DAR ES SALAAM-based small-scale women traders have urged the government to set special areas in every municipality and let them exhibit their goods for at least twice a week, for sustainability of the markets and encourage the public to buy local products.

They were speaking at the weekend in the city during the entrepreneurs workshop, organised by the Community Service Tanzania (CST) aimed at among others, promoting economic integration in the informal sector.

The workshop was part of the implementation of CST one year pilot project (from December last year) over empowering women vendors to demand their rights and engage key actors for better services and conducive business environment in the citys Ubungo Municipality. It is sponsored by African Womens Development Fund, for 20,000 US dollars.

A workshop participant, Ms Stella Kabelege whose business is to make liquid soaps said they have already benefited from entrepreneurship trainings on how to improve their businesses but they lacked reliable markets.

We produce and consume by ourselves as one used walking door-to-door in search of consumers.

It is very limited business indeed. We need open and permanent markets. We have quality and quantity products to meet the publics demands and requirements.

Questioned on why they do not grab market opportunities in the newly introduced weekly exhibitions by the Tanzania Trade Development Authority (Tantrade) at Mwalimu Nyerere Trade Fair (Saba saba) grounds in the citys Temeke Municipality, Ms Kabelege responded that they could not afford trading charges and other costs involved because they have low capital.

On behalf of her colleagues, she proposed Kimara area as proper exhibition destination, as it was the centre for all traders, and they used gathering there for various discussions.

Commenting on what has been done to support small scale traders in Ubungo, the Municipalitys Community Development Officer, Ms Anita Makota said that a total of 3,399 groups of female and youth traders were already connected to CRDB Bank and will receive soft loans in the nearest future after they attained special training on savings and expenditure.

The groups were composed of 2,023 female and 1,376 youths while the Municipal continued registering more groups, she said, stressing that registration was free of charge.

CST Technical Advisor, Mr Mgwabi Mwambi told participants that, upon completion of the project (November this year); it was expected that a total of 800 female street vendors in Ubungo will be trained and act on the Councils by-laws which govern street vending business, access community based financial and legal aid services, effectively participate in the leadership within business locations as well as challenging all forms of abuse.
More than 140 migrants rescued by an aid group as they drifted in the Mediterranean have claimed five ships passed them by without plucking them to safety.

The migrants, including 67 unaccompanied minors, were mainly from Somalia and Eritrea and were believed to have been at sea for about 35 hours on a small wooden boat that had no motor.

Over the past few months, southern European countries have taken a hard line on those rescued as they try to cross the Mediterranean, refusing to allow ships to dock and the migrants to disembark. This means commercial ships risk being blocked for days at sea, unable to carry out their business.

Stock image of migrants waiting to be rescued off the coast of Libya by a rescue ship run by SOS Mediterranee and Medecins Sans Frontieres

European aid group SOS Mediterranee said its ship Aquarius spotted the group on Friday. A spokesman added: In a disturbing development, rescued people told our teams they encountered five different ships that did not offer them assistance.

This could be due to the high risk of being stranded and denied a place of safety.

In June, Aquarius was forced to sail to Spain with more than 600 rescued migrants after Italy and Malta refused it permission to dock. Other private vessels, including a support ship for an offshore oil rig, have had to wait days until a country agreed to let rescued migrants disembark.

The Aquarius was still in the Mediterranean last night hoping to receive docking permission from a country. Nick Romaniuk, SOS Mediterranees search and rescue co-ordinator, said: What is of utmost importance is the survivors are brought to a place of safety without delay, where their basic needs can be met.
Author Sir V S Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2001, has died at his home in London aged 85, his family announced yesterday.

Sir Vidia, who won numerous coveted literary awards, wrote 30 books including critically acclaimed novels such as In A Free State and A Bend In the River.

His wife, Nadira, called him a 'giant in all that he achieved' and said he had died surrounded by 'those he loved having lived a life which was full of wonderful creativity and endeavour'.

He was raised as a Hindu and brought up in Trinidad before moving to England at 18 after receiving a scholarship to University College, Oxford.

He left university in 1954 and his first novel  The Mystic Masseur  was published three years later.

In 1961 he published his most celebrated novel, A House For Mr Biswas, which took more than three years to write.

American author Paul Theroux, who had a bitter 15-year feud with Sir Vidia before reconciling, said: 'He will go down as one of the greatest writers of our time.'

Vidia Naipaul (pictured here with his wife Nadira) was, in my view, the literary godchild of Dickens and Conrad, writes A N Wilson

Vidia Naipaul was, in my view, the literary godchild of Dickens and Conrad. His earliest published comic prize-winning novels such as The Mystic Masseur (1957) and Miguel Street (1959), were recognised almost immediately, as the works of an outstanding master.

He went on to become one of the truly great writers of his time, justly awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2001.

His canvas was wide  nothing less than the world itself, in all the confusions of a post-Imperial era.

Born in Trinidad, the grandchild of imported Indian labourer, it was his journalist father  whose affectionate portrait was drawn in the immortal 1961 novel A House For Mr Biswas  who filled his sons with his own reverence for the printed word. Vidia's younger brother Shiva was also a writer.

Vidia went to Oxford on a scholarship, worked for the BBC's Caribbean Voices, and was quickly taken up by the London literary world.

The novelist Anthony Powell was an early champion and friend, as was Powell's niece Lady Antonia Fraser.

In Andre Deutsch, himself a refugee in London from Hungary, he found a publisher who championed his wistfully pessimistic view of the human condition.

Though Naipaul wrote in prose, he was the great poet of exile, revealing in book after book, fictional and non-fictional, that none of us are really at home on this bewildering, filthy, beautiful but confused planet.

While at Oxford, Vidia met and later married a fellow-student Pat Hale, a wife to whom he was unfaithful and who had quite a hard time of it, but who was his loyal friend and champion until her death from cancer in 1996.

His second wife, Nadira Alvi, a great beauty and distinguished journalist, was his companion to the end.

In his work, Naipaul was scathingly contemptuous of what he saw as the folly and hypocrisy of the human race.

'The Europeans wanted gold and slaves like everybody else, but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves,' he wrote.

Sir Vidia, who won numerous coveted literary awards, wrote 30 books including critically acclaimed novels such as In A Free State and A Bend In the River. In 1961 he published his most celebrated novel, A House For Mr Biswas

His first book about India, An Area of Darkness, caused howls of dismay, not only in India but in the West, for while recognising the wonder of that land, he depicted its squalor.

For his books on Africa, especially In A Free State, he was denounced  absurdly  as fascist.

He once said that 'if a writer does not generate hostility, he is dead'. While this may be true, he took an undisguised delight in being deliberately offensive.

His fellow-writer Paul Theroux wrote an extremely funny memoir of Naipaul, a catalogue of impossible behaviour.

A friend of mine, a French diplomat, found herself beside him at dinner one night and suffered an uninterrupted hour in which he informed her that every single French writer, from Victor Hugo to Emile Zola, from Balzac to Proust, was no good. Then he fell asleep.

More or less teetotal, he was not drunk when he made these tirades, he simply liked upsetting people.

He caused international outage for supporting the Hindu nationalists in India, and, though married to a Muslim, he was accused inevitably of Islamophobia.

What will remain is not the reputation for belligerence, but the luminous quality of his prose, the perspicacity of his writing, and, behind the curmudgeonly manners, a spark which could make him hilarious company.
Boys are expected to get more A and A* grades than girls in the new, harder A-levels when the results come out on Thursday.

Experts believe they may also narrow the gap with girls when it comes to all A* to C grades.

A report published today by the University of Buckingham predicts that boys' performance will be better because the qualifications will mostly be graded through exams, which on average boys are better at.

This is instead of coursework, where girls tend to do better.

Exam regulator Ofqual said marks will be set so no one is at a 'disadvantage' by the new changes which meant hundreds of thousands of pupils acted as 'guinea pigs'

Last year, when there were new A-levels in 13 subjects, boys scored more As and A*s than girls by 0.5 percentage points.

This year 24 subjects will follow the new system, which was pioneered by former education secretary Michael Gove.

Professor Alan Smithers, who wrote the report, said the reforms favoured boys because they are 'happier to throw themselves into a final revision effort for an exam'.

Markers grading this year's GCSE and A-Level exams will be more lenient so 'no pupil is disadvantaged' by new harder tests... which have left some with 'extreme anxiety'

Grading of A-level and GCSE papers will be especially lenient this year to compensate for teething problems with the new exams.

Exam regulator Ofqual has said the marks needed for a pass will be set so no one is 'disadvantaged' by the changes.

It said grade boundaries  set after marking  will be positioned so roughly the same proportion of pupils will get good grades as in previous years.

This could potentially mean placing boundaries lower to compensate for poorer performance caused by teachers unfamiliar with the materials.

This year new A-levels and GCSEs have been sat by hundreds of thousands of pupils who will be acting as 'guinea pigs' following radical reforms to toughen up exams.

The changes were brought in by former education secretary Michael Gove following concerns over years of slipping standards under New Labour.

The new exams aim to bring performance in line with that of high-flying countries in Asia which are far ahead of the UK in many international league tables.

Yesterday critics warned that if the leniency continues there will have been little point in making the exams harder.

Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, said: 'It's reasonable to recognise that the first people to take these exams will be guinea pigs and should get protection.

'But while it is reasonable to provide these protections for pupils for the moment, I would question how long they will be in place if they continue indefinitely, we will not get the full benefit of the reforms.'

Reformed A-levels include maths, geography, French, Spanish, Latin, PE and drama.

And reformed GCSEs include biology, chemistry, physics, geography, history, French, Spanish, PE, art and Latin.

The GCSEs will also be graded on a new scale, from 1 to 9, with the 9 equivalent to a high A*.

The new exams aim to bring performance in line with countries in Asia which are much higher than the UK in the international league tables

Cath Jadhav, a director of standards at Ofqual, revealed its grading strategy for this year in a series of blog posts.

She said: 'Student performance dips a little in the first years of a new qualification, because teachers are less familiar with the new specifications, and there are fewer support materials and past papers for students to use.

'Using statistics compensates for that dip, so that the 2018 cohort is not unfairly disadvantaged by being the first to sit these new qualifications.'

She said the results of the new A-levels will 'look similar' to last year, providing only that the 'ability make-up' of pupils has not changed.

This means a similar proportion of entries  26 per cent  will get an A or A*, while three quarters will be graded C or above.

At GCSE the proportion of entries previously getting a C or above  two thirds  will be graded 4 or above this year.

The bottom of grade 7 is equivalent to the bottom of the old A, and as before, 20 per cent should achieve this or above. Within this sub-group around 20 per cent again will get the top grade of 9.

This means the 9 grade  which Oxford and Cambridge will use to identify the very brightest pupils  will be much harder to get than the old A*.

However, some teachers are still worried the volatility of the reforms could mean pupils miss out on the results they deserve.

The changes were brought in partly because leading universities had complained pupils were arriving poorly prepared for the demands of degrees.

They also said they found it difficult to choose between thousands of applicants who had achieved straight As and A*s at GCSE and were predicted top grades at A-level as well.

A-level results come out on Thursday and GCSE results are out on August 23.
Meghan Markle's father Thomas has admitted he may never see his daughter again after a series of explosive interviews since the royal wedding.

Former Hollywood lighting director Mr Markle, 74, said he did not expect to 'see her or hear back from her', adding: 'That's OK'.

It came after the Duchess's father revealed he had not spoken to his daughter in months and said he wanted his old life back.

Mr Markle said he wanted to go on holiday and leave the furore with the royal family behind, he told The Sun.

Meghan Markle's father Thomas (pictured in March) has admitted he may never see his daughter again after a series of explosive interviews since the royal wedding

Thomas and Meghan have not spoken since their wedding as her father was cut off by Kensington Pa;la

He said: 'I want to say good luck and God bless to my daughter. I don't expect to see her or hear back from her  and that's OK.

'All I was doing was saying things I wanted to say. I just want to re-establish the relationship with my daughter.'

Mr Markle, 74, announced days before the Windsor wedding that he had suffered a heart attack and would not be walking his daughter down the aisle.

It came after the revelation that he had worked with the paparazzi to stage photos which appeared to show him preparing for the wedding.

Since the May ceremony he has said on Good Morning Britain that he had discussed politics with Harry, claiming the Prince was 'open to Brexit'.

Harry is said to have had a phone row with his father-in-law over his paparazzi deal

Mr Markle has also revealed he has not spoken to his daughter since the wedding and that he feels he had been cut off as a punishment for staging the fake paparazzi pictures.

He claimed in a newspaper interview that his daughter looked terrified in her new role and that she wore a pained smile.

Meghan's father also says that he was concerned his daughter may have read false reports that he faked his heart attack.

Relations between the Duchess of Sussexs father and the royals sank to a new low yesterday after he made a string of claims about how the couple and the Palace have treated him.

In another explosive interview, Thomas Markle claimed he hung up on Prince Harry in a heated exchange after he was exposed for staging paparazzi photos for cash days before the wedding in May.

The 74-year-old claimed that the prince had rudely called him as he recovered from a heart attack in hospital and berated him before Mr Markle cut off the call, saying: Maybe it would be better for you guys if I was dead...

Mr Markle also claimed he was told there was no room for him to give a speech as father of the bride at the wedding and that he did not even receive an invitation  while his ex-wife Doria Ragland was hand delivered a scroll bearing the Queens formal announcement by two representatives at her Los Angeles home.

No one came to my door in Mexico. I would have liked the engagement announcement too, he said, adding that the was never even sent one of the 600 formal wedding invitations issued under Prince Charless name.

Mr Markle also criticised the Palace for hanging him out to dry and leaving him totally isolated by not giving him any advice on how to deal with the Press attention after the engagement.

The latest claims, published in the Mail on Sunday yesterday, will no doubt further damage his already strained relationship with 37-year-old Meghan.

Despite recent rumours of a rapprochement between the two, the Daily Mail understands the duchess has no immediate plans to contact her father and will deal with the issue in her own time.

It is understood that this is not the first time father and daughter have been estranged and have in the past gone for long periods without speaking.

Mr Markle, 74, announced days before the Windsor wedding that he had suffered a heart attack and would not be attending. Pictured: Harry and Meghan kiss after the ceremony

Their current estrangement has already lasted three months and came after Mr Markle was exposed for staging paparazzi photographs of himself being measured for a suit before the wedding.

Yesterday he admitted that he had lied to Prince Harry when the couple rang him to ask if he had co-operated with photographers, telling him: No, I was being fitted for a new hoodie.

But days after footage emerged of Mr Markle posing for the shots, Harry called again.

By now Mr Markle was in hospital after a heart attack which had forced him to pull out of walking his daughter down the aisle days before the wedding.

The retired Hollywood lighting director claims the furious prince told him: If you had listened to me this would never have happened.

Mr Markle said he was upset at the call and replied: Maybe it would be better for you guys if I was dead... then you could pretend to be sad before hanging up.

In hindsight, he admits Harry was absolutely right to criticise him for dealing with the paparazzi for money but described the timing of the phone call as rude.
Pippa Middleton has been pictured with her father-in-law for the first time since he was accused of rape.

The Duchess of Cambridge's sister joined David Matthews, 74, for tea with her husband James and mother-in-law Jane in West London.

Pippa, 34, was seen carrying tea for the get-together last week more than four months after it emerged Mr Matthews was being investigated by French authorities over the allegations, which he strongly denies.

Pippa, who is believed to be due with her first child in October, wore a flowery blue dress over her baby bump while her father-in-law wore jeans, trainers and a light blue shirt to the family reunion.

Pippa Middleton and her mother-in-law Jane Matthews carry tea for a get-together with the 34-year-old's husband James Matthews and his father David Matthews, 74

From left: Pippa Middleton, James Matthews, David Matthews and Jane Matthews at the table

Pippa attended the West London catch-up with her husband James, 42, who sat on her side of the table for tea.

David Matthews was joined at the family reunion by his wife Jane, 71, who wore an all-black outfit with trainers.

Pippa and Jane brought the hot drinks to the table, each carrying two mugs from a matching set for the family to enjoy.

Mr Matthews was accused of two offences in the late 1990s, one in Paris and one on the island of St Barts where the millionaire owned a hotel.

The woman at the centre of the claims contacted police last year and initially told officers Mr Matthews had acted inappropriately towards her when she was 15.

The Matthews family said at the time of the Paris probe: 'David Matthews categorically denies the allegation and unequivocally contests the untrue and scandalous accusation.'

David Matthews wore a light blue shirt, jeans and trainers for the family reunion in London

Pippa and Jane carry two mugs each for the West London family get-together last week

Pippa was also seen wearing the summery blue outfit as she headed out for a cycle ride in Kensington.

She teamed with a pair of nude flats decorated with a green star and slung a purple leather bag over her shoulder.

With safety in mind, the mother-to-be donned her helmet before wheeling her bike into the road and setting off.

Also last week Pippa was spotted visiting her local gym where she apparently enjoyed a one-to-one training session.

The sporty sister of the Duchess of Cambridge was glowing as she left Define Fitness Studio in Fitzrovia, which charges upwards of 28 per class.

Apparently sticking to her exercise regime weeks before she is due to give birth, Pippa was casually dressed in a light grey hoodie and black leggings.
Australia's worst female child killer who is serving a 40-year sentence for killing her four children has been calling her friend at the same time every day to complain about jail.

Kathleen Folbigg, from the New South Wales Hunter Valley, became a hated figure in May 2003 when a Supreme Court jury concluded she had killed her two sons and two daughters between 1989 and 1999.

The 51-year-old murderer has been calling her friend Tracy Chapman every day at 9.30am for the past 15 years to chat about the banalities of prison life.

'Good morning bub, how are you?,' she would say.

Their conversations have been more intense during the past three years, as Folbigg expressed her frustration at the State Government's delay in getting her case reviewed.

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Kathleen Folbigg, a 51-year-old killer, has been calling her friend Tracy Chapman (left in their younger days) every day at 9.30am for the past 15 years to chat about the banalities of prison life.

Kathleen Folbigg (pictured with Salvation Army court chaplain Joyce Harmer) was found guilty by a Supreme Court jury in 2003 of killing her two sons and two daughters between 1989 and 1999

From Cessnock Correctional Centre, in a phone call recorded by prison authorities, Folbigg revealed her shock at the jurors finding her guilty on three counts of murder and one of manslaughter in 2003.

In a recording obtained by the ABC's Australian Story, she told her friend she couldn't walk as she was led from the courtroom to the downstairs cells.

'In the end, I was just shattered and felt like by the time they got me downstairs, my legs werent even working properly, you I know I was half carried down the stairs, and out to the cells,' she said.

Minutes earlier, the jury had found she had murdered her infant children Patrick, aged seven months in February 1991; Sarah, aged 10 months in August 1993; and Laura, aged 18 months in February 1999.

Caleb (left) was just 19 days old when he died in February 1989, while Patrick (right), was seven months in February 1991

She was found guilty of manslaughter of her 19-day-old son Caleb's death in February 1989.

The jury had rejected her defence the deaths were of natural causes, leading to her being sentenced to 40 years in jail with a 30-year non-parole term.

Ahead of Australian Story going to air tonight, NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman hinted the State Government was open to reviewing her case.

'Ms Folbigg's petition raises complex questions to which I am giving appropriate consideration and have taken extensive advice,' he told Daily Mail Australia in a statement.

'I hope to be in a position to make an announcement in the near future.'

Folbigg told her friend the 2003 jury verdict had traumatised her.

'Look, it was just so overwhelming. There are no words. No words to even describe it,' Folbigg told her friend in one of their telephone calls.

'It was shattering and it was devastating and it was overwhelming. If I had started screaming, I would have sent the courthouse into a big, giant frenzy.

'Thats what I felt like I was doing on the inside.'

Sarah (left) died aged 10 months in August 1993 while her sister Laura (right) was 18 months old when she died in February 1999

Folbigg, who was convicted based on her diary entries found by her former husband Craig Folbigg at their Singleton home, told her friend she was angry inside.

'Nothing might have come out of my mouth and the tears were flowing, but from the inside, I just felt like I was absolutely just screaming my lungs out going, "No. this isnt right",' she said.

In another phone call, she revealed her diary entries were written from the point of view of an insecure mother.

'You've got to understand that those diaries are written from a point of me always blaming myself,' she said in one phone call.

Pictured: Laura Folbigg, one of Katherine Forbigg's four children who died by her hand between 1989 and 1999

'I blamed myself for everything. It's just I took so much of the responsibility, because that's, as mothers, what you do.'

In 2003, jurors were told the children were killed at the hands of a mother who was driven to smother them in violent fits of rage.

Barrister Isabel Reed - one of several lawyers who has been working on a petition to have Folbigg's case reviewed by the NSW justice system - insisted her conviction was based on insufficient evidence.

The 51-year-old killer had been keeping in regular phone contact with a friend Tracy Chapman since she was sentenced to 40 years behind bars at Cessnock Correctional Centre

'We don't want her released from prison. We just want an inquiry to look at the evidence and consider: has there been a miscarriage of justice here?' Ms Reed told The Sydney Morning Herald.

'I didn't think when we started this that that was a big ask.'

Monash University forensic pathologist Stephen Cordner, who is also involved in the petition, agrees 'there is no pathological or medical basis for concluding homicide' in the case of Folbigg's deceased children.

Courts previously heard it was 'cessation of breathing' that led to each child's sudden and unexpected death - though post-mortems failed to shed conclusive light on any cause beyond that.

Moreover, much of the evidence used in the trial was deemed to have been misleading .

A group of lawyers who believe Folbigg may have been unfairly sentenced are appealing for NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman (pictured) to launch a formal inquiry into her case

Ms Reed claims to have called the office of NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman every two weeks for the past two years in an effort to have him launch a formal inquiry into Folbigg's case, to little avail.

She spoke to the ABC's Australian Story.

'I don't know whether public pressure is a thing that might help with a decision,' Ms Reed said, adding she hoped the state attorney-general would 'at least not be able to sleep comfortably on Monday night' after watching the ABC.
New York police have asked the public for help in locating a former hedge fund millionaire who went from spending at least $400-a-night living at the Waldorf Astoria to homeless.

Paul Greenwald, 70, has gone missing after leaving Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan at around 2am on Saturday, according to police.

The NYPD describes Greenwald as a white male with blue eyes and gray hair.

He is approximately 6 feet tall and weighs around 200 pounds.

Paul Greenwald, 70, has gone missing after leaving Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan at around 2am on Saturday, according to police

Greenwald once lived at the luxurious Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan, where rooms cost a minimum of $400-a-night. He is now said to be homeless

Greenwald was last photographed on surveillance cameras wearing a red shirt, black pants, black sandals, and white socks.

He also had a pair of eyeglasses on his forehead.

Greenwald was admitted to the hospital this past Thursday, though it is not known why, according to the New York Post.

Police said that Greenwald is currently homeless. He had been living in a shelter just around the corner from Bellevue Hospital.

Greenwald was last in the news in 2009, when he was hauled into court for allegedly violating a restraining order against his then-estranged wife, Michelle Greenwald (above)

It was only less than a decade ago that Greenwald was a millionaire living at one of New York Citys most luxurious hotels.

Greenwald was last in the news in 2009, when he was hauled into court for allegedly violating a restraining order against his then-estranged wife.

Michelle Greenwald, a cookbook author and teacher at New York Universitys Stern School of Business, told police that Paul Greenwald lured her out of her apartment by calling her and telling her she was parked near a fire hydrant.

Once she came outside, Paul Greenwald allegedly grabbed her by the arm and started to scream at her.

He was subsequently charged with seven counts of felony criminal contempt.

The judge presiding over the case had him kicked out of the courtroom after he shouted: The judge is a f***ing crook!

Anyone with information in regards to Greenwald's whereabouts is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).

The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577.

All calls are strictly confidential.
A controversial comedian has launched an extraordinary attack on Australia's drought-stricken farmers, labelling them as 'pig headed, entitled and inflexible'.

Catherine Deveny, who first found notoriety through her newspaper column for The Age newspaper in Melbourne, made the tasteless comments in a Facebook post on her now-deleted public profile.

'Many farmers are pig headed, entitled, inflexible and cashing in on Australia's romanticised idea of the land,' she wrote.

'The government bank rolling farmers s**t me.'

Controversial former columnist and comedian Catherine Deveny (pictured) has offered a scathing review of drought-stricken farmers, calling them 'pig headed, entitled and inflexible'

Deveny made the tasteless comments in a Facebook post to her now-deleted public profile, taking aim at those worst affected by the recent drought

The entire state of NSW was declared in drought last week  with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology predicting little chance of rain for the rest of the year

Her extraordinary attack comes as thousands of Australia's farmers battle a once-in-a-generation drought and face the harrowing prospect of deserting their family's land.

Only last week the entire state of New South Wales was declared to be now in drought, with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology offering little hope of decent rains until at least the end of the year.

This autumn was the driest on record while July was the driest in 15 years.

Perhaps most heartbreaking has been the forced culling of thousands of starving livestock by farmers with no other choice but to shoot suffering animals and bury them in mass graves.

However, the environmental disaster has also moved thousands of Australians to band together in support of their countrymen.

In addition to millions in private donations, the nation's supermarkets have jumped on board, with Woolworths pledging to donate a day's profit to the cause.

This Autumn was the driest on record and last month the most-parched July in over 15 years

Perhaps most heartbreaking has been the forced executions of thousands of starving livestock by farmers with no other choice but to shoot much-wanted animals and bury them in mass graves

'Why are farmers bailed out time and time again?' Deveny asked her thousands of followers in the post

Thousands more have contributed to campaigns like Buy a Bale which asks punters to purchase a bale of hay before it's transported to an affected area.

But despite the dire nature of the situation, the widespread sympathy appears not to have extended to Deveny, who questioned the reason for additional support.

'Why are farmers bailed out time and time again?' she asked her thousands of followers.

'Some farmers are thriving because they are respond to change in markets and climates. Others have a breathtaking sense of privilege it's impossible for me to fathom.'

So far, state and federal governments have promised close to $2billion towards drought relief, through income support, farm business loans and other forms of support.

The latest map from the Bureau of Meteorology shows dramatically low levels of rainfall from April to August 2018

Alternatively in the 2010 version, large patches of green and blue can be seen, showing a high percentage of rainfall

How Australian governments are helping drought-stricken farmers Australia's governments have backed drought-affected farmers, promising close to $2billion towards relief. Last week, the federal government announced it is giving farmers an extra $12,000 on top of usual assistance, as well as making it easier for them to get allowances. 'When nature throws its worst at us, it brings out the best in Australians,' Mr Turnbull told parliament on Monday. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said penalties taken from the big banks should be used to pay for more help to farmers. In Queensland, the state government will add $9 million dollars to drought relief programs. It will also appoint two special commissioners to oversee the response to the worsening issue. The multi-million dollar fund will be spread across a number of existing programs, including supporting mental health and financial counselling services. The distance at which stock feed can be transported at a subsidised rate while also be increased from from 1000 to 2000km. Meanwhile, the NSW government is cracking down on dodgy operators in the freight industry who are cashing in on the plight of drought-stricken farmers. The transport subsidies will work as part of the state government's $500 million emergency relief package for drought-stricken farmers. Advertisement

The post is not the first time Deveny has courted controversy.

On the eve of Anzac Day in April, the 50-year-old labelled ANZAC Day as 'Bogan Halloween' in a series of tweets.

'Why do people in the armed forces use the word 'serve' to describe their work despite it being no more dangerous or prone to upheaval than many other jobs?' she wrote.

'It's just a job and work. Throw the term 'serve' in the bin. It's part of the fetishism of war and violence.'

'ANZAC Day. It's Bogan Halloween.'

Earlier this year, the 50-year-old created a media firestorm through a series of Tweets, including one which labelled ANZAC Day as 'Bogan Halloween'

In 2010, Deveney was famously axed from The Age newspaper after suggesting a then 11-year-old Bindi Irwin should 'get laid' following that year's Logie Awards

Deveney's column in The Age was axed in 2010 after she suggested a then 11-year-old Bindi Irwin should 'get laid'.

'I do so hope Bindi Irwin gets laid,' Deveny wrote on Twitter following Bindi's appearance at that year's Logie Awards.

The comedian defended her comments, claiming she was using satire 'to expose celebrity raunch culture and the sexual objectification of women.'

However, her then-employer was quick to respond, end her column at the paper.
Bank branch closures are killing off shops on the high street, a poll reveals.

Nearly a quarter of store owners said the loss of a local bank branch helped push them to close at least one store within the last five years.

And nearly half  or 46 per cent  told the Nottingham Building Society survey that such a loss had harmed their business.

A poll has revealed bank branch closures are killing off shops on the high street. Stock image

A Government report released earlier this year shows that 1,270 bank branches were closed between 2014 and 2017, often to cut costs. This year alone, 650 were shut, with more to come.

Experts believe there are now as many as 1,500 towns in the UK that used to have branches but no longer do.

The Daily Mail has been campaigning to save the countrys high streets, which are being hit by lower footfall and higher business rates than online retailers. An investigation earlier this year found Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland were downplaying how many customers used branches they wanted to shut.

Gary Womersley, head of branch network for Nottingham Building Society, said: Financial institutions play a major role in local high streets drawing customers to shops and boosting sales and business.

The survey questioned 100 UK shop owners and 1,073 shoppers. Owners hit by bank branch closures estimate that their annual revenue dropped by an average of 20 per cent. It also found that 26 per cent were looking at moving their businesses to a new area or smaller premises nearby, while 31 per cent were considering operating solely online.
Minnesota Congressman and Democratic National Convention co-chair Keith Ellison is accused of domestic violence by his ex-girlfriend who alleges he dragged her off a bed by her feet, and says there is video of the incident.

He denies the allegations lobbed against him Saturday night, and he is currently in the running for the Democratic slot for the state's Attorney General, the vote for which is on Tuesday.

The explosive claims came to light after the ex, Karen Monahan's son, Austin, posted a now viral Facebook comment on the matter, in which he claims to have seen the tape in question, in which Ellison allegedly drags his mother off a bed while screaming obscenities at her.

The son, Austin Aslim Monahan, took to Facebook in the lengthy post, which reads: 'In the middle of 2017, I was using my moms computer trying to download something and I clicked on a file, I found over 100 text and twitter messages and video almost 2 min long that showed Keith Ellison dragging my mama off the bed by her feet, screaming and calling her a ''f****** b*****'' and telling her to get the f*** out of his house.'

Co-chair of the Democratic National Committee and current Minnesota Congressman vying for the Democratic ticket for Attorney General on Tuesday, Keith Ellison, is accused of dragging his ex-girlfriend, Karen Monahan (right) off a bed by her feet while screaming obscenities. He denies the allegations against him & denies the existence of a tape showing such an incident

Monahan and Ellison in happier times. A tweet shared by Ellison in September of 2016 at event

'The messages I found, were mixed with him consistently telling my mom he wanted her back, he missed her, he knew he f***ed up and wished he could do things different, he would victim shaming, bully her, and threaten her if she went public. I text him and told him I know what you did to my mama and a few other things.'

Monahan, who is a Minneapolis political organizer, said via Twitter that what her son posted was 'true.'

'What my son said is true. Every statement he made was true. @keithellison, you know you did that to me. I have given every opportunity to get help and heal. Even now, u r willing to say my son is lying and have me continue to leak more text and info just so others will believe him.'

Ellison denied the allegation of physical abuse. A spokesman for his campaign also denied the congressman had sent threatening text messages.

'Karen and I were in a long-term relationship which ended in 2016, and I still care deeply for her well-being,' Ellison said in a statement. 'This video does not exist because I have never behaved in this way, and any characterization otherwise is false.'

Minnesota Public Radio News reported Sunday that it reviewed more than 100 text and Twitter messages between Ellison and Monahan that showed the two communicating over months after their breakup, including coordinating her getting her things from his house.

MPR said the tenor was sometimes friendly, sometimes combative. MPR said in one message, Monahan told Ellison she planned to write about their 'journey' and Ellison warned her not to, calling it a 'horrible attack on my privacy, unreal.'

MPR said there was no evidence in the messages it reviewed of alleged physical abuse.

Ellison, who is divorced, is a six-term congressman and a leader within the Democratic Party.

Ellison shared this shot of Monahan and her son Austin on Twitter in April 2016

Austin Monahan's full post, alleging he saw a video of his mother being dragged off a bed

He became deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee last year after falling just short of the top job. He announced this summer he would leave Congress after six terms representing the Minneapolis area and run for the state's open attorney general's office.

With a huge fundraising advantage and star power over his opponents - including a visit from Vermont Sen. and 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders - Ellison was considered the heavy favorite heading into Tuesday's primary.

Ellison's Democratic opponents pounced on the allegations.

State Rep. Debra Hilstrom circulated the initial Facebook post Saturday night, calling the allegations 'troubling.' Tom Foley, a former county attorney, called on any video or messages to be turned over to law enforcement for an 'immediate investigation.'
DIGITAL robots will soon be taking over all the necessary processes in making public procurements.

That is according to the experts resolutions endorsed during the recent International Procurement Meeting held in Arusha.

It was agreed that all bidding, purchasing and payments should be done through online arrangements and paid digitally.

This is intended to avert all forms of graft, misuse of funds as well as promoting transparency.

The Deputy Director of the Experts Board of Procurements and Supplies, Mr Godfrey Dimbanyi, summed up the resolutions at the peak of the 8th International Conference, on Public Procurement in a Global Environment  Past, Present and Future Development, over the weekend.

All tenders, bidding and decisions will be done digitally, including online, and this will reduce the face-to-face human interactions in making purchases and payments and therefore reduce or totally eliminate all forms of corruption and rackets related to procurements, said Mr Dimbanyi.

A Ruaha Catholic University don, Dr Dorminicus Kasilo, said they had agreed to conduct research and reviews on public procurement activities ahead of the next meeting scheduled for China in 2020.

It was stated during the Arusha meeting that at least 90 per cent of all cases of graft and public funds embezzlement affecting developing countries, could be traced in procurement related activities and transactions.

The Minister for Finance and Planning, Dr Phillip Mpango, who opened the meeting at the Arusha International Conference Centre, stated that most of the purchases being made hardly took into consideration issues like Value for Money, Actual needs, Realistic Pricing, Transparency and Competition factor.

Even here in Tanzania, much of the public fund leakages occur during procurement exercises and for years, this has been costing the government billions in losses, Dr Mpango explained.

Quoting the Public Procurement Regulatory Authoritys Annual Performance Evaluation Report, the minister pointed out that, over 70 per cent of funds from the national budget was spent on procurement.

You can thus see how sensitive this sector is and its ability to either push forward or cripple the economy and industrial development in the country, he said.
Stamp duty should be cut to prevent property developers forming an 'oligopoly' over the housing market, Boris Johnson has demanded.

The former foreign secretary said young people are being prevented from getting on the housing ladder because of the 'absurdly high' levy.

Mr Johnson accused large property companies of 'landbanking' to keep house prices high, and said they treated their buyers like 'serfs'.

Boris Johnson accused large property firms of 'landbanking' to keep house prices high

His call came as fellow Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg warned the party needed to accept more building on the green belt as not all of it is in areas of outstanding natural beauty.

He described the housing shortage as the biggest challenge facing Britain.

And Mr Johnson, writing in his Daily Telegraph column, urged Theresa May and London Mayor Sadiq Khan to abandon quotas on affordable housing to fix Britain's 'housing disgrace'.

The article made no mention of the burka row that was ignited by last week's column in which Mr Johnson compared veiled Muslim women to letterboxes and bank robbers.

Mr Johnson wrote: 'This is meant to be Britain, the great homeowning democracy, but we now have lower rates of owner-occupation, for the under-40s, than France and Germany.

'That is a disgrace; and you can't expect young people to be automatically sympathetic to capitalism when they find it so tough to acquire capital themselves.

'We need to tell Lefties like Sadiq Khan to stop their ideological obsession with quotas for affordable housing on each development.'

Mr Johnson described how almost two-thirds of house-hunters ten years ago were aged between 25 and 34. But now the percentage of young buyers has dropped to 39 per cent.

He blamed the 2008 financial crash for decimating the property industry, leaving only a handful of large companies that dominate the market.

Mr Johnson accused the giant firms of not making use of around 500,000 permissions to build and said more needed to be done to build new homes.

His intervention was echoed by North East Somerset MP Mr Rees-Mogg who claimed villages across the country could each take up to 50 new houses without changing their character.

His remarks come a week after Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss warned the Tories must build homes in the countryside  or they will hand power to Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr Rees-Mogg told the Financial Times political podcast: 'I think the biggest challenge facing us at the moment is housing.

'The housing market has problems  it is very expensive, mobility has declined, we need to build more houses. We need to build houses that people want, rather than what architects think are good for them.

'That means a difficult conversation with our own supporters about where we build on green fields.

'It is going to be primarily on green fields ... but there is going to be some element of green belt as well because not all green belt land is in areas of outstanding natural beauty.'

However, campaigners have warned the green belt is already being 'gobbled up at an alarming rate' to build thousands of homes.

Around 460,000 properties in green belt land have been planned since 2013.
Birthday girl Eliana Ferreira Campos, dubbed 'Miss Barbye Marley,' (above on Facebook) was fatally shot outside her house party on Saturday night

Disturbing surveillance video released Sunday shows the moment a girl in the midst of celebrating in her 24th birthday is fatally shot by members of a gang outside her own house party in Brazil.

Eliana Ferreira Campos, dubbed on her Facebook profile as 'Miss Barbye Marley,' was the first victim of the triple homicide that took place in the municipality of Ji-Parana around 11pm on Saturday.

Campos had rented out the party house she is seen on surveillance standing outside of while taking a smoke break and chatting with pals.

Not long after, Campos is approached by a group of people who begin physically assaulting her before one takes a gun and shoots her dead.

The two other victims shot dead afterward were identified by local police as Paloma de Oliveira Guimaraes, 26 and Edmundo Cristian Ferreira de Matos, 18.

It's currently unclear how the trio knew one another.

Social media photos suggest the second two victims, Guimaraes and de Matos, may have been romantically involved.

Campos (seen center in dark clothes between two men) had been taking a smoke break with friends before the deadly incident took place

She had been hosting a party in the municipality of Ji-Parana around 11pm on Saturday

Campos is seen far left as she is attacked by members of First Command of the Capital gang

The suspects in the gang-related incident were Fernando FS 25, Ray SS, 23, and Gustavo P. C, 22.

The men were taken into custody and questioned by authorities afterward.

Local news outlet RH 24 Horas reports the deadly incident was motivated 'due to the war between the criminal factions Red Command and First Command of the Capital.'

The deadly incident was motivated from 'the war between the criminal factions Red Command and First Command of the Capital'

Campos is seen left lying on the ground after being assaulted and shot by a gang member

Ray - the man said to have taken the gun to each of the victims - told police he feels no remorse for his heinous actions.

'I'm not sorry at all... because if I do not kill them, they're the ones who kill me because we're at war,' Ray, a member of the First Command of the Capital, or PCC, said.

He also told police that he and fellow gang members planned to kill more people in attendance to the birthday bash.

Campos had been hosting a party with members of the suspects' rival gang, Red Command

The 24-year-old victim is pictured smiling brightly above in this Facebook image before her death

The two other victims shot dead afterward were identified by local police as Paloma de Oliveira Guimaraes, 26 and Edmundo Cristian Ferreira de Matos, 18 (shown above together)

This photo shows the suspects (no order, men not yet individually pictured) Fernando FS 25, Ray SS, 23, and Gustavo P. C, 22

Some members of Miss Barbye's birthday party were apart of their rival gang, Red Command.

The young, ravishing redhead last posted a public profile photo of herself signaling a peace sign as she walked away from the camera.

Campos penned in the caption: 'I put the pieces together and played back. That cut the feet of those who try to follow me, that cut my feet if i try to return.'
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Aided by slightly cooler temperatures, firefighters made steady progress Sunday in battling a wildfire that destroyed 16 structures as it raged through Southern California's Cleveland National Forest.

The Holy Fire was 41 percent contained Sunday afternoon after burning across 35.5 square miles (92 kilometers) of dry timber and brush, said Lynne Tolmachoff of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

'The weather out here in California seems to be cooling down today and over the next couple days, and that should hopefully help firefighters get even more containment,' Tolmachoff said. 'They should make better progress over the next couple of days.'

Dramatic time-lapse footage captured the moments the fire erupted in the hills above Orange County.

Meanwhile, the National Weather Service released a new map showing smoke from the wildfires will be lofted into the air and carried 3,000 miles to the East Coast where it may subtly affect health.

Dramatic time-lapse footage captured the moments the fire erupted in the hills above Orange County

Firefighers made steady progress Sunday battling Southern California's 'Holy Fire'

The National Weather Service's new map shows that smoke from the California wildfires will be lofted into the air and carried 3,000 miles to the East Coast where it may subtly affect health

Kim Burns sifts through the charred rubble of her home burned in the Carr Fire, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, in Redding, California

A Cal Fire firefighter sprays water on the smoldering remnants of the Oak Fire Sunday

Arthur Whitings video of the blaze shows the Holy Fire exploding in size as it burned in the hills of the Cleveland National Forest.

Temperatures are expected to again reach 100 degrees or more by the end of the week.

The Holy Fire - named for Holy Jim Canyon, where it began last Monday - is one of nearly 20 blazes burning across California as the state sees earlier, longer and more destructive wildfire seasons because of drought, warmer weather attributed to climate change and home construction deeper into forests.

With firefighters beginning to get a better handle on the blaze, they began to lift evacuation orders over the weekend for areas previously in its path, said Tolmachoff, who did not have exact numbers.

More than 20,000 people were reportedly told to evacuate at one point.

Aircraft have made flight after flight, dumping water and bright pink retardant on the blaze to protect Lake Elsinore and other foothill communities near the flames.

The man accused of deliberately starting the fire appeared in court on Friday, but his arraignment was postponed.

Forrest Clark, 51, made several outbursts, claiming his life was being threatened and saying the arson charge against him was a lie. A court commissioner ordered his bail to remain at $1 million.

Elsewhere, the largest wildfire ever recorded in California - the Mendocino Complex - burning north of Sacramento destroyed more than 100 homes. It was nearly 70 percent contained. On Sunday, it had covered 525 square miles (1,359 square kilometers).

The two-week-old Carr Fire that killed eight people and burned more than 1,000 homes was more than 50 percent contained on Saturday.

Local firefighters help provide structure and property protection along Oak Drive and Buck Mountain Road during a vegetation fire which burned one structure and several acres of land

Cal Fire firefighters stand vigilant as they provide hose lays around a vegetation fire along Oak Drive and Buck Mountain Road near Alta Sierra

An outbuilding and vehicles smolder in the remnants of the Oak Fire which burned through Oak Drive and Buck Mountain Road Sunday

Cal Fire firefighters help mop up the oak woodland that burned in a vegetation fire

A structure and vehicles burn in the wake of the Oak Fire Sunday near Grass Valley

The Carr Fire has burned more than 173,000 acres and is 47 per cent contained. Cal Fire officials said it is not sure when the'll have it fully contained.

Firefighters across California are battling more than a dozen wildfires that have scorched more than 600,000 acres. Until the fires are fully contained, smoke now covers three quarters of the state.

Meanwhile, bear cub is recovering after receiving fish skin bandages to her paws, which were burned in the California wildfires.

A contractor found the yearling black bear female alone on August 2 near Whiskeytown, California, lying in ash and unable to walk on her raw, burned paws.

The contractor notified California Fish and Wildlife, which tranquilized the bear and took it to the department's lab in Rancho Cordova, California, for treatment.

Smoke emanates from a structure and subsequent vehicles that succumbed to the Oak Fire Sunday

Freddie Cox plants a flag at the charred remnants of his godfather, Ed Bledsoe's home, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, in Redding, Calif. Bledsoe's wife, Melody, great-grandson James Roberts and great-granddaughter Emily Roberts were killed at the home in the Carr Fire

Kim Burns, left, and her daughter Brandi Mello take a break while sifting through the charred remains of Burns' home burned

A flag flies in the charred rubble of a home burned in the Carr Fire, Saturday

Kim Burns sits in the charred rubble of her home burned in the Carr Fire, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, in Redding

A senior Air Force officer said he wants to drop bombs on raging wildfires in California and Colorado in the hope that shockwaves will put them out.

USAF staff officer Mike Benitez pointed to Sweden successfully employing the unorthodox strategy on its own wildfires last month.

The Scandinavian country dropped a 500lb bomb on a fire in a military munitions range on July 25 that burned for two weeks and threatened homes.

Mr Benitez wrote on his blog that the bomb 'momentarily deprived the blaze of oxygen and successfully extinguishing it within 100 yards of the detonation point'.

'The Air Force can put a bomb anywhere in the world within a three-foot circle, extremely close to friendly forces on the ground, all while avoiding collateral damage to buildings and infrastructure,' he wrote.

'The same personnel, equipment, and procedures could be easily adapted and integrated into firefighting.

Gary Parmely, father of Jeremy Stoke of the Redding Fire Department, visits a memorial for his son, Saturday

From right, Mary Holpuch, Russ Holpuch, and Kathy Look hold hands after visiting the site where Jeremy Stoke of the Redding Fire Department, was killed in the Carr Fire
Chinese President Xi Jinping is beset by economic, foreign policy and domestic political challenges just months after clearing his way to rule for as long as he wants as China's most dominant leader since Mao Zedong.

The ruling Communist Party leader used to dominate state-run newspapers' front pages and the state broadcaster CCTV's news bulletins on a daily basis but has in recent weeks made fewer public appearances.

Of greatest concern to many is the trade war with the US that threatens higher tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese exports.

Critics say they've yet to see a coherent strategy from Beijing that could guide negotiations with Washington and avoid a major blow to the economy. Beijing instead seems to be opting for defiance and retaliatory measures of its own.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is best by a wave of economic, foreign policy and domestic political challenges just months after clearing his way to rule as long as he wants (file photo)

Chinese President Xi Jinping holds a grand ceremony to welcome US President Donald Trump at the square outside the east gate of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing last year

Mounting criticism of the Xi administration's policies has exposed the risks he faces from amassing so much power: He's made himself a natural target for blame.

'Having concentrated power, Xi is responsible for all policy setbacks and policy failures,' said Joseph Cheng, a retired City University of Hong Kong professor and long-time observer of Chinese politics.

'He can't shift the blame, so he's responding by taking a lower profile,' Cheng said.

The challenges so far aren't seen as a threat to Xi's grip on power, but for many Chinese, the government's credibility is on the line.

Both the stock market and the currency have weakened in response and the Communist Party itself conceded at a meeting last month that external factors were weighing heavily on economic growth.

At the same time, a scandal over vaccines has reignited long-held fears over the integrity of the health care industry and the government's ability to police the sprawling firms that dominate the economy.

Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan welcome Trump and his wife Melania Trump at the Palace Museum in Beijing last November. Xi is facing mounting criticism over the trade war with the US

'Trust is the most important thing and a loss of public confidence in the government could be devastating,' said Zhang Ming, a retired professor of political science in Beijing.

And last week, the authorities mobilised a massive security effort to squelch a planned protest in Beijing over the sudden collapse of hundreds of peer-to-peer borrowing schemes that underscore the government's inability to reform the finance system to cater to small investors.

Meanwhile, Xi's signature project, the trillion-dollar 'Belt and Road' initiative to build investment and infrastructure links with 65 nations, is running into headwinds over sticker shock among the countries involved. Some Chinese have also questioned the wisdom of sending vast sums abroad at a time when millions of Chinese remain mired in poverty.

That in part plays into concerns over Xi's abandonment of the highly pragmatic, low-key cautious approach to foreign relations advocated by Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China's economic reforms that laid the groundwork for today's relative prosperity.

Leaders are likely to discuss at least some of these challenges during informal discussions at the Beidaihe resort in Hebei province as part of a tradition begun under Mao. Xi and others generally drop out of sight for two weeks or more during the summer session.

Leaders are likely to discuss some of the challenges faced by Xi during informal discussions at the Beidaihe resort (pictured) in Hebei province as part of a tradition begun under Mao

Sun Wenguang, a retired professor and veteran activist, has apparently gone missing after blasting President Xi's money diplomacy in Africa on Voice of America. This file photo taken on August 28, 2013 shows Sun, aged 79 at the time, talking at his home in Jinan, eastern China

Xi's mildly bombastic brand of Chinese triumphalism 'has not been popular with many in the party,' leading critics to speak out, said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

Some have even called for the sacking of one prominent proponent of the rising China theme, Tsinghua University economist Hu Angang, with 27 graduates of the elite institution signing a letter to that effect.

Resentment lingers also over Xi's moves to consolidate power, including pushing through the removal of presidential term limits in March and establishing a burgeoning cult of personality.

That resentment was given voice in a lengthy jeremiad titled 'Imminent Fears, Imminent Hopes' penned by Tsinghua University law professor Xu Zhangrun, who warned that, 'Yet again people throughout China ... are feeling a sense of uncertainty, a mounting anxiety in relation both to the direction the country is taking as well as in regard to their personal security.'

'These anxieties have generated something of a nationwide panic,' Xu continued before listing eight areas of concern including stricter controls over ideology, repression of the intelligentsia, excessive foreign aid and 'The End of Reform and the Return of Totalitarianism.'

China's President Xi Jinping waits for the arrival of Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O'Neill prior to a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing in June

Even more boldly, Xu called for a restoration of presidential term limits and a re-evaluation of the 1989 pro-democracy movement centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The peaceful protests were crushed by the military and remain a taboo topic to this day.

Although Xu is reportedly out of the country and has not been officially sanctioned, another longtime critic, retired professor Sun Wenguang, found himself carted off by police in the middle of a radio interview with the Voice of America in which he railed against China's lavish spending abroad.

A sign of the Xi administration's anxieties is a new campaign to promote patriotism among intellectuals - a recurring tactic when public debate is seen as needing a course correction.

The notice of the new campaign, issued July 31, cites 'the broad masses of intellectuals' and the 'patriotic spirit of struggle,' while giving little in the way of specifics.

Much of the discontent with Xi can be traced to his administration's perceived ineffectiveness, said Zhang, the retired academic.

'If you want to be emperor, you must have great achievements,' Zhang said. 'He hasn't had any, so it's hard to convince the people.'
A family has shared the gruesome photos of the rashes and blisters they suffered while living in a rental property that used to be a meth lab.

The family moved into the property in December 2017 and were unaware that the four-bedroom rental house in Bundall, on the Gold Coast, had dangerously high levels of methamphetamine residue.

Anthony and Sophie Turner, and their two sons, fell ill within weeks of being exposed to the toxic fumes.

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A family suffered blisters and rashes (pictured) from living in a rental property that used to be a meth lab

Sophie Turner (pictured left) her husband Anthony (pictured right) and their two children moved into a four-bedroom rental house on the Gold Coast on December 15, 2017

Within weeks of being exposed to the toxic fumes the family fell ill. Mrs Turner had severe migraines and Mr Turner had gastro

Ms Turner had severe migraines and needed to have an ambulance called to the home on several occasions.

'Sophie couldn't open her eyes. She was literally crippled by migraines. Myself, I had gastro,' Mr Turner told 9NEWS.

Mr Turner suffered gastro issues and their sons, aged 13 and 19, broke out in painful rashes and blisters as shown in photos of the victims legs.

'We were mortified. Absolutely mortified,' Mrs Turner said.

The couples 19-year-old son was born with a heart problem and their doctor is convinced the meth has had some effect in it's worsening.

Ms Turner told the Gold Coast Bulletin: 'It's just mind-blowing what has happened. It's just been a nightmare.'

Meth Screen, a company that tested the house for methamphetamine, found that in some instances more that 20 times higher than the 0.5 micrograms safety guideline was found.

Ten micrograms were found on multiple occasions, however, the bathroom and the dining room did not return high readings.

Meth Screen spokesman Ryan Matthews said that any level above 0.5 can cause adverse health effects to the occupants.

Meth Screen found that in some instances more that 20 times higher than the 0.5 micrograms safety guideline was found

The Turners broke their lease in mid-July and now live in Ashmore, also on the Gold Coast.

Ms Turner told The Project: 'We have had to exit the home because it is contaminated. It is unlivable. [We] can't take our possessions with us. It has put our health at risk.'

The family intend to take legal action against the real estate that leased them the property.

They will also have to monitor their health in the coming years after the exposure to the toxic residue.

Mr Matthews recommended that renters should always try and check the background of their property before moving in.

'If you can't understand the previous history of a property, there is a potential risk because of the amount of ice users in Australia,' Mr Matthews said.
A truck driver has suffered serious injuries after being flung from his vehicle when it crashed into a power pole.

The small truck crashed into a power poll at about 12.45am on Fifteenth Avenue at Austral in outer western Sydney early on Sunday morning.

The driver had been flung from the truck after he crashed into the tree and was then rushed to hospital, 9News reported.

A truck crashed into a power pole in western Sydney at about 12.45am Sunday

He was then treated for a number of injuries including multiple leg fractures.

He was put in an induced coma before being taken to Liverpool Hospital in a critical condition.

The cause of the crash is not yet known.

Anyone with information should call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
A boutique hotel decorated with sexually loaded signs like 'blow me' and 'open me wide' has divided opinion online after a guest complained it was 'degrading'.

Teresa Pomeroy, from Wellington, blasted the Naumi Hotel in Auckland Airport on social media after being offended by the lewd signs inside her hotel room.

'This s*** has got to go,' Ms Pomeroy wrote on Facebook.

'By the time I got to the safe to swallow sign in the bathroom this morning I was rightly f***ed off,' she added.

The signs were placed around objects and amenities in each hotel room.

A hotel with sexually-explicit signs (pictured) with phrases like 'blow me' and 'open me wide' has been slammed by shocked guests

'Naumi says...swallow, it's safe' (pictured) is a sign labelled in the hotel's bathroom

Her hotel room included a 'Naumi says blow me' sign labelled on a hairdryer and a guest information book with the caption 'Naumi says open me wide.'

Ms Pomeroy was not impressed with the signs, writing 'It's not the play boy mansion' and calling on the hotel to hire a new marketing director.

But Naumi Hotel Auckland Airport said the signs were intended to be 'light-hearted.'

'[The signs are]tongue-in-cheek, light-hearted and fun approach,' a spokesman from Naumi Hotel Auckland Airport told the NZ Herald.

The hotel's marketing director Allison De Cruz said the signs had been featured at a string of international hotels in the Singaporean hotel group for four years.

Ms Cruz told the NZ Herald that there hasn't been any 'major issues with guests finding it offensive.'

The signs were placed around objects and amenities in each hotel room. This sign (pictured) show's Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump cartoons in the bathroom accompanied with lewd phrases like 'how big are your hands'

'[The signs are]tongue-in-cheek, light-hearted and fun approach,' a spokesman from Naumi Hotel Auckland Airport said

Social media users were quick to side with Naumi Hotel, accusing Ms Pomeroy of being too easily offended and representing a minority of opinion.

'A couple of people, so a total of two were offended. Another non story from those that get offended at nothing. Moving along,' wrote one man.

'Speak for yourself, it's not offensive at all you just obviously want something to complain about,' added a woman.

'After reading these comments think its a shame that the lowest common denominator has come through again,' another said.

Teresa Pomeroy took to social media (pictured) condemning the hotel and its marketing director for approving the sexually-explicit signs

Naumi Hotel Auckland Airport said that the signs were intended to be 'light-hearted'
The Muslim man arrested in a New Mexico compound along with four other adults and 11 children last week once allegedly tested positive for an explosive residual substance before a flight to Saudi Arabia three years after 9/11 - but was never detained.

Siraj Wahhaj Jr is the man who was allegedly armed while holding the group of starving children in a ramshackle site out in the New Mexico desert before Taos County sheriffs deputies raided the compound and arrested him.

Wahhaj, who was wanted by authorities after his disabled three-year-old son, Abdul Ghani, was reported missing in Georgia, was allegedly training children to commit school shootings.

Siraj Wahhaj is the man who was allegedly armed while holding the group of starving children in a ramshackle site out in the New Mexico desert before Taos County sheriffs deputies raided the compound and arrested him

Wahhaj, who was wanted after his disabled three-year-old son, Abdul Ghani, was reported missing in Georgia, allegedly trained children to commit school shootings. Abdul Ghanis remains were found at the compound (above) on what would have been his fourth birthday

Abdul Ghanis remains were found at the compound on what would have been his fourth birthday.

Sirajs two sisters, his wife, and a friend were also arrested and charged.

A retired New York Police Department detective said on Sunday that news of the arrest of Wahhaj did not surprise him because of the familys alleged links to extremism.

Michael Zotto told WPIX-TV that after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the NYPD began monitoring the Masjid al Taqwa mosque on Fulton Street in Brooklyn.

That mosque was run by Imam Siraj Wahhaj Sr, Siraj Wahhajs father.

Wahhaj himself, Senior, was always espousing hatred for America, Zotto said.

Michael Zotto (above), a retired New York Police Department detective, said on Sunday that news of the arrest of Wahhaj did not surprise him because of the familys alleged links to extremism

Zotto said that after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the NYPD began monitoring the Masjid al Taqwa mosque (above) on Fulton Street in Brooklyn

He wanted to start a caliphate government here, a Muslim government here.

Wahhaj Sr. told reporters at a news conference from his mosque that he was shocked to hear that his son was allegedly training children to commit violence.

I think my son can be extreme sometimes, but not radical, like killing people, God forbid, the imam said.

Imam Siraj Wahhaj, 68, the father of three of the adults arrested in New Mexico, is the head of the Masjid al Taqwa

Hes just a little high strung.

You can imagine right now Im feeling a lot of emotions.

But Zotto said that the mosques links to extremism are well known.

There was definitely guns being bought from that mosque, Zotto said.

I would say a lot of the Muslims in that mosque, who were pretty much moderate Muslims, they would report to us, the NYPD.

Authorities, however, never prosecuted anyone from the mosque on weapons charges.

Zotto claims that members of the mosque received martial arts training to learn how to disarm police officers.

He also alleges that Wahhaj Sr was linked to military-style training camps in upstate New York and other parts of the country.

Wahhaj Sr is also alleged to have had ties with two of the most notorious terrorists to strike at New York.

The imam is alleged to have frequented another Brooklyn mosque that was said to have been visited by Mohammed Atta (left), the ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers. Wahhaj Sr also testified as a character witness for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (right), who died in prison after he was convicted for plotting to blow up New York City landmarks in the 1990s

The NYPD alleges that Wahhaj Sr once entered the Al Farooq mosque in Brooklyn that was believed to have been visited by Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers.

Last week, prosecutors released documents which said that Wahhaj Sr was a character witness for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, according to CBS News.

Abdel Rahman was the blind sheikh who was convicted in 1995 of plotting terrorist attacks in the United States. He was sentenced to life in federal prison.

The Egyptian cleric died behind bars last year.

An NYPD document also alleges that Wahhaj Jr had traces of explosives on him while flying from New York to Saudi Arabia in 2004.

During one of our investigations into the activities of Siraj Wahhaj and his son, in 2004, Siraj Wahhaj Junior was flying to Saudi Arabia from NYC, when he was tested for foreign substances by TSA agents and he tested positive for Pentax, an explosive substance, according to the NYPD.

The imam's daughters Subhanah (left) and Hujrah (right) were also arrested and are in custody

Lucas Morton, the husband of Subhannah, also appeared in court with his head covered with a towel, apparently folded in a style resembling a plain white keffiyeh. Also there was the imam's daughter, Jany Leveille (right)

However, TSA choose not to detain him.

Wahhaj Jr is alleged to have told his three-year-old sons mother that he wanted to perform an exorcism on the child because he was possessed by the devil.

The suspects are being jailed without bail in New Mexico and one of them, Lucas Morton, also faces a charge of harboring a felon.

He is accused of refusing to tell authorities the younger Siraj Wahhaj's location during the compound raid. Wahhaj eventually was found armed with multiple firearms, including an assault rifle, authorities said.
A woman has been left furious after her application to work for Air New Zealand was rejected because of a Tinker Bell tattoo on her back.

Lynley Baker, 46, had high hopes of landing a customer service role with the airline but her plans were grounded late last month because of her ink.

Ms Baker had progressed through the early stages of the recruitment process for the part-time job at Tauranga City Airport, on the country's North Island, Stuff reported.

Lynley Baker's job application for Air New Zealand was rejected because of her Tinker Bell back tattoo (pictured)

Ms Baker said she was 'angry because it's not like it's on my face; it's between my shoulder blades'

She was asked to provide a video response to written questions and declared she had a tattoo on her back as required, sending photos through of the design.

But it was then an employee from the airline phoned to say Ms Baker's application could not proceed because her tattoo would be visible in her work attire.

Ms Baker was shocked because she believed only about one centimetre of the tattoo would be visible above Air New Zealand's distinctive Koru uniform, which she said could be covered by concealer.

'I am disgusted that they are allowed to get away with this type of discrimination when there is clearly an option in the uniform range that would hide my tattoo,' she told Stuff.

Ms Baker (pictured left and right) said she was 'disgusted' with the airline for rejecting her job application for a customer service role because of the tattoo

'I'm just so angry because it's not like it's on my face; it's between my shoulder blades.'

Ms Baker, who works as a travel broker, has had the tattoo for about six years.

Air New Zealand said in a statement that 'uniformed customer-facing staff are not permitted to have tattoos visible when wearing the uniform'.

The airline's careers website also advises potential employees visible tattoos are not allowed.

'Please note - Air New Zealand's Uniform policy does not permit visible Tattoo's and/or Body art in our Koru Uniforms. If you have Tattoos/Body Art anywhere on your body, please answer Yes to this question when you apply and we will discuss this with you directly,' the website states.
Kim Jong-un will host South Korea's President Moon in the North Korean capital Pyongyang next month after the two nations agreed to go ahead with their third peace summit.

The meeting, due to take place in September, was agreed following high-level talks in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula.

A trip by the South's President Moon Jae-in to the North's capital would be the first such visit for more than a decade, as the diplomatic thaw on the peninsula builds.

At the historic first summit between Moon and the North's leader Kim Jong Un in Panmunjom in April they agreed the South's president would visit Pyongyang during the autumn.

Today's high-level talks, taking place on the northern side of the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone, were proposed by the North last week as it lashed out at Washington for pushing ahead with sanctions.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in hugs North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in May. Today it was announced there will be more peace talks in September

The rival Koreas have agreed to hold a third summit between their leaders in Pyongyang sometime before the end of September. The North's dictator Kim Jong-un is pictured touring a fish farming facility in Kaechon city today

The push for what would be the leaders' third summit since April comes amid renewed worries surrounding a nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang. Kim is pictured with officials at a fish plant in Kaechon city today

North Korea is thought to have a growing arsenal of nuclear bombs and long-range missiles and to be closing in on the ability to reliably target anywhere on the U.S. mainland

In his opening statement, the North's chief delegate Ri Son Gwon said: 'As the Pyongyang meeting of the leaders of the north and south is being discussed, I think talking about the issue will provide answers to the wishes of the people.'

Using a proverb describing a very intimate friend to refer to inter-Korean ties, Ri added: 'We have opened an era where we are advancing hand in hand rather than standing in each other's way.'

Despite the rapprochement, international sanctions against the North for its nuclear and missile programmes have kept economic cooperation between the two Koreas from taking off, while little progress has been made on the key issue of Pyongyang's denuclearisation.

South Korea's Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, leading the delegation from Seoul, said it was important that the two Koreas keep 'the same mind'.

'Many issues will be raised (at the meeting), but I think any problem can be resolved with that mindset,' Cho added.

Earlier the two Koreas opened high-level to prepare for the summit as the diplomatic thaw on the peninsula builds.

The two Koreas opened high-level to prepare for the summit as the diplomatic thaw on the peninsula builds

Experts are seeing slow progress on efforts to disarm North Korea since the Singapore summit

If the third Moon-Kim summit takes place, the two are also expected to focus on hammering out a consensus on officially ending the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded with an armistice instead of a peace treaty. Kim is pictured at a cattle farm in the Ungok area today

Although Trump touted his summit with Kim as a historic breakthrough, the nuclear-armed North has since criticised Washington for its 'gangster-like' demands of complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament

The two Koreas have informally agreed the summit will take place in Pyongyang late this month or at the beginning of September, Yonhap News Agency reported Monday, without citing a source.

Cho addressed the possibility of Pyongyang raising the issue of sanctions to the South, and said: 'We will explain our position to the North.'

The rapid rapprochement between the two neighbours that began this year paved the way for a landmark meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.

Cross-border exchanges between the two Koreas have significantly increased since then, with the neighbours planning to hold reunions for war-separated families next week for the first time in three years.

But although Trump touted his summit with Kim as a historic breakthrough, the nuclear-armed North has since criticised Washington for its 'gangster-like' demands of complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.

South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyun met with his North Korean counterpart Ri Son Gwon at the northern side of the border truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)

South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon is leading the South's delegation

Meanwhile the US has urged the international community to maintain tough sanctions on the isolated regime -- Seoul has caught three South Korean firms importing coal and iron from the North last year in violation of the measures.

Analysts say Moon could try to act as a mediator between the US and North Korea, having salvaged the Singapore meeting when Trump abruptly cancelled it.

If the third Moon-Kim summit takes place, the two are also expected to focus on hammering out a consensus on officially ending the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded with an armistice instead of a peace treaty.
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A Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston is facing calls to boycott their establishment after it posted a photo of an owner posing with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who dined there Friday.

El Tiempo Cantina's co-owner, Dominic Laurenzo, posed for a photo with Sessions, and the backlash was almost instantaneous with many people saying they saw posting the photo as an endorsement of Sessions' tough stance on immigration.

Laurenzo's Restaurants president Roland Laurenzo said it was not an endorsement, but agreed that posting the photo was a mistake.

'In retrospect, it was a mistake because it angered so many people,' Roland told KHOU.

'We had the honor': Tex-Mex restaurant, El Tiempo Cantina in Houston, posted this photo of Attorney General Jeff Sessions with its owner. The post saw swift backlash from the diverse community it serves

'We have gotten so many complaints and comments. And threats, death threats. This has been extremely shocking to our family.'

The post was removed by the end of Friday, and by Saturday the restaurant took their Twitter, Instagram and Facebook pages down.

'The last thing I ever wanted to do was to upset everybody. It didn't dawn on me until after that everyone was associating me with approving of the politics of Mr. Sessions and by no means is that the case. It's been a big misunderstanding,' Roland added.

One person took to Yelp and said the dining establishment used to be a favorite, but said after the 'owner was posing and celebrating with the attorney general with his crazy racist agenda, I can't eat here again with a clear conscience'.

The Yelper added: 'Their staff, mostly Hispanic, is SUPER sweet and hard working. What a slap in the face for them.'

Roland clarified they did not endore policies such as seperating immigrant children from their families, and did not back Sessions' anti-gay agenda either.

Another reviewer said their original Yelp was 'Great food - indeed, Tex-Mex the way it should be done.' However, he added, 'But I seem to no longer have an appetite for their food knowing that they support a racist government that supports separating families who are simply seeking a safe, better way of life.'

El Tiempo Cantina, a Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston, faced enormous backlash after they posted a photo of an owner with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose tough stance on immigration runs counter to the 'Mexican' half of the restaurant's culture

And yet another reviewer was angry at what they see as a lack of support for the community of Houston: 'Better off finding a local Tex-Mex place that isn't over priced and over-hyped and that actually supports the community they are in with the profits they bring in.'

Houston activist Cesar Espinosa told KPRC, 'A lot of these restaurants hire undocumented people, they hire immigrants to work, to take these long shifts, to serve people with a smile on their face, and you have this man, Jeff Sessions, who, consequentially, before visiting El Tiempo, blamed a lot of the U.S. crime, a lot of the U.S. ills on immigrants.'

'So you can't have it both ways. You can't be hypocritical and say, 'I don't like immigrants but I like what they contribute to the U.S. through their food and their culture,' Espinosa continued.
Shocking dashcam footage shows a New Zealand police car running a red light, with no sirens or lights in use, narrowly missing an oncoming vehicle.

The dangerous move happened on the corner of Kerrs Road and Dalgety Drive in Wiri, South Auckland, at 2.23pm on August 8, the New Zealand Herald reported.

The video, posted to Shocking Auckland Drivers Facebook page, shows the police car waiting to the left at the set of lights as the car with the dashcam approaches the intersection heading straight.

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As the light turns green, the driver with the dashcam rolls straight through the intersection, moments later the police car pulls out in front of the car.

The police car did not have its lights or siren on. The driver appears to slow down to avoid a collision.

As the light turns green, the driver with the dash-cam drives straight through the intersection. The police car can be seen waiting at the lights

Inspector Adam Pyne said police were aware of the incident after the video was sent them.

'We are making enquiries into this incident and to identify the officer driving the vehicle.

'However we are not able to ascertain a registration number from the footage provided and are asking for anyone who has information, or saw the incident, to contact the Manurewa Police on (09) 268 5800.

'Driving incidents such as this are not tolerated, no matter who is driving, and we will be treating this matter seriously.'

Social media users were quick to question the officers driving technique.

Do as I say not as I do, one person commented on the Facebook post.

What a d*******g. hope u managed to get a rego number but then again nothing ever happens to a man of the law 4 breaking the law, another person said.
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The aftermath of the deadly crash caused by a suicidal baggage handler who stole an empty passenger plane and flew it into an island on the Puget Sound on Friday was laid bare on Sunday in aerial images of the wreckage.

Richard Russell, 29, was a 'bored' baggage handler at Seattle's International Airport. On Friday, he stole a 76-seater plane from the airport where he worked and flew for an hour, performing a loop-the-loop, before crashing it into Ketron Island.

No one else was injured or killed but Russell, who was married, died in the crash.

On Sunday, his remains were recovered from the crash site along with the plane's flight data recorder and the voice recorder.

The plane shattered into hundreds of pieces upon impact and was unrecognizable on Sunday as authorities worked through it.

Before crashing, Russell joked with air traffic controllers that he did not know how to land the aircraft but knew how to fly it because he had played 'some video games'.

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US investigators found Sunday the Horizon Air passenger plane stolen by a troubled Seattle airport worker smashed to pieces on a sparsely populated island

The aerial image above shows smoke from the crash site on Ketron Island on Saturday. The island is privately owned and is only accessible by ferry. Miraculously, no one else was injured in Russell's suicidal joy-ride

He described himself as a 'broken guy with a few screws loose,' and apologized to his friends and family who have since told of their shock.

Baggage handler Richard Russell (pictured with his wife Hannah) was suicidal and 'bored', according to friends

During the hour he spent in the air, Russell flew the plane in a loop - an improbable stunt caught on video by a surprised bystander - then slammed it into Ketron Island in Puget Sound.

No one besides Russell was hurt, and two F-15s which were scrambled to try to bring him down, never fired a single shot.

'You couldn't even tell it was a plane except for some of the bigger sections, like the wing section.

'Even the small sections, most of it doesn't resemble a plane,' National Transportation Safety Board Western Pacific Region chief Debra Eckrote said.

Russell, who was known affectionately as 'Beebo' by friends and family, was remembered as 'quiet' and 'very friendly'.

He had worked at the airport for three-and-a-half-year before Friday's incident.

Beforehand, he ran a business with his wife in Oregon.

They were successful for three-and-a-half years but closed the bakery in 2015 after being featured in local news outlets as a happy, aspirational couple.

Questions have now emerged around how he was able to gain access to the aircraft which belonged to Horizon Airlines, the sister airline of Alaska Airlines.

Russell had no criminal background and passed background checks before he started work at the airport.

Aviation experts have since told how it is easy for someone with access to a hangar or airport to steal a plane because aircrafts do not operate with keys and are instead controlled by switches.

Alaska Airlines, which owns Horizon, has said it is working closely with the FBI and NTSB to determine how he was able to get access to the plane and if it could have been prevented.

This is what remained of the aircraft on Sunday when authorities were working through the site

Ketron Island is a small, 221-acre piece of land located in the southern Puget Sound

This is a file image of the type of aircraft Russell stole. It was a 76-seater Alaska Airlines Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 and was empty when he took it into the air on Friday night

Russell had worked as a baggage handler for Horizon Airlines for three-and-a-half years but was bored with his work and even joked about it in videos that he posted to YouTube

'I don't need that much help. I've played some video games before': Suicidal airport employee speaks to air traffic control before crash Shortly after the plane took off, traffic controllers were heard on an Internet livestream speaking to a man identified as 'Rich'. 'There is the runway just off your right side in about a mile, do you see that?' the traffic controller said. 'Oh those guys will try to rough me up if I try land there,' Rich replied. 'I think I might mess something up there too. I wouldn't want to do that. Oh they probably have got anti-aircraft.' 'They don't have any of that stuff, we are just trying to find you a place to land safely.' 'Yeah, not quite ready to bring it down just yet, but holy smokes I need to stop looking at the fuel 'cos it's going down quick.' 'OK, Rich, if you could, could you start a left-hand turn and we'll take you down to the south-east.' 'This is probably jail time for life, huh? I would hope it is for a guy like me. ' Rich: I've got a lot of people that care about me. It's going to disappoint them to hear that I did this. I would like to apologize to each and every one of them. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose I guess. Never really knew it, until now Rich: I'm down to 2,100, I started at like 30-something. Air traffic control: Rich, you said you had 2,100 pounds of fuel left? Rich: Yeah, I don't know what the burnage, burnout? Is like on a takeoff, but yeah, it's burned quite a bit faster than I expected. Air traffic control: Right now he's just flying around, and he just needs some help controlling the aircraft. Rich: Nah I mean, I don't need that much help. I've played some video games before. I would like to figure out how to get this make it pressurized or something so I'm not lightheaded. Rich: Ah minimum wage. We'll chalk it up to that. Maybe that will grease the gears a little bit with the higher-ups Rich: Damnit Andrew, people's lives are at stake here. Air traffic control: Ah Rich, don't say stuff like that. Rich: I don't want to hurt anyone, I just want you to whisper sweet nothings into my ear. Rich: Hey do you think if I land this successfully Alaska will give me a job as a pilot? Air traffic control: You know, I think they would give you a job doing anything if you could pull this off. Rich: Yeah right! Nah, I'm a white guy Air traffic control: If you wanted to land, probably your best bet is that runway just ahead and to your left. Again, that's McCourt (sic) Field. If you wanted to try, that might be the best way to set up and see if you can land there. Or just like the pilot's suggestion, the other option might be over Puget Sound, into the water. Rich: Dang, did you talk to McCourt, cause I don't know if I'd be happy with you telling me I could land like that, cause I could really mess some stuff up. Air traffic control: Well Rich I already talked to 'em. Just like me, what we want to see is you not get hurt, or anyone else get hurt. So if you want to try to land, that's the way to go. Rich: Hey I want the coordinates of that orca, you know, the mama orca with the baby. I want to see that guy. Rich: Hey, is that pilot on? I want to know what this weather is going to be like in the Olympics (mountains). Air traffic control: Well, if you can see the Olympics, the weather's good. I can see the Olympics from my window, and it looks pretty good over there. Rich: Alright, 'cause I felt some, what felt like turbulence around Rainer, but there was no clouds hardly. Air traffic control: Oh, that's just the wind blowing over all over the bumpy surfaces there. Captain Bill: Alright Rich, this is Captain Bill. Congratulations, you did that, now let's try to land that airplane safely and not hurt anyone on the ground. Rich: Alright, damnit, I don't know man, I don't know. I don't want to I was kind of hoping that would be it, you know. Rich: I'm gonna land it, in a safe kind of manner. I think I'm gonna try to do a barrel roll, and if that goes good, I'm just gonna nose down and call it a night. Air traffic control: Well Rich, before you do that, let's think about this. I've got another pilot coming up, pilot Joel, in just a minute here I hope. And we'll be able to give you some advice on what to do next. Rich: I feel like one of my engines is going out or something. Air traffic control: OK Rich, if you could, you just want to keep that plane right over the water. Maybe keep the aircraft nice and low. Rich: Just kind of lightheaded, dizzy. Man, the sights went by so fast. I was thinking, like, I'm going to have this moment of serenity, take in all the sights. There's a lot of pretty stuff, but they're prettier in a different context. Air traffic control: Do you have any idea of how much fuel you have left? Rich: Oh man, not enough. Not enough to get by. Like, uh, 760? 760 pounds? Air traffic control: Just flying around the plane, you seem comfortable with that? Rich: Oh hell yeah, its a blast. Ive played video games before so I know what Im doing a little bit. Air traffic control: OK, and you can see all the terrain around you, youve got no issue with visibility or anything? Rich: Naw, everythings peachy, peachy clean. Just did a little circle around Rainer, its beautiful. I think Ive got some gas to go check out the Olympics (mountains). Rich: I wouldnt know how to land it, I wasnt really planning on landing it. Rich: Sorry, my mic came off, I threw up a little bit. Im sorry about this, I hope this doesnt ruin your day. Rich: Man, have you been to the Olympics? These guys are gorgeous, holy smokes. Air traffic control: Ya, I have been out there, its always a nice drive. Rich: (inaudible) Air traffic control: Hey I bet you do. I havent done much hiking over there. But if you could start a left turn, and back towards the east. I know youre getting a good view there, but if you go too much farther in that direction I wont be able to hear you anymore. Rich: Hey pilot guy, can this thing do a backflip, you think? Rich: I wouldnt mind just shooting the s**t with you guys, but its all business, you know? Advertisement

Ketron Island is a small, 221-acre piece of land located in the southern Puget Sound. The island is privately owned and can only be reached by ferry.

In 2010, the last time the federal government published the results of its census, the island's population was just 17 people.

Russell's family said the incident came as a 'complete shock'.

'It may seem difficult for those watching at home to believe, but Beebo was a warm, compassionate man. It is impossible to encompass who he was in a press release. He was a faithful husband, a loving son, and a good friend.

'A childhood friend remarked that Beebo was loved by everyone because he was kind and gentle to each person he met.

Ketron Island is pictured from Solo Point in Steilacoom. The island spans 220 acres and is made up of private homes

Mike Matthews, a family friend, reads a statement on behalf of Russell's family on Saturday. They described him as quiet and loving

'This is a complete shock to us. We are devastated by these events and Jesus is truly the only one holding this family together right now.

'Without Him we would be hopeless. As the voice recordings show, Beebos intent was not to harm anyone and he was right in saying that there are so many people who love him,' they said.

Russell's role at Horizon, an Alaska Airlines affiliate where he had worked since 2015, involved towing aircraft, loading and unloading cargo and luggage, and cleaning the aircraft, officials said.

In 2017, he uploaded a video to YouTube where he complained about the monotonous nature of his job.

The airline has expressed its condolences for his family.

Rick Christenson, retired from Horizon Air, told the DailyMail.com that Russell was 'quiet' and 'a nice kid'.

Christenson didn't supervise Russell's team, but said he saw the 29-year-old in passing while at work.

'He always had a nice smile,' he said. 'He seemed quiet, and he always had a smile. The people that knew him said he was a nice guy.'

Christenson said he was sitting on his deck Friday night at his Tacoma home with his wife, his cousin and his cousin's wife when he saw the Horizon Q400 fly over his house.

'All of a sudden one of the Horizon Q400s came over the house at 500 feet, followed by two F-15s; one was high, one was low,' Christenson said, adding that he knew something was wrong because the plane was flying way too low.

He added in a separate interview: 'Everybody's stunned... that something like this would happen. How could it? Everybody's been through background checks.'

The former supervisor said he grabbed a pair of binoculars to watch the aircraft, admitting that he was 'scared' and 'concerned' because he didn't know what was going on.

'He was doing a lot of weird flying, weird turns,' he said, 'but he was coming back towards us, towards our way.'

Christenson said while the plane was over the water it did a 360 degree roll 'and went into a steep dive'.

'He brought the one wing up and the whole airplane rolled and as it rolled it went into a dive. It looked control,' he said, adding that the plane pulled up with less than 50 feet between the nose of the aircraft and the water.

Christenson said two minutes later there was 'big plume of black smoke', indicating the plane had crashed.
A Samoan nurse has been charged with the deaths of two babies after she gave them routine measles vaccinations.

The senior nurse has been charged with manslaughter, negligence and conspiracy to defeat the course of justice after the two 12-month-old babies died.

She will appear in court on Tuesday, with the matter likely to be referred to the Supreme Court, Radio New Zealand reported.

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A Samoan nurse has been charged with the deaths of two babies after she gave them routine measles vaccinations (stock image)

Both of the infants died quickly after being immunised for measles, mumps and rubella at Safotu District Hospital, in Savai'i, in early July.

The vaccines were immediately recalled and the immunisation programme paused while the deaths were probed.

Senior health officials says they've been working with the World Health Organisation since to rebuild confidence in vaccinations and hope to run a catch-up campaign after the investigation.

Nurses Association of Samoa president Sonialofi Papalii said it was offering support.

'We have to seek legal support for her, and support the girl as well,' Ms Papalii said.

'(We need) to reassure her psychologically of what has happened, to be patient with what's going on. Hopefully God will assist her in all her pain.'

Ms Papalii told the Samoa Observer there was confusion about the charges, given post-mortem results had not yet been received.

The nurse remains in custody and was removed from the hospital with another last month over safety concerns.
A single-engine Cessna 172 aircraft was captured on a couple's dash camera making an emergency landing Saturday on a California freeway.

The unusual incident occurred around 6:45pm on Westbound I-580 in San Leandro, the Alameda County Fire Department said in a public statement.

The small plane had suffered a fuel pump issue shortly before it was captured by Eric and Brandi Geer on video as it quickly lowered in between busy traffic.

Drivers in San Leandro, California were stunned when a small plane made an emergency landing on the highway

A couple captured the unusual incident on dash cam Saturday evening

The small plane had suffered a fuel pump issue shortly the emergency landing

The couple is heard saying repeatedly as the plane swoops into traffic: 'Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!'

The Geers told CBS San Francisco the pilot waited for enough room in between vehicles before making the quick and risky landing just near the 164th Street exit.

'He was able to hold that plane up until all the cars got out of the way and then he landed it and he immediately went to the side,' Brandi told the station.

Brandi called 911 immediately. Emergency personnel arrived within minutes.

Eric and Brandi Geer called 911 after they witnessed the incident and captured it on dash cam

No one on the plane was injured and there were no accidents

The plane departed Lake Tahoe and would have arrived at the Hayward Executive Airport

Luckily, no one on the plane was injured and there were no accidents as a result of the incident.

'It was fear at first and then adrenaline kicks in,' Brandi told CBS San Francisco.

Eric had been driving at the time of the incident. He said: 'So I was trying to like, "Hey! Listen up (to other drivers" ... so I was swerving around on the freeway.'

The plane departed Lake Tahoe and was set to arrive at the Hayward Executive Airport.

'You hear about it on TV, you see it sometimes and youre like, "That would never happen!"' Brandi said further.

'There are things that happen that are beyond your control, and planes do fall out of the sky.'

Another video, obtained by DailyMail.com, shows the plane after it was parked on the side of the freeway as fire officials surround the scene.

The California Highway Patrol escorted the aircraft off the freeway with a flat bed tow truck.
Torrential rains and a flooded church in the Philippines weren't enough to stop one couple from tying the knot.

A video has emerged of a bride wading down the aisle through murky water to meet her soon-to-be husband at the altar.

The Philippines is enduring a particularly wet monsoon season but nothing could dampen the spirits of Jefferson and Jobel de los Angeles on their big day.

Torrential rains and a flooded church in the Philippines weren't enough to stop one couple from tying the knot

The bride doesn't look concerned by the flooded church, and is seen smiling as she attempts to hold her white wedding gown above the brown floodwaters.

'Even if it floods or it rains, nothing can stop me. You only get married once, will you postpone it? I was marrying the man I love,' the new Mrs De los Angeles told the AFP after the ceremony.

'My gown got wet and heavy but I told myself it was as if I was walking on a red carpet.'

The groom is dressed in a suit with sandals, and also seems quite jovial despite the less than perfect conditions.

The rain waters even forced the couple to arrive via boat to the church, as cars refused to take them.

The video was posted to Facebook and has already been viewed over 180,000 times.

Many areas in the Philippines are currently experiences flash flooding due to a south-west monsoon

Many areas in the Philippines are currently experiences flash flooding due to a south-west monsoon.

The monsoon was exacerbated by nearby tropical storm Yagi, which brought heavy rains and fierce wind to the islands.

The Philippines endures an average of 20 typhoons and storms each year.
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is yet another one to be duped into a faux sit-down interview with Sacha Baron Cohen for the actor's Showtime series 'Who is America?'

In the latest clip released on the one-year anniversary of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Lewandowski outwardly defends neo-Nazi's.

'Why should the president pick a side between anti-fascists and fascists?' Baron Cohen asks, disguised as Trump support Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr. 'He's the president of all people.'

To which Lewandowski replies: 'There is a place and time to disagree with all people, everywhere.'

'You have to respect them, you can't be attacking them,' Lewandowski says of the white supremacists who carried tiki torches at last year's rally that left one counter-protester dead.

Corey Lewandowski is yet another person to be duped by Sacha Baron Cohen

'You can't be attacking honest, fascist people who just want to express their right to start a genocide,' Baron Cohen says in his pro-Trump disguise, attempting to bate Lewandowski into a ridiculous response. 'That is there right.'

Lewandowski sparked outrage in June for mocking a story about a 10-year-old disabled immigrant girl who was separated from her mother at the border while live on air.

The former campaign chief rolled his eyes and now-infamously said 'womp, womp' when Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas shared the horrific story.

The incident made Lewandowski the perfect target for Baron Cohen, as the new show has built a reputation for reeling in political figures who lack a squeaky-clean reputation - including former judge Roy Moore, former sheriff Joe Arpaio, and former representative Jason Spencer.

In this episode, Lewandowski repeatedly defends the president, arguing that Trump is not a racist.

'I had the privilege of standing and sitting next to candidate Trumpthe presidentfor thousands of hours over my tenure running his campaign. Never did I ever hear him utter a racist word in his life,' Lewandowski says.

'The president doesn't look at racenever has. It's a non-issue to him,' he adds.

Baron-Cohen agrees: 'If he was racist why would he have moved into a black man's house?'

The ruse continues as the actor asks Lewandowski if Trump is a misogynist and if the president's claim that 'no one respects women more than me' is true.

'His actions demonstrate that its true,' the former aide asserts, adding that 'the American people are so smart' as not to believe the 'fake news media'.

Lewandowski is known for mocking a 10-year-old disabled immigrant girl on national television with his now-infamous 'womp womp' line

The show has - for obvious reason - caused controversy, including forcing a republican lawmaker to resign and having numerous political figures coming out to defend or retract their regretful statements that shine them in a sometimes racist and almost-always embarrassing light.

A previous episode featured a bizarre interview with former Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The professional spoof artist, posed as a Finnish journalist, asked Arpaio: 'If Donald Trump calls you up after this and says: "Sheriff Joe, I want to offer you an amazing b***job," would you say yes?'

The former sheriff shockingly replied: 'I might have to say yes.'

Just this week Arpaio came out to say he made a 'bad mistake' in accepting the interview, adding that he couldn't understand what the actor was asking through his thick - and fake - accent.

The president gave Arpaio a full pardon last year on a contempt of court conviction that stemmed from his refusal to stop targeting suspected illegal immigrants with otherwise reason-free traffic stops.

Representative Jason Spencer got semi-nude and expressed anti-gay, anti-Muslim and anti-Asian sentiments on Who Is America?, which forced his resignation.

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's much-anticipated interview which she stormed out of has yet to air.
Australians are being warned not to ignore a letter from the tax office advising of a mistake on their tax return as it could end up costing them thousands of dollars.

As part of a crackdown on dodgy claims, the Australian Taxation Office will be sending out an increasing number of data matching letters stating certain financial details have not been declared.

The missing information may be money from a previous job throughout the financial year, bank interest or welfare payments, news.com.au reported.

Etax senior tax agent Liz Russell said it was important for Australians targeted by the ATO not to panic, stressing that choosing to throw the note away was not an option.

Tax experts say if Australians receive a data matching letter from the Australian Taxation Office, they should not ignore it as it could end up costing them thousands of dollars

'It means that someone has lodged a tax return that the ATO believes may not contain all the information, or may contain incorrect information,' Ms Russell said.

'The ATO is fed information from different institutions and then they do a data match with the tax return.'

Ms Russell said if the recipient ignores the letter, they put themselves in a position where their tax return is 'adjusted based on assumptions'.

This could end up costing them 'hundreds, if not thousands of dollars'.

Ms Russell said many Australians did not know the ATO could audit tax returns up to three years after one had been lodged.

Recipients have 28 days to respond to the letter. Penalties could apply.

'If they don't hear from you in that time they will reassess you no matter what, so you have to do something if you don't believe it's correct, and even if it is correct and you've done it inadvertently, you should contact the ATO to see if any penalties are reduced,' Ms Russell said.

Those who receive a data matching letter have the option to agree or disagree with the information contained in the letter (stock image)

Not every tax return lodged is data matched by the ATO.

The ATO website states they use data matching to ensure there are no discrepancies on an individual's tax return.

'Providing details of income received, tax withheld and other tax-related data is required by law,' the website says.

'We match the data we hold with details provided on your tax return. If we identify differences, we may send you a letter outlining the discrepancy.'

The ATO said the type of data matching letter an individual could receive depends on the discrepancy identified.

'Generally, when we send a data-matching letter, it will relate to a tax return lodged more than a year ago. We can only issue letters after we receive all relevant information from other organisations. Delays can occur as some organisations may take longer to report,' the ATO website says.

The type of data matching letter an individual could receive depends on the discrepancy identified in their tax return (stock image)

'Each letter we issue will clearly show the financial year to which it relates.'

Those who receive a data matching letter have the option to agree or disagree with the information contained in the letter.

'If you receive a data-matching letter from us, you will need to review your records. The action you take will depend on whether you agree or disagree with the information included in your letter,' the ATO website says.
Two tourists sleeping in a remote Australian campground were shocked when they woke up to the sound of 'thundering' shots fired directly at their campervan.

A man, 65, and woman, 56, from New Zealand, had travelled to Rockhampton in Queensland for a music festival, Rockhampton Music Bowl.

They told police they were sleeping in their campervan when they were blinded by the headlights of an approaching vehicle on Monday about 5am.

Two tourists sleeping in the middle of a campground were shocked when they woke up to the sound of 'thundering' shots fired directly at their campervan (pictured) in Rockhampton, Queensland on Monday

'They've then hit the deck and a second round has rung out which has crashed into the windscreen, Sergeant Peachey said

The tourists told Detective Senior Sergeant Luke Peachey they heard a round of bullets that sounded like 'thunder' which were fired into the side of their campervan parked at the grounds of the music festival.

Yet the Kiwi tourists told police they were shocked when a second round of shots were fired.

'They've then hit the deck and a second round has rung out which has crashed into the windscreen, Sergeant Peachey said.

The tourists told Detective Senior Sergeant Luke Peachey they heard a round of bullets that sounded like 'thunder' which were fired into the side of their campervan

A man, 65, and woman, 56, from New Zealand, had travelled to Rockhampton in Queensland for a music festival, Rockhampton Music Bowl (pictured)

'It's obviously very, very concerning - the fact that two people were sleeping in this when a firearm was discharged,' He continued.

Police believe that a rifle could have been used but they are waiting to find bullet casings before confirming it was a gun attack.

While the shooting in the camperground is being treated as a deliberate attack, police have not determined a motive for the alleged shooting.

Police are currently looking for the perpetrators and their vehicle.
Shoppers are accusing Government-controlled supermarkets of ripping them off as they're forced to fork out inflated amounts for grocery goods.

Over 20 remote grocery stores in Queensland are owned by Community Enterprise Queensland (CEQ) - a body of the Queensland Government - that sell products at higher prices.

With no major supermarkets like Coles or Woolworths nearby customers are forced to pay exorbitant prices including $28 for a jar of instant coffee, $16 for laundry detergent and $9 for a box of instant oats, ABC reported.

Lockhart River Mayor Wayne Butcher said customers in the remote Indigenous areas were burdened by the prices and couldn't visit Coles or Woolworths to compensate.

Shoppers in remote Queensland have complained of inflated prices that are more expensive than major supermarket chains Coles and Woolworths

'I'm angry because it's very expensive and it just makes life so much harder,' he said.

Petrol prices at stores controlled by the Government are also taking a hit as drivers are forced to pay almost two dollars per litre.

In Lockhart River, unleaded petrol was recorded at $1.93 per litre and $1.89 per litre for diesel petrol.

ABC compared the prices of ten products at Doomadgee's only grocery store and a major supermarket in Brisbane.

Doomadgee is remotely located on the Gulf of Carpentaria over 2000 kilometres away from Brisbane.

A comparison of ten goods showed that customers in remote Queensland were forced to pay an additional $63.93 when compared to shoppers living in Brisbane.

The stores are Government-controlled and shoppers are forced to pay $28 for a jar of instant coffee (pictured, left) and double for biscuits (pictured, right)

Lockhart River Mayor Wayne Butcher said customers in the remote Indigenous areas were burdened by the prices (stock image)

A Government spokesperson said that core grocery products like fresh fruit, milk and eggs are subsidised to ensure prices are kept low.

'However, it must also be noted that there are still significant freight costs that have to be borne due to CEQ operating in very remote areas of the state,' the spokesperson said.

The Government has been controlling most of the remote supermarket stores since 2016.

Mr Butcher said they were told that prices would be improved but claims it has been a broken promise.

'Because of the remoteness and lack of employment opportunities, they should consider more subsidies to make things affordable,' he said.
Elisa Salatino (pictured) is facing a life sentence for smuggling cocaine into Australia

An Italian special education teacher who smuggled $1.1 million worth of cocaine into Melbourne may have been targeted as a drug mule because she is such a 'nice person', lawyers say.

Elisa Salatino is facing a potential life prison sentence after customs officers found 5.3kg of the drug in a hidden compartment of her bag when she arrived at Melbourne Airport from Rome in February 2017.

The 40-year-old from Bari in southern Italy is a primary school teacher who specialises in helping children with disabilities.

Salatino is proficient in sign language, reads braille and has taught disabled kids in Italy for more than a decade.

She's now doing it tough as the only native Italian-speaking woman in Victoria's prison system, her lawyer says.

'She's extremely isolated,' lawyer Michael McGrath told the County Court on Monday.

'There are no other prisoners who speak her native tongue.

'There's only a handful of books in the library in Italian and there only so many times she can read them.'

Salatino was found guilty by a jury of the federal offence of importing a commercial quantity of cocaine and. She is now awaiting sentencing.

Prosecutor John Dickie said Salatino's background and good character may have drawn drug smugglers to choose her as a courier in the hope she wouldn't be caught.

'Demonstrations of wanting to help others and being a nice person would've been attractive to people who would want to import drugs into Australia,' he said.

Her lawyers say that she was targeted as a drug mule because she is a good person. Pictured: The five kilograms of cocaine found in a hidden compartment of her bag

Salatino suffered from depression and had endured relationship troubles with her former partner in Italy, and these difficulties were linked to her criminal lapse, her lawyer said.

She did not organise the smuggling plot, nor did she know exactly how much cocaine she was carrying, but she received a free flight and possibly some cash, the court was told.

Mr Dickie said Salatino may have been 'naive' but a strong sentence was needed to ensure other would-be smugglers were deterred from doing the same.

'That's because of the ease with which this offence can be committed and the difficulty of detecting it,' Mr Dickie said.

One of Salatino's (pictured) close friends described the teacher as a 'bright' and 'ethically correct' person who'd never been in trouble with the law before

One of Salatino's close friends described the teacher as a 'bright' and 'ethically correct' person who'd never been in trouble with the law before.

'She is an exceptional woman,' the friend said in a letter, read to court by an interpreter.

'Anyone who gets to meet her is always affected by her positivity.'

The maximum penalty for importing a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug is life in prison.

Salatino is due to be sentenced by Judge Irene Lawson on August 30.
Iconic Australian furniture retailer John Cootes Furniture has been forced to close its doors after 36 years of success.

The furniture chain, which employs 135 people and has 12 stores across NSW and ACT, announced on Monday morning it aims to shut down by the end of December.

In a bid to offload stock after plunging profits forced the retailer's hand, the store announced a new closing down sale with goods up to 40 per cent off.

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Former rugby league international John Cootes (pictured in a 1987 television ad) left the Roman Catholic Clergy to open a chain of stores

After 36 years in business in Australia, John Cootes Furniture is closing down

The company have announced they are taking 40 per cent off as part of their closing down sale on their website

Parent company Elanor Investors Group informed shareholders on Monday morning that it would be shutting the doors after they failed to secure a buyer for the struggling retailer after a season of dwindling sales and tough competition.

'The significant increase in the competitive environment, combined with softer retail market conditions has resulted in our decision,' CEO Glenn Willis said.

John Cootes Furniture originally started trading in 1982, after former rugby league international John Cootes left the Roman Catholic Clergy to open a chain of stores.

John Cootes (pictured arriving in England in 1970) played six Tests for Australia and was part of Australia's line-up which won the 1970 World Cup final

He was the first Roman Catholic priest to play international rugby league in 1969 when he was selected for Australias tour of New Zealand.

A former centre and adept goal kicker, Cootes scored six tries in seven Tests for Australia in 1969-1970.

His last Test was the 1970 World Cup final against Great Britain at Headingley in Leeds, which Australia won 12-7.

Cootes was also a television sports commentator in the 1980s.

The furniture stores were started by a Catholic priest turned rugby league international

The John Cootes Furniture warehouse in Yennora in Sydney's southwest was gutted by fire in 2015

John Cootes Furniture currently has 12 stores in NSW and the ACT, including Merrylands, Penrith, Tuggerah, Prospect, Newcastle, Auburn, Campbelltown, Canberra, Wagga Wagga, Taree, Bathurst and Rutherford.

Those affected include 90 full-time and 45 casual and part-time workers.

Elanor said it would deliver redundancy payments to the 90 full-time employees.

Shoppers took to the company's Facebook page to express their disappointment.

'This is the place I want the lounge from we better go before it closes,' wrote one person keen to snap up a bargain.

'Theyre closing down! We should go look for a lounge,' wrote another.

'What closing down when where noooo,' wrote one person who was upset at the news.
Melbourne mayors have joined Sudanese leaders in Victoria to call for the phrase 'African gangs' to be scrapped.

Mayors from eight councils across the city made a public display of solidarity with African-Australian community leader Maker Mayek in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick on Monday, SBS reported.

The group said they were opposed to using the term 'African gangs' for the way in which it vilified innocent African-Australians and tarred large swathes of the community with a single brush.

Mayors from eight councils across the city made a public display of solidarity with African-Australian community leader Maker Mayek (right) in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick on Monday (pictured left: City of Melton Mayor Bob Turner)

'You can't broad-brush a whole community just because of the actions of a few young people,' said Mr Mayek. 'We all call Australia home, and it is important that all members of our communities come together to make everyone feel welcome'

'You can't broad-brush a whole community just because of the actions of a few young people,' said Mr Mayek. 'We all call Australia home, and it is important that all members of our communities come together to make everyone feel welcome.'

City of Melton Mayor Bob Turner agreed that 'Making young people and their families feel welcome in the place they now call home is the best way to make our communities healthier.'

The call for unity comes after months of hysteria in Australian media coverage and political conversation over what many have dubbed an 'African gang' crisis.

Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton claimed in January that Melbournians were 'scared to go out at restaurants', while Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently insisted that 'there is real concern about Sudanese gangs' in the Victorian capital.

Other commentators, meanwhile, have suggested that the escalating rhetoric is being leveraged off of in the lead up to the November 24 state election.

Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton alleged in January that Melbournians were 'scared to go out at restaurants' because of what many have called an 'African gang' crisis

Tensions reached a head last week when about 100 youths from Sudanese backgrounds gathered at Taylors Hill - with members of the public furious over revelations police 'tactically' chose not to arrest those involved

City of Whittlesea Mayor Kris Pavlidis, for one, has accused politicians of turning the matter of gang crime and racial tensions into a hot button election issue - and implored them to do better.

'The role of political leadership is to unite diverse communities, ensure vulnerable people are given the tools they need to thrive and to dismantle unhelpful stereotypes and prejudice - not to amplify them,' he said.

Tensions reached a head last week when about 100 youths from Sudanese backgrounds gathered at Taylors Hill, in Melbourne's north-west, for an organised fight sparked by a 'teenage issue over a girl'.

Members of the public reacted with fury amid revelations Victoria Police 'tactically' chose not to arrest those involved, while the riot squad had rocks hurled at them as they attempted to deescalate the situation.

When reporters asked Mr Mayek whether there was in fact an 'African gangs' crisis in Melbourne, he stated that 'we do not accept that proposition'

Speaking at the press conference on Monday, Mr Mayek said that the Taylors Hill incident 'was reported in such a negative way... Although there was no damage done or anybody hurt apart from ... the police property being damaged'.

When reporters asked whether there was in fact an 'African gangs' crisis in Melbourne, Mr Mayek stated that 'we do not accept that proposition'.

'There is no such thing as a gang crisis here in Melbourne,' he said in a statement.

'Today we are here to show our politicians that communities are standing together united against the media frenzy of sensationalist reporting that is hurting African-Australian people and their communities.'

Cabinet minister and member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly Jacinta Allan conceded that there were 'challenges in this area', but said it was good to see community leaders 'taking a stand against racism and hatred'.

Figures from Victoria's Crime Statistics Agency show that Sudanese-born Victorians were responsible for three per cent of serious assaults, five per cent of car thefts and 8.6 per cent of aggravated burglaries in 2017.

Of the overall crimes committed in the state throughout that year, however, they were responsible for just 0.1 per cent.
A former Georgia State student has been shot in the face outside one of the university's dorms.

Nikari Elder was shot around 5am on Saturday outside The Commons by 24-year-old Musleem Jones, who is not a student.

Police said Elder was struck in the face by a bullet which exited through his neck before he was rushed to hospital for surgery.

Nikari Elder, a former Georgia State University student, was shot in the face around 5am on Saturday in a car on campus by 24-year-old Musleem Jones, who is not a student

He suffered non-life-threatening injuries, according to college paper The Signal.

Officers say Elder and Jones were in the car with two other people and had been out clubbing before pulling up on campus to speak with a student about drugs.

That's when Jones, who was sat in the front seat, opened fire and shot Elder, who was sitting in the back seat.

All four occupants of the car are now in police custody. A gun and a bag of marijuana were recovered from the scene.

The driver was Jones' brother, according to police, who did not release his name. It is not known who the fourth passenger was or what their relationship to the others is.

Jones has been charged with aggravated assault, 11 Alive reported.
A community radio station headed by Terry Blacker (pictured) has been slammed for playing a 'racist' song on air

A community radio station has been slammed for playing a song on air which was considered 'racist' towards indigenous Australians.

Logan Radio 101FM in Queensland has been criticised for playing the 1961 hit My Boomerang Won't Come Back by UK comedian Charlie Drake.

The radio's station manager Terry Blacker said he gave permission for the song to be played on Saturday August 4.

The song is about an Aboriginal boy who is ostracised from his tribe because he can't throw a boomerang correctly.

Some have critiqued the hit which topped the charts in the 1960s because of its racist undertones.

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A community radio station in Queensland has been slammed for playing a 1961 hit called My Boomerang Won't Come Back' by UK comedian Charlie Drake (pictured) due to its 'racist' undertones

A controversial line in the song reads: 'I've waved the thing all over the place, practiced until I'm black in the face, I'm a big disgrace to the Aborigine race.'

Mr Blacker claims the majority of listeners don't believe it is a 'racist' song.

'The vast majority of listeners appear to accept the song as a comedy track with no racist tones intended,' Mr Blacker told the Courier Mail.

Mr Blacker suggests there are too many songs in musical history that can be challenged for not being 'politically correct.'

Some listeners have defended the radio station manager saying the song is not racist. 'Fair dinkum was not meant to be and isn't racist, it is just funny,' one woman said

'Today, there are many songs that fall into the PC (political correct) category and open to personal interpretation and we cant ban all songs that people complain about otherwise we wouldnt have any songs to play,' Mr Blacker added.

Some listeners have defended the radio station manager saying the song is 'not racist.'

'Fair dinkum was not meant to be and isn't racist, it is just funny,' one woman said.

'It was a funny song. I still have no issues with my boomerang wont come back [...], another man said.

What is the song My Boomerang Won't Come Back about? My Boomerang Won't Come Back is about a young Aboriginal boy who is disowned from his family for not being able to throw a boomerang The song is about a young Aboriginal boy who is disowned from his family because he can't correctly throw a boomerang. Lyrics include the lines: 'I've waved the thing all over the place, practiced until I'm black in the face, I'm a big disgrace to the Aborigine race.' Later in the song, a kangaroo threatens to jump on the boy's head if he attempts to throw his boomerang at it. A 'witch doctor' then offers to show the boy how to use his boomerang. Yet after he unsuccessfully throws the boomerang, he hits a flying doctor's plane and it crashes. The witch doctor then asks for 14 chickens in payment. The song hit number one in Australian charts in November 1962. Advertisement

The song was banned by the ABC in 2015 after furious listeners complained about it being played on air.

A media statement from the broadcaster at the time read: 'The broadcast of the song My Boomerang Wont Come Back was not in keeping with the ABCs editorial standards for harm and offence; there was no editorial justification for playing it.

'The song was not on a regular ABC playlist but was aired because it was requested by a listener. This error was due to staff not being familiar with the tracks lyrics. The ABC apologised to the complainant, removed the track completely from the system and took steps to ensure that this would not happen again'.
The man fatally stabbed with a samurai sword in Sydney's inner-west has been remembered as an IT worker desperate to become a rapper.

Jett McKee, 30, who went by the stage name Scepaz, was killed in an altercation in his Forest Lodge home last Friday afternoon.

Neighbours heard arguing between McKee and another man and woman, before he staggered out the front of the house with a 'massive' head wound.

Emergency services were called by McKee had already died by the time they arrived.

Since his passing, members of the hip-hop community have remembered him as an 'awesome soul'.

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Jett McKee (pictured) was identified as the victim of a fatal stabbing in Sydney's west on Friday

He is being remembered as an affluent member of the local hip-hop community

Tributes have been pouring in on social media since the rapper who went by Scepaz passed

He has been remembered as a 'humble guy', and was well-respected in the local scene

Tributes have poured in for the IT worker who was desperate to become a rapper.

'RIP Scepaz....we only met a handful of times but all the homies told me what a good bloke you were,' fellow rapper The Tongue said.

'R.I.P Scepaz you will be remembered,' said another.

The man and woman fled the scene, and are currently still being sought after by police.

The woman is described as white, aged in her early 20s, thin build, about 178cm tall, with bleached blonde hair and dark coloured roots.

She was wearing a black singlet and maroon three-quarter pants at the time.

Her male companion was described as white, aged in his late 20s medium build, about 178cm tall with short brown hair.

'Police want to reassure the community that the attack is not considered random,' a NSW Police statement said.

New South Wales Police has appealed for a woman and man seen fleeing from the scene (pictured) of a fatal assault on Friday to come forward

Witnesses said they saw the victim staggering down the street and collapsing after he was attacked in the suburb of Forest Lodge, near Glebe, on Friday afternoon

Resident Lynn Charlesworth's car (pictured) was covered in blood from the victim as he tried to escape

Police seized a firearm and a number of weapons to be forensically examined but said no shots were fired.

Officers from Leichhardt Police joined forces with detectives from the State Crime Command's Homicide Squad to establish Strike Force Hedda to investigate the man's death.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

Police are desperately hunting for a woman and man wanted in relation to the fatal attack of a man in a quiet suburban area on Friday afternoon (officers pictured at the scene)

Police were called to the intersection of Hereford Street and Minogue Crescent at Forest Lodge around 12.40pm to find a body lying in the middle of the road (pictured)

Police raided a house in a nearby street following the discovery of a gun near the body, but later uncovered it was a replica.

Witnesses said they saw the victim staggering down the street and collapsing after hearing an altercation.

Resident Lynne Charlesworth heard a woman's screams and saw the victim slumped in the street, covered in blood.

Her car was covered in his blood as he tried to escape.

'I told him to stay still and he started to roll across the street,' she told reporters on Saturday.

'He got to our car, laid back on it and pulled himself up. He was doing anything to get away, anything at all. His head was covered in blood. I couldn't tell you what his features were.'

Heavily armed police and officers carrying a battering ram closed in on a house nearby in Cross Street just after the fatal attack in broad daylight

Resident Alex Ververis arrived home shortly after the incident and described it as 'really unexpected and kind of scary'.

'I came back with my kid after swimming lessons. We know everyone on the street, there's nothing untoward and nothing suspicious,' he told ABC News.

Police are yet to reveal exactly what caused the victim's fatal injuries, but said a man and woman were seen fighting with him before his death.

Officers followed a trail of blood from the body to a nearby property on Hereford Street, and heavily armed officers carrying a battering ram closed in on the house.

A wide-scale manhunt continued on Saturday while a man and woman remain on the run.

The pair reportedly live on the street where the attack occurred.

Pictures from the scene show the body covered with a white blanket surrounded by police at the intersection of Hereford Street and Minogue Crescent

Police were called to the intersection around 12.40pm on Friday, where Acting Superintendent Sam Crisafulli (pictured) told reporters that the victim was 'sadly found deceased on the street'

A builder working nearby told 9 News he and his workmates had heard a 'loud bang' and thought someone may have been run over by a car.

'One of the boys ran down to see if he was okay,' the man said.

He said the victim had 'a lot of blood coming out of his head'.

Another witness said she heard a lady yelling: 'Get away. Get the f**k away from me'.

The incident is believed to have been targeted and to have occurred after a man and a woman were 'seen in an altercation' with the victim prior to his death.

'We've spoken to a number of witnesses who tell us shortly before we were called a man and a woman were in an altercation with another man,' Superintendent Sam Crisafulli said.

'It was a violent attack with very, very serious consequences.'

Several crime scenes were established along Hereford Street on Friday, including inside a private residence

'We've spoken to a number of witnesses who tell us shortly before we were called a man and a woman were in an altercation with another man,' Superintendent Crisafulli said

A man and woman remain on the run after a man was killed in Sydney's inner west. Police were called to the intersection around 12.40pm on Friday and have reportedly already found a weapon

Detectives from the homicide squad are part of a strike force set up to investigate the man's death
A South Korean woman has been jailed for secretly photographing a male nude model, in a case that sparked controversy over double standards.

High-tech South Korea has been battling a growing epidemic of so-called 'molka' or spycam videos, which largely involve men secretly filming women in schools, offices, trains, toilets, changing rooms and on the street.

Spycam crimes reported to police surged from around 1,100 in 2010 to more than 6,500 last year, and many offenders share or sell photos and videos online.

According to official statistics about 98 percent of offenders are men - ranging from school teachers and college professors to church pastors and police officers - while more than 80 percent of victims are women.

But in the latest case the woman in her 20s - also a nude model - was sentenced to 10 months in prison for taking a picture of her male counterpart at a Seoul art college and sharing it on the internet in May.

A South Korean woman has been jailed for secretly photographing a male nude model, in a case that sparked controversy over double standards. The case sparked a recent series of mass women's rallies in Seoul, at which protestors accused the police and court of treating male victims and offenders more favourably than women

She was arrested days later and paraded in front of television cameras while police raided her home to search for evidence - described by many activists as an uncharacteristically swift and aggressive response.

Patriarchal values are deeply ingrained in South Korea despite its economic and technological advances.

State data shows only 8.7 percent of high-tech peeping Toms are jailed on their first conviction, with most only fined or receiving suspended terms, seen by many as a slap on the wrist.

'The whole response by the police to this rare case in which a victim is male is truly unprecedented,' said Seo Seung-hui, head of the Korea Cyber Sexual Violence civic group.

'We rarely saw them act so quickly for countless cases in which victims were female,' she told AFP.

The case of the model -- who has not been named -- was a catalyst for a recent series of mass women's rallies in Seoul, at which protestors accused the police and court of treating male victims and offenders more favourably than women.

Smartphones sold in the South are required to make a loud shutter noise when taking pictures, but many offenders use special apps that mute the sound, or turn to high-tech spy cameras hidden inside eye glasses, lighters, watches, car keys and even neckties.
A young apprentice baker who allegedly killed a 16-year-old girl after slamming his ute into a group outside a birthday party claims he didn't know he hit anyone, a court has heard.

Brodie Lee Gibbard, 19, was allegedly driving a white Holden utility truck that struck pedestrians at Monjingup, 700 kilometres south east of Perth, at 1.30am on Saturday morning.

He was charged with the manslaughter of Kaitlyn Scott, 16 who died in Esperance hospital shortly after the incident occurred.

Brodie Lee Gibbard (pictured) was allegedly driving a white Holden utility that struck pedestrians at Monjingup, more than 700 kilometres south east of Perth, at 1:30am on Saturday morning

The court heard the apprentice baker did not realize he had hit anyone and was shocked to receive a text from another party-goer stating he did.

According to his lawyer, Alan Comp, he thought something had been thrown at the car but turned himself into police shortly after.

The young girl, allegedly hit by Gibbard was critically injured when the ute struck her and two other party-goers as they were walking along the semi-rural road.

Kaitlyn Scott suffered critical injuries and was rushed to Esperance Regional Hospital, but sadly didn't make it.

Kaitlyn Scott (pictured), allegedly hit by Gibbard was critically injured when the ute struck her and two others as they were walking along the semi-rural road - she died in hospital

Two other pedestrians, an 18-year-old woman and 18-year-old man were treated for minor injuries.

In addition to manslaughter, Mr Gibbard is facing charges on failing to stop and ensure assistance and failing to report the crash early.

It is believed the 19-year-old was driving in the area with his girlfriend, on the hunt for a 19th birthday party.

In addition to manslaughter, Mr Gibbard is facing charges on failing to stop and ensure assistance and failing to report the crash early (Pictured: general street view of David Road)

Police prosecutors told the court that Mr Gibbard allegedly passed the party on several occasions before he accelerated.

The police prosecutor told the court bail would not be opposed as Gibbard had no criminal record, was only 19-years-old and the crash occurred in darkness on a narrow, semi-rural road after rain.

Gibbard's bail was granted with strict conditions, including surrendering his passport, living with his mother and reporting to the Esperance Police Station weekly.

The young driver's bail was granted with strict conditions, including surrendering his passport, living with his mother and reporting to the Esperance Police Station weekly

Mr Gibbard is set to appear in court again on August 29.

Kaitlyn's mother, Cassandra Eccles, has described the family's grief in a series of Facebook posts.

She wrote: 'To those who don't know yet, we lost our beautiful girl early this morning. Kaitlyn Scott we will love you and be proud of you forever baby girl. Forever sweet 16,'

'Another day we have to live without you, so many things aren't fair about this.'

Friends and family have continued to pay their respect and place flowers and cards along Davis Road

A friend of Ms Eccles, Yvonne Cooper, set up a GoFundMe page to help the family with the unexpected funeral costs and supporting Kaitlyn's brother and sister.

Ms Cooper wrote on the GoFundMe Page: 'Forever sweet 16 Kaitlyn. You will be sadly missed by so many people. You were loved by many and your life was just starting. Rest in Paradise beautiful girl.'

The fundraiser has already raised nearly $8,000 of a $10,000 goal as of publication.

To donate, search Kaitlyn Scott on gofundme.com.

Friends and family have continued to pay their respect and place flowers and cards along Davis Road.
Flying from Perth to London is now faster than ever, after a Qantas flight made the journey in record time.

The long-haul journey from the Western Australia state capital to London averages around 17 hours but Qantas has repeatedly shaved minutes off that time since it launched its non-stop London flight in March.

The airline broke its record again by arriving in just 16 hours and 23 minutes - ten minutes faster than its previous best and almost an hour quicker than scheduled - on a flight last month, The West reported.

Fancy a quick trip to visit the Queen? Qantas has been smashing its flight time record since launching the Perth to London service in March

About 330 peppermint tea bags and hundreds of chocolate biscuits are loaded on the plane to help make the painful journey to England a little easier

Back in 1947, the 14,400 kilometre (9,000 mile) flight from Australia to London took four days, totaling 55 hours in the air and stop-offs along the way to refuel.

Now the QF9 non-stop flight, using the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, is scheduled for 17 hours and 20 minutes, but had consistently been arriving about 45 minutes ahead of schedule

The flight follows different paths depending on the best winds, helping the aircraft fly faster and more efficiently. Qantas analysed a decade of seasonal wind patterns in preparation for the service.

The return trip, from London to Perth, takes about 15 hours and 45 minutes, with the shorter time accounted for by the spinning of Earth toward the plane's position.

QF9 carries around 92 tonnes or 110,000 litres of fuel with the Dreamliner burning approximately 20 per cent less than its predecessor aircraft of the same size.

The flight to London once took four days, totaling 55 hours in the air. The new route that launched in March is making it easier to visit the Queen

There are more than 21,000 individual items loaded onto the aircraft for each flight between Perth and London including 330 peppermint tea bags and hundreds of chocolate biscuits.

The flight is 24 per cent further than the previous longest non-stop route arriving in the UK, operated by Garuda Indonesia between Heathrow and Jakarta.

The QF9 flight is operated by four pilots across the journey, with one or two pilots resting at any given time.
A seemingly shocking photo has emerged of a baby sitting in the middle of train tracks while its photo was taken.

An image uploaded to Twitter shows the baby sitting on the tracks while a person more than a metre away took a photo.

Another person is seen standing adjacent to the baby and the photographer, while a third person is standing by a pram, metres away at a crossing.

A photo has emerged on social media of a baby sitting in the middle of train tracks in Fremantle, Western Australia so its photo could be taken

The image of the incident, which was captured in Fremantle, Western Australia, was posted to The Bell Tower Times Twitter account.

'Now trending on Instagram: babies on train tracks. Spotted in Freo (Steve C),' the caption, which accompanied the photo, read.

But some Twitter users were quick to claim the tracks where the baby had been placed were not in use anymore.

'Not the point I suppose if they didn't know, but no train goes through there does it? It's after the Freo station,' one said.

Another wrote: 'Good thing the train doesn't work anymore'.

The Public Transport Authority last year issued a warning over taking images on train tracks, amid a surge of photographers staging such photos.

The West Australian reported a warning sign had been placed at level crossings to warn of the dangers as it was 'dangerous and illegal'.

'Being on the tracks or within the rail reserve, without a permit and other than for traversing a pedestrian crossing, is classified as trespassing,' PTA communications manager David Hynes said.
Theresa May must push for a full inquiry into Boris Johnson's burka comments or he will have got away with victimising minorities, the UK's largest Islamic group said today.

The Muslim Council of Britain says Islamophobic incidents have risen since Mr Johnson compared women in veils to bank robbers and letterboxes.

The organisation is today writing to Mrs May today demanding a full disciplinary inquiry as allies including the former Foreign Secretary's father and sister said he 'didn't go far enough'.

The MCB's letter says: 'We are hopeful that the party will not allow any whitewashing of this specific inquiry currently in process. No one should be allowed to victimise minorities with impunity.'

Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of Tell Mama, which measures anti-Muslim incidents, said today that Mr Johnson's comments will 'embolden mainly male perpetrators to have a go at visible Muslim women as a whole'.

Tell Mama says there have been 14 incidents of abuse of women wearing a niqab or hijab in the past week - up from fiev,

Boris Johnson (pictured in his car in Oxfordshire today) sparked controversy after he said that women in burkas look like letterboxes in a column published a week ago

Boris Johnson's father has backed his comments over the burka - but said his son should have called for a ban in 'some circumstances'. Pictured: Boris Johnson and his dad Stanley Johnson

Ban the burka? Women have been outraged by Boris Johnson's comments calling them 'letter boxes' insisting the right to wear the covering clothing should be protected

Mr Mughal said: 'Johnson thinks his flippant comments were funny and whilst his comments were about the burqa, the fact is that visible Muslim women are also impacted on by these comments. Perpetrators don't sit around thinking, 'Oh there is a burqa-clad woman and I will only vent my anger to her' - they see a visibly identifiable woman and off they go with their bigotry and prejudice.'

Boris Johnson's father last night accused the Tory leadership of 'losing its senses' over the burka row embroiling his son.

What did Boris Johnson say about the burqa and the niqab? The ex Foreign Secretary sparked a storm of controversy after using his weekly newspaper column to compare women who wear burqas to letterboxes and bank robbers. The burqa is a full face covering that is associated with a conservative interpretation of Islam. It is different to the hijab, which leaves the face uncovered, or the niqab, which leaves the eyes exposed. In his Daily Telegraph article Mr Johnson said that he felt 'fully entitled' to expect women who wear face coverings to take them off when talking to him at his MP surgery. He also said schools and universities are entitled to take the same approach if a pupil comes in 'looking like a bank robber'. Mr Johnson branded the burqa 'oppressive' and said it is 'weird and bullying to expect people to cover their faces'. He added that he could not find scriptural authority for the dress code in the Koran. And he said 'it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes'. Advertisement

As Cabinet ministers lambasted the party's 'cack-handed' approach, Stanley Johnson claimed Conservative chiefs were 'making a mountain out of a molehill'.

He suggested his son was facing a 'kangaroo court' after describing Muslim women in face-covering veils as looking like letter-boxes or bank robbers.

Rachel Johnson has also backed her sibling.

She wrote: 'If I'd been phoning it in, as it were, I might have changed the word 'ridiculous' and cut out 'bank robbers', but apart from these two or three words, it seemed fine and fair  in fact, it didn't go far enough to express, in my view, how oppressive the garment is.

'When I see a woman wearing one, I don't try to 'other' her. The reverse. I try to imagine myself in her shoes. On the street. All the rest of my family are in casual shorts and T-shirts and flip-flops, but I'm a faceless, unidentifiable ghost in a suffocating black shroud.

'On the beach, my man in skimpy Speedos (OK, please no) me in hot dark fabric from head to toe, having to eat an ice cream by posting the pudding into my mouth from under a flap beneath my chin.'

Ms Johnson also called for her brother to 'go further' saying she would only apologise for his having not called for an outright ban.

The party's treatment of the former foreign secretary  who returned to the UK from holiday in Italy yesterday  has fuelled a Tory civil war.

Conservative chairman Brandon Lewis has called on Boris to apologise for his remarks, made in a newspaper column, while the party is considering formal disciplinary action. However, Mr Johnson's allies believe the ex-London mayor is being targeted because he poses a leadership threat to the Prime Minister.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen last night said grassroots anger could lead to more MPs submitting letters to reach the 48 needed to force a leadership challenge.

He warned: 'If Boris is suspended it will be open warfare in the Conservative Party. If Theresa May dares engineer a leadership contest while Boris is suspended it will be World War Three.' Yesterday Stanley Johnson told Sky News: 'The hierarchy of the Tory Party has collectively lost its senses. It is making a mountain out of a molehill.

'If ever there was an own goal, the Tory Party is in the process of scoring it with this emphasis on a kangaroo court  it's just nonsense. I blame people who are ready to cook up reasons of their own to attack what was actually a well-written article.'

He accused Labour and Remain-supporting MPs of 'whipping it all up' and insisted: 'We're all making a terrific mountain out of a molehill here.' The Sunday Times reported that four Cabinet ministers had privately expressed dismay at the handling of the case by Downing Street and Tory HQ.

Rachel Johnson and Boris Johnson. Rachel has also backed her brother over his burka comments despite the huge backlash

One minister said: 'It's been so cack-handed. Boris is a backbencher. What he said wasn't that outrageous  a lot of people have said worse and a lot of the party happens to agree with him.

'The sooner the party throws this investigation out, the better. Lots of people both on the front and back benches are really p***** off.' A second minister said: 'It's been a total cock-up from start to finish. What started out as something and nothing has been whipped up into a storm.

'It would have soon blown over, but in their willingness to see Boris punished, all they've done is hurt themselves.' Another added: 'They have managed to engineer a total disaster. There is not a serious political brain in or around Downing Street.

'Trying to silence Boris is stupid, especially when the majority of people agree with him.'

Mr Johnson appeared unfazed by the row as he wore colourful shorts to bring a tray of tea to journalists waiting outside his home in Thame, Oxfordshire.

Meanwhile 53 per cent of voters believe he should not face disciplinary action, according to a ComRes poll for the Sunday Express. Forty per cent said he deserved to be disciplined.

Hamilton is axed over KKK tweet

Former Tory MP's wife Christine Hamilton has been sacked as a charity ambassador after tweeting a Ku Klux Klan photo with the caption: 'If the burka is acceptable then presumably this is too?'

The tweet in the wake of Boris Johnson's burka row sparked fury on social media and Muscular Dystrophy UK severed its links with her. Chief executive Robert Meadowcroft said the decision 'fully reflects the values of the charity'.

This controversial tweet has led to Christine Hamilton's sacking as a charity ambassador

One poster wrote to Mrs Hamilton online: 'You (and Mr Johnson) are both as bad as each other trying to disguise your prejudices as 'jokes'. I hope you're proud of yourself for perpetuating this idea that Muslim women should be vilified and mocked.'

Mrs Hamilton, 68, a former reality show contestant, said the post was 'tongue in cheek', adding: 'For heaven's sake  no, I am not comparing Muslim women to KKK members. I was graphically illustrating how full facial cover can be sinister, which is how many people view the burka.'

Her husband Neil is an ex-Tory MP who is currently the leader of Ukip Wales.
A brave cafe worker has relived the moment she tried to save the life of a cyclist hit hit by a stolen Mercedes.

The female rider was mowed down in a suspected hit and run in Melbourne's inner city on Sunday morning.

Police are still on the hunt for the driver of the white sedan, who allegedly walked away unscathed.

Melissa Donaldson, 55, told Daily Mail Australia it was 'total carnage' at the scene of the crash.

A brave cafe worker has relived the moment she tried to save the life of a cyclist hit hit by a stolen Mercedes

Ms Donaldson said 'instinct' kicked in when she saw the woman 'face down on the wheel'.

She performed CPR with the help of a witness and a nurse, but unfortunately the cyclist passed away.

'We did see her slip on, it was sad to see her go,' she said.

Ms Donaldson said 'instinct' kicked in when she saw the woman 'face down on the wheel' but many people were just standing around watching.

'Nobody was helping her, they were all just saying, is she OK, is she breathing.'

'I felt we gave her that chance. (You) have to help if you think you can.'

Victorian Police said they are still looking for the man they believe can assist with their inquiries.

The driver has been described as aged in his late 20s or early 30s with dark hair and facial hair.

Victoria Police have released a photo of a man they believe can assist with their inquiries after a hit and run

He was wearing dark clothing, including tracksuit pants with a large white Adidas logo on the side.

Inspector Stuart McGregor described the man behind the wheel of the car as 'despicable'.

'We've lost the life of a young girl who was just going about a Sunday morning bicycle ride,' Inspector McGregor said.

'Unfortunately for her, the driver of the white Mercedes decided he was going to cut through on the left-hand side of the other vehicles and at the same time he's collided with her and pushed her up against another car.

'His first thought was to run. It wasn't to help, it wasn't to stop, it wasn't to think about the poor person he's hit.

'This is not going to go away... we will not stop, we do not stop. We will arrest you. You're going to court, you're going to look a lot better if you come to us.'

The stolen white Mercedes sedan clipped another vehicle before rolling onto the cyclist at South Yarra around 10am on Sunday
Pictured: Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism project

Schoolboy rapists think their victims' tears is a part of foreplay due to the rise in online porn.

Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism project, says there is a national epidemic of sexual assaults happening in playgrounds across Britain.

Ms Bates said rape victims were being put back into the classrooms with their attackers because schools were not being given guidance on how to deal with the problem.

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the campaigner said a rape a day was being committed in British schools during term time.

Ms Bates said the rise in online pornography had warped the view of some teenage boys, leaving them to believe making girls cry was a 'part of foreplay'.

She also told the festival a continuing absence of sex and relationship lessons in schools meant there was no official guidance for youngsters to correct the impact of internet porn.

The Times reported Ms Bates said: 'I went to a school recently where they had a rape case involving a 14-year-old boy and a teacher had said to him, 'Why didn't you stop when she was crying?' and he looked straight back at her, quite bewildered, and said, 'Because it is normal for girls to cry during sex.'

Shocking:According to research 5,500 sexual offences, including 600 rapes in UK schools, were reported to the police in the three years to July 2015 (stock image)

She added: 'I go into schools and talk to children around that age all the time who think that crying is part of foreplay because they have seen so much online porn that normalises violence and treats women in a way that is incredibly misogynistic and dehumanising.'

Worrying figures showed 5,500 sexual offences, including 600 rapes in UK schools, were reported to the police in the three years to July 2015.

The government has pledged to produce guidelines for schools to prevent children being forced to share classes with pupils who have raped or sexually assaulted them and is consulting on proposals to make all state schools teach relationships and sex education.
An Australian small homeware firm has fallen victim to a hacking scam - and it's not the only business to be hit recently.

Phoebe Bell, owner of Sage & Clare, believes her emails were watched for months before her company handed over $10,000 to a fake supplier.

The stock order she placed via email appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary even when the supplier gave new bank account details.

Phoebe Bell (pictured), owner of Sage & Clare, believes her emails were watched for months before her company handed over $10,000 to a fake supplier

The scam began earlier this year, when Phoebe placed a stock order with an unnamed supplier and engaged in a series of emails back and forth for weeks.

After being notified the goods were ready with supporting documentation, an invoice was sent to Sage & Clare.

It was requested the $10,000 invoice be paid to a different account than the one Phoebe was familiar with - something not uncommon among suppliers.

Phoebe began receiving strange emails from the supplier until she realised something was not right.

The scam began earlier this year, when Phoebe placed a stock order with an unnamed supplier and engaged in a series of emails back and forth for weeks

After contacting the supplier directly, Bell learnt her gut feeling was right and accepted she had fallen victim to a scam describing her feeling on Facebook as 'stupid and naive'.

It is believed this was a targeted scam as the hackers knew a lot about her business as well as the suppliers they were posing as - even the writing style was the same.

The incident has been reported to the Australian Federal Police through the Australian Cybercrime Reporting Network (ACORN), and to the bank.

After contacting the supplier directly, Bell learnt her gut feeling was right and accepted she had fallen victim to a scam describing her feeling on Facebook as 'stupid and naive'

Phoebe says: 'It's frustrating, because we already have so many insurances in place. And if you were burgled, you'd have the police out there right away.'

The story was shared on social media on Sunday night and fans of the brand have united to show support.

The story was shared on social media on Sunday night and fans of the brand have united to show support

One Facebook user advised the business to: 'Definitely check your business insurance policy. Our broker talked to us about coverage for this type of event just recently... Apparently there is a lot of it going on at the moment.'

Whilst other users offered well wishes and support, Sage & Clare responded to the comment advising: 'Will do! Wish I was covered but will look to add this on x.'

It appears the company has no way of retrieving the funds.

Sage & Clare was founded in 2013 by Victorian husband and wife duo, Phoebe and Christopher after a Christmas spent in India.

Sage & Clare was founded in 2013 by Victorian husband and wife duo (pictured), Phoebe and Christopher after a Christmas spent in India

With a turnover of $1 million, the financial loss has come at a time where the business is able to absorb it.

This hasn't stopped further support for the victims with a Brighton small business, Bungalow Trading Co taking to Instagram to auction off a bed-head with the proceeds going directly to Sage & Clare.

Bungalow Trading Co are just one of around 100 distributors of the brand.

With a turnover of $1 million, the financial loss has come at a time where the business is able to absorb it

According to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Scamwatch statistics, in the month of July 2018 alone $12,787,691 AUD was lost to scams with over $3 million of this being taken via email.

Males appeared to be the biggest victims accounting for 60.5%.
It seems it's not just rats that can't resist the taste of good pizza after a squirrel was caught chewing on the Italian dish.

The bushy-tailed rodent can be seen munching on a slice in Queens, New York City.

It nibbles its way through the pizza and is so intent on finishing its dinner that it fails to care about the film maker.

It seems it's not just rats that can't resist the taste of good pizza after a squirrel was caught chewing on the Italian dish

Mary Proto shared the video on Twitter, with people responding with pictures of other rodents who had devoured their fair share of the New York staple.

The most famous of those, is of course, the Pizza rat.

Pizza rat was made famous in 2015 after a video showed a rodent attempting to carry a large slice down the subway steps in Manhattan.

A video showed the rat trying to carry the pizza down the stairs before abandoning the large slice.

The bushy-tailed rodent can be seen munching on a slice in Queens, New York City

The pizza rat is back for another slice of cheese after a New York commuter spotted the rodent scurrying down the subway tracks

Since then, there have been other viral rats including the 'pretzel rat', 'avocado rat' and 'pole-dancing rat'.

Yet with pizza eating rodents and crows that can pick up your litter for you, outsmarting the animal kingdom is becoming more challenging by the day.

A recent study has warned the ever increasing ability of urban creatures is leading to an 'arms race' with humans.

The paper in the journal Animal Behaviour written by Lisa P. Barrett, Lauren Stanton and Sarah Benson-Amram, of the University of Wyoming's Animal Behavior and Cognition Lab, examined whether smarter animals might be better at learning to live in cities - but, at the same time, also may come into more conflict with humans.

An Instagram user spotted a rat running along a Brooklyn subway with half an avocado

It concluded that as animals become better at surviving in cities, the chances of conflict with humans is set to grow dramatically.

Social media users were quick to comment whether the pizza squirrel was guzzling down the dish the right way.

One said: 'At least hes eating the slice like youre supposed to eat itwithout utensils.'

However Bobby FU commented: 'Must be a tourist...not folding the slice!'

David Savona agreed: 'I think he's from out of town - he didn't fold the crust.'
Charles Bronson's soon to be ex wife called him a 'b*****d' as she partied with her friends at the weekend - and shocked revellers as she simulated a sex act in a public toilet, it is claimed.

Paula Williamson, 37, who married Britain's most notorious prisoner last year, had a dig at her now ex lover at Brighton Pride festival by daubing a message on her arm.

The former Coronation Street actress wrote 'Ya b*****d' on her arm with pen, and drew his famous handlebar moustache alongside it.

She was later seen messing around with a friend against a wall with a 'Toilets are for customers only' sign.

The former Coronation Street actress wrote 'Ya b*****d' on her arm with pen, and drew his famous handlebar moustache alongside it (left). She was also spotted simulating a sex act (right) next to a public toilet

Her antics soon caught the eye of revellers, despite her attempts to disguise herself by donning a purple wig and sunglasses, the Daily Star reported.

One partygoer told the publication: 'She said she was out to have a good time and she did.

'She was sat in a portaloo in a garage forecourt simulating a sex act with another woman.

'It wasn't the most classy thing you've ever seen.

'As the day went on and booze flowed, the glasses came off and she posed for raunchy pictures.

Charles Bronson (pictured in 2004, left, has vowed to divorce Ms Williamson (on Loose Women last month (right) after a photo emerged of a young man with his head between her breasts during a wild night out in Tenerife

'I didn't see her without a can in her hand all day.'

Bronson, 65, vowed to divorce Ms Williamson after a photo emerged of a young man with his head between her breasts during a wild night out in Tenerife.

He called her a 'drunken tart' and accused her of disrespecting him.

Bronson is one of the country's most notorious prisoners and has spent the majority of the past four decades imprisoned for a series of violent crimes.

The couple wed last November in HMP Wakefield, (pictured: the bride covered with a sheet) where Bronson is being held

In recent years he has turned his hand to art and changed his surname from Bronson to Salvador in tribute to the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali.

He first struck up a relationship with Miss Williamson - who also had roles in Emmerdale and Hollyoaks - back in 2013 after they started writing to one another.

Bronson has previously said he wants to have children with Miss Williamson, claiming he would be the 'best dad in the world'.

He was first locked up for armed robbery in 1974, but during his time inside he has taken hostages in 10 prison sieges, attacked at least 20 prison officers and caused 500,000 in damage in rooftop protests.

A spokesman for Ms Williamson declined to comment on the incident.

But on Twitter today she denied the claims, writing: 'I had fun with friends at Brighton Pride, I did not commit lewd act in toilet and did not have a bloody can in my hand all day.

'I was dancing mostly! Tattoo was an in joke with the girls!'
A group of far-right activists were allegedly chased away from a rally showing support for a left-wing London bookshop which was vandalised by a mob of 'mask-wearing fascists' earlier this month.

Footage shows five men retreating from rally members as both sides exchange foul-mouthed aggressive rants.

'We'll kick you f****** off our streets every f****** time,' shouts one woman in Bloomsbury, central London, near the Bookmarks store.

A group of far-right activists (left) were allegedly chased away from a rally showing support for a left-wing London bookshop which was vandalised by a mob of 'mask-wearing fascists' earlier this month

Footage shows five men retreating from rally members as both sides exchange foul-mouthed aggressive rants

The bookshop was targeted nearly two weeks ago by a group wearing 'Make Britain Great Again' caps and shouting 'we love Trump' as they tore items from the shelves.

The clip, filmed on Saturday, shows five men being ushered away from the bookshop by people who appear to be there for the demonstration.

As one of the supposedly far-right activists holds a red flag he is warned by a man that he will be in 'f****** trouble' if he doesn't return it.

The allegedly left-wing activists shout: 'Get the f*** out of here'.

Then after escalating yells, one of the members of the group who disturbed the demonstration, says: 'We've got enough,' and the men leave.

'We'll kick you f****** off our streets every f****** time,' shouts one woman in Bloomsbury, central London, near the Bookmarks store

Then after escalating yells, one of the members of the group who disturbed the demonstration, says: 'We've got enough,' and the men (pictured) leave

Vinnie Sullivan, who led the group to the rally, tweeted about the incident, writing: '200 chased 5 and not a scratch on us despite weapons and more.'

There is no indication that the group of men interrupting the rally on Saturday had any part in the attacks on the bookshop earlier this month.

Bookmarks in Bloomsbury, central London, said the store was targeted by a dozen far right assailants attempting to intimidate customers and staff just before closing on August 4.

Metropolitan Police officers were called at around 6.35pm to reports of a protest at the store. No arrests were made.

A second call was made 'a short time later' telling police the group had caused damage inside the shop.

Bookmarks in Bloomsbury, central London, said the store was targeted by a dozen far right assailants attempting to intimidate customers and staff

Right-wingers attack the socialist bookshop Bookmarks in Bloomsbury on August 4

Police said an appointment was made for officers to speak to the complainant.

A statement from the bookshop posted on Facebook read: 'On Saturday evening around 6:45 just as we were closing, Bookmarks was attacked by around a dozen mask wearing fascists.

'They attempted to intimidate staff and customers and to destroy books and materials.

'Fortunately, no one was hurt.'

They added: 'We will not let this happen! Never Again', and said on Twitter 'this is the true face of fascism. No Paseran!'.

The statement urged supporters to 'send solidarity' to shop staff, in a post that has been shared more than 1,000 times on Facebook and retweeted around 400 times.

No reports were made to police regarding the incident on August 11.
A defrocked monk has been charged with murdering an Egyptian Coptic bishop at a desert monastery, in a case that has rocked the Middle East's biggest Christian minority.

Bishop Epiphanius, 64, was found dead in a pool of blood at the Abu Makar Monastery in Wadi al-Natrun, some 68 miles northwest of Cairo, on July 29.

Former monk Wael Saad has reportedly confessed to collaborating with others to kill the bishop, saying he used an iron pole to beat him to death.

Murder investigation: Former Coptic Christian monk Wael Saad reportedly confessed to beating Bishop Epiphanius to death with an iron pole at the Abu Makar Monastery, pictured

Saad was stripped off his monkhood on August 5, however the Coptic Church denied that it had a connection to Bishop Epiphanius' death.

The church said Saad, known as Isaiah al-Makari as a monk, had been investigated over alleged long-standing violations of his duties.

In a statement, the church said Saad has a record of failing to abide by the monastery's rules and that an investigation committee had previously decided to keep him out of the monastery for three years.

However, when other monks had signed a petition calling for him to be pardoned and pledged to help him change his 'wrong course' he was given the opportunity to make amends.

The Church said the defrocking had taken place on August 5 as Saad had failed to change his conduct despite the efforts made by fellow monks.

Scene: Bishop Epiphanius, 64, was found dead in a pool of blood at the Abu Makar Monastery in Wadi al-Natrun, some 68 miles northwest of Egypt's capital Cairo

Yesterday, Egyptian authorities detained another monk in connection with Bishop Epiphanius' death, a 33-year-old monk identified only by his monastic name, Valtos.

Following Epiphanius' death, the head of the Coptic Church, Pope Tawadros II, announced a series of measures aimed at instilling discipline into monastic life.

Among them was to halt accepting new novices in monasteries nationwide for a year and giving monks across Egypt one month to close their social media accounts arguing that keeping them is incompatible with monastic life.

Egypt is the birthplace of Christian monasticism and is home to some of the world's most ancient monasteries, which have drawn monks for centuries to lead solitary ascetic lives in the country's vast barren landscape.

Monks have largely remained in retreat over the years even amid the monumental changes that shook Egypt's political and social landscape in recent years.

New rules: The head of Egypt's Coptic Church, Pope Tawadros II, has banned Coptic monks from using social media in the wake of Bishop Epiphanius' death

The monasteries, located in remote desert areas, have had faint experience with the rise in Islamic militancy following the 2013 military ouster of former Islamist President Mohammed Morsi after mass protests against his rule.

In April 2017, gunmen attacked security forces stationed near the famed St. Catherine's Monastery in Egypt's south Sinai, killing one policeman. The attack was later claimed by the extremist Islamic State group.

A month later, masked gunmen ambushed a bus carrying Coptic Christians traveling to a monastery south of Cairo, killing 29 in an attack blamed on militants who infiltrated across the desert border with Libya. IS claimed that attack, too. Egypt responded with airstrikes targeting what it said were militant training camps in Libya.

Yesterday, a Coptic church north of Cairo was targeted by a suicide bomber, who ended up blowing himself up outside the building due to heightened security.

The man had been walking among churchgoers, while wearing an explosives belt, and tried to enter the building in the Mostorod district in Qaliubiya province,

Authorities said an explosive device hidden beneath his clothing detonated as he retreated due to the heavy police presence around the church, and the bomber was the only casualty.
A group of Florida police officers have gone above the call of duty to make the first day of school extra special for the son of their wounded comrade.

More than a dozen officers can be seen greeting five-year-old Kaleb as he makes his way to Kindergarten and admiring his new Lego Batman backpack.

Kaleb's father, Officer Kevin Valencia, was shot in the head on June 10 while responding to a domestic violence call in which the suspect killed four children, aged one to 11, before taking his own life.

More than a dozen Orlando Police Department officers, who worked with the little boy's injured father, met Kaleb to wish him good luck on his first day of school

Kaleb's father, Officer Kevin Valencia, was shot in the head on June 10 while responding to a domestic violence call. The suspect killed four children, aged one to 11, before taking his own life

The five-year-old was excited to show off his Lego Batman backpack and chat to the cops on his way to the classroom

As other members of his Orlando Police Department squad were rescuing Valencia, the armed suspect barricaded himself in the apartment with four young children.

The standoff that followed lasted 24 hours and ended when the suspect killed himself and the children.

Officer Valencia was rushed to Orlando Regional Medical Center in a critical condition.

He has now been in a coma for two months and is being treated at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Center specialises in spinal cord and brain injury rehabilitation.

In the heartwarming video officers can be seen high-fiving an excited Kaleb and embracing his mother in the parking lot before walking down to the classroom.

As the school boy joins his new classmates the proud officers look on and cheer, wishing him good luck for his first day.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina said members of Valencia's squad took Kaleb and his mother, Meghan, to school Friday.

Chief Mina said it was an emotional day, but the little boy was excited to show off his Lego Batman book bag as he went to school for the first day.

Kaleb also high-fives his mom before walking into the classroom as the officers stood by.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina along with members of Valencia's squad took Kaleb and his mother, Meghan, to school Friday

Chief Mina said it was an emotional day. Kaleb can be seen in the video high-fiving the officers and his mother before joining his new classmates for the day

Mom-of-two Meghan Valencia sobbed at a news conference in June and spoke about how she was woken up in the middle of the night and told about her husband's injuries.

She told CNN: 'He is fighting every second, and I need him to continue to fight... My boys need their daddy and I need my husband.'

A JustGiving page for the family has been set up and raised $168,889 towards short term and long term expenses such as medical bills in two months.

Wife Meghan said: 'I am overwhelmed with gratitude at the support my husband is receiving. I could not have imagined so many people gathering to help a wounded hero.

'I cannot thank you enough for the continued donations to help the long road ahead in what I KNOW will be my husbands healing process.'
A Honduran drugs lord has been captured after evading police for over a year by dressing up a Red Cross doctor, it was reported today.

Barrio 18 leader Jose Modesto Reyes Silva, 32, had been on the run since May 2017, when 19 gang members broke out of Honduras' Tamara National Penitentiary.

Whenever police hunting Barrio 18 believed they had surrounded the gang, Silva, known as El Yonster, always managed to escape, baffling investigators.

Finally captured: Jose Modesto Reyes Silva, 32, broke out of prison in May, 2017, and had been able to evade capture for over a year by dressing up as a doctor

The 32-year-old kingpin was finally arrested this week in a massive anti-gang operation in San Pedro Sula, when police discovered why he had evaded capture for so long.

A spokesman for the FNAMP anti-gang squad revealed he was caught with a doctor's uniform, an official jacket from the Honduran Red Cross and a hospital ID card with a photo of himself dressed as a surgeon, using the name Romel Samir Acervedo.

Officers recalled occasions when a Red Cross doctor passed through checkpoints after police believed they had surrounded Silva, only for him to have vanished when they went in to arrest him.

A spokesman for the Honduran Red Cross said that one of the organisation's jackets was stolen two months ago.

Con artist: Upon Silva''s arrest, police found a doctor's uniform, an official jacket from the Honduran Red Cross and a hospital ID card with a photo of himself dressed as a surgeon, using the name Romel Samir Acervedo

Big catch: Honduran police arrested Silva and two other gang members, and confiscated submachine guns, bullets, magazine loaders, and 12 bricks of cocaine

Red Cross president Jose Juan Castro said: 'We have strict protocols when we lose an insignia of the organisation, we report the loss to the police investigations department.

'About two months ago, one of our volunteers parked his car in a shopping centre and when he opened the door they grabbed one of the jackets.

'This person certainly wasn't working for the Red Cross.'

Silva had been serving a jail sentence since December 2013 for illicit association and illegal possession of firearms before he escaped last May.

The gangster's body is covered in tattoos, including the Roman numerals XVIII - after the name of his gang Barrio 18 - on his chest, and a gravestone on each shoulder.

In the operation to recapture Silva, in which two other gangsters were arrested, police also confiscated submachine guns, bullets and magazine loaders, and 12 bricks of cocaine.
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Theresa May's controversial Brexit plans could cost the Tories 25 seats at the next election and hand the keys to No10 to Jeremy Corbyn, new analysis today shows.

The PM's Chequers proposals sparked fury among Brexit voters - triggering a Tory grassroots revolt, a wave of resignations and a fall in the polls.

Politics professor and pollster Matthew Goodwin said angry voters could desert the Conservatives and switch to Ukip - leaving marginal seats to fall to Labour.

Former Home Secretary Amber Rudd's seat of Hastings and Rye is among those which could turn red, Mr Goodwin warned.

The analysis piles further pressure on Mrs May who faces renewed speculation that she could face a leadership challenge when MPs com back from their summer holidays.

Theresa May (pictured left last week at a WW1 event) has triggered a massive Brexiteer backlash after publishing her Chequers plan. It triggered the resignation of Boris Johnson (pictured, right, at his Oxfordshire home yesterday giving cups to teas to reporters)

While the bitter Tory civil war has been fuelled by the growing backlash over the Tory leadership's decision to investigate Boris Johnson over his burka remarks.

Many Remainers have seized on the comments to pile into Mr Johnson - a leading Brexiteer -and warn that he is not fit to lead the Tories or the country.

Mr Goodwin, professor of politics at Kent University, said: 'Unless things somehow change, the Conservatives are stuck between a rock and a hard place, stuck in the middle of a partial realignment.

'On the one side they've irritated Remainers and on other have delivered a Chequers Brexit proposal that has irritated their core groups and fanned Ukip flames.'

He said that support for Ukip is now far higher than it was at last year's election amid fury at Chequers.

While out of the 14 polls carried out since the proposal was published in July, just one put Mrs May's party ahead.

It would only take a small swing of support to Labour for the Tories to lose No10 to Mr Corbyn and his allies, Mr Goodwin said.

He said a swing of just two points to Labour would give Mr Corbyn enough seats to form a Coalition, while a four per cent shift would mean he would have an outright majority.

Mr Goodwin said: 'Were an election held tomorrow, then something of a perfect storm could easily form above the Conservative Party.'

He said the Tories face a big battle to hang on to their pro Brexit but marginal constituencies as voters peel off back to Ukip.

According to the average scores of polls carried out in the wake of the Chequers plan being published, Tory support has dipped

And he warned that this is a big problem for the Tories, who under Mrs May have become more dependent on blue collar working class voters who are worried about immigration.

While middle class graduates have deserted the Tories and baked Labour in their swathes.

Mr Goodwin said the Tories do not stand much of a chance winning over these middle classes in the short term, and the next election could be decided on who manages to persuade their supporters to go and vote.

He said: 'Conservatives need to rebuild their coalition and obviously reach out to Remainers, social liberals, graduates & minorities. That's a no-brainer.

'But short term, those groups are simply never going to consider the Conservatives in the current highly divisive electoral cycle.

'Brexit Land will cast a long shadow over British politics. So, the next election will be a game of differential turnout on both sides - who can get their people out.'
A 26-year-old man has been arrested after a Dutch cyclist was killed in a suspected hit-and-run.

There were scenes of 'total carnage' in South Yarra, Melbourne, on Sunday morning after the woman was mowed down by a Mercedes, which is alleged to have been stolen.

A man, of no fixed address, was arrested on Bourke Street at 5.30pm.

A brave cafe worker has relived the moment she tried to save the life of a cyclist hit hit by an allegedly stolen Mercedes

Ms Donaldson said 'instinct' kicked in when she saw the woman 'face down on the wheel'.

It comes after a brave cafe worker relived the moment she tried to save the life of a the cyclist.

Melissa Donaldson, 55, told Daily Mail Australia it was 'total carnage' at the scene of the crash.

She performed CPR with the help of a witness and a nurse, but unfortunately the cyclist passed away.

'We did see her slip on, it was sad to see her go,' she said.

Ms Donaldson said 'instinct' kicked in when she saw the woman 'face down on the wheel' but many people were just standing around watching.

'Nobody was helping her, they were all just saying, is she OK, is she breathing.'

Victoria Police released a photo of a man they believe can assist with their inquiries after a hit and run

'I felt we gave her that chance. (You) have to help if you think you can.'

Inspector Stuart McGregor previously described the man behind the wheel of the car as 'despicable'.

'We've lost the life of a young girl who was just going about a Sunday morning bicycle ride,' Inspector McGregor said.

'Unfortunately for her, the driver of the white Mercedes decided he was going to cut through on the left-hand side of the other vehicles and at the same time he's collided with her and pushed her up against another car.

'His first thought was to run. It wasn't to help, it wasn't to stop, it wasn't to think about the poor person he's hit.

'This is not going to go away... we will not stop, we do not stop. We will arrest you. You're going to court, you're going to look a lot better if you come to us.'

The allegedly stolen white Mercedes sedan clipped another vehicle before rolling onto the cyclist at South Yarra around 10am on Sunday
Major Charlie Gair has many achievements to be proud of, from tours in Afghanistan to sporting success, but he has now broken a record which has a special place in his heart.

The former Irish Guards officer has become the first to win a new kind of double- setting a record involving his dog, his fiancee and two renowned magazines.

This week, his fiancee, Alexandra Bradley was featured on the world's poshest page three in Country Life magazine and at the same time his dog Sika was named Dog of the Week on page three of Shooting Times.

The household is the first to dominate page three of both magazines in the same week and Mr Gair could not be more proud.

Miss Alexandra Bradley: Charlie Gair's fiancee is a nursery headmistress in Knightsbridge and will marry Mr Gair in Italy this month

'I was totally gobsmacked,' Major Gair told The Times.

Historically, the Country Life page was for young society women to be 'introduced' after it began 121 years ago.

Among those who have featured on the uber posh page three include The Queen, Princess Pauline Duleep Singh, Viscountess Astor the first female MP and Lady Browning in 1947.

Last year, Shooting Times bosses decided to have a little fun and replicated the page themselves  but for dogs.

And, the 'girls in pearls' page from Country Life is often now referred to jokingly as 'dog of the week'.

Charlie Gair and his beloved dog Sika. Both Sika and Mr Gair's fiancee featured in magazines, this week

But Miss Bradley, a London nursery headmistress, took it in good humour. While the page was once 'girls for sale' it now celebrates the achievement of women ,she said.

'Two dogs of the week, in the same week,' she joked.

'Charlie couldn't believe it. He said it was the best wedding present ever. He is taking them both to be framed, for the day when we move out of our Fulham flat and into somewhere with a downstairs loo.'

Sika is more used to the fame having already appeared in Country Life in 2014 with the daughters of Estate agent Tim Blenkin, Emerald and Amelia.

'She has been spotted a few times on walks since then by people who have seen her in the magazine. She's enjoying the attention,' Major Gair, told The Times.

Sika was featured in Shooting Times as the same time as Miss Bradley after it was arranged by Mr Gair's uncle

Mr Gair, a consultant at the accountancy firm KPMG, revealed he has been teased about his love for his pet.

'I get a lot of people winding Alexandra up saying she will never hold a place in my heart that a dog has,' he said.

'I didn't think a woman would ever come between me and the dog but she definitely has.'

Peter Glenser, QC, the uncle of Major Gair orchestrated the double debut.

He said: 'I thought that it would be very nice if Charlie's dog and his fiancee, whom he loves very much indeed, should be celebrated in print on the same day immediately before the wedding.'
This is the heartbreaking moment a tiny puppy licks its dead sibling while on display in a pet shop window.

The disturbing scenes were recorded by an onlooker at the pet shop in Pagrati, in the Greek capital Athens.

In the video, a tiny Pekingese puppy can be seen licking the face of another dog while in a small box.

This is the heartbreaking moment a tiny puppy licks its dead sibling while on display in a pet shop window

The puppy lies motionless as its siblings continuously nudges it in an apparent attempt to resuscitate it

The puppy lies motionless as its siblings continuously nudges it in an apparent attempt to resuscitate it.

Local media report the puppies were kept in a small container with the bottom covered in newspaper which the animals had defecated and urinated on.

Reports suggest the animals were not being kept in conditions that met local regulations.

Animal activists reported that the owner of the pet shop has no permit for selling dogs or cats.

The disturbing scenes were recorded by an onlooker at the pet shop in Pagrati, in the Greek capital Athens

Local media report the puppies were kept in a small container with the bottom covered in newspaper which the animals had defecated and urinated on

The owner of the pet shop reportedly refused to hand over the body of the dead dog for forensics examinations.

Animal rights organisations are working on acquiring a prosecutor's order so that the body can be examined.

The Panhellenic Animal Welfare and Environmental Federation had filed a complaint against the same pet shop in June 2011.

Despite not having a permit, vets employed by the administrative body of the municipality of Athens had previously claimed that the business was working according to animal welfare rules.

No arrests have been reported.
A casual swim in a South African hotel pool became a magical memory for tourists when they were paid a visit by an unexpected guest.

They say elephants never forget, and these travelers will also remember forever the moment a herd of the majestic beasts took a drink from the pool in the Limpopo province.

The footage, captured by Mhondoro Lodge tour guide Ivan Ueckermann after he spied the herd approaching, shows the elephant taking big gulps and dipping its trunk underwater.

Tourists swimming in a South African hotel's pool had an unexpected visitor as they took a refreshing dip in the water

A herd of the majestic beasts took a drink from the pool in the Limpopo province, taking big gulps and dipping its trunk underwater

Ivan, 29, said: 'I knew this was a great opportunity to witness them in their natural environment.

'We learn so much about these amazing creatures and their behaviour, how they react to one another, which ones dominate the pool keeping the others at bay.

'Just enjoying the sounds they make when they drink the water and communicate, or seeing textures of their skin and super long eyelashes.

'It was amazing.'

During dry season in South Africa, few natural rivers flow and waterholes are dry, forcing to elephants to resort to alternative measures.

Ivan said the pool contained salt water with no chemicals, so it was perfectly safe for the elephants to drink.

The footage was captured by Mhondoro Lodge tour guide Ivan Ueckermann, 29, who described the moment as 'a great opportunity to witness them in their natural environment'

The confident elephants were completely safe drinking from the swimming pool. Ivan said the pool was filled with salt water and had no chemicals

Mhondoro Safari Lodge & Villa (pictured) is a five-star private safari lodge and villa within the Welgevonden Game Reserve in the Limpopo Province of South Africa

Elephant populations are increasing in South Africa, correlating to an increase in human interaction.

Ivan said: 'It's a salt water pool with no chemicals, so this is completely safe for them.

'They are opportunistic animals and will stop at any water for a drink if within their reach.

'It was just awesome to witness, they are super relaxed with human presence and come and go at their own will.'
Four British nationals have been arrested over the death of a fellow Briton in the Ibizan party resort of San Antonio yesterday.

Conor Lee Spraggs, 23, believed to be from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, died in the early hours of Sunday following an altercation with a group of five men and two women.

The four detained British citizens are being questioned at a local Civil Guard station before an expected court appearance later today or tomorrow.

Conor Lee Spraggs, 23, from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, died in the early hours of Sunday in San Antonio, Ibiza

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: 'Our staff are providing assistance to the family of a British man who has died in Ibiza and are in touch with the local authorities who are investigating.

Police sources said witnesses had told them the Mr Lee had been alone on the San Antonio seafront promenade when he started insulting a group of men and women.

One said: 'The incident happened on the main seafront promenade in San Antonio, near a hotel called Ses Savines.

'Witnesses have told officers the man who died started having a go at a group of five men and two women for reasons that are still under investigation.

The 23-year-old reportedly died following an altercation with a group of five British men and two women in the Ibizan party town

Mr Lee, 23, is understood to have been staying at a hotel called Hotel Bergantin in the town

The three-star Hotel Bergantin, where the dead man was staying, said this morning it was not in a position to comment (Pictured: San Antonio)

'The witnesses say the altercation got physical after initial insults were traded.

'The British man was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy will determine whether he was killed by a blow or by his head hitting the ground.'

The three-star Hotel Bergantin, where the dead man was staying, said this morning it was not in a position to comment.

The hotel is in San Antonio Bay by the beach just over a mile walk from the town's centre.

An autopsy will now determine if he died as a direct result of the beating he received or if other factors played a part in his death.

Last month a 22-year-old Brit Jack McDonnell died after collapsing in the street in San Antonio and being rushed to a health centre

Last month, a 22-year-old Brit died after collapsing in the street in San Antonio and being rushed to a health centre.

He was later named as Jack McDonnell, from the West Midlands market town of Salford.

Two days before he died on July 20 a British seasonal worker named as Birmingham-born Harry Kingsland, 21, was killed in an altercation at a flat in the party resort.

The man suspected of delivering the punch linked to his death - Mitchell Loveridge, also 21 and from Llwynypia in the Rhondda, Wales, was arrested after trying to flee the scene by jumping out of the second-floor apartment window.

He was remanded in custody after appearing in court.
Mystery surrounds how worshippers ended up with 'tingling faces' and headaches after signing themselves with holy water at Notre Dame in Paris.

A number of Catholic tourists were taken ill after attending a service at the famous cathedral in the French capital over the weekend.

One concerned priest told local media that holy water at the entrance to the landmark 'smelled especially bad'.

Mystery surrounds how tourists ended up with 'tingling faces' and headaches after signing themselves with holy water at Notre Dame in Paris (file picture)

There was also speculation that the incident was the result of an act of malice and that the water had been poisoned.

But in the end police in the 4th arrondissement of the city could not determine why people had been affected and concluded that there was no risk to the public.

According to Le Parisien, tourists complained of tingling and headaches after signing themselves.

Cathedral officials emptied the stone basins 'for safety' and bleached them before filling them back up with fresh water.

Local mayor, Ariel Weil, said: 'If it is a desecration, we will seize the subject with the greatest gravity.

'We will go to the end of this case.'




A young mother has described her horror at discovering she has a deadly brain tumour after going to the doctor when she lost her hearing.

Jennah McCumber, who lives on the Gold Coast, felt her symptoms getting worse, and it almost resulted in a car accident with her kids in the vehicle.

Eventually the 26-year-old was diagnosed with having a pineal cystic tumour, which is a form of brain tumour.

Jennah McCumber (pictured with Zac McCumber and their three kids) felt her symptoms getting worse, and it almost resulted in a car accident with her kids in the vehicle

Miss McCumber's condition began to worsen.

When her fiance, Zac, told his boss at Frizelle Sunshine Group about Miss McCumber's condition, the possibility of having high-risk surgery from surgeon Dr Charlie Teo AM and the $100,000 price tag of the surgery, his boss went straight to the owner of the company.

Brett Frizelle offered to do a fundraiser to help raise the $100,000 the family needed to afford the surgery.

The business, who teamed up with Rotary, is raffling off a car - specifically a Fiat 500 Lounge 1.2 manual with six months registration.

The car typically retails at $24,958.

Mr McCumber told The Gold Coast Bulletin: 'It was very overwhelming, I did not expect it, it took a lot of weight off our shoulders.'

Eventually the 26-year-old was diagnosed with having a pineal cystic tumour, which is a rare form of brain tumour

Miss McCumber said without the surgery her future looked bleak and she may not have much time left with her kids.

She said: 'I say that because Ive hit a point where Im in a pretty major depression, because I could fall over and hit my head the wrong way, it could burst, at any moment it could cause an aneurysm or a stroke.

'I dont want that, my kids dont need that, no one needs that, and for anyone whos got one of these things in there I wouldnt wish it on my worst enemy.'

The family described their plight on a Go Fund Me page.

Miss McCumber wrote: 'Since February I have lost my quality of life.

Brett Frizelle offered to do a fundraiser thing to help raise the $100,000 the family needed to afford the surgery. The business, who teamed up with Rotary, is raffling off a car - specifically a Fiat 500 Lounge 1.2 manual with six months registration

'I now suffer seizures, chronic headaches, memory loss, hearing loss, dizziness, blurred vision, speech problems, insomnia to name a few.

'I had to give up my dream study of becoming a nurse, I can no longer care for my children on my own [and] I can no longer drive.

'There are days I can't even get out of bed, this has impacted my family significantly.'

Dr Teo has completed over 100 pineal cystic tumour surgeries and has been called 'unorthodox' for operating on brain tumours that are believed to be inoperable.

Entries for the raffle close September 14 or when 1,000 tickets are sold - whichever comes first.

More about the fundraiser can be found here.
A man who was allegedly abused by a priest has admitted to robbing several Catholic churches, insisting that he will not stop his attacks.

The man appeared in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday and said he will not stop his vendetta until he receives a formal apology from church leaders, the Herald Sun reported.

The court heard the 49-year-old targeted 21 churches resulting in the theft of about $100,000 in cash, as well as cars he later dumped, but he says he doesn't care about the money as long as the churches suffer.

The money was used for living expenses and gambling.

The court heard the 49-year-old targeted 21 churches resulting in the theft of about $100,000 in cash (pictured - church that was targeted)

The man would also target the same churches on the same day and would take advantage of Sundays when church goers would donate their money

He went on a rampage between February and April which resulted in attacks against a priest, including threatening to kill a church cleaner with a hammer.

The man would also target the same churches on the same day and would take advantage of Sundays when church goers would donate their money.

He also vandalised the churches and caused thousands of dollars in damage.

He then broke into a priest's house as he was sleeping and stole $1500, the publication reported.

According to the Herald Sun, the man stole from from parishes in Pascoe Vale, Ringwood, Kew, Glen Iris, Doncaster, Balywn, Camberwell, Clifton Hill, Heidelberg, Ivanhoe, Prahran, Coburg, Burwood, Reservoir and Preston.

The man was only caught when the church leaders asked police for help, and once caught, he admitting to the offendings.

On Monday, the man pleaded guilty to causing almost $3000 overall damage to church buildings, smashing his way through doors and windows so he could commit the crimes

On Monday, the man pleaded guilty to causing almost $3000 overall damage to church buildings, smashing his way through doors and windows so he could commit the crimes.

He is facing a maximum jail term of five years after applying to have his case determined by a magistrate.

Magistrate Charlie Rozencwagj said the offending was too serious and warranted the denunciation of a higher court.

The man remains in custody on remand and will appear at the County Court next week.
A no-deal Brexit would be worse for the EU than for Britain, a secret report drawn up by the bloc reveals.

European Commission chiefs have been drawing up contingency plans as fears Britain will crash out of the bloc without a deal grow.

They are becoming increasingly worried red tape in Brussels will slow down the ability of EU countries to quickly respond to the challenges, The Times reports.

The plans, drawn up by the EU's top civil servant Martin Selmayr, would see the bloc step in to keep trade open and planes in the air.

But the bureaucracy-laden EU may not be able to get all the clearance needed to act swiftly, the report finds.

The plans, drawn up by the EU's top civil servant Martin Selmayr (pictured right with Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker), would see the bloc step in to keep trade open and planes in the air

Officials fear that decisions would need to be green the green light by member states and the EU Parliament - taking some time.

What is in Theresa May's Brexit blueprint? These are some of the key features of the Chequers plan being pushed by the UK government: A new free trade area in goods, based on a 'common rulebook' of EU regulations necessary. This will require the UK to commit by treaty to match EU rules

'Mobility' rules which will end automatic freedom of movement, but still allow UK and EU citizens to travel without visas for tourism and temporary work. It will also enable businesses to move staff between countries.

Continued UK participation in and funding of European agencies covering areas like chemicals, aviation safety and medicines

A 'facilitated customs arrangement', removing the need for customs checks at UK-EU ports. It would allow differing UK and EU tariffs on goods from elsewhere in the world to be paid at the border, removing the need for rebates in the vast majority of cases. This is designed to avoid the need for a hard Irish border. But in theory it still allows Britain to sign trade deals.

Keeping services - such as banking or legal support - outside of the common rule book, meaning the UK is completely free to set its own regulations. It accepts it will mean less trade in services between the UK and EU.

Continued co-operation on energy and transport, a 'common rulebook' on state aid and commitments to maintain high standards of environmental and workplace protections.

A security deal allowing continued UK participation in Europol and Eurojust, 'co-ordination' of UK and EU policies on foreign affairs, defence and development.

Continued use of the EHIC health insurance card. Advertisement

While the decisions could also be bogged down in legal challenges as many steps taken would have to be in line with EU treaties.

This means that they could be challenged in the European Court of Justice - further delaying the scramble to get the plans up and running.

While the EU Parliament is due to break up just three weeks after Brexit, at the end of next March, for fresh elections to the bloc and will not meet again until July.

Officials are alarmed that this may leave a political vacuum in Brussels just as swift action will be needed to cope with a no deal.

And they believe this could chip away at the unity of the bloc, and that member states with strong trade links with the UK will step in and call for a softer approach to Britain.

A senior EU source told the newspaper: 'It will be very difficult to co-operate. In most areas where we will need to act there will be national vetoes in play.

'All countries will be able to block.'

Experts believe that as a single government the UK will be able to take respond more effectively because it can take decisive action quickly.

If Britain does crash out of the Brussels bloc then the two sides will need to decided how to police the borders, and collect and pay customs tariffs

Vicky Ford, a former chairwoman of the European parliament's internal market committee, said: 'In terms of getting decisions made quickly you need more notice than you do in the British parliament.'

And she said that EU elections next spring could see a more right-wing and populist parliament elected.

She said: 'The fear is that the new parliament is going to be much more fragmented and difficult to manage.

'Everyone I speak to in member states wants a deal before March and if that is not possible then an extension to Article 50 to give us time to reach a deal.'

Tory MP Bill Cash, a leading Brexiteer and chairman of the European scrutiny select committee, said the EU would face 'very substantial legal problems' in the event of there being no deal.

Under the contingency plans drawn up by the bloc, the EU could agree to just estimate the amount of customs tariffs owed in order to keep the borders open.
The model girlfriend of murdered Boris Nemtsov - a leading foe of Vladimir Putin - is making a comeback as a beauty contestant.

Ukrainian Anna Duritska was the only witness to the assassination of Russia's top pro-Western democratic politician in February 2015.

The couple were walking close to the Kremlin when the former deputy prime minister was gunned down in front of his lover, now 26.

In the aftermath of the shooting she was severely traumatised - and retreated to her Ukrainian home in the midst of a Russian media 'smear campaign' to blacken her name over the shooting by implying she had led assassins to 55-year-old Nemtsov, allegations without foundation.

Now the fashion model - who has describes herself as 'calm, friendly, elegant' - is making a major return as a contestant in the Miss Ukraine Universe 2018 pageant on August 14.

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Anna Duritska (pictured), the glamorous model girlfriend of murdered Boris Nemtsov is making a comeback as a beauty contestant. Nemtsov, a leading Putin critic, was gunned down in front of his lover in Moscow in 2015

Ukrainian Anna Duritska (pictured) was the only witness to the assassination of Russia's top pro-Western democratic politician in February 2015

The couple were walking close to the Kremlin when the former deputy prime minister was gunned down in front of his lover, now 26. Pictured: The crime scene in the aftermath of the shooting in February 2015

Five people were convicted and jailed for Nemtsov's (pictured) murder but the person who ordered the shooting has not been apprehended - leading to claims of a Kremlin-led cover up

In response to the killing, Putin (pictured yesterday) praised his long-time enemy Nemtsov and told his elderly mother in a telegram that Russia would do everything to bring those responsible for the 'vile and cynical crime' to justice

Duritska - also spelled Duritskaya - vanished amid concerns for her health after the murder but now she is urging Ukrainians to 'support me' in her quest for the title.

'I am a finalist of the contest Miss Ukraine Universe. And I believe that beauty will save the world,' she posted.

Devoted to charity work, she told supporters: 'To feel how much you are loved, and love in return - it means understanding the true meaning of life, this is love.'

Earlier she posted: 'Whatever happens, smile, be calm and friendly with everyone! Your tears, pain and suffering are needed by others only for gossip.'

The model said in a video that her biggest dreams are a career in journalism - and winning the beauty contest.

Five people were convicted and jailed for Nemtsov's murder but the person who ordered the shooting has not been apprehended - leading to claims of a Kremlin-led cover up.

'I didn't see a man. When I turned, I only saw a car of light colour, but I didn't see either the brand or the numbers of the car which was leaving.'

Duritska - also spelled Duritskaya - vanished amid concerns for her health after the murder but now she is urging Ukrainians to 'support me' in her quest for the title

The model said in a video that her biggest dreams are a career in journalism - and winning the beauty contest

The model shared an elite duplex apartment with Nemtsov on Malaya Ordynka Street, including a bathroom and main bedroom with views over the spires and domes of the Kremlin

On who killed her lover, a former Russian deputy prime minister who died as he was preparing a report on 'corruption' by Putin's government, she said: 'I do not know who did it.'

To other questions, she replied 'I don't remember' while also criticising investigators for her repeated questioning while traumatised by her loss.

The model shared an elite duplex apartment with Nemtsov on Malaya Ordynka Street, including a bathroom and main bedroom with views over the spires and domes of the Kremlin.

It was at this flat that lingerie pictures of Duritskaya were found by police.

These were later leaked to the pro-Kremlin media, along with a version - later discredited - that she could have been a plant by Ukrainian secret services, blamed by some Moscow news outlets for his death.

The politician was penning a dossier on alleged Kremlin corruption when he was shot.

Asked about who killed her lover, Russian deputy prime minister who died as he was preparing a report on 'corruption' by Putin's government, Anna said: 'I do not know who did it'

Nemtsov's death sparked demonstrations in Russia and global outrage as world leaders including then British Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barack Obama condemned the violent act.

Cameron said at the time: 'I am shocked and sickened by the callous murder of Boris Nemtsov as he walked in the heart Moscow.

'This despicable act must be fully, rapidly and transparently investigated, and those responsible brought to justice.'

In response to the killing, Putin praised his long-time enemy Nemtsov and told his elderly mother in a telegram that Russia would do everything to bring those responsible for the 'vile and cynical crime' to justice.
China has defended its crackdown on Muslims after the UN claimed more than three million are being held in 'counter-extremism' and 're-education camps'.

Beijing said it was trying to prevent the troubled region of Xinjiang from becoming 'China's Syria' amid concern over tough security measures aimed at fighting what the country has called Islamic extremism .

It comes after the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was told that a million Muslims are being detained in 'counter-extremism centres' and a further two million are in 're-education' camps in the region.

China has stepped up a crackdown in Xinjiang against what it calls Islamic extremism and separatist elements but many Muslims in the region accuse Beijing of religious and cultural repression (file picture)

Chinese authorities have denied the existence of such camps despite mounting evidence from both official documents and testimonies from those who have been held in them.

The country has stepped up a crackdown in Xinjiang against what it calls Islamic extremism and separatist elements but many Muslims in the region accuse Beijing of religious and cultural repression.

In a region that shares borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, Muslims face regulations banning beards and veils as well as the distribution of unauthorised Korans.

In an editorial, the state-run Global Times defended the crackdown in the far-west region, accusing the West of trying to 'stir trouble for Xinjiang and destroy the hard-earned stability in the region'.

'The turnaround in Xinjiang's security situation has avoided a great tragedy and saved countless lives,' the newspaper wrote in its English and Chinese editions.

While the tabloid noted that police posts 'can be seen everywhere' in Xinjiang, it did not mention the camps.

The editorial said the security crackdown has prevented the region from becoming 'China's Syria' or 'China's Libya'.

It was printed after Gay McDougall, vice-chair of the committee, said on Friday: 'In the name of combating religious extremism and maintaining social stability (China) has changed the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy,' Gay McDougall, vice-chair of the committee, said on Friday.

She said upwards of one million ethnic Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities are being held in counter-extremism centres and another two million 'have been forced' into reeducation camps for 'political and cultural indoctrination'.

The Chinese delegation began responding to the allegations on Monday at the committee in Geneva.
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This rogues gallery shows Edwardian thieves and fraudsters dressed in their Sunday best to pose for their mugshots more than 100 years ago.

The fascinating custody pictures were unearthed in the West Midlands Police archives, and tell the stories of criminals from years gone by.

The snapshots were taken at the Moor Street public office in Birmingham in the early 20th century and were accompanied with scrawled notes about the crook's crimes.

The process of taking mugshots was first utilised by Belgian officers in 1843, following photography's inception in 1800 by British inventor Thomas Wedgwood. In the UK, the first crook was snapped by Birmingham police in 1853.

The force first started producing its own photographs in the 1870s when those arrested started being snapped while holding a chalk board with their details.

Styles of mugshots changed over the decades with criminals at one stage being asked to put their hands out in front of their body; and then in front of a number of mirrors to picture the various angles of one person.

Among the criminals in the recently unearthed gallery is Emma Griffiths, a 64-year-old who donned a Queen Victorian-style outfit after being arrested for theft and sentenced to just one day in prison in 1906.

This rogues gallery shows Edwardian thieves and fraudsters dressed in their Sunday best to pose for their mugshots, as more than 100 years ago. Pictured: Glamorous forger Elie Newman, 41, posed wearing a fur scarf while she was also sent down for three years for forgery in 1909

Among the criminals in custody in the recently unearthed gallery of mugshots is Emma Griffiths, a 64-year-old who donned a Queen Victorian-style outfit after being arrested for theft and was sentenced to just one day in prison in 1906

Gentleman fraudster Henry Mercy, who was in his 60s, posed in a monocle, waistcoat and stiff white colour for his mugshot after being arrested for fraud in 1903

The fascinating black and white custody pictures were unearthed in the West Midlands Police archives, and tell the stories of criminals from years gone by. Pictured: Police on the streets of Birmingham in the 1800s

The process of taking mugshots was first utilised by Belgian officers in 1843, following photography's inception in 1800 by British inventor Thomas Wedgwood. In the UK, the first crook was snapped by Birmingham police in 1853. Pictured: Uniformed officers on the streets of Birmingham in the 1800s

Serial thief, Leah Lowe, 23, was jailed for 21 days in the same year after she was charged with multiple shoplifting offences

Professional crook and expert forger Ada Launders, 44, wore a fashionable straw boater as she was jailed for three years in 1909

Fraudster Thomas ONeil, 30, cut a shambling figure as he posed with his hair askew and leaning back for his custody snap in 1903

The force first started producing its own photographs in the 1870s when those arrested started being snapped while holding a chalk board with their details. Pictured: The streets of Birmingham in the 1800s

Boot thief, Elie Cole, 72, was sentenced to a day behind bars in 1906, suggesting a spate of shoplifting across Birmingham or perhaps police cracking down on the crime that year

Emma Brown, 51, who was charged with stealing a pair of boots and fined in 1906. mugshots with the first snapped crook in 1853.

Mustachioed Chester Laughton, 60, stared chillingly down the lens of the camera for his mugshot after being charged with forgery and sentenced to four years behind bars

Styles of mug shots changed over the decades with criminals at one stage being asked to put their hands out in front of their body; and then in front of a number of mirrors to picture the various angles of one person. Pictured: Children stand outside a building in Birmingham in the 1800s
Over 2,000 people were evacuated from a beach resort in Poland as navy experts removed three WWII bombs from the sea today.

Reports said approximately 900kg of explosives were discovered, contained in three German bombs that were found close to the shoreline.

Kolobrzeg, which was part of Germany during the war, was the site of fierce fighting in the war's last phase.

Navy experts in Poland have retrieved three WWII bombs found near the vacation resort of Kolobrzeg, prompting the evacuation of 2,000 residents and 200 holidaymakers

The German bombs containing 900kg of explosives were placed onto a flatbed truck and taken to a test range for controlled detonation

Navy unit spokesperson Jacek Kwiatkowski said the bombs were hoisted out of the sea and onto a flatbed truck to be taken to a test range for a controlled detonation.

Soldiers oversaw the process which lasted several hours and caused 5.6 miles of the beach to be closed off during the operation.

Local roads, railways and air space were also shut down.

Kolobrzeg city official Dariusz Trzeciak said about 2,000 residents and 200 vacationers evacuated in their own cars or in buses and were later allowed to return.

Each bomb weighed about 300kg and their impact radius was estimated at 1.2 miles.

Trzeciak added: 'If something went wrong, the consequences would be unimaginable.'

Each bomb weighed about 300kg and their impact radius was estimated at 1.2 miles, leading to the beach, local roads and railways being closed off during the extraction
A two-year-old girl has suffered puncture wounds to her face and ears after being mauled by two dogs whilst in her pram.

Emergency services were called to Turrella Reserve, in Sydney's south, where the child was attacked on Monday at around 11am.

It is understood the child's mother was pushing the toddler in a pram along a footpath when the attack happened.

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Emergency services were called to Turrella Reserve (pictured) on Monday morning after two dogs mauled a two-year-old girl in her pram

It is understood the child's mother was pushing the toddler in a pram along a footpath when the attack by two bulldogs occurred (file image)

The child's mother began screaming and tried to keep her away from the dog by holding her up in the air.

She was bleeding from the bite wounds to her face and was assessed and treated by paramedics at the scene before being transported to St George Hospital, in Kogarah, in a stable condition.

Mario, a witness told 9News: 'I saw two bulldogs jump up, trying to grab their baby and I sort of went over there to stop it, and rang the ambulance,'

'I've got kids so you don't want to see that.'

Mario (pictured), a witness said: 'I saw two bulldogs jump up, trying to grab their baby and I sort of went over there to stop it, and rang the ambulance.'

ARE YOU LIABLE IF YOUR DOG ATTACKS A PERSON OR ANIMAL? Dog attacks whether on you or another person should be reported to local council or the police if out of hours Under the Companion Animals Act 1998, the dog owner is liable for any attacks made by their dog but there are some protections in place for attacks where a trespasser comes into contact with the animal Advertisement

A spokesperson for NSW Ambulance Service told Daily Mail Australia that when paramedics arrived on the scene the toddler's injuries were quite severe.

The spokesperson confirmed once they had attended to the girl, however, the situation 'wasn't that serious'.

The dogs, one of which was an American bulldog have been taken by council.

A hunt for the owners of the two bulldogs is currently underway.

Dog attacks should be reported to the local government as soon as possible or to the police.

A spokesperson for NSW Ambulance Service told Daily Mail Australia that when paramedics arrived on the scene the toddler's injuries were quite severe
This is the adorable moment a father decided to wear women's clothes so his children wouldn't feel left out during a Mother's Day celebration.

Chatchai Parnuthai, 32, turned up last Friday at his youngsters' school in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, where sons Ozone, 5, and Imsome, 3, were waiting alone.

Fellow classmates were enjoying games with their mothers - a Thai tradition that takes place once a year ahead of the country's Mother's Day celebrations yesterday.

Yet Mr Parnuthai's two sons faced an uncomfortable afternoon alone, as their mother had walked out on them three years ago and currently lives in Europe.

This is the adorable moment a father decided to wear women's clothes so his children wouldn't feel left out during a Mother's Day celebration

But Mr Parnuthai, a motorbike-loving mechanic, surprised them when he borrowed his own mother's pink floral blouse and pinned up his hair with a flower to attend the event.

Touching footage captures the two boys as they pay respect to their 'mother' while he sits alongside all the other women.

Mr Parnuthai said: 'I'm a single dad so I just wanted to make sure that my two sons were happy.

'I was a bit embarrassed, but it meant that they could take part like their classmates.'

Chatchai Parnuthai, 32, turned up last Friday at his youngsters' school in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, where sons Ozone, 5, and Imsome, 3 (pictured together left), were waiting alone

Fellow parent Kornpat Sukhom, 36, who also attended the event with her own children, said Mr Parnuthai was the 'best mother'.

She added: 'In Thailand if it's Mother's Day, every mother has to join in activities with their children at school.

'The children's parents are divorced and the mother is now living in Europe.

'This is why he showed up to the school wearing a dress to take the place of her in the celebration.

'He wanted the children not to feel left out because their mother had left them.'
By any measure, he was a hero - a veteran of the First World War who saved troops from gas, warned when enemies were nearby and even caught a German spy.

He met three Presidents, earned three service stripes and one wound stripe after shrapnel got embedded in his leg, and took part in victory parades across America.

All of which would be a remarkable achievement for any man, but made all the more incredible because Sergeant Stubby was in fact a dog.

Sergeant Stubby was a stray dog adopted by J Robert Conroy in New Haven before he shipped out to serve in the trenches during the First World War, where he became a hero

Conroy's commanders were initially furious that he had brought a dog to the front, but allowed Stubby to stay after he saluted them - a trick Conroy had taught him

While Stubby finished life a legend, he began it as a stray - begging for scraps on the streets of New Haven.

That was until he walked into an army training session and won the love of one soldier, J. Robert Conroy, who decided to adopt him.

Conroy was able to smuggle Stubby aboard a ship taking soldiers to Europe and, as the story goes, the Boston Terrier mix became the mascot of the 102nd Regiment by charming officers with his ability to salute, a trick which Conroy taught him.

Now his story is being made into an animated film starring Helena Bonham Carter and Gerard Depardieu called Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero.

Curt Deane, Conroy's grandson, says he would be thrilled to know that a century after his service in World War I, people have not forgotten Stubby's heroics.

Stubby was never officially made a sergeant, Deane said. But he did have many documented exploits, earning a medal that was presented to the dog by famed Gen. John Pershing.

Stubby survived 17 battles and earned three service stripes. During that time he saved soldiers from gas attacks, alerted medics to wounded men and caught a German spy. He returned home a hero, where he took part in victory parades (pictured in 1921)

Stubby also provided comfort to veterans following the war, in effect becoming one of the first service animals (pictured in 1919)

'Before Stubby was a cartoon, he was a real dog, and he really did some amazing things,' Deane said.

Stubby was in the trenches during 17 battles, where he was injured in a gas attack and later used his keen nose to give troops early warning of chemical shellings, said Christine Pittsley, who manages the Connecticut State Library's World War I preservation project. He even had his own custom-made gas mask.

He also would stand by injured soldiers on the battlefield and alert medics by barking. He was even credited with capturing a German soldier he discovered behind the Allied lines, biting him on the rear end and holding on until help arrived, said Pittsley, who helped filmmakers research Stubby's story.

He also would visit wounded soldiers, including Cpl. Conroy, in field hospitals.

'What I think meant the most to my grandfather is that Stubby took some of the edge off what was a horrific war,' said Deane.

'There was just an absolute comfort that soldiers got from seeing him. He was, in fact, the first service dog.'

After he returned from the war, Stubby became famous and toured the country. He posed for photos with celebrities and veterans and met three presidents, Deane said.

Stubby also met presidents Woodrow Wilson, Warren G Harding and Calvin Coolidge. He passed away in his sleep and his owners arms in 1926

His story has now been turned into an animated film, Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero, starring Helena Bonham Carter and Gerard Depardieu

Stubby died in his sleep and the arms of his owner 1926.

His hide was placed over a plaster cast and is on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington D.C., part of an exhibit called 'The Price of Freedom: Americans at War.'

Kathleen Golden, who curates that exhibit, said Stubby is popular, especially with teachers who are able to use his story as a way to begin the discussion of the Great War with young students.

'Children can relate to the story of a dog who stowed away and has all these exploits,' she said. 'It's much more interesting to them then just hearing about soldiers and battles.'

Later this month, Pittsley will travel to France with a plush Stubby doll, documenting on social media as she visits the places where Stubby and the 102nd Regiment's 26th Infantry Division (the Yankee Division), were deployed.

'I want people to get a little more interested in the war,' she said. 'I'm hoping this film helps people take another look at the war, especially within their own families and get some of those great intergenerational conversations going.'

Lanni says that is also the hope of the filmmakers, who also have partnered with Humane Society of the United States and approximately 90 other regional and national animal organizations to help promote the adoption of stray dogs.

'We have educators en masse making block bookings to take their kids to this film,' Lanni said. 'We really believe Stubby can be a force force for good.'

There will be a Connecticut premiere of the movie April 8 in New Haven. The film features the voices of Logan Lerman, Helena Bonham Carter and Gerard Depardieu.
There is no new money in the Government's flagship 100million fund to tackle homelessness, a minister today admitted.

Housing Secretary James Brokenshire toured the TV and radio studios to plug the new fund, which he said would give significant help to rough sleepers.

But under questioning he admitted that none of the cash announced today was new money for the problem.

Mr Brokenshire said half the money was taken and 'reprioritised' from other areas of the housing budget while 50m has already been announced

The number of rough sleepers in England has risen every year for the past seven years and now stands at 4,751 people.

Housing Secretary James Brokenshire (pictured on Sky News today) toured the TV and radio studios to plug the new fund, which he said would give significant help to rough sleepers

Questioned by the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, Mr Brokenshire said: 'Yes, some of this is reprioritised... reprioritised from within existing budgets where we have underspends and issues such as that.

'There are significant sums of money being focused and targeted.

'Half of that has already been committed to homelessness and rough sleeping.

'The other remaining half of this is money that's new to rough sleeping and homelessness, reflecting and recognising the priorities and importance of taxes.'

Mr Brokenshire denied Government policies were behind a rise in homelessness, as identified by independent organisations such as the National Audit Office.

Alarm at the number of people sleeping rough on England's streets has been growing after figures show the numbers have been spiralling in the wake o the economic crash and the years of austerity.

Figures released in January by the Government this year showed that the numbers reached a record high of 4,751 in the autumn of last year, new data reveals today.

It was up 15 per cent from 4,134 in 2016 to the highest point since comparable records began in 2010.

The Government has faced fierce criticism for failing to do enough to tackle rough sleeping - and Labour has accused the party of bringing in policies that have pushed people into homelessness.

Last year the the National Audit Office - the national spending watchdog - tore into ministers for not assessing the impact on welfare reforms on homelessness since 2012.

But Mr Borkenshire today suggested that he would now start carrying out the assessments.

He said: 'I'm not going to be sitting here blindly ignoring further evidence that comes to sight.

The number of people sleeping rough in England reached a recorded high of 4,751 in the autumn of last year, new data reveals today - with almost a quarter in London alone

'The strategy today includes a new commitment for the DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) and my department to look at the way new policy may impact on homelessness.

'We're looking at new modelling and analysis to better inform further changes we may make in the future around welfare and around other legislation so we're getting the best information we possibly can.'

Shelter chief executive Polly Neate had welcomed the strategy with the caveat more must be done to tackle issues around housing benefit and lack of housing.

She said: 'This strategy is an important step forward in the fight against the rough sleeping emergency that's led to people dying on our streets.

'But let's be clear, this is a step forward and not a total fix for homelessness.

'We still need to tackle the chronic lack of genuinely affordable homes, deep instability of renting, and problems with housing benefit that are leaving so many without a home.

'If the Government wants to eradicate rough sleeping for good, this strategy must be quickly followed by a new plan to build many more social homes and efforts to create real security for those struggling with their rent.'
Parts of the Australian east coast are set to shiver through mornings this week as a cold front sweeps the nation causing temperatures to dip.

New South Wales has been issued with a severe weather warning on Tuesday with strong winds from 80km/h to 120km/h expected.

Thredbo, Mount Perisher and Charlotte Pass should expect snow with possible blizzard conditions on Wednesday.

Pedestrians (pictured) brave the cold in the central business district of Sydney as temperatures dip

Thredbo, Mount Perisher and Charlotte Pass should expect snow with possible blizzard conditions on Wednesday

Victoria should also expect damaging winds as winds strengthen on Tuesday night with wind gusts reaching up to 120km/h

Victoria should also expect damaging winds as winds strengthen on Tuesday night with wind gusts reaching up to 120km/h, however they will ease by Wednesday night.

Locations which may be affected include Hamilton, Warrnambool, Portland, Kyneton, Ballarat and Bacchus Marsh.

Canberra will shiver through frosty mornings with temperatures as low as -2 degrees, with chilly mornings getting warmer as the week goes on.

Up north in Brisbane, a hint of summer will shine across the state as temperatures soar to 29 degrees and a week long of sunshine.

South Australia will shiver through cooler temperatures and will have a few days of rain.

Perth should expect winds of up to 25km/h on Tuesday and will experience slightly cooler temperatures through the rest of the week.

Canberra will shiver through frosty mornings with temperatures as low as -1 degrees

Tasmania will bear the brunt of the chilly mornings with temperatures reaching a maximum of 12 degrees this week

Tasmania will bear the brunt of the chilly mornings with temperatures reaching a maximum of 12 degrees this week.

There is also a minor flooding warning issued as river levels remain high and renewed rises are expected.

The Northern Territory will have temperatures of 32 degrees but a severe fire danger has been forecast as a high over South Australia is directing dry and fresh, gusty southeasterly winds into the western Top End.

Severe Fire Danger is forecast for Darwin and Adelaide River and Northern Fire Protection Area.
A Russian woman has confessed to murdering her 18-year-old daughter with an axe because the teenager was 'too argumentative'.

Tatiana Degirmendzhy, 49, reportedly attacked her daughter Yulia while she was asleep in their home in the city of Chaykovsky in central Russia's Perm Krai region.

The mother reportedly hit her sleeping daughter several times with an axe, severing an artery in the teenager's neck in the process.

Killed: Yulia Degirmendzhy, 18, from Chaykovsky, central Russia, was reportedly murdered by her own mother for being 'too argumentative'

Local media report the mother then fled the scene, going to a railway station and catching the first train out of Chaykovsky.

The victim was discovered several hours later by her older brother Sertan Degirmendzhy, 22, who had returned home from a walk.

The young man found his sister lying motionless in her room, with blood all over the bed and walls.

He reportedly discovered the blood-covered axe lying on the floor near the bed, and immediately called emergency services.

Paramedics who arrived at the scene found that the 18-year-old had died from massive blood loss.

Murder mother: Tatiana Degirmendzhy, 49, later told police: 'if I had had seven daughters like her, I would have killed them all'

Tragedy: The mother reportedly hit her sleeping daughter several times with an axe

Shocking: The teenager died from massive blood loss after her mother severed her neck artery

According to reports, detectives assume from the wounds found on the victim's body that the perpetrator had tried to dismember the body.

Police searched the crime scene and discovered that only Mrs Degirmendzhy's passport had disappeared and the mother was declared wanted.

The woman was found within 24 hours trying to board a train in the city of Izhevsk =, located 36 miles from Chaykovsky.

Russian media reports that detectives assume that the mother had tried to dismember the body of her 18-year-old daughter

Horrifying: The 18-year-old's dead body was found by her brother, 22-year-old Sertan, pictured left with Yulia

According to police, the mother has confessed to murdering her daughter, adding: 'If I had had seven daughters like her [Yulia], I would have killed them all.'

A police spokesperson commenting on the matter said: 'The investigation found that during the last three months the suspect and the victim had been constantly in domestic conflicts.

'The suspect said she committed the murder on the basis of personal dislike.'

The suspect faces 15 years in prison if found guilty.
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Grant Percival, 33, was jailed for two years for grooming

A man who tried to meet a girl for sex who he believed was a 15-year-old virgin was snared by paedophile hunters.

Grant Percival, 33, from Carlisle, went to a hotel in Leigh, Lancashire, to meet the youngster, but was caught in the sting by the vigilante group.

Bolton Crown court was told how he began talking with what he thought was a 15-year-old girl on social media.

The person running the fake profile told Percival they were underage and had yet to lose their virginity.

But he carried on communicating with her, and encouraged the girl to meet for sex. He even asked if the two of them could be partners.

On February 2 he travelled to the hotel believing he was going to meet his victim.

Instead, he was met by a team of paedophile hunters, and was later arrested by the police.

He was jailed for two years after admitting grooming and told he would need to serve at least 16 months before he could apply for bail.

Sentencing, Judge Timothy Clayson, said: 'You attempted to meet a child after sexually grooming them on February 2 - a matter you admitted before the magistrates.

Percival thought he was going to meet a 15-year-old girl when he visited a hotel in Leigh, Lancashire

The facts of the case are that a fake profile for a 15 girl was set up on an adult social media site. You contacted this profile and exchanged messages.

'You wanted to go to a hotel and wanted to engage in sexual activities with this person. You said you wanted to kiss her, have sex and for you two to be boyfriend and girlfriend.

'The profile indicated that they were a 15-year-old virgin but you still wanted to meet.

'As you went to the hotel in Leigh, you got there and the police had been called and you were arrested.

'It has to be said that because you have history and the fact that you have committed an offence of this nature, I do determine that you present a significant risk to members of the public.'

The judge also handed him a sexual harm prevention order for a period of 10 years.
Iran has unveiled its next generation short-range ballistic missile with a warning that its 'will to enhance our defence power in all fields will increase'.

The Fateh Mobin rocket was described by Iranian defence minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami as '100-percent domestically made - agile, stealth, tactical (and) precision-guided'.

'As promised to our dear people, we will not spare any effort to increase the missile capabilities of the country and we will certainly increase our missile power every day,' Hatami said.

It comes as Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that there would be neither war nor negotiations with the United States.

'Recently, U.S. officials have been talking blatantly about us. Beside sanctions, they are talking about war and negotiations,' he said via his official Twitter account in English.

'In this regard, let me say a few words to the people: THERE WILL BE NO WAR, NOR WILL WE NEGOTIATE WITH THE U.S.'

Iran has unveiled its next generation short-range ballistic missile (pictured) with a warning that its 'will to enhance our defence power in all fields will increase'

It comes as Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (pictured today) said that there would be neither war nor negotiations with the United States

Earlier, Hatami described the new version of the Fateh Mobin missile as '100-percent domestically made... agile, stealth, tactical (and) precision-guided'.

'Be sure that the greater the pressures and psychological warfare against the great nation of Iran, our will to enhance our defence power in all fields will increase,' he added.

The new missile's range was not given, but previous versions had a range of around 200 to 300 kilometres, according to the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

US officials told Fox News last week that a 'Fateh-110 missile' was test-fired by Iran during naval exercises in the Strait of Hormoz last week.

A US general described the exercises as designed to send a message, following threats from Iran that it could shut down the vital, oil-shipping waterway in retaliation for renewed sanctions.

The new missile's range was not given, but previous versions had a range of around 200 to 300 kilometres, according to the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Footage has emerged online purportedly showing the rocket

The Fateh Mobin rocket was described by Iranian defence minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami as '100-percent domestically made - agile, stealth, tactical (and) precision-guided'

US officials said last week that a 'Fateh-110 missile' was test-fired by Iran during naval exercises in the Strait of Hormoz last week

'Nothing can stop this missile because of its high degree of flexibility,' said Hatami, adding that the new version of the Fateh Mobin was '100-percent domestically made... agile, stealth, tactical (and) precision-guided'.

'Be sure that the greater the pressures and psychological warfare against the great nation of Iran, our will to enhance our defence power in all fields will increase,' he added.

President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and world powers in May.

Iran's missile programme is a major bone of contention, particularly with the United States and its allies, but is seen as vital by Iran to its defensive posture in a troubled region.
A New Jersey couple got more than a lucky sprinkle on their wedding day as flooding tore through the northern part of the state, leaving them stranded in their car.

Stunning video shows the bride dressed in a lavish white wedding dress crawling out of the sunroof of a black car that's submerged in several feet of floodwater.

The Bogota Police Department posted the video of the rescue on Saturday, wishing the couple a lifetime of 'love and adventure' following the swampy start to their marriage.

Police had to rescue a wedding party from their vehicle on Saturday as amidst severe flooding in Bogota, New Jersey. The local police department posted a video of the rescue on Facebook

The video shows the bride dressed in a full white wedding dress climbing out of the car's sunroof and stepping onto the police Humvee with help from an officer

Video shows the wedding party's Audi crossover stalled in the middle of the street in floodwaters that had reached midway up the car's grill.

Officers had to use a police Humvee to reach the marooned group, who had to climb out of the sunroof.

One of the officers straddled both cars to give the bride a hand as she struggled to get out of the car in her floor-length wedding gown.

The couple have not been identified, but the police department indicated that they did manage to make it to their nuptials on time.

'We hope the bride and groom had a great wedding day and we wish nothing but the best for them,' the department wrote on Facebook.

Hundreds of commenters praised the officers for their rescue efforts and assured the couple that rain on one's wedding day is known to bring good luck.
China has been printing foreign currencies on a massive scale as more and more countries outsource money production in a bid to keep costs down.

The country's currency printing plants are running at near full capacity, according to South China Morning Post citing sources at the state-owned China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation.

After launching the 'Belt and Road initiative' in late 2013, China has won contracts for money production projects from countries such as Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, India, Brazil and Poland.

China is said to be able to provide security features such as embedded thread, metallic ribbon and colour-shifting ink at a relatively low cost compared with their Western rivals.

A Chinese employee checks the pattern plates of 100-yuan banknotes in the Chengdu Banknote Printing company. By contrast, the demand for its own bills has decreased recently

China has won contracts for money production projects in countries such as Sri Lanka

At the same time, the country's own yuan bills only made a small proportion of the orders as the Chinese public increasingly favours mobile payments, causing a decrease in the demand for cash.

According to President of the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation Liu Guisheng, China did not print foreign currency until recently.

Two years after Beijing launched the belt and road plan, the country started printing 100-rupee notes for Nepal, according to Liu in an article he wrote in journal China Finance.

Launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the belt and road plan is a global development blueprint involving about 60 countries from Asia, Europe to Africa to stimulate economic growth through capital investment and infrastructure projects.

China also produced 200 million 1,000-rupee notes last year. A Xinhua report stated that Bhuban Kadel, the executive director of the Nepalese central bank, said he was 'utterly impressed by the quality of the notes, particularly considering the cost was far lower than the bank had previously paid to another printer.'

Thailand is one of the countries that has outsourced its currency production to China

China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation had seized opportunities brought by the Belt and Road Initiative to secure currency production projects in Poland

'The quality is as good as the ones that were printed earlier in another country but the cost is less than half of the amount we had paid,' Kadel told Xinhua.

Getting 200 million notes printed in China saved the Nepalese central bank US$3.76 million (2.9 million), according to him.

Currently China is the only country that has the capacity to perform Intaglio, or 'raised' printing simultaneously on both sides of a banknote, according to South China Morning Post.

In 2015, Chinese researchers won an international innovation award for ColorDance, a new holographic feature that can significantly increase a paper currency's security at lower cost.

Zhongchao Special Security Technology, a subsidiary of China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation is now the world's biggest supplier of security features for banknotes, according to the report citing British banknote manufacturing firm De La Rue.

In comparison, the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing employs a tenth of the staff at two currency factories. De Le Rue, the world's number two, had just over 3,100 employees at the end of last year.
This is the woman who almost killed her friend by pushing her off a 60ft bridge.

Jordan Holgerson, 16, suffered five broken ribs and a punctured lung when she was shoved into Moulton Falls on the Lewis River in Yacolt, Washington on Tuesday.

The pusher was her friend, 18-year-old Taylor Smith, family members confirmed to Dailymail.com.

Instagram photos show Miss Smith partying at Clark County Fair just days after the incident as sources say she 'isn't sorry and doesn't care.'

Taylor Smith almost killed her friend by pushing her off a 60ft bridge. Her Facebook page says she works at Dutch Bros Coffee, although sources say she is unemployed and lives with her grandmother

Pictures of Smith partying with a friend at a fair were shared just days after incident (left). Relatives say she 'isn't sorry and doesn't care'

Jordan Holgerson (pictured), 16, has returned home from hospital after she was pushed off bridge above Moulton Falls in Washington Tuesday

Her Facebook page says she works at Dutch Bros Coffee, although sources say she is unemployed and lives with her grandmother.

A source close to the family told The Sun: 'Taylor has been going out as if nothing happened.

'Taylor hasn't been to visit Jordan to see if she is ok. She clearly doesn't care.

'She messaged Jordan to say sorry but nobody thinks it was a sincere apology.'

Video showing Jordan hesitating to jump and the moment her friend pushes her has gone viral.

Speaking to DailyMail.com, Jordan's aunt Kristie Morgan said on Friday 'she went home last night and woke up crying in pain this morning.

Her aunt tells DailyMail.com she has returned home from the hospital but is suffering 'physically and emotionally'. Jordan is pictured recovering with a childhood friend Donovan at home

'No, I won't go in,' Jordan can be heard telling her friends as they try to pressure her into jumping off the bridge. Suddenly, one of them pushes her off

A source said Smith (pictured) has been going out as if nothing happened

'She has a hard time breathing and it gives her a panic attack which makes it even harder to breathe. She is really suffering physically and emotionally.'

Despite the pain, Kristie said her niece is 'in great spirits' and has decided not to seek 'revenge' against the woman who pushed her.

'Jordan is truly the sweetest girl in the world. It doesn't matter what someone does to her she always has someone's best interest at heart. She doesn't wish to seek revenge on her friend. But in my opinion her friend needs to learn a lesson,' Kristie said.

'She could have killed her and it wouldn't be a question at all if she was in trouble for her actions. She would be in jail right now. But that is how Jordan feels,' she added.

The teenager spoke out from hospital on Thursday after the shocking footage went viral.

'I could have died, easily,' she told reporters.

Her mother Genelle is taking 'amazing care of her,' according to Kristie.

'It's hard to see her baby like that. I cry every time I'm with Jordan. It's painful to watch her move around and I really wish I could take the pain for her,' she said.

Jordan suffered five cracked ribs, a bruised esophagus, an injured trachea, air bubbles in her chest and a punctured lung.

'She is lucky she is not paralyzed or dead,' her mother told Thoroughbred Daily News.

Jordan said she may have 'blacked out' middair, but was aware and awake when she hit the water.

Someone immediately swam out to rescue the teen after she hit the water and rushed her to PeaceHealth Southwest Washington Medical Center in Vancouver, Washington.

Jordan suffered five cracked ribs and internal injuries. She also suffered a bruised esophagus, an injured trachea, air bubbles in her chest and a punctured lung

Holgerson's red and seriously bruised left thigh is pictured above after she slammed into the water from 60ft

One man can be heard on camera asking 'Ready?' before a female friend is seen shoving Jordan off the bridge

The terrifying ordeal was captured on video as Jordan stood on the 60-foot high ledge with her friends gathered behind her.

'No, I won't go in,' Jordan can be heard telling her friends as they try to pressure her to jump off the bridge.

She tells her friends 'no' a second time in the video, but the group still rallies to get her to leap. Then, suddenly, one man asks 'Ready?' and a female friend is seen shoving Jordan off the bridge.

The teen plunges into the water below and lands with a horrifying thud as her friends gasped.

'Oh, that's so f****d,' someone can be heard saying off-camera.

Jordan's mother has since revealed that the friend who pushed Jordan into the water is an adult.

'I'm very upset with her,' said the mother-of-four, who believes the woman should turn herself in. 'She is an adult, and I'm sure she should have known better.'

Jordan said her friend has since said sorry, but that her apologies are not enough.

'I could've died,' she said. 'It could've ended a lot worse, is what I'm thinking about.'

Jordan's sister Kaytlin said she confronted the friend on social media, saying a true friend wouldn't have done that.

'Friends don't push someone from that high so I was p***ed,' Kaytlin said.

Jordan spoke out from hospital on Thursday saying she could have easily died after being pushed off a 60-foot ledge

Her aunt revealed Jordan 'does not seek revenge' against her friend who pushed her

'She pretty much said that she was sorry for doing it and she wouldn't have done it if she knew the outcome of it and that she knows it was an absurd thing to do.

'I think the girl that pushed her should have some sort of consequence because you won't learn your lesson if you think you can could do that again and think it will be fine.'

Ashley Mahree, the woman who posted the shocking clip to YouTube, also said she believes the woman who pushed Jordan should go to jail.

'This looks to be almost criminal... this could have easily taken a life,' Mahree wrote in the YouTube description.

'I think this girl needs to be held accountable in some way.'

Clark County Fire Chief Ben Peeler confirmed it is illegal to jump from the bridge and the Clark County Sheriff's Office is currently investigating the incident.

Kristie has set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for her niece's rising medical expenses.
The long-term boyfriend of a 67-year-old woman found dead at an apartment block in Sydney has been charged with murder and treated for self-inflicted wounds.

Dawn Butterworth, 67, was found about 11am on Monday at a unit block on Victoria Avenue at Penshurst, in south Sydney, following concerns for her welfare.

It is believed Ms Butterworth died from a possible morphine overdose, Daily Telegraph reported.

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Dawn Butterworth (left), 67, was found about 11am on Monday at a unit block on Victoria Avenue at Penshurst

It is believed Ms Butterworth (pictured) died from a possible morphine overdose on Monday

Her boyfriend Allan Greentree, 62, was found with self-inflicted wounds and was taken to St George Hospital for treatment.

'We believe that it may be domestic-related, we believe they do know each other,' Superintendent Julian Griffiths said.

Residents have told Nine News that Ms Butterworth's health had been deteriorating for a while and suffered a violent death.

Following treatment, Greentree was taken to Hurstville Police Station where he was arrested and later charged with murder.

'He's conscious and speaking to police and is still under police guard.'

Police established a crime scene as the apartment is forensically examined and enquiries are continuing.

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A British man has died after plunging from an apartment block in an Ibizan party town, it has emerged.

The 40-year-old, who is thought to have been living on the Spanish island, fell to his death at the Tanit building in San Antonio last night.

Police sources say they are keeping an open mind on the cause and have not ruled out suicide.

It comes a year after a 26-year-old Briton named as Callum Marriott, from Clipstone, Nottinghamshire, died at the same building having fallen from the fourth floor on to an inside patio.

Callum had just enjoyed his last night out on the holiday island with friends and was due to catch a plane home later the same day.

A British man has died after plunging from an apartment block in an Ibizan party town, it has emerged (file picture)

Investigators said afterwards they believed he may have been trying to get into his fourth-floor apartment when he fell around 4.15am on August 6 2017 after leaving his friends and returning early only to find he didn't have keys to get in.

Charlie Simpkin, 20, a workmate at Mansfield Citroen where Callum worked as a technician, said in a moving tribute at the time: 'There aren't words to describe him. He was just golden. He was like a brother to me.

'He was really bubbly, he loved life, his music and his cars.'

In the latest incident last night, the alarm was raised just after 10pm and police spent time trying to establish who the man was because he had no documentation on him.

The victim was pronounced dead at the scene. He reportedly plunged from a fourth floor or sixth floor.

The local Civil Guard said this morning they could not confirm the height he had fallen from.

Three Britons have died already this summer after plunging from the same building - Eden Roc - in Magaluf on the neighbouring island of Majorca.
7-Eleven has taken a major 51 percent stake in an Australian alcohol delivery startup Tipple - but won't be selling booze in it's 670 stores anytime soon.

Alcoholic Slurpees could be on the cards in the future for the corner convenience store giants but the alcohol distributor will operate separately for now.

The private company, owned by the Withers and Barlow family believe Tipple's business model and platform is well-aligned with their interests, and has grown significantly since starting up less than three years ago.

7-Eleven has taken a major 51 percent stake in Australian alcohol delivery startup Tipple - but won't be selling booze in it's 670 stores anytime soon

Digital innovation has been at the forefront of 7-Eleven since it's Fuel App launched in the marketplace to meet the needs of consumers in digital, delivery and in-store services.

7-Eleven Chief Executive, Angus McKay said: 'While in time there may be interesting opportunities for the two businesses to explore and work together serving convenience customers, for now this partnership is about bringing our customer insights and marketing expertise to help accelerate the growth and expansion of Tipple as a standalone business.'

The major backing has been welcomed by Tipple's CEO and founder, Ryan Barrington who will remain in his position.

Mr Barington said: 'We couldn't be happier to be preparing for the next phase of Tipple's growth alongside 7-Eleven,'

The major backing has been welcomed with open arms by Tipple's CEO and founder, Ryan Barrington who will remain in his position

'Their expertise and capabilities are unparalleled, but it's our shared ambition to create new and engaging customer experiences on the cutting edge of convenience that excites us most.

'We're very excited about the potential for this partnership to transform the landscape of both alcohol and convenience retailing in Australia,' said Barrington.

Mr Barrington told Smart Company: 'We built everything in-house, and we've lived through every situation. We started with our own bottle shop, built the tech for that, and then the tech and our business model evolved when we started using independent bottle shops around the country for our roll-out strategy,'

Tipple was established in 2015 and services Melbourne and Sydney suburbs, promising to deliver cold alcohol to people within a 30 minute radius

'We were the retailer, then the wholesaler, now we're the end-to-end package.'

Tipple was established in 2015 and services Melbourne and Sydney suburbs, promising to deliver cold alcohol to people within a 30 minute radius.

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This is the shocking moment a radiographer called a pregnant black woman a n****r four times in a donut shop.

Kyle Thomas has been fired from Mississippi Baptist Medical Center after mobile phone footage of him arguing with a Donut Palace employee went viral online.

In a furious row over customer service at the Jackson store, the woman appeared to say 'I hope you don't deal with children' before he snapped: 'shut your f*****g mouth.'

After the video was shared on Facebook, the radiographer wrote online: 'I regret every word... there is no excuse to say these horrible things.'

This is the shocking moment a radiographer called a woman a n****r in a doughnut shop

The woman then said 'who are you talking to?' before he said 'you're a child, shut up.'

She replied 'you're a son of a b**** that's what you are, you don't speak to me that way.'

Mr Thomas then turned to leave and muttered 'you're a n****r shut up,' prompting the woman to shout' Oh I'm a n****r, now I'm a n****r and you're a b****, say it again.'

The radiographer then repeated the word three times as he walked out of the store.

After the video was shared on Facebook, the radiographer wrote online: 'I regret every word... there is no excuse to say these horrible things.

'I was upset about another issue and it spilled over into this. I can't apologize enough.'

The apology and a picture of Mr Thomas was shared online by a Facebook user called Marcus Little.

Mobile phone footage showed the man named as Kyle Thomas arguing with a woman at the counter of the store in Jackson, Mississippi

He wrote: Ladies and Gentlemen meet Kyle Thomas, the bigoted radiologist x-ray tech yelled racial epithets towards a pregnant black woman over some creme filled doughnuts at a local family owned donut shop in the Jackson, MS area earlier today.' (sic)

Employee Keaundrea Wardlaw said Thomas was upset about the service and that she didn't want to get him fired.

She said he returned to the shop and apologized to her boss for causing a disruption and that she would accept an apology if he'd offered her one too.

Mississippi Baptist Medical Center said the off-duty employee's language and behavior don't represent the organization's values.
Devastated: Vendor Andrew McGarry has been left 'in tears' after being sacked by the Big Issue

A homeless man has been left in tears after he was sacked by the Big Issue after refusing to take part in a publicity stunt with his local Labour MP Ben Bradfshaw.

Heartbroken vendor Andrew McGarry, 52, says he has lost his livelihood after upsetting charity bosses by snubbing the photoshoot with an MP.

Mr McGarry declined to take part in the event with Ben Bradshaw, Labour MP for Exeter.

The popular magazine seller - who has worked in Exeter for six years - said he wanted to protest against the lack of support for rough sleepers.

But his comments have appeared to have cost him his job with charity bosses confirming they no longer require Mr McGarry's service.

When he turned up to collect his usual pile of copies of the Big Issue, staff at the Exeter branch told him to 'take a week off'.

But when he arrived this morning, Mr McGarry claims he was told he no longer allowed to work for the social issues publication.

The 52-year-old told MailOnline he was devastated.

'I've lost my livelihood': Andrew McGarry, pictured with a customer above, says he has lost his main source in income

Pitch perfect: Mr McGarry, pictured in May, standing in his usual spot in front of Exeter's Cathedral in the county of Devon

Well-known: Andrew McGarry, pictured with a customer in May, has sold thousands of magazines over the course of the last six years

He said: 'I am in tears about the whole thing, I didn't realise can't have political voice selling the Big Issue.'

He added: 'I am at a loss about the whole thing.'

The news has come as a blow to the charity fundraiser who is well-known locally for raising money for clothes and essentials for rough sleepers.

Mr Bradshaw was a journalist for BBC Radio 4's The World At One programme before he was elected during Blairmania in 1997.

He donned the red Big Issue tabard for a publicity shoot with the Big Issue in Exeter on August 4.

Mr McGarry was invited to take part in the event but decided not to - calling it a PR stunt.

His comments appeared to have ruffled bosses at the Big Issue with the firm calling time on Mr McGarry's connection with the company today.

Charity: Labour MP Ben Bradshaw took part in a selling competition against vendors in Exeter during a publicity stunt for the magazine on Friday, August 3

The magazine's decision has been met by fury with those online who said it was a 'disgraceful' way to treat a man who has raised hundreds for worthy causes.

One man wrote: 'I don't think the Big Issue appreciated the negative publicity and this is their punishment. This is Andrew's ****** livelihood we're talking about.'

While another said: 'This is very sad news and a real loss to the Exeter community Big Issue seller.

I am in tears about the whole thing, I didn't realise can't have political voice selling the Big Issue

'He has done so much for homeless people in Exeter and is a real inspiration to us all.'

Mr Bradshaw told MailOnline he hoped Mr McGarry could return to selling the Big Issue in Exeter again soon.

Beth Thomas, Regional Manager for Wales and South West at The Big Issue, said: 'Along with other local Big Issue vendors, Andrew McGarry was invited to take part in a sell off event in Exeter on August 3 with local MP Ben Bradshaw. Andrew declined to take part.

When he turned up to collect his usual pile of copies Big Issue staff at the Exeter branch told him to 'take a week off' then return on Monday, August 13

The magazine's decision has been met by fury with those online who said it was a 'disgraceful' way to treat a man who has raised hundreds for worthy causes

Mr Bradshaw told MailOnline he hoped Mr McGarry could return to selling the Big Issue in Exeter again soon

'The sell-off experience was a great opportunity to show Ben, on a small scale, what everyday life selling the magazine on the streets is like for Big Issue vendors.

Ms Thomas added: 'Following the sell-off taking place, Andrew informed our Distribution Team that he intended to take a week off selling The Big Issue.

She said: 'Since then, due to various breaches of the Vendor Agreement by Andrew, we have taken the decision that we are no longer able to supply him with the magazine. However, we will be happy to discuss and review this decision with Andrew in the future.'

Mr Bradshaw said: 'I very much hope that Andrew can iron out whatever differences he has with Big Issue so that he can resume his familiar pitch in Exeter.'

Shortly before the Labour MP took to the streets for his photo shoot, Mr McGarry told Devon Live: 'I'm boycotting the event to make a statement on behalf of all the homeless in the UK

He said: 'Being fined, sent to prison and given ASBOs does not help homeless issues.

'I don't remember Ben Bradshaw ever buying the Big Issue off me.

'I've got a great gift scheme idea which a lot of people think is very awesome and I'm trying to get attention for that.

'Just because I'm a street vendor it doesn't mean that this gift scheme idea can't work.'

Mr McGarry, who usually sells the Big Issue just a stone's throw from the city's cathedral, has raised hundreds of pounds for homeless charities in recent years.

Mr Bradshaw, who has been MP for Exeter since 1997, told DevonLive he was sorry for how Mr McGarry felt, blaming budget cuts by the Conservative government for a recent spike in homelessness.

Charity-minded: Earlier this year, Mr McGarry helped buy 150 worth in jeans for homeless men
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Incredible photos have emerged of the moment these drought-stricken cattle in New South Wales' central west have been waiting for.

In dire need of food, dozens of famished cows swarmed around bales of hay delivered by Victorian-based company Redfield Transport to a dry and dusty paddock at Wayne Dunford's Lynton property near Parkes on Monday.

With 100 per cent of the state officially in drought, many desperate farmers like Mr Dunford now depend on convoys of hay from interstate to feed their hungry herds.

Dozens of starving cows (pictured) at Wayne Dunford's Lynton property near Parkes received some welcome relief on Monday

The bales of hale delivered to feed Wayne Dunford's cattle (pictured) were transported from central Victoria

Chris Redpath, who has run an agricultural freight business in central Victoria for 15 years, never had to cross the NSW border until this year.

His drivers are making the 720-kilometre, eight hour journey to the NSW central west on a daily basis.

'I've never carted hay like this before - it's horrendous, it's horrible,' Mr Redpath told AAP.

'Running hay over the NSW border is, in our business, unheard of. We've actually had to buy more gear to be able to handle the job. I should not be carting hay that far.'

Redfield Transport made the the 720-kilometre, eight hour journey to the Lynton property on Monday to deliver hay bales

The dry and dusty paddock (pictured) at the Lynton property shows how tough it has been for drought-stricken farmers

Mr Redpath finds himself offering emotional support to the drought-stricken farmers.

'We've never met before and they're reaching out on the telephone,' he said.

'I had a farmer ring me up the other day and say 'I really need to know that you're going to cart up this load of hay because my cattle are starving.'

Mr Dunford, 68, has been forced to fork out $100,000 on freighted hay so far this year.

He will continue to pay for hay to be transported from interstate until the drought breaks.

'We got caught short because we came off the back of some other bad years,' he told AAP.

'We've had little bits of rain but all it does is settle the dust.'

The drought in NSW has taken its toll on livestock on this Lynton property west of Parkes in the state's central west

Meanwhile, a convoy of 20 road trains laden with 2,000 bales of hay will arrive in Condobolin in the state's central west from outback Western Australia later this week following a 3,500 kilometre journey across the Nullarbor which began on Monday.

Organised by the Rapid Relief Team (RRT) charity, it will feed 1,000 cows or 20,000 sheep for a fortnight.

'Some of the drivers are donating their time, some are doing a route they wouldn't normally do, others are driving for companies but in most cases they've personally put their hand up,' RRT spokesman Alex Sharpe told the ABC.

'It's amazing  I can say with certainty that everyone involved is absolutely passionate and keen to be on board.'

Watsons Logistics and Transport managing director Robert Watson added: 'There's not much we can do from Western Australia usually, but this is something we can do so we put our hand up.'

The dry spell is expected to continue for drought-affected regions in the coming months

Federal Hume MP Angus Taylor juggled parliamentary duties with coordinating the road trains of hay from Western Australia for needy farmers across NSW.

'There has been a tremendous show of solidarity for our farmers, which is lifting them through this tough time,' Mr Taylor said.

'It's about 1000 tonnes of hay  or about 2000 bales - that's being donated to farmers, including those who need help around the Wollondilly and Camden regions. This won't even touch the sides, but it's a way of saying 'we're with you and we're going to help you get through.'

RRT delivered a B-double load of 64 hay bales to farmers in the Wollondilly region southwest of Sydney on the weekend.

Redfield Transport trucks (pictured) had never had to cross the NSW border until this year. It's now happening on a frequent basis

The NSW government last month announced $500 million in drought relief for farmers taking the total contribution past $1 billion.

Stage two of funding provides freight subsidies of up to $20,000 per farm.

'Any dollar is handy,' Mr Dunford said.

Sadly, the record breaking dry spell is expected to continue with the Bureau of Meteorology predicting high warm and dry conditions for drought-affected regions in the coming months.

Wayne Dunford (pictured) has spent $100,000 on transported bales of hay from interstate so far this year
CCTV has emerged showing an NYPD officer apparently using a banned choke hold while arresting a car mechanic outside a garage in Queens.

The footage shows detective Fabio Nunez arresting Tomas Medina just before midnight on July 14 after responding to a noise complaint.

Police say Medina refused to show his ID so he could be issued with a summons and resisted arrest, while Medina's lawyers say Nunez - who has already cost the city $260,000 in lawsuits - could have killed their client.

Detective Fabio Nunez was responding to a noise complaint on July 14 in Queens when he attempted to arrest Tomas Medina for allegedly failing to show ID

When Medina seemingly resists arrest, Nunez places an arm around his neck. The move appears to be a choke hold, which is banned by the NYPD

In the video, Medina can be seen sitting in the street with two friends when Nunez and his partner, Shanee Pierce, arrive and begin speaking with them.

'I told him I was already picking everything up to go,' Medina told the New York Daily News.

The group can be seen speaking to the two officers for several minutes, though it is not clear exactly what was said because there is no audio with the tape.

Medina can be seen taking a cable used to power a speaker back into the shop before Nunez carries the speaker into the back of his patrol car.

That prompts a further discussion between Medina's group and the officers, who can be seen gesturing to each other.

Medina says at one point Nunez asked the group which one of their cars was parked over the entrance to the workshop.

When a female friend said it was her vehicle, Nunez said he was giving her a ticket for parking illegally despite the workshop owner allowing her to park there.

Medina then picks up a chair and gets into another discussion with Nunez, before turning his back on the officer to walk into the workshop.

Nunez then shocks Medina in the back with a Taser, prompting him to break free from the officers and continue struggling

Medina was arrested for assaulting an officer and taken into custody. His lawyers say a suit against Nunez, who has already cost the city $260,000 over wrongful arrests, is forthcoming

At that point, Nunez walks towards him, places a hand on the back of his neck, and pushes him up against a vehicle.

One of Medina's friends can be seen motioning for him to calm down as he swaps further words with Nunez.

Medina then turns around with his arms outstretched to speak with Nunez, before turning back around to face toward the car.

Nunez can be seen reaching for Medina's wrist to put him in cuffs, and when Medina appears to resist, Nunez places him in the hold.

Medina spends at least 20 seconds with Nunez's arm around his neck as the officer's partner attempts to get his arm behind his back.

Eventually Nunez lets go but only so he can pull out his Taser, which he uses to shock Medina in the back.

That causes Medina to fight back, pushing both officers away. Nunez shoots Medina with the Taser, but he pulls the probes off before retreating to the back of the shop.

As passersby gather both Medina and Nunez disappear from view as the officer's partner calls for backup.

A few moments later around a dozen officers flood the scene, some running to the back of the shop while others keep the gathering crowd at bay.

Medina suffered burns to his back from the Taser, and bruises and cuts to his body. Nunez said Medina bit him on the finger, causing a laceration, and hit his partner in the face

In total 20 officers responded to the scene. Medina was charged with assaulting an officer and taken into custody.

Gurmeet Singh, Medina's lawyer from the Legal Aid Society, said Nunez's actions were 'very dangerous' and could had led to his client suffocating.

The incident happened just days before the NYPD filed charges against officer Daniel Pantaleo who used a similar hold while arresting Eric Garner in 2014.

Garner was recorded saying 'I can't breathe' 11 times before he died. His death sparked nationwide protests and led to the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Even before Garner's death, the NYPD had banned the use of choke holds as a restraint technique.

Cynthia Conti-Cook, another lawyer with the Legal Aid Society, added: 'The timing of this incident really shows how little progress the NYPD has made and how it has learned little since death of Garner.'

In the criminal complaint, Nunez says Medina resisted arrest and bit him on the finger, causing a laceration.

Medina is also accused of striking Pierce in the left eye, causing bruising.

A police spokesman added that Medina had refused to show identification so he could be issued with a summons for the noise violation, which led to the arrest.

Nunez, who served in the Navy, has already cost the NYPD almost $260,000 in lawsuits brought by people he has arrested.

In the largest case, Wilkins Cabreja was awarded $100,000 in 2005 after Nunez and another officer managed to break his arm during an arrest. The charges against Cabreja were dropped.

Despite his checkered history, the NYPD promoted Nunez to detective in 2015 and made him part of the neighborhood coordination officer program.

Such officers are supposed to help build ties with the community.

Medina has yet to file a lawsuit, but attorneys say one is forthcoming. An NYPD spokesman said the incident is under review.
The chilling diary entries of a mother who killed her four children have been revisited as her lawyers fight for the case to be reviewed.

Kathleen Folbigg, from the New South Wales Hunter Valley, became a hated figure in May 2003 when a Supreme Court jury concluded she had killed her two sons and two daughters between 1989 and 1999.

Dubbed Australia's worst female child killer, the 51-year-old is serving a 40-year sentence for killing her children.

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In a recording obtained by the ABC's Australian Story, she told her friend she couldn't walk as she was led from the courtroom to the downstairs cells following the 2003 jury verdict (Kathleen Folbigg is pictured a month before being found guilty of murder and manslaughter)

Her diary entries, which were used to convict her for the murders, were reported on the ABC's Australian Story.

One of the excerpts read: 'I feel like the worst mother on this earth. Scared that she'll leave me now like Sarah did.'

Folbigg also wrote: 'I knew I was short tempered and cruel sometimes to her. She left, with a bit of help.'

She has exhausted her right of appeal and now hopes the outcome of a petition to review her case will be her savior.

Pictured: Laura Folbigg, one of Katherine Forbigg's four children who died by her hand between 1989 and 1999

Sarah (left) died aged 10 months in August 1993 while her sister Laura (right) was 18 months old when she died in February 1999

The petition, which was drafted by a Newcastle legal team, argues that some of the medical evidence against Folbigg during the trial was flawed.

From Cessnock Correctional Centre, in a phone call recorded by prison authorities, Folbigg revealed her shock at the jurors finding her guilty on three counts of murder and one of manslaughter in 2003.

In the recording she told her friend she couldn't walk as she was led from the courtroom to the downstairs cells.

The petition, which was drafted by a Newcastle legal team, argues that some of the medical evidence against Folbigg during the trial was flawed

'In the end, I was just shattered and felt like by the time they got me downstairs, my legs weren't even working properly, you I know I was half carried down the stairs, and out to the cells,' she said.

Minutes earlier, the jury had found she had murdered her infant children Patrick, aged seven months in February 1991; Sarah, aged 10 months in August 1993; and Laura, aged 18 months in February 1999.

She was found guilty of manslaughter of her 19-day-old son Caleb's death in February 1989.

NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman hinted the State Government was open to reviewing her case

The jury had rejected her defence the deaths were of natural causes, leading to her being sentenced to 40 years in jail with a 30-year non-parole term.

NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman hinted the State Government was open to reviewing her case.

'Ms Folbigg's petition raises complex questions to which I am giving appropriate consideration and have taken extensive advice,' he told Daily Mail Australia in a statement.

Kathleen Folbigg (pictured with Salvation Army court chaplain Joyce Harmer) was found guilty by a Supreme Court jury in 2003 of killing her two sons and two daughters between 1989 and 1999

Caleb (left) was just 19 days old when he died in February 1989, while Patrick (right), was seven months in February 1991

'I hope to be in a position to make an announcement in the near future.'

Folbigg told her friend the 2003 jury verdict had traumatised her.

'Look, it was just so overwhelming. There are no words. No words to even describe it,' Folbigg told her friend in one of their telephone calls.

'It was shattering and it was devastating and it was overwhelming. If I had started screaming, I would have sent the courthouse into a big, giant frenzy.

'That's what I felt like I was doing on the inside.'

Folbigg, who was convicted based on her diary entries found by her former husband Craig Folbigg at their Singleton home, told her friend she was angry inside.

'Nothing might have come out of my mouth and the tears were flowing, but from the inside, I just felt like I was absolutely just screaming my lungs out going, 'No. this isn't right',' she said.

The 51-year-old killer had been keeping in regular phone contact with a friend Tracy Chapman since she was sentenced to 40 years behind bars at Cessnock Correctional Centre

In another phone call, she revealed her diary entries were written from the point of view of an insecure mother.

'You've got to understand that those diaries are written from a point of me always blaming myself,' she said in one phone call.

'I blamed myself for everything. It's just I took so much of the responsibility, because that's, as mothers, what you do.'

In 2003, jurors were told the children were killed at the hands of a mother who was driven to smother them in violent fits of rage.

Kathleen Folbigg, a 51-year-old killer, has been calling her friend Tracy Chapman (left in their younger days) every day at 9.30am for the past 15 years to chat about the banalities of prison life.

Barrister Isabel Reed - one of several lawyers who has been working on a petition to have Folbigg's case reviewed by the NSW justice system - insisted her conviction was based on insufficient evidence.

'We don't want her released from prison. We just want an inquiry to look at the evidence and consider: has there been a miscarriage of justice here?' Ms Reed told The Sydney Morning Herald.

A group of lawyers who believe Folbigg may have been unfairly sentenced are appealing for NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman (pictured) to launch a formal inquiry into her case

'I didn't think when we started this that that was a big ask.'

Monash University forensic pathologist Stephen Cordner, who is also involved in the petition, agrees 'there is no pathological or medical basis for concluding homicide' in the case of Folbigg's deceased children.

Courts previously heard it was 'cessation of breathing' that led to each child's sudden and unexpected death - though post-mortems failed to shed conclusive light on any cause beyond that.

Moreover, much of the evidence used in the trial was deemed to have been misleading .

Ms Reed claims to have called the office of NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman every two weeks for the past two years in an effort to have him launch a formal inquiry into Folbigg's case, to little avail.

'I don't know whether public pressure is a thing that might help with a decision,' Ms Reed said, adding she hoped the state attorney-general would 'at least not be able to sleep comfortably on Monday night' after watching the ABC.
Omarosa Manigault Newman revealed Monday that she recorded a phone call from President Donald Trump the day after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fired her in December 2017.

And in the latest stage of her public relations tour to promote her tell-all memoir 'Unhinged,' the former West Wing staffer claimed Trump was caught on tape using the 'N-word' more than once during the production of his long-running hit show 'The Apprentice.'

That recording, if it exists, has not been made public.

But an astonishing 22-second audio clip released Monday morning shows Trump telling Manigault Newman that he knew nothing about her dismissal. The president is heard assuring the onetime reality TV contestant on the phone call that he wasn't happy to see her leave.

'Omarosa whats going on? I just saw on the news that youre thinking about leaving? What happened?' Trump asks her.

She responds: 'General Kelly  General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave.'

'No  I, I, Nobody even told me about it,' Trump says, leading her to interject: 'Wow.'

'You know, they run a big operation, but I didnt know it,' Trump tells her. 'I didnt know that. Goddamn it. I dont love you leaving at all.'

Omarosa Manigault Newman claimed Monday that there are 'multiple' recordings of Donald Trump using the 'n-word' while he was taping 'The Apprentice'

Before her 'Today' show interview, NBC News broadcast a clip from a phone call Omarosa recorded with the president; she says he told her the day after she was fired that he was unhappy to see her leave

Manigault Newman said Monday that 'Donald Trump has no clue what's going on,' concluding that he's not 'fit' to hold office.

'John Kelly is running this White House,' she said, 'and Donald Trump has no clue whats going on. Hes being puppeted, and thats very dangerous for this nation.'

It's not unusual for a president to be in the dark about staffing decisions in a White House that employs hundreds of people.

A White House official told DailyMail.com on Monday that 'Omarosa apparently thinks she's important enough to be on Trump's radar 24/7.'

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani fumed Monday morning on 'Fox & Friends' that Manigault Newman came off as arrogant.

'Donald Trump made her!' he said. 'What kind of ingratitude!'

And he said it's unremarkable that Kelly, not Trump, handled the management of wayward aides.

'Most of the things about her never came to him. They dont walk in and say to the president, "So and so leaked something," or "So and so is fighting with this one in the White House." If you did that, the president couldnt do his job. Thats for the chief of staff to handle,' he explained.

The question of whether Trump may have used a racial slur to refer to African-Americans on his show's Trump Tower set has hung in the political air since 2016.

Manigault Newman claimed Monday that more than one such recording exists.

'There are multiple tapes,' she said Monday on the 'Today' show of audio outtakes from 'The Apprentice'. She claimed to have heard at least one of them personally.

Initially deflecting questions about how and when she was able to listen to it, she eventually explained to host Savannah Guthrie that 'it's about 3 minutes. It's audio.'

'He was talking about some Afrircan-Americans in the production throughout the course of "The Apprentice." That's unacceptable,' she said.

Manigault Newman said she didn't have possession of any of the audio but 'the people who have the tape intend to release the tape.'

She focused on what she claimed was an election-year discussion in which one campaign aide, Katrina Pierson, said she believed the recording was real.

'There was a conference call among campaign workers, Jason Miller, Lynn Patton and Katrina Pierson where we talked about the possibility of him saying it,' Manigault Newman said Monday. 'And his own spokesperson, Katrina Pierson, said, "I have heard from a credible source that yes, he said it".'

Pierson flatly denied a similar allegation on Sunday, telling DailyMail.com that she has 'never heard President Trump ever use the derogatory language that Omarosa claims' and that she 'never confirmed the existence of an alleged tape from "The Apprentice" to her.'

'Thats a complete fabrication by Omarosa,' Pierson said. 'I feel pity for Omarosa as she embarrasses herself by creating salacious lies and distortions just to try to be relevant and enrich herself by selling books at the expense of the truth. "Unhinged," indeed.'

LISTEN - Audio of John Kelly firing Omarosa in the situation room over her 'integrity issues'

NBCUniversal Privacy Policy GEN. JOHN KELLY: Hi. OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: Hi there, how are you? JOHN KELLY: Who are you? FEMALE VOICE: Hi. OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: My assistant. JOHN KELLY: Could you leave us alone? FEMALE VOICE: Sure. OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: Hi. JOHN KELLY: I'm only going to stay for a couple of minutes. These are lawyers. We're going to talk to you about leaving the White House. It's come to my attention, over the last few months, that there's been some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues related to you and use of government vehicles and some other issues. And they'll, they'll, they'll walk you through the legal aspects of this. But there is some, from my view, there's some money issues and other things, but from my view, the integrity issues are very serious. I'm stuck with my past experience and that is, when we hold people accountable in the military, I would, I compare what I see here at the White House and other issues that I've had to deal with and say what would I do to this, in this case if I was in the Pentagon dealing with a Marine or a soldier or something like that? And the issue that you may or may not have a full appreciation for, but I think you do, this would be a pretty high level of accountability, meaning a court-martial. We're not suggesting any legal action here. OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: That I -- that I did? JOHN KELLY: Just stay with me, just stay with me. Yep. That it would be a a pretty serious offense. So with that I'm just going to ask you -- these gentlemen will explain it. We'll bring a personnel person in after after they talk to you. But just to understand that I'd like to see this be a a friendly departure. There are pretty significant legal issues that we hope don't develop into something that, that'll make it ugly for you. But I think it's important to understand that if we make this a friendly departure we can all be, you know, you can look at, look at your time here in, in the White House as a year of service to the nation. And then you can go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation. But it's very, very important I think that you understand that there are some serious legal issues that have been violated. And you're, you're open to some legal action that we hope, I think, we can control, right? So with that, if you would stay here with these gentlemen they'll lay this thing out  OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: Can I ask you a couple questions? Does the president -- is the president aware of what's going on? JOHN KELLY: Don't do -- let's not go down the road. This is a non-negotiable discussion. OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: I don't want to negotiate. I just, I've never talked -- had a chance to talk to you General Kelly so if this is my departure I'd like to have at least an opportunity  JOHN KELLY: No. OMAROSA: --to understand. JOHN KELLY: We can, we can talk another time. This has to do with some pretty serious violat -- integrity violations. So I'll let it go at that. So the the staff and everyone on the staff works for me, not the president. And so after your departure I'll inform him if he gets interested on, on where you may be. So with that I'll let you go and if gentlemen you could take it. MALE VOICE: Thanks. Yep. I'm really sorry we're here. SOURCE: NBC NEWS' 'MEET THE PRESS WITH CHUCK TODD' A conference room is shown inside the Situation Room complex at the White House  a signal-hardened place where recording devices and cameras are strictly prohibited Advertisement

Confronted on Monday with video from a 2017 television interview in which she insisted Trump was not a racist and she would never work for him otherwise, she claimed she was trying at the time to avoid turning the West Wing against her.

'I was being very cautious about what I said, so as not to upset these folks,' she claimed Monday.

Manigault Newman shocked the political world on Sunday with an audiotape of her own firing made in the ultra-secure Situation Room.

In Monday's contentious 'Today' show interview, she claimed she was held there against her will and accused the White House of subjecting her to 'false imprisonment.'

She wouldn't explain how she recorded her firing, however, saying: 'I'll just leave that to your imagination.'

'It's not acceptable for four men to take a woman into a room, lock the door and ... tell her that she cannot leave,' the former White House aide said. 'The moment I said I would like to leave, and they said I can't go, it became false imprisonment.

She also said the unnamed men who confined her in the Situation Room prevented her from having contact with a lawyer.

'I came out of that Situation Room, I was terrified. ... I was very concerned about my well-being, about what these powerful people would do to me after they threatened me,' she recalled.

'There are other people who have been treated this way by General Kelly,' she claimed, while not naming any of them.

She suggested, however, that she may be protected by federal whistle-blower statutes. Asked if she is worried about the consequences of exposing the Trump White House to public ridicule, she replied: 'No, absolutely not.'

Manigault Newman parried several other questions, telling host Savannah Guthrie that she would have to read her book, on sale Tuesday, for answers.

'You know that it's a seven-minute interview,' she lectured. 'Now we're at ten.'

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel raised the possibility of criminal prosecution for Omarosa if she broke federal law by making her secret recording

The White House fired back at her on Sunday, focusing on the apparent national security breach represented by the former Trump aide sneaking a smartphone into one of the most secure rooms in Washington, D.C.

'The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room, shows a blatant disregard for our national security  and then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee,' Trump's press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a dinnertime statement.

NBC News broadcast the audio of Kelly firing Manigault Newman during its 'Meet the Press' interview with the explosive onetime Trump booster. Kelly says on the tape that 'serious integrity violations' had left her without a job.

The issues, he says, surrounded money and the improper use of government vehicles. He can be heard denying a request for her to speak with president about her dismissal, which he said was non-negotiable.

'I think its important to understand that if we make this a friendly departure we can all be  you know, you can look at, look at your time here in the White House as a year of service to the nation,' the retired general said. 'And then you can go on without any type of difficulty in the future, relative to your reputation.'

The fired West Wing official said she viewed the comment as a 'threat' and defended her decision to covertly make recordings as a form of self-preservation.

'If I didn't have these recordings, no one in America would believe me,' she said Sunday.

The Situation Room is known as a SCIF  a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. Such rooms are hardened against electronic eavesdropping so classified information can be securely discussed inside.

Standard protocol prohibits cameras and recording devices. Lockers or cubbies are typically situated outside SCIFs to hold cellphones while their owners are inside. The Situation Room is no exception.

Omarosa's admission, a highly unusual one, immediately drew fire from allies of the president.

'Who in their right mind thinks its appropriate to secretly record the White House chief of staff in the Situation Room?' Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel tweeted.

'Secretly recording conversations in the Situation Room isn't just wildly inappropriate, it's a threat to our national security,' McDaniel added. 'If she broke federal law, she should be prosecuted.'

The RNC's own Twitter account carped, 'Omarosa will clearly say anything to make a buck. Its obvious that no one should believe a word she says.'

National security lawyer Bradley Moss told The Daily Beast on Sunday that '[p]rotocol absolutely dictates you place that phone into the lockers right outside the Situation Room. Ive put my cell phones in similar lockers at government facilities. Its non-negotiable.'

He said while White House visitors are screened, in-house staff operate on an honor system, which Omarosa 'clearly violated ... and it is clear she deliberately meant to do so.'

President Trump branded Manigault Newman, a former communications aide, a 'lowlife' on Saturday. On Friday Sanders said the memoir was 'riddled' with lies.

Much of the controversy surrounding the book, titled 'Unhinged,' has centered on her claim that she has heard audio of the president referring to African-Americans with the 'n-word.'

She writes only that several people had told her of the existence of the tape, purportedly made through an open mic during an 'Apprentice' taping.

Two people to whom she has attributed that information, pollster Frank Luntz and Trump campaign aide Katrina Pierson, have both publicly denied it.

Beginning on Friday Manigault Newman insisted she had heard the outtake herself, but not until after her book was finished.

'It was confirmed what I feared the most: that Donald Trump is a con and has been masquerading as someone who is actually open to engaging with diverse communities, but when he talks that way, the way he did on his tape, it confirmed that he is truly a racist,' she said Sunday on NBC.

She said she felt used by Trump, who a year ago was under siege for his comments about a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville that ended with the death of a counter-protester.

Presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Monday on the Fox News Channel that it wasn't surprising Trump had no idea John Kelly had fired Omarosa: 'Most of the things about her never came to him'

Omarosa expressed regret for aiding and abetting Trump, saying, 'I was complicit with this White House in deceiving this nation.'

Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway on Sunday rebutted Manigault Newman's claim that Trump used racially charged language in the White House.

'He never said that to us in the White House, and I certainly have never heard it. But why didnt she tell us at the time?' Conway asked on ABC. 'She said, "No, hes not a racist." She said, "I would not be there, and I wouldnt be there, none of us would be there if that were true".'

As the drama intensified Sunday, current and former White House officials flooded the airwaves to defend themselves and the president against the attacks coming from Trumpworld's newest apostate.

Noted pollster Frank Luntz on Friday debunked a passage of the book where Omarosa claims she was told he had personally heard the rumored Trump 'n-word' audio.

'Im in @Omarosas book on page 149. She claims to have heard from someone who heard from me that I heard Trump use the N-word,' Luntz wrote. 'Not only is this flat-out false (Ive never heard such a thing), but Omarosa didnt even make an effort to call or email me to verify. Very shoddy work.'

Luntz continued: 'It seems like certain book publishers these days care more about getting a release out than getting the facts down. This is why people dont trust these exposes, which is especially bad for authors who actually are good and reliable.'

Manigault Newman said Sunday that aside from the N-word tape, she had never heard Trump use a racial slur.

'You know, I was in his presence when he said inappropriate things but he has never said the n-word in my presence. Ever,' she acknowledged.

She told Todd that Trump has 'probably' uttered the slur about her, too, 'because Donald Trump talks about everyone behind their back.'

'I am pretty certain that he's probably said some very derogatory things about me,' she asserted. 'In fact, yesterday, on this moment before Charlottesville, the anniversary of Charlottesville, instead of talking about how to unify the nation, he actually insulted me by calling me a "lowlife."

Omarosa charged: 'That is a man who is inclined to start racially charged engagement, and use race to kind of stir up his base.'

Conway told ABC on Sunday that she has 'never a single time' hear the president use a racial slur.

Instead of telling the truth about all the good President Trump and his administration are doing to make America safe and prosperous, this book is riddled with lies and false accusations. Its sad that a disgruntled former White House employee is trying to profit off these false attacks, and even worse that the media would now give her a platform, after not taking her seriously when she had only positive things to say about the President during her time in the administration.  White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders

'I also never heard Omarosa complain that he had done that. And so the only thing thats changed is that shes now selling books,' the ex-campaign manager to the president said.

In a vicious assault on her former White House colleague, Conway compared Manigault Newman to Judas Iscariot, saying, 'I understand whether its 30 pieces of silver or a seven-figure book advance, people do change their loyalties and change their mind. But I would refer you to Omarosas own comments. Very glowing appraisal of this presidents work and this presidents work with respect to the African American community.'

Mangiault-Newman led the president's African-American outreach in 2016.

She claimed in a memorable video that fall that when if the former 'Apprentice' host won the the White House, 'Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump.'

After her dismissal, Manigault Newman had a change of heart, writing in her book that she witnessed him slip into a serious 'mental decline' that was not apparent to people around him who had not known him for as long as she had.

They'd had a working relationship since Omarosa's appearance on the first season of 'The Apprentice,' dating back more than a decade to 2003.

In her 'Meet the Press' interview, Omarosa doubled down on the charge and lobbed grenades at former colleagues like ex-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

She alleged that the president's cronies 'absolutely' bought the ex-White House aide's silence and tried to enter into a similar deal with her.

Spicer told DailyMail.com that he did not receive a paycheck from the Trump-supported America First PAC until June of this year, roughly 10 months after the conclusion of his White House tenure.

The former White House aide who's on a promotion tour now for his own book detailing his time working with Trump, 'The Briefing,' said he signed a contract for the manuscript in December.

America First said later in a tweet: 'Her compulsive lies are sick&sad! It's clear that what she was fired for in the first place(lack of integrity)is still running wild in her world of make-believe!'

President Trump refrained from tweeting about his disloyal former aide on Sunday, with nothing on his schedule as a vacation at Bedminster, New Jersey, estate came to a close.

Omarosa made more pedestrian recordings of Trump on her own while she worked in the West Wing, but insists the white-whale tape is out there somewhere

The White House fired a missile in Manigault Newman's direction on Friday following reporters that the book would accuse the president of uttering 'several' racial slurs.

'Instead of telling the truth about all the good President Trump and his administration are doing to make America safe and prosperous, this book is riddled with lies and false accusations,' White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement to reporters, throwing an unmistakably sharp elbow.

'Its sad that a disgruntled former White House employee is trying to profit off these false attacks, and even worse that the media would now give her a platform, after not taking her seriously when she had only positive things to say about the President during her time in the administration.'

Omarosa, who launched her famous-for-being-famous career on the strength of her pugnacious persona on 'The Apprentice,' became an outspoken Trump critic only after she left her spokeswoman job at the White House's Office of Public Liaison and began to shop for a book deal.

She also writes that she personally witnessed the president using a pair of racial insults against senior aide Kellyanne Conway's half-Filipino husband George.

'Would you look at this George Conway article?' she quotes Trump as saying, according to The Guardian. 'F***ing FLIP! Disloyal! F***ing Goo-goo.'

George Conway dismissed the story as 'absurd.'

Omarosa claims Lara Trump, the wife of Eric Trump, offered her a $15,000 per month campaign job after she left the White House, a position that she says came with an onerous nondisclosure agreement

'The allegation is not credible, and indeed is ridiculous, particularly in light of the timing of her departure from the White HouseDecember 12, 2017. Its absurd all around,' he tweeted.

It wasn't until months later that he emerged as a steadfast and reliable Trump critic on Twitter despite his wife's loyalty and devotion to the president.

Omarosa's spicy memoir includes other less incendiary but equally too-good-to-check anecdotes.

One is the charge that a tanning bed occupies space in the presidential residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and that President Trump caused a stink when he demanded one.

The Washington Post reported Friday that Omarosa wrote about how Trump fought over a tanning appliance with Angella Reid, then the White House's 'chief usher'  a title held by the chief of the household staff.

Reid was dismissed in early May 2017, narrowing the timeframe in which the story could have unfolded.

But a former White House official employed in the West Wing during those months told DailyMail.com on Friday that 'it never happened.'

'Are you kidding me?' asked one former aide who worked alongside Omarosa. 'If that were true, he would have tweeted about it by now and challenged Putin to get one.'

The source, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, called the outspoken former colleague 'Ponderosa,' a derisive combination of her name and the word 'ponderous.'

Separately, a current senior White House official told a 'New York' magazine reporter that 'there is no tanning bed in there,' and there has 'never been any request' for one.

Among the odder claims in 'Unhinged' is Omarosa's insistence that presidential daughter-in-law Lara Trump offered her a $15,000-per-month campaign job when she left the White House, along with an agreement not to talk publicly about Trump.

Omarosa describes that as a bid to silence her, but presidential campaign jobs typically come with such strings attached.

And she says she once saw the president chewing up a piece of paper after a meeting with lawyer Michael Cohen.

'I saw him put a note in his mouth. Since Trump was ever the germaphobe, I was shocked he appeared to be chewing and swallowing the paper. It must have been something very, very sensitive,' she writes in an excert given to The Washington Post.

As with many of her more pointed stories, White House aides flatly dnied it to the Post. Cohen, too, contradicted the story on Sunday ans marveled that anyone would believe it.
Kim Jong Un appeared to be having the time of his life inspecting cow pens and grain fields during a visit to one of his livestock farms, as seen in new pictures released by the North Korean government.

The dictator has reportedly made cattle breeding a priority, demanding improvements in meat quality and efficiency, as the North Korean population continues to starve.

Kim was pictured giving orders to staff and agricultural scientists as he toured a livestock breeding farm in Un'gok, South Pyongan Province.

Kim the cowboy: North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un visits a cattle farm in Un'gok South Pyongan Province

The images show the dictator inspecting the crops grown on the farm to feed the cattle, before touring the pens where the cows are kept.

According to state media, the dictator gave advice and directions to the staff on the cattle farm on how to improve North Korean cow breeds.

He said he wanted North Korean cows to 'rank among the advanced countries', and ordered that staff 'intensify the research work to prevent degeneration of the breeds'.

He also promised to make the breeding of North Korean cattle a 'state issue', and apparently offered his own expert advice on how to manage the cows.

According to state media, the visit took place on August 5, and was carried out in conjunction with a trip to a fish farm.

He's a-maized: Kim inspects the grains grown at the stock farm to feed the cattle

Top cows: Kim said he wanted North Korean cows to 'rank among the advanced countries'

Giving ordered: Kim ordered staff at the breeding centre to 'intensify the research work to prevent degeneration of the breeds'.

The pictured were released as North and South Korea agreed to hold a third peace summit in Pyongyang next month, with Kim hosting President Moon Jae-in.

The meeting was agreed this morning, following high-level talks in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula.

A trip by the South's President Moon Jae-in to the North's capital would be the first such visit for more than a decade, as the diplomatic thaw on the peninsula continues.

At the historic first summit between Moon and the North's leader Kim Jong Un in the Demilitarized zone in April, they agreed the South's president would visit Pyongyang during the autumn.

Today's high-level talks, taking place on the northern side of the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone, were proposed by the North last week.

In his opening statement, the North's chief delegate Ri Son Gwon said: 'As the Pyongyang meeting of the leaders of the north and south is being discussed, I think talking about the issue will provide answers to the wishes of the people.

'We have opened an era where we are advancing hand in hand rather than standing in each other's way.'

International sanctions against the North for its nuclear and missile programmes have kept economic cooperation between the two Koreas from taking off, while little progress has been made on the key issue of Pyongyang's denuclearisation.

South Korea's Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, leading the delegation from Seoul, said it was important that the two Koreas keep 'the same mind'.

Fishy business: Kim cracks a smile as he inspects a fish farm tasked with breeding fish to boost the population in Lake Yonphung, a man-made lake near Kaechon city

Taking a look around: Kim was photographed being showed around the fish farm

Giving directi-Uns: Kijm addresses staff at the fish farm in Kaechon city

'Many issues will be raised (at the meeting), but I think any problem can be resolved with that mindset,' Cho added.

Cho addressed the possibility of Pyongyang raising the issue of sanctions to the South, and said: 'We will explain our position to the North.'

The rapid rapprochement between the two neighbours that began this year paved the way for a landmark meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.

But although Trump touted his summit with Kim as a historic breakthrough, the nuclear-armed North has since criticised Washington for its 'gangster-like' demands of complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.

Meanwhile the US has urged the international community to maintain tough sanctions on the isolated regime - Seoul has caught three South Korean firms importing coal and iron from the North last year in violation of the measures.

Analysts say Moon could try to act as a mediator between the US and North Korea, having salvaged the Singapore meeting when Trump abruptly cancelled it.

If the third Moon-Kim summit takes place, the two are also expected to focus on hammering out a consensus on officially ending the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded with an armistice instead of a peace treaty.
A man and a woman have been arrested following the death of an aspiring rapper who was fatally stabbed with a samurai sword.

The duo turned themselves in to Newtown Police Station on in Sydney's inner-west on Monday evening following the stabbing in Forest Lodge on Friday. They are expected to be charged.

IT worker Jett McKee, 30, who went by the stage name Scepaz, was killed in an altercation in his Forest Lodge home last Friday afternoon.

Neighbours heard arguing between McKee and another man and woman, before he staggered out the front of the house with a 'massive' head wound.

Emergency services were called by McKee had already died by the time they arrived.

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Jett McKee (pictured) was identified as the victim of a fatal stabbing in Sydney's west on Friday

He is being remembered as an affluent member of the local hip-hop community

Tributes have been pouring in on social media since the rapper who went by Scepaz passed

He has been remembered as a 'humble guy', and was well-respected in the local scene

Since his passing, members of the hip-hop community have remembered him as an 'awesome soul'.

Tributes have poured in for the man, who was desperate to become a rapper.

'RIP Scepaz....we only met a handful of times but all the homies told me what a good bloke you were,' fellow rapper The Tongue said.

'R.I.P Scepaz you will be remembered,' said another.

The man and woman seen arguing with him fled the scene.

New South Wales Police has appealed for a woman and man seen fleeing from the scene (pictured) of a fatal assault on Friday to come forward

Witnesses said they saw the victim staggering down the street and collapsing after he was attacked in the suburb of Forest Lodge, near Glebe, on Friday afternoon

Resident Lynn Charlesworth's car (pictured) was covered in blood from the victim as he tried to escape

Police seized a firearm and a number of weapons to be forensically examined but said no shots were fired.

Officers from Leichhardt Police joined forces with detectives from the State Crime Command's Homicide Squad to establish Strike Force Hedda to investigate the man's death.

Police raided a house in a nearby street following the discovery of a gun near the body, but later uncovered it was a replica.

Witnesses said they saw the victim staggering down the street and collapsing after hearing an altercation.

Police are pictured gathering evidence near the scene of the stabbing on Friday

Police were called to the intersection of Hereford Street and Minogue Crescent at Forest Lodge around 12.40pm to find a body lying in the middle of the road (pictured)

Resident Lynne Charlesworth heard a woman's screams and saw the victim slumped in the street, covered in blood.

Her car was covered in his blood as he tried to escape.

'I told him to stay still and he started to roll across the street,' she told reporters on Saturday.

'He got to our car, laid back on it and pulled himself up. He was doing anything to get away, anything at all. His head was covered in blood. I couldn't tell you what his features were.'

Heavily armed police and officers carrying a battering ram closed in on a house nearby in Cross Street just after the fatal attack in broad daylight

Resident Alex Ververis arrived home shortly after the incident and described it as 'really unexpected and kind of scary'.

'I came back with my kid after swimming lessons. We know everyone on the street, there's nothing untoward and nothing suspicious,' he told ABC News.

Police are yet to reveal exactly what caused the victim's fatal injuries, but said a man and woman were seen fighting with him before his death.

Officers followed a trail of blood from the body to a nearby property on Hereford Street, and heavily armed officers carrying a battering ram closed in on the house.

A wide-scale manhunt continued on Saturday while a man and woman remain on the run

Pictures from the scene show the body covered with a white blanket surrounded by police at the intersection of Hereford Street and Minogue Crescent

Police were called to the intersection around 12.40pm on Friday, where Acting Superintendent Sam Crisafulli (pictured) told reporters that the victim was 'sadly found deceased on the street'

A builder working nearby told 9 News he and his workmates had heard a 'loud bang' and thought someone may have been run over by a car.

'One of the boys ran down to see if he was okay,' the man said.

He said the victim had 'a lot of blood coming out of his head'.

Another witness said she heard a lady yelling: 'Get away. Get the f**k away from me'.

The incident is believed to have been targeted and to have occurred after a man and a woman were 'seen in an altercation' with the victim prior to his death.

'We've spoken to a number of witnesses who tell us shortly before we were called a man and a woman were in an altercation with another man,' Superintendent Sam Crisafulli said.

'It was a violent attack with very, very serious consequences.'

Several crime scenes were established along Hereford Street on Friday, including inside a private residence

'We've spoken to a number of witnesses who tell us shortly before we were called a man and a woman were in an altercation with another man,' Superintendent Crisafulli said

Police were called to the intersection around 12.40pm on Friday and have reportedly already found a weapon

Detectives from the homicide squad are part of a strike force set up to investigate the man's death
Boris Johnson's decision to bring tea to reporters and pester them until they took one has seen him compared to Father Ted's housekeeper Mrs Doyle today.

Footage of the extraordinary moment the ex-foreign secretary emerged from his Oxfordshire house with a tray of hot drinks has been watched more than 3.8 million times since yesterday.

But rather than answer any questions or apologise for comparing a woman in a burka to a letter box he batted away questions with a cheery: 'Will you have a cup of tea?'

When pushed he said: 'I have nothing to say about this matter except to offer you some tea.'

Many compared him to Mrs Doyle from Father Ted, whose catchphrase was: 'Would you like a cup of tea, father?' and would say 'go on, go on' until he had one.

Boris Johnson left his Oxfordshire home today as the burka storm raged on but this time didn't bring tea for the waiting reporters and photographers

Boris Johnson brings tea for members of the press outside his home in Thame, Oxfordshire yesterday - and pestered them into taking a hot drink

Mr Johnson's insistence to focus on the tea rather answering any questions led to the comparison to Mrs Doyle from Father Ted

Other said that his decision to shuffle out with hot drinks was a typically British response to the crisis engulfing the Tories.

Oli Coyle branded the incident: 'The most British & Boris thing ever! Cup of tea anyone??'

What did Boris Johnson say about the burqa and the niqab? The ex Foreign Secretary sparked a storm of controversy after using his weekly newspaper column to compare women who wear burqas to letterboxes and bank robbers. The burqa is a full face covering that is associated with a conservative interpretation of Islam. It is different to the hijab, which leaves the face uncovered, or the niqab, which leaves the eyes exposed. In his Daily Telegraph article Mr Johnson said that he felt 'fully entitled' to expect women who wear face coverings to take them off when talking to him at his MP surgery. He also said schools and universities are entitled to take the same approach if a pupil comes in 'looking like a bank robber'. Mr Johnson branded the burqa 'oppressive' and said it is 'weird and bullying to expect people to cover their faces'. He added that he could not find scriptural authority for the dress code in the Koran. And he said 'it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes'. Advertisement

Another tweeted: 'Haha! Priceless! Boris Johnson: 'I will not answer any questions.' and serves a few cups of tea for the British press'.

One viewer said: 'I am in love with Boris for bringing out tea to the press.. s*** like that makes me feel proud to be British'.

His choice of mugs - including a mini egg one given free with an Easter egg - and his scruffy jumper and surf shorts have also been widely lampooned.

The Muslim Council of Britain says Islamophobic incidents have risen since Mr Johnson compared women in veils to bank robbers and letterboxes.

The organisation is today writing to Mrs May today demanding a full disciplinary inquiry as allies including the former Foreign Secretary's father and sister said he 'didn't go far enough'.

The MCB's letter says: 'We are hopeful that the party will not allow any whitewashing of this specific inquiry currently in process. No one should be allowed to victimise minorities with impunity.'

Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of Tell Mama, which measures anti-Muslim incidents, said today that Mr Johnson's comments will 'embolden mainly male perpetrators to have a go at visible Muslim women as a whole'.

Tell Mama says there have been 14 incidents of abuse of women wearing a niqab or hijab in the past week - up from five.

Mr Mughal said: 'Johnson thinks his flippant comments were funny and whilst his comments were about the burqa, the fact is that visible Muslim women are also impacted on by these comments. Perpetrators don't sit around thinking, 'Oh there is a burqa-clad woman and I will only vent my anger to her' - they see a visibly identifiable woman and off they go with their bigotry and prejudice.'

Boris Johnson's father last night accused the Tory leadership of 'losing its senses' over the burka row embroiling his son.

As Cabinet ministers lambasted the party's 'cack-handed' approach, Stanley Johnson claimed Conservative chiefs were 'making a mountain out of a molehill'.

He suggested his son was facing a 'kangaroo court' after describing Muslim women in face-covering veils as looking like letter-boxes or bank robbers.

Rachel Johnson has also backed her sibling.

She wrote: 'If I'd been phoning it in, as it were, I might have changed the word 'ridiculous' and cut out 'bank robbers', but apart from these two or three words, it seemed fine and fair  in fact, it didn't go far enough to express, in my view, how oppressive the garment is.

'When I see a woman wearing one, I don't try to 'other' her. The reverse. I try to imagine myself in her shoes. On the street. All the rest of my family are in casual shorts and T-shirts and flip-flops, but I'm a faceless, unidentifiable ghost in a suffocating black shroud.

Boris waved as he and his son Milo leave their Oxfordshire home in their bashed up Toyota

Boris' tea run has sparked mixed reactions on Twitter after a clip viewed by millions

'On the beach, my man in skimpy Speedos (OK, please no) me in hot dark fabric from head to toe, having to eat an ice cream by posting the pudding into my mouth from under a flap beneath my chin.'

Ms Johnson also called for her brother to 'go further' saying she would only apologise for his having not called for an outright ban.

The party's treatment of the former foreign secretary  who returned to the UK from holiday in Italy yesterday  has fuelled a Tory civil war.

Conservative chairman Brandon Lewis has called on Boris to apologise for his remarks, made in a newspaper column, while the party is considering formal disciplinary action. However, Mr Johnson's allies believe the ex-London mayor is being targeted because he poses a leadership threat to the Prime Minister.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen last night said grassroots anger could lead to more MPs submitting letters to reach the 48 needed to force a leadership challenge.

He warned: 'If Boris is suspended it will be open warfare in the Conservative Party. If Theresa May dares engineer a leadership contest while Boris is suspended it will be World War Three.'

Yesterday Stanley Johnson told Sky News: 'The hierarchy of the Tory Party has collectively lost its senses. It is making a mountain out of a molehill'.
This is the shocking moment a pair of baby formula bandits dressed in high-vis jackets make a run for it as they try to steal tins of powder.

Gangs of tradies have been caught on camera brazenly shoplifting hundreds of dollars worth of the product across Sydney.

The men are seen stashing baby formula in gym bags or even just running off with shopping baskets filled with the goods, the footage reveals.

It is believed the thieves are shipping tonnes of baby formula to lucrative international buyers for a high profit.

This is the shocking moment a pair of baby formula bandits dressed in high-vis jackets make a run for it as they try to steal tins of powder.

Shane Windred, professional thief catcher, observed 10 tins worth $300 be stolen in 20 minutes from a store in Concord, Sydney's inner west.

Police were then led to a 24-foot container 'full to the brim' with the product, Mr Windred said.

In recent months, police raids have uncovered large quantities of stolen formula.

Evidence of coordinated syndicates and links to criminal gangs have also been uncovered through the police raids.

A number of stores have been hit by gangs of tradies in high-visibility clothing ripping tins of the valuable commodity off the shelf, stashing it into their bags and returning a number of times

It is believed the thieves are shipping tonnes of baby formula to lucrative international buyers for a high profit

One man has taken to social media to share his support for the thieves stating on Twitter: 'That's what happens when people need two or more jobs to feed their family, its also what happens when you drive up house prices and make more families struggle, it also occurs when items prices get jacked with the population increase.'

However, this is not common sentiment with other social media users sharing opinions such as 'disgusting' and 'such a shame'.

Australian-made baby formula fetches a high price in overseas markets such as China, where the domestically produced equivalents are not considered as safe or as pure.

In recent months, police raids have uncovered large quantities of stolen formula

Chinese Sydneysiders are frequently seen buying up the product from Australian chemists and sending large quantities back home, or advertising them on social media to make a sizable profit.

These shoppers are known as 'daigou' - a Chinese word that translates to 'buying on behalf of'.

It is understood the new Sydney-wide cartel of shoplifting formula dealers is tapping in to this booming baby formula market.

Chinese Sydneysiders are frequently seen buying up the product from Australian chemists and sending large quantities back home, or advertising them on social media to make a sizable profit

In 2017, digital marketer, Benjamin Sun from Think China estimated there were around 80,000 'daigou' plying their trade in Australia - up from 40,000 in 2014.

Diagou shoppers have been criticised in the past after footage emerged of huge queues of people waiting to stockpile baby formula and ship it overseas - while Australian mothers were left with limited access to the product.

In attempts to combat stockpiled baby formula, where some footage showed customers grabbing it off the trolleys before it could even reach the shelves, major supermarkets and other stores were forced to set consumer limits.

Woolworths announced in October 2017 it's supermarket chain was introducing a stricter limit in order to give all customers a fair chance.

'At Woolworths, we understand the frustration that our customers can feel when they can't get the products they need and this is another example where we've taken action to do the right thing,' said merchandise manager James Hepworth.

'This is particularly the case when it comes to family necessities such as baby formula.'

In attempts to combat stockpiled baby formula, where some footage showed customers grabbing it off the trolleys before it could even reach the shelves, major supermarkets and other stores were forced to set consumer limits

At the time of the reduced limit announcement, Mr Hepworth said the majority of Woolworths customers purchase only the necessary amounts of baby formula.

'However, by reducing our can limit to two per shop means we are better placed to support our customers in purchasing this essential item.'

'Our two-tin formula limit has been in place since October 2017 and is designed to ensure more of our customers have access to the products they need for their family,' he said.

'While the majority of customers only buy the product they need for their family, our store teams continue to work hard to uphold the two-tin limit.

'We continue to look for new ways to ensure guaranteed stock for Australian families with our suppliers.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted NSW Police for comment about the alleged 'cartel'.
This is the momet two dogs that mauled a two-year-old girl's face rampaged through a Sydney park.

The girl suffered puncture wounds to her face and ears after being mauled by two American bulldogs on Friday.

Video footage shows the young girl being pushed into the park in a pram by her mother.

The horrific moment when two American bulldogs attacked a two-year-old girl in Turella Reserve in Sydney's south has been caught on camera

As they get further on their walk the toddler wanted to play by the water in Turella Reserve in Sydney's south and so she was out of her pram.

The two American bulldogs then race towards the mother and daughter - the dogs were off the lead.

Both dogs head straight for the young girl.

Are you liable if your dog attacks a person or animal? Dog attacks whether on you or another person should be reported to local council or the police if out of hours Under the Companion Animals Act 1998, the dog owner is liable for any attacks made by their dog but there are some protections in place for attacks where a trespasser comes into contact with the animal Advertisement

The child's mother began screaming and tried to keep her away from the dog by holding her up in the air.

The owner of the animals can be seen attempting to restrain them as other people run to help.

Emergency services were called on Monday around 11am.

She was bleeding from the bite wounds to her face and was assessed and treated by paramedics at the scene before being transported to St George Hospital, in Kogarah.

The young girl was then taken to Sydney Children's Hospital in a stable condition.

Mario Bogdanyi (pictured), a witness said: 'I saw two bulldogs jump up, trying to grab their baby and I sort of went over there to stop it, and rang the ambulance'

Mario Bogdanyi, a witness, told 9News: 'I saw two bulldogs jump up, trying to grab their baby and I sort of went over there to stop it, and rang the ambulance.

'I've got kids so you don't want to see that.'

A spokesperson for NSW Ambulance Service told Daily Mail Australia that when paramedics arrived on the scene the toddler's injuries were quite severe.

The spokesperson confirmed once they had attended to the girl, however, the situation 'wasn't that serious'.

The dogs have been taken by council.

Dog attacks should be reported to the local government as soon as possible or to the police.
Britain could be responsible for taking in 141 migrants rescued from the Mediterranean, Brussels said after the Italian government called for the UK to take them in.

Rescue ship the Aquarius has been stranded at sea after operations to save the group, which includes 67 unaccompanied minors and is mainly made up of Somalis and Eritreans, on Friday.

Italy's transport minister Danilo Toninelli claimed the UK is responsible for the migrants because the rescue ship that picked them up is sailing under the flag of the British territory of Gibraltar.

The European Commission said that as the flag state, the UK could be responsible, but suggested the circumstances of the rescue also had to be looked at.

But the Foreign Office rejected the claim said it was 'well-established' that those stranded aboard the Aquarius should disembark 'at a nearby safe port'.

The Aquarius (pictured) has been stranded at sea after operations to save the group, which includes 67 unaccompanied minors and is mainly made up of Somalis and Eritreans

Tove Ernst, the commission's spokeswoman on migration, said: 'There is a possibility that the flag state, that there could a case for the flag state to be responsible.

'However, this may not be practically feasible and it is also really depending on the situation and who is co-ordinating where the events took place.'

She added: 'We are now in contact with a number of member states and stand ready to lend our full and swift diplomatic support to resolve this situation.'

A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'We are deeply concerned for the welfare of 141 migrants who have been rescued from the Mediterranean by sailing vessel Aquarius.

'It is well-established that responsibility for arranging disembarkation, at a nearby safe port, is assumed by the relevant regional maritime rescue and co-ordination, and in accordance with the wishes of the ship's master.

'The UK is committed to working with European partners long term to tackle the shared challenge of irregular migration.'

Italy has repeatedly refused rescue ships entry to its ports.

Ms Ernst added: 'The issue of search and rescue and disembarkation is a question that falls under international law and a matter for national authorities, the Commission has no competence or role to play when it comes to disembarkation and cannot assess individual cases.

'While the duty to rescue is clear, there is nothing in the international legal regime as to the responsibility of the flag state for the disembarkation of the rescued persons.'

The Aquarius, which was left stranded with 630 migrants on board in June after being turned away by Rome and Valletta, resumed rescue operations off the Libyan coast last week.

On Friday, it picked up 141 people in two separate operations, half of them children, but it has again struggled to find a port to bring them ashore.

Sophie Beau, president of the vessel's operator SOS Mediterranee, said the ship, currently situated between Malta and the Italian island of Lampedusa, had again received 'official negative replies' from the two countries.

'We're asking all European countries to find a solution. We're asking them to be responsible and find a safe port in the Mediterranean,' she said, accusing Italy and Malta of flouting international maritime law.

Tove Ernst, a spokesman for the European Commission, said it was in contact with 'a number of member states that have approached us regarding the incident' to try to find a 'swift resolution' to the standoff.

The Aquarius, which was left stranded with 630 migrants on board in June after being turned away by Rome and Valletta, resumed rescue operations off the Libyan coast last week

Since June, Italy's new far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has regularly turned away rescue ships operated by foreign NGOs such as the Aquarius, accusing them of playing into the hands of people smugglers.

On Saturday, he said the Aquarius would 'never see an Italian port' again.

His hardline stance has sparked a row among EU members, underscoring their failure to come up with a common approach to the influx of people trying to escape conflict, persecution or poverty in Africa and the Middle East.

In June, Spain stepped in and welcomed the Aquarius.

France, which was within closer range but did not allow the boat access, took in 78 of the migrants after they landed.

The director of the French port of Sete on the Mediterranean coast said Monday that he would be prepared to let the boat dock if the French government gave its approval.

'We have a port, three docks are available and we can welcome these migrants whenever, but they cannot come without the approval of French authorities,' Jean-Claude Gayssot, a former Communist party minister, told AFP.

The French government insists that international maritime law must be respected, meaning that the boat should be able to dock in the port that is closest.

Leaders on the French island of Corsica had offered to welcome the Aquarius in June.

For years, Italy pleaded with its EU partners for help with a massive influx of arrivals from Africa that has seen 700,000 people cross the Mediterranean and land in the country since 2013.
This is the horrifying moment an an angry ostrich floored and attacked a zoo worker in Russia.

Visitors to Penza city zoo watched the disturbed scenes as the ostrich repeatedly kicked the man with its long sharp claws.

There were screams from onlookers as the giant bird went berserk, toppling the man, who used his feet to try and fight off the ostrich.

After losing interest in him, the bird lunged towards a watching zebra, who quickly flees.

This is the horrifying moment an an angry ostrich floored and attacked a zoo worker in Russia

The unnamed man picked up his hat from the ground and left the enclosure.

He had been trying to feed the ostriches when he was suddenly attacked.

First reports said the zoo worker had broken several ribs but the zoo claimed he was 'unhurt' from his ordeal and did not require hospital treatment.

Ostriches are capable of killing lions as well as humans with their sharp claws on each two-toed foot.

The attack was highlighted on mainstream and online television in Russia by Ren TV Telegram channel 112.

Visitors to Penza city zoo watched the disturbed scenes as the ostrich repeatedly kicked the man with its long sharp claws

A witness told Ren TV: 'The bird was throwing him here and there for a while.'

The reports claimed the male ostrich mistook the man for a rival during its mating season.

Another version was the man had poked the bird with a mop handle infuriating the bird.

Zoo rules say that the man should have been accompanied by another worker when feeding the ostriches.

Local news outlet Progorod58 said that the unnamed worker was today back at work.
A grieving widow was informed by text message that the man who killed her husband before mutilating his body is set to be released from prison.

James Spencer bludgeoned Peter Green, 67, to death with a spanner then repeatedly stabbed his body with a kitchen knife in Skelmanthorpe, West Yorkshire in October 2008.

Mr Green's wife of some 28 years, Linda, said her life was 'totally destroyed' when Spencer carried out the sickening attack on her 'soulmate'.

And in a further blow she learned that her husband's killer is set to be released and will be allowed to visit the neighbouring village, after police sent her a text message.

Linda Green, who said her life was 'totally destroyed' when Spencer carried out the sickening attack on her 'soulmate'

Linda Green with her husband Peter on their wedding day in 1980 (left) and James Spencer (right)

Mrs Green, a retired nurse who still lives in her marital home, said she was on holiday in Spain when she received a text message from a police liaison officer.

She said: 'I felt physically sick. I just couldn't believe it. I told [friends] 'that thing' who killed my husband is to be released.

'But to be quite honest I have been expecting this from the word go. I just couldn't believe what I was hearing.

'There is no justice, just ridiculous do-gooders who have no idea of the destroyed lives left behind existing in a constant nightmare - dead but still breathing, nothing to live for, just total emptiness, no purpose, no reason, nothing but that thing still has his life in front of him, he is only in his mid-30s.

Mrs Green (right) said she was on holiday in Spain when she received this text message (left)from a police liaison officer

Police at the scene in Skelmanthorpe, West Yorkshire in 2008 after Mr Green's body was found

'No one is safe. He is totally unpredictable, a drug user and alcoholic and very dangerous, has no emotions, just pure evil through and through his entire body.'

Mr Green had been house-sitting for Spencer's mother in Skelmanthorpe, West Yorkshire, when Spencer launched his savage attack after a 16-hour drinking binge, downing more than 15 pints of Guinness, a cocktail and eight vodkas.

Around 4am he went hunting for Mr Green and when he didn't find him at his home, he went to his mothers'.

He smashed down the door, and attacked Mr Green in an upstairs bedroom before putting his bloodied clothes and weapons in a Morrisons bag, and dumping it nearby.

He then drove to his stepfather's home and told him: 'You won't believe what I've done.'

A post mortem found Mr Green had made a desperate attempt to stave off the vicious assault, suffering 30 cuts to his head and neck, skull fractures, multiple stab wounds and deep gashes on his wrists inflicted after he died.

Spencer pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and was given a sentence of imprisonment for the public's protection.

He was ordered to serve at least seven years and 148 days in jail on top of the 582 he had already spent inside.

He had already admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility after psychiatrists found he was suffering from an 'abnormality of the mind.'

Mr Green had made a desperate attempt to stave off the vicious assault (pictured, police at the scene) suffering 30 cuts to his head and neck, skull fractures, multiple stab wounds and deep gashes on his wrists

The court heard he suffered from Asperger syndrome, mood swings and panic attacks and an 'abnormality of the mind.'

A parole bid in 2013 failed with judges telling him the term was 'not excessive' in light of the 'substantial' aggravating features in the case.

Mrs Green said: 'I would like to know how the Parole Board has come to the decision to release him.

'Peter was my entire world, I still have his ashes and his spectacles and a handkerchief of his on my bedside table. We used to have a brilliant social life, dinner parties, we'd go away for weekends, life was wonderful. We worked hard and played hard.

'I don't know how I have survived all this time but I seem to have gained an inner strength. I have mood swings and some days I feel I can take on the world and other days I have had enough.'

A Prison and Probation Service spokeswoman said: 'Public protection is a priority and a full risk assessment is carried out by the independent Parole Board when offenders are released into the community.

'Life-sentenced offenders are on licence for life and subject to supervision and a strict set of conditions, which can include exclusion zones which ban offenders from entering or living in certain areas. If they fail to comply with those conditions they can be recalled to prison.'

A Parole Board spokesman said: 'We can confirm that a panel of the Parole Board directed the release of Mr James Spencer, following an adjourned oral hearing in March 2018 that was completed on paper in July 2018. Parole Board decisions are solely focused on whether a prisoner would represent a significant risk to the public after release.'
A seven-year row over a dropped kerb between a supermarket maintenance worker and his local council has ended after the authority was forced to issue him an apology.

Birmingham City Council said sorry to Ron Humphries after he was accused of doing the works himself to get his car on his driveway. Mr Humphries was facing a huge fine after being accused of illegally lowering the edge of the pavement outside his home for his own benefit.

It then emerged the council had actually done the work at the property in Alwold Road, Wesley Castle.

And last week, the council finally finished the job.

'I'm over the moon the work has been carried out,' says the 57-year-old.

'But I'm still not sure if I'm going to be billed for it.

'They just turned up and did it out of the blue.'

Back in 2011, Ron approached the council about his plans to have a driveway built. The work would require a dropped kerb installed on a grassed area outside his home.

Ron Humphries outside his home in Wesley Castle where the council botched a drop kerb - and them blamed him

The dropped kerb works were originally carried out seven years ago but the row tumbled on until this year. The bump left by contractors can be seen under the car

The council agreed to the improvement, but pointed out that because footpath alterations were needed, the kerb must be put in place by their contractors.

For the job Birmingham Council did not use longstanding highway partners Amey, but another company.

Ron, a supermarket maintenance worker, paid 1,450, but was unhappy with the result.

'The tarmac had been raised into a bump, a little hill,' he says.

'I had to angle the car to get it on the drive, otherwise the sills would scrape against it.'

The kerb was dropped by Birmingham City Council but Mr Humphries faced a fine when he was accused of doing it himself

Eighteen months ago, council contractors, in the street to carry out similar work on a neighbour's property, spotted the raised area and voiced concern.

That prompted Ron, who owns the home, to take action.

'I put a complaint in and sent pictures,' he explains.

'Back in October, I had an email agreeing to do the repairs and I was told it would be done within six months.'

He was still waiting by June of this year and decided to jog the local authority's memory.

The response was a letter informing him that he himself had carried out the job illegally - and would be billed for the work.

'My neighbour's kerb cost 2,000,' he said, 'so we were talking about a substantial sum. I was livid, I had lots of proof. They accused me of doing it myself.

Mr Humphries was contacted by the council to ensure him the works were being carried out to fix the damage

The kerb repair works are being fixed and Birmingham City Council has apologised to Mr Humphries

'I'm not that stupid. I knew if I did it and someone tripped and fell, I'd have been liable.'

The stand-off is now over. Ron says he was not contacted about last week's repairs and has had no assurances he won't be charged.

But a council spokesman told the Sunday Mercury: 'We can confirm that the dropped kerb, constructed by a subcontractor in 2011, was authorised and apologise for any confusion caused by the letter sent in error to Mr Humphries stating otherwise.

'We apologise for the delay Mr Humphries has experienced in having these repairs carried out, which is due to our highways partner Amey having to prioritise the most safety critical defects first before carrying out other repairs.

'However, we can confirm that works are expected to be completed within the next 14 days.'
Duane Youd (pictured) was killed when he flew a small plane into his own house early Monday morning after he had been arrested

A Utah man flew a small plane into his own house early Monday just hours after he had been arrested for assaulting his wife in a nearby canyon where the couple went to talk over their problems, authorities said.

Duane Youd, 47, was killed in the crash after he piloted the Cessna Citation Jet 525 from a nearby airport.

His estranged wife, Sandy, and her son who were in the home got out and survived despite the front part the two-story house being engulfed in flames, Payson police Sgt Noemi Sandoval said.

The crash occurred around 2.30am on Monday in Payson, a city of about 20,000 residents 60 miles south of Salt Lake City.

Investigators believe the plane belonged to Youd's employer and that he intentionally flew into his own house, Sandoval said.

Authorities said Youd was an experienced pilot. It wasn't immediately clear who employed Youd, but according to his Facebook page, he worked as a MedEvac pilot.

Youd was arrested about 7.30pm Sunday after witnesses called police to report that he was assaulting his wife, Utah County Sheriff's Sgt Spencer Cannon said.

Youd was arrested just hours before he smashed into the home where his estranged wife, Sandy, and a child were sleeping. Police said Youd had assaulted his wife in a nearby canyon where the couple went to talk over their problems

The crash occurred around 2.30am on Monday in Payson, a city of about 20,000 residents 60 miles south of Salt Lake City

Joslyn Youd, 21, center, with her brother Parker Youd, 17, talks near their damaged house after a plane crashed

The couple had been drinking and went to American Fork Canyon to talk about problems they were having.

Youd was booked into jail on suspicion of domestic violence and then bailed out, Cannon said.

He requested an officer escort to go to his home so he could get his truck and some belongings around midnight. That occurred without incident, Sandoval said.

Within hours, Youd was taking off in the plane from the Spanish Fork-Springville Airport about 15 miles north of his house.

He flew directly to his neighborhood and smashed into his house, Sandoval said.

Photos of the wreckage showed the white plane charred and in pieces in the front yard nearby an overturned and crushed car. Most of the upscale house was still intact, but heavily burned in the front.

Joslyn gets a hug from her aunt Nikki Ewell outside her damaged house, background, after a plane operated by her father crashed

His wife, Sandy (pictured, together left and right) and a child who were in the home got out and survived the crash, despite the front part the two-story house being engulfed in flames, Payson police Sgt Noemi Sandoval said

Sandy works as a real estate agent. She previously worked as a bus driver for the Nebo School District. Youd is pictured with his estranged wife, Sandy

Before the crash Youd was booked into jail on suspicion of domestic violence and then bailed out. Federal Aviation Administration officials investigate the scene of a plane crash in Payson, Utah

Police had responded one previous time to the house on a domestic violence incident, Sandoval said.

Online court records show that Youd agreed on July 23 to attend marriage and family counselling sessions for six months as part of a plea agreement following an April 8 domestic violence incident in which he was charged with disorderly conduct.

In 2008, Youd, who has a 17-year-old son, Parker, earned a bachelors degree from Utah Valley University where he studied Professional Aeronautical Science.

Sandy works as a real estate agent. She previously worked as a bus driver for the Nebo School District.

He requested an officer escort to go to his home so he could get his truck and some belongings around midnight

Within hours, Youd was taking off in the plane from the Spanish Fork-Springville Airport about 15 miles north of his house. He flew directly to his neighborhood and smashed into his house, Sandoval said

Photos of the wreckage showed the white plane charred and in pieces in the front yard nearby an overturned and crushed car. Most of the upscale house was still intact, but heavily burned in the front
The family of a mother-of-three who vanished on St. Patrick's Day are asking for drones to help search for her, even though cops think she is dead.

Rita Gutierrez-Garcia, 34, was last seen in a parking lot behind 3's Bar in downtown Longmont, Colorado on March 18.

Investigators no longer believe that she is still alive, but have not yet been able to locate her remains.

Authorities said could be anywhere between Longmont and Rollins Pass outside of Nederland, Colorado, according to CBS Denver.

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Rita Gutierrez-Garcia, 34, a mother of three, was last seen by friends in an alleyway behind a bar in downtown Longmont, Colorado at 2.30am on March 18

Authorities have named Juan Figueroa, 29, as a suspect in Gutierrez-Garcia's disappearance. He is in custody after a 2017 accusation that he strangled and raped a woman in Longmont

In July, Longmont police said that they had a suspect in her disappearance, Juan Figueroa, 29, who is said to be the last person Gutierrez-Garcia was seen speaking with before she vanished, the Times-Call reported.

There did not appear to be a prior connection between the two.

Figueroa is currently in custody after being arrested on a warrant for a case in which he was accused of strangling and raping a woman in Longmont in November 2017.

He was caught while trying to cross the border nine days after Gutierrez-Garcia disappeared.

Figueroa has not been charged in the Gutierrez-Garcia case.

Gutierrez-Garcia's friends and relatives have not given up hope of finding her.

Her brother, Omar Holguin, told CBS Denver that he, family members and their close friends have a weekly routine in which they take a cadaver dog to search for her out to the wilderness where authorities suspect she may be.

Holguin said the area 'is huge' and that they are 'going to take it week by week and just cover as much of it as we can.'

'People with drones obviously they cover more ground and more quickly. It will be a lot more helpful than someone walking' he added.

Her friends and family are now hoping to enlist the help of drone pilots in their search, since they can 'obviously they cover more ground and more quickly. It will be a lot more helpful than someone walking,' Holquin said.

The mother-of-three's friends and relatives have not given up hope of finding her

Gutierrez-Garcia's friends and family have settled into a weekly routine in which they use a cadaver dog to search the area where authorities believe she might be

Police said Gutierrez-Garcia was last seen speaking with several other people in the parking lot behind 3's Bar. The avid Snapchat user has not posted any updates since her disappearance

He has also asked anyone with any additional information about Gutierrez-Garcia's death to come forward to help narrow down the search area.

The evening of her disappearance, Gutierrez-Garcia was said to have been out with friends and family celebrating St. Patrick's Day on March 17. Police said that she had gone to two establishments that night  The Speakeasy and Breakers Grill  before walking to the nearby parking lot behind 3's Bar.

Her friends said they saw Gutierrez-Garcia on her phone in the parking lot at about 2.30am on March 18 and heard her say that she would get a ride with someone, Deputy Chief Jeff Satur said, according to the Times-Call.

Gutierrez-Garcia's friends, then left the parking lot. That was the last time the mother of three was seen.

Her family realized that she was missing when her mother, Diane Romero, arrived at her home to pick up Gutierrez-Garcia's three children  ages 6, 13 and 18  to take them to church, according to KDVR.

She was officially reported missing on March 19.

Gutierrez-Garcia's family was said to be particularly concerned because her cell phone has been turned off and she has not responded to any calls or texts. The avid Snapchat user has not shared any content since around the time she was last seen on March 18.

Romero said that Gutierrez-Garcia is one college semester shy of graduation and is studying to become a paralegal. She described her daughter as being a busy and bubbly mother.

Gutierrez-Garcia has ombre hair and is 5'7' tall weighing about 140 pounds. She has tattoos on her arms, shoulder and feet. She was last seen wearing a black, long-sleeve shirt and black leggings.

The Longmont Police Department is now is offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to discovery of her whereabouts or for information that leads to arresting the suspect.

Anyone with information about Gutierrez-Garcia's disappearance is asked to contact Longmont police at (303) 651-8501.
A seven-year-old girl was tragically killed after she was hit by a stray bullet at a Florida shopping plaza over the weekend.

Heydi Rivas Villanueva was sitting in a car with her father and a sibling, waiting for her mother to return, when a stray bullet struck her in the head on Saturday.

Authorities said multiple shots had rang out at the Jacksonville plaza during a confrontation between 'two unrelated groups'.

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Heydi Rivas Villanueva was sitting in a car with her father and a sibling, waiting for her mother to return at a Florida shopping plaza, when a stray bullet struck her in the head on Saturday

Heydi's family had just dropped her mother off when they got caught in the crossfire around 6pm.

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said two people on foot approached a dark sedan and a confrontation occurred with the driver.

A dark-colored Kia that was parked next to the sedan also appeared to be involved in the incident.

An argument ensued and gunfire broke out between the two groups of individuals.

Heydi was struck and later died from her injuries at a nearby hospital.

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said two people on foot (pictured) approached a dark sedan and a confrontation occurred with the driver

An argument ensued and gunfire broke out between the two groups of individuals. Heidi was struck by a stray bullet. Pictured are two of the suspects fleeing during the incident

The two people on foot who had confronted the car fled in a green Nissan Altima.

Authorities said there is believed to be a bullet hole in the upper part of the car's windshield.

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office has since released photos and surveillance footage that shows the two suspects who approached the car.

They show a black man wearing a white top and jeans, and a black man wearing a red top and black shorts.

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office has since released photos and surveillance footage that shows the two suspects who approached the car

The footage shows the two suspects walking around the shopping plaza before the shooting

The surveillance footage shows the two men walking around the shopping plaza.

It also shows footage of the black Kia pulling out of the parking lot and a man running away as the black Kia almost hits a bright blue car.

Authorities have released images of vehicles that were in the parking lot at the time of the shooting, including the Kia and the blue car.

'The bright blue vehicle we believe was involved in a traffic crash with one of the vehicles. We are trying to make contact with the driver of the vehicle,' First Coast Crime Stoppers said in a statement on Sunday.

Authorities also released footage that shows a black Kia that was parked next to the car that the suspects on foot confronted. It is believed to be involved in the incident

At one point in the surveillance footage the Kia almost crashes into a bright blue car as it pulled into the parking lot after what appeared to be the shooting

An $11,000 reward is being offered for information leading up to an arrest.

Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry has called the fatal shooting 'heartbreaking'.

'My Lord. My God. This is heartbreaking. These are our children,' Curry said in a statement posted to Twitter.

'Our cops are in pursuit of these terrible people. Prayers for the family. Our law enforcement will bring the full force of the law on those who committed this.'
A Labour MP will face trial over charges of perverting the course of justice for allegedly lying about who was behind the wheel of a speeding vehicle.

Fiona Onasanya, who represents Peterborough, allegedly conspired with her younger brother Festus to avoid penalty points.

The 34-year-old, who is a Labour whip responsible for discipline in the party, faces one count of perverting the course of justice. Her brother Festus Onasanya, 33, faces three counts of the same offence.

Labour MP Fiona Onasanya seen leaving the Old Bailey today where she discovered she will face trial in November on perverting the course of justice charges

Fiona Onasanya allegedly conspired with younger brother Festus, seen here leaving court earlier, to avoid getting penalty points

Prosecutors allege either she or her brother were behind the wheel of a speeding vehicle on July 24 last year but together with her brother, told the authorities someone else - Aleks Antipow - was driving.

The second similar count relates to an incident on August 23 when her brother was allegedly driving, but she told authorities the same man had been behind the wheel.

Festus, 33, a singer from Cambridge, also faces a third charge of perverting the course of justice relating to a similar offence, where he allegedly blamed Suvradip Paul for a speeding offence on June 17 last year.

The charges allege they intended to pervert the course of justice by driving a vehicle in excess of the speed limit, falsely informing the investigating authorities that a third party had been the driver and enabling them to avoid such prosecution and punishment.

Ms Onasanya, of Cambridge, won the key marginal seat in 2017, and is a member of Jeremy Corbyn's frontbench.

At the Old Bailey today both appeared in the dock - Ms Onasanya wearing a black shirt and jacket, with her co-defendant wearing a white t-shirt and dark green jacket.

The politician (pictured) was charged last month with perverting the course of justice after allegedly lying to police about who was behind the wheel of a speeding vehicle in separate incidents in Cambridgeshire last year

Both spoke only to confirm their names and enter their not guilty pleas to all three counts.

Both Mr Antipow and Mr Paul - who lives in India - will be giving evidence in person, the court heard.

Jocelyn Ledward prosecuting said: 'It is likely to be a seven-day trial.

'All witnesses are investigating individuals, except Mr Antipow and Mr Paul, who are both private individuals.

'Mr Paul is a resident of India but he is willing to travel to the UK and that is the most cost effective provision, given difficulties with video links.'

Ms Onasanya, who is an ally of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, denies the allegations

The court heard the trial may be heard by a High Court judge.

Last month on Twitter Ms Onasanya said: 'I will be robustly defending all these allegations, and strongly refute any suggestions that I have broken the law.'

Judge Nicholas Hilliard, the Recorder of London, released the defendants on unconditional bail.

He added: 'If you decided not to come to your trial the trial will nonetheless go ahead so it's in your interests that you are here.'

Both will next appear at the Old Bailey on November 12 for a trial expected to last around two weeks.
The widow of the Texas church gunman who massacred 26 people in the middle of a Sunday service says he called her immediately after saying he was sorry for killing so many people.

Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, opened fire during church services on the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs last November before taking his own life soon after.

For the first time since the massacre, the gunman's wife Danielle Kelley has opened up about that day and the painful months that have followed in a lengthy interview with the San Antonio Express-News.

She revealed that her husband bound her to their bed using rope, handcuffs and tape in front of their two young children right before the massacre. Danielle said he told their two-year-old son that he would be right back.

Danielle Kelley, the widow of Texas church gunman Devin Kelley, has tearfully spoken out for the first time about the massacre that left 26 people dead

Danielle said she watched helplessly as he left the house wearing a ballistic vest and carrying his Ruger AR-556 and two handguns.

Following the shooting, Kelley fled the scene in his truck after a brief shootout with a man who tried to chase him after hearing the gunfire in the church.

Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, opened fire during church services on the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs last November before taking his own life soon after

Kelley then called his wife and parents. He had earlier called his parents saying his wife needed help and they had rushed over to untie her.

Not knowing that he had already carried out the mass shooting, his wife and parents begged him to reconsider.

'I just shot up the Sutherland Springs church,' he said during the call.

'He was like 'I can't, I've killed so many people. So, so many people',' Danielle said. 'He kept saying how sorry he was.'

She said they all said they loved each other before the phone call ended.

Kelley shot himself moments later and he was later found dead in his car.

The church Kelley targeted was one frequented by his wife's adoptive mother Michelle Shields. She wasn't at the service on the day of the massacre and has described her son-in-law as controlling and abusive to her daughter, who often accepted the abuse.

Danielle, who still uses her husband's name because she doesn't want to be 'ashamed' of it, has since started going to services at the First Baptist Church with her mother.

Danielle, who is now raising their son and daughter alone, said she is still coming to terms with her husband's death and the pain he caused nine months ago

Danielle has since started going to services at the First Baptist Church with her mother. She is pictured above praying with Stephen Willeford - the man who shot her husband as he was fleeing the church last year

She knew a lot of the victims as she grew up in the same community.

More than half of those killed were children. Authorities put the official death toll at 26 because one of the victims was pregnant.

Danielle described returning to the church as 'difficult' but said she had been welcomed with open arms.

'I feel awful because nothing I can ever say will ever, ever, ever mend anyone's heart,' she said.

'A lot of people who died were very special to me.

'If I could take everything, all the pain, and hold it on my own I would, so nobody else would hurt. If it was only me that could've died and everybody else could've been alive, I would've gladly taken that.'

Her interview with the Express-News touched on her conflicting grief about mourning for her husband given he murdered so many people nine months ago.

'No matter what, I will love him,' Danielle said. 'Even though he went off and ruined more people's lives than I could ever imagine.'

She admitted there had been 'red flags' and also acknowledged their relationship had been tumultuous at times.

'We all have our demons,' Danielle said.

Kelley opened fire during church services on the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs (pictured above) last November, killing more than two dozen people

A memorial for the victims of the shooting, including 26 white chairs each painted with a cross and and rose, is displayed in the church in Sutherland Springs

Danielle and Devin met when she was 13 and he was 17. Both came from unstable backgrounds. Danielle said her biological parents had abused her before Child Protective Services removed her and Michelle Shields adopted her as a four-year-old. She said Devin told her about being bullied as a child.

After he joined the Air Force and married another woman, they corresponded through letters. He was court-martialed for fracturing his stepson's skull, served time behind bars, was kicked out of the military and divorced.

Devin and Danielle married in April 2014, when he was 23 and she was 19. She said he went everywhere with her.

'It was frustrating. But you would be surprised, when everything's gone, how much I miss it,' she said.

Six months before the massacre, while living in Sutherland Springs, about 30 miles southeast of San Antonio, Devin grew more depressed, his temper grew shorter, and he grew less tolerant, she said.

'He was shutting down,' Danielle said.

In April 2016, he bought an assault-style rifle and gathered more than a dozen magazines capable of holding 30 rounds of ammunition each. He grew more reclusive.

When she persuaded him to attend church services, including at First Baptist, he would laugh during sermons. He became an atheist.

'Devin was sick. He lost who he was. Because the real Devin would've never hurt babies. He was a family person. He would never have hurt anybody. He lost touch of reality,' Danielle said.
A group of black school girls on a summer camp in New Jersey were asked to leave an aquarium gift shop on Friday by a store owner who said they were 'not welcome' without a chaperone.

The incident happened at Jenkinson's Aquarium Gift Shop at Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, on Friday when four girls from Princess to Queenz day camp in Paterson entered the store after touring the aquarium.

The girls, all of whom are aged 12 or 13, were promptly told they were not welcome inside without an adult chaperone.

When they returned with one of the chaperones from the camp, they say they were 'yelled at' while other white children in the store were allowed to browse without supervision.

A video taken by one of the camp organizers afterwards has been viewed more than 60,000 times since being uploaded to Facebook.

Four girls from the Princess 2 Queenz day camp from Paterson, New Jersey, were asked to leave the aquarium gift shop. Their camp director shared this photograph of the group afterwards along with a video of her exchange with the store worker

The store worker, who was named only as 'Linda', told the girls they were not welcome without a chaperone and then questioned

She claims that when she took her cell phone out to record the exchange, the store worker, who was named only as Linda, said: 'You guys love to get your phone out to record.'

It is the latest in a string of incidents across the country where black or Hispanic people have recorded being asked to leave premises or had their presence questioned by a white person without explanation.

In the video, camp director Attiyya Barrett is filmed questioning the worker who laughed and seemed to dismiss her complaint.

'She excused all of our girls, and what was your reason?' Barrett said from behind the camera.

'Cause they didn't have a chaperone,' the store worker replied. And when they went and got their chaperone, what was your reason?' she carried on.

The store worker replied: 'I didn't think she was a chaperone.'

Camp director Attiyya Barrett shared a video of her exchange with Linda on social media afterwards

Attiyya Barrett, the camp director, (right) said the store owner told her 'you guys love to get your phones out to record' when she started filming. One of the chaperones who was called on after the incident is pictured (left) in the store standing in front of the girls

The girls from the summer camp have since said the experience left them feeling 'embarrassed'. 'I've never been in a situation like that before.

'It was a pretty bad experience because we didnt do anything wrong,' Kierra Williams, 12, told northjersey.com.

Her cousin, Kianna, was with her at the time. She said that they had just toured the aquarium and were excited about their day out when the incident occurred.

'We were all excited to go because a lot of the girls had not been there before,' she said.

She claimed that after they were told to leave, the woman threatened to call security.

Jayla Bush, a 12-year-old who was part of the group, said she thought the incident was 'a colored thing'.

Sajadah Tisder, the fourth girl who is 13, said: 'This is the world we live in today.'

Jenkinson's suspended the woman in the video and apologized to the group.

In a statement, the company said: 'We strive to provide all of our customers with an enjoyable experience and we clearly missed the mark this time.

The incident took place inside the Jenkinson's Aquarium gift shop on Friday

'We sincerely apologize to the girls from the camp group for the way they felt upon leaving.

'We have been in contact with the group leader and will continue to work with her to make amends,' marketing director Toby Wolf said.

Barrett was furious about the exchange which she said undermined everything the camp taught.

'The constraint I had to exhibit in front of them leaves a horrible taste in my mouth.

'I had to explain to 40 girl that they are still valuable and their green dollars still spends even if racist folks try to hurt them,' she fumed on social media.
Some 260lbs of marijuana worth $1million were found inside a shipment of lettuce on a tractor-trailer in Indiana.

State police released a photo of the massive drug cache that was found during a routine commercial vehicle inspection on Interstate 70 near Putnamville last week.

The driver and co-driver, 33-year-old Jorge Blanco-Diaz and 40-year-old Adan Labanino Delacruz - were arrested and charged with felony dealing marijuana, according to a press release.

Indiana State Police found 260lbs of marijuana worth $1million (pictured) inside a shipment of lettuce on a tractor-trailer last week during a routine commercial vehicle inspection

The driver and co-driver, 33-year-old Jorge Blanco-Diaz (left) and 40-year-old Adan Labanino Delacruz (right), are charged with felony dealing marijuana, according to a press release

Both men from Cutler Bay, Florida, are out on $10,005 bond, the Putnam County Jail said Sunday.

They were believed to have obtained the drugs in Colorado, where the sale of recreational marijuana is legal.

A trooper had noticed 'several criminal indicators' during the search Wednesday morning, the press release said.
Incredible bodycamera footage has revealed the race against time for cops who rescued cats and dogs from a shelter under threat by wildfire.

Police in Vacaville, California rushed to the aide of the pets in the SPCA of Solano County on Friday as the flames of the Nelson Fire crept to within yards of the animal shelter.

Flames came within feet of the building where 60 animals were rescued from the shelter.

The community rallied and many of the rescued animals and were quickly given temporary foster homes in an outpouring of support.

'As the Nelson Fire raced towards the south end of town, it looked like the Solano SPCA would be the first to be hit by the flames,' the Vacaville PD said in a statement.

Police in Vacaville, California rushed to the aide of the pets in the SPCA of Solano County on Friday as the flames of the Nelson Fire crept closer

The officers loaded dozens of cats and dogs into their vehicles to evacuate them from the fire

A Vacaville police officer carries an animal in a crate from the SPCA of Solano County

'Our officers worked with Humane Animal Services, SPCA staff and volunteers to evacuate all they could in a race against the clock,' the department said.

Shelter staff had been put under mandatory evacuation with 'extremely short notice' as the wildfire raged closer, the SPCA said.

The video shows officers rushing into the shelter and leading out cats and dogs.

Officers loaded dogs into the backs of their vehicles and drove them to safety.

The shelter staff rallied in the parking lot of a nearby Burger King and put out the call for community support, which came flooding in.

A police officer is seen rushing the animals outside to her waiting car as the flames encroach

The police put the dogs directly into the back of their vehicles to escape the Nelson Fire

One dog even got a front seat ride as police loaded the animals up and escaped from the fire

Residents donated crates, food and bedding for the animals, while others opened their homes to temporarily foster the pets.

Fortunately, fire crews were able to stop the blaze before it destroyed the animal shelter - though photos of the aftermath show that the blaze came within yards of the structure.

The Nelson Fire, which started on Friday, burned a total of 2,162 acres and destroyed one structure before it was contained and extinguished over the weekend. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

In a statement, the SPCA of Solano County thanked the police and community for support through the crisis.

A photo taken behind the animal shelter on Saturday shows just how close the burn area got

A helicopter hunts for hotspots over the blackened burn area behind the shelter on Saturday

'We thank you all so much for your donations, love, support, and concerns,' the shelter said. 'The Vacaville community has been so gracious to open their homes and hearts for us.'

Elsewhere in California, fire crews continued to turn the tide against other more massive wildfires.

In the north, the deadly Carr Fire near Redding was 57 per cent contained on Sunday night, and the Mendocino Complex Fire was 67 per cent contained.

In the south, the Holy Fire was 52 per cent contained on Sunday night.
A restaurant in south-east China is threatening to charge its US guests a 25 per cent 'service fee' amid the escalating trade war between Beijing and Washington.

Hanshi Chaoshan Beef Hot Pot restaurant in Guangzhou city, Guangdong province has put up a notice at its shopfront, informing its guests that the discriminatory policy would start on the first day of the trade war.

The restaurant's new manager, Wu Bo, confirmed that the notice was put up by the store's former manager three months ago, but it's 'just for show only'.

Hanshi Chaoshan Beef Hot Pot restaurant in Guangzhou city has put up a notice three months ago informing its guests of the extra charge. But its manager said 'it's just for show only'

A cartoon of Trump baring his teeth and holding up a finger is printed along with the notice

'US citizens who visit Hanshi restaurant will have to pay a 25 per cent service fee,' the notice read.

'The new policy will start on the same day as the implementation of the tariffs on our country's goods.'

A cartoon sketch of US President Donald Trump baring his teeth and holding up a finger is also printed along with the statement.

Mr Wu said since he took over the restaurant, he didn't actually ask his American guests to pay more.

'We only get less than 20 US guests per month,' Mr Wu told MailOnline. 'The notice is just for show only. We will take it down if it upsets people.'

The new manager said since he took over the restaurant, he didn't actually ask his American guests to pay more, saying that they only get less than 20 US guests per month

After weeks of fruitless negotiations, the US on July 6 imposed 25 per cent tariffs on approximately US$34 billion (26 billion pounds) of Chinese mechanical and technological products, which then led China to respond with similar sized tariffs on US oil and agriculture products.

The Trump administration said the tariffs were necessary to protect national security and the intellectual property of US businesses and to help reduce the trade deficit with China.

Washington has 'ignited the biggest trade war in economic history,' said a statement released by the Commerce Ministry.
More than 30 residents joined forces to haul out a car that was dangling on the edge of a giant sinkhole in north-west China.

The white SUV was left teetering on the edge of the four-metre (13-foot) -deep hole which opened up amid torrential rain in Shaanxi province.

The quick-thinking locals attached two ropes to the front bumper of the car and eventually pulled it back to safety.

The white SUV was left teetering on the edge of the 13-foot-deep sinkhole which opened up amid torrential rain in Shaanxi province on August 11. Brave locals helped pull it out

Residents attached ropes to the front bumper of the car and eventually pulled it back to safety

Two other vehicles had already fallen in after the road surface gave way in Yan'an city on August 11 during the heavy downpour. Luckily, no one was injured, according to Shaanxi Online.

Video footage of the dramatic rescue operation shows the car perched right on the edge of the sinkhole, threatening to tumble at any moment.

Rain and muddy groundwater were seen sloshing around the vehicle, pushing it further back.

A group of residents immediately formed two lines and tied ropes to the front bumper of the car.

'One, two, three!' They were heard shouting in the video as they dragged the vehicle forward.

A security guard who witnessed the incident told reporters that the ground had flooded right before the giant sinkhole opened.

'One, two, three!' the residents shouted in the video as they dragged the vehicle forward

Rain and muddy groundwater were seen sloshing around the vehicle, pushing it further back

'The hole swallowed two cars, one by one. The last car was about to fall in, too,' Mr Wang Qiang said. 'It was a very dangerous situation.'

'We didn't think much about it - we just wanted to pull the car up to safety,' he added.

Eventually, the SUV was pulled to solid ground thanks to the residents' efforts.

One of the cars has been retrieved from the sinkhole and the authorities are searching for the second one, according to the report. Fortunately, all three cars were not occupied at the time of the incident.

Shaanxi province has been battling heavy downpours and howling winds since early July. The extreme weather had triggered severe flooding and landslides.

The embankment of a reservoir near Zizhou county was breached in mid July, forcing 20,000 residents to evacuate.
A man killed himself days after being arrested on suspicion of his partner's murder, an inquest heard today.

David Palmer, 56, was found dead at his home in Buckton, Bridlington after his girlfriend Carol Camm, killed herself on December 19, 2017.

An inquest into Miss Camm's death last month heard she had taken her own life after Mr Palmer encouraged her to 'go do it'.

Police initially arrested Mr Palmer for her murder but released him under investigation. His body was found shortly after his release on New Year's Day.

Today, a coroner has returned a conclusion of suicide in the death of Mr Palmer.

David Palmer, 56, was found dead at his home in Buckton, Bridlington on January 1 after his girlfriend Carol Camm, killed herself on December 19, 2017

An inquest into Miss Camm's (pictured) death last month heard she had taken her own life after Mr Palmer encouraged her to 'go do it'

Mr Palmer is the son of Coronation Street actress Helene Palmer, who played Ida Clough.

Mrs Palmer starred on the soap from 1978 until 1988. Her character returned in 1995 and she made her last appearance in 1998. Mrs Palmer died aged 82 in 2011.

The inquest heard Mr Palmer would beat and verbally abuse Miss Camm after becoming obsessed with the idea she had an affair two decades before.

Mr Palmer told a neighbour he had booked a lie detector test to get Miss Camm to confess to the affair, to which she later did.

When she admitted it, Mr Palmer told the neighbour he had hit her and confided that he also spread out pills in the house and told her to take them.

Mr Palmer worked as a handyman-type doing seasonal work at the local council and a colleague said Mr Palmer was 'heartbroken' after Miss Camm admitted to the affair.

The co-worker said Miss Camm had told Mr Palmer before that she would take her own life if he left her.

The inquest heard on the day of Miss Camm's death, Mr Palmer told her to 'go do it' and she went to the the other side of the room and killed herself.

Mr Palmer was sitting watching the television just 10 ft away and later told police he didn't notice until he started talking and she didn't reply.

The inquest heard Mr Palmer would beat and verbally abuse Miss Camm after becoming obsessed with the idea she had an affair two decades before. Pictured: The couple's home

Mr Palmer is the son of Coronation Street actress Helene Palmer (centre) who played Ida Clough on the soap

Mr Palmer's colleague said he was 'an emotional wreck' after Miss Camm's death and that 'the once bullish man was gone'.

A friend of the couple told the inquest: 'David was devastated at the loss of Carol and was drinking heavily.

'David said ''I can't deal with it, I hope god will give me a heart attack, so then I can be back with Carol''.

'Dave was depressed, drinking a lot and using it as his solace. He was drinking on a daily basis.'

Miss Camm's mother, Margaret, had her statement read out at Hull Coroner's Court.

She told how the couple had been together since they were teenagers and that Miss Camm had rung her in the months before her death saying Mr Palmer wanted to leave her.

A neighbour said Mr Palmer 'told me he hadn't changed the sheets since Carol's death so that he could still smell her.

'He told me that he wanted to end his life in the same way Carol did. I asked him to promise me that he wouldn't do it. He promised me that he wouldn't do it.'

Speaking about the days after Miss Camm had died, the neighbour said Mr Palmer would visit him in states of distress.

Mr Palmer's colleague said he was 'an emotional wreck' after Miss Camm's death and that 'the once bullish man was gone'. Pictured: The couple's home in Bridlington, Hull

'After Carol's death he slept on the floor where Carol died and drank alcohol to get to sleep,' he told the court. 'He was so upset.'

Dr Karsai, the consultant histopathologist in the case, said Mr Palmer died after he hung himself.

It also heard Mr Palmer was a bodybuilder and had taken steroids in the past.

The inquest has heard Mr Palmer had 3.5 times the amount of alcohol in his blood than would be considered legal for drink-driving.

Dr Karsai said the amount was 'very high by any standards' and would 'certainly have affected his judgement'.

Detective Constable Claire Jackson said Mr Palmer was released under investigation as police had more enquiries to make.

They had seized computers and mobile phones and said it was normal to release people under investigation or bail them with conditions.

She confirmed police had no power to remand Mr Palmer over his mental health as he had not yet been charged.

Up to his death, police had nothing evidence wise that would lead to a criminal case.

For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit a local Samaritans branch, or click here for details.
A 20ft statue of a bug-eyed child in a hazmat suit has provoked anger in Fukushima whose people demand it be taken down.

Residents in the disaster-hit Japanese prefecture argue the monument is a distasteful reminder of the 2011 nuclear crisis at a power plant there.

The statue, called 'Sun Child,' was made by contemporary artist Kenji Yanobe to express his wish for a world free from nuclear disasters.

Fukushima locals want this statue of a child in a 'protective' suit emblazoned with a radiation level counter taken down from outside the railway station

Japan Times reported how the seen device on the child's chest indicates the surrounding air is 'clean' as the radiation counter reads '000'.

But Yanobe apologised for anyone unsettled by the artwork for giving the wrong impression that people who visited the area needed to wear a protective suit.

'I wanted to make a work that encourages people (in Fukushima)  and made the statue of a child standing up bravely and strongly against any difficulties it faces,' he said.

'The clothing looks like protective gear, but it is also armor to confront major issues and, being like a space suit, it also carries a futuristic image.'

The Municipal Government has received calls demanding the statue's removal from outside Fukushima railway station.

It has provoked angry responses on Twitter, with one person writing:

'The statue will encourage harmful rumors to be spread because it gives an impression that people in Fukushima cannot live without protective gear.'

Others said the piece was unscientific as it may lead people to believe it would only be safe for someone wearing protective gear to take off their helmet when the radiation level falls to zero.

Creator Kenji Yanobe said 'Sun Child' was intended to show people of Fukushima could 'stand up bravely and strongly against any difficulties it faces'

Yanobe admitted his earlier explanation of the artwork  such as calling the device on the statue's chest a 'Geiger counter'  may have led to misunderstandings.

Fukushima Mayor Hiroshi Kohata defended the artwork however, saying:

'Contemporary art is abstract expression, unlike science.'

The statue row comes just days after the operator of Japan's Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant was forced to stop selling souvenirs at the site.

Japan's Fukushima No 1 plant was battered by the killer tsunami-earthquake disaster causing the evacuation of thousands of residents

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) halted the sale of plastic folders featuring images of the battered power station just eight days after launching the product which cost 300 yen (2.10).

The move was criticised as inconsiderate by some people who blasted TEPCO for profiting on the 2011 disaster.

Guardian reported few residents have returned to cities, towns and villages around Fukushima that were evacuated following the accident.

In Naraha, about 12 miles south of the plant, only several hundred people among the pre-disaster population of 7,400 have returned since the town was declared safe in September 2015.
A stray dog was seen refusing to leave the lifeless body of its dead companion in the middle of a road in central China.

The heart-wrenching moment was caught on camera in Shangqiu city after the pooch was hit by a car when the pair attempted to cross the road.

After sniffing and nudging its friend, the devoted pup sat guard and watched over the motionless body.

A stray dog was seen refusing to leave the lifeless body of its dead companion in the middle of a road in Shangqiu city, central China's Henan province last Friday

Video of the heart-breaking incident in Henan province last Friday was released by People's Daily on Weibo.



Vehicles passing by were seen travelling at a slower speed to avoid running over the pair.

Both dogs were not wearing collars.

Net users, many of them animal lovers, were saddened by the incident.

'Poor thing!' one said. 'What a loyal pup. Why did no one help it?'

'The driver who hit the dog should have buried the carcass,' another commented. 'If the driver injured it, he/she should have taken it to a vet. This has nothing to do with being an animal lover or not - just basic respect for all lives.'

'Sometimes animals show more devotion and commitment than humans do,' one said.

After sniffing and nudging the body, the devoted pup sat guard in the middle of the road
The deputy head of Norway's anti-immigration party quit his post as Fisheries Minister after going on holiday with the former Miss Iran.

Per Sandberg breached security protocol when he travelled with new girlfriend and beauty queen Bahareh Letnes, 28, to her native Iran in July.

The 58-year-old failed to inform the prime minister's office in advance of his vacation and admitted taking his work phone with him.

Progress Party deputy head Per Sandberg has quit following a holiday to Iran with his girlfriend Bahareh Letnes, a 28-year-old former beauty queen. Pictured: The pair at Mazandaran Province on Iran's southern coast

Bahareh Letnes, who was denied asylum to Norway three times as a teenager, now owns two companies there, which specialise in the import and export of fish and gas between Norway and Iran

Norway's intelligence agency regularly lists Iran as one of the countries most likely to carry out espionage, alongside China and Russia.

Sandberg is number two in the Scandinavian country's Progress Party, which is part of the ruling coalition with Conservatives and Liberals.

'Per asked to step down, and I think it was the right decision,' said Conservative Prime Minister Erna Solberg about the scandal.

'He didn't show the necessary common sense when it comes to handling security issues,' she said.

The story has been making headlines in Norway, fuelling criticism from members of the opposition and Sandberg's own party.

Letnes had her asylum request rejected three times in Norway and was expelled.

She finally obtained a residency permit on the grounds that she risked being subjected to a forced marriage in Iran.

Dagbladet reported that Letnes represented Iran several times in beauty contests, including Miss Iran 2013, Miss Globe Iran 2014 and Miss Grand International Iran.

She owns two companies which specialise in the import and export of fish and gas between Norway and Iran.

Sandberg's Progress Party favours a strict immigration policy, calling for rejected asylum seekers to be expelled swiftly.

It is also highly critical of foreigners who return to their native country after receiving asylum in Norway.

Sandberg was rebuked by Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg who said he showed no common sense in visiting Iran

Sandberg issued an apology in a bid to quell the criticism, but with new details emerging daily he ultimately decided to resign.

Among other things, it emerged he had also broken security protocol in May when he took his work phone to China.

'It's sad,' he told reporters on Monday. 'I had hoped to finish up a few projects,' he added, refusing to comment on the personal aspects of the affair.

Norwegian intelligence services have opened a probe into Letnes, who denies any ties to the Iranian regime.

Sandberg will be replaced by Harald Tom Nesvik, a member of his own party, and has also stepped down as deputy head of the party.
Rudy Giuliani says the president will not sit for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller and his team unless it takes place before Sept. 1 because he does not want to create the potential for election interference.

Giuliani claimed Monday that Mueller told him two months ago that he could conclude the probe by the date but has not heard him mention the timeline again.

The president's lawyer issued Mueller an ultimatum on Sunday evening, telling the Wall Street Journal that the date was an internal deadline for Trump to submit to questioning from Mueller.

'We certainly wont do [an interview] after Sept. 1, because were not going to be the ones to interfere with the election,' Giuliani said. 'Let him [Mr. Mueller] get all the bad publicity and the attacks for that.'

He said Monday on Fox News, 'I think we have them on the run.'

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEOS

Rudy Giuliani says the president will not sit for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller and his team unless it takes place before Sept. 1 because he does not want to create the potential for election interference

Giuliani has demanded an end by Sept. 1 to the special counsel probe that is reviewing election meddling and allegations that the president's campaign colluded with the Russians in 2016 to boost Trump's odds of winning.

Mueller is also probing charges that Trump obstructed justice when he fired former FBI director James Comey.

Trump's lawyers have been trying to limit questioning to allegations of collusion, arguing that the president has the right to hire and fire whomever he chooses and that authority cannot and should not be questioned.

The president's legal team has been going back and forth with Mueller for weeks over an interview setting and the potential questions.

If Trump refuses to speak to Mueller, the special counsel could subpoena him. That would lead to a Supreme Court scuffle that the president's legal team has essentially welcomed, although they believe it's possible that DOJ could back down before the dispute gets that far.

Appearing on Fox & Friends on Monday morning, Giuliani said that Mueller should end his probe by Labor Day weekend.

'There's no reason why it can't be done.'

Giuliani said the lagging investigation caused the president to appeal on Twitter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 'Trying to wake them up. Come on. Let's start being an attorney general here. Let's be equal,' he said. You've been investigating us forever, how about we take a look where there's a big pile of evidence.'

The president's team has called for the investigators to come under investigation.

Giuliani also insisted on Sunday that a central claim of Comey  one that could land the president in legal hot water  is completely false.

Comey wrote in a private memo following a February 2017 meeting with Trump that the newly minted president had asked him to tone down the investigative pressure on former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Not so, Giuliani claimed.

Trump's exact words, according to Comey  who memorialized them on paper afterward  were: 'I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is good guy. I hope you can let this go.'

Flynn was bounced from the White House after just 24 days on the job, an event Trump has said was a consequence of Flynn's lies to the FBI about his pre-inauguration contacts with a now-former Russian ambassador.

Comey, however, has claimed the president asked him whether there was a FISA investigation into Flynn, and suggested he should go easy on the retired lieutenant general and consider 'letting Flynn go.'

'I was so stunned by the conversation that I just took it in,' he told a Senate panel in June 2017.

Giuliani said Monday on Fox & Friends that the president did not utter those words.

But if he did, he has the absolute right under Article II to make the comments, Giuliani said.

'You can't really question why the president would say something. He has the power to say it,' the president's lawyer argued.

Comey does not claim that the president threatened his job if he didn't act, either, Giuliani pointed out.

The president's lawyers have made desperately tried to keep Trump from talking to Mueller.

Giuliani said Monday that it has nothing to do with the president's guilt or innocence.

'I've been through everything. I've talked to the president. The president's an honest man. The president did nothing wrong,' he asserted.

He has repeatedly warned that Trump could find himself in a perjury trap if he talks, accidentally saying something untruthful under aggressive questioning.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Sunday on CNN's 'State of the Union' program that the president and later-fired FBI Director James Comey never discussed the idea of going easy on disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn

Trump and Comey met early in 2017 and the two men's recollections are different; Comey wrote his down in the car afterward

Comey has conceded in congressional testimony that Trump never ordered him to back off from investigating Flynn, who later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his late 2016 contacts with Russia's then-ambassador Sergey Kislyak

Giuliani said on Sunday that none of it ever happened.

'There was no conversation about Michael Flynn. The president didn't find out that Comey believed there was until about  I think it was February when it supposedly took place,' he said on CNN's 'State of the Union' program.

Democrats have seized on Comey's claim to the contrary as evidence that Trump obstructed justice by interfering with an intelligence investigation that could establish ties between the Trump transition and the Russian government.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's lengthy probe into such purported but unproven links has been a consistent distraction for the Trump administration. And Comey's claims, made while he was working on a memoir that clobbered Trump, have escalated the tension.

But Giuliani noted Sunday that before Comey released his memo to the media through a third party, the former lawman assured senator sthat Trump and his team never obstructed his ongoing investigations.

'[The] memo came out in May [2017],' Giuliani said. 'And in between, Comey testified under oath: In no way had he been obstructed at any time.'

'Then all of the sudden in May he says he felt obstructed. He felt pressured by that comment, "you should go easy on Flynn." So we maintain the President didn't say that.'

What Comey said in his June 2017 congressional grilling is that 'I don't think it's for me to say whether the conversation I had with the president was an effort to obstruct.'

But he did concede that Trump's expression of 'hope' that Flynn, a decorated military officer, could save face, didn't constitute a criminal act.

'Those words are not an order,' Comey conceded.

The president has insisted in the past that he never 'asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn'; it matters because intervening in a criminal probe about the retired general coud be seen as obstruction of justice

Giuliani said last month during a Sunday broadcast of ABC's 'This Week' show that Trump 'didn't direct' Comey to fold his Flynn investigation during the fateful February 20176 one-on-one.

'He didn't direct him to do that,' Giuliani said then. 'What he said was, "Can you, can you give him a break?"'

Giuliani's interview Sunday isn't the first time the White House has disputed Comey's version of events.

Trump himself tweeted in December 2017, amid a digital tirade against his own Justice Department, that 'I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn.'

'Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!'

Flynn had pleaded guilty a week earlier to a single count of lying to the FBI.
Helen Thompson, 43, of Rugby, Warwickshire, (pictured outside court) had denied taking part in the kidnapping but was convicted by a jury earlier this year

A woman who kidnapped a teenage girl before she was raped in a flat has avoided jail after a judge said it would be 'unfair' to send her to prison.

Helen Thompson, 43, of Rugby, Warwickshire, had denied taking part in the terrifying kidnapping but was convicted by a jury earlier this year.

A court heard the victim was bundled into the boot of a car before being driven to a property by Thompson where she was raped.

Peter Livingston Jones, 55, and Raymond Dickens, 53, were previously jailed for a total of 38 years for their involvement in the case.

The twisted pair would befriend teenagers aged 17 and 18 before raping them in order to 'exercise control' and forcing them to work as prostitutes.

The charges relate to the rape, kidnapping, sexual assault, and violence offences against six teenage girls dating from the 1990s until last year.

On Monday Thompson appeared before Warwick Crown Court to learn her fate after she was found guilty of kidnap.

But she was spared prison after a judge was told she had 'worked hard' to turn her life around since she was involved in the crime.

Instead, Thompson was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for a year.

Sentencing, Judge Sylvia de Bertodano said: 'You are here because of a single incident that happened a very long time ago to a young woman who was being exploited by Peter Jones, who was convicted of many serious offences and has gone to prison for a very long time.

'Your part in all of this was a limited one, in that on one occasion Peter Jones bundled that young woman into the boot of a car which you then drove to his flat.

'That was the extent of your involvement.

'I don't mean to belittle it, because what happened to her at that flat was truly terrible, and you could of course have said no.

'But there is no suggestion this wouldn't have happened if you had not helped him.

'Someone else would have done so, because he had considerable power in that community at that time.

Sentencing, Judge Sylvia de Bertodano said: 'You are here because of a single incident that happened a very long time ago to a young woman who was being exploited by Peter Jones, who was convicted of many serious offences and has gone to prison for a very long time

'You are not the woman now that you were when you were a teenager.

'You have worked hard to put that behind you, and it would be quite unfair of me to send you to prison today.'

During the trial, the jury heard that Jones and Dickens were at the heart of a prostitution business in Rugby in the 1990s.

They targeted vulnerable teenagers who were raped and sexually assaulted and forced to work as prostitutes for them.

Prosecutor Michael Shaw said there were periods when Jones could not drive himself, because he had been banned, and he was driven around by others including Thompson.

One girl was just 16 at the time and Jones had befriended her after being freed from a 16-year sentence for armed robbery.

'She too was effectively the victim of others who used her. At the time she was a vulnerable person herself. She was exploited. She has had to re-live her past from 20 years ago, and it has been a painful experience for her. Since then, she has built a life for herself, working hard and putting her past life behind her. She did not let her past define her. - Mohammed Latif, defending

His attitude towards her changed after she told him that a video recorder he had left at a 'safe house' in Rugby had been stolen - and blaming her for that. The court heard he beat her up and told her she would have to 'work the money off.'

Mr Shaw said: 'He put a gun to her head and bundled her into the back of a car driven by Thompson before, because she wouldn't stop crying, putting her in the boot and taking her back to his flat.'

Thompson's involvement ended at that point, but the jury heard that once back at his flat, Jones had raped the girl.

Mohammed Latif, defending, said: 'This is a sad case, both for the complainant, inevitably, but also for the defendant.

'She too was effectively the victim of others who used her. At the time she was a vulnerable person herself. She was exploited.

'She has had to re-live her past from 20 years ago, and it has been a painful experience for her.

'Since then, she has built a life for herself, working hard and putting her past life behind her. She did not let her past define her.

'She was the driver of the vehicle, she didn't say or do anything.

'She didn't have any knowledge of what happened after they arrived, she simply left after Peter Jones and the victim got out.'

Jones of Coventry, was jailed in June for 22 years as part of an extended sentence - and will have to serve at least two-thirds of that before being considered for release.

Dickens, of Rugby, was jailed for 16 years and both were ordered to register as sex offenders for life.
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They'd already landed an hour late in London, so these passengers were in no mood for any extra waiting around.

But these photographs show the chaotic scenes at London Stansted Airport early yesterday morning after Ryanair passengers arriving on the flight from Ibiza were faced with a three-hour wait for their luggage.

Witnesses told MailOnline how it took two hours just to show which carousel the bags would arrive on  and then the first bags which came out were actually for other passengers arriving from two different Jet2 flights.

Passengers were left fuming at London Stansted Airport early yesterday morning as they faced a three-hour wait for baggage

These photographs show the chaotic scenes at London Stansted Airport early yesterday morning as people waited for bags

Flight FR9252 landed one hour and 16 minutes late at London Stansted Airport at 0.32am early yesterday morning

Passengers scramble to pick up their bags as they face chaotic scenes at London Stansted Airport early yesterday

The huge backlog resulted in bags overflowing and falling off the belt onto the waiting passengers - which prompted them to press the emergency stop button after two passengers were injured, it was claimed.

The trouble began for the Ryanair passengers on Saturday evening in the Spanish resort when flight FR9252 took off one hour and 39 minutes late from Ibiza, and landed one hour and 16 minutes late at Stansted at 0.32am.

Passengers were said to have felt claustrophobic, agitated and distressed as they sat in the hot aircraft on the Tarmac at Ibiza Airport waiting for takeoff, while the airline offered them 3 (2.70) bottles of water.

Having finally landed at Stansted, the tired passengers then rushed through passport control hoping to get home as soon as possible  but were then faced with further problems at baggage reclaim.

A witness told MailOnline: 'Two hours later bags begin to convey around the carousel, only they were not for the awaiting Ibiza passengers - but instead for another two Jet2 flight arrivals from other destinations.

'At this point there was now a huge backlog resulting in bags overflowing on to the belt, piling up and falling off on to the public - leaving two passengers injured and others filling out incident forms.

'Passengers were left no choice but to repeatedly hit the emergency stop button to prevent further causalities and damages to the already broken belt due to the overloading and high volume of cases.

It comes as talks aimed at resolving the long-running dispute between Ryanair and its Irish pilots got under way

The Ryanair passengers had already arrived late on their flight from Stansted when they were left waiting for their luggage

The huge backlog resulted in bags overflowing and falling off the belt onto the waiting passengers, it was claimed

A witness said that the first bags which came out were actually for other passengers arriving from two different Jet2 flights

People waiting for bags were allegedly prompted to press the emergency stop button after two passengers were injured

'Despite the public having to stop the machine, airport staff repeatedly and manually restarted the belt back up to try and clear the Ryanair backlog which has now been going on for some days.

'On the third hour after landing an announcement was made that in fact Ryanair's Ibiza passengers' bags were now to be sent out on belt three. Finally this was to be the truth as bags begin to convey around the belt.

'This did not please disgruntled customers who were demanding to speak with management or persons higher at Ryanair but never once got to see or speak with a Ryanair member of staff from any department.

'Passengers were left upset and stranded after their modes of transport home were also affected as some were cancelled or family members weren't able to wait due to the high parking charges at Stansted for pickup.'

A Ryanair spokesman told MailOnline: 'Due to continued Air Traffic Control delays across the UK and Europe, some flights are arriving much later than planned  especially late at night  which has stretched available resources beyond normal shift timings.

'In addition, heavy rain on Friday evening also caused delays which had a knock-on effect throughout Saturday. Swissport (our handling agent at Stansted) has already put additional staff resources in place and we will continue to work with them with to ensure adequate resources are in place to meet all flights.'

Ryanair passengers arriving on the flight from Ibiza were faced with a three-hour wait for their luggage

The trouble began for the Ryanair passengers in the Spanish resort when flight FR9252 took off one hour and 39 minutes late

The tired passengers had rushed through passport control at London Stansted, hoping to get home as soon as possible

A Swissport spokesman told MailOnline: 'Over the weekend, adverse weather conditions across the UK and Europe caused disruption to flights.

'The knock-on impact of these challenging weather conditions meant that on Saturday evening and into Sunday morning a high number of outbound flights were delayed or cancelled and many inbound flights had to land off-schedule, including outside of normal operating hours.

'This disruption coincided with one of the busiest weekends for travel in the UK. We apologise to passengers for the resulting baggage delays and we are doing everything we can to respond to the impact of the adverse conditions.

'This includes additional staff being rota-ed to respond to the large numbers of delayed aircraft landing off-schedule. We will continue to work with our airport and airline partners to provide the best possible travel experience for passengers.'

MailOnline has also contacted Stansted Airport for comment. It comes as talks aimed at resolving the long-running dispute over pay and working conditions between Ryanair and its Irish pilots got under way today.

The dispute resulted in a fifth day of strike action on Friday. About 100 of Ryanair's 350 Irish-based pilots joined colleagues in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden in a series of strikes.

The airline said 396 flights were cancelled as a result, disrupting thousands of passengers. Ryanair said mediation was required after five strikes failed to achieve 'anything other than to regrettably disrupt some customers'.

** Do you have any photographs of chaos at Stansted? Please send them to: pictures@mailonline.co.uk **
A 14-year-old girl suffered horrific head injuries when a woman driving a black sedan slammed into her while she was on her bicycle on Thursday, then fled the scene, prosecutors say.

The victim, identified as Emma-Mae on a GoFundMe page created to cover her medical costs, was riding with friends in the Borough of Point Pleasant when she was struck by a driver identified by Ocean Beach County Prosecutor's Office as Brittany Keifer, 26.

The cheerleader flew over her handlebars and landed on the hood of the car, but the driver kept going, according to police.

She sustained three skull fractures and a brain hematoma and is in the pediatric intensive care unit at Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune City.

Her family said she is in a critical condition and is unable to sit up without vomiting.

Emma-Mae, 14 (pictured), remains in critical condition in New Jersey after prosecutors say Brittany Keifer, 26, slammed into her with her black sedan while she was riding her bicycle near Route 88 on Thursday

'Please continue to pray for Emma-Mae,' her mother, Stephanie, wrote on the fundraising campaign website. 'She has a long road ahead of her.'

Keifer has been charged with assault by auto and leaving the scene of an accident that caused serious bodily injury, according to NJ.com.

She attempted to cover the car that struck Emma-Mae with a tarp before fleeing, the OCPO said.

Emma-Mae, a member of the Jersey All-Star Cheerleading team, was trying to cross Route 88 on her bicycle when she was struck by a vehicle that was traveling eastbound along the route, the OCPO said.

'Emma is still in critical care on the pediatric ICU floor,' her mother shared on Sunday.

'Her skull is fractured in three places, however the hematoma on the brain is not as large as it has been and went down a little bit.

The driver hit the teen, causing her to fly off of her bike and land on the hood of the car, against the windshield, according to the OCPO.

Emma-Mae is a member of the Jersey All-Star Cheerleading team, seen here in her uniform in a photo shared to social media on December 11

Emma-Mae was attempting to cross Route 88 on her bicycle when she was struck by a vehicle that was traveling eastbound along the route, the OCPO said

The collision occurred at around 10.30pm on Thursday, about 150 feet east of the Route 88 and Sunset Avenue intersection, the OCPO said

OCPO said the suspect continued to drive for some distance while Emma-Maewas still on the hood of the car, before she was thrown from the vehicle.

The eastbound vehicle struck the bicyclist as she traveled in a north-to-southbound direction, approximately 150 feet east of the Route 88 and Sunset Avenue intersection. according to the OCPO.

The bicyclist was struck by the front passenger portion of the vehicle, which caused her to roll onto the windshield and hood of the vehicle, the OCPO said.

The vehicle's driver continued driving after the impact, carrying the girl on the vehicle hood for a distance before she was thrown from of the vehicle, the OCPO said.

The driver then fled the scene, continuing eastbound on Route 88, the Point Pleasant Patch reported.

The crash has left Emma-Mae significantly debilitated, unable to sit upright without throwing up, her family said. The teen is shown here in a photo shared to social media in January 2017

The crash has left Emma-Mae significantly debilitated, unable to sit upright without throwing up, her family said.

'She is still vomiting every time we try to get her to sit up or if she moves around too much, but they say that is expected,' her mother wrote.

'Hoping tomorrow we can get her out of bed and sitting up in a chair.'

While the teenager's condition seems to be improving, her family has cautioned that an unexpected downturn could happen at any moment.

'She is not out of the woods just yet, the bleed can come back at any time but for now she has gone from getting neurological exams every one hour to now every two hours,' her mother said. 'She has passed every exam so far.'

Emma's family thanked those who had contributed to the fundraising campaign, which had raised just over $22,000 as of 11.00am Eastern on Monday, for their prayers and well-wishes.

The initial goal of the campaign was listed at $10,000.

The collision occurred at around 10.30pm on Thursday, about 150 feet east of the Route 88 and Sunset Avenue intersection, the OCPO said.

Keifer was released from custody on a summons, the OCPO said.
Rayma Ramey, 18, has been charged with DUI manslaughter after a horrific crash in Walnut Creek, California, on Sunday, that killed two of her friends and injured two others

Two teenagers have been killed and three others injured after a suspected drunk driver plummeted off a highway overpass in California.

The 18-year-old driver Rayma Ramey has been charged with DUI manslaughter following the crash in Walnut Creek around 4am Sunday morning.

California Highway Patrol said the silver 2000 Honda Civic carrying Ramey and four other teens was headed eastbound on Highway 24 when it drove off the interchange and dropped to the asphalt 50 feet below.

Two 18-year-old male passengers from Antioch were declared dead at the scene.

Ramey and two female passengers, also 18, suffered major injuries and were transported to a hospital.

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The Honda Civic Ramey was driving was crushed after it plunged 50ft off a highway overpass

Two 18-year-old male passengers were pronounced dead on the scene while Ramey and two female passengers suffered major injuries and were transported to a hospital

Friends and family of the three injured teens are seen waiting outside the hospital Sunday

A statement posted to the Contra Costa CHP Facebook page said Ramey was 'placed under arrest for multiple counts of felony manslaughter for killing two of her passengers and multiple counts of felony DUI, causing major injuries to her other passengers'.

'For reasons unknown that are still under investigation, she allowed the Honda to veer completely off SR-24 and overturned and crashed onto Boulevard Circle, which is below SR-24, causing major damage,' it went on.

A relative of the injured driver told The Mercury News Ramey's parents are 'devastated' by the horrific crash and are sending their prayers to the other teens' families.

Anisha Hackney said the teens were good friends who had 'known each other for years'.

Ramey's family is waiting for official toxicology reports to indicate whether she had alcohol in her system at the time of the crash.

A relative said Ramey was an honor roll student who recently graduated high school and had plans to study biomedical sciences at University of the Pacific this fall

Anisha Hackney, right, told media outlets Ramey's family is waiting for a toxicology report to show whether the teen had alcohol in her system at the time of the crash

Hackney said that drunk driving is completely out of character for the honor roll student who recently graduated from high school.

'She may have made the wrong decision at the wrong moment, but we've all made bad decisions, and some of us have just escaped the negative results that often come along with those bad decisions,' Hackney said.

'That should not color who she is as a person. She's been an upstanding young citizen up to this point. She had goals and dreams and was working towards those goals and dreams right alongside her friends.'

Hackney added that Ramey was planning to study biomedical sciences at University of the Pacific beginning this fall, after having been awarded a scholarship from the Woman's Club of Antioch earlier this year.

'She was making plans to move into her dorm just the other day,' the relative said.

'It's been a difficult day, just the gravity of it all.'

Friends and family were gathered at John Muir Medical Center on Sunday awaiting news about the three injured teens, ABC7 reported.

Investigators are still looking into what caused Ramey to drive off the interchange, according to a statement from the California Highway Patrol
Although animal attacks on tourists are uncommon, and rarely fatal, they are not unheard of.

In May this year, Mike Hodge, a 72-year-old British expat living in South Africa was attacked by a lion living on his sanctuary.

Horrifying footage shows Mr Hodge entering the lion's enclosure at the Marakele Animal Sanctuary before being dragged away into bushes and clawed by Shamba as onlookers scream in terror.

The big cat eventually dropped Mr Hodge and a staff member outside the camp shot and killed Shamba to save his life, according to local media. In a statement, the family - Mr Hodge, his wife Chrissy and daughter Emma, 29 - said they were 'devastated' by the loss of the lion which they said had been raised from a cub.

In February, a British tourist from the Isle of Wight was attacked by a ferocious cow which became angry after she sang it a Black Eyed Peas song.

Mellisa Meville, 25, from the Isle of Wight, has been travelling around India since November last year.

But she was left with injuries to her face, shoulder and knees after the savage attack in the street at 4pm on February 15.

Mellisa was walking back to her hotel in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, northern India, when she noticed a huge stray cow with a sizeable hump.

Amused by how large the creature was, she jokingly began singing the popular song 'My Humps' by the Black Eyed Peas.

But the cow, unamused by her rapping, suddenly charged at her with its horns.

Just last month, a gang of poachers who broke into a South African game reserve to hunt rhinos came off second best when they were attacked and eaten by a pride of hungry lions.

At least three hunters are believed to have been devoured by the predators, judging by the bloody scene on the Sibuya Game Reserve near Kenton-on-Sea in Eastern Province, South Africa.

One head and a number of bloodied body parts and limbs have been recovered from the area, along with three pairs of empty shoes.

And in June, a tourist in South Africa stroked a lion and got the fright of his life when he was met by a terrifying roar.

Shocking footage shows the man petting the big cat's back with the vehicle's window wide open.

The male lion then turns around and lets out an almighty roar prompting the tourists to flinch and slam the window shut before letting out loud sighs of relief.

A month before, an award-winning director was killed by a giraffe in the South African bush.

Carlos Carvalho had worked on most of the series of the hit family drama that featured a British family building up an animal hospital in the South African bush.

But the 47-year-old was sent flying 16 feet through the air while working on a feature film with Gerald the Giraffe after the animal headbutted him, causing devastating head injuries.

He was airlifted from the scene in Broederstroom, South Africa, to the same hospital where British safari park owner Mike Hodge is recovering from a lion attack in Johannesburg but surgeons were unable to save him.

And in April, a German couple in Namibia survived a horrific tug of war with a leopard after the predator attacked and tried to drag one of them out of the open window of their camper van by the head.

Hardy Specker, 61, and partner Petra Windmeisser, 60, had pulled over to sleep in the Kuiseb Canyon in Namibia when they were woken by loud scratching at a window in the early hours.

Mr Specker got up to close the window at 1am but as he pulled it shut a leopard jumped up the side of the camper van and gripped his head with its claws and jaws.

Ms Windmeisser told The Namibian how her screaming husband was being dragged out of the window when she rushed forward and grabbed his legs and fought with the leopard.
A cosmetic clinic near a Centrelink office offered breast implants on a $5-a-day payment plan - and it's completely legal.

The surgery is believed to have offered the procedures at a heavily discounted price.

The implants usually cost upward of $10,000 but these payment plans made the procedure drastically cheaper at $5,990.

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The surgery near a welfare office was offering the procedures at a heavily discounted price and targeted at women on welfare payments

In an investigation by ABC's Four Corners, a former nursing unit manager claimed a number of patients who had breast implants at the surgery were on Centrelink benefits.

Another ex-employee described the company as a 'boob factory' and that the business model was run like 'McDonald's'.

The former operations manager said: 'We worked on high volume, lots of people coming through the doors and doing it at a low cost.

Implants usually cost upward of $10,000 but these breast augmentations were priced at $5,990

'The whole system was set up just to make money. It was a boob factory,' he said.

These low-cost procedures are believed to be carried out by doctors who weren't trained as plastic surgeons and not equipped to handle potential complications in the breast augmentation surgery.

After going under the knife, patients can experience infections and pain caused by contracture of the implant as well as deformity.

In an investigation by ABC's Four Corners, a former nursing unit manager claimed a number of patients who had breast implants at the surgery were on Centrelink benefits

The rise in popularity for cosmetic procedures is believed to be led by social media influencers on Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat.

Surgeons and influencers are believed to be teaming up with each other for discounted or free procedures exchanged for advertising.

Kate Szepanowski, a social media influencer who has more than 45,000 followers on Instagram, admits to having surgery on her lips, cheek and jaw.

The social media star has been approached to have procedures such as a 'Brazilian butt lift' from various clinics for a discounted price.

The 23-year-old has also been brand ambassador for laser companies and receives free treatments if she promotes it them on her social media.

Ms Szepanowski said: 'It's kind of just this generation I guess, It is just kind of normal.'
A teenager who almost ended her life after she was raped has now saved the lives of eight people by leaving notes of hope on the bridge she nearly jumped off.

Paige Hunter was driven to the brink of suicide after she was attacked by a stranger as she walked home from a friend's house at the age of 14.

But after almost ending her life three months ago, the 18-year-old has now turned her life around by writing hundreds of 'notes of hope'.

The letters, attached to the Wearmouth Bridge in Sunderland, include inspirational thoughts and a contact number for the Samaritans.

Paige Hunter, who was on the brink of suicide after being raped, has now saved the lives of eight people by leaving 'notes of hope' on the bridge where she attempted to end her life

The letters, attached to the Wearmouth Bridge in Sunderland, include inspirational thoughts and a contact number for the Samaritans

The health and social care student has recently been commended by Northumbria Police for her fantastic work, which has saved the lives of eight people.

Paige, from Sunderland, said: 'I was raped at 14 and from that I had developed PTSD and depression.

'It was terrifying because I did not tell anyone for six months. I eventually confessed to one of my teachers who told me to phone the police.

'They were very supportive but it was just too much. I was having constant flash-backs - sometimes up to 70 a week.

'I got to the point where I could not deal with it any more so I went to the bridge and debated if my life was worth living.

'I just remember standing on the other side of the railings and I had the loneliest feeling - it is hard to describe.

The health and social care student has recently been commended by Northumbria Police for her fantastic work, which has saved the lives of eight people

The Poundworld employee, who is also studying at East Durham College, has been given a commendation certificate from Northumbria Police for her work

'I was only there for five minutes but it felt like much longer. Two people who were in a van stopped me.

'They told me that I was worth a lot more than what I was going to do. They called the police and stopped with me until they arrived. I am so thankful to them.'

Paige said that although she has not spoken to the men who saved her life since, she would love to meet them again to thank them.

She explained that she had the idea of writing the notes after seeing something similar on social media.

The teenager spends three days at a time writing the notes, and it takes her three-and-a-half hours to tie them all to the bridge.

She has written 240 notes in total so far, but adds more every month. Paige added: 'I really just wanted to stop other people from having that lonely feeling.

The teenager spends three days at a time writing the notes, and it takes her three-and-a-half hours to tie them all to the bridge (pictured)

'I am truly overwhelmed by the response my little messages have gotten, it is unbelievable. The Wearmouth bridge is notoriously known for suicide.

'Since attaching the notes six people have posted on Facebook saying that they stopped them from taking their lives. A further two got in touch directly.

'It is very emotional to know that I have made a real difference.

'I just want to encourage people to talk, and want to show people that they are not alone.'

Paige said she is going to continue to hang the notes on the bridge, and has set up a funding page to raise money for Sunderland Mind.

To donate, go to https://www.gofundme.com/5uswwv4?member=483956
Muslims from across the world have travelled to Meccas iconic Masjid Al-Haram in Saudi Arabia for the Hajj pilgrimage of 2018.

Hajj is considered to be the largest single gathering of people on the planet, with three million Muslims gathering around Islams holiest site, the Kaaba.

However in the past, because thousands of people cross the Jamarat Bridge multiple times to compete the Stoning of the Devil ritual, this has resulted in stampedes, fires and riots. In 2015, a staggering 345 people were killed, but the bridge has now been redesigned.

Heres everything you need to know about what and when Hajj is, what the Stoning of the Devil ritual is, the Jamarat Bridge redesign and when Eid al-Adha is.

The Hajj pilgrimage is considered to be the largest single gathering of people on the planet

What is Hajj?

The Hajj is one of the five pillars of the Islamic faith and every Muslim is expected to complete this pilgrimage at some point in their lifetime, as reported in the Evening Standard. During Hajj, pilgrims will spend five days praying in Mecca and in the surrounding desert.

While Hajj is a demonstration of the togetherness of Islamic people and their devotion to their God Allah, the other pillars of the religion are Shahadah, the belief in God and the acceptance of Muhammad as prophet; Salat, prayer; Zakat, charity and Sawn, which is fasting.

What is the Stoning of the Devil ritual?

According to Birmingham Mail, during Hajj millions of pilgrims gather at the Jamarat Bridge which houses three columns representing the devil and Muslims will throw seven pebbles at the largest of the columns.

This act, which is referred to as Jamarat, takes place in the position where Ibrahim is thought to have done the same to frighten off the Devil after Allah had told him to sacrifice his son as a proof of faith and this is spot is where the Devil appeared to dissuade him from doing as Allah had asked.

The Stoning of the Devil ritual occurs on the third day, which is also known as yawm-ul hajj al-akbar and is the longest day of pilgrimage, as well as the most dangerous. This is also when Eid al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice, also takes place.

Muslim pilgrims around the Kaaba located in the centre of the Haram Sharif Great Mosque

Jamarat Bridge redesign

Although the Jamarat Bridge was constructed in 1963, due to an increasing number of pilgrims visiting the site, the Saudi Arabian government decided to demolish the original structure in 2006 and start building the bridge from scratch.

Birmingham Mail reported that before the upgrade, crowd density could reach up to 11-15 people per square metre at peak times, but local officials revealed that now there is one square metre per person. The new bridge also has five levels, hundreds of escalators, several lifts, two helipads and air conditioning.

Otis Middle Easts Vice President and Managing Director Maged Nagib said: With something this vital to Muslims worldwide, it is vital that outside factors do not disturb the true meaning of Hajj. The reconstruction of the Jamarat Bridge was an important step forward in terms of safety during the pilgrimage.

When is Hajj 2018?

Typically the Hajj is a five-day pilgrimage that takes place from the 8th to the 12th day of Dhul-Hijjah, the 12th and final month of the Islamic calendar.

In 2018, Hajj will begin on Sunday, August 19 and continue until Friday, August 24.

However, like all celebrations in the Muslim calendar, the event start will be determined by the sighting of the moon, which will in turn, reveals the date of Dhul-Hijjah and Eid Al-Adha.

Muslim pilgrims at Mount Arafat where Mohammed is believed to have given his final sermon

When is Eid al-Adha?

Eid al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice which marks when Allah came to Ibrahim in a dream and asked him to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience, will begin in the evening of August 21 and end in the evening of August 25.
A male Louis Vuitton model faces a life jail sentence after being convicted of stabbing his rival to death in a row over a girlfriend.

George Koh was obsessed with catwalk rival Harry Uzoka's success and had boasted in Instagram messages he had slept with the GQ star's girlfriend Ruby Campbell.

Mr Uzoka was knifed in the heart, shoulder and back after a confrontation with Koh, 24, in Shepherd's Bush, west London, in January this year.

The 25-year-old was chased and cornered around a parked car by Koh and three friends before his rival knifed him three times.

Harry Uzoka (left) was knifed in the heart, shoulder and back after a confrontation with George Koh (right) in Shepherd's Bush, west London, in January this year

Shocking CCTV footage shows the moment Harry Uzoka was chased by Merse Dikanda, George Koh and Jonathan Okigbo

Wounded, Mr Uzoka stumbled towards his Shepherd's Bush home, but collapsed and died on the pavement outside.

Described in court as Britain's 'most famous black model', Mr Uzoka and his music video editor pal Adrian Harper took dumbbell bars for extra protection.

But it turned out their rivals were armed with knives and what they thought was a gun during the stand-off.

He starred in a GQ photoshoot shortly before his death which saw him stand in front of a Mercedes Benz feature for the magazine.

Mr Uzoka also starred in campaigns for Zara and Mercedes and regularly modelled for clothing line Everlane.

He was signed up by world renowned agent Premiere Model Management, who helped launched the career of Naomi Campbell.

At the Old Bailey today, a jury found Koh and Dikanda guilty of murder after 18 hours of deliberation. Okigbo was found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter

After chasing Mr Uzoka, Merse and Dikanda are seen walking away through the car park

Koh, a former Louis Vuitton and Paul Smith model, previously posted a photo on Instagram of David Beckham standing in front of his photo at London Fashion Week.

The defendant claimed he acted in self-defence and only wanted to meet face to face for him to apologise to his rival for thinking he had bedded Ms Campbell.

All three defendants, including Koh, and his two friends who were also at the scene, Jonathan Okigbo and Merse Dikanda, all denied murder.

Koh had already pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of two knives, but Dikanda denied having an offensive weapon, a machete and knife.

At the Old Bailey today a jury found Koh and Dikanda guilty of murder after 18 hours of deliberation. Okigbo was found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Dikanda was also found guilty of two counts of possessing a bladed weapon. None of the defendants reacted as the verdicts were returned.

George Koh boasted in Instagram messages he had slept with the GQ star's girlfriend Ruby Campbell (shown left). Pictured right is model Chuck Achike, who gave evidence at the trial

At the Old Bailey today a jury found Koh and Dikanda guilty of murder after 18 hours of deliberation. Okigbo was found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter

Messages in which Koh said he admired Mr Uzoka came to light when the defendant harassed a French catwalk star for sex.

Koh persuaded fellow model Annecetta Lefon to come to his home whilst she was working in London on a video.

But during her one night's stay he was said to have tried to kiss her and force her to perform a sex act.

When she protested Koh began asking about Mr Uzoka and would not believe her when she insisted they had never met.

Judge Wendy Jospeh QC adjourned the hearing until September 21 all three will sentenced.

She added: 'I want impact statements from Harry's family who have sat through the trial day after day with such dignity.

'I want to know how all this has impacted on them, not that it's hard to imagine but I want to hear it from them.'

All three were remanded in custody until they are sentenced next month.
Anthony Bourdain's Manhattan apartment is available for rent, just two months after the celebrity chef took his own life.

The two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment has gone on the market for $14,200 a month.

Bourdain's former pad is located in the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle, just steps from Central Park and where CNN is located.

The 1,280 sq ft apartment features floor-to-ceiling windows, offering a breathtaking view of the Hudson River and Manhattan skyline.

Anthony Bourdain's Manhattan apartment is available for rent, just two months after the celebrity chef took his own life

Bourdain's former pad is located in the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle, just steps from Central Park

Bourdain's kitchen is described as being filled with 'top of the line appliances', according to the listing posted by Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

The apartment is just four rooms but also features two walk-in closets, hardwood floors, and a washer and dryer.

Included with the 54-story building is a full-time doorman, health club, spa, screening room, and sundeck.

The apartment was put on the market two weeks ago. It was last listed for $13,000 in September 2016.

The two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment has gone on the market for $14,200 a month

Bourdain's apartment was put on the market two weeks ago by Douglas Elliman Real Estate

The apartment is just four rooms but also features two walk-in closes, hardwood floors, and a washer and dryer

Bourdain will once again reappear on television screens in late fall as it has been revealed that CNN will bring back Parts Unknown for one final season.

Five of the episodes will include footage from trips that Bourdain filmed in Kenya, Texas, Spain, Indonesia, and Manhattan before his death.

Bourdain's Kenya trip was the only episode that was completed with his own narration before the celebrity chef took his life in June.

The remaining episodes will use audio that has been stitched together from pre-recorded interviews, as well as follow-up interviews with Bourdain's guests to help fill the gaps.

The 1,280 sq ft apartment features floor-to-ceiling windows, offering a breathtaking view of the Manhattan skyline. Pictured is a view from the apartment

Included with the 54-story building is a full-time doorman, health club, spa, and sundeck

It is unclear if any footage from Bourdain's trip in Alsace, France - taken just days before he died - will be used.

The final two episodes will show how the producers made the series in the wake of his death and how Bourdain impacted the world.

A CNN spokesman told DailyMail.com that the final season will 'have the full presence of Tony in them'.

'You'll see him, you'll hear him, you'll watch him,' they said.

Bourdain hanged himself in the bathroom of his hotel room in Kaysersberg, France, on June 8.

The luxury high-rise apartment also features a full gym with windows offering a stunning view of Manhattan

The apartment also includes a large screening room (pictured). The apartment was last listed for $13,000 in September 2016

He had just spent several days with his girlfriend Asia Argento in Italy before he traveled to France to continue filming.

Parts Unknown began in 2013 and was among the first shows picked up by CNN Original Series.

At the time, Bourdain had overcome drug addiction and found success with Kitchen Confidential - his book about the realities of working as a chef.

He had been working on the Travel Channel when CNN decided to hire him.

For confidential support, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 1-800-273-8255 or visit their website here
Two Utah brothers who accused their father of sexually abusing them as children 12 years ago have now admitted that they lied and are trying to clear his name.

Jeremy and Nathan Hawkins, then aged 13 and 9, testified in court that their father David had molested them in the bath at his Salt Lake City home before Sunday church services in 2006.

Their father was found guilty and ended up serving eight years in prison before being released on parole in 2015. David, who was a chiropractor prior to his arrest, is now a registered sex offender.

The boys, now aged 25 and 21, haven't seen their father since they lied on the witness stand but have spent several years trying to get the conviction overturned.

Jeremy (right) and Nathan Hawkins (left) accused their father David of abusing them when they were 13 and 9 at their home in Salt Lake City, Utah in 2006. They have since admitted they lied and are trying to clear his name with the help of their other brother Ian (center)

They are being helped by their brother Ian, who never believed his siblings and testified in court that there was no sexual abuse.

Jeremy and Nathan said they concocted the lie because they hated their father growing up and were caught in the middle of their parents' divorce. At the time, the two older brothers were living with their dad, while Nathan and their sister were living with their mom.

David Hawkins was found guilty of molesting his sons and ended up serving eight years in prison before being released on parole in 2015. He is now a registered sex offender

'We accused him of sexually abusing us, which wasn't true,' Jeremy told Fox13. 'Growing up as kids, we hated my father. We didn't want to see him again but we didn't realize how serious it was.

'We're basically the only evidence they have. They didn't find any evidence, see anything wrong with us. It's just our words.'

Their father David had to sit in court and listen as his two sons lied about how he got into the bathtub with them and 'touch me in places I wouldn't want to be touched'.

David said he remembers Nathan giggling through parts of his testimony.

'I don't think they understood the severity of what they were saying,' David said. 'It was surreal. I couldn't stop it, couldn't control, I had to let it play itself out.'

After being found guilty, David said he had every intention of challenging but prosecutors offered a plea deal to avoid going back for a second trial.

The father said that given he had already been found guilty once, he felt forced to take the deal in order to not be jailed for life.

David is hopeful that his conviction will be overturned and is preparing to file a factual innocence claim. He said he was forced to lie in prison while undergoing sex offender treatment if he ever wanted to be considered for parole

'I felt sleazy,' he told the Salt Lake Tribune about the deal. 'I felt dirty. But to me, it was like it's what I got to do because I couldn't see any other avenue.'

He said he was forced to lie in prison while undergoing sex offender treatment if he wanted to be considered for parole.

'I took the coward's approach and told them what they wanted to hear to get out,' he said.

His sons also lied initially in therapy sessions after their father went to prison.

His son Ian, who never believed his brothers, also eventually conceded that maybe the abuse happened because he was so tired of going to therapy.

About two years after David went to prison, his two sons started telling family that the abuse never occurred and that they were just angry at him.

They have spent the past five years writing to the judge and asking prosecutors to review David's case to clear his name.

'He deserves to be clean again, to have a new, clean slate in life and move forward,' Jeremy said. 'I don't think he should be known as a sex offender everywhere he goes. I don't think he deserves that.'

Prosecutors, however, recently said that their explanation that they lied because they were upset had 'greater inconsistencies than the original disclosure'.

David is hopeful that his conviction will be overturned and is preparing to file a factual innocence claim.

'The damage is done, you can't change the past,' David said. 'All you can do is move forward at this point. That's what I'm working on.'
This is the shocking moment a BBC camera crew come under attack from villagers in Malawi who accuse them of being 'vampire' child killers.

The BBC journalists had been investigating a series of murders of children in northern Malawi, southeastern Africa, where the bodies of the victims had been mutilated.

Locals believe the body parts of the dead children had been ritually removed to be used by local 'witch doctors' as magical charms.

Shocking: The video shows the undercover BBC journalists meeting with a witch doctor promising to kill a child for them

They also accuse the witch doctor killers of drinking the children's' blood on the orders of wealthy clients to pass on 'good luck' to them.

Ghanaian undercover journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas had approached a local witch doctor pretending to be a businessman.

During a late night meeting, the witch doctor offered to kill and drink a child's blood to create good luck for Anas's fake character.

However their meeting was interrupted by angry villagers, who mistook Anas and his film crew for the witch doctor and his accomplice.

Fear: Shortly afterwards, the journalists themselves came under attack, when angry he locals mistook them for the witch doctor killers

Video footage shows them being confronted by the angry mob who threaten to kill them, pelt them with stones and destroy their vehicle.

Last year, Malawi saw a spate of 'vampire'-related attacks, after rumours began spreading from Mozambique and in to the southern districts of Mulanje and Phalombe.

From September to December 2017, at least nine people accused of being blood-suckers were killed by vigilante mobs, and hundreds of villagers were arrested in connection with alleged mob murders.

The violence even prompted the United Nations and the U.S. embassy to declare some parts of the country no-go zones, and the UN pulled staff from the country.
Saudi Arabia has launched a bizarre propaganda campaign against Canada as a bitter diplomatic dispute between the two nations escalates.

The dispute kicked off earlier this month when a Canadian government-linked Twitter account posted two tweets criticizing the Saudi government for imprisoning women's rights activists calling for their immediate release.

Saudi Arabia responded by launching a full-force attack on Canada's record on civil rights in an apparent attempt to prove the old adage that 'people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones'.

A string of outlandish smears - most of them translated from Arabic - has included claims that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government is holding University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson and other critics as political prisoners.

Saudi supporters have also declared that Canada is 'the world's worst oppressor of women' - despite the kingdom's own weak record on gender equality, having only recently made it legal for women to drive.

Amidst the chorus of criticism, a Saudi government-affiliated Twitter account also threatened to carry out a 9/11-style terrorist attack on the city of Toronto in a tweet last week that accused Canada of 'sticking its nose where it doesn't belong'.

Saudi Arabia has launched a bizarre propaganda campaign against Canada amidst an escalating diplomatic dispute between the two nations. Pictured: A government-owned TV outlet calls Canada 'the world's worst oppressor of women' in a segment last week

One of the smears alleged that University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, above, is being held as a political prisoner because of his criticisms of the Canadian government

Saudi Arabia appeared to threaten Canada with 9/11-style attack on August 6 after the nation expelled its ambassador in a row over jailed women's activists

The Saudi government is said to be behind the recent influx in propaganda against Canada, spreading unsupported claims through its media outlets, political pundits and various social media accounts.

The majority of the smears have been translated to English from Arabic, potentially skewing the messages to a small degree.

As a whole the campaign has taken aim at Canada's record on a range of civil rights issues, including its treatment of women, indigenous people and its own citizens.

Below is a series of examples of how the bizarre dispute has unfolded:

SAUDI GOVERNMENT CLAIMS PROFESSOR IS A 'POLITICAL PRISONER OF TRUDEAU' IN SPAT OVER JAILED BLOGGER

The feud between the two countries began when the Canadian Foreign Ministry posted two tweets on August 3 following the arrest of blogger Raif Badawi's sister Samar, who is an outspoken civil rights campaigner.

Raif was arrested in 2012 and later sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for insulting Islam in his writing - a case which sparked outrage from international human rights groups who have continually called for his release.

The blogger's wife and their three children became citizens of Canada earlier this year.

'Very alarmed to learn that Samar Badawi, Raif Badawi's sister, has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia,' the first tweet read.

'Canada stands together with the Badawi family in this difficult time, and we continue to strongly call for the release of both Raif and Samar Badawi.'

In another tweet the ministry wrote: 'Canada is gravely concerned about additional arrests of civil society and woman's rights activists in #Saudi Arabia, including Samar Badawi.

'We urge Saudi authorities to immediately release them and all other peaceful #humanrights activists.'

Canada last week said it was 'gravely concerned' over a new wave of arrests, including award-winning gender rights activist Samar Badawi, pictured left. Samar is a vocal campaigner for her brother Raif Badawi, a blogger who was arrested in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Badawi's wife Ensaf Haidar, seen holding Raif's photo, has been granted asylum by Canada, where she is raising their three children

In April, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (pictured) expressed his 'serious concern' over the continued jailing of Badawi to King Salman

The Saudi government quickly responded to the tweets by freezing all new trade with Canada and expelling its ambassador over citing 'interference' in the desert kingdom's domestic affairs. It added Canada's actions were a violation of the country's sovereignty.

Saudi-owned TV station Al Arabiya stepped into the feud days later by releasing a series of videos on August 6 in which it accused the Canadian government of holding several of its own dissidents as political prisoners.

The outlet specifically referred to right-wing pundit Jordan Peterson as a 'Canadian prisoner of conscience'.

The best-selling author - who has criticized the Canadian justice system on multiple occasions - made headlines earlier this year for his conservative views on gender and sexuality.

He has never been arrested or jailed, and there is no evidence to support the idea that he is a political prisoner.

The same Saudi TV segment also mentioned the allegedly appalling conditions in Canadian prisons, claiming that 75 percent of detainees die before standing trial.

The Saudi Arabian government responded to Canadian criticism in a string of tweets August 5

TWEET THREATENS 9/11-STYLE ATTACK ON TORONTO

The same day that the inflammatory news coverage was released, a Saudi government-linked Twitter account posted tweet that appeared to threaten a 9/11-style attack on Canada.

The tweet featured an image showing a passenger plane flying towards the CN Tower in Toronto with the words: 'Sticking one's nose where it doesn't belong.'

The caption read: 'As the Arabic saying goes: "He who interferes with what doesn't concern him finds what doesn't please him."'

Hours later in a desperate attempt to wriggle out of the gaffe, the Twitter account responsible, @infographic_ksa, apologized saying: 'Earlier we posted an image, which is why we deleted the post immediately.

'The aircraft was intended to symbolize the return of the Ambassador, we realize this was not clear and any other meaning was unintentional. We apologize to anyone who was offended'.

SAUDI ARABIA CLAIMS CANADA IS 'THE WORLD'S WORST OPPRESSOR OF WOMEN'

In addition to trying to prove that the Canadian government has mistreated its critics, the Saudi media has attempted to paint the country as having a poor record when it comes to women's rights.

One news segment last week, an Al Arabiya commentator claimed Canada has one of the world's highest rates of oppression against women, specifically pointing to the disappearance of about 1,000 indigenous Canadian women over the past hundred years.

Trudeau commissioned a $41million investigation into those disappearances.

Several Saudi social media accounts began sharing a report detailing statistics of crimes against women.

Canadian media outlets were quick to point out that many of the offenses on that list - including spousal rape and domestic violence against women - are not criminalized in Saudi Arabia itself.

The World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report released earlier this year ranks Canada as number 16 for gender equality and Saudi Arabia at 138.

Key distinctions between the countries include the fact that women in Canada were granted the right to vote a century ago, whereas women in Saudi Arabia were just granted that right last year.

Additionally, the Saudi Arabian government considers women to be under the guardianship of men, and thus requires them to get permission to marry, get an education, obtain employment and to travel abroad.

Several Saudi social media accounts have criticized the Canadian government's treatment of indigenous people and alleged that the country is fraught with racism

RACISM IN CANADA IS VERY CONCERNING, CLAIMS SAUDI ARABIAN LOBBYIST

Continuing with the civil rights record theme, the campaign has also targeted Canada's track record on racism.

On Tuesday, top Saudi Arabian lobbyist Salman Al-Ansari tweeted a video of a Canadian woman going on a drunken racist rant against Afghan men in Lethbridge, which had gone viral four months ago.

In the caption Al-Ansari wrote: 'Racism in Canada is very concerning!'

He had also called Canada one of the 'top 10 countries for domestic violence' in an appearance on BBC last week.

Other Saudi commentators also hit out at Canada's treatment of indigenous people, which has long been a sore subject for the nation.

Criticisms ranged from accusations that the government has failed to provide inadequate housing and education for indigenous people to assertions that those groups aren't afforded any rights at all.

In one TV segment, a panel of guests said the treatment was worse than the massacres and mass rapes that the Rohingya ethinic minority is currently enduring in Myanmar.

The Saudi smear campaign also brought up the issue of homelessness in Canada. A homeless man is seen wrapped up a coat in the street in Toronto

HIGHLIGHTING HOMELESSNESS IN CANADA

Also receiving heat from the Saudi smear campaign was the rate of homelessness in Canada.

Oslo-based refugee and blogger Iyad el-Baghdadi reported that several pro-Saudi Twitter accounts had tweeted an image of a man in Montreal carrying a sign that reads: 'Canada Land of the Homeless'.

While there are an estimated 30,000 people sleeping on the streets of Canada every night, Saudi Arabia is said to have upwards of 80,000 homeless people.

The Saudi Arabian government has been accused of arresting 'beggars' in the streets and jailing journalists who try to document the homelessness problem in the country.
A Florida day care worker will spend 11 months behind bars following the death of a toddler in a hot van last summer.

Louvenia Johnson pleaded no contest to aggravated manslaughter of a child by culpable negligence, testifying that she was distracted while unloading the children.

The Pensacola News-Journal reports McGee picked up three-year-old Jai'Nier Barnes at her Pensacola home last August and drove her with several other children to the In His Arms Christian Academy.

Louvenia Johnson (pictured) pleaded no contest to aggravated manslaughter of a child by culpable negligence

Last year, three-year-old Jai'Nier Barnes (pictured) was left in a hot van for four hours and later died while being treated at the hospital

Judge Joel Boles also sentenced the 29-year-old to 10 years of probation Friday

About four hours passed before another driver went outside at around 1pm and discovered the small girl. Employees tried CPR but the child died of hyperthermia at the hospital.

Judge Joel Boles also sentenced the 29-year-old to 10 years of probation Friday.

The judge's decision was a departure from the recommended minimum sentence of 13 years in prison as he said neither defendant had intended to harm Jai'Nier.

Earlier this week, a jury acquitted 27-year-old driver Cornel McGee in the incident.

Prosecutors in the case provided evidence that showed both Johnson and McGee signed state-mandated transportation logs saying Jai'Nier had been taken off the van, according to the News-Journal.

McGee later told the newspaper that Johnson had picked up every child and stated their name, including Jai'Nier, while he checked off their name in the log.

Prosecutors in the case provided evidence that showed both Johnson and Cornel McGee (L) signed state-mandated transportation logs saying Jai'Nier had been taken off the van

Earlier this week, a jury acquitted 27-year-old driver Cornel McGee in the incident

McGee explained that Johnson must have gotten distracted after calling Jai'Nier's name, and then the child fell asleep.

Following Johnson's hearing, prosecutors were at a loss on how to prevent such tragedies from reoccurring in the future.

'I don't have an answer for what's right,' state prosecutor Trey Myers said during the hearing.

'It's become an epidemic of some nature and something has to be done to grab their attention, judge,' Myers added, referring to dozens of cases where caregivers were found responsible of having left children in hot vehicles over the years.

Defense attorney Paul Hamlin called the episode an isolated incident and argued that it was unfair that his client was being punished while McGee was allowed to go free.

'This is just a terrible tragedy and I don't know how you rectify that,' Hamlin said.

Judge Boles said during the hearing that he understood that both defendants did not intend to harm Jai'Nier, but ultimately decided that they both had failed in their responsibility to protect her welfare while she was in their custody.

'Quite frankly they both failed at this, we had Mr McGee go to trial, he admitted he failed and the jury deliberated and made a determination that they thought he failed, his failure didn't rise to the nature of criminal activity,' the judge added.

Johnson will be prohibited from working with children during her probation period. She will be required to turn herself in to custody on August 20 to begin her sentence.
A father who stuck out his hand to hail a taxi and accidentally clotheslined a scooter driver has been arrested and threatened with attempted murder charges in Bali.

Matthew Arai, from Perth, was hailing a taxi at about 4am outside the Bounty nightclub in Kuta, Bali, on Sunday, when he injured the scooter driver who received a cut to his eyebrow, Perth Now reported.

Mr Arai was holidaying with his wife and four-year-old son for his cousin's wedding.

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Matthew Arai (pictured), a New Zealand citizen, has been arrested and thrown into Kuta jail

Mr Arai was holidaying in Bali with his wife and four-year-old son for his cousin's wedding when the incident occurred

Mr Arai still has access to his phone and has been communicating with the media and friends about his situation.

'I didn't realise the injury as he quickly jumped off and ran down the road. I was then surrounded by local Indonesians punched to the face and kicked in the groin region multiple times,' Mr Arai wrote on Facebook.

'I wanted to report myself being assaulted but ended up in Kuta jail with no charge or reasoning for my detention.

'I understood afterwards that the scooter rider was injured and arrived from hospital, then they lock me up without charge.'

He told Nine News that authorities are demanding $10,000 or he risks being charged with attempted murder.

'I have been threatened with 40 days local jail, then transfer to prison with minimum five months to five years imprisonment,' Mr Arai said.

Authorities are demanding $10,000 or he risks being charged with attempted murder

Mr Arai pictured in his jail cell in Kuta Jail. His family is seeking legal advice to help get him out

Mr Arai's friend Regan Jhonson has sent over $5000 on Monday morning and they're still working on getting the rest of the money.

His mother, Wendy Clark, is upset to hear about what her son is going through and is seeking legal advice.

'It is very distressing, to see my son, in a one-metre cell on the floor,' she told Ngaarda Media.

'There's urine and its flea infested...he hasn't got a bed and I am not leaving Bali until I get my baby out of there.'

'I really need a lawyer to help us negotiate.'

The New Zealand Embassy in Indonesia told Daily Mail Australia assistance is being provided to Mr Arai.

'The New Zealand embassy in Jakarta is providing consular assistance to Mr Arai,' the spokesperson said.

'Due to privacy considerations no further details will be provided.
This chilling footage captures the moment Australia's most notorious female killer denied murdering her four children in a case which shocked the nation.

Despite being convicted of the killings, Kathleen Folbigg still insists she was telling the truth as she fights for the case to be reviewed 15 years on.

In the grainy police footage, Folbigg, who is from the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, wept as officers questioned her about the deaths of her four children - who were all under the age of two.

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The petition, which was drafted by a Newcastle legal team, argues that some of the medical evidence against Folbigg during the trial was flawed

In a recording obtained by the ABC's Australian Story, she told her friend she couldn't walk as she was led from the courtroom to the downstairs cells following the 2003 jury verdict (Kathleen Folbigg is pictured a month before being found guilty of murder and manslaughter)

The officers listed all of her dead children and asked the question - 'did you kill' Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura.

'No!' the convicted killer shrieked each time the officer posed the question, one child after the other.

Her diary entries, which were used to convict her for the murders, were reported on the ABC's Australian Story.

One of the excerpts read: 'I feel like the worst mother on this earth. Scared that she'll leave me now like Sarah did.'

Folbigg also wrote: 'I knew I was short tempered and cruel sometimes to her. She left, with a bit of help.'

She became a hated figure in May 2003 when a Supreme Court jury concluded she had killed her two sons and two daughters between 1989 and 1999.

Dubbed Australia's worst female child killer, the 51-year-old is serving a 40-year sentence for killing her children.

In 15 years, has exhausted her right of appeal and now hopes the outcome of a petition to review her case will be her savior.

The petition, which was drafted by a Newcastle legal team, argues that some of the medical evidence against Folbigg during the trial was flawed.

Pictured: Laura Folbigg, one of Katherine Forbigg's four children who died by her hand between 1989 and 1999

Sarah (left) died aged 10 months in August 1993 while her sister Laura (right) was 18 months old when she died in February 1999

Caleb (left) was just 19 days old when he died in February 1989, while Patrick (right), was seven months in February 1991

From Cessnock Correctional Centre, in a phone call recorded by prison authorities, Folbigg revealed her shock at the jurors finding her guilty on three counts of murder and one of manslaughter in 2003.

In the recording she told her friend she couldn't walk as she was led from the courtroom to the downstairs cells.

'In the end, I was just shattered and felt like by the time they got me downstairs, my legs weren't even working properly, you I know I was half carried down the stairs, and out to the cells,' she said.

Minutes earlier, the jury had found she had murdered her infant children Patrick, aged seven months in February 1991; Sarah, aged 10 months in August 1993; and Laura, aged 18 months in February 1999.

She was found guilty of manslaughter of her 19-day-old son Caleb's death in February 1989.

The jury had rejected her defence the deaths were of natural causes, leading to her being sentenced to 40 years in jail with a 30-year non-parole term.

NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman hinted the State Government was open to reviewing her case.

NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman hinted the State Government was open to reviewing her case

'Ms Folbigg's petition raises complex questions to which I am giving appropriate consideration and have taken extensive advice,' he told Daily Mail Australia in a statement.

'I hope to be in a position to make an announcement in the near future.'

Folbigg told her friend the 2003 jury verdict had traumatised her.

'Look, it was just so overwhelming. There are no words. No words to even describe it,' Folbigg told her friend in one of their telephone calls.

'It was shattering and it was devastating and it was overwhelming. If I had started screaming, I would have sent the courthouse into a big, giant frenzy.

'That's what I felt like I was doing on the inside.'

Folbigg, who was convicted based on her diary entries found by her former husband Craig Folbigg at their Singleton home, told her friend she was angry inside.

'Nothing might have come out of my mouth and the tears were flowing, but from the inside, I just felt like I was absolutely just screaming my lungs out going, 'No. this isn't right',' she said.

In another phone call, she revealed her diary entries were written from the point of view of an insecure mother.

Kathleen Folbigg (pictured with Salvation Army court chaplain Joyce Harmer) was found guilty by a Supreme Court jury in 2003 of killing her two sons and two daughters between 1989 and 1999

'You've got to understand that those diaries are written from a point of me always blaming myself,' she said in one phone call.

'I blamed myself for everything. It's just I took so much of the responsibility, because that's, as mothers, what you do.'

In 2003, jurors were told the children were killed at the hands of a mother who was driven to smother them in violent fits of rage.

Barrister Isabel Reed - one of several lawyers who has been working on a petition to have Folbigg's case reviewed by the NSW justice system - insisted her conviction was based on insufficient evidence.

'We don't want her released from prison. We just want an inquiry to look at the evidence and consider: has there been a miscarriage of justice here?' Ms Reed told The Sydney Morning Herald.

'I didn't think when we started this that that was a big ask.'

Monash University forensic pathologist Stephen Cordner, who is also involved in the petition, agrees 'there is no pathological or medical basis for concluding homicide' in the case of Folbigg's deceased children.

Courts previously heard it was 'cessation of breathing' that led to each child's sudden and unexpected death - though post-mortems failed to shed conclusive light on any cause beyond that.

Moreover, much of the evidence used in the trial was deemed to have been misleading .

Ms Reed claims to have called the office of NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman every two weeks for the past two years in an effort to have him launch a formal inquiry into Folbigg's case, to little avail.

'I don't know whether public pressure is a thing that might help with a decision,' Ms Reed said, adding she hoped the state attorney-general would 'at least not be able to sleep comfortably on Monday night' after watching the ABC.
This is the shocking moment a police officer shattered a car window before dragging the driver to the ground after accusing him of not wearing his seat belt.

Footage from a traffic stop in New Mexico shows officers breaking the window and grabbing hold of the motorist, Phillip Pages, arm.

Filmed by Angela Fisher-Herrera from the passenger seat of the car, the clip captures the pair as they are stopped for a seat belt violation.

The New Mexico officer shatters the window on drivers side before ripping it from the frame

The officers are reportedly unhappy when 41-year-old Page refuses to roll down his window all the way, revealed the Albuquerque Journal.

Page warns the police that he is recording and to calm down - to which they respond that they are also filming.

Fisher-Herrera, 29, then explains to the camera: They pulled us over for not wearing a seatbelt. We were wearing a seatbelt and now theyre threatening to break our windows.

You havent even asked me for my license or registration, argues Page.

But then suddenly one of the officers - with his bare hands - pulls on the glass window and smashes it.

Fisher-Herrera had already rang 911 to request another officer as she feared the polices intentions.

She can be heard shouting, dont break his arm as the officer tries to drag Page from his vehicle - with the seat belt obstructing their way.

Phillip Page was dragged out of the vehicle for not wearing a seatbelt after he argued the officers had not asked for his licence and registration

The video, published on Facebook this week but first filmed in February, shows a police officer shouting Youre under goddamn arrest! as Page is thrown to the ground.

Yet State Police say the officers were in the right since the driver refused to comply for more than 15 minutes before his window was forcefully broken.

A spokesperson for New Mexico State Police told the newspaper that Page refused to give his identification 14 times and was warned at least eight times that if he failed to roll down his window they would break it and arrest him.

New Mexico State Police Chief Pete Kassetas said after investigating that the force believes Page could have avoided the incident if he followed the rules.

Angela Fisher-Herrera filmed the officers from the passenger seat of the car and can be heard shouting 'don't break his arm'

Im standing by my officers, he said. At some point after a certain amount of time of noncompliance, something has to happen.

We didnt break the window and drag him out of the car because he didnt have a seat belt on, he said. He got removed from the vehicle forcefully because he didnt comply.

I was just doing everything that was within my rights, Page said.

Both the motorist and the passenger were arrested for resisting, evading or obstructing an officer, concealing identity, dialling 911 to report a false alarm or complaint, and a seat belt violation.

Page, who now lives in Oregon, told the Journal he hopes the case will be dismissed.
A parrot stuck on a roof for three days greeted firefighters sent to its aid with a four-letter tirade.

Jessie, the multi-lingual Macaw, flipped the bird after escaping from her owner's home in Edmonton, north London.

When she could not be lured down from a neighbour's roof, firefighters were called out and told to tell the bird 'I love you' - to which Jessie replied 'I love you back'.

But she then ruffled her would-be rescuers' feathers by telling them to 'f**k off' before flying off to another nearby rooftop.

Jessie, the multi-lingual Macaw, flipped the bird after escaping from her owner's home in Edmonton, north London

When Jessie could not be lured down from a neighbour's roof, firefighters were called out and told to tell the bird 'I love you' - to which Jessie replied 'I love you back'

But she then ruffled her would-be rescuers' feathers by telling them to 'f**k off' before flying off to another nearby rooftop

The foul-mouthed pet also speaks Turkish and Greek according to its owner, but had its own choice words in English for the rescue team.

Watch Manager Chris Swallow said: 'Jessie had been on the same roof for three days and there were concerns that she may be injured which is why she hadn't come down.

'Our crew manager was the willing volunteer who went up the ladder to try and bring Jessie down.

'We were told that to bond with the parrot, you have to tell her ''I love you'', which is exactly what the crew manager did.'

The foul-mouthed pet also speaks Turkish and Greek according to its owner, but had its own choice words in English for the rescue team

Watch Manager Chris Swallow said: 'Jessie had been on the same roof for three days and there were concerns that she may be injured which is why she hadn't come down'

As Jessie wasn't injured, the firefighters, who had been called in by the RSPCA, left her on her perch

Mr Swallow continued: 'While Jessie responded ''I love you'' back, we then discovered that she had a bit of a foul mouth and kept swearing, much to our amusement.

'Jessie also speaks Turkish and Greek, so we tried telling her to ''come'' in both those languages too.

'Thankfully it soon became apparent that Jessie was fine and uninjured as she flew off to another roof and then to a tree.'

As Jessie wasn't injured, the firefighters, who had been called in by the RSPCA, left her on her perch.
A widow is still demanding answers from one of Australia's biggest insurers, 10 years after her husband's super fund and $200,000 death benefit were bled dry by fees and charges.

Kim Garbutt expected to receive more than $208,000 in death benefits from her estranged husband Craig Mollison's superannuation fund with AMP when he died from alcoholism in 2008, aged 39.

The mother-of-two got a rude shock when she received a cheque for $25.09 less than a fortnight after he passed away.

Craig Mollison (pictured) died from alcoholism in 2008 aged 39, leaving behind an estranged wife and two young sons

'When the cheque arrived, I was dumbfounded that it was $25.09, so some time after that I spoke to them and they were saying that the account had run dry,' Ms Garbutt told ABC's 7.30.

She launched an investigation and eventually learned her husband had rolled over $1,621.93 into the account from his former fund in 2003.

He had been slugged more than $188.16 in fees and insurance premiums within five weeks of the account being opened.

Mr Mollison didn't contribute another cent to the account following his initial contribution but continued to pay monthly death benefit premiums for six years.

AMP continued to deduct fees and charges from Mr Mollison's account until it was cancelled five months prior to his death because the account was more than $200 in arrears.

By then, Mr Mollison was unwell with alcohol addiction, didn't open mail and had no fixed address.

'I'm angry that I'm now living off my own super because Craig's super fund have another look at the case,' Kim Garbutt (pictured) said

For the last 10 years, Ms Garbutt has 'begged and pleaded' with AMP to find out what happened to the account with little success.

'We have never been able to get a full understanding of what he agreed to and they took no due diligence in looking at why the fees had been taken out,' she said.

'I'm angry that I'm now living off my own super because Craig's super fund didn't have another look at the case and go maybe we could have done better.'

Kim Garbutt was shocked to receive a cheque (pictured) for $25.09 from her husband's super fund just 13 days after his death

Kim Garbutt has 'begged and pleaded' with AMP to find out what happened to with husband's account with little success

AMP 'strongly rejected' claims Ms Garbutt had not been kept informed.

'At no time were we informed that [Craig] was unwell, and we corresponded with him as early as seven months before his death that he was at risk of losing his valuable insurance,' a spokeswoman said.

She told the ABC program that AMP paid '95 per cent of all claims' and paying claims on lapsed policies could lead to 'all customers having to pay increased premiums'.
An Israeli teenager has been arrested in Poland after he was caught on CCTV while exposing his rear at the former Nazi German death camp Majdanek.

The 17-year-old was filmed as he 'pulled down his trousers while turning his back to the camp' near Lublin, eastern Poland, on Friday, local police said.

The teenager was detained and notified he would be charged with 'desecrating a monument or memorial', which can result in either a fine or jail time.

Shocking: The boy, 17, who was visiting Majdanek, near Lublin, Poland, as part of a group of Israeli students, was caught on CCTV pulling his trousers down as he left former Nazi camp

The teenager reportedly confessed on the spot and paid aid 1,000 zloty (207) in cash towards any future fine.

'He admitted to the act and said he was willing to accept punishment,' local police press officer Andrzej Fijolek said.

Israeli media reported that the boy had since been released from police custody and expelled from Poland.

Management of the museum located at the site told AFP that it 'strongly condemns' the 'indecent' and 'revolting' act.

The teenager paid 1,000 zloty (207) in cash towards a future fine, and may be sentenced to jail for 'desecrating a memorial'

Nazi Germany set up the Majdanek camp in occupied Poland in 1941 and ran it until 1944.

A quarter of a million people, including more than 100,000 Jews, died at the camp, according to Polish historians.

Every year hundreds of thousands of people visit the former death camps installed by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland.

In March, an Israeli teenager was fined 1,200 euros for urinating at the largest of these sites, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

A Polish court also jailed the organisers of an anti-war stunt that saw a dozen people strip naked at Auschwitz-Birkenau before one of them slaughtered a lamb last year.
The adopted Peruvian daughter of an American couple could be kicked out of the US unless the four-year-old is given a last-minute reprieve.

Angela Becerra was adopted by Amy and Marcos Becerra in 2014. She had been abandoned at a Peruvian orphanage at 11 days old by her biological mother, a sex trafficking victim.

The Becerras, who had been living in Peru, immediately fell in love with Angela when they met her and decided to make her a permanent part of their family, they told Fox31 Denver.

They began legal adoption proceedings. And by April 2017, a Peruvian court had legally recognized the adoption, paving the way for the family to return to the US.

But family life has been anything but simple since then. The Becerras were denied citizenship for Angela, who was merely granted a tourist visa.

Amy and Marco Becerra asked the US government to look into the denied immigration case of their daughter Angela Becerra.

Angela hasonly been allowed to enter the US with a tourist visa. It expires August 31 and she will have to leave the country unless immigration officials intercede.

She has now again been denied citizenship, and the Becerras fear she will have to leave the US when the tourist visa runs out on August 31.

Amy Becerra works for the State of Colorado and Marco Becerra works for the federal government, and they have now recruited Congressman Mike Coffman to help to help fight their cause with the local U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Denver.

'[Angela's natural mother] was treated like a dog,' Mrs Becerra told KDVR in Denver. 'She was chained to the table and sex-trafficked. That's the reality. No running water. No electricity. Very little food.'

She said Angela's citizenship documents were continuously delayed and denied because of the stringent measures imposed by the Trump aministration.

She said the family had to stay in Peru for 13 months during the initial application, and it wasn't until March that officials finally granted Angela Becerra a tourist visa.

But the upcoming expiry of that visa, and the decision to deny her citizenship, has left Angela's future in limbo.

An appeal could be submitted, but the law forbids it within three weeks of the visa's expiration.

An old shot of the Becerras with a young Angela. She was just 11-days-old when her biological mother, a sex trafficking victim, gave her up for adoption.

'I mean this is beyond belief,' Representative Coffman told FOX31 Denver.

'We believe there were errors in that process, I believe we have a broken immigration system, and this is a symptom of that broken immigration system.'

If Angela's last attempt at citizenship is denied, the Becerras could well leave the US and resettle back in Peru.

'We're both citizens. My husband and I have a full legal binding adoption completed and we have a birth certificate that lists no other parent,' Amy Becerra said.

'If she expires her visa, she is officially here as an undocumented alien and legally is at risk for deportation even though both her parents are citizens.'
A teenager has told how she was forced to escape from the Mayo Clinic after doctors 'refused' to discharge or transfer her and tried to take guardianship of her against her will following a brain surgery last year.

Alyssa Gilderhus, now 19, was a high school senior and 18-years-old when she was admitted to the world renowned hospital's Minnesota facility on Christmas Day, 2016.

She had suffered a brain aneurysm and required emergency surgery to save her life.

After neurosurgeons performed the procedure, Alyssa was transferred to the hospital's rehabilitation unit where she spent three weeks.

Over the course of those three weeks, her parents butted heads with doctors who she says were 'cruel' to her and did not listen to her needs.

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Alyssa Gilderhus is shown being wheeled out of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota on February 28 by her stepfather after telling staff she was going outside to meet her grandmother

Alyssa had been at the hospital since Christmas Day and was desperate to get out but staff had stopped listening to her parents and 'ignored' her pleas to be transferred, she said

Alyssa and her family drove for 12 hours to South Dakota where they got a second opinion from doctors who supported their belief that she was ready to go home and was able to make her own decisions. By then, the Mayo Clinic had called 911 and the police were looking for the family

By the end of her time there, the hospital had excluded her mother from conversations about her care and had asked the county to take guardianship of her claiming that though she was 18, she was not mentally competent to make her own medical decisions.

On February 28, 2017, she left the hospital after her parents pretended to be wheeling her into the parking lot to meet her elderly grandmother.

She could not get out on her own because she could not walk out and the hospital had put her under the constant watch of nurses.

The family filmed a video of the February 28 escape which shows Alyssa climbing in to the passenger seat of the family's car with her mother Amber at the wheel.

For the next 12 hours, the family was on the run from Minnesota authorities which the hospital had alerted after they fled.

Before: Alyssa is pictured before she suffered a brain aneurysm on Christmas Day, 2016

It was not until they got to a different state and found the opinion of a second doctor who disagreed with what the Mayo Clinic specialists had said that the family were free to go home.

Now, more than a year later, the family has decided to speak out by telling their story to CNN. They are not suing the hospital but are in talks with a lawyer.

The Mayo Clinic has hit back at the story that was published this week, claiming CNN 'knew' of a fuller context but chose not to include it in its reporting.

It is standing by the practices of its doctors who they believe acted ethically.

On December 25, Alyssa was admitted to the hospital after suffering a brain aneurysm.

The problems arose in the rehabilitation unit of the facility. Among the earliest disagreements between Alyssa's parents and her doctors was the decision by staff that she should not be given oxycodone, a powerful pain killer, a few days after her fourth surgery of the month.

Her father said it was too soon. 'She'd lay in bed with tears coming out of her eyes because she was in so much pain,' Duane Engebretson, her stepfather, said.

Others included their belief that Alyssa's feeding tube was not the right size. They also say that doctors failed to notice she had a bladder infection.

On February 21, Alyssa's mother asked for her doctor to be replaced. The next day, she asked for a nursing aide to be replaced.

After the aneurysm on December 25, the then 18-year-old had to undergo four operations in a month

Alyssa (pictured with her younger sister) spent three weeks in the rehabilitation unit of the hospital until she escaped on February 28, 2017

They say they had already asked repeatedly for her to be transferred but were either ignored or told no.

On February 22, Amber was thrown out of the hospital after barging in on a meeting between a doctor and a social worker who were discussing her daughter's care.

She claims she was told afterwards that she was not allowed to 'participate' in her daughter's care anymore.

Over the next week, the family says Alyssa had her phone confiscated after she made a video for her mother.

The hospital, they say, started refusing her other relatives when they wanted to spend the night and Alyssa was put under the constant supervision of two nurses.

The family wanted to remove her but because she could not walk, they could not do so without causing a physical scene.

On February 28, Duane convinced staff that Alyssa's grandmother was in the parking lot.

Alyssa's mother Amber Engebreston and her husband Duane say they were excluded from decisions about her care after they questioned doctors at the hospital. They believe they were being punished by the facility for daring to question its decisions but say they stand by their doubts

Alyssa, now 19, says it felt 'phenomenal' to escape from the hospital where she says doctors and nurses were 'cruel' to her

The Mayo Clinic would not go into detail when addressing the family's allegations but said its doctors believed they were acting in the best interest of the patient all along

The nurses agreed then to let her go into her chair and they accompanied her as she was wheeled outside.

Once in the parking lot and next to the car, he lifted Alyssa out of her chair despite the nurses' protestations.

'Don't you touch my daughter,' he can be heard saying in a clip of the escape as Alyssa's mother, Amber, tells her soothingly: 'Come on honey, we're going home.'

A nurse attempted to intervene and yelled: 'No!'

Once they had left the hospital, the nurses called 911. They explained to police that the hospital was in the process of trying to obtain county guardianship for her and said they had concerns about her health.

They said that Alyssa would die if she went too long without medication or care.

They said she was at risk of 'pneumonia, malnourishment, dehydration, aspiration, infection and falling.'

Police launched a manhunt and got in touch with the family via their cell phones. Officers pleaded with Duane to bring Alyssa back to hospital.

Alyssa returned to high school later in 2017 and was crowned prom queen. She is now preparing to go to college

Afraid that she would be sent back to The Mayo Clinic, the family kept on driving.

Twelve hours after removing her, the family arrived at an ER in South Dakota where not only did doctors determine that she was able to make her own decisions, they disagreed with the claim that she had to be in hospital.

Satisfied with their second opinion, the family returned home and explained to police that the other doctors did not agree with the Mayo Clinic.

More than a year later, Alyssa has graduated from high school and is preparing to go to college.

She said she was desperate to escape and that when she did, it felt like a 'weight' had been lifted. She said it felt 'phenomenal'.

In a statement to DailyMail.com on Monday, The Mayo Clinic hit back at the family's claims and CNN's presentation of them.

The hospital's statement is as follows:

'Patient safety is always our highest priority, and it is at the forefront of the care we deliver to each patient. We are unwavering in our dedication to do what is best for every patient, every time.

'This patients case was no exception. This case was escalated to the highest level of leadership, and the care team worked with this family on a daily basis to listen to them and resolve their concerns. The same care and level of professionalism that this patient experienced during her surgery were also part of her post-surgery experience. This was a very complex situation with very challenging dynamics.

We provided lifesaving care for this patient and made decisions based on what we felt is best for the future of this patient The Mayo Clinic

'Following a thorough and careful review of the care in question, we have determined that the version of events provided by certain patient family members to CNN are not supported by the facts nor do they track with the direct observations of numerous other providers on the patients care team.

'Our internal review determined that the care teams actions were true to Mayo Clinics primary value that the patients needs come first. We acted in a manner that honored that value for this patient and that also took into account the safety and well-being of the team caring for the patient.

'This story lacks further clarification and context that CNN knew but chose not to use.

'While we will not discuss specific patients or their families, many who seek Mayo Clinics care can also be dealing with significant emotional and family dynamic complications which can be challenging in an already complex medical situation.

'We provided lifesaving care for this patient and made decisions based on what we felt is best for the future of this patient.'


The widower of a woman allegedly killed by her son-in-law today disputed claims she had taken her own life.

Muhammad Tafham, 31, is said to have stabbed mother-of-five Rahman Begum, 46, to death at her home in Rochdale after she helped her daughter Aysha Gulraiz, 25, run away from him and return to her long-term boyfriend.

Ms Gulraiz continued seeing her partner despite entering into an arranged marriage in Pakistan with Tafham, a cousin on her father's side, who joined her in the UK in September 2016.

Muhammad Tafham, 31, is said to have stabbed mother-of-five Rahman Begum, 46, to death at her home in Rochdale. Pictured, police and forensics at the scene

Tafham and Ms Gulraiz argued when they tried to live together but he said he would 'only give her a divorce after she had lived with him for three years so he could then stay in this country', Minshull Street Court heard.

The prosecution claim Tafham killed Mrs Begum in a furious rage the day after she tricked him to leave the family home so her daughter and boyfriend could swiftly collect her belongings before he returned.

The defendant placed the murder weapon, a 12-inch kitchen knife, in her hand to make it appear as a suicide, it is claimed.

Mrs Begum's husband Gulraiz Sharif told the court that his wife, known as Ruksana, was 'happy' and joking about making a chicken curry that he could not eat when he spoke to her on a video phone call from Pakistan the night before she was found lying in a pool of blood in her kitchen on February 7, 2018.

Andrew Thomas QC, prosecuting, asked him: 'Did Ruksana that night, or ever, tell you she was thinking of killing herself?'

He replied: 'No. Why would she kill herself? She didn't have any problems. She was happy, she was very happy.'

Mr Sharif told the court the couple were planning a six-week summer holiday in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Aysha Gulraiz told the court her father did not accept the relationship with her boyfriend Malik, and that she only agreed to the arranged marriage with Tafham to keep her father happy.

The defendant placed the murder weapon, a 12-inch kitchen knife, in Mrs Begum's hand to make it appear as a suicide, it is claimed. Pictured, police outside her home

But she said her mother had never accused her of bringing shame to the family over living elsewhere with her boyfriend while married.

The jury has heard that another of the couple's daughters had also entered an arranged marriage at the same time but it was subsequently discovered she too had a boyfriend in this country.

Cross-examined by Abdul Iqbal QC, Mr Sharif denied he had separated from his wife in the months before her death and that she was planning to move her and some of their children to the Midlands near to her family.

Mr Iqbal said: 'You blamed her for the upbringing of your daughters, didn't you?'

Mr Sharif said: 'I am not accepting this because she is my wife and we lived together for 25 years. We lived together and never separated.'

He said he was unaware his wife had visited her family GP in November 2017 and had complained of a 'low mood'.

Mr Iqbal continued: 'Your evidence is that your wife was perfectly happy in your marriage as of February 2018?'

Mr Sharif replied: 'Yes, she was very happy.'

Tafham's claims he found Mrs Begum lying on her kitchen floor with a knife in her chest and later fled without raising the alarm after he panicked as he thought he would get the blame.

The trial continues.
A woman whose three children were all killed by her ex-husband in a murder-suicide says she relives the traumatic ordeal everyday but she wants to become a mother again.

Amanda Simpson, 29, was the only survivor when her ex-husband Justin Painter stormed into her home in Ponder, Texas in May and shot dead their three children - Odin, 8, Caydence, 6, and Drake, 4.

He also killed her 29-year-old boyfriend Seth Richardson before turning the gun on himself in a bedroom.

Simpson, who was hospitalized with a gunshot wound to her shoulder and a broken neck and ribs from the attack, told the Star-Telegram: 'I have to put on a fake smile every day.'

Amanda Simpson, 29, was the only survivor when her ex-husband Justin Painter stormed her home in Ponder, Texas in May and shot dead their children - Odin, 8, Caydence, 6, and Drake, 4

'I relive it every day. Every single day,' she said.

'It's hard to keep going. I don't know how to keep going but at the same time I know I have to until I see them again.'

Simpson said her children had all spoken about them wanting a younger sibling.

'To me, that gives me permission to have another child. I'm not done being a mom. I am wired, I have always been wired to be a mom,' she said.

'I'm not done yet. I'm kind of terrified to find anybody or run into anybody who's willing to take my so-called baggage and start a family.

'Right now, I'm just trying to get myself fixed, mentally and physically.'

Simpson has previously said she believes Painter intentionally left her alive so she would suffer in the aftermath.

Justin Painter, pictured above with their children, also took his own life. Simpson believes he intentionally left her alive to suffer after she had divorced him a year earlier

Painter also killed her 29-year-old boyfriend Seth Richardson (above with Simpson) before turning the gun on himself

In the days after the attack, Simpson filmed a Facebook Live video from her hospital bed saying she believes Painter was mentally unstable when they divorced a year earlier.

Simpson expressed anger with the judge in her divorce suit, whom she said ignored her warning about her husband.

She said she told the judge Painter had attempted suicide.

'I don't know if anybody knows, but Justin tried to commit suicide a year ago. I made it very clear to the judge that he was mentally unstable,' she said.

'They didn't listen, so now I don't have my babies. You guys know they were my everything, my purpose to breathe.'

After the divorce, she said Painter had hoped for reconciliation.

'I told him I couldn't. He didn't like it. He didn't like it,' Simpson said, adding he couldn't accept that she was planning a life with her boyfriend.

Simpson said her children (above) had all spoken about them wanting a younger sibling. She said: 'To me, that gives me permission to have another child. I'm not done being a mom'
Torrential rain and flash floods in New Jersey have sent cars floating down a raging river.

Shocking video displays the moment the swelling Peckman River sweeps 16 cars from a dealership parking lot and sends them downriver into a crashing pile up in Passaic County.

The bizarre scene was filmed on Saturday as vans, SUVs and trucks were seen floating away from the Chrysler Jeep Doge dealership in Little Falls then smashing into each other under a highway overpass.

Shocking video shows the moment 16 cars were pulled into the Peckman River and tossed down the river by the strong current following flash floods in New Jersey

The cars were pulled into the water from a Chrysler Jeep Doge dealership in Little Falls on Saturday following thunderstorms and were tossed into a pile up under a highway overpass

In the video the cars are seen floating in a line as they succumb to the current and helplessly bob in the water, still bearing their sticker prices on the windshield as onlookers film every moment.

The bizarre display took place around 30 miles west of New York City, according to Fox.

A towing company said it took hours to fish out about 16 vehicles and bring them to shore.

'Theyre all filled with mud, rocks and whatever you can flush into a car,' Vincent Cleffi of Ajaco Towing said to ABC7.

The Passaic river, which is connected to the Peckman River where the cars were spotted, was 19.4ft by Sunday afternoon, slightly above the minor flood stage and was forecasted to crest at 20.2ft by Tuesday, which is above the moderate flood stage.

New Jersey had flash flood warnings on Saturday and Sunday as thunderstorms passed through the east coast.

Locals snapped the display where cars crashed and hit each other as they rushed downstream

Crashing cars: The vans, SUVs and trucks came to a sudden halt under a highway overpass

Sunday morning a towing company fished out the cars, saying they were damaged and filled with 'mud, rocks and whatever you can flush into a car'

A Flood Advisory warned that six inches of fast-moving water can knock over and carry away an adult while 12 inches of fast-moving water is powerful enough to move a small car.

Jersey saw between three inches and four inches of rain by the time storms passed on Saturday. Bergen, Essex, and Passaic counties were hit the hardest by the rainfall this weekend. Caldwell county received a staggering 4.92 inches, according to NJ.com.

The rain led to road closures and extensive street flooding by Monday as flash flood warnings continue into the afternoon.

Cars weren't the only thing that needed to be rescued this weekend.

In Bogota Township a New Jersey couple getting married was left stranded in their car on their big day on Saturday and had to be rescued by police then escorted to the church for their nuptials.

Video shows the bride holding onto her dress as she walked on top of her car and into a police rescue Humvee.

The rainy weather is expected to end by Wednesday.
A grieving daughter was awarded 9,000 in compensation after Co-op Funeralcare mistakenly returned her ashes to a crematorium where they were scattered without her knowledge.

Elaine Kendall, 60, wanted to scatter Hilda Kendalls remains in the sea at Whitby in North Yorkshire on what would have been her 91st birthday, on August 12, 2016.

But staff at Britain's largest funeral firm had already returned them to the crematorium, where they scattered Mrs Kendalls remains in November 2015, believing they belonged to another family who shared the same surname.

Ms Kendall spoke of her upset and pain at Wandsworth County Court as she was awarded 9,007, for breach of contract, aggravated damages, interest and costs.

In a statement she said: My mum, Hilda Kendall, lived a simple, modest life. She was in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during World War Two while my dad served in the Royal Marines at the D-Day Landings and in Burma.

Hilda Kendall, pictured, was 89 when she passed away in May 2015. Her final wish was for her ashes to be scattered in the sea at Whitby, North Yorkshire, 'the place she loved the most'

'She asked for little in this life. However, her final wish was that her ashes be scattered in the sea at Whitby, the place she loved the most.'

She continued: To say that we were devastated when Co-op Funeralcare told us of its grievous mistake is an understatement.

I can never carry out my mums final wish and nothing can make it right. I asked Co-op Funeralcare to refund me the money I paid for the funeral together with a relatively small sum so that I can buy a memorial for my mum in Whitby.

The company refused to do so.

Co-op Funeralcare has defended the fact that it mistakenly scattered my mums ashes and has offered a few hundred pounds refund, which suggests that it considers returning the ashes after a funeral as an unimportant part of the service it provides.

In addition, it has poured scorn on my mums wishes and prolonged the distress and grief that my siblings and I have suffered since that terrible day when we realised we could not carry out mums wishes.

'Win or lose today we just think the public should know how Co-op Funeralcare deals with bereaved families when it makes grievous mistakes.'

Ms Kendall also went on to say she was 'shocked' by the way the company responded to her request for a refund.

But Co-op Funeralcare mistakenly returned Mrs Kendall's ashes to the crematorium where they were mistakenly scattered before her daughter Elaine Kendall, pictured here with sister Linda Bullock (left), got the chance. She was awarded 9,007 in damages

She added: Despite trying conciliation, some of the statements made in the defence demonstrate not only the level to which the defendant is entrenched in this case but also a level of heartlessness one would hope not to encounter in the funeral business.

In particular, I find the statement that my mothers wish to have a ceremony for the scattering of her ashes on the sea at Whitby did not constitute a memorial and so I cannot now say I want one for her, particularly offensive.

Mrs Kendall was 89 when she passed away on 3 May 2015.

Ms Kendall sat in court with sister Linda Bullock, 67, as Judge John Hugman said: Forgive me, but your memory of your mother has no price. The law I am afraid does have its hard edges particularly when it comes to contract.

Speaking outside court Ms Kendall said: Whilst my siblings and I will never be able to fulfill my mothers final wishes, with todays win we hope that Co-Op Funeral Care will now ensure it puts robust procedures in place to ensure that no other family has to go through what we went through.

It has been extremely difficult couple of years but with this victory we feel that we now have some form of justice and closure for our mother and can now secure an appropriate memorial for her in Whitby.
A white man who fatally shot an unarmed black man in a dispute over a parking space has now been charged with manslaughter after a sheriff initially refused to arrest him because of Florida's 'stand your ground' law.

Michael Drejka, 47, was arrested on Monday over the shooting death of 28-year-old Markeis McGlockton outside a convenience store in Clearwater on July 19.

The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office said the State Attorney had reviewed the case and decided to pursue charges against Drejka.

Sheriff Bob Gualtieri recently stood by his decision not to arrest Drejka, saying the man was defending himself and had claimed he was in fear for his life.

Michael Drejka, 47, was arrested on Monday (left in his mugshot) over the shooting death of 28-year-old Markeis McGlockton (right) in Clearwater, Florida on July 19

Following the State Attorney's decision, Sheriff Gualtieri said in a statement: 'I support the State Attorney's decision and will have no further comment as the case continues to work its way through the criminal justice system.'

Drejka was booked into the Pinellas County Jail on Monday and bond has been set at $100,000.

McGlockton died just a few yards away from his children and girlfriend at a store in Clearwater following the confrontation with Drejka over a parking spot.

His death has reignited the debate over the state's polarizing 'stand your ground' self-defense law.

The dispute with Drejka started when he yelled at McGlockton's girlfriend, Britany Jacobs - who was in a car with two of the couple's small children - outside a store for parking in a handicapped space.

She said Drejka yelled at her to move the 'f**king car'.

After exiting the store and seeing the argument, McGlockton shoved Drejka to the ground before Drejka pulled out his handgun seconds later and fired.

Surveillance video from the store captured the moment Drejka shot McGlockton in the torso.

Sheriff's Detective George Moffett revealed on Monday that Drejka had threatened three other drivers previously.

Drejka allegedly threatened to shoot a septic truck driver and used racial slurs three months ago when the driver parked in the same handicapped-accessible parking space as McGlockton.

Moffet also said that in 2012, drivers involved in two separate road-rage confrontations with Drejka said he pointed a gun at them. Moffet said that in one of the cases, the teen driver declined to press charges. In the other, the woman driver left the scene before the officer could get her information. The detective said that in both cases, Drejka denied pointing a gun but one was found in his car.

Markeis McGlockton (left, standing) was shot dead by Michael Drejka (kneeling) outside a store following a dispute about a parking spot. McGlockton had shoved Drejka to the ground before Drejka pulled out his handgun and fired

McGlockton family attorney Benjamin Crump - who gained national prominence representing the family of Trayvon Martin after the black teen's fatal shooting by a Hispanic man in 2012 - said in a statement Monday 'it's about time' Drejka was arrested.

'This self-appointed wannabe cop attempted to hide behind 'Stand Your Ground' to defend his indefensible actions, but the truth has finally cut through the noise,' Crump said.

'I have full faith that this truth will prevail to punish this cold-blooded killer who angrily created the altercation that led to Markeis' needless death.'

Sheriff Gualtieri originally declined to charge Drejka, saying one day after the shooting that the man was protected by the stand your ground law.

Under the state's controversial law, people are allowed to use deadly force if they believe they are in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and have no obligation to retreat.

'I didn't make the law, and I do not do what people want because of outrage,' sheriff Gualtieri said at the time. 'If you're outraged by the law and don't like the law, then change it.'

Under a change made by the Legislature last year, if a suspect raises a stand-your-ground defense, prosecutors must prove the law doesn't apply.

The case drew hundreds to a rally earlier this month in Clearwater.

Sheriff Bob Gualtieri recently stood by his decision not to arrest Drejka, saying the man was defending himself and had claimed he was in fear for his life

McGlockton's family, who had been pushing for charges to be filed against Drejka, released a statement on Monday saying the update provided a small measure of comfort.

'While this decision cannot bring back our partner, our son, our father, we take solace in knowing our voices are being heard as we work for justice,' they said.

'This man killed Markeis in cold blood, without a second thought about the devastating impact his actions would have on our family, but this charge gives us a measure of hope that the truth will win and justice will prevail in the end.'

In a recent interview with The Associated Press, the victim's father Michael McGlockton said that if the law didn't exist, his son might have gone home that night.

'No law should be able to protect somebody to the point that they kill somebody on the street and they can lay in the bed the same night,' McGlockton said.

'To me and my family, that's a slap in the face. (Drejka) would've thought twice before he pulled the trigger. With the law, he knew that he could hide behind that.'

'He didn't have to pull that trigger. But because of 'stand your ground,' this is what happens.'

McGlockton said it is his son who was defending himself and his family against a threat.

'Every man raises his kid to be that ultimate man for his family,' McGlockton said. 'That's exactly what he was doing, standing up for his family. I'm so proud of him because he did exactly what I taught him to do.'
America's intelligence chiefs have warned banks of a major hacking threat to cash machines worldwide in the next few days.

The FBI sent out a confidential alert on Friday to warn that cyber criminals are planning a global 'cash-out scheme' using malware to take over ATMs and steal millions of dollars.

Banks were warned that they could fall victim to an 'unlimited operation' in which millions of dollars could be withdrawn from cash machines.

Smaller banks with less sophisticated security systems are thought to be most vulnerable to an attack using the 'jackpotting' technique, the Daily Telegraph reports.

The FBI sent out a confidential alert on Friday to warn that cyber criminals are planning a global 'cash-out scheme' using malware to take over ATMs and steal millions of dollars

The warning said: 'The FBI has obtained unspecified reporting indicating cyber criminals are planning to conduct a global Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cash-out scheme in the coming days, likely associated with an unknown card issuer breach.'

The website Krebs On Security reported that criminals could create 'fraudulent copies' of bank cards by installing their data on reusable magnetic strip cards.

The FBI warned that 'at a pre-determined time, the co-conspirators withdraw account funds from ATMs using these cards.'

'Historic compromises have included small-to-medium size financial institutions, likely due to less robust implementation of cyber security controls, budgets, or third-party vendor vulnerabilities,' the alert said.

Attacks could affect banks all over the world with British banks with large overseas interests including Barclays and HSBC thought to have been made aware of the danger from the 'jackpotting' technique.

Earlier this year it was revealed that a co-ordinated group of hackers had stolen more than $1million by hijacking cash machines in the U.S.

The spate of attacks represented the first widespread jackpotting activity in the United States, officials said in January.

The heists, which involved hacking ATMs to rapidly shoot out torrents of cash, were across the United States spanning from the Gulf Coast to New England.

British banks with large overseas interests including Barclays and HSBC are thought to have been made aware of the danger from the 'jackpotting' technique

An alert at the time from an ATM maker said the method included gaining physical access, replacing the hard drive and using an industrial endoscope to depress an internal button required to reset the device.

A U.S. Secret Service alert sent to banks in January said machines running Windows XP were more vulnerable and encouraged ATM operators to update to Windows 7 to protect against the attack.

Hackers have moved from stealing payment card numbers and online banking credentials to more lucrative hacks on bank networks, giving them access not only to ATM machines, but also to electronic payment networks.

In 2016 it was reported that cyber criminals had remotely attacked cash machines in more than a dozen countries across Europe.
Danny Thompson, 69 (pictured), set the land speed record for piston driven vehicles of 448.757mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Tooele County, located in northwestern Utah on Sunday in his dad's 50-year-old car

A Utah racer's new land speed record for piston driven vehicles was confirmed on Sunday, 30 years after he first planned to attempt the feat in his father's now-50-year-old vehicle.

Danny Thompson, 69, drove the Challenger 2, a four-wheel drive streamliner built by his late father Mickey Thompson in 1968 who was later killed by hitmen, to set the new record of 448.757mph in northwestern Utah.

'We passed tech inspection. Were officially the worlds fastest piston powered vehicle!' Danny tweeted on Sunday.

When Mickey first drove the Challenger 2 in 1968, also at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Tooele County, he was trying to break the same record, but that attempt was derailed by flooding.

Mickey retired from racing 20 years later, which is when he enlisted the aid of Danny to bring the record home for the family.

That partnership ended abruptly, however, when Mickey and his second wife, Trudy, were murdered that same year, in 1988, by two hitmen hired by his former business partner, Michael Goodwin.

Goodwin was convicted of the killings in 2007 in Los Angeles County, and that conviction was upheld in 2015.

He is now serving two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole in California, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Scroll down for video

Danny is seen here on Sunday in Utah, hopping into the same four-wheel driver streamliner his father drove 50 years ago, just before breaking the record

Danny fulfilled a lifelong dream when he shattered the piston-powered, wheel-driven land speed record at Bonneville with a blistering two-way average run of 448.757mph on Sunday

With a great deal of emotion tied up in breaking the record on Sunday, Danny finally laid to rest the goal his father started chasing more than 50 years ago

With a great deal of emotion tied up in breaking the record on Sunday, Danny finally laid to rest the goal his father started chasing more than 50 years ago.

When the tech inspection results came back, it was confirmed that a slightly faster return run, combined with a run that was just a hair slower on Saturday, brought the record home for the Thompson family.

'On Sunday, August 12th, Danny Thompson laid down a 450.909mph record run at the Bonneville Salt Flats using the Challenger 2, a vehicle originally built by his father, Mickey Thompson, in 1968,' read the caption of the video of the run, posted to the team's YouTube page.

'This run, averaged with a 446.605mph pass he made the previous day, gives the Challenger 2 a new AA/FS record of 448.757mph, and makes it the world's fastest piston driven vehicle. Not bad for a 50 year old race car!

'As you can tell, it was a hairy ride, with Danny going almost lock-to-lock on the steering wheel to control a slide at over 430mph.'

The ride itself wasn't the only hairy part of the journey.

A video of Danny's view while make the final pass on Sunday, including the moments he had to maneuver out of a slide at 430mph, was shared on the Thompson racing team's YouTube page

Danny tweeted a photo of his time slip on Sunday, showing a pass of 450.909mph

Mickey retired from racing in 1988, which is when he enlisted the aid of Danny to bring the record home for the family; The two are seen here in this undated file photo

His father, Mickey Thompson, first drove the Challenger 2 in 1968 at the same place, while trying to break the same record, but that attempt was derailed by flooding

Mickey Thompson (right) and his second wife, Trudy (left) were murdered at their home in 1988

Mickey Thompson is shown here obscured by a cloud of his own smoke as he speeds his 1,000 bhp Ford-powered dragster to a then-record-for-Europe standing quarter-mile (8.84 seconds or 178 mph) at Debden RAF Station in Essex, England on January 13, 1964

Danny first set out to break the record behind the wheel of the Challenger 2 with the engineering and financial support of his father in 1988.

By that time he was already a celebrated racer in his own right.

The duo scheduled an attempt for 1989, but that would never come to pass because Mickey and his second wife, Trudy, were murdered.

'Mickey and his wife were preparing to leave their home when two gunmen, employed by a former business partner, emerged from near their front gate and murdered them,' the Thompson racing team website says.

'Grief-stricken, Danny packed up the Challenger 2 along with his father's other possessions and placed it in long-term storage.'

Michael Goodwin was convicted of the murders of Mickey and Trudy Thompson in 2007; Goodwin is shown here listening to Mickey's sister, Collene Campbell, as she reads a statement during his sentencing hearing on March 1, 2007, in Pasadena, California

Goodwin was Mickey's former business partner; Goodwin is seen here in 1960 with his car, the Challenger I, which was also used to try to break the land speed record for piston driven cars

But on the 50 year anniversary of his father's 406mph run at Bonneville Salt Flats, Danny got the streamliner out of storage and began the restoration process.

And on Sunday, the Challenger 2 made history with its final run.

'The whole crew pulled together to get the record,' Danny told Fox News.

'I feel like Ive finally put the streamliners unfinished business to rest.'

Danny formally retired from racing in 1995, but made a special showing to set the family record on Sunday.
Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, will be charged with another murder count on Monday

The man accused of being the Golden State Killer has been charged with the earliest known murder tied to the notorious serial killer's reign of mayhem.

Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, was charged first-degree murder on Monday in the 1975 slaying of Claude Snelling in Visalia, California, prosecutors in Tulare County announced at a televised press conference.

'With this filing, we have officially linked the Visalia Ransacker and the murder of Claude Snelling to the Golden State Killer,' District Attorney Tim Ward said.

The charge was added to the 12 murder counts that DeAngelo already faces in Sacramento, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, all tied to the Golden State Killer's spree of burglary, rape and murder in the 1970s and 80s.

Unlike those cases, however, there is no DNA linking DeAngelo to the Visalia Ransacker's burglaries and Snelling's murder, prosecutors said.

Ward said that the charges were brought on the basis of witness interviews and statements, strong similarities in MO between the Ransacker and the Golden State Killer, as well as unspecified physical evidence.

The Visalia Ransacker (left in suspect sketch) shot and killed journalism professor Claude Snelling (right) in 1975, as Snelling protected his daughter from being abducted

Snelling is believed to be the first murder victim of the Golden State Killer, who at the time was known as the Visalia Ransacker.

The Ransacker's sick crime spree included some 102 burglaries or attempted burglaries between 1974 and 1975.

The prowler had several signatures, including the use of dishes and bottles propped by doors as makeshift alarms, leaving multiple escape points such as windows and doors open, and stealing small items such as earrings and coins but ignoring banknotes and valuables in plain sight.

The Ransacker also had a habit of scattering women's underwear in the houses he burglarized, and arranging the homeowner's belongings in strange displays.

The burglary spree took a darker turn on September 11, 1975, when journalism professor Snelling, 45, awoke to strange noises outside his home.

Snelling ran outside and discovered a man in a ski mask dragging his 16-year-old daughter Elizabeth away.

Journalism professor Claude Snelling's home is seen, where in 1975 he caught a rapist dragging his daughter away in the middle of the night and was shot to death

The prowler had broken into her bedroom and threatened to shoot her if she didn't come quietly.

'That's when I heard my dad yell and the man with a ski mask pushed me to the ground, turned, and shot my dad twice as he was coming through the back door,' she recently told CBS News.

The masked prowler let the girl go and sprinted off into the night after shooting her father.

'He's always been my hero,' Elizabeth said, adding, 'I would not be here today, I'm sure of it, if it hadn't been for him.'

Ballistics matched the gun used to kill Snelling to a .38 Miroku that had been stolen in another burglary months earlier, thanks to bullets recovered from the owner's practice shooting.

The police dragnet intensified after the murder, and the Visalia Ransacker was almost captured three months later.

DeAngelo is seen left as a high school sophomore and right in the Navy, in an undated photo

Three suspect sketches of the East Area Rapist/Golden State Killer are seen above. The serial killer is believed to have started out as the Visalia Ransacker in 1974

A police detective was on stakeout in the garage of a home in an area the prowler was known to frequent, when he confronted a suspicious masked man, who tried to flee.

The detective fired a warning shot, and the suspect took off his mask and began shrieking.

'He started screaming in this funny, high-pitched voice, begging me not to shoot him. He had his right hand up and his left hand in the pocket of his jacket,' Detective William McGowen told the Visalia Times-Delta at the time.

Suddenly, the suspect fired on the detective, narrowly missing him but shattering his flashlight. The suspect made a break for it and escaped.

Soon after, the burglary spree in Visalia ceased abruptly. Later, experts came to believe that the Visalia Ransacker had moved on to the Sacramento area and committed a string of rapes and murders that became known as the work of the East Area Rapist.

The suspect in those crimes, and four murders committed by the Original Nightstalker in Santa Barbara, became known as the Golden State Killer.

Golden STate Killer suspect Joseph James DeAngelo stands with attorney Joe Cress, left, during a May hearing in Sacramento, California

DeAngelo was arrested and charged with eight counts of first-degree murder in the Sacramento crimes in April, after familial DNA from a public database tied him to the crimes.

Four additional counts of murder in Santa Barbara were added in May.

Though no DNA evidence exists in the Visalia Ransacker crimes, new information after DeAngelo's arrest led investigators in that case to file the murder charge on Monday.

At the time of the crimes in Visalia, DeAngelo was working as a police officer in the nearby town of Exeter.

Around the time the crime spree there ended, and the East Area Rapist's reign of terror in Sacramento began, DeAngelo took a job on the outskirts of Sacramento as a police officer in Auburn.

DeAngelo is being held without bail in the Sacramento County Jail. He is next due in court on September 5.
A hospital worker has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after allegedly putting a plastic bag over an elderly patients head.

The 79-year-old woman was reportedly left bruised, barely conscious and struggling to breathe after the incident at a hospital in Liverpool.

The hospital worker claimed he was playing peekaboo with the pensioner, who was a patient on the hospitals troubled Ward 11, it is understood.

Merseyside Police last night confirmed a 31-year-old man was arrested and released on bail until later this week.

The 31-year-old man was held after police were contacted by staff at Broadgreen Hospital in Liverpool (pictured) on July 22

The patient, who was at Broadgreen Hospital, is said to have been discovered by horrified nurses, barely conscious and in respiratory distress, on Sunday, July 22.

Sources said the woman, whose identity has not been revealed and is said to have no friends or family, was also covered in heavy bruising.

The injured pensioner is understood to have been rushed to the Royal Liverpool Hospital, where she was stabilised, and has since been transferred to a nursing home in the city.

The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals Trust, which runs both hospitals, said there is no ongoing risk to patients.

A spokesman said yesterday: We are investigating a serious incident at Broadgreen Hospital.

We reported the matter to Merseyside Police and are assisting them with their enquiries.

We have taken appropriate action and there is currently no suggestion that patients or their loved ones should be concerned for their safety.

Last night, the hospital would not confirm or deny whether the worker involved has also been suspended.

He was arrested after staff at Broadgreen contacted Merseyside Police on July 22, a Merseyside Police spokesman said.

Ward 11 was recently subject to a 1m investment and adapted to take overflow patients from the Royal Liverpool Hospital.

An inquiry is under way after a hospital worker was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder with Merseyside Police confirming a 31-year-old man had been arrested

The move was designed to create space for patients, who are mainly elderly and with complex needs, awaiting places in nursing homes or discharge to their own homes with carer support.

However, the Liverpool Echo has reported how most recent data shows that ward 11 was understaffed by nurses in day-time hours for May and June.

The number of hours nurses are actually available to treat patients compared with the number of hours deemed necessary, were below the national target of 80% for both months.

The Trust also recorded a spike in medication incidents on the ward.

According to a Safe Staffing Report, the hospital trust underestimated the staffing needed to treat Ward 11s patients, who had complex and severe conditions.

The report said: Following discussions with the senior nursing team and the care group it has been acknowledged that actual patient acuity and dependency is higher than originally profiled when planning took place to staff this ward.

As a result additional nursing resource will be allocated to Ward 11 and the recruitment process has commenced to support this. A recent update from chief executive of the Trust, Aidan Kehoe, said: Our staff have driven forward a number of changes within our hospitals and working with our partners across the North Mersey A&E Delivery Board to improve timely access to care whether in the community or in hospitals.

The Trust has invested 1m on ward 11 at Broadgreen Hospital to be remodelled to support patients who were waiting to be discharged.
The tragic final selfie of a young New Zealand woman who died after jumping off a 20-metre high bridge in Canada has been revealed.

Danni Hogan, 23, initially failed to surface after taking the leap off the Bruhn Bridge in Sicamous, British Columbia, with four friends last week.

She was eventually pulled from the water but died in hospital.

Ms Hogan had just embarked on a year-long trip of a lifetime with her boyfriend, Louis Aiello.

Ms Hogan, from Taranaki, posted a touching photo with Mr Aiello just days before she died, saying: 'I love exploring the world with you'

Danni Hogan initially failed to surface after taking the leap off the Bruhn Bridge in Sicamous, British Columbia, with four friends last week

Ms Hogan, from Taranaki, posted a touching photo with Mr Aiello just days before she died, saying: 'I love exploring the world with you.'

The heartbroken boyfriend is now raising funds to bring Ms Hogan's body home to her family.

Mr Aiello wrote that his love was 'excited to meet new and inspiring people and begin our adventures with a new connection together' during the trip.

He continued: 'Danni took on a new lease of life in this country and her spirit was in such a beautiful place here. She was glowing with life and excitement and was ready to take on the world.

The heartbroken boyfriend is now raising funds to bring Ms Hogan's body home to her famil

'Danni's heart grew with love for herself and me, as mine did for her. Life couldn't get much better.'

'Dannis life was one to be proud of. Her loving family, parents Vicky and Brian and sisters Olivia and Tia cherished Danni and gave her everything we saw in Danni and she loved each of them deeply- what me and Danni called more than love!

'Dannis family and friends have been devastated by this loss and we are all left feeling lost and bereft in her absence.

'A parents greatest joy is their child. The loss of a child is their greatest fear. Vicky and Brian are meeting and living every parents nightmare and my heart aches for them.'

Ms Hogan had just embarked on a year-long trip of a lifetime with her boyfriend Louis Aiello

The 23-year-old New Zealand woman died after plunging from the Bruhn Bridge in Canada

The New Zealand High Commission in Ottawa released a statement regarding the death, saying that it was 'in contact with local authorities regarding the death of a New Zealand citizen in Canada'.

'For privacy reasons no further information will be provided,'the statement added.

Sicamous Detachment Commander Sergeant Murray McNeil also released a statement about the tragic death, saying it was the second such death in the area in the last two months.

'Tragically this is the second water related death in Sicamous this summer,' he said.

'While we want to encourage people to get out and enjoy all that the area has to offer, we cannot stress enough the importance of paying attention to advisories and signage which are put in place to ensure your safety.'

Initial investigation does not lead police to believe there was any criminality involved in the woman's death.
It has emerged that the former White House aide that President Donald Trump labelled Wacky Omarosa recorded the US President when he first heard of her dismissal by his chief of staff John Kelly and was called into the Situation Room.

In the tape, which was played on NBCs Today programme, Trump is heard expressing his surprise at the news that Omarosa Manigault Newman had been fired and said that he had not been informed of the decision.

This comes after Omarosa Manigault claimed that Trump had been caught on tape using the N-word more than once during the production of The Apprentice, on which she was a contestant, while on tour to promote her book Unhinged.

Trump took to Twitter to respond to the tape being released and said: Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. Here's everything you need to know about Omarosa Manigault.

Former White House aide that Trump labelled Wacky Omarosa recorded the US President

Who is Omarosa Manigault?

Born Omarose Onee Manigault on February 5, 1974 in Ohio, more commonly referred to as Omarosa, she is known for appearances on The Apprentice, The Celebrity Apprentice and All-Star Celebrity Apprentice.

After establishing herself as a reality television show villain, Omarosa served as the Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison for the Trump administration, but after leaving the White House, she made it to the final five of the 2018 season of Celebrity Big Brother.

Omarosa also collaborated with Trump to create a new dating show called The Ultimate Merger in 2010, in which twelve men competed for her affections. Six years later, during the Republican National Convention, she was named the Director of African-American Outreach for Trumps campaign.

In an interview with Frontline, she said: I believe the first reason that Donald Trump is running for president is because he truly believes that he can help the nation around. The second reason I believe is that this is the greatest position in the world, to be at the center of political power, of the universe.

But more importantly, every critic, every detractor will have to bow down to President Trump. Shortly after the President was inaugurated, Omarosa revealed that he had kept a list of Republican enemies who had not voted for him in the 2016 election.

She then took up her Public Liaison role and in an interview with Megyn Kelly said that she was now a Trumplican and had switched her affiliation to the party because of Trump and hoped that other African Americans would do the same, as reported by the Washington Examiner.

Omarosa then received backlash after signing her name as the Honorable Omarosa Manigault at the Congressional Black Caucus (CBS) and getting into a shouting match with Ed Gordon at the National Association of Black Journalists.

Trump and Omarosa Manigault attend The Ultimate Merger premiere at Trump Tower in 2010

Was Omarosa fired?

At the end of 2017, it was announced that Omarosa Manigault Newman would be leaving her position in the Office of Public Liaison and she would leave on the anniversary of Trumps inauguration on January 20.

The statement read: Omarosa Manigault Newman resigned yesterday to pursue other opportunities. We wish her the best in future endeavors and are grateful for her service. Trump later tweeted: Thank you Omarosa for your service! I wish you continued success.

Following this news, she told ABC News Nightline: It has been very, very challenging being the only African-American woman in the senior staff and although the White House has a lack of diversity, this is not Trumps fault.'

She continued to say that Trump is not a racist even though he has made comments that have been perceived in that way.

Yes, I will acknowledge many of the exchanges, particularly in the last six months have been racially charged. Do we then just stop and label him a racist? No.

However, rumours that she had been forcibly removed from the White House started circulating after she had been spotted cursing and yelling at Chief of Staff John Kelly, but these claims were denied and it was revealed that her access to the White House had been revoked.

Omarosa is the latest former Trump aide to land a book deal and this time, its for seven books

Omarosa Manigault Newman book

Last month, it was revealed that Omarosa was the latest former Trump aide to land a book deal and this time round, it was for seven books in a seven-figure deal with Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster.

An insider claimed that she had been feeling downhearted after leaving the White House and Trump cut her off completely. He never tweeted about her or said a bad thing like hes done to others; but he ceased all correspondences with her.

The source continued: She was smart to drop nuggets of information while on Celebrity Big Brother to get people tantalized. That certainly helped in her finally getting the best publishing. She knew that Celebrity Big Brother might be make or break for her landing a book deal and she maximized that moment.

Her first book Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House revealed that the US President has a tanning bed in White House and that he had personal counselling with the New Destiny Church pastor Rev Paula White, as reported by The Guardian.

Omarosa was also told to back off by a Trump family member and teased: Another highly visible assistant to the president might be carrying on her affair right now. She also states that the President asked her about former FBI director James Comey.

Omarosa Manigault Trump tapes

Omarosa revealed this week that she had recorded a phone call from President Donald Trump the day after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly had fired her in December 2017 and during her tour promoting Unhinged, said that the President had been caught on tape using the N-word.

However, if that recording exists, it has not been made public. What has been released is a 22-second clip that showed Trump telling Omarosa that he knew nothing about her dismissal and that he was not happy to see her leave.

On Today, Manigault Newman said that 'Donald Trump has no clue what's going on,' concluding that he's not 'fit' to hold office and that 'John Kelly is running this White House'.

'Donald Trump has no clue whats going on. Hes being puppeted, and thats very dangerous for this nation.'

What did the Trump tape say?

In the brief recording, Trump is heard asking Omarosa that he has heard news that she is thinking of leaving and asks, Whats going on?, as reported by the BBC.

She replied: General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave. Trump responds: No... Nobody even told me about it. You know they run a big operation but I didn't know it. I didn't know that. Damn it. I don't love you leaving at all.

#Breaking: @OMAROSA provides @NBCNews with this exclusive excerpt of a recording of a phone call that she says she received from President Trump the day after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fired her. pic.twitter.com/OJe47RdcDC  TODAY (@TODAYshow) August 13, 2018

This comes after reports from Trumps lawyer Rudy Giuliani claiming that she may have broken the law by recording private conversations at the White House, in areas such as the Situation Room.

In the recording that she released of John Kelly, he is heard saying: It's come to my attention over the last few months that there's been some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues related to you and goes on to mention her use of government vehicles and money issues and other things.

There are some serious legal issues that have been violated and you're open to some legal action that we hope, we think, we can control. He continued: If we make this a friendly departure... you can look at your time here in the White House as a year of service to the nation and then you can go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation.

Speaking to NBC, she defended herself for making the recordings by saying that she had protected herself because this is a White House where everybody lies'.

The president lies to the American people. [White House press secretary] Sarah Huckabee [Sanders] stands in front of the country and lies every single day. You have to have your own back or else you'll look back and you'll have 17 knives in your back.

However, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that her decision to make a secret tape inside the Situation Room shows a blatant disregard for our national security. And then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled White House employee.

Trump then took to Twitter and said: Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard really bad things.
A widow whose husband was hit with terrorism charges following an argument with an American Airlines employee over retrieving eye drops from his carry-on luggage has now filed a lawsuit against the airline in the wake of her husband's death.

Debbie Cardarelli, of Rochester, New York, filed a lawsuit seeking $1million in damages and punitive charges from American Airlines in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, the Washington Post reported.

The lawsuit stems from a March 2017 incident in which Richard S. Cardarelli wound up being arrested on terrorism charges after an American Airlines baggage handler alleged that he had made a bomb threat while trying to retrieve eye drops from his carry-on luggage at the gate.

Debbie Cardarelli filed a lawsuit against American Airlines following an incident in which her husband, Richard S. Cardarelli, was charged with making a terroristic threat, after an argument with a baggage handler over retrieving eye drops from his carry-on luggage

Debbie is now suing the airline on both her and her late husband's estate's behalf, claiming that the airline did not take responsibility for its employee's bad behavior, refused to respond to legal subpoenas which wound up delayed her husband's criminal trial and barred him from taking a flight to attend the trial.

The incident at the heart of the lawsuit occurred on March 24, 2017, when Debbie and Richard, who died from pancreatic cancer in January, were boarding an American Airlines-operated, American Eagle regional flight in Philadelphia.

The Cardarellis were on their way home from Miami, where they were celebrating Richard's upcoming birthday, and had a layover at Philadelphia International Airport.

When boarding their American Eagle regional flight from Philadelphia to Rochester, Richard was told that he needed to gate check his carry-on luggage due to the plane already being full.

According to the lawsuit, Richard turned over his carry-on suitcase to an AA baggage handler, identified as Tawanda Ward. He then took three steps towards the plane, before realizing that he had left his medically-required eye drops inside the bag.

The argument occurred while Richard, who died of pancreatic cancer in January, was trying to retrieve eye drops from his carry-on luggage, which he had gate checked just seconds before. He needed the eye drops to treat his corneal replacement

Richard was said to have needed to have the eye drops with him to treat an old cornea replacement.

Ward allegedly refused to allow Richard to take the eye drops out of his baggage, even though it was still sitting on the boarding bridge next to Ward at the time.

Debbie said that even though Richard explained that he needed the eye drops for health reasons, Ward told him that since he already turned the luggage over to her, he could not have have it back at that point.

While Richard argued with Ward, Debbie went to the ticketing agent for help. The agent, identified as Marsha Batchelor in the lawsuit, then argued with Ward, until Ward eventually gave in and let Richard retrieve his eye drops.

Debbie and Richard then boarded the flight. From their window, they were able to see Ward, who appeared to be angry. At one point, Debbie said she saw Ward throw a pair of wheel wedges.

Philly.com reported that after 20 minutes of idling at the gate, Philadelphia police officers boarded the plane, along with Batchelor, and arrested and removed Richard from the plane.

The incident occurred in March 2017, when Debbie and Richardwere boarding an American Airlines-operated, American Eagle regional flight in Philadelphia (stock image)

All the passengers were then made to exit the plane while a K-9 unit searched the plane for explosives. After the plane was cleared, it departed for Rochester.

Richard, however, spent the night in a Philadelphia jail and was then charged with disorderly conduct, making a terroristic threat and threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction.

His bail was set at $25,000 cash, a portion of which Debbie posted the next day for his release.

Then, in October, when Richard was due to fly an American Airlines flight from Rochester to Philadelphia for his criminal trial appearance, the airline barred him from boarding the plane, despite the couple having been assured in advance that he wouldn't have a problem getting on the flight, Debbie said.

Richard then missed most of the proceedings while traveling to the city via other means.

During the trial, Ward testified that Richard had said that his bag 'would blow up,' but admitted that she didn't tell anyone about the supposed threat for at least 15 minutes.

According to Debbie's lawsuit, the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas judge acquitted Cardarelli of all charges after questioning Ward's time delay in revealing the supposed threat.

All told, the Cardarellis paid more than $20,000 in legal fees and other expenses over the criminal case.

Following the incident the couple had to go to therapy and Debbie said that Richard spiraled into a depression as a result of the court case, causing him to attempt suicide.

'She lied through her teeth,' Debbie Cardarelli said. 'It's so ridiculous what I'm going through just because someone lied.'

When reached by the Washington Post, an American Airline spokesperson said that the airline doesn't comment on issues in litigation, while the company's lawyer on the case did not respond to request for a comment.
Police in Bismarck, North Dakota, have requested funding in the city's 2019 budget for equipment that includes AR-15 rifles for school resource officers.

Bismarck Public Schools and the Bismarck Police Department plan to share the cost of purchasing nearly $26,000 worth of AR-15s, gun safes, additional bulletproof vests and medical kits, the Bismarck Tribune reported.

The district won't fund the acquisition of firearms and the rifles will be locked up in the schools, according to district officials.

Police and school officials began considering rifles for school resource officers after a gunman in February killed 17 people at a school in Parkland, Florida, said Lt. Jason Stugelmeyer, who oversees the department's Police Youth Bureau.

Police in Bismark requested funds to purchase $26,000 in AR-15s to arm school resource officers (stock image of the assault rifle)

School officials and police began considering rifles for school officers after a gunman in February killed 17 people at a school in Parkland, Florida

The bureau includes six school resource officers.

The Bismarck officers currently carry handguns, which Stugelmeyer said won't help if they need to shoot from a distance.

'I fully believe that we have some solid preventative measures in place, and generally our schools are safe,' he said.

'But we have to do everything we can to be prepared for something if it did happen,' Stugelmeyer added.

District leaders also agree the rifles would increase school safety.

'I think we have to take any kind of threat to our kids seriously,' said district Interim Supt. Jim Haussler.

'I don't think (the police department's) request would've been made without them believing that (the rifles) will provide them with the tools necessary.'

The 2019 city budget has not yet been finalized.

If the request is approved, Bismarck police will receive the funds in January.
Donald Trump said Monday on Twitter that Omarosa Manigault Newman, the reality-TV villain who he hired to conduct African-American outreach in his White House, signed a confidentiality agreement while she worked in the West Wing.

The president's tweet confirmed what his counselor Kellyanne Conway suggested a day earlier. But it's unclear whether non-disclosure agreements signed by government employees are worth the paper they're printed on.

'Wacky Omarosa already has a fully signed Non-Disclosure Agreement!' Trump told his 53.7 million Twitter followers.

That hasn't stopped her, and she told MSNBC on Monday that she 'absolutely' has more audio recordings than the few she has released to date.

'Theyve been threatening legal action. Theyre trying to figure out how to stop me,' she said of her former colleagues.

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Donald Trump said Monday before leaving for an appearance at Fort Drum, N.Y. (pictured) that former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman signed a non-disclosure agreement before she wrote an embarrassing tell-all book about her nearly 11 months at the White House

Trump's tweet could complicate Manigault Newman's book publicity tour but it's unclear whether a government employee's First Amendment rights can be pared back even after signing an agreement not to talk publicly

Manigault Newman, a reality TV villain who roamed the West Wing halls for nearly a year, is promoting her tell-all book and enraging Trump in the process

During Sunday's broadcast of ABC's 'This Week,' Conway explained that signing an NDA 'in any place of work,' has become ordinary.

'Weve all signed them in the West Wing,' she said, 'and why wouldnt we?'

Manigault Newman has broken in recent days the veneer of any confidentiality the Trump administration may have imagined it had cemented in place.

She provided a recording to NBC News of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly firing her during a closed-door meeting in the ultra-secure Situation Room.

In another audio file, President Trump called her a day later to say he hadn't been told she was let go and wasn't happy about it.

White House officials have since begun to consider whether Manigault Newman was recording her in-house conversations for months during 2017.

'There could be hundreds of tapes for all we know,' one official said Monday in a background conversation. 'Did she bring a hidden microphone into the Oval [Office]? No one would have checked.'

It's unclear whether formal confidentiality agreements are legally binding on government employees.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the federal government from intervening in the exercise of free speech, and whistle-blower laws protect government employees who decide to inform inspectors general or even Congress about nefarious White House activities.

Trump, pictured Saturday with a group of 'Bikers for Trump' supporters, has been hopping mad since news of Omarosa's book first made it into news reports, seeing her as a turncoat who would be a no-name without him

The Obama White House required some Budget Office employees to sign non-disclosure agreements but cited legal authorities and explained to aides where any loopholes might be

Trump himself seemed to acknowledge during a 2016 Washington Post interview that the idea rested on legal quicksand.

'I dont know, there could be some kind of a law that you cant do this,' he admitted then.

'But when people are chosen by a man to go into government at high levels and then they leave government and they write a book about a man and say a lot of things that were really guarded and personal, I dont like that. I mean, Ill be honest.'

'Unhinged' will go on sale Tuesday

The future president hinted at the time that any White House aide would be the one waiving his rights by taking the job.

'People would say, "Oh, thats terrible, youre taking away his right to free speech." Well, hes going in.'

Another head-scratcher attached to any government non-disclosure agreement concerns exactly who, or what, an employee would be making a pact with.

In order to be enforceable in the event of a breach, a party with legal standing to sue would have to take a loose-lipped Trump aide to court.

Two legal experts said Monday that there's no evidence whether the United States government, the executive Office of the President or even Trump himself may be the legal entity 'signing' on the dotted line.

NDA or no NDA, the Trump White House became a reliable leak machine during its tumultuous first year with junior and the most senior aides dishing dirt, both true and untrue, to reporters.

In most cases, they suffered no consequences. A few were fired, but none landed in legal trouble.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared in a 1972 case, and the D.C. Federal Circuit Court agreed in 1983, that even former federal employees have a First Amendment right to talk publicly about government information that isn't classified.

'The government has no legitimate interest in censoring unclassified materials,' the D.C. court declared.

Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway said Sunday on ABC that it's common for Trump administration senior aides to sign non-disclosure agreements

Manigault Newman was once a reliable Trump booster and represented the president in outreach activities targeting black communties; all that ended when she announced she was writing a tell-all

Still, the Obama administration in at least some cases forced White House appointees to sign non-disclosures.

One advisory issued by the Office of Management and Budget reminds employees that 'you may have been required to sign a non-disclosure policy, form, or agreement (NDA) to access classified or other information.'

The memo goes on to cite a raft of federal laws. Some form the legal basis for the NDAs, while other provide loopholes including testimony to Congress, declassified documents and disclosures of White House activity that may itself be illegal.

The Trump administration has not indicated that it cited statutes or executive orders to justify any non-disclosures that may have been prerequisites for holding presidential jobs.

Aside from the prospect of suing Manigault Newman over her secret-leaking publicity tour for the memoir 'Unhinged,' a Washington attorney pointed DailyMail.com to a federal law on Monday that might open her up to criminal prosecution in certain circumstances.

18 U.S. Code  641 makes it a crime punishable by 10 years in prison to take 'any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States' and 'convert' it for personal gain.

A different section of federal law specifies that all 'presidential records' are property of the government.

That includes 'documentary materials' created in the White House by anyone who assists the president, if they are produced in the course of carrying out anything related to the president's duties.

A big exception is 'personal' notes and diaries maintained by government employees.

The attorney, who declined to be named, asked the operative question: 'If you use a tape of your own firing to make money, is that part of official government business or is it your personal stuff that has nothing to do with the White House?'

'I think Omarosa might be in serious trouble,' he added with a sigh. 'But don't quote me on that.'
Tory Brexiteers have today slammed their party high command for sending out a leaflet in 'Lib Dem yellow' urging local activists to back the PM's controversial Chequers plans.

The document, passed to MailOnline, proudly announces that the Government's Brexit plans 'means the right deal for Britain' and urges local associations to back it.

But Tory Eurosceptics have reportedly torn into the pamphlet on a WhatsApp group - and complained that Tory activists furious at the Brexit plans are fuming at the leaflet.

Maria Caulfield, the Conservative MP for Lewes who quit as a party vice chairwoman in protest at the Chequers plan, was scathing about the leaflet, The Daily Telegraph reports.

She wrote: 'I've seen the leaflet produced by CCHQ [Conservative Campaign Headquarters] today which they are expecting associations to buy and then deliver on the Chequers plan.

'My phone has not stopped ringing with angry calls this morning from officers and councillors.

'Are the powers that be determined to add insult to injury after the white paper, Boris, the PM letter and now this?'

The leaflet, passed to MailOnline, (pictured) proudly announces that the Government's Brexit plans 'means the right deal for Britain' and urges local associations to back it. Bit it has sparked fury among some Tory Brexiteers

Laurence Robertson, another Brexiteer Tory MP, replied: 'Who are those leaflets expected to be delivered to? The electorate? They have already given their verdict. Unless the Government is secretly planning a second referendum. I think this needs an explanation.'

And fellow Conservative Marcus Fysh said: 'Utterly moronic I'm afraid. The sooner this administration is changed the better. In Lib Dem yellow too.'

Mrs May published her Chequers Brexit plan last month but it triggers a Tory grassroots revolt and a wave of cabinet resignations - including Boris Johnson and David Davis who quit in anger at the plan.

Brexiteers have been left seething at the key compromise in the plan which would see the UK effectively stay in the EU single market for goods but not services.

Eurosceptics say this is a half in half out fudge that will undermine the ability of the UK to strike trade deals globally after the country quits the bloc.

Maria Caulfield (pictured, left, in the House of Commons chamber in the spring) was scathing about the leaflet in a Tory WhatsApp group. She quit from her role as Tory party vice chairwoman in protest at the Chequers Brexit plan put forward by Theresa May (pictured, right, at a WW1 memorial in France last week)

The yellow leaflet announced that the proposal delivers on the PM's three main aims - ending free movement, ending the authority of EU judges over the UK, and ending massive payments to Brussels.

But Brexiteers have moved against the PM in the aftermath of the Chequers white paper, and renewed talk that Mrs May could face a leadership challenge when MPs return from their summer holidays next month.

Boris Johnson is reportedly preparing to make a dramatic intervention on the eve of the Tory party conference in October.

The week-long conference will be a crucial test of the PM which will determine if the Tory party stick with her to finish the Brexit negotiations.
A new section of the Berlin Wall has been discovered in a park, it has emerged, as the city marks 57 years to the day since the border to West Berlin was closed overnight.

Locals stumbled upon a 66-foot section of the concrete barrier in a park in central Berlin in June before officials confirmed it was genuine in time for the anniversary.

The latest find almost 30 years after German reunification is the second such discovery this year, after a graffiti-covered stretch of the inner wall was revealed in January.

Soviet-backed East Germany closed the border on the night of August 13, 1961, barring its citizens from entering West Berlin, and leaving the city divided for 28 years.

A newly-discovered section of the Berlin Wall which was found by locals on a neighbourhood walk in June, and confirmed by officials to be a genuine part of the former barrier

The newly-discovered part of the Wall initially baffled experts as it did not have the barrier's distinctive curved top, Der Tagesspiegel reported.

But officials realised the concrete stretch was part of an outer section of the Wall, a part of the extensive security arrangements which guarded the border.

Walkers in the area stumbled upon the part of the Wall, near the former Chausseestrae border crossing, as they tried to get round a fence in the park.

A local SPD politician said he was 'totally surprised' that there were still undiscovered parts of the Wall in existence.

A service was held on Monday at the Berlin Wall Memorial to remember those who died attempting to cross to the West.

The exact number of victims is unclear but the memorial foundation estimates that at least 140 people were killed as they tried to go over the border.

The section of the Wall (pictured) was confirmed to be genuine in time for today's anniversary

One of them, Winfried Freudenberg, died in March 1989 as he tried to escape in a balloon, just eight months before the border was opened.

The ruling party in East Germany closed the border without warning in an attempt to stem the flow of people fleeing the country for the economically thriving West during the 1950s and early 1960s.

On the night of August 13, 1961, soldiers shut the border, initially blocking the way with barbed wire before beginning the construction of the permanent Wall, officially termed the 'Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart'.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy visited the Wall in 1963, when he declared solidarity with West Berlin by proclaiming: 'Ich bin ein Berliner'.

East German workers begin construction on the Berlin Wall after the border was closed in August 1961, leaving the city divided for 28 years until the Wall came down in late 1989

Joyous Berliners sit on the Berlin Wall in November 1989 after the border was re-opened

The Wall encircled West Berlin, an outpost of the NATO-aligned Federal Republic of Germany buried deep within East Germany. It was separate to the border between the two German states.

The border was not opened again until November 1989, when an official at a clumsy East German press conference suggested that travel to the West would be permitted, sending crowds of people thronging to the border crossings.

With no clear instructions from the East German or Soviet leadership, border guards opened the crossing and let the crowds stream through to the West.

The Wall was gradually torn down over the following months, leading up to full German reunification in 1990, although some sections have been preserved.

On February 5 this year the city celebrated as the Wall had been gone for longer than the 28 years (10,315 days) for which it had divided the city.

In January history enthusiast Christian Bormann revealed he had found a 262-foot section of the Wall, Deutsche Welle reported.

He said he had first found it in 1999 but informed authorities after noticing that the section of Wall had been damaged by storms.
An elderly couple were left devastated when their retirement home in Hertfordshire was allegedly wrecked by a builder.

The Sun reported how Peter and Jennifer Lobb thought it was a joke when they heard their two-bedroom bungalow had been demolished just weeks before construction was scheduled to finish.

Mrs Lobb, 68, said: 'We were just in shock, disbelief. It was like a bad dream.'

The wreckage of one of the five homes in Buntingford, Hertfordshire, after the demolition work allegedly carried out by a Romanian builder on Saturday

Retired couple Jennifer and Peter Lobb were expected to move into one of the 800,000 properties after August 31 but will now have to wait to see what happens next

'We just keep laughing, it feels like an April Fool's joke.'

The former school admin worker and husband, retired cop Peter, 71, were expected to move in to the property after completion on August 31.

Instead they must wait to hear if they will ever be able to move in.

McCarthy & Stone are yet to decide whether to tear down the homes completely or attempt to salvage the damaged bungalows

She said: 'We're not sure whether the homes are going to be demolished or if they can be rebuilt or salvaged.

A Romanian builder Daniel Neagu, 30, has been charged with criminal damage after five homes worth approximately 800,000 each were wrecked by a digger.

He is accused of causing 4 million of damage to a row of newly built retirement homes after he was 'sacked for leaving a company vehicle in Romania'.

Neagu will appear for a plea hearing at St Albans Crown Court on September 10.

A spokesperson for McCarthy & Stone, who developed the properties, said:

'Following an incident at our Buntingford site on Saturday, our response team has been on-site and we can confirm that five newly built bungalows have been damaged.

'We are now awaiting a structural engineer's report, so we can plan the work required to repair or rebuild these properties.

'The five properties were all unoccupied at the time, with homeowners set to move in in the coming weeks.

'We are absolutely devastated for the purchasers affected; and our priority is to continue to stay in close contact with them and their families, and to ensure that any disruption is kept to a minimum.

'We will also continue to assist the police with their enquiries; and we can confirm that the individual who has been charged is not an employee of McCarthy & Stone.'
Shocking footage shows a male teacher in India beating a schoolboy unconscious in front of his classmates.

The teacher, who has been identified as Jagmohan Meena by the Deccan Chronicle, was allegedly angry at the boy for returning late back to class after running an errand because he had stopped for a drink of water.

The P.E teacher at the Swami Vivekanand Model School in Didwana was caught on CCTV slapping the child ferociously more than a dozen times.

The young victim passed out at his desk following the sustained attack, which lasted several minutes, and was rushed to hospital, NDTV reports.

His parents filed a complaint with police on Saturday and an investigation is now under way.

Leaked surveillance footage - which has gone viral on social media - shows the teacher towering over the student at his desk, shaking him forcefully as he hits him.

The child shields his face with both arms as the blows land thick and fast.

And the teacher only pauses to scold him more before resuming his assault.

Around a dozen students can be seen watching the sickening scenes in fear from their desks.

The thug then appears to close his hand into a fist and punches the boy on the top of the head and in the upper back.

The child shields his face as the blows land thick and fast during the vicious attack

Around a dozen students can be seen watching the sickening scenes in fear from their desks

He walks to the front of the class and jabs his finger at the victim before confronting him again, raising his hand in the air until he flinches then pulling it away.

He gives him one last hard slap to the face then appears to push him over in his chair before leaving the room.

Another student rushes to the boy's aid as he sits slumped forward with his face against the desk.

The teacher returns and lifts up the boy's head by his hair but appears to decide against launching another attack after seeing his condition.

The teacher appears to decide against launching another attack after seeing his condition

He then returns to the front of the classroom and appears to hold up his finger as a warning to the students before the footage cuts out.

The teacher has been identified by the Deccan Chronicle as Jagmohan Meena.

The unnamed victim told Indian news outlet NDTV: 'I left the class when he asked me to do something and then I had gone to drink water. When I came back he asked me how I got so late. He started beating me as he sought an explanation.

'He held me by the hair and continued to thrash me. I soon fell unconscious and my friends took me to hospital. I narrated the whole incident to my family after I felt a little better.'

Viewers on social media called for the strongest possible action to be taken against the teacher.

Jacinta Pereira said: 'Unable to comprehend what the teacher is truly trying to achieve here. Although the teacher is using physical force on one student, he is literally traumatising the entire class of students who are visibly confused and just mute spectators.'

Imran Mohammad wrote: 'Respect small children. They came to learn. Please don't hit them.'

Janardhan Palayur added: 'We are far behind. It may take another century to get things fixed in schools.'
The White House has found itself with few available options to punish Omarosa Manigault-Newman after she released tapes of her conversations with the president and his chief of staff.

Legally, experts said that while she violated White House regulations, she did not break any laws when she taped John Kelly in the Oval Office. The District of Columbia is a one-party consent territory.

And a non-disclosure agreement, if she signed one while working at the White House as President Trump has insinuated, may not be enforceable.

'Unless the administration finds some other type of violation, I think she's in the clear so far,' Washington lawyer Glenn Ivy, a partner at Price Benowitz, told DailyMail.com.

The White House found itself with little available options to punish Omarosa Manigault-Newman on Monday after she released tapes of her conversations with the president and his chief of staff

White House officials were scratching their heads on Monday on how to appropriately punish Manigault-Newman for recording the president and chief of staff as the ex-White House official began her media tour.

Other than the impugning of her integrity, which White House and party and campaign officials did in full force, Manigault-Newman was seemingly set to get away with her betrayal of the president and keep a seven-figure advance.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders accused Manigault-Newman of showing a 'blatant disregard' for national security in a Sunday evening statement.

'The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room, shows a blatant disregard for our national security  and then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee,' she said.

But Sanders did not threaten government action against the ex-White House aide and former friend of the president.

President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told Fox News on Monday that he believed that Omarosa was in violation of national security protocols, leaving open the potential for action from Trump, whom he said he'd spent most of Sunday with, on the grounds that Manigualt-Newman was endangering state secrets.

'Shes certainly violating national security regulations, which I think have the force of law. Yeah, I would think she is,' he said in an interview on Fox & Friends. 'I mean, Id have to look at it more carefully. Is she violating every bit of trust that people should have in someone?'

Giuliani said: 'Donald Trump made her. What kind of ingratitude is this? You can tell from the tape, he thought she resigned.'

President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told Fox News on Monday that he believed that Omarosa was in violation of national security protocols, leaving open the potential for legal action from Trump

He was referring to audio of Trump on the phone with Manigault-Newman a day after her firing in which he claimed he'd heard that she was resigning. Omarosa told the president on the portion of the call that she chose to release that she was actually being fired by Kelly.

'No. Nobody even told me about it. You know, they run a big operation but I didn't know it. I didn't know that,' he said. 'God d****t.'

Trump could declare Manigault-Newman in violation of the presidential records act for releasing the communication. Whether the declaration would have any teeth would depend on how the document is classified. She is within her rights to keep notes and a diary.

How the White House was planned to prevent someone else from doing the same thing - taping and then releasing their conversations with Trump - was also unknown.

Kelly introduced a crackdown on personal devices in the West Wing to prevent leaking to the media after Manigault-Newman's departure that would help protect the kinds of recordings she's said to have made in the Oval Office and keep private conversations like the one she had with Kelly in the Situation Room private.

It was not explicitly known that Manigualt Newman had her phone on her when she recorded her firing from Kelly. She is said to, perhaps, have used an audio-recording pen.

White House rules clearly prohibit the use of cell phones inside the Situation Room, where Manigault-Newman was inexplicably fired, regardless of the personal device ban that Kelly put into practice in January. Signs are posted in the vicinity spelling out the rules, sources have said.

As for her call with the president, only one-party is required to give their consent for a recording to be made in the District of Columbia.

'Obviously Omarosa knew she was taping, and that's all that needed,' Ivey said.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders accused Manigault-Newman of showing a 'blatant disregard' for national security in a Sunday evening statement. She did not threaten legal action against Manigault-Newman, though in the statement

That leaves the non-disclosure agreement that Trump says Manigault-Newman signed.

Sources said that the last NDA she inked may have been in the Trump presidential campaign, which ended in 2016.

Manigault-Newman was at the time the head of African-American outreach. She says she rejected an offer she considered a payoff to join the 2020 apparatus after her White House firing.

At the White House, officials are known to be working in the West Wing without a disclosure form, and it is not known if Omarosa signed one.

Staffers who have had to sign them are liable to be fined $10 million by the government, the Washington Post in March reported.

The Post said then that staffers working for Trump under Reince Priebus signed the forms because they knew they would be unenforceable.

The president in 2016 told The Post that he wanted aides to sign the documents just like employees have to at private businesses to prevent the exact sort of situation the Trump now finds himself in.

'When people are chosen by a man to go into government at high levels and then they leave government and they write a book about a man and say a lot of things that were really guarded and personal, I dont like that,' Trump at the time stated.

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, who began her tenure at the White House at the same time at Manigault-Newman, said Sunday that West Wing staffers 'absolutely' have confidentiality agreements.

'But confidentiality is implied,' she argued. 'You have a reasonable expectation of confidentiality and privacy in your conversations at your place of work.'

Maybe so, but unless the Manigault-Newman signed an NDA like the one outlined in March by The Post, the White House would have no legal course to act against her.

'The issue for them is what sanctions could you impose,' Ivey said. 'What teeth do you have left, because termination is usually an option.'

He said the White House could attempt to come after her pension, but it wouldn't after 18 months of work amount to much.

'I don't think shes worried about it,' Ivey added. 'She seems to have her eyes on a different revenue stream.'
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Overnight rains triggered flash flooding in parts of central and eastern Pennsylvania on Monday, closing down a heavily traveled interstate and sending water into homes in the mountainous coal regions.

State highway and emergency management officials reported numerous closed roads in a wide swath of the state from Williamsport to the Philadelphia suburbs, and some motorists had to be rescued.

Stunning photographs show stranded residents surrounded by murky floodwaters as they wait for overwhelmed rescue crews to arrive.

Scroll down for video

Extensive areas of central and eastern Pennsylvania have been overwhelmed by flash flooding following torrential rain

Rescue crews are pictured as they make their way through deep floodwaters on a street in Darby, Pennsylvania, on Monday

A minivan sits partially submerged in floodwaters that have overtaken a commercial parking lot in Darby on Monday

Overnight rains between Sunday and Monday triggered the flooding that has threatened thousands of homes across the state

Hazel Coles said water rose so quickly at her home in Darby, outside Philadelphia, that she had to evacuate through a window. She said there was about three feet of water on her street, and some people had to be evacuated by boat. She said the Red Cross was helping displaced residents.

'It's just crazy,' she said. 'I thank God it wasn't worse.'

The National Weather Service in State College said there were numerous reports of six inches of rain or more in Schuylkill and Columbia counties.

Meteorologist Aaron Tyburski said the latest downpours followed weeks of a stalled weather pattern that is drawing moisture from the Atlantic Ocean, hitting some communities repeatedly.

'It's been quite a rough go for them over the past three weeks,' Tyburski said.

An uprooted dumpster floats in several feet of floodwater on a street in downtown Darby, Pennsylvania on Monday

Large swaths of flooding flowed into the Philadelphia suburb of Darby overnight, taking residents by surprise

State officials reported numerous closed roads in a wide area of the state from Williamsport to the Philadelphia suburbs

Emergency crews have been overwhelmed by the number of residents in need of assistance during the flooding

Thousands of residents have been left stranded by the flash floods that have overtaken their cars and their homes

A van is seen stranded in floodwaters that appear to be more than four feet deep on a road in Darby

In the Benton area north of Bloomsburg, Fishing Creek spilled from its banks Monday, sending out a torrent of chocolate brown water.

The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency said a helicopter rescue was planned for people on the roofs of homes in that part of northern Columbia County, but weather needed to clear before the helicopter could take off early Monday afternoon.

High water in Port Carbon caused some evacuations and prompted firefighters to launch rescue boats and rafts. Parts of Pottsville were inundated, and three shelters were set up.

Schuylkill County emergency management director John Matz said water levels were starting to fall by early afternoon Monday and officials were making plans to assess the damage. He said the recent flooding could have caused more damage than the high water that hit the county a few weeks ago and affected several hundred structures.

'The difference now is, once we hit the center part of the county, it's a more populated area,' Matz said.

Workers clean up debris swept into the street by severe flooding in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania on Monday

Construction equipment is used to clear the street of debris-laden floodwaters following heavy rains across Pennsylvania

In the Philadelphia area, the Schuylkill Expressway was closed in both directions at the busy King of Prussia Mall exit. The waters affected dozens of stores and a parking garage at the mall.

Upper Darby and Montgomery County police reported numerous rescues of people trapped in cars by flooding.

The National Weather Service office issued a flash flood warning and urged people not to drive through flooded roads.

Gov Tom Wolf activated the Commonwealth Response Coordination Center on Monday morning and the National Guard was notified to be ready to help, if needed.

The forecast calls for storms to continue and cause flooding in the south-central, north-central and eastern parts of the state through Wednesday.

Neighboring New Jersey also experienced severe flooding over the weekend across the northern portion of the state.

Jersey saw between three inches and four inches of rain by the time storms passed on Saturday. Bergen, Essex, and Passaic counties were hit the hardest by the rainfall this weekend. Caldwell county received a staggering 4.92 inches, according to NJ.com.

The rain led to road closures and extensive street flooding by Monday as flash flood warnings continue into the afternoon.

One shocking video captured the moment the swelling Peckman River in Little Falls swept 16 cars from a dealership parking lot and sent them downriver into a crashing pile up in Passaic County on Saturday.
Ricardo Garcia Lopez, 39, killed three of his children before turning the gun on himself in a horrific murder-suicide

A California father who was arrested twice this year on domestic violence complaints killed three of his children before shooting himself dead.

Ricardo Garcia Lopez, 39, was found dead in the driveway of his home in Clearlake.

Authorities said Lopez shot dead his nine-month-old, two-year-old, and four-year-old children. Their bodies were discovered in an SUV parked outside the mobile home.

A fourth child, aged five, was also found in the car with a bullet to the chest.

Police gave the child medical aid until paramedics arrived at the scene.

The child was flown to an out-of-country hospital and remains in stable condition.

Authorities said the children's 25-year-old mother ran from the home and called 911 shortly after midnight on Sunday, telling dispatch that Lopez was firing a gun.

Police did not say what kind of gun Lopez used in the crime or how he obtained it. The laborer was barred from owning a firearm.

Lopez was found dead in the driveway of his home (pictured) in Clearlake. Three of his children were found dead inside an SUV parked at the house

A motive for the horrific murder-suicide has not been revealed. The children and their mother's names have also not been released.

Lopez (pictured in a mug shot) had been arrested twice for domestic violence complaints against his wife this year

Lopez was arrested on March 10 on a felony complaint of infliction of corporal injury on a spouse. He was released on $10,000 bail.

The father-of-four pleaded guilty to battery on a non-cohabitating partner and was sentenced to three years of probation.

He was also barred from owning or possessing a firearm and the court issued a restraining order.

Just two months later, police arrested Lopez again on May 24 on a misdemeanor complaint of spousal battery and released him on $25,000 bail.

Police issued a bench warrant for Lopez's arrest after he failed to show up for his scheduled arraignment in July.

Lopez was also facing three charges of failure to register as a sex offender, according to sheriff records from his May arrest.

Details of the sex offender case were not immediately available and did not appear to stem from Lake County, the court said.
Fire crews had to rescue an Illinois man from deep mud after he became stuck while trying to reach his pet parrot.

John Crawford, from Belleville, Southern Illinois, was out for a walk in Bicentennial Park on Sunday, with his eight-year-old parrot Amigo perched on his shoulder.

Suddenly, the blue-and-yellow macaw flew off and landed in the center of one of the dredged lakes, according to the official report.

Fire crews had to rescue John Crawford from deep mud after he became stuck while trying to reach his pet parrot Amigo

Crawford, from Belleville, Southern Illinois, was out for a walk in Bicentennial Park on Sunday, with his eight-year-old parrot Amigo perched on his shoulder when it flew off (he is pictured pulling himself out the mud)

When Crawford, who works at local restaurant Fischers, tried to reach Amigo, he quickly got stuck.

Thankfully a passerby heard his cries for help and called 911 at around 4.30pm.

Fire Chief Tom Pour tells the Belleville News-Democrat the mud from the lake being dredged was like quicksand.

When Crawford tried to reach Amigo, he quickly got stuck and a passerby was forced to call 911 (pictured crawling across the ladder with the parrot on his back)

Firefighters even hosed him down after he was finally cleared of the mud

Crawford is regularly seen with his eight-year-old, blue and yellow macaw Amigo

He often rides a bike around with the parrot on his shoulder

'He was probably several hundred feet out into the mud with the parrot on his back,' Pour said.

The fire crews laid multiple ladders across the dredged lake to create a makeshift bridge to reach Crawford.

With Amigo safely back on his shoulder, video shows Crawford hauling himself out of the mud and climb back to safety across the ladders. Firefighters even hosed him down after he was finally cleared of the mud.

Neither Crawford nor the blue and yellow macaw, which originates from South America, was injured.

Pour says he often rides a bike around with the parrot on his shoulder.
Black cab rapist John Worboys has been quizzed about a number of new sex attack claims which could scupper his imminent release from prison.

Officers from Scotland Yard's Child Abuse and Sexual Offences Command have interviewed the notorious sex offender under caution after a number of women came forward to accuse him of sexual assault.

The fresh investigation comes just months after the Parole Board's decision to release him caused uproar.

The 61-year-old was jailed indefinitely in 2009, with a minimum term of eight years, for drugging and sexually assaulting 12 female passengers.

Black cab rapist John Worboys (pictured) has been interviewed by Officers from Scotland Yard's Child Abuse and Sexual Offences Command over new sexual assault claims

But in January the Parole Board decided that after serving just 10 years in prison, Worboys no longer posed a threat - despite police fears that he could have attacked over 500 women over the years he spent as a licenced taxi driver.

The decision was later overturned at the High Court after his victims took legal action to block his release.

Parole Board chairman Nick Hardwick was forced to quit in the furore and Justice Secretary David Gauke launched an overhaul of the system.

Since then five women are said to have gone to police with new allegations against the taxi driver, who drugged and raped women in the back of his cab.

A further two women are said to have asked police to reconsider their allegations against him.

Yesterday it emerged that police are liaising with the Crown Prosecution Service after receiving a number of allegations including sexual assault and administering a substance with intent to commit a sexual offence, which are said to have been committed between 1997 and 2007.

The 61-year-old was jailed indefinitely in 2009, with a minimum term of eight years, for drugging and sexually assaulting 12 female passengers (pictured, his taxi)

Worboys was interviewed in Wakefield prison on Wednesday 4 July.

The development has raised hopes that his imminent release from prison will be indefinitely delayed as he could be locked up again if charged and convicted of any offence.

No arrest has been made, but it is thought that he will remain in custody while the allegations are fully investigated

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: 'Detectives investigating a number of allegations of non-recent sexual assault have interviewed a 61-year-old man under caution.

'An investigation was launched in January 2018 after a number of women contacted police with information.

'Since then, officers have assessed all the information provided and established there are a number of allegations that required investigation. Police also sought early investigative advice from the Crown Prosecution Service.

'The allegations include sexual assault and administering a substance with intent to commit a sexual offence; and are said to have been committed between 1997 and 2007.

'The man was interviewed at a venue in Yorkshire on Wednesday 4 July.

'The investigation continues.'

Many of the women who originally made allegations against Worboys were told their cases were not being prosecuted because he was unlikely to ever be released.

The CPS prosecutor in the original case, Tony Connell, wrote to victims back in 2009 apologising to those whose allegations were not taken to trial, saying: 'There are dangers in putting too many charges on an indictment as the trial can become too long and complicated.'

More than 100 women reported him to the police.

But the Crown Prosecution Service only proceeded with 14 cases and did not haul him back to court when more victims came forward after his 2009 trial as it was assumed he would be locked up for the rest of his life after being given an indeterminate sentence for public protection (IPP).

It is thought that police will now be looking back over the file to establish whether there is unused evidence.
A Kansas teacher who was being investigated for alleged child pornography reasons is said to have committed suicide.

John Derby, 46, an art teacher at Olathe East High School in Olathe, Kansas, was found dead in a field on Thursday night after apparently killing himself, FOX4 reported.

Derby's body was said to have been found in De Soto, Kansas, about 21 miles from his home, the same evening that his Overland Park, Kansas, apartment was raided by police.

John Derby, 46, a high school art teacher was found dead in a field on Thursday night after apparently killing himself following a child pornography investigation

Police had a warrant to search his apartment for child pornography and confiscated his computer while they were there.

The Overland Park sheriff's office told WIBW that Derby's wounds were self-inflicted.

Authorities said that criminal charges were not being filed because Derby is now dead, however, the investigation into the child porn will continue as it's necessary to identify the victims.

Police have not yet determined if the alleged victims associated with Derby's investigation were from the Olathe School District or lived in or near the apartment complex where Derby resided. It is also possible that he downloaded the child pornography files off the internet.

Derby's body was found the same day that authorities raided his home and took his computer

Derby had been a high school art teacher at Olathe East High School for the past year

The Olathe East High School's website listed Derby as having worked in the school district for a year and stated that he was an art teacher who taught metals, jewelry and ceramics, according to reports.

Since news of the investigation and his apparent suicide surfaced, his profile has been removed from the school's website.

Prior to teaching at the high school, Derby was an Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Kansas.

For confidential support in the US call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.

For confidential support in the UK call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit a local Samaritans branch, see www.samaritans.org for details.

For confidential support in Australia call the Lifeline 24-hour crisis support on 13 11 14.
Francisco Diaz, 46, was arrested on Saturday in San Diego on eight felony counts

An outraged father has beaten up a registered sex offender whom his three-year-old daughter accused of abducting and molesting her.

Francisco Diaz, 46, was arrested in San Diego, on Saturday, and charged with eight felony counts, including kidnapping, lewd and lascivious acts with a minor and sodomy with a minor.

Unbeknownst to his neighbors, Diaz has been on the sex offender registry since 2007, on a conviction for annoying or molesting a child under 18.

Diaz had apparently been living with his mother on the 5200 block of Maple Street - directly across the street from the Oak Park Elementary School, the Times of San Diego reported.

California's sex offender registry merely lists Diaz's last known address as the 92105 zip code, which includes the school. It's unclear if he was legally allowed to live so close to an elementary.

Diaz was living on the right side of this block when he was arrested for allegedly sexually abusing his neighbor's toddler. The Oak Park Elementary is seen on the left side of the street

Neighbors had little suspicion that Diaz had a sordid past. So one neighbor was shocked when he found his daughter partially undressed in his own living room at around 10am on Saturday.

The little girl told her father that a man had taken her out through the window and touched her inappropriately, the dad told Fox5.

When he asked her who had taken her, she pointed at Diaz's house.

'I talked to him everyday. I gave him money,' the stunned father said. 'Everyone in my family is comfortable with him. I can't believe it.'

The father, who asked not to be named, said that Diaz's mother had returned the girl home, although police did not comment on how the girl was returned.

The outraged father confronted Diaz and the two men began to fight, until police arrived and broke up the brawl.

There was no word of charges against the dad but Diaz was quickly arrested when police heard the child's accusations.

Diaz has been charged with felony counts of kidnapping, burglary, lewd and lascivious acts with a minor, sodomy with a minor, aggravated sexual assault on a minor using force, aggravated sexual assault on a minor by sodomy, and kidnapping to commit robbery or rape.

He is being held without bail in the San Diego Central Jail and is due in court for arraignment on Wednesday.
A fired white Kansas police officer has been charged with manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a black man.

Matthew Harrington, 25, was indicted on Monday on one count of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Antonio Garcia Jr in Leavenworth.

The shooting happened back in July 2017 outside Garcia Jr's home when Harrington was investigating a domestic dispute involving a reported stolen vehicle.

Harrington, who was working for the Leavenworth Police Department at the time, allegedly shot the 47-year-old victim after a confrontation.

Matthew Harrington, 25, pictured left, was indicted on Monday on one count of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Antonio Garcia Jr, pictured right, in Leavenworth, Kansas in July last year

Police refused to release Harrington's name after the shooting and have not publicly released the bodycam footage from the incident.

Harrington was fired in January for what Leavenworth Police Chief Patrick Kitchens called a violation of the department's use of deadly force policy.

Police said Harrington was dispatched to the home to deal with the domestic report but Garcia had already left by the time he arrived.

He returned moments later to find Harrington there.

The victim's family said Harrington was trying to stop Garcia from leaving when he fired the fatal shots.

Garcia was still sitting in his car when Harrington allegedly fired at him.

Harrington, who was working for the Leavenworth Police Department at the time, allegedly shot the 47-year-old victim after a confrontation outside the victim's home (above)

Harrington was fired in January for what Leavenworth Police Chief Patrick Kitchens called a violation of the department's use of deadly force policy

His family have filed numerous requests to see the bodycam footage of the incident.

The attorneys representing Garcia Jr's family, Ken Barnes and John Cusick, have only recently been able to view the video, the Kansas City Star reports.

'If and when you get to see the video, you will see that Mr Garcia was trying to disengage himself from the officer. He was not trying to engage with the officer,' Barnes said.

'There was no threat,' Cusick added.

Leavenworth County Prosecutor Todd Thompson announced the charges against Harrington on Monday.

Barnes said the Garcia family was 'relieved' and was considering a wrongful death lawsuit.

Harrington's bond was set at $50,000 when he appeared in court.
The parents of a 10-year-old boy with autism are outraged after bodycam footage revealed he was handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a school resource officer.

Emily and Robert Brown are planning to take legal action after they received a video showing their son Thomas being held face down to the ground by his neck at Alexander Elementary School in Denton, Texas.

Thomas can be heard repeatedly crying and screaming throughout the disturbing two-hour ordeal, during which he was handcuffed on two different instances.

The struggle began when Thomas allegedly began poking students and ignoring teachers in his special needs classroom.

Eric Coulston, a Denton Police Department school resource officer, was called on to help after a teacher pulled Thomas out of a cubbyhole, where he tried to isolate himself.

Disturbing bodycam footage shows 10-year-old Thomas Brown, who has autism, being held down by the neck and handcuffed by a school resource officer. The incident began at his school in Denton, Texas after Thomas tried to hide in a cubbyhole (pictured)

Eric Coulston, a Denton Police Department school resource officer, was asked to help. He then took Thomas to an empty room and the school and held him down on the ground by his neck

Thomas was taken to an empty room known as the 'quiet-down space' at the school, where he was immediately placed on the ground and held there by his neck.

'Well, we're back to where we were the other day,' Coulston is heard telling the boy in the footage as Thomas begins to struggle.

'Do you want the handcuffs? Or not?' he asks, continuing to hold Thomas face-down on the ground.

'Get off!' the boy can be heard screaming and sobbing as he is put in handcuffs.

Thomas continues to scream himself hoarse as one teacher holds his face and tries to soothe the boy, telling him 'it's time to stop'.

At one point Thomas calms down and Coulston takes the handcuffs off of him.

'Get off!' the boy can be heard screaming and sobbing as he is put in handcuffs by the officer

At another point in the disturb video Coulston can be seen pushing down on the boy's back

'Well, we're back to where we were the other day,' Coulston is heard telling the boy in the footage as Thomas struggles

Thomas continues to scream himself hoarse as one teacher holds his face and tries to soothe the boy, telling him 'it's time to stop'

'I don't want you to end up back in the same predicament, okay,' he can be heard telling the boy as he unlocks the cuffs.

But Thomas later begins ripping up tissues into small pieces, throwing them in the direction of the teacher as he becomes agitated again.

'Thomas, you're about to find yourself in handcuffs again,' Coulston warns the boy.

He tries to resist and begins screaming and crying again as Coulston goes to put the cuffs back on and demands that Thomas give him his hands.

After about 20 minutes, Coulston removes the cuffs again and Thomas calms down before his mother arrives and speaks to him in the room as well.

'Take a long last look at this room, let this be the last time you're in here,' another officer can be heard telling Thomas before the video ends.

Thomas calms down and is taken out of the cuffs. But he is cuffed again after he begins ripping up tissue and throwing it in the direction of a teacher (pictured)

He tries to resist and begins screaming and crying again as Coulston goes to put the cuffs back on and demands that Thomas give him his hands

Emily said she broke down in tears when she saw the footage of her son.

'It's abuse, the torture, and the hell that he was put through,' she told WFAA.

Emily revealed that, just days before the April 30 incident, she walked into the school and saw her son in handcuffs.

She was told that Thomas had been harming others and disrupting the classroom, and took the officers at their word.

But after the second incident, Emily noticed severe bruises on Thomas' body.

'I didn't notice until I got home, and started realizing there's something really wrong here,' she said.

In another instance Thomas is dragged to a wall by both of him arms when he tries to slide toward the door

Coulston can once again be seen gripping the young boy's neck during the horrific incident

Thomas' parents have a detailed behavior intervention plan with the school that includes de-escalation techniques.

They said that they never permitted the school to use restraints or force to hold him down.

Emily said at no point in the video does Thomas ever appear to be a serious threat.

'I see a little boy hiding,' she said. 'Not doing anything that's an imminent serious harm to someone else.'

Michael Holum, an advocate consultant representing the family, said the officer's treatment of Thomas was 'abusive'.

'It was excessive. It was vicious. It was calculated,' he told ABC News.

'If he's being put in handcuffs just because of a tissue, that's outrageous. I do this professionally in over 50 districts. This is the worst I have ever seen, and there's no close second.'

Holum said Thomas' parents plan to seek either 'civil or criminal' action against the Denton Police and the Denton Independent School District that will 'keep these particular employees from ever being able to be near children with disabilities again.'

Thomas can then be seen quietly sitting, his back to the wall, as another officer speaks to him

His mother Emily Brown then arrives at the school and helps to calm him down before they both leave

The Denton Independent School District claims that Thomas had been engaging in 'physically assaultive and unsafe behaviors' before he was handcuffed.

'SRO Coulston deemed handcuffs appropriate a second time in order to minimize the student's ability to harm himself or engage in acts of violence against others,' the report states.

A review conducted by the Denton Police Department Office of Professional Standards found that Coulston did nothing wrong.

Thomas' parents said they 'vehemently disagree' with the review and want an independent investigation to be conducted.

'We as parents will never stop fighting for our son or other children,' they said in a statement.

'So that they can be safe within the walls of their school and free of physical emotional, and psychological [abuse] at the hands of the very people that are publicly employed to protect them.'
Sacha Baron Cohen's latest installment of 'Who Is America?' has a former sheriff explaining how he would have stopped anti-fascists in Germany in the 1930s, as the Nazis were coming to power ahead of World War II.

Baron Cohen, who was disguised at the time as his alter ego, Danish YouTube personality OMGWhizzboyOMG, interviewed former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, Jr. about Antifa, calling them 'the dangerous people who marched in Charlottesville.'

'So if you were the sheriff in the '30s in Germany, and the anti-fascists were marching, the Antifa were marching, what would you have done to stop them?' Baron Cohen asks, as 'Whizzboy.'

'Well, you have to act aggressively,' Clarke says. 'When I say that, you have to use force to disperse the crowd. You have to be willing to arrest people and take them to jail.'

Clarke also says it's wrong to choose sides between fascists and anti-fascists on the show, while simultaneously denouncing the anti-fascist group, Antifa.

Nazism is a form of fascism, which is defined as, 'a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.'

Antifa, which is short for 'anti-fascists,' has been described by USA Today as 'the name for loosely affiliated, left-leaning anti-racist groups that monitor and track the activities of local neo-Nazis.'

Members of Antifa clashed with far-right protesters in the deadly Charlottesville, Virginia rally last year, which led to the death of Heather Heyer, 32.

Heyer was killed after she was hit by a car driven by an Ohio man that plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters, including Heyer, who had showed up in support of the removal of a Confederate statue in Virginia.

Sasha Baron Cohen, disguised as his alter ego, Danish YouTube personality OMGWhizzboyOMG (right), interviewed former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, Jr. (left) about Antifa and 1930s fascists in Germany

Dressed as Whizzboy, Baron Cohen asks Clarke to describe what the group known as Antifa is like.

'Antifa is an anarchist group,' Clarke says.

'They promote chaos. They come in  again, this is not protest. When you start trashing buildings...'

Clarke doesn't quite finish his sentence, before 'Whizzboy' moves the interview along.

'It's a shame that there weren't brave sheriffs like you around in the 30s, because you could have protected the fascists,' Baron Cohen said to Clarke

Baron Cohen (right) asks Clarke (left) to explain to a donut figurine that he has named Mackenzie Maple Donut why the inanimate object should not join Antifa, and Clarke says, 'They support killing police officers, they support disorder'

Later he asks him to explain to a donut figurine that he has named Mackenzie Maple Donut why the inanimate object should not join Antifa.

'Maple donut, do not join Antifa,' Clarke says. 'They support killing police officers, they support disorder.'

When Clarke talks about being willing to arrest people and take them to jail, the character being played by Baron Cohen says, 'Exactly, it's a shame that there weren't brave sheriffs like you around in the 30s, because you could have protected the fascists and let them speak theirs minds a bit clearer, and then things could have been done a bit quicker.'

'Well, you don't want to pick sides,' Clarke says. 'When you say, "protect the fascists," you don't want to take sides.'

'Of course,' 'Whizzboy' says. 'Particularly not in Germany in the 30s.'

Who Is America? is Baron Cohen's latest foray into trickery, marking his return to television after more than a decade away.

'In the works over the past year, the seven-episode series explores the diverse individuals who populate our unique nation, and features Baron Cohen experimenting in the playground of 2018 America,' Showtimes says.

New episodes air on Mondays at 9.00pm Eastern on Showtime.
President Donald Trump's re-election campaign organization is considering filing a breach of contract lawsuit against Omarosa Manigault-Newman, responding to what a campaign official says are 'ongoing' violations of a non-disclosure agreement the former White House aide signed in 2016.

The official, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, told DailyMail.com that other campaign aides who are mentioned in Manigault-Newman's memoir, on sale Tuesday, also have initiated discussions with the campaign about filing defamation lawsuits of their own.

The non-disclosure agreement, the official added, specifically prohibited her from publicly disparaging Donald Trump at any time after she signed it, and 'she's violating it right now.'

The clause specifically barred her from publicly denigrating Trump 'during the time of your service, and at all times thereafter.'

President Trump tweeted Monday that the White House's former African-American outreach director had signed an NDA, but didn't specify whether it came before or after he took office.

An official with Donald Trump's presidential re-election campaign said Monday that it might sue former aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman, who worked for the campaign before working for the transition and the White House, for violating a 2016 non-disclosure agreement with her tell-all book and a related publicity tour

Trump said Monday before leaving for an appearance at Fort Drum, N.Y. (pictured) that Manigault-Newman signed a non-disclosure agreement before she wrote a tell-all book about her nearly 11 months at the White House

The president tweeted that his onetime African-American outreach director had signed an NDA, but didn't say it happened after his inauguration

'Wacky Omarosa already has a fully signed Non-Disclosure Agreement!' Trump told his 53.7 million Twitter followers. The tweet confirmed what his counselor Kellyanne Conway suggested a day earlier.

It's unlikely an NDA signed by a government employee is enforceable. But an agreement made with a campaign committee  a private entity without the Constitutional restrictions faced by the federal government  could have a smoother legal ride.

Manigault-Newman said Monday on MSNBC that 'they've been threatening legal action. Theyre trying to figure out how to stop me.'

She has broken in recent days the veneer of any confidentiality the Trump administration may have imagined a previous NDA had cemented in place.

The onetime reality TV villain provided a recording to NBC News of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly firing her during a closed-door meeting in the ultra-secure Situation Room.

In another audio file, President Trump called her a day later to say he hadn't been told she was let go and wasn't happy about it.

WHAT OMAROSA SAYS IN BOMBSHELL BOOK AND INTERVIEWS ABOUT TRUMP President uses the N-word and other racial slurs In 'Unhinged,' Omarosa says she was told he had been recorded using the N-word in outtakes from The Apprentice. Now she says she personally heard it after the book went to press: 'When he talks that way, the way he did on this tape, it confirmed that he is truly a racist.' In the book she claims he called Kellyanne Conway's husband George, who is half-Filipino, 'a goo-goo' and a 'flip.' Isn't competent to hold office 'They continue to deceive this nation by how mentally declined he is, how difficult it is for him to process complex information. How he is not engaged in some of the most important decisions that impacts our country.' She also writes: 'Donald has only a surface-level understanding of the content hes signing into law.' Is in mental jeopardy She writes of his interview with NBC News's Lester Holt in which he addressed his firing of James Comey: 'Donald rambled. He spoke gibberish. He contradicted himself from one sentence to the next. 'While watching the interview, I realized something real and serious was going on in Donalds brain. They thought Trump was being Trump, off the cuff. But I knew something wasnt right.' Lies and leads an administration which lies 'This is a White House where everybody lies; the president lies to the American people,Sarah Huckabee [Sanders] stands in front of the country and lies every single day.' Disparages his family He called Jared Kushner 'sweet', a term for gay, and called Don Jr. 'a f***-up' after the notorious Trump Tower meeting with Russians, saying: 'He screwed up again, but this time, hes screwing us all, big time!' Wanted sworn in on a copy of The Art of the Deal Claims she told him: 'Its the greatest business book of all time. Just think how many copies Id sellmaybe a commemorative inauguration copy?!' ... and what she says about John Kelly Manigault-Newman says former Chief of Staff John Kelly is the real boss and that he has mistreated more people than just her. 'John Kelly is running this White House,' she said, 'and Donald Trump has no clue whats going on. Hes being puppeted, and thats very dangerous for this nation.' 'Rob Porter is accused of allegedly abusing his wives. And you know what John Kelly said about Rob Porter? He said he was a man of great integrity. And he's accusing me of integrity violations?' ... and about Melania Omarosa says the First Lady wore the notorious 'I really don't care, do you?' coat to visit separate immigrant children at the border solely to shame her husband - and it wasn't the first time. 'The messages behind her style choices aren't always clear, but they are never accidental. Taken as a whole, all of her style rebellions have served the same purpose, and not only misdirection and distraction - strategies her husband knows all too well. I believe Melania uses style to punish her husband.' ... and about herself I was complicit with this White House deceiving this nation. I had a blind spot where it came to Donald Trump.' Advertisement

Manigault-Newman, a reality TV villain who roamed the West Wing halls for nearly a year, is promoting her tell-all book and consistently disparaging Trump in the process

White House officials have since begun to consider whether Manigault-Newman was recording her in-house conversations for months during 2017.

'There could be hundreds of tapes for all we know,' one official said Monday in a background conversation. 'Did she bring a hidden microphone into the Oval [Office]? No one would have checked.'

Manigault-Newman joined forces with Trump in the summer of 2016 and spent far more time working in the West Wing than on the campaign trail. Her book publicity tour so far hasn't included any bombshells that date from before the president's inauguration.

But even so, the campaign official said Monday, publicly denigrating the president after she left the White House in December 2017 runs against the NDA she signed more than two years ago.

The official confirmed that the president's 2016 campaign committee that entered into the NDA with Manigault-Newman is the same organization currently working to re-elect him. It's that legal entity that would assert it has standing to sue her.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the federal government from intervening in the exercise of free speech, and whistle-blowers protect government employees who decide to inform inspectors general or even Congress about nefarious White House activities.

But private citizens don't enjoy the same benefits when entering into contracts with non-governmental organizations.

The D.C. Federal Circuit Court ruled in 1983 that former federal employees have a First Amendment right to talk publicly about government information that isn't classified.

That ruling specified that 'the government has no legitimate interest in censoring unclassified materials.' It did not address third parties with whom a prior agreement might have existed.
The uncle of hardline Trump immigration advisor Stephen Miller has delivered an astonishing takedown of his nephew, writing that the family survived and then thrived through 'chain migration' that spared them from slaughter in Eastern Europe.

David Glosser, a neuropsychologist who volunteers for an immigrant aid society in Philadelphia, penned an essay where he described in wrenching detail how family patriarch Wolf-Leib Glosser fled the town of Antopol in what is now Belarus.

After arriving at Ellis Island with just $8 in his pocket, he brought over a son, followed by other family members, using what he could earn to bring them here.

Ancestors of Trump immigration advisor Stephen Miller escaped pogroms in Eastern Europe, moving to the U.S. before a tightening of U.S. immigration policy as well as the Nazi invasion that rubbed out early every member of their village in Belarus

Not only did they benefit from the 'chain migration' that President Trump lambastes in speeches and policy proposals that Miller helps craft, but the policies that allowed them to enter and live here likely spared them from the horrors of the Holocaust, he writes.

'Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family would likely have been murdered by the Nazis along with all but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol,' he writes in Politico.

'I would encourage Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do not envision a similar fate for him.

White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller is Trump's hawkish advisor on immigration issues

Glosser wrote: 'I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, who is an educated man and well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our familys life in this country.'

Glosser sketches out how the Glosser clan settled in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and ultimately found success  a counterpoint to the president's descriptions of how modern immigrants sap communities of resources and bring crime and drugs.

'The Glosser family quickly progressed from selling goods from a horse and wagon to owning a haberdashery in Johnstown run by [son] Nathan and Wolf-Leib to a chain of supermarkets and discount department stores run by my grandfather, Sam, and the next generation of Glossers, including my dad, Izzy.'

Izzy Glosser is Miller's maternal grandfather, who went on to raise a family of merchants, academics, and professionals. Miller himself grew up in tony Santa Monica, California.

The Glossers arrived during an immigration window that would shut in the years leading up to the Second World War. 'The Glossers came to the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the America First nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees,' Glosser writes.

'Acting for so long in the theater of right wing politics, Stephen and Trump may have become numb to the resultant human tragedy and blind to the hypocrisy of their policy decisions,' he writes.

'After all, Stephens is not the only family with a chain immigration story in the Trump administration. Trump's grandfather is reported to have been a German migrant on the run from military conscription to a new life in the USA and his mother fled the poverty of rural Scotland for the economic possibilities of New York City.'

He points out that Trump's in-laws, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, recently got U.S. citizenship, having obtained green cards through their daughter's citizenship. Melania Trump came to the U.S. from Slovenia.
Frankly, it's hard to think of a more shameful act for a British politician than to attend a commemoration for some of the worst terrorists the world has known.

There is no other way to describe the vile terror organisation Black September.

The murderous actions in the early Seventies of this gang of Palestinian nationalists easily rivalled their terrorist brothers-in-arms from the same period, such as the Baader-Meinhof Gang  a hard-Left German terrorist organisation largely populated with middle-class Marxists  or, indeed, the Provisional IRA.

Named after a particularly brutal and devastating military campaign carried out by the Jordanians against the Palestine Liberation Organisation in September 1970, the group was formed by the Palestinians to strike back at Jordan.

However, its remit soon expanded into global terrorism, to devastating effect.

Although the group is, of course, most notorious for its massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Black September was also responsible for scores of letter bombs, hostage takings, assassinations and murders that took place all over the world for two dark years from August 1971 to August 1973.

The Black September group is, of course, most notorious for its massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Pictured: the aftermath

One audacious operation was the hijacking of Sabena Flight 571 from Brussels to Lod in Israel in May 1972, which ended when Israeli elite commandos stormed the plane. Pictured: a female terrorist is detained after Israeli forces stormed a Sabena plane in 1972

If, as Mr Corbyn claims, he was in Tunisia in 2014 to remember 'everyone who died in every terrorist incident everywhere', then perhaps instead of mourning the likes of Black September terrorists, he should show more genuine sympathy for the victims of violence by composing letters of condolence to the families of the group's victims.

Perhaps the Labour leader would care to write to the families of Cleo Noel, the United States ambassador to Sudan, and his deputy, George Curtis Moore, who were among ten hostages taken by eight Black September gunmen when they stormed the Saudi embassy in Khartoum in March 1973.

The terrorists insisted the hostages' lives would be spared if members of Baader-Meinhof were released from prison, as well as Sirhan Sirhan, jailed for assassinating Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968.

President Richard Nixon refused to negotiate and, as a result, Black September took Noel and Moore, along with a Belgian, Guy Eid, down to the basement and shot them dead.

When the members of Black September surrendered and the siege was lifted, the task of identifying the diplomats' bodies fell to a female consular officer  who had never seen a dead body  and an American sergeant called Timothy Wells. A Vietnam veteran, Wells was still revolted by what he saw.

The bodies were riddled with so many bullets that the men were unidentifiable, and only their heights provided any clues of their identities.

For such disgusting murders, the terrorists got off remarkably lightly, with only six of them being prosecuted and then sentenced to jail terms in Egypt, despite the United States pressing hard for the death penalty. Three of the terrorists subsequently escaped.

Black September was clearly delighted by how well the action had gone. The operation gleaned even bigger headlines than a previous one, which ended in a brokered release deal after they had taken six Israelis hostage at the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok.

In fact, owing to a mixture of bad luck, poor planning and the effectiveness of intelligence organisations such as Israel's Mossad and the U.S. National Security Agency, many Black September operations were thankfully to end in failure. But it was not for want of trying.

One audacious operation was the hijacking of Sabena Flight 571 from Brussels to Lod (Tel Aviv) in Israel in May 1972, which ended when Israeli elite commandos stormed the plane, killing two of the four hijackers and rescuing all the passengers apart from one, who would later die of her injuries.

One of the commandos was also shot in the shoulder, but survived. His name was Benjamin Netanyahu  now, of course, the prime minister of Israel.

A Black September campaign carried out in late 1972 involved a hundred or more letter bombs were sent to Israeli targets all over the world, including the UK. Pictured: Vivian Prins' secretary crying after a letter bomb exploded in his face

One of the most potentially dangerous plots took place in New York shortly after the killings in Khartoum, in which a series of huge bombs were placed in rented cars in locations around the city associated with Israel, such as a branch of the Israel Discount Bank.

The bombs, which would have caused mayhem and, according to the FBI, hundreds of deaths, were timed to go off with the arrival in New York of the Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir.

Thankfully, there was an error in the bombs' circuitry, and they never exploded.

The culprit, Khalid Duhham Al-Jawary, managed to escape, although he was later captured and sentenced to a U.S. prison for 30 years in 1993.

He, in fact, served only 16. Al-Jawary is said to have been a key participant in a Black September campaign carried out in late 1972, during which a hundred or more letter bombs were sent to Israeli targets all over the world, including the UK.

Many of the bombs were sent from Amsterdam, and some were to have devastating effects.

On the morning of September 19, the agricultural attache at the Israeli Embassy in London, Dr Ami Shachori, opened a package which he thought contained seeds from Holland that he could plant when he got back home.

Instead, it contained a bomb, which blew up his desk and sent a splinter of wood straight through his heart, killing him.

That month, at least 16 further bombs were intercepted by Scotland Yard. Any of them could have exploded at any stage on their journeys, potentially killing British Post Office staff.

In Israel, Malaysia and New York, postal workers were injured by Black September's bombs, although mercifully, none died. Despite the risk to those not a target, the group continued with the campaign. In November, more bombs were sent to London.

One exploded in the face of Vivian Prins, Jewish managing director of a diamond trading company in the City.

When colleagues rushed up to his office after hearing the explosion, they found their 54-year-old boss gasping for help with burns and cuts on his face, head, thigh and stomach. Mr Prins was lucky  he survived.

As the letter bombs came shortly after the Munich Olympics atrocity, the gang succeeded in becoming one of the foremost terrorist organisations in the world.

However, after some foiled hijackings, the group badly needed another 'spectacular' like Munich.

Their chance came in Athens in the summer of 1973. It was at the city's airport in the mid-afternoon of August 5 that Muhammad Jehud and Husain Tallat carried out a massacre that shocked the world.

It was at Athen's airport in the mid-afternoon of August 5 that Muhammad Jehud and Husain Tallat carried out a massacre that shocked the world, killing three and injuring 60. Pictured: One of the terrorists under arrest

After a few hours in Athen's airport, the terrorists surrendered. They had killed two Americans and an Austrian, and injured nearly 60

A TWA ground employee called Dimitra Michapoulou saw the two terrorists start the killings. 'A man about 30 walked up to a table nearby to have his hand luggage checked,' she recalled. 'He suddenly pulled out a grenade and threw it to the ground.'

Many Britons were to witness what happened next because they were travelling from Athens to Luton with Thomson Holidays.

'There was blood and screaming all around,' said Fred Smith. 'We crawled under a table and crept on our hands and knees outside.'

Violet Richardson from Essex was lucky. 'Shrapnel tore through my sleeve,' she said, 'and blood from injured victims spattered over me. It is a wonder we are alive.'

One couple, Barry and Susan Newton from Speen in Buckinghamshire, were having a drink when the attack started. 'Minutes later, two terrorists came through with guns and told us to lay on the floor,' Mr Newton said.

'They were shouting in Arabic telling people to speak in Arabic and not English.'

The Newtons stayed on the floor for hours until the killing ended.

After a few hours, the terrorists surrendered. They had killed two Americans and an Austrian, and injured nearly 60.

Mr Corbyn may wish to write to the relatives of those murdered, Elbert Kersing of New Jersey, Jeanne Salandri from New York, and Wolfgang Ullhofen from Vienna, whose wife was able to identify his body only from one shoe.

In the aftermath, Black September petered out, partly because of the tortuous politics within the Palestinian nationalist community, but also because of the successful Israeli campaign of assassinating terrorists in revenge for Munich.

Until Mr Corbyn commemorates all the victims of Black September  rather than only its members  then it is all too easy to see where his sympathies lie.

If he wants to begin to make amends, he could do a lot worse than to lay some flowers at the memorial plaque to Ami Shachori, who died at the Israeli Embassy in London. It would be a start.
The family of a 19-year-old girl who has been missing for the past nine days is appealing to anyone with information to come forward.

Kiera Bergman, 19, from Phoenix, Arizona was last heard from more than a week ago when she sent a unusual text message to her roommate after failing to come home.

'She was saying that she was going to go out with some guy that she met at the store a couple days ago, which is something that's not like her, I mean, that's not something that she would do,' Destiny Hall-Chand told CBS affiliate KPHO-TV.

Kiera Bergman (pictured), 19, from Phoenix, Arizona was last heard from nine days ago

'This is my worst nightmare...for it to now be a week and her not getting in contact with anybody, this is not Kiera,' Kiera's mother said

'I don't know. I don't know what to think, I don't know what to believe, I don't know. It's just, I know there's something wrong. I'm just hoping she'll come home and everything will be okay,' Hall-Chand added.

Kiersten Bragg, Kiera's mother, said she received a phone call from one of her daughter's friends soon after she vanished.

'This is my worst nightmare...,for it to now be a week and her not getting in contact with anybody, this is not Kiera,' Bragg told the broadcaster.

Bragg and her family traveled to Phoenix from San Diego and fanned out over the city to post fliers and ask for help from neighbors and community residents.

According to CBS, Kiera moved to Arizona in March to be with her boyfriend.

Bergman's family traveled to Phoenix from San Diego and fanned out over the city to post fliers (pictured above) and ask for help from neighbors and community residents

At a vigil held on Saturday evening, Bragg said that she's been overwhelmed by the amount of support the community has provided during a stressful time.

'We are just being flooded with messages and people telling us that they're praying for us and praying that she comes home safe,' Bragg said.

Kiersten Bragg (R), Kiera's mother, said she received a phone call from one of her daughter's friends soon after she vanished

'They're out there sharing and they're messaging me and telling me they're praying and I'm just so thankful for all those people,' she added.

'You have my heart, so come home,' Chris Bragg, Kiera's father, said.

A GoFundMe page has been setup by a member of Bergman's family to help fund the search for the 19-year-old.

'Kiera Bergman, my cousin went missing on Saturday August 4th in the Phoenix/ Glendale area,' a person identifying themselves as Jessica C states on the page.

'She has not been seen since. Her family as well as myself are worried sick about my cousin. We pray that she comes home safe to her family very very soon!

'I would like to start this go fund me to help raise money to help my cousin family in their search efforts. To help them afford the cost of the hotels, taking time off work, gas, you name it!

'Her immediate family will be the sole receivers of the money and it will be used for private investigators, [counseling], etc.,' the message adds.
Omarosa Manigault-Newman wasn't offered a $15,000-per-month job with Donald Trump's re-election campaign in early 2017 to keep her quiet, a high-ranking campaign official said Monday.

Instead, according to a second highly placed source in Trumpworld with direct knowledge of the episode, the disgraced former West Wing aide came to the campaign asking for work.

Manigault-Newman claims in her tell-all book 'Unhinged' that she turned down the deal, in part because of a non-disclosure agreement that would have come with it.

'The NDA attached to the email was as harsh and restrictive as any Id seen in all my years of television,' she writes, according to a sneak-peek given to The Washington Post.

But the campaign official said the onetime Trump booster, now the president's sworn enemy, had already signed a nearly identical one a year and a half earlier.

Donald Trump's presidential campaign organization says Omarosa Manigault-Newman came looking for work after the White House fired her over 'integrity' issues, and it briefly offered her a 'legitimate job'  until it found out why she was marched out of the West Wing

Omarosa is the latest and most outspoken Trumpworld apostate, calling her former boss a narcissistic racist and a poor leader whose mental faculties aren't up to the task

The earlier agreement, inked by Manigault-Newman when she first joined the campaign in July 2016 to build African-American coalitions, was 'the same exact NDA that everyone else on the campaign signed,' the official said.

'Unhinged,' a word that Manigault-Newman says refers to Trump, goes on sale Tuesday

As with many such written pacts in the political campaign world, it prohibited her from disparaging Trump, even in the distant future, unless she were to be released from that obligation.

When she returned to ask for work after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly gave her the axe in December 2017, campaign lawyers believed she was still covered by that agreement.

But the 2016 NDA didn't yet include future Vice President Mike Pence and his family members under the non-disparagement umbrella, the campaign official said, so she was given an updated version to sign.

'The only reason we offered her a new one at all is that we included the Pence family in there for the first time,' the official explained, referring to a copy the Post published Friday.

'If you cut that out and compared it to what she signed in 2016, they would be the same.'

Both also apparently include clauses prohibiting signers from engaging in any media appearances about Trump without the campaign's permission, something she has done at least a half-dozen times since Friday.

A campaign official says the contract offered to Manigault-Newman early this year (portions shown above) was practically identical to the one she signed in 2016; the 2018 version prohibits disclosure of confidentiality and public disparagement of the president and his family members; it also specifies that the signer is bound by it after the relationship terminates

Paraphrasing Manigault-Newman's telling of the story, the Post reported that campaign adviser Lara Trump offered her 'a job and the monthly contract in exchange for her silence.'

She turned it down flat, according to the Post.

The second source confirmed, however, that the campaign broke off discussions after officials learned why Kelly had dismissed her.

A recording Manigault-Newman secretly made of her firing shows the chief of staff citing 'some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues.'

The source said that at the time 'it was very hush-hush why she was fired in Washington. But then as the campaign started getting details about why she was let go  that's when it became clear  she wasn't going to come back on board.'

Kelly's reasons for sacking Manigault-Newman were later reported to include repeated abuse of the White House's car service, intended for use by VIPs, as a chauffeur pool for her short daily commute.

The NDA provided by the campaign also prohibits signers from making any media appearances about the president without permission  something Manigault-Newman has done repeatedly over the past four days

The campaign official emphasized Monday that an unemployed Omarosa initiated the employment discussions that followed, and 'of course it's absolutely ridiculous that we offered her hush money.'

'She was offered a legitimate job with a legitimate salary.'

Instead of a contract offer adding up to $180,000 annually, a few dollars above what she earned at the White House, she shopped for a book deal.

The result describes the president as a brain-addled and dangerous leader, an inveterate racist and a quick-triggered menace.

Separately, a campaign official told DailyMail.com on Monday that Donald J. Trump for President is considering a lawsuit against Manigault-Newman for breaching the 2016 NDA, which its lawyers believe is still in force.
Brandon Lewis, chairman of the Conservative Party, questions how Labour put up with Jeremy Corbyns on the grounds on basic decency

Throughout his time as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn has been embroiled in controversy.

Behind his rhetoric about a 'kinder, gentler politics' there lurks a veteran hard-Left politician, characterised by radical dogmatism and worrying links with those hostile to the West.

But even for this ideologue, an appalling new low has been reached as a result of the Daily Mail's revelations about Corbyn's attendance in 2014  only a year before he became party leader  at a wreath-laying ceremony in Tunisia appearing to commemorate a group of terrorists from the Black September organisation, which perpetrated the infamous massacre of 11 Israelis at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

Through both his attendance at the event and his offensive dissembling this week about his role, Corbyn has exposed himself as unfit for senior public office, never mind his position as the official Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition.

Labour in the past has always had its sincere policy differences with the Conservatives, but its leading figures have belonged to the democratic, patriotic mainstream.

Clement Attlee was an army major in World War I, Denis Healey a beach master at the Anzio landings in World War II. Tony Benn served as an RAF officer, and Jim Callaghan in the Royal Navy. But Corbyn is completely divorced from this tradition.

The exposure of his Tunisian escapade in 2014 is just the latest in this unedifying pattern, but the incident is beyond the pale.

The 1972 Munich attack was one of the darkest episodes in modern history. It is deeply worrying to know that a man at the top level of public life in Britain felt, only four years ago, that he should attend such an event.

What is almost as reprehensible is the attempt by Corbyn and his team to mislead the British public, once the investigation was published. At first his office engaged in the simple tactic of denial.

The Labour leader (pictured on Sky News today on a visit to the Midlands) faced the cameras after a photograph of him holding a wreath near the graves of Palestinian activists linked to the 1972 Munich massacre - which left 11 Israelis dead, emerged. He said he attended a ceremony in Tunis in 2014 because he wanted to commemorate all those killed in atrocities

According to this narrative, the story was a 'smear,' 'fake news' and a 'hoax.' But the weight of evidence made this impossible to sustain.

Not only were there photographs of Corbyn holding a wreath near the memorial to the terrorists, but he had also boasted about his attendance at the event in his column in the Morning Star, a communist newspaper.

Confronted with this material, Corbyn resorted in interviews yesterday to more prevarication, arguing that he was present at the commemoration but 'I don't think I was actually involved in it.' Such a form of words would be laughable were it not so serious.

The Tunisian debacle may be appalling, but sadly, it is no longer shocking. As the MP for Islington North since 1983, Corbyn has been behaving like this throughout his Parliamentary career.

When he was an obscure backbencher and serial far-left rebel, his conduct was not so important. But now, he is the Opposition Leader, and exposure of his past is vital.

This is a man whose leadership, in less than three years, has not put an end to the vile anti-semitism flourishing within his party, not least because of his own hostility to Israel.

Corbyn has regularly shown contempt for the state of Israel, not just its government and its policies, such as in 2010 when he used the occasion of Holocaust Memorial Day to host an explosively controversial meeting in Westminster at which nauseating comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany were loudly voiced, something the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) describes as clearly anti-semitic.

In 2010 he told a crowd of protestors outside the Israeli Embassy that the position of Gaza was similar to the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad during the Russian resistance to Nazism in the Second World War.

In 2013, he compared Israel's actions in the West Bank to the Nazi occupation of Europe in World War Two.

In the same disreputable vein, in 2012 he used Facebook to express his support for a work in East London by graffiti artist Mear One, who had painted a clearly anti-semitic mural of Jewish plutocrats exploiting the poor.

Corbyn told the artist he was 'in good company', a remark for which he later apologised. But precious few other apologies have been forthcoming from Corbyn, not even over his description of the anti-semitic terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah as 'our friends' at an event in Westminster in 2009.

Much to the incandescent fury of respected MPs like Margaret Hodge  who lost several members of her own family in the Holocaust  Corbyn's team has refused to write the globally accepted definition of anti-semitism drawn up by the IHRA into Labour's rulebook.

It is an unbelievable situation in a party that has long fought to promote anti-racism and social justice.

Indeed, Corbyn likes to portray himself as a passionate warrior against discrimination, but his deeds hardly match his words.

Jeremy Corbyn is pictured with members of a delegation of Palestinian officials at the graveyard in Tunis in 2014, with the wreath which was laid in the cemetery to honour Palestinian 'martyrs'. He has admitted being at the ceremony after initially insisting he was there for a tribute to different Palestinians

He has been painfully slow to speak out against the anti-semitic abuse meted out to some of his own Labour MPs, like Luciana Berger, by hard-left activists.

This is beyond normal Party politics, as this is an issue far beyond the traditional, century-long battle between Conservatives and Labour.

I remember the Labour party of old and it saddens me to see it in this state.

Thanks to Corbyn's leadership, decent, moderate Labour activists and MPs are in complete despair at what is happening at the very top of the Labour party.

Yet it is only Labour that can sort out this problem.

How much longer is the party going to put up with a leader who obfuscates about his past, who equivocates about anti-semitism, who lambasted the BBC for 'bias' for saying Israel has the right to exist, who refuses to be accountable for his actions and who will not even defend his own MPs and members from racist abuse?

At such a crucial time for Britain's future, this cannot continue. I feel only foreboding.

For the sake of democracy and decency in public life, decent members of the Labour party must ask, is this man fit to lead them and to be leader of Her Majesty's Opposition?
Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk were sued twice on Friday by investors who said they fraudulently engineered a scheme to squeeze short-sellers

Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk were sued twice on Friday by investors who said they fraudulently engineered a scheme to squeeze short-sellers, including through Musk's proposal to take the electric car company private.

The lawsuits were filed three days after Musk stunned investors by announcing on Twitter that he might take Tesla private in a record $72billion transaction that valued the company at $420 per share, and that 'funding' had been 'secured'.

In one of the lawsuits, the plaintiff Kalman Isaacs said Musk's tweets were false and misleading, and together with Tesla's failure to correct them amounted to a 'nuclear attack' designed to 'completely decimate' short-sellers.

The lawsuits filed by Isaacs and William Chamberlain said Musk's and Tesla's conduct artificially inflated Tesla's stock price and violated federal securities laws.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the proposed class-action complaints filed in the federal court in San Francisco. The company is based in nearby Palo Alto, California.

Short-sellers borrow shares they believe are overpriced, sell them, and then repurchase shares later at what they hope will be a lower price to make a profit.

Such investors have long been an irritant for Musk, who has sometimes used Twitter to criticize them.

Musk's August 7 tweets helped push Tesla's stock price more than 13 per cent above the prior day's close.

The lawsuits were filed three days after Musk stunned investors by announcing on Twitter that he might take Tesla private in a record $72billion transaction that valued the company at $420 per share, and that 'funding' had been 'secured'

The stock has since given back more than two-thirds of that gain, in part following reports that the US Securities and Exchange Commission had begun inquiring about Musk's activity.

Musk has not offered evidence that he has lined up the necessary funding to take Tesla private, and the complaints did not offer proof to the contrary.

But Isaacs said Tesla's and Musk's conduct caused the volatility that cost short-sellers hundreds of millions of dollars from having to cover their short positions, and caused all Tesla securities purchasers to pay inflated prices.

Tesla's market value exceeds $60billion, and its shares closed Friday up $3.04 at $355.49.

According to his complaint, Isaacs bought 3,000 Tesla shares on August 8 to cover his short position.

The proposed class period in Isaacs' lawsuit runs from the afternoon of August 7 through the next day, and in Chamberlain's lawsuit runs from August 7 to August 10.

The cases are Isaacs v Musk et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 18-04865; and Chamberlain v Tesla Inc et al in the same court, No. 18-04876.

On Monday, Musk shared new details about Tesla's plans to go private.

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has approached Musk 'several times' about taking Tesla private, in conversations that stretch back as far as two years ago, Musk wrote in a blog post.

Sovereign wealth funds are investment funds that are controlled by the government. They can invest globally in stocks, bonds, real estate and other areas.

The lawsuits filed by Isaacs and William Chamberlain said Musk's and Tesla's conduct artificially inflated Tesla's (file image) stock price and violated federal securities laws

Shares of Tesla were sliding more than 1 per cent to $351.80 on Monday morning.

The surprise tweets have since caught the eye of the Securities and Exchange Commission, with regulators looking into whether the statements were truthful and why Musk announced them via Twitter.

Musk attempted to clear up his tweets in the blog post Monday.

'Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private,' Musk wrote in the post.

'They first met with me at the beginning of 2017 to express this interest because of the important need to diversify away from oil.

'They then held several additional meetings with me over the next year to reiterate this interest and to try to move forward with a going private transaction,' Musk added.

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund met with Musk on July 31 after purchasing a 5 per cent stake in Tesla.

'During the meeting, the fund's managing director reiterated a desire to fund a going private transaction for Tesla', Musk wrote.

'I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a deal with the Saudi sovereign fund could be closed, and that it was just a matter of getting the process moving,' he added.

'This is why I referred to 'funding secured' in the August 7th announcement.'

Musk said that Tesla is still in the early stages of the take-private process and that the firm continues to meet with Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund.

He added that he continues to hold conversations with Tesla's largest shareholders and that a deal would be funded primarily by equity, instead of debt.

The Tesla board has already met 'several times' in the past few weeks to discuss the proposal to take the firm private.

Still, Musk felt it was necessary to inform all of Tesla's shareholders and announce his 'intentions publicly' on Twitter.

'The only way I could have meaningful discussions with our largest shareholders was to be completely forthcoming with them about my desire to take the company private,' Musk said.

'However, it wouldn't be right to share information about going private with just our largest investors without sharing the same information with all investors at the same time.

'As a result, it was clear to me that the right thing to do was announce my intentions publicly.'

The blog post comes follows a wild week for Tesla's stock, with shares initially rising close to 12 per cent on Tuesday, then falling about 2 per cent on the news that the SEC was investigating Musk's tweets.

Should Musk decide to take Tesla private at $420 share, it would mark one of the largest buyouts in history.
A Los Angeles woman flew into a rage and hurled racist insults at two Latino construction workers before throwing a cup of hot coffee directly at one of their faces.

Miguel Sanchez was the first to arrive at the site of job he had landed through a contractor at an upscale apartment complex in Century City and stepped outside to allow his co-worker Jesse access into the building the morning of August 4.

When the men were about to enter the complex's garage, Rhonda Michelle Polon paused from walking her dogs and started arguing with both men, questioning their motives before attacking Sanchez with the hot drink.

In the video that has gone viral since the incident, the woman can be heard accusing them of being thieves, according to Sanchez.

A Los Angeles woman flew into a rage and hurled racist insults at two Latino construction workers before throwing a cup of hot coffee directly at one of their faces

'She was calling us w*tbacks, and that we were probably there to steal stuff. After all those racial comments on us, I got my phone out and started recording,' Sanchez told KLTA.

Sanchez remained cool and recorded the video with his cell phone before Michelle completely went berserk. She took a couple of steps towards him and tossed a cup of coffee at the defenseless man's face.

Both men were trying to attempt to get to their vehicle, but Polon continued to verbally abuse Sanchez, whose face had turned red and whose t-shirt was completely drenched by the coffee.

Michael Sanchez (left) was the victim of a racist insults by Rhonda Michelle Polon on August 4. Polon then threw coffee in Sachez's face. She is seen holding the cup of the hot beverage right and his stained shirt is seen left

The woman, who owns Spin Gal Fitness in West Hollywood and has since shutdown her Instagram account, @spin_gal_fitness, continued to berate the men before leaving the scene.

While Sanchez recorded additional footage of the shocking incident, another tenant appeared from behind the condo's lobby entrance dressed in a bathrobe and walking barefooted.

He accused them of previously having stolen his bicycle before going toe-to-toe with Jesse and hurling more racist epithets at the men.

Sanchez declined to press charges on Polon, who was given a citation.

Rhonda Michelle Polon hurled racist epithets at two Latino men that were hired to work at her upscale apartment in Los Angeles.

'I had compassion which I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have with me if it was the other way around. I know I made the right decision, and I know deep down that she will not change her point of view about us (latinos, mexicanos, hispanos, etc,etc) but I still tried to show good values and hopefully to pass them on,' Sanchez wrote on his Facebook account.ht decision, and I know deep down that she will not change her point of view about us (latinos, mexicanos, hispanos, etc,etc) but I still tried to show good values and hopefully to pass them on,' Sanchez wrote on his Facebook account.

'Despite the job I have, the color of my skin or where I came from, I tried to be the better man, and that's how you win. There is only one race, HUMAN RACE.'
Jeremy Corbyn yesterday gave yet another confusing and contradictory account of his visit to the Tunisian cemetery where the terrorists linked to the Munich Massacre are buried.

Since the Labour leader took part in a service to honour Palestinian 'martyrs' during a trip in 2014, he and his aides have given a series of inconsistent explanations about his involvement.

Mr Corbyn yesterday appeared to admit being present at a wreath-laying for those thought to be involved in the 1972 killings at the Munich Olympics, but said that he did 'not think' he was involved in actually putting down the floral tribute.

Less than six hours later, his office put out a further statement, this time with an unequivocal denial that Mr Corbyn had laid a wreath at the graves of those linked to the Munich Massacre.

Jeremy Corbyn, pictured here leaving his home yesterday, has given a confusing and contradictory account of his visit to the Tunisian cemetery where the terrorists linked to the Munich Massacre are buried

Despite the repeated attempts to clarify the details over his visit, Mr Corbyn last night was still refusing to give a full explanation for what exactly happened during his time at the Cemetery of the Martyrs of Palestine on the outskirts of Tunis.

Demands for an apology after Mail's revelations Luciana Berger, Labour MP and chair of the Jewish Labour Movement 'Being 'present' is the same as being involved. When I attend a memorial my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association and support. There can never be a 'fitting memorial' for terrorists. Where is the apology?' Dame Margaret Hodge, Labour MP 'Jeremy Corbyn... should adopt the internationally agreed definition of anti-semitism in full. 'Until he does that incidents such as his presence at the laying of wreaths at the graves of those responsible for torturing and murdering innocent Jewish Israeli athletes in Munich will continue to emerge and whatever his protestations, he will be judged by his actions, not his words.' Joan Ryan, Labour MP and chairwoman of Labour Friends of Israel 'The widows of some of those who were so brutally murdered at Munich have expressed their disbelief and sadness that you appear to have participated in an event at the graves of their husbands' killers. Even if your participation was inadvertent, I would urge you to offer a full and unreserved apology to the families of the victims of Munich.' Mike Gapes, Labour MP 'Jeremy Corbyn needs to clarify exactly what happened. 'It would be deplorable for anyone to commemorate the terrorist crime and the torture of those athletes. I was shocked to see the photos of that ceremony. 'There needs to be a complete unequivocal condemnation of those Black September terrorists who carried out that despicable crime.' Jennifer Gerber, Director of Labour Friends of Israel 'Jeremy Corbyn's latest statement is a further insult to those savagely murdered at Munich and their bereaved relatives. He says he was paying respect to victims of terrorism when there is clear photographic evidence of him holding a wreath at the grave of the terrorists themselves. Jeremy Corbyn's appalling actions, and Labour's attempted cover up, is another truly shameful day for the party he leads.' Gideon Falter, Campaign Against Anti-Semitism 'His brazen lies about honouring the brutal antisemitic terrorists behind the Munich massacre show that he is not a decent man. Jeremy Corbyn is a liar, a defender of terrorists, and an antisemite. Under his leadership the Labour party presents an existential threat to the British Jewish community, not least because he so clearly supports those who brutalise and murder Jews. The fact that he remains the Leader of the Opposition shows how rotten the Labour Party itself has become.' Advertisement

Shortly after returning from his trip, Mr Corbyn recorded an account in an article published in the communist newspaper, the Morning Star, in October 2014.

He wrote that his visit was to mark the anniversary of the bombing of the Palestine Liberation Organisation headquarters in Tunis on October 1, 1985.

At the cemetery, Mr Corbyn said wreaths were laid to commemorate the 47 Palestinians killed in the Israeli air strike on the building, but also 'on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991'.

But there appears to be no record of Mossad having carried out an assassination in the French capital in that year, leading to questions about who he was referring to.

In the cemetery, the remains of three men assassinated in 1991 are buried: Salah Khalaf, who founded Black September; his key aide Fakhri al-Omari; and Hayel Abdel-Hamid, the PLO chief of security. However, the men, who all have links to Munich, were killed in Tunisia rather than France.

Adjacent to their graves is that of Atef Bseiso, a PLO head of intelligence, who is accused of masterminding the 1972 atrocity. He was assassinated in Paris, but in 1992 rather than 1991. Mr Corbyn never addressed whose graves he referred to in his newspaper column.

The issue resurfaced in the run-up to the general election last year. When asked in May 2017 whether he was 'honouring' Bseiso, Mr Corbyn told Sky News: 'No absolutely not.' He added: 'I was in Tunisia at a Palestinian conference and I spoke at that conference. I laid a wreath to all those who had died in the air attack on Tunis on the headquarters of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. I was accompanied by many other people who were  searching for peace in the Middle East.

'The only way we achieve peace is by bringing people together and talking to them. That was the whole point of the conference and, frankly, the whole point of my life.'

But yesterday he appeared to further confuse the matter when he changed the year of the assassinations in France to 1992.

He told ITV News: 'A wreath was indeed laid by some of those who attended for those who were killed in Paris in 1992. I was present when it was laid I don't think I was actually involved in it.'

Yesterday, when asked who Mr Corbyn was referring to when he said he was at the laying of a wreath for those killed in Paris in 1992, a Labour source refused to comment.

Labour transport spokesman Rachel Maskell yesterday appeared to admit that members of the party accompanying Mr Corbyn had honoured the Black September terrorists linked to the Munich Massacre, but she argued he was there 'for different purposes'.

She told Sky News: 'He was trying to honour people who have lost their lives and was doing that in a very dignified way and certainly not engaging in other agendas that were perhaps occurring at the site at the time.'

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn last night issued another statement, this time stating unequivocally that he did not lay a wreath at the graves of those linked to the Munich Massacre, which he condemned as a 'terrible attack'.

He said: 'Jeremy visited the Palestine National Cemetery to support Palestinian rights and honour the victims of the illegal 1985 airstrike.'

Jeremy Corbyn is pictured with members of a delegation of Palestinian officials at the graveyard in Tunis in 2014, with the wreath which was laid in the cemetery to honour Palestinian 'martyrs'
A woman has been charged with murder over the killing of an aspiring rapper who was stabbed to death with a samurai sword.

Jett McKee, 30, aka Scepaz, bled to death in the leafy suburb of Forest Lodge in Sydney's inner-city on Friday after a suspected home invasion gone wrong.

A man and a woman wanted by police turned themselves in after three days on the run on Monday evening, and the woman, 23, has been charged with murder.

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Jett McKee (pictured), 30, aka Scepaz, bled to death in the leafy suburb of Forest Lodge in Sydney's inner-city on Friday after a suspected home invasion gone wrong

A woman has been charged with murder over the killing of an aspiring rapper who was stabbed to death with a samurai sword (pictured is a car smeared with the dead man's blood)

The man, 28, was taken to hospital under police guard for a pre-existing face wound and is expected to be charged on his release.

Mr McKee was well known in Sydney's hip-hop community, and featured in a number of music videos and collaborations with other artists.

In one of his last songs, Yesterday's Dream featuring Bhoky101, Mr McKee opened with the prophetic lines 'I nearly died yesterday, Lord tried to take my breath away'.

The IT worker was seen staggering down the street with blood pouring from his forehead before he collapsed and died on Friday.

Mr McKee (pictured) was well known in Sydney's hip-hop community, and featured in a number of music videos and collaborations with other artists

A balaclava and knuckledusters (pictured) were found at the scene, and witnesses said they heard an altercation before Mr McKee was chased down the street

Resident Lynne Charlesworth heard a woman's screams and saw the victim slumped in the street, covered in blood (pictured is the murder scene)

Police are investigating whether Mr McKee was involved in a home invasion in which he used a replica gun found at the scene, ABC News reported.

A balaclava and knuckledusters were found nearby, and witnesses said they heard an altercation before Mr McKee was chased down the street.

Resident Lynne Charlesworth heard a woman's screams and saw the victim slumped in the street, covered in blood.

'I told him to stay still and he started to roll across the street,' she told reporters on Saturday.

Since Ms McKee's death, members of the hip-hop community have remembered him as an 'awesome soul' (pictured above are tributes to 'Scepaz')

'He got to our car, laid back on it and pulled himself up.

'His head was covered in blood. I couldn't tell you what his features were.'

Since Ms McKee's death, members of the hip-hop community have remembered him as an 'awesome soul'.

Tributes have poured in for the man, who was a fixture in the local music scene, and was due to release his next single.

'RIP Scepaz....we only met a handful of times but all the homies told me what a good bloke you were,' fellow rapper The Tongue said.

'R.I.P Scepaz you will be remembered,' said another.
In February 2011 Nicola Adcock took her son Jack to Leicester Royal Infirmary with sickness and diarrhoea.

But following a misdiagnosis of gastroenteritis by Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba plus a catalogue of further errors, the six-year-old, who had Down's syndrome and a heart condition, died.

The landmark case prompted doctors to rally around the paediatrician.

They claimed that, while she made errors, she had been made a scapegoat for systemic failings in the NHS.

So how did this junior doctor  who has described herself as 'wholeheartedly sorry'  come to be convicted of manslaughter in the first place?

A TRAGIC DEATH IN AN OVERSTRETCHED DEPARTMENT

Firstly, after Jack's admission, came Dr Bawa-Garba's misdiagnosis of gastroenteritis.

On her first day back from maternity leave, she was on a 13-hour shift, doing the work of two doctors because one hadn't turned up.

She was also reliant on a faulty IT system. It took her three hours to examine X-rays that would have revealed Jack needed antibiotics and she failed to raise the alarm at his abnormal blood tests.

But, said Jonathan Cusack, a neonatologist at the infirmary who became her supervisor as part of her re-training following Jack's death, a computer failure meant she was told Jack's results over the phone rather than reading them on screen, making her more susceptible to 'cognitive error'.

Bawa-Garba was struck off for a catalogue of errors, including misdiagnosing the child with a tummy bug when he had sepsis and failing to act on abnormal blood results

He explained: 'Normally with blood samples, abnormal numbers flash up in red and they're easy to see.'

Instead, he said, 'she was given 15 to 20 numbers at speed which she was writing down. She was under pressure and didn't think about what those numbers meant.'

Yet Dr Bawa-Garba wasn't the only professional to ignore the blood test results.

The court heard that Stephen O'Riordan, duty consultant paediatrician that day, had written them down at the evening handover but chose not to review Jack.

Dr Cusack added: 'If, as has often been claimed, it should have been obvious to a trainee that Jack had sepsis, surely it should have been obvious to a consultant, too?'

A BETRAYAL AND A BOTCHED INVESTIGATION

Five days after Jack died, Dr Bawa-Garba was asked to meet Dr O'Riordan in the hospital canteen and encouraged to admit her mistakes as part of her 'reflection'  a process essential for medical training which doctors insist should stay confidential.

Yet Dr O'Riordan typed up her notes which were eventually fed into an inquiry and police investigation.

Jack who also had Downs syndrome and a heart condition, died 11 hours after he was admitted to hospital

'Trainees keep a log to assess what they've learned,' says Dr David Nicholls, who organised a doctors' petition backing Dr Bawa-Garba.

'That these are being used in court cases is an abuse of their education.'

Dr Bawa-Garba returned to work and the hospital's serious untoward incident inquiry  completed in 2012  found widespread faults in the hospital, including staff shortages and IT system failures.

Ninety changes were recommended, making it abundantly clear Dr Bawa-Garba  who moved to the UK from her native Nigeria in 1994 and qualified as a doctor in 2003  was far from the only one at fault.

A HIGHLY CONTENTIOUS CRIMINAL CONVICTION

At first, the Crown Prosecution Service claimed there were no grounds to charge an individual doctor.

Yet at the inquest, in July 2013, experts apparently decided there were sufficient grounds to prosecute.

The case was re-conferred to the CPS which still didn't charge Dr Bawa-Garba until December 2014.

Doctors insist it is wrong to criminalise medical error as it will make staff to scared to work in case they make mistakes, and because in healthcare multiple processes are nearly always responsible for error.

Thousands of junior doctors believe she has been scapegoated for wider failings at her understaffed hospital

And at Dr Bawa-Garba's trial, it is claimed, expert witnesses were stopped by the prosecution from discussing the improvements Leicester Healthcare Trust made after Jack's death that would have shown how many other factors were to blame.

Dr Bawa-Garba was given a two-year suspended jail sentence, as was nurse Isabel Amaro, who was on duty that day.

'Clearly there are doctors who wilfully cause harm and of course they should be stopped,' says Dr Cusack, who gave evidence at the trial.

'But I don't believe manslaughter applies to someone who has an otherwise unblemished record and has made a medical error in a case where there are multiple other failures.'

A MEDICAL PROFESSION AT WAR

At Dr Bawa-Garba's tribunal hearing last June, the hospital's failings became more widely known and the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service  whose job is to decide whether a doctor is fit to practice  found there was nothing to suggest her actions were 'deliberate or reckless'.

Instead of being struck off, Dr Bawa-Garba was suspended for 12 months.

Jack's mother wrote on Facebook that she was 'disgusted'.

The General Medical Council said public trust would be harmed if a doctor continued to work after being convicted of homicide.

To the dismay of 800 doctors who begged it to reconsider, the GMC appealed the MPTS ruling, won its appeal at the High Court  and in January Dr Bawa-Garba was struck off.

Jack's mum Nicola (pictured right) said she was glad the doctor has been struck off

A NEW LAWYER FOR A FIGHTBACK

Thousands of furious senior doctors crowd-funded more than 300,000 to help Dr Bawa-Garba fund an appeal.

As support for her grew, then-health secretary Jeremy Hunt ordered a review into whether gross negligence manslaughter laws should apply in the context of healthcare.

In February, she instructed a new law firm  Tim Johnson Law  and this March was given leave to appeal.

Following yesterday's judgment Jack's mother said she was 'devastated' by a decision that has made a 'mockery of the justice system'.

GMC chief executive Charlie Massey fully accepted the Court of Appeal's judgment. 'As the independent regulator responsible for protecting patient safety we are frequently called upon to take difficult decisions, and we do not take that role lightly,' he said.
Fired FBI agent Peter Strzok tweeted out a link to a fundraising page hours after his lawyer confirmed his firing, and promptly raised over $50,000.

Strzok, who was escorted out of the FBI in June after an inspector general singled out his anti-Trump text messages with FBI coworker Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair.

Within hours of the news, Strzok fired off his first tweet, which included a link to his new gofundme page.

Fired FBI agent Peter Strzok tweeted out a link to a fundraising page hours after his lawyer confirmed his firing

In doing so, he was following in the footsteps of porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an affair with Trump and raised more than $500,000 as she fights legal battles against Trump and his associates.

The link was attached to a statement from Strzok's lawyer, who wrote that the firing was 'deeply troubling to all Americans.'

According to the online solicitation: ' All funds raised on this GoFundMe will be put into a trust dedicated to covering Pete's hefty  and growing  legal costs and his lost income. The trust is being created and details about its management will be shared here as things progress. We also appreciate your help spreading the word about this GoFundMe by sharing this link: www.gofundme.com/peterstrzok.'

It was his first and only tweet to date.

Strzok tweeted out a link to a gofundme campaign

Strzok tweeted out a statement from his lawyer as well as the link to the fundraising page

Strzok also entered a series of 'likes,' including one for comedian Jim Carrey. Carrey wrote about South Carolina GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy, who clashed with Strzok during his House testimony, calling him a 'vile insect.' It was attached to a drawing of Gowdy made to look like a bug.

'When Trey Gowdy woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed into a vile insect. After crawling into the people's chamber he was promptly squashed by Agent Strzok of the FBI,' said the quotation Carrey tweeted.

Helping to raise Strzok's profile was an ongoing Twitter attack by President Trump.

Strzok's lawyer Aitan Goelman slammed the firing in a Monday statement, saying the FBI overruled its own Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) and 'departed from established precedent by firing 21-year FBI veteran.'

Strzok lost his job months after being cited in an IG report for his anti-Trump texts

Strzok's Twitter page calls him a 26 year veteran of the Army and the FBI.

President Trump, in his own Twitter attack, highlighted different elements of Strzok's bio.

'Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally,' Trump wrote

'The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer,' the president continued. 'Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped?' Trump said, using his terminology for special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe.

Strzok exchanged anti-Trump texts with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page

Trump turned up the heat on the Russia probe once again after news broke of Strzok's firing

The president also called for the FBI investigation that did not charge his political opponent Hillary Clinton to be redone

'It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!' he said.

The statement issued by Strzok's lawyer, Aitan Goelman, hinted at the type of case he might pursue agains the FBI seeking compensation for his firing.

'The decision to fire Special Agent Strzok is not only a departure from typical Bureau practice, but also contradicts Director Wray's testimony to Congress and his assurances that the FBI intended to follow its regular process in this and all personnel matters,' Goelman wrote.

He could cite President Trump's frequent texts going after the 'FBI lovers' to claim he was targeted for political reasons.

The Justice Department IG found Strzok had 'bias' but found Strzok and Page hadn't let their views impact their decisions on cases.

In one text to Strzok before the election, Page asks: Trump is 'not ever going to become president, right? Right?!'

One early donor was Lawfare editor and fired FBI Director James Comey friend Benjamin Wittes.

'I do not approve of or defend what Strzok did, which was monumentally stupid for a very smart guy, and which caused huge problems for the FBI in two separate high profile investigations on which the integrity of the Bureau's work should have been beyond question,' Wittes wrote on his own Twitter account.

'That said, I don't believe that individual line agents at federal law enforcement agencies should be the subject of Twitter campaigns by the President of the United States,' he continued.

With even allies criticizing his conduct, which was cited in an IG report, Strzok is an unlikely hero for the Trump opposition. He may have helped his case when he delivered a tongue-lashing to congressional investigators during his testimony in June, generating applause from the Democratic minority.
An angry commuter physically assaulted a subway conductor after a group of riders missed their stop in Brooklyn early Saturday.

The violent incident happened around 4am on a southbound A train, Transport Workers Union Local 100 officials said in a statement.

In the video, the male commuter is heard shouting at the conductor before he punches and hits him from outside the train door.

Several other people are gathered behind the man assaulting the conductor, and one woman, who seemingly missed her stop as well, is heard saying: 'Hit him! That's right!'

This angry commuter threw punches at a subway conductor on Saturday morning

The violent incident happened around 4am on a southbound A train, Transport Workers Union Local 100 officials said

As the physical fight ensues, the woman jumps in and also throws several punches at the conductor before the video concludes.

The conductor, identified as Jacob Credell, said in a statement: 'This young gentleman came up on me yelling and screaming, and before I could say anything he was throwing punches at me,' according to TWU.

Credell shared the video to his Facebook page Sunday afternoon.

He suffered black eyes and abrasions on his body as a result of the abuse.

The conductor, identified as Jacob Credell, suffered black eyes and abrasions. He is pictured above on Facebook

Credell was abused by a man and a woman in the viral video on social media

New York City Transit president Andy Byford said he was 'disgusted' after learning of the incident and said further actions would be taken against the perpetrators.

'It is absolutely unacceptable, and we are working closely with NYPD to make certain the perpetrators are identified, arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,' Byford said.

'Were also collaborating with TWU Local 100 on ways to combat assaults, including discussing a potential pilot program for body cams.'

Credell had also shared the video to his Facebook page Sunday afternoon
President Trump's unfamiliarity with world affairs led him to mispronounce one Asian country's name and try to make a late-night call to the prime minister of another.

At least that's what diplomatic sources told Politico of Trump's steep learning curve his first year in office, revealing embarrassing instances when the sitting President of the United States fell short of the expectations of someone in his office.

The stories include a time when Trump referred to Nepal as 'nipple' and 'Bhutan as 'button.'

'He didnt know what those were. He thought it was all part of India,' a source told Politico. 'He was like, "What is this stuff in between and these other countries?" '

President Trump's unfamiliarity with world affairs led him to mispronounce one Asian country's name and try to make a late-night call to the prime minister of another

At the same meeting he's said to have joked about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's estrangement from his wife, saying to aides, 'Ah, I think I can set him up with somebody.'

He is also said to have tried to put in a call to Tokyo in the middle of the night there when he wanted to speak to the prime minister of Japan.

Politico says that aides to the president had to explain that it would be inappropriate to call Shinzo Abe, whose name the president routinely mispronounces in public, while he was sleeping.

The anecdote seems more unlikely than some of the past claims about the political novice president. After all, Trump is a billionaire who, until he won the presidency, oversaw a massive, international real estate venture.

But a White House official seemed to suggest to Politico that it was accurate.

'Hes the president of the United States. Hes not stopping to add up,' the person said. 'I dont think anybody would expect him or Obama or Bush or Clinton or anybody to do that. Thats the whole reason you have a staff to say "Yes, well set it up," and then they find a time that makes most sense.'

Aides had to explain that it would be inappropriate to call Shinzo Abe, the Japanese PM, while he was sleeping

A former National Security Council official told Politico, 'He wasnt great with recognizing that the leader of a country might be 80 or 85 years old and isnt going to be awake or in the right place at 10:30 or 11 p.m. their time.'

Likewise, a person who is close to Trump suggested that the former businessman calls on people at inopportune times because he's inconsiderate.

'When he wants to call someone, he wants to call someone. Hes more impulsive that way. He doesnt think about what time it is or who it is,' the person said.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders did not deny the claims in a statement to Politico.

'The president has developed strong relationships and good rapports that are not only friendly, but also allow for candid conversations with many of Americas closest allies,' she said. 'Foreign leaders appreciate that the President is willing to take their calls day and night.'
Dozens of cars were set alight and stones thrown at police as gangs of masked youths went rampaging across Sweden on Monday evening.

Fires were reported in Malmo, Gothenburg and Helsingborg as dramatic footage showed youths targeting vehicles in a shopping centre and hospital car park at Frolunda Torg in the west of the country.

Police were last night investigating whether the various blazes which broke out across the country were related.

The largest group of youngsters apparently gathered in Trollhattan north of Gothenburg where as many as 40 people threw stones and started fires.

Dramatic footage has emerged of cars being set alight by masked attackers in Sweden

Footage showed cars burning bright orange in a large car park at Frolunda Torg, which includes a specialist hospital and a major shopping centre.

There were also reports of young people setting cars on fire in Hjallbo, to the north east of Gothenburg, in Malmo, at the southern tip of the country, and in the city of Helsingborg.

Emergency services were tackling the apparent outbreak of violence with no injuries reported, Swedish police said.

All the fires had been extinguished by midnight and police said the 'identification of young people was ongoing' although it was not clear if any arrests had been made.

'While most fires started within a short period of time, it can not be excluded that there is a connection between the fires, the case will be investigated,' police said.

Swedish national radio reported that around 40 firefighters were in action tackling the different blazes.

Around 80 vehicles had been vandalised in total, Swedish television reported, with three caravans and a truck also targeted, and witnesses describing 'dark-haired' youngsters launching the attacks.

The violence comes just three weeks before Swedish voters go to the polls in a general election.

Police said they were dealing with fires at a car park near a shopping centre and specialist hospital at Frolunda Torg, south-west of Gothenburg.

Around 60 vehicles had been vandalised in total, Swedish television reported, with stones also thrown at police by masked men
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Stunning images have emerged showing New York City being plunged into complete, almost pitch-black darkness during the 2003 blackout that affected the Northeast United States and parts of Canada.

It was a regular mid-August day 15 years ago and the temperature outside in New York City was hovering around 90 degrees.

As is usually the case during the summertime, electricity usage was above average as 20 million customers in New York State kept themselves cool indoors.

But just after 4pm, everything changed.

The Empire State building in midtown New York City is dark with a few lights on in surrounding buildings as a ferry passes on the Hudson River as seen from Jersey City, New Jersey on August 14, 2003

The Upper West Side of Manhattan is seen from a park in Weehawken, New Jersey on the night of Thursday, August 14, 2003

The largest power blackout in U.S. history rolled across a vast swath of the northern United States as well as southern Canada, driving millions of people outdoors into stifling rush hour streets, then darkness. Commuters were forced to use the pedestrian walkway on the Brooklyn Bridge because the subways shut down

Just before people started to head home for the rush hour commute, 21 power plants shut down within a span of three minutes. Cars are seen on the FDR Drive as they drive by darkened buildings in Lower Manhattan

A vendor stands in his candlelit store window with signs reading 'We Have Water' and 'Sold Out Flashlights Batteries Candles' during the massive blackout

New Yorkers are seen above waiting outside Grand Central Station on August 15, 2003. The busy terminal is a vital link that connects commuters from New York City's northern suburbs and Connecticut to Manhattan

Although power companies were able to resume some service in as little as two hours, power remained off in other places for more than a day

People sleep on the sidewalk outside the Renaisance Hotel during the blackout on August 15, 2003

On the second day of the massive power failure, stressed travelers try to get out of New York City at a crowded and closed Port Authority bus station

Stranded travelers try to keep cool in Grand Central Terminal. It took more than 30 hours for power to come back in the New York area

Pedestrians and bicycle riders make the trek across the Brooklyn Bridge after the power outage shut down subway service

Just before people started to head home for the rush hour commute, 21 power plants shut down within a span of three minutes.

Just like that, between 50 and 60 million people in New York, Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto, and Ottawa were without electricity.

The power companies did manage to get their grids back online in a few places, but a blackout persisted in New York City for more than a day.

The chaos that ensued was on a scale of epic proportions.

Pedestrians pack the street as they stream down Broadway in Greenwich Village on August 14, 2003

New York City police officer Paul Piotrowski watches over pedestrians leaving downtown Manhattan and crossing the Brooklyn Bridge

The subway station at 23rd street and 6th avenue in Manhattan is empty after the blackout hit

Pedestrians and traffic leaving downtown Manhattan crossing the Queensboro Bridge after the onset of the largest power blackout in American history

A police officer directs traffic at a darkened intersection during the historic blackout which knocked out traffic lights

People prefer to rest on the sidewalks rather than make the long-distance journey home by foot

The outage stopped trains and elevators, and disrupted everything from cellular telephone service to operations at hospitals to traffic at airports

These vendors decided to relieve the stress of the average New Yorker by selling cold beers during the blackout

Despite concerns, there were very few reports of looting or other blackout-inspired crime. The image above shows Lower Manhattan in a darkened state

In New York City alone, the estimated cost of the blackout was more than $500 million. The billboards and screens in Times Square also went dark

The blackout was caused by an overgrown tree branch that extended into a power line in Ohio and caused a chain reaction affecting numerous plants and generators

The blackout occurred almost three years to the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks - fueling concerns that the power outage was caused by sinister motives. Homeland security officials, however, said there were no indications terrorism was involved

Passengers were stranded in New York City subways for up to two hours while emergency crews worked to get them out - often in the middle of tunnels or between stops.

Small business owners lost expensive refrigerated stock.

In many areas, electric water pumps shut down, thus denying water service to residents and businesses.

Some amusement park riders were stranded in the middle of a roller coaster.

In less than five seconds we went from normal operations to most of the state blacked out, the head of New York States electricity grid, Rick Gonzales, said.

Alarms were ringing and our computers started flashing red. We didnt know if we were getting bad information or if this was a true blackout.

They soon found out. The Northeast blackout of August 14, 2003, was the biggest in North American history, and laid bare the vulnerabilities of an aging electric grid in the most populous region of the United States.

More than 50 million people from Ohio to Ontario would lose power, at an estimated cost of almost $10billion.

Coming just two years after September 11, the blackout reignited fears of what a targeted attack could achieve if, as an official report eventually concluded, a few untrimmed tree branches in Ohio could do that much damage.

The sun sets over the Manhattan skyline on the night of August 14. More than 50 million people from Ohio to Ontario would lose power, at an estimated cost of almost $10billion

Brooklyn residents are forced to eat by candlelight at a local restaurant on the night of August 14, 2003

New York utilities restored power to about two-thirds of homes and businesses by 8am Eastern time Friday, about 16 hours after the blackout started

To help speed the recovery, the grid operator relied on just one guy in a truck navigating his way through congested traffic to reconnect the state to the wider grid at a substation just north of the New Jersey border, where they still had power. The image above shows pedestrians crossing the Queensboro Bridge from Manhattan to Queens

Stranded commuters wait overnight outside Penn Station, another major transportation hub, during the blackout

Transit officials guide stranded subway commuters out of a subway car during the outage

Passengers are seen above patiently waiting inside a subway car during the power outage

People try to board the back of a crowded New York bus in Manhattan on August 14

Commuters sleep on the steps of the Post Office on 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue in New York during the early hours of Friday, August 15, 2003

The darkened Manhattan skyline is seen from Queens in the pre-dawn hours of Friday, August 15, 2003

Joung Yun of Flushing, Queens, reads a newpaper by flashlight as he sits on the sidewalk at New York's Fifth Ave in the early morning hours of August 15, 2003

After the nation's worst ever blackout, utilities have made improvements and New York has spent millions of dollars on new high-tech gadgets to avert the chaos that followed

Electricity experts say a similar event is far less likely to happen in the U.S. Northeast. Grids and power companies have overhauled their operations, and regulators now have the authority to punish any company that doesnt adhere to rules covering everything from maintenance schedules to how close tree branches can get to power lines

To help speed the recovery, the grid operator relied on just one guy in a truck navigating his way through congested traffic to reconnect the state to the wider grid at a substation just north of the New Jersey border, where they still had power.

New York utilities restored power to about two-thirds of homes and businesses by 8 a.m. Eastern time Friday, about 16 hours after the blackout started.

Service was completely back after about 30 hours.

Electricity experts say a similar event is far less likely to happen in the U.S. Northeast.

Grids and power companies have overhauled their operations, and regulators now have the authority to punish any company that doesnt adhere to rules covering everything from maintenance schedules to how close tree branches can get to power lines.
Thousands of mothers could be spared epidurals if doctors switched to a more effective painkiller, a study suggests.

Experts found that remifentanil  a drug barely used by the NHS  was far more effective than pethidine, which is given to about 250,000 women a year.

Pethidine is an injection routinely given to around a third of the women who give birth per year in the UK.

But about 40 per cent end up needing an epidural anyway. If remifentanil was more widely used, the researchers suggested, it could slash the number of women who go on to have one by as much as half.

Thousands of mothers could be spared epidurals if drug, reminfentanil, was used. It could cut the number of women who have them in half

An epidural involves inserting a local anaesthetic into the space between two vertebra in the spine  removing all feeling from the waist down.

It offers extremely effective pain relief, but is an invasive procedure that can slow down labour and increase the chance of needing a forceps birth.

This can lead to further complications and women spending longer in hospital.

The study  led by the universities of Birmingham, Sheffield and Nottingham  found using remifentanil instead of pethidine more than halved the rate of subsequent epidurals from 41 per cent to 19 per cent.

Researchers also found that the average pain score women reported during their labour, on a scale of zero to 100, was significantly lower in the group given remifentanil, which is delivered through a drip that women can control with a handheld device to give pain relief to coincide with contractions. The authors said hospitals should now routinely offer remifentanil.

The findings of the study, funded by the NHS's National Institute for Health Research and published in the Lancet medical journal, were based on 400 women giving birth at 14 UK hospitals.

Pethidine is given to 250,000 women in the UK as almost half of them go on to have epidurals

Chief investigator Dr Matthew Wilson, of the University of Sheffield, said: 'While pethidine is commonly used in labour, its effectiveness in terms of pain relief has long been challenged and its shortcomings are more serious when set against known side effects which include women feeling sedated and nauseous; it can also transfer to the baby via the placenta producing side effects.'

Professor Christine MacArthur, of the University of Birmingham, added: 'While we were anticipating fewer women who had been given remifentanil patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) to go on to have an epidural, we did not expect to show that the epidural rate could be halved.

'The results of the trial provide strong evidence that remifentanil PCA should be routinely offered as an alternative to pethidine and should be rolled out at hospitals across the UK.

'Not only would it provide women with a more effective pain relief option in labour, it could significantly reduce the number of epidurals and the associated higher rates of instrumental births, in turn potentially reducing the financial burden on the NHS.'

Dr Wilson said there 'was also no difference in the health of babies born to women who received remifentanil'.

However, consultant obstetrician Dr Pat O'Brien, of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, urged caution. 'While this is a large study ... more research will be needed to replicate these findings and change standard of clinical practice,' he said.

'But it does offer evidence which can be used in discussions between a woman and her midwife and/or obstetrician when making a decision about which pain relief to use during birth.'
Gyrth Rutan, 34, was pulled over by police in Maine. He shot himself in the head during the stop

A Massachusetts man who was pulled over during a traffic stop in Maine and fatally shot himself had a woman's body in the trunk of his car.

Gyrth Rutan, 34, was driving erratically in Gardiner along Interstate-295 Thursday evening, according to Maine State Police.

After being pulled over, he stepped out of his vehicle with a shotgun in his hand, pointed it towards his own head, and pulled the trigger.

The woman's body that was discovered in the trunk of his car was 28-year-old Maddilyn Burgess, although police did not clarify his relation to her.

Maine authorities said it did not appear that she had been killed in the state, but the Medical Examiner's office said she died from blunt force trauma.

According to NECN, the Sturbridge police and Massachusetts state police detectives who are assigned to the Worcester County District Attorney's Office became involved after learning Rutan, who has a daughter, lived in Sturbridge.

Rutan (left) used a shotgun to kill himself during Thursday's traffic stop in Maine. Authorities discovered a body in the trunk of his car afterward

The scene of the traffic stop turned doubly deadly in Maine on Thursday after Rutan killed himself, police found the body of 28-year-old who the Medical Examiner's office said died from blunt force trauma

The Massachusetts authorities were at Rutan's home on Friday and discovered what appeared to be a crime scene, but they did not elaborate on what was found.

Sturbridge police and state police detectives assigned to the Worcester County District Attorney's Office got involved after it was learned that Rutan lived in Sturbridge.

'It is not clear why Rutan drove to Maine, but he has family located in Maine and his Facebook page indicates that he grew up in Brewer,' Steve McCausland, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety said, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Rutan had visited a 38-year-old friend in Maine about a week before Thursday's incident, who did not want to be identified, but told the paper 'He wasn't looking too great.'

'He was talking about troubles he was having with his finances, with work, with his most recent girlfriend. He came up for a few days and said he wanted to go camping but he didn't end up staying.'

The friend said Rutan arrived August 1, and left that weekend, never spoke about harming anymore.

'There was no indication things were as bad as they obviously were,' the man added.

Police in Massachusetts confirmed they had evidence of a crime scene inside of Rutan's Sturbridge home (pictured) but they did not elaborate on what they found

The friend, who said he had seen Rutan previously around Christmas, was recently was 'accepted into the union' and was 'pretty proud of that.'

According to Rutan's Facebook page he listed himself as a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 42, based in Manchester, Connecticut.

'He was making good money and working a lot of overtime installing power lines and running heavy equipment,' the man claimed.

For confidential support in the US call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.

For confidential support in the UK call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit a local Samaritans branch, see www.samaritans.org for details.

For confidential support in Australia call the Lifeline 24-hour crisis support on 13 11 14.
Jeremy Corbyn yesterday admitted being at a 2014 ceremony for Tunisian 'martyrs', but added: 'I don't think I was actually involved in it.'

The Mail revealed that the men honoured were linked to the Munich massacre in which 11 Israelis were killed.

Mr Corbyn has denied commemorating the terrorists but pictures of the event show him standing at the foot of their graves.

Last night Labour said he had not laid a wreath on the graves of those linked to the massacre.

Jeremy Corbyn is seen posing with a wreath under a distinctive red canopy as other politicians look on. This canopy runs alongside the graves of Salah Khalaf, Hayel Abdel-Hamid, Fakhri al-Omari and Atef Bseiso, three of whom have been linked to Black September, the group behind the 1972 atrocity at the Munich Olympic Games

Mr Corbyn appears to be adjusting the wreath, which is being held by Salman El Herfi, the Palestinian ambassador in Tunisia. He is still standing by the graves of the men linked to the terror attack

Jeremy Corbyn raises his hands in what appears to be an Islamic prayer position as he stands beside other politicians. A source said he was not praying but 'copying the others out of respect'

Mr Corbyn looks at a plaque which honours Khalaf, al-Omari and Abdel-Hamid. It describes them as 'martyrs' who were assassinated in 1991. A wreath that looks very similar to the one Mr Corbyn was holding in the earlier two photographs is seen beside the plaque, circled

The story that keeps changing: Jeremy Corbyn's confusing and inconsistent account of what DID happen as he attended wreath-laying event at graves of Palestinian 'martyrs'

Jeremy Corbyn yesterday gave yet another confusing and contradictory account of his visit to the Tunisian cemetery where the terrorists linked to the Munich Massacre are buried.

Since the Labour leader took part in a service to honour Palestinian 'martyrs' during a trip in 2014, he and his aides have given a series of inconsistent explanations about his involvement.

Mr Corbyn yesterday appeared to admit being present at a wreath-laying for those thought to be involved in the 1972 killings at the Munich Olympics, but said that he did 'not think' he was involved in actually putting down the floral tribute.

Jeremy Corbyn, pictured here leaving his home yesterday, has given a confusing and contradictory account of his visit to the Tunisian cemetery where the terrorists linked to the Munich Massacre are buried

Less than six hours later, his office put out a further statement, this time with an unequivocal denial that Mr Corbyn had laid a wreath at the graves of those linked to the Munich Massacre.

Demands for an apology after Mail's revelations Luciana Berger, Labour MP and chair of the Jewish Labour Movement 'Being 'present' is the same as being involved. When I attend a memorial my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association and support. There can never be a 'fitting memorial' for terrorists. Where is the apology?' Dame Margaret Hodge, Labour MP 'Jeremy Corbyn... should adopt the internationally agreed definition of anti-semitism in full. 'Until he does that incidents such as his presence at the laying of wreaths at the graves of those responsible for torturing and murdering innocent Jewish Israeli athletes in Munich will continue to emerge and whatever his protestations, he will be judged by his actions, not his words.' Joan Ryan, Labour MP and chairwoman of Labour Friends of Israel 'The widows of some of those who were so brutally murdered at Munich have expressed their disbelief and sadness that you appear to have participated in an event at the graves of their husbands' killers. Even if your participation was inadvertent, I would urge you to offer a full and unreserved apology to the families of the victims of Munich.' Mike Gapes, Labour MP 'Jeremy Corbyn needs to clarify exactly what happened. 'It would be deplorable for anyone to commemorate the terrorist crime and the torture of those athletes. I was shocked to see the photos of that ceremony. 'There needs to be a complete unequivocal condemnation of those Black September terrorists who carried out that despicable crime.' Jennifer Gerber, Director of Labour Friends of Israel 'Jeremy Corbyn's latest statement is a further insult to those savagely murdered at Munich and their bereaved relatives. He says he was paying respect to victims of terrorism when there is clear photographic evidence of him holding a wreath at the grave of the terrorists themselves. Jeremy Corbyn's appalling actions, and Labour's attempted cover up, is another truly shameful day for the party he leads.' Gideon Falter, Campaign Against Anti-Semitism 'His brazen lies about honouring the brutal antisemitic terrorists behind the Munich massacre show that he is not a decent man. Jeremy Corbyn is a liar, a defender of terrorists, and an antisemite. Under his leadership the Labour party presents an existential threat to the British Jewish community, not least because he so clearly supports those who brutalise and murder Jews. The fact that he remains the Leader of the Opposition shows how rotten the Labour Party itself has become.' Advertisement

Despite the repeated attempts to clarify the details over his visit, Mr Corbyn last night was still refusing to give a full explanation for what exactly happened during his time at the Cemetery of the Martyrs of Palestine on the outskirts of Tunis.

Despite the repeated attempts to clarify the details over his visit, Mr Corbyn last night was still refusing to give a full explanation for what exactly happened during his time at the Cemetery of the Martyrs of Palestine on the outskirts of Tunis.

Shortly after returning from his trip, Mr Corbyn recorded an account in an article published in the communist newspaper, the Morning Star, in October 2014.

He wrote that his visit was to mark the anniversary of the bombing of the Palestine Liberation Organisation headquarters in Tunis on October 1, 1985.

At the cemetery, Mr Corbyn said wreaths were laid to commemorate the 47 Palestinians killed in the Israeli air strike on the building, but also 'on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991'.

But there appears to be no record of Mossad having carried out an assassination in the French capital in that year, leading to questions about who he was referring to.

In the cemetery, the remains of three men assassinated in 1991 are buried: Salah Khalaf, who founded Black September; his key aide Fakhri al-Omari; and Hayel Abdel-Hamid, the PLO chief of security. However, the men, who all have links to Munich, were killed in Tunisia rather than France.

Adjacent to their graves is that of Atef Bseiso, a PLO head of intelligence, who is accused of masterminding the 1972 atrocity. He was assassinated in Paris, but in 1992 rather than 1991. Mr Corbyn never addressed whose graves he referred to in his newspaper column.

The issue resurfaced in the run-up to the general election last year. When asked in May 2017 whether he was 'honouring' Bseiso, Mr Corbyn told Sky News: 'No absolutely not.' He added: 'I was in Tunisia at a Palestinian conference and I spoke at that conference. I laid a wreath to all those who had died in the air attack on Tunis on the headquarters of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. I was accompanied by many other people who were  searching for peace in the Middle East.

'The only way we achieve peace is by bringing people together and talking to them. That was the whole point of the conference and, frankly, the whole point of my life.'

But yesterday he appeared to further confuse the matter when he changed the year of the assassinations in France to 1992.

He told ITV News: 'A wreath was indeed laid by some of those who attended for those who were killed in Paris in 1992. I was present when it was laid I don't think I was actually involved in it.'

Yesterday, when asked who Mr Corbyn was referring to when he said he was at the laying of a wreath for those killed in Paris in 1992, a Labour source refused to comment.

Labour transport spokesman Rachel Maskell yesterday appeared to admit that members of the party accompanying Mr Corbyn had honoured the Black September terrorists linked to the Munich Massacre, but she argued he was there 'for different purposes'.

She told Sky News: 'He was trying to honour people who have lost their lives and was doing that in a very dignified way and certainly not engaging in other agendas that were perhaps occurring at the site at the time.'

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn last night issued another statement, this time stating unequivocally that he did not lay a wreath at the graves of those linked to the Munich Massacre, which he condemned as a 'terrible attack'.

He said: 'Jeremy visited the Palestine National Cemetery to support Palestinian rights and honour the victims of the illegal 1985 airstrike.'
President uses the N-word and other racial slurs

In 'Unhinged,' Omarosa says she was told he had been recorded using the N-word in outtakes from The Apprentice.

Now she says she personally heard it after the book went to press: 'When he talks that way, the way he did on this tape, it confirmed that he is truly a racist.'

In the book she claims he called Kellyanne Conway's husband George, who is half-Filipino, 'a goo-goo' and a 'flip.'

Isn't competent to hold office

'They continue to deceive this nation by how mentally declined he is, how difficult it is for him to process complex information. How he is not engaged in some of the most important decisions that impacts our country.'

She also writes: 'Donald has only a surface-level understanding of the content hes signing into law.'

Is in mental jeopardy

She writes of his interview with NBC News's Lester Holt in which he addressed his firing of James Comey: 'Donald rambled. He spoke gibberish. He contradicted himself from one sentence to the next.

'While watching the interview, I realized something real and serious was going on in Donalds brain. They thought Trump was being Trump, off the cuff. But I knew something wasnt right.'

Lies and leads an administration which lies

'This is a White House where everybody lies; the president lies to the American people,Sarah Huckabee [Sanders] stands in front of the country and lies every single day.'

Disparages his family

He called Jared Kushner 'sweet', a term for gay, and called Don Jr. 'a f***-up' after the notorious Trump Tower meeting with Russians, saying: 'He screwed up again, but this time, hes screwing us all, big time!'

Wanted sworn in on a copy of The Art of the Deal

Claims she told him: 'Its the greatest business book of all time. Just think how many copies Id sellmaybe a commemorative inauguration copy?!'

... and what she says about John Kelly

Manigault-Newman says former Chief of Staff John Kelly is the real boss and that he has mistreated more people than just her.

'John Kelly is running this White House,' she said, 'and Donald Trump has no clue whats going on. Hes being puppeted, and thats very dangerous for this nation.'

'Rob Porter is accused of allegedly abusing his wives. And you know what John Kelly said about Rob Porter? He said he was a man of great integrity. And he's accusing me of integrity violations?'

... and about Melania

Omarosa says the First Lady wore the notorious 'I really don't care, do you?' coat to visit separate immigrant children at the border solely to shame her husband - and it wasn't the first time.

'The messages behind her style choices aren't always clear, but they are never accidental. Taken as a whole, all of her style rebellions have served the same purpose, and not only misdirection and distraction - strategies her husband knows all too well. I believe Melania uses style to punish her husband.'

... and about herself

I was complicit with this White House deceiving this nation. I had a blind spot where it came to Donald Trump.'
Google records your movements even when you explicitly ask it not to.

Google services on Android devices and iPhones store records of your location even after you have enabled privacy settings that claim to halt the practice.

Disabling 'Location History' in the settings of Google apps should stop the company keeping track of your movements.

However, researchers discovered the search company was still keeping tabs on users' location behind their back.

To prove this, Princeton postdoctoral researcher Gunes Acar carried an Android smartphone with the 'Location History' setting switched off.

Despite the setting purportedly preventing data collection, researchers discovered Google had kept records of Dr Acar's train commute on two trips to New York and visits to the High Line park, Chelsea Market, Hell's Kitchen, Central Park and Harlem.

The movements tracked by Google have been plotted on a map by researchers. To protect the privacy of Dr Acar, researchers did not plot the most telling and frequent marker  his home address.

The researchers found Google logs a record of your current location each time you open its turn-by-turn navigation app, Google Maps. The daily weather updates on Android phones also provided another way to track movement.

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Researchers created a visual map of the movements of Princeton postdoctoral researcher Gunes Acar, who carried an Android phone with Location history off, and shared a record of his Google account (pictured)

The finding was the result of an Associated Press (AP) investigation and was confirmed by computer-science researchers at Princeton University.

For the most part, Google is upfront about asking permission to use your location information, the researchers found.

An app like Google Maps will remind you to allow access to location if you use it for navigating.

If you agree to let it record your location over time, Google Maps will display that history for you in a 'timeline' that maps out your daily movements.

Storing your minute-by-minute travels carries privacy risks and has been used by police to determine the location of suspects  such as a warrant that police in Raleigh, North Carolina, served on Google last year to find devices near a murder scene.

HOW DOES GOOGLE TRACK ITS USERS' LOCATIONS OUTSIDE OF 'LOCATION HISTORY'? A new investigation led by the Associated Press found that some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking - even when you've paused Location History. The investigation found, for example: Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you open its Maps app

Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint where you are each time the forecast is refreshed

Simple searchers, such as 'chocolate chip cookies,' or 'kids science kits,' pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude  accurate to the square foot - and save it to your Google account This information is all logged as part of the 'Web and App Activity feature, which does not specifically reference location information in its description. This is enabled by default, and stores a variety of information from Google apps and websites to your Google account. When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account. Leaving 'Web & App Activity' on and turning 'Location History' off only prevents Google from adding your movements to the 'timeline,' its visualization of your daily travels. It does not stop Google's collection of other location markers. Advertisement

To prevent this, the company will let you 'pause' a setting called Location History.

Google says the settings will prevent the company from remembering the locations you have visited.

Google's support page on the subject states: 'You can turn off Location History at any time.'

With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored, the firm claims.

However, the latest findings suggest this isn't true.

Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.

For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app.

This photo, taken on July 25, 2018, shows Kalyanaraman Shankari, right, and her husband Thomas Raffill, left, who noticed that her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohl's, even though she had turned Location History off

Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones also pinpoint roughly where you are each time the forecast is refreshed by the device.

And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like 'chocolate chip cookies,' or 'kids science kits,' pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude  accurate to the square foot - and save it to your Google account.

The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Google's Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search.

Storing location data in violation of a user's preferences is wrong, said Jonathan Mayer, a Princeton computer scientist and former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission's enforcement bureau.

A researcher from Dr Mayer's lab confirmed the AP's findings on multiple Android devices; the AP conducted its own tests on several iPhones that found the same behaviour.

'If you're going to allow users to turn off something called 'Location History,' then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off,' Dr Mayer said. 'That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.'

HOW CAN YOU FIND AND DELETE WHERE GOOGLE KNOWS YOU'VE BEEN? Even if you have 'Location History' off, Google often stores your precise location. Here's how to delete those markers and some best-effort practices that keep your location as private as possible. But there's no panacea, because simply connecting to the internet on any device flags an IP address that can be geographically mapped. Smartphones also connect to cell towers, so your carrier knows your general location at all times. To disable tracking on any device Fire up your browser and go to myactivity.google.com. You'll need to be logged into Google. On the upper left drop-down menu, go to 'Activity Controls.' Turn off both 'Web & App Activity' and 'Location History.' That should prevent precise location markers from being stored to your Google account. Google will warn you that some of its services won't work as well with these settings off. In particular, neither the Google Assistant, a digital concierge, nor the Google Home smart speaker will be particularly useful. On iOS If you use Google Maps, adjust your location setting to 'While Using' the app. This will prevent the app from accessing your location when it's not active. Go to Settings Privacy Location Services and from there select Google Maps to make the adjustment. In the Safari web browser, consider using a search engine other than Google. Under Settings Safari Search Engine, you can find other options like Bing or DuckDuckGo. You can turn location off while browsing by going to Settings Privacy Location Services Safari Websites, and turn this to 'Never.' This still won't prevent advertisers from knowing your rough location based on IP address on any website. You can also turn Location Services off to the device almost completely from Settings Privacy Location Services. Both Google Maps and Apple Maps will still work, but they won't know where you are on the map and won't be able to give you directions. Emergency responders will still be able to find you if the need arises. On Android Under the main settings icon click on 'Security & location.' Scroll down to the 'Privacy' heading. Tap 'Location.' You can toggle it off for the entire device. Use 'App-level permissions' to turn off access to various apps. Unlike the iPhone, there is no setting for 'While Using.' You cannot turn off Google Play services, which supplies your location to other apps if you leave that service on. Sign in as a 'guest' on your Android device by swiping down from top and tapping the downward-facing cursor, then again on the torso icon. Be aware of which services you sign in on, like Chrome. You can also change search engines even in Chrome. To delete past location tracking on any device On the page myactivity.google.com, look for any entry that has a location pin icon beside the word 'details.' Clicking on that pops up a window that includes a link that sometimes says 'From your current location.' Clicking on it will open Google Maps, which will display where you were at the time. You can delete it from this popup by clicking on the navigation icon with the three stacked dots and then 'Delete.' Some items will be grouped in unexpected places, such as topic names, google.com, Search, or Maps. You have to delete them item by item. You can wholesale delete all items in date ranges or by service, but will end up taking out more than just location markers. Advertisement

Google says it is being perfectly clear.

'There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people's experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services,' a Google spokesperson said in a statement to the AP.

'We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time.'

To stop Google from saving these location markers, the company says, users can turn off another setting, one that does not specifically reference location information.

Called 'Web and App Activity' and enabled by default, that setting stores a variety of information from Google apps and websites to your Google account.

When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account.

But leaving 'Web & App Activity' on and turning 'Location History' off only prevents Google from adding your movements to the 'timeline,' its visualisation of your daily travels.

It does not stop Google's collection of other location markers.

You can delete these location markers by hand, but it's a painstaking process since you have to select them individually, unless you want to delete all of your stored activity.

You can see the stored location markers on a page in your Google account at myactivity.google.com, although they're typically scattered under several different headers, many of which are unrelated to location.

Huge tech companies are under increasing scrutiny over their data practices, following a series of privacy scandals at Facebook and new data-privacy rules recently adopted by the European Union.

Last year, the business news site Quartz found that Google was tracking Android users by collecting the addresses of nearby cellphone towers even if all location services were off.

Google changed the practice and insisted it never recorded the data anyway.

You can see the stored location markers on a page in your Google account at myactivity.google.com, although they're typically scattered under several different headers, many of which are unrelated to location (stock image)

Critics say Google's insistence on tracking its users' locations stems from its drive to boost advertising revenue.

'They build advertising information out of data,' said Peter Lenz, the senior geospatial analyst at Dstillery, a rival advertising technology company. 'More data for them presumably means more profit.'

The AP learned of the issue from Kalyanaraman Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who studies the commuting patterns of volunteers in order to help urban planners.

She noticed that her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohl's, even though she had turned Location History off.

'So how did Google Maps know where I was?' she asked in a blog post.

The AP wasn't able to recreate Mrs Shankari's experience exactly, but its attempts to do so revealed Google's tracking. The findings disturbed her.

'I am not opposed to background location tracking in principle,' she said. 'It just really bothers me that it is not explicitly stated.'

Google offers a more accurate description of how Location History actually works in a place you'd only see if you turn it off - a popup that appears when you 'pause' Location History on your Google account webpage.

There the company notes that 'some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other Google services, like Search and Maps.'

Google offers additional information in a popup that appears if you re-activate the 'Web & App Activity' setting - an uncommon action for many users, since this setting is on by default.

That popup states that, when active, the setting 'saves the things you do on Google sites, apps, and services ... and associated information, like location.'

Warnings when you're about to turn Location History off via Android and iPhone device settings are more difficult to interpret.

It previously emerged that your Android smartphone could be tracking your every move, even when location services are switched off (stock image of the Google Pixel 2)

On Android, the popup explains that 'places you go with your devices will stop being added to your Location History map.' On the iPhone, it simply reads, 'None of your Google apps will be able to store location data in Location History.'

The iPhone text is technically true if potentially misleading. With Location History off, Google Maps and other apps store your whereabouts in a section of your account called 'My Activity,' not 'Location History.'

Since 2014, Google has let advertisers track the effectiveness of online ads at driving foot traffic , a feature that Google has said relies on user location histories.

The company is pushing further into such location-aware tracking to drive ad revenue, which rose 20 per cent last year to $95.4 billion (75bn).

At a Google Marketing Live summit in July, Google executives unveiled a new tool called 'local campaigns' that dynamically uses ads to boost in-person store visits. It says it can measure how well a campaign drove foot traffic with data pulled from Google users' location histories.

Google also says location records stored in My Activity are used to target ads. Ad buyers can target ads to specific locations - say, a mile radius around a particular landmark - and typically have to pay more to reach this narrower audience.

While disabling 'Web & App Activity' will stop Google from storing location markers, it also prevents Google from storing information generated by searches and other activity. That can limit the effectiveness of the Google Assistant, the company's digital concierge.

Sean O'Brien, a Yale Privacy Lab researcher with whom the AP shared its findings, said it is 'disingenuous' for Google to continuously record these locations even when users disable Location History. 'To me, it's something people should know,' he said.
The carcass of a pygmy woolly mammoth has been unearthed in Siberia  and could be evidence of a new species of 'mini-mammoth'.

The dead animal was discovered preserved in permafrost on Kotelny island and could be almost 50,00 years old, experts say.

Dubbed 'Golden mammoth' because of the striking colouration of its fur, the diminutive stature of the dead animal has led some to believe it could be evidence of a never-before-seen 'mini-mammoth' species that lived during the last ice age.

The adult measures seven feet (2.1 metres) tall, less than half the hulking 16 feet (4.8 metres) height of a normal woolly mammoth.

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The carcass of an extraordinary pygmy woolly mammoth (pictured) has been found in Siberia, and it could be up to 50,00 years old. Preserved in permafrost, the dwarf beast could prove the existence of an entirely new 'mini-mammoth' species that lived during the last ice age

The pygmy's sand-covered remains now lie embedded in undersea permafrost.

The carcass is only visible at low tide on Russia's Kotelny island, which is found between the Laptev and East Siberian seas.

Mammoth expert Dr Albert Protopopov, head of the department for the study of mammoth fauna, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), insists after examining the carcass that it is an adult not a baby and the specimen will be excavated from its inaccessible grave next summer.

Dr Protopopov, head of mammoth fauna at the Academy of Sciences in the Siberian region of Yakutia, said: 'Its hairs look golden in the sun.'

A stunning picture of the specimen shows that one tusk is fully intact, while the other has been broken or severed  with its 'golden' locks visible.

Bones of miniature mammoths have been found in some locations previously, but this is the first time a carcass has been discovered in the region.

He also believes that many such bones were those of stunted mammoths on remote islands in the period before their extinction as the species was failing and dying out.

In contrast, he thinks the new find dating to between 22,000 and 50,000 years ago is an example of a distinct subspecies or species of mammoth that thrived in the Arctic.

Mammoth expert Dr Albert Protopopov (pictured), from the Russian Academy of Sciences, insists after examining the carcass that it is an adult not a baby and the specimen will be excavated from its inaccessible grave next summer

The carcass is only visible at low tide on Russia's Kotelny island, which is found between the Laptev and East Siberian seas

WOOLLY MAMMOTHS EXPLAINED: THESE GIANT MAMMALS ROAMED THE EARTH DURING THE PLEISTOCENE 10,000 YEARS AGO The woolly mammoth roamed the icy tundra of Europe and North America for 140,000 years, disappearing at the end of the Pleistocene period, 10,000 years ago. They are one of the best understood prehistoric animals known to science because their remains are often not fossilised but frozen and preserved. Males were around 12 feet (3.5m) tall, while the females were slightly smaller. Curved tusks were up to 16 feet (5m) long and their underbellies boasted a coat of shaggy hair up to 3 feet (1m) long. Tiny ears and short tails prevented vital body heat being lost. Their trunks had 'two fingers' at the end to help them pluck grass, twigs and other vegetation. The Woolly Mammoth is are one of the best understood prehistoric animals known to science because their remains are often not fossilised but frozen and preserved (artist's impression) They get their name from the Russian 'mammut', or earth mole, as it was believed the animals lived underground and died on contact with light  explaining why they were always found dead and half-buried. Their bones were once believed to have belonged to extinct races of giants. Woolly mammoths and modern-day elephants are closely related, sharing 99.4 per cent of their genes. The two species took separate evolutionary paths six million years ago, at about the same time humans and chimpanzees went their own way. Woolly mammoths co-existed with early humans, who hunted them for food and used their bones and tusks for making weapons and art. Advertisement

'I believe that this mammoth is related to the period of the heyday of the species,' he told The Siberian Times.

'Our theory is that in this period the mammoths rose in number significantly and this led to the biggest diversity of their forms. So we want to check this theory.

'We are yet to discover whether this is an anomaly, or something quite typical for this area  when a grown-up mammoth looks like a pygmy.

'We have had reports about small mammoths found in that particular area, both grown ups and babies.

'But we had never come across a carcass. This is our first chance to study it.'

The unique find has been named the 'Golden mammoth' because of its striking colouration. The adult is around seven feet (2.1 metres) tall, less than half the hulking 16 feet (4.8 metres) height of a normal woolly mammoth (pictured, stock)

Examples of the bones of pygmy mammoths have been found previously on remote islands  as far afield as Wrangel in the Arctic, and the Channel Islands off the coast of California.

Kotelny, now an island, was connected to the Siberian mainland during the Ice Age and is a well-known mammoth necropolis.

Despite this, the latest find has been described as 'unique'.

Dr Albert Protopopov does not believe an 'island effect', which is caused by a declining species cut off in a remote location, accounts for the dwarf mammoth found on Kotelny.

Today, the island is a key base in Vladimir Putin's military expansion into the Arctic.
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Sharp-eyed conspiracy theorists claim to have spotted a secret 'military base' in the middle of the Gobi desert.

The circular formation of buildings, which has been likened to the shape of Stonehenge, was spotted between Kathmandu in Nepal and Mongolia on Google Maps.

The site has been branded 'China's Area 51' by some wayward conspiracy theorists, while others have speculated it could be a huge circular array of solar panels or a secretive military base.

The site is less than 100 miles (160km) from Jiuquan, where China's space programme headquarters and launch pads can be found, suggesting may have a military purpose.

MailOnline has contacted military experts to find out if they know the function of the structure.

This is not the first time a Google Maps satellite has photographed such structures during a sweep of the vast desert, which have subsequently sparked a number of strange theories around what they could be.

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Sharp-eyed conspiracy theorists claim to have spotted a secret 'military base' in the middle of the the Gobi desert. The strange circular formation, which has been likened to the Stonehenge, was spotted between Kathmandu in Nepal and Mongolia using Google Maps

Conspiracy theorists Blake and Brett Cousins, who run the popular YouTube channel 'thirdphaseofthemoon', believe the circular site is a 'runway for extraterrestrials'.

According to the video creators, three aircrafts are clearly stationed in the middle of the circular base, with trucks and control towers also stationed around the site.

'Three airlines within the circular formation of rocks and buildings, I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at,' the Cousins brothers wrote. 'It almost looks like Stonehenge from this aerial view'.

The Cousins brothers also suggested it could be 'an area 51 for China'.

Readers flooded the controversial post with their own opinions about exactly what caused the formation.

'Maybe it's a huge solar panel for under ground living,' wrote YouTube user 'Jolene N'.

A user called 'Steve' said that it 'looks like a old military base'.

'Stop with the hype, it's a test rang for reconnaissance aircraft, their cameras and targeting equipment,' wrote another YouTube user who comments under the name 'joshreynolds72'. (sic)

WHAT MAKES SOMEONE BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACY THEORIES? Over the course of three online-based studies, researchers at the University of Kent showed strong links between the belief in conspiracy theories and certain psychological traits. Narcissism and self-esteem levels have a large impact on a persons belief in conspiracy theories. The results showed that people who rated highly on the narcissism scale and who had low self-esteem were more likely to be conspiracy believers. However, while low self-esteem, narcissism and belief in conspiracies are strongly linked, it is not clear that one - or a combination - causes the other. But it hints at an interesting new angle to the world of conspiracy and those who reinforce belief. There are widely believed to be three main reasons as to why people believe in conspiracy theories. The desire for understanding and certainty - Seeking explanations for events is a natural human desire.

The desire for control and security - Conspiracy theories can give their believers a sense of control and security.

The desire to maintain a positive self-image - People who feel socially marginalised are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories and it gives them a sense of worth in the UFO community. These three things tie in with the previously stated qualities and combine to create an avid conspiracy theorist. Advertisement

This is not the first time strange formations have been spotted in the Gobi desert.

Previously, a set of strange shapes were spotted in a similar area on the borders of Gansu province and Xinjiang in northwestern China.

The internet was buzzing with theories about what their purpose was, with suggestions ranging from giant QR readers to practise targets for military satellites.

Unidentified: One bizarre structure (pictured) was spotted by a Google Maps satellite on the borders of Gansu province and Xinjiang. The internet was buzzing with theories about what their purpose was, with suggestions ranging from giant QR readers to practise targets for military satellites

Some internet users have been trying to overlay one of the strange structures on to various U.S. city maps, worried that there may be a sinister military purpose behind them.

Others have pointed out that if China wanted to attack a US city, it doesn't need a practise map in the desert.

It is also difficult to tell what the structures are made of  whether they are painted on or dug into the landscape.

Speculation: Some internet users have been overlaying the strange structures over maps of US cities while a closer view shows burnt out vehicles (right) which have raised questions about whether the desert has been used for military purposes
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The Perseid meteor shower arrived this weekend, stunning stargazers around the world as more than 70 shooting stars flashed across the night sky every hour.

Known as the 'fiery tears of Saint Lawrence', the celestial showcase takes place each year when the Earth ploughs through the galactic debris left discarded by the passing of the Swift-Tuttle Comet.

People both north and south of the equator were able to watch and photograph the stunning celestial showcase this weekend, and will enjoy one final opportunity to see the Perseids tonight.

Those in mid-northern latitudes will have the best views of the display, with stellar views expected across the United States, Europe, and Canada.

With a slice of good fortune and clear skies, people looking skyward in Mexico and Central America, Asia, much of Africa, and parts of South America may also be able to catch a glimpse of the occasional meteor.

Those south of the equator will catch the tail-end of the meteor shower, since the vast majority of the event will take place below the horizon, diminishing the impact of the phenomenon.

Nasa says the meteor shower reached its peak earlier in the weekend between 4 pm ET (9 pm BST) on Sunday 12th until 4 am (9 am BST) this morning. However, the event will continue tonight.

Although the number of shooting stars etched across the night sky will be somewhat diminished, this evening will provide people around the world a chance to see the spectacular annual event unfold.

Stray shooting stars will be visible until August 24, but these will be much harder to spot as the majority of the meteors will have already passed.

This year sees the event coincides with the new moon phase of the lunar cycle, which sees the moon emanating almost no light at all  creating perfect conditions in the sky for stargazing.

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This picture, taken over Loch Etive, near Taynuilt in Argyll on the West coast of Scotland, shows a Perseid meteor (top left) together with the Milky Way, Mars and Saturn. The annual meteor shower can produce between 50 and 100 shooting stars per hour and conditions this year are expected to be ideal with the darkened New Moon keeping the skies dark

Perseid meteors streak across the sky over the radar near the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Science of the Czech Republic in Ondrejov, Czech Republic. The Perseid meteor shower occurs every year in August when the Earth passes through the debris and dust of the Swift-Tuttle comet which spans 16-miles (28 km) wide and ploughs through our Solar System once every 133 years

For those in areas with low light pollution, no smog and clear skies, the Perseids are visible to the naked eye, with no specialist equipment needed.

The meteor shower takes place at the same time each year, as the Earth passes though a section of its orbit peppered with galactic space dust leftover from the last passing of the Swift-Tuttle Comet.

The Swift-Tuttle Comet, which spans 16-miles (28 km) wide and is formed of ice and rock, ploughs through our Solar System once every 133 years, with the last pass coming in 1992.

The comet will come within one million miles of Earth on August 5, 2126 and August 24, 2261.

The name 'Perseids meteor shower' comes from the fact meteors appear to shoot out from the Perseus constellation  the 24th largest constellation in the sky.

The annual meteor shower is known for the sheer quantity, including the possibility of bright fireballs in the sky.

A girl lies in hammock as she looks at the milky way during the peak of Perseid meteor shower in Kozjak, Macedonia. People both north and south of the equator saw the celestial showcase and will get one last opportunity to see the Perseids tonight

HOW CAN YOU SEE THE PERSEID METEOR SHOWER THIS YEAR? Shooting stars will be visible north and south of the equator, though observers in mid-northern latitudes will have the best views, according to NASA. Some Perseid meteors will even be visible during the early evening The Perseid meteor shower will reach the beginning of its peak at 4pm (ET) on Sunday the 12th. This will last until 4am on the 13th. As the event coincides with the new moon this year, observers will be treated to a dark, moonless sky for a clearer view of the meteors. North of the equator: Observers in the United States, Europe, and Canada should begin looking to the sky from a few hours after twilight until dawn. The same goes for viewers in Mexico and Central America, Asia, much of Africa, and parts of South America. South of the equator: Meteors will be visible for those south of the equator, too, though not at the rate seen in more northern areas. For viewers in Australia and other southern locations, meteors will start to appear in the sky around midnight and continue through the early hours of the morning. You won't need binoculars to spot a shooting star this weekend, nor do you need to look directly at the constellation Perseus. Instead, just look up. NASA says you 'can look anywhere you want to,' to see the Perseids, 'even directly overhead.' Advertisement

Known as the 'fiery tears of Saint Lawrence', the celestial showcase takes place once a year. This image was taken over the village of Klinovka, Simferopol District of the Crimea and shows a long-exposure image of the meteor shower on August 12

According to Nasa, the meteor shower reached its peak earlier this weekend between 4 pm ET (9 pm BST) on Sunday 12th until 4 am (9 am BST) on Monday 13th. This image was captured over the Windy Post Cross on Dartmoor. The Windy Cross, or Beckamoor Cross, dated from the 16 Century and marks the Abbotsi Way across the moor

For those in areas with low light pollution, smog and clear skies, the Perseids are visible to the naked eye, with no specialist equipment needed. Those in mid-northern latitudes, such as in the Crimean village of Klinovka where this photo of the shooting stars was taken, will have the best view of the celestial event

Most of the specks of material are tiny and flash across the night sky when they collide with Earth's atmosphere at about 133,200 mph (214,365 km/h).

During the meteor shower's peak, skywatchers in the northern hemisphere saw between 60 to 70 shooting stars cross the sky every hour.

Although fewer will be visible tonight, well-positioned spectators can expect to see dozens of 'shooting stars' every hour.

According to Nasa, the odd stray meteor will likely be visible until August 24, though rates will drop after today's peak.

'Unlike most meteor showers, which have a short peak of high meteor rates,' Nasa explains, 'the Perseids have a very broad peak, as Earth takes more than three weeks to plow through the wide trail of cometary dust from comet Swift-Tuttle.'

The Perseid meteor shower occurs as Earth passes through the trail of cometary dust following comet Swift-Tuttle (illustrated above)

A meteor streaks through the night sky, past Mars (yellow dot, centre left), during the Perseid meteor shower over the lake of Kozjak, some 30 miles (45km) from the capitol Skopje, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia on August 13

A meteor streaks across the skies over the cross near the Franciscan monastery Rama-Scit during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower in Prozor, Bosnia and Herzegovina on August 13

Luckily, less than ten per cent of Britain is built up, leaving lots of places where the cityscape will not obscure the natural beauty of the Perseids.

There are just 11 Dark Sky Reserves in the world, and the UK is home to four: Brecon Beacons National Park (Wales), Moore's Reserve (South Downs, England), Snowdonia National Park (Wales) and Exmoor National Park (England).

The others are scattered around the world, with locations listed in Europe, the US, Africa and New Zealand.

These locations, assuming the weather is clear and there are no clouds in the sky, provide an 'exceptional or distinguished quality of starry nights and nocturnal environment'.

Those not close enough to one of these locations to make it worth the night trip should head to an area with low-light pollution.

For example, high vantage points in a built-up area, or ideally, a trip to the countryside should provide the best view.

The 2018 Perseid meteor shower over the village of Klinovka. The meteors will also be visible tonight in a last-ditch attempt to catch the Perseids

Most of the specks of material are tiny and flash across the night sky when they collide with Earth's atmosphere at about 133,200 mph (214,365 km/h). Those wishing to take pictures of the meteor shower, like this time-lapse image from Russia, should use a tripod but the event will also be visible to the naked eye

A meteor streaks through the sky during the Perseid meteor shower above the village of Hajnacka, or Ajnacsko in Hungarian, Slovakia. This year the event coincides with the new moon phase of the lunar cycle, which sees the moon emanating almost no light at all  creating perfect conditions in the sky for stargazing

The event will originate in the night sky from the constellation Perseus and spread throughout the sky, with the shooting stars set to be visible both north and south of the equator, though observers in mid-northern latitudes will have the best views

The Perseid meteor shower is said to be the best of the year. This annual meteor shower comes as Earth passes through the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle, causing bright streaks that appear as though they're radiating from the constellation Perseus

WHAT ARE THE 11 DARK SKY RESERVES? Aoraki Mackenzie (New Zealand)

Brecon Beacons National Park (Wales)

Central Idaho (U.S.)

Exmoor National Park (England)

Kerry (Ireland)

Mont-Megantic (Quebec)

Moore's Reserve (South Downs, England)

NamibRand Nature Reserve (Namibia)

Pic du Midi (France)

Rhon (Germany)

Snowdonia National Park (Wales)

Westhavelland (Germany) Advertisement

The Dark Sky Atlas can be used to help people find their nearest dark spot as it maps the light pollution of areas around the world.

Those unfortunate enough to have an overcast evening can still catch the beauty of the Peresids via a live stream that was run by the Virtual Telescope Project.

Nasa says the meteor shower will be accompanied with the parade of planets Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars.

When asked about the best way to view the Perseids meteor shower Bill Cooke, head of Nasa's Meteoroid Environments Office at the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Alabama simply said: 'All you've got to do is go outside, find a nice dark spot, lie flat on your back and look up.

'You don't want binoculars. You don't want a telescope. You just use your eyes.'

Speaking to LiveScience, Mr Cooke said stargazers should give their eyes around 30 minutes to adjust to the dark sky.

'Don't expect to walk outside and see Perseids,' Cooke said.

Those who want to capture the celestial event with a camera should use a tripod to ensure their image is not blurred. For the best results, take a long-exposure shot, lasting from a few seconds to a minute.

Nasa's Bill Cooke warns against setting the exposure any longer than that, otherwise you'll pick-up the rotation of the stars, which could block out streaks from shooting stars.
Devastating images of monkeys clutching plastic bottles, carrying crisp packets and placing carrier bags over their heads have been caught on camera.

Captured by a British tourist holidaying in Thailand, these creatures are a tragic illustration of the plastic plight caused by travellers overseas.

Litter strewn across the beaches and streets by careless visitors makes it all too easy for these Macaque monkeys to reach it and put themselves in danger.

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These heartbreaking images show the devastating effect reckless tourism in Thailand is having on its wildlife population. Here, a macaque monkey is toying with a plastic bag in a tree after it was discarded by tourists

The use of single-use plastics is causing a build-up of the debris in even the most remote locations.

Countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and India are particularly affected, with tonnes of plastic going to landfill and not being recycled - most of it generated by visiting tourists.

Heartbreaking images from Thailand show the devastating effect this reckless behaviour is having.

In one of the pictures a monkey sits in a tree and appears to be suffocating on a plastic bag.

Litter, particularly plastic, has been strewn across the ground by careless visitors, making it all too easy for these Macaque monkeys to pick up and dangerously consume

The cute creatures were snapped be seen playing with plastic bottles and crisp packets that have been abhorrently discarded in acts of sheer mindlessness

In other images, the cute creatures can be seen playing with plastic bottles and crisp packets that have been abhorrently discarded in acts of sheer mindlessness.

Jasper Wilkins, 25, from the UK said: 'Hundreds of tourists visit these areas and you can see vast amounts of waste surrounding the area that the monkeys take advantage of.

'The monkeys will sometimes fight over the plastic bags and bottles and become territorial.'

Jasper, who has been in South East Asia for the last three months, said that this type of carelessness highlights how important it is for companies and governments to focus on ways to reduce plastic waste, as the man made product is clearly infiltrating the natural world - with devastating effects.

Crisp packets that were bought, used and thrown away by people have made their way into the hands of the local wildlife, These macaques are playing with the packaging despite the fact it poses a threat to their life as it can cause death via suffocation or asphyxiation

Countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and India are affected particularly badly, with tonnes of plastic going to landfill and not being recycled

Tourism and industrial processes are generating more waste than can be sustainable disposed of and it is now infringing on wildlife

The Daily Mail has campaigned tirelessly to reduce the plight of plastic across the world.

As part of our Turn The Tide on Plastic campaign, the Daily Mail has been calling for a deposit return scheme for plastic bottles to ensure they are recycled rather than discarded.

It follows the success of the papers Banish The Bags initiative, which led to the 5p charge for supermarket bags and an 86 per cent fall in their use.

Earlier this year the Mail also launched its Great Plastic Pick-Up, when our army of conscientious readers went out to pick up rubbish from the countrys streets, fields and beaches.

The use of single-use plastics is causing a build-up of the debris in even the most remote locations. Monkeys are seen drinking and playing with the plastic waste let behind by visitors to the Asian nation
The ability to learn something new while you sleep, known as Hypnopedia, has long been the dream of students cramming for upcoming exams.

However, a new study suggests the practice might be impossible.

Experts hooked up participants to advanced brain scanners to monitor them while they slept and while they were awake.

Scientists then played the participants sounds either randomly, or from part of three distinct patterns.

Sleeping volunteers showed no brain activity when it came to detecting the similarities in sounds, while the participants who were awake had no trouble picking out the pattern in the recording.

This led researchers to conclude that, while the human brain is able to register sounds while it is asleep, it cannot grasp the information and learn from it.

Previous studies into hypnopedia have also shown that the human brain is unable to take onboard information heard while it's resting.

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Hypnopedia, or the ability to learn during sleep, has long been a dream of science fiction but a new study suggesting it may be impossible. Experts hooked up participants to advanced brain scanners while they slept and while they were awake (stock)

A team of researchers from the ULB Neuroscience Institute in Brussels discovered that our learning capabilities are limited during slow-wave sleep.

Using a technique known as magnetoencephalography (Meg) scanning, they showed that while our brain is still able to perceive sounds during sleep, it is unable to group these sounds in any meaningful way.

A group of 26 participants were tested both during slow wave sleep, also known as non-rapid eye movement sleep, or NREM, when brain activity is highly synchronised, and during wakefulness.

Volunteers were exposed to a fast flows of pure sounds during sleep and while they were awake.

These were either random or structured in a way that they could be grouped into sets of three distinct elements.

Volunteers were then played sounds either randomly or from part of three distinct patterns. Sleeping volunteers showed no brain activity when it came to detecting the similarities in sounds, while the participants who were awake had no trouble (stock image)

WHAT IS MEG BRAIN SCANNING? Magnetoencephalography (Meg) is a non-invasive technique for investigating human brain activity. It allows the measurement of ongoing brain activity on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis, and it shows where in the brain activity is produced. At the cellular level, individual neurons in the brain have electrochemical properties that result in the flow of electrically charged ions through a cell. Electromagnetic fields are generated by the net effect of this slow ionic current flow. While the magnitude of fields associated with an individual neuron is negligible, the effect of multiple neurons excited together in a specific area generates a measureable magnetic field outside the head. These neuromagnetic signals generated by the brain are extremely smalla billionth of the strength of the earths magnetic field. Therefore, Meg scanners require superconducting sensors that are bathed in a large liquid helium cooling unit at approximately -269C (-452F). Due to low impedance at this temperature, the device can detect and amplify magnetic fields generated by neurons a few centimetres away from the sensors. A magnetically shielded room houses the equipment, and mitigates interference. Advertisement

During sleep, brain Meg responses showed they could detect individual sounds, but there was no evidence of any pattern detection.

While they were awake, however, all participants presented brain Meg responses that demonstrated they had detected the three clusters.

Writing in a paper on the subject, its authors said: 'We showed in the present study that in young healthy participants proved able to implicitly learn segmenting auditory streams during wakefulness, segmentation processes seem abolished during NREM sleep.

'Frequency-tagged responses analysis showed that sleeping participants keep processing auditory information at the tone level, but that auditory processing was not influenced by the presence of statistical regularities in the auditory stream.

'Therefore, lack of frequency-tagged magnetic responses suggests statistical regularities remained undetected during NREM sleep.'

The ULB Neuroscience Institute in Brussels study in the latest in a string of experiments to disprove the popular myth.

In a similar study published by experts from PSL Research University in Paris in August 2017, researchers tested sleep learning by playing 20 participants white noise, which contained patterns of sound.

The sounds heard during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep were remembered by these people when they woke up.

They found it easier to identify the white noise which had repeated sounds in it because they had heard it while asleep.

But the noise played while people were in deep sleep, which makes up almost a third of our slumbers, was forgotten.

The full findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Elon Musk has shared new details about Tesla's plans to go private.

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has approached Musk 'several times' about taking Tesla private, in conversations that stretch back as far as two years ago, Musk wrote in a blog post Monday.

Sovereign wealth funds are investment funds that are controlled by the government. They can invest globally in stocks, bonds, real estate and other areas.

It follows a shock announcement from the Tesla boss last week, when he tweeted that he was considering taking the firm private at $420 per share, adding that funding was 'secured.'

Shares of Tesla were sliding more than 1 percent to $351.80 on Monday morning.

The surprise tweets have since caught the eye of the Securities and Exchange Commission, with regulators looking into whether the statements were truthful and why Musk announced them via Twitter.

Additionally, Musk and Tesla are being sued by investors who claim the plan to go private was part of a 'fraudulent scheme' to punish short-sellers, or investors who borrow stock in a company with the hope shares will fall.

The plaintiffs also allege that Musk's announcements artificially inflated Tesla's stock price and violated securities laws.

Musk attempted to clear up his tweets in the blog post Monday.

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Musk said Tesla is still in the early stages of the take-private process and that the firm continues to meet with Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund. It came after his surprise announcement on Twitter last week

'Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private,' Musk wrote in the blog post.

'They first met with me at the beginning of 2017 to express this interest because of the important need to diversify away from oil.

'They then held several additional meetings with me over the next year to reiterate this interest and to try to move forward with a going private transaction,' Musk added.

Shares of Tesla were sliding more than 1 percent to $351.80 on Monday morning. The stock shot up almost 12 percent last week after Musk's initial tweets about taking Tesla private

WHAT IS SAUDI ARABIA'S SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUND? Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, or Public Investment Fund (PIF), is a state-run organization that invests in stocks, bonds, real estate and other areas. The investment vehicle is chaired by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud. In recent years, the fund has been trying to diversify its investments away from oil, as part of Saudi Arabia's effort to broaden its economy. The fund now aims to raise its assets from $250 billion under management to $400 billion by 2020. It has purchased stakes in ride-hailing giant Uber and Lockheed Martin, pledged to invest in Blackstone and partnered with Japanese investment giant SoftBank to create the SoftBank Vision Fund. The fund also invested $1 billion in Virgin Galactic's Space Ventures unit. Last week, it was revealed that Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund took a 5 percent stake in Tesla, which may pave the way for a larger stake, or outright buyout, in the future. Advertisement

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund met with Musk on July 31 after purchasing a 5 percent stake in Tesla.

During the meeting, the fund's managing director reiterated a desire to fund a going private transaction for Tesla, Musk wrote.

'I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a deal with the Saudi sovereign fund could be closed, and that it was just a matter of getting the process moving,' he added.

'This is why I referred to funding secured in the August 7th announcement.'

Musk said that Tesla is still in the early stages of the take-private process and that the firm continues to meet with Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund.

He added that he continues to hold conversations with Tesla's largest shareholders and that a deal would be funded primarily by equity, instead of debt.

'The $420 buyout price would only be used for Tesla shareholders who do not remain with our company if it is private,' he explained.

'My best estimate right now is that approximately two-thirds of shares owned by all current investors would roll over into a private Tesla.'

The Tesla board has already met 'several times' in the past few weeks to discuss the proposal to take the firm private.

Still, Musk felt it was necessary to inform all of Tesla's shareholders and announce his 'intentions publicly' on Twitter.

Tesla boss Elon Musk shocked Wall Street last week when he tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 a share and that funding was secured

Musk added that investor support was 'confirmed' and that the Tesla board had already met 'several times' in the past few weeks to discuss the proposal to take the firm private

'The only way I could have meaningful discussions with our largest shareholders was to be completely forthcoming with them about my desire to take the company private,' Musk said.

'However, it wouldnt be right to share information about going private with just our largest investors without sharing the same information with all investors at the same time.

'As a result, it was clear to me that the right thing to do was announce my intentions publicly.'

Musk explained in the blog post that he will continue to talk with investors, while he 'investigates a range of potential structures and options.'

Musk said that Tesla is still in the early stages of the take-private process and that the firm continues to meet with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund

WHY DOES ELON MUSK WANT TO TAKE TESLA PRIVATE? In a shock announcement on Tuesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that he has weighed taking the electric car company private at $420 a share. A take-private price of $420 a share would value Tesla at $82 billion and marks a significant jump from the stock's current levels of roughly $379 a share. Going private involves a transaction(s) that take a company off the public market, meaning retail investors can no longer trade shares on the stock market. Take-private transactions may be led by a non-controlling shareholder, a private equity firm making a leveraged buyout or a consortium of companies. Musk said he has received broad investor support for the move. The only thing standing in the way of an official announcement is a shareholder vote. Going private would allow Tesla to avoid many of the pressures of the public markets, such as wild stock swings, scrutiny from Wall Street analysts, as well as 'attacks' from short-sellers - a group that Musk has said 'want [Tesla] to die so bad they can taste it.' In a letter to employees, Musk said Tesla's volatile stock has served as a 'major distraction' to staff and that being public created a lot of pressure on the company to 'make decisions that may be right for a given quarter, but not necessarily right for the long-term.' If Tesla goes private, it would no longer be forced to file public financial statements or host quarterly earnings calls with Wall Street analysts. These events tend to cause upward or downward swings in Tesla's stock. Advertisement

'If and when a final proposal is presented, an appropriate evaluation process will be undertaken by a special committee of Teslas board, which I understand is already in the process of being set up, together with the legal counsel it has selected,' Musk explained.

'If the board process results in an approved plan, any required regulatory approvals will need to be obtained and the plan will be presented to Tesla shareholders for a vote.'

The blog post comes follows a wild week for Tesla's stock, with shares initially rising close to 12 percent on Tuesday, then falling about 2 percent on the news that the SEC was investigating Musk's tweets.

Reports have suggested that the SEC's investigation has 'intensified' its probe into Musk and Tesla.

Regulators are looking into whether Musk's tweets violated the SEC's fair disclosure rules, which include some provisions around posting material announcements on social media platforms and whether that is an example of market manipulation.

Securities lawyers told Bloomberg that Musk's tweets about a take-private transaction for Tesla are unlikely to violate any laws unless they're proven false or inaccurate.

Musk's blog post on Monday will likely help prove that the tweets were accurate.

Should Musk decide to take Tesla private at $420 share, it would mark one of the largest buyouts in history.

WHAT ARE THE SEC'S RULES AROUND FAIR DISCLOSURE? Tesla CEO Elon Musk's tweets about the firm going private have reportedly drawn a closer look from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC is now looking at whether what Musk said was truthful and why he announced the information on his Twitter. The regulatory agency has certain rules around what companies can and cannot speak about on social media platforms, as part of its fair disclosure rules. Many believe Musk's tweets are likely to be weighed against the Reed Hastings Rule, which was established in 2012. The rule was established when Netflix CEO Reed Hastings used his Facebook to post that the streaming service had 'exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time.' This warranted further investigation by SEC regulators, who later determined that posting material information on social media is allowed. However, companies must make sure that shareholders are notified that material announcements will be made on social media channels, as well as given proper access to them. In Musk's case, Tesla has only told investors to monitor the CEOs Twitter feed in a public filing once, back in 2013. Beyond that, regulators will be working to find out whether Musk's claims were honest. Musk tweeted that financing had been secured for a take-private deal and that the company had received broad investor support. If Tesla doesn't have the funding in place, experts say Musk's tweets could amount to market manipulation, since it would be an example of false statements causing the company's shares to skyrocket. Advertisement

In a letter to shareholders after his tweet on Tuesday, Musk fleshed out his idea, suggesting they would get the option to sell their shares for $420 each or remain investors in a private Tesla, out of the glare of Wall Street and its need for quarterly results.

He said that would allow Tesla to 'operate at its best, free from as much distraction and short-term thinking as possible.'

It's highly unusual for the head of a major company make a significant announcement in such casual manner.
Parents should make sure they talk to their children from a very young age, scientists say.

Children who are regularly engaged in conversation by adults have stronger connections between the two developing brain regions that are critical for language.

This helps them to improve their language skills  regardless of their economic background, something scientists had previously thought was an important factor.

The new study highlights the importance of spending time with children and engaging them in conversation rather than leaving them to watch television, or play on a tablet or smartphone.

The most important aspect of conversation is that parents and children take turns in conversing  as this helped children the researchers said.

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The amount of adult-child conversational turns that young children experience is related to the strength of white matter connections between two key language regions in the brain, as represented by the coloured brain regions from two participants

While it might seem like a basic idea, around a third of five-year-olds in the UK start school without the basic speaking skills needed to participate in class.

The new research, published in the journal JNeurosci, suggests simply by spending more time in conversation, children from poorer economic backgrounds will narrow the gap with children from more affluent families by the time they start school.

Corresponding author Dr Rachel Romeo, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, said: 'This suggests that early intervention programs should not only encourage parents to talk to their children, but to talk with their children to promote optimal brain development.'

The research was carried out on 40 four to six year-old children and their parents.

During a weekend, researchers from MIT recorded how much parents spoke to their children and then carried out brain scans to see how this changed their biology.

The findings showed stronger connections between Wernicke's area and Broca's area  brain regions critical for the comprehension and production of speech  in children whose parents spent longer talking to them.

The key factor was that parents and children took turns in conversing, the researchers said.

Researchers found children who are regularly engaged in conversation by adults may have stronger connections between two developing brain regions critical for language (stock image)

The research, although carried out in the US, may lend support to recent comments by Education Secretary Damian Hinds.

In July, Mr Hinds said it was a 'persistent scandal' almost a third of five-year-olds start school without the ability to speak in sentences.

The lack of speech skills means they cannot follow lessons or make friends, and they quickly fall behind  a disadvantage which can last for life.

The warnings have also come from the chief inspector of schools who has warned that many children are not read bedtime stories, and nursery rhymes at home.

Mr Hinds said it aims to cut in half the proportion of five-year-olds without communication and literacy skills by 2028.

The Department for Education said children with poor vocabulary at age five are more than twice as likely to be unemployed at age 34 as children with good vocabulary.
Humans were forced to adapted to sudden climate change 8,200 years ago, after a sudden shift to a colder climates, new research has revealed.

Early farmers helped stave off food scarcity by altering the animals they reared, a study of animal fats preserved in pottery vessels has revealed.

Changes in dwelling structures also showed a shift from communal households to small, independent families, eventually leading to the settlement's abandonment.

Scientists made the discovery at a UNESCO World Heritage site in Turkey, that was inhabited from approximately 7,500 BC to 5,700 BC.

Humans were forced to adapted to sudden climate change 8,200 years ago, after a sudden shift to a colder climates, new research has revealed. This image shows a pottery vessel uncovered at the site

A team of researchers, led by the University of Bristol, focused on the stone and copper age city settlement of Catalhoyuk in southern Anatolia.

During the height of the city's occupation, a well-documented climate change event occurred.

This resulted in a sudden decrease in global temperatures, caused by the release of a huge amount of glacial meltwater from a massive freshwater lake in northern Canada.

Examining animal bones excavated at the site, scientists concluded that the herders of the city turned towards sheep and goats at this time, as these animals were more drought-resistant than cattle.

Study of cut marks on the animal bones also revealed butchery practices. The high number of such marks at the time of the climate event showed that the population worked on exploiting any available meat due to food scarcity.

The authors examined animal fats surviving in ancient cooking pots, where they detected the presence of ruminant carcass fats, consistent with the animal bones discovered at Catalhoyuk.

For the first time, compounds from animal fats detected in pottery were shown to carry evidence for the climate event in their isotopic composition.

Early farmers helped stave off food scarcity by altering the animals they reared, a study of animal fats preserved in the pottery vessels (pictured) has revealed. Scientists concluded that the herders of the city turned towards sheep and goats as they were more resilient

Using the 'you are what you eat (and drink)' principle, the team deducted that the isotopic information carried in the hydrogen atoms - the deuterium to hydrogen ratio - from the animal fats was reflecting that of ancient rainfall.

A change in the hydrogen signal was detected in the period corresponding to the climate event, thus suggesting changes in rainfall patterns at the site at that time.

Dr Melanie Roffet-Salque, lead author of the paper, said: 'Changes in precipitation patterns in the past are traditionally obtained using ocean or lake sediment cores.

'This is the first time that such information is derived from cooking pots. We have used the signal carried by the hydrogen atoms from the animal fats trapped in the pottery vessels after cooking.

'This opens up a completely new avenue of investigation  the reconstruction of past climate at the very location where people lived using pottery.'

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences.
Vimeo has become the latest tech giant to take action against controversial radio host Alex Jones.

The video-hosting website removed InfoWars from its platform for violating the site's Terms of Service.

It follows similar moves by almost every major Silicon Valley company, including Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Spotify and Pinterest. Twitter remains one of the last holdouts to keep Jones and InfoWars' content up on its site.

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Vimeo has become the latest tech giant to take action against controversial radio host Alex Jones (pictured). The site removed InfoWars from its platform for violating its terms of service

Jones appeared to seek out Vimeo as a refuge after he found himself banned from most popular social media platforms.

InfoWars posted more than 50 new videos on Vimeo by Thursday and Friday, Business Insider said.

Before that, the channel had fewer than a dozen videos uploaded to it.

Vimeo's Trust & Safety team manually reviewed the videos uploaded to InfoWars' channel and moved within 48 hours to delete them from the site.

As of Monday, InfoWars' Vimeo account shows a notice that says 'Sorry we couldn't find that page.'

As of Monday, InfoWars' Vimeo account shows a notice that says 'Sorry we couldn't find that page.' The account was flagged after InfoWars uploaded more than 50 videos to the channel

Last week, several employees raised concerns internally at Vimeo that Jones' account was allowed to stay up on the site, Business Insider reported.

'We can confirm that Vimeo removed InfoWars account on Sunday, August 12 following the uploading of videos on Thursday and Friday that violated our Terms of Service prohibitions on discriminatory and hateful content,' a Vimeo spokesperson told MailOnline.

'Vimeo has notified the account owner and issued a refund.'

Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud is expected to make a company-wide announcement about the decision on Monday.

This means that Twitter is one of the last popular platforms where Jones and InfoWars can post content.

Last week, several employees raised concerns internally at Vimeo that Jones' account was allowed to stay up on the site. The firm then manually reviewed more than 50 InfoWars videos

WHO IS ALEX JONES? Alex Jones is a controversial radio and podcast host based in Austin, Texas. Jones says his 'InfoWars' shows, which are broadcast on radio, YouTube and other platforms, reach at least 70 million people a week. Among other claims, he has called the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting a hoax. He was sued for defamation by families of some of the children killed in that attack, which left 20 children and six adults dead. Among other claims, Alex Jones (file photo) has called the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting a hoax. He was sued for defamation by families of some of the children killed in that attack, which left 20 children and six adults dead He now admits the shooting occurred but says his claims were free speech. He has sought to have the lawsuit dismissed. Jones has also claimed that the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington were staged by the US government. While he began broadcasting his shows in 1999, Jones' profile has spread from the far-right fringe in recent years. While running for president in 2015, Donald Trump told Jones his reputation was 'amazing.' Advertisement

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has defended the move on several occasions, saying Jones or InfoWars haven't violated the site's terms of service.

'We didn't suspend Alex Jones or InfoWars yesterday,' Dorsey wrote in a tweet last week.

'We know that's hard for many but the reason is simple: he hasn't violated our rules. We'll enforce it if he does.'

Many have argued that InfoWars appears to continuously violate Twitter's rules, however, posting hateful content about Muslims and harassing specific accounts.

Twitter told MailOnline last week that it continues to review content posted to Jones and InfoWars' accounts.

YouTube, Apple and Facebook announced bans within hours of each other, citing violations of their respective policies around hate speech and violence.
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson has been known to set lofty goals for his aerospace company.

But the billionaire mogul has admitted that many of these over-ambitious deadlines are now 'embarrassing' to reflect on, in a wide-ranging interview with the New Yorker.

Branson has predicted at various points throughout the last few years that Virgin Galactic would soon be sending passengers into space.

He now acknowledges that this and other far-flung claims may have been a bit premature.

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Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has been hard at work trying to catch up with its rivals, which include Jeff Bezos' space tourism project Blue Origin and SpaceX, the rocket firm founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk

'It would be embarrassing if someone went back over the last thirteen years and wrote down all my quotes about when I thought we would be in space,' Branson told the New Yorker.

However, he believes these lofty goals are what helps Virgin Galactic stay competitive in the crowded market of private space exploration firms.

'If you are an optimist and you talk ahead of yourself, then everybody around you has got to catch up and try to get there,' he added.

Virgin Galactic has been hard at work trying to catch up with its rivals, which include Jeff Bezos' space tourism project Blue Origin and SpaceX, the rocket firm founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

In 2014, Virgin Galactic experienced a catastrophic crash that killed one pilot and injured another.

The SpaceShipTwo, a 60-foot-long craft designed to be the first ever to carry passengers into space, split into pieces as it fell over California's Mojave Desert.

Virgin Galactics Unity spaceplane completed its first rocket-powered flight in a successful supersonic test flight in April, nearly four years after the firms fatal crash in the Mojave Desert

It took two years for the company to regain approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration to fly SpaceShipTwo again.

In April, the company completed its first rocket-powered flight with SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity - a feat that is largely due to Virgin Galactic's skilled, lead test pilot Mark Stucky.

Stucky, who piloted the craft on more than a dozen previous test flights, avoided near-disaster when he completed SpaceShipTwo's rocket-powered flight earlier this year.

After the craft took off and was supersonic, Stucky struggled to control the rocket 60,000ft above the Earth's surface.

The vehicle had managed to roll over at 84,000ft, giving the crew a view of the earth, instead of space and messing up many of the craft's on-board sensors.

VSS Unity (pictured during a test flight in August) is designed to take customers into space via suborbital rocket flight, and could begin commercial flights as early as next year

WHAT CAUSED VIRGIN GALACTIC'S 2014 CRASH THAT KILLED ONE PILOT AND INJURED ANOTHER? Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo - a plane designed to run the first ever passenger flights into space - split into pieces as it fell to Earth over California's Mojave Desert during a test flight in October 2014. The crash killed 39-year-old pilot Michael Alsbury and seriously injured co-pilot Peter Siebold, 43, while debris from the disintegrated aircraft was spread over a wide area. The vehicle broke up after Alsbury unlocked the craft's tail wing braking system early, which led to a sudden increase in aerodynamic forces as it passed through the sound barrier. Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo - a plane designed to run the first ever passenger flights into space - split into pieces (right) as it fell to Earth over California's Mojave Desert during a test flight in October 2014 A 2015 NTSB report found that the co-pilot unlocked the so-called feathering system early at Mach 0.92 instead of the intended speed of Mach 1.4. The feathering system helps to increase drag and slows the spacecraft down for re-entry. Simply unlocking the spacecraft's brakes shouldn't have applied them, but investigators said that might have happened anyway as a result of aerodynamic forces. The crash killed 39-year-old pilot Michael Alsbury and seriously injured co-pilot Peter Siebold, 43, while debris from the disintegrated aircraft was spread over a wide area The resulting stress may have contributed to the spacecraft's destruction. Investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said no safeguards were built into system to overcome the error of the co-pilot. It took two years for the company to regain approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fly SpaceShipTwo again. Advertisement

Stucky was able to use a last-minute maneuver to right the ship - the same one that led to the fatal crash in 2014.

They made it back to Earth's surface and the runway safely.

Virgin Galactic expects to conduct several more supersonic test flights.

After that, the company will be closer to its goal of offering commercial spaceflight to the 600 patrons who have paid $250,000 for a ride, the New Yorker noted.

The commercial flight would involve ferrying six passengers on a 'suborbital' flight high above Earth.

Branson has previously stated that he hopes Virgin Galactic will lead the pack in commercial space travel.

'I hope that Virgin Galactic will be the first of the three entrepreneurs fighting to put people into space to get there,' Branson recently told CNN.

However, Branson has admitted he's slightly jealous of fellow tech mogul Elon Musk's recent success.

In an interview with CNN this year, Branson said: 'Elon and his team are extraordinary at what they achieved,' referring to this month's historic Falcon Heavy launch'

HOW IS VIRGIN GALACTIC HEATING UP THE SPACE RACE? Virgin Galactic successfully tested its VSS Unity spacecraft last August. It involved a glide test flight of its VSS Unity spaceplane, the company's second version of SpaceShipTwo. The test flight saw a plane, dubbed VSS Unity, sent up from California's Mojave Air and Space Port, attached to a twin-fuselage White Knight carrier airplane. Once the two aircrafts had reached the desired altitude, VSS Unity was released for an unpowered descent back to the space port. VSS Unity had 450 litres of water loaded into its tank, which was dumped from the plane  as fuel would be in a real flight. By jettisoning water on descent, Virgin Galactic was able to confirm handling characteristcs as the vehicle's centre of gravity changes. Advertisement

'I was a little bit jealous,' Branson told CNN. 'I mean Elon and his team are extraordinary at what they achieved.'

'They all just did fantastic,' he added.

The Falcon Heavy launch on Feb. 6 marked the maiden flight of what's now the most powerful operational rocket in the world.

It was estimated that the journey to Mars orbit will take about six months, with the module and the attached Roadster traversing roughly 140 million miles (225 million kilometres).

But Branson said Virgin Galactic won't be standing still and, in fact, has some big plans in store for later this year.

'Watch this space,' Branson said. 'We will be coming, hopefully, out with something very exciting over the next few months.'

He added that he expects Virgin Galactic to have a spacecraft in space in the next few months.

'If it's not in space with people in the next few months, I would be very disappointed,' Branson added.

Virgin Galactic hopes to send tourists into space aboard the firm's VSS Unity spaceplane by the end of 2018.

So far, over 700 customers have reserved a spot on one of the suborbital trips at a cost of $250,000 (200,000) per rider.

Richard Branson rolled out his new SpaceShip Two VSS Unity in 2016. The event came two years after the SpaceShipTwo split into pieces in a catastrophic crash in the Mojave Desert

Celebrities including Brad Pitt, Katy Perry and Ashton Kutcher have already signed up.

Virgin Galactic is competing head-to-head with SpaceX, as well as Blue Origin, the space venture launched by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, in the commercial space race.

Blue Origin has successfully tested its New Shepard rocket in 2016 and hopes to be able to conduct human flights by mid-2018 or 2019.

Branson said he hopes Virgin Galactic will be the first of the three companies to get to space, however.

'I'd hope that Virgin Galactic will be the first of the three entrepreneurs fighting to put people into space to get there,' Branson explained. 'That's our aim.'

He added that firm has 800 engineers 'working diligently' on the project and making sure that it's safe, following the fatal crash in 2014.

'We'll wait for their word before we put anybody up,' Branson said.

Still, Branson acknowledged that Musk's stunt of sending his Tesla Roadster into space is one that will be hard for Virgin Galactic to top, once the firm finalizes its plans for sending a spacecraft into orbit.

'We're already thinking about what we can do to upstage that one,' Branson said.


Considered one of the world's last great wildernesses, the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard is home to a wealth of wildlife and breathtaking landscapes as these stunning images show.

Award-winning photographer Renato Granieri spends seasons sailing around the ice-cold area on an expedition boat for adventure travel company G Adventures.

The 49-year-old, who is originally from the warmer reaches of Sardinia, told MailOnline Travel that he first visited Svalbard in 2012 and instantly fell in love with the place.

'I've visited almost 70 countries but it's the most inspiring spot I've ever visited,' he explained. 'There's nothing like the excitement of spotting a polar bear - and the peaceful surroundings of Svalbard let you reflect on all your thoughts.'

In February Granieri was crowned National Geographic Traveller photographer of the year thanks to an image he took of two beak-locked King penguins at the other end of the globe, towards the South Pole.

The Italian, who is based in London in between travels, says birds are one of his favourite subjects because they 'never stay still and there's great opportunity for action shots'. Scroll down to catch a glimpse of some of Granieri's mesmerising pictures.
Burning Man is hailed as being one of the most extraordinary human gatherings in the world, with a wacky mix of art, dance and theatre attracting attendees from far and wide.

And showcasing the annual extravaganza in all its glory, is a new book titled Dust to Dawn by British photographer Philip Volkers.

The tome features a breathtaking collection of images which Volkers took over the course of a decade as the event's official cameraman.

With the desolate plains of the Black Rock City desert in Nevada acting as the backdrop, different objects are captured in action.

Many shots show the giant art installations which wheel into Burning Man every year, with everything from an armour-plated rhinoceros to a ferocious-looking dragon on display.

Other images show festival-goers dancing and parading along in a dusty haze, dressed in post-apocalyptic-styled outfits. Scroll down to catch a glimpse of some of Volkers' eye-opening work before Burning Man kicks off for another year on August 26...
Talks aimed at resolving the long-running dispute between Ryanair and its Irish pilots have got under way.

The budget airline and Forsa, which has been representing the Irish pilots, are attempting to seek a resolution over pay and conditions under mediator Kieran Mulvey.

Mr Mulvey, the former head of the Workplace Relations Committee, has set aside three days for the negotiations.

Talks aimed at resolving the long-running dispute between Ryanair and its Irish pilots have got under way

The dispute resulted in a fifth day of strike action on Friday.

About 100 of Ryanair's 350 Irish-based pilots joined colleagues in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden in a series of strikes.

The airline said 396 flights were cancelled as a result, disrupting thousands of passengers.

A spokesman for Forsa said Mr Mulvey had asked both parties to refrain from public comment while the process is under way.

A Ryanair spokesman said mediation was required after five strikes failed to achieve 'anything other than to regrettably disrupt some customers'.

He added 95 per cent of the airline's flights and the majority of its pilots had operated on those days.

The spokesman added: 'Mediation should ensure Forsa takes control of their side of the process, take these negotiations more seriously and remove unwanted interference.

'Talks, not strikes, will move this forward and allow Ryanair to make the same progress we are making with other unions elsewhere in Europe.'

Forsa has not served notice of further strike action while the process of mediation is under way.

Irish Ryanair pilots form a picket line during a strike last month. Ryanair operates more than 2,000 flights a day, serving 223 airports across 37 countries in Europe and North Africa

Union representative Bernard Harbor told RTE Radio One's Morning Ireland programme that there was a lot of ground to be made up and a lot of time had been wasted.

Ryanair operates more than 2,000 flights a day, serving 223 airports across 37 countries in Europe and North Africa.

Last month the airline revealed it was reducing flights from Dublin later this year, warning that up to 300 jobs - 100 pilots and 200 cabin crew - were on the line.

Speaking at a press conference in Austria, Ryanair chief Michael O'Leary said he was prepared to cut jobs 'in any market' if strike action harmed bookings.

He explained: 'If some market is being damaged as the Irish market has been damaged in recent months by these activities, the Polish market is growing hugely strongly for us, the Ryanair Sun is very full, profitable, we need more aircraft in the Polish market - move aircraft to Poland.

'If we have people who just want to have strikes for the sake of having strikes then they can have strikes and they'll find themselves (with) jobs getting moved and aircraft getting moved.'
The warring between Kourtney Kardashian and her sisters Kim and Khloe looks set to threaten her staying on the show.

In a trailer released on Saturday, ahead of Sunday's new E! episode of KUWTK, Kourtney appears to be on the verge of quitting.

The 39-year-old mother of three, who clashed with Kim in a savage argument on last week's season premiere, is seen in tears saying she's not 'up for it'.

Tense: In a trailer released on Saturday, ahead of Sunday's new E! episode of KUWTK, Kourtney appears to be on the verge of quitting

'I dont even want to be around my sisters. They just dont have my back,' Kourtney is heard saying in the clip.

'She can't commit to filming a season,' remarked Kim, 37, sounding very critical.

'I'm not up for it,' Kourtney is then seen crying, before Khloe retorts, 'then get out.'

Had enough? The 39-year-old mother of three, who clashed with Kim in a savage argument on last week's season premiere, is seen in tears saying she's not 'up for it'

The sisters were seen coming to blows over a Christmas family photoshoot in last Sunday's episode.

Kim attacked Kourtney over her request to leave by 4pm to be available for her childrens' bedtimes.

The wife of Kanye West then told her eldest sister in fruity terms that she didn't need to attend because she's the 'least exciting to look at'.

Argument: The warring between Kourtney Kardashian and her sisters Kim (pictured) and Khloe looks set to threaten her staying on the show

Awkward: Khloe looked tense as tensions rose with Kourtney

Suggested counselling: Kim folded her arms as she took on the issues with Kourtney

The trailer follows another clip posted by E! Friday that saw Kourtney refusing to go to counseling with her siblings.

In the clip from the upcoming episode, Kim and Khloe are trying to convince Kourtney to go to group therapy with the family.

And as Kourtney seems disinterested in what her siblings are discussing, Khloe gets offended and storms out of the room and yells 'f*ck off'.

The quick clip begins with Kim explaining: 'Well, we're all going to therapy together. So, it's happening.'

'But why?' Kourtney asks.

'Because we all need to communicate with a mediator, and we don't have that mediator,' Kim responds.

At war: The feud between the sisters continues on Keeping Up With The Kardashians this Sunday

Kourtney adjusts in her seat and explains: 'I don't really think we need to go to therapy to be honest, to solve our problems. I think we should just talk.'

When Kourtney takes to her phone and seems to be ignoring her sisters, Khloe expresses her lack of appreciation - despite Kim being seen over her shoulder scrolled her phone too.

'In therapy are you on your phone or do you give your therapist attention?' an annoyed Khloe asks, as Kourtney mumbles an answer.

'If you were listening instead of zooming in on some picture, you would've known what I was saying,' Khloe yells.

Ignore: Soon Kourtney takes to her phone and seems to be ignoring her sisters, which Khloe doesn't appreciate

Kourtney continues her sibling silent treatment.

'OK, well I'm not investing myself, so you can f--k off then,' Khloe says as she abruptly leaves the room.

Last week, when Kourtney refused to budge her schedule to accommodate Kim's meetings, Kim told her: 'Nobody wants you in the f***ing shoot so get the f*** out of here and go.'

She then derided her for being so difficult despite not having 'a f***ing business that you were passionate about' that kept her as busy as the others.

She snapped: 'I need Kourtney to not be so f***ing annoying with a stick up her a** like she f***ing runs this s*** because she doesn't.'

That went well: Khloe gives the middle finger to her eldest sibling before she storms out of the room and yells 'f*ck off'

Kim then made a painful personal comment, saying of her sister: 'She's the least exciting to look at, so she can be out.'

She then told Kim: 'You're a very distraught, evil human being. I don't want to see you, OK? I don't agree with who you are as a human being.'

'Honestly, it's like we have a disgusting family. Like, I'm ashamed to be a part of people that, like it's just gross,' she said.

Kourtney then snapped: 'And I'm not going to be filming with some f***ing c*** like Kim when she just talks that way about her own sister.'

The eldest Kardashian sister was still upset when Kim held her baby shower for now 6-month-old Chicago West in November, leading her to skip the event.

They've clearly made up since as the sisters were all together for Kylie's 21st birthday party on Thursday evening.
She became a household name starring as Aria Montgomery on Pretty Little Liars for seven years.

And on Sunday, Lucy Hale looked every inch the movie star that she is while heading to the InStyle Day Of Indulgence Party in Los Angeles.

The 29-year-old actress chose stylish high-waisted flared bottoms with a tucked in shirt and cream heels for the daytime event.

Effortless: Lucy Hale looked every inch the movie star that she is while heading to the InStyle Day Of Indulgence Party in Los Angeles on Sunday

Lucy's bottoms featured a flared darker accent along the hems and a tighter fit along her slim waist.

She chose a sleeve-less round-neck ribbed top that she chose to tuck into her bottoms; her look was completed with strappy neutral heels, statement earrings and delicate necklaces.

Lucy toted a unique pale blue structured handbag featuring a belt accent along the bottom.

The beauty, who donned small framed sunglasses, styled her brunette locks sleek with minimal makeup.

Looking good: The 29-year-old actress chose stylish high-waisted flared bottoms with a tucked in shirt and cream heels for the daytime event

Coffee to cool down: Lucy's bottoms featured a flared darker accent along the hems and a tighter fit along her slim waist

Earlier in the day, Lucy opted for a low key look while leaving yoga in Studio City.

The TV star flaunted her toned legs in skintight bottoms as she headed to her car post workout.

She wore a black and white shirt, APL sneakers and her locks half-up, half-down.

Low key: Earlier in the day, Lucy opted for a low key look while leaving yoga in Studio City

Casual: The star flaunted her legs in skintight bottoms as she headed to her car post workout

The Life Sentence star flaunted her natural beauty by opting to go makeup free for her yoga session.

The songstress recently returned from a holiday in Mexico with her pal; the friends enjoyed the beach vacation in late July.

She posted snaps of the trip, including one while she posed with her derriere on display in a red bathing suit.

Sunshine: The songstress recently returned from a holiday in Mexico with her pal; the friends enjoyed the beach vacation in late July

Lovely: She posted snaps of the trip, including one while she posed with her derriere on display in a red bathing suit

Lucy's chic one-piece featured a cut-out detail below her chest; she added a hat to round out her summer ensemble.

The stunner captioned the pictures: 'Another trip in the books with my main @annebreiter - Thank you @viceroyrivieramaya for an incredible time.

Lucy played Aria in the hit series Pretty Little Liars for seven seasons alongside Ashley Benson, Shay Mitchell and Troian Bellisario.
They came under fire as the villains on last year's season of the reality renovation series.

And now Ronnie and Georgia have given the new baddies of The Block 2018, Sara and Hayden, some handy advice.

Speaking with Woman's Day magazine, Ronnie suggested how the husband-and-wife duo can best deal with public backlash.

'You have to have a thick skin, otherwise you won't survive': Former Block villains Ronnie and Georgia, pictured here, have sent a warning to new feisty couple Sara and Hayden

'You can't take it personally. It's easier said than done, of course, but you just need to ignore the comments,' he explained.

'You have to have a thick skin, otherwise you won't survive!' he added.

Despite being seen throwing tantrums and threatening to walk out in promotional clips for the show, Sara claimed the couple are 'not comparable' to Ronnie and Georgia during an interview with The Daily Telegraph last month.

'You can't take it personally': Speaking with Woman's Day magazine, Ronnie suggested how the husband-and-wife duo can best deal with public backlash. Pictured: Ronnie and Georgia

'We're the feisty couple. That's just our dynamic. And I think what's important is that it was always between us though, and never towards other couples,' Sarah said.

'Were nothing like Ronnie and Georgia  who I've met and who are amazing and lovely people. But it's a high stress situation.'

Just a few episodes into the show, Sara and Hayden have had several run-ins with the other contestants.

Including one with Carla and Bianca, resulting in Sara saying to Hayden; 'We'll f*** them over when we win!'

We are different! Despite being seen throwing tantrums and threatening to walk out in promotional clips for the show, Sara claimed the couple are 'not comparable' to Ronnie and Georgia during an interview with T he Daily Telegraph last month

Last week the couples went toe to toe again, when Sara demanded the girls pay them a last-minute fee of $700 for plumbing.

Sara's request was resolved with the help of foreman Dan, who was forced to intervene to sort out the issue as Sara claimed it 'almost broke out into a screaming match'.

Meanwhile, Ronnie made a shock appearance on this season of The Block to help contestants Norm and his radio host wife Jess with their guest bedroom renovation in the Gatwick Hotel.
Joe Jonas had a night to remember as he celebrated his 29th birthday with some friends and family in Miami on Saturday.

The two-part bash started off with a somewhat intimate dinner at a restaurant that came complete with birthday cake, candles and, of course, the birthday song.

But then things broke loose when they headed out and joined hundreds of revelers for a night of music and dancing at the famed Story Nightclub.

Brotherly love: Joe Jonas celebrated his 29th birthday, a few days early, with brother and former bandmate Nick Jonas in Miami on Saturday

Joe, who's actual birthday is on Wednesday August 15, shared some videos of the celebration in an Insta-story and on his Twitter.

In the Twitter video, you can see Jonas and friends seated at a restaurant as the waiter lights the birthday candle and the group sing 'Happy Birthday.'

Joe gently eases up off his chair and blows out the one long candle that was placed on top of an array of cakes and pastries.

Intimate: The birthday bash started off at a restaurant with some choice friends and family that included dinner and birthday cake

Party time: Nick Jonas, Virgil Abloh, Joe Jonas and DJ Don Hot pose for picture in the DJ booth at the Story Nightclub in Miami

Party in style: The Story Nightclub made some light up photos of Joe for the birthday bash

Good friends: Nick Jonas, Purple, Joe Jonas and DJ Don Hot hammed it up in the DJ booth

Joe and company eventually headed out to the Story Nightclub where they whipped it up with hundreds of well-wishers that included the likes of DJ Don Hot, fashion designer Virgil Adloh and Purple.

The club went all out for Joes birthday: they even made some light up photos of the DNCE front man, along with a bunch of giant cutouts of his head.

And being music connoisseurs that they are, Joe and Nick spent a good amount of time in the DJ booth with DJ Don and Virgil and later posted a picture of the four with the headline 'Last Night. Virgil killed it on the ones and twos.

Both Nick and Joe kept it cool-casual in the fashion department on this night. The birthday boy wore a black, white and green patterned button-down shirt with black pants.

Nick opted for a pair of brown and red pants that were stylishly cut above the ankle, with a white t-shirt and sneakers.

Rocking the house: Virgil Abloh, and DJ Don Hot had the place jumping for Joe's birthday

Happy 29th: Nick Jonas, Virgil Abloh and Joe Jonas talked a little music

Birthday wishes: Virgil Abloh and Joe Jonas hugged it out on his 29th

It was definitely a time for celebration as Nick shared a video to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of their Jonas Brothers album A Little Bit Longer.

He wrote: 'Umm you guys A Little Bit Longer is 10 years old today @nickjonas @kevinjonas

'Hard to believe our album A Little Bit Longer came out 10 years ago today. So grateful to all of the amazing fans who made this chapter of my life so incredible. #jonasbrothers #imgettingold @joejonas @kevinjonas'
Caroline Flack is reportedly back together with her on-off beau Andrew Brady, marking the third time the couple has reunited since confirming their romance in February.

The TV host, 37, is said to have given The Apprentice star, 27, another chance after they broke off their engagement last month.

According to The Sun, Caroline and Andrew met up for a 'make-or-break' getaway in Ibiza, where the couple were spotted for the first time since calling off their engagement in July.

Reunited: Caroline Flack, 37, and ex-fiance Andrew Brady, 27, 'are back together following their make-or-break Ibizan getaway'

Since their Ibizan rendezvous in late July, the supposedly on-again couple have been seen at London's swanky Pizza East in Shoreditch on Saturday.

The Sun reported that that Caroline was sharing a passionate kiss with Andrew during the intimate date.

An insider told the publication that the Love Island presenter and the Celebrity Big Brother alum are still very much in love, but have decided to take their relationship slowly.

Back together: Caroline and Andrew met up for a 'make-or-break' getaway in Ibiza, where the couple were spotted for the first time since calling off their engagement in July

The source said: 'Caroline and Andrew are back together again after they decided to rekindle their relationship. Although it hasn't been a smooth road their chemistry is undeniable and they really love each other.

'Wedding bells are still a long way off and she is determined to move at a slower pace this time and doesn't want to run before she can walk, but they're very much a couple again.

Andrew - who moved out of Caroline's house following the break up, is said to still be living elsewhere, but will likely return to help care for the puppy they share.

Rekindle the romance: Since their Ibizan rendezvous in late July, the supposedly on-again couple have been seen at London's swanky Pizza East in Shoreditch on Saturday

While friends and family of Caroline are reportedly concerned about her choice to rekindle the romance, the source added that they are pleased to see the star smiling once again.

MailOnline have contacted representatives for Caroline and Andrew for comment.

The pair, who got engaged in April after a two-month romance, briefly split in March amid claims of cheating and fears that the CBB star was using the ITV presenter for her fame.

Slow things down: An insider told the publication that the Love Island presenter and the Celebrity Big Brother alum are still very much in love

Caroline opted not to put her engagement ring from Andrew back on during last week's Love Island Reunion show, despite their loved-up appearance just days before.

In a statement released last month, the blonde beauty announced the pair's break-up: 'I'm sad to announce that Andrew and I have decided to part ways. Unfortunately it was not to be. I wish him all the best.'

The couple got engaged at the end of April after what has been a whirlwind romance since meeting at the start of 2018. Caroline also had her beau's initials tattooed on her inner wrist just weeks after meeting him in the flesh.
Last week Matthew Newton officially stepped down from directing Jessica Chastain's new movie Eve, following online backlash over his alleged history of domestic violence.

And now sources say his mother Patti Newton is rallying behind her troubled son.

According to a report in Woman's Day, the 73 year-old media matriarch is 'devastated' by the recent turn of events.

'He's changed and overcome his demons!' 'They believe he's changed and overcome his demons': Patti Newton 'devastated' after troubled son Matthew was forced to step down from directing Jessica Chastain's new movie following outrage over his history of alleged domestic violence The pair are pictured with Patti's daughter Lauren at the 2006 Logie Awards

'Patti will always want the best for Matthew,' an insider revealed, 'in her mind, he's really tried to rehabilitate himself through therapy and taking time out of the spotlight.'

The source added: 'While she and Bert have never condoned what's happened in the past, they love him. And they believe he's changed and overcome his demons.'

Last week, Jessica Chastain, a vocal advocate for the Times Up movement, was condemned for selecting Matthew to write and direct her new film Eve.

'Patti will always want the best for Matthew!' According to a report in Woman's Day on Monday, the 73 year-old media matriarch has rallied behind her troubled son

'I am profoundly aware that I have a responsibility to lead where I have failed in the past!' Last week, Jessica Chastain, a vocal advocate for the Times Up movement, was condemned for selecting Matthew to write and direct her new film Eve

Fans blasted the Oscar-nominated star's decision as 'concerning' after Newton's long history of alleged assault and domestic violence claims, which date back to 2006.

In response, the actor and writer released a statement on Friday, saying he wishes to do the right thing and take responsibility for his problems.

'Yesterday I notified Jessica Chastain and the other producers on the film Eve that I will be stepping down as director,' he said.

'Since the announcement of this film, the responses, which are powerful and important, have not fallen on deaf ears. I am profoundly aware that I have a responsibility to lead where I have failed in the past.

'I can never undo the harm that Ive caused the people Ive cared about and I carry that shame and responsibility with me every day.'

Newton, who suffers from bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder, went on to explain that he's been seeking treatment for his issues.

Controversial selection: Fans blasted Chastain's decision as 'concerning' over Newton's long history of alleged assault and domestic violence claims dating back to 2006

'Over the past eight years, I have been working extensively with healthcare professionals to help me overcome my addiction and mental health illness,' he continued.

'For the past six years I have lived a quiet and sober life. All I can do now is try to be a living amends and hopefully contribute to the positive change occurring in our industry.'

Arrest: Newton was arrested for the alleged physical assault of his former partner Brooke Satchwell (pictured) in 2006. The couple are pictured in November 2003

Newton, who lives with fiancee Catherine Schneiderman in New York's Upper West Side, was arrested for the alleged physical assault of his former partner Brooke Satchwell in 2006.

In 2010, his then-girlfriend Rachael Taylor filed a protective order against him, alleging physical, verbal and emotional abuse, and he entered Sydney's Northside West Clinic for treatment.
Roxy Jacenko's office has been vandalised for a third time in 15 months.

CCTV footage captured a mystery man removing a custom laser cut sign off the facade of the building with force on Friday at around 11pm.

It comes after Roxy's Sweaty Betty PR headquarters were graffitied with ink-injected eggs in July 2017, and a brown sludge, believed to be 'faeces', hurled at the walls in April the same year.

Vandalism: Roxy Jacenko's Sweaty Betty offices have been vandalised for a THIRD time. A mystery offender was seen ripping a custom laser cut sign off the facade on Friday night

Roxy told Daily Mail Australia on Monday: 'One of our custom laser cut signs was ripped cleanly off the wall and left on the floor for our company The Ministry of Talent.

'The perpetrators didn't seem concerned about the 8+ infrared security camera which surround every angle of my property.

'Its property damage, so I will be referring the matter to Paddington Police along with the footage and any other information, which will no doubt come through,' the 38-year-old added.

The CCTV footage captured two females and three males walking along the pathway in front of Roxy's Paddington office, in Sydney's inner-city, at 11.08pm on Friday August 10.

Roxy [pictured] told Daily Mail Australia on Monday: 'One of our custom laser cut signs was ripped cleanly off the wall and left on the floor for our company The Ministry of Talent'

A man, dressed in a pale blue dress shirt, black trousers and lace-up shoes, is then seen ripping a custom laser cut sign off the venue's facade with force.

The sign is then left on the ground and the group flee the scene.

Roxy shared the footage to her Instagram account on Monday morning, and asked anyone who had any information on the man or the group's identity to come forward.

An employee at Paddington's The London Hotel told Roxy shortly after: 'I just watched your footage of the vandalism to your building. When I was working at the London on Friday night, the same group of people were there.

Captured: CCTV footage captured two females and three males walking along the pathway in front of Roxy's Paddington office, in Sydney's inner-city, at 11.08pm on Friday August 10

'I remember them distinctly because they were being very loud and disrespectful, we had to get the security guard to kick them out.'

The act of vandalism comes just a year after another mystery offender hurled custom-made egg projectiles at the Paddington office.

A grainy clip, recorded at 11.20pm on Thursday July 13, 2017, captured the unsuspecting perpetrator as they kept their distance to avoid showing their face.

The disguised figure, believed to be a male, could be seen wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and grey tracksuit pants.

Fleeing the scene: After the act of vandalism the group were seen fleeing the scene, leaving the damaged sign on the ground

Identity: Roxy has asked the public to come forward should they know the group's identity

Within four minutes, his task was completed, with Roxy discovering the building covered in red and blue inks splatters the next morning.

And over Easter Weekend last year, the offices were smeared with foul-smelling brown sludge.

The Daily Telegraph later reported that the substance was in fact 'faeces'.

Vandalised: Roxy is seen in July 2017, removing ink from ink-injected eggs, off the facade of the Paddington office

Roxy purchased the building in July 2014 for $2.6million, undergoing a complete refurbishment with Blainey North and SJB.

The space now houses Sweaty Betty PR, The Ministry of Talent and Social Union.

The building is now said to be worth upwards of $6million due to the refurbishment.
She's been overwhelmed with joy ever since she welcomed her first child with husband Jose 'Pepe' Baston on June 19.

And Eva Longoria looked every inch the doting mother as she featured in a heart-warming shoot for Hello! magazine with her newborn son Santiago Enrique.

The former Desperate Housewives actress, 43, who has been in the business for nearly two decades, admitted she's 'anxious' about returning to work as she enjoys her cosy routine with her baby boy.

Family first: Eva Longoria looked every inch the doting mother as she featured in a heart-warming shoot for Hello! magazine with her newborn son Santiago Enrique

In the snap, the yummy mummy looked radiant as she donned a navy silk dress, embellished with delicate ruffles.

The Frontera star complemented her stunning features with glamorous make-up, and framed her visage with voluminous waves.

Eva beamed with delight as she placed her hand on her seven-week-old, who laid beside the brunette on a comfy grey sofa.

Honest: The former Desperate Housewives actress, 43, admitted she's 'anxious' about returning to work as she enjoys her cosy routine with her baby boy

Speaking to the publication, the director branded her connection with Santiago as 'indescribable', and went on to share details of her experience with motherhood.

Eva said: 'He was born so alert! It was like he said, Hey! I know you! Its as if I knew him my whole life.'

Relishing in her tender moments with her son, the Telenovela star confessed she's not quite ready to return to her directing role on upcoming drama series Grand Hotel.

New parents: The star has been overwhelmed with joy ever since she welcomed her first child with husband Jose 'Pepe' Baston on June 19 (pictured May 2015)

In love: Speaking to the publication, the director branded her connection with Santiago as 'indescribable', and went on to share details of her experience with motherhood

She revealed: My son will be two and a half months old and I cant even think about it right now ... I enjoy our routine and our days together.'

Out now: The latest edition of Hello! magazine is available now

'I actually miss him when hes sleeping, so Im like: Ugh. Hurry up and wake up so I can play with you! The thought of going back to work ... I get anxiety thinking about it', she added.

Eva's interview comes after she appeared on ITV's Lorraine to gush about her love for her bundle of joy.

Looking elegant as she promoted her new film Dog Days, the actress said: 'I was breastfeeding and this was the first time Ive done hair and make-up and I think my baby was looking at me going, "Who is this woman, wheres my mom?"'

Speaking of her being a parent, the Texas-born beauty gushed: 'Now that I have my son, its like every cliche they tell you is true  your lifes going to change, youre going to love him so much  I knew Id love him very much, but it feels like my heart is outside of my body when I see him.'

Eva wowed as she sat for her interview with Lorraine's Los Angeles correspondent Ross King in a relaxed fit purple dress - however, she insisted that she's yet back to her pre-pregnancy weight.

'I have a long way to go,' she admitted. '[Santiago] was fully cooked, so I just kept getting bigger and bigger. So it looks like I look great because I was so big so now its definitely going to take some effort to get back to the way I was.'
The Bachelor's first ever Indigenous contestant on Nick 'The Honey Badger' Cummins' upcoming series of the reality dating series, is interested in men and women.

According to NW magazine, Brooke Blurton 'identifies as bisexual'.

Many other bisexual women have appeared on franchise in the past - including Megan Marx, who made headlines when she left Richie Strahan on The Bachelor in 2016 to date co-star Tiffany Scanlon.

She likes guys... and girls! The Bachelor's first ever Indigenous finalist Brooke Blurton has revealed reveals she's bisexual

Natalie Holmberg also revealed she was bisexual before she vyed for the heart of Matthew 'Matty J' Johnson during the 2017 season of the show.

Brooke, 23, tells NW magazine she is looking for a partner with admirable qualities.

'Someone who has passion and drive to do amazing things, but also has empathy and compassion for others,' she said.

'Someone who... has passion and drive to do amazing things, but also has empathy and compassion for others': Brooke has revealed the qualities she is looking for in a partner

Past seasons: Many other bisexual women have appeared on franchise in the past

Megan Marx: She made headlines when she left Richie Strahan on The Bachelor in 2016 to date co-star Tiffany Scanlon

And winner of the show in 2016, Alex Nation, 26, also identified as bisexual, dating AFL player Maegan Luxa after things didn't work out with Richie Strahan when The Bachelor concluded.

After the 'yes' result was announced, Alex took to her Instagram to share a sweet snap with Maegan, penning a heartfelt caption: 'Everywhere around the country, voices of the oppressed rang true. They were not silenced and love prevailed.'

Former contestant of the 2015 Bachelor, Heather Maltman, also rejoiced during the 'yes' vote and took the opportunity to reveal she is bisexual, candidly explaining: 'To me, I see people I am attracted to as wonderful souls, not a gender.'

Former contestant: Natalie Holmberg also revealed she was bisexual before she vyed for the heart of Matthew 'Matty J' Johnson during the 2017 season of the show

Winner in 2016: Alex Nation, 26, also identified as bisexual, dating AFL player Maegan Luxa after things didn't work out with Richie Strahan when The Bachelor concluded

Meanwhile, Brooke has also recently spoke about her traumatic childhood experience, revealing her mother committed suicide when she was only 11 years old.

'I've figured out that the way I lived wasn't exactly normal because my brothers and I did go into foster,' she said.

'I just didn't have the stability that young people need. We constantly moved, and I was surrounded by things kids really shouldn't be exposed to at such a young age,' she added.

Former contestant of the 2015 Bachelor: Heather Maltman, also rejoiced during the 'yes' vote and took the opportunity to reveal she is bisexual, candidly explaining: 'To me, I see people I am attracted to as wonderful souls, not a gender'

Having spent the years following the tragic loss of her mother living in fear of drug-fuelled violence, Brooke used her heartbreaking experiences to help others in similar situations.

She volunteers as a mental health service worker and has previously discussed her battles in an SBS program Noongar Dandjoo.

The future Bachelor star has also come out of her experiences a stronger person, becoming a role model for her siblings.
She's on a six-week break from her residency at the Caesars Palace Colosseum in Las Vegas.

And Mariah Carey appears to be spending part of it on a yacht with her beau Bryan Tanaka.

On Sunday the 48-year-old songstress shared an Instagram snap of herself draped over the hunky 35-year-old.

Romantic getaway: Mariah Carey, 48, appeared to be enjoying a loved up break with her beau Bryan Tanaka, 35, in this Instagram she posted on Sunday

The Always Be My Baby crooner showed off her decolletage in a long, pink, animal print dress with a plunging neckline.

With her hair styled in a bun, she peeped sexily over the top of her sunglasses as Bryan held one of her legs around his hunky body.

The backing dancer and choreographer was topless, showing off his chiseled chest, wearing only a pair of blue shorts as he looked lovingly at the celebrity.

Shimmering star: Mariah showed off her fab physique in a silver dress with a plunging neckline on the opening night of her The Butterfly Returns show at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in July

There was no sign of Mariah's seven-year-old twins Monroe and Moroccan.

She shares her children with her amicable ex-husband Nick Cannon, 37, to whom she was married from 2008 to 2016.

Mariah is due to be back on stage at the Colosseum with her show, The Butterfly Returns, on August 31 and will play six shows before wrapping it up on September 10.

Proud mom: Mariah and her seven-year-old twins Moroccan, left, and Monroe, appeared in Harper's Bazaar in June

A month later she will begin the Asian leg of her #1's tour.

It kicks off in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia on October 16.

And she's due to play 13 dates in Taiwan, Macau, China, Philippine, South Korean, Japan, Singapre and Indonesia before it ends in Bangkok, Thailand on November 9.

On a roll: Mariah looked chic in a tight black dress with a mermaid tail ruffle at the Golden Gloves at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills in January after losing more than 30lbs




Big Brother's JC Mounduix continues to find himself in the eye of the storm.

The Miami native was criticized by his co-stars Haleigh Broucher and Angie 'Rockstar' Lantry over his casual use of the phrase #MeToo, the phrase representing the wave of people who have been victims of sexual harassment and assault.

The exchange from the show, which is in its 20th season, came during a back-and-forth amid a live-stream showing Mounduix, 28, Broucher, 21, and Lantry, 34, chatting.

Scroll below for video

Foot in mouth: Big Brother's JC Mounduix, 28, was criticized by his co-stars over his casual use of the phrase #MeToo in a recent excerpt from the show's live-stream

Mounduix, a professional dancer, was relaxing in a chair when he used the phrase in a joking context, at which point a person off-camera told him, 'It's not funny JC, you can't joke about that.'

He replied, 'I've been saying it for 50 days,' causing more backlash an off-camera housemate, who told him, 'And I tell you every single time - the #MeToo movement is about women and sexual harassment.'

Mounduix asked, 'Women or men?' at which point Brett Robinson, 25, told him that 'the idea was [to create] awareness to sexual harassment.'

A woman off-camera told Mounduix that the #MeToo movement is 'about how much [sexual harassment] actually occurs,' and why it's inappropriate for him to use the phrase in a joking manner.

Outspoken: The exchange came during a back-and-forth amid the show's live-stream Saturday

Light: Mounduix didn't seem to take seriously his co-stars' responses to his statements

'When you [say] #MeToo,' she said, 'it's like because you too have been sexually harassed.'

But Mounduix refused to drop the joke.

'That's why when people touch me, I'm like "hashtag MeToo,"' he said, to more groans that he wasn't taking it seriously.

Explanation: Brett Robinson's warnings about the phrase seemed to fall on deaf ears

Fleet of foot: The Miami native is a professional dancer based out of West Hollywood

Lightning rod: Mounduix has raised the ire of his castmates with his freewheeling chatter

Mounduix himself has exhibited behavior linked to sexual harassment, as he told castmate Kaycee Clark it 'feels good' to 'open up' her genitalia with an ice cream scooper, and groped the crotch area of Tyler Crispen.

He's consistently raised eyebrows with his words, as late last month he irritated castmate Rachel Swindler by asking her if she is a trans person.

In another instance, he used the N-word in a discussion with housemate Bayleigh Dayton, who is black, prompting her to warn him, 'Youre not allowed to say that - dont do that again - that was, like, out of control.'

Big Brother airs on CBS Wednesdays and Thursdays at 9/8c and Sundays at 8/7c.
Tammy Hembrow, 24, made headlines across the globe after she was pictured being carried out of Kylie Jenner's 21st birthday party face down on a stretcher over the weekend.

And as rumours swirl about the events leading up to the worrying incident, many fans have been curious to learn more about how the Australian fitness model came to be there in the first place.

The mother-of-two, who hails from Queensland, is a social media sensation who boasts over 8.6 million Instagram followers and 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube.

Who is Tammy Hembrow? Meet the Instagram model and mother-of-two, 24, who built a multi-million dollar fitness empire... and whose party girl antics left her face down in a stretcher outside Kylie Jenner's birthday party. Pictured at a Cosmopolitan event in Sydney this month

Shocking: Tammy made headlines across the globe after she was pictured being carried out of Kylie Jenner's 21st birthday party face down on a stretcher over the weekend

Tammy began her meteoric rise to fame in 2014 when she started documenting her pregnancies with ex-fiance Reece Hawkins via social media.

In 2016, she hit the headlines for the first time after she shared pictures of her incredible transformation just two months after giving birth.

'When I first started getting into social media, honestly, it [started] from boredom,' the fitness influencer previously told E! News.

Va-va-voom! Queensland mother-of-two Tammy is a social media sensation and fitness model who boasts a following of over 8.6 million on Instagram and 1.2 million YouTube subscribers

Yummy mummy alert! Tammy is mother to Wolf, two, and daughter Saskia, one, (pictured) who she shares with her ex-fiance, Australian personal trainer Reece Hawkins

'I really like getting dressed up and I also saw an opportunity in it because people seemed to like what I was posting.'

Tammy is also a firm favourite among celebrities, with Khloe Kardashian previously crediting her as an inspiration behind her own her fitness journey.

In May last year, Khloe wrote a gushing Instagram post about the entrepreneur's awe-inspiring commitment to health and fitness.

Before and after: In 2016, Tammy hit the headlines for the first time after she shared pictures of her incredible transformation just two months after giving birth

Sharing her tips and tricks: Tammy is also the founder of successful fitness app Tammy Fit

'She has motivated me on my fitness journey for longer than she is probably aware of. Seeing how she juggles her beautiful babies and hubby, her ever-growing business and making fitness look easy and glamorous,' the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star, 34, wrote.

Tammy is also a member of Khloe's 'Good Squad', a group of models that promote her Good American denim line.

Last year, she solidified her entrepreneur status by launching her own athleisure company Saski, named after her daughter Saskia.

What can't she do? Tammy also designs her own brand of athleisure wear called Saski Collection, named after her daughter

The company has since sold apparel in over 190 countries, earning a revenue of around $3.6million.

Meanwhile, the businesswoman has been enjoying the success of her fitness app Tammy Fit and her endorsement deals with supplements brand Women's Best.

However, things haven't been going as smoothly in Tammy's personal life.

In June this year, she and her ex-fiance, Australian personal trainer Reece Hawkins, announced that they had separated.

The former couple are parents to son Wolf, two, and daughter Saskia, one.

'One or two months ago, I decided to end things with Reece': In June this year, Tammy and her former fiance, personal trainer Reece Hawkins (left) announced that they had split

Young family: Tammy and Reece became parents at age 20 after just one month of dating

She's not shy! The curvy beauty often takes to social media to flaunt her figure in skimpy attire

In a statement released via YouTube, Tammy revealed why her fiance had been noticeably absent from her life.

'One or two months ago, I decided to end things with Reece. He didn't cheat on me, I didn't cheat on him. It wasn't like that at all,' she said.

However, she appears to have recovered from her heartbreak and was spotted partying with fellow socialite Imogen Anthony earlier this month.

The pair were seen putting on a raunchy display as they danced seductively together at a nightclub.

A week later, Tammy was pictured being carried into an ambulance outside Kylie Jenner's 21st birthday party at Los Angeles hotspot The Delilah.

Just hours after the worrying incident, however, the blonde appeared to have recovered well and was documenting her shopping trip in Beverly Hills on Instagram.

What split? Tammy (right) didn't take long to recover from her breakup, and was spotted partying up a storm with fellow socialite Imogen Anthony (centre) earlier this month
Katie Price's boyfriend has furiously denied TV psychic's Sally Cudmore's claims he elbowed her and had her kicked out of a bar in London.

Kris Boyson, 29, posted a lengthy rant on Facebook on Sunday evening after Sally said she felt 'attacked' by Kris when she went over to give Katie, 40, a reading at Mordens Wine Bar on Saturday.

The personal trainer hit out at the medium calling her 'fame hungry', after Sally spoke of the alleged incident on her social media accounts.

Bitter Facebook spat: Katie Price's boyfriend Kris Boyson has furiously denied TV psychic's Sally Cudmore's claims he elbowed her and had her kicked out of a bar in London

The psychic, who has previously appeared on This Morning, told The Sun: 'I introduced myself [to Katie] and told her about the reading I had done for Sophie.

'It was quite loud in the bar and I leaned in to Katie to hear what she had said to me, but as I did it Kris pushed out his elbow and it hit me in the chest.

'I asked him what he thought he was doing and Katies friend called me the c-word, I was stunned he had attacked me like that.'

Annoyed: Kris, 29, posted a lengthy rant on Facebook on Sunday evening after Sally said she felt 'attacked' when she went over to give Katie, 40, a reading at Mordens Wine Bar

Furious: The personal trainer hit out at the medium calling her 'fame hungry', after Sally spoke of the alleged incident on her social media accounts

Sally added she was asked to leave the bar by bouncers, and accused Katie of laughing with Kris when she was standing outside.

Enraged by her claims of the alleged incident, Kris took to Facebook to share his side of the story.

He said: 'Unfortunately for this women that has history of wanting exposure to boost her business, Mordens has confirmed CCTV of me, Katie and 2 others buying a drink, sitting in a reserved area then leaving before any of this kicked off.

His account: Enraged by her claims of the alleged incident, Kris took to Facebook to share his side of the story

'She was reported to the police by Mordens on the night due to her aggressive behaviour.

'Not quite sure what this is all about or what her motive is other than wanting exposure but CCTV has got you this time. Such a shame there is people like this out there.'

Hitting back Sally responded: 'Wow really!! The lengths I go to to boost my career eh! being elbowed away. I dont need to expose my business.

'So I am the one Kris that wants to expose myself lol so all those photos with you and Katie on the beach dry humping isnt for attention ! Classy.(sic)'

The Sun Online has contacted Katies representatives for comment.

Katie found love again with Kris, who she met through her son Harvey's new fitness plan following the demise of her marriage from third husband, Kieran Hayler.

Despite only confirming their romance weeks ago, Katie and Kris have already holidayed in Bruges, Glasgow and now Thailand - with the star revealing she has finally found a man who 'ticks all the boxes'.

She told OK! in June: 'Hes a mans man. Hes got his own job, hes not false or fame hungry. In that respect, I think this is going to be a more normal relationship and less toxic.'
Tziporah Malkah, formerly known as Kate Fischer, was engaged to billionaire businessman James Packer for two years before splitting in 1998.

And two decades after ending their relationship, the 44-year-old Australian former model has admitted she is keen to reconnect with her old flame.

Speaking exclusively to Daily Mail Australia on Saturday, Tziporah revealed she would be open to reconnecting with James - but strictly as friends.

EXCLUSIVE: 'I'd certainly welcome a friendship with him': Tziporah Malkah has revealed she is open to reconnecting with her billionaire ex-fiance James Packer, two decades after ending their engagement. Pictured: Tziporah and James during their relationship in the late 1990s

'I would certainly welcome a friendship with him,' she said. 'Obviously we had quite a lot in common, that's why we were together.

'I wouldnt reject him if he put his hand of friendship out to me.'

Tziporah, who is the ambassador of homeless charity White Caravan, also addressed bizarre photos that recently surfaced of her leaving a pot plant outside of the Bondi home she and James shared in the '90s.

'Obviously we had quite a lot in common, that's why we were together': Speaking exclusively to Daily Mail Australia on Saturday, Tziporah revealed she would be open to reconnecting with James - but strictly as friends. Pictured: James and Tziporah in the '90s

In the paparazzi photos published in June, Tziporah was shown leaving the plant on the doorstep as a gesture of friendship - despite the fact James had not lived in the property for many years.

She admitted to Daily Mail Australia the images were 'just really embarrassing' and she regretted her impulsive behaviour.

'I act before I think sometimes,' she added. 'And when no-one answered the doorbell I just ran away. It's one of those ideas where you think, "Oh God, this is just embarrassing, why did I do this?"'

'This is just embarrassing, why did I do this?' Tziporah also addressed bizarre photos (above) that surfaced in June of her leaving a pot plant outside of the Bondi home she and James shared in the '90s

Since her split with James, Tziporah had experienced many ups and downs in her personal life.

While living in the US, a friend embezzled her out of her fortune and she returned to Australia penniless, even spending 22 months in a homeless shelter.

'The whole experience being in the women's shelter was terrifying,' she confessed

Good cause: Drawing on her personal experience, Tziporah has teamed up with Australian charity White Caravan to help tackle the housing crisis and keep women safe by offering them transitional housing in renovated caravans

'The women's shelter that housed me had a pretty strict policy when it came to who is allowed to stay there, but unfortunately some people slipped through under the radar, some of them went off their meds and went a bit psychotic.

'There were a few instances where there was screaming and shouting and banging on my door. It was very scary.'

Drawing on her personal experience, Tziporah has teamed up with White Caravan to help tackle the housing crisis and keep women safe by offering them transitional housing in renovated caravans.
He credits the practice of yoga and meditation with helping him overcome addiction.

And Russell Brand is helping other people learn his techniques in a series of bizarre YouTube videos - including one that encourages followers to mimic their breathing to that of a crack addict.

While dressed in nothing but a white blanket, the comedian, 43, demonstrated how to breathe through a Kundalini Yoga excersise, and also related the techniques to smoking weed.

Bizarre: Russell Brand, 43, asked yoga followers to mimic breathing 'like a crack addict' during strange YouTube excersise

Demonstrating the energetic routine, Russell wildly swung his arms around while breathing in quick and sharp breaths.

Upon finishing the lively display, the Rock Of Ages star flung his arms high in the air, and asked his followers to hold in their breath.

Russell no doubt raised some eyebrows with his comments after he likened the action to being a crack addict, explaining said: 'Pull in the breath hard, if you've ever been a crack addict or you like your weed you'll know how to pull that breath in hard'.

Odd: While dressed in nothing but a white blanket, the comedian demonstrated how to breathe through a Kundalini Yoga excersise, and related the breathing to smoking weed

Strange: Upon finishing the lively display, the Rock Of Ages star flung his arms high in the air, and asked his followers to hold in their breath

Teaching: Russell has previously credited the practice of yoga and meditation with helping him overcome addiction

Despite the odd routine and choice of phrasing, fans appeared to love Russell's eccentric techniques, with followers complimenting the star on his lesson.

One fan commented: '"If you like youre weed youll know how to pull the breath in." These are great, I am a teacher of yoga and these are fantastic techniques for energy management', while another wrote: 'This speaks volumes about Russell Brand, he's simply sharing something with all of us that has clearly benefited him.'

Russell had a well-publicised battle with Class A substances back in 2002, resulting in more than a dozen brushes with the law - including a high-profile arrest by the Metropolitan Police for stripping off during an anti-capitalist Mayday protest in Londons teeming Piccadilly Circus.

Giving advice: Russell raised some eyebrows after he said: 'Pull in the breath hard, if you've ever been a crack addict or you like your weed you'll know how to pull that breath in

Supportive: Despite the odd routine and choice of phrasing, fans appeared to love Russell's eccentric techniques, with followers complimenting the star on his lesson.

The star has now been clean from drugs for fifteen years, and even penned a book to help others overcome their demons, titled Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions, in October last year.

Russell has previously credited overcoming his drug addiction with the help of yoga and transcendental meditation - which even his ex wife, Katy Perry, thanked him for after introducing the technique to her during their two-year marriage in 2010.

Meanwhile, Russell's elaborate yoga lesson comes after the news that he was set to become a father for the second time.

New dad: Meanwhile, news that Russell was set to become a father for the second time came to light last month - with wife Laura Gallacher, 31, spotted with a rounded stomach

In an image obtained by The Sun, the funnyman was spotted out with wife Laura Gallacher, 31, who was sporting an extremely rounded stomach at the The Catherine Wheel Pub, close to their home in Henley-On-Thames.

The couple, who became doting parents for the first time after welcoming daughter Mabel in November 2016, were hit with reports of a second child in February before she was spotted with her eye-popping bump in June.

Russell and Laura, who is the younger sister of TV presenter Kirsty Gallacher, looked every inch the delighted expectant couple as they strolled along.

The pair married in a romantic ceremony in Henley-on-Thames in August 2017 with the great and good of showbiz watching including Noel Gallagher and David Baddiel.
She's enjoying her low key relationship with Michael Barrett.

And Anna Faris looked healthy and happy as she arrived in a fashion forward ensemble at the InStyle Day Of Indulgence party in Los Angeles on Friday.

The 41-year-old actress showed off her unique style sense in a flirty floral mini skirt and military.

Floral fun! Anna Faris, 41, arrived in a fashion forward ensemble at the InStyle Day Of Indulgence party in Los Angeles on Friday

Daring to impress, the Overboard thespian flaunted the toned and tanned arms in the chic black tank top.

Her gorgeous gams were thrust on center stage as the flirty skirt cut off mid thigh.

The actress spoke to Marie Claire about life after her split from husband of nine years Chris Pratt.

'I do think I'm a romantic because I love the small things in life. Just like the little pleasures of life that feel like secrets,' she said.

Style icon: The actress showed off her unique style sense in a flirty floral mini skirt and military

'I still always want to keep that as a part of my life, does that make any sense at all? Maybe. I don't know.'

The 41-year-old played down her ex's recent infamous 'divorce sucks' comments.

'It feels like it's more dramatic than it is. Chris and I have a great friendship and Jack is so happy and so loved,' she said, referring to their five-year-old son.

She revealed how she deals with headlines about her: by avoiding them.

'I think that I just sort of learned to not Google myself,' she said. 'And when my sweet assistant is like, "Look what just popped up." I'm like, "F*ck off. I love you but I don't know if I need to know everything."

She continued: 'I think a lot of actors would describe themselves as more introverted than most people would think, because there is that feeling like, you get to hide behind a character. Then, when you do press, you suddenly feel exposed and you have to analyze yourself in a public forum, which is incredibly uncomfortable.'

Anna has been dating cinematographer Michael since November.

Family: Anna shares five-year-old son Jack with Chris Pratt

Summer indulgence: Daring to impress, the Overboard thespian flaunted the toned and tanned arms in the chic black tank top
She's known for portraying Veronica Lodge on The CW's Riverdale.

And Camila Mendes let the cast of her television show along the red carpet and onto the stage at Sunday's Teen Choice Awards.

The 24-year-old actress cut an elegant figure in a fairy tale pink dress as she prepared for a big night at the award show.

Timeless: Camila Mendes let the cast of her television show along the red carpet and onto the stage at Sunday's Teen Choice Awards

The chic frock fell to Camila's shins and she added a couple inches with strappy Sophia Webster heels.

Her sartorial choices showed she's far beyond her years as she paired the classic garment with timeless pendant earrings.

She painted her lips a slightly darker pink and let her dark her cascaded across her shoulders in relaxed curls.

Pure class: The 24-year-old actress cut an elegant figure in a fairy tale pink dress as she prepared for a big night at the award show.

Teamwork: The chic frock fell to Camila's shins and she added a couple inches with strappy Sophia Webster heels

Winners: Her sartorial choices showed she's far beyond her years as she paired the classic garment with timeless pendant earrings

Her co-star Madelaine Petsch, 23, flaunted her slender frame in skintight, floral pants with a matching top.

The Curse of Sleeping Beauty actress wasn't afraid to show some skin as she bared her taut midsection and also showed off some cleavage beneath the bikini-esque top's sheer pieces.

She pulled her fiery tresses into a stylish ponytail that fell down her neck, and added a couple inches with black heels.

Her heavily tattooed co-star and boyfriend Travis Mills showed up in an all black ensemble and wrapped his arm around Madelaine.

Summer fun: Her co-star Madelaine Petsch, 23, flaunted her slender frame in skintight, floral pants with a matching top

Gorgeous: The Curse of Sleeping Beauty actress wasn't afraid to show some skin as she bared her taut midsection and also showed off some cleavage beneath the bikini-esque top's sheer pieces

Vanessa Morgan, 26, who will be returning as a series regular for season three, also wasn't a afraid to show some skin.

She bared her ripped midriff between a polka dot tube top and matching skirt, which fell to just below her knees.

KJ Apa, 21, looked straight out of 70s Hollywood in a a mauve button down shirt and matching trousers.

Cole Sprouse, 26, followed with a retro look of his own, donning a white jacket over a denim shirt and black pants.

Lili Reinhart, 21, sparkled in a glimmering rose frock and added to her natural movie star glamour with red heels.

Matching: Vanessa Morgan, 26, who will be returning as a series regular for season three, also wasn't a afraid to show some skin

Retro: KJ Apa, 21, looked straight out of 70s Hollywood in a a mauve button down shirt and matching trousers

Throwback: Cole Sprouse, 26, followed with a retro look of his own, donning a white jacket over a denim shirt and black pants

Sparkling: Lili Reinhart, 21, sparkled in a glimmering rose frock and added to her natural movie star glamour with red heels

Riverdale started off the Teen Choice Awards with a bang, earning 10 whole awards near the top of the show.

Castmates Lili Reinhart, Cole Sprouse, KJ Apa, Mark Conseulos, Vanessa Morgan, Madelaine Petsch and Camila Mendes all took the stage to accept the Choice TV Drama award.

The CW show's wins didn't stop there, also earning surfboard trophies for Choice Villain, Hissy Fit, and Scene Stealer among others.

Real life couple Cole Sprouse and Lili Reinhart, who play the characters Jughead Jones and Betty Cooper on the show, earned awards for Choice Liplock and another for Choice TV Ship, shorthand for audiences favorite relationship.

Big winners: Riverdale started off the Teen Choice Awards with a bang, earning 10 whole awards near the top of the show

Surfing home: Castmates Lili Reinhart, Cole Sprouse, KJ Apa, Mark Conseulos, Vanessa Morgan, Madelaine Petsch and Camila Mendes all took the stage to accept the Choice TV Drama award
MasterChef judge Gary Mehigan has been embroiled in a new political brawl over his role as a South Australian tourism ambassador.

The State Government is being grilled by the Labor Party opposition because the celebrity chef actually resides in Melbourne, Victoria.

'My question is Gary, where the bloody hell are you?' shadow tourism minister Zoe Bettison boldly asked on Sunday, referencing Lara Bingle's controversial 2006 Tourism Australia campaign.

'Where the bloody hell are you?' Gary Mehigan's role as a South Australia tourism ambassador has come under fire from the State opposition because he primarily resides in Melbourne, Victoria (pictured in South Australia's Barossa Valley in June this year)

According to The Advertiser, Ms Bettison stated: 'My concern is that we haven't seen a lot of Gary here. I don't think he is selling us enough.'

The Labor Party opposition are also asking the State Government to reveal how much they have paid Gary for the plum gig.

Details of the star chef's twelve-month contract are being kept confidential, and are exempt from Freedom Of Information.

Salary secret: Details of the star chef's twelve-month contract are being kept confidential, and are exempt from Freedom Of Information

However, interestingly, Gary was signed on as a South Australian tourism ambassador back in March 2017, when the Labor Party was still in power.

And now, the Liberal State Government have blasted back, accusing the opposition of hypocrisy.

Tourism Minister David Ridgway told The Advertiser: 'It's worth noting, the former [Labor] minister Leon Bignell approved the strict confidentiality provisions, including exemption from Freedom Of Informartion, four days out from the state election [in 2017]'.

Under fire! Gary primarily lives Melbourne, Victoria, but the State Government has urged the opposition to stop 'cooking up personal attacks on a much-loved Australian chef'

He urged the opposition to stop 'cooking up personal attacks on a much-loved Australian chef' and encouraged cooperation in order to promote the 'wonderful state' of South Australia.

While Gary's paycheque for his role as a tourism ambassador is unknown, his salary for MasterChef is also a closely-guarded secret.

According to a 2014 report in the IB Times, Gary and fellow judges Matt Preston and George Columbaris took home '$1 million each' for that year's season.
She has her first baby on the way.

And Kat Von D tenderly cradled her growing bump when she stepped out wearing a reliably Gothic-chic ensemble in the City Of Angels this Sunday.

The 36-year-old was joined by her husband Leafar Seyer, sharing a kiss with him as they soaked in the sun in the West Hollywood area.

Stepping out: Kat Von D cradled her bump when she stepped out wearing a reliably Gothic chic ensemble in the City Of Angels this Sunday

Kat, who wrote on Instagram last month that she 'has the intention of raising a vegan child, without vaccinations,' teamed a black hat with cream-rimmed shades.

Her man slid into a form-fitted floral button-down with short sleeves, popping on metallic-tipped shoes and skintight black trousers.

Kat went public with her pregnancy to her 6.7 million Instagram followers on May 8, posting an evocative portrait-style snapshot of herself and her husband.

Throwing her bump into relief by caressing it from the bottom, the erstwhile reality star modeled a gleaming haunted-house chic gown and captioned: 'Its a boy.'

All that sweet affection: The 36-year-old was joined by her husband Leafar Seyer, sharing a kiss with him as they soaked in the sun in the West Hollywood area

Oh baby! Kat went public with her pregnancy to her 6.7 million Instagram followers on May 8, posting an evocative portrait-style snapshot of herself and her husband

Kat, who like her new husband was born in Mexico and moved to America when she was a small child, married the Prayers musician in an intimate Beverly Hills ceremony early this year before throwing an extravagant Goth wedding months later.

Leafar, who on top of being a musician also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel about his gang past called Living Dangerously, is Spouse No. 2 for Kat.

She was previously married for four years to her fellow tattoo artist Oliver Peck, whom she divorced in 2007 - the same year she both gave up alcohol and began starring on her claim-to-fame reality show LA Ink.

Strict: Kat wrote on Instagram last month that she 'has the intention of raising a vegan child, without vaccinations'

Enjoying a four-season run on TLC before it was scuttled in 2011, LA Ink was a spin-off of Miami Ink, on which Kat had also been a cast member.

Between marriages, Kat was engaged to Sandra Bullock's ex-husband Jesse James, who was himself between his third and fourth wives at the time.

After her split from Jesse, Kat had another broken engagement, this time to electronic musician deadmau5, whose actual name is Joel Zimmerman.

Kat's own full handle is Katherine Von Drachenberg, whereas Leafar Seyer is a backwards version of his Christian name Rafael Reyes.
Sam Cochrane made extraordinary allegations last week that his ex-fiancee Tara Pavlovic physically abused him during their relationship - an accusation she later confirmed as being true, but 'out of character'.

And as the 28-year-old nanny moves on with Gold Coast plumber Nick Shepherdson, it has been claimed she is worried about the strain the negative publicity is placing on her new romance.

A source told Woman's Day on Monday that Nick 'doesn't want any drama', adding that the accusations about Tara's past behaviour 'have raised some concerns'.

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More drama! Tara Pavlovic (left) 'is worried about the future of her new romance with Nick Shepherdson' after it was claimed she subjected her ex-fiance Sam Cochrane to 'physical and verbal abuse'. Pictured right: Tara and Nick

The magazine, which first broke the news of Tara's 'abusive' behaviour, further alleged that Nick's family and friends are 'concerned' about his new relationship.

'Nick's friends and family have raised some concerns about [Tara's] behaviour,' an insider claimed. 'Nick's just a really nice, down-to-earth guy, who doesn't want any drama.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Tara Pavlovic for comment.

Scandal: A source told Woman's Day on Monday that Nick 'doesn't want any drama', adding that the claims about Tara's past behaviour 'have raised some concerns'. Pictured: Tara and her ex-fiance Sam Cochrane, who she allegedly subjected to 'physical and verbal abuse'

It comes after Sam made sensational claims that Tara subjected him to physical and verbal abuse before their break-up in June.

Sam accused Tara of violent behaviour leading up to their split in a bombshell interview with Woman's Day last Monday, prompting her to respond by branding him 'emotionally abusive'.

Tara later admitted on Instagram that she did hit Sam at their engagement party, but alleged he 'pushed her' to do it and insisted her actions were 'out of character'.

Explosive: Sam accused Tara of violent behaviour leading up to their June split in a bombshell interview with Woman's Day last Monday, prompting her to respond by branding him 'emotionally abusive'

Tara had previously alluded on social media to her experience of dating a 'narcissist', but did not mention Sam by name.

'There are terrible people in this world. I've learned that over the past six months,' she wrote. 'I reached a low I never knew I could reach and I turned into a person I have never been before... I am a good person and that's all that matters.'

Earlier this month, Tara told Daily Mail Australia that she felt 'relieved' following the couple's split and alleged that her relationship with Sam was 'toxic'.

'Sam left me after a fight thinking I would beg for him back - he always threatened to leave and played games,' she claimed.

'But this time I told him to never speak to me again and then he begged for me back for weeks.'

'The relationship was just the most toxic thing. I feel the biggest sense of relief now that it's all over. I finally feel like I'm myself again.'

Sam and Tara confirmed their split via Instagram in June.

They got engaged during the Bachelor In Paradise finale, which was filmed in Fiji last year and aired in late April.

Sam proposed with a GS Diamonds ring believed to be worth $11,000. Following their break-up, he announced plans to auction it off for charity.
Flight attendant Tenille Favios is set to compete for Nick 'Honey Badger' Cummins' heart on The Bachelor this year.

And it seems the brunette beauty, 25, is no stranger to dating reality TV stars, admitting to NW magazine that she once dated Michael Turnbull, 37, not long after he was dumped by Sam Frost on The Bachelorette.

'He was running a competition on his Instagram account to win a Valentine's Day date with him and he was donating money to charity,' she told the publication on Monday.

'He'd been liking my pictures on Instagram!' Bachelor contestant Tenille Favios, 25, (left) has reveals she once dated Bachelorette reject Michael Turnbull, 37 (right)

'He had been liking some of my pictures on Instagram, so I asked my friend, 'Should I apply for this?'. And I did.'

To her delight, Tenille won the competition and was whisked away for a romantic dinner with the suave real estate agent.

However, things became awkward when a group of onlookers decided to press their phones against the restaurant window, showing them pictures of Sam Frost.

'I was like, 'Oh my God, this is so weird,'' Things became awkward during their Valentines dinner when a group of onlookers decided to press their phones against the restaurant window, showing them pictures of Sam Frost

'I was like, 'Oh my God, this is so weird,'' she confessed.

While Tenille admitted that things didn't work out romantically between the pair, she insisted that they still keep in touch and remain good friends.

Michael has experienced his fair share of romance controversies since being dumped by Sam Frost.

In December 2015, he began dating single mother Katrina Vincent after pursuing her on social media.

Just friends! While Tenille (pictured) admitted that things didn't work out romantically between the pair, she insisted that they still keep in touch and remain good friends

Where it all began! Michael has experienced his fair share of romance controversies since being dumped by Sam Frost (pictured)

The pair split up a few months later, with Katrina telling Woman's Day magazine that Michael dumped her because he didn't want to date someone with a child.

Michael retreated from the dating game for some months before his relationship with much-younger student Isabella Gonsalves in March 2016.

Two months later, Isabelle confirmed on Facebook that she had broken up with Michael after discovering he had 'no chill'.

Former flame: In December 2015, he began dating single mother Katrina Vincent (pictured) after pursuing her on social media

Moving on: After splitting from Katrina Vincent, Michael found love with much-younger student Isabella Gonsalves (right) in March 2016

In March 2017 he began another short-lived relationship with model Bijanka Dobrev.

Bijanka confirmed their split months later on Facebook by uploading a series of leaked text message shared between the two, accompanied with the caption: 'Michael Turnbull lies'.

Within the text message exchange, Michael asked Bijanka to be his girlfriend just days before asking whether she would marry him.

He has a type! In 2017 he enjoyed relationships with blonde beauties Bijanka Dobrev (left) and Dina Pinteric (right)

It didn't take long for him to move on, sparking romance with retail sales assistant Dina Pinteric.

'She's an incredible woman and I feel very lucky to have her in my life,' he told Mamamia at the time.

In April this year he was photographed getting cosy with First Dates contestant and Maxim hopeful Tash Candyce.

However, things turned sour a month later when the love-birds were pictured sharing a tense exchange on a Melbourne street.

The couple have since parted ways.
He has battled genetically altered dinosaurs in the last two Jurassic World blockbusters.

And on Sunday, Chris Pratt was awarded for his efforts when he won Choice Summer Movie Actor at the 2018 Teen Choice Awards for his role as Owen Grady in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

The crowd went wild when the 39-year old was announced as winner and then strutted on stage to get his surfboard with a big grin on his face.

A-list movie star: Chris Pratt won Choice Summer Movie Actor at the 2018 Teen Choice Awards

Teen Choice winner: The actor won for his role as Owen Grady in Lost World: Fallen Kingdom

The crowd had good reason for their enthusiasm.

The actor looked every bit the movie star that he is dressed in classic Ted Baker two-piece suit that was paired with a black polka-dot shirt.

He wore his short locks stylishly pulled combed back and with a left part.

But on this night, and in classic Pratt style, the actor used equal parts charisma and humor to address the excited audience.

Stylish: Pratt looked every bit the movie star dressed in a classic Ted Baker two-piece suit with a black polka-dot shirt

Chemistry: The actor was joined by his Jurassic World co-star via video chat for the acceptance speech

Duel wins: Howard won Choice Summer Movie Actress for her role in Fallen Kingdom

'I haven't been a teenager in a long time,' the hunky actor joked when he accepted the award.

Pratt's Jurassic World co-star Bryce Howard, who also won for Choice Summer Movie Actress, was brought up on big screen via video chat because she couldn't attend the event in person.

And the two, once again, showed their great chemistry with a chummy and adoring acceptance speech.

Wow factor: The co-stars showed their undeniable chemistry during the acceptance speech

Humble: Pratt used charisma, humility and humor to wow the the audience

Pratt took time out to thanks God in his speech, while Howard reaped praise to her co-star.

'The only thing better than running from dinosaurs is running from dinosaurs with Chris Pratt,' she gushed.

Their undeniable chemistry has helped turn the last two Jurassic World installments into major blockbusters. The 2015 movie earned more than $1.6billion worldwide, while Fallen Kingdom has raked-in more than $1.2billion since its release May 21.
Actress Ronni Hawk did not appear alongside four of her On My Block castmates at the FOX Teen Choice Awards Sunday as they accepted the honors for the Choice Breakout Show.

Diego Tinoco, Jason Genao, Sierra Capri and Brett Gray came up to accept the honors for the award at The Forum in Inglewood, California without Hawk, who was embroiled in controversy about four months ago when fans of the program complained about a number of tweets she had past sent in support of both President Donald Trump and against gun control, as reported by Buzzfeed.

It was not immediately clear why Hawk, who portrays Olivia on the Netflix comedy, did not accompany her castmates onstage when their show was announced as the victor in a category that included shows The Resident, Black Lightning, Anne with an E, 9-1-1 and Siren.

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Question: Ronni Hawk, 18, (below) did not appear alongside four of her On My Block castmates (above, L-R, Diego Tinoco, Jason Genao, Sierra Capri, and Brett Gray) at the FOX Teen Choice Awards Sunday as they accepted the honors for the Choice Breakout Show at the LA Forum

Hawk, 18, was present at the ceremony, walking the red carpet in a seasonal ensemble of a shoulder-less light blue top with fringes hanging off the bottom. The Boca Raton, Florida native rounded out her ensemble with matching Capri pants, sliver high heels, with her wavy brown mane pulled back as she made her entrance.

She also posed with three of her castmates - Genao, Capri and Jessica Marie Garcia - during entrances.

Hawk found herself in hot water this past spring after a number of her tweets speaking in favor of Trump resurfaced, spurring some fans of the series to call for her firing. (A change.org petition amassed more than 2,000 signatures in favor of her ouster.)

On April 24, she took to social media with a detailed statement in which she chalked her opinions up to her young age at the time she posted them: 'The truth is that I was 16 years old when I put that post out there and at 18, I know know that I am not informed enough on several different subjects to be posting blindly.'

Big win: The Netflix comedy beat The Resident, Black Lightning, Anne with an E, 9-1-1 and Siren in their category

Fashionista: She wore a shoulder-less light blue top with fringes hanging off the bottom, matching Capri pants and sliver high heels

Out and about: Hawk posed with three of her co-stars during entrances

Mea culpa: Ronni took to social media last spring to clarify the issue of her beliefs

She said that she cherishes her stint on On My Block, and that being on the program has changed her on a personal level.

'What I do know, is that being on this show has been one of the most special things in my life and I do not take it for granted,' she said. 'I learned to much from this show  about injustices that take place in this world and that being silent is just as bad as doing nothing.'

Hawk said she was 'nervous to speak up' with the knowledge she couldn't 'make everyone happy.'
Chris Hardwick made a tearful speech to mark his return to Talking Dead on Sunday after abuse allegations caused his temporary suspension from the show.

Hardwick, 46, was removed as host of the show in June after his ex-girlfriend Chloe Dykstra published an essay claiming that she was emotionally and physically abused for three years by an unnamed ex-boyfriend, believed to be Hardwick.

The TV host denied all allegations and he was reinstated to the show after an investigation by AMC and Ivy Kagan Bierman of the law firm Loeb & Loeb.

Hardwick returned to the show on Sunday as it was revealed a female executive producer and a 'handful' of the show's 25-person staff left in protest after he was brought back on.

Emotional return: Chris Hardwick wiped away tears as he returned to Talking Dead on Sunday following a temporary suspension due to abuse allegations

Former couple: Hardwick is shown with ex-girlfriend Chloe Dykstra in November 2013 in Los Angeles

He opened AMC's official aftershow for The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead with a tearful speech.

'Hi, normally I would recap the show that we're about to talk about here, but instead I really just want to take a minute and say that I'm so appreciative to be standing here right now,' he said, wiping away tears.

'And I want to thank you, The Walking Dead community for all of your support these last couple of months, you know this show is not just a job to me, this is a vital part of my life you know, and this has been a sanctuary these last seven years we've been here.'

'This has been with me through good times and bad times and I have so much gratitude to you the fans and the producers and the amazing cast of both of these shows, you know for allowing me to come here and be a part of this community every week,' he continued.

'This is a community and you know, we're on the precipice of a lot of changes on both Walking Dead shows in the coming weeks and months and I am so looking forward to going on that journey with you and I've said the following words a million times, countless times, and I have never been more thankful than I am in this very moment so say to you that I am Chris Hardwick and this is Talking Dead.'

So appreciative: The 46-year-old TV host thanked The Walking Dead community for all the support

Every word: Dykstra posted a tweet on Friday saying she stood by every word in her essay

After his emotional speech, Hardwick launched into some analysis of the midseason premiered of Fear the Walking Dead.

He was joined by actress Danay Garcia who plays Luciana on FTWD, actress Yvette Nicole Brown and executive producer Ian Goldberg.

Hardwick soon recovered from his tearful opening to laugh about the plot lines and characters of FTWD with his guests.

He closed the show by saying: 'I just want to thank you all so much again, all the wonderful people who work on our staff here at Talking Dead, for all of you fans watching at home, your support has really meant the world to me.'

'I will be very happy to see you next week,' he concluded.

Wet eyes: Hardwick wipes his eyes several times at the start of the show

Big hug: Yvette Nicole Brown who subbed for Hardwick gave him a hug

Hardwick's tear-filled return comes as it was revealed he had a 'very emotional' meeting with Talking Dead staffers on Wednesday, according to The Wrap.

Sources said that Hardwick gathered the staff and apologized for the scandal. They described his demeanor as 'apologetic and contrite'.

Hardwick also reportedly told staff members he would have one-on-one meetings with anyone who wanted to address additional concerns.

The abuse allegations against the host first came to light after Dykstra published an essay titled 'Rose-Colored Glasses: A Confession'.

Dykstra, an actress and cosplayer, went on to claim that she had suffered 'long-term abuse' by an ex-boyfriend who was 20 years her senior.

She said the former boyfriend, who is never named in the essay, gave her a set of rules she had to follow and made her cut off all her close male friends.

The guests: Danay Garcia and executive producer Ian Goldberg joined Yvette as guests on the show

Dykstra was also not allowed to have alcohol, because her boyfriend was sober. Hardwick has often discussed his struggles with alcohol addiction.

'Before we began dating he said, "I noticed you have a glass of wine with dinner. That's going to stop,'" she wrote.

According to the actress, other rules included not speaking in public places because he thought 'people recognized him and were listening to our conversations.'

'Our dinners out were usually silent, him on his phone,' she added.

Dykstra also accused her ex of sexually assaulting her on a regular basis before their breakup in 2014.

'I was expected to be ready for him when he came home from work...Every night, I laid there for him, occasionally in tears. He thought the whole idea was funny,' she wrote. 'To be fair, I did go along with it out of fear of losing him.'

Dykstra said that after she ended the three-year relationship, her ex retaliated by blacklisting her.

Showing support: Brown, who was celebrating her birthday, showed her support for Hardwick

This week Dykstra tweeted that she still stands by 'every single word' of her essay.

'I made sure it was unembellished, factual, and that I had evidence to back it up in order to protect my self in case of ACTUAL litigation (not a network investigation, where I'm not protected', she wrote.

After Dykstra's blog post went viral, multiple Talking Dead staffers told The Wrap that Hardwick was known for outbursts and loud confrontations that were similar to those his ex had described.

And a former employee who worked for Hardwick at Nerdist claimed he made it hard for individuals to find work in the future if he felt they had betrayed him, just as Dykstra claimed he derailed her career following their break-up.

Hardwick's name has since been restored on the Nerdist website, which he co-founded.

He has also been reinstated as host of NBC's prime time game show The Wall and appeared as a guest judge on America's Got Talent last week.
Rebel Wilson had a spring in her step when she headed out on the town in Los Angeles on Sunday.

The 38-year-old Aussie actress attended the annual InStyle Day of Indulgence party.

The party is every bit as indulgent as the name suggests, with stars in attendance treated to freebies and spa treatments.

Eye candy! Rebel Wilson wears eye-catching graphic white T-shirt as she steps out for party in LA

And Rebel was no exception to this year's guest list, appearing to have cleaned up at this year's event.

After walking in with just her handbag, the funny lady was later seen emerging with several bags brimming with freebies.

There was no missing the Pitch Perfect star, who stepped out in a graphic white T-shirt printed with two eyes with red love hearts on her chest.

Written above each eye were the words 'eye' and 'candy'.

Eye spy: There was no missing the Pitch Perfect star, who stepped out in a graphic white T-shirt printed with two eyes with red love hearts on her chest

Loot: After walking in with just her handbag, the funny lady was later seen emerging with several bags brimming with freebies

She also wore a knee-length black pencil skirt with a frilly hemline.

Rebel rounded out her look with a pair of studded silver slip-on loafers.

Although she arrived wearing a pair of black cat-eye sunglasses, she appeared to have picked up a new pair inside the event.

Silver linings: Rebel wore a knee-length black pencil skirt with a frilly hemline, and rounded out her look with a pair of studded silver slip-on loafers

Rebel was later spotted exiting the party in a pair of brown aviator shades.

Her medium-length blonde hair sat in loose waves around her shoulders.

The actress will next be seen on the big screen in The Hustle alongside Anne Hathaway, 35, a remake of the 1988 comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
She's expecting the arrival of her first baby boy in just under two weeks.

And former My Kitchen Rules Star Zana Pali is bumping along nicely, having just past the 38-week mark in her pregnancy.

The 26-year-old celebrated upcoming motherhood by sharing a stunning snap to Instagram on Sunday, in which she is seen flaunting her blossoming baby bump in Calvin Klein underwear.

'Ready for this little man to enter the world': Heavily pregnant My Kitchen Rules star Zana Pali flaunts her blossoming baby bump in Calvin Klein underwear

Zana, who will welcome her first child with husband Gianni Romano on August 25th, sported a comfortable bralette teamed up with a matching pair of black briefs.

Revealing her pregnancy glow, Zana's makeup look consisted of bold brows, a pop of tangerine eye shadow and a slick of nude-tinted lip gloss.

She captioned the post: 'Officially have made it past the 38 week pregnancy hurdle. Haven't reached the nesting stage yet however, definitely ready for this little man to enter the world.

Almost there! The former My Kitchen Rules Star Zana Pali is bumping along nicely, having just past the 38-week mark into her pregnancy

'Body is in major struggle mode carrying the extra weight. I have a long road ahead of me shedding all of the pizzas off once he's out!' she comically wrote, followed with the hashtags '#38weekspregnant #pregnant #babybump'.

Zana and husband Gianni recently prepared a nursery for their new addition - offering a glimpse of the lavish designer getup on social media.

Adorned with embellishments from Dolce & Gabbana, Versace and Gucci directly imported from Italy, the pasted-themed nursery has been in the works since Zana's first trimester.

'Body is in major struggle mode carrying the extra weight. I have a long road ahead of me shedding all of the pizzas off once he's out!' she comically wrote on the Instagram post, followed with the hashtags '#38weekspregnant #pregnant #babybump'

'One of the first things I bought was the grey and white Gucci blanket,' she said while speaking to News.com.au this month.

And it's not the first time the former lawyer has splashed the cash for her soon-to-arrive bundle of joy.

In June, Zara hosted a luxurious over-the-top baby shower with Gianni at The Langham's private function room that featured a high tea for guests.

The brunette beauty stunned in a pastel-tinged beaded frock by Bonita Couture and finished off the look with a golden crown by Ashlee Lauren.

Zana and Gianni are both accomplished young lawyers who shot to fame on the 2016 season of My Kitchen Rules.

Glam baby! In June, Zara hosted a luxurious over-the-top baby shower with Gianni at The Langham's private function room that featured a high tea for guests
She has owned the role of Grace Adler in the hit sitcom Will & Grace.

But on Sunday, Debra Messing made a splash at Jennifer Klein's 20th Annual InStyle Day of Indulgence Party.

The star-studded event brings together some of the biggest names in Hollywood for an afternoon of fun, food and spa treatments as they check out some of the best new products.

Grand entrance: Debra Messing shined when she arrived to the 20th Annual InStyle Day of Indulgence in Los Angeles on Sunday

Never one to hold back with her enthusiasm, the 49-year old flashed that million dollar smile that her fans know and love, when she arrived for the who's who event.

She oozed fresh and breezy in a bright blue leggy dress that was cut above the knees to showcase her famous gams.

The number had a matching belt that was tied around her waist to highlight her toned figure, and she carried an amazing white and black purse over her shoulders.

She wore her trademark raven tresses long with lots of volume and body and had a pair of sunglasses stylish placed on top of head to help keep her hair off of her face.

Shining star: The Will & Grace actress turned heads in a bold blue dress

Say cheese: Debra posed with event hostess Jennifer Klein (l) and Warren Diane (middle)

Selfie time: The Will & Grace actress hammed it up with Rebel Wilson (l) and Allison Janney (r)

Debra shared a couple of pictures from the star-studded event on her Instagram.

In one caption she wrote,'With my twin, the hostess with the mostess, Jennifer Klein, and the greatest songwriter alive, the brillient @warren_diane who happens to be a cool chic on top of it.' #Sundaysoiree #prebirthdayfun.

She added, 'Girls Gathering @allisonjanney & @rebelwilson are fun times squared,' along with an adorable selfie alongside Rebel Wilson and Allison Janney.

Will & Grace first aired from 1998 to 2006 and was a huge hit on NBC.

It was rebooted after an 11-year hiatus in 2017, and has been green-lit for a second season, but this time around it has been expanded to 18 new episodes

Back in the saddle: Debra reprised her role as Grace Adler in the reboot of Will & Grace in 2017
They jetted off to Macedonia on a family holiday last week.

Now lovebirds Sam Wood and Snezana Markoski have taken time off parenting duties to spend some quality time together, leaving their kids in Macedonia.

Sam Wood took to his Instagram on Monday to share a busty snap of his soon-to-be wife Snez holding a bottle of French champagne and rose.

Busting out! Bachelor Sam Wood's fiancee Snezana Markoski flaunts eye-popping cleavage in a skimpy yellow ensemble on a family holiday in Europe

She wore a cleavage-baring yellow crop top and matching high-wasted skirt.

'Drink responsibly,' the caption read.

Snez, 38, also shared some tropical holiday snaps getting cosy with her fitness instructor beau, some of which they were seen holding hands and enjoying the beautiful Greece weather at the popular Mykonos hot-spot Nammos.

In another series of pics they are seen attempting a good snap but struggled with the wind, leaving Snez's hair to blow over her face.

'When you say 'do not MOVE or I'll kill you' and he literally stands still for 100 pics because he can't wait for it to be over,' she captioned the series of snaps followed by the boyfriends of Instagram hashtag.

The look of love: Now lovebirds Sam Wood and Snezana Markoski have taken time off parenting duties to spend some quality time together, leaving their kids in Macedonia

Stunning: Snezana stunned in a yellow ensemble while having lunch at the popular lunch spot Nammos in Mykonos

The cute social media snap comes after rumours circulated the pair were heading to Macedonia to tie-the-knot.

Sam, took to his Instagram story last Wednesday to document his genetically-blessed brood packing for their upcoming overseas jaunt.

The first video he posted to the photo-sharing-app showed his stunning bride-to-be, 38, cuddling the couple's 10-month-old daughter Willow.

Relaxed: They were seen getting cosy while enjoying lunch at Nammos on Sunday

The tiny tot appeared to be distracting the duo from their task at hand as fans could see an empty suitcase in the background.

'Packing for Macedonia and someone (is) making it very difficult!' Sam captioned the video.

The hunk also posted a sweet snap of his beaming daughter sitting in an opened suitcase.

Adorable: Sam, took to his Instagram story last Wednesday to document his genetically-blessed brood packing for their upcoming overseas jaunt

'Carry on...?' he captioned the cute snap.

Elsewhere, Sam filmed the Macedonian-born beauty packing a bag of baby essentials for Willow.

'What are you two doing? Look at this bag...formula, nappies, baby wipes and those little biscuit things that she eats...Willow is this your bag?' he exclaimed in the clip.

Sam and Snezana welcomed daughter, Willow, in October 2017.

They fell in love on the 2015 season of The Bachelor and the pair became engaged at the end of that same year.
The Block's high-flyers, Courtney Brown, 34, and Hans Baumgartner, 37, met in 2011 and got engaged just one week before they commenced filming the hit renovation show this year.

And as soon as host, Scotty Cam calls 'tools down' on the Nine Network reality TV juggernaut, the well-traveled couple plan to tie the knot in an 'amazing destination wedding.'

Speaking to TV Week on Monday the first-class flight attendant divulged details about her upcoming nuptials with her pilot fiance.

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'We're such travellers!' The Block's Courtney Brown (left) and Hans Baumgartner (right) reveal plans to tie the knot in a destination wedding

'We have been so focused on The Block, so it's only now we have just been talking about where we want to get married,' she explained.

'Hans and I are such travelers, we want to have an amazing destination wedding,' Courtney revealed.

The Western Australian couple plan to exchange vows in either 'Mexico or the Barossa Valley in South Australia,' according to the publication.

Beachside or countryside? The WA engaged duo (pictured) plan to exchange vows in either 'Mexico or the Barossa Valley in South Australia'

The brunette beauty dished more details about the aviation duo's lavish overseas nuptials and revealed the pair will opt for a 'small and intimate' celebration.

'We want to make it small and intimate but make it a great party as well,' she said.

The first-time renovators from Perth are yet to lock-in a wedding date.

Hours before the premiere of the popular Nine Network program last week, Confidential revealed contestant Courtney once enjoyed a successful modelling career in the noughties.

'We want to make it small and intimate but make it a great party as well': While the aviation duo (pictured) are yet to lock-in a wedding date, the brunette beauty said they've decided to opt for a 'small and intimate' celebration

'It's not something that I tell people': The Block's Courtney Brown, 34, (right) reveals she once worked as an international model. Pictured with fiance Hans (left)

Speaking to the publication last week, the WA beauty confirmed her former model status but conceded: 'It's not something that I tell people.'

'I'm reluctant to talk about my modelling days because of how people can perceive you  like people have already perceived us in a certain way just being a pilot and a flight attendant,' she explained.

The former beauty queen told the publication her modelling past can often sneak up on her partner too.

'He's a little bit shocked, people saying, ''Oh I remember you from Miss Universe in 2009,'' and he's like, ''What Miss Universe, who are you?'' He knew I did modelling and loved I had travelled so much with it,' she said.

The brunette stunner revealed she forged a strong bond with many successful models during her tenure, namely David Jones ambassador, Jessica Gomes, 33.

'He's a little bit shocked': The former beauty queen told the publication her modelling past can often sneak up on her partner too. Pictured Courtney Brown (left) and Hans Baumgartner (right) competing on The Block 2018

While comparisons may form between Courtney and The Block winner and bikini model, Elyse Knowles, she insists she has no plans to kick-start her catwalk career.

Courtney was discovered after she was chosen as a finalist in both the Dolly and Girlfriend magazine model searches.

She has since gone on to feature in campaigns for Portmans alongside Miranda Kerr and has strut down some of the world's most elite runways in Milan, Hong Kong and London, according to Confidential.

Here we go! Meet the cast of The Block's new season who beat out 45,000 other hopefuls

Courtney and Hans, a flight attendant and pilot from WA beat out 45,000 other hopefuls for a spot on the renovation show and believe their 'perfectionist' ways will take them far in the competition.

This season, The Block's contestants will be renovating Melbourne's notorious Gatwick Hotel, a grungy St Kilda property that was once known as a refuge for the city's down and out.

Speaking to Woman's Day last week, host Scott Cam says the pressure got to some of the competitors right from the beginning.

'This series, right from the get-go, I have had to talk a few people down from the ledge, which was unusual because that normally doesn't happen until week five, but this time it happened straight away,' Scott told the publication.

The Block will return on Sunday night at 7pm on Channel Nine.
When Australian actress Yael Stone welcomed her first child in May, things did not go according to plan.

While Orange Is The New Black star says that the experience in some ways left her feeling like a 'failure' it has also inspired her to help pregnant women around the world who have less access to healthcare than herself.

The 33-year-old attempted to have a water birth at home in Australia, but after 21 hours of labour the actress was rushed to hospital where she underwent an emergency Caesarean section to deliver her daughter, Pemau Stone Bancroft.

Close call: When Australian actress Yael Stone welcomed her first child in May, things did not go according to plan. While Orange Is The New Black star says that the experience in some ways left her feeling like a 'failure' it has inspired her to help pregnant women around the world who have less access to healthcare than herself

The theatre star shared her emotional journey with her one million Instagram followers in two lengthy posts on Monday.

'Im sharing the most vulnerable moment Ive ever experienced. We lived a lifetime during the birth. We labored at home for 18 hours, hoping to deliver there naturally,' she began.

'The first 10 hours I felt like a warrior, after that something changed. The next 8 hours had me questioning myself, digging deeper than ever before and still not making the progress that our baby needed.

Difficult: The 33-year-old attempted to have a water birth at home in Australia, but after 21 hours of labour the actress was rushed to hospital where she underwent an emergency Caesarean section to deliver her daughter, Pemau Stone Bancroft

Lucky: 'The first 10 hours I felt like a warrior, after that something changed... I felt like a failure when knew it was time to go to hospital but we were so incredibly lucky to have that as an option,' the actress said

'I felt like a failure when knew it was time to go to hospital but we were so incredibly lucky to have that as an option,' the actress continued.

Yael shared an image of the water birth, in which she is submerged in a plastic pool with her partner, Jack Manning Bancroft, comforting her.

She also shared an image in which she was nestled in a hospital bed, explaining: 'By hour 21 of labor I was being rushed off for an emergency C-section.

Saving grace: 'When our beautiful daughter arrived she needed help to breathe and I needed help stay conscious. Without modern medicine and the expertise of the doctors and nurses our baby would not be here, I would not be here' she explained

Charity: The star says she was inspired her help mothers who don't have life-saving access to healthcare. 'I learned about the @aminatafoundation who are saving mothers and babies in Sierra Leone,' she told her fans

'When our beautiful daughter arrived she needed help to breathe and I needed help stay conscious. Without modern medicine and the expertise of the doctors and nurses our baby would not be here, I would not be here.'

She admitted: 'Our birth experience was not what Id wanted for but I know how lucky I am to hold my baby and feel her heart beating next to mine'.

The star says that in 'making peace' with her experience she was inspired her help mothers who don't have the life-saving access to healthcare that she does.

New delivery: The actress and her partner, Jack Manning Bancroft, welcomed their daughter Pemau Stone Bancroft on May 30

'In searching for the positive I learned about the @aminatafoundation who are saving mothers and babies in Sierra Leone where you are 200 times more likely to die giving birth than in Australia, where I was lucky enough to give birth,' she wrote.

The outspoken star added: 'Im grateful to Aminata and part of my healing will be making a donation.'

Yael and Jack welcomed their daughter Pemau Stone Bancroft on May 30, a representative confirmed to Us Weekly.

Famous face: Yael is best known for her role as Lorna Morella in the hit Netflix prison dramedy Orange is the New Black. Yael is pictured on the set of Orange is the New Black

'On May 30th Pemau Stone Bancroft was born to Yael Stone and Jack Manning Bancroft,' the rep said. 'Her mum and dad are very tired and very much in love.

'She was named after her great great great grandmother who provides a powerful link to the past, the Bancrofts oldest link to the Djanbun clan of the Bunjalung nation.'

Yael is best known for her role as Lorna Morella in the hit Netflix prison dramedy while Jack is CEO of AIME, a youth mentoring organization.

Star of stage and screen: She is also well known as a theatre star in Australia. Yael is pictured on the set of Orange is the New Black




She recently jetted off to Barcelona for a romantic holiday with her partner, Jeremy Parisi.

Yet, Kelly Brook, 38, reminisced about her idyllic Cannes trip on Instagram on Sunday as she shared a striking shot featuring her sensational curves and eye-popping cleavage in a striking blue gingham bikini.

The buxom beauty commanded her social media followers attention as slipped into the the stylish swimwear on her Instagram while enjoying a boat trip with her beau.

Eye-popping: Kelly Brook, 38, reminisced about her idyllic Cannes trip on Instagram on Sunday as she shared a striking shot featuring her sensational curves and eye-popping cleavage in a striking blue gingham bikini

The Loose Women panellist highlighted her statuesque figure and taut midriff as she donned a pair of complementing high-waisted bikini bottoms.

Standing tall on board a boat, she drew attention to her bust as she ran her hands through her hair while the sea lapped against the boat.

Kelly kept her accessories to a minimum and opted for a pair of shades while she soaked up the sunshine.

The British beauty enjoyed her time out at sea as she partook in a spot of snorkelling alongside her European love and rested on a paddle board.

Having fun: The British beauty enjoyed her time out at sea as she partook in a spot of snorkelling alongside her European love

Appearing in jovial spirits, she beamed at the camera, equipped with a pair of goggles on while Jeremy relaxed in the water.

She captioned the shot: 'Snorkelling amongst Jelly Fish my favourite activity

The loved-up couple have been enjoying a whistle-stop tour of Europe, visiting Cannes before heading to Barcelona.

After touching down in the Spanish city, Kelly took to Instagram to share a cryptic snap of the pair swimming, captioning the photo 'average day @jeremyparisi' with a Pinocchio nose emoji, which sparked further speculation the hunk proposed.

Breakway: The loved-up couple have been enjoying a whistle-stop tour of Europe, visiting Cannes before heading to Barcelona

Her display of the glittering band comes after Kelly revealed she proposed to Jeremy during a romantic holiday to Antigua back in February - but he turned her down because he was so embarrassed by her public display of affection.

The beauty took it on the chin, however, confessing during an interview with OK! magazine that the mortified French hunk immediately shut her down.

Kelly said: 'When we were in Antigua and the sun was setting and we were up at Shirley Heights I said to Jeremy, "Will you marry me?" and he said, "Be quiet there are people around!'

'So I tried to propose but he said it was too busy and told me to be quiet! Ive asked him, but it wasnt private enough!

Fuelling the fire: After touching down in the city, Kelly took to Instagram to share a cryptic snap of the pair swimming, captioning the photo 'average day @jeremyparisi'

Setting tongues wagging: Her display of the glittering band comes after Kelly revealed she proposed to Jeremy during a romantic holiday to Antigua back in February - but he turned her down because he was so embarrassed by her public display of affection

Earlier this month, Kelly said she had been subjected to questions about when she was planning to start a family as she nears 40, speaking about enduring the heartbreak of 'several miscarriages' on Loose Women.

She said: 'People always ask  my biological clock is ticking, Im approaching 40. I have tried to have children, I havent been lucky, Ive had several miscarriages.

'People feel the need to ask, they dont think it could be a medical reason youre not having children.

In the past: The beauty took it on the chin, however, confessing during an interview with OK! magazine that the mortified French hunk immediately shut her down

'They think Im a selfish person, I don't want children, people need to understand and look at why you arent having kids. When Im asked are you going to have kids? I never have the right answer, I never want to go into it, its no ones business.

'It annoys me when people look at you, they say you dont have children, you don't know anything, wait till you have them,. I think that's a bit mean too.'

Kelly has spoken openly about her previous battles to have a baby. In April 2011 she experienced a painful miscarriage when she was six months pregnant by then boyfriend Thom Evans.

In her autobiography Close Up, she also admitted she had suffered another miscarriage in December 2011. She has been in a relationship with Italian model Jeremy since April 2015.
She's rarely seen out of her hi-vis while working up a sweat inside The Gatwick.

Which is why The Block's Sara Vale, 31, went all out for her first big celebrity appearance after finding fame on the Nine renovation show last week.

The brunette recruited a team of three from Salon Vogue Hair in Werribee, VIC, to transform her before heading to AFL Footy Show's My Room Telethon on August 09.

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Ultimate diva? The Block's villain Sara Vale recruited a beauty entourage ahead of first celebrity appearance at the AFL Footy Show's My Room Telethon

In one picture shared to social media, Sara is snapped being made-over by the three people simultaneously.

The TV star looked relaxed as a makeup artist and two hairdressers worked their magic on her.

'Had this beautiful human in today for some colour, style and makeup,' the salon wrote on Instagram.

Looking like a star: 'Had this beautiful human in today for some colour, style and makeup,' Salon Vogue Hair in Werribee, Victoria, wrote on Instagram

TV star: Sara has become the breakout star of the latest season of the Nine show

Sara has become the breakout star of the latest season of the Nine show so far.

Her controversial comments towards the judges after they slated her bathroom and various confrontations have led viewers to brand her the 'villain' and take notice.

The drama surrounding her appearance on The Block peaked on Monday after an Australian magazine claimed her hubby, Hayden Vale, had threatened to divorce her.

However, Sara rubbished the claim to Daily Mail Australia.

'Spoiler alert  we're still together and we are still madly in love,' she said.

'In fact, we are trying for another baby.'

United: The brunette was forced to hit back at claims husband Hayden Vale was threatening to divorce her on Monday

Not true: 'Spoiler alert  we're still together and we are still madly in love,' she told Daily Mail Australia

The feisty contestant shared footage of a stack of magazines and zoomed in on New Idea's cover line which read: 'It's over! Hayden's divorce threat'.

Sara seemed to see the funny side of the situation, however.

'Holy cr*p @haydenvale, you could have told me we were getting a divorce to my face,' she wrote on the post, adding a laughing face emoji.
She won wide acclaim and legions of fans for her portrayal of glamorous Joan Holloway in Mad Men  a role which earned her six Emmy nominations.

And Christina Hendricks showed she can command attention just as effortlessly as her former TV character, when she stepped out in style for the 20th annual InStyle Day of Indulgence gifting suite in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon.

The 43-year-old actress exuded elegance as she arrived for the event  held at the Brentwood home of producer Jennifer Klein  in a deeply plunging navy patterned gown, which allowed her to flash a peep at her black lacy bra.

Special guest: Christina Hendricks attended the star-studded 20th annual InStyle Day of Indulgence gifting suite in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon

She teamed the flowing frock with a pair of strappy gold heels, while opting to accessorise with a black leather handbag and a sparkling diamond ring.

Hiding her eyes behind a pair of oversized sunglasses, she wore her signature fiery red hair in a flattering wavy bob, while her natural beauty was highlighted with a palette of makeup that included pillarbox red lipstick.

The Good Girls star rubbed shoulders with a host of celebrities at the exclusive event, including Anna Faris, Debra Messing, Elizabeth Olsen, Rebel Wilson, Gabrielle Union, Alison Brie, Leslie Mann, Kaley Cuoco and Lea Michele.

Taking the plunge: The 43-year-old actress wowed in a deeply plunging navy patterned gown, which allowed her to flash a peep at her black lacy bra

It's all in the details: She teamed the flowing frock with a pair of strappy gold heels, while opting to accessorise with a black leather handbag and a sparkling diamond ring

Redhead beauty Christina is often seen at events with her her husband of nine years Geoffrey Arend, who is best known for his role on the TV series Madam Secretary.

Christina and Geoffrey, 40, met in 2007 when they were introduced by her Mad Men co-star Vincent Kartheiser  and she found herself immediately drawn to him.

She told the March 2012 issue of Cosmopolitan UK: 'Geoffrey walked in and I was like, "Who is this guy?" He had amazing hair and was all dishevelled - he was running late and everyone was waiting for him. He just came in with this very high energy.'

Tress-ed to impress: Hiding her eyes behind a pair of oversized sunglasses, she wore her signature fiery red hair in a flattering wavy bob

Natural beauty: The Good Girls star's natural beauty was highlighted with a palette of makeup that included pillarbox red lipstick

'He was just charming, funny and very magnetic. I got his number that night under the pretence of, "We could just be friends." And of course I immediately went home and Googled him.'

After a few weeks of the pair meeting as part of a group, they finally had a date and the rest is history.

Christina admitted her husband finds her whole pin-up image incredibly funny, adding he 'has a good laugh about it'.

In good company: At the event, she rubbed shoulders with a host of stars, including Anna Faris, Debra Messing, Elizabeth Olsen, Rebel Wilson, Gabrielle Union and Alison Brie

Acclaim: She won wide acclaim and legions of fans for her portrayal of glamorous Joan Holloway in Mad Men  a role which earned her six Emmy nominations
She has spent most of her summer abroad, jetting to Mykonos, Cannes and Italy over the last few weeks.

And Lady Victoria Hervey proved to still be in holiday mode on Saturday, as she continued her most recent getaway in sunny LA.

The socialite, 41, slipped her slim figure into a trendy vintage-style bikini as she topped up her tan on the beach with her pet pooch.

Sun worshipper: Lady Victoria Hervey proved to still be in holiday mode on Saturday, as she continued her most recent getaway in sunny LA

The blonde turned heads in the black two-piece, which left much of her sun-kissed complexion on show.

The top was of a classic bandeau style, while the chunkier bottoms pulled into numerous strings at the sides, to accentuate her famously leggy figure and flash even more skin to all.

Styling her hair into loose waves and accessorising with gold mirrored shades, Victoria was the picture of casual glamour as she wandered the beach with her dog.

Turning heads: The socialite, 41, slipped her slim figure into a trendy vintage-style bikini as she topped up her tan on the beach with her pet pooch

Victoria's trip to California only adds to a jet-set summer, which has seen her holiday in Mykonos, Cannes and Italy so far.

However, while she has been travelling all over the world, Victoria recently discussed her future plans to settle down and become a mother, after realising her dream for a baby.

She revealed to The Mail On Sunday that she started freezing her eggs in a fertility clinic - which cost her 11,000 - after letting years of partying slip away.

Time to tan: Victoria's trip to California only adds to a jet-set summer, which has seen her holiday in Mykonos, Cannes and Italy so far

Victoria said: 'Like many women, Ive realised  nearly too late  that I am desperate to have a child.

'In fact, I want two. Which is why Im hoping science might be able to stop the clock until I can find the right man to be a father to my babies.'

Speaking about the experience on Lorraine later on, the blonde revealed: 'It was tough, it was emotional, I cried a lot...

'Not just the injections that you had to do daily, but you are put on the pills. You just feel like it is an emotional rollercoaster.'
It's been announced that they split this week.

But last weekend, Carly Bowyer and Troy Delmege were all smiles as they let their hair down with their Married at First Sight cast mates at a Melbourne bar.

The reality TV buddies appeared to have a wild evening at the Storyville cocktail bar, a fairy tale-themed established in the city's centre.

Looking friendly? It's been announced that they split this week. Last weekend, Carly Bowyer (left) and Troy Delmege (right) were all smiles as they let their hair down with their Married at First Sight cast mates at a Melbourne bar

Carly, dressed in a figure-fitting red dress, threw her arms around Troy passionately, her hair flowing behind her.

Feeling festive, she was also lifted off the ground by a number of Married At First sight alums, including Charlene Perera, Sean Thomsen and Nasser Sultan.

She also joined Telv Williams and Sean Donnelly in a group selfie in which the entire party appeared to be very festive.

Season four's Nick Furphy and season five's Matty Locket played hosts at what was described as a surprise party at the bar, which is know for it's Harry Potter themed cocktails and potions.

Mates! Feeling festive, Carly (centre) was also lifted off the ground by a number of Married At First sight alums, including Charlene Perera (third from right), Sean Thomsen (far right) and Nasser Sultan (far left)

Say cheese! She also joined cast members including Telv Williams and Sean Donnelly in a group selfie in which the entire party appeared to be very festive

The amorous display between Troy and Carly came before news the couple have split after a whirlwind eight-month romance.

On Monday, a source close to the couple confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that their relationship was 'over'.

According to the source, the pair's relationship had been in trouble ever since Troy relocated from Sydney to Melbourne to live with Carly.

Fun night! Matty Locket (right) was seen chatting with Sean Thomsen at the cocktail bar

Smile! Telv Williams (left) took a selfie with Nasser (right) and assorted cast mates

Bros! Sean, Nick Furphy (second from left) and Troy appeared to be enjoying their night

Three's company! Matty and Charlene posed with a punter wearing a festive striped scarf

Man in black: Sean Thomsen donned an all-black outfit including a leather jacket for the night

'He officially moves back to Sydney in two weeks,' said the insider. 'They sleep in separate rooms and have for three months.'

Apparently, Troy's ambitions for a career in the media contributed to their split.

'He hasn't even tried to get work [in Melbourne]. He hasn't sent out a single application. He wanted a job in media and is convinced it will happen,' the source added. 'Carly is fed up with it. He just lays about all day.'
On the back of allegations of domestic violence, Sam Cochrane and Tara Pavlovic's Bachelor in Paradise co-stars have opened up about the couple's tumultuous relationship.

Speaking to Woman's Day magazine on Monday, fellow reality stars Rachael Gouvignon, Michael Turnbull, Sian Kelly and Nina Rolleston all weighed in on the drama.

Since announcing their split in June, both Sam, 31, and Tara, 28, have accused one another of being abusive in their relationship.

'He was too embarrassed to speak to us': Sam Cochrane's Bachelor in Paradise co-stars reveal the aftermath of his explosive fight with Tara Pavlovic amid physical abuse claims

Intimate details of their breakup were made public when Sam accused Tara of being physically and verbally abusive towards him.

Tara has since admitted she was physically abusive towards her ex, while simultaneously accusing him of being emotionally abusive towards her.

And now the former couple's Bachelor in Paradise co-stars have spoken out on the allegations.

The group appears to be divided, with Rachael and Michael siding with Sam, while Sian and Nina are on Team Tara.

Speaking to Woman's Day, Rachael recounted seeing Tara left devastated by her actions while filming Bachelor in Paradise

Michael Turnbull said that while he didn't know exactly what had happened in Sam and Tara's ill-fated romance, 'violence in any relationship should not be tolerated'

Speaking to the magazine, Rachael recounted seeing Tara left devastated by her actions while filming Bachelor in Paradise.

According to Rachael, she'd been having breakfast with Nina at their hotel, when Tara ran through the lobby in tears.

'Tara said she'd 'messed up',' she recalled to Woman's Day.

Best friends: Sian Kelly is standing by Tara, after going on an angry rant at Sam on her Instagram

Picking sides: Nina Rolleston is also supporting Tara, referring to her as 'my beautiful friend' on Instagram

'Sam was too embarrassed to speak to us.'

Michael said that while he didn't know exactly what had happened in Sam and Tara's ill-fated romance, 'violence in any relationship should not be tolerated.'

'If that was the case, I would have left as well,' he told Woman's Day of Sam's apparent decision to call off the couple's engagement.

Bad romance: Since announcing their split in June, both Sam and Tara have accused one another of being abusive in their relationship

Meanwhile, Sian is standing by Tara, after going on an angry rant at Sam on her Instagram.

'Don't publicly humiliate my friend when we all know damn well how you feel about her,' she wrote.

Nina is also supporting Tara, referring to her as 'my beautiful friend' on Instagram.
Caroline Flack has been spotted kissing her ex-fiance Andrew Brady, in confirmation of their rekindled romance.

In photos obtained by MailOnline, the Love Island host, 37, is seen cosying up to the former Celebrity Big Brother star, 27, during a date at Pizza East in Shoreditch - before the pair passionately lock lips in front of onlookers.

The outing marks the couple's third reconciliation since February, having called off their engagement in May amid claims Andrew was cheating and using her for fame.

On again: Caroline Flack has been spotted kissing her ex-fiance Andrew Brady, in confirmation of their reconciliation

Sealed with a kiss: The Love Island host, 37, was seen beaming widely as she cosied up to Andrew, 27, during a date at Pizza East in Shoreditch - before they passionately locked lips

The photos show Caroline beaming widely as she cuddled up to the former Apprentice star at the restaurant's bar.

Chatting with their faces close together, the pair are then seen indulging in a number of passionate kisses, after weeks of swirling rumours regarding their turbulent romance.

Having ordered a few cocktails at the bar, the on-again couple then headed to their table, where they continued their tactile and giddy display over their pizza dinner.

Close: The photos show Caroline beaming widely as she cuddled up to the former Apprentice star at the restaurant's bar

Besotted: Having ordered a few cocktails at the bar, the on-again couple then headed to their table, where they continued their tactile and giddy display over their pizza dinner

The outing follows claims the pair have decided to reconcile, after a make-or-break getaway to Ibiza.

The TV host is said to have given The Apprentice star another chance after they jetted abroad away from their friends and family, to work through their issues in private.

An insider told The Sun that the pair are still very much in love, and have decided to give their relationship another try - but at a slower pace.

Third time lucky? The outing follows claims the pair have decided to reconcile, after a make-or-break getaway to Ibiza - marking their third reunion since February

Back together: An insider claimed the pair are still very much in love, and have decided to give their relationship another try - but at a slower pace

The source said: 'Caroline and Andrew are back together again after they decided to rekindle their relationship. Although it hasn't been a smooth road their chemistry is undeniable and they really love each other.

'Wedding bells are still a long way off and she is determined to move at a slower pace this time and doesn't want to run before she can walk, but they're very much a couple again.'

Andrew, who moved out of Caroline's house following the break up, is said to still be living elsewhere, but will likely return to help care for the puppy they share.

While friends and family of Caroline are reportedly concerned about her choice to give him a second chance, the source added that they are pleased to see the star smiling once again.

Feeling good: The pair certainly looked in good spirits as they headed to London's Pizza East in Shoreditch, ahead of their PDA-filled dinner (above)

Despite their loved-up appearance over the last week, Caroline chose not to put her engagement ring back on during the Love Island reunion show.

MailOnline have contacted representatives for Caroline and Andrew for further comment.

The pair first split in March after a month of romance, amid claims of Andrew's infidelity and fears that he was using the presenter for her fame.

However, they soon reconciled - with Caroline even having his initials tattooed on her inner wrist, just weeks after their first meeting.

Wary: While friends and family of Caroline are reportedly concerned about her choice to give him a second chance, they are thought to be pleased to see her smiling once again

Following a whirlwind two-month romance, the pair then became engaged in April, and confirmed the news on their Instagram pages.

Yet, things turned sour once again the following month, with Caroline announcing their second break-up in a statement on social media.

It read: 'I'm sad to announce that Andrew and I have decided to part ways. Unfortunately it was not to be. I wish him all the best.'

Amid claims of a 'messy' break-up, due to his alleged infidelities and 'fame-hungry' nature, Andrew shared a lengthy statement about the split on Twitter last month - claiming he was 'not perfect'.

Back on: Caroline opted not to put her engagement ring from Andrew back on during last week's Love Island Reunion show, despite their recently loved-up appearance

He penned: 'I would like to issue a statement as I believe stories, half truths and lies have been circulated in the media by various parties and are to a large extent inaccurate. This was at times before and during my relationship with Caroline.

'But I do not believe Caroline was party to this. One ex-girlfriend and another girl have chosen to go to the press to divulge stories that were embellished. For the record I saw one for a few dates and one for a number of weeks.

'Lack of trust was a major factor in my decision to end these short relationships. We were deeply in love, as proven by the level of commitment from the early stage of our relationship.'

Caroline went on to touch upon the breakup to Fabulous magazine - revealing the pain was 'still raw', but claiming that she had come to terms with their split.

She said: 'Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesnt. Thats life. I dont fear being single at all.'
She regularly fills her Instagram feed with racy bikini-clad photos while documenting her enviable travels across the globe.

And Kimberley Garner, 28, was back to her figure-flaunting tricks as she showcased her enviable figure in a daring two-piece during her idyllic breakaway to Mykonos in Greece.

The former MIC star looked sensational as she displayed her svelte frame in a mismatched red and white bikini while enjoying a quick swim in the sea.

Walk this way: Kimberley Garner, 28, was back to her figure-flaunting tricks as she showcased her enviable figure in a daring two-piece during her idyllic breakaway to Mykonos in Greece

Her white bikini top highlighted her ample bust and drew attention to her incredible taut midriff.

The E4 star continued to set pulses-racing as she slipped into a pair of minuscule red thong bikini bottoms which showcased her slender pins and displayed her pert posterior.

Keeping to her glamorous ways, she worked her honey-hued locks into a tousled style and donned a pair of circular shades for her afternoon along the idyllic shore.

Later in the day, Kimberley was spotted enjoying a dip in the crystal clear sea before continuing her sun bathing session.

Cheeky: The E4 star continued to set pulses-racing as she slipped into a pair of minuscule red thong bikini bottoms which showcased her slender pins and displayed her pert posterior

Cooling down: The former MIC star looked sensational as she displayed her svelte frame in a mismatched red and white bikini while enjoying a quick swim in the sea

Since starting up her own luxury swimwear line Kimberley London, the Chelsea beauty often spends her time jetting to a number of countries.

Last month during her Greek break, the swimsuit model topped up her tan when she relaxed with pals - and she was even seen topless sunbathing beside her ex-boyfriend.

However, when contacted by MailOnline, Kimberley insisted the pair have remained 'good friends', but are 'not together'.

Ab-solutely: Her white bikini top highlighted her ample bust and drew attention to her incredible taut midriff

Mane thing: Later in the day, Kimberley was spotted enjoying a dip in the crystal clear sea before continuing her sun bathing session

Remaining tight-lipped on his identity, she revealed she broke up with her former beau after a 'wonderful' three years together.

Kimberley shot to fame when she starred in Made In Chelsea in 2012 as a love interest of Richard Dinan.

Recently, she was forced to deny claims she had gone under the knife when she shared an Instagram snap in recent weeks.

Shore thing: Since starting up her own luxury swimwear line Kimberley London, the Chelsea beauty often spends her time jetting to a number of countries

Then: Last month during her Greek break, the swimsuit model topped up her tan when she relaxed with pals - and she was even seen topless sunbathing beside her ex-boyfriend

She wrote: 'For all the gossip, no I have not had a boob job, and no I have not had a butt job! (Which still comes as a very weird concept to me)'

'Womens bodys change, sometimes Im a little chubbier and sometimes too skinny, its just natural and so important to love our bodys, whatever the phase - but thanks for all the gossip I have heard over the past year, it has really made me laugh.'

'ps I have been learning some butt exercises, will make a video, incase you want a fake butt ;) (sic).'
Mr. Pham Toan Thang speaking at the ceremony (Photo: vov.vn)

This is an event hosted by the Vietnamese Embassy as the rotating President of the ASEAN Committee in the Netherlands.

Mr. Pham Toan Thang, Charge d'Affaires of the Vietnamese Embassy in the Netherlands, said ASEAN has played an important role in maintaining peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region. By establishing the ASEAN Community in 2015, it has become an important economic centre of the region and the world. Members are trying their best to successfully carry out the vision to 2025.

Mr. Thang emphasized that Vietnam pledges to build a unified ASEAN, strengthen ties, and promote ASEANs central role. He added that since its establishment in October 2015, the ASEAN Committee in the Netherlands has organized many activities to promote ASEANs image and boost cooperation between ASEAN and the Netherlands and its partners.

After the ceremony, Ms. Rudsjana Puja, Head of the ASEAN Ladies Circle (ALC) in the Netherlands, presented ALCs gift to the Vietnamese Ambassador.

At the event, ALC and ASEAN embassies co-organized a cultural and art and cuisines exchange./.
5 Seconds of Summer will continue their Meet You There Australian tour in Melbourne on Monday evening.

And hours before the pop rockers took to the stage in the Victoria capital, bassist Calum Hood, 22, put on a rather amusing dress rehearsal for viewers during an interview on The Project.

The young star was seen performing a bizarre leg kick in a pair of very tight-fitting flares, giving fans a generous glimpse of his 'moose knuckle.'

''There's a bit of Moose knuckle action!' 5 Seconds of Summer's Calum Hood is left red-faced after a joke about his manhood thanks to VERY tight pants. Pictured alongside 5SOS band members Luke Hemmings, 22, Ashton Irwin, 24, and Michael Clifford, 22

Calum was seen attempting a high-kick in the crotch-hugging pants after his fellow band member Ashton Irwin, 24, requested he bust a move in the clingy flares.

'We wanted to see Calum's flares, bust them out. Give them some hey,' Ashton said with a laugh.

Comedian, Tommy Little appeared to be highly amused by the routine and pointed out the musician sported a 'moose knuckle,' a slang term to describe the outline of a male's manhood through taut clothing.

Brave: Calum (far right) was seen attempting a high-kick in the crotch-hugging pants after his fellow band member Ashton Irwin, 24, requested he bust a move in the clingy flares

'You have brought back the tight flares, there is a bit of moose knuckle if we zoom in that flare!' the funnyman joked.

The boys appeared to be playfully disturbed by Tommy's suggestion as Ashton pulled an awkward expression and said: 'next question.'

The band affectionately known as 5SOS commenced their national tour in Sydney this week.

'There is a bit of moose knuckle in that flare!' Comedian, Tommy Little appeared to be highly amused by the routine and pointed out the musician sported a 'moose knuckle,' a slang term to describe the outline of a male's manhood through taut clothing

Taut flares: Before the pop rockers took to the stage in Melbourne, bassist Calum Hood, 22, kicked off the performance hours earlier by performing a bizarre leg kick in tight flares during an interview on The Project on Monday evening

Calum, Ashton, Luke Hemmings, 22, and Michael Clifford, 22 will perform a series of concerts across the country this month.

The boys, who recently played in Sydney and Brisbane will perform in Melbourne Adelaide and Perth.

5SOS made Billboard history in June when their third album Youngblood took out the No. 1 spot in the US charts.

They are the first band in Billboard history to have their first three studio albums each go to No. 1.

Following the milestone achievement, 5SOS thanked their fans on Twitter.

'Today you made history for four young men, and you are every reason why we feel like the luckiest people alive,' the band wrote.
They finished as runner's up on Love Island, have met each other's families and been virtually inseparable since leaving the villa.

But Laura Anderson, 29, and Paul Knops, 31, revealed on Monday's This Morning that they still aren't boyfriend and girlfriend, instead telling Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford that they are 'exclusively seeing each other.'

The awkward interview saw Laura admit there's 'a lot of pressure on us' as Eamonn and Ruth questioned them further.

Not official: Laura Anderson, 29, and Paul Knops, 31, revealed on Monday's This Morning that they still aren't boyfriend and girlfriend

'We are exclusively seeing each other and we are not speaking to anyone else or anything like that, but there is a lot of pressure on us' Laura explained, before Paul jumped in with:

'It's not like we've sat down and said 'are we boyfriend and girlfriend'... but typically, I guess we are.'

Unlike some of their Love Island co-stars, Laura and Paul added that they have no plans to move in together 'just now', but the Scottish flight attendant and London based model did reveal: 'We are going to live close together.'

'I've been in Dubai for eight years so coming out of the villa and moving to the UK, I don't have my bearings yet but Paul is helping me,' Laura explained.

No labels: 'We are exclusively seeing each other. There's a lot of pressure on us,' Laura explained during the interview

Taking things slow: Unlike some of their Love Island co-stars, Laura and Paul added that they have no plans to move in together 'just now'

The beauty also addressed her surprise crush on Eamonn, posting a sweet snap of the foursome posing together after the show, saying meeting the duo was a 'dream come true' and apologising for being 'so cringe'.

Alongside the cosy shot, Laura wrote: 'When dreams come true. Apologies for being so cringe but honestly @ruthlangsford and @eamonnholmes what a little dream team.

'Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being so lovely on @this_morning_itv What a pleasure for @paulknopsie and I. Hope to see you both soon xx #howfunnyisruth #apologiesmyweehand.'

Laura revealed last week that she'd embarked on an apartment hunt around London, so she can be closer to Paul and launch her media career.

'Apologies for being so cringe': Laura also addressed her surprise crush on show host Eamonn as the foursome posed for a sweet snap together after the show wrapped

Relocating: Laura revealed last week that she'd embarked on an apartment hunt around London, so she can be closer to Paul and launch her media career

Love story: Laura and Paul finished in second place on the 2018 series of Love Island behind winners Dani Dyer and Jack Fincham

On Thursday, the former air hostess took to Instagram to pose a selfie, which she captioned: 'Getting ready in this amazing hotel for my never ending apartment viewings today. Wish me luck.'

Laura was also asked about her close friend Samira Mighty on This Morning after MailOnline revealed on Sunday that her beau Frankie Foster was filmed kissing another girl during a nightclub appearance over the weekend.

'I heard something last night so I've messaged Samira, she hasn't got back to me with the full story so I don't really know what's going on there. But I 100% support her. Frankie's got a good thing there, so I think he'd be stupid to [throw it away]...' Laura said.

The blonde beauty was delighted to meet Eamonn during the interview, after famously confessing in the villa that the Irish charmer is her secret crush.

The two shared a cosy hug before the couples 'wife swapped' with Laura taking Ruth's seat on the This Morning sofa.
Jennifer Metcalfe has said how glad she is to be back filming Hollyoaks with her friends - and admitted her maternity leave could at times be 'isolating' and 'difficult'.

The 35-year-old actress recently reprised her role as Mercedes McQueen in the Channel 4 soap and appeared on Good Morning Britain on Monday to chat about going back to work, having had a baby last year.

She said: 'It's hard work [filming in Magaluf] because you don't have your siestas and you don't have your beer an hour, so it's hard. But because maternity leave was so difficult... because my little boy never kept still and for about six months he screamed his life away and he didn't sleep very good.

Back to work: Jennifer Metcalfe has said how glad she is to be back filming Hollyoaks with her friends - and admitted her maternity leave could at times be 'isolating' and 'difficult'

'So, for me to be out in that setting working with all my friends again... obviously I love my little boy, I love the time with him.

'I was in Newcastle as well. I made a couple of friends up there but it wasn't like being at home.

'And I realised being up there that Liverpool is my home. I've been there 12 years, so it [was] quite isolating. I've been based back in Liverpool now.'

On Friday night's E4 episode, Hollyoaks featured her alter-ego reunited with first husband and now-fiance Russ Owen (Stuart Manning) in Magaluf, where she celebrates her hen do.

Causing trouble: 'I've been loving it ever since. I've been back two months now,' Jen said of her return to the show

The return of the (Mc)Queen: The 35-year-old actress recently reprised her role as Mercedes McQueen in the Channel 4 soap and appeared on Good Morning Britain on Monday to chat about going back to work, having had a baby last year

She's back: On Friday night's E4 episode, Hollyoaks featured her alter-ego reunited with first husband and now-fiance Russ Owen (Stuart Manning) in Magaluf, where she celebrates her hen do

But while Jennifer enjoyed filming in the Majorca resort town, she admitted she missed her Geordie Shore star boyfriend Greg Lake and their one-year-old son Daye.

Jennifer had to slip into a swimsuit to film Mercedes' sun-kissed Spanish hen do, but she didn't mind donning the beachwear just 12 months after giving birth, admitting she was just pleased to be shooting the soap again.

She added: 'I didn't really care - I was just happy to be part of it all again. I was like, "Put me in whatever".

All smiles: Jennifer had to slip into a swimsuit to film Mercedes' sun-kissed Spanish hen do, but she didn't mind donning the beachwear just 12 months after giving birth, admitting she was just pleased to be shooting the soap again

'It was so much fun going out there with all my friends who I had not seen properly for a year, having three nights of sleep, and several glasses after work in a beautiful setting - I wouldn't have had it any other way.

'I've been loving it ever since. I've been back two months now.

'Mercedes is also the heart of the mischief and the drama, so when they said we were going to Magaluf I was made up. I'm made up with the story.'
Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin are waiting until next year to tie the knot, despite getting engaged last month.

According to TMZ, the pair have decided to postpone their wedding until 2019, as they don't want to 'put pressure' on themselves and rush the big day.

Justin, 24, and his model girlfriend, 21, are still excited about becoming man and wife, but feel making the 'commitment' to each other is what really matters.

Holding off: Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin are waiting until next year to tie the knot, despite getting engaged last month (pictured in July)

A source told the site: 'Justin and Hailey are waiting until sometime next year to tie the knot as they feel they've made the commitment, and that's the most important thing.'

While the couple have faced criticism for getting engaged so quickly, the source revealed the pop star is sure Hailey is the one, having been besotted with her for many years.

The insider continued: 'Justin's been in love with her for a long time, so this didn't just come from out of the blue.'

Taking it slow: According to new reportes, the pair have decided to postpone their wedding until 2019, as they don't want to 'put pressure' on themselves and rush the big day

MailOnline has contacted both Justin and Hailey's representatives for further comment.

Justin proposed to Hailey, who is the daughter of actor and producer Stephen Baldwin, during a trip to the Bahamas last month.

After two days of swirling rumours, the Sorry hitmaker went on to confirm the news to fans on Instagram, with a sweet tribute to his blonde beauty.

'It wasn't the blue': While the couple have faced backlash for getting engaged so quickly, the source added Justin is sure Hailey is the one, having been besotted with her for many years

He wrote: 'Was gonna wait a while to say anything but word travels fast, listen plain and simple Hailey I am soooo in love with everything about you!

'So committed to spending my life getting to know every single part of you loving you patiently and kindLY. I promise to lead our family with honor and integrity letting Jesus through his Holy Spirit guide us in everything we do and every decision we make.

'My heart is COMPLETELY and FULLY YOURS and I will ALWAYS put you first! You are the love of my life Hailey Baldwin and I wouldn't want to spend it with anybody else.'

Man and wife: Justin proposed to Hailey during a trip to the Bahamas last month, having known the model since 2009

Justin and Hailey have known each other since 2009 as members of the Hillsong Church, which they regularly attend together in LA.

However, eyebrows were raised over the pair's engagement, considering the pop star only split from Selena Gomez in March.

Justin dated the pop diva, 26, on and off for seven years, enduring numerous break-ups and reconciliations, with the most recent taking place in November 2017.
Love Island's Jack Fincham has revealed that he has finally met girlfriend Dani Dyer's father Danny.

The pen salesman, who presented a Back to School stationery segment on Monday's This Morning, admitted that the pair bonded over a takeaway after the EastEnders star returned from his family holiday to Orlando.

The ITV2 star looked dapper in a white shirt and lightwash denim jeans as he chatted to hosts Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes about the welcoming meal with her girlfriend's father, describing him as 'lovely'.

Finally: Love Island's Jack Fincham has revealed that he has finally met girlfriend Dani Dyer's father Danny

He said: '[I've] finally met Danny Dyer. Hes lovely, we had a nice takeaway. Any man saying he wouldnt be nervous meeting a girlfriends partner would by lying.'

The reality star was revealed to be a big fan of his girlfriend's dad on the hit ITV2 series when his ex Ellie Jones told Dani that Jack had a big poster of her father hanging in his house which made for hilarious viewing.

Back on This Morning, Jack also admitted that he and Dani have been looking at finding the perfect home together.

'We have just started house-hunting,' he said. 'We are going to take time off next week and look at all the houses in one day.'

Family: The pen salesman, who presented a Back to School stationery segment on Monday's This Morning, admitted that the pair bonded over a takeaway after the EastEnders star returned from his family holiday to Orlando

'Lovely': The ITV2 star looked dapper in a white shirt and lightwash denim jeans as he chatted to hosts Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes about the welcoming meal with her girlfriend's father, describing him as 'lovely'

Aside from discussing his relationship, Jack was on the mid-morning stalwart to showcase his expertise and bring viewers the best in back-to-school stationery.

His appearance comes after Love Island fans are demanding refunds for the show's recent live event, which they claim was 'oversold' and 'chaotic'.

Love Island Live took place at London's ExCel on Friday, and saw viewers pay 35 for a meet-and-greet with this year's islanders, as well as host Caroline Flack.

However, disgruntled attendees have since vented their fury to Daily Star Sunday, after queuing for hours to meet winners Jack Fincham and Dani Dyer, to only be denied photos and a chance to chat to them.

Having fun: Jack showcased glittering notepads and pencil cases during the short segment

Nerves: He said: '[I've] finally met Danny Dyer. Hes lovely, we had a nice takeaway. Any man who meets his girlfriends dad and says hes not nervous is lying'

Expertise: Aside from discussing his relationship, Jack was on the mid-morning stalwart to showcase his expertise and bring viewers the best in back-to-school stationery

The paper claims the queues at the event - attended by thousands - were lengthy but to no avail, as many were later told it was too late to meet the 2018 cast.

It is even claimed fights broke out among those waiting, with one furious attendee blasting the show for hugely overselling the venue's capacity.

Anna Troth, who took a number of teenage girls to the event for a birthday, said: 'I have spent close to 100 to be here today and we haven't got a single picture. The event was oversold. It was so crowded. So many people want their money back.'

She also claimed they queued for almost two hours to meet show winners Jack and Dani, but were only given a matter of seconds to meet and chat to them.

Looking ahead: Jack also admitted that he and Dani have been looking at finding the perfect home together. 'Been looking at houses online,' he shared. 'Hopefully next week we will get to go and look at a place'

Appearance: His appearance comes after Love Island fans are demanding refunds for the show's recent live event, which they claim was 'oversold' and 'chaotic'

Moving on: Love Island Live took place at London 's ExCel on Friday, and saw viewers pay 35 for a meet-and-greet with this year's islanders, as well as host Caroline Flack

Despite purchasing 35 VIP tickets, which promised meet and greets with all the islanders, Anna added: 'They walked past and Jack was going to let us take a picture but we were pushed aside by one of the organisers who looked like security.'

The event was organised to give fans the opportunity to meet their favourite 2018 stars, with the website promising: 'Get your best face ready for the ultimate selfie with your favourite Islanders.'

A spokesperson for ITV told MailOnline: 'Love Island Live allowed viewers to see a 60 min show with the Islanders hosted by Caroline Flack, and meet and greet some of their Islander favourites during a further 2 hour period.

'We have had overwhelmingly positive feedback and are sorry to hear some people were disappointed.'

Queue: However, disgruntled attendees have since vented their fury to Daily Star Sunday , after queuing for hours to meet winners Jack and Dani, to only be denied photos and a chance to chat to them
Katie Piper was confirmed as the first celebrity to join the 2018 Strictly Come Dancing cast after the TV presenter announced the news on BBC Breakfast and revealed she hoped to be partnered up with Giovanni Pernice.

After having appeared in a number of hard-hitting documentaries, Katie Piper said she was looking forward to starring in something a little more light-hearted.

She continued to discuss the Strictly judges and said: I dont want to cry. The judges can be quite scary. Ive developed a thick skin over the years so hopefully Ill be fine. For me its really out of my comfort zone and its not something Ive ever done before.

Katie Piper was confirmed as the first celebrity to join the 2018 Strictly Come Dancing cast

Who is Katie Piper?

Born Kate Elizabeth Piper on October 12, 1983 in Andover, Hampshire, Katie trained as a beautician after leaving school.

She then embarked on a modelling career, a period of her life during which she took part in national newspaper shoots and was runner up of the 2006 Miss Winchester pageant, as reported in The Sun.

Katie moved to London and started work as a television presenter on a number of digital programmes but she fell victim to an acid attack at the hands of David Lynch, who she had a short relationship with in 2008.

Katie Piper acid attack

After starting a relationship with David Lynch in February 2008 following conversations they had on Facebook, Katie started doubting the relationship and just two weeks into the romance, he raped and attacked her in a London hotel room.

When Katie returned to her flat in Golders Green, Lynch demanded she go to a nearby internet cafe but he had arranged for his accomplice Stefan Sylvestre to wait outside her home and throw sulphuric acid in her face.

Katie Piper before she was the victim of a rape and an acid attack by a jealous boyfriend

The attack resulted in Katie being rushed to hospital for emergency treatment because the acid had burned her face and she was left blinded in her left eye. In order for Katie to undergo extensive skin grafts, she was put in an induced coma for 12 days.

Katie also had to wear a plastic face mask for up to 23-hours a day and has to undergo a total of 40 operations to treat her burns. However, a year after the attack, she launched the Katie Piper Foundation. During this time, she also appeared in a Channel 4 documentary Katie: My Beautiful Face.

Describing the attack in a 2009 interview with the Daily Mail, Katie said: The pain was indescribable, but for a split second I remember thinking, How rude to throw coffee when I was trying to help him.

I could feel my skin and clothes burning off me. She added: Im never going to be the old Katie. Shes like a best friend I once had. Shes gone and theres a different one in her place. Im not going to be a victim. Im the woman who got through this. Im full of life and looking forward to the future.

Daniel Lynch, jailed for life after raping Katie Piper and arranging for acid to be thrown at her

Katie Piper foundation

According to the official website, the Katie Piper Foundation was set up while Katie was still in the early stages of her recovery and it was made possible by the likes of Simon Cowell and a number of Brownie Guide groups.

Piper embarked on her first ever theatre tour in March 2018 to share her experience after the release of her new book From Mother to Daughter.

Katie Piper husband

Katie Piper gave birth to her daughter Belle Elizabeth in March 2014 and at the end of the year, announced her engagement to Richard James Sutton. She married the builder in November 2015.

She gave birth to their second daughter Penelope in December 2017 and revealed to Sunday Peoples Love Sunday magazine that she wants to be more open about her attack, as reported in The Mirror.

She mainly asks about my hands. I just tell her I was burnt when I was younger, it did hurt, but it doesnt now. All she really says is, Be careful of your other hand when Im near the oven. But if she asks how I was burnt, Ill tell her the truth.

Thank you for all your lovely messages. Im super excited but very nervous about being a contestant on this years @bbcstrictly its going to be a challenge but everyone who knows me knows I love a challenge so here goes... a new chapter in my life! #strictly2018 #bbcbreakfast pic.twitter.com/hVBQnloqce  Katie Piper (@KatiePiper_) August 13, 2018

Katie Piper Strictly Come Dancing

Katie Piper announced that she would be taking part in Strictly Come Dancing on BBC Breakfast and said: It took a while to say yes because its something way out of my comfort zone. The only person I told was my husband and he thought I was joking.

Im worried Ill be the first to go home, the fear I have is I dont have the natural rhythm. But I like a challenge, anything I cant do it inspires me to learn it. She went on to say how she would like to be partnered with Giovanni, but I have no sway in that at all.

Katie continued: I hope to come away with a different kind of confidence in a different area of my life. I think it gives a wider message, my past is irrelevant, to be able to go forward and do these things is a bigger wider message.

Thats something I want to take forward, and its nice to be part of something so light-hearted, she said as reported in Metro. Strictly Come Dancing will start filming this months and the rest of the line-up is expected to be announced across the next two weeks, with the final three on a special episode of The One Show.

While the launch show date has not been confirmed, the professional dancers are already in rehearsal and it is likely to air in early September with the main series beginning a few weeks later.
Iskra Lawrence is known for her provocative photo shoots and the body positive models most recent summer getaway in Miami, Florida was the perfect opportunity to snap some shots for her Instagram followers.

Alongside promotion for Aerie, Iskra Lawrence also took to social media to call for the end of body shaming and shared a side-by-side image of herself next to Gigi Hadid. The caption read: *this is not a reflection of all the beautiful bodies on this planet* but the message still stands - stop body shaming.

She also shared images taken by Deniz Alaca in which her nipples could be seen through her T-shirt. The model wrote: We all got nipples so lets not make a big deal about it. This caption was accompanied by the hashtags #letsnotoversexualizenipples and #mybodymychoice. But what is Iskra Lawrences net worth?

Iskra Lawrence attends American Heart Association's Go Red For Women Red Dress Collection

Who is Iskra Lawrence?

Born Iskra Arabella Lawrence on September 11, 1990 in Wolverhampton, she soon moved to Worcestershire where she grew up most of her life. Despite being a competitive national swimmer as a child, she was accepted into the UK National Youth Theatre at the age of 15, according to Hollywood Life.

Iskra began modelling at the age of 13, but was dropped by her first agency after two years because her hips were too big. She soon joined JAG, where she is signed to this day and in addition to this, she is also the Managing Editor of Runway Riot and an ambassador for the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA).

The champion of body diversity went viral after she announced that she would say no to photoshopping her images on Instagram. Taking a different approach to the role of Instagram model, she wrote: You wont see me promoting tea detoxs or anything that I dont actually use or wear or believe in.

I am NOT an Instagram model and do not earn a living off it. I post because I hope to grow my platform to share my experiences and hopefully help other girls that are going through what I went through, as Cosmopolitan reported.

In 2014, Iskra became American Eagles newest spokesmodel for their lingerie brand Aerie and the NEDA advocate would be appearing in stores in university towns across the US to speak about body positivity.

As reported by Time, in the first video for the campaign, she said: I wanted to be a part of the campaign so much. I got told I wasnt good enough, and I could never make it. And then Aerie told me I was beautiful because I was me. You dont need to be retouched. The real you is beautiful.

Two years later, she took to Instagram to shut down body-shamers again and shared a picture of herself sprawled on a bed of crisp bags and then a video eating the crisps.

This is for anyone who's ever been called FAT, she wrote on Instagram, adding: P.S.- I do not condone binge eating. I eat whatever I want in moderation. I will eat crisps, but I'll also make healthy home cooked meals and work out regularly. The message is: Who gives a F what anyone else thinks of you? YOU are the only one who decides your self-worth.

This was in response to an online troll who had commented on her picture, saying: Fat cow. Its only cus every Fr on this planet is obese that thats the norm Plus-size models? give me a F*****g breaking. Everyone needs to stop eating McDonalds, the NHS is fd because of people like her eating too many bags of crisps [sic].

Speaking to Teen Vogue, she revealed why she had decided to clap back. I was a little nervous at first to put it out there. First off I hoped people didn't think I was affected by it as I usually brush off and ignore any haters.

But I had received DMs from followers saying they were upset someone had written something so rude and offensive. That's when I realised I could use this negativity to create something positive and constructive.

To show people that body shaming and online trolling is not ok. And that if someone says something hateful towards you, you can stand up for yourself. But I wanted to do it in a jokey way to show that the words didn't hurt me.

When I put this pic out there I thought about what my 15-year-old self would want to say to all the people that called me fat when it did used to hurt me. And I want to help and represent all the girls out there who feel that way and show them this is for you we can all stand strong together and we are beautiful no matter what anyone says.

After modelling for 13 years, Iskra Lawrence was given the opportunity to walk in her first ever NYFW runway show and was part of the Chromat Spring 2017 lineup. In conversation with Self.com, she said: I can't quite believe it's happening.

I had a little teary-eyed moment at the fitting because for so many years I got told I'd never make it because of my size. I was always worried that I was the smiley, blonde, kind of commercial [type]. So for them to take a risk and have me walk on their runway, it's just very overwhelming. It means a lot to be accepted for just being me.

Iskra Lawrence diet

After blasting being referred to as a plus-size model, Iskra is known as a body-confidence model and regularly shares her gym workouts and meals with her Instagram followers. According to Style Caster, she starts her day with a fresh juice.

Iskra also said that you can always find an avocado in her kitchen as theyre the only food that has such complete nutrition. You can survive off them if you were stranded on an island. Real talk! She added that she also cannot live without eggs or chocolate.

The model revealed that while she may have a Five Guys burger for lunch, she carries protein bars with her in case she gets hungry, doesnt drink and usually has leftovers for dinner. Her biggest health tip for travellers is to Prepare, and dont use traveling as an excuse.

Research healthy restaurants or food stores, and buy snacks - nuts, fruit, protein bars - so you dont reach for junk. Even if you only do squats while youre brushing your teeth or some ab exercises before bed, just do it! You will thank yourself for it.

Iskra Lawrence net worth

Iskra Lawrences net worth has accumulated to approximately $400,000, according to Net Worth Bio, which also revealed that she is paid a salary of over $100,000. Known to not make money from her Instagram posts, most of her earnings come from her ambassadorship with Aerie.
Tammy Hembrow, 24, has broken down in tears in a YouTube video addressing the night she was carried out of Kylie Jenner's 21st birthday on a stretcher.

The Queensland mother-of-two and fitness blogger spoke out for the first time and blamed 'drinking' and a 'lack of sleep' for her horrifying collapse at trendy nightspot Delilah in West Hollywood on Thursday.

She looked visibly exhausted and could be seen wiping away tears as she revealed she feels 'embarrassed' by the incident before pleading with trolls to stop 'being nasty.'

'I pretty much collapsed': Tammy Hembrow broke down in an emotional YouTube video on Monday (left) as she blamed 'drinking' and 'lack of sleep' after she was carried out of Kylie Jenner's 21st birthday face down on a stretcher last week (right)

'Firstly I want everyone to know that I'm ok...So yeah I pretty much collapsed. Honestly I'm already like super super embarrassed about it,' she said.

'I probably, definitely shouldn't have been drinking because of how jet-lagged and exhausted I was and I already wasn't feeling well.

She continued: 'So basically what happened was I was in LA I was running off pretty much 30 hours of no sleep. I was struggling to stay awake even when I had my hair and makeup done...I could barely keep my eyes open.'

On the mend: Tammy said she has recovered and is in good health following the shocking incident. Pictured here in West Hollywood on August 9

Tammy, whose fitness program has won her legions of fans around the world, touched on her recent split from the father of her children, Reece Hawkins.

'I've been throwing myself into work way more than ever and I have my kids majority of the time...literally been non-stop on the job kind of thing,' she explained.

'I think because of the break-up, I've been trying to keep myself busy and not really taking time to think about how I'm actually feeling.'

Party girls! Tammy was among various high-profile guests invited to Kylie Jenner's 21st birthday bash. Pictured left to right, Khloe, Kim, Kylie, Kendall, Kourtney. The event was reportedly 'shut down' by police because it raged on past LA's 2 a.m. closing time

The Instagram sensation, who is a model for Khloe Kardashian's Good American denim line, said she has since been bombarded with 'nasty' comments from online trolls.

'Another thing I wanted to bring up is people trolling or being nasty or making up things just for no good reason,' she said.

'I could never imagine attacking someone and judging someone for something like this.'

'You just never know what someone is going through, it's a reminder to be kind always. There are people who go through worse things than this at the end of the day.'

Taking responsibility: Tammy told fans, 'I probably, definitely shouldn't have been drinking because of how jet-lagged and exhausted I was and I already wasn't feeling well'. Pictured at the Your Cosmo Cover Event on August 2, 2018 in Sydney

She added: 'I won't let something like this define me. I'm not gonna let it bring me down. I'm gonna use it to grow and become a stronger person.'

Tammy was among various high-profile guests invited to Kylie Jenner's exclusive 21st birthday bash.

Kim Kardashian and sisters Kendall, Khloe and Kourtney led star arrivals at the event, which was reportedly 'shut down' by police because it raged on past LA's 2am curfew, according to Page Six.

Fitness enthusiast: Tammy has built a lucrative fitness empire and her fans include e Khloe Kardashian and Real Housewives of Atlanta's Porsha Williams among other celebrities

Tammy rose to stardom in 2014 after sharing incredible photos of her post-baby body just two months after giving birth.

She went on to build a lucrative fitness empire and her fans include Khloe Kardashian and Real Housewives of Atlanta's Porsha Williams, among other celebrities.

She boasts eight million Instagram followers and one million YouTube subscribers.

In June, she announced her shock split from her fiance Reece Hawkins, 24.

They share two children together, Wolf, two, and Saskia, one.

Split: In June, she announced her shock split from her fiance Reece Hawkins (pictured right), 24. They share two children together, Wolf, two, and Saskia, one
Love Island's Ellie Brown tweeted about 'heartless people' on Twitter, a day after boyfriend Charlie Brake partied with Alexandra Cane and left her home alone.

The 20-year-old appeared to have a change of heart as she later deleted the post but has made it clear how sad she was to have been left to her own devices.

Taking to Instagram stories on Sunday, the pretty blonde admitted she was having a 'horrible, sleepless night' without her man as her parents are also out of town.

Down: Love Island's Ellie slammed 'heartless people' in a now deleted tweet and said she's 'having a horrible sleepless night' a day after Charlie Brake partied with Alexandra Cane

Home alone: Taking to Instagram stories on Sunday, the pretty blonde admitted she was having a 'horrible, sleepless night' without her man as her parents are also out of town

Looking down in the dumps in a white hoodie, she said: 'Bad timing that I'm in Newcastle and my mum and dad are on holiday.

'So this is the first night since I went into the villa that I am home and totally alone and it's horrible. So I'm watching Love Island back.

'I've never watched it before, so I am just watching the bit when me and Zara went into the villa.'

Troubled: Ellie also took to Instagram stories that night to say she couldn't get to sleep and was never staying at home alone again

Ellie then shared a fatigued picture of herself rubbing her eyes as the clock struck 03:18am, saying: 'Update, never staying by myself again.'

Earlier in the day, she was pictured arriving in Newcastle after a trip to Dublin, looking dressed down in a tracksuit.

Charlie, 23, and Ellie have had something of a rollercoaster relationship so far, with them falling out spectacularly on the night of the wrap party.

Driving back: Ellie has been away in Dublin but soon returned to Newcastle where she lives, although not with Charlie

Golden girl: Ellie was busy promoting beauty products on Instagram

There he is: Meanwhile, Charlie was busy partying with Alexandra Cane in Gallery nightclub in Maidstone

On Saturday night, he was pictured leaving Gallery Nightclub in Maidstone, Kent with Alexandra Cane as they had a joint booking.

Meanwhile, Charlie has been slammed for promoting budget watches on Instagram, despite his multi-million pound fortune.

The reality star, 23, took to his social media page on Sunday to claim he is 'absolutely obsessed' with his new Lord Time Pieces watch, which retail between 70 and 150.

However, millionaire Charlie was immediately slammed by fans for 'lowering his standards' to 'cash in', having filmed the advert itself from the wheel of his Porsche.

'Like you can't afford more!': Charlie has been slammed for promoting budget watches on Instagram, despite his multi-million pound fortune

Charlie shared a video to his Instagram story on Sunday evening, which saw him show off his new black watch as he headed for a drink with friends.

Sat at the wheel of his Porsche, the hunk urged his followers to treat themselves to a band of their own, with the use of his 10% discount code.

Not stopping there, Charlie then shared a snap of himself sipping on a coffee, with the same watch clearly visible in shot.

'Rocking it': The star, who is dating co-star Ellie Brown (above), took to social media to claim he is 'obsessed' with his Lord Time Pieces watch, which retail between 70 and 150

Promotion: The hunk urged his followers to treat themselves to a band of their own, with the use of his 10% discount code on his Instagram story

He wrote in the caption: 'Sunday Funday rocking my new @lordtimepieces watch, absolutely obsessed with this brand! Hook yourself up with 10% off by using code BRAKE10~'

However, the blonde was immediately slammed for the posts, with many claiming he clearly isn't a fan of the budget brand, as an heir to millions.

One user wrote: 'Youre a millionnaire you aint wearing lord' while another added: 'For someone that has that much money why TF are you pushing budget watches?' (sic)

Further fans agreed, chiming in: 'How is he a millionaire doing these s*** ads with the absolute worst kettles for a few quid'

Need for speed: The millionaire heir even awkwardly filmed the ad from the wheel of his Porsche

'Can't stand these adverts. As if anyone believes that these people genuinely wear them then go and buy one. Youre better than this!'

'At least accept a realistic endorsement for god sake' and 'Come on lad. Dont lower your standards for a couple of quid !'

Others even commented on his more expensive tastes, writing: 'Wheres ya Rolex?' and 'Its not like u cant afford a real AP !'

Charlie's grandfather is the founder of food distributors Brakes, which he and his two business partners sold in 2002 for a huge 434million.

Lavish taste: The Love Island star has previously revealed to owning an Audemars Piguet watch (above), which can cost up to 70,000

The Love Island star has previously revealed to owning an Audemars Piguet watch on his Instagram, when a friend asked the brand of his jewellery.

Watches by the luxurious Swiss brand can cost anything between 18,000 and a huge 70,000.

MailOnline has contacted his representatives for further comment.

Charlie is currently riding the wave of fame with new girlfriend Ellie Brown, following their stint on hit ITV2 series Love Island.

However, the pair have already been forced to defend their romance, amid claims they are on the rocks after a fierce row during the show's reunion last week.

Stumbling over his words, Charlie said on ITN: 'Couples do have their tiffs. And literally from day one we have not had one day where we havent woken up in the same bed together...'

With Charlie skirting around the issue, Ellie, 20, then chimed in: 'Basically Charlie got too drunk and [I] was sober.

'He wasnt just in trouble with me. He was mortal drunk and that's not good when you're going on live TV. I was fuming, ITV were fuming, but were okay.'

Tense: However, the pair have already been forced to defend their romance, amid claims they endured a fierce row and were 'frosty' during the show's reunion last week (above)

Charlie had allegedly threatened to embarrass Ellie live on air during the show, with a source telling MailOnline: 'Producers were forced to cut his microphone off after he threatened to embarrass her and walk off the show while it was being aired.

'He had been out drinking tequilas with Frankie Foster earlier in the day and they turned up to the studios wearing the same shirt which was also posted on their social media accounts.

'Charlie and Ellie had a huge row. They looked incredibly frosty during the programme and everyone could see it.'

However, Ellie affirmed of their romance: 'People are constantly trying to tear us apart. And I take everything to heart. But Im 100 per cent sure I want to be with him.'
Millie Mackintosh has shared a stunning bikini picture of herself from her honeymoon with new husband Hugo Taylor.

The 29-year-old shared the snap of herself wearing a skimpy brown bikini top which had a strap which sat around the body on Instagram on Monday.

She wore a pair of skimpy leopard print bottoms and a gold body chain as she sat under a straw parasol in the sunshine.

Beach day: Newlywed Millie Mackintosh shared a 'dreamy' throwback bikini picture from her honeymoon in Greece on Instagram on Monday

What a day! The couple tied the knot on June 22 and travelled to Greece for their honeymoon at the start of last month

Millie captioned the image with the words: 'Dreaming of this today.'

She tagged the location as Antisamos beach, which is in Kefalonia in Greece, where she went with her husband after the wedding.

Hugo and Millie married on June 22 and travelled to Greece at the start of last month.

And last week, Millie shared some extra details about her wedding day with her fans on Instagram.

The newlywed revealed design sketches from Kate Halfpenny as well as selfies as she posed in the designer's shop throughout the process.

Newlywed: Millie shared a behind the scenes look of her wedding dress fittings on Tuesday, posting a number of exquisite photos to her Instagram account

Millie enlisted celebrated London designer Kate, who also crafted Emilia Fox's wedding dress, to create her bespoke, off-the-shoulder lace gown.

Using French lace, spotted tulle and silk organza, the dress included a quirky detail in its detachable bubble sleeves, while a long veil completed the look.

In the photos shared by Millie, a design sketch shows off the original handwritten notes from Kate, with the bride captioning the snap 'where the magic began.'

The beginning: The newlywed, who married Hugo Taylor on June 22, revealed sketches from London designer Kate Halfpenny who created the bespoke gown

She included close ups of the dress' gorgeous detail before posing in Kate's London boutique for snaps.

Millie also shared a closer look at her stunning gold leaf crown from Tilly Thomas Lux, which complemented the ethereal feel of her dress beautifully.

The final touch was her towering Gucci heels, with the platform pair covered in dazzling silver glitter.

Stunning: Using French lace, spotted tulle and silk organza, the dress included a quirky detail in its detachable bubble sleeves, while a long veil completed the look

Quirky touches: As well as the detachable sleeves, Millie's dress included a lace over skirt which could be removed

Millie and Hugo said their vows at his uncle's country estate, Whithurst Park, in West Sussex, with the wedding covered by Hello! Magazine.

The couple dated in 2011 while on Made In Chelsea, but split when it emerged Hugo had cheated on her with her friend Rosie Fortescue, who attended the wedding alongside a bevy of their other co-stars including Caggie Dunlop and Jamie Laing.

They reunited in May 2016 shortly after Millie's split from first husband, rapper Professor Green.

Strike a pose: The bride-to-be posed for a number of mirror selfies throughout her fittings

Wedding bells: Millie and Hugo said their vows at his uncle's country estate, Whithurst Park, in West Sussex on June 22

Millie was married to the musician, real name Stephen Manderson, 34, for two-and-a-half years.

The couple announced their split in February 2016 and finalised their divorce in May 2016, the same week that Millie went public with Hugo.

Hugo then popped the question during a holiday in Mykonos, Greece, in July 2017.

Detail: Millie also shared a closer look at her stunning gold leaf crown from Tilly Thomas Lux, which complemented the ethereal feel of her dress beautifully

Talking about his bride, Hugo told Hello! magazine at the wedding: 'I knew she was The One within about five minutes of us getting back together.'

Millie concurred: 'But if we'd stayed together when we were younger, we wouldn't be together now.

'We had to go away, do our separate things and grow as people. We needed that time apart.'

After years of partying, it is not surprising that the couple injected details of their wild child ways into the day as they revealed they had named tables after nightclubs they held dear to their hearts - with them sitting on the 'Boujis' table.

Speaking of the big day, Millie said: 'The whole day has felt like an out-of-body experience.

'Even in my wildest dreams I didn't imagine it would be this perfect. I am so excited to finally be married to Hugo - he's the love of my life.'
Delegates at the event (Photo: quehuongonline.vn)

Speaking at the ceremony, Deputy Minister Vu Hong Nam highly appreciated the patriotic tradition and spirit of mutual affection and love of overseas Vietnamese in Thailand. He stressed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and SCOV always accompany overseas Vietnamese and desired that overseas Vietnamese in general, and overseas Vietnamese in Thailand in particular, will further develop and have various significant deeds toward the homeland.

Speaking at the event, Mr. Trinh Cao Son, Deputy Chairman of the General Association in Overseas Vietnam in Thailand and Chairman of the Overseas Vietnamese Association in Nakhonphanom province, said that overseas Vietnamese in Thailand are very active to donate and support people in difficult circumstances. After the ceremony, some associations still continue raising funds to support these victims.

At the ceremony, on behalf of the overseas Vietnamese in Cambodia, Ambassador Vu Quang Minh received THB291,950 to transfer to Vietnamese in Cambodia in difficult circumstances; THB291,950 will be transferred to flood victims in Vietnams northwestern provinces and the remaining will be sent to overseas Vietnamese affected by Xepian - Xe Nam Noy hydroelectric dam collapse in Laos' Bolaven plateau./.
EastEnders actress Kacey Ainsworth has hinted her beloved character Little Mo could be returning to the BBC soap.

Appearing on Loose Women on Monday, the star, 49, revealed she has spoken to her screen sisters - Lynne, Kat and Belinda Slater - about a potential return, as their old boss has returned to the soap as a writer.

However, she admitted the storyline would have be 'logistically right' for her to go back, and joked she also wanted a 'snog' off Danny Dyer as part of the deal.

Comeback kid? EastEnders actress Kacey Ainsworth has hinted her beloved character Little Mo could be returning to the BBC soap

On the cards: The star, 49, revealed she has spoken to her screen sisters about a potential return, but joked she would only come back if she could 'snog' co-star Danny Dyer

When asked by the panel if she would consider a return to Albert Square, Kacey excited fans by stating: 'It's really lovely and very flattering.

'I'm still in contact with all my screen sisters. We've talked a lot about coming back and the writers are so good on EastEnders.'

Only fuelling the fire, she hinted her comeback is more likely now her former boss has returned to the soap, adding: 'My old boss is there now....' before trailing off.

Exciting: When asked by the panel if she would consider a return, Kacey excited fans by stating: 'I'm still in contact with my screen sisters. We've talked a lot about coming back'

Family affair: Mo was a favourite on the soap alongside sisters Kat (Jessie Wallace, R), Lynne, (Elaine Lordan, L) and Belinda (not pictured. Mo's daughter Zoe, Michelle Ryan, second R)

However, the Grantchester star did say she would only return for the right storyline, which still suited her character after all these years.

She continued: 'It would have to be logistically right, and I loved her so much that it would have to not dilute her. It's not a definite no, it's never a definite no.'

Before joking: 'I'll only go back if I can get behind the bar at the Queen Vic and snog Danny Dyer!'

Hinting: Only fuelling the fire, she hinted her comeback is more likely now her former boss has returned to the soap, adding: 'My old boss is there now....' before trailing off

'It would have to be logistically right': However, the Grantchester star did say she would only return for the right storyline, which still suited her character after all these years

Caught her eye: She also joked she would only go back if she 'can get behind the bar at the Queen Vic and snog Danny Dyer! (pictured)

Kacey first appeared as Little Mo in 2000, when she and her family moved to Albert Square on the day of Ethel Skinner's funeral.

She became a fan favourite on the soap alongside her three sisters - Kat, played by Jessie Wallace, Lynne, played by Elaine Lordan and Belinda, played by Leanne Lakey.

In typical Walford style, Little Mo soon became embroiled in a number of tense storylines, including her abusive relationship with Trevor Morgan (Alex Ferns) and rape at the hands of Graham Foster (Alex McSweeney).

Back in the day: Kacey first appeared as Little Mo in 2000, when she and her family moved to Albert Square (pictured with Kat that year)

Heartbreak: She departed the soap in 2006 when she was accused of hurting her son Freddie (pictured on trial in the soap)

She bore son Freddie from the attack, but was later accused of hurting him by everyone but her family, leading to her departure in 2006.

Little Mo's storylines would no doubt only get more exciting if she was return, as Kate Oates has now joined as an executive producer.

The 39-year-old quit her role on Coronation Street in June, following weeks of criticism for her dark storylines, which included a grooming circle, a male rape and a suicide.
Holly Willoughby shared a sweet picture of herself and her youngest son, Chester on Instagram on Monday, writing: 'Someone snuck in last night.'

The 37-year-old shared a snap of both her and her three-year-old son's legs in the bed for the sweet snap taken during the summer holidays.

Holly and her beloved family are currently enjoying a break away in Portugal alongside her This Morning co-host Phillip Schofield.

Her pride and joy: Holly Willoughby shared a sweet picture of herself and son Chester while on holiday in Portugal on Instagram on Monday, writing: 'someone snuck in last night'

And she should enjoy the rest while she can as the beautiful blonde is reportedly the firm favourite to replace Ant McPartlin on I'm A Celebrity this year.

The presenter is said to be adored by ITV bosses, who are yet to find a replacement for Ant, 42, after he released a statement on Thursday revealing he would not be returning to TV until 2019.

According to The Mirror, there have been no official talks about Ant's replacement, but Holly is looking likely to be the main contender.

An insider told the publication: 'Holly is very close friends with Ant and Dec and both she and Phil have been backing Ant since his troubles.

Congratulations: Holly 37, marked her 11th wedding anniversary with a sweet black-and-white Instagram snap of herself and her husband Dan Baldwin, 43, on August 4

'Ant and Dec both love her and I am sure they'd be thrilled if she got the job'.

Both Ant and Dec, 42, share the same management company as Holly, so the star will no doubt be aware of what weeks in the Australian Jungle will entail.

Meanwhile, Holly marked her eleventh wedding anniversary to TV producer Dan Baldwin on August 4 with a sweet black-and-white Instagram snap.

She looked more loved-up than ever as she smiled widely while nuzzling her face into her producer husband's cheek.

Heading to The Jungle? Holly is reportedly 'a firm favourite to replace Ant McPartlin on I'm A Celebrity 2018' (pictured 2017)

The pair sported matching Ray-Bans in the selfie, with Holly's pushed on top of her head to reveal her eyes closed, completely lost in the moment. Holly captioned the photograph: '11 years baby... your love gets sweeter every day... love you.'

The Brighton-born beauty met Dan when she was presenting Ministry of Mayhem and he was her producer. Six months later, the couple were in a relationship.

After 18 months of dating, Dan popped the question to Holly while she was taking a bath. Dan had asked her parents' permission in advance before they tied the knot in 2007.

And 11 years later, the pair now share three young children; Harry, nine, Belle, seven and Chester.

How it all began: The Brighton-born beauty met Dan when she was presenting Ministry of Mayhem and he was her producer. Six months later, the couple were in a relationship

Unusual proposal: After 18 months of dating, Dan popped the question to Holly while she was taking a bath

Earlier this year, the veteran host spoke to The Sun about her career plans and her marriage to 'hot' TV producer Dan Baldwin.

The devoted mum-of-three has been a staple of morning telly for almost two decades, landing her first TV gig on CITV.

She said: 'I don't really want to do more, I just want to pause everything and keep everything as is. Work is in a really lovely place and I'm really happy with This Morning.

Sweet: Dan had asked her parents' permission in advance before they tied the knot in 2007

'My main focus over the next few years is churning out three very grounded, normal, happy, content children, teenagers and adults, eventually.' she added.

It's not just her children she plans to work more on - but her 11 year marriage to producer Dan , whom she met while working on show Ministry of Mayhem.

Describing her husband as 'one of my best friends', the blonde beauty admitted that despite the close-knit relationship, marriage is 'something you have to look after and work at', but cheekily confessed that Dan is 'also a friend that I think is quite hot'.
Things are still going strong between Chris Pratt and his new girlfriend Katherine Schwarzenegger, who coordinated in black outfits and treated his son Jack to a movie at ArcLight Hollywood on Sunday.

The 39-year-old action star is clearly comfortable enough with the 28-year-old socialite to introduce their intimate romance to his bespectacled boy, who celebrates his 6th birthday on August 25.

A week earlier, the LA native's 24-year-old brother Patrick Insta-storied a snap of the coy couple enjoying family dinner at their journalist mother Maria Shriver's home.

Still going strong! Chris Pratt and his new girlfriend Katherine Schwarzenegger coordinated in black outfits and treated his son Jack to a movie at ArcLight Hollywood on Sunday

Ghostbusters fan: The 39-year-old action star is clearly comfortable enough with the 28-year-old socialite to introduce their intimate romance to his bespectacled boy, who celebrates his 6th birthday on August 25

'Maria helped set them up,' a source told People in June. 'It's still new.'

Pratt and Schwarzenegger were first spotted canoodling during a romantic picnic date in Santa Barbara on June 17.

Chris and Katherine then confirmed their relationship with a very public display of affection outside a Los Angeles church on July 29.

'He's back!' A week earlier, the LA native's 24-year-old brother Patrick Insta-storied a snap of the coy couple enjoying family dinner at their journalist mother Maria Shriver's home

A source told People in June: '[Her mother Maria Shriver] helped set them up. It's still new' (pictured July 4)

Not red carpet ready: But Schwarzenegger did not attend Sunday night's Teen Choice Awards with Pratt, who won the trophy for 'summer movie actor' for his work in Jurassic World

But the USC grad did not attend Sunday night's Teen Choice Awards with the Minnesota-born heartthrob, who won the surf board trophy for 'summer movie actor' for his work in Jurassic World.

Little Jack is Chris' only child with estranged wife Anna Faris (now dating her Overboard cinematographer Michael Barrett), whom he filed for divorce from December 1 after eight years of marriage.

The 41-year-old SAG award nominee looked very slim in a floral skirt while attending the Day of Indulgence at producer Jennifer Klein's Los Angeles home on Sunday.

Pictured Sunday: Little Jack is Chris' only child with estranged wife Anna Faris (now dating her Overboard cinematographer Michael Barrett), whom he filed for divorce from December 1 after eight years of marriage

Skinny Minnie: The 41-year-old SAG award nominee looked very slim in a floral skirt while attending the Day of Indulgence at producer Jennifer Klein's Los Angeles home on Sunday

Zoom in: Last Tuesday, the Mom funnywoman joked via Twitter that her 'Hollywood lunch' was the equivalent of a miniature toy meal

Last Tuesday, the Mom funnywoman joked via Twitter that her 'Hollywood lunch' was the equivalent of a miniature toy meal.

Aside from her lifestyle blog - Katherine published a children's book called Maverick and Me, she shills for Chef Boyardee, and she frequently models for Rob Lowe's wife Sheryl's jewelry company.

The ASPCA activist has nepotism to thank for her career as her father is former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and her great uncle was President John F. Kennedy.
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley put a chic twist on business attire as she headed off to meetings in New York on Monday morning.

The model looked oh so stylish in a grey blazer and beige slacks, teaming the look with a silky camisole, statement R necklace and bold sunglasses and handbag.

Stepping out in style: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley looked oh so stylish in New York on Monday

She finished off the outfit with towering shoes.

Her outing comes after it emerged she has set a date to marry long-time love Jason Statham.

The Meg actor and the 31-year-old model - who have been together since 2010 and got engaged two years ago - will tie the knot before the end of the year and are planning a huge celebration of their marriage on New Year's Eve.

Suits you: She wore a grey blazer and beige slacks, teaming the look with a silky camisole

The Mail on Sunday reports the couple - who have son Jack, 14 months, together - will send out invitations for the celebrations in the next few weeks.

The couple had originally planned to get married last year, but put their plans on hold because of Rosie's pregnancy.

Meanwhile, the blonde beauty recently spoke of how 'special' it has been to take time off work to be with Jack and 51-year-old Jason.

She said: 'I took a bit of time off and had my baby.

R for Rosie: She wore a bold statement necklace

'I tried to take the time at home to enjoy those first special months with my family.

'I have a wonderful personal life with lots of love and fun.'

And though Rosie didn't want to sound 'terribly smug', she couldn't be happier with her family life.

She said: 'I don't know how to explain it without sounding incredibly cliched or terribly smug, but it is the most amazing time right now. I feel so happy, all the way from the bottom of my heart. Life just feels so full. The thing that surprised me the most is how all-consuming and deep a love you can feel. I've been very lucky to experience love in my life, but with your baby, there's nothing else like it.'

And the blonde beauty loves bringing Jack up in sunny Los Angeles but admits she does miss her home country.

She said: 'The Los Angeles lifestyle is so fantastic, but there's this niggling part of me, every single day, that says, 'When am I going to come home?''
She recently confirmed her romance with non-binary gender model Rain Dove.

But Rose McGowan flew solo as she promoted her new book, Brave, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in Scotland on Monday afternoon.

The former Charmed actress, 44, looked in high spirits as she publicized her hard-hitting memoir, which details her sexual assault by disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, at the event.

Back to business: Rose McGowan flew solo as she promoted her new book, Brave, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in Scotland on Monday afternoon, after confirming her romance with model Rain Dove

Rose showed off her style prowess in a floral rollneck, which the star jazzed up with flared, cropped trousers and leather platforms.

Brave, which was released in January, details the activist's childhood living as part of the controversial group Children of God, as well as her sexual assault at the hands of Miramax mogul Weinstein.

The outing comes shortly after Rose was spotted getting cosy with Rain Dove, who prefers the pronoun 'they', while at the OZY Fest last month.

Tell all: The former Charmed actress, 44, looked in high spirits as she publicized her hard-hitting memoir

New Yorker Rain, who stands at a striking 6ft2in, 28, is famous for modelling both men's and women's clothes.

Born female but taunted over their masculine looks, Dove believed they were popular because they had been adorned a nickname  Tranny Danny  until they discovered what 'tranny' meant in high school.

They discovered that dressing like a man received different treatment, and even worked as a firefighter under a male pseudonym for a year.

Fashionista: Rose showed off her style prowess in a floral rollneck, which the star jazzed up with flared, cropped trousers and leather platforms

They became a model after losing a bet and agreeing to go to a Calvin Klein lingerie casting call; they were told to come back the following day to the male casting, and was hired.

'I think all people are androgynous,' Dove told Buzzfeed in a 2015 interview. 'It's just that we've created these genders.

'I think that "androgynous" applies to someone who doesn't appear physically to be gender specific  you won't be able to figure out what's in their pants.'
She's never been one to shy away from the limelight.

And Kimberley Garner ensured all eyes would be on her as she attended the world premiere of The Festival at the Cineworld Leicester Square in London on Monday.

Oozing glamour on the outing, the 28-year-old reality star turned heads in a glamorous backless gown in a shimmering gold colour.

Golden girl! Kimberley Garner ensured all eyes would be on her as she attended the world premiere of The Festival at the Cineworld Leicester Square in London on Monday

The blonde bombshell went braless on the outing, putting her cleavage on display in the low-cut cowl neck gown that clung to her hourglass curves.

Skimming over her enviably peachy posterior, the garment fell just below the knee, exposing a hint of her toned pins, that were boosted with a pair of barely-there gold heels.

The former Made In Chelsea stunner finished off the look by styling her glossy golden locks in loose waves that framed her pretty features.

Dressed to impress: Oozing glamour on the outing, the 28-year-old reality star turned heads in a glamorous backless gown in a shimmering gold colour

Kimberley proudly flaunted her figure after hitting back at claims she has had cosmetic surgery.

She wrote: 'For all the gossip, no I have not had a boob job, and no I have not had a butt job! (Which still comes as a very weird concept to me)'

'Womens bodys change, sometimes Im a little chubbier and sometimes too skinny, its just natural and so important to love our bodys, whatever the phase - but thanks for all the gossip I have heard over the past year, it has really made me laugh.'

'ps I have been learning some butt exercises, will make a video, incase you want a fake butt ;) (sic).'

Dazzling: The blonde bombshell went braless on the outing, putting her cleavage on display in the low-cut cowl neck gown that clung to her hourglass curves

Kimberley often flaunts her sensational figure on social media, as she proves to be her own best advert for her swimwear range.

She recently revealed how she used to pretend to be the intern when she first started in business as nobody took her seriously.

She told Femail: 'I was 18 when I started my first company - I came up with an idea, stayed up for days learning how to register the company and teaching myself. It became very successful overnight. However, as I was only 18, no one ever imagined it was mine.

'I was a young blonde girl with a soft voice. No one would take me seriously or realise it was my company. So, I pretended to be the Intern!
He turns 58 on Friday.

So Sean Penn may well be celebrating his birthday on vacation with his 26-year-old actress girlfriend, Leila George.

The couple were spotted on the beach on the Hawaiian island of Oahu on Monday.

Happy: Sean Penn, who turns 58 on Friday, enjoyed a cigarette as he stood next to his lady love. actress Leila George, 26, on a beach on the Hawaiian island of Oahu on Monday

The Oscar winner, who wore green swimming trunks and a cap, smoked a cigarette as he stood on the sand next to Leila.

The beautiful blonde showed off her slender figure in a barely there bandeau-style bikini.

The Milk star, 57, enjoyed a quick dip in the ocean before leaving the beach with his girlfriend.

The couple have been dating for two years.

Looking good: The Hollywood star showed off his pecs in green swimming trunks and a cap as he walked along the beach after going for a dip in the water

She is the daughter of Law & Order vet Vincent D'Onofrio and stunning Eighties actress Greta Scacchi.

At 57, Greta is a year younger than Sean while her former husband D'Onofrio is the same age at 58.

Sean has been associated with many women before Leila, including ex-wives Madonna, to whom he was married from 1985 to 1989, and Robin Wright, 1996 to 2010.

Beach beauty: Leila showed off her slender body in a barely there bandeau-style bikini as she carried a towel and her book Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine to Sean's beach-front home

Cooling down: The beauty was seen taking a dip in the ocean

Robin reportedly tied the knot with her beau Clement Giraudet, head of VIP relations at Saint Laurent, at a mystery location on Saturday, according to Vogue Paris.

Sean was most recently engaged to Charlize Theron before the couple called it quits in June 2015.

Meanwhile, Leila's screen career is growing. She debuted on screen in the Lifetime TV movie Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? alongside James Franco and Tori Spelling in 2016.

Casual: The lovebirds enjoyed a fun day at the beach

Friendly exes: Sean and Madonna, who were married from 1985 to 1989, posed with her children David Banda and Mercy James at Sean's Help Haiti Home gala benefit in LA in2016

Another ex: Sean and Robin Wright Penn at the Oscars in Hollywood, 2009, during their four-year marriage. They split in 2010 and she reportedly married Clement Giraudet on Saturday

The Australian-born actress also has three movies in post-production - Peter Jackson's Mortal Engines, James Franco-directed The Long Home, and The Kid, which stars Chris Pratt and also featured an appearance by her father.

Leila has also previously worked with Sean - posting a picture of them both in a studio, where they were recording an audio book.

Sean can next be seen on TV in sci-fi drama The First when Hulu premieres the first of eight episodes on September 14.
She has been frequently seen about New York with her new fiance Justin Bieber.

But Instagram superstar Hailey Baldwin was stag when she was glimpsed stepping out in the City That Never Sleeps this Monday.

The 21-year-old, whose uncle is Alec Baldwin, swept her signature blonde hair into a tight bun and bundled up in a purple, blue and black Martine Rose jacket.

On the town: Instagram superstar Hailey Baldwin was stag when she was glimpsed stepping out in the City That Never Sleeps this Monday

Accentuating her vertiginous gams with charcoal Alo Yoga leggings, she slipped into white shoes and accessorized with a pair of massive sunglasses.

Hailey added a splash of glitz to the look with a pair of glistening Messika by Gigi Hadid earrings, carrying a plastic water bottle as she emerged onto the sidewalk.

Her outing in New York comes a day after she was snapped cheerily snuggling up to her man in his hometown of Stratford, Ontario - where Loreena McKennitt also lives.

It had evidently been an emotional week for the pair, who were spotted apparently tearfully comforting each other in a New York eatery this past Tuesday.

Stepping out: The 21-year-old, whose uncle is Alec Baldwin, swept her signature blonde hair into a tight bun and bundled up in a purple, blue and black Martine Rose jacket

Justin at one point seemed to be wiping tears away the hem of his T-shirt, and at another stage he took Hailey's distraught face in his hands.

Earlier that same day, they had been spotted holding each other close at a park in the city - and they had appeared to be crying then as well.

Justin proposed to Hailey in a restaurant at the Bahamian resort where he was staying on a weekend in July, a brace of eyewitnesses gossiped to TMZ.

Before he popped the question on July 7, his security detail allegedly instructed the other restaurant-goers to tuck away their cellphones.

Hoofing it: Accentuating her vertiginous gams with charcoal Alo Yoga leggings, she slipped into white shoes and accessorized with a pair of massive sunglasses

He and Hailey were seen the next day kissing and mingling with other revelers at Great Guana Cay's Nippers Beach Bar And Grill.

It was during the same outing that eagle-eyed onlookers first captured photographs of Hailey's ring - which TMZ claims cost $500,000 - and posted them to the Internet.

By the day after that, Justin himself fired up his Instagram page and confirmed to his more than 100 million followers that he and Hailey were engaged.

Hailey held forth about her religious convictions in Elle UK last year, saying: 'It's something I plan to stick to for the rest of my life  raise my kids that way, marry someone who believes in the same things. It's important to me.'

Staying hydrated: Hailey added a splash of glitz to the look with a pair of glistening Messika by Gigi Hadid earrings

Meanwhile, Justin, who in 2014 was arrested in Miami on charges including driving his Lamborghini under the influence, is a famous congregant of the Sydney-born megachurch Hillsong and something of a religious protege to its pastor Carl Lentz.

A source exclusively revealed to DailyMail.com that Hailey and Justin will attend Hillsong classes prior to going down the aisle.

'The marriage course is something which is encouraged and in some cases demanded by Hillsong pastors before they will marry you,' the insider confided.

Loved up: A source has exclusively revealed to DailyMail.com that Hailey and her groom-to-be Justin Bieber will attend Hillsong classes prior to going down the aisle

Yet in the slipstream of his latest split from his on-off flame Selena Gomez earlier this year, Justin and Hailey had been back on in the weeks prior to their engagement.

Former teenage sweethearts Justin and Selena reportedly went on again late last year - but by this March, they were on a break.

Selena's mother Mandy Teefey told Gossip Cop in January she was 'not happy' her daughter had taken up with her used-to-be.

Cuddling up: Justin is a famous congregant of the Sydney-born megachurch Hillsong and something of a religious protege to its pastor Carl Lentz

They purportedly first started dating in 2010 before going red carpet official at the following year's Vanity Fair Oscar Party.

'Jelena' are said to have split up late in 2012 - only for a rash of unconfirmed reconciliation rumors to flare up around them for a bit in 2013.

That July, however, Selena explained in an interview with the Associated Press: 'I've known him for a really long time and we enjoy each other's company every now and then. But I'm definitely single and enjoying being that.'
Their relationship blossomed after their characters embarked on romance on The Inbetweeners over eight years ago.

And Hannah Tointon looked positively radiant as she joined her fiance and co-star Joe Thomas on the custom green carpet for The Festival in London's Leicester Square on Monday.

The actress, 30, supported her leading man beau, 34, in a glamorous blush pink gown with a decant lace floral design.

Support: Hannah Tointon, 30, dazzled in a chic pink lace gown as she cosied up to fiance Joe Thomas for The Festival premiere in London on Monday

Hannah drew attention to her cleavage with the plunging design,and navigated the custom grass carpet in classic metallic stiletto heels.

The former Hollyoaks star swept back her brunette tresses into a sleek ponytail and amplified her beauty with soft rosy make-up.

Hannah left any glitzy accessories by the wayside and simply accessorised her stunning ensemble with her glittering engagement ring.

So glam: Hannah drew attention to her cleavage with the plunging design,and navigated the custom grass carpet in classic metallic stiletto heels

Larking about: Her Inbetweeners co-star Joe complimented Hannah's look perfectly with his own sharp attire, opting for a tailored black jacket and matching slacks

Smiles: Clearly having a great time together, Hannah burst out into a fit of giggles as she attempted to keep her composure on the red carpet

Hannah's Inbetweeners co-star Joe complimented her look perfectly with his own sharp attire, opting for a tailored black jacket and matching slacks, polished off with box-fresh while skater shoes.

The couple, who got engaged last year, have teamed up again on screen for the British comedy, which will premiere in the rest of the UK on Tuesday.

Joe told Christine Bleakley on ITV's Lorraine on Tuesday that he loved working with his fiancee again, eight years after their first worked together.

Mess it up! Hannah showed off her silly side as she tousled her beau's locks

So chic: The former Hollyoaks star swept back her brunette tresses into a sleek ponytail and amplified her beauty with soft rosy make-up

Loved up: The couple, who got engaged last year, have teamed up again on screen, this time for new big screen comedy The Festival

Written by the BAFTA award-winning writers and producers behind The Inbetweeners, Iain Morris and Damon Beesley, The Festival stars Joe as Nick who is dumped by Hannah's character at his uni graduation and heads to a music festival with his pals in a bid to move on.

'He's kind of going there to get over her, it's all about letting yourself go and losing yourself at the festival.'

'Towards the end he kind of lets go, it's about enjoying yourself and enjoying life,' Joe explained to Christine.

Smitten: Last January UniLad reported Joe got down on one knee after seven years with Hannah

Tight knit: Their love no doubt blossomed after their characters embarked on romance on the show - with the sister of Kara Tointon playing unlucky-in-love Simon's crazy girlfriend Tara

Shimmering: Hannah left any glitzy accessories by the wayside and simply accessorised her stunning ensemble with her glittering engagement ring

Meet and greet: Hannah happily signed autographs for fans waiting for a chance to meet the star at the barricades

Say cheese! The former soap star flashed a smile for a fan's selfie

Of working with Hannah again, he quipped: 'I've got to the stage like she's in everything, it went very well I think!'

Last January UniLad reported Joe got down on one knee after seven years with Hannah.

Their love no doubt blossomed after their characters embarked on romance on the show - with the sister of Kara Tointon playing unlucky-in-love Simon's crazy girlfriend Tara.

Having more luck with their love off-screen however, it was confirmed that the duo had moved in together in the City back in 2012.

Palling around: The Festival co-star and former Hollyoaks alum Emma Rigby, 28, looked her red carpet best as she joined friend Hannah for some glamorous snaps

Glam girls: Emma teased some serious side-boob in her black lace halterneck gown as she posed alongside her fellow big screen queen

Stylish: Emma styled her glossy blonde tresses in huge Hollywood curls and added a pop of colour with a vibrant red lip

TV queens: Emma and Hannah last shared the screen together in Hollyoaks, with Emma playing Hannah Ashworth from 2005 to 2008, while Hannah was in the fictional Chester town as Katy Fox in 2007

While he's known for his comedic roles, Joe says he tries to separate work and home life, explaining:

'I guess I do try and switch off when I get home, if you're doing comedy all day sometimes you want to be calm, I'm trying to introduce the word chilled into my vocabulary.'

The actor also admitted he can't believe it's been a decade since The Inbetweeners hit screens, gushing:

'It's great obviously it connect with people and thats so rare. One of the things thats forgot about the Inbetweeners is that vocab because it's all kind of the boys vocabulary.

All together: Director Iain Morris in his best festival wellies (L) and co-star Hammed Animashaun (centre left) joined Hannah and Joe for a series of red carpet snaps

All the fun: Hammed ensured to capture the moment on his phone with his fellow Festival stars

Star-studded: (L-R) Nick Frost Director Iain, Hammed, Hannah, Joe, Emma, Theo Barklem-Biggs, Hugh Coles and Claire Jones all teamed up for a cast photo
Girls creator Lena Dunham shared more than a swimsuit selfie with her combined 8.8M social media followers, as she dug up a sad relic from her five-year relationship with ex-boyfriend Jack Antonoff.

The 32-year-old Golden Globe winner posted a list of potential baby names - including 'Oz, Na, Sara Lee, Zavie, Rah, and Shogo' - she and the 34-year-old Bleachers frontman compiled in 2015.

'I could definitely keep this private,' the Oberlin College grad tweeted early Monday.

Nostalgic: Girls creator Lena Dunham shared more than a swimsuit selfie with her combined 8.8M social media followers, as she dug up a sad relic from her five-year relationship with ex-boyfriend Jack Antonoff

'I could definitely keep this private': The 32-year-old Golden Globe winner posted a list of potential baby names - including 'Oz, Na, Sara Lee, Zavie, Rah, and Shogo' - she and the 34-year-old Bleachers frontman compiled in 2015

'But then the world wouldn't know that you suggested Carrot over and over... Love u!'

Lena and the three-time Grammy winner - who split in December after 'evolving separately' - never had kids but she gave up their 'special needs' dogchild, Lamby Antonoff-Dunham, in March 2017.

Dunham was also feeling nostalgic last Wednesday when she admitted she's been rehashing her 'trauma again and again in art and relationships.'

The RuPaul's Drag Race guest judge has been spotted with many a mystery man, but Jack has only publicly canoodled with Elite Model Carlotta Kohl at a March 17 Knicks vs. Hornets game.

'Best friends 4ever!' The Oberlin College grad and the three-time Grammy winner - who split in December after 'evolving separately' - never had kids but she gave up their 'special needs' dogchild, Lamby Antonoff-Dunham, in 2017 (pictured June 22)

Mining for material? Lena was also feeling nostalgic last Wednesday when she admitted she's been rehashing her 'trauma again and again in art and relationships'

Moved on? Dunham has been spotted with many a mystery man, but Jack has only publicly canoodled with Elite Model Carlotta Kohl at a March 17 Knicks vs. Hornets game

Adding to the AHS: Cult actress' wistful mood Monday was the fact that she just officiated the wedding of Wynter Mitchell and Allan Rohrbaugh in Ojai on August 4.

'This woman so beautifully and joyfully united Allan and I last weekend in the holiest of matrimonies,' the digital branding guru gushed on Instagram - according to Page Six.

'This goddess did right by us. You're my sister from another mister 4 life.'

'This goddess did right by us': Adding to the AHS: Cult actress' wistful mood was the fact that she just officiated the wedding of Wynter Mitchell and Allan Rohrbaugh in Ojai on August 4

End of an era: Lena also just amicably ended her eight-year producing partnership with Jenni Konner (R), who co-created Girls as well as their upcoming HBO series Camping, which premieres October 14 (pictured June 29)

According to THR, Lena also just amicably ended her eight-year producing partnership with Jenni Konner, who co-created Girls as well as their upcoming HBO series Camping, which premieres October 14.

Jennifer Garner, Juliette Lewis, Ione Skye, David Tennant, and Bridget Everett star in the twosome's eight-episode reboot of Julia Davis' 2016 Sky Atlantic show about a man's 45th birthday weekend gone awry.

Meanwhile, Antonoff and his Bleachers bandmates will next headline 88.9 WERS and Emerson College's free Wicked Good Festival taking place on Boston Common this Saturday.

June 7 set snap: Jennifer Garner (R), Juliette Lewis (3-L), Ione Skye (2-L), David Tennant, and Bridget Everett star in the twosome's eight-episode reboot of Julia Davis' 2016 Sky Atlantic show about a man's 45th birthday weekend gone awry
ULAN BATOR, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Mongolian Prime Minister Ukhnaa Khurelsukh said on Sunday that Minister of Road and Transport Development Jadamba Bat-Erdene and several others would be fired over a train derailment in the morning.

Speaking on state television, Khurelsukh said Bat Tsogtgerel, vice minister of road and transport development, and several other officials of the ministry would also be fired.

The announcement came after a train with 328 on board derailed in the southeast early Sunday morning, injuring nine people.

The train was traveling from capital Ulan Bator to Zamiin-Uud, a town in southeastern Dornogovi Province. There was heavy rainfall at the time of the derailment.

[ Editor: LYQ ]
His fine moustache is as renowned as his ability to solve even the most tangled of mysteries using his little grey cells.

But Hercule Poirot's famous facial feature has gone missing  and the prime suspect in its disappearance is none other than Hollywood star John Malkovich.

The American actor is playing Agatha Christie's celebrated Belgian sleuth in a BBC drama and has replaced the moustache with a neat grey goatee.

John Malkovich was pictured sporting a grey goatee while on location in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, for a BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1936 novel The ABC Murders

It's a far cry from the waxed and pointed moustaches described by Christie and worn by previous screen Poirots such as Albert Finney in 1974's Murder On The Orient Express and Peter Ustinov. Sir Kenneth Branagh sported an extravagant number in last year's remake of Orient Express.

And the most famous Poirot, David Suchet  who played him on ITV for 24 years  told The Times: 'As far as I know Agatha Christie never depicted him wearing a beard. I seem to remember him wearing a false beard in one of the short stories.

But Poirot is famous for his fine moustaches. Not his beard. Poirot says of himself that it is the finest moustache in the world, and he thinks he looks great. His vanity would say, 'This looks fantastic'.'

Suchet, 72, added: 'But whatever other actors choose I've got to remember that's a very careful choice from an artist.'

Malkovich, 64, was pictured while on location in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, for an adaptation of Christie's 1936 novel The ABC Murders, which is expected to be shown by the BBC at Christmas.
The honeymoon period is definitely over.

Danielle Staub has filed a restraining order against her husband of three months Marty Caffrey, according to Page Six.

It was reported late last month that the newlyweds were having marital problems, having just tied the knot on May 5.

Honeymoon period is over: RHONJ star Danielle Staub has filed a restraining order against her husband of three months Marty Caffrey

On Sunday, the 56-year-old Real Housewives Of New Jersey star returned home to find her garage door disengaged and unable to be opened, according to the order obtained by the site.

When she accessed the garage by another door, 'she found her husband standing in her garage. He appeared to be under the influence of alcohol, agitated and confrontational.'

She went straight to her bedroom to avoid fighting with him, but returned downstairs after hearing 'a disturbing noise'.

'Then she realized that several of her family portraits of her children and other sentimental framed photographs had been taken down causing her to be upset', the report continued.

Trouble: It was reported late last month that the newlyweds were having marital problems, having just tied the knot on May 5 (pictured at Bobby Zarin's funeral in January)

As Staub went through the house looking for photos it was Caffrey, 66, who called the police; however when officers arrived it was Staub who obtained the restraining order.

She told authorities she believes Caffrey 'is attempting to tarnish her reputation and career by making repeated false reports to the media.'

Caffrey was then given 20 minutes by the police to gather his belongings and leave the scene.

He was ordered to stay away from his now estranged wife, her two daughters, her workplace and her home, which exclusively belongs the the RHONJ star anyway.

Report: On Sunday, the 56-year-old Real Housewives Of New Jersey star returned home to find her garage door locked, and Marty inside 'under the influence of alcohol, agitated and confrontational'

Worrisome: The first sign of trouble apparently surfaced when the reality star's husband Caffrey took to Instagram last month

The restraining order is valid until they are both due in court on August 20.

The first sign of trouble between the two surfaced surfaced when the reality star's husband to Instagram in July to announce: 'Sorry things didn't work out baby. You aren't what you pretended to be. Sad.'

A source confirmed to Page Six at the time that she was having 'some difficulties with her marriage right now and is hoping everything will work out.'

Going postal: The restraining order is valid until they are both due in court on August 20

However Marty was notably absent from Danielle's birthday party shortly afterward.

Marty proposed during a RHONJ Reunion Secrets Revealed episode in January.

They tied the knot on May 5th in a ceremony held on the Bahamas North Bimini Island at the Luna Beach Club, having dated since April 2016.

It was Danielle's third marriage, after previously walking down the aisle with Thomas Staub and Kevin Maher.
It looks like Married At First Sight star Telv Williams' recent split with Melbourne sales manager Maddie Carolan was anything but amicable.

The couple, who were in an on-again-off-again relationship for a few months after Telv broke up with Sarah Roza, are believed to have ended things last month.

But Maddie, 27, has wasted no time jumping back into the dating scene, debuting her new boyfriend Nick James on Instagram on Monday.

It's war! Telv Williams' ex-girlfriend Maddie Carolan (left) has branded the MAFS star 'fake' in a scathing Instagram comment as she debuts her new boyfriend Nick James (right)

Sharing a photo of herself and Nick together, the blonde bombshell alluded to past heartbreak in the caption, writing: 'Everything happens for a reason'.

In the comments section, Maddie's followers congratulated her on finding happiness again - but some also criticised her for moving on so quickly.

'You didn't take long to move on,' wrote an Instagram user, before another leaped to her defence by writing: 'So what? Does she need to ask you before being happy?'

It's over! The couple, who were in an on-again-off-again relationship for a few months after Telv (right) broke up with Sarah Roza, are believed to have ended their romance last month

'Fake everything being the key word there': In the comments section (above), Maddie appeared to take a swipe at her ex-boyfriend and his habit of using dating apps like Tinder

Meanwhile, the former grid girl also appeared to take a swipe at her ex-boyfriend and his habit of using dating apps like Tinder.

One of her Instagram fans wrote: 'Nice work, girl! Wonder if I'll be seeing Telv's "fake" Tinder account reappear now.'

Maddie then replied: 'Hahaha, yeah babe. Fake everything being the key word there.'

Taking the high road: In a statement to Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday, Telv said: 'I wish Maddie and her new boyfriend all the best. She is a good person with a good heart and she deserves to be happy, just like all of us do.' Pictured: Telv on Married At First Sight

In a statement to Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday, Telv said: 'Not sure what she's talking about there. My Tinder and Bumble are both real!

'I wish her and her new boyfriend all the best. Maddie is a good person with a good heart and she deserves to be happy, just like all of us do.'

Maddie and Telv began dating in March, following his acrimonious split with his Married At First Sight 'bride' Sarah Roza.

Case of the ex! Maddie and Telv began dating in March, following his acrimonious split with his Married At First Sight 'bride' Sarah Roza (right). After an on-again-off-again romance, they parted ways for good last month

In May, they unfollowed each other on social media and briefly split. Around this time, Telv denied rumours he had an active Tinder profile.

The following month, they were back together and Maddie hinted they had worked through their issues in a loved-up Instagram post.

'Life should be about lifting each other up. Not tearing each other down. Loving my life with this one,' she wrote, tagging Telv.

But in July, it emerged they had officially parted ways after Telv was spotted using dating app Bumble.
It's the highly anticipated live-action remake of Disney's hit 1998 animated blockbuster, Mulan.

And on Monday, Disney released the first look at Chinese-American actress Liu Yifei, 30, in costume as the title character.

Disney also revealed that production on the highly anticipated movie has begun.

So fierce: On Monday Disney released the first look at Chinese-American actress Liu Yifei, 30, in costume as Mulan for its live-action remake of its 1998 blockbuster animated movie

The Niki Carodirected film is being shot on location in China and New Zealand.

In the publicity shot, the star, also known as Crystal Liu, wears a red robe as she wields a large sword with an intense stare on her face.

It will no doubt come in useful when Mulan goes to war instead of her elderly father.

Tough act to follow: Warrior Mulan was voiced by Ming-Na Wen in Disney's 1998 animation

The stellar cast features Chinese actor Jet Li, actor and martial artist Donnie Yen, both 55, Jason Scott Lee, 51, and Chinese-Singaporean actress Gong Li, 52.

Choosing Liu for the role of Mulan was part of a worldwide casting process that took over a year.

The award-winning actress, who has been a brand ambassador for Dior and Pantene, beat more than 1,000 other hopefuls vying for the part.

Keen to be cast: The actress, also known as Crystal Liu, seen at an event in Shanghai, China in December, was one of more than 1,000 hopefuls vying for the part

Liu is no stranger to martial arts movies having been in 2008's The Forbidden Kingdom with Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

Disney's hit animated version was released in 1998 and starred Ming-Na Wen as the voice of the brave Mulan with Eddie Murphy as the voice of her bumbling dragon Mushu.

The live-action Mulan is set to hit the big screen on March 27, 2020.
Cate Blanchett is well known for her passionately held political views.

Whether it be climate change or the plight of asylum seekers, Cate has not held back from sharing her progressive opinions - least of all with her family.

Speaking to Harper's Bazaar Australia, the actress said there are a lot of 'oh no, not again' reactions from her children when she tries to discuss social issues at home.

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'We make a point of not lecturing them': Cate Blanchett (pictured) has revealed her children 'roll their eyes' when she tries to tell them about climate change and asylum seekers

'There's a lot of eye-rolling,' Cate, 49, told the magazine.

Cate is mother to sons Dashiell John, 16, Roman Robert, 14, Ignatius Martin, nine, and adopted daughter Edith, four, with husband Andrew Upton, 52.

When asked what she would tell Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, 63, if given the chance, Cate said: 'I'd talk about off-shore processing [of refugees] and the absolute importance of upholding the human rights convention.'

Not again, mum! Cate said there are a lot 'oh no, not that again' reactions from her children when she discusses social issues. Pictured, from left: Ignatius Martin Upton, Cate Blanchett, Roman Robert Upton and friend

However, while outspoken in her views, Cate insisted that she and Andrew don't 'lecture' their children.

'We took our nine-year-old to Jordan, but we make a point of not lecturing them,' she said. 'It's actually interesting to hear them talk when they think you're out of earshot...'

Cate has been married to Australian playwright Andrew for more than 20 years.

'There's a lot of eye-rolling': Cate is used to her children's reactions when she expresses her progressive views on political matters. Pictured Cate (left), and Ignatius Martin Upton (right)

In October 2015, the Ocean's 8 star revealed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that her romance with Andrew was a whirlwind.

Cate admitted that she and Andrew slept together early on in their romance, and got engaged just a couple of weeks later.

'Actually after three days,' Cate said when asked how quickly she decided to marry him.

Family values: 'We took our nine-year-old to Jordan, but we make a point of not lecturing them,' Cate (pictured) told Harper's Bazaar Australia. Pictured: Cate with Ignatius Martin
She was glimpsed over the weekend while in the process of moving out of her Orange County home.

And the work continued on Monday, when Audrina Patridge was seen carrying some of her belongings out to a parked truck.

The 33-year-old The Hills alum, who is in the midst of a divorce from Corey Bohan, was joined by their two-year-old daughter Kirra out on the driveway.

In the process: Audrina Patridge was joined by her two-year-old daughter Kirra out on her driveway as she continued the process of moving out of her Orange County home Monday

Audrina, who acquired the four-bedroom home for $1,546,000 in 2016, has made money on it by selling it for $1.8 million, The Blast reported last week.

Her prenuptial agreement with Corey ensured she would keep the house, and after separating from him last September, she listed her home this May.

Audrina and professional BMX dirt bike rider Corey were together on and off since 2008 and welcomed Kirra into the world on June 24, 2016.

The couple married in a romantic Hawaiian ceremony in November 2016, just 10 months before they parted ways.

Mark-up: Audrina, who acquired the four-bedroom home for $1,546,000 in 2016, has made money on it by selling it for $1.8 million, The Blast reported last week

TMZ reported last September that Audrina obtained a temporary restraining order against Corey and filed for divorce shortly thereafter.

Audrina claimed in court documents that Corey had allegedly shoved her while she held Kirra, and that he had previously threatened to kill himself, among other allegations.

Though Audrina filed a domestic abuse claim against Corey, the prosecutor decided there was insufficient evidence, and the Orange County District Attorney's office declined to file charges, E! News reported on September 25.

Audrina's representative clarified to E! News at that time: 'There is still a family law domestic violence case open.'

Out she goes: Her prenuptial agreement with Kirra's father Corey Bohan ensured she would keep the house, and after separating from him last September, she listed her home this May

Kirra's mother won full custody, but Corey did obtain limited visitation rights.

The reality star forked over $35,000 to get her estranged husband to vacate their house in Irvine, California, according to TMZ.

Yet she alleged that she arrived at the premises only to find the locks changed and the wedding rings gone.

She made these claims in court documents cited by Us Weekly, maintaining further that the 'closet drawers were ransacked,' and that she had needed help from a locksmith to get into the house.

Backdrop: Audrina and professional BMX dirt bike rider Corey were together on and off since 2008 and welcomed Kirra into the world on June 24, 2016

This March, Audrina put in an emergency request to deprive Corey of his visitation rights and take out a restraining order against him, The Blast reported.

'I am more afraid of him now than ever, and fear for the safety of our daughter Kirra when she is in his care,' Audrina insisted, accusing him of such menacing behavior as having 'one time swerved his vehicle dangerously close to my sister.'

Corey has maintained his innocence of harassment allegations, Radar Online claimed this June, citing court documents.

Audrina has reignited her romance with her fellow former The Hills cast member Ryan Cabrera, whom she previously dated in 2010.
Tracey Jewel and Dean Wells' relationship on Married At First Sight ended bitterly after he had an 'affair' with fellow contestant Davina Rankin.

But the former lovebirds have reconciled, with the 35-year-old single mother telling Who on Tuesday that Dean, 40, 'has been such a support' during her recent troubles.

The surprising confession comes after Tracey revealed she attempted suicide in Berlin several weeks ago following her split with ex-boyfriend Patrick Kedemos.

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'He has been amazing': Married At First Sight's Tracey Jewel (left) confirmed on Tuesday she has reconciled with her 'ex-husband' Dean Wells (right)... after revealing her suicide attempt

Referring to a worrying social media post she shared about her battle with trolls on August 3, she said: 'In my despair, I put something on my Instagram saying "I'm done, the trolls have won" and it's been amazing the support I've received from Dean, from the show. He's been such a support for me.'

Tracey added: 'He's [reached out] and he's texted a few times and publicly messaged saying for people to leave me alone. He's been amazing.'

She also told the publication that fellow MAFS cast members Gabrielle Bartlett and Sarah Roza have been 'really supportive too' amid her mental health crisis.

Supportive: Tracey and Dean's relationship on Married At First Sight ended bitterly after he had an 'affair' with fellow contestant Davina Rankin - but it seems they have moved on from the scandal are now good friends. Pictured on MAFS

On Monday, Tracey told New Idea magazine that she tried to end her life by 'overdosing' on medication in Berlin several weeks ago.

Tracey hit rock bottom in the days after her ex-boyfriend Patrick, 45, dumped her while they were travelling across Europe - but fortunately German doctors were able to save her following the suicide bid.

'I went into a head spin and I overdosed. I just couldn't see a way out of the current situation,' she confessed.

'I've been trolled and cyber bullied relentlessly, pretty much all year [since MAFS]. I'm not someone with a history of depression, but I started getting help in April because a psychologist said I might have post-traumatic stress disorder because of everything I'd been through.'

Eventually, Patrick gave Tracey money to pay for a flight back to Australia.

Knight in shining armour: After Tracey revealed she was struggling with trolls on August 3, Dean messaged her and released a public statement telling people to 'leave [her] alone'

Following her return to Perth on August 3, Tracey was admitted to a mental health clinic. She said: '[My doctors] thought the best thing I could do was to have care to get better as quickly as possible.'

The self-help author is believed to be currently living at her adoptive mother Jenny's house in Perth and is taking an extended break from social media.

Tracey also said that her biological daughter Grace, eight, does not yet know about her suicide attempt because she 'doesn't want to scare or upset her'.

Ordeal: On Monday, Tracey told New Idea magazine she tried to end her life by 'overdosing' on medication in Berlin several weeks ago

Late last month, a source close to Tracey confirmed she split with her ex-boyfriend Patrick while the pair were cruising around Europe together.

German police were called after an argument between Tracey and Patrick that took place on July 28, following the pair's arrival in Berlin.

The newly-single star was then forced to turn to the Australian embassy after she was left stranded and 'unable to pay for her own return flight home'.

'Things reached breaking point on Saturday night [July 28] when they had an almighty row - with Tracey moving into a separate hotel room to calm down,' the source said at the time.

Crisis: After her return to Australia on August 3, she was admitted to a mental health facility

'Patrick officially ended things and Tracey was then left to arrange her own return travel back home to Australia alone after they split.

'But she hadn't taken any money with her on the trip and was left stranded. The last friends heard she'd filed a complaint with the police was waiting for the Australian embassy to open on Monday so she could figure out what to do.'

Patrick eventually gave Tracey money to fly home, telling Woman's Day last week that he 'transferred another $2,000 just to get rid of her'.

Desperate: Tracey hit rock bottom in the days after her ex-boyfriend Patrick Kedemos (right) dumped her while they were travelling across Europe - but fortunately doctors in Germany were able to save her following the suicide bid

Earlier this year, Tracey became one of the most talked-about women in Australia when she was involved in a love triangle on Married At First Sight.

She was paired with Dean Wells on the 'social experiment', but was left blindsided when he had an 'affair' with fellow contestant Davina Rankin.

In the months after the show aired, however, Tracey emerged as one of the series' most controversial and divisive contestants.

She has faced criticism for running an allegedly fraudulent competition, plagiarising content in her books and falsely implying she suffered from cervical cancer.

(Tracey has claimed her competition's winner was 'unable to take the major prize so it was redrawn'. She has also denied intentionally plagiarising anybody else's work. Regarding claims about her health, Tracey insists she never claimed to have cervical cancer and a since-deleted Instagram post that seemingly implied she did suffer from the disease was 'taken completely out of context' by fans and the media.)

If you, or someone you know, needs support please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit lifeline.org.au
The Australian Greens will try to censure independent senator David Leyonhjelm for telling Sarah Hanson-Young on the floor of parliament to "stop shagging men".

Greens leader Richard Di Natale on Monday confirmed the minor party would push ahead with the move while Senator Hanson-Young is suing Senator Leyonhjelm for defamation over comments in subsequent media interviews.

While he wasn't able to sanction or force Senator Leyonhjelm to apologise, Senate President Scott Ryan vowed to apply a strict line on appropriate language to "uphold the dignity of the chamber".
The harmful impacts of gambling on Victoria's Aboriginal community will be among the concerns discussed at a meeting in regional Victoria.

The meeting, hosted by the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, is the only one of its kind in Australia and draws on input from overseas and national experts.

The state government is expected to pledge $200,000 over three years for gambling research in Aboriginal communities.

"This project will aim to help us understand and build on Victorian Aboriginal Health Service's own successes in supporting Aboriginal communities affected by gambling harm, and offer the Foundation insights into how we can better support other communities facing similar challenges," foundation chief executive Louise Glanville said on Monday.

The foundation said it will work to help people recover from gambling harm.

The Geelong meeting, which started on Monday, will also launch the foundation's three-year strategy to further its public health approach to gambling harm.
Changes to South Australia's corruption and maladministration watchdog run the risk of denying some people natural justice, a parliamentary inquiry has been told.

The Law Society of South Australia has detailed a number of issues it has with the state government's proposed bill which would allow public hearings for matters of maladministration and misconduct but maintain secret hearings in corruption cases.

President Tim Mellor says the society is most concerned there is no automatic right to legal representation for people appearing before any public hearing and that exactly how those hearings are conducted would be at the discretion of the commissioner - potentially denying some natural justice.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (L) and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (R) [File photo: China Plus]

BEIJING, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said Sunday Beijing is willing to join hands with Tokyo to work for the long-term healthy and stable development of bilateral ties.

Li and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe exchanged congratulatory messages on Sunday to mark the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship.

In his message, Li noted that 40 years ago, the leaders of the two countries made the decision to sign the treaty and affirmed various principles in the China-Japan Joint Statement in the form of law, creating a milestone for bilateral ties.

Over the past 40 years, the relationship between China and Japan has seen remarkable progress, which has brought benefits to the two peoples, and contributed to the prosperity and stability in the region and around the world, Li added.

In May, the Chinese premier paid an official visit to Japan, where he also attended the 7th China-Japan-South Korea leaders' meeting.

Li said his visit and the meeting have helped put China-Japan relations back on the track of normal development.

China is willing to work with Japan to safeguard the political foundation of the bilateral relationship, deepen cooperation of mutual benefit, properly handle differences and promote a long-term sound and stable development of bilateral ties in the spirit of "taking the past as a mirror and looking forward to the future," and following the principles laid out in the four political documents signed between the two sides, he added.

Abe, in his message, said that thanks to joint efforts, the relationship between the two sides has witnessed substantial development in such areas as politics, economy, culture and people-to-people exchanges.

Both Japan and China shoulder important duties for regional and world peace and prosperity, said Abe, adding that the two countries should continue deepening their cooperation, and contribute to the settlement of all sorts of problems facing the international community.

Speaking highly of Li's visit to Japan this May, Abe said is looking forward to visiting China later this year so as to help bring bilateral ties into a new stage of development.
Australia's armed forces have pledged to work closely with the United States as it establishes a new branch of the military dedicated to fighting wars in space.

The Defence Department says decisions on the structure of the so-called Space Force are a matter for the US, as Donald Trump considers an extra agency on par with the army, navy, air force, marines and coast guard.

"Australian defence cooperation with the United States on space is strong and growing. This will continue irrespective of how the US military force is structured," a spokesperson told AAP on Monday.
Jason Taumalolo will miss North Queensland's NRL game against Cronulla after he pleaded guilty to a shoulder charge offence.

He was charged for his hit on Brisbane winger Jamayne Isaako in Thursday night's win over the Broncos and on Monday pleaded guilty to the grade-one offence.

With an early guilty plea he will miss just the one match, however, it comes as a significant blow given the Sharks boast a representative pack.

Canberra hooker Josh Hodgson was the only player charged out of Sunday's games but he will escape a ban with an early guilty plea for his dangerous throw on Wests Tigers' forward Luke Garner.
Red tape for re-developing Australian airports would be reduced under a government proposal that has found bipartisan support.

Legislation passed parliament's lower house on Monday allowing projects up to $25 million to be completed without the need for a major development plan.

The government's original legislation sought to increase the threshold from $20 million to $35 million - to take into account the increasing costs of development - but was reduced to $25 million after changes put forward by the opposition were adopted.

Labor's transport spokesman Anthony Albanese said a major development plan would trigger the need for public consultation and increasing the limit by 75 per cent would remove that requirement from most major projects.

The legislation also proposes to reduce how often smaller airports are required to develop their master plans.

International airports in capital cities will still be required to be completed every five years, but that will be increased to eight years for smaller regional airports.

Infrastructure Minister Michael McCormack said the changes would streamline administrative arrangements which are "currently generating inefficient outcomes for industry as well as imposing unnecessary and onerous administrative and compliance costs".

The proposal, which first came before parliament in 2016, will now go to the Senate.
Australia's "insidious" drought is devastating farmers but bringing out the generous best in Australians, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says.

Mr Turnbull thanked farmers for showing tenacity and courage, while the community was digging deep to help out.

"When nature throws its worst at us, it brings out the best in Australians," Mr Turnbull told parliament on Monday.

Mr Turnbull said the government is giving farmers an extra $12,000 on top of usual assistance, as well as making it easier for them to get allowances.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said penalties taken from the big banks should be used to pay for more help to farmers.

"Let's work on a plan to reinvest those penalties in some of the people who've suffered in more than their fair share of rip-offs from the banks," Mr Shorten told parliament.

Mr Turnbull said all of NSW and two-thirds of Queensland is in drought, with the Bureau of Meteorology saying it could be even worse than the drought in the mid-1960s.
Queensland's premier has categorically ruled out any move to introduce daylight saving, saying she doesn't want to "divide the state".

The perennial issue has been reignited with an opinion poll in the Courier-Mail on Monday showing 55 per cent of Queenslanders surveyed supported the introduction of daylight saving, with 41 per cent opposed to the move and 4 per cent undecided.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said those numbers suggested there wasn't enough support to alienating rural Queenslanders who are mostly opposed to daylight saving.
WHAT WE LEARNED

* The winners of by-elections held in Braddon, Perth, Fremantle, Longman and Mayo on July 28 have taken their seats.

* Labor's newest MP has a classically Australian middle name - Patrick Possum Gorman.

--

WHAT THE GOVERNMENT WANTED TO SPIN

Bill Shorten says one thing to one group and another to another.

--

WHAT LABOR WANTED TO TALK ABOUT

Will the prime minister now admit, after not picking up any seats in five by-elections, that he got it wrong in proposing a corporate tax cut?

--

THEY SAID WHAT

"I rise to ... affirm the nation's support for courageous farmers and farming communities." - Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

"If we keep the farms going, we keep the towns going." - Labor leader Bill Shorten.

"I can't say what I'm thinking." - Turnbull quotes Shorten during a microphone incident in outback Queensland.

"Why is this prime minister so careless with taxpayers' money?" - Shorten on $444 million given to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

--

TWEETED

@SwannyQLD When MPs who have returned to the Parliament after renouncing their UK Citizenship then have to pledge allegiance to Queen Elizabeth, it's surely time for an Australian Head of State #qt #auspol
More than 130,000 people, including 22,000 children, are living in poverty in South Australia, the state's lead welfare agency says.

The South Australian Council of Social Service said households in regional areas are twice as likely to be surviving below the poverty line as those in metropolitan Adelaide.

Chief executive Ross Womersley said while there's no easy answer, both state and federal governments must do more to help those in need.

"SACOSS believes we can do much better in addressing the issue of poverty in our community," he said on Monday.

"We know that there is no simple solution but urge both state and federal governments to make addressing poverty a matter of national importance."

SACOSS also found that poverty affected more than 60,000 households in SA with 41 per cent of the people affected being single with no children.

It said 7.1 per cent of all households in metropolitan Adelaide were living below the poverty line compared to 14.8 per cent across the rest of the state.

Its new data was prepared as part of a submission to a state parliamentary inquiry into poverty in SA.

Mr Womersley said the best and most direct way to reduce poverty would be for the federal government to raise the Newstart and other base welfare payments by at least $75-a-week.

"The reality is that the Newstart payment at its current rate is simply inadequate and does not meet the needs of South Australians receiving it," he said.

"The impact of an inadequate Newstart payment in regional, rural and remote South Australia is even more profound as the likelihood of poverty doubles in these communities.

"Regional South Australia has always been a key driver of our state's economic growth over many years and if we want to eradicate poverty then it must be a vital part of the solution."
An 84-year-old Australian human rights activist remains detained at Manila's international airport, nearly a week after he was first barred from entering the Philippines.

NSW professor Gill Boehringer hasn't left the airport since he arrived on a flight from China on August 8 because the government had "blacklisted" him for allegedly participating in a rally three years ago.

His lawyer, Maria Sol Taule, on Monday told AAP he's still waiting on the Bureau of Immigration to consider his application to stay in the country on medical grounds.

The 84-year-old - who is originally from the United States - previously told AAP the airliner won't allow him to fly without first obtaining a clearance from a medical specialist outside the airport.

Prof Boehringer, who is married to a Filipino woman, insists the charges against him are false.

He says while he may have acted as a "devil's advocate" through his criticism of the Filipino government he was only trying to protect human rights and promote social justice.

"There is no basis for my exclusion from the Philippines in what was an educational experience for myself, the others who travelled with me into the mountain district," Prof Boehringer said in a statement on Monday.

Geneve Rivera-Reyes from advocacy group Health Action for Human Rights examined Prof Boehringer after he arrived in the Philippines and said he was suffering from deep vein thrombosis and cellulitis on both legs.

She agreed it was "not safe" for him to travel again without a medical clearance.

The government claims it banned Prof Boehringer because of his participation in a November 2015 rally violated an order "prohibiting foreigners from engaging in political activities in the Philippines".
A NSW Supreme Court trial has begun for a trio charged over the torturous death of a man whose battered body was found on the side of a road in 2014.

Raquel Gaelle Hutchison, 40, and Paul Andrew Wilkinson, 39, have pleaded not guilty to the murder of the 41-year-old man while their alleged associate, Daniel Greentree, has denied being an accessory after the fact to the killing.

Crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen on Monday submitted Hutchison had participated in a "joint criminal enterprise" with Wilkinson to "lure" her ex-husband - the victim - to his St Marys home before he was repeatedly punched, tied up, shoved in a car boot and dumped in Wisemans Ferry.
Liberal MP Jason Falinski would "welcome and encourage" drug tests on welfare recipients in his northern Sydney beaches electorate.

The lower house is again debating the controversial policy, which would allow 5000 new Youth Allowance and Newstart recipients in three locations in Queensland, NSW and Western Australia to be drug tested.

Labor and Greens are opposed, but Mr Falinski told parliament on Monday he would embrace the testing in his electorate of Mackellar because locals "truly care about everyone in their community, our community, especially those trying to get back on their feet".
A poster saying "hate has no home here" is seen in Charlottesville, Virginia, the US, on August 10, 2018. A year after a white nationalist rally traumatized Charlottesville, in the US state of Virginia, with riots and blood, the city is still healing from the shock. On August 12, 2017, white supremacists and members of other hate groups gathered in Charlottesville for a self-styled "Unite the Right" rally to protest against the city's decision to remove a Confederate statue before clashing violently with counter-protesters. After the riots were dispersed, an Ohio man associated with white nationalist groups drove a car into the crowd of counter-protesters who were marching peacefully, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others. [Photo/Xinhua]

WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of anti-protesters gathered in several locations in central Washington Sunday afternoon, hours before a controversial right supremacist rally is scheduled.

The protesters are gathered in Lafayette park, just across the street from the White House, and the freedom plaza, just blocks away.

The protesters gathered in the country's capital to mark the one-year anniversary of the deadly Charlottesville protest, during which a white supremacist killed a female anti protester, sparking nationwide furor.

To prevent potential conflict, Washington law enforcement came onto the street in force to maintain order. An entire section of Pennsylvania adjacent to the White House has been sealed off.

Organizers of the the far right rally, officially named United the Right 2, claim their purpose was to advocate "White civil rights," but were slammed as promoting racism and xenophobia. The far right rally is set to begin in Lafayette park at 5:30 pm.

Anti-protesters held up signs denouncing racism, fascism and calling for pluralism, and at time broke out in chants and sing alongs.

Debbie Wagner, an anti protester from neighboring state of Maryland, told Xinhua that she was shocked by the tragedy at Charlottesville last year, and found many around her have become more politically vocal in the past year.

"White Supremacism is a terrible thing, I hope America can continue to be a place of diversity," she said.

Last summer's "Unite the Right" rally in historic Charlottesville, held on Aug. 12 to protest U.S. cities taking down Confederate statues, attracted national attention when white supremacists, fascists and neo-Nazis violently clashed with counter-protesters.

A 32-year-old woman was killed and 19 others were injured when an Ohio man associated with white nationalist groups allegedly drove a car into the crowd of counter-protesters.

President Trump drew a firestorm of criticism last year following the deadly when he said "both sides" were to blame for the violence.
A company that allowed unlicensed staff to x-ray the teeth and jaws of thousands of NSW children has been fined almost $200,000, the state's environment watchdog says.

The NSW Environment Protection Authority on Monday said the Australian Aged Dental Care was fined $198,000 and ordered to pay $125,000 in costs by the Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney.

EPA Chief Environmental Regulator Mark Gifford said AADC "showed a blatant disregard" for the rules by instructing employees who didn't hold radiation licences to perform hundreds of teeth and jaw x-rays between 2013 and 2015.
Schools, hospitals and housing should be safeguarded from the impacts of climate change, a Greens-led Senate committee has found.

A report released on Monday into current and future effects of climate change called for urgent action to protect critical infrastructure like water and electricity assets.

"Business as usual is not acceptable," committee chair and Greens senator Janet Rice said in her report.

The report called for houses, communities, cities and infrastructure to be made more resilient to climate risks.

One recommendation calls for the federal government to commit to zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.

"Australia must do its fair share and it must do it fast," Senator Rice told parliament.

The committee also wants the commonwealth to urge state and territories governments to develop coastal retreat strategies to combat sea level rises.

Liberal senator and committee deputy chair Jonathon Duniam listed a range of measures the government is taking to mitigate climate risks.

"Coalition senators note the government's climate policies are working," Senator Duniam said.
Today's Birthday, August 14: Australian journalist Laurie Oakes (1943 - ).

After more than 50 years of ground-breaking scoops, veteran journalist Laurie Oakes fired a few select parting shots when he retired as Nine News chief political editor.

The 75-year-old lamented the state of modern politics and opined that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's failings were largely incompetence-based.

"The current PM's main problem in my view is that he's just not very good at politics, never has been. He lacks the skills," Oakes said last September at a Melbourne Press Club lunch held in his honour.

"Political skills, I think, have been in short supply in the post-Howard era in all parties."

Oakes was criticised in June 2017 after leaking off-the-record footage of Turnbull mimicking US President Donald Trump at the Canberra Press Gallery's annual Midwinter Ball.

The Nine Network poached ABC political editor Chris Uhlmann to replace Oakes, who signed off for the last time almost exactly 12 months ago.

Born in Newcastle in 1943, Oakes gained a Sydney University arts degree while working for the now-defunct tabloid Daily Mirror, initially as a graveyard shift crime reporter and then as a state political reporter.

At age 25 in 1969, he became Canberra bureau chief for the Sun, then Melbourne's highest circulation morning tabloid.

Over the next five decades he became famous for never revealing his sources and having no allegiances, dealing both major parties political blows along the way.

His biggest scoops included the Hawke-Keating leadership pact, a 1997 travel rorts scandal that cost three ministers their jobs and a leak of the entire 1980 federal budget two days before its release.

Oakes became Nine's political editor in 1984 and shortly afterwards started writing a column for the Bulletin.

However, not all of his peaks behind the political curtain were well received publicly.

He was forced to defend his 2002 report of a long-running affair between former deputy Labor leader Gareth Evans and Australian Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot during which Kernot defected to Labor.

Oakes argued the story was justified due to Kernot neglecting to mention the affair in her autobiography.

The three-time Walkley Award-winner's career spanned 13 prime ministers, 20 federal elections, 51 budgets and one dismissal.

Oakes wrote eight books, two of them co-authored, on politics.
Truck drivers from across Australia are converging on drought-stricken NSW carrying bales of hay, but some are providing more than fodder for desperate farmers and their livestock.

Chris Redpath, who has run an agricultural freight business in central Victoria for 15 years, never had to cross the NSW border until this year.

Now his drivers are making the 720-kilometre eight-hour journey to the NSW central west daily.

"I've never carted hay like this before - it's horrendous, it's horrible," Mr Redpath told AAP from his base in Avoca.

"Running hay over the NSW border is, in our business, unheard of."

Despite the distance, Mr Redpath has found himself providing emotional support to the NSW farmers battling the record-breaking dry spell.

"We've never met before and they're reaching out on the telephone," he said.

"I had a farmer ring me up the other day and say 'I really need to know that you're going to cart up this load of hay because my cattle are starving.'

"I think they're very, very strong people. And let's be honest, in farming you have to be strong because your whole destiny lies in the hands of the weather."

His latest delivery arrived at Wayne Dunford's livestock and crop farm near Parkes in the NSW's central west on Monday morning.

Mr Dunford, whose family has been farming the area for more than a century, has spent $100,000 on freighted hay so far this year.

"We got caught short because we came off the back of some other bad years," he told AAP.

"We've had little bits of rain but all it does is settle the dust."

The 68-year-old on Monday pointed to a dry, dusty paddock past his hay shed where he sowed canola two months ago.

"That should be a foot high," he said.

The NSW government last month announced $500 million in drought relief for farmers, taking the total contribution past $1 billion.

The second stage of the funding provides freight subsidies of up to $20,000 per farm which Mr Dunford said does help: "Any dollar is handy."

He'll continue to pay for hay to be trucked to his property until the drought breaks.

But that's not expected to be any time soon.

"The (weather) bureau's climate outlook for August to October shows high chances of warmer and drier conditions over the drought-affected regions," climatologist Simon Grainger said in a statement to AAP.

The NSW government has declared the entire state drought-affected.
As Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull prepares to rally support for his signature energy plan in the coalition partyroom, his predecessor has stressed he's not taking the decision of whether to back the policy lightly.

"This is by far the most important decision that this parliament will take," former prime minister Tony Abbott told ABC TV on Monday.

"This will shape our economy, this will determine our prosperity and the kind of industries we have for decades to come."

Mr Abbott is one of a core group of coalition MPs who have signalled willingness to cross the floor to vote against the government's National Energy Guarantee.

Mr Turnbull is aiming to win the group over when the coalition party room meets on Tuesday by promising to underwrite new power generation, potentially including coal.

Mr Abbott has warned Australia will be "surrendering its sovereignty" if his coalition colleagues support the policy.

He wants the government to buy the Liddell coal-fired power station and forget about the Paris emissions target he signed as prime minister.

Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce is among several others to have threatened to vote against the energy guarantee.

He wants it to include promises to act against power companies who lift energy prices for households.

Mr Joyce's Nationals colleague George Christensen said he is optimistic ahead of Tuesday's meeting, based on reports the government will underwrite the construction of new power assets, including coal-fired stations.

The move was one of 56 recommendations from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission designed to cut power prices, on which Nationals MPs were briefed on Monday.

Opposition energy spokesman Mark Butler is worried the recommendation has been "grossly misrepresented" by some Liberal and Nationals members.

"I'm concerned that this recommendation runs the risk of being manipulated to suit Malcolm Turnbull's need to get something through the coalition party room," he told the ABC Radio on Monday.

"If that happens, we certainly don't support that."

But Mr Butler said he was eager to see a form of the guarantee succeed.

"I don't think anyone wants this to fall over."
A homeless man has spent the night in custody after being arrested in the Melbourne CBD over a hit-run crash that killed a Dutch woman.

The 26-year-old man was arrested on Bourke Street in Melbourne's CBD at 5.30pm on Monday after a member of the public recognised him from images released by police.

A 27-year-old woman was riding her bike in South Yarra when she was hit by a stolen Mercedes-Benz on Sunday.

The victim, who police are yet to name and who was was living in Melbourne on a working visa, died while the driver of the Mercedes got out of the car and left the scene.

Her relatives are on their way to Melbourne from the Netherlands.
Senators are gearing up for a potentially divisive showdown on whether to give territories the right to make their own assisted suicide laws.

Liberal Democrats' David Leyonhjelm's bill to restore the ACT and Northern Territory's powers to make euthanasia laws will be debated on Tuesday.

The upper house will deal solely with Senator Leyonhjelm's bill until it's voted on.

He believes the bill has enough support to pass, with some senators opposed to legalising euthanasia set to vote for the bill because they see it as an issue of territories' rights.

Senator Leyonhjelm says he was guaranteed a vote in both chambers in return for his support for re-establishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

But Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull denies the deal.

Senator Leyonhjelm's legislation would repeal Liberal MP Kevin Andrews' 1997 private bill which banned territories from ruling on voluntary euthanasia.

Mr Andrews told Sky News he had been assured by the government's Leader of the House Christopher Pyne that the draft laws would not be voted on in that chamber of parliament.

Coalition and Labor senators have been given a conscience vote on Senator Leyonhjelm's bill.

On Monday, ACT and NT chief ministers ramped up calls for the legislation to be passed with a full-page newspaper advertisement.
Omarosa Manigault Newman described herself as being "complicit" in the White House's deception of Americans

A former White House staffer who has written a bombshell memoir of her time serving under President Donald Trump released a secret tape Sunday of the chief of staff firing her.

Omarosa Manigault Newman said she decided to release the secret recording of John Kelly in the Situation Room -- which marks a breach of security protocols -- and recorded conversations with Trump because "this is a White House where everybody lies."

The White House Situation Room is supposed to be a top-security room and electronic devices are banned there, but it was not immediately clear whether Manigault Newman would face legal ramifications for releasing the recording.

On the tape, which Manigault Newman said was made in 2017, a voice she claims belongs to Kelly points to "significant integrity issues" that prompted him to fire her.

"They take me into the Situation Room, the doors are locked, they tell me I can't leave and they start to threaten me, put fear in me, to put me under duress," she said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" that featured the recording.

"I protected myself because this is a White House where everybody lies. The president lies to the American people, (spokeswoman) Sarah Huckabee stands in front of the country and lies every single day. You have to have your own back or else you'll look back and you'll have 17 knives in your back."

She called on the White House to release her personnel file to clear her name.

The White House reacted angrily to Manigault Newman's move, dismissing her as a "disgruntled former White House employee."

"The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room shows a blatant disregard for our national security," Sanders said in a statement.

"And then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee."

- Trump 'mentally declined' -

Manigault Newman, who is African-American, also writes in her incendiary memoir "Unhinged" -- set to hit bookshelves Tuesday -- that Trump uttered a racial slur "multiple times" during the making of his hit show "The Apprentice" prior to his presidential run, and that there are tapes to prove it.

She branded the president as "racist" and he, in turn, called her a "lowlife" for making the recording.

Manigault Newman described herself as being "complicit" in the White House's deception of Americans.

"It is hindsight. But I will say this to you, I was complicit with this White House deceiving this nation," she said on NBC's Sunday talk show.

"They continue to deceive this nation by how mentally declined he is," she said, referring to Trump, "how difficult it is for him to process complex information. How he is not engaged in some of the most important decisions that impacts our country. I was complicit, and for that I regret."
Tribunals are imposing 'cooling-off' periods to allow potential divorcees to reconsider. Cao Yin reports.

In March, a couple in Anhui province filed for divorce at a court after a number of arguments about trivial family matters. However, instead of granting their request, the judge imposed a "cooling-off period" of one month to give the couple time to reconsider.

The judge at Yixiu District People's Court in Anqing city urged the couple to cherish life with their family, and took time to explain the problems that could arise regarding the allocation of property and child support if the divorce was granted.

Four weeks later, the couple returned and told the court that they were dropping the case because they had decided to remain married.

"Some couples, especially younger ones, are more susceptible to impulsive break ups. The cooling-off period allows them to think twice and solve their disputes sensibly," read a statement released by the court.

In the past two years, cooling-off periods - lasting from two weeks to three months - have been imposed on couples filing for divorce in 118 courts in places as widespread as Beijing and the provinces of Sichuan and Shandong.

The move is part of a two-year pilot program to reform hearings involving domestic disputes implemented by the Supreme People's Court in 2016. During the period of reflection, courts do not deliver a verdict; instead, they investigate the family's situation or offer couples marriage guidance.

At the end of last month, the maximum duration of the cooling-off period was officially limited to three months and written into a guideline for handling domestic dispute cases issued by the top court. Psychological assistance and social workers' surveys of troubled families were added to the guideline at the same time.

Conflict alleviation

Guo Jie, a judge at the Intermediate People's Court in Sanming, Fujian province, welcomed cooling-off periods and said the concept has played a major role in alleviating conflict, especially between newlyweds and couples with children age 16 or younger.

However, she noted that cooling-off periods would not be appropriate for all divorce proceedings - for example, those involving domestic violence where approval is usually granted without delay.

Some critics have complained that the move interferes with the freedom to divorce, but Wang Peng, a judge's assistant at Dongcheng District People's Court in Beijing, said the final decision lies solely with the litigants.

"The period of reflection doesn't mean that a couple must remain married. In fact, some people spend the time clarifying the division of property and arranging child support. We want to solve domestic disputes effectively and minimize the damage to litigants, not interfere in their decisions," he said.

Minor complaints

Last year, Guo Jing, a judge at Haidian District People's Court in Beijing, handed a couple a two-week cooling-off period after discovering that their problems were relatively trivial.

"The wife didn't have any major complaints about her husband, such as committing domestic violence or having an affair. She just complained about his bad temper and frequent socializing," she said. "The cooling-off period can play a major role in helping people with minor family problems who impulsively decide to divorce."

She compared the period of reflection to a "brake" on a marriage that gives people time to reconsider their actions, and said it worked well in about 20 percent of the cases she handled last year.

According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the divorce rate has risen rapidly nationwide since 2002. More than 4 million couples ended their marriages in 2016, while between January and June last year, 1.85 million couples filed for divorce.

Chen Aiwu, a law professor at Nanjing Normal University in Jiangsu province, said it is essential for courts to establish that a marriage can be saved before they impose a period of reflection.

"If some litigants display extreme behavior before going to court, such as threatening to commit suicide, judges should provide psychological aid, not mediation," he said.

Guo Jie, the judge from Fujian, voiced the same opinion. "The cooling-off period is not designed to force couples to remain married," she said. "Litigants can use the time to reconsider, while courts can use the time to identify the best way to resolve the dispute."

Surveys, assistance

Since 2016, Guo Jie's court has invited social workers and psychologists to conduct pretrial surveys of troubled families to establish the roots of domestic disputes.

Social workers from independent bodies visit the litigants' workplaces, communities and neighbors over a period of 10 to 15 days before submitting a report to help judges determine if a marriage can be saved.

"We don't compel litigants to take part in the survey. We fully protect the privacy of those who are willing to speak with us," Guo Jie said, adding that surveys were conducted in 20 of the 70-plus domestic dispute cases her court handled last year.

In Beijing, the court in Dongcheng district often invites people involved in domestic disputes to discuss their problems with judges in an informal room decorated with sofas, televisions and a circular table.

The court has also cooperated with the Dongcheng Women's Federation to provide psychological help for litigants who request it.

"Some people become too emotional to accept suggestions from their partners or others close to them," said Wang Xiuwen, one of the judges.

Zheng Hong, a mediator at the court, said: "Some litigants may prefer to speak about their dispute in a cosy environment, while others will unburden themselves to psychologists. No matter what method they choose, we hope to help them resolve their dispute peacefully and avoid any new trauma that could be caused by conflict."

Preventing harm

Guo Jie, from Fujian, has never regarded ruling on domestic disputes as trivial legal work.

"Some litigants have physically harmed themselves or other people when their conflicts weren't resolved satisfactorily," she said.

She recalled a case in 2014, when she had to stop proceedings and take emergency action to protect a woman who refused to accept her husband's request for a divorce and dismissed Guo Jie's suggestion that divorce would be the best option for the couple.

"She screamed at me and climbed up to the courtroom window with the intention of committing suicide. We had to erect a safety net at the base of the building to protect her, and spent a long time pacifying her," she said.

In 2016, Ma Caiyun, a judge in Beijing, was shot and killed by a man who was unhappy with a ruling Ma had made about the division of property relating to his divorce.

"Sometimes we think we have solved a case in accordance with the law, but the dispute still exists. That's why we are taking measures to discover the roots of conflict and making greater efforts to alleviate them," Guo Jie said.

Difficulties, challenges

Courts not only face difficulties resolving problematic cases, but also have to contend with low levels of staffing and inadequate financial support.

For example, the court in Dongcheng employs 29 officials, including nine judges, to handle domestic disputes, but more than 1,000 cases have been filed annually since 2016, and the number continues to rise.

"The labor shortage means we cannot devote as much time as we would like to every case. It's only when proceedings are extremely complex that we are able to fully investigate, conduct surveys and invite psychologists to mediate," said Wang Xiuwen.

In addition, Guo Jie said a lack of funds means courts are unable to employ enough social workers and psychologists. She urged authorities to provide special funding to ensure greater improvements in the handling of domestic disputes.

"Higher salaries would help to improve efficiency," she said, adding that increased funding would allow cooperation between courts and support services to become stronger and more effective.
Mozambique's child marriage and teen pregnancy rates are among the highest in the world

In the tiny maternity ward in Murrupelane, two 16-year-old mothers breast-feed their babies, both born that morning.

Mozambique's child marriage and teen pregnancy rates are among the highest in the world, a driving factor in the population explosion in this poverty-plagued southern African nation.

After emerging from a brutal war in 1992, the former Portuguese colony saw its population swell 40 percent in the two decades to 2017, reaching 29 million today.

"My parents really wanted me to get married," says Julia Afonso, one of the girls who has just given birth in Murrupelane, a village in the north.

In a tiny voice, she says her family received 1,500 meticals ($21, 22 euros) as a dowry.

Around half of Mozambique's women -- 48.2 percent -- marry before they turn 18, according to UN children's agency UNICEF.

Of girls aged between 15 and 19, 46.4 percent are either pregnant or have already become mothers.

These early marriages and pregnancies "are impoverishing the community," says Murrupelane village chief Wazir Abacar.

Young parents "cannot feed their children, and the mums leave school," he said. As a result, 58 percent of Mozambican women are illiterate.

- Pregnant at 12 -

Around half of Mozambique's women marry before they turn 18, according to UN children's agency, UNICEF

Ema Nelmane, now 13, gave into the advances of a man she met in the market who offered her 200 meticals (three euros) for her virginity.

"She saw a chance to get the same shoes her friends were wearing," her grandmother said, by way of explanation.

When she fell pregnant, Ema was flabbergasted.

"I didn't know you could get pregnant by making love," she said, breast-feeding seven-month-old Ismail in the clay yard outside her grandmother's home.

Ema was plunged prematurely into the world of adults.

"I can't go out and play with my friends anymore," she said.

As in other developing countries, teenagers in Mozambique often fall pregnant "through lack of education", said demographer Carlos Arnaldo.

"Parents see in these births a guarantee that they'll be looked after when they get old."

Until recently, Mozambique's government did little to tackle demographic problems.

But the mounting costs of the population boom have forced a change of thinking.

- Contraception drive -

"The economic consequences for the government are that it has to build hospitals and schools," said Pascoa Wate, head of maternal and child health at the health ministry.

"In spite of government spending, people don't have access to them."

To try to curb the population explosion, Mozambique's government is in the process of changing the law to allow marriage only at 18, rather than at 16 with parental consent

In a bid to curb the population explosion, Mozambique's government is in the process of changing the law to allow marriage only at 18, rather than at 16 with parental consent.

"We know that the practice of early marriage is rooted in deeply-seated cultural values and social norms that prioritise fertility," said Youth Minister Nyeleti Mondlane.

With UN support, Mozambique has also been waging a contraception awareness campaign since 2016.

Only a quarter of women currently have access to contraception, according to a national health survey.

In the shadow of a mango tree in the northern village of Namissica, a dozen women crowd around a table to watch a nurse demonstrate how to use different contraception, with the help of a wooden model penis and a plastic vagina.

If their husbands are "not cooperative", nurse Fatima da Silva Cobre advises women to opt for a birth control implant.

"He won't know you're using it," she says.

The women ask anxious questions: could the implant fall out? Won't it make them infertile?

One by one, the nurse debunks the myths.

- Rites of passage -

Reining in the population boom also depends heavily on male education in a country where "it's they who dictate sexuality to girls", said Gilberto Macuacua Harilal.

Only a quarter of women in Mozambique currently have access to contraception, according to a national health survey

A crusader against underage pregnancies, Macuacua uses his weekly television show "Man To Man" to denounce churches that defend marriage under 18, as well as traditional initiation rites, common in Mozambique.

During such ceremonies, "boys aged eight to 12 learn to punish girls by forcing them into sex," he said.

Slowly, the message is starting to get through.

Jaoa Carlos Singano, a village chief in the northern Rapale district, said that for a year "we've been trying to convince officials who carry out the initiation rites to be careful in the instructions they give boys".

But the need for change is urgent.

At current rates, the population is set to double in the next 25 years.

"It is a race against time," says Mondlane.
Tourists take pictures of a mural at the now-derelict ashram visited by the Beatles 50 years ago, in Rishikesh in northern India

Fifty years after the Beatles came to India, the bungalows where the Fab Four lived, the post office where John Lennon sent Yoko Ono postcards and the giggling guru's house are all ruins.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram, where the world's most famous group sought refuge and spirituality in 1968 and wrote much of their seminal "White Album", fell into disuse in the early 2000s.

But thanks to the efforts of a group of locals, the site has been reclaimed from the jungle and tourists now roam where tigers and snakes were until recently the most common day trippers.

"Before, people used to sneak in, which could be dangerous," said local journalist Raju Gusain, instrumental in rescuing the area overlooking Rishikesh in northern India.

Meditation huts at the now-derelict ashram visited by the Beatles 50 years ago, in Rishikesh in northern India

"There used to be leopard paw marks and elephant dung," he told AFP on a tour of the site. "Now we have erected a fence to stop animals getting in from the tiger reserve next door."

By 1968, following the death of Beatles manager Brian Epstein the year before, fissures were beginning to show between John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

But the group found a new mentor: the magnetic Maharishi who promised them happiness and enlightenment without drugs, through transcendental meditation.

The bushy-bearded sage persuaded them to travel to his spiritual retreat in Rishikesh, and so in February 1968 they fetched up with their partners, not knowing quite what to expect.

- Come out to play -

Ajit Singh, 86, the owner of a music shop who fixed John Lennon's guitar and performed at George Harrison's 25th birthday in 1968 in nearby Rishikesh

A world away from "Swinging London", the band appeared to reconnect, penning almost 50 new songs.

Others there included fellow musicians Donovan and Beach Boy Mike Love, actress Mia Farrow and her reclusive sister Prudence, inspiration for Lennon's song "Dear Prudence".

The local wildlife -- although the song is also supposedly about heroin or Yoko Ono -- inspired "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" as well as "Blackbird".

McCartney wrote "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" after seeing monkeys openly copulating, while Love's presence helped spark "Back in the USSR", a pastiche of the Beach Boys' "California Girls".

The band -- with the exception of Starr, who brought a supply of baked beans due to his sensitive stomach and left after 10 days -- enjoyed the break and the meditation too.

"I felt like I actually was a feather floating over a hot-air pipe," McCartney recalled later of one session. "And I reported that to Maharishi, and he giggled: 'Yes, this is good!'"

One local old enough to remember is Ajit Singh, the owner of a music shop -- still open -- in the nearby town of Dehradun, who fixed Lennon's guitar and performed at Harrison's 25th birthday.

A mural at the now-derelict ashram visited by the Beatles 50 years ago, in Rishikesh in northern India

Turbaned, thin and with a croaky voice, the 86-year-old Singh recalls with twinkling eyes the band wandering into the store one day, pursued by a crowd outside, and him "inviting them home for tea".

"They were very polite with me, they were not haughty or something," he told AFP in his shop. "I always said to people that they were good people."

After a while though, relations worsened between the Beatles and the Maharishi, the atmosphere soured by the yogi's rumoured sexual advances and his evident desire to make money from his famous new pupils.

McCartney left after five weeks and Harrison and Lennon after two months. Asked the reason by the yogi, Lennon is reputed to have told the guru, "If you're so cosmic you'll know why."

- Get baksheesh -

But still, the Beatles helped put Rishikesh on the map for Westerners, and popularised meditation and Eastern spirituality. The Maharishi even made the cover of Time magazine in 1975.

His ashram initially thrived but then went into decline and was abandoned in 2001. Nature slowly reclaimed the site, while parts of the buildings were removed and people sneaked in and left graffiti.

But in 2016, paths were cleared, a fence was put up and some of the structures were repaired. Ruins they remain, however, although a few new murals have been added.

The site now charges an entry fee -- 600 rupees ($8.75) for foreigners, 150 rupees for Indians -- and boasts a cafe and a small photo exhibition and some information signs.

One recent visitor was none other than Prudence herself, said Raju Nautiyal, a ranger with the Rajasthan Tiger Reserve who has helped in the clean-up.

"I used to sing 'Dear Prudence' and one day Prudence came to play," he said.

American visitor Atta Curzmann, 68, a "great Beatles fan" inspired to take a lasting interest in Indian spirituality, said she hoped the site would not be restored too much.

"The first time we came four or five years ago it was really run-down and we had to pay baksheesh (a bribe) to get in," she told AFP.

"But I hope they don't make it too lovely and perfect because you want to see that antiquity, that part of it that shows the history."
Different teams of investigators in the world's biggest refugee camp in Bangladesh, home to a million people, have been quietly documenting what Myanmar's Muslim minority suffered in 2017

Cross-legged in a windowless, almost pitch-black bamboo shack, the investigator pressed record on a video camera and asked the young Rohingya woman to describe the night the Myanmar soldiers came.

"They broke down our door. They took my husband outside and shot him," recalled the 20-year-old, one of around 700,000 Rohingyas driven from Myanmar into Bangladesh a year ago.

"Then they killed my son. Four of them raped me," said the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, only her eyes visible beneath a veil covering her face, as the monsoon rain fell outside.

Different teams of investigators in the world's biggest refugee camp in Bangladesh, home to a million people, have been quietly documenting what the Myanmar Muslim minority suffered in 2017.

From seasoned professionals working for governments, the UN and international rights groups, to grassroots volunteers armed with pen and paper, a trove of evidence is being amassed which it is hoped will help bring the Rohingya some justice.

Another of those giving testimony is Nurjahan, whose husband and son were also murdered.

She has taken it upon herself to secure justice for them and for all the girls in her village raped at gunpoint.

She was among the first of 400 Rohingya women to put their inked thumbs to a legal document formally requesting a probe by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The group of largely illiterate women she is part of, Shanti Mohila ("Peace Women"), has also collected victim testimonies and signatures to lobby the ICC thousands of miles away.

"We've lost our sons. Our daughters have been violated. We want justice for them," the 45-year-old told AFP.

- Unique approach -

The only other Rohingya submission before the world's only permanent war crimes court is for the victims of Tula Toli, a Myanmar village whose Muslim inhabitants were rounded up and methodically slaughtered on August 30, 2017.

Some testimony for a broader enquiry has already reached The Hague, where the ICC is being urged to investigate crimes against humanity, something that Myanmar denies.

Rohingya volunteers collect data of alleged abuses by Myanmar soldiers at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia

There is a new Myanmar-led commission to examine abuses, but this has been denounced by many observers as an empty stunt that will fail to establish accountability.

A handful of soldiers have been charged by Myanmar for involvement in a single massacre but UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee has tempered expectations that Myanmar's generals would stand trial anytime soon.

Myanmar is not a signatory to the court but ICC prosecutors and human rights lawyers have taken a unique approach by arguing that the crime of deportation was not complete until the Rohingya crossed into Bangladesh.

And as Bangladesh is an ICC signatory, they say the court has jurisdiction.

A pre-trial chamber of ICC judges is reviewing the unprecedented request, alarming Myanmar which voiced "serious concern".

"They do feel some threat from this. I think that's important," said international lawyer Megan Hirst from Doughty Street Chambers in London, who is representing the Tula Toli villagers at the ICC.

- How many babies? -

Back at the camps in Bangladesh, another of those painstakingly pulling together evidence is Osman Jahangir, a field investigator from Bangladeshi rights watchdog Odhikar.

His grim questions hint at the savagery of the violence.

A Rohingya refugee has her picture taken by a volunteer collecting information of alleged abuses by Myanmar soldiers, at a data collection site in the Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia

"Where did the gasoline come from? How many soldiers raped you? Did you see how many babies were thrown in the river?" he asked refugees.

In a dark tent, Jahangir jotted down the coordinates of a Rohingya village on Google Earth. Where possible, he also gathers medical records and smartphone footage.

In partnership with Hong Kong's Asian Legal Resource Centre, some of the findings were sent to the ICC. There are plans for a formal submission once rigorous field work is complete.

"I have studied the Bosnian war. There was a trial. They were held responsible," Jahangir told AFP. "I really hope we can bring justice to the Rohingya."

The NGOs and volunteer groups lack the resources and expertise of UN fact-finders or the US State Department, which sent veteran investigators to interview more than 1,000 refugees this year.

Justice experts also worry that amateur efforts to gather testimony risk contaminating evidence and undermining prosecutors in the event of a trial.

But that does not dampen zeal in the camps.

Community leader Mohibullah has a database of abuses uploaded by Rohingya volunteers onto an ancient laptop, detailing gang rapes, torched mosques and murders

"Nobody can deny this," said community leader Mohibullah as he scrolled through a database of abuses uploaded by Rohingya volunteers onto an ancient laptop, detailing gang rapes, torched mosques and murders.

Lawyers representing the Rohingya are quietly optimistic the ICC will decide it can investigate.

"But whether that means anybody will anytime soon end up in the dock, is a less optimistic prospect," said lawyer Wayne Jordash from Global Rights Compliance, who is representing the Shanti Mohila group.

On the other side of the world, in the squalid refugee camp, his clients say they are prepared for a long wait.

"We know this could take a very long time, years even. We don't care. We just want justice," said 25-year-old Sukutara, another Shanti Mohila member.

"Even if I die, and my children one day get justice, I will be happy."
Malakeh Harbaliyya is one of a number of nurses and doctors from Aleppo who set up a new children's hospital

Her scarred hands wrapped in gloves, Malakeh Harbaliyya lifted an infant out of an incubator at a hospital in Syria's rural north, holding him gently as he guzzled milk from a bottle.

Nearly two years ago, the nurse and her brave colleagues were scrambling to save premature babies from heavy regime bombardment of Aleppo city, before ultimately being forced to quit the facility altogether.

Now the same team of doctors has reunited to open Hope Hospital in northern parts of the province still outside regime control.

"I think of the children first before thinking of myself, because their lives are in our hands," said 31-year-old Harbaliyya at the facility in rebel-held Al-Ghandura.

"Their tiny souls didn't do anything to deserve this war."

In November 2016, Harbaliyya was working in the only children's hospital still operating in rebel parts of Aleppo city when an air strike slammed into the building.

In footage of the aftermath, Harbaliyya is seen scooping up a baby in a light pink blanket, then suddenly bursting into loud sobs.

Barely eight months later, after evacuating the city, a car bomb sent Harbaliyya herself into intensive care in neighbouring Turkey.

But she has pulled through, and the severe burns on her hands have today healed into a swirl of scars.

Her hair covered by a pink-coloured scarf and dressed in a top that reads "Girls for the Future," Harbaliyya beamed as she lovingly pinched a frail infant's cheeks.

"My colleagues at the Hope Hospital -- the staff with me here -- gave me the will to live," she said.

- 'Wherever we went' -

In blue scrubs, Dr Hatem greeted his colleagues at the door before heading in to examine a girl squirming on a consultation bed from stomach pain.

The hallway features a large portrait of Mohammad Wassim Maaz, a beloved children's doctor who died in an air strike on Aleppo city in April 2016.

Later that year, after the city's Children's Hospital was knocked out of action and as a regime victory loomed, Hatem and his colleagues formulated a plan.

Doctor Hatem treats a child at Hope hospital in the rebel held village of Al-Ghandura, northeast of Aleppo

With government troops closing in, the staff knew they would soon be evacuated from Aleppo and wanted to stay together, said the 32-year-old doctor, also the hospital's director.

"Wherever we went, we wanted to set up a children's hospital," said Hatem, preferring not to give his surname.

In under a month, a crowd-funding campaign by the Turkey-based Independent Doctors Association and Britain's CanDo charity gathered enough donations from around the world to rehabilitate and run a new hospital for a whole year.

"We would never have imagined that we could find the whole amount in just three weeks," Hatem said.

With equipment brought from Britain via neighbouring Turkey, they opened the Hope Hospital in April 2017 in the previously underserved Al-Ghandura district.

"There was not a single dispensary or anything to do with medicine in the whole area," said Hatem, who criss-crossed parts of the province still under rebel control looking for a good location.

Slowly, the facility grew into a fully-fledged children's hospital complete with nine baby incubators, a malnutrition clinic, a well-equipped lab and emergency services.

- 'Something extraordinary' -

After having to refer many women to another hospital, they added an obstetrics and gynaecology section too.

Nurse Malakeh Harbaliyya feeds a baby at crowd-funded Hope hospital in the rebel held village of Al-Ghandura, northeast of Aleppo

"The team is mostly the same as the one in Aleppo but, because of the bigger workload here and the higher turnout, we had to increase staff," said Hatem.

As the only specialised facility for miles, his clinic set amidst tall pine trees receives 8,500 to 9,500 cases a month.

"The Hope Hospital really is a point of hope," he said.

"It allowed the staff from Aleppo to feel that there is still humanity left in the world," Hatem said of the donations that brought the facility to life.

But funds have started to run out and another crowd-funding campaign failed to meet its target.

Now, staff hope to sign a contract with the UN's children agency (UNICEF) to help run the facility for six more months.

Hospital manager Riyadh Najjar, 31, said the hospital is providing services to many in need.

"It's anguishing to leave your city, but here you have the opportunity to serve people," he said, dressed in trousers and a white t-shirt.

A woman stands at the entrance of Hope hospital in the rebel held village of Al-Ghandura, northeast of Aleppo

Beyond the district's original inhabitants, Najjar said the hospital also serves many Syrians displaced from other parts of the country by the seven-year war.

Like the hospital staff, patients come from Aleppo city, but also the central province of Homs and northern province of Raqa.

"It's something extraordinary to be able to offer them medical services and help them," said Najjar.
South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyun met with his North Korean counterpart Ri Son Gwon at the northern side of the border truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)

North and South Korea agreed Monday to hold a summit in Pyongyang in September after high-level talks in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula.

The two sides "agreed at the meeting to hold a South-North summit in Pyongyang in September as planned", the joint statement said, without giving a precise date.

A trip by the South's President Moon Jae-in to the North's capital would be the first such visit for more than a decade, as the diplomatic thaw on and around the peninsula builds.

But despite the rapprochement, international sanctions against the North for its nuclear and missile programmes have kept economic cooperation between the two Koreas from taking off, while little progress has been made on the key issue of Pyongyang's denuclearisation.

"The September summit can be viewed as North Korea's strategy to find a breakthrough in its stalled talks with the US," said Asan Institute of Policy Studies analyst Go Myong-hyun.

"For South Korea, President Moon wants to improve inter-Korean ties but that's hard without progress in US-North Korea talks," he told AFP.

At the historic first summit between Moon and the North's leader Kim Jong Un in Panmunjom in April they agreed the South's president would visit Pyongyang during the autumn.

The first South Korean president to go to the North's capital was Kim Dae-jung, who met the current leader's father and predecessor Kim Jong Il in 2000 and later won the Nobel Peace Prize, in part for his efforts at inter-Korean reconciliation.

Pyongyang saw a second inter-Korean summit in 2007, when Roh Moo-hyun also met Kim Jong Il.

But relations subsequently soured as the North accelerated its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the South elected conservative governments.

Monday's high-level talks, taking place on the northern side of the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone, were proposed by the North last week as it lashed out at Washington for pushing ahead with sanctions.

Afterwards the North's chief delegate Ri Son Gwon said the meeting had gone well and the date for the summit was "ready", but they had not announced it as "reporting would be more fun when reporters are curious".

Earlier he used a proverb describing a very intimate friend to refer to inter-Korean ties, saying: "We have opened an era where we are advancing hand in hand rather than standing in each other's way."

The summit would probably be held after the 70th anniversary of the North's foundation on September 9, the South's presidential office suggested.

"It would be difficult in early September, which means until September 10," Moon's spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told reporters, citing a "reason all reporters can guess".

Pyongyang has previously lavishly celebrated the occasion with military parades or mass games involving thousands of people performing acrobatic choreography in unison, and is expected this time to hold its first mass games for five years, boosting tourism revenues.

- Rapid rapprochement -

The rapid rapprochement between the two neighbours began this year ahead of the Winter Olympics in the South and paved the way for a landmark meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.

Cross-border exchanges between the two Koreas have significantly increased since then, with the neighbours planning to hold reunions for war-separated families next week for the first time in three years.

South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon is leading the South's delegation

But although Trump touted his summit with Kim as a historic breakthrough, the nuclear-armed North has since criticised Washington for its "gangster-like" demands of complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.

Meanwhile the US has urged the international community to maintain tough sanctions on the isolated regime -- Seoul has caught three South Korean firms importing coal and iron from the North last year in violation of the measures.

Experts say Moon could try to act as a mediator between the US and North Korea, having salvaged the Singapore meeting when Trump abruptly cancelled it.

"They are trying to send a message externally that the North-South dialogue momentum has been established and that it will be maintained regardless of the outcome of US-North Korea talks," said analyst Go.

"Whether that is true is in doubt but they are trying to indirectly pressure the US, especially on sanctions, by showing an improvement in North-South ties and that peace has been established between them."

Moon and Kim agreed at their summit in April to officially declare an end to the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded with an armistice instead of a peace treaty, by the end of the year.

But Harry Harris, the US ambassador to South Korea, said Monday it was too soon for such a declaration, Yonhap reported.

"It's too early for that even as we seek improvement in relations between the North and the South and between the North and the United States," Harris said, adding the allies share the "same goal" of the "final, fully verified denuclearisation" of the peninsula.
Shahidul Alam is accused of making 'false' and 'provocative' statements on Al Jazeera and on Facebook Live as tens of thousands of students protested in Dhaka

Award-winning Bangladesh photographer Shahidul Alam was in jail on Monday, 10 days after being arrested following an interview with Al Jazeera about massive student demonstrations, police said.

Alam, 63, who accused police of assaulting him in custody and was earlier sent to a hospital for a check-up following an order from the high court, was taken to a magistrate's court late on Sunday.

"The court then sent him to jail," police official Moshiur Rahman told AFP.

Another police officer told the local Daily Star newspaper that Alam would be kept in prison until the completion of the probe into his charges.

Alam was accused of making "false" and "provocative" statements on Al Jazeera and on Facebook Live as tens of thousands of students protested in Dhaka in late July and early August. He also published photos of the demonstrations.

Alam told Al Jazeera that the protests were the result of pent-up anger at an "unelected government... clinging on by brute force" that has looted banks, gagged the media and is steeped in corruption.

He is being investigated for allegedly violating Bangladesh's internet laws, enacted in 2006 and sharpened in 2013, that critics say are used to snuff out dissent and harass journalists.

Alam -- whose work has appeared widely in Western media and who founded the renowned Pathshala South Asian Media Institute -- faces a maximum 14 years in jail, along with others who have been charged with breaching the laws in the wake of the protests.

The renowned photographer told reporters outside court last Monday that he had been beaten so badly in police custody that his tunic needed washing to get the blood out.

New York-based Human Rights Watch and London's Amnesty International have demanded his release, and on Monday United Nations human rights experts echoed these calls.

"The arrest and alleged ill-treatment of Mr. Alam is extremely worrying and takes place in a general context of a crackdown against young students and others calling for better public governance, reforms and justice in Bangladesh, including media workers and other civil society," said the experts in a statement.

The experts were special rapporteurs on human rights, freedom of expression and arbitrary detention, respectively Michel Forst, David Kaye and Seong-Phil Hong.

- 'Spreading rumours' -

Alam's arrest capped a turbulent week in Bangladesh as students poured onto the streets in Dhaka and elsewhere for nine straight days after two teenagers were killed by a speeding bus.

Last weekend the demonstrations turned violent as some protestors vandalised and torched vehicles and police used tear gas and rubber bullets.

Mobs allegedly aligned with the government and wielding metal rods attacked demonstrators, journalists and even the US ambassador's car. Some 150 people were injured.

Although the protests fizzled out last week, Bangladesh authorities launched a crackdown on online activists for "spreading rumours" to fuel the unrest.

Police are looking for people behind some 1,000 Facebook accounts and have arrested at least a dozen social media activists.

These include a television actress and the head of an online media outlet.

A well-known Bangladeshi online activist, Pinaki Bhattacharya, has also not been seen since August 5, his father told AFP on Monday, saying he presumed he had gone underground to escape arrest.
Cambodia has arrested a Chinese national who attempted to smuggle in nearly 100 kilogrammes of MDMA pills in pet food shipments

Cambodian authorities seized nearly 100 kilogrammes of ecstasy hidden in pet food shipments from Germany, police said Monday, after charging a Chinese national in connection with the record haul.

The suspect, identified as Yao Zeye, was arrested on August 7 after coming to the Phnom Penh central post office to pick up the boxes, said National Anti-Drugs Authority deputy secretary-general Mok Chito.

In total 98 kilogrammes of MDMA pills -- better known as ecstasy -- were discovered in the shipment, which was intended for distribution locally and in Vietnam.

"This is the biggest bust of ecstasy" in Cambodia, Chito told AFP, adding that one pill of the party drug sold for between $20 and $80 and the total haul was worth "millions" of dollars.

Yao Zeye was charged over the weekend with drug trafficking and faces up to life imprisonment if convicted, as police look into possible accomplices.

Cambodia has taken a hard line on drugs in recent years in response to smugglers turning to the country as a transit point, particularly for heroin and methampetamine.

Heavy sentences are passed down for drug trafficking, with hundreds arrested including senior officials and foreigners.

In June a court jailed a Belgian man for life after he was found guilty of smuggling a kilogram of cocaine into the kingdom through a suitcase.

The same month authorities in a separate case seized 120 kilogrammes of crystal methamphetamine smuggled in from Laos.

The kingdom has also cracked down on safrole oil, an ingredient in cosmetics that can be used as a precursor in making ecstasy.

The oil is derived from the rare M'rea Prov Phnom tree in Cambodia's protected forests and production of it was banned in 2007.
A picture taken on March 12, 2017, shows an Iranian tanker and a South Korean (R) tanker docking at the platform of the oil facility in the Khark Island on the shore of the Gulf

Iran is selling oil and gas at a discount to Asian customers as it prepares for the return of US sanctions, state news agency IRNA reported on Monday.

The "informed source" in Iran's oil ministry did not give details of the discount, but sought to downplay the move as common industry practice.

"Discount is part of the nature of the global markets being offered by all oil exporters," the source told IRNA.

Bloomberg reported on Friday that the state-run National Iranian Oil Company was reducing official prices for September sales to Asia to their lowest level in 14 years, compared with Saudi crude.

The United States will seek to block Iran's international oil sales from November 5, when the second phase of sanctions are reimposed as part of Washington's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal.

Several key buyers, including China and India, who account for roughly half of Iran's sales, have said they are not willing to make significant cuts to their energy purchases from Iran.

But analysts predict Iran could still see its oil sales drop by around 700,000 barrels per day from their current level of around 2.3 million.

Much will depend on the European Union, which has vowed to resist US sanctions on Iran, but whose companies and financial institutions are more vulnerable to US financial pressure than their Asian counterparts.

French energy giant Total has already said it is pulling out of its multi-billion-dollar investment project in the South Pars oil field in southern Iran as a result of the renewed sanctions.
Third inter-Korean summit may be held in late August in Pyongyang

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) launched high-level talks on Monday to discuss the date and venue for a third summit between top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un and ROK President Moon Jae-in later this month.

The talks started at 10 a.m. local time (0100 GMT) in Tongilgak, a DPRK building in the border village of Panmunjom, according to the joint press corps report.

The ROK's delegation was led by Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, while Ri Son Gwon, chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, headed the DPRK's delegation.

The two sides will discuss the schedule and venue for the third summit between the leaders of the two countries.

Moon and Kim met in Panmunjom on April 27 for the first time, agreeing to hold another summit in Pyongyang in the fall. They met again on May 26. Before the Moon-Kim summit, the inter-Korean summit meetings have been held only twice in 2000 and 2007, all in Pyongyang, the capital city of the DPRK.

As the Pyongyang summit of the leaders of North (DPRK) and South Korea (ROK) is being pursued, I believe that we can give concrete answers to the problems that the people hope and wish for, Ri said during the talks, according to the ROK Unification Ministry.

Citing an unidentified ROK official, the Kookmin Ilbo newspaper reported earlier on Monday that the next summit could be held as soon as late August.

The schedule had mostly been coordinated with the DPRK and the summit would likely be held in Pyongyang, it said.

We hope that the timing, venue and the size of the delegation that will visit North Korea (DPRK) will be decided, Blue House spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said, declining to comment on specifics.

ROK Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon shakes hands with his DPRK counterpart Ri Son Gwon before their meeting in the truce village of Panmunjom inside the demilitarized zone, DPRK, August 13, 2018. /Reuters Photo

During Monday's talks, the two Koreas are also likely to discuss what has been implemented since their previous summits, especially on their promised efforts to expand cross-border exchanges and cooperation.
Muslim Brotherhood supporters at a 2014 rally in Cairo to remember those killed in a 2013 crackdown on protesters

Global rights groups have slammed Egyptian authorities for failing to prosecute members of the security forces over a bloody 2013 crackdown on protesters that left hundreds dead.

Five years ago on August 14, 2013, security forces moved in to disperse a sprawling Islamist protest camp in Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya square, where demonstrators had rallied against the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi a month earlier.

Amnesty International says at least 900 protesters were killed by security forces, marking "a horrific turning point for human rights in Egypt".

Since then hundreds of Islamists, including leaders of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, have been convicted at mass trials.

But not one member of the security forces has been prosecuted for the deaths of protesters.

The lack of prosecutions has "contributed to an environment in which the security forces feel empowered to violate human rights with absolute impunity," said Najia Bounaim, Amnesty's North Africa campaigns director.

Egyptian officials have blamed protest leaders for the 2013 bloodshed, pointing to the presence of armed gunmen at the sit-in and the deaths of several police officers.

- 'Mass show trial' -

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi last month approved a law giving senior military officers immunity from prosecution tied to the unrest that followed Morsi's ouster.

On the eve of the anniversary, Human Rights Watch slammed Egyptian authorities for trying to "insulate those responsible for these crimes from justice".

"The response from Egypt's allies to the crimes at Rabaa and to the lack of justice for the victims has been complete silence," Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW Middle East director, said in a statement.

Egyptian photojournalist Mahmud Abu Zeid, also known as Shawkan, in the dock during his trial in Cairo on July 28, 2018

The US-based rights group said the protest crackdown was "the largest mass killings in Egypt's modern history", leaving at least 817 demonstrators dead.

"Without justice, Rabaa remains an open wound. Those responsible for the mass killings of protesters shouldn't count on being able to shield themselves from accountability forever," Whitson said on Monday.

In late July an Egyptian court sentenced to death 75 Islamists over the 2013 unrest, as part of proceedings involving 700 defendants which Amnesty described as a "mass show trial".

Among those still awaiting a verdict are prominent photojournalist Mahmud Abu Zeid, widely known as Shawkan, who in May received UNESCO's Press Freedom Prize.

The dispersal of the protest camp was followed by several months of deadly clashes with police in which hundreds more people were killed.

The Muslim Brotherhood was designated a terrorist organisation in Egypt in December 2013 and banned.

Former armed forces chief Sisi won the presidency in 2014 after leading the ouster of Morsi following mass protests against the Islamist's rule.

Sisi won reelection with 97 percent at a vote in March against a single opponent widely seen as a token challenger, with critics saying the president had carried out a widespread crackdown on dissent.
Thousands of Yemeni attend a mass funeral in the northern city of Saada on August 13, 2018, for the victims of an air strike which killed dozens of children

Thousands of Yemenis vented anger against Riyadh and Washington on Monday as they took part in a mass funeral for children killed in an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition.

At least 29 children were among those killed in the air raid Thursday on a bus in a crowded market in Dahyan, Saada province, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The mass funeral was held in Saada city, a stronghold of the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, with images broadcast by the rebels' Al-Masirah television.

Around 50 vehicles brought coffins into a large square in the city.

The coffins were covered with green drapes and portraits of the victims were lined up on the ground, where relatives cried over them and the Islamic prayer for the dead was recited.

Mourners raised pictures of the children and shouted slogans against Saudi Arabia and its ally and key arms supplier, the United States.

A Yemeni man carries portraits of two of the children killed in an air strike, during a mass funeral for the victims on August 13, 2018

"America kills Yemeni children," read several banners.

The Saudi-led coalition has taken part in Yemen's conflict since 2015 in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's government in its fight against the Huthis.

The head of the rebels' revolutionary council, Mohammed Ali al-Huthi, took part in the funeral and slammed the raid as a "crime by America and its allies against the children of Yemen".

The Huthis' health ministry said that 51 people were killed in the raids including 40 children.

- 'Ugly' side of war -

It also said 79 others were wounded, including 56 children.

Al-Masirah did not say how many victims were buried on Monday.

Some families had already buried their loved ones, according to residents.

The coalition said Friday it would launch a probe to "assess the events (and) clarify their circumstances", while the United Nations Security Council has called for a "credible investigation".

The UAE, a key Saudi ally in the coalition battling the Huthis, on Monday said that both sides in the conflict had been to blame.

Coffins of those killed in an air strike in Saada province, northern Yemen, during a mass funeral on August 13, 2018

Anwar Gargash, the UAE's minister of state for foreign affairs, bemoaned the "ugly" side of war and played up the coalition's own probe into the strike.

"In this war we have seen civilians shot at, bombed, killed and, unfortunately, this is really part of any confrontation," he said in Dubai.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke by telephone on Monday, discussing topics including efforts by a UN special envoy to "to resolve the conflict in Yemen", the State Department said.

The war in impoverished Yemen has left nearly 10,000 people dead and unleashed what the UN describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The UN envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has invited the warring sides to talks on September 6 in Geneva.
Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa, pictured centre at an annual celebration of the country's independence heroes

Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Monday called on the country to move on from its disputed elections, despite his victory being challenged in court over alleged fraud and his inauguration delayed.

The country's first election since the fall of Robert Mugabe late last year was mired by the army opening fire on protesters, allegations of vote-rigging and a crackdown on opposition activists.

"It's now time to put the election period behind us and embrace the future," the president-elect said at a speech on the annual day honouring Zimbabwe's independence heroes.

"The task facing us today is a great one," he added.

"We should never be deterred by temporary setbacks and regrettable events we have encountered."

Mnangagwa narrowly won the July 30 vote, after taking power last year when the military ousted Mugabe after 37 years in office.

In a statement, opposition candidate Nelson Chamisa said the "unsatisfactory, and in fact scandalous way" the election was carried out was a "betrayal of the heroes and heroines who made an independent Zimbabwe possible in 1980".

He added that in their push for liberation they had fought for "one person, one vote".

Mnangagwa, a former close ally of Mugabe, repeated his accusation that the opposition MDC party was responsible for violence at an anti-fraud protest when soldiers opened fire killing six people.

Supporters of Mnangagwa salute his arrival during the commemorations in Harare

The MDC on Friday lodged a Consitutional Court appeal against the election result, forcing Mnangagwa's inauguration, which had been due on Sunday, to be postponed.

The court must make its ruling within 14 days, though analysts say the judicial system is tilted in favour of Mnangagwa's ZANU-PF party, which has held power since independence from Britain in 1980.

Mnangagwa, 75, had vowed to hold a credible and peaceful election to re-launch the country and revive its shattered economy after the Mugabe era.

He narrowly won the presidential race with 50.8 percent of the vote -- just enough to avoid a run-off against the MDC's Nelson Chamisa, who scored 44.3 percent.

Earlier Monday, MDC member Jeff Chaitezvi was arrested at Harare airport, according to Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.
China has stepped up a crackdown in Xinjiang against what it calls Islamic extremism and separatist elements but many Muslims in the region accuse Beijing of religious and cultural repression

China vehemently denied Monday allegations that one million of its mostly Muslim Uighur minority are being held in internment camps, insisting all ethnic groups in the country are treated equally.

A Chinese official told a UN human rights committee in Geneva that tough security measures in China's far-west Xinjiang region were necessary to combat extremism and terrorism, but that they did not target any specific ethnic group or restrict religious freedoms.

"Xinjiang citizens, including the Uighurs, enjoy equal freedom and rights," Ma Youqing, the director of China's United Front Work Department, told the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

During the first day of China's review before the Geneva-based committee on Friday, one of the 18 committee members, Gay McDougall, voiced deep concern at "numerous and credible reports" that China had turned the region into "something that resembles a massive internment camp."

She cited reports from rights groups that upwards of one million ethnic Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities are being held in counter-extremism centres, while another two million "have been forced" into reeducation camps for "political and cultural indoctrination".

- 'Completely untrue' -

Ma, who was among around 50 high-level Chinese officials answering questions from the committee Monday, insisted that "the argument that one million Uighurs are detained in reeducation centres is completely untrue."

Chinese authorities have long denied the existence of such camps despite mounting evidence from both official documents and testimonies from those who have been held in them.

Ma also flatly denied McDougall's claim that the region had been turned into a no-rights zone", saying this was "completely against the facts."

"There is neither deliberate targeting at a particular ethnic minority, nor suppressing or restricting the rights or the freedom of religious belief of the Uighur people," he said.

McDougall appeared unimpressed by Ma's comments.

"I heard a flat denial of allegations about detentions in the Uighur area," she said.

"You said I was false on the million, well, how many were there? Please tell me. And what were the laws on which they were detained?"

"We have to have more than a denial of allegations," she insisted.

China has stepped up a crackdown in Xinjiang against what it calls Islamic extremism and separatist elements but many Muslims in the region accuse Beijing of religious and cultural repression.

In a region that shares borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, Muslims face regulations banning beards and veils as well as the distribution of unauthorised Korans.

But China's state-run Global Times newspaper insisted Monday that the tough security measures in the region had prevented it from turning into "China's Syria" or "China's Libya".

The Global Times defended the crackdown in an editorial, accusing the West of trying to "stir trouble for Xinjiang and destroy the hard-earned stability in the region".

"The turnaround in Xinjiang's security situation has avoided a great tragedy and saved countless lives," the newspaper wrote in its English and Chinese editions.
Duterte faced global condemnation in September 2016 when he likened his crackdown on drugs to Adolf Hitler's genocidal drive in World War II

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is to make an official visit to Israel next month, his government said Monday, nearly two years after he sparked outrage by likening his deadly drug war to the Holocaust.

The September 2-5 trip will be the first by a Filipino leader since diplomatic ties were established between the two countries in 1967, a foreign department statement said.

Duterte and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will discuss how to develop ties on issues including security and counter-terrorism, according to the statement.

Israel has been a key weapons supplier to the Philippines, which is fighting Islamic militants as well as communist guerrillas.

An Israeli firm supplied the thermal imaging system for an armoured military unit that killed the top leader of Islamic State group-linked militants who seized the southern city of Marawi last year, the unit has told AFP.

Duterte faced global condemnation in September 2016 when he compared his crackdown on drugs to Adolf Hitler's genocidal drive in World War II.

"Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now there are three million drug addicts (in the Philippines). I'd be happy to slaughter them," he said. Most mainstream historians say six million Jews died in the Holocaust.

Duterte later apologised to the Jewish community over his remarks, which he said were aimed at critics who had likened him to the Nazi leader.

His government also pointed out the Philippines gave refuge to around 1,300 Jews fleeing the Holocaust.

Duterte, 73, won elections in 2016 by a landslide after a campaign dominated by his pledge to rid society of drugs by killing tens of thousands of people.

Since Duterte took office, police say they have killed 4,354 drug suspects, with many others murdered by unknown killers. Rights groups allege the total dead in the campaign is more than 13,000.
Allegations that huge sums were plundered from 1MDB contributed to the shock election defeat in May of former premier Najib Razak, who set up and oversaw the fund

A $35 million private jet owned by a playboy financier at the centre of a Malaysian corruption mega-scandal will be returned to the country as soon as possible, the prime minister said Monday.

The plane, thought to currently be in Singapore, is the latest asset Malaysia is seeking to claw back that was allegedly bought by businessman Low Taek Jho with money looted from sovereign wealth fund 1MDB.

Last week a $250 million super-yacht allegedly owned by the financier, an adviser to 1MDB often referred to as Jho Low, was returned to Malaysia after being impounded by authorities in Indonesia.

Allegations that huge sums were plundered from 1MDB contributed to the shock election defeat in May of former premier Najib Razak, who set up and oversaw the fund.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that Low's Bombardier Global 5000 jet would be returned to Malaysia "as soon as possible", but that it would need to be serviced first as it had been grounded for some time.

"Jho Low's jet will be brought here as soon as we can make it fly," the 93-year-old told reporters at his office in administrative capital Putrajaya.

Authorities are seeking to arrest Low -- who had close ties to Najib's family -- but his current whereabouts are unknown.

The financier has previously denied any wrongdoing over the multi-billion-dollar scandal.

Najib, his family and cronies are accused of overseeing the plundering of 1MDB to buy everything from US real estate to artworks.

The US Department of Justice, which is seeking to recover items allegedly bought with stolen 1MDB cash in America, estimates that $4.5 billion in total was looted from the fund.

Since his election loss, Najib has been charged with corruption and money laundering over the scandal.

Mahathir also said Monday a series of massive, Chinese-funded infrastructure projects in Malaysia, which were agreed by the former government, may be dropped or modified.

The new government has already suspended some projects, including a major rail link. Mahathir will visit China at the end of this week.
Donald Trump has already branded Omarosa Manigault Newman a "lowlife" after she released a recording of her firing by chief of staff John Kelly

Former White House staffer and TV celebrity Omarosa Manigault Newman has released a recording of a private conversation with President Donald Trump after she was fired.

NBC's "Today" program on Monday played the brief recording, in which Trump claims to have had no knowledge that she was sacked and expresses regret at the news.

The recording is the latest volley from the disgruntled 44-year-old, once an ardent Trump ally, and represents another stunning breach of presidential trust.

But it also appears to show a president who has little knowledge of what is happening inside his own White House -- or who is willing to lie to avoid confrontation.

"Omarosa? Omarosa what's going on? I just saw on the news that you're thinking about leaving? What happened?" he said, apparently unaware she had already been fired.

"Nobody even told me about it," Trump is heard saying, after chief of staff John Kelly terminated her employment.

"You know they run a big operation, but I didn't know it."

He continues: "I didn't know that. Goddamn it. I don't love you leaving at all."

Trump has already branded "Omarosa" -- as she is commonly known -- a "lowlife" after she released a recording of her firing, seemingly recorded in the White House Situation Room.

He lashed out further at his former friend in a series of angry tweets, as he prepares to return to the White House after an 11 day vacation.

"Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard.... " Trump tweeted.

"...really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired!"

Trump seemed to acknowledge that the unseemly fight would have been unusual for most of his 44 predecessors as president of the United States.

"While I know its 'not presidential' to take on a lowlife like Omarosa, and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!"

Trump came to office vowing to hire "only the best people" -- but has struggled to put a lid on leaks, backbiting and scandal inside his White House.

Trump has also dangled the prospect of legal action against his former protege: "Wacky Omarosa already has a fully signed Non-Disclosure Agreement!" he said.
Screen grab from an AFPTV video taken on August 12, 2018 shows an injured man receiving medical treatment at Ghazni Provincial Hospital in the eastern Afghan city of Ghazni

At least 100 security forces have been killed in the ongoing struggle to push the Taliban from the embattled Afghan city of Ghazni, a government minister said Monday, four days after the fighting began.

The announcement came as fresh reinforcements were deployed to the provincial capital and air strikes targeted Taliban positions, according to defence minister Tariq Shah Bahrami.

"About 100 security forces have lost their lives and between 20 and 30 civilians have been killed," Bahrami told a press conference in Kabul.

"194 enemy fighters, including 12 of their key commanders, have also been killed," he added.

Map of Afghanistan locating a Taliban attack in Ghazni which began on August 10

At least 95 Taliban combatants were killed in the air strikes, Bahrami said.

Communication networks remained mostly down, and officials have been reticent to speak about the situation in the city, making any information difficult to verify.

The onslaught on Ghazni is the latest attempt by the Taliban to overrun an urban centre, and comes as pressure increases on the insurgents to begin peace talks with the government to end the nearly 17-year-old war.

Screen grab from AFPTV video taken on August 10, 2018 shows smoke rising after Taliban militants launched an attack on the Afghan provincial capital of Ghazni

It is also the largest tactical operation launched by the Taliban since an unprecedented truce in June brought fighting between security forces and the Taliban to a temporary pause, providing war-weary Afghans some welcome relief.

Ghazni lies along the major Kabul-Kandahar highway, effectively serving as a gateway between Kabul and the militant strongholds in the south.
Jordanian security forces gather near a four-storey building in the town of Salt where three jihadists were killed and five arrested during a weekend raid

Jordan said Monday that a "terror cell" targeted in a deadly weekend raid by security forces were supporters of the Islamic State group and shared its extremist views.

Saturday's raid, during which three jihadists were killed and five arrested, revealed that the militants were preparing a series of "terrorist" attacks in Jordan, Interior Minister Samir Mubaideen said.

A joint unit of special forces, police and army troops raided a house in Salt, a town northwest of Amman, a day after an officer was killed and six were wounded in a bomb blast in a nearby town during a music festival.

Four members of Jordan's security forces were also killed in the operation.

The suspects "were not part of an organisation but followed its takfiri (Sunni Muslim extremist) ideology and supported Daesh", Mubaideen told a news conference, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

All of them were Jordanians, he said.

"The raid also foiled other plots to carry out a series of terrorist operations against security installations and public gatherings," he said.

Speaking alongside the minister, government spokeswoman Jumana Ghneimat said "a horrific amount of explosives" was found in the jihadists' hideout.

"The explosives were primed to be used and linked to timers," she said.

Jordanian security forces and relatives of Sergeant Hisham Aqarbeh, a member of an anti-terrorist unit killed at the weekend, attend his funeral in the town of Birayn, north of the capital Amman

The militants were holed up in an apartment in a four-storey residential block in Salt. They blew up the apartment as security forces encircled them and exchanged heavy fire.

Medical sources said 10 people were wounded in the raid, including members of the security forces and residents of the building used as a hideout.

Jordan, a small desert kingdom bordering Syria and Iraq, has been the target of several jihadist attacks. A shooting rampage in 2016 claimed by IS killed 10 people including a Canadian tourist in Karak, known for its Crusader castle.

A close ally of Washington, Jordan has played a key role in the US-led coalition fighting IS in Syria and Iraq, using its air force against the jihadists and allowing coalition forces to use its bases.
Taking the high speed rail, wandering around ancient towns and tasting delicious food, this is now probably the best way for foreign tourists to travel in China. Together with Amy Lyons and Steven Greig, let's experience China's most beautiful high-speed rail travel routes. North: from Hunchun to Dalian; South: from Fuzhou to Hefei. Today, Amy arrived at her first stop: a century-old Chinese Korean minority tribe in Hunchun in Jilin Province. There, she learned some local folk dancing and tasted some interesting fare.
Former South African president Jacob Zuma sits in the dock of the High Court of Pietermaritzburg at a hearing on corruption charges

South Africa's top court Monday ruled that the country's chief prosecutor had been incorrectly appointed and ordered that he be replaced, a decision that adds to criticism of former president Jacob Zuma's record in office.

The Constitutional Court ruled that Shaun Abrahams had been named to the job after his predecessor, Mxolisi Nxasana, had been ousted by Zuma in a "constitutionally invalid" process entailing a large compensation package.

Shaun Abrahams was named director of public prosecutions by Zuma in 2015.

He has often been accused of allegedly protecting Zuma and his associates.

"Advocate Shaun Abrahams is a beneficiary of an abuse of power. It does not matter whether he was part of the abuse of power," Judge Mbuyiseni Madlanga said, reading the court's judgement Monday.

The ruling was seen as a boost for President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has vowed to tackle government corruption that he has admitted was a serious problem during Zuma's nine-year reign.

Zuma, 76, was forced to resign in February as criticism grew from within the ruling ANC party over multiple corruption scandals.

The former president has been charged with 16 counts of graft linked to an arms deal from before he became president and could face trial later this year.
Volunteers carry an injured woman on a stretcher to a hospital in Ghazni, eastern Afghanistan, on August 12, 2018

At least 100 Afghan security forces have been killed as troops backed by US airpower struggled to push the Taliban from embattled Ghazni city, officials said Monday, while residents reported food and medicine shortages four days after fighting began.

The Afghan government said it had sent reinforcements to the strategic city, which lies barely two hours drive from Kabul on the main highway connecting the capital with the country's south. US forces in Afghanistan said they had been conducting airstrikes daily since the fighting began.

The assault, which the Taliban launched late Thursday, comes as the insurgents are under increasing pressure to join peace talks and highlights the difficulty of repelling their repeated attacks on urban centres crowded with civilians, with residents among the dead.

"About 100 security forces have lost their lives and between 20 and 30 civilians have been killed," defence minister Tariq Shah Bahrami told a press conference in Kabul, offering the first high-level official casualty figure since the insurgents entered the city.

Map of Afghanistan locating a Taliban attack in Ghazni which began on August 10

He also said that 194 insurgents had been killed and 147 wounded.

The Taliban swiftly responded, saying the government's claims were "baseless" and that talks were "under way for their surrender".

Doctors were struggling to treat dozens of wounded at hospitals in the eastern provincial capital, where residents said insurgents roamed the streets.

At a hospital in the city wounded people could be seen groaning in agony on stretchers, while uncovered wooden coffins filled with bodies were laid on the floor.

A doctor in the hospital's intensive care unit said they had received over 80 dead bodies as of Sunday and had treated more than 160 patients, many of whom were had been injured by gunshots or shrapnel.

"There are no police or soldiers to guard the hospital. They bring their wounded and then leave," the doctor, Mohammad Arif Omari, said.

"The hospital is overwhelmed," Andrea Catta Preta, a spokeswoman for the International Red Cross in Kabul, told AFP.

With residents reporting power remained out in the city, she said the Red Cross was able to reach the hospital on Monday during a brief lull in fighting, providing nearly 200 litres of fuel for its generator and medical supplies for over 100 people.

Screen grab from an AFPTV video taken on August 12, 2018 shows an injured man receiving medical treatment at Ghazni Provincial Hospital in the eastern Afghan city of Ghazni

"Everybody is requesting assistance, so we have been doing what we can whenever we have a window of security to do something," she added.

An AFP reporter in the city said late Sunday that militants were going door to door and commandeering supplies including water, tea, and wheelbarrows to move injured fighters.

- Confusion and rumour -

Ghazni residents who arrived in Kabul after fleeing the violence told AFP that the dead bodies of militants and soldiers continued to litter the streets, while government offices have been set ablaze by Taliban fighters and food prices are rising.

"Everyone wanted to find a way to flee the city. Most of the people are still hiding in their basements as fighting is going from street to street," said Ghazni journalist Fayeza Fayez, who arrived in Kabul late Sunday after fleeing the city.

Communication networks in Ghazni remained mostly down, and officials have been reticent, making any information difficult to verify and fuelling rumours of high tolls. Most officials contacted by AFP in Ghazni and Kabul had switched their phones off.

The United Nations called on all parties to respect the rights of civilians caught in the crossfire.

Screen grab from AFPTV video taken on August 10, 2018 shows smoke rising after Taliban militants launched an attack on the Afghan provincial capital of Ghazni

The onslaught was the latest attempt by the Taliban to overrun an urban centre, and comes as pressure increases on the insurgents to begin peace talks with the government to end the nearly 17-year-old war.

It was also the largest tactical operation launched by the Taliban since an unprecedented truce in June brought fighting between security forces and the Taliban to a temporary pause, providing war-weary Afghans some welcome relief.

Ghazni lies along the major Kabul-Kandahar highway, effectively serving as a gateway between Kabul and the militant strongholds in the south.

US forces in Kabul denied reports that the highway had been blocked by the insurgents, saying Afghan forces remained in control of the area and were carrying out a clearance operation targeting militants.

Confusion over one deployment of commandos headed for Ghazni also raised concerns, with local media reporting up to 100 special forces troops were missing.

An official at the Ministry of Defense denied the reports.

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Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk said he was in talks with the Saudi government's sovereign wealth fund as part of his efforts to take Tesla private

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk disclosed Monday that he was in talks with Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and other investors to take the electric automaker private.

The revelation came after Musk claimed in an August 7 Twitter post that financing for a deal to take Tesla private had been "secured."

Musk said in a blog post on Monday he had "no question" that the Saudis would finance such a transaction following a July 31 meeting.

"I continue to have discussions with the Saudi fund, and I also am having discussions with a number of other investors, which is something that I always planned to do since I would like for Tesla to continue to have a broad investor base," Musk wrote.

"It is appropriate to complete those discussions before presenting a detailed proposal to an independent board committee."

The transaction would be structured with equity so as not to burden Tesla with crushing debt, Musk added.

Musk's surprise comments last week sparked speculation he would need to borrow massive amounts to take Tesla private, a move that could allow the company to operate without requirements for financial reports and other pressures of a publicly traded firm.

But the comments also raised questions about whether Musk ran afoul of securities laws by claiming backing without a firm financial commitment.

The disclosures about Saudi interest "helps reduce the legal risk fallout for Tesla," said Efraim Levy, an equity analyst at CFRA Research.

"It also helps clarify the going private situation even if the transaction is ultimately not consummated."

But Levy said taking the company private would be a mixed blessing for Tesla and Musk -- the company could avoid short-term pressures from Wall Street but also reduce its access to capital markets.

"They've had significant benefits from having access to capital markets, and the media attention has provided priceless free advertising," Levy said.

"Despite Musk protestations, we think remaining public has and will benefit Tesla," he added.

Tesla shares failed to sustain an early surge and ended with a small gain of 0.26 percent at $356.41.

- Less than $70 billion -

If Tesla goes private, it would avoid many of the requirements and scrutiny of a publicly traded firm but could also limit its access to capital

In his blog post Monday, Musk said that reports that more than $70 billion would be needed to take Tesla private "dramatically overstate the actual capital raise needed" because he expected some shareholders to remain invested in the firm.

His comment that he wanted to launch a buyout at $420 a share "would only be used for Tesla shareholders who do not remain with our company if it is private," Musk said in the post.

"My best estimate right now is that approximately two-thirds of shares owned by all current investors would roll over into a private Tesla."

Musk added that the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund "has approached me multiple times" starting in early 2017 about taking Tesla private and had already taken a stake of nearly five percent though share purchases.

He said the Saudis were interested "because of the important need to diversify away from oil" and added that the sovereign fund "has more than enough capital needed to execute on such a transaction."

Loup Ventures analysts Gene Munster and Will Thompson said in a research note that Musk has answered the question "where would the money come from?" but still faces a number of challenges.

"If Musk can help it, we believe he will limit additional investors to 20 percent equity (he owns 22 percent), which implies the Saudi fund could only invest $16 billion," the analysts wrote.

"We still believe there is a greater than 50 percent chance Tesla is private in a year, and the blog post slightly increased those odds."

California-based Tesla has become one of the most valuable automakers on expectations it will disrupt the industry, although it produced only slightly more than 100,000 vehicles last year.

The company has been struggling to boost production of its Model 3, which is less expensive than its first models and could held expand Tesla's base.
China, the world's second-largest economy, is increasing investment in ports and other building projects in Sri Lanka

The United States announced Monday it would grant Sri Lanka $39 million to boost maritime security as China develops its strategic hold on the Indian Ocean island.

The State Department will provide the funds as "foreign military financing", pending congressional approval, the US embassy in Colombo said.

"We look forward to discussing with the government of Sri Lanka how this contribution can support our Bay of Bengal initiative and Sri Lanka's humanitarian assistance and disaster response priorities," it said.

It comes as China, the world's second-largest economy, increases investment in ports and other building projects in Sri Lanka -- a key link in its ambitious "Belt and Road" infrastructure initiative.

Last week, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka announced it had secured a $1 billion Chinese loan as the island develops closer relations with Beijing.

The US had stopped arms sales to Sri Lanka during the height of the island's Tamil separatist war that ended in 2009. The global power has also been highly critical of the human-rights record of the former government of strongman president Mahinda Rajapakse.

Several senior military commanders from the Rajapakse regime have been denied visas to visit the US.

The US funding for Sri Lanka is part of a $300 million package Washington is setting aside for South and Southeast Asia to ensure a "free, open, and rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region".

China has vowed to keep providing financial help, including loans, to Sri Lanka despite warnings about the island nation's mounting debt.

Sri Lanka last year granted a 99-year lease on a strategic port to Beijing over its inability to repay Chinese loans for the $1.4 billion project.

The port in Hambantota straddles the world's busiest east-west shipping route and also gives a strategic foothold to China in a region long dominated by India.

The International Monetary Fund, which bailed out Sri Lanka in June 2016 with a $1.5 billion staggered loan, has warned Colombo over its heavy debt.
A woman holds the Tunisian national flag during a demonstration in Tunis to demand equal inheritance rights and to mark the country's Women's Day on August 13, 2018

Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi on Monday announced plans to submit a draft bill to parliament equalising inheritance rights between men and women.

"I propose to make equal inheritance a law," he said in a televised speech on Tunisia's Women's Day.

The text of the bill will be presented to lawmakers after the end of the parliamentary recess in October, he said.

The proposal to equalise inheritance is among the most hotly debated of a raft of proposed social reforms, guided by a commission the president set up a year ago.

The commission suggested inheritance should by default be shared equally among male and female heirs.

Similar to many Muslim-majority countries, Tunisian law currently stipulates that male heirs should receive double the assets given to females of the same level of kinship.

"We will overturn this situation" and make equality the rule, while unequal sharing of inheritance will require special dispensation, Essebsi said.

"It is my duty as president of all Tunisians to unite and not to divide," he said.

Following the announcement, around 2,000 supporters of the change rallied in the capital Tunis, police said.

"We have come back down onto the street for equality," crowds chanted on Monday evening, waving banners and the national flag.

- 'Hope' for Arab women -

The proposed inheritance equality law would be incorporated into the country's 2014 constitution, which has been praised as a key milestone.

Tunisians making a last will and testament would still be able to divide their assets as they see fit, with the equality law being applied in cases where no such preferences have been stated.

Tunisians gather in the capital Tunis to mark the country's Women's Day and to demand equal inheritance rights, on August 13, 2018

Long seen as a pioneer for women's rights in the Arab world, Tunisia has pushed ahead with other reforms promised after its 2011 revolution.

"We give hope to all women in the Arab world," said Bochra Belhaj Hmida, head of the commission which proposed the changes.

Some opponents of the bill argue men should have greater inheritance rights because they must provide for their families.

But according to Hlima Jouini, a member of the Tunisian association of women democrats, such an approach fails to take account of societal changes.

"Nowadays the woman is responsible for her parents, for her family, the man is no longer the only person responsible or the head of the family, therefore the legislation must conform to this change," she said.

Tunisian women demonstrate in Tunis on August 13, 2018, to mark Tunisia's Women's Day and to demand equal inheritance rights between men and women

As part of Tunisia's reforms, a law on violence against women was passed last year and came into force in January.

After several months of consultations with civil society and political parties, the commission also proposed decriminalising homosexuality and abolishing the death penalty.

More than 5,000 people protested against the proposed reforms in front of Tunisia's parliament on Saturday.

Some held copies of the Koran and shouted "we will defend Islam with our blood!"
FBI agent Peter Strzok, a target of President Donald Trump's ire, was removed from the Russia election meddling probe after he was found to have exchanged anti-Trump texts with his lover

FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was removed from the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election after it was revealed he had exchanged anti-Trump text messages with his lover, has been fired, his lawyer said Monday.

Aitan Goelman, Strzok's attorney, said the 21-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was fired by FBI deputy director David Bowdich on Friday.

Goelman said Strzok was dismissed despite the fact that the disciplinary office had decided he should face a demotion and a 60-day suspension.

He described the move as "a departure from typical bureau practice."

"This decision should be deeply troubling to all Americans," Goelman said in a statement.

"A lengthy investigation and multiple rounds of congressional testimony failed to produce a shred of evidence that Special Agent Strzok's personal views ever affected his work," he said.

"In fact, in his decades of service, Special Agent Strzok has proved himself to be one of the country's top counterintelligence officers," Goelman said.

"The decision to terminate was taken in response to political pressure, and to punish Special Agent Strzok for political speech protected by the First Amendment, not on a fair and independent examination of the facts," he said.

"It is a decision that produces only one winner -- those who seek to harm our country and weaken our democracy," the attorney said.

Strzok, 48, and his lover, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, exchanged text messages during the 2016 election campaign which were critical of Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Following the public revelation of the messages, Strzok was removed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller from the investigation into Russian meddling into the 2016 election.

Trump has seized upon the messages to bolster his claim that the Special Counsel's probe is a political "witch hunt" by biased prosecutors.
A soldier in front of a mural of the late UAE founder in the Yemeni port city of Mukalla on August 8, 2018, pictured during a press trip organised by the UAE government

The United Arab Emirates, a key player in Yemen's war, says it is determined to wipe out Al-Qaeda in the country and denies making deals with the jihadists.

The UAE entered Yemen's complex war in 2015 alongside regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia, after Iran-backed Huthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa and swathes of the country from the government of Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

But that summer, as Emirati-backed government forces retook five southern provinces of Yemen, they found themselves facing another powerful enemy: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The group, seen by the US State Department as the most dangerous branch of the global Al-Qaeda franchise, had taken advantage of the chaos gripping Yemen to carve out its own territory.

In April 2015, the group seized Mukalla, capital of the vast Hadramaut province, which it controlled for a year until being ousted in an Emirati-led operation.

Emirati forces have established a major military presence across the country's south and commanders say they are determined to wipe out AQAP.

"Irrespective of what happens in the wider Yemen conflict, the UAE will continue until AQAP is broken as a regional and global threat," a senior Emirati military official said during a recent press tour in the country's south.

- 'Nothing to negotiate' -

UAE-trained cadets of the Yemeni police march during their graduation in Mukalla on August 8, 2018, during a press trip arranged by the UAE

More than two years since the jihadists were ousted from the city, Hadramaut governor General Faraj Salmin al-Bahsani, described the operation.

"We set up a local force of soldiers from the region, with Emirati help," said Bahsani, who is also commander of government forces across a chunk of southern Yemen.

"Coalition air forces paralysed Al-Qaeda forces before they were ousted from the region," he said, sitting in his office in the provincial government headquarters, its wall adorned with a picture of Hadi.

Experts said the jihadists, who had imposed a reign of terror on the city, opted to cut their losses by withdrawing without a fight to remote mountain areas.

But a press report published earlier this month detailed secret deals allegedly made between AQAP and the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen.

Payments were reportedly made to some jihadists to convince them to retreat, while others were allowed to leave with their weapons.

The claims were dismissed as "false accusations" by Brigadier General Musallam al-Rashedi, from the Emirati Armed Forces, who said he was angered by the report.

"There is nothing to negotiate with these guys," he told journalists Monday in Dubai.

- Dependant on UAE -

The Yemeni port city of Mukalla on August 8, 2018, pictured during a trip organised by the UAE's National Media Council

In Mukalla, a semblance of normality has returned.

Its port, a key trading point serving the entire province, is a hub of activity.

Cargo ships come and go, directed into the dock by a tugboat provided by the UAE.

The city is heavily dependent on its Emirati backers.

The UAE has pumped some $3.8 billion (3.3 billion euros) of aid into the country since 2015 and provides much of the support that keeps hospitals, schools, courts and the port running, according to its governor.

Abu Dhabi's police force has even sent 170 cars and 500 brand new motorcycles to the city, an Emirati general said.

The Emirates have also trained and equipped some 60,000 Yemeni fighters, 30,000 of whom were directly involved in the fight against Al-Qaeda, according to an Emirati military official.

He said Al-Qaeda's activities have dramatically decreased. The group launched just five attacks in southern Yemen in the first half of 2018, as compared to 77 over the same period of 2016.

He added that until 2016, the jihadists had a major presence in cities and towns which are home to some 850,000 people, giving the group with a major source of funding and new recruits.

A Yemeni soldier speaks to a woman riding a bus in the port city of Mukalla on August 8, 2018. Pictured during a UAE-planned press trip

That is no longer the case.

Emirati operations and a long-running American drone campaign against the group have hit its capabilities hard.

Some 1,000 AQAP fighters have been killed in Yemen since 2015, including 13 of the group's top 18 leaders, the official said.

A further 1,500 have been captured.

General Rashedi said that since the start of 2016, the jihadists have lost "half the territory" they controlled in southern Yemen.

"Their capacity to carry out terrorism globally has been seriously hampered," he said.

AQAP claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo magazine in January 2015.

In July this year, Amnesty said human rights violations in a string of UAE-run Yemeni prisons could amount to war crimes, a report rejected by Abu Dhabi.

Despite Emirati successes, Bahsani admits that AQAP is still active in Hadramaut, alongside the Islamic State group which has recently established a presence in southern Yemen.

He blamed both groups for a string of killings targeting security officials.
Between 20,000 and 30,000 Islamic State fighters remain in Iraq and Syria despite the jihadist group's defeat and a halt in the flow of foreigners joining its ranks, according to a UN report released Monday.

The report by UN sanctions monitors estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 IS jihadists were based in Libya while some of the key operatives in the extremist group were being relocated to Afghanistan.

Member-states told the monitors that the total IS membership in Iraq and Syria was 'between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals, roughly equally distributed between the two countries.'

A member of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) removes an Islamic State group flag in the town of Tabqa, just west of Raqa, the former IS capital in Syria

'Among these is still a significant component of the many thousands of active foreign terrorist fighters,' said the report.

The sanctions monitoring team submits independent reports every six months to the Security Council on the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, which are on the UN terrorist blacklist.

IS once controlled large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, but last year it was driven out of Mosul and Raqa -- the twin seats of power of the Sunni extremist group.

By January 2018, IS was confined to small pockets of territory in Syria, although the report said the group 'showed greater resilience' in eastern Syria.

IS 'is still able to mount attacks inside Syrian territory. It does not fully control any territory in Iraq, but it remains active through sleeper cells' of agents hiding out in the desert and elsewhere, said the report.

A wall with the logo and slogans of the ISIS terrorist militia in Mosul, Iraq, was struck off in May 2017

Some member-states raised concerns about new IS cells emerging from the densely populated Rukban camp for internally displaced persons in southern Syria, on the border with Jordan, where families of IS fighters are now living.

The flow of foreigners leaving IS 'remains lower than expected' and no other arena has emerged as a favorite destination for foreign fighters, although 'significant numbers have made their way to Afghanistan', said the report.

There are an estimated 3,500-4,500 IS fighters in Afghanistan and those numbers are increasing, according to the report.

The flow of foreign fighters toward IS 'has essentially come to a halt,' it added.

IS finances are drying up, with one member-state estimating that its total reserves were 'in the low hundreds of millions' of US dollars. Some revenue from oil fields in northeastern Syria continues to flow to IS.

An undated ISIS propaganda image showing an explosion from aerial bombardment of the city center of Ayn al-Islam, Syria by Russian aircraft

IS commands only 250 to 500 members in Yemen, compared to between 6,000 and 7,000 fighters for Al-Qaeda.

In the Sahel, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara is active mostly at the border between Mali and Niger but has less of a foothold than the Al-Qaeda-linked Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JMIN).

The Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab dominates in Somalia but the report said that IS 'has the strategic intent to expand to central and southern Somalia'. Some Somali IS fighters may choose to relocate to Puntland, said the report.
A meeting of the General Council of the World Trade Organization (WTO) held on July 26 in Geneva, Switzerland saw heated debate between Ambassador Zhang Xiangchen, Chinas permanent representative to the WTO and the US envoy, Dennis Shea, US Ambassador to the WTO.

The US envoy condemned Chinese economy and called it Alice in Wonderland.

However, had Shea recalled the practices of the US in both the past and the modern time while labeling China as the most protectionist and mercantilist economy in the world?

The US enjoys a long history of protectionism and mercantilism. The infant industry argument was exactly proposed by the first US Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in the Report on Manufactures published in 1791.

The UK was the worlds strongest country from late 18th century to mid-19th century, and also the cradle of Laissez-faire. The US, in its early years, had an edge in agriculture rather than industries. It should have followed the proposition of Thomas Jefferson who gave credit to comparative advantages, which conformed to both the views of the UK at that time and the modern US. However, the Americans didnt follow the UKs theory, but the latters practices.

In addition, the US approved the notorious Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930 in response to the Great Depression, substantially improving import duties on over 20,000 categories of foreign products. The act received immediate opposition from the USs trading partners and led to a dramatic drop of global trading volume from $36 billion in 1929 to $12 billion in 1932.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act not only exacerbated the recession, but also hurt the interests of the US itself. The irony was that, Reed Smoot and Willis C. Hawley, both initiators of the act, failed in the following congressional election.

Why is the US trying to hide its history and burning the bridge? Its a question that Washington doesnt want to and cant answer. However, it is obvious that the US doesnt want to see the developing countries cross the river through the bridge so that it can continue to take control of the world.

So far, China and the US have adopted completely different attitudes toward free trade and multilateral trading system. The US is waving the tariff stick in front of China, as well as its traditional allies including the European Union, Japan, Mexico and Canada, while China promotes WTO reform, advocates settlement of trade disputes through multilateral frameworks, and continuously lowers tariffs on imported goods.

China fulfilled its promise for WTO membership of lowering average tariff to less than 10 percent ahead of the scheduled time. At present, Chinas trade-weighted average tariff is only 4.4 percent, and the effective rate is even as low as 2.4 percent. In addition, by July 29 this year, China has had a total of 2,652 non-tariff barriers, much lower than 5,452 of the US, according to the Integrated Trade Intelligence Portal of the WTO.

Is there something that can prove Chinas economic model is damaging the global trade? Or is Chinas development model reducing global trade volume or quality? If not, why did Ambassador Shea remarked that China is hurting the world? On the contrary, China has never groundlessly belittled the unique contribution made by other countries although it is making more and more contribution to the world economy.

The following set of data should be repeated, though the US refused to recognize them every time.

China has maintained medium to high speed of economic development, becoming an indispensable engine for global economic recovery and sustainable development. According to the countrys National Bureau of Statistics, China secured an average annual growth of 7.2 percent from 2013 to 2016, much higher than that of the three major developed economies of the US, the Eurozone, and Japan, and outrunning that of the global economy which stood at 2.7 percent in the same period.

China lent a powerful hand to the growth of global economy, contributing an average of over 30 percent to the world economic growth in those four years. As a matter of fact, the countrys GDP only accounted for 1.8 percent of the worlds total back in 1978.

Chinas economic development has created opportunities for other countries through trade. On one hand, Chinas exportation of the large volume of fine products at reasonable prices to many countries including the US enriched the latters choices and lowered input costs; on the other hand, Chinas rapidly growing demand for imports is also making more and more contribution to the prosperity of global trade and promoting the rebalance of world economy.

World Bank statistics indicated that the global share of the goods and services exported and imported by China grew to 9.7 percent in 2016 from 8.4 percent in 2011, while that of the US, the Eurozone, and Japan together saw a drop of 0.4 percentage points.

The contribution China has made to the world also won the country a good reputation. During the seventh trade policy review of China, the WTO representatives generally believed that China has created opportunities for the world development through its economic development and trade policies in recent years, giving full recognition to the country in this regard.

They also expressed high appreciation toward such opportunities, and confirmed the progress that China has made in fulfilling WTO obligations. Highly praising Chinas new measures in reform and opening up, they were glad to see China expanding openness after its accession to the WTO.

Gao Lingyun is a researcher with the Institute of World Economics and Politics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Stones marked with the names of the former Nazi concentration camps Majdanek (L), where an Israeli teen was detained after he was caught exposing his rear, and Buchenwald are seen near Weimar, Germany in 2016

Polish police on Monday said they had detained an Israeli teenager after security cameras caught him exposing his rear at the former Nazi German death camp Majdanek.

The 17-year-old male, who was visiting the site near the eastern Polish city of Lublin with others from Israel, "pulled down his trousers while turning his back to the camp barracks" on Friday, local police press officer Andrzej Fijolek told AFP.

Police notified the teenager that he would be charged with "desecrating a monument or memorial," an offence that can result in either a fine or jail time.

"He admitted to the act and said he was willing to accept punishment," Fijolek said.

Before returning to Israel, the teenager handed over the 1,000 zloty (230 euros, $270) he had on him to go towards his future fine, Fijolek added.

Management of the museum located at the site told AFP that it "strongly condemns" the "indecent" and "revolting" act.

Nazi Germany set up the Majdanek camp in occupied Poland in 1941 and ran it until 1944.

A quarter of a million people, including more than 100,000 Jews, died at the camp, according to Polish historians.

Every year hundreds of thousands of people visit the former death camps installed by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland.

In March, an Israeli teenager was fined 1,200 euros for urinating at the largest of these sites, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

A Polish court also jailed the organisers of an anti-war stunt that saw a dozen people strip naked at Auschwitz-Birkenau before one of them slaughtered a lamb last year.
Outgoing Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila (L), who has been in power since 2001, will not run for re-election later this year, with his party picking former interior minister Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary (R) as its candidate

The UN Security Council on Monday welcomed President Joseph Kabila's decision to not seek re-election in the Democratic Republic of Congo and said the polls must now lead to a peaceful transfer of power.

In power since 2001, Kabila last week appeared to bow to international pressure when his governing coalition picked Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary as its presidential candidate in the December 23 vote.

The council said in a statement drafted by France that it "welcomed President Joseph Kabila's respect for his commitment to abide by the Congolese constitution".

Council members said the "entire Congolese political class and the institutions responsible for organizing elections" must remain "committed to ensure the success of the rest of the electoral process, leading to a peaceful transfer of power."

The United States, France and Britain had urged Kabila to state clearly that he would not seek another term amid fears that his failure to step aside could trigger violence.

The DR Congo has never known a peaceful transition of power since independence from Belgium in 1960.

The Security Council is planning to visit the DR Congo before the elections, possibly in October.

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Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler (holding flag) and 20 or so supporters march in Washington, under heavy police escort

A year after American white supremacists marched with flaming torches through a southern university and delighted in President Donald Trump's response after protests turned deadly, the so-called "alt-right" is in disarray, riven by infighting and struggling financially.

The divisions became clear Sunday, when a rally in Washington, organized by the same man behind last year's "Unite the Right" event in the Virginia city of Charlottesville, turned into a fiasco.

Jason Kessler had estimated about 400 demonstrators would come but only a couple dozen showed up, protected by scores of police officers and drowned out by thousands of counter-protesters.

Barred from carrying rifles and other weaponry, as some had done in Charlottesville, the extremists looked vulnerable and, at times, terrified.

The rally marked a low point for the neo-Nazi movement, which less than two years ago welcomed Trump's election with cries of "Hail Trump" and Nazi salutes, and saw his victory as the moment their views would slide into the American mainstream.

In the immediate aftermath of Charlottesville, which culminated in a woman's death when a man drove into a crowd of counter protesters, neo-Nazi groups were jubilant that Trump initially failed to condemn white supremacists.

He famously said there was "blame on both sides" for the violence, condemning the anti-fascists who came "with clubs in their hands," and praised "very fine people" from both the protest and counter-protest groups.

Trump "refused to even mention anything to do with us," Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, wrote at the time.

"When reporters were screaming at him about White Nationalism he just walked out of the room."

David Duke, a former KKK leader and avowed racist and anti-Semite, praised Trump's "honesty and courage."

- 'Deplatforming' -

But in the months since, the neo-Nazi movement has been hammered where it hurts most -- the wallet.

Silicon Valley responded by refusing to host extremist sites and shut down PayPal accounts associated with fundraising for neo-Nazis.

Daily Stormer now solicits donations via cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

Heidi Beirich, an expert at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) who has been tracking hate groups since 1999, said white extremists are also reeling from a process called "deplatforming," where they lose access to social media networks.

And, she noted, several people who marched in Charlottesville have been hit with lawsuits.

"It's not been a good year for the participants of Charlottesville and Kessler has been personally blamed for that," Beirich told AFP.

"That explains why so few people came out to support him."

- 'Doxxing' and 'cucks' -

Experts observed that another reason for Sunday's dismal turnout was that would-be participants are afraid of their identities being revealed.

After Charlottesville, several marchers lost their jobs after online sleuths posted photos and asked for people to identify them. This form of online shaming is sometimes known as "doxxing."

"If you show up at this event, and you are identified, your life will be ruined," Anglin wrote.

Anglin also points to another division in the alt-right -- their aesthetic.

Many participants in the Charlottesville rally, realizing that jackboots and swastikas would not endear them to a broader public, donned smart polo shirts and chinos.

But some on the extreme right saw this as kowtowing to the politically correct.

A small group of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the "alt-right" face off with Virginia State Police in Charlottesville last year

In a blog this year, white supremacist Christopher Cantwell called this "optics cucking."

A "cuck" in extreme right parlance is a submissive male that is "cuckolded" by a woman.

Anglin insists the neo-Nazi movement should try to be "hip, cool, sexy, fun.

"We need to speak to the culture. We do not want the image of being a bunch of weird losers who march around like assholes while completely outnumbered and get mocked by the entire planet," he said.

- 'A billion times better' -

Despite these divisions, the neo-Nazi movement is still having an impact.

In liberal Portland, Oregon, two far-right groups, Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys, marched in support of the first group's founder Joey Gibson, who is running as a Republican for the US Senate in neighboring Washington state.

Several openly racist or white nationalist candidates are seeking elected office this year including avowed Nazi Arthur Jones of Illinois, who won his district's Republican party primary and is running for Congress.

And in Wisconsin, Paul Nehlen, the leading Republican running to fill the seat in Congress currently held by retiring Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, has emerged as a leader of the alt-right movement.

Beirich, of the SPLC, noted the alt-right still feels emboldened with Trump in the White House, and are thrilled with his anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies.

"They just thought that he was a billion times better than anything they'd seen in their lifetimes," she said.

"And I don't think that their enthusiasm has diminished on that front."
A man looks at artefacts at the Idlib Museum in northern Syria after it reopened on August 13, 2018

An antiquities museum in Syria's rebel-held province of Idlib said to house one of the world's oldest dictionaries reopened on Monday after five years, an AFP correspondent said.

Dozens of visitors trickled into the museum in Idlib city to see what an official said represented just a fraction of the building's collection.

Ayman al-Nabu, head of antiquities for the city controlled by an alliance of rebels and jihadists, said the museum had been damaged by air strikes and looting during Syria's nearly seven-year conflict.

After it was closed in 2013, "we carried out maintenance and rehabilitated the museum to give it new life," he said.

Organisers are planning "visits for a whole generation of students who have been unable to visit archeological sites due to the war," he added.

The museum is said to house a collection of clay tablets dating back to 2400-2300 BC, which bear witness to the invention of the first alphabet.

Syrians stroll through northern Syria's Idlib Museum after it reopened on August 13, 2018

They were discovered in Idlib province's site of Ebla, which was the seat of one of ancient Syria's earliest kingdoms.

Nabu urged UNESCO to help preserve the archeological sites of the province, and said archeology has nothing to do with politics.

On Monday, a man admired clay lamps displayed in a glass cabinet, while a women took a picture with her phone of a collection including a large amphora.

A dark grey statuette stood beheaded on a pedestal in a corner.

Archeologist Fayez Qawsara said he remembers the museum's opening in 1989.

"I attended the founding of Idlib museum in my youth... and today, after all these dark happenings, the museum is reopening with what remains in it," he said.

A Syrian woman takes pictures of a mosaic on the floor of Idlib Museum after it reopened on August 13, 2018

Important objects in the collection included "the Ebla tablets and basalt statues showing ancient religious rites", he said.

Major historical sites or monuments have been destroyed in fighting and by jihadists during Syria's war, including in the UNESCO-listed world heritage site of Palmyra.

Idlib is the last province in Syria that is still largely under opposition control.

President Bashar al-Assad has warned that government forces intend to retake the province after his Russia-backed regime seized territory from rebels and jihadists in other parts of Syria.

The war has also killed 350,000 people and displaced millions more.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi delivers a speech in the holy city of Najaf on January 7, 2018

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Monday defended his stance on US sanctions against Iran in the face of harsh criticism from Tehran and its allies in Baghdad.

"Some people want to put pressure on us to place the interests of gangs ahead of those of the Iraqi people," he told a news conference. "This is not possible."

Abadi has cancelled a visit to Iran, his press office said Sunday, after announcing last week that Iraq would reluctantly comply with renewed US sanctions against Tehran.

"We don't support the sanctions because they are a strategic error, but we will comply with them," said Abadi, whose country is an ally of both Tehran and Washington.

"In general, sanctions are unjust," the prime minister added.

His position has drawn fire from several groups close to Tehran, especially the Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Badr paramilitary movements.

On Sunday, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative in Baghdad also lashed out at Abadi.

"It's a disloyal attitude towards the honest position of Iran and the blood of the martyrs this country has spilt to defend the land of Iraq" against jihadists, said Moujtaba al-Hussein.

"We are saddened by this position which shows he has been defeated psychologically in the face of the Americans," he said.

Abadi stood firm on Monday, although Baghdad is in the midst of political jockeying to form a new government after the results of May's parliamentary elections were finalised last week following a recount.

"Our economic situation is also difficult and we sympathise with Iran," said Abadi, who was appointed prime minister in 2014 with Western backing and by consensus between the leading factions in Iraqi politics.

"But at the same time I will not make grand slogans that destroy my people and my country just to make certain people happy," he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem on August 12, 2018

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the lengthy questioning of an American Jewish journalist on arrival at Tel Aviv airport was the result of an "administrative mistake".

Peter Beinart of The Forward, a Jewish American magazine published in New York, said he was questioned for an hour Sunday on his political views by a Shin Bet intelligence service agent.

A supporter of a pro-Palestinian boycott of goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Beinart said he was asked repeatedly for names of organisations with which he is associated.

The journalist, who said he was in Israel on a family visit, described his experience at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport, where travellers are often interrogated for hours on arrival and departure, as "depressing".

The prime minister's office said he had looked into the incident.

Netanyahu "heard of Mr Beinart's questioning at Ben Gurion airport and immediately spoke with Israel's security forces to inquire how this happened", it said in a statement.

"He was told it was an administrative mistake. Israel is an open society which welcomes all -- critics and supporters alike."

Reacting to the premier's intervention, Beinart tweeted that Netanyahu had "half-apologised for my detention yesterday at Ben Gurion airport".

"I'll accept when he apologises to all the Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans who every day endure far worse," he wrote.

In March 2017, Israel's parliament passed a law banning the entry of supporters of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), a movement inspired by measures against South Africa before the fall of apartheid.
Charred trees remain on burned area at the Holy Fire in Lake Elsinore, California

Senior members of the Trump administration were due in California Monday as blazes that have killed at least eight people continued to cut a catastrophic swathe through the country's most populous state.

Tens of thousands have been forced to flee their homes over the last month, with more than 14 blazes still threatening land and property from south of Los Angeles to the state's border with Oregon.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke -- wrapping a two-day tour of the Carr Fire's path to the west of Redding, northern California -- will meet rescuers alongside Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.

Firefighters made progress on the inferno, which has destroyed more than 1,000 homes and other property, over the weekend, according to federal and local government data.

But the 203,000-acre (82,000-hectare) blaze is still less than two-thirds contained after killing eight people and prompting the evacuation of 40,000.

The temperatures have remained in double digits but emergency workers say they are bracing for hotter weather, dry air and gusty winds over the coming days.

Around 130 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Redding, the Mendocino Complex wildfire, California's largest in history, has scorched 345,000 acres.

The blaze is made up of the Ranch and River fires which were respectively 59 percent and 93 percent contained by Monday morning, according to Cal Fire.

Zinke's visit with Perdue comes days after President Donald Trump suggested that California's environmental policies had deprived firefighters of water and left too many trees that could fuel fires.

A helicopter drops water on a brush fire at the Holy Fire in Lake Elsinore, California, southeast of Los Angeles

Some activists have acknowledged that many of the state's forests are too dense and require more aggressive management but Cal Fire officials have stated they have enough water.

Other experts have added that California's most destructive blazes have started in shrublands, not thick forests, and that the devastating fire season has been lengthened by climate change.

Zinke angered activists by downplaying the importance of global warming in wildfire management as he began his California visit on Sunday.

"I've heard the climate change argument back and forth," he said in an interview with television station KCRA 3.

"This has nothing to do with climate change. This has to do with active forest management."

Fourteen of California's 20 largest wildfires have started since 2003 -- a period boasting some of the hottest, driest years on record in the US.
A handout picture from the Egyptian Presidency shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in New York on September 18, 2017

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a rare, secret visit to Egypt in May for talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Israeli television reported Monday.

There was no immediate confirmation of the visit from official sources, but the private Channel 10 station said the leaders met on May 22.

That followed a day of huge protests on May 14 along the Gaza border against the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem, sparking clashes which left 63 Palestinians dead.

Gaza lies between Israel and Egypt, which has previously mediated between Netanyahu's government and the Islamist Hamas movement that controls the coastal enclave.

According to American sources quoted by Channel 10, Netanyahu and Sisi discussed the possibility of a long-term truce in the Strip, where Israel has since 2008 fought three wars with Hamas.

The Islamists seized power in the territory after a virtual civil war with the Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, and Gaza has been under a crushing Israeli blockade for a decade.

Netanyahu and Sisi also examined the possible return of the Palestinian Authority to the territory, an easing of Israel's blockade and reconstruction of Gaza's war-scarred infrastructure, the report said.

The Egyptian presidency was not immediately available to comment on the Channel 10 report.

Gaza has seen mass protests since the end of March as Palestinians demand the right to return to homes their families fled or were expelled from in 1948 during the war surrounding the creation of Israel.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday that another round of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was inevitable, despite attempts to reach a long-term truce.

There have also been three major military flare-ups between Israel and Hamas since July, on top of the months of tension along the border.

At least 169 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since March 30, mostly during clashes sparked by demonstrations.

One Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper in July.

There have been efforts by United Nations officials and Egypt to secure a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas, though Israeli officials have not commented on them.

A fragile truce came into effect Thursday night, mediated by Egypt and the UN, according to a source close to the negotiations.

Thursday saw extensive Israeli air strikes in retaliation for the launching of more than 180 rockets and mortar rounds by Hamas and its allies beginning on Wednesday night.
US President Donald Trump (L) watches an air assault exercise with Army Major General Walter Piatt at Fort Drum, New York

US President Donald Trump signed an almost $750 billion defense spending bill Monday, while vowing a new "Space Force" would give America dominance over rivals in China and elsewhere.

"Our competitors have begun weaponizing space," Trump warned troops at Fort Drum in New York state, as he signed a National Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress earlier this month.

"It's not enough to have American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space," Trump said, as he warned of the threat from China and elsewhere.

"Look at what they're doing, they have given me run-downs," he said in reference to security briefings. "I've seen things that you don't want to see what they're doing and how advanced they are."

"They want to jam transmissions which threaten our battlefield operations and so many other things"

"We'll be catching them very shortly," he said. "We will be so far ahead of them in a very short time, your head will spin."

He specifically mentioned a "new" Chinese military division that oversees space operations.

The spending bill contains a number of important provisions, including a prohibition on delivering F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft to Turkey, a NATO ally unless they ditch Russian technology.

Trump has sparred with the country's leaders over the detention of a Christian pastor.

It also extends a restriction on US-Russian military cooperation, something the White House vociferously opposed.
President Donald Trump (L) has already branded Omarosa Manigault Newman (R, in focus) a "lowlife" after she released a recording of her firing by chief of staff John Kelly

President Donald Trump on Monday plunged himself into a made-for-TV spat with his former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman -- a mud-slinging match that has fuelled fears of chaos in his White House and cast doubt on his pledge to hire "only the best people."

Manigault Newman -- who first gained fame as a contestant on Trump's reality show "The Apprentice," and then secured a $180,000-a-year staff job at the White House -- released a recording of a private conversation she had with the president after she was fired.

The recording by the disgruntled 44-year-old, once an ardent Trump ally, represents another stunning breach of presidential trust. It also came on the eve of the release of her tell-all book, "Unhinged."

NBC's "Today" program on Monday played the brief recording, in which Trump claims to have had no knowledge that she was sacked and expresses regret at the news.

That revelation sparked a stream of presidential invective on Twitter.

"Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will," Trump said in a stream of angry tweets.

The Republican president claimed that Manigault Newman "already has a fully signed Non-Disclosure Agreement!" -- a first admission that members of the administration were asked to sign potentially illegal hush deals.

If such deals prohibit government staff from revealing all information they learn of at work, the American Civil Liberties Union said "they are unconstitutional and unenforceable."

- 'They run a big operation' -

Manigault Newman's recordings have also caused political problems for Trump, dominating American headlines for days -- and she told NBC that there are "absolutely" more audio files.

The latest recording appears to show a president who has little knowledge of what is happening inside his own White House -- or who is willing to lie to avoid confrontation.

"Omarosa? Omarosa, what's going on? I just saw on the news that you're thinking about leaving? What happened?" he said, apparently unaware she had already been fired.

"Nobody even told me about it," Trump is heard saying, after chief of staff John Kelly terminated her employment.

"You know they run a big operation, but I didn't know it," he says, adding: "I didn't know that. Goddamn it. I don't love you leaving at all."

Trump had already branded "Omarosa" -- as she is commonly known in America -- a "lowlife" after she released a recording of her firing by Kelly, seemingly recorded in the White House Situation Room.

He hurled angry tweets at his former friend, as he prepared to return to the White House following an 11-day vacation in New Jersey.

- 'Wacky Omarosa' -

"She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard really bad things," Trump tweeted.

Manigault Newman's firing by White House chief of staff John Kelly -- and her apparent audio taping of the encounter -- is at the center of the political firestorm

"Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me -- until she got fired!"

Trump also rejected Manigault Newman's assertion -- made in her upcoming book -- that he was caught on mic using the N-word during the making of "The Apprentice."

The president tweeted Monday night that the show's creator Mark Burnett "called to say that there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa. I don't have that word in my vocabulary, and never have."

Trump seemed to acknowledge that the unseemly fight would have been unusual for most of his 44 predecessors as president of the United States.

"While I know it's 'not presidential' to take on a lowlife like Omarosa, and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!"

She fired back, telling NBC: "I think it's sad with all of the things going on in the country that he would take time out to insult me and to insult my intelligence. This is his pattern with African Americans. He doesn't know how to control himself."

Manigault Newman later expressed willingness to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion between Trump's campaign and Moscow -- and indicated that she had already been contacted by his office.

"If his office calls again, anything they want, I'll share," she said on MSNBC's "Hardball."

Trump came to office vowing to hire "only the best people" -- but has struggled to put a lid on leaks, incompetence, backbiting and scandal inside his White House.
At-Large Director of the Illinois Soybean Association and soybean grower Austin Rincker shows the soybeans produced on his farm.

Photo by Zheng Qi from Peoples Daily

The customer just left, said Kraig Baumann, an American ginseng producer in Wisconsin, after he lost a potential buyer due to the recent tariff policies issued by the US government.

Baumann runs the largest American ginseng farm in Wisconsin that covers about 500 acres of land. He has been engaged in ginseng growing for 45 years, and his farm produces 250,000 pounds of the plant each year.

Baumann was still an ambitious man during an interview with the Peoples Daily last November, saying he would expand overseas business. He also showed around the newly-built staff dorms to the journalist with pride.

He would print QR codes on the package of his ginsengs sold to China, and he said it was a special design for the customers on the other side of the ocean.

95 percent of American ginsengs of the US come from Wisconsin. Meanwhile, 85 percent of the states production goes to Asia, 80 percent of which ends up in mainland China and Hong Kong.

However, the current China-US trade dispute is placing huge impact on the states American Ginseng industry. Imposing the tariffs brings no good to anyone, said Baumann.

He introduced that their business was great with continuously growing export before the US adopted the tariff policy. However, the farmers now have to offer high discounts in order to retain their customers. As a result, the farmers are suffering losses and cannot afford to purchase new equipment and hire new employees, Baumann told Peoples Daily. It is disappointing, he said.

Apart from the American ginseng industry, the cranberry growers in the state do not want the trade war, either.

A lorry loaded with soybeans on a farm in Illinois.

Photo by Zheng Qi from Peoples Daily

Statistics released by the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association (WSCGA) indicated that the US exports about 95 million pounds of cranberries, or 12 percent of its total production to the European Union (EU) each year. However, the EU is now levying extra tariff on the US plant as a retaliatory measure against the US government who increased import duties on EU steel and aluminum products.

In addition, 90 percent of Wisconsins milk is sold out-state after being manufactured into cheese. The milk price, which experienced a dramatic decline in 2014 from a record high, has already impacted many of the US dairy farms. Recently, the industry was further threatened after Mexico announced to slap a 25 percent of tariff on US dairy products as retaliation to the US steel and aluminum tariff policy. Mexico is the largest export market of the US dairy products, with nearly $400 million of imports last year.

Not a single state is spared from the damage, with the industrial Midwest and the agricultural heartland states hit especially hard, according to the latest research report by the US Chamber of Commerce (USCC). The report said that the increased tariff has caused damages to the whole US business world, from agriculture to industries, from Wisconsin to the rest of the states.

The US-initiated trade war will bring impact to over $1 billion worth of the export industry in Wisconsin, casting shadow on about 800,000 jobs in international trade. The damage will only become worse.

Although the US government recently announced an agricultural subsidy plan worth $12 billion to aid the domestic farmers and ranchers whose interests have been hurt by the trade disputes, it is only a makeshift.

We want free trade. Any aid program, no matter how massive, is nothing but band-aid, said Bill Gordon, a soybean grower in Minnesota. He believes that the best way to stop the trade war from hurting the US economy is to put an end to the trade war.

President and CEO of USCC Thomas J. Donohue recently published an article, saying that the Trump administration has slapped billions of dollars worth of tariffs on imports from around the world, provoking retaliatory actions from other nations and boomeranging back to hit US businesses and consumers.

He also stressed that the cumulative effect of the retaliatory tariffs could eventually stunt the economic progress of the US.

We like neither trade war nor tariff war. It will affect everyones life. Many Americans expressed their concerns about the trade war. From agricultural to manufacturing industry, all walks of the US society have felt the impact of the tariffs.
While Afghan security forces are conducting most of the fighting against the Taliban and other insurgent groups in the country, US troops operate alongside them in a training capacity and are frequently on the front lines

A US special operations soldier has been killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan's Helmand province, the Pentagon said Monday.

According to a statement, Staff Sergeant Reymund Rarogal Transfiguracion died Sunday after an improvised explosive device detonated near him while he was conducting combat patrol operations.

The 36-year-old from Hawaii was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group.

Officials said the incident was under investigation.

While Afghan security forces are conducting most of the fighting against the Taliban and other insurgent groups, US troops operate alongside them in a training capacity and are frequently on the front lines.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) - The Latest on events marking the anniversary of violent white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia (all times local):

10:15 p.m.

The police chief in Washington, D.C., says only one person was arrested after a chaotic day of protests and counterprotests centered around a white nationalist rally in front of the White House.

Journalists photograph a type of smoke grenade placed by Antifa-activists in the middle of 17th street during the "Unite the Right 2" rally in Washington, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018. (Craig Hudson/Charleston Gazette-Mail via AP)

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser hailed the police department's performance Sunday, saying it was "successful in allowing the First Amendment activities to happen while maintaining peace."

There were several tense moments, with police essentially shielding the 20 or so white nationalist demonstrators from several thousand enraged counterprotesters on the anniversary of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Police Chief Peter Newsham called it "a well-executed plan to safeguard people and property while allowing citizens to express their First Amendment rights."

Police also had a tense standoff with about 150 masked antifa protesters who marched through the area blocking traffic after the white nationalists left.

___

6:50 p.m.

A group of about 150 to 200 anti-fascists is confronting police about a half-mile from the White House after a white nationalist demonstration broke up.

Antifa members, many of them wearing black masks, marched around downtown Washington on Sunday evening in the rain. In a tense scene, police shoved back the advancing counterprotesters, but it didn't appear any tear gas has been used.

The group had been separated earlier from the few dozen white nationalists who rallied in front of the White House on the anniversary of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. President Donald Trump is in New Jersey.

The white nationalists later packed into white vans and left, escorted by the police.

Antifa is shorthand for the far-left-leaning militant groups that resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

___

6:20 p.m.

White nationalists who marched on Washington and rallied at a park near the White House have left the area in white vans under a police escort.

The demonstration led by the principal organizer of last year's "Unite the Right" event in Charlottesville, Virginia, Jason Kessler, ended earlier than expected. Those marching with Kessler numbered only about 30, far fewer than the 100 to 400 he predicted in a permit for the demonstration.

Thousands of counterdemonstrators showed up to jeer and shout insults at the white nationalists as they made their way through Washington streets. Police kept the two sides separated during the march and the rally.

The white nationalists were commemorating last year's Unite the Right event in Charlottesville, which turned violent and deadly.

___

5:30 p.m.

The city of Charlottesville, Virginia, says four people have been arrested in incidents marking the anniversary of last summer's violent white nationalist rally.

Authorities said in a statement Sunday that two arrests stemmed from a confrontation near a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee where a Spotsylvania, Virginia, man stopped to salute the statue and a Charlottesville woman confronted him and a physical altercation took place. Both face disorderly conduct charges.

Officials say a Charlottesville man who positioned himself in front of police motorcycle units also was arrested, as well as a Portland, Maine, woman following an altercation.

Police in northern Virginia's Fairfax County also reported the arrest of a man accused of spitting on state troopers providing security at a Metro station. The station saw increased ridership Sunday on the line into Washington, where a "Unite the Right" event drew counterprotesters.

___

5 p.m.

A few thousand people have converged on downtown Washington to counter a demonstration by about 30 white nationalists and denounce their racist views.

Police have been keeping the two groups separate as the white nationalists rally in Lafayette Park in front of the White House. No violence has been reported.

As it began to rain, a chant went up from the crowd: "It's hot, it's wet, but we aren't done with the Nazis yet."

The demonstration and counterdemonstration come on the anniversary of last year's deadly gathering of neo-Nazis, skinheads, Ku Klux Klan members and others in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Sunday's gathering is being led by the principal organizer of last year's "Unite the Right" event, Jason Kessler, who calls the demonstration a rally for white civil rights.

___

4:55 p.m.

A group of about 30 white nationalists has marched to a park near the White House for what they call a rally in favor of white civil rights.

Thousands of counterprotesters are in the area, too, and jeered and heckled the white nationalists as they made their way down the street surrounded by police.

The demonstration and counterdemonstration come on the anniversary of last year's deadly gathering of neo-Nazis, skinheads, Ku Klux Klan members, and others in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Sunday's gathering is being led by the principal organizer of last year's "Unite the Right" event, Jason Kessler.

___

3:45 p.m.

A contingent of about 30 white nationalists is marching down a Washington street toward the White House surrounded by a protective bubble of police officers and vehicles.

Hundreds of counterprotesters are walking alongside the group but keeping on the sidewalks, many of them shouting and taunting the nationalists as they make their way to a park in front of the White House.

The demonstration and counterdemonstration come on the anniversary of last year's deadly gathering of neo-Nazis, skinheads, Ku Klux Klan members, and others in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Sunday's gathering is being led by the principal organizer of last year's "Unite the Right" event, Jason Kessler, who calls the demonstration a rally for white civil rights.

___

2:30 p.m.

More than 1,000 protesters are gathered in Freedom Plaza near the White House to rally against a white nationalist demonstration scheduled for later in the day.

The demonstration is being held on the first anniversary of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned violent and led to the death of a counterprotester.

Makia Green, who represents the Washington branch of Black Lives Matter, told Sunday's crowd that: "We know from experience that ignoring white nationalism doesn't work."

The counterprotesters plan to march to Lafayette Square in front of the White House, just before the arrival of the white nationalists. Police have erected a maze of barricades to keep the two sides apart.

The counterprotesters are expected to far outnumber the white nationalists.

___

2 p.m.

The mother of a woman killed when a car plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally last summer has visited the site of the attack to mark the anniversary of her daughter's death.

Heather Heyer's mother, Susan Bro, embraced supporters Sunday in downtown Charlottesville. At one point, she asked the crowd to raise their fists in solidarity, and she laid flowers at a makeshift memorial.

Bro said there's still "so much healing to do." She said the city and the country have a "huge racial problem" and that if it's not fixed, "we'll be right back here in no time."

Bro also said the day was about more than just her daughter. She recognized the other victims of the attack, which injured dozens of people, and thanked the two Virginia state troopers killed in a helicopter crash for their sacrifice.

Lt. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke Bates died when their helicopter crashed while deployed as part of the response to last year's violence.

___

1:45 p.m.

A park across the street from the White House is already filling up with people who oppose a white nationalist demonstration that is scheduled to take place later Sunday.

The white nationalists are gathering in Washington on the first anniversary of their rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned violent and led to the death of a counterprotester.

A stage has been set up in Lafayette Park and rap music is playing for a crowd of about 300, many of whom are carrying signs saying "Shut down white supremacy."

Uniformed police officers and a line of police barricades have cut the park in half, restricting the counterprotesters to the northern half, farthest from the White House.

A counterprotest organizer, speaking from the stage, said: "We will be here until these fascist forces are gone, however long that takes."

The white supremacist rally is scheduled to end at 7:30 p.m.

___

11:45 a.m.

More than 100 people are demonstrating against racism in downtown Charlottesville, marking the one-year anniversary of a violent white nationalist rally and protesting this year's ramped-up police presence.

The group began marching Sunday morning after a rally held at a city park and made its way toward downtown. Some marchers linked arms as they walked.

The group directed chants against police officers who were accompanying the march, including "cops and Klan go hand in hand."

Law enforcement officials faced blistering criticism in the wake of last year's rally for what was perceived as a passive response to the violence that unfolded.

A review by a former U.S. attorney found a lack of coordination between state and city police and an operational plan that elevated officer safety over public safety.

Demonstrators on Sunday chanted, "Will you protect us?"

___

9:20 a.m.

Dozens of activists and residents have gathered at a Charlottesville city park to protest racism and to observe the one-year anniversary of a rally by white supremacist that turned deadly.

The Rev. Seth Wispelwey is a founder of a group of clergy and lay people called "Congregate C-ville" last year. The group came together in direct response to white nationalists who gathered in Charlottesville for a "Unite the Right" rally on Aug. 12, 2017.

On that day, white supremacists and counterprotesters clashed in the city streets before a car driven into a crowd struck and killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

Wispelwey says the city's residents are still reeling from the violence that day, but he expressed hope that the anniversary can be a turning point.

___

A day after tensions between police and community activists nearly boiled over on the University of Virginia's campus, the city of Charlottesville plans to mark Sunday's anniversary of a deadly gathering of white supremacists with a rally against racial hatred. But 115 miles (185 kilometers) away in Washington, the principal organizer of last year's "Unite the Right" event will hold a "white civil rights rally," and police are preparing for counterprotesters.

Jason Kessler abandoned plans for a similar anniversary event in Charlottesville. His Washington permit application says he expects 100 to 400 people Sunday afternoon in Lafayette Park, near the White House.

But some leading figures in the white nationalist movement have said they won't attend or encouraged supporters to stay away. And the events likely will be dwarfed by counterprotests, for which permits also have been issued.

___

3 a.m.

A day after tensions between police and community activists nearly boiled over on the University of Virginia's campus, the city of Charlottesville plans to mark Sunday's anniversary of a deadly gathering of white supremacists with a rally against racial hatred.

But 115 miles (185 kilometers) away in Washington, the principal organizer of last year's "Unite the Right" event will hold a "white civil rights rally," and police are preparing for counterprotesters.

Jason Kessler abandoned plans for a similar anniversary event in Charlottesville. His Washington permit application says he expects 100 to 400 people Sunday afternoon in Lafayette Park, near the White House.

But some leading figures in the white nationalist movement have said they won't attend or encouraged supporters to stay away. And the events likely will be dwarfed by counterprotests, for which permits also have been issued.

White nationalists hold flags in front of the White House during a rally near the White House on the one year anniversary of the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

A White nationalist is shown during a rally near the White House on the one year anniversary of the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Metro Police and Secret Service personnel are forced back by counter-protesters outside of the Pennsylvania Avenue security barrier on 17th street while attempting to escort attendees of the "Unite the Right 2" rally from Lafayette Park in Washington, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018. (Craig Hudson/Charleston Gazette-Mail via AP)

A white nationalist holds his phone while marching to Lafayette Square during the "Unite the Right 2" rally in Washington, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018. (Craig Hudson/Charleston Gazette-Mail via AP)

White nationalist Jason Kessler talks during a rally near the White House on the one year anniversary of the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Demonstrators rally near the White House on the one year anniversary of the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

White nationalists march to Lafayette Square during the "Unite the Right 2" rally in Washington, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018. (Craig Hudson/Charleston Gazette-Mail via AP)

White nationalist Jason Kessler walks to the White House to rally on the one year anniversary of the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Demonstrators march near the White House on the one year anniversary of the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Jason Kessler, center, marches with other white nationalists to Lafayette Square during the "Unite the Right 2" rally in Washington, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018. (Craig Hudson/Charleston Gazette-Mail via AP)

Demonstrators rally near the White House on the one year anniversary of the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
SEATTLE (AP) - The Latest on a plane stolen from Sea-Tac International Airport in Washington state (all times local):

8:18 p.m.

Authorities have recovered the flight data recorder from a plane taken by an airline worker who performed dangerous loops before crashing into an island in Washington's Puget Sound.

This undated image posted to Richard Russell's YouTube channel shows Russell, an airline ground agent. Investigators are piecing together how Russell stole an empty commercial airplane, took off from Sea-Tac International Airport in Seattle, and crashed into a small island in the Puget Sound in Washington. (Richard Russell/YouTube via AP)

The FBI says it has also found components of the cockpit voice recorder from the Horizon plane.

The NTSB is now processing the equipment.

Richard Russell, 29, of Sumner, Washington, stole the commercial plane Friday night from Sea-Tac International Airport, performing acrobatic stunts before crashing into a thick island forest. Russell worked for Horizon as a ground service agent.

The FBI said Sunday that human remains were found at the scene.

The Pierce County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed Sunday that Russell died in the fiery wreckage.

Whether the crash was deliberate or accidental was one of several topics remaining for investigators.

The site on Ketron Island in Washington state where an Horizon Air turboprop plane crashed after it was stolen from Sea-Tac International Airport is seen from the air, Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018, near Steilacoom, Wash. Investigators were working to find out how an airline employee stole the plane Friday and crashed it after being chased by military jets that were quickly scrambled to intercept the aircraft. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Alaska Airlines planes sit on the tarmac at Sea-Tac International Airport Friday evening, Aug. 10, 2018, in SeaTac, Wash. An airline mechanic stole an Alaska Airlines plane without any passengers and took off from Sea-Tac International Airport in Washington state on Friday night before crashing near Ketron Island, officials said. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Smoke rises from the site on Ketron Island in Washington state where an Horizon Air turboprop plane crashed Friday after it was stolen from Sea-Tac International Airport as seen from the air, Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018, near Steilacoom, Wash. Investigators were working to find out how an airline employee stole the plane Friday and crashed it after being chased by military jets that were quickly scrambled to intercept the aircraft. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Workers gather in a staging area Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018, near Steilacoom, Wash., near the site on Ketron Island in Washington state where an Horizon Air turboprop plane crashed Friday after it was stolen from Sea-Tac International Airport. Investigators were working to find out how an airline employee stole the plane and crashed it after being chased by military jets that were quickly scrambled to intercept the aircraft. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Ffire trucks drive toward a ferry boat headed to Ketron Island, Friday, Aug. 10, 2018, at the ferry terminal in Steilacoom, Wash. An airline mechanic stole an empty Horizon Air turboprop plane, took off from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and was chased by military jets before crashing onto Ketron, a small island in the Puget Sound, on Friday night, officials said. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Ferry workers stand by as fire trucks are parked on a ferry boat headed to Ketron Island, Friday, Aug. 10, 2018, at the ferry terminal in Steilacoom, Wash. An airline mechanic stole an empty Horizon Air turboprop plane, took off from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and was chased by military jets before crashing onto Ketron, a small island in the Puget Sound, on Friday night, officials said. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Alaska Airlines planes sit on the tarmac at Sea-Tac International Airport Friday evening, Aug. 10, 2018, in SeaTac, Wash. An airline mechanic stole an Alaska Airlines plane without any passengers and took off from Sea-Tac International Airport in Washington state on Friday night before crashing near Ketron Island, officials said. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Planes sit on the tarmac at Sea-Tac International Airport after service was halted after an Alaska Airlines plane was stolen Friday, Aug. 10, 2018, in Wash. An airline mechanic stole an Alaska Airlines plane without any passengers and took off from Sea-Tac International Airport in Washington state on Friday night before crashing near Ketron Island, officials said. (Bettina Hansen /The Seattle Times via AP)

People stand in the Alaska Airlines ticket area at Sea-Tac International Airport Friday, Aug. 10, 2018, in SeaTac, Wash. An airline mechanic stole an Alaska Airlines plane without any passengers and took off from Sea-Tac International Airport in Washington state on Friday night before crashing near Ketron Island, officials said. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

People wait near the luggage area at Sea-Tac International Airport Friday, Aug. 10, 2018, in SeaTac, Wash. An airline mechanic stole an Alaska Airlines plane without any passengers and took off from Sea-Tac International Airport in Washington state on Friday night before crashing near Ketron Island, officials said. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

People stand in the Alaska Airlines ticket area at Sea-Tac International Airport Friday, Aug. 10, 2018, in SeaTac, Wash.An airline mechanic stole an Alaska Airlines plane without any passengers and took off from Sea-Tac International Airport in Washington state on Friday night before crashing near Ketron Island, officials said. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

The site on Ketron Island in Washington state where an empty Horizon Air turboprop plane crashed Friday after it was stolen from Sea-Tac International Airport is seen from the air, Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018, near Steilacoom, Wash. Investigators were working to find out how an airline employee stole the plane and crashed it after being chased by military jets that were quickly scrambled to intercept the aircraft. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

The site on Ketron Island in Washington state where an empty Horizon Air turboprop plane crashed Friday after it was stolen from Sea-Tac International Airport is seen from the air, Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018, near Steilacoom, Wash. Investigators were working to find out how an airline employee stole the plane and crashed it after being chased by military jets that were quickly scrambled to intercept the aircraft. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Smoke rises from the site on Ketron Island in Washington state where an Horizon Air turboprop plane crashed Friday after it was stolen from Sea-Tac International Airport as seen from the air, Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018, near Steilacoom, Wash. Investigators were working to find out how an airline employee stole the plane Friday and crashed it after being chased by military jets that were quickly scrambled to intercept the aircraft. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Friends of Richard Russell give parting hugs after making a statement to the media Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018, at the Orting Valley Police and Fire Department, in Orting, Wash. Russell is presumed dead after stealing a Horizon Airlines plane from SeaTac International Airport and crashing it into Ketron Island in the Puget Sound. (Bettina Hansen /The Seattle Times via AP)
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico's president-elect announced an even more ambitious proposal for a train on the Yucatan peninsula Monday that would link nearly all the region's main tourist draws and cost double or more than the previously announced figure.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had campaigned on building the tourist train from the beach resort city of Cancun down through Tulum and to the Mayan ruins of Palenque, 520 miles (830 kilometers) to the southwest.

The new plan adds a western spur that could stop in the cities of Campeche, Merida and Valladolid - the latter near the famed ruins of Chichen Itza - and ultimately complete the circuit in Cancun.

In this Aug. 1, 2018 photo, tourists climb a temple at the archeological site of Coba, in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Mexico's president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wants to build a train that would run from Yucatan Peninsula resort of Cancun to the Mayan ruins of Palenque in Chiapas, a route dotted by low jungle, wildlife reserves, pre-Hispanic archaeological sites, wetlands and underground rivers that can suddenly cave in. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Lopez Obrador said the "Mayan train" would cost between $6 billion and $8 billion, compared with the previous figure of $3.2 billion. He said it would be financed over six years through both public and private investment, including tourism taxes that currently net about $370 million a year.

What was to be 560 miles (900 kilometers) of track would rise to about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers), and would be completed in four years "at the latest," he said. Most of the route lies on land already owned by the federal government.

"This will greatly stimulate tourism and will create jobs in the southeast, which is the most neglected region of the country," Lopez Obrador said.

The announcement amounted to a doubling down on a campaign proposal that had left some scratching their heads, and perhaps improving its viability by extending it along a well-traveled tourist route.

The region is dotted by low jungle, wildlife reserves, pre-Hispanic archaeological sites, wetlands and underground rivers that can suddenly cave in.

Even the initial proposal would have taken years to build, and soaked up scarce money, to reach ruin sites like Calakmul, which now gets only about 35,000 visitors a year - the number better-known sites like Chichen Itza have in a week.

The new plan would bring Chichen Itza into play, as well as Campeche and Merida, two gorgeous if sweltering cities known for their picturesque colonial buildings.

For fans of Lopez Obrador's initial plan, it's all about getting people off the beaten track - the heavily travelled tourism route of Cancun-Riviera Maya-Chichen Itza-Xcaret visited by millions of tourists every year.

"Tourists today prefer other types of tourism projects that are more in contact with nature. ... They are showing less interest in the coast," said Vicente Ferreyra, a Cancun-based consultant whose Sustentur company specializes in sustainable tourism. "They are turning more toward the jungle, and there is an opportunity to diversify for markets that don't just want sun and sand."

So, imagine if you could hop on a train at the Cancun airport and step off two hours later in one of the communities at the edge of the Sian Ka'an nature reserve, south of Tulum, where the coast turns into lagoons and mangroves.

Villages like Muyil are offering tours such as floating down fresh-water canals dug by the Mayas, visiting local pre-Hispanic ruins, seeing local craftsmen and sampling regional foods.

Few doubt that the first stretch of proposed train on the Caribbean coast - from Cancun through the Riviera Maya to Tulum - would be heavily used. Almost 7 million international tourists visit this stretch of coast every year, many of them arriving at the Cancun airport and then taking buses or cars down the coast.

While resorts have been popping up south of Cancun since the 1990s, most hotel workers still live in Cancun, which was founded in 1974. So huge numbers of tourism workers could also use the train to get to their jobs, a trip that can currently take them an hour and a half or more.

But it's not clear whether the train would have stops at Playa del Carmen or other busy resorts that would be destinations for the tourists and workers. The initial plan shows it making its only Maya Riviera stop in Tulum before heading farther south.

It is the second, southern stretch from Tulum to the unpicturesque Maya town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, just southwest of the Sian Ka'an environmental reserve, then on to Bacalar, the state capital of Chetumal, Calakmul and Palenque that raises more questions. Some see it as an expensive folly. There is little developed tourism infrastructure until one gets around the Bacalar fresh-water lagoon. And the route from there west is practically undeveloped.

"The biggest doubt (about the southern leg) is regarding the profitability of the project, based on tourism flows," said Francisco Madrid Flores, director of the Tourism and Gastronomy Department at Mexico's Anahuac University. "In southern Campeche, where Calakmul is, there are practically no hotel rooms."

That's not to say that Mayan communities there don't have something to offer tourists beyond sites such as Calakmul, a sprawling ancient Maya city-state almost completely covered in low jungle. Five communities in the low jungle around Calakmul already offer hiking, biking, bird watching, cave tours, kayaking and craft workshops.

Historically, the largely Mayan southern half of the Yucatan has been locked out of the tourism boom that has enriched the northeast - around Cancun - that now is largely populated by non-indigenous Mexicans. But in part that is due to the logic of who has the white-sand beaches and turquoise waters loved by tourists. The south has them, too, but only on the Costa Maya, a narrow peninsula running from Mahahual to Xcalak, an area the train apparently wouldn't go to, although cruise ships do.

In 2012, current President Enrique Pena Nieto announced that he would build a rapid-train link connecting the Riviera Maya with Merida, passing by Valladolid and Chichen Itza. The $1.5 billion project would have connected already developed tourist destinations on a heavily travelled, well-known route.

It was cancelled in 2015 due to a lack of funds, but the idea now would appear to be revived with Monday's announcement by Lopez Obrador, who takes office Dec. 1.

"Based on the sheer numbers of inhabitants, it would seem to me to make more sense to run it in the northern part" of the Yucatan peninsula to Merida, said Ferreyra.

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Associated Press writer Maria Verza contributed to this report.

In this Aug. 1, 2018 photo, tourists climb the pyramid at the archeological site of Coba on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Mexico's president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wants to bring tourism revenues to more remote and forgotten stretches of Mexico, like Coba, with a train running from Cancun to Palenque, Chiapas. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

In this Aug. 1, 2018 photo, a tourist holds her ams out for a picture atop a pyramid at the Mayan archeological site of Coba in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Mexico's president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wants to build a $3.2 billion train that would run from the Yucatan Peninsula's resort of Cancun, to the Mayan ruins of Palenque in Chiapas. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

In this Aug. 5, 2018 photo, tourists vist the archeological site of Tulum on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Almost seven million international tourists visit this stretch of coast every year; many of whom arrive at the Cancun airport and are bused or drive down the coast. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

In this Aug. 3, 2018 photo, tourists walk at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Mexico's president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wants to build a $3.2 billion train from the Yucatan Peninsula to Chiapas state to get tourists off the heavily travelled tourism route of Cancun-Riviera Maya-Chichen Itza-Xcaret visited by millions of tourists per year. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

FILE - In this March 10, 2012 file photo, people fill the beach during Spring Break in Cancun, Mexico. Almost 7 million international tourists visit this stretch of coast every year, many of whom arrive at the Cancun airport and are bused or drive down the Riviera Maya. (AP Photo/Israel Leal, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Russia typically brushes off new U.S. sanctions. Not this time.

The Trump administration announcement of export restrictions in response to accusations Moscow used a nerve agent to poison a former Russian spy in Britain sent the ruble tumbling to a two-year low and drew a stern warning from its prime minister. While the initial sanctions may have a limited impact, a second batch expected within months could hit the Russian economy much harder and send already tense relations into a tailspin.

If sanctions are expanded even further to target Russia's top state-controlled banks, freezing their dollar transactions - as proposed under legislation introduced in the Senate this month - it would amount to a "declaration of economic war," Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Friday.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev speaks during a meeting in Kamchatka Peninsula region, Russian Far East, Russia, Friday, Aug. 10, 2018. Russia's prime minister sternly warned the United States on Friday against ramping up sanctions, saying that Moscow will retaliate with economic, political and unspecified "other" means. (Dmitry Astakhov, Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP)

So much for President Donald Trump's hopes for better relations with Moscow.

On his watch, the U.S. has imposed a slew of sanctions on Russia for human rights abuses, meddling in the U.S. election and Russian military aggression in Ukraine and Syria. For the most part, they have punished Russian officials and associates of President Vladimir Putin rather than targeting broad economic sectors.

In 2014, both the U.S. and European Union introduced sanctions that restricted Russia's access to global financial markets and to equipment for new energy projects. Those measures were punishing, but the sanctions announced by the Trump administration this past week could be even worse.

The restrictions were triggered under U.S. law on chemical weapons following a formal U.S. determination that Russia used the Novichok nerve agent to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury in March.

The first tranche, due to take effect Aug. 22, will deny export licenses to Russia for the purchase of many items with national security implications. Existing sanctions already prohibit the export of most military and security-related items, but now the ban will be extended to goods such as gas turbine engines, electronics and calibration equipment that were previously allowed on a case-by-case basis. The State Department said it could potentially affect hundreds of millions of dollars in trade.

"It's a significant step, but not an overwhelming one," said Daniel Fried, a veteran State Department official who served as chief U.S. coordinator for sanctions policy until he retired last year.

The penny could drop, though, in three months' time.

Russia has 90 days to "provide assurances" that it will not use chemical weapons in the future and allow inspections. If Russia does not comply, Trump will be obligated to impose a second set of sanctions, applying restrictions on at least three from a menu of options: opposing multilateral bank assistance to Russia, broad restrictions on exports and imports, downgrading diplomatic relations, prohibiting air carrier landing rights and barring U.S. banks from making loans to the Russian government. That could do significantly more economic harm and have a lasting, destabilizing effect on the currency and stock markets.

Senior Russian lawmaker Vyacheslav Nikonov said a second set of sanctions may be inevitable and predicted it would pitch relations to new low. The relationship is already routinely described as at its worst since the Cold War.

"They are demanding that Russia (accepts) an obligation to refrain from any further use of chemical and bacteriological weapons, which amounts to our acknowledgement that we have used it. But we haven't," he said.

Things could get even worse if the Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act, which a bipartisan group of senators introduced Aug. 2, makes its way through Congress. It would target Russia's state-controlled banks and freeze their operations in dollars, which would deal a heavy blow to the Russian economy. The prospects for the legislation becoming law remain uncertain.

Medvedev warned the U.S. that such a move would cross a red line and would warrant a Russian response by economic, political or "other means" he did not specify. His tough tone was a departure from past nonchalance from Putin and his lieutenants over the impact of Western sanctions on the Russian economy.

Vladimir Vasilyev, a researcher with the Institute of the U.S. and Canada, a government-funded Moscow think tank, said U.S.-Russian ties were now approaching "the point of no return with no prospect for improvement" in sight.

Fried said that in addition to uncertainty over sanctions, Moscow's strong response this time is likely also being fueled by larger inconsistencies in U.S. policy toward Russia. While Trump has hankered for closer ties with Putin, the government he leads has been far less accommodating.

"Whatever deal the Russians had or thought they had or thought they could get from President Donald Trump, they're not able to get it from Trump's administration," Fried said.

The State Department denied inconsistency in U.S. policy and maintained that sanctions were aimed at encouraging improved behavior from Russia. "We'd like to have a better relationship with the Russian government, recognizing that we have a lot of areas of mutual concern," spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

Congress has a less diplomatic view.

Trump has repeatedly come under fire from lawmakers, including from his own Republican Party, for his conciliatory statements on Russia, particularly at his joint press conference with Putin at their summit in Helsinki last month where he appeared to doubt U.S. intelligence conclusions that Russia intervened in the 2016 election.

Rep. Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was among lawmakers who welcomed the U.S. sanctions announced this week. "It's critical that we use every tool at our disposal to confront Putin's use of chemical weapons, as well as his efforts to undermine our democracy," the Republican from California said.

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Isachenkov reported from Moscow.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - The counting of the last ballots in the tight and contentious Republican primary for Kansas governor will stretch out over the week and still might not settle the race.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Gov. Jeff Colyer were locked in a tight race after late mail-in ballots from all 105 counties were added to totals from advance voting and ballots cast at the polls on Aug. 7. The state's 105 counties still must review nearly 9,000 provisional ballots and determine how many of them were cast in the Republican primary - and how many will be counted. They have until Aug. 20 to finish that process and certify their local results.

A look at the process for counting the remaining votes and a possible recount:

FILE - In this Jan. 31, 2011, file photo, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, right, confers with Assistant Secretary of State Eric Rucker during a Kansas House Elections Committee hearing on Kobach's bill for cracking down on election fraud at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Kobach says he's stepping aside from his duties as the state's top elections official while his hotly contested Republican primary race with Gov. Jeff Colyer remains unresolved. Kobach announced his decision Friday, Aug. 10, 2018, in a letter to Colyer. Kobach said he is handing his election duties over to Rucker. (AP Photo/John Hanna, File)

MAIL-IN BALLOTS

The Legislature last year changed the state's law on mail-in ballots so that they were to be counted if they were postmarked Tuesday, the day of the primary, and arrived by Friday. Previously, they had to arrive by Election Day, and in the 2016 general election, more than 500 arrived afterward, said Bryan Caskey, the state elections director in the secretary of state's office.

WHO COUNTS

While Kobach's office provides guidance on the handling of ballots and supervises the counting, the work is done by the counties.

The chief elections officer in each county appoints a bipartisan board of election workers to handle the individual ballots.

The secretary of state appoints an election commissioner in the state's four most populous counties - Johnson, Sedgwick, Shawnee and Wyandotte - and the chief elections officers in the other 101 are elected clerks.

The elections chiefs present their workers' recommendations on whether provisional ballots should be counted to the county commission, which then decides and certifies the final results.

PROVISIONAL BALLOTS

Voters receive provisional ballots at the polls when election workers are not sure they are eligible to vote at that location, or at all. Those ballots are sealed in envelopes and set aside to be reviewed later, with notes about the issues involved. The eligibility of the voters is determined before workers unseal the ballots. Once a ballot is unsealed, workers can see whether it was cast in the Republican or Democratic primary before counting any relevant votes.

Kobach said based on past elections, it's likely that about two-thirds of 9,000 provisional ballots that were filled out Tuesday were cast in the Republican primary and that a majority of them will be counted.

COUNTING DAYS

State law says counties can begin their canvassing Monday. Seventy-six counties plan to start then, including Johnson and Sedgwick.

An additional 14 plan to start Tuesday, two on Wednesday and six on Thursday, including Shawnee and Wyandotte counties. Rooks County in northwest Kansas has scheduled its canvassing for Friday, and six counties have set it for Aug. 20, the deadline to finish.

REQUESTING A RECOUNT

Under a Kansas law specific to statewide races, a candidate must ask for a recount by 5 p.m. Friday. State law has no provision for an automatic recount, no matter how close the race.

A candidate can ask for a recount no matter how large the margin, but he or she must put up funds to cover the full cost of the recount. If the recount changes the result, the candidate seeking it gets his or her money back, and the counties and state cover their costs.

The candidate can seek a recount in only one or a handful of counties, dozens of counties, or statewide. Also, the candidate chooses whether the recount will be machine re-scanning of paper ballots or a hand count of those ballots.

The cost of the recount is determined by the secretary of state's office. Caskey said the office would survey the counties involved in a recount for their estimated costs, then add "a small amount" to cover the state's administrative expenses.

There's no frame of reference for what a recount would cost because there hasn't been one in a statewide race in at least several decades.

A recount must start the day after the candidate requests one, even if the work would start on a Saturday. Counties involved have five days to finish, meaning all of it would be done by Aug. 22 at the latest.

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Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer addresses the media on Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2018, at the Kansas Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Out-of-power Kansas Democrats smelled opportunity Wednesday in the tight, unsettled GOP primary race for governor between Colyer and Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a close political ally of President Donald Trump and a conservative lightning rod who alienates even some Republicans. (Chris Neal/The Topeka Capital-Journal via AP)

Secretary of State Kris Kobach, surrounded by his family and running mate Wink Hartman, talked to the media during a news conference at the Topeka Capitol Plaza hotel in Topeka, Kan., Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2018. (Thad Allton /The Topeka Capital-Journal via AP)
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (AP) - For years he dutifully carried out Roger Ailes' orders, earning himself the nickname "the Butler" at Fox News.

Now, Bill Shine is serving the same role under President Donald Trump.

The former news executive, who was formally brought into the White House last month as deputy chief of staff for communications, has yet to move into a permanent office or bring on his own staff. But he is already putting his mark on the West Wing, clashing with reporters, improving the production quality of White House events and trying to shape the message of an administration whose communication strategy has always seemed haphazardly dictated by tweet.

FILE - In this April 24, 2017, file photo, then-Fox News co-president Bill Shine, leaves a New York restaurant. For years Shine carried out Roger Ailes' orders, earning himself the nicknamed "the Butler" at Fox. Now, Shine is serving the same role under President Donald Trump. Shine has yet to select a permanent office or unpack his stuff. But he has been putting his mark on the West Wing (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

Shine is most often described by people close to the White House as an "adult" and well-respected professional with the age and experience to be trusted by a president who is uniquely obsessed with his image and coverage.

"I think that Bill commands the respect that is needed on such a priority based on his management experience and knowledge of the media," said Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary and communications director. Shine, he said, "entered the White House with the respect, maturity and experience that is more of a peer than a staffer."

After years working with and managing cable news stars with outsized egos, Shine understands how to work with someone like the president, including the most effective ways to offer guidance or pushback.

And unlike many failed hires who have entered the West Wing with guns blazing, threatening mass firings, Shine appears to have, at least so far, succeeded in not ruffling his colleagues' feathers - though he is widely expected to add his own staff and has been conducting interviews.

"He's about making sure we're moving in the right direction," said Mercedes Schlapp, the White House director of strategic communications, who said Shine is universally well-liked by senior staff and has eased, not increased, tensions.

But Shine's arrival also has coincided with a perceived escalation in friction with the press, including an incident last month when a CNN reporter was barred from covering an open-press event because Trump didn't like the questions she'd shouted earlier in the day, when she was serving as a representative of the television networks.

Kaitlan Collins said she was called into Shine's office, where Shine and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders informed her she would not be welcome at the next event because they'd deemed her questions inappropriate. The move sparked immediate outcry from media groups and organizations, including Shine's former employer, Fox News.

Sanders disputed the idea that Shine was encouraging Trump's combative instincts with the press and said he wants to lower the temperature and find more ways to work with them.

"Bill is a great guy who is adding new perspective and expertise to the team. He is great to work with and a strong leader in the White House," she said.

But some who have worked with him saw the move as classic Shine.

Shine knows all the things that can rile up news organizations, said one person who knows both men and, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely about their interactions.

Another person familiar with his work at Fox described him as a true believer in Fox's mission, saying his idea of what television news should be is the opinionated, combative, personality-driven formula of Fox News star Sean Hannity.

Trump's decision to bring Shine into the White House was not a surprise. His name had been floated for months as a potential White House hire, and he had worked for years for Hannity, one of Trump's closest confidants and most loyal cheerleaders.

Shine served as Hannity's executive producer, as well as the top executive for Fox's prime-time opinion programming and the morning hit, "Fox & Friends," and briefly as co-president of Fox after Ailes was ousted amid allegations of rampant sexual harassment at the network.

Shine left Fox last year amid questions over his own handling of harassment and discrimination allegations. Shine was never accused of direct wrongdoing but was considered vulnerable because of claims he looked the other way as charges of toxic workplace behavior piled up.

Throughout that time, Shine served as an ever-loyal lieutenant to Ailes - serving as the "executor" of his orders.

So far, Shine has focused on his expertise, working quietly behind the scenes to improve the production quality of Trump's made-for-TV events, including the announcement of the president's Supreme Court pick.

Shine, who the White House said was unavailable for comment for this story, understands the importance of visual images, as well as how events are going to play in the news, said Schlapp. "He thinks about the big picture and how it's going to play out."

He also appears to have ushered in a new - if temporary - era of discipline, with Trump taking reporters' shouted questions less frequently than he had before Shine's arrival.

Last month, Shine took the unusual step of informing a group of reporters gathered outside the Oval Office for a swearing-in ceremony for the new Veterans Affairs secretary that Trump would not be taking questions since he had spoken earlier in the day. While Trump often appears unable to resist the urge to engage, he walked straight out the door when the event was over, as Shine had forecast.

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Bauder reported from New York.

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Follow Colvin and Bauder on Twitter at https://twitter.com/colvinj and https://twitter.com/dbauder
WASHINGTON (AP) - After flaming out in the GOP presidential primary - and enduring rival Donald Trump's taunts along the way - Sen. Marco Rubio is entering his next act in politics.

The once-rising star used to be criticized for being in too much of a hurry, but now he's hunkered down in the Senate with nothing, it seems, but time.

Rubio passes his days buried in the work of the Senate Intelligence Committee and is a leading advocate of bolstering election security and slapping sanctions on Russians if they interfere again in 2018. In the hallways of the Capitol, he brushes past reporters looking for reaction to the news of the day, focusing instead on legislative proposals or policy speeches on the Senate floor. And back in Florida, he's involved in long-running disputes over the Everglades and toxic algae blooms.

FILE - In this Aug. 2, 2018, file photo, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks at a news conference to discuss Paid Family Leave legislation, on Capitol Hill in Washington. After flaming out in the GOP presidential primary _ and enduring rival Donald Trump's taunts along the way _ Rubio is entering his next act in politics. But one thing Rubio isn't doing, he says, is gearing up for a White House run in 2020. And, he says no other Republicans should primary Trump either, because it could cost the GOP the presidency. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

But one thing Rubio isn't doing, he says, is gearing up for a White House run in 2020.

"I'm not primarying the president, and no one else should either unless we want to lose the White House," Rubio told The Associated Press. "I'm kind of approaching every day as if the U.S. Senate is the last place I'll ever serve in public office and trying to make that meaningful."

Like the other Capitol Hill also-rans against Trump - Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz - Rubio is finding his way in the Trump-era Republican Party, testing whether there is room for his own brand of conservatism.

He says he keeps in contact with Trump, talking to him on the phone two to three times a month, including last week. But he is continuing to reshape his own political identity, separate from the president, and isn't ruling out another White House run somewhere down the line.

"I still peek around the corner every now and then, but by and large I try to be more and more focused on what's in front of us," Rubio said.

He added that he remains "impatient," but "like anyone who is alive, and is watching, listening and trying to learn, time teaches you things."

After he ended his 2016 presidential campaign, Rubio appeared to be on his way out of Washington. He had pledged not to run for re-election, but colleagues pressed him to reconsider.

Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, told the AP he was among the first Republicans to nudge Rubio to seek re-election to the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made his own pitch as Republicans fought to keep the Senate majority. Eventually Rubio agreed.

Since then, people who have observed Rubio during his career see a more mindful, even liberated, politician who no longer carries the weight of being "The Republican Savior," as Time magazine once called the charismatic young son of immigrants. Instead, the 47-year-old is keeping his head down and doing the grunt work of governing, answering head-on the criticism that he was more flash than substance as a candidate.

"He seems to have found his place," said longtime ally Nick Iarossi, a Florida-based GOP lobbyist and fundraiser.

On several fronts this year, Rubio has started taking his shots to "modernize" the GOP agenda for the 21st century, as he puts it, with an emphasis on countering China abroad and helping working families at home.

In the spring, Rubio helped lead an effort to rein in the Chinese telecom giant ZTE for violating U.S. trade rules over selling goods to Iran and North Korea. He sought to impose stiffer penalties than the Trump administration wanted. The Senate approved the bipartisan effort, but Rubio ultimately lost that battle with the White House, as the legislative provision was abandoned.

Earlier this month, Rubio unveiled a family leave plan, after having successfully worked with Ivanka Trump to expand child tax credits in the 2017 GOP tax overhaul. The paid leave plan would allow young parents to take their Social Security funds early, to help pay for time off with children, rather than in retirement. Both ideas had been part of his presidential bid.

"His distance from the middle of the political firestorm," said Rubio's former campaign manager and top adviser Terry Sullivan, "has allowed him the space to practice his style of politics."

But mention of Rubio still draws a collective eye roll from some critics who see just another survival strategy after the brutal presidential campaign. He's doing what Rubio often does, they say, which is trying to chart a middle ground that often pleases no one.

Jesse Ferguson, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, said the idea that Rubio is emerging as some independent Republican voice "is indicative of the way Trump has turned Congress into a bunch of yes-men."

"In the GOP today, showing independence from Trump is like being awarded valedictorian at summer school," he said. "The bar is so low that any Republican that doesn't salute, praise or genuflect any time he walks in the room is suddenly seen as a thoughtful, independent-minded leader."

It's also not clear that there's space for Rubio's brand of conservatism in the GOP's Trump tent.

Despite his roots as a tea-party-backed candidate in 2010, Rubio always played better to suburban voters - the Starbucks moms and dads whose households look a lot like his, with kids, mortgages and college costs in the distance. It's those same voters who are at risk of fleeing the GOP in the Trump era.

Jenny Beth Martin, of the Tea Party Patriots, surveyed several hundred members at the start of this year and found a mixed response to Rubio.

"It really went the whole spectrum from excellent to ho-hum to disappointing," she said. "They just cannot figure out exactly what issues are driving him the most and how they align with the tea party values or President Trump's agenda."

Rubio, for his part, tweets Bible verses many mornings, which some see as an antidote to Twitter's usual rants, and he is perhaps the only rank-and-file lawmaker to be guarded by a security detail after it was reported there was a possible threat on his life.

He expects the nation's political pendulum to swing back his way eventually. Americans will one day grow exhausted of the current "outrage cycle and the constant fighting," he says.

Or so he hopes.

"Because if it doesn't, we're in a lot of trouble."

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Follow Mascaro on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lisamascaro

FILE - In this July 19, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump greets Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., left, and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. during a luncheon in the State Dinning Room of the White House in Washington. After flaming out in the GOP presidential primary _ and enduring Trump's taunts along the way _ Rubio is entering his next act in politics. But one thing Rubio isn't doing, he says, is gearing up for a White House run in 2020. And, he says no other Republicans should primary Trump either, because it could cost the GOP the presidency. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

FILE - In this June 22, 2018, file photo, Sen Marco Rubio speaks during a news conference in front of the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Homestead, Fla. After flaming out in the GOP presidential primary _ and enduring rival Donald Trump's taunts along the way _ Rubio is entering his next act in politics. But one thing Rubio isn't doing, he says, is gearing up for a White House run in 2020. And, he says no other Republicans should primary Trump either, because it could cost the GOP the presidency. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 16, 2018, file photo, President Donald Trump, third from right, shakes hands with Coconut Creek Police Officer Mike Leonard, second from left, as he meets with law enforcement officers at Broward County Sheriff's Office in Pompano Beach, Fla., following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Fla. Also pictured is Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., left, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, second from left, first lady Melania Trump, second from right, and Florida Gov. Rick Scott, right. After flaming out in the GOP presidential primary _ and enduring rival Trump's taunts along the way _ Rubio is entering his next act in politics. But one thing Rubio isn't doing, he says, is gearing up for a White House run in 2020. And, he says no other Republicans should primary Trump either, because it could cost the GOP the presidency. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
China is now making efforts to establish a more diversified soybean supply system by increasing the import sources and adjusting domestic production of oil-bearing crops, insider from Chinas major grain stockpiler said, adding that the soybeans imported from other countries except the US can meet Chinas daily demands.

China Grain Reserves Corporation (Sinograin) has expanded the purchase from South America, who contributed over 90 percent to about 2.5 million tons of imported soybeans in May.

In addition, the company is studying the feasibility to import oilseeds from emerging producing areas such as the Black Sea region. In recent years, the soybeans and sunflower seeds from Ukraine and Russia have experienced rapid growth in both production and export.

The imported soybeans from the rest of the world other than the US can meet the daily operation demands, according to Sino Grain, adding that no halt of production, short supply, or sharp rise of price has occurred.

Some short supply can totally be solved by diversifying the supply channel, a responsible person from Sino Grain stressed, responding to the guess that China still has to import certain amount of soybeans from the US to cope with the short supply caused by the trade frictions.

The company said China will increase its import of soybeans from major production areas such as South America and Canada, as these places enjoy huge potential in production and supply. Argentina, in particular, is expected to increase over 15 million tons of supply after it recovers production.

In addition, Brazil is likely to increase its production area of soybeans and drive up production by over 5 million tons. Besides, Belt and Road countries such as Ukraine and Russia can also become potential soybean suppliers of China.

Chinas demand for soybeans may experience a decline, said the responsible person, elaborating that on one hand, China can import more soybean meals and other miscellaneous meals to guarantee the supply of fodder and protein, while on the other hand, domestic fodder industry is working on the technology of low-protein formula fodder.

Domestic oilseeds production still has certain rising space, according to the company, adding that supply-side structural reform for agricultural industry launched by both central and local governments have reaped fruits, including the adjustment of planting structure in the transition zones of planting regions and cattle-producing regions, as well as the expansion of soybean plantation.

In addition, to grow rapeseeds on the winterly idle land alongside the Yangtze River will also increase the domestic supply of oilseeds.
MASON, Ohio (AP) - As Aftab Pureval campaigns for Congress in southwest Ohio, he sometimes smilingly introduces himself as "a brown dude with a funny name."

The Ohio native is the son of a Tibet-born mother and India-born father. He first upset the Cincinnati political order in 2016, winning the Hamilton County clerk of court's post that had been in Republican hands for a century. Now the 35-year-old attorney-turned-politician wants to unseat veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot.

"He's had his chance," Pureval says of the 65-year-old Chabot. "It's our time now."

Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval speaks at a fundraising event for his 1st House District campaign challenge to veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot at a supporters home, Friday, June 15, 2018, in Maineville, Ohio. The Democratic candidate for Congress in southwest Ohio jokes that besides already going against the electoral odds, he's a "brown dude with a funny name." But 35-year-old Aftab Pureval is attracting national attention as tries to unseat veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, part of the Cincinnati-area political landscape for three decades. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Defeating Chabot won't be easy. He's been a fixture on the Cincinnati-area political landscape for three decades and hasn't had a tough race since congressional districts were redrawn following the 2010 census. Chabot won his 2016 race with 59 percent of the vote.

Their matchup is among dozens of House contests playing out in districts that have largely been afterthoughts in recent elections. It's these kinds of races - beyond the 25 districts that elected a Republican member of Congress in 2016 despite Hillary Clinton defeating Donald Trump there - that could determine whether Democrats gain the 23 seats they need to retake the House.

Pureval is among the Democratic hopefuls looking to reclaim districts that span the nation's small and midsize cities and their surrounding suburbs and small towns - much of it political territory where Democrats were swept away in Republicans' 2010 midterm romp.

Democrats felt encouraged by the tight battle in last week's congressional special election in Ohio. While Trump claimed victory for Republican state Sen. Troy Balderson, the race against Democrat Danny O'Connor was considered too close to call, with a recount possible. The two will have a rematch in November for the seat vacated by Republican Pat Tiberi, who won by 37 points two years ago.

Democrats got a boost in a March special election in Pennsylvania, where Democrat Conor Lamb won a congressional district Trump carried by nearly 20 percentage points.

Pureval is among 60-plus names on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's "Red to Blue" list of candidates the national party believes are its best shots to flip GOP seats. The list is a mix of Clinton-won districts and the next tier of targets. Beyond that list, there are several dozen additional districts the national party and grassroots groups are eying for signs of competitiveness.

Certainly, Democrats don't expect to win all those districts, and there are a handful of Democratic seats that Republicans could reclaim. But Dan Sena, the DCCC's executive director, says the "historic and diverse battlefield" will force tough Republican decisions on "who to defend and who is a lost cause."

Those dynamics mean legitimate races in districts as varied as Salt Lake City, where Mayor Ben McAdams faces Rep. Mia Love in a district Trump carried by 7 points (Love won in 2016 by 12 points) to West Virginia coal country, where Democratic state Sen. Richard Ojeda voted for Trump and now seeks an open seat in a district the president carried by 50 points. (Outgoing Republican Rep. Evan Jenkins last won by 44.)

It's a stunning turn two years removed from just 16 House races coming within 5 points, with an average victory margin of 37 points across all 435 districts.

Democrats are employing a range of candidates across that wide field.

Pureval is the millennial rising star. National Democrats noticed him after he scored the major upset to become Hamilton County clerk. He ran memorable TV ads that highlighted his unusual name with an Aflac duck-like puppet squawking "AF-TAB!"

Pureval shows up at nearly any parade, festival or other large public event and at home gatherings hosted by volunteers. He talks about economic development, helping the middle class and bringing generational change, trying to tap into demographic shifts without delving too much into the daily Trump-driven national narratives.

In conservative West Virginia, Ojeda is the tattooed combat veteran who offers righteous anger about the economic plight and opioid crisis gripping his part of the country. He voted for Trump but says Washington has forgotten about his district.

"When I've got children in my backyard that have it worse than some children I saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's time for me to do something about it," Ojeda says, promoting universal health care and other investments he thinks the government should make in West Virginia.

In Omaha, Nebraska, and its surrounding suburbs, Democrat Kara Eastman echoes Ojeda's policy check list - Medicare for all and a $15 minimum wage - but does it as a nonprofit executive who focuses her efforts on younger, female and first-time voters. She's running against Rep. Don Bacon in a district Trump won by just 2 points but where the GOP has held the House seat for 22 of the last 24 years.

To win, these Democratic candidates will need some combination of voters who typically back Republicans or who haven't been voting at all.

For Pureval, that means coaxing Jeff Sieger, 56, a Republican who met the candidate at a summer festival and came away impressed. Sieger says he's happy with Trump but thinks Congress could use younger members "who know what's going on" with digital-age issues like net neutrality.

It also could mean steering away from hot-button issues, such as abortion, that remind some GOP-leaning voters why they usually don't support Democrats.

"That's going to be an albatross around his neck," Tom Grossmann said of Pureval's support of abortion rights in GOP-dominated Warren County, added to Chabot's district after 2010. Grossmann, a county commissioner and former county GOP chairman, chatted amiably with Pureval while the Democrat worked his way through a music festival crowd in the affluent suburb of Mason.

Chabot already has called Pureval "the most extreme pro-abortion candidate I've ever faced."

Still, Chabot acknowledged in a recent blog post that his opponent "is raising a lot of money" and that some national prognosticators have rated the race a toss-up. Chabot asked "for any help you can give me" to defeat what he calls a "far-left" foe.

Pureval, meanwhile, ran his first campaign commercial last week, opening: "I'm incredibly proud of my name - Aftab. It means 'sunshine.'"

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Barrow reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writer Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

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Follow Sewell and Barrow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/dansewell and https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP

___

Sign up for "Politics in Focus," a weekly newsletter showcasing the AP's best political reporting from across the United States leading up to the 2018 midterm elections: http://apne.ws/3Gzcraw

Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval greets constituents and their children as he campaigns for his 1st House District challenge against veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot at a music festival, Friday, June 15, 2018, in Mason, Ohio. The Democratic candidate for Congress in southwest Ohio jokes that besides already going against the electoral odds, he's a "brown dude with a funny name." But 35-year-old Aftab Pureval is attracting national attention as tries to unseat veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, part of the Cincinnati-area political landscape for three decades. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval speaks with constituents as he campaigns for his 1st House District challenge against veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot at a music festival, Friday, June 15, 2018, in Mason, Ohio. The Democratic candidate for Congress in southwest Ohio jokes that besides already going against the electoral odds, he's a "brown dude with a funny name." But 35-year-old Aftab Pureval is attracting national attention as tries to unseat veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, part of the Cincinnati-area political landscape for three decades. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

In this June 13, 2018, file photo, former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, left, and Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval stand for photographs during the "Women for Aftab" advocacy group kickoff event in support of Pureval's 1st House District challenge to veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot in Cincinnati. The Democratic candidate for Congress in southwest Ohio jokes that besides already going against the electoral odds, he's a "brown dude with a funny name." But 35-year-old Aftab Pureval is attracting national attention as tries to unseat veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, part of the Cincinnati-area political landscape for three decades. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

In this May 31, 2018, file photo Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., right, speaks alongside Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, during a town hall at the Kroger Co. ice cream and beverage plant, Thursday, May 31, 2018, in Springdale, Ohio. The Democratic candidate for Congress in southwest Ohio jokes that besides already going against the electoral odds, he's a "brown dude with a funny name." But 35-year-old Aftab Pureval is attracting national attention as tries to unseat veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, part of the Cincinnati-area political landscape for three decades. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

In this May 31, 2018, file photo Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, speaks alongside Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., during a town hall at the Kroger Co. ice cream and beverage plant, Thursday, May 31, 2018, in Springdale, Ohio. The Democratic candidate for Congress in southwest Ohio jokes that besides already going against the electoral odds, he's a "brown dude with a funny name." But 35-year-old Aftab Pureval is attracting national attention as tries to unseat veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, part of the Cincinnati-area political landscape for three decades. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval, far right, speaks with patrons as he campaigns for his 1st House District challenge against veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot at a local bar, Friday, June 15, 2018, in Maineville, Ohio. The Democratic candidate for Congress in southwest Ohio jokes that besides already going against the electoral odds, he's a "brown dude with a funny name." But 35-year-old Aftab Pureval is attracting national attention as tries to unseat veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, part of the Cincinnati-area political landscape for three decades. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval speaks with patrons as he campaigns for his 1st House District challenge against veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot at a local bar, Friday, June 15, 2018, in Maineville, Ohio. The Democratic candidate for Congress in southwest Ohio jokes that besides already going against the electoral odds, he's a "brown dude with a funny name." But 35-year-old Aftab Pureval is attracting national attention as tries to unseat veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, part of the Cincinnati-area political landscape for three decades. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval speaks with constituents as he campaigns for his 1st House District challenge against veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot at a music festival, Friday, June 15, 2018, in Mason, Ohio. The Democratic candidate for Congress in southwest Ohio jokes that besides already going against the electoral odds, he's a "brown dude with a funny name." But 35-year-old Aftab Pureval is attracting national attention as tries to unseat veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, part of the Cincinnati-area political landscape for three decades. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Audience members listen as Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval, right, speaks at a fundraising event for his 1st House District campaign challenge to veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot at a supporters home, Friday, June 15, 2018, in Maineville, Ohio. The Democratic candidate for Congress in southwest Ohio jokes that besides already going against the electoral odds, he's a "brown dude with a funny name." But 35-year-old Aftab Pureval is attracting national attention as tries to unseat veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, part of the Cincinnati-area political landscape for three decades. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

In this June 13, 2018, file photo, Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval speaks during the "Women for Aftab" advocacy group kickoff event in support of Pureval's 1st House District challenge to veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot in Cincinnati. The Democratic candidate for Congress in southwest Ohio jokes that besides already going against the electoral odds, he's a "brown dude with a funny name." But 35-year-old Aftab Pureval is attracting national attention as tries to unseat veteran Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, part of the Cincinnati-area political landscape for three decades. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The Latest on talks between officials from North and South Korea (all times local):

2:45 p.m.

The rival Koreas have agreed to hold a third summit between their leaders in Pyongyang sometime before the end of September.

South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, left, shakes hands with his North Korean counterpart Ri Son Gwon during their meeting at the northern side of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, North Korea, Aug. 13, 2018. Senior officials from the rival Koreas met Monday to set a date and venue for a third summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, part of an effort to breathe new life into resolving the nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang. (Korea Pool/Yonhap via AP)

The agreement comes amid an ongoing nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang.

The two sides did not announce an exact date for the summit.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un first met in April in a highly publicized summit and then again in May for more informal talks.

The Koreas said in a statement that they reviewed ways to set up agreements made at the past summits during nearly two hours of talks Monday.

The meeting between Seoul and Pyongyang comes as experts see slow progress on efforts to disarm North Korea since a June summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump.

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10:30 a.m.

Senior officials from the rival Koreas are meeting to set a date and venue for a third summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The talks Monday are happening at a North Korea-controlled building in the border village of Panmunjom.

The two leaders first met in April in a highly publicized summit and then again in May for more informal talks. They agreed at the time to meet in the fall in Pyongyang.

The delegations Monday are made up of senior officials handling inter-Korean issues for both countries.

The meeting comes amid a growing standoff on North Korean denuclearization that has followed Kim's summit with President Donald Trump in June in Singapore.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Hundreds of people have fled four days of fierce fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban over the key provincial capital of Ghazni that has killed about 120 security forces and civilians, the defense minister and witnesses said Monday.

Nearly 200 insurgents, many of them foreigners, have been killed, the government said.

Between the civilians have left the city and those too fearful to venture from their homes into the streets, "Ghazni has become a ghost town," said Ghulam Mustafa, who made it to neighboring Maidan Wardak province with 14 of his relatives.

An Afghan family, who escaped from the volatile city of Ghazni, pose for a photograph in Maidan Shar, west of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Tareq Shah Bahrami said Monday that about 100 policemen and soldiers as well as 20 civilians have been killed in past four days of battle in the eastern capital of Ghazni. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

"The city became so dangerous," the 60-year-old Mustafa told The Associated Press while stopped briefly at a checkpoint where police searched for wounded Taliban fighters.

The Taliban's multipronged assault, which began Friday, overwhelmed Ghazni's defenses and allowed insurgents to capture several parts of it in a major show of force. The Taliban pushed deep into the strategic city about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital, Kabul.

The United States has carried out airstrikes and sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces in the city of 270,000 people. The fall of Ghazni, which is the capital of the province of the same name, would be an important victory for the Taliban, cutting Highway One, a key route linking Kabul to the southern provinces, the insurgents' traditional heartland.

A spokesman for the U.S. military, Lt. Col. Martin O'Donnell, said the city "remains under Afghan government control, and the isolated and disparate Taliban forces remaining in the city do not pose a threat to its collapse, as some have claimed."

He added that attempts by the insurgents to hide among the residents "does pose a threat to the civilian population, who were terrorized and harassed by this ineffective attack and the subsequent execution of innocents, destruction of homes and burning of a market."

Sporadic clashes are continuing, O'Donnell said.

Afghan authorities insist the city will not fall to the Taliban and that Afghan forces are in control of key government positions and other institutions.

"The Taliban have failed in reaching their goal," said Col. Fared Mashal, the provincial police chief.

Gen. Tareq Shah Bahrami, Afghanistan's defense minister, said about 100 Afghan police and army and 20 civilians have been killed in Ghazni, the first official casualty toll released by the government since the Taliban launched the massive assault.

At a news conference in Kabul, Bahrami said the casualty figures are not definite and that the numbers might change. Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak said nearly 70 police were killed.

About 1,000 additional troops were sent to Ghazni, Bahrami said. He added that 194 insurgents, including 12 Taliban leaders, were killed - with fighters from Pakistan, southern Russia's region of Chechnya and various Arab countries among the dead.

The Taliban destroyed a telecommunications tower on Ghazni's outskirts, cutting off landline and cellphone links to the city, where shops are closed. The fighting severely damaged Ghazni's historic neighborhoods and cultural treasures, Bahrami said, adding that he believes the next 24 hours would turn the tide in the battle.

Mustafa's wife, Razia, said they had no food, water or and electricity for four days.

"There were so many dead bodies under the bridges, at the side of roads and under the destroyed houses," she said.

Their son and two daughters were wounded by shrapnel from an airstrike on the Taliban near a mosque.

Another witness, Abdul Wasih, 59, said his son was wounded in the leg by a mortar attack Sunday that killed five of his close relatives.

"I went to the hospital, but it was full of dead bodies with a very bad smell," he said. Bodies wrapped in sheets lay in open wooden coffins in the hospital.

Wasih said that since his son's wound was not serious, he decided to take him to Kabul for treatment.

The U.N. expressed concern for the civilians caught up in the fighting.

Humanitarian officials report that the heavy fighting has resulted in more than 100 civilian casualties, said U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq.

"Communications networks and electricity supply are currently down in the city, resulting in water shortages, and food is also reportedly running low," Haq said.

Rik Peeperkorn, acting U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan, said residents "have seen their city turn into a battlefield since Friday morning, with fighting and clashes reportedly still ongoing."

The insurgents began the attack by entering homes in Ghazni and then slipping out into the night to attack security forces.

A 14-year-old girl who goes by only one name, Fereshta, said the infiltration of the city was the first time in her life that she had seen a member of the Taliban.

Top security and government officials, including the military chief of staff, were now in Ghazni, leading the "clearing-up operations" in different parts of the city, Barmak said.

Khair Mohammad, a police officer in neighboring Maidan Wardak province, told the AP he was searching all vehicles coming from Ghazni and looking for any wounded Taliban. Mohammad said locals were coming out of Ghazni and military convoys were heading in.

In recent months, the Taliban have seized several districts across Afghanistan, staging near-daily attacks on security forces, but they have been unable to capture and hold urban areas.

The U.S. and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, but have since then repeatedly come to the aid of Afghan forces as they struggle to combat the resurgent Taliban.

President Ashraf Ghani is said to be considering a cease-fire offer to the Taliban for the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which starts Aug. 21. A three-day holiday cease-fire in June brought rare quiet to much of the country, but the insurgents rejected a government request to extend it.

The Taliban seem to be intent on seeking a position of strength ahead of expected talks with the United States, which has been at war in Afghanistan for nearly 17 years.

The Taliban say they met with Alice Wells, the top U.S. diplomat for South Asia, in Qatar last month for preliminary talks. Washington neither confirmed nor denied the meeting, but acknowledged Wells was in Qatar, where the Taliban maintain an office. The Taliban said they expect another round of talks.

Earlier this year, the U.S. sent more military advisers to Afghanistan. It also shifted A-10 attack planes and other aircraft from striking Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan. These and other moves boosted the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by at least 3,500, to a total of more than 14,000.

Losing Ghazni to the Taliban would essentially cut Afghanistan in half, closing its second-busiest trade route. Although Kabul is also supplied from Pakistan, the trade route to Iran and the Gulf supplies the northern half or the country with many essentials.

It would also be the most important strategic victory for the Taliban since they lost control of the country after the 2001 U.S. invasion. At the height of the troop surge ordered by former U.S. President Barack Obama, thousands of NATO troops were deployed in the city and province, including more than 2,500 from Poland.

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Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon in Islamabad, Mohammad Anwar Danishyar in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.

An injured boy is cared for by a medic in an ambulance on the Ghazni highway, in Maidan Shar, west of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Afghan forces battled the Taliban the eastern city of Ghazni, a key provincial capital, for the fourth straight day on Monday, following a massive assault on the eastern city last week that overwhelmed its defenses and allowed insurgents to capture several parts of it, officials said. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Afghan police officers search a vehicle at a checkpoint on the Ghazni highway, in Maidan Shar, west of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Tareq Shah Bahrami said Monday that about 100 policemen and soldiers as well as 20 civilians have been killed in past four days of battle in the eastern capital of Ghazni. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

In this Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, photo, a wounded woman is brought into a hospital in Ghazni province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces in Ghazni, where they were struggling on Sunday to regain full control three days after the Taliban launched a massive assault on the eastern city. (AP Photo/Mohammad Anwar Danishyar)

In this Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, photo, injured men receive treatment at a hospital in Ghazni province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces in Ghazni, where they were struggling on Sunday to regain full control three days after the Taliban launched a massive assault on the eastern city. (AP Photo/Mohammad Anwar Danishyar)

In this Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, photo, Afghan Security personnel petrol in the city of Ghazni province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces in Ghazni, where they were struggling on Sunday to regain full control three days after the Taliban launched a massive assault on the eastern city. (AP Photo/Mohammad Anwar Danishyar)

In this Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, photo, an Injured man receives treatment at a hospital in Ghazni province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces in Ghazni, where they were struggling on Sunday to regain full control three days after the Taliban launched a massive assault on the eastern city. (AP Photo/Mohammad Anwar Danishyar)

In this Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, photo, bodies of civilians and security forces are placed at a hospital in Ghazni province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces in Ghazni, where they were struggling on Sunday to regain full control three days after the Taliban launched a massive assault on the eastern city. (AP Photo/Mohammad Anwar Danishyar)

An Afghan family, who escaped from the volatile city of Ghazni, pose for a photograph in Maidan Shar, west of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Tareq Shah Bahrami said Monday that about 100 policemen and soldiers as well as 20 civilians have been killed in past four days of battle in the eastern capital of Ghazni. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak, left, and Defense Minister Gen. Tareq Shah Bahrami, give a press conference in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Bahrami said Monday that the ongoing battle with the Taliban in the eastern city of Ghazni has killed about 100 policemen and soldiers, as well as at least 20 civilians. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

An injured boy rides in an ambulance on the Ghazni highway, in Maidan Shar, west of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Afghan forces battled the Taliban in the eastern city of Ghazni a key provincial capital, for the fourth straight day on Monday, following a massive assault on the eastern city last week that overwhelmed its defenses and allowed insurgents to capture several parts of it, officials said. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

An injured man is transported on the Ghazni highway, in Maidan Shar, west of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Afghan forces battled the Taliban the eastern city of Ghazni, a key provincial capital, for the fourth straight day on Monday, following a massive assault on the eastern city last week that overwhelmed its defenses and allowed insurgents to capture several parts of it, officials said. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
BERLIN (AP) - China insisted on Monday that "arbitrary detention" or "re-education centers" do not exist in its far western Xinjiang region, rejecting concerns raised by a U.N. human rights committee that millions of ethnic Uighurs may be being held in camps.

Beijing was responding to questions raised by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva. A committee member last week cited estimates that over 1 million people in China from the country's Uighur and other Muslim minorities are being held in "counter-extremism centers" and another 2 million have been forced into "re-education camps."

In Xinjiang, following sporadic violent attacks by Muslim separatists, hundreds of thousands of members of the Uighur and Kazakh Muslim minorities have been arbitrarily detained in indoctrination camps where they are forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the party.

China's delegation told the U.N. panel that "there is no arbitrary detention ... there are no such things as re-education centers." It said authorities in Xinjiang have cracked down on "violent terrorist activities," while convicted criminals are provided with skills to reintegrate themselves into society at "vocational education and employment training centers."

"The argument that 1 million Uighurs are detained in re-education centers is completely untrue," Chinese delegate Hu Lianhe said through an interpreter.

He added "there is no suppression of ethnic minorities or violations of their freedom of religious belief in the name of counter-terrorism." But he also said "those who are deceived by religious extremism ... shall be assisted through resettlement and education."

Xinjiang has been enveloped in a suffocating blanket of security for years, especially since a deadly anti-government riot broke out in the regional capital of Urumqi in 2009.

Gay McDougall, the committee vice-chairwoman who raised the detentions last week, said she wasn't convinced by China's "flat denial" of the detention figures. She said China "didn't quite deny" that re-education programs are taking place.

"You said that was false, the 1 million. Well, how many were there? Please tell me," she said. "And what were the laws on which they were detained, the specific provisions?"

There was no direct response to that in Monday's session, which addressed a broad range of issues that went well beyond the Uighurs.

But delegation leader Yu Jianhua said some panel members had treated "some of the unsubstantiated materials as credible information." He contended that some of that information came from groups which "seek to split China" and have links to terrorist organizations.
PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AP) - Malaysia's prime minister said Monday he is seeking to hike the price of water sold to neighboring Singapore by more than 10 times as his country searches for ways to pay off massive debts.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who shot back to power in an electoral upset in May, told The Associated Press that a decades-old treaty governing the water agreement needs to be revised to reflect increases in the cost of living.

The water deal has long been a point of contention between the two countries. Mahathir said in June he wants to renegotiate the deal.

Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is interviewed in Putrajaya, Malaysia, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Mahathir said he will seek to cancel multibillion-dollar Chinese-backed infrastructure projects that were signed by his predecessor as his government works to dig itself out of debt, and he blasted Myanmar's treatment of its Rohingya minority as "grossly unjust." (AP Photo/Yam G-Jun)

Malaysia currently sells water to Singapore at 3 sen (0.7 U.S. cents) per thousand gallons and buys treated water at 50 sen (12 cents) per thousand gallons.

Mahathir said that by comparison, the southern Malaysian state of Johor sells water to the neighboring state of Melaka at 30 sen per 1,000 gallons - a rate he described as "charitable" given that it's a domestic deal.

"To a foreign country, we need to get more than that," he said. He declined to discuss specifics, citing ongoing negotiations.

Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan has said his country will live up to the agreement and expects Malaysia to do the same.

Mahathir also continued to cast doubt on the value of a high-speed rail project linking the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, to the wealthy island city-state. He announced the cancellation of the project in May as part of a wider review of big-ticket infrastructure deals reached under his predecessor, Najib Razak, though the government has since reconsidered and is trying to renegotiate the terms.

"We cannot afford it. If the price is brought down within our means, then maybe we'll go ahead," he said Monday. He added, though, that it would be preferable to improve existing train lines to improve travel times.
MILAN (AP) - The Latest on the influx of migrants into Europe (all times local):

6:00 p.m.

Malta's armed forces say that a patrol boat has rescued 114 migrants aboard a rubber dinghy taking on water 53 nautical miles south of the Mediterranean island nation.

In this photo taken Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018, migrants stand on the deck of the Open Arms boat, after being rescued off the coast of Libya in the early hours of the nigh of Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018. Rescuers from the Spanish non -profit Open Arms saved 87 migrants off the coast of Libya in a dramatic nighttime operation. The group included eight minors. (AP Photo/Valerio Nicolosi)

The Maltese Navy said all of the migrants, who were sighted during a regular patrol, were brought to Malta - the first to arrive there since late June.

Separately, the Maltese government said that it has no legal obligation to offer safe harbor to another group of 141 migrants picked up at sea Friday by the Aquarius rescue ship, since it was neither the coordinating nor the competent authority for the rescue.

The EU said it is in touch with member states to identify a port. Italy has refused, saying Britain should take in the migrants since the Aquarius flies the flag of the British territory Gibraltar.

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3:05 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says talks with Greece on its taking back migrants who previously sought asylum there are well-advanced but similar negotiations with Italy have some way to go.

Germany last week reached an agreement with Spain for Madrid to take back asylum-seekers who previously applied there and then show up at the German-Austrian border. That was a largely symbolic first step toward implementing a deal to defuse a domestic political dispute; Greece and Italy have been bigger sources of migration to Germany.

In June, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer threatened to turn back previously registered migrants unilaterally at the border. Merkel insisted on striking agreements with other countries.

Merkel said Monday she's prepared to speak with the Greek and Italian leaders if needed but "we haven't yet reached that point."

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1:20 p.m.

A few dozen people have gathered in the northwestern Bosnian town of Bihac to protest the government's response to an unprecedented influx of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Protesters who assembled Monday in a square in the center of Bihac accused the state government of intentionally sending migrants to their town without identifying and registering them or providing them with proper accommodation. They reject the claim that Bihac is an obvious gathering place chosen by migrants because of its proximity to the border with Croatia, a member of the European Union.

Thousands of migrants are staying in squalid, makeshift camps in Bihac and the surrounding towns, relying on limited support of the local Red Cross and a couple of international aid agencies.

Over 9,300 migrants have entered Bosnia so far this year.

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12:20 p.m.

Italy's transport minister says Britain should take in 141 migrants picked up by a rescue ship that sails under the flag of the British territory of Gibraltar.

Italy continues to refuse port to ships run by humanitarian groups, and Danilo Toninelli said Monday on Twitter that Britain should take responsibility for the migrants aboard the Aquarius, operated by French humanitarian groups.

Toninelli said the rescue was coordinated by the Libyan coast guard and that the ship was now in Maltese waters.

The French aid groups SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders have called on European nations to identify a close port of safety so the 141 migrants picked up in two rescues Friday could disembark. Most of the migrants are from Somalia and Eritrea and include 67 unaccompanied minors.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The Latest on the fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security forces in the city of Ghazni (all times local):

8:45 p.m.

After four days of fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban, the country's defense minister says the battle for control of a key city has claimed the lives of at least 100 Afghan policemen and soldiers and at least 20 civilians.

In this Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, photo, a wounded woman is brought into a hospital in Ghazni province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces in Ghazni, where they were struggling on Sunday to regain full control three days after the Taliban launched a massive assault on the eastern city. (AP Photo/Mohammad Anwar Danishyar)

The numbers provided by Gen. Tareq Shah Bahrami on Monday were the first official casualty toll since the Taliban launched a massive assault on Ghazni last Friday.

The fall of Ghazni would mark an important victory for the Taliban, and would cut off a key highway linking the capital to the southern provinces. The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces and carried out airstrikes against the insurgents.

The Taliban have seized several districts across Afghanistan in recent years and stage near-daily attacks on Afghan security forces, but have been unable to capture and hold urban areas.

The United States and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, but have since then repeatedly come to the aid of Afghan forces as they struggle to combat the resurgent Taliban.

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3:40 p.m.

Afghanistan's defense minister says the ongoing battle with the Taliban in the eastern city of Ghazni has killed about 100 policemen and soldiers, as well as at least 20 civilians.

Gen. Tareq Shah Bahrami gave the toll at a press conference on Monday, the fourth day of fighting in Ghazni, the provincial capital of the province with the same name. He says the casualty figures are not yet definite and that the numbers might change.

He did not offer a breakdown of the casualties but Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak says nearly 70 policemen are among those killed.

The Taliban launched a massive attack on Ghazni on Friday, overwhelming the city's defenses and capturing parts of it.

The defense minister says about 1,000 additional troops have been sent to Ghazni and helped prevent the city from falling into Taliban hands.

He also says 194 insurgents, including 12 leaders, were killed. They include Pakistani, Chechen and Arabs foreign fighters.

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11:50 a.m.

Afghan officials say security forces are battling the Taliban in a key provincial capital for the fourth straight day after insurgents launched a massive assault on the eastern city last week.

Najib Danish, Interior Ministry's spokesman, says reinforcements have been sent to Ghazni and were trying to clear it of the Taliban on Monday.

The assault on Ghazni, the capital of Ghazni province, was a major show of force by the Taliban, who had infiltrated deep into the city and attacked from several directions.

The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces in Ghazni.

Col. Fared Mashal, the province's police chief, say majority of the insurgents fighting in Ghazni are foreigners, including Pakistanis and Chechens.

Mashal says hundreds of Taliban have been killed so far in Ghazni.

In this Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, photo, Afghan Security personnel petrol in the city of Ghazni province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces in Ghazni, where they were struggling on Sunday to regain full control three days after the Taliban launched a massive assault on the eastern city. (AP Photo/Mohammad Anwar Danishyar)
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - Norway's fishery minister has stepped down after harsh criticism for not informing the government of his private trips abroad to Iran and China.

Per Sandberg, 58, gave no reasons why he failed to tell his bosses about the trips in advance - a summer holiday in July to Iran with his Iranian-born girlfriend and a trip to China in May. In Norway, government members are required to report before going to another country on private trips.

After returning from Iran, his work phone was given to Norway's domestic intelligence service to make sure it was not hacked. The PST agency considers Iran "a high risk country" when it comes to electronic surveillance.

He was replaced in the fisheries post Monday by Harald Tom Nesvik.
NEW YORK (AP) - The company that makes Wrangler and Lee jeans is breaking off its denim division to focus on its fast-growing outdoor and activewear business as Americans swap out jeans for yoga pants.

VF Corp. said Monday the non-denim division would include its other well-known brands, The North Face and Timberland, Altra, Icebreaker and Williamson-Dickie.

The preference toward activewear has fueled growth at companies like Lululemon, Under Armour and Nike. Retailers like The Gap and Target have hopped aboard. Even traditional jeans makers have added stretch to their denim to catch up.

FILE- In this Feb. 4, 2011, File photo, Wrangler jeans are displayed at a store in Hayward, Calif. VF Corp. says it plans to split into two publicly traded companies, with one focusing on clothing and footwear and the other concentrating on jeans and its outlet businesses. VF Corp. previously sold the Nautica brand and purchased the Altra, Icebreaker and Williamson-Dickie brands. Some of its other brands include The North Face, Timberland and Wrangler. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

Despite growing more slowly last year, activewear sales still rose at least 10 percent for the year ended in June, according to NPD Group, a market research firm. In comparison, jeans sales climbed 4 percent for that same period, fueled by women's denim.

The change in what people wear is playing out every quarter at VF. In the most recent quarter, revenue from activewear surged 25 percent and outdoor revenue rose 6 percent. Revenue from denim increased 3 percent.

VF expects 6 percent to 8 percent revenue growth in its outdoor business this fiscal year and 13 percent to 14 percent growth in its active division. Revenue in denim is expected to be flat, VF Corp. said last month.

The yet-to-be-named outdoor and activewear division is expected to generate annual revenue of around $11 billion. It will move from North Carolina to the Denver area in the next year.

VF said it expects the tax-free spin-off of its denim business to generate annual revenue of $2.5 billion. The company that operates the denim and also its outlet businesses, called NewCo, will remain in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The separation, which needs final approval from board members, is expected to be completed in the first half of next year.

VF shares fell 4 percent Monday to $92.40.

FILE- In this Jan. 21, 2015, file photo people walks pass The North Face exhibit displaying its new avalanche airbag "modulator system" that is a set of dual air bags that be attached to any backpack at the Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt lake City. VF Corp. says it plans to split into two publicly traded companies, with one focusing on clothing and footwear and the other concentrating on jeans and its outlet businesses. Some of VF Corp. brands include The North Face, Timberland and Wrangler. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

FILE- In this Dec. 31, 2017, file photo Detroit Lions defensive end Ezekiel Ansah, wearing Timberland shoes, addresses the media after an NFL football game against the Green Bay Packers in Detroit. VF Corp. says it plans to split into two publicly traded companies, with one focusing on clothing and footwear and the other concentrating on jeans and its outlet businesses. VF Corp. previously sold the Nautica brand and purchased the Altra, Icebreaker and Williamson-Dickie brands. Some of its other brands include The North Face, Timberland and Wrangler. (AP Photo/Jose Juarez, File)
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - Scott Dixon will likely finish his career with Chip Ganassi Racing under a new contract for one of IndyCar's greatest drivers.

The extension announced Monday puts Dixon behind the wheel of the PNC Bank-sponsored entry and ends all speculation he'd leave Ganassi after 17 seasons to join Fernando Alonso on a new McLaren team. The McLaren entry has not been announced, but Dixon is among the top IndyCar drivers who had been targeted to team with Alonso.

It's unclear if the McLaren team will come to fruition for 2019, but Dixon will be back behind the wheel of Ganassi's No. 9 Honda.

FILE - In this Sept. 1, 2017, file photo, Scott Dixon sits in his car before a practice session for the IndyCar Series auto race in Watkins Glen, N.Y. ixon will likely finish his career with Chip Ganassi Racing under a new contract for one of IndyCar's greatest drivers. The extension announced Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, puts Dixon behind the wheel of the PNC Bank-sponsored entry and ends all speculation he'd leave Ganassi after 17 seasons to join Fernando Alonso on a new McLaren team. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

Dixon's tenure is the longest of any Ganassi driver but his future with the team was in question as the McLaren team and others gauged his interest. He said this free agency period was the most active of his career because of the "rumblings" surrounding some of the suitors.

He listened out of due diligence, not a desire to leave Ganassi, and characterized his talks with other teams as "moderate discussions."

"It's silly not to look at the landscape, other series, the future. Things change and it's good to have an understanding of the landscape," Dixon said. "You are just doing a bit of research and looking to see what options are there."

Dixon flew last month to Pittsburgh to spend an afternoon with Ganassi. The team owner asked him that day if he needed to be worried about his top driver leaving.

"I said to him, 'Hey, is there something I need to know?'" Ganassi said. "And he said, 'If there's something going on, you'll be the first to know. OK?' And that ended it. I took him at his word.'"

Dixon's career began in 2000 with PacWest Racing, but the team ran out of money three races into the 2002 season and Dixon was picked up by Ganassi. His tenure is the longest of any Ganassi driver.

The New Zealand native has won the Indianapolis 500 and his 44 career victories trail only A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti on the all-time win list. At 38, he's leading the series in pursuit of his fifth IndyCar title.

Dixon has three wins this season and leads Alexander Rossi by 46 points in the standings with four races remaining.

"I think when you mention the name Scott Dixon, the numbers and the records start to speak for themselves," Ganassi said. "We have achieved a lot together, but there are no signs of him slowing down. He's still the guy the championship goes through, and you know you have to beat him to get on the top step. He's a driver that's always thinking about the next race and how he's going to approach it, attack it and ultimately win it."

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Mr. Armin Strom studied watchmaking and set up his own store in his native town of Burgdorf in 1967. In parallel with the normal activity of a small watch shop, he also offered a restoration service and gradually developed a particular knack for the art of hand skeletonizing, long before it became fashionable among the mainstream brands. The first watches bearing the Armin Strom name were presented in 1984 at what was then still called the Basel Watch Fair. His desire to push the limits of his skills earned him a Guinness World Record in 1990 after he created the worlds smallest hand-skeletonised watch for ladies. He also caught the attention of Switzerlands bigger watch brands, who discreetly started turning to him to skeletonize small series of their own watches.

Guinness World Record in 1990

When Armin Strom was looking for someone to take over the company, Serge Michel, a watch collector and friend of the family, jumped at the chance, bringing his childhood friend and watchmaker Claude Greisler on board with him. With memories of the man of mystery who would head off in his exotic Jaguar E-Type to deliver watches to his customers personally, Serge and Claude drew up ambitious plans to uphold the Armin Strom legacy of skeletonizing and fine watchmaking and at the same time develop the brand into a fully-fledged manufacture in the true sense of the word, the young team producing the majority of their movement components in-house. Armin Strom started the production of its own mainplates, bridges, levers, springs, wheels, pinions and screws in 2008 and one year later presented its first in-house calibre, the ARM09 with 8-day power reserve. This established the brands credentials as a manufacture, which Armin Strom has constantly developed ever since, achieving a level of vertical integration that is now measured quite precisely at 97%.

The worlds smallest hand-skeletonised watch for ladies by Armin Strom

Other in-house calibres followed, such as the AMW11 in 2011 and soon after the ATC11 tourbillon movement, with an impressive 10 days of power reserve. The brands biggest breakthrough came in 2017, however, when it presented the Mirrored Force Resonance to the world. For the first time in a watch, two separate oscillators (the balance spring assembly) were connected by a resonance clutch spring that brought two separate seconds hands into perfect synchronicity once the oscillators achieved resonance because of their proximity to each other. It was the culmination of two and a half years of development for Claude Greisler and his team and another step along the path towards ever greater precision for Armin Strom watches.

Mirrored Force Resonance 2017  Armin Strom

Although it is a small brand with a small team, Armin Strom likes to flaunt the luxury of its independence. Its in-house movements are the most evident example of this, but watch connoisseurs will appreciate the more subtle manifestations, such as the configurator that allows them to customize individual elements of their timepiece, including the colour for the coating on movement components, and the slightly off-centre location of the hour and minute hands, which is only possible when a brand has full control of its own design and manufacturing.
BERLIN (AP) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday slapped down an ally's suggestion that her conservatives could work with the post-communist Left Party in the country's east, an idea that appalls many on the right.

Germany's political landscape has become increasingly fragmented in recent years - particularly in the formerly communist east, where the Left Party is a major force and the far-right Alternative for Germany is at its strongest.

That makes it increasingly hard to form governing coalitions, and three eastern states hold regional votes next year. In federalized Germany, state governments play an important role and regional political experiments can foreshadow national developments.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denis Zvizdic, left, address the media during a joint press conference as part of a meeting at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. (AP Photo/Miriam Karout)

Daniel Guenther, the conservative governor of the western state of Schleswig-Holstein, said in a weekend newspaper interview that his Christian Democratic Union must be "pragmatic" if election results in the east make it impossible to form a coalition without the Left Party.

The Left Party won 9.2 percent of the vote in last year's national election. A fusion of eastern ex-communists and other left-wingers created in 2005, it has experience of governing in several eastern states but tends to be more radically left-wing in the west.

Merkel has jettisoned many tenets of conservative orthodoxy and moved her party to the center in her nearly 13 years as chancellor, but an alliance with the Left Party so far has been off-limits - as has working with the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD.

"If there are sensible people at work in the Left Party, it isn't a mistake to seek sensible solutions," Guenther was quoted as saying.

His comments drew criticism from many in the CDU, and Merkel wasn't impressed.

"I don't advocate working with the Left Party and that has been the case for many years," she told reporters. "We will do everything in the upcoming elections in the (eastern) states to form governments under the CDU's leadership without the Left Party and, of course, without AfD."
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - The Latest on the Republican gubernatorial primary race between Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer and Secretary of State Kris Kobach (all times local):

5:50 p.m.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach hung on to his narrow lead for the Republican nomination in the governor's race, but the state's two most populous counties won't be reporting their canvass results until Tuesday.

FILE - In this Aug. 8, 2018, file photo, Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer, left, alongside Lt. Gov. Tracey Mann, addresses the media at the Kansas Statehouse in Topeka, Kan., a day after his primary race against Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. County election officials across Kansas are set to begin reviewing provisional ballots to arrive at final official vote totals in the tight Republican primary for governor. (Chris Neal/The Topeka Capital-Journal via AP)

Kobach had a 206-vote lead over Gov. Jeff Colyer by the time the secretary of state's office closed for the day Monday, with 43 counties left to report their results in the coming days. The count resumes Tuesday morning.

The campaigns for both Republican candidates said they planned to continue campaigning for the general election as if they were the GOP nominee.

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4:30 p.m.

The top election official in Kansas' most populous county says they are not counting some 35 provisional ballots where the unaffiliated voter did not complete a party affiliation declaration on Election Day.

How to handle such ballots in Johnson County and across the state has emerged on the first day of canvassing as the most contentious issue in the razor-thin race for the Republican nomination for governor.

A legal opinion issued Monday by the governor's top attorney took issue with the guidance issued by the person Kobach appointed to oversee vote counters after he recused himself.

Assistant Secretary of State Eric Rucker has told election officials that provisional ballots cast by such voters should not be counted - a guidance Johnson County apparently appears to be following.

The results for the state's two largest counties will not be finished until Tuesday.

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10:50 a.m.

Commissioners say results from Kansas' most populous county won't be available until Tuesday afternoon in the review of some 9,000 provisional ballots in the tight Republican primary for governor.

In suburban Kansas City's Johnson County, commissioners agreed Monday morning to throw out 898 provisional ballots and to count 1,451 of them.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach led Gov. Jeff Colyer by 110 votes out of 313,000-plus cast, after late mail-in ballots from all 105 counties were added Friday to totals from advance voting and ballots cast at the polls last Tuesday. That grew to 113 votes Monday morning after the results were posted from four small counties.

Even as counties begin to review provisional ballots, the outcome of those reviews is in question. On Monday, the governor's chief counsel disputed guidance issued by the deputy whom Kobach appointed to oversee vote counters.

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10:15 a.m.

The fight over how to count unaffiliated voters in Kansas has begun as the state reviews nearly 9,000 provisional ballots in the close Republican primary for governor.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Gov. Jeff Colyer are locked in a tight battle for the ticket, separated by 110 votes as of Friday.

On Monday, the governor's chief counsel disputed guidance issued by the deputy whom Kobach appointed to oversee vote counters.

Assistant Secretary of State Eric Rucker says an unaffiliated voter who doesn't declare party affiliation is not entitled to vote. Poll workers sometimes give unaffiliated voters provisional ballots rather than a party affiliation statement.

The chief counsel says provisional ballots cast by unaffiliated voters in a primary should be construed as evidence of voter intent and must be counted.

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9:25 a.m.

Election officials in more than half of Kansas counties are beginning to review some 9,000 provisional ballots Monday as part of a statewide effort to arrive at final official vote totals in the tight Republican primary for governor.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach led Gov. Jeff Colyer by 110 votes out of 313,000-plus cast after late mail-in ballots from all 105 counties were added Friday to totals from advance voting and ballots cast at the polls Tuesday.

The canvass was beginning early Monday in suburban Kansas City's Johnson County, where a board it set to review 1,800 provisional ballots, given to voters at the polls when their eligibility is in question. Seventy-six counties start canvass meetings Monday, but some will meet later this week and next.

Colyer's team said they would have representatives at every canvass meeting to watch the process.

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11 p.m.

County election officials across Kansas will begin reviewing provisional ballots from last week's primary to arrive at final official vote totals in the tight Republican race for governor.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach led Gov. Jeff Colyer by 110 votes out of more than 313,000 cast as of Friday evening. That was after late mail-in ballots were added to totals from absentee voting and ballots cast at the polls Tuesday.

County officials will review nearly 9,000 provisional ballots, given to voters at the polls when their eligibility is in question. Most counties start their canvass meetings Monday, but some will meet later this week and next.

Colyer said Friday that he believes Kobach's office advised county clerks to discard legal mail-in ballots. Kobach said he's following the law.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.

An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you've used a privacy setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so.

Computer-science researchers at Princeton confirmed these findings at the AP's request.

FILE - In this June 15, 2017, photo, people walk inside the Oculus, the new transit station at the World Trade Center in New York. Data collection practices of tech firms are increasingly under the microscope. An Associated Press investigation shows that using Google services on Android devices and iPhones allows the search giant to record your whereabouts as you go about your day. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)

For the most part, Google is upfront about asking permission to use your location information. An app like Google Maps will remind you to allow access to location if you use it for navigating. If you agree to let it record your location over time, Google Maps will display that history for you in a "timeline" that maps out your daily movements.

Storing your minute-by-minute travels carries privacy risks and has been used by police to determine the location of suspects - such as a warrant that police in Raleigh, North Carolina, served on Google last year to find devices near a murder scene. So the company lets you "pause" a setting called Location History.

Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where you've been. Google's support page on the subject states: "You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored."

That isn't true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking. (It's possible, although laborious, to delete it .)

For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like "chocolate chip cookies," or "kids science kits," pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude - accurate to the square foot - and save it to your Google account.

The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Google's Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search.

Storing location data in violation of a user's preferences is wrong, said Jonathan Mayer, a Princeton computer scientist and former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission's enforcement bureau. A researcher from Mayer's lab confirmed the AP's findings on multiple Android devices; the AP conducted its own tests on several iPhones that found the same behavior.

"If you're going to allow users to turn off something called 'Location History,' then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off," Mayer said. "That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have."

Google says it is being perfectly clear.

"There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people's experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services," a Google spokesperson said in a statement to the AP. "We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time."

Google's explanation did not convince several lawmakers.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia told the AP it is "frustratingly common" for technology companies "to have corporate practices that diverge wildly from the totally reasonable expectations of their users," and urged policies that would give users more control of their data. Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey called for "comprehensive consumer privacy and data security legislation" in the wake of the AP report.

To stop Google from saving these location markers, the company says, users can turn off another setting, one that does not specifically reference location information. Called "Web and App Activity" and enabled by default, that setting stores a variety of information from Google apps and websites to your Google account.

When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account. But leaving "Web & App Activity" on and turning "Location History" off only prevents Google from adding your movements to the "timeline," its visualization of your daily travels. It does not stop Google's collection of other location markers.

You can delete these location markers by hand, but it's a painstaking process since you have to select them individually, unless you want to delete all of your stored activity.

You can see the stored location markers on a page in your Google account at myactivity.google.com, although they're typically scattered under several different headers, many of which are unrelated to location.

To demonstrate how powerful these other markers can be, the AP created a visual map of the movements of Princeton postdoctoral researcher Gunes Acar, who carried an Android phone with Location history off, and shared a record of his Google account.

The map includes Acar's train commute on two trips to New York and visits to The High Line park, Chelsea Market, Hell's Kitchen, Central Park and Harlem. To protect his privacy, The AP didn't plot the most telling and frequent marker - his home address.

Huge tech companies are under increasing scrutiny over their data practices, following a series of privacy scandals at Facebook and new data-privacy rules recently adopted by the European Union. Last year, the business news site Quartz found that Google was tracking Android users by collecting the addresses of nearby cellphone towers even if all location services were off. Google changed the practice and insisted it never recorded the data anyway.

Critics say Google's insistence on tracking its users' locations stems from its drive to boost advertising revenue.

"They build advertising information out of data," said Peter Lenz, the senior geospatial analyst at Dstillery, a rival advertising technology company. "More data for them presumably means more profit."

The AP learned of the issue from K. Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who studies the commuting patterns of volunteers in order to help urban planners. She noticed that her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohl's, even though she had turned Location History off.

"So how did Google Maps know where I was?" she asked in a blog post .

The AP wasn't able to recreate Shankari's experience exactly. But its attempts to do so revealed Google's tracking. The findings disturbed her.

"I am not opposed to background location tracking in principle," she said. "It just really bothers me that it is not explicitly stated."

Google offers a more accurate description of how Location History actually works in a place you'd only see if you turn it off - a popup that appears when you "pause" Location History on your Google account webpage . There the company notes that "some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other Google services, like Search and Maps."

Google offers additional information in a popup that appears if you re-activate the "Web & App Activity" setting - an uncommon action for many users, since this setting is on by default. That popup states that, when active, the setting "saves the things you do on Google sites, apps, and services ... and associated information, like location."

Warnings when you're about to turn Location History off via Android and iPhone device settings are more difficult to interpret. On Android, the popup explains that "places you go with your devices will stop being added to your Location History map." On the iPhone, it simply reads, "None of your Google apps will be able to store location data in Location History."

The iPhone text is technically true if potentially misleading. With Location History off, Google Maps and other apps store your whereabouts in a section of your account called "My Activity," not "Location History."

Since 2014, Google has let advertisers track the effectiveness of online ads at driving foot traffic , a feature that Google has said relies on user location histories.

The company is pushing further into such location-aware tracking to drive ad revenue, which rose 20 percent last year to $95.4 billion. At a Google Marketing Live summit in July, Google executives unveiled a new tool called "local campaigns" that dynamically uses ads to boost in-person store visits. It says it can measure how well a campaign drove foot traffic with data pulled from Google users' location histories.

Google also says location records stored in My Activity are used to target ads. Ad buyers can target ads to specific locations - say, a mile radius around a particular landmark - and typically have to pay more to reach this narrower audience.

While disabling "Web & App Activity" will stop Google from storing location markers, it also prevents Google from storing information generated by searches and other activity. That can limit the effectiveness of the Google Assistant, the company's digital concierge.

Sean O'Brien, a Yale Privacy Lab researcher with whom the AP shared its findings, said it is "disingenuous" for Google to continuously record these locations even when users disable Location History. "To me, it's something people should know," he said.

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AP Interactive: https://interactives.ap.org/google-location-tracking/

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Associated Press writers Alan Fram and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington and Jonathan Drew in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

In this Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2018, photo a mobile phone displays a user's travels in New York. Google records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to. An Associated Press investigation shows that using Google services on Android devices and iPhones allows the search giant to record your whereabouts as you go about your day. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

In this Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2018, photo a mobile phone displays a user's travels in New York. Google records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to. An Associated Press investigation shows that using Google services on Android devices and iPhones allows the search giant to record your whereabouts as you go about your day. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

In this July 25, 2018 photo, Kalyanaraman Shankari poses for photos in Mountain View, Calif. An Associated Press investigation shows that using Google services on Android devices and iPhones allows the search giant to record your whereabouts as you go about your day. Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who connects commuting patterns with urban planners, noticed that her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohl's. That happened even though she had turned off Google's "location history" setting, which according to the company should prevent it from remembering where a user has been. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

In this July 25, 2018 photo, Kalyanaraman Shankari poses for photos in Mountain View, Calif. An Associated Press investigation shows that using Google services on Android devices and iPhones allows the search giant to record your whereabouts as you go about your day. Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who connects commuting patterns with urban planners, noticed that her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohl's. That happened even though she had turned off Google's "location history" setting, which according to the company should prevent it from remembering where a user has been. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

In this July 25, 2018 photo, Kalyanaraman Shankari, right, and her husband Thomas Raffill pose for photos in Mountain View, Calif. An Associated Press investigation shows that using Google services on Android devices and iPhones allows the search giant to record your whereabouts as you go about your day. Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who connects commuting patterns with urban planners, noticed that her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohl's. That happened even though she had turned off Google's "location history" setting, which according to the company should prevent it from remembering where a user has been. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - North Carolina's five living former governors delivered an extraordinary rebuke Monday to the Republican-dominated legislature for two constitutional amendments that lawmakers put on the fall ballot, saying they would shred gubernatorial power and government checks and balances if approved.

The ex-governors - three Democrats and two Republicans - gathered for a rare appearance in the old Capitol, urging voters to defeat the two November ballot questions.

Democrats Jim Hunt, Mike Easley and Beverly Perdue and Republicans Jim Martin and Pat McCrory served from 1977 through 2016. Some would appear to be unlikely allies. Perdue narrowly defeated McCrory in the 2008 gubernatorial election.

Former North Carolina living ex-governors, from left, Jim Hunt, Mike Easley, Jim Martin, Bev Perdue and Pat McCrory, speak during a press conference opposing proposed amendments to the North Carolina constitution Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, at the North Carolina State Capitol in Raleigh, NC. They say the ammendments would shred gubernatorial power and government checks and balances if approved. (Travis Long/The News & Observer via AP)

"It would be a mistake to say this is a partisan fight between Republicans and Democrats. It's worse - it's legislators versus governor," said Martin, governor from 1985 to 1993.

Hunt, a four-term governor who left office in 2001, added the amendments are "really about whether or not a few politicians in the legislature will increase their power at the expense of the people of North Carolina."

Current Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper didn't attend, but has sued to prevent votes on the two amendments this November. He contends the questions are so false and misleading as to be unconstitutional themselves. Later this week, a three-judge panel will hear legal requests from Cooper and from interest groups that sued to get four questions off the ballots.

The former governors' event emphasized the stakes and the potential rebalance of government powers if the amendments are approved. Governors would no longer have sole power on filling nearly all judicial vacancies and would be cut out of making appointments to the state elections and ethics board and possibly other key state boards and commissions.

"Never have five of us gotten together and stuck it to you on the same issue," said Easley, governor from 2001 to 2009. "So you can believe we believe in what we are saying to you."

Republican House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger said in a release they "respectfully disagree with these governors" and "it's not surprising former governors oppose checks and balances on the unilateral authority of their office."

Before the news conference, other Republican lawmakers struck hard, listing in a release lapses linked to the former Democratic governors. That included Easley entering a felony plea in 2010 for an improperly filed campaign finance report.

One amendment would shift control of filling vacant judgeships away from the governor and toward the legislature. Instead, the governor would have to choose from at least two recommended candidates from a pool deemed qualified by a "nonpartisan judicial merit" commission.

The ballot question says the new system would rely "on professional qualifications instead of political influence when nominating justices and judges," but opponents say that's not true, insisting lawmakers would just pick friends and political allies.

The second amendmen t would give the legislature appointment powers over the state elections board. The governor has made the appointments for over 100 years, but lawmakers have tried to wrest that control from Cooper since he was elected in November 2016.

The amendment also would state that the legislature controls the appointments and duties of any board or commission it creates. Republicans call this clarifying language after a pair of state Supreme Court rulings - one initiated by Cooper and another by McCrory, Martin and Hunt - that found lawmakers retained too much power over several state panels.

But the governors say it would give the General Assembly tremendous power over potentially hundreds of boards and commissions, especially those where the governor gets to appoint some or most of the members.

Easley, also a former attorney general, said "the power of the executive" rests in commissions, which often set the permits and the rules everyday people must follow.

"I couldn't find one thing to help the people of North Carolina, and I find that very troublesome," Perdue said.

McCrory said if lawmakers want "to take on the responsibility of the governor, then have the courage to run for governor and win ... don't hijack our constitution, especially through two deceitful and misleading amendments."

Other amendments on fall ballots would mandate photo identification to vote in person, lower the maximum income tax rate allowed from 10 percent to 7 percent, create a right to hunt and fish and expand the rights of crime victims.

Republican legislators, who have been in charge of the General Assembly since 2011, hope some amendment questions will attract conservative voters to the polls and help them retain their majorities. The state Democratic Party is opposing all six amendments.
LONDON (AP) - British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is facing allegations of enabling anti-Semitism, acknowledged Monday that he was present at a wreath-laying to Palestinians allegedly linked to the murder of 11 Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

But the Labour Party leader said "I don't think I was actually involved" in laying the wreath.

The left-wing politician - a longtime critic of Israel's treatment of Palestinians - has been facing mounting criticism since the Daily Mail published photos of Corbyn holding a wreath in a Tunis cemetery in 2014, near what the newspaper said were graves of Black September members. The Palestinian militant group carried out the kidnapping and massacre at the Munich games. Several members were later killed by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.

FILE - In this Monday, April 23, 2018 file photo, Britain's opposition Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives to attend a Memorial Service to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence at St Martin-in-the-Fields church in London. British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, facing allegations of enabling anti-Semitism, has acknowledged he was present at a wreath-laying to Palestinians allegedly linked to the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But the Labour Party leader said on Monday, Aug. 13 "I don't think I was actually involved" in laying the wreath. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, file)

Corbyn has previously said he was at the cemetery to commemorate the victims of a 1985 Israeli air attack on Palestinian Liberation Organization offices in Tunis.

On Monday, he acknowledged a wreath had also been laid to "those that were killed in Paris in 1992." PLO official Atef Bseiso, whom Israel has accused of helping to plan the Munich Olympic attack, was gunned down outside a Paris hotel that year.

"I was present when it was laid. I don't think I was actually involved in it," Corbyn told reporters. "I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere because we have to end it."

The statement is unlikely to quell criticism from Jewish groups and Labour members who say Corbyn has allowed anti-Semitism to spread in the party.

"Being 'present' is the same as being involved. ... Where is the apology?" tweeted Labour lawmaker Luciana Berger.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted that "the laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorist who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone - left, right and everything in between."

Corbyn responded on Twitter that Netanyahu's "claims about my actions and words are false." The Labour Party said Corbyn "did not lay any wreath at the graves of those alleged to have been linked to the Black September organization or the 1972 Munich killings."

Corbyn has been accused of failing to expel party members who express anti-Semitic views and has received personal criticism for past statements, including a 2010 speech in which he compared Israel's blockade of Gaza to Nazi Germany's sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad during World War II.

The dispute recently boiled over after the party proposed adopting a definition of anti-Semitism that differed from the one approved by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Labour's version omits some of the alliance's language around criticism of Israel. The alliance's definition says it is anti-Semitic to compare contemporary Israeli policies to the policies of the Nazis, a view Labour did not endorse.

Corbyn said Labour was consulting with Jewish groups on the party's definition of anti-Semitism.

He said it was important to ensure "you can discuss and debate the relations between Israel and Palestine, the future of the peace process and, yes, make criticisms of the actions of the Israeli government in the bombing of Gaza and other places."

"But you can never make those criticisms using anti-Semitic language or anti-Semitic intentions, and that is what we are absolutely clear on," Corbyn said.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N. Security Council is urging Congo's rival political parties and the institutions organizing December's elections to ensure peaceful and credible voting and a democratic transition of power.

The U.N.'s most powerful body issued a statement Monday welcoming recent steps in the electoral process, including President Joseph Kabila's "respect for his commitment to abide by the Congolese Constitution" and not seek a third term.

Council members urged all involved to ensure the elections occur in conditions "of transparency, credibility and inclusivity."

FILE - In this Thursday, July 19, 2018 file photo, Congo's President Joseph Kabila speaks during the state of the nation address to the National Assembly in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Congo's president is not running again in December's long-delayed elections, easing concerns by the opposition and international community that he would try to stay in power. A government spokesman on Wednesday, Aug, 8, said former interior minister Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, the ruling party's permanent secretary, is the presidential candidate as Congo faces its first peaceful, democratic transfer of power in the country's history. (AP Photo/John Bompengo, file)

They said respect for fundamental rights and maintaining the electoral timeline are essential for peaceful elections on Dec. 23.

The council encouraged the electoral commission to ensure that any request for logistical and technical support for the elections from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo "is made on time."
MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Nicholson both came out Monday against boycotting Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson, the day after President Donald Trump said it would be "great" if there was a boycott.

Trump's Sunday tweet forced Walker and other Republicans to take a position on the sticky political issue involving an iconic Wisconsin company just ahead of Tuesday's primary where Trump allegiance has been a central focus.

Trump on Sunday tweeted it was "great" that "many" Harley owners planned to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas, continuing a steel tariff dispute he's had since June with the company.

FILE - In this Aug. 31, 2013 file photo, Gov. Scott Walker laughs before riding in the Harley-Davidson 110th Anniversary Parade in Milwaukee, Wis. President Donald Trump's call for a boycott of Harley-Davidson motorcycles forced Gov. Walker and other Republicans to either criticize the president or stick with the Milwaukee-based company just ahead of the Tuesday Aug. 14, 2018 primary, where Trump allegiance has been a central focus. (Mike De Sisti/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP, File)

Walker, Wisconsin's most prominent Harley owner, faces a tough re-election bid in November. He tweeted Monday afternoon that "of course I don't want a boycott of Harley-Davidson." That came after Walker initially on Sunday did not directly address the boycott call.

Nicholson, who faces state Sen. Leah Vukmir in a Republican Senate primary on Tuesday, said on WTMJ radio that "I don't want to see Harley-Davidson boycotted," but didn't think a boycott would be necessary because Trump's approach to trade was succeeding and opening new markets.

Both Nicholson and Walker backed Trump's approach to tariffs, saying they support moving to having no tariffs as soon as possible.

Democrats running in the Tuesday primary for a chance to take on Walker teed off on his unwillingness to strongly defend Harley-Davidson.

"By attacking Wisconsin workers to cover for failed economic policy President Trump took a page right out of Scott Walker's playbook," said Mahlon Mitchell, one of eight Democratic candidates and the head of the state firefighters union. He has more backing from labor unions than any other candidate.

Another Democratic candidate, Kelda Roys, accused Walker of "cowering before Trump" and the president's "attempts to destroy an iconic Wisconsin business."

Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who is also up for re-election in November, was more forceful than Walker in her reaction to the Trump tweet.

"You can't run our economy with tweets," Baldwin tweeted to Trump. "Wisconsin businesses like @harleydavidson need better trade deals, not tweets and trade wars."

Nicholson pushed back against Baldwin on Twitter.

"We do need better trade deals, not the ones engineered by you and other members of the political class," Nicholson tweeted at Baldwin. "We must bring trade partners back to the table and do away with tariffs. You don't fight for WI and you don't understand our economy."

Vukmir, who won the endorsement of the Wisconsin Republican Party, was making a final campaign swing in southeast Wisconsin, including a stop with retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan. She did not address Trump's boycott call in a statement calling Harley "a point of pride not only for our state, but also our nation."

"I trust they will not abandon their Wisconsin roots, and the best way for that to happen is to get rid of tariffs like the president is working to do," Vukmir said.

In July, Harley-Davidson said it expects new tariffs to cost the company as much as $100 million annually.

A spokesman for Harley-Davidson declined to comment both Sunday and Monday.

Polls have shown the Senate race to be a dead heat. State Superintendent Tony Evers had a double-digit lead in the Democratic gubernatorial primary based on polls in the months leading up to the election.

But others in the race who had raised enough to advertise on television - including Mitchell and Roys - were hoping for a late swing in their favor, particularly among younger voters.

Whoever wins the Democratic primary will enter the final three months of the race at a financial disadvantage to Walker. He had $4.8 million cash on hand in August, while the top tier Democrats were likely to be tapped out after spending on the primary.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party and the Democratic Governors Association have been raising money and building infrastructure in preparation for Wednesday, to help the winner of the primary get a fast start against Walker.

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Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter at https://twitter.com/sbauerAP

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FILE - In this Jan. 30, 2018, file photo, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks at a news conference in Madison, Wis. Eight Democrats are taking on Walker in the Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018, as he seeks a third term, a sign of just how badly the party wants to dethrone one of the GOP's most recognizable governors. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer, File)

FILE - In this July 26, 2018, file photo, Republican U.S. Senate candidates Leah Vukmir, right, and Kevin Nicholson debate in Milwaukee. Nicholson, running as an outsider, is running against Vukmir, a 15-year veteran of the Legislature who had the state GOP endorsement. (Tyger Williams/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP)
The spring of teacher uprisings has given way to summer, but these are anything but lazy days for educators continuing the fight through their own election campaigns.

Hundreds of teachers are running for office in November elections, campaigning primarily on promises to address public education spending cuts and meager pay hikes that provoked walkouts in states including Arizona, Oklahoma and Kentucky.

As they spend summer break courting voters, hanging signs and debating opponents, teachers also are seeking a measure of vengeance against state legislative incumbents perceived as not supporting their cause.

In this Monday, June 18, 2018 photo, Jennifer Samuels, a teacher and a Democratic candidate for the Arizona House of Representatives in LD15, speaks to other teacher candidates and constituents at a campaign event, in Scottsdale, Ariz. Samuels was part of the Red For Ed movement by Arizona teachers successfully striking for higher pay and funding for schools. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

In Oklahoma, where more than half the 100 educators who filed for office survived last month's primary elections, teachers describe a contentious relationship with state Republican leaders over stagnant funding for schools and the rejection of a teacher pay hike.

"At their heart, they didn't respect the public schools and public school teachers," said John Waldron, a Tulsa high school government and history teacher who is running for the Oklahoma House.

Nationwide, union counts put the number of educators on ballots for offices from school board to state legislature at more than 300, more than double the 2014 and 2016 numbers.

For some, victory can mean a leave of absence from the classroom or even resigning to handle their new responsibilities.

Christine Pellegrino, a Long Island reading teacher elected last year to the New York Assembly, said the six-month legislative sessions made continuing to teach impossible.

"It was a really hard transition to make, but I get to do so much more," said Pellegrino, a Democrat. "I get to deliver money for schools."

ARIZONA

A six-day teacher walkout this spring kept most Arizona students out of school while teachers protested for increased pay and school funding. Lawmakers passed a budget that authorized a 20 percent teacher pay increase over three years but fell short of demands for more overall funding for public schools.

Sitting in the front row of the Senate gallery that May night was Jennifer Samuels, a Scottsdale teacher who been leaning toward a run for office - but not until 2020.

"I just realized that we didn't have any time to waste," said Samuels, an English teacher and athletic director at Desert Shadows Middle School. "My eighth-grade students, essentially their entire academic career, they've lived in underfunded schools and overcrowded classrooms."

She is now a candidate for the state House - one of more than 40 Democrats running for state legislature who are current or former teachers or education professionals, according to the Arizona Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. The state Republican Party says at least four current educators are running for the legislature.

The mother of three acknowledges she's an underdog, but she feels propelled by the grassroots movement that inspired her to run.

"We know that we can win if we turn out the vote," she said. "We know that people in our district support education, and they are looking for an education candidate."

OKLAHOMA

Waldron, the Tulsa teacher, was among dozens of Oklahoma teachers who unsuccessfully ran for office in 2016. This year, their numbers have multiplied, partly because the candidate filing period coincided with a two-week April walkout when tens of thousands of educators closed school districts and thronged the Capitol demanding more funding for public schools.

Since then, six Republican incumbents were ousted from office in the June primary, including several who voted against a tax increase to pay for teacher pay raises.

Carri Hicks, a Democrat who's a fourth-grade math and science teacher from Deer Creek, said she is running for state Senate because teachers need a voice inside government.

"We need protected class sizes. We need a respectable salary. And I think those echoes you've heard of teachers feeling undervalued or disrespected are really tied to that," Hicks said.

KENTUCKY

Many teachers in Kentucky were getting more involved in politics to oppose a 2017 law that made charter schools legal when the Republican-controlled state legislature proposed changes to the state's underfunded pension system. That prompted thousands of teachers to march on the Capitol in a protest that forced dozens of school districts to close.

The legislature passed the law anyway and within weeks of the vote in March, House Majority Leader Jonathan Shell, one of the lawmakers who wrote the bill, lost his Republican primary to a high school math teacher who has never held public office, R. Travis Brenda.

At least 34 current or former teachers are seeking seats in the state legislature this fall. About two-thirds are Democrats. It's the most educators on the ballot ever in Kentucky, according to David Allen, a former president of the Kentucky Education Association.

Many teachers considered to have the best prospects against incumbents are running in rural districts, where public school systems are often the largest employer.

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Associated Press writers Adam Beam in Frankfort, Kentucky; Melissa Daniels in Phoenix, Arizona; Maria Danilova in Washington, D.C., and Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; contributed to this report.

In this Monday, June 18, 2018 photo, Jennifer Samuels, a teacher and a Democratic candidate for the Arizona House of Representatives in LD15, speaks to other teacher candidates and constituents at a campaign event in Scottsdale, Ariz. Samuels was part of the Red For Ed movement by Arizona teachers successfully striking for higher pay and funding for schools. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

In this Monday, June 18, 2018 photo, Jennifer Samuels, a teacher and a Democratic candidate for the Arizona House of Representatives in LD15, speaks to other teacher candidates and constituents at a campaign event in Scottsdale, Ariz. Samuels was part of the Red For Ed movement by Arizona teachers successfully striking for higher pay and funding for schools. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
District Court Judge Sarah C. Backus (pictured) cleared the way for the release of two men and three women accused of child abuse at a ramshackle desert compound

A judge has received death threats for allowing the release of a family of alleged Muslim extremists accused of child abuse at a ramshackle desert compound in New Mexico.

Court officials condemned threats of violence made against State District Court Sarah Backus who issued the ruling and evacuated several administrative court offices as a precaution on Tuesday.

Lawmakers have also criticized Judge Backus's decision, saying allowing their release 'is absurd' and they should remain in jail pending trial.

Prosecutors have alleged two men and three women kept eleven children at a squalid compound near the Colorado border and trained them to use firearms for an anti-government mission including attacks on policemen and teachers.

Jany Leveille (pictured) sits in court after she was arrested when authorities raided a property and found 11 children living on a squalid compound on the outskirts of tiny Amalia

Defendants (from left) Jany Leveille, Lucas Morton, Siraj Wahhaj and Subbannah Wahhaj enter a district court for a detention hearing after they were charged with child abuse

The squalid compound in Amalia where the remains of a boy were found. The remains, which haven't been positively identified, may resolve the fate of a missing, severely disabled boy

One of the defendants, Jany Leveille, a 35-year-old native of Haiti and mother of six children, was taken into custody by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Tuesday during the compound raid, Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe announced.

Eleven children were taken into custody at the squalid compound near the Colorado border during the raid by authorities on August 3.

When authorities returned three days later they recovered the body of a small boy.

The father of a severely disabled boy who was kidnapped in Georgia will not be released because an arrest warrant has been issued for him in that state.

Backus, an elected Democrat, said her decision to grant release to house arrest, with conditions such as wearing ankle monitors, was tied to recent reforms of the state's pre-trial detention system that set a high bar for incriminating evidence needed to hold suspects without bail.

Defendants Hujrah Wahhaj (left) and Siraj Wahhaj (right) talk during a break in court hearings

Backus said Monday the state failed to provide evidence backing up key allegations in the case.

'The state alleges that there was a big plan afoot but the state hasn't shown to my satisfaction and by clear and convincing evidence what that plan was,' Backus told the courtroom, noting that none of the defendants has a criminal record.

Initiated by a statewide vote in 2016, New Mexico's bail reforms are modeled after similar changes made in New Jersey and under consideration in California that reduce the role of money as a means of ensuring court appearances or making release impossible for potentially dangerous suspects.

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, a former district attorney, said Tuesday she 'strongly disagreed' with the judge's decision and renewed her criticism of rules for pre-trial detention that are determined in part by the state Supreme Court.

Siraj Ibn Wahhaj (center) confers with one of his attorneys on accusations of child abuse and abducting his son from the boy's mother. Authorities are waiting to learn if human remains found were those of Wahhaj's missing son

'You have a person who is training kids to shoot up schools, they have a compound that is like a third-world country,' State Republican Party Chairman Ryan Cangiolosi said.

'There's a child's body on the compound - I believe that allowing them to be released is absurd.'

Medical examiners have yet to determine conclusively whether the body found at the compound outside Amalia was that of Abdul-ghani - the missing son of compound resident Siraj Ibn Wahhaj. Other relatives have said or told authorities that the remains are those of Abdul-ghani.

Prosecutors presented evidence that Siraj Ibn Wahhaj provided some of the children with firearms training, including tactical skills such as speed-loading guns and firing while in motion.

Along with rifles, handguns and ammunition, authorities say they found books on being effective in combat and building untraceable assault-style rifles.

An exit tunnel is seen within the squalid makeshift living compound where authorities recovered the body of a small boy

Backus pressed prosecutors for evidence to support allegations that the children were starving at the compound and said prosecutors failed to articulate any specific threats or plan against the community

Backus, however, said prosecutors failed to articulate any specific threats or plan against the community.

She also pressed prosecutors for evidence to support allegations that the children were starving at the compound.

Administrative court officials say Backus was the target of threats via social media, email and telephone. One caller to the district court in Taos made a death threat, said Barry Massey, a spokesman for the Administrative Office off the Courts.

Agency Director Artie Pepin stressed that the judge's responsibility is to make decisions based on evidence and 'not popular sentiment that may develop from incomplete or misleading information.'

Suspect Siraj Ibn Wahhaj will remain in jail pending a warrant for his arrest in Georgia issued over accusations that he abducted his son, Abdul-ghani, from the boy's mother in December and fled to New Mexico.

Defendant Subbannah Wahhaj (left) looks toward the judge's bench during a court hearing

Three other defendants - Lucas Morton, Subhannah Wahhaj and Hujrah Wahhaj - had yet to be released on Tuesday.

Attorneys for those four defendants say volunteers have come forward to provide a suitable place for them to live as legal proceedings move forward.

Backus set bail at $20,000 with no up-front deposit - just a threat of a fine if defendants break condition of their release.

Court testimony Monday by an FBI agent shed light on the fate of the boy whose body was found.

Agent Travis Taylor said a 15-year-old resident of the compound described attempts to cast demonic spirits the child through a ritual that involved reading passages from the Quran while Siraj Ibn Wahhaj held a hand on the boy's forehead.

The boy apparently died after one of the sessions, Taylor said.
PAYSON, Utah (AP) - The Latest on a small plane that crashed into a Utah home (all times local):

11:10 a.m.

Authorities say a man killed after crashing a small plane into a Utah house appears to have intentionally flown into his own home just hours after being arrested on suspicion of assaulting his wife.

In this frame from video, emergency personnel work at the scene of a small plane that crashed into a house in Payson, Utah on Monday, Aug 13, 2018. Authorities said the pilot was killed in the crash. (John Wilson/KSL-TV/Deseret News via AP)

Police in the city of Payson, south of Salt Lake City, say Duane Youd's wife was in the home when the plane hit early Monday but survived.

Sgt. Noemi Sandoval says Youd was arrested Sunday night after witnesses reported seeing him assault his wife in a canyon where they had been drinking. Youd posted bail.

Sandoval says Youd flew a plane that investigators believe belongs to his employer directly into the house about 2:30 a.m. Monday.

The front of the house was engulfed in flames, but his wife and a child got out. Sandoval says it's unknown if the child is related to Youd.

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6:40 a.m.

A small plane has crashed into a house near the mouth of Utah's Payson Canyon, and the pilot was killed, according to media reports.

The crash happened about 2:30 a.m. Monday near 600 East Canyon Road in Payson, Fox 13 News reported.

The two occupants of the home reportedly were unhurt. The Utah County Sheriff's Office confirmed to Fox that the pilot died.

No further details were immediately available.

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This story has been corrected to say the crash happened about 2:30 a.m., not 2:30 p.m.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A year after the Trump administration introduced its strategy for Afghanistan, the Taliban are asserting themselves on the battlefield even as U.S. officials talk up hopes for peace. That's raising questions about the viability of the American game plan for ending a war that began when some of the current U.S. troops were in diapers.

A Taliban assault on Ghazni, a key city linking areas of Taliban influence barely 75 miles from Kabul, has killed about 100 Afghan security forces and 20 civilians since Friday, the Afghan Defense Ministry said. That has demonstrated the militants' ability to attack, if not hold, a strategic center on the nation's main highway, and highlighted the vulnerability of Afghan security forces.

In a reminder that U.S. troops and their families are paying a heavy price, even with Afghan forces in the lead combat role, the Pentagon announced Monday that a 36-year-old soldier, Staff Sgt. Reymund Rarogal Transfiguracion of Waikoloa, Hawaii, died Sunday of wounds sustained on a combat patrol in the Helmand province.

In this Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, photo, Afghan security personnel patrol in the city of Ghazni province west of Kabul, Afghanistan. A Taliban assault on Ghazni, a key city linking areas of Taliban influence barely 75 miles from Kabul, has killed about 100 Afghan policemen and soldiers since Friday, the Afghan Defense Ministry said. A year after the Trump administration introduced its strategy for Afghanistan, the Taliban are asserting themselves on the battlefield even as U.S. officials talk up hopes for peace. That's raising questions about the viability of the American game plan for ending a war that began when some of the current U.S. troops were in diapers. (AP Photo/Mohammad Anwar Danishyar)

Against that turbulent backdrop, some wonder whether President Donald Trump can resist pulling the plug on a war in which the U.S. is still spending $4 billion-plus a year just to keep Afghan forces afloat. He said when he introduced his strategy on Aug. 21, 2017, that his instinct was to withdraw entirely.

Fighting across the country has intensified in recent weeks despite a fleeting outbreak of peace earlier in the summer. Taliban and the Afghan government called separate, briefly overlapping, national cease fires in June, and the administration has made its own contact with the Taliban in hopes of nudging them into talks with Kabul.

The strategy revisits an approach that was tried, and failed, under President Barack Obama: increasing military pressure to push the Taliban into peace negotiations with the Afghan government. Signs point to Trump pressing ahead; he is about to send a new Army general, Scott Miller, to take charge of the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul.

David Sedney, who has worked on Afghan issues as a civilian, including multiple years in Kabul and at the Pentagon, since the war began in October 2001, said he believes the chances for peace are the best they've been.

"That doesn't mean they're great," he said in an interview. "It just means they're better."

Among the meaningful factors at play, Sedney says, is Trump's announcement a year ago that the U.S. would no longer set time limits on its military support for Afghanistan. This introduced an element of uncertainty for the Taliban, he said. On the other hand, the current U.S. push to draw Taliban leaders into peace negotiations with Kabul must succeed soon, he said, or risk following the failed path of previous efforts.

Trump also gave the U.S. military more leeway to attack the Taliban, and a few thousand additional U.S. troops were sent to Afghanistan this year as part of an effort to improve the effectiveness of training and advising Afghan ground forces, while also developing a small Afghan air force. The battlefield results have been mixed, however, as the Taliban have managed to preserve their influence in numerous districts.

Early in 2018 the U.S. military declared Afghanistan to be its top combat priority, supplanting the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Key U.S. warplanes, including A-10 ground attack aircraft, were switched to Afghanistan, and the Pentagon introduced a newly formed outfit called a Security Force Assistance Brigade of U.S. soldiers assigned to help Afghan forces closer to the battlefield.

With Ghazni under threat, the U.S. has dispatched military advisers to assist the Afghan forces in retaking the besieged city, and has launched airstrikes.

Seth Jones, a longtime watcher of Afghanistan and director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was unlikely the Taliban will be able to hold populated areas of Ghazni for long. The militants have lacked sufficient popular support and military power to hold population centers.

But the Taliban's ability to mass forces in multiple areas of Afghanistan at virtually the same time_including in Ghazni, Faryab, Baghlan, and Kunduz provinces - should worry Afghan and U.S. officials. Tribal leaders and local officials had been repeatedly warning Afghan policymakers in Kabul that the Taliban was preparing for a broad offensive in Ghazni, Jones said.

He remains skeptical the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan will work as he sees no sign that Trump is willing to take what could be a game-changing move: to target the top Taliban leaders in their Pakistan sanctuaries.

"Much like Bush and Obama, the Trump administration has other areas of the world that it would rather focus on, whether it's the Korean Peninsula or Iran or China more broadly, and to move on, if possible, from Afghanistan," Jones said. "If a settlement is the way to do that, then they are willing to give that a shot. The challenge, though, is that it is still not clear to me that the Taliban is seriously interested in peace negotiations" in terms that would be acceptable to the U.S. and the Afghan governments, including making a formal, public break with al-Qaida.

"The Taliban is willing to talk a little bit about talks, but not to sit down and formally negotiate," he added. "I think they view time as in their favor and that the longer the war continues, the better their negotiating position."

The group has growing regional clout. The Taliban assault on Ghazni began as the head of its political office was wrapping up a rare diplomatic foray in neighboring Uzbekistan.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who helped persuade Trump last summer not to quit Afghanistan, says it's too early to render judgment on whether peace talks will emerge anytime soon.

"No doubt the strategy has confronted the Taliban with a reason to go to cease fires ... and to go into discussions" about potential negotiations, he said Aug. 7. "But it is still early in that reconciliation process."
A wildfire destroyed structures and forced evacuations Monday from the busiest area of Montana's Glacier National Park, as officials in California prepared to reopen Yosemite National Park following a two-week closure at the height of the summer season.

Meanwhile, a Utah firefighter died Monday battling a massive blaze in Northern California - the sixth fatality in a matter of weeks.

The fighter was injured and died at a hospital, state fire officials said, but provided no further details.

FILE- In this Aug. 9, 2018, file photo a wildfire burns near homes in the Cleveland National Forest in Lake Elsinore, Calif. California homeowners may find themselves facing insurance issues even if they were not directly hit by this year's blazes. The California Department of Insurance warned in January that the increasing number and severity of wildfires in the state were making it more difficult for homeowners to find and hold on to insurance. And now they say that recent massive fires may make the problem more acute. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)

Firefighters from many states are on the lines in California, which has seen a series of deadly and devastating wildfires since late July.

The death occurred north of San Francisco where the largest fire in recorded state history has been burning since July 27.

Two other wildfires in Northern California have claimed five other firefighters and six other lives.

In Montana, Glacier's Sprague Creek campground was closed and evacuated, a day after a fast-moving fire triggered the evacuation of dozens of guests from the historic Lake McDonald Lodge late Sunday night.

Park officials said in a statement that structures on the north end of Lake McDonald were lost, but they did not provide details on the number and type. The fire grew to between 2 and 4 square miles (between 5 and 10 square kilometers) by Monday afternoon.

"It just completely exploded. Yesterday we were watching it grow all day, and now it's so smoky you can't see anything," said Kyersten Siebenaler with Glacier Outfitters, which rents boats in Apgar, a small community at the south end of the lake.

The outfitting company was trying to help tourists who evacuated find places to stay on the east side of the park, where it was not as smoky, Siebenaler said.

A second campground, a motel and private residences inside the park's boundary also were evacuated. A 30-mile (48-kilometer) stretch of the scenic Going-to-the-Sun Road was closed to traffic. The road, with breathtaking views of the park's mountainous interior, is a major draw for tourists.

Triple-digit temperatures across parts of the state - paired with lightning from passing thunderstorms - set the stage for several new large fires to take hold in Montana in recent days.

Among them was a 3-square-mile (8-square-kilometer) fire that triggered an evacuation order for residents of 15 houses southwest of the town of Ennis, Montana. The fire was burning in challenging mountain terrain with a mix of pine, fir and spruce trees, said fire information spokesman Dave Sabo.

Montana had a slow start to this year's fire season following a record-setting 2017 in which more than 2,400 square miles (6,215 square kilometers) burned. This year's fires so far have charred a combined 30 square miles (78 square kilometers) of the state.

In Colorado, a wildfire in the southwestern portion of the state ignited by lightning July 29 had burned across 34 square miles (88 square kilometers) by Monday.

Wildfires flare up regularly at many of the large national parks that dot the U.S. West, often burning in densely-forested, backcountry areas where their effects are limited. This year's blazes threaten to have a magnified impact coming at the height of the summer tourist season.

More than 400,000 visitors last month passed through the west entrance of Glacier, near McDonald Lake. That was almost half the park's total. August is typically just as busy, and a protracted shutdown of part of the park could hurt the tourist-driven local economy.

"We're hoping this is short-lived," said Danny McIntosh, marketing manager for Glacier Park Collection by Pursuit, which operates Motel Lake McDonald. McIntosh said all of the guests in the motel's 28 rooms were relocated to other accommodations run by the company.

Yosemite was scheduled to reopen Tuesday after being largely closed since July 25 because of smoke from fires in remote areas that choked the scenic Yosemite Valley.

The closure caused upheaval for thousands of tourists whose summer trips were cancelled. Visitors were warned to expect limited hours and services as the park returns to normal.

The fire burning in Glacier was one of several started in the park by lightning on Saturday evening. Windy, dry conditions on Sunday caused the blaze to spread rapidly, in full view of tourists and people who live and work around Lake McDonald, a 9-mile (14-kilometer) body of water ringed by steep-sided mountains.

Two planes from Canada were brought in to help battle the blaze, but officials said high winds prevented their pilots from flying close enough to the fire to be effective.

The lake was partially closed to boaters while the planes were scooping up water to drop on the fire, Siebenaler said.

Crews were expected to stay on scene through the night to protect houses and other structures from the flames.

It's the second year in a row that wildfires prompted evacuations around Lake McDonald. A blaze in the area last year destroyed the Sperry Chalet, an iconic backcountry lodge built in 1914. Work recently started on rebuilding the chalet. It was not immediately known if construction had to be halted due to the fires.

Taylor Creasey of Whitefish said she and a friend drove up to the lodge Sunday afternoon after they heard about the fire, the Missoulian newspaper reported. She posted a video on Facebook of huge plumes of smoke hanging over burning ridges around the lake.

"We didn't expect to see anything that crazy," Creasey said Monday. "It was so cold there, but at the same time really hot - you could feel the heat radiating across the lake. It was windy and cold and hot all at the same time."

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Follow Matthew Brown on Twitter at www.twitter.com/matthewbrownap .

From left, Yaqmur Abay from Turkey and Anne Ruiz from Spain, two summer employees in Glacier National Park, sit on the edge of the Apgar dock with the feet in the water of Lake McDonald on Monday morning, Aug. 13, 2018. The iconic view into the park has been completely obscured and air quality has been significantly affected by multiple wildfires which are currently burning. (AP/Daily Inter Lake, Brenda Ahearn)

In this photo taken Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018, an air tanker drops water over a wildfire burning in Glacier National Park, Mont. The fire was started by lightning on Saturday night and forced the evacuation of the Lake McDonald Lodge and closed part of the scenic Going-to-the-Sun Road in the park. (Chris Peterson/Hungry Horse News via AP)

A boat taking off from Apgar heads across Lake McDonald on Monday morning, Aug. 13, 2018. Three fires burning in the park have reduced visibility and air quality. (Brenda Ahearn/The Daily Inter Lake via AP)

Park Ranger Elizabeth Boyden talks with a visitor at the intersection of Apgar Loop and Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park on Monday, August 13. Visitors had to be stopped at Apgar and rerouted either to East Glacier, from which visitors can still reach Logan Pass, or toward North Glacier. (Brenda Ahearn/The Daily Inter Lake via AP)

Park Ranger Mercedes O'Grady working at the intersection of Apgar Loop and Going-to-the-Sun Road on Monday, August 13, 2018, in Glacier National Park. Traffic attempting to go into the park had to be stopped at this point and rerouted through East Glacier if they were trying to reach Logan Pass, or told they would have to wait if they had left things behind Sunday night in the evacuations. (Brenda Ahearn/The Daily Inter Lake via AP)
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - Prosecutors on Monday rested their tax evasion and bank fraud case in the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, closing two weeks of testimony that depicted him as using millions of dollars hidden in offshore accounts to fund a luxurious lifestyle - and later obtaining millions more in bank loans under false pretenses.

The trial of the longtime Washington operator now turns to Manafort's defense team, which has so far blamed any wrongdoing on Rick Gates, the former Manafort protege who testified he and his former boss committed crimes together for years. Defense attorneys have called Gates a liar, philanderer and embezzler as they've sought to undermine his testimony.

Manafort's lawyers have not yet said whether they will call any witnesses or present other evidence in the case. They will have to disclose that information Tuesday as the case reaches its final stages.

Members of the defense team for Paul Manafort, including Kevin Downing, left, Richard Westling, and Thomas Zehnle, walk to federal court as the trial of the former Trump campaign chairman continues, in Alexandria, Va., Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. The prosecution is expected to rest its case in the fraud trial. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The trial is the first to emerge from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, but it does not relate to any allegations of Russian election interference or possible coordination with the Trump campaign. Neither Manafort nor Gates have been charged in connection with their Trump campaign work.

Still, the proceedings have drawn President Donald Trump's attention - and tweets - as he works to undermine the standing of the Mueller investigation in the public square.

Trump has distanced himself from Manafort, who led the campaign from May to August 2016 - with Gates at his side. Gates struck a plea deal with prosecutors and provided much of the drama of the trial so far.

The government says Manafort hid at least $16 million in income from the IRS between 2010 and 2014 by disguising money he earned advising politicians in Ukraine as loans and hiding it in foreign banks. Then, after his money in Ukraine dried up, they allege he defrauded banks by lying about his income on loan applications and concealing other financial information, such as mortgages.

Gates said he helped Manafort commit crimes in an effort to lower his tax bill and fund his lavish lifestyle. During testimony, Gates was forced to admit embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from Manafort and conducting an extramarital affair.

The prosecution has introduced a trove of documentary evidence as they've sought to prove Manafort committed 18 separate criminal counts. Along the way, they've not only faced an aggressive defense team but tongue-lashings from U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who presides over the case. The admittedly impatient judge has pushed the government to speed up its case.

Before the government rested its case Monday afternoon, the court heard testimony from a bank executive who said he found several red flags with Manafort's finances while he was being considered for more than $16 million in bank loans.

James Brennan, a vice president at Federal Savings Bank, says Manafort failed to disclose mortgages on his loan application. He said he also found several "inconsistencies" in the amount of income Manafort reported for his business.

That information led senior executives to reject one of the loans. But Brennan said Federal Savings Bank chairman Stephen Calk overruled that decision.

"It closed because Mr. Calk wanted it to close," Brennan said.

Other witnesses have said Calk pushed the loans through because he wanted a post in the Trump administration.

Emails admitted into evidence in the trial show that in the weeks after the 2016 election, Manafort lobbied Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to consider Calk for Secretary of the Army, a position Calk had put at the top of his list in an earlier email to Manafort. Calk also listed seven other senior domestic appointments and 18 ambassadorships - ranked in order of preference - that he would accept.

In the Nov. 30, 2016, email to Kushner, Manafort passed along Calk's resume along with two other names of people he said "should be a part of the Trump administration."

"The 3 individuals are people who I believe advance DT agenda. They will be totally reliable and responsive to the Trump White House," Manafort wrote, providing brief biographies for Calk and the other two candidates.

Manafort noted Calk's background was "strong in defense issues, management and finance." He also listed three "alternative positions" in the Treasury and Commerce departments.

Kushner responded, "On it!"

Calk ultimately did not get an administration post, though he did approve the loans for Manafort.

Brennan said the Chicago-based bank lost at least $11.8 million because it had to write off the two loans, which he said were the two largest the bank had made at that time.

The prosecution also recalled a Treasury Department agent - over the objections of Manafort's defense team - to testify that two of his companies hadn't filed any reports disclosing the foreign bank accounts as required by federal law.

Senior special agent Paula Liss said the Treasury Department had no record of DMP International or Davis Manafort Partners filing such reports between 2011 and 2014.

Liss' testimony came after Manafort's attorneys signaled they intend to argue that the offshore accounts that he used to pay for millions of dollars in personal expenses, such as fancy suits, landscaping, rugs and homes, were actually controlled by the company and not him personally.

Late Monday, Manafort's team also made a motion to dismiss all the charges, saying the government hadn't met its burden of proof. Ellis took the motion under advisement.

Ellis also closed the courtroom from the public while he heard arguments on a sealed motion filed by Manafort's team. Ellis said the proceedings and the motion will be kept secret until after the case concludes.

The closed hearing came after the judge delayed Manafort's trial for hours last Friday without explanation. The judge left the courtroom that day toward the jury room, and later admonished jurors repeatedly to not discuss the case.

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Read the emails: http://apne.ws/eQShubl

Television cameras are set outside of federal court as the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort continues, in Alexandria, Va., Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
SEATTLE (AP) - The spectacular theft of a 76-seat plane from the Seattle airport by a ground crew employee is prompting an industrywide review of how to thwart such insider security threats, though it remains unclear what steps airlines might take.

"This is too big a deal. It's not going to go away," said Glen Winn, a former Secret Service agent who teaches in the University of Southern California's aviation security program. "There's going to be a lot of discussion, a lot of meetings, a lot of finger-pointing, and it's going to come down to: How do we stop it?"

Investigators are continuing to piece together how 3-year Horizon Air employee Richard Russell stole the empty Bombardier Q400 turboprop on Friday evening and took off on a roughly 75-minute flight, executing steep banks and even a barrel roll while being tailed by fighter jets. He finally crashed into a forested island south of Seattle.

Workers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport enter a secured area of the airport through a screening area Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, in SeaTac, Wash. A turboprop plane was stolen from the airport by an airline ground agent on Friday, and later crashed into a small island in the Puget Sound, killing the man. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Russell was killed. No one else was hurt. In conversation with an air-traffic controller, he described himself as "just a broken guy," said he "wasn't really planning on landing" the aircraft, and claimed he didn't want to hurt anyone else.

Port of Seattle Commissioner Courtney Gregoire called the theft from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport "truly a one-in-a-million experience," but added, "That doesn't mean we can't learn from it."

She said airport officials have been in touch with other airports and airlines to begin to assess procedures. Sea-Tac has added security guards in the cargo area where the plane was parked when Russell stole it, she said.

"We're not waiting," Gregoire said. "We expect a national-level conversation. We expect the federal government may have some ideas about regulation."

The industry group Airlines for America confirmed it is closely reviewing the incident but would not comment further. The National Transportation Safety Board referred questions to the FBI, which has released limited information about the investigation.

"There's a lot of discussion about: What does this tell us?" said Michael Huerta, who retired in January as head of the Federal Aviation Administration. "I wouldn't be surprised if the individual airlines came together with the regulators and made a decision that we need to do more."

Potential solutions could include additional vetting or monitoring of employees; changes in who can access the planes and when; having parked aircraft monitored by closed-circuit television or by security patrols; requiring electronic or digital passcodes to start a plane's engines; or requiring locks that could prevent an unauthorized person from manipulating a plane's throttle, experts said.

Aviation professor Jeff Price of Metropolitan State University in Denver said he expects a renewed focus on insider threats and warned that there is a real possibility Russell's actions could inspire terrorists or copycats.

Countering an insider threat remains challenging, given the number of people - caterers, mechanics, cleaning staff and others - who have access to aircraft.

Such workers already undergo background checks and drug and alcohol screenings. At some airports, including Sea-Tac, they are also subject to physical screenings the way passengers are.

Russell was not believed to have had a pilot's license. His responsibilities included towing and pushing aircraft for takeoff and gate approach, de-icing them and handling baggage.

Many planes in service were designed decades ago and are started up by manipulating levers and switches in a certain sequence, rather than by, say, an ignition key.

Experts said Russell had to have known how to start the plane, taxi and take off, but it's not clear where he learned to do so. He told the air-traffic controller he didn't need much help flying because he had played video games.

John Cox, a veteran pilot and aviation security expert with Washington, D.C.-based Safety Operating Systems, said that given the rarity of commercial airplane theft, there should be no rush to adopt additional measures that might bog down airlines or otherwise be counterproductive.

The investigation, once complete, will likely show any shortcomings that need to be remedied, he suggested.

He also cast doubt on some ideas suggested by others, saying it would probably be prohibitively expensive to retrofit older planes with measures such as computer passcodes.

"It's not as simple as putting a key fob in your pocket and getting in your car and pushing a button," he said.

Cox also questioned the effectiveness of having more guards monitoring parked planes.

"If you're a guard and a person comes up in a pushback tug, in uniform, with proper credentials, it's only at the point the engine starts that you'd notice something's amiss," he said. "By then it's too late."

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Associated Press writer Dee-Ann Durbin contributed from Detroit.

People stand at the ramp tower, used to control airplane traffic, as a plane takes off behind them at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, in SeaTac, Wash. A turboprop plane was stolen from the airport by an airline ground agent on Friday, and later crashed into a small island in the Puget Sound, killing the man. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Port of Seattle Commissioner Courtney Gregoire speaks with media members at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, in SeaTac, Wash. A turboprop plane was stolen from the airport by an airline ground agent on Friday, and later crashed into a small island in the Puget Sound, killing the man. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

A worker at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport places his finger on a biometric screening device before entering a secured area of the airport Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, in SeaTac, Wash. A turboprop plane was stolen from the airport by an airline ground agent on Friday, and later crashed into a small island in the Puget Sound, killing the man. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

This undated image posted to Richard Russell's YouTube channel shows Russell, an airline ground agent. Investigators are piecing together how Russell stole an empty commercial airplane, took off from Sea-Tac International Airport in Seattle, and crashed into a small island in the Puget Sound in Washington. (Richard Russell/YouTube via AP)

Friends of Richard Russell give parting hugs after making a statement to the media Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018, at the Orting Valley Police and Fire Department, in Orting, Wash. Russell is presumed dead after stealing a Horizon Airlines plane from SeaTac International Airport and crashing it into Ketron Island in the Puget Sound. (Bettina Hansen /The Seattle Times via AP)
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The Latest on the return of a Marine whose remains were returned Monday after 70 years (all times local):

3 p.m.

The remains of a Marine lost since the early days of World War II have been identified and returned to his family in Philadelphia more than 70 years after he was killed.

In this July 31, 2018 photo, Dominic Ragucci poses for a portrait in Philadelphia with a photo of his brother, Emil, who was killed in action during World War II. Nearly 70 years after Emil's death in the South Pacific Battle of Tarawa, his remains are scheduled to return home to Philadelphia on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Dominic and Victor Ragucci, along with other family members, stood on the tarmac Monday to meet their brother, Emil, as his body was returned from the Central Pacific atoll of Tarawa.

Emil was 19 when he was killed during a bloody three-day battle. Less than 90 days later his brother Nicholas was killed in Italy. And while the family was able to bury Nicholas, they thought they might never be able to bring Emil home.

A funeral will be held in Philadelphia Tuesday to lay Emil to rest with his parents and his brother Nicholas.

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11:45 a.m.

Dominic Ragucci had thought for nearly 70 years that the remains of his older brother, Emil, were swept out to sea during a World War II battle on a Pacific atoll.

On Monday, the 86-year-old plans to stand on the tarmac in Philadelphia with his 91-year-old brother Victor and greet Emil's remains as he finally makes it home.

They are the last surviving members of an 11-sibling family.

Five brothers fought in the war, and two died less than 90 days apart. Nicholas, killed in Italy in January 1944, was brought home right after the war.

Recent efforts by a nonprofit group brought dozens of sets of remains from Tarawa back to the U.S., and new DNA technology made it possible to identify the men, including Emil.

His funeral will be Tuesday.

This image shows a Western Union Telegram dated Dec. 23, 1943, announcing that United States Marine Corps Private Emil Ragucci was killed in action during World War II. Decades after his death in the South Pacific Battle of Tarawa, Ragucci's remains are scheduled to return home to Philadelphia on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. (Courtesy of the Ragucci family via AP)

This undated photo provided by the United States Marine Corps shows Emil Ragucci, who was killed in action during World War II. Decades after his death in the South Pacific Battle of Tarawa, Ragucci's remains are scheduled to return home to Philadelphia on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. (United States Marine Corps via AP)

In this early 1940s photo provided by the United States Marine Corps, Emil Ragucci poses with a rifle. Decades after his death in the World War II Battle of Tarawa in the South Pacific, Ragucci's remains are scheduled to return home to Philadelphia on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. (United States Marine Corps via AP)

This combination of undated photos shows five of the Ragucci brothers, from left: Anthony, Emil, Joseph, Nicholas, and Dante, all of whom served in the United States armed services during World War II. Nearly 70 years after Emil's death in the South Pacific Battle of Tarawa, his remains are scheduled to return home to Philadelphia on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. (Courtesy of the Ragucci family via AP)

In this July 31, 2018 photo, Dominic Ragucci points to a photo of himself, top left, and his brothers Gus, center, and Victor during a interview with The Associated Press in Philadelphia. The three siblings were all members of the United States armed services. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
SEATTLE (AP) - Researchers carrying out unprecedented efforts to save an ailing young killer whale in the U.S. Northwest released live salmon into waters in front of the free-swimming orca but didn't see her take any of the fish.

The operation that dropped eight salmon from a boat Sunday is part of an extraordinary response effort to save the 3 -year-old critically endangered whale called J50, who is malnourished and in poor body condition. A veterinarian gave the animal a closer look Thursday and also injected her with antibiotics using a dart.

Researchers want to see whether they can dose a live salmon with medication and feed it to the whale. But they first need to test whether it will take the fish.

Live chinook salmon aboard the King County Research Vessel SoundGardian are released into waters off San Juan Island, Wash, as a young female orca called J50 was not in the area on Friday Aug. 10, 2018. Experts have done a practice run to work out feeding live fish to the whale off Washington state so they're ready when they get a chance to save the ailing orca. The young female killer whale was too far north in Canadian waters for teams in boats carrying salmon to try to feed the emaciated animal Friday. (Alan Berner/The Seattle Times via AP, Pool)

Brad Hanson, wildlife biologist for NOAA Fisheries, told reporters Monday that the team will wait for the orcas to return to the inland waters of Washington state to evaluate the next step. The whales were last seen heading west toward more open waters.

The fish-eating whales have struggled for years because of lack of Chinook salmon - their preferred food source - toxic contamination and disturbance from vessel noise. They are down to just 75 animals, the lowest in more than three decades.

Hanson said he saw J50 "slogging along" with her pod mates off Washington state's San Juan Island, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) north of Seattle. She appeared tired from swimming into the current and was even moving backward as other whales sprinted by her.

Her body condition is quite poor, he said, and she doesn't look "very vibrant." She isn't socializing, such as splashing, but experts aren't seeing other things worsening, Hanson said.

For the feeding attempt Sunday, members of the Lummi Nation, a Native American tribe, and others moved their boat about 100 meters in front of J50 and other whales.

Keeping ahead of the pod in challenging currents, they scooped out salmon from a tote on the back of the boat and pushed it through a blue tube into the water.

Hanson called it very successful even though they didn't see J50 take fish. He said some of the whales responded to a salmon but it wasn't clear whether it was a fish that came off the boat.

"This type of thing has never been tried before," he said.

Aboard a Lummi Nation police boat, tribal members, NOAA and others use a dip net to lift a chinook salmon from a fish tote to release through the green tube as a test into waters off San Juan Island, Wash., as viewed from aboard the King County Research Vessel SoundGardian, Friday, Aug. 10, 2018. With the whale far away and a bin full of salmon pulled that morning from a state hatchery, crews did a practice run to work out the logistics of feeding live fish to a whale while staying ahead of it in a boat. The young female killer whale was too far north in Canadian waters for teams in boats carrying salmon to try to feed the emaciated animal Friday. (Alan Berner/The Seattle Times via AP, Pool)
FORT DRUM, N.Y. (AP) - President Donald Trump on Monday signed a $716 billion defense policy bill named for John McCain but included no mention in his remarks of the Republican senator, who is battling brain cancer at home in Arizona.

Trump and McCain are engaged in a long-running feud that dates to Trump's 2016 presidential run. At campaign rallies, Trump regularly castigates McCain - without using his name - for casting a dramatic thumbs-down vote that doomed Trump's effort last year to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which was enacted by President Barack Obama.

Trump said there was "no better place than right here at Fort Drum" to celebrate passage of the defense bill, which will boost military pay by 2.6 percent, giving service members their largest increase in nine years.

President Donald Trump signs the John McCain National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year 2019, during a signing ceremony Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, in Fort Drum, N.Y. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink)

The bill - formally the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act but referred to by Trump as simply the National Defense Authorization Act - will introduce thousands of new recruits to active duty, reserve and National Guard units and replace aging tanks, planes, ships and helicopters with more advanced and lethal technology, Trump said.

"Hopefully, we'll be so strong we'll never have to use it. But if we ever did, nobody has a chance," he said.

Later Monday, Trump referenced McCain - again without naming him - while talking about Obama's health law at a fundraiser in Utica for Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney.

"I would've gotten rid of everything, but as you know, one of our wonderful senators had thumbs down at 2 o'clock in the morning," Trump said, pantomiming the gesture.

The bill authorizes billions of dollars for military construction, including family housing.

Besides setting policy and spending levels, the bill weakens a bid to clamp down on Chinese telecom company ZTE. It allows Trump to waive sanctions against countries that bought Russian weapons and now want to buy U.S. military equipment. The bill provides no money for Trump's requested Space Force but authorizes the military parade he wants in Washington in November.

The compromise bill removes a provision reinstating penalties against ZTE and restricting the company's ability to buy U.S. component parts. ZTE was almost forced out of business after being accused of selling sensitive information to nations hostile to the U.S., namely Iran and North Korea, in violation of trade laws.

The measure also includes provisions designed to improve how the Defense Department handles reports of child-on-child sexual assaults among the tens of thousands of children and teens who live and go to school on the military bases where their parents serve. An Associated Press investigation this spring documented broad failures of justice when military kids report incidents.

Among the changes, the bill creates new legal protections for students at Department of Defense Education Activity schools and requires the school system and the Pentagon to develop new policies for responding to reports on bases more generally. Schools and the armed services also must start tracking incidents - AP identified nearly 700 over 10 years, but that was a certain undercount.

The annual measure sets policies and a budget outline for the Pentagon and will be followed by a later appropriations bill.

Trump and McCain have had a strained relationship for years. During his election campaign, Trump declared that McCain, who was a prisoner of war for more than five years in Vietnam, was not a war hero, and he has publicly and privately blamed McCain for submarining the Republican health care bill last year.

In May, a West Wing aide dismissed McCain's negative opinion on Trump's CIA nominee during a closed-door meeting by saying of the senator that "he's dying anyway." Trump, who has long prided himself on never apologizing, believing it shows weakness, did not apologize, but the aide was later fired.

In a statement Monday, McCain expressed pride in the bill.

"I'm proud the NDAA is now law & humbled Congress chose to designate it in my name. As Chairman of the Armed Services Cmte, I've found high purpose in service of a cause greater than self_the cause of our troops who defend America & all that she stands for," he tweeted.

His wife, Cindy McCain, meanwhile, retweeted a post from CBS News that noted Trump had neglected to mention McCain at the signing.

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Superville contributed from Washington.

President Donald Trump talks with Maj. Gen. Walter Piatt as they watch an air assault exercise at Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field in Fort Drum, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field in Fort Drum, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump waves as he arrives on Air Force One at Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field in Fort Drum, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump greets member of the military as he arrives on Air Force One at Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field in Fort Drum, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field in Fort Drum, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Waiting to greet the president is Vice President Mike Pence. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump talks with Maj. Gen. Walter Piatt as they watch an air assault exercise at Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field in Fort Drum, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump points to the crowd as he signs the $716 billion defense policy bill named for Sen. John McCain during a ceremony Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, in Fort Drum, N.Y. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump speaks before signing the $716 billion defense policy bill named for Sen. John McCain during a ceremony Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, in Fort Drum, N.Y. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink)

President Donald Trump speaks before signing the $716 billion defense policy bill named for Sen. John McCain during a ceremony Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, in Fort Drum, N.Y. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink)

President Donald Trump speaks before signing the $716 billion defense policy bill named for Sen. John McCain during a ceremony Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, in Fort Drum, N.Y. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink)

President Donald Trump speaks before signing the $716 billion defense policy bill named for Sen. John McCain during a ceremony Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, in Fort Drum, N.Y. Trump lashed out at Omarosa Manigault Newman on Monday, saying his former White House adviser - who is promoting a tell-all book and airing secret audio recordings -"got fired for the last time." (AP Photo/Hans Pennink)

FILE - In this April 1, 2014 file photo, Donald Trump, left, and Carl Paladino appear together during a gun rights rally at the Empire State Plaza in Albany, N.Y. Several local Republicans, including Paladino, have stepped forward to run for Chris Collins' Congressional seat after the Republican said he won't run for re-election in the face of insider trading charges. (AP Photo/Mike Groll, File)

President Donald Trump and Maj. Gen. Walter Piatt view air assault exercises at Fort Drum, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, before a signing ceremony for a $716 billion defense policy bill named for Sen. John McCain. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump and Maj. Gen. Walter Piatt view air assault exercise at Fort Drum, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, before a signing ceremony for a $716 billion defense policy bill named for Sen. John McCain. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump and Maj. Gen. Walter Piatt view air assault exercises at Fort Drum, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, before a signing ceremony for a $716 billion defense policy bill named for Sen. John McCain. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump and Maj. Gen. Walter Piatt walk as they view air assault exercises at Fort Drum, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, before a signing ceremony for a $716 billion defense policy bill named for Sen. John McCain. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump and Maj. Gen. Walter Piatt view air assault exercises at Fort Drum, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, before a signing ceremony for a $716 billion defense policy bill named for Sen. John McCain. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
HOUSTON (AP) - A popular Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston is facing backlash after it posted a photo of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has pushed for a wide crackdown on immigration.

El Tiempo Cantina was targeted by hundreds of tweets and Facebook posts after Roland Laurenzo, president of the company that operates the chain, posted a photo Friday with Sessions. The photo caption said it was an "honor" to serve Sessions, who delivered a speech in Houston that day.

The post drew the ire of people who oppose President Donald Trump's immigration policies and Sessions, a key official administering the zero-tolerance policy that led to family separations.

Laurenzo tells KHOU-TV he does not support family separation and regretted that the post "angered so many people."

The chain later deleted the photo.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A woman's lawsuit claiming she was raped by a Mormon church leader who was allowed to oversee young missionaries despite a history of sexual misconduct will go forward, a judge decided Monday.

The decision will allow McKenna Denson's lawyers to investigate whether there are others who claim to be victims of Joseph L. Bishop, who oversaw hundreds of young people as president of the Missionary Training Center in the 1980s, or others in leadership positions, attorney Craig Vernon said.

"The church represented to McKenna and everybody else that he was good guy, he was safe and he was trustworthy, he was not a sexual predator, he was not a sexual addict," Vernon said. "We believe there is evidence the church in fact knew that was not true."

FILE - In this April 5, 2018, file photo, plaintiff McKenna Denson speaks with reporters during a news conference, in Salt Lake City. A judge is refusing to dismiss a lawsuit claiming Denson was raped after the Mormon church allowed a man to oversee young missionaries in the 1980s despite a history of sexual misconduct. Her attorney, Craig Vernon, says the Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, decision will allow them to investigate for other possible victims. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

The Associated Press doesn't usually name people who say they are victims of sexual assault, but Denson has said she wants her story to be public.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has disputed the allegations. Spokesman Eric Hawkins said in a statement Monday they are "confident in the legal system to evaluate these claims and determine the truth. As the Church has repeatedly stated, there can be no tolerance for abuse."

The church had wanted the case dismissed because the allegations are 34 years old, meaning key witnesses are dead and evidence has disappeared.

U.S District Judge Dale Kimball did dismiss three of the four claims, including those that could have forced the faith to change how it handles abuse complaints, Vernon said. Kimball allowed a fraud claim to stand because Denson said she only discovered the cover-up when she confronted Bishop in December 2017.

Bishop told her that he'd confessed "incidents of sexual predation" to church leaders in the 1970s, before he was named to the role that gave him authority over hundreds of young Mormons preparing to go on church missions, Denson said.

Kimball also dismissed the claims against the now-85-year-old Bishop because the statute of limitations has passed.

Bishop has denied assaulting her, but he acknowledged he asked her to expose herself when she was 21, according to police documents.

Denson said she reported the assault several times over the past three decades, but the church failed to take action. The church has said Bishop wasn't punished because he denied the allegations and church members could not verify them.

The case emerged with the release of a conversation Denson secretly recorded with Bishop in December. He is heard apologizing to Denson after she confronts him, though he didn't specify what happened.

FILE - In this April 5, 2018, file photo, plaintiff McKenna Denson, right, receives a hug from supporter Jenea Gillespie, left, after speaking with reporters during a news conference in Salt Lake City. A judge is refusing to dismiss a lawsuit claiming Denson was raped after the Mormon church allowed a man to oversee young missionaries in the 1980s despite a history of sexual misconduct. Her attorney says the Monday, August 13, 2018, decision will allow them to investigate for other possible victims. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)
PAYSON, Utah (AP) - A Utah man flew a small plane into his own house early Monday just hours after he had been arrested for assaulting his wife in a nearby canyon where the couple went to talk over their problems, authorities said.

The pilot, Duane Youd, died. His wife and a child who were in the home survived despite the front part the two-story house being engulfed in flames, Payson police Sgt. Noemi Sandoval said.

The crash occurred at about 2:30 a.m. in Payson, a city of about 20,000 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of Salt Lake City.

This photo shows a damaged house after a plane crashed in Payson, Utah, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. A Utah man flew the small plane into his own house early Monday just hours after he had been arrested for assaulting his wife in a nearby canyon where the couple went to talk over their problems, authorities said. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP)

Investigators believe the twin-engine Cessna 525 belonged to Youd's employer and that he intentionally flew into his own house; Sandoval said he was an experienced pilot. It wasn't immediately clear who employed Youd or whether he was authorized to take the plane.

It's unknown if the child in the house is related to Youd, Sandoval said.

Youd, 47, was arrested about 7:30 p.m. Sunday after witnesses called police to report that he was assaulting his wife, Utah County Sheriff's Sgt. Spencer Cannon said. The couple had been drinking and went to American Fork Canyon to talk about problems they were having, authorities said.

Youd was booked on suspicion of domestic violence and posted bail, Cannon said. Youd requested an officer escort him to his home so he could get his truck and some belongings around midnight. That occurred without incident, Sandoval said.

Within hours, Youd was taking off in the plane from the Spanish Fork-Springville Airport about 15 miles (25 kilometers) north of his house. He flew directly to his neighborhood and smashed into his house, Sandoval said.

Photos of the wreckage showed the white plane charred and in pieces in the front yard nearby an overturned and crushed car. Most of the upscale house was still intact, but heavily burned in the front. Youd and his wife bought the 2,700 square foot house valued at nearly $400,000, in 2016 in a quiet subdivision of new homes near the foothills, county property records show.

The plane barely missed power lines and other homes, Sandoval said. The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.

Online court records show that Youd agreed last month to attend marriage and family counselling sessions for six months as part of a plea agreement following an April 8 domestic violence incident in which he was charged with disorderly conduct.

It is the second bizarre airplane incident in recent days. On Friday an employee stole a turboprop plane from Sea-Tac International Airport in Seattle and flew it for more than an hour before dying in a crash on an island southwest of Tacoma.

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This story has been corrected to say the crash happened about 2:30 a.m., not 2:30 p.m.

This frame from video shows the scene of a small plane that crashed into a house in Payson, Utah, on Monday, Aug 13, 2018. Authorities said the pilot was killed in the crash. (John Wilson/KSL-TV/Deseret News via AP)

This photo provided by the Utah County Sheriff's Office shows Duane Youd. Youd, of Utah, flew a small plane into his own house early Monday, Aug. 13, 2018, just hours after he had been arrested for assaulting his wife in a nearby canyon where the couple went to talk over their problems, authorities said. The pilot, Youd, died. His wife and a child who were in the home got out and survived despite the front part the two-story house being engulfed in flames, Payson police Sgt. Noemi Sandoval said. (Utah County Sheriff's Office via AP)

Federal Aviation Administration officials investigate the scene of a plane crash in Payson, Utah on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Authorities say the small plane has crashed into a house in Utah, killing the pilot. (Scott G Winterton/The Deseret News via AP)

Federal Aviation Administration investigators take photos at the scene of a plane crash in Payson, Utah on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Authorities say the small plane has crashed into a house in Utah, killing the pilot. (Scott G Winterton/The Deseret News via AP)

The scene of a plane crash is blocked off as Federal Aviation Administration officials investigate the area in Payson, Utah on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Authorities say the small plane has crashed into a house in Utah, killing the pilot. (Scott G Winterton /The Deseret News via AP)

In this frame from video, emergency personnel work at the scene of a small plane that crashed into a house in Payson, Utah on Monday, Aug 13, 2018. Authorities said the pilot was killed in the crash. (John Wilson/KSL-TV/Deseret News via AP)

Joslyn Youd, 21, gets a hug from her aunt Nikki Ewell outside a damaged house, background, after a plane operated by Youd's father crashed in Payson, Utah, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. A Utah man flew the small plane into his own house early Monday just hours after he had been arrested for assaulting his wife in a nearby canyon where the couple went to talk over their problems, authorities said. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP)

Joslyn Youd, 21, center, with her brother Parker Youd, 17, talks near their damaged house after a plane crashed in Payson, Utah, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. A Utah man flew the small plane into his own house early Monday just hours after he had been arrested for assaulting his wife in a nearby canyon where the couple went to talk over their problems, authorities said. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP)

This photo shows a damaged house after a plane crashed in Payson, Utah, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. A Utah man flew the small plane into his own house early Monday just hours after he had been arrested for assaulting his wife in a nearby canyon where the couple went to talk over their problems, authorities said. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP)

Federal Aviation Administration officials investigate the scene of a plane crash in Payson, Utah on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Authorities say the small plane has crashed into a house in Utah, killing the pilot. (Scott G Winterton/The Deseret News via AP)

Federal Aviation Administration investigators take photos at the scene of a plane crash in Payson, Utah on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Authorities say the small plane has crashed into a house in Utah, killing the pilot. (Scott G Winterton/The Deseret News via AP)

Federal Aviation Administration officials investigate the scene of a plane crash in Payson, Utah on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Authorities say the small plane has crashed into a house in Utah, killing the pilot. (Scott G Winterton/The Deseret News via AP)
MONTEZUMA, Iowa (AP) - Investigators searching for a University of Iowa student who vanished last month are launching a new website to generate tips from potential witnesses.

The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation unveiled FindingMollie.Iowa.gov at a news conference Monday.

Mollie Tibbetts has been missing since July 18, when the 20-year-old was last seen jogging in her small hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa. Her disappearance has sparked an enormous search involving local, state and federal authorities and volunteers.

This undated photo released by the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation shows Mollie Tibbetts, a University of Iowa student who was reported missing from her hometown in the eastern Iowa city of Brooklyn on Thursday, July 19, 2018. Investigators say they have concluded that a woman spotted in northwest Missouri was not Tibbetts. Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation special agent Mike Krapfl confirmed Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018 that the reported sighting of Mollie Tibbetts wasn't substantiated and has been ruled out by investigators. (Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation via AP)

Assistant DCI Director Mitch Mortvedt says investigators are considering all scenarios but that it's "possible that Mollie has come into contact with someone who has caused her harm." He asked the public to report information about anyone who has recently displayed odd behaviors.

The site seeks tips from people who were in specific Brooklyn locations on July 18, including a car wash and a truck stop.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A state review into the treatment of immigrant teens held at a Virginia detention center confirmed the facility uses restraint techniques that can include strapping children to chairs and placing mesh bags over their heads.

Investigators concluded the current treatment of detainees at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center did not meet the state's legal threshold of abuse or neglect, according to a copy of the findings issued Monday by the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice and obtained by The Associated Press.

But a top state regulator conceded in an interview that investigators did not attempt to determine whether serious allegations of past abuse at the locally run facility are true.

FILE - In this June 20, 2018 file photo, the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center is shown in Staunton, Va. Virginia investigators say they've found no evidence of abuse at a detention facility after immigrant teens described being strapped to chairs with their heads covered with bags. The investigation found the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center does use restraint chairs on "out-of-control" residents considered a safety threat, but that doesn't meet the legal threshold of abuse or neglect. (AP Photo/Zachary Wajsgras)

Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam ordered the review in June, hours after the AP published first-person accounts by children as young as 14 who said they were handcuffed, shackled and beaten at the facility. They also described being stripped of their clothes and locked in solitary confinement, sometimes strapped to chairs with bags over their heads.

The incidents are described in sworn statements from six Latino teens included in a class-action lawsuit filed in November and are alleged to have occurred from 2015 to 2018, under both the Obama and Trump administrations. The teens who made those initial complaints were subsequently transferred by federal authorities to other facilities or deported to their home countries.

Angela C. Valentine, the chief deputy director of the state juvenile justice agency, said Monday that investigators interviewed only the 22 who were being held at the facility in late June, following the AP's report. She said the investigators were not permitted to review the case files or medical records of past detainees who say they were abused.

"The only youth the Department of Juvenile Justice interviewed at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center in response to Gov. Northam's direction to conduct an inquiry were the juveniles currently at the facility," Valentine said. "(We) did not interview or inspect any records of any ... youth making the allegations in the federal lawsuit."

The legal advocacy group representing the Latino teens suing the facility called the state's review "deeply flawed" and said the investigators never contacted them or asked to speak to their clients.

"The children in this facility are denied necessary mental health care and subjected to abusive conditions," said Jonathan Smith, executive director of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. "We look forward to proving our case in court."

Though incarcerated in a facility similar to a prison, the children detained on administrative immigration charges have not been convicted of any crime. The U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement oversees the care of immigrant children held in federal custody.

The regulators did make several recommendations to improve current conditions inside the facility, including hiring more bilingual staff, expanding "culturally relevant programming" and improving screening to provide care for detainees who suffer from mental health issues. The state also said administrators should consider new furniture and fresh paint to make the jail-like facility "more developmentally appropriate."

Northam issued a statement applauding his administration's "quick and comprehensive examination."

"I take these allegations very seriously and directed members of my administration to immediately look into these claims of abuse and mistreatment," he said. "The safety of every child being held there is of the utmost importance."

The Shenandoah lockup is one of only three juvenile detention facilities in the United States with federal contracts to provide "secure placement" for immigrant children who had problems at less-restrictive housing.

On average, 92 immigrant children annually cycle through the facility nestled in the mountains outside Staunton, most of them from Mexico and Central America. The local-government commission that runs the center received $4.2 million in federal funds last year to house children ages 12 to 17 facing deportation proceedings or awaiting rulings on asylum claims.

Of the 22 federal detainees held at Shenandoah in June, three told investigators they had experienced abusive behavior by staff. According to the state report, local child protective services investigators reviewed those complaints and determined they "did not meet the legal definition of abuse or neglect."

The state investigators were only allowed to interview the federal detainees while a member of the facility's staff was in the room. They also reviewed case files, medical records and other documents related to the current detainees, but were barred from making copies or keeping handwritten notes.

Shenandoah deputy director Timothy Showalter issued a statement Monday that promoted the state's findings as an exoneration.

"The report confirms our long-standing dedication to being a well-run facility that treats our residents with respect and dignity," the facility's statement said.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the federal refugee resettlement responsible for housing detained immigrant children, said the agency treats any allegation of abuse "with the utmost seriousness."

"The Office of Refugee Resettlement has strong policies in place to combat incidents of abuse at every shelter under its purview," said Caitlin Oakley, the HHS spokeswoman. "Any assertion to the contrary is misguided and inaccurate."

A separate class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of immigrant children housed at a nonprofit facility in Texas alleged the residents were routinely administered psychotropic drugs without their parents' consent, keeping them in a sedated "chemical strait jacket." Last month a federal judge found staff at the Shiloh Treatment Center outside Houston had violated federal law by drugging the children.

While the Virginia investigators said they found no evidence of the beatings and other severe abuse described in the 2017 lawsuit, their report does confirm that staff at the facility are trained in the use of restraint chairs and "mesh spit guards" for "out-of-control residents who cannot be safely restrained by less intrusive methods."

Such restraint devices are legal in juvenile detention facilities in Virginia, though regulations say they can never be used as punishment and are only appropriate "to ensure the safety and security of residents, staff and the facility."

In two of the instances reviewed by investigators, the report says staff members were disciplined for using restraint techniques that did not follow state guidelines. However, those incidents, which were not detailed in the report, did not involve restraint chairs.

While some teens cited in the lawsuit reported being left in the restraint chair overnight or isolated in their cells for days at a time, the investigators said the documents they reviewed showed no record of that. According to the facility's records, there was only one documented example of a child kept locked in isolation for 23 consecutive hours.

As part of their findings, the state investigators recommended the facility's staff receive additional instruction in techniques for de-escalating conflicts and retraining in how to safely strap down unruly teens.

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Follow Associated Press investigative reporter Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck

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Read the state report at: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4755218-Virginia-DJJ-Report-of-Findings.html

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Contact the AP's investigative team with tips about this or other matters: https://www.ap.org/tips
TAOS, N.M. (AP) - The Latest on 11 children found living in a filthy, makeshift compound in New Mexico (all times local):

7:20 p.m.

A sheriff in New Mexico says a woman arrested in a raid on a compound and charged with child abuse has been turned over to federal immigration authorities.

Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, center, confers with one of his attorneys at a first appearance in New Mexico district court in Taos, N.M., on Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2018, on accusations of child abuse and abducting his son from the boy's mother. Authorities were waiting to learn if human remains found at a disheveled living compound were those of Wahhaj's missing son. Authorities also allege Wahhaj was conducting weapons training with assault rifles at the compound near the Colorado border where they say they found 11 hungry children living in filthy conditions in a raid Friday. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)

Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said Jany Leveille was transferred Tuesday to custody of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The 35-year-old native of Haiti is the mother of six children taken into state custody in a raid this month on the ramshackle compound near the Colorado state line.

Leveille's immigration status is unclear.

One of the four other adults arrested at the compound will not be released because an arrest warrant has been issued for him in Georgia.

Siraj Ibn Wahhaj (see-DAHJ' wah-HAJ') is accused of kidnapping his 3-year-old son in December. A young boy's remains were found on the compound.

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6:50 p.m.

An attorney for a woman charged with child abuse in a raid on a makeshift living compound in northern New Mexico says she believes her client has been taken into custody by federal immigration authorities.

Attorney Kelly Golightley says she has reason to believe Jany Leveille no longer is in Taos at the county's detention facility and appears to be in federal custody.

A regional spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement could not immediately determine whether Leveille had been detained by the agency.

Leveille was among five adults detained in the raid.

A state judge on Monday cleared the way for the release of the adults to house arrest pending trial.

Golightley could not provide information about the citizenship or immigration status of the 35-year-old client.

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2:30 p.m.

New Mexico state court officials say a judge has received threats of violence after a ruling that allows the release of five defendants accused of child abuse in connection with a raid on a ramshackle compound near the Colorado state line.

Administrative Office of the Courts Director Artie Pepin said Tuesday said that Judge Sarah Backus has come under attack through social media, emails and telephone calls in response to a pre-trial ruling that allows the release of two men and three women. One telephone caller threatened to slit the judge's throat, while others made derogatory insults.

Backus says prosecutors presented troubling information Monday in court about the defendants but failed to articulate any specific danger to the community.

Pepin says a judge's responsibility is to make impartial decisions based on evidence in court and not popular sentiment from other information.

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10:55 a.m.

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez and other state Republicans are criticizing a judge's decision to allow the release of defendants accused of child abuse at a ramshackle desert compound where authorities found the remains of a boy.

The decision came even though prosecutors warned that the extended family had been training for an armed, anti-government mission.

The father of a boy kidnapped in Georgia would not be released because an arrest warrant has been issued for him in that state.

State Republican Party Chairman Ryan Cangiolosi on Tuesday described the decision to allow the release as "absurd" and said he believes the suspects pose a danger to the public and are a flight risk.

Democratic Judge Sarah Backus set a $20,000 bond for each defendant and ordered them to wear ankle monitors when released. They are forbidden to hold firearms.

Martinez also renewed her criticism of new state rules for pre-trial release that set a high standard of proof for holding suspects without bond.

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6:30 p.m.

A state judge has denied a request by prosecutors to keep in jail the two men and three women who were arrested during a raid at a New Mexico compound as they await trial on child abuse charges.

The decision came Monday evening after a lengthy hearing in Taos during which prosecutors said the five defendants were preparing for a dangerous anti-government mission.

They presented evidence of the firearms training done by Siraj Ibn Wahhaj (see-DAHJ' wah-HAJ') and described a compound fortified by old tires and wooden pallets.

Judge Sarah Backus said although she was concerned by "troubling facts," prosecutors failed to articulate any specific threats to the community.

She set a $20,000 bond for each and ordered that they wear ankle monitors and have weekly contact with their attorneys.

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5:35 p.m.

Authorities say the father of a missing boy whose remains were found following a raid of a New Mexico compound had performed rituals in an attempt to rid the disabled child of demons before the child died.

FBI Agent Travis Taylor testified Monday during a court hearing in Taos that one of the 11 children found at the makeshift compound and taken into custody said during an interview that the boy, Abdul-ghani Wahhaj (ahb-DOOL' GAH'-nee wah-HAJ'), had died in February.

His father, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj (see-DAHJ' wah-HAJ'), is one of the five adults arrested at the compound on child abuse charges.

Public defenders argue Wahhaj was trying to heal the boy by reading passages from the Quran. Prosecutors argued that Wahhaj was denying the boy medication.

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4:45 p.m.

Defense attorneys for the two men and three women arrested on child abuse charges following a raid at a northern New Mexico compound argue that prosecutors are unjustly trying to paint their clients as armed militants.

The attorneys' objections came Monday as officials with the Taos County Sheriff's Office testified about the recent raid, when the five adults were arrested and 11 children were found living in filthy conditions.

Public defenders also argued that the rifles and handguns found on the property are common guns that can be bought at retail stores and that their clients made no aggressive efforts to defend their compound as authorities closed in to serve search warrants earlier this month.

Prosecutors are asking that Siraj Ibn Wahhaj and the other defendants be held pending trial.

Authorities testified during the hearing about the tires, wooden pallets and earthen walls that made up the compound. They also described the shooting range that was on the property.

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3:20 p.m.

State prosecutors say children who were found at a ramshackle New Mexico compound were trained to use firearms and learned other tactical techniques as they prepared to get rid of teachers, law enforcement and other institutions that were considered corrupt.

The prosecutors provided more details about the accusations during a court hearing Monday in which they asked that Siraj Ibn Wahhaj and four other defendants be held pending trial on child abuse charges.

The defendants were arrested and 11 children were taken into custody during a raid Aug. 3 on the compound near the Colorado state line.

Wahhaj and the others were seated with their public defenders in a Taos courtroom as prosecutors presented books that were found at the compound, documents related to Wahhaj's trip to Saudi Arabia and a handwritten notebook that appeared to be some kind of teaching manual.

They also pointed to evidence that Wahhaj had taken a series of firearms courses while in Georgia.

Public defenders argued that they didn't have enough time to review the evidence, but the judge allowed the hearing to continue.

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11 a.m.

A court hearing is planned on allegations that children at a remote compound in northern New Mexico may have been trained in the use of firearms in preparation for a school shooting.

Two men and three women were scheduled to appear in New Mexico state district court Monday on accusations of child abuse. They were arrested and 11 children were detained during an Aug. 4 raid on a squalid makeshift living compound near the Colorado state line.

Public defenders are calling into question the credibility of information that links defendant Siraj Ibn Wahhaj to firearms training for children.

Wahhaj is accused of abducting his son from Georgia in December. The body of a small boy was retrieved from the compound a week ago and has not been identified by medical examiners.

Various items litter a squalid makeshift living compound in Amalia, N.M., on Friday, Aug. 10, 2018, where five adults were arrested on child abuse charges and remains of a boy were found. The remains, which haven't been positively identified, may resolve the fate of Abdul-ghani Wahhaj, a missing, severely disabled Georgia boy. Eleven other children were found at the compound during a raid last week. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine expressed full support Monday for President Donald Trump's proposed military "Space Force" but added that it will have a role separate from NASA.

Bridenstine said in New Orleans that NASA's responsibilities involve science, space exploration and technology development. As for defense and national security, he told reporters in New Orleans: "We want to be an agency that maintains its independence from those capabilities."

Bridenstine was touring the Michoud Assembly Center, where workers are putting together major parts of systems that are planned to return Americans to the moon and, eventually, take them to Mars. In a towering building, Boeing workers are building parts of the 322-foot (98-meter) rocket known as the Space Launch System. Lockheed Martin workers are building the spacecraft called Orion.

NASA Administrator James Bridenstine walks with Jody Singer, acting director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., as he tours the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Bridenstine, a former Republican congressman, was nominated by Trump to head NASA last year and confirmed by the Senate in April.

He touched on the work at Michoud and other NASA concerns while standing next to a massive liquid hydrogen tank - a test version of one that eventually will be part of the SLS rocket.

SPACE FORCE

Bridenstine was among the officials with Trump in June when he called for creation of a new military branch known as the Space Force. He said it's needed because the nation's space assets - including satellite technology and global positioning systems - are vital to numerous interests and industries, including communications, navigation, food and energy production, banking and climate.

"If we lose GPS, we lose banking in the United States of America. There's no milk in the grocery store in a matter of three days," he said.

The space force plan requires congressional approval. Military leaders and experts have questioned the wisdom of launching an expensive, bureaucratic new service branch.

JAMES WEBB SPACE TELECOPE

Bridenstine spoke enthusiastically about the much-delayed James Webb Space Telescope, what is now a nearly $10 billion project. That next-generation technology is envisioned as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, despite an announcement in June - for the third time in less than a year - of a lengthy postponement.

Among the latest problems: In a vibration test of the telescope earlier this year in California by prime contractor Northrop Grumman, dozens of loose fasteners - some 70 pieces in all - came off. In another mishap, the wrong solvent was used to clean spacecraft propulsion valves, leading to a need for repair or replacement.

Webb, which officials now hope to launch in 2021, is meant to peer farther into space and deeper into time than ever before. It will operate from a point 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth.

Bridenstine gave a lengthy explanation of the infrared telescope's design and mission and added: "We are, in fact, going to see back to the very beginning of the universe, what we call cosmic dawn."

He stopped short of saying there would be financial penalties for Northrup Gumman to cover NASA's burgeoning costs on the project but said the contractor is being held accountable.

SLS AND ORION

Bridenstine praised workers at Michoud for their work on the Orion spacecraft and the SLS rocket that will launch it into space, saying their efforts are helping the U.S. get ahead and stay ahead of other nations in space.

"This is a brand new, very large project that is unmatched in the world," he said. "And it will remain unmatched for a very long time."

The SLS rocket is expected to launch an unmanned Orion mission beyond the moon and back, a 40,000-mile (64,370-kilometer) trip, in late 2019.

Bridenstine got a close up look at the Orion capsule with astronauts Stan Love and Nicole Mann, expected to be part of the crew for Orion's first crewed mission.

NASA Administrator James Bridenstine, center, listens with astronauts Stan Love, and Nicole Mann, the first crew who will fly into space in the Orion Exploration Mission 2, as Mark Kirasich, manager of the Orion Program, speaks at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

NASA Administrator James Bridenstine delivers remarks as he tours the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Astronaut Nicole Mann, a member of the first crew who will fly into space in the Orion Exploration Mission 2, speaks at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Background from left to right, astronauts Stan Love, NASA Administrator James Bridenstine, and W. Michael Hawes, vice president and program manager of Lockheed Martin Space Systems. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

NASA Administrator James Bridenstine speaks to media in front of the liquid hydrogen qualification tank, a test tank identical to the first that will fly on the first Exploration Mission 1, as he tours the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Background from left to right, John Honeycutt, Space Launch System (SLS) program manager; Julie Bassler, SLS core stage element manager; Jody Singer, acting director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center; and Keith Hefner, Michoud Assembly Facility manager. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The Latest on Google's location-tracking settings (all times local):

3 p.m.

Lawmakers are vowing to step up their oversight of the data collection practices of giant technology companies after an Associated Press investigation found Google continues to collect user location data even if they've used a privacy setting that claims to prevent it.

In this July 25, 2018 photo, Kalyanaraman Shankari poses for photos in Mountain View, Calif. An Associated Press investigation shows that using Google services on Android devices and iPhones allows the search giant to record your whereabouts as you go about your day. Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who connects commuting patterns with urban planners, noticed that her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohl's. That happened even though she had turned off Google's "location history" setting, which according to the company should prevent it from remembering where a user has been. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said in a statement to the AP that if a Google user disables the setting, called Location History, it is "perfectly reasonable for that person to expect that apps will not continue tracking their location."

Warner said the fact it does not is a "frustratingly common" experience for technology users. He's calling for policies that give users more control over their data and levy stiff penalties on firms that violate user trust and expectations.

Representative Frank Pallone of New Jersey said Congress needs to take action to protect consumers and is calling for public hearings.

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12:01 a.m.

Google records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.

An Associated Press investigation shows that using Google services on Android devices and iPhones allows the company to record your whereabouts as you go about your day, even if you've used privacy settings that are supposed to prevent it from doing so.

Google stores time-stamped location data when its Maps app is simply opened. Automatic, daily weather updates pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like "chocolate chip cookies," are pinned with precise coordinates down to the square foot to your Google account.

The privacy issue affects some two billion users of Android devices and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users that rely on Google for maps or search.

In this Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2018, photo a mobile phone displays a user's travels in New York. Google records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to. An Associated Press investigation shows that using Google services on Android devices and iPhones allows the search giant to record your whereabouts as you go about your day. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

In this July 25, 2018 photo, Kalyanaraman Shankari poses for photos in Mountain View, Calif. An Associated Press investigation shows that using Google services on Android devices and iPhones allows the search giant to record your whereabouts as you go about your day. Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who connects commuting patterns with urban planners, noticed that her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohl's. That happened even though she had turned off Google's "location history" setting, which according to the company should prevent it from remembering where a user has been. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

In this July 25, 2018 photo, Kalyanaraman Shankari, right, and her husband Thomas Raffill pose for photos in Mountain View, Calif. An Associated Press investigation shows that using Google services on Android devices and iPhones allows the search giant to record your whereabouts as you go about your day. Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who connects commuting patterns with urban planners, noticed that her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohl's. That happened even though she had turned off Google's "location history" setting, which according to the company should prevent it from remembering where a user has been. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

In this July 25, 2018 photo, Kalyanaraman Shankari, right, and her husband Thomas Raffill hold their phones while posing for photos in Mountain View, Calif. An Associated Press investigation shows that using Google services on Android devices and iPhones allows the search giant to record your whereabouts as you go about your day. Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who connects commuting patterns with urban planners, noticed that her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohl's. That happened even though she had turned off Google's "location history" setting, which according to the company should prevent it from remembering where a user has been. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
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A 12-year-old boy has been dramatically rescued after being trapped in a raging river during flash floods in Pennsylvania.

The boy was at risk of being swept away as he was perched precariously on a pile of branches in a river in Charleston Township, about 30 miles west of Philadelphia.

And a bride and her groom also had to be plucked to safety after their vehicle became stranded on their wedding day, after heavy rainfall triggered flash flooding in parts of central and eastern Pennsylvania.

Emergency crews were kept busy rescuing motorists from deluged roads and waterways, or evacuating people as rapidly rising water gushed into homes and businesses in the mountainous coal regions.

This image shows the moment the 12-year-old boy was carefully rescued from a pile of branches, to the left of the picture above, to the bank on the other side of the river

Near Little Falls, police officers rescued a bride from the roof of her car, when she and her groom were stranded on their wedding day

Floodwater from Fishing Creek and West Creek is seen in the downtown area of Benton, Pa., following heavy rains Monday

With some people unable to quickly escape the flooding, Kyle Morgan, of the Schuylkill Haven Rescue and Recovery Dive Team, told CBS: 'We made our way with our boats, because they had some areas they [emergency crews] couldn't access anymore, with their heavy brush trucks.'

Near Little Falls, police officers rescued a bride from the roof of her car, when she and her groom were stranded on their wedding day.

State highway and emergency management officials yesterday reported numerous closed roads from Williamsport to the Philadelphia suburbs.

PennDOT workers clear debris from the Swatara Creek on a Route 443 bridge after more flooding in Pine Grove, Pa

The Ryan Township dive team uses a boat to transport a person for medical problems along Pike Street in Port Carbon, Pa

Floodwaters surround homes along West Main Street in Schuylkill Haven, Pa., after overnight rainfall triggered flash flooding in parts of central and eastern Pennsylvania on Monday, closing down a heavily traveled interstate and sending water into homes in the mountainous coal regions

A sinkhole opened up near the Giant foods store parking lot, on Progress Avenue in Pottsville, Pa., after flooding on Monday

Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) said that the Commonwealth Response Coordination Center was 'activated to monitor ongoing flooding in central and eastern PA. Stay alert for rapidly changing conditions and never drive through floodwater.

PEMA warned of 'ongoing flash flood threat courtesy of overnight heavy rain across central and eastern PA. [The] threat continues through late evening with more heavy downpours.'

Today, the US National Weather Service State College PA said: 'The pesky, slow-moving area of low pressure in the upper atmosphere will bring yet another day of numerous showers and isolated thunderstorms, capable of bringing locally heavy rain and flooding of some small streams, creeks and poor drainage areas.

'The greatest threat for heavy rain will be across the Central and northeast portions of the state.'

It added: 'Never drive cars through flooded areas. The water may be too deep to allow safe passage. Most deaths occur during flooding are related to vehicles trying to cross flooded roadways.'

In Port Carbon, borough workers Larry Eich Jr., left, and Bob Faust, unclog storm drains on Spruce Street after flooding

A barefoot man walks during a heavy rainfall along the corner of Wyoming Avenue and Mulberry Street in downtown Scranton, Pa

Members of the Columbia/Montour SWAT team and a crew from a Montour water rescue team help evacuate the Jason Simpkins family from their home in Benton, Pa.

People sit on the front porch in Benton, Pa., as floodwater fills the street and flows around their home, covering the bottom steps

First responders make their way through floodwaters in Darby, Pa. The forecast has warned of storms to continue, causing flooding in the southcentral, northcentral and eastern parts of the state through to Wednesday

The National Weather Service in State College said there were numerous reports of six inches of rain or more in Schuylkill and Columbia counties

Hazel Coles said water rose so quickly at her home in Darby, outside Philadelphia, that she had to evacuate through a window.

She said there was about three feet of water on her street, and some people had to be evacuated by boat. Coles said the Red Cross was helping displaced residents, adding: 'It's just crazy. I thank God it wasn't worse.'

The National Weather Service in State College said there were numerous reports of six inches of rain or more in Schuylkill and Columbia counties.

The weather also caused choppy waters on the Lehigh River, prompting conflicting reports of a group of missing rafters.

Two occupants from a front-end loader walk up Route 487 as a water rescue team moves towards them, after the loader ended up off the roadway in the floodwater from Fishing Creek near Benton, Pa.

Floodwater swept through businesses and homes, prompting officials to warn people to remain 'alert' given the conditions

Water rescue teams from Lehigh and Northampton counties were dispatched to an area near Slatington, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) north of Philadelphia after a rafting company reported that they could not account for nearly 150 rafters.

The Morning Call reported that emergency officials have talked to the company and they said they believed everyone was accounted for and on their way home.

Police in Bloomsburg set off a mandatory evacuation siren late Monday afternoon for a few hundred people in the west end of town, after Fishing Creek burst its banks and rose rapidly.

Columbia County emergency official Dave Witchey said a fire hall in Berwick was accepting evacuees, and another shelter may be opened if necessary.

Workers clean up debris swept into the street during flooding in Upper Darby, Pa. Authorities say heavy rains have been causing flooding and prompting road closures and rescues of people from stranded cars in central and southeastern Pennsylvania

A car sits submerged at an intersection in Pottsville, Pa., after heavy rain triggered flash flooding in parts of central and eastern Pennsylvania

'If it keeps coming up, it could be a lot worse,' said Bloomsburg Mayor William Kreisher, who said a state-of-emergency declaration was being prepared.

National Weather Service meteorologist Aaron Tyburski said the latest downpours followed weeks of a stalled weather pattern that is drawing moisture from the Atlantic Ocean, hitting some communities repeatedly.

'It's been quite a rough go for them over the past three weeks,' Tyburski said.

In the Benton area north of Bloomsburg, three helicopters with a group run by the National Guard and the state Fish and Boat Commission performed about 10 rescues, including people plucked from the roofs of their homes, according to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.

Buildings were deluged along a street in Port Carbon, Pa., and ended up damaged as Mill Creek overflowed its banks. High water in Port Carbon caused some evacuations and prompted firefighters to launch rescue boats and rafts

Water rushes across Market Street in Port Carbon, Pa. Overnight rains triggered flash flooding in parts of central and eastern Pennsylvania, closing down a heavily traveled interstate and sending water into homes in the mountainous coal regions

The agency also said that in Columbia County, a helicopter team rescued nine people stranded on roofs, three of whom were children.

High water in Port Carbon prompted evacuations, as firefighters launched rescue boats and rafts. Parts of Pottsville were inundated with floodwater, and three shelters were set up in response.

Schuylkill County emergency management director John Matz said water levels were starting to fall by early afternoon Monday, and officials were making plans to assess the damage.

He said the recent flooding could have caused more damage than the high water that hit the county a few weeks ago and affected several hundred structures.

Mill Creek overflowed its banks, damaging a structure along Pottsville Street in Port Carbon, Pa., on Monday. Gov. Tom Wolf activated the Commonwealth Response Coordination Center on Monday morning and the National Guard was notified to be ready to help, if needed

People inspect a car and truck partly submerged in floodwaters in Darby. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning and urged people not to drive through flooded roads

'The difference now is, once we hit the center part of the county, it's a more populated area,' Matz said.

In the Philadelphia area, the Schuylkill Expressway was closed in both directions at the busy King of Prussia Mall exit. The waters affected dozens of stores and a parking garage at the mall.

Upper Darby and Montgomery County police reported numerous rescues of people trapped in cars by flooding.

Gov. Tom Wolf activated the Commonwealth Response Coordination Center and the National Guard was notified to be ready to help, if needed.

The forecast has warned of storms to continue, causing flooding in the southcentral, northcentral and eastern parts of the state through to Wednesday.

Firefighters look on as floodwaters rise over a road in Darby, Pa. People had to be rescued from stranded cars in central and southeastern Pennsylvania
The son of a powerful Republican congressman lambasted his father on Twitter on Monday for "ruining" the career of a recently fired FBI agent who had sent anti-Trump text messages during the Russia investigation.

The son of U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte also began soliciting campaign donations on Sunday for the Democrat who is running to replace his father, who is retiring. The Democratic campaign said more than $25,000 had flowed in from across the country in less than 24 hours.

The elder Goodlatte, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, is leaving his seat in western Virginia after 13 terms. His son Bobby Goodlatte was an early designer at Facebook and is based in the San Francisco area.

FILE - In this Tuesday, June 19, 2018, file photo, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, speaks during a joint House Committee hearing in Washington. Goodlatte's son, Bobby Goodlatte, has lambasted his father on Twitter for "ruining" the career of a recently fired FBI agent. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

"I'm deeply embarrassed that Peter Strzok's career was ruined by my father's political grandstanding," the younger Goodlatte wrote on Twitter on Monday. "That committee hearing was a low point for Congress. Thank you for your service sir. You are a patriot."

Strzok's lawyer said Monday that he had been fired by the FBI.

Bobby Goodlatte was referring to his father's role in an extraordinarily combative congressional hearing last month in which Strzok was questioned about the anti-Trump texts he had sent.

The hearing lasted 10 hours. Strzok said the texts, including ones in which he called Trump a "disaster" and said "We'll stop" a Trump candidacy, did not reflect political bias and had not infected his work.

Congressman Goodlatte asked colleagues to imagine being investigated by someone who "hated you" and "disparaged you in all manner of ways."

"Would anyone sitting here today believe that this was an acceptable state of affairs, particularly at an agency whose motto is 'Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity'? I think not," Goodlatte said.

When Strzok declined to answer some questions on the Russia probe, Goodlatte suggested Republicans might recess the hearing and hold him in contempt. Democrats objected and Goodlatte eventually let the hearing proceed.

A day before he tweeted about his father's treatment of Strzok, the younger Goodlatte had requested donations in support of the Democrat who is running for the open seat in Virginia's 6th District.

"I just gave the maximum allowed donation to Jennifer Lewis, a democrat running for my father's congressional seat," he wrote. "I've also gotten 5 other folks to commit to donate the max. 2018 is the year to flip districts - let's do this!"

Political observers have described the House district in Virginia, which includes Roanoke, as safely Republican. Lewis has received about $73,000, according to the latest Federal Elections Commission data. Her Republican opponent, Ben Cline, has pulled in nearly $400,000.

Following Goodlatte's tweet on Sunday, more than $25,000 had flowed in from across the country by Monday afternoon, according to Lewis' campaign manager, Josh Stanfield.

He said mostly smaller donations, such as $100, came first from northern California and then from places like Iowa and Alaska.

"(Bobby Goodlatte) never expected this to go viral," Stanfield said. "Everyone is sort of caught off guard. But obviously it's compelling for some reason. We'd be delighted if he'd come back to the 6th and canvass with us."

___

Ben Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia. AP technology writer Barbara Ortutay in New York and AP reporter Brian Slodysko in Washington contributed to this report.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Seven ships loaded with wheat grown in America's Pacific Northwest are sailing for Yemen, where a stalemated civil war has pushed more than 8 million people to the brink of starvation.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, which administers the Food for Peace program, purchased the wheat to benefit America's wheat farmers and people in crisis. It was then handed over to the U.N.'s World Food Program to be shipped and distributed in Yemen.

Stephen Anderson, the WFP's Yemen country director, told a Friday news conference in Portland that the wheat will provide much-needed relief.

FILE - In this Aug. 16, 2017 file photo, operator Justin Waggoner swings his combine into wheat growing outside Condon, Ore. Seven ships loaded with wheat grown in the Pacific Northwest are sailing for Yemen, where civil war has pushed over 8 million people to the brink of starvation. The U.S. Agency for International Development purchased the wheat to benefit America's wheat farmers and people in crisis. (Eric Mortenson/The Capital Press via AP, File)

"We're doing our best to get food assistance to those people who need it most," Anderson said, according to the Capital Press, an agricultural publication.

Over the past two weeks, seven ships filled with 176,000 tons (159,665 metric tons) of wheat have left Portland for Yemen, two Oregon politicians said.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley and Republican state Rep. Mike McLane said in a joint statement they're proud to see Oregon wheat being used in one of America's "most effective peacebuilding tools," its Food for Peace program.

"We see these agricultural programs representing the best of American values, culture and policy," Merkley and McLane said in their statement published in The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Darren Padget, a wheat farmer from Grass Valley, Oregon, told the Capital Press he's pleased the wheat is going to the needy.

Aid workers in Yemen are worried that fighting that is nearing a port where most food aid arrives could force its shutdown and potentially tip millions into starvation. WFP Executive Director David Beasley has called Hodeida Port "a humanitarian lifeline for millions who are on the brink of famine."

Yemeni government forces, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, have been trying to retake Hodeida as they battle Iran-allied rebels known as Houthis.

The Houthis seized control of Sanaa, Yemen's capital, in September 2014, and later pushed south toward the port city of Aden. The Saudi-led coalition entered the conflict in March 2015 and has faced criticism for a campaign of airstrikes that has killed civilians and destroyed hospitals and markets.

The Houthis have laid land mines, killing and wounding civilians. They also have targeted religious minorities and imprisoned opponents. The stalemate war has killed more than 10,000 people.

Around two-thirds of the country's population of 27 million relies on aid and 8.4 million are at risk of starving.
HOUSTON (AP) - Many Texas cities are denying workers' compensation to firefighters with cancer, according to union leaders and state lawmakers.

Over the past six years, more than 90 percent of the 117 workers compensation claims filed by Texas firefighters with cancer have been denied, according to the Texas Department of Insurance. Cities are ignoring a 2005 state law requiring the government to presume that firefighters' cancers are caused by exposure to carcinogens on the job, union officials told the Houston Chronicle .

"The sky-high denial rate of cancer is the first problem," said Marty Lancton, president of the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association. "Firefighters with denied claims often have fewer treatment options and face the risk of financial ruin because of lost income."

All seven of the association's members who filed workers' compensation claims since 2016 have been denied, the union said.

Houston's benefits provider didn't respond for comment. But firefighters have said that cities use a memo by the Texas Intergovernmental Risk Pool to dodge the cancer presumptive law. The memo only presumes three types of cancer are caused by firefighting: testicular, prostate and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

"It's not that we're not sympathetic to firefighters. We are," said Counsel David Reagan of the risk pool, which handles workers' compensation for more than 2,700 Texas municipalities. "But at the same time, we have to follow the law in spending taxpayer money."

Union leaders have said that the memo and the risk pool ignore substantial research linking firefighting to other forms of cancer.

Firefighters are much more likely to win benefits on appeal, with nearly 65 percent of cases winning workers' compensation appeals over the past six years. But less than one-fifth of firefighters disputed their denied claims. Firefighters risk being sued by the cities that employ them, and often it's too daunting a task to battle in court while battling cancer.

Houston sued Margaret Roberts in 2015 after she appealed and won a workers' compensation claim for her blood and bone cancer. The Houston Fire Department veteran of 23 years died in 2017, but the city's lawsuit against her estate is ongoing.

Republican Rep. Dustin Burrows sponsored a bill to allow workers to challenge bad faith claim denials this past session, but it died in the Senate. Burrows plans to try again next January.

"I am very, very, disappointed in what I'm seeing," Burrows said. "I think there is a really strong argument that's what's going on here . that maybe they're making economic decisions rather than actually contractually living up to their obligations."

___

Information from: Houston Chronicle, http://www.houstonchronicle.com
Egypt's interior ministry said in a statement on Monday that six terrorists have been killed in a shootout with police in 6 October City on the outskirts of the capital, a statement by the Egyptian interior ministry read.

Police forces had received information that a group of terrorists were using a residential house in 6 October as a hideout and were planning on carrying out "violent operations," the ministry said.

The raid was carried out based on intelligence obtained by the National Security Agency.

The suspects opened fire on police forces when the raid began.

"Information had revealed that the terrorists planned to implement a series of hostile operations targeting vital state institutions, Christian churches, and military and police personnel during the upcoming Eid Al-Adha holiday," the ministry statement said.

Three automatic rifles, a sniper rifle, a birdshot rifle, ammunition, and improvised explosive devices were found at the site.

The State Security Investigations Service is investigating the incident, the statement added.

Egypt's police forces have recently been carrying out a number of raids on terrorists involved in executing or attempting to carry out hostile acts throughout the country.

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NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - Prosecutors say a former New Jersey police officer who was fired a decade ago but according to authorities continued to wear his uniform in public has been convicted of illegal weapons possession.

The Essex County prosecutor's office says 39-year-old Newark resident Eddie Gonzalez has been convicted of failing to turn over two handguns as part of a restraining order by an ex-girlfriend.

Prosecutors say he faces three to five years on each count.

Gonzalez had been out on bail after being convicted in April of impersonating a police officer and filing false police reports. His sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 7.

He had been forced to resign from the Newark police force in 2008 after police say he assaulted a 14-year-old by forcing his tongue into her mouth.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) - A Wisconsin father says he cannot give up hope that his missing son will be found alive after disappearing seven weeks ago while vacationing in Slovenia.

But Allan Luskin of Madison says no trace of his 25-year-old son, Jonathan, has been found and the family is "running out of clues."

Allan Luskin and his ex-wife, Susan Stone, spent last week in the Central European country, meeting with investigators and visiting the hostel where their son was last seen on June 23.

Allan Luskin said Monday there's been no activity on his son's electronic devices or on his bank account or credit cards.

Jonathan Luskin, who teaches in Hong Kong, told a friend he was going to hike the Triglav National Park in northeast Slovenia. His father says there is no record of his son staying at any of the huts in the park.
The recent raft of bank branch closures is hastening the loss of local shops on the high street, new research shows.

A survey released by Nottingham Building Society found that 46% of shop owners blame the loss of a local bank branch in the last three years for negatively impacting their business, while 24% said it contributed to them going out of business within the last five years.

Small business owners are suffering as a result of lower footfall, with around 36% of consumers saying they would make fewer visits to their town or village once their local bank branch closed.

Nearly half of shop owners blame the loss of a local bank branch in the last three years for negatively impacting their business (Lynne Cameron/PA)

Around 40% said they would make at least three fewer visits a month as a result.

Shop owners in areas affected by branch closures estimate that their annual revenue dropped by an average of 20% after the bank shut its doors.

It also found that 26% were looking at moving their businesses to a new area or smaller premises nearby, while 31% say they are considering shutting their high street stores and operating solely online.

The survey noted that 15% were mulling job cuts.

Gary Womersley, head of branch network for Nottingham Building Society, said: Financial institutions play a major role in local high streets drawing customers to shops and boosting sales and business.

This is particularly true in market towns, where much of our focus is placed. Sadly, there are now as many as 1,500 towns in the UK that used to have branches but no longer do.

A Government report released earlier this year shows that 1,270 bank branches were closed between 2014 and 2017, with 650 cut last year alone.

Further closures have since been announced by the likes of Royal Bank of Scotland, which has confirmed it will close 162 branches across England and Wales.

Lloyds earlier this year also announced plans to shutter 49 branches across its Lloyds and Halifax brands between July and October.

A separate study by the Nottingham Building Society released last month projects that a further 2,400 banks could close, putting 12,000 jobs at risk.

Were seeing campaigns in the media calling for people to embrace their high streets and we fully back that but also recognise the need to evolve, Mr Womersley said.

Expert advice and great service is integral to the strength of our branch network supporting our unique all-under-one-roof strategy that offers building society and estate agency services to our customers.

The societys research has been part of a campaign to to highlight the value of bank branches to local towns and businesses, having doubled its network of branches to 67 over the past five years.
The rival Koreas have agreed to hold a third summit between their leaders in Pyongyang sometime before the end of September.

The agreement between the two countries unification ministers comes amid an ongoing nuclear stand-off between Washington and Pyongyang.

South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, left, shakes hands with his North Korean counterpart Ri Son Gwon (Korea Pool/Yonhap via AP)

The two sides did not announce an exact date for the summit.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un first met in April in a highly publicised summit and then again in May for more informal talks.

South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, second from left, talks with his North Korean counterpart Ri Son Gwon, second from right, during a meeting at Panmunjom in the Demilitarised Zone, North Korea (South Korea Unification Ministry/AP)

The Koreas said in a statement that they had reviewed ways to set up agreements made at the past summits, during nearly two hours of talks at a North Korea-controlled building in the border village of Panmunjom on Monday.

The meeting between delegations of senior officials from Seoul and Pyongyang comes as experts see slow progress on efforts to disarm North Korea since a June summit between Mr Kim and US President Donald Trump.

Ri Son Gwon, the head of the North Korean delegation, told pool reporters at the end of the talks that officials agreed on a specific date for the summit in Pyongyang sometime within September, but he refused to share the date, saying he wanted to keep reporters wondering.

The South Korean unification minister, Cho Myoung-gyon, told reporters after the meeting that officials still had some work to do before agreeing on when exactly the summit would happen.

He said the two sides will again discuss when the leaders would meet but did not say when.

It was not clear why Mr Ri and Mr Cho differed on the issue of the date, and Mr Cho would not answer a specific question about the discrepancy.

Photos showing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and South Korea President Moon Jae-in (Ahn Young-joon/AP)

Mr Cho, the chief of the South Korean delegation, said the two sides also talked a lot about international sanctions meant to punish the North for its development of nuclear weapons, but he did not elaborate.

Seoul has been preparing for possible economic collaboration with Pyongyang that could go ahead when sanctions are lifted.

Pyongyang has urged Washington to ease the economic punishments, but the United States says that cannot happen until the North completely denuclearises.

The South Korean envoy said he urged Pyongyang to accelerate its current nuclear negotiations with the United States. The North said it was making efforts to disarm, but Mr Cho said there were no new details on those efforts.

Experts say there has been slow progress on those efforts since the Singapore summit.
Mens welfare campaigners fear an unconscious bias is causing police to ignore psychological abuse of vulnerable men by a partner and focus only on female victims.

The comments came after it emerged that in the first year since a law against engaging in controlling and coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship was introduced, it was overwhelmingly used to prosecute men.

From the laws introduction on December 29 2015 up to the end of March 2017, there were 4,246 allegations of coercive and controlling behaviour recorded, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

A man showing signs of mental anguish (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

A Freedom of Information request revealed that 272 people were charged with the offence.

Of these, just four were women.

The law covers behaviour isolating a victim from their support networks, depriving them of their independence, exploiting them financially or controlling activities such as what they wear or who they speak to.

It also covers a pattern of acts such as threats, humiliation, intimidation or other abuse used to punish or frighten a victim, eroding their resistance and locking them in the relationship.

The ManKind Initiative, a helpline for male victims of domestic abuse, helped to campaign for the introduction of the law, but fears law enforcers think it is only a problem faced by women.

Last year 82 women were killed by a current or former partner compared with 13 men, but data from the ONS shows that one in three reported instances of domestic abuse involve a male complainant.

Mark Brooks, a spokesman for the charity, said: When people say domestic abuse disproportionately affects women more than men, its true at one level, in that there are more female victims than male victims.

But when you use the term disproportionately  its almost saying that because theres more female victims, then really your focus should be on female victims rather than all victims.

He continued: It takes away the individual impact  because if youre a male victim and theres a female victim in the house next door, you could be going through the same level of crime, theres not a disproportionate effect on you than her, its the same effect.

Earlier this year, Jordan Worth, 22, became the first woman to be convicted of the new offence.

She subjected her partner Alex Skeel, also 22, to a series of vicious assaults, leaving him with major head trauma and serious burns.

But for months before the assaults, Worth dictated what he could wear, who he could speak to, starved him and forced him to sleep on the floor but succeeded in making him believe their relationship was normal.

Mr Brooks said: The question is whether there is an unconscious bias in police and prosecutors when they apply or think about coercive control legislation and if their biases are actually stopping them applying the law to male victims in the way they apply the law  rightly  to female victims.

ManKind is also concerned that cultural stereotypes of the whipped boyfriend can mask signs of more serious controlling behaviour and coercion.

Mr Brooks said: If a woman is going through that situation where shes being isolated from support networks like friends, family or colleagues, people start to ask questions.

He said that men who are perceived as being dominated by their partner are often mocked by their friends, who might not recognise how serious the situation can become.

You would never say to a woman Are you under the thumb of your boyfriend? without being concerned about it, he said.

The prosecution figures for 2017 to 2018 will not be available until next year, but ManKind is hopeful that attitudes towards male victims are changing.

What we need is more prosecutions and more publicity around those prosecutions, which will therefore then educate the public, Mr Brooks said.

The current data is not broken down by victim, so it is not clear how many of those prosecuted were in same-sex relationships, or were charged with abusing a family member other than their partner.

Deputy Chief Constable Louisa Rolfe, the National Police Chiefs Councils (NPCC) lead on domestic violence, said that men are usually more reluctant to report abuse, as are those in LGBT relationships.

She said the NPCC had always expected the offence to have a slow start, followed by a significant uptick in the number of offences recorded and people charged in the second year.

I am sure that women are equally capable of offending in that way and there are a number of horrific cases  men are victims of domestic abuse and they deserve support, she said.

But she warned against considering coercive and controlling behaviour as a gender neutral offence that affects both women and men equally.

I think some domestic abuse  not all of it  is absolutely driven by perceptions of a womans place, she said.

In some domestic abuse there is a traditional view of a womans place and its driven by gender privilege and a desire to control a woman.

Ms Rolfe also said those guilty of this kind of offending can skew the number of domestic violence cases recorded.

If youre in an abusive relationship, if your partner makes a counter allegation that they are also the subject of domestic abuse then police are obliged to record that, she said.

As we know, the perpetrators of controlling and coercive behaviour are incredibly manipulative individuals and they almost always make a counter-allegation.

Police will make a very clear decision about whos the perpetrator and whos the victim, but the crime recording rules will oblige us to record both allegations.

Ms Rolfe added that although abuse occurs in all walks of life, often those in abusive relationships were both very vulnerable and the role of perpetrator and victim might be less clearly defined.

She said that to truly understand what is going on in an emotionally abusive relationship required a lot of professional curiosity and hard work from officers.

Now if they do that in the right way, that should work equally well for male or female victims  we shouldnt have a bias towards women as victims and men as perpetrators, she said.
Loans to help farmers hit by months of adverse weather are being offered by the Scottish Government.

The National Basic Payment Support Scheme (NBPSS) was launched on Monday by Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing.

Under the scheme, loans will be made available to eligible farmers of up to 90% of the value of their annual payment from the European Union.

The funding will be available on an opt-in basis (Andrew Milligan/PA)

While that money would usually be handed over between December and June, the loan payments are expected to be made to eligible farmers from early October.

It follows a run of difficult weather for farmers in 2018, with the Beast from the East cold spell followed by a heatwave this summer.

.@FergusEwingMSP in Bridge of Weir to meet local farmer Willie Harper, after announcing loan funding for farmers struggling with severe weather conditions #BPS2018 https://t.co/H4w9XB7TtU pic.twitter.com/wDnNNU2rKw  Net Zero Scotland (@ScotGovNetZero) August 13, 2018

Mr Ewing said: Farmers are the backbone of Scotlands rural economy, and we understand that many of them have really suffered this year due to the unprecedented severe weather experienced in 2018.

The Scottish Government is of course committed to supporting our farmers, and have responded by taking decisive action to make this extra funding stream available.

We will be issuing loan offers shortly, providing a much-needed cash injection for those feeling the effects of increased prices for feed and fodder, the impact of restraints on irrigating their land, and in some cases resorting to selling livestock earlier than planned to preserve fodder for breeding stocks.

Mr Ewing said he has also asked experts to consider what other actions may be helpful in response to the recent dry weather.

The funding will be available on an opt-in basis, with individual loan offers expected to be sent to farmers from early September.

A similar scheme created last year delivered payments of more than 317 million to around 13,500 farmers, the Scottish Government said.

Scottish Labours rural economy spokesman, Colin Smyth, said: This long overdue announcement is welcome but doesnt go far enough. Farmers have been warning of a crisis for months now, with grass growth at a standstill and hay and silage crops in some cases just half the normal level.

The shortages and spiralling prices for feed is hitting all sectors and both the Scottish and UK governments have to step up and do more.
Danny Ings has the craft to help drive Southamptons misfiring forwards back to regular Premier League goal-scoring, according to boss Mark Hughes.

Saints manager Hughes hailed Liverpool loanee Ings for delivering a creative debut in Sundays season-opening goalless draw with Burnley.

Southampton failed to break the St Marys Stadium deadlock but Ings produced an encouraging cameo off the bench as the hosts pushed for a late winner.

Danny Ings, pictured, has been backed to create as well as score goals for Southampton (Andrew Matthews/PA)

Manolo Gabbiadini hit just five goals in 28 league appearances last year, with Charlie Austin mustering seven in 24  but now Hughes believes Winchester-born Ings can bring about a revival after joining his home club in the transfer window.

Asked if Ings can spark Saints other forwards back into goal-scoring form, Hughes replied: I think so; the players that are quick in mind and actions, and ship the ball quickly.

I was a little bit reluctant to throw him (Ings) on so soon.

I felt he was fit to play a part, but looking back he hadnt actually had a great deal of time on the grass in pre-season.

But when he came on he looked as fresh as a daisy. He came on, retained the ball on the half-turn, running between the lines, and gave us a glimpse of what he will bring to the party.

So were really pleased with that cameo from him.

Southampton rode out a sluggish start where ex-Saints midfielder Jack Cork had the ball in the back of the net, only for the strike to be ruled out for offside.

Alex McCarthy saved well from Aaron Lennon at point-blank range too, but after the break  with the introduction of Ings and fellow new recruit Mohamed Elyounoussi  the hosts seized the initiative.

Norway forward Elyounoussi joined Saints for 16million from Basel as ex-Stoke boss Hughes continues to put his stamp on the south coast set-up.

And former Wales striker Hughes believes the 24-year-old was another to stand up well on his club debut.

I was pleased with the contribution from Moi Elyounoussi too, we saw glimpses of the talent he has, said Hughes.

Overall Im reasonably pleased with it being the first game. Obviously you want a win, but a point and a clean sheet is the next best thing.

Mario Lemina I thought was good today as well, and certainly the second-half he was driving forward well.

Theres work to be done clearly, but overall Im happy with where we are for now.

Summer recruit Joe Hart impressed for Burnley, staying calm as Saints built the pressure late on  leaving his boss Sean Dyche impressed with the 31-year-olds start to life with the Clarets.

Hes a very experienced keeper and hes been brought in for a reason, said Dyche, of England man Hart.

I dont think he touched the ball until the 16th minute. He kept his mentality and focus and, when called upon, he produced a mature performance.

Hes a top keeper. Im very fortunate to have a number of top keepers at this club.
A British man who died in Ibiza was described as a gentle soul with a heart of gold.

Friends and loved ones of Conor Spraggs, believed to be 23 and from Stevenage, paid tribute to the holidaymaker after his death on the popular island.

A JustGiving page has been set up to bring his body home and cover his funeral costs.

The beach in San Antonio, Ibiza (Joel Ryan/PA)

The page description read: Conor was tragically killed on his last day of his holiday in Ibiza.

We are trying to raise enough money to fly his body home so he can be back with his family and put to rest in his home town.

Conor was a gentle soul, with a heart of gold who is going to be deeply missed by family and friends and anyone who knew him.

More than 3,000 has been raised after the page was set up late on Sunday.

Those who donated to the fund remembered Mr Spraggs as a top lad who had not a bad bone in his body.

According to media reports, the victim died after a fight in the early hours of Sunday morning following an altercation with a group of males in the resort of San Antonio.

A police investigation has been launched.

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: Our staff are providing assistance to the family of a British man who has died in Ibiza and are in touch with the local authorities, who are investigating.

Mr Spraggs is the latest British holidaymaker to die this summer in the popular destination.

Last week, a 24-year-old was found floating in a marina in San Antonio

In July, the body of a 19-year-old man was pulled from a pool in Sant Josep in the early hours of the morning.
Italys transport minister has said the UK should take in 141 migrants picked up by a rescue ship that sails under the flag of the British territory of Gibraltar.

As his country continues to refuse port to ships run by humanitarian groups, Danilo Toninelli said the UK should take responsibility for the migrants aboard the Aquarius, which is operated by French humanitarian groups.

UPDATE: Maritime authorities from #Malta and #Italy inform #Aquarius that they will not grant 141 people onboard a place of safety to disembark. #Aquarius has now reached a standby position exactly between Malta and Italy and is awaiting further guidance. pic.twitter.com/Dc1gjK4dvj  MSF Sea (@MSF_Sea) August 13, 2018

Mr Toninelli said the rescue was co-ordinated by the Libyan coast guard and that the ship is now in Maltese waters.

The French aid groups SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders have called on European nations to identify a close port of safety so the 141 migrants picked up in two rescues on Friday could disembark.

Most of the migrants are from Somalia and Eritrea and include 67 unaccompanied minors.

Doctors Without Borders said many of the people who were rescued are weak and malnourished.

The European Commission said it is in contact with a number of member states to identify a country willing to take those picked up by the ship.

The migrants are thought to have come from the coast of Libya (AP)

Spokeswoman Tove Ernst said: It could of course be the case that in theory a flag state of a rescue ship could be considered a potential location for disembarkation, but this might not be possible in practice.

She added: As we have done in a number of previous cases, we stand ready to lend full diplomatic support and weight to a swift solution of the incident.

Doctors Without Borders said European governments tend to focus their efforts on propping up the Libyan JRCC (joint rescue co-operation centre), but that the two rescues on Friday underlined the unreliability of the system.

Aloys Vimard, Doctors Without Borders co-ordinator on board the Aquarius, said the ship happened on the two boats by chance, even though the Libyans were aware of their distress.

In addition, those rescued reported that five ships had come into their vicinity before the Aquarius and did not offer to help.

Mr Vimard added: It seems the very principle of rendering assistance to persons in distress at sea is now at stake. Ships might be unwilling to respond to those in distress due to the high risk of being stranded and denied a place of safety.
An ongoing battle between Afghan forces and the Taliban in the eastern city of Ghazni has killed about 100 policemen and soldiers, as well as around 20 civilians, Afghanistans defence minister said.

General Tareq Shah Bahrami spoke on the fourth day of fighting in Ghazni, the provincial capital of the province of the same name.

Interior minister Wais Ahmad Barmak said nearly 70 policemen are among those killed.

Afghan Security personnel petrol in the city of Ghazni (AP)

The Taliban launched a massive attack on Ghazni on Friday, overwhelming the citys defences and capturing parts of it.

The defence minister said about 1,000 additional troops have been sent to Ghazni and helped prevent the city from falling into Taliban hands.

He added that 194 insurgents, including 12 leaders, have been killed. They include Pakistani, Chechen and Arabs foreign fighters.
The Cairo Criminal Court has sentenced an Al-Azhar University student to 10 years in prison and five professors to life imprisonment for communicating with and providing logistical assistance to the banned Muslim Brotherhood organisation.

The verdict can be appealed before the Court of Cassation.

Investigations revealed that the defendants plotted to recruit new Al-Azhar University students who were unknown by security services with the aim of carrying out revolutionary acts inside and outside of the university in support of the Brotherhood.

The defendants planned to achieve this by providing financial support and covering residential and study expenses for the new recruits.

The cell organised their communications through social media networks and telephones, according to investigators.

The Muslim Brotherhood was designated a terrorist organisation by the Egyptian government in November 2013.

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A Labour MP will stand trial accused of lying about who was behind the wheel of a speeding vehicle.

Peterborough MP Fiona Onasanya appeared at the Old Bailey on Monday charged with one count of doing an act tending or intending to pervert the course of justice (PCJ).

The 34-year-old, who won the marginal seat with a majority of just 607 votes in 2017, spoke only to confirm her identity and plead not guilty during the brief hearing.

She and her 33-year-old brother Festus Onasanya are alleged to have misinformed Cambridge police about who was responsible for driving a speeding vehicle on July 24 2017.

Fiona Onasanya arrives at the Old Bailey (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

They claimed a man called Aleks Antipow was behind the wheel.

It is alleged that by naming him they enabled themselves to avoid prosecution.

Onasanyas brother, from Chesterton, Cambridge, faces two further charges of PCJ.

He is alleged to have blamed someone else for two separate speeding incidents on June 17 and August 23 last year.

Ms Onasanya, who was a solicitor before her election to Parliament, is a Labour whip, meaning she is responsible for party discipline.

The siblings are due to next appear at the Old Bailey on October 26 for a pre-trial hearing.

A provisional trial date has been set for November 12.
Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba, who was convicted of gross negligence manslaughter after the death of six-year-old Jack Adcock, has won her appeal over the decision to strike her off.

The paediatrician fought a decision made in January by two High Court judges to substitute erasure for the lesser sanction of a years suspension imposed by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal (MPT) in June last year.

Their ruling followed a successful appeal by the General Medical Council (GMC), which argued that suspension was not sufficient to protect the public or maintain public confidence in the medical profession.

Jack, from Glen Parva, Leicestershire  who had Downs Syndrome and a heart condition  died at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 2011 after he developed sepsis.

Six-year-old Jack Adcocks death was at the centre of the appeal brought by Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba (PA)

After a 2015 trial at Nottingham Crown Court, Dr Bawa-Garba was sentenced to two years in prison suspended for two years.

The sentencing judge said that neither she nor a nurse who was on duty at the time gave Jack the priority which this very sick boy deserved.

Dr Bawa-Garbas counsel, James Laddie QC, told the Court of Appeal that the MPTs decision was humane and balanced.

He said: The MPT concluded that suspension was an appropriate sanction which was necessary in the public interest.

That conclusion was within its margin of judgment and was rational. Indeed the MPTs conclusion was correct.

But Ivan Hare QC, for the GMC, said the High Court had regard to the individual circumstances of the case and its reasoning was straightforward and correct.

Hadiza Bawa-Garba (front right) and her supporters outside the High Court in London (Nick Ansell/PA)

The MPT had undermined the Fitness to Practise Rules and the jurys verdict by reaching its own conclusion on Dr Bawa-Garbas individual culpability by reference to systemic failings and the failings of others, he added.

Unanimously allowing the appeal on Monday, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, the Master of the Rolls Sir Terence Etherton and Lady Justice Rafferty said that Dr Bawa-Garbas name should be restored to the medical register forthwith and remitted the matter to the MPT for review of the suspension, which will remain in place in the meantime.
There have been calls for the funding of the West Belfast Festival to be reviewed after footage emerged of pro-IRA chanting at one of its final events.

The controversy centres around a Wolfe Tones concert at the Falls Park on Sunday evening.

Some politicians have expressed anger over some of the bands lyrics and pro-IRA chants from the crowd during the gig.

The controversy centres around a Wolfe Tones concert at the Falls Park on Sunday evening (Andy Butterton/PA)

They have also expressed concern over the waving of Irish flags daubed with IRA slogans.

The West Belfast Festival, Feile an Phobail, receives funding from Belfast City Council as well as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Tourism NI.

This.



No place for it at Feile or anywhere else: glorifying terrorism is both wrong and dangerous.



Such a shame to end an otherwise inclusive fortnight of events on such a bitter, divisive and sectarian note. https://t.co/PWYGjNDScM  Naomi Long MLA (@naomi_long) August 13, 2018

It includes 350 individual events, including debates, art exhibitions and concerts.

Olly Murs was among the headline acts to perform at the festival.

Organisers say the festival attracts visitors from across the community.

Alliance leader Naomi Long expressed concern about the scenes at the Wolfe Tones concert.

Glorifying terrorism is both wrong and dangerous, she said.

Such a shame to end an otherwise inclusive fortnight of events on such a bitter, divisive and sectarian note.

Ulster Unionist councillor Chris McGimpsey called for the funding of the festival to be looked at.

In Belfast over the years we have given them millions of pounds and I think we need to look very, very seriously at that, he told BBC Radio Ulsters Nolan Show.

They have really crossed the line, it is absolutely outrageous. This is not art, this is support for terrorism and we need to look seriously at that.

A spokesman for Belfast City Council said they will be engaging with the organisers of Feile.

We are working with all of our funded cultural partners to achieve shared celebrations of culture in Belfast, he said.

The terms of our funding state that the grant must comply with statutory equality provisions.

Belfast City Council will be engaging directly with the organiser concerning this matter.

Feile an Phobail responded saying they had hosted a range of events.

A spokesman also pointed out that they had stopped the bonfires this year, which had previously sparked anti-social behaviour.

This years 30th anniversary of Feile an Phobail saw the biggest Feile ever held. In total around 100,000 people attended this years Feile, he said.

Over 350 events took place, including 75 debates and discussions, 45 art exhibitions, a host of literary, sporting and theatre events, a massive carnival parade with over 4,000 people in attendance, a series of family events and three 10,000-capacity concerts.

This year, representatives from all communities were welcomed to Feile to have their voice heard.

This covered a wide and diverse range of society. Many representatives from unionist and loyalist communities attended and took part in various panels, as did representatives from ethnic minority communities and international visitors.

Feile includes all opinions and all communities and provides a platform for many different views. There is something for everyone at Feile.

Also significantly, this year, for the first time since 1971, there were no bonfires in Belfast on August 8.

In past years these unwanted bonfires have brought destruction and an increase in anti-social behaviour to the areas in which they were held.

Due to the hard work and commitment of Feile staff and volunteers, community organisations and political representatives, Belfast was bonfire free on August 8 and all those involved in achieving this deserve praise.
Jeremy Corbyn appeared to admit to being present at a wreath-laying ceremony for Palestinian activists suspected of being behind the Munich Olympics massacre.

The Labour leader has faced calls to quit over his controversial visit to the Palestinian Martyrs Cemetery in Tunisia in 2014.

Mr Corbyn said he had been present when a wreath was laid to those that were killed in Paris in 1992 but he did not think he was involved in laying it.

File photo dated 09/03/18 of Jeremy Corbyn. Labour has been in talks with the Jewish Museum over Jeremy Corbyn using the venue to address the growing anti-Semitism crisis.

Israeli secret service Mossad was accused of killing terrorists behind the Olympics atrocity.

It was blamed for killing Atef Bseiso, a Palestine Liberation Organisation intelligence chief linked to the attack, in the French capital in 1992.

Being present is the same as being involved. When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association & support. There can also never be a fitting memorial for terrorists. Where is the apology? https://t.co/TNQpCs6mN2  Luciana Berger (@lucianaberger) August 13, 2018

Asked about the incident during a visit to Walsall he said: A wreath was indeed laid by some of those who attended conference to those that were killed in Paris in 1992.

I was present when it was laid. I dont think I was actually involved in it (laying it).

I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere because we have to end it.

You cannot pursue peace by a cycle of violence. The only way you pursue peace is a cycle of dialogue.

Palestinian terrorist group Black September killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorist who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone  left, right and everything in between.  Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) August 13, 2018

Home Secretary Sajid Javid earlier suggested that Mr Corbyn should quit over the issue.

The widows of Israeli athletes murdered by terrorists said they were extremely disturbed by claims about the visit.

Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger said: Being present is the same as being involved.

When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association & support.

There can also never be a fitting memorial for terrorists. Where is the apology?

Being present is the same as being involved. When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association & support. There can also never be a fitting memorial for terrorists. Where is the apology?

The row erupted after The Daily Mail published pictures of the Labour leader holding a wreath in the cemetery, which it said were taken in front of a plaque honouring the founder of Black September.

Labour said previously that Mr Corbyn had made clear he was paying his respects to the victims of a 1985 Israeli air strike on Palestinian Liberation Organisation offices in Tunis.

If this was the leader of any other major political party, he or she would be gone by now https://t.co/q1oa07Rngd  Sajid Javid (@sajidjavid) August 12, 2018

A tweet on the official Labour press team account on Sunday said the Munich widows were being misled.

Jeremy did not honour those responsible for the Munich killings.

Mr Corbyn said last year he had spoken at the conference and I laid a wreath to all those that had died in the air attack that took place on Tunis, on the headquarters of the Palestinian organisations there.

Writing in The Morning Star at the time of the visit, Mr Corbyn said that wreaths had been laid not only at the memorial, but also on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991.

Coverage of my statement in the Mail article yesterday. #EnoughIsEnough https://t.co/gGwvzFtYwq  Jonathan Goldstein (@jonnysgoldstein) August 12, 2018

The pictures emerged amid continuing controversy over Labours refusal to adopt in full an international definition of anti-Semitism, including a list of examples of anti-Semitic behaviour.

Labour launched a consultation with Jewish groups over the code, after protests that the version agreed by the partys ruling National Executive Committee omits four examples relating to criticism of the state of Israel.

Three senior union leaders added their voices to calls from deputy leader Tom Watson for the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance text to be incorporated in its entirety into Labours new code of conduct on anti-Semitism.

But Mick Whelan, general secretary of train drivers union Aslef, who sits on the NEC, said he voted for the code because it is an advance on the original document.

He said: For example, it adds the use of derogatory terms for Jewish people such as kike or yid, plus stereotypical physical depictions of Jewish people, and equating Jews with the ruling class.

Mr Corbyn said the Labours version of code was the most sophisticated of any political party.

He told reporters: The one example that we are discussing and consulting on is one that makes sure that you can discuss and debate the relations between Israel and Palestine, the future of the peace process and, yes, make criticisms of the actions of the Israeli government in the bombing of Gaza and other places.

But you can never make those criticisms using anti-Semitic language or anti-Semitic intentions, and that is what we are absolutely clear on.
Google records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to, an investigation has found.

The Associated Press reported that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data, even if you have used a privacy setting which states it will prevent Google from doing so.

Computer science researchers at Princeton University in the US confirmed the reports findings.

For the most part, Google is up-front about asking permission to use your location information.

An app like Google Maps will remind you to allow access to location if you use it for navigating. If you agree to let it record your location over time, Google Maps will display that history for you in a timeline that maps out your daily movements.

Storing your minute-by-minute travels carries privacy risks and has been used by police to determine the location of suspects. However, the company will let you pause a setting called Location History.

Thomas Raffill and his wife Kalyanaraman Shankari took part in the study (Jeff Chiu/AP)

Google said this will prevent the company from remembering where you have been.

The tech giants support page on the subject states: You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.

This is not true, the AP report found. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.

For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you simply open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, such as chocolate chip cookies, or kids science kits pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude  accurate to the square foot  and save it to your Google account.

The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Googles Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or searches.

Storing location data in violation of a users preferences is wrong, said Jonathan Mayer, a Princeton computer scientist and former chief technologist for the US Federal Communications Commissions enforcement bureau.

A researcher from Mr Mayers lab confirmed APs findings on multiple Android devices. AP also conducted its own tests on several iPhones that found the same behaviour.

Mr Mayer said: If youre going to allow users to turn off something called Location History, then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off.

That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.

Google insisted it has been perfectly clear.

The company said: There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve peoples experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services.

We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time.

To stop Google from saving these location markers, the company says, users can turn off another setting, one that does not specifically reference location information. This setting, called Web and App Activity and enabled by default, stores a variety of information from Google apps and websites to your Google account.

Google says location records stored in My Activity are used to target ads (Lauren Hurley/PA)

When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account. But leaving Web & App Activity on and turning Location History off only prevents Google from adding your movements to the timeline  its visualisation of your daily travels. It does not stop Googles collection of other location markers.

You can delete these location markers by hand, but it is a painstaking process since you have to select them individually, unless you want to delete all of your stored activity.

You can see the stored location markers on a page in your Google account at myactivity.google.com, although these are typically scattered under several different headers, many of which are unrelated to location.

To demonstrate how powerful these other markers can be, AP created a visual map of the movements of Princeton post-doctoral researcher Gunes Acar, who carried an Android phone with Location history switched off, and shared a record of his Google account.

The map includes Mr Acars train commute on two trips to New York and visits to The High Line park, Chelsea Market, Hells Kitchen, Central Park and Harlem. To protect his privacy, AP did not plot the most telling and frequent marker  his home address.

Huge tech companies are under increasing scrutiny over their data practices, following a series of privacy scandals at Facebook and new data-privacy rules recently adopted by the European Union.

Last year, the business news site Quartz found that Google was tracking Android users by collecting the addresses of nearby mobile phone towers, even if all location services were turned off. Google changed the practice and insisted it had never recorded the data anyway.

Critics say Googles insistence on tracking its users locations stems from its drive to boost advertising revenue.

Peter Lenz, the senior geospatial analyst at Dstillery, a rival advertising technology company, said: They build advertising information out of data. More data for them presumably means more profit.

Since 2014, Google has let advertisers track the effectiveness of online ads when it comes to driving foot traffic, a feature that Google has said relies on user location histories.

The company is pushing further into such location-aware tracking to drive ad revenue, which rose 20% last year to 95.4 billion dollars (74.6 billion).
A shotgun was fired recklessly at least twice into a large crowd of people at a Manchester street party following the citys Caribbean Carnival, police believe.

Detectives say the answers to Sundays shooting which injured 12 people, including a 12-year-old girl, may lie within the Moss Side community as they explore a number of working hypotheses for the motive.

Two men, aged 23 and 30, and the young girl remain in hospital for treatment for injuries that are not believed to be life-threatening.

Officers were called to reports of gunshots in Claremont Road at about 2.30am and armed and unarmed officers arrived one minute later with several people having suffered pellet injuries.

Chief Superintendent Wasim Chaudhry speaks to the media (Peter Byrne/PA)

Chief Superintendent Wasim Chaudhry, of Greater Manchester Police, said: We are now more than 24 hours on from this truly shocking attack and our investigation team has been following numerous lines of inquiry in their attempts to establish the full picture of what happened.

A key part of that work to establish the full picture is information from the community being fed into the investigation team by members of the public.

The person responsible for this incident recklessly fired a gun into a crowd of people enjoying a celebration of Caribbean culture, which included children.

One of those injured by the shooting was a 12-year-old girl who remains in hospital with her family at her bedside but thankfully she should make a full recovery.

Police are appealing for members of the community to help find the person responsible for the shooting in Moss Side that happened over the weekend. Full details here https://t.co/dyOTOGCKmL  Greater Manchester Police (@gmpolice) August 13, 2018

We need to get answers for her family and the loved ones of all the people injured in the incident and we believe those answers may lie within the community.

I want to urge anyone who thinks they may know anything to please get in touch as a matter of urgency.

If people dont feel comfortable contacting the police then people can report information anonymously to Crimestoppers, which is a charity that is completely independent from the police.

The weapon believed to have been used in the attack has yet to be recovered.
The state is controlling how the history of the Northern Ireland conflict is told, author Ed Moloney said.

He produced a new film about the Troubles  I, Dolours  which focuses on the story former IRA prisoner Dolours Price told him.

Mr Moloney was involved in a long-running legal battle after detectives took action to secure the release of interviews he conducted with former republican and loyalist paramilitaries.

Ed Moloney said I, Dolours was about Ms Prices `futile and `failed life which left her a victim (John Stillwell/PA)

Conversations recorded on the Boston College Tapes were supposed to be secret until the contributors died.

Mr Moloney said: Essentially what they were saying to people was, no, no, the state does this, the state are the people who will decide how history is told.

Freelance efforts like this are not going to be allowed and that has been the major effect of them moving against Boston College.

(It) is to prevent and inhibit other people from following in our footsteps in a real way, telling the real story, telling truthful stories and painful stories and violent stories, which are the ones that have to be told at the end of the day.

Ms Price, who died in 2013, was one of the IRA gang that bombed the Old Bailey in 1973.

She was adamantly opposed to the very existence of Stormont and steeped in traditional republicanism, Mr Moloney said.

The film provided a disturbing account of how one of the Disappeared, Jean McConville, was abducted, shot dead and secretly buried by the IRA.

Ms Price described how she and two other IRA members were involved in murdering the Belfast mother-of-10 at a beach in Co Louth in the Irish Republic in 1972.

Ms Price has said Ms McConville was abducted because she was an informer  denied by her family and former police ombudsman Baroness Nuala OLoan.

Mr Moloney acknowledged Ms McConvilles familys concerns but said some others had seen the film for what it was about, Ms Prices futile and failed life which left her a victim.

In a sense it is a very sad story, of a life wasted, a life unfulfilled.

Film director Maurice Sweeney said audiences would be conflicted and there had been very different reactions.

He said they had not shied away from uncomfortable subjects and using Ms Prices words gave the film a ring of authenticity.

I would urge people not to judge but to try and understand why people made decisions in their lives and the consequences when a person gives themselves to violence of some form or another  there is a pay-off to that.

Dolours found that in a very emotional way.

The film will be shown at the Belfast Film Festival on August 13 and will be released on August 31.

Police Service of Northern Ireland Detective Chief Superintendent Sean Wright said: The PSNI have had no involvement with this film and its content will be considered in due course after its release.
A paediatrician convicted of gross negligence manslaughter over the death of six-year-old Jack Adcock said she was very pleased after winning her bid to be reinstated to the medical register.

Hadiza Bawa-Garba fought a decision made in January by two High Court judges to substitute erasure for the lesser sanction of a years suspension imposed by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal (MPT) in June last year.

The ruling followed a successful appeal by the General Medical Council (GMC), which argued that suspension was not sufficient to protect the public or maintain public confidence in the medical profession.

On Monday, the Court of Appeal unanimously allowed her challenge and said her name should be restored to the medical register forthwith.

Six-year-old Jack Adcock died at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 2011 (PA)

Her case was remitted to the MPT for review of the suspension, which will remain in place in the meantime.

Dr Bawa-Garba told the BBCs Panorama programme: Im very pleased with the outcome but I want to pay tribute and remember Jack Adcock, a wonderful little boy that started the story.

I want to let the parents know that Im sorry for my role in what has happened to Jack.

I also want to acknowledge and give gratitude to people around the world from the public to the medical community who have supported me. Im very overwhelmed by the generosity and Im really grateful for that.

Jack, from Glen Parva, Leicestershire  who had Downs syndrome and a heart condition  died at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 2011 after he developed sepsis.

In 2015, at Nottingham Crown Court, Dr Bawa-Garba was sentenced to two years in prison suspended for two years.

The judge said neither she nor a nurse who was on duty gave Jack the priority which this very sick boy deserved.

Hadiza Bawa-Garba and her supporters and legal team outside the High Court in London (Nick Ansell/PA)

Jacks mother Nicola branded the ruling an absolute disgrace.

She told ITV News: It makes a mockery of the justice system. If shed (Dr Bawa-Garba) have done what she should have done that day I know my son would still be here 99.9% and I will never budge from that.

Giving the appeal courts ruling, the Master of the Rolls, Sir Terence Etherton, said: Undoubtedly, there are some cases where the facts are such that the most severe sanction, erasure from the medical register, is the only proper and reasonable sanction. This is not one of them.

Once it is understood that it was permissible for the tribunal to take into account the full context of Jacks death, including the range of persons bearing responsibility for that tragedy and the systemic failings of the hospital, as well as the other matters relied upon by Dr Bawa-Garba, and that the tribunal plainly had in mind its overriding obligation to protect the public for the future, it is impossible to say that the suspension sanction imposed by the tribunal was not one properly open to it and that the only sanction properly and reasonably available was erasure.

He added: The present case is unusual.

No concerns have ever been raised about the clinical competence of Dr Bawa-Garba, other than in relation to Jacks death, even though she continued to be employed at the hospital until her conviction.

The evidence before the tribunal was that she was in the top third of her specialist trainee cohort.

The tribunal was satisfied that her deficient actions in relation to Jack were neither deliberate nor reckless, that she had remedied the deficiencies in her clinical skills and did not present a continuing risk to patients, and that the risk of her clinical practice suddenly and without explanation falling below the standards expected on any given day was no higher than for any other reasonably competent doctor.

The tribunal was an expert body entitled to reach all those conclusions, including the important factor weighing in favour of Dr Bawa-Garba that she is a competent and useful doctor, who presents no material continuing danger to the public, and can provide considerable useful future service to society.
A number of people have been arrested in connection with the death of a British man in Ibiza, police said.

Conor Spraggs has been described as a gentle soul with a heart of gold.

Friends and loved ones of Mr Spraggs, believed to be 23 and from Stevenage, paid tribute to the holidaymaker after his death on the popular holiday island.

The beach in San Antonio, Ibiza (Joel Ryan/PA)

A JustGiving page has been set up to bring his body home and cover his funeral costs.

The page description read: Conor was tragically killed on his last day of his holiday in Ibiza.

We are trying to raise enough money to fly his body home so he can be back with his family and put to rest in his home town.

Conor was a gentle soul, with a heart of gold who is going to be deeply missed by family and friends and anyone who knew him.

More than 5,000 has been raised after the page was set up late on Sunday.

Those who donated to the fund remembered Mr Spraggs as a top lad who had not a bad bone in his body.

According to media reports, Mr Spragg died after a fight in the early hours of Sunday morning following an altercation with a group of males in the resort of San Antonio.

The Diario de Ibiza news website reported that four Britons had been arrested.

Spanish police told the Press Association that the investigation is still open and confirmed there had been some arrests made.

A spokeswoman for the Guardia Civil declined to give details on the number of people arrested, their ages, genders or nationalities.

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: Our staff are providing assistance to the family of a British man who has died in Ibiza and are in touch with the local authorities, who are investigating.

Mr Spraggs is the latest British holidaymaker to die this summer in the popular destination.

Last week, a 24-year-old was found floating in a marina in San Antonio

In July, the body of a 19-year-old man was pulled from a pool in Sant Josep in the early hours of the morning.
Egypt rejects non-Arab forces having a foothold in Yemen, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said in a joint presser with Yemeni counterpart Abd Rabo Hadi after the two leaders held a meeting in Cairo on Monday.

"Yemen's security and stability is a top priority not only for Egypt's national security, but the security and stability of the entire region, and we therefore reject Yemen becoming a stronghold for non-Arab forces, a threat to the security and stability of brotherly Arab states, or [endanger] freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and the Strait of Bab Al-Mandab," said El-Sisi.

El-Sisi stressed Egypt's commitment to supporting the stability and territorial integrity of Yemen and the preservation of its current leadership.

During his speech, El-Sisi has also expressed Egypt's support for the efforts by the UN special envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths to achieve a consensus between various Yemeni political parties and reach a political solution to the conflict in the country.

El-Sisi said that he has had "fruitful discussions on strengthening bilateral relations between the two countries on all levels, as well as mechanisms to achieve a political solution and alleviate the human suffering of the brotherly Yemeni people."

Egyptian presidency spokesperson Bassam Rady said that the two leaders discussed cooperation between Egypt and Yemen to enhance the protection of maritime navigation in the Red Sea and the Bab Al-Mandab Strait "to avoid being negatively affected by the current situation in Yemen."

Hadi thanked Egypt for its supportive stance and its condemnation of the "Houthi coup" in Yemen. Hadi also discussed with El-Sisi the latest developments in his country as well as issues of bilateral interest and a number of regional and international issues.

We are sure that the support from Egypt will continue, Hadi said, describing Egypt as a defender of Arab causes.

The Yemeni president also discussed with El-Sisi the threats posed by Houthi militias to security on the Red Sea.

We aspire to see an end to this war and the suffering of the Yemeni people at the hands of the Houthi [militias], he said.

He also thanked Egypt for hosting tens of thousands of Yemeni citizens who have fled their country to escape the fighting.

Ahead of the conference, El-Sisi witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Central Bank of Egypt and Yemen to enhance cooperation between the two countries in the banking sector, especially in exchanging skills and training workers.

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Adrian Mariappa has signed a new two-year contract with Watford, the Premier League club have announced.

The Jamaica international defender is in his second spell at Vicarage Road and has agreed terms on a deal that runs until 2020.

The 31-year-old came through the ranks at Watford and enjoyed seven years in the first-team before leaving for Reading.

Adrian Mariappa came through the ranks at Watford. (Adam Davy/PA)

After a brief spell in Berkshire, a move to Crystal Palace saw Mariappa spend three seasons in south London before he rejoined the Hornets in 2016.

Since returning to Watford he has made 38 appearances and was an unused substitute as Javi Gracias men started the new Premier League campaign with a 2-0 home win over Brighton on Saturday.
Rose McGowan has accused the Democratic Party of protecting movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

The actress, who was one of the first women to accuse Weinstein of rape, told an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival that the events of the last year had almost snapped her.

McGowan, who starred in 1996 horror movie Scream as well as television series Charmed, was among the first of around 100 women to accuse Weinstein of sexual harassment and assault.

Her allegations helped cement the film producers downfall, and sparked the Me Too movement (Anthony Devlin/PA)

Her allegations helped cement the film producers downfall, and sparked the Me Too movement.

Discussing her book Brave, she said: I will say, Harvey Weinstein, his protection came from the Democratic Party, far more so than Hollywood.

He was their de facto cult leader and their star, and thanked as many times as god at the Oscars, a dead heat. But it was the Democratic party and the operatives there.

He set up this whole operation to do this and he tended to go for anybody, the scale, the sheer magnitude, its probably in the thousands. He just f***ked with the wrong person.

Leading Democrats including Bill and Hillary Clinton were criticised for not moving quicker to condemn Weinstein when the scandal first broke, although later did so.

McGowan, who grew up in the Children of God cult, also compared support for US President Donald Trump to a cult.

She said: I do think Trump has done us a favour, if we can survive him.

Showing us so clearly what racism is, showing us so clearly what sexism is and the thing is hes doing what they all did before he just says it.

So many of his predecessors, they worked under those same auspices hes just so dumb he actually says it. He lets us all in on the secret.

I would say Trump supporters, its largely a cult. Hes their leader, he uses trigger words, he says the same things over and over.

Speaking about the impact of the whole affair on her personal life, McGowan said: Its been a hard last ten months. Im only coming out of it calmly now but it was a real nail biter.

I just wanted him to stop, I just wanted it to stop and I wanted the lying to stop and I wanted the protection to stop and I wanted to stop being looked down on and so many others, because the whole casting couch idea, thats such a myth its more like the rape couch.

Hollywood is notorious for it.

She added: Its not optimal right now, Im trying to find my way in the world right now. Im gearing up to write a second book, Trust, on behind the scenes of the last year.

This last year, the stress of it almost snapped me and Im strong but it was really hard. I felt like I was manning the Titanic and refusing to let it sink.

Weinstein has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex.
Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba has won an appeal over the decision to strike her off after she was convicted of gross negligence manslaughter over the death of a six-year-old boy.

Here are some key questions and answers relating to the case and the impact the judgement could have on the medical profession.

 Who is Dr Bawa-Garba?

The paediatric specialist was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter in 2015 over the death of six-year-old Jack Adcock, who died from sepsis at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 2011.

A tribunal ruled in June last year that she should remain on the medical register despite her conviction, but issued a one-year suspension.

Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba outside the High Court in London (Nick Ansell/PA)

The General Medical Council (GMC) took the case to the High Court to appeal against the sanction, saying it was not sufficient and Dr Bawa-Garba was struck off in January.

 How did the medical community respond to the case?

The actions of the GMC angered many doctors who said important issues raised by the case  including dangerous levels of understaffing, failures of IT systems and staff working in inappropriate conditions  had been ignored.

Jeremy Hunt, who was health secretary at the time, ordered an urgent review to clarify the line between gross negligence manslaughter and human error for healthcare workers.

Accepting the findings by Professor Sir Norman Williams, Mr Hunt said doctors and nurses who make honest mistakes while treating patients would receive greater support.

 What are the implications of Dr Bawa-Garbas successful appeal?

Organisations representing healthcare workers said the GMC would have to work to regain their trust, and hope the ruling will signal a move away from blame culture.

Professor Dame Jane Dacre, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said the judgement is a welcome step towards the development of a just culture in healthcare.

The court of appeal has today unanimously overturned the ruling

of the high court that Dr #BawaGarba be struck off the medical register.



Read the response to the judgment from our president @DacreJane herehttps://t.co/NWbtITiAiC  Royal College of Physicians (@RCPhysicians) August 13, 2018

She said: We hope todays judgement will provide some reassurance to doctors, particularly our trainees, that they will be protected if they make a mistake.

Professor Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said: We stand willing to continue working with the GMC to address the issues raised by this case.

Our members are committed to delivering high-quality, safe care for children and avoiding errors; but when one-off errors do happen, doctors are owed a duty of care and support, not blame.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, British Medical Association (BMA) council chair, said the regulator has lost the confidence of doctors and must now act to rectify their relationship with the profession.

Lessons must be learnt from this case which raises wider issues about the multiple factors that affect patient safety in an NHS under extreme pressure rather than narrowly focusing only on individuals, he added.

 How has the GMC responded?

Charlie Massey, GMC chief executive, said: We fully accept the Court of Appeals judgment.

This was a case of the tragic death of a child, and the consequent criminal conviction of a doctor.

Were sorry for the anguish & uncertainty these proceedings have had on Jacks family, Dr Bawa-Garba & the wider profession. This was a complex case; while the decisions we took were in good faith, we know that investigations & hearings are difficult for everyone involved.  GMC (@gmcuk) August 13, 2018

It was important to clarify the different roles of criminal courts and disciplinary tribunals in cases of gross negligence manslaughter, and we will carefully examine the courts decision to see what lessons can be learnt.

The case has exposed a raft of concerns, particularly around the role of criminal law in medicine and the GMC has commissioned an independent review as a result, Mr Massey said.

He added: Doctors have rightly challenged us to speak out more forcefully to support those practising in pressured environments, and that is what we are increasing our efforts to do.
Former Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez has denied wrongdoing after recent accusations that she was responsible for a corruption scheme involving public works contracts.

Fernandez said in a written statement presented to a federal court that the accusations are false and politically motivated.

More than a dozen people have been arrested in the case. They include business leaders and former officials who served in Fernandezs 2007-15 administration.

Cristina Fernandez is surrounded by media outside her home as she leaves for the court hearing in Buenos Aires (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

The case is based on an investigation by La Nacion newspaper into alleged corruption over more than a decade during the governments of Fernandez and her late husband, Nestor Kirchner.

The newspaper says the driver of one of the accused kept notebooks with detailed information on bribes.

Fernandez is currently a senator, a post that grants her immunity from prosecution.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticised Jeremy Corbyn over his presence at a ceremony where a wreath was laid in memory of Palestinians suspected of being behind the Munich Olympics massacre.

Mr Netanyahu accused the Labour leader of laying a wreath on the grave of one of those behind the 1972 atrocity in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed, during a controversial visit to the Palestinian Martyrs Cemetery in Tunisia in 2014.

He said the move deserved unequivocal condemnation from those on all sides of politics.

Mr Corbyn had earlier said he had been present when a wreath was laid to those that were killed in Paris in 1992 but he did not think he was involved in laying it.

Labour said he attended the event to remember victims of a 1985 Israeli air strike on Palestinian Liberation Organisation offices in Tunis.

The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorist who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone  left, right and everything in between  Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) August 13, 2018

Israeli secret service Mossad was accused of killing terrorists behind the Olympics attack, including Atef Bseiso, a Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) intelligence chief, who was killed in the French capital in 1992.

Writing on Twitter, Mr Netanyahu said: The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorist who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone  left, right and everything in between.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Prime Minister Theresa May at 10 Downing Street at the start of an official visit in June (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Israeli PM @Netanyahu's claims about my actions and words are false.



What deserves unequivocal condemnation is the killing of over 160 Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli forces since March, including dozens of children.https://t.co/H5nXqi3pnU  Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) August 13, 2018

However, Mr Corbyn later hit back, saying the prime ministers claims were false.

He added: What deserves unequivocal condemnation is the killing of over 160 Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli forces since March, including dozens of children.

The Labour leader faced calls to quit on Monday over his controversial visit to the cemetery four years ago.

The row erupted after The Daily Mail published pictures of the Labour leader holding a wreath in the cemetery, which it said were taken in front of a plaque honouring the founder of Black September.

The Palestinian terrorist group killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Asked about the incident during a visit to Walsall on Monday Mr Corbyn said: A wreath was indeed laid by some of those who attended conference to those that were killed in Paris in 1992.

I was present when it was laid. I dont think I was actually involved in it (laying it).

I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere because we have to end it.

You cannot pursue peace by a cycle of violence. The only way you pursue peace is a cycle of dialogue.

If this was the leader of any other major political party, he or she would be gone by now https://t.co/q1oa07Rngd  Sajid Javid (@sajidjavid) August 12, 2018

Home Secretary Sajid Javid earlier suggested that Mr Corbyn should quit over the issue.

The widows of Israeli athletes murdered by terrorists said they were extremely disturbed by claims about the visit.

Being present is the same as being involved. When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association & support. There can also never be a fitting memorial for terrorists. Where is the apology? https://t.co/TNQpCs6mN2  Luciana Berger (@lucianaberger) August 13, 2018

Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger said: Being present is the same as being involved.

When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association & support.

There can also never be a fitting memorial for terrorists. Where is the apology?

Being present is the same as being involved. When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association & support. There can also never be a fitting memorial for terrorists. Where is the apology?

Coverage of my statement in the Mail article yesterday. #EnoughIsEnough https://t.co/gGwvzFtYwq  Jonathan Goldstein (@jonnysgoldstein) August 12, 2018

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn reiterated that Mr Corbyn was paying his respects to the victims of a 1985 Israeli air strike on Palestinian Liberation Organisation offices in Tunis.

He added: Jeremy did not lay any wreath at the graves of those alleged to have been linked to the Black September organisation or the 1972 Munich killings.

He of course condemns that terrible attack, as he does the 1985 bombing.

Mr Corbyn said last year he had spoken at the conference and I laid a wreath to all those that had died in the air attack that took place on Tunis, on the headquarters of the Palestinian organisations there.

Writing in The Morning Star at the time of the visit, Mr Corbyn said that wreaths had been laid not only at the memorial, but also on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991.

The pictures emerged amid continuing controversy over Labours refusal to adopt in full an international definition of anti-Semitism, including a list of examples of anti-Semitic behaviour.

Labour launched a consultation with Jewish groups over the code, after protests that the version agreed by the partys ruling National Executive Committee omits four examples relating to criticism of the state of Israel.

Three senior union leaders added their voices to calls from deputy leader Tom Watson for the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance text to be incorporated in its entirety into Labours new code of conduct on anti-Semitism.

But Mick Whelan, general secretary of train drivers union Aslef, who sits on the NEC, said he voted for the code because it is an advance on the original document.

Mr Corbyn said the Labours version of code was the most sophisticated of any political party.

He told reporters: The one example that we are discussing and consulting on is one that makes sure that you can discuss and debate the relations between Israel and Palestine, the future of the peace process and, yes, make criticisms of the actions of the Israeli government in the bombing of Gaza and other places.

But you can never make those criticisms using anti-Semitic language or anti-Semitic intentions, and that is what we are absolutely clear on.
Black cab rapist John Worboys has reportedly been questioned by police over allegations of non-recent sexual assault.

The Met said they would not confirm the persons identity other than to say they had interviewed a 61-year-old man under caution last month in Yorkshire.

The BBC reported that the man questioned was the notorious sex attacker.

Scotland Yard said the allegations, which arose after an investigation was launched in January this year, include sexual assault and administering a substance with intent to commit a sexual offence.

John Worboys black cab (Metropolitan Police/PA)

The alleged offences are said to have been committed between 1997 and 2007.

In a statement the force said: An investigation was launched in January 2018 after a number of women contacted police with information.

Since then, officers have assessed all the information provided and established there are a number of allegations that required investigation. Police also sought early investigative advice from the Crown Prosecution Service.

Worboys was jailed indefinitely in 2009 with a minimum term of eight years after being found guilty of 19 offences, including rape, sexual assault and drugging, committed against 12 victims.

Police believe he committed crimes against 105 women between 2002 and 2008, when he was caught.

A decision earlier this year to release him was overturned by three High Court judges who said the Parole Board must make a fresh determination in his case following a challenge by victims.
The Government has distanced itself from calls for the UK to take in 141 migrants rescued from the Mediterranean by a Gibraltar-registered ship.

The Foreign Office said it was well-established that those stranded aboard the Aquarius should disembark at a nearby safe port, after the Italian government called for Britain to take them in.

Italys transport minister Danilo Toninelli claimed the UK is responsible for the migrants because the rescue ship that picked them up is sailing under the flag of the British overseas territory.

The European Commission said that as the flag state, the UK could be responsible, but suggested the circumstances of the rescue also had to be looked at.

The group, which includes 67 unaccompanied minors and is mainly made up of Somalis and Eritreans, was picked up on Friday.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: We are deeply concerned for the welfare of 141 migrants who have been rescued from the Mediterranean by sailing vessel Aquarius.

It is well-established that responsibility for arranging disembarkation, at a nearby safe port, is assumed by the relevant regional maritime rescue and co-ordination, and in accordance with the wishes of the ships master.

The UK is committed to working with European partners long term to tackle the shared challenge of irregular migration.

Gibraltar is a British overseas territory at the mouth of the Mediterranean (Ben Birchall/PA)

At a regular briefing for journalists in Brussels, Tove Ernst, the European Commissions spokeswoman on migration, said: There is a possibility  that there could be a case for the flag state to be responsible.

However, this may not be practically feasible and it is also really depending on the situation and who is co-ordinating where the events took place.

We are now in contact with a number of member states and stand ready to lend our full and swift diplomatic support to resolve this situation.

Italy has repeatedly refused rescue ships entry to its ports.

Ms Ernst added: The issue of search and rescue and disembarkation is a question that falls under international law and a matter for national authorities. The commission has no competence or role to play when it comes to disembarkation and cannot assess individual cases.

While the duty to rescue is clear, there is nothing in the international legal regime as to the responsibility of the flag state for the disembarkation of the rescued persons.
Defender Virgil van Dijk believes consistency will be the key if Liverpool are to topple Manchester City as Premier League champions.

Despite what the Holland captain described as an almost complete performance in Sundays dismantling of West Ham, the Dutchman knows there will be more difficult hurdles to overcome.

Liverpool finished 25 points adrift in fourth place last season having drawn 12 matches.

Liverpools Virgil van Dijk believes consistency will be key for their title chances this season (Nigel French/PA).

Van Dijk said it was those kind of results they needed to eradicate.

The most important thing is that we look at ourselves, he said when asked about competing with City.

We know that right now we have a great squad. We have a lot of quality players. Everyone who plays for Liverpool has a lot of quality.

Its all about being consistent. We want to challenge for any competition.

Of course, we want to challenge. I do not feel any pressure in that case but we play every game to win, thats how our mindset is.

Our focus was good (against West Ham) and now we recover before focusing on Crystal Palace on Monday, which is going to be a very tough game.

Its just one game. We had a good pre-season with good results and games where weve played very well.

But we can do a lot better and its just the start. I think the key is we need to be very consistent and do it every game.

Van Dijks central-defensive partner in the short term looks like being Joe Gomez, with Joel Matip, Ragnar Klavan and Dejan Lovren all sidelined.

The 21-year-old endured injury problems of his own last season, with an ankle operation forcing him to miss the Champions League final, but he coasted through the Premier League opener.

I was not really worried to be fair, added Van Dijk.

Ive played a couple of games pre-season with Joe at centre-back and I have a very good relationship with him, a very good understanding outside of the pitch as well.

We need everyone in the squad. Its very important at our club. Everyone needs to be ready when we need you. Everyone realises this.
Jeremy Corbyn has clashed with the Israeli prime minister as a row escalated over the Labour leaders presence at an event which included the honouring of a Palestinian suspected of involvement in the Munich Olympics massacre.

Benjamin Netanyahu said Mr Corbyn deserved unequivocal condemnation, accusing him of laying a wreath on the grave of one of those behind the 1972 atrocity in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed, at a Tunisian cemetery in 2014.

The right-wing Likud leader also criticised the UK Labour leader for drawing parallels between Israeli actions against Palestinians and Nazi atrocities.

Jeremy Corbyn hit out after being criticised by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (John Linton/PA)

The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorist who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone  left, right and everything in between  Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) August 13, 2018

Mr Corbyn hit back in the Twitter spat, saying the accusations were false and blasting Mr Netanyahus policies in Gaza.

Mr Corbyn had earlier said he had been present when a wreath was laid to those that were killed in Paris in 1992, but he did not think he was involved in laying it during a controversial visit to the Palestinian Martyrs Cemetery.

Labour said he attended the event only to remember victims of a 1985 Israeli air strike on Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) offices in Tunis.

Israeli secret service Mossad was accused of killing terrorists behind the Olympics attack, including Atef Bseiso, a PLO intelligence chief, who was killed in the French capital in 1992.

Writing on Twitter, Mr Netanyahu said: The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorist who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone  left, right and everything in between.

Israeli PM @Netanyahu's claims about my actions and words are false.



What deserves unequivocal condemnation is the killing of over 160 Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli forces since March, including dozens of children.https://t.co/H5nXqi3pnU  Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) August 13, 2018

Mr Corbyn was quick to deny the claims, saying: What deserves unequivocal condemnation is the killing of over 160 Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli forces since March, including dozens of children.

The Labour leader faced calls to quit on Monday over his controversial visit to the cemetery four years ago.

The row erupted after the Daily Mail published pictures of the Labour leader holding a wreath in the cemetery, which it said were taken in front of a plaque honouring the founder of Black September.

The Palestinian terrorist group killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Asked about the incident during a visit to Walsall on Monday, Mr Corbyn said: A wreath was indeed laid by some of those who attended conference to those that were killed in Paris in 1992.

I was present when it was laid. I dont think I was actually involved in it (laying it).

I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere because we have to end it.

You cannot pursue peace by a cycle of violence. The only way you pursue peace is a cycle of dialogue.

Criticism came from the Conservatives and from within Mr Corbyns own party.

Being present is the same as being involved. When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association & support. There can also never be a fitting memorial for terrorists. Where is the apology? https://t.co/TNQpCs6mN2  Luciana Berger (@lucianaberger) August 13, 2018

Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger said: Being present is the same as being involved.

When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association & support.

There can also never be a fitting memorial for terrorists. Where is the apology?

The widows of the Israeli athletes said they were extremely disturbed by claims about the visit.

Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis said the row showed Mr Corbyn was unfit for senior public office, never mind his position as the official Leader of Her Majestys Opposition.

Writing in Tuesdays Daily Mail, Mr Lewis said that decent Labour members should be questioning whether Mr Corbyn should continue to lead a party that has long fought to promote anti-racism and social justice.

Mr Lewis added: At such a crucial time for Britains future, this cannot continue. I feel only foreboding.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: Jeremy did not lay any wreath at the graves of those alleged to have been linked to the Black September organisation or the 1972 Munich killings.

He of course condemns that terrible attack, as he does the 1985 bombing.

Mr Corbyn said last year he had spoken at the conference and I laid a wreath to all those that had died in the air attack that took place on Tunis, on the headquarters of the Palestinian organisations there.

Writing in the Morning Star at the time of the visit, Mr Corbyn said wreaths had been laid not only at the memorial, but also on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991.

The pictures emerged amid continuing controversy over Labours refusal to adopt in full an international definition of anti-Semitism, including a list of examples of anti-Semitic behaviour.

Labour launched a consultation with Jewish groups over the code, after protests that the version agreed by the partys ruling National Executive Committee omits four examples relating to criticism of the state of Israel.

Mr Corbyn said on Monday that Labours version of code was the most sophisticated of any political party.
A charity has condemned a decision by health officials to reject a drug to treat a rare genetic disorder which can mean that affected children do not live to their their second birthday.

In new draft guidance, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) has not recommended Spinraza, a treatment for people with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), for widespread use across the NHS.

Muscular Dystrophy UK said the decision would cause heartbreak for families.

The charity said that, without access to the treatment, children with SMA  which affects up to 2,500 people across the UK  will lose the ability to crawl, walk and swallow.

But Nice said it would welcome further discussions about access to the drug, also known as nusinersen, manufactured by Biogen.

The health body said the drug shows substantial benefits but there are uncertainties over its long-term benefits.

And the cost of the drug is extremely high, it added.

Infants with the most severe forms of SMA usually die before the age of two.

The condition affects the nerves in the spinal cord which control movement. This causes muscle weakness, progressive loss of movement, and difficulty breathing and swallowing.

Spinraza is the first treatment to address the cause of motor neurone degeneration in SMA  it is injected directly into the spine and is a lifelong treatment.

Muscular Dystrophy UK, along with SMA Support UK and the SMA Trust, called for a temporary scheme so patients can access the drug while evidence is collected on its long-term benefit.

Spinal muscular atrophy can be devastating and todays news will be heartbreaking for the families of those living with the condition, saud Robert Meadowcroft, chief executive of Muscular Dystrophy UK.

Once again we are seeing families suffer due to the appraisal process being too limited to assess costly but life-changing rare disease drugs.

The one glimmer of hope is for a temporary scheme that ensures access.

We call on Nice, NHS England and the drug company, Biogen, to urgently come together and find a solution to provision and pricing so families can get Spinraza before more lives are lost.

The charity said that in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, children diagnosed with the most serious form of the condition can access the treatment through a temporary programme set up by Biogen.

But it raised concerns that there are no guarantees this scheme will continue indefinitely.

Avery Ball was diagnosed with SMA Type 2 when he was 18 months old (PA)

Avery Ball, two, from Braunston, Northamptonshire, was diagnosed when he was 18 months old.

His father Alex said: SMA is relentlessly cruel, and it turns your life upside down. To hear that your child will never be able to walk, or will struggle to sit independently, is heartbreaking. All your hopes, dreams and plans for the future are completely thrown off course.

This news is such a blow to families like ours. For the first time, there is a treatment that can buy families more time to spend with their loved ones  yet we cannot access it.

Its agonising to see your child slowly lose their mobility. But it doesnt have to be this way. By approving Spinraza, Nice would throw families like ours the lifeline we so desperately need.

Meindert Boysen, director of the centre for health technology evaluation at Nice, said: Nusinersen is a promising treatment that has been shown to improve a range of outcomes important to patients.

We are actively engaging with Biogen to discuss how they might address the uncertainties identified by the committee, while demonstrating the potential for nusinersen to be considered cost-effective and managing the risk to the NHS of allowing access to this treatment.
Egypt's cabinet held a meeting on Monday to discuss preparations for President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi's upcoming visit to China, which is scheduled for September.

The meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly to review a number of agreements that are set to be inked between the two countries during the visit, especially in the fields of transportation, industry, electricity, education and housing.

The Egyptian PM reaffirmed Egypt's keenness to maximise already existing cooperation with China during the upcoming period as well as open new areas of investment in other important sectors.

The meeting was attended by the ministers of transportation, investment, electricity, industry, agriculture, petroleum and mineral resources.

The ministers reviewed a number of projects between Egypt and China, including the electric monorail project to link the country's industrial zones with new cities and the establishing of a coal-fuelled power plant in El-Hamrawein region in the Red Sea governorate. They also discussed financial terms for the second of phase of Egypt's New Administrative Capital's central business area.

China's leading new-energy carmaker BYD reached an agreement with the Egyptian government in October 2017 to build the monorail transit system in Egypt, the company's second overseas monorail order.

The Shenzhen-based company signed the agreement with Alexandria governorate to build a 128-kilometre monorail, the company said.

Egypt's FM Sameh Shoukry visited China in July to discuss boosting relations between the two countries on various levels.

Shoukry expressed Egypt's interest in continuing to enhance economic and trade cooperation, stressing Egypt's keenness to attract more Chinese investments, especially given the various investment opportunities offered by the country's ongoing economic reform programme.

President El-Sisi's last visit to China was in September 2017, where he held talks with President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.

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By Davide Barbuscia

DUBAI, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Gulf stocks fell on Sunday, pressured by general weakness across emerging markets as investors steered clear of assets perceived as risky due to a diplomatic and economic spat between the United States and Turkey.

The Turkish lira plunged last week after U.S. President Donald Trump doubled tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium imports. On Friday, the lira fell 18 percent to a record low.

Other geopolitical factors, such as the reintroduction of U.S. sanctions on Tehran, as well as the diplomatic dispute between Saudi Arabia and Canada, added further pressure to the markets.

The Turkish crisis weighed the most on the Qatar market. The index down 2.6 percent, was pulled down by Commercial Bank and blue-chip Qatar National Bank, which dropped 4.1 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively - the two worst performing stocks in the Qatari exchange Sunday.

QNB owns Finansbank in Turkey and Commercial Bank has a majority stake in Turkish lender Alternatifbank.

In Saudi Arabia, the index fell 1.4 percent, below its 100-day average for the first time this year. It closed at 8,065 points, the lowest since late May.

Banks were mostly down, led by National Commercial Bank , which fell 3.2 percent on concerns about its exposure to Turkish assets. Al Rajhi Bank dropped 1.3 percent.

Despite Sunday's sell off, "MENA (Middle East and North Africa) equities remain under-represented in global portfolios (and are thus less exposed to global EM (emerging market) outflows)," said Sanat Sachar, equity research analyst at Al Mal Capital.

"GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) equities are pegged to the U.S. dollar, and are thus insulated from the EM local currencies turmoil. This means that some asset allocators could even consider the GCCs as an EM safe haven."

According to Sachar, further turmoil in Turkey could exacerbate the differential between MENA equities and other emerging markets.

In Dubai, where the index shed 1 percent, Air Arabia was down 2.9 percent.

The company last week reported a 24 percent drop in second quarter profit. The low cost airline, which in June disclosed an exposure of $336 million to private equity group Abraaj - headed for liquidation - said in its financial statement for the first half of 2018 that a short term investment of 275 million dirhams in Abraaj had not been repaid after maturing at the end of June.

Air Arabia, however, had not made any provision for the investment "on the basis that the events are still unfolding," it said.

All eyes in Dubai were on the emirate's largest bank, Emirates NBD, which earlier this year agreed to buy Turkey's Denizbank from Russia's state-owned Sberbank for $3.2 billion.

There was an overhang on the bank's stock because of the Turkish deal, one analyst said. Shares were down 1.7 percent.

Arqaam Securities said in a note the sharp fall in the Turkish lira since the deal was announced could trigger a material adverse change clause, creating the possibility for a renegotiation of the deal.

"This provides ENBD an opportunity to reduce the acquisition price by as much as 27 percent," the note said.

Emirates NBD said in an email to Reuters it was closely monitoring the Turkish situation, but declined to comment whether the deal might be renegotiated.

SAUDI ARABIA

* The index slipped 1.4 percent to 8,065 points.

DUBAI

* The index fell 1.1 percent to 2,889 points.

ABU DHABI

* The index fell 0.6 percent to 4,845 points.

QATAR

* The index lost 2.6 percent to 9,635 points.

KUWAIT

* The index fell 0.6 percent to 5,424 points.

BAHRAIN

* The index fell 0.1 percent to 1,348 points.

OMAN

* The index went down 0.6 percent to 4,406 points.

EGYPT

* The index fell 1.2 percent to 15,738 points. ($1 = 3.6728 UAE dirham) (Additional reporting by Saeed Azhar; Editing by Mark Potter)
By Crispian Balmer

ROME, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Speculators will probably attack Italian financial markets this month but the country has the resources to defend itself, a senior and highly influential government official said in a newspaper interview on Sunday.

Giancarlo Giorgetti, undersecretary in the prime minister's office and a leading light in the far-right League party, said thin summer trading volumes helped fuel market assaults.

"I expect an attack (in August)," Giorgetti told Libero.

"The markets are populated by hungry speculative funds that choose their prey and pounce ... In the summer the market volumes are small, you can lay the groundwork for aggressive initiatives against countries. Look at Turkey."

Turkish markets slumped last week on growing concerns over the country's economy and political leadership.

Italian assets have also come under strain in recent weeks, with investors concerned that the governing coalition, made up of the League and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, might tear up EU fiscal rules to pay for big-spending budget plans.

"If the (market) storm comes, we will open our umbrella. Italy is a big country and has the resources to react, thanks in part to its large amount of private savings," said Giorgetti, who is seen as a moderating force within the League.

Quoting a report by bankers' federation Fabi, Italian newspapers said on Sunday household savings in Italy totalled some 4.4 trillion euros against 2.2 trillion in 1998.

"PLAN B"

In an interview with Il Foglio newspaper on Saturday, Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi, who is not a member of any political party, said the collapse of Turkey's lira currency showed how important it was for Italy to be a part of the euro.

"What is happening in Turkey should be carefully considered by those who continue to have doubts over whether a currency like the euro is a positive thing or not," he said.

Ahead of March national elections, the League called for Italy to exit the euro, but since forging its alliance with 5-Star has repeatedly denied any suggestion that it is planning to orchestrate Italy's exit from the single currency.

Underscoring deep divisions within the coalition on the issue, the League's chief economist Claudio Borghi, who is head of the lower house budget committee, said on Sunday that Moavero did not understand what he was talking about.

"We should worry about the euro, not celebrate its presumed stability," he told La Verita daily, warning that plans by the European Central Bank to finish its three-year-old stimulus programme could prove highly damaging to Italy.

"Either a new (market) guarantee is put in place, or we need to prepare for a plan B," he said, in an apparent reference to Italy exiting the euro. "We already have a (trade) surplus. The moment we have our own currency, we will have a super surplus."

Mixed messages from various government ministers and coalition officials have confused investors and exacerbated market concerns over the coalition's economic plans. Giorgetti said there could be no room for communication errors.

"My colleagues must understand that the old ruling class in Italy and Europe want to abort this government ... the EU fears that if we succeed in Italy, other countries will imitate us." (Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Catherine Evans)
CAIRO, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Egyptian security forces have arrested seven alleged militants suspected of involvement in a foiled church bombing outside Cairo on Saturday, the interior ministry said on Sunday.

A militant wearing a suicide vest blew himself up 250 metres from a Coptic Christian church in Qalyubiyah, a governorate north of Cairo, killing himself but no one else according to eyewitnesses and state media.

The attack was the latest directed at Egypt's large Christian minority, who make up around 10 percent of the country's 96 million people.

Islamist militants carried out two deadly bombings on Palm Sunday in April 2017 and a blast at Cairo's largest Coptic cathedral in December 2016 that killed 28 people, while a church shooting last December killed eleven.

State news agency MENA said Saturday's bomb attack was thwarted by a strong security presence around the church that prevented the assailant from getting too close.

An interior ministry statement identified the attacker as 29-year-old Omar Mohamed Ahmed Mostafa from Cairo but did not link him to a particular militant group.

No group has claimed responsibility.

The statement said the seven arrested were plotting a "series of hostilities" and that among them were two women, including one living in the upscale Cairo neighbourhood of Zamalek who "played a prominent role ... in promoting extremist ideas and providing financial support".

Egypt has fought an insurgency led by Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula that has killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen in recent years, but attacks in the country's mainland are less common. (Reporting by Ali Abdelaty Writing by Eric Knecht Editing by Giles Elgood)
The U.S. Department of State announced today that it would provide approximately $39 million in Foreign Military Financing for Sri Lanka, pending Congressional approval.

We look forward to discussing with the Government of Sri Lanka how this contribution can support our Bay of Bengal initiative and Sri Lankas humanitarian assistance and disaster response priorities, it said in a statement.

The Secretary traveled to Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia last week for bilateral and multilateral meetings to advance the security of the United States and the region, and to underscore our support for a rules-based order, reaffirm our commitment to friends and allies, and demonstrate the robust engagement in the Indo-Pacific. In Singapore the Secretary outlined the security pillar of the administrations Indo-Pacific strategy and announced nearly $300 million in additional funding intended for South and Southeast Asia. Weve gotten a lot of questions about this, so I just wanted to highlight some of what is involved in that program. Theres been a lot of interest in this, U.S. Department of State Spokesperson Heather Nauert said.

The funding represents a significant investment in our security relationships with Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mongolia, Nepal, the Pacific islands, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and others. The investment focuses on four key areas that are critical to ensuring a free, open, and rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region. This includes maritime security, humanitarian assistance, and disaster response, also peacekeeping capabilities and countering transnational crime. As part of the maritime security theme, we launched the Bay of Bengal Initiative to help enhance the capacity of civilian and military maritime actors in this vital region, which is home to important sea lanes linking the Indian Ocean to East Asia, Ms Nauert said.
Northern Province Governor Reginald Cooray today suggested that the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) ministers should resign so as to resolve the issue, which has arisen from the change in its ministerial composition.

He said the composition had changed in the wake of the Appeal Court reinstating B. Deniswaran as a NPC minister.

"With the reinstatement, the number of ministers had increased to six. This has prevented the council from taking decisions or enacting laws. The best solution available to resolve this matter is for the ministers to resign and a new set of ministers appointed. According to clause 154 (E) of the Constitution, the Chief Minister is empowered to appoint ministers. I, as governor, have no authority to appoint or remove ministers. Therefore, Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran should resolve this matter without further delay," the Governor said during a visit to the Advanced Technological Institute in Jaffna.

He highlighted the fact that students from different ethnic communities islandwide including Hambantota, Kurunegala, Puttalam and Badulla study at the institute.

"This is a good precedent for reconciliation. We should commend these students for taking the initiative to study here while staying with Tamil families. This is a better way to end hostilities among us," he said.

He said he would do his best to find solutions to the problems faced by the institute after discussing them with the President and the Higher Education Minister. (Lahiru Pothmulla)
Weak sales and profits from the key power generation and tourism businesses hit Aitken Spence PLC performance as the Sri Lankan corporate monolith with interests in to wider business segments reported financial performance for the quarter ended in June 30, 2018 (1Q19) last Friday.



Aitken Spence group reported operating profits of Rs.720.4 million for the April - June period on revenues of Rs.10.6 billion compared to Rs.911 million profit and Rs.11.6 billion revenues for the same period last year.



The companys share ended 20 cents or 0.42 percent lower at Rs.47 end of trading last week.



Aitken Spence was under financial strain until its powerful corporate strongman, Harry Jayawardenas group in April 2016 managed to strike a deal with the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) to re-start the engines of the then abandoned 100 megawatt thermal power plant in Embilipitiya when the country faced back-to-back power blackouts.

The deal was signed and renewed annually amid serious questions from the power regulator over the rationale behind the purchase of the most expensive thermal power as the CEB until recently failed to win the Public Utilities Commissions conditional green light to its much delayed Least Cost Long Term Generation Plan.

During this period the groups power generation business captured under strategic investments reported significantly less revenues of Rs.3.0 billion compared to Rs.4.7 billion reported during the same quarter last year.



The segmental operating profit too dropped to Rs.334 million from Rs.476 million a year ago.



Aitken Spence did not specifically attributed this segments weak performance to the power generation business in their earnings release although the power generation unit accounts for a larger share of this segment.



Sri Lankas power generation mix has wider swings between cheaper hydro and most expensive thermal power depending on the rainfall the country receives in to the catchment areas.



Meanwhile the groups tourism business which has resorts in Sri Lanka, Maldives, India and Oman reported an operating loss of Rs. 72 million for the quarter, on a revenue of Rs.4.9 billion.



Despite the impact of the exchange rates and increase in costs, revenue from the tourism sector remained strong as in the previous year rising by 4.7 percent to Rs. 4.9 billion. The revenue increased across Sri Lanka, the Maldives and India markets while Oman reported a reduction, the company said in a statement.



Stating on the losses the company further said the lower occupancies in the Maldivian resorts and a lack of significant improvement in occupancy levels in Sri Lankan hotels contributed towards the losses.



Indian performance improved, with better occupancy and banquet sales at Turyaa Chennai. Performance from Aitken Spence Travels during the quarter remained steady over the corresponding period last year, the company added.



The company invested heavily on its Heritance Aarah resort, in the Maldives - the first Heritance branded resort in the Maldives which is set to open by the end of 2018.



Meanwhile the groups maritime and logistics business reported an operating profit of Rs.367 million on a revenue of Rs.2.2 billion, up from a profit of Rs.297 million and a revenue of Rs.1.9 billion in the year earlier period.



The company is also investing on a waste-to-energy power plant in Colombo in the north of Colombo and would be equipped to convert municipal solid waste to electricity, aimed at greatly relieving the Colombo city of its waste disposal burden.



For the 1Q19 Aitken Spence reported earnings of Rs. 52 Cents a share or Rs.210.7 million in after tax profits compared to 87 Cents a share or Rs.354 million after tax profit for the same period last year.



The Jayawardena-controlled Melstacorp Limited, Rubicond Enterprises Limited and others held over 68 percent of Aitken Spence while the Employees Provident Fund held 5.07 percent stake being the third largest shareholder.
Dual-IT hub to be centered around outsourced services and start-up ecosystem

Need for a catalytic IT movement and a clear sense of the challenges ahead

Sri Lankas leading management consulting firm, STAX, recently launched a research report outlining a dual-hub IT strategy for Jaffna. In collaboration with Market Development Facility (MDF), STAX released this report with a view to fostering the regions substantial potential for IT-related services in line with the national drive to develop a globally-competitive IT industry in Sri Lanka.

Earlier this year, the Government unveiled its plans for Island of Ingenuity (IOI), a LKR 300M investment in the ICT/BPM sector. By 2022, Sri Lankas IT/BPM sector is expected to reach $5B in revenue, create 200,000 direct jobs and encompass 1,000 start-ups. STAXs report highlights that Jaffna is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the sectors growing momentum, ultimately expanding its own contribution to the sector and the wider national economy.

Among the noteworthy attributes, we observe a positive and entrepreneurial attitude among the Jaffna communities, who also retain a strong connection to the Sri Lankan diaspora  which could lead to opportunities for investment and knowledge transfer. The region also maintains a high literacy rate while already possessing the necessary ICT infrastructure and a range of opportunities for IT education, the report noted.

Specifically, the report called for the dual-hub strategy to be centered on the development of an Outsourced IT Hub together with the establishment of a Start-up Hubboth of which could be concurrently fostered while delivering returns along different timelines.

The Outsourced Hub would involve relatively low-risk activities capable of garnering quick returns in employment, productivity, revenue and IT skilling. Initially, the report envisioned its implementation within the format of a 1,000-person managed services operation that matches local talent to outsourced demand with a gradual focus on upscaling to accommodate new market opportunities.

When considering the implementation of this hub, there are at least three potential avenues through which a Managed Services operation in Jaffna can carve a niche for itself in IT/BPO outsourcing, both globally and island-wide: Quality Assurance, Tamil Call Centers and KPO for Accounting Services, the report added.

Comparatively, STAX envisions the Jaffna Start-up Hub as providing greater long-term returns for the region and the national economy, initially focusing on the development of complex and strategic areas of expertise in specific innovations and creating a strong network of IP skills that would shift the focus from importing foreign technology to encouraging and embracing homegrown innovation.

The report advocated a combination of traditional and creative startup strategies. While the traditional start-ups could focus on specialized web and app-based development and search engine optimization, the creative start-ups could be oriented around prevailing primary industries in the North  including agriculture, farming, fisheries, tourism and health  in addition to catering to industries of necessity through products like smart street lighting, waste management, health, travel and education related apps.

The viability of this strategy is already borne out in the organic maneuvers of prominent Sri Lankan IT start-up accelerators like Yarl IT Hub and NCIT and IT companies like WS02, Microimage and InfoMate. The current challenge, however, is that many such forward-thinking players operate in isolation or do not benefit from adequate access to resources.Through the formal inclusion of these organic activities in a dedicated strategy for Jaffna, the goal is to build momentum and focus in terms of investment and activity being channeled into this space, whether via global or local investors, the report stated.

The recommendations of the report are informed by a detailed assessment of the overall IT industry in Jaffna and the broader Northincluding over 100+ conversations across industry experts, national IT enablers, IT accelerators, private sector companies, local government, diaspora members, Jaffna-based employees and universities and schools.

For interested investors and stakeholders, there is a clear call to action. The first order of business is to conduct an evaluation of the financial and technical feasibility of developing a Managed Services operation for the Outsourced Hub. Subsequently, there is a need to secure smart capital for this effort, which will include crafting a compelling story when pitching to relevant investors.

As STAXs Managing Director Ruwindhu Peiris argued Global success stories like Malaysias Cyberjaya make it clear that digital hubsare the product of a catalytic movement where investors and digitalcompanies grow to a critical mass. For this to happen, all keystakeholders need to come together in a cohesive move. Otherwise, theres only dispersion.

In essence, local ITeducation providers need to develop industry-ready graduates.Colombo-based IT companies need to move past perceptions andseriously investigate the viability of setting up in the North. Membersof the diaspora need to be engaged to create targeted flows offunding and technology transfer. Northern start-up accelerators needto cultivate the funds and partnerships necessary to foster newentrants. The Government needs to collaborate with externalfunding agencies, private-sector players, non-profit organizationsand other investors to further develop the infrastructure andincentives for a digital hub.

Above all, the movement needs to be communicated to the masses. In that sense, this report comes at a critical juncture. As Mano Sekaram, CEO and Co-Founder of 99X Technology pointed out, For a long time, the biggest drawback weve faced as investors and stakeholders is the absence of a bankable document to promote Jaffna as an IT hub - this report is a step in the right direction and an important conversation starter.

STAX, Sri Lankas leading management consulting firm, has its headquarters in Boston, and branch offices across Chicago, New York, Colombo and Singapore. With a rich client base comprising 30+ local conglomerates and family businesses, 15 of the top 20 global investors and 25+ Fortune 500 companies, Stax prides itself on being a full service consulting firmfrom strategy to implementation. If you are looking for a nimble, collaborative, and highly focused firm dedicated to finding implementable solutions, we invite you to find out more at www.stax.com

MDF isAustralias flagship private sector development programme. It stimulates investment, business innovation and regulatory reform to create additional jobs and increase income for poor women and men in rural and urban areas in the Indo-Pacific region.
Some 999 terror suspects from 40 nationalities, including one from Sri Lanka, detained in Saudi Arabia's intelligence prisons, according to Nafidha, the Interior Ministry's window for communications between the suspects and their relatives.

The new list of suspects, who for arrested for their involvement in terrorist activities and national security issues, included three Canadians as well as a number of nationals from countries that had not on the list previously, the Saudi Gazette reported.

The new countries that found their place on the list are China, Eritrea, Russia, Sri Lanka, Oman, Kyrgyzstan and Kenya.

According to the window, there are eight suspects from Afghanistan, four from Ethiopia, one each from Eritrea, Oman, Kyrgyzstan, Djibouti, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Libya and Mauritania, 22 from Jordan, two each from the United Arab Emirates, Mali, Myanmar and Algeria, 10 from Bahrain, 33 from Sudan, four from Somalia, two from China, four from Iraq, 16 from the Philippines, two each from Kuwait, Bangladesh and Morocco, 19 from India and five from the United States.

The window said there are 365 Yemenis, the largest community on the list of suspects, 10 from Iran, 70 from Pakistan, 19 from Turkey, 17 from Chad, four from Russia, 221 from Syria, 20 from Palestine, three each from Qatar and Canada, four from Lebanon, 87 from Egypt and five from Nigeria.

A number of suspects were already tried and are serving their prison terms while others are under investigation.
The Senate of the Peradeniya University had decided to re-open the Medical, Dental and Agriculture Faculties, which had been closed for over fifteen days, sources said yesterday.

The Faculties will open on Monday, August 13, for academic activities.

A senior spokesman said that the re-opening days would be declared by the Deans of other faculties in due course and Arts and Management Faculties were scheduled to be re-opened on Monday, August 20.

The Senate closed the University since July 27 until further notice due to a clash between students and the management.

The undergraduates of the Engineering Faculty should show an attendance of 80% as part of the degree programme. (Nadeeka Daya Bandara)
Sanjiv Alles, Director,Saberion; Shan Nanayakara, General Manager, Bureau Veritas Lanka; Mufaddal Lukmanjee, Director, Saberion; and Gayan Balachandra, Manager, Sales and Marketing, Bureau Veritas Lanka

Saberion (Pvt) Limited, a leading local technology services provider specializing in bespoke web and mobile software development and cloud infrastructure solutions, announced that effective 9 July 2018, the organization was certified to be compliant with the stringent ISO 9001:2015 standards for Development and Architecture of Web and Mobile Applications, Workflow Management Systems and Cloud Infrastructure. The ISO audit found zero non-conformances at the Saberion facilities in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The certificate was presented to Saberion by officials from Bureau Veritas Certification Holdings SAS  UK.

ISO 9001:2015 compliance recognises Saberions adherence to the highest standards and processes in solution development and delivery whichmeet the discerning needs of a global client base.

"We are delighted to announce this newest complianceto ISO 9001:2015, it reflects the importance we attach to quality in process and development at Saberion," said Mufaddal Lukmanjee, Director/Co-Founder of Saberion (Pvt) Limited. "By continual investment in bettering our offering, we ensure that Saberion is a world class organization that can match the highest international standards across all our operations."

Sanjiv Alles, Director/Co-Founder of Saberion further elaborated "We are honored to be the first dedicated software and cloud infrastructure provider that meets the stringent standards under this prestigious certification. We believe that in adhering to such standards, our processes will remain consistent, managed efficiently and effectively, and continually assessed for improvement. We have always focused on quality service and customer care, the certification simply underlines that commitment.

Commenting on the association, Shan Nanayakara, General Manager of Bureau Veritas Lanka said: We would like to congratulate the entire team at Saberion (Pvt) Ltd for their collective efforts that have resulted in the company being certified to ISO 9001:2015 international standards. Their achievement will make a positive difference in developing the objectives of the organization.

Being certified to ISO 9001:2015 will not only support Saberion in the continued growth of the company but demonstrates Saberions commitment to meet and exceed customer requirements for quality products and services.
World acclaimed Egyptian economist and Marxist thinker Samir Amin died on Sunday in Paris at age 86.

Amin was born in Egypt in 1931 to an Egyptian father and French mother and spent his youth in Port Said. After studying in Egypt, he went on to receive a diploma in political science in Paris in 1952, before getting a degree in statistics and then a doctorate in economics.

Amin was one of the founders of the Egyptian Communist Party in the 1940s. After his graduation from French universities, he worked among the teaching staff at several French universities and escaped the successive imprisonment campaigns during the Nasserite era of the 1950s and 60s.

He worked first in Cairo at the Institute for Economic Management from 1957 to 1960, then moved between countries before becoming director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal in 1980.

He authored many books including The Liberal Virus (2003), A life Looking Forward )2006), Accumulation on a World Scale (1970) and Capitalism in the age of globalisation (1997).

Amin contributed articles to Al-Ahram Weekly on many occasions during the past three decades. 

In January 2000, he wrote that the 21st century will not be America's century. It will be one of vast conflicts and the rise of social struggles that question the disproportionate ambition of Washington." 

In an interview with Ahram Online in 2012, Amin said that he believes that "this neo-liberal phase is in a state of collapse. It doesn't mean that capitalism is collapsing; but that its current form is collapsing and we're entering a new phase. It has to adapt, and whether the new system will be biased to the ruling class or the masses is still be revealed."

He also said that "we should not just look at the Muslim Brotherhood as a political Islamist power, but as a backward movement that rejects workers movements and social justice, preferring to talk about charity as a form of ensuring their control over the people. The Islamists accept the policies of dependency under the guise of open market and private ownership rights; they openly accepted the American role in the region and the US support for Israel, including the Camp David agreements."

Here are some of Amins articles and interviews with Ahram Online and Al-Ahram Weekly, which we publish in tribute to the prominent thinkers contributions to helping us understand the world. 

Not a happy ending

Globalisation and the market were celebrated as "the end of history" at the beginning of this [20th] century, just as they are being celebrated today, at its conclusion. This is not a case of history repeating itself, however, and capitalism's contradictions are sharper today than ever before, Amin writes.

Democracy against hegemony

The weapon against the US' global strategy is a process of globalisation which must be at once multipolar, democratic (at least potentially), and negotiated. The margin of autonomy that this allows is the only means of correctly addressing fundamental social problems, which differ due to the unequal development of markets, and is by the same token the condition for democracy to take root seriously, since it gives a better chance to demilitarisation, security and peace, writes Amin.

Confronting the empire

The present crisis [in Iraq] has demonstrated the ambitions of the United States  nothing short of bringing the entire planet under its military control, writes Amin.

Interview: Marxist thinker Samir Amin discusses demise of capitalism

Amin spoke to Ahram Online about how capitalism developed over the years and how today's world, Egypt included, is witnessing the "autumn of capitalism."

Samir Amin talks to Ahram Online on future of Egypts revolution

Speaking to Ahram Online, Amin analyses why uprisings broke out in the Arab world in 2011 and what developments await.

Book Review: A Marxist perspective for the January revolution

Amin explores in his new book a way forward for Egypt based on a "non-alignment movement" similar to that which existed in the Cold War era.

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A high-profile diplomatic spat has arisen between Saudi Arabia and Canada as a result of Canada expressing grave concern over the crackdown by Saudi authorities of human rights activists.



Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, de facto ruler in Riyadh, has recently been implementing a delicate reform process. While paving the way for social and economic reforms such as the removal of the ban on women driving vehicles and abolishing the male guardianship system, no plans are afoot to permit political activities in the kingdom.



The recent arrests of dissidents indicate, that his priority is to manage the politics around the reform process rather than public relations. Salman has warned Saudi women to refrain from abusing their newly granted freedom.



Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland recently tweeted in Foreign Policy Canada twitter page; Canada is gravely concerned about additional arrests of civil society and womens rights activists in Saudi Arabia, including Samar Badawi. We urge the Saudi authorities to release them and all other peaceful human rights activists immediately.

The Saudi Education Ministry announced that it will be arranging the relocation of over 15,000 Saudi graduate students currently studying in Canadain universities outside of Canada. Saudi patients receiving treatment in Canadian hospitals are to be moved to hospitals in other countries



The tweet referred to the arrest of several womens rights activists, including most recently of Samar Badawi, a Canadian citizen whose brother, Raif Badawi, had already been jailed in the country.These sentiments were retweeted by the Canadian Embassy in Riyadh.



The Saudi response was swift.The Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed those arrested were lawfully detained, and accused Canada of blatant interference in the Kingdoms domestic affairs. It called the Canadian move an unacceptable affront and a violation of the Kingdoms sovereignty and ordered the Canadian Ambassador out of Saudi Arabia within 24 hours.It also recalled its own Ambassador in Canada.



Several other measures were implemented to send a clear and unmistakable message to Canada and other nations who have been critical of Saudi Arabia. It froze trade relations with Canada and suspended all new trade and investments.The Saudi Education Ministry announced that it will be arranging the relocation of over 15,000 Saudi graduate students currently studying in Canadain universities outside of Canada. Saudi patients receiving treatment in Canadian hospitals are to be moved to hospitals in other countries. Saudi Arabian national carrier Saudia has announced the suspension of its flights to and from Toronto. The suspension of Saudia flights came as a shock for hundreds of Canadian Muslims booked to travel to Saudi Arabia to celebrate Eid-Al-Adha.



A Saudi Foreign Ministry tweet stated; The kingdom of Saudi Arabia ... will not accept interference in its internal affairs or imposed diktats from any country. The Canadian position is an overt and blatant interference in the internal affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and is in contravention of the most basic international norms and all the charters governing relations between states.



Canadas response to Saudi measures, communicated by Foreign Minister Freeland, stated: Canada will always stand up for the protection of human rights, very much including womens rights, and freedom of expression around the world. She further said. Our government will never hesitate to promote these values and believes that this dialogue is critical to international diplomacy.



Despite Canadas defense of human rights, it faces criticism over the USD 12 billion light armoured military vehicles deal signed by the previous Conservative government. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, once in office claimed his government was bound by the deal. Canada and other western crusaders rarely permit human rights issues to interfere with lucrative trade deals.



As the dispute deepens, Trudeau when asked if offering an apology to Saudi Arabia something he would consider responded, Canadians have always expected our government to speak strongly, firmly, clearly and, politely about the need to respect human rights at home and around the world. We will continue to do that.

At the other end, Saudi Foreign Minister Abdel al-Jubeir insisted, the issue was not one for mediation. He stated, There is nothing to mediate. Canada made a mistake and must fix it.

The suspension of Saudia flights came as a shock for hundreds of Canadian Muslims booked to travel to Saudi Arabia to celebrate Eid-Al-Adha



Bi-lateral merchandise trade between the two countries in 2017 amounted to USD 4 billion with a USD 1.2 billion positive balance in Saudi Arabias favour. Both Canada and Saudi Arabia are not in the top trading partners category of each other, and its disruption would not cause severe damage to either of the economies.

However, Saudi Arabias choice in selecting Canada, a mid-level trading partner to send a clear warning to members of the international community is significant.

Saudi Arabia may have appreciated a more subdued approach by Canada in the form of expressing its concerns through a ministerial visit. However, Canada opting for the use of Twitter, a type of megaphone diplomacy, was apparently not acceptable to the Saudis.



The strong response to the Canadian tweet is believed to have the support of most Saudis and will go a long way to placate feelings of those perturbed over Salmans lack of criticism of Israels aggression against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during the recent months.



It is reliably understood, that Canada has approached several close allies for assistance to cool down Saudi Arabias outrage.



Even though the US government initially called on both countries to settle their dispute amicably, in a subsequent press briefing, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert stated it is up to Canada and Saudi Arabia to resolve their differences. We cant do it for them.



The current status of US-Canada relations may have even encouraged Saudi Arabia to take its current course of action.



It is noteworthy, that not a single western European ally of Canada has spoken on its behalf and come to its defence. The deafening silence, especially from the likes of the British (also known to bring about Resolutions at the UNHRC against some countries for human rights violations), French and Germans is the clearest of signs, the Saudi warning has been taken seriously and none of these countries will act in a manner detrimental to their lucrative trade deals with Saudi Arabia.



On the other hand, UAE, Bahrain,Comoros, Djibouti,Egypt, Mauritania and Palestinian Authority have all expressed solidarity with Saudi Arabia and endorsed the Saudi position.

Not a single western European ally of Canada has spoken on its behalf and come to its defence. The deafening silence, especially from the likes of the British (also known to bring about Resolutions at the UNHRC against some countries for human rights violations), French and Germans is the clearest of signs, the Saudi warning has been taken seriously



It may be recalled, that former Canadian High Commissioner in Colombo Shelly Whiting, in 2014 boycotted the annual Victory Day Parade held in Matara on May 18. Rather than declining the invitation which was her right, she went public issuing an unwarranted statement. After advising Sri Lanka to retire its annual Victory Day Parade, she ventured to lecture the government on how to handle reconciliation before concluding, I will not be in Matara.



The then government, in its infinite wisdom, ignored the whole episode. It failed to adopt any of the measures available in the conduct of diplomacy to indicate displeasure, without being confrontational.



Saudi Arabia is not Sri Lanka.



In Saudi Arabia, Canada may have met its match!
Sri Lanka is currently facing a foreign currency issue and needs to go for an export-driven economy, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said today.

Mr. Wickremesinghe expressed this sentiment during the opening of greater Kurunegala water supply and sewerage project this evening.

The country was facing a debt service issue when we took over and the nations revenue was not sufficient to settle the debts. However, we have managed to reduce the debt service to 70 per cent of our revenue. We have also been able to increase state revenue by ten per cent. However the country is short of US dollars, the Prime Minister said.

However, the Prime Minister assured that the troubled times are ending and the countrys economy would be stable from next year.

The Prime Minister, therefore, said the countrys economy should be converted into an export-driven one.  We will have to get more investments in order to increase our exports, he said while highlighting that vast development projects will take place from Hambantota to Kandy via Kurunegala.

He said Kurunegala will benefit from the Central Highway project which is already underway. He said phase one of the project was handed over to China while the second phase was given to Sri Lankan firms. The Third phase will be done by a Chinese Company and the final phase in India.

In addition, he said Enterprise Sri Lanka and Gam Peraliya programmes will help economic situation of rural folk.

Minister of Water Management and Town Planning Rauff Hakeem said the second phase of the Greater Kurunegala water supply and sewerage project would be funded by Indian Export Bank. He said the cabinet has approved this funding. He said Kandy, Kuliyapitiya water projects and Negombo, Galle, Batticaloa and Kalmunei swearage projects will be launched soon.

Secretary Economic and Commere Affairs Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka Yang Zuoyvan said Sri Lanka could benefit from Slik Raod and One Belt One Raod concept of China. He said Chinese companies are keen to invest in Sri Lanka and assist in its infrastructure facilities development. Chinese companies are committed to quality and preservation of the environment. Focusing on Grater Kurunegala water supply and Sewerage project he said 30,000 cubic meters of rock had to be removed to lay pipelines under the project. (Yohan Perera in Kurunegala)
The State-controlled telecommunication behemoth, Sri Lanka Telecom PLC (SLT) reported strong growth during quarter ended June 30, 2018 (2Q18), as the group witnessed pick up in revenues in its fixed telephony and data operations.



The quarterly performance was further bolstered by the strong top line performance of the groups mobile telephone services subsidiary.



SLT reported earnings of 92 cents a share or Rs.1.7 billion for the quarter under review compared to earnings of 58 cents a share or Rs.1.09 billion reported for the same quarter, last year, which is a strong 58 percent increase year-on-year (YoY)



SLT operates with eight subsidiary companies, including Mobitel Private Limited.



But over Rs.700 million of the group profit came from the holding companySLT and its revenue was just under Rs.12 billion.

The group revenue for the quarter under review stood at Rs.19.7 billion, up a billion rupees from the same quarter, last year.



SLT group saw its bottom line falling 19 percent year-on-year (YoY) to Rs.1.18 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2018 (1Q18) due to loss of revenue and business from its fixed ICT services amid heightened competition.



The modern phenomenon of people spending majority of their time on their smart phones appears to have propelled SLTs performance during the quarter under review and the operating efficiencies as claimed by the company.



The group reported operating profit of Rs.1.6 billion, up from Rs.1.2 billion reported for the same period, last year.



SLTs the top line performance was supported by the groups fixed ICT operations and mobile services which offers voice, broadband, enterprise solutions, wholesale and pay TV services.



Meanwhile, for the first six months of the year, SLT reported a net profit of Rs.2.8 billion or per share earnings of Rs.1.57, up from Rs.2.5 billion or Rs.1.39 a share reported for the same period, last year.



The group revenues were up by about two billion rupees to Rs.39.5 billion. Operating profit stood at Rs.3.1 billion, up from Rs.2.8 billion.



During the period under review the group invested Rs.10.8 billion for the acquisition of property, plant and equipment as well as intangible assets aimed at technology upgrades, infrastructure expansions, new connections, IT and system upgrades etc.



In line with increasing investments the group depreciation increased by 10.2 percent to Rs. 9.1 billion, the company said in a statement.



The group raised a staggering Rs.18.9 billion in fresh borrowings but settled Rs.10.2 billion in existing loans.



A segmental breakdown of business operations showed Mobitel Private Limited increasing revenues from Rs.16.6 billion to Rs.17.8 billion for the six months. But the pre-tax profit of the segment fell to Rs.2.12 billion from Rs.2.22 billion reported for the same period, last year.



As at June 30, 2018 the government through the National Treasury held 49.50 percent stake in SLT while Global Telecommunications Holdings NV, a unit of Malaysias Maxis group backed by billionaire Ananda Krishnan held 44.98 percent stake.



The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) had a 1.40 percent stake, being the third largest shareholder.

HC dismisses Rs.7.8bn damages claim from SLT

By S.S. Selvanayagam

The Colombo High Court upheld the preliminary objection raised by defendant Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) and dismissed the claim of Rs.7.8 billion claim made by plaintiff Dialog Broadband Network (Pvt) Ltd. (DBN) as a cause of action accrued to the plaintiff.

High Court judge Ratnapriya Gurusinghe delivered this order with regard to the litigation initiated by DBN against SLT.



DBN filed action on July 18, 2017 seeking relief against the defendant SLT.



The plaintiff sought an order from the court that SLTs acquisition of DBNs Request for Proposals (RFP) was a dishonest commercial practice constituting an act of unfair competition.



It sought the court to order defendant SLT to disclose the source/person from which/whom the confidential RFP was acquired from and to furnish the original of RFP to the court.



The case was earlier supported ex-parte and court granted the reliefs aforementioned.



On August 9, 2017, SLT made an application to revoke the said reliefs, which were granted ex-parte.



DBN filed its objections to the application made by SLT and in turn SLT filed its counter objections.



The case was taken up for inquiry on May 16, 2018 and Presidents Counsel S.A. Parthalingam, who appeared for the defendant SLT, took up a preliminary objection that this action has been filed by the wrong party.



Presidents Counsel Dr. K. Kanag Ishwaran, who appeared for plaintiff DBN objected to the preliminary objection and submitted that the preliminary objection was not on a pure question of law and that a preliminary objection cannot be raised at the present stage of litigation.



He further contended that issues, preliminary or otherwise may only be determined at the pre-trial hearing and that until an answer/replication has been filed by defendant SLT.



Counsel Parathalingam for the defendant SLT maintained that RFP was not issued and/or floated by defendant SLT and therefore plaintiff DBNs action is to be dismissed in limine.



He further submitted that the captioned name of the plaintiff Dialog Broadband Network (Pvt) Ltd. does not appear anywhere in the RFP document annexed to the plaint and that the term Dialog in the said RFP document refers to Dialog Axiata PLC and not Dialog Broadband Network (Pvt) Ltd.



He also brought to the cognizance that the said RFP document states that the receipt and/or response to the RFP should be communicated to Dialog Axiata PLC and not to Dialog Broadband Network (Pvt) Ltd.



The contract for supply, delivery, installation, testing, commissioning, integration, training and maintenance of Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON) active solution accompanying the RFP identifies the parties to such contract as Dialog Axiata PLC and the successful bidder, he submitted.



The said RFP document states that all documents and correspondence shall be addressed to Director/Group Chief Executive, Dialog Axiata PLC, No.475, Union Place, Colombo 02 and not of Dialog Broadband Network (Pvt) Ltd, he pointed out.



The Performance Bond format in the schedule of the contract, which stipulates that such is to be issued in favour of Dialog Axiata PLC and not Dialog Broadband Network (Pvt) Ltd, he said.



After having heard the submissions, the High Court judge dismissed the action of the plaintiff Dialog Broadband Network (Pvt) Ltd.s action that claimed Rs.7.8 Billion damages from defendant SLT in limine and held that the RFP document was issued by Dialog Axiata PLC and not by Dialog Broadband Network (Pvt) Ltd.



Dr. Kanag Iswaran PC with Lakshmanan Jeyakumar instructed by F.J & G De Saram appeared for plaintiff DBN.



S.A.Parthalingam PC with Chanaka de Silva, Niranjan Arulpragasam and Sachinda Kahandage instructed by G.G.Arulpragasam appeared for defendant SLT.
There are pillars of a society and there are the even stronger yet unseen foundations of a society. And that is how I think of my good friend Somesasunthary Krishnakumar (January 17, 1956  August 6, 2018). She was scathingly critical of Jaffna society, but was deeply committed to rebuilding it. Somes was a woman whose heart reached out to deprived and suffering women. A lecturer to many university students over the decades, a dissenter who lived through the war in Jaffna, a mother of five children and a supportive partner of her husband Krishnakumar.



Somes belonged to the first batch of the Jaffna University in the mid-1970s. I remember her from my childhood as she was one of my fathers favourite students. That educational relationship with my father for decades, continued into many discussions between Somes and myself, and more recently with her daughters pursuing post-graduate education. During a formal meeting earlier this year, she introduced herself, as lecturer at the Jaffna University, and that she liked to proudly identify herself as someone who studied with intellectuals like K. Kailasapathy, K. Indrapala and S. Kadirgamar. Somes carried that tradition of commitment to education and intellectual engagement through the difficult war-times in Jaffna.



While I remember Somes as a child growing up in Jaffna, I reconnected with her after almost two decades, when I went on a short visit to Jaffna during the ceasefire period in 2002. I wanted to meet my fathers colleague and literary critic A. J. Canagaratna, who for almost two decades before he passed away in 2006 lived with Somes and her family. That is when I realised, that even as there was an exodus of Tamil intellectuals during the war, it was people like Somes and Krishnakumar, who kept a quiet but dissenting circle alive amidst a climate of fear and repression.



For the many meetings and discussions over the years relating to issues such as the legacy of the anti-caste struggles, on Tamil-Muslim relations and the socio-economic challenges facing Jaffna, Somes would without fail come on the back of the scooter driven by Krishnakumar. The two of them, known for their impeccable intellectual honesty, would make their points softly but forcefully. Somes wide understanding of the historical and sociological make up of Tamil society, would dispel many of the myths that underlie the conservative and nationalist discourse prevalent in Jaffna.

With decades of experience of living through troubled times, she would caution against any quick moves to change society



Somes politics was both personal and public. For Somes, the most important aspect of the years after the war she would say, was that women like her did not have to worry about children being forcefully recruited into the war. Sometimes the only woman present in a discussion, when women were put down by a conservative proponent, she would shoot back with piercing questions. At the same time, with decades of experience of living through troubled times, she would caution against any quick moves to change society. Her approach was to step by step build the political space to have critical discussions and build a society that can again find the path of compassion and progressive aspirations.



As her life became difficult with the onslaught of cancer, she fought it with courage despite tremendous pain. During our last meeting, a couple of months before she passed away, when she knew the end was near, she said with conviction and determination that she had no regrets about her life, and that she had lived it fully. Even at that moment, she wanted me to meet with a young woman, a friend of her twin daughters, who was interested in pursuing research. Her heart and mind fought hard to the end, never giving up on the personal and social challenges in life. For many of us who have learned so much from her, depended on her work and solidarity, and been nurtured by her warmth and smile, she leaves behind a void that cannot be filled.
Uva Provincial Council Member of the JVP Samantha Vidyaratne shares his thoughts on future politics of his party and the struggle spearheaded by it.

Excerpts

Q You raised a lot of noise against the Uma Oya project. You, in fact, fielded a separate independent group representing the affected people to contest the local Government elections. It failed. Now, you are quite silent on the project. Why is that?



It is a project with disastrous consequences on multiple fronts once implemented. Now, there are some structural changes introduced in the execution of the project. There is a mechanism to give relief to the affected people. We carried out protest rallies at grassroots level. We brought the struggle to the notice of the President. We took legal action. We got the project suspended on three different occasions. Of course, we wanted the Government to terminate the project. It could not be done, though. But, we forced the Government to take measures for the mitigation of damage caused in the execution of the project. Based on advice from the Norwegian expert whom the Government consulted, they altered the route of the underground canal. Plastering on the canal wall was also altered. There are certain changes to machinery used in dredging the tunnel. Machinery is changed in keeping with the soil condition. They have slowed the pace of construction. With the introduction of the latest technology, damage has been minimized. This is a project that violates human rights. People were denied access to drinking water, their livelihood.

Those who took the lead in the peoples struggle were fielded for the elections as an independent group. They did not succeed. People again got carried away by traditional political rhetoric. Those who led the struggle are now scattered a bit. Some are with us. It is a bit difficult for us to unite them all. At one point, people will be forced to team up with us again.



This is a project that spells doom. Further doom will fall once the project is completed.



Q The JVP which you represent suffered a setback all over the country at the last elections. What is the reason?



Instead of calling it a setback, I would say the JVP could not perform to the extent expected by all including us. We also expected a better performance than this. Society also did the same. Yet, we did not reach the expected level at the election. Peoples political decisions are shaped by the prevailing circumstances. It does not happen in the way we think only. Our peoples literacy rate is good. Yet, we are still poor at political wisdom. Those who advocate racism can still make headway in politics. It is easy to capture power by cashing in on religious and racial sentiments of people. That is backward thinking. So, it is an arduous task for us to reach our political targets.

We will tie up with anyone accepting these policies. We want citizens to join us. Suppose, there is an intellectual working for Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa



Q In our country, we see some parties driven by populism and adaptable to public sentiments. There are some other political forces trying to stick to their ideologies without adaptation to public sentiments. What does your party advocate?



Our society has a specific need. We are driven by it.



Q What is that need in your view?



You referred to two matters. One is politics based on populism. The other is to convince people to embrace the ideologies followed by the party concerned. In our case, we have a vision to be achieved. We want to lead society in that direction. We do not believe in giving inducements for vote catching. We have our own vision on economy, environment and communal harmony. We have painted our vision and translated it into policies. Today, the country pays dearly for following popular politics since Independence. The economy is in ruins. Racism and religious fanaticism have raised their head. Moral values of people have eroded. We need to work out a mechanism that can find solutions to all these social and economic ills.



The traditional political party system cannot address it. There are people who love and care for the country. May be they are not affiliated to any party. During the last elections, we witnessed how some civil society movements became so influential even challenging the status of political parties. In addition to the political parties, these civil forces played a pivotal role in unseating the Rajapaksa rule. We believe that such forces have a role to play in building the country. Casting aside traditional politics, we thought of forming a broad front that comprised such personage. We need to include those who are honest, dignified and anti-corrupt. That is the path for us.



Q Are you referring to the civil society organizations such as the National Movement for Social Justice that campaigned for good governance at the last 2015 Presidential Election?



There are civil persons and organizations having links with the political parties. We do not intend to tie up with them. We will formulate policies. We will tie up with anyone accepting these policies. We want citizens to join us. Suppose, there is an intellectual working for Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa. If he is ready to join us accepting our policies, we will welcome him.



QThe JVP cherished certain policies since its inception in 1956. But, the JVP still occupies a distant third position in national and local politics. How do you intend to change the long- standing policies of the party in the new political journey?



Only the media have ranked the political forces in this manner. According to our interpretation, there are only two forces. The United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), in our view, are on the same footing when it comes to their economic policies.



They use racism and religious fanaticism as and when required for their political ends. They represent the capitalist class. We, in the left, are the only alternative force. In that sense, there are two political camps in the country. The world is also going through a crisis. Capitalism has no solution to peoples issues. There are acute problems in the world.



People are warring against each other. There are multinational companies exploiting people. The drug menace is out of control. It means the world is in a quandary being unable to solve problems. The present system has caused enormous damage to the environment. We need an alternative.

That is a system ensuring equality to all mankind and meting out justice to all beings. Capitalism cannot find solutions to it. We advocate socialism



Q Does it mean that the JVP still believes in Socialism as the only means?



Yes, it is clear. We need to change the social system. Yet, there is a global reality today. Taking it into account only, we can proceed. So, we cannot look back to the 1917 communist model, Chinese system, Cuban model etc. Ours is not like that.



We need social revolution that is in line with the current global trends and needs. That is a system ensuring equality to all mankind and meting out justice to all beings. Capitalism cannot find solutions to it. We advocate socialism.



Q Is the proposed JVP-led front capable of achieving it?



There are social ills. We need to evolve a system that can cure all these ills permanently. For that to happen, we have to win over people. We need to do what is best at this juncture. The formation of this front is one such step forward.



Q In Capitalism, there is market-driven manufacturing. Yet, in Socialism, it is driven by social needs, not profit. Today, only the marketdriven model is followed all over the world. What is the policy of your political front that is in the making?



We are working out our policies at the moment. It is not appropriate for me to spell out the policies now. It is in the process. Society needs to move forward. It cannot remain stagnant. We need scientific innovation. Innovation in the world today is not used solely for the common good of people. Though it is said that everything is done to keep society happy, it is not the case. Society is not happy as a whole eventually. May be, people enjoy the luxury of having quality garments, vehicles etc. But, most people are not happy.

The world is also going through a crisis. Capitalism has no solution to peoples issues. There are acute problems in the world



Q Your party has moved to introduce the 20th Amendment to the Constitution. How is it linked with the policies of the new political front?



If we form a Government, the present constitution will undergo drastic changes. Yet, the 20th Amendment is todays requirement. A total revision of the constitution is impossible now. We brought the 20th Amendment to change a system that is sine-qua-non in todays context. All the past leaders pledged to abolish the executive

presidential system.



Q There is criticism that the JVP is doing this at the behest of the UNP. What is your response?



We have to ask as to why these critics are opposed to the 20th Amendment. If they criticize us as being the cats paw of the UNP in this regard, they virtually admit that the UNP would come to power next time. We do not believe in it, though. In 1994, former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga promised to abolish the Executive Presidency. Did she act in favour of the UNP then?



Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa also did the same in 2005. Does it mean that Mr Rajapaksa wanted to do a favour for the UNP? These critics see the 20th Amendment as a barrier for a person in their mind to become the President. They pin hopes on someone to become the President. As things stand at the moment, those who are in the Rajapaksa camp are opposed to their dream President.



Q Yet, it became obvious that the JVP acted in the interests of the UNP in the enactment of legislation to postpone the provincial council elections. Actually, the UNP benefited from it finally. How do you respond?



We do not act for the benefits of the UNP or the President. Those who criticize us see us as an impediment to them in upholding their political cause. We are only concerned about the public benefits. There is criticism on the current electoral system. It is a distorted system that enables only moneyed candidates to win elections.

We never intended to postpone elections. In fact, we supported the enactment of that piece of legislation on condition that the electoral system would be changed within the stipulated time to conduct polls. The Government only broke that promise. Now, we have to struggle for early elections.



Q The political complexion of the JVP was nationalism at one time. The JVP stood for the development of local industries. The party also agitated against foreign interference. Also, the JVP played a role in the war against separatism. Now, there is a school of thought that the JVP is heading for neo-liberal policies. What is your view?



There is an attempt to create a public opinion to that effect in some circles. The JVP has not deviated from its founding ideals.We strive for Socialism. Yet, we have to take into account the present ground realities in pursuing our target. Unless we adapt ourselves to the changing circumstances, we will become a political force that is extinct.

They use racism and religious fanaticism as and when required for their political ends. They represent the capitalist class. We, in the left, are the only alternative force. In that sense, there are two political camps in the country



Q What about nationalism you once advocated?



When armed separatism was at its height, we appeared to be a force of nationalism in clear-cut terms. We had to take certain action as the situation demanded. We eliminated terrorism.



Now, we have to win over people in the north. We indulged in the anti-imperialist struggle. We do it even today. Nationalism is raising its head globally. We foresaw this trend. At one point, the world will be globalized under a communist system in the future.



Q There is an allegation that your leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake has become a stooge of the UNP. What is your view?



All our past leaders faced such criticism. We have not become the cats paw of any political party. The group that criticizes us in this regard has links with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Maithripala Sirisena. That is to cover up their cases.
Tunisia's president on Monday proposed giving women equal inheritance rights despite protests from thousands of people objecting to any challenge to Islamic law.

The North African Muslim country, which toppled autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, grants women more rights than other countries in the region, and since last year has allowed Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men.

But in a show how divided society remains, thousands demonstrated on Saturday in front of parliament against any changes to inheritance rules.

The current system is based on Islamic law which typically allows men to inherit double what a woman would receive.

"I propose equality inheritance to become law," President Beji Caid Essebsi said in a speech.

But in the face of the opposition from conservatives, he left the door open for some exceptions, saying families who wished to continue the allocation based on Islamic law would be able to do so.

Parliament now needs to decide on a bill.

They had agreed in 2014 on a constitution granting far-reaching political rights, limiting the role of religion and holding free elections, which stands out in a region often run by autocrats.

But one of the few areas where the Islamists have resisted change is the inheritance law.

To break the standoff Essebsi, a secular politician, had in August 2017 set up a committee to draft proposals to advance womens rights, winning praise from secular-minded women.

While Tunisia has been hailed as the only "Arab spring" success story economic growth has been disappointing, however, with high unemployment driving many young Tunisians abroad who had joined the uprising.

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Italy on Monday denied safe harbour to the 141 people rescued by the humanitarian ship Aquarius off the coast of Libya last week, setting up another stand-off with European Union allies over who would take them in.

The Aquarius, run by Franco-German charity SOS Mediterranee and Doctors without Borders (MSF), picked up the people in two separate operations and is now in international waters between Italy and Malta.

Malta said it had no legal obligation to berth the ship while Spain said its ports were not the safest destination for the vessel.

More than 650,000 migrants have come to Italy's shores since 2014, prompting Rome to accuse its EU peers of not sharing the burden of caring for those who arrive on the bloc's southern border.

The Aquarius spent nine days at sea in June after Italy's new populist government took office and shut its ports to all humanitarian boats, calling them a "taxi service" and accusing them of helping people smugglers  charges the charities deny.

"It can go where it wants, not in Italy!" far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said of the Aquarius on Twitter on Monday, mentioning France, Germany, Britain or Malta as destinations.

"Stop human traffickers and their accomplices," he wrote.

Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli, who oversees ports and the coast guard, said the ship's flag country, which is Gibraltar, should take responsibility.

"At this point, the United Kingdom should assume its responsibility to safeguard the castaways," Toninelli said on Twitter.

The British foreign office was not immediately available for comment.

The European Commission was in touch with several EU states and trying to help resolve the "incident" with the Aquarius, a spokesman in Brussels said. She added that while Britain could theoretically be considered as a destination port, it was not practically feasible to bring the ship there.

Malta rejected any suggestion the Aquarius should dock in its ports, saying the latest rescue was made closer to Libya, Tunisia and Italy than to its own shores.

"Malta was neither the coordinating nor the competent authority ... and therefore has no legal obligation to make the arrangements to provide for a place of safety. The requests for the vessel to enter our ports are unwarranted and without legal standing," it said in a statement.

Earlier on Monday, Malta's armed forces rescued 114 migrants from a rubber dinghy taking on water 53 nautical miles south of Malta and brought them back to the Mediterranean island.

In June, the Aquarius ended up taking some 630 migrants to Spain, which welcomed it. But on Monday, Madrid did not repeat its offer, with a government spokeswoman saying: "At the moment, Spain is not the safest port because it is not the nearest one" for Aquarius to dock.

The Aquarius' search and rescue coordinator Nick Romaniuk said some migrants on board were sick and wounded and "need to be disembarked as soon as possible" for proper medical care.

Due to pressure from Italy and Malta, most charity ships are no longer patrolling off the coast of Libya.

Though departures from Libya have fallen dramatically this year, people smugglers are still pushing some boats out to sea and an estimated 720 people died in June and July when charity ships were mainly absent, Amnesty International estimates.

Protracted feuds between EU states over how to handle immigrants have thrown the issue back onto the European agenda. That is despite overall Mediterranean arrivals having dropped sharply since the 2015 peak when a million people arrived.

EU border agency Frontex said on Monday it counted 73,500 "irregular border crossings" into the bloc so far this year via the sea and the Western Balkans route, more than 40 percent fewer than in the first seven months of 2017.

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Egypt and China signed a $45 million grant to implement the new satellite "Egypt Sat 2'' on Monday, according to an official statement by the Ministry of Investment and International Cooperation.

The agreement was signed by Sahar Nasr, Egypt's minister of investment and international cooperation, and the Chinese ambassador to Egypt, Song Aiguo.

Nasr spoke of the agreement as a sign of the good strategic relations between the two countries, while mentioning that the upcoming period will witness cooperation between the Ministry of Investment and International Cooperation and the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.

She also said that "developing the new satellite Egypt SAT-2 for the applications of remote sensing" aims to benefit from Chinese technology and experience, and help further Egypts progress on establishing the Egyptian Space Agency to make Egypt a regional and international centre for science and innovation.

Nasr also praised China for their several projects in Egypt, such as the Fish Collection and Integration Test Center, the Vocational Training Center in the economic area of Suez Canal, the Opera House project in Luxor, and the development of stage one and two online education, in addition to the other 1558 Chinese firms in various sectors.

She also said that she is looking forward to strengthening the relations between both nations and attracting more foreign direct investments (FDI) from China.

Khaled Abd-Elghaffar, Egypt's minister of higher education and scientific research, added that he appreciates Nasr's support for his ministry, and that this agreement is a result of their cooperation.

The project takes Egypt to a higher level in the field of scientific research, since this project will include training of Egyptians in China on remote sensing, Abd-Elghaffar added.

Aiguo said following the inking of the deal that the upcoming period will witness a development in Chinese investments in Egypt, and that hes excited to share Chinas experience and knowledge in manufacturing and operating satellites.

In January 2018, Egypt's president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi ratified a law establishing the country's first Egyptian space agency, aiming to develop and transfer space science and technology into Egypt.

The Egyptian president vowed utmost efforts by the government to advance Egypts status in the field of scientific research and innovation last March.
By Michael Biesecker

10 August 2018

WASHINGTON (AP)  A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration endangered public health by keeping a widely used pesticide on the market despite extensive scientific evidence that even tiny levels of exposure can harm babies brains.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to remove chlorpyrifos from sale in the United States within 60 days.A coalition of farmworkers and environmental groups sued last year after then-EPA chief Scott Pruitt reversed an Obama-era effort to ban chlorpyrifos, which is widely sprayed on citrus fruit, apples and other crops. The attorneys general for several states joined the case against EPA, including California, New York, and Massachusetts.In a split decision, the court said Thursday that Pruitt, a Republican forced to resign earlier this summer amid ethics scandals, violated federal law by ignoring the conclusions of agency scientists that chlorpyrifos is harmful.The panel held that there was no justification for the EPAs decision in its 2017 order to maintain a tolerance for chlorpyrifos in the face of scientific evidence that its residue on food causes neurodevelopmental damage to children, Judge Jed S. Rakoff wrote in the courts opinion.Michael Abboud, spokesman for acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, said the agency was reviewing the decision, but it had been unable to fully evaluate the pesticide using the best available, transparent science.EPA could potentially appeal to the Supreme Court since one member of the three-judge panel dissented from the majority ruling.Environmental groups and public health advocates celebrated the courts action as a major success.Some things are too sacred to play politics with, and our kids top the list, said Erik Olson, senior director of health and food at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The court has made it clear that childrens health must come before powerful polluters. This is a victory for parents everywhere who want to feed their kids fruits and veggies without fear its harming their brains or poisoning communities.The attorneys general of California and New York also claimed victory.This is one more example of how then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt skirted the law and endangered the health of our children  in this case, all because he refused to curb pesticide levels found in food, Attorney General Xavier Becerra of California said in a statement. [more]
By Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Steve Gorman and Sandra Maler

3 August 2018

(Reuters)  The Trump administration has rescinded an Obama-era ban on the use of pesticides linked to declining bee populations and the cultivation of genetically modified crops in dozens of national wildlife refuges where farming is permitted.

Environmentalists, who had sued to bring about the two-year-old ban, said on Friday that lifting the restriction poses a grave threat to pollinating insects and other sensitive creatures relying on toxic-free habitats afforded by wildlife refuges.

Industrial agriculture has no place on refuges dedicated to wildlife conservation and protection of some of the most vital and vulnerable species, said Jenny Keating, federal lands policy analyst for the group Defenders of Wildlife.Limited agricultural activity is authorized on some refuges by law, including cooperative agreements in which farmers are permitted to grow certain crops to produce more food or improve habitat for the wildlife there. The rollback, spelled out in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service memo, ends a policy that had prohibited farmers on refuges from planting biotech crops  such as soybeans and corn  engineered to resist insect pests and weed-controlling herbicides. That policy also had barred the use on wildlife refuges of neonicotinoid pesticides, or neonics, in conjunction with GMO crops. Neonics are a class of insecticides tied by research to declining populations of wild bees and other pollinating insects around the world. Rather than continuing to impose a blanket ban on GMO crops and neonics on refuges, Fish and Wildlife Service Deputy Director Greg Sheehan said in Thursdays memo that decisions about their use would be made on a case-by-case basis. Sheehan said the move was needed to ensure adequate forage for migratory birds, including ducks and geese  favored and hunted by sportsmen on many of the nations refuges. U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose department oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, has made expansion of hunting on public lands a priority for his agency. [more]
Dr. Jeff Masters

8 August 2018

(Weather Underground)  Smoke from the raging fires in California has brought dangerously high levels of fine particulate pollution (PM2.5, particles less than 2.5 microns or 0.0001 inch in diameter) to portions of California, Oregon, and Nevada since late July, and wildfire smoke now covers more than half of the continental U.S. and much of Canada. Much of this smoke is due to the largest fire in California history, the Mendocino Complex, which had burned over 292,000 acres as of August 8, and was just 34% contained. A major amount of smoke has also come from the sixth deadliest fire in California history, the Carr fire, which has killed 7 people and burned over 172,000 acres, and is 47% contained. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, on August 8 there were 107 active large fires in the U.S., which had collectively burned over 1.6 million acres. []On three consecutive days, July 26  28, hourly levels of PM2.5 pollution in Yosemite peaked above a suffocating 400 g/m3, thanks to smoke from the Ferguson fire. On August 3, a personal air pollution sensor made by purpleiar.org recorded even higher levels of PM2.5 at Wawona, on the south side of the park: an insanely high 1044 g/m3. There is no EPA 1-hour standard for PM2.5, but the 24-hour standard is 35 g/m3, and PM2.5 levels in excess of 250 g/m3 maintained for an entire day are considered hazardousthe highest level on the Air Quality Index (AQI) scale. The highest 24-hour PM2.5 levels in Yosemite were 166 g/m3 on July 28, which is solidly in the purple very unhealthy range. At this level, EPA warns to expect Significant aggravation of heart or lung disease and premature mortality in persons with cardiopulmonary disease and the elderly; significant increase in respiratory effects in general population. [more]
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SEATTLE  Concluding a deal announced in June, Pet insurer Trupanion has purchased its Georgetown headquarters building from landlord Benaroya Co. for just under $65 million. King County recorded the sale on Friday.

The property is at 6100 Fourth Ave. S., a little north of South Michigan Street and east of the Duwamish Waterway. The five-story building was developed in 1975. It has 227,200 square feet. The deal was worth about $285 per square foot. Brokers were not announced.





. . .
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RENTON  A warehouse at 3002 Lind Ave. S.W. has sold for $11.3 million, according to King County records. The seller was Lind Ave LLC, which acquired the property in 2016 for almost $5.7 million.

The buyer was LBA-RVI Company WV LLC, which is associated with LBA Realty of Irvine, California.





. . .
The Australian festival will screen Yommeddine and Sheikh Jackson among its roster of international films

Two Egyptian films, Sheikh Jackson and Yommeddine, are being screened at the Melboune International Film Festival in Australia, which runs through19 August.

Yommedine was the first Egyptian directorial debut to be screened in Cannes official competition.

Directed by Abu Bakr Shawky, Yomeddine follows a leper named Beshay who leaves the confines of the Abu Zaabal leper colony for the first time, embarking on a journey across Egypt. In the company of his orphaned apprentice Shika, he goes in search for what remains of his family.

Shawky, who was born in Cairo in 1985, studied political science and filmmaking in Cairo, and graduated from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts graduate film programme.

Written and directed by Amr Salama, and co-written by Omar Khaled, Sheikh Jackson was released in 2017 and premiered at Egypts Gouna Film festival.

Set on the day of Michael Jacksons death in 2009, the film centres on a sheikh who was dubbed Jackson by his friends during his schooldays for his Michael Jackson impressions.

The story goes on to explore the emotions stirred by the pop star's death, sparking a series of existential questions within the sheikh.

Sheikh Jackson also screened at the Carthage Film Festival (JCC), Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF), and the Arab Cinema Week in New York. The Egyptian Cinema Syndicate selected Sheikh Jackson to be Egypt's official submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign-Language Film, though it wasnt nominated for an Oscar.

Both films will be screened twice. The festival includes other films from countries in the Middle East and Africa, including Palestine, Lebanon, Qatar, and Tunisia.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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Drive Brazil's soymeal exports to China with joint ventures, says Chinese diplomat



Brazil could drive the export of processed soymeal to China - the country's top buyer of its raw soybeans - with soy-processing joint ventures formed between Chinese and Brazilian companies, Ou Yuhui, Minister-Counselor in charge of political affairs at the Chinese embassy in Brazil, told Reuters.

According to Qu, Chinese companies usually process soybeans in local plants rather acquiring soymeal directly from Brazil. However, companies will go along with whatever option which offers the best profits.



"If a Chinese and Brazilian company together found a joint venture in Brazil to process soybeans, that is a good choice for both sides' profits," he said. Such joint ventures would also reduce the burden of Brazilian logistic costs.



For now, there are no discussions on whether China will provide Brazil a soymeal quota with a lower import tax.



During the interview, Qu downplayed suggestions that China's recent investments in Brazil is a sign of Chinese aggressiveness in "buying" over the country. Addressing the remarks of a right-wing candidate who will participate in Brazil's upcoming presidential election, Qu said it is hard to understand the root of the candidate's grievances.



Nevertheless, both nations would continue to cooperate on mutual development regardless the outcome of the election, Qu commented, adding that the countries' two-way trade is expected to grow 25% to US$110 billion in the next two to three years.



In addition to booming demand for Brazilian soy and corn, Qu pointed out that growing Chinese consumption will boost trade in fruits, chicken, pork and beef. This is even though China had imposed anti-dumping measures on Brazilian chicken in June.



However, he expressed optimism that the matter would be resolved soon.



- Reuters






US trade tariffs may cause China to consider other markets for meat imports



US trade tariffs, instead of pressuring China to buy American meat, may push the latter to source from other countries.



"When the US prices go so expensive after the duties ... we will source from other origins," said Zhang Lihui, Shanghai manager for global meat company PMI Foods. As a result of China's retaliatory tariffs, US pork and beef are being priced exorbitantly, making it less likely that Chinese importers will continue buying these products from the US, Agence France-Presse reported.



"Like for beef, we will buy more from Australia, we will buy more from South America, and maybe a little bit more from Canada," Zhang added.



Following China's tariffs imposed in July, PMI Foods has stopped bringing in cuts of US pork into China. The company has already ceased importing cuts of US pork meat into China after Beijing's tariffs - imposed last month in response to Trump's initial duties on Chinese goods - drove prices up.



Another Chinese company, Shanghai Xinshangshi International Trade Co. could also get beef and pork from other regions, namely Europe, Australia and South America, according to its general manager Xu Wei. The company brought in US$40 million worth of US beef and pork in 2017 and had planned to raise that to US$100 million this year.



"The gap will be filled very soon," Xu said. "So for the trade war, if we Chinese importers still want to maintain our trade volumes, it would hurt the US suppliers and exporters the most."



Changing trade patterns- a consequence of the US-China tariffs - will benefit other countries at the US's expense, according to Zhang. The Chinese market, she said, will very likely source from "replacements."



Currently, it is difficult to ascertain the overall impact of the tariffs, which have affected multiple sectors, but analysts caution that US exporter will lose much business with China.



The US exported around US$140 million worth of pork, beef and related by-products to China in June, before tariffs kicked in, according to the US Meat Export Federation, about 10% of all US beef and pork exports.



While the tariffs would drastically alter trade, the impact on prices of imports will be largely negligible as "the global trade system is quite flexible," Julian Evans-Pritchard, a China economist with Capital Economics, said. This is because suppliers on both sides will absorb much of the tariff costs themselves to maintain their exports.



That is the case with Lin Zhengu, chef and owner of Shanghai's upscale Stone Sal steak restaurant, which serves mainly high-end American and Australian beef.



Costs of prime US beef cuts are already up 30-40% due to the trade war, Lin said, but he and his US suppliers are absorbing the losses themselves rather than pass them on to customers.



"The only way we will switch to other (non-US) beef is if the gate is totally closed. For now, we still want to work with our suppliers and farms," he said.



- AFP/CNA




US will face greater impacts than China over trade wars



While China can survive the trade war by increasing imports from other countries and adjusting domestic agricultural patterns, US may lose the Chinese markets that its farmers have taken decades to explore, according to a senior official in charge of agriculture.

Despite US President Donald Trump's US$12 billion aid for US farmersand EU agreeing to increase imports of US soybeans, the US farming sector will suffer greatly if it loses the huge Chinese market, Han Jun, deputy head of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Rural Affairs and vice-minister for agriculture and rural affairs, said in an interview.



In the midst of rising tensions, China does not want to see the escalation of China-US trade friction, and many people from respective countries do not want trade relations to reach a point of no return.



"Negotiation is the only way to resolve trade disputes between the two countries," Han added. "For China, the door for negotiation will not close. China will pay attention to US concerns in agriculture, but the US should not make unreasonably high demands."



In response to the US imposing tariffs on Chinese goods, China has since begun to levy additional 25% tariffs on 517 types of agriculture products, including soybeans, cotton and pork, imported from the US, which valued to a total of US$21 billion last year, Han shared.



Just last week, as US threatens to impose additional tariffs on Chinese goods worth US$200 billion, China announced that it might levy different levels of additional tariffs on US goods worth US$60 billion, which will include 387 kinds of agricultural products. As a result, almost all US agricultural products will face additional tariffs once the latest countermeasures by China come into force.



"China drafted the countermeasures only after extremely soliciting opinions and careful evaluations of the effects, and they are rational and restrained," Han remarked.



Han also analysed that China and the US strongly complements each other in agricultural trade. He said, "China has a huge demand for import of agricultural products. With its population growth and rising living standards of its people, it will keep expanding imports."



"We hope to see healthy agricultural trade relations between the two countries, so US farmers also get benefits. However, the US keeps escalating trade frictions, regardless of a consensus already made between the two countries," he revealed.



China will continue to closely evaluate the effects caused by its countermeasures to lessen their impact on domestic production and people's livelihood.



Han further explained: "Levying additional tariffs will cause a great decrease in the export of US agricultural products to China. But, the impact on China is very limited due to multiple import resources. If a trade war breaks out between China and the US, many other countries will be willing and able to replace the US share of agricultural products in the Chinese market."



Trade conflicts between China and the US will result in increased costs for US agricultural products entering China, and the US share of the Chinese market will be significantly reduced.



"Once other countries have become reliable suppliers of agricultural goods for China, it will be very difficult for the US agricultural producers to regain footing in the Chinese market," Han pointed out. The additional tariffs would also cause a great decrease in China's imports of soybeans from the US, which is deemed as the most important product of China-US agricultural trade.



However, China is both prepared and capable of bridging the reduced supply gap through various measures, including increasing imports from other countries, promoting alternatives to animal feed made of soybeans in the poultry and husbandry industries to reduce domestic consumption of soybeans and increasing domestic planting of soybeans, he said.



As China relies on imports for most of its soybean consumption, US is the second-largest source of imports for China, after Brazil. Between 2015 - 2017, nearly 60% of all exported soybeans from the US went to China.



This year, Chinese experts have forecasted more than 10 million tonnes decrease in soybean imports by China, which is a fall by more than 10% from last year, due to expanding domestic production and the promotion of soybean substitutes. China may also increase soybean imports from countries such as Brazil to meet its increasing demands.



Regardless of the agreement by the EU to import more soybeans from the US, the EU can only import an estimated 13 million to 14 million tonnes of soybeans each year over the next 10 years, as compared with more than 30 million tonnes imported by China last year  so it would be impossible for the US to handle all the soybeans in surplus, Han evaluated.



"People of all walks of life in agriculture in the US have expressed worries over losing the Chinese market," he concluded.



Source: CHINADAILY




Thailand to reduce antibiotics use in livestock



Thailand's Livestock Department director-general Sorawit Thaneto and members of the Thai Veterinary Medical Association Under Royal Patronage (TVMA) have announced a move to cut antibiotics use in livestock, Pattaya Mail reported.



Along other agencies, the VMA and the Livestock Department will cooperate in creating guidelines on the use of antibiotics in livestock, in order to ensure no chemicals are left in meat before reaching consumers, TVMA president Dr. Somchuan Rattanamangkalanont said.



The guidelines will align with international standards for antibiotic use. In addition, the Livestock Department has set a goal to reduce the use of chemicals in livestock by 30% by 2021. Meat manufacturers will also be required to comply with the regulations.



Thai Swine Veterinary Association president Dr. Sujet Cheunchom said his organisation will make sure that pork producers comply with the consumer safety guidelines.



As for poultry, the president of the Thai Poultry Veterinary Association, Dr. Sumet Sapchukul, said Japan, the Middle East and the EU continue to import chicken from Thailand as it meets global safety standards.



He added that veterinarians working on chicken farms use antibiotics only when it is absolutely necessary and in a small amount to treat sick chickens.



Dr. Sumet also claimed farm chickens in Thailand are bred from species that are resistant to diseases.



- Pattaya Mail




Cargill opens innovation center to boost fish farming standards in Indonesia

Cargill has opened an aquaculture innovation center in Indonesia as part of an effort to work with freshwater fish farmers in improving farming and feeding standards.



The Technology Application Center (TAC) is located at Ciseeng, Parung-Bogor, which is a hub for freshwater aquaculture in Indonesia. It will bring global aquaculture best practices and expertise from Cargill's network of 12 such centers dedicated to aquaculture worldwide.



The TAC will also provide a platform where local aquaculture farmers can attend training and discussions concerning feeding and other farm management practices.



"Freshwater aquaculture in Indonesia is showing strong growth thanks to increasing demand for seafood in the country," said Chad Gauger, managing director of Cargill Aqua Nutrition in South Asia. "This innovation center will support the development of the freshwater aquaculture industry by educating and training farmers on how to improve their productivity and income."



The center covers one hectare, with eight large ponds and a set of closed cement tanks for smaller trials in closed systems. The facility is designed to improve the feed performance of freshwater fish varieties including catfish, tilapia, pangasius and carp. It is the fourth TAC facility Cargill has opened in South Asia this year and brings the Cargill aqua nutrition TAC footprint in Asia to six locations, namely Thailand, India, Vietnam (two TACs), Indonesia and China.



- Cargill
Dear @IlhanMN,



I hear you plan to go on a fact-finding tour of Israel. In fact, Israel is doing pretty well. Its, Somalia, your native country, that could truly use your formidable skills. Maybe you could use your frequent flyer miles and swing by.
Security measures taken in front of the pastor Brunsons house

The Turkish government has tightened the security of Pastor Andrew Brunsons house who was arrested near the city of Izmir after spending nearly two years in a Turkish prison.

American evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson who accused of helping to plot a 2016 coup attempt is been securely guarded by the Turkish police forces.

Special operations forces, motorcycle cops and anti-terror police forces are carrying out duty for 7/24 in front of the pastor's house.

The residents said that that the neighborhood became much safer and the street became Turkeys safest street.
How dare Catholic hospitals protect the unborn! By Michael R Shannon

FiveThirtyEight.com is an Opposition Media website that assures us of its superiority and authority: FiveThirtyEight uses statistical analysis  hard numbers  to tell compelling stories about elections, politics, sports, science, economics and culture. What that glowing description leaves out is that FiveThirtyEight reporters also use bias and selective facts to color how they report their hard numbers. And speaking of firmness, the website appears to have a bone of contention with Catholic hospitals in the US. Even we lowinformation Trump voters know there is an opioid crisis in rural America. Its so bad that even normally disdained rural whites are getting sympathetic news coverage. Simultaneously, theres another rural crisis that affects everyone in the boondocks, druggies and deplorables alike. As drugs move in, hospitals are moving out. Forprofit hospitals leave because low incomes and low population density make it difficult to justify operating a hospital in the hinterlands. When small town hospitals close it leaves residents without healthcare options. Below is a sampling of relevant headlines: A Hospital Crisis Is Killing Rural Communities. This State Is Ground Zero. Hospital Closings Likely to Increase Nearly 700 rural hospitals at risk of closing After that one would think any organization keeping rural hospitals open would be the beneficiary of praise and congratulated for their compassion for rural Americans. But not so fast. That thinking might get one fired at FiveThirtyEight. Anna Maria BarryJester and Amelia ThomsonDeVeaux (beware of reporters bearing hyphens) examined one organization that still operates rural hospitals and found it wanting, and even worse, religious. In a growing number of communities around the country, especially in rural areas, patients and physicians have access to just one hospital. And in more and more places, that hospital is Catholic. Now I can understand if the hospital was operated by Mormons it might be tough to get a cup of coffee in the cafeteria, but what could be wrong with Catholics? After all, the word hospital comes to us from the Knights Hospitaller, an order dating back to the Crusades. The danger is evidently intrinsic to being a Catholic. What happens when you need or want a standard medical service, but the hospital wont provide it? A hospital that wont provide standard medical service? That does sound ominous. I know Catholic doctrine considers homosexual practice a sin, but that shouldnt rule out a colonoscopy. Passing out drunk is frowned upon, too, but I dont think anesthesia is banned. Suicide is certainly a nono, but Ive never read of a Catholic hospital forcing those who attempt selfmurder to visit a Satanist for treatment. So what are these standard medical services? The hard numbers reporters explain, abortion, birth control, vasectomies, tubal ligations, some types of endoflife care, emergency contraception and procedures related to gender transition can all be off-limits if your local hospital happens to be Catholic. Translation: If you want an abortion, assisted suicide or to have your body vandalized so you can claim to be a woman (or man) when youre not, a Catholic hospital is not a good place to go for an estimate. The other standard procedures relate to birth control and even those in the grip of the strongest passion can pop into Walmart for stopgap measures, until they make their way to the big city. As Becket Adams, who found the story, pointed out, Remember, this is an article is about Catholic hospitals servicing poor and isolated rural areas where other medical organizations dont or cant operate. One would think the left would be celebrating Catholics commitment to the rural poor isolated by the closure of evil profitmaking hospitals. Instead the hyphen twins twist facts to make Catholic hospitals look malign. In Cook County, not a rural area, the Popes practitioners are made to appear sinister because Medicaid patients were enrolled in a plan where Catholic hospitals made up a bigger share of in-network facilities with labor and delivery departments than the share they accounted for in Cook County as a whole. What they dont tell readers is why. Thats because Catholic hospitals will accept any Medicaid patients, while many forprofit hospitals wont accept the same patients because the reimbursement rates are very low and the checks come very slow. Catholic hospitals are over represented because the forprofit hospitals wanted out. Instead of the praise Catholic hospitals deserve for continuing to serve the poor and isolated, these religious institutions are pilloried in the media because Catholics refuse to provide an altar for the lefts sacrament of abortion and its celebration of sexual license and dysfunction. In spite of the FiveThirtyEight criticism, I imagine that even rural atheists are glad they have a hospital, in spite of the fact its run by Catholics. Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He is a dynamic and entertaining keynote speaker. He can be reached at mandate.mmpr (at) gmail.com. He is also the author of Conservative Christian's Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!). Home
Finally! Some fuel economy common sense By Paul Driessen

Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were devised back in 1975, amid anxiety over the OPEC oil embargo and supposedly imminent depletion of the worlds oil supplies. But recall, barely 15 years after Edwin Drake drilled the first successful oil well in 1859, a Pennsylvania geologist was saying the United States would run out of oil by 1878. In 1908, the US Geological Survey said wed exhaust our domestic oil reserves by 1927; in 1939, it moved petroleum doomsday to 1952. Somehow, steadily improving technology and geological acumen kept finding more oil. Then the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) revolution postponed the demise of oil and natural gas production for at least another century. The fuels that brought wealth, health, longevity, and modern industrialization, transportation, communication and civilization to billions will continue doing so. However, the powerful forces arrayed against fossil fuels, internal combustion engines and automobiles have kept pushing for tighter CAFE rules. In 2012  claiming that CO2 and other vehicle greenhouse gas emissions required a near-total shift to electric cars to prevent manmade climate cataclysms  the Obama Environmental Protection Agency decreed 54.5 miles per gallon (mpg) rules by 2025. But climate chaos is a product of computer models, a phony scientific consensus and hysterical headlines  not Real World evidence. (See here, here and here to launch some down-to-earth thinking.) Electric cars represent under 1.5% of new vehicles sold in the USA, a minuscule fraction of the total US vehicle fleet, and a vanishingly small, barely detectable portion of vehicles in use worldwide. Their short range, long recharging times and dauntingly high prices deter most drivers, despite taxpayer subsidies that can reach $10,000 per car sold to rich buyers. And their batteries have significant human health, human rights and environmental problems, as detailed here, here and elsewhere. Moreover, the rest of the world is rapidly industrializing, building coal and gas-fired power plants to bring electricity to billions who still dont enjoy its blessings, and putting more cars and trucks on their roads. So even if carbon dioxide has replaced the powerful natural forces that have driven climate and extreme weather fluctuations throughout Earth and human history, US mileage rules would make no difference. It is therefore hugely refreshing to see that the EPA and Department of Transportation have proposed to freeze fuel economy standards at the existing 2020 target of 37 mpg. The proposal would also create a single national mileage and emission standards  and eliminate the arguably illegal Clean Air Act waiver that the Obama EPA gave California in 2013, letting it set its own tougher automobile emission standards. To encourage discussion, negotiation and compromise, the EPA/DOT proposal also presents seven alternatives to the 37 mpg freeze: allowing standards to ratchet upward between 0.5% and 3.0% annually through 2026. Public comments will be accepted until the end of September. Consumer groups and would-be new car buyers welcomed the move. Reactions from certain other quarters were predictably negative. Democratic California Governor Jerry Brown labeled it an assault on the health of all Americans  a reckless scheme that will force motorists to pay more at the pump, get worse gas mileage and breathe dirtier air. He promised his state will fight this stupidity in every conceivable way possible. Others claimed it would roll back efforts to protect the climate. Major automotive manufacturers would prefer to have mpg standards climb steadily upward. They want to promote their green credentials, while selling more cars and light trucks  and avoiding vitriolic backlash from the likes of Gov. Brown and the Sierra Club. Theyd like to see a negotiated deal. As to dirty air, there is virtually no connection between mileage and vehicle emissions, which have already plummeted by nearly 98% from what came out of tailpipes in 1970. Thats why radical greens call carbon dioxide carbon pollution  to make it sound like soot, instead of the miracle molecule that we exhale, and plants use as a basic building block to make life on earth possible. The more CO2 in the air, the better and faster forest, grassland and crop plants grow, using less water in the process. And where do greens think electric vehicles get their electricity? Wind turbines and solar panels? Fat chance. Try coal and gas-fired power plants  or nuclear and hydroelectric plants that they also detest. Climate benefits are equally illusory. Even if there were a connection between CO2 and global warming (or the newer always accurate nomme de guerre climate change), the EPA and DOT estimate that the difference between the Trump 37 mpg standard and Obama 54.5 mpg rule would be a completely undetectable 0.0003 degrees Celsius (0.0005 F) by 2100. Thats a microscopic 0.00004 degrees per year! How can Gov. Moonbeam claim that freezing mpg will harm human health? By ignoring another reality. As mileage standards tightened, car makers had to downsize vehicles, use less steel, and employ more aluminum and plastic. Even with expensive vehicle modifications like side air bags, these smaller vehicles have less armor to protect occupants, and less space between them and any car, truck, bus, tree or other obstacle they might collide with. So they are less safe, and less affordable for poor families. Insurance industry and other studies show that bigger, heavier vehicles are safer. Drivers and passengers in 54.5 mpg vehicles are more likely to die in a crash  and far more likely to be maimed, disfigured, disabled or paralyzed  than if the fuel economy standards had been relaxed or frozen decades ago. Freezing standards now at 37 mpg would save car and light truck buyers tens of billions of dollars over the next decade  and save families hundreds of billions in burial, hospital, disability and related costs. But tougher standards would save drivers billions in gasoline costs, Gov. Brown and his comrades claim. What chutzpah! These are the same folks who demand mandates for ethanol, which costs more and gets a third fewer miles per gallon than gasoline. Theyre the same ones whose great champion once said, Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. That champion would be Paul Ehrlich, who remains deeply concerned about population bombs  and the human population levels that smaller, lighter, less safe cars are as good a way as any to reduce. Then theres the basic matter of choice. Not just for pregnant women; consumer choice. Not everyone is an urbanite, with one kid, comfortably squatting down almost to pavement level to squeeze into an econobox smart car, happily hauling one or two non-plastic grocery bags a week from Whole Foods. The rest of us  including those in the 85% of US counties who did not vote for Hillary Clinton  want affordable options, sizes and features that meet our individual needs. Were tired of having urban and government intellectuals, pressure groups and ruling elites dictating our vehicle choice, steadily reducing our access to full-size sedans, mini or full-size SUVs, light trucks, panel trucks or whatever vehicles best meet our diverse family, boating, camping, farming, ranching, small business or other needs. 54.5 mpg definitely limits choice. And econoboxes are inherently unsafe slamming into an urban wall or tree at even 20 or 25 mph; at virtually any speed mating with an oncoming bus or truck; and almost anywhere on a rural highway, with traffic moving at 55-70 mph, and along which many of us have seen these minuscule cars blown right over onto their sides by high winds or passing semi-trucks. A EQ Smart ForTwo, Fiat 500 or other micro urban car may be the perfect adventure for some. But not for me, and not for most of the folks I know and love. From my perch, the best solution would be for EPA and DOT to roll these restrictive, dangerous, even deadly CAFE rules back a few notches. At least freeze them where they are  or, as a last-ditch compromise, restrict future hikes to 0.1% annually. If it matters to you, weigh in here by September 30. Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of books and articles on energy, climate change and economic development. Home
An introduction to the thought of George Parkin Grant, on the centenary of his birth (Part One) By Mark Wegierski

George Grant is a conceptually complex Canadian critic of technology and America who may appeal to different parts of the political spectrum. George Parkin Grant (1918-1988) is one of the rarest of birds -- a conservative Canadian nationalist philosopher. George Parkin Grant (who usually called himself George Grant) is virtually unknown outside Canada, and should not be confused with the American conservative writer of the same first and last name. The exploration of the combination of the four words used to describe George Grant  conservative, Canadian, nationalist, philosopher -- will be the backbone of this series. George Grant is not a narrowly partisan politician confined to the day-to-day mud-slinging and hurly-burly of "practical politics" -- rather, he is a political philosopher who looks at society from a high and abstruse standard which may fairly be termed as "world-historical" in its perspective. Although Grant did endeavour to write to be widely understood, his writing is far more abstract and abstruse, and far less crudely biased, than that found in "practical political" discourse. George Grant is also not an analytic philosopher (i.e., Grant loves broad vistas rather than minutiae); nor is he a political scientist (in the narrow sense of the kind of person in political studies who aspires to put on a lab coat to lend themselves prestige); nor is he a student of international relations; and certainly not an administrative or management theorist. By his preference for political philosophy, Grant has set himself against the rising tide of these disciplines today, which are proceeding  despite some exotic postmodern fraying at the edges -- in the direction of analytics, the scientific model, a mathematical modelling of international relations, and administrative and managerial approaches. Grant does not care about the "micro" of politics and society (such as that expressed in interminable statistical analysis), but about the "macro", the really big picture. Specific historical instances are used by Grant to illustrate his "macro" thesis, rather than analyzed in themselves. Grant does not care about quantitative analysis of picayune events, but rather looks at why, rather than how, certain things happen. George Grant, like all political philosophers, derives his views of all human societies from a carefully defined set of first principles. These most noticeably include a conception of human nature which differs from that of most modern thinkers. To Grant, there are deep and fundamental distinctions between premodern and modern societies, which transcend the particular features of individual societies. This assertion of a distinction between the premodern and modern (and an explanation of what these terms mean in a philosophical sense) could be seen as the core of Grant's political philosophy. The premodern and modern viewpoints or "world-views", make different assumptions about human nature, the purposes of human existence, and the place of humankind in the world, and therefore determine the type of society in which we live. In particular, Grant pays an enormous amount of attention to what technology, and the interaction of humanity and technology, means. Because of the negative conclusions which he reaches about technology and the "ideology of technology", which he identifies with the modern world-view, Grant is generally critical of modernity and modern societies. The second crucial point to be made is that the term "conservatism", as used by George Grant, has almost nothing in common with its various current, conventional meanings and definitions. He uses the term in a special sense, which emerges from his "holistic" view of human history and social development. Today, most people associate "conservatism" as a political term mostly with "neoconservatism", the advocacy and espousal of the so-called free market (i.e., of capitalism), with tax-cuts, budget-reductions, big corporate profits, etc., as well as with a certain harshness, rigidity, and anti-idealism. In Canada, neoconservatism is often seen as an American import. To George Grant conservatism, properly defined, is almost the exact opposite of these -- he is, in fact, vociferously anti-capitalist, because capitalism is seen by him as identical with that dominance of technology to which he is opposed. His own definition of "conservatism" is a highly eclectic one, which portrays it as a highly positive, life-affirming viewpoint, rooted in traditional philosophy and religion, especially Platonism and Christianity, as he sees them. It should also be noted that meaning of the word "Tory", as which George Grant could in some sense be described, has undergone an incredible evolution throughout history. Like the word "conservatism", this word has an extraordinarily large number of different meanings, virtually all of which have nothing to do with the way the word was being employed to describe the "Tory" government and party of Brian Mulroney in Canada in 1984-1993 -- roughly meaning "political fat-cats and friends of big business". A better term to describe Grant would be "Red Tory" or "radical Tory". However, one must be careful to include the reflective component in it, as many unreflective Progressive Conservative party hacks in Canada, who simply wanted to adopt a left-liberal program to gain votes, have also been called "Red Tories". Another term which could be applied to Grant is "high Tory", the word "high" connoting both the sense of the philosophical and the religious. The third point to be made is that George Grant calls himself a Canadian nationalist. This is clearly at odds with the conventional contemporary definition of conservatism in Canada as pro-American, pro-capitalist, and pro-Free Trade, but is, of course, entirely consistent with the definition of "conservatism" which George Grant adopts for himself. George Grant's view of himself as both a conservative and a Canadian nationalist is rooted in a certain view of modernity, modern history, and the development of Canada and the United States on the North American continent, which will be explained further below. The fourth point to be made is that, in the same way that there are many definitions of "conservatism" and "Toryism", so too there are many definitions of nationalism. Nationalism is often a principle which virtually all persons in the national community, regardless of other political beliefs, can agree to. For example, in the Polish Second Republic, virtually all Poles believed in the necessity of a strong Poland, an effective military, and the strengthening of Poland's place and position in the international order, regardless of party affiliation. Many of the minorities of the Second Republic, however, were against the Polish national consensus  although they were also citizens of the Polish state. There can be various types of nationalism, which usually fall somewhere along a continuum based on ethnicity, to an identity based purely on state. All the Anglo-American societies (including Britain and the United States) have heavily tended in the direction of state nationalism  which should have theoretically made them more tolerant and less exclusivist  although this in practice has not always been the case. And, as is discussed below, the prevalent form of Canadian nationalism today actually attacks the traditions of the British-inspired state, and of the two nations (English and French), in Canada. Grants version of Canadian nationalism, however, is as a truly conservative, traditionalist tendency. According to Grant  in contrast to some political theories that usually see nationalism as something distinctly modern -- some types of nationalism can indeed be the expression of a premodern ethos or its residues in modern times. To be continued. Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher. Home
Conservatives dreading a Martha McSally Senate win in Arizona By Rachel Alexander

After Arizona Senator Jeff Flake announced he was not running for reelection to the U.S. Senate, three prominent candidates entered the race. One is conservative Kelli Ward, a former state legislator who ran unsuccessfully for Senate against John McCain. A second candidate is former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who many do not believe is a serious candidate at age 86. The third well-known candidate in the race is Rep. Martha McSally , a liberal Republican who represents a Democratic leaning district in Arizona. The Arizona Daily Independent reports that John McCain is pushing her candidacy. Ward appeared to be leading in the race until Arpaio jumped in. Now, the conservative base is split between Ward and Arpaio loyalists, giving McSally the lead. Arpaio is in third place. McSally is averaging 10 points ahead of Ward. Some Ward supporters are urging Arpaio to drop out of the race, but so far he has not. According to One News Now , If Arpaio were removed from the equation, it's likely that Ward could defeat McSally in the August 28 primary. Arizona conservatives are tired of liberal Republicans representing them in the Senate. The state is still fairly conservative, unlike a state such as Maine which has liberal Republican Senator Susan Collins. Arizona would be better represented by a solid conservative. McSally has a poor record in Congress as one of the more liberal Republicans in Congress. The American Conservative Union rates her voting record as less conservative than McCain and Flake. Yet she is now pretending to be a conservative, talking tough on immigration. This is not accurate. She helped craft a bill that would have provided renewable status for Dreamers. Ward opposed it. McSally said she supports DACA legislation along with border security. She said , I have also consistently shown  with my votes, words and actions  that I am willing to support a legislative solution for the DACA population. Tellingly, her campaign website doesnt appear to contain her positions on issues. Wards website does . Blog for Arizona, a popular Democratic blog in Arizona, observes , the Left and Right agree: Martha McSally is a fraudulent candidate. McSallys record as a pilot in the Air Force has been called into question by former colleagues. The James T. Harris Show interviewed Lt. Col. retired Tom-Chuck Norris about McSallys experience with the A-10 aircraft. Norris doesnt think shes much of a pilot. He said, she doesnt even know how many bullets the airplane she flew carries, going into combat carries. He said she once told him, It doesnt matter how good a pilot I am, it doesnt matter how good I execute close air support. What matters is getting me promoted. Norris said McSally showed her lack of knowledge during an interview with Greta Van Susteren, when she spoke about threats while flying. He said her answer was Madness, pure madness. I mean she was, there was a reason why she was under the highest level of supervision starting back in 1995, because she had severe lack of knowledge and credibility and it hasnt changed. He warned, a fraud is being perpetrated on, on, the nation. The James T. Harris Show also interviewed Colonel (ret.) Pappy Russell about McSally. He said McSally exploited the tragic deaths of two other pilots in order to promote her campaign. He said she made up details about her role in their deaths that werent true. Theres very little there that truly happened, because I was intimately involved with both of those events. McSally distanced herself from President Trump during the 2016 election. In contrast, Ward embraced him and Trump has tweeted positively about her. Conservative Arizona U.S. Representative Paul Gosar endorsed Ward. He said, We cannot afford another establishment patsy who promises one thing and votes differently. The winner will face Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema in the general election. The Arizona Federation of Taxpayers awarded Sinema the Vladimir I. Lenin award a few years ago for being the most far left legislator in the Arizona legislature. The American Conservative Union gave her voting record in Congress a dismal 13.04 rating. She is running her campaign to the right, however, pretending to be a conservative in flashy TV ads. It will be a close race, and at least one poll shows Ward can beat Sinema. But unless Arpaio drops out of the race, Arizona looks headed to elect another liberal U.S. Senator.



Rachel Alexander and her brother Andrew are co-Editors of Intellectual Conservative. She has been published in the American Spectator, Townhall.com, Fox News, NewsMax, Accuracy in Media, The Americano, ParcBench, and other publications. Home
iStock/Thinkstock(DUBLIN) -- Around 50,000 passengers across Europe are expected to be affected this weekend as Ryanair is forced to cancel almost 400 flights due to a 24-hour walkout by staff in five European countries over a dispute about pay and working conditions.



Ryanair employees are on strike in Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands, forcing the firm to cancel 394 flights.



The Irish airline, which last year carried its one billionth passenger, is Europes biggest low-cost carrier.



It said in a statement that the action was unjustified and regrettable, but said that 85 percent of its flights would still be operated, and said that it had done all that it could to prevent the dispute escalating into industrial action, adding that the majority of customers affected have already been re-accommodated on another Ryanair flight.



But some people took to Twitter to complain at how Ryanair handled the debacle after their flights were canceled.



Unions representing Ryanair staff said they want work rules to be governed by the laws of countries where employees are based, not the laws in Ireland where Ryanair is headquartered.



The action is the latest in a series of disagreements between Ryanair management and staff after the firm recognized its employee unions in late 2017 and entered into negotiations.



In July, around 300 flights were cancelled in similar strikes in Portugal, Spain and Belgium.



Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Returning to the Old Country, sixteen years ago By Mark Wegierski

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada of Polish immigrant parents, I have had, over the decades, a deep relation with the land of my forebears. Having visited Poland a number of times as a child and adolescent in earlier decades, I returned over four fairly extensive visits from 2002 to 2004. The places I stayed at during those more recent visits included Ciechocinek, Nieszawa, Torun, Czestochowa, and Grudziadz, among others. I always flew in to Warsaw from Toronto on a direct flight on Polish LOT airlines, which usually takes about nine hours. When one travels in the direction of Torun from Warsaw by car, one normally goes by the Wislostrada (the Vistula Highway). Looking to the west, one can see the various landmarks of Old Warsaw, such as the Royal Castle, the Old Town, and the so-called New Town (dating from the eighteenth century). During my first trip of the recent time, in May 2002, my relatives travelled to Torun not by the Wislostrada, but by a more circuitous route that led along a two-lane road through various picturesque villages. I still remember the look and aroma of the acacia that bloomed prodigiously by the side of the road. Ciechocinek lies about 200 kilometers northwest of Warsaw near Torun, the birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus, in the Kujawy-Pomorze (Kuyavia-Pomerania) region. It is a spa and resort town of about 14,000 permanent residents, known for its unique titration towers  large wooden structures with thick layers of bramble, through which water from nearby salt springs is filtered, producing a healthy microclimate, which approximates that of sea-air. In Ciechocinek, I mostly stayed at a large, elegant spa known as Pod Tezniami (By the Titration Towers), which has won awards as one of the best such resorts in Poland. Nieszawa, which is about 10 kilometers southeast of Ciechocinek, is a picturesque small town of about 2,200 inhabitants, which lies on a few hillsides above the Vistula River. Standing at the top of the hillside, one can see clear across the broad river to the verdant forests on the other side. Nieszawa has existed on its current site since the fifteenth century, and has a beautiful church dating back to that era, known especially for its original frescoes. Grudziadz is a town of close to a hundred thousand inhabitants, further north along the Vistula, where I recall attending a funeral in 2004. My fathers eldest sister had passed away. The town dates back to the Early Middle Ages, and contains a variety of architectural styles. It was known as a fortress throughout much of its history. The funeral ceremony was carried out with full formality. There were extensive prayers by the open coffin in the basement of the church; then a long funeral mass in the church above, to which the closed coffin had been carried; and then the coffin was conveyed by hearse, for interment at the gravesite, in a large historic cemetery in another part of the town, where the son of the deceased also gave a short eulogy. Obviously, the persons attending the funeral travelled in cars, in a quite impressive motorcade. This was followed by the wake or stypa-- which had been arranged at a particularly elegant restaurant in the town. I also stayed at a few small places to the northeast of Torun, notably a tiny hotel on a lake near Brodnica, and a renovated manor-house itself called Owieczkowo. I had also traversed by car the route from Torun to Bydgoszcz, as well as from Torun to Warsaw, a considerable number of times. On occasion I was driven from Torun southwest to Lodz and then to Czestochowa. Some of the places I saw along the way included Piotrkow Trybunalski, which was the seat of Polands Royal Tribunal for hundreds of years (hence the second part of the name), and Zarnow, a small town that has a church, the oldest parts of which date back to the tenth century. In one of my most notable trips to Czestochowa, I attended a 60th Wedding Anniversary, including a commemorative ceremony at the famous Jasna Gora monastery, with its glorious image of the Virgin Mary. (An earlier version of this article has appeared in Polonez: Canadian-Polish News (16-31 July 2007), p. 11.) Mark Wegierski is a Toronto-based writer and historical researcher. Home
Portland descending into leftist madness By Rachel Alexander

Portland, Oregon has gradually become the laughingstock of the country. The far left began moving there in droves a few years ago, taking over the city and transforming it to their liking. Taxes and regulations increased. Many of the changes involved implementing more aggressive environmental laws, some which seemed based on junk science. Money was directed into public transit instead of relieving motor vehicle traffic congestion, leading to the fifth worst traffic in the nation. The TV comedy Portlandia emerged, making fun of the citys nuttiest aspects. The far left in Portland became obsessed with protesting white supremacy through violence. They claim that Portland is full of white supremacists who must be stopped  but that only makes the left look bad, since Portland is now predominantly comprised of the left. The history of racism that once plagued the state has mostly dissipated, as generations have died out and laws have been rescinded. Notably, all the lefties moving there arent making the city more diverse. It is one of the whitest big cities in the U.S., at almost 78 percent. Only 2.2 percent of the population is black. Since Portlands left cannot find many real white supremacists to complain about, they falsely label conservatives as fascists, Nazis and white supremacists. The right-leaning organization Patriot Prayer, which was founded and led by non-whites, has attempted to hold rallies in the city. The far left refers to Patriot Prayer as the alt-right, in order to lump them in with white supremacists. But this isnt true. Founder Joey Gibson, who is half-Japanese, says his ideology is libertarian. The rallies are given patriotic names like Stand Against Communism and Freedom March. The Patriot Prayer demonstrators are met with violent protests by Black Bloc and the ironically named Antifa. Antifa claims to stand for anti-fascism, but their tactics of suppressing conservative speech through violence is akin to fascism. The lefty anarchists dress in black with their faces covered up to avoid identification by the police. They hurl fireworks, rocks and bottles at the demonstrators and police. The police wear heavy armor to avoid being hurt and launch flash-bang grenades to disperse the fighting. Gibson reports being attacked multiple times at his rallies. The counterprotesters are often successful at getting the police to shut the rallies down. Recently Patriot Prayer held another rally. Predictably, counterprotesters engaged in violence. Activists struck a reporter from The Oregonian/OregonLive in the head, drawing blood. A major thoroughfare, Naito Parkway, was shut down for much of the day. At least four people were arrested. In June, Antifa and other radical activists advocating for open borders surrounded the local ICE office. They trapped workers inside and got the office shut down for a week. Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler, who also serves as police commissioner, refused to provide officers to diffuse the situation. He tweeted, I do not want the @PortlandPolice to be engaged or sucked into a conflict, particularly from a federal agency that I believe is on the wrong track. If [ICE is] looking for a bailout from this mayor, they are looking in the wrong place. After a week, federal police from out of state finally showed up to re-open the office. Protesters camped out for 38 days, leaving feces and dirty needles behind. They held signs that labeled ICE employees as Nazis and white supremacists. They harassed a family that operated a food cart across from the ICE office until the family shut it down. Last year, a burrito restaurant operated by two white women was forced to close after activists accused the pair of cultural appropriation for learning to make tortillas from women in Mexico. The Portland Mercury called the closure a victory, "Because of Portlands underlying racism, the people who rightly own these traditions and cultures that exist are already treated poorly." Imagining racism where very little exists serves no purpose but to exacerbate racial tensions. The left claims that the right is full of white supremacists. But if thats true, why is far left Portland home to more white supremacist accusations than other areas of the country? And if the left is such a mecca for minorities, why arent they flocking to Portland? The truth is when the far left takes over, you can expect elements of racism (toward right-leaning minorities in particular), anarchy and fascism, which doesnt make for a very pleasant place to live. Rachel Alexander and her brother Andrew are co-Editors of Intellectual Conservative. She has been published in the American Spectator, Townhall.com, Fox News, NewsMax, Accuracy in Media, The Americano, ParcBench, and other publications. Home
Random thoughts IV By Dr. Robert Owens

If youre not ready for Christ to return today  Youre not ready. Bill Clinton  Gave Nukes to North Korea Barrack Obama  Gave Billions in cash to Iran Hillary Clinton  Gave uranium to Russia Trump  Gave tax cuts to America How can a moral wrong be a civil right? Your past does not preclude your future. Why was it a crime for Nixon to wiretap Democrats at Watergate but not for Obama to wiretap Republicans at Trump Tower? The FBI was told multiple times that a 19-year-old psychopath was going to shoot up a high school and they did nothing. But they have plenty of manpower to spy on presidential campaigns and monitor private conversations. A porn star says she had sex with our President and they raid his lawyers office. Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture? And what do the allegations of a porn star have to do with the Russian collusion case Mueller is supposed to be investigating? Black Lives Matters Facebook page is fine but Diamond and Silk are a danger to the community? How can a moral wrong be a civil right? I have no problem with background checks for guns as soon as we do the same thing for immigration and voter ID. Faith isnt a magic formula to make everything turn out all right  its being all right no matter how things turn out. If people quit believing in God it isnt that they believe in nothing  instead they will believe in anything. The one thing that is worse than being poor is being poor again. I told everyone that I had a credibility problem but no one believed me. Any generation taught to hate their country will refuse to defend it as well. Even a little light is bright in the middle of the night. Wake up Democrats! Your party has turned communist on you. If we don't know where we come from we have no idea where we are and we can't imagine where were going. If we don't know what rights we have we will not notice when those rights are taken away. No one gets to live in the world they grew up in. If everyone you meet is a jerk it might be that youre the jerk. The awareness of my own mortality leads me to seek a life that has eternal significance. All things must pass  only those things done in Christ will last. War breathes life to the State. It breathes death to empires. Empires won by the strong hand of conquerors fall from the limp wrists of their descendants. Bernie Sanders and the Socialists oppose greed and support gun control. If they ever take over the country they will raise your taxes and if you dont pay they will send armed troops to collect. I need an ID to buy a gun I need an ID to board an airplane I need an ID to buy alcohol I need an ID to go fishing I need an ID to get a loan I need an ID to drive I need an ID to get a bank account Why dont I need an ID to vote? One hundred years from now it wont matter what my job was, how much money I made, how big my house was, or what kind of a car I drove but If I can make a difference in the life of even one child it may reverberate through the corridors of time. How can people proudly wave the flag of a foreign country but at the same time consider it a punishment to be sent back there? Most young people act as if youth is some clever thing they invented or covered. They dont seem to realize that though a forty-year-old may know what its like to be twenty a twenty-year-old cannot know what it is to be forty. The History we are taught in secondary school is often sugar coated. It is when we start to look at alternative views that we find there has always been a great debate as to what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and what it all means. The older we get the more of our lives become History perhaps that is why it is more interesting, we can remember so much more of it. Things are being left out of our History books, purged you might say. What isn't remembered will be forgotten. Every society and culture has always taught what might be called a glorified History that explains why they exist and should exist as a distinct group. When a country stops teaching this to their young in a few generations it is hard for the people to justify in their own minds why they are who they are and why they should continue to be. This leads inevitably to a crisis that usually portends the end. Since the Constitution says what the justices tell us it says with each passing majority they can re-write the document however they see fit. The debate about whether or not it is a document carved in stone or a living document has been resolved it is written in the sands of time and it can change with the rising of the tide. That isnt a good thing but it is what it is  unless we change it. There is only one purpose for a written constitution ... to stand the test of time. Due to differences in personality, education, intelligence, and other factors such as socioeconomic classes there is no universal experience. This is an important thing to realize across the board in Historical studies; everyone is the center of their own world and everyone experiences life from where they stand and all attempts to speak of "the" experiences of people is a fabrication that may be agreed upon by scholars but has little relationship to what any one person may experience. The socialist economics of the USSR and the inefficiencies it caused brought about the implosion of the Soviet empire. After that fall America rushed headlong into socialism itself and it may just be a matter of time until we join the Soviets on the trash heap of History. I remember that we woke up one morning and the USSR was arguably the strongest nation on earth and unarguably the largest and by the time we went to bed it had disappeared. Since then we have worked hard to limit competition and extend benefits, "From each according to their ability to each according to their need" and while our self-satisfaction has risen everything else is in decline. Maybe what we need is some Glasnost and Perestroika. Its kind of hard to believe the Democrats are so enraged over someone trying to illegally influence our elections when they are against voter ID. Ask a farmer about the weather and its always too hot, too cold, too wet, or too dry. But one thing is for sure ... wherever you go the weather is there. And everywhere you go people say, If you dont like the weather wait five minutes itll change. Dr. Robert Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com  2018 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens Home
Plastic found in stomach of dead turtle on Cornish beach

Plastic has been discovered in the stomach of a leatherback turtle found dead on a Cornish beach on Sunday (12 August).

The plastic did not kill the 1.8-metre turtle, but scientists say it is further evidence of widespread pollution  with plastic now found in almost all turtles examined.

The team that carried out the autopsy, from the University of Exeters Penryn Campus, believe the turtle might have been killed by a boat propeller.

The animal washed up at Marazion near Penzance after summer storms, and the Exeter researchers ask people using boats to be careful as more leatherbacks are likely to be in the waters off Cornwall.

The turtle had been at sea for some time and was severely decomposed, said Professor Brendan Godley, leader of the universitys marine strategy and a former veterinarian, who co-ordinated the investigation.

Prior to her death she was in good condition and had eaten relatively soon before dying.

She showed no obvious entanglement injuries but had deep cuts across her shell that are consistent with propeller wounds.

It is not 100% sure that these wounds happened prior to death, but such injuries do point to a possible cause.

Professor Godley carried out the autopsy with the help of three University of Exeter PhD students: Emily Duncan, Liliana Poggio Colman and Dominic Tilley.

It was not possible to establish exactly when the turtle died, but Professor Godley felt the level of decomposition meant it died in UK waters or nearby.

Duncan, who sailed across the Pacific earlier this year to study the presence and impact of micro-plastics in the region, said: Leatherback turtles are known to swallow plastic bags which they are thought to confuse with their natural jellyfish prey.

We can confirm that this is not what killed this animal. She had partially digested food inside, as well as a piece of clear plastic. It is unfortunate that almost all turtles examined now around the world have plastic in their gut.

Poggio-Colman, who is studying the population of leatherbacks in her native Brazil with funding from the Brazilian government, said: Based on satellite tracking studies around the Atlantic, it is likely that this female did not come from Brazil or the largest Atlantic population in Gabon, but from the wider Caribbean area from a site like French Guiana, Trinidad or Colombia.

It is amazing to think that she would travel all this way.

Professor Godley added: It has been a warm summer and, as Lewis Pugh has been finding out in his Channel Swim, there are many jellyfish around.

This means that there are likely to be more leatherbacks and sunfish which will stay in the area.

It would be prudent for boaters, especially in faster vessels, to pay especially close attention for animals basking at the surface until the waters cool down in November.
Dimity McMorran works five days a week at the Ongerup and Gnowangerup Community Resource Centres.

WITH a passion for community and a love for the country, 23-year-old Dimity McMorran truly classifies as a young gun.

Growing up in Dowerin, Dimity moved to Perth with her parents when she was eight.

Living in Perth until she was 16 and attending Carine Senior High School, her family made the move to Albany before she started year 12.

In 2010, Dimity graduated from Albany Senior High School where she found it difficult to start a new school with only one year left.

When I finished year 12 I started working at the CBH port in Albany, Dimity said.

I really enjoyed CBH and the grain handling side of things.

Over harvest Dimity managed to get 13 weeks of work at the port.

After her harvest stint she stayed with the co-operative, doing ship sampling which meant she sampled the grain before it went onto the ships to guarantee the right export specifications.

Then Dimity found herself in Perth where she met boyfriend Harry Creagh.

Harry and his father own the local one-stop-shop in Ongerup where locals buy their farm supplies, chemicals, groceries and alcohol.

When I moved back to Albany I worked at CSBP in Albany for a year doing customer service in the office, she said.

After that I didnt know what to do and Harry was out in Ongerup which isnt exactly close to Albany.

To be closer to Harry, Dimity moved to Ongerup where she managed to pick up some casual bar work and farm work.

In between a harvest season Dimity, who didnt have much direction to where her life was heading, went and worked on a cattle station in the Pilbara.

I wasnt up there very long, she said.

I really didnt like it up there but it taught me a few things about life.

It also taught me about stock handling and the cattle up there are crazy.

After returning to Ongerup, Dimity found herself again working on farms and behind the bar.

In November last year she was offered a job at the Gnowangerup and Ongerup Community Resource Centres.

I had a trip booked to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam a month after I got the job, she said.

So I went on my trip where I was volunteering with the elephants in Thailand and I also volunteered in Cambodia in a really small village where we built a house for a family.

When Dimity returned to WA she started her job and quickly found a home in the local community.

This year marked the start to a new career and Dimity also found herself committing to positions outside of work.

I joined the committee for the Ongerup Community Development Group and the sporting complex in Ongerup, she said.

Ongerup doesnt have a team anymore so I have been playing netball at Boxwood for the past couple of years.

I dont play anymore but I am running the kitchen down there and I do all the ordering and food for the home games.

Dimity has always wanted to improve the communitys sense of belonging, especially given the trend of small towns getting smaller.

My big aim this year is to try to bring everyone together, she said.

With this mission in mind its no wonder Dimity jumped at the idea of starting a Country Womens Association (CWA) for Gnowangerup, Borden and Ongerup.

All three towns fall under the shire of Gnowangerup and Dimity said Ongerup and Borden felt they had been forgotten because Gnowangerup was the bigger centre and the shire office was situated there.

All the towns are getting smaller and everyone has to start coming together and working together, she said.

So we talked about starting the CWA to bring all the girls together and do something to reunify all the towns.

At the first expression of interest meeting 25 women, with a few from each town, attended.

A lot of the girls who attended the meeting dont play sport so they dont feel like they are a part of something, she said.

Dimity said the women also struggled with isolation, especially at seeding or harvest when their partners were always busy.

Every CWA has a motto for the branch, CWA Stirlings motto is the road to a friends house is never long.

Dimity said the CWA branch would be what we make it.

We want to make it more about educating ourselves and making friendships, she said.

We want to include women of any age, but there is a stigma around the CWA being for older women.

Dimity hopes her new role as the CWA Stirlings president can focus on togetherness.

We are all out here with the same issues, she said.

We all feel that isolation.

This September the Stirlings CWA plans to have a garden lunch where the speakers will be talking about isolation during harvest and addressing mental health issues.
THE Australian pork industry is a victim of its own success, according to Australia Pork Limited (APL) general manager  marketing Peter Haydon.

Mr Haydon said pig producers across the country were experiencing undoubtedly very tough conditions which have been brought on by a profitable 2015-16 period that saw producers increase investment and improve productivity.

That increased productivity has seen an oversupply of fresh pork meat in the domestic market, which has put downward pressure on prices.

Mr Haydon said despite the difficult time producers were experiencing, demand for pork meat wasnt decreasing, with figures showing that exports increased 16.5 per cent for the past 12 months, with a 30pc increase in the month of June compared with last year.

He said that was largely due to existing markets taking more product.

Mr Haydon said if the domestic oversupply wasnt so big it would be a different story because domestic demand had been up, with one third more pork being consumed than it was 15 months ago.

Demand is growing everywhere, Mr Haydon said.

The production growth has been so fast we are still catching up with it.

Mr Haydon said it was anybodys guess how long the industry would have to struggle through the issue but historically a profitability crisis would last about two and a half years.

We are about 1.5 years in so hopefully next year we will start seeing improvement I suggest, Mr Haydon said

But it is not easy to tell.

He said the level of imported pork hadnt changed since 2015 and while that had impacted significantly on ham and bacon sales, it was a separate issue to fresh meat.

The majority of fresh meat sales is from Australian pork, he said.

This over supply of fresh meat has caused the domestic price crash.

Mr Haydon said the national average price required for a producer to cover costs was 270c/kg, however that could be impacted by the rising costs of grain.

He said APL would do its best to help producers by continuing to invest $450,000 a year in the marketing campaign Get more pork on your fork, as well as providing the best possible information for producers to make the best decisions.

The WA pig industry has been tight-lipped about the issues despite their concerns.

While everyone in the industry is feeling the impacts of a downturn in prices and oversupply from the Eastern States, some smaller pig producers have been shooting stock because they were not worth the cost of production.

Farm Weekly has been investigating claims of producers shooting their stock for months but very few people within the industry have been willing to go on the record due to the nature of the WA industry  being so small and with only a few processors to supply to.

Some producers however, have managed to survive the current crisis by supplying small butchers in Perth and said without this demand, they would be forced out of the industry.

There are also rumours circulating that Linley Valley Pork has lost one or two contracts in Singapore and as a result its freezers are at full capacity, leading to cancelled or reduced supply from some of its long standing suppliers.

Linley Valley Pork has not responded to questions nor confirmed or denied the rumours.

East Victoria Park, Perth, butcher Helen Goddard-Borger from Swansea Street Markets, said she had concerns for small producers.

The market is a little ridiculous at the moment, pork is so cheap, Ms Goddard-Borger said.

There is an oversupply of pigs and small pig farmers are shooting pigs.

Small pig farmers are really hurting.

Ms Goddard-Borger said pig producers were trying to sell direct to butchers due to the penalties placed on them from processors and the lack of sustainable prices being offered.

She questioned the whole industry, asking where is Australian Pork Limited in its advertising of local product and its encouragement to buy Australian pork?

Ms Goddard-Borger said she was concerned about the long-term impact on the industry.

Its not a good thing, she said.

Lamb is too expensive for ordinary people.

My average customer is not better off and so its harder to sell.

Its great to sell cheap pork but Im worried about the future  its not a good thing.

Ms Goddard-Borger said she was selling pork legs for 350c/kg and they would be cheap at Christmas.

One producer who didnt want to be named said he shot 40 pigs a few weeks ago because they werent worth the cost of production.

Another producer, Ron Burro, Southern Cross, who has about 25 sows, said some larger producers had been told there was no need for their pigs as there was an oversupply at the processor.

Mr Burro said the industry would see producers cut back their production and stop breeding to minimise their costs in order to stay viable into the future.

He said he was fortunate to have direct supply to a Perth butcher, which was keeping him in operation.

The WA Pork Producers Association (WAPPA) has also come under fire from small producers for not standing up for them enough and for being to closely aligned to the processors.

WAPPA president Dawson Bradford said the bigger producers in the State were working with the processors to find a way forward and he had heard talk about small producers having to shoot their stock, but wasnt sure if it was accurate.

Small producers are in and out of the industry and they cant expect processors to look after them when they only supply one or two pigs at a time, Mr Bradford said.
EXECUTIVE changes are taking place at Wellard with Fred Troncone resigning as director and executive director  operations recently and replaced by the current chairman and non-executive director John Klepec, who has been appointed as interim executive chairman.

Mr Klepec will take over the management of Wellards day-to-day operations as the company continues to undergo a strategic refocus in respect of its livestock and charter divisions.

The package deal will see Mr Klepecs existing chairmans and associated directors fees of $235,000 per annum added to by an additional monthly fee of $31,000, payable until December 31, 2018, in respect of the additional interim duties which will be provided on a consultancy basis.

Wellards strategic themes remain the same, with the principal goal to continue to rebuild the companys balance sheet.

The company will remain both a cattle trader and a charterer.

In the immediate short-term, Wellard will concentrate its charter division primarily on the South American live cattle export market to Europe, while its live cattle export division will narrow its focus to trading Australian-sourced cattle to the South East Asia market, where Wellard has been the dominant supplier.

In refocusing the strategy, the board and Mr Troncone concluded that this should be implemented by a new senior manager.

Consequently Mr Klepec was requested by the board to manage the operations role until a permanent replacement was identified.

He will revert to the role of chairman ollowing this interim engagement.

Mr Klepec thanked Mr Troncone and recognised the significant contribution he had made to Wellard, particularly in helping stabilise the business during difficult market conditions, and in relation to a very successful costs-out program.

Mr Klepec possesses considerable expertise in both agriculture and listed companies and will work with Wellard chief executive officer Mauro Balzarini, who continues to focus on strategic planning and the development of growth initiatives.

Chief business development officer Scot Braithwaite has also tended his resignation from the business to pursue other opportunities, and will leave Wellard at the end of October, 2018.

Mr Klepec said Wellard planned to release its financial results in the second half of August.

He said Wellard vessels enjoyed strong bookings to the end of 2018.

With cattle prices in Australia stabilising at lower, more attractive levels, the company is receiving increased interest from South East Asian markets and is looking at regaining market dominance in this core trade, Mr Klepec said.
ABOUT a dozen WA farmers will be heading to Canberra this week to share their stories of financial hardship due to bank lending practices, in the hope of extending and expanding the Banking Royal Commission.

A special Extend the Banking Royal Commission Event will be held on Wednesday, August 15, by Senator Frazer Anning, who recently left Pauline Hansons One Nation Party to join Bob Katters Australia Party, and who is also set to give his maiden speech in parliament that night.

Rural Action Movement president Greg Kenney, Salmon Gums, said the WA farmers hoped to achieve four things while in Canberra, including expressing their disappointment in the commission and its results so far, expanding the terms of reference to include receiver managers, allowing the Royal Commissioner to determine criminal activity by the banks and extending the length of the inquiry to allow for more submissions and testimonials.

Mr Kenney said so far only a handful of farmers had presented to the commission and the findings have been unsatisfactory.

We are not happy with the Royal Commission, Mr Kenney said.

Nothing has been mentioned in the media about the alleged money laundering thats been exposed.

Mr Kenney said the Royal Commissioner needed stronger powers to determine criminality because it makes the Royal Commission a little bit toothless otherwise.

He was concerned that the banks were way out of control and needed to be brought to account for all the hardships farmers had experienced because of their lending practices.

About 20 farmers will be expected to share testimonials at the event, which will be held in the main committee room at Parliament House.

The room seats about 300 but with the amount of interest from the rural community it is expected to be full to overflowing.

I reckon Senator Anning will need every bit of that, Mr Kenney said.
This Grain King Nyrex chaser bin will be put up for aution later this month to raise funds for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

CUNDERDIN machinery manufacturer Grain King is to auction a specially-built, 40,000 litre Nyrex chaser bin to raise money for the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) which is celebrating its 90th anniversary in 2018.

The bin will be auctioned at the Dowerin GWN7 Machinery Field Days on Wednesday, August 29.

It would sell for $97,900 retail but it is hoped to raise a profit of $60,000 to $70,000, which will be donated to RFDS.

The Nyrex chaser bin, which was internationally recognised for its innovation at the Swedish Steel Awards in May, will feature the livery of the RFDS.

Grain King chief executive officer Colin Jorgensen said the business worked extensively throughout all the grain-growing areas of Australia which made it a natural fit with the RFDS, one of the largest and most comprehensive aero-medical organisations in the world.

The service provides extensive primary health care and 24-hour emergency service to people over an area of 7.69 million square kilometres.

The Nyrex chaser bin will be auctioned online and on-site by Smith and Broughton Auctioneers.

Mr Jorgensen said the Nyrex chaser bin was a one-of-a-kind.

It will be an efficient addition to any grain farm, helping to reduce grain discharge times, minimising energy use and reducing soil compaction on farms, he said.

And not only will the farmer be getting a great piece of machinery, the RFDS will be gaining a meaningful donation.

The Nyrex Chaser bins use a Strenx product that is 25 per cent lighter than steel plate and provides a longer life than conventional bins.

Its assembly process uses laser technology in a bolted construction that avoids steel bowing from welding, creating savings in time and energy.

The modular construction also helps reduce freight costs enabling the Nyrex Chaser Bin to gain an international audience.

RFDS chief executive officer Rebecca Tomkinson said the organisation was delighted to have Grain Kings support.

Like Grain King we spend much of our time in remote rural properties providing support for farming communities and we urge farmers to get behind this initiative which can benefit both them and ourselves, she said.
HAVING active roles in WAs wool and grains industries, Pingelly producer John Hassell realises the importance of having a say on remote decisions potentially affecting his livelihood.

The former CBH Group director and WAs representative on the national WoolPoll panel, Mr Hassell has reminded WA woolgrowers they had a chance next month to have a say on what portions of their wool cheque levy is spent on research and development (R&D) and on marketing wool over the next three years.

Mr Hassell said he hoped levy-paying woolgrowers would feel strongly enough about their industrys future to vote in WoolPoll 2018.

He said with high wool prices there was a risk woolgrowers would be complacent about the poll.

The poll will determine whether the two per cent levy of the past three years is maintained and how revenue derived from it will be spent by Australian Wool Innovation (AWI).

Prices are so good that growers might naturally focus on other areas of their farming operations, particularly here in WA, where the majority of mixed farmers will look to cropping towards the end of the year, Mr Hassell said.

Farmers need to have their say and not let others speak for them.

Our other challenge is that while WA farmers are very innovative and do some amazing stuff, theyre also very individualistic and self-supporting  they dont like to go charging out and getting involved elsewhere.

A vote in WoolPoll is a chance that wool producers have every three years to vote on the amount they want spent on researching industry issues, developing new technologies and marketing wool to the world.

No vote means no say.

Wool producers need to think about their industrys future, think about the investment thats gone into marketing and R&D and what its returned and vote.

Mr Hassell and wife Michelle run a mixed-farming enterprise 25 kilometres east of Pingelly and this season shore 3500 ewes and 700 lambs, as well as implementing a cropping program of wheat, canola, lupins, oats and hay over 1000 hectares.

Their sheep numbers have doubled in the past two years to take advantage of a buoyant wool market for their 17-19 micron fleece wool.

The recent rains were a welcome relief for both enterprises.

Mr Hassell said eligible woolgrowers would receive a voter information kit shortly, which will include all the information they need to make an informed decision, as well as the levy rate options.

This years voter information kit is very comprehensive and contains more financial detail than ever before, he said.

I encourage woolgrowers to take the time to review the documents and complete their ballot paper online, by mail or fax.

Voting in WoolPoll 2018 opens on Monday, September 17 and closes on Friday, November 2.

p More information: visit woolpoll.com.au
Almost by necessity, most articles, reports and academic papers discussing the topic of corruption start by establishing that corruption is morally wrong and economically/politically detrimental. The point, beyond providing the reader with the basic information required to venture through the rest of the text, has become a sort of ritual with little more meaning than to ascertain the pertinence of the topic.

A similar  but much more problematic  ritual can usually be found by the end of those works, where the author is required to provide recommendations and guidance to the work of those charged with reducing corruption in real-life settings.

While it is a matter of common sense that these recommendations be aimed at decision-makers, the fact that they are more precisely directed at the work of high-level actors of the state apparatus seems to run contrary to their purpose, which is the adoption and implementation of new or improved policies and the consequent reduction of corruption.

Let me explain why.

Take a consultancy report commissioned by a private company interested in implementing an ethics management program. Aware of the legal risks of non-compliance with anti-corruption regulations, senior management takes an active role as the interested principal behind the adoption of technical recommendations. Thus, the consultants audience is both clearly identified as well as highly motivated, making the whole process of policy-recommendation production, transmission, and adoption a rather straightforward one. Information, audience, interests and reformers are all well-identified and on the same page.

The same does not apply to matters of public anti-corruption reform.

Take the issue of conflict-of-interests among members of the U.S. Congress, or that of judicial reform. Both are highly important and extremely common areas on which policy recommendations can be found to dwell at large  and yet, those same recommendations tend to be invariably devised in a way which makes them fall victim to circular logic and become utterly meaningless.

I will show this with an example from Salihu and Gholamis 2018 paper Corruption in the Nigerian judicial system: an overview, but which equally applies to almost any other article and paper on the topic. There, the authors posit that [c]orruption [h]as affected completely the professionalism and integrity of the judicial system, and that other arms of government still have great influence on the court decisions. Based on the two statements, any sensible reader would correctly conclude that corruption in that country is a pervasive issue throughout the state apparatus.

Yet, when we reach the final section of Recommendations, it is almost impossible to not be baffled by the piece of advice provided there: The institution of the judiciary needs to be completely free from any form of influence; and judges should rise up to the task to ensure that the judicial independence entrusted in their hands is not traded for money and gifts. How exactly are these changes expected to take place?

Such recommendations, regardless of being well-spirited, cannot be realistically called recommendations at all but rather a general call for ethical behavior, as they dont state either steps nor methods to accomplish the goal. Most importantly, however, they are inherently public policy recommendations, as they are only directed towards the decision-making process of public actors, which creates the circular logic I mentioned above (and which I have discussed (pdf) at length in A Systems Model on Corruption and Anticorruption Reform): We cannot establish that a specific sector is affected by pervasive corruption and then recommend its operators to adopt effective anti-corruption policies. Thats not how corruption works. Corruption is endogenous to the system, not exogenous, and thus it is highly unlikely for embedded actors to adopt measures against it without being subjected first to a new incentive structure imposed from outside the system.

Thus, recommendations of this kind make the mistake of requesting corrupted actors to tackle their own corruption.

To correct this pervasive problem in the anti-corruption literature (including assessment reports) I posit that authors should think of public policy reform as goals, and devise appropriate recommendations in the form of strategies, using a variety of interest groups (e.g. organized civil society, private sector, international actors, opposition parties, independent/autonomous agencies) as target audience and agents for their subsequent execution. This approach would significantly correct inherent errors in the formulation of anti-corruption policy recommendations and align the production of knowledge with its social purpose.

Michael Johnston has touched on the same point before in another post for the FCPA Blog, Relying on political will to fight corruption is magical thinking. Crucially, he says: Reform scenarios dependent upon political will amount to claiming these ideas will work if someone makes them work  wishful, and circular, thinking at best. In the argument I presented above, political will of the sort he criticizes is manifest in the implicit audience and requirements of the traditional recommendations abundant in anti-corruption work.

It is high time authors stopped framing their ideas for reform in terms of magical thinking and began taking as much care in the way they construct recommendations (if they choose to offer them at all) as they do in pointing out the issues. Yes, corruption is a serious problem, and it affects this and that organization  but the solution definitely will not follow from recommending they become more transparent, accountable, or independent. Those changes need to be produced, not required.

_____

Joseph Pozsgai-Alvarez, pictured above, is Program-Specific Assistant Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University in Japan. He has served as external consultant to the Office of the Prime Minister of Peru on matters of ethics, transparency, and access to information, and is currently engaged in the development of the Daily Corruption: News Feed & Database project with NGOs in Latin America and Africa. His topics of research include corruption tolerance, the politics of anti-corruption, and integrity management. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Tsukuba. He can be contacted here.
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MyDreamPlus, a Beijing, Chinabased smart workspace service company, completed a US$120m Series C funding round.

The round was led by Hillhouse Capital and General Atlantic with participation from existing investors JOY Capital, Ocean Link, M31 Management Fund of Giant Network Group, and K2VC.

The company intends to use the funds to further grow operations, to consolidate its position in the domestic co-working space and workspace industry.

Co-founded in 2015, MyDreamPlus is a tech company that provides shared office space to startups, freelancers, small and medium enterprises, and satellite offices or teams from corporations. It has focused on building an Office as a Service system (OaaS), which integrates space design, smart office management, and community operation. Currently, the company operates around 300,000 square meters of floor space across nearly 40 office units/properties in the core business districts of Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Xian.

This round of financing will further support the companys expansion into the Tier 1 cities in which it operates, such as Beijing and Shanghai, as well as into new Tier 1 cities, including Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Xian, and will also allow the company to increase investment into R&D and upgrade its smart office spaces.

FinSMEs

13/08/2018
Mindwell, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based plant-based jerky company, raised $100k in seed funding.

The Zell Founders Fund, a student-led venture fund in the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan, made the investment.

The company intends to use the funds to expand the business through investments in working capital and marketing.

Founded in early 2017 by Allyson Stewart, MBA 17, and Bridget Henley, MPH 17, Mindwell makes plant-based foods, specializing in making high-protein plant-based jerky with no artificial flavors or ingredients. The companys products are currently available in the Midwest in Plum Market, Dollop Coffee, and in Chicago Equinox locations at Wellness Grub cafes.

The company is growing and has plans to launch in a large regional grocery chain this fall.

FinSMEs

13/08/2018
Back in 1971, when Starbucks was first founded as a small coffee shop in a dingy Seattle neighborhood, nobody in their right mind could have predicted that what was initially just a glorified cafe will eventually turn into one of the biggest multinational corporations in the world. In fact, you can apply the same anecdote to every successful modern company  Google, Apple, you name it.

So, what do all of these companies have in common, apart from dominating nearly every aspect of our daily lives and reaching the status of near ubiquitousness? The answer to this question is quite simple: their logos. More precisely, the way these companies incorporated visual branding into their corporate identity and used it to bolster their reach and influence. In this article, we will be discussing how Starbucks used things such as brand awareness and marketing to reach people and attract more attention to their service. Here is Starbuckss visual branding and the correlation to their brand success.

Basic Elements of Starbucks Logo Design and History

Presently, the company logo features a medium sized green circle, with a Siren. As you might already know, Sirens are dangerous mythological creatures that, according to Greek and Roman legends, preyed on sailors by luring them with their enchanting music and beautiful singing voices by leading their ships into the rocky coasts.

This, of course, does not mean that the Starbucks Siren has some nefarious symbolism behind it, like Starbucks luring unassuming customers to their Spiced Lattes. The explanation behind their logo choice is quite simple. Back in 1971, when the founders came up with the idea, they landed on the name Starbucks inspired by Moby Dick, Herman Melvilles famous novel.

While browsing through several old marine books, they came across a picture with a siren in an ancient Norse Woodcut. They liked the picture and chose to incorporate it into the companys logo. So, ironically, you could say that the Siren called to them, as the mythological creatures do.

Throughout the years, the image has suffered some modifications, adapting to the times. However, it did retain its basic elements. Probably one of the most famous starbucks logo changes since the companys founding is the shift from rich coffee brown to todays deep green. The shape and font have also suffered some alterations.

Connection Between the Brand and Local Culture

However, the connection between the company and this logo goes beyond the fact that the founders simply liked how it looked. As you might know, Seattle is one of the biggest port cities in the United States, so there is a strong link between the locals and seafaring in general. Secondly, coffee travels for long and often excruciating distances across water to end up on our shelves.

Whatever the case, the logo worked for two main reasons: it made sense on a local level, and it helped the company get traction when it hit the mainstream due to the fact that it was a breath of fresh air amongst the bland and uninspired corporate logos of the time.

Size, Fonts and Consistency

When it comes to visual branding, there are several ways to exploit it to your advantage. Throughout the years, Starbucks has invested tons of financial resources both to expand their business and to create a standardized look for their merchandise, food, drinks as well as stores. It is no wonder why the Starbucks Siren logo is one of the most recognizable brands in the world. No matter where you go  New York, Tokyo, London -, if you walk into a Starbucks, you will have the same experience.

But how exactly can one correlate Starbucks visual branding to their overall success? The answer is not singular, and most of them are interlinked, so we will try to make a brief analysis to figure this out.

First off, let us talk about the size and font of the logo. Let us get one thing out of the way: if you want your business to be successful, you need to get your startup image right because it will influence both the culture of the company and how the public perceives it down the line.

In our day and age, sadly, having a great product is not always enough to be successful  you have to find innovative ways to get it noticed. Even if a lack of branding is not the sole reason why many startups fail, investing as much time and effort could mean the difference between besting your competitors or losing ground to a rival with a lesser product that was more marketing savvy.

As a result, the size, as well as the font of the logo, should be chosen with care. The size, design and structure of the logo should be appropriate for social media so that it can be easily spotted. As for the color of the logo, simplicity is key. The pallets that work the best are those that people can refer to on a regular basis and convey the message that the founders of the company want to transmit.

But even more important than the colors, fonts and design of the logo is consistency. Starbucks have strived, both through their logos and products, to transmit the idea that their products will always be in accordance with the companys philosophy. That is why the companys attempt to revamp their logo a few years ago (when they switched green with black) backfired in a considerable way.

Conclusion

The reason why their revamp enjoyed such a bad reception is because people were just too accustomed to the old green logo. And it makes total sense if we take a look at our personal experiences. What is the first thing that you think about when you see a green logo in a crowded city center, even if you cant read it from a distance? That is right, you make the connection with Starbucks. And that is why their visual branding tactics were so successful.
WGL Energy Systems, a Washington, D.C.-based source for clean, efficient and diverse energy solutions, secured a $75m financing package from M&T Bank.

The funding will support WGL Energys efforts to expand solar development opportunities in the United States.

The funding will support future solar energy projects. WGL Energy seeks to expand its renewable energy programs and will partner with organizations across the country on these key solar energy initiatives. The credit package provides WGL with the flexibility and autonomy to choose between one and up to 30 projects to invest in, own and operate. WGL Energy has more than 290 megawatts (MW) of distributed generation projects installed or under contract across 21 states and the District of Columbia.

The WGL family of companies  Washington Gas, WGL Energy, WGL Midstream and Hampshire Gas  are now indirect, wholly-owned subsidiaries of AltaGas Ltd [TSX:ALA].

With activities and assets across the U.S., WGL provides options for natural gas, electricity, green power and energy services, including generation, storage, transportation, distribution, supply and efficiency.

WGL Energy delivers a full spectrum of energy offerings, including electricity, natural gas, renewable energy, carbon reduction, distributed generation and energy efficiency solutions provided by WGL Energy Services, Inc. and WGL Energy Systems, Inc.

FinSMEs

13/08/2018
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Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund would be the main source of money for Tesla CEO Elon Musk's grand plan to take the company private, but the deal isn't done yet, Musk disclosed in a blog on Monday.

The fund approached Musk about going private multiple times during the past two years, and Musk says he left a July 31 meeting with no question that the deal could be closed. That's why he tweeted on Aug. 7 that he had "funding secured" to take the company private.

It is that phrase that may lead to trouble for Musk.

If the tweet is deemed by regulators to be a factual statement, and it was taken as such by investors who drove shares up 11 percent on that day, Musk could be at risk for securities fraud if it wasn't entirely true.

Already there are reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into Musk's tweet.

Funding for the deal would come from the ultraconservative kingdom's Public Investment Fund, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds. Founded in 1971, the fund has some $250 billion in investments across the world, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, based in Las Vegas. Among its holdings include a $3.5 billion stake in the ride-sharing app Uber.

A fund spokesman declined to comment Monday night in Riyadh.

Musk's blog , posted before the markets opened Monday, didn't impress investors much. Shares fell $3.10 to $352.39 in midday trading.

Under his proposal, only investors who don't want to remain with a private company would be paid, and funding for the deal would come from Tesla stock, not debt. Musk wrote that he expects about one-third of shareholders to take an offer of $420 per share, making the buyouts worth roughly $23.6 billion. Presumably the wealth fund and perhaps other investors would put up the money to buy the shares and would be repaid in Tesla equity.

Musk wrote that at the July 31 meeting, the fund's managing director "strongly expressed his support" for taking the electric car and solar panel maker private. "I understood from him that no other decision makers were needed and that they were eager to proceed," Musk wrote in the blog.

But the deal appeared to be far from finished. Since the meeting, the men have continued discussions and the managing director has expressed support "subject to financial and other due diligence and their internal review process for obtaining approvals," Musk wrote.

The wealth fund recently bought nearly 5 percent of Tesla's shares.

The fund's chairman is Saudi Arabia's assertive 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He has used the fund as a vehicle to achieve economic goals of increasing employment in the kingdom, as well as for floating a possible public offering of the state oil giant Saudi Aramco, though that effort appears to have stalled.

Tesla has a growing following on the Arabian Peninsula, with a glittering new showroom in the skyscraper-studded city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Musk has visited the region as well and given talks.

Musk wrote in Monday's blog that he made the Aug. 7 announcement because he had talked to large investors about his desire to take the company private. "It wouldn't be right to share information about going private with just our largest investors without sharing the same information with all investors at the same time," he wrote.

He wrote that he was speaking for himself as a potential bidder for the company.

Musk also wrote that the Saudis are interested in the company because they want to diversify away from oil.

Musk continues to speak with other investors because he wants Tesla to continue to have a "broad investor base," he wrote.

Tesla wouldn't comment on a possible SEC investigation or why it took a week for details to be released in the blog. The SEC also would not comment Monday.

Late on Friday, Musk used Twitter to taunt investors who have bet against his company, despite the possible SEC investigation.

The tweets were aimed at "shorts," or investors who borrow shares of Tesla and immediately sell them with the hope that Tesla's share price will fall. That allows the shorts to buy back the stock at a lower price, return the shares to the lender, and pocket the difference.

On Friday, two lawsuits were filed accusing Musk of seeking to harm short sellers by artificially running up the price of the company's shares.

By taking Tesla private, Musk believes that the company will be able to sharpen its long-term focus of revolutionizing an automobile industry dominated by fuel-combustion vehicles without having to cater to investors' fixation on how the business is faring each quarter.

____

Jon Gambrell in Dubai and Marcy Gordon in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
Chris Hardwick teared up on Sunday nights episode of Talking Dead while addressing the investigation into the abuse allegations that nearly cost him his hosting duties.

Hardwick returned as the host of the The Walking Dead aftershow on Sunday after he was reinstated following an AMC investigation into claims that he abused his ex-girlfriend, Chloe Dykstra. The comedian thanked his fans for their support through the scandal.

"You know, normally I recap the show were about to talk about here, but instead I really just want to take a minute, and I want say that I am so appreciative to be standing here right now and I want to thank you, the 'Walking Dead' community, for all of your support these last couple of months," Hardwick said during the shows open.

CHRIS HARDWICK TO RETURN TO AMC AFTER SEXUAL ASSAULT CLAIMS

Hardwick said hosting the show wasnt just a job for him, but a vital part of my life. He said working on the show for the last seven years has been like a sanctuary.

"This has been with me through good times and bad times and I have so much gratitude to you, the fans, and the producers, and the amazing casts of both of these shows, you know, for allowing me to come here and be a part of this community every week, he said. This is what this is. This a community."

Hardwick also noted that hes excited for the upcoming changes on "The Walking Dead show.

Despite his excitement to be back, a female executive producer and a handful of staffers reportedly quit in protest over Hardwicks return. Hardwick is attempting to regain support from the remaining staff members.

CHRIS HARDWICK RETURNING TO NBC HOSTING GIGS AFTER ABUSE ALLEGATIONS

AMC announced in July Hardwick will be back hosting Talking Dead and Talking With Chris Hardwick after the company conducted a comprehensive assessment.

Hardwicks investigation began after Dykstra said in a Medium essay that her former boyfriend, believed to be Hardwick, had emotionally abused and sexually assaulted her. In the essay published June 14, Dykstra accused the ex-boyfriend of pressuring her into sex and in her career, which she says was ultimately derailed.

Following the investigation, Hardwicks name was reinstated on Nerdist, a website he founded. He will also return as The Wall host at NBC and is expected to appear as a guest judge on Americas Got Talent, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Disney fans awaiting the live-action version of Mulan got a taste of what its star, Chinese actress Liu Yifei, looks like in the title role.

Production has begun on Disneys live-action #Mulan! Walt Disney Studios tweeted Monday, while sharing a snap of the 30-year-old actress.

The movie will also feature other international stars, including Rogue One: A Star Wars Story star Donnie Yen as Commander Tung, a mentor to the warrior.

SYLVESTER STALLONE TEASES RAMBO V ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Chinese actors Gong Li and Jet Li are playing a witch and the Chinese emperor, respectively, according to Variety, which says actor Yoson An is taking on the role of Mulan's love interest Chen Honghui.

Disney previously made a cartoon version of "Mulan," which was released in the U.S. in 1998.

The new movie wont hit U.S. theaters until March 27, 2020, but fans already have some information regarding the plot.

LOST NUDE SCENE OF MARILYN MONROE DISCOVERED, WAS KEPT IN LOCKED CABINET FOR YEARS: REPORT

Mulan is the epic adventure of a fearless young woman who masquerades as a man in order to fight Northern Invaders attacking China, Disney says, per E!.  The eldest daughter of an honored warrior, Hua Mulan is spirited, determined and quick on her feet.

The company adds, When the Emperor issues a decree that one man per family must serve in the Imperial Army, she steps in to take the place of her ailing father as Hua Jun, becoming one of Chinas greatest warriors ever.
The Instagram-famous friend of the Kardashians who was carried out of Kylie Jenner's 21st birthday party on a stretcher is speaking out about her health scare.

Australian model Tammy Hembrow, who has appeared in Khloe Kardashian's Good American clothing line ads, was carried out of Jenner's soiree facedown on a stretcher with blackened feet and bruises on her face on Thursday.

"Firstly I want everyone to know that I'm OK," a visibly upset Hembrow said in a YouTube video. "So yeah, I pretty much collapsed. Honestly I'm already like super, super embarrassed about it."

The 24-year-old mom-of-two explained she was "running off pretty much 30 hours of no sleep" and was "struggling to stay awake" while having her hair and makeup done for Jenner's party.

"I've been trying to keep myself busy not really taking time to think about how I'm actually feeling," she shared adding that she has custody of her two kids "the majority of the time."

Hembrow also addressed the "nasty" comments she received from followers following her highly-publicized hospitalization.

"Another thing I wanted to bring up is people trolling or being nasty or making up things just for no good reason... I could never imagine attacking someone and judging someone for something like this," an emotional Hembrow said.

"You just never know what someone is going through, it's a reminder to be kind always. There are people who go through worse things than this at the end of the day."

Aside from the Hembrow's EMT-assisted exit from the event, the New York Post reported that Jenner's birthday was shut down by the cops for violating Los Angeles' 2 a.m. closing time policy.

But despite some of the evening's drama, Jenner and her famous sisters, Kim, Kourtney, Khloe and Kendall, seemed to have a fabulous evening celebrating the youngest member of the Kardashian-Jenner family.

The "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" stars all made bold fashion statements, clad in neon and glittery ensembles for Jenner's epic celebration.

Fox News' Morgan Evans contributed to this report.
A Marilyn Monroe nude scene with Clark Gable from the 1961 movie "The Misfits" was thought to have been destroyed, but it turns out a producer kept the footage because he saw it as groundbreaking, a report said.

Deadline reported Sunday that the scene was discovered by Charles Casillo, an author who was doing research for his upcoming book "Marilyn Monroe: The Private Life of a Public Icon."

Casillo spoke with Curtice Taylor, the son of movie producer Frank Taylor, who said the footage had been stored away since 1999.

The scene shows Monroe dropping a sheet that was covering her body, the report said. The scene would have been one of the first times  possibly the first  that a nude scene would be in a major production.

The scene was left on the cutting room floor.

The director of the flim reportedly felt the scene was not needed for the story, but Frank Taylor saw it as groundbreaking and saved it.

Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson and changed her name after coming to Hollywood. She used her mother's maiden name Monroe.

Monroe remains a pop culture phenomenon. She was well known for films that included "Some Like it Hot," "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and "How to Marry a Millionaire." But for younger generations, Monroe remains an icon of style.

In the end, Monroe is one of the most complex female public figures in American history, and that real complexity plays a role in her continuing ability to fascinate us, Lois Banner, the author of Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox, wrote for The Los Angeles Times.

We admire her beauty, puzzle over her mysteries and see her as a reflection of the quixotic, multifaceted, always striving and often contradictory American character.

It is reportedly not clear what will happen with the newly found footage.
Becoming a royal isnt always a fairy tale  just ask Princess Sofia of Sweden.

The former model, who is married to Prince Carl Philip, recalled the huge hate storm she endured when her relationship with the Duke of Varmland became public.

The couple announced their engagement in 2015 and were married a year later at the Royal Palace of Stockholm. They welcomed a son, Prince Alexander in 2016, followed by their second child, Prince Gabriel, in 2017.

When my relationship with Carl Philip became public, I was greeted by a huge hate storm, Sofia, 33, told Swedens TV4, as reported by UKs Daily Mail Monday. People had opinions about me and my relationship, and more. It surprised me and knocked me over for a period of time. It was very tough. People had comments on everything possible, on what I do and how I look.

The Daily Mail added Sofias experience with online bullying compelled her to combat hate speech through the Prince Couples Foundation, which was founded on her wedding day.

Sofia added that she and her husband intend on creating an open dialogue with their sons about the issue of online bullying.

We have said that we plan to always have an open dialogue on the level of our children, she explained. It is partly about giving our children the tools to deal with life in general. Also, the network they have is very important.

The publication revealed before Sofia became a princess, she worked as a glamour model to help fund her studies at the University of Stockholm. In 2004, she was crowned Miss Slitz by readers of the Swedish mens magazine. She was also cast in the reality show Paradise Hotel, which pairs up single contestants to share a room for seven days.

Carl Philip, now 39, and Sofia reportedly met at a nightclub in Stockholm after he ended his relationship with publicist Emma Pernauld, whom he dated for a decade. Sofia told TV4 in 2015 they met through mutual friends.

Sofia was slammed by the press for being a reality TV star and model. And while the pair were initially shy around each other, she described their first encounter as love at first sight.

The first thing I noticed about Carl Philip was that he seemed very humble, said Sofia at the time. When I got to know him, I saw that he was incredibly natural, very intelligent and very humble.

Carl Philip, who is third in line to the Swedish royal throne, felt the same way.

Above all, shes beautiful and has beautiful eyes, he said. But shes also a fantastic person. Shes down to earth and has a wonderful personality. There are so many good things to say about her.

I dont think I knew the magic of love before I met Sofia, added Carl Philip. But ever since I met her, Ive seen how love can change a person.

I completely agree, said Sofia. Carl Philip is definitely the right person for me. Hes my best friend.

Sofia revealed she was eager to use her new royal status for good.

In my new role, Im hoping to focus on issues that are important in society, to do good, she said. For example with the wedding, weve created a foundation that supports children and young people.
An Ohio mothers heart-wrenching note to the 19-year-old who bought her coffee has gone viral on social media.

Last week, Mackenzie Mauller decided to pay it forward by buying the woman behind her a cup of coffee  little did she know how much of an impact that simple gesture would make on struggling mother Nicole Clawson.

Yesterday I bought coffee for the lady behind me at Starbucks... later in the day I found this is my mailbox. Small acts can make a big difference folks, spread some kindness, the Kent State student wrote on Twitter, which has been liked over 80K times.

FAST FOOD EMPLOYEE'S 'BEAUTIFUL' ACT OF KINDNESS GOES VIRAL

In a two-page note Clawson left in Maullers mailbox, Clawson explained how much the coffee meant to her after her life had taken an unexpected turn that she was not emotionally [or] financially prepared for.

I rarely go to Starbucks and treat myself, but the last couple of months have been a bit of a struggle. My father just passed away and he was also my babysitter. My family and my children have had a really hard time, the mom writes.

Clawson, who noted that she was compelled to write the letter to Mauller after realizing the young woman was her neighbor, went on to say that the coffee was more than just a coffee.

It was something that has turned my whole day around, put tears in my eyes and a smile on my face and I feel so grateful.

VIRAL LOUISIANA SUPERMARKET EMPLOYEE WHO LET AUTISTIC CUSTOMER STOCK SHELVES GETS $100G FOR COLLEGE

Thousands of others have also left comments on the Twitter post, which was retweeted by Starbucks, praising Maullers actions.

Clawson even reached out again to thank Mauller and wrote that the kindhearted woman offered to babysit for Clawson if she needed.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

Clawson said her children are also planning to pay it forward themselves, after seeing what a positive impact it can leave.
Health officials announced Friday that two children were sickened by a rare strain of influenza after coming into contact with pigs at a county fair in Michigan.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said that influenza A (H1N2) has been identified as the strain that the children contracted from last months Fowlerville Family Fair, which took place July 23 to 28.

Several of the pigs exhibited at the fair tested positive for influenza on July 27 and the Center for Disease Control confirmed the virus found in the children is similar to that circulating amongst the swine.

CONTAMINATED GOLDFISH CRACKERS LEFT MISSISSIPPI WOMAN SICK, HOSPITALIZED, LAWSUIT CLAIMS

The kids were not hospitalized and are currently recovering from the illness.

These are among the first H1N2 infections identified in the U.S. this year. Two other cases have been confirmed in California. Officials say they are still investigating anyone else who became ill after attending the fair.

Only 17 cases of this strain have been submitted to the CDC since 2005.

Symptoms of swine flu are similar to a seasonal flu and can include fever, cough, runny nose, and sometimes body aches, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea, according to the DHHS. On rare occasions, the illness can be deadly, especially for those at a higher risk, including children under five, people 65 years of age and older, pregnant women and people with certain chronic health issues, such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease, weakened immune systems and neurological conditions.

WISCONSIN WOMAN'S DEATH LINKED TO BACTERIA FROM DOG SALIVA, DOCTORS BELIEVE

To protect yourself and others from contracting H1N2, DHHS recommends taking the following precautions:

Refrain from eating or drinking in livestock barns or show rings.

Do not take toys, pacifiers, cups, baby bottles, strollers or similar items into pig areas.

Anyone who is at high risk of serious flu complications and is planning to attend a fair should avoid pigs and swine barns.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. Germs spread this way.

Avoid contact with pigs if you have flu-like symptoms.

If you are sick, stay home from work or school until your illness is over.

Avoid close contact with sick people.

Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it and wash your hands.

Wash your hands often with soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Wisconsin womans death has been linked to dog saliva that caused a rare infection that spread to the rest of her body.

In June, Sharon Larson, 58, was rushed to the hospital days after her new puppy nipped her hand, causing a small cut.

Within two days of arriving at the Wheaton Franciscan hospital in Franklin, Larson died of an infection that doctors believe was transferred from the dog's mouth.

I was told she could get struck by lightning four times and live, win the lottery twice, said Sharons husband Dan Larson to Fox 4. Thats how rare this is supposed to be."

CONTAMINATED GOLDFISH CRACKERS LEFT MISSISSIPPI WOMAN SICK, HOSPITALIZED, LAWSUIT CLAIMS

The doctors tried general antibiotics, but according to her husband the medication didnt do anything.

I feel like I got robbed. Lost my right arm. My best friend, Dan Larson said to FOX4.

Larson's daughter, Stacy Larson-Hruzek, added on Facebook that she "loved [her] mother with all of [her] heart," and urged anyone bit by a dog to follow the CDC's guidelines and contact them immediately.

Doctors told the grieving widower that his wife tested positive for capnocytophaga, a bacteria found in most cats and dogs that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, rarely spreads to humans and cause illness  but when it does it can be deadly.

However, the rare infection has popped up twice in the state this summer.

BOY'S SQUEAKY COUGH CAUSED BY WHISTLE STUCK IN HIS THROAT

Nearly 45 miles away in West Bend, Greg Manteufel had to have all four limbs amputated after he contracted the bacteria from a dog lick.

Doctors suggest that people with weakened immune systems are at the greatest risk for contracting capnocytophaga, but Manteufel's case, who had a history of good health, is prompting questions into how the infectious disease takes hold.

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Larsons son, Steven, now wants answers about the potentially fatal illness, which typically begins with flu-like symptoms.

I had no knowledge, he said. What do you want people to know? To always be more cautious. People think nothing of getting a simple dog bite. But even something so simple... can go wrong, he said to FOX4.
Alabama health officials are investigating multiple reports of Zika and the West Nile virus in the area, the states health agency said in a Monday afternoon news release.

Shelby County health officials confirmed at least one Zika case in Pelham, the Pelham Patch reported Monday. Officials, however, stressed that Zika hasnt been transmitted locally.

To date in Alabama, the Zika virus has only been identified in individuals known to have traveled to areas where Zika is known to be endemic. There has been no local transmission, the agency explained.

Fortunately, there are precautionary steps people can take  like using certain types of bug repellent and wearing loose, full sleeves and pants.

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People can get the Zika virus from mosquito bites, sex and blood transfusions, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains on its website. A pregnant woman can also pass it onto her baby, the agency warned.

Muscle pain, joint pain, rash and fever are some of the common symptoms of the virus.

Infection with the Zika virus causes only mild symptoms in the majority of the cases, but the biggest risk is to pregnant women, Alabama health officials said. Zika is now known to cause birth defects and other poor pregnancy-related outcomes if infection occurs during pregnancy.

West Nile is a virus thats typically spread by infected mosquitoes. Though side effects of the virus can be severe, most people who are infected experience little to no symptoms and fully recover.

WHAT IS WEST NILE VIRUS? 3 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE MOSQUITO-SPREAD AILMENT

Most people who are infected do not experience symptoms, the CDC warns. However, a small percentage of people  roughly 1 in 5  develop a fever and may additionally experience headaches, body aches, vomiting, diarrhea, or a rash, among other signs of the virus.

Even rarer, about 1 in 150 people who are infected with West Nile virus can develop a serious illness  such as inflammation of the spinal cord or brain  the CDC said.

There is no vaccine or specific antiviral medication to treat or prevent the virus, according to the CDC. Rather, those who are infected can take over the counter pain and fever reducers to alleviate symptoms.

Fox News Madeline Farber and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Recent comments by North Koreas foreign minister could signal that dictator Kim Jong Un may break his vague pledge to President Trump to dismantle the Norths nuclear weapons and missile programs.

Since Kim, his father and grandfather who ruled before him all have a well-documented history of lying about North Koreas military aims when it suits their interests, it should not come as a shock that Kim is continuing the proud family tradition.

If so, Northeast Asia could very well be headed right back to the brink of war, with few options left to avoid what could be a dangerous nuclear showdown.

While in Iran on a three-day visit, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said Thursday, according to Iranian media: Although North Korea has agreed on disarmament to deliver on its commitments in negotiations with US, we will preserve our nuclear science as we know that the Americans will not abandon their hostility toward us.

It is tough to know exactly what such remarks mean. For example, does the North want to keep its nuclear research facilities or power generation capabilities and give up its atomic arsenal? Or does it want to do nothing of substance?

Its clear that such comments only build on North Koreas growing dissatisfaction with Americas firm insistence on denuclearization.

There is a big roadblock in implementing such crippling sanctions: China.

That same day that Ri spoke, the North Korean Foreign ministry issued a statement through the Korean Central News Agency. The statement declared that as long as the U.S. denies even the basic decorum for its dialogue partner and clings to the outdated acting script which the previous administrations have all tried and failed, one cannot expect any progress in the implementation of the DPRK-U.S. joint statement including the denuclearization.

Huh?

It seems the Kim regime feels that what it calls its recent goodwill measures are not being reciprocated by the Trump administration.

These goodwill measures include: halting long-range missile and nuclear weapons testing; a questionable claim that the North has dismantled its nuclear test site; and the return of what the North Koreans claim are the remains of 55 members of the U.S. military who died in the Korean War.

None of these steps by North Korea does much to end the threat from the rogue regimes nuclear bombs and missiles. And since there are about 5,300 American service members still missing and presumed dead in North Korea, the Norths supposed return of the remains of about 1 percent of them 65 years after the Korean War ended must be seen as only a token gesture.

But according to North Korea, the U.S. hasnt done enough to show its appreciation of the goodwill measures. The North says this even though: President Trumps has suspended important U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has visited Pyongyang; and President Trump met with Kim at a summit in Singapore in June and showered him with praise.

It seems that Kim is determined to weaken U.S. and international trade sanctions on North Korea and get a formal peace declaration officially ending the Korean War  which was halted with an armistice in 1953. But odds are that even if Kim gets these things he will still find excuses to keep at least some of his nukes.

North Korea has confounded some of the worlds top diplomats for decades. It will likely do so for decades more to come.

So if North Korea is backtracking on its promises to end its nuclear weapons program, what should America and our allies do about it?

There are only three possible options at this point  none of which are easy to implement.

Option 1: Take away any excuses Kim could use to hold onto his nuclear program.

There is no harm in declaring the Korean War over. As I have offered in prior commentary for Fox News, President Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in could arrange a three-way summit with Kim Jong Un along the Demilitarized Zone separating the Koreas.

There is even the possibility of a modifying the recently announced North-South Korea summit to include President Trump.

At this summit, all three leaders  along with possibly China and the secretary general of the United Nations  could sign a formal declaration ending the Korean War.

If the Trump administration is leery of giving Kim another legitimizing media moment, President Trump could declare the war over in his own way: send out a tweet.

Or, if he wants to follow a more traditional path, the president could issue a more formal statement going into greater length and make a speech or hold a news conference.

If, even after some sort of declaration, North Korea still wont even talk about denuclearization, it most likely never will. American policy will need to change to reflect this new reality.

Option 2: Toughen sanctions on the North with what some have called Maximum Pressure 2.0.

This, simply stated, would be economic sanctions and containment on a much harsher scale than what we have imposed on North Korea up to now.

America and its allies could push for things like: a full-scale oil and natural gas embargo; the immediate withdrawal of all North Korean guest workers (more like slaves) from around the world; and a potential naval blockade to ensure Kim does not try to sell any bombs from his nuclear arsenal or missiles for cash.

Unfortunately, there is a big roadblock in implementing such crippling sanctions: China. With Washington and Beijing in the middle of a nasty trade war, there is very little chance China will ever tighten the screws on Kim, because North Korea could end up being the ultimate bargaining chip.

As over 99 percent of the Norths external trade moves through China in one form or another, a new maximum pressure strategy rises or falls depending on the whims of Beijing.

And you can bet the Chinese will, at the very least, demand the end of the trade war America is now waging  on terms President Trump might find very hard to swallow.

Option 3: Some sort of military strike on Pyongyangs nuclear and missile sites.

With the North having already built as many as 65 nuclear warheads that can be easily dispersed throughout the country, the chance of destroying all of them in a military strike is nearly zero.

Such a strike would also present a dangerous choice for Kim: would he launch whatever remaining nuclear weapons he had left, knowing that America and its allies may not stop with just one strike?

North Korea has confounded some of the worlds top diplomats for decades. It will likely do so for decades more to come. While no one knows for certain what the future holds on the Korean Peninsula one thing seems clear: the chances of the Kim regime surrendering even one nuclear weapon look pretty bleak.

And sadly but realistically, it may well be that getting the North to agree to the gold standard of complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization is an impossible dream.
NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles!

A story is supposed to have two sides, but there is only one when it comes to President Trumps foreign policy. Most American media treat his every effort as a savage assault on a harmonious world order.

Whether its the trade dispute with China, his pushing North Korea to scuttle its nukes or his demand that NATO members spend more on defense, the headlines sound the same shrieking note: Trump inflames . . . Trump escalates . . . Trump doubles down . . . Trump risks . . .

The parade of horribles continues to this day, but it will be hard to out-fear-monger a Time magazine headline from May: By Violating Iran Deal, Trump Jeopardizes National Security.

But since the world hasnt ended and since were not dead yet, I humbly suggest its time to take a deep breath and consider the other side of the story.

To continue reading on The New York Post click here.
Another powerhouse of the left is questioning whether President Trump should be impeached.

I think thats something we ought to look at, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman who helped run presidential campaigns of Bill and Hillary Clinton, told CNNs State of the Union Sunday.

McAuliffe, rumored to be considering a 2020 run for president, disproved of Trumps special relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

If President Clinton or President Obama had gone to Helsinki and done what President Trump had done, you would already have impeachment hearings going on, he told host Jake Tapper, as Politico noted.

There has to be a reason, Jake, why he is over there acting the way he acts about Putin, then inviting them here, and then saying he may go over there, McAuliffe added. Do not forget that they came into the 2016 election, they came in and tried to destroy the greatest democracy in the world.

McAuliffe is the latest in the Democratic establishment questioning its own actions.

Left-wing billionaire Tom Steyer is the founder of the Need To Impeach campaign, which is aimed squarely at Trump.

The billionaire said earlier this month that while Democratic lawmakers tell him in private about their willingness to back his campaign, many wont take any public stance.

Their message to me and the 5.5 million Americans demanding Donald Trumps impeachment is that its bad politics, its off message and it will galvanize the Republicans.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for example, has suggested impeachment could harm Democrats future electoral prospects.

McAuliffe also told CNN that the left ought to focus more on jobs and education: Its about the values, what you stand for.

He added: But our message as a party ought to be, like I had in Virginia, how do you grow an economy?  How do you invest in education?
Top police officials in Massachusetts have accused Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of insulting rank-and-file officers when she said the criminal justice system was "racist ... front to back" earlier this month.

Warren made the remarks Aug. 3 at Dillard University, a historically black college. She cited disproportionate arrests of African-Americans for petty drug possession; an overloaded public defender system; and state laws barring convicted felons from voting after their sentences are complete.

In response, Yarmouth Police Chief Frank Frederickson called Warren's comments "an insult to the hard working men and women of the Yarmouth Police Department, as well as other Local, State and Federal Law Enforcement Agencies who are part of the criminal justice system."

In a letter to Warren, Massachusetts Chief of Police Association President Steven Wojnar said he was "extremely troubled" by the senator's comments.

"Labeling the entire criminal justice profession as 'racist' spreads false and damaging information about our members," Wojnar wrote. "When our elected officials make generalized and inflammatory statements about our entire profession, without any information to back their position, it creates further hostility toward our officers and can damage the positive relationships with our residents that we have worked long and hard to establish."

Attorney General Jeff Sessions also called out Warren during a speech in Georgia on Thursday, calling her statement "a slander of every law officer and every prosecutor in America. And, frankly, I think it is an insult to their families and to the crime victims they have helped to face their attacker."

In a statement obtained by The Boston Globe this weekend, Warren said: "I spoke about an entire system  not individuals  and will continue to work on reforms to make the criminal justice system fairer.

"The entire law enforcement system has a lot of good people who get up every day and try to make this a more just, a more fair, more responsive system. And they say over and over, the system needs reform. It needs change."

A spokeswoman for Warren's Senate re-election campaign told the Globe that Warren spoke to Frederickson on Saturday. Warren's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Fox News.

Warren is heavily favored to win a second Senate term in deep-blue Massachusetts this November. She is also considered a top contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.

Click for more from Boston25News.com.

Fox News' Jake Gibson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
With President Trumps nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, the abortion debate once again has returned to the national spotlight.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Alabama and West Virginia  two states where voters will decide this fall on ballot measures asking whether to amend their constitutions to do away with any abortion protections.

If passed, the measures would not immediately impact state policy but would ensure their constitutions cant be used to allow abortions, if the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade were to be overturned.

That's far from a sure thing. But the November ballot initiatives in these two socially conservative states are being closely watched as a bellwether for how other states might handle the abortion issue in that scenario.

Its the beginning of a trend, Mary Ziegler, a professor at Florida State University College of Law and the author of "Rights to Privacy: How Americans Reimagined Roe v. Wade and Why We Have Forgotten," told Fox News. If Roe v. Wade is eventually overturned, there will be some ugly state-by-state battles.

In Alabama, state legislators approved the Republican-led measure for the ballot back in April.

We want to make sure that at a state level, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, that the Alabama Constitution cannot be used as a mechanism by which to claim that there is a right to abortion, said Republican Rep. Matt Fridy, who sponsored the bill.

According to the language on the measure, Alabama voters will be asked to either support or oppose the amendment to make it state policy to "recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life" and to state that no provisions of the constitution provide a right to an abortion or require funding of abortions.

Alabama, which is one of 43 states that ban abortion beginning at a certain stage of pregnancy, has already seen a drastic drop in the number of abortions carried out in the last decade. The number fell 41 percent from 2005 to 2016, according to the states Center for Health Statistics.

If the measure passes, Alabama would be the third state to enshrine the right to life in its state constitution, following Missouri and Utah.

A similar measure, entitled the No Constitutional Right to Abortion Amendment, will appear on Novembers ballot in West Virginia after more than two-thirds of the states House of Delegates voted for it in March.

While not as sweeping as Alabamas measure, voters in West Virginia will be asked whether the following sentence should be added to the state constitution: Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of abortion.

West Virginia is one of nine states to have laws prohibiting abortion that had been in place before Roe v. Wade and, if the Supreme Court ruling were overturned, abortion would be banned there.

In 1993, the West Virginia Supreme Court overturned a state law that prohibited Medicaid coverage for abortions, except to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape, incest or fetal anomalies, and many pro-life supporters in the state believe that the current ballot measure would undo that ruling.

Wanda Franz, president of West Virginians for Life, told the Charleston Gazette-Mail that the part of the amendment that specifies, Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion was included in order to make clear that the state constitution isnt going to be addressing the abortion issue.

For weeks, pro-choice activists and Democratic lawmakers have warned that a Kavanaugh confirmation could set the stage for Roe v. Wade to be overturned, leaving the issue to the states. However, experts have cautioned both sides not to jump to conclusions.

Kavanaugh has a mixed history when speaking about abortion law -- calling it a binding precedent during his confirmation hearing for the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., but telling the American Enterprise Institute last September that he approved of the late Justice William Rehnquist's dissent in the 7-2 Roe v. Wade ruling.

Florida States Ziegler said that, historically, even the more outspoken judges to be appointed have tempered themselves once they've become a Supreme Court justice.

"There is no guarentee that Roe v. Wade will be overturned," she said. "Everyone thought [retired Justice Anthony] Kennedy would be the deciding vote to overturn it and he did not. Justices act different when you're in a position to actually make a change.

In regard to the ballot measures, Ziegler added that they are not about eradicating abortion" and more about "laying the groundwork to take action if Roe is eventually overturned.

Theyre playing the long game, because if Roe is overturned, states will be able to go any way they want to, she said. But West Virginia and Alabama are good places for pro-life activists and legislators to sharpen their skills should Roe be overturned.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Democrats are giving up on capitalism.

According to a Gallup poll released Monday, more Democrats view socialism positively than they do capitalism  a development that comes amid the popularity of Democratic socialist candidates in the midterm elections.

Fifty-seven percent of Democrats polled by Gallup have a favorable view of socialism, while just 47 percent of Democrats in the poll have positive feelings about capitalism.

It wasnt long ago  in 2012, according to the poll -- that Democrats viewed capitalism more favorably than socialism. But the positive feelings toward capitalism have dramatically dropped nine points since 2016, when 56 percent of Democrats said they liked capitalism.

Some liberals celebrated the poll numbers.

A funny thing happens when you demonize universal health care, nutritional aid, and unemployment benefits as socialism: lots of people decide socialism is OK, New York Times op-ed writer Paul Krugman tweeted.

Meanwhile, conservatives drew attention to the poll, with the Republican campaign group America Rising taking aim at Democrats, saying it shows just how far to the left the party is being pulled. Other conservatives on Twitter cited the poll and pointed to the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, a socialist country.

Republicans still overwhelmingly prefer capitalism, with 71 percent saying in the poll they have a positive view of it and just 16 percent saying they see capitalism favorably.

The poll numbers follow the popularity in the Democratic Party of far-left figures like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who ran for president in 2016, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who defeated an incumbent this summer in a Democratic primary for a congressional seat.

Still, some Democrats have struggled trying to balance attracting support from the far-left, while still appealing to mainstream voters.

Last week, Maryland Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ben Jealous, endorsed by Sanders, cursed at a reporter on Wednesday for asking if he's a socialist.

DEM CANDIDATE BEN JEALOUS SNAPS AT REPORTER FOR SOCIALISM QUESTION

Are you f---ing kidding me?" replied Jealous, the former leader of the NAACP.

Jealous is challenging Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, whose campaign has painted the Democrat as a far-left candidate. He later apologized for the outburst.
FBI official Peter Strzok, who played a lead role in both the Russian meddling and Hillary Clinton email probes but became a political lightning rod after the revelation of anti-Trump text messages, has been fired.

Strzok attorney Aitan Goelman said in a statement Monday that his client, a 21-year FBI veteran, was fired Friday afternoon, claiming this was a departure from standard practice and politically motivated. Goelman said bureau Deputy Director David Bowdich overruled the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility to remove him.

This decision should be deeply troubling to all Americans, the attorney said.

The FBI responded: Mr. Strzok was subject to the standard FBI review and disciplinary process after conduct highlighted in the IG report was referred to the FBIs Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). OPR reviewed the investigative materials, as well as the written and oral responses of Mr. Strzok and his counsel, and issued OPR's decision. The Deputy Director, as the senior career FBI official, has the delegated authority to review and modify any disciplinary findings and/or penalty as deemed necessary in the best interest of the FBI.

Strzok appeared to launch a new Twitter account to fire back, saying he's "deeply saddened" by the decision and linking to a GoFundMe page.

President Trump and his allies for months, though, have hammered the former FBI agent and cast him as the poster child for anti-Trump bias within the bureau and Justice Department.

Reacting to the firing, the president tweeted, "finally," while asking whether the Russia case will now be dropped:

"Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!"

The president over the weekend had tweeted that Strzok and others have badly damaged the FBIs reputation, referring to them as clowns and losers!

Strzok was removed from the special counsel probe last year after the discovery that he exchanged anti-Trump and other politically charged messages with colleague and lover Lisa Page.

FBI TEXTING SCANDAL EXPLAINED

In June, he was then escorted from his FBI office and lost his security clearance amid the release of a scathing DOJ inspector general report that largely dealt with the DOJ and FBIs handling of the investigation into Clintons private email server but uncovered messages that appeared to mix political opinion with discussions about that probe -- namely, between Strzok and Page.

The IG ultimately found no evidence that the bias among the several FBI agents impacted prosecutorial decisions in the Clinton email probe. But Republicans have repeatedly raised concerns that anti-Trump bias played a role in the start of the investigation into Russian meddling and potential collusion with Trump associates in 2016.

One Strzok text in particular vowed to "stop" Trump from becoming president.

In an explosive congressional hearing last month, Strzok sought to clear his name and address the many controversial messages. He claimed his personal opinions did not affect his work. But Republicans tore into the FBI official, with House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy saying he exhibited "textbook bias."

Trump's allies cheered the former agent's termination on Monday.

"Peter Strzok was fired from the FBI because of what his own written words plainly showed: he was willing to use his official FBI position to try and stop President Trump from getting elected. He tarnished the FBI's sterling reputation and severely damaged public trust in an institution where trust is paramount. His conduct should deeply concern every American," House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said in a statement to Fox News.

Strzoks attorney, meanwhile, blasted the bureau on Monday, saying the deputy director reversed the decision of the career FBI official responsible for employee discipline who concluded, through an independent review process, that a 60-day suspension and demotion from supervisory duties was the appropriate punishment.

He added, A lengthy investigation and multiple rounds of Congressional testimony failed to produce a shred of evidence that Special Agent Strzoks personal views ever affected his work.

The Justice Department declined to comment for this report.

Text messages first emerged last year, showing Strzok and Page discussing 2016 campaign politics and repeatedly blasting Trump. In one message, Strzok called Trump an "idiot."

Messages continued to trickle out, including some reflecting apparent concern about being too tough on Clinton during the investigation into her private email system use.

The inspector general report, meanwhile, referred a total of five FBI employees for investigation in connection with politically charged texts, suggesting more disciplinary action could be considered for additional employees. Lisa Page left the bureau earlier this year.
Fired FBI agent Peter Strzok took his anti-Trump rhetoric public on Monday, setting up a defiant Twitter account as a GoFundMe page sought to raise $150,000 to cover his "legal costs and lost income."

Strzok, who played a lead role in both the Russian meddling and Hillary Clinton email probes but became a political lightning rod after the revelation of text messages critical of Trump, wasted no time blasting the administration and House Republicans in his new social media account.

"Deeply saddened by this decision," Strzok wrote in the tweet shortly after his firing was announced Monday. "It has been an honor to serve my country and work with the fine men and women of the FBI."

He attached an image of a statement from his attorneys that criticized his firing, saying "the FBI and the American people deserve better." The letter specifically lambasted the decision of the deputy director of the FBI to effectively overrule the FBI's internal disciplinary body, which had recommended Strzok be suspended and demoted instead of terminated.

FIRED FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR RAISES $500,000 ON GOFUNDME

The Twitter account indicated that it had been established at some point in August, but it has "liked" several incendiary posts dating back more than a month.

One post "liked" by Strzok's account, written by humorist John Hodgman, calls President Trump a "moral monster."

"One reason this is so bracing is that since the election, the tactic of most establishment white dudes (on both sides) has been to blandly ignore, forget, and/or smugly eye-roll past what a moral monster Trump was and is," Hodgman wrote.

Another tweet liked by Strzok, written by comedian Jim Carrey, compares Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., to a "vile insect." Separately, Strzok also endorsed a tweet by "Star Wars" actor Mark Hamill decrying "complicit treason-weasels" in the Republican party.

Strzok's account follows a variety of other anti-Trump Twitter users, including Rosie O'Donnell and ex-CIA Director John Brennan.

The GoFundMe account described Strzok as a "proud husband" despite his affair with a former FBI lawyer, decried "politicized" attacks on his service and asked for money to go into a trust.

TERMINATED JAMES COMEY'S SECRET TWITTER ACCOUNT REVEALED

"Unlike those who typically become the focus of partisan investigations in Washington, Pete is not politically connected, hes not a wealthy lobbyist and hes not interested in using his notoriety for personal gain," the account stated. "Because of this, he doesnt have deep pockets that allow him to pay for the significant legal bills he has incurred to defend himself and the FBI against these political attacks, or to easily cover the expenses incurred by his lost income."

According to a bombshell report by the Justice Department's inspector general, bureau attorney Lisa Page texted Strzok in August 2016 to ask: [Trumps] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!

No. No he wont. Well stop it, Strzok responded. He was having an extramarital affair at the time with Page.

The DOJ watchdog found that Strzok's bevy of anti-Trump texts using FBI-issued phones had undermined the FBI's appearance of impartiality, although the IG did not definitively find that bias specifically motivated any of Strzok's official actions.

SEVEN BOMBSHELL REVELATIONS FROM THE DOJ INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT ON FBI, DOJ BIAS

At an incendiary hearing earlier this year, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, unloaded on Strzok, asking him "How many times did you look so innocent into your wife's eyes and lie to her?"

Strzok's actions on Twitter and GoFundMe have some recent precedent. Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired last year, was revealed to have a secret Twitter account himself in late 2017.

And former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired in March -- just days before he would have been eligible for a lifetime pension -- also set up a GoFundMe account in March. He raised more than a half million dollars before shutting down the account, more than doubling his original goal of $250,000.

McCabe was fired after it was determined that he lied to investigators reviewing the bureaus probe of Hillary Clintons private email server.
A Republican candidate for a Florida state House seat is facing questions about whether she actually graduated from Miami University in Ohio.

After questions arose about Melissa Howards academic credentials, the state House candidate posted a photo of what she said was a copy of her transcripts to Facebook. She also sent photos of what she said was her diploma to media outlets, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported.

But Robin Parker, general counsel for Miami University, told the Herald-Tribune that Howard never graduated from the college and questioned the diplomas authenticity.

He said the diploma Howard produced doesn't match those issued in 1994 or 1996, the years she claimed she graduated, or any year.

The picture of the diploma shows that Melissa Marie Fox received a Bachelor of Science in Marketing degree from Miami University on December 20, 1996, Parker told the newspaper, using Howards maiden name. We have no such record of a degree.

FOX NEWS MIDTERM ELECTION HEADQUARTERS

He said, too, that the university offers marketing majors a Bachelor of Science in Business  not marketing specifically. He also said that while the university president's signature is correct, another administrator's signature would not have appeared on the diploma.

The questions about Howards higher education were first reported by FLA News Online, which bills itself as the conservative choice for Florida news & politics.

It appears her campaign website is no longer available, and her campaign Facebook page has been removed.

According to the Herald-Tribune, Howard was also dishonest about her rating from the National Rifle Association. The newspaper said she posted about an A rating from the pro-gun organization on Facebook; however, Marion Hammer, a former NRA president who now leads the group's lobbying efforts in Florida, said Howard actually received a B grade.

Anthony Pedicini, her campaign consultant, told the Herald-Tribune that Howards husband suffered a cardiac arrest Friday so she is focused on her family  not fake news.

FLORIDA DEMOCRAT ASKED TO DROP OUT OF GUBERNATORIAL RACE FOLLOWING YEARS-OLD ASSAULT ALLEGATIONS

Howard faces Air Force veteran Tommy Gregory in the August 28 Republican primary. He told the newspaper that voters deserve nothing less than truth and integrity from their elected officials. Unfortunately, it seems that Melissa Howard has failed that test.

On Facebook Saturday, Gregory said his thoughts and prayers were with the Howards "as they get through their medical struggles with Ian." He also encouraged others to be respectful of the couple during this time.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Omarosa Manigault-Newman drew a new wave of condemnation from President Trump's inner circle on Monday after the release of a secretly taped phone call with the president -- compounding the backlash and security concerns raised by her recording of Chief of Staff John Kelly in the Situation Room.

Donald Trump made her, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told Fox & Friends on Monday. What kind of ingratitude is this?

The recording was released on NBCs Today Monday morning, purporting to capture a conversation between Manigault-Newman and Trump after she was fired by Kelly in December.

Omarosa whats going on? I just saw in the news that youre thinking about leaving. What happened? Trump asks on the recording.

General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave, Omarosa responds.

No. Nobody ever told me about it, Trump replies.

Wow, Omarosa says.

You know, they run a big operation, but I didnt know it, Trump is recorded saying. ... God dammit. I dont love you leaving at all.

Reacting to the tape, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley described the frenzy as the work of a "disgruntled" and "self-serving" former official.

The thought of doing something like that to a fellow employee, not to mention the leader of the free world, is completely disgraceful, he told "Fox & Friends."

Over the weekend, Manigault-Newman released a different recordingof Kelly notifying her of her firing. Manigault-Newman said Sunday that Kelly was threatening her in the White House.

In the recording, Kelly seeks Manigault-Newmans friendly departure from the administration without any difficulty in the future relative to your reputation. According to the tape, Kelly says things could get ugly for her, and that she would be open to some legal action for conduct that would merit a court martial if she were in the military.

OMAROSA RELEASES PURPORTED SECRET RECORDING OF CHIEF OF STAFF JOHN KELLY 'THREATENING' HER IN THE SITUATION ROOM

Manigault-Newman described that comment as a very obviousthreat on NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday. She said she had recorded the conversation because otherwise no one would believe her.

"We've got to talk to you about leaving the White House," Kelly apparently says in the tape. "It's come to my attention over the last few months that there's been some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues related to you and the use of government vehicles and some other issues.

When she asks whether the president was aware of her pending termination, Kelly, on the audio recording, purportedly tells her that this is a non-negotiable discussion and that her firing was related to pretty serious integrity violations.

When asked about Manigault-Newmans secretly recorded conversations with both the chief of staff and the president, Giuliani said the former aide was in violation of White House rules.

Shes certainly violating national security regulations, Giuliani said Monday.

Giuliani also denied that White House officials pressured or attacked her, saying if anyone wanted to hurt her, they could have leaked derogatory information to the media, like, Everybody in the White House thinks shes a backstabber.

Upon release of the first conversation with Kelly on Sunday, White House officials fired back immediately saying that Manigault-Newmans termination for alleged ethical violations was handled appropriately and charged that she would have flagrantly violated security protocols by taping Kelly in the highly secured room in the basement of the West Wing.

The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room, shows a blatant disregard for our national securityand then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement on Sunday evening.

In January, shortly after Manigault-Newmans firing, the White House announced a new policy banning staff and guests in the West Wing from using personal cellphones, citing concerns about the security and integrity of White House security systems.

Manigault-Newman, who campaigned for Trump before taking the job as director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison, left the White House in December 2017.
In a twist all-too-familiar for anyone who watched her villain persona on reality TV, Omarosa Manigault-Newman has turned  on her former mentor, her former colleagues and anyone else who crossed her during her brief time in politics.

The famously vindictive TV personality-turned-aide, in her forthcoming book due out Tuesday, aims to settle countless scores. She blasts President Trump as moblike. She depicts tensions inside the first family. She mocks her former campaign and White House co-workers.

And that's in addition to her accusations of racism against Trump that have featured heavily in her promotional interviews.

Fox News obtained an advance copy of the sensational tell-all, Unhinged: An Insiders Account of the Trump White House. In it, she details her long working relationship with the now-president, from her rise to fame on his show "The Apprentice" to her work on the campaign and later in the White House.

But, months after her firing, she has traded her praise of the administration for payback. And no blow is too low, including swipes at former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, who also served as press secretary for the Trump campaign.

In the book, Manigault-Newman accuses Hicks of lacking the understanding of politics for the job she was given.

She was always Googling terms while we were in meetings, always playing catch-up, always sensitive about what she didnt know, Manigault-Newman writes. She was so painfully aware of her inadequacies, she refused to speak publicly about the campaign or as a surrogate to express the candidates views.

Manigault-Newman also accuses Trump, whom she calls her mentor throughout the book, of expecting moblike loyalty, likening him to a cult leader.

Loyalty is a loaded topic when it comes to Donald Trump. His moblike loyalty requirements are exacting, imperishable, and sometimes unethical (as in James Comeys case.), she writes. But for the people in Trumpworld, loyalty to him is an absolute and unyielding necessity, akin to followers devotion to a cult leader.

She alleges: Trumpworld is a cult of personality focused solely on Donald J. Trump.

At one point, she deploys a Trumpian nickname for the president: "Twitter Fingers."

But Trump has deployed his own for the author, dubbing her "Wacky Omarosa" on Monday as she hits the interview circuit, as his aides come out in force to decry her conduct.

Drawing pointed condemnation from the West Wing was her decision to release tapes of secretly recorded conversations, including with Trump himself.

That recording was released Monday on NBCs Today, purporting to capture a conversation between Manigault-Newman and Trump after she was fired by Chief of Staff John Kelly in December. In the tape, Trump claims he didnt know about her firing in advance.

Over the weekend, Manigault-Newman released a different recording, of that conversation with Kelly in the Situation Room.

White House officials blasted her for making both recordings.

The thought of doing something like that to a fellow employee, not to mention the leader of the free world, is completely disgraceful, Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told "Fox & Friends."

And on Monday, Trump tweeted that, People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart.

Her firing is a key section of the new book. In it, she goes so far as to claim that Kelly and the White House lawyers present, upon notifying her of her termination, were holding her against her will in the Situation Room, suggesting she was at risk of an asthma attack because she initially couldn't get her inhaler.

I am an asthma sufferer, and I began to feel a tightness in my chest. I had to calm myself down or I could have had a full-blown asthma attack, Manigault-Newman writes in the prologue. I asked if I could go get my purse where I had stashed my inhaler, and they wouldnt let me leave the room. I asked why I was not allowed to leave, and they said this is how Kelly had set up the meeting.

Manigault-Newmans assistant was ultimately allowed to go get [her] purse with the inhaler.

My asthma is triggered by stressful situations, and this was definitely one. I asked again if I was allowed to leave the room or speak to my husband, and they refused, she wrote. I was being held against my will in a secure room guarded by men with guns.

Manigault-Newman also writes in the book that she believed her firing was related to her knowledge of a tape made in the early 2000s, in which Trump supposedly uses the N-word.

That claim has been the subject of intense dispute, as she says in the book that the tape exists but she hadn't heard it. Yet on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, she said she has since heard it

Monday evening, Trump tweeted that "The Apprentice" producer Mark Burnett had assured him that no such tape existed of him using "such a terrible and disgusting word."

"I don't have that word in my vocabulary, and never have," Trump wrote. "She made it up."

The president then claimed that "Omarosa had Zero credibility with the Media (they didnt want interviews) when she worked in the White House. Now that she says bad about me, they will talk to her. Fake News!"

The former White House aide makes a slew of other accusations in her book, sure to be chewed over for days by the president's allies and detractors alike.

In other sections, she gets deeply personal about the first family. She says that daughter Tiffany Trump was treated like a California castoff, and that Donald Trump Jr., the presidents eldest son, was desperate to please his father.

Don Jr. has been struggling against the negative expectation of his namesake since the moment he was born, Manigault-Newman writes, going on to state that candidate-Trump did not attend his eldest sons convention speech, but instead watched Erics.

He beamed with pride at his second son, she writes. When Donald sat there to watch Eric, I felt sorry for Don Jr.

She later quotes Trump as calling Trump Jr. a f---up over his comment likening Syrian refugees to a bowl of Skittles.

Manigault-Newman lobs a slew of other shots at the first family, including claiming first lady Melania Trump wants a divorce when he's out of office.

Plus she writes that, "Our president is mentally and physically impaired."

The White House on Friday responded to early leaks of the book's contents with a blanket statement decrying it. "Instead of telling the truth about all the good President Trump and his administration are doing to make America safe and prosperous, this book is riddled with lies and false accusations," Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said.

Manigault-Newman also blasts former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, now on trial, as a liability, and former Trump campaign chief strategist Steve Bannon as an alarming choice, slamming him as a sexist and racist.

And as for Russia, Manigault-Newman claims that Trump lacked basic comprehension about the very complicated relationship between the U.S. and Russia.

He was fixated on Vladimir Putin as a feared, respected, and admired leader, she writes. I believe he was envious of the control that Putin exerts over his people.

In another skirmish, Trump tweeted Monday that Manigault-Newman signed a non-disclosure agreement upon her exit from the White House. But the former White House aide writes in her book that she refused to sign an NDA.

Fox News' Samuel Chamberlain contributed to this report.
Prosecutors on Monday rested their case against Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman accused of bank and tax fraud in a case brought by Special Counsel Robert Muellers team.

After a day of testimony from a bank executive, prosecutors announced in court: The government rests.

Manafort, 69, is facing tax evasion and bank fraud charges after being accused of hiding a significant percentage of income earned from his Ukrainian work from the IRS. Hes also been accused of fraudulently obtaining millions more in bank loans, including while he was working on the Trump campaign.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Last week, the prosecutions star witness, Rick Gates  Manaforts former business partner who struck a plea deal to cooperate with the government -- testified that he and Manafort committed bank and tax fraud together.

MANAFORT TRIAL JUDGE DELAYS TESTIMONY FOR HOURS, WITHOUT EXPLANATION

Earlier Monday, James Brennan, the vice president of The Federal Savings Bank, testified under immunity about a loan the bank gave Manafort.

According to Brennans testimony, the bank approved $16 million in loans to Manafort by CEO Stephen Calk, who was angling for a cabinet position in the Trump administration.

When asked by prosecutor Greg Andres if he thought the loan should have been be approved, Brennan replied, My recommendation was the loan not be made.

Brennan said the loan was approved because of Calk. He said the Federal Savings Bank ended up losing $11.8 million on the loan.

The prosecution had been expected to rest on Friday. But Judge T.S. Ellis III mysteriously delayed testimony in the case for five hours on Friday. The postponement was significant, as prosecutors had been hoping to finish calling witnesses Friday -- and Ellis has a reputation as a stickler for keeping trials moving.

Its unclear whether the defense will put forward witnesses or evidence or if the trial will head toward closing arguments. Last week, Ellis said he was limiting closing arguments to two hours for each side.

Ellis is also expected to rule on several of motions Tuesday morning. One is a standard defense motion for acquittal, claiming the prosecution has failed to prove their case. The second is a sealed matter.

Manaforts legal troubles wont end with this trial. He is also facing charges in a separate federal court case in Washington, including conspiring against the United States, conspiring to launder money, failing to register as an agent of a foreign principal and providing false statements.

Fox News Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
As Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 election continues, two former members of his team are under scrutiny for text messages they exchanged about President Trump and the probe.

In the messages, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who were romantically involved, bashed Trump and discussed concerns about being too tough on Hillary Clinton during an investigation into the use of her private email server.

Overall, the pair exchanged some 50,000 text messages throughout the presidential election and first year of the Trump administration, many of them with anti-Trump sentiments.

In one particular message, when Page asked if Trump would ever become president, Strzok reportedly replied, No. No he won't. We'll stop it.

Other text messages showed an allegiance for fired FBI Director James Comey.

The messages have not gone unnoticed by GOP lawmakers or Trump. Republicans have argued that their messages color the outcome of the Clinton email investigation and undercut the FBIs ongoing investigation into Russian election interference. The president has often tweeted personal attacks at Page and Strzok and called the texts hate filled and biased.

The Justice Department's inspector general has criticized Strzok and Page for creating the appearance of impropriety through the texts. But the report said it found no evidence of political bias in the FBI's decision to not pursue criminal charges against Clinton.

Heres a look at who exchanged the text messages  and who would eventually leave the FBI.

Peter Strzok

A veteran counterintelligence agent, Peter Strzok was assigned to both the investigation into Clintons personal email server and the special counsels probe into potential collusion between Trump officials and Russia during the election.

Strzok was removed from the Russia investigation after it was revealed that he exchanged anti-Trump text messages with Page, then a senior FBI lawyer.

Months later, in August 2018, Strzok was fired from the FBI, his attorney said.

According to the text messages, Strzok was hesitant to join Muellers investigation because of his gut sense that there was no big there there.

MUELLER PROBE ONE YEAR LATER: HOW THE RUSSIA INVESTIGATION BECAME DCS BIGGEST POLITICAL FOOTBALL

Strzok previously worked on investigations pertaining to Chinese and Russian espionage, according to The New York Times. ABC first reported that Strzok left the probe and was reassigned to the human resources division in August 2017.

After he was fired, Trump said "finally" and again criticized the legitimacy of the Russia investigation.

Lisa Page

A lawyer for the FBI, Lisa Page was only temporarily on Muellers team, but she discussed the investigation with Strzok.

Page warned Strzok via text about the FBIs investigation into Clintons use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state, saying in February 2016 that she might be our next president.

The last thing you need [is] going in there loaded for bear, Page continued. You think shes going to remember or care that it was more [DOJ] than [FBI]?

Page, who has "deep experience [in] money laundering and organized crime cases," was removed from the investigation in September 2017. She left the FBI in May.

House lawmakers subpoenaed her to appear for a private interview in July. They said she was "cooperative" and "credible" in her closed-door interview that lasted for hours.

Andrew McCabe

A controversial figure at the FBI, deputy director Andrew McCabe was seemingly referenced by Page and Strzok in their text messages.

I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andys office - that theres no way he gets elected - but Im afraid we cant take that risk, Strzok texted in August 2016. Its like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before youre 40.

US MARSHALS SERVED SUBPOENA ON FBI LAWYER LISA PAGE, LAWMAKER SAYS

Some lawmakers believed Andy to be a reference to McCabe.

In another text that same month, Strzok told Page that McCabe was concerned with information control about the investigation into Trumps campaign.

McCabe, whose wife ran as a Democrat for a Virginia Senate seat with financial assistance from a group tied to Clinton, repeatedly faced criticism from Trump.

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 wife's campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation? Trump asked in a December 2017 tweet.

In January, McCabe was removed from his post, taking terminal leave until his planned retirement in March. However, he was ultimately fired before he was set to leave his post.

Robert Mueller

Special Counsel Robert Mueller was tasked with overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself.

A LOOK AT TRUMPS LAWYERS WHO ARE INVOLVED IN THE RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

Mueller led the FBI through the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and served under presidential administrations of both parties.

His Russia probe has led to charges for four former Trump campaign officials, although none of the charges directly stem from misconduct during the election.

Fox News Brooke Singman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President Trump, speaking at a fundraiser Monday with New York Republicans, dared Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo to run against him for president in 2020, with Trump saying he welcomes the challenge.

Please do it. Please, the president said in Utica, adding that anybody that runs against Trump suffers.

Trump, during the event for GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney, who is running for re-election, told the crowd that Cuomo wants to take away your Second Amendment more than anything.

'TRUMP 2020' FLAG ATOP FERRY LEADS TO SUSPENSIONS OF 2 STATE WORKERS

The president also claimed Cuomo called him and said, I will never run for president against you. But maybe he wants to. Cuomo is currently running for re-election as governor, facing a primary challenge from the left from actress Cynthia Nixon. He reportedly agreed Monday to debate her later this month.

Cuomo later slammed what he portrayed as Trump's cozy relations with the National Rifle Association in a tweet: "Donald Trump & the NRA  bankrupt bedfellows: literally and morally. Unlike Trump, I'm not afraid to take on the NRA."

Earlier, he said in a statement to the president: "Despite being a native New Yorker, since you took office, you have attacked our healthcare, passed a tax law that punished New York in order to fund corporate tax cuts, ripped immigrant New Yorkers from their families, launched an assault on our environment, and undermined the basic values on which this state and this nation were built.

During the fundraiser, which was opened to the media, Trump spoke on a wide range of topics and took aim at New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, referencing his past donations to her.

She's been up to my office looking for campaign contributions, Trump said. She is very aggressive on contributions, but she's not very aggressive on getting things done.

And, ahead of the midterm elections, the president portrayed California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters as the new face of the Democratic Party.

Maxine Waters, Trump said. She's a real beauty.

Fox News' Kathleen Foster contributed to this report.
Its all about the governors in Tuesdays primaries as voters in several states pick their parties' candidates for races seen as competitive in November.

Many candidates are hoping to make history: the first transgender woman running for governor in Vermont, a 14-year-old gubernatorial hopeful who needed his parents permission to run and a former Minnesota governor who wants his seat back after nearly a decade away.

The #MeToo movement may also have some influence over some key races in Tuesday's primaries, particularly in Minnesota.

Read on for a preview of some of the major elections on Aug. 14.

Minnesota attorney general

Rep. Keith Ellisons campaign for Minnesota attorney general was thrown for a loop after an ex-girlfriend publicly alleged he emotionally and physically abused her during the course of their relationship.

Karen Monahans son first alleged in a Facebook post he had seen hundreds of angry text messages from Ellison, including some that were threatening. He also claimed he saw a video in which Ellison dragged his mother off the bed by her feet.

Monahan confirmed the allegations as true. However, Ellison, has denied the accusations, saying I never behaved in this way.

FOX NEWS MIDTERM ELECTIONS HEADQUARTERS

Aside from Ellison, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor race includes: county attorney Tom Foley, state Rep. Debra Hilstrom, attorney Matt Pelikan and Minnesota Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman.

Ellison was considered the heavy favorite leading up to the primary, given his fundraising advantage and leadership in the Democratic National Committee as its deputy chairman. He also got support from 2016 presidential contender and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

As for the Republicans, former state Rep. Doug Wardlow and longtime hunting and fishing guide Bob Lessard, also a former state senator, are vying for the GOP nomination.

Current Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson is running for governor in the state as a Democrat.

Democrat Hillary Clinton won Minnesota in the 2016 election with 46.9 percent of the vote compared to President Trumps 45.4 percent.

Vermont governor

Republican Gov. Phil Scott is running for re-election  and is favored so far to win it  but the Democrats have some candidates running who could make history.

Christine Hallquist is the first openly transgender woman to run for governor in the U.S. A former CEO of the Vermont Electric Cooperative, Hallquist is focused on combatting climate change and implementing universal health care in the Green Mountain State.

Vermonters are going to elect me on the platform. They are not going to elect me because of the fact that I'm transgender  that's the reality, Hallquist told The Associated Press, conceding: Obviously, nationwide it's significant, the first transgender governor. It is pioneering.

WHO IS SHARICE DAVIDS, THE KANSAS CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE WHO COULD MAKE HISTORY?

Ethan Sonneborn wants to make history with his candidacy for governor. Hes lived in Vermont for 14 years  all of his life.

The teenager needed his parents to sign off on his candidacy and collect enough signatures to make it onto the ballot.

Its on us to build our own future, he told The Washington Post. Youve got to get involved, youve got to vote, youve got to knock on doors. Its how were going to make the changes we want to see in the state, in this country, in this world. When we get involved, we make our democracy stronger.

Environmental activist James Ehlers and Brenda Siegel, a dance festival organizer focused on combatting the opioid epidemic, are also running in the Democratic primary.

Scott has recently seen approval ratings drop, but he still enjoys a sizeable lead over his Democratic opponents and his one Republican challenger, grocer Keith Stern. No sitting governor has been defeated in Vermont since 1962.

Wisconsin governor

Eight Democrats are running in the primary to take on incumbent Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican who faces only one challenger within his own party.

Tony Evers, a state schools chief who has often butted heads with Walker, leads the pack. But Kelda Roys, a former state representative who released a campaign video that showed her breastfeeding her daughter, hopes to appeal to younger voters and women.

ABORTION ON THE BALLOT: RED STATES ALREADY PLANNING FOR POSSIBILITY OF ROE ROLLBACK

New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has endorsed Roys, and California Sen. Kamala Harris has endorsed Mahlon Mitchell, a state firefighters union leader.

The other candidates are: attorney and Navy veteran Matt Flynn, Blue Jean Nation founder Mike McCabe, lawyer Josh Pade, Madison Mayor Paul Soglin and state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout.

Flynn has faced questions about his work as an attorney for the Milwaukee Archdiocese fighting priest abuse cases in the 1990s. He's said he was not involved with the transfer of priests accused of abuse to other parishes. He also told The Associated Press he would not apologize for being a good lawyer.

On the Republican side, Walker faces Robert Meyer in the primary.

Trump barely eked out a win over Clinton in the 2016 presidential election in Wisconsin, earning 47.8 percent of the vote compared to her 47 percent.

Connecticut governor

With Gov. Dan Malloys decision not to seek a third term as Connecticuts Democratic governor, he left the door to replace him wide open; Fox News has the race ranked as a tossup.

For the Democrats, Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim and wealthy businessman Ned Lamont are battling it out for the partys nomination.

Ganim fell just short of getting enough support from the states Democratic Party convention to automatically qualify him for the ballot, so he had to hit the streets and collect signatures. Fundraising could pose a challenge for Ganim, according to the Hartford Courant. He served seven years in prison for corruption charges the first time he was mayor of Bridgeport.

CONNECTICUT GOP GOV CANDIDATE RUNS ON TRUMPIAN ECONOMIC PLATFORM; VOWS TO REPEAL STATE INCOME TAX

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, former First Selectman Tim Herbst, veteran Steve Obsitnik, former investment banker Bob Stefanowski and former hedge fund manager David Stemerman are running in the Republican primary.

Although Clinton beat Trump in Connecticut with 54.6 percent of the vote in the 2016 presidential election, Republicans are seeing hope in the state.

There is definitely frustration, and I think thats why you sort of see that red tide, a mini red tide if you will, out in this part of the state in terms of seats flipping from blue to red, Boughton, the GOPs endorsed candidate, told The Associated Press.

Wisconsin Senate

Trump has not endorsed a Republican hopeful vying to take on incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, but two candidates in particular are trying to convince voters they are the most like the president.

Former Marine Kevin Nicholson, running as an outsider, is battling state Sen. Leah Vukmir, a 15-year veteran of the state legislature who has the state GOP endorsement.

Both Vukmir and Nicholson initially supported other GOP candidates in the 2016 presidential election before eventually backing Trump. Nicholson has hit Vukmir over footage that has surfaced of her saying Trump is offensive to everyone.

KANSAS GOV. COLYER HIRES LAWYER FOR CONTESTED GOP PRIMARY

Nicholsons parents have donated to Baldwins campaign; Vukmir has the endorsement of House Speaker Paul Ryan.

The three candidates, and outside groups, have spent $36.9 million on the race so far, more than any other Senate race in the country, based on a tally by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Baldwin does not face a challenger in the Democratic primary. Fox News rates the Senate race as likely Democrat.

Minnesota governor

Tim Pawlenty is hoping to stage a political comeback and become Minnesotas governor again.

Pawlenty is one of three candidates vying for the GOP nomination for governor to replace outgoing Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton. His main opponent is Jeff Johnson, who was the partys 2014 gubernatorial nominee.

Johnson and Pawlenty have fought over who the most true conservative is in the race  both are hitting each other over negative comments theyve made about Trump in the past. Johnson once called Trump a jackass, and Pawlenty earned Trumps wrath when he said the real estate tycoon was unhinged and unfit for the presidency.

Pawlenty said he retired from politics after he suspended his 2012 presidential campaign. He was first elected as Minnesotas governor in 2002 and was re-elected four years later. After he left the statehouse, he spent several years working for the Financial Services Roundtable in Washington, D.C.

DNC CO-CHAIR, MINNESOTA REP. KEITH ELLISON DENIES ABUSE ALLEGATIONS FROM EX-GIRLFRIEND

Johnson, on the other hand, is a former state representative and Sen. Marco Rubios Minnesota state chair when the Florida Republican ran for president in 2016. Later, he served as the state co-chair for Sen. Ted Cruz when he was running for president.

On the Democrats side are: state Rep. Erin Murphy, Minnesota Attorney Gen. Lori Swanson and U.S. Rep. Tim Walz.

Murphy, former executive director of the Minnesota nurses union, has been endorsed by the local party and Dayton. After a Star Tribune investigation highlighted problems in the way sexual assaults are investigated in the state, Murphy outlined her plan for new requirements for police.

Swanson, however, has been criticized for her running mates handling of sexual harassment complaints in his office. Swanson has stood by Rep. Rick Nolan, who hired the aide accused of harassing and groping women for his re-election campaign, despite the allegations, according to Roll Call.

Fox News has rated the Minnesota gubernatorial race a tossup.

Wisconsin House race

Voters on Tuesday will also begin to select who will replace House Speaker Paul Ryan in Congress. Ryan, who was first elected to Congress in 1998 and became House speaker in 2015, announced in April he would not seek re-election.

His aide, Bryan Steil, is expected to prevail in the GOP primary to replace him in the 1st congressional district. The other candidates are: Paul Nehlen, Nick Polce, Jeremy Ryan and Kevin Steen.

REPUBLICANS WHO ARENT COMING BACK TO CONGRESS AFTER 2018 MIDTERM ELECTIONS

Nehlen is a self-described pro-white candidate who has been banned from Twitter. Hes made headlines for some of his views, including when he suggested the country have a conversation about not letting Muslims live in the U.S. and for defending white supremacist messages on social media.

The outgoing House speaker has endorsed Steil in the GOP primary.

As for the Democrats, Union ironworker Randy Iron Stache Bryce faces teacher and school board member Cathy Myers in Tuesdays primary.

Fox News Robert Gearty, Andrew OReilly and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
West Virginia lawmakers, seeking to remove every justice on the state's four-member Supreme Court amid what they called an "over-the-top" spending scandal, impeached three justices on Monday, including Chief Justice Margaret Workman.

One article of impeachment said Workman and Justice Robin Davis signed documents in their roles as chief justices allowing for senior status judges to be paid higher than allowed wages. Lawmakers say the overpayments violated state law and stopped when they were challenged by the Internal Revenue Service.

Earlier Monday, the Republican-led House of Delegates voted 64-33 to send an impeachment article against Davis to the state Senate for trial. The vote came shortly after lawmakers also impeached indicted Justice Allen Loughry by a vote of 64-33. Loughry's impeachment vote, which came after approximately two hours of debate, took only seconds, NPR reported.

Other articles are under consideration. Justice Beth Walker is the only current justice who has not been impeached as of Monday evening.

Walker was cleared late Monday of an impeachment article for spending $131,000 on renovations after taking office last year. She still faces another article that accuses her and the three other justices of abusing their authority by failing to control office expenses and not maintaining policies over critical matters. Some lawmakers said they didn't condone Walker's spending but said it paled in comparison to other justices.

The impeachments do not remove the justices from office. The articles will go to the Senate, which can formally remove the justices only by a two-thirds vote.

The charges were largely related to the justices' use of state funds to conduct office renovations. Davis spent more than $500,000 on her office and Loughry spent more than $363,000 on his.

Loughry is under federal indictment and named in eight impeachment articles, including allegations he lied about taking home a $42,000 antique desk and a $32,000 suede leather couch.

On Monday, Loughry was impeached under six impeachment articles, including for allegedly driving state vehicles for personal use and of using state-owned computers at his home. He was also impeached for his role in assuring higher pay for senior status judges.

Republican Delegate Tom Fast of Fayette County said he had seen the work done in Davis' office, including track lighting on the floor. He characterized the renovations as "over-the-top" and said the impeachment article "is one of the more easy ones" for him to support.

However, some legislators said they didn't support impeaching any justice for wasteful spending, only for articles pertaining to lying, cheating or stealing.

Several lawmakers noted that the Supreme Court has a separate budget and is currently allowed to spend as it sees fit. A proposed constitutional amendment this fall would bring the state courts' budget partly under legislative control.

But State GOP Delegate John Shott, who helped draw up the impeachment articles, said that if West Virginians do not trust their highest court, "we need to take action to try to rebuild that trust."

Normally, West Virginia has five Supreme Court justices who are elected to serve a 12-year term. However, Menis E. Ketchum resigned from the state Supreme Court in July after he was accused of alleged federal wire fraud. He pleaded guilty to a felony charge of defrauding the state and faces up to 20 years in prison.

Fox News' Kaitlyn Schallhorn and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
An endangered orca that captivated the world with its tour of grief has returned to its pod after spending more than two weeks clinging to a dead and decomposing calf, researchers said Sunday.

The orca, known as J35, was spotted chasing a school of salmon off the coast of Washington Saturday afternoon and its calf was nowhere to be seen.

According to telephoto images, J35 is in good health despite concerns it wouldnt be able to hunt while carrying the carcass, Alaska Highway News reported.

The Center for Whale Research in Washington state said the whales have been struggling due to lack of salmon, and J35s calf died after birth on July 24.

MOURNING ORCA STILL CARRYING DEAD CALF MORE THAN TWO WEEKS LATER

Ken Balcomb, the founder of the Center for Whale Research, told Q13 Fox that J35's actions were a "tour of grief" and "unprecedented."

An audio recording from earlier this month apparently featured the mother's "mournful and prominent" calls, Q13 Fox reported. Images of the mother clinging to the dead calf have struck an emotional chord across the world.

Balcomb said he was immensely relieved to see J35 returning to typical behavior.

Researchers said J35 towed the calf for nearly 1,000 miles over a span of 17 days.

Fox News' Travis Fedschun and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Fossils found in Siberia of a tiny woolly mammoth could be an entirely new species, researchers say, with some dubbing it a "Golden mammoth."

The woolly mammoth is tiny and has been described as a "pygmy," at just seven-feet tall. Woolly mammoths averaged between 9 and 11 feet tall, with some approaching 15 feet in height, according to TED.

This mammoth was found in Siberia on Kotelny island and could be 50,000 years old, according to experts. Like rings in a tree, scientists are able to discern a mammoth's age by looking at the rings of its tusks, going so far to tell when what season the animal died. Darker rings indicate the creature died during warmer months.

COULD REVIVING WOOLY MAMMOTH GENES FIGHT THE EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING?

According to the Daily Mail, the recently discovered mammoth has been given the nickname of a "golden mammoth," due to the color of its fur.

It is now embedded in undersea permafrost and is only visible during low tide on the island, located between the Laptev and East Siberian seas.

According to Dr. Albert Protopopov, who is the Chief of the Mammoth Fauna Research Department at Yakutian Academy of Sciences, said that it's still a question of whether this mammoth was an anomaly or not, but coming across its carcass will allow them to answer questions.

"We are yet to discover whether this is an anomaly, or something quite typical for this area - when a grown up mammoth looks like a pygmy," he told the Siberian Times. "We have had reports about small mammoths found in that particular area, both grown ups and babies. But we had never come across a carcass. This is our first chance to study it."

Discoveries of smaller or pygmy mammoth remains are not uncommon. Remains have been found off the coast of California and in the Arctic, but Dr. Protopopov believes the new findings are a new species, unrelated to the so-called island effect, which has been bandied about by researchers as causing a decline in the population of mammoths, which eventually died out about 4,000 years ago.

THE OLDEST DNA FROM GIANT PANDA WAS JUST DISCOVERED IN A CAVE IN CHINA

"It is a different thing," Dr. Protopopov said, when asked about whether the new find was related to the mammoth remains found on Wrangel Island. "I think that our new mammoth is not related to the Wrangel mammoth population. This was a different era and different case."

While it's not yet known what researchers will learn from the aforementioned woolly mammoth, some scientists have pondered that reintroducing some of the mammoth's permafrost-preserved DNA could help with climate change.

Speaking with Live Science in May, George Church, a Harvard and MIT geneticist who is the co-founder of gene-editing tool CRISPR and is heading up the Harvard Woolly Mammoth Revival team, said it may not be desirable to bring back the creature in its entirety. However, introducing a few of its genes to Asian elephants could help increase their tolerance to the cold.

"The elephants that lived in the past  and elephants possibly in the future  knocked down trees and allowed the cold air to hit the ground and keep the cold in the winter, and they helped the grass grow and reflect the sunlight in the summer," Church told Live Science. "Those two [factors] combined could result in a huge cooling of the soil and a rich ecosystem."

The Siberian mammoth remains are set to be excavated from their grave next summer.

Follow Chris Ciaccia on Twitter @Chris_Ciaccia
Rare video footage captures the moment when a shark attacks a seal off Cape Cod, turning the water red.

The video, which was posted to YouTube by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, shows a research vessel approaching the shark. When researchers reach the predator, it launches its bloody attack on the seal.

The research team recorded this close up footage of a seal predation in clear water about 100 yards from the beach off Wellfleet, MA, explained the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, in a post accompanying the YouTube video.

SCIENCE OF 'THE MEG': HOW SCIENTISTS KNOW THE WORLD'S LARGEST SHARK IS GONE FOREVER

The video provides a rarely seen window into the world of the Atlantic white shark in Cape Cod water, it said.

Sharks are in the spotlight at the moment. Last week a shark bit a Texas man, who was rushed to hospital. Last month two children were bitten by sharks off Atlantique Beach and Sailors Haven in Long Island.

Terrifying images recently showed a great white shark swimming just feet away from a paddle boarder off a Cape Cod beach.

MASSACHUSETTS MAN CAPTURES STUNNING VIDEO OF SHARK LEAPING FROM WATER WITH JAWS OPEN

Earlier this month a Massachusetts man recorded stunning video of a shark leaping out of the water with its jaws wide open.

Fox News Chris Ciaccia contributed to this article.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
After decades of scientific brainstorming and years of construction, NASA's Parker Solar Probe is safely on its way to flying seven times closer to the sun than any mission has before.

Now that the spacecraft is finally off the ground, it won't be long before scientists can start digging into its data  and that data will keep coming for seven years.

"There's definitely a coiled-spring feeling," project scientist Nicola Fox, a solar scientist at Johns Hopkins University, told Space.com earlier this week, before the launch. "We're just ready for her to leave this planet." [The Greatest Missions to the Sun]

And now, the spacecraft has finally left Earth. Here's where the journey will take it.

Here comes the sun

The $1.5 billion Parker Solar Probe needed a ton of speed to escape Earth's orbit, hence the total of three rocket stages that fired during the launch. That will carry it to the neighborhood of Venus in just six weeks, arriving by late September.

On Sept. 28, the spacecraft will need to pull off a careful maneuver designed to gently slow it down and begin its calculated dance with the sun. That maneuver, called a gravity assist, will pass a little of the spacecraft's acceleration to the planet and edge the probe a little closer to the sun.

The Parker Solar Probe will then begin its first of 24 orbits around the sun, with its first close approach, or perihelion, coming on Nov. 1.

Each orbit will be petal-shaped, skimming over the sun closely and then flying out farther into space to close out the orbit. The bulk of the probe's science work will come when it is within a quarter of the distance between Earth and the sun  although the team is hoping that the instruments can be turned on for as much of the mission as possible.

The early orbits, while remaining farther away from the sun, will be special because the spacecraft will spend its time close to the sun in essentially the equivalent of geosynchronous orbit, hovering over the same region. "Not a lot of people appreciate how entertaining these periods are going to be," Justin Kasper, a physicist at the University of Michigan and principal investigator for one of the probe's instruments, told Space.com about these early orbits.

During these periods, which scientists call fast radial scans, the spacecraft will swoop in at a speed that closely matches the sun's speed of rotation, and then swoop out again. While the spacecraft keeps pace with the sun's rotation, it will be able to watch how the same region of the sun behaves over a period of about 10 days.

"We're really able to hover and stare at it," Fox said, giving the team "the ability to spend days looking at the dynamics of how one region of the sun is changing  or maybe it isn't changing."

That means there's plenty of science to look forward to years before the spacecraft completes its closest approach to the sun near the end of the mission. "It might take us five years to get to our closest orbit, but we should have some amazing insights into our sun just this winter," Kasper said. "We're going to have some amazing observations this November with that first perihelion." [What's Inside Our Sun? A Star Tour from the Inside Out]

Seven years to go

As the mission continues, the spacecraft will move closer and closer to the sun, eventually coming to less than 4 million miles (6 million kilometers) above the visible layer of the sun that we think of as the surface.

On each orbit, the spacecraft will take the same measurements at different depths in the sun's atmosphere, which is called the corona. That layer, which is invisible from Earth except during a total solar eclipse, reaches temperatures of millions of degrees (Fahrenheit or Celsius).

"It's all exactly the same observations; the beauty of the Parker Solar Probe mission is that we are getting [the same data from] these different locations," Fox said. "We really do get a chance to look at the dynamics in all different locations in the corona."

Scientists are hoping that will help them decipher how the corona gets so hot and how the sun produces phenomena like the solar wind and solar flares, which have serious impacts on space travel, satellites and even life here on Earth.

In addition to sampling different layers of the sun, the probe will catch our star displaying a complete range of activity, since it undergoes an 11-year cycle from relatively tranquil to particularly tempestuous conditions and back again.

"The sun is very different during those different phases," Fox said. "We do want to see a nice broad spectrum of solar activity.

Squeezing as much science in as possible

But while the Parker Solar Probe is gathering all that data, the spacecraft won't be able to communicate with Earth. Instead, it will focus on making as many observations as possible. Then, it will send back huge chunks of information in batches.

Several of those data dumps will come as the spacecraft executes another crucial chore: dancing around Venus to inch closer to the sun. The probe will repeat the gravity-assist maneuver planned for late September a total of seven times throughout the mission, until the spacecraft has slipped too close to the sun to be able to loop around Venus.

And if all goes well, scientists may get a bonus in addition to the wealth of solar data: observations of Venus. During the sixth gravity assist, the spacecraft won't be aligned well to send data home, so if it has enough power, it may leave its instruments on and turn them to its dance partner.

"There is an absolute dearth of Venus missions," Paul Byrne, a planetary geologist at North Carolina State University who studies the planet, told Space.com. "A single flyby in and of itself would not revolutionize our understanding of Venus, but it would be extremely useful."

Venus will need its own revolution  but our understanding of the star that shapes every day of our lives will never be the same after scientists start analyzing the data the Parker Solar Probe sends home.

End of the road

Of course, all good things must come to an end, and the Parker Solar Probe's mission is due to last until mid-2025. If the spacecraft still has fuel, which it uses to twist itself to keep delicate instruments hidden behind a protective heat shield, the scientists hope that the mission could, theoretically, be extended.

But sooner or later, that fuel will run out, and the spacecraft will be helpless, its high-tech heat shield rendered useless. The instruments and the probe's skeleton will slowly break apart until nothing is left except the heat shield itself, Parker Solar Probe project manager Andrew Driesman, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said during a NASA news conference on Aug. 9.

"In hopefully a long, long period of time  10, 20 years [whenever the spacecraft runs out of fuel and breaks apart]  there's going to be a carbon disk floating around the sun in its orbit," Driesman said. Then, he added, it's anyone's guess how long it could circle our sun as a lonely reminder that the star once fostered humans who developed the technology to reach out and touch it. "That carbon disk will be around until the end of the solar system," Driesman said.

Original article on Space.com.
Newly discovered data from radioactive sheep provides strong evidence that a mysterious double flash detected almost 39 years ago near a remote island group was a nuclear explosion.

Ever since the flash was observed by a U.S. Vela satellite orbiting above Earth in September 1979, theres been speculation that it was produced from a nuclear weapon test by Israel. International researchers in the journal Science & Global Security analyzed previously unpublished results of radiation testing at a U.S. lab of thyroid organs from sheep in southeastern Australia in order to make their determination.

The flash was located in the area of Marion and Prince Edward islands, which are in the South Indian Ocean about halfway between Africa and Antarctica.

A new publication sheds further light on the Vela Incident of 1979, said Professor Nick Wilson, of Otago University at Wellington, who highlighted the findings but was not involved with the study itself. [The research] adds to the evidence base that this was an illegal nuclear weapons test, very likely to have been conducted by Israel with assistance from the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Wilson, an epidemiologist and member of the Australia-based Medical Association for the Prevention of War, said the test would have violated the Limited Test Ban Treaty signed in 1963 and urged the United Nations to mount a full inquiry.

POLICE OFFICERS TEST NEW RESTRAINT TECHNOLOGY

The researchers conclude that iodine-131, which is an unstable radioactive form of the element iodine found in the thyroids of some Australian sheep, would be consistent with them having grazed in the path of a potential radioactive fallout plume from a [September 22, 1979] low-yield nuclear test in the Southern Indian Ocean.

"This was an illegal nuclear weapons test, very likely to have been conducted by Israel..."  Professor Nick Wilson

Thyroid samples from sheep killed in Melbourne were regularly sent to the U.S. for testingmonthly in 1979 but also in the 1950s and 1980s, researchers say.

According to a report in the New Zealand Herald, the sheep had been grazing in an area hit by rain four days after the flash incident was observed, which would have been in the downwind path from the suspected explosion site.

Researcher also said the detection of a hydroacoustic signal from underwater listening devices at the time is another piece of evidence pointing to a nuclear test.

Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of a nuclear program, dismissed the claim that it was responsible for the 1979 incident.

INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL REQUIRES A LONG-TERM APPROACH

Israels Ambassador to New Zealand, Itzhak Gerberg, told the Herald, when asked if Israel was responsible for the explosion: Simply a ridiculous assumption that does not hold water.

However, the country's former Knesset Speaker, Avrum Burg, told a conference in 2013 that Israel has nuclear and chemical weapons and called for public discussion.

Commenting on the findings, U.S. nuclear weapons expert Leonard Weiss of Stanford University said in the online Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that the important new evidence removes virtually all doubt that the flash was a small-yield nuclear explosion.

Weiss added that there was growing circumstantial evidence that it was conducted by Israel.

Israel was the only country that had the technical ability and policy motivation to carry out such a clandestine test, he said.
Hackers apparently took control of NBC News national correspondent Peter Alexander's Twitter account Sunday morning, posting Turkish propaganda as well as threats against President Trump.

The account's handle briefly was changed to @PeterAlexanderv from @Peter Alexander and posted pro-Turkey tweets for at least 30 minutes Sunday morning. One such message read: "Mr. Trump, countries who try to threat[sic] our country will end up its artery get cut. Be aware of the Turks and study our history. You won't defeat us ever."

Another read: "Mr. Trump, we will tear down blood vessels of those who are hostiles to TURKIYE. Be wise and learn about Turkish people in history. No one can take down our country."

At 9:01 a.m. ET, NBC News' communication department tweeted that the Twitter accounts of Alexander and White House reporter Kristen Welker "have been compromised.

"Please do not click any links in DMs or tweets," the PR department added. That tweet echoed a warning by Welker at 8:10 a.m. ET: "To all of my contacts .. my twitter feed has been apparently been spammed. Please DO not respond if you receive a direct message from me."

Tensions are currently high between the U.S. and Turkey. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, accused Washington of leading an "economic war" against his country Saturday.

Among the issues, Turkey has arrested an American pastor and put him on trial for espionage and terror-related charges linked to a failed coup attempt in the country two years ago. The pastor has proclaimed his innocence.

The U.S. responded by slapping sanctions on Turkey and threatening more. The sides held talks in Washington this week but failed to resolve the spat.

President Trump on Friday tweeted that he had authorized the doubling of steel and aluminum tariffs on Turkey. He said the tariffs on aluminum imports would be increased to 20 percent and those on steel to 50 percent as the Turkish lira "slides rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar!"

"Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!" he wrote.

Alexander's account eventually was restored. At 2:29 p.m. ET, he tweeted: "Thank you @NBCNews and @Twitter for quickly responding after my account was hacked this morning. Its been resolved. Now, back to work."
It sounds incredible: the ability to tap into a commercial airliners on-board systems as it flies thousands of meters over head. But a cyber expert is telling a security conference hes managed to do just that  hundreds of times.

The Black Hat cybersecurity conference currently being held in Las Vegas brings together a variety of experts to discuss the risks, pitfalls  and locations  of flaws in computer networks.

Ruben Santamara of IOActive, reports Forbes, has found a doozy.

Hes found a weakness in the satellite communications network which provides aircraft with a wide variety of services  from passenger Wi-Fi through to weather forecasts.

He says that, had he been inclined, he could peek into every connected phone, tablet or laptop on planes streaming overhead. And he did this by tapping into the antennas beaming data direct at each aircraft.

While commercial airliner on-board systems remained out of his direct reach, Santamara warns the access he gained gave him the hypothetical power to damage specific parts of an aircraft as satellite communications technology allowed the transfer of energy via radio frequencies.

This could potentially cause burns or damage sensitive equipment, he said.

Forbes reports the cybersecurity expert as saying the satellite-link flaws enabled him to tap into cargo ships and oil tankers. He says it also gave him the ability to track the location of supposedly Top Secret military bases.

Santamara says hes reported his findings to relevant airlines, satellite operators and government agencies. Some exploits, he says, remain open.

I think there are still [open] attack vectors, he told Forbes, warning the weaknesses will not be easy to fix. In certain cases its more of a design issue. Its not going to be easy.

WAS MH370 VULNERABLE

The mystery surrounding the strange behaviour of Malaysia Airlines MH370 has led some to speculate the Boeing 777 had been hacked, allowing someone to remotely shut down its systems and guide it out to sea.

The Malaysian Governments independent report, issued last month, dismisses this as a possibility.

Dr. Kok Soo Chon reiterated several times in this afternoons press conference that unlawful interference could not be ruled out.

We can also not exclude the possibility that theres unlawful interference by a third party, Dr. Chon said.

We cannot deny that there was a turn back. We are not ruling out any possibility.

(But) we are not of the opinion it could be an event committed by the pilot.

He said systems were disabled. And deliberate acts taken.

It is possible that the absence of communications prior to flight path diversion was due to the systems being manually turned off, whether with intent or otherwise, he said.

We cannot establish if the aircraft was flown by anyone other than the pilot, he admitted. We can also not exclude the possibility that theres unlawful interference by a third party.

But this did not include remote hacking.

There is no evidence to support the belief that control of the aircraft 9M-MRO (operating as MH370) could have been or was taken over remotely as the (necessary) technology was not implemented on commercial aircraft, he said.

This story originally appeared in news.com.au.
For Uber Technologies Inc. and Airbnb Inc., New York City has been a cradle of growth, with its 8.5 million residents and burgeoning tech startup scene.

But the highflying tech firms are also finding that their biggest U.S. market is generating its own obstacles.

This week, New York has passed legislation that could hamper the Silicon Valley heavyweights at a crucial moment as they prep for potential initial public offerings expected as early as next year. Some investors and executives of the companies have privately expressed concern that New Yorks restrictions could spur other cities to follow suit.

On Wednesday, despite weeks of lobbying by Uber, rival Lyft Inc. and others, the New York City Council passed a bill to freeze new issuances of ride-hailing licenses, a measure Mayor Bill de Blasio embraced.

And on Monday, Mr. de Blasio signed legislation that would require Airbnb to disclose to the city detailed information about its hosts, which could wipe out a share of listings by cracking down on illegal rentals and spooking other hosts from listing.

CALIFORNIANS ARE TOSSING THEIR ELECTRIC SCOOTERS INTO THE OCEAN, BURNING THEM

For now, the hold on new ride-hailing licenses might not be a crushing blow: The freeze is for one year. And New York is unusual in that it requires licenses, unlike other cities that let drivers simply get approved by Uber.

But New Yorks latest measures show how regulation remains an immense risk to tech stars financial health. Roughly a decade after these companies were founded, cities around the world are still wrestling with exactly how to measure and manage their societal impact.

Click here for more from The Wall Street Journal.
For decades, the U.S. government denied that Area 51, a top-secret military base in Nevada, existed, until 2013, when a 2005 Freedom of Information Act request forced the CIA to officially acknowledge it. Now, using images from Google Maps, conspiracy theorists claim they have found China's version in the Gobi desert.

Utilizing images from Google Maps, the YouTube conspiracy channel "thirdphaseofmoon" believes that the circular formation of buildings spotted between Nepal and Mongolia could be some sort of "runway for extraterrestrials," though nothing like that has ever been confirmed by the Chinese government or elsewhere.

Fox News has reached out to the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C. for comment on this story.

WHAT IS GOING ON AT AREA 51?

"Thirdphaseofmoon" describes itself as the "#1 Most Viewed UFO Youtube Channel" and regularly publishes videos about UFOs, aliens and other conspiracy-theory type events.

While it may be nothing more than just an odd arrangement of buildings or rocks, that has not stopped conspiracy theorists from claiming that it is "China's Area 51," with some going so far as to think it is a landing pad for ships.

"It looks like a landing pad for a huge ship of sorts," one commenter wrote. "Runway? I don't think so, but landing pad yes. Especially because of the concave circles. Looks like something rests there."

Another commenter suggested that it is for reconnaissance aircraft: "Stop with the hype, its a test rang for reconnaissance aircraft, their cameras and targeting equipment. Every country that puts satellites up, has ballistic missiles or a fleet of ISR aircraft has a range like this."

One commenter even likened it to the famous Phoenix Lights phenomena in 1997. "Wasn't the huge craft behind the 'Phoenix Lights' the same kind of chevron?" user Marc Conyard wrote.

The formation seen in the image above has been hotly debated before, with some believing it could be the Chinese Stonehenge, used by nomads to worship the Sun, according to a 2015 report in the Daily Mail.



Other reports, including one in 2011 from CBS, have suggested they are used to calibrate China's spy satellites, but the Chinese government has never confirmed this.
Police officers in Illinois are testing a new restraint weapon designed for situations where deadly force is not warranted.

In the gun range at the Buffalo Grove Police Department, officers from several suburban police departments were testing the new technology, known as the BolaWrap.

Wrap Technologies was showing its hand-held remote restraint device that fires an 8-foot Kevlar tether at a range of up to 25 feet.

WELSH POLICE FORCE IS FIRST IN UK TO USE VIRTUAL REALITY TO TRAIN ITS OFFICERS

The Las Vegas-based company says its designed to restrain people who are unruly or uncooperative without having to resort to deadly force. The new weapon could be used if a person is threatening to harm themselves or is suffering from a mental illness.

Advocates have for the last several years called on police departments nationwide to rethink their use of force policies amid the killings of black people during interactions with law enforcement officers.

I think it's just another tool in the toolbox for officers when they're confronting perhaps a mentally ill person or a subject who wants to commit suicide. This might be a tool to help the officer control the subject, Steve Casstevens, Buffalo Grove Police Chief, told Fox 32.

DNA TECHNOLOGY CREATES DIGITAL 'SKETCH' OF TERRORISTS' FACES

The station reports that the BolaWrap costs $800 dollars and each tether cartridge is $30 bucks. It's just gone into production and is being used by a few law enforcement agencies in California.

First impressions are good, said Aurora Police Chief Kristen Ziman.

Ziman explained that her only concerns about the technology are the danger of the tether wrapping around the targets neck.

But there are some times where we are dealing with subjects who are going to resist arrest, and so we have to move into that force continuum. And this is an appropriate tool, Ziman said.
Residents in Southern California who feel they've had enough of the electric scooter craze are reportedly resorting to vandalism in an effort to vent their frustrations.

They allege they cause numerous traffic accidents and scooter pilots tend to rush through the streets ignoring traffic signals.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday that workers at Santa Monica Beach and Venice have seen these pay-per-mile scooters tossed into the ocean and trash cans.

One police officer in Venice said his officers have seen them stacked 10 feet high, but these cases are not being called in.

If we have to prioritize the allocation of our time and resources, first and foremost were going to prioritize the preservation of life, Lt. Michael Soliman told the paper. Protection of property comes second.

Cities like Milwaukee have initially pushed back on Bird and its competitors, LimeBike and Spin, by issuing cease-and-desist orders. But some have ultimately relented and decided to give the scooters a chance.

Bird, a scooter rental company that operates in about 30 cities, previously removed them from Denver and Salt Lake City before resuming operations recently under a pilot program in those locations. Portland, Ore., is also allowing Bird scooters under a pilot.

There is even an Instagram account called Birdgraveyard, which appears to celebrate the scooters destruction. It has over 28,000 followers.

We do not support the vandalism or destruction of any property and are disappointed when it takes place, a Bird spokeswoman told the paper. Nor do we support the encouragement, celebration or normalization of this behavior.

A Bird spokeswoman hopes those who see any vandalism report it.

These electric scooters, which can go up to 15 mph, have proliferated in places across the country in recent months, often without warning to city officials who have grappled with how to regulate them. They could be found left in the middle of sidewalks, which could be an eyesore in a neighborhood.

These companies point to their overall affordability and the fact they reduce car traffic.

The Bird app shows where they're available. Riders, who must scan in their driver's license, unlock one by scanning a bar code for an initial charge of $1. It then costs 15 cents a minute to ride one. Once done, riders take a picture of where they left the scooter to make sure it's properly parked.

Beverly Hills has reportedly banned scooters for six months.

If you imagine just walking on the sidewalk and somebody on a scooter at 15 miles an hour hits you, it can be fatal, Beverly Hills councilmember Lili Bosse said last month after the California city voted to ban the devices for six months, following similar edicts and warnings in places like West Hollywood, Seattle, Saint Paul, Nashville, Boston and Miami.

Fox News' Greg Norman and The Associated Press contributed to this report
The mom who was detained in a hot and foul-smelling jail cell in Dubai after admitting to drinking a complimentary glass of wine on an Emirates Airlines flight has been released and reunited with her family at the behest of Sheikh Mohammed of the United Arab Emirates.

I am shocked and excited to be returning home to England and that this nightmare is coming to an end, Ellie Holman, a dentist and mom of three from Kent, England, said upon learning of her release, according to The Guardian.

Holman, 44, added that she couldnt believe it and initially wondered if it was a trap, before coming to the realization that she would indeed be able to return home.

They apologized on behalf of the immigration official and I was told that I was free on Sheikh Mohammeds orders and welcome to return to Dubai. They helped me to arrange flights out of the country, she said.

SEX TOYS IN AIRLINE PASSENGERS LUGGAGE PROMPT SECURITY ALERT AT BERLIN AIRPORT

Holman was originally detained on July 13, along with her 4-year-old daughter Bibi, after landing in Dubai and being told by an official that she needed to return to the United Kingdom immediately because of an invalid visa. Holman filmed the encounter, claiming the official was dismissive and rude.

She was then asked if she had consumed alcohol on the flight, and she admitted she had. She was taken into custody shortly thereafter.

Holman, in a statement obtained by the human rights group Detained in Dubai  who also helped with her case  claimed she and her daughter were forced to sleep on a filthy mattress, clean toilets, eat food that smelled like rotting garbage, and use the bathroom on the cell floor before being bailed out three days later.

Dubais Attorney Generals Office has since disputed those statements, saying that she and her daughter "remained in airport security for less than 24 hours while services were provided to them, taking into full account and consideration of her 4-year-old daughter."

Holmans daughter returned to the UK with Holmans husband, who reportedly tried unsuccessfully to visit Holman while she was detained.

Holman claims the incident has cost her over 30,000 pounds in legal fees and missed wages, and resulted in the closure of her dental practice.

VIRGIN ATLANTIC PASSENGERS 'FAINT' ON SWELTERING PLANE

After news of Holmans situation was reported, Dubai officials also disputed the reason Holman was taken into custody.

We dispute Dr. Holmans account of her treatment," an official told The Sun. She was not turned away because she had a one-visit visa, as she claimed, because European citizens get a 30-day visa upon arrival. UAE law is strict on people recording others on their mobile phone without permission, which will not have helped Dr. Holmans case. She became abusive toward airport staff, which is not tolerated.

We cannot comment further as Dr. Holmans case is still under review but there is more to her story than she has told."

Holman was reunited at the airport with her husband and her children, including her daughters Bibi, 4, and Suri, 9, as well as her son Noah, 8. They then returned home for a private family reunion, The Sun reported.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

Concerning Dubai's liquor laws, Radha Stirling, Detained in Dubais chief executive, said it is wholly illegal for any tourist to have any level of alcohol in their blood, even if consumed in flight and provided by Dubais own airline. It is illegal to consume alcohol at a bar, a hotel and a restaurant, and if breathalyzed, that person will be jailed."

However, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says that being intoxicated, and not neccessarily just having a small amount of alcohol in your system, is what's actually forbidden, according to News.com.au.

Its illegal to drink alcohol or be intoxicated in public, the department states. You can be arrested. Foreigners have been arrested on arrival after becoming intoxicated on incoming aircraft or while in transit.

Kathleen Joyce contributed to this report.
Heres something to crow about: A historical theme park in France has enlisted the brainy birds to clean up after pigs.

The folks at Puy du Fou in the western Vendee region have schooled six intelligent rooks to collect cigarette butts and debris left on their grounds.

GUY FIERI'S NEW CHICKEN RESTAURANT AT DISNEY WORLD HAS APPROPRIATE NAME

The gregarious Eurasian crows deposit the detritus into a small box. But these waste collectors dont work for free. Each time they deliver a piece of trash, the box dispenses a tasty treat.

The goal is not just to clear up, because the visitors are generally careful to keep things clean, the parks president, Nicolas de Villiers, told Agence France-Presse news agency, noting that the birds also like to communicate with humans and establish a relationship through play.

The first cleaners have already been put to work, with the rest set to join them on Monday.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

Puy du Fou attracts more than 2 million visitors a year, making it the second most popular theme park in France after Disneyland Paris.

When it comes to crows, however, this is not the first feather in the birds cap. Earlier this year, scientists created a vending machine that showed the crows prowess solving problems. The machine required a particular size of paper token to release a treat, BBC News reported.

This story originally appeared in The New York Post.
A stinky situation aboard an Alaska Airlines flight forced the plane to make an uncheduled landing on Sunday  but the airline isn't about to take blame for the stench.

Following an earlier statement in which Alaska Airlines confirmed a "strong odor" was responsible for forcing a flight from San Francisco to New Orleans to divert to Los Angeles on Sunday, the company now says the smell was not caused by the aircraft itself, but rather "someone or something in the cabin."

PARENTS CALL OUT FRONTIER AIRLINES FOR TREATMENT OF THEIR KIDS

"After a maintenance inspection of [the plane], it was determined the odor was not caused by the aircraft," a spokesperson for Alaska Airlines told KCRA. "The cause of the odor is believed to have emanated from someone or something in the cabin. The aircraft is back in service."

In an earlier statement shared with Fox News, Alaska Airlines had simply said "strong odor was detected onboard during the flight in the aft cabin."

The plane landed safely at LAX around noon on Sunday, and the 136 passengers were reaccommodated on other flights, according to The San Francisco Gate.

At the time, the airline had also confirmed that the plane was being inspected by technicians to pinpoint the cause.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE TRAVEL NEWS

The Alaska Airlines flights unscheduled stop follows news of a Spirit Airlines flight that was forced to make an emergency landing on July 26, after passengers detected an unusual odor that one likened to dirty socks. A hazmat team was called in to inspect the plane, and several passengers were treated on the scene for symptoms including headache, nausea and difficulty breathing.

Michelle Gant contributed to this report.
A widow is suing American Airlines, claiming a baggage handler made false accusations against her husband that led to his arrest.

Debbie Cardarelli filed a lawsuit in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, seeking more than $1 million in damages and punitive charges after an incident in March 2017 led to her husbands arrest.

Debbie was flying home to Rochester, N.Y., with her husband, Richard S. Cardarelli, from a vacation in Miami, Fla., The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The couple had a layover in Philadelphia and, when they began to board the plane for the last leg of their trip, they were informed that the fully-booked flight could not accommodate anymore carry-on bags.

DELTA PASSENGER RECORDS BAGGAGE HANDLER 'RECKLESSLY' THROWING BAGS, DROPPING STROLLER ON GROUND

Richard turned over his bag to American Airlines baggage handler Tawanda Ward and proceeded down to board. Almost immediately, though, Richard remembered his eyedrops were still in the bag and turned around to retrieve them.

Richard, who needed the drops with him because of a corneal transplant he had in 1980, asked Ward to get them out of his suitcase.

Ward, who had not yet moved the bag from where Richard had handed it to her, continually refused to let him access it, citing security policy.

"I'm sorry, sir, but now that you've handed me the bag, you can't have the bag back," Ward said, Debbie recalled to The Washington Post.

According to the Inquirer, Richard involved two managers from the help desk in the terminal and was able to retrieve his eyedrops.

Richard and Debbie took their seats and waited to take off. Twenty minutes later, two Philadelphia cops approached the couple and asked Richard to come with them.

AIRPORT WORKER FILMED 'OPENING PASSENGER BAGS' AND STEALING CONTENTS

Debbie told the Inquirer she thought it was about Wards behavior, who the couple had been watching from the plane window. Debbie alleged that Ward was visibly angry on the tarmac.

I thought, That woman must be in big trouble! Debbie said.

Though that did not end up being the reason  instead, Debbie learned Ward had claimed that Richard made a bomb threat when she declined him access to his luggage.

In her police report, Ward said Richard allegedly told her, If I dont get my bag back, its going to blow up! the Inquirer reported.

Richard was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction and making terrorist threats about a bomb. All passengers were forced to deplane while authorities investigated.

"It was a nightmare," Debbie Cardarelli said in an interview with The Washington Post.

"She lied through her teeth," Debbie said. "It's so ridiculous what I'm going through just because someone lied."

It breaks my heart that his last birthday on the face of this earth was spent in jail."  Debbie Cardarelli

Richard, who died in January from pancreatic cancer, spent the night in jail and was released the next day  his 59th birthday  after Debbie posted 20 percent of the $25,000 bail, the Inquirer reported.

It breaks my heart that his last birthday on the face of this earth was spent in jail, Debbie said.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

Richard eventually was acquitted of all criminal charges after Wards claims were found not credible.

But even getting to that part took a long time, as American Airlines delayed the court date by refusing to respond to legal subpoenas and barring Richard at the last minute from taking an American Airlines flight from Rochester to Philadelphia for a legal proceeding, the lawsuit claims.

American Airlines has refused Fox News request for comment.

Debbie is hoping to hold the airline accountable for its actions, stating that the case cost the couple over $20,000 in legal fees and expenses and that she had to go to therapy after the incident.
Public school officials in Alabama are looking to put God back into their schools through displays of the U.S. motto In God We Trust  but critics are speaking out against the move, calling it a constant push for theocracy.

State lawmakers in February approved legislation allowing such displays on public property. The motto soon could become more common in Alabama schools, Al.com reported, with legal challenges expected to follow.

Blount Countys school board is poised to become one of the first systems to take action, the news site reported. A policy on the issue could be drafted within the next month, Superintendent Rodney Green said.

Observers view Blount County as a testing ground for the upcoming legal battles with organizations that advocate for the separation of church and state.

You would think that something that passes the Legislature wont be challenged in the courtroom but we all know that it can and probably will, said Green, who oversees a school system with more than 7,800 students spread out over 17 schools north of Jefferson County.

State Rep. David Standridge, R-Hayden, sponsored the original legislation that gives public bodies the right to display the In God We Trust motto. The Alabama law took effect July 1.

The Alabama legislation is not a mandate, and is a lighter version of what was approved by Tennessee lawmakers this spring that requires the mottos prominent display inside all public schools.

My hope is they have the Ten Commandments in the schools all over the state of Alabama as well as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the historical documents that go with this country, said Dean Young, chairman of the Ten Commandments political action committee. That way, children will be able to see and ask, What are these documents and a teacher can say, Those are the Ten Commandments and they come from God and this is what they say.

The critics claim national politics are fueling efforts to incorporate the motto or Christian symbols in government buildings.

Its a tsunami of Christian national laws in our country right now, said Annie Laurie Gaylord, co-president of the Madison, Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation.

The upcoming election will say a lot about the direction of our nation, she added. With the Republicans in charge of Congress and so many of these states, we are seeing a constant push for theocracy.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
About 70,000 people gathered Saturday at a park in the state capital of Naha under pouring rain ahead of an approaching typhoon and observed a moment of silence for Okinawa's governor, Takeshi Onaga, who died Wednesday of cancer.

Opponents of the relocation say the plan to move U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from a crowded neighborhood to a less populated coastal site would not only be an environmental debacle but also ignore local wishes to remove the base.

Tens of thousands of protesters in Okinawa vowed to stop the planned relocation of a U.S military base, saying they want it off the southern Japanese island entirely.

 Successor Takes up the Fight

Onaga, elected in 2014, had spearheaded opposition to the relocation and criticized the central government for ignoring the voices of Okinawans. He had filed lawsuits against the central government and said he planned to revoke a landfill permit issued by his predecessor that is needed for construction of the new base.

Deputy Gov. Kiichiro Jahana, representing Onaga at Saturday's rally, said he will follow through with the revocation process as instructed by the governor and carry on his "strong determination and passion."

Okinawans are trying to block the government plan to start dumping soil into Henoko Bay within days to make a landfill for the new site of the Futenma base. Environmental groups say construction at the bay risks corals and endangered dugongs, an aquatic mammal similar to a manatee.

The protesters held up signs saying "Henoko new base, NO!" and "Okinawans will not give up," as they chanted slogans. They also adopted a resolution demanding the central government to immediately scrap the relocation plan.

 Okinawa-Japan Rift

Japan's government says the current plan is the only solution, but many Okinawans want the base off the island. About half of the 50,000 American troops in Japan are stationed on Okinawa. Onaga had said Tokyo's postwar defense posture under the Japan-U.S. security alliance was built on Okinawa's sacrifice.

The dispute over the Futenma relocation reflects centuries-old tensions between Okinawa and the Japanese mainland, which annexed the islands, formerly the independent kingdom of the Ryukus, in 1878. Okinawa was Japan's only home battleground in the final days of World War II, and the island remained under U.S. rule for 20 years longer than the rest of Japan.

Okinawa is still forced to sacrifice for the interest of the mainland, Onaga's son Takeharu, an Okinawa assemblyman, told the rally. "The (relocation issue) is pushed to Okinawa because nobody on the mainland wants it," he said, urging the rest of the country to also think about the issue. "Let us keep fighting so we can achieve my father's unfinished goal and give him good news."


Chicago saw a new burst of bloody violence this weekend, with a string of shootings that killed at least one woman killed and wounded some 27 others.

Still, the numbers were down from the previous weekend when a burst of gun violence left at least 11 people dead and around 70 wounded.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that the citys first fatal shooting of the weekend killed a 29-year-old woman on Friday afternoon, police said. Investigators said she was getting an order of protection against a man, who got angry and returned to shoot her in the back. She later died at University of Chicago Hospital from her injuries.

After last weekends frustratingly high violence, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said 400 additional officers already were patrolling areas on the West and South Sides where most of the shootings unfolded. Another 200 were said to be added to affected neighborhoods by this weekend.

Still, many activists have said enough is enough, and have called for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to step aside.

All of us know that this is not Chicago, what we saw, Emanuel, a Democrat, said after last weekend's shootings. We are better than what we saw.

We have ordered a series of strategic deployments aimed at keeping our community safe, Johnson said Tuesday. These additional deployments will continue to supplement existing manpower.

We are taking resources from other areas of the city, Johnson added. These are discretionary resources, so we are not taking any manpower from a particular district and relocating them; were taking manpower from units that do other things.

Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill., said the crime environment in Chicago has been years in the making, due to neglect.

People not having enough space. People not having enough food. People not getting the type of education that they need to get, Davis said. People who arent sure of what the next day is going to bring them. People whove lost hope, whove given up on their government.

Several politicians highlighted the importance of family and community leaders in the fight to curb the violence.

Alderman Walter Burnett Jr. condemned drugs and its profits as blood money, and said parents shouldnt look away when their children come home with goods the adults know they didnt give them the money to buy.

Theres too many blind eyes in our community, Burnett said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Destruction wrought in a northern California city hit by the Carr Fire this summer has been captured in a series of heartbreaking photos.

The images showed the charred remains of homes, burned-out cars and scorched trees in Redding, which is home to more than 91,000 people.

The city itself has published 360-degree aerial images online showing the extent of the damage in various spots.

The Carr Fire was triggered July 23 over a vehicle's mechanical failure, fire officials said.

As previously reported, the wildfire spawned a July 26 fire whirl in Redding generating wind speeds of up to 143 mph  the equivalent to an EF-3 tornado  and triggering a wave of destruction.

CALIFORNIAS CARR FIRE MORE THAN 50 PERCENT CONTAINED, BUT STILL GROWING

The National Weather Service (NWS) and Cal Fires Serious Accident Review team was conducting a storm damage survey regarding the fire whirl, according to an Aug. 2 tweet.

In an infographic, the weather agency explained that a fire whirl is [a] rotating column of fire induced by intense rising heat and turbulent winds.

Intense fire whirls can be violent and cause damage similar to tornadoes, it added.

The agency said that the collapse of power lines, trees getting uprooted and tree bark being removed were all reported.

CALIFORNIAS CARR FIRE MORE THAN 50 PERCENT CONTAINED, BUT STILL GROWING

The nearly three-week-old wildfire that killed eight people and ruined more than 1,000 homes is 59 percent contained, Cal Fire said Sunday.

Firefighters continue to improve containment lines, while mop-up and patrol efforts continue throuought [sic] the less active areas, the update said.

Fox News Chris Irvine and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Anthony Shannon, the self-proclaimed marine-life activist who admitted to swiping a shark from the San Antonio Aquarium last month, apparently also steals pots and pans.

Investigators in Leon Valley say theyve identified him as the person caught on security camera grabbing a box of pots and pans worth $250 from an H-E-B Grocery store on July 23  five days before the shark theft, MySanAntonio.com reported.

Shannon, 38, is then seen taking the box to the customer service counter and attempting to do a no receipt return, according to his arrest affidavit. After the return is denied he picks up the box and walks out the door, the affidavit states.

AQUARIUM SHARK THIEF MAY HAVE POSED AS SUPPLIER TO STAKE OUT EXHIBIT, STAFF SAYS

When Shannon made news for stealing a gray horn shark named Miss Helen by disguising her as a baby and smuggling her out in a infant carriage, a loss prevention associate at the store recognized him.

In a subsequent interview, Shannon claimed he was an activist, not a criminal who had been worried about the animals well-being.

Click for more from The New York Post.
A group of Florida police officers escorted the son of their wounded comrade to his first day of kindergarten.

Caleb's father, Officer Kevin Valencia, was shot in the face in June while responding to a domestic violence call in which the suspect killed four children before taking his own life. Valencia is in a coma and is being treated in Atlanta.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina said members of Valencia's squad took Caleb and his mother to school Friday.

Mina said it was an emotional day, but the boy was excited to show off his Lego Batman book bag. The Orlando Sentinel reports Caleb high-fived his mom before walking into the classroom as the officers stood by.
Police raced to evacuate animals from a shelter in California as the rapidly spreading Nelson Fire quickly approached, video posted to social media on Monday showed.

Officers from the Vacaville Police Department could be seen in the footage guiding dogs and cats into their vehicles as smoke from the approaching grew thicker on Saturday.

As the Nelson Fire raced towards the south end of town, it looked like the Solano SPCA would be the first to be hit by the flames, the department posted on Facebook. Our officers worked with Humane Animal Services, SPCA staff and volunteers to evacuate all they could in a race against the clock.

All animals are safe in foster homes at this time, the SPCA later wrote in an update. Unfortunately we do not have power or water at this time but all 60 of our animals are safe in foster homes for the time being. We are hoping to get in there tomorrow to clean up the ash and debris inside our kennel building and around the property. We thank you all so much for your donations, love, support, and concerns. The Vacaville community has been so gracious to open their homes and hearts for us. If you have pictures from last night feel free to post them on our page.

The fire burned more than 1,700 acres and was contained on Sunday morning, according to Fox 40.

That comes after the largest wildfire ever recorded in California  the Mendocino Complex  destroyed more than 100 homes north of Sacramento. By Sunday, it had covered 525 square miles.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Members of Antifa were seen launching eggs, fireworks and water bottles at police officers and the Secret Service, beating people in the street and threatening members of the media during the uber-left, so-called anti-fascist group's counter-protest of rightwing rallies this weekend in Washington, D.C. and Virginia.

The rallies, which drew about 40 alt-right or pro-white nationalist demonstrators to Charlottesville, occurred to mark the one-year anniversary of the violence in that Virginia city that left one woman dead. An event was also held in Washington, D.C., which attracted about 150-200 Antifa members, many wearing black masks.

The rallies also boasted hundreds of non-violent counter-protesters who weren't affiliated with Antifa and were mostly peaceful in their demonstrations against the white nationalists.

The D.C. Antifa group marched around the downtown area as camera phones caught members throwing eggs and water bottles and shooting fireworks at cops and journalists. The events were also relayed by some media members on the ground.

In a tense scene about a half-mile from the White House, police appeared to shove back the advancing Antifa group. One officer used pepper spray, but officials said no tear gas was used.

A video posted on Twitter showed Antifa members violently attacking a police officer on a motorcycle as he drove through the crowd.

A day earlier, in the city of Charlottesville, Virginia  the site of the violent and deadly clashes sparked by a massive far-right white supremacy rally  counterprotesters clashed with journalists, with an NBC News reporter saying one person even tried to grab a cameramans camera as he told him to stop filming.

Protesters very aggressive with media, Cal Perry tweeted with a video showing one person trying to grab the camera from his hands.

WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE

He later tweeted that the demonstrations, which began near the University of Virginias campus, came to be Almost exclusively Antifa after students left the protests.

Another reporter, DeJuan Hoggard with WTVD, shared a video from Sunday in Charlottesville that showed an Antifa member tried to stop his group from filming and even cut their audio cable.

Charlottesville police said they are investigating the assault of an officer who was knocked down during a demonstration related to the rally. The officer was knocked to the ground and swarmed after approaching a man whose face was covered, according to police. The officer wasnt hurt, but the investigation is ongoing.

Four people were also arrested in the citys downtown area, with two arrests stemming from a confrontation near the monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The physical altercation was sparked after a Spotsylvania, Virginia man stopped to salute the statue and a Charlottesville woman confronted him, officials said.

Hundreds of neo-Nazis, skinheads and Ku Klux Klan members and other white nationalists descended on Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017, in part to protest the city's decision to remove a monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a park.

Violent fighting broke out between attendees and counterprotesters. Authorities eventually forced the crowd to disperse, but chaos erupted again when a car barreled into the crowd, killing Heather Heyer.

James Fields Jr., of Maumee, Ohio, is charged in state court with murder in Heyer's killing and faces separate hate crime charges in federal court. He pleaded not guilty last month to the federal charges.

The day's death toll rose to three when a state police helicopter crashed, killing Lt. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke Bates.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A previous tweet included in this report was posted in 2017.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has mandated inspections of all facilities in the state run by Southwest Key, the non-profit organization that collected hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the federal government to house immigrant children.

The order follows the arrest of workers at shelters housing migrant children. The workers are accused of sexually assaulting the children.

Ducey ordered inspections for every one of the 13 facilities that Southwest Key operates in Arizona, according to a CBS affiliate in Phoenix.

Cara Christ, the director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, told the CBS affiliate her agency has visited Southwest Key shelters in recent months to follow up on reports of abuse or other mistreatment.

Weve been going out since June to investigate the different allegations that have been showing up, she said. Weve been out to some of these facilities a couple of times.

Many of the more than 2,000 children who were separated from their parents after crossing the border illegally have been held at Southwest Key facilities. The non-profit, which is based in Texas, houses migrant kids at 26 shelters in Texas, California and Arizona.

Federal authorities allege a former youth care worker at a Southwest Key shelter for immigrant youths in Arizona sexually abused eight teenage boys, one of several cases brought to light in recent weeks as thousands of immigrant children remain detained around the country.

Court documents show Levian Pacheco faces several charges stemming from incidents that allegedly took place between August 2016 and July 2017 at a Southwest Key facility in Mesa. The case was first reported by ProPublica.

Authorities charge Pacheco performed sex acts on two boys and touched six others, all between ages 15 to 17 at the time. Court documents also state Pacheco is HIV-positive, and that some of the teens opted to be tested for the virus.

Pacheco has pleaded not guilty, and denied the allegations. His federal public defender has said in court documents the government's allegations include an "extraordinarily broad range of dates and lack of specificity."

"We are looking forward to defending Mr. Pacheco in court," attorney Benjamin Good said in an email to The Associated Press.

The revelations came on the heels of another report about a worker at a different Southwest Key facility, Fernando Magaz Negrete, who is suspected of molesting a 14-year-old immigrant girl.

Authorities say Magaz Negrete kissed and fondled the girl in her bedroom on June 27, in an encounter witnessed by the girl's 16-year-old roommate. They said surveillance video shows Magaz Negrete, 32, approaching the bedroom several times throughout the night, though the bedroom itself was outside the camera's view.

Southwest Key fired Magaz Negrete. It was not clear if he is represented by an attorney.

Efforts by Fox News to reach Duceys spokesman were unsuccessful.

Southwest Key spokesman Jeff Eller told Fox News in a statement that Pacheco was immediately suspended, and police were called when allegations surfaced.

As for Negrete, another statement said: "When a child tells us of inappropriate behavior, we immediately call law enforcement and start an internal investigation as appropriate. Thats what happened in this case. Southwest Key always works with law enforcement to bring the full force of the law to bear when it is warranted.

Southwest Key continued: "Our number one priority at Southwest Key Programs is to keep the children in our care safe. We have built a thorough infrastructure of both preventative and responsive measures in order to ensure their safety."

"In addition to vetting and training our staff, we educate every minor in our care of their right to be free from abuse or neglect in our program and in this country," said the statement. "This message is shared with them upon arrival and repeated to the children throughout the duration of their stay at our shelters."

The non-profit said that when there is a report of possible abuse, it alerts the federal and state agencies that have a role in such shelters.

The victims in the case against Pacheco were all unaccompanied minors. It's not clear if they had been separated from their parents or traveled to the U.S. alone, although the government was not widely separating families at the time of the incidents.

The CBS report said that Arizona State Rep. Kelli Butler says shes drafting a measure aimed at tightening oversight of Southwest Key facilities. Butler wants Southwest Key to report crimes to the Arizona Department of Health Services as well as to police.

Were working on legislation to try to close that loophole and make sure the Department of Health knows when these allegations are made, Butler said. They need to know.

The Associated Press contibuted to this report.
A California father reportedly attacked his neighbor Saturday after the man's 3-year-old daughter said the neighbor kidnapped and sexually assaulted her.

Francisco Diaz, 46, was arrested on charges including kidnapping, threat to cause death, lewd and lascivious acts with a minor and sodomy with a minor, FOX5 San Diego reported. Diaz, a registered sex offender stemming from a 2007 offense, is accused of abusing the toddler around 10 a.m. Saturday.

The girls father told FOX5 he found his daughter partially undressed in the living room of their Oak Park house. When he asked what happened, the girl said a man had taken her through the window and touched her inappropriately. She reportedly pointed to the house belonging to Diaz, who lives in the neighborhood, when the father asked who took her.

"I don't get it, I'm so shocked and so scared for my kid," the father told FOX5 on Sunday. "I talked to him everyday. I gave him money...Everyone in my family is comfortable with him. I can't believe it."

The father said he confronted Diaz and their verbal argument turned physical. San Diego police officers arrived at the scene and broke up the fight.

Diaz was arrested at the scene.

The girl was taken to the hospital for treatment.

The father said Diazs mother had returned his daughter to his house. The San Diego Police Departments Child Abuse Unit is investigating the incident.
The son of a New York City imam -- who was allegedly training school shooters at a decrepit New Mexico compound -- once tested positive for an explosive residue before a flight to Saudi Arabia three years after 9/11, but he was never detained, according to a retired police officer.

Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 39, has been accused of conducting weapons training on the compound on the outskirts of tiny Amalia, New Mexico before the complex was raided by authorities. Four other adults were arrested at the makeshift home that was shielded by old tires, wooden pallets and other debris.

Wahhaj and the four other adults, Hujrah J. Wahhaj, Lucas Allen Morton, Jany N. Leveille and Subhannah Wahhaj, will appear in court Monday and find out if they will have to remain in jail until their trial, KOB4 reported. Toas County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe is expected to discuss more about allegations the children at the compound were being trained to commit school shootings while in court.

The 39-year-old Wahhaj is the son of Siraj Wahhaj, who also leads a well-known Brooklyn mosque and was named as someone who may be alleged as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, according to the New York Post. He was the one who steered police to the compound, after his grandson was reported missing in Georgia in December.

This is not a surprise to anyone, retired NYPD Detective Michael Zotto told PIX11 on Thursday. Wahhaj himself, Senior, was always espousing hatred for America. He wanted to start a caliphate government here, a Muslim government here.

INVESTIGATORS RAIDED NEW MEXICO COMPOUND ON TIP FROM TERROR-TIED NEW YORK CITY IMAM, CLERIC CLAIMS

Zotto, who served as an undercover detective, told PIX11 that Wahhaj was also connected to camps in upstate New York and other parts of the country for military-style training.

Zotto was part of the NYPD Terrorism Interdiction Unit, which was supervised by retired Sergeant Louis Savelli. Savelli sent PIX11 a summary of prior surveillance detectives did on the elder Wahhaj and his son, which included that the mosque was believed to have been visited by chief 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta.

During one of our investigations into the activities of Siraj Wahhaj and his son, in 2004, Siraj Wahhaj Junior was flying to Saudi Arabia from NYC, when he was tested for foreign substances by TSA agents and he tested positive for Pentax, an explosive substance. However, TSA choose not to detain him," according to the documents obtained by PIX11.

INVESTIGATORS FIND AMMO, DIRTY DIAPERS AT SQUALID 'EXTREMIST MUSLIM' COMPOUND IN NEW MEXICO

The owner of the property in Mexico, Jason Badger, on Friday took the Associated Press on a tour of the property, which is littered with diesel cans, used diapers, household garbage and Korans. He questioned why authorities did not search the squalid New Mexico compound for the boy, saying he told them in late spring that he had met the child's father at the site and that the man was wanted in Georgia for kidnapping his own son.

"If they knew about it, and then that kid died in that timeframe, when they knew, somebody has to be held accountable," Badger said.

Taos County Sheriff's Department Steve Fullendorf spokesman downplayed Badger's criticism of the investigation, telling the AP that Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe did everything he could under the law and had to follow certain restrictions.

"Mr. Badger doesn't have to adhere to those same restrictions," Fullendorf said. "He wants to have his 15 minutes of fame and that's fine."

Hogrefe has said the FBI put the New Mexico compound under surveillance in recent months and took photographs, but he could not initially get a warrant to enter because the images collected did not show the boy or his father.

That changed when a note was forwarded to Georgia authorities saying children inside the compound were starving, Hogrefe said.

Eleven children, ages 1 to 15, were found living in the compound in "filthy" conditions. The Taos County Sheriff's Office said the kids "looked like third world country refugees not only with no food or fresh water, but with no shoes, personal hygiene and basically dirty rags for clothing.

The sheriff's office previously said the occupants of the compound were "most likely heavily armed and considered extremist of the Muslim belief."

Fox News' Ryan Gaydos, Robert Gearty, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Federal officials announced late Sunday that they recovered the flight data recorder and human remains from the stolen commercial airplane that took off from Sea-Tac International Airport and crashed into a small island in Puget Sound.

The FBI recovered the cockpit voice recorder from aircraft N449QX and the National Transportation Security Board is processing the data. The Pierce County Medical Examiners Office is in possession of the remains.

The plane was located and was considered highly fragmented.

The wings are off, the fuselage is, I think, kind of positioned upside down, Debra Eckrote, the Western Pacific regional chief for the National Transportation Safety Board, said. No structures on the ground were damaged by the plane, which sparked a small wildfire.

Richard Russell, 29, is presumed dead. Authorities don't know why he took the plane, but he could be heard on audio recordings telling air traffic controllers that he is "just a broken guy." His family says it's clear he didn't mean to harm anyone.

In a written statement to the media on Saturday, Russell's family described him as a faithful husband, loving son and a good friend who didnt mean to harm anyone.

This is a complete shock to us, the statement read. We are devastated by these events and Jesus is truly the only one holding this family together right now.

Video showed the Horizon Air Q400, a turboprop plane that seats 76 people, doing large loops and other dangerous maneuvers as the sun set on Puget Sound. The plane was believed to be empty except for Russell.

Horizon Air is part of Alaska Air Group and flies shorter routes throughout the U.S. West.

Two F-15C aircraft were scrambled from Portland and pursued the plane but authorities say they didnt fire on it before it crashed on tiny Ketron Island, southwest of Tacoma, Washington.

The greatest threat we have to aviation is the insider threat, Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent and transportation security expert, told the AP. Here we have an employee who was vetted to the level to have access to the aircraft and had a skill set proficient enough to take off with that plane.

Fox News Bradford Betz and The Associated Press contributed to this report
Former presidential adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman said Sunday she secretly recorded conversations she had in the White House, including her firing by chief of staff John Kelly in the high-security Situation Room. It was a highly unusual admission, which immediately drew fire from allies of the president.

Parts of her conversation with Kelly were played on the air during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" to promote her new book, "Unhinged," which will be released next week.

In it, she paints a damning picture of President Donald Trump, including claiming without evidence that tapes exist of him using the N-word as he filmed his "The Apprentice" reality series, on which she co-starred.

Manigault Newman said in the book that she had not personally heard the recording. But she told Chuck Todd on Sunday that, after the book had closed, she was able to hear a recording of Trump during a trip to Los Angeles. "I heard his voice as clear as you and I are sitting here," she said on the show.

But the other recording she discussed Sunday could prove equally explosive. "Who in their right mind thinks it's appropriate to secretly record the White House chief of staff in the Situation Room?" tweeted Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee.

The Situation Room is a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, and staff are not permitted to bring in cell phones or other recording devices.
A former hedge fund millionaire who went from living at the Waldorf Astoria to sleeping on the streets has vanished after leaving a New York City hospital, police said.

Paul Greenwald, 70, was reported missing after leaving Bellevue Hospital at around 2 a.m. on Saturday, police said. It was unclear why Greenwald was in the hospital to begin with, the New York Post reported.

Greenwald was living at the Bellevue mens shelter before he was admitted to the hospital, law enforcement sources told the New York Post.

Greenwalds apparent fall from grace began after he was accused of attacking his ex-wife, Michelle Greenwald, outside her apartment in 2009. He allegedly lured her out of her home by saying she was parked in front of a fire hydrant, according to the New York Post. When she came out, he grabbed her arm and yelled at her.

He was committed to Bellevue Hospitals jail ward after a panel determined he was too sick to knowingly plead not guilty, according to the Post. He was reportedly charged with several counts of contempt for shouting at the judge during a court hearing.

Greenwald, who used to live at the Waldorf Astoria, was last seen holding a yellow folder, wearing a red shirt, black pants, black sandals and glasses. He is believed to be about 6-feet tall and 200 pounds.
Authorities say a body found wedged inside a pillar near the entrance to a Lancaster, Calif., grocery store may be that of a man who vanished last week as sheriff's deputies were chasing him.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt. John Corina says the body was found Saturday afternoon in the high-desert city 70 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

Corina says authorities are attempting to determine if the body is that of a man who disappeared July 6 during a police pursuit. It is possible that he slipped and got trapped and was unable to breathe, authorities said, according to KTLA.

"It's unusual. I've never seen anything like this before  some body inside a column," Corina told the station. "Somebody tries to hide from the police and they can't get out and end up dying in there. That's what it looks like anyway.

He called it a horrible way to die.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
The man believed to be the notorious Golden State Killer was charged Monday in the 1975 shooting death of a California man, believed to be his first slaying in a murder spree that terrorized the state for years.

Visalia Police Department and Tulare County District Attorneys Office announced a first-degree murder charge against Joseph James DeAngelo, the 72-year-old former cop who was arrested in April after his DNA was linked to those found in several murder scenes in California.

DeAngelo is accused of murdering Claude Snelling, 45, in 1975 in his Visalia home. Snelling was shot and killed while trying to save his 16-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Hupp, from a man attempting to abduct her, KFSN reported.

"Joseph DeAngelo is the man responsible for these crimes," Visalia Police Chief Jason Salazar

Officials said Monday they believe DeAngelo is the "sole suspect" in the incidents linked to the so-called "Visalia ransacker" and Snelling's murder.

OKLAHOMA POLICE HOPE GOLDEN STATE KILLER METHOD COULD BREAK OPEN 2004 COLD CASE

Hupp recalled to the KFSN how a man in a ski mask woke her up that night and said he was abducting her. Her father spotted Hupp as she was being taken from their house.

"He couldn't believe what he was seeing and he just charged out the back door and the man pushed me down," Hupp said. "And he shot my dad twice and then took off running."

The incident was one of the many by the Visalia ransacker, who burglarized dozens of homes in the town in the 1970s.

DeAngelo is currently being held in Sacramento County Main Jail and faces 12 counts of murder in Sacramento, Orange, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. He is accused of committing dozens of rapes and murders across California in the 1970 and 1980s. Among the nicknames, the serial killer was also dubbed the East Area Rapist.

In June, DeAngelo was cleared of the 1978 murders of Rhonda Wicht and 4-year-old Donald in Simi Valley after the alleged killers DNA did not match those collected from the crime scene.
The Massachusetts man who police say blasted himself with a shotgun after getting pulled over last week in Maine reportedly was talking about troubles he was having during a visit to the state a week before his death, a friend and former neighbor claimed.

Gyrth Rutan, of Sturbridge, was stopped Thursday in Gardiner by an officer investigating a report of an erratic driver along Interstate-295, Maine State Police said. Rutan, 34, then stepped out of the vehicle with a shotgun and pointed the weapon at his own head before pulling the trigger. A woman's body was found later in Rutans trunk and police added they believed her death did not take place in Maine.

Worcester County investigators identified the woman Monday afternoon as 28-year-old Maddilyn Burgess, but did not give details about her possible relationship to Rutan.

It is not clear why Rutan drove to Maine, but he has family located in Maine and his Facebook page indicates that he grew up in Brewer, Steve McCausland, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, said in a statement.

But a 38-year-old man who identified himself to the Bangor Daily News as Rutans friend and former neighbor said Rutan visited him about a week before he committed suicide, and didnt seem well.

He wasnt looking too great, the man told the newspaper, adding that Rutan was in better spirits when he came up for a visit around Christmas time last year. He was talking about troubles he was having with his finances, with work, with his most recent girlfriend. He came up for a few days and said he wanted to go camping but he didnt end up staying.

The friend also said Rutan  who arrived Aug. 1 and left that weekend  never talked about harming anyone.

There was no indication things were as bad as they obviously were, the man told the Bangor Daily News.

On the Facebook page purportedly belonging to Rutan, he listed himself as a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 42, based in Manchester, Connecticut.

The friend said in December, Rutan recently was accepted into the union and was pretty proud of that."

He was making good money and working a lot of overtime installing power lines and running heavy equipment, the man claimed.

Rutan used to work as a member of the Bangor Department of Parks and Recreation and their director on Sunday confirmed his employment, the Bangor Daily News reported.

The friend said Rutan left a job there in 2014 and moved to California with his daughter to pursue better work opportunities. Years later, he came back to the East Coast and settled in Sturbridge to be close to his father, the man added.

Police in Sturbridge on Friday were seen going in and out of a unit at an apartment complex and a neighbor interviewed there by the Worcester Telegram said police had asked when she last saw its occupant.

Maine State Police also say the womans death is being looked into by the Worcester County District Attorneys Office, which, when contacted by Fox News on Monday morning, did not have an update on the investigation at that time.

Fox News' Mike Arroyo contributed to this report.
A 24-year-old lieutenant made history when she became the first and only woman in the Marine Corps to lead an infantry platoon.

Lt. Marina A. Hierls historic achievement came last September, when she graduated from the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course at Quantico, Va., the New York Times reported. Hierl was the second woman to complete the grueling 13-week course.

The lieutenant, however, is the only woman to lead a platoon of about 35 men.

I wanted to do something important with my life, Hierl told the New York Times. I wanted to be part of a group of people that would be willing to die for each other.

Hierl, from Bethlehem, Pa., said her interest in joining the Marines began in high school when she met with a recruiter. She said joining the Marines sounded good, but the recruiter advised the then-high school student to finish college before propelling her career toward becoming an officer.

Hierl went on to attend the University of Southern California. She recalled in 2013 hearing then-defense secretary Leon Panetta announce the ban on women in combat roles was finally lifted  a moment that became a turning point for her.

I wanted to lead a platoon, she said. I didnt think there was anything better in the Marine Corps I could do.

The U.S. military remains dominated by men, with women only making up 15 percent of the active-duty troops. Only 15,885 of the 184,473 active-duty Marines are women, the New York Times reported.

Monday also marked the 100th anniversary of women in the Marine Corps.
The search for missing Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts is ongoing, officials said at a Monday press conference, as they urged the public to provide tips and to help identify anyone who may have exhibited unusual behavior around the time of her July 18 disappearance.

We are considering all potential scenarios, Mitch Mortvedt, the assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, said at the press conference. It is possible to Mollie came into contact with someone who caused her harm.

Mortvedt asked for help in identifying anyone who may have exhibited unusual behavior around the time Tibbetts vanished.

"Individuals who commit violent crimes often display behavior that is recognized by those with whom they live, work, attend school or are in otherwise close relationships with," he said.

Please contact us if you have noticed changes, he continued. He cited changes in normal routine, a vehicle unexpectedly taken to a repair shop or sold, changes in physical appearance, displays of anxiety, nervousness or irritability, unexplained injuries or changes in consumption of alcohol or drugs, or interest in the status of the investigation.

Tibbetts' father has suggested she might have been abducted from her boyfriend Dalton Jack's home in Brooklyn, Iowa. The 20-year-old Tibbetts was seen jogging July 18 and her family reported her missing the next day.

Jack's brother, Blake, told Fox News there were no signs of struggle at the home, adding that Tibbetts is "small, but she would have done something" if she had been attacked.

Despite the one-month mark of her disappearance approaching this weekend, officials remained hopeful on Monday, announcing the establishment of a website, findingmollie.iowa.gov, that lists information and methods for submitting tips.

Our message is to continue to call in leads, Rick Rahn, the special agent in charge with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, said at the press conference. Were looking at all options and all possibilities and we will continue to do that until we are able to bring back Mollie.

We havent lost hope, he said. We continue to strive to bring her back safely.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Michel Moore, the new chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, collected a one-time retirement payment of $1.27 million after he retired for a few weeks before being rehired for the same role and pay, The Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday.

Under the citys controversial Deferred Retirement Option Plan, known as DROP, a veteran police officer or firefighter can-- for the last five years of service-- receive their pensions plus salaries. The pension payment is transferred to a special account as long as they retire.

The Times reported that Moore left his $240,000-a-year post as chief of operations and rejoined just a few weeks later for the same job at the same pay.

'You may call it suspicious timing, but I didnt program it that way'  Chief Michael Moore

The paper pointed out that if Moore had been promoted before retiring, he would have lost out on the money. Chiefs, the report said, are excluded from DROP.

He also managed to pull in $170,000 of unused sick and vacation days, the report said.

Since 2008, 51 chiefs at LAPD and LAFD have completed the program, the report said. The program paid more than $1.6 billion in extra pension checks since 2001.

You may call it suspicious timing, but I didnt program it that way, Moore said, according to the paper. He reportedly said in an interview that the plan to have him return was approved by the former police chief and Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Moore is widely respected, but the paper reported that his retirement and rehiring raised eyebrows.

Keith Comrie, a former L.A. chief administrative officer, told the paper that leaders at the police and fire departments carry sharp pencils and they stay up all night trying to figure out how to suck as much out of the city as possible.

Moore told the paper that he was approached by the former chief, Charlie Beck, and was asked to come back on the administrator role. Moore said he was unaware that Beck was going to retire.
A Florida man was arrested on a prosecutors warrant Monday in connection with a fatal shooting last month that a sheriff said was justified under the states Stand Your Ground self-defense law.

Michael Drejka, 47, was charged with manslaughter in the July 19 death of 28-year-old Markeis McGlockton during a dispute over a handicapped parking spot at a convenience store in Clearwater.

The shooting, which was caught on video, reignited debate around the Stand Your Ground law, and led to demonstrations by protesters who criticized Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gulatieri for not arresting Drejka, a white man who shot and killed an unarmed black man.

Gualtieri said detectives from his office took Drejka into custody pursuant to an arrest warrant. Drejka, of Clearwater, was booked into the county jail, and bond was set at $100,000.

FLORIDA SHERIFF SAYS STAND YOUR GROUND LAW PREVENTS ARREST IN FATAL SHOOTING

I support the State Attorneys decision and will have no further comment as the case continues to work its way through the criminal justice system, the sheriff said.

Family members of McGlockton said they were pleased the suspect was charged with manslaughter. Family attorney Benjamin Crump  who gained national prominence representing the family of Trayvon Martin after the black teens fatal shooting by a Hispanic man George Zimmerman in 2012  said in a statement Monday: Its about time Drejka was arrested.

This self-appointed wannabe cop attempted to hide behind `Stand Your Ground to defend his indefensible actions, but the truth has finally cut through the noise, Crump said. I have full faith that this truth will prevail to punish this cold-blooded killer who angrily created the altercation that led to Markeis needless death.

McGlockton, 28, of Clearwater, shoved Drejka to the ground, and then was shot and killed when Drejka, from a sitting position, pulled out a gun he legally owned and opened fire. McGlockton was shot once in the chest.

Gualtieri said Stand Your Ground prevented him from arresting Drejka.

FATHER BLAMES STAND YOUR GROUND IN SONS PARKING-LOT DEATH

He told deputies that he had to shoot to defend himself. Those are the facts and thats the law, he said. No matter how you slice it or dice it that was a violent push to the ground.

The dispute began when Drejka began arguing with McGlocktons girlfriend, Britany Jacobs, 25, because she was parked in a handicapped parking space without a permit. With her were two of their children, a 3-year-old and a 4-month old.

McGlockton got involved when he came out of the store with his 5-year-old son.

The complaint stated that detectives recorded the crime scene with a 3D scanner showing that the distance between Drejka and McGlockton at the time of the shooting was about 12 feet.

It also stated that the findings of the autopsy were consistent with the video footage of the shooting in which McGlockton appeared to be turning away from Drejka when he was shot.

In addition, the complaint said that in 2012 Drejka displayed a gun during two separate road rage incidents in which he was never charged.

Fox News' Frank Miles and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A pilot and passenger appeared to be safe after the duo made an emergency landing on a California highway Saturday.

The unidentified pilot was forced to land the single-engine Cessna on Interstate 580 in San Leandro, located about 20 miles east of San Francisco, according to FOX2.

Dashcam video shows the plane landing on the shoulder of the highway as traffic zooms by. The plane didnt hit any cars on its way down.

The pilot was heading to Hayward Executive Airport from Lake Tahoe when the planes engine started acting up, the FAA said, so the pilot looked for the safest spot to set it down.

The landing forced the closure of two lanes, California Highway Patrol Officer Herman Baza told SF Gate.
7a Records

While The Monkees' Michael Nesmith currently is recovering from recent heart surgery, he's also preparing to launch a tour next month with a new version of his early-'70s country-rock group, The First National Band. Meanwhile, a live album documenting a January 2018 concert by Nesmith and The First National Band Redux at the famed Los Angeles-area venue The Troubadour has just been released on CD and as a two-LP vinyl set.

Live at The Troubadour features mostly renditions of songs from Nesmith and The First National Band's three studio albums -- 1970's Magnetic South and Loose Salute and 1971's Nevada Fighter. It also includes a versions of the Nesmith-penned Monkees tune "Papa Gene's Blues and Mike's "Different Drum," which the Linda Ronstadt-fronted The Stone Poneys made a top-20 hit in 1967.

"I've never been happier with a record," says Nesmith. "I've never been more proud and pleased to get it out in front of people, and play it and leave it with the people, in their care. It's at the top of my form. It's the best I can do. So if I die now, that was it, guys."

The Live at The Troubadour CD comes housed in a digipak set and includes a 16-page booklet with rare photos and extensive liner notes penned by Nesmith. The LP set is pressed on opaque gold vinyl, and includes the photos and liner notes. Signed copies of both can be purchased at VideoRanch3D.com.

As previously reported, 75-year-old Nesmith underwent a quadruple bypass operation after falling ill before a June 21 concert near Philadelphia while touring with his Monkees band mate Micky Dolenz. The last four dates of the trek were postponed.

Here are Nesmith's tour dates with The First National Band Redux:

9/7 -- Houston, TX, The Heights Theatre

9/8 -- Austin, TX, The Paramount Theatre

9/9 -- Dallas, TX, The Kessler Theatre

9/11 -- Nashville, TN, CMA Theatre

9/13 -- Chicago, IL, Old Town School of Folk Music

9/14 -- Royal Oak, MI, Royal Oak Music Theatre

9/15 -- Kent, OH, The Kent Stage

9/17 -- Alexandria, VA, The Birchmere

9/19 -- Somerville, MA, The Somerville Theatre

9/20 -- New York, NY, The Concert Hall at New York Society of Ethical Culture

9/22 -- Phoenixville, PA, The Colonial Theatre

9/23 -- Ridgefield, CT, The Ridgefield Playhouse

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Officials from the two Koreas meet in the border truce village of Panmunjom on Monday to discuss the next summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The summit is expected to take place in Pyongyang later this month or in early September. Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told reporters on Sunday that the officials are highly likely to agree on the date and venue.

Working-level officials from the two sides apparently laid much of the groundwork in earlier talks through official and unofficial channels.

"If we skip unnecessary protocol the summit could take place in late August" before everything comes to a halt as the North Korean regime celebrates its 70th anniversary on Sept. 9. That opens up a window after reunions of families separated by the Korean War on Aug. 20-26.


A dozen students in Alabama expecting to start high school last week are heading back to the eighth grade because the school system can't seem to find their grades.

Superintendent Dr. Keith A. Stewart said in a letter that the students were initially promoted to the ninth grade at Bessemer City High School. But the students were sent back to middle school.

WBRC-TV reports they had been enrolled in a program at Bessemer City Middle School, which was designed to help students who failed a grade catch up and graduate. In the program, students took seventh-grade classes part of the year and eighth-grade classes the rest of the year. But Stewart says there was no record of those students passing the eighth-grade classes.

Stewart says he had no choice but to hold them back because the school couldn't produce the needed grades for them.
The woman who allegedly pushed her 16-year-old friend off a Washington state bridge -- causing the teen to break several ribs and suffer a lung injury -- is reportedly acting as if nothing happened.

Taylor Smith, 18, was the woman who pushed Jordan Holgerson off a bridge near Moulton Falls in Vancouver, Wash., her family told multiple media outlets. Holgerson plunged 60-feet into the water below, video showed.

Taylor has been going out as if nothing happened, a source close to Smith told The Sun on Monday. She's been at a pool party and there were pictures of her at the county fair with a friend on Instagram.

The person told the British tabloid Smith hasnt even seen Holgerson.

Taylor hasn't been to visit Jordan to see if she is OK. She clearly doesn't care. She messaged Jordan to say 'sorry' but nobody thinks it was a sincere apology, the person said.

Holgerson was with a group of friends at the time and had second thoughts about jumping into the Lewis River before she was pushed, she told KGW-TV.

In midair I think I mightve blacked out, she told the station. I was awake and aware when I hit the water.

Officials were investigating the incident.
Afghan forces battled the Taliban in a key provincial capital for the fourth straight day on Monday, following a massive assault on the eastern city last week that overwhelmed its defensed and allowed insurgents to capture several parts of it, officials said.

The assault on Ghazni, the capital of Ghazni province, was a major show of force by the Taliban, who infiltrated deep into this strategic city barely 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital, Kabul.

The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces.

The multi-pronged attack on Ghazni began on Friday, with insurgents infiltrating people's homes and slipping out into the night to attack Afghan forces. The fighting since has been ferocious and many Afghan troops and insurgents are believed to have died in the battle so far.

Few details have emerged from Ghazni since the Taliban destroyed a telecommunications tower on the city's outskirts, cutting off all landline and cell phone links to the city and making it difficult to confirm details of the fighting.

In Kabul, authorities insisted that the city would not fall to the Taliban and that Afghan forces remained in control of key government positions and other institutions there.

Najib Danish, the Interior Ministry's spokesman, said reinforcements have been sent to Ghazni and were trying to clear it of the Taliban on Monday.

Col. Fared Mashal, the province's police chief, said majority of the insurgents fighting in Ghazni are foreigners, including Pakistanis and Chechens.

Mashal also said that hundreds of Taliban have been killed so far in Ghazni and that 18 security forces are dead.

"The Taliban have failed in reaching their goal," he added.

The fall of Ghazni, a city of 270,000 people, would mark a major victory for the Taliban. It would also cut off a major highway linking Kabul to the southern provinces, the Taliban's traditional heartland.

Over the past months, the insurgents have seized several districts across Afghanistan, staging near-daily attacks on Afghan security forces, but have been unable to capture and hold urban areas.

The United States and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, but have since then repeatedly come to the aid of Afghan forces as they struggle to combat the resurgent Taliban.

The United Nations has expressed its concerns for the civilians caught up in the fighting in Ghazni.

Ghazni's residents "have seen their city turn into a battlefield since Friday morning, with fighting and clashes reportedly still ongoing. We have received initial reports of a number of civilian casualties and of people trying to reach safe areas outside of the city," said Rik Peeperkorn, acting U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan.

Ghazni's hospitals are running out of medicines and people are unable to safely bring casualties, Peeperkorn's statement added. Electricity, water supply and food are also running low, the statement said.

"Parties to the conflict need to ensure that access to medical services is not denied and respect for medical facilities and staff is upheld," Peeperkom said.

Meanwhile, the International Federation of Journalists and the Afghan Independent Journalists Association jointly put out a statement condemning the violence in Ghazni and attacks on journalists there.

Media technician Mohammad Dawood was among those killed in Ghazni, the statement said, and also condemned the torching of Ghazni's radio and television station.

___

Associated Press reporter Mohammad Anwar Danishyar in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.
China's campaign of pressure against the country's Uighur Muslim minority has prevented the far-northwestern region of Xinjiang from "becoming 'China's Syria' or 'China's Libya,'" an official Communist Party newspaper said Monday.

The Global Times editorial came after a U.N. anti-discrimination committee raised concerns Friday over China's treatment of Uighurs, citing reports of mass detentions that is said "resembles a massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy."

Following attacks by radical Muslim separatists, hundreds of thousands of members of the Uighur and Kazakh Muslim minorities in Xinjiang have been arbitrarily detained in indoctrination camps where they are forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the party.

Global Times said the intense regulations in the region were merely "a phase that Xinjiang has to go through in rebuilding peace and prosperity."

The editorial did not directly mention the existence of the internment camps.

Denouncing what it called "destructive Western public opinions," the paper said, "peace and stability must come above all else."

"Through the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, the national strength of the country and the contribution of local officials, Xinjiang has been salvaged from the verge of massive turmoil," the paper said. "It has avoided the fate of becoming 'China's Syria' or 'China's Libya.'"

Xinjiang has been enveloped in a suffocating blanket of security for years, especially since a deadly anti-government riot broke out in the regional capital of Urumqi in 2009. Over recent months, monitoring groups and eyewitnesses say Uighurs have been summoned from abroad and across China and sent into detention and indoctrination centers.

The roughly 10 million Uighurs make up a tiny proportion of China's almost 1.4 billion people and there has never been an insurgency that could challenge the central government's overwhelming might.

When the U.N.'s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination started reviewing China's report in Geneva on Friday, Chinese delegation leader Yu Jianhua highlighted economic progress and rising living standards among other things.

Committee vice-chairwoman Gay McDougall said members are "deeply concerned" by "numerous and credible reports that we have received that, in the name of combating religious extremism and maintaining social stability, (China) has turned the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy."

McDougall said there were estimates that more than a million people "are being held in so-called counter-extremism centers and another 2 million have been forced into so-called re-education camps for political and cultural indoctrination."

She did not specify a source for that information in her remarks at the hearing.

The Geneva-based committee continues its hearing Monday, with conclusions expected later. Yu, China's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, said China will respond to the main questions raised in Friday's session on Monday.
A tourist from Taiwan taking pictures at a lake in Kenya on Sunday was attacked and killed by a hippo -- just hours before a local fisherman was mauled to death in the same area by another hippo, authorities said.

Chang Ming Chuang, 66, and his friend, Wu Peng Te, were at the edge of Lake Naivasha in Kenyas Rift Valley when a witness said they got too close to a hippo and were attacked, the BBC reported. Both were taken to the hospital in Naivasha, about 56 miles southeast of Nairobi, the Kenya Wildlife Service said in a statement.

Chang was later pronounced dead. His friend was treated for minor bruising.

Authorities said its unclear what circumstances led to the attack on the tourists. Wildlife service spokesman Paul Udoto said attacks on tourists are rare because they are usually protected by guides.

NEW JERSEY WOMAN STRANGLES RABID FOX AFTER ANIMAL BITES HER LEG

Later in the day, a Kenyan fisherman was also mauled by another hippo a few miles from where the initial incident occurred, police said.

"The man was bitten on the chest and his injuries were serious and he died minutes after he was retrieved from the lake," said Rift Valley Head of Criminal investigations Gideon Kibunja.

At least six people have been killed by hippos around Lake Naivasha this year, the BBC reported.

Hippos are the worlds deadliest large land animal due to their aggressive nature and sharp teeth. The animals can weigh up to three tons and kill about 500 people in Africa every year, the BBC reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A prominent Jewish-American commentator who has been critical of Israel's policies said Monday that he was detained by Israeli airport authorities and interrogated about his political views before he was allowed to enter the country.

The questioning of Peter Beinart was the latest in a string of incidents in which Jewish critics of Israel have been interrogated about their politics by border officials. The Israeli government called the incident a mistake.

Beinart, a contributor to The Atlantic, CNN and the Israeli daily Haaretz, considers himself a supporter of Israel, but has been an outspoken critic of the government's hard-line policies toward the Palestinians and close alliance with President Donald Trump.

He has warned of a growing rift between Israel and the predominantly liberal Jewish-American community, and said that Israel must establish a Palestinian state to ensure its survival as a Jewish-majority democracy. Such views are shared by many on Israel's political left.

In an interview, Beinart said he was pulled aside when he arrived with his family on Sunday to attend a relative's bat mitzvah.

Beinart said he was sent to a small room where a security official asked about his political activities and whether he was involved in groups that advocate violence, threaten democracy or promote anarchy.

Beinart said he was then asked about his participation in a nonviolent West Bank protest two years ago. He said the interview ended after he said he would not be joining any protests on his current visit. He was released after calling a well-known Israeli human rights lawyer. In all, he said he was held for over an hour.

Beinart called his experience "trivial" when compared to the experiences of others, particularly Palestinians and Palestinian Americans who travel through Israel's main international airport.

"My hope would be that this provokes a conversation more generally about the way in which Israel harasses people based on their political views," he said. "The real scandal is what happens to people who are much more vulnerable than me because they don't have the privilege that I have as an American Jew."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said that upon learning of Beinart's detention he immediately asked Israeli security officials what happened and was told it was an "administrative mistake."

"Israel is an open society which welcomes all - critics and supporters alike," his office said. "Israel is the only country in the Middle East where people voice their opinions freely and robustly."

The Shin Bet internal security service apologized for causing any anguish and said it was investigating.

In recent weeks, a left-wing Israeli author who lives in the U.S. said he was detained at the airport for a "cautionary conversation" about his political activities, while two Jewish-American women involved in Israeli left-wing causes were questioned about their political work with Palestinians while entering the country from Egypt.

Israel has also begun enforcing a ban on foreign activists who support boycotts of the country.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tore into British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn Monday, calling for unequivocal condemnation from everyone  left, right and everything in between  after images surfaced of Corbyn laying a wreath near the graves of a terrorist group who killed 11 Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The Daily Mail posted the pictures Friday and reported Corbyn  who has long been accused of anti-Semitism  was standing just feet away from the graves of terrorists from Black September, the group behind the massacre of the athletes, who all ended up being killed.

The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorist who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone  left, right and everything in between, Netanyahu posted in a tweet.

Sources described as being close to Corbyn told the newspaper he was at the Tunisian cemetery in 2014 to commemorate 47 Palestinians who were killed by an Israeli airstrike in 1985. But that monument, the newspaper says, is about 45 feet away from where Corbyn was photographed standing, wreath in hand. In another photo, Corbyn is seen praying at the same site.

The British politician tried to distance himself from the controversy Monday by claiming he was present, but not involved during the wreath-laying ceremony, according to The Guardian.

Corbyn told reporters in England that a wreath was indeed laid for some of those who were killed in Paris in 1992.

I was present at that wreath-laying, I dont think I was actually involved in it, he added.

The photos, however, appear to show otherwise.

I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere, Corbyn said Monday.

In an October 2014 newspaper column found by The Guardian, Corbyn wrote wreaths were laid to mark the 1985 bombing of the PLO HQ and on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991.

Members of his own party criticized Corbyns response and said he needs to go further.

Being present is the same as being involved, said Luciana Berger, a parliament and Labour Party member, according to The Guardian. When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association and support. There can also never be a 'fitting memorial' for terrorists. Where is the apology?

Allegations of anti-Jewish prejudice within Labour have grown since Corbyn, a veteran socialist, was elected leader in 2015. Some in the party allege Corbyn, a longtime critic of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, has allowed anti-Semitic abuse to go unchecked, the Associated Press says.

In early August, Corbyn apologized for the "concerns and anxiety" caused before he became Labour's leader when, as a pro-Palestinian activist, he shared platforms with people "whose views I completely reject."

But Board of Deputies of British Jews President Marie van der Zyl tweeted that Corbyn was "hiding behind a half-hearted 'apology' no doubt crafted by his spin-doctors."

"Jeremy Corbyn needs to stop hiding & make an abject apology to UK Jews in his own voice," she wrote.

The long-simmering dispute inside Labour recently boiled over after the party proposed adopting a definition of anti-Semitism that differed from the one approved by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

The alliance says it is anti-Semitic to accuse Jewish people of being more loyal to Israel than to their home countries, an example omitted from Labour's definition. The alliance also says it is anti-Semitic to compare contemporary Israeli policies to the policies of the Nazis, a view Labour did not endorse.

Corbyn also has received personal criticism for his past appearances alongside alleged anti-Semites and for some of his statements, including a 2010 speech in which he compared Israel's blockade of Gaza to Nazi Germany's sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad during World War II.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in will meet in Pyongyang in September for their third summit, officials announced Monday, as doubt grows about the Hermit Kingdoms vow to end its nuke and missile programs.

The countries chiefs of inter-Korean affairs met for nearly two hours at the border village of Panmunjom before making the announcement. Both parties spoke about North Koreas nuclear disarmament efforts and international sanctions, but provided few other details on the meeting.

North Korea's chief delegate, Ri Son Gwon, had hinted a date for the summit was set, but refused to unveil the date because he wanted to keep reporters wondering. South Korean unification minister Cho Myoung-gyon would only say officials still had work to do before agreeing on a date.

Both sides would only confirm it would be sometime in September.

If the summit occurs, it would be the third since April, when the once-rival countries began thawing tensions after nearly reaching the brink of nuclear war.

Officials have been watching and waiting for North Korea to make progress on its promise to denuclearize its regime  an agreement Kim made with President Trump during their historic June summit in Singapore. Cho said he urged North Korea to continue its nuclear negotiations with the U.S.

Cho, however, said there were no new details on the progress.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the latest intelligence assessment on North Korea told Fox News in late July that the rogue regime is possibly constructing new intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Its business as usual, the official said, showing Kim may be going against the promises he made in recent months.

Pyongyang has urged Washington to ease economic punishments, but the U.S. says that can't happen until the North completely denuclearizes.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has accepted an invitation to visit Israel next month in a sign of improving ties, which hit a sore spot early in his presidency when he compared his bloody anti-drug crackdown to Hitler and the Holocaust.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said Monday that Duterte will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his Sept. 2-5 visit to discuss cooperation in labor, tourism, trade, agriculture, counterterrorism and law enforcement. Several accords are expected to be signed.

It will be the first visit by a Philippine president since diplomatic ties were established in 1957, the department said, adding that Duterte will be joined by a business delegation.

The Philippines has recently acquired Israeli-made arms such as Galil assault rifles and pistols for its 120,000-strong police force, which is at the frontline of Duterte's battle against illegal drugs and other crimes, an official said.

Duterte's visit "will highlight the enduring friendship between Filipinos and Israelis, which began when President Manuel L. Quezon opened the doors of the Philippines as a sanctuary to an estimated 1,300 Jewish refugees who were fleeing the Holocaust," the department said.

Duterte drew outrage a few months after he took office in 2016 when he compared his anti-drug campaign to the Holocaust and said he would be "happy to slaughter" 3 million addicts. He later apologized.

Israel's Foreign Ministry then said it was "unfortunate" that Duterte chose to invoke Hitler and the Holocaust in discussing his fight against illegal drugs.

Duterte acknowledged he erred in referencing what happened to Jewish people under Hitler.

"I mentioned the word Jewish and that was what was terribly wrong and for that I apologize," Duterte said then, adding, "I'm not one of the racist members of this republic."

The Nazis and their allies killed 6 million Jews during World War II as part of a campaign to obliterate European Jewry.

More than 4,500 mostly poor drug suspects have been killed in gunbattles with police under Duterte's anti-drug crackdown, alarming Western governments, U.N. officials and human rights groups.
A 24-year-old woman celebrating her birthday was among the three people reportedly killed by gang members outside her party late Saturday night in Brazil.

Eliana Ferreira Campos, a suspected gang member, was hosting her birthday party at a home in the municipality of Ji-Parana, about 1,926 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro, when she was attacked.

Surveillance footage from outside the party shows Ferreira Campos chatting with friends when she was approached by a group of people who began physically attacking her. Amid the scuffle, one person took out a gun and fatally shot her, local news outlets reported.

Local news outlet Comando 190, citing police, said Ferreira Campos was struck in the forehead, chest and the back of the head. Two of the attackers fled the scene on a stolen motorcycle, police said.

Two other people, identified later as Paloma de Oliveira Guimaraes, 26, and Edmundo Cristian Ferreira de Matos, 18, were also killed at the scene.

WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO

RH 24 Horas reported the deadly incident happened due to the war between the criminal factions Red Command and First Command of the Capital.

According to Comando 190, Ferreira Campos was a member of Red Command and went by the name Miss Barbye Marley.

Police arrested three people in connection to the fatal incident: 22-year-old Ray de Souza Silva aka Baleado; 25-year-old Fernando Ferreira da Silva, aka Furunco; and 22-year-old Gustavo Pereira Cabral, commonly known as Brizola. All three are believed to be gang members with First Command of the Capital.

Local news outlets reported witnesses told police the gunmen arrived at the party in a silver-colored vehicle and that a person had followed the vehicle to a nearby supermarket. Police eventually arrested Pereira, who reportedly had cell phone videos that confirmed he participated in the incident.

Souza Silva and Ferreira da Silva were stopped by police at a nearby town.

Police said de Souza Silva told authorities that he felt no remorse for the crime and that they had planned to kill more people at the birthday party.

Im not sorry at all  because if I do not kill them, theyre the ones who kill me because were at war, he reportedly police, according to RH 24 horas.

Brazil has long been the world leader in overall homicide numbers, and its homicide rate is also one of the worlds highest. According to a report released Thursday, a record 63,880 people were slain in the South American country last year.

The report counted an average of 14 deaths a day at the hands of police officers, which it said was a 20 percent increase over last year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The number of women who reported violence from their boyfriends soared 30 percent from 6,702 in 2016 to 8,703 in 2017, according to the National Police Agency. But male victims doubled from 458 to 977 over the same period.

The number of men who report being attacked by their girlfriends is increasing faster than that of female victims of domestic violence.

Already some 4,427 women and 650 men fell victim to domestic violence during the first six months this year. If this trend goes on, the number of male victims will likely surpass 1,000 by year's end.

Experts believe that the actual number of male victims is larger but they are often ashamed to come forward.

But Chung Suk-hun, a professor of criminal psychology at Soonchunhyang University, said, "The increase in the number of male victims of domestic violence means in a sense that women with more education on sexual equality are now actively resisting verbal attacks from their boyfriends."

"But women should not use violence either. We need education and counseling because this can lead to domestic violence," he added.
Outside a quiet, rundown building on the edge of the city, a few young boys hobble quietly in the hot afternoon sun. Each is missing a vital part of their body  a hand, a leg, an arm.

Inside that building is new hope for each: Prosthetic limbs are being cut, carved, melted and molded.

Sometimes I go to my office to cry for each of these miserable stories, Dr. Haitham Ahmed Ali Ahmed, a Sudanese volunteer with Physicians Across Continents, told Fox News. It isnt fair, but we do whatever we can to give them another chance.

Such an undertaking has become an all too common craft in the country battered by nearly three years of intense conflict between a Saudi Arabia-led coalition intent on restoring the internationally recognized Yemen government, and the Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels who have taken over strategic ports and cities.

The market for prosthetics became so high that opening an in-house facility - complete with a warehouse of materials and tool workshop - was deemed a necessity. The Marib center opened next to the General Hospital in February 2017, and in one year alone, 305 prosthetic limbs were fitted to more than 195 victims.

The waiting room is filled with tiny children, revealing stumps where there were once arms and legs. The kids cling to their fathers, who often have lost a limb as well. There are niether tears nor screams.

In an adjacent private room, stocked high with body part-making supplies, a burka-clad 26-year-old woman sits with a female medical professional as she has measurements taken for a new hand to be sketched and sculpted.

The beneficiary comes in, we complete a form about their injury and we take the measurements. Then after a few days they come back for the first fitting and training, explained Dr. Mohammed Abdo Al-Qubati, head of the Saudi King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Foundation (KS Relief) funded prosthetics center. After five days of training, they can get their new limb.

The training process is fraught with challenges. One 33-year-old man, Mohammad Abdul Aziz, wearily hauls himself upright as he grips two wooden bars on either side of him  struggling to try and walk again with a new artificial leg, below the knee. Eight months ago, the bus driver from Yemens capital Sanaa lost his leg in an attack.

I just want to go back to work again for my family, Aziz mutters.

Demand for artificial limbs is nationwide. The technology deployed to various on-site factories in Yemen is often reported to be new. But materials are generally outdated  meaning even small children have no choice but to be outfitted with limbs that are weighty, hardly functional, and seemingly cosmetic.

YEMEN'S CHILD SOLDIERS FACE LONG ROAD AFTER SEXUAL, PHYSICAL ABUSE

Accurate data is impossible to come by, but it's anticipated more than a thousand children are now in need of prosthetics, with the number rising almost daily. And as for who is to blame for the carnage, there's enough for both sides.

The Saudi-led coalition has been widely accused by human rights groups and much of the international community of indiscriminate targeting in its aerial campaign. The opposing Houthis, too, have been blamed for haphazard shelling, and leaving the country littered in landmines, exposing Yemenis not only to fatal threats now, but for generations.

Saudi Arabia claims more than 600,000 mines have been discovered in areas now liberated from Houthi control, along with more than 130,000 globally prohibited sea mines. As a result, more than 1,500 deaths have been recorded, and at least 4,000 injured or permanently disabled.

Most of the victims are said to be women, children and the elderly.

WIVES AND MOTHERS ON YEMEN'S FRONTLINE FIGHT TO FREE THOUSANDS OF MEN FROM PRISON HELL

Sixty percent of the cases are due to mines, Al-Qubati said. Thirty percent from road accidents, and the rest mostly from gun shots.

Yemen was considered the poorest country in the Middle East even before the war. Sustained conflict has only spiraled the nation into a further cycle of hunger, disease, poverty, death and destruction.

The specialists at the Marib center are mostly from nearby Middle East countries, including Turkey and Syria. But Yemenis are in the process of being trained, with the ultimate goal being for them to soon run the facility on their own.

Meanwhile, at a nearby camp, several Yemenis caught in the crossfire have been left disabled. Their lives appear frozen, as they attempt to get through the day with lost limbs, living in arid conditions, the notion of even receiving a manufactured body part something of a faraway luxury.

There are no schools or medical clinics or work opportunities in the tent-dotted patch of dust. Daily life revolves around waiting for the stalemate war to end. There's also a waiting list of at least 10 other families waiting for space to open up in the closed camp.

In one case, a wheelchair-bound mother and son await further medical help - which they fear will never come. Little boys without arms sit nearby, in some moments laughing with one another, at other times staring in silence.

They went outside to play with something, said one camp worker from KS Relief. But it turned out to be a bomb.

On top of their already dire disabilities, the threat of malnutrition, cholera, chicken pox and diphtheria looms for all the Yemenis  young and old  stuffed into small, dusty tents.

We are trying to help with the limbs and the injuries you can see, adds another worker. But its the ones you cant  the trauma, the persecution, running from home, in many ways that is almost harder to heal.




[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource Games Press.]

Watch the launch trailer here: https://youtu.be/jUAKvfDi_yc 13th August 2018  Team17 , a global games label, creative partner and developer of independent, premium video games in partnership with Brazilian indie development teams Firecast Studios and Fableware Narrative Design are thrilled to announce that Sword Legacy: Omen releases today. Available on Steam, Sword Legacy: Omen is priced at 14.99/$17.99/17.99/R$36.99. A Digital Deluxe Edition is also available which includes a digital story & art book, wallpapers and the Sword Legacy: Omen OST for 19.49/$24.99/24.99/R$46.99. Both editions have a 20% discount for the week of launch. Sword Legacy: Omen is a turn-based tactical RPG that provides a dark, brutal reimagining of the Arthurian Legend. Playing as Uther Pendragon, you must fight a path of vengeance across the realm of Broken Britannia to avenge your fallen lord and recover the lost sword, Excalibur. Uther wont be fighting alone as along your journey you will be joined by a band of misfit fighters, each equipped with their own unique set of fighting skills. Explore the world and engage in challenging battles where you must use tactics to play to your heros strengths while exploiting your enemys weaknesses. Combining a rich world with a striking, cartoon-aesthetic and brutal combat, Sword Legacy: Omen will take you on a journey through a war-torn land where Uther is dared to fulfil the legendary prophecy of Excalibur and must face legions of foes and gruesome bosses. From the grueling blizzards of Northumbria to the dark and mysterious Wessex you must be prepared to fight for the redemption that you seek. Long live the legacy! Assets are available to download from http://bit.ly/PressKitTeam17 For more information please contact: Holly Cooper - PR & Events Manager - Team17 [email protected] - +44 (0)1623 857579 About Team17 Digital Ltd Founded in 1990, Team17 Group plc is a leading international video games label and creative partner for independent developers. The portfolio comprises over 90 games, including The Escapists, Genesis: Alpha One, Overcooked, Yokus Island Express, Yooka-Laylee, the Worms franchise and many more from developers around the world. Visit www.team17.com for more info. About Firecast Studio Founded in 2014, Firecast Studio is a game studio focused on innovation and fun. We create high quality graphics, characters and stories, to enable expansion into other universes outside the game world. About Fableware Narrative Design Founded in 2015, Fableware is an independent storytelling studio specialized in developing content for multiple platforms and transmedia projects. Its portfolio includes awarded works such as the Digital Emmy nominated TV show, Now Generation; the mysterious VR adventure, Angest; and the tactical RPG, Sword Legacy: Omen, awarded Best Storytelling at the SB Games Festival. a Sword Legacy: Omena 2017. Developed by Firecast Studio and Fableware Narrative Design. Published by Team17 Digital Ltd. Team17 is a trademark or registered trademark of Team17 Digital Limited. All other trademarks, copyrights and logos are property of their respective owners.
The diplomatic spat took Canadian officials off guard. They say the tweets by Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland protesting the detention of female critics of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler, were hardly unusual and amounted to routine critiquing of the Saudi rights record. They accuse Riyadh of an absurd overreaction.

Both governments can benefit politically from the standoff when it comes to domestic politics, say analysts, who suspect the feud could play out for some time.

The Saudis have expelled Canada's ambassador and recalled their own envoy from Ottawa, ordered home 15,000 scholarship students studying at Canadian universities and hospitals, and frozen bilateral trade and investment, including halting barley and wheat imports.

Following the tweets posted Aug. 5, the feud has only worsened, with media in both countries piling on and urging government officials in their respective countries to not back down.

Saudi Arabia accused Canada of interfering in its internal affairs with the tweets that called on the Gulf kingdom to release detained "civil society activists."

Neither side is showing signs of wanting to ease a quarrel that flared when Canada's Foreign Minister criticized the recent arrests of 11 prominent rights activists in Saudi Arabia.

The diplomatic feud between Saudi Arabia and Canada, triggered by a tweet criticizing the Gulf kingdom's human rights record, looks set to worsen this week with the suspension of direct Saudi flights to Canada.

But analysts say the sharp reaction by Riyadh may have less to do with Canada and more to do with domestic Saudi politics, fitting in with a recent pattern of aggressive Saudi behavior that has seen Riyadh engineer a standoff with Gulf neighbor Qatar, which it is blockading, and continuing to pursue the war in Yemen, despite allegations of human rights violations.

They say the crown prince appears to be ramping up Saudi nationalism to try to reduce the risk of a reactionary backlash from conservative clerics and their supporters in the royal family to a series of reforms the crown prince has implemented, part of a high-profile social and economic modernization program designed to refashion Saudi Arabia that's been unfolding the past two years.

The reforms include allowing women to drive, opening movie theaters, and allowing concerts. Economic modernization, including welcoming greater foreign investment, is designed to reduce the Saudi economy's dependence on oil.

"No one should interpret this as a tantrum from Riyadh," tweeted Hisham Al-Zoubeir Hellyer, an analyst with the Atlantic Council, a U.S.-based research group. "It is far more likely to be a calculated move, designed to establish a new litmus test internationally for continued relations with Saudi Arabia. The question is whether or not everyone will buckle or refuse."

The Canadian government shows little sign of backing off, although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has acknowledged recently that Saudi Arabia has made progress on human rights.

Much of the Canadian media is supportive.

"We should not apologize, and we should be ready to accept further retaliation from Riyadh," wrote Jim Warren, a columnist for the Toronto Sun. "When we consider Canadian values versus Saudi Arabian values, we must stand up for what is right and for what we believe in. This will require sacrifices. Doing the right thing sometimes costs you something."

In its efforts to bring the Canadian government to heel, Riyadh has organized an apparently coordinated social media offensive, which has taken several bizarre turns, including targeting Canada's women's rights record, by accusing Canada of being one of the worst oppressors of women.

One social-media posting, which was deleted after being linked to the Saudi government, warned Canada not to "stick its nose where it doesn't belong," with the message superimposed over a photograph depicting a plane flying into Toronto's CN Tower.

"While in the short-term, both sides may benefit politically from brow-beating each other before domestic constituencies, it doesn't appear that anyone truly stands to gain from this in either country," argues Shuvaloy Majumdar, an analyst at Canada's Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a former government adviser.

In a tweet, Majumdar faults the Canadian government for the dispute, arguing it should have been more careful in how it campaigns for human rights, "One doesn't just wave a wand or issue a tweet."


TORONTO, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Eloro Resources Ltd. (TSX-V: ELO; FSE: P2Q) (Eloro or the Corporation) is pleased to provide an update on the La Victoria Gold Project in the north-central mineral belt of Peru which it is exploring with its joint venture partner EHR Resources (EHR). EHR currently holds a 10% interest through its Peruvian subsidiary and is earning up to a 25% interest in La Victoria. Eloros Peruvian subsidiary currently owns a 90% interest in La Victoria. Eloro completed three diamond drill holes totalling 1,242m to test the Rufina East target area. It was decided that the three holes, ERU-10, ERU-11 and ERU-12 provided a sufficient test of the target area where significant gold values had been intersected in surface sampling (see press release June 6, 2018). Table 1 gives significant results from each hole. Figure 1 shows the locations of the drill holes and Figure 2 is a geological cross-section of Holes ERU-11 and ERU-12. Highlights are as follows:



3.71 g Au/t over 1.40m from 367.0m to 368.3m in ERU-10

3.00 g Au/t over 0.60m from 105.7m to 106.3m in ERU-10

1.80 g Au/t over 0.6m from 319.8m to 320.4m in ERU-11

1.33 g Au/t over 1.3m from 88.3m to 89.6m in ERU-11

0.83 g Au/t over 1.5m from 161.7m to 163.2m in ERU-12

0.86 g Au/t over 0.5m from 126.6m to 127.1m in ERU-12

Rufina is one of the six target zones that form part of the La Victoria Gold Project. The drilling by Eloro at Rufina is the first diamond drilling ever carried out on the property. The first and second phases which comprised twelve drill holes totalling 4,281m (see press releases January 16, 2018 and June 6, 2018), were designed to provide complete sections across up to 500m strike length of the target zone to test the major NW and NE-SW striking mineralized structures identified in the surface geological mapping. All the reconnaissance drill holes intersected extensive zones of mineralization and alteration, including more than sixty anomalous gold intervals distributed in about 40 mineralized structures. Many of these structures correlated with zones mapped on surface. Gold mineralization and alteration at Rufina occurs over 600 m in width, over 700 m in vertical extent and about 600 m along strike.

Dr. Bill Pearson, P.Geo., President of Eloro commented: Results so far at Rufina are considered positive and provide indications of a large-scale epithermal gold mineralized system at La Victoria, however further drilling needs to focus on the likely overall major core area which is believed to be San Markito (Figure 3). San Markito is the best target zone identified thus far on the property, where gold and silver mineralization are found in an extensive symmetric alteration zone within both the favourable Chimu Formation sediments and dioritic intrusives. This target will be the focus of further drilling at La Victoria going forward. Work is continuing to obtain final drill permits for San Markito.

Tom Larsen, Chairman & CEO said: The Eloro geological team has continued to make good progress in understanding the extensive and complex epithermal gold system at La Victoria. We will shortly commence a geological mapping and sampling program at San Markito to be followed by a diamond drill program as soon as the final drill permit is issued.

Qualified Person

Dr. Bill Pearson, P.Geo., a Qualified Person in the context of National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical content of this news release. Assays were done at the SGS del Peru S.A.C. laboratory in Lima, Peru. Eloro employs an industry standard QA/QC process including blanks, duplicates, standards and checks at an external laboratory in addition to the rigorous internal QA/QC process employed by SGS del Peru S.A.C.

About Eloro Resources Ltd.

Eloro is an exploration and mine development company with a portfolio of gold and base-metal properties in Peru and Quebec. Eloro owns a 90% interest in the La Victoria Gold/Silver Project, located in the North-Central Mineral Belt of Peru some 50 km south of Barrick's Lagunas Norte Gold Mine and Tahoe's La Arena Gold Mine. La Victoria consists of eight mining concessions and eight mining claims encompassing approximately 89 square kilometres. The property has good infrastructure with access to road, water and electricity and is located at an altitude that ranges from 3,100 m to 4,200 m above sea level.

For further information please contact Thomas G. Larsen, Chairman and C.E.O. of Eloro Resources Ltd., or Jorge Estepa, Vice-President of Eloro Resources Ltd. at (416) 868-9168.

Information in this news release may contain forward-looking information. Statements containing forward-looking information express, as at the date of this news release, the Corporation's plans, estimates, forecasts, projections, expectations, or beliefs as to future events or results and are believed to be reasonable based on information currently available to the Corporation. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.



Neither the TSXV, nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Table 1: Significant Assay Results, Diamond Drill Holes ERU-10, -11 & -12, Rufina East Target Zone. A. Main mineralized intervals in drill hole ERU-10 (Complete). From

m To

m Length

m Au

g/t Description 63.00 63.50 0.50 0.40 Moderately sericitized diorite hosting a 1m massive sulfide & quartz vein with crustiform texture and 3/m millimetric FeOx veinlets. 105.70 106.30 0.60 3.00 55cm crustiform texture massive sulfide + quartz vein, FeOx stockwork in moderate to strong sericitized diorite & weak chlorite. 124.00 125.00 1.00 0.50 Moderately sericitized & weak chlorite diorite, quartz irreg. veinlets, FeOx stockworks, including a 4cm massive sulfide & quartz vein 234.00 235.00 1.00 0.60 Moderately sericitized, chloritized carbonaceous diorite, sulfides veinlets 4/m and 30 cm massive sulfides & quartz crustiform vein. 253.00 253.50 0.50 0.70 Hydrothermal breccia with shale and moderately silicified diorite and gouge close to a shear zone. 338.00 339.00 1.00 0.90 Moderately to strongly sericitized diorite with quartz, ad, py, aspy, cpy veinlets and py-aspy pervasive dissemination (3-5%). 367.00 367.80 0.80 4.90 0.7 m crustiform/coliform textures quartz-massive sulfides vein 367.80 368.30 0.50 1.80 Moderately to strongly sericitized diorite, 5/6 quartz-sulfide veinlets. Overall section 3.71 gAu/t over 1.40m. B. Main mineralized intervals in drill hole ERU-11 (Complete). From

m To

m Length

m Au

g/t Description 17.80 18.30 0.50 0.40 Moderately to strong FeOx stockwork, fine veinlets, 2cm massive sulfides/quartz veinlets in moderate to strong sericitized diorite 73.30 74.30 1.00 0.90 Quartz & sulfides crustiform vein and rare veinlets in moderately sericitized diorite 88.30 89.30 1.00 1.33 Quartz & sulfides (massive Aspy-Py) crustiform vein and veinlets in moderate to strong sericitized diorite, includes 1.0m @1.69g/t Au 89.30 89.60 0.30 146.30 146.70 0.40 0.91 Quartz & sulfides (Aspy-Py) crustiform vein and veinlets in moderately sericitized diorite 248.60 249.30 0.70 0.34 Vein zone, Quartz & sulfides (Py-Po-Aspy) vein (20cm) and veinlets in moderately sericitized diorite 316.30 317.10 0.80 0.65 Vein zone, Quartz & sulfides (Qz-Aspy and Aspy-Py) vein (5cm) and veinlets in moderately sericitized diorite 319.80 320.40 0.60 1.80 Quartz & sulfides crustiform vein in moderately sericitized diorite 348.80 349.30 0.50 0.37 Veinlets Quartz-Py (1-2mm), in moderately sericitized diorite C. Main mineralized intervals in drill hole ERU-12 (Complete). From

m To

m Length

m Au

g/t Description 125.60 126.60 1.00 0.31 Veinlets Quartz-Py-Chlorite, Py diss, in moderately sericitized diorite 126.60 127.10 0.50 0.86 Vein zone, Quartz & sulfides (Py-Aspy) vein (10cm) and veinlets in moderately sericitized diorite 161.70 163.20 1.50 0.83 Brecciated vein with abundant py-aspy, quartz and sulfides intergrowths 251.50 252.00 0.50 0.34 Vein Quartz - Aspy - Py in moderately sericitized diorite 269.40 270.80 1.40 0.40 Vein zone, Quartz & sulfides (Py-Aspy) vein (5cm) & rare veinlets in moderately sericitized diorite 295.70 296.20 0.50 0.31 Vein zone, 2 & 4cm Quartz-Aspy-Py<Cpy, horse, in moderately sericitized metadiorite 306.60 307.80 1.20 0.45 Laminated quartz veinlets w/sulfides intergrowths 334.05 334.65 0.60 0.20 Vein zone, 15cm Qz-Aspy-Py<Cpy, in moderately sericitized diorite 355.60 356.30 0.70 0.56 Quartz  sulfide vein with meta-diorite horse tails 357.30 358.15 0.85 0.49 Veinlets to 3cm Quartz-Py-Aspy, <Cpy, in moderately sericitized diorite 389.25 390.00 0.75 0.28 Laminated quartz veinlets with sulfide intergrowths 400.00 401.10 1.10 0.28 Vein zone, Quartz-sulfide 40 cm vein in wk phyllic, moderate carbonate, moderate chlorite-altered diorite, includes 0.6m@0.49g Au/t

(I) Diamond drill core for all holes is NTW size = 56.23mm

(II) True width is equal to approximately 70%-75% of core length

(III) Abbreviations: py=pyrite, aspy=arsenopyrite, ad = adularia, cp=chalcopyrite, po=pyrrhotite, gn=galena, ca=calcite, dissem = disseminated

Table 2: Collar coordinates and Dip/Azimuth of the drill holes reported Hole Id Easting Northing Elevation Az Dip Length RUFINA EAST Completed ERU-10 172617 9080167 3272 90 -50 456.35 Completed ERU-11 172640 9080093 3213 90 -45 355.30 Completed ERU-12 172640 9080093 3213 90 -60 430.50 Total 1,242.15

(i) All measurements are in metres except Azimuth (Az) and Dip, which are measured in degrees.





Figure 1: Plan map showing locations of drill holes reported and significant surface samples.

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2b8cc65d-9b6a-4f23-85d0-c663fa5b3fd8

Figure 2: Geological cross-section holes ERU-11 and ERU-12, Rufina East Target

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a0cb683e-350b-4974-a7f5-b744c1e8b382

Figure 3: Epithermal Mineralization and Hydrothermal Alteration, Rufina-San Markito.

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/84575ebe-cf3a-476f-a018-cd78975a8f6c
Excellent mobile water quality monitoring vehicle in place for Import Expo

By:Zheng Qian | From:english.eastday.com | 2018-08-10 19:52

A world-class mobile water quality monitoring vehiclewill be deployed in late October to the Water Supply Security Command Center for the first China International Import Expo (CIIE) to ensure the high quality and efficiency of the water supply during the fair, according to the water supply department responsible for the upcoming Expo.

Since the first CIIE, a significant move for the Chinese government to push forward a new round of high-level opening-up, is to be held at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) in November, currently all the preparatory work is being conducted in all aspects. In terms of water guarantee, key tasks including emergency drills for water shortages, the renovation of the weak water supply network around the exhibition center, and the continuing improvement of water quality, have been implemented gradually.

According to Zhao Jian, senior engineer of the Municipal Water Supply Monitoring Center, the monitoring vehicle can efficiently monitor 44 pollutants such as volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds, volatile phenols and cyanide.Before, the monitoring of water had to go through the process of taking contaminated water samples, sending themto the laboratory, and doing experiments, which took at least three hours to get a result. With this monitoring car which will arrive at the expo site, at least half of the time will be reduced. The continuous sampling and real-time monitoring till the contamination is eliminated improves our capability to respond to emergent awful situations.
China's Communist Party forced six churches in Beijing to shut down after attempts to bribe members to leave failed, a new report has revealed.



Persecution watchdog China Aid reports that authorities closed six branches of Zion Church, located in Beijing, claiming that its members refused to register with the government. One police officer said, "We asked Zion Church to register, but the church has continuously refused. Other churches have all registered. It is just Zion Church that refuses to register."



However, church officials dispute this account, as authorities have attempted to close the church for months. Since May, government officials have bribed attendees to leave the church by promising them good occupations, good schools for their children, solutions to other problems, or threatening their jobs. Eventually, authorities forced the church to close.



The church's pastor, Jin Mingri, claims officials never asked his church to register with the government "No [government] department has asked me to register the church in the past 10 years," he said.



In an attempt to "Sinicize" Christianity and infuse it with "Chinese characteristics," China has arrested hundreds of pastors and church congregants. Additionally, dozens of churches have been demolished, with officials claiming that curtain buildings must be torn down due to new zoning laws.



News of the church's closing comes on the heels of a report from The Associated Press in which believers described increasing persecution under President Xi Jinping's government.



A 62-year-old shopkeeper from Henan province revealed that local officials recently showed up at their church and demanded that the cross, Bible verse calligraphy, and a painting of the "Last Supper" be taken down.



"I've always prayed for our country's leaders, for our country to get stronger," the shopkeeper said.



"They were never this severe before, not since I started going to church in the '80s. Why are they telling us to stop now?" he asked.



A dozen Chinese Christians revealed that their gatherings have been raided, and that they have been subjected to interrogations and surveillance because of their beliefs.



The wife of one pastor said that government authorities have prevented church members from being baptized and have even interrupted Christmas services.



"The government says that we have religious freedom, but really there is no freedom at all," said the woman.



"Many of our Christian brothers and sisters are upset and fearful."



Persecution watchdog Open Doors ranks Chin 43rd on its list of 50 countries where believers face the most persecution.


Governments around the nation are working to design the best vaccine policies that keep both their employees and their residents safe. Although the latest data shows a variety of polarizing perspectives, there are clear emerging best practices that leading governments are following to put trust first: creating policies that are flexible and provide a range of options, and being in tune with the needs and sentiments of their employees so that they are able to be dynamic and accommodate the rapidly changing situation.
Some prominent Southwest Florida Republicans are calling on GOP state House candidate Melissa Howard to drop out of the District 73 race after a Miami University official said a diploma that Howard has displayed does not appear to be authentic, and that Howard does not have the degree she has been claiming.Former Manatee County GOP Chair Donna Hayes, who helmed the party for a decade and has endorsed Howard's opponent, said Sunday that Howard should immediately withdraw from the race."That's a very deceptive falsification that she made," Hayes said, adding: "It makes the Republican Party look very loose and look like they have no principles."Former Manatee County Commissioner Jonathan Bruce also urged Howard to quit the race."What a sad day for integrity in local politics," said Bruce, who also has endorsed Howard's opponent. "A really unreal turn of events. Melissa Howard should leave the race now."But the Republican Party of Sarasota put out a statement that did not condemn Howard's actions and indicated she would have the party's support if she wins the primary."We're not prepared to comment on the House 73 primary at this point in time," the statement said. "We will let the primary process complete on August 28. We look forward to supporting the nominee after the primary."Sarasota GOP Chair Joe Gruters is Howard's campaign treasurer. He said that has no bearing on the party's position."It's up to the voters to decide," Gruters said of the primary.Manatee County GOP Chair Kathy King could not be reached for comment.Peggy Simone, a former GOP state representative and a member of the Manatee County Republican Party Executive Committee's board of directors, said she plans to reach out to King about polling the board on whether to ask Howard to drop out."I would hope that if she's faking her diploma that gets out by her opponent and she's not elected," Simone said. "Whether she should drop out of the race -- I wouldn't make that decision alone. I'd have to get to the board."Hayes said she plans to attend the Manatee GOP's next meeting and push for a resolution calling on Howard to drop out."I will definitely bring it up if nobody else does," Hayes said.But Gruters said King agrees with him."Her and I talked yesterday morning when this first happened and agreed on that position together," Gruters said in a text message Sunday. "We agreed to let the voters decide."Some GOP leaders went so far as to express support for Howard.Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh said in a Facebook comment -- posted Saturday in response to a post linking to the Herald-Tribune's article about the controversy surrounding Howard -- that "I stand by Melissa."Responding to Baugh's comment, Martin Hyde -- a Republican and former candidate for the Sarasota City Commission -- said "It is very poor judgment to state as a publicly elected official that you condone such frankly criminal behavior.""This really is a bizarre case of almost psychotic arrogance," Hyde said in another Facebook post. "How anyone could continue to run for office after showing such lamentable and shameful behavior I do not know. I am ashamed for her and for anyone that condones dragging this charade on for another moment. Howard must take her name off the ballot immediately in the name of everything that we hold decent in this great country of ours."Howard did not respond to a text message Sunday, and her voicemail was full. Her campaign consultant, Anthony Pedicini, did not respond to a text message and email.Howard's campaign has been thrown into turmoil by the revelations that she never obtained a degree from Miami University -- despite repeatedly insisting that she did -- and that she may have gone to great lengths to deceive people about the degree, including displaying a diploma that does not appear to be authentic.Miami University general counsel Robin Parker sent an email to the Herald-Tribune declaring unequivocally that Howard never graduated. And Parker also took aim at the diploma seen in pictures that Howard distributed.The diploma says Howard obtained a degree in marketing, but Parker noted that Miami University doesn't offer a degree in marketing and brought up other reasons why the diploma "does not appear to be an accurate Miami University diploma."The sensational story of a candidate potentially faking a diploma has received national and even international attention. The Washington Post ran a story about Howard, as did the Daily Mail newspaper in the United Kingdom.The pressure on Howard to drop out of the race is likely to intensify within GOP circles. If she were to win the primary against Sarasota attorney Tommy Gregory she would be badly damaged, giving Democrat Liv Coleman a better chance of winning the strongly GOP-leaning seat.Gregory called on Howard to apologize to him and his family "for disparaging my reputation in the community." Howard repeatedly called Gregory a liar and blamed him for spreading false information about her college record.In a statement released Sunday, Gregory went on to question Howard's integrity but stopped short of calling on her to drop out of the race."From reading yesterday's news stories and what the general counsel from Miami University stated, the Melissa Howard diploma is not authentic, and the actions surrounding that diploma raise a lot of questions about integrity and character," Gregory said. "But I'll leave that to the Howard campaign."
Home  Just In  Prime Minister not happy with media coverage of govt decisions

Kathmandu, August 12

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has expressed his unhappiness over the media coverage of various decisions and activities carried out by the government.

Receiving a newly elected executive committee of Media Society Nepal, an association of Nepali media houses, Oli said some media portrayed the government decision to restrict demonstrations from public places including Maitighar Mandala as a move against civil liberty, which it was not.

Lets think without any prejudice. What do you think: is Maitighar Mandala an appropriate place for staging mass meetings and rallies? How can some media portray us as anti-liberty? he said, The Nepal Communist Party is the proponent of democracy. We cannot imagine violating democratic values, press freedom and human rights.

He stressed the media coverage should be true and trustworthy, claiming some media houses intentionally carried propaganda against his government and party.
The Governors Official Program is comprised of a wide range of constitutional and legal duties and ceremonial and community engagements. Each year, the Governor hosts thousands of visitors to Government House to take part in investiture and award ceremonies, Open Days, receptions and meetings, and travels widely throughout Queensland to support the activities of Patron groups. View a chronological record of the Governors daily program below.

On Saturday, in the morning, at Parliament House, Brisbane City, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC and Mrs Kaye de Jersey attended the official launch of the Parliament House Open Day to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the Parliament House Building, and the Governor addressed guests.

Following, at the Brisbane Showgrounds, Bowen Hills, His Excellency and Mrs de Jersey attended the 2018 Royal Queensland Show, and the Governor officially opened the show, addressed guests and viewed the Parade of Champions.
(TNS)  BUTLER COUNTY  A new generation of voting machines may soon be on the way thanks to a bill signed by Gov. John Kasich, which will allow $114.5 million to be distributed among Ohios 88 counties.New generation, however, may mean taking a step back in time. Voters in 41 counties, including Butler, Montgomery and Greene, have been using direct-recording electronic voting machines, or DREs, which requires the use of a touchscreen. But now, more counties are considering using paper ballots, as no DRE machine is currently certified for use in Ohio.That leaves many counties looking at a switch to paper ballots and optical-scanning equipment to count ballots, or hybrid systems coming at more than twice the price that employ touchscreens to mark a paper ballot.I know people think thats going backwards, Butler County Board of Elections Director Diane Noonan said. But you have to look at these machines and understand that paper is not what they think it is.Warren, Preble and Clark counties already use paper ballots.Nationwide, 47 percent of American registered voters in November 2016 lived in jurisdictions using only optical-scan technology that requires voters to fill in bubbles, complete arrows or make other machine-readable marks on paper; 28 percent lived in DRE-only jurisdictions; another 19 percent lived in jurisdictions where both were used, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Verified Voting Foundation data.According to Butler County Commissioner Don Dixon, DRE machines actually pose more of a security risk, leaving votes susceptible to hacking. What is most helpful when it comes to the voting process, he said, is having some sort of paper trail.(Voting) is the basis that runs our whole form of government, so you have to be able to reassure people that youre correct, Dixon said. If that means producing a paper trail, it sure makes people feel a lot better.Last year, the Butler County Board of Elections looked at five possible vendors for their new voting machines, and has since narrowed it down to two.Right now much of the decision is up in the air, Noonan said. Choosing a new voting system will depend mostly on the funds available to purchase them.We have to go back and see how the pricing comes out. Get our numbers together and figure out exactly what system we want to go with, Noonan said.The recently signed bill will give the county $3.12 million, but it wont determine the overall cost of the systems Butler County chooses.Montgomery County Board of Elections Director Jan Kelly said its possible Montgomery county might purchase two types of voting machines, the first a hybrid machine that could be used for early voting at the BOE office, and then paper ballots for the separate precincts. Noonan agrees that this might be Butler Countys strategy as well.Choosing new voting machines is a long process, but it has to be done, according to Butler County Administrator Charlie Young. In the end, all 1,600 of Butler Countys machines will be replaced.We have to put in a place a system that has the confidence of the voters and is simple and straightforward as it can be, Young said. I hope that the voters of Butler County will share the belief that whatever we have to do in order to utilize new systems, we will do.
(TNS)  JANESVILLE  Rock County, Wis., will begin implementing an archiving system for text messages sent and received on county-issued cellphones, making such communication available as public records.The program is expected to be operational by Thursday, Rock County Administrator Josh Smith said. Once in place, the texts will be stored on a server and kept for about seven years.County IT staff have installed an app on each of the 573 county-issued cellphones to manage the archiving process. Much like emails sent to and from county email addresses, Smith said all text messages will be stored on a server.If an open records request is filed for text messages, IT staff will retrieve the messages and, along with department heads, supply substantive texts, Smith said.Because text messages are often used for quicker and more direct communication, many texts could include irrelevant or transient information. Smith said the county is focused on preserving all official communications regardless of medium.In recent years, Smith said the use of texting for official business has ballooned. He used the Human Services Department, where employees sometimes text supervisors from the field if they need more help, as an example.As technology continues to shape the way county employees communicate, Smith said officials wanted to keep in step with the states public records laws.We felt that it was our responsibility to be transparent, Smith said.Some county employees will be exempt from the archiving system. Nick Osborne, an assistant to the county administrator, wrote in an email tothat detectives in the Bureau of Investigation will not have their messages stored because they could include information about ongoing investigations.Osborne also wrote that investigators sometimes issue cellphones to anonymous informants. Those texts will also be exempt from the system.For years, county officials have been trying to develop a text message archive, but the technology wasnt available until late last year. The county began vetting services, and the Rock County Board approved a resolution in June authorizing Smarsh Cellular as the countys archiving provider.Rock County will be one of the first to adopt the system, Osborne wrote.In its June resolution, the county board approved $52,000 to install the system. Smith said that full amount will not be spent because the system will only be in place for part of this year.
(TNS)  On a recent day after work, a group of paralegals perplexed by Cook Countys new electronic filing system gathered at a downtown office to vent about it and take part in some hands-on training.Tisha Delgado, vice president of the Illinois Paralegal Association, stood behind a projector demonstrating how to file a lawsuit when she saw a prompt on the screen that needed more explanation.The phrase ad damnum, Delgado told the audience of about 30 people, means the amount of money sought through litigation.If you were pro se (filing without an attorney), how would you ever know that? another paralegal chimed in. Thats terrible.In theory, e-filing is supposed to increase access to the courts, enabling people without an attorney in civil cases to submit legal documents from a computer instead of trekking to a courthouse. But many paralegals and attorneys who find the mandatory platform confusing worry that its not user-friendly for people filing motions on their own. The system, launched July 1 by an Illinois Supreme Court order, also requires registrants to have an email address and an electronic form of payment, something advocates say can create barriers for low-income people.Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown said she is working with the vendor, Texas-based Tyler Technologies, to make the platform more intuitive. But the changes need to be approved by the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts because they are part of a statewide program, Brown said.Its been very challenging and difficult for our users as well as our staff, Brown said. Were really asking our users to be patient.Compared with the federal courts, which have used an electronic filings and case management system since the late 1990s, Cook County was operating in ancient times.That changed in 2016 when the states top court ordered the system to be implemented in all 102 trial courts and selected Tyler Technologies as the sole vendor. Tyler will receive $7 million when the three remaining counties  DuPage, Winnebago and McHenry  come online next summer, said Chris Bonjean, a spokesman for the state Supreme Court.Tyler Technologies was selected after an extensive process that evaluated eight comprehensive proposals from e-filing providers, Bonjean said in an emailed statement. This selection was made due to Tyler's deep expertise and success in statewide e-filing, including similar implementations with e-filing systems in Texas and Indiana.Despite that experience, the transition in Cook County has been bumpy. On the first day of e-filing, long lines filled rooms in the Daley Center where people waited to register online. And just last week, the system temporarily crashed for parts of Tuesday and Wednesday.E-filing has proved particularly vexing for attorneys and paralegals who say their filings have taken days to get approved. For others, the filings were rejected by clerks for reasons not communicated to them.Ira Piltz, a Skokie-based practitioner, said he had to drive downtown to fix errors in person. He needed to file a new eviction case, but there were no instructions about how to upload a summons, and he couldnt figure it out. As a result, Piltz will have to bill his client for extra hours.It was an absolute, unmitigated disaster, Piltz said. A lawyers job is hard enough  especially for a guy like me. I dont have a real staff. Im a solo practitioner. I do a lot of this stuff myself.The outrage has boiled over on social media too.E-filing in Cook County has been a complete failure, one attorney tweeted July 23, complaining that it took up to 15 days for clerks to process domestic relations paperwork online.Another lawyer lamented July 6 on Facebook that e-filing was driving him to drink more.Some attorneys blame Brown for failing to provide enough notice and training on the new software before it went live. But Brown, who said her staff is working overtime to iron out the kinks, said she could provide only the few instructions given to her by Tyler Technologies. One of Browns June training sessions drew 1,100 pro se litigants and other court users. There are 131 workstations at the Daley Center and suburban courthouses to assist users and at least 10 people on each floor of the downtown courthouse to answer questions, a spokeswoman said.Brown acknowledged that people can really learn the system only by using it themselves.We did all that we could, that we had in our power, to help people, Brown said.If people with years of legal experience are struggling to navigate the new system, it is sure to distress self-representing litigants who are filing motions on their own, said Margaret Duval, executive director of the Domestic Violence Legal Clinic.This is a manifestation of the ways that our courts function as a fractured system with the judges on one side, the clerks on another side and multiple other players not working in correspondence with each other for the benefit of the litigants, Duval said.For now, e-filing at the domestic violence courthouse is not mandatory, according to an order issued June 29 by Presiding Judge Sebastian T. Patti. Patti issued another order in response to the July 31 and Aug. 1 computer outages, allowing the clerk to start cases on paper for people seeking an emergency order of protection when the system is down for more than two hours. The orders stemmed from concerns that a delay or error from the new system would adversely affect a time-sensitive case.Leslie Corbett, executive director of the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, said e-filing can serve an important purpose for people who dont have time to make a trip to the courthouse. Court technology needs to enter the 21st century, she said, but it should be implemented in a thoughtful way that wont make participation in the justice system more confusing, she said.In terms of our low-income folks, I know the county is trying to do as much as it can as far as having people available to walk them through the process, but the bottom line is for folks who dont use a computer on a regular basis or who dont have a credit card and an email address, this is just one more barrier, Corbett said.Bonjean said there are several exemptions that allow self-representing litigants to keep using paper filings: if they do not have internet or computer access at home, have a disability that keeps them from e-filing, have trouble reading or speaking in English, or are filing an order of protection or civil no-contact/stalking order.Meanwhile, judges are also considering how the new system affects their daily process in the courtroom. In that past month, Chief Circuit Court Judge Timothy Evans has met twice with officials in the clerks office, the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts and Tyler Technologies, said his spokesman, Pat Milhizer.The meetings generated discussion that helped the Clerk representatives and Tyler Technologies identify solutions for the new e-filing process, Milhizer said in an emailed statement.By far, Cook County is the states largest and most complex court system to undergo the electronic makeover. The Illinois Supreme Court granted Brown a six-month extension to prepare for the change in December when Tyler Technologies and the clerk agreed it could not meet the states Jan. 1 deadline. Cook was among 15 counties already using a form of electronic filing that needed to be switched over to the state-selected vendor.Delgado, the paralegal who organized a training for colleagues, said she has gotten used to calling the clerks office for help every morning since the new system launched, joking that she has built a reputation there.But more seriously, she said she wonders why the state didnt outfit Cook County with the system first instead of last.Cook County is the most complicated one, she said, so if they could figure out Cook County, then everyone else could have been easy.
Russian operatives have successfully hacked some of Floridas voter registration systems ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said last week.They have already penetrated certain counties in the state and they now have free rein to move about, the Florida Democrat told the Tampa Bay Times , referring to Russian hackers.Nelson did not elaborate on which counties Russians targeted or when the attacks occurred, saying the information was classified. He said that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee encouraged him and Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida to inform local officials that the Russians are in their records.A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, Sara Sendek, said in a statement that agency officials have not seen any new compromises by Russian actors of election infrastructure.Election experts say Russia wouldnt need to change votes to disrupt Americas electoral process. In primary elections earlier this year, for example, California and Maryland left nearly 200,000 people off voter rolls , leading to confusion and anger when those people tried to cast ballots.The error factored into the low turnout in Marylands primary, state officials said. Only 1 in 10 affected voters cast a ballot, compared with the overall primary turnout of 1 in 4.
(TNS)  Within the Tennessee Valley Authority's new cybersecurity center in the utility's downtown Chattanooga Office Complex, two dozen IT specialists stare at their computer terminals and scan email messages, twitter feeds and network activity looking to spot any signs of cyberthreats.Beneath a giant wall screen displaying areas of potential concern in TVA's 7-state region, cybersecurity experts monitor a portion of the 2 billion activities across TVA's digital platforms every day. Around the clock, workers monitor electronic messages, both from within TVA and those trying to hack into the utility's network, looking for any attempt to disrupt communication and power delivery across more than 16,000 miles of TVA transmission lines.As America's biggest government owned power utility  and the operator of 29 power-generating dams, seven nuclear reactors and multiple connections to the Oak Ridge nuclear weapons production arsenal  TVA is regarded as one of the richest targets for cyberterrorists.Andrea Brackett, director of TVA's Cybersecurity group, says the federal utility is vigilant and ready."There are all kinds of threat actors that attempt to test us on a daily basis, but I think we are in a really great spot with all kinds of layering of defenses to make sure that we're protecting our operational assets from different types of cyberattacks that could happen, whether that is from the internet or internally from within TVA," she said. "We've not had any events that have impacted our operational capability."But the threats of cyberhacks into America's electric grid or digital communications and financial systems in the United States have risen to what Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen calls "a crisis mode" on cybersecurity. Following hacks last year at Equifax and Yahoo, the energy sector is regarded as another very popular target for cybercrime."Cyber threats now represent a greater threat to the United States than physical threats," Nielsen recently warned. "Our digital enemies are taking advantage of all of us. They are exploiting our open society to steal, to manipulate, to intimidate, to coerce, to disrupt and to undermine."U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry was a bit more sanguine last week about the cyberthreats to America's power grid, however. Americans should not be unduly alarmed, he said, because the U.S. power grid is decentralized among hundreds of separate utilities and still relies on older technology, making the system harder to hack than in most other countries."We've got an old infrastructure, if you will, 50 or 60 years old in a lot of cases," Perry said. "In one way that kind of protects us because we've got some old technology in there. You've got some old analog equipment. On the other hand, all the digital, the new types of technology there is vulnerable to a cyberattack."Despite concerns of attack from domestic or foreign threats, including new evidence of attempted Russian cyberattacks against American power utilities, Perry said "Americans should know that some of the best in the world are defending them."With cybercrime on the rise, TVA sees tens of thousands of attempts daily to hack into, or at least test the resilience, of TVA networks. TVA's cybersecurity professionals have identified and blocked hacking activities including those conducted by nation states that pose ongoing threats.A decade ago, TVA had less than a handful of full-time employees working on cybersecurity issues. The agency's cybersecurity staff now totals 38 TVA employees, supported by another 20 to 30 contract workers.Employees are the first line of defense against cyberthreats and the key to success in TVA's program, Brackett said"Not only do we have a well-trained and experienced staff, but we provide regular company-wide awareness training to all employees," she said. "Every employee is required to have cyber security training and then we do significant training for those with elevated roles."TVA has invested heavily in state-of-the-art monitoring systems and equipment for a new Cybersecurity Operations Center that opened its doors in October 2017. TVA's core cybersecurity team monitors the cyberactivities taking place across the company and collaborates to share intelligence and build mitigating strategies."Our Cybersecurity Operations Center tracks not only local and national cyberactivity, but foreign threats as well, including those posed by nation states," said Rob Arnold, TVA's senior manager of cybersecurity operations.TVA's status as a multi-purpose, government-owned utility makes it a potential target for terrorists, hackers and enemy states interested in disrupting power deliveries or causing floods or nuclear accidents at TVA dams and nuclear plants.But as a federally owned corporation, TVA is also integrated with other federal agencies in monitoring and communicating about such threats."We are in a unique position as a federal utility," Brackett said. "We have a close and ongoing relationship with our federal intelligence community partners such as the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Energy. This advanced intelligence allows us as a federal entity to better prepare and respond to cyber threats often earlier than our industry peers."TVA adheres to both industry and government regulations, including those set forth by the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), the National American Electric Reliability CorporationCritical Infrastructure Protection (NERC-CIP) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) .Last year in the 2017 audit of cybersecurity systems and policies under the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014, TVA was judged to be "managed and mature" and got a 4 rating on a 5-point scale.TVA also works to monitor, train and upgrade cybersecurity for the 155 municipalities and power cooperatives that distribute TVA-generated power across the Tennessee Valley.Phillip Burgess, a communications director for the Tennessee Valley Public Power Association in Chattanooga, said TVA distributors have always placed a priority on protecting customers' information from hackers."But with technological advances being employed by hackers, we have expanded our efforts to ensure that our facilities are secure from sophisticated attacks that could potentially shut down or adversely impact delivery of electricity to our customers," Burgess said. "We monitor cybersecurity issues, and provide education and information sharing opportunities for our members."Just this week, TVPPA hosted an engineering and operations conference that dealt, in part, with cybersecurity.At the national level, the Department of Homeland Security announced last month plans to open the National Risk Management Center in New York City to guard the nation's banks, energy companies, and other industries from major cyberattacks that could cripple critical infrastructure. Among electric utilities, the ElectricityInformation Security Analysis Center (E-ISAC) gathers and shares intelligence among energy companies about emerging cyberthreats.While a cyberattack is always a threat, Bracket said TVA's isolated and layered defense system offers a strong defense against hack attacks."You are much more likely to see a power outage due to a weather related event or wildlife interference than a cyberevent," she said.
Ford has released the first images of the new Territory, a mid-size SUV targeted at new buyers in emerging cities in China. Ford developed the Territory together with its joint venture partner, Jiangling Motors Corporation (JMC).





Territory customers can choose between a fuel-efficient gasoline engine option; 48V mild hybrid with Miller-Cycle technology; and a plug-in hybrid powertrain when it goes on sale in early 2019.

It also will offer Fords infotainment system with intuitive Mandarin voice-command function, Co-Pilot360 suite of driver assistance technologies, incorporating features such as Adaptive Cruise Control and FordPass Connect with embedded modem.

The Territory is a breakthrough for Ford in China in terms of our ability to successfully compete with Chinese automakers for millions of customers that we do not currently serve. Territory is a key proof point for how we will grow in China. We brought Territory to market with speed, high quality and cost efficiency. It will be affordable for young families and new buyers across China, not just the coastal mega-cities. And the technology will delight customers. Peter Fleet, president, Asia Pacific and chairman & CEO, Ford China

JMC provided insights into Chinese customers lifestyles and product preferences, while the Ford team leveraged its global expertise to design, engineer, and test Territory at Fords testing centers in Nanjing, China and Melbourne, Australia. The all-new SUV will be manufactured at JMCs Xiao Lan plant, which meets Fords global manufacturing standards.

Market background. While China remains the worlds largest automotive market, the greatest growth in demand for automobiles will come not from traditional Tier 1 cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, which have implemented license plate restrictions to manage traffic congestion, but rather from smaller but fast-growing cities in the interior of the country.

The number of registered passenger vehicles in Chinese cities with no license plate restrictions is expected to soar to about 23.7 million in 2020, up from 10.8 million in 2010, according to IHS Markits latest China Provincial Forecast1. In contrast, vehicle registrations in restricted cities is expected to fall to 1.6 million in 2019, from a peak of 2.2 million in 2010.

For these buyers, the midsize SUVs such as Ford Territory is a highly popular choice. According to McKinseys China auto consumer survey 20172, the midsize SUV segment saw an annual growth rate of 38% in China between 2012 to 2016. Indigenous Chinese automakers in particular have capitalized on this trend.

The Territory further expands the Ford SUV family lineup, which is composed of Ford EcoSport, Ford Kuga, Ford Edge, Ford Explorer and Ford Everest, to further meet the diversified needs of Chinese consumers.

The new Ford Territory is part of Fords China 2025 plan to launch more than 50 new vehicles in the country by 2025.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment will propose Regulation Number 20, Low Emission Vehicles (Colorado Low Emission Automobile Regulations, CLEAR), to the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission (AQCC) to the AQCC at its regular meeting on 16 August. The proposed rule adopts California Low Emission Vehicle standards for new light- and medium-duty motor vehicles sold in Colorado beginning in MY 2022.

The proposed rule incorporates by reference the some 52 sections of the California Code applicable to emission from MY 2022 and later new passenger cars, light-duty trucks, medium-duty vehicles (up to 14,000 lbs GVWR) and replacement engines for these vehicles.

The LEV standards include criteria pollutant emissions (hydrocarbon, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, particulate and formaldehyde). These criteria emission standards are essentially the same as the federal EPA standards.

The incorporation also includes adoption of the California greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards for most of these vehicles.

The proposed rule adopts not only the criteria pollutant and GHG standards, but also several ancillary California rules relating to evaporative emissions, ob-board diagnostics (OBD), testing, accountability and reporting, and consumer protections to include vehicle warranty and recall.

Should the rule be adopted, Colorado will be in company with the 13 states other than California that adopted California LEV requirements between 2005 and 2014.

Background. Under the federal Clean Air Act, states may adopt either federal standards or California standards. Colorado discussed the adoption of California LEV at least twice in the past (2005 and 2012), but took no action.

In June 2018, Colorado Governor Hickenlooper issued Executive Order B 2018 006, Maintaining Progress on Clean Vehicles. The executive order noted that the federal government had announced its intention to roll back vehicle greenhouse gas (GHG) standards for model years 2022-2025. Rolling back these standards would negatively impact Colorados ability to meet its GHG reduction goals. The executive order directs the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to do the following:

Develop a rule to establish a Colorado Low Emission Vehicle (LEV) program, which incorporates the requirements of the California LEV program; and

Propose that rule to the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission (AQCC) during its August 2018 meeting for possible adoption into the Colorado Code of Regulations by 30 December 2018.

The executive order does not direct CDPHE to propose a zero emission vehicle program or to mandate the sale of electric vehicles. Accordingly, the proposed rule does not create a Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program for Colorado. Similarly, it has no effect on heavy duty trucks or non-highway equipment, and no change to fuel specifications in this proposed rule.
Home  Just In  Two Chitwan rhinos will come to Kathmandu Tuesday on their way to China

Chitwan, August 13

Officials of the Chitwan National Park say they are sending two one-horned rhinocerosone male and one femaleto Kathmandu on Tuesday as they are scheduled to fly for China on Thursday.

The rhinos constitute the second pair of four rhinos that Nepal is gifting the northern neighbour.

Information Officer Nurendra Aryal at the National Park says all preparations have been over to see off Solti (two-year-old male) and Mitini (a female of the same year). They will leave their habitat at 5 pm tomorrow.

Earlier, the Government of Nepal had sent the first pair of rhinos to China on July 12.

The officials of the Park say that there will be no problem in translocation of the rhinos since they are familiar with the humans.

Like before, the Park veterinarians, technicians and assistants will be sent this time too together with the rhinos.

During his visit to China two years ago, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli had pledged to gift two pairs of rhinos.
On the request of PAO Severstal, one of the worlds largest metallurgical steel companies, scientists at Russias NUST MISIS have developed a new steel alloy called SeverCorr for oil-field pipelines that reduces the environmental risks of oil production and increases its efficiency.

Severstals necessity to develop a new steel grade is due to the peculiarities of current oil development technology in Russian oil fields. Existing oil field pipes operate in conditions of constant contact with the corrosive water-emulsion mixture of oil and concentrated salt solutions. This leads to short operation periods (about 2 years) and unpredictable accidents which are often accompanied by the pollution of large swaths of surrounding areas.

NUST MISIS scientists proposed an innovative technology for the production of rolled steel to manufacture corrosion-resistant field pipes with improved mechanical characteristics.

The new steel grade SeverCorr can significantly reduce environmental risks and the operating costs of oil extraction, including in the hard-to-reach fields of Western Siberia, where repairing and replacing pipes is complicated by the conditions of their delivery and the necessary composition of hydrocarbons that lead to an increased level of corrosive wear.

The new technology of rolled steel production for the manufacturing of straight-seam oilfield pipes provides them with increased corrosion resistance and cold resistance. The development of new alloying schemes (adding impurities to the composition of the materials to improve the properties of the base material) and providing the necessary structural and phase steel composition to the production of rolled and sheet metal has become our main task. Alexander Komissarov, one of the developers

NUST MISIS scientists have already calculated the conditions of the complex micro-allocation of the melt with elements such as chromium, copper, and nickel to obtain the necessary properties. The introduction of these metals into the liquid steel allows manufacturers to regulate the composition of corrosion-active non-metallic inclusions in the steel, thereby reducing their negative impact on its properties.

According to the developers, this technology will significantly reduce both operating costs and environmental risks of oil extraction. The production of pipes through welding will help to reduce their cost and increase the efficiency of oil extraction.

According to Komissarov, the technology is competitive by the global standard. This year, the developers intend to obtain an international patent, and in the future, they plan to issue a guarantee of at least double the life cycle of pipes manufactured with this technology.

As part of the project, several promising steel concepts have been developed. A series of both experimental melting and smelting of an experimental batch at the Severstal enterprises have already been conducted, and the SeverCorr samples passed the corrosion tests. Full-scale pilot tests of the new steel pipeline at the West Siberian oil fields of Lukoil, Gazprom Neft, and Irkutsk Oil Company are being prepared for launch.
Photo: Courtesy of Rodale Books

Rodale Books has pulled an Instagram influencers foraging cookbook, after criticism that some of the recipes could make people sick. In a statement, Rodale says that it and author Johnna Holmgren, who runs the whimsical lifestyle account Fox Meets Bear, have ended publication and promotion of Tales from a Foragers Kitchen, offered refunds for customers, and asked retailers to return their stock.

Holmgrens book was criticized for recipes involving unsafe ingredients, and she initially defended it to BuzzFeed News as for adventurous eaters. These ingredients include raw, peeled acorns, which are not dangerous but are inedibly bitter if you dont leech them; raw elderberries, which contain a compound called glycosides that can make people sick; and, most significantly, raw morels, which can cause nausea and vomiting and contain difficult-to-digest chitin.

The use of foraged morels is more alarming because foraging for mushrooms as an amateur is like playing Russian roulette on the forest floor. Morels can be confused for false morels, another mushroom that contains the toxic compound gyromitrin. Grubs expert advice: unless you know what youre doing, forage for mushrooms at your Whole Foods or something.

Others simply criticized the book for its, well, culinary quality, as one recipe for Minnesota Wild Rice French Toast instructs the readers to just soak and not cook the rice  which seems, obviously, like a recipe for disaster. Holmgren also posted the statement to her website, and has not posted to her frequently updated Instagram account since August 5. A book event in her hometown of Minneapolis at Foundry Home Goods was also canceled, though the shops manager told BuzzFeed it was because of a scheduling conflict.
The trattoria cooking at Lillo is resolutely uninterpreted, unembellished, and unmodernized. Photo: Louise Palmberg

Sometime last fall, with not a scintilla of fanfare, Lillo Cucina Italiana opened just south of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyns Cobble Hill.

What seemed at first to be a nondescript coffee shop replacing another nondescript coffee shop was not exactly a stop-the-presses culinary event, even in this coffee-shop-besotted era. No releases were issued over the digital transom. No Yelp Elite free-for-alls were scheduled. No influencers were summoned.

Instead, owner Giampietro Lillo Remia started quietly making the cornetti, baba, and wine biscuits he used to sell at the bakery he once ran in Rome, where he grew up, as well as a selection of super-simple Italian panini named, as Italian sandwich-makers often do, after favorite movies like La Grande Bellezza and Amarcord. The coffee? Unfashionably Italian, served in branded Miscela dOro china. Gradually, the locals found him, and as his clientele grew, so did his menu, to the point that the six-table coffee shop became a bona fide trattoria, albeit one without the amenities usually associated with the genre (there is no liquor license and no BYO policy, which might be for the best as there is also no public bathroom).

The locals have discovered Lillo Cucina Italiana, but the restaurant and its 17-seat dining room remains under the radar. Photo: Jemma Hinkly/New York Magazine

But in this 17-seat space, from behind a counter stocked with Remias homey pasticceria comes a cavalcade of hearty pastas, rustic vegetables, and straightforward entrees as true to Italy as Remias accent. The dishes bear classic names, and the preparations are resolutely uninterpreted, unembellished, and unmodernized. Gnocchi are chewy-soft potato pillows napped with tomato or cream sauce and sometimes tinged pink from beets in the dough, which is as radical as Lillo gets. From his hometown, there is cacio e pepe, about as good as any rendition youd find in fancier places across the river. There is spaghetti with meat sauce, and lasagna alla Bolognese, and housemade fettuccine variously adorned with rich, creamy sauces and salutary bites of mushroom or zucchini. (Truth be told, Lillos pastas tend to the rich and the saucy, which is either praise or criticism, depending on your point of view.)

A glance at the specials, scribbled on a flattened brown-paper shopping bag tacked on the wall near the counter, might reveal a chickpea-and-shellfish soup or a side of beet greens. But in general, this food is nothing if not familiar to anyone whos dined out in New York over the past, oh, lets say, 35 years.

Giampietro Lillo Remia is one of those old-fashioned chef-proprietors who believe a chef-proprietor should actually be present at his restaurant. Photo: Sanne Berg/Getty Images

So even though a side dish as mundane-sounding as sauteed cabbage alla Lillo could actually convert a protest mob of cabbage skeptics, and the chicken Milanese is textbook crisp, and the coffee-gelato affogato might be the last word on the subject of espresso dumped over ice cream, you cant say that Lillos success is entirely attributable to his kitchen. No. The main attraction at Lillo Cucina Italiana is Lillo himself. At six-foot-four and typically sporting a kitchen apron, colorful bandanna looped around a shock of black hair, extra-large polo shirt, comfortable black shoes the size of violin cases, and a pair of no-holds-barred muttonchops, hes hard to miss. His overall mien is like a cross between a small grizzly bear and a culinarily inclined Hells Angel.

Clockwise from top: artichokes; cabbage; pastas (cacio e pepe and rigatoni alla boscaiola). Louise Palmberg. Clockwise from top: artichokes; cabbage; pastas (cacio e pepe and rigatoni alla boscaiola). Louise Palmberg.

Lillo, you soon discover, is one of those sweet-natured old-fashioned chef-proprietors who believe a chef-proprietor should actually be present at his restaurant. Therefore, hes not only familiar with his kitchen and the operation of its equipment but he greets customers at the door, he drapes their table with one of his charmingly mismatched tablecloths with a practiced flourish, he takes their orders, he debates with them the finer points of Italian versus American salami, he makes goofy faces at the babies they hold on their laps, he buses their tables, and he bids them a hearty Ciao! on their way out. From pulling espresso and making bomboloni in the morning to clearing the last plate of rigatoni alla gricia at night, hes there. In restaurant-world-speak, he is the front-of-the-house and he is the back-of-the-house.

Clockwise from top: chicken Milanese; gnocchi with tomato sauce; meatballs. Louise Palmberg. Clockwise from top: chicken Milanese; gnocchi with tomato sauce; meatballs. Louise Palmberg.

Further, Lillo seems to actually like his customers, and they like him back. Regulars are extended family here. Hows your son? Hows your wife? they inquire, and How are your feet? when referring to the fact that Lillo pays the price of a man who makes his living standing all day. As evidence of their devotion, among the assorted knickknacks on the plain white walls are testimonials: a portrait in pencil of Lillo drawn by a customer, a photo of a group of well-fed revelers, a thank-you card open to the message You Make People Happy.

Yet in spite of its neighborhood-gem status, Lillo Cucina Italiana is one of those spots that remain curiously under the radar, and Lillo regulars are perfectly happy to keep it that way lest they find themselves unable to score a table at 8 p.m. on a Tuesday night. Its not only the quality and affordability of the food that fills the seats, or the delicious coffee and pastries, but the vibe of the place that attracts fans willing to overlook minor annoyances like the lack of air conditioning in a heat wave, the old-world pace that comes from a constitutional inability to resist congenial banter, and the absence of wine. After all, quick service, climate control, and Chianti are easy to find in these parts. Lillo is not.

Clockwise from left: coffee affogato; crostatine; pastiera. Louise Palmberg. Clockwise from left: coffee affogato; crostatine; pastiera. Louise Palmberg.

Rating: 3 stars

Lillo Cucina Italiana

331 Henry St., nr. Pacific St., Cobble Hill; 347-763-0899; lillobrooklyn.com

Open: Tuesday through Sunday for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Prices: $10 to $23; cash only.

Ideal Meal: Artichokes or cabbage alla Lillo, spaghetti cacio e pepe or rigatoni alla boscaiola, chicken Milanese, affogato.

Note: If you desperately need a drink and a bathroom break, go across the street to Long Island Bar or next door to Henry Public.

Scratchpad: One star for the solid, satisfying trattoria cooking, one for Lillos old-world hospitality, and one more for his coffee affogato.

*This article appears in the August 20, 2018, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!
News

Sheikh Mohammed meets President of Seychelles at Expo 2020

His Highness discussed with the Seychelles President ways to enhance ties between the two countries, especially in the fields of economy, trade and tourism, in light of the efforts to facilitate smooth travel between the two countries and the restoration of normalcy in different regions of the world.




Haiti - Agriculture : President Moise in the Artibonite for a rice harvest





On Sunday, August 12th, President Jovenel Moise went to the locality of Borel in Deschapelles in the Artibonite Valley to take part in a rice harvesting day at the Deschapelles cooperative, which includes some 1,330 farmers.



For this crop the planters anticipate a yield of 4.5 tons of rice per hectare on 68 ha. Recall that in 1997 the yield of rice which was 5 tons per hectare in 1997 had fallen to 3 tons/ha in 2001, according to the data of the Development Organization of the Valley of Artibonite (ODVA).



By using combine harvesters, modernity enters the rice production in the Artibonite Valley, says the Head of State.



By using combine harvesters modernity is entering the rice production in the Artibonite Valley says the Head of State.



"My administration salute all the efforts that are made to support the national production. We will work with all actors to mechanize, modernize agriculture to increase national production, so as to help the population to better fight against hunger and expensive living.



We distributed this Sunday to the planters of the production block # 6, in Cova in the Artibonite Valley, a lot of equipment that includes two harvesters, machines that cut, clean and sack the rice to be dried,



I am happy to see that there are 12 production blocks in operation in the Artibonite Valley. Each block has 500 hectares. For 2019 we will work to increase the number of Group to 18 [...]" said Moise.



Note that the planters of the Artibonite valley have invested more than 24 million Gourdes and the State, through the Ministry of Agriculture has allowed them to benefit from an accompaniment of about 17 million gourdes to cultivate their 500 ha.



Moreover, let us recall that last January the Ambassador of Taiwan (Republic of China) in Haiti and Andre Carmel Beliard, the Minister of Agriculture at the time, initialed a memorandum of understanding in the framework of a project to strengthen rice production in the plain of Les Cayes https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-23211-haiti-news-zapping.html funded by Taiwan to the tune of $8 million. At the end of this four-year project, the Haitian-Taiwanese cooperation expects an increase in annual production of about 10 metric tons of rice per hectare over an area of about 1,200 hectares.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-24452-haiti-agriculture-update-of-the-agricultural-situation-in-the-country.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-23933-haiti-agriculture-moise-wants-to-increase-rice-production-in-the-plain-of-maribao.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-23775-haiti-agriculture-support-project-for-rice-producers-of-artibonite.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-23537-haiti-agriculture-distribution-of-52-additional-tractors-in-the-artibonite.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-23346-haiti-agriculture-jovenel-gives-40-rice-mills-to-farmers-of-artibonite.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22435-haiti-politics-jovenel-moise-distributes-48-tractors-to-12-cooperatives.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-20925-haiti-flash-moise-distributes-tractors.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21380-haiti-panama-donation-of-rice-and-maize-seeds.html



HL/ HaitiLibre


























Haiti - Politic : Results of the parliamentary week





According to the Citizen Observatory for the Institutionalization of Democracy (OCID), for the week from July 30 to August 3, 2018, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate for the second week in a row, realized only one plenary session (July 31) with just the necessary quorum (62 deputies and 18 senators).



Chamber of Deputies :

The plenary session was very productive with 9 items on the agenda, 7 of which were dealt with.



Following the presentation by the Commission Economies, Finances and Budget, the deputies voted the draft law on the public debt, the whole text was adopted article by article unanimously of the 62 deputies present. But the debate generated a great deal of divergence and one of the commissioners asked the chairperson to give the committee a little more time to complete its work. Note that this legislation has already been passed in the Senate at first reading.



Then, the deputies attended the presentation of the "statement of reasons" of 5 bills:



Proposed law by Deputy Jean Robert Bosse, transferring competence for social assistance to local authorities



Bill proposed by the Deputy Marie Gladice St-Jean Lundy, relative to the protection of the farmers of modest conditions ;



Draft law by the Deputy Deus Deronneth, on the compulsory internship of the students of the professional schools and universities, constituency of Marigot ;



Draft law by the Deputy Abel Descollines modifying article 2 of the law of 18 December 2002 on the creation of an autonomous body called "Road Maintenance Fund" (Fond dEntretien Routier) ;



Bill proposal by the Deputy Abel Descollines setting the terms of publication of the information relating to privileges and advantages of the great clerks and high officials of the State.



Senate :

During the plenary session, the 18 participating senators continued the discussions and the vote of the proposal of law put in continuation on July 19th https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-25046-haiti-politic-results-of-the-parliamentary-week.html on the commercialization, possession, control and carrying of firearms in the Republic (Articles 8 to 14).



In addition, the Economics, Finance and Budget Commission received, on the same day, Jean Baden Dubois, the Governor of the Bank of the Republic of Haiti (BRH) concerning certain Headings of the Amending Budget.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





A police officers killed on duty

"The National Police of Haiti PNH sends its condolences to the family and friends of police officer Peterson Raymond (A1) killed not far from Liancourt on August 6 during an operation."



Registration, literary holidays for young people

The National Library of Haiti (BNH) launches the Literary Holidays and informs the general public that it organizes activities of animation for children and young people from 5 to 15 years old from August 7 to August 31, 2018 of 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. An intense month of activities around books and reading: theater workshops, story-telling hours, talks, film screenings... Come register your children on the premises of the BNH at # 193, Center Street, Port-au-Prince. Mandatory participation fee: 250 gourdes. For information: +509 2208 9156 / com.bnh@gmail.com



Tijuana : First Haitian association

While visiting Tijuana, Haiti's ambassador to Mexico Guy G. Lamothe met with the members of the "Vision de los Migrantes" (VM) Association, the first legal Haitian association in Tijuana Baja California, founded in January 2018. Its President Ladouceur Jean Guetchine Paul proposes to promote the image of a plural Haiti, always in symbiosis with his diaspora ..



Minimum wage, amendment of the law Benoit

A bill amending the law Benoit Steeven (48th legislature) of 10 September 2009 fixing the minimum wage in industrial and commercial establishments was tabled in Parliament by a group of deputies. The explanatory memorandum and deposit of the bill was made by the Deputy Manes Louis.



Senator Etienne congratulates the grenadieres U-20

"I would like to congratulate all the players of the Haitian Women U-20 Football Selection, I pay a special tribute to Nerilia Mondesir, a native of the North, who until then has scored the only goal of the team in this World Cup . Haiti will remain proud of you," Senator Dieudonne Luma Etienne. See the match https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-25237-icihaiti-u-20-women-s-world-cup-watch-the-match-haiti-germany-live-stream.html



Exhibition  Kwen Kay 

On Friday, students from the Juvenile Professional Center of Lilavois (CPROFOJUL) and postulants from the State University of Haiti visited the exhibition "Kwen Kay" at the National Bureau of Ethnology (BNE). According to Erol Josue, Director General of BNE, these visits help to transmit and perpetuate the intangible cultural heritage and collective memory of the Haitian nation to new generations. We already welcome other institutions that want to visit this exhibition open to the public until August 22, 2018. Good participation to all!



HL/ HaitiLibre


















(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Plandai Biotechnology, Inc., a penny stock company, and its Chairman and CEO with making illegal, unregistered sales of stock to unaccredited investors and with failing to adequately disclose that proceeds from sales of Plandai stock were sent to a private company owned by the CEO.

According to the SECs complaint, filed in federal district court for the Southern District of New York, from November 2013 through January 2015, Plandai, acting through Roger Duffield, made unregistered offers and sales of Plandai common stock to at least two unaccredited and unsophisticated investors. In addition, although the shares in question had been newly issued and sold directly to the investors by Plandai, Duffield allegedly instructed the investors to wire their payments to a private company that he owned and controlled. Plandais annual report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014, misleadingly stated that Plandai had received cash in exchange for the shares, and did not disclose that the proceeds from the sale were actually sent to Duffields private company. Although Duffield, through his private company, ultimately paid various Plandai business expenses in amounts approximating the payments that had been received from the investors, Plandai did not accurately and fairly record these transactions in its books and records. Plandais failure to properly record these transactions allegedly resulted from its lack of a sufficient system of internal accounting controls.

The SECs complaint charges Plandai and Duffield with violating the registration provisions of Sections 5(a) and 5(c) of the Securities Act of 1933. The complaint also charges Plandai with violating, and Duffield aiding and abetting violations of, the reporting, books and records, and internal accounting controls provisions of and Sections 13(a), 13(b)(2)(A) and (B) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rules 12b-20 and 13a-1 thereunder. The SEC seeks permanent injunctions and financial penalties against both defendants.
Soini on Friday commended the Argentine Senate for rejecting a bill that would have legalised abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. Long live life! Stronger than death, he wrote in his personal blog .

Timo Soini (BR), the Minister for Foreign Affairs, has once again raised eyebrows by declaring his opposition to abortion.

What do I think about the senates decision last night? he continued, answering his own question with an emoji blowing a kiss.

His blog post provoked a response from several of his fellow cabinet members who were concerned that it could obfuscate the official position of Finland.

Finland promotes the rights of women and girls all over the world. Argentina makes its own decisions, but the National Coalition is not pleased about this setback in efforts to improve the position of women, tweeted Anne-Mari Virolainen (NCP), the Minister of Foreign Trade and Development.

Soinis anti-abortion view is also not the governments view.

Annika Saarikko (Centre), the Minister of Family Affairs and Social Services, similarly argued that allowing abortions is a key aspect of responsible equality and human rights policy making.

Finland is not about to slip from this principle in the national or international arena. The more challenging the circumstances for promoting reproductive and sexual health, the more resilient and consistent Finland must become, she wrote in a press release.

Soini responded to the criticism on his blog by arguing that freedom of speech, freedom of opinion and freedom of religion belong to everyone in Western democracies such as Finland.

Finland is a great country. Youre allowed to state your opinion here. To believe and not believe. To support and oppose different things. Finland has to be that way also in the future. For everyone. Sometimes I go with the herd, sometimes alone. Sometimes you have to have the courage to be a one-man majority, he stated.

Soini in May kindled a similar outcry by voicing his disappointment with the outcome of an abortion referendum in Ireland.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Aku Hayrynen  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
ABC News(PHOENIX) -- Police are searching for a 19-year-old Phoenix woman who disappeared after leaving work more than a week ago.



Kiersten Bragg said her daughter, Kiera Bergman, left her job on the morning of Aug. 4, but doesn't know if she ever made it home.



I dont know if she ever made it back to her apartment or not. I havent really talked to anybody that saw her there, so Im not quite sure where she was last seen and Im not really getting information from people about that, Bragg said in an interview with Good Morning America on Monday. She does have a boyfriend. ... Last I heard they were together and that is who picked her up from work that morning.



Bragg said she last spoke with Bergman via text on July 30, but she wasnt her normal, happy self. Bergman left San Diego in March and moved into an apartment with her boyfriend near Phoenix, where she had recently started a new job, her mother said.



I dont know, maybe circumstance in her life when she came out here you know caused her to maybe have some anxiety or stuff about what she was going through, she said. Thats when I noticed a lot of her moods and everything. That's when she started changing, when she started dating this guy and coming out here, so I do believe that a lot -- that has to do with that relationship.



Bragg and her husband arrived in Arizona from California last week to help with the search. The family says Bergman isnt the type of person who would willingly disappear and cut communication with her family and friends.



Her mother also questioned reports that she had left to hang out with a guy shed just met.



To that text message that stated that she was going to hang out with a guy somewhere she met at a store, a couple days ago, that to me is not my daughter, Bragg told GMA. That is not something that she would just do. And then for her to leave, and leave her purse with her wallet and ID there at the apartment, thats not normal neither -- thats why I feel like theres something not right here.



We are going to find her, we are going to find out what happened and we're going to bring her home, she added.



The family said it held a vigil of hope near the young womans apartment over the weekend and thanked her community for their support.



We did have the one out where we live that was some friends family and church family, and we did the one here last night. I want to clarify its not a vigil for a memorial, she said. We dont think shes gone, its more of a vigil for hope. ... We all gathered and we prayed for her and for the police officers that are trying to find her.



Bragg said Phoenix police officers haven't shared much information. Phoenix Police Department Sgt. Vincent Lewis told multiple media outlets on Saturday that there were "no updates to share at this time."

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The Nazis had them fifty years before Desert Storm made precision weapons look like a modern invention.

On the afternoon of Thursday, September 9, 1943, Adm. Carlo Bergamini was a worried man. The day before, the Italian government had signed an armistice, and that morning, at 2:30 a.m., he had sortied from La Spezia to deliver the remains of Mussolinis once-proud fleet to the Allies at Malta, as required by the armistice terms. Even as his ships left harborthe battleships Roma, Italia, and Vittorio Veneto, accompanied by three cruisers and an escort of eight destroyersthe first American troops were storming ashore at Salerno in the face of what would soon be ferocious German resistance. Hitlers military was not about to accept Bergaminis move without a fight, either; indeed, the ships had departed just ahead of German soldiers seizing the port.

Roma, his flagship, was just over a year old, a graceful ship of over 45,000 tons displacement, armed with nine fifteen-inch cannon in three triple-mount turrets, capable of making nearly 32 knots. Even so, Bergamini was under no illusions as to its vulnerability. Air attacks had already savaged Italys fleet, most notably in the British strike at Taranto in 1941. Bergaminis fleet was far from the reach of friendly air cover, operating in waters that the Luftwaffe considered its own, and facing the risk of aerial attackers moving ten times as fast as they.

As dawn rose, he sailed west of Corsica, and then turned south, hugging its coast, joined by three more cruisers and two destroyers that had left Genoa. Allied reconnaissance aircraft reported his movements, and British and American naval authorities noted with approval that the Italian fleet was complying with the instructions they had given.

At approximately 3:50 p.m., a formation of five twin-engine airplanes passed high overhead. Lookouts at first likely thought them Allied aircraft, but instead they were Dornier Do 217K bombers from the Luftwaffes III Gruppe of Kampfgeschwader 100. A second formation of six aircraft followed close behind. Based at Istres, France, and commanded by Maj. Bernhard Jope, a legendary ship buster, III/KG100 was one of the Luftwaffes most notorious antishipping bomb wings.



Devistated by two German Fritz X guided bombs, the Italian battleship Roma broke in two and sank on September 9, 1943. (HistoryNet Archives) Devistated by two German Fritz X guided bombs, the Italian battleship Roma broke in two and sank on September 9, 1943. (HistoryNet Archives)

As the intent of the airplanes became clear, the ships began evasive maneuvering, causing the bombs from the first group to fall harmlessly into the sea. The second group, however, struck with unerring accuracy. Italia took a bomb hit that damaged its steering and temporarily left it out of control. But it was the flagship that the Luftwaffe pounded with particular effect. As Roma turned, one bomb struck its bridge, the detonation instantly killing Bergamini and his staff. A second bomb followed, slicing through the deck between B turret and the shattered bridge, burying itself deep in the ship before exploding. B turret was torn from its mounts, the ships hull opened to the sea, and a raging fire broke out. Listing and burning, Roma drifted out of control, as its crew desperately tried to save their ship. Twenty minutes after the attack, the forward magazine erupted in a thunderous blast, tearing the ship asunder. Its broken halves swiftly sank, carrying with them over 1,350 of Romas crew.

Bergaminis flagship had been destroyed by a PC1400X, a guided bomb known more familiarly as the Fritz X. It anticipated by a quarter century the smart bombs that are now commonplace in the air arsenals of many nations. Basically a conventional PC1400 bomb equipped with a guidance package, four fins to give it some gliding ability, and a twelve-sided box kitelike tail unit for stability and control, Fritz X was a lethal ship killer. A Do 217K medium bomber could carry two of them, one under each wing, hanging from pylons between its engines and fuselage. The Dornier approached and bombed its target as if on a conventional bombing run. But then its pilot throttled back, so that the plane would not overrun the falling bomb. The descending Fritz X displayed a bright flare, which the Dorniers bombardier used as a reference point, manipulating a small joystick to send radio pulses to the bombs tail surfaces, controlling its descent path until the flare merged with the target.

In 1938, German airmen were fighting over Spain, already finding it difficult to attack small targets with precision. Max Kramer, an engineer at Berlins Deutsche Versuchsanstalt fur Luftfahrt (German Aviation Research Institute) began experiments using control surfaces to alter the path of a falling bomb. Although he began with small weapons, the German Air Ministry recommended he work with the heavyweight PC1400. By the end of 1939, Kramer and a three-person team had evolved the Fritz X, dropping their first example in June 1940. Extensive testing in laboratories at Gottingen University, Aachen Polytechnic, and Telefunken, followed by a series of drop tests over a specially instrumented bombing range at Peenemunde, refined its aerodynamics, guidance, and performance. In a final series of drop tests in early 1942, crews launched the experimental bombs from 20,000 feet. For the time, the results were extraordinary: 50 percent fell within 23 feet of the aim point, and 100 percent within 48 feet. Later that year, Rheinmetall-Borsig put Fritz X in full production.



The Fritz X had a 710lb warhead and the nearly 11 foot long bomb weighed over 3,000 pounds. (National Archives) The Fritz X had a 710lb warhead and the nearly 11 foot long bomb weighed over 3,000 pounds. (National Archives)

In the summer of 1941, British intelligence had obtained glimmerings of Germanys guided bomb experiments from POW revelations and information sent by agents. The reports raised little alarm; such efforts had a long and largely unproductive history. As early as 1918 the Siemens-Schuckert company had developed a gliding torpedo for possible use from Zeppelins and large bombers, making a number of disappointing test drops. At the same time, British and American developers had tested their own experimental gyro-stabilized aerial torpedoesdrone airplanesand in the late 1930s, both countries had developed radio-controlled flying targets: more promising, but still far from practicable for a weapon.

Even after Enigma intelligence revealed in late July 1943 that fifty specially modified Dornier Do 217s equipped to carry two such weapons were being sent to Istres, Allied commanders still evinced little interest. Only in August of 1943 would they awake to any potential danger, and even then they failed to realize the truly punishing trial they were about to experience.

The devastating attacks began the final week of August, with Dorniers from III/KG100 targeting antisubmarine vessels patrolling the Bay of Biscay. On August 25, they near-missed HMS Landguard and HMS Bideford, killing one sailor. On August 27, Egret, a small Royal Navy sloop, took a direct hit and went down, with the death of 194 sailors.

The sinking of Roma on September 9 heralded the start of a sharply more dangerous phase. Just two days later, U.S. Army general Mark W. Clark stood on the bridge of his command ship, Ancon, watching the approach of the light cruiser Savannah. The ships were off Salerno, supporting the Allied landings on the Italian mainland. Suddenly Clark heard a terrific screeching noise that seemed to be heading directly toward the Ancon. But, instead, a Fritz X plunged into the cruisers No. 3 turret, exploding deep within the ship.Instantly, all was chaos, smoke, blood, and death, as a navy report later described the scene. The blast ripped open the hull and seawater flooded in. The forecastle was awash within minutes and the ship seemed almost certain to go down. Nearly two hundred sailors were killed in the blast and fire, with most of the gun crews asphyxiated in their turrets by smoke and fumes. The blast knocked out all the ships boiler fires, leaving it without power. Heroically, and against all odds, the crew managed to right the seriously listing vessel and get the boilers relit, and Savannah was able to limp into Malta. Four crew members trapped in the radio room were freed only when workers in Malta, sixty hours later, drilled and chipped their way through the steel deck to reach them.

Over the next five days, four more ships were hit off Salerno: A Fritz X crippled the British cruiser Uganda on September 13; tugs towed it to Malta. The next day, a guided bomb sank a tanker, Bushrod Washington. On the fifteenth, another so badly damaged SS James Marshall as to render it only fit for service as part of an artificial harbor constructed for the Normandy invasion. Then, on September 16, the British battleship Warspite took three Fritz X hits, one a near-lethal hit in a boiler room, briefly robbing the tough old Jutland veteran of all power and causing extensive flooding. Very badly battered, it, too, joined the growing fleet of damaged ships undergoing repairs in Malta.



The Henschel Hs 293, shown in a test launch from a Heinkel He-111H, had nearly three times the range of the Fritz X. (HistoryNet Archives) The Henschel Hs 293, shown in a test launch from a Heinkel He-111H, had nearly three times the range of the Fritz X. (HistoryNet Archives)

Allied experts soon discovered that several of the attacks including those on Egret and Bidefordhad been carried out with a second, and even more sophisticated, radio-controlled weapon. The Hs 293 was actually more airplane than bomb, befitting the background of its creator, Herbert Wagner. A former marine engineer who became one of the most distinguished figures in German aeronautics, Wagner had pioneered the design of lightweight all-metal structures, designed an early jet engine for Junkers, and then, at the invitation of the air ministry, joined the Henschel company at Berlin-Schonefeld to assist in their weapon development.

The Hs 293, which had its first test flight in 1940, amply reflected his expertise. Equipped with a rocket booster and weighing just half as much as the Fritz X, it was a true pilotless aircraft. Launched from the twin-engine Do 217E and, later, the four-engine He 177A, it had nearly three times the range of the Fritz X. The attacking bomber could launch it as much as five miles from the target, safely out of range of shipboard antiaircraft guns. What was more, the bomber could pass three-quarters of a mile to one side of the ship, rather than straight toward it. After launch, the missile fell away, and its engine and a flare ignited. The engine burned for approximately twelve seconds, producing a thrust of 1,500 pounds, accelerating the bomb and boosting its range. As with the Fritz X, the bombardier tracked its progress by following the tail flare and radioed steering commands via a joystick.

In the face of the unremitting assault, Allied scientists scrambled to devise ways to foil the bombs. Ideas included pointing searchlights at the attacking bomber to momentarily blind the bombardier or firing flares to mimic the glide bombs guidance flare. More conventional tactics were also proposed, including smoke screens, evasive maneuvering, intensive antiaircraft barrages, and constant fighter patrols.

The most promising new idea was to jam the radio guidance link between bomber and bomb. The catch was that scientists needed an intact bomb, so they could take apart the radio gear and figure out the frequency it operated on, as well as the method used to encode the steering instructions within the radio signal. Technical intelligence personnel from Britains Air Ministry pored over bomb fragments for vital clues, their job made harder by the Germans practice of equipping the bombs with small self-destruct charges that would blow up the guidance unit even if the bomb itself failed to detonate on impact.

Finally, in October, British scientists discovered nine Dorniers abandoned at Foggia: seven Fritz Xlaunching Do 217Ks and two Hs 293launching Do 217Es. These contained sufficient portions of Telefunken FuG 203 Kehl transceivers and their aerials, control panels, and bomb launch mechanisms, to permit technical analysis.

They could not, however, put this find to practical use fast enough to prevent serious losses throughout November. On the thirteenth of the month, a bomb struck HMS Dulverton off Kos, forcing the destroyers scuttling. On the twenty-first, twenty-five He 177As from the II Gruppe of KG40 (an antishipping bomb wing based at BordeauxMerignac) attacked a convoy off Spain. Thanks to adroit ship handling, the Luftwaffes own blundering assault, and the actions of an RAF Liberator crew, which repeatedly attacked the wheeling bombers, only two of the forty-six bombs that were launched hit; still, they damaged one vessel and sank another, SS Marsa. On the twenty-sixth, during another He 177 attack on a Suez-bound convoy off the Algerian coast, intercepting fighters shot down six of the bombers. However, at least one bomber managed to score, and with terrible effect. An Hs 293 hit the Rohna, a converted British troopship, starting raging fires. Nearly twelve hundred men perished on the blazing ship or in the water, including more than a thousand American GIs a shocking loss whose details were kept secret for many years after the end of the war.

Countermeasures were still not fully effective when, on January 22, 1944, British and American forces commenced Operation Shingle, the landing at AnzioNettuno. An Hs 293 dropped at dusk damaged the British destroyer Jervis on January 23. Fear of more such attacks prompted the Allied naval commander, Rear Adm. Frank J. Lowry, to order his cruisers and destroyers out to sea every afternoon, even though this meant abandoning nighttime fire support missions for troops already fighting ashore.

Even with this precaution, on the twenty-ninth, guided bombs hit the British cruiser Spartan, capsizing it, and set the American transport Samuel Huntington ablaze; it blew up the next morning. In response, Adm. Sir John Cunningham ordered that the large cruisers be sent to the roadstead only if troops ashore were facing extreme threats. The many lightly armored destroyers, transports, and landing craft plying waters off the beachhead would have to continue to take their chances. Consequently, on February 16, the SS Elihu Yale took a bomb hit that sank it and a landing craft moored alongside, and on the twenty-fifth, the British destroyer Inglefield sank under another missile attack.

Fortunately, with these assaults, the high-water mark of German antiship missile warfare had passed. Over the next few months, the Allies introduced electronic jamming countermeasures to limit the effectiveness of the Fritz X and Hs 293; of greater significance, Allied fighter patrols and antiaircraft fire increasingly made operations near naval forces even riskier than they had been. Only occasional successes attended subsequent German use of precision bombs against shipping. At Normandy in 1944, an unjammed glide bomb attack on the night of June 6 destroyed one LST, and in the early hours of June 8, another undetected glide bomb so damaged the American destroyer Meredith that it had to be abandoned.



The Mistel program joined a war weary aircraft packed with explosives with a mother ship to launch the huge glide bomb. (National Archives) The Mistel program joined a war weary aircraft packed with explosives with a mother ship to launch the huge glide bomb. (National Archives)

After the landings in Southern France and Normandy, German antishipping operations of all kinds declined dramatically. In the meantime, German scientists and engineers attempted to build on the success they had achieved with the Fritz X and, particularly, the Hs 293. They explored wire and television guidance to overcome the effects of jamming and created new and potentially even more devastating designs, including the Mistel program, an effort to modify war-weary Ju 88 bombers into remote-controlled flying bombs carrying a 7,700-pound shaped-charge warhead.

Such work complemented the Nazi regimes heavy investment in futuristic weapons such as jet fighters, long-range rockets, pilotless cruise missiles, and air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles. But most of these efforts proved woefully fanciful, technological dead ends, or were impossible to achieve before the Hitler regimes collapse. Thus, Nazi precision weapons, far from constituting war-winning strategic wunderwaffen, furnished at best temporary tactical hindrances to the Allies inexorable drive to Berlin.

Yet the Nazis smart weapons offered a glimpse of the future: one the Allies, particularly the United States, would over time embrace. The loss of the Roma in particular greatly accelerated official interest in several American research programs that had been under way since the beginning of the war but had yet to yield practical results.

One was the navys TDR, which would become the antecedent of the modern cruise missile. The TDR owed its origins to a fortunate partnership between Commodore Oscar Smith, a visionary surface officer; Lt. Comdr. Delmar Fahrney, a flying bomb enthusiast; and television pioneer Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian emigre and RCAs chief scientist. In 1942, the three men successfully demonstrated controlling a drone aircraft while it approached and then dropped a dummy torpedo against a maneuvering destroyer. The results so impressed Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King that he authorized development of an assault unit flying a specially built attack drone.



An Interstate TDR-1 drone being prepared for a mission against enemy targets in the Solomon Islands. The television guidance equipment can be seen inside the nose. (U.S. Navy) An Interstate TDR-1 drone being prepared for a mission against enemy targets in the Solomon Islands. The television guidance equipment can be seen inside the nose. (U.S. Navy)

The TDR was built by a small firm, the Interstate Aircraft Company, assisted by the Wurlitzer organ company and a furniture manufacturer. Controlled from an accompanying Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bomber whose operator saw through the TV eye of the drone, the TDR could carry a 2,000-pound bomb. Deployed to the Solomons, TDR drones saw a month of combat testing. Their first sorties took place on September 27, 1944, when four were launched by Special Air Task Group 1 from Stirling Island against a Japanese merchant ship used as an antiaircraft trap off South Bougainville. Two destroyed it. Trials ended in late October, by which time the group had launched 46, of which 21 successfully hit their targets. (That success dramatically contrasted with conventional bombing. When 47 B-29s raided Yawata, Japan, in the summer of 1944, only 1 of their 376 bombs actually hit the target. It took 108 B-17s dropping 648 bombs to guarantee a 96 percent chance of getting just two hits on a Nazi power plant.)

The U.S. Navy also developed a self-guided bomb, the Bat, which used built-in radar to home in on an enemy target. When deployed in the last few months of the war, it sank a destroyer and several freighters. Moreover, during the last year of the war, the air force produced a third American guided bomb, Azon. Like the Fritz X, it was steered over a radio link by a bombardier, who followed the bombs fall visually with the aid of a flare. By wars end, over 15,000 had been produced by Gulf Research and Development Company. Early trials in Europe met with indifferent success, but by December 1944, Azon had been refined to a point of deadly efficiency. In Burma, the 7th Bomb Group used it with extraordinary effect against bridges. On December 27, six B-24s of the 493rd Bomb Squadron dropped eighteen Azons, which destroyed a 300-foot steel bridge at Pyinmana that had withstood scores of attacks. Altogether, twenty-seven Japanese bridges fell at a cost of 450 Azons.

TDR, Bat, and Azon were the apex of American smart air weapons in the Second World War, but already developers were looking well beyond, envisioning supersonic and hypersonic global-reaching cruise-and-ballistic missiles, heat-seeking bombs and missiles, and robot aircraft. Out of the spoils of Nazi Germanys technology came even more ambitious projects. Nonetheless, official interest in precision guidance all but vanished after the war. For much of the next two decades, unguided dumb bombs continued to dominate Americas weapons inventory, and military commanders saw little reason to change that. The advent of the atomic bomb added its own limits on military thinking; planners saw conventional war as outdated.

Only when America found itself once again in a major conventional war in Vietnam, and American jets took a painful pounding when attacking difficult and well-defended targets such as bridges, was interest in precision guidance reborn for goodwith the legacy that the world witnessed so vividly in the air war over Serbia and the two wars in Iraq.

Originally published in the September 2007 issue of World War II Magazine. To subscribe, click here.
Until very recently the remote forward airstrip had been deep inside Soviet Russia, but now it was Nazi territory. Lieutenant Hans-Ulrich Rudel and the rest of his dive bomber wing had gathered in mid-September 1941 to strike another blow in Operation Barbarossa, Germanys campaign to conquer the USSR. Out in the Gulf of Finland, the Soviet Baltic Fleets 23,000-ton dreadnought Marat was hurling 12-inch, 1,000-pound shells 18 miles onto German forces encircling Leningrad. The men of Sturzkampfgeschwader 2 (StG.2), flying Junkers Ju-87B Stukas, had been tasked with sinking the troublesome ship.

It would be nothing like raining bombs and fear over fleeing enemy infantry and civilians, as Stukas had across Spain, Poland, Belgium and France. And Rudel had flown his first combat mission just three months earlier.

His first flight, at age 8, had been a jump off a roof with an umbrellain 1924 it was not yet a clichethat earned him a broken leg. Young Rudel, an avid skier and athlete, came of age in early 1930s Germany at the same time as Nazism and the dive bomber. Plummeting from on high with sirens wailing and bombs whistling, Stukas struck terror long before they struck targets. Yet withstanding rapid changes in air pressure as he plunged thousands of feet, not to mention near-blackout on pull-up, proved difficult for Rudel. And as the son of a Lutheran minister, he didnt exactly fit into the Stuka fraternity. He doesnt smoke, drinks only milk, has no stories to tell about women and spends all his free time playing sports, wrote one of his instructors. Senior Officer Cadet Rudel is a strange bird!

He spent the Polish invasion as a backseat observer in reconnaissance planes, and sat out the Battle of Britain and the Balkan and Cretan campaigns. Not until the invasion of Russia was he at last given a combat seat. With near-complete air superiority on its side, the Stuka was back in its elementrelentless blitzkrieg.

In his first day of battle, Rudel flew four missions. In a little over a month he flew 100, receiving the Iron Cross First Class and new respect from his flying mates. He is the best man in my squadron! claimed Captain Ernst-Siegfried Steen. But this crazy fellow will have a short life. Rudel later wrote in his memoirs, He knows that I generally dive too low a level, in order to make sure of hitting the target and not waste ammunition.

The Stukas had caught Marat out in the Gulf of Finland. Steens bomb missed, but Rudels 1,000-pounder burst on its aft deck. On the morning of September 23, 1941, a reconnaissance plane spotted the dreadnought undergoing repairs in Kronstadt Harbor, the largest naval base in the Soviet Union, with more than 1,000 shipboard and land-based guns. But StG.2 had just taken delivery of new 2,000-pound armor-piercing bombs, and Rudel said: I am longing to be off. If I reach the target, I am determined to hit it.

His backseat gunner, Sergeant Alfred Scharnowski, was with him all the way. The young East Prussian, the 13th child in his family, was accustomed to having the odds against him. He seldom speaks, commented Rudel, nothing ruffles him.

On target approach the flak was so intense that the Stukas, bobbing, weaving and dodging, broke formation. Rudel held station on Steens wing, and together they bored in. From miles away they could see Marat tied up with the heavy cruiser Kirov at its stern. Wing-mounted dive brakes extended for greater stability and accuracy, Steen pitched over into the attack, with Rudel right behind him. The airspeed indicator wound up as the altimeter wound down. I have already picked up Marat in my sights, Rudel recounted. We race down towards her; slowly she grows to a gigantic size. Now all their A.A. guns are directed at us.

Steen closed his brakes, trying to get down through the flak before it blew him out of the sky. Rudel cut his brakes as well, going all out. I am right on his tail, traveling much too fast and unable to check my speed. He passed so close to the lead plane that he could see Steens rear gunner, Sergeant Helmut Lehmann, looking terrified that Rudel would ram them. Marat loomed up below, large as life in front of me. Sailors are running across the deck.Now I press the bomb release switch on my stick and pull with all my strength.

Already too low to use the Stukas automatic dive-recovery system, Rudel was also well below his bombs 3,000-foot safe release height. My acceleration is too great, he wrote. My sight is blurred in momentary blackoutwhen I hear Scharnowskis voice: She is blowing up, sir!

They had pulled out a dozen feet or so above the water. Behind them Rudel saw a 1,200-foot pillar of smoke and fire billowing from the battleship. His bomb had exploded in an ammunition magazine. Marats bow had blown off.



The Soviet battleship Marat, whose bow was blown off during Rudels September 23 attack, undergoes repairs in Kronstadt Harbor. Although Marat would contribute to the defense of Leningrad as a floating battery, it never steamed out of Kronstadt again. (National Archives) The Soviet battleship Marat, whose bow was blown off during Rudels September 23 attack, undergoes repairs in Kronstadt Harbor. Although Marat would contribute to the defense of Leningrad as a floating battery, it never steamed out of Kronstadt again. (National Archives)

The Stukas regrouped at their field for a go at the cruiser Kirov. Taxiing for takeoff, Steens plane mired in soft ground, so he switched to Rudels Stuka. Rudel had to watch as the CO took off, with Scharnowski still in back. In the midst of their attack dive, they took a hit in the tail. Unable to pull out, Steen aimed the Stuka at Kirov, but hit the sea alongside.

Even Rudels ardent Nazism seemed shaken by the incident. They are lucky to have died, he later wrote, at a time when they could still hold the conviction that the end of all this misery would bring freedom to Germany and to Europe.

Sunk in shallow water, Marat was refloated in a few months and used as a stationary gun battery. After 16 months the encirclement of Leningrad was broken. By that time Adolf Hitler had other goals: Ukrainian wheat. Caspian oil. Stalingrad.

Meanwhile Rudelnow a 500-mission veteransurvived his first Russian winter and a summer commanding a Stuka training unit. He also married his fiancee, Ursula. By the time he rejoined StG.2, flying the new Ju-87D over Stalingrad, the German Sixth Army had already cornered the Russians in 1,000 yards of the Volga Rivers west bank.

Stuka bombing precision was essential in this situation.We have to drop our bombs with painstaking accuracy, explained Rudel, because our own soldiers are only a few yards away in another cellar behind debris of another wall.

On the morning of November 19, 1942, answering a massive Soviet barrage north of the city, Rudel and his pilots overflew their Romanian allies fleeing a wave of Russian infantry. Relentlessly I drop my bombs on the enemy and spray bursts of M.G. [machine gun] fire [but] with these hordes our attacks are merely a drop in the bucket, he despaired. And as for the Romanians (who would switch sides in August 1944), It is a good thing for them I have run out of ammunition to stop this cowardly rout.

Within days the Sixth Army was encircled. The Stukas flew 10, 15 sorties a day, dawn to dusk around Stalingrads shrinking Kessel (cauldron), where Soviets and Nazis fought to the death over wreckage, rubble and their dictators prestige. Because of the uninterrupted sorties and the stiff fighting, Rudel said, the whole squadron has at the moment scarcely more than enough aircraft to form one strong flight.

StG.2 pulled out to a base 100 miles west of the city, only to find Soviet armor bearing down on the airfield. Rudel flew 17 sorties, stopping the last tank himself just a few yards short of his own runway. We know the strength of the opposition, he wrote. It is too late to free the Sixth Army.

In February 1943, Rudel flew his 1,000th mission, for which the wing gave him a chimney sweep and a pig (both lucky) and an honor goblet (full of milk). He was then invited to Rechlin, Germany, to help test a new concept in anti-tank warfare.

It had occurred to the German high command that the most efficient way to kill a tank wasnt by trying to hit it on the roof with a bomb. Armed with two 600-pound cannon pods, the Stuka became slow and unwieldy, unable to dive or carry bombs, but its 6-foot gun barrels could put 37mm tungsten-core shells through square-foot targets from the air at more than 150 yards. This Ju-87Gthe Kanonenvogel (Cannonbird) or Panzerknacker (Tankcracker)would become one of the wars supreme tank busters, largely in Rudels hands.

Rudel got off to a bad start, shot down by flak on his first combat test, but he made short work of Russian landing craft on the Kuban front. Promoted to captain and awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knights Cross by Hitler himself, he agreed to take a Panzerknacker back to the front, just in time for the epic July 1943 Battle of Kursk.



A stricken Soviet T-34/76 burns, a fate shared by 519 enemy tanks targeted by Rudel. (Bundesarchiv Bild F016221-0014) A stricken Soviet T-34/76 burns, a fate shared by 519 enemy tanks targeted by Rudel. (Bundesarchiv Bild F016221-0014)

As thousands of German and Russian tanks wheeled and fired at point-blank range below him, Rudel circled behind the enemy armor formations to attack from the rear. In his first attack he disabled four tanks, and by the end of the first day he had bagged 12the equivalent of a Soviet armor company. He came in so low he risked being caught in the targets explosion. This happens to me twice in the first few days when I suddenly fly through a curtain of fire, he reported. I come out, however, safe and sound on the other side, even thoughmy aircraft is scorched and splinters from the exploding tank have riddled it with holes.

The Luftwaffe already intended the faster Focke-Wulf Fw-190F to replace the Ju-87G in the ground attack role (and Rudel would sometimes fly it), but his name would always be linked to the Stuka. The evil spell is broken, he raved about the Panzerknacker. In this aircraft we possess a weapon which can speedily be employed everywhere and is capable of dealing successfully with the formidable numbers of Soviet tanks.

Soon appointed wing commander, Rudel formed an elite tank-hunter squadron, a Stuka fire brigade tossed into the line wherever the latest Russian breakthrough threatened. His mission tally and score rose dramatically; by November he had racked up 1,500 missions and more than 100 tank kills. His back-seater, Sergeant Erwin Hentschel, became the most successful gunner in the Luftwaffe, with more than 1,200 missions and several enemy aircraft to his credit. Rudel recommended him for the Knights Cross, but the paperwork had not gone through when he was called to Hitlers Wolfs Lair headquarters to receive the Swords to his own Knights Cross. Rudel took Hentschel along with him, and by sheer force of personality arranged for the gunner to receive his medal directly from the Fuhrer.

Yet the Stukas were unable to halt the relentless Soviet offensives leading into the winter of 1943. Terrible weather shielded the enemy from aerial attack. On one reconnaissance mission, lost in thick fog and running low on fuel, Rudel felt his way down to a forced landing. Hentschel scouted a nearby road jammed with German truck traffic. We taxi along the very broad highway as if we were driving a car, Rudel recounted, obeying the usual traffic regulations and allowing heavy lorries to pass.Many of them think they are seeing a ghost plane. Nearly 25 miles along, surely some sort of taxi record, an overpass blocked the way. Leaving Hentschel to guard the plane, Rudel caught a ride to base and returned to take off when the weather lifted.

He also proved the Panzerknacker was effective against Soviet flying tanks. Catching a flight of Soviet fighters and Lend-Lease Bell P-39 Airacobras escorting heavily armored Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmoviks to battle, he dropped down alone through the fighter cover. When I have got to within three hundred feet of [the Shturmoviks] Iloose off a round of anti-tank ammunition from each of my slow-firing cannons. The infamous Il-2 was no better armored than a T-34 against cannon fire from above. Rudels target exploded; he escaped.

In late March 1944, StG.2 (which had been redesignated SGSchlachtgeschwader, or battle winga Luftwaffe admission that the Stukas glory days as a dive bomber were over) joined the effort to cut the Soviet bridgeheads over the Dniester River near Nikolayev, Ukraine. On his eighth sortie that day, now-Major Rudel saw one of his crews forced down on the wrong side of the river and landed to pick them up. (He had performed such rescues a half-dozen times before, and had been so rescued himself.) But with two extra passengers, his Stuka bogged down in the mud.

With Soviet troops closing in, Rudel, Hentschel and the rest ran several miles in full gear. Doffing flight suits and boots, they slid down riverbank cliffs into the water. The 600-yard-wide Dniester was in full flood, a few degrees above freezing and full of ice. Gradually one becomes dead to all sensation save the instinct of self preservation, Rudel recalled. His athletic training saved him: Last into the water, he was second to reach the far bank. Eighty yards short, gunner Hentschel threw up his arms and went under. Rudel dived back in, but couldnt find his flying mate. The others were soon captured.

Rudel had been shot in the shoulder, and was wet, barefoot and freezing. Although deep in enemy territory, he refused to be taken prisoner. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had announced a 100,000-ruble reward for the capture of the Eagle of the Eastern Front, dead or alive. Rudel sheltered among refugees and locals who had no love for Stalinist Russians, and barely survived his trek across some 30 miles of enemy territory to reach German lines.

His feet were so badly injured that when he next flew he had to be helped into his plane. Yet within the week Rudel chalked up his 1,800th mission, destroyed 17 enemy tanks in one day and went to Hitlers Berghof retreat to receive the Diamonds to his Knights Cross, Germanys highest decoration at the time. (The Fuhrer permitted him to wear padded flight boots for the ceremony.) Reluctant to risk his hero again, Hitler grounded him, but relented when Rudel said he would refuse the medal if forbidden to fly.



Marking his 1,300th mission, Rudelwho was a teetotalerwould have left the champagne to his backseater Erwin Hentschel, then celebrating his 1,000th. (National Archives) Marking his 1,300th mission, Rudelwho was a teetotalerwould have left the champagne to his backseater Erwin Hentschel, then celebrating his 1,000th. (National Archives)

Germany needed heroes that summer of 1944, and Rudel did not disappoint. His count rose: 2,000 missions flown, 300 enemy tanks destroyed. Shot down over Latvia, he crash-landed with his gunner, Ernst Gadermann. Both men were wounded, and both were immediately back in the air. Rudels tally now stood at 320 tanks destroyed. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel and appointed commanding officer of SG.2. Shot down again and wounded in the upper right leg, he escaped from the hospital to fly, with the leg in a cast. By now he had flown 2,400 missions and notched 460 tank kills, approximately equal to three Soviet tank corps. Colonel General Ferdinand Schorner claimed, Rudel alone is worth an entire division!

On January 1, 1945, at the Eagles Nest, the Nazi western headquarters, in the presence of Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl, Grand Adm. Karl Donitz, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and Imperial Marshal Hermann Goring, Rudel was promoted to colonel and received from Hitler the specially created Golden Oak Leaves with Swords and Diamonds to the Knights Cross. No other German soldier has ever received it. Again Hitler ordered him grounded; again Rudel refused. The Fuhrer smiled and said: Very well then, fly. But be careful, the German people need you.

By then the Soviets new T-34/85 medium and JS (Josef Stalin) heavy tanks were banging on Nazi Germanys gate, or grave. On February 8, with his leg still in a cast, Rudel shot up a dozen tanks that had breached the Oder River. He used his last cannon round to score an unlucky 13th, a Stalin, but his Stuka was hit by Soviet 40mm anti-aircraft fire. On the verge of passing out, he called back to Gadermann, Ernst, my right leg is gone. Gadermann (who would survive the war with 850 missions and earn his own Knights Cross) talked his half-conscious pilot down to a crash-landing, pulled him from the wreckage and stopped the bleeding. Rudel woke up in a hospital with his leg amputated below the knee.

Recovering in a Berlin bunker, Rudel was back in a Stuka by Easter, flying one-legged against Hitlers orders. (His subsequent tank kills were attributed to the squadron anonymously.) The Fuhrer wanted him to take over a jet unit, but now even Rudel saw the cause was hopeless. By April 26, it was barely possible to fly into the embattled capital. Rudel phoned Hitlers adjutant, Colonel Nicolaus von Below, offering to land a Stuka on a Berlin road the following morning, and implying he could evacuate the Fuhrer. Hitler refused, and within the week was dead.

Still fighting for Schorners Army Group Center in Austria, on its surrender SG.2 was ordered to hand over all equipment to the Soviets. Though Rudel would have preferred to lead his wing on a glorious suicide mission against a Soviet headquarters, instead he sent his men to flee overland, west toward the American lines, on May 8. He and a half-dozen other pilots deliberately crash-landed their planes on an American-held airfield and surrendered.

In all, Hans-Ulrich Rudel was credited with 2,530 missions, one battleship, one cruiser, a destroyer, 70 landing craft, some 800 vehicles, 150 gun positions, numerous armored trains and bridges, 519 tanks and nine aircraft. He had been shot down more than 30 times (never by an enemy pilot) and wounded five times.

Yet Rudels fighting philosophyhis life philosophycame to him not in the air but when he was on foot, on a Ukrainian hillside the same afternoon he swam the half-frozen Dniester River. With a bullet through his shoulder, his comrades gone and enemy troops closing in fast, he remained defiant: Only he is lost who gives himself up for lost.

Frequent contributor Don Hollway recommends for further reading: Stuka Pilot, by Hans-Ulrich Rudel; Stuka Pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel, by Gunther Just; Junkers Ju 87 Stuka, by Manfred Griehl; and Ju 87 Stuka in Action, by Brian Filley.

Are you ready to build your own copy of Rudels Tank-killing Stuka?

This feature originally appeared in the July 2011 issue of Aviation History. Subscribe today!
Japan never seriously considered the following scenariobut might have been wise to do so.

On December 15, 1941, naval and air units of the empire of Japan suddenly and deliberately attack the Dutch naval squadron at Batavia in the Netherlands East Indies (present-day Indonesia). They destroy or damage all five cruisers and eight destroyers, leaving fifty-five-year-old Vice Adm. Conrad Emil Lambert Helfrich with only twenty submarines and numerous but frail torpedo boats with which to retaliate.

Shortly thereafter the Japanese Sixteenth Army invades the Dutch portion of the island of Borneoscrupulously avoiding portions administered by Great Britain then rapidly follows up with attacks on Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and other major islands in the East Indies archipelago. The puny Dutch garrisons are swiftly overrun, the Dutch naval bases at Batavia and Surabaya quickly fall, and by the end of February 1942, Japan has secured the Netherlands East Indies cornucopia of petroleum, natural gas, tin, manganese, copper, nickel, bauxite, and coal.

The Japanese government had taken the first step toward an attack on the East Indies in July 1941, when it demanded and received from Vichy France the right to station troops, construct airfields, and base warships in southern Indochina. The German invasion of the Soviet Union the previous month had removed any threat from that direction and cleared the way for a thrust southward. The southward move, in turn, was predicated on Japans desire to secure enough natural resources to become self-sufficient. It was dangerously dependent on America for scrap iron, steel, and above all oil: 80 percent of its petroleum came from the United States. President Franklin D. Roosevelts administration had been attempting for years to use economic sanctions as lever age to force Japan to abandon its invasion of China. As expected, the move into southern Indochina triggered a total freeze of Japanese assets in the United States and a complete oil embargo.

Japanese leaders initially assume that if they proceed with their intention to grab the Dutch East Indies, the inevitable con sequence will be war with both the British Commonwealth and the United States. Consequently, plans also include attacks on British bases at Singapore and Hong Kong, American bases in the Philippine Islands, and even the forward base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Careful review of the British and American situations, however, prompts a reconsideration by Japans planners. They conclude that the beleaguered British cannot afford to add Japan to their existing adversaries, Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Britain especially cannot do so without a guarantee that the United States will enter a war with Japan. And although the Roosevelt administration might engage in threats, American public opinion is so averse to war that the president has been unable to persuade the country to enter the fight against the Nazis despite their conquest of most of Europe. Indeed, a July 1941 bill to extend the nations peacetime draftwhich the Roosevelt administration deemed fundamental to U.S. national securitypassed by a single vote.

The revised Japanese plan therefore contemplates an attack on the Dutch East Indies alone, albeit with most of the Imperial Japanese Navy held in reserve should either Great Britain or the United States declare war.

Events completely vindicate Japans gamble. British prime minister Winston Churchill reinforces Singapore but otherwise adopts a defensive posture in Southeast Asia. Already thwarted in his efforts to make the case for war against Hitlers Germany, neither Roosevelt nor his advisers can think of a rationale persuasive enough to convince the public that American boys should fight and die because the Japanese have overrun an obscure European colony.

How plausible is this scenario? There is little doubt that Japan could have swiftly defeated the Dutch and seized the East Indies in mid December 1941. Even when (as occurred historically) the Americans, British, and Australians added their available warships to the defense of the Dutch colony, the Japanese had little trouble overrunning the entire archipelago by March 1942.

The harder question to answer definitively is what course Britain and America actually would have pursued if Japan had bypassed their Pacific possessions and also, of course, refrained from an air strike against Pearl Harbor.

The British plainly could not have sustained such a war without American help. True, Great Britain and the United States had been steadily making common cause against Nazi Germany. The U.S. Congress had passed the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941, and U.S. destroyers had begun escorting convoys bound for Great Britain to the mid-Atlantic before handing them off to their British counterparts. In August, Churchill and Roosevelt had met for a secret conference in the waters off Newfoundland, a summit that had included military as well as diplomatic discussions. And by the autumn of 1941, the U.S. Navy was engaged in an undeclared but lethal war with German U-boats.

Cooperation to prepare for a conflict with Japan, however, was considerably less advanced. At the Atlantic Conference, the British had given the Americans text for a proposed warning to Japan to be sent jointly by Great Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States, stating that if Japan pursued further aggression in Southeast Asia, the three countries would be compelled to take counter measures even though these might lead to war. Roosevelt agreed to make such a stern statement but unilaterally, not jointlyand as matters turned out, the president told the Japanese ambassador merely that if Japan struck southward, he would take steps toward insuring the safety and security of the United States.

As the crisis with Japan deepened, Roosevelts top military advisers told him that while they preferred a less provocative diplomatic line toward Japan, the United States could not stand by if the Japanese struck American, British, or Dutch possessions and would have no choice but to take military action in that case. Privately Roosevelt agreed, and on December 1 he told the British ambassador that in the event Japan attacked the Dutch East Indies or British possessions in Southeast Asia, we should all be in this together. When the ambassador pressed him to be specific, Roosevelt replied that the British could count on armed support from the United States.

But the president also worried about his ability to do so if American possessions continued to be spared by the Japanese. As historian David Reynolds points out, Roosevelt could only propose war; Congress had to declare it. From a purely diplomatic point of view, Pearl Harbor was therefore a godsend. It would have been difficult to persuade Congress that an attack upon the Dutch East Indies alone demanded a military response; it might well have proved impossible.

In the end the dilemma never arose because the Japanese never considered such an alternative strategy. Once the Japanese government decided that it must seize the natural resources of the Dutch East Indies, it never seriously considered any plan but a simultaneous attack against the British and the United States in the Pacific. This decision was driven overwhelmingly by operational considerations: Japans military planners believed they could not run the risk of leaving the American air and naval bases in the Philippines athwart their line of communications with the East Indies. For that reason they concluded the Philippines must be captured as well.

Ironically, by refusing to run such an operational risk, they wound up taking an even larger strategic risk, for the attack on Pearl Harbor was premised on the highly tenuous assumption of a short war with the United States followed by a negotiated peace that would allow Japan to keep its territorial gains. Japan bet that American public opinion would never countenance a prolonged and bloody Pacific war and that the combination of the blow to the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor and Japans erection of a hermetic defensive perimeter in the Central and South Pacific would convince America to throw in the towel.

As actual events subsequently showed, that was a poor bet.

Originally published in the September 2007 issue of World War II Magazine. To subscribe, click here.
Dak To Defenders

I want to personally thank Vietnam Magazine, and my friend author Ed Murphy, for his excellent account of the 299th Combat Engineers defense of Dak To (December 2007). During the course of the entire war, the Dak To area of the Central Highlands was a constant hotbed of NVA activity for all the units who served there.

Jay Gearhart

Traverse City, Mich.

I want to thank Ed Murphy for the article about the 8-week siege at Dak To in 1969. Through his extensive interviews and fact-gathering, he very accurately told a story that has been unknown for too many years. I am very proud of each and every man I served with at Dak To during that very, very difficult time.

Because I was the jeep driver for the D company commander, I knew lots more about what was happening than the average soldier. Only by Gods grace did any of us survive.

I believe that the short two page article with pictures about the mine sweep ambush near Dak To by Larry Burrows in the September 19, 1969, issue of Life magazine showed the failure of the Vietnamization program and verified that we should get out of Vietnam. The American soldiers did not lose the war in Vietnam.

Our Dak To Defender reunions in the last few years have reunited many of us and opened a way of escape and healing that can only happen by sharing similar experiences.

I dont believe that a day has passed since returning that I have not thought about Dak To, its events and many of the brothers. Only recently have I dug out the many letters that I wrote to my wonderful, wonderful wife and read those 632 pages of history that were written from Dak To. She gave me the strength to go on and God gave me the grace to survive.

Glen Hickey

Madison, S.D.

The author replies: Ive heard from a number of 299th veterans and they were extremely pleased that their story has been told. Others I know who get the maga zine have also contacted me and praised the story.

Ed Murphy

On the Giving Side of Dewey Canyon

I have just read your article on Operation Dewey Canyon (August 2007). I was one of the two-man tactical air control party attached to H 2/9 and third man down from the skipper when he triggered that ambush. The feeling of being on the giving side of a truck ambush for a change was something else.

R. Johancen

Ontario, Calif.

Vietnam: Not a Jimi Hendrix Experience

In the December 2007 Letters column, someone mentioned the death cards. Yes, we did use them in the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). But the writer said that Jimi Hendrix threw some cards around on his tour in the Nam. Im sorry, sirJimi Hendrix was in the 101st, yes, but he did not go to Vietnam. I love Jimis guitar playing, but he never left the States.

Jesse Hill

Levittown, Pa.

Any Volunteers?

I would like to set the record straight about the Marines never drafting. It was April 1968 and I was sitting at the Oakland Induction Center in Oakland, Calif, when an Army NCO announced that the Marines were looking for six volunteers. Well, no one budged or raised their hand, so the guy picked out six volunteers. I swear this happened, and had it been me I would have refused and left. So much for Marine volunteers!

Don Malone

Concord, Calif.

Rebuilding the Khe Sanh Airstrip

In your October 2007 issue, there was a short letter regarding Khe Sanh airstrip. I do not have exact dates, but I do have info regarding when the old French airstrip was dug up and rebuilt and when it went through much-needed renovations.

In mid- to late 1966, a detachment from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB) 10 (Seabees) was sent to Khe Sanh to rebuild the old French airstrip with aluminum matting. This detachment replaced the 3,300-foot airstrip of pierced steel planking with a 60-foot wide by 3,900-foot long airstrip of AM-2 aluminum planking.

In late 1967 or very early 68, a combined detachment from Construction Battalion, Maintenance Unit 301, NMCB-10, 11 and 53 (Seabees) was sent to Khe Sanh to repair and upgrade the existing airstrip. This occurred just before Tet 68 started and lasted through the barrage at Khe Sanh. I believe Khe Sanh Combat Base was closed shortly after Khe Sanh was relieved. That would be roughly mid-68. What occurred from there is military history which Im not aware of.

Bruce MacDougall

(NMCB- 40CCo.)

President, Vietnam Era Seabees, Inc.

Midlothian, Va.

Flying With the Enemy

The caption of the picture displayed on pages 52-53 of the December 2007 issue (Flying with the Enemy) gets almost everything wrong. The photograph was taken on August 9, 1989, by U.S. Air Force MSgt Richard L. John, analyst of Joint Casualty Resolution Center (JCRC) Investigation Team 1, on a hilltop southeast of Rau But Hamlet, Thuong Trach Village, Quang Binh Province. This location is 8 km north of the Ban Karai Pass. I am the person shown standing near the helicopter door. To my right is U.S. Army MSG Randall J. Nash, a search and recovery specialist of what was then the U.S. Army Central Identification LaboratoryHawaii.

The curious residents surrounding us were members of the Pacoh and Van Kieu ethnic minorities.

Our team was investigating loss incidents in the Ban Karai Pass area. That day we found two sites, both associated with unresolved loss incidents: an F-4 site in the morning and a T-28 site in the afternoon. The T-28 site was subsequently excavated and the remains of both crewmen recovered. The F-4 site is associated with an incident in which both crewmen ejected safely but died in proximity to Vietnamese forces. Their burial sites have not yet been located.

In the interest of accuracy, one other point should be noted. Formal investigation and recovery efforts in Vietnam began in September 1988 (not 1987, as stated on page 55). U.S. military and civilian personnel had conducted one excavation in 1985 (a B-52 site in Gia Lam District, near Hanoi) and had visited the reported burial site of an A-4 pilot later that same year. But it was not until September 1988 that JCRC began the first of what subsequently became known as Joint Field Activities. Readers may be interested to know that the 90th JFA ended on December 2, 2007. The work continues, but its continued success would not be possible without the support afforded by the government and people of Vietnam, as Colonel Jordan so effectively describes in his article.

James M. Coyle, Senior Researcher

Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command

Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii

Editors note: The Joint Casualty Resolution Center (JCRC) was replaced in 1992 by the Joint Task ForceFull Accounting (JTF-FA), which evolved into the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in 2003. More information about JPAC can be found at www.jpac.pacom.mil.

MIAs Found

In the MIAs Found article (News, December 2007), it says that Sgt. 1st Class John T Gallagher was an aircrew member shot down on January 5, 1968. I believe this really was John Theodore Gallagher, Staff Sergeant Reconnaissance patrol member, Command & Control North, MACVSOG.Missing in action since 5 Jan 68, when aboard the second helicopter transporting patrol 20 miles inside Laos south of Lao Bao, which was struck by 37 mm antiaircraft fire at an altitude of 2,000 ft; it went into an uncontrollable spin and exploded in flames upon impact with ground; heavy ground fire prevented search attempts. The reference is to Green Berets at War, by Shelby L. Stanton, Presidio Press, 1985, page 322. I figure Gallagher has a family somewhere, and I wanted to get it right for their sake.

Bob Edwards

Asheboro, NC

Editors note: The promotion to sergeant first class may have been posthumous, as happens in many instances.

Corrections

The article Birds v. Cong, which appeared in the April 2007 issue of Vietnam Magazine, was a firsthand account of events from Brig. Gen. (ret.) Stanley Cherries Vietnam experience written with Mr. John Falcon.

The sidebar on Page 33 of Edward Murphys Dak To article (December 2007) lists David Zabecki as the author. Edward Murphy wrote the sidebar.

In our October 2007 editorial, it was reported that Sergeant Billy Walkabouts awards included five Silver Stars, and that he spent six months in a coma after being wounded near Hue on November 20, 1968. While there is no question that Sergeant Walkabout served with honor and distinction in Vietnam, our reporting unfortunately reflected some widely circulated exaggerations. According to U.S. Army personnel records, his Distinguished Service Cross replaced a single Silver Star, and there is no record of the coma.

Originally published in the April 2008 issue of Vietnam Magazine. To subscribe, click here.
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Historical Society Sets 271st Anniversary Event for Fort Mass

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  The North Adams Historical Society will once again honor the 1746 Siege of Fort Massachusetts on Sunday, Aug. 19. The ceremony, which will take place in Western Gateway Heritage State Park at 2 p.m., marks the 272nd anniversary of the event.

The commemoration also marks the 271st anniversary of the rebuilding of Fort Massachusetts. Wendy Champney and her group Save Fort Massachusetts Memorial have fought long and hard to preserve the land that the original fort stood upon, and in past years have stressed the importance of celebrating and preserving these historic events and landmarks.

The ceremony will remember August 19-20, 1746, when about 1,000 French and Indian soldiers took over the fort, which lies in what is now North Adams. While Fort Massachusetts was abandoned after the French and Indian War, the a local historical society began to search for funds in 1895 for a memorial site, which was completed and dedicated in 1933 for the Fort Massachusetts chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

The replica fort was turned into a restaurant and demolished many years ago but the stone fireplace and a marker remain at the site off State Road. The plot of land was donated to the city last year by Price Chopper Corp., which had helped maintain.

Members of the Historical Society who will play a role in the ceremony include Gene Carlson, Charles Cahoon, and Justyna Carlson, who serve as the NAHS treasurer, president, and secretary, respectively. Gene Carlson will be the master of ceremonies, while Cahoon and Justyna Carlson will speak.

Wendy Champney, the author of "The Forgotten Ledge of Fort Massachusetts" who is a teacher and historian in the Berkshires, will also speak in the ceremony. Chapman is the secretary of the North Adams Historical Commission and for many years has promoted Fort Massachusetts.

Additional speakers include retired teacher Fran Flaherty and Department of Conservation and Recreation ranger Robert Campanile. Campanile played a large role in the opening of the North Adams Museum of History and Science 17 years ago as the designer of its barracks room. He also was a lecturer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and is the author of two books: "Mohawk Trail" and "North Adams."

Participants will meet in Building 5A of the Museum of History and Science on the third floor, which houses Campaniles replica of Fort Massachusetts barracks. As usual, the event is free to the public.
State Rep. Paul Mark says there were successes and disappointments this last legislative session.

End of Session Review 2018: Paul Mark

DALTON, Mass.  The state Legislature relaxed a bit in the early hours of Aug. 1 as the formal legislative session was ready to close.

But, wait, wait. State Rep. Paul Mark had one more bill -- a land taking for the town of Northfield intended to help local farmers.

"I was able to hold the House and the Senate open until after 1 in the morning on the last day of the session because it was an important bill. It had to be done before we adjourned," Mark said, joking about the change in his popularity among legislators as that night waned.

The Peru Democrat is wrapping up his fourth term in the House of Representative. He said lawmakers tackled a number of issues on Beacon Hill over the last year and a half or so, many of which will have impacts in his Western Massachusetts districts -- whether that be the large criminal justice reform bill or small land takings such as the one in Northfield.

He particularly highlighted the economic development bond bill and the environmental bond bill as having key funding earmarks for the district.

In the economic development bond bill, he made a $2 million amendment to help developers of historic buildings comply with Americans with Disability Act regulations. The $2 million bolsters a grant program through the Massachusetts Office on Disability and adds language emphasizing economic development projects.

"The idea of this funding is to help communities, developers, who are trying to redevelop historic buildings in the Berkshires, in Franklin County, be able to make their buildings ADA compliant with the help of the state," Mark said.

"A specific example would be the Stationary Factory here in Dalton. They are trying to renovate and trying to make it productive again. But there is a problem with the expense of putting in new elevators and making the building fully compliant with the ADA is overwhelming and threatens project like this all over the state."

Another earmark for Dalton is a $250,000 expense to help construct North Mountain Park; there is another $250,000 earmark to make improvements to the Dalton Town Hall. In the economic development bill, Dalton is earmarked for $1 million to remediate the old Dalton High School, and $500,000 is earmarked to make drainage repairs along the Skyline Trail in Hinsdale.

"This money, I hope, will be helpful to repair places that flood so if you fix the road up it will last," Mark said.

Mark also secured money, though not as much as he wanted, in the state budget to combat opioid abuse. For the last few years, he was able to get funding for an opioid abuse task force in Franklin County and is now looking to replicate that model in the Berkshires.

The $150,000 will be used to hire a full-time person focused on the issue for Berkshire County. Currently, the county has the Berkshire Opioid Abuse Prevention Coalition but that is through the work of Berkshire Regional Planning Commission. He hopes this task force will enhance the work of that collaborative, not replace it.

The funds will go toward hiring one person to lead the task force, bolster material for prevention, distribute naloxone, and supplement funding for opioid treatment in the Berkshire County House of Correction.

The money goes through the sheriff's department and has multiple areas of focus, from prevention to education, to ending the stigma, to getting into schools. Mark is hoping whoever is the next district attorney is will be part of that collaborative.

One of the unique aspects of Mark's district is it has two jails. The state passed criminal justice reform, which Mark said will enhance the sheriffs' offices focus on rehabilitation in place of punishment.

"I think the changes were to make us smarter on crime rather than saying we are tough on crime and not addressing any of the causes, especially when it comes to drug abuse and drug treatment," Mark said.

He said the criminal justice reform attempts to avoid being "vindictive" in punishment but rather helping people to turn their lives around so they don't end up back behind bars.

It calls for diversion programs so that if somebody is facing something like a drug problem they are able to go to treatment instead of getting a lifelong mark on their permanent record and jail time. It eliminates many mandatory minimum sentences to provide the judge and prosecutors with more discretion.

Mark said there was some good news and some disappointments for him with both the energy bill and the compromise on the minimum wage.

Ballot questions regarding paid family leave, raising the minimum wage, and lowering the sales tax came before the Legislature. After parties file for a ballot question, the Legislature then has the opportunity to see if it can reach an agreement with the advocates. In this case, the Legislature was concerned with the Retailers Association's ballot question to lower the minimum sales tax from 6.25 percent to 5 percent.

"We can pass something but if they agree to it, they can move forward with the ballot question anyway. With these ballot questions, it puts us in a position where we either need to act or say this is something we are going to leave to the people," Mark said.

"A deal was reached if the Retailers Association agreed to drop the idea of lowering the sales tax from 6.25 percent to 5 percent, which would have reduced revenue figures by over $1 billion, we would raise the minimum wage over time, over five years, we would implement the paid family leave system in collaboration with the business community, and they would eliminate Sunday overtime for workers in the retail sector."

Mark is disappointed that the requirement to pay workers overtime on Sunday will be faded out over the next five years. But he is supportive of raising the minimum wage and paid family leave. The retailers also got the Legislature to agree to keep the sale tax holiday a reoccurring event.

"The retailers got out of this the gradual reduction of the Sunday overtime and the permanent sales tax holiday, so going forward there will be a holiday every August," Mark said.

On the energy bill, Mark was happy that the Legislature agreed to raise the renewable energy portfolio to 2 percent -- though he filed an amendment to raise it to 3 percent -- but he is disappointed the net metering cap was not raised.

"In the end, we passed a bill that increases the renewable energy portfolio standard to 2 percent. It does a lot for energy storage, the potential for energy storage, the potential for using batteries, the potential for really modernizing the electricity grid and trying to find a new model. We are still doing things the same way they did 70 years ago and the world has changed significantly," Mark said.

Mark had really hoped to raise the net metering cap to bolster solar in the state. He noted integration concerns about energy with Saudi Arabia being the biggest oil producer and out of state energy sources. He said he'd like to see the state do as much as it can to move away from relying on those sources.

"I was disappointed we did not raise the statewide solar metering cap. I think it is important to try to take advantage of solar energy. I think there is a lot of growth in jobs, union jobs, good-paying technical jobs, and a lot of potential for our economy to make ourselves not reliant on fuel sources that come from out of the state or out of the country," he said.

The state also passed automatic voter registration that automatically signs up citizens to vote when they get a license or otherwise interacts with the state.

"There are so many people I talk to and they feel they've been left out, they don't understand the whole process, people are busy and sometimes having that extra step of having to go and affirmatively fill out paperwork to vote is a hindrance to them. To me, anything that makes it easier for people who are eligible to vote, to be able to vote, is a good thing," Mark said. "This isn't a sport you watch, this is a sport you play too."

The Legislature was unable to come to terms on health care and education bills. Though both were kicked around, no consensus was made by the end of the session.

With education, Mark said there are so many different views on how to change the foundation formula for school aid. A foundation review committee report was released showing the state would need to bolster Chapter 70 funding by more than $1 billion, which is a task Mark said is monumental. Instead much has been focused on trying to change that foundation formula for state aid to schools to get the best value and equity out of the money that is being spent.

"There are so many varying points of view on what to do to fix the foundation formula," Mark said.

He said Western Mass tends to be concerned with the funding aspects of regional school transportation, which denser communities like Boston don't benefit from. There are wealthy towns some don't think should get state funds, but those towns will argue that it is money they paid to the state. That wide range of issues led to many different opinions on the best way to change things.

"What ends up happening is we all come to a place where we agree 'well, we all have students.' So we're just going to increase the per-pupil amount. And that is what keeps on happening. The per-pupil amount goes up and the amount of funding toward Chapter 70 is the highest in the history of the state. But because there are flaws in the formula, we don't have as many students, we're not growing the number of students. We are getting more money than before but it is not tailored," Mark said.

Mark is hoping that will be one of the first things the Legislature takes up next session.

Health care faced a similar problem.

"The idea of sharing some of the income from the big, gigantic teaching hospitals out east and doing a one-time shot in the arm to try to prop up the whole system was a good one. But that wasn't able to get consensus on the conference committee and it fell to the wayside and it is a shame," Mark said.

And with that, Mark said a study on single-payer fell to the wayside, too. That bill included funding an independent study on what it would actually take to implement single-payer and what is currently being paid into the system. He hopes that would set a new starting point for having the conversation about moving to such a program in the future.

"One of the things we were hoping to be included in the final bill was a single-payer study, just to show year by year what are we paying as a state, as a population, right now per person for health care and what would we be paying if we went to a different model?"

There may have been enough agreement to get either of those bills passed, but Mark said both issues are so large lawmakers would rather have a large majority -- with health care, in particular, being one in which Gov. Charlie Baker would have a keen interest in and a large majority would be needed to override any vetoes.

Meanwhile, Mark thinks the state did a good job with the marijuana legislation but now he feels the Cannabis Control Commission is not moving fast enough with approving licenses. The legislation includes the ability for farmers to grow hemp, which Mark said wasn't included in the ballot question and could be a big help in Western Massachusetts.

"This isn't about marijuana and people smoking it. This is about people using hemp which is a crop people have been using throughout the history of humanity except for the last couple of years. When you are trying to support farmers in our region, diversification is one of the most important things they have," Mark said.

Mark spent the session chairing the Committee on Redistricting. The group is preparing for the U.S. Census in 2020 and the subsequent redistricting process.

"We've been trying to anticipate what will the population look like at the State House level, the state Senate level, and for the U.S. House of Representative," Mark said. "We did the best population estimate we could do based on the last eight years and if those projects continue through 2020, what the population of each municipality will look like."

The good news with that is that Massachusetts is not currently expected to lose a member of U.S. Congress like it had last time. But the Berkshires have been losing population or stagnant while the rest of the state has grown. That means there will likely be a further power shift from the Berkshires east.

"The congressional districts are going to get bigger, the state Senate districts are going to get bigger, and the state House districts are going to get bigger," Mark said. "The problem with that is if you are representing 16 or 22 towns, it is already a lot. It makes us have to put in that much more time and effort to make sure we are accessible to all of our constituents. If we boost that to 25 towns or 28 towns, it is just going to get that much harder."

He said Western Massachusetts already has a difficult time getting its voice heard because it is vastly outnumbered by the eastern part of the state and redistricting is trending in a way that Western Massachusetts will be even more outnumbered.

"Every single day we are at a disadvantage in terms of getting our voice heard," Mark said.

Mark said a whole lot can change in just a couple years so he didn't elaborate into any of the details. But, he said it is likely that Pittsfield will no longer be large enough to have two representatives in the House.
'Saturday Night Live' saxophonist Alex Foster and North Adams native and trumpet player Richard Boulger, who studied with Freddie Hubbard and played with the Allman Brothers Band, will be camp instructors.

Jazz Camp to Be Hosted at Hoosac Valley



Bassist Alex Blake, who started his career with Sun Ra; drummer Victor Jones, who has played with Chaka Khan; and pianist Charles Blenzig, who has played with Marcus Miller and Michael Brecker, will be on the camp faculty. CHESHIRE, Mass.  Hoosac Valley and the Adams Anthony Center are hosting a free Berkshire Jazz Day Camp this week.

Berkshire County music students will get a week of face time with five professional New York City musicians that will culminate in a live performance at the Bounti-Fare.

"I have always wanted to bring as much music and my experience as an artist back to the area," North Adams native and jazz trumpeter Richard Boulger said. "I always wanted to do that for years and years  and I always thought an opportunity like this would be great for the kids."

Boulger will bring with him a team of professional New York City musicians with varied styles and backgrounds who include pianist Charles Blenzig, drummer Victor Jones, bassist Alex Blake, and saxophonist Alex Foster.

"They are all teachers. They are not only great musicians, but they have the ability to teach," President of the Adams-Anthony Center William Kolis said. "You can have someone who is fantastic but cannot relate  they all are excellent teachers and have phenomenal backgrounds."

Kolis said for some time now the Adams Anthony Center wanted to host an event that would connect Berkshire County students to the arts. He said they began organizing the camp just over a year ago when he met Boulger on a train heading to Pittsfield.

"It was kind of serendipitous I was on the train in the Albany train station and Richard got on because he was coming up from Brooklyn," Kolis said. "I heard him say he was from North Adams  his father was my history teacher at Hoosac Valley."

From there the Adams Anthony Center started the fundraising process and contacted Hoosac Valley band director Jacob Keplinger who was happy to host the camp at the high school.

"We have a great facility for this type of workshop with two large rehearsal spaces and the auditorium very close to each other," Keplinger said. "Additionally, there are a number of classrooms that can be utilized to split the students up into smaller groups nearby."

Kolis said each high school was sent an invitation and were able to choose five students to attend the camp. Currently, there are just over 30 students signed up and students may still be able to apply. The camp was in need of bass players, piano players, and drummers as of last week.

The camp organizers can be reached through their Facebook page

The camp starts Monday runs daily from 4 to 8. During the first two days of the camp, Boulger said the kids will be sorted into ensembles. He added that they will also go over some warmups, how to practice properly, and technique.

"We are basically going to kind of evaluate their playing levels andsee who is going to gel where and kind of figure out what kids will work better with other kids," he said.

On Wednesday, the four New York City musicians will arrive and spend the first hour of the camp interacting with the students and fielding questions. Each faculty member will present before breaking off into instrument specific sections and then ensembles.

Boulger said interspersed between the playing their will improvisational lessons, jazz history, transcribing lessons, and even listening sessions.

"We want kids to understand the importance of listening and turn them on to some of the maters of jazz and music as a whole to help them find their own voice," Boulger said. "The instrument is an amplifier for what you are hearing, thinking, and ultimately feeling."

Keplinger said students will be able to learn some specific jazz styles and techniques that there is often no time to teach in the classroom.

,

"This kind of specialized program will provide students with a unique experience of playing jazz, improvising, playing specific jazz warmups that most programs at high schools in Berkshire County do not address due, at least in my case, but Im sure Im not alone, to time constraints," Keplinger said. "Having four hours to work on these techniques and skills will be a very special opportunity for these students."

The camp ends Friday at the Bounti-Fare were students will not only perform but set up and do a sound check to get the full gigging experience.

"We are going to do a sound check and teach the kids about what it is like to do a real gig," Boulger said. "Sometimes you catch kids playing and they are on a microphone and dont know how to play or work it. Stage presence and just the little things you cant pick up reading in a book."

Kolis said both the student ensembles and professionals will play sets and residents can attend the event. This starts at 6; tickets are $25.

Kolis said he hopes such a high-quality program could put Adams on the map and he hopes jazz students from throughout the county network and build friendships during the camp.

Boulger agreed and said networking is a huge part of the music industry.

"Our hope is that the kids begin to build relationships with the staff andbuild a bridge of sorts to New York," he said. "In this crazy music industry, you have to be able to networkyou need a community and we ultimately want to build a bridge through Berkshire County, so students feel connected and can jam together."

Both Kolis and Boulger hope the camp can be an annual event.

"Everyone on this faculty is very committed to music and we hope this is something we can build upon in the future," Boulger said.
Purple Valley Aquatics' Kuster Excels at Junior Nationals

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Purple Valley Aquatic's Cole Kuster of Williamstown returned to New England after competing at the 2018 Speedo Junior Nationals swim meet in Irvine, Calif.

Kuster, 17, qualified to swim not only the 1500 meter freestyle, but also the 400 freestyle and the 800 freestyle at the event. At the William Woollett, Jr. Aquatic Center, he competed against some of the fastest swimmers in the country from July 31 to Aug. 4. This swim meet brings excitement, fast athletes and another great level of competition for Cole.

Kuster managed not to let the events, crowds or situations overwhelm him as he came away with some amazing swims. He rounded out the weekend with four of his five best times, which is a great accomplishment at a meet of this caliber.

Kuster placed 25th in the 1500 freestyle with a time of 16:02.8, which was his best time by 9 seconds. In the 400 freestyle, he placed 30th with a time of 4:01.68 (a best by 3 seconds), and in the 800 freestyle he placed 21st with a time of 8:23.53, which was right on his best time.

Kuster also swam time trial races in the 100 freestyle and 200 freestyle, racing his way to best times of 55.2 in the 100 and 1:56.04 in the 200 freestyle.

He said he was extremely pleased with how he swam at the event, but he still is hungry for even more next time out. Kuster will now get some much deserved time off this month before returning to the pool on Sept. 10, when Purple Valley Aquatics begins its 2018-19 short course/fall season.
Hula hooping on Eagle Street is a Downtown Celebration highlight.

Downtown Celebration Set For Wednesday, Aug. 15

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  The 22nd annual Downtown Celebration will fill downtown North Adams with more than 100 vendors and entertainers on Wednesday, Aug. 15, from 5:30 to 9 p.m.



This event is free. In the case of inclement weather, an announcement will be made on Wednesday morning and the rain date will be Thursday, Aug. 16.



The event will feature plenty of music: JP Murphy will be performing by the Bus Stop starting at 6; Champagne Jam will perform at the Berkshire Bank Plaza; the Berkshire Rhythm Keepers will be performing African drumming at the southwest side of Main Street starting around 7 p.m.; and the Bad Art Ensemble will hit the new Eagle Street Stage at 7 p.m.



There will be performances throughout the evening by local groups, including the Berkshire County Line Dancers, Studio North Dance, J Star Gymnastics, North Adams Youth Cheerleaders, and the Drury High School Cheerleaders.



Balloon creatures and creations will be offered by Balloon Ben, Linda Peck aka Mary Poppins, and Greylock Federal Credit Union. Also, Johnny Mystic will bring his magic back to Main Street while Serenity Circles will bring her hula hoops back to Eagle Street.



The First Baptist Church will have a bouncy house set up on Main Street near the CCB Kid Zone.

Tres Ninos

As always, the Child Care of the Berkshires Kid Zone offers games, activities and free face painting. Berkshire Nursing Families offers a family area where families are welcome to rest, nurse, feed, or change their babies and relax.



And more than 100 vendors and entertainers this year will be offering information, giveaways, clothing, jewelry, handcrafted soaps, decor, and more. Restrooms will be available on the corner of Holden Street and Main Street thanks to A1's support.



There will be no parking allowed on Main Street, Eagle Street, or north Church Street after 1 p.m. on the day of the celebration and the streets will close by 3 p.m. Cars that remain parked on these streets will be towed at the owner's expense. For more information, call 413-664-6180.
Final Debates Set for Berkshire District Attorney Candidates

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  The three district attorney candidates competing for the Democratic nomination in September's primary will meet at least three more times.

Paul Caccaviello, Andrea Harrington and Judith Knight are vying for the nomination that will essentially determine the winner in the race since there is no other candidate on the general election ballot.

Caccaviello was first assistant district attorney for 14 years until his predecessor, David Capeless, stepped down in March so Caccaviello could run as the incumbent. He has worked in the district attorney's office as a prosecutor for nearly three decades.

Harrington is a civil and criminal defense attorney who has defended death row inmates in the state of Florida and is now an attorney at Connor & Morneau LLP. She has been practicing law for more than 15 years and first ran unsuccessfully for state senator two years ago.

Knight worked as a prosecutor and a public defender before entering private practice in 2003. An attorney for more than 20 years, Knight ran against Capeless in 2006 with a campaign centered on overzealous prosecution of youth caught peddling marijuana but lost.

The upcoming forums and debates are:

 Tuesday, Aug. 14, at 6:30 p.m. at Becket Town Hall. Sponsored by the Becket Democratic Town Committee with state Sen. Adam Hinds as moderator.

 Monday, Aug. 20, at 7 p.m. at Berkshire Community College sponsored by the Pittsfield Gazette with former Pittsfield Mayor Sara Hathaway as moderator.

 Thursday, Aug. 23, 7 p.m. at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, 270 State Road, Great Barrington, sponsored by Hevreh, Berkshires Interfaith Organizing, and Multicultural Bridge.




iciHaiti - Messages : International Youth Day





Minister of Haitians Living Abroad :

As part of the International Youth Day commemorated on Sunday, August 12, Guy A. Francois Jr, the resigning Minister of Haitians Living Abroad (MHAVE), saluted the Haitian youth from here and in the diaspora and took advantage of this opportunity. day to ask young people "to believe in this better future" so much desired for the country adding "Haiti, has the advantage of a population consisting mainly of young people, it can and must rely on energy, the passion of these young people to change the course of history. Young people must be catalysts and drivers of change.



The MHAVE encourages young people to commit to and in Haitian society and is particularly aimed at young people from the diaspora to urge them to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by their respective host countries and to put their knowledge and experience at the disposal of young people. profit of the motherland.



Joseph Lambert, Speaker of the Senate:

"My country is to build. This project calls for the active participation of young Haitians. A special thought goes to the Haitian youth who deserves a space articulated for its blossoming," Senator Joseph Lambert, President of the Senate.



Ambassador of Haiti in London Bocchit Edmond :

"On this World Youth Day, I would like to invite Haitian youth to continue to dream of a better and more socially just Haiti because its next day belongs to you 'Ayiti pap peri'," said Bocchit Edmond, Ambassador of Haiti in London



Jean-Henry Ceant, Prime Minister appointed:

On Sunday as part of International Youth Day, Jean-Henry Ceant, the appointed Prime Minister, said "[...] I welcome the potential of our young people as key partners in society. Once ratified by Parliament, my Government will tackle issues related to youth."



IH/ iciHaiti


















Manoj Bajpayee (left) won the Best Actor for his yet-to-release "Gali Guleiyan," and Rani Mukerji was named Best Actress for her performance in "Hichki at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM). (IANS photo)
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As you may already know, the deadline for the Continuous Voters Registration(CRV) is August 17. This means that, those who fail to register before the deadline will have to wait until next year.

This, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), is to enable the production of Permanent Voters Cards(PVCs) for distribution.

INEC is to resume registration of voters after the 2019 elections.

Public Affairs Officer of INEC in Gombe, Mr Mohorret Bigun told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the exercise would henceforth include weekends and public holidays to allow for more people to register beginning from Aug.1 with timing from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Sunday.

Decide.NG, an initiative of Information Nigeria has decided to step in to assist citizens who are yet to register or collect their PVCs by providing useful information on their platform www.decide.ng. The platform provides answers to all PVC related questions as well as providing detailed information on registration points according to state and local government.

With August 17 fast approaching the initiative has urged citizens to make due of this opportunity in securing their PVCs because the change we all need is in our own hands.
The global L.I.S.T. (Lessons In Success Training) conference is coming to Africa and Nigeria will be hosting the conference for the first time ever. The conference is scheduled to hold in Lagos from Friday, November 16 to Saturday, November 17, 2018.

The global L.I.S.T. Tour is one of the most anticipated business workshops for established and aspiring entrepreneurs seeking worthwhile profit in their businesses. It will bring together leading experienced and skilled instructors who will provide professional insights and hands-on training in the areas of Business Strategy, Sales Marketing, and the Fashion Industry.

The L.I.S.T. tour will be the first ever business workshop designed by African-Americans for Nigeria. The panelists and speakers boast of expertise in business development, branding, economics, fashion and psychology with decades of experience in their respective fields; hence, the Conference will offer vital keys to exponential growth in business and enterprise. This is not just an opportunity for networking with like-minded visionaries, but also a chance to be equipped with inspiring nuggets for business dominance.

Organized by renowned production and customer culture expert, LaTonya Washington, the conference will host distinguished panelists and speakers who possess finesse in their craft as business leaders, inventors, investors, physicians and policymakers. Washington, accompanied by a team of resourceful leaders on the forefront of business innovation in the United States, is a prominent figure of talent in the professional community in America. As CEO of LW Special Events Management LLC, The Customer Culture and the founder of L.I.S.T.; she has dedicated years to the empowerment of entrepreneurs to take their businesses to new heights through this platform.

For more information and reservation, visit https://thelisttour.com

For media inquiries, contact: yinka.akinkunmi@roberttaylormedia.com
Trois Rivieres, QC, (Monday August 13, 2018): Donald Theetge had what he classed as a terrific race at the famed Grand Prix de Trois Rivieres on Sunday afternoon. It was event number eight of the thirteen race NASCAR Pintys Series in 2018.

The weekend started off on a positive note as Theetge practiced his #24 Mercedes-Benz St Nicolas/Circuit Acura Chevrolet Camaro in the top ten for most of the hour-long session.

We still have a little work to do to make the car perfect, but I am happy with the direction we are going, said Theetge.

Next up would be qualifying and Theetge would go on track with the second group of cars and when the final car hit pit road ending the qualifying session, he was scored as 11th quickest. Theetge would line up the #24 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 on the inside of row six for the Le 50 Tours Can Am race on Sunday.

The 50-lap event on Sunday would take the green flag in front of a sold-out crowd. Theetge settled into the top 12 where he stayed until lap 15 when he moved into the top 10. It was a tough and competitively contested event with drivers racing very hard right from the start. The event was marred by 20 caution laps of the total 50 scheduled laps. As the race wound down Theetge continued his move forward and when the checkered flag flew he was scored in seventh place.

This is like a podium finish for us, said a very happy Theetge after the race. I am very proud what this team did on the weekend as we were working for a top eight and finished seventh. My brother Benoit was here, and he helped me a lot as he knows this track very well and he kept me calm every lap. We made some points today and we still have four oval races left and I am confident we can win another one of those. We have a great team and I am very proud of them.

The Le 50 Tours Can Am will air on TSN 1 & 3 on Saturday August 18th at 12 p.m. ET and the race was aired live on RDS2 in Quebec.

Donald Theetge and his #24 Mercedes Benz St Nicolas/Circuit Acura team are currently scored in eighth in the national point standings with five events remaining on the 2018 schedule.

The team next takes to the track at Riverside International Speedway in Antigonish Nova Scotia on Saturday August 18th for round nine of the 2018 NASCAR Pintys Series. For more event information please visit www.riversidespeedway.ca

Donald Theetge is supported by the following sponsors: Mercedes-Benz St Nicolas, Circuit Acura, Antidote, V Tele, Le Soleil, XPN World et Quebec Automobile Esthetique

For more information please contact:

Linda Jones

(705) 730-4044

ljones@drivenmi.ca
OSHAWA, ON (August 12, 2018)- During its 2018 schedule, the Ontario Modifieds Racing Series powered by Torque Builders Inc. has been focused on building its brand and introducing people to the tour and its exciting events. With just a few shows remaining on the schedule, officials are looking forward to seeing how the late season events play out.

It has been a great year and weve had a chance to make some new friends and fans during this years tour, said Rick Warnes, who along with Randy Hollingsworth and Bill Pickford make up the OMRS group of officials. Our car counts have been strong, with a dozen or more teams scoring points in at least one main event and only a single rainout on the calendar.

Warnes pointed to the arrival of former Peterborough Speedway Thunder Car/Super Stock track champion Anthony DiBello as one of the strengths this year; along with Bob Franks and Craig Scott joining the tour and the return of former series regular Josh Gruntz. In addition to the annual events at Peterborough and Flamborough Speedways, the Ontario Modifieds Racing Series also added Sauble Speedway to this years agenda and has a first-ever trip to Delaware Speedway planned for Saturday, August 18th.

Getting to some different areas is a great thing for all involved; the drivers, sponsors and especially the series, said Rick Warnes. Theres no telling where the next group of new drivers might be coming from, so we need to put out the welcome mat and be willing to open the door to as many people as possible.

Ontario Modifieds Racing Series point standings:

#16 Anthony DiBello 396

#77 Brad Stevenson 381

#63 John Baker Jr. 375

#77c Chad Strawn 373

#90 Rick Warnes 356

#95 Rob Warnes 353

#90m Craig Stevenson 334

#62w Willow Barberstock 330

#62 Randy Hollingsworth 325

#72 Bob Franks 166

#69 Craig Scott 93

#31 Josh Gruntz 55

To learn more about the 2018 Ontario Modifieds Racing Series powered by Torque Builders Inc. schedule, visit the groups social media platform, www.facebook.com/OMRS or look for the newly redesigned web-site www.ontariomodifiedsracing.com, coming soon.

For over a decade, Torque Builders Inc. has worked with partners and clients in the construction industry, offering new, general construction services, renovations and retrofits in the industrial, commercial and institutional sector. See www.torquebuilders.com to find out more. The 2018 OMRS tour is also supported by Complete Mechanical, Borque Transmission, Gen-3 Electrical, Sterling Tire and Clarke Motorsports Communications.

Prepared by: Jim Clarke, Clarke Motorsports Communications/First Draft Media

clarkemotorsports@hotmail.com, www.facebook.com/clarkemotorsports

613.968.6410
August 13, 2018 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Bob Moriarty of 321 Gold discusses a gold explorer in British Columbia's Golden Triangle that just released off-the-charts drill results.

I've written about Aben Resources Ltd. (ABN:TSX.V; ABNAF:OTCQB) before. In my first piece, I talked about Ron Netolitzky, the man who discovered Eskay Creek and the Snip mine. It looks as if he may have done it again with assays of 62.4 g/t gold over 6.0 meters in a zone of 38.7 g/t Au over 10.0 meters.

Those are Eskay Creek grade intercepts.

The hole is the first of eight holes already drilled in the newly discovered North Boundary zone in a planned 5,000-meter drill program. Aben feared the numbers being leaked out so made the decision to announce early.

The highest grade intercept within that 10.0 meters was 331.0 g/t Au over 1.0 meter but there were four high grade intercepts overall in the one hole, including 22.0 g/t Au and 22.4 g/t Ag over 4.0 meters, 3.9 g/t Au and 4.0 g/t Ag over 13.0 meters and 8.2 g/t Au and 1.4 g/t Ag over 6.0 meters.

The area was drilled before, over twenty years ago, but the high cost of operation due to a lack of power and road access meant progress came at too high a cost. A recently commissioned power plant has lines running across the southern portion of the Forrest Kerr project. And the British Columbia government has built road access to much of the Golden Triangle. What couldn't be afforded 25 years ago can be worked now.

If you look at photos from Google Earth from above, you can see how the glaciers receding have opened up a lot more ground to be prospected. The Golden Triangle is going to be the go-to area for the near future with results coming from a whole heap of companies.

Aben's terms on the Forrest Kerr project call for the company to spend $3 million by 2020 to earn 100% of the project. The company has over 40 million warrants outstanding at an average price of $0.14 that would bring in over $5 million so them spending $3 million in exploration on Forrest Kerr is not going to be a problem.

I suspect Ron Netolitzky hit just hit his third high-grade gold mine in the Golden Triangle. My subscribers have been warned in the past and the present has arrived in spades.

Aben is an advertiser. I participated in the past PP and own shares. Naturally I am biased. Do your own due diligence.

Aben Resources

ABN-V $0.20 (Aug 08, 2018)

ABNAF-OTCBB 81.4 million shares

Aben Resources website.

Bob and Barb Moriarty brought 321gold.com to the Internet almost 16 years ago. They later added 321energy.com to cover oil, natural gas, gasoline, coal, solar, wind and nuclear energy. Both sites feature articles, editorial opinions, pricing figures and updates on current events affecting both sectors. Previously, Moriarty was a Marine F-4B and O-1 pilot with more than 832 missions in Vietnam. He holds 14 international aviation records.

Disclosure:

1) Bob Moriarty: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: Aben Resources. Aben Resources is an advertiser on 321 Gold. I determined which companies would be included in this article based on my research and understanding of the sector.

2) The following companies mentioned are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Aben Resources. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees.

3) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of the author and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The author is wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. The author was not paid by Streetwise Reports for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports requires contributing authors to disclose any shareholdings in, or economic relationships with, companies that they write about. Streetwise Reports relies upon the authors to accurately provide this information and Streetwise Reports has no means of verifying its accuracy.

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. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Aben Resources, a company mentioned in this article.

Images provided by the author

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Disclaimer/Disclosure: Investorideas.com is a digital publisher of third party sourced news, articles and equity research as well as creates original content, including video, interviews and articles. Original content created by investorideas is protected by copyright laws other than syndication rights. Our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services or products. Nothing on our sites should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investing involves risk and possible losses. This site is currently compensated for news publication and distribution, social media and marketing, content creation and more. Disclosure is posted for each compensated news release, content published /created if required but otherwise the news was not compensated for and was published for the sole interest of our readers and followers. Contact management and IR of each company directly regarding specific questions.

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Edmonton, Alberta - August 13, 2018 (Newsfile Corp.) (Investorideas.com Newswire) Grizzly Discoveries Inc. (TSXV: GZD) (FSE: G6H) ("Grizzly" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has mobilized a field crew to the Robocop Cobalt-Copper-Silver (Co-Cu-Ag) project near Roosville in southeast British Columbia (B.C.). The field crew, provided by APEX Geoscience Ltd., will conduct a two week surface exploration program in advance of a follow-up airborne geophysical survey.

The Robocop claims comprise 9,891 acres and are located in southeast B.C., approximately 45 kilometres (km) south of Fernie and 70 km southeast of Cranbrook, immediately north of the Canada-USA border. The property is located east of Grizzly's Greenwood Property in southeastern British Columbia.

The Board of Directors of Grizzly have also authorized the issuance of an aggregate 1,050,000 stock options to Officer, Directors, and Consultants of Grizzly with an exercise price of $0.10 and expiring on August 13, 2023 or earlier in accordance with the Company's stock option plan.

HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE ROBOCOP PROPERTY

The Project is comprised of 9,891 acres in 5 mineral claims that are all road accessible just off Provincial Highway 93 in southeast B.C.

Initial surface trenching in the late 1980's to early 1990's yielded up to 0.06% Co and 1.93% Cu over 6 m in one trench and in a separate trench up to 0.182% Co, 2.44% Cu and 9.6 grams per tonne (g/t) Ag in sediment hosted mineralization within middle Proterozoic Purcell Group rocks.

A total of 15 drillholes in the area between 1990 and 2008 have yielded several intersections of near surface Co-Cu-Ag mineralization with grades of up to 0.134% Co, 1.19% Cu and 33.8 g/t Ag over 1.23 m core length in hole R-1990-5 and 0.14% Co, 0.9% Cu and 2.7 g/t Ag over 3.1 m core length in hole R-1990-6 (Thomson, 1990),

Along with an intersection of 0.18% Co, 0.28% Cu, 4.1 g/t Ag over 1 m core length in hole R-2008-02 (Pighin, 2009), and

Sediment hosted Co-Cu-Ag mineralization is similar in style, age and host rocks to eCobalts Idaho Cobalt project and Hecla's Revett Formation hosted mineralization near Troy Montana.

Prior work has identified areas within the Robocop property with significant historic Co-Cu-Ag in soil anomalies. Combined with historic drilling during the 1990's (Teck Explorations Ltd.) and early 2000's (Ruby Red Resources) that yielded significantly anomalous near surface Co-Cu-Ag mineralization, the project warrants follow up exploration including additional drilling. The Co-Cu-Ag mineralization is hosted in Sheppard Formation and is classified as mid-Proterozoic sediment hosted mineralization. Based upon recent work by the USGS (Bookstrom et al., 2016), Robocop Co-Cu-Ag mineralization is similar in style and age of host rocks to mineralization in the Blackbird Co-Cu-Au-Ag district in Idaho including eCobalt's Idaho Cobalt Project. Grizzly believes that significant potential exists to expand the known extent of the Co-Cu-Ag mineralization on the Property and further exploration is warranted. In order to advance the project, Grizzly is planning to conduct a helicopter airborne magnetic and conductivity survey, a first for the Robocop Property, to assist in identifying future drill targets.

Grizzly has commenced land use permitting for drilling at the Robocop Property that is anticipated to be ready for a fall drilling campaign if required.

GRANT OF STOCK OPTIONS

The Board of Directors of Grizzly have also authorized the issuance of an aggregate 1,050,000 stock options to Officers, Directors, and Consultants of Grizzly with an exercise price of $0.10 and expiring on August 13, 2023 or earlier in accordance with the Company's stock option plan. 250,000 of the options authorized for issuance will be issued to insiders of Grizzly. All of the options will vest immediately upon issuance. The options, exercise price, and the Company's stock option plan are subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

ABOUT GRIZZLY DISCOVERIES INC.

Grizzly is a diversified Canadian mineral exploration company with its primary listing on the TSX Venture Exchange with 62 million shares issued, focused and its precious metals properties in southeastern British Columbia and on developing significant Potash assets in Alberta. The Company holds, or has an interest in: over 180,000 acres of precious-base metal properties in British Columbia along with metallic and industrial mineral permits for potash totaling more than 60,000 acres along the Alberta-Saskatchewan border; and more than 161,000 acres of properties which host diamondiferous kimberlites in the Buffalo Head Hills region of Alberta.

The technical content of this news release and the Company's technical disclosure has been reviewed and approved by Michael B. Dufresne, M. Sc., P. Geol., P.Geo., who is the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

On behalf of the Board,

Grizzly Discoveries Inc.

Brian Testo

President

(780) 693-2242

For further information, please visit our website at www.grizzlydiscoveries.com or contact Investor Relations:

Nancy Massicotte

IR PRO COMMUNICATIONS INC.

Tel: 604-507-3377

Toll Free: 1-866-503-3377

Email: ir@grizzlydiscoveries.com

www.irprocommunications.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.

Caution concerning forward-looking information

This press release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. This information and statements address future activities, events, plans, developments and projections. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, constitute forward-looking statements or forward-looking information. Such forward-looking information and statements are frequently identified by words such as "may," "will," "should," "anticipate," "plan," "expect," "believe," "estimate," "intend" and similar terminology, and reflect assumptions, estimates, opinions and analysis made by management of Grizzly in light of its experience, current conditions, expectations of future developments and other factors which it believes to be reasonable and relevant. Forward-looking information and statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause Grizzly's actual results, performance and achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information and statements and accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed thereon.

Risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to vary include but are not limited to the availability of financing; fluctuations in commodity prices; changes to and compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including environmental laws and obtaining requisite permits; political, economic and other risks; as well as other risks and uncertainties which are more fully described in our annual and quarterly Management's Discussion and Analysis and in other filings made by us with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and available at www.sedar.com. Grizzly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information or statements except as may be required by law.

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This news is published on the Investorideas.com Newswire - a global digital news source for investors and business leaders

Disclaimer/Disclosure: Investorideas.com is a digital publisher of third party sourced news, articles and equity research as well as creates original content, including video, interviews and articles. Original content created by investorideas is protected by copyright laws other than syndication rights. Our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services or products. Nothing on our sites should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investing involves risk and possible losses. This site is currently compensated for news publication and distribution, social media and marketing, content creation and more. Disclosure is posted for each compensated news release, content published /created if required but otherwise the news was not compensated for and was published for the sole interest of our readers and followers. Contact management and IR of each company directly regarding specific questions.

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August 13, 2018 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Gregory Beischer, president and CEO of Millrock Resources, in conversation with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable, discusses his company's assets in Mexico, the sale of its Golden Triangle assets and future plans for the prospect generator.

Maurice Jackson: Joining us today is Gregory Beischer, the president, CEO, and director of Millrock Resources Inc. (MRO:TSX.V; MLRKF:OTCQX), a premier project generator.

I understand that you have some exciting news for us for current and prospective shareholders. Mr. Beischer, take us to Mexico, where Millrock Resources just completed its second phase of core drilling at the La Navidad Gold Project. What can you share with us?

Gregory Beischer: We are satisfied with the drill program results of 3000 meters to fully test the Cobre and Crossover prospects, and we hit gold in just about every hole. Pretty long, anomalous sections of mineralization in the core. What we presented in the press release are the best of the best, but the higher grade or thicker intersections only. And there's some decent widths there with some pretty decent grades. So, we were pleased. More drilling still remains to really understand the significance whether some of these intersections join together into some sort of a cohesive deposit that could be economically mined.

We would have liked to have seen a few thicker intersections. In that part of the world, for the type of mining that would be done, pretty low grade is minable, down as little as 0.5 a gram of gold per ton. But you need pretty thick volumes or thick intersections to make big volumes of material to mine. So, Millrock and Centerra will be considering these results over the month, seeing how we think they all tie together, and then make a decision about the project going forward.

M. Jackson: Millrock has some additional news regarding drill Hole NV010, which was discovered in the first phase of the core drilling. What can you share with us?

G. Beischer: It was Hole 21, Maurice, that had quite a thick intersection of gold, over 60 meters. So that's definitely the sort of width we're looking for. One interpretation is that we drill partially down a vertical structure. And if that's the case, then that 60 meters is not a true width and not as significant as it might first appear. There's alternate interpretations, though, and if it is a 60-meter thick intersection, that's the sort of thing we're really looking for at that grade. But we won't be able to know for sure which interpretation is correct until more drilling is done.

M. Jackson: That's my next question here for you, Gregory. What is the next step at La Navidad, and when can we receive an update?

G. Beischer: Shareholders will receive an update before the end of August. As I mentioned, we'll have a team meeting with our partner, Centerra Gold, at the middle of the month and make a decision about the project's next step from there.

M. Jackson: Moving on to British Columbia, Millrock Resources has just executed a definitive agreement on three projects with Sojourn Exploration. Please share the details of this transaction.

G. Beischer: This is something we've worked long and hard on and I was really glad to finally be able to announce this today. Millrock has vended into Sojourn Exploration, another TSX Venture Exchange listed company, our three projects in the Golden Triangle that we bought back in 2015. We are selling them to Sojourn Exploration for a large number of shares in this new start-up, and we received some cash reimbursement for exploration work that we funded last year.

There will be a new technical team coming into Sojourn, and they're coming with four of their own projects. And these are geologists that we've known for some time now. They are top-notch technical talent. In fact, I don't think there could be much better. One of the main principals of the company basically wrote the book on Northwest British Columbia metallogeny.

These people are proven explorers. They're proven generators. And this is what we wanted to find, geologists who would run the company and follow rigorously, as does Millrock, the project generator model. And these fellows already have established a track record, and command respect from major mining companies. And, in fact, there are several major mining companies already lined up to go look at the projects in the coming weeks. So, I know that they'll be successful in securing funding partners for the projects, and we'll see exploration going on.

So, for Millrock, it's great, because now we have exposure not just to the three projects that we acquired in British Columbia a couple of years ago, but the four others that these gentlemen are bringing to the company. And they're pretty darned good and interesting projects that have a chance of success. So, we'll be content to be large shareholders; probably in the order of 19% of the company will be owned. And if they have exploration success and those shares become highly valuable, that's going to benefit Millrock shareholders.

M. Jackson: That's another classic display of good business acumen by Millrock Resources. So, you have the shares, and you also received some cash. Share with us, what do you plan to do with the capital from these sales?

G. Beischer: It's not a huge amount of capital, but it's always welcome to put that into our treasury. And we just keep doing what we're doing, Maurice. It's got to be a constant pipeline of new projects. So, that money will be used in part to generate more projects elsewhere. I will say that we're not going to generate more projects in British Columbia. When we bought those projects, it was a target of opportunity at what appears to have been the very, very bottom of the market, in late 2015.

But, we'll leave it to Sojourn to be one of the better project generators in BC. And look, there's a lot of competition in British Columbia, a lot of smart geologists. So, we'll stick to Alaska, where there's a lot more elbow room, and Sonora, where there are really good chances of finding mines. So, we'll deploy the capital to generate more projects is the short answer.

M. Jackson: Congratulations on all fronts. This is quite impressive. As a shareholder, I wouldn't expect anything less from Millrock Resources. Before we leave, Mr. Beischer, last question. What did I forget to ask?

G. Beischer: We always like to talk about the price of gold because, as you know, even though Millrock explores for copper, and zinc, and even uranium, so much of capital availability seems to depend on the price of gold. And it's gone down. No idea what it's going to do any more. I think it's going to take a surging gold price before investor interest will really pour into the mining markets. And some of the things I read tell me a big rise up is imminent, but we've seen that before. So, I'm not sure, but I know it has a big effect on junior explorers.

M. Jackson: Gregory, if someone listening wants to get more information regarding Millrock Resources, please share the contact details.

G. Beischer: Please visit our website at www.millrockresources.com and or contact Melanee Henderson of our investor relations office who will be glad to take your call and answer any questions.

M. Jackson: And as a reminder, Millrock Resources trades on the TSX-V symbol MRO, and on the OTCQX symbol MLRKF.

And last but not least, please visit our website www.provenandprobable.com where we interview the most respected names in the natural resource space. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.

Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.

Disclosure:

1) Maurice Jackson: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: Millrock Resources. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. My company has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this article: Millrock Resources is a sponsor of Proven and Probable. Proven and Probable disclosures are listed below.

2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: None. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees.

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Disclaimer/Disclosure: Investorideas.com is a digital publisher of third party sourced news, articles and equity research as well as creates original content, including video, interviews and articles. Original content created by investorideas is protected by copyright laws other than syndication rights. Our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services or products. Nothing on our sites should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investing involves risk and possible losses. This site is currently compensated for news publication and distribution, social media and marketing, content creation and more. Disclosure is posted for each compensated news release, content published /created if required but otherwise the news was not compensated for and was published for the sole interest of our readers and followers. Contact management and IR of each company directly regarding specific questions.

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JOPLIN, Mo. - August 13, 2018 (Investorideas.com Newswire) ZAF Energy Systems Inc. (ZAF), a developer of next-generation battery technology, announced today that it has received $300,000, the first installment of a $600,000 investment from Missouri's Department of Economic Development (DED) fund as part of the state's Venture Capital Co-Investment Program.

Demand for ZAF's nickel zinc (NiZn) battery as a replacement for lead-acid batteries in key market segments is growing. The company will use the investment to hire employees, expand production, and forge strategic supply chain partnerships. This additional production capability will enable ZAF to meet growing customer demand, which will accelerate licensing and joint venture negotiations and commercialize NiZn batteries on a global scale.

Randy Moore, president and CEO of ZAF Energy Systems, commented, "This award will help us meet our goal of substantially increasing our production capacity, thus enabling us to keep pace with growing demand for our battery technology. We have demand now for over a million batteries in what we call soft backlog, meaning that customers have told us that when the manufacturing capacity is available, that's the quantity they will order."

ZAF has already cultivated strong relationships with companies in the commercial trucking, telecommunications, and large-scale data storage industries that are in search of powerful, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly battery solutions. ZAF's NiZn batteries have potential uses in a wide range of applications including: automotive, heavy trucking, remote telecom, renewable energy, and marine. NiZn batteries are poised to disrupt the $50 billion conventional lead-acid battery market with their ability to provide twice the storage capacity and three times the power of legacy lead-acid batteries in a smaller, lighter package. They provide a powerful and affordable alternative to their lead-acid counterparts while generating a lower environmental impact.

About ZAF Energy Systems, Inc.

Incorporated in 2011 and with locations in northwestern Montana and southwest Missouri, ZAF Energy Systems develops and commercializes next-generation battery technologies that use sustainable, non toxic materials and can be safely and easily recycled. Its breakthrough battery technologies include a nickel zinc (NiZn) chemistry and a zinc air chemistry, both of which deliver the highest power and energy density of any battery system in their class. ZAF's rechargeable batteries provide long-life and economical solutions in a safe package for a variety of applications, including: electric vehicles, commercial trucking, renewables integration, back-up power, consumer electronics, mobility, and recreation vehicles. For more information, visit: www.zafsys.com

Press Contact:

Wendy Prabhu

Mercom Communications, a division of Mercom Capital Group

1-512-215-4452

zaf@mercomcapital.com

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Arif Consulting Engineers Islamabad Jobs 2018 for Engineers

Latest Arif Consulting Engineers Engineering Posts Islamabad 2021 Arif Consulting Engineers Islamabad, Pakistan required candidates for the posts of Senior Structure Design Engineer, Junior Structure Design Engineer, Assistant Resident Engineer and Site Engineer.

How to Apply on Arif Consulting Engineers Job Advertisement

Apply as per details in job advertisement. In some cases, you may apply online at vacancies after registering at https://www.jobz.pk online.

Note: Beware of Fraudulent Recruiting Activities. If the employer asks you to pay money for any purpose including processing to shortlisting, do not pay at all and report us using our contact us form. Apply as per instuctions & dates mentioned in official job ad. Govt jobs cannot be applied online here. Error & omissions excepted.
What a Paratha Islamabad Jobs 2018 for Managers

Latest What a Paratha Hotel Posts Islamabad 2021 What a Paratha Islamabad, Pakistan is seeking for the services from experienced candidates for the posts of Managers, Cashiers, Kitchen Helpers, Bar BQ Workers, Waiters, Sweepers and Dish Washer.

How to Apply on What a Paratha Job Advertisement

Apply as per details in job advertisement. In some cases, you may apply online at vacancies after registering at https://www.jobz.pk online.

Note: Beware of Fraudulent Recruiting Activities. If the employer asks you to pay money for any purpose including processing to shortlisting, do not pay at all and report us using our contact us form. Apply as per instuctions & dates mentioned in official job ad. Govt jobs cannot be applied online here. Error & omissions excepted.
WIMER, Ore. 

UPDATE: The Jackson County Sheriff's Office (JCSO) says that they are no longer looking for Correia, following his shooting and hospitalization in an "unrelated incident." However, they continue to investigate the Wimer assault case.

(Updated 8/14/18 at 3:45 p.m.)

UPDATE: Eddie Joseph Correia, suspect in a Wimer assault on Friday, was found shot in Cave Junction early Tuesday morning, according to Oregon State Police (OSP).

At approximately 1:00 a.m., OSP Troopers responded to the Cave Junction area on the report of a person that had been shot.

The victim, later identified as Correia, was transported to Three Rivers Medical Center in Grants Pass and later transferred to Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford.

Anyone with information regarding this shooting is asked to contact the OSP Southern Command Center at 541- 776-6111 and reference case # SP 18-302404.

OSP says that the investigation is ongoing and no further information will be released at this time.

(Updated 8/14/18 at 3:30 p.m.)

INITIAL REPORT: Deputies from the Jackson County Sheriffs Office (JCSO) are looking for a suspect in the assault of a young man over the weekend.

JCSO says that 34-year-old Eddie Joseph Correia, a transient from the Grants Pass area, pointed a handgun at a 19-year-old man at the Wimer Family Market on East Evans Creek Road and assaulted him with the help of an accomplice.

On Friday night, just after 8 p.m., deputies were dispatched to reports of an assault at the market. The caller reported that a man armed with a handgun pistol whipped the victim in the parking lot. A woman with Correia, later identified as 29-year-old Lindsey Anne Jordan, also reportedly struck the victim. The victim claimed to be acquainted with Jordan, but says that he did not know Correia prior to the incident.

After the assault, Correia and Jordan fled in a white Dodge pickup with a broken rear window to a residence associated with Jordan in the 6900-block of East Evans Creek Road, according to JCSO. A deputy later located Jordan as she tried to leave the residence as a passenger in another vehicle. She was taken into custody and lodged in jail on a charge of third degree assault.

The victim went to the hospital by private vehicle for treatment for facial injuries, described as contusions and lacerations. He was treated and released.

Deputies served a search warrant on the residence in an effort to locate Correia and evidence related to the case. The JCSO SWAT team assisted with the warrant service because Correia was reportedly armed and has a criminal history involving firearms.

Correia was not located at the residencehe is believed to have fled into a wooded area nearby prior to deputies arrival. During the search, deputies located a handgun in the residence. JCSO could not confirm whether it was the same firearm used in the assault, or whether Correia has access to additional firearms.

While searching the residence, JCSO says that they encountered several other people. 26-year-old Kyle Flury Palomino, who was not involved in the assault, was arrested on an outstanding warrant and transported to jail. Palomino was also charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine.

Deputies believe that Correia returned to the residence after the warrant service and fled again in the white Dodge truck. Just after 3:00 a.m., deputies located the truck abandoned about a mile away on Pinegrove Road. Attempts to locate Correia in the area were unsuccessful.

JCSO says that they have probable cause to arrest Correia on charges related to this incident. In addition, Correia has a state-wide (Oregon) felony arrest warrant for violating the terms of his post-prison supervision.

Correia is described as six-feet-tall, weighing about 245 pounds. He has numerous tattoos, including on both eyelids and the number 13  on his throat.

Deputies urge citizens to not approach Correia and to call their local law enforcement agency if they know his whereabouts. Those with other information about the case can call Deputy Adam Osborne at (541) 774-6800. Refer to case #18-16778.
KOMO via ABCNews.com(FRIDAY HARBOR, Wash.) -- Grieving Orca whale who hold on to her dead calf for more than 2 weeks, has let go of the dead body of her offspring.



The 30-year-old southern resident killer whale who was spotted pushing the corpse of its short-lived offspring since 24 July, 30 minutes after it gave birth to her baby at least until 17 days later, has finally let go of her dead calf, according to researcher.



On the afternoon of August 11, the orca whale, J35, also known as Tahlequah vigorously chased a school of salmon with her pod-mates in mid-Haro Strait in front of the Center for Whale Research for a half mile - no longer carrying the deceased baby that she had carried for at least seventeen days and 1,000 miles, according to Center for Whale Research.



Ken Balcomb, founder of the Center for Whale Research who has been monitoring J35 since she gave birth to her short-lived baby, saw J35 again on Sunday. This Monday morning, Balcomb is on his boat to find her to observe her behavior.



"I feel much relieve," Balcomb told ABC News before getting on his boat.



"I'm hoping this ordeal is over."



Her tour of grief is now over and her behavior is remarkably frisky, Center for Whale Research wrote on its website.



Telephoto digital images taken from shore show that this mother whale appears to be in good physical condition following her record-setting ordeal, according to Center for Whale Research.



There had been reports from brief sightings by whale-watchers two days ago that J35, Tahlequah, was not pushing the calf carcass in Georgia Strait near Vancouver, British Columbia, the website says. It went on saying that now we can confirm that she definitely has abandoned it.



Researcher initially planed to study the body of the dead calf to to find out what lead to her death, but the body of the dead baby not seen in the water.



The carcass has probably sunk to the bottom of these inland marine waters of the Salish Sea, and researchers may not get a chance to examine it for necropsy, the website says.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
LEBANON, Ore. -- Smoke and flames took over a home in Lebanon Sunday afternoon along Santiam Highway.

When fire crews arrived, they noticed that the residents were not at home.

The 24 firefighters worked fast to prevent the fire from spreading to surrounding homes and nearby fields.

The residents returned and told firefighters they had animals in the house.

Fire crews were able to retrieve two dogs and one cat. The animals were treated with oxygen until they appeared healthy.

Crews spent more than three hours on scene.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.
ICT ministry to come up with measures to prevent incidents like KT outage The Ministry of Science and ICT on Friday said it will come up with measures restricting the concurrent update of routers to prevent recurrence of a network outage that crippled th...
ROCHESTER, Minn.- Candidates are making their rounds before the primary election, encouraging people to get out and vote.

Today, US Senator Tina Smith and DFL candidate for Minnesota's 1st congressional district Dan Feehan met with volunteers, as they geared up to go door knocking.

Senator Smith tells KIMT that this election year has caused quite a bit of disagreement and wants to remind voters that they have power at the polls.

On Tuesday you have the opportunity to choose and you need to, if you use that power that you have on Tuesday your voice is going to be so much stronger because of it, said the senator.

Republican endorsed Jim Hagedorn, whos campaigning for the first congressional district seat, was at Kasson's Festival in the Park 'Grand Parade. Hes out looking to peek the interest of undecided voters, he tells KIMT he's out to let the people of Kasson know what he stands for.

Were pro-life, we're pro second amendment... we're for the President and his legislative agenda we're excited about it, said Hagedorn.

Many polls in Minnesota open at 7 a.m on Tuesday.
ST. PAUL, Minn.  The Minnesota Court of Appeals has upheld an Olmsted County drug conviction but ordered a resentencing.

Aaron Michael Anderson, 38 of Mazeppa, was arrested in December 2015 after a traffic stop and convicted of 1st degree possession of methamphetamine. Anderson was sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison, with credit for 177 days already served.

Anderson appealed his conviction and sentence. He says he was pulled over because he was driving someone elses vehicle and the owner had an outstanding felony warrant and a cancelled drivers license. Anderson says as soon as law enforcement determined he was not the owner, they had no cause to stop and search the vehicle and find 27 grams of meth inside. Anderson also argues he should have been sentenced under new guidelines in the Minnesota Drug Sentencing Reform Act and not under previous sentencing rules.

The Court of Appeals has rejected the first claim, ruling that authorities had reasonable cause to stop and search the vehicle Anderson was driving. However, the Court agrees that Anderson should have been sentenced under the new guidelines and orders a new sentencing hearing be held.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  A man charged with murder says his actions in an Urbandale bar fight are protected by Iowa's "stand your ground" law.

The Des Moines Register reports that a judge has set a hearing for Aug. 20 to consider the motion filed for 49-year-old Rodney Henricksen. He's pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the Jan. 18 death of Joshua Sadlon, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

The motion says Henricksen was defending himself from an intoxicated and aggressive Sadlon. Henricksen told three people at the bar that Sadlon had threatened his life. The law says a person doesn't have to retreat before using deadly force if he or she reasonably thinks his or her life is being threatened.

The motion says Henricksen was entitled to use reasonable force to preemptively strike at Sadlon to avoid injury to himself.
AUSTIN, Minn.  A man accused of a garage attack has filed a petition to plead guilty.

Noah Dean Skattebo, 39 of Austin, is charged with 1st degree burglary and 3rd degree assault. Austin police say he entered a garage in the 1600 block of 4th Avenue SW on January 15 and punched and kicked another man. Doctors said the victim suffered orbital fractures to his face. The victim said he thought his attacker used brass knuckles or some other object.

When he was arrested, officers say Skattebo denied the attack but had blood on his shoes.

His sentencing has been set for December 20.
CERRO GORDO COUNTY, Iowa  A man wanted on a warrant has been arrested and is facing drug and theft charges.

Chad Wolfe, 43, is being held in the Cerro Gordo County Jail after being arrested at 10:39 p.m. near Walmart.

Authorities said Wolfe was found with a glass pipe used for smoking illegal drugs. He is also accused of theft for allegedly stealing a 10-person tent from Wal-Mart valued at $179.00. Police said Wolfe scanned the bar code for a t-shirt without paying for the tent.

This is the third time in 2018 Wolfe has been arrested for felony drug possession.
By Aislinn Laing

Aug 12 (Reuters) - The main union at Chile's Caserones copper mine said on Sunday that 98.5 percent of its workers had voted to reject a final offer from mine operator Lumina Copper during mediation.

The union said in a statement that as a result of the vote, that was held following a weekend-long meeting of its members, a strike had been agreed and it would begin on Tuesday at 8am.

It said it would first meet Lumina, which is controlled by a partnership of JX Holding and Mitsui Mining , for a final period of compulsory mediation starting on Monday at 1030am.

Lumina's human resources vice-president Claudio Raffo said the company had offered the most competitive package it could to workers, given that it had failed to meet its production targets, and had to ensure the company and its workers had a "sustainable future".

"We hope for that reason that the union members will reconsider their decision," he said. "If however that is not the case, the company will be ready to face a mobilization in the best way it can."

The union at Caserones voted to reject Lumina's final contract offer in late July and began compulsory government-led mediation last week. A company spokesman told Reuters a second, improved offer was made during the mediation, which the union on Sunday voted to reject.

The mine produced 122,800 tonnes of copper in 2017, just over 2 per cent of Chile's total annual copper output.

(Reporting by Aislinn Laing Editing by Susan Thomas)
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Militiamen in eastern Congo attacked trucks belonging to Banro Corps Namoya gold mine, killing two people and kidnapping four others, the army said on Saturday, in at least the third attack on mine personnel since last year.

The attack was carried out by militiamen from the group Mai Mai Malaika on Thursday in the Tubangoyi forest about 35 km (22 miles) from the mine in Democratic Republic of Congos Maniema province, local army spokesman Dieudonne Kasereka told Reuters.

The two people killed are not Banro workers but passengers that the drivers picked up along the road. For the moment, the hostages have not been found but the Congolese army has launched operations to recover them, Kasereka said.

He added that the hostages were two drivers and two soldiers who were protecting the trucks.

Banro did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Repeated attacks by the Mai Mai on Namoya and Banros Twangiza mine in neighbouring South Kivu province in the past two years threw the Canadian companys survival into question late last year.

It was delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange in January but is pursuing a recapitalisation plan to continue its operations.

Militias like the Mai Mai, who believe blessed water has magical properties like protecting fighters from bullets, have preyed on eastern Congos population and exploited mineral resources since the end in 2003 of a regional war that killed millions, most from hunger and disease.

Mai Mai Malaika is one of several groups allied with another militia in the zone called Mai Mai Yakutumba, which briefly threatened to capture the city of Uvira last September before being pushed back by Congolese and U.N. forces.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Peter Wang was asleep at his home in Beijing last Monday when police officers arrived before dawn to detain him, saying he had helped organize a protest planned for later that day.

Across the city, others who had lost money investing in Chinas online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms - including some who had traveled from as far away as Shandong and Shanxi provinces - got similar visits from police.

By the time they were released, the demonstration they had planned using social media chat groups had fizzled amid a massive security response around the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) headquarters in the heart of Beijings financial district.

Instead of demanding that the government bail out the hundreds of collapsed P2P companies, those who made it to the protest area were forced onto buses and carted away to Jiujingzhuang, a holding center for petitioners on the outskirts of Beijing, according to two P2P investors.

Once the police checked your ID cards and saw your petition materials, they knew you are here looking to protect your rights. Then they put you on a bus directly, said Wang, who works at an auto repair shop. He joined a separate, smaller protest in a different part of Beijing after his detention. There was no channel to solve any problems. All they care about was preventing any disturbance.

The size of Chinas P2P industry is far bigger than in the rest of the world combined, with outstanding loans of 1.49 trillion yuan ($217.96 billion), according to data tracker p2p001.com, run by the Shenzhen Qiancheng Internet Finance Research Institute.

P2P, in which platforms gather funds from retail investors and loan the money to small corporate and individual borrowers, promising high returns, started flourishing nearly unregulated in China in 2011. At its peak in 2015, there were about 3,500 such businesses.

But after Beijing began a campaign to defuse debt bubbles and reduce risks in the economy, including the countrys enormous non-bank lending sector, cracks began to appear as investors pulled their funds.

Since June, 243 online lending platforms have gone bust, according to wdzj.com, another P2P industry data provider. In that period, the industry saw its first monthly net fund outflows since at least 2014, the data provider said.

The latest burst of anger, which led to the planned protests, flared up ahead of a June 30 deadline for companies to comply with new business practice standards, which are still being finalised.

Many of them shut down rather than face tougher regulations, Zane Wang, chief executive of online micro-loan provider China Rapid Finance (XRF.N), told Reuters. That caused panic in the broader market. Investors tried to pull funds from P2P companies, causing liquidity problems for many smaller operators, Wang said, although larger ones are faring better. Some platforms might become a winner out of this, and some platforms, probably a large portion of the platforms, might not be able to make it, he said.

Chinas propaganda machine has swung into action as Beijing seeks to reassure people that the Chinese economy and financial markets are healthy despite a trade war with the United States and steep declines in the value of stock prices and the yuan.

No mainland Chinese media - official mainstream papers or more independent-leaning publications - reported the attempts to protest in Chinas capital.

Many would-be protesters were forced to give fingerprints and blood samples and prevented from traveling to Beijing. Some were even removed from Beijing-bound trains ahead of the protests, said a Shanghai-based P2P investor who lost 1.3 million yuan. She declined to be named out of fear for her safety.

Even after the demonstrations were effectively snuffed out, hundreds of security personnel patrolled around CBIRCs office, highlighting authorities sensitivity to any form of social instability.

The CBIRC did not respond to an emailed request seeking comment. The Ministry of Public Security did not respond to a fax seeking comment.

On Sunday, state media outlet Xinhua reported that the government has proposed 10 measures to reduce risk in the P2P sector, including a strict ban on new P2P companies and online finance platforms, and a blacklist under Chinas social credit rating system for those who dont repay their loans.

MESSY CLEAN-UP

Peer-to-peer lending was pioneered by firms like LendingClub (LC.N) in the United States, but in China it has expanded on a massive scale as firms piggy-backed on the governments drive for financial innovation to serve credit-starved small and mid-sized private companies.

The industry expanded too fast for regulators to keep up.

Many P2P platforms lend to customers that might be deemed too risky for a commercial bank. That has in cases led to liquidity crises, when too many investors demand their funds at once if loans appear to be going south.

There have also been cases of outright fraud, the most well-known being Ezubao - a $7.6 billion Ponzi scam involving more than 900,000 investors.

More than 100 companies listed in Chinas domestic stock markets are involved in P2P operations, and 32 of those own more than 30 percent of a P2P company, according to a July research report by CITIC Securities.

China extended by two years a separate June 30 deadline for an online finance clean-up campaign. But rather than calming matters, it created more uncertainty, market watchers said.

CITIC Securities estimated that under the clean-up campaign, only about 100 platforms out of 1,836 would be able to meet even todays regulatory standards and obtain a license. Less than 50 would thrive.

Experts say larger companies would probably benefit from firmer regulation. But for now, listed companies in the industry have seen their share prices take a beating.

Shares of some of the Chinese P2P companies listed in the U.S. have plunged. China Rapid Finance shares have lost 73 percent so far this year, while Yirendai (YRD.N) has slumped 71 percent. PPDai (PPDF.N) has dropped 44 percent, and Hexindai (HX.O) 27 percent.

Officials with PPDai declined to comment.

In a news release, Hexindai said it would improve risk management and further reduce credit risk.

Tang Ning, founder and chief executive officer of CreditEase, the majority owner of P2P lending platform Yirendai, told Reuters that he was concerned that the industry-wide panic would escalate.

He urged regulators to act with a sense of urgency to protect good P2P companies while punishing bad players to avoid harming Chinas financial system and economy.

Otherwise, it will be winter for the industry. All companies will be hit, both illicit and compliant. Everyone will lose and thats a situation no one wants to see, said Tang. Small businesses will lose an important, or the most important source of funding. Thats not only hurting the financial system but also the real economy.

For Wang, the Beijing investor, the pain is acute. He and his family had invested 7 million yuan - their life savings, with which they had planned to use to buy a home at the end of the year - in two P2P platforms that have shut down.

They recovered none of their investment.

We are financial refugees, not mobsters. The only thing we want is to get back our money, at least a portion of it, said Wang.
BERLIN (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Monday that Turkeys economic situation was causing great concern and that Ankara could do more to improve diplomatic ties with both the United States and Germany which would also ease its economic woes.

Yes, the developments that are currently going on in Turkey are causing great concern, Maas said during a news conference in Berlin when asked to comment on Turkeys economic situation.

Turkeys relations with United States and Germany have been strained by its decision to arrest several citizens from both countries. Maas said that resolving differences between Turkey and its two NATO allies could help ease its economic crisis.

I believe that would help to facilitate a solution, including to the economic problems, Maas said.
Shenandoah, IA (51601)

Today

Mainly clear. Low 32F. NNW winds at 10 to 20 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear. Low 32F. NNW winds at 10 to 20 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph.
A Seoul court handed down a prison term on Monday to a figure-drawing model for secretly taking nude photos of a male colleague and deliberately posting them on the Internet.

The Seoul Western District Court sentenced the 25-year-old defendant, only identified by her surname Ahn, to 10 months in prison and ordered her to undergo a 40-hour therapy session on sexual violence.

"The defendant has damaged the victim's personal dignity in an irrecoverable way and needs punishment, given the repercussions her actions have had on the victim's life and society," the court ruled.

She was charged in May for taking the photos without the victim's consent during a drawing class at Hongik University and leaking them on a radical feminist website in the same month.

She has told police she was angry at the victim after they had an argument over sharing the rest area. The suspect and victim had just met on the day of the incident.

She said earlier she never expected it to be "such a big deal." (Yonhap)
President Moon Jae-in's approval rating dropped to its lowest level last week, a poll showed Monday, amid an ongoing investigation into an opinion rigging scandal targeting his former and current aides.

Moon's approval rating came to 58.1 percent in a survey conducted Monday through Friday by Realmeter. The reading marks a 5.1 percentage point plunge from 63.2 percent tallied a week earlier. It also marks the first time Moon's approval rating has dipped to below 60 percent.

The sharp drop follows the recent summons of South Gyeongsang Province Gov. Kim Kyoung-soo, who worked as a key election campaigner for Moon in the lead-up to the 2017 presidential election.

The former lawmaker of the ruling Democratic Party has been summoned twice for questioning over possible involvement in suspected attempts by a local blogger to manipulate online opinion in favor of the party and its presidential candidate.

A special counsel investigating the case has also summoned an incumbent secretary to the president, Song In-bae, for questioning.












Bottles of Monsanto's Roundup weed killer are displayed on a store shelf in St. Louis in this June 2011 file photo. / AP-Yonhap





Monsanto Korea CEO Lee Nam-hee
By Vladislav Inozemtsev





MOSCOW  With concern growing in the United States and Europe over Russia's so-called oligarchs and the money they have stashed abroad, it is worth considering two fundamental questions. First, who qualifies as an oligarch? And, second, does every oligarch deserve to be regarded with suspicion?







Suspicion is certainly the order of the day in the U.S., where the authorities have announced massive sanctions against two Russian tycoons, Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg, as part of an effort to punish the Kremlin for its alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election.







Similarly, following the nerve-agent attack in England on former Russian double agent Sergey Skripal and his daughter, the United Kingdom has implemented new measures aimed at preventing money laundering, with capital inflows from Russia to come under the closest scrutiny.







The problem is that the criteria Western governments are using to identify Russians worthy of investigation and even punishment remain overly broad.







The most common definition of an oligarch is a person whose wealth depends on political connections  particularly to Russian President Vladimir Putin. On its so-called Putin list  a sanctions watch list created last January  the U.S. Treasury identified 96 "oligarchs" based on the mere fact that they are worth more than $1 billion.







In fact, even the focus on ties to Putin is flawed. After all, many of today's wealthy Russian businessmen  including Deripaska (who is being punished by the U.S.) and Roman Abramovich (who has been protected by Israel), as well as Alfa Group's Mikhail Fridman and Norilsk Nickel's Vladimir Potanin  go their start under Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.







Moreover, some wealthy Russians who benefited from Kremlin connections in the past have already fled Russia, and are now doing business in the West or living there in exile.







Former Bank of Moscow President Andrey Borodin has received political asylum in the U.K. Yevgeny Chichvarkin, a former mobile phone tycoon, has actively campaigned against Putin since fleeing Russia in 2009. And Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's wealthiest man, spent 10 years in prison on trumped-up fraud and embezzlement charges after funding Putin's opponents.







Given this, Western governments need a more nuanced definition that distinguishes "bad" oligarchs from the rest. Such a definition should include, first and foremost, direct and current involvement with the Kremlin leadership in business and personal deals, including large, politically sensitive government contracts.







For example, the billionaire magnate Arkady Rotenberg has constructed natural-gas pipelines for state energy giant Gazprom and is building a bridge to Crimea.







Such involvement can also include nepotism. In the 1990s, Alfa Group's Pyotr Aven authorized Putin's controversial commercial deals in St. Petersburg when he served as minister for external economic affairs, and Alfa Group has employed both the son-in-law of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin's own eldest daughter. In such cases, the oligarchs in question are clearly acting as loyal servants to Putin's regime.







A second criterion for defining a "bad" oligarch should be that a major part of his or her business dealings are in Russia, and thus depend on at least tacit government support. That means potentially giving a pass to the many wealthy Russians who in recent years have been selling off parts of their holdings in Russia and investing in Western countries (presumably at least partly owing to sanctions).







For example, Abramovich, a former governor of the Arctic region of Chukotka, Mikhail Prokhorov, who ran as an independent candidate in the 2012 Russian presidential election, or Alexander Lebedev, the longtime financial backer of Novaya Gazeta, have sold nearly all of their assets in Russia and pursued legal and transparent businesses in the U.S. and the U.K.







Should they not be treated differently from the likes of Rotenberg, Yury Kovalchuk (known as Putin's personal banker), or Putin's de facto deputy Igor Sechin, not to mention Russia's super-wealthy public officials?







To be clear, every individual who has amassed a major fortune in Russia did so at least partly in cooperation with the state. But that does not mean they all deserve to be punished equally today. Joachim-Napoleon Murat and Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte were both Napoleon's pawns. Yet whereas Murat stuck by Napoleon (and was ultimately executed for treason), Bernadotte, in his position as King Charles XIV John of Sweden, eventually helped to bring about Napoleon's defeat.







Not everyone is basing their treatment of Russia's wealthy on sweeping generalizations. Israel granted citizenship to Abramovich. More surprising, France dismissed a money-laundering charge brought against another billionaire, Suleyman Kerimov, though Kerimov, a member of Russia's Federation Council, does maintains close ties to the Kremlin.







But some, like the U.S. administration, continue to paint all wealthy Russians with the same brush. This is counter-productive. If the West really wants to hurt Putin's regime, giving oligarchs an incentive to take their money and leave is a lot more effective than punishing those whom Putin considers his enemies.









Vladislav Inozemtsev is director of the Center for Post-Industrial Studies in Moscow. Copyright belongs to Project Syndicate (

).




By Doug Bandow





It has been decades since bombs fell and bullets flew on the Korean Peninsula. Yet the U.S., China, North Korea, and South Korea are still technically at war. The Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.



The time is long overdue for the "combatants" to declare a state of peace.



Until now formally ending the war might have seemed premature. Despite Pyongyang's sometimes pacific protestations, it didn't seem like the North Korean leadership actually wanted peace.



Everything changed this year. Although the Trump-Kim summit was the highlight, there was much more. Kim met three times with China's Xi Jinping and twice with the Republic of Korea's Moon Jae-in; the second visit was arranged overnight.



Indeed, Kim apparently has been invited to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin and there is even talk of a summit with Japan's Shinzo Abe. The North Korean leader appeared to enjoy his stroll in Singapore.



Equally significant, the North recently ended its anti-American propaganda. For 70 years Washington and its "puppets" in the ROK were the primary enemies used to rally North Koreans behind the regime. Now Kim Jong-un has implicitly declared that peace reigns on the peninsula.



Recognizing changing reality is a good reason to formally make peace, but there is a better one: encouraging movement toward denuclearization.



Grant that no one has ever gone broke betting against North Korea's intransigence. Moreover, the U.S. has given Kim much cause to hold on to his nukes.



The last international pariah to disarm in return for Western expressions of love and affection, Moammar Gadhafi probably wondered in his dying moments why he had trusted the Americans.



Nevertheless, Kim appears to be different than his predecessors. He is more committed to economic reform and comfortable with the international spotlight than his father and grandfather. In a first, he at least wants North Korea to appear non-threatening.



If denuclearization is really possible, it still won't be easy. Pyongyang won't give away anything for free and Kim understandably wants assurances  presumably better than those received by Gadhafi.



Before the summit Kim said nukes wouldn't be necessary if the U.S. and North Korea had a relationship and lots of contact. The short statement agreed to at the summit put denuclearization last, after establishing "new U.S.- North Korea relations" and building "a lasting and stable peace regime." Kim almost certainly expects to proceed in that order.



The administration should seek to accelerate the process, first ending the dual travel ban, on Americans going to North Korea and North Koreans coming to America. Dropping the prohibition would indicate the end of what the North Koreans routinely term America's "hostile policy."



The administration also could send additional visitors. For instance, a Treasury Department official could discuss how Washington might roll back sanctions  if Pyongyang proceeds with denuclearization. The objective would be to demonstrate to Kim that the administration is prepared to establish significant, positive, and ongoing ties.



Moreover, the administration should propose elimination of today's formal state of war. Pyongyang long pushed to create "a peace regime."



Some Washington policymakers fear that a formal peace treaty would be viewed as a concession, but the U.S. and South Korea no less than North Korea have an interest in peace. Even something less formal than a formal treaty would be helpful: The North suggested a declaration ending the war.



Another concern is that agreeing to a peace treaty would reduce international pressure on the North, but that ship has sailed: Kim's transformation from threatening lunatic to serious statesman has transformed South Korean public opinion and led both China and Russia to relax sanctions enforcement.



Finally, some U.S. officials fear such an agreement would reduce the justification for U.S. troops in the Republic of Korea. But why should they remain if peace reigns?



While costing little, creating a formal agreement or treaty would reinforce the Kim government's retreat from confrontation. This approach also would help maintain cooperation with South Korea, which has agreed with the North to replace the armistice with a permanent peace accord.



Even more important, though, would be to advance Washington's denuclearization agenda. Kim is more likely to comply if the rest of the agreement also is fulfilled. And that means ending the peninsula's state of war.



Washington understandably wants to eliminate Pyongyang's leverage at the start of the process, which is why the North's demand for normalization of relations first makes sense. Why give up your ultimate deterrent if you can't trust your longtime enemies?



North Korea understandably distrusts Washington, which has a disturbing  from other governments' perspectives, anyway  tendency to bomb, invade, and occupy weaker nations. But if the administration signs a peace treaty with Pyongyang, the North Koreans are more likely to believe that President Trump has no ill intent.



Transforming the peninsula would be advantageous even if the North did not fully disarm. Kim's willingness to denuclearize may be in doubt, but his newly demonstrated desire to participate internationally is not. Creating "a peace regime" might help normalize the North's behavior even if it does not result in disarmament.



By meeting Kim, the president created new opportunities to encourage stability and peace in Northeast Asia. Despite the uncertainties and risks, he should press forward, which means building the sort of relationship and treaty that might help bring North Korea in from the cold.





Doug Bandow (chessset@aol.com) is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of "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 views expressed in the above article are the author's and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.


By Hwang Jae-ho





Kim Hor Toh.
Reaching consensus is important before making changes



The government is considering measures to ensure the sustainable operation of the National Pension Fund, which could run out of money faster than predicted.



Possible measures may include extending the top subscription age from 60 to 65. Another step could be to collect higher premiums, now 9 percent of a subscriber's monthly income.



The Moon Jae-in administration is floating the idea of pension reform because the pension fund for salaried workers and the self-employed is expected to be depleted in 2057, three years earlier than the previously estimated 2060.



The need for pension reform is growing because the number of senior citizens is rapidly increasing while the birthrate is expected to fall to 1 _the world's lowest _ from last year's 1.05.

If these trends continue, the pension fund may go bankrupt much earlier than 2057.



Falling investment returns are also putting more pressure for pension reform. The fund is estimated at 635 trillion won ($562 billion), the third-largest in the world, with 22 million subscribers. Its return rate hit a five-year high of 7.3 percent last year. But this plummeted to 0.89 percent in the first four months of this year.



Against this backdrop, pension reform is more than necessary if the authorities want to keep the fund afloat in the years ahead. However, it is not easy to push for reform, given that many subscribers are against the "paying more, getting less" formula.



Therefore, it is important to reach a consensus not only with subscribers but also with the people about how to reform the pension system. If the government fails to do so, it will face strong public resistance to any changes in the subscription period and pension premiums.



A possible extension of the top subscription age to 65 may backfire, considering that the legal retirement age is now 60. This measure, if adopted, could not produce any intended results because only a few people can work after retirement.



The government is reportedly mulling increasing premiums gradually from 9 percent of monthly income to 13 percent. However, the increase might have an adverse socioeconomic effect on subscribers because their disposable income will shrink.



All parties, including subscribers, policymakers and the public, should pool their wisdom on when and how to reform the pension fund. They also need to make sure that pension reform will not pass the burden to future generations.








By Nam Hyun-woo





Korea South-East Power CEO Lyu Hyang-reol
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Get ready to shake yer booty: Learn fraternity and sorority style stepping at the Ford; catch a free show with Ranky Tanky at the Skirball or handjive as "Grease" plays on the Wiltern's big screen. For more cerebral offerings: author Allie Rowbottom talks about Jell-O and her family's history, Wayne Kramer of MC5 discusses his memoir and the OC-Centric New Play Festival kicks off in Orange. The Manhattan Beach Open (volleyball) begins a four-day tournament and Echo Park Rising returns.

MONDAY, AUG. 13; 7 p.m.

JAM Session: Stepping

Ford Theatres -- 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood

Members of the California Step Association teach participants how to turn their bodies into instruments through foot stomping, hand clapping and chants. After a demo, instructors will break down the moves to create a group performance. This dance form has its roots in African culture, made popular by historically black fraternities and sororities. All ages and skill levels are welcome to participate. Be sure to wear sneakers or boots for this workshop.

COST: FREE; MORE INFO

MONDAY, AUG. 13; 8 p.m.

Heat Comedy

Iron Triangle Brewery, 1581 Industrial St., downtown L.A.

Todd Masterson hosts a new comedy show the second Monday of every month. August's comics include Marlena Rodriguez, Kelly McInerney, Heather Turman and Jon Schabl. The comedy should be as hot as the temperature outside -- but the venue is air conditioned.

COST: FREE; MORE INFO

MONDAY, AUG. 13; 4 - 6 p.m.

Together with Tacos on Pico

Brad Metzger Restaurant Solutions -- 11705 West Pico Blvd., Sawtelle

To celebrate the life of the late Jonathan Gold, Trejo's Tacos will give away free tacos to the first 200 attendees in front of the "Pico...where I learned to eat" mural. Guests are encouraged to donate to the GoFundMe campaign, created by friends of the Gold-Ochoa family to assist them with immediate expenses.

COST: FREE; MORE INFO

TUESDAY, AUG. 14; 9 p.m.

John Early and Special Guests

The Satellite -- 1717 Silverlake Blvd., Silver Lake

The full lineup for Early's show hasn't been announced but go anyway. Seeing the comedian in a small venue for an even smaller price will be worth it. The show is 21+.

COST: $8; MORE INFO

TUESDAY, AUG. 14; 7 p.m.

'Jell-o Girls: A Family History'

Book Soup -- 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood

Allie Rowbottom discusses and signs her new book, a family memoircombined with a product history. In 1899, Rowbottom's great-great-great-uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor for $450. While the deal would prove lucrative, the family was also "haunted by suicides, cancer, alcoholism, and mysterious ailments." Rowbottom's mother, who died of cancer, passed her research onto her daughter, hoping someone would write the story that she could not.

COST: FREE; MORE INFO

TUESDAY, AUG. 14; 9:30 p.m.

The Get Brown

UCB Franklin -- 5919 Franklin Ave., Franklin Village

This is the last show of a successful run for UCBT's 's first all-South Asian comedy team -- six comedians of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage. The sketches explore South Asian themes, including Bollywood, Indian weddings, matchmakers, Islamophobia and family. Also on the program is the musical sketch show "Heather Woodward Is UnCastable."

COST: $7; MORE INFO

Could this be the droid you're looking for? The CanguRo Ride-Roid makes its U.S. debut at a transportation-mobility discussion at the Petersen Museum. (Image: Courtesy of Japan House LA)

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 15; 6:30 - 9 p.m.

Reimagining Mobility for Los Angeles

Petersen Automotive Museum -- 6060 Wilshire Blvd., Mid-Wilshire

In advance of the official opening of its inaugural exhibition "Prototyping in Tokyo," Japan House LA teams with the Petersen Museum to discuss mobility as a key to city living. University of Tokyo Professor Shunji Yamanaka and UCLA Studio Professor Greg Lynn share their visions for L.A. with Seleta Reynolds, the head of L.A.'s Department of Transportation. They'll talk modes of transport from scooters to self-driving cars to robots. The event also features the U.S. premiere of the "ride-roid" CanguRo and presents Gita, a "Star Wars"- esque cargo droid that carries your stuff around.

COST: FREE; MORE INFO

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 15; 7 p.m.

Panic! At the Disco

Staples Center -- 1111 S. Figueroa St., downtown L.A.

All you sinners stand up and sing Hallelujah because this foursome from Vegas is in the middle of its first headlining tour. The band is supporting their new album, "Pray For The Wicked." Hayley Kiyoko andNew Jersey electropop outfit Arizona open the show.

COST: $30.75 - $80.75; MORE INFO

The little neighborhood festival Echo Park Rising, with music, performances and deals at local businesses, returns. (Image: Courtesy of Echo Park Rising via Facebook)

THURSDAY, AUG. 16 - SUNDAY, AUG. 19

Echo Park Rising

various locations in Echo Park

The l'il festival that could is now in its eighth year, keeping its focus on music, art, performances and small, neighborhood businesses. Performers include TT, featuring Theresa from Warpaint, James Supercave, Aidan James, Shannon Shaw, Kolars, Bob Baker Marionettes, Local Hero (Andy Clockwise) and Busted Storytellers. Many businesses -- from Blank City Records to Mohawk Bend and Memento Mori -- are offering discounts and sales throughout the festival.

COST: FREE; MORE INFO

THURSDAY, AUG. 16; 8 p.m.

Ranky Tanky

Skirball Cultural Center -- 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Brentwood

The Sunset Concert series continues with the South Carolina quintet bringing the sounds and traditions of Gullah culture to audiences. The Gullah people can trace their roots to West Africa and the Transatlantic slave trade. Ajay Ravi of dublab begins the night with a DJ set starting at 6:30 p.m. The art galleries remain open until 10 p.m.

COST: FREE; MORE INFO

THURSDAY, AUG. 16; 7 p.m.

Shine

Santa Monica Playhouse -- 1211 4th St., Santa Monica

The long-running Westside show features writers, performers and musical artists sharing stories with the theme of "The Power of Music." Listen to tales from Jake Cassman, Rich Johnson, Molly Meng, Ksusha Miretski (aka HibiscusChild), Misty Rosas and Terrie Silverman.

COST: $12; MORE INFO

THURSDAY, AUG. 16; 8 p.m.

'Grease'

The Wiltern -- 3790 Wilshire Blvd., Koreatown

Get ready to bust out your hand jive moves and celebrate the beloved musical's 40th anniversary. Professional dancers accompany the film and we're pretty sure audience members also sing along. A dance party in the lobby follows the screening.

COST: $15 - $20; MORE INFO

THURSDAY, AUG. 16; 7 p.m.

'Beyond the Streets': 'Wild Style' Screening

Beyond the Streets -- 1667 N. Main St., Chinatown

The epic exhibition of works by more than 100 street and graffiti artists has been extended through Aug. 26. For its final weeks, BTS runs a number of free events and special weekend programming, including a screening of the 1983 hip hop film produced by Charlie Ahearn. A Q&A with Ahearn follows the film. Follow @beyondthestreetsart on Instagram for promo codes to the screening.

COST: $25 for exhibition; FREE screening tickets with promo code; MORE INFO

THURSDAY, AUG. 16; 6:30 p.m.

MOCA Music

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA -- 152 North Central Ave., Little Tokyo

The museum collaborates with Spaceland to feature new and emerging artists in this music series. HOODBOI, the performance moniker of L.A.-based producer-DJ-graphic designer Roger Schami, and Promnite (Paul "PJ" Sledge) headline. Food trucks and a cash bar will be on site.

COST: FREE with RSVP; MORE INFO

THURSDAY, AUG. 16 - SUNDAY, AUG. 26

OC-Centric New Play Festival

Moulton Hall Studio Theatre, Chapman University -- 300 E. Palm Ave., Orange

The theater festival champions new works by Orange County playwrights. This year's offerings include the feature-length play "Allegory of the Cave," written by Darren Andrew Nash and directed by Angela Cruz. It follows a young woman involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric facility after a psychotic break. Three one-acts are also on tap: "A Girl Smiles in the Arctic," "Joey & Mare" and "The Mulberry Bush."

COST: $23; MORE INFO

Wayne Kramer, pictured at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, talks about his new memoir at Book Soup this week. (Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images)

THURSDAY, AUG. 16; 7 p.m.

'The Hard Stuff'

Book Soup -- 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood

Wayne Kramer, original guitarist and songwriter for MC5, discusses his memoir, which recounts his life as an artist and addict. Novelist and screenwriter Jerry Stahl, who knows a thing or two about battling personal demons, will interview Kramer.

COST: FREE; MORE INFO

THURSDAY, AUG. 16; 8 p.m.

Justin Willman

Dynasty Typewriter at The Hayworth -- 2511 Wilshire Blvd., Westlake

The magician and comic celebrates the release of his new Netflix series, "Magic For Humans." The night includes a live performance, screening and post-screening reception.

COST: $15 - 20; MORE INFO

THURSDAY, AUG. 16 - SUNDAY, AUG. 19

Manhattan Beach Open

Manhattan Beach Pier -- 2 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Manhattan Beach

The tournament known as the Super Bowl of beach volleyball features pros competing on nine courts over four days. Teams are vying to receive a ticket to the AVP Hawaii Invitational.

COST: FREE general admission; VIP packages available; MORE INFO

What are you doing this week? Let us know on Twitter @christineziemba and @LeoHasACat.

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It was peculiar. Looking at Google's map of Los Angeles, three words stood out. Nestled between the historic neighborhoods of Eagle Rock and Highland Park was another designation: "North Highland Park."

When asked, everyday Angelenos and city officials said the same thing: Never heard of it.

"It's Highland Park to us and the community ... we deal with every day," said Rick Coca, a spokesman for City Councilman Jose Huizar, who represents L.A.'s District 14.

The office of Councilman Gil Cedillo, whose District 1 shares a border with Huizar's, confirmed the city "(doesn't) have an official designation for North Highland Park."

Scrolling west led to another puzzler. Above the label for the L.A. community of Silver Lake, just east of the reservoir, was a neighborhood dubbed "Silver Lake Heights."

This screenshot taken from Google Maps on Wednesday, Aug. 8, shows the fictitious neighborhood of "Silver Lake Heights," which is not a real community in Los Angeles. (Courtesy Google Maps)

But that's not a real place either, according to the office of District 13's Councilman Mitch O'Farrell. So why were these fake neighborhoods showing up in Google Maps?

The short answer: they existed because Google said they did. But, again, they actually don't. And now they've been erased from the map -- a few days after we asked Google about them.

So, how exactly does Google get the data to decide what to call certain neighborhoods? We asked them about that, but the behemoth company is infamous for its extreme secrecy and lack of public information about how they do much of anything.

But in a recent New York Times report on Google's mapmaking (which also mentions "Silver Lake Heights"), a company spokeswoman said the tech giant creates its maps using information from third-party data, public sources, satellites and Google users. The Times article went on to explain that property listings for fictional, nice-sounding neighborhoods made up by local realtors might be catching Google's eye.

Asked why the former "Silver Lake Heights" and "North Highland Park" neighborhoods were wiped from the Los Angeles-area map, Google did not respond.

The fictitious labels might be strange and inaccurate, but do Angelenos actually care where Google says they live or work? City officials weren't aware of the faux digital destinations until we asked about them.

"It's inconsequential to us," Huizar's spokesman Coca said. "Communities and neighborhoods are defined over the years by the people who live there, not a device that might help you get from Point A to Point B."

RELATED: Check Out This Amazing Map That Features Every L.A. Neighborhood

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After learning that the 1933 Group plans to restore Tail o' the Pup and revive it as a working hot dog stand, we decided to check in with the company on its other major project, restoring the Formosa Cafe. You remember the shuttered West Hollywood restaurant anchored by an old trolley car, right? It was a popular Los Angeles hangout for nearly a century before it got a makeover that pretty much everyone hated and closed in 2016. Cue the lamenting.

Six months later, in June 2017, the 1933 Group announced it had signed a 10-year-lease for the space and would start a painstaking, $1 million restoration. Cue the cheering. At the time, the company said the Formosa Cafe would reopen sometime "next year" i.e. in 2018.

How likely is that? TL;DR: It's gonna be a while but in the process of restoring the Formosa Cafe the owners have learned a ton about its history.

The exterior of the Formosa Cafe (Sue Hwang of the L.A. Conservancy/Courtesy of the 1933 Group)

The Nitty Gritty

1933 Group partner Bobby Green is overseeing the Formosa's renovation. Aside from the usual permitting and inspection hassles, he says his biggest problem is finding parts for a 117-year-old trolley car. It turns out, the Formosa Cafe owns the last surviving 800 series train car in the world.

Green says the trolley car was probably plucked from a salvage yard and placed at the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and Formosa Ave. in 1940. It is the original model used on the Red Line, which started running these kind of cars around 1904. "At that time, they were open-sided, so it was more like a hop-on, hop-off trolley," Green says. This particular car dates to 1901, so it was already vintage when it became part of the Formosa Cafe.

"We're not only restoring the restaurant and bar, we're restoring the train car and making it way more visible as a train car than it ever was before," Green says. "That's as exciting for me as restoring the Formosa itself."

The interior of the Formosa Cafe in West Hollywood as it undergoes renovation in 2018. (Courtesy of the 1933 Group)

As part of the overhaul, the 1933 Group dove into the history of the Formosa, leading to a sad discovery. The only other 800 series train car they could find belonged to the Orange Empire Railway Museum. "I called them because I wanted to go take pictures or find out if they'd sell any hardware off of it," Green says. "And sadly, they told me that last year, the thing burned to the ground."

So where does he find parts for a train car that no longer exists? He doesn't. He has them made. Green is getting various parts  including brass handles and the destination box that was on the roof of every train  rebuilt from pictures. "To me, that's just second nature," says Green, who restores cars, motorcycles and boats from the 1920s and '30s.

The exterior of the Formosa Cafe. (Sue Hwang of the L.A. Conservancy/Courtesy of the 1933 Group)

The Backstory

As part of the renovation, the 1933 Group brought in Max Shapovalov to write a book about the history of the Formosa Cafe. He describes it as "an intensive historical investigation" and says he has been digging into the archives of libraries, city officials, Pacific Electric, the FBI and family members.

The semi-official history of the Formosa Cafe, if you go by Wikipedia (and everyone who has cribbed from it), is that "the Formosa was founded in 1925 by 1920s prize-fighter Jimmy Bernstein," who "operated his establishment initially in a Red Car trolley."

Shapovalov offers a different and more detailed account. It's based on the memoir of Lindy Brewerton, a bartender who worked at the Formosa for 48 years. He says that although the Formosa is believed to have been a diner as early as 1915, when the Jesse Hampton Studio was built, the earliest documented reference to a restaurant at that site is a tiny eatery called the Red Post Cafe. It opened some time in the 1920s and was owned by Joe Levey, the proprietor of a local steakhouse chain.

An old newspaper clipping about the Red Post Cafe, which would go on to become the Formosa Cafe. (Courtesy of Max Shapovalov)

"It sat on the corner of Formosa and Santa Monica for a number of years, serving breakfast and lunch in its cramped space," Shapovalov says via email. "It served working class people and tenants of the rapidly growing residential area to the north of Santa Monica Blvd."

And exterior view of the Samuel Goldwyn Studios circa 1943 with the sign of the Red Post Cafe, later the site of the Formosa Cafe, visible on the left. (Security Pacific National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public Library Collection)

The Red Post Cafe remained in operation until the end of the 1930s when the land, once owned by Standard Oil of California, was bought by a new owner. According to Shapovalov, Maximilian Goldstein, a nightclub entrepreneur known as Max Goldie, rebuilt the place in 1939 to make way for a "Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge with a Dining Car." When Goldie expanded the space, he attached a Pacific Electric Red Car to the venue, debuting it as "The Formosa Night Club."

A postcard promoting the Formosa Cafe. (From the collection of Allison Martino/Courtesy of the 1933 Group)

Shapovalov says that by one account, Goldie lost the cafe in a poker match to the brother of prize-winning lightweight fighter Jimmy Bernstein. After getting injured, Bernstein had moved from New York to Los Angeles, where he became friends with actors Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks.

Boxer Jimmy Bernstein (right) is seen with actors Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks in this undated photo. (Courtesy of Max Shapovalov)

In another account, the venue had three owners -- Goldie, Bobby Goodman and Stan Marcus -- when it debuted as the Formosa. In 1945, Goldie was found shot in the back in a phone booth on Santa Monica Blvd. and Jimmy Bernstein, a bookie who has been confused with the boxer of the same name, bought in to the business in 1947. A few years later, Bernstein brought in Lem Quon as a chef and Quon eventually became his business partner.

From Brewerton's memoir, "Forty Years Behind Bars":

"We had the three owners when I started at the Formosa. The one of them, Goldie, was nervous as a whore in church, would walk all night from one end of the bar to the other, which was a long ways. Later on, after he had sold his interest in the bar, they found him in a telephone booth on Santa Monica Blvd. with a bullet hole in his back. Soon after that, Jimmy Bernstein bought into the Formosa. He was a bookmaker. He used to come in all the time and I would wait on him. He was never as free with the "buck" as the other bookmakers. Lem started at the Formosa in 1948 or 1949. He said he was there a lot earlier but he wasn't."





These are glimpses of a much larger story, Shapovalov says, that will be detailed in his book. Who knows what he  and other researchers  might uncover as they keep digging?

Whatever the origins of the Formosa Cafe, it became popular with actors like Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart and Frank Sinatra, to name just a few. Later, it would become a haunt for rockers. Hundreds of black and white headshots would eventually decorate its walls.

The interior of the Formosa Cafe. (Jared Cowan/Courtesy of the 1933 Group)

Over the years, the Formosa Cafe retained a degree of coolness and distressed glamour even as L.A.'s couture cocktail boom brought more upscale watering holes to the city. But it also struggled to survive. At one point, it was almost torn down and turned into a parking lot.

A 1991 Los Angeles Time story about the fight to preserve the Formosa Cafe and prevent it from being turned into a parking lot. (Courtesy of the 1933 Group)

Shapovalov says the Beastie Boys were big fans of the Formosa and had a line, "God, the Formosa," in one of their songs. He's still sorting out the details.

Irish rocker Bono is also a fan. He was supposedly sitting at a pub in Ireland when he heard the Formosa was going to be shut down and wrote a poem on the back of a beer coaster. Shapovalov shared a few lines:

It's dark in the daylight, you can't see very far

Past the ghosts of Sam Goldwyn in the old train car.





Want more tidbits and historical details about the venue? You'll have to wait for the book. It's slated to come out around the same time the Formosa Cafe reopens, which Bobby Green hopes will be in February or March of 2019. Fingers crossed.

The interior of the Formosa Cafe in West Hollywood as it undergoes renovation in 2018. (Courtesy of the 1933 Group)
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On the corner of Baxter and Echo Park Avenue, a sidewalk runs along the edge of Elysian Heights Elementary School. It spans almost an entire block, but if you look closely, you'll see messages of love carved into the cement.

Back in the 1960s, students left behind written tributes to one of the school's most beloved figures of all time: a domestic shorthair cat. His name was Room 8.

He died on August 13, 1968 -- 50 years ago today.

Room 8 first made his appearance in 1952, wandering into the elementary school during recess and ransacking the children's lunches. The students named him after the room where they found him.

He lived at the school while classes were in session and then disappeared during the summer, returning again only when students did. For the 16 years following his arrival, he wove himself into the community and Los Angeles history.

As historian Paul Koudanaris put it to KPCC's Take Two, it wasn't that the school had adopted a cat -- "but that a cat had adopted a school."

Room 8 looking over his fan mail at Elysian Heights School on September 14, 1964. (Photo: Art Worden/Herald-Examiner Collection /LAPL Archive).



And this cat was popular. During his time at the school, Room 8 received more than 10,000 pieces of mail from all over the country.

In his life, he never took a permanent home. He was always technically a stray cat. So when he died in 1968, the students wanted to give him a permanent resting place.

The students set out to secure a burial for Room 8 at the Los Angeles pet cemetery in Calabasas. It's where celebrities like Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart laid their pets to rest -- and where famous animals like the MGM lion are buried.

When they put out a call to help raise funds, they were overwhelmed with the response. The money that came pouring in was enough to secure Room 8 one of the largest headstones in the cemetery.

Room 8 rests peacefully in Calabasas. (Photo: Courtesy Devan Brown)

"The whole history of Hollywood celebrities has their pets in that cemetery," said Koudanaris, "yet that cat, that homeless cat who adopted a school has a bigger memorial than any of them. And to this day, his grave is still the most visited."

Room 8 also made waves posthumously. His obituary in the L.A. Times took up three columns and included a picture. And in 1972, a cat shelter took on the name Room 8 in his honor -- it's currently in Riverside.

And to celebrate his life on the school's campus, Elysian Elementary painted murals around the building, etched his name into the sidewalk, and hung portraits of him in hallways.

A distinguished Room 8 portrait, in color, at Elysian Heights Elementary. (Photo: Lori Galarreta/KPCC)

A freshly painted mural featuring Room 8 at the entrance of Elysian Heights Elementary School. Photo: Lori Galarreta/KPCC

Loving message for Room 8. It reads, "Without a name/to Room 8 he came/to give our school/the greatest fame." (Photo: Lori Galarreta/KPCC)

An inscription on the sidewalk outside Elysian Heights: "Home of Room 8, School Cat." (Photo: Lori Galarreta/KPCC)

A portrait of Room 8, outside room 8. (Photo: Lori Galarreta/KPCC)

Reminders of Room 8 are all over the school. (Photo: Lori Galarreta/KPCC)

A close-up of Room 8's grave in the pet cemetery in Calabasas. The headstone includes "Elegy to Room 8, School Cat," written by Henry C. Fry. (Photo: Courtesy Devan Brown)

Rest in peace, you glorious feline.

You made it! Congrats, you read the entire story, you gorgeous human. This story was made possible by generous people like you. Independent, local journalism costs $$$$$. And now that LAist is part of KPCC, we rely on that support. So if you aren't already, be one of us! Help us help you live your best life in Southern California. Donate now.
Netflix said Monday that its chief financial officer, David Wells, is planning to step down after an eight-year period in which he oversaw billions of dollars of spending to transform the streaming entertainment company into a Hollywood powerhouse.

Wells, 47, joined Netflix in 2004 and has served as CFO since 2010. He intends to stay with the company until his successor takes the role to ensure a smooth transition, Netflix said in its announcement. His announced departure didnt appear to overly spook Netflix investors, though the stock closed down 1.3% for the day to $341.31.

Wells said that he discussed his transition with Chief Executive Reed Hastings.

We agreed that with Netflixs strong financial position and exciting growth plans, this is the right time for us to help identify the next financial leader for the company, Wells said in a statement on Monday. Personally, I intend my next chapter to focus more on philanthropy and I like big challenges but Im not sure yet what that looks like.

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During his tenure, Wells led Netflix on a spending spree that saw the company borrow billions of dollars to fuel its aggressive growth strategy into original content. As a result, Netflix saw its worldwide subscriber base climb steadily, but it also generated concerns among investors about its rapid cash burn.

Netflix has stated that borrowing remains an attractive option as long as interest rates remain attractive.

Wall Street has largely been forgiving of Netflixs big spending. Shares of the Los Gatos, Calif., company broke the $400 mark for the first time this year. But the stock has since retreated, especially following last quarters subscriber miss, in which the company fell short of new customer estimates by about 1 million.

Netflix also faces growing competition from the Walt Disney Co.s upcoming streaming service, which is expected to launch next year, as well as a rejuvenated Amazon Prime Video, which is ramping up production on new series.

David has been a valuable partner to Netflix and to me, Hastings said in a statement on Monday.

He skillfully managed our finances during a phase of dramatic growth that has allowed us to create and bring amazing entertainment to our members all over the world while also delivering outstanding returns to our investors.

As Netflix surges, original content is the new black. But licensed shows still take the crown 

UPDATES:

10:13 a.m.: This article was updated with additional details about Netflixs growth strategy.

This article was originally published at 6:50 a.m.
Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said Monday that his tweet about having secured funding to take the electric-car maker private was based on meetings with Saudi Arabias sovereign fund that left him with no question that they could strike a deal.

But others remained unconvinced that the billionaire has yet secured the tens of billions of dollars likely needed to buy Tesla and turn it into a private company, or that he has eased the concerns of the market regulators scrutinizing his comments.

In a blog post Monday, Musk said he met July 31 with a fund representative who expressed regret that Musk had not taken steps to take the company private. Little more than a week later, Musk tweeted that he was considering taking the company private at a price of $420 a share and that he had funding secured.

I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a deal with the Saudi sovereign fund could be closed, and that it was just a matter of getting the process moving, Musk said in Mondays post. This is why I referred to funding secured in the August 7th announcement.

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But Wall Street signaled that theres still pervasive doubt among investors as to whether the funding is indeed secure and whether the going-private transaction at that price will materialize. Despite Musks assurances, Teslas stock closed little changed Monday at $356.41 a share, up 0.3% and well below $400 a share.

Musk said the Saudi fund first expressed interest in a go-private transaction with Tesla early last year and that the fund has more than enough assets to put up the tens of billions of dollars such a transaction could require. The Saudi fund  the Public Investment Fund, or PIF  has assets of about $230 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Fund representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

Musks blog post runs counter to a story posted by Reuters over the weekend suggesting that the fund was not interested in a go-private transaction with Tesla, at least for now. However, the Saudi fund did recently buy nearly 5% of Teslas stock on the open market, Musk confirmed Monday.

Musk said he will present a more complete financing plan later but that doing so now would be premature. I continue to have discussions with the Saudi fund, and I also am having discussions with a number of other investors, he said. It is appropriate to complete those discussions before presenting a detailed proposal to an independent board committee.

Musk sent Tesla stock on a wild ride last week by tweeting about a go-private deal, which he said could be beneficial for the company. Shares jumped 10% the day of his tweet but lost ground over the course of the week amid questions about the likelihood of such a deal and concerns that Musk may have run afoul of securities regulators with his tweets.

A day after Musks initial tweet, the Wall Street Journal reported that officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission were asking Tesla about the tweet, and suggested that there were questions about the factual basis for the communication. The SEC declined to comment.

On Monday, Musk said the tweet was sent in his capacity as an individual investor, not as chief executive and chairman of the company. Musk  with a net worth that Forbes estimates at $21.3 billion  owns about 20% of the companys stock. Any takeover would require overall shareholder approval; he cant push any deal through on his own.

Ross Gerber, president of the investment-management firm Gerber Kawasaki Inc. in Santa Monica, which is a Tesla investor, acknowledged that there is a huge gap in perception among investors about the outlook for Palo Alto-based Tesla going private. He said he remained bullish on a forthcoming deal.

Im buying the stock right now, Gerber said Monday. The fact that people dont believe that Saudi Arabia would love to buy the crown jewel of clean energy is foolish. Of course theyd love to buy Tesla.

He also speculated that Saudi Arabia would not purchase Tesla by itself but might be a major shareholder along with a consortium of other investors that Musk recruits.

However, analyst Gordon Johnson of the investment firm Vertical Group did not interpret Musks blog post as confirming that the Saudis are set to take Tesla private.

Noting that Musk said the Saudi support remains subject to financial and other due diligence and their internal review process for obtaining approvals, among other conditions, Johnson told Bloomberg Television that Musk is specifically stating that funding is not secured, and I think thats a big deal.

Musk also said in his Monday blog post, as he did on Twitter last week, that current Tesla shareholders would be able to continue to hold stakes in the company if it goes private  though Mondays post did little to build on his tweets in that regard.

The same day he tweeted about the possibility of taking the company private, he said he was super appreciative of Tesla shareholders and would ensure their prosperity in any scenario. He said he hoped to create a special fund that would enable Tesla shareholders to maintain ownership in the company. Its not clear how that would work.

Musk said in Mondays post that he has hired advisors to determine, among other things, how many of Teslas existing public shareholders would remain shareholders if we became private.

Tesla overall would be worth nearly $72 billion if its stock was priced at $420 a share. But Musk has said he hopes many current Tesla investors would retain their shares in the private firm.

Therefore, reports that more than $70B [billion] would be needed to take Tesla private dramatically overstate the actual capital raise needed, he wrote. My best estimate right now is that approximately two-thirds of shares owned by all current investors would roll over into a private Tesla.

Despite Teslas meteoric stock-market performance over the last few years  shares are up from $35 in early 2013  Musk has said the company might be better off as a private concern.

Being publicly traded, he said in a blog post last week, means the company must report quarterly on its financial results, which puts enormous pressure on Tesla to make decisions that may be right for a given quarter, but not necessarily right for the long-term.

Thats a common criticism of public companies, but one that may be more acute for Tesla, which has repeatedly fallen behind on performance targets, including production targets for its Model 3 sedan.

In addition, investors have fretted about whether Tesla, which so far has amassed huge losses, will have the necessary cash to maintain the Model 3s rollout and its other operations.

Tesla burned through more than $1.5 billion in cash in the first half of this year and had $2.2 billion in cash remaining. Musk said recently that Teslas cash flow would be enough to fund the company going forward and that he didnt plan to raise new funds through stock or debt issues. Tesla also said it plans to be profitable starting in the latter half of this year.

Tesla is a frequently shorted stock, meaning many investors are betting that the companys shares will tumble. That, Musk said, means that there are large numbers of people who have the incentive to attack the company.

Musk has been slamming and mocking short sellers; just days before his take-private tweet, he posted a parody video depicting Hitler as betting against the automakers stock. Over the weekend, he tweeted that Tesla would soon introduce a novelty side product: short shorts.

james.peltz@latimes.com

james.koren@latimes.com

UPDATES:

3:15 p.m.: This article was updated with Tesla shares closing price, the size of Elon Musks Tesla stake, an analysts bearish comments on a potential deal and information about Teslas cash-flow problems.

12:40 p.m.: This article was updated with an investors comments, Teslas updated stock price, more comments from Musks blog post and details about Saudi Arabias initial purchase of Tesla stock.

10:05 a.m.: This article was updated with information about Teslas stock performance, rationale for taking a company private, and Musks reaction to short sellers.

8:50 a.m.: This article was updated with information about Musks assertions that Tesla shareholders could continue to hold stakes in the company if it goes private, and with Teslas stock movement.

7:25 a.m.: This article was updated with additional background information.

This article was originally published at 7 a.m.
The former president of the Salk Institute discouraged one of her professors from suing for gender discrimination, saying in a private email that legal action could damage the La Jolla science centers reputation  and suggesting it might harm the researchers career.

Elizabeth Blackburn, a Nobel laureate, sent the email to biochemist Beverly Emerson on June 30, 2017.

Families have disagreements. But they dont litigate their disagreements, Blackburn told Emerson, adding that a lawsuit would be ill-advised and might not be the most prudent tactic for her career.

In a dispute thats been unfolding in court documents, Emerson, 66, a noted cancer researcher, decided to join colleagues Katherine Jones and Vicki Lundblad in suing the Salk Institute for alleged gender discrimination.

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All three women claimed that the institute had systemically discriminated against them on salary, benefits, promotions and access to private donations.

The institute announced out-of-court settlements with Jones, 63, and Lundblad, 65, on Aug. 7. Neither researcher is talking. Nor is Emerson, who is proceeding with her lawsuit.

But their concerns are outlined in court documents  especially those of Emerson, who went from believing that the institute might shed its misogynist culture to thinking that very little would change.

The Salk Institute denies that it discriminated against the women. And it is asking a San Diego County Superior Court judge to remove Blackburns email to Emerson from the record, saying that it is a privileged communication. That request is scheduled to be considered on Friday.

The institute says the email is privileged because it is part of mediation between Emerson and the Salk Institute.

Emersons attorney, Alreen Haeggquist, disputes that the email is privileged and says the email helps establish that Emerson was retaliated against for filing the lawsuit.

It is disappointing that [Emersons] counsel has chosen to disclose what we maintain is a privileged communication, over our objections and before the matter could be decided by the Court, particularly because Dr. Blackburns message was a sincere effort to reach out to Dr. Emerson and avoid litigation, said Steve Strauss, an attorney representing the institute, in a statement emailed to the Union-Tribune. That olive branch is now being used out of context to create an unfair and inaccurate characterization of Salk.

Blackburn, 69, could not be reached for comment. She left the institute earlier this year after announcing her retirement in December.

Optimism

In May 2016, Emerson, Jones and Lundblad met with Blackburn to discuss the Salk Institutes workplace culture and advancement opportunities. Blackburn had become president in January.

The meeting seemed to go well.

I dont want to go too overboard (ok, maybe I will just a bit), but our meeting with Liz (Blackburn) was a little tiny bit historic, Lundblad wrote in an email to Emerson. First time in decades (or ever) that three senior women faculty sat in the Salk Presidents office and were lauded by the Salk President for their scientific achievements ...

Yes, you had support from me and Kathy, but all the heavy lifting was done by you  and if you hadnt run for faculty chair, I dont think the three of us wouldve been there, listening to Liz acknowledge that yes, there is a real problem, and its been a problem for years.

Emerson replied, I think with Liz at the helm, the misogynist culture will definitely change and the Institute will evolve. This has to be set in stone or things can revert back when Liz eventually steps down (hopefully after many years.)

This is poignant, wonderful, and sad all at the same time.

The question of gender balance at the institute also was called into question in early 2016 by Seattle cancer researcher Robert Eisenman, who served on the Salk Institutes External Advisory Board.

Ive certainly been aware of the lack of gender balance but to my knowledge it never came up as an issue for discussion at any of our EAB meetings, Eisenman told Emerson in a February email. I wish it had.

Claim of retaliation

Emerson left the institute at the end of December after her contract was not renewed. She technically remains at the Salk Institute as an emerita faculty member.

In her lawsuit, Emerson maintains that the failure to renew her contract was illegal retaliation and points to Blackburns June 30, 2017, email as evidence.

You have a reputation to protect, Blackburn wrote. The Institute has a reputation that it will vigorously defend. While you certainly have a right to litigate, I ask you to consider if this is the least injurious path toward achieving your goals. What feels good right now, based, perhaps, on complex emotions, may not prove  on a career-long road  the most prudent tactic.

Emerson responded to Blackburns email on July 3, agreeing to talk with Blackburn and reiterating her grievances.

As you know, I have tried to resolve the issues you are referring to in many ways, even as Faculty chair and Board member, but in my mind nothing changed for the senior female faculty, Emerson replied.

Even lately, simple things like getting broken departmental equipment replaced ... and even trying to get a donation by giving a lab tour and showing a PowerPoint to the Brown Foundation, have been unsuccessful.

My request to hire a part-time student lab helper, previously approved, was not re-approved and my student, whom we had trained as a volunteer for several months, took a job elsewhere. I only have two postdocs in my lab so their time to train the student is valuable, Emerson said.

Finally, I havent heard any updates about the status of fundraising for my research proposal on Cancer Ecosystems in several months even though I worked to prepare a 5 year budget and write a lay summary as requested.

Strauss, the Salk Institute attorney, said Emersons tenure expired at the end of 2017, and that the institute followed proper procedure in not renewing her contract.

To qualify for a post-tenure appointment, Salk professors must meet the external funding requirements set out in the Institutes written post-tenure guidelines, which were most recently updated in 2011, Strauss said.

Several Salk professors (female and male) have met these requirements and have continued to work at the Institute, for decades in some cases, beyond the expiration of their original appointments. Dr. Emerson did not meet the requirements.

Emerson said in a July 13 filing that the institute denied her the resources to meet the requirements, subjecting her work to a death spiral that effectively ended her career.

Emerson is best known for her work on how cancer develops. In 2015, she was named a fellow of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, a distinguished scientific society.

Other allegations

Controversy over the Salk Institutes treatment of women extends beyond the lawsuit. An April article in the journal Science detailed allegations from eight women that star Salk scientist Inder Verma, 70, had sexually harassed or discriminated against them for decades.

Verma, a noted geneticist and cancer researcher, denied the charges. But he resigned from the institute in June after an investigation.

He had earlier told the Union-Tribune in an email, I have never used my position at the Salk Institute to take advantage of others. I have also never engaged in any sort of intimate relationship with anyone affiliated with the Salk Institute.

The institute has declined to release details of the investigation.

Whatever the specifics of the [Jones and Lundblad] settlement, their lawsuits, combined with the claims of eight women who made sexual harassment allegations against Inder Verma  raise troubling questions about the challenges women face working as researchers at the Salk Institute, said Leigh Turner, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota.

Turner added that the institute also misstepped in its initial response to the researchers lawsuits.

In July of last year, shortly after Jones and Lundblad sued, the institute released a statement characterizing the two as below-average scientists in the bottom quartile (lowest 25%) in scientific productivity, compared with their peers.

Emerson wasnt then part of the litigation, but sued a week later.

Blackburn declined to comment on the assessment at the time, but institute staff said she cleared the statement.

In April, however, the institute said Blackburn didnt personally issue the statement, and that it disagrees with the characterization of the July 2017 statements; they do not criticize the quantity or quality of the professors scientific research.

Top scientists condemned the July 2017 statement. Carol Greider, who shared a 2009 Nobel Prize with Blackburn, called the comments unwarranted. On Twitter, she specifically defended Lundblad, calling the Salk Institutes characterization of her work a character smear.

Greider also defended Emerson after she sued.

Ive known [Emerson] for over 30 years, been to many conferences with her. And her science is fabulous, Greider said at the time.

After the criticism, Blackburn said in an open letter that she wanted to correct any unintended impressions from prior statements related to the litigation.

The Salk greatly values the contributions of professors Emerson, Jones, and Lundblad to the scientific community and to the Institute, Blackburn wrote in the letter, dated Aug. 17, 2017.

These professors are our colleagues and members of the Salk community we all cherish. Indeed, the institute greatly values all of your contributions to the progression of science.

Emersons lawsuit is scheduled for trial on Dec. 7.

News researcher Merrie Monteagudo contributed to this report.
These are the dog days of summer, but in Hollywood, the current infatuation with canine fare has made pet projects a year-round pursuit.

There have been a dozen canine-centric feature films released since the start of last year, the most recent being Dog Days, an ensemble romance about Californians who bond over their pooches that hit theaters last week. It will be followed on Friday by Alpha, a prehistoric adventure that depicts the origins of the man-canine friendship and does so with big-dog ambitions  the Ice Age epic will also be released in the IMAX format.

Those join a pack of pooch movies that also includes Show Dogs, Isle of Dogs, Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero, Patrick, Benji, A Dogs Purpose, Megan Leavey, Santa Stole Our Dog, Life in the Doghouse and The Stray.

Its a wildly diverse group, from the campy talking-pooch crime comedy of Show Dogs (with voice actors Shaquille ONeal as Karma the toy spaniel and RuPaul as a Mexican hairless named Persephone) to the harrowing, true-life battlefield drama of Megan Leavey (which stars Kate Mara as a Marine corporal deployed in Iraq with her K-9 partner, Rex).

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The common link, of course, is the tail-wagging scene-stealers getting all the close-ups.

I think on some level, we all are suckers for watching dogs do tricks or looking cute  be it on the internet or up on a movie screen, said Ken Marino, director of Dog Days, which stars Eva Longoria, Vanessa Hudgens, Nina Dobrev and Finn Wolfhard of Stranger Things.

Marino said Dog Days explores how canines reveal the hidden humanity their owners might miss in a place as dauntingly disconnected as Los Angeles.

The theme of our movie is the way that dogs can connect people to each other. If you put two people in a room alone, they might have trouble breaking the ice. Put a dog in the same room and those people find things in common and, just maybe, they find love or friendship.

If theres a tail end to Hollywoods dog show, its nowhere in sight. Thats both timely and appropriate in 2018  the Year of the Dog, according to the Chinese zodiac. Upcoming releases include A Dogs Way Home in January (a dog treks 400 miles to find its owner, with Ashley Judd starring), A Dogs Journey in May (a reincarnated dog gets a new leash on life) and The Secret Lives of Pets 2 next June (Patton Oswalt replaces Louis C.K. as the voice of Max in the sequel to the 2016 summer hit).

The skys the limit for Hollywoods dog ambitions, it seems: Warner Bros. last week confirmed that its ramping up Super Pets, an animated feature film chronicling the adventures of Supermans caped canine (Krypto the Superdog), Batmans crime-solving companion (Ace the Bat-Hound), Supergirls orange tabby (Streaky the Supercat) and other heroic animal companions from the pages of DC Comics. The family-friendly script is being written by Jared Stern, whose credits include The Lego Batman Movie.

Disney, meanwhile, expects filming to begin later this year on a remake of its 1955 classic Lady and the Tramp, which will be a hybrid of live action with computer-generated visual effects (in the vein of the 2016 hit The Jungle Book). That movie is taking a modern path to the marketplace  instead of opening at theaters, it will be offered exclusively on Disneys streaming service, a high-priority initiative the company will launch late next year.

It sounds like Hollywood is becoming a kennel with cameras, but theres a long cinematic heritage for history of canine stars jumping through hoops for filmmakers. Rin-Tin-Tin, a German Shepard rescued from the battlefields of World War I by an American soldier, became an international star in the silent era and made more than two dozen pictures. The 1943 movie Lassie Come Home introduced the collie character to the movies. There were more than a half dozen sequels and follow-up films, as well as hit shows on television and radio. Disneys heart-tugging 1957 hit Old Yeller has been seen by generations  although the films 1963 sequel, Savage Sam, was a commercial runt (and dismissed by the Washington Post reviewer as a dogged, listless effort.

Dog movies seem to come and go in cycles, like so many things in Hollywood, says Mark Forbes, a dog trainer who has worked on dozens of films, including Alpha, We Bought a Zoo and the live-action 101 Dalmatians in 1996. Right now, theres definitely a wave of them and a lot of interest in them.

That flurry may represent more than the usual cycle of Tinseltown tastes. Pet obsession is running at an all-time in high in the United States, and according to the American Pet Products Assn., Americans spent a record $69.5 billion on their pets in 2017, a total thats skyrocketed since 2008, when $43.2 billion was spent.

To Jennifer Nosek, editor of Modern Dog magazine, the statistics show robust growth in the number of first-time pet owners, but the more meaningful measure is the depth of passion shown by those owners, many of whom view themselves as adoptive parents.

Its not just the number of pet lovers, its the degree to which pets are increasingly now adored and doted on as family members Nosek said. That represents the real sea change.

To Dog Days director Marino (the owner of two rescue pooches himself), the numbers are interesting but not especially surprising.

Im not sure if theres just more dog owners than ever or if they have just decided to own their obsession in a big way, he says. You cant really throw a dog biscuit in Los Angeles  or anywhere in the country as a whole  without hitting a dog lover.

Marino said the challenge of filming Dog Days was capturing the magic moments of pet connection as well as the expected vagaries of working with animals. No matter how trained a dog is, he said, they dont understand that theyre making a movie.

That challenge was even greater on the set of Alpha, a tale of survival for a hunter named Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who befriends a wounded wolf, marking the first rapport between man and canine. The film is directed by Albert Hughes (Menace II Society, From Hell), who also conceived its story.

(On Wednesday, PETA called for a boycott of Alpha, regarding use of bison in the movie. In a press release, PETA alleged that multiple bison were reportedly slaughtered and partially skinned to be used for a hunting scene. A source close to the production countered that no bison were killed for the sole purpose of the picture and that the film contracted with a reputable meat-processing company to purchase previously harvested bison carcasses).

For Forbes, the veteran animal trainer, reading the script was something special. It still gives me goosebumps. The same, he added, applied to the experience of working with Chuck, a wolf-dog whose lineage tracks back to the 1950s, when the Czech military bred German shepherds with wolves.

Hes got some dog in him, but he is very wolf-like in his look and aloof in a way that dogs arent, Forbes said. The experience was unique, and the story of the movie is too. I spend a lot of time thinking about dogs and their psychology, so the idea of going back to the place the friendship started? It was moving for me, and it made me appreciate dogs even more.

calendar@latimes.com

UPDATES:

1:36 p.m. Aug. 15: This article was updated with additional details.

This article was originally published at 1:50 p.m. Aug. 13.
Uneasy lies the head that wears Nicki Minajs crown.

Thats the prime takeaway (whether or not she intended it to be) from Queen, on which the most commercially successful female rapper in history spends so much time describing her dominance that a clear conclusion is that she fears its beginning to erode.

And why wouldnt she?

Always a fast-moving genre, hip-hop has only sped up its evolutionary pace in the four years since Minajs last album, The Pinkprint. In 2014, few at raps center were worried about competing with Post Malone; fewer still identified Cardi B as a legitimate threat.

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Now, of course, the latter is as big as they come, with a hit debut and a streaming-and-radio smash in I Like It that many view as the song of the summer.

Took a little break, but Im back to me, Minaj raps on her new albums LLC, before taking what appears to be a shot at Cardi B, whose ascent as a woman with a microphone has been compared countless times to Minajs: Trying to make a new Nicki with a factory / Theyll never toe to toe on a track with me.

But its not just the names that have changed in hip-hop; so too have the routes to success. And on Queen, Minaj, 35, continues to put her faith in the old way of doing things  even if listeners, as she surely knows, couldnt care less about some of them.

I aint ever have to strip to get the pole position, she insists in the throbbing Hard White, which is almost certainly a reference to Cardi Bs much-discussed (if little-disparaged) past as an exotic dancer. Elsewhere, in the opening Ganja Burns, she tsk-tsks the emerging generation behind her for assuming theyve matched the talented veterans, including Jay-Z and DMX, with whom she obviously sympathizes.

You gotta have real skill, gotta work for that / If its really passion, would you give your world for that? she asks the youngsters. Unlike a lot of these hos, whether wack or lit / At least I can say I wrote every rap I spit.

The fuddy-duddy stance  thou shalt rise from the streets and compose by hand with paper and pen  feels bitterly defensive, even when Minaj lives up to her boasts about her hard-won craft, which on Queen is almost all the time.

In the sly Barbie Dreams, built on a funky guitar lick familiar from its appearance decades ago in a song by the Notorious B.I.G., she cleverly (and unprintably) flips the earlier tracks conceit to make fun of Drake and 50 Cent, among other male rap stars.

And she sounds as fierce as she has in years on Coco Chanel, which closes the album with a spray of furious dancehall beats and a thoroughly imposing cameo from Foxy Brown. (On Saturday, hours after Queen came out, Minaj teamed with yet another relatively aged New Yorker to release Sorry, a duet with Nas that reportedly didnt make the album thanks to an unauthorized Tracy Chapman sample.)

Whats strange about Minajs preoccupation with these outmoded values is that it hasnt squelched  or been squelched by  her forward-looking instinct.

More than any other rapper at her level, shes at ease shifting between rap and pop; for her, its never been a sacrifice of her credibility to sing airy melodies over sleek electronic grooves, as indeed she does here in Nip Tuck, about a protracted breakup, and the disarmingly tender Come See About Me, in which she pleads with an ex to reconsider their relationship.

Minajs willingness to switch styles (and her ability to follow through on it) is the thing likely to keep her on top as hip-hop keeps advancing.

On Queen, though, all the back-in-my-day stuff suggests a lack of confidence in her unique perspective. Ditto several recent missteps, including a widely publicized dust-up after a fan gently criticized her on Twitter and her baffling decision to collaborate with the 22-year-old Soundcloud-rap star 6ix9ine, who pleaded guilty in 2015 to using a child in a sexual performance.

Much of what endangers Minajs supremacy she cant help. But some of it she can.

_______________

Nicki Minaj

Queen

(Young Money/Cash Money/Republic)

mikael.wood@latimes.com

Twitter: @mikaelwood
Alex Wong/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Celebrating the signing of the 2019 military authorization funding bill at Fort Drum in upstate New York on Monday, President Donald Trump New York made no mention of the man whose name is attached to the legislation: John McCain.



The John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 was named in honor of the longtime Arizona senator and former prisoner of war who is chair of the Senate Armed Service Committee and currently battling brain cancer.



"Im humbled that my colleagues in Congress chose to designate this bill in my name," McCain said in a statement from his home in Arizona where he is receiving care released soon after the bill was signed into law.



"Serving as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and working on behalf of America's brave service members has been one of the greatest honors of my life," he said. "Through the committees work, Ive been privileged to support our men and women in uniform who have dedicated their lives to that noble cause.



In June, at the signing ceremony of the VA MISSION Act of 2018," another bill bearing McCain's name, Trump never mentioned McCain by name. Instead he praised multiple members of Congress who were at the White House for the signing.



The 2019 defense authorization bill provides $717 billion to the military, which Trump touted as the "most significant investment in the military in modern history." But it also notably advances many of McCain's policy priorities, including tough language on Russia.



The president Trump specifically highlighted a 2.6 percent raise for military personnel authorized in the bill, telling the Army's 10th Mountain Division - one of the most-deployed divisions of the Army to Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11 - that "we think our war-fighters deserve the equipment  they have earned with their blood, sweat and tears."



Aside from policy differences, the president has a long-running personal feud with McCain going back to the presidential campaign, when then-candidate Trump said McCains five years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War dont qualify him to be called a war hero.



"He's not a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, Trump famously said of McCain back in 2015.



Their rocky relationship hit a low point when McCain withdrew his support of Trump as the party's nominee following the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape in October.



"When Mr. Trump attacks women and demeans the women in our nation and in our society, that is a point where I just have to part company," McCain said of his decision to drop his support of Trump.



Trump fired back at McCain, calling him very foul mouthed on Twitter.



More recently, Trump continues to fume openly about McCains vote against the Republican plan to repeal of President Obamas hallmark Affordable Care Act. Trump will frequently blame one guy for tanking the GOPs effort during stump speeches.



I had Obamacare done except one guy at 2 o'clock in the morning went in and said, he went thumbs down, even though he campaigned for years repeal and replace, the president said to the boos of the crowd earlier this month during a rally in Pennsylvania.



In reality, three Republican senators voted against the GOP repeal bill. McCain was joined by Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.



Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Heidi Morawetz, the famed makeup artist who conceived some of Chanels best-known beauty products and worked with photographers such as Guy Bourdin, died on Aug. 9. She was 79 years old.

Heidi Morawetz, known for her innate sense of color and elegance, passed away, Chanel tweeted. She created The Rouge Noir and Le Blanc de Chanel. Her vision of beauty will remain indelibly linked with Chanel history.

Morawetz helmed Chanels makeup division with Dominique Moncourtois for almost three decades before retiring from the company in January 2008.

In 1980, Morawetz was hired by Moncourtois, then international director of makeup creation, to be the director of Chanels makeup creation studio. A graduate of the School of Art and Design and the School of Fashion Design in Vienna, Morawetz spent more than a decade working with leading photographers, such as Bourdin, Helmut Newton and Patrick Demarchelier.

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In the Seventies, with Bourdin, she worked on campaigns including  notably  the surreal images for Charles Jourdan. That led to her being asked to create Yves Saint Laurents first makeup line, out in 1978.

Morawetz was born in Vienna in 1939.

Peter Philips, the makeup artist who succeeded Morawetz and Moncourtois at Chanel, paid tribute to her in a tweet. Besides being an amazing makeup artist and makeup creator, she was the most beautiful person inside and out. For over 30 years, Heidi worked next to Dominique Moncourtois at Chanel, before that, she was at the start of the YSL makeup line in its early days. She worked with the greatest, Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton, Sarah Moon, Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurentto name a few.

When I did my first steps in makeup creation, she took me under her wings and I couldnt have wished for a better mentor, continued Philips, who is now with Dior.

In 2011, Philips interviewed Morawetz for a feature in Interview magazine, which described how she, with Moncourtois and Karl Lagerfeld, pioneered the idea that cosmetics could be just as fashionable as clothes.

In the process, they masterminded some of Chanels most memorable products, among them Rouge Noir, released in the U.S. as Vamp, which was invented on the fly backstage before the 1994 autumn ready-to-wear collection, a story that has become the stuff of lore, he wrote.

Uma Thurman famously wore the nail polish in her leading role in Pulp Fiction that year, kicking off the bestseller that endures today.

A private funeral will be held for Morawetz on Aug. 21.
Claude Snelling woke in the night 42 years ago to find a man in his Visalia backyard trying to abduct his 16-year-old daughter. He tried to intervene and was fatally shot.

Tulare County prosecutors on Monday filed a murder charge against Joseph DeAngelo, 72, bringing the deaths he is accused of to 13 and resolving four decades of police disagreement over whether the Visalia attacker was the same person suspected of killing a Sacramento suburban couple and later raping and slaying 10 people in Southern California  crimes now attributed to the Golden State Killer.

Without DNA evidence to tie Snellings death to DeAngelo, Visalia detectives built their murder case on good old tenacious police work, Dist. Atty. Tim Ward said.

Snellings daughter, Elizabeth Hupp, told police in September 1975 that she was sleeping when a man in a ski mask entered her bedroom and forced her to move in silence to the backyard. Her father saw his daughter from the kitchen window and rushed out the back door to come to her aid. The attacker pushed the teenager to the ground, kicked her in the head, and shot her father twice before running off alone.

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Claude Snelling, 45, a journalism professor and public information officer at the College of the Sequoias, died on the way to the hospital.

The murder was immediately linked to a prolific series of burglaries in Visalia in which a prowler over two years broke into 102 homes, ransacked dressers for womens underwear, and stole coin banks, random pieces of jewelry and a gun later linked to Snellings killing.

A prowler had been reported at the Snelling house six weeks earlier. On the night of the assault, police said the attacker crept in through a back window while the family of five was asleep. After Snellings death, police patrols for the Visalia Ransacker were increased. An officer on stakeout three months later was shot at when he surprised the prowler  the last known attack.

DeAngelo at the time was a police officer in a nearby small town, Exeter, where his mother, sister and brother also lived.

He left Exeter at roughly the same time the Visalia ransackings stopped to join the police force in Auburn, a small town north of Sacramento. Concurrently, a serial rapist began to operate in Sacramentos eastern suburbs, attacking some 34 women and killing a young couple who evidently surprised the prowler while they were on an evening stroll.

The so-called East Area Rapist then moved south and west, attacking couples in their homes in Modesto, Stockton, Davis and in the San Francisco Bay communities of Danville and Fremont. Visalia detectives said it was the work of a single attacker, but detectives in other jurisdictions disagreed.

After DeAngelo was fired from the Auburn Police Department in 1979 for shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent from a nearby store, the rapes stopped, but a serial killer began attacking women and couples in Southern California. He assaulted and killed 10 people, bludgeoning or shooting them. The last victim, an 18-year-old, was raped and killed in 1986 at her home in Irvine.

Police departments for decades disagreed over whether attacks spanning the state over more than a decade were committed by a single man.

DNA evidence in 2000 linked most of the murders. The following year, DNA unearthed in three rape kits confirmed they were also the work of the East Area Rapist.

It wasnt until this year that cold case detectives uploaded the killers DNA profile to a public genealogy site to identify the likely family line of the killer, and from there, narrowed their hunt to DeAngelo.

He was arrested in late April and subsequently charged with 12 murders. The retired truck mechanic was living in the same north suburban Sacramento home he had bought in 1979.

A search warrant accompanying his arrest showed police had sifted through DeAngelos trash to find a tissue with DNA that matched that of the serial killer. They had little other evidence to go on beside geographic coincidence between DeAngelos movements and those of the killer. No DNA was left behind in the attack on Claude Snelling, but the bullets that killed him matched those from a gun stolen by the Visalia Ransacker from another home.

Police Chief Jason Salazar said Snellings murder is the only Visalia homicide for which DeAngelo is being investigated, and he said there were no known sexual assaults in the crime series. After DeAngelos arrest, the department renewed its call for community tips and recontacted victims and witnesses from the 1970s. Salazar said those interviews are continuing.

The criminal had a very specific modus operandi, Salazar said. Weve been able to link the Visalia Ransacker to the Snelling homicide. There is additional physical evidence that we have and are continuing to work.

Salazar would not detail that evidence other than to say none of it was recovered in the police search of DeAngelos Citrus Heights home in April.

DeAngelo is represented by a Sacramento County public defender. He has not yet entered a plea in the murder charges. The statute of limitations on the rapes ran out long ago, but individuals close to the investigation say prosecutors are exploring whether they also can file kidnapping charges against DeAngelo.

DeAngelos arraignment on the Tulare County charges is not set. He remains in custody in Sacramento County jail, pending charges now in five counties. Prosecutors in those counties have met several times to discuss where and when to bring the case to trial. Ward, Tulare Countys district attorney, said no decision has been made on whether to seek the death penalty.

DeAngelo is scheduled to return to court in Sacramento on Sept. 5.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

Twitter: @paigestjohn

UPDATES:

12:30 p.m.: This article was updated with statements from the Tulare County district attorney and the Visalia police chief.

This article was originally published at 11:15 a.m.
Although a break in the weather has provided firefighters a respite from the scorching heat that has complicated the fight against multiple wildfires in California, an alert warning of poor air quality remains in effect for much of the Central Valley, the National Weather Service said.

The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District warned of poor air quality in Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Kern counties, the east side of the San Joaquin Valley and the Sierra Nevada and foothill areas due to smoke from the Ferguson fire.

Air pollution control districts in Mariposa and Tuolumne counties have also issued air quality alerts, which will be in effect until the fire is extinguished. The Ferguson fire has scorched 96,457 acres and is 86% contained. The fire has also claimed the lives of a Cal Fire bulldozer operator and a captain of the Arrowhead Interagency Hotshots.

Exposure to particle pollution can cause serious health problems, aggravate lung disease, cause asthma attacks and acute bronchitis, and increase risk of respiratory infections, the weather service said.

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Across the state, slightly cooler temperatures are helping firefighters get a handle on the wildfires. Humidity is inching upward due to a weakened high-pressure system that forecasters say will persist through Tuesday.

Were having a couple of cooler days today and tomorrow, in the upper 90s, said Jim Bagnall, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford. Through the latter half the week, [temperatures are] creeping again upwards.

A photo taken from the International Space Station on Aug. 3 shows the Carr and Ferguson fires. (Alexander Gerst / AFP/Getty Images)

In Southern California, firefighters were making headway on the Holy fire burning in the Cleveland National Forest near Lake Elsinore, raising the containment estimate to 52% on Monday.

Firefighters also made progress on the Mendocino Complex fire, the largest recorded in California history, which had burned more than 344,890 acres as of Monday morning. The blaze, which is made up of the Ranch and River fires, has destroyed 147 homes and is now 68% contained, officials said.

Containment of the 202,976-acre Carr fire in Redding has reached 61%. That fire has destroyed almost 1,600 structures, including 1,077 homes, and threatened 528 others.

Eight people have died in connection with the Carr fire. They include a Cal Fire mechanic, four Redding residents, a Redding firefighter, a bulldozer operator and a Pacific Gas & Electric utility worker.

On Sunday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke toured neighborhoods devastated by the flames.

The presidents right, Zinke said. We have to actively manage our forests.

President Trump has tweeted that California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which arent allowing massive amounts of readily available water to be properly utilized.

It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear stop fire spreading! Trump tweeted.

The brunt of Trumps tweet attempts to tie the fires ravaging Northern California to complaints by members of the states Republican congressional delegation concerning environmental protections that have reduced water deliveries to San Joaquin Valley agriculture. The presidents assertion has been declared incorrect by a number of experts.

Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, walked through an area where a fire tornado tipped over a soaring transmission tower, tore tiles off the roofs of homes and uprooted massive trees. In one spot, a fence post was bent around a tree, with the bark on one side sheared off.

The devastation was on par with the scenes he saw during his time in Iraq, he said.

sarah.parvini@latimes.com

Twitter: @sarahparvini
San Diego County cities are preparing to go head-to-head with the federal government this week in a legal battle that could force the Trump administration to plug sewage spilling from Tijuana.

Local officials filed the lawsuit in March after demanding for more than a year that federal infrastructure along the border be beefed up to ensure that flows from Mexico are captured before they foul San Diego County wetlands and beaches.

On Monday, a federal court judge will hear a motion to dismiss the case filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, which is defending the International Boundary and Water Commission, or IBWC.

The cities of Imperial Beach and Chula Vista, as well as the Port of San Diego, have alleged that the IBWC is violating the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act by not doing more to prevent the pollution.

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While both Mexico and the United States spent billions decades ago to address the situation, crumbling wastewater infrastructure in Tijuana has left South Bay beaches routinely covered in a toxic soup of sewage and other contamination.

In the motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the defense has argued that the IBWC isnt legally responsible for the renegade flows. Lawyers have pointed out that the agency has helped prevent pollution from entering San Diego County.

Nowhere in this sequence is there an addition of pollution to a water of the United States, attorneys for the defense said in court documents.

Lawyers for both sides would not comment on the pending litigation.

Plaintiffs said in court documents that the tainted flows constitute an improper discharge under federal water quality rules even through the pollution originated in Mexico.

The plaintiffs maintain that because IBWC oversees a flood control channel that redirects the Tijuana River on its way to the Pacific Ocean, as well as water-capture basins in five canyons along the border, the agency is responsible for the pollution thats often conveyed through or escapes those systems.

The [flood control channel] need not generate a pollutant to effect a discharge; the fact that it introduces a pollutant to waters of the United States is sufficient, lawyers said in court documents.

Specifically, local elected officials hope their lawsuit will force the federal government to upgrade pumps on the Tijuana River and the capture basins in the canyons that divert flows to the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant west of San Ysidro.

The case will likely move forward despite the defenses attempts to get it thrown out early on, said UC Berkeley law professor Holly Doremus.

Its really hard to predict what will ultimately happen, but the claim that this has already been decided under the Clean Water Act, thats just wrong, she said.

What makes this case so unique, Doremus said, is the fact that the water crosses an international boundary. In cases cited in the defenses motion to dismiss, she said, water was being diverted within the United States.

Theres this funny situation that isnt anticipated in the Clean Water Act, so all of those prior cases that the defense is trying to rely on are a little different, she said. There is no precedent for this.

Earlier this year, state Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerras office and the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board signaled a willingness to join the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs. In May, the two agencies filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the IBWC over Clean Water Act violations.

Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina has led the charge against the IBWC since his citys shoreline was blanketed with millions of gallons of raw sewage in February 2017. Beaches as far north as Coronado were affected.

Dedina said he attended a meeting with IBWC officials last week at which he and other local officials were told by Acting Commissioner Jose Nunez that municipalities in the San Diego region would have to pony up more money to help address the issue of cross-border pollution.

They said we should be paying way more money to fix the problem, Dedina said. All our jaws were open when we heard that. That explains why were doing a lawsuit.

We have no money, he added. Our pockets are empty. Were just trying to pave our streets. We barely have money for that. Until recently, we didnt have a major grocery store.

In response to questions about the meeting, the IBWC issued a statement that said: The U.S. IBWC has and continues to proactively work toward the sanitation issues in San Diego.

Imperial Beach, which includes the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge, has portions of its shoreline off-limits to swimmers roughly a third of the year on average due to sewage and other water pollution flowing from Mexico.

Smith writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Smith writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
One of Cubas most prominent dissidents has been arrested and held incommunicado for days, sparking international pleas for his release.

Jose Daniel Ferrer, from Cubas Santiago region, was detained a week ago, his organization, the Patriotic Union of Cuba, said.

Ferrer is a longtime critic of Cuban governments led by both Fidel and Raul Castro and has been frequently subjected to official harassment and imprisonment. He previously served eight years of a 25-year sentence in a Cuban jail.

News reports from the island, however, said Ferrer was arrested following a traffic incident in which he almost ran over an official. On Friday, Ferrer was charged with attempted murder, Reuters reported from Havana.

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Human rights groups quickly mobilized to his defense.

The Americas division of Amnesty International voiced extreme concern for Ferrers fate and the conditions under which he was being held.

The arrest comes after a relatively benign period for Cuban dissidents, who have enjoyed more freedom as the new government of Miguel Diaz-Canel drafts a new constitution, Cubas first in decades.

Diaz-Canel is the first person not named Castro to lead the Cuban government in more than half a century.

As Cubas new administration embarks on constitutional and other legal reforms, it must demonstrate to the world that it will uphold its obligations to guarantee human rights and due process for all Cubans, including the countrys most critical voices, Amnesty International said.

Within the Trump administration, Francisco Palmieri, the acting deputy secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, called Ferrer a prisoner of conscience.

We are deeply concerned by Ferrers detention, he said. No family visit, no lawyer, no due process, no justice.

After President Obamas remarkable opening with Cuba in 2015, Ferrer was optimistic and looking forward to putting aside differences with the government.

A year later, he was allowed for the first time to travel outside of Cuba. But political evolution, he said, was slow.

We make advances, then the regime represses us and we have to take steps back, Ferrer told a small group of reporters in Washington that year.

tracy.wilkinson@latimes.com

For more on international affairs, follow @TracyKWilkinson on Twitter
On her first meet-the-candidate night, she walked into the house and saw 18 empty chairs and three $1 bills resting in a yellow plastic container marked donations.

Her name was on the bucket. It was spelled wrong.

Its not Lisa. Its Lesia. Short for Alesia. But shes used to this. The last name gets butchered, too. Its Romanov, not Romanoff. Or Romanof. Occasionally, she even gets Romanob.

Few people know her name anyway in this rural Nevada district where she is running for the state Assembly. She is a Democrat, and Democrats hadnt even bothered to run a candidate since 2012, when the Republican won by nearly 30 points.

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But the national tide of women running for elected office  a reaction to the presidency of Donald Trump  has even reached this sparsely populated area of America whose lone claim to fame is legalized prostitution.

Romanov is pitted against Dennis Hof, owner of five brothels in the state. His candidacy has garnered national attention, with late night talk shows cracking wise about it.

Hof shocked the states political establishment in June by beating a three-term incumbent to become the Republican nominee for the seat. He calls himself The Trump of Pahrump. He had a reality television show called Cathouse. He doesnt shy away from being called a pimp  its how he refers to himself in the title of his book. Hes been accused of sexual assault; is touted as a strong businessman; and, since securing the nomination, has been a source of discomfort for high-level GOP leaders.

Romanov said she felt compelled to run  though she waited until two days before the filing deadline in March to make it official.

Right now, so many women are running and Im running against a man who is very much like Trump in the way he views women and treats them, she said. I think thats a huge part of this election, and I think it will work in our favor.

The 51-year-old Nevada native is an assistant principal at Gwendolyn Woolley Elementary School, but has spent the bulk of her career teaching. She lives in a small part of the district that reaches into Clark County  Nevadas Democratic stronghold. But the bulk of District 36 is in Nye County, which gave Trump 68% of the vote in 2016.

Assistant elementary school principal Lesia Romanov, right, greets a visitor at a meet and greet in Pahrump, Nev., on Aug. 3. (David Becker / For The Times)

Eric Herzik, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno, said Romanovs only chance is for Hof to self-destruct in some unforeseen fashion.

He did get some bad news last week when his brothel license for the Love Ranch was revoked after Nye County officials said he was late paying the fee. Hof has said county officials mail bills late, which make the payments late. Its the second time this year Love Ranch has been closed.

Herzik said simply being a Democrat is virtually an insurmountable obstacle for Romanov.

The demographics are overwhelmingly against her, Herzik said. I think Democrats know this is a long shot, but its a better shot than theyve had in the past when theyve had no candidate.

Hof said it wont be a matter of if he wins, but by how much.

I dont want to just win, he said. I want to crush it.

Romanov said she used to be a Republican, but that changed after her divorce in 1999.

I think it raised my level of empathy, she said. I was more aware of the struggles of a single mom and trying to make ends meet, trying to take care of a family and household.

Romanov had also endured other difficult circumstances. There was the suicide of her brother in 2005, which gave her a firsthand look the toll of depression and drugs. In 2008, she got swept up in the mortgage crisis and had to file for bankruptcy after losing her house. She said she was a victim of predatory lending practices.

She said she had thought about running for office before  she has a relative running for a judges seat in Florida  but it wasnt until the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., in February that she took the idea of running seriously.

As an educator, she said, she was alarmed by suggestions that teachers should be carrying weapons and didnt want to see that become a practice. She had participated in the Womens March in 2017 and has been dismayed by President Trump on womens issues.

Since announcing her candidacy, she has picked up support from other women running for office in the state, including U.S. Rep. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat who is seeking to unseat the Republican incumbent senator, Dean Heller.

Democrats like Lesia Romanov are running for office in every corner of our state this cycle, and the wave of women who are stepping up to run in these tough races is incredible and inspiring, Rosen said in a statement.

Nevada has been a strong state for women in elected office, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Nationwide, a record 2,212 women are running for state legislative seats. In Nevada, women already hold 24 of the 63 seats, or 38%, giving the state the third most female legislature in the country. Arizona and Vermont are both at 40%.

Lesia Romanov meets William Seddon, right, at his Pahrump, Nev., mobile home as she canvasses for state Assembly. (David Becker / For The Times)

Kelly Dittmar, assistant professor of political science at Rutgers and scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics, said although Romanov is in a tough race, just having her running could be helpful for other Democrats competing in Nevada and beyond.

Her being in the race helps shine a spotlight on the fact that the Republicans candidate is a brothel owner.

We saw this play out with Roy Moore in Alabama, she said. Democrats can use it to their advantage in other races and say, Look at the type of people theyre willing to choose  even though Democrats have chosen some questionable characters at times, too.

Several Republicans in high-profile races in Nevada have refused to endorse Hof, including Heller and Adam Laxalt, who is running against Democrat Steve Sisolak for governor.

Hof doesnt care, though, and announced on Twitter he was going to have trucks with billboards reading: The Winning Team. Laxalt. Hof. Heller.

Hof does have the backing of the Nye County Republican Central Committee  which hosted his watch party when he won the primary.

Romanov said she knew how difficult the race would be.

At the meet-the-candidate event on a hot, Friday evening in Pahrump in early August, she was met by Nye County Democratic Chairwoman Carol Little, who was also a novice to politics and got involved after the Womens March last year.

Two pizzas arrived. Little and Romanov filled out a calendar for events she needed to attend. But after more than an hour, only one person had showed up to meet Romanov  a retired mine worker.

Romanov stood up and looked around.

We should get out there and knock on some doors, she said.

With temperatures still above 100 degrees, Romanov and Little got into a car and drove to some mobile homes. The sun was setting over the mountains as William Seddon answered the door. Romanov introduced herself and said she was running against Dennis Hof.

Youre the Democrat? Seddon asked.

She said she was.

Youve got my vote then.

Buoyed by that success, she found a woman standing next to the porch of her mobile home. Romanov introduced herself. Little asked if she was registered to vote. She said she wasnt and had no interest in it.

It had grown dark, and Little said they probably should call it a night. The two women hugged and Romanov smiled.

Its a start, she said.

david.montero@latimes.com | Twitter: @davemontero
Earlier this summer, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law allowing judges, at their discretion, to order community mental health treatment in lieu of prosecution for people accused of crimes. Some prosecutors and radio talk show hosts went nearly berserk, claiming that murderers and rapists would now go free simply by telling some gullible judge that whatever they did was due to health problems.

Its tempting to dismiss the criticism of the bill, AB 1810, as just another groundless rant of the type that backward-looking, tough-on-crime critics have thrown at criminal justice reforms like AB 109 realignment and Propositions 47 and 57.

In this case, though, the critics have a point. Although it seems inconceivable that a judge would ever dismiss murder or rape charges just because the defendant claims mental illness, the law does, in theory, make such a thing possible. Its a flaw that ought to be fixed.

Unfortunately, fixing it opens the door to wider efforts to entirely scrap a law that at its core is smart and badly needed. The task for lawmakers is to fine-tune the legislation that they passed and Brown signed just a few weeks ago without undermining its central purpose  the expanded diversion of mentally ill defendants from the criminal justice system  and to do it in the final weeks of the legislative session, when legislators are dealing with competing demands for their attention. It wont be easy. But its important.

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The real issue is who gets the power in the courtroom  the prosecutor or the judge  to decide between prosecution and treatment.

The legislation addresses a crisis in both mental health and criminal justice. California jails are increasingly filling up with mentally ill people who have been accused of crimes. Many are so sick they have been deemed incompetent to stand trial. So what do we do with them?

Ideally, they are sent to one of the limited number of California state hospitals where they are treated until finally fit to be tried for their alleged crimes. It may sound counterintuitive, but most patients who are hospitalized actually do get better and do go to court for further proceedings.

But those state hospitals are packed. With virtually every bed full, a growing number of ISTs (the states lingo for accused criminals who are incompetent to stand trial) are kept in local jails, where their mental condition is far less likely to improve and they are far less likely to proceed to trial. There they sit, taking up badly needed space, neither convicted of any crime (because they havent gone to trial) nor free to go home (because they have been charged).

Many of those defendants are chronically homeless. Because of their mental conditions they require close (and costly) observation. If they become competent to stand trial and they are convicted of a misdemeanor or a less-serious felony, they will often not return to jail because of overcrowding, but will instead go back to the street  until their illness again affects their behavior and they are again arrested, found incompetent to stand trial and returned to jail. Its a foolish, costly, merry-go-round system.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion 

Counties have responded with a variety of programs that collectively are known as diversion. In Los Angeles County, hundreds of patients who are incompetent to stand trial have been diverted from jail into community treatment programs until they are fit for court. Hundreds of others  but still too few  who proceed to trial and are convicted go into community treatment in lieu of jail.

But its still not enough. The worthy goal of AB 1810 is to divert mentally ill people (including those likely to be found incompetent to stand trial) into treatment at the earliest point. Defendants who can present sufficient evidence that they suffer from a mental disorder  and who can show that that they do not pose an unreasonable risk to the public  would be able to ask judges to suspend criminal proceedings in favor of mental health treatment, which could last up to two years. After treatment, a judge, finding the defendant no longer a danger to the community, could dismiss the charge. Otherwise, there would be a hearing to determine whether to reinstate the prosecution.

Its likely that even most prosecutors who are unhappy with the new law dont honestly believe that judges will allow accused murderers and rapists to go free without trial. The real issue is who gets the power in the courtroom  the prosecutor or the judge  to decide between prosecution and treatment. Recent criminal justice reforms have begun to return to judges some discretion that had previously been transferred to prosecutors through excessive tough-on-crime legislation and ballot measures. Generally, discretion in the courtroom properly belongs with the judge, but it must be balanced so as to protect the public. To achieve that balance, AB 1810 needs a little work.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
For months, powerful interest groups and everyday Californians alike have been in suspense about the fate of scores of bills at the state Capitol in Sacramento.

This time, were using the word suspense quite literally.

THE CLEARING OF THE SUSPENSE FILE

Both houses of the California Legislature use whats called the suspense file in their appropriations committees to park any proposed law whose price tag is projected at $150,000 or more. Thats a pretty low bar in state government, which means a lot of bills are held in limbo.

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Its also a way to thin the herd without a fully transparent final vote. When the fiscal committees of the Assembly and Senate meet on Thursday, a decision on almost every bill will be announced in rapid-fire style without a traditional roll call vote. Amendments to approved bills will be announced verbally, only to appear in print for public review after the committees take action.

Well be tracking the most important actions on our Essential Politics news feed.

ONE TO WATCH: BAIL REFORM

An important proposal that must clear the appropriations hurdle this week to survive is a long-debated effort at overhauling Californias money bail system.

The proposal now on the table, Senate Bill 10, would require counties to establish a new system to evaluate the release of defendants and would limit the amount of money posted for bail to the least restrictive level needed to ensure the person shows up for court.

There are some heavy hitters behind changing the system, including California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. But several law enforcement and crime victims groups have pushed back. And with only three weeks left in the legislative session, this is likely to be a watershed moment.

AND THEN THERES WILDFIRE LIABILITY

State lawmakers are also scheduled to hold two additional hearings on the role of utility companies in preventing wildfires, after two other hearings were held last week.

The marching orders of the special legislative conference committee were pretty broad  which is why its so noticeable that one part of the subject has come to dominate the discussions: the legal rules governing a utility companys financial liability when its equipment is involved in a blaze.

Our citizens at home  they want us to get down to business, state Sen. Jeff Stone (R-Temecula) said at last Thursdays hearing. I think were being hamstrung by this one issue.

GOOD LUCK, HERES THE CASH, WELCOME BACK

The selection of Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore to lead the department in June won praise in some corners. Less discussed was the fact that Moore had briefly retired from the force, then returned to take the job offered by Mayor Eric Garcetti.

That chain of events provided Moore with a financial windfall: a lump sum retirement payment of $1.27 million from the city, as Jack Dolan reports.

You may call it suspicious timing, but I didnt program it that way, Moore said last week.

ELLIOTT BROIDY: A TALE OF TWO SCANDALS

After years of discreetly forging his way back into the Republican Partys highest ranks, a wealthy Bel-Air political player is in the news as he fights a lawsuit by a former Playboy playmate.

The lawsuit accuses Elliott Broidy of reneging on his vow to pay Shera Bechard $1.6 million in exchange for her silence about their alleged affair.

Its not the only challenge facing the man who has been a major fundraiser for President Trump, as a former business partner has landed in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, ONE YEAR LATER

Sundays first anniversary of the violent and deadly racial clash in Charlottesville, Va., saw thousands turn out in the nations capital.

And that group vastly outnumbered the people they came to protest, a small number of white nationalists. Police managed to keep the groups apart.

Elizabeth Oka, a musician who traveled from California to D.C., said she felt morally obliged to protest hatred in all its forms.

If enough people do this, it sends a message, she said, standing in a crowd in a plaza a few blocks from the White House. As a citizen, it is my right and responsibility to do this.

NATIONAL LIGHTNING ROUND

-- Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) ended his reelection bid on Saturday, days after the Republican was charged with insider trading.

-- Michael Avenatti, the self-styled provocateur taking on the president for porn actress Stormy Daniels, told Iowa Democrats on Friday that hes considering a White House bid in 2020.

-- While lawmakers feud over blueprints for 3-D-printed plastic guns, the Transportation Security Administration wants fliers to know that screeners have been able to spot the so-called untraceable and undetectable weapons in carry-on bags.

-- Denaturalization  a complex process of stripping an immigrant of their citizenship, once primarily reserved for Nazi war criminals and human rights violators  is on the rise under the Trump administration.

-- The Senate announced last week that the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will begin on Sept. 4.

TODAYS ESSENTIALS

-- This weeks California Politics Podcast takes a closer look at the legislative debate over wildfire liability and the white-hot politics over those long lines at DMV offices across the state.

-- The California Housing Crisis Podcast dives into the debate over Proposition 5, this falls ballot measure offering a new tax break for older homeowners.

-- California officials have asked the Trump administration to release documents indicating whether officials considered the potential psychological impact of the zero tolerance policy on children separated from their parents after crossing the border.

-- Actress Jane Fonda joined Time magazine Silence Breakers Juana Melara and Sandra Pezqueda in Sacramento to support AB 3080, a bill intended to help victims of on-the-job harassment and discrimination.

-- Gov. Jerry Brown appointed a public employee union leader and his state budget director to serve as University of California regents.

-- At UC Santa Cruz, a housing shortage pits the need for beds against a much-loved meadow.

-- A few months after state Sen. Josh Newman was recalled from office by voters, the Fullerton Democrat has scheduled a political fundraiser to collect money for a possible 2020 campaign to reclaim the seat.

LOGISTICS

Essential Politics is published Monday and Friday.

You can keep up with breaking news on our politics page throughout the day. And are you following us on Twitter at @latimespolitics?

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Please send thoughts, concerns and news tips to politics@latimes.com.

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California election officials are guarding their voting machines and registration lists against Russian hackers  although no one has spotted any.

I operate under the assumption that hacking is actually happening and California is a target, Secretary of State Alex Padilla says.

This year, theres a big focus on several congressional races that could determine the House majority. The stakes in California have national implications.

But would the Russians actually try to change election outcomes?

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I have no doubt that if they could, they would, says Padilla, a Democrat whos heavily favored to win reelection in November.

Hacking into Californias voting system and altering votes, however, is considered by most experts to be practically impossible. Thats because voting machines arent hooked up to the internet. State law forbids it. A hacker might attack one machine but couldnt reach into the entire vote-collecting system.

We invited the Department of Homeland Security to try to hack into our system, says Joe Holland, Santa Barbara Countys recorder-assessor and president of the state association of election officials. They stayed five days and couldnt do it.

Voter registration lists are different, however.

People are registered online. Records are connected to the internet. And hackers could break into those, says Matt Bishop, a UC Davis computer science professor. They could create chaos by disenfranchising voters.

Why would Russians want to do that? To tick off Americans and undermine the credibility of U.S. elections  to further divide us and exacerbate political polarization. This was their goal in interfering with the 2016 presidential election  that and helping President Trump beat Hillary Clinton, who really irked Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Fomenting discord also is achieved by spreading false information  fake news  on social media, including Twitter and Facebook.

Like what?

Everything from directing people to the wrong polling places  that happens, Padilla says. And theres the age-old tactic of trying to tell voters that the election is on a different date. Two years ago, they were saying that provisional ballots arent counted. Thats absolutely not true.

Yes, there were lies flowing through the internet that thousands of boxes of provisional ballots were stacked in warehouses, never to be opened. Some people actually believed it.

A provisional ballot is cast when someone shows up at a voting place and isnt listed on the precinct registration list. The voter might have gone to the wrong location. Rather than send the person packing, a provisional ballot is handed out. And the voter is checked out later.

More from George Skelton 

Well over 90% of provisional ballots check out and are counted, Padilla says.

Los Angeles County Voter Registrar Dean Logan says, Theres also an ongoing myth that we dont count mail ballots unless its a close contest. We always count all ballots.

No election official I talked with knew of any Russian hacking in California, but theyre on alert with 24/7 monitoring, they say.

National security officials revealed last year that Russian hackers tried to break into 21 states election systems in 2016.

California apparently wasnt one, despite an initial report by the Department of Homeland Security. The agency later corrected itself and said Russian hackers had actually scanned the state Department of Technologys network, not the secretary of States.

Our notification [from Homeland Security] was not only a year late, Padilla complained at the time, it also turned out to be bad information.

Late was common for the Obama administration in defending against cyberattacks in 2016.

Coverage of California politics 

While the Americans dithered, the Russians feasted, New York Times national security correspondent David E. Sanger wrote in his new book, The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age. He was referring to Russians cracking the Democratic National Committees computer system, and he was critical of both the DNC and the FBI.

Writing about the Russians social media campaign of misinformation and troublemaking, Sanger observed: To this day, no one can prove whether it actually affected the elections outcome  in fact, the dispute over its effects widened the political divide, as the Russians intended.

In Sacramento, Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature recently appropriated $134 million to upgrade county voting systems and defend them against hackers.

Padilla criticized the Republican-controlled Congress for rejecting a $250-million appropriation that would have helped states protect their voting systems.

Intelligence officials have been crystal clear: our democracy is, and will continue to be, under attack by Russia and others, he said in a statement.

Padilla noted that Congress simultaneously approved a $717-billion defense spending bill.

Bolstering our election infrastructure is a matter of national security, he asserted.

Republicans claimed the money for cyberattack defense wasnt needed.

I know what we need for safe and secure elections, and thats voter ID, said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Ah, yes, the old illegal voting myth  the cry that undocumented immigrants are stuffing the ballot box. Nonsense.

After Trump got fewer popular votes than Clinton, but won the presidency in the electoral college, he claimed that millions of people voted illegally. He created a commission to prove his fantasy, but had to shut it down when no evidence was found.

Voter fraud gets talked about in partisan circles and in the heat of campaigns, Logan says, but its just not borne out to be factual.

Whats factual are Russian cyberattacks. California isnt dithering.

george.skelton@latimes.com

Follow @LATimesSkelton on Twitter
John McGroarty, who wrote a column for the Los Angeles Times called Seen from the Green Verdugo Hills, also wrote The Mission Play, a three-hour portrayal of the California missions.

The play, which opened in 1912, was seen by an estimated 2.5 million people. It was inspired by Helen Hunt Jacksons 1884 Ramona, a fictional account of two star-crossed lovers, which sparked an interest in Old Spanish California.

This interest, coupled with new railroad lines connecting the Midwest with the West, brought an influx of people ready to see and hear more of our mission story.

In 1902, a wealthy hotelier named Frank Miller began building the Mission Inn in Riverside. He also began traveling the world to collect treasures to display in the hotel, built mainly in the Mission Revival style to attract travelers seeking old California.

On a trip to Europe, he saw the Oberammergau Passion Play and returned home to find someone to write a similar play about Southern Californias dramatic past.

A friend suggested that he talk to McGroarty.

[McGroarty] had been writing Californiana [the study of California history and culture] for The Times; he knew the region; he could put words together, according to William Deverell, author of Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past.

McGroarty, born in Pennsylvania in 1862, suffered from severe asthma as a youth. Despite his poor health, he began teaching school, then wrote for the Wilkes-Barre Evening Leader.

In 1901, after marrying a young woman named Ida Lubrecht, the couple made their way west, eventually settling in Tujunga, in hopes that the clear air would ease his asthma. That same year, he began writing his weekly column for The Times, according to Wikipedia.

After listening to Millers request, McGroarty agreed to write the play. He took time off from the newspaper and moved into the Mission Inn to write; reportedly completing the project in just eight weeks.

Unexpectedly, Miller backed away from the play before its debut, but McGroarty persevered. The play opened on April 29, 1912, on an outdoor stage at the San Gabriel Mission with a cast of over a hundred.

It was, by all accounts, a virtuoso performance. The audience shouted and cheered. People laughed and wept, Deverell wrote. They even pulled the author to the stage for a standing ovation.

Within 10 weeks, after 127 consecutive shows, the play entered the American theater record books. Within the year, it was a Southern California phenomena that connected and expanded the mission fantasies of the region. Deverell added that railroads incorporated the play into their advertisements, and one reviewer wrote that the entire history of California could now be seen in an afternoon.

The San Gabriel Mission Playhouse was constructed in 1927 to house the production, which saw its 3,000th performance in February 1930.

McGroarty had close ties to Glendale. In 1930, he spoke at a huge fiesta thrown by the San Rafael Park Assn., formed to save the old adobe on Dorothy Drive from demolition. (Yes, they were successful; it is now one of our foremost city parks.)

In 1955, at the unveiling of a historic marker at McGroartys home, Glendale News-Press publisher Carroll W. Parcher spoke of his friend, who had died in 1944, recalling the early days of Tujunga when McGroarty founded the Millionaire Club of Happiness and Contentment, made up of men who sat on the post office steps waiting for the mail to be delivered by horse and buggy from La Crescenta.

The marker was just one of many honors bestowed on McGroarty. He was named poet laureate of California, knighted by King Alfonso XIII of Spain and also made a Knight of Saint George by Pope Pius XI for his positive portrayal of the mission priests in California.

Readers Write:

In response to Daniel Conovers request for information about the Roads End neighborhood, Richard Threlkeld, who was a student at Glendale High in 1966, emailed to say that he had a high school friend whose parents lived in that area. Threlkeld had the impression that it was a community of missionaries.

KATHERINE YAMADA can be reached at katherineyamada@gmail.com. or by mail at Verdugo Views, c/o Glendale News-Press, 202 W. First St., Second Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Please include your name, address and phone number.
Snow monkeys usually call the snowy areas of Japan their home. But two newborns are chilling at a South Dakota zoo where a total of 16 members of the endangered species now thrive.

A female snow monkey and her baby at the Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls, S.D. Great Plains Zoo

Snow monkeys, also known as Japanese macaques, weigh about a pound at birth. The babies at the Great Plains Zoo & Delbridge Museum of Natural History in Sioux Falls were born May 28 and June 10, a news release said.

The babies born this summer bring the total number of snow monkeys at the zoo to 16. Great Plains Zoo

Visitors can see them during regular zoo hours 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily except Sundays, when the hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

One of the newborn snow monkeys plays in the enclosure at the Great Plains Zoo. Great Plains Zoo

The Sioux Falls zoo has witnessed the births eight young snow monkeys since the exhibit opened five years ago.

Snow monkeys live farther north than any other nonhuman primate, according to National Geographic. The red-faced monkeys with grayish-brown fur are known for hanging out in alpine hot springs at high elevations in Japan.

A mom grooms one of two snow monkeys born at the Great Plains Zoo this summer. Great Plains Zoo

I was struck by how like us they are. Their expressions and behaviors are easy to relate to. In fact, theyre a lot like what I see when I look in the mirror, or at my daughters, said National Geographic photographer Jasper Doest, who has photographed the intelligent, expressive primates several times in their native habitat:

Other zoos in the U.S. that host snow monkeys include Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley, Minn.

Info: Great Plains Zoo & Delbridge Museum of Natural History, 805 S. Kiwanis Ave., Sioux Falls; (605) 367-7003

travel@latimes.com

Twitter: @latimestravel
If I were planning a Thanksgiving visit to my maternal grandmothers house in Virginia, I would be in a world of hurt. I would be forking out at least $600 for a round-trip ticket if I traveled on the traditional days  leaving Wednesday and returning Sunday.

Its still August, Thanksgiving is 99 days away, and the fare is probably not going to get any cheaper.

I wont be going, because thats more than Ive ever paid for a round-trip ticket to the Washington area and because granny died in 1935. (I know that sounds as if mathematically I could be as old as Methuselah; Im not, although I could be his younger sister.)

But theres other math you should pay attention to right now if youre thinking about flying this fall and winter, and unlike my granny, its pretty ugly.

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Heres why, why it matters and why there may be hope on the horizon:

-- Fuel prices are rising. Big deal, you say. Fares havent gone up that much. Thats true for now, but it takes awhile for those increases to infiltrate the fare structure before you feel the pain.

And you will feel it, as Thomas Spagnola, senior vice president of supplier relations for fare website CheapOAir, said, fuel is about a quarter of the cost of a ticket.

Fuel prices increased 11 cents a gallon from June 21 to Aug. 3, according to data from Airlines for America, an industry group.

When prices increase, fuel becomes the equivalent of other, less acceptable, four-letter words. In 2011, higher prices contributed to fares that reached new heights. Our L.A. Times Travel section airfare charts tell the tale. The chart of Aug. 7, 2011, showed a round-trip fare to Washington of $472. The fare chart from Aug. 5 of this year showed $328.

-- More people are flying. Almost 250 million will board a plane this summer, Airlines for America predicts, an increase of about 5% from last summer. That means load factors  how full the planes are  continue to increase, A4A stats show.

It wasnt unusual for a plane to fly 55% full in the mid-70s; by 2017, that figure had increased to 83.5%, which means you cant always find another seat if the passenger next to you smells like sweaty gym socks.

More important, those load factors tell us that demand continues to be strong. Airlines are experts in yield management  charging the maximum the market will bear  so dont expect them not to try to make money.

-- Airlines do need to make more money, especially in the face of rising costs. Theyre not nonprofits, at least not on purpose. Second-quarter results werent horrible, but they werent dazzling after several years of profits.

I dont live and breathe airline earnings, but Airline Weekly does. Seth Kaplan, the managing partner for the publication, just ranked nine airlines on their profit declines in the second quarter. None of the nine airlines escaped a drop in revenue, but some did not fare as badly.

And two are in growth mode, Kaplan said: United and Spirit. Thats important, because airlines that are growing can afford to add capacity, which helps with demand.

Even those airlines that arent in growth mode may hold the keys to keeping fares affordable.

Spirit is an ultra-low-cost carrier, or ULCC; American, United and Delta have basic economy fares (and Alaska will introduce a version later this year).

So fliers, here is the good news and the hope:

Spirit, which once delighted in being the most hated airline in America, is winning friends and fans and expanding quickly. It may be that its message has finally stuck with the flying public: Were not like the carriers you have known and tolerated lo these many years. We are a low-cost carrier, and were going to charge you for stuff. Upselling (paying for a bag, paying for a seat assignment) is part of our model.

Kaplan and Spagnola have flown Spirit with their families and have praised its cost savings.

The mirror image of Spirit is the legacy carriers, which recently jumped on the basic economy bandwagon and have had their own image issues to deal with as they work to explain that basic is a restrictive fare that can save you money. Upselling is also part of their model.

The biggest point of contention is whether you can take a carry-on bag. Delta allows it. American is going to start allowing it after initially playing hardball. And United doesnt yet allow it, but pressure is on.

Although you may not be able to choose your seat in advance (you might allow yourself to pay  to be upsold  to do so) or upgrade or change your ticket, you still will save money over regular economy fares.

The legacy carriers are burdened with trying to explain that basic economy is not your grandmothers flight experience; no one expects hot meals anymore, for instance.

But consumers are still not quite on board with what basic economy means, which is this: You make a choice to be in control of your flying destiny, and one of them is to risk being uncomfortable because it saves you money.

This confusion about what basic is will sort itself out in time. But for now, basic economy and the ULCCs (include Frontier and Allegiant in the group) may be the leisure travelers BFF. And the low-cost trend is expanding to international carriers as well.

Only you can decide whether what you save is worth what you must accept/endure. But at least there are options, something that our flying foremothers never had.

Have a travel dilemma? Write to travel@latimes.com. We regret we cannot answer every inquiry.

travel@latimes.com

@latimestravel
More than 100 members of Afghan security forces and 20 civilians have been killed in four days of heavy fighting with the Taliban in a strategic city, officials said Monday, illustrating the potency of the insurgency even as the U.S. pursues peace talks.

The clashes in Ghazni, about 90 miles southwest of Kabul, the capital, began early Friday and have forced throngs of residents to flee the city by road while others took shelter in their homes.

About 1,000 Afghan troops were sent as reinforcements Monday and helped to prevent the collapse of Ghazni city to the enemy, but fighting was ongoing, Defense Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami told reporters in Kabul.

U.S. military advisers were sent to Ghazni to assist Afghan forces, and U.S. warplanes launched airstrikes that killed 140 suspected insurgents since Friday, according to the U.S.-led NATO coalition. Afghan officials said a total of nearly 200 Taliban had been killed in the fighting.

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Hopefully within 24 hours, the situation will be changed remarkably, Bahrami said.

Just last month, representatives of the Taliban held the first direct talks with U.S. officials, part of a push by the Trump administration to end the 17-year conflict. The meeting reportedly took place in Qatar and involved Alice Wells, a senior State Department official, but no representatives of the Afghan government.

U.S. and Afghan officials have said the prospects for peace talks are encouraging.

But the offensive in Ghazni, which Afghan officials said was carefully planned and involved insurgents from multiple provinces, showed that the Taliban plans to keep fighting to improve its negotiating position.

Even if the Afghan government keeps control of Ghazni  a provincial capital on the main highway leading to Kabul  the situation in the city of 270,000 was bleak, with civilians killed and injured in crossfire and bodies piling up in overwhelmed health facilities. In interviews Sunday, residents described scenes of chaos.

There are many dead bodies  theyre stinking because theyve been brought since the first day of fighting, said Sayed Abdul Hakim, a 24-year-old shopkeeper who had come to Ghaznis main hospital where his brother was being treated for a shrapnel wound.

This is a hospital where people should get well, but instead were getting sick from this smell. My brother has been lying here and no one takes care of him.

On Sunday, battered sedans pulled up to the hospital entrance carrying wounded civilians, who were carried into the crowded hallways by volunteers. In the distance, plumes of dark smoke rose from a fabric market that the Taliban had set ablaze as fighters stormed through the city.

At a morgue on the hospital grounds, dozens of dead bodies, most of them members of the security forces, lay in simple wooden coffins surrounded by buzzing flies.

Both sides are killing people, no matter who does what, but we have been suffering, said Wahidullah, a 25-year-old shopkeeper who had brought his injured brother to the hospital, and like many Afghans has only one name.

Hes shot in the back  Im not sure by whom.

Electricity and cellphone service have been cut off in much of the city, with some residents blaming the Taliban for attacking the infrastructure. U.N. humanitarian officials said Monday that the power shortage had limited the supply of water in Ghazni and food supplies were running low.

Medication at the main hospital is reportedly becoming scarce and people are unable to safely bring casualties for treatment, Rik Peeperkorn, acting U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Afghansitan, said in a statement.

Main access roads both north and south of the city to larger cities where medical facilities are available are contested and unsafe for people to travel.

Bahrami did not give a breakdown of the casualties but Wais Ahmad Barmak, the interior minister, said that about 70 of the dead security forces were members of the police.

The people should be proud of their security forces, Barmak said.

Special correspondent Faizy reported from Kabul and Times staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India. Special correspondent Mohammad Anwar Danishyar contributed to this report from Ghazni.

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Shashank Bengali is The Times South Asia correspondent. Follow him on Twitter at @SBengali

UPDATES:

10:45 a.m.: This article was updated throughout with Times reporting.

This article was originally published at 5:05 a.m.
Representatives of the rival Koreas announced Monday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in will meet in Pyongyang sometime in September.

The push for what would be the leaders third summit since April comes amid renewed worries surrounding a nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang.

The announcement released after nearly two hours of talks led by the rivals chiefs for inter-Korean affairs was remarkably thin on details. In a three-sentence joint statement, the two sides did not mention an exact date for the summit and provided no details on how to implement past agreements.

Ri Son Gwon, chairman of the North Korean agency that deals with inter-Korean affairs, told reporters at the end of the talks that officials agreed on a specific date for the summit in Pyongyang sometime within September, but he refused to share the date, saying he wanted to keep reporters wondering. He earlier told the South Korean delegation in opening remarks that the Koreas were like very close friends with an unbreakable bond.

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The South Korean Unification Minister was set to brief reporters later Monday.

The meeting at a North Korea-controlled building in the border village of Panmunjom took place as the international community waits to see if North Korea will begin abandoning its nuclear weapons, something officials suggested would happen after Kims summit with President Trump in Singapore in June.

North Korea is thought to have a growing arsenal of nuclear bombs and long-range missiles and to be closing in on the ability to reliably target anywhere on the U.S. mainland. A string of North Korean weapons tests last year, during which Pyongyang claimed to have completed its nuclear arsenal, had many in Asia worried that Washington and Pyongyang were on the brink of war.
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Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2018 > The Bugles Are Calling For War

IMPRESSIONS

The big question is finally being addressed: who will be the Oppositions candidate for the Prime Minister? It will be unrealistic of course to expect an answer at this stage. But the unexpected flexibility in the Congress position

tells its own tale. Two days after taking a stand firmly in favour of Rahul Gandhi, it said the party would be accommodative, that it saw itself as a facilitator of alliances, that it was ready to accept any non-RSS candidate as the Prime Minister.

In a more sensational policy shift, Mamata Banerjee said that she would organise an Opposition rally in Kolkata in January to which she would invite the CPM, a sworn enemy against which she had a fought a bitter war and won. She called for an inclusive Opposition. At the other end of the country, Mehbooba Muftis Peoples Democratic Party rushed to compliment its long-time adversary, the National Conference, when NC leader Farooq Abdullah called for talks with Pakistan over Kashmir.

Chandrababu Naidu emphasised a critical factor when he said: Strengthen the regional parties whether it is the party of Mamata, Mayawati, Akhilesh or Kumaraswamy, then India will have a better future. This is common-sense endorsed by history. The Congress was strongest when it functioned more or less as a syndicate of regional leaders such as Kamaraj, S.K. Patil, Atulya Ghosh, S. Nijalingappa and C.B. Gupta.

Men of that calibre are hard to come by these days and regional leaders are finding it difficult to achieve national stature. Mayawati has spent massively to field candidates in many States many a time, scoring zero most of the time. Akhilesh Yadav similarly is unable to make any impact outside his home turf. Kumaraswamy has a party with an all-India sound, but is crippled by a father who is over-ambitious for an 85-year old and a brother in the Cabinet whose authoritarianism is aggravated by his eccentricity; it was unbearable family politics that reduced the Karnataka Chief Minister to a pitiable weeping angel.

Mamata Banerjee is the only person in Naidus list whose mass popularity at home has some echoes elsewhere as well. She certainly had a larger audience in mind than the one she faced in Kolkata last week when she said that there is a crisis in India because the ruling group had unleashed Taliban Hindutva. She referred to hundreds of people being killed in UP in fake encounters, and 13,000 farmers committing suicide. She asked people to unite under the slogan BJP hatao, desh bachao.

Chandrababu Naidu said, intriguingly, that his TDP would play a national role. Does it mean one-upmanship with other regional leaders or helping a chosen one? Earlier Telanganas Chandrasekhar Rao had said, a bit too blatantly, I am ready to enter national politics.....I will take the leadership at the national level, why not? To mention just one reason: What credibility can he have when he is unable to work collaboratively even with the other Telugu State next door? The TDP member who introduced the no-confidence motion in Parliament faced the loudest interruptions from the Telangana members.

Actually that debate unveiled talent that could be of use to both the Telugu States and beyond. Jayadeva Gulla, eloquent in polished English, was a forceful speaker, deserving the one hour he managed against the allotted 13 minutes. Eloquent in his own native style was Kesineni Srinivas who regaled the House with quotable quotes. Referring to the Prime Ministers speech, he said: Wandraful oratory speech, madam. Wandraful. I felt I was watching blockbuster Bollywood movie. The best actor in the world, madam. No doubt, madam. Madam Speaker didnt want such things said and cut him short. The Telangana MPs were happy.

Telugu is the only language, other than Hindi, that has more than one State in its name. That does not seems to be helping either the language or the States. Such inherent contradictions can stand in the way of Opposition unity. How an my leaders will have the maturity and the good sense to set aside personal ambitions for the common good? The shift to pragmatism announced by the Trinamul and Congress must set an example to others.

A warning implied in Rahul Gandhis speech in Parliament suggests that unity may be a matter of life-and-death for Opposition parties. He said: The Prime Minister and the BJP President cannot afford to lose power. Because the moment they lose power, the other processes will start against them. Think that over. One thing is sure. It is not going to be a general election next year. It is going to be war.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2018 > Sushma versus Trolls: Rift within BJP before 2019 polls

by Aurobindo Ghose

There is more to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swarajs apparently graceful response to the Twitter trolling she has faced over her Ministrys issuance of a passport to an inter-faith couple than meets the eye.

Swaraj has been the target of offensive tweets for helping Tanvi Seth, the wife of Mohammad Anas Siddiqui, get her passport after an officer allegedly harassed her for not changing her name to a Muslim one after her marriage.

It is significant that a Hindustan Times analysis revealed that 41 BJP parliamentarians, who are either Ministers in the Union Cabinet or elected MPs to the Lok Sabha, follow at least one of the accounts that tweeted a message which Swaraj regarded as trolling. It transpires that Narendra Modi follows eight of those accounts.

Although there is nothing to suggest that any or all of the above said 41 BJP parliamentarians endorse the tweets posted against her, the proximity of the hate trollers and the Twitter accounts of these BJP MPs and Ministers, including the Prime Minister, tell a story of its own.

On June 30, which was Social Media Day, apparently unaffected by the bitter trolling of his colleague, Prime Minister Modi congratulated his young friends for their innovative usage of social media, which has played a key role in democratising our discourse and that their frank method of conveying opinions is extremely endearing.

Narendra Modi? @narendramodi 30 Jun

Greetings on #SocialMediaDay! The world of social media has played a key role in democratising our discourse and giving a platform to millions of people around the world to express their views and showcase their creativity.

@narendramodi

I would particularly like to congratulate my young friends for their innovative usage of social media. Their frank method of conveying opinions is extremely endearing. I urge youngsters to continue expressing and discussing freely. #SocialMediaDay

In the background of the parallel and heavy trolling of Swaraj, Modis tweets meant only one thing: he had no sympathy for his colleague.

Politicians of all hues and commentators over Facebook, online and printed media, were quick in responding to the bitter trolling of Swaraj and her apparently gentle response. Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari and Ram Vilas Paswan, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Mehbooba Mufti, the Indian National Congress and other Opposition parties, all separately came in support of Swaraj. Rajnath Singh said the trolling was wrong but added that she should not have liked the tweets that offended her and there was no need to conduct the poll on Twitter that she had done to canvass support for civil language.

On July 3, Sidharth Bhatia wrote in The Wire that Swarajs polite response means that she chose to swallow the insults. The same day, Swaraj directly hit back at a troll. When one of her critics asked her to do her a favour and block her on Twitter, Swaraj shot back in Hindi Why wait? Here you go, youre blocked.

The BJP came out with a delayed and weak defence of Swaraj when its National General Secretary Ram Madhav wrote a piece in The Indian Express on July 6. Madhav is clear that trolling Swaraj, a champion of nationalism, on the passport issue is unacceptable, and also admits that the trollers are from the same side. Yet his main grouse seems to be why the trollers have let go the regressive Muslim cleric who performed the nikah and forced a Hindu woman to change her name. In another piece in The Indian Express on July 10, Apoorvanand looks at the issue ideologically and concludes that the trolls that target Swaraj are a byproduct of her and her partys politics.

A few words on who is Sushma Swaraj (nee Sharma) might be relevant. Born in Ambala, Haryana, her father was a prominent RSS member hailing from Lahore. She began her political life with the ABVP but was influenced by her husband and colleague in the legal profession, Swaraj Kaushal, who was a socialist by conviction and closely associated with the Socialist leader George Fernandes. This took her to active participation in JPs total revolution movement and the legal defence team for Fernandes in 1975. After the Emergency, she joined the BJP and soon became one of its prominent national leaders. Since then she has twice been an MLA in Haryana and the youngest ever Cabinet minister in the country at the age of 25. She has been the Chief Minister of Delhi for a brief period. She has been a Member of Parliament for seven terms, Leader of the Opposition in the 15th Lok Sabha and Union Minister in-charge of important portfolios like Information and Broadcasting, Health and now External Affairs since May 2014.

After taking over the MEA, Swaraj has been virtually reduced to the handling of overseas Indian affairs with foreign policy being exclusively handled and directed by Prime Minister Modi and his cohortsNS Advisor Ajit Doval and, till recently, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar. She has done the job allocated to her well. By creating the Twitter Seva service and now the passport seva mobile app she has helped thousands of Indian citizens in difficulty abroad. The passport seva mobile app, which allows migrant applicants to apply for a passport from their original place of residence, was launched on June 27 and by June 29, there were one million downloads. As recently as July 11, Swaraj tweeted that she was hearing only harsh language these days, a comment which means that she continues to be the victim of vicious and bitter trolling. No wonder, communication firm Burson Cohn and Wolfe concluded after a survey, that she is the most followed female world leader on Twitter with more than 10 million followers.

It is clear that Sushma Swarajs response to the bitter trolling was not only firm but also reflected her determination to uphold the passport rules rather than succumb to the coercion of communal trolling. She thereby upheld the Rule of Law, rather than the rule of the mob. She stood up to Modi and his loyalists and showed him who is the real External Affairs Minister. By holding a surprise Twitter poll on trolls where she secured a majority, she demons-trated her popular base. By getting support from her Cabinet colleagues and political leaders from different parties, she proved that she commands respect.

Those who say Swarajs response to the trolling was inadequate have not realised that what she did is tantamount to a virtual revolt both within the BJP as well as the RSS. Her response, although couched in gentle terms, may gather more force in the coming months and take a clear shape only before the Lok Sabha polls in 2019. Given the fact that Swaraj enjoys having support and friends both within her party and outside, her present stand and actions may even influence, at the same time, the result of the elections, as well as the choice of the next Prime Minister, should Narendra Modi fail to deliver a decisive victory for the BJP.

(Courtesy: The Wire)

Aurobindo Ghose is a lawyer and human rights activist, practicing in the Supreme Court of India. He is a retired professor from Delhi University.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2018 > Post-Sachar Discourse: Search for an Inclusive Idea of India

by Badre Alam Khan and Mohammad Shahid Alam

Recently under the banner of the Institute of Objective Studies (IOS), a report has been released on Vision 2025, Socio-Economic Inequalities: Why does Indias Economic Growth need an Inclusive Agenda? on July 6, 2018. A keynote was delivered by an eminent scholar, Amitabh Kundu, who is currently the Chairman of the Post-Sachar Evaluation Committee, 2014, and a former Professor of the JNU at the Jamia Millia Islamia, in the presence of eminent personalities like former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies Director Vijay Mahajan and other dignitaries. This programme was also attended by Abusaleh Shariff (who was directly associated with the SCR and Kundu Committee Report), and Jamias teachers, research scholars, and general audience. While introducing the theme of the report, Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam, the IOS Chairman, made important observations like a major difference between the Vision 2025 document and others is that the earlier reports were the work of governments [SCR], while the present one is from an NGO (IOS) affiliated to the United Nations.

Discussions around Vision 2025

Let us come to important points of the Vision document 2025, as mentioned in the introductory note brought out by the IOS, which essentially focuses on the need for building a secular and inclusive society as enshrined in our secular Constitution and on lines of the SCR (2006). In this respect, editors like Amir Abdullah and Abdul Azim Akhtar have done a wonderful scholarly exercise by putting together 17 papers in the proper perspective and brought out their ideas on Indian Muslims and the varied issues and problems they confront in everyday life. While identifying the important areas of intervention by the state as well as civil society groups, the introductory small booklet points out: The report focuses on educational, economic and political upliftment as well as the issues of security for the Indian Muslims. It focuses on the five critical areas of Health, Education, Political Representation, Employment and Security. (Amir Ullah Khan and Abdul Azim Akhtar, Editors, An Introductory Copy Vision 2025, Socio-Economic Inequalities: why Indias Economic Growth needs an Inclusive Agenda IOS, New Delhi, 2018, p. 2)

Broadly speaking, the themes which have been covered under the report are Muslim political representation, violence against Indian Muslims, security and equity issues, anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat (2002). Moreover, some papers have also discussed topics like Hindutva and Indian Muslims, Muslim women and issues of development, reform of Muslim personal laws and role of police during communal riots, stereotypical images of Muslims in popular media and finally caste among the Indian Muslims etc. In the light of previous (SCR) and current reports, the editors have given some worthwhile recommendations. In this respect, the introductory copy points out that more and more educational institutions like the AMU should be established. The dropout rate among the boys and girls should be checked, more schools and colleges should be opened by the government, particularly in the Muslim concen-trated areas. And the Muslim community should be encouraged to assimilate quality education etc.

Moreover, the report also points out that Muslims should be motivated to join the government services, mainly in the field of education and police forces. Secondly, Hajj and Waqf Board officials should be made accountable for their activities. And these institutions should not be headed by political appointees. Pakistan should not be used to stigmatise the Muslims of India as is usually done by the communal forces, and the concept of Islamic banking should be introduced, the report adds. In short, on the basis of the above-mentioned points as outlined in the Vision 2025, one could argue that current reports like the earlier SCR (2006), Rangnath Mishra Report (2007) and Kundu report (2014) have envisaged an inclusive idea of India. To elucidate these points further, the booklet rightly states:

We envision India in 2025, where all Muslims are assured of, and have access to, equitable and inclusive growth through public and private service delivery and are able to pursue their aspirations with optimal health, education, wellbeing and quality of life. This vision will be realised by empowering all Muslims and minorities and their institutions, through building leadership, capacity, accountability and diverse partnership etc.

Having spelt out Vision 2025, now let us first discuss how the community responded to the SCR recommendations. It is to be noted that within the community opinions are somehow divided along the caste and gender lines. A Muslim feminist scholar, Farah Naqvi, has raised the point that the SCR has not said anything concrete about Muslim womens problems. Besides, she said that it was surprising to note that not even a single woman member has been included in the SCR. (Read her public talk at the Jamia Collective, on May 10, 2018.) In addition to that, Pasmanda leaders like Ali Anwar initially had shown their disagreement with the terms and conditions of the report and some of its recommendations as well. Pasmanda leaders argued that if caste as a category had been taken seriously by the SCR, the outcome would have been quite different.

We are willing to highlight the discourse around the SCR, current Vision 2025 (which is based on the broad theoretical perspective mentioned in the SCR) and its political ramifications in the wider society. In this context, we would like to mention the wider-range of perspectives like the Hindu Right, Left-liberal, community leaders, Pasmanda leaders and some feminists critical viewpoints about the SCR. Here we would like to say that all perspectives have not presented holistic pictures underlined by the SCR. However, we will not discuss all these views in detail, but our focus will remain confined to only the manner in which the Hindu Right has usually propagated myths around the SCR while comparing it wrongly with the W.W. Hunter report (1871) and other colonial documents. Toeing the line of Kundu, we would like to argue that the SCR, which is followed by other reports including the current Vision-2025, is much broader and really envisaged the idea of an inclusive India, enshrined in our secular Constitution.

RSS Critique of SCR

Let us discuss how the Hindu Right-wing had earlier responded to the SCR in particular and the minority rights discourse in general. It is pertinent to note that communal forces had created a lot of myth around minority appease-ment, which is empirically untenable. In this respect, noted journalist Ajaz Ashraf rightly exposed the myth of the Muslim appeasement debate. As he writes, The Sachar report punctured the myth of Muslim appeasement. No longer could anyone accuse the Indian state of favouring Muslims: the report showed that they lagged behind other communities, barring the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, on just about every socio-economic index. (April 21, 2018, in scroll.in, accessed on July 7, 2018) In a similar way, French scholar Christophe Jafferlot and Kalaiyarasan A. in their recent article have also debunked the appeasement debates, falsely created by the communal forces. As they write, Muslims faced rapid socio-economic decline. Yet, any move in their favour is made to look illegitimate. (See, Jafferlot and Kalaiyarasan, The Myth of Muslim Appease-ment in The Indian Express, April 20, 2018) However, while discussing the myth around the growth of Muslim population in India, Rakesh Sinha writes:

It is a common knowledge that the Muslim population is growing much faster than other communities. In the past 40 years, the total population of India has grown by 134 per cent while that of the Muslims has grown by 194 per cent. The gap in the growth rate of Muslims and total population is almost 10 per cent. (Rakesh Sinha, on Deceptive Equality, Deconstructing: The Equal Opportunity Commission, India Policy Foundation, New Delhi, 2009, p. 24)

In complete contrast to Sinhas arguments about the growth of the Muslim population, a noted sociologist, Tanweer Fazal, has shown that the growth rate of the population is declining among the Indian Muslims. As he writes,

The Sachar Report demolished the Right-wing discourse that had thrived on perpetuating stereotypes regarding high Muslim fertility, reluctance towards contraceptive usage, propensity towards madrasas, etc. Analysis of population figures revealed a constant decline in Muslim fertility and growing tendency among Muslims to adopt contraceptive usage. (Tanweer Fazal, Between Minorityism and Minority Rights: Interrogating Post-Sachar Strategies of Intervention, History and Sociology of South Asia (2010), p. 149)

In a similar way, very thoughtful and critical points were made on the issues of Muslims and family planning of India by Dr S.Y. Quraishi at the same seminar on July 6, 2018. He spoke on myth and realities about the Indian Muslims particularly related to the growth of population, issue of polygamy and status of Muslim women. Moreover, Dr Quraishi concluded that the myths propagated by the Right-wing and corporate owned media houses were empirically untenable and the problems of the Muslims associated with these aspects were similar to those of other communities. It is wrong to say that in the case of Indian Muslims, the religious factor played an important role on these issues, said Quraishi.

It is crucial to underline that the staunchest critique of the SCR has come from the RSS-BJP combine. RSS ideologues like Rakesh Sinha openly rejected the SCR and equated the report with the W.W. Hunter report (1871). His argu-ment was that the committee recommended reservation on grounds of religion, which is unconstitutional and will create a communal divide in society along religious lines. Further, he went on to say that the report will in future generate separatist tendencies among the Indian Muslims, as it had happened in the case of the Hunter report as well, subsequently preparing the ground for the demand of Pakistan. In this respect, Sinha wrote: This [SCR] recommen-dation reminds us of the Morley-Minto reforms which introduced the poisonous ideology of communal electorates and permanently strained the fissile Hindu-Muslim relations which led to partition. (Prof Rakesh Sinha, on Deceptive Equality Deconstructing the Equal Opportunity Commission, India Policy Foundation, New Delhi, 2009, p. 32)

It is pertinent to mention in this respect that through the presidential order 1950, Article 341 had been amended twice and Dalit Muslims and Christians were kept outside the fold of reservation because they belonged to other religious communities. Here, communal forces argue that they should not be given reservation because Islam and Christianity are non-Indic religions and in their religious scriptures, caste has not been sanctioned. However, in 1956 and 1990, Sikhs and Neo-Buddhists have got reservation and are included in the list of Dalits. Several academics and the SCR have said that not giving reservation to Dalit Muslims is contrary to the principle of secularism and violates several provisions of Fundamental Rights of the Indian Constitution. As the committee notes, there were voices that questioned the non-availability of the SC quota for Muslims while it was available for Mazhabi Sikhs and Neo-Buddhists. (SCR: 2006, p. 26)

In addition to this, long back RSS ideologue Dr Hedgewar had said that Muslims and Christians were cultural outsiders. In this respect, noted scholar Asghar Ali Engineer rightly observed: Guru Golwalkar, who succeeded Dr Hedgewar, treated Muslims and Christians as foreigners and aliens. He (Golwalkar) wrote that they, the (that is, Muslims and Christians) came to this country as guests and that guests should not overstay and go back to their own countries. (Asghar Ali Engineer, The RSS as an evolution from the minority perspective in Secular Perspective, April 16-30, 2001, p. 1)

To put it differently, the RSS-BJP and Sinhas arguments on the SCR are not empirically tenable, because several eminent academics have argued that the SCR, if implemented holistically, has the potential to democratise the Muslim society in particular and Indian society in general. It is to be noted that the Committee has put forth an idea of establishing an Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC) and of Diversity index. (SCR: 2006, pp. 240,242) In this respect the Report says: The diversity principle which entails equity is to be applied not only between the majority and minorities but also between minorities so that the truly disadvantaged can and should benefit. If the recommendations made by the SCR and subse-quent reports are implemented honestly by the Central and State governments, Kundu argues that than we will be able to bridge the gap between gender, caste, and community etc. There-fore, it is wrong to say that the SCR recommen-dations are based on the colonial state policy to divide the Indian society along communal lines, and contrary to the principle of secularism, as held by RSS ideologue Prof Sinha. It is to be noted that a former Vice-President of India, Hamid Ansari, was also attacked by the communal forces when he spoke at the Golden Jubilee celebrations of All India Majilis-e-Mushawarat on September 4, 2015. Truly speaking, he spoke about the pathetic situation of Indian Muslims as mentioned in the SCR. In short, any genuine demand of Indian Muslims is considered by the Hindu nationalist forces as appeasement (often they call it pseudo-secularism), and contrary to the principles of genuine secularism.

The Academic Discourse around SCR

Contrary to Sinha and the Right-wing Hindutva forces, Prof Kundu strongly emphasised that the SCR and other subsequent reports put forward the idea of the inclusive vision of India. To elaborate the point further, Prof Kundu, Chairman, of the Post-Sachar Evaluation Committee (2014), writes in his preface:

The Committee believes that a concerted effort must be made to cherish the unfulfilled dream of inclusive India and hence puts forward an operational strategy for this. It recommends that the government in power must work out the details of implementation of this strategy by taking all components of governance into confidence. (Kundu report, p. 14)

Noted sociologists like Surinder. S. Jodhka and others have said that for the first time, after the publication of SCR, the discourse around the minority community has been shifted from security/identity to development. As he writes, the Sachar Committee shifted the discourse from identity politics to concerns for develop-ment, participation and citizenship by articu-lating the anxieties of a large cross-section of the Muslims about the deep-rooted prejudice and discrimination they often experience in everyday lifebe it in the job market, in housing and in civic life. (Surinder S. Jodhka, The Problem, in Seminar October, 2009, accessed on July 7, 2018)

In this respect, eminent scholar Javeed Alam noted that unlike in the colonial period of minority politics, which was headed by primarily the Muslim League led by Jinnah, the SCR has inaugurated the politics of citizenship (based on socio-economic backwardness) among the Indian Muslims. (See, Javeed Alam, Contem-porary Muslim Problems in EPW, 2010) It is crucial to note that even the progressive Left initially had not taken the report seriously and lamented that it will create a communal divide, as stated by Prof Kundu in a recent public talk organised by the Jamia collective held on May 10, 2018. Moreover, even social justice parties, like the SP-BSP have also not taken the report seriously and disagreed the terms and conditions along with some recommendations underlined by the report on the Indian Muslims.

The question that arises is: after more than one decade has passed, what would be the fate of the SCR in the current Indian political scenario, which is dominated by Hindutva politics? However, it is ironical to underline here that recently the former President of the Congress Party, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, openly said that the party had lost the Lok Sabha elections, 2014, because our party has been understood as pro-Muslim by the general Hindu masses. While addressing the gathering at the India Today Conclave in Mumbai, she said: The BJP has managed to, I dont say brainwash because that is a rude word, but it has managed to convince people, to persuade people that the Congress party is a Muslim party. (BJP managed to convince people we are a Muslim party: Sonia Gandhi in The Indian Express, March 10, 2018)

After her statement, acrimonious debates subsequently took place in the public sphere. In this respect, noted social activist Harsh Mander wrote an article in The Indian Express and argued that for the first time since partition, Indian Muslims have now become politically untouc-hable in India. (See, Sonia, Sadly, The Indian Express, March 17, 2018) Further he noted: Sonia Gandhis fear that the Congress is being per-ceived as a Muslim party completes the communitys abandonment. It has to be mentioned that, after four years of publication of the report, Mander himself wrote an article in The Hindu in 2011, and underlined that the report has not been satisfactorily implemented. In this context, he stated: Even four years after the Sachar Committee Report revealed that Muslims were the most economically backward socially disad-vantaged community; still nothing has been done to address the development deficit of this commu-nity. (See, The Hindu, February 20, 2011, p. 3)

However, it is surprising to note that one of the distinguished and so-called liberal Hindu historians, Ramchandra Guha, wrote an article in The Indian Express (see, Liberals, Sadly, The Indian Express, March 24, 2018), and like the communal forces he also squarely blamed the Muslim community for their socio-economic backwardness. However, several scholars and social activists like Javed Anand (Liberals in majoritarian times, in The Indian Express, April 4, 2018, p. 13), Prof Apoorvanand (Liberally blinkered, The Indian Express, March 24, 2018.) have expressed deep dissatisfaction with Guha. As Apoorvanand says, liberals and RSS both want to shed Muslims their Muslimness. He and several others also strongly expressed disagreement with Guhas formulations (mainly when he drew an analogy between the Burkha and Trishul), and they argued that it is empirically wrong to say that the Muslim community is backward solely because of their innate religious conservatism. In short, they demonstrated that like other societies the Muslim community had liberal currents and many in the past cherished the progressive traditions. Progressive writers movement, which was headed by Indian Muslims, is a case in point.

Conclusion: Threat to an Inclusive Idea of India

Since the coming of the BJP to power in 2014, the idea of India is under attack. The attack on the minorities in the form of mob lynching, economic disparities and intolerance are increasing day by day. The Sachar Committee Report, which came out in 2006 as a reply to these attacks and cherished the inclusive idea of India, should be relooked with a fresh perspective.

Sachar drafted the Report to uphold the ideals of the Indian Constitution and the democratic framework. The Report should be implemented to uplift the minorities. The readings of the SCR have been narrowly defined and not understood by the earlier secular regimes holistically, as pointed out by Kundu earlier.

Let us conclude here our discussions by citing Babasaheb Ambedkars views on minority rights and nationalism.

Unfortunately for the minorities in India, Indian nationalism has developed a new doctrine which may be called the divine right of the majority to rule the minorities according to the wishes of the majority. Any claim for sharing the power by the minority is called communalism while monopolising of the whole power by the majority is called nationalism. Guided by such a philosophy the majority is not prepared to allow the minorities to share political power. (Christophe Jaffrelot and Narender Kumar, Dr Ambedkar and Democracy, OUP, New Delhi, 2018, p. 172)

On the basis of the above arguments, given by the professional academics and the community of intelligentsia and including Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, one could argue that the Right-wing communal forces propaganda against the SCR and rights of minority community is quite misleading and motivated by communal thinking. Finally, we argue that if the recommendations and suggestions in the SCR, which is followed by the Kundu report 2014, and lastly Vision 2025, would be taken seriously by the Central and State governments respectively, it would it would help in future to build a really inclusive idea of India, which had been long back conceptualised by the founding fathers of our Constitution and nation-building.

Badre Alam Khan, is a Ph.D Research Scholar, Political Science Department, University of Delhi. Mohammad Shahid Alam, is a Ph.D Research Scholar, Political Science, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2018 > Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Bhim!

It was Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri, when he was Indias Prime Minister, who coined the slogan Jai Jawan! Jai Kisan!, in the realistic under-standing that the Jawan provides national external security (since then he has also been providing internal security due to failure of governance) and the Kisan provides the nation with food security. Were Shastri alive today, it seems likely that he would have added Jai Bhim! to his original slogan, since it is the so-called Shudra, the untouchable, the present-day Dalit, who provides health security to the entire Indian population through the most basic and most essential sanitary services.

This certainly does not imply that Dalits should continue forever to provide such health security to our nation. Rather, correction of the current deplorable situation calls for social reform to ensure health security by provision of sanitary services as the participatory responsibility and duty of each and every citizen regardless of his/her status or position in society. Indeed, the Attorney General admitted in Court that the SC/ST communities have faced thousand years of deprivation at the hands of society, by continued denial of access to the basic facilities of life including temples and schools. Only well-directed social reform together with destruction of the hereditary caste system can relieve and hopefully eliminate the millennia-long burden of social deprivation suffered by Dalits.

But there is a growing perception that the story of deprivation also pertains to the soldier and the farmer. The soldier (here the reference is to the Jawan and equivalent ranks in the Navy and Air Force, sometimes referred to as Other Ranks or OR) is essentially a poor man who, with military training and motivation, is the foundation of Indias military and national security. He joins military service when barely out of his teens and retires at age 38 to 42 years, with a paltry pension and and no job security, and sometimes with disability due to his military service. He is neglected by society at large, and is thus subjected to deprivation, although not of the sort or intensity that Dalits face.

As regards the Kisan, the bulk of them are small, marginal or subsistence farmers, almost all of them dependent upon the rains, usurious creditors and unfriendly markets controlled by greedy middlemen and callous governments. The truth of this is reflected in the fact of an average of more than one farmer committing suicide per day over the past couple of decades. To say that the average Kisan suffers deprivation is to put it rather mildly.

Is the worm turning?

The phrase the worm turns is used to describe the situation when people who have been treated badly for a long time suddenly become forceful and stop accepting a difficult situation.

It would appear that the Jawan, the Kisan and the Dalit are finding common cause based upon the deprivation of which they have been victims. This is understood from the news that organisations representing the Jawan, the Kisan and the Dalit are getting together under the respective organisationsthe Indian Ex-Service-mens Movement (IESM), All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) and All India Ambedkar Mahasabha (AIAM). Even though each naturally will agitate for their respective particular demands, it is understood that they are making common cause on three issues, namely,

Put an end to the hate-driven mob violence and lynching which is plaguing the country,

Revive and vote the Womens Reservation Bill into law, to guarantee reservation for women in Lok Sabha and State Vidhan Sabhas, and

Demand that the Aadhaar scheme be scrapped since it has wreaked havoc with welfare schemes, compromised civil liberties and is a threat of a state surveillance.

This coming together of the IESM, AIKS and AIAM is to happen at New Delhis Jantar Mantar, the venue which was closed to all protests by a blanket ban imposed on environmental grounds by the National Green Tribunal. Hearing a bunch of petitions including that of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan opposing the ban, the Supreme Court of India lifted the ban in July 2018, with direction to the Centre to frame guidelines to grant permission to hold such events.

It appears highly unlikely that the Centre will grant permission for this coming together as a joint andolan scheduled for August 9, since it is understood that the AIKS and AIAM have issued calls for nation-wide actions like Jail Bharo and Bharat Bandh, which obviously go against the current dispensation.

But even without Lal Bahadur Shastris charisma, it might appear that Jai Bhim! is getting clubbed with the Jai Jawan! and Jai Kisan! calls.

Major General S.G. Vombatkere, VSM, retired as the Additional DG Discipline and Vigilance in the Army HQ AGs Branch. His area of interest is strategic and development-related issues.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2018 > Communists and Quit India Struggle

From N.C.s Writings

This was the week, fiftytwo years ago, that marked the parting of ways between the Communists and the Congress. It was the Communist opposition to the Quit India resolution at the historic AICC session in August 1942 that ultimately led to the expulsion of the Communists from the Congress organisations in 1946. Incidentally, the eviction of the Communists from the Congress marked the beginning of the process of transformation of the Congress from an all-embracing national platform to the personality of a party in the modern sense, which harboured only the appurtenances of power as its ideology. The aspect of the Congress as a national platform in the pre-independence days is often missed by the generations which have come after indepen-dence; as a result one finds learned scholars trying to put the Congress of the past into the straightjacket of a modern political entity with ideological cohesion. In fact, the Congress in those days was like a huge umbrella under which men and women adhering to diverse and sometimes conflicting ideologies lived in co-existencefrom the Socialists and the Commu-nists in the Left to radical nationalists, and on to the conservative Right.

Looking back to the early thirties when the present writer as a college student had his political awakening, one regarded the Congress as the national platform with a single-point programme of ousting the British imperial power from the shores of our motherland. The stalwarts of the mighty civil disobedience movement, which was set in motion by Gandhijis famous Dandi March initiating the salt satyagraha, had disparate outlooks on social and economic issues as also about designing the edifice of independent India. It was not an easy task to maintain the unity of the teamthe term High Command had just come into vogue. I remember in our school days in the twenties, when the national leader of Bengal was Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das; he with Motilal Nehru had voted for Gandhijis boycott of the legislature and alongwith Motilal Nehru formed the Swarajya Party and swept the polls despite the very restricted franchise and limited powers of self-government under the Montford consti-tutional set-upMontague was the Secretary of State for India in the British Cabinet and Chelmsford was the Viceroy at that time.

The political folktale of those days was that Motilal Nehru, who had given up his lucrative practice at the Bar, was so much of an aristocrat that not only did he send his son to the British public school where the royalty sent their progenies, but even his clothes used to be sent for laundry all the way from Allahabad to Paris. As for Chittaranjan Das, he gave up his own sprawling mansion in Calcutta to be later turned into a hospital named after him. The sacrifice of worldly belongings by the leaders helped to rouse thousands upon thousasnds of political activists to give up everything for the freedom struggle. This was how a mighty national festival of supreme sacrifice was wit-nessed as they gave up their very life and unflinchingly faced persecution, imprisonment and even gallows. Going to prison at the call of the Congress was in those days a badge of honour.

Coming to the Communists and the Congress, differences in outlook and ideology were there all through though that did not come in the way of their being enlisted in the Congress. The present writer first heard the name of Dange as a fire-brand who had written a book Lenin and Gandhi in which non-violence was attacked as a futile mode of struggle for the revolutionary goal. This was the running streak of the Communists throughout on the ideological planetheir stand against the abjuration of violence in mass struggle as advocated by Gandhiji. Later, in the thirties when Aldous Huxleys book, Ends and Means, became a big hit, a young Indian intellectual in London wrote a sharp Marxist rejoinder to it in the shape of a neat little volume entitled Ends are Means. The name of that young Marxist was Krishna Shelvankar who after independence was, for many years, a well-known correspondent of The Hindu. Shelvankars polemics against Aldous Huxley became almost a staple fare for budding Indian Communists in Britain, many of whom, on return home, figured in the countrys active politics. It was about this time that the British Communist leader, Rajni Palme Dutts book, India Todayin which Gandhi was branded as the Joneh of Indian revolutionhad a negative influence on Indian Communists.

This debate between violence and non-violence as a mode of mass movement long persisted within the Congress in which not only Marxists but other revolutionary groups functioned while adhering to violent means. The entire contingent of Bengal revolutionaries together with a large section of their comrades in UP and Punjab were active Congressmen, some of them holding elected offices in the organisastion. The Socialists in the Congress were by and large critical of non-violence at that time though they did not denounce it as the Communists did. In contrast, the militant actions by armed revolutionaries did not lead to their exit from the Congress. In fact, many of the district Committees of the Congress in Bengal and the Pradesh Congress itself were controlled by these revolutionary groups whose leaders were star figures in the Congress as well.

That was also the case with the Communists. Few today would remember that some of the top leaders of the Communist Party were also well-known Congress leaders. The present writer can recall, among others, S.G. Sardesai, Bankim Mukherjee, P. Ramamurti, Z.A. Ahmed, R.D. Bharadwaj, Hiren Mukherjee and Dinkar Mehta.

Differences over the question of violence did not prevent Gandhiji from keeping up his dialogue with the Communists and other revolutionaries. When the British Government, in a sudden swoop in 1929, framed the top Communist leaders in the famous Meerut Conspiracy Case, Gandhiji went to meet them in prison. He did the same with the Bengal revolutionaries in 1937 and wanted their release from detention. At the Ramgarh Congress in 1940, the present writer was witness to the extraordinary scene when Gandhi took in his car a top underground Communist leader to the Subjects Committee session so that he could move the Communist amendment to the official resolution.

Prelude to the Quit India struggle in 1942, the Communist campaign against fascism was more or less along the lines that Nehru had taken. The issue became urgent when Hitler attacked Russia in June 1941. There was intense interest all over the country about the Russian resistance to Hitlers advance. Even Tagore on his death-bed was reported to have repeatedly enquired about the news of the war and blessed the heroic Russians for defending not only their motherland but civilisation itself. At that time Jawaharlal Nehru undertook a countrywide tour rousing public opinion against Hitlers fascism. This was intensified when Japan joined the war in December 1941 and quickly ousted the British from Singapore and Burma. Chiang Kaishek and his madam visited Calcutta on his way back for consultation with Churchill and Roosevelt at Cairo. Nehru came to Calcutta to meet them and there was a special lunch for the leaders at the Birla House in South Calcutta. It was all laid out in Indian style with low seats and tables and silver dishes.

While Nehrus mass campaign against fascism set the tone for Congressmen there were, however, differences within the Congress High Command on the question of the War itself. The dominant opinion was that this was the moment to press for the British promise of independence after the war, with an interim government with considerable powers to rule the country; in return for this could the British Government get the cooperation of the Congress in the war effort. This was discussed thoroughly and frankly within the Congress Working Committee. It needs to be noted that by that time, Subhas Chandra Bose had already formed the Azad Hind Fauj and was advancing towards the Indian border alongwith the Japanese Army. The British Government leaked out the proceedings of the Congress Working Committee, which might have precipitated the Congress decision to call the AICC meeting in Bombay in the first week of August to go into mass direct action against the government, which later came to be known as the Quit India struggle.

This was the moment of truth for the Communistswould they go with the Congress, in which they were part of the militant vanguard, or stay away for the sake of what they had already started calling the Russian struggle as the worlds Peoples War?

A brief resume of how the Indian Communists reached the Peoples War is revealing. When the war broke out in August 1939, the Communists branded it as the imperialist war, in which the British and the French were only mock fighters but really egging on Hitler to go East against Soviet Russia. At that time, the Communist slogan at the Ramgarh Congress in 1940 was: Yeh ladai samrajyashahi, na ek pai, na ek bhai (This is a war of the imperialists, not a pie for it to be given, nobody to join it). When Hitler attacked Russia in June 1941, the Communist stand changedthey ceased to brand it an imperialist war, but called it a peoples war.

However, the Indian Communist leaders at first reiterated that their fight against British power in India must continue until a national government had been formed. This stand actually led to intense debate within the Communist Party itself. An important section of the Communist leadership was then imprisoned at the Deoli Detention Camp. A group of Communist leaders, with B.T. Ranadive at its head, sent a note to the Communist leadership outside denouncing its stand and asking for cooperation with the war effort to stand in solidarity with the Soviet Union. This was circulated by the Polit-Bureau to the party ranks together with its rejoinder refuting the document from the jail.

The position suddenly changed in December 1941 when the British Communist leader, Harry Pollitt, sent the Comintern directive that Russias war against Hitler must be taken up as the Peoples War by all Communists and, therefore, the Indian Communists must do the same. Overnight, the CPI leadership fell in line with the Comintern as the per the Pollitt letter. In a couple of weeks, the All India Students Federation, one of the mass organisations under the Communist control at that time, met for its annual conference at Patna, and from there the Communists initiated the public campaign for Peoples War. While the demarcation with the Congress stand became sharper, the Indian Communists did not at that time go as far as the followers of M.N. Roy did in openly working with the British Governments war efforts in this country. This distinction was, however, blurred to a large measure in the public eye, when the Quit India struggle suddenly came like a mighty avalanche sweeping over the entire country.

What was the precise Communist position at the Bombay AICC and how did the Congress leadership tackle them? At that time, the Communists had a small but active contingent in the AICC. Many of them did not go to the Bombay AICC; they knew by that time what its outcome would be. Just over a dozen of them were present at the AICC and the amendments they moved were mostly to avert the immediate unleashing of a mass campaign against the British Government but to forge unity between the Congress and the Muslim League so that they together might extract a national govern-ment as a prelude to freedom. They knew these amendments were foredoomed. In his final speech Gandhiji congratulated the Communists for their courage to dissent, to learn not to lose courage even when we are in a hopless minority and be laughed at.

In the nationwide Quit India struggle that followed the Bombay AICC, the Communists not only kept out but at many places actively intervened so that strikes did not disrupt production which might hamper war efforts. Their political campaign was totally ineffective and thoroughly isolated them from the entire segments of the public who came forward to participate in the Quit India struggle.

In 1994 when Gandhiji came out of prison, the Communist Party leadership represented their position before him seeking to neutralise the angry complaints of many Congressmen against the Communistss. One of the young Comunists so sent to Gandhiji was Mohan Kumaramanglam who later on, in the late sixties, himself left the CPI and joined the Congress and became an important Minister under Indira Gandhi after the 1971 elections.

But these representations to Gandhiji did not help the Communists. When the bulk of the Congressmen were released from prison in 1945, there were angry attacks on the Communists at many places and the raiding of their office premises. What is significant is that this outburst of Congressmen was confined against Communists alone and not against those Congress leaders who had stayed away from the Quit India movement. The formality of Communist expulsion from the Congress came towards the end of 1946. Two years later, the Socialists on their own left the Congress, thereby making it clear that nonconformists would have no place within the Congress.

This was the turning point within the premier party in the country. In five years, one found many of the heroes of the storm-centres of the Quit India struggle of 1942 finding themselves in the company of the CommunistsNana Patil of Satara, Ajoy Mukherjee of Tamluk, Vir Bahadur Singh in Balia-Azamgarh, and Aruna Asaf Ali herself.

Its time the Communists as well as the Congress alongwith leaders of other parties reviewed their respective positions since that magnificent struggle of 1942.

(Mainstream, August 13, 1994)
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2018 > Lynching to Nowhere

More gruesome details about the Alwar lynching have come to light. Rakbar Khan, the victim, could have been saved if the police had acted in time. In fact, the force stopped for tea and wasted three-and-a-half hours in reaching the victim to the hospital. He bled to death. If one were to put all the pieces together, one would come to the conclusion that the police delay was deliberate.

The religion of the victimhe was a Muslimhas been his undoing. Inquiry would give details but there is no doubt that the police were keener on recovering the two cows from him than saving his life. The cows were taken to a gaushala (cow shed) 10 kilometres away, a good one hour before Khan was brought to the community health centre, a six-kilometre drive from the attack site.

According to data available on blood-thirsty mobs striking fear in the hearts of minorities for some time now, 86 per cent of those dead in cow-related violence since 2010 are Muslims and 97 per cent of the attacks took place after 2014. Whenever such happenings took place, including lynching or attacking people, invariably the Muslims and Dalits had borne the brunt in the name of so-called cow protection.

This is a sad commentary on our efforts to make the society pluralistic. Mahatma Gandhi would emphasise on Hindu-Muslim unity all the time during his prayers. Indias first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, too stressed on the same point and strengthened the argument for unity through steps, including abolishing the column of religion from application forms for admission to institutions and employment.

The line drawn on the basis of religion is haunting us all the time. Muslims in India, although 17 crores, do not matter in the affairs of government administration. In fact, their habitation is separate and even though those have become slums they feel safe in living together.

Not long ago, there was a riot in Delhi. I was helping the community as an activist. One sitting judge preferred to stay in the slums and told me that he felt safe there. He found the police contaminated. Obviously, there is a lacuna in the training of policemen. For a long time, the government kept out mosque, temple or gurudwara from the police line. But leaders from different political parties saw people only in terms of religion and catered to their parochial tendencies.

The question we should ask ourselves is: why are the protectors of law becoming violators themselves? Now the temple, mosque and gurudwara are allowed in the places where they live and they blare their propaganda all the time. There are separate schools for each community. The madrassa cult has got deepened in the community because the Muslims want to save their identity.

I raised all these points in the Rajya Sabha when I was nominated to the House in the 1990s. My criticism was directed at the Congress which had ruled the country since independence. Instead of giving a reply to what I had mentioned, Pranab Mukherjee, then a top Congress leader and Leader of the Upper House, went out of the House to register his lack of interest on the issue. Probably, this was his reply to my pointed criticism of the Congress for having failed to galvanise the nation.

Secularism is the ideology which we have chosen in contrast to Pakistans Islamic order. Unfortunately, the Muslim community in India stays distant. It feels as if it is somewhat responsible for the partition. This is not entirely true. The Hindus failed to instil confidence among the Muslims. Some fundamentalists were openly propagating for the beliefs they espoused.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has no connection with the national struggle and therefore its ideology remains what Shyama Prasad Mookerji, a tall leader at that time, propagated. The philosophy was to establish a Hindu Rashtra. Jayaprakash Narain was able to bring even the fanatic Hindus into the Janata Party and act at his bidding. They gave up their caps which was typical.

The sticking point, however, was the relation-ship with the RSS. When JP asked the then Jan Sangh leaders to sever their ties with the RSS, they preferred to constitute their own party. L.K. Advani founded the BJP. Some committed members stayed with the RSS but most of them remained with JP. The matter ultimately came before the central leadership. The Jana Sangh lost there.

That is the time when Atal Behari Vajpayee emerged as the leader because he was acceptable to all. He kept their confidence intact because the bus he took to Lahore had members of all political parties. The speech he made at the civic reception was so appealing to the Pakistanis that some of them came to me to seek my services to request Nawaz Sharif not to speak because the mood was pro-Vajpayee. Nawaz Sharif said he was not a fool to speak after Vajpayee. Instead, he said that if Vajpayee were to contest the elections today in Pakistan, he would sweep the polls.

The BJP has come a long way since then. Prime Minister Narendra Modi looks trying to be another Vajpayee but is not succeeding in his efforts. Vajpayee remains the idol because he was able to influence even the Congress followers. I recall Vajpayee visiting London when I was the High Commissioner. Those were the days when the Babri Masjid dominated the discussion. Vajpayee said: Those who are Ram bhakt, they have gone to Ayodhya and those who love the country have come here.

Though Modi is emphasising on sabka saath, sabka vikas, but RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat seems to have initiated a parallel campaign to have as many candidates in the Lok Sabha as possible so that when the time comes to choose the Prime Minister, the RSS would have its own stamp. Instances like Alwar lynching are going to pull down both the RSS and the BJP because the countrys mood does not tally with the intentions of the RSS. The nation wants to stay pluralistic.

The author is a veteran journalist renowned not only in this country but also in our neighbouring states of Pakistan and Bangladesh where his columns are widely read. His website is www.kuldipnayar.com
Oil And Energies On The Move Lower

If you have been following our analysis and research of the Crude Oil trend and the energy sector, you know weve been suggesting Crude would attempt a move lower and attempt to retest the $58~63 level. It appears the breakdown in prices has begun.

Our research team, at www.TheTechnicalTraders.com , uses an array of proprietary technology, price modeling tools and price cycle modeling tools to attempt to keep our followers up to date with trend reversals, trend expansions and more. This recent downside price move is something we have been expecting for the last 20+ days. The breakdown of support in the Crude oil market, as well as the oversupply of oil on the planet, is setting up for a downside move that could be extraordinary.

This Daily Crude Oil chart shows some of our trend following work where we attempt to identify break ranges, channels, Fibonacci levels and other advanced technical analysis studies. The daily chart only shows a shorter time span and is perfect for attempting to identify immediate support or resistance levels for the price. One can see from this chart that the current breakdown in price is attempting to breach a number of key Fibonacci levels. Should the $66.50 level be broken, we would expect Crude prices to fall to near $64.75 or $62.90. These are the next support levels below the current Fibonacci levels.

The Blue and Magenta levels on this chart are price channels that will become more evident on the next chart  the Weekly chart.

This Weekly Crude Oil chart provides a better, longer-term, perspective of the Oil market. We can see from this chart the Magenta price channel originates from 2016 price rotation. The Blue price channel originates from early 2018 price rotation. The lower, Red, support level originates from the low in June 2017. All of these play an important role in understanding how the price is breaking free of these price channels and may attempt to move dramatically lower.

Weve already broken the Red support levels, are attempting to breach the Blue price channels and that only leaves the Magenta price channels as final support. Breaking all three of these levels would put Crude prices below $63.00 ppb and we believe that type of move could draw prices to below $60 ppb.

Pay close attention to the size of the most recent Weekly candles  they are much bigger in range than the late 2017 candle ranges. This indicates that volatility in the Crude Oil market is extended and any breakout/breakdown trend could be very aggressive in nature.

The last chart we have for you today is the OILD 3x Short Oil ETF. It is pretty easy to see that any downside price break in oil, with any longer-term capitulation, would likely drive the OILD prices from about $23.50 to possibly well above $27~32. This type of move could present an opportunity for a 20~40% ROI on a small position if Crude Oil breaks further to the downside. Any opportunity to buy OILD below $22.50 should be considered a strong potential setup as we believe Crude Oil will move to between $60~63 ppb before attempting to find any real support.

Follow our analysis and read all of our past research posts by visiting www.TheTechnicalTraders.com . Learn how we can help you stay ahead of these moves and find new opportunities in the markets. 53 years experience in researching and trading makes analyzing the complex and ever-changing financial markets a natural process. We have a simple and highly effective way to provide our customers with the most convenient, accurate, and timely market forecasts available today. Our stock and ETF trading alerts are readily available through our exclusive membership service via email and SMS text. Our newsletter, Technical Trading Mastery book, and 3 Hour Trading Video Course are designed for both traders and investors. Also, some of our strategies have been fully automated for the ultimate trading experience.

Chris Vermeulen

www.TheTechnicalTraders.com

Chris Vermeulen has been involved in the markets since 1997 and is the founder of Technical Traders Ltd. He is an internationally recognized technical analyst, trader, and is the author of the book: 7 Steps to Win With Logic



Through years of research, trading and helping individual traders around the world. He learned that many traders have great trading ideas, but they lack one thing, they struggle to execute trades in a systematic way for consistent results. Chris helps educate traders with a three-hour video course that can change your trading results for the better.



His mission is to help his clients boost their trading performance while reducing market exposure and portfolio volatility.



He is a regular speaker on HoweStreet.com, and the FinancialSurvivorNetwork radio shows. Chris was also featured on the cover of AmalgaTrader Magazine, and contributes articles to several leading financial hubs like MarketOracle.co.uk

Disclaimer: Nothing in this report should be construed as a solicitation to buy or sell any securities mentioned. Technical Traders Ltd., its owners and the author of this report are not registered broker-dealers or financial advisors. Before investing in any securities, you should consult with your financial advisor and a registered broker-dealer. Never make an investment based solely on what you read in an online or printed report, including this report, especially if the investment involves a small, thinly-traded company that isnt well known. Technical Traders Ltd. and the author of this report has been paid by Cardiff Energy Corp. In addition, the author owns shares of Cardiff Energy Corp. and would also benefit from volume and price appreciation of its stock. The information provided here within should not be construed as a financial analysis but rather as an advertisement. The authors views and opinions regarding the companies featured in reports are his own views and are based on information that he has researched independently and has received, which the author assumes to be reliable. Technical Traders Ltd. and the author of this report do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any content of this report, nor its fitness for any particular purpose. Lastly, the author does not guarantee that any of the companies mentioned in the reports will perform as expected, and any comparisons made to other companies may not be valid or come into effect.

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[August 13, 2018] Sarcos Robotics Awarded Second Exoskeleton Development Contract for United States Air Force Logistics Applications Sarcos Robotics, a global leader in the production of full-body exoskeleton robots for industrial and military applications, today announced that it has been awarded a second exoskeleton development contract from the United States Air Force. The first contract, awarded last year, focused on quasi-powered, full-body exoskeleton robots that facilitate lifting up to 80 pound loads. The second contract is focused on a more robust version, capable of lifting up to 200 pound loads, with a specific focus on use cases relevant to Air Force logistics applications. "We are very pleased to have been awarded a second contract to expand our work with the United States Air Force," said Ben Wolff, chairman and chief executive officer of Sarcos Robotics. "The Air Force is leading the charge when it comes to developing next-generation robotics technologies that combine human intelligence with the strength, endurance and precision of machines to serve as a force multiplier while also dramatically reducing the risk of injury. These exoskeletons will be a game-changer for the Air Force." For more information about Sarcos Robotics, their leadership team, board of directors, advisory board and investors,please visit https://www.sarcos.com/company/. ABOUT SARCOS Sarcos Robotics is the world's leader in mobile, dexterous, tele-operated robots that combine human intelligence, instinct and judgment with robotic strength, endurance and precision to augment worker performance. Leveraging more than 25 years of research and development, Sarcos makes revolutionary robotics products designed to save lives, reduce injury and improve productivity, including the Guardian S, Guardian GT, and Guardian XO. Sarcos is revolutionizing a myriad of industries by deploying robots that will create the safest, most productive and cost-effective work force in the world. Sarcos' investors include Caterpillar, GE Ventures, Microsoft (News - Alert), and Schlumberger. Sarcos is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, with additional offices in the Seattle area. For more information please visit www.sarcos.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180813005093/en/

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Michigan Technological University's Great Lakes Research Center was the site for the unveiling of the Marine Autonomy Research Site (MARS)the first freshwater testbed of its kind in the worldFriday, Aug. 10.

Play Marine Autonomous Test Site Launched video Marine Autonomous Test Site Launched Expand

The unveiling of MARS was held in conjunction with the launch of the Smart Ships Coalition, designed to study and set ground rules for the use of autonomous marine vehicles on the Great Lakes. The coalition is made up of scientists, policy makers, resource managers, innovators, navigators and educators that share a common interest in the advancement of autonomous technologies in marine environments.

Representatives of many of the coalition's partners were on hand for Friday's launch ceremony, hosted by Guy Meadows, director of the Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC). Meadows said autonomous marine vehicles are the future and "we get to set the future."

U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman said, "This center puts us on the cutting edge. And if you're not on the cutting edge, you're behind."

Among the coalition's partner organizations is the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Governors and Premieres, chaired by Governor Rick Snyder. The group's Executive Director David Naftzger said, "Shipping will look different in 25 years. Largely because of the work done here."

Also participating in the launch were Michigan Tech President Richard Koubek; Jon Allan, director of the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes; State Senator Tom Casperson; State Representative Scott Dianda; Kevin Kohlmann, director of the Office of Safety, U.S. Maritime Administration; Bruce Kelly, policy advisor for Transport Canada; Lt. Abbie Lyons, U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit, Station Duluth and representatives from the offices of Governor Rick Snyder and U.S. Senators Debbie Stabinow and Gary Peters.

Putting research into practice

Travis White (GLRC) explained how autonomous marine vehicles are already being used. His Houghton company, Pro Nav Marine, manufactures a buoy used for sailboat racing. "It uses GPS and satellite technology, so not only can the buoy be remotely placed to change a race course, it can also remain stationary without an anchor."

Following the launch ceremony, there was a live demonstration of state-of-the-art autonomous marine technologies and opportunities to tour the GLRC.

The MARS test-bed will allow collaborations between technology developers, university researchers, resource managers and industry to meet the future challenges in marine technology development, application and workforce creation. MARS is the first freshwater site of its kind in the world.

Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than 7,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, the University offers more than 125 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.
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Deepthi Nandan Reddy By

Express News Service

HYDERABAD: The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 enacted by Parliament seeks to protect home-buyers against developers and property brokers misdeeds. It is essential for the home buyers to verify that their builder and broker both are registered with Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA).

We have heard of home buyers complain about builders promising a house of certain specifications and finally delivering another one or of brokers misrepresenting facts in terms of property specifications or price. These complaints will now become a thing of past, once RERA comes into force effectively across all states. If a builder or broker fails to deliver what they promised before closing the transaction, the home buyers will have a legal recourse under RERA. While most of the home buyers are aware of what RERA offers them in terms of builders, many are unaware that brokers too come under the purview of RERA, said Gummi Ram Reddy, a senior representative of CREDAI.

It has been more than a year since RERA Act came into force and most of the states have started implementing the landmark Act which is expected to bring in discipline in the sector and eliminate unscrupulous players. While states like Maharashtra and Karnataka already have a fully functional RERA, states like Telangana are yet to start implementation on a full scale.

RERA Act is mostly uniform across India, with some minor changes being done to suit each states specific requirements. The home buyers can check with the local RERA authorities if their broker is registered under body or check the states RERA website.

Mere regulation is not enough; home buyers need to be made aware of the provision. Many home buyers do not know that even property brokers need to be registered with RERA. If they transact through a RERA registered broker, then they will have a legal option to pursue or complain and protect their interest. Broker ecosystem is highly unorganised and unprofessional. The Act will help home buyers if they ensure that the builder and the broker are both registered under RERA, suggested K Sreedhar Reddy, Treasurer, Telangana Real Estate Developers Association (TREDA).
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Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Merck Foundation commits to improve patients access to quality and equitable cancer care in Africa

Dr. Rasha Kelej, CEO of Merck Foundation meets the First Ladies of Gambia, Botswana, Lesotho and Zimbabwe

Merck Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Merck KGaA Germany continues their long term commitment to improve access to cancer care and to build capacity through their Merck Access Program in Africa.



Dr. Rasha Kelej, CEO of Merck Foundation met the First Lady of Gambia, H.E. Fatoumattah Bah-Barrow, First Lady of Lesotho, H.E. Maesiah Thabane, First Lady of Botswana, H.E. Neo Masisi and First Lady of Zimbabwe, H.E. Auxillia Mnangagwa to discuss Merck Cancer Access Program and Merck Foundation long term partnership to build capacity in their countries in the fields of cancer, fertility and diabetes.



We are committed to lead Africa to a better future through changing the landscape of Cancer care in the continent. Our meeting today was an effort in the same direction. Merck Foundation has been actively working to realize our vision and achieve our objectives of building professional capacity with the aim to increase the limited number of oncologists in more than 17 African countries. We will now strengthen our efforts in more countries, emphasized Dr. Rasha Kelej.



So far, more than 30 candidates from Niger, Chad, Guinea, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Liberia, Botswana, South Africa, Gambia, Senegal, Zambia, Namibia, Mauritius and Ghana have been enrolled in the one year and two year Oncology Fellowship Program in partnership with African ministries of health and First Ladies offices to be conducted in the University of Nairobi, Kenya, Tata Memorial Centre, India, University of Malaya, Malaysia, and Cairo University, Egypt.



Merck Cancer Access Program builds cancer care capacity, supports the implementation and development of specialized healthcare solutions and is augmented by community awareness campaigns to contribute to the reduction of cancer incidences and improve survival rates.

The lack of financial means is not the only challenge in Africa and developing countries, but a scarcity of trained health care personnel capable to tackle the prevention, early diagnosis and management of cancer at all levels of the health care systems is even a bigger challenge. Therefore, Merck Foundation has conducted the Merck Oncology Fellowship Program focuses on building professional cancer care capacity with the aim to increase the limited number of oncologists in Africa and Developing Countries.



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This is unedited, unformatted feed from Business wire india.
Anusha Ravi By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: With hints to move Aero India show out of Bengaluru becoming stronger and after coming under constant attack by the Congress, BJP MPs from Karnataka have decided to fight to retain it in Bengaluru. Two Union ministers from Bengaluru and MPs including P C Mohan and Rajeev Chandrashekhar will write to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asking her to retain the grand air show in Bengaluru.

A day after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath raised a request to host the show in his home state, Congress leaders from Karnataka have been continuously attacking the BJP at the Centre as well as MPs and Union ministers from Karnataka of being unfair to the state.

We held a meeting with Ananth Kumar this morning (Sunday) and have decided to write to the defence minister. Ananth Kumar will also meet Nirmala Sitharaman to request that Bengaluru be allowed to host the aero show. We will definitely put pressure on the minister, Mohan told The New Indian Express.

While KPCC chief Dinesh Gundu Rao and Deputy Chief Minister Dr G Parameshwara have been attacking the BJP ever since The New Indian Express report on plans to shift Aero India, former chief minister Siddaramaiah joined the bandwagon on Sunday reminding Nirmala Sitharaman that she has responsibilities towards the state that elected her to the Upper House.

Siddaramaiah joined the bandwagon on Sunday reminding Nirmala Sitharaman that she has responsibilities towards the state that elected her to the Upper House.

Reports of shifting #AeroIndia, from #NammaBengaluru which has the necessary infrastructure, will deepen the wound caused by the recent exit of many defence projects under @BJP4India. The exit of #Rafael project from HAL is still in the memory of people of Ktaka. We urge Ms. @nsitharaman, who is elected to Rajya Sabha from Ktaka, to first safeguard the interests of this land but neglecting will be an act of betrayal. @INCKarnataka @INCIndia (sic), tweeted Siddaramaiah.

Reports of shifting #AeroIndia, from #NammaBengaluru which has necessary infrastructure, will deepen the wound caused by the recent exit of many defence projects under @BJP4India. The exit of #Rafael project from HAL is still in the memory of people of Ktaka. 1/2  Siddaramaiah (@siddaramaiah) August 12, 2018

Looks like BJP MPs have lost their spine when it comes to protecting our states interest, Priyank Kharge, Minister for Social Welfare, tweeted on Saturday.

We have two Union ministers from here who are serious about taking this matter up. The Union government has done a lot for Karnataka and Bengaluru in particular including Metro and the Sub Urban rail. We are sad that we may lose Aero India but that doesnt mean the party hasnt done anything at all for Karnataka, MP P C Mohan said.

Eye on LS polls, Centre wants to shift venue: CM

Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy on Sunday said the Centre, with an eye on the LS polls, was planning to shift the venue of the aero show from Bengaluru to Lucknow. The CM who was in Hubballi said, Bengaluru has been hosting it since its inception. BJP leaders should put pressure on the Centre not to shift it from Karnataka. I will make a request to the defence minister once again in this regard.
Tushar Kaushik By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: Two police personnel of Ashoknagar traffic police station are about to learn a lesson on the consequences of abusing authority to harass innocent citizens. Using a handy mobile camera and social media, two motorists have spread word about their alleged bullying.

The cops are under the scanner for allegedly using abusive language against the two motorists, slapping them and imposing a fine without any cause. And all this while one of them was allegedly under the influence of alcohol on duty.

A Twitter user Darshan Barapatre (@ImDarshan12) posted a video on Twitter, shot at Richmond Road around 9 pm on Saturday. It first shows a police personnel, who was later identified as Head Constable Ramakrishna, abusing Darshan and his friend, with insults directed at them for being migrants to the city. You outsiders, you will die if I hit you, Ramakrishna is heard telling them. He then takes their picture using his phone.

Another policeman, Assistant Sub-inspector Muniyappa, is in the process of printing out a challan. Though the duo ask him for what offence they were being penalised, in both English and Hindi, he does not respond. At this juncture, the phone shudders in Darshans hands, and he is heard asking Ramakrishna, Why did you slap me? Ramakrishna is heard asking someone to snatch the phone from which the video was being taken.

In tweets accompanying the video, Darshan alleges that Ramakrishna slapped him and they were fined `400 without being told for what offence, although both were wearing helmets and had furnished all documents required. He also alleged that one of the policemen was under the influence of alcohol, but does not specify which one.

The official Twitter handle of Bengaluru Traffic Police (@blrcitytraffic) replied to the tweet, stating that the Inspector of the police station concerned has been informed about the incident and also provided contact numbers of the officials.

A senior police official told The New Indian Express that an inquiry will be ordered into the incident and, if the officials were found guilty, action would be taken against them.

We will try to contact the motorists since we wish to hear both versions of the incident and reach a conclusion. I myself have seen the video, and the language they have used is very wrong. It is not tolerable, the official said.

Responding to the allegation that one of the policemen was drunk on duty, the official said Ramakrishna suffers from a speech defect, and his incoherent speech might have led the motorists to assume he was under the influence of alcohol. As far as I know they both do not consume alcohol, the official said.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Divya, a 12-year-old Telugu NRI girl from Florida, USA, performed a solo Bharatanatyam performance in the city on Saturday for a fundraiser. She performed to a packed hall of 500 guests at the Centre for Economic & Social Studies (CESS), Nizamia Observatory Campus, Punjagutta.

It was performed in support of Pratyusha Support Foundation helmed by actor Samantha Akkineni, and Padmasri Dr. Manjula Anagani, a gynaecologist. Speaking on the occasion Samantha said, What surprises me to know about this young 12-year-old dancer Divya is though she is so young but her approach using art and dance form to reach out to humanity. I am also equally impressed to know about Divyas charitable mind and her visit to Haity and extending her helping hand to them.

Disciple of Shaila Sateesh, Sarasota, Florida, USA, Divya, an 8th standard student is the daughter Dr. Swaroop Muppavarapu, Anaestheologist and Smt Rajakumari Muppavarapu is using her art to reach out to humanity. She is passionate about dance and people, especially children.

Her most memorable performance was Tales of a lovable Thief, stories of Krishna performed at Sarasota Opera House. The show proceeds went to benefit underprivileged youth in her home town of Sarasota for the purpose of teaching them the Arts. Divya travelled to Haiti to help at an orphanage in June this year. Divya and her family supports the educational needs of children at Repalle Childrens Home.
By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA: With heavy rains in the upper riparian States of Krishna basin Telangana, Karnataka and Maharashtra, the major reservoirs and barrages across Andhra Pradesh witnessed heavy inflows. For the first time in three years, on Sunday, the Water Resources department lifted 40 crest gates of Prakasam Barrage to let the surplus water downstream.

Due to heavy flooding, road connectivity in parts of East Godavari, Krishna and other districts was cut off. And with weathermen forecasting rains for the next 24-48 hours in coastal areas, the Water Resources Department said that more inflows were expected to reach all the major projects.

In Vijayawada, over 40,000 cusecs of water reached Prakasam Barrage in the day, following which 40 gates were opened. The flow decreased by evening. However, by night, it was intense. We expect another 30,000 cusecs to reach the barrage from Munneru, Paleru and others on Monday, Superintending Engineer of Vijayawada division, KVLNP Choudary, told TNIE. He added that close to one TMC of water had been let downstream on Sunday. The department had released 0.87 TMC of water in July, for the first time after a complete dry 2017.

Similarly, with the flow of Godavari rising, water level at Dowaleswaram Barrage reached 13.9 mtrs by afternoon.

About 2.56 lakh cusecs of water was released from the barrage into the sea, while 9,600 cusecs was diverted to fields. Due to continuous rains, ponds and tanks overflowed, affecting the road connectivity in around 30 remote villages of Vararachandrapuram mandal.

Trees were uprooted, obstructing the movement of traffic on the inter-State road from Maredumilli to Chintur. APSRTC bus services between Bhadrachalam, Upper Sileru, Rajamahendravaram and Kakinada were suspended. The Tungabhadra Dam and Almatti in Kurnool district too were brimming with flood water.

Officials said after Karnataka released water from its side, the level in Tungabhadra dam was almost full. Against its full capacity of 100.66 TMC, the dam has 96.45 TMC of water. The dam received 74,000 cusecs of inflows on Sunday. Almatti has about 128.19 TMC of flood water as against its capacity of 129.72 TMC. The dam received 30,900 cusecs of water, and officials released 30,900 cusecs from the dam in Maharashtra to Krishna river. The flows from Sunkesula and Jurala were also released to Tungabhadra and Krishna Rivers, which were diverted to Srisailam reservoir.

Meanwhile, the Indian Meteorological Department issued a heavy rainfall warning across Coastal Andhra Pradesh. Speaking to TNIE, In-charge Director of IMD, Hyderabad Centre, K Naga Ratna said, Currently, we have normal monsoon which is active over coastal AP and slightly weak over Rayalaseema. The cyclonic winds are carrying forward and the low pressure is very likely to occur in North Bay of Bengal. As of now, due to active circulation of winds, about 6-10 cm of rainfall is being registered. The impact of low pressure will be more on northern districts of Visakhapatnam, Srikakulam and Vizianagaram which will receive heavy rains. Officials said that the seas would be rough and warned fishermen against venturing into waters.

From Saturday night to Sunday morning, very heavy rain occurred at isolated places in East Godavari, Srikakulam and West Godavari and heavy rain occurred at isolated places in Guntur, Krishna, Prakasam and Visakhapatnam of Coastal Andhra Pradesh. On Sunday, moderate rains occurred in district Kurnool and Kadapa of Rayalaseema region. With the influence of cyclonic circulation of winds, a low pressure is likely to occur in the next 24 hours in Bay of Bengal.
By Online Desk

Ministry of Information and Broadcasting will be hosting a two-day event 'Retrospective Of Films Of National Award Winner And Padma Shri Sridevi' screening some iconic movies of late superstar Sridevi on her birthday as a homage to the actress.

Starting today the event will be held in Films division auditorium, New Delhi. The first movie to be screened at the function is 'Mom' (2017) directed by Ravi Udyawar. 'Mom' was also the superstars' last movie for which she was awarded the Best Actress honour at the 65th National Film Awards.

Statement by I&B Ministry

Later in the day, 'Lamhe'(1991) directed by Yash Chopra and 'Mr India' (1987) directed by Shekhar Kapur will be screened.

'English Vinglish' (2012) by Gauri Shinde- considered to be Sridevi's comeback movie, critically acclaimed 'Sadma' (1983) by Balu Mahendra and 'Chandni' (1989) by Yash Chopra will be screened Tuesday.

SEE IN PICTURE: Remembering late Superstar Sridevi on her birthday: Her 5 Filmfare Award-winning performances

The collection of movies to be screened are considered to be some of the finest work done by the actor in a career spanning five decades.

Sridevi had made her acting debut with a Tamil film as a child artiste in 1967 at the age of 4.

Considered 'India's first female superstar' she had worked in Tamil, Telugu, Hindu, Malayalam and Kannada films.

54-year-old Sridevi passed away on late night on February 24 in Dubai, where she went to attend a relative Mohit Marwah's wedding.

She was cremated at Vile Parle's Seva Samaj Crematorium and Hindu Cemetery on February 28, in Mumbai with full state honours.
By UNI

NEW DELHI: Celebrities from the world of Bollywood on Monday paid tributes to Sridevi on her birth anniversary.

Paying tribute to the late Bollywood diva, her brother in law and film actor Anil Kapoor said,''A true star that shone brightly on-screen & lit up the lives of everyone she touched.

Not a day goes by when we don't miss you Sri. We see your reflection in #JanhviKapoor & #KhushiKapoor everyday. You live on in our hearts & minds.''

The late actress Sridevi, whose sudden death in Dubai in February left the tinsel town in shock, would have turned 55 on Monday.

A true star that shone brightly on-screen & lit up the lives of everyone she touched. Not a day goes by when we dont miss you Sri. We see your reflection in #JanhviKapoor & #KhushiKapoor everyday. You live on in our hearts & minds... pic.twitter.com/VD9Bx3jAnw  Anil Kapoor (@AnilKapoor) 13  2018 .

Popularly called the first female superstar of Hindi cinema who reigned in the industry in the 90s with films like 'Chandni', 'Nagina' and 'Lamhe', made a comeback to films with 2012's 'English Vinglish'.

Her last film was 'MOM'. Paying tribute to Sridevi on her birthday, the Congress said,''We remember #Sridevi on her birth anniversary. An actor par excellence, known for her versatility. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2013.''

Probably her last dance of life... #Sridevi happily dancing with husband #BoneyKapoor at Mohit Marwah & Antara Wedding in Ras Al Khaimah 4 days ago.

She died in Dubai's Jumeirah Towers Hotel Saturday(24Feb) night. pic.twitter.com/MmIXBTtt54  The Legend (@TheLegendChap) 25  2018 .

Earning acclaim with 'Sadma', the Hindi remake of their Tamil hit Moondram Pirai which starred her opposite Kamal Haasan, Sridevi climbed the ladder of success with 'Nagina' in 1986, where she played a snake-woman, a role rejected by many actresses, opposite Rishi Kapoor.

The movie became a superhit and the credit went to Sridevi and her snake dance.

She followed it up with a sequel called Nigaahen (1989).

With Shekhar Kapur's 'Mr India' (1987), she entered the big league in Bollywood.

She went on to start in many hits like Pankaj Parashar's 'Chaalbaaz'- a remake of Sita Aur Gita-, 'Yash Chopra heroine' in 'Chandni' and 'Lamhe (1991).
Kumar Vikram By

Express News Service

Clearing way for commercial operation of seaplanes in the country, Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu on Saturday announced that in-principle approval has been given for the construction of water aerodromes in five states.

This move will promote tourism as well as connect places of religious importance. To start with, we have identified five states: Odisha, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Assam for the development of water aerodromes. For the first phase of the project, Chilka Lake (Odisha), Sabarmati River Front and Sardar Sarovar Dam (Gujarat) have been identified, Prabhu tweeted on Saturday.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has already issued regulations prescribing the procedure and requirement for licensing of Water Aerodromes, he added.

Since there is no historical data on market and also the demand from any airlines, the Project will be done as a pilot project, he added.

A water aerodrome is any water body that complies with certain minimum requirements for landing an aircraft.

India was acquainted with the seaplanes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew in one on the final day of campaigning in the Gujarat elections.

Thereafter, in December last year, Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari had asked then Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju to explore a regulatory regime for single-engine seaplane services.

Subsequently, SpiceJet also conducted a successful trial flight of a seaplane that landed at the Girgaon Chowpatty in Mumbai. The low-cost airline is reportedly working on a cost-effective business plan to start operating small amphibious planes in the coming time.
Fayaz Wani By

Express News Service

SRINAGAR: Just a few days ahead of Independence Day celebrations, an encounter broke out between terrorists and security forces at Batamaloo area in the heart of Srinagar on Sunday in which a policeman was killed and four other security men were injured.

Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Law and Order Munir Khan told reporters that police and paramilitary personnel laid siege around Banapora in Batamaloo in the wee hours of Sunday after receiving specific information about the presence of militants there.

He said as the security personnel were conducting house to house searches in the congested area, militants hiding in a house opened fired on them and lobbed grenades on the search party.

Khan said the fire was returned by the troops, however, three policemen and two CRPF personnel sustained injuries in the initial attack.

The injured security men were evacuated to a nearby hospital, where one of the critically injured policeman identified as Parvaiz Ahmad, died. The other injured security men are undergoing treatment and doctors have termed their condition as stable.

After the initial attack, additional police and paramilitary personnel and armoured vehicles were rushed to the area to tighten the siege and prevent the terrorists from escaping.

Sources said the militants had escaped from the area during the initial early morning gunfight.

However, DIG central Kashmir VK Birdi told TNIE, We have information the militants sustained injuries in the gunfight and we are conducting searches to nab them.

The DIG said two accomplices of the insurgents were arrested during the search operation. The arrested persons are being interrogated. We are ascertaining the motive behind the presence of militants in Srinagar.

The encounter in Srinagar and the escape of the terrorists from the scene of the gunfight is a cause of worry for security agencies as the incident has taken place three days before Independence Day. The security arrangements across the Valley, especially in Srinagar, had been tightened ahead of Independence Day celebrations.

The Sundays encounter is the second militancy-related incident in Batamaloo and on both occasions the militants have managed to escape. Earlier, on July 24, a CRPF man was killed and another was injured in a militant attack near the Fire and Emergency Services headquarters at Batamaloo.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Two youngsters were arrested from the city by the National Investigation Agency on Sunday for allegedly having links with ISIS operatives and their handlers in Syria. The accused, including a teenager, were allegedly in touch with Adnan Hassan, who was arrested by the NIA in 2016 on charges of radicalising Indian Muslim youngsters. The arrests have come just ahead of the Independence Day.

The accused are Md Abdullah Basith(24) of Hafiz Baba Nagar and Md Abdul Qhadeer(19) of Chandrayangutta. They were among the 20 suspects who were questioned earlier for allegedly pledging allegiance to ISIS. Now, the sleuths are trying to find out if the duo hatched any conspiracies or planned any terror attacks in the country.

Two others were arrested by the NIA in 2016 along with Adnan Hassan  Sheikh Azhar ul Islam and Mohammed Farhan Shaikh. They were accused of motivating and radicalising Indian Muslim youngsters on the behalf of ISIS to carry out terrorist activities. They were charged under Section 120B of IPC and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.

While Sheikh Azhar ul Islam and Mohammed Farhan Shaikh pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 7 years of imprisonment, the trial against Adnan Hassan is still going on. It was then that NIA received a fresh input that one Abdullah Basith based in Hyderabad was in touch with Hassan and a few others.

Based on this tip-off, the agency conducted searches across seven places Hyderabad on August 6. Sleuths claimed to have seized certain incriminating materials which they have sent to Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Hyderabad for analysis and data extraction.

Who is Basith?

In December 2015, three youngsters were arrested for allegedly planning to run away to Syria and join the ISIS. They had just Rs 90,000 cash in hand. They planned to ride to Nagpur via Adilabad; then take a flight from Nagpur to Kashmir; then cross over to Afghanistan and proceed to Syria. Md Abdullah Basith was one of the three accused.

The trios plans were busted by Telangana police who got in touch with Maharashtra ATS and nabbed them from the Nagpur airport.

Basiths Syrian dream

In 2014, Basith along with two friends was caught in Kolkata while they were trying to reach Bangladesh as part of their plan to proceed to Syria. That time, they were counselled and let off

Who funded their plans?

Sleuths claim to have found that their plan to reach Syria was funded by Adnan Hassan. Basith is also the nephew of SIMI ex-president Syed Salahuddin who died in a road mishap in Nalgonda in October 2014.
By UNI

AGARTALA: The Tripura government has sent a proposal to its Assam counterpart for providing General Nursing and Midwifery (GNM) training to the state's domicile students and help them to excel professionalism after passing out.

Official sources here today said that Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb has written to his Assam counterpart Sarbananda Sonowal to allow students from Tripura to avail GNM training and get professional exposure in the different health institutions there, as Assam has better health infrastructure in the Northeast.

Besides Tripura, there is severe shortage of professional nursing staff in other Northeastern states too.

Accepting Tripura government's proposal, Assam has agreed to take 2000 students from Tripura for GNM course in Assam.

According to reports, Assam government has indicated to create post-training job opportunities for the trainees from Tripura.

It is being reported that the chief minister has initiated a plan to launch e-health system to cater and monitor the health delivery system in the state.

In this respect, the state has already setup district level digital health information system and is overhauling the health delivery system to cater to the needs of the common people.

While digitising the health system, the state government is also stressing on the implementation of Ayushman Bharat, National Health Protection Mission, the health department officials of the state said.

The state govt is committed to expand health care delivery system to the poor and the vulnerable sections of the society, they added.

The Tripura government has targeted to bring 5.20 lakh families under the ambit of Ayushman Bharat.
By PTI

LUCKNOW: Taking a jibe at BJP chief Amit Shah's claim that the saffron party will win 73-plus of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh in 2019, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav said today the BJP was saying this as the shaping up of opposition unity had frightened it.

"Samajwadi people are ready (for the Lok Sabha elections). What is our strategy, we will not disclose. But its implementation has begun and see their condition," Yadav told reporters here today.

They are saying they will win 73-plus seats, he said.

"Forget 73-plus, you have just lost three seats in bye-elections," Yadav, a former UP Chief Minister, said. He said the BJP should first correct its arithmetic.

The SP chief was distributing laptops to meritorious students at the party headquarters here.

To a question on the possibility of a SP-BSP alliance, he said, "Big interviews about this tie-up are appearing in newspapers. A 'Mahagathbandhan' will be formed. It is there and will stay in the future too. As far as UP is concerned, an alliance will be here also."

Earlier, on August 5, BJP president Amit Shah while addressing a gathering in Chandauli had claimed that the opposition was "spreading the rumour about the impact on the poll equation in UP if the SP and the BSP come together."

"Even if Bua (BSP chief Mayawati), bhatija (Yadav) and Rahul (Gandhi) join hands, our tally (in Lok Sabha from UP) will be 74 instead of 73 now and not even 72," he had said.

Shah had exuded confidence that BJP and its allies will perform better than 2014 when they wrested 73 of the 80 seats in UP.

In an apparent response, Yadav said today that the people of the state had seen how the BJP had "deceived" the people and how it had "driven a wedge into different communities for political interest, how it triggered spread of hatred among people of different religions."

As the Lok Sabha elections are approaching, the BJP will forget issues like demonetisation, and rake up new issues like defence industrial corridor, Yadav said.

"When ordinary roads are not being made and permissions are not being given for construction of bridges, then how and when such a corridor will be built?" he asked.

Referring to the laptop distribution initiative, he said it was not a political stunt.

"Today, the laptop is a necessity for every child, so the SP during its regime distributed laptops," he said.

"We distributed then, and are doing it today as well, he added."
By UNI

NEW DELHI: Confident of doing well and only about eight months to go for the general elections, the ruling BJP on Monday would yet again press for simultaneous polls to Lok Sabha and state legislatures.

A party delegation comprising key leaders, including Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, will meet Chairman of Law Commission Justice B S Chauhan and press for the same, a party source said here.

Other leaders include Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, Bhupender Yadav and Anil Baluni - all Members of Parliament in Rajya Sabha.

Simultaneous elections to state legislatures and Lok Sabha have been one of the principal issues being pushed by the BJP leadership and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself since 2014.

The proponents of the idea have been insisting that such a measure can help in doing away with populist measures for the political leaderships both at the central and state levels and also save lot of time and money.

However, besides opposition parties, the move has not quite been accepted by the BJP allies also.

On July 7, in a minor embarrassment to BJP, its ally in Goa also opposed the idea.

Goa Forward Party president Vijay Sardesai, who is also Agriculture Minister in BJP-led government in the state, told Law Commission during a consultative meeting that "Even if we are a BJP ally in Goa, we are opposing it.

The idea sounds good. There are a few nominal benefits as well but the proposal for simultaneous elections is in effect against the spirit of federalism, which is a fundamental feature of our Constitution".

N Chandrababu-led TDP, which was part of NDA till March this year, also has opposed it.

The Law Commission's draft paper titled "Simultaneous Elections - Constitutional and Legal Perspectives" has recommended amendments to the Constitution and the Representation of People's Act, 1950 to facilitate and sustain the concept of simultaneous polls.

The Trinamool Congress and the CPI have disapproved the concept saying such an idea is against federal structure of the Constitution.

However, the Bodoland People's Front of Assam has welcomed the initiative.

Biju Janata Dal chief and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik recently backed the idea.

The Congress party in its political resolution adopted after party plenary on March 17 in Delhi this year had said, "The BJP's move for simultaneous elections is misplaced".

The resolution adopted at the first plenary of the party after Rahul Gandhi took over as Congress president also had said, "The idea will have serious implications, which must be thoroughly inquired into and a national consensus built".

However, on July 7, Congress spokesman RPN Singh had said, "The Congress will be in touch with all Opposition parties and we will exchange notes and then we will take a decision on the ongoing processes involved".

The Law Commission had already written to the seven recognised national and 59 state parties to give their views on the matter.

Elections to four states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh - all BJP ruled - and Mizoram under Congress are to go for assembly polls by this November.

Pushing for 'One Nation - One Election' agenda by the BJP comes at a time when it is about to launch a rather aggressive 'social justice fortnight' from August 15 to 30.

The programme, which is being taken up at the directives of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will seek to make deeper inroads among OBCs, SC-STs and also highlight Modi government's legislative initiatives.

The BJP leaders during the 15-day long programme in every state covering rural pockets, will also speak on Triple Talaq Bill that makes instant divorce to Muslim women a criminal offence.

Successful passing of crucial Bills during the recently concluded monsoon session of Parliament providing constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes (also known as OBC Commission) and restoring provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 are seen as major achievements of the NDA-led dispensation.
By IANS

FEROZEPUR: A strategically important bridge in Punjab's Ferozepur district was on Sunday dedicated to the nation by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman -- 47 years after the old one was blown off in the 1971 India-Pakistan war.

The 280-feet-long bridge connects connects Ferozepur with Hussainiwala barrage on the Sutlej river on the old Ferozpur-Lahore highway.

It is the only lifeline for the residents of nearly 10 villages and connects Hussainiwala enclave with the outside world.

After the 1971 war, a Bailey bridge was set up by the Indian Army to restore road communication in the area.

"To replace the old bridge, Project Chetak was launched and the Border Roads Organisation entrusted with the task of constructing a permanent bridge, which has since been completed," a defence spokesman said here.

Sitharaman said that the bridge -- with RCC decking over steel beam girders -- will be useful not only to the Indian armed forces but also the local population.

She pointed out that Hussainiwala is a historic place connected to martyrs Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru and many other war heroes. The Minister later visited the Hussainiwala Shaheed Smarak to pay homage to the martyrs.

Western Command General Officer Commander-in-Chief, Lt Gen Surinder Singh, and Lt Gen Harpal Singh, Director General of the BRO, were present on the occasion.
Amit Agnihotri By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The Congress on Monday urged the Election Commission to suspend Rajya Sabha membership of BJP president Amit Shah saying he had submitted a false affidavit before the poll panel.

In its petition, the Congress charged that at the time of filing his nomination papers for election to the Upper House, Shah had already mortgaged two of his properties (in 2016) to Kalupur Commercial Cooperative Bank for his son Jay Shah's company Kusum Finserve LLP.

The properties were mortgaged in lieu of a large and substantial loan of Rs 25 crore extended by the bank to his son's company.

The properties constitute a liability that should have been declared and Shah, who became a Rajya Sabha member in 2017, had wilfully and deliberately concealed significant liabilities from his declaration, the Congress charged.

"The EC must take immediate note of this and initiate appropriate proceedings to suspend the membership of Amit Shah to the Upper House with immediate effect," Congress spokespersons Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi said.

"I don't have to say anything on that. The party has already responded to the allegations. It does not matter if they go to the EC or somewhere else," Union Minister Ravi Shankar said while responding to the Congress plea.

The opposition party had raised the issue last week following which BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra had dismissed the charges.

The Congress also said the EC must initiate proceedings against Shah for filing a false affidavit, which attracts up to six months' imprisonment, and/or fine, and should communicate with the deputy chairman Rajya Sabha to determine what further penalties may be imposed on the BJP chief for breach of privilege.

Singhvi further said that Shah's liability vis-a-vis the loan is co-extensive with his son's undertaking and cannot be evaded by defining the same as a 'contingent liability', adding that the fact that this omission of liabilities is deliberate and not inadvertent is clearly established considering that Shah did not rectify or update the record even though an entire year has passed.

"This would attract several criminal provisions under the existing laws and precedent as laid down by the Supreme Court," said Singhvi.
By PTI

NAGPUR: A group of farmers in Maharashtra has received bank notices for loan recovery of about Rs 40 lakh to Rs 50 lakh each though they claimed they have not taken any loan, prompting the police to launch a probe.

Crime Branch of the Nagpur Rural police has started an inquiry into complaints received from farmers of Sinzar village in Narkhed tehsil of Nagpur district, an official said today.

According to the police, 11 farmers have filed complaints with the Jalalkheda police station, stating they have received notices for "defaulting" on loans worth Rs 40 lakh to Rs 50 lakh each from a public sector bank.

However, the farmers claimed they have not taken any loan from the bank.

One of them, Prakash Gaikwad, told PTI over the phone that around 10 days back, his family received a bank notice for non-payment of instalments on a loan of about Rs 50 lakh.

Gaikwad and the other farmers suspect a man, who had taken documents from them on pretext of registration in some government scheme, may have misused them and also forged their signatures to secure farm loans on their behalf from the bank.

The man remains unidentified.

Inspector G R Tamte confirmed receiving complaints from 11 farmers.

"Considering the seriousness of the issue, the department has asked the local Crime Branchto inquire into the matter," said Tamte.

Sanjay Purandare, Inspector, Nagpur Rural Crime Branch, said, "We have started the inquiry into the complaints received from the farmers of Sinzar village."

"We will be probing all the stages involved in securing a bank loan like application process and verification of documents. All relevant information will be sought from the bank during the inquiry," he said.

Role of bank officials, if any, and whether there was any middleman will be known only after the inquiry is completed, Purandare said.
By IANS

AGARTALA/AIZWAL: Ahead of the Independence Day, Indian authorities have asked security forces to increase vigil along the international borders with Bangladesh and Myanmar, officials said on Monday.

Border Security Force troopers are guarding India's border with Bangladesh while the Assam Rifles are deployed along the country's frontier with Myanmar.

"We have asked the BSF to further intensify vigil along the India-Bangladesh border to check any trespassing and clandestine trans-border movements," Tripura's Inspector General of Police (law and order) K.V. Sreejesh told IANS.

Additional security in all entry and exit points of Tripura were deployed and CCTV cameras were installed to closely monitor the movement of vehicles and people, he said.

"Security was also stepped up at the airports, railway stations, bus terminus, shopping malls, market and crowded places. Close vigils are being kept at all places that are sensitive and important," Sreejesh said.

"Night patrolling has been increased. Bomb and dog squads are doing constant rounds," he added.

Besides the border forces, Tripura police, Tripura State Rifles and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) are also keeping vigil within the state.

In Aizawl, an Assam Rifles official said that their troopers were on high alert along the unfenced India-Myanmar borders to curb infiltration.

Smuggling of drugs and arms has also come down to a large extent, the official said.

While Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Assam share a 1,880-km border with Bangladesh, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh share a 1,640-km unfenced border with Myanmar.

An official of the Airports Authority of India said entry of people, except for passengers, into the terminal buildings across the northeast has been barred. The restrictions will continue till August 18.
By Online Desk

Demanding a referendum for an independent homeland for Sikhs, hundreds of Khalistan separatists and their supporters held a rally in London's Trafalgar Square on Sunday. The protesters were carrying pro-Khalistan banners for a non-binding referendum in 2020 at the rally, organised by the U.S.-based group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ).

Meanwhile, a counter-rally was also held at the same venue by a group of Indians who carried placards like Sikhs for a United India and We stand for one united strong India.



Amarinder Singh ridicules SFJ rally

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday said the "no-show" London rally by the Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) for a separate state has exposed the "total lack of ground support" for the 'Referendum 2020' even outside India.

Singh also dismissed the entire affair as a "futile exercise" by a "sham" organisation to create trouble in India, particularly Punjab.

"The SFJ is just a group of fringe elements that is playing into the hands of Pakistan's ISI to divide India, but they have failed, and will continue to fail in their nefarious designs," the chief minister said in a statement here.

"The presence of Pakistani politicians at the rally confirms that it was out and out an ISI plot, which fell through, just as their attempts to create trouble in India have been failing all these years", he said.

Reacting to the UK rally, the chief minister said it turned out to be a "damp squib" participated by a handful of elements.

He, however, felt the UK government should have put its foot down and not allowed its soil to be used to propagate anti-India campaign.

Further castigating the UK government, Singh said that by allowing the protestors to use Trafalgar Square, instead of the usual Hyde Park generally used for such purposes, it had shown its total complacency in the issue.

The entire referendum business is nothing but a "money-making racket" of the SFJ, with no takers for the so-called campaign either in India, or even outside, as is evident from the poor show at the rally," Singh added.

He said that there was virtually "nil local support" for the rally and whatever little support they had managed to garner was of "similar fringe elements" from other countries.

"The presence of Pakistani leaders, including Nazir Ahmed who openly spoke of dividing India and splitting Kashmir, Punjab and Nagaland from it, made it clear that the rally was a game plan of the ISI - a fact further endorsed by the presence of separatist Kashmiris living in UK," Singh added.

Citing ground reports, the chief minister claimed that some of those Kashmiris were forced to wear turbans to make them look like Sikhs.

And a handful of Sikhs around had evidently been forced to come, Sing said.

Describing the SFJ fringe elements as mere "social media tigers", who are trying to create hype even when they have no support, both in India and abroad, Singh said the Sikhs were a patriotic community who have always stood for the unity and integrity of the country.

As many as 90,000 Sikhs are serving in the Indian Army, defending the country's borders, he pointed out, adding that the SFJ could "never succeed in misleading the community" into falling for their "selfish" designs.

Singh warned the SFJ and all such "anti-India" forces to stay out of the country and refrain from any attempt to foment trouble in Punjab, or any other part of India.

Their efforts will backfire on them, he said, adding that his government would deal with such elements with an "iron hand".

Nobody would be allowed to disturb the peace and the communal harmony in the state, he said.

(With inputs from PTI)
By IANS

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday mourned the death of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee.

"Sorry to hear of the passing of Somnath Chatterjee, former Speaker of the Lok Sabha and a veteran parliamentarian who had a forceful presence in the House.

The Prime Minister described Chatterjee as a stalwart of Indian politics who made the parliamentary democracy richer.

Modi tweeted that Chatterjee "was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise. My thoughts are with his family and supporters".

The 10-time parliamentarian died at 8.15 a.m., at the Bellevue Clinic in Kolkata following a cardiac arrest and prolonged age-related ailments.

He suffered the heart attack on Sunday. Following kidney-related ailment his condition was critical and he was admitted to the clinic on August 7.
By ANI

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed hope that Pakistan would work in the direction to make the country 'terror and violence' free under the new government of Prime Minister-in-waiting Imran Khan.

In an exclusive interview to ANI on Saturday, Prime Minister wished for good relations between the two countries and said that his government has also taken numerous initiatives in this regard.

"I have always said that we wish to have good neighbourly relations. We have also taken various initiatives in this regard. I recently congratulated Imran Khan on his victory in the elections. We hope that Pakistan would work for a safe, secure, stable and prosperous region, free from terror and violence," the Prime Minister responded when asked if India is ready to hold talks with Pakistan.

Prime Minister Modi had called up Khan on July 30 and congratulated him on his electoral success. He also expressed hope that democracy would take deeper roots in Pakistan under the new government.

Pakistan went to polls on July 25 and Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) emerged as the single largest party with 116 seats.

Soon after emerging victorious in the elections, Khan in his first speech said he wanted to have good relations with India and work to resolve all outstanding issues through dialogue.

Referring Kashmir as the major issue of dispute between the two countries, he said it was time the two countries sat across the table and discussed the issues.
By PTI

NAGPUR: The Congress today said the political parties that broke the opposition ranks to facilitate the victory of the NDA nominee in the election for the post of Rajya Sabha deputy chairman had exposed their "hypocrisy".

Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi also claimed that the Opposition unity was intact, even though some parties had voted against the Opposition nominee in the August 9 election.

Harivansh Narayan Singh of the Janata Dal (United) won the election against Opposition candidate B K Hariprasad of the Congress in the Upper House of Parliament.

Addressing a press conference here, Chaturvedi said the outcome of the election did not mean the opposition unity had broken.

"A lot of people and political parties that have been attacking the (Narendra) Modi government and claiming to represent the voice of the common people chose to abstain and not vote against the candidate put up by the government.

"They clearly shirked their own responsibilities and exposed their hypocrisy," she alleged.

During the election, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the ruling parties in Odisha and Delhi respectively, broke ranks with the Opposition to facilitate the NDA candidate's victory, despite their fierce political battles with the BJP in their states.

The Shiv Sena, which had abstained from voting on the no-confidence motion moved against the NDA government in the Lok Sabha recently, had joined the BJP to help Singh win the election for the post of Rajya Sabha deputy chairman.

The two YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) MPs had abstained from voting.

In all, 16 members were not present.

Replying to a query, Chaturvedi said, "I don't think the opposition unity is breaking in any way.

In a veiled attack on the Shiv Sena, which is part of the NDA-led governments at the Centre and in Maharashtra, the Congress leader said, "It is shameful that one of the parties that shares power with the BJP in Maharashtra is attacking the state government and when the time comes, they choose power over accountability.

We were hoping that those within the government would live up to their responsibilities when the time came, but that did not happen.

Chaturvedi claimed that it clearly emerged from the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman's election that the Modi government did not believe in taking everybody along.

"This is perhaps for the first time that the government did not reach out to the opposition parties to find a consensus candidate and chose to use its power. This is how democratic principles are being compromised to stay in power," she said.

Alleging that the deal to purchase Rafale fighter jets from France was a "scam", Chaturvedi said, "A lot of allegations were hurled against the Congress regarding the Bofors deal.

However, the then Congress government did not shy away from any probe.

The Congress held itself accountable and answerable to the people of India and the Supreme Court.

"When (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee was the prime minister, he had absolved us of all the charges," she claimed.

The Bofors deal between India and Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s had snowballed into a major political scandal, wherein several members of the Indian and Swedish governments were accused of receiving kickbacks for winning a bid to supply 155-mm field howitzer guns to India.

Chaturvedi said the Army had hailed the role of the Bofors guns in the 1999 Kargil War between India and Pakistan.
By PTI

KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today accused the BJP of being "anti-Bengalis" and wrly asked the saffron party if hilsa fish, Jamdani saree, sandesh and mishti doi, which are originally from Bangladesh, would be branded as "infiltrators or refugees".

Banerjee made the remarks as she escalated her attack on the Centre over the exclusion of 40 lakh people in the draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam.

Asserting that these 40 lakh people are "very much Indians", she questioned the criteria on which they have been excluded.

Banerjee said even she would not be able to produce the birth certificate of her parents if the government asks for it.

"Do not know my parents' birth dates. I only know the dates of their death. I would not be able to provide any documents for their date of birth but there should be a clear system about such cases, you cannot blame the layman," she told reporters at her chamber in the state assembly.

Banerjee has been relentlessly attacking the BJP government at the Centre over the NRC which has excluded names of over 40 lakh citizens in Assam in the draft for want of necessary documents.

Taking a swipe at the BJP, she asked whether hilsa fish, Jamdani saree, sandesh and mishti doi, which are originally from Bangladesh, would be branded as "infiltrators or refugees".

Sandesh and mishti doi are famous Bengali sweets.

"What is going on in the country is injustice. The BJP with their extremist ideology is trying to create division among the people. I think they are playing the politics of revenge among the countrymen. We are not for this kind of politics," she said.

She accused the BJP of being "anti-Bengalis" and "anti-West Bengal".

"They (the BJP) must not forget that speaking Bengali is not a crime. It is the fifth most spoken language in the world. What is BJP's problem with (West) Bengal. Are they scared of the intellect of the Bengalis, their culture. They must not forget that (West) Bengal is the cultural mecca of the country," she said.

The TMC chief said, "the culture practised by them does not have any respect for people speaking Hindi, Bengali, Maratha and the South Indian (languages)".
By PTI

CHANDIGARH: Some Dera Sacha Sauda followers had allegedly planned to 'eliminate' Sikh preacher Baljit Singh Daduwal, according to a report prepared by Punjab police's Special Investigation Team, probing sacrilege incidents.

The contents of the SIT report were today shared with media by AAP MLAs Sukhpal Singh Khaira and Kanwar Sandhu here.

SIT chairman Ranbir Singh Khatra, who is also the DIG of Ludhiana Range, submitted his report in the month of June to the Justice (retd) Ranjit Singh Commission which was constituted to investigate various incidents of sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib and other religious texts.

In the report, the SIT mentioned that sacrilege incidents which took place in Faridkot district in 2015 were the "result of a conspiracy hatched by some Dera Sacha Sauda followers."

According to the SIT report, main conspirator Mohinderpal, who was part of a 45-member committee of the Dera along with some other members, had allegedly planned to eliminate Daduwal who, according to them, was protesting against the Dera.

However, later the plan was called off, as per the report.

The police had already arrested Mohinderpal and some other followers in connection with sacrilege incidents at Bargari in Faridkot in 2015.

According to the report, Mohinderpal was the mastermind behind the theft of a 'bir' of the Guru Granth Sahib from the gurdwara at Burj Jawahar Singh wala village.

Addressing a press conference here today, Khaira and Sandhu sought a probe "into the role of Dera Sacha Sauda head in sacrilege incidents".

They asked the Congress government in Punjab to take an action against those involved in Behbal Kalan and Kotkapura firing incidents in 2015.

Meanwhile, Khaira said a march will be taken out from Bargari till district administration office complex in Faridkot on August 20 seeking a prompt action in sacrilege incidents.

They also demanded a special session of the state Assembly to discuss Bargari incident report prepared by the Justice (retd) Ranjit Singh Commission.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has allowed construction at the stalled hydropower projects in Uttarakhand but directed the state government to first abide by the High Court order of having in place muck disposal sites before work is restarted.

In June, the Uttarakhand High had directed that all construction activities/widening of roads near the river banks shall remain on hold till the agencies concerned identified suitable disposal sites 500 m from the river banks for disposal of muck and excavated material.

It had also expressed concern over unscientific and illegal mining operations in the rivers causing immense damage to the fragile ecology of the area

The HC order had put a stop on all construction activities, and hydropower projects were most affected. Subsequently, the Uttarakhand government had moved the apex court for relief.

Last week, a SC bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur stayed the High Court order after hearing Additional Solicitors General Tushar Mehta and Pinky Anand on behalf of the Uttarakhand government and the Environment Ministry.

While vacating the order, the bench maintained that the High Courts concerns required to be appropriately addressed by the authorities and that indiscriminate dumping of muck in the Mandakini and the Alaknanda could not be permitted. It asked the Uttarakhand government to file an affidavit regarding the identification of muck disposal sites along with their photographs.

The court made it clear that the High Court order was being stayed temporarily and that it would be reviewed after three weeks when the government adduces a plan to address the concerns about muck disposal.

According to the NGO, Himadri Jan Kalyan Sansthan, which had approached the High Court, haphazard muck disposal in the two rivers has changed their natural course and caused unnatural rise in the riverbed.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today held talks with UN General Assembly President-elect Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces on key issues such as revitalisation of the world body, including reform of the Security Council and strengthening global counter-terrorism legal framework.

Swaraj held delegation-level talks with the president-elect of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly here during which she emphasised the need for the UNSC reforms, especially continuation of the Inter Governmental Negotiations, as well as early finalisation of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, a Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) statement said.

The External Affairs minister also highlighted India's commitments as part of the south-south cooperation, it said.

Garces, who is on India visit from August 10-14, outlined her priorities in the next one year as president of the UNGA, especially revitalisation of the United Nations, including the General Assembly as well as the Security Council reforms.

Swaraj and the UNGA president-elect held wide-ranging discussions on the revitalisation of the UN, including reform of the UN Security Council, strengthening global counter-terrorism legal framework, and other global issues, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

The minister conveyed her congratulations to Garces on becoming the fourth woman president of the UNGA in its history and reiterated India's support to the president-elect in carrying out her duties.

Garces' meeting with Swaraj comes after she called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Friday and discussed the need for a stronger UN action on major global challenges, including terrorism.

During her four-day visit to India, Garces also visited Dilli Haat where she interacted with various NGOs involved in womens' development projects and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

She inaugurated "Delhi Process-IV', an event commemorating BAPA+40 (United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation) here, and also delivered a speech on "Revitalization of the United Nations" at the Indian Council of World Affairs.

Garces, an Ecuadorian national, is fourth woman president to assume this position.

India's Vijayalakshmi Pandit was first-ever woman president of the UNGA.

The UN General Assembly in June had overwhelmingly elected Garces as its next president.
Ravi shankar Etteth By

Express News Service

When I first met V S Naipaul at a party in New Delhi in the year he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the writer was enjoying a glass of wine, indifferent to the admirers and social voyeurs milling around him, talking little and observing much as his wife Lady Nadira hovered around; protective and watchful as if the diminutive giant with one of the most famous faces in the world (After one look from him, I could skip Yom Kippur, said Saul Bellow) would vanish into Miguel Street where Mr. Popo is yet to build a chair and B. Wordsworth has never got past his first line.

Sir Vidias fastidious scorn, as the critic Clive James put it, was apparent at a reception thrown in his honour later in the week, as I noticed the long line of guests waiting to shake his hand as he stood sheathed in the armour of polite indifference.

Mr. Biswas yet to find a house? I joked. I wonder, Sir Vidia replied laconically in a crisp British accent.

In the mystic subtlety and civilisational complexity of Hinduism, Sir Vidia did find a home. Like Miguel he did in the end escape  but into the great white world of literary triumph, a salon lion and citizen of the world. Novelist Lady Antonia Fraser gave Naipaul his boarding pass to the upper class deck of British society.

When I talk about being an exile or a refugee Im not just using a metaphor, he told The New York Times in an interview. Im speaking literally. His Nobel was awarded in the shadow of 9/11, and many considered it a political statement by the West that was grievously wounded by Islam.

There was no love lost between Sir Vidia and liberals who see him as a misogynistic racist and Hindutva icon; Naipaul called the Babri Masjid demolition a creative passion and Baburs invasion a mortal wound inflicted on India. Yet he could never belong there: its heritage he loved but the country he couldnt. Starting with An Area of Darkness, the first of his India travelogues, India was a disappointing epiphany; Indians forced into a nationalism which in the beginning was like a mimicry of the British.

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born on August 17, 1932 to an Indian family that had migrated during British rule to Chaguanas in Trinidad and Tobago, but did not abandon their Hindu roots. He grew up in a literate and influential family; father Seepersad was a journalist and his mother belonged to the powerful Capildeo clan. In 1959, he left for England to study at Oxford, where he suffered a mental breakdown  a half a person, living a borrowed life.

His writing career began as a colonial narrative in 1954 while working for the BBC as an announcer. His vision of Third World nationalism was merciless.

Edward Said calls him a witness for the Western prosecution full of contempt for newly freed peoples.

He mocked India as a land of defecators and Africans primitive and barbaric.

He told The Washington Post once, Africans need to be kicked, thats the only thing they understand. Yet for all his literary elitism, the white establishment did not forgive him his success.

Evelyn Waugh called him a black face. Paul Theroux hated him. Poet Derek Walcott called him V. S. Nightfall.

However, all Naipaul was perhaps attempting was to hold up an alternate standard of humanity, a literary drills sergeants discipline aimed at inspiring backward cultures to rise to global equality. The war of civilisations was first Naipauls forecast.

In over five decades of his writing career, Naipaul published more than 30 books, both fiction and nonfiction. His work reflects the belief that individuals are shaped by history.

The Mystic Masseur, The Suffrage of Elvira, Miguel Street and A House for Mr. Biswas, all set in the Caribbean, are irrigated with ironic humor and poignant debasement written by the laureate of humiliation as the influential literary critic Dwight

Garner describes Naipaul; frustrated writer Ganesh Ramsumair cynically reinvents himself as a miracle man and then a successful politician; in Suffrage of Elvira post-colonial political corruption drowns an individual in its greedy tides. Naipauls work is an examination of the existential crisis of newborn nations that struggled to marry their indigenous and colonial heritages, the failed revolutions and the uncertainty of Independence.

In 1971, he won the Booker for In a Free State. In 1961, Miguel Street won the Somerset Maugham Award; the first-ever work by a non-European writer to do so.

In the late 1970s, Sir Vidias critical binoculars moved its focus away from the Third World to Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia where political Islamic fundamentalism ruled a cowed citizenry parasites who lock themselves away in belief shut themselves away from the active, busy world and lacking intellectual mirrors.

Naipaul believed Islamic societies encourage tyranny since Islam offered no political or practical solution and only the faith.

Naipaul had a unique window to interpret history, straddling two centuries. He saw the decline of the British Empire, the rise and fall of fascism and the seismic horrors of World War II. In his lifetime, White Britain change into a multicultural, multiracial landscape that he never would have expected when he landed in London. New nations were born throughout Africa and Asia exposing hidden faultlines in nascent democracies.

He witnessed the emergence of Americas might that ushered in a new world order. He saw the collapse of Communism and the Berlin Wall. The birth of the military industrial complex, the Internet and the Silicon Valley revolution happened on his literary watch. He also watched the world change as radical Islam began to commit suicide on the civilised world's shores. The Arab Spring toppled dictatorships only to open the doors to theocratic tyranny, creating one of the largest humanitarian crisis that is now redrawing the map of the worlds most volatile region.

Never in modern history has a writer ever received such a mixed bounty from history: to laugh, weep and sail on its tragic but exultant rides. Sir Vidias editor always said that his novels needed no work and the words spoke volumes in his inimitably frugal style; perhaps because he had seen too much.

One of the greatest universal writers born in the twentieth century, Naipaul said of literature, Plot is for those who already know the world; the narrative is for those who want to discover it. Even after he went into the good night aged 85 on 11 August, Sir Vidias narrative will continue to unfold through the plots milling around the collective subconscious.
By PTI

HAPUR: Fear is palpable in Madapur village here, nearly two months after a man was allegedly lynched and another brutally assaulted by a mob over allegations of cow slaughter.

The incident occurred on June 18 in the fields near a stream, equidistant from the Muslim-majority Madapur and the Hindu-dominated Bhajeda Khurd.

Samiuddin, 65, of Madapur was brutally assaulted, while Qasim of nearby Pilakhua was killed by the mob from Bajheda alleging that the two were involved in cow slaughter.

Villagers in Madapur, under Mustafabad assembly constituency in Hapur district, claim they have become cautious of their movement outside the village since the incident.

The fear was amplified as a video appeared on social media in the past two days in which the accused persons are purportedly seen bragging about how they assaulted the duo.

Hearing a plea in the case by Samiuddin's brother, the Supreme Court today directed the Meerut inspector general of police (IGP) to investigate the case.

"Clearly there is an atmosphere of fear. When they are saying this clearly in the video, it's possible that anyone could be harmed," a man, in his early thirties, said.

He added that people are now scared of venturing out of the village, even to the forests nearby.

"It's not that we don't know them or they don't know us. They know many of us by name, and where we live. Now if the administration takes any action which leads to worsening of the situation, anybody could be in danger. While we are going out of the village or returning from outside anything might happen during that time. That is dangerous," said the man, who did not wish to be named.

Asked about the Supreme Court's order today for providing the victims' families with security if they so desired, the villagers said no one from the administration or police came here today to talk about it.

The villagers said that they were not aware of the Supreme Court order on security.

Another man, in his fifties, told PTI that the locals were no doubt "hesitant" to venture out.

"With the kind of statements they have been made in the new video, anybody would become cautious," he said.

Asked if there is any message by the elderly in the village for the youth, he said that peace and harmony should not be breached and patience lost.

"The almighty is above and down here we have the judiciary and we are hoping for justice," he said.

"It's not that all Indians are like this. It's only a handful of people, which could be in the majority or the minority. But whoever they are, what is wrong is wrong," he said.

Another villager, alluding to the video clip, said when the accused are blatantly saying this, fear is obvious.

"When the administration is with them, we will automatically be scared," the man, in his late 60s, said, adding that Qasim kept begging the mob for water even as a policeman stood there.

"Now either the government will do us justice or the God. We are not for any confrontation," he added.

A young man from Havaal village, which falls in between Madapur and Bakheda Khurd, expressed worry if Bakrid later this month would witness more tension.

"We have already seen the violence. Every one is exercising caution. The festival is on August 22, I hope nothing untoward happens," the man from Havaal, another Muslim-majority village, told PTI.
By PTI

ALLAHABAD: The Allahabad High Court today turned down an Uttar Pradesh government's plea to prevent media from reporting on the infamous Deoria's women shelter home case involving suspected sexual exploitation of its inmates.

A bench of Chief Justice DB Bhosale and Justice Yashwant Varma, which had taken suo motu cognisance of the media reports on the suspected sexual racket, allegedly run by the Deoria-based Maa Vindhyavasini Mahila and Balika Sanrakshan Grih, turned down Additional Advocate General Manish Goel's request to prevent media from reporting on the case.

While refusing to pass the gag order, the bench however, cautioned media against identifying the victims in the case.

Taking cognisance of the case earlier on August 9, the bench had asked the counsel for the state government and the CBI to submit it the copies of the statements of all the victim girls and women inmates of the shelter home by August 13.

The bench had also sought the presence of investigating officer of the case.

During a brief hearing of the case in the forenoon session today, the bench asked the law officer to apprise it of the actions taken against the erring police officials in the case and slated the matter for hearing again at 2 pm.

During the 2 pm-hearing, the AAG submitted to the bench that the government has taken a stern view of the matter and is all set to take severe actions against all the erring police officials.

The court later heard the case in-camera and slated it for next hearing on August 20.

During its earlier hearing, the bench had asked the state government to examine the video footage of the CCTV cameras installed in and around the shelter home and apprise it of its outcome, but the AAG today said nothing much came out of it.

The bench had also asked the counsel to apprise it of the owners of the cars, reportedly seen parked outside the shelter home during evening hours and used for ferrying girls and women from the shelter home for a night out.

On this count, the AAG submitted that the matter is still being probed.

The Deorai police had raided the shelter home on August 5 night after a 10-year-old girl had escaped from it and apprised the police of various misdeeds there.

During the raids, the police had rescued 24 women, but had found 18 others missing.

The police have arrested shelter home manager Girija Tripathi, her husband Mohan Tripathi and their daughters Kanchan Lata Tripathi and Kanak Lata Tripathi.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Several mediapersons from Kerala were allegedly assaulted by a group of private security guards at the Bishop House in Jalandhar in Punjab today.

The Delhi-based journalists were in Jalandhar to report on the police investigation and questioning of Roman Catholic Bishop Franco Mulakkal, who had allegedly abused his position and repeatedly raped a nun from Kerala.

According to some of the journalists, the guards manhandled them and damaged their cameras and equipment while they were capturing the visuals of Bishop Mulakkal who had just returned to his headquarters from Chandigarh.

No official comment was immediately available on the alleged assault of journalists.

A special team of Kerala Police earlier reached the Bishop House to question the Bishop but was unable to do so since he was in Chandigarh.

Punjab Police then asked the Bishop to return and appear for questioning.

Interrogation is now underway.

The state government earlier today told the Kerala High Court that a decision on arresting Mulakkal, who has so far claimed innocence, will be taken after he is interrogated and the evidence examined.

As per the initial investigation of the police, Bishop Mulakkal abused his position and repeatedly raped a nun from Kerala, a special team probing the case told the Kerala high court today.

Responding to a petition seeking speedy investigation, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Kottayam, K Subhash informed the court that the investigation was proceeding effectively and impartially.

The police statement before the high court was based on initial investigation and available evidence.

It is revealed that Bishop Franco Mulakkal committed unnatural offence and committed rape repeatedly on the nun against her will, the statement read.

The bishop confined the nun to a guestroom in St Francis Mission Home in Kuravilangad in Kottayam district of Kerala, the statement alleged.

In her complaint lodged with Kottayam district police, the nun accused Mulakkal of raping and having unnatural sex with her multiple times between 2014 and 2016.

State police chief Loknath Behera on August 1 reviewed the progress of the case and permitted the investigation team to proceed to Jalandhar, New Delhi and other cities as part of the investigations.
Harpreeet Bajwa By

Express News Service

CHANDIGARH: Chief Minister Amarinder Singh rubbished the pro-Khalistan rally 'Punjab Referendum 2020' and blamed Pakistan's ISI for its role in the 'no-show' event.

"The no-show SFJ rally in London has exposed the total lack of ground support for the Referendum 2020 even outside India,'' said Amarinder, who dismissed it as a futile exercise by a 'sham organisation' to create trouble in India, particularly Punjab.

"The Sikhs for Justice is just a group of fringe elements playing into the hands of ISI to divide India, but they have failed. They will continue to fail. The presence of Pakistani politicians at the rally confirms that it was an ISI plot, which fell through, just as their attempts to create trouble in India have been failing."

As expected, Amarinder said, the event turned out to be a "damp squib".

The Chief Minister felt the UK government should not have allowed its soil to be used for anti-India activities.

By allowing the protestors to use Trafalgar Square, instead of the usual Hyde Park that's generally used for such purposes, it (the UK govt) has shown total complacency."

The entire referendum is nothing but a money-making racket of SFJ, with no takers either in India or even outside, he added.

"The presence of Pakistani leaders, including Nazir Ahmed who openly spoke of dividing India and splitting Kashmir, Punjab and Nagaland from it, made it clear that the rally was a game plan of the ISI - a fact further endorsed by the presence of separatist Kashmiris living in the UK."

Amarinder asserted the Sikhs always stood for the unity and integrity of India. As many as 90,000 Sikhs are serving in the Army, defending the country's borders, he pointed out, adding that the SFJ could never succeed in misleading the community into falling for their selfish designs.

He warned the SFJ and all other anti-India forces to not make any attempt to foment trouble in India. Their efforts will backfire he said, adding that his government would deal with such elements with an iron hand. "Nobody will be allowed to disturb peace and communal harmony in Punjab."
S Gurumurthy By

Muthuvel Karunanidhi, Kalaignar as millions affectionately called him, dominated the politics of Tamil Nadu for five long decades  from 1968, when he became chief minister, till 2016, when he took ill, which disabled him from active public life. No other political leader had such a long and imposing relevance in a party and in the state.

From the age of 14, when he became active in public life, till December 2016, for 78 long years he worked ceaselessly for the cause he believed in, for the party he led for 50 years and for the governments he led five times as chief minister. Never in the history of democracy anywhere had a leader remained strong and relevant for half a century as Karunanidhi did. In the seven-plus decades, the man did the work that most would not in twice the number of years. Karunanidhi was indeed a human dynamo.

Brilliant takeover of DMK after Annadurai

A strategist in the Chanakya mould, he was an unparalleled organiser and matchless manager of the masses. A born politician who aimed to win, Karunanidhi  the media called him MK  vaulted over his seniors when the man who built the DMK, C N Annadurai  Anna as he was lovingly known  died. MK was then just 44.

Hours after the demise of the towering Anna, MK virtually filled the void in the minds of the powerful DMK cadre with an audio tape of his brilliant poetic tribute to the departed leader he had worked on in advance, even as Anna was terminally ill. The audio tape mesmerised the cadre and put them in MKs lap, leaving senior leaders like V R Nedunchezhiyan, K A Mathiazhagan and N V Natarajan nowhere in the reckoning. That single brilliant strategic move made MK their natural choice.

With M G Ramachandran  MGR to millions  who alone could have thwarted the succession plan, putting his weight behind him, MK succeeded Anna as chief minister in 1968. Within a couple of years he became the tallest leader of the party, sidelining and dwarfing all others. Then came the best opportunities and the worst challenges, and the way MK navigated the DMK through both in the 1970s and early 1980s is a lesson for political strategists though it may be abhorrent to puritans in politics.

Unchallenged in 1971 to defeat in 1977

With the monolithic Congress splitting in 1969, MK tactically allied with the faction led by Indira Gandhi, held the Assembly and parliamentary polls together in 1971 by offering 10 Lok Sabha seats to the Indira Congress but no Assembly seat to it, thus wiping out the Syndicate Congress and winning a huge majority in the Assembly. While the alliance once and for all compromised and diluted the DMKs ideological position, it also made MK the unchallenged leader of not only the party, but of Tamil Nadu as well. However, when he began downsizing the other tall leader, MGR, within the party, the latter revolted. MK strategically co-opted the very senior leaders he had sidelined with MGRs help, expelled MGR in 1973 and regained control over the party.

MGR formed the AIADMK and won the Dindugul parliamentary bypoll with a massive majority, which challenged the DMKs hold over the state, but not Karunanidhis hold over the DMK. By then the DMK had become totally dependent on him like a honeybee falling into a honeypot. Then came the toughest test of his career, the Emergency, when Indira Gandhi did to him what he did to MGR in 1973. She sacked him as chief minister, imposed Presidents rule and instituted anti-corruption inquiry against him. In the 1977 Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in Tamil Nadu, MGR allied with Indira Congress and won a majority in the Assembly and the alliance swept the Parliament seats, while the DMK, which allied with the Janata Party, came a cropper.

1980: Lok Sabha poll win, Tamil Nadu poll defeat

But MK soon got his opportunity to turn the tables on MGR. When the Janata Party split and the Morarji Desai government was facing a no-confidence motion, MGR committed the worst folly of his life by voting for the Janata party. The government lost the no-trust vote. Charan Singh became Prime Minister, but the Congress pulled the rug from under his feet within months, like it did later with Chandrasekhar, H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral, and forced Lok Sabha polls on the nation in early 1980. Here again, seizing on MGRs slip of turning against Indira and supporting the Janata Party, MK brilliantly timed his tactical shift and switched sides to Indira Gandhi.

It suited a waiting Indira Gandhi who gladly welcomed him back, ignoring his earlier hostility. All her earlier charges of bribery against him, too, were brushed under the carpet. Both joined hands and trounced MGR in the Lok Sabha polls. But when the AIADMK government was dismissed and Assembly polls held within three months of the Lok Sabha polls won by them, MGR trounced both and captured power again, which no one, especially MK, had expected. Had MKs strategic alliance succeeded in the Assembly polls like in the Lok Sabha polls, MK would have wiped out the AIADMK and emerged as the unchallenged leader of Tamil Nadu again.

With that win, MGR pushed MK, as the latter himself used to say, into agnyatavasa (political exile) for eight more years, till MGRs death. The way MK fought to protect the DMK against the MGR phenomenon in this period was an example of leadership in the times of adversity. Thereafter it was a tussle between the DMK led by MK and AIADMK led by Jayalalithaa where power kept shifting between the two, through 1991 to 2011 in each Assembly election, though Jayalalithaa arrested the trend and narrowly retained power in 2016. The DMKs failure that year was also because of MKs failing health, since he could not campaign effectively.

Tireless worker

Assessing MK is not easy. But anyone who dominated a state for 50 years needs to be analysed. After being in and out of hospital for almost 18 months from December 2016, MK was interred on August 8, with the media unanimously describing it as Eternal rest for the man who never took rest. That best captures his life more than any other tribute. His hard work qualitatively vaulted over the quantitative limitation on time, which enabled him to accomplish in a day what a thousand others might not, even in a month. He was relentless thinker, ceaseless reader and unceasing writer. A multidimensional mind, MKs shadows extended long beyond his main domain of politics into literary, poetic, cinematic, artistic and musical fields  of course exporting his political ideas to those apolitical territories.

In power or out of it, he was unprecedented in his responses to situations, which kept him far ahead of his competitors within the party and outside. His day would start a couple of hours before sunrise with politics and end again in politics several long hours after sunset. He would have completed reading the morning papers by the time his colleagues would not have even brushed their teeth. The telephone of any colleague faulted by any newspaper would wake him into listening to MKs voice seeking an explanation for the slip up. Owners of media reporting wrongly about him or his government or his party, too, would get calls pointing out the injustice done to him.

His human relations  within and outside the party  would entice and entreat, captivate and compel the target into compliance. His personal touch made mutual adversaries within the party unwaveringly loyal to him.

His wit and sarcasm won the admiration of the most difficult customer, the media, and equally floored his competitors within and adversaries without alike. If his unparalleled oration captivated millions in his party and lured its supporters, his skill and alertness unnerved those who would think of stepping out of the line.

A dictator who democratised dictatorship within the party, he was extremely loved and intensely loathed.

Contrasts, contradictions and negatives

He was a contrast too. But his brilliant repartees and quick wisdom would overshadow and justify all contradictions and contrasts in him. Rising from an oppressed ecosystem of the Tanjore district, he had a continuing dislike for traditions and Brahmins, while, in contrast, he loved heritage and culture, unlike the communists who hate both. Decidedly not a nationalist, but not a separatist too, MK yet kept alive a lurking sense of emotional separatism by his clever wordplay and deed. In the process, he became a suspect in the eyes of both. A serious negative, even dangerous, contribution of MK to Tamil Nadu politics was his improvement of secular politics from being just sensitive to the minorities to becoming insensitive to the majority  which has whetted the appetite of a section of the minority with anti-Hindu rhetoric.

Unwavering to his friends, he was unforgiving to them if estranged  the famous illustration being his unremitting enmity to MGR which the latter reciprocated equally, making Tamil Nadu politics polarised around two parties, and between two leaders who would not even look at each other.

The MGR vs MK personality clash defined Tamil Nadu politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the anti-DMK  read anti-MK  constituency became a political reality that worked in favour of MGR. And later, burdened as MK was with LTTEs shadow and the murder of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, it worked in favour of Jayalalithaa, who inherited the popularity of MGR and the enmity of MK together. In over four decades of DMK vs AIADMK rivalry, the fault lines of MGR-Jaya vs MK also became the dividing line between the regional drift and the national current in which the AIADMK subsumed the nationalist stream, leading to the marginalisation of the only relevant national party, the Congress. Result, the AIADMK became the nationalist regional party, and DMK remained the regionalist regional party.

Post MK, MGR-Jaya era

Half a century of Tamil Nadu politics shaped by intense personal rivalry between the tallest leaders on either side of the divide is now poised for an uncertain future. Intense mutual hate has been the grammar of the DMK led by MK and the AIADMK led by MGR, succeeded by Jaya, which shaped the political culture and behaviour of the cadre on both sides.

The AIADMK without its tallest leaders and the DMK without MK suddenly face the need for a cultural shift to manage their future. How the cultural shift would occur, and how the two parties will manage to navigate through it, only time can tell. Tamil Nadus politics, frozen between the two parties, may melt down and open the closed territories for new players who are on the horizon  including the national players, the Congress and the BJP.

The 2019 Lok Sabha polls will be the first major test for both parties bereft of the imposing leaders who had led them with an iron fist. Interesting time ahead for Tamil Nadu.

S Gurumurthy

The author is well-known commentator on political and economic affairs
By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA: TDP national spokesperson Kambhampati Rammohan Rao lambasted YSRC chief YS Jaganmohan Reddy for his remarks against Telugu Desam and said for gaining sympathy he was not even hesitating to bring his family onto the roads.

In a press release here on Sunday, he said the YSRC had allied with the BJP at the Centre to get the cases against Jagan withdrawn. At the same time considering the unfavourable circumstances for the saffron party in the State, he had now started a new drama alleging the BJP-TDP tie-up.

Rammohan Rao said once they understood that YS Bharathis name had figured in the charge sheet filed by the Enforcement Directorate, the YSRC refrained from voting against the BJP candidate in the Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman election.

He said those criticising the TDP for the news reports about the ED chargesheet figuring Bharathis name should understand the facts. She is a director, managing director and vice-chairperson of several companies, which were involved in the illegal assets cases against Jagan. It was her signature that was on the documents meant for transfer of the companies shares, he said.

Jagan never believes the third person, hence he has involved his wife in the illegal assets dealings and shamed her, he said.

The TDP national spokesperson said even Ambati Rambabu of YSRC admitted that cases pertaining to `1,200 crore assets of Jagan are in the court. Let me ask Jagan how he was able to construct palatial residences in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pulivendula.

He maintained that the TDP aligned with the BJP in 2014 for the good of the State and when it found that the alliance was not doing any good to AP, it came out of the NDA. But, the YSRC has reached a backdoor deal with the BJP government at the Centre purely for political gains, he said.
By ANI

IDUKKI: National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) rescue officer Kanhaiya Kumar, who hogged the headlines for saving a child in Idukki district of flood-hit Kerala, thanked everyone for acknowledging his selfless act.

Watch Kanhaiya Kumar's interview here:

#WATCH: NDRF Rescue officer Kanhaiya Kumar, on a video of him running through flooded bridge in Kerala's Idukki with a child close to his chest going viral, says, "I realised that I can help by taking the child to nearest hospital in a safer place for 1st-aid& I did exactly that" pic.twitter.com/WvKrv6owao  ANI (@ANI) August 11, 2018

The NDRF personnel, is being lauded on social media after a video of him, running across a submerging bridge with the child in his arm surfaced on media. The child was suffering from a high fever and had to be shifted to a nearby hospital.

Kumar, who was deployed in Idukki district for the rescue mission, told ANI, "I have been in this profession for past six years and after this video went viral and people praised me, I feel my hard work paid off well."

Minutes after the rescue officer crossed the bridge, it was submerged by the flood water released from the Cheruthoni Dam.

"I realised that I can help the child by taking him to the nearest hospital and I exactly did that. I didn't know that with just a small act of mine I would become famous. I would like to thank people who showed love and respect for this act," Kumar, who hails from Bihar said.

Flash floods, caused by incessant rains, have wreaked havoc in several districts of Kerala, killing at least 37 people.

As many as 14 teams of NDRF consisting of 404 rescuers and 31 boats have been deployed in various parts of flood-hit districts including Thrissur, Ernakulam, Alappuzha, Wayanad, Kozhikode and Idukki to assist the state administration in the relief and rescue operation and to provide medical support to affected people at the time of emergency.
By Express News Service

KOZHIKODE: After a lull, heavy rain lashed Wayanad and parts of Kozhikode in north Kerala adding to the woes of people in both districts. One death was reported from Wayanad on Sunday. The deceased was identified as Rajamma, 58, who passed away here at the private hospital in Sulthan Bathery after a wall collapsed and fell over her. The boundary walls of two houses in Kozhikode were also destroyed in heavy rain.

More people sought shelter in relief camps set up across the two districts on Sunday. Presently, 11 relief camps are functioning in Kozhikode district and 67 in Wayanad, in Sultan Bathery and Mananthavady taluks.

A total of 269 families consisting of 1,030 members are residing in the relief camps set up in Kozhikode and 2,144 families consisting of 7,949 members are at the relief camps in Wayanad. According to the Kozhikode Disaster management Control room authorities, no major accidents were reported in the district on Sunday.

A team headed by Minister for Transport A K Saseendran visited the rain-affected regions on Thamarassery Ghat road, Mattikunnu in Puthuppady panchayat and Kannappankundu in Kozhikode on Sunday. The visit was conducted following a decision was taken at an all-party meeting held earlier at the district collectorate, to demolish a building on the verge of collapse on the second hairpin bend of the Thamarassery Ghat road. The minister directed the authorities concerned to remove a tree close to the building, which could pose threat to it.

Land Revenue Commissioner A T James has directed authorities concerned to submit a report on the loss suffered by people residing in the relief camps. A fund of `3,800 will be distributed to people returning home from the camps.

Likewise, a relief package of `6 lakh will be provided to those who have lost their land, and a sum of `4lakh to those whose houses have been destroyed in rain. People who have lost both their houses and lands will be given a relief fund of `10 lakh.

Excise Minister T P Ramakrishnan visited the affected areas and relief camps in Wayanad district. He said state was facing an unprecedented tragedy. The minister visited the relief camp in HIM UP School, Vaithiri.
By Express News Service

KOLLAM: Fr Jaise K George, the fourth accused priest of Malankara Orthodox Syrian church in the rape case, arrested at Kollam on Monday.

His arrest was recorded after he surrendered before the Kollam Crime Branch office. The first accused in the case Fr Abraham Varghese surrendered before a court in Thiruvalla.

The surrender came after the investigation team was moving ahead with the arrest after the time allowed by Supreme Court expired on Monday.

The court had told the priests to surrender before August 13, while considering their bail plea. The priests are accused in the alleged blackmail and sexual abuse of a homemaker using her confession in 2009.

Fr Job Mathew, the second accused in the case surrendered before the Crime Branch office in Kollam on July 12.

He along with the third accused, Fr Johnson V Mathew, have been granted bail by the High Court. Crime Branch Police has charged IPC sections 354 (assault to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty) and 376 (rape) against the priests Job Mathew, Jaise K George, Abraham Varghese and Johnson P Mathew, based on the statement given by the victim before the magistrate.

The 34-year-old victim had given secret statement before the Thiruvalla Judicial First Class Magistrate based on section 164 of CrPC reiterating her claim that she was sexually assaulted by the priests.

According to the statement, the victim was sexually assaulted by Orthodox priest Fr. Abraham Varghese before her marriage while she was just 16. The women later confessed this before Fr. Job Mathew in 2009, who also abused her.

She said both Fr Jaise K. George who was a classmate and Fr Johnson P. Mathew also abused her. The victim's husband was instrumental in bringing the case to the light. The priests accused in the case were suspended by Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church following the scandal.

The investigating team is headed by DySP of Crime branch (HHW) Sabu Mathew consists of DySP Crime Branch DySP (EoW), Jossy Cherian and three circle inspectors.
By Express News Service

BHAWANIPATNA: With rise in number of people testing positive for dengue and malaria, fear has gripped the residents of Ladugaon village in Kalahandi district.

Earlier, out of 14 blood samples collected from the district, six tested positive for dengue. In the second phase, 94 blood samples were sent for test of which 18 tested positive for the disease. Besides, as many as 12 cases of malaria have been recorded in the village.

Additional District Public Health Officer Dr Jyotish Kumar Mohapatra, who has been camping in the village, said steps are being taken on a war footing to eliminate mosquito larvae through spraying and fogging. He said a drive has been started to make people aware of the importance of maintaining a clean environment and getting rid of stagnated water.

Dr Mohapatra said the medical team stationed in the village is on alert and the villagers need not panic.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: A week after the death of DMK president M Karunanidhi, his elder son MK Alagiri, who has been kept away from party affairs for the past four years, stirred a controversy over the party leadership stating that true loyalists of Kalaignar were with him despite his exclusion.

Talking to reporters at his fathers samadhi on Marina after paying homage to the late leader, Alagiri, along with family members and party supporters, said, I have conveyed my grouses to my father. You dont know what are my grouses. All the true loyalists of Kalaignar ( M Karunanidhi) across Tamil Nadu are only with me and they are supporting me. Future will give you the answer on this.

Asked about the party's executive committee meeting scheduled for Tuesday, Alagiri said, I dont anything about it because I am not with the DMK now.

To a question whether he would rejoin the DMK, he remarked, I have conveyed to Kalaignar only about that, indicating that the much-expected power struggle within the DMK has started.

An hour later, when asked about the outbursts of Alagiri at Karunanidhi's samadhi, J Anbazhagan, one of the confidantes of MK Stalin told reporters: There is no need to respond to Alagiri because he is not with the DMK. No one in the party is in touch with Alagiri.

DMK working president MK Stalin or the top leaders of the DMK including Durai Murugan are yet to react to the remarks made by Alagiri.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: BJPs Raja Singh has done it again. The Goshamahal MLA on Sunday threatened violence, akin to mob lynching, by gau rakshaks if the State government did not take precautions to curb illegal slaughter in the days leading to Bakrid.

At the same time, he also announced that he had tendered his resignation letter to the State BJP chief because Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah were being blamed for his statements on a multitude of issues.

We do not want the kind of violent atmosphere that we have seen in other states. However, if you do not install any check-posts outside the city and conduct raids in Old City where butchers have hidden cows and calves, there is a 200 per cent chance of mob lynching and violence, Raja Singh said at a press conference on Sunday.

He alleged that TRS government was being coerced by AIMIM to rally for Muslim causes and that it was turning a blind eye towards illegal cow slaughter that was widely prevalent. Raja Singh claimed to have created a 1,000 strong team of gau rakshaks who have been deployed at every district and village of Vikarabad, Suryapet, Adilabad, Warangal and other places.

Raja Singh, who submitted his resignation to State BJP president K Laxman four days ago, made the announcement at a press conference on Sunday. In the letter Singh wrote, I dont want to trouble the party nor do I want to answer any of you for my actions to safeguard my mother cow. I am ready to do any such act to safeguard her.

Ominous signs?

In an unrelated incident, a mob detained a truck carrying animals and assaulted the driver at Champapet in Saidabad.

As the vehicle carrying animals reached Champapet, some youngsters, posing as cow protectors stopped the vehicle and assaulted the truck driver brutally. The condition of the victim is said to be serious.

Saidabad police, who received information about the transportation of animals, on reaching the spot, dispersed the mob. Later, Rachakonda police took the animals to police station for further action.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: The Central government is hopeful that the DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill, 2018, will be passed in the Parliament before the end of the present governments term next year, said Union Minister of Science and Technology Dr Harsh Vardhan.

The minister was speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the new campus of Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) at Uppal in Hyderabad on Sunday. The bill was introduced in the monsoon session of Lok Sabha on August 9, which ended on August 10.

The DNA bill has attracted fear and criticism from different quarters over possible misuse of the genetic data collected by authorities and over invasion of privacy. Speaking to media, Harsh Vardhan said that the government has involved various stakeholders in drafting the bill to address any kind of concerns, including legal and technical issues, and a committee comprising Law minister, Home minister and him has also looked into various aspects of the bill. He said that the government is confident of answering any concerns or queries raised on the bill from any quarter.

The minister said, When it comes up for discussion, we are confident that we can answer every query and apprehension that anyone might have about the bill. He added that the DNA bill will strengthen the course of forensic activities in the country and help investigative agencies.

The minister lamented that while the bill was initiated during the regime of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it has been introduced only now in the Lok Sabha by the present BJP-led government. On the occasion, he said many scientists from India, who had migrated abroad, are returning to India and the country is now talking of brain gain, unlike earlier times when brain drain was the trend.
By AFP

DHAKA: Award-winning Bangladesh photographer Shahidul Alam was in jail on Monday, 10 days after being arrested following an interview with Al Jazeera about massive student demonstrations, police said.

Alam, 63, who accused police of assaulting him in custody and was earlier sent to a hospital for a check-up following an order from the high court, was taken to a magistrate's court late on Sunday.

"The court then sent him to jail," police official Moshiur Rahman told AFP.

Another police officer told the local Daily Star newspaper that Alam would be kept in prison until the completion of the probe into his charges.

Alam was accused of making "false" and "provocative" statements on Al Jazeera and on Facebook Live as tens of thousands of students protested in Dhaka in late July and early August. He also published photos of the demonstrations.

Alam told Al Jazeera that the protests were the result of pent-up anger at an "unelected government... clinging on by brute force" that has looted banks, gagged the media and is steeped in corruption.

He is being investigated for allegedly violating Bangladesh's internet laws, enacted in 2006 and sharpened in 2013, that critics say are used to snuff out dissent and harass journalists.

Alam -- whose work has appeared widely in Western media and who founded the renowned Pathshala South Asian Media Institute -- faces a maximum 14 years in jail, along with others who have been charged with breaching the laws in the wake of the protests.

The renowned photographer told reporters outside court last Monday that he had been beaten so badly in police custody that his tunic needed washing to get the blood out.

New York-based Human Rights Watch and London's Amnesty International have demanded his release, and on Monday United Nations human rights experts echoed these calls.

"The arrest and alleged ill-treatment of Mr. Alam is extremely worrying and takes place in a general context of a crackdown against young students and others calling for better public governance, reforms and justice in Bangladesh, including media workers and other civil society," said the experts in a statement.

The experts were special rapporteurs on human rights, freedom of expression and arbitrary detention, respectively Michel Forst, David Kaye and Seong-Phil Hong.

'Spreading rumours' -

Alam's arrest capped a turbulent week in Bangladesh as students poured onto the streets in Dhaka and elsewhere for nine straight days after two teenagers were killed by a speeding bus.

Last weekend the demonstrations turned violent as some protestors vandalised and torched vehicles and police used tear gas and rubber bullets.

Mobs allegedly aligned with the government and wielding metal rods attacked demonstrators, journalists and even the US ambassador's car. Some 150 people were injured.

Although the protests fizzled out last week, Bangladesh authorities launched a crackdown on online activists for "spreading rumours" to fuel the unrest.

Police are looking for people behind some 1,000 Facebook accounts and have arrested at least a dozen social media activists.

These include a television actress and the head of an online media outlet.

A well-known Bangladeshi online activist, Pinaki Bhattacharya, has also not been seen since August 5, his father told AFP on Monday, saying he presumed he had gone underground to escape arrest.
By PTI

ISLAMABAD: The maiden session of Pakistan's newly-elected Parliament began today with the outgoing speaker administering oath to 331 members as part of the process of transition and handing over powers to the new government.

Ayaz Sadiq, speaker of the previous National Assembly, presided over the 15th Parliament's session and administered oath to the new leaders in the 342-member lower house. The new members signed their presence in a register.

President Mamnoon Hussain had summoned the maiden session of the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, at 10 AM in parliament house today, 19 days after Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party emerged as the single largest in the general elections.

Prime Minister-in-waiting and PTI chairman Khan and other prominent leaders including Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president Shahbaz Sharif, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and former president Asif Ali Zardari were present in the assembly for the oath-taking.

The speaker announced that elections of the new speaker and his deputy will be held on August 15.

The PTI has nominated Asad Qaisar for speaker, while opposition has named Syed Khurshid Shah of the PPP as the joint opposition candidate for the post.

Earlier, the maiden session started with the National Anthem, followed by recitation from the Holy Quran.

Khan looked prominent as he sat in the front row of the parliament house close to the chair of the leader of the house, which he is eventually expected to take after formal election as Prime Minister.

The PTI emerged as the single largest party with 116 seats in July 25 elections. Its number increased to 125 after nine independent members joined it and final tally reached 158 after it was allotted 28 out of 60 seats reserved for women and 10 seats reserved for minorities.

Party sources said that the list of the Cabinet has not been finalised but there is a general consensus that Shah Mahmood Qureshi will be the new Foreign Minister and Pervez Khattak the new Interior Minister. Asad Umar is expected to get the key post of Finance Minister.

Khan is expected to appoint prominent businessman Abdul Razzak Dawood as advisor on finance. Dawood served in the Cabinet of former military dictator Pervez Musharraf.

The election of the Prime Minister will be held after election of the new Speaker who will supervise the election of the premier.

The PTI has nominated Khan for the top post and he is scheduled to take oath on August 18 at the President House.

The combined opposition has nominated Shehbaz Sharif against Khan.

The new government faces a strong opposition as the PML-N has a final tally of 82 seats, followed by the PPP with 53 and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) 15 seats. The three have joined hands and formed the combined opposition.

The PTI has the support of smaller parties including Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) with seven seats, Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) five, Balochistan National Party (BNP) four, Pakistan Muslim League (PML) three, Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) three, Awami Muslim League and Jamori Watan Party one seat each.
By Online Desk

Social media has certainly given rise to a number of 'challenges' that have been affecting a large number of unrelated people. While a few could be harmless, most of them are highly dangerous. Not even a year has passed since the Blue Whale challenge subsided, a new game has been spreading in the internet, encouraging suicides amongst teenagers.

A 12-year-old girl from Argentina recently died after participating in the terrifying 'Momo challenge'. The girl reportedly received messages from an unknown individual named 'Momo'. The girl recorded a video saying that she committed suicide because of Momo.

Momo has a display picture of a creepy, thin woman with bulging eyes. Its account and number has been circulating through Whatsapp, Facebook and YouTube.

The challenge begins as the participant receives a text from Momo. Momo reportedly sends disturbing and violent images and threatens the recipient if they refuse to participate. Throughout, Momo encourages the recipient to perform cruel acts and commit suicide. The unknown number calls and uncomfortable noises are heard, as though someone is crying in pain.

This is very similar to the Blue Whale challenge, which involved the participant to perform 50 tasks for 50 days, with the last task being suicide.

The image of a creepy woman was originally shared on Reddit. It is a sculpture named 'Mother Bird', created by Midori Hayashi, and it is on display at the Tokyo Vanilla Gallery, Japan. The artist is not

associated with the challenge.

Currently, it has been reported that the challenge is viral in Japan, Colombia and Mexico. It won't be long till it arrives in India. With the targets being teenagers between 13 and 19 with self-esteem issues, there are many social media alerts that are warning parents to look out for odd behaviour in their children.

While most reports confirm that the Momo challenge exists, some cyber experts say that it could be a hoax to steal personal data from the participant. According to Manorama, Kerala Police have found impostors who are pretending to be Momo and are sending similar messages.

Also Read:

Blue Whale Challenge: As panic spreads, kids, parents keep helpline number buzzing in Tamil Nadu

Teens are drawn to blue whale challenge due to loneliness: Study

Mastermind behind Blue Whale suicide game, a Russian girl, arrested

Blue Whale not a cyber game: Cyber Forensic experts

Banned Blue Whale game still available in various other names
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the lengthy questioning of an American Jewish journalist on arrival at Tel Aviv airport was the result of an "administrative mistake".

Also Read | Benjamin Netanyahu cancels Colombia trip, citing Gaza situation

Peter Beinart of The Forward, a Jewish American magazine published in New York, said he was questioned for an hour Sunday on his political views by a Shin Bet intelligence service agent.

A supporter of a pro-Palestinian boycott of goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Beinart said he was asked repeatedly for names of organisations with which he is associated.

The journalist, who said he was in Israel on a family visit, described his experience at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport, where travellers are often interrogated for hours on arrival and departure, as "depressing".

The prime minister's office said he had looked into the incident.

Netanyahu "heard of Mr Beinart's questioning at Ben Gurion airport and immediately spoke with Israel's security forces to inquire how this happened", it said in a statement.

"He was told it was an administrative mistake. Israel is an open society which welcomes all - critics and supporters alike."

Reacting to the premier's intervention, Beinart tweeted that Netanyahu had "half-apologised for my detention yesterday at Ben Gurion airport".

"I'll accept when he apologises to all the Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans who every day endure far worse," he wrote.

In March 2017, Israel's parliament passed a law banning the entry of supporters of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), a movement inspired by measures against South Africa before the fall of apartheid.
By ANI

SEOUL: The two Koreas on Monday decided to hold their third meeting in September. The meeting will take place between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang. The date of the third-inter Korean summit between the two leaders would be announced later.

The consensus for the meeting was reached following high-level talks between the two countries on the northern side of Panmunjom in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), the de facto border separating North and South Korea, Yonhap News Agency reported.

In a joint statement, officials from the two Koreas said: "We agreed to hold an inter-Korean summit within September in Pyongyang. We reviewed the implementation situations of the Panmunjom Declaration and held consultations in a sincere manner on matters related to its more active enforcement."

While the four-member South Korean delegation was led by the country's unification minister Cho Myoung-gyon, Ri Son-gwon, chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, led the North Korean side.

This was the fourth time the high-level talks took place, with the last one being held in June, the report said. On April 27, the first inter-Korean summit between Moon and Kim took place on the southern side of Panmunjom, wherein the two leaders signed the Panmunjom Declaration, which called for ceasing of hostilities against each other and signing a permanent peace treaty in the near future to replace the armistice agreement adopted during the 1950-53 Korean War. The two Koreas are technically at war since no peace agreement was signed. On May 26, the two leaders met on the northern side of Panmunjom for the second time.

The high-level talks also come amid growing concerns that North Korea's denuclearisation process had slowed down than expected and Pyongyang's constant belittling of the United States on its "gangster-like" demands, for the former to give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Many international organisations and countries have repeatedly urged Pyongyang to halt its nuclear development programme if the latter wanted to achieve and ensure a stable and peaceful Korean Peninsula.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

A steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low around 50F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

A steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low around 50F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Reporter/Columnist

Julie Wurth is a reporter covering the University of Illinois at The News-Gazette. Her email is jwurth@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@jawurth).
It is now time to put behind the elections and be united in working to achieve the Zimbabwe we all want. We are indeed building the Zimbabwe we want, growing the economy together, and creating employment and improving the standards of living for everyone, where everyone is involved, irrespective of tribe, creed, gender, religion and party affiliation, he said.
A University of Zimbabwe lecturer who refused to be named said: The discipline that is inculcated in the uniformed forces is needed in Government business. You may need to realise that most of the Western countries that are calling for military reforms in African countries or dropping of former military personnel in government are, in fact, the most militarised countries in the world. What they preach to you is not what they do in their own backyards. Zimbabwe, as a sovereign state, should be allowed to decide what it is good for its citizens without any undue influence. Herald
(Newser)  An Ohio mom's Facebook video about the attempted abduction of her child in a Walmart parking lot was all made up, per local authorities. Chelsie Hendel was arrested Friday after the Marion County Sheriff's Office says the 27-year-old mother recorded a live video about her experience in the parking lot of an area Walmart, where a man tried to snatch her daughter. "That man walked up and he grabbed (my daughter) and I looked at him and I said what the F are you doing that is my kid," Hendel said in the video, per USA Today. "I wanted to let everyone know about this because they couldn't get a good look of him on the cameras and there is nothing really that we could do about it but she is fine and everything is fine."

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Per the Marion Star, Hendel said she reported the incident to the store but was told they couldn't help. Not so, according to Marion County Sheriff Tim Bailey, who said security footage his office reviewed showed no such incident happened. Bailey also said Hendel never reported a crime to police. When police questioned Hendel at her home on Friday, they say she admitted to making the story up and was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of inducing panic. Her video, which reportedly got reactions from hundreds of users, has been taken down from Facebook. (Read more Facebook stories.)
(Newser)  The 76-seat Horizon Air turboprop stolen by airport worker Richard Russell on Friday was completely destroyed when it crashed into an island in Puget Sound, authorities say. National Transportation Safety Board regional chief Debra Eckrote says the plane, stolen from Sea-Tac International Airport, was broken into small pieces by the crash into trees on sparsely populated Ketron Island. "You couldn't even tell it was a plane except for some of the bigger sections, like the wing section," she says. "Even the small sections, most of it doesn't resemble a plane." Authorities say human remains have been found at the scene, along with the flight data recorder and components of the cockpit recorder, the AP reports.

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Authorities believe the 29-year-old Russell was killed in the crash, but nobody else was injured and he was not shot down by the military F-15s that trailed him for around an hour as he chatted with controllers and performed stunts including loops and barrel rolls, the Washington Post reports. Family members say they are utterly shocked by the actions of Russell, who had worked as a ground agent for more than three years and opened a bakery with his wife in Oregon years earlier. Analysts say the incident is likely to lead to major changes in airport security. "This is going to be a major learning event for the industry," says CNN aviation analyst Justin Green. "This is a really big deal." (Officials have no idea how Russell learned to fly.)
Lameness prevention: it's all in the head

An understanding of how cows think, how they see the world and how they move is essential for lameness prevention.
(Newser)  A longtime Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston has been caught up in the volatile politics of the day, with some calling for a boycott of El Tiempo Cantina. And it's all because Jeff Sessions came to dinner, explains CultureMap. After the attorney general ate there Friday, the owner posted a since-deleted photo online of his son posing with Sessions, saying it had been an "honor" to serve him. Those opposed to White House policies on immigration quickly pounced, with calls for a boycott and worse, reports KHOU. "Death threats," says owner Roland Laurenzo. The restaurant then posted an apology to those it offended and tried to distance itself from White House policies.

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"El Tiempo does not in [any way] support the practice of separating children from parents or any other practices of the government relative to immigration," Laurenzo wrote. "The posting of a photograph of the Attorney General at one of our restaurants does not represent us supporting his positions." Of course, that prompted supporters of the White House to join the debate, and now El Tiempo is taking flak from both sides. Meanwhile, the restaurant's Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages went dark over the weekend, notes the Houston Chronicle. (A restaurant in Virginia also entered the political fray.)
(Newser)  An ex-girlfriend has made disturbing allegations of domestic abuse against US Rep. Keith Ellison, days before the Democrat faces a five-way primary for Minnesota attorney general. Karen Monahan says a Facebook post made by her son, who said he'd seen video of Ellison dragging her off a bed and screaming obscenities at her, is true, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. Monahan has been tweeting for months about an abusive relationship she was in with a powerful man, without naming Ellison. "I was physically abused, emotional and psychological and sexually manipulated by this man," she said in one tweet.

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Ellison, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, has denied the allegations, saying the video Monahan's 25-year-old son claims to have seen on her computer last year doesn't exist, Politico reports. "Karen and I were in a long-term relationship which ended in 2016, and I still care deeply for her well-being," Ellison said in a statement. "This video does not exist because I never behaved in this way, and any characterization otherwise is false." Monahan provided more than 100 text and Twitter messages between her and Ellison in the months after their breakup to Minnesota Public Radio, which found that the tone was "combative," though the messages don't contain any proof of abuse. (Read more Keith Ellison stories.)
(Newser)  Virginia authorities say they are investigating an assault of a Charlottesville police officer who was knocked down during a anti-racist demonstration related to a deadly 2017 far-right rally, the AP reports. Hundreds of people marched in Charlottesville on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the far-right "Unite the Right" rally that left one dead and others injured. A Charlottesville Police Department press release states an officer at the march approached a man whose face was covered.

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The release says the officer and the man were then knocked to the ground, where the officer was swarmed by other people. The release says other officers pulled the people off the grounded officer. It says the officer wasn't injured, and the people rejoined the march. An investigation into the alleged assault is ongoing. The Cavalier Daily reports that the marchers were protesting white supremacism and the continued presence of a Robert E. Lee statue in the Virginia city, as well as the increased police presence ahead of the anniversary. (White nationalists were vastly outnumbered by counterprotesters at a march toward White House on Sunday.)
(Newser)  Michel Moore retired as chief of operations for the Los Angeles Police Department in January, but just briefly: by March he was back in the roleafter having collected a $1.27 million lump sum retirement payout from the city. Then, in June, he was named the new chief of the LAPD. As the Los Angeles Times explains, Moore, 58, took part in LA's Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP), in which, for the final five years of their careers, police officers and firefighters are given their pension payments in addition to their salaries. Those pension payments go into a special account; after the five years are up, as long as the employee does retire, they get the money. One important caveat: Chiefs are excluded from the program, meaning that if Moore had been promoted to chief before retiring, he would have given up the $1.27 million.

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But Moore tells the Times he did not know his promotion to chief was imminent when he agreed to a plan, proposed by then-Chief Charlie Beck and approved by Mayor Eric Garcetti, that would see him spend just a few weeks off the job before returning via a mechanism known as "the bounce," which allows a retired officer to be brought back for up to a year if the city can't replace him. Before the plan was proposed last fall, he says he expected to leave the department permanently in January, when his five years in DROP were up. He says he was further surprised when, just before he briefly retired in January, Beck announced his own pending retirement. "You may call it suspicious timing, but I didnt program it that way," he says. The Times notes that he also collected $170,000 for unused sick and vacation days when he retired, and was allowed to collect his pension on top of his salary when he came back on the job. Read the full article. (Read more Los Angeles Police Department stories.)
(Newser)  The so-called "enemy of the American People" has now decided to rally against a common critic: the president. The Guardian reports that more than 100 newspapers have joined the initiative spearheaded by the Boston Globe to publish editorials about President Trump's "assault on the press" this Thursday. On Saturday, the Globe's deputy editorial page editor said that figure likely wouldn't stay put: "I expect that number to grow in the coming days," Marjorie Pritchard told CNN, which reports journalism groups including the American Society of News Editors have been promoting the effort.

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Though large papers like the Houston Chronicle and Denver Post are said to be on board, Pritchard added that "the majority are from smaller markets, all enthusiastic about standing up to Trump's assault on journalism." While each publication will pen its own unique editorial, she added that she anticipates they'll share "the same sentiment: The importance of a free and independent press." (Read more President Trump stories.)
(Newser)  "ATM cash-out." It's a phrase that has the ring of a game show but the reality of a nightmare, at least according to the FBI, which has issued a warning about the scheme. Per Krebs on Security, the FBI has been on the receiving end of "unspecified reporting" suggesting cybercriminals are preparing to carry out a so-called cash-out, in which they hack a bank or payment card processoroften gaining entry by successfully phishing an employee at the institutionand then visit ATMs armed with cloned cards and begin pulling out money, as much as millions over the course of a few hours. The alert made to banks on Friday indicated the scheme would take place in the coming days, with Krebs reporting such attacks typically occur after close-of-business on Saturdays.

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Krebs delves more into the process, which typically involves loosening fraud controlslike doing away with the cap on the amount of cash that one can withdraw in an ATM transactionand jacking up account balances so there's more cash to take. The alert explained "historic compromises have included small-to-medium size financial institutions, likely due to less robust implementation of cyber security controls," and Krebs backs that up by recalling an alleged cash-out scheme that occurred at the National Bank of Blacksburg in Virginia that saw $2.4 million taken over two cash-outs in May 2016 and January 2017. The Roanoke Times reported in July that the bank is suing its insurer, which has said it will only reimburse the bank $50,000; more on how it arrived at that amount here. (Read more cybercrime stories.)
(Newser)  If anyone was unsure what Iran's supreme leader thought of President Trump's offer to hold talks after the US reimposed "the most biting sanctions" on Iran last week, all doubt has been removed, per Reuters. "I ban holding any talks with America.  America never remains loyal to its promises in talks," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Monday, according to Iranian state TV. "America's withdrawal from the nuclear deal is a clear proof that America cannot be trusted." The Times of Israel notes Khamenei's outline on his English Twitter account as to why negotiations are out of the question, in which he calls the US government a "duplicitous" one that uses a bait-and-switch-style "formula" during talks. "Even if we everimpossible as it isnegotiated with the U.S., it would never ever be with the current U.S. administration," he adds in a follow-up tweet.

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Still, Khamenei doesn't see an Iranian-US war coming down the pike anytime soon. "[The Americans] are exaggerating the possibility of a war with Iran. There will be no war," he said, per Reuters, adding a veiled threat on Twitter: "This is because Islamic Republic and Iranian nation have proved that any transgressor will be stricken a bigger blow." Khamenei also took the opportunity during his Monday diatribe to take a jab at Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the country's faltering economy. "More than the sanctions, economic mismanagement [by the government] is putting pressure on ordinary Iranians," he noted. "I do not call it betrayal but a huge mistake in management." (Trump issued an all-caps warning tweet to Iran's president last month.)
(Newser)  Razan Zaitouneh earned enemies on all sides of her homeland's civil war. One of Syria's most well-known rights activists, she chanted in protests against President Bashar Assad, but she was also unflinching in documenting abuses by rebels fighting to oust him. Then she vanished. Her fate has been one of the longest-running mysteries of Syria's long conflict. There has been no sign of life, no proof of death since a cold December evening in 2013 when Zaitouneh, her husband, and two colleagues were abducted by gunmen from her office in Douma. Five years later, bits of clues are emerging: a handwritten threat vowing "I will kill you"; a logon from her computer after the kidnappers stole it from her office; possible sightings by witnesses and reports of graffiti on a prison cell wall reading, "I miss my motherRazan Zaitouneh, 2016."

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The clues give strong indications that Zaitouneh was taken by the Army of Islam, the most powerful rebel faction in Douma at the time, and was then likely held in its feared Tawbeh Prison. The Army of Islam vehemently denies any role in her disappearance. It's also likely she was killed, though how long after the abduction is unknown, several friends and colleagues tell the AP. The small hope that she and the others were kept alive in detention was shaken in April, when Syrian government forces retook Douma. Prisoners were released, but Zaitouneh and her colleagues didn't surface. An AP team recently toured the abandoned Tawbeh Prison and interviewed a dozen locals and people who knew Zaitouneh to assemble what's known about her disappearance. Read the full article for much more, including speculation on where she may be buried.

(Read more Syria stories.)
(Newser)  Instagram star and blogger Johnna Holmgren, aka Fox Meets Bear, chronicles her family's life in the woods of Minnesota, which sometimes involves foraging for food. Her first cookbook, published in May, reflected that lifestyle: Tales From a Forager's Kitchen included recipes readers could make by foraging wild mushrooms, berries, and other plants from the forest. But the book has now been recalled due to concerns that those recipes could make aspiring foragers sick, BuzzFeed reports. One recipe, for example, called for morel mushrooms to be eaten raw; doing so can lead to nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain, per health officials. Readers and experts alike expressed concern, including in reviews on the book's Amazon page; multiple reviewers also pointed out recipes calling for raw elderberries (they need to be cooked in order not to be toxic to humans) and unleached acorns (they're basically inedible by humans if not leached first).

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Holmgren initially told BuzzFeed her recipes were meant for "adventurous eaters" and noted that readers should "be certain you are 100% sure of the species and their identification before consumption. ... If you arent 1 million percent sure, do not eat it." But now publisher Rodale Books has formally recalled the book, issuing a statement saying that it takes readers' concerns seriously and that, along with Holmgren, it has "decided to discontinue the publication and promotion of the book. We are encouraging retailers to return their stock, and we are offering a full refund to consumers who have purchased the book." BuzzFeed notes that posts promoting the cookbook were no longer active on Holmgren's Instagram feed as of Friday night. On her blog, which includes the disclaimer "Some wild plants are poisonous or can have serious adverse health effects. I am not a health professional, medical doctor, nor a nutritionist," there is a post alerting readers to the recall. (Read more cookbooks stories.)
(Newser)  Prosecutors charged a white man with manslaughter Monday in the death of an unarmed black man whose videotaped shooting in a store parking lot has revived debate over Florida's "stand your ground" law, the AP reports. Michael Drejka, 47, has been charged with the July 19 death of Markeis McGlockton outside a Clearwater convenience store, Pinellas County State Attorney Bernie McCabe said. Drejka was arrested Monday morning and was being held at the county jail on $100,000 bail. McGlockton's girlfriend, Britany Jacobs, who was seated in the couple's car with two of their children, ages 3 years and 4 months, said Drejka confronted her for being parked in a handicapped-accessible space. McGlockton, 28, had gone into the store with their 5-year-old son. Jacobs said Drejka was cursing at her. Video shows McGlockton exited the store and shoved Drejka to the ground. Seconds later, Drejka pulled a handgun and shot McGlockton as he backed away.

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McGlockton family attorney Benjamin Crump said in a statement Monday "it's about time" Drejka was arrested. The family, civil rights groups and others had been holding protests demanding he be charged. "This self-appointed wannabe cop attempted to hide behind 'Stand Your Ground' to defend his indefensible actions, but the truth has finally cut through the noise," Crump said. "I have full faith that this truth will prevail to punish this cold-blooded killer who angrily created the altercation that led to Markeis' needless death." Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri originally declined to charge Drejka, saying one day after the shooting that the man was protected by Florida's stand-your-ground law. The sheriff passed the case to prosecutors for a final decision. "I support the State Attorney's decision and will have no further comment as the case continues to work its way through the criminal justice system," Gualtieri said in a statement Monday. (Read more Stand Your Ground stories.)
New Delhi/Srinagar:

Militants gunned down a civilian after abducting him from his house in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir, a police official in Srinagar said.

"Terrorists in Murran area of Pulwama last night barged inside the house of Gulzar Ahmad Bhat and abducted him," the police official said.

Also Read | Article 35-A: BJP MLA snubs party, praises Kashmiris for defending

Bhat's bullet-riddled body was recovered from a nearby field, the police said, adding a case has been registered and investigation initiated.

Also Read | Man held for burning copy of Constitution

"Police have registered a case and initiated investigation, which suggest involvement of local militants Zahoor Thokar and Showkat Dar of the Hizbul Mujahideen outfit," he added.

For all the Latest Cities News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Lasting romance is the dream of any man-woman relationship, and Hollywood star Jessica Alba believes the key to a lasting romance in a relationship is to continue supporting each other through thick and thin.

ALSO READ | Marital fights can make you suffer from leaky guts



Jessica Alba recently revealed the secret to her lasting romance with husband Cash Warren and said that they always have each other's support, according to reports.



ALSO READ | Britney Spears recalls recording ' Baby One More Time'

"We support each other. I think it's just nice to have someone who can just listen and be there for you and cuddle, Jessica told People magazine.



The actress said she and her film-producer husband make sure to spend quality time with each other. Jessica and Warren got married in 2008. They have two daughters -- Honor, 10, and Haven, six -- and son Hayes, who was born earlier this year.



ALSO READ | Working with Bradley Cooper changed me: Lady Gaga

"I don't know, we do a lot of down time, and being chill. It's important to have a date night once in a while," Alba added.

(With inputs from agencies)

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New Delhi:

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah on Monday wrote a letter to the Law Commission, pitching the idea of One Nation One Election in the country. In his eight-page letter to the commission, the BJP chief also explained various benefits of holding simultaneous elections in the country, saying it would check expenditure and ensure that the nation is not in "election mode" throughout the year.

Shah said the claim that holding two sets of polls was against the federal structure of the country is a "baseless" argument while on the contrary, he stated, it would strengthen the federal structure of the country.

The BJP president also claimed that the opposition to simultaneous polls seems to be politically motivated.

BJP President Amit Shahs letter to the Law Commission for One Nation One Election. #Delhi (2/2) pic.twitter.com/3NWZogpmzy  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

Read | Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia charged for alleged assault on Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash

The law panel, which is examining the feasibility of holding simultaneous polls, had sought the views of the political parties before finalising its report. Both the BJP and Congress had stayed away from consultation organised by the commission in this regard last month.

The Congress had met the Commission top brass recently where it had opposed the concept of simultaneous polls.

It's been a quite long time that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with several other ministers, has been pushing the concept of simultaneous polls across India. President Ram Nath Kovind and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav also came forward to support BJP's One Nation One Election.

(With inputs from PTI)

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New Delhi:

As the 2019 Lok Sabha elections is just a few months away, the Congress has started intensifying its campaign across the country. To kick-start with party president Rahul Gandhi on Monday arrived to a warm welcome in Karnataka, where he has launched the 'Jana Dwani Yatra' following a public address in Bidar. During his address, the Congress president stressed on the issues of farmers, spoke about controversial Rafale deal and also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of sluggish job creation under the NDA government.

"I challenge PM Modi from this stage. Karnataka government waived off loans of farmers. I challenge you (centre) to provide 50% of the farm loan waived in Karnataka. If you have 56-inch chest, I dare you to do this. But you won't do this," Gandhi said while taking a tig at the Modi government.

"Nirmala Sitharaman Ji has lied to the youth of the nation. She said India and France have a secret pact and so they can't reveal the price of Rafale aircraft. I asked France President if this is true and he denied," the Congress president alleged in Bidar.

"Modi is not prime minister of country but of 15 "super-rich businessmen", I challenge him for a debate on Rafale deal," Gandhi stated.

Elaboarating the matter to a greater extent, the Congress chief hit out at Modi for "stealing" taxpayers' money and giving it to his "friend" whose firm he alleged had bagged a contract in the Rafale deal. "Chowkidar Hi Bhaagidar Hai. (This watchman is a collaborator)," Gandhi mocked the prime minister.

Read | Rahul Gandhi to visit Telangana today; to hold talks with youths, women

Talking about the growing incidents of rapes and sexual assault across the country the Congress president said, "The prime minister gave the slogan of 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' but he did not say from whom the girl child be saved".

"Rape happens in Uttar Pradesh and BJP leader is caught. When small girls in Bihar are raped, we see BJP leaders hanging around there. However, the prime minister does not speak a word on it," PTI quoted Gandhi as saying.

Meanwhile, several high profile leaders, including Mallikarjun Kharge, KPCC president Dinesh Gundurao, AICC general secretary KC Venugopal, former chief minister Siddaramaiah and deputy chief minister G Parameshwar took part in the 'Jana Dwani Yatra'. The rally also marked attendance around two lakh Congress workers from different Assembly segments across the state.

Read | Income Tax Department sends notice to Rahul Gandhi over his 2011-12 I-T return

Bidar is an important region for the Opposition party with the Congress having won four of the six Assembly seats in the district in the recent Karnataka Assembly election, held in May.

Later in the day, the Gandhi scion will arrive in Telangana and is expected to meet women Self-Help Groups, students and unemployed youth, entrepreneurs and others in separate events in Hyderabad on Monday and Tuesday.

"After Bidar, Congress President @RahulGandhi now heads to Hyderabad, Telangana to meet representatives of Self Help Groups and to address a gathering," the Congress said in a statement.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

After addressing the 'Jana Dwani Yatra'rally in Karnataka's Bidar, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Monday reached Hyderabad to kick-start his poll campaign ahead of Lok Sabha elections in 2019. This is Gandhi's maiden visit to the state after he was elected unopposed as the Congress president in December 2017. In Hyderabad, he is scheduled to attend a slew of events and will interact with the students community, unemployed youths, entrepreneurs, women of Self Help Groups and others.

Here are the highlights on Rahul Gandhi's Hyderabad visit:

# 07:10 pm: The unfulfilled promises made by Modi Govt to people of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh will be fulfilled when Congress comes to power: Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

# 07:09 pm: 4000 farmers have committed suicide in Telangana in the last 4 years. When Congress was in power, it was a revenue-surplus state. Now Telangana is in debt, the Gandhi scion said.

# 07:08 pm: 1 lakh govt positions remain vacant in Telangana. The govt has failed to provide jobs to its people: Rahul Gandhi.

# 07:07 pm: Telangana has become the capital of corruption. Peoples land is being grabbed by the Govt, claims the Congress chief.

# 07:06 pm: In the last four years, both the NDA govt at the Centre and TRS in Telangana worked in similar styles. They keep making false promises, says Rahul Gandhi in Serilingampally.

# 06:32 pm: Congress President Rahul Gandhi arrives for a corner meeting at Serilingampally.



# 05:06 pmm: We do not make fake promises like giving 15 lakh rupees to all. The promises we make, are the promises we keep, Rahul Gandhi told the gathering.

# 05:05 pm: When we come to power, we will open more government schools and colleges so that education becomes accessible to the poorest of the poor. Health facilities will also be made accessible for all: Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

# 05:05 pm: When Congress comes to power, our focus is going to be on providing employment and ensuring the safety of women, assures Rahul Gandhi.

Read | Rahul Gandhi arrives to warm welcome in Karnataka; dares PM Modi for debate on Rafale

# 05:00 pm: Congress party believes that this country cannot move forward without the contribution of women. But our governments both at the Centre and State, think women are not important in nation building, claims the Gandhi scion.

# 04:59 pm: Gabbar Singh Tax is meant to loot people of the country. When Congress comes to power, we will give you a GST with a single tax rate.

# 04:58 pm: 10 years ago, bureaucrats told me that UP cannot have SHGs. We brought women from Telanganas SHGs to teach the women there to run SHGs. The women of Telangana proved them wrong. Today in UP, 15 lakh women work in SHGs: Rahul Gandhi.

10 years ago, bureaucrats told me that UP cannot have SHGs. We brought women from Telanganas SHGs to teach the women there to run SHGs. The women of Telangana proved them wrong. Today in UP, 15 lakh women work in SHGs: Congress President @RahulGandhi #RahulGandhiWithTelangana pic.twitter.com/SpbqjkBvcb  Congress (@INCIndia) August 13, 2018

# 04:50 pm: You were told that demonetisation was aimed at fighting black money. You were forced to deposit your money in the bank. That money is now being used to waive off loans of big industrialists, says the Congress chief.

You were told that demonetisation was aimed at fighting black money. You were forced to deposit your money in the bank. That money is now being used to waive off loans of big industrialists: Congress President @RahulGandhi #RahulGandhiWithTelangana pic.twitter.com/OEZ7eBXZVI  Congress (@INCIndia) August 13, 2018

# 04:49 pm: After Demonetisation, when all of you were standing in long queues, did you find a single rich person? No. Because, they were busy converting all the black money they had into white, alleges Rahul Gandhi.

# 04:47 pm: When the Congress comes to power, we will ensure greater availability of loans to SMEs and SHGs run by women: Congress president.

# 04:46 pm: Making banks and financial institutions accessible to women and SHGs is extremely important to create jobs, says Rahul Gandhi.

# 04:44 pm: When we come to power, we will provide pensions for women in Self Help Groups. This is your right. If we want to move forward as a country, women need to be given their due: Rahul Gandhi in Telangana.

# 04:21 pm: Congress President addresses members of Self Help Groups in Hyderabad.

Congress President addresses members of Self Help Groups in Hyderabad. #RahulGandhiWithTelangana pic.twitter.com/K6Jy74X4u6  Congress (@INCIndia) August 13, 2018

# 03:54 pm: A sea of people greet Congress President Rahul Gandhi enroute to Hyderabad city.

A sea of people greet Congress President @RahulGandhi enroute to Hyderabad city. #RahulGandhiWithTelangana pic.twitter.com/4esgiEjfGB  Congress (@INCIndia) August 13, 2018

# 03:42 pm: Congress President Rahul Gandhi arrives in Hyderabad to meet members of Self Help Groups and to address a public rally.

# 02:59 pm: After Bidar, Congress President Rahul Gandhi now heads to Hyderabad, Telangana to meet representatives of Self Help Groups and to address a gathering.

Congress President @RahulGandhi arrives in Hyderabad to meet members of Self Help Groups and to address a public rally. #RahulGandhiWithTelangana pic.twitter.com/tJdPJb0Bq6  Congress (@INCIndia) August 13, 2018

After his two-day visit to Telangana, the Gandhi scion will leave for Delhi on Tuesday.

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New Delhi:

Congress president Rahul Gandhi will be visiting Telangana on Monday. This will be his first visit to the state after becoming the party chief. He will attend several events in Hyderabad where he will address the students community, unemployed youths, entrepreneurs, women self-help-groups and others.

The events will be held on Monday and Tuesday. On Monday, Rahul will hold an interaction with various women Self-Help Groups at a convention centre at Shamshabad in Hyderabad, Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee said in a statement.

Also Read | Rahul to visit Telangana tomorrow; to meet SHGs, students

The visit would give a definite boost to the party. This is his first visit to Telangana after becoming party president. He played a key role in the formation of Telangana, Deputy Leader of the Congress party in State Legislative Council P Sudhakar Reddy was quoted as saying by PTI.

On Tuesday, Rahul would hold a tele-conference with 31,600 booth committee presidents, mandal and district Congress presidents and also state unit officials. He would then have an interaction with various media editors and bureau chiefs for an hour at the hotel where he would be staying.

Also Read Opinion | New Congress stables: How Rahul knocked out old hands with new ones

Later, Rahul would address about 150 young industrialists and CEOs from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. In the evening, he would attend a public meeting for students and unemployed youth at Saroornagar stadium.

The Congress president will leave for Delhi by 8.30 pm on Tuesday.

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New Delhi:

As heavy rains continue to lash several parts of the country, the total number of flood-related deaths has risen to 774, with Assam recording 45 deaths so far. Northeast India is one of the rainiest pockets of the country and the Southwest Monsoon has already covered most of the states - Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura, Mizoram and Manipur. In Nagaland too, around 10 people have lost their lives while several others are missing, according to data issued by the MHAs National Emergency Response Centre.

On Saturday, Cherrapunji in Meghalaya witnessed 47 mm of rains while Shillong saw moderate rains of 9.4 mm. Mizoram recorded moderate rains with Aizawl witnessing 21 mm of rains, and Lengpui 16 mm.

Last week, heavy rains were reported from Nagaland's capital Kohima with the city witnessing a whopping 54 mm of rains, Imphal in Manipur recieved 31 mm of rainfall. In Assam, North Lakhimpur recorded 23.9 mm of rainfall, Silchar 9.2 mm, Golaghat 3.6 mm and Tezpur 8.6 mm rainfall.

Going by the reports provided by the Meteorological Centre, heavy rains have been attributed to the cyclonic circulation over western parts of Assam owing to which moisture incursion has taken place over the northeastern states.

Therefore, moderate to heavy rains are expected over many parts of Northeast India particularly in Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. Other parts may also recieve rainfall of lesser intensity, according to the weatherman.

Read | Kerala floods: Rajnath Singh surveys rain-battered areas; Sushma Swaraj assures passport replacement free of cost

Meanwhile, in a big relief for people across Kerala, the water levels in the Idukki reservoir has been falling slowly. Though incessant downpour has thrown normal life out of gear, the intensity of the rain is now way below the predicted level.

On Sunday, the weather department issued a 'Red alert', asking people to be cautious as there was a possibility of heavy to very heavy rainfall in most places in Idukki, Wayanad, Kannur, Ernakulam, Palakkad and Malappuram districts. The IMD has also warned fishermen against venturing into the sea.

Terming the unprecedented flood situation in Kerala, very serious, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh also announced Rs 100 crore as immediate central relief for the state. The decision came moments after the minister conducted an aerial survey of worst-hit Idukki and Ernakulam districts.

Death toll in #KeralaFloods rises to 39. Home Minister Rajnath Singh has announced an immediate relief of additional Rs 100 crores for the state. #Kerala (file pic) pic.twitter.com/sxy5Pul753  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

Meanwhile, up North, red alert has also been issued for another 24 hours in Uttarakhand. Roorkee in Haridwar district was hit by heavy rainfall triggering heavy congestion and waterlogging in many parts of the city.

According to the Indian Meteorological Department, "The intensity of rainfall will reduce after tomorrow. Light to moderate rainfall will occur from 15 August. But there is a need to stay alert till Tuesday".

Uttarakhand: Parts of Roorkee city in Haridwar district have been water-logged following overnight rainfall yesterday. pic.twitter.com/7hS4ZTteu1  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

Read | Weather Alert: Heavy rains lash Delhi, Noida, Gurugram; traffic affected

Similarly, more rains are on the way for already-soaked Himachal Pradesh, prompting authorities to close schools in several districts, including Shimla, Kangra and Solan.

#HimachalPradesh: Heavy rains have led to a flood-like situation in Parvati Valley area in Mandi pic.twitter.com/QmyKGduaeP  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

Several roads, incuding National Highway 3 (Chandigarh -Manali) have been blocked due to landslide near Mandi and Panjpula in Chamba district. Road clearing operation is underway.

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New Delhi:

Somnath Chatterjee, who passed away in Kolkata on Monday at age 89, is one of the rare role models who will be remembered for his competence, his erudition, his extraordinary wit and his unflinching honesty. In these times when role models are hard to come by, he was an amalgam of rarest qualities.

While he was elected to the Lok Sabha 10 times and lent immense lustre to his party, the CPI (M), ironically he was expelled from the very same party because he refused to resign on principle on a diktat to quit the post of the Lok Sabha Speaker.

The CPI (M) had decided to vote against the then Congress-led government in 2004 while Somnath was not ready to vote on the same side as the BJP. He refused to step down as Speaker because he believed be was no longer associated with the party after becoming the Speaker. He ultimately continued in that post.

Somnath was the CPI (M)s most articulate face in his heydays and he will be long remembered for the brilliant conduct of his duties as Speaker where he displayed great character and commitment to ideals. Although he made no bones about his personal antipathy towards the BJPs ideology, he was impartial and a stickler for rules when it came to dealing with the party as Speaker.

When his party wanted him to follow its line, he set forth the principle that he belonged to the institution of Parliament with no strings attached. This is a principle that needs to be followed for the integrity of the institution itself.

Read | Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee passes away

One rues the fact that todays parliamentarians lack the calibre of some of the stalwarts of Somnath Chatterjees time. The painstaking efforts that went into making them well-rounded personalities are woefully lacking today. In yesteryears, the sharp wit of Atal Behari Vajpayee, the meticulousness of a Madu Limaye or the articulation skills of Hiren Mukherjee were examples other than Somnath who exemplified excellent parliamentary skills.

Even during his times, Somnath faced unruly scenes in Parliament and was much disturbed by the lack of decorum among members. But he always raised his voice for discipline and order.

A strong proponent of the independence of the legislature, Somnath had often been critical of judicial activism. In 2005, he was caught in a controversy over his statement on the Supreme Court orders related to the vote of confidence in the Jharkhand Assembly. He said that the Supreme Court was encroaching on the right of the Legislature by issuing orders on the proceedings of the Jharkhand Assembly. He asked for a Presidential reference to the Supreme Court under Article 143 of the Indian Constitution.

Somnaths deep baritone voice, his argumentative skill of the lawyer that he was and clarity on issues left a mark in the Lok Sabha.

Ironically, the only time Somnath lost a parliamentary election during his chequered career was to Mamata Banerjee whose demagoguery led her to where she is today as West Bengals chief minister. The constituency was Jadavpur which later became a reserved constituency.

Read | Political leaders pay homage, say Somnath Chatterjee was outstanding parliamentarian

Somnath was not hamstrung by ideological dogmas and was a liberal to the core. His support to Jyoti Basu for possible prime ministership was shot down by the party that later regretted it.

Somnath was known for his fiscal integrity. When in 2004, as a Speaker, he moved into the official residence at 20 Akbar Road, he discontinued the practice of paying for toiletries and tea from the national exchequer. On trips abroad, he bore the expenses of any accompanying family members. How many members of Parliament would display such integrity in todays environment is indeed a moot point.

The last decade of Somnath Chatterjees life was spent in relative oblivion as he was in expulsion from the party. His skills as a lawyer, however, stood him in good stead. He was held in deep respect and esteem.
New Delhi:

It seemed as if MK Alagiri, elder brother of DMK working president MK Stalin, was only waiting for their father to breath his last to mount a challenge to his brothers leadership and stake a claim to his fathers political legacy.

Even as the family is yet to come out of mourning for the demise of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi on August 7, Alagiri sounded the bugle for war against his younger brother Stalin with caustic remarks that question his leadership abilities and dismissed him as a leader of consequence.

Alagiri, considered the DMK strongman in southern districts, was at one time a very powerful satrap of the party with his own fiefdom  with a finger in every pie of business and political activity that took place in the region.

Now not even a primary member of the DMK, after he was expelled from the party for anti-party activities in 2014, Alagiri as such cannot do much of a damage to the chances of Stalin who is about to be formally elected as the DMK president, in due course. On Tuesday, the DMK is to meet for a crucial executive council meeting in Chennai to decide the schedule for holding the general council which alone can elect a new leader of the party.

Alagiri timed his attack on Stalin and mounted his challenge as a comeback bid into the party at a time when the DMK can ill afford to lose any of its political clout and workers, especially in the southern region ahead of the two crucial bye-elections  at Thiruparankundram and Tiruvarur  that will be held along with general elections to Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh shortly.

Stalin is not working, was his cryptic remark to a question from a scribe on the elevation of Stalin as the president from the post of working president that he currently holds.

Read | Karunanidhi Funeral: An era ends as Kalaignar is laid to rest at Marina Beach in Chennai

It was seen in Chennai bye-election, how DMK lost its deposit in RK Nagar bye-election that TTV Dhinakaran won, Alagiri told media persons in Chennai after paying homage to his father at his memorial at Marina Beach in Chennai.

And it is in the TTV region that the two bye-elections would be held shortly and the DMK would like to avoid any erosion in its ranks ahead of such a crucial test of Stalins leadership. Taking back Alagiri into party is just not possible, said a DMK leader on condition of anonymity. He is speaking out of frustration, the leader said echoing the sentiments of many in the party.

Alagiri is trying to compare his past track record of success in southern region against the seeming failure of Stalin in bye-elections as also in the 2016 general elections and the previous 2014 Lok Sabha general elections. Alagiri had also put up rebel candidates in some assembly seats to spite Stalin and this may have some impact in DMKs loss.

In fact, just before 2014 polls, Alagiri had predicted that the DMK would not win more than two of the 39 seats in Tamil Nadu.

His challenge to Stalin will come to a nought, as it must be remembered that it was Karunaidhi who himself expelled him from the party. Besides, Karunanidhi had anointed Stalin as his political heir and allowed to take full control of the party, by placing his key trusted aides and replacing all Alagiris men. Besides, all the henchmen of Alagiri were neutralised by tough police action by the Jayalalithaa government.

Most of the Karunanidhi supporters and cadres are with me. Only the money minded people in party positions are with Stalin, Alagiri had said.

His outburst is being dismissed as false bravado and described as an attempt to stay relevant in the state politics. All his attempts to enter the DMK when Karunanidhi was alive. So not many in the party are going to go along with Alagiri, said a political analyst.

Read | Karunanidhi Burial: DMK, AIADMK continue to trade barbs on Marina beach issue

Alagiri may cause some perception damage but cannot do any collateral damage to either Stalin or the DMK, said perception expert and political strategist John Arokiaswamy.

Alagiris frustration also stems from the fact that he tried to re-enter the party and made several attempts to persuade his father. But to no avail. Even now, he is trying to work this around through Selvi, his sister, to soften Stalin and facilitate his comeback bid. But this divide within the DMK first family is something that its rivals  AIADMK will be thrilled about. But it is hardly in a position to take advantage over this as it itself is a house divided.

The BJP may want to fish in DMKs troubled waters, but Alagiri would know in Tamil Nadu he has future only if he is with the DMK.

The BJP is waiting and watching the unfolding drama in DMK first family with glee but would refrain from making any comment other than saying this was an internal matter of the DMK. Everyone knows, DMK is a party of a family and not of cadres. But it is shameful that brothers are fighting it out less than a week of their father death for his legacy," BJP leader P Selvam said.
New Delhi:

At least four miners were killed and 13 others trapped as methane gas exploded in a coal mine near Quetta in Pakistan on Sunday, police said.

The blast took place on Sunday in the village of Sanjdi, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Quetta, local police official Wajeet Khan said, according to the news agency AP.

Four bodies have been recovered, Khan said, adding that 13 other miners are missing and feared dead.

Also Read | Explosion at Nepals Biratnagar Metropolis office

The gas leak hampered the rescue operations. According to reports, frequent mining accidents in Pakistan are often attributed to the poor enforcement of safety regulations.

Also Read | Blast in northern Syria claims 18 lives

The new prime minister of the country, perhaps, would have to address the issue and ensure safety regulations to prevent such recurrence.

(With inputs from agencies)

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Together We Care in cooperation with Salmaniya Blood Bank and One Bahrain Hospitality will conduct their fourth annual blood donation camp.

The camp will be held on the 15th of August 2018 from 08:00 am to 11:00 am at the Salmaniya Medical Hospital premises.

Dawn Caparas, Operation Supervisor at One Bahrain Hospitality Bahrain told Tribune, Together We Care is the community service platform of One Bahrain Hospitality and ITICO. The platform was created, as we wanted to unite the people and our associates to actively participate in community services,

This is our fourth annual blood donation camp and we are calling out all the individuals in Bahrain to come and support this noble cause. Last year there were about 25 people who donated blood and we are expecting above 40 people to donate blood from our associates this year.

We urge everyone to come forward and donate blood. Blood is the most precious gift that anyone can offer. This may sound cliche but, whenever we donate blood, we do not only help other people but are also helping ourselves, Ms Dawn added.
London : The United States urged Britain yesterday to ditch its support for a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and instead join forces with Washington to counter the global threat it says Tehran poses. Despite opposition from European allies, US President Trump in May pulled the United States out of a deal between world powers and Tehran under which international sanctions were lifted in return for curbs on Irans nuclear programme. Since then, Britain, France and Germany have sought to keep the deal alive, while Trump has prepared new sanctions, saying a broader and more balanced deal is needed. Iran has denounced the sanctions as US unilateralism.

US Ambassador to Britain Woody Johnson criticised Tehran for funding proxy wars and malign activities instead of investing in its economy. He said Iran needed to make tangible and sustained changes to behave like a normal country. Until then, America is turning up the pressure and we want the UK by our side, Johnson wrote in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper. It is time to move on from the flawed 2015 deal. We are asking global Britain to use its considerable diplomatic power and influence and join us as we lead a concerted global effort toward a genuinely comprehensive agreement.

Asked about Johnsons article, the British foreign office pointed to comments from Middle East minister Alistair Burt, who last week ruled out Britain going along with the United States. Burt said the deal was an important part of regional security and that, with the European Union, the government was trying to protect British companies from the US sanctions when dealing with Iran. Britain remained open to talks with the United States on how to address concerns about Iran.
Manama : Majid Al Futtaim, the exclusive franchisee of the Carrefour brand in 38 countries across the Middle East, Africa and Asia has opened its 12th store in the Bahrain. Located in Oasis Mall Juffair, it features a range of fresh meats, bakery items, fruits and vegetables, hot meals in addition to 1200 of Carrefour private label products. The new Carrefour supermarket will also feature a wide array of healthy and organic products in the Healthy Kitchen section.

Apart from the vast selection on offer, the store has been designed with the environment in mind, and includes special freezer cabinets that both increase food safety and reduce power consumption. Oasis Mall Juffair was strategically chosen as it is situated across from Al-Fateh Grand Mosque next to the King Faisal Highway. With an overall 2000 sq. meters of retail space and more than 900 free parking spaces, customers can benefit from a shopping experience that is convenient and hassle free.

Jerome Akel, Country Head of Carrefour Bahrain at Majid Al Futtaim Retail commented, In response to the growing demand from our customers for quality food and non-food products at the best value, were pleased to be unveiling our latest location in Oasis Mall Juffair. We look forward to creating great moments for our shoppers every day and are confident that the standards theyve come to expect from our brand will be met and exceeded.
Manama : Mohammed Jalal & Sons Engineering and Technology division has been granted the ISO 9001 Quality Management System certification in recognition of the application of the quality management system, under which all procedures are carefully designed, integrated and implemented in accordance with the requirements of the international standard.

TUV Nord Middle East, a member of the TUV NORD Group, conducted the audit and awarded the ISO 9001: 2015 certification to Mohammed Jalal & Sons Engineering & Technology. By obtaining this certification the company proved that its quality system effectively meets legal, regulatory and internal requirements, which will improve efficiency of all aspects, in order to achieve the highest degree of customer satisfaction, the company said.

The Engineering & Technology Division is one of the oldest companies in the Kingdom, with a large customer base from different sectors. It is one of the leading engineering equipment companies which meets the needs of industries and businesses in Bahrain and the Gulf. Jalal Mohammed Jalal, CEO of Mohammed Jalal & Sons Group, and Ahmed Mohammed Jalal, board member, received the ISO certificate from Godly Mathew George, Regional Director of TUV Nord Middle East, in the presence of Naveen Majani, General Manager, Mohammed Jalal Engineering & Technolog, besides general managers of the group.
Victims of the 1985 crash of a Japan Airlines <9201> jumbo jet were remembered on the mountainous disaster site on the 33rd anniversary on Sunday.

Bereaved family members and others climbed to the Osutaka Ridge in the village of Ueno, Gunma Prefecture, north of Tokyo, to reach memorial markers established at places where remains of the victims were found.

They mourned the victims and prayed that no more air crash would occur again. According to JAL, a total of 272 bereaved people of 82 families climbed to the crash site.

The crash occurred Aug. 12, 1985, killing 520 of the 524 people on board. It is the world's deadliest single-aircraft accident.

Among those who climbed on Sunday included Shinsuke Tanaka, a 52-year-old resident of Kobe, who lost a close friend from his high school days.
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Presidential aspirant, Alhaji Ahmed Markafi yesterday insisted that without the restructuring of institutions, especially as it concerns Nigerias electoral body, INEC, candidates for the 2019 general election might win but would have their results falsified because the operational institution was not restructured to capture the interest of all and sundry.Markafi stated this in Abakaliki when he paid a courtesy call on PDP stakeholders in the state.The former PDP National Caretaker Committee Chairman who stressed on the need for the restructuring of institutions as a key panacea to solving Nigerias problems emphasized that as long as you leave key government institutions under the executive arm of government, then, the problem is not solved.On the issue of restructuring, I said we must include institutional restructuring. If you restructure financial and political without institution, I tell you, you will regret it. What do I mean by institutional restructuring? As long as you leave key government institutions under the executive then, the problem is not solved. Thats why the National Assembly was invaded the other day. Because somebody in executive can just ask security to go and stop National or States Assembly.But when you restructure institution such that they become apolitical, they take no political directive from anybody. They provide for all irrespective of their political affiliation. If you dont restructure electoral body, you will win but they will go and falsify the result. So, we must do institutional restructuring and make them more accountable.If Im given the opportunity to serve I will ensure National cohesiveness. The trusts that use to be between us are being eroded. The fabric that is holding us together as one nation is becoming tinnier and tinnier by the day and about to break. We must reinforce it. Nigerians have been talking that they want to sit down and restructure the country. We cannot run away from it. We must sit down immediately and talk about how Nigeria can be for the good of everybody. It is achievable. It is a policy of the PDP. It is not an individual policy of an aspirant of PDP.When one of the APC Governors said in Channels Television that the APC and the government do not believe in restructuring. The very next day, Channels television called me to come and tell them the policy of PDP and I told them that PDP believes in restructuring. And whoever that is standing for an election in PDP must believe that restructuring is a matter that we must have to face.I have a bit of experience to do that. Most of you may not be aware that the first national conference convened by President Olusegun Obasanjo that before he convened it he set up a technical committee which he asked me to head to prepare the background and agenda for the conference. I chaired the committee that prepared the agenda and background for the Conference. It was my report though edited that was used. I said edited because some items were taken out by the federal government as no-go-areas. But according to my own report, we did not consider them as no-go-areas.We thought they are matters that Nigerians should talk about so that whatever they resolve, will help put an end to them once and for all so that it does not keep on reoccurring. So, if I played such a role back so many years ago, I think by now nobody will be in doubt what my principles and capabilities are.We must address the issue of unemployment. The unemployment rate is terrible. The people who have lost their jobs is about 7.7m not to talk about those who are employable but are not employed. If this trend continues, there cannot be peace and security in Nigeria. We must address it by direct employment and providing enabling environment that can make the private sector to grow. If the private sector is not allowed to grow we can hardly address the issue of unemployment in Nigeria.We must address the issue of our children dropping out of school because they cannot pay tuition fee or cannot do their project because of money. It is simple! We will create loan scheme where people can access money to do their studies. And when you graduate, government will ensure you get something doing so that you can pay back. If government fails to meaningfully engage you so that you can pay, it cannot come to ask of any money.We have to acknowledge the recent deployment in both air and land but why did it take that long? Is it because of neither election nor what? Why did they not do it all these while that lives were being lost everywhere and it took about a year and half and in some places two years and in some other places three years to wake up and realize that it is not politics? Because we have a government that when you advice or criticize they will say it is politics. We must restore security in every nook and crannies of Nigeria.
The All Progressives Congress (APC), on Sunday, said there was a plot by some R-APC forces to get Senate President Bukola Saraki to declare ...

The All Progressives Congress (APC), on Sunday, said there was a plot by some R-APC forces to get Senate President Bukola Saraki to declare the seat of Senator Godswill Akpabio vacant following the latters defection.





The former Akwa Ibom governor last week dumped the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the APC.





A statement by Yekini Nabena, APCs acting National Publicity Secretary, derided such move as R-APCs wishful thinking.





He said: We normally do not respond to the so-called, Reformed All Progressives Congress (rAPC) because it is neither a duly-registered political party or a faction as it labours to sell to the public.





The content of their statement particularly the request to the Senate President Dr. Bukola Saraki to declare the seat of Senator Godswill Akpabio vacant, is a borrowed and scripted tactic  sensationalism and comical conspiracies  typically used by unknown groups to get media attention to their normally unserious activities. The statement should not be given any attention and credence.





The real issue remains our clear position that the Senate President honourably steps down or be impeached. Dr. Sarakis vote of no confidence which the so-called rAPC alleges has since been passed going by our Partys rejection of his leadership of the Senate.








The Benue State Government has fired back at Steve Lawani, the immediate past deputy governor of the state over his recent media attack on G...

The Benue State Government has fired back at Steve Lawani, the immediate past deputy governor of the state over his recent media attack on Governor Samuel Ortom.





Lawani had in a recent interview, claimed that the party chased Ortom away for his alleged poor performance.





Responding to Lawanis assertion, Tahav Argezua, Special Adviser to the governor on Media and ICT, wondered why Lawani, who once passed a vote of confidence on Ortom was now faulting the governors performance.





Argezua advised Lawani to rather tell the people of Benue South what he had done to deserve their vote rather than resorting to cheap blackmail.





He said, The former Deputy Governor of Benue State, Chief Steven Lawani, veered off course in an interview he granted to Sunday Vanguard of August 12, 2018.





Instead of concentrating on telling his constituents in the Benue South Senatorial district his qualifications for the seat and the agenda he would pursue if elected, he digressed by saying that the All Progressives Congress, APC, forced Governor Ortom out on account of poor performance.





Of course, by bashing Governor Ortom, Chief Lawani hopes to impress the owner of the party in the state in the hope that he would be given the platform to run on a platter of gold.





Otherwise, what the former Deputy Governor ought to do at the moment is to seek to impress his constituents about how he discharged the eight-year mandate the people of the state gave him to their benefit.





He should also be listing his legislative agenda rather than casting aspersions on the Governor.





The statement he made about why Governor Ortom defected to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has rather exposed him to ridicule as someone bending backwards to curry favour.





We recall how Chief Lawani showered praises on Governor Ortom at different times regarding his performance in office. The former Deputy Governor was specific in his speech in Otukpo during the campaign for the 2016 Benue South re-run senatorial election that he and others had decided to join the APC because of the laudable performance of the Governor.





We hope that Chief Lawani still remembers that the APC had passed numerous votes of confidence on Governor Ortom and that it adopted him as its sole governorship candidate for 2019 at its last state Congress.





He might still remember that he, as a major stakeholder in the party, was not allowed to make any input in the list of ward, local government, and state executive committees of the party in the state.





It was this kind of impunity and hijacking of the party structure in the state by one individual that forced Governor Ortom and several others including State and National Assembly members as well as local government chairmen and councilors to defect to the PDP.





On the Benue killings, it is true that they started before the Buhari administration but Nigerians recall his role as patron of Miyetti Allah, particularly his visit to Oyo State and what he said there, before he became President. This indicated that he has been party to the herdsmens activities for a long time.





Benue people know that the failure of security agencies under President Muhammadu Buhari to arrest and prosecute the leadership of Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore and other Fulani groups who threatened to invade Benue State and were duly reported and thereafter, carried out the threats cannot exonerate him from personal and official blame.





Moreso, the utterances of the Presidents Ministers of Internal Affairs and Defence, the Inspector General of Police, the Chief of Army Staff, as well as Presidential Spokesman on the invasion and killings are strong enough proof of complicity on the part of the Federal Government.





Chief Lawani has the choice to align with anyone, even if such persons have shown clearly that they do not have the interest of the Benue people at heart.




The Department of State Services has denied the rumours making the round that a huge sum of money and weapons were found in the house of its sacked Director General, Mr. Lawal Daura.The service said that the rumours emanated from some fake videos which it said were circulated as being the outcome of a search allegedly carried out in the home of Daura.A statement issued by the Spokesperson for the agency, Mr. Tony Opuiyo in Abuja on Monday, said there was no iota of truth in the allegation that N21bn and unspecified number of Permanent Voters Card were found in Dauras houses.The videos, which Opuiyo had described as fake, gave an impression that the search was conducted at the residence of the former DG in both Abuja and Daura, Katsina State.The spokesman for the agency said that there was no search carried out in the home of Daura by any security agency.Opuiyo said, The attention of the Department of State Services has been drawn to the circulation of fake information and videos in which several items were said to have been recovered from the Katsina and Abuja homes of its immediate past Director General, Lawal Daura.These non-existent items include:N21bn cash, 400 assorted and sophisticated small arms and light weapons/rifles, andthousands of Permanent Voters Card belonging to Niger Republic immigrants.In another video also in circulation, some persons believed to be personnel of a security outfit were seen forcing open safes stocked with money.The security operatives were described as executing a recovery operation at the Katsina home of the former DGSS.Consequently, the Service wishes to inform the public that these videos are false and should be disregarded. So far, no such recovery operations have been undertaken by the EFCC or any other security agency at DSS office or residences of the former DG.There is no doubt that different interests have continued to give varied accounts of the incident of last week at the National Assembly.It may, however, be recalled that the Presidency had pledged to carry out a detailed investigation regarding the alleged National Assembly siege.Opuiyo asked members of the public to exercise restraint in their narration of events and as such, desist from spreading fake news or engaging in activities that he said might mislead or further cause a breach of the peace as well as preempt the outcome of investigations.Earlier, the Peoples Democratic Party had accused the Independent National Electoral Commission of keeping silent over the alleged discovery of the PVCs in Dauras house.A statement issued by the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan had charged the National Assembly to immediately commence investigation into the veracity of the allegation. ENDS.
Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has slammed President Muhammadu Buhari for telling Nigerians to pray over the incessant killings in...

Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has slammed President Muhammadu Buhari for telling Nigerians to pray over the incessant killings in the country.





Atiku expressed sadness that after innocent people were murdered in places across the nation, Buhari was in the habit of asking Nigerians to pray.





According to him, the president should have been a cleric, noting that insecurity cannot be tackled only by prayers.





He told Thisday, The other day, there were killings in Plateau State and the President said the situation had got so bad there was nothing more he could do than pray.





Even that statement itself is a cry for restructuring. The man is admitting that there is nothing he can do, within the current structure, other than to pray. That means the current structure, by his admission, is not working.





How can I be president and criminals will attack my people and I will tell them that the only thing I can do is pray? Then, in that case, I should be a clergyman, not a president!









How can a leader open his mouth and tell his citizens that it is better to give land than to die? That is as good as telling the people that they have been conquered.




The Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, has reacted to the Acting President Yemi Osinbajos attack on Pastors for not preaching against...

The Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, has reacted to the Acting President Yemi Osinbajos attack on Pastors for not preaching against corruption.





Osinbajo berated Pastors for failing to lend support to the Federal Governments anti-corruption war.





He stated this at the 30th National Biennial Conference of the Students Christian Movement of Nigeria holding in Enugu, adding that preachers were preoccupied with preaching prosperity rather than righteousness.





However, CAN President, Rev. Samuel Ayokunle said although Osinbajo might have exclusive information for him to make the claim, the church had been speaking against the manifestation of corruption for a while, to no avail.





In a statement by his Special Assistant on Media and Communications, Pastor Adebayo Oladeji, Ayokunle said, Being a pastor, the acting president may know what we dont know and he has a right to correct those whose teaching or preaching contradicts the scripture.





What we know is that the church must speak against evil in the land, corruption inclusive. The church has been speaking against the perceived genocide in the country, insecurity of life and property, hypocrisy, nepotism, greediness, tribalism, favourism, treasury lootings, lopsided appointments, etc.





These are all manifestation of corruption. Corruption goes beyond greed and diversion of public money into personal hands. Whether our leaders, politicians and civil servants are listening is another thing entirely.




Unfazed by the lethal and fiendish pose of gun-totting operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS), she braced herself for a show...

Unfazed by the lethal and fiendish pose of gun-totting operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS), she braced herself for a showdown at the National Assembly Complex on Tuesday. It was the height of daredevilry and bravado for Boma Goodhead, lawmaker representing Asalga/Akulga federal constituency of Rivers state. She dared the masked men to shoot her after they invaded the parliament and prevented lawmakers from gaining access.

Pointing menacingly at one of the operatives, Goodhead roared, Shoot this gun, how many people can you shoot down here? Let those bullets start coming out. We are not going anywhere.

Use these bullets and Nigerians shall face you. I dare you to shoot these bullets. Go back to your station, go back to your station. You come here with masked face, bullets in your guns, to intimidate. Enough is enough in Nigeria.

At the world press conference he addressed following the invasion, Senate President Bukola Saraki heaped praises on Goodhead for her gallant display against the hooded operatives.

He said, Among the many that come up for special mention, I believe that Boma Goodhead, a member of the house of representatives, stands out. She looked at a masked security operative in the eye and dared him to shoot. She let it be known that Nigerians would not stand for the barricade at the national assembly, that we would not be cowed. It was another pointer to what is possible in this country when women take their place in leadership.

For the feeble ones, the display at the national assembly was an act of grabbing the devil by the testicles. But little do they know that the 47-year-old lawmaker has an enviable resume of gallantry and resilience  the type that some associate with her Niger Delta kinsmen.





And one more thing, shes Mujahid Asari-Dokubos sister. Asari-Dokubo, ex-militant and leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), was formerly Melford Dokubo Goodhead Jr. The siblings were born to Melford Dokubo, a former high court judge.





Her brother was actively involved in the rerun election that brought her into the 8th assembly. When she was declared winner of the keenly contested exercise, Asari-Dokubo and his supporters trooped to the streets.

Goodhead surrounded by security operatives in 2005.





STRUGGLE FOR HER BROTHER





She is not new to protests or brawls with security operatives. In 2005 when the government of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo allegedly harassed her brother, Goodhead staged a protest to demand fair treatment for him. Back then, she displayed her courageous act just as she did last week. Goodhead confronted the policemen.





She is a former aide of James Ibori, ex-governor of Delta state, having served as a junior assistant.





COMBATIVE LAWMAKER

During a committee meeting in the chamber last year, she had allegedly threatened to break the head of her colleague, Abdulrazak Atunwa who had written a letter to former President Goodluck Jonathan, asking him to appear before an ad hoc panel probing the Malabu bribery scandal.





last month when 37 APC lawmakers joined PDP, she had a shouting match with Munir Agundi, her colleague from Kano state. Agundi had attempted to convince his colleagues not to leave the ruling party and this drew the ire of Goodhead who engaged him in an argument.





MET WITH ESE ORURU





With the parents of Ese Oruru

Goodheads life is not all about activism. She also identifies with the downtrodden. After Ese Oruru, the 13-year-old reportedly girl abducted and taken to Kano from Bayelsa state, where she was allegedly forcibly converted to Islam and married off without her parents consent, Goodhead visited her and her parents and promised to sponsor the girls education to tertiary institution.





Its not clear if that promise was fulfilled.





Goodhead being led away by mobile policemen she challenged

The graduate of the University of Port Harcourt had vied to represent her constituency in the state house of assembly on three occasions but lost until 2015 when she won the house of reps seat. The election was annulled but

she also won the rerun.





ASKED WOMEN TO FIGHT FOR THEIR RIGHTS





In an interview with PUNCH, the legislator advised women to fight for their rights.




The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has uncovered about N1.4billion allegedly belonging to the Akwa Ibom State Government....

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has uncovered about N1.4billion allegedly belonging to the Akwa Ibom State Government.





The cash was remitted in two tranches of N1.1billion and N300million, in 11 accounts belonging to eight top lawyers in the country.





One of the suspected lawyers has made a statement to the EFCC on how he came about the huge transfers.





The suspect told detectives that the deposits were legal fees for 16 cases but could not produce documentary evidence of any agreement between his team and the state government.





Meanwhile, the anti-graft agency has invited four officials of the state government for questioning on the issue.





They are: Commissioner for Finance, Nsikan Linus, the Permanent Secretary and Director of Finance and Accounts in the Ministry of Justice , and an Assistant Chief Accountant in the Accountant-General Office in the state, Mfon Jacobson Udomah.





The fact-sheet of the case showed that N1.4billion was remitted into the various accounts as follows: N135m; N120m; N100m; N60m; N60m; N65m; N570m; N75m; N75m; N75m; N30m; and N45m.





One of the investigators told Nation: There was no document tied to specific payment. The deposit also did not specify what the cash was meant for.





There was no evidence of any agreement between the state government and the beneficiaries of the N1.4billion.





The lead coordinator of the lawyers who benefitted from the cash could not say how much was charged and how much was agreed upon.





The lead lawyer only said the cash was for 16 cases in various courts across the country but only a case was reflected as having gone from the lower court to the Supreme Court.





The lead lawyer has made statement without any shred of evidence or document to justify the legal contract.





Letters of invitation were written to the Permanent Secretary and Director of Finance and Accounts of the Ministry of Justice of Akwa Ibom State on June 8, 2018 and the Commissioner for Finance and an Assistant Chief Accountant in the Accountant-General Office in the state on July 13, 2018.





They were to be questioned in Abuja. They all failed to report despite sending reminders to them on July 3 and July 13. We later sent a team to interact with them at the EFCCs Uyo Zonal office but they refused to meet with our operatives.





The EFCCs team from Abuja travelled to Uyo on July 19 and on July 20, our operatives requested to invite the affected state officials. None of them came around.





The Secretary to the State Government and the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice wrote an undertaking in Uyo Zonal Office and Abuja respectively assuring the EFCC that the invited persons would report as requested but they failed to turn up.




Gov. Abubakar Bello of Niger has warned government organisations against outright rejection of corps members posted to them in the state.He gave the warning during the closing ceremony of the 2018 Batch B orientation course of corps members in Paiko Local Government Area of the state.Alhaji Mamman Musa, the state Commissioner for Water Resources represented the governor at the occasion.Bello enjoined employers of corps members to accept them in their organisations and provide them with decent accommodation for their one year national service.We will not accept outright rejection of corps members by employers or organisations, you should ensure you accommodate all corps members posted to you and provide them with conducive environment, he said.The governor urged the corps members to strive to make positive contributions in their host communities.He also called on them to accept their postings, make positive impact in their place of primary assignment and leave behind projects that would add value to the people of the state.Earlier, Mrs Theresa Arokoyo, NYSC Coordinator in Niger, said that the skill acquisition and leadership training corps members were exposed to during their orientation course would make them be self-reliant after their service.She advised corps members to see their service year as a period of sacrifice and adhere to the advice given to them by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in their participation of the forth coming general elections.I urge you to be of the highest degree of diligence, discipline and avoid any situation that might compromise your integrity.You must remain politically unbiased electoral officers throughout the electoral process.The nation believes in the ability of the scheme to ensure a credible election like your predecessors did, please do not betray the confidence reposed on the scheme, she said.
The leadership of the national assembly never agreed to reconvene on Tuesday.

The leadership of the national assembly never agreed to reconvene on Tuesday.





Last week, Yusuf Lasun, deputy speaker of the house of representatives, announced the lawmakers will be cutting short their recess to reconvene this week.





He had said the agenda will primarily be the presidential request for virement of funds for the operations of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the 2019 elections.





However, unlike the customary practice, less than 24 hours to the planned date (Tuesday), the lawmakers are yet to be informed of the decision to cut short the recess.





TheCable reports that various lawmakers who spoke to them revealed that they have not received any of such letter from Mohammed Sani-Omolori, clerk of the national assembly.





A national assembly official said contrary to Lasuns claim, the leadership was yet to decide on a date to reconvene.





One of the sources said what was agreed at the meeting with Mahmood Yakubu, INEC chairman, was that the relevant committees should work with INEC on sorting the commissions budget.





There is nothing like that (reconvening), the source said, adding: I wonder who told the deputy speaker the national assembly will reconvene, it is not true. They wont reconvene tomorrow.





If the lawmakers are reconvening, you would have seen the announcement in the media. To the best of my knowledge, no plan to reconvene.





What they did that day was that they told the committees to start working with the INEC leadership; you know the budget brought was too much. So they asked them to work with INEC on it so that whenever they are reconvening, it will be to follow the other due process and work on what the committee has.





It is possible (to reconvene); you cant rule it out. But currently, nothing like that, he said.





Abdulrazak Namdas, spokesman of the house of representatives, also confirmed to TheCable that the lawmakers were yet to be informed about any plan to cut short the recess.




Garba Shehu, senior special to the president on media and publicity, says Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo will run on the same ticket with Pres...

Garba Shehu, senior special to the president on media and publicity, says Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo will run on the same ticket with President Muhammadu Buhari.

He was reacting to the string of victories recorded by the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) during the weekends bye elections in the country.

Decisive victories in senatorial and state assembly elections in Katsina, Bauchi, Kogi and states were an indication that the Buhari/Osinbajo presidential ticket that won the 2015 election will ensure an encore in 2019, he said.

The presidential media said the victory in those states shows that the ruling party is still popular and that Nigerians have just endorsed Buhari/Osinbajo joint ticket.





I like to speak to you about the fabulous shows of the APC in Katsina, Bauchi and Kogi, and even to some extent in Cross River States. All of these coming against the background of Ekiti state, he said.





It is clear that from election after election, Nigerians are reposing confidence in the Buhari/Osinbajo presidency. Each of these election victories is considered to be epic in nature because none of these elections was an ordinary election. We are happy that we have won and on behalf of the president and the acting president, we like to say thank you to Nigerians who continue to repose their confidence in the leadership of the APC administration.





We also want to thank the leadership of the party at the national level, but equally important, to thank all the partys apparatchiks deployed to all the campaigns and ensured that all the elections were won handsomely by APC.





So, we are expressing our gratitude to everyone for these that had happened and to say that with this increasing confidence reposed in the president and the acting president, who are determined more than ever before to leave no stone unturned in order to bring the promised change to Nigerians.





For a quick review, maybe one, two, three or four lessons can be taken from the victories that the party has been recording.





First of all is to say that these decisive victories are indications that clearly, Nigerians have spoken that President Buhari maintains his momentum. That these victories place Buhari/Osinbajo presidency in very good stead for next years election.




The Special Adviser on Political Matters to the Presidency, Babafemi Ojudu has debunked speculations claiming that the sacked Director-Gener...

The Special Adviser on Political Matters to the Presidency, Babafemi Ojudu has debunked speculations claiming that the sacked Director-General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Lawal Daura, insulted the Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo.





Osinbajo fired Daura last week, over the invasion of the National Assembly by masked operatives of the DSS.





Daura is believed to be under house arrest and there have been rumours of what transpired during Osinbajos meeting with security chiefs, in which the Acting President took the decision.





Ojudu, speaking with Vanguard, sought to clear the air on the matter.





Quite often when I read something in the papers or listen to some views on television, they are devoid of the facts. It is not what you read on social media that often happens.





I read quite a lot of what was said to have happened at the meeting the Acting President had with the security chiefs in the aftermath of the invasion of the National Assembly: How Daura was rude to the Acting President; he (Daura) was insulting him (Osinbajo). All those ones are fake news.









You dont base your judgement on hearsay. Those of us who are in there and those who are knowledgeable enough and search for the real facts will then be able to assess the situation and give the correct opinion.




Primate Elijah Ayodele of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church, Lagos, has revealed how the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, can win the 2019 P...

Primate Elijah Ayodele of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church, Lagos, has revealed how the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, can win the 2019 Presidential election.

Ayodele said PDP will win the 2019 Presidential election if it fields the Senate President, Bukola Saraki as its flag bearer.





The cleric said this during the launch of his book, titled Warning To The Nations, which is a compilation of his prophecies covering the 2018/2019 period in Lagos.





According to Ayodele, I do not know Saraki neither do we have any link, politically or otherwise. But he is the only man who can win anything for PDP. Bukola Saraki being president will change many things for good in Nigeria and there will be peace in Nigeria.





 God needs Saraki to rule for another four years. 





The clergyman also noted that tough times await Nigeria and the ruling All Progressives Congress,APC, in the coming year.





Speaking on the upcoming Osun governorship election, Ayodele said, If Osun APC didnt put their house in order, they will find it difficult to retain Osun state.




Senators from the All Progressives Congress, APC, are currently meeting at the Abuja residence of the National Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole.Reasons for the meeting yet unknown.Recall that the the Reformed-All Progressives Congress, R-APC, on Sunday had alleged that Oshiomhole had mobilized and ordered all APC Senators to ensure that they participate in the plenary to remove Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki by interpreting the 1999 Constitution.More details soon...
. -        -,     .            ,     ,       .       ,          2017 .         , ...
Danny Gonzalez, a 27-year-old Honduran man working in the United States, recently tried to fake his own death in an effort to stop his wife constantly asking him for more money.

Gonzales told reporters that ever since they married, two years ago, his Honduran wife would call him every week to complain that he had only sent her so much money, and that he needs to send her this much more. At one point, it got too much to bear, so he came up with a desperate plan to make her stop. The man decided to trick his wife into thinking that he had died, and to that end, sent her some photos of himself lying on a bed with cotton balls in his nostrils and mouth and covered with a white sheet. A message accompanying the photos let the wife know that he had died of a combination of cancer and asthma

Photo: Facebook

What the Honduran man working in the US didnt count on was his wife taking the photos to a local television station in Honduras, which actually showed them on television. All his relatives soon heard about his death, but while some, including his mother were devastated, others took a closer look at the photos and realized that he seemed to be grinning in some of them, and that the white sheet covering his body was actually a pillow cover.

As the photos went viral on social media and more people voiced their suspicion that Gonzales had faked his death, local media decided to investigate and it didnt take long for them to find out that the 27-year-old was actually alive and well. To his credit, he immediately admitted to staging his own death, but used his wife constant nagging as an excuse for it.

Photo: Facebook

My wife would call me every week just to ask to send more money. Every Saturday she would call me telling me I had sent her so much, and I needed to send her this much more, he told HCH. The rest of the week, not even a message. She would never send photos or ask me anything else. She kept asking me to send her mobile phones, but Id already sent six and she always rang me to tell me it had been stolen.

Some social media users in Honduras found Danny Gonzalez excuse hilarious, and a few even appeared to understand his reasons, but for the most part, the reaction to his message was negative. Some of his own family members accused him of being an ungrateful son for putting his own parents through the pain of thinking he was dead, and other people said that he could have come up with a less traumatizing way to put a stop to his wifes financial demands.

Photo: Facebook

Interestingly, Gonzales used the same tactic as this Thai conman we reported about last month. Not only did he use the same type of photos, but he even used the same deadly combo  asthma and cancer  as the cause of his death. I cant help but think that Gonzales was inspired by that story.
11 years ago, UK resident Amethyst Realm gave up on relationships with men in order to have sex with ghosts. Now she claims to have started a pretty serious relationship with an incorporeal being; she even hopes that there is a way for the pair to start a family together.

Amethyst is a 30-year-old spiritual guidance counselor who claims that over the last decade, she has had 20 different sexual encounters with ghostly apparitions. During a recent trip to Australia, she claims to have met her new long-term lover. Amethyst claims that the spirit returned with her to the UK. 6 months after their first meeting, the relationship is still going strong. While she is not able to see her ghostly lover, she says she is able to communicate with it and also engage in intercourse. While she is not able to say for certain if the ghost is male or female, she believes that the connection between the two is genuine.

Photo: StockSnap/Pixabay

One day, I was walking through the bush, enjoying nature, I suddenly felt this incredible energy. I knew a new lover had arrived, the young woman said. Its pretty serious, in fact we have been thinking about having a ghost baby. I know that sounds crazy but Ive been looking into it and I dont think its totally out of the question.

Amethyst believes that it is possible for some women to be impregnated by ghosts, but because the human body and mind are not able to properly process the experience, the pregnancy will not go to term. In fact, she believes that phantom pregnancies can be explained as ghost babies that are trapped in human bodies. Still, she remains optimistic that she can find some way around these limitations: I just havent worked it out yet.

The spiritual guidance counselor claims she has always been able to communicate with ghosts; however, her first experience with paranormal sex was unexpected. She describes how she felt a presence in a home she moved into with her fiance 10 years ago. When her fiance went away on a trip, she decided to try and take things further.

It was kind of like a weight, I felt a pressure on my thighs. At the same time physical breath, and stroking, she described the experience.

After this occurrence, Amethyst believes that the ghost revealed itself to her fiance.



I think it was in love with me too and it wanted me to end the relationship, she recalls.

For Amethyst, her encounters with various spirits are always unique: You can always feel the difference, its the same with different humans, they have different energies.

Christopher French, a professor of psychology, believes he can provide a rational explanation for the experiences Amethyst has had: Sleep paralysis is common  20 to 40 per cent of people say theyve experienced it  and is the state between sleep and wakefulness when you realise you cant move. In a smaller percentage of the population, you get associated symptoms that can be very scary. One thats commonly reported is a sense of a presence  something or someone in the room with you.

You can also get hallucinations where you see dark shadows or monstrous figures, you can get auditory hallucinations  you hear voices, footsteps  and also tactile hallucinations. You can feel as if youre being held, you might feel as if someone is breathing on the back of your neck, you can feel as if youre being dragged out of the bed, French added.

So are Amethysts experiences simply sleep paralysis? She certainly doesnt think so, and will continue to explore the possibility of having a child with her ghostly lover.
Voters encouraged to vote early for flood bond

The 2018 Harris County Flood Control Bond election will be Aug. 25. Harris County has identified more than 150 potential projects as candidates for bond funding, organized by watershed.

According to the Harris County Flood Control, hcfcd.org/bond-program, If voters approve the bonds, the bonds would be sold in increments over at least 10-15 years, as needed for the multiple phases of each project. The actual timing of individual projects will depend on a variety of factors, including environmental permitting and right-of-way acquisition. Projects will be authorized individually for funding by commissioners court, based on recommendations by the flood control district.

Early voting locations for the Aug. 25 election and Election Day polling locations are listed at harrisvotes.com.

Early voting started last week and will be held Aug. 15-21 from 7 a.m.-7 p.m., except for Sunday, Aug. 19, from 1-6 p.m. Locally, the early voting locations are the Kingwood Community Center, 4102 Rustic Woods, Kingwood; Octavia Fields Branch Library, 1503 S. Houston Ave., Humble; and Lone Star College-Atascocita, 15903 W. Lake Houston Pkwy., Atascocita.

To review the list of potential projects, visit hcfcd.org/bond-program. All watersheds work together and improve the overall flood control for the City of Houston. For questions regarding the upcoming Harris County Flood Control Bond Program, call the Harris Count Flood Control District Bond Program Hotline at 713-684-4107.
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How Pakistan`s Economy can Improve in Upcoming Years? 13 August, 2018



The General Elections are over, and we are waiting for the next government to take charge.

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AEO Partners `Play Fair` to Kick start Migration Services For some reason, our national treasure is always empty during this transfer of power. The winning party, Pakistan Tehreek-e- Insaaf was very vocal about how it will boost the economy if given a chance. Well, the public made its decision and gave PTI the mandate. Now, its time to deliver. PTIs Assad Umer was very vocal about these changes. We decided to do our evaluation, and therefore we come up with the following crucial points that do help save or improve a failing economy Tax Rebate and Cut It gives back the consumer their money. The consumer is allowed to spend a portion of this money doing business. Tax Rebates or cuts in return increases business revenue, cash flow, and even profits. More cash flow gives the company better resources to procure capital, improve their tax, growth, and expansion. These actions improve their productivity which in return strengthens the economy. Cutting taxes affects the government revenues. These decisions create a budget deficit or increase the sovereign debt of a country. The best countermeasure is cutting off expenditures. But the critics of tax cut argue these cuts help the rich rather than the poor. Services can get cut and put the money back in consumer pockets will increase spending, boosting the economy and raise wages. So, in the end, it depends on where you make important cuts. Boost Export PTI won the elections and its time they deliver. Assad Omar always said he would improve the economy by boosting our countrys exports and creating more jobs. While we will debate whether he was speaking the truth or just making his speech more powerful, he made valid points because there is a lot we can do to improve our exports. Pakistan is an agricultural nation, and our main exports are raw materials. Most farmers fail to understand the legal process. Therefore they hire help. But the government and authorities should help these people and improve their work relationships. Speaking of which, following we are mentioning a few practices that may help boost the exports: Combine Short-Term and Long-Term Policies You need to combine both short and long-term export growth policies to stimulate any results. In such context, you need to exploit the complementarity among EPPS and domestic policies geared towards productivity and technological content of domestic produce. Encourage Cooperation Among Business Apart from policy instruments, export growth is improved by facilitating the cooperation between exporters, government body, and businesses. The government needs to partner with Small or Micro Entreprises and boost the economy. They need to help the business access the international market and provide financial assistant to create jobs and boost exports. Doing so will help improve local exports. Make Things Simple The Government needs to ease up on export because bureaucracy process can have adverse effects on developing businesses. The government should make relevant information accessible. This information consists of foreign market climate and requirement for export. The acting body also needs to take various steps to set product standards and such technical requirements when exporting to developed countries. Increase Available Credit Short and long-term credit is important for exporters. The government should be responsible for making this credit available as it is a decision for SMEs. The constraints should be more severe for large firms. Small and medium business enterprises form a big chunk of businesses in developing countries, and the country should take the necessary steps to favor their growth. Form Duty Drawback Regulations Start with surveying the opinions of entrepreneurs to find how you can promote business growth and improve your Standard Duty Drawback Schemes. Moreover, you need to make them easily accessible to both, indirect export and extend them even to important inputs used in producing the final product. You need to get rid of pre-payment and limit credit requirement to encourage more import. Introduce Bankruptcy Laws Its funny, but the need for bankruptcy is a consequence of an interest-based loan system. Pakistani laws have identified the issue and provided a solution. But then again, the laws are not implemented as they should be. In general, the law lets the troubled company file for bankruptcy. The company filing for bankruptcy gets a specified time to recovery. If the company fails to revive itself, the creditor will take over the company and liquidate it to recover the loan. Situation in Pakistan Interestingly, the situation is very different in Pakistan as if a business starts to fail, the owners are treated as criminals, and they have to fight a long battle against the creditor. This battle benefits no one. Therefore, businesses in Pakistan dont file for bankruptcy out of their fear of criminal charges. Bankruptcy Attorney But most people dont start their business every for fear of failing and such laws for bankruptcy hardly inspire any confidence. Pakistan needs strong reform laws withhelping new startups and help them understand their options if everything goes south. Infrastructure Boosting economy through infrastructure means erecting physical structure or facilities that serve comer and social causes. Roads, bridges, ports and sewer systems make an important part of the infrastructure. A top-notch infrastructure improves productivity as improves the efficiency of businesses. With the smooth infrastructure of road and bridges, trucks waste less time sitting in traffic. They dont take long routes to traverse. Infrastructure also creates jobs and thus, give an excellent boost to the economy. Deregulation Deregulation means lifting strict rules and regulations from industries and business. It gives them relief and helps them increase their productivity to boom the economy. A great example is the Reagan Administration in the 1980s. The US Federal Government deregulated many industries, especially the financial institutes. Deregulation fights strict regulations that keep business from growing and operating to its optimum capacity. These regulations usually slow down production and hiring process which has adverse effects on GDP Growth. Remove Unclear and Unnecessary Laws Industries set international standards for testing and evaluation, but federal departments (who doesnt worry about money) hire consultants to create new and redundant test procedures. They usually end up wasting taxpayer money on reinventing the wheel. These changes make it hard for business to operate as they dont know if they violate any laws or not. Most Government Prosecutors make a living threatening legal action against big companies. These laws waste valuable resources and time while hurting the productivity of companies. If these companies cant work at their optimum capacity, they wont help the economy grow. Mistakes to Avoid Dont Compare Apple to Oranges You cant compare your economy with someone elses and figure out whats wrong with you. Every country has its unique laws and trends that dictate the economys growth or fall. Instead, you should look for employment trends. Keeping tabs on how a country is booming its economy (only one actor, not others) is counterproductive. Instead, you should focus on the sophisticated things like trends in metropolitan cities (cities that share the same characteristics) including employment, and business growth. You need to be realistic about your local strength and where the growth will come. You can make miracles with high-tech growth and produce economic opportunities for struggling business. If you want it to be inclusive, you need policies which target the people in dire need of your help. Dont Ask Big Companies for Direction Multi-nationals do help your economy. But you cant just ask them for help. They will only tell you what works for them without caring about how it will affect the economy. For example, a pharmacy company can advise you establish new transport links, but it will be a lot better if you invest in the basic skills of the employers and residents. Stop Wasting Money on Complex Economy Models Many countries pool their resources to develop economic models that may predict the future impact of several policies. The accuracy of such models is always questionable because whatever insight they offer doesnt affect many systems. Planning for a few possible outcomes may give you better potential for change in the economy at a much lower price. Therefore, its time you stop paying the top buck to commission consultants for these models. Dont rush when it comes to your economy. Go back to the basics and make your case for intervention. There will always be some issues that your policies won't address. Some policies dont work, and any intervention can bring some unintended consequences. You need to ask around to get a better idea.
In a video interview, five-time Grammy winner Lionel Richie talks to USA TODAYs Jefferson Graham on the effects of on-line streaming services on the music business.



Of course this isn't a new subject and many artists are still refusing to work with streaming services like Garth Brooks, Bob Seger, Pete Townshed, Neil Young, Def Leppard, Aaliyah, and others. A 2015 report by Ranker listed information about musicians against Spotify, loosely ranked by fame and popularity. Spotify's low-paying compensation practices and perceived discouragement of creativity have been called into question by some of the most popular musicians of all time.

A new wave of streaming music services are in the works that support and compensate musicians and writers better and you could learn about them here.

In 2015 Patently Apple posted a report titled "Apple's Jimmy Iovine Pounds the Table to Kill off the Freemium Music Business Model at Vanity Fair Event." Apple's Jimmy Iovine pounded the drum to kill off the damaging Freemium business model back in 2015 at a Vanity Fair event.

Until giant music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music take a stand and create a fairer way to compensate artists, major artists like Lionel Richie have to keep bringing the issue to the fore and push for change that will allow writers to make a living beyond hobby status.

About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or negative behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus.
Although Samsung tried to put on positive face for their fans in the U.S. last week when launching their Note9 in New York, the fact remains that Samsung Electronics is one of the world's worst-performing technology stocks this year with billions wiped of its value as factors from increased smartphone competition to worries about the health of the semiconductor market have weighed on the company's performance.

CNBC reports today that "Shares of the South Korean giant are down over 11 percent this year, more than major U.S. and other Asian technology stocks. Over $39.4 billion has been erased from Samsung's market capitalization year-to-date. It's a far cry from the 41 percent rally Samsung shares saw in 2017.

If it wasn't for their success in semiconductors, the company could have collapsed. The semiconductor division has been Samsung's biggest business, accounting for 37 percent of sales but 78 percent of profits in the second quarter of this year. Samsung's success in semiconductors has helped it offset a slower smartphone market, but some analysts fear that the market dynamics that helped it charge high prices could become undone this year. In a recent note, Morgan Stanley warned of rising inventory in the semiconductor industry, which could make it harder to charge higher prices.

Samsung's second quarter earnings showed the slowest quarterly profit growth in more than a year, partly because of sluggish smartphone sales. Revenue from the mobile division was down 22 percent year-on-year in the three months to June, which Samsung attributed to "lower-than-expected sales of the Galaxy S9," the company's flagship smartphone.

Samsung is hoping the recently-released $1,000 Note 9 smartphone could help revive sales." Read the full CNBC report here.

While Samsung is hoping the Note9 will turn the tide for their smartphone sales, the fact is that the new Note9 couldn't even beat the iPhone X in a recent Geekbench 4 test on performance. Apple's iPhone X was the clear winner in that category with Samsung's Note9 coming in third. With Apple preparing to launch a new line-up of iPhones next month, Apple's new premium iPhone running on a 7nm processor is likely to blow away the Note9 even further.

Samsung's mobile President of their Mobile Communications Division Koh Dong-Jin (better known as DJ Koh overseas) tried to pump up the U.S. media after the Note9 launch.

Koh stated that "Samsung will solidify its leadership in the global smartphone market as we have competitiveness in terms of responding quickly to market changes. With more competitive budget smartphones in the lineup, Samsung will expand our business in emerging markets, and we will also do everything possible to ensure future growth by investing more in future technologies such as Bixby, SmartThings and the 5G network."

Koh added that "I have said we are struggling in China. That's true, and it takes time to recover. The only thing I can guarantee is we have done everything we can do (to revive the smartphone business in China) over the past year, ranging from restructuring our organization and preparing for the opening of a new store there. I think we can recover our market share next year."

Koh further noted that "For the past six to seven years, I have used 70 percent of my energy on premium smartphones, but the high-end phones have less importance in emerging markets such as India, South America and Southeast Asia. Samsung's upcoming mid-range smartphones will solidify our lead in emerging markets, featuring more innovative technologies."

On July 31st Patently Apple posted a report about Samsung crashing profits and how the company began officially play up their future Folding Smartphone. Koh made note of their folding phone in New York as well. Yet while in New York, Koh went much further in describing their future folding smartphone.

A Korean report posted today claims that "Koh was not shy about his desire to make Samsung the world's first company to release a foldable smartphone.

"I don't want to hand over the world's first title," Koh said when asked when Samsung will launch the foldable smartphone. Koh went on to say that he will make an official announcement of the foldable phone because he wants it to do "well."

"Once we launch the foldable phone, I would like to have a great response (from the industry and consumers)," Koh said. "It is not far away. We will have an event solely for the foldable phone."

Koh didn't confirm the price range and the number of shipments of the foldable phone, but did say that it won't be cheap as the phone will have two independent screens.

The rumors have been swirling around a "foldable phone" in terms of one display being folded over. Samsung's top officer for mobility is contradicting that rumor trend by specifically stating it will have two independent displays. No wonder Samsung is saying that it won't be cheap. Hopefully it will deliver something refreshingly different, like their patent pending 2 display foldable smartphone that was revealed in a Patently Mobile (then Patent Bolt) report posted back in 2013.





Earlier this month Samsung was granted a patent for a new hinge concept supporting a dual display smartphone as noted in the Samsung patent figure below.





Without a doubt Samsung needs to hit a grand slam home run with an all-new revolutionary type of smartphone category in order to help turn their smartphone division around as the likes of Xiaomi and Huawei are continuing to take market share away from them in huge mass markets like China and India. With Samsung now focusing on delivering a new mid-range set of smartphones and a possible new high-end model, the company is hoping that they could return to their old glory days. It's a long shot to be sure.



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Iran Arrests 67 People In Drive Against Financial Crime

08/13/18

Source: RFE/RL

Iran's judiciary says the authorities have arrested 67 people in a drive against financial crime as the country faces renewed U.S. sanctions and public outcry against widespread corruption.

"Sixty seven suspects have been arrested, some of whom were released on bail, and more than 100 people including government employees and officials, as well as private employees and others have been given travel bans," judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said in remarks carried by state television on August 12.



The remarks come as a day after the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, approved a request by the judiciary to set up special courts to deal with financial crimes.



Iranian media quoted Khamenei as saying in a brief statement issued on August 11 that punishments for those accused of economic corruption should be "carried out swiftly and justly."

New Islamic revolutionary courts will be directed to impose maximum sentences on those "disrupting and corrupting the economy," judiciary head Sadeq Amoli Larijani had proposed in a letter to Khamenei.



The request by the judiciary said the courts should be eligible to try all suspects, including "official and military" people. The sentences can include the death penalty.



The decision comes amid a plunging national currency that has lost about half of its value in past weeks following a decision in May by U.S. President Donald Trump to leave the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose tough sanctions.



The Central Bank of Iran and the judiciary have blamed "enemies" for the fall of the currency.



The judiciary said last month that 29 people have been detained for "disturbing" the nation's economy and its "money and currency systems."



Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and IRNA
The Odorkor District Police have apprehended one out of three suspected armed robbers, who allegedly attacked a house at Gbawe Gonse and stabbed the occupants in their attempt to rob them of their money and belongings.



Issah Iddrisu, 26, was arrested with a knife, gun and 20 rounds of ammunition.



He is currently in the custody of the Odorkor District Police Command assisting in investigations.



His two accomplices have been declared wanted by the police.



An eyewitness told the paper that the incident occurred on August 2, 2018 around 8:30pm.



She said the armed robbers first attacked the complainants wife who had arrived home from work in an unregistered vehicle around 8:30pm.



Iddrisu, who was the first to scale the wall, immediately attacked the complainants wife who had alighted from her car.



The suspect pointed a gun at the victim and asked her to surrender all her money and mobile phones.



The complainant, who was then in the bathroom, heard the unusual noise and immediately moved outside to rescue his wife.



The complainant attacked the suspect from behind, overpowered him and kicked the gun from his hand.



The suspects accomplice, who also scaled the wall into the house, immediately took the gun and pulled the trigger of the gun which did not fire.



They stabbed the complainant in the chest and inflicted knife wounds on his wife and daughter but neigbours called the police for assistance.



Sensing danger, Nicholas left the scene immediately.



The police immediately apprehended him and took him to the police station for questioning.



A source at the Odorkor District Police Command, who confirmed the story to DAILY GUIDE, said the three victims were given hospital forms to seek medical attention.



The source said during interrogations, Iddrisu confessed that he and his two accomplices stormed the house but one person was waiting in a taxi outside the house.



The source indicated that the police are currently on the heels of Nicholas, adding that the knife and gun would be used as exhibits in court.

Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo exchanging pleasantries with the people of Beposo in the Ashanti region



President Nana Akufo-Addo has hinted of plans to introduce a new legislation that would ensure that every Ghanaian child acquires at least senior high education.



He explained the move is aimed at ending school dropouts at the basic level as well as ensuring that everyone gets meaningful employment.



Very soon, we will pass legislation that stipulates that every child in Ghana should go to school up to Senior High School level, at least. We dont want dropouts. This way, everyone can find meaningful employment in this country, the President said.



Though Ghanas constitution guarantees free compulsory basic education, that is yet to be implemented but the government has since September 2017 introduced free senior high school education in public schools across the country.



Addressing a durbar of chiefs held in his honour at Beposo on Saturday during his tour of the Ashanti Region, the President said the critics said the free SHS education he promised was not attainable.



Those who said we could not do it have been put to shame, he said, adding the work that we promised to do, the promises I made during the campaign period, I believe that all Ghanaians can attest to the fact that they were not idle promises, but rather promises that I honestly believed that I could fulfill, once I won power.



He continued, We have reduced electricity tariffs as well, so as to bring relief to individual households, as well as to businesses. By so doing, business owners, especially entrepreneurs, will be energised to bring in more income. We came to visit you and to inform you that the promises we made to you here in Beposo, during the campaign period, are being fulfilled.



President Akufo-Addo thanked the Chief of Beposo, Nana Boamah Kwabi IV, for the large tracts of land, i.e. 24,000 acres, given to his administration to facilitate the realization of Governments flagship projects such as the Programme for Planting for Food and Jobs, and 1-District-1-Factory.



These are very valuable additions. I am truly thankful. In the same vein, the Kwamanhene has also offered us 5,000 acres for Planting for Food and Jobs. The Nsutamanhene has also given us 3,000 acres for warehouses. Out of the 21 constituencies here in Asanteman that will have warehouses, the Nsuta constituency will receive one, he added.



Touching the concerns of the Beposohene on the extension of electricity to all communities in Beposo, President Akufo-Addo assured that Government is working towards ensuring that every town and village in this country will have access to electricity, so that nobody will be left behind.



It is systematic. We are pushing for complete rural electrification and very soon, you will hear from us here in Beposo.



Earlier in the day, President Akufo-Addo visited the Rocklands Farms in Beposo, Wontumi Farms in Asare Nkwanta, and visited Assam, in Mampong, to inspect ongoing works on the Kofiase-Mampong road, which is being constructed for the first time in the countrys history.









Source: 3news.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Some members of a vigilante group, the Kandahar Boys Monday morning chased out the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH), Dr David Zaawumya Kolbila.



The group, said to be affiliated to the New Patriotic Party (NPP), is accusing Dr Kolbila of incompetence.



They (Kandahar boys) have also accused the CEO of misappropriating the hospital's funds.



The group having chased Dr Kolbila out placed his office under locks.



Dr Kolbila took over as Chief Executive Officer of the Tamale Teaching Hospital on Monday, June 19, 2017, from Dr Prosper Akanbong.



The Kandahar Boys are one of the known vigilante groups in the Tamale metropolis with their base at Aboabo, one of the suburbs.

Source: Graphic.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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A proposed joint China - Ghana Eye and Vision Center is to be established by the Wenzhou Medical University (WMU) in China with the Tamale Teaching Hospital to provide better eye care service to people especially those in the Northern region.



According to the proposal, under the first phase of the project, the Tamale Teaching Hospital will provide 2000 square meters of medical space ( land) to establish four major functional departments including a Primary Eye Care department, a Refractive Surgery department, a Cataract surgery department and a Complex Eye Disease department.



As part of the program the Tamale Teaching Hospital is to send a team of local medical service providers each year to Wenzhou for training programs and further education.



According to the proposal Wenzhou Medical University will make continuous efforts to raise funds from various sources in China to sponser the project .



Dr David Kolbilla CEO and Medical Director of the Tamale Teaching Hospital signed the Memorandum of Understanding ( MOU) on behalf of the Tamale Teaching Hospital whilst Prof Qu Jia Dean of Wenzhou Medical University signed the MOU on behalf of the University in China.



Ghana's Deputy Ambassador to China Dr Charles Dwamena witnessed the signing of the MOU on behalf of Ghana

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Ashanti Regional Council of Elders Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Frank Osei Mensah, has openly kicked against his party members that are seeking to contest Mr. Mahama for the NDC presidential candidate position.



According to him, he is totally in support of the candidature of Mr. Mahama, stressing that he would make sure that the other contestants would not get the needed support and votes in the Ashanti Region, which has 47 constituencies.



I have declared operation no-go-area for the other NDC presidential aspirants that are contesting Mr. Mahama in the Ashanti Region, Mr. Osei Mensah, who was the first NDC Ashanti Regional Chairman during the early 1990s, declared on Nhyira Fm on Monday.



He argued that Mr. Mahama is the suitable candidate to lead the NDC to wrest political power from the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) in 2020, which is about two years away, stating that his open declaration doesnt represent the view of the entire NDC Council of Elders.



This is my personal decision as the Council of Elders Chairman of the party in the Ashanti Region, but I am cocksure that most of the members of the Council of Elders also share similar view. But this is my personal declaration, Mr. Osei Mensah hammered.



Mr. Osei Mensahs open declaration, predictably, would surely create deep cracks in the largest opposition political party considering the crucial roles Council of Elders play in the party. The Council of Elders usually plays fatherly roles to ensure peace in the party.



According to the Ashanti Regional NDC Council of Elders Chairman, he has decided to opt for Mr. Mahama because he is well marketed as compared with the other presidential hopefuls; therefore the NDC would not struggle to market him to the electorates.



Mr. Osei Mensah, who is very outspoken, also took a swipe at the other NDC presidential aspirants, saying that they are not popular among even their own party (NDC) members therefore none of them can lead the NDC to recapture power from the NPP in 2020.



Mahama is well marketed to Ghanaians already. The other aspirants such as Joshua Alarbi, Alban Bagbin and Sylvester Mensah, among others, are not even popular among our own NDC grassroots members so it is impossible to market them to lead the NDC to victory.



Mr. Osei Mensah stated that the 2020 presidential election would be a two horse race contest between ex-President Mahama and President Nana Akufo Addo, saying that Ghanaians will compare their four years reign each and vote for who is the best manager of the country.



We dont need any experiment in the NDC during the 2020 polls, because it is an important election, which Mr. Mahama stands the chance of winning for the NDC to enable us recapture political power and save the country from the NPP governments poor leadership.



Further buttressing his open support for Mr. Mahama as the right person for the NDC as flagbearer for the 2020 polls, he stated that NDC politics in the Ashanti Region is different from the other regions therefore he is right to declare his support for Mr. Mahama.



Meanwhile, Mr. Osei Mensahs decision to ban the NDC presidential aspirants, with the exception of former President Mahama, from campaigning in the Ashanti Region, clearly frowns on the partys guidelines regarding how the NDC executives across the country, should behave.



The NDC leadership has stated emphatically that the partys executives, including the Council of Elders in the various regions, should accommodate and give a level-playing field to every aspirant that may visit their region to campaign for votes.



A press release, authored by Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, the NDC General Secretary, on August 7, 2018, stated All party executive officers at the regional, constituency or branch levels are to extend the usual courtesies to aspirants who may come into their jurisdiction to campaign.



The statement also enjoined the party aspirants campaigning for national positions and the flagbearer slot in the NDC to conduct their campaign with decency and decorum, devoid of personal attacks and insults.

Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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1818 Market Street: The tower is dubbed the Beneficial building because 165-year-old Beneficial Bancorp, the largest bank still based in Philadephia, has its offices here. WSFS Financial Corp. plans to cut back-office jobs but retain a presence in Center City after it buys the bank for $1.5 billion next year. Read more

For most of the 165 years since it was founded under the aegis of Bishop (later Saint) John Neumann  as a bank run by trusty Catholics so his priests wouldn't be called on to guard the wages of Irish immigrant refugees from the Great Famine  Beneficial Savings Bank was owned by its depositors.

That idealistic mutual structure, shared by the former PSFS and a few other East Coast banks, looked antiquated by the late 20th century. While free-spending commercial banks were grabbing customers, mutuals had a hard time raising capital or hiring ambitious executives, since they couldn't sell shares on the stock market or award fat share bonuses.

That changed in 2016, when Beneficial was the last of the local mutuals to complete a years-long conversion to private stock ownership. The board promptly rewarded its nine members with shares worth around $17 million.

In a court filing, Beneficial said the directors were to be paid "following their successful overseeing and guidance of Beneficial through a decade-long process of converting Beneficial Bank from a mutual to a stock company," and "to align the economic interest of the directors with other shareholders," as endorsed by a compensation consultant, McLagan Partners Inc., which compared the payout against 11 other mutual conversions. And shareholders rubber-stamped the director pay plan in the 2017 annual meeting vote by crushing margins.

The payout was equivalent to more than four months' profits for the slow-growing bank. It was to be paid in three yearly installments.

Half the shares would go to chief executive Gerard P. Cuddy. The rest would be shared by his fellow directors, mostly Philadelphians: $1.3 million for chairman Frank A. Farnesi, a former KPMG accounting partner, and just over $1 million each for Edward G. Boehne, who retired as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in 2000; Karen Dougherty Buchholz, a Comcast executive; Michael J. Donahue, adviser to firms backed by NewSpring Ventures, the Radnor investment firm; Donald F. Gayhardt Jr., former CFO of Berwyn-based payday lender Dollar Financial Group; Elizabeth H. Gemmill, a former Tastykake vice president who also sat on the boards of area insurance, utility, and tech companies; investor Thomas J. Lewis; and Roy D. Yates, a Rutgers University professor whose previous bank Beneficial bought.

But what did those prominent Philadelphians do to deserve more than a million dollars each? asked Cody Laidlaw, a New York bank investor who held Beneficial shares. The directors were already paid $138,000 to $198,000 each last year, in cash and stock, for running or showing up at meetings.

To Laidlaw, it looked like the board was paying itself millions that belonged to shareholders like him, and mutual, pension, and hedge funds, and small investors. (He didn't challenge $13 million paid to four full-time Beneficial executives for their merger work.)

Laidlaw sued in Maryland, a financial-law haven where Beneficial is based for legal purposes. In his lawsuit, Laidlaw accused Beneficial of giving the directors "unfair and excessive" payments at other shareholders' expense. He accused them of "unjust enrichment" and a "breach of fiduciary duty."

By the time retired Judge Diane M. Welsh held a daylong mediation session between the two sides in March, directors had already gotten two of the three yearly payments.

Meanwhile, something else was going on that would profoundly affect Beneficial and its overseers: The previous winter, Cuddy had met with the boss of a larger and far more profitable former mutual, WSFS Financial Corp. chairman Mark A. Turner, over beers at the Union League to talk informally about WSFS's buying Beneficial. On May 30, the Wilmington bank sent Cuddy a formal merger proposal.

A week later, on June 7, the board agreed to a settlement with Laidlaw: Cuddy would get the rest of his $8.6 million in stock. But the other directors would be deprived of their final payments (worth around $3 million at the time.) And the board members, including Cuddy, would repay $1.4 million in cash to the bank. (Laidlaw and his lawyers are asking the court to make the bank pay them a million dollars to cover the costs of suing it.)

So, Laidlaw had saved his fellow Beneficial investors from giving away shares worth over $4 million. Board members got to keep more than half of what they were originally awarded, and Cuddy got most of his award. Each side stipulated in the settlement that it still believed it was right, but both agreed it wasn't worth a costly court fight.

Through one of his lawyers, Laidlaw didn't respond to a request for comment. Brian P. Flaherty of Cozen O'Connor, a lawyer for Beneficial, sent me a post-settlement memorandum justifying Beneficial's actions.

The pact was signed June 7, and for the next 10 weeks Cuddy turned his attention to selling his bank to WSFS, for $1.5 billion. That deal calls for him and two as-yet-unnamed Beneficial directors to join the WSFS board.

But that might not be the end of the story for the soon-to-be former Beneficial directors. "Nothing in the settlement," according to the June 7 agreement, will prevent the board from paying itself more  maybe millions more  in case of "a future extraordinary corporate event." Such as the sale of the company.

WSFS and Beneficial plan to disclose terms of the sale, including payments to insiders, in a future filing with the SEC.

I expect that watchful shareholders like Laidlaw will be counting every dollar.
The new Federal Donuts location will be at 540 South St., the southeast corner of Sixth and South. Read more

Federal Donuts, the Philly-bred chicken-and-doughnut mini-chain, is teeing up for a South Street location to open in late September.

Midwood Investment & Development has leased 540 South St.  the southeast corner of Sixth and South, site of a former cell-phone store  to the partners: Michael Solomonov and Steve Cook, and co-founders Tom Henneman, Felicia D'Ambrosio, and Bob Logue.

This will be the seventh FedNuts, as a previously announced location is up for 2019 at 19 S. 12th St. in Center City, as part of the East Market development.

Federal Donuts, whose first shop opened in 2011 in South Philadelphia, is the basis for The Rooster, the Center City restaurant formerly known as Rooster Soup Co. Cook had the idea to turn FedNuts' unused chicken parts into soup, which then would be sold with proceeds destined to Broad Street Ministries.
Republicans say John Fetterman, Gov. Wolf's running mate, is an example of a Democratic "leftward lurch" that can help the GOP. Read more

A dozen weeks to Election Day. Time to test the waters.

What's floating around out there? Dems overconfident? Republicans doomed? Do Democratic socialists give voters the heebie-jeebies? Can a rising youth vote sink the GOP?

Let's dive in.

Dems are pretty much sold on a "blue wave" thanks to President Trump.

Republicans argue that because of the economy, things, for them, are looking better.

If Dems are right, it's easy reelection for Gov. Wolf and Sen. Casey, congressional pickups en route to control of the U.S. House, and erosion of GOP majorities in the legislature (though almost certainly not enough to flip either chamber).

But if the "wave" just laps to the shore on Election Day? Different story.

Either way, it's all about Trump.

Morning Consult's key states "2018 Midterm Wave Watcher" released late last week shows Trump's approval numbers still down in Pennsylvania. And it shows the generic R/D ballot here favoring Democrats by five points (41-36).

But state GOP Chairman Val DiGiorgio says that's only because, "In all midterm elections intensity is with the party out of power."

He says 40 staffers surveying in every Pennsylvania county are finding "the trend is getting better" for the GOP. He credits tax cuts and Trump going to Korea, and notes the generic ballot earlier this year had Republicans down double digits.

That's certainly true nationally. Real Clear Politics' average generic ballot had Dems up 12.5 points Jan. 1. The current RCP average has Dems up 3.9 points.

"If we get our base out, we'll have a good year," DiGiorgio says.

Could be. The Consult report says Trump's approval rating among Pennsylvania Republicans is 67 percent.

Democratic consultant, strategist and former Democratic state party chairman T.J. Rooney calls the current five-point Democratic edge "definitely believable."

He even concedes that without Trump dominating political news (not in positive ways) GOP chances would improve.

"They [Republicans] have something to say," says Rooney, "but they get drowned out. Every day there's new fodder for the fire and it comes from the guy in charge."

Ah, but you know how Democrats do. The party is known for internal divisions. Republicans think they'll benefit from that.

"The leftward lurch," DiGiorgio calls it. He means Democratic socialists. There are four state House candidates endorsed by Democratic Socialists of America.

And DiGiorgio calls Wolf's running mate, LG candidate John Fetterman, "a silver-spoon socialist."

Fetterman is a Bernie Sanders fan. And as Braddock mayor, salary $150 a month, Fetterman has gotten support from his family, which owns a York insurance firm.

I ask Fetterman if he'd care to respond to DiGiorgio. He offers a Wolf campaign-style reply: "Val, can you get Scott to finally release his tax return?"

(GOP gubernatorial candidate and multi-millionaire businessman Scott Wagner declines to make his tax returns public. Wolfies keep hitting him on it.)

Still, Republicans see opportunity in painting Dems too left: free health care, free college, abolish ICE, end of capitalism and such.

It's just hard to make a case that a few House members or a lieutenant governor can effectuate radical change.

And Dems are buoyed by what they see as positive voting trends, and a large-scale effort to turn out younger voters.

NextGen America, billionaire liberal activist Tom Steyer's PAC, is dropping $3.5 million in Pennsylvania to drive the often-idle youth vote.

Starting this week, 130 paid staff members plus volunteers are on 70 college campuses across the state as students start to arrive for fall semester. "Welcome Week" is aimed at registering thousands of new voters.

A NextGen spokesperson says overall efforts began last year, and Pennsylvania leads the nation with a 16 percent increase (just since February) in new registration of 18- to 29-year-olds.

Also, Democrats say two voting trends here favor their candidates.

Nathan Davidson, state House Democratic Campaign Committee director, says there's an uptick of 275,000, mostly Democratic, "surge voters," those who voted in 2017 (basically an off year, judicial and local) after not voting in prior elections. And he says Democratic turnout in six House special elections since 2016, four won by Democrats, outperformed the norm.

"There's energy driving Democrats," Davidson says.

But a wave?

DiGiorgio says, "To the extent there is one, it's regionalized [in the southeast]. I don't see it around the state."

Maybe not. But right now, it's hard to see Wolf or Casey losing. And the question of the moment is should Republicans merely get out waders  or seriously think about lifeboats?
Greg Conley, a South Jersey lawyer and vaping advocate, enjoys a puff at Firehouse E-cigs and Vapors, in Cherry Hill. Read more

When vaping enabled him to finally stop smoking 10 years ago, Greg Conley saw the light.

"I immediately became kind of evangelical about it," said the personable 31-year-old Medford lawyer, who's the founder and president of the American Vaping Association.

"I'm not an anti-smoker," he said. "Smokers don't respond to that. What I'm saying is, if you wish to quit, vaping is a great method. Not, 'You should stop smoking.'"

I met Conley at Firehouse E-cigs & Vapors on Route 38 in Cherry Hill. Compact, battery-powered delivery devices and pretty little vials of flavored, nicotine-enriched fluid are displayed like fine jewelry inside the bustling shop's glass cases.

What with the vapers coming and going, and the agreeably communal vibe of the place, one could easily conclude that vaping, which does not involve burning tobacco and ingesting its toxic smoke, is a rather robust enterprise.

Turns out that not everyone sees vaping's recent  cachet in some quarters as a salutary development.

"The FDA and the anti-smoking industry are trying to kill it," said Conley, warning that a product "that is saving the lives of smokers" could be regulated or taxed to death.

A lawyer who earned an M.B.A. and a law degree from Rutgers-Camden, Conley founded the association in 2013. He taught himself the intricacies of the regulatory, legislative, and political process, as well as the ins and outs of dealing with the media.

"I always feel smug saying this, but I'm the most quoted person in U.S. news media on the subject of vaping," he said.

No wonder some vapers refer to him as a "superhero," a term he neither uses nor seems to mind hearing.

"I've probably given 1,000 media interviews. I've been to all 50 states. I take a couple of international trips annually  I was in Qatar earlier this year, and I'm heading to South Africa," said Conley. "This is so much better than an ordinary job."

Sure sounds like it.

But is vaping, the name for inhaling nicotine-infused water vapor created by those handheld electronic devices on display at Firehouse and other vape shops, as beneficent as Conley believes? Is opposition to vaping, some of it from progressive anti-smoking advocates, merely what Conley calls "busybody, nanny-state stuff"?

Or is it instead a common-sense cautiousness about a new technology's popularity, particularly among the young?

Consider the brand Juul, whose website includes a quote calling the slick devices "the iPhone of e-cigarettes." Amid stern "adults only" and "nicotine is an addictive drug" warnings, the site also showcases videos and photos of diverse, mostly youthful looking, people blissfully puffing away.

Elsewhere, headlines have described the brand not only as having gone viral among young people  but tempting them to smoke cigarettes, too.

Conley and others liken this contention to the marijuana-leads-to-insanity fears of the Reefer Madness era. He cites other headlines, such as those generated by Britain's Royal College of Physicians and its conclusion that vaping is far less hazardous than cigarette smoking.

"The hysteria over Juul has largely been manufactured by activist organizations that are concerned with banning products rather than improving public health," Conley said.

He is forthright about the fact that his nonprofit association does accept money from e-cigarette manufacturers, but "nobody gets to dictate" its positions on the issues, he said.

But Conley would not say whether Juul is among those that fund the association, citing what he described as a nondisclosure policy.

And like Juul, he took pains to emphasize that only people who would otherwise be smoking choose vaping. Which reminded me, fairly or not, of the way Big Tobacco used to claim it was merely in the business of providing products to folks who already were smoking, and not about trying to persuade nonsmokers to light up.

Look, like Conley, I'm a former cigarette smoker. After years of on-again, off-again, I lit my last Marlboro on Sept. 1, 2008, and haven't inhaled since. But when I told friends, including several reformed smokers, that I was doing an interview at a vape shop, they asked if I planned to sample the product.

I told them there's no way I would take a chance on reactivating that extensive, and expensive, nicotine addiction.

Conley prefers the term dependence, and freely acknowledges that vaping does create it, albeit without the toxicity associated with sucking hot smoke through a burning paper tube packed with processed tobacco.

"When I was in law school, I tried to stop smoking, but the [cessation] products just didn't work for me, and I would go back to smoking," he recalled.

"The kind of smokers who switch to vaping are the type who try to quit and then relapse," Conley said. "Nicotine usage in smoke-free form may be a better solution for many smokers than just going cold turkey and hoping for the best."

Vaping as a harm reduction measure? I get that. I support it.

Vaping as a desirable lifestyle choice?

I don't  and won't  buy it.
Former U.S. Air Force Maj. Heather Penney stands for a portrait in her office at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, where she is currently a resident fellow, in Arlington, Va., on Tuesday, May 1, 2018. Penney was an Air Force lieutenant on September 11, 2001, when she was ordered to fly her F-16 fighter jet into the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 to stop it from reaching Washington, D.C. TIM TAI / Staff Photographer Read more

ARLINGTON, Va.  Early Tuesday afternoon, the skies outside Maj. Heather "Lucky" Penney's office window were clear blue, much like the brilliant blue morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

That was the day Penney, then a rookie Air Force fighter pilot, was called upon to serve her country in perhaps the greatest way possible. She was asked to bring down a hijacked jetliner before it could slam into a building and kill thousands. With no missiles aboard her F-16 and no time to load, she would have to ram it, on what was essentially a suicide mission.

"Well, this is it," she thought. She had sworn an oath that there were things more important in this world than herself. She resolved that if this was why she had been put on Earth, she would complete the task as best she could.

Penney didn't have to give her life that day. Before she could, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers attempted to take control from the terrorists.

Now Penney has another purpose: Telling people that everyone has the capacity for courage, sacrifice, and service, and exercising it on a daily basis  using that "courage muscle," as she calls it  will make them ready when it counts most.

Later this month, Penney will bring that message to graduating students at Widener University. It will be her first time as a commencement speaker.

"It's really about the courage we all have inside and we all have to give," said Penney, 43, a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, a think tank in Virginia. "We all have a greater purpose than our own personal interests. and when we seek that purpose, we can serve our community and our family and our nation in so many ways."

She is among a rich cast of dozens of commencement speakers dispatched to address area graduates from now until the middle of June. Thomas Jefferson University tapped a prince. Rowan University offered an Eagles running back, and Lincoln University had U.S. Rep. Alma S. Adams of North Carolina.. A Nobel Prize winner will address Ursinus College graduates, and a number of politicians, actresses, and a filmmaker will appear at other schools. Anita Hill, the woman who accused U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment long before #MeToo, will appear at Rutgers-Camden Law School's commencement.

Penney was picked as Widener's speaker after a recommendation from a student there who was inspired by her story, one she kept to herself for a decade but has been sharing publicly in recent years. Widener has roots in the armed forces: Until 1972, the school in Chester was known as Pennsylvania Military College.

The board of trustees selected her to speak at the May 19 ceremony.

"She really is a great American hero," said retired Army Gen. John Tilelli Jr., chairman of Widener's board of trustees and an alumnus of the military college.

Born on an Air Force base in Arizona, Penney grew up around the military. Her father, retired Lt. Col. John Penney, flew jets, too. From age 4, she told her mother she wanted to be a fighter pilot, along with a ballerina, a butterfly and a volcanologist  "I loved volcanoes." She fell in love, too, with jets and the camaraderie of the Air Force community. When her twin sister was helping her mother with the dishes at night, she would sneak into the back room and listen to her father and his squadron mates share flying stories after dinner.

It wasn't until she got to Purdue University as an undergraduate in 1992 that she discovered women weren't allowed to be fighter pilots.

"I didn't understand, if I was willing and able, why I was not allowed to also serve my nation," said Penney, who earned her bachelor's in English and her master's in American studies. "The jet doesn't care if you're a man or a woman."

While she was still in college, Congress opened up combat aviation to women. In graduate school, she applied and got in. She was the only woman in her class, and although the men treated her well, it was still a boy's club, she said, and that was hard.

"Today, I think it's still challenging for women to be a total minority in a man's world," she said.

Only a little more than 2 percent of fighter pilots and weapons system officers are women, she said. In 2005, women started the Chick Fighter Pilot Association, a place to discuss balancing career and children and supporting each other.

Her squadron gave her the name "Lucky" when she first arrived, as in "lucky Penney." She loved flying jets, riding at 500 knots, 30,000 feet up, totally focused on the task.

"It's exhilarating," she said. "I feel like I have an expanded awareness."

She was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and 2006, and then took a job at Lockheed Martin, the global security and aerospace company. She became a traditional reservist, which allowed Penney, then a divorced single mother, more time to raise her daughters, now 12 and 14. (She has since remarried.)

Penney still flies for enjoyment and has her own vintage planes, a Cessna 170 A and a Stearman PT13. Her office at the think tank is filled with pieces of aviation history, an engine fan blade from a Vulcan  a British nuclear bomber  instruments from her planes, her first set of wings (from her father), and a model Boeing 314, known as a China Clipper, a gift from her husband. At Mitchell, where she started about a month ago, she researches and writes on air power and Air Force issues.

In her speech to more than 800 Widener graduates, Penney plans to recount her experience and the lessons she learned.

"You never know when you're going to be called upon to give your most, give your best," she said she will tell them. "You always need to be ready to answer the call when it comes."

She has told the story many times: She was a lieutenant on 9/11, the first female fighter pilot that the 121st Fighter Squadron had. She was stationed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland with the District of Columbia National Guard. That morning, she was in a planning meeting when a knock came at the door with word that a plane had just struck the World Trade Center.

Penney and her colleagues thought: On such a beautiful day, how could that be an accident? Minutes later they learned about the second plane and understood it was no mistake. A third plane hit the Pentagon. Then word came others could be on their way to Washington. They received the order to get in the air.

"Lucky, you're with me," Col. Marc Sasseville, her commanding officer, told her.

Their planes weren't armed; the two pilots knew they'd have to smash into the airliner with their jets. Penney had no plans to eject, for fear she would miss the target.

"I'll take the cockpit," Sasseville told her. She'd aim for the tail, it was understood.

"We never found anything," she said. "We were not heroes that day. The passengers on Flight 93 were the true heroes."

That moment didn't change her immediately, she said. She didn't talk about it publicly for 10 years, not until Sasseville asked her to participate in a program on 9/11.

"You have to understand, in my view, we were a mission failure," she said, "because we didn't get there in time. The passengers on Flight 93 should never have had to make the decisions that they made."

But then she reflected more deeply after telling her story in 2011. The Flight 93 passengers illustrated great courage and sacrifice, the very principles she now tells her audiences everyone has the capacity for  including the Widener undergraduates who will hear her message.
Eighth grader Iris Sanchez shares a nervous and excited look with her teacher Hillary Strang as their aircraft ascends at helicopter camp at Leonardo Helicopters in Northeast Philadelphia. MAGGIE LOESCH / Staff Photographer Read more

The idea of a summer camp as a place for archery or swimming seems pretty quaint as 13-year-old Iris Sanchez climbs into the cockpit of an AW139 helicopter and looks over the control panel of the roughly $10-12 million bird.

Iris and her fellow campers  Elvia Mejia and Hillary Wong, also 13  had listened with a mixture of awe and perhaps youthful confusion as Ryan Thomas, a ground instructor for Leonardo Helicopters, raced through the daunting checklist of what a pilot needs to know, from hydraulic fluid levels to forward air speed.

Now Iris had bulky headphones on and  with the giant blade turned off, of course  operated the control stick that moves the large rotary gears atop the helicopter, the same model used by Air Force pilots from Italy to the United Arab Emirates.

"It's nerve-racking," Iris confessed after her moment in the hot seat.

Welcome to one of the most unusual summer camps in the Philadelphia region  the Leonardo Helicopter camp, where 10 lucky rising eighth graders fly over the Great Northeast during a packed week where high-tech learning goes into heavy rotation, and happy campers learn how choppers are manufactured and flown.

For these kids from Northeast Philadelphia's St. Martin of Tours School  each selected for the free camp as a reward for being a top all-around student  the week is not only fun but also an early glimpse into future career opportunities, and not just in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills needed to design and build the whirlybirds.

"They love it  it's opened their eyes to so many different things they wouldn't [otherwise] experience," said Chuck Pavonarius, an eighth-grade teacher at the parochial school who accompanied the campers. "Will they all be helicopter pilots? No. But if they want to go into law, they have lawyers here. If they want to go into engineering, business  that's all here."

For the Italy-based Leonardo, the camp is an opportunity for the world's ninth-largest defense contractor  which mostly flies under the radar here in Philadelphia despite employing close to 550 people at its main American helicopter facility  to give back to the community and maybe spark the imagination of future employees. The 10 kids even start their week with a mock interview in its human resources department.

"It's about science and technical stuff but more about the practical piece of it," said Bill Hunt, CEO of Leonardo Helicopters' Philadelphia division, who grew up in Bustleton and graduated from Archbishop Ryan High School. "It's a way of taking what they learn in school and applying it to the job. "

He urged the kids "to live this moment, enjoy this moment.  This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience."

Although the 15-minute helicopter flight over their school and home neighborhoods is clearly the camp highlight, the teens spend most of their time learning just how much work goes into getting one of the choppers off the ground, with sessions on design, manufacturing, and even the complex supply chain, taught by Leonardo staffers.

This is the fourth year for the free camp for St. Martin's students, chosen because their school is closest to the plant.

Inside the large hangar where the helicopters are assembled on Red Lion Road next to Northeast Philadelphia Airport, students learn how Leonardo's new AW609 TiltRotor, which combines elements of a chopper and an airplane, is built. The campers want to know how the helicopters make it out of the hangar (driven out, through large openings at either end) and whether they can be used for search-and-rescue missions (yes, with special lights and loudspeakers).

"I want one of these," says Luis Chavez, gesturing at the AW609. "It looks more modern and sophisticated."

It costs $25 million, his teacher, Hilary Strang, tells him.

"I also want to be a doctor," Chavez adds.

But other students are thinking about a career in tech, and the camp may have pushed them a little closer. "I'm really interested in engineering," said William DeLeon, 13. He said the camp has "been great, nothing but fun.  I got to see a helicopter land."

The real thrill came Thursday when three groups of the campers each took off for their short flight, a thrill that CEO Hunt admitted even most of the workers at the plant have never experienced. "I've worked here 12 years, built over 530 helicopters  and flown three times," he said.

Some of the kids seemed a little nervous, and pilots Jason Court and Doug Edge worked to put them at ease by showing off the elaborate nature of the preflight safety check, making sure the rivet lines are straight and that every nut and bolt is securely in place. "It's kind of monotonous, but safety is always first," Court said.

Soon, kids and teacher were seated in the eight-person helicopter, their headphones snug, and  after briefly hovering, it was tail up, nose down and off they flew. As they passed over St. Martin of Tours School, workers streamed out of the building and waved.

"It was good," Luis said afterward. "It's really crazy. I was starting to feel sick, but I didn't vomit. When you're going up it feels like a roller coaster. When you turn, it feels like you're going to fall out."

"It was peaceful at times, then you'd get so scared when they were turning and dipping," Elvia added. "It felt like you were falling."

Would she do it again?

Probably not.

But Hunt told them future flights should be something to aspire to. "This is a little taste of what could possibly be in your future," he told them earlier. "Especially if you win the lottery and buy one of these things."
Chef Marcie Turney and Valerie Safran  who over the last 16 years reinvented the 13th Street corridor in Washington Square West, opening such restaurants as Lolita, Barbuzzo, and Bud & Marilyn's  are branching out.

They've also chosen a company name  something they never got around to doing in the crush of opening nearly a dozen businesses.

As Safran Turney Hospitality, they're planning a restaurant expansion to East Passyunk Avenue in South Philadelphia, where they have purchased four properties, and to yet another location in Center City. Recently married, Turney, 48, and Safran, 43, also are in what they call "the live stage" of adopting a child.

They've also hired a culinary director, chef George Sabatino. It's actually a homecoming for Sabatino, who started with Turney in 2006 as a line cook at Lolita and in 2010 helped open Barbuzzo as chef de cuisine. He recently left Rooster Soup Co. in its transition to The Rooster and previously co-owned the late Center City bistro Aldine.

They've always loved the openings. In 2011, Safran told me: "We're addicted to opening businesses. When you do something and you do it well, you just keep going."

But in 2015, they hit the pause button.

"We took a break after Bud & Marilyn's [opening in 2015], built a home, and started figuring out whether we were having kids or not," Safran said.

"We had to look at the whole picture," Turney said. (As for the company name, Turney said Safran's name appears first "because it had a better ring to it.")

Turney and Safran declined to disclose more about the new projects, other than to say that they will be restaurants. The South Philadelphia project will be near Pat's and Geno's, on East Passyunk Avenue between Reed and Wharton.

The real estate deal also reflects a maturity in their business. "The idea is to not write a rent check every month," Safran said. "This is security for our future."

They emphasized that their 13th Street empire will remain as it is. "We're not going anywhere," both said.

They got into business in 2002 with Open House, a home-furnishing store on 13th Street between Sansom and Chestnut.

They opened their first restaurant, Lolita, in 2004, followed in 2006 by Grocery, a gourmet market/prepared foods shop. Bindi, a short-lived Indian restaurant followed in 2007. (It's now Jamonera.) Then came Verde, a boutique that sells Marcie Blaine Artisanal Chocolates, Turney's line. Then came Barbuzzo, before they went south on 13th Street to Locust, where they opened Little Nonna's and Bud & Marilyn's.
White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in August. Read more

David S. Glosser, a retired doctor who lives in the Philadelphia area and is the uncle of President Trump's adviser Stephen Miller, called his nephew an "immigration hypocrite" in a scathing op-ed piece in Politico Magazine on Monday.

"I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, who is an educated man and well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family's life in this country," Glosser wrote, detailing how Miller's ancestors fled anti-Jewish violence in eastern Europe in the early 1900s and eventually settled in Johnstown, where the Glossers ran a number of businesses, including a department store.

Glosser grew up in Johnstown and later moved to the Philadelphia area. He could not be reached Monday, but public records indicate he lives in Yardley. He also performs psychological evaluations for clients of HIAS Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that provides legal services to immigrants.

Miller was the brains behind the Trump administration's highly controversial "zero-tolerance" policy, which separated more than 2,000 immigrant children from their parents at the southern U.S. border before President Trump  facing public outcry  reluctantly signed an executive order to halt family separations.

Trump has repeatedly vilified immigrants, using language such as "infest" and "crime infested and breeding" to describe them.

"Trump and my nephew both know their immigrant and refugee roots," Glosser wrote in Politico. "Yet, they repeat the insults and false accusations of earlier generations against these refugees to make them seem less than human. Trump publicly parades the grieving families of people hurt or killed by migrants, just as the early Nazis dredged up Jewish criminals to frighten and enrage their political base to justify persecution of all Jews."

Glosser's opinion piece has been widely shared on Twitter, where Miller's name was trending Monday afternoon.

This isn't the first time Glosser has criticized his nephew. In the weeks before Election Day in 2016, Glosser wrote on Facebook: "With all familial affection I wish Stephen career success and personal happiness, however I cannot endorse his political preferences. I am not a Trump supporter."
Erie Catholic Bishop Emeritus Donald Trautman, left, and Erie Catholic Bishop Lawrence T. Persico celebrate Communion during Mass at St. Peter Cathedral in Erie this February. As part of the two-year investigation into clergy sex abuse, Persico spoke directly to the grand jury. Read more

>> UPDATE: Pa. Catholic Church sex abuse report names hundreds of priests, accuses leaders of cover-up: 'They hid it all'

For two years, the 23 members of the grand jury investigating Catholic dioceses heard devastating stories of sexual abuse from victims.

They heard from perpetrators. And they heard testimony and saw documents of how bishops often failed to protect children, even putting them in harm's way from known abusers.

Then in April, in one of the last sessions of their two-year term in downtown Pittsburgh, they heard from a bishop directly. And they were angry.

"When you sit there for two years listening to victims and also to abusers  that is very difficult on the jurors," Erie Bishop Lawrence Persico said Friday.

He said it was important for him to face the truth, both for the sake of the victims and the sake of the church. "There are two victims, the victims who are actually sexually abused, but there are also victims in the people of God," he said. "Everything they believed in, it makes it so difficult for them. Because if you can't trust your bishops and priests, who can you trust? And we certainly haven't lived up to that trust."

The state Supreme Court has set a Tuesday deadline for the release, in redacted form, of the grand jury's long-anticipated report. It delves into seven decades of sexual abuse and cover-ups in six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania.

The report has remained sealed pending Supreme Court challenges on behalf of about two dozen current and former clergy. The portions of the report referring to them will remain redacted until the court can hear their arguments that their depictions in it are inaccurate or unfair.

Numerous details about the investigation have appeared in court filings surrounding that battle in the last few months, as well as from public statements by witnesses and Catholic officials. But for a report that is under seal, a lot is actually known about it.

Various estimates put the page count 800 to more than 1,000.

It covers a vast sweep in time  seven decades  and space, with six dioceses spanning the width of Pennsylvania. (The dioceses in Philadelphia and Altoona-Johnstown underwent similar scrutiny in the past and were not included in the grand jury's inquiry.)

It is known that the report, overseen by the office of Attorney General Josh Shapiro, is hotly disputed by some depicted in it. Two dioceses, Greensburg and Harrisburg, tried to shut down the investigation last year, arguing that it belonged under local district attorneys. The dioceses now voice support for releasing the report.

Even beyond those petitioning the Supreme Court, other individuals and dioceses have had the chance to file formal written responses to the report, so some of its findings are likely to be challenged.

The report is looking not just into how bishops handled or mishandled cases of abusive priests, but whether they were aided by community and political leaders in alleged obstruction of justice.

The report will list more than 300 names it describes as "predator priests," according to the Supreme Court.

Many have become known over the years, but the public will see many new names. In the Diocese of Pittsburgh alone, one lawyer's filing strongly suggests more than 90 "offenders" will be listed, about twice previous estimates.

As for the bishops, the report is blistering.

The report will say victims' pleas for help "were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institution above all."

"The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid 'scandal,'" the report says, according to a document that the attorney general's office has stipulated to. ".  Priests were raping little boys and girls and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing: They hid it all."

It continues: "Priests were regularly placed in ministry after the diocese was on notice that a complaint of child sexual abuse had been made."

And: "Several diocesan administrators, including the bishops, often dissuaded victims from reporting abuse to police, pressured law enforcement to terminate or avoid an investigation, or conducted their own deficient, biased investigation without reporting crimes against children to the proper authorities."

The report will put names, dates and other specifics to those generalizations.

The bishops of the six dioceses were given options that included testifying or filing a written statement. Like the five others, Persico initially filed a statement. But when invited again, he decided to go in person. He said Senior Deputy Attorney General Daniel Dye, who led the investigation, told him: "I have to warn you this is a hostile grand jury."

But the bishop chose to take questions directly from the jurors.

"I wanted to hear what they had to say and also just to try to engage in dialogue with them," said Persico, who was a priest and administrator in the Diocese of Greensburg before being named bishop of Erie in 2012.

When the diocese provided its documents to investigators early in the process, Persico also had a law firm review the diocese's files, particularly older cases from years ago that were left as inconclusive.

That prompted the diocese in April to become the first of the six under investigation to post a list of those accused of abusing or failing to protect children.

If those credibly accused had left the diocese, there is "really no way to monitor them," Persico said. But "if you put the abuser's name to the public, that alerts the community," and can help prevent such a person from gaining another position of trust.

The list, now at 62 names, had an unexpected side effect.

"Many victims called just to say, 'Thank you for releasing my perpetrator's name. It gives me a sense of validation,'" he said.

He put one of his own predecessors on the list, the late Bishop Alfred M. Watson, who led the diocese from 1969 to 1982.

"None of that is easy," Persico said. "But the point was he received credible allegation of a case of abuse. The person who reported it to him happened to be a priest. He told the priest basically to go home and mind your own business. Not long after that, he transferred the perpetrator [to another school] and he continued to abuse. So to me it was very clear he would go on the list."
Comcast has expanded its low-cost high-speed internet program by adding nearly 20,000 low-income Philadelphia households and two million households nationally over the last year, the company announced Monday.

At the same time, the company announced that its Internet Essentials program will now include all low-income veterans living in its service area.

"Veterans have stood up for our country, and for our way of life, and we believe it's time for all of us to stand up for those veterans," said David L. Cohen, Comcast's senior executive vice president and chief diversity officer, speaking at a news conference Monday at a new housing community for veterans under construction near Fairhill. The expansion "will enable us to reach about a million low-income veterans."

Still, some advocates are calling for Comcast to do more.

While "we should ensure [veterans] have broadband internet access along with other necessary services," the program still "doesn't go far enough to meet the need," wrote Bryan Mercer, executive director of West Philadelphia's Media Mobilizing Project, which advocates for greater media access for working-class people.

"We need to see much more substantial investment in communities and options to address the gaps and ensure the modern right to communicate," Mercer said.

He said Internet Essentials offers "speeds that don't even meet the FCC definition of broadband" and a "series of restrictions" that take away the program as an option for people who struggle to afford service. Families and veterans with Comcast service within the last 90 days, or any outstanding bills, would not qualify for the program, he said.

"That is a real roadblock to someone trying to keep their utilities affordable and their families online," Mercer said.

Jennifer Bilotta, a Comcast spokesperson, said that all Philadelphians who had Comcast in the last 90 days could still join Internet Essentials, thanks to a commitment the company made in late 2016.

Bilotta also disagreed that speeds don't meet the FCC definition, and said the program offers speeds that are enough for homework, research, applying for jobs and more.

"There's nothing you can't do online with 15 mbps download speeds," she said.

Outside of Philadelphia, the 90-day stipulation still exists, mostly to encourage people who have never had internet service to sign up.

About 36,000 low-income veterans are in the commonwealth, Cohen said, and 70 percent of low-income veterans don't have internet access at home.

The program is meant to cut out a common roadblock to internet service, high costs, in the nation's poorest big city, where thousands live in poverty. Philadelphia is one of America's least-connected cities, and also home to the nation's largest internet provider.

Cohen also announced a $25,000 grant to go toward a computer lab in a new veterans housing community being built by the nonprofit Veterans Multi-Service Center.

The nonprofit is converting the old Edison High School near Fairhill into a housing community for veterans. The community, which will be called Edison 64, will offer 66 housing units, with on-site services including case management, job training and more, said Cohen, who spoke at the site. Sixty-four of the school's graduates died in the Vietnam War, the highest number of deaths recorded by any U.S. high school, according to the center.

The hope for the center is "to keep people in their housing," said Tim Williams, executive director of Veterans Multi-Service Center.

Keith Higgins, who was in the military, said he still knows plenty of veterans struggling to live, but the housing and expanded services could be the "perfect opportunity for a lot of veterans to get up on their feet."

"It's needed," Higgins said.

The Germantown native said he was "glad corporations are stepping up and helping the older generations of veterans out."

Over the course of the internet essentials program, more than six million homes nationally and 200,000 Philadelphians have used the service. Those qualifying generally need to be on some kind of public assistance, the firm's website said.

Nearly half of all adults with an income below $30,000 don't have home broadband service or a traditional computer, a 2017 Pew Research study said.

Comcast agreed to finance the program in 2011 as part of its NBCUniversal acquisition. That commitment expired in 2014 but the company has committed to funding it indefinitely, a spokeswoman said.

READ MORE >>> Comcast to wire thousands of public housing units with internet
Student Volunteer Kourtney Thompson, center, assists Sharon Okune with her groceries at the Temple University food pantry, in Philadelphia, Thursday, August 09, 2018. Read more

On a Thursday in late July, Claire Vilain wandered through Temple University's Cherry Pantry for the first time. She chose peanut butter, grape jelly, kettle chips and oatmeal  foods that would last.

The 24-year-old graduate student has a summer meal plan that covers lunch. For nearly everything else, she must fend for herself and find other low-cost or free ways to eat.

For Vilain, that makes the pantry "pretty dope."

At Temple, as across the region and the country, food pantries are popping up to help students when financial aid and other campus resources fall short. And at some colleges they've become a summer lifeline for students.

Each week this summer at Temple's nearly eight-month-old pantry, the same handful of students showed up for the free nonperishables during the pantry's limited hours, according to the pantry's lone summer volunteer, Kourtney Thompson.

Many, like Vilain, were dependent on the pantry for meals.

Finding food in the summer is "definitely harder," Vilain said.

"The food around here is kind of expensive, so it's like trying to find that good alternative between what I can afford and what's healthy, because I'm not trying to just put anything into my body," she said.

At colleges around the nation, research shows thousands of students are what's known as "food insecure," meaning they have limited access to consistent, adequate, nutritious meals. One 2018 study of more than 20,000 students at 35 four-year colleges and universities found that 36 percent of students were food-insecure.

The issue has been shown to be even more prevalent among students of color. In a 2016 study, 57 percent of black students reported food insecurity, compared with 40 percent of non-Hispanic white students.

In its own survey last fall, Temple found similar results, with more than one in three students meeting the criteria.

>> READ MORE: Food pantries pop up on college campuses for students struggling with hunger

That's one reason the donation-based Cherry Pantry remained open this summer.

During the fall and spring semesters, when campus life is in full swing, it can be easier to finesse and find meals by going to free food events or signing up for night classes where teachers bring food, said Sara Goldrick-Rab, who has researched food insecurity on college campuses for 10 years.

In the summer, those options dwindle, she said.

Goldrick-Rab is a sociology and higher education policy professor at Temple University and founded the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, which authored the study that revealed food insecurity on Temple's campus.

Other schools have taken similar steps. West Chester University's resource pantry was open on a limited summer schedule and drew a constant flow of students. More than 130 students shopped  56 of them new  and over 2,000 pounds of food were distributed at the resource pantry this summer, according to Kate Colyer, assistant director of service-learning and volunteer programs.

At Temple, students are allowed one visit to the Cherry Pantry per week and are given a limit of 16 points to get a variety of free nonperishables, from pineapple chunks and canned spinach, to steel-cut oats and pasta. Each pantry item is worth either one, two, or three points.

The pantry is run completely by food and financial donations, said its director, Michelle Martin. Bulk donations of canned goods still come in frequently, Martin said.

>> READ MORE: Food pantries at college campuses: How to help

"Temple's community support has been really amazing," she said.

The increase in pantries comes as the cost of a college education has skyrocketed, sparking a national debate. Rising student debt  collectively, students owe $1.5 trillion in student loans  coupled with upticks in tuition and cost of living means many students struggle to get by.

In interviews, students who patronize the pantry described their finances as complex balancing acts, where they must budget hard and often choose between basic necessities, such as paying rent, eating, or washing clothes.

"I know a lot of people whose money is tight, so they work in a restaurant and try to eat as many meals at work as possible for free," said Gretta Rauhoff, a 21-year-old psychology major who also has a waitressing job.

One day late last month, she and Lucy Crawford navigated through unpacked donation boxes in the pantry and shelves filled with canned food.

The duo chose a variety of food: canned beans, mac and cheese, an assortment of protein bars.

In the week before, Rauhoff said, she ate leftover scones from her restaurant job every day for each meal  because they were free. "I felt so terrible because scones are terrible for your body," she said, "but I was like, 'This is so many free meals.' "

>> READ MORE: Hunger haunts Philly, these are the voices of its pain

Shortly before Vilain arrived, another woman, a rising sophomore, was also feeling the financial stress. She noted that during the summer, Temple's dining halls are open only for limited lunch hours  and other eating options are too expensive.

"Every cent I make goes to rent," said the woman, who asked not to be identified as a student who is food-insecure.

The hunger such students face is often written off as part of "the college struggle," said Samantha Retamar, who works with local hunger organization Philabundance, "like, this is the price you pay for wanting an education."

"But it doesn't have to be," she said.

While Retamar was at college in Florida from 2011 to 2015, she said, she was food-insecure despite receiving financial aid, working a part-time job, and receiving some Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits.

"Because so many of us were dealing with it, I didn't think it was a problem," Retamar said.

One summer, things got so bad that she and her friend came up with a plan to ease their hunger, at least for a while.

They would order a $5 box pizza, cut the eight slices into 16, and share it as meals until it was gone. Then they'd do it over again. She's sure the same struggle occurs today.

"I am concerned that this is the least well-cared-for generation of college students that we've had," Goldrick-Rab said. "They have been hung out to dry by rising prices, and really are in tough shape."

Philadelphia Media Network is one of 19 news organizations producing Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on solutions to poverty and the city's push toward economic justice. Follow us at @BrokeInPhilly.
Phyllis Lieberman, 73, of Elkins Park, the Whitpain Township manager for three decades, died Saturday, Aug. 11, at Einstein Medical Center in Elkins Park of complications from an earlier fall.

In 1981, Mrs. Lieberman became assistant township manager in Whitpain, and a short while later was appointed township manager. She held the position until 2010, when she stepped down to work for a year on township planning projects before retiring in 2011.

"Whitpain Township has been very fortunate to have Phyllis as its manager for almost 30 years," Joseph Palmer, chairman of the board of supervisors, told the Ambler Gazette in 2010.

When Mrs. Lieberman took over, Whitpain was not on the public radar. Many thought of it as a stoplight and seven street lamps along Route 202 surrounded by woods and fields, said her son, Neil Lieberman. She oversaw its growth into a thriving community.

Mrs. Lieberman presided over improvements in public works, code enforcement, the police department, ambulance service, and recreation facilities.

"Over the years, for a little community, we've been recognized nationally as one of the best places to live," Mrs. Lieberman told the Gazette. She said publications such as Money and Philadelphia Magazine had singled out Whitpain as desirable. "For the longest time," she said, "people didn't really know who we were, and we have brought ourselves into the main scheme of the Philadelphia area."

Before 1994, Whitpain had no parks and recreation department. Wentz Run Park did not exist when she became manager. She was able to help get the land set aside for public use.

"That park really gets used a lot by people of all ages," she told the Gazette. "It's really been the greatest pleasure. Because we're a township and we don't have a downtown, that's the place where people come together. It gives us a real sense of community. The park system is something we're pretty proud of."

Born in Philadelphia to Edward B. and Blanche H. Crane, Mrs. Lieberman grew up in West Oak Lane. At age 16, she moved with her family to Memphis so her father could take a job with the Sam Fortas Housefurnishing Co.

In 1963, Mrs. Lieberman returned to Philadelphia to enroll in Temple University. That December, she met Max Lieberman, and they married in 1964. The Liebermans then moved to Lincoln, Neb., where her husband was a missile launch officer at Lincoln Air Force Base.

In August 1965, her husband was transferred to Shreveport, La. Mrs. Lieberman completed her bachelor's degree in elementary education at Centenary College of Louisiana in 1968. She was a second-grade practice teacher in Bossier Parish.

After graduating, Mrs. Lieberman taught in an early Head Start program, enacted by President Lyndon B. Johnson to help meet the needs of preschool-age children from low-income families.

In August 1968, the Liebermans moved to Greenbelt, Md., Mrs. Lieberman taught fourth grade at Highbridge Elementary School in Bowie.

In 1971, the family returned to the Philadelphia area. Mrs. Lieberman earned a master's degree in public administration from Pennsylvania State University in 1980.

While serving as Whitpain Township manager, she was active at the county level. She was chairman of the Montgomery County Consortium of Communities, president of the Southeast Pennsylvania Managers' Association, and vice president of the Association of Pennsylvania Professional Managers.

Mrs. Lieberman was a member of a blue-ribbon panel assigned to investigate whether Montgomery County needed a health department. As a result of the panel's work, the question was put to a voter referendum in 1989, and the county office of public health began operating in 1991.

She was a long-time board member of the Montgomery County Solid Waste Authority and organized one of the first county-wide hazardous waste disposal events.

When liability insurance rates for municipalities began to soar in 1989, Mrs. Lieberman served on a committee of the Consortium of Communities to see if there was an alternative to commercial insurance. The consortium founded the Delaware Valley Insurance Trust, a risk management pool, and she served as a trustee until 2012.

Mrs. Lieberman was also a vice president of the Germantown Jewish Center and president of the Rotary Club of Blue Bell.

Besides her husband and son, she is survived by another son, Matthew; two grandchildren; and a sister.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 16, at Goldsteins' Rosenberg's Raphael-Sacks, 6410 N. Broad St. Burial is private.

Donations may be made to Philabundance via https://www.philabundance.org/donate/ or the United States Holocaust Museum via https://donate.ushmm.org/.
WASHINGTON DC  The US Appeals Court has for the fourth time denied bail to former Hong Kong Home Affairs minister Patrick Ho Chi-ping, who is accused of offering a $500,000 (Shs1.8b) bribe to Foreign Affairs minister Sam Kutesa in exchange for oil rights for CEFC China Energy

Ho, who allegedly wired the money to the bank account of Kuteesa when the latter was the president of the UN Security Council in 2014, was arrested in the US in November and charged with multiple counts of bribery and money laundering and has been detained for more than eight months.

Ho, who turned 69 last week in prison, is scheduled to stand trial starting in November.

He has been charged with eight counts of bribery and money laundering after allegedly offering US$2.9 million (HK$22.8 million) worth of bribes to government officials in Uganda and Chad to advance oil and development rights for the Shanghai-based CEFC China Energy.

Ho had requested bail three times since his arrest in New York last November but was turned down by the federal court for the Southern District of New York, which said he posed a severe flight risk.

Hos co-defendant, Cheikh Gadio, the former Senegal foreign minister, has been out on bail and under house arrest since November. The South China Morning Post earlier reported that Gadio has been in discussions with the US prosecution about a potential deal.

Prosecution states that the contact between Mr Kutesa and HO started in 2014 when they met at the UN in New York.

Then, HO, claiming to be acting on behalf of the Energy NGO, discussed a strategic partnership between Uganda and the Energy Company.

The company was to engage in various business ventures, which would be formed once Mr Kutesa completed his term as President UNGA and returned to Uganda.

Mr Kutesa returned to Uganda in 2015, just ahead of Ugandas 2016 general election.

According to the complaint, in or about February 2016, after Mr Kutesa had resumed his role as Ugandas Foreign minister, he solicited a payment from HO, purportedly for a charitable foundation that he wished to launch.

HO caused a $500,000 payment to be wired to an account in Uganda designated by the Ugandan Foreign Minister, through a bank in New York. In his communications, HO variously referred to this payment as a donation to the reelection campaign of the President of Uganda (who had already been reelected) and as a donation to support the Ugandan Foreign Minister, says the statement.

Attempts to reach Mr Kutesa have so far failed.

The U.S. Attorneys Office of Southern District of New York says the charges contained in the complaint are merely accusations.

It says the defendants HO and Cheikh who were arrested on Friday and Saturday respectively are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

HO, 68, of Hong Kong, China, and GADIO, 61, of Senegal, are each charged with conspiring to violate the FCPA, violating the FCPA, conspiring to commit international money laundering, and committing international money laundering.

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KAMPALA- About 17 days after the Age Limit ruling, Lawyer Male Mabirizi is at Supreme Court appealing against the Mbale Constitutional Court decision which validated lifting of the age limit.

Mr Mabirizi, the dissatisfied lawyer of the presidential age limit ruling has listed 84 grounds challenging the judgment that validated the lifting of the same.

Mabirizis 30, 692 paged record has been delivered at the Supreme court on a pick-up and has been received by Deputy Registrar Godfrey Angualia Opefeni.

Among the grounds ; Mabirizi faults the majority 4 justices of failing to address themselves on the provisions of the Constitution that require the Electoral commission to hold a referendum before carrying out any constitutional amendment.

The Constitutional court ruled that it was not mandatory to hold a referendum since MPs who amended the Constitution are empowered by the people to make laws on their behalf.

He also contends that the 4 justices erred in law when they held that the public was fully consulted by their representatives before amending the Constitution to remove the Presidential age  limit.

The four justices include the Deputy Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny- Dollo, Remmy Kasule, Cheborion Barishaki and Elizabeth Musoke.

Mabirizi further faults the Constitutional court for refusing to award him the Shs20 million as costs saying he never engaged a professional lawyer to argue his petition yet he contends that he incurred expenses like other petitioners.

To this Mabirizi asks the Supreme Court to award him damages for inconvenience.

Now with Mabirizi filing his full appeal, what is remaining is for the Chief Justice Bart Katureebe to appoint a panel of 7 justices to preside over the hearing.

However Mabirizi is uncertain when his co-appellants; the 6 opposition MPs and the Uganda Law society will file their record of appeal having lodged their notices one week ago.

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KAMPALA  The Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) has reacted with consternation to a dossier that was addressed to the Inspector General of Government (IGG), alleging that some of its directors are involved in corrupt tendencies.

According to UNRA, the document is from selfish individuals with the intent to derail the work of the roads authority and tarnish its image.

In January, the IGG directed UNRA Executive Director Allen Kagina to investigate whistleblower allegations that Mary Kamuli Kuteesa, the Director Legal Services and Member of the Contracts Committee at UNRA, participated in the award of a contract to Chinese companies China Wuyi and China Communications Construction Company Limited (CCCC) which are clients of her husbands law firm without declaring a conflict of interest.

The IGG had directed Ms Kagina to investigate the allegations and give a report within 30 years.

And now in a strongly-worded August 11 statement issued by Mark Ssali, the UNRA Head of Public and Corporate Affairs, said their findings had discovered that the allegations were false and should be treated with the contempt they deserve.

It was established that neither Mary Kuteesas husband nor any of the Partners in his Law Firm had ever represented or was at the time representing the said Chinese companies involved in bidding for civil works at UNRA, the statement reads in part.

It is, therefore, our submission that the stories being propagated by a section of rumour mills are tainted with malice to misrepresent the office of the IGG and to further advance that there is an apparent crisis at the Roads Authority, the statement adds.

According to the statement, the investigation has delayed road projects such as Rukungiri-Ishasha road and Busega-Mpigi ExpressWay.

The said letters and media reports are purely intended to malign and character assassinate persons of good repute, integrity and skill working to deliver services efficiently to all Ugandans.

In one of the whistleblower petitions, they claimed that UNRA awarded the tender for the construction of the Busega-Mpigi expressway to the fourth lowest bidder, who had quoted more money, instead of the lowest person.

The contract was awarded to a joint partnership of China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation and China Railway 19th Bureau Group Co Ltd (CCECC & CRBGC).

In his June 21 letter, the whistleblower claims that whereas the lowest bidder had given a quotation of Shs390.8b to construct the 23.7km road, the UNRA Procurement Directorate instead gave to one who quoted Shs534.1b, meaning government stands to lose Shs143.2b.

It should be brought to your notice that it is nearly one year since the UNRA Procurement Directorate opened the bids on 31st August 2017. The top management in UNRA has been frustrating the procurement by imposing on the agencys Procurement Directorate and Evaluation Committee the 4th lowest evaluated bidder instead of the lowest, eligible, compliant and substantially responsive bidder as the PPDA Act directs, the whistleblower states in his letter to the IGG.

Therefore, madam IGG, it is my humble request that you crack the whip as soon as possible and saves the country from this loss because the illegal procurement is inevitable. I have information that UNRA officials are doing this in expectation of a huge financial award from the top officials of CCECC & CRBGC which is high-level corruption that your office needs to stop as soon as possible, the petitioner adds.

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KAMPALA  The ability of the 10th Parliament to conduct business in a balanced, democratic manner is in jeopardy after several opposition MPs turned down calls to join the new shadow cabinet under the stewardship of Betty Aol, PML Daily can exclusively report.

FDC party president Patrick Amuriat about two weeks ago reshuffled the leadership of the party, which has majority MPs in Parliament, in what party insiders said was intended to stamp his authority on the legislators, most of whom had backed former party president Maj Gen. (Rtd) Mugisha Mintu.

However, this website has learnt that Ms Aol has failed to form a new shadow cabinet after some of the legislators turned down her requests to become ministers.

In a democracy, a House must have opposition and ruling party MPs, with substantial leaders of committees as well as the shadow ones from the opposition.

But parliament business is likely to be affected since Aol has not formed the cabinet amid the looming Tuesday, August 14 deadline for submitting the list to the speaker.

Among the MPs that have turned down appointment is Butambala County MP Muwanga Kivumbi who has been the Shadow Internal Affairs minister.

Mr Kivumbi told PML Daily in an interview that he cannot be party to situations where outside forces dictate what the opposition will do in Parliament.

Another is Amuru Woman MP Lucy Akello, the outgoing Shadow Gender minister.

Asked whether her decision to quit was because of the happenings at Najjanankumbi, Ms Akello could neither confirm nor deny, only insisting that the two years she had served in the position are enough and that it is time for others to be given chance.

Kalungu West MP Joseph Sewungu and Masaka Municipality MP Mathias Mpuuga, all DP members, have also refused to join the shadow cabinet.

When contacted, Aol acknowledged the challenge and urged MPs to join the cabinet for the service of the nation.

The revelation is another slap in the face of FDC president Amuriat whose reshuffle of the party leadership has been welcomed with hostility.

Last week, some opposition MPs opposed to the reshuffle reportedly held a meeting in Kampala to map a way forward. There were reports that they resolved to withdraw support to the party and agreed to form a splinter group. However, we could not independently verify the claims.

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Look out Donald Trump, while youre not watching, China is quietly stealing a continent from you. And India may not be far behind.

Currently, the battle for supremacy on the African continent is being fought out between the leaders of Asias two superpowers  China and India  and, for the most part, the United States is nowhere to be seen.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi all but tripped over each other last month crisscrossing the continent on personal goodwill visits.

Meanwhile, the President of the African Development Bank had to come hat in hand to Washington, where, a source with knowledge of the situation told me, all he got to see were some officials in the Treasury Department

President Trump has still not visited the continent and has not announced plans to do so.

Why should we care? China and India care deeply. After all, Africa is home to Nigeria  poised to become the worlds third most populous country and all the challenges that pose in terms of more jobs for an increasingly youthful population, not to mention food and infrastructure.

But its also where critical, strategically essential minerals including lanthanum, cerium and neodymium, essential for the electric cars of the future, are located.

And as Akinwumi Adesina, the President of the African Development Bank, told me this week, there are 400 million hectares of arable land in the savannas of Africa that will determine the future of food in the world.

Not surprisingly, Modi announced in an address to the Ugandan Parliament, the first by a serving Indian Prime Minister, that India would be opening 18 new embassies, deepen[ing] our partnership and engagement across the vast expanse of Africa.

Xi came with an even grander proposal  membership in Chinas mega-development project: the Belt and Road initiative, initially involving the development of massive land and trading corridors across Eurasia and extending its scope even more broadly. Already, it has loaned some $94 billion to African governments and state-owned companies.

But these Chinese-led initiatives and this push into Africa have only been accompanied by considerable peril and deep challenges to the United States and its interests there.

Public debt in sub-Saharan Africa has soared from 28.5% of gross domestic product in 2012 to 48% of GDP this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, meaning broad swaths of the continent must use large chunks of their output just to service their debt.

All too often, pledged against this debt are the natural resources ranging from oil in Nigeria and Angola to rare minerals in Congo and deeply important geo-strategic locations like Djibouti.

At the same time, two-way trade between the US and Africa has plummeted from roughly $142 million in 2008 to $55 million last year, largely because the US has become increasingly energy self-sufficient, removing the need for African crude oil.

Meanwhile, as China and the US are embarking on a virulent trans-Pacific trade war, China is embedding itself in the country after country across Africa, often quite profitably, occasionally quite toxically.

Take Djibouti, the tiny nation barely the size of Vermont, which occupies a strategic corner of Africa overlooking the Gulf of Aden, through which some 12.5% to 20% of global trade passes annually.

The US maintains Camp Lemonnier with 4,000 personnel stationed in what the Navy describes as the primary base of operations for US Africa Command in the Horn of Africa.

As it happens, the base is located not far from a massive new billion dollar Doraleh Container Terminal complex that includes roads and a hotel, in addition to the port, all built by Dubai-based DP World, the mammoth owner and operator of ports and related facilities in more than 40 countries. Last year, China opened its first overseas military base right next door.

On February 22, armed Djibouti troops, without any warning, seized control of the DP World facility and claimed it for Djiboutis government.

The London Court of International Arbitration ruled the seizure illegal.

Before the Chinese arrived, we had no problems here, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, chief executive of DP World, told me in an interview. But as soon as the Chinese moved in, of course, the Chinese basically loaned them more than what they neededto the point where the government became helpless.

China has failed to take any note of this, while the Djibouti government has said it was simply rewriting the terms of its contract with DP. The London Arbitration Court disagreed and termed it an outright seizure.

Sultan Sulayem paused and continued, What is killing Africa is the infrastructure is collapsing and the only way to improve it is through public-private partnerships. And now, after Djibouti, who is going to invest?

Djibouti is hardly the only African nation to be seduced by what would appear to be easy Chinese money that will be difficult if not impossible to repay without selling its patrimony of raw materials at wholesale prices, thereby holding them hostage to or tying them ever closer to the Chinese sphere.

Nigeria agreed to a three-year $2.5 billion currency swap to boost its reserves with the understanding that the yuan would become a Nigerian reserve currency.

The African Development Bank (AfDB), Adesina told me, has a number of programs designed to stem this drift away from Western-style capitalism. But Chinas commitments may be simply too large and too seductive.

The US has few such profound ties to Africa. Yet it has become quite clear since the late years of the Obama administration that Africa is where instability can quickly morph into direct attacks on American security. Al Qaeda and ISIS have discovered vast new reservoirs and support in terms of manpower, funding and easy plunder in several African nations.

American troops have begun dying in terrorist incidents, most recently in Niger, where four US soldiers died in an ambush by ISIS.

Yet American interests diverge quite dramatically from Chinas in many corners of this complex continent. China has little interest in building strong, democratic institutions and states. Its goal is to create dependencies that will advance its own agenda of control and security. So, it is long past time for Trump to pay more than lip service to Africas needs and undertake a substantive visit to this region where he is losing a vast and potentially quite deadly war.

============================================================================

David A. Andelman, visiting scholar at the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School and director of its Red Lines Project, is a contributor to CNN where his columns won the Deadline Club Award for Best Opinion Writing.

Author of A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today, he was formerly a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Asia and Europe

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Code Enforcement Officer Jill Robinson. Image courtesy of West Valley City / Twitter.

A West Valley City, UT, code-enforcement officer was shot and killed on Thursday, and a house fire near where the woman's body was found is being investigated as arson, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

"We are shocked and heartbroken by the death of Code Enforcement Officer Jill Robinson," the city said in a statement on Twitter. "Jill worked for WVC for more than ten years, and was a trusted colleague, a loving aunt, a proud mother, and a doting grandmother."

Two West Valley City police officers arrived at the scene shortly after the shooting, reportedly ordering the suspect to get on the ground. He complied and was taken into custody without incident.

West Valley City police said 64-year-old Kevin Wayne Billings was booked into jail for investigation of aggravated arson and aggravated murder, which are first-degree felonies, and for arson, which is a second-degree felony.
A pair of longtime Dearborn Heights employees recently switched roles, but those job changes dont appear to have been welcomed as one official has already resigned from his new position.

Mayor Daniel Paletko announced at a recent City Council meeting that former Emergency Manager and Public Relations Officer Robert Ankrapp would become his chief of staff, and his administrative assistant Krystina Kramarz-Laslo would move into Ankrapps old role.

Mr. Ankrapp has lots of institutional knowledge in regards to our dealing with emergencies, and I did not want to have that lost, Paletko said.

Paletko said he was looking to reassign Kramarz-Laslo to keep people fresh in their roles. He said during the City Council meeting that she was instrumental in coordinating local officials with Wayne County and FEMA during recent flooding.

It was the logical move to make, Paletko said. Im not sure you can real easily get a replacement for (Ankrapp).

However, Councilman Bill Bazzi did not understand the decision to have Ankrapp and Kramarz-Laslo change jobs.

Bazzi said that during the meeting, you can clearly hear Paletko mutter to himself, Hes going to get fired tomorrow, while Ankrapp was speaking at the podium to the council, which Paletko later denied during the meeting when Bazzi asked if he was just threatening Ankrapp.

After the meeting, Ankrapp filed for an early retirement. He declined to comment on if the job switch was related to his planned departure.

During the meeting, Ankrapp said several times he was not sure when he would retire, and that all he wanted to do was to protect his health care. He announced after the meeting that Oct. 1 would be his last day with the city.

According to Paletko, Kramarz-Laslo is in the process of getting certified in emergency management.

Both (police and fire) chiefs thought they would work well with her, he said.

Bazzi was not convinced the move was best for the city.

I am not confident with the mayors decision to assign someone to this job who is unqualified, he said. I am concerned about the 57,000 residents and their safety.

According to multiple council members, during the recent tornado watch and subsequent tornado that touched down in Taylor, Wayne County officials tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with both Paletko and Kramarz-Laslo in order to activate the citys warning sirens. The county then contacted council members, and one member suggested that the county contact the chief of police.

The sirens didnt go off until just before 1 a.m., after much of the storm was already over.

The mayor put everyones life at risk, Bazzi said.

Councilwoman Lisa Hicks-Clayton said she wants what is best for the city.

We all want the best for our citizens, and we all need to be prepared, she said. We have a responsibility to secure safety for our residents. We work for the residents.

Prior to his job change, Ankrapp served the city for almost 13 years in a dual role.

He is a certified professional emergency manager in the state of Michigan and also was the citys Certified Emergency Response Team (CERT) coordinator.

As public information officer, Ankrapp also was responsible for all manners of public relations for the city, including press releases, web content, photography, and direction of the operation of the citys local cable TV studio (Channel 12 for Comcast, Channel 10 for Wide Open West, or Channel 99 for AT&T).

He holds a bachelors degree in mass communication from Western Michigan University and a masters degree in emergency management from Eastern Michigan University.

I am, and will always be grateful for the friendship, cooperation and support Ive been shown by our residents throughout my stay in Dearborn Heights, Ankrapp said. However, I have decided it is time to exercise my eligibility to retire, and move on to other opportunities.

Bazzi said the city is losing a valuable team member.

He is a very honorable person and he is always going above and beyond the call of duty, Bazzi said.

Ankrapp said he thanks the residents for allowing him to serve.

I hope each of you found my work in both the emergency management and the public information areas useful and of value to you over the years, Ankrapp said. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve you. Thank you again, stay safe, stay informed, and God bless.

Kramarz-Laslo declined to comment for this report.
SEOUL, South Korea, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Block Seoul, one of the largest Blockchain conferences of its kind will be held September 16th19th, 2018 in Seoul, South Korea. It gathers experts, creators and investors from around the world in a dynamic location and provides innovative technological tools for bringing them together in groundbreaking conversation.

Block Seoul Global Crypto Investors Summit September 16th-19th, 2018, Seoul, South Korea [email protected] For more information, go to blockseoul.com

Speakers at Block Seoul have been carefully chosen from amongst the most respected and knowledgeable experts in their fields. They include Former Governor of New York State, David Paterson; Former Director of U.S. National Intelligence, Lt. General James Clapper; Bobby Lee, co-founder of BTCC and board member of the Bitcoin Foundation; and Jun-Hee Ryu, PH.D, CEO of FuturePlay. These illustrious men will provide insight and inspire conversations about the future of humans and technology.

Held at the Sebitseom island complex in Seoul's Han River, at the nexus of Gangnam, Itaewon, and Yongsan, the central location of this 4-day conference will provide attendees easy access to the heart of the city while remaining removed enough to ensure an exclusive experience.



Block Seoul explores a distinct blend of two important concepts: the ever-changing landscape of technology, and how human beings use this landscape to further connections with themselves and each other. It is also a connection hub for a diverse range of ICOs, investors, financial institutions, and VCs. Integrated technology, designed specifically for this event, optimizes matchmaking and brings people together in more meaningful ways, to focus on real world relationships and synergistic collaborations.

From projects and funders to clients and services, Block Seoul provides a unique opportunity for investors and developers to discover each other and align their goals and visions for bringing growth and change to the world. Korean investors are well known as some of the most powerful in the world, and will draw attendees from around the globe to this meeting of the minds. Block Seoul attendees will leave the conference with connections that are meaningful beyond tech and Blockchain.

With the combination of leading edge technology, high-caliber speakers, a broad program and a dynamic location, Block Seoul promises to create connections and partnerships that will have a long lasting impact on the industry.

To register go to blockseoul.com

For More Information:

Contact: Jea Edman

Telegram: @jeaedman

Email: [email protected]

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Related Links

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SOURCE Block Seoul
CHANDIGARH, India, August 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Chitkara University today announced its new collaboration with Red Hat Academy to offer open source certification programs to engineering students. In association with Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source, enterprise IT solutions, Chitkara University is gearing up to offer certification programs in Cloud, Linux, Middleware, Storage and Virtualization technologies.

(Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/729615/Chitkara_University_Red_Hat_Academy.jpg )

Red Hat Academy is an open source, web-deployed and web-managed education program that is designed to provide turnkey curriculum materials to Chitkara University to start and sustain an open source and Linux curriculum program. The Red Hat Academy curriculum involves hands-on instruction across platform, middleware, and cloud technologies. Rather than learning theoretical skills, students learn practical skills based on use cases from thousands of enterprise implementations.

Chitkara University has established an unassailable reputation for associating with the industry best for benefit of its students. This has been achieved through the virtue of intensive focus on making students 'industry ready'. Chitkara University maintains close link with leading corporations and professional associations to deliver most of their professional programs. These alliances help to stay in touch with industry, ensuring that the courses are relevant, practical and deliver the skills in demand, thus enabling the graduates to hit the ground running.

"We have a long-standing commitment to our students to help them enhance their education and strengthen their position in the job market. We believe Red Hat Academy offers our students the best chance to learn in-demand open source skills that will help them all through their career. It is a proud moment for all of us at Chitkara University to be associated with world leader in open source technologies," said Dr. Madhu Chitkara, Vice Chancellor, Chitkara University.

"We're pleased to have collaborated with Chitkara University for the Red Hat Academy Program," said Shirish V Pandey, Lead, Red Hat Academy APAC. "We are impressed with Chitkara University's approach of giving the best to their students and thus shaping the right talent needed by to corporates in the campus itself. We can confidently count on Chitkara University as an important associate of RedHat's training and certified ecosystem."

About Chitkara University:

In the year 2002, Chitkara Educational Trust established its Punjab campus 30 kilometres from Chandigarh, on the Chandigarh-Patiala National Highway. In the year 2010, Chitkara University was established by the Punjab State Legislature under 'The Chitkara University Act'. Chitkara University, the best university in Punjab is a government-recognized university with the right to confer degrees as per the Sections 2(f) and 22(1) of the UGC Act, 1956.

Chitkara University has been founded by Dr. Ashok Chitkara and Dr. Madhu Chitkara who have been passionate teachers for more than 40 years now. Chitkara Education brings with it a reputation that has been earned through years of serving the career-needs of the student community. It is a reputation for excellence and innovation among coveted employers for preparing graduates who have the knowledge and skills they need for success in their workplace.

Chitkara University graduates go on to great careers, as they have their hands on the responsive teaching methodology. Students from around the county are attracted to Chitkara University because of their commitment to teaching excellence, because they conduct research that makes a difference, because of their industry partnerships and because of their tailored courses. This difference has been acknowledged by students, parent, alumni, government, and industry since the inception of the university.

Within a decade, most of Chitkara University academic programs are ranked among the top 50 programs in the country which speaks volumes about their string academic heritage, highly committed faculty, extensive industry collaborations, great international connections, and state-of-the-art campus facilities.

About Red Hat Academy:

Red Hat Academy provides a curriculum to help education institutions keep pace with the demands of industry. The curriculum involves hands-on instruction across platform, middleware, and cloud technologies built with input from Red Hat development, support, and field consulting teams. Unlike a generic 'distribution agnostic' Linux curriculum, Red Hat's curriculum is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the leading enterprise Linux platform. Rather than learning theoretical skills, students learn practical skills based on use cases from thousands of enterprise implementations.

Media Contact:

Shravan Medempudi

[email protected]

+91-8374899991

Ogle Media



SOURCE Chitkara University
BANGALORE, August 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Demonstrates one prefabricated home in just 1 hour

Felicity Adobe has launched SwarnaGriha I - 'Homes for All', the first in the series of affordable housing projects, in Annenahalli, Tumkur that offers the best affordable lifestyle requirements to the EWS and LIG category. Thus, it shares Prime Minister's dream to provide housing for all by 2022 under Prime Minister Awas Yojana (PMAY)-a government scheme.

Speaking on the launch, Mr. Preenand Premachandran, - Founder and CEO, Felicity Adobe, said, "A good shelter is a birth right of every citizen in our country. Our objective is to contribute to the aspirations of people who cannot afford an appropriate living owing to their low earning capacity. Thus; we started SwarnaGriha, a well thought of and well-planned affordable project series that promise to offer best amenities at the lowest price."

SwarnaGriha I is the first such project that has given a holistic approach to affordability by giving a lot of easy options to buyers. There are no pre EMIs to be paid, only minimum 10% initial advance needs to be paid and there is no payment till the possession. Also the buyer can avail upto 90% as loan amount. Due to credit linked subsidy scheme, the buyer can pay an EMI as low as Rs. 2,500, adds Preenand.

SwarnaGriha I is Tumkur Urban Development Authority (TUDA) approved and houses 268 units of 1 BHK on four floors. It offers buyers well designed homes with best amenities including car parking, children's play area and passenger lifts for every two blocks.

Mr. K G Basavalingappa, Retd. Principal, Rotary Assistant Governor & Secretary TOS, Tumkur, said, "Buying a house is a dream for every individual. If high quality residential projects like SwarnaGriha have come up at an affordable cost, it is a sign that nation is progressing."

Prefabricated construction

Prefabricated construction technology sets this affordable housing project apart wherein two houses are built in a day. Felicity Adobe demonstrated the construction by installing precast walls/blocks and raised into a house in a span of one hour.

Prefabricated technology was used in order to provide quality construction at an affordable price in a short timeline. With this, the turnover time has been reduced to 50% against the conventional constructional methodologies.

Mr. Pranav Sharma, Founder and Director, Felicity Adobe said, "The world is embracing new technology to improve the quality, durability and aesthetic designs in shorter time duration. We identified prefabricated technology as it can save time and yet give precision and quality. It helped us to maintain standardization in all the units."

Dr. T V Mallesh, HOD-Civil Engineering, SSIT, said, "Prefabricated technology can make a huge difference in workmanship and maintenance of uniformed strength in all the houses. Construction time is drastically reduced thereby meeting the deadline of the project launch."

SwarnaGriha is being constructed using the most modern technology available yet proving that affordable cost does not mean low cost. Mr. Suneeth Kumar, Director, Sycon Infra Pvt. Ltd., said, "SwarnaGriha-I stands for the famous saying 'Home is where the heart is'. It was conceptualized to provide a home that is affordable but at the same time durable."



Loan Availability

Without banking support from ICICI Bank, SwarnaGriha would have remained just a dream. The team from ICICI Bank was moved by the social cause Felicity Adobe held. "Initially, we were hesitant for sanctioning the loan to the low income category of buyers. But we were impressed by the noble idea, commitment, execution and planning of SwarnaGriha's team had. We agreed to be a part of the project and we are committed to be a part of providing housing for all," said Mr. Deepak Shetty, Regional Head-Sales, ICICI Bank.

Mr. Sreenivas .J, a labour of automobile company happily shared his home buying experience at SwarnaGriha. He said, "I always believed that owning a house is a farfetched dream. It is a scenario where people like us can't even think of buying a plot, but with the help of SwarnaGriha team, we bought a neatly built house. I'm deeply grateful to SwarnaGriha for making all the processes very smooth."

Eligibility under PMAY

SwarnaGriha I is located in the industrial hub, Annenahalli, Tumkur. The site is in close proximity to various civic utilities. Due to industrial estates around the location, Annenahalli is well connected to several industries across Tumkur.

A thorough research on the demography showed that the vicinity is populated with around 30,000 employees working across various industry segments. This populace falls under government proposed categories eligible for PMAY scheme that includes EWS (Economically Weaker Section) with an income less than Rs. 3 Lakh, Light Income Group (LIG) with an annual household income ranging between Rs. 3 Lakh to Rs. 6 Lakh, Medium Income Group (MIG1) who earned less than Rs. 12 Lakh and Medium Income Group (MIG2) whose income is between Rs. 12 Lakh to Rs. 18 Lakh. Felicity Adobe meticulously planned the project in a way to provide housing needs for all the home buyers in these categories.

For buyers buying a home in SwarnaGriha I, the four criteria mentioned under PMAY scheme are mandatory such as beneficiary's maximum age to be 70 years, annual income less than Rs. 3 Lakh (for EWS), Rs. 3 Lakh to Rs. 6 lakh for (LIG) since Feb 2017, beneficiary should not have an own dwelling unit on the name of any family member in any part of India and an adult female membership is mandatory in the property ownership. If these criteria are met, the buyer can avail a subsidy of upto Rs. 2.67 lakh.

Next series of SwarnaGriha

With the success of SwarnaGriha-I, Felicity Adobe is ruminating over building SwarnaGriha-II in Vasanthanarasipura in Tumkur. K N Shiva Kumar, President, Vasanthanarasapura Industries Association & Council Member of KASSIA, said, "We welcome the initiative of Felicity Adobe to build affordable houses in Vasanathanarasapura, which is the biggest industrial area in the country with 10,000 acres of land allocated to industries. We are happy that the housing needs of this region will be met by SwarnaGriha."



About Felicity Adobe LLP

Felicity Adobe LLP is a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) firm that has two partners Hebron and Valante Lifespace Creators.

Media Contact:

Tejus V

[email protected]

+91-80-43728002

Felicity Adobe LLP



SOURCE Felicity Adobe LLP
ALBANY, New York, August 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The global barite market was valued at US$ 1,276.60 Mn in 2017 and is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 4.8% from 2018 to 2026, according to a new report published by Transparency Market Research (TMR) titled 'Barite Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 2018-2026.' The global barite market is driven by the rise in demand in the oil & gas industry. North America accounts for major share of the global barite market, due to the increase in production of oil and gas in the region.

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Request a Sample of Barite Market: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=2404

Rise in Production of Oil and Gas and Increase in Drill Rig Count Projected to Drive Market

Barite possesses high specific gravity, and is thus used as weighting agent in drilling fluids. It is used to elevate hydrostatic pressure to counteract high-pressure zones during drilling activities. In this process, barite is crushed and mixed with water and other materials. It is then pumped into the drill hole. The weight of this mixture counteracts the force of oil and gas when released from the ground. This allows rig operators to prevent the explosive release of oil and gas from the ground. Currently, drilling constitutes more than 70% share of the global consumption of barite. However, consumption of barite in drilling mud fluctuates from year to year, as it is dependent on the amount of exploration drilling for oil and gas. This, in turn, depends on prices of oil and gas. The drill rig count is estimated to rise owing to the increase in demand for natural gas. This, in turn, is projected to augment the demand for barite.

View in-depth table of contents for this report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/report-toc/2404

Expansion in Paints & Coatings and Rubber & Plastics Industries to Offer Attractive Growth Opportunities

Barite is employed as filler agent in paints, coatings, rubber, and plastics, as it possesses beneficial properties such as chemical inertness, nontoxicity, and high specific gravity. It is used as pigment in paints, while it is employed as a weighted filler in paper, textile, and rubber industries. The global paints & coatings industry is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.4% during the forecast period. This is anticipated to boost the consumption of barite in this application in the near future. Asia Pacific is projected to dominate the global market, as the region is a major producer of paints and coatings in the world. The plastics industry is projected to expand at a CAGR of more than 6.0% by 2020. The global plastics industry was valued at US$ 298.3 Bn in 2014 and is likely to cross the US$ 500.0 Bn mark by 2020. This is anticipated to provide lucrative opportunities to the barite market. Significant growth in paints & coatings and rubber industries is estimated to fuel the consumption of barite.

Stringent Government Regulations and Monitoring to Hamper Barite Market

Strict government monitoring and interference over the production of barite in major countries such as China and India has adversely affected the barite market. This has led to a severe shortage of barite in the market. Governments of countries across the world have implemented stringent regulations with regard to the environmental impacts of mining. Companies need to adhere to acts such as the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the U.S. Environmental Protection Act in order to obtain leases and licenses from governments. The global barite market is also projected to be hampered due to the implementation of stringent regulations regarding the usage of toxic metals such as mercury, cadmium, arsenic, and lead.

Request for Multiple Chapters on Global Barite Market: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=MC&rep_id=2404

North America Dominates Global Barite Market

In terms of region, North America held major share of more than 30% of the global barite market in 2017. Significant rise in production of oil and gas and increase in drill rig count in the U.S. have been the primary factors driving the demand for barite in the region since the last few years. Middle East & Africa is also one of the key consumers of barite, as it is the largest producer of crude oil and natural gas in the world. Asia Pacific is also a prominent consumer of barite. Barite is largely employed in paints, coatings, rubber, and plastics industries in the region. It is also used in drilling mud application in Asia Pacific, especially ASEAN, due to the rise in production and exploration of oil and gas in the region. Furthermore, Asia Pacific is expected to be a rapidly growing region of the barite market during the forecast period owing to the rise in demand for barite as filler in China, India, and ASEAN.

Ask for Discount on Premium Research Report (US$ 5795) With Complete TOC: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=D&rep_id=2404

High Degree of Competition among Established Players

Large numbers of small- and large-scale manufacturers operate in the global barite market. These companies offer different grades of barite for various applications. Key players profiled in the report on the global barite market are The Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corporation Limited, Ashapura Minechem Limited, Anglo Pacific Minerals, Schlumberger Limited, Baker Hughes Incorporated, Excalibar Minerals LLC, International Earth Products LLC, Milwhite Inc., Oren Hydrocarbons Private Limited, CIMBAR Performance Minerals, and P&S Barite Mining Co., Ltd.

Global Barite Market, by Grade

Up to Sp. Gr. 3.9

Gr. 4.0

Gr. 4.1

Gr. 4.2

Gr. 4.3 & Above

Global Barite Market, by Application

Drilling Mud

Pharmaceuticals

Rubber & Plastics

Others

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SOURCE Transparency Market Research
Passenger traffic rises at Frankfurt Airport and across Fraport's Group airports worldwide  New daily record of 237,966 passengers achieved at FRA

FRANKFURT, Germany, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- FRA/dsn-gk - In July 2018, Frankfurt Airport (FRA) welcomed some 6.9 million passengers  an increase of 7.5 percent. During the January-to-July-period, FRA achieved accumulated passenger growth of 8.8 percent, with European traffic remaining the main growth driver. FRA posted a new daily record on July 29, when 237,966 passengers traveled through Germany's largest aviation hub.

The number of aircraft movements rose by 7.3 percent to 46.648 takeoffs and landings. Accumulated maximum takeoff weights (MTOWs) expanded by 3.2 percent to about 2.8 million metric tons. Cargo traffic (airfreight + airmail) was the only category to post a decline, with 175,960 metric tons being handled at FRA (down 6.4 percent). This was attributable, among other things, to a reduced number of freighter aircraft operating from FRA and a decreased amount of belly freight being shipped on passenger aircraft (due to higher passenger numbers).

Airports in Fraport's international portfolio all showed positive development. Ljubljana Airport (LJU) in Slovenia remained almost level year-on-year, with 198,911 passengers being served (up 0.4 percent). Combined traffic at Fraport's two Brazilian airports in Fortaleza (FOR) and Porto Alegre (POA) rose by 6.8 percent to some 1.4 million passengers. The 14 Greek regional airports achieved a 7.2 percent increase in combined traffic to about 5.4 million passengers. The three busiest gateways in Fraport's Greek portfolio were Rhodes Airport (RHO) with some 1.1 million passengers (up 4.0 percent), Thessaloniki Airport (SKG) with 812,540 passengers (up 7.2 percent) and Corfu Airport (CFU) with 686,894 passengers (up 10.9 percent).

Lima Airport (LIM) in Peru reported an increase of 5.9 percent to about 2.0 million passengers. The Fraport Twin Star airports of Varna (VAR) and Burgas (BOJ) in Bulgaria, combined, served 1.4 million passengers, representing a rise of 7.3 percent. Antalya Airport (AYT) in Turkey registered almost 4.8 million passengers (up 15.6 percent), while Hanover Airport (HAJ) in northern Germany welcomed 725,392 passenger (up 9.9 percent). Traffic at Pulkovo Airport (LED) in St. Petersburg, Russia, rose by 9.7 percent to about 2.1 million passengers. Xi'an Airport (XIY) in China gained an increase of 9.1 percent to around 4.0 million passengers.

Print-quality photos of Fraport AG and Frankfurt Airport are available for free downloading via the photo library on the Fraport Web site. For TV news and information broadcasting purposes only, we also offer free footage material for downloading. If you wish to meet a member of our Media Relations team when at Frankfurt Airport, please do not hesitate to contact us. Our contact details are available here.

For further information about Fraport AG please click here.

Fraport Traffic Figures July 2018 Fraport Group Airports1

July 2018 Year to Date (YTD) 2018





Fraport Passengers Cargo* Movements Passengers Cargo Movements Fully-consolidated airports share (%) Month  % Month  % Month  % YTD  % YTD  % YTD  % FRA Frankfurt Germany 100.00 6,868,718 7.5 173,009 -6.6 46,648 7.3 39,545,890 8.8 1,248,256 -1.3 293,709 8.4 LJU Ljubljana Slovenia 100.00 198,911 0.4 1,052 11.1 3,571 9.1 1,030,106 11.8 7,103 7.6 20,519 4.8 Fraport Brasil 100.00 1,423,911 6.8 7,270 47.5 12,758 7.1 8,299,976 4.8 47,102 46.5 79,053 4.3 FOR Fortaleza Brazil 100.00 631,038 1.5 3,642 16.3 5,565 6.3 3,603,255 4.5 24,689 21.9 31,929 5.2 POA Porto Alegre Brazil 100.00 792,873 11.5 3,628 > 100.0 7,193 7.8 4,696,721 4.9 22,413 88.4 47,124 3.7 Fraport Regional Airports of Greece A+B 73.40 5,350,820 7.2 733 48.2 41,944 7.3 15,980,566 9.8 4,623 8.6 131,682 7.8 Fraport Regional Airports of Greece A 73.40 2,807,078 6.5 564 43.3 20,786 6.0 9,017,195 8.0 3,457 5.6 71,847 6.4 CFU Kerkyra (Corfu) Greece 73.40 686,894 10.9 31 n.a. 4,926 11.7 1,787,072 17.9 103 > 100.0 14,191 22.5 CHQ Chania (Crete) Greece 73.40 526,454 -2.4 36 -13.7 3,198 -1.3 1,693,701 -0.7 260 -9.3 10,822 -2.7 EFL Kefalonia Greece 73.40 165,876 17.5 0 n.a. 1,422 17.2 406,499 25.4 1 -63.4 3,726 22.1 KVA Kavala Greece 73.40 66,950 10.7 9 -27.4 593 1.2 244,668 47.3 48 -23.0 2,575 29.3 PVK Aktion/Preveza Greece 73.40 142,121 2.6 0 n.a. 1,172 4.4 303,765 3.5 0 n.a. 2,842 1.5 SKG Thessaloniki Greece 73.40 812,540 7.2 488 43.7 6,769 5.1 3,634,488 4.2 3,041 4.1 30,733 0.7 ZTH Zakynthos Greece 73.40 406,243 7.3 0 -100.0 2,706 4.0 947,002 11.1 4 > 100.0 6,958 8.2 Fraport Regional Airports of Greece B 73.40 2,543,742 7.9 169 67.2 21,158 8.7 6,963,371 12.2 1,167 18.4 59,835 9.5 JMK Mykonos Greece 73.40 316,126 13.0 18 n.a. 4,507 8.2 736,001 14.7 53 > 100.0 9,552 11.0 JSI Skiathos Greece 73.40 108,668 3.6 0 n.a. 954 -3.2 231,004 4.6 0 n.a. 2,182 -1.2 JTR Santorini (Thira) Greece 73.40 385,650 11.0 18 n.a. 3,492 14.3 1,212,195 18.0 101 91.7 10,871 19.0 KGS Kos Greece 73.40 523,024 11.1 25 > 100.0 3,652 14.7 1,358,454 18.0 149 19.4 10,481 18.1 MJT Mytilene (Lesvos) Greece 73.40 67,950 8.1 28 -3.2 749 12.5 253,499 3.9 224 -1.0 3,038 -7.2 RHO Rhodes Greece 73.40 1,052,860 4.0 55 22.2 6,843 4.1 2,927,131 7.9 479 24.9 20,528 5.9 SMI Samos Greece 73.40 89,464 13.5 25 -0.6 961 14.5 245,087 15.6 160 -6.9 3,183 0.0 LIM Lima Peru2 70.01 2,007,078 5.9 24,566 3.9 17,098 4.1 12,645,630 9.2 155,963 6.6 111,864 5.9 Fraport Twin Star 60.00 1,436,715 7.3 539 -76.1 9,401 5.8 3,088,595 17.3 5,034 -44.8 22,891 13.4 BOJ Burgas Bulgaria 60.00 945,837 5.7 525 -76.6 6,053 4.4 1,809,348 12.1 4,972 -44.5 12,868 8.4 VAR Varna Bulgaria 60.00 490,878 10.7 14 3.1 3,348 8.5 1,279,247 25.6 62 -61.5 10,023 20.6





























At equity consolidated airports2

























AYT Antalya Turkey 51.00 4,841,514 15.6 n.a. n.a. 27,122 19.4 17,093,016 25.0 n.a. n.a. 101,091 22.5 HAJ Hannover Germany 30.00 725,392 9.9 992 8.4 7,836 5.6 3,486,101 8.2 9,807 0.3 44,711 2.7 LED St. Petersburg Russia 25.00 2,103,426 9.7 n.a. n.a. 17,428 11.1 10,054,894 11.0 n.a. n.a. 94,162 9.0 XIY Xi'an China 24.50 4,000,522 9.1 24,652 18.2 28,885 2.6 25,576,355 7.8 159,517 11.3 189,161 3.8

Frankfurt Airport3





July 2018 Month  % YTD 2018  % Passengers 6,869,038 7.5 39,548,112 8.8 Cargo (freight & mail) 175,960 -6.4 1,272,670 -0.9 Aircraft movements 46,648 7.3 293,709 8.4 MTOW (in metric tons)4 2,846,380 3.2 18,125,057 5.5 PAX/PAX-flight5 156.0 -0.2 143.9 0.2 Seat load factor (%) 85.0

78.9

Punctuality rate (%) 60.8

67.8











Frankfurt Airport PAX share  %6 PAX share  %6 Regional Split Month YTD Continental 65.2 11.8 64.4 12.7 Germany 9.8 5.8 10.9 4.5 Europe (excl. GER) 55.4 12.9 53.5 14.6 Western Europe 45.7 12.3 44.5 14.3 Eastern Europe 9.7 15.9 9.0 15.7 Intercontinental 34.8 0.3 35.6 2.4 Africa 4.0 5.7 4.2 10.4 Middle East 4.8 1.4 5.3 2.5 North America 14.0 2.6 12.5 2.8 Central & South Amer. 2.7 1.6 3.4 0.4 Far East 9.3 -5.9 10.3 -0.5 Australia 0.0 n.a. 0.0 n.a.

Definitions:1 According to ACI definition: Passengers: commercial traffic only (arr+dep+transit counted once), Cargo: commercial and non-commercial traffic (arr+dep excluding transit, in metric tons), Movements: commercial and non-commercial traffic (arr+dep); 2Preliminary figures; 3Commercial and non-commercial traffic: Passengers (arr+dep+transit counted once, incl. general aviation), Cargo (arr+dep+transit counted once, in metric tons), Movements (arr+dep); 4Inbound traffic only; 5 Scheduled and charter traffic; 6absolute change vs. previous year in % ; *Cargo =Freight + mail

Fraport AG

Maria Linden Telephone: +49-69-690-70557 Corporate Communications E-mail: m.linden@fraport.de Media Relations Internet: www.fraport.com 60547 Frankfurt, Germany Facebook: www.facebook.com/FrankfurtAirport

Related Links

http://http://www.fraport.com



SOURCE Fraport AG
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Seizure of Summa Group co-owners assets upheld

 TASS, Mikhail Pochuyev

12:59 13/08/2018

MOSCOW, August 13 (RAPSI)  The Moscow City Court on Monday upheld the seizure of bank accounts and property belonging to a co-owner of Summa Group and ex-member of Russias Federation Council Magomed Magomedov charged with embezzling 2.5 billion rubles ($43.5 million), RAPSI reports from the courtroom.

The court dismissed an appeal filed by the defendant seeking to overturn a lower courts ruling.

Moscows Tverskoy District Court seized assets owned by Summa Group owners Ziyavudin Magomedov and his brother Magomed in April. Overall, the seized property includes four cars, two apartments, shares in several companies and money located at bank accounts, according to the courts press service.

Ziyavudin Magomedov and Magomed Magomedov are involved in the organization of a gang, embezzlement of 2.5 billion rubles from the state budget and withdrawal of some of these assets abroad, investigators claim. Magomed Magomedov is also charged with illegal weapon possession. They have been detained along with another defendant, ex- CEO of Intex construction company Arthur Maksidov. Two more defendants in the case, who allegedly fled to the United Arab Emirates, were arrested in absentia and put on the international wanted list.
Moscow court upholds seizure of bank accounts in bankruptcy commissioner Smetanin's case

 RIA Novosti, Aleksei Panov

13:59 13/08/2018

MOSCOW, August 13 (RAPSI)  The Moscow City Court has upheld seizure of three bank accounts belonging to Oleg Smetanin, the former bankruptcy commissioner of several Rosneft subsidiaries, charged with embezzlement of 300 million rubles ($5.3 million), lawyer Eduard Geraskin has told RAPSI.

In June, a court ruled to seize 1.6 million rubles ($23,500) located on Smetanins accounts in Promsvyazbank.

Investigators believe that Smetanin and other defendant Sergey Bogdanov have forged some documents; as a result, a paper debt amounting to 3.2 billion rubles (about $ 57 million at the current exchange rate) has been registered with a Rosneft subsidiary. According to Russias Interior Ministry press-service, the defendants used the forged documents to transfer 300 million rubles to the accounts of a dummy company. Later, they cashed out and embezzled the money, the press-service noted.

Both Smetanin and Bogdanov are charged with embezzlement.
Investigation into murder of Russian penitentiary official who fought corruption complete

 RIA Novosti, Yevgeny Odinokov

16:59 13/08/2018

MOSCOW, August 13 (RAPSI)  Investigation into a criminal case against Sabir Sadykov charged with killing Russias Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) official, Colonel Nikolay Chernov, has been completed, the Main Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee for St. Petersburg has told RAPSI.

According to investigators, Chernov, the head of the technical supervision department for the FSINs St. Petersburg Directorate, was murdered in order to hide corruption crimes that took place during construction of a new detention center in the region.

The defendant admitted guilt in full and made a pre-trial deal with investigators. The case will be forwarded to a court soon.

Investigators believe that in late 2016 Sadykov was approached by ex-deputy chief of the FSIN St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region directorate Sergey Moiseyenko, who proposed to kill Chernov, after the latter began to counteract corruption plans of Moiseyenko. In turn, Sadykov received a gun and ammunition from Igor Zakharov.

The case documents read that in March 2017 Sadykov appointed a meeting with Chernov on a highway. On March 2, the defendant allegedly shot the victim, who died in a hospital on March 7.

The criminal case against Moiseyenko and Zakharov is nearly complete.

Moiseyenko also stands charged with taking bribes from CEO of Petroinvest company engaged in the construction of a detention center Ruslan Khamkhokov and other businessmen Viktor Kudrin.

According to investigation, in March 2010, then deputy chief of the FSIN St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region directorate Sergey Moiseyenko promised Khamkhokov, to assist in execution of necessary documents on rendered services during the construction of a local pretrial detention center for the money reward in the amount of not less than 10% each transfer of funds allocated for the work performance to the Petroinvest accounts. Investigators claim that from March 2010 to August 2015, Khamkhokov gave about 350 million rubles ($5.2 million) to Moiseyenko through intermedia.

According to case papers, from 2007 to 2015, the Federal Penitentiary Services (FSIN) St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region directorate and General Building Company headed by Kudrin signed contracts on the construction of a pretrial detention center. The company allegedly received over 12.3 billion rubles ($213.5 million) as payment for its services but did not fulfilled its obligations. Investigators claim that Kudrin violated contract provisions and embezzled over 56.5 million rubles ($980,000).

As reported earlier, between May 2007 and December 2012, Nikolay Barinov, then FSIN deputy director and supervisor of building a detention facility in St. Petersburg, regularly received bribes from top managers of firms engaged in the construction.

In particular, he promised Khamkhokov and Kudrin, to assist in execution of necessary documents on rendered services for the money reward in the amount of not less than 12% of each funds transfer of funds allocated for the work performance to the companies accounts. The construction companies heads transferred the money through Moiseyenko.
These courts will be set up in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, and Hyderabad

The corporate affairs ministry has proposed setting up special courts under the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to deal with insolvency cases.

Ministry officials say eight courts are proposed to be set up for this purpose.

These courts will be set up in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, and Hyderabad, a senior ministry official said.

While three courts are proposed to be set up in Mumbai, two may come up in Delhi and one each in Chennai, Kolkata, and Hyderabad.

After these are set up, Mumbai will have seven courts, Delhi six, and Chennai, Kolkata, and Hyderabad three each under the NCLT.

When the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) came up with its first list of non-performing assets to be referred to the NCLT last year, experts had said there would be a burden on the tribunal despite it having 11 benches.

The NCLT handles company law cases and mergers and acquisitions, apart from insolvency and bankruptcy cases.

A total of 9,073 cases are under consideration in the NCLT as on January 31, 2018, including 1,630 cases of merger and amalgamation, 2,511 cases of insolvency, and 4,932 cases under other sections of the Companies Act, 2013, according to the governments reply in Parliament.

Subsequently, in the months after that, the number of cases has doubled, sources said.

Till the end of June, 6,326 companies had filed cases in the NCLT under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.

Of those, a majority has gone into liquidation.

The NCLT has given liquidation orders in 4,390 cases and 907 cases have been referred for resolution.

Of the first 12 cases referred by the RBI, three have been resolved.

Apart from the government working towards a cross-border insolvency framework that will require the upgrade of infrastructure at the NCLT, e-courts will be set up so that in the jurisdictions that sign an understanding with the Indian government, cross-border insolvency proceedings can take place.

A committee is discussing the contours of cross-border insolvency provisions.

Globally, the UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Law) Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency, 1997, has emerged as the most widely accepted legal framework to deal with cross-border insolvency issues.

Owing to the growing prevalence of multinational insolvencies, the Model Law has been adopted by 44 countries, including Singapore, the UK, and the US.

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code came into effect in 2016.

Photograh: Joshua Lott/Reuters
Among Sensex constituents, Vedanta fell 3.40 per cent, followed by SBI 3.17 per cent, Yes Bank 3.11 per cent, Axis Bank 1.68 per cent, ONGC 1.60 per cent, Power Grid 1.52 per cent and HDFC 1.48 per cent.

The benchmark Sensex on Monday logged its second straight session loss, tumbling over 224 points to a near two-week low of 37,645 on massive sell-offs mainly in financial stocks as the battered rupee and Turkish financial crisis spooked investors.

The broader NSE Nifty too fell by 73.75 points to end at 11,355.75.

The Indian rupee on Monday plummeted to its life-time low of 69.85 (intra-day) against the US dollar, tracking global cues.

A massive selling pressure was seen in financials and PSU shares after constant fall in Turkish lira fuelled demand for safe havens.

"Flare-up of tensions between the US and Turkey hit global financial markets by surprise and the ripple effect has seen in domestic market too.

Despite upbeat June IIP growth of 7 per cent, weak global cues and deprecating INR led investors to book profits.

However, considering revival in corporate earnings, declining oil prices, improving domestic macros and reversal in FIIs flows, the downside for the market is largely protected," Vinod Nair, head of research, Geojit Financial Services Ltd, said.

Among banking stocks, SBI dived 3.17 per cent after the lender reported a hefty loss of Rs 4,876 crore for the June quarter.

Other lenders such as Punjab National Bank, Yes Bank, Bank of Baroda, Federal Bank, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank fell by up to 3.37 per cent.

Among Sensex constituents, Vedanta fell 3.40 per cent, followed by SBI 3.17 per cent, Yes Bank 3.11 per cent, Axis Bank 1.68 per cent, ONGC 1.60 per cent, Power Grid 1.52 per cent and HDFC 1.48 per cent.

Other laggards were RIL 1.40 per cent, Asian Paints 1.39 per cent, NTPC 1.28 per cent, HDFC Bank 1.15 per cent, Tata Steel 1.10 per cent, HUL 0.90 per cent, ICICI Bank 0.88 per cent, Tata Motors 0.68 per cent, Maruti Suzuki 0.67 per cent, Hero MotoCorp 0.48 per cent, Adani Ports 0.29 per cent and Bharti Airtel 0.14 per cent.

Asian and European shares too fell tracking last week's sell-offs on Wall Street.

Investor sentiment took a hefty blow as Turkish currency, lira, crisis fears spread to financial markets globally.

Meanwhile, the outlook for the country's banking sector is likely to remain negative until its capital position strengthens in proportion to the bad loans and weak financial performances, according to Fitch Ratings.

The rating agency said the $151-billion stock of bad loans remains a risk for the sector's weak income base, which is vulnerable to ageing provisions and slower non-performing loans (NPLs) resolution.

The Sensex, which resumed lower at 37,693.19, continued its slide and touched a low of 37,559.26 as selling intensified.

However, the benchmark recovered marginally on value-buying and covering-up of short positions. It ended at 37,644.90, down 224.33 points, or 0.59 per cent.

The gauge had lost 155.14 in the previous session.

The broader NSE Nifty, after cracking the 10,400-mark, ended 73.75 points, or 0.65 per cent, lower at 11,355.75.

Sectoral indices led by oil and gas, PSU, financial, energy, banking, infrastructure, power, metal, realty, auto and capital goods ended in the negative terrain, falling by up to 1.93 per cent.

Vedanta, ONGC, HDFC, Reliance Industries, HUL, Asian Paints, Power Grid, NTPC, Tata Motors, Maruti Suzuki, Hero Motorcorp, Adani Ports and Tata Steel contributed the most to the losses in the 30-share Sensex pack.

However, IT and teck stocks ended in the positive zone as the rupee fell.

Foreign funds sold shares worth Rs 510.66 crore, while domestic institutional investors bought equities worth Rs 457.83 crore on Friday, provisional data showed.

The broader markets depicted a weak trend, with the BSE small-cap index falling 0.78 per cent and the mid-cap 0.70 per cent.

In sectoral terms, the BSE oil and gas index emerged as the worst performer, losing 1.93 per cent, followed by PSU 1.90 per cent, energy 1.70 per cent, finance 1.33 per cent, bankex 1.20 per cent, infrastructure 1.04 per cent, power 0.99 per cent, metal 0.78 per cent, realty 0.72 per cent, auto 0.69 per cent and capital goods 0.33 per cent.

However, IT index topped the list by rising 1.24 per cent, followed by teck 0.77 per cent, healthcare 0.55 per cent, FMCG 0.16 per cent and consumer durables 0.06 per cent.

In contrast, Infosys was the top gainer in the Sensex pack, rising 1.75 per cent followed by Wipro 1.31 per cent and TCS 0.33 per cent as the rupee hit record low.

Other gainers were Sun Pharma 1.65 per cent, M&M 0.96 per cent, Coal India 0.89 per cent, IndusInd Bank 0.62 per cent, ITC 0.39 per cent, L&T 0.29 per cent and Kotak Bank 0.06 per cent.

On the macro front, industrial output recorded a five-month high growth of 7 per cent in June as the production of consumer durables and capital goods picked up pace ahead of the festive season.

The data was announced post market hours on Friday.

Photograph: Shailesh Andrade/Reuters
'Most Assamese don't understand a word like ghuspethiya and its insulting connotation.'

IMAGE: Maya Devi Sonar, left, and Malati Thapa, residents of Hatigaon, show documents outside the NRC Seva Kendra in Guwahati stating that their and their family members' names were not included in the final National Register of Citizens draft. Photograph: PTI Photo

Relatives of a former President, a former chief minister of the state, an ex-serviceman who served for 30 years, wife of an MLA of the ruling party, and an MLA of the principal Opposition party are among those 4 million people left out of the final draft of Assam's National Register of Citizens.

Clearly, the draft has a large scope for correction and these persons and others like them are most likely to be included in the final list of citizens.

But there seems to be no clear policy about those who will eventually be declared 'non-citizens'.

As the exercise was carried out under the Supreme Court's monitoring, questions are being raised why the apex court did not ask the government, or lay out guidelines, to make a plan to deal with such people and decide the future course of action.

In the first part of the interview, Sanjib Baruah, professor of political studies at Bard College in New York, explained the history of migration and the 'foreigner' question in Assam.

"Despite the rhetoric of some of our politicians, when we look at the overall picture, the NRC exercise and the citizenship amendment bill for them are all about pleasing domestic constituencies," Professor Baruah tells Rediff.com's Utkarsh Mishra in the concluding part of the interview.

How can the NRC fulfil the demand of securing the privileges of the indigenous people of Assam when Indian citizens who are not native Assamese will also be included in the list?

Assam is not a state where there is any legal way to separate a group of people as 'indigenous' and safeguard their interests.

One can, of course, make an argument that Assam needs such laws. But that is not the current legal situation.

Under the current law, Assam is like most other Indian states -- say, a state like Gujarat, Maharashtra or Tamil Nadu -- where there is no legal way of defining or safeguarding the interests of indigenous people.

The situation is different in a number of neighbouring states that were 'excluded areas' of some kind in colonial times, states like Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland or Mizoram or Meghalaya.

You are quite right. Since the NRC is a register of Indian citizens, to expect it to safeguard the 'privileges for the indigenous people of Assam' would be barking up the wrong tree.

For that we will need different conversation and a different set of tools.

Should the Supreme Court have focussed more on issuing guidelines about what should be done with those left out of the final list?

Of course it should have, and it must.

Statelessness -- the condition of being formally excluded from citizenship everywhere -- has been called the world's 'hidden catastrophe'.

Our Supreme Court is known globally for its pubic interest jurisprudence. It has an obligation to do all it can to prevent statelessness, not contribute to its creation.

The issue may not lead to a civil war, as Mamata Banerjee says, but it will certainly lead to polarisation on a nation-wide scale.

Already, BJP leaders in various states are raising the demand to conduct a similar exercise on a national level.

Do you see the BJP benefiting electorally from such a situation?

I don't see the BJP benefitting from the NRC electorally in Assam.

Already, we can see that the Barak Valley is furious about the NRC for understandable reasons: The memories of Partition there are very different from that in the Brahmaputra Valley.

The BJP would have, of course, liked to pass the Citizenship Amendment Bill before the completion of the NRC. But they could not.

Since people -- including those running our national political parties -- seem to know so little about the modern history of Assam, they expected that Assamese public opinion on the Citizenship Amendment Bill to be exactly the same as that in Delhi -- a city of Partition refugees.

For the moment, the Citizenship Amendment Bill has been shelved because of protests in Assam. The bill will separate out the Hindus from the list of people now excluded from the NRC.

That will please a large number of people, but will alienate an equally big number.

The BJP would like to postpone this bill till after the next election, but they will face huge pressure from Bengali Hindus in Assam not to do that.

In the rest of Assam the bill will once again face formidable obstacles, jeopardising both the BJP's alliance with regional parties and its electoral prospects.

IMAGE: BJP President Amit Anilchandra Shah during his Rajya Sabha address on the NRC issue. Photograph: PTI Photo

The BJP president called these four million people 'infiltrators' at a press conference on the same day it was said that this is just a draft, exclusion from which doesn't mean one is not a citizen.

Has it become difficult now for the government to frame a lenient policy for those who will be left out?

He could say something like that only out of ignorance.

I have a number of friends and family members whose names are not included in the NRC.

Some of them are born and brought up in Assam and others were born in places like Punjab or Uttar Pradesh; they live in Assam because they are married to someone from there or because of work.

Since the updating of the NRC has taken place only in Assam, it has not been easy for them to get government officials of their states of origin to issue the necessary papers.

Fortunately for the BJP president, most Assamese don't understand a word like ghuspethiya (infiltrator) and its insulting connotation.

But I know from news reports that there are people like 70-year-old Phulbaso Devi of Fakirganj who was 'fuming'.

She was married to a former Assam police constable and had submitted a 1943 land document from Sahebganj district in Jharkhand, but her name does not appear in the draft NRC.

Her son was quoted in the press as saying, 'My mother was very angry when she heard Amit Shah saying on television that those who missed the NRC are ghuspethiya.'

NRC Coordinator Prateek Hajela is very clear. He says only a 'judicial scrutiny' can establish whether or not someone excluded from the NRC is an illegal immigrant.

What could be the best possible solution for this problem?

Deportation doesn't seem feasible, whereas allowing 'non-citizens' to stay will expose them to the risk of being attacked in case of communal strife.

It is not just that deportation is not possible, our government has no interest whatsoever in jeopardising its relationship with Bangladesh by raising the inconvenient issues of unauthorised cross-border migration and deportation.

The Assam movement's original demand was summarised in three 'Ds' -- detection (of 'foreigners'), deletion (of names from electoral rolls) and deportation.

I can't imagine that leaders of the Assam movement ever thought of the implications of achieving the first two Ds, but not the last one.

In that sense, whatever the NRC may have achieved, it does not do what the Assam movement tried to do.

Larger political forces have appropriated their demands.

Despite the rhetoric of some of our politicians, when we look at the overall picture, the NRC exercise and the citizenship amendment bill for them are all about pleasing domestic constituencies.

They have no appetite for diplomacy with Bangladesh on this issue.

Any imaginative solution to the problem requires acceptance of the reality that the idea of Partition as the creation of two, and subsequently three, bounded nation-States -- each functioning on a 'container model of national sovereignty' -- has never quite matched up with ground realities of Partition's eastern border.

We need to get out of the illusion of unilateralism. Only then it becomes possible to imagine alternatives like an Indo-Bangladesh protocol on labour movement.

A labour protocol could take some of the pressure away from the circular migrant who until now has had to look for security by procuring fake citizenship papers and finding a political patron.

Like so many other seasonal cross-border migrants in the world, they may actually prefer going back and forth rather than settling in the place where they find seasonal work.

To be sure, that will deal with only a small aspect of the problem. But I see the acceptance of bilateralism as the beginning of a solution, and the illusion of unilateralism a dead end.
'He wanted to fire, I held his hand tightly so that he would not be able to shoot.'

IMAGE: Umar Khalid speaks to the media after he was shot at. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo

Jawaharlal Nehru University student Umar Khalid on Monday, August 13, says he was shot at at the Constitution Club near Parliament, an area that has turned into a high-security fortress ahead of Independence Day.

The attacker escaped, says Khalid, who was unhurt in the incident.

"I have been demonised by BJP spokespersons and news anchors of prime time shows. They spread canards and lies about me. They say that I am anti-India and anti-national. This has made my life very vulnerable," Khalid tells Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf.

What were you doing at the Constitution Club?

I am associated with United Against Hate, which works for the victims of mob lynchings.

The organisation completed one year and therefore families who have become victims of mob lynchings had come to attend the event.

Like the families of Rakbar or Alimuddin, who were killed in mob lynchings.

The programme was at 2.30 pm and I reached there by 2.10 pm.

I then went to have tea with my friends.

When I was coming back to the event, a man came out of nowhere and jumped on me.

He flung me to the ground with all force.

He then took out a gun and pointed it at me.

He wanted to fire, (but) I held his hand tightly, so that he would not be able to shoot.

My friends jumped in and dragged the man away from me.

As soon as he was dragged away by my friends, he ran away.

Before running away, he fired a shot near us.

I ran inside the programme hall to save my life.

Why would someone want to kill you?

As of now, I don't know who that person was.

It is for the Delhi police to investigate.

However, there is a pattern going on in India when people like (rationalists Narendra) Dabholkar, (Govind) Pansare or (journalist) Gauri Lankesh, who were speaking in defence of democracy and critical of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), their lives were made vulnerable.

After the Gauri Lankesh murder, I found out that there is a hit-list to eliminate (such people) which consists of my name too.

I have been demonised by BJP spokespersons and news anchors of prime time shows.

They spread canards and lies about me.

They say that I am anti-India and anti-national.

This has made my life very vulnerable.

This must be the first assassination attempt on me, but for the past two years I have received death threats twice.

If something happens to me in the coming days, then I appeal to the people that they must hold those people responsible for my death who are spreading false and baseless charges against me.

These people are creating the environment where I am being portrayed as anti-national and anti-Hindu.

This is a very dangerous trend.

In the last two-and-a-half years, in the JNU case, the police have not been able to proceed one bit ahead.

There has not been a chargesheet till now.

They must apologise to me.

But you have been linked with the 'tukde tukde' group in a section of the media.

This is precisely what I mean by demonisation.

The police have not been able to find out who gave the tukde tukde slogan.

But the media and BJP spokespersons say they want to do tukde tukde of Umar Khalid.

The man who came to kill me today came to do tukde tukde of me.

I am not saying they sent the killers, but they created an atmosphere against me.

Why do you think any random man would attack you?

Right now I am at the police station and I am waiting for a copy of the FIR (first information report).

Who is this man who attacked me?

It is for the police to answer.

What were his motivations?

The police have to answer.

This is very scary.

It happened in the heart of the capital.

It is a few kilometres away from Parliament at the Constitution Club.

There was a BJP programme going on there.

I want to ask the BJP: Why didn't they condemn the attack on me?

Did the man actually fire? On social media, people claim no gun shot was heard.

I heard the gun shot.

People who were present there heard the gun shot.

The guard there heard the gun shot.

One of my friends escaped the firing.

The attacker could not shoot me because I was holding his hand tightly.

But when he ran away, he turned and fired at me.

What was going through your mind when you saw the gun?

I thought of Gauri Lankesh when I saw the gun so close to me.

In those 10 seconds, when I was resisting the attack, I thought my time had come to die.

They killed Gauri Lankesh, Dabholkar and Pansare, but the ideas for which they stood don't get killed.

The ideas that we all represent is for a better India.

We represent the India of Bhagat Singh.

The irony is that we were talking of being freed from fear at that meeting and this attack was done so that we remain under fear.

The police are also saying that it was a targeted attack.

Whoever the attacker was, he knew that I was going to be there and he was present with a gun.

A news report (external link) claimed that you were not present when the attack took place.

When Gauri Lankesh was killed, there was an elaborate attempt to create a conspiracy theory that Naxalites killed her and the right wing had no role in it.

As the investigation started unfolding and arrests were made, we all know who killed Gauri Lankesh.

These kinds of attempts by certain sections who support the right wing do that every time.

I am not saying that the right wing was involved in my attack.

I am not pointing fingers at anyone.

I am only saying that law and order must be restored.

Why are they (the right wingers) getting defensive?

Are they guilt driven and trying to create a counter narrative?

Some people allege that you are playing the victim card after this attack.

It is absolutely disgusting.

These are the people who are followed by the prime minister.

Now, they are trying to change the narrative -- that the attack never happened.

I had a gun pointed at me.

I saw it.

The police have accepted my statement. They have recorded my statement.

What else do I need to say?

The police will know the answer.

Are the police providing you security?

I have been demanding security, but as of now I do not have any security.

I travel all alone.
BJP president Amit Shah has come out in support of holding Lok Sabha and assembly polls simultaneously, saying it will check government expenditure and ensure the nation is not in "election mode" throughout the year.

In a bid to underline its commitment to simultaneous polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party is mulling holding assembly elections in 10-11 states along with the Lok Sabha polls, which are scheduled in the first half of next year,

A top party leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they are exploring the possibility of deferring assembly elections of some states by a few months and advancing some others to ensure they are held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha polls.

The tenure of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh assemblies will expire in January next year and the governments of these BJP-ruled states may recommend a brief spell of governor's rule so that assembly elections there could be held with the Lok Sabha polls, he said.

The tenure of the assembly in the Congress-ruled Mizoram is ending in December this year.

Former Lok Sabha secretary general and constitutional expert P D T Acharya questioned the legal validity of imposing the governor's rule in states where assembly elections are due before the Lok Sabha polls.

The governor's rule can be imposed only in case of constitutional breakdown, he said.

The source said other states where assembly polls can be advanced to enable it to be held with the Lok Sabha polls are Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, all under the BJP's rule.

Assembly elections in these three states are also scheduled next year following the Lok Sabha polls.

The Lok Sabha elections in 2014 were held in April-May.

The source said assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Telangana are anyway scheduled to be held with the Parliamentary polls.

Another state where talks of advancing assembly elections are doing the rounds is Bihar, where they are due in 2020 end.

The BJP is a junior partner in the state government led by Janata Dal-United's Nitish Kumar.

The JD-U has in public pooh-poohed the suggestion that the state elections be held with the Lok Sabha polls but many political watchers believe that it may suit Kumar as well.

This is because he may like to ensure his party gets to contest lion's share of assembly seats while the BJP fights more Lok Sabha seats.

There is a view within the BJP that holding assembly elections of as many states as possible with the Lok Sabha polls will be a positive plank in its favour as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly emphasised his support to the idea.

With the opposition parties like the Congress being against the idea, the government is not in a position to effect the constitutional amendment that the exercise of holding assembly and Lok Sabha polls simultaneously would require.

By clubbing assembly elections in states ruled mostly by the BJP, the party would send a message that it means business, its leaders said.

This would also help the party counter the anti-incumbency factor in states ruled by it.

BJP president Amit Shah had on Monday written to the law commission stating his party was in favour of simultaneous elections, saying it would curb expenditure and ensure the nation is not in "election mode" throughout the year.

In a letter, Shah said holding simultaneous polls is not only a concept, but also a principle which can be implemented.

Shah said two sets of polls will strengthen the federal structure of the country. He told the panel that during elections the Model Code of Conduct is in force which adversely impacts development works and policy decisions.

Shah maintained that there is no relation between Lok Sabha and assembly elections. He pointed out that Prime Minster Narendra Nodi, President Ram Nath Kovind and former President Pranab Mukherjee have all supported the idea of 'one nation, one poll'.

For the best-possible legal framework, there is a need for an "open, free and frank" debate among parties and stakeholders, he wrote.

Shah's letter to the law panel was handed over by a BJP delegation which met the commission top brass.

In his eight-page letter, the Bharatiya Janata Party chief said the opposition to simultaneous polls seems to be politically motivated.

The law panel, which is examining the feasibility of holding simultaneous polls, had earlier sought the views of political parties before finalising its report. Both the BJP and Congress had stayed away from the consultation organised by the commission.

The Congress had met the commission top brass recently where it had opposed the concept of simultaneous polls.

A paper by the law commission had recently recommended holding the Lok Sabha and assembly polls in two phases beginning 2019.

Political parties are divided on the issue.

Besides National Democratic Alliance ally Shiromani Akali Dal, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Samajwadi Party and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti have supported it.

The Congress, the Trinamool Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Telugu Desam Party, Left parties and the Janata Dal-Secular have opposed the proposal.
If I was stupid enough to think that an American lawyer can practice in Canada, I might just do that.



Of course, only one of us is stupid enough to suggest that.
The 36 women commandos took on rigorous training which lasted 15 months, reports Saloni Bhatia.

IMAGE: The all-women SWAT personnel are equipped with AK-47 rifles, MP5 machine guns, Glock 17 or 26 pistols and corner shot devices for enhanced night vision. The women commandos were also trained in Krav Maga, which is a self-defence system developed for the Israel Defence Forces. Photograph: Indraneel Chowdhury/PTI Photo

For fashion designer Ashish N Soni, designing uniforms for the first all-women SWAT team of the Delhi Police has been a journey full of excitement and pride.

On August 10, the 36 women commandos of the Delhi Polices Special Weapons And Tactics unit, were formally inducted and also displayed their blue-coloured uniforms.

The northeastern women, who form the SWAT, were happy to don the designer uniform that would help them in shattering the various misconceptions about people from the northeast.

Soni said the entire process of designing the uniform took him four to five months of research and brainstorming.

It was quite a process from start to finish -- from small things like buckles, to getting the right manufacturers involved, getting approval from the officers in the force, he said.

IMAGE: Designer Ashish N Soni said the unforms are made of polyviscose, which is easy to ear and does not stick to the body. Photograph: Indraneel Chowdhury/PTI Photo

Soni also interacted with the women in the run-up to designing the uniform and sought their inputs on what they wanted.

It has been a matter of pride for me. I have been getting a lot of congratulatory messages. This is something you feel good about as a citizen of Delhi, he said.

He said he had two objectives while designing the uniform -- to make them feel good about what they are wearing and to help in their identification as an entity in case of a crisis situation.

The idea of having blue colour in their uniform was by the police commissioner (Amulya Patnaik). It is a colour that works in all seasons and we worked it into the SWAT teams uniform. We wanted to make the uniform at par with the uniforms abroad so a lot of research went into it. I also wanted to keep it vibrant, the designer said.

The material of the uniform is polyviscose, and is different from the traditional polyester.

It is different from the material of your khaki uniforms. It is easy to wear, comfortable and does not stick to the body during summers. I had to ensure that the uniform was easy to put on, durable and conducive for both winter and summer, he added.

Sanjeev Yadav, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) said the Delhi Police commissioner wanted a new uniform for the SWAT team and they researched on the internet but did not find anything appealing.

Then we called Ashish to help us. He gave us many proposals and finally we selected this, he said.

IMAGE: The women, who form the SWAT, were happy to don the designer uniform that would help them in shattering the various misconceptions about people from the northeast. Photograph: Indraneel Chowdhury/PTI Photo

The all-women SWAT personnel are equipped with AK-47 rifles, MP5 machine guns, Glock 17 or 26 pistols and corner shot devices for enhanced night vision. The women commandos were also trained in Krav Maga, which is a self-defence system developed for the Israel Defence Forces, the police said.

The women commandos were trained to undertake complex operations during terrorist attacks at crowded markets, residential complexes or government premises.

Sonira, a member of the SWAT team, who belongs to Sikkim said, It feels good that I was chosen for this. I have been in Delhi from 2016 and I have felt that we get strange looks when we step out while we are not in uniform.

Once I had gone to the market with my friends and some one called us Chinky. I gave him a stern look and he fled. I hope to change the perception of people.

Devika Kshetri, who belongs to Sikkim, concurred with Sonira and said she has been cat-called by men on motorcycles while not being in uniform.

Many people used to ask me Are you from Nepal? But now when they see me in this uniform they are like, We could not do anything while being in Delhi, but you have done so much despite coming from the northeast.

She said that she wants the people to know that the northeast is part of India and they are not outsiders.

Tulika, who belongs to Assam, and underwent a rigourous training to become a SWAT commando, said, It is a feeling of pride to don the uniform. Even though it is difficult task to change peoples set notions but we can try that through our uniform.
IMAGE: Gajanand Sharma, in white kurta, crosses Wagah border, in Attari after completing his sentence of 36 years. Photograph: PTI Photo

After languishing in a Pakistan prison for more than 36 years, Indian prisoner Gajanand Sharma was released on Monday.

Gajanand, now 68, went missing in 1982 and was part of the 30 Indian prisoners released by Pakistan as a goodwill gesture ahead of the country's Independence Day on August 14.

Watching the news on a mobile phone, Makhni Devi's eyes well up as she sees her husband walk back into India through Wagah-Attari border.

"Yes, he is my husband, but he has become very weak and lean," she says sitting before a small place of worship in her house in a narrow lane of Brahmpuri area in Jaipur.

She is surrounded by her family members and neighbours.

The man Makhni Devi identified as her husband appears frail and is seen walking with the help of a BSF soldier.

"My husband is in a bad state just because of Pakistan and my heart is cursing Pakistan for keeping him away from me and making his so weak. He was in good health before he went missing," Makhni Devi told reporters.

IMAGE: Indian prisoners at Pakistan cross Wagah border as they return after their release. Photograph: PTI Photo

His arrival was confirmed by Jaipur MP Ramcharan Bohra.

"I spoke to the authorities who have confirmed that Gajanand has arrived in India. After completing the formalities, he will be reaching Jaipur in a day or two," the BJP MP said.

Bohra said he has sent four men to the Wagah border to facilitate Gajanand's return.

The sexagenarian's family came to know in May this year that he is lodged in a prison in Lahore after Jaipur (Rural) police received a request for verification of his nationality.

However, it is not yet known how Gajanand reached Pakistan.

Makhni Devi said she is eager to meet her husband and is waiting for the moment when he will finally be home.

"I will definitely ask him how he reached Pakistan and how he spent all these years, but I will not complain. I have had a tough time while he was gone and waited for him all these years. I kept my hope alive," she said.

IMAGE: Pakistani prisoners prepare to cross Wagah border as they return after their release by India. Photograph: PTI Photo

Gajanand's younger son Mukesh Sharma said it was a dream come true for the family.

"I cannot express my feelings in words. This is a dream which turned into reality. We will decorate our house and will organise a feast for our family, relatives and friends to celebrate my father's arrival after 36 years," said the elated son, who was only 12 years old when his father went missing.

"Today is 'Hariyali Teej', a special festival for women, and my mother has got her biggest blessing on this day," he said.

'Hariyali Teej' commemorates the union of Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati.

India also released seven Pakistani prisoners who were handed over to the concerned authorities, officials said.

Fishermen from Pakistan and India are frequently detained on charges of illegal 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 being drifted away.

The two countries usually release each other's prisoners ahead of their Independence Day celebrations.
Days after M Karunanidhi's death, the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham on Monday appeared headed for a fresh succession war the party patriarch's estranged son M K Azhagiri claiming all loyal party workers are with him.

IMAGE: Former union minister MK Azhagiri with his family members addresses the media after paying homage to his late father and DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi at his memorial on Marina Beach in Chennai . Photograph: R Senthil Kumar/PTI Photo

Karunanidhi had expelled Azhagiri and his supporters from the party in 2014 at the height of his fight with his younger brother M K Stalin over establishing supremacy in Tamil Nadu's main opposition party.

Stalin is now the working president of the DMK and looks set to assume its reins.

Azhagiri, a former union minister, on Monday paid tributes to his father at his grave on the Marina Beach and fulminated against Stalin, whom he accused of blocking his return into the DMK and selling party posts.

"All the true and loyal supporters of Thalaivar, Kalaignar (The leader and the artiste, sobriquets used for Karunanidhi) are with me, they are supporting me...time will provide the answer," Azhagiri, who has been leading a life away from the media glare in Madurai since his expulsion, told reporters.

Later, speaking to an English TV news channel, Azhagiri said, "Even if I am inclined to rejoin the party, they (Stalin and his supporters) are not in a mood to let me in."

"The DMK will dig its own grave if it does not take me back," he said, adding nobody from the Karunanidhi family was interested in talking to him to facilitate a reunion.

The Karunanidhi family had presented a united face when the DMK stalwart was fighting for life at a city hospital. Azhagiri was present at the hospital and was seen at his father's funeral.

However, close watchers of Tamil Nadu politics expected him to flex his political muscle once Karunanidhi was gone.

The former union minister wields considerable influence in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu. He was the party's secretary for these districts before his expulsion.

When asked why there was opposition to his returning to the DMK fold, he shot back, saying "How do I know? You (media) have said I have a good reputation and the cadre likes me....they (Stalin and his backers) have that fear.... there could be a thought that I might become the party chief if I am taken back...that may be the reason."

Azhagiri said several people in the DMK were in touch with Tamil film superstar Rajinikanth, who has said he will launch a political party.

"The party will crumble if it loses the Lok Sabha polls. Party posts are being sold," he said, adding "Thalaivar will punish them... his soul will not allow them go scotfree."

The development came a day ahead of the DMK's executive committee meeting that has been ostensibly convened to condole Karunanidhi's death but where a decision may be taken about summoning the party's general council for putting its seal of approval on Stalin's elevation.

Though Stalin sits firmly in the saddle and his ascension as DMK president is only a matter of time, Azhagiri's tough posturing may prod his supporters in Madurai and adjoining districts to come out openly against the new party chief.

If that happens, the DMK, which has lost two successive assembly polls and failed to open its account in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, may encounter fresh electoral reverses in the general elections next year.
The Uttar Pradesh Shia Waqf Board has told all madrasas functioning from its properties to celebrate the Independence Day by chanting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' after the hoisting of the national flag and singing of the national anthem.

The state government has also issued orders on celebration of Independence Day at state madrasas.

"We have directed the madrasas running under the Shia Waqf Board to ensure 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' is chanted by students after hoisting of the national flag and singing of the national anthem," Board Chairman Waseem Rizvi said.

The board warned of "strict action" against those not complying with the order.

Rizvi said there were over 1,500 madrasas and schools running on Waqf properties in the state which will have to abide by the directive.

Asked whether the Uttar Pradesh government had also issued any order making chanting of 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' mandatory for students in madrasas, UP minority welfare Laxmi Narayan Chaudhary avoided a direct reply.

"Jo Bharat varsh mein paida huaa hai usse to Bharat Mata ki jai bolni hi hai (A person born in India has to say Bharat Mata ki Jai)," he said.

"We have issued orders that on August 15, the tricolour will be hoisted, tributes will be paid to freedom fighters and martyrs, students will be told about their heroic deeds, and plantation of saplings will be done," the minister said.

"This is only a departmental order, and nothing more. This should in no way be seen as move to test the patriotism of Muslims," he said responding to a question.

He said August 15 is a national festival.

"On this day, there is hoisting of the national flag, tributes paid to martyrs and chanting of Bharat Mata ki Jai is natural. This is followed by all the departments. Since the minority welfare department is under me, hence the orders for the madrasas," Chaudhary told reporters.
Tampa, FL -- (ReleaseWire) -- 08/13/2018 --All Star Insurance is a well-known insurance company which offers affordable building, auto, business, commercial, renter's and home insurance in Clearwater and Lakeland Florida. All Star Insurance serves families as well as businesses in the communities. Being an independent insurance agency the company enables customers to choose the best policies as per their requirement from the leading insurance companies within the company.



All Star Insurance works with a wide range of insurance carriers, allowing them to configure a risk management solution based on the needs instead of product availability. And in case the rates increase with one carrier, the professionals shop for the customer among the vast network of providers to make sure that they always get the best coverage at the best price. The main aim of the company is to provide the customers with the best in class policies which will suit their requirement and will fit into their budget.



All Star Insurance analyzes the risks of the customers and walks them through the process of choosing the coverage that will provide the protection they actually require. They in fact customize the policy to fit the needs of the customers as well as their budget. Starting from St. Petersburg to Tampa, and Clearwater to Land O' Lakes, Florida's businesses and families rely on All Star Insurance to offer smart, reasonably priced insurance solutions. Whether one is a first-time homeowner looking for a homeowner's policy, a new Florida resident looking for reasonably priced auto insurance or a potential entrepreneur opening the first business, one can contact All-Star Insurance as they offer the right kind of insurance in St Petersburg and Tampa Florida.



To get in touch with the company, one can get in touch with 813-875-8888 or on 813-977-4949. One can also login to the website of the company to get more details about the services that the company offers.



About All Star Insurance

All Star Insurance is a renowned independent insurance company which is located in Tampa, FL and can meet all the insurance needs of the customers.
Los Angeles, CA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 08/13/2018 --Celerity Educational Group, a nonprofit network of public charter schools in Los Angeles, announced today the launch of a new brand identity. The organization will now be known as ISANA, which means "sun" in Eastern Uganda. Among other changes will include a new logo, social media presence, and a new website domain name (www.isanaacademies.org).



"Our rebranding efforts reflect positive changes highlighting the best of the organization's culture and an unwavering dedication to providing a superior, tuition-free public education experience to our students," said Nadia Shaiq, Chief Executive Officer. "With this powerful name in hand, we wanted to personalize with an acronym representing what we stand for  Innovative, Socially Aware Network of Achievers."



Because the organization values inclusiveness and transparency, it was important to include all stakeholders in the rebranding process. In June 2018, school leaders reached out to all students, families, and staff for input. One theme that kept emerging revolved around the concept of a sun  symbolizing a new day and new hope for each one of the students and families served. The ISANA crest logo sits two children who are studying under the sun of ISANA. Under them, are symbols that reflect key aspects of the organization.



Throughout 13 years of operating public charter schools, the organization has consistently stood out among all public education options available  outscoring schools in individual communities, throughout the school district and across the state. Internal branding research and stakeholder focus groups determined that evolving its original brand was the optimal decision. As a result, the Board requested a rebrand to renew and rejuvenate the organization's overall perception with the public  providing schools where students from underserved areas thrive in an atmosphere of high expectations and engaging curriculum with challenging learning activities.



"Making the decision to rebrand our organization was no easy task," said Curt Hessler, Board Chair. "It was more than a name change and new logo. It was about re-examining ourselves and identifying what sets us apart, to reflect our strengths, values, and mission as a place of high aspirations for learning. The Board is extremely proud of our school leadership and professional teaching staff for taking on this important milestone."



Each of the 6 individual public charter schools will be renamed "Academy" but still maintain their original names to ensure identities remain consistent with current families: ISANA Nascent Academy (Jefferson Park), ISANA Octavia Academy (Glassell Park), ISANA Palmati Academy (North Hollywood), ISANA Cardinal Academy (Sun Valley), ISANA Achernar Academy (Compton), and ISANA Himalia Academy (Central/Vernon).
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MGX Minerals Inc. (MGX or the Company) (CSE: XMG / OTCQB: MGXMF / FKT: 1MG) is pleased to report completion of the previously announced Time Domain Electromagnetic (TDEM) survey at the Salinitas lithium brine project (the Project) located in the Salinas Grande Salar of northwest Argentina. The TDEM geophysical survey was conducted across 52 stations at 500 meter totaling approximately 26 kilometers. Data compilation is underway and interpretation is expected to begin shortly. Based on interpretation of the TDEM data, the Company is now preparing to carry out trenching as well as an auger drilling program to test for shallow, near surface brines that contain anomalous concentrations of lithium and other elements correlated with geophysics in preparation for definition of drill targets.



About the Salinitas Lithium Brine Project

The Salinitas tenements are located in the lithium triangle at the Salar de Salinas Grandes, in the Province of Salta. The 4,308 hectare contiguous land package resides in the Puna region of northwest Argentina near the border of Chile, an area renowned for its lithium- and potassium-rich brine resources. MGX has partnered with A.I.S. Resources (TSX.V: AIS) on the Project and is currently earning an undivided 80% interest by incurring total exploration expenditures of at least US$1.2 million by May 31, 2020 and by making payments totaling US$3.2 million which are primarily due at that time.

Rapid Lithium Brine Extraction Technology

MGX has developed a rapid lithium extraction technology eliminating or greatly reducing the physical footprint and investment in large, multi-phase, lake sized, lined evaporation ponds, as well as enhancing the quality of extraction and recovery across a complex range of brines as compared with traditional solar evaporation. This technology is applicable to petrolithium (oil and gas wastewater), natural brine, and other brine sources such as lithium-rich mine and industrial plant wastewater. The technology was recently chosen as winner of the Base and Specialty Metals Industry Leadership Award at the 2018 S&P Global Platts Global Metals Awards, held in London in May (see press release dated May 18, 2018).

Qualified Person

Andris Kikauka (P. Geo.), Vice President of Exploration for MGX Minerals, has prepared, reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information in this press release. Mr. Kikauka is a non-independent Qualified Person within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 Standards.

About MGX Minerals

MGX Minerals is a diversified Canadian resource company with interests in advanced material and energy assets throughout North America. Learn more at www.mgxminerals.com.

Contact Information

Jared Lazerson

President and CEO

Telephone: 1.604.681.7735

Web: www.mgxminerals.com

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking information or forward-looking statements (collectively "forward-looking information") within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information is typically identified by words such as: "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "intend", "estimate", "potentially" and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking information provided by the Company is not a guarantee of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking information as a result of various factors. The reader is referred to the Company's public filings for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects which may be accessed through the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/846f9456-579c-4d5e-acf6-9db09a7bed26
Don't pay the builder & this may happen; development in #Buntingford wrecked as unpaid builder uses diggers to devastating effect to get revenge. Photos courtesy of Hertfordshire Police who arrested the upset man pic.twitter.com/UuPLT8mOBd
New Zealand will on Monday see July figures for the Performance of Services Index from BusinessNZ, highlighting a light day for Asia-Pacific economic activity. In June, the index score was 52.8.

New Zealand also will release food price data for July; in June, food prices added 0.5 percent on month and 0.2 percent on year.

Also, the in South Korea and Thailand are closed on Monday in observance of Provincial Election Day and the queen's birthday, respectively.

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Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.
Michael Jackson's estate and Sony Music plan to celebrate King of Pop's 60th birthday on August 29 by hosting The Michael Jackson Diamond Birthday Celebration program in Las Vegas.

According to Billboard, the celebration will start off with an evening performance of "Michael Jackson One" by Cirque du Soleil, which will be followed by a party. Both at Daylight Beach Club at Mandalay Bay.

Jackson will be represented by his family at the event. His children Paris and Prince, along with brothers Jackie, Marlon and Tito are expected to attend.

Paris Jackson and Prince Jackson will accept the 2018 Elizabeth Taylor Legacy Award for Humanitarian Service awarded to their father Michael Jackson posthumously.

The Michael Jackson Estate has also decided to honor the late pop star's desire to help disadvantaged people around the world. The estate has announced that it will work together with The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation to bring accessible and free care to those living in southern rural Malawi.

Sway Calloway of "Sway in the Morning" will host the evening.

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Entertainment News
German steel producer Salzgitter Group (SZGPF.PK,SZGPY.PK) reported Monday that its second-quarter consolidated net income climbed to 70.1 million euros from last year's 15.9 million euros. Earnings per share were 1.27 euros, higher than 0.27 euros in the prior year.

EBIT before depreciation and amortization or EBITDA improved to 213.6 million euros from 126.5 million euros a year ago.

External sales grew to 2.31 billion euros from prior year's 2.26 billion euros.

In the quarter, Crude steel production grew to 1.76 million tonnes from 1.68 million tonnes last year.

In the first half of 2018, Salzgitter Group achieved the best result in earnings before taxes since 2008. Along with the strong performance of the Strip Steel Business Unit, all other segments contributed to this impressive development with positive results.

Against the backdrop of uncertainty from trade policies and their possible impact, Salzgitter said it is leaving its guidance for the financial year 2018 unchanged.

The company continues to expect a slight increase in sales to above the 9 billion euros mark, and a pre-tax profit of between 250 million euros and 300 million euros.

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Business News
U.K. shares fell on Monday to extend losses from the previous session as fears over the collapse of the Turkish lira continued to spook .

The lira recouped some losses after hitting a new record low early today on concerns about a deepening rift with the United States.

After the currency witnessed a free fall late last week, the country's central bank today took measures to boost the liquidity in the foreign exchange market.

In addition, Finance Minister Berat Albayrak announced a plan to calm the highly volatile financial markets.

The benchmark FTSE 100 was down 40 points or 0.51 percent at 7,627 in late opening deals after closing 1 percent lower on Friday.

Travel firm TUI tumbled 3.2 percent and packaging group Mondi lost 2 percent after a fresh slump in Turkey's currency.

Shipbroker Clarkson soared 11 percent after the company said trading conditions have improved in the second quarter.

Shares of Ocean Wilsons Holdings plunged 14 percent after the Bermuda based investment Company reported weak profit in its first half with lower revenues.

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Market Analysis
Editors Pick

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the emergency use of Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech's (BNTX) Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. The approval is one of the final steps needed to get around 28 million young children vaccinated against the coronavirus. Now, the Centers for...

Target is running week-long Holiday Best deals starting this weekend to offer holiday shoppers early access to Black Friday savings all season long. Starting October 31 through to the end of the holiday season, the retailer will unveil new week-long Holiday Best deals every Sunday.

Citigroup has mandated vaccination against Covid-19 for its workers in the United States. In a LinkedIn post, Sara Wechter, the company's head of human resources, said the Bank has made the decision to require U.S.-based colleagues to be fully vaccinated as a condition of employment.
Oil prices were trading mixed on Monday morning as Turkey's financial crisis dented the outlook for fuel demand, offsetting speculation that supply will tighten with the introduction of U.S. sanctions against Iran.

Front-month Brent crude futures were marginally higher at $72.81 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was down 10 cents at $67.53 a barrel.

Investors fear that an escalating trade dispute between Washington and Beijing as well as the risk of contagion from Turkey's deepening crisis may weigh down on investor confidence and sentiments.

Traders also remained concerned about rising production levels from OPEC and the United States.

Baker Hughes energy services firm said in its closely followed report on Friday that U.S. energy companies last week added the most oil rigs since May despite U.S. crude prices falling for a sixth week in a row. Drillers added 10 rigs in the week to Aug. 10, bringing the total count to 869.

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Market Analysis
China Biologic Products Holdings, Inc. (CBPO) announced that the company's Board has appointed Bing Li as the Chief Executive Officer, effective August 13, 2018. Li has moved from an independent director to an executive director of the Board.

Zhijun Tong, the former acting CEO, will continue to serve as an executive director of the Board and President of the company.

Bing Li has been a member of the Board of China Biologic since July 25, 2018 and previously served on the Board of the company from February 2011 to May 2014.

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Business News
President Donald Trump was seemingly unaware of the decision to fire White House aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman last December, according to an audio recording released by the former "Apprentice" contestant on Monday.

A day after releasing a recording of her firing by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Manigault-Newman released a separate recording of a phone call with Trump on NBC's "Today."

In the call, which was purportedly recorded a day after Manigault-Newman was fired, Trump expresses surprise at her termination.

"Omarosa? Omarosa what's going on? I just saw on the news that you're thinking about leaving? What happened?" Trump is heard saying on the tape.

Manigault-Newman responds, "General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave."

Trump subsequently claims he was not told about Manigault-Newman's firing and later adds, "You know they run a big operation, but I didn't know it. I didn't know that. Goddamn it. I don't love you leaving at all."

During her interview on "Today," Manigault-Newman claimed Kelly is running the White House and Trump has no clue what's going on.

Trump struck back in a series of posts on Twitter, calling Manigault-Newman "wacky," "vicious, but not smart," and a "lowlife."

"People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work," Trump tweeted.

He added, "When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired!"

Members of the White House have also lashed out at Manigault-Newman, describing her as a "disgruntled employee" and "self-serving."

Manigault-Newman's tell-all book titled "Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House" is scheduled to be released on Tuesday.

(Photo: Gage Skidmore)

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Political News
US President Donald Trump has hailed a section of Harley-Davidson owners' reported plan to boycott the American iconic motorcycle manufacturer over their move to shift production abroad.

"Many @harleydavidson owners plan to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas. Great!," Trump said on Twitter Monday, in apparent reference to a New York Times report citing some Harley-Davidson owners criticizing the company at a rally in Sturgis, South Dakota.

The Wisconsin-based motorcycle manufacturer announced in June that to address the substantial cost due to the European Union's increased import tariff, it will be implementing a plan to shift production of EU-bound motorcycles from the US to its international facilities.

In addition to its manufacturing units in the US, Harley-Davidson has assembly plants in Australia, Brazil, India and Thailand.

The company says new retaliatory import tariffs by the European Union, an increase from 6 percent to 31 per cent, will result in an additional cost of approximately $2,200 on each bike exported from the US to the EU.

The company estimates an additional cost of around $50 million this year due to the EU tariffs and higher aluminum and steel prices.

Trump described it as "A really bad move," and claimed that "most other companies, including Harley competitors," agreed with his decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

U.S. will soon have a level playing field, or better, according to the President.

Trump had warned that Harley-Davidson will have to pay a heavy price for deciding to shift some of the production of its iconic motorcycles overseas.

The European Union imposed tariffs on various U.S.-manufactured products, including Harley-Davidson motorcycles, on June 22 in response to the US import tariffs on European steel and aluminum.

On the same day, Trump threatened to impose a 20 percent tariff on all cars imported to the U.S. from the European Union.

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Business News
ATLANTA, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Consistent with its commitment to continuous innovation, First Advantage, a global leader in background check and drug screening solutions, has released its new smartphone-based Mobile Fingerprint Capture solution. Now, recruiters and employers no longer have to send their candidates to third-party collection sites for fingerprinting services; consequently, improving the job candidate experience and keeping them fully engaged while accelerating background screening turnaround time.



Fingerprinting is required for employment in a range of public and private sector industries such as child and health care, financial services and transportation. Historically, job candidates were required to visit a physical location where fingerprinting services were conducted or wait until a visit by an onsite mobile unit could be scheduled. As a result, job candidates had to take extra time off from their current place of employment. Additionally, the hiring process was lengthened, which resulted in the risk of candidate attrition.

With unemployment rates hovering at record lows, talent acquisition teams need to onboard qualified candidates before losing them to the competition. Elongating the hiring cycle  being too slow to extend a job offer  is resulting in a new trend known as ghosting, whereby the candidate loses interest and stops communicating with the prospective employer. By ensuring prompt background screening using the latest technologies, employers are protecting their investments in job advertising and employment branding as well as advancing the candidate experience.

To deliver this breakthrough mobile-based biometric capability, First Advantage partnered with Tascent, the industry leader in intuitive, multimodal biometrics. The First Advantage solution leverages the Tascent Enterprise Suite and Tascent MX, which delivers single-device FBI-certified fingerprinting capabilities by easily connecting to smartphones.

Ranjeev Teelock, First Advantages senior vice president and general manager, Biometrics Solutions, commented, Our background check solutions are available via mobile device, and we sought to deliver that same convenience and speed through our biometric partner  particularly at a time in our industry when minimizing time-to-hire is a crucial differentiator. This new technology enables our clients to capture candidate fingerprints quickly, cost-effectively and without interruptions.



Were thrilled to be able to collaborate with First Advantage as it brings this groundbreaking service to market, said Joey Pritikin, Founder and Co-CEO of Tascent. The combination of Tascents leading technology and First Advantages customer-centric approach and integrated services offering will give companies across the U.S. a modern, efficient and easily accessible way to establish and verify employee identity.

For more information about mobile-based fingerprinting solutions from First Advantage, please visit FADV.com.

About First Advantage

First Advantage provides comprehensive background screening, identity and information solutions that give employers and housing providers access to actionable information that results in faster, more accurate people decisions. With an advanced global technology platform and superior customer service delivered by experts who understand local markets, First Advantage helps customers around the world build fully scalable, configurable screening programs that meet their unique needs. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, First Advantage has offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

To learn more please visit fadv.com .

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b85c0ff6-d0fb-4c38-aeab-db572adae742
Saudi Arabia lowered its oil production in July despite the kingdom agreeing to raise output significantly in order to offset an expected drop in Iranian exports.

OPEC's crude oil production averaged 32.32 million barrels a day in July, an increase of 41,000 barrels a day from June. Crude oil output increased mostly in Kuwait, Nigeria, UAE and Iraq, however, production declined in Libya, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

In June, OPEC agreed to increase output by 1 million barrels a day, in order to prevent sharp rallies in crude prices that could result from US sanctions on Iran Iran is OPEC's third-largest producer of crude oil.

Saudi Arabia produced 10.39 million barrels a day in July, down from 10.44 million barrels a day in June.

In the monthly report, OPEC said the world will need 32.05 million barrels a day of crude from its 15 members in 2019, down 130,000 bpd from last month's forecast.

"Healthy global economic developments and increased industrial activity should support the demand for distillate fuels in the coming months, leading to a further drawdown in diesel inventories," OPEC said in its monthly statement.

Meanwhile, OPEC also lifted forecasts for supply from non-OPEC for the rest of the year. Non-OPEC production is now expected to be 59.62 million barrels a day in 2018, a 2.08 million barrel a day increase from last year.

Oil prices were trading mixed on Monday morning as Turkey's financial crisis dented the outlook for fuel demand, offsetting speculation that supply will tighten with the introduction of U.S. sanctions against Iran.

Front-month Brent crude futures were marginally higher at $72.81 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was down 10 cents at $67.53 a barrel.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
After moving notably higher over the two previous sessions, treasuries gave back some ground during trading on Monday.

Bond prices regained some ground after coming under pressure early in the day but still closed in negative territory. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, rose by 2 basis points to 2.877 percent.

The pullback by treasuries came as traders cashed in on last Friday's strong upward move, which came amid concerns about Turkey.

Traders continued to worry about the concerns about the financial crisis in Turkey, although Canaccord Genuity asset class strategist Brian Reynolds predicted the Turkish panic would be less impactful than the Greek financial panic circa 2010-2011.

Reynolds noted Turkey's external debt, at $447 billion, is only about three-quarters of Greece's when that country ran into trouble.

Additionally, Reynolds said Greek external debt was about 4 percent of U.S. GDP in 2010 and less than 11 percent of the U.S. public credit market, while Turkish external debt currently represents less than 2.5 percent of U.S. GDP and just over 5 percent of the U.S. public credit market.

Reynolds subsequently said, "The U.S. credit boom is likely going to persist and eventually take stocks higher after worries over this situation crest."

The Turkish lira hit a new record low against the U.S. dollar in Asian trading before regaining some ground after Turkey's central bank took measures to boost liquidity in the foreign exchange market.

Over the weekend, Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak announced the government plans to calm the highly volatile financial .



A report from Reuters noted Albayrak pledged to take "necessary steps" but did not provide details on what those steps included.

Trading activity remained somewhat subdued, however, with a lack of major U.S. economic data keeping some traders on the sidelines.

The economic calendar remains relatively light on Tuesday, although traders are likely to keep an eye on a report on import and exports prices in the month of July.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis


Nation grieves for Somnath Chatterjee President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday led the nation in paying glowing tributes to former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, one of the country's most respected parliamentarians who died here in the morning. Calling him "a veteran parliamentarian who had a forceful presence in the House", the President tweeted: "A loss for public life in Bengal and India. My condolences to his family and innumerable well-wishers."



Modi described Chatterjee, a 10-time MP, as a stalwart of Indian politics who made parliamentary democracy richer.



He said that Chatterjee "was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise".



Congress President Rahul Gandhi hailed him as "an institution".



"He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief," he tweeted.



West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who came to prominence incidentally with her triumph over Chatterjee in the Lok Sabha polls from Jadavpur consituency in 1984, termed it a great loss.



"Saddened at the passing away of Somnath Da. My condolences to his family and admirers. This is a great loss for us," the Trinamool Congress chief tweeted.



Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal said he was "extremely sad" over his death and remembered him as "one of the greatest parliamentarians of contemporary times. He will always be missed".



Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said: "A stalwart parliamentarian, popular amongst people and one of greatest Speakers of Lok Sabha. A huge loss to the Indian democracy."



Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also paid homage to Chatterjee.



In Kolkata, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Biman Bose said Chatterjee always used to talk in favour of the masses. "He was a distinguished, big hearted and highly respectable parliamentarian.



"Somnath Da's demise is a colossal loss to parliamentary politics... We were in touch with him despite not being a party member. So his demise is also a loss to revolution of the poor," Bose told the media.



CPI-M state Secretary Surya Kanta Mishra added: "He used to raise voice whenever democracy and secularism were attacked. He attended meetings and programmes to support for democracy even after his retirement from active politics."



Trinamool Congress leader and Lok Sabha member Saugata Roy pointed out that it was under Chatterjee's watch that the Zero Hour was telecast live from July 5, 2004. A 24-hour Lok Sabha television channel also came into being in 2006.



"In Indian politics, he is a colossus. We all know that between 2004 to 2009, Somnath Chatterjee had done exceedingly well as Speaker of the Lok Sabha," Roy said.






English Finnish

EFECTE PLC -- HALF-YEARLY REPORT -- 13 AUGUST 2018 at 14.00

Efecte Plc's Half-Yearly Report 1-6/2018 - SaaS grew by 25%

Net sales grew by 19% to 6.0 Million euro

SaaS grew by 25% and was 46% of total net sales

Services grew by 24% and was 39% of total net sales

Forward-looking investments into accelerating international growth decreased profitability, as anticipated. EBITDA was -1.0 Million euro and operating profit -1.2 Million euro

Guidance on 2018 remains unchanged

Group key figures

1000 EUR 1-6/2018 1-6/2017 2017 Net sales 5 983 5 038 10 615 EBITDA -1 038 96 305 EBITA -1 205 -26 41 Operating profit -1 239 -99 -110 Profit for the period -1 256 -111 -841 Profit for the period (adjusted for listing cost) -1 256 -106 -122 Earnings per share, eur* -0.22 -0.03 -0.19 Adjusted earnings per share, eur* -0.22 -0.02 -0.03 Equity per share, eur* 0.79 0.15 1.02 SaaS MRR 483 393 425 Order intake 6 583 6 965 11 866

* Share-based key figures have been calculated with the 1:3 split in October 2017

CEO Sakari Suhonen:

In 1-6/2018 Efecte's net sales grew by 19% to 6.0 MEUR (5.0 MEUR in 1-6/2017). Our current main businesses grew more rapidly: net sales of SaaS grew by 25% and services by 24%. Net sales of traditional perpetual licenses grew by 22%. Net sales of traditional maintenance decreased by 13% as expected.

Our business in Sweden, Germany and Denmark generated approx. 16% of our net sales and international net sales grew more rapidly than in Finland. We continue implementing our international growth strategy. It should be noted that our international growth will develop in stages in near future, as typical new customer agreements are relatively large compared to the current size of the local business, especially in Germany.

The forward-looking growth investments, especially the significant increase in the number of employees in Germany and Sweden, have decreased profitability in the review period as anticipated.

Orders from new customers grew by 35%. Total order intake was slightly below last year, as the comparison period included several large long-term renewals. Order intake in Finland was good, but international development did not yet match our expectations. We received the largest new orders near the end of the period: from Tampere3 universities in Finland, from a large university in Sweden and from a major law firm in Germany.

I will leave the CEO post in good spirits at the end of August. Efecte has achieved a lot in the last few years and the company has good prospects to continue on the selected strategic path towards international growth.

Long-term financial targets

Efecte aims for over 20% annual organic growth on average in 2017-2022. Substantial investments in international growth will decrease operating profit in the next few years, but the company aims for a double-digit operating profit percentage by the end of the strategy period.

Guidance for year 2018

The company has done substantial investments in international growth, especially in Germany and Sweden, which is expected to accelerate our growth starting from the second quarter. Annual growth in net sales is expected to exceed 20%. Due to the growth investments, we expect EBITDA to be clearly negative. Profitability in the first year-half is expected to be lower than in the second year-half.

Additional information:

CFO Hannu Nyman, +358 50 306 9913

Certified adviser: Evli Bank Oyj, tel. +358 40 579 6210

This release is unaudited. The amounts in this report have been rounded from exact numbers.

NET SALES AND PROFIT

Efecte's net sales in 1-6/2018 were 6.0 Million euro (1-6/2017: 5.0 Million euro). Net sales by type were: SaaS 2.7 MEUR (2.2 MEUR), Services 2.3 MEUR (1.9 MEUR), licenses 0.3 MEUR (0.2 MEUR) and Maintenance 0.6 KEUR (0.7 MEUR).

Net sales for cloud-based solutions continued to grow substantially. SaaS grew by 25% and Services grew by 24%. Also the perpetual licenses grew by 22%, while traditional maintenance decreased by 13%. Total growth was 19%.

The international net sales grew more rapidly than net sales in Finland and the foreign subsidiaries generated 0.9 MEUR (0.7 MEUR) net sales, corresponding to 16% of total net sales.

The recurring revenue (SaaS and maintenance) was 3.4 MEUR (2.9 MEUR), corresponding to 56% of the net sales (58%).

Efecte's EBITDA was -1.0 MEUR (0.1 MEUR) and operating profit was -1.2 MEUR (-0.1 MEUR). Forward-looking growth investments, e.g. recruited employees, affected profit negatively.

Taxes corresponding to the profit of the period have been entered as tax expense. Efecte has confirmed tax losses in the taxation for Finland, so there was no income tax expense.

Net profit for the period was -1.3 MEUR, while it was -0.1 MEUR last year.

The order intake in the review period was 6.6 MEUR (7.0 MEUR). Orders from new customers grew by 35%, but the smaller amount of long-term agreements on renewal phase decreased the total order intake. After a slow first quarter the second quarter had good order intake growth. Largest new orders were received near the end of the period: from Tampere3 universities in Finland, from a major university in Sweden and from a major law firm in Germany. Order intake in Finland was good in the review period, but the development of the international markets did not yet match our expectations.

FINANCE AND INVESTMENTS

At the end of the reporting period Efecte's balance sheet totaled 9.2 MEUR (12/2017: 9.3 MEUR). Equity ratio was 69% (12/2017: 71%) and net gearing was -124% (12/2017: -109%).

The financial loans were 0.0 MEUR (12/2017: 0.0 MEUR) at the end of reporting period. The company's cash and liquid assets were 5.7 MEUR (12/2017: 6.1 MEUR). The interest-bearing net debt was -5.7 MEUR (12/2017: -6.1 MEUR).

Cash flow from operating activities for the reported period was -0.5 MEUR (1.4 MEUR) and cash flow from investing activities was -0.8 MEUR (-0.2 MEUR). Investments in tangible and intangible assets were 0.2 MEUR (0.2 MEUR) and mainly were activated R&D expenses.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTS

During the first half of 2018 the growth of net sales was slightly less than our long-term targets. Slower than expected progress in some large implementation projects, relatively high share of new employees as well as well employee churn have contributed to that. Partially also changes in customers' own ramp-up schedules have impacted negatively on our net sales. Investments into international business did not yet fully contribute to the net sales growth.

The number of employees has increased rapidly, and the organization has been developed to match the needs of growing business. We continue to develop our methods, processes and organization so that they support the next phase of our business development as well as possible. During this year we will focus not only on growth, but also on actions ensuring scalability of our business. Growth in the employee headcount and in the number of customers requires continuous development of our processes, methods and organization in order to ensure both the customer satisfaction and the employee satisfaction.

Efecte seeks to strongly accelerate the international growth and especially Germany and Sweden have been in focus of forward-looking investments, which decreases profitability in near future.

International growth will likely develop in stages for the next few years, as typical new customer agreements are relatively large compared to the current size of the local business, especially in Germany

In addition to winning new customers, the sales efforts have also focused on further sales of Efecte's whole offering to the existing customers. The current customers are believed to offer significant growth potential, as typically a new customer initially uses only some of Efecte's solutions and expands usage later. Expansions by current customers made half of the order intake in the period.

EMPLOYEES

The number of employees was 103 persons at the end of the reporting period (74). 79 employees were based in Finland (62), 11 in Sweden (8), 3 in Denmark (2) and 10 in Germany (2). The average number of employees during the period was 102 (70).

Demand for consultants in the review period exceeded our capacity on some fields. We are a bit behind our targets in consultant recruitments and have utilised external consultants to some extent. This has had negative impact on profitability of the services business.

Milla Kuosmanen was appointed as the vice president responsible for service business and cloud operations and to the management team as Timo Hyvonen left the company.

MARKET OUTLOOK

Based on research organisations, the markets related to Efecte's main offering, IT Service Management (ITSM) and Identity and Access Management (IAM) are expected to grow strongly in Efecte's target markets in Europe.

The European cloud based ITSM market is expected to grow annually by 15.5% on average in 2016-2021. The small and medium sized companies' market is expected to grow annually by 20.8% on average, and the large enterprise market by 13.6% on average. The average annual growth in 2016-2021 is expected to be 14.6% for software and 18.5% for services.

The global cloud-based IAM market is expected to grow annually by 23.7% on average in 2016-2021. The European market is expected to grow annually by 22.0% on average in 2016-2021.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Research and development actions were focused on extending the enterprise service management capabilities of the Efecte Edge solution. The IT Service Management solution was updated to the latest industry standards, and the solution received the PinkVerify certification, the globally recognized certification issuer for ITSM tools. The HR Service Management solution was also significantly enhanced in close co-operation with existing customers. Furthermore, Efecte added new capabilities to its solution enabling customers to meet the GDPR requirements for the anonymization and archiving of personal data.

Research and development actions are performed in Efecte Finland Oy. Research and development is mainly done by own personnel, but subcontractors are also used to increase flexibility and cost efficiency.

The company enters the research and development cost as expense to the current period. Those development costs that are related to new products or functionalities, are activated in balance sheet as immaterial assets since when the product is technically feasible, it can be utilised commercially and is expected to generate economic benefits in future.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING AND GOVERNANCE

The Annual General Meeting held on 5 April 2018 adopted the financial statements for 1.1.-31.12.2017 and discharged the members of the Board of Directors and the CEO from liability. The Annual General Meeting decided that no dividend is distributed for the year 2017.

The Meeting decided that the Chairman of the Board will be paid EUR 3,000 per month and the other members of the Board of Directors will be paid EUR 1,500 per month each. Approximately 40 per cent of the remuneration will be paid in Efecte Plc's shares and 60 per cent will be paid in cash.

Pertti Ervi, Niilo Fredrikson, Turkka Keskinen, Kari J. Makela, Paivi Rekonen and Hannu Vaajoensuu were elected as members of the Board of Directors. The organization meeting of the Board of Directors elected Pertti Ervi as Chairman.

Ernst & Young Oy acts as the auditor, and Juha Hilmola is the auditor in charge.

CEO CHANGE

The company has announced on 25 May 2018 that the CEO Sakari Suhonen will leave the company during autumn. His employment will end in August. CFO Hannu Nyman will act as the interim CEO until the new CEO has started.

After the review period, on 13 July 2018, the company announced that Niilo Fredrikson has been appointed as the new CEO. He is expected to start in the position on 24 September 2018, but latest by the end of the year.

SHARES AND TRADING

The company has one share series and all shares have similar rights. At the end of the review period Efecte Plc's share capital consisted of 5 810 988 shares. The company owned 4 753 treasury shares, approx. 0.1 % of the total amount of the shares.

The company's share has been trading on the First North marketplace. During the review period the highest share price was 6.34 euro, the lowest price 5.00 euro and the closing price 5.67 euro. The market value of shares was 32.9 MEUR at the end of the period excluding the treasury shares.

SHAREHOLDERS

The company had a total of 1614 owners on 30 June 2018. The list of the largest owners can be found in the company's web site.

10 largest shareholders as of 30 June 2018:

Shareholder Shares % 1 First Fellow Oy 1 010 499 17.4 2 Oy Fincorp Ab 684 593 11.8 3 Stadigh Kari 334 546 5.8 4 Innovestor Kasvurahasto I Ky 298 992 5.1 5 Ilmarinen 290 909 5.0 6 Montonen Markku 263 571 4.5 7 Sarkkinen Jussi-Pekka 182 015 3.1 8 Aktia Nordic Micro Cap Mutual Fund 174 545 3.0 9 Havacment Oy 121 107 2.1 10 Kosonen Jukka 120 000 2.1

The ownership of the board members, CEO and their controlled corporations totaled approx. 6.3%. Additionally, CEO has options for approx. 0.8% of shares.

THE AUTHORIZATIONS GIVEN TO THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

The Annual General Meeting held on 5 April 2018 authorized the Board of Directors to decide to acquire the company's own shares with distributable funds. A maximum of 450 000 shares may be acquired. The authorisation is effective until the next Annual General Meeting, however, at the latest until 30 June 2019.

The Annual General Meeting held on 5 April 2018 authorized the Board of Directors to offer a maximum of 800,000 shares through a share issue in one or several instalments. The Board may decide to issue new shares or shares held by the company. The authorisation includes the right to issue shares through private offering, in other words, to deviate from the shareholders' pre-emptive right subject to the requirements set forth in the law and the right to issue shares against payment or without charge. Under the authorisation, the Board of Directors will be entitled to decide on the terms and conditions of any share issue, including the recipients of the shares and the compensation to be paid. This authorisation can be exercised for purposes determined by the Board of Directors. The authorisation is effective until the next Annual General Meeting, however, at the latest until 30 June 2019.

OPTION PROGRAMS

Option program 2011

Option program 2011 consist of 130 000 options that entitle the holders to subscribe a maximum of 390 000 new shares. Each option entitles to subscribe three new shares. The share subscription period will end on 31.12.2020. The subscription price of a share is 0.58 euro. By 30.6.2018 a total of 290 895 shares have been subscribed with the options. There are 33 035 unused options that can be used to subscribe 99 105 shares.

Option program 2015

Option program 2015 consists of 135 000 options that entitle the holders to subscribe a maximum of 405 000 shares. The options are divided to four series: A series 45 000 options (of which 25 500 are allocated), B series 45 000 options (25 500 allocated), C series 30 000 options (26 500 allocated) and D series 15 000 options (all allocated). Each option entitles to subscribe three new shares.

The share subscription period for the options is 30.4.2017-31.12.2020. The right to subscribe shares begins with the following schedule: A series vests on 30.4.2017, B series on 30.4.2018 and C series 30.4.2019. D series vests on 30.4.2020 with the following conditions: of D options a) 50% if Efecte's international net sales in 2019 exceed 3.2 Million euro, b) 75% if it exceeds 4.0 Million euro and c) 100% if it exceeds 4.7 Million euro.

The subscription prices are as follows: A series: 1.50 euro/share, B series: 1,6666667 euro/share, C series 1,6666667 euro/share, and D series 3,34 euro/share. By 30.6.2018 a total of 64 500 shares have been subscribed with the options.

Option program 2018

Option program 2018 consists of 450 000 options that entitle the holders to subscribe one share per option. The options are divided to three series: A series of 170 000 options with subscription price of 5.75 eur/share and subscription period of 2.5.2021-31.5.2022; B series of 140 000 options with subscription price of 5-day average price after Q1/2019 results and subscription period of 2.5.2022-31.5.2023; and C series of 140 000 options with subscription price of 5-day average price after Q1/2020 results and subscription period of 2.5.2023-31.5.2024. A series options are intended to be allocated in 2018, B series in 2019 and C series in 2020. In connection to the 2018 option program, the board has set a share-ownership requirement for the participants.

LEGAL PROCESSES

The company has settled the dispute with a German headhunting company and the 55 KEUR cost impact is included in the review period's result.

ASSESSMENT OF RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES

The risks related to the company have been described in detail in the prospectus published on 24 November 2017. The prospectus is available on the company's internet pages.

Reliable service delivery to customers is essential in cloud-based business. There are risks related, for example, to the functionalities of the software, to the cloud operations by the company, and to the outsourced computing capacity and network connections. Possible disruptions in the service can lead into decrease in customer satisfaction, which may lead into decreases in net sales and profitability.

In the implementation projects, the company configures its products to operate with the customer's existing systems. There may be delays or unexpected work related to customer projects. Although the majority of the projects are time and materials based, there are also fixed price projects. Especially the long-term identity and access management projects may produce unexpected and hard-to-forecast delays, or the needed work amount of the project may turn out to be significantly larger than originally expected.

Risks to immaterial property rights (IPR) are significant for the company. Risks include both the loss of own IPRs for others, as well as third-party IPR breaches by Efecte. Efecte seeks to minimize the risk with pedantic control of customer agreements and with careful evaluation of third-party software components taken into use.

The company's research and development activities as well as the service delivery are based on skillful personnel. If the company is unable recruit and retain skillful employees, the quality of the services may decrease, which can decrease net sales and profitability.

Investments into accelerating international growth increase the fixed costs, e.g. due to forward-looking recruitments, and may decrease profitability, if achieving growth turns out to be harder than expected.

LONG-TERM FINANCIAL TARGETS

Efecte aims for over 20% annual organic growth on average in 2017-2022. Substantial investments in international growth will decrease operating profit in the next few years, but the company aims for a double-digit operating profit percentage by the end of the strategy period.

FUTURE OUTLOOK

The company has done substantial investments in international growth, especially in Germany and Sweden, which is expected to accelerate our growth starting from the second quarter. Annual growth in net sales is expected to exceed 20%. Due to the growth investments, we expect EBITDA to be clearly negative. Profitability in the first year-half is expected to be lower than in the second year-half.

NEXT EARNINGS RELEASE

Efecte will publish a business review for 1-9/2018 on 7 November 2018.

Efecte Plc

Board of Directors

Additional information:

CFO Hannu Nyman, +358 050 306 9913

Certified adviser: Evli Bank Oyj, tel. +358 40 579 6210

A briefing for analysts, investors and media will be arranged on Tuesday 14 August 2018 at 11.00 at Hotel Scandic Simonkentta, Simonkatu 9, Helsinki.

Participants are kindly requested to register by phone +358 50 306 9913 or by e-mail: hannu.nyman@efecte.com

www.efecte.com

-----

Financial information:

1. Consolidated income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement and statement of changes in equity

2. Notes

3. Key figures

1. Consolidated income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement and statement of changes in equity

CONSOLIDATED INCOME STATEMENT

(1 000 EUR) 1-6/18 1-6/17 2017 Net sales 5 983 5 038 10 615 Materials and services -520 -581 -1 043 Personnel expenses -4 639 -3 167 -6 502 Other operating expenses -1 862 -1 193 -2 766 EBITDA -1 038 96 305 Other depreciation and amortisation -168 -123 -263 EBITA - 1 205 -26 41 Goodwill amortisation -9 0 -6 Group goodwill amortisation -24 -73 -145 Operating profit -1 239 -99 -110 Financial income and expenses -17 -12 -731 Profit before income tax - 1 256 -111 -841 Income tax - - 0 Profit for the period -1 256 -111 -841 Profit for the period, adjusted for IPO cost -1 256 -106 -122

CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEET

(1 000 EUR) 6/2018 6/2017 12/2017 Non-current assets Development expenses 933 810 925 Other intangible assets 11 10 13 Goodwill 71 86 79 Group goodwill - 97 24 Machinery and equipment 42 17 36 Current assets Inventories, work in progress 3 - 95 Trade and other receivables (long-term) 63 78 46 Trade and other receivables short-term) 2 372 1 747 2 027 Short-term investments 3 589 250 3 000 Cash and cash equivalents 2 074 2 050 3 098 Total assets 9 157 5 146 9 344 Equity attributable to owners

of the parent Company Share capital 80 11 80 Reserve of invested non-restricted

equity 10 586 4 733 10 356 Other reserves - 0 0 Retained earnings -6 101 -4 091 -4 822 Total equity 4 566 653 5 614 Current liabilities Loans and borrowings - 35 - Received advances 2 550 2 482 1 435 Trade payables 449 720 410 Other payables 558 560 673 Accruals 1 035 694 1 211 Total liabilities 4 592 4 493 3 729 Equity and liabilities 9 157 5 146 9 344

SUMMARY CONSOLIDATED CASH FLOW STATEMENT

(1 000 EUR) 1-6/2018 1-6/2017 2017 Cash flows from operating activities Profit for the period - 1 256 -111 -841 Adjustments to profit for the period 196 207 1 144 Change in working capital -593 1 320 249 Interest and other financial cost paid -6 -7 -14 Interest and other financial income received - 0 2 Income taxes paid - - - Net cash from operating activities -474 1 408 539 Cash flows from investing activities Acquisition of tangible and intangible assets



-180



-224 -501 Investments to short-term investments -600 - -3 000 Proceeds from short-term investments - - 250 Net cash from investing activities -780 -224 -3 251 Cash flows from financing activities Share issues 230 - 5 694 Acquisition of treasury shares - - -1 Repayments of non-current borrowings - -135 -171 IPO costs - -5 -719 Dividends paid to the owners

of the parent company -



- - Net cash from financing activities 230 -140 4 803 (Decrease)/increase in cash and cash equivalents -1 024 1 044 2 091 Cash and cash equivalents

at the beginning of the period



3 098



1 007 1 007 Cash and cash equivalents

at the end of the period



2 074



2 050 3 098

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF CHANGES IN EQUITY

1000 eur 30.6.2018 30.6.2017 Permanent equity Share capital 1.1. 80 11 Capitalisation issue - - Share capital 30.16. 80 11 Legal reserve 1.1. - 0 Share issue - - Legal reserve 30.6. - 0 Permanent equity in total 80 11 Distributable equity Reserve of invested non-restricted

equity 1.1. 10 356 4 733 Capitalisation issue - - Share issue 230 - Acquisition of treasury shares - - Reserve of invested non-restricted

equity 30.6. 10 586 4 733 Retained earnings 1.1. -4 822 -3 979 Translation differences -22 -1 Retained earnings 30.6. -4 844 -3 979 Profit (loss) for the period -1 256 -111 Distributable equity 4 486 642 Total equity 4 566 653

2. Notes

2.1 Basis of preparation

This interim report has been prepared in accordance with the FAS recognition and measurement principles.

2.2 Net sales by type

(1 000 EUR) 1-6/18 1-6/17 2017 SaaS 2 730 2 189 4 645 Perpetual licenses 304 248 615 Maintenance 645 741 1 453 Services 2 305 1 859 3 901 Group total 5 983 5 038 10 615

2.3 Development of number of shares

Number of shares 1.1.2017 1 483 531 30.6.2017 1 483 531 Exercise of share options 2 500 Share split 2 972 062 Exercise of share options 31 008 Initial public offiering 1 035 000 31.12.2017 5 524 101 1.1.2018 5 524 101 Exercise of share options 286 887 30.6.2018 5 810 988

On 30.6.2018 Efecte Plc owns 4 753 treasury shares, approx. 0.1% of the total amount of the shares.

2.4 Commitments

The following tables present the company's commitments not in the balance sheet on 30.6.2018 and 31.12.2017.

Guarantees given 30.6.2018 31.12.2017 (thousand euro) Office lease agreements 59 42 Liabilities secured by mortgage 1 000 1 000 Total 1 059 1 042

Lease commitment amounts 30.6.2018 31.12.2017 (thousand euro) During next 12 months 145 167 Later 201 265 Total 346 432

Lease agreements for computer equipment are mainly three-year lease agreements, and the equipment can be purchased at the end of the period with approx. 2-5% remainder value.

Other commitments

Parent company Efecte Plc has an ongoing office lease agreement. The lease period started on 1.7.2017 and the agreement can be terminated earliest on 30.6.2018 with a termination period of nine months. The monthly rent is approx. 18 thousand euro. The company's lease liability from this contract is approx. 277 thousand euro.

30.6.2018 31.12.2017 (thousand euro) Payable during the next 12 months 327 296 Payable later 127 293 Total 454 589

3. Key figures

1000 eur 1-6/2018 1-6/2017 2017 2016 Net Sales 5 983 5 038 10 615 8 325 SaaS 2 730 2 189 4 645 3 439 Licenses 304 248 615 539 Maintenance 645 741 1 453 1 707 Services 2 305 1 859 3 901 2 640 Domestic net sales 5 025 4 290 9 102 7 142 International net sales 958 748 1 513 1 183 Domestic sales (% of net sales) 84 % 85 % 86 % 86 % International (% of net sales) 16 % 15 % 14 % 14 % Recurring revenue 3 375 2 930 6 099 5 146 Recurring revenue (% of net sales) 56 % 58 % 57 % 62 % SaaS MRR, monthly net sales at the end of the period 483 393 425 328 Net sales growth % 18.8 % - 27.5 % 20.9 % EBITDA -1 038 96 305 493 EBITDA % -17.3 % 1.9 % 2.9 % 5.9 % EBITA -1 205 -26 41 281 EBITA % -20.1 % -0.5 % 0.4 % 3.4 % Operating profit (EBIT) -1 239 -99 -110 136 Operating profit (EBIT) % -20.7 -2.0 % -1.0 % 1.6 % Earnings for the period -1 256 -111 -841 115 Adjusted earnings for the period -1 256 -106 -122 115 Earnings/share (EPS), eur -0.22 -0.03 -0.19 0.03 Equity/share, eur 0.79 0.15 1.02 0.17 Adjusted earnings/share (EPS), eur -0.22 -0.02 -0.03 0.03 Balance sheet total 9 157 5 146 9 344 3 572 Equity 4 566 653 5 614 765 Net debt -5 664 -2 265 -6 098 -1 086 Return on invested capital (ROI) % -49 % -24 % -3 % 14 % Equity ratio % 69 % 25 % 71 % 33 % Net gearing % -124 % -347 % -109 % -142 % Research and development cost 1 007 865 1 624 1 466 Research and development cost, % of net sales 17 % 17 % 15 % 18 % Order intake 6 583 6 965 11 866 7 387 Number of employees on average during the period 102 70 77 59 Number of employees at the end of the period 103 74 96 63 Number of shares (on average during period) 5 599 889 4 437 783 4 516 679 4 427 044 Number of shares at the end of the period 5 806 235 4 437 783 5 510 541 4 437 783

Share-based key figures have been calculated as adjusted for 1:3 split that was done in October 2017.

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Nine youths graduated from an internship programme organised by the Samoa One United Nations Youth Employment Programme.

With the aim of addressing youth unemployment, eight of the graduates secured employment. Two work full time at Wilex Samoa and six work for the Ah Liki Investment Group.

United Nations (U.N.) Resident Coordinator and the United Nations Development Programme Resident Representative, Simona Marinescu, said this years Youth Week theme - safe space for all  promoted the providing of a platform for young people to show their full potential.

We decided to start with an internship, we expose you to jobs, and business environments, so that you can realise if that is what you want to be whether in five years or 10 years, Ms. Marinescu said.

I will quote from Michael Jacksons song which has a powerful message, he said stand up for your rights. Let us start with the man in the mirror and ask him to change his ways for the world to become a better place.

Ministry of Women, Community and Social Development Assistant C.E.O. (economic Development), Nanai Sovala Agaiava, said it is under the work plan of the ministry to provide assistance and pathways into jobs for young people.

We started late 2016 working with the Chamber of Commerce and they remain our number partner in this work.

We coordinate the programme, in partnership with Chamber of Commerce, we identify the youths, we have a database where unemployed people register and we also get people that get referred to us. We also have a list of people who come through the door looking for jobs.

This is the fourth graduation, we went from 54 percent success rate of people securing jobs after the completing the programme to 84 percent, Nanai said.

Anyone is eligible to participate in the programme but have to register at the Ministry of Women, Community and Social Development.

It is significant due to targeting our goal of increasing household income and at the same time reduces household expenditure. In addition to that, they are trained in financial assistance through Samoa Commercial Bank and Samoa Chamber of Commerce, he added.
BEIJING (AP)  As China's leaders gather for their annual Yellow Sea retreat, the country's political waters are looking choppy.

Chinese President and ruling Communist Party leader Xi Jinping is beset by economic, foreign policy and domestic political challenges just months after clearing his way to rule for as long as he wants as China's most dominant leader since Mao Zedong.

Mounting criticism of the Xi administration's policies has exposed the risks he faces from amassing so much power: He's made himself a natural target for blame.

"Having concentrated power, Xi is responsible for all policy setbacks and policy failures," said Joseph Cheng, a retired City University of Hong Kong professor and long-time observer of Chinese politics.

Notably, Xi used to dominate state-run newspapers' front pages and the state broadcaster CCTV's news bulletins on a daily basis but has in recent weeks made fewer public appearances. "He can't shift the blame, so he's responding by taking a lower profile," Cheng said.

The challenges so far aren't seen as a threat to Xi's grip on power, but for many Chinese, the government's credibility is on the line.

Of greatest concern to many is the trade war with the U.S. that threatens higher tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese exports. Critics say they've yet to see a coherent strategy from Beijing that could guide negotiations with Washington and avoid a major blow to the economy. Beijing instead seems to be opting for defiance and retaliatory measures of its own.

Both the stock market and the currency have weakened in response and the Communist Party itself conceded at a meeting last month that external factors were weighing heavily on economic growth.

At the same time, a scandal over vaccines has reignited long-held fears over the integrity of the health care industry and the government's ability to police the sprawling firms that dominate the economy.

"Trust is the most important thing and a loss of public confidence in the government could be devastating," said Zhang Ming, a retired professor of political science in Beijing.

And last week, the authorities mobilized a massive security effort to squelch a planned protest in Beijing over the sudden collapse of hundreds of peer-to-peer borrowing schemes that underscore the government's inability to reform the finance system to cater to small investors.

Meanwhile, Xi's signature project, the trillion-dollar "Belt and Road" initiative to build investment and infrastructure links with 65 nations, is running into headwinds over sticker shock among the countries involved. Some Chinese have also questioned the wisdom of sending vast sums abroad at a time when millions of Chinese remain mired in poverty.

That in part plays into concerns over Xi's abandonment of the highly pragmatic, low-key cautious approach to foreign relations advocated by Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China's economic reforms that laid the groundwork for today's relative prosperity.

Leaders are likely to discuss at least some of these challenges during informal discussions at the Beidaihe resort in Hebei province as part of a tradition begun under Mao. Xi and others generally drop out of sight for two weeks or more during the summer session.

Xi's mildly bombastic brand of Chinese triumphalism "has not been popular with many in the party," leading critics to speak out, said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

Some have even called for the sacking of one prominent proponent of the rising China theme, Tsinghua University economist Hu Angang, with 27 graduates of the elite institution signing a letter to that effect.

Resentment lingers also over Xi's moves to consolidate power, including pushing through the removal of presidential term limits in March and establishing a burgeoning cult of personality.

That resentment was given voice in a lengthy jeremiad titled "Imminent Fears, Imminent Hopes" penned by Tsinghua University law professor Xu Zhangrun, who warned that, "Yet again people throughout China ... are feeling a sense of uncertainty, a mounting anxiety in relation both to the direction the country is taking as well as in regard to their personal security."

"These anxieties have generated something of a nationwide panic," Xu continued before listing eight areas of concern including stricter controls over ideology, repression of the intelligentsia, excessive foreign aid and "The End of Reform and the Return of Totalitarianism."

Even more boldly, Xu called for a restoration of presidential term limits and a re-evaluation of the 1989 pro-democracy movement centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The peaceful protests were crushed by the military and remain a taboo topic to this day.

Although Xu is reportedly out of the country and has not been officially sanctioned, another longtime critic, retired professor Sun Wenguang, found himself carted off by police in the middle of a radio interview with the Voice of America in which he railed against China's lavish spending abroad.

A sign of the Xi administration's anxieties is a new campaign to promote patriotism among intellectuals  a recurring tactic when public debate is seen as needing a course correction.

The notice of the new campaign, issued July 31, cites "the broad masses of intellectuals" and the "patriotic spirit of struggle," while giving little in the way of specifics.

Much of the discontent with Xi can be traced to his administration's perceived ineffectiveness, said Zhang, the retired academic.

"If you want to be emperor, you must have great achievements," Zhang said. "He hasn't had any, so it's hard to convince the people."
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Shawn Matian Esq., President of The Matian Firm dba La Liga Defensora announces it has contributed $5,000.00 to LAFLA, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles , in an effort to provide poor and low-income families throughout Los Angeles with the legal help they need. For more than 85 years, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA) has provided civil legal services to poor and low-income people in Los Angeles County . Through multiple avenues, LAFLA provides legal aids to approximately 50,000 people per year and The Matian Firm is delighted to help further their reach. The Matian Firm will also be a sponsor at LAFLAs 2018 Access to Justice Dinner.



President and founder of the Matian Firm, Shawn F Matian ,  The Donald Trump administration has essentially declared war on immigrants and has abandoned the poor. As lawyers, we have an obligation to protect the rights and liberties of all those in need of legal help. LAFLA is a wonderful organization that is on the front line of helping those in legal jeopardy. The Matian Firm is honored to help organizations like LAFLA continue their work.

Matian continues, "As Federal Government agencies like ICE and DHS become more aggressive in their tactics of detaining, deporting and separating children from families, we as a community must act to help protect what's fundamentally right."

The Matian Firm | La Liga Defensora has helped thousands of clients with their immigration and criminal cases by providing excellent legal services. This consistent track record of outstanding work has been notably recognized by the legal community as evidenced by the many awards that have been bestowed upon the firm including: Super Lawyers | Rising Stars ; The National Top 100 Trial Lawyers ; Lawyers of Distinction Award ; Nationally Ranked Top 10 Attorney Award ; 10 Best Law Firms Client Satisfaction ; and Avvos Client Choice Award , amongst other accolades.

The Matian Firm | La Liga Defensora is staffed with experienced, aggressive, and zealous attorneys who are prepared to protect the rights of all immigrants as well as those who stand accused of committing a crime. Associate attorneys include former federal prosecutors, former special task force lawyers, former district attorneys, former public defenders, former asylum officers, former LAFLA (Legal Aid Foundation Of Los Angeles) attorneys , and many other lawyers who strive to make a difference in the fields of immigration law and criminal defense law.

The Matian Firm | La Liga Defensora provides legal services in all immigration and criminal matters including, but not limited to: deportation defense , family petitions , U-Visas , DACA , FOIA , Asylum , and VAWA . The firm also handles all criminal felony and misdemeanor matters including cases related to: Driving Under the Influence (DUI/DWI) , drug offenses , domestic violence matters , theft/robbery cases , sex crimes , violent crimes , fraud , arrest warrants , and cases falling under federal jurisdiction.

The Matian Firm is located at 3701 Wilshire Blvd Suite 210, Los Angeles, California 90010 . This year also welcomes a new location to serve the Bay Area / Northern California at 111 N. Market Street Suite 888 in San Jose, California 95113.

More information on the firm, its attorneys, and its casework can be found on the web: www.MatianLegal.com

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711 Media

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A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9242014e-0644-431d-b73e-25dd0fd44114
SEATTLE (AP)  He cracked jokes, complimented the professional demeanor of an air traffic controller and apologized for making a fuss.

But the friendly tone of a 29-year-old airport worker who stole a commercial plane Friday night, performing acrobatic stunts before the fatal plunge into a thick island forest, belied his desperate actions.

"I think I'm going to try to do a barrel roll, and if that goes good I'll go nose down and call it a night," Richard Russell said from the cockpit, according to a recording of his conversation with the controller.

The Pierce County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed Sunday that Russell had died in the fiery wreckage, but whether the crash was deliberate or accidental was one of several topics remaining for investigators.

Others include how, nearly 17 years after the 9/11 attack, someone can simply take a passenger plane from a major U.S. airport without authorization.

The Seattle FBI office said Sunday that it had recovered the flight data recorder and components of the cockpit voice recorder from the Horizon plane. The NTSB is now processing the equipment.

The FBI also said it found human remains among the wreckage.

Tragic as Russell's death was, he could have inflicted vastly more damage had he been so inclined. Potential targets included tens of thousands of fans assembling at Safeco Field, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) away, for a sold-out Pearl Jam concert just as he took off.

"Last night's event is going to push us to learn what we can from this tragedy so that we can ensure this does not happen again at Alaska Air Group or at any other airline," Brad Tilden, CEO of Alaska Airlines, told a news conference Saturday.

The plane was a Bombardier Q400, a turboprop that seats 76 people, owned by Horizon Air, part of Alaska Airlines. It had been parked at a cargo and maintenance area for the night after arriving from Victoria, British Columbia, earlier in the day.

Russell, a 3 1/2-year Horizon employee, worked as a ground service agent. His responsibilities included towing and pushing aircraft for takeoff and gate approach, de-icing them, and handling baggage.

Authorities said he used a tractor to rotate the plane 180 degrees, positioning it so that he could taxi toward a runway. They said it's not clear whether he had ever taken flight lessons or used flight simulators, or where he gained the skills to take off. The plane didn't require a key, but it did require buttons and switches to be activated in a particular order.

His 75-minute flight during the golden twilight took him south and west, toward the Olympic Mountains. As a flight controller tried to persuade him to land, he wondered aloud about whether he had enough fuel to make it to the Olympics, talked of the beautiful view, and said he had a lot of people who cared about him, apologizing for what he was doing.

He complimented the controller: "You are very calm, collect, poised," he said.

He said flying was a "blast" and that he didn't need much help: "I've played some video games before."

"You think if I land this successfully Alaska will give me a job as a pilot?" he joked.

He also told the controller he "wasn't really planning on landing" the aircraft, and he described himself as "just a broken guy."

Authorities sent fighter jets to escort him, and the controller repeatedly tried to direct him to runways. But the plane slammed into tiny Ketron Island, a sparsely populated island southwest of Tacoma.

Russell went by "Beebo" on social media. On his Facebook page, which had limited public access, he said he was from Wasilla, Alaska; lived in Sumner, Washington; and was married in 2012.

In a humorous YouTube video he posted last year, he talked about his job and included videos and photos of his travels.

"I lift a lot of bags. Like a lot of bags. So many bags," he said.

Russell's family said in a statement that they were stunned and heartbroken. They said it's clear Russell didn't intend to harm anyone, and "he was right in saying that there are so many people who loved him."
The former president of the Salk Institute discouraged one of her professors from suing for gender discrimination, saying in a private email that legal action could damage the La Jolla science centers reputation  and suggested it might harm the researchers career.

Elizabeth Blackburn, a Nobel laureate, sent the email to biochemist Beverly Emerson on June 30, 2017.

Families have disagreements. But they dont litigate their disagreements, Blackburn told Emerson, adding that a lawsuit would be ill-advised and might not be the most prudent tactic for her career.

In a dispute thats been unfolding in court documents, Emerson, 66, a noted cancer researcher, decided to join colleagues Katherine Jones and Vicki Lundblad in suing the Salk for alleged gender discrimination.

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All three women claimed that the Salk had systemically discriminated against them on salary, benefits, promotions and access to private donations.

The Salk announced out-of-court settlements with Jones, 63, and Lundblad, 65, on Aug. 7. Neither researcher is talking. Nor is Emerson, who is proceeding with her lawsuit.

But their concerns are outlined in court documents  especially those of Emerson, who went from believing that the institute might shed its misogynist culture to thinking that very little would change.

The Salk denies that it discriminated against the women. And it is asking a San Diego Superior Court judge to remove Blackburns email to Emerson from the record, saying that it is a privileged communication. That request is scheduled to be considered on Friday.

The institute says the email is privileged because it is part of mediation between Emerson and Salk.

Emersons attorney, Alreen Haeggquist, disputes that the email is privileged and says the email helps establish that Emerson was retaliated against for filing the lawsuit.

It is disappointing that (Emersons) counsel has chosen to disclose what we maintain is a privileged communication, over our objections and before the matter could be decided by the Court, particularly because Dr. Blackburns message was a sincere effort to reach out to Dr. Emerson and avoid litigation, said Steve Strauss, an attorney representing the institute, in a statement emailed to the Union-Tribune. That olive branch is now being used out of context to create an unfair and inaccurate characterization of Salk.

Blackburn, 69, could not be reached for comment. She left the institute earlier this year after announcing her retirement in December.

Optimism

In May 2016, Emerson, Jones and Lundblad met with Blackburn to discuss the Salks workplace culture and advancement opportunities. Blackburn had become president in January.

The meeting seemed to go well.

I dont want to go too overboard (ok, maybe I will just a bit), but our meeting with Liz (Blackburn) was a little tiny bit historic, Lundblad wrote in an email to Emerson. First time in decades (or ever) that three senior women faculty sat in the Salk Presidents office and were lauded by the Salk President for their scientific achievements ...

Yes, you had support from me and Kathy, but all the heavy lifting was done by you  and if you hadnt run for faculty chair, I dont think the three of us wouldve been there, listening to Liz acknowledge that yes, there is a real problem, and its been a problem for years.

Emerson replied, I think with Liz at the helm, the misogynist culture will definitely change and the Institute will evolve. This has to be set in stone or things can revert back when Liz eventually steps down (hopefully after many years.)

This is poignant, wonderful, and sad all at the same time.

The question of gender balance at the institute also was called into question in early 2016 by Seattle cancer researcher Robert Eisenman, who served on the Salks External Advisory Board.

Ive certainly been aware of the lack of gender balance but to my knowledge it never came up as an issue for discussion at any of our EAB meetings, Eisenman told Emerson in a February email. I wish it had.

Claim of retaliation

Emerson left the institute at the end of December after her contract was not renewed. She technically remains at the Salk as an emerita faculty member.

In her lawsuit, Emerson maintains that the failure to renew her contract was illegal retaliation and points to Blackburns June 30, 2017 email as evidence.

You have a reputation to protect, Blackburn wrote. The Institute has a reputation that it will vigorously defend. While you certainly have a right to litigate, I ask you to consider if this is the least injurious path toward achieving your goals. What feels good right now, based, perhaps, on complex emotions, may not prove -- on a career-long road -- the most prudent tactic.

Emerson responded to Blackburns email on July 3, agreeing to talk with Blackburn and reiterating her grievances.

As you know, I have tried to resolve the issues you are referring to in many ways, even as Faculty chair and Board member, but in my mind nothing changed for the senior female faculty, Emerson replied.

Even lately, simple things like getting broken departmental equipment replaced ... and even trying to get a donation by giving a lab tour and showing a PowerPoint to the Brown Foundation, have been unsuccessful.

My request to hire a part-time student lab helper, previously approved, was not re-approved and my student, whom we had trained as a volunteer for several months, took a job elsewhere. I only have two postdocs in my lab so their time to train the student is valuable, Emerson said.

Finally, I havent heard any updates about the status of fundraising for my research proposal on Cancer Ecosystems in several months even though I worked to prepare a 5 year budget and write a lay summary as requested.

Strauss, the Salk attorney, said Emersons tenure expired at the end of 2017, and that the Salk followed proper procedure in not renewing her contract.

To qualify for a post-tenure appointment, Salk professors must meet the external funding requirements set out in the Institutes written post-tenure guidelines, which were most recently updated in 2011, Strauss said.

Several Salk professors (female and male) have met these requirements and have continued to work at the Institute, for decades in some cases, beyond the expiration of their original appointments. Dr. Emerson did not meet the requirements.

Emerson said in a July 13 filing that the institute denied her the resources to meet the requirements, subjecting her work to a death spiral that effectively ended her career.

Emerson is best known for her work on how cancer develops. In 2015, she was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a distinguished scientific society.

Other allegations

Controversy over the Salk Institutes treatment of women extends beyond the lawsuit. An April article in the journal Science detailed allegations from eight women that star Salk scientist Inder Verma, 70, had sexually harassed or discriminated against them for decades.

Verma, a noted geneticist and cancer researcher, denied the charges. But he resigned from the institute in June after an investigation.

He had earlier told the Union-Tribune in an email, I have never used my position at the Salk Institute to take advantage of others. I have also never engaged in any sort of intimate relationship with anyone affiliated with the Salk Institute.

The institute has declined to release details of the investigation.

Whatever the specifics of the (Jones and Lundblad) settlement, their lawsuits, combined with the claims of eight women who made sexual harassment allegations against Inder Verma  raise troubling questions about the challenges women face working as researchers at the Salk Institute, said Leigh Turner, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota.

Turner added that the institute also misstepped in its initial response to the researchers lawsuits.

In July of last year, shortly after Jones and Lundblad sued, the institute released a statement characterizing the two as below average scientists in the bottom quartile (lowest 25 percent) in scientific productivity, compared to their peers.

Emerson wasnt then part of the litigation, but sued a week later.

Blackburn declined to comment on the assessment at the time, but institute staff said she cleared the statement.

In April, however, the institute said Blackburn didnt personally issue the statement, and that it disagrees with the characterization of the July 2017 statements; they do not criticize the quantity or quality of the professors scientific research.

Top scientists condemned the July 2017 statement. Carol Greider, who shared a 2009 Nobel Prize with Blackburn, called the comments unwarranted. On Twitter, she specifically defended Lundblad, calling Salks characterization of her work a character smear.

Greider also defended Emerson after she sued.

Ive known (Emerson) for over 30 years, been to many conferences with her. And her science is fabulous, Greider said at the time.

After the criticism, Blackburn said in an open letter that she wanted to correct any unintended impressions from prior statements related to the litigation.

The Salk greatly values the contributions of professors Emerson, Jones, and Lundblad to the scientific community and to the Institute, Blackburn wrote in the letter, dated Aug. 17, 2017.

These professors are our colleagues and members of the Salk community we all cherish. Indeed, the institute greatly values all of your contributions to the progression of science.

Emersons lawsuit is scheduled for trial on Dec. 7.

News researcher Merrie Monteagudo contributed to this story.

Related reading

Salk Institute settles 2 of 3 gender discrimination lawsuits

San Diegos scientific community confronts #MeToo as women in science speak out

Sexual harassment in academic science, engineering, medicine needs systemwide change

To Prevent Sexual Harassment, Academic Institutions Should Go Beyond Legal Compliance

Salk Institute professor Inder Verma resigns after investigation

Nobel laureate Blackburn unexpectedly retiring as president of the Salk Institute

Salk board chairman stepping down amid institute turmoil

Sexual harassment uproar in Berkeley leads to meeting at UCSD

Gender discrimination controversy grows at fabled Salk Institute

Leaked documents expose long-standing gender tensions at Salk Institute

Sexual harassment must not be kept under wraps

What we learned  or didnt  from the Bob Filner scandal

Science Playlist  On Now In a first, scientists rid human embryos of a potentially fatal gene mutation by editing their DNA On Now Space station flyovers visible from San Diego this week 0:55 On Now UCSD's 'ghost drivers' begin testing people's reaction seemingly empty cars 1:29 On Now 10 interesting facts about Mars On Now Kids can add years to your life On Now LA 90: SpaceX launches recycled rocket On Now Big passions, big giving: Malin Burnham 2:30 On Now Big passions, big giving: Darlene Shiley 2:40 On Now Big passions, big giving: Joan and Irwin Jacobs 2:45 On Now Ocean temperatures warming at rapid rate, study finds

bradley.fikes@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1020
The city Monday won a lawsuit that has been holding up the $80 million makeover of Balboa Parks Plaza de Panama.

In his tentative ruling, San Diego Superior Court Judge Gregory Pollack sided with the city, rejecting plaintiff San Diegans for Open Governments claims, namely that the bonds the city authorized in late 2016 to sell to cover project costs required a public vote. The judgment, which is expected to be signed and finalized by Pollack in a few weeks, eliminates a legal roadblock for project backers who plan to move forward with construction early next year.

Were ecstatic  because this says we can go out there and do our thing, said Jim Kidrick, who heads the San Diego & Air Space Museum and chairs Balboa Park United, a coalition of various park institutions.

Kidrick expects that the Plaza de Panama project, which represents a partnership between the city and the non-profit Plaza de Panama Committee, to break ground in the first three months of 2019. Construction is anticipated to last between 24 and 26 months.

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The pedestrian-friendly park revamp seeks to divert traffic from the Cabrillo Bridge and displace cars from two plazas in the center of the park. The plan, championed by Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs and backed by Mayor Kevin Faulconer, also calls for a bypass bridge and an 800-space underground garage, topped by landscaping. It was approved by the City Council in 2012.

Activist attorney Cory Briggs, on behalf of San Diegans for Open Government, challenged the legality of bonds proposed to cover about $50 million of the project; the remaining $30 million is being raised privately. Briggs also found fault with the citys agreement to give the committee, established by Jacobs, the naming rights for several park facilities.

My clients have a really good case (for appeal), Briggs said. The bonds are illegal. They need a public vote; they incurred too much money. (The city) doesnt have the money to pay for (the bonds); they didnt get the certification that the funds were available.

Some of Briggs arguments, however, werent considered by Judge Pollack, who Monday also granted the citys motion to dismiss its own cross-complaint. Briggs characterized the citys actions as deceptive maneuvering because the cross-complaint, he said, introduced several legal problems around the citys bond approval process that ultimately couldnt be factored into the judges ruling.

Faulconer lauded Pollacks ruling as a triumph for parkgoers.

Todays court victory shows what can happen when we continue to push bold ideas and dont let a small group of naysayers stand in the way of progress, he said in a statement. This project will mark the largest investment in Balboa Park in decades and transform the plaza to its original grandeur with acres of new park space for San Diegans to enjoy.

The city will work jointly with the Plaza de Panama Committee to design the project, and will take the lead on construction, according to the city attorneys office, which tried the case. Contractors will be selected through a competitive bidding process.

Dating back to 2009, the Balboa Park makeover has been in limbo for years. A separate suit from preservationist group Save Our Heritage Organisation also sought to kill the project. The organization lost its case and is appealing the ruling.

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jennifer.vangrove@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1840 Twitter: @jbruin
Lemon Grove is about to clamp down on nearly three dozen local businesses that sell cigarettes and similar products.

The city wants to be sure retailers are held accountable for following the law and not selling tobacco products to those under 21 years of age.

Local data from the California Healthy Kids Survey in the Lemon Grove School District revealed that 5 percent of seventh-graders have already tried electronic smoking devices.

The latest available data provided by Community Action Service Advocacy (CASA), a group that helps cities develop strategies to stop minors from buying tobacco and alcohol, indicates that among East County 11th grade students, 4 percent smoked cigarettes in the past 30 days and 11 percent used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days.

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The City Council last week reviewed a draft ordinance that will bring a tobacco retailer licensing program to Lemon Grove. The City Council plans to finalize the ordinance around October and hopes to roll out the program in December.

Lemon Grove was awarded $46,000 in grant funding from the California Department of Justice for program administration and enforcement costs for 2018-20 for the program.

The ordinance will require all sellers of tobacco/smoking products to obtain a Lemon Grove-approved license annually through a process similar to the citys regular annual business license process.

A report from the city says there are currently 31 tobacco retailers in Lemon Grove. The variety of retailers include convenience stores, gas stations, grocery stores, smoke shops and liquor stores.

According to CASA, a survey found that 31 percent of stores were illegally selling to minors.

The sale itself is unacceptable, said City Councilman David Arambula.

As part of its survey, CASA typically sends out a minor with an adult supervisor to a retail store and has the minor attempt to buy a product that is not legally allowed to be purchased.

Among the Lemon Grove stores that sold to minors, one in five did not ask for identification as required by law. CASA reported that some asked for ID but sold a tobacco product even though the ID showed the person was not 21.

More than 120 California cities and counties have adopted local licensing programs in addition to the states licensing requirements. California already requires tobacco retailers to apply for a $265 retail license with the state; their license has to be renewed on an annual basis.

The states tobacco retail licensing program is primarily intended to target enforcement of cigarette tax evasion and stop black market sales. It doesnt pay for enforcement of minimum age to purchase tobacco products and does not include any provisions to further regulate tobacco sales.

The type of tobacco retailer licensing Lemon Grove is considering is in addition to the state program and is aimed at ensuring that those selling tobacco are aware of certain eligibility requirements and performance standards.

Other cities in San Diego County, including El Cajon, San Diego, San Marcos, Solana Beach and Vista, already have local tobacco retail licensing programs. El Cajon was the first to have a program, in 2004. It charges its 114 retailers an annual fee of $675. Fines for noncompliance run up to $1,000.

El Cajon, San Marcos and Vista are considered by tobacco control organizations to be the most effective because of regular compliance checks by public safety officers, according to a report from Lemon Grove.

Angeles Nelson, a community advocate for the Lemon Grove Heal Zone, a group that focuses on health-related issues in the city and has been working with CASA for several months on the tobacco retail licensing program, said the community needs the City Council to stand with them.

There have been many people working on this and I thank all of you for taking this seriously and moving forward, Nelson said. Im happy this program is going to happen. It is going to help our youth and is going to help the health of the community.

The City Council considered several penalties for those who violate the ordinance.

An initial violation would result in a warning and requirement to train employees within 60 days; the second violation would be a suspension of up to 30 days; the third violation would be up to a 90-day suspension; the fourth violation would be a suspension up to one year; the fifth violation may result in a license being revoked.

Arambula said he wanted tougher penalties and suggested a three-year period as a time frame instead of five.

Lemon Groves draft ordinance says that if a license is suspended or revoked, the retailer would be allowed to appeal the decision before an impartial hearing officer.

There would also be incentives to tobacco sellers when they comply with the ordinance.

karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.com
La Mesa-Spring Valley School District Board President David Chong, the subject of controversy earlier this year over comments supporting the Second Amendment, will not run for re-election this November.

Two other incumbents, Bob Duff, who has served on the La Mesa-Spring Valley school board since 2004, and Rebekah Basson, appointed last fall to fill a position on the board vacated by Rick Winet, are also not among seven candidates vying for three seats.

Chong was voted into office in 2014. He will no longer be living in the districts boundaries. He and his family are moving out of Casa de Oro to the Granite Hills area of El Cajon starting in early 2019.

Chong, 45, said that although he had been promised $5,000 in pledges from supporters and qualifies for the ballot now, if voters elected him in November, it would be disingenuous to vacate the seat within two months, he said.

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Chong owns AO Swords Firearms in El Cajon. He faced heat in April from the community when he posted comments on his businesss Facebook page about protecting the rights of gun owners.

One post said: REPEAL THE 2nd AMENDMENT? Its already halfway dismantled in CA! Now people are marching in the streets, demanding that the government take away their civil rights! Its time for Federal Intervention!

He also made a video to endorse El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells in his run for Congress. The video, which went viral, included criticism of elected officials who take firearms policy advice from kids who were eating Tide pods just last week.

Chong said that when he was elected, I took an oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, including the entire Bill of Rights, not pick and choose the ones I like, just as when I was in the military service.

La Mesa-Spring Valley Superintendent Brian Marshall has defended Chong. On Monday, Marshall reiterated: Mr. Chongs comments were made as a private citizen, and we are all entitled to our opinions.

Duff, 79, announced his plans to not seek re-election earlier this year; Basson, 26, has told friends that she wants to concentrate on her pregnancy.

Those running for a seat in the district are:

Former appointed school board member and Spring Valley Community Church Pastor Steve Babbitt; Megan Epperson, who lists herself on the San Diego County Registrar of Voters website as a parent; Charda Fontenot, an educator/parent/entrepreneur, according to the Registrar; businesswoman Brianna Garza; former appointed La Mesa-Spring Valley Board member Jerry Lecko; teacher and parent Rebecca McRae; and middle school teacher and businessman Matthew Austin Sablove.

From a district perspective, Mr. Chong has been an outstanding board member for four years and we appreciate his thoughtful and deliberate deliberations on issues that came forward, Marshall said.

Marshall, who is retiring at the end of this year, noted that board members still have four months to serve until the new board members are seated.

Chongs three children have attended La Mesa-Spring Valley schools, including Casa de Oro Elementary and Spring Valley Middle School, now Spring Valley Academy. He was previously a PTA president at Casa de Oro.

Chong has not ruled out running for political office in the future. He said his term as president of the board this past year gave him great satisfaction.

For me this was the highest office, serving my own children and leaving a legacy for my kids, my neighbors, my kids playgroups, the community, all of our kids, Chong said. We made meaningful decisions about whats being taught in schools and helped resources become available to (teachers and children).

He said he was extremely pleased with and somewhat surprised about the difference a local elected official can make in policy creation, the financials and quality of life for people in the community.

Id be eager to serve again, Chong said, not so much as an ambition but I would thoughtfully look at ways I can meaningfully make a difference. Im not looking to be upwardly mobile. I serve where theres a need.

karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.com
A citizens initiative that would let Santee residents decide the fate of high-density housing projects that do not comply with the citys general plan will not be on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Backers of the Santee General Plan Protection Initiative gathered enough signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot  10 percent, or 3,779 of 32,962 registered voters.

But the City Council voted 3-1, with Councilman Brian Jones absent, to first do a 30-day study on the implications the initiative might have on Santees finances and other concerns. Pushing it out another month would not give the San Diego County Registrar of Voters enough time to prepare the initiative for the ballot, postponing the issue until the 2020 election.

Nearly 200 people crammed into Santee City Council chambers last week to let city officials know they are weary of traffic woes and concerned about the rapid growth and expansion of the city.

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Mayor John Minto said the City Council needs the study so that it can make an informed decision.

I have a fiduciary responsibility to this community, Minto said. And to go out there and do something that may cause us not to lose a few hundred thousand dollars, but millions? The loss of potential revenue? When I have a sheriffs contract that goes up $800,000 each year and I have to figure out where to come up with that money? Nobodys come forward with a plan to raise that money. Selling marijuanas not going to do it, folks.

Those supporting the grassroots effort backed by environmentalist Van Collinsworth of Preserve Wild Santee and Santee City Councilman Stephen Houlahan were hopeful the measure would be on this Novembers ballot.

Many said their biggest concerns revolved around growing traffic gridlock in and around the city, along with plans being put in place for Fanita Ranch, the sprawling development that its current developer says will put about 3,000 homes into rolling hills above Santee Lakes.

The people have spoken, lets move this forward, Houlahan said.

The initiative would amend the general plan to require voter approval for zoning changes that would increase the density or otherwise intensify the use permitted by law; or change, alter or increase the general plans land use categories.

Collinsworth told the City Council that its decision to do a study would clearly be a delay intended to allow projects not compliant with the general plan the ability to escape voter oversight.

Nearly 500 homes in Santee are currently under construction, with Fanita Ranch and others under review and possibly coming to the city in the near future.

Theres a lot of people who feel like you guys dont care about us and I really hope thats not true, said Santee resident Karen Schroeder, who said shes lived in the area since 1992, as she fought back tears. But a lot of people think you dont care. So I want you to prove me wrong. I want you to give us a choice and give us a voice.

Some speakers, including developer Michael Grant, said the city needs to go forward with the study. Grant and several others said a study would help voters understand what the financial implications would be if developers were stymied in being allowed to build homes in Santee.

Im a strong believer that you should represent the will of the people, and that they should have the opportunity to have their voices heard and a chance to vote on a measure of this type, Grant said. Its also important that they know what exactly those impacts would be and they be fully informed.

Grant said that a study looking over the last six years might show voters how fees and taxes developers pay to build in Santee help fund the citys sheriffs, firefighters and paramedics.

Id really like to know how much less revenue the city would have and what it would do to our budget, he said.

Michael McSweeney, a senior public policy adviser for the Building Industry Association of San Diego, said his group doesnt think ballot box planning is what Santee needs. He said the city needs to learn how much this initiative would affect its finances through an economic study.

I have heard a number of people express their opinions, they want more parks, they want more traffic calming, traffic measures, McSweeney said. These are the exact types of things that development provides. The streets, parks, all these things are paid for by developers when they put things in.

Collinsworth said he doesnt think there is a need for a study.

The general plan went through extensive environmental review prior to its approval, he told the City Council. The issue is simply: Do you want to comply with the general plan or not? If not, then citizens are requesting a voice at election on those non-compliant projects. The Fanita Ranch proposal is the primary example of a noncompliant project.

City Councilman Ronn Hall said that residents needs to remember that Santee will be under pressure to build some part of a state-mandated 171,000 homes in San Diego County in the next 15 years.

According to Santee City Planner John ODonnell, in the current Housing Element Cycle (2013-21), Santees allocation of the regions housing needs is 3,660 dwelling units.

karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.com
Dozens of swimmers kicked, paddled and floated away the hours Sunday at the Boys and Girls Club of San Dieguito in Solana Beach to raise money for the Prevent Drowning Foundation of San Diego.

The Swim 24 Challenge Swim Relay, now in its fifth year, pitted 13 teams of 12 people against each other for a 24-hour race that began Saturday. The rules require at least one team member had to be in the pool the entire time.

Corey McClelland, the volunteer CEO of the Prevent Drowning Foundation, said this years event raised more than $60,000, which is used to fund swim classes at schools in underprivileged San Diego neighborhoods.

Drowning is the leading cause of accidental death for kids, he said.

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McClelland worked as a lifeguard for several years, and said he had participated in more than 1,000 rescues.

Debbi Levis, captain of the first place team from Bay Club Carmel Valley, said her team was there not just because it was a good cause  they were also there to win.

They split the team into four groups of three people, she said. Each group took a three-hour shift in the pool.

This is our fifth year, she said. We have it down to a science. The four groups of three is the key.

Randy LeRuth of team Unclutured swims the final minutes in The Swim 24Challenge at the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Dieguito on August 12, 2018. (K.C. Alfred/San Diego Union-Tribune)

Allison Jackson captained the San Diego State University womens club water polo team, who came in third. She said she got involved last year, and that the cause was near and dear to her.

This is such an important cause, she said. Its shameful how common it is for young children to lose their lives to drowning.

Jackson came in second place for individual distance and said she was at the pool for the entire 24 hours.

Well, I napped for about an hour and a half, she said.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says an average of three children die every day due to drowning and recommends everyone learn the basics of swimming.

McClelland noted that many children do not have the opportunity to swim or access to a pool. Students who graduate Prevent Drowning San Diegos program are taken to the beach for an ocean swim, he said.

Not everyone was there to compete, however. In the Anything Goes category, swimmers could use fins and flotation devices. This gave some of the smallest swimmers a chance to take part in the relay.

Were just here to support the cause, said Jolie Parker of Solana Beach. Her family was part of a team that included adults and children, including her two daughters aged 9 and 6. Its important for the kids.

Natalie Espanol, front, and Charlie Hernandez swim during the final minutes of The Swim 24Challenge at the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Dieguito on August 12, 2018. (Photo by K.C. Alfred/San Diego Union-Tribune)

Sonnet Richmond, a high school senior from Phoenix, swam for the San Diego Junior Lifeguards. Richmond, who said she had been scared of the ocean before joining the junior lifeguards six years ago, has plans to become a lifeguard next year.

This is to fight childhood drowning, she said. Its so important for kids to be familiar with pools and the ocean.

Beth Saunders, a swim instructor, swam for Team Uncultured, which she said finished in the middle of the pack. She said the camaraderie and team bonding was a big part of what she enjoyed about the event, but also said she was always looking to give back.

The world is 70 percent water, she said. Once you get these kids swimming, its going to open a whole new world for them.

The foundation also raises funds through the Ocean Beach Pier Jump, the next of which is Monday, Aug. 13. Tickets are available online and first-come, first-served at the pier.

Contact Andrew Dyer via email or Twitter.
August 13, 1938 Evening Tribune

The San Diego Union-Tribune will mark its 150th anniversary in 2018 by presenting a significant front page from the archives each day throughout the year.

Saturday, August 13, 1938

In perhaps Del Mars most famous horse race, Seabiscuit, ridden by George The Iceman Woolf, beat Ligaroti and rider Noel Spec Richardson by a nose in a $25,000, winner-take-all match race on Aug. 12, 1938. The race drew a crowd of 20,000 to the track and a nationwide radio audience.

Woolf and Richardson spent much of the race engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Stewards, on the infield stand above the finish line, saw it all and suspended both riders, only to lift the suspensions days later because the race had been an exhibition with no public betting involved.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the story:

Suspend Riders But Seabiscuit Race Official

By George Herrick

DEL MAR RACETRACK, Aug. 13 (SPECIAL)As an aftermath of the Seabiscuit-Ligaroti match race here yesterday, won by the former in a stirring nose finish, the riders of both horses were suspended today for the remainder of the meeting and in all likelihood for the balance of the year.

Board O.K. Certain

George Woolf, astride the Biscuit, and Noel (Spec) Richardson, up on Ligaroti, were called into the stewards office today and after going over the fouling committed in the race, the officials made the following announcement:

For foul riding during the running of the fifth race Friday, Aug. 12, Jockey Noel Richardson and Jockey George Woolf are suspended for the balance of this meeting and denied all privileges of these grounds and their case referred to the California horse racing board with the recommendation that these suspensions be continued until Dec. 31, 1938, by order of the stewards.

Their suspension for the remainder of the year is a foregone conclusion, as the racing board always upholds any recommendation for suspension made by track stewards.

Blow to Howard Stable

The stiff jolt is expected to work a hardship on the Charles S. Howard stable, owner of Seabiscuit, for it had engaged Woolf to ride the Biscuit in several stakes this summer. Woolf was to take the place of Seabiscuits regular rider, Jack (Red) Pollard, who is out with a broken leg incurred in a fall off a 2-year-old at Suffolk Downs.

When the California racing board makes its official announcement anent suspending Woolf and Richardson for the remainder of the the year, neither boy will be permitted to ride at any recognized track track in America, as all racing commissions have a working agreement with the California body.

Although the Del Mar stewards would make no announcement other than issuing the official suspension notification, Richardson went into the stewards pagoda immediately after the running of the match race and claimed Woolf had grabbed Ligarotis bridle. Woolf in turn accused Richardson of hindering him from whipping Seabiscuit as the two hit the head of the stretch.

The stewards declared the race official. There was no public betting on the race.

View anniversary front pages online at sandiegouniontribune.com/150-years. For more from the Union-Tribune digital archives, go to newslibrary.com/sites/sdub. Searching is free, with registration. A fee is required to view full stories.
They are known as gaviotas  gulls  and they are the bane of thousands of long-suffering border crossers who line up every day at the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa ports of entry. In the lingo of binational commuters, gaviotas are those drivers who push their way into long queues that lead to the busy international crossings.

As the gaviotas test the tolerance of their fellow car-bound crossers, Tijuana police are cracking down on the practice that can lead not only to frayed nerves but also to accidents and angry confrontations.

In recent weeks, authorities have been stepping up patrols, erecting new barriers and posting inspectors at critical intersections and medians where gaviotas are known to make sudden appearances.

Now the city is preparing to go a step further  amending the citys transit code to make cutting into the border lanes a serious traffic infraction, punishable by a fine of some 1,300 pesos, about $68. Tijuana councilman Rogelio Palomera has been working with the Tijuana Police Department on a draft that he expects to submit to the council in coming days.

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Right now theres a lot of disorder, Palomera said. The aim is to establish order.

The disorder typically occurs during the morning rush hour, or on Sunday afternoons when lines to get to the U.S. inspection booths can stretch for miles into Tijuana streets that lead to the crossings.

Rather than drive to the back of the line, gaviotas approach through adjacent empty lanes, or from intersections that feed into the line. Some will pleadingly ask to be let in, but those who are more brazen will jump median strips and defy police barriers, and sometimes will collaborate with indigents who hold up the line for a few pesos so the gaviotas can cut in.

The situation has increasingly gotten out of hand in recent months, say commuters such as Jerry Jackson, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen who lives in Tijuana and crosses on weekdays to his job in downtown San Diego. Before youd see maybe one or two gaviotas and it wasnt upsetting, theyd ask for permission, you knew that it was a person who was late or had an emergency, Jackson said. But now you have 50 cars trying to cut in in a very aggressive manner.

A driver tries to cut into the line of vehicles waiting to enter the San Ysidro Port of Entry on Friday morning. (Courtesy)

On Thursday morning, transit inspector Marcos Gonzalez Alvarez was standing guard, keeping order in the long line of drivers that stretched toward the border, ensuring that no one crossed the temporary police barrier set up for the rush-hour period. They should be more conscientious, and line up like everybody else, he said of the gaviotas. Theyre just not respectful, people spend two, three hours in line, and they come and want to cut in.

Marco Antonio Sotomayor, Tijuanas public safety secretary, said the city government wants to ensure not only that commuters are ensured a stress-free crossing  but that visitors to the city arent left with a negative impression. Imagine a tourist who spends three hours in line, and unfortunately because there is no order, someone forces their way ahead of them into the line, and they have to wait longer, Sotomayor said. Maybe they wont come back.

Near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, Chela Ortega said she has noticed the difference in recent days. Im seeing the police paying more attention, said Ortega, who does a brisk business selling burritos to weekday morning commuters on their way to the United States. For about two weeks, theres been more order, its slow now, but its more peaceful.

Some crossers admitted to having been occasional gaviotas or enabling friends who wanted to jump into the line.

Josue Vicente Palafox, 23, who waited Wednesday morning to cross at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, admitted he has at times cut into the line  or helped his friends do so. Sometimes, among pals, you contact each other, and say, Hey, whats up, are you in line? Pasale , go ahead of me, he said.

Yes, its irritating, but Ive also done it, when Im late, or when the lines have been really long, said Jackson, whose Friday morning commute entailed a one-hour, 45-minute wait at the border.

Officers assigned to the tourist section of the Tijuana Police Department process people rounded up at the port of entry who were allegedly engaging in illegal activities in the long line of cars waiting to go in to the US. (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune)

While many gaviotas cut in line unassisted, others get help from indigents who walk among the lanes of northbound vehicles. Known on the border line as traperos, they brandish rags and offer to wipe cars for a few pesos. Some also offer their services to the gaviotas, helping the drivers force their way into the line.

They wait there by the side of the road, waiting for a client, said Arnoldo Rios, 23, a Tijuana resident and frequent crosser at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. One of them stands in front of the cars, while the other lifts the barrier.

In response to the rising number of complaints, Tijuana police have stepped up patrols and sweeps of the area, and those arrested are largely the traperos, whose nickname is derived from the Spanish word for rag.

The largest recent operation took place on Aug. 5, when officers picked up more than 100 people in the border lanes leading to San Ysidro and Otay Mesa, two of them on suspicion of peddling drugs. On Thursday, they detained 22 suspects found wandering the border lanes and disturbing citizens waiting in line to cross to the United States, according to a news release.

One of them was Felipe Becerra Lopez, 34, who said he earns his living cleaning cars and is addicted to crystal meth. He said he has been detained in this manner about 20 times. Inside his black backpack, police found two syringes, a small glass pipe, cigarette papers, as well as tools that could help him break into a vehicle.

Becerra and others picked up by police Thursday morning faced a range of charges  from begging in a public right of way to urinating in public to littering. Many of them are consuming drugs in public, said Alfredo Torres, the shift commander. These are the kinds of people who are causing the problem, stopping traffic.

Watching the drama that unfolds has become something of a sport for those inching forward in the line.

They communicate through Facebook pages such Como Esta La Linea Tijuana, which counts nearly 300,000 members, They publish photos and videos of the offending gaviotas, cheering when a police officer intercepts a driver and orders him to the back of the line. They alert fellow commuters that a gaviota is about to strike.

Theyre never going to change, these people need a life lesson, one commuter wrote recently. They are, and always will be, gandallas. People with no values!! Added another: Its a reflection of how they manage their lives.

sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com

@sandradibble
KEMP, Texas, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Larson Electronics LLC, a leading industrial lighting company, announced the release of a new hazardous location camera designed for discreet monitoring and remote observation in indoor and outdoor industrial environments. This 2MP camera features pan, tilt and zoom controls and can be powered via POE or wall outlet.



The HAL-CMR-IP-POE-PTZ-20MP produces crisp 1080p full-HD high resolution images day and night, for both indoor and outdoor applications. This explosion proof camera is capable of capturing images 1920 x 1080 resolutions. It features pan, tilt and zoom controls, the day/night unit offers up to 3x zoom for far-flung targets. Operators can power the monitoring device via POE or wall outlet. Alternatively, a network cable can be used to power the unit, when connected to POE-enabled devices, such as a POE NVR or POE switch.

The HAL-CMR-IP-POE-PTZ-20MP is constructed of durable copper-free aluminum and has an unbreakable polycarbonate lens. Four NPT hubs allow operators to safely wire and securely mount the unit in vessels, tanks, reactors, walls, ceilings or pendant configurations. This explosion proof camera is NEMA 3 and 4 rated.

"This explosion proof camera is perfect for discreet remote monitoring, said Rob Bresnahan, CEO of Larson Electronics. "It can be mounted inside vessels and tanks for real time viewing, or on building walls and ceilings to observe workplace operations."

About Larson Electronics LLC: Larson Electronics LLC is a manufacturer of industrial lighting equipment and accessories. The company offers an extensive catalog of industry-grade lighting and power distribution products for the following sectors: manufacturing, construction, food processing, oil and gas, military, marine and automobile. Customers can benefit from the companys hands-on, customized approach to lighting solutions. Larson Electronics provides expedited service for quotes, customer support and shipments.

For further information, please contact:

Rob Bresnahan, President and CEO

Toll-free: 1-800-369-6671

Phone: 214-616-6180

Fax: 903-498-3364

E-mail: sales@larsonelectronics.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9382dccc-0c32-40d2-a7fc-efb303e0e8e6
As Tijuanas homicides have continued to rise, dozens of residents marched through city streets on Sundayfrom students calling for safer neighborhoods to families seeking answers about their missing relatives.

We are sad and fed up with everything that is happening in Tijuana, that you cant walk around at peace, said Fernanda de la Torre, a 24-year-old culinary arts student and one of the organizers of what was billed as a Mega March for a Safe Tijuana.

The event was staged by a group of friends in their 20s who said they had no ties to political groups. It has come as authorities have registered more than 1,500 homicides in Tijuana so far this year, putting the city on pace to break last years record of more than 1,700 killings. Julys tally of 251 homicides reported by the Baja California Attorney Generals Office made it the most violent month to date.

Participants in Sundays march, many dressed in white, called for peace and justice as they marched down Agua Caliente Boulevard, cleared of traffic by a police escort. The group ended up in the citys Rio Zone at a traffic circle that surrounds a giant statue of the Aztec emperor Cuauhtemoca popular gathering spot both for protests and celebrations.

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While 4,500 people had expressed interest in joining the Mega March on the events Facebook page, the group never grew to more than 100 participants.

Truly, I think that people are apathetic, said Lizeth Vera, a 42-year-old physician who participated with her husband and two sons, ages 11 and 8. They think that this will never happen to them, that they are immune to such a situation. They find a thousand excuses not to go out.

De la Torre, one of the marchs leaders, said support on social media for her idea spread quickly after she first brought it up on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. This is a problem that affects all of us in Tijuana, she said.

The group planned to present a petition on Monday at City Hall. Their demands include better treatment of citizens at the hands of police, more public access to information about the police department and improved lighting in city neighborhoods.

The citys high homicide numbers of recent years have largely been attributed by authorities to disputes involving members of the local drug trade, though they have not been the only victims. Last week, a 13-year-old boy was shot to death by an assailant who stole his cellphone.

But while city officials acknowledge the rise in homicides, they say figures show an overall drop in crime, with pointed declines in certain areas. According to statistics from the Tijuana Police Department, the first five months of the year show a 5 percent overall drop in crime compared with the same period last year. The statistics show particularly steep declines in residential burglaries at 36 percent; car theft and commercial burglaries at 18 percent; and robbery with violence at 16 percent.

Over a decade ago, anti-crime marches in Tijuana brought out thousands of residents. But unlike the previous events, Sundays march did not include the participation of the citys leading civic groups and of the leading anti-crime organization, the Baja California Citizens Council for Public Safety.

The march may have suffered from not having a single galvanizing event to bring out the crowds. Two months ago, thousands participated in a march immediately following the disappearance of a 15-year-old girl, Diana Laura Piggeonountt Gomez, who was a student at the citys elite public high school Preparatoria Federal Lazaro Cardenas. She has not been found.

On Sunday, several families of missing persons joined the march, hoping to keep alive the search. Aide Aceves Montes said her 25-year-old son, Abraham Yunoe Chavez Aceves, had not been seen since April 24. 2016. He had gone to purchase medicine for one of his children on a Sunday morning and never returned.

We have no information of any kind, neither good, nor bad, she said.

sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com

@sandradibble
A group of U.S. Air Force officers, enlisted personnel and civilian employees is calling for an investigation into the installation commander of Edwards Air Force Base, accusing him of violating Department of Defense policies on religious proselytizing.

On Sunday, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation made an official demand to Defense Secretary James N. Mattis to immediately and comprehensively investigate Air Force Brig. Gen. E. John Teichert.

The foundation, which seeks to maintain the separation of church and state in the military, provided reporters with a copy of the demand on Monday.

At issue is Teicherts website, called Prayer at Lunchtime for the United States, in which the commander says he encourages Bible-believing Americans to take time to specifically pray for our nation at lunchtime every day.

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The foundation has asked the Defense Department to determine whether Teicherts conduct interferes with or violates the civil liberties of service-members and civilians under his command or the diversity or equal opportunities of service-members and civilians under his command.

Michael Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said his organization represents 41 client complainants, the vast majority of whom are practicing Christians. The group also includes Muslims, Jews, Hindus and atheists, he said.

In the groups demand letter, foundation attorney Donald Rehkopf accused the officer of using both his military rank as well as his position and status as an Air Force officer to aggressively promote his brand of religion  clearly giving the appearance if not outright impression that he, in his official status, is endorsing if not outright proselytizing his religion.

Teicherts publicly posted remarks demonstrate his discriminatory animus and overt condemnation of all personnel under his command who do not share his personal and particular dominionistic brand of Christianity, the complaint letter said.

Teichert commands the 412th Test Wing and is also the installation commander, according to the Edwards website.

On his religious website, Teichert goes only by John, and writes that he is an active duty brigadier general who has served in the Air Force since 1994, and who was saved by grace through faith in Christ in 2004.

The Lord has blessed his career while burdening his heart with the need for our nation to return to its Christian foundation, his bio reads.

The website features a prayer list, which includes President Trump, Vice President Pence, and the Trump administration, a return to our Biblical foundation, recognition of Gods preeminence in our lives and in our land and the unborn, among others.

The page also links to a 2014 interview that uses Teicherts full name and discusses his military career. In it, he says we have allowed our country to slip away from its founding Christian principles while it has become increasingly intolerant of Christianity.

Requests for comment by representatives of Edwards Air Force Base and the Pentagon were not immediately returned Monday.

sarah.parvini@latimes.com

For more California news follow me on Twitter: @sarahparvini
Cooler, calmer weather is helping firefighters get a handle on battling the largest wildfires burning across California and preventing new blazes from getting out of control.

Temperatures are cooling slightly, and humidity is inching upward due to a weakened high-pressure system that forecasters say will persist through Tuesday.

Though conditions remain far from ideal, theyre an improvement from just a few days ago and a welcome respite from the scorching, high-risk conditions that fueled some of the biggest, most destructive fires in California history.

Were fortunate that we dont have the triple-digit temperatures, we dont have the single-digit humidity, and we dont have the howling wind, said Kathy Hoxsie, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. Its still hot, its still dry, the winds arent light, but it could be much, much worse.

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Officials said that even small improvements, like temperatures dropping into the normal summer range and humidity climbing out of bone-dry territory, will allow quicker progress on 11 major blazes more than 13,000 firefighters are battling across the state.

Firefighters are going to take full advantage of this opportunity to get the lines reinforced and build more containments, said Lynne Tolmachoff, spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The favorable turn in the weather also enabled firefighters to quickly contain a new blaze, the Gulch fire in Monterey County, to only 650 acres Saturday, while reaching full containment on the 2,162 acre Nelson fire near Vacaville.

As long as the weather cooperates, fire officials expect to keep ratcheting up their containment levels.

Because of the weather, were in a good place right now, Tolmachoff said.

To date, the fires have burned more than 695,000 acres, an area more than twice the size of the city of Los Angeles. More than 12,000 residents remain under evacuation orders, fire officials said.

In Southern California, firefighters were making headway on the Holy fire burning in the Cleveland National Forest near Lake Elsinore, raising the fires containment to 51% on Sunday. But those efforts could be complicated by the changing weather, which also brought a chance of thunderstorms and wind gusts in Southern California mountain areas Sunday afternoon.

Firefighters also made progress on the Mendocino Complex fire, the largest recorded in California history, which had burned more than 336,000 acres as of Sunday. The blaze, which is made up of the Ranch and River fires, has destroyed 146 homes and is now 70% contained.

In Redding, containment of the 201,680-acre Carr fire increased to 61% on Sunday. That fire has destroyed almost 1,600 structures, including 1,077 homes, and threatened 528 others.

Meanwhile, Yosemite Valley is on schedule to reopen to the public on Tuesday after nearly a three-week closure due to the 96,000-acre Ferguson fire, which was at 83% containment Sunday. The Wawona and Mariposa Grove area of the park is set to open Monday.

The break in the weather may be brief. Temperatures are expected heat up again by the end of the week, though forecasters dont expect conditions as severely hot and dry as in July, when some of states largest fires broke out.

That doesnt mean were out of the woods. Its only August, and extreme heat, strong winds and other fire-stoking conditions are likely to return by September and October, historically the most destructive months in California. Officials said they are bracing for more large wildfires through the fall.

Times staff writer Alene Tchekmedyian contributed to this report.

tony.barboza@latimes.com

Twitter: @tonybarboza

UPDATES:

9:40 p.m.: This article was updated with new fire figures.

5:20 p.m.: This article was updated with new information from fire officials.

This article was originally posted at 3:40 p.m.
Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies shot and killed a man in East Los Angeles on Sunday morning, authorities said.

The shooting occurred about 2 a.m. in a housing complex on the corner of North Mednik Avenue and Floral Drive, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department.

East Los Angeles Station deputies responded to a call of a man being robbed at gunpoint. When they arrived, the man directed deputies to a group of people inside the complex, the sheriffs department said.

As the deputies drove toward the group, they ran in different directions, according to the sheriffs department. Deputies tried to find the suspects and directed additional units to the complex. An assisting unit driving through the complex found a man walking in a courtyard. Authorities said he looked at the deputies and began to run, then fell.

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A fight broke out between the deputies and the suspect as they tried to detain him, the sheriffs department said, and a deputy or deputies shot the man. A semiautomatic handgun was recovered from the scene, the department said. It was not immediately clear if more than one deputy opened fire.

The Los Angeles County coroners office identified the man as Anthony Vargas. The 21-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene. One deputy suffered minor injuries.

Investigation into the shooting is ongoing.

sarah.parvini@latimes.com

For more California news follow me on Twitter: @sarahparvini

UPDATES:

8:15 a.m.: This article was updated with the identity of the man who was shot and killed.

This article was originally published at 8:05 a.m.
With the new school year just days away, hundreds of San Diego-area charter school students and their parents are waiting to see if their school will be legally allowed to exist.

For years, independent study California charter schools, many of which combine in-class and online instruction, had opened satellite locations outside of the school district that authorized them under the assumption that state law allowed it. Every charter school needs authorization to operate, whether it be a school district or a county education office.

These satellite schools were controversial because they took students  and state funding  away from districts that didnt have a say in authorizing them. It was often easier way for such charter schools to get approved, because their authorizing school district would not be losing students to the charter school.

In 2016, an appeals court ruled that charter schools can no longer have satellite locations outside the boundaries of the authorizing school district. So charter schools that already had these satellites were forced to find ways to comply with the court decision. Many charter schools got waivers from the state that gave them about a year of extra time to do so.

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In order to comply, some charter schools have simply closed satellite locations that couldnt get authorized, had too few students or wouldnt survive financially as their own school. Thats why Julian Charter School closed its San Diego and Alpine locations at the end of June, said Jennifer Cauzza, Julian Charter Schools executive director. Some schools have also combined locations and shuffled students around.

But mainly, charter schools have petitioned the school districts in which their satellites are located, asking them for authorization.

Charter school leaders describe it as an arduous process that has taken so long, its beginning to spill over into the new school year. Charter school officials had to draft applications, often with as many as 1,000 or more pages, for each satellite location.

If you wonder why it took so long, thats why it took so long, Cauzza said.

The issue frustrates charter school leaders because they have been operating schools for years, and now theyve found themselves relying on different school districts to authorize them and let them stay open.

It is crazy, it is complicated, and its sad because it was working well to begin with, Cauzza said.

This almost became a problem for the National University Academy charter school network, which was authorized by the Lakeside Union School District but had a satellite dual language school in the Vista Unified School District, as well as other locations.

The charter school asked the Vista school board this year to authorize the Dual Language Institute, which has about 260 students.

Vista denied the application for a number of reasons, including that the charter schools students overall had fewer poor students, Hispanic students and students with disabilities than Vista. Vista officials also complained that the schools test scores were too low, that its leaders did not outline a detailed plan on how it serves students with disabilities and that other National University Academy locations had been closed in the past, among other concerns.

School districts can deny charter school applications only if they find the school presents an unsound educational program, among other stipulations, according to state law.

Charter school advocates argued its unfair to deny a school that has already been operating for years.

How educationally and financially unsound can you be if youve been in existence for eight years? said Michelle Anderson, San Diego and Orange Countys regional manager for the California Charter Schools Association. These are schools that are in existence right now, and how these districts cannot approve them is a shock to me.

National University Academys Dual Language Institute appealed Vistas denial to the San Diego County Board of Education, which voted on Wednesday to authorize the school based on conditions yet to be determined. National University Academy has also won authorization from San Diego Unified School District for its 1001 STEAM school and authorization from La Mesa-Spring Valley for its Sparrow school.

Other schools are still waiting to hear their fate. In June, the San Diego County school board denied Julian Charter Schools petition for a countywide authorization, suggesting it should seek local authorization instead. The school is waiting for decisions on the authorization of three of its locations from three different school districts: La Mesa Spring Valley, Mountain Empire and Julian Union, Cauzza said.

Those decisions could come in August or September, but if any of those districts deny the charter schools petition, the charter school leaders will have to decide whether to appeal to San Diego County, which would delay the outcome longer.

Either way, the decisions almost certainly wont come in time for Julian Charter School to open for the first day of school, which is Aug. 20. In the meantime, the school will educate its students virtually, Cauzza said, using virtual conferencing tools like Skype to connect teachers to students. The charter network is down about 100 students and three teachers since last year, she said.

Kristen Taketa

Email: kristen.taketa@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @Kristen_Taketa
South Bay cities are preparing to go head-to-head with the federal government this week in a legal battle that could force the Trump administration to plug sewage spilling from Tijuana into San Diego.

Local officials filed the lawsuit in March after demanding for more than a year that federal infrastructure along the border be beefed up to ensure that flows from Mexico are captured before they foul San Diego wetlands and beaches.

On Monday a federal court judge will hear a motion to dismiss the case filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, which is defending the International Boundary and Water Commission, or IBWC.

The cities of Imperial Beach and Chula Vista, as well as the Port of San Diego, have alleged that the IBWC is violating the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act by not doing more to prevent the pollution.

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While both Mexico and the U.S. spent billions decades ago to address the situation, crumbling wastewater infrastructure in Tijuana has left South Bay beaches routinely covered in a toxic soup of sewage and other contamination.

In the motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the defense has argued that the IBWC isnt legally responsible for the renegade flows. Lawyers have pointed out that the agency has helped prevent pollution from entering into San Diego.

Nowhere in this sequence is there an addition of pollution to a water of the United States, attorneys for the defense said in court documents.

Lawyers for both sides would not comment on the pending litigation.

Plaintiffs said in court documents that the tainted flows constitute an improper discharge under federal water quality rules even through the pollution originated in Mexico.

The plaintiffs maintain that because IBWC oversees a flood control channel that redirects the Tijuana River on its way to the Pacific Ocean, as well as water-capture basins in five canyons along the border, the agency is responsible for the pollution thats often conveyed through or escapes those systems.

The (flood control channel) need not generate a pollutant to effect a discharge; the fact that it introduces a pollutant to waters of the United States is sufficient, lawyers said in court documents.

Specifically, local elected officials hope their lawsuit will force the federal government to upgrade pumps on the Tijuana River and the capture basins in the canyons, which divert flows to the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant west of San Ysidro.

The case will likely move forward despite the defenses attempts to get it thrown out early on, said UC Berkeley law professor Holly Doremus.

Its really hard to predict what will ultimately happen, but the claim that this has already been decided under the Clean Water Act, thats just wrong, she said.

What makes this case so unique, Doremus said, is the fact that the water crosses an international boundary. In cases cited in the defenses motion to dismiss, she said, water was being diverted within the U.S.

Theres this funny situation that isnt anticipated in the Clean Water Act, so all of those prior cases that the defense is trying to rely on are a little different, she said. There is no precedent for this.

Earlier this year, state Attorney General Xavier Becerras office and the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board signaled a willingness to join the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs. In May, the two agencies filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the IBWC for alleged Clean Water Act violations.

Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina has led the charge against the IBWC since his citys shoreline was blanketed with millions of gallons of raw sewage in February 2017. Beaches as far north as Coronado were impacted.

Dedina said he attended a meeting with IBWC officials last week where he and other local officials were told by Acting Commissioner Jose Nunez that municipalities in the San Diego region would have to pony up more money to help address the issue of cross-border pollution.

They said we should be paying way more money to fix the problem, Dedina said. All our jaws were open when we heard that. That explains why were doing a lawsuit.

We have no money, he added. Our pockets are empty. Were just trying to pave our streets. We barely have money for that. Until recently, we didnt have a major grocery store.

In response to questions about the meeting, the IBWC issued a statement that said: The U.S. IBWC has and continues to proactively work towards the sanitation issues in San Diego.

Imperial Beach, which includes the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge has portions of its shoreline off-limits to swimmers roughly a third of the year on average due to sewage and other water pollution flowing from Mexico.

Twitter: @jemersmith

Phone: (619) 293-2234

Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com
Diane Harkey, the Republican candidate for Californias 49th Congressional District, recognizes that President Trump doesnt make women real comfortable.

Men just have a different style, she said: Theyre more warrior-oriented. We are a little more consensus-builders.

But she laughs off the idea of campaigning as a woman. I want all voters, I like men too, she said. I dont think it helps to talk about gender.

It may be the year of the woman in midterm campaigns across the country, but Ms. Harkey is not embracing it here in one of the nations most hotly contested congressional elections. The passion is far more evident 30 miles south of here, in the offices of a new group called Flip the 49th, whose weekly protests following Mr. Trumps inauguration drove the Republican incumbent, Darrell Issa, from his seat. Now, it is working feverishly to elect the male Democrat running against Ms. Harkey.

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Shes anti-health care, anti-gun control, anti-family, anti-immigrant, anti-environment, said Mary Schrader, a Flip volunteer who was a Republican until 2016. Shes completely out of touch with the women in her district.

This is the bind for Republican women running for office in the Trump era. The energy among women that started with the marches after the presidents inauguration is against them  surveys have shown that 70 percent of the membership of local resistance groups, and almost all the top leadership, are women. And having long resisted identity politics, Republican women are reluctant or unable to claim any advantage to being a woman among voters.

Republican women running in swing districts are instead left to carefully carve out the separation between themselves and Mr. Trump, a president who was elected with the biggest gender gap ever recorded, and who regularly dismisses female officeholders as crazy and low I.Q.

Those running in districts where the president is popular have been punished for so much as criticizing him for incivility.

Weve told a lot of women, Dont run this year, said Meghan Milloy, the co-founder of Republican Women for Progress, which helps to promote moderate female Republicans. Weve told them, Youre a great candidate, if it were any other year you would win. We dont want these women, who have such potential, to lose and get down and get out of politics.

There is a record number of Democratic women running for the House this year, but Republican women did not break the record they set in 2010  when the resistance energy was on the right. Only about 14 percent of Republican House candidates are women, compared to about a third of Democratic candidates, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers.

Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican who is leading her partys recruitment efforts in the House, noted that the number of Republican women running had tripled since the last cycle. She credits several candidates with keeping the party competitive in districts where Hillary Clinton won in 2016  Young Kim in Southern California, for example, and Lea Marquez Peterson in Arizona.

Ms. Stefanik argued that Republican women connect better to voters. Democratic women are running in response to the Trump administration, she said. With my candidates Ive worked to recruit, its more about representing their communities and their districts.

In states and districts, though, the party has been slower to support Republican women.

Carla Nelson, running for an open House seat in southern Minnesota, has the endorsement of four national conservative womens groups, nine incumbent congresswomen and the National Rifle Association. She beat an incumbent Democrat to win her current seat in the State Senate.

But in the primary on Tuesday, local party organizations are supporting Jim Hagedorn, who has run for the seat and lost three times, even in 2016 when Mr. Trump won the district by 15 points.

Locally its different, Ms. Nelson said. All the good ol boys begged me not to run.

Mr. Hagedorn has a trail of blog posts derogating women. He described the nomination of Harriet Miers in 2005 as an attempt to fill the bra of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor and in 2008, he thanked John McCain on behalf of all red-blooded American men for his vice-presidential pick  SARAHS HOT! he wrote  leading a columnist for the conservative Washington Examiner to label him in April the worst midterm candidate in America.

The mailers would write themselves, Ms. Nelson said. It was no wonder, she added, that the Republican Party is struggling to earn the support of women in the voting booth.

Republican voters may be less inclined to support women: 13 percent of Republican primary winners so far are women, compared with 42 percent among Democrats, according to the Rutgers center.

Ms. Nelson sounds like many Democratic women when she describes why she is running in a year when the odds are so against her.

The need is so great for someone like me who has a track record of getting things done, she said. I just cant sit on the sidelines.

Jenifer Sarver, who ran unsuccessfully in a crowded primary in Texass solidly red 21st District, echoed that reasoning. But while Ms. Nelson largely aligns with the president, Ms. Sarver, a former aide to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, had written about her decision to vote for Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Trump in 2016.

I sat back and said, Do I want to be somebody on the sidelines throwing rocks or do I want to jump in and make a difference? she said. My message was, I want to stand next to him when hes delivering conservative policies I agree with but be the first person to call out the incivility I see.

She was blown away, she said, by the support from many voters. One man, she said, told her, My New Years resolution was to only vote for female candidates.

But others told her that they could never vote for her because of her vote for Mrs. Clinton, and her primary opponents pounced on her for saying the Republican Party did not do a good enough job representing women and young people. Consultants told her to run to the right and equivocate later.

Thats what people are disgusted with in politics, said Ms. Sarver, who came in fifth out of 18 candidates in the March primary. I would rather lose with grace than lie to voters.

Republican women have always said we dont play identity politics, she said. How we address that going forward is a really big problem.

But the biggest problem for Republican women this year is what Ms. Harkey told the crowd of 80 people who gathered to open her headquarters on a steamy August Saturday. The energy is on the other side, she said.

Republicans are going, Are you Trump or are you not Trump? Are you this or are you that? she said. You know what? This is no time to worry. Just get out and vote, and vote for the party, people, because the other side has gone way far left and its going to continue.

The district of red-roofed Spanish-style McMansions and oceanside golf courses stretches from southern Orange County to northern San Diego County and includes the Marine base at Camp Pendleton. The crowd cheering Ms. Harkey included several veterans and a woman with a sparkling flag pin. A leader of a local Republican womens club noted proudly that her red dress was from Ivanka Trumps label.

As Ms. Harkey called out to make sure she had not missed any local officials  School board, water board, anything else?  a man in the crowd replied, Im all for waterboarding!

Ms. Harkey told her story of arriving in California as a young girl from Illinois and having to peel onions with the Mexican bracero workers to earn $11 for her first Barbie doll. She went to community college and the University of California-Irvine, working her way up in banking and to become mayor of Dana Point, a wealthy oceanfront enclave. She served six years in the California State Assembly and is now a member of a board that reviews state tax assessments.

After nearly two decades of voting Republican in presidential races, the district went for Mrs. Clinton by 7 points in 2016. And Pat Bates, a state senator, warned the crowd at Ms. Harkeys headquarters that Democrats had overperformed in their voter registration efforts in the June primaries.

We need boots on the ground, she said. Every single Republican has got to vote or were looking at a socialist southern Orange County and north San Diego, I kid you not.

The women at the Flip the 49th headquarters, who worked hard for that overperformance, began their activism out of concerns about the Trump administration dismantling the Affordable Care Act. They held weekly protests outside the office of Mr. Issa, a leading tormentor of Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton, and once brought a cake in the shape of a Hawaiian shirt to encourage him to retire early; they returned to celebrate the next day when he announced he would.

They began calling themselves ReSistas, and by November had joined up with Flip the 49th to rent office space in Carlsbad. A Trump effigy stands in one corner and across the window is a banner reading We the People embroidered by Karin Brennan, a former Sergeant in Army intelligence who joined the group.

About 200 people showed up  and stayed  for a six-hour training session on how to canvass voters.

In the primaries in June, the group reached 57,000 voters by phone or door-knocks, turning out more Democrats than Republicans in a district that is known as the birthplace of the modern right.

Eighteen months ago if you asked me my congressional district, I would have said I have to look it up on Google, said one volunteer, Ellen Montanari.

With so many women running this year, the women here wanted to support a female candidate. But they believe Mike Levin, the Democratic opponent, will support what they see as womens issues, particularly health care and gun control.

You can have a female candidate, said Terra Lawson-Remer, a founder of Flip the 49th. But you need an army to take power.

Jackie Peregoy, left, and her daughter Janelle made calls at the office of Flip the 49th the day before Californias primary election in June. (Hilary Swift for The New York Times)

Ms. Harkey was endorsed by Mr. Issa. Theyre trying to bank on the R next to her name, said Nikki Faddick, a co-leader for a local chapter of Moms Demand Action, a gun control group.

But Ms. Harkey, while a loyal Republican, is aware that she needs to choose her words carefully. I would like to see the president tweet less and govern a little more, she said in an interview.

The crowd at her headquarters seemed mostly concerned about illegal immigrants taking advantage of the system. Ms. Harkey returned to her story about the braceros, noting that Mexican workers can come across the border on day passes to work in Californias agricultural industry. Her voice betrayed a tinge of exasperation.

If the president wants his wall, he needs his wall, Ms. Harkey told them. Just do it, you know? Its not that big a deal.
Authorities on Monday identified an Orange County man who was killed on Interstate 5 near Camp Pendleton when his Chevrolet Suburban overturned and was struck by another SUV.

The crash happened shortly before 3 a.m. Aug. 4 on northbound I-5 past Basilone Road, near San Onofre State Beach and not far from the Orange County line.

Guadalupe Hernandez Velasquez, 25, of San Clemente, was behind the wheel of the SUV that veered off the road for unknown reasons and went up an embankment on the right shoulder before rolling over several times, according to the San Diego County Medical Examiners Office.

The victim was thrown from the vehicle onto the roadway.

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Shortly afterward, a Nissan Rogue driven by a 46-year-old Tijuana man struck the disabled Suburban, California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Latulippe said.

Passing drivers stopped to assist the driver of the Suburban, who was found unresponsive outside his vehicle on the right shoulder, Latulippe said.

The man died at the scene.

Drugs and alcohol were not considered to be factors in the crash, Latulippe said.
A fight that escalated to a shooting in the Gaslamp Quarter early Monday left a 33-year-old man dead and the suspected gunman behind bars, police said.

Witnesses told police the victim and a companion were near 5th Avenue and Market Street when they got into an altercation with a group of men about 2 a.m., police Lt. Matt Dobbs said.

The quarrel escalated, and, at one point, the victim was seen swinging a street sign. He was later shot at least once in the upper body, the lieutenant said.

Good Samaritans who jumped into action were providing medical aid when officers arrived. Police and paramedics also tried to save the man, but he succumbed to his injuries, Dobbs said.

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Investigators believe they know who the victim is, but his name will not be released until his family has been notified.

Two men suspected of being involved in the incident fled the area in a cab that was later stopped by officers, Dobbs said. The two were questioned, and one of them  24-year-old Jonathan Hernandez  was arrested.

He was booked into jail on suspicion of murder, Dobbs said.

The victim and Hernandez appear to be strangers.

The San Diego Police Department appreciates the assistance of citizens coming to the aid of the victim and providing timely information which led to the identification of possibly involved parties, Dobbs said in a statement.

The lieutenant said streets in the area were crowded when the shooting happened, and encouraged anyone who may have witnessed the incident to call police at (619) 531-2293 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at (888) 580-8477.

Several streets remain closed until about 8:30 a.m. while officers investigated.

Twitter: @LAWinkley

(619) 293-1546

lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com

UPDATES:

This article was originally published at 7:10 a.m.
Its a delicate conversation fraught with pitfalls: asking a family member with deepening dementia to give up his or her firearm.

Perhaps the guns have been cautiously owned for decades for protection or sportsmanship, a proud exhibition of the constitutional right to bear arms. Maybe the guns are a reminder of military service or a career in law enforcement.

A new program is making it easy for people with dementia to keep their prized firearms by their side  safely.

Alzheimers San Diego is offering free gun locks to anyone living in households affected by dementia. The program is believed to be the first specifically tailored to dementia patients in the country.

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Five hundred locks have been donated so far by Poway Weapons and Gear Range, a mega gun store and shooting range whose owner knows what its like to have the uncomfortable gun discussion with a declining relative.

My grandma fought dementia for 10-plus years, said owner John Phillips. This is my way to do something in her memory.

The topic of dementia patients access to guns has been gaining greater attention recently as the U.S. population ages. An estimated 5.1 million Americans 65 and older suffer from some form of dementia. Meanwhile, an estimated 33 percent of adults in that same age bracket own guns, while another 12 percent live in a household with someone who does, according to a Pew Research Center report last year.

Many families caring for dementia and Alzheimers patients, especially during the onset of the disease, dont realize that along with memory loss can come hallucinations, aggression, paranoia and the inability to recognize people  symptoms that dont mix well with guns.

And family members also tend to forget about the revolver that has been stored under the bed for decades, or the hunting rifle in the closet.

In one case, a North County father shot his daughter through a bedroom door because he thought she was an intruder, and in another, a husband under the delusion his wife and neighbor were having an affair threatened to shoot them.

Dementia patients are also at heightened risk of suicide, said Jessica Empeno, vice president of programs and family services at Alzheimers San Diego.

While Empeno said the safest option is to have the gun removed from the home altogether, she says that is not always viable.

Its not easy to go in there and just take guns away, she said. We wanted to be able to offer another option for families who maybe dont want to get rid of the gun.

Removing firearms from a home can also get tricky legally. The laws around gun ownership and gun transfers are complicated and can be easy for well-meaning families to run afoul of.

For instance, some family members can be easily gifted the gun under state law, while in other cases the transaction must go through a licensed firearm dealer.

California law is a minefield, Phillips said. Families are so focused on the health and support, they dont realize they are making a mistake and breaking laws.

The $5 cable-style lock being offered through the program fits all types of firearms and is secured around the weapon with a padlock and key. It is bright red, providing a visual cue that the gun is disabled.

A gun lock allows for others in the home to still use the gun if necessary, such as for home protection or recreational shooting, and also preserves it for future generations if it is valuable or sentimental.

The gun gets to stay there. They can touch it, feel it, clean it. They just will not be able to chamber a round or have the gun operate, Phillips said.

What it does take away is the potential for rash decisions to be made by someone who doesnt have all their mental faculties.

It also gives added comfort to caregivers who go into these homes.

For families with a dementia patient, getting a lock is as simple as asking Alzheimers San Diego for one. Locks can also be requested for firearms stored at a home that is frequently visited by the patient, such as an adult childs home.

The idea for the program came during a roundtable meeting that Empeno attended alongside local law enforcement.

Empeno reached out to the Poway range and got an enthusiastic response.

Phillips unveiled the program last month at an event for the 2,500-plus members of his gun range and encouraged the gun enthusiasts to consider if the topic of dementia and firearms safety needs to be discussed within their own families. Many told him that it was not something they had considered before.

Phillips remembered his own attempts at such discussions with his grandmother. She eventually gave him her guns, but when she wanted to do it, not when we wanted her to do it, he said. That was not a discussion she wanted to have until she was ready.

Imagine the tight grip that ex-military or ex-law enforcement might have on their guns, Phillips said.

I think the car will be easy compared to taking their guns away, he said.

Gun locks might help bridge that gap.

Once that lock is on the firearm its no longer a firearm, its a paperweight, Phillips said, but the symbolism still remains.

To request a free gun lock for situations of dementia, call Alzheimers San Diego at (858) 492-4400.

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis
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PassionAir becomes first Bombardier operator in Ghana with three Q400 aircraft

MONTREAL, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bombardier Commercial Aircraft announced today that the company successfully placed three pre-owned Q400 turboprops with PassionAir from the Republic of Ghana. The airline acquired the aircraft through a dry-lease with a third party.

Bombardier has sold about 3,500 new regional aircraft to date, and we continue to be very active on the used aircraft market. said David Speirs, Vice President, Asset Management, Bombardier Commercial Aircraft. Our recent momentum on the pre-owned aircraft market worldwide is a clear indication that our products are addressing a growing need for regional air transportation, especially in emerging markets.

Our market penetration in Africa continues to intensify, and we are pleased to welcome Passion Air as the first commercial airline operating a Bombardier regional aircraft in the Republic of Ghana, said Jean-Paul Boutibou, Vice President, Sales, Middle East and Africa, Bombardier Commercial Aircraft. Africa is the youngest and fastest growing region in the world, and regional aircraft like the Q400 will play a key role in helping advancing Africas economic growth.

The airline will operate the three Q400 aircraft in a 78-seat configuration on domestic routes.

This is a first step, and we look forward to expanding our fleet with more Bombardier aircraft, said Edward Annan, Chief Executive Officer, PassionAir. The Q400 offers the performance and flexibility that we need to further develop our network. With a range that unlocks great opportunities for us, we are confident that we will capitalize on a larger market, which extends to 12 countries and over 180 million potential passengers out of Accra.

About PassionAir

PassionAir is a Ghanaian owned airline, and aims to become the most competitive Aviation Service Provider in Ghana and West Africa. Our focus is on safety and excellent customer service delivery, depicting the proverbial Ghanaian hospitality. Our product lines range from scheduled to chartered flights offered at internationally accepted standards and competitive prices.

PassionAir as start off, will operate flights domestically, with plans of expanding our services to the West African sub-region in the medium term.

About Bombardier

With over 69,500 employees across four business segments, Bombardier is a global leader in the transportation industry, creating innovative and game-changing planes and trains. Our products and services provide world-class transportation experiences that set new standards in passenger comfort, energy efficiency, reliability and safety.

Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Bombardier has production and engineering sites in 28 countries across the segments of Transportation, Business Aircraft, Commercial Aircraft and Aerostructures and Engineering Services. Bombardier shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (BBD). In the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017, Bombardier posted revenues of $16.2 billion US. News and information are available at bombardier.com or follow us on Twitter @Bombardier .

Notes to Editors

To receive our press releases, please visit the RSS Feed section.

Pictures of the Q Series aircraft are available on www.bombardier.com .

For more information about Bombardier Commercial Aircraft, visit http://commercialaircraft.bombardier.com/.

Bombardier, Q Series, Q400 are trademarks of Bombardier Inc. and its affiliates.

For Information

Nathalie Siphengphet

Head of Communications and Public Relations

Bombardier Commercial Aircraft

+1 416-375-3030

nathalie.siphengphet@aero.bombardier.com

www.bombardier.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a7a12071-57c0-4623-a95c-2fea00764cb9
A 46-year-old man was arrested in the Oak Park community over the weekend on suspicion of multiple felonies, including kidnapping a 3-year-old girl and sexually assaulting her, San Diego police said Sunday.

Police were sent to a home on Maple Street to investigate the incident about 9:45 a.m. Saturday.

The toddlers father had confronted Francisco Diaz, whom the father suspected of kidnapping and abusing his daughter, and a fight erupted, police said.

Officers arrived minutes later and Diaz was arrested. He was booked into jail on suspicion of making criminal threats, kidnapping, committing lewd and lascivious acts on a child under the age of 14, committing sodomy on a child under the age of 14 and burglary, according to jail records.

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San Diego police Lt. Jason Weeden said injuries to the child are yet to be determined.

According to state records, Diaz is a registered sex offender who was convicted in 2007 of annoying or molesting a child under 18 years of age.

There are no outstanding suspects in the case.

Twitter: @LAWinkley

(619) 293-1546

lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com
Three men led Oceanside police on a pursuit in a stolen car this afternoon, running red lights and later ditching the vehicle before two of them were apprehended on foot.

One remained at large.

The incident began about 4:10 p.m., when the three occupants of a Honda Civic apparently spotted a patrol car near the intersection of College Boulevard and Mesa Drive, and took off for no immediately obvious reason, Oceanside police Lt. Tom Wayer said.

One of our officers was just driving around College and Mesa and this car started driving on the shoulder and running red lights, Wayer said.

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The driver sped through the area with officers in pursuit before pulling over on Calle Del Greco near Calle Goya in a nearby residential neighborhood, Wayer said.

The three men in the car then got out and tried to get away from officers on foot.

One of the three ran into a backyard, and police were able to arrest two men by about 4:35 p.m., according to Wayer.

Officers later determined the car had been stolen, Oceanside police Sgt. Jeff Brandt said.

Police were continuing to search for the vehicles third occupant, Brandt said.

Twitter: @LAWinkley

(619) 293-1546

lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) is denying allegations that he abused a woman with whom he had a romantic relationship.

Ellison, who is deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee and running for Minnesota attorney general in Tuesdays primary, issued a statement Sunday denying claims that he dragged the woman, Karen Monahan, off a bed by her feet and berated her with profane language. The claims, which the womans son made and she confirmed, have not been corroborated.

The woman and her son allege that there is video of the incident. They did not respond to multiple requests Sunday from the Washington Post to provide the video.

Karen and I were in a long-term relationship which ended in 2016, and I still care deeply for her well-being, Ellison said in the statement issued through his campaign. He was apparently referencing Monahan.

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He added, This video does not exist because I never behaved in this way, and any characterization otherwise is false.

On Saturday, a person identifying himself as Austin Monahan wrote in a post on Facebook that he came across an almost two-minute video of the incident while using his mothers computer.

On Sunday, a woman identifying herself as Karen Monahan wrote on Twitter: What my son said is true.

The allegations surfaced days before the primary in Minnesota, a contest Ellison entered earlier this summer. He faces four opponents in the Democratic race.

One of his opponents, state Rep. Debra Hilstrom, took to Twitter to call on Ellison to answer the allegations. She was tagged in Austin Monahans Facebook post.

Ellison is one of the most liberal members of the House. After the 2016 election, he sought the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. He lost to Tom Perez but was later appointed his deputy, as Democrats sought to unify their fractured party.
Peter Strzok, the FBI agent whose anti-Trump text messages to a colleague during the 2016 campaign have been cited by the president as evidence of bias within the agency, has been fired.

Strzok initially helped lead the bureaus investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible complicity by the Trump campaign, which remained secret until after the election. When his texts with an FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, were disclosed last year by the agencys inspector general, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III immediately removed Strzok from the team.

Strzok had initially been demoted and given a 60-day suspension after the bureaus traditional independent review. But on Friday, FBI Deputy Director David L. Bowdich overrode that decision and ordered his firing, according to Strzoks attorney, Aitan Goelman.

This decision should be deeply troubling to all Americans, Goelman said in a statement. A lengthy investigation and multiple rounds of congressional testimony failed to produce a shred of evidence that Special Agent Strzoks personal views ever affected his work.

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The FBI said in a statement that once Strzok underwent the standard process and received a punishment, Bowdich, as the agencys deputy director, has the authority to review and modify any disciplinary findings and/or penalty as deemed necessary in the best interest of the FBI.

The firing of Strzok, a 22-year FBI veteran and one of its senior counterintelligence agents, is an unexpected turn of events for him, but in keeping with FBI Director Christopher A. Wrays promise back in June to hold people accountable.

The decision to fire him  following repeated attacks on Strzok by the president and his allies in Congress, who cheered the news  will do little to quell widespread concerns that the agency and the Justice Department may not be acting independent of politics.

Strzoks lawyer was quick to hit that theme.

In his decades of service, Special Agent Strzok has proved himself to be one of the countrys top counterintelligence officers, Goelman said in his statement. Strzoks firing, he said, leads to only one conclusion  the decision to terminate was taken in response to political pressure, and to punish Special Agent Strzok for political speech protected by the 1st Amendment, not on a fair and independent examination of the facts.

Trump, who just Saturday tweeted that Strzok was among the clowns and losers at the FBI, on Monday weighed in on Twitter to applaud the firing, and again to paint the Russia investigation as a hoax.

Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI  finally, Trump tweeted. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction  I just fight back!

When FBI Inspector Gen. Michael E. Horowitz told Mueller last summer that Strzok, then the lead agent on his team, had been exchanging anti-Trump messages with Page, Mueller removed Strzok the following day. That did not satisfy the president and his defenders, who have sought to focus the publics attention on Strzok and Page, who had a romantic relationship, to discredit the broader investigation.

Trump has mocked the pair as FBI lovers. Page, who had left the Mueller team before the texts became public, resigned from the FBI in May.

Will the FBI ever recover its once stellar reputation, so badly damaged by Comey, McCabe, Peter S. and his lover, the lovely Lisa Page, and other top officials now dismissed or fired? Trump wrote on Saturday, referring also to former FBI Director James B. Comey and Comeys deputy, Andrew McCabe, both of whom were fired.

So many of the great men and women of the FBI have been hurt by these clowns and losers!, Trump added.

Strzok, who was a deputy assistant director for counterintelligence at the bureau, has apologized for sending the messages and testified before Congress that they reflected personal views that did not affect his work. The text messages included criticism of Hillary Clinton

Even so, Horowitz concluded that Strzok showed a willingness to take official action to hurt Trumps electoral prospects, particularly in a text he sent telling Page well stop Trump from being president.

Strzoks lawyer has said that if his client had wanted to prevent Trumps election, he could have leaked that the Trump campaign was under investigation for possibly coordinating with Russia.

Last month, Strzok sparred with Republican lawmakers who raised questions about his character during a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill. He stated that there was no evidence of bias in my professional actions and claimed that his demotion was done based on the appearance of bias, a point Republican lawmakers refused to accept.

Several of the Republicans joined Trump on Twitter on Monday to laud Strzoks ouster. Its about time, wrote Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. Long overdue, tweeted House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.

In June, Strzok was escorted out of the FBI building and effectively relieved of work responsibilities, although he technically remained an employee as he and his attorney challenged the effort to dismiss him.

On July 24, they made a final pitch to Candice M. Will, who leads the FBIs office of professional responsibility. Will decided that Strzok would receive the demotion and 60-day suspension as part of a last-chance agreement, according to Goelman.

But, Goelman said, Bowdich overruled that decision and Strzok was fired.

Mark Zaid, a lawyer in Washington who has represented a number of FBI agents over the years, said Bowditchs decision to overrule Wills disciplinary action was highly unusual and would inevitably be viewed as a reaction to political pressure from the president. That could strengthen Strzoks case should he challenge his firing in court, Zaid added.

Those cases are hard to win, he said, but Strzok could have a stronger case than most.

When the president is tweeting that he should be fired and then he is, it seems pretty obvious that his attorney can reasonably ask the question of what role those tweets may have played.

Times staff writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.

UPDATES:

5:20 p.m.: The article was updated with an FBI statement.

11:50 a.m.: The article was updated with staff reporting.

The article was originally published at 9:35 a.m.
A Houston Mexican restaurant was forced to shut down its social media accounts after sharing a photo that touted the visit of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Sessions dropped by El Tiempo Cantina in the Montrose neighborhood Friday and posed for a smiling photo with executive chef Domenic Laurenzo.

The photo  whose caption declared it an honor to serve the Republican  was uploaded to the restaurants Facebook page  and quickly sparked massive backlash.

El Tiempos Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts were all taken down Saturday.

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People are insulting us in such a dramatic fashion, and we feel like we dont deserve it, owner Roland Laurenzo told ABC13 KTRK. At least temporarily I had it taken down because I dont want to be insulted, my children to be insulted, my family to be insulted.

Laurenzo said in a statement that the restaurant does not support the Trump administrations immigration policies, and claimed that employees were too preoccupied with serving the Secret Service to pay any mind to Sessions political leanings.

The Secret Service contacted us that a government official was coming to dinner at our establishment and his identify was not known until he walked through the door, he said, according to CultureMap. The man came to dinner and he was served without us even thinking about the political situations. We were preoccupied with the Secret Service and catering to their wants and needs.

The owner also said that the photo was shared to Facebook without his review or approval.

This has lead to everyone jumping to conclusions that somehow we are involved in this political matter, he said. We dont approve of anyone separating parents and children.

Sessions was in Texas to talk about cracking down on illegal immigration with local law enforcement officials.

Still, it appears the damage is already done, as El Tiempos Yelp page has been inundated with criticism and one-star reviews.

You messed up your reputation posting that picture, user Alejandro G. wrote. I really hope the Latino and LGBT community dont visit your business anymore You missed the opportunity to stand on the right side of history.

Posting pictures bragging about serving Jeff Sessions? wrote another. What a slap in the face to the Montrose community, LGBTQ community, and Latino community.

The backlash echoes a similar situation involving White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in June.

Sanders was asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., as owner Stephanie Wilkinson found the Trump administration inhumane and unethical.

Sanders detailed the encounter on Twitter, prompting both cheers and jeers from the general public.

The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, President Trump wrote on Twitter.
The remains of an airline worker who stole and crashed a passenger plane have been found on an island in Puget Sound, officials say.

Investigators also said they have recovered the flight recorder and components of the cockpit voice recorder from the 76-seat Horizon Air Q400 flown by Richard Russell.

Russell swiped the commercial aircraft from the Seattle-Tacoma airport Friday and performed some startling acrobatic stunts before going down.

The Pierce County, Wash., medical examiners office confirmed Sunday that Russell died in the fiery wreckage, but investigators are unsure if the crash was deliberate or accidental.

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You couldnt even tell it was a plane except for some of the bigger sections, like the wing section, Debra Eckrote of the National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday, according to CNN. Even the small sections, most of it doesnt resemble a plane.

Richard Russell died in Fridays plane crash. (AFP/Getty Images)

Russell, 29, flew the plane for 75 minutes before the crash. Observers wondered how, 17 years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, someone can simply take a passenger plane from a major U.S. airport.

He could have inflicted much more damage if he wanted to. Potential targets included tens of thousands of fans assembling at Safeco Field, about 12 miles away, for a soldout Pearl Jam concert.

As a flight controller tried to persuade him to safely land the plane, Russell wondered aloud about whether he had enough fuel to make it to the Olympic Mountains, spoke about the view, and said he had a lot of people who cared about him.

He also apologized for what he was doing. He complimented the controller. You are very calm, collect, poised, he said.

Russell told the controller he wasnt really planning on landing and described himself as just a broken guy.

Investigators say Russell may have been suicidal. A friend who is a former co-worker told TV station KIRO that Russell was not happy with his job.

Richard Russell flying the stolen plane. (JOHN WAULDRON/AFP/Getty Images)

He was getting really stressed about the financial situation he was in, Robert Reeves told the station. Hes worked at Horizon longer than I did, and he still wasnt making $15 an hour.

Russells responsibilities included towing and pushing aircraft for takeoff and gate approach, deicing them and dealing with baggage.

Reeves said he left Horizon in 2016 because they were short-staffed and they had me run three planes in the same time. Thats just not safe.

With News Wire Services
The planes came in low. One of John Murphys Navy mates on the repair ship Vestal wondered out loud why the Army pilots were practicing on a Sunday morning.

Then the bombs started falling.

Murphy ran to his station in the radio room and received this message: Air Raid Pearl Harbor! This is not a drill!

No kidding, Murphy thought.

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The Dec. 7, 1941 attack by the Japanese ushered the United States into World War II, and for young service members like Murphy, it became a defining moment of their lives. He survived to fight another day, then came home from the war and spent decades honoring comrades who paid the ultimate price that day.

Murphy died July 16 at his home in Rancho Bernardo from congestive heart failure after a recent bout of pneumonia. He was 97.

Some survivors didnt talk about it much, but my father did, said Patricia Rinehart. He was proud of what his shipmates did that day, and passionate about making sure people remembered Pearl Harbor.

Born Jan. 7, 1921, in Oxnard, Murphy joined the Navy in 1939 shortly after graduating from high school and was assigned to the Vestal, a retrofitted cargo ship with a service record pre-dating World War I.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked, the ship was tied up to the Arizona, a prime target along Battleship Row. Two Japanese bombs hit the Vestal. Another bomb penetrated the decks of the Arizona, touching off a massive explosion that set both ships on fire.

Moments before the Arizona blast, a crew member on the Vestal had closed a hatch door to the radio room. Murphy didnt think much of it at the time, but he said later it probably saved his life.

Suddenly there was a huge roar outside, and our ship rolled way over, Murphy once told freelance writer Mark Carlson for an article about the attack. It sounded like the whole world had gone up.

The explosion knocked several sailors, including the Vestals commander, Cassin Young, into the water. Young swam back to the ship and ordered it to get under way. When sinking appeared imminent, the commander ran the ship aground on a nearby shoal.

The crews actions left the Vestal able to assist with repairs of other ships. Eventually, they turned their attentions to their own vessel, and by the following summer it was on its way to a string of battles through the end of the war, including the Marshall Islands, Okinawa and Saipan.

Murphy left the Navy after the war ended in 1945 and returned to Ventura County, where he worked for many years as an electrician. He married Betty Lou Pope in 1948, and they raised two children.

They moved to San Diego in 2001 and settled in Rancho Bernardo. Betty Murphy died later that year.

He was active in the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association for decades and traveled to Hawaii for anniversary events over the years. He also had a passion for antique cars, including Model As. He restored a 1937 Ford V8, a reminder of the first car he had owned.

Murphys passing leaves 12 Pearl Harbor veterans in the local association, according to Stuart Hedley, the longtime president. At one time, there were more than 350.

Survivors include daughter Patricia Rinehart of San Diego, son William Murphy (Kimi) of Fortuna, Ca., and two grandchildren.

A burial service with military honors is scheduled for Monday at 10 a.m. at Dearborn Memorial Park in Poway, 14361 Tierra Bonita Road.

john.wilkens@sduniontribune.com
In the midst of the great stress, danger and difficulty of many wildfires burning in California, first responders, community members and pet owners alike work together to keep their beloved animals alive and well.

Residents are often times left no choice but to leave their animals behind when wildfires strike, Culver City fire figthers tweeted last week. We not only protect human lives and property, but animals as well.

As many as 17 wildfires have burned simultaneously across California this summer including the Mendocino Complex Fire in Colusa, Lake and Mendocino Counties  which is now the largest on record in state history  and the Carr fire in Shasta and Trinity Counties, which is sixth on the list of the most destructive fires in state history.

These are just five of the many fascinating stories of rescue and support for animals found or evacuated from wildfires in California in the last two months.

1. Carr Fire  The chicken and the cat

In this photo taken July 28, 2018, provided by the Grass Valley Fire Department, a cat seeking refuge from a raging Northern California wildfire found a fine-feathered friend as it awaited rescue from the heat and flames in Redding, Calif. Grass Valley Fire Department via AP

Ever seen a chicken and cat spending time together? On July 26, Grass Valley firefighters working on the Carr Fire found a cat and a chicken huddled together for safety and support in a doorway.

Both suffered burns that require treatment.

Grass Valley firefighters found a dish and provided the two new found friends with fresh water as other firefighters searched for a way to contain the pair for rescue; they were able to find an animal carrier, The Fire Department wrote on Instagram. After some reassurance, Grass Valley firefighters managed to coax the cat and chicken into the carrier where they would be together and safe as they awaited pickup by the Siskiyou County Animal Control.

The animals were transported to a local veterinary hospital for treatment and are expected to make a full recovery.

2. Carr Fire  Fish support

CalFire on Saturday shared the story of firefighters and police making sure a fish remained well-fed in the evacuated home of a girl who believed her it wouldnt survive.

Fed your fish a few sprinkles. Sorry if we werent supposed to, said a note left by Cal Fire Engine 1489.

Good luck the Corning Police Department wrote on another note indicated it was fed a second time.

3. Carr Fire  Missing python

The staff of Redding Reptiles had to evacuate and move more than 200 snakes, lizards and other animals as the Carr Fire approached in late July. The evacuation zone moved again and again and by the time they had moved four different times, they realized a 14-foo lavender albino reticulated python named Eres had escaped from the tub she was being kept in.

Redding Reptiles reached out to the surrounding community to help in the search and eventually she was found  the next day  in a neighboring back yard in a milk crate.

We are ever thankful to the community of Redding for helping us find her during this devastating time, Redding Reptiles said.

4. Nelson Fire  A race against time

The Nelson Fire in Solano County raced toward the city of Solano on Friday, threatening the Solano Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals facilities. Staff and other first responders and volunteers raced to get 60 animals out in time.

An officer from the Vacaville Police Department caught the efforts he and others made to help the animals as quickly as they could in the video above.

We were forced to evacuate under extremely short notice, wrote the SPCA on Facebook. Vacaville Police Department was gracious enough to fit as many animals as they could in their vehicles to help us.

All the animals were in foster care as of Monday.

5. Carr Fire  The fawn and the officer

In this photo released July 28, 2018, by the California Highway Patrol, Sergeant David Fawson holds a month-old fawn that was located by Cal Fire without a mother inside the Carr Fire line near Redding, Calif. Sawson evacuated the deer to safety for care with a wildlife rescue. California Highway Patrol via AP

The California Highway Patrol office in Redding, California, reported in July that Sergeant David Fawson of San Francisco responded to a call for help evacuating that turned out to be for a one-month old fawn.

Sgt. Fawson evacuated the deer to safety, CHP reported on Facebook. The deer was released to, and will be cared for by a wildlife rescue. The fawn even thanked Sgt. Fawson with a kiss...

Heres a look at more of what animals have been through as California goes through a long stretch of wildfires that doesnt look to end any time soon.

Rose Wyckoff holds up three kittens to a passing fire truck in a neighborhood destroyed by the Carr Fire, Friday, Aug. 10, 2018, in Redding, Calif. Wyckoff brought the kittens to a veterinarian after she couldn't find the mother. AP Photo/John Locher

A dog sits inside the passenger seat of a pick up truck as residents evacuate from an approaching wildfire, Thursday, July 26, 2018, in Mountain Center, Calif. AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

Ferguson fire evacuee Dan Powell and his dog Amber wait in a Red Cross shelter in Mariposa, California, on July 22, 2018.

An animal scrambles while flames consume structures as the River Fire burns in Lakeport, Calif., Tuesday, July 31, 2018. AP Photo/Noah Berger

Debbie Prior evacuates a horse as the Ranch Fire tears down New Long Valley Rd near Clearlake Oaks, California, on Saturday, August 4, 2018. NOAH BERGER/AFP/Getty Images

A deer runs from flames as the Ranch Fire tears down New Long Valley Rd near Clearlake Oaks, California, on Saturday, August 4, 2018. NOAH BERGER/AFP/Getty Images

Hear of any good animal stories we missed? Send them to the email address below or tweet @sdutideas.

Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @abbyhamblin
PLEASANTON, Calif., Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Stoneridge Creek continuing care retirement community in Pleasanton, California, has been certified as a top workplace by the independent research and consulting firm Great Place to Work  .



Great Place to Work is a global authority on high-performance workplace cultures and provides the benchmarks, framework and expertise needed to create, sustain and recognize outstanding workplace environments. Great Place to Work produces the annual 100 Best Companies to Work For list for Fortune magazine, as well as lists identifying the best workplaces for millennials, women and diversity.

The certification process for Stoneridge Creek included a survey of all employees  which included all departments, job functions and levels of experience. The survey was conducted in April and measured more than 60 categories to evaluate employee satisfaction including respect, fairness, employee pride in the community, camaraderie and belief that their work makes a difference. Stoneridge Creek had to meet the threshold in each category in order to be certified.



This honor belongs to every employee at Stoneridge Creek, said Zeke Griffin, Stoneridge Creeks Executive Director. The staff work hard every day to make a positive environment for the residents as well as each other in line with our core STAR values. An employee recognition program was created a few years ago as a way to recognize the outstanding job the employees do on a round-the-clock basis for exemplifying these values. The Great Place to Work certification validates our efforts to create a work culture that celebrates and recognizes the contributions of every employee, no matter what department they work in or what job they do.



Employees are nominated for the STAR award by residents and their peers at the community. A committee then votes to determine the employee of each quarter and ultimately decides upon the STAR of the Year for the community. The quarterly employees and the STAR of the Year each receive awards funded by Stoneridge Creek management. We are proud to see the positive results from the Great Places to Work survey reflect the hard work and efforts made by our team to live the STAR values every day.



The Stoneridge Creek STAR values are Service to Residents and Colleagues, Team Success, Aim for Excellence and Do the Right Thing.

About Stoneridge Creek

Stoneridge Creek, located at 3300 Stoneridge Creek Way in Pleasanton, California, is a continuing care retirement community for people 60 years of age and older featuring a variety of housing options and a package of services, activities and amenities. More information can be found at www.stoneridgecreek.com.

For More Information:

Donna Hahn

Hahn Communications

(949) 458-3983

donna@hahnmarketing.com


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CALGARY, Alberta, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Parkland Fuel Corporation (Parkland, We, Our or Us) (TSX:PKI) Canada's largest and one of North America's fastest growing independent marketers of fuel and petroleum products and a leading convenience store operator, is pleased to announce that Parkland through its U.S. based subsidiaries (collectively, "Parkland USA"), has entered into an agreement to acquire all of the issued and outstanding equity interests of Rhinehart Oil Co., Inc. and its affiliates (collectively, Rhinehart), a retail, commercial and lubricants business with operations in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, (the Acquisition).



Rhinehart is headquartered in American Fork, Utah and transports, distributes and markets a full range of fuels, lubricants and chemical products in addition to providing equipment and one-stop shop servicing to its customers in the region. Rhinehart operates and supplies four cardlock facilities, nine retail sites and markets and distributes fuels, lubricants and specialties through ten distribution facilities. Rhinehart distributes approximately 72 million gallons of fuel and lubricants per year.

The Rhinehart Acquisition represents a significant expansion for Parkland, said Bob Espey, President and Chief Executive Officer of Parkland. Rhinehart has an excellent business and asset base that will serve as a platform for growth in Utah, Colorado and neighboring states. We are excited to welcome Dave and John Jardine from the Rhinehart leadership team and the rest of the Rhinehart employees to the Parkland team.

Rhinehart is a prominent fuel distributor and a well scaled and respected ExxonMobil lubricants distributor, said Doug Haugh, President of Parkland USA. The addition of Rhinehart to the Parkland USA team provides us with the talented staff and scalable infrastructure we need to establish our Regional Operations Center (ROC) for the Rocky Mountain tributary. This ROC will be the operating platform that drives organic growth and enables further acquisitions across the region that can leverage substantial existing capacity within their current rail hubs, bulk storage terminals, and warehouses.

The Acquisition is expected to close on or about August 27, 2018 and is expected to be funded with cash flows and capacity under Parkland's existing credit facility. The Acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions.

About Parkland Fuel Corporation

Parkland is Canada's largest and one of North America's fastest growing independent suppliers and marketers of fuel and petroleum products and a leading convenience store operator. Parkland services customers through three channels: Retail, Commercial and Wholesale. Parkland optimizes its fuel supply across these three channels by operating the Parkland Burnaby Refinery, and leveraging a growing portfolio of supply relationships and storage infrastructure. Parkland provides trusted and locally relevant fuel brands and convenience store offerings, including its On the Run/Marche Express banners, in the communities it serves.

Parkland creates value for shareholders by focusing on its proven strategy of growing organically, realizing a supply advantage and acquiring prudently and integrating successfully. At the core of our strategy are our people, as well as our values of safety, integrity, community and respect, which are embraced across our organization.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Certain statements contained in this news release constitute forward-looking information and statements (collectively, forward-looking statements). When used in this news release the words expect, will, could, would, believe, continue, pursue and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. In particular, this news release contains forward-looking statements with respect to, among other things, the successful completion of the Acquisition and the timing thereof, business objectives and growth strategies; future acquisitions and organic growth, and the benefits resulting from the Acquisition including expected increase to EBITDA and revenues.

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. No assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and such forward-looking statements included in this news release should not be unduly relied upon. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this news release. Parkland does not undertake any obligations to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements except as required by securities law. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of numerous risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to: failure to complete the Acquisition; failure to satisfy the conditions to closing of the Acquisition; failure to achieve the anticipated benefits of the Acquisition; general economic, market and business conditions; competitive action by other companies; changes and developments in environmental and other regulations; and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of Parkland. See also the risks and uncertainties described in Forward-Looking Statements and Risk Factors included in Parklands Annual Information Form dated March 9, 2018 and in Forward-Looking Statements and Risk Factors in the Q2 2018 MD&A, each as filed on SEDAR and available on the Parkland website at www.parkland.ca .
Here are our favorite quips from the comedians in the White House.

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Thanks, folks. Im here all this term.

The president of the United State is supposed to represent the people of the country. And since we Americans have a sense of humor that is strong as it is broad, its not surprising that presidents can occasionally crack up their audiences.

Here are a few chuckles from our Chief Executives.

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John Adams

on the legislature

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.

Abraham Lincoln



of a political foe

He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I ever met.

Theodore Roosevelt

on corruption in Congress

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.'

Calvin Coolidge

to a woman sitting next to President Coolidge at a dinner party told him shed bet a friend she could get at least three words of conversation out of him.

You lose.

Franklin Roosevelt

on being informed by an aide that Eleanor Roosevelt (who was conducting a fact-finding tour of a penitentiary) was in prison.

Im not surprised, but for what?

John F. Kennedy

I was almost late here today, but I had a very good taxi driver who brought me through the traffic jam. I was going to give him a very large tip and tell him to vote Democratic and then I remember some advice Senator Green had given me, so I gave him no tip at all and told him to vote Republican.

Lyndon B. Johnson

addressing a Marine who said, Mr. President, this is your helicopter over here.

Theyre all mine, son.

Jimmy Carter

on a late resurgence of his popularity

My esteem in this country has gone up substantially. It is very nice now when people wave at me they use all their fingers.

Ronald Reagan

on other politicians

I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency  even if Im in a Cabinet meeting.

Bill Clinton

describing the White House

Being president is like running a cemetery: youve got a lot of people under you and nobodys listening.

George W. Bush

No matter how tough it gets, however, I have no intention of becoming a lame-duck president. Unless, of course, Cheney accidentally shoots me in the leg.

Barack Obama



on his name

Many of you know that I got my name, Barack, from my father. What you may not know is Barack is actually Swahili for That One. And I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didnt think Id ever run for president.

Donald Trump

on wife Melania Trumps Republican National Convention speech

The media is even more biased this year than ever before  ever. You want the proof? Michelle Obama gives a speech and everyone loves it  its fantastic. They think shes absolutely great. My wife, Melania, gives the exact same speech, and people get on her case.

Featured image: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush in 2013 (Pete Souza, White House photo)
She was first in line, and became the first woman Marine. She was Opha May Johnson, and she enlisted 100 years ago today.

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Its been said that history is made by those who show up. Last week,The New York Times ran a story on First Lieuntenant Marina A. Hierl; Hierl is one of only two women to pass the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course. Lieutenant Hierl made further history as she was assigned her own platoon to lead. Hierl is one of the people that shows up. Opha May Johnson led the way for women like Lieutenant Hierl and proved that you can make history by showing up first. 100 years ago today, Johnson earned the distinction of becoming the first woman to enlist in the United States Marine Corps.

Born Opha May Jacob in Kokomo, Indiana in 1879, the future Marine attended Woods Commercial College. She earned the rank of salutatorian, graduating from the shorthand and typewriting department in 1895. Three years later, she married Victor Johnson, musical director of the Lafayette Square Opera House in Washington D.C.

According to the Richmond Time-Dispatch dated September 1, 1918, Johnson was already a civil servant, working for the Interstate Commerce Department, when the chance came up for her to apply to the United States Marine Corps Reserve. The reserve had been established in 1916, concurrent with the U.S.s involvement in World War I. During the last two years of the war, women were allowed to join branches and reserves to cover responsibilities typically held by men that were under active deployment; 33,000 women would eventually serve support staff.

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On that day in 1918, Opha May Johnson found herself at the front of the line. Private Johnson became the first of over 300 women that would enlist in the Marine Corps during the remainder of World War I. Her first assignment sent her to Marine Corps headquarters; she worked there as clerk where she managed the records of the other new, female Marines. After the conclusion of World War I in November, 1918, the various branches of the service began discharging all women from active duty. Johnson took a job as a clerk in the War Department (which would be renamed as the Department of Defense in 1949).

Johnson died on August 11, 1955, at Mount Alto Veterans Hospital in Washington, D.C. Her funeral services coincidentally fell on August 13, 37 years to the day after she enlisted. She is buried in an unmarked grave in Rock Creek Cemetery in D.C. Last year, the Women Marines Association began to fund-raise to install an official marker; the successful project will result in a site unveiling on August 29, with the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Robert B. Neller, scheduled to speak.

Since Johnsons historic enlistment, thousands of women have served in the U.S. Armed Forces in combat and support capacities. As of 2015, around 2 million veterans in the U.S. were women. Johnson helped pave the way for later Marines like Bea Arthur; before becoming the actress best known for Maude and The Golden Girls, Arthur drove a truck as a member of the Womens Reserve and attained the rank of staff sergeant during her stateside service in World War II. The late Margaret Brewer, the first female Marine to be made a general, was promoted to brigadier general in 1979. As of May 2018, 92 women serve in combat positions in the USMC; approximately 7% of the 186,000 active Marines are women.
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/13/2018 -- The shale gas hydraulic fracturing markets in Canada, US, and China are expected to individually register impressive growth over a 10-year forecast period. While US is anticipated to remain the global leader, China is foreseen to be a lucrative region thriving at the fastest CAGR value. In terms of volume, the US market that represented a production volume of 18,059 BCF in 2017 is estimated to grow at a 9.8% CAGR through to 2027, whereas the 317.6 BCF Chinese market is likely to witness a stellar CAGR of 21.2%. Canadas shale gas hydraulic fracturing volume was 213.3 BDF in 2017, which is expected to reach up by a CAGR of 8.4% over 2017-2027.



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The world today is dependent more on unconventional energy resources, including shale gas. It is presumed that by the end of 2027, the development of shale gas in the top regions across the world, i.e. North America and China, will gain robust traction in the coming decade, reaching a peak level. The US is likely to bring in innovative opportunities and promising circumstances for players, owing to increasing use of relatively cheaper energy resources. This region is projected to lead the global industry for shale gas in terms of sales and currently holds over two-third of the market in terms of value and volume. Dominance of the US in shale gas hydraulic fracturing thus revolutionizes North Americas overall energy scenario and also holds a strong impact on the global energy domain. In terms of technology, exploration, development, production, and export of shale gas, the US will be the global leader throughout 2017-2027.



Hydraulic fracturing continues to be the most sought after process for shale gas production



Shale gas hydraulic fracturing is a popular shale gas production process that involves extraction of trapped natural oil or gas by fracturing the shale rock, eventually enhancing the flow of natural oil or gas that needs to be recovered. Although the prices of natural gas have been seeing an affordable decline since the recent past, the real boost to the market in the US is being provided by greater convenience of shale gas production through hydraulic fracturing compared to that through the conventional method. However, heavy consumption of water during shale gas production through hydraulic fracturing may turn out to remain a major challenge to growth of this process. Moreover, both production and transportation of shale gas tend to release a heap of toxic pollutants in underground water, which is another factor that will continue to hold a strong negative impact on growth of market in near future. Plug & perforation poised for robust growth



By technology, plug and perforation segment covered maximum volume share of the US market and is expected to continue dominance through to 2027. This dominance is attributed to indispensable benefits that this process has brought to the US market for shale gas production through hydraulic fracturing. The plug and perforation segment recorded a volume of 13,088.4 BCF in 2017, which will possibly expand at a CAGR of over 10% by 2027-end. Sliding sleeve segment will however thrive at a relatively lower CAGR of over 8% during 2017-2027. Technological innovations such as novel water treatment and management solutions, a major shift from vertical (conventional) vertical drilling to more profitable and eco-friendly horizontal drilling, and emergence of pitless drilling technology are looked at as significant boosters to US market growth in shale gas hydraulic fracturing.



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As far as key players in the shale gas hydraulic fracturing industry is concerned, a majority of global key players are based on the US, contributing to the region's fostering growth over the years.



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Los Angeles, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/13/2018 -- In 2013, BSLA spearheaded its First in the Family Humanist Scholarship initiative which focuses on undocumented, foster care, homeless, LGBTQI, system-involved and secular youth who are underrepresented in the college population. The organization was created to provide resources for non-believers of color and combat stereotypes about atheists not being socially responsible. Responding directly to the school-to-prison pipeline crisis in communities of color, BSLA is the first atheist organization to specifically address college pipelining for youth of color. If current prison pipelining trends persist the Education Trust estimates that only "one of every 20 African American kindergartners will graduate from a four-year California university" in the next decade.



The Freedom from Religion Foundation is a nonprofit organization that "works as an umbrella for those who are free from religion and are committed to the cherished principle of separation of state and church." The FFRF sponsors publications and competitions and conducts outreach and education on secularism worldwide.



Website: www.blackskepticsla.org, www.ffrf.org



About Black Skeptics Los Angeles

Black Skeptics Los Angeles is a 501c3 community-based organization that provides resources and education for non-believers, humanists and secularists of color.
Northbrook, IL -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/13/2018 -- The global 3D machine vision market is expected to be valued at USD 2.13 Billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 11.07% between 2017 and 2022. The key opportunities for this market include increasing demand for application-specific 3D machine vision systems (ASMV) and growing demand for plug and play 3D machine vision systems. Some of the key factors driving the growth of this market are integration of 3D vision systems with robot controllers, rising demand for 3D object analyses in manufacturing applications, and increasing demand for non-industrial 3D machine vision systems.



The key players operating in the 3D machine vision market include Cognex Corporation (U.S.), Keyence Corporation (Japan), ISRA Vision AG (Germany), Sick AG (Germany), Basler AG (Germany), Stemmer Imaging (Germany), National Instruments (U.S.), MVTec Software GmbH (Germany), Tordivel AS (Norway), and LMI Technologies (Canada). Most of the leading companies focus on organic strategies such as new product developments and launches and inorganic strategies such as agreements, partnerships, and collaborations to boost their revenues.



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Top 2 players in the 3D machine vision market:



Cognex Corporation holds a leading position in the global machine vision market due to its strong employee base and diversified geographic presence, with offices and distributors located throughout the Americas, Europe, and APAC. The company also focuses on developing solutions for various applications such as automotive, consumer electronics, and logistics to grow in the 3D machine vision market. It provides high resolution smart cameras, DS1000 3D sensors, and VisionPro 3D, which deliver accurate, three dimensional, real-time information that could enhance vision performance for assembly, logistics, and robot applications. In 2016, Cognex acquired three providers of 3D machine vision solutions. Apart from this, the company has a number of patents registered on its name. As of December 31, 2015, Cognex had 437 granted patents and 358 pending patent applications worldwide. Though the company has a wide geographical presence, its presence in Japan is limited. Cognex is, currently, aiming to increase its market presence in Japan to compete with the companies operating in the 3D machine vision market in the country.



Keyence Corporation held the second position in the 3D machine vision market in 2015. The company is highly focused toward enhancing its product portfolio through product developments and strengthening its sales to ensure medium- and long-term growth. In 2016, the company developed new products including a high-speed microscope, and an ultra-high speed and high-capacity multi-camera image processing system. It is among the world's most innovative companies. Recently, the company has launched its first coordinate measurement machine with handheld probe and augmented reality support. The new XM-Series model is portable and could be highly useful to accelerate and streamline the creation of 3D models of existing parts for augmented reality-assisted procedures. The company's CV-X image processing system provides stable recognition of objects with a speed of 64,000 profiles per second. Thus, it is expected to remain one of the key players in the 3D machine vision market, offering more innovative products in the near future.



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Sodium (a component of table salt) intake is associated with cardiovascular disease and strokes only in communities where mean intake is greater than 5 g/day, the equivalent of 2.5 teaspoons of salt, according to a new study published in The Lancet.

The World Health Organization recommends that populations consume less than 2 g/day sodium  thats one teaspoon of salt  as a preventive measure against cardiovascular disease, but this target has not been achieved in any country, said lead author Dr. Andrew Mente from the Population Health Research Institute of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences and colleagues.

The American Heart Association recommends even less  1.5 grams of sodium a day for individuals at risk of heart disease.

These recommendations are primarily based on individual-level data from short-term trials of blood pressure without data relating low sodium intake to reduced cardiovascular events from randomised trials or observational studies.

We investigated the associations between community-level mean sodium and potassium intake, cardiovascular disease, and mortality.

The study followed 94,000 people, aged 35 to 70, for an average of eight years in communities from 18 countries around the world and found there an associated risk of cardiovascular disease and strokes only where the average intake is greater than 5 g/day.

China is the only country in the study where 80% of communities have a sodium intake of more than 5 g/day.

In the other countries, the majority of the communities had an average sodium consumption of 3 to 5 grams a day (equivalent to 1.5 to 2.5 teaspoons of salt).

Only in the communities with the most sodium intake  those over 5 g/day  which is mainly in China, did we find a direct link between sodium intake and major cardiovascular events like heart attack and stroke, Dr. Mente said.

In communities that consumed less than 5 g/day, the opposite was the case. Sodium consumption was inversely associated with myocardial infarction or heart attacks and total mortality, and no increase in stroke.

We found all major cardiovascular problems, including death, decreased in communities and countries where there is an increased consumption of potassium which is found in foods such as fruits, vegetables, dairy foods, potatoes and nuts and beans.

_____

Andrew Mente et al. 2018. Urinary sodium excretion, blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and mortality: a community-level prospective epidemiological cohort study. The Lancet 392 (10146): 496-506; doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31376-X
Toronto, ON, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO) has strongly denounced the Ontario governments decision to repeal the updated 2015 sexual health curriculum and will advise its members to continue to exercise their professional judgement when it comes to teaching all sections of the current curriculum.



The governments decision to revert to the 1998 Health and Physical Education Curriculum while initiating further consultation is irresponsible, discriminatory and jeopardizes the safety of the students that we teach, said ETFO President Sam Hammond at the Federations Annual Meeting today. Teachers will not be muzzled by a government whose political agenda takes precedence over the protection and education of their students.

Since the governments plan was announced, an unprecedented coalition made up of educators, parents, community groups, the medical profession, faith groups and legal advocacy groups has called on the government to continue to uphold the 2015 curriculum.

We need to prepare students for the world of 2018, not the world of 1998. The governments actions are in direct conflict with teachers fundamental responsibilities and obligations towards their students including the duty to ensure their safety and their fundamental human rights. These obligations are enshrined within the Education Act and the Standards of Practice of the Ontario College of Teachers and cannot be taken lightly.

The governments actions are also in direct conflict with the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They infringe upon the freedom of speech of teachers to provide proper education to their students, added Hammond.

ETFO will vigorously defend members who continue to follow the 2015 Health Curriculum and will pursue all options to respond appropriately to the governments reckless behaviour.

The Federation has also instructed its legal counsel to intervene in any proceeding before the Human Rights Tribunal and provide full support and assistance to the applicant.

We acknowledge the strong response of Ontario school boards concerning this issue and appeal to them to join us in this action by supporting teachers who demonstrate care and concern for their students. Our students deserve as much.

The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario represents 83,000 elementary public school teachers and education professionals across the province. ETFOs Building Better Schools education agenda can be viewed at buildingbetterschools.ca.
Russia is Belarus largest trading partner. Some 43 percent of its exports go to Russia, while 57 percent of its imports come from Russia. Yet Russias share in Belarus trade has declined overall since 2000, meaning that although Belarus is still heavily dependent on Russia, it has become less dependent over time. Much of the trade between these two countries is related to the energy sector. Belarus relies on Russia for its energy needs, but it also uses Russian oil and gas to create other products for export. Roughly 30 percent of Belarus total exports are oil and gas products, sending about 15 million tons of oil products to Europe alone every year. The problem, however, is that Russian companies dont have to pay duties on the goods they export to Belarus, thanks to their free trade zone. But when the products are processed in Belarus and then exported to the rest of Europe, companies do have to pay a duty to the Belarusian government. (These re-exported energy products have become particularly attractive as some countries have grown hesitant to do business with Russia.) Russia thus has been considering slashing oil and gas exports to Belarus so that it can make money off the duties itself. This issue has caused a rift between the two, as any cuts in this trade could create a serious economic downturn in Belarus considering its dependence on oil and gas exports. In the first quarter of 2018, the federal government earned 466.5 million Belarusian rubles ($233.8 million) from duties on oil products, accounting for 8.8 percent of tax revenue. Meanwhile, Belarus is Russias fourth-largest export destination and third-largest import supplier. Belarus accounts for less than 6 percent of Russian exports and imports. On a basic level, therefore, Belarus is clearly more dependent on Russia than Russia is on Belarus. Belarus supplies food products, machinery and technical goods to Russia. Companies in Belarus supply components such as electric motors and diesel engines to assembly plants in Russia and also Ukraine. Assembly of some finished products is also carried out in Belarus for export to Russia. Russia is also Belarus main investment partner. According to Belarus state statistics agency, Belarus attracted $9.7 billion in foreign investments in 2017, more than 38 percent of which came directly from Russia. At the end of 2016, loans from the Russian government and Russian banks totaled $6.61 billion, or 48 percent of Belarus external debt. Russia provided Belarus with two state loans totaling $870 million for a period of 10 years in 2015 and another $600 million in 2016. In April 2017, Russia agreed to refinance Belarus debt in the amount of $700 million, though this loan has not yet been issued.

The Future of the Union Clearly, Belarus and Russia are heavily integrated in terms of economics and defense. Still, this does not reach the level of integration that was envisioned with the creation of the Union State. So is the initial vision of the Union State still a possibility? The short answer is probably not for one central reason: Both countries value their sovereignty too much to allow another country to dictate their foreign and domestic policies. They are unlikely, for example, to adopt a single currency or a constitution because this could require serious economic and political reforms that neither is prepared to make. In terms of economic integration, theres another critical hurdle: Both countries are part of the Eurasian Economic Union, which established a common market between the five member states. In some ways, therefore, the need for the Union State has diminished. And despite the common market, member states still employ protectionist measures and accuse each other of unfair trade practices. Belarus regularly accuses Russia of applying duties on Belarusian goods, setting unfair prices for energy and restricting entry at the border. Carrying out a coordinated foreign policy has also become more difficult. In 2016, Belarus adopted a new defense doctrine that advocates neutrality and states that the country will avoid military conflicts. This is inconsistent with the concept of the Union State, whereby if Russia engages in a conflict, Belarus would be expected to follow. It also states that Belarus will coordinate with multiple parties at the same time. But in a union, Russia may want to restrict Belarus from developing ties with certain nations or groups, particularly NATO. In addition, Russias annexation of Crimea has complicated relations between Minsk and Moscow. Belarus was critical of the Russian incursion and hasnt officially recognized Crimea as part of Russia. Moscow expected support from its neighbor when it imposed sanctions on goods from some Western countries in response to Western-imposed sanctions on Russian goods. Instead, it found that embargoed goods from the EU were illegally making their way to the Russian market through Belarus. Belarus has faced heavy political and diplomatic pressure to side with Moscow on the conflict in Ukraine. Whenever Minsk falls out of line, Moscow threatens to pull some of its economic support or increase its military presence in Belarus. Russia has also tightened controls at the border and deployed operational units of the FSB border guard service there. In February 2017, units from the Federal Customs Service showed up in Belarus. Integration will continue but likely on a situational basis. When it suits the needs of both countries, they will cooperate, but neither wants to commit to a union that might force them to take positions they dont want to take. Belarus in particular has already seen that integration can turn into dependency, and that can be used as a lever to bend its policies and behavior to Moscows benefit.
The family of the 23-year-old Australian woman killed while biking on Central Park West are devastated. Madison Jane Lyden's father told the Post, "Our girl was on the trip of a lifetime, and shed only spoken to me I think the previous day and said, Dad, can you believe your little girl is in New York City?"

Lyden had been traveling north in the Central Park West bike lane on Friday afternoon when, just before 4:45 p.m., a livery cab moved into the bike lane from a parked position and Lyden swerved into traffic to avoid it around 66th Street, according to police. A private sanitation truck driver, also heading north, then struck Lyden.

Lyden was pronounced dead at Roosevelt Hospital. The NYPD charged the truck driver, Felipe Chairez, 44, who was arrested for DWI and operating a commercial vehicle while under the influence of alcohol (it was between 0.04 and 0.06%). Beer cans were reportedly in the truck at the time.



(Courtesy of West Side Rag)

"Madison was a beautiful, beautiful daughter. She was loyal, loving," the victim's father, Andrew Lyden, added. "For her to be taken from us in such a horrific way is gut-wrenching. Words cant describe how heartbreaking this is."

A lawyer for Chairez claimed his client's lunch would have counteracted any possible effects of alcohol, "If he had a chicken salad sandwich, the alcohol may have been absorbed by the lunch he had."

The livery driver has not been charged yet; the NYPD says the collision is still under investigation.

Mayor de Blasio, who happened to be in the neighborhood for another event, went to the scene. He said, "Of course there has to be a full investigation, but this is an example from my point of view of the danger of reckless driving."

"Madison Jane Lyden is dead because her bike lane was blocked," Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White said in a statement. "Its tragic, yes, but all the more unconscionable because this was a crash waiting to happen. Every day in this city, bike lanes meant to protect people on bikes are used as drop-off lanes, parking lanes, and idling lanes for lazy and entitled drivers. As a city we should be ashamed, because this death could have been prevented. More and more people are traveling by bike in our city, and they need safe, protected space. And while we have more protected lane-miles today than ever before, this preventable death underscores the need for every major street in New York City to have a safe, protected space to travel by bike."
One year ago this weekend, hundreds of white nationalists marched on Charlottesville, Virginia, wielding tiki torches and clashing with anti-racist counterprotesters in a dramatic spectacle that left dozens injured and one person deadand, days later, seemingly earned the endorsement of President Trump. On Sunday, the sequel to that rally came to Washington D.C., though after weeks of tense buildup, and the promise of around 400 potential attendees, the white-pride event managed to muster only two dozen or so supporters.

Escorted by a heavy police presence, and largely accommodated by the city, the handful of racists and self-identified Nazis found themselves far outnumbered by the left's counterprotest, which included members of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and the Democratic Socialists of America. Security barriers and armed guards kept the two factions separated, for the most part, and the rally ended two-and-a-half hours ahead of schedule. By organizer Jason Kessler's own admission, the hate-fest was a major bust.

Jason Kessler is now giving his speech, which he began by admitting his rally is a flop pic.twitter.com/lL0p41Wj5U  Caleb Ecarma (@calebecarma) August 12, 2018

Among the humiliations, the lonely white nationalists were forbidden from carrying flag poles into the park, and were ultimately stranded by an apparent prankster who lied about picking the group up on a bus. Those indignities were likely compounded by weeks of infighting on the far-right, as well as warnings circulated among some prominent neo-Nazis that they should avoid the event. Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin, for example, cautioned his followers, "If you show up and are identified your life will be ruined. You won't be able to get into university or get a good job."

Jason Kessler said Unite the Right 2 wasnt about white supremacy but surprise surprise heres attendees with tattoos and pamphlets touting the neo-Nazi symbol 1488 and the 14 Words slogan pic.twitter.com/oIOQMU3uUj  Caleb Ecarma (@calebecarma) August 12, 2018

This is Dan from Long Island. Dan believes in peaceful cleansing of Latinos and blacks from the United States. He turned 19 today. pic.twitter.com/wBplDshIxn  Zack Beauchamp (@zackbeauchamp) August 12, 2018

The twenty-five or so committed racists who did make it to the event were granted private access to D.C.'s subway system, including their own entrance to the Vienna Metro Station. The WMTA has been widely criticized for that, though a spokesperson told Vox that the "the Kessler group" traveled on a regularly scheduled train, and that any additional measures came from local and transit police.

Police with helmets moving into position at the south entrance of the Vienna metro. This seems to be the entrance where they now expect the Unite the Right rally pic.twitter.com/Vk7JOhYZ7C  Julie Carey (@JulieCareyNBC) August 12, 2018

What skirmishes did happen were almost entirely between counterprotesters and the policewith the extremely large press contingent often caught in the middle. No injuries were reported, though two people were arrested; one for possessing pepper spray and a slingshot, the other for spitting on a Virginia State Police officer.

Masked antifa launch fireworks, water bottles, eggs at cops



Secret service has backed off pic.twitter.com/Jrru0by0WM  Tim Mak (@timkmak) August 12, 2018

Heres where police unnecessarily kettled media and shoved everyone on their way out. Nbd, but if were getting righteous about this from afar, the only people to push me were cops. pic.twitter.com/zcPWof3XuT  Kelly Weill (@KELLYWEILL) August 13, 2018

As he did last year, President Trump once again elected not to condemn the white supremacist action, and instead denounced "all types of racism."
P&O Cruises svp, Paul Ludlow said: From the initial stages of her build we knew that Iona would be sailing to the Fjords and as such, every single detail has been designed to maximize the views, the ever changing vistas and remarkable landscape.

SkyDome, with its glass roof and temperature control will ensure that guests have an unrivalled viewpoint as the ship sails through the breathtaking vertical expanses of narrow gorges and blue sky and past mountains, glaciers and wildlife, he commented.

In all Ionas Norwegian ports of call, P&O Cruises has developed a diverse range of excursions and activities for guests including active and cultural experiences.

Leon Skylift for Fjord landscape views

In OldenLoen, for spectacular views over the Fjord landscape guests can take a trip on the Loen Skylift that carries them up to the summit of Mount Hoven as well as visit the Briksdal glacier  part of the Jostedal ice field, the largest in continental Europe.

Norway's fastest zipline

In Bergen, adrenaline junkies can see the sights on one of Norways fastest ziplines, which soars 300mtr from Mt Ulriken 643mtr high to Mt Floyen.

For a different viewpoint of Bergen a flight-seeing helicopter ride is available, whilst a helicopter ride to Pulpit Rock (a 604mtr-high flat-topped cliff rising out of the Lysefjord is offered at Stavanger.

Staying on the flight theme in Hardanderfjord guests can enjoy the beauty of Norways second longest Fjord by light aircraft.

Kayaking either fast or slow

In Hellesylt, there is a chance for a rafting adventure along 8km of fast flowing river followed by lunch around a bonfire.

A kayaking experience and a 17km bike ride are two of the active offerings on Geiranger stops.

In Alesund visitors can view some of the best preserved examples of Art Nouveau architecture in Europe.

Iona has been designed to maximise views from three storey high glass walls in the Grand Atrium, to the innovative Conservatory Mini-suites.

Iona based out of Southampton

Iona will offer seven day holidays to the Norwegian Fjords from May 2020, each leaving from and returning to Southampton.

Iona is currently being built at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg and will be launched in May 2020. Holidays on Iona go on sale in September 2018.
Marina administrator Rey Leonardo Guerrero said JICA will with Marina and extend technical assistance and expertise to help develop the sector.

JICAs aid will greatly help us in promoting and developing our shipbuilding industry. Were hoping to further improve this relationship for the interest of Japan and Philippine maritime industry, Guerrero said.

JICA senior representative Tetsuya Yamada assured that the multilateral agency would continue to extend technical assistance and expertise to Marina in developing standard design for locally made ships, in establishing the Philippines first-ever maritime industry hub, and in setting up a financing facility for local shipbuilders and ship owners.

Furthermore, JICA expressed support for the implementation of Marinas 10-year Maritime Industry Development Plan which serves as the blueprint in making the local shipbuilding and ship repair industry globally-competitive and technologically-responsive.

Another critical element is JICA will also provide Japanese experts to help Marina to work out a plan for assessing the retirement criteria of aging domestic ships.

The Philippines has one of the world's worst domestic maritime records and Marina has often been criticised for its inadequacies.

Read More: Philippines ferry collision, safety and global crewing
A group of non-English speaking New Yorkers are alleging unlawful discrimination by the NYPD, citing several instances of the department failing to provide legally mandated translation services, which in some cases prevented sexual assault survivors and other victims from accessing critical resources.

On Monday, Make the Road New York filed an organizational complaint with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, which prosecutes cases that appear to violate the city's civil rights statutes. The complaint names three plaintiffs, two of whom say that they were victims of sexual harassment, and one of whom says he was assaulted by a roommate over his sexual orientation. In each case, the victims were allegedly told by police that they could not file a report in Spanish, and that their local precinct did not have anyone capable of providing interpretation.

According to Cristobal Gutierrez, a staff attorney with Make the Road, the advocacy group's organizers have witnessed dozens of similar encounters at several precincts across the city. "We're alleging that it's a systemic failure on the account of the police," Gutierrez told Gothamist.

One of the suit's plaintiffs, Iris Vega, alleges that she repeatedly tried to file a police report about a coworker who sexually assaulted her, and was told that the precinct only had English speakers available. She soon returned to work, as did her attacker, according to the complaint. Eventually, the person was arrested, but when Vega attempted to follow-up on the case, she was once again told that the department offered no interpretation services.

In another instance, Victor Sanchez says he attempted to file a report after he was "viciously assaulted" by his roommate because he was gay. He went directly from the hospital to the precinct, where he found that no one was available to take his complaintbut one officer did allegedly tell him to find somewhere else to live. Sanchez remained in the apartment for three more weeks, and was ultimately unable to file a complaint or protective order against his attacker.

The string of allegations come as the city touts a new set of foreign language policies, claiming in a press release last year that the guidelines will "ensure that people will be able to communicate with NYPD officers, no matter what language they speak." Those updates were announced in order to resolve a 2013 lawsuit, in which officers were accused of failing to provide translators in domestic abuse calls, and in some cases mocking and arresting the victims. The department also agreed to keep tabs on the use of foreign language interpretation services during investigationssomething that Gutierrez says has not happened.

A police spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson with the city's Commission on Human Rights said the agency does not comment on open or potential law enforcement matters.
BlueScope Steel's two Kiwi businesses, New Zealand Steel and Pacific Steel, delivered an 84 percent lift in underlying earnings in the year to June 30, outstripping strong gains across the rest of the multi-national Sydney-based business and delivering the highest return on capital in the group.

Once the Cinderella of the group, the New Zealand operations delivered underlying earnings before interest and tax of A$111.7 million for the year, compared with A$61.1 million a year earlier. Its return on invested capital (ROIC) was 31.6 percent, compared to 20 percent for the group as a whole.

BlueScope's earnings statement to the ASX also included New Zealand among territories in which it would "continue to review further appropriate (organic) growth opportunities".

However, it notes that "commodity steel-making in Australia and New Zealand is a valuable option provided it can deliver targets results and is cash flow break-even at the bottom of the cycle". The group confirmed an "intent to maintain capacity to fund a shutdown of steel-making if not cash positive" - a statement notable for including its Australian operations as well as New Zealand's. Australia is grappling with reduced energy security, higher prices and a climate change dilemma created by the country's dependence on coal for electricity generation.

At a group level, BlueScope reported net profit after tax of A$1.569 billion, including abnormal items of A$743.1 million. Underlying NPAT was A$826 million.

Underlying earnings before interest and tax, a better comparative measure of performance, came in at A$1.269 billion, up A$164 million on the previous year.

In a call with news media, managing director Mark Vassella cited the strength of the US economy following recent federal tax cuts as justifying the possible US$500 million to US$700 expansion of its US-based steel business, North Star. He cited strong growth in logistics, data warehouses and distribution warehouses as drivers of North American demand.

He dodged a question about whether US President Donald Trump had been "a plus or a minus" for BlueScope, whose Australian steel production is exempt from Trump's globally imposed tariffs as part of his escalating trade war with China. Those tariffs do apply to New Zealand-produced steel exports and the New Zealand government has been criticised for failing to gain the same exemptions from the White House as Australia.

However, asked by BusinessDesk whether the US tariffs were likely to have a material impact on the New Zealand operations' earnings, Vassella said: "No."

The New Zealand domestic and Pacific Island markets remained the main focus of output from both NZ Steel's Glenbrook mill and the flat-rolled products facility operated by Pacific Steel, in Auckland.

He noted the New Zealand government appeared to be re-examining whether to open anti-dumping inquiries relating to Chinese steel imports to New Zealand, which the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment has previously rebuffed.

The New Zealand division's total steel dispatches totalled 650.1 million tonnes for the year, up from 604.9 million in the previous year. Exports accounted for 207.1 million of the total, compared to 151.1 million in the 2017 financial year.

Total revenues were A$833.6 million, from A$747.5 million, reflecting strong demand and activity levels, and higher regional steel and vanadium prices.

Ongoing productivity improvements and cost savings will be a "constant, essential focus for the business", even with strong demand continuing and steel prices expected around their current levels in the year ahead.

BlueScope announced an increased final dividend of A8 cents per share and said it is targeting a larger than anticipated A$250 million share buyback programme.

"The company currently expects 1H FY2019 underlying ebit to be around 10 percent higher than 2H FY2018 (which was A$745 million)," the company said, subject to spread, foreign exchange and market conditions.

BlueScope shares, which briefly touched a high point for the past year of A$18.83 on July 20, closed at A$17.87 last Friday. They were trading mid-morning in Australia at A$18.44 per share.

(BusinessDesk)

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The government is doubling to nearly $500 million the funding for forestry planting from its Provincial Growth Fund, meaning one-sixth of the $3 billion, three-year fund will be spent on trees.

Regional Development Minister Shane Jones announced the boost after the weekly Cabinet meeting.

The $240 million commitment to plant some 60 million trees will be funded through the PGF with about $118 million set aside for grants and a further $120 million for partnership projects over three years and will come on top of the $245 million already committed to the so-called 'One Billion Trees' project to kick-start the programme, which includes funding for joint ventures and the expansion of the Hill Country Erosion programme.

The funding would "support tree planting in areas where wider social, environmental, and regional development goals can be achieved" rather than clear commercial returns.

Were strengthening our support for planting over the next three to four years in areas where there are currently limited commercial drivers for investment, and where wider social, environmental or regional development benefits can be achieved," said Jones in a statement.

The new grants scheme will provide simple and accessible direct funding to landowners for the cost of planting and establishing trees and regenerating indigenous forest. Private landowners, government agencies, NGOs and iwi will all be able to apply."

Forestry planting has emerged as a key element of the government's efforts to tilt the New Zealand economy towards action on climate change, land erosion, water quality and regional unemployment, as well as producing a valuable commercial crop.

(BusinessDesk)

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New Zealand's services sector activity picked up in July as strong tourism numbers continued to underpin the wider economy, allaying fears about the impact of slowing manufacturing.

The BNZ-Business New Zealand performance of services index rose 2.4 points to a seasonally adjusted 55.1 in July, reversing some of June's decline, and sitting above the long-run average of 54.5. Services account for about two-thirds of the country's economy, and the PSI series has been in a period of ongoing expansion since July 2010. A reading of 50 separates expanding activity from contraction.

"There is still a decent economic pulse in the service sector. Moreover, there is some encouragement in the details too with activity/sales rising 3 points in July pushing back above its long-term average 56 in the process," Bank of New Zealand economist Doug Steel said in a note. "It all suggests that the service sector continues to tick along at a reasonable pace, if a bit slower than we have seen over the recent past."

Steel said ongoing strength in accommodation and hospitality tied in with strong growth in tourist numbers and "remains an important source of growth", while retail continued to languish.

The PSI's sister survey, the performance of manufacturing index, marked its second month below the long-run average, registering a contraction in production activity in July. Manufacturing is typically linked to the construction sector and despite New Zealand's massive pipeline of building work, construction firms are struggling to operate profitably as rising wage bills, more expensive building products, and tough contract conditions keep margins razor thin.

The performance of composite index, which combines the PSI and PMI, rose 2.1 points to 54.8 on a GDP-weighted basis and increased 0.7 points to 54 on a free-weighted basis due to the recovery in the services sector.

Steel said the indicators still point to slower economic growth, suggesting gross domestic product will increase around 2 percent in the second half of the year, slowing from the 3.3 percent pace in the March year, and "somewhat lower than most are forecasting".

Among the sub-indices, new orders/business rose 1.6 points to 60.1, supplier deliveries gained 2.5 points to 50.6 and stocks/inventories increased 0.3 of a point to 51. Employment dipped 0.1 of a point to 49.9, the first time it's been in contraction since January 2013.

"With sales and orders firm, this looks to be at least as much an issue with finding staff as any slowdown in labour demand," Steel said.

(BusinessDesk)

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Scales Corp will sell its bulk liquid storage unit to Taranaki's SBT Group for $20 million as the agriculture group builds up a war chest to seek out new acquisitions.

Christchurch-based Scales said the Liqueo Bulk Storage division reported earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $1.5 million in calendar 2017. While it had "grown well", the operation was "sub-scale" for the wider group and didn't closely match its storage business.

SBT Group has interests in rendering and animal byproducts. It said it's well positioned to grow Liqueo's tallow storage in Hawke's Bay and Timaru, and its new long-term edible storage contract in the South Canterbury town.

"The sale of Liqueo represents the final phase in our current portfolio rebalancing of businesses considered to be less aligned with our refreshed strategy," Scales chair Tim Goodacre said in a statement. "Our refreshed strategy is about adopting a greater focus on pure agri-businesses that play well to our strengths."

Scales has been on the prowl for new agri-businesses which better match its remaining portfolio, having sold its cold storage business for $151.4 million in May. Before today's transaction, analysts predicted Scales had built up capacity to fund $220 million of mergers and acquisitions.

Goodacre said proceeds from the Liqueo sale will be used "to pursue other attractive opportunities in agribusiness, both currently and in the future." There's no plan to return capital to shareholders at present.

Scales said its strengths are in operating a vertically integrated agri-business, participating in export-focused operations, and adding value through connections to the Chinese market.

The shares slipped 0.2 percent to $4.61, having declined 3.4 percent so far this year.

(BusinessDesk)

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Paul Greenwald, a former hedge fund millionaire, slipped out of Bellevue Hospital early Saturday morning and is now missing, according to authorities. The police say security camera footage caught the 70-year-old leaving the building around 2 a.m. with a yellow folder in hand, wearing a red shirt, black pants, black sandals, white socks, and with glasses perched atop his head. They have issued a Silver Alert and are asking anyone with information about Greenwald's location to come forward.

Formerly a resident of the luxury Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Midtown, Greenwald is believed to be homeless and according to the Daily News, may have been staying at a homeless shelter on East 30th Street, near the Kips Bay hospital. The NY Post reports that he was admitted to the hospital "for unknown reasons" on August 9.

In September 2009, authorities arrested Greenwald after he attacked his then-estranged, now-ex wife. As the Post reported at the time, he had lured Michelle Greenwaldauthor of a cookbook called The Magical Melting Pot and an adjunct assistant professor at NYU's Stern School of Businessto a spot near her apartment, telling her she needed to check on her parked car. When she arrived, he forcefully grabbed her arm and began screaming at her, in violation of a restraining order she'd taken out against him. He got out on bail, and apparently continued to harass Michelle over the phone.

In early 2010, the harassment earned Paul Greenwald seven charges of felony criminal contempt, but a Manhattan Supreme Court Justice sent him to Bellevue's correctional ward after determining him unfit to enter a plea. He reportedly shouted "the judge is a fucking crook!" and declined to enter the courtroom at the hearing.

Greenwald is roughly 200 pounds, and 6 feet tall with blue eyes. Anyone who has information on his whereabouts can call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782), or submit a tip to the Crime Stoppers website: www.nypdcrimestoppers.com. They can also text tips to 274637 (CRIMES) and enter TIP577. Police note that all calls are strictly confidential.
Pok Pok Ny, the Thai restaurant that won accolades since opening in Red Hook in 2012, will only be around for a few more weeks.

The NY Times reported the news, noting there were "several reasons for the decisions" from chef and owner Andy Ricker: "The restaurants lease came up for renewal. And though the landlord was willing to negotiate, Mr. Ricker said, it didnt make sense in the face of decreasing revenues and rising expenses. His general manager, Valerie Dozier, is switching careers to film and leaving the restaurant. And, the Columbia Street waterfront district, the restaurants neighborhood, has not become 'a hub of activity despite years of positive predictions,' as he put it."

Ricker started Pok Pok in Portland, Oregon, where he has other establishments, and will open an offshoot in Las Vegas. However, the Times also reports that, "On the cusp of turning 55 and wanting something of a less-hectic life, Mr. Ricker said that he is looking forward to spending more time at his home in Chiang Mai, Thailand."

Sorry the beer slushie never quite worked out.
The freedom that we enjoy and take for granted came after Himalayan sacrifices by our elders. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs fought the British colonial rulers in multiple wars of independence losing their lives in thousands, being incarcerated in faraway places like Malta and Andaman and Nicobar Islands and spending their lives in unimaginable misery and suffering.

India will be celebrating its 72nd Independence Day this week. This is a day that nation looks forward to every year and its significance is not lost on anyone, whether young or old. Kids grow up celebrating the day from their infancy, holding the tricolor and singing nationalist songs.

Throughout the freedom struggle, beginning in the immediate aftermath of the British rule being forced upon the nation, Hindus and Muslims fought the oppressive British regime together. While there are stories of valour even before the 1857 Mutiny, the sepoys and the freedom fighters belonging to both the communities , in the Mutiny, both fought shoulder to shoulder, supporting one another and even planning it together.

The communal divide that seems to have become all pervasive over the last two decades in the country was nowhere to be seen. Nana Sahib, who led the mutiny in Cawnpur (Kanpur) was ably supported and helped by none other than Azeemullah Khan who was his top aide and worked first as his diwan and then Prime Minister. Much before the first war of independence had broken out, Azeemullah Khan was sent by Peshwa to London to hold negotiations with British officials on his part. Before coming back to India, Azimullah went to Turkey and Russia and saw how the British forces were struggling in the war in Crimea. It reinforced the young bureaucrat's determination to see the British colonial forces driven out of the nation. He was a polyglot and spoke English and French as native speaker, something a rarity those days.

Kamladevi Chattopadhyaya, while writing in her book, 'New History of the Marathas, Vol-1' says: "About the time of the Meerut rising, there were assembled a larger number of Revolutionary leaders in the palace of Nana Sahib than could be found, at the time, in the palace of Lucknow, in the Subah at Bareilly, or even at the Dewan-i-Khas palace at Delhi. The Revolution of 1857 was conceived in the palace at Brahmavarta. It was there that the embryo also took a definite shape. And, if the birth also had taken place at Brahmavarta, the Revolution would surely not have been so short-lived. But, before complete development, the thunder at Meerut brought the Revolutionary child into being, unfortunately before its time; it was not, however, left to its fate; but strenuous preparations were made in the palace at Brahmavarta to sustain and nourish it even under such adverse circumstances."

"At the place of honour sat the proud and noble form of Nana Sahib, the very incarnation of the Revolutionary Spirit. His brothers, Baba Sahib and Bala Sahib, and his nephew Rao Sahib, were there, ready to sacrifice their lives, wealth, and comfort for the fulfilment of their leader's noble objects. Beside these sat the man who, from the low station of a menial servant, had risen in his master's favour by means of his industry and ability, the man who had studied the politics and warfare of Europe, determined to utilise that knowledge in the holy war of liberating his country from slavery. This was none other than Azimullah Khan. There also sat the lightning Queen of Jhansi, aiding now the experience of the Revolutionary leaders with her magnificent intuition and inspiring them with her own unbounded love of country and honour. But in this historical meeting, who is the warrior over there, sharpening his sword in the direction of the armoury? Readers, that hero in the armoury is the celebrated Mahratta Tatia Tope. He is the last valiant Maratha warrior of the School of Shivaji".

The freedom fighters had close coordination with each others and synchronized their efforts in a very harmonious manner for maximum benefit. When Nana Saheb eventually lost the war in Cawnpur and was driven out of Oudh too, he took refuge in Bareilly that was under the control of Khan Bahadur Khan Rohilla.

Sir William Wilson Hunter while writing in The Imperial Gazetteer of India, Volume 1 says: "In that year the troops at Bareilly rose on the 31st of May. The European officers, except three, escaped to Nainital; and Khan Bahadur Khan, Hafiz Rahmat's grandson, was proclaimed Nawab Nazim of Rohilkhand. On the 11th of June the sipahis went off to Delhi, and Khan Bahadur organized a government in July...On the 25th of March 1858, the Nana Sahib arrived at Bareilly on his flight from Oudh, and remained till the end of April; but when the commander in-chief marched on Jalalabad, he fled back again into Oudh."

Some sixty years later, when the Congress was still in infancy, the first Indian provisional government in exile (Arzi hukumate-e-Azad Hind) was formed in Kabul in the year 1915, it was a confluence of Hindu and Muslim revolutionaries. Raja of Hathras, Raja Mahendra Pratap, who was a renowned freedom fighter and worked hard to achieve the independence for the nation was its President, Maulana Barkatullah Bhopali, an ideologue and freedom fighter its Prime Minister, Ubaidullah Sindhi, a top scholar and disciple of Shaykhul Hind Mahmud Hasan as home minister, Maulavi Bashir as War Minister and Champakaran Pillai as Foreign Minister. These revolutionaries ran the provisional government for four years and had extensive contacts with German, Russian and Turkish governments.

The freedom that we cherish now and take for granted came after extraordinary hard struggle and huge sacrifices by revolutionaries. The human loss in Oudh, present day Uttar Pradesh was more than 1.5 lakh in the Mutiny of 1857 alone.

We should work relentlessly to preserve the freedom and the inclusive nature or Ganga Jamuni Tehzib of the nation.

More columns by Syed Ubaidur Rahman:



Why Jinnah's portrait should be removed from Aligarh Muslim University

Muslim Law Board caught in a time warp

Minorities' persecution and blasphemy laws in Pakistan

Narendra Modi Muslim outreach: Will Muslims bite the bait?

Will Congress return to power in Karnataka?

Muslim Law Board shocked by top cleric's views on Babri

Narendra Modi: Why Muslims are losing hope

Why Muslims are not mourning withdrawal of Haj subsidy

Owaisi expands his appeal thanks to talaq bill

Will Indian Muslims take a break from too much focus on electoral politics?
China allows Swedish doctor to see detained publisher: Sweden



Stockholm, Aug 13 (AFP) Aug 13, 2018



China has allowed a Swedish doctor to examine publisher Gui Minhai, a Chinese-born Swede who vanished into Chinese custody in January in murky circumstances for the second time, Sweden said Monday.

"Swedish medical personnel have on Monday, August 13, been able to carry out a visit with detained Swedish citizen Gui Minhai. This is welcome," Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said in a statement.

Gui was one of five Hong Kong-based booksellers -- known for publishing gossipy titles about Chinese political leaders -- who disappeared in 2015 and resurfaced in mainland China.

He was released in October 2017, but was arrested on a train to Beijing in January while travelling with two Swedish diplomats.

He was reportedly en route to see a Swedish specialist over fears he had the neurological disease ALS.

Wallstrom, who provided no details about Gui's condition or Monday's medical visit, reiterated Sweden's call for him to be freed.

"Gui Minhai must be released and be allowed to reunite with his family," she said.

She said Sweden was continuing its "intensive work" in the matter, and said the medical visit would be "followed up in several different ways".

Gui, 54, first disappeared in 2015 while on holiday in Thailand.

He eventually surfaced at an undisclosed location in China, confessing to involvement in a fatal traffic accident and smuggling illegal books into the mainland.

Chinese authorities declared they had released him in October 2017 but his daughter Angela Gui told AFP at the time that he was under "loose house arrest" in Ningbo.

After his second disappearance into police custody in January, Gui appeared in a video interview in February confessing to wrongdoing and accusing his adopted country Sweden of manipulating him like a "chess piece".

It was unclear whether that statement was made under duress, but video of his confession showed him flanked by two police officers. A close friend said the remarks were "not to be believed".

The Chinese embassy in Sweden said in February that Gui was being held in a detention centre in the city.
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/var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fd4790d88)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd4d4d598)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fd4790d88)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd4d4d598)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fd47cef18)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd4d4d598)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd4d4d598)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd3ebf2a0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fd4d4fd40)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fd4d4fd40)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951

/var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fd4903d10)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd49feb38)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fd4903d10)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd49feb38)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fd4842290)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd49feb38)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd49feb38)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd3ebff70)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fd495c7b0)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fd495c7b0)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951

/var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fd4416ff8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd4815528)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fd4416ff8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd4815528)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fd4446c10)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd4815528)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd4815528)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd3ec0468)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fd480f188)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fd480f188)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951

/var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fd47f8ad0)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd4983d78)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fd47f8ad0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd4983d78)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fd480cef8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd4983d78)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd4983d78)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fd3ebffb8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fd48ba4c0)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fd48ba4c0)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
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Protests at funeral for Yemeni children killed in coalition strike



Sanaa, Aug 13 (AFP) Aug 13, 2018



Thousands of Yemenis vented anger against Riyadh and Washington on Monday as they took part in a mass funeral for children killed in an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition.

At least 29 children were among those killed in the air raid on Thursday on a bus in a crowded market in Dahyan, Saada province, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The mass funeral was held in Saada city, a stronghold of the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, with images broadcast by the rebels' Al-Masirah television.

Around 50 vehicles brought coffins into a large square in the city.

The coffins were covered with green drapes and portraits of the victims were lined up on the ground for the Muslim prayer of the dead.

Mourners shouted slogans against Saudi Arabia and its ally and key arms supplier, the United States. "America kills Yemeni children," read several banners.

The Saudi-led coalition has taken part in Yemen's conflict since 2015 in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's government in its fight against the Huthis.

The head of the Huthis' revolutionary council, Mohammed Ali al-Huthi, took part in the funeral and slammed the raid as a "crime by America and its allies against the children of Yemen".

The Huthis' health ministry said that 51 people were killed in the raids including 40 children.

It also said 79 others were wounded, including 56 children.

Al-Masirah did not say how many victims were buried on Monday.

Some families had already buried their loved ones, according to residents.

The coalition said Friday it will launch a probe to "assess the events (and) clarify their circumstances", while the UN Security Council has called for a "credible investigation".

The war in impoverished Yemen has left nearly 10,000 people dead and unleashed what the UN describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The UN envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has invited the warring sides to talks on September 6 in Geneva.
Protests at funeral for Yemeni children killed in coalition strike



Saada, Yemen, Aug 13 (AFP) Aug 13, 2018



Thousands of Yemenis vented anger against Riyadh and Washington on Monday as they took part in a mass funeral for children killed in an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition.

At least 29 children were among those killed in the air raid Thursday on a bus in a crowded market in Dahyan, Saada province, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The mass funeral was held in Saada city, a stronghold of the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, with images broadcast by the rebels' Al-Masirah television.

Around 50 vehicles brought coffins into a large square in the city.

The coffins were covered with green drapes and portraits of the victims were lined up on the ground, where relatives cried over them and the Islamic prayer for the dead was recited.

Mourners raised pictures of the children and shouted slogans against Saudi Arabia and its ally and key arms supplier, the United States.

"America kills Yemeni children," read several banners.

The Saudi-led coalition has taken part in Yemen's conflict since 2015 in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's government in its fight against the Huthis.

The head of the rebels' revolutionary council, Mohammed Ali al-Huthi, took part in the funeral and slammed the raid as a "crime by America and its allies against the children of Yemen".

The Huthis' health ministry said that 51 people were killed in the raids including 40 children.

It also said 79 others were wounded, including 56 children.

Al-Masirah did not say how many victims were buried on Monday.

Some families had already buried their loved ones, according to residents.

The coalition said Friday it would launch a probe to "assess the events (and) clarify their circumstances", while the United Nations Security Council has called for a "credible investigation".

The UAE, a key Saudi ally in the coalition battling the Huthis, on Monday said that both sides in the conflict had been to blame.

Anwar Gargash, the UAE's minister of state for foreign affairs, bemoaned the "ugly" side of war and played up the coalition's own probe into the strike.

"In this war we have seen civilians shot at, bombed, killed and, unfortunately, this is really part of any confrontation," he said in Dubai.

The war in impoverished Yemen has left nearly 10,000 people dead and unleashed what the UN describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The UN envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has invited the warring sides to talks on September 6 in Geneva.
Iraq PM defends stance on US sanctions against Iran



Baghdad, Aug 13 (AFP) Aug 13, 2018



Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Monday defended his stance on US sanctions against Iran in the face of harsh criticism from Tehran and its allies in Baghdad.

"Some people want to put pressure on us to place the interests of gangs ahead of those of the Iraqi people," he told a news conference. "This is not possible."

Abadi has cancelled a visit to Iran, his press office said Sunday, after announcing last week that Iraq would reluctantly comply with renewed US sanctions against Tehran.

"We don't support the sanctions because they are a strategic error, but we will comply with them," said Abadi, whose country is an ally of both Tehran and Washington.

"In general, sanctions are unjust," the prime minister added.

His position has drawn fire from several groups close to Tehran, especially the Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Badr paramilitary movements.

On Sunday, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative in Baghdad also lashed out at Abadi.

"It's a disloyal attitude towards the honest position of Iran and the blood of the martyrs this country has spilt to defend the land of Iraq" against jihadists, said Moujtaba al-Hussein.

"We are saddened by this position which shows he has been defeated psychologically in the face of the Americans," he said.

Abadi stood firm on Monday, although Baghdad is in the midst of political jockeying to form a new government after the results of May's parliamentary elections were finalised last week following a recount.

"Our economic situation is also difficult and we sympathise with Iran," said Abadi, who was appointed prime minister in 2014 with Western backing and by consensus between the leading factions in Iraqi politics.

"But at the same time I will not make grand slogans that destroy my people and my country just to make certain people happy," he said.
US soldier killed in Afghanistan



Washington, Aug 13 (AFP) Aug 13, 2018



A US special operations soldier has been killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan's Helmand province, the Pentagon said Monday.

According to a statement, Staff Sergeant Reymund Rarogal Transfiguracion died Sunday after an improvised explosive device detonated near him while he was conducting combat patrol operations.

The 36-year-old from Hawaii was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group.

Officials said the incident was under investigation.

While Afghan security forces are conducting most of the fighting against the Taliban and other insurgent groups, US troops operate alongside them in a training capacity and are frequently on the front lines.
Protests at funeral for Yemeni children killed in coalition strike



Saada, Yemen, Aug 13 (AFP) Aug 13, 2018



Thousands of Yemenis vented anger against Riyadh and Washington on Monday as they took part in a mass funeral for children killed in an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition.

At least 29 children were among those killed in the air raid Thursday on a bus in a crowded market in Dahyan, Saada province, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The mass funeral was held in Saada city, a stronghold of the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, with images broadcast by the rebels' Al-Masirah television.

Around 50 vehicles brought coffins into a large square in the city.

The coffins were covered with green drapes and portraits of the victims were lined up on the ground, where relatives cried over them and the Islamic prayer for the dead was recited.

Mourners raised pictures of the children and shouted slogans against Saudi Arabia and its ally and key arms supplier, the United States.

"America kills Yemeni children," read several banners.

The Saudi-led coalition has taken part in Yemen's conflict since 2015 in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's government in its fight against the Huthis.

The head of the rebels' revolutionary council, Mohammed Ali al-Huthi, took part in the funeral and slammed the raid as a "crime by America and its allies against the children of Yemen".

The Huthis' health ministry said that 51 people were killed in the raids including 40 children.



- 'Ugly' side of war -



It also said 79 others were wounded, including 56 children.

Al-Masirah did not say how many victims were buried on Monday.

Some families had already buried their loved ones, according to residents.

The coalition said Friday it would launch a probe to "assess the events (and) clarify their circumstances", while the United Nations Security Council has called for a "credible investigation".

The UAE, a key Saudi ally in the coalition battling the Huthis, on Monday said that both sides in the conflict had been to blame.

Anwar Gargash, the UAE's minister of state for foreign affairs, bemoaned the "ugly" side of war and played up the coalition's own probe into the strike.

"In this war we have seen civilians shot at, bombed, killed and, unfortunately, this is really part of any confrontation," he said in Dubai.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke by telephone on Monday, discussing topics including efforts by a UN special envoy to "to resolve the conflict in Yemen", the State Department said.

The war in impoverished Yemen has left nearly 10,000 people dead and unleashed what the UN describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The UN envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has invited the warring sides to talks on September 6 in Geneva.
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Former Catalan President Puigdemont 'I Don't Like Being in Exile'

In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont talks about fleeing Spain, his detention in Germany and the future of the independence movement.
Voting by Smartphone Quick and Easy, Just Not Very Secure

With the U.S. midterm election approaching, concerns about cybersecurity and Russian meddling are mounting. The state of West Virginia has chosen now, of all times, to introduce smartphone voting.
Algiers, August 13, 2018 ( SPS) - Ambassador of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) to Algeria, Abdelkader Taleb Omar, reaffirmed Sunday Polisario Front's readiness to engage into direct negotiations with Morocco, in accordance with the recent resolution of the United Nations Security Council.



"Polisario Front, the sole and legitimate representative of Sahrawi people, reaffirms its readiness to fully engage into negotiations with Morocco, in accordance with the UN Security Council's resolution 2414," the Sahrawi ambassador told a press briefing at the end of his meeting with the Secretary General of the National Republican Alliance (ANR) Belkacem Sahli.



The Sahrawi diplomat also underlined Polisario Front's commitment to cooperate with the UN Secretary General's Personal Envoy for Western Sahara, Horst Kohler, hailing the latter's efforts for a just and fair solution guaranteeing the right of Sahrawi people to self-determination.



In this regard, the Sahrawi ambassador urged the UN Security Council to "assume its responsibility in accordance with the principles of the UN Charter and to ensure the respect for Sahrawi people's inalienable right to self-determination."



On the other hand, he denounced Moroccan regime's attempts to undermine the negotiation process, by provoking crisis ahead of each meeting on negotiations. (SPS)



062/SPS/APS
Philip Hopf,

Hopf Klinkmuller Capital Management KG





Philip Hopf ist geschaftsfuhrender Gesellschafter der Hopf Klinkmuller Capital Management KG. Die HKCM KG beschaftigt sich mit der Risikoabwagung bei Investitionsentscheidungen in die Rohstoffmarkte und richtet sich an Anleger die Fragen zum Kauf und Lagerung von Physischen Edelmetallen haben. Philip Hopf hat sich auf die Bereiche Marktpsychologie und Analyse via Elliott Wellen Theorie spezialisiert und befasst sich hiermit regelmaig in seinen Artikeln.



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Taxing the global commons

Most previous analyses of the environmental impacts of tax havens have been done by investigative journalists focusing on a few locations. Examples include the links between rainforest destruction in Indonesia and palm oil companies operating through British Virgin Islands, and shell companies involved in destructive diamond mining in West Africa.

The new study, on the other hand, takes a more systematic approach to analyse how tax havens influence the sustainability of the ocean and the Amazon rainforest as two key examples of global environmental commons.



"The absence of a more systemic view is not surprising considering the chronic lack of data resulting from the financial opaqueness created by the use of these jurisdictions," says co-author Beatrice Crona, GEDB executive director.



This lack of transparency hides how tax havens can play a key role in facilitating the degradation of environmental commons that are crucial for both people and planet at global scales. The Amazon rainforest, for example, is critical for stabilizing the Earths climate system while the ocean provides a vital source of protein and income for many millions of people worldwide, particularly in low-income food-deficit countries.



From Cayman Islands to the Amazon

The paper includes the first quantification of foreign capital that flows into the beef and soy producing sectors operating in the Brazilian Amazon  two sectors linked to deforestation.

"Our analysis shows that a total of USD 26.9 billion of foreign capital was transferred to these sectors between October 2000 and August 2011. Of this capital, about USD 18.4 billion was transferred from tax haven jurisdictions," they write.

The Cayman Islands turned out to be the largest transfer jurisdiction for foreign capital to the key companies operating in the Brazilian Amazon. The well-known tax haven provides three benefits to investors: legal efficiency, tax-minimization and secrecy.




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What is wrong with the German military? Apparently quite a lot. Consider this; the German Navy has six modern Type 212 submarines and at the end of 2017 it became a major news that none of them were available for service. One damaged its steering mechanism on December 19th when U-35 struck a rock off Norway. The other five 212s are either undergoing repairs or maintenance or waiting for a dry dock to become available for essential work. There were other problems, similar to those that have kept many German warplanes and armored vehicles out of action since the 1990s. One that was frequently mentioned was a lack of spare parts. While that was true, and a common problem throughout the German armed forces, it soon became apparent that there was a larger and more serious problem; poor leadership in the Defense Ministry and among the senior officers (generals and admirals).

This became obvious when analysts and journalists compared German performance in developing and building warships to what other nations were doing. Germany is a major shipbuilder, one of the top five in the world. But its own navy, when given a choice, selects designs that look good on paper but do not perform in reality. That is not a new problem and not unique to Germany. The extent of the incompetence, however, is surprising. Politicians saw building new warships for the German Navy as more about providing jobs and paid little attention to the practicality of the designs selected. This was particularly evident with German surface warships. As Germany replaced its aging Cold War designs the navy sought out and accepted designs that were more suitable for peacekeeping than warfare and now Germany finds itself with a surface fleet of warships that are not only incapable of fighting but often have a hard time remaining capable of going to sea.

For twenty years after the Cold War ended in 1991 German defense planners did not consider the possibility that Germany would again face a military threat. But after 2008 Russia became more and more aggressive and now Russia, with much less efficient shipyards, is building more effective warships. This is particularly embarrassing because the primary combat zone for German warships is the Baltic Sea and Germanys new NATO partners in East Europe (Poland and the Baltic States) are openly critical of Germany not being able to handle its share of the defense burden in the Baltic.

Its not just ineffective surface warships but also naval aviation, including ASW (anti-submarine warfare) aircraft, that are, to put it mildly, inadequate. For decades Germany did not seriously consider the need for modern ASW aircraft because; who would they be used against? Now there is a real threat in the Baltic and North Sea and Germany must depend on other NATO nations (and non-NATO nations like Sweden and Finland) to protect German access to the shipping lanes in the Baltic and North Sea.

In one area of warship construction; submarines, Germany remained a world leader and major exporter. To remain competitive German subs had to be designed and built for combat operations. But when the German Navy purchased German-built subs these boats were misused and poorly administered. It was more than lack of spare parts that left Germany with no combat ready subs in late 2017 and into 2018. It was extremely poor leadership and planning at the top.

Some things were obvious. Defense spending was sharply cut in the 1990s. This was the peace dividend, the expected savings from the demise of the Soviet Union and its enormous military (including the second largest fleet on the planet.) The German Type 212s entered service during this period and the failure to buy sufficient spare parts soon led to subs being sidelined until the spares could be manufactured. In some cases spares were obtained by taking components from subs sidelined for something else so that two subs would not be out of action. But this was more expensive and the situation just kept getting worse until there were no subs available for service and that situation wont be rectified until early 2018 and wont improve much until the navy gets a lot more money for spares and maintenance. Note that export users of the Type 212s werent having these problems. More Germans began to notice that.

Germany could use its U-Boats right now because they provided a major threat to increasingly aggressive Russian warships in the Baltic and North Sea. That was always the intent, even though the 212s were developed simply to replace the Cold War era Type 209s and keep a prosperous export business (subs) going. In late 2005 Germany commissioned its first Type 212 submarine, U-31. This was quickly followed by U-32 and two more in 2006 and 2007. Two more entered service in 2015 and 2016. Another two were planned but never ordered. Italy also has four Type 212s.

Type 212s are special boats, as they were among the first use fuel cells (for AIP, or Air Independent Propulsion), which enable them to quietly operate underwater for weeks at a time. They still have diesel propulsion, but this is only used for surface travel when the batteries are recharged. The 212's are also very quiet, quieter than most nuclear boats in service. This makes them an even match for a current nuclear boat equipped with better sensors. The 1,450 ton 212's are much smaller than nuclear boats (57 meters/188 feet long, compared to twice as long and 6,200 tons for the new U.S. Virginia class SSNs). The nuclear boats are used for a lot more than hunting other ships and subs.

While the 212's are mainly attack boats, and well designed and equipped for it, they can, because of their AIP, be used for intelligence collection and landing commandos. While Germany is an American ally, their development of fuel cell technology for subs, and use of these boats in their own navy, helped this technology mature, and eventually available to many more nations. These 212 boats are, expensive (about half a billion dollars each), but that's less than a third the cost of a nuclear boat. The 212's are also highly automated, requiring a crew of only 27. But with six torpedo tubes, and a dozen torpedoes (plus anti-ship missiles, launched from the tubes, as well as mines), they could be, in the wrong hands, a major threat to the U.S. fleet. Cheaper to buy, cheaper to run (you don't need as many skilled sailors for the crew) and very lethal. American admirals always paid attention to who the Germans export these boats to. Most of the exports are the less expensive Type 2014, which are 212s without a lot of the highly classified tech. For export customers, the 212s were reliable and worked as advertised. But the German navy, or at least the senior admirals, refused to read, or pay attention, to the users manual.

American admirals see new German surface warship designs as more examples of what not to do. These German designs were dysfunctional to begin with and supervision of their construction (by the navy) so incompetent that these ships failed sea trials (a relatively uncorrupted process in which navy crews take the new ships to sea and compare their performance to what the design promised and what was needed to stay alive out there). You can try and fake sea trials but it is very difficult especially when you have a free press and many sailors willing to talk about a ship design that could get them killed.

Germany remains a major exporter of high tech gear. Meaning that German defense industries design and export electronics, weapon systems and other military gear that is competitive on world markets. Their own armed forces are not looking for competitive but for politically correct so German manufacturers concentrate on their export markets. Since the 1990s the home market for defense items has, in many sectors, become poisonous and source of much stuff that German manufacturers keep quiet about because the German Defense Ministry was seeking unsatisfactory weapons and equipment for German forces.

The inability of the German Navy to keep six German built submarines in service was all about poor leadership and planning, both on the political side (Defense Ministry) and the military side (the senior officers.) But the problems went far beyond submarines. Pass the schadenfreude, it is one thing the German military has plenty of these days.
U.S. SOCOM (Special Operations Command) has ordered over 40,000 SURG (Suppressed Upper Receiver Group) from Sig Sauer for some of its M4 assault rifles. The SURG actually replaces most of an M4 rifle as it includes a barrel and stock thus each SURG costs over a thousand dollars. SURG includes a 170mm (6.75 inch) barrel with a permanently attached suppressor. SURG has two gas settings, for subsonic and standard ammo. In other words, SURG is virtually silent at close range (using subsonic ammo to eliminate the distinctive crack of the round breaking the sound barrier)). The suppressor has nineteen baffles, which greatly reduces the sound of hot gasses coming out of the barrel behind the bullet, especially with standard (supersonic) ammo.

The subsonic ammo is accurate up to 100 meters and popular with farmers and hunters in areas where large numbers of wild pigs are a problem. Hogs are smart pack animals. If one in a group is alarmed the entire group will scatter. With subsonic 5.56mm ammo fired from a rifle with a suppressor (to muffle the bang of the hot gasses pushing the bullet out of the barrel) it is possible to take down four or more hogs when firing at more than 50 meters (where the muffled bang and sound of rounds being chambered and ejected is hard to detect). In combat SOCOM operators using military grade 5.56mm subsonic ammo (virtually identical to what hunters can obtain) do a lot of damage to the enemy, especially at night, using am M4 with a suppressor and subsonic ammo. SURG also has a short stroke piston gas system, which reduces buildup of carbon inside the rifle and is generally more reliable in sandy and dusty conditions. Deliveries of SURG will take place over five years (by 2023).

The M4 assault rifle has long been controversial because of the original gas-tube system to power the automatic reloading and loading system. The gas-tube system required more frequent cleaning to prevent fouling of the barrel and failure of the reloading system. There were a lot of other minor problems but these have been gradually addressed.

The main problem is that the U.S. Army will not make major (and expensive) changes to the M4. In 2015 the army agreed to implement another batch of upgrades for its existing M4A1, basically creating the M4A2 (or M4A1+, take your pick). The list of M4A2 improvement was still being compiled from user suggestions and analysis of what is affordable when the effort was cancelled in 2016 because of budget problems. Some of the most popular suggested improvements were a longer (by a third) Picatinny rail (to make some accessories easier to use), a floating barrel, a single stage trigger (preferred by snipers), a more effective flash suppressor, camouflage-colored components (to make the currently all black rifle less easy to spot), better cleaning tools (more like commercially available stuff) and some design changes (different shapes and materials for some components plus more efficient slings) to make the M4 easier to handle and carry. The "floating" means that the barrel is attached only to the main body of the rifle to reduce resonance (which throws off accuracy.) The new trigger would only be on M4s used by marksmen (about ten percent of all infantry) who are trained to be snipers.

The M4A2 effort came after yet another failure to find a replacement rifle. In 2013 the army held a competition to find a replacement for the aging (1980s vintage) M4 carbine. There has been a lot of pressure from the troops and Congress (where many of the complaints end up, after all, the M4 users are also voters). The basic infantry weapon, the M16, is half a century old and the M4 is a shortened version of that. The rifle the M16 replaced (the M14) lasted less than a decade and the one before that (the M-1) lasted two decades. The one before that (M1903) lasted three decades and so on, back to the Civil War (1861-65). The M4 is a variant of the M16 that was adopted in the 1980s, but there are still plenty of M16s in service. The army declared the competition inconclusive and went for yet another upgrade of the M4, which was later canceled.

Meanwhile, the army has been upgrading its older M4 assault rifles to the M4A1 standard since 2011. Ultimately upgrade kits were purchased for 70 percent of the armys half-million M4 carbines and that turns them into M4A1s. At the current rate, this will take until 2020. The kits replace the barrel, receiver, and auto-loading system with one that is easier to keep clean. There is also a heavier barrel and the ability to fire full automatic. There is also a stronger Picatinny rail on top of the barrel, for mounting scopes and such.

Most elements (except for the short stroke piston system) of the M4A1 were already incorporated by SOCOM for their own M4s, which were, in effect, the first M4A1 models to enter service. The marines are not upgrading their M4s (which are mainly used by support troops).

This conversion kit addressed years of complaints about the M4 and M16 assault rifles. The main change was replacing the main portion of the rifle with a new component that contains a short stroke piston gas system (to reduce buildup of carbon inside the rifle) and a heavier (by 142 gr/five ounces) barrel (which reduces barrel failure from too much heat, which happens when several hundred rounds are fired within a few minutes).

The user demand for the adoption of the short stroke piston gas system has been around for decades so that M16s would be more reliable and easier to clean. This came to a head (again) in 2007 when the army ran more dust and reliability tests on its M4 rifle. Four weapons tested were: the M4, the XM8, SCAR (Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle), and the H&K 416 (similar to the new M4 with the upgrade kit and short stroke piston system).

The testing consisted of exposing the weapons to 25 hours of heavy dust conditions over two months. During that testing period, 6,000 rounds were fired from each of ten weapons of each type. The weapons with the fewest failures (usually jams) were rated highest. Thus, the XM8 finished first, SCAR second, 416 third, and M4 last. In response, the army said it was satisfied with the M4's performance but was considering equipping it with a heavier barrel (to lessen overheating) and more effective magazines (27 percent of the M4s 882 jams were magazine related). The army noted that the M4 fired over 98 percent of its rounds without problems. That missed the point that the other rifles had far fewer jams. In combat, each jam is a life-threatening situation for the soldier in question. The army had been forced by Congress to conduct the tests. Congress was responding to complaints by the troops. But the army refused to adjust its budget priorities to act on the test results.

The XM8 had 127 jams, the SCAR 226, and the 416 had 233. Thus the M-4 had nearly eight times as many jams as the XM8, the rifle designed to replace it. The M4 had nearly four times the jams of the SCAR and 416, which were basically M4 type rifles with a short stroke piston system. Any stoppage is potentially fatal for the soldier holding the rifle, thus the disagreement between the army brass and the troops who use the weapons in combat.

In dusty places like Iraq and Afghanistan you have to clean your M16 and M4 rifles constantly, otherwise the combination of carbon (from the recoil system) and dust in the chamber will cause jams. The army and marines both decided to stick with their current weapons, rather than adopt an easier to maintain the weapon, like the XM8 or H&K 416, because of the billion or so dollars it would cost to switch rifles.

If the issue were put to a vote the troops would vote for a rifle using a short-stroke system (like the XM8, SCAR, or H&K 416). But the military is not a democracy, so the troops spend a lot of time cleaning their weapons and hoping for the best. The debate involves two intertwined attitudes among senior army commanders. First, they don't want the hassle, and possible embarrassment, of switching to a new rifle that might have even more difficult problems. Second, they are anticipating a breakthrough in weapons technology that will make possible a much-improved infantry weapon. This is likely to happen later, rather than sooner, but the generals kept obsessing over it. They are encouraged by recent success in the development of caseless and short case ammo for a new machine-gun design.

Earlier efforts to just get the troops a more reliable rifle have failed. Back in 2005, the U.S. Army's design for a new assault rifle, the XM8, was canceled. After that, the manufacturer incorporated one of the key components of the XM8 into M4 rifles and calls the hybrid the H&K 416. Heckler & Koch (H&K) designed the XM8, which was based on an earlier H&K rifle, the G36. SOCOM is using the 416 but no one else is (except for a few police departments).

The XM8 (like the G36 and 416) uses a short-stroke piston system. The M16 uses the gas-tube system, which leads to carbon build up and jams (rounds getting stuck in the chamber and the weapon unable to fire). The short-stroke system also does not expose parts of the rifle to extremely hot gases (which wears out components more quickly). As a result, rifles using the short-stroke system, rather than the gas-tube, are more reliable, easier to maintain, and last longer.

H&K developed the 416, for SOCOM, at the same time the XM8 was being evaluated by the army. SOCOM got the first 416s in 2004, a year before the Army canceled the XM8. The 416 looks like the M4, for the only thing that has changed is the use of the short-stroke system to automatically extracts the cartridge after the bullet has been fired and loads the next round. SOCOM can buy pretty much whatever they want, the U.S. Army cannot. SOCOM listens to what its troops want, the army often doesn't.

The army proposed some other changes, as part of the M4 component replacement. These included improved trigger pull characteristics, ambidextrous controls (to make life easier for lefties), and a round counter (in the pistol grip) to track the number of bullets fired over the lifetime of the rifle (makes for better data on how rifles perform over time and for scheduling the replacement of components). Few of these were implemented because of tight budgets after 2010.

The main problem with replacing the M4 is that the weapon is not dramatically inferior to most proposed replacements. Moreover, troops acknowledge it is the devil they know and will all the minor changes and new accessories that have become available since 2001 the M4 has managed to keep up. Army leaders point out that with constantly shrinking defense budgets you have to be careful with what you spend your money on. Replacing the M4 and M16 would cost over $5 billion and you might, as has happened to many other countries, get a weapon that looks good on paper (and in pictures) but reveals some serious flaws once it is exposed to sustained combat. Thats what makes most combat troops (especially infantry) willing to stick with an improved M4.
The commander of the 21,000 AU (African Union) peacekeeper force has ordered peacekeepers to permanently attach themselves with army units and operate together as a joint force. This is another effort to deal with the poor discipline, corruption and uneven performance of Somali Army units. All the AU troops are African and, while Somalis have a high opinion of themselves, it will be interesting to see how they react to daily examples of other African soldiers demonstrating superior discipline and capability. This may be a cure or a source of fatal friction between the Somali soldiers and the peacekeepers.

Al Shabaab is also having personnel problems. Although the Islamic terror organization has established a new source of income (via providing immunity from attack in return for regular payments) this protection scheme enables al Shabaab to pay the salaries and benefits for leaders and monthly pay for full-time members. Al Shabaab always takes care of its payroll because it has discovered in the past that unpaid members often just walk away. The current pay levels are enough to keep most members on the job but not enough for expansion or foreign operations. Before 2011, when al Shabaab still controlled much of Mogadishu as well as other ports like Kismayo and a percentage of the pirate ransoms (which dried up after 2011) there was a lot more cash to work with and al Shabaab was a lot more dangerous. Now they are a persistent local problem. They are trying to establish themselves among the Somali minority in Kenya but that is proving difficult. In part, it is because most of the hundreds of Kenyan Somalis who joined al Shabaab in Somalia have died or deserted and returned home disillusioned. In Somalia, this means al Shabaab is concentrating more on recruiting via kidnapped or enticed children (teenaged boys). Until they get older and more experienced these recruits are cheap and expendable. Taking these kids is considered another form of taxation rural Somalis have to deal with.

Noisy Neighbors Next Door

Over the last week, there has been another outbreak of ethnic violence next door in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. The governor of the region was replaced (after he was arrested) and federal forces were sent in to calm things down between ethnic Somalis and other groups (particularly Christians). Unrest among ethnic Somalis next door in Ethiopia was a problem for much of 2017 but by the end of 2017, the government had restored the peace and Ethiopians displaced by the violence began returning home. The Ethiopian government returned its attention to the Somali problem in Somalia.

The Ethiopian problem was not about violence against Somalia but between ethnic Somalis in eastern Ethiopia and the non-Somali Oromo people who live to the west. The Ethiopian province of Ogaden, which comprises most of eastern Ethiopia contains a largely ethnic Somali population. To the west of Ogaden is Oromia, where the largest minority in Ethiopia (the Oromo) predominate. There have long been territorial disputes along the Ogaden-Oromia border and these have flared up again in 2017 and took a while for the government and armed forces (many withdrawn from Somalia) to deal with.

Meanwhile, many Somalis believe Ogaden belongs to Somalia. Islamic radicals in Somalia have long sought to conquer Ogaden but the Ethiopians have been defeating these efforts for generations. That is not going to change, especially since oil and gas have been discovered in Ogaden, and drilling is underway. In 2015 Somalia and Ethiopia signed an agreement to not provide rebels from the other nations with sanctuary.

Earlier in 2018 Kenya hosted another round of peace talks between the Ethiopian government and the ONLF (Ogaden National Liberation Front). This was part of a larger effort to bring peace to Somalis throughout the region (mainly Somalia but also Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti). Somalia is playing a role in trying to make peace between Ethiopia and its Somali minority. For example, in August 2017 Somalia arrested Abdikarin Sheikh Muse, an ethnic Somali who was an Ethiopian rebel leader hiding out in Somalia. Muse was taken to the Ethiopian border and turned over to Ethiopia, which had requested this. That, as expected, caused some protest demonstrations by Somalis who believe Ogaden belongs to Somalia. The newly elected Somali president survived this and remains popular. Most Somalis have mixed feelings about Ogaden. The Ethiopians have been defeating Somali efforts to seize Ogaden for generations. That is not going to change, especially since oil and gas have been discovered in Ogaden, and drilling is underway. Abdikarin Sheikh Muse is a leader in the ONLF and Somalia has long been a convenient refuge. In 2015 Somalia and Ethiopia signed an agreement to not provide rebels from the other nations with sanctuary. Meanwhile, Ethiopia is having problems in Oromia, the region east of the Ogaden, which is populated by Moslems who are hostile the Christian Ethiopians who run the country and the Somalis in neighboring Ogaden. That is another issue that Ethiopia has to handle on its own but solutions never seem to last long.

August 8, 2018: In the south (Lamu, across the border in Kenya) al Shabaab raiders used a roadside bomb and gunfire to kill five Kenyan police, wound six and destroying their truck. Kenyan police believe these attackers were among the many hiding out in the nearby Boni Forest, which has long been a refuge for outlaws because the thinly populated woodlands are on both sides of the border. Kenya spends $20 million a year providing security for the 360 kilometers Somalia border. Because of the continuing al Shabaab violence in Somalia, there are plenty of people (refugees, smugglers) crossing illegally besides Islamic terrorists and bandits.

August 5, 2018: In Mogadishu, a bomb hidden in a truck went off near a popular restaurant leaving six dead. Al Shabaab was believed responsible, as it was an earlier incident where two al Shabaab gunmen were killed at a checkpoint. Some 30 kilometers southwest of the city an al Shabaab suicide car bomber attacked the entrance to the Afgoye army base, killing three soldiers. Al Shabaab gunmen then tried to get into the camp but were repulsed. There were more casualties on both sides before the Islamic terrorists fled.

August 2, 2018: Some 120 kilometers northwest of Mogadishu an American UAV used a missile to kill four al Shabaab men. That is the 19th such attack (UAVs and missiles) so far in 2018. There were 31 attacks in 2017 and 15 in 2015. The main purpose of the UAV operations in Somalia (including Puntland and Somaliland) is to deal with international Islamic terrorists like ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) or al Qaeda (which al Shabaab technically belongs to). There were some attacks against ISIL in 2017 but none in 2018. There are still some ISIL in Somalia but the few that remain are hiding out in the Puntland highlands getting by as bandits, too busy with that to pose much of an international threat. There are still some al Shabaab factions that show up (in chatter or whatever that foreign intel agencies can detect) as still trying to support violence outside of Somalia. Often this is other African states like Kenya or Uganda. Since these two countries supply many of the AU peacekeepers, the Americans go after any al Shabaab cells that appear to be planning violence in neighboring states.

July 30, 2018: Another thousand Ugandan soldiers deployed to Somalia. The contingent replaces the current Ugandan battle group serving with the AU peacekeepers.

July 23, 2018: In the south (outside Kismayo) about a hundred al Shabaab attacked an unused (but still guarded) base. Two suicide car bombs hit the main gate followed by gunmen. The initial attack killed four soldiers guarding the gate. About a dozen soldiers died before the guard force was ordered to retreat and let the reinforcements take care of the more numerous al Shabaab. The attackers fled when reinforcements arrived and took more losses in the process. There wasnt much (that was portable) to steal. At least six of the attackers were killed in the operation. Al Shabaab was apparently the victim of poor intelligence because although this camp sometimes hosted Kenyan and American troops that was not the case when the expensive (in terms of men and resources) al Shabaab attack took place.

July 20, 2018: In the north al Shabaab took control of the town of Urur, again. The government soon regained control. Al Shabaab got in because the garrison left before its replacements arrived and al Shabaab took advantage of that to do some looting. Taking Af Urur can be dangerous because in mid-2017 Puntland executed seven al Shabaab men who had been captured after they attacked both the military base and adjacent village of Af Urur and killed about fifty people. The village and base are near the coast and a main road south so the government fights to keep control.

July 19, 2018: The United States amended its description of al Shabaab (as an international terrorist organization) to include the Kenyan branch (Al Hijra). In the past (since it was formed in 2008) Al Hijra often described itself as a separate Islamic terrorist group but its members are almost all ethnic Somali Kenyans and the group survives because of its connections with al Shabaab.
Hussains final volumes of case law digest launched View(s):

The final parts (volume 25 and 26) of the Complete Digest of Case Law of Sri Lanka (1820  2000) edited by M.S.M. Hussain, LL.M., a senior lawyer with a 40-year practice, were launched at a function held on August 9 at the Royal Golden Court of the Royal Mall in Kandy. The chief guest was former Supreme Court Judge, P.A. Ratnayake P.C. Judges and lawyers from Kandy and suburbs took part in the event. The foreword of the final volume has been written by Chief Justice Priyasath Dep, P.C. Mr. Hussain is seen here presenting the book to the invitees.
Pakistan Maritime Security Ship Kashmir to visit Sri Lanka View(s):

Pakistan Maritime Security Ship (PMSS) Kashmir will call over at Colombo Port on a four-day goodwill visit from August 13 to 16. Pakistan Naval ships frequently pay port calls to Sri Lanka, as both countries enjoy warm diplomatic and strong military ties, a Pakistan High Commission statement says.

Such interactions also demonstrate both navies resolve to contribute towards achieving a more secure and conducive maritime environment which is essential for the regional peace, prosperity and harmony, it adds.

The PMSS Kashmir, a 94-metre MPV, displaces 1,550 tons of water and is equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry, communication and navigational equipment.
Sunday Times Kumudini Hettiarachchi wins gold at The Top 50 Professional and Career Women Awards 2018 View(s):

The Sunday Times Deputy Editor (News Features) Kumudini Hettiarachchi was awarded Gold in the Media  Print category at The Top 50 Professional and Career Women Awards 2018 held at the Colombo Hilton on August 7.

Sixty-three women from Sri Lanka and the Maldives were honoured with Gold and Silver awards for excellence in either their chosen career or recognised as inspiring women in their community. Presented by Women In Management (WIM) and the IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, the awards also recognised corporates and other institutions for accomplishments benefiting women.

In a career spanning nearly 40 years, Kumudini has received many prestigious awards including the Mervyn de Silva Journalist of the Year 2003 in the Editors Guild of Sri Lanka Journalism Awards of Excellence, the Reuter Fellowship in 1986/87 and the Dag Hammarskjold Fellowship in 1983.
Too many White House lies that debase the currency of trust By Joseph S. Nye, exclusive to the Sunday Times View(s): View(s):

CAMBRIDGE  By June 1 of this year, US President Donald Trump had made 3,259 false or misleading claims, according to The Washington Post Fact Checkers database, which tracks and categorizes every suspect statement uttered by the president. Thats an average of more than 6.5 false claims a day, up from a daily average of 4.9 untrue claims in his first 100 days, and reaching eight per day in May. Trump is clearly going for a record.

Trumps supporters justify his mendacity on the grounds that all politicians lie. Indeed they do, and a little introspection leads us to admit that all humans lie. But the amount and type of lying make a difference. Too many lies debases the currency of trust. Not all lies are born equal. Some are self-serving. A president may lie to cover his tracks, avoid embarrassment, harm a rival, or for convenience.

Other presidential lies serve a loftier purpose. In some circumstances, historians even applaud the fact that a president decided to deceive the public for what he considered a larger or later good. John F. Kennedy misled the public about the role of American missiles in Turkey in the deal that ended the Cuban missile crisis in 1962; but that was certainly better for their interests than a high risk of nuclear war.

A more ambiguous example occurred in 1941, before the United States entered World War II. In trying to persuade an isolationist public that Hitlers Germany was a threat, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said that a German submarine had attacked a US destroyer, when in fact it was the American side that had initiated the action. In wartime, when loose lips can sink ships and secrets are crucial, Winston Churchill argued that the truth may be so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

Machiavellian deception is often part of a strategy in bargaining to get a deal, and Trump claims to be a master of that art. Perhaps that explains his lies about North Korean weapons, European tariffs, and Russian President Vladimir Putins interference in the 2016 US presidential election. But his dishonesty concerning the size of the crowd at his inauguration, the payment of hush money to women, or his reasons for firing former FBI Director James Comey has nothing to do with statecraft. It is purely self-serving manipulation of others and the public.

Even when a presidents motives are not self-serving, he should be cautious about choosing to lie. Before he turns to lying as an instrument of statecraft, he should consider the importance of the goal, the availability of alternative means to achieve it, and whether the deception can be contained or is likely to establish a pattern.

The more a leader deceives the public, the more he erodes trust, weakens institutions, and creates damaging precedents. Roosevelts lies in 1941 were intended to awaken the American people, but he also set a precedent that Lyndon B. Johnson could use in 1964 to win congressional support for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which led to a dramatic escalation of the Vietnam War. The danger is that leaders tell themselves they are lying for the public good when they are doing so for political or personal gain.

Johnson did not want to seem cowardly or to be portrayed as the man who lost Vietnam. He continually lied to the American people about the progress that was being made in the war. He also wanted to keep the war limited.

One of the moral benefits of a limited war is the prevention of damage through escalation. But such wars involve an element of bluffing. To maintain credibility in bargaining with the enemy, a president must maintain a relentless public optimism, which serves to misinform the public. In Johnsons case, this imperative was reinforced by his personal motives. By 1968, people were saying that the only way to tell if he was lying was to see if his lips were moving. He decided not to run again.

Johnsons successor, Richard Nixon, also lied about the Vietnam War, including his expansion of it into Cambodia. This was followed by his lying about his role in the cover-up of the break-in at the Democratic Partys headquarters, which had been carried out at the behest of his administration. When this was finally revealed by the Watergate tape recordings, Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974 to avoid impeachment.

The damage that Johnson and Nixon did was not only to their presidencies but also to public trust. At the beginning of the 1960s, polls showed that three-quarters of Americans had a great deal of confidence in government. By the end of the following decade, only a quarter felt that way. While the causes of the decline were complex, presidential lies played a part.

Some observers, pointing to his record in the private sector, argue that Trump merely lies out of habit. Others believe that the frequency, repetition, and blatant nature of his lies reflect not habit but a deliberate political strategy to damage institutions associated with truth. Either way, Trump has eroded the credibility of institutions such as the press, the intelligence agencies, and the US Department of Justice, making everything relative and playing to his extremely loyal base.

Can a post-Trump America recover? It is worth remembering that Johnson and Nixon were succeeded by Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, who were notably more honest, and that public trust in government rose somewhat under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. But as the sheer number of lies indicates, the US has never seen a president like Donald Trump.

(Joseph S. Nye is a professor at Harvard and author of Is the American Century Over?)

Project Syndicate, 2018.

www.project-syndicate.org
The SOS Perrera animal charity in Los Barrios has made an urgent plea to the local community in order to find temporary homes for dozens of abandoned dogs. The animal rescue centre is currently stretched to the limit and is desperate for reliable and caring foster carers.

The charity looks after hundreds of stray animals, most of which come from the Campo de Gibraltar and surrounding areas, and it needs to find temporary accommodation for dogs waiting to be transferred to their new owners.

Several years ago the local pound was an extermination station, where dogs rounded up by local authorities were kept for ten days, after which they were destroyed. Thanks to years of negotiations by several charities, the dogs in the pound are now handed over to the team at SOS Perrera for care and re-homing.

The charity is run by a group of volunteers who began rescuing the dogs from the local pound in 2016, but they are now struggling to cope with the current influx of animals.

"With the pound overflowing, urgent foster homes in the Los Barrios region are needed. To offer shelter to just one of these dogs would make a huge difference. There are many dogs needing the chance of a foster home, even short term placements are welcome," Sharon Peterson, a representative of the rescue home told SUR in English.

Full back-up service

The charity offers a full back-up service for potential foster carers, especially those without experience, including advice and information about looking after animals that might have never lived in a family environment. The charity will also pay any vet fees incurred during the fostering period.

"You do not necessarily have to have experience , just a kind, calm and patient manner, with lots of understanding and common sense. You will receive support from a local mentor, who is just at the end of the phone," Sharon explains.

The charity has so far found homes for dozens of dogs in Finland, Germany, Sweden and France, and it is now looking for emergency foster placements in the UK.

It also needs more volunteers to help with the day to day running of the charity and to help with the exercising the 350 dogs that are currently residing in the pound.

"The pound is simply not a good place for some dogs and they receive few learning opportunities whilst there, other than how to survive. Some of the dogs have had a very traumatic background, but with a kind and understanding nature, all these issues can be overcome. The foster carers would be their lifeline to living a long and happy life with their new families," Sharon concludes.

Those wishing to foster an abandoned dog or volunteer their services can find details on the SOS Perrera Facebook page, or phone Sharon Peterson on 674 74 33 56.
Take A Mulligan: The Big 7-0

Here is the $64,000 question. Just exactly how old is old? In my teens, I figured it was about 35 but when I was getting close to that age, it ...
In the Broadway musical and, later, Chris Columbus-directed film, Rent, there is a scene in which several HIV-positive people gather for a "life support" meeting to offer hope in the face of the impending HIV/AIDS epidemic. The cast sings "Will I," a short, emotional ballad with these lyrics: Will I lose my dignity?

Will someone care?

Will I wake tomorrow,

From this nightmare? It's a song about survival and hope in the face of all odds. The main characters of the late Jonathan Larson's 1996 hit show faced not only the very real HIV/AIDS epidemic but also the impact of gentrification on their safety, livelihood, and homes. In many ways, the play foreshadowed the gentrification and displacement that have happened on New York City's Lower East Side, where the clamor for more and more real estate for luxury housing continues to force poor people living with HIV out of their Manhattan neighborhood and into the outer boroughs. Last week, a group of neighbors, led by a small grassroots organization called Neighbors to Save Rivington House (NTSRH), gathered to fight the redevelopment of the former health care facility for people living with HIV into expensive housing. The 200-plus residents of Rivington House at 45 Rivington Street -- one of the few nursing homes dedicated specifically to caring for people with the HIV -- had already been displaced when the organization closed its doors in 2015. But this wasn't a Broadway show. Here, the consequences were all too real. "We are here to bring light to the fact that we are losing this facility, and the provider is not doing what is in the best interest of the community," said Debra Jeffreys-Glass, a member of NTSRH and a resident of the community for over 25 years.

Kenyon Farrow

Rivington House originally opened in 1995 and was listed as one of the few nursing homes to care for HIV/AIDS patients. "They provided care for a very specific population," Glass said. According to Glass, Village Care, the non-profit that owned Rivington House, came to the community board and explained that the building was at half capacity because of improvements in HIV treatment, which meant that more people were now living healthier, longer lives than when Rivington House opened, so there was less of a need for an HIV/AIDS-specific nursing facility. However, neighbors and the local community board wanted to ensure that whoever owned the building upheld the two deed restrictions on the property. One restriction stated that the Rivington property was to remain a nonprofit entity and the other required the building to remain a health care facility. According to the New York Times, the facility was sold to the Allure Group, which promised to keep the facility a general nursing home "if the deed restriction was lifted." After this was done, as the Wall Street Journal reported in 2016, the building was again sold, for a reported $116 million, to three companies, Slate Property Group, Adam America Real Estate and China Vanke Co., which intend to build luxury condos. The community was outraged, given that the community board representatives had written the mayor's office a letter opposing the non-transparent lifting of the deed restriction by the city and warning that the property could now be converted into free market housing. The city comptroller consequently opened an official inquiry/investigation into the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) and Mayor Bill de Blasio's office and their roles in the sale of the property. "I'm here as the comptroller that did the investigation and exposed the city's complicity in the potential for building a luxury condo here," said New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer, at the NTSRH gathering. "The developers played city offices like a fiddle and, as a result, people lost a valuable health facility for something they don't need." That "something(s)" are the proposed luxury condos developers want to erect in place of the neighborhood health care facility. Nevertheless, the NTSRH's protesting has not been in vain. Because of what happened to the Rivington House, a bill was written by State Senator Daniel Squadron and Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou to ensure community involvement when nursing homes are at risk and to promote the upholding of deed restrictions on certain properties or at least to put more hurtles in place before they can be lifted. Nevertheless, the closing of this facility has major consequences for older people living with HIV. According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, in 2016, there were 385 new HIV diagnoses of New Yorkers over the age of 50. And, while new diagnoses are declining overall, there was an increase in new diagnoses among women (including transgender women) over the age of 50 from the previous year. Of all those over the age of 50 diagnosed with HIV, nearly 26% also received an AIDS diagnosis. Treatment options have gotten better, and more people are living longer. This presents unique challenges to a new, growing population of people who are aging with HIV.

Kenyon Farrow

Jason Rosenberg, 26, a member of ACT UP New York, attended the Rivington rally with his uncle, Richard Rosenberg, 70, who's living with HIV and was a resident at Rivington House from 2004 to 2014, before he was moved to a new facility in a different neighborhood. Jason sees housing as an imploding issue for the HIV community. "Something that has fallen off the radar is HIV housing and the need for it," said Jason. "Once we had the effectiveness of treatment, people lost track of how dire the need for housing is, and we are trying to get that back." Richard recalled just how impactful and unique his residency at Rivington had been for him. "Coming from being on my own with the virus, it was a shock coming into the nursing home situation," he said to a crowd of supporters. "However this place eased the shock for me." Richard said that even though he had been able to find other housing on the city's Upper West Side, he noticed a difference in services right away. "It's like going from my home to a factory," he said of his new place of residence. "Here [at Rivington House], everyone was on a first-name basis." As of this reporting, development plans for the Rivington property remain at an exploratory stage. Representatives of the developers declined to comment on this story. DCAS and the mayor's office were unavailable for comment. However, the NTSRH are committed to speaking out until everyone returns to the table to discuss a solution. K. Brewster, another organizer, who said she has lived on the Lower East Side for "decades," said: "We don't intend for this PR nightmare to ever go away until you reach some resolution with the HIV/AIDS community, the Alzheimer's community, and everyone who's trying to figure out how we care for our neighbors." After the testimonies of former residents and elected officials and calls to action from neighbors, the small group of activists fanned out across the front of Rivington House, stretching a strip of police tape across the building that read, "Gentrification in Process." A woman began singing: Return this house to the people.

Return this house to the people.

Kenyon Farrow
Hey yall. So remember I told you guys that I was headed to Jamaica for the Tropic Isle Living It Starts With Us Retreat? Well Im back and I had an amazing time. And of course I have to give yall a full recap. The Tropic Isle Living It Starts With Us Influencer Empowerment Retreat was held August 3rd-6th at Moon Palace Jamaica in Ocho Rios. Tropic Isle Living invited 25 influencers to beautiful Jamaica to learn more about the brand and to empower our impact on the natural hair & beauty communities. I was honored to be a part of the group.

The retreat kicked off with a Welcome Mixer which included words of wisdom from Kiana Woodson (Brand Manager), Sabrina Boissiere (Event Producer), Lois Reid-Hines (CEO & Co-Founder) and Stephanie Scott (First And Last PR).

With @CoolCalmCurly and @HeyCurlie

We mingled and took photos. Then enjoyed the resort for the rest of the evening.

The next morning we took a bus ride to Port Royal in Kingston and headed out on the water with Loose Cannon Tours for a yacht party in celebration of Jamaican Independence Weekend. The destination was Maiden Cay for a photo shoot.





<br />



We ate, drank, and enjoyed each others company. And had an amazing time taking photos on the private island. It was truly an experience to remember.

On day 3 we headed out for a tour of one of the Tropic Isle Living Jamaican Black Castor Oil Farms. We learned about how Jamaican Black Castor Oil is produced. From growing the trees, roasting and planting the seeds and producing the oil.

We were even able to plant our own seeds.

The visit was very educational and we had fun although it was hot as hell lol. It was great to find out how JBCO is produced. Bless the farmers as it is such a tedious task.

After the farm visit I grabbed some lunch and hung out on the beach for a bit. Then I went to pull myself together for the All White Farewell Dinner.

Dinner was delicious. We ate drank and danced the night away. And also had a lantern lighting ceremony to release our fears and negative energy.

My Grandfather passed while I was away. All of the ladies were so supportive which is exactly what I needed when receiving such news while so far away from my family. I was able to find a little peace before I had to go home and deal with the storm.

It truly was amazing being surrounded by such beautiful spirits.

The Moon Palace Jamaica was beautiful. And the food was on point. The traditional Jamaican breakfast was my favorite meal and I ate a variation of it every chance I got.

The ackee & salt fish was cooked perfect every time, and everything was so fresh.

This was my first time trying bammy and I fell in love! Festival and Sweet Plantains will always hold a special place in my heart. Im so greedy lol.

I made multiple trips to the ice cream station as well. The rum raisin was delicious, along with this vanilla and almond combo.

The Tropic Isle Living It Starts With Us Retreat was an amazing experience. I feel blessed to be a part of something so big. As if all of these pictures werent enough, I filmed my very 1st vlog yall! Check it out to get a behind the scenes peek at the fun!
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Linkedin Badreddine Tazrouti and Namira Samir (The Jakarta Post) Amsterdam/Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 09:42 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52b6473 3 Opinion blockchain,digital-technology,cashless-society,digital-economy,Internet,global-economy,SDGs,Sustainable-Development-Goals Free

Trust and money, two age-old concepts that keep the economic wheels turning, are at the dawn of fundamental change  on a scale we havent seen before.



The internet has reduced the costs of searching, collaborating and exchanging information and virtually turned the world into a global village. Yet, as Peter Steiner says in his famous cartoon: On the internet, nobody knows youre a dog. We still cant trust others online when transacting, as the internet was created to move information, not value. Thats where third parties, such as financial services providers, governments and tech companies, come in.



Although intermediaries do a great job resolving the trust issue, relying on them has become incredibly inefficient, leading to risks, decreased speed, increased costs  and sometimes even fraud. Blockchain can solve this by making a network responsible for establishing trust, as opposed to centralized intermediaries, and giving them the tools, mass collaboration and clever code to do so. This could reduce our dependence on third parties and significantly improve efficiency.



The original use of blockchain was to store and track cryptocurrency transactions. However, new initiatives to benefit society more broadly are emerging. They include the establishment of secure digital identities, the fight against corruption, land registry and the coordination of food deliveries.



As such, some of these initiatives can be used to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in innovative ways.



The SDGs cover a broad range of social and economic development issues. Although plenty of organization are targeting the SDGs, achieving it will cost a tremendous amount of effort, which is not merely about financing, but also about the strategies that should be employed.



Recent estimates released by the World Bank reveal that more than 1 billion people live on less than US$1.90 a day. These peoples ability to escape poverty is strongly affected by several factors, and financial inclusion happens to be one. One of the biggest gaps for the SDGs success is simply a lack of access to resources and funding. According to a report by the UN Development Program, $1.4 trillion a year is needed to reach global goals for the worlds poorest.



At this moment, billions of individuals are unbanked for a variety of reasons. While a large portion of the worlds population may not have proper access to financial services, smartphone penetration rates are increasing. In some countries, more people have mobile phones than clean drinking water, electricity and/or toilets.



By leveraging blockchain technology, those without a formal identification could have an opportunity to obtain a digital identity, straight from their mobile phones. In combination with cheaper blockchain-powered remittance services, low-income individuals and households can be enabled to save and lend more.



Ant Financial for example, an Alibaba subsidiary, is trialing blockchain remittances in tandem with Standard Chartered and GCash, whereas Sovrin and uPort are attempting to establish and manage digital identities by deploying blockchain technology.



As stated by the UNs Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year, approximately 1.3 billion tons, gets lost or wasted. Thats a staggering amount. Consumer behavior plays a big role. However, the study also discovered a lack of coordination between actors in the food supply chains as a major contributing factor. Most companies still keep records about their products in closed databases, or even on paper.



According to the IBM Food Trust initiative, leveraging blockchain technology could create more efficient food supply chains, cut costs, improve shelf-life management and help reduce food waste.



The World Food Program (WFP), the food assistance agency of the UN, distributes 3.5 million tons of food assistance annually to 90 million people in 80 countries. This is happening through a large physical and highly complex supply chain. The WFP is currently researching and exploring how to benefit from blockchain technology for the traceability and optimization of their physical assets.



Besides handing out food, the WFP increasingly hands out cash or vouchers to those in need, so they can buy food for themselves. Especially when food is available on the local market, but too expensive for the poorest to buy, cash and vouchers offer a solution without distorting the local economy.



Yet, this creates certain fraud and security risks and requires costly intermediaries. Blockchain could play a major role in solving this.



That is why the WFP ran a pilot project named Building Blocks in the Jordanian refugee camp of Azraq, where 10,000 refugees redeem their digital vouchers and pay for their food through a blockchain-based system.



The results are positive. It enabled the WFP to improve the security, increase the privacy of the beneficiaries, reduce the possibility of risks and put every Jordanian dinar that was saved on transaction fees in the hands of the refugees. The next phase of the pilot project aims to provide support to all of the 500,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan.



The abovementioned initiatives are just a few examples of the benefits the use of blockchain can create. There are more projects out there and possibilities beyond our imagination. Seizing them, however, will not happen overnight.



Blockchain technology could pave the way for the worlds progress on realizing the SDGs, which requires both macroeconomic and microeconomic approaches. However, one thing to be noted is that blockchain is not a singular solution.



Collaborative efforts between stakeholders, in combination with the use of other technological advancements, are central to the SDGs realization.

***

Badreddine Tazrouti is a blockchain specialist and trainer based in the Netherlands. Namira Samir is a research fellow at Bank of Indonesia. All the views expressed are personal.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
Low levels of air pollution may cause heart abnormalities similar to those seen in the early stages of heart failure, a study reported by the Independent warned.

Conducted in the United Kingdom, the study tested 4,000 people and found that those living near polluted areas have on average larger hearts than those living in less polluted areas  regardless of the fact that the participants came from areas where pollution levels were below the UK guidelines.

Having a larger heart is found to be associated with higher pollutants exposure, which increases the size of the hearts left and right ventricles, a change said to be similar to patients in the early stages of heart failure.

Read also: Jakartas air pollution worse than Bangkok, better than Manila: WHO

Although the study was observational and could not definitively determine what other factors contribute to heart change, the head of the research analysis at Queen Marys University London, Dr. Nay Aung, reminded the public that they should be aware of their exposure as air pollution is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

The study, published in the journal Circulation, is in line with the UK governments effort to consult on its Clean Air Strategy, which closes this month. (anm/kes)
Nobel Prize-winning British author VS Naipaul died on Saturday at the age of 85.

Born in 1932 in Chaguanas in Trinidad and Tobago, Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipauls parents were of Indian descent, with the family having arrived there from India in the 1880s.

Naipauls death was mourned by many across the world who said his writings would live on.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Ram Nath Kovind expressed grief over his passing away.

Sir VS Naipaul will be remembered for his extensive works, which covered diverse subjects ranging from history, culture, colonialism, politics and more. His passing away is a major loss to the world of literature. Condolences to his family and well wishers in this sad hour, PM Modi said in a statement.

The official Twitter account of President Ram Nath Kovind posted: Sad to learn of the passing of V.S. Naipaul whose books are an penetrative exploration of faith, colonialism and the human condition, in his home in the Caribbean and beyond. A loss for the world of letters and for the broader school of Indo-Anglian literature.

Sad to learn of the passing of V.S. Naipaul whose books are an penetrative exploration of faith, colonialism and the human condition, in his home in the Caribbean and beyond. A loss for the world of letters and for the broader school of Indo-Anglian literature #PresidentKovind  President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) August 12, 2018

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tweeted: Agree or disagree with him, Naipaul wrote beautiful prose. Sad, he is no more. The world of words loses an artful master.

Agree or disagree with him, Naipaul wrote beautiful prose. Sad, he is no more. The world of words loses an artful master. https://t.co/6gFj7rm2q9  Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) August 12, 2018

Taking to Twitter, author Salman Rushdie posted: We disagreed all our lives, about politics, about literature, and I feel as sad as if I just lost a beloved older brother. RIP Vidia. #VSNaipaul

We disagreed all our lives, about politics, about literature, and I feel as sad as if I just lost a beloved older brother. RIP Vidia. #VSNaipaul  Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) August 12, 2018

Read also: Nobel-winning writer V.S. Naipaul dies aged 85

English novelist and journalist Hari Kunzru recalled interviewing Naipaul. In a series of posts on Twitter, he described the meeting.

I interviewed VS Naipaul for BBC TV. When we sat down, the first thing he said was tell me what youve read and dont lie. Only then would he consent to be questioned, he tweeted.

I interviewed VS Naipaul for BBC TV. When we sat down, the first thing he said was tell me what youve read and dont lie. Only then would he consent to be questioned.  Hari Kunzru (@harikunzru) August 12, 2018

I made Naipaul cry. I knew he rarely signed books and probably wouldnt want to put his name on some paperback so I found a 1st of Mr Biswas. He saw it and broke down. Everyone v alarmed. I havent seen one of these for so long, he said, when he recovered himself, Kunzru posted, adding He did sign the book. We were in the room (now part of a hotel) where he had written radio scripts for the BBC when he first came to the UK.
H.O.T., one of the biggest groups in K-pop history, is holding its first concert since its 2001 break-up.

Local promoters for the concert on Monday confirmed earlier reports that the boy band will hold a concert in October at the Jamsil Olympic Stadium in southern Seoul, after their comeback performance on MBCs ToToGa 3: Return of the Kings made headlines and created a nationwide buzz.

There have been a parade of requests from the fans since the Totoga concert in February. ... The members agreed to hold a concert for the fans, an official from the promotion company PRM was quoted as saying.

Read also: HallyuPopFest 2018 set to feature 100 K-pop idols

After debuting in 1996, H.O.T. was the first boy band in Korea to accomplish a megastar status and international fame, enjoying popularity in other Asian countries even before the term hallyu was coined.

All of its five studio albums sold more than 1 million copies.
Former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan today walked out of jail a free man after the countrys Court of Appeals ruled that he cannot be prosecuted for the March 1, 2008 post- election violence in Yerevan that killed ten.

The Court of Appeals overturned a lower courts ruling to arrest Kocharyan on charges that he usurped state power during the 2008 protests.

Kocharyan had vehemently denied the charge, while his defense lawyers argued that their client enjoyed legal immunity from prosecution.

The lawyers claimed that the Pashinyan government was waging a political vendetta against Kocharyan.

Kocharyan was charged on July 26. Two days later, a Yerevan court issued an order detaining him for two months.

Ruben Sahakyan, one of Kocharyans defense lawyers, told reporters outside the court that the Special Investigative Service (SIS) opposes todays ruling and will file an appeal with the Court of Cassation.
"Korean Festival 2018 Palembang: Hallyu Come On!" held at Palembang Sport and Convention Center, South Sumatra, on Sunday was attended by thousands of K-pop enthusiasts.

K-pop posters of all sorts could be seen at the venue, while the smell of kimchi and Samyang instant noodles lingered in the air. Teenagers and adults seemed to be the majority of attendees.

Organizer United K-Pop Lovers Indonesia in Palembang initially provided 2,000 tickets for the event, but the crowd reached 3,000 people. At first, we hoped for 1,000 attendees. We didnt expect so many people would come, so we had to make do with impromptu tickets, said Yunas, organizing head, to The Jakarta Post.

He went on to say Hallyu (Korean wave) fans could enjoy a wide variety of activities in the festival, including a Buchaechum traditional dance performance and K-pop dance and singing competitions.

The Korean Cultural Center Indonesia (KCCI) offered cultural activities in its booth, along with community and culinary booths. Visitors could try on hanbok (traditional Korean attire), for free as well as try out Korean-style archery.

This is the fifth edition of 'Hallyu Come On' for K-pop fans in Palembang. This year, not only was the visitors number was more than what we expected, we had to limit the number of contestants, Yunas said.

Read also: Jakpost explores Palembang

KCCI director Chun Young-poung said they, along with the Embassy of Korea in Indonesia and the Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (KOFICE), supported the festival as it was designed to promote and share information on South Korean culture. We hope more people will know and understand Korean culture, he said.

He added that the event was necessary to increase understanding and strengthen the friendship among the worlds countries.

With Palembang being one of the cities that hosts the 2018 Asian Games, the organizer offered tickets to the the sporting event for 20 Hallyu fans in the city. The fans will support Korean athletes in matches held at Jakabaring Sport City Palembang.

Chun Young-poung said they had received around 2,500 registrants from Jakarta and Palembang. With two stages of selection, they then chose 50 supporters in Jakarta and 20 in Palembang.

Pitria, one of the festivals attendees, said she was very pleased with the event. However, she regretted that it was held for only one day, compared to the 2013 festival, which lasted three days. There was so much to uncover and one day is not enough. Thankfully, I still managed to buy K-pop merchandise, she said. (wng)
Scottish writer Darren McGarvey's one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe, informed by his own violent and addictive past, is a powerful insight into Britain's wealth gap via rap and acid comedy.

His upbringing in Glasgow's poorest high-rise estates, combined with his fluid patter and fresh ideas on how to tackle inequality drive his show, "Poverty Safari Live."

McGarvey, 33, tells the story of a working class boy who goes to a party with his girlfriend's university friends. Dressed first as his rapper alter-ego Loki and then bespectacled and in a suit, he dissects the attitudes of Britain's poor towards the casually privileged and tries to explain it.

The show pokes fun at class; "regeneration" projects with cafes selling "gender-neutral gingerbread" and warns the working class in the audience that the threatre bar only sells orange juice "with bits."

At times it is uncomfortable too, tapping into anger and prejudice and shining a light on how the poor are shut out.

NatCen Social Research has found that the highest backing for Britain to leave the European Union in a 2016 referendum was amongst those classed as most economically deprived and with no educational qualification.

Using his own memoirs as a hook to talk about poverty has proved successful, and this year McGarvey won Britain's prestigious Orwell prize for political writing with the bestselling "Poverty Safari".

"Brexit Britain is a snapshot of how things sound when people who are rarely heard decide to grab the microphone and start telling everybody how it is," he says in his book.

McGarvey, who has worked with police fighting gang crime and with social services helping children with anxiety and deprivation, suffered an abusive mother as a child. In a drunken rage she once held a knife to his throat at a party, one of many harrowing incidents he recounts in Poverty Safari.

"I never regarded my childhood as hard until I saw the look on people's faces when I talked about it," he says.

He spent years as an alcoholic and drug user, even as he was working with social services to help young people with the same problems. The exercise of holding up a mirror to society and its assumptions about class is potent because he applies the same process to himself.

"I've taken on a potential tension between middle-class sensibilities and working class sensibilities and pulled it in to work, so that it is something that can be used as grist in the mill for creativity," he told Reuters.

"Instead of accepting it, I'm trying to reconstruct it in my work to make it acceptable to both sides."
Britain's Ken Loach, Canada's David Cronenberg and dozens of other filmmakers called Monday on Russia to free Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov, who has been on hunger strike for nearly three months in a Siberian jail.

In an open letter in French daily Le Monde, around 120 actors and directors, joined by French Culture Minister Francoise Nyssen, warned that "to do nothing would be to let Oleg Sentsov die" and called on the EU and UN to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into freeing him.

"With his health apparently deteriorating rapidly with each passing day, it is time to act. And fast," they wrote.

Sentsov, a 42-year-old filmmaker and Kremlin opponent is serving a 20-year-sentence on terrorism charges after being convicted three years ago of arson in his native Crimea following its annexation by Russia.

Last week, his cousin warned that his health was "catastrophically bad", prompting French President Emmanuel Macron to take up his case in a telephone call with Putin.

Russia has denied any deterioration in his health, but Putin promised to respond to Macron's proposals on ending Sentsov's hunger strike, according to a French statement.

In their letter, the group of mostly European directors, including French-Swiss film legend Jean-Luc Godard, accused Moscow of trying to silence Sentsov.

"Today, a filmmmaker is dying because he is a dissident," they said comparing his plight to that of dissident novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent seven years in a Soviet gulag.

Citing claims by Sentsov's lawyers that he has lost 30 kilograms since the start of his fast on May 14, the signatories of the letter said to let him die "would be to accept that one can be killed for one's ideas, opinions and stances."

Sentsov's fate has become a cause celebre in the West, with Johnny Depp and Stephen King among the celebrities campaigning for his release, alongside Western governments.

His lawyer said Friday he was "ready to die" but Russian authorities have consistently played down fears over his health.

In a statement on Saturday, the prison service said he was "not seen to be underweight and a worsening in his state of health is not observed".

It added that it was "taking all the necessary measures", including giving him nutritional supplements to protect his health, which it described as "satisfactory".

Sentsov himself has refused to be taken to hospital.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 11:58 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52be360 2 City commuter-line,Greater-Jakarta,Train,KCI,KAI Free

Trains from Jakarta to Bogor and to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport will depart from different platforms from Sunday onward because of the renovation of Manggarai Station in South Jakarta, which will slightly increase travel time.

Edy Kuswoyo, the spokesperson of state-owned railway operator PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI), explained that the Bogor-Jakarta and Sudirman Baru-Soekarno-Hatta trains would now depart on platforms 8, 9 and 10, whereas they previously ran on platforms 6 and 7, while tracks 8, 9 and 10 were used for locomotives and the train depot.

The operation will, unfortunately, increase travel times, said Edy on Saturday, as reported by tribunnews.com.

Traveling from Jakarta to Bogor, for example, would take about 5 to 10 minutes longer than the previous 1 hour and 55 minutes, he said.

He added that the authorities would increase staff at Manggarai Station to guide commuters.

The renovation in question pertains to the installation of new railway tracks at Manggarai Station, the largest transit station in Greater Jakarta, to separate intercity trains from commuter trains so as to reduce congestion.

On behalf of KAI and the Transportation Ministrys Railway Directorate, Edy apologized for any inconvenience and said he hopes commuters would understand the situation.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 12:56 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52c04aa 4 Politics 2019-presidential-election,Prabowo-Subianto,Sandiaga-Uno,KPU Free

Presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto, 66, and his running mate Sandiaga Uno, 49, arrived at Central Jakarta's Gatot Subroto Army Hospital (RSPAD) on Monday morning to undergo their health checks, one of the requirements for candidates of the 2019 presidential election.

Arriving separately at the hospital, the two will undergo a 12-hour medical check that includes neurological, cardiological and psychiatric tests administered by a joint team of medical professionals from the Indonesian Medical Association (IDI) and Gatot Subroto hospital. The team will submit the results to the General Elections Commission (KPU) within two days following the health check.

Sandiaga, who has resigned from his position as Jakarta deputy governor, asked for the people's blessings to pass the physical and mental health check.

In between the series of tests that commenced at 8 a.m. on Monday, Prabowo said that he was not fond of medical checks.

I am afraid of doctors and needles. Id rather skydive, the former Armys Special Forces (Kopassus) commander told journalists, as reported by kompas.com.

President Joko Jokowi Widodo, 57, and his running mate Maruf Amin, 75, underwent their health checks on Sunday. Jokowis son, Kaesang Pangarep, stated that his father was very healthy. (ris/rin)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 16:27 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52cdd45 1 City Sandiaga-resignation,Sandiaga-Uno,anies-baswedan,Jakarta-council Free

Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan has said he was still awaiting the official discharge of Deputy Governor Sandiaga Uno, before selecting potential replacements.

We still need to wait for a decree from the President [on the deputy governor's dismissal], he said at City Hall on Monday.

Sandiaga tendered his resignation letter last week after being declared the vice presidential candidate to run with Gerindra Party leader Prabowo Subianto in the upcoming election.

Read also: Will millennial Maruf and santri Sandiaga change Prabowo vs Jokowi game?

However the Jakarta Legislative Council has to approve the resignation through a plenary session, followed by presidential approval, before Sandiaga is officially discharged.

Anies refused to comment on likely candidates to replace Sandiaga in the deputy governor position, but expressed confidence that the Gerindra Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), which backed the pair, would recommend solid candidates. (nor)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 17:15 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52d1244 1 Business Bir-Bintang,exports,USA Free

Beer producer PT Multi Bintang Indonesia launched on Monday its maiden export of Bir Bintang to the United States after targeting South Korea in May.

With the latest move, Bir Bintang will be available in Asia, Europe, Australia and North America.

We are proud that Bir Bintang [] will be available in four continents, Multi Bintang Indonesia president director Michael Chin said during a ceremony to mark the companys first shipment to the US in Tangerang, Banten, on Monday.

Michael said Bir Bintang was particularly popular among surfers, including those from the US, who regularly visit Indonesias beaches and surfing destinations.

They would be very happy [to find] Bir Bintang in their own country, he said in a press release received by The Jakarta Post.

Meanwhile, the Industry Ministrys acting director general of agroindustry, Achmad Sigit Dwiwahjono, expressed his appreciation for the companys efforts to expand its market abroad.

Excise tax from alcoholic beverages contributed Rp 5.27 trillion (US$360 million) to the 2017 state revenue, a 2.63 percent increase from Rp 5.14 trillion the previous year, he said.

US Embassy senior commercial officer Rosemary Gallant, who also attended Fridays event, expressed hope that Bir Bintangs launch to the US could help strengthen cooperation between the two countries.

Indonesia and the US will soon celebrate 70 years of diplomatic ties.

We may be able to enhance our relationship with the beer export, she said. (bbn)
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Linkedin Nethy Dharma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jayapura, Papua  Mon, August 13, 2018 10:40 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52ba2a4 1 National Papua,plane-crash,Jayapura,accident,family Free

A 12-year-old boy, the only survivor of Saturday's plane crash in Papua, was saved when his father jumped out of the plane holding him just before it crashed in the Mount Menuk area of Oksibil district, Pegunungan Bintang regency.

As the plane was falling to the ground, his father embraced him and then they jumped. The father hit his head on a rock and was killed, while Jumadi was knocked out, Gandi, the boy's uncle, said on Sunday.

The fifth-grader was the only survivor on Saturday, when a PAC light utility aircraft crashed into the Mount Menuk area, killing eight, including Papua New Guinea pilot Leslie Suvuve, Balinese copilot Wayan Sugiarta and Jumaidis father, Jamaluddin.

Read also: Eight die in Papua plane crash, teen boy survives

Andre Tukan, a nurse at the Oksibil Regional Hospital, said that Jumaidi had told him that as the plane prepared to land in Oksibil, it suddenly entered a dark cloud and came out onto a cliff, which triggered the emergency alarm. His father then held him in his arms and jumped out of the plane.

After he regained consciousness, continued Andre, Jumaidi crawled back inside the plane to look for something to drink. He stayed in the wreck until the Search and Rescue (SAR) team found him in the early hours of Sunday.

Bhayangkara Jayapura Hospital head Adj. Sr. Comr. Heri Budiono said Jumaidi was in stable condition. He had lightly injured his right hand during the crash.

He arrived at the hospital in a stable hemodynamic condition. He has no serious bleeding, just a few [minor] injuries, Heri said, and that a medical team was running tests to deter Jumaidi's condition.

Jumaidi is the youngest of three children. His father Jamaluddin, who originally came from Palopo, South Sulawesi, was a trader.

Jayapura SAR spokesman Yadianto said the plane had crashed nose down. The team had recovered the bodies of all eight victims and taken them to the Oksibil hospital, where their families could claim them and take them back to their hometowns. (rin)
Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan (center), who is also a retired Indonesian Military (TNI) general, raises his fists together with other members of a newly established group of former high-ranking military officials called the Cakra 19 in Jakarta on Sunday. At the event, Cakra 19 declared its support for President Joko Jokowi Widodos reelection bid. The group also includes some non-military figures, like Andi Widjajanto (second right), Jokowis former Cabinet secretary and the son of late general and politician Theo Syafei. (JP/Vellen Augustine)(center), who is also a retired Indonesian Military (TNI) general, raises his fists together with other members of a newly established group of former high-ranking military officials called the Cakra 19 in Jakarta on Sunday. At the event, Cakra 19 declared its support for President Joko Jokowi Widodos reelection bid. The group also includes some non-military figures, like Andi Widjajanto (second right), Jokowis former Cabinet secretary and the son of late general and politician Theo Syafei. (JP/Vellen Augustine)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post)  Mon, August 13 2018

Filippo Grandi (JP/Agnes Anya)

Indonesia just finished hosting the seventh Bali Process Ministerial Conference on people smuggling, trafficking in persons and related transnational crime, which for the first time involved the private sector in the regional agenda. The Jakarta Posts Agnes Anya recently spoke with the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, who participated in the Bali forum and is seeking to involve businesspeople in alleviating the global refugee crisis. Here are excerpts from the dialogue:

Question: How do you view the involvement of businesspeople in the seventh Bali Process Ministerial Conference?
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 16:54 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52cf06b 4 National crime,Makassar,drug-dealer,fire-accidents,South-Sulawesi Free

The Makassar Police have accused the alleged leader of a drug ring and several members of his gang of allegedly setting fire to a house in Pannampu subdistrict, Makassar, South Sulawesi, over drug debts, killing a family of six.

Akbar Dg Ampu, 32, a drug and murder convict serving time in a local penitentiary, had ordered the fire, Makassar Police chief Sr. Comr. Irwan Anwar said on Sunday as reported by tribunnews.com.

Akbar allegedly instructed several of his men to collect outstanding drug money from several buyers, including 24-year-old Fahri, who died in the fire.

Fahri reportedly owed Akbar Rp 9 million (US$615) for a packet of sabu-sabu (crystal methamphetamine)

Akbar ordered his men to collect the money and torture [Fahri]. Finally, Akbar told his men to burn down Fahris house, Irwan said.

Police also arrested AI, 23, who they believe had set fire to the house, as well as R, 23, H, 25, and W for allegedly torturing Fahir.

One more suspect, A, remains at large.

The fire on Aug. 6 killed Fahri and his grandparents Sanusi, 70 and Bodeng, 65; his aunt Musdalifah, 30 his cousin Namira Ramadina, 2; and 2.5-year-old Hijas.

An initial investigation suggested that the family was tortured before the house was set on fire. They had been locked inside to prevent them from escaping, Irwan said. (rin)
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Linkedin Andi Hajramurni (The Jakarta Post) Makassar, South Sulawesi  Mon, August 13, 2018 09:13 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52b55ba 1 National poso,terrorists,East-Indonesia-Mujahidin,central-sulawesi Free

Members of the National Polices Densus 88 antiterror squad arrested four men on suspicion of being members of the East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT) terrorist group in Bone and East Luwu regencies in South Sulawesi last week.

In separate raids, Densus 88 personnel arrested B, 28, M, 30, R, 30 and 28, who are believed to be members of the Poso, Central Sulawesi-based terrorist network that had launched attacks on security personnel while hiding in the forests of Poso.

Fifteen kilograms of explosive material were seized in the arrests, South Sulawesi Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Dicky Sondani said, adding that the explosives had been planted in B and Ms plantations in Bone regency.

The four men were below Santoso and Daeng Koro. They are bomb assemblers, he said in Makassar on Saturday referring to Santoso aka Abu Wardah, the former leader of the militant group killed in a shoot-out in July, 2016 and Daeng Koro, a senior member of the group who was killed in an armed clash with security personnel in 2015.

They [the four suspects] are key informants of the remaining Poso terrorists still at large. They provide protection and hiding spots to several wanted terrorists, Dicky said, adding that the four suspects had been taken to Jakarta by Densus 88 personnel for further investigation.

The government carried out Operation Tinombala, the biggest joint National Police and Indonesian Military (TNI) operation in history, to arrest members of the MIT. Besides killing the leader and senior members of the group in the operation, several members of the group have been arrested and killed. (rin)
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Linkedin Stefanno Reinard Sulaiman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 16:11 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52cd515 1 Business Rokan-block,production-cost,reduction,ArcandraTahar Free

The government has approved a plan in production cost cut up to US$1 billion for the Rokan Block, one of the countrys most productive oil and gas blocks.

Energy and Mineral Resources Deputy Minister Arcandra Tahar told the press recently that the cost cut was possible because remediation for contaminated soil would be implemented in Riau, where the Rokan Block is located.

Earlier, they had to rehabilitate oil-contaminated soil in Cibinong [Bogor Regency]. This burdened the company more in terms of transportation costs, Arcandra said, and that the plan had already been implemented.

The cut is expected to help the governments effort in reducing the operational cost of the block. The Rokan Block is currently operating under a cost recovery scheme that will shift to a gross-split scheme in 2021, when the block is to be taken over by state-owned energy holding company Pertamina from PT Chevron Pacific Indonesia (CPI), the local subsidiary of US oil and gas giant Chevron Corporation.

The gross-split scheme has been applied to all new production-sharing contracts (PSCs) since early 2017. The government has inked 25 gross-split PSCs for onstream oil and gas blocks since June 2018.

In addition to the transportation cost, Arcandra said that the volume of contaminated soil would be reduced following the Environment and Forestry Ministry's approval to lower the oil contamination standard. (bbn)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13 2018

The head of Jakartas chapter of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), Sakhir Purnomo, said he expected the replacement of departing Jakarta deputy governor Sandiaga Uno to have good chemistry with Governor Anies Baswedan.

Anyone replacing Sandiaga should have good chemistry with the governor, he said on Sunday, as quoted by tempo.co, adding that input from Anies would be taken into account.

Sakhir said he expected an immediate meeting between his party and Gerindra, the party that had backed the pair during the gubernatorial election last year, to determine who should fill the vacant position, after Sandiaga decided to run as a vice-presidential candidate in the 2019 presidential election.
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Linkedin Andi Muhammad Ibnu Aqil (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13 2018

The Jakarta Citizen Forum (Fakta) has filed a lawsuit against the Jakarta administration and the management of Cilandak Town Square (Citos) shopping mall in South Jakarta for allegedly allowing people to smoke in restricted zones.

The legal standing lawsuit, which is the second case the group has pressed against malls that are lenient to smokers, was filed at the Central Jakarta District Court on Thursday, against Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan as well as the Jakarta Environment Agency, the Jakarta Public Order Agency (Satpol PP), and Citos operator PT Graha Mega Raya.

Fakta head Azas Tigor Nainggolan said the group chose the governor as the main defendant for failing to implement regulations on smoke-free areas, including Governor Decree No. 50/2012 on the implementation of smoke-free zones.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 17:02 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52d0cba 4 Politics Mustofa-Bisri,Gus-Mus,Maruf-Amin,NU,NahdlatulUlama,MUI Free

Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) cleric Ahmad Mustofa Gus Mus Bisri has told Maruf Amin to step down from his position as Rais Aam, or supreme leader, of the organization as he will run with President Joko Jokowi Widodo in the 2019 presidential election.

Gus Mus said it was unethical for Maruf to hold many positions at once in different organizations.

I think its unethical for him to hold so many positions at once, even when he has been appointed a vice presidential hopeful, he said recently as quoted by tribunnews.com.

Besides being the supreme leader of the NU central board (PBNU) for 2015-2020, Maruf has also been the chairman of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) since 2007 and is a board member of the Pancasila body (BPIP).

Jokowi has also recently appointed Maruf as his running mate in the upcoming election against Gerindra Party presidential nominee Prabowo Subianto, who has paired with businessman Sandiaga Uno.

Gus Mus, a respected NU cleric, has also asked the PBNU and the MUI to prepare a replacement following Marufs appointment.

Maruf said on Sunday that he had not resigned from his position as MUI chairman and would let the organization decide how to resolve it. (ris)
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Linkedin Jon Afrizal (The Jakarta Post) Jambi  Mon, August 13 2018

It takes more than three hours to reach Pulau village from the city of Jambi, the capital of Jambi province. After passing through some difficult and damaged roads, the journey is continued with a 15-minute motorboat ride across the Batanghari River.

The residents of this quiet village, which is surrounded by palm oil plantations where its residents work for a living, were recently shocked by an incest rape case, and their harsh response has sparked nationwide and even global outrage.

The case unfolded a few months ago, when a palm oil plantation owner noticed a pungent smell and later discovered the body of a baby boy. He reported his finding to the police and within a few days a 15-year-old girl was arrested on suspicions of aborting the child.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 13:43 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52c583f 1 Business Qatar-Airways,Asian-Games-2018,official-airline,jakarta,Palembang Free

Qatar Airways has been picked as the official airline of the 18th Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang from Aug. 18 to Sept. 2, which will bring athletes from 45 participating nations.

Qatar Airways is delighted to be the prestige partner and official airline of the 18th Asian Games Jakarta Palembang 2018, and to once more unite fans from around the world through a shared love of sport, said Qatar Airways Group chief executive Akbar Al Baker in a press statement received by The Jakarta Post on Monday.

The signing ceremony of the agreement was held last week in Jakarta, attended by Vice President Jusuf Kalla, Qatar Ambassador to Indonesia Ahmed bin Jassim Al-Hamar and Indonesian Asian Games Organizing Committee (INASGOC) chairman Erick Thohir.

We are proud to be flying the Qatar team of more than 200 athletes to Jakarta for the event, and we look forward to welcoming all fans to Jakarta and Palembang, Al Baker added.

Meanwhile, Ahmed expressed the hope that the agreement between Qatar Airways and the INASGOC would further strengthen cooperation between Indonesia and Qatar, including in the tourist sector and other sectors.

This is the second time Qatar Airways has sponsored the Asian Games. The Qatar national carrier was also the official airline of the 15th Asian Games Doha 2006.

The Asian Games is the second-largest multi-sport event after the Olympic Games and will include 61 sporting disciplines in more than 40 facilities throughout the two host cities. (bbn)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 17:38 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52d2e97 4 National whale-shark,diving,Cendrawasih-Bay Free

Conservation group World Wide Fund for Nature Indonesia (WWF Indonesia) has lambasted a group of divers and a local tour operator after a video went viral showing divers riding a whale shark, a protected species, while also warning that the careless act is dangerous for both humans and the fish.

The 22-second clip, in which a group of divers were seen touching and riding the whale shark, was taken in Cendrawasih Bay National Park in Papua.

Cassandra Tania, marine species officer at the WWF Indonesia, said the act was dangerous for both humans and the whale shark, as the harsh skin of the largest fish species could harm the divers.

What's more, its large size means it could hurt humans if the shark hits them, she said over the weekend as reported by tempo.co.

The video, which went viral on social media, was first uploaded by the frontman of legendary rock band Slank, Akhadi Kaka Wira Satriaji, on his personal Twitter account @fishGOD on Thursday. In the post, Kaka tagged Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti and Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar.

Cassandra added that riding and swimming near the whale sharks could also potentially lead to the sharks death, with the species listed as endangered and protected by a 2013 regulation issued by the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry.

Moreover, she also regretted that the tour operator did not inform the divers on how to properly interact with the whale sharks.

Cendrawasih Bay National Park is the largest marine national park in the archipelago where visitors can have unique encounters with the giant fish that regularly visit the area. (ris/rin)
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States  Mon, August 13, 2018 19:55 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52d7cc9 2 World US,scandal,White-House,trump Free

Former White House staffer and TV celebrity Omarosa Manigault Newman has released a recording of a private conversation with President Donald Trump after she was fired.

NBC's "Today" program played the brief recording, in which Trump claims to have had no knowledge that she was sacked by chief of staff John Kelly, and expresses regret at the news.

The recording is the latest volley from the disgruntled 44-year-old, once an ardent Trump ally, and represents another stunning breach of trust.

It also appears to show a president who has little knowledge of what is happening inside his own White House -- or who is willing to lie to avoid confrontation.

"Omarosa? Omarosa what's going on? I just saw on the news that you're thinking about leaving? What happened? he said, apparently unaware she had already been fired.

"Nobody even told me about it," Trump is heard saying.

"You know they run a big operation, but I didn't know it."

He continues: "I didn't know that. Goddamn it. I don't love you leaving at all."

Trump has already branded "Omarosa" -- as she is commonly known -- a "lowlife" after she released a recording of her firing by Kelly, seemingly recorded in the White House Situation Room.

Trump came to office vowing to hire "only the best people" -- but has struggled to put a lid on leaks, backbiting and scandal inside his White House.
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post)  Mon, August 13 2018

The maleo, a bird endemic to Sulawesi and exceptional for its distinctive build and colors, is on the brink of extinction. Its population in the wild has been in rapid decline  estimated at between 8,000 and 14,000 only. The chicken-sized bird with its bright unique crest joins Indonesias long list of endangered species.

As todays Special Report reveals, this species is vulnerable to predators and poaching as this distinctive bird, the icon of Central Sulawesi, lays eggs in open sandy riverbanks, coastal areas or lagoon beaches, making it an easy target.

However, animal predators, experts say, are no match for the most dangerous threat to the maleo: humans. People capture the birds to keep them as pets for their elegance and beauty, or steal their eggs to be used chiefly in traditional rituals or sold as mementos. In the past, people hunted the birds for their meat.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 10:59 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52bb793 4 Business soekarno-hatta-airport,expansion,Budi-Karya-Sumadi,Rini-Soemarno Free

Transportation Minister Budi Karya Soemadi has said the government plans to develop Soekarno-Hatta International Airport II, located 10 kilometers away from the existing airport with total investment estimated to reach Rp 100 trillion (US$6.83 billion).

The location is north of [the existing] Soekarno-Hatta Airport. Part is on the land and the other part is offshore, said Budi when visiting the existing airport in Tangerang, Banten on Saturday.

The planned airport will be 10 times larger than the existing airport, said Budi, adding that the project was expected to begin construction in 2020.

To realize the project, the minister said, the government would invite private companies to take part in financing the project.

The feasibility study for the project is now underway, starting from the technical, economic and ecological aspects, he added.

After that we will decide the location. For the land acquisition, we may cooperate with private companies or not, depending on the value of the project, Budi said as quoted by tribunnews.com.

The idea to develop Soekarno-Hatta International Airport II came from State-Owned Enterprises Minister Rini Soemarno, because of the increasing number of airplane passengers to Jakarta, which is projected to reach 80 million in 2021 from 62 million in 2017.

Meanwhile, the current capacity of Soekarno-Hatta International Airport is now only 43 million annually. (bbn)
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Linkedin Fachrul Sidiq (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 18:00 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52d303d 1 City MRT-Jakarta,test,operation Free

Less than a year before the official kickoff of its commercial operation, the MRT in Jakarta has begun the testing and commissioning of its operation, which the operator says is satisfactory.

The testing and commissioning part is in the early phase in a series of trial runs the operator has planned before its official operation in March.

MRT Jakarta president director William Sabandar said since its first test on Aug. 9, which aimed to see the readiness of its train, signaling system and tracks, did not face any significant obstacles.



Tests will be conducted every day until its official operation. So far, there have not been any negative reports, but well see, he said on Monday. The first phase of the MRT spans from Lebak Bulus, South Jakarta, to the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Central Jakarta.

He added that during the first few days, the train moved at slow speeds, which was then gradually increased.

William said authorities from the Jakarta administration have begun discussing fares for the MRT.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 12:04 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52be87b 1 Business Muslim-travelers,exhibition,Singapore Free

Regional travel trade show ITB Asia has said that about 156 million Muslims would be traveling around the globe by 2020, a growth of nearly 30 percent since 2016, and that the estimated total purchases by Muslim travelers would more than double over a decade to US$300 billion by 2026.

Muslim travel is thus an important focus for ITB Asia this year, as key players in the travel and tourism scene are demanding insights and best practices in marketing destinations and how to better connect with Muslim travelers, ITB Asia stated in a press release The Jakarta Post received on Monday.

ITB Asia also said it would launch a Muslim Travel Hub and Pavilion from Oct. 17 to 19 at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre in Marina Bay Sands, Singapore.

Over the three days, the "halal travel" event will host panel discussions and showcases for industry players.

Key topics include how to attract Muslim travelers to destinations throughout the year, how to develop the growing Muslim travel market and Muslim-friendly travel packages. The event's Muslim Travel Pavilion would be dedicated to exhibitors offering Muslim travel products and services, the release said.

The Muslim Travel Hub is to showcase presentations from Indonesia, Japan and Turkey on Targeting US$126 billion Muslim tourism market with cultural changes, "Making Muslims feel at home" and "Travelling in style", respectively. (bbn)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 13, 2018 10:02 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52b78d8 2 Business trade-war,impact,tire-sales Free

With no end in sight to trade tensions between the United States and China, domestic tire producers may bear the brunt of the spat as a revision to a ministerial regulation has made it easier for tire products to enter the Indonesian market, Fitch ratings agency has said in a statement.

Trade Ministry Regulation No. 6/2018 effectively authorizes imported products, in this case tire products, to be checked outside of customs, as part of the governments broader effort to debottleneck lines of goods checked in customs areas in a bid to improve efficiency.

The revised regulation has simplified the procedure for tire imports, and gives incentives to overseas manufacturers to sell more products to Indonesia, Fitch said in a statement. The situation is crippled further by the imposed tariffs on Chinas exports to the US, including tire-related products, which may force Chinese manufacturers to divert trade to new markets, including Indonesia.

However, the agency said the recovery of automotive sales in the first half would likely offset the short-term negative impact for local tire manufacturers as both car and motorcycle sales recorded doubledigit growth in the first half.

Trade Ministry data show that tire imports increased to US$158 million in the first half of the year, a 90 percent year-on-year (yoy) increase from the $83 million earned over the same period last year.

Imported tires would flood the local market if the trade war continues in the long-term, which we believe may further undermine the business profile of local manufacturers that are already in an oversupplied market environment, Fitch said.
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Montreal, Canada  Mon, August 13, 2018 10:30 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52b8c78 2 World #Canada,trudeau,shooting,victims Free

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met Sunday with the families of victims of a fatal shooting in eastern Canada -- but said "now is not the time" to discuss gun control.

Matthew Vincent Raymond, 48, opened fire in the sleepy city of Fredericton, New Brunswick, early Friday, killing four people, including two police officers.

Trudeau met the families privately, and laid a wreath at a makeshift memorial in front of the city's police headquarters.

"This is a moment to remember the two brave officers who fell in the line of duty and the other two victims and all of their families and the communities that are pulling together," he said.

"Obviously, reflecting on this loss, but remembering that resilience comes from leaning on each other and being there for each other."

Raymond, who was injured and hospitalized, was charged with four premeditated homicides, though police did not provide details of his motives.

The incident sparked panic in the city as Canada grapples with rising gun violence, with some calling for a handgun ban.

When questioned on gun control, Trudeau said there would be "time to reflect on what we need to be doing to ensure the safety of citizens and their communities."

But he added: "Now is not the time to be talking about that."
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Gap, France  Mon, August 13, 2018 08:55 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52b34e0 2 World #French,#Austria,French,Austria,accident Free

Two Austrians -- a man in his fifties and a teenager -- died Sunday when their glider crashed to the ground in the Champsaur valley in the southern French Alps, sources said.

"The alert was sounded by witnesses who saw the glider fall," a local official said, adding that the weather conditions had been "good".

Two rescuers and a doctor were sent to the scene, but the exact circumstances of the accident were not yet known.

The accident happened at a place called Roche Rousse, at an altitude of 2,515 metres (8,280 feet), the local official told AFP.

The pair had taken off from a local aerodrome earlier Sunday, a source close to the inquiry said, adding that they were an Austrian man in his fifties and a boy aged around 15.

The valley, near Grenoble, is famed for its unspoilt farmland crisscrossed by hedgerows and rural residents who still make their living from making cheese and other regional delicacies.
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Montreal, Canada  Mon, August 13, 2018 09:09 1173 b147f6715e2195e5246e701df52b5591 2 World #tennis,tennis,WTA,Montreal Free

World number one Simona Halep held her nerve in a rollercoaster duel with Sloane Stephens Sunday to win the WTA Montreal crown for the second time.

In a gruelling 2hr 41min battle, French Open champion Halep prevailed 7-6 (8/6), 3-6, 6-4 over Stephens in a repeat of the duo's meeting in the final of Roland Garros earlier this year.

The victory was Halep's 18th career title and her second in Montreal following her success in 2016.

The 26-year-old sealed the win with an ace on her fourth match point, capping an enthralling duel marked by several momentum swings.

Halep had taken the first set on a tie-break, after saving four set points against American third seed Stephens.

Halep made the stronger start, dictating rallies from the baseline to race into a 4-1 lead after twice breaking Stephens in the opening five games.

Yet reigning US Open champion Stephens rallied superbly to claw her way back into the contest, breaking twice to level at 4-4.

That however proved to be the cue for Halep to respond, breaking back after a net cord sat up invitingly for the Romanian, who crushed a winner into the corner for 5-4.

Another poor service game from Halep though gave the initiative back to Stephens, who broke for 5-5 and then held for a 6-5 lead.

Stephens appeared to be closing in on the first set in the next game, when a wild forehand from Halep -- her 20th unforced error -- handed her opponent two set points.

But Halep dug deep to save both points and then forced the tie-break.

Stephens again looked to be on the brink of the first set after surging into a 5-1 lead which soon became 6-4 in the tiebreak.

But once again the American was unable to seal the deal, Halep recovering to win the next four points for 8-6.

Stephens responded brilliantly in the second set however, breaking Halep twice in the first three games before advancing into a 5-3 lead.

Once again though Stephens appeared to be on her way to squandering the momentum, wasting three set points in the ninth game before finally converting her to force a decisive third set.

Both players traded early breaks in the decider before Halep secured the 13th break of the match in the fifth game for a 3-2 lead.

A hold left her 4-2 up and she bagged another break in the seventh game to go 5-2 ahead when Stephens wearily duffed a straightforward volley into the net.

Stephens refused to go quietly though, saving a match point before breaking for 5-3, and then saving two more match points to hold.

Halep was not to be denied however, thumping down an ace to seal a memorable win on her next service game.
With three lounges, three dining rooms, an open-air jacuzzi, a bar and six luxury cabins, the 50-metre "Aster" is one of Dutch shipyard Heesen's more modest superyachts.

The Netherlands, which amassed huge wealth through the technical superiority of European shipbuilders during its 17th century Golden Age, is continuing its maritime tradition by carving out a prominent place in the luxury yacht industry.

"It's a big year for us," Johan Kaasjager of Heesen Yachts told Reuters at his shipyard in Oss. "We'll have delivery of three yachts this year and still a lot to come. The order book is very good at the moment so we're full till 2020."

A new ship construction dock is so large it's been nicknamed "the cathedral". At 90 meters long it will enable Heesen to build its largest ever superyacht, the 80-metre Cosmos.

Heesen has found a sweet spot in that 50-80 meter market segment, with demand so strong it cannot keep up, even after adding new facilities.

Home to several of the world's top 10 superyacht builders, the Netherlands ranks second behind Italy this year in the builders of yachts longer than 24 meters, with 65 in the pipeline, data from Superyacht Times shows.

Last year, the average price per yacht rose nearly 10 percent to a record 57 million euros ($65 million).

"The reason for strong demand is that people are more trying to escape daily life," Kaasjager said. "A yacht of course, when you're out at sea, is fully private so it's the perfect way to relax and be with your family."

ONBOARD WATERFALLS

The trend seen since the recovery from the 2007-2008 recession is for more luxurious, larger ships, with features such as waterfalls that double as projection screens, helipads and swimming pools, blurring the boundary with cruise liners.

While Italy produces a greater numbers of ships and Germany dominates the market for mega yachts over 100 meters long, the Dutch are known for their reliability in delivery, high-tech specifications and speed, Kaasjager said.

Top customers over the past decade have been the United States and Russia, accounting for nearly 40 percent of business, with Americans making up 22 percent of existing orders.

Read also: City administrations urged to develop yacht, cruise ship industries

The value of superyachts built in Dutch yards rose from 662 million euros in 2014 to nearly 1.2 billion euros in 2017, the report said, giving the Netherlands roughly 30 percent of global annual sales of around 4 billion euros.

"It's also the Dutch mentality to build good yachts, good quality, on time, and we do what we promise", Kaasjager said.
The powerful earthquakes that struck the Indonesian island of Lombok in recent weeks killing some 400 people have sent holidaymakers fleeing, raising questions about how its lucrative tourism sector will bounce back.

Two deadly tremors a week apart -- accompanied by dozens of aftershocks -- wrought widespread damage on homes and livelihoods, striking during the crucial tourism season, when hotels, local businesses and seasonal workers earn the bulk of their annual revenue.

In the Gili Islands, a popular backpacker and diving destination just off Lombok's northern coast, thousands of terrified tourists jostled on powder-white beaches for departing boats.

Lombok's airport was briefly crammed with holidaymakers rushing to get flights out, while the main tourist drag of Senggigi has been left deserted.

Alfan Hasandi depended on peak season tourists to see his family through the rest of the year. He and his brothers ran a now shuttered business on one of the islands, Gili Air, offering boat tickets, snorkeling, trekking and vehicle rentals, usually earning five million rupiah ($350) a day during peak season.

"We hope we can rebuild... but it's impossible because people are still traumatised," the 25-year-old told AFP. "Our homes have been completely destroyed... We don't have money to rebuild, we need help."

Located in the one of the most tectonically active areas in the world, Indonesians are used to natural disasters and its tourism industry has bounced back from catastrophes in the past.

But for Lombok, the quakes struck at an especially cruel time, when the island's tourism industry was on the way up.

- 'A new Bali' -

Dubbed "The Island of a Thousand Mosques", Muslim-majority Lombok was always a path less travelled destination than its bigger neighbor Bali, the Hindu-majority island that forms the backbone of Indonesia's $19.4 billion tourist sector.

But it had been earmarked as one of Indonesian President Joko Widodo's "10 new Balis" with the regional government hoping to develop it into a major destination, especially in the booming halal tourism sector.

Its residents now have to repair and rebuild, hoping that spooked tourists return.

Senggigi would normally be bustling with visitors this time of year. Now boats lie idle along its main beach, restaurants and hotels have been shuttered on its main drag and the usual stream of touts offering services has dried up.

"We don't know whether we can operate again in September," Susi Hayati, manager of the Asmara restaurant, told AFP.

Ketut Jaya, manager of the nearby Holiday Resort Lombok, said it might be a month before they could start taking guest bookings again. Just 19 of the resort's 189 rooms were occupied by hardy tourists who decided not to leave after the quake.

Authorities estimate the damage unleashed by the two quakes on buildings and infrastructure on Lombok will exceed two trillion rupiah ($138 million).

Read also: Lombok's lesson: Time for disaster-sensitive tourism

- 'Temporary shock' -

But while the post-quake images of destruction and departing tourists were dramatic, analysts predict tourism in the region will recover after short-term pain.

Indonesia's tourism sector has been robust in the face of major crises before, including natural disasters like the 2004 tsunami and terror attacks such as the 2002 Bali bombings.

"The impact is not as big as a tsunami and the (Lombok) airport is still open," Tedjo Iskandar, a Jakarta-based travel analyst with TTC Travel Mart, told AFP.

Asnawi Bahar, chairman of Indonesia's tour and travel agency association, described the earthquake as a "temporary shock" for the sector.

The number of visitors to Bali plummeted following the 2002 bombings, which targeted a nightclub and bar frequented by Western tourists. The attacks killed more than 200 people and shocked the world.

But the island soon regained its status as one of the world's most popular holiday destinations.

That is little comfort for people like Vina Kartika, who used to work on Gili Trawangan, where one of her friends was killed in the quake, and has currently lost her seasonal tourism job.

"I will now have to stay at home, doing nothing," she said.

On Gili Air island, some hotels were flattened but others survived. A diving school was barricaded with wood panels and furniture to keep intruders out. A supermarket in the middle of the island was completely empty, its windows broken.

Hasandi said he is trying to remain upbeat, and he said lessons can be learned from the Bali's recovery.

"People were scared back then but then came back," he said. "This is a natural disaster, so it should be OK -- God willing."
Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said on Thursday that Lampung had seen a significant rise in international visitor numbers. He said 245,000 visitors were recorded in 2017, a 58 percent increase from 155,000 visitors in 2016.

The number surpasses the national average of 22 percent growth, the minister said as quoted by tempo.co.

Lampung Tourism Agency head Budiharto said high tides may have attracted surfers to the area.

Most surfers come from Australia and the Netherlands to surf in on Banana Island, he said.

Read also: 10 destinations to visit in Lampung

Thrill seekers may want to visit during high tides, while those seeking long tides may want to visit Cape Setia not too far away.

Aside from the western coast, foreign tourists are also fond of the rhinoceros and elephant habitat at Way Kambas National Park. They usually stay a few days to observe the animals, on resorts available onsite.

The Son of Krakatoa volcano is also one of the most iconic tourist spots in Lampung. Budiharto said tourists were allowed to climb the volcano as long as they complied with the rules and regulations. When volcanic activity is high, tourists will be asked to wait or reschedule their visit.

Two popular means of transportation to reach Lampung include a plane ride from Jakarta, or land route via Merak Port. The local tourism agency records 64 flights to and from Lampung daily. (asw)
My names Will Capers. For almost nine years, Ive blogged on various topics. I blogged as Blaque Ink first, and as Brotha Wolf second. The latter had a mu...

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Today

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 46F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph..

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Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 46F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph.


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CHICAGO - Thirty-one males, ranging from 17 to 41, and three females, ages 26 through 31, were shot and wounded over the weekend in Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods. One female, age 29, was shot and killed in the South Shore neighborhood. While the statistics are grievous, they were markedly less than last weekend's numbers. Altogether thus far in August 2018, 27 Chicagoans have been shot and killed, 151 shot and wounded making the total of 178 shot in the first half of the month.

Chicago's killing spree is once again the focus of national news - while Chicagoans celebrate the Cubs in 1st place on the city's safest north neighborhoods, things are very different in the city's south and west neighborhoods. (For those not familiar with Chicago's geography, there are no "eastern residents" - Lake Michigan is Chicago's eastern neighborhood.)

Is it fair to say the whole city is amid "killing fields"? According to a map posted on "HeyJackass.com" - no, not really.
You will definitely have heard of Taiwan. If you are reading this on an Acer or Asus computer or HTC phone, then you own a piece of Taiwanese technology, but this large Asian island is officially unrecognised by all-but 19 countries.

As a result of its complex history, Taiwan, or the Republic of China as it is officially known, is more American in its outlook than nearby Peoples Republic of China, but the island has not lost its truly Asian culture and appearance.

Taipei  the foodie capital

The modern capital is Taipei, a large metropolis like most in Asia: towering skyscrapers such as the former worlds tallest building Taipei 101, bustling street markets selling every Chinese food imaginable, and award-winning restaurants to rival those anywhere else across the world.

As you walk around the city, you cannot escape the mesmerising smells of tasty food drawing you towards the street markets spread across the city. The most famous street food is to be found in Raohe Street Night Market, with its countless stalls selling everything from egg fried rice with Korean chili sauce, fried potato spirals, steamed blood cake, and the infamous stinky tofu. The food here is surprisingly cheap in comparison to European standards too.

Taipei is undoubtedly one of Asias foodie capitals  it even has a 3-Michelin starred restaurant. Le Palais was awarded 3 Michelin stars in this first year of the Michelin guide including Taipei.

Located inside the Palais de Chine Hotel, the Le Palais restaurant specialises in typical Chinese cuisine, with ingredients sourced locally where possible. Dishes including cubed beef on rice crackers, Peking duck and fried rice noodles are served in museum-like surroundings with pottery and gold statues sourced from around the world.

Taipei  the view

In the Xinyi district, It is hard to miss the towering bamboo-style Taipei 101 skyscraper  formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Center  was once the worlds tallest building with an elevator that travels to the top in less than 40 seconds. The sweeping views across Taipei and New Taipei are simply spectacular.

Tainan  Taiwans ancient capital

Taiwan was ruled by the Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese for centuries before the Chinese mainlanders arrived in large numbers in the wake of Chiang Kai-shek after he lost the Chinese civil war against Mao Zedong and the Communists. Tainan is almost a city dedicated to Chiang and his wife Madame Chiang.

The Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall is a grand white palace dedicated to all things related to the former long-term president of Taiwan. At regular intervals each day, a changing of the guard ceremony takes place, where smartly-dressed Taiwanese Marines, after standing completely still on podiums in front of a statue of President Chiang, change places. This draws the crowds from across Asia.

Tainan isnt particularly big, so the Zeelandia Fort is not far from the centre of the city. This former Dutch East India Company fortress was opened in 1634, at a time when the majority of Tainan was under water. The fort was used to control trade access to Asia and further afield.

Alishan  mountain retreat

You never can guess how thick the mist clouds will be high above Taiwan in the Alishan National Forests. Towering thick red and yellow cypress trees, some more than 10,000 years old, cast shadows over hidden Buddhist and Taoist temples and quaint streams and waterfalls. A former Japanese logging train, coated in a bright green moss from the constant mists that fall over Alishan, takes visitors through the dark forests, from Shenmu (sacred tree) station to the hill station close to Alishan House hotel.

Alishan is also famous for its rolling tea plantations, with teas ranging from green to thick full-bodied cultivated on the mountains of Alishan.

Where to stay

From ultra-modern to grand and historic, Taiwan has a large selection of accommodation options to choose from.

Home Hotel Daan is located at the heart of the Taiwanese capitals main shopping district, and close to a Taipei metro station. Large rooms with comfortable king-size beds, designer Taiwanese furnishings, large windows and a free buffet breakfast come as standard.

Tayih Landis Hotel, Tainan is a grand and ultra-modern hotel located in the centre of the historic former capital of Tainan. The 5-star hotel is spread across 315 rooms, with a grand piano in the lobby and a huge buffet breakfast in the large basement restaurant.

Alishan House is perched at the top of the mountains of Alishan National Forest, promising sweeping views across endless forests and mist-covered peaks. The hotel is split between a modern wing and historic wing, which has hosted countless diplomats, Japanese governors, and presidents from around the world.

Fact file

FLY: Emirates flies to Taipei from London Gatwick and Heathrow via Dubai. China Airlines fly direct between Gatwick and Taipei. EVA Air fly between Heathrow and Taipei with a touchdown in Bangkok.

Language: Traditional Mandarin Chinese is the official language of Taiwan.

Currency: Taiwan uses the New Taiwan Dollar (approximately 1:NT$40).

Whats the weather like: The weather changes little throughout the year, but in the summer months (June to October) typhoons and earthquakes are not uncommon.

More info: Visit Taiwan Tourism website
Flamboyant Swiss financier Arpad Busson's hedge fund Lumx is in the soup

Flamboyant Swiss financier Arpad Busson's hedge fund Lumx is in the soup. Latest accounts reveal its eighth year of consecutive losses  this time 5.4million. Financial News reports UK fund manager Artemis is itching to sell its 6 per cent holding. Another investor describes the predicament as 'extremely worrying'. Glossy maned Busson, 55, who has two children with model Elle Macpherson, was involved in a messy custody battle last year with icy Hollywood star Uma Thurman, during which unseemly accusations about his private life arose. He's a generous donor to anti-press lobbyists Hacked Off, by the by.

Schroders is in the process of relocating to its sparkling new offices in London Wall. Bosses, I am told, have chosen to name the staff canteen inside the 300,000 sq ft development Bruno's, in honour of the 200-year-old banking dynasty's current patriarch. The toads. As if stately billionaire Baron Bruno, 86, is going to be glad-handing grateful employees at the entrance.

Why is Vodafone UK's bearded chief Nick Jeffery, 50, flogging 566,000 shares in the firm, pocketing him just over 1million? Perhaps Jeffery's Wikipedia page goes some way to shedding light on the matter. Earlier this year someone in Vodafone's Canary Wharf offices amended his personal details from 'married' to 'divorced'.

Challenger lender Tandem's takeover of Harrods Bank in February has doubled its customer base to 21,000 and boosted capital by 80million. I'm told the merger all passed off smoothly  bar one minor hitch. Tandem's software had to be rejigged to accommodate the high proportion of sirs and dames among Harrods' nobby clientele.

The Treasury is putting the finishing touches to its job advert for the next governor of the Bank of England in preparation for Mark Carney's departure. The ad is usually placed in The Economist, which presumably prompts legions of timewasters enquiring about the position. Incidentally, Carney never formally applied when the job last came up in 2012. He was shoe-horned in by public relations-obsessed George Osborne who was desperate to be seen to have lured an international name.
CHEAP BEAUTY Budget retailer Poundland is launching its own skincare range as it looks to tap into what is tipped to become a 26.7billion beauty market in the UK.

The group said its six-piece skincare range will 'inject some everyday luxury' into beauty routines.

Holly Mobley, Poundland's head of glamour, said: 'Everyone wants to look good for less, and we spent a long time ironing out the wrinkles to develop a fantastic skincare range to fit all budgets.'

Budget retailer Poundland is launching its own skincare range as it looks to tap into what is tipped to become a 26.7billion beauty market in the UK

GAME LAUNCH Tech firm Immotion Group has launched a space-themed virtual reality ride. The AIM-listed firm said Delta Zero, which allows players to control a spaceship inside a digital world, was being rolled out after successful trials.

BATTERY BOSS James Proudlock has been appointed chief executive of Direct Nickel Projects, a company eyeing the battery production boom.

His appointment comes as the electric vehicle market is fuelling demand for nickel, cobalt and other metals used to make batteries.

FARM DEAL Japanese firms J-Power and Kansai Electric Power are buying a 41 per cent stake in Triton Knoll Offshore Wind Farm, from Innogy.

The farm, off the Lincolnshire coast, is due to supply 800,000 homes with renewable electricity.

Innogy was the sole owner of the farm after buying out Norway's Statkraft last year.

West African gold producer Avesoro Resources produced 128,319 ounces during the half-year, more than three times as much as in the same period last year

MINE SALE BHP mining spin-off South 32 has completed its purchase of Canada's Arizona Mining for 1billion.

South 32 boss Graham Kerr said: 'The acquisition adds to our portfolio one of the most exciting base metal projects in the industry.'

DRUG BID Drug-maker Shire's Japanese partner Shionogi has applied to expand its use of Intuniv to treat adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The drug is already approved for use for children in the country.

A Shire spokesman said: 'There remains a significant need for new non-stimulant treatment options for adults being diagnosed with ADHD in Japan.'

GOLD NUMBERS West African gold producer Avesoro Resources produced 128,319 ounces during the half-year, more than three times as much as in the same period last year.

It sold 125,838 ounces at an average 1,032, bringing in around 129.9million.

EXIT SCENE Streaming service Netflix's finance chief David Wells will step down after 14 years.
A fraudster who thought he'd struck lucky at a poker tournament has been forced to hand his 70,000 winnings to the taxman

A fraudster who thought he'd struck lucky at a poker tournament has been forced to hand his 70,000 winnings tothe taxman.

Adam Lulat was ordered to pay the money to HM Revenue & Customs by a court in Manchester.

His winnings will go towards paying a fine the 26-year-old, from Preston, had previously avoided.

Lulat and five others were jailed three years ago for VAT fraud and money laundering. He was a student but held four bank accounts for the gang.

He was jailed for 28 months and ordered to pay a 1 fine because he had no assets. But HMRC reserved the right to extract 237,449 from him in future.

In March he was hauled back into court after it emerged he had won 68,930 at a poker tournament.

Lulat was ordered to hand over the money  on top of 2,840 held in his bank account  and the taxman said he still has to pay back nearly 165,700 left on the fine.
A July 25 letter to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CPS Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Janice Jackson, from Republican senators asked several follow-up questions after CPS officials testified before a joint Senate and House hearing in Chicago. As of August 13, neither the Mayor nor Dr. Jackson have responded to these inquiries. CPS has also provided very little information in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from the media.

The unwillingness to come forth with direct answers to basic questions  such as how the sex offenders were disciplined, who made decisions to not immediately notify families and police of abuse and assault allegations, and whether employees who failed to immediately report allegations or evidence of abuse and assault to the proper authorities, as required by law, were disciplined or terminated  is troubling, Righter said. The Chicago Tribune revelations  detailing instances of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment, perpetrated by CPS employees and other students, then covered up by CPS officials  are shocking. And now, those students are being victimized once again by the deafening silence emanating from the Mayors office and CPS.

If CPS and the Mayor continue their refusal to address what happened to their students and how it was allowed, we will ask Senate President Cullerton to authorize the use of subpoenas. This will allow the appropriate Senate committee to require the presence and testimony of CPS officials, so that we and the public can understand how this sort of abuse and assault was allowed to occur, and who decided to hide that from families and police, Righter explained. Those who played a part in victimizing these students must be held accountable and that process must start with honest and direct answers to the most basic questions as to how this occurred.
MBABANE  Jonker Investments intends to construct a residential township in Ezulwini to comprise of 54 units.



The township will be located at the remainder of portion 54 of farm number 51 along the Mantenga/ Gables secondary road, behind the Gables Shopping Complex. It stretches from the Ezulwini Bible Centre to Mantenga Lodge at the site which measures approximately 40 hectares.



It has been explained that the project entails cutting up of 54 residential plots with associated infrastructure, including one open public space, unused space and internal access roads with storm water drainage. It was also mentioned that water and sewer reticulation would be provided as well as power and telecommunications.



In accordance with the Swaziland Environmental Authority (SEA) Environmental Audit, Assessment and Review Regulations of 2000, members of the public were invited to a scoping meeting on Wednesday for unpacking information about the project. The meeting, convened at the Mantenga Road junction, was also intended to give interested and affected parties an opportunity to voice their concerns regarding the project for eventual input to the Environmental Impact Assessment.



constructed



At Ezulwini, the International Convention Centre and Five Star Hotel being constructed by the Kukhanya, Inyatsi and Stefanutti Stocks (KISS) Joint Venture valued at over E2.5 billion is ongoing. On the opposite direction of the state of the art hotel and convention centre, is the almost complete Swaziland Revenue Authority (SRA) headquarters which was projected to cost E400 million. The principal contractor is Stefanutti Stocks and the Project Managers are APM Consulting while MA Consulting Engineers takes care of the engineering aspect.



On another note, a multimillion office park and shopping complex is also being constructed by MA Properties.

The property, which sits on 8 000 square metres plot opposite Corner Plaza, comprises of 15 double storey office spaces and a retail centre to be operated by OK Foods as anchor tenant.



The structure to be completed in November is already 60 per cent complete. The construction tender was awarded to the Mbhilibhi Group while Project Management is undertaken by professionals from MA Consulting Engineers. The total number of jobs created was about 200 people.

Also at Ezulwini, the upsurge for leisure and conferencing facilities prompted Happy Valley to construct an additional 60 rooms worth E73 million.
MBABANE  Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious. Last Saturday over 150 comedy lovers packed the Swaziland Theatre Club to experience comedy from two celebrated comedians, Eswatinis Mdura and South Africas Thenjiwe, who were headliners of the show dubbed Laugh Goes On.



The show which also featured local female comedian Mandy kicked off at around 8pm.

Eswatinis TV presenter Elfoe, who was the MC for the night started off the show on a high, as he warmed the audience with a few jokes before he introduced the first act of the night which was local female comedian Mandy.

Mandy delivered a 45 minute set which whet their appetite for the night of laughter. Most of her jokes were sexual as she narrated how social media made a big deal about fellow comedian, Dr Shakes withdrawalfrom taking part in this years MTN SWAMA awards.



Taking over the microphone next was South African female comedian and actress Thenjiwe Moseley, who is a good friend of Mdura. The two are one of the lead characters in a sitcom titled The Nkhambules which is a series that is currently airing on Moja Love on DSTV channel 157.

Moseley, said it was an honour to be back performing in what is referred to as The Kingdom of Eswatini. The female comedian told the audience that they must embrace the name change from Swaziland to Eswatini because it means they are going back to their roots as people.



On another note, while on stage, the female comedian noted that she values August because it was the month of celebrating women. Even though women face several challenges on a daily basis, Moseley is convinced that women were created with enough superpower and inner-strength to win at this life thing.



As a woman I have so many amazing superpowers. Being a woman is a truly amazing thing. To be a woman is to be a strong and resilient being, who is able to handle anything that comes her way. I dont need to be saved or rescued. I am not a damsel. Disney lies to us, we dont need princes to save us, they need us just to stay alive, she said. Much to the audiences delight as they screamed and applauded her.

She further said her ability to shift into so many different characters - from mother, daughter, sister, ex-wife, girlfriend, straight to a CEO and still give all the roles her undivided attention and commitment, was a power like no other.

The female comedian, during her set also pointed out that above all else, if anybody ever wanted to dispute the heroes women are, giving life to a child was all the proof needed.

I literally have the power to create life. As women, we are the vessels of actual life; if we decided to end human existence we could all just abstain, use contraceptives or abort. Our bodies are incredible, mind blowing things and if thats not a superpower what the heck is? Moseley asked.
MBABANE  Sick notes from tinyanga would have been acceptable long ago in the country had MPs not slept on their job over the past years.

This was an observation made by the Chairman of the Witch Doctors Association, Makhanya Makhanya.



According to Makhanya, Members of Parliament (MPs) should have amended the Witchcraft Act of 1954, which demonised the work of tinyanga when western cultures showed their faces and were considered better than Eswatini culture.

People were sick and were healed by tinyanga in the ancient days. However, when the western cultures came to Africa, the work of tinyanga was demonised in order to promote the western cultures, Makhanya opined.

He alleged that the work of tinyanga was discredited in order to separate emaSwati from their ancestral beliefs.



He said the MPs should have amended the Witchcraft Act which classified witch doctors under witches.

He said MPs should have noted the difference between witchcraft and witch doctors. He stated that the existence of the Act made it difficult for employers to trust sick notes issued by people who were linked to witchcraft.

It is a pity that some of the aspiring politicians are assisted by witch doctors to win the elections. How can one forget the work of a person behind his success when he or she gets into Parliament? asked Makhanya.

Witch doctors include tangoma, babholofidi, tingedla and tinyanga, all who operate without issuing sick notes in the country.



He said one would be tempted to plead for the reduction of the MPs salaries because their work was not understood once they secured the positions.

He said the recognition of sick notes from tinyanga should have been made a priority because a majority of emaSwati believe in them. The chairman said even those who do not believe in magic were at times compelled by circumstances to engage tinyanga.

He asserted that some sicknesses could not be healed by doctors and nurses or pastors. He made an example of sicknesses such as likhubalo, lilumbo, umklwebho, mental illnesses, among others, stating that there was no way doctors and nurses could cure them.

Healed

If a condition has to do with magic, it has to be healed by the people who understands magic, he said.

Makhanya said the issue of tinyanga sick notes vested in Parliament where all laws of the country were amended.

He was interviewed following the recent judgment that was issued by High Court Judge Ticheme Dlamini.

Dlamini ruled that His Majestys Correctional Services should pay a wardress, Precious Maziya, whose salary was stopped after she submitted a sick sheet signed by a traditional healer, who operates in a consultation room (indumba).

In his judgement, Dlamini ruled that HMCS should accept the sick note from the Traditional Health Organisation for Africa, just as they accepted the sick notes signed by doctors from health institutions.

This was after Dlamini had satisfied himself with Maziyas sick note, which was forwarded to HMCS by the Traditional Health Organisation for Africa Public Relations Officer, Beauty Makhabane.

Makhanya also confirmed the knowledge of Maziyas condition as he also assisted her.

He commended Dlamini for recognising the work of tinyanga, saying that Maziya would have suffered a great consequence just because of an illness which she never invited to her life.

We are still wondering how the judge arrived at making the fair judgment. I think this should serve as a precedent to other judges dealing with similar cases, Makhanya said.
MBABANE  A South African national was allegedly killed and dumped at the Mbabane Government Hospital casualty department.

The man was booked at Swazi Oak Lodge prior to being allegedly killed.



He was, however, not killed at the Lodge as an eyewitness said he left the premises alive.

Police stated that there were no visible wounds on the deceaseds body which could help ascertain how he had been killed.

According to Joseph Gwebu, who is a security guard stationed at Swazi Oak Lodge and speaking with permission from his superiors, the man had been enjoying alcoholic beverages at the establishment with two other men earlier on Saturday.

Later, in the afternoon, the two men left, leaving the South African national. The man is then said to have asked that they call him a taxi at around 9pm.



When the taxi arrived, the South African man went out to talk to the taxi driver, and a grey Corsa van drove into the lodge.

Three men got out of the van and one of them started playing with a dog on the premises while another spoke to South African man.

Gwebu said he left the four gentlemen and went to attend to one of the guests in the establishment.



While he was gone, he said he heard a noise and another security guard came running to call him, informing him that there was a fight.

Fight.

When I went to where they were, I found that the man was being attacked with fists and I stopped the fight. The driver of the van calmed down but one of the men was adamant that they wanted their money and phones. I could not understand where or how the property had been taken or who took it between the men, Gwebu said.



He went on to explain that one of the men, who also arrived in the van and was also assaulted, had disappeared while he stopped the fight.

The two men then bundled the South African into the back of the van, as it had a canopy and told Gwebu they were going to the police.



The security guard said after the three left, the other man who had disappeared then came back claiming that he had lost his phone at the spot where he had been assaulted.

They searched for the phone but did not find it and he left.
GUCUKA  Did police do enough to prevent the suspect in the murder of nine people as part of an insurance scam from killing innocent peopple?



One can ask this question after hearing the stories of two families of the women who were allegedly killed by George Amos Mamba and his co-accused.

Mamba, who is a traditional healer, is wanted by both Eswatini and South African police for the alleged murder of nine people and human trafficking. George allegedly lured three women from the country to SA, where they were either strangled or shot dead before their corpses were used to fraudulently claim insurance money.



Ntombikayise Nhleko, the mother to Cebisile Nhleko, still remembers the period her daughter died, allegedly after Mamba had promised her a job in SA.

Ntombikayise was found in her house at Enceka, near Sithobelweni where she still keeps a calendar in which the significant date of her daughters death is marked. She alleged that after she heard about her daughters death, she never kept quiet, but told police officers the identity of her childs alleged killers.



arrested



She claimed that local police never made a follow-up on the alleged murder after she reported that her daughter had died in SA. She also alleged that a couple of weeks after her daughters death, George was arrested in SA for the crime. He was allegedly arrested on September 8, 2011. Cebisile died on August 19, 2011, and was buried on September 3, 2011.

Ntombikayise said he was later released after he identified other suspects involved in the matter.



He identified three other people, who included two other traditional healers and a woman, she said.

She claimed that the woman was Nokwazi Ngema-Zondi of KwaZulu-Natal, who was given a life sentence by the Pietermaritzburg High Court in February 2014. Zondi was allegedly Georges girlfriend.

She also alleged that SA police were told by George that one of the traditional healers was the one who shot Cebisile dead and all he (George) did was to lure her from Eswatini to SA.
SITEKI  A dead body of a male was found with dismembered parts and a missing leg in what is feared to be a ritual murder incident.



Police said the body was discovered on Saturday in a bushy area near eMalayinini (civil servants flats), not very far from Siteki Town Centre.

According to the police, a woman who was passing by made the grim discovery and quickly alerted the police.



Police quickly arrived at the scene and found that the body was already in a decomposed state, said a source close to police investigations.

The woman was passing by but was drawn to the body by a very unpleasant smell, the source explained.



People who saw the scene told this publication that there was a large bag made of sack material (khonzekhaya) near the body.

The head was on its own and the body was also on its own. Other parts were chopped off. And one leg was missing, added the source.



Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Khulani Mamba said, as of yesterday, the body had not been identified.

However, sources close to police investigations said the body could belong to a young man who was reported missing about a week ago.

According to the source, the man was herding goats on a farm near Siteki before he disappeared on July 29.



His boss, according to the source, reported him missing to the police on August 2.

The source added that the man was reportedly last seen near Siteki factory shell, which is not very far from the spot where the body was found.

Mamba, the police spokesperson, said a post-mortem would be conducted to ascertain the exact cause of death.



Confirmed



He confirmed that the body was found with missing body parts.

At the moment, we cannot speculate on the cause of death. We do not want to say this could be related to ritual murder. All we can say is that investigations are ongoing, he stated.

A week ago, a body of a young man was found with multiple injuries at Lugongolweni, along Siteki/Mhlumeni Public Road.
MBABANE  Do tough times lie ahead for the Eswatini Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (EPTC) and its customers?



This is a question that some people may ask themselves following a call for a strike by about 100 EPTC employees, who were gathered at Salesian High School yesterday. The bone of contention was the existence of two National Executive Councils (NECs) of the same union, the Swaziland Communications and Allied Workers Union (SWAWU), representing the same workers.



According to the EPTC website, Swazi Post alone has 33 major outlets and 69 agencies nationally. Should the proposed strike go on, most of these centres, if not all, stand to be affected.



Hinted



The members of the union hinted that they would fight the situation they were faced with both physically and spiritually, as all struggles were formulated in the latter. The meeting was chaired by Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) President Quinton Dlamini, whose secretary was the federations Second Deputy Secretary General Muzi Mhlanga.



Reports are to the effect that the two NECs were elected in two different conferences, one of which was held around the beginning of August while the other was held a few days later. The president of the first NEC is Innocent Ngcobo, while for the second one is Oscar Vilakati. The aggrieved employees accused the Vilakati-led NEC of being elected illegally and being allegedly in bed with management. They based this on that they elected what to them was the legitimate NEC (led by Ngcobo) and this was communicated to management after the elections. They reached the conclusion that management gave recognition to the Vilakati-led NEC and not theirs.



Also not spared by the employees was the SWAWU interim committee, which held office for about two years. The employees raised concern on a E25 000 transaction which they alleged was paid to purchase a cow from one of the members. They alleged that the committee further did not forward their subscriptions to TUCOSWA since it took office. They called for an auditing of the unions books so to establish how their contributions were used.



Voicing out their concern about the relationship between the Vilakati-led NEC and EPTC management, they alleged that the latter seemed to easily give audience to the former. They stated that their leadership together with TUCOSWA should lead them as they march to the EPTC headquarters to have the matter addressed.



Let us all go to the sixth floor and demand answers on why management is allowing these people to access our funds, one speaker submitted.

During the meeting, some of the union members submitted that they were ready to take the matter of the two NECs to court. Some went to the extent of pledging to contribute from their own pockets that a lawyer be engaged to take the matter up in court. Others stated that they were ready to even report the issue of the unions financials to the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).



They alleged that they had in the past invited the Vilakati-led NEC to call a mass meeting for EPTC employees but to date that had not happened. They said the aim of the meeting was for EPTC employees to state which NEC they recognised as their true leadership. They admitted that both NECs had supporters but said the legitimate one would be the one recognised by most workers.



Intervention



The employees yesterday sought the intervention of their mother body TUCOSWA, which promised to assist them. Mhlanga, in his summary, said they would write to the EPTC management and inform them about the situation, then invite them to intervene. If management failed to solve the matter, according to Mhlanga, they would then engage government, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Addressing the matter of the alleged E25 000 cow, Mhlanga said it might lead to the arrest of certain people as there was no way of justifying it.



Further allegations regarding the E25 000 will not be repeated, as none of the parties involved in the matter have been arrested or charged for any wrongdoing.

TUCOSWA President Dlamini said the law would solve the situation of having two NECs. He shared that the federation wrote to EPTC management informing them about the Ngcobo-led NEC, having been elected into office. He declined to reveal all that TUCOSWA would do to solve the situation.



Ngcobos executive will work but we cannot say what it will do because it may end up reaching the wrong ears, Dlamini said.

He promised that as TUCOSWA, they would not abandon the employees but would do all they could to assist them. He said the federation would update members in due course about what it had done.

The interim committee members accused of being responsible for the E25 000 transaction, when reached for comment, declined to get into the merits of the matter. The name of the member is known to this publication but will not be mentioned at the moment. The member stated that such matters were addressed by the union secretary, as the transaction in question was made while he was in office. He said had it been his money, he would have explained his side of the story.



Secretary General of the Vilakati-led NEC, Sandile Dlamini, declined to comment on the matter of the existence of two NECs at the organisation but said he would have to consult first. Sandile declined to answer any other questions put to him as he said he was in no position to comment without first consulting.

EPTC Corporate Communications Manager Nqobile Magagula asked to be sent a questionnaire on the matter which she said would be responded to today.
Representatives of Greek federations abroad and associations from USA, Canada, Germany, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Australia as well as from other countries around the world

Greeks of the diaspora from the Ionian Islands will meet on Corfu in September, in the first such international conference organized by the regional authorities with the Foreign Ministry, and the General Secreteriat of Greeks Abroad specifically, ANA reports.

The first international conference of overseas Ionian islanders will take place between 5 and 7 September to further develop ties between the region and communities of the diaspora, and will be inaugurated by Greek President Prokopios Pavlopoulos.

The archbishop of Tirana and all Albania Anastasios has been invited to attend by regional governor Theodoros Galatsiatos in order to be honored for his work.

At the same time, the Region of Ionian Islands announced it expects tourist arrivals to its island destinations to surpass 2.9 million.

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: Fandecaisses License: CC-BY-SA
Companies from Kazakhstan will take part in a trade event in Dubai, UAE, with the aim of developing commercial relations between Kazakhstani and UAE entrepreneurs.



The event will take place tomorrow (August 14), at JW Marriott Marquis Dubai, Business Bay.



From Kazakhstans side, large commodity producers of processed products will arrive to Dubai from following economic sectors: light industry, agriculture, F&B (honey, meat, dairy products, sweets), electro technical industry, engineering, chemical products, pharmaceutical industry, building materials, oil and gas, etc, said a statement.



The event is an opportunity for both the UAE and Kazakhstan entrepreneurs to establish new contacts and to demonstrate their products, it said.



The organisers of this event are the Ministry of Investments and Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs of the Republic of Kazakhstan "Atameken" and the Chamber of International Commerce of Kazakhstan, it added.



Trade and economic cooperation between Kazakhstan and the UAE is developing from year to year. Nowadays, the entrepreneurial community strengthens already existing ties even more and establishes new business partners in new industries. The UAE is a country with developing economy that has great prospects for emerging bilateral cooperation in infrastructure, agriculture, energy, as well as education and culture.



According to official data, the trade turnover between Kazakhstan and the UAE in 2017 was $643.06 million (exports  558.7 million, imports  84.3 million).



In contrast with last years, trade turnover between both countries increased nearly two times. Therefore, Kazakhstan has great potential to export ecologically clean agricultural products to the UAE. First, there are meat products and grain legumes (lentils, chickpeas, mung beans, and peas), as well as products like wheat, flour, vegetable oil and honey, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service
Oman air has restated its commitment to sustainable social development and has pledged to continue promoting initiatives, which aim to develop and support people with special needs.



The Ministry of Social Development (MOSD) makes the support of these citizens a major priority and it works to meet their needs on a daily basis.



Oman Airs chief executive officer, Engineer Abdulaziz Al Raisi, said: As the national carrier of Oman, Oman Air is proud to be working closely with the MoSD to improve the life of the citizens of our nation. At Oman Air, we have expanded the range of our community initiatives to support eligible individuals to reach their full potential and achieve a rewarding and balanced life. Oman Air supports a wide range of educational, cultural and sporting schemes which not only help to improve the lives of individuals, but also make an important contribution to the economic and social wellbeing of the sultanate.



Oman Airs support for the work of the Ministry of Social Development stems from its endeavours to support the community to deliver a positive, long-term impact within the less advantaged communities, and create a cooperative, united society in which all citizens are enabled to achieve their full potential.



In pursuing this essential aspect of Oman Airs mission, the airline has developed a genuine strong partnership with the Ministry of Social Development. For example, the national carrier offers a 50 per cent discount for individuals travelling from families that fall under the social insurance programme and their accompanying person. This includes those who are travelling for medical treatment and study purposes. Also, new graduates from high schools in Oman are entitled to receive a 25 per cent discount on return flights to enable them to continue their studies overseas, with baggage allowance of 10kg above the weight normally permitted.



In addition, Oman Air recently introduced a new Senior Citizen discount on flights, wherein Omani nationals can get up to 15 per cent discount on domestic flight bookings. - TradeArabia News Service
President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov paid a working visit to the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, where he attended the 5th Summit of the Heads of the Caspian States.

In his speech, the President of Turkmenistan noted the great importance of the Summit for the peoples and states of the region, as it marked the completion of very complicated and painstaking work on the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea.

According to the Turkmen leader, it took many years for diplomats, lawyers and experts in various fields to prepare this document. They all managed to demonstrate the high level of professionalism and readiness to compromise, taking into account the interests of partners. At the same time, the political will and high degree of responsibility of the leaders of the Caspian states was the key to the overall success.

As the President of Turkmenistan stressed, the documents prepared for signing envisaged establishing a mechanism for five-sided regular consultations under the auspices of the ministries of foreign affairs. In this regard, the Turkmen leader suggested that the foreign ministries of the littoral countries should be instructed to consider issues related to the practical implementation of this provision immediately after the Summit.

Stressing that the five-sided cooperation in the Caspian Sea depends largely on the degree of involvement of the regional countries in the trade, economic and transport processes, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov thanked the Caspian countries for supporting the initiatives on development of relevant agreements on cooperation in these areas that the Turkmen side put forward at the IV Caspian Summit.

Expressing confidence that the first Caspian Economic Forum expected in 2019 would confirm readiness of all the Caspian states to consolidate efforts in this direction, the head of state proposed to hold this forum in Turkmenistan.

Noting the fact that mutual trust between the littoral countries would strengthen the Agreement on prevention of incidents in the Caspian Sea, the President of Turkmenistan stressed that maintaining and consolidating peace and security in the Caspian Sea presents a task with no time limits. In this regard, further confidence-building measures in the Caspian Sea in the field of military activities should be developed and agreed.

"The Caspian Sea should forever become a zone of peace, good-neighborliness, mutual understanding and trust, and all issues should be solved only by peaceful means through negotiations, the President said.

In conclusion, he once again expressed special gratitude to the heads of the littoral states for their great personal contribution to the development of good-neighborliness and cooperation in the Caspian Sea. President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov proposed to hold the next Caspian Summit in Turkmenistan.

The five-sided Summit finished with the ceremony of signing the resulting documents.

To the applause of those present, the Presidents of the Caspian Five, namely Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, Hasan Rukhani of Iran, Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov of Turkmenistan signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, as a historical base document establishing the legal norms of interaction in various spheres in the Caspian Sea.

The heads of state also observed the signing of the Protocol on cooperation in the fight against terrorism in the Caspian Sea; the Protocol on cooperation in the fight against organized crime in the Caspian Sea; the Protocol on cooperation and concerted action by border agencies; as well as the Agreement on trade and economic cooperation; the Agreement on cooperation in the field of transport; the Agreement on prevention of incidents in the Caspian Sea.

The heads of Caspian state also adopted the Communique on the outcomes of the 5th Summit of the Caspian states.

At the end of the signing ceremony, the leaders of the Caspian countries made statements for the mass media.

In his statement, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov spoke highly of the results of the Summit and stressed that there was signed the most important document, i.e. the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea.

Noting the active participation of all Caspian littoral states in preparation of the Convention, the Turkmen leader expressed hope for the efficient implementation of its provisions by the five-sided mechanism for political consultations under the auspices of the ministries of foreign affairs.

According to the head of state, the Protocols signed in the course of the current Summit in the field of combating terrorism, organized crime and interaction of border agencies to the Agreement on Cooperation in the field of security in the Caspian Sea will contribute to the strengthening of stability in the region.

President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov stressed the importance of the forthcoming Caspian Economic Forum expected in 2019. Noting that this forum should become a permanent platform for the multilateral economic dialogue with greater participation of government, business and academic circles, representatives of international organizations, the Turkmen leader suggested that it should be held on a regular basis alternately in each of the Caspian states.

Noting that transport was the most important sphere of interaction in the Caspian Sea, the Turkmen leader proposed to establish a Caspian transport and logistics center for better partnership in this area. He said the executive office of such center should be located on a rotational basis at coastal cities of each of the Caspian countries.

Concluding his statement, the President of Turkmenistan noted that in general the Summit was an important step in building the architecture of relations between the Caspian states, forming the political and legal bases for further cooperation in various areas, strengthening ties of friendship, mutual respect and sincere sympathy among the peoples of the countries of the region.

On the same day, President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov held a meeting with President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev.

In the afternoon, the heads of the Caspian states took part in the ceremony of releasing young sturgeons into the Caspian Sea.

This symbolic action served as a kind of confirmation of the littoral countries commitment to the course of constructive partnership that prioritizes the ecological safety of the Caspian Sea and efficient use of its natural resources.

The heads of state also attended a special theatrical performance on the Caspian theme.

Later in the day, President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov left for his home country from the International airport of Aktau.

 TURKMENISTAN.RU, 2021
 The global agreement facilitates cooperation for a period of two years in close to 20 countries where both entities operate.



 Community development and protection of human rights will be promoted through local economic and social progress, along with support for environmental protection.

 The two organizations will engage local communities to define their priorities for sustainable development; support initiatives that ensure this development; and share information and experiences in order to contribute to the achievement of the SDGs.

Madrid/New York, August 13- Repsol and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have signed a global agreement that facilitates advancement of sustainable development in close to 20-plus countries where both the entities operate. This is the first global agreement between UNDP and a company from the oil and gas sector.

The agreement will foster collaboration in support of community development and the protection of human rights, through initiatives that promote local economic and social progress as well as respect for the environment. As such, the partnership will support local communities in their efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

We are committed to support countries engaged in the sustainable use of natural resources to transform their wealth into sustainable development, said Marcos Neto, Director of the global UNDP Istanbul International Center on Private Sector in Development. This involves working closely with companies in these industries to align their investments with the Sustainable Development Goals. This global partnership with Repsol is an exciting opportunity to do this at scale, he further added.

Repsol considers sustainable development to be one of the companys global goals, and the agreement with UNDP demonstrates our high standards, said Fernando Ruiz, Director of Sustainability at Repsol. With this important partnership with the United Nations, we go one step further in our commitment to the local communities and environments in the countries where we are present, he added.

The collaboration between Repsol and UNDP has an initial duration of two years and identifies four areas of work exchange of information and analysis to identify potential collaborative projects; engage community stakeholders in participatory dialogue to define local development priorities; support concrete projects that ensure sustainable development; and sharing of knowledge and experiences of how the extractive industries can support towards the achievement of the SDGs.

This is not the first time the two organizations have collaborated. They have already worked together on projects including a water access program in La Guajira and a community development initiative in Cartagena (Colombia) and an initiative to support local communities in Libya.

With the signing of this agreement, the basis of their cooperation will become global. Currently, the international operations of Repsol and UNDP have the following countries in common: Algeria, Aruba, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Gabon, Guyana, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela and Vietnam.

About Repsol

Repsol is a global company, present across the entire energy value chain. It is active in 37 countries and employs more than 25,000 people, and its products are sold all over the world. It produces some 700,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, and has one of Europes most efficient refining systems, capable of processing over one million barrels of crude oil daily. Repsol distributes and sells fuels and lubricants through its more than 4,700 service stations in Spain, Portugal, Peru, Italy, and Mexico. In addition, it is the largest player in Spains liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) market. The company is well-positioned for the energy transition with its focus on developing production of gas, low-carbon businesses and a multi-energy offering for consumers. In terms of technologyone of the pillars of the companyits cutting-edge projects in various fields have made it a point of reference for innovation, sustainability, and efficiency in the energy industry.

About UNDP

UNDP partners with people at all levels of society to help build nations that can withstand crisis, and drive and sustain the kind of growth that improves the quality of life for everyone. On the ground in nearly 170 countries and territories, we offer global perspective and local insight to help empower lives and build resilient nations.

Media Queries:

At Repsol, Communication Executive Managing Division, prensa@repsol.com, Tel. +34 91 753 87 87, www.repsol.com

At UNDP- Sangita Khadka, Communications Specialist, New York, email: sangita.khadka@undp.org , Tel: +1 212 906 5043
The thin, bespectacled medical student acted as a paramedic in street protests in Nicaragua until gun-toting paramilitaries detained him last month.

They beat me, they put a towel on my face and poured water on me until I felt like I was drowning, says the student, who goes by the name of Lobo, or Wolf in Spanish, a tag he gained in the demonstrations.

There was lots of psychological abuse too.

Nicaraguas current political crisis began April 18 with protests in the capital Managua to oppose planned cuts to pensions and social security by the government of President Daniel Ortega.

Clashes in the Central American nation have since killed at least 317 people according to a tally by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. More than 2,000 have been injured, and an unknown number detained.

They beat me, they put a towel on my face and poured water on me until I felt like I was drowning.

Lobo  who asked not to be named for safety reasons  was finally freed from jail after five days following the intervention of a local human rights association. A network of friends then helped him get across the border to Costa Rica.

The 21-year-old is now staying in the nations capital, San Jose, with other displaced Nicaraguan students. While they wait for their asylum claims to be processed by the government, many are helped by Costa Ricans, dubbed 'Ticos.'

Even with all the love the Ticos and Costa Rican government have given us, I feel imprisoned here because its not my country, says Lobo. Its never going to be the same. I left friends, memories, my studies.

The medical student is among the thousands of Nicaraguans who have sought asylum in neighbouring Costa Rica since April.

Twenty-one-year-old medical student Lobo* shows the scars of the violence he says he endured during unrest in Nicaragua.  UNHCR/Roberto Carlos Sanchez

Jorn Henrry Bermudez, 28, and his 19-year-old partner Ana Kathiushka Castro, who is five months pregnant, apply for asylum in San Jose.  UNHCR/Roberto Carlos Sanchez

A young girl and her family apply for asylum in San Jose, after fleeing Nicaragua.  UNHCR/Roberto Carlos Sanchez

A family from Nicaragua wait to file their asylum application at the immigration office in San Jose, Costa Rica.  UNHCR/Roberto Carlos Sanchez

Also seeking protection in San Jose is Jorn Henrry Bermudez, a 28-year-old cell phone technician from Managua, whose home there is next to one of the universities at the heart of the student-led protests.

You could see police come in with weapons, shooting at the guys, Bermudez recalls.

In the ensuing crackdown Bermudez said several local residents were shot dead, among them a mentally ill elderly man who lived a few doors down from him, and a 14-month-old boy shot in the head by paramilitaries.

Bermudez decided to flee Nicaragua after paramilitaries raided the home he shared with his pregnant partner in late July. He sold his camera, laptop, and cell phone to make the journey to Costa Rica, and the couple left with a small suitcase so as not to attract attention, finally making it to San Jose.

Thats when I met a woman who offered to take us in. Shes fed us and gave us a room, he says. But its like having your life in someones hands because you never know when theyre going to say, Hey, we need the room.

More than three months into the crisis, the capacity of the Government to process asylum claims is being severely overstretched.

I signed up as a reserve, but when they called us I thought, how am I going to kill my own people?

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is providing an initial support to the migration authority to increase its processing capacity and is strengthening its presence in Costa Ricas northern border region to provide protection and assistance to refugees.

Another recent arrival in the Costa Rican capital is Jose, who also asked not to be identified due to security concerns. A resident of Leon, Nicaraguas second city, he served in the military for seven years but left four years ago after the birth of his daughter.

I signed up as a reserve, but when they called us I thought, how am I going to kill my own people?

Refusing to heed four calls to return to active duty, he opted to flee to Costa Rica in early July after paramilitaries broke up protests in Leon.

Now the family of three are living in a room provided by a nun at a local Catholic church. Like many of the recent asylum seekers from Nicaragua, they are depending on the kindness of friends, charities, and strangers.
British Hollywood actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw met with refugees this week in Rwandas Mahama and Gihembe refugee camps, on her first trip with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

Rwanda has been hosting thousands of refugees for decades, and today supports over 150,000 refugees and asylum-seekers who have fled mainly from Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Government of Rwanda has generously maintained open borders and refugees in Rwanda are granted the right to work as well as being progressively included into host communities, national health and education systems.

After spending time meeting and talking to Burundian and Congolese refugees and seeing some of UNHCRs work to support and protect them, Mbatha-Raw commented, Its one thing to hear about UNHCRs work, and another to witness it first-hand. It has been eye-opening to meet the refugees who have fled unimaginable violence and suffering, and to hear their stories. I met a woman, Rehema, who had just arrived from Burundi  she was 9 months pregnant and with her two year old daughter Josephine. Her husband had been killed and she fled desperate for help with a baby about to be born. Seeing how quickly the UNHCR team and partners worked to get her settled and give her special assistance was incredibly impressive.

I have been able to see some amazing, positive UNHCR supported projects here in Rwanda, like MADE51 an inspiring initiative in which Burundian refugee women create beautiful products like bowls, baskets and bags for international sales.Mbatha-Raw continued. Its uplifting to see these talented women getting the opportunity to earn their own money, while learning creative and business skills. But MADE 51 also creates a vital healing environment, a feeling of dignity, hope and a sense of working together to create a new community.

The group of artisan women Mbatha-Raw met are supported by Indego Africa in Mahama camp as part of UNHCRs MADE51 initiative, which helps to connect refugee-made artisanal products with international markets.

UNHCR has led a programme of resettlement to the United States for Congolese refugees who have fled to Rwanda. The US also provides significant financial assistance for refugee programs in Rwanda and is the largest individual donor to UNHCR. Since 2002, more than 57,000 Congolese refugees have been resettled in the United States. Commenting on this Mbatha-Raw said Refugee resettlement is so vital for many of the vulnerable refugees I have met, who have already shown incredible resilience and strength, resettlement has the capacity to be completely life-changing. I met a young woman, Jeanette, about to be resettled in Atlanta and when I asked her what she would do there. She told me I am young, I can do anything! But even though needs are greater than ever, less than 1% of refugees worldwide are ever resettled.

UNHCRs Representative to Rwanda, Ahmed Baba Fall, said, The Burundian and Congolese refugee crises remain two of the most chronically underfunded in the world. High profile visits like Gugus help to shine a light on these forgotten crises by amplifying the voices of those who have been forced to flee to ensure they are not forgotten.

Notes to editor

UNHCR works with governments and partners on the ground in locations all over the world to support and protect refugees and help them build better futures. UNHCRs Rwanda programme is currently 14% funded, Burundi and Congolese situations are 11% and 10% respectively.

Images of Gugus mission to Rwanda.

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CM Tamang addresses14th Convocation of ICFAI University 30 Oct 2021 | 1:36 AM Gangtok, Oct 29 (UNI) Chief Minister of Sikkim PS Tamang addressed the 14th Convocation of the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India ( ICFAI ) University here on Friday, at a local resort, the Governor participated virtually at the event. 27 Students were awarded Gold and Silver medals out of 678, rest attended virtually. see more..

Day One launches its first single, Kyun? 30 Oct 2021 | 1:23 AM Kochi, Oct 29 (UNI) Just like his name which takes inspiration from a cocktail thats tonic for the soul; producer, composer, 'Pina Colada Blues' has been creating refreshing tracks across various formats of music such as dream, electro-pop, trap, hip-hop, R&B, Carnatic and eastern infused western styles. see more..

Real-Time Data Acquisition system launched in APEPDCL 30 Oct 2021 | 1:20 AM Visakhapatnam, Oct 29 (UNI) Andhra Pradesh Eastern Power Distribution Company Limiteds (APEPDCL) Chairman and Managing Director K. Santhosha Rao inaugurated the RT-DAS (Real-Time Data Acquisition system) control system under the IPDS scheme of the Government of India as part of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav at Seethammadhara here on Friday. see more..

Road safety to be made part of schools & colleges curriculum, stresses Raja Warring 30 Oct 2021 | 1:18 AM Chandigarh, Oct 29 (UNI) Punjab Transport Minister Amarinder Singh Raja Warring on Friday directed to celebrate 'No challan day' by organising roadside campaign where traffic violators will be stopped and given traffic awareness briefing on Road Safety. see more..
CBI registers case against private company directors for cheating banks of Rs 114 crore 29 Oct 2021 | 9:23 PM New Delhi, Oct 29 (UNI) The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered a case on complaint from Bank of Baroda (BOB) against a private company based at Nadiad in Gujarat and others including its directors, unknown public servants on the allegations of cheating BOB, e-Corporation Bank and Union Bank of India Rs 114.06 crore, the agency said. see more..

Indo-France strategic partnership even more relevant to future of Indo-Pacific: EAM Jaishankar 29 Oct 2021 | 8:58 PM New Delhi, Oct 29 (UNI) The strategic partnership between India and France has become even more relevant in the 21st century, both to strengthen multilateralism, and even more for the future of the Indo Pacific region, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Friday, adding that while India is at the strategic centre of the region, France makes up the two bookends with a vast EEZ. see more..

Enforcing previous orders on ban on firecrackers: SC reserves order 29 Oct 2021 | 8:46 PM New Delhi, Oct 29 (UNI) The Supreme Court on Friday reserved its interim order on how to enforce its previous directions regarding ban on the sale, manufacture and transportation of firecrackers.

A two-judge bench, headed by Justice M R Shah, reserved the order after hearing detailed arguments and submissions from the various parties, including the petitioners and respondent. see more..

Pneumonia vaccine for children launched under Universal Immunization Program 29 Oct 2021 | 8:20 PM New Delhi, Oct 29 (UNI) Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) for children was launched under Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) by Centre on Friday. see more..
New Delhi, Aug 13 (UNI) Aiming to further deepen the bilateral ties with Fiji, Indian Naval Ship (INS) Sahyadri on Monday entered Port of Suva on a goodwill visit.

The Naval Ship is visiting Republic of Fiji enroute to India after participation in the RIMPAC 2018 at Hawaii. During the visit, the Indian Naval Ship personnel will have professional interaction with their Republic of Fiji counterparts and the Ship will have an Open Day for general public on August 14, the Indian Navy said in a statement.

During their stay, a medical camp will be organized in collaboration with Fijian government where the doctors from both the countries will jointly perform free health screening on August 15 at Ratu Sukuna Park, Suva.

Officers from INS Sahyadri, RFMF and Indian High Commission will also be participating in mangrove and sandalwood planting activities on August 14.

INS Sahyadri (F49) is the third and latest ship among the Shivalik Class of indigenously built Stealth Frigates and forms a part of the Eastern Fleet of Indian Navy.

INS Sahyadri draws her name from the beautiful, age-defying Western Coast (also known as Sahyadri ranges) stretching across 1600 Kms along the Western Coast of India.

UNI ASH SHK2001
SSB sleuths seize Thai heroin in Bihar

Araria, Aug 12 (UNI) Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) sleuths seized 450 grams of heroin smuggled from Thailand and arrested two peddlers under Sonamani police outpost area in the district late last evening.

Sub divisional police officer K D Singh said here today that SSB jawans deputed at Dumaria border outpost seized 450 grams of heroin smuggled from Thailand from two motorcycle borne peddlers. He said that seized heroin worth Rs 35 lakh in the international market was concealed in the dikkie of motorcycle.

Mr Singh said that the nabbed peddlers had been identified as Mohammed Afzal, a native of Jokihat police station area and Kripanand Mandal, a native of Palasi police station area.
UTSA was recognized in 2014 by the Ponemon Institute as home of the nations leading cybersecurity program.

(Aug. 13, 2018) -- Six leaders from The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) will speak about emerging trends and workforce development in national security at the annual CyberTexas conference, scheduled from Aug. 14-15 at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. UTSA is recognized by the Ponemon Institute of home of the nations leading academic and research programs in cybersecurity.

The annual CyberTexas conference, which draws 700 attendees annually, strengthens the cybersecurity ecosystems in San Antonio and across Texas by facilitating dialogue related to communication, education, innovation and workforce development between cybersecurity experts and leaders in government, industry and academia. The program is sponsored by the CyberTexas Foundation and the Federal Business Council in conjunction with Cyber USA.

UTSA President Taylor Eighmy will present a keynote address titled UTSA Cyber Leadership: Building Partnerships to Meet Global Security Challenges. In his remarks, Eighmy will share how UTSA strategically built the nations top academic and research program in cybersecurity. He will also discuss the universitys national security portfolio and plans for a new National Security Collaboration Center to further advance San Antonios robust security ecosystem.

Eric Bachura, a UTSA doctoral candidate in the Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security, joins the conference to introduce Robert W. Heller (Southwest Research Institute). Heller will discuss his research on cybersecurity and connected roadway vehicles. In a second panel, Bachura will introduce Deborah Carter (Rackspace University and Open Cloud Academy) for a discussion about up-skilling veterans for cybersecurity careers.

Cybersecurity expert Nicole Beebe, a UTSA professor who was named in 2018 as one of Texas Monthlys 15 Innovators Reshaping Texas, will moderate a panel about the cyber defense toolbox. Panelists Jacek Materna (Assembla), Chris Gerritz (Infocyte) and David Heard (SecureLogix Corp) will discuss new tools and technologies available to help defend critical infrastructure.

On the second day of the conference, Greg White, director of the UTSA Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security, and a 2016 San Antonio Cyber Hall of Honor Inductee, will moderate a discussion about how government and industry can work together to harden U.S. critical infrastructure against future attacks. Panelists will include Patrick Robinson (AT&T Global Public Sector), Michael Stewart (USAA), Michael Kampstra (San Antonio Water System) and John Heintz (CPS Energy).

CyberTexas is a tremendous opportunity for UTSA and other partners across the state to contribute to ongoing policy discussions about our nations national security, said Bernard Arulanandam, UTSA interim vice president for Research, Economic Development, and Knowledge Enterprise. By bringing government, industry and education leaders together on a regular basis to develop strategies to achieve mutual goals, we will continue to advance Texas as a trailblazer in cybersecurity education and research, policy, and workforce development.
UTSA undergraduate and graduate students shared what success means to them as they pursue their degrees.

(Aug. 13, 2018) -- What does success look like for a student at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), a great multicultural learning and research enterprise? Is it earning a degree, landing their dream job, becoming financially stable or making their loved ones proud?

Transfer student Isis Burks says she achieved success when she left her comfort zone to make friends at UTSA and by getting involved and excelling in her degree program and internships. The senior kinesiology major and her family moved to Houston from St. Louis about three years ago. In addition to leaving her hometown, family, and friends, but, she also transferred to UTSA, a new university in an unfamiliar city.

I talked to my mom on the phone about four times a day! She encouraged me to stick it out and my older siblings, who had gone to college, encouraged me to get involved on campus, said Burks.

Burks said she made an effort to meet new people and would attend student organization meetings to learn about the different groups on campus. She got involved with NAACP chapter at UTSA, the UTSA Pre-Physical Therapy Society, the student organization, VOICES, and other groups.

Once I got involved on campus, I became a much more outgoing and positive person, said Burks. To me, student success is based on getting an education and developing as a young adult. At UTSA, I grew as a person, professionally, academically and socially.

As a peer mentor in the UTSA Roadrunner Transition Experience, Burks now shares tips with other students who might be going through what she did.

Recently, Burks participated in a UTSA focus group to define student success. The group included undergraduate and graduate students from different backgrounds.

Graduate student Jonathan Casas participated in the focus group and shared that he, much like other students who will be the first in their families to earn a four-year degree, shares his success with family members who love and support him on his educational journey.

Casas parents came to San Antonio from Mexico more than 20 years ago and worked tough jobs to give him and his younger brother more opportunities than they had. They encouraged him to do well in school, and he excelled at Highlands High School before attending Texas A&M University, College Station to earn his bachelors degree. At UTSA, he is currently pursuing a masters degree in school psychology.

I want to make sure my parents know that their sacrifices for me meant a lot and paid off. They always motivated me to do my best, said Casas.

Another member of the first-gen Roadrunner family, Deaisha Coleman, a senior from Dallas, also took part in the focus group. She says the resources in place at UTSA support other students like herself who are the first in their families to navigate college.

Success means being able to receive resources from the university so when students graduate they are equipped with the necessary skills to start their careers, said Coleman.

The focus group, which met this summer, helped to develop UTSAs Unified Vision of Student Success:

Student Engagement and Belonging

An inclusive, student-minded culture exists that provides a positive student experience resulting in student connectedness towards UTSA during and post-graduation.

Student Retention and Persistence

All students remain, register each semester and successfully continue their undergraduate education. Also, if you are failing and need academic support, is there a way to make sure you get help from an advisor, faculty member, or mentor?

Educational Attainment

All students persist to degree completion and attainment of their degree, program or educational goal within a time frame that is desirable to the student and with the least amount of debt possible.

Academic Achievement

Students achieve increasingly higher levels of academic performance as they progress through and complete their college experience.

Student Achievement

Students have the ability to participate in high impact practices (including, but not limited to employment, internships, experiential learning, research and co-curricular experiences) and are prepared to articulate their marketable skills in order to obtain desired post-graduation employment and beyond (achievement, impacting people/programs, research, networking).

The student viewpoints that emerged from this focus group help us understand that for our students success is about retention, graduation, and so much more. UTSA students measure student success by personal achievements, experiences, and reaching milestones, said Rhonda M. Gonzales, UTSA interim vice president for Student Success.

Gonzales is leading a Student Success Task Force that is developing a student success plan that includes goals, metrics, accountability and self-assessment. The plan will have a student-focused strategy and consider the student experience from the start of their journey with us to career launch.

We plan to use this feedback to expand upon the initiatives UTSA has to support students to become future leaders in academia and the workforce, she added.

UTSA is committed to delivering exceptional student experiences and creating an atmosphere where students feel welcome, supported and engaged. As a next generation Hispanic Serving Institution, UTSA fosters innovation and creative discovery by channeling its expertise into tackling critical societal issues of today and tomorrow and being a research-intensive environment where underserved students can thrive.

UTSA is ranked among the nations top five young universities, according to Times Higher Education.
UW Alumni Association Accepts Information for Homecoming Schedule

The University of Wyoming Alumni Association (UWAA) requests that campus departments inform the association about activities planned for Homecoming 2018.

Events will be listed online, in public calendars, in printed materials and publicity announcements. The deadline for submissions is Monday, Oct. 8.

Homecoming activities will take place Oct. 13-20, with the theme The World Needs More Cowboys.

We are happy to provide publicity for anyone sponsoring an activity over Homecoming in which you would like to have alumni and general public involvement, says Emily Vernon, UWAA senior special events coordinator.

For an entry form or to submit an activity online, go to www.uwyo.edu/alumni/homecoming.

For more information, call Vernon at 766-6878 or email evernon@uwyo.edu.
Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung chairing the press conference on Connecting Vietnam Innovation Network 2018

In the framework of the week-long programme of Connecting Vietnam Innovation Network 2018, 14 activities will take place between August 18 and 24 in three cities and provinces. Participating in the programme are representatives of ministries, agencies, leading technical corporations, and 100 Vietnamese technology experts and scientists.

They are studying and working in the leading sectors of science and technology, directly participating in the deployment of science and technology development strategies in Vietnam in the coming time. However, their names have not been disclosed.

These 100 people will meet with leaders of the state and have a dialogue with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc. Vietnamese leaders will tell them about the countrys development demand and listen to the experts comments and recommendations.

They will hold discussions with the Ministry of Industry and Trade on high-tech production and e-commerce development, with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on solutions for the development of high-tech agriculture, with the Ministry of Science and Technology on artificial intelligence (AI), and with the State Bank of Vietnam on e-payments.

The 100 intellectuals will attend the launching ceremony of Vietnam Innovation Network, and visit Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Quang Ninh to discuss urbanisation and smart city solutions.

The Programme of Connecting Vietnam Innovation Network is part of constructing the Impact Assessment Scheme and the formulation of a national strategy on Industrial Revolution 4.0. This is an initiative of the Ministry of Planning and Investment to gather and mobilise the maximum resources of gray matter from Vietnamese experts who are well-trained and are working in countries with developed science and technology foundations.

These experts will be a crucial resource to ensure the successful implementation of the Industry 4.0 strategy, bringing about rapid technological changes in Vietnam, allowing the country to transform vigorously in harmony with the globe.

In the context of robust global momentum in science and technology, the ability to access and utilise science and technology advances is a requisite for each economy to keep pace in the Industry 4.0 era.

Vietnam considers this as a particularly propitious juncture to access and take full advantage of new science and technology advances in economic development, contributing to the pursuit of rapid and sustainable growth in the future.
The unexploded bomb was found near the centre of Rouen in northern France. (Photo: AFP/Charly Triballeau)

The 220kg bomb was found in late June during construction work near the centre of Rouen in Normandy.

Residents living within a 270m radius of the site were told to leave the area early Sunday ahead of the operation, which wound up shortly after 11am (0900 GMT).

Discoveries of bombs and shells from World War II are common in France and elsewhere on the continent.

Last month, the French navy defused an unexploded shell found in the sea near a popular beach in Cannes on the Mediterranean coast.

In May, nearly 9,000 people had to be evacuated after a bomb was uncovered in Dresden, Germany, a city which was heavily bombed toward the end of the war.
Despite sticking in huge scandal, Con Cung launches its seven new stores

Accordingly, the MoIT have to conclude whether Con Cung violated regulations on the origin of goods, then carry out the appropriate sanctions.

At the working session between Con Cung and the MoITs Market Surveillance Agency on July 30, Tran Hung, deputy director of the agency, said: Despite the clear signs of violations, we have yet to reach a conclusion.

At the session, the Ho Chi Minh City Market Surveillance Branch outlined seven signs of Con Cungs violations. These include: its stores are unable to show legal documents to prove the origin of imported goods; the information on the packages of Made in Vietnam goods is written in Latin instead of Vietnamese; and the firm is sticking labels on products that provide information different from that on the packaging.

Explaining the reason of behind not having the legal documents to prove the origin of goods, Nguyen Quoc Minh, chairman of Con Cung JSCs Management Board, said: Con Cung has only one legal dossier for each order, but with 350 stores, Con Cung cannot show all legal documents for all orders at the same time.

The firm also stated the recent issues have significantly impacted its prestige, and its sales fell by dozens of billions of VND over the last month.

However, contrary to what Con Cung stated about reduced sales, within the last few weeks, the firm launched seven new stores in Ho Chi Minh City, the central city of Nha Trang, the southern cities of Vung Tau and Ca Mau, and the Central Highlands province of Dak Nong.

The Ho Chi Minh City Market Management Department inspected 88 Con Cung stores in the city and confiscated more than 120,000 products in order to ascertain their origin.

The signs of violation came to light on May 22, when after buying seven baby products in a Con Cung store in Ho Chi Minh Citys Tan Binh District, Truong Dinh Cong Vinh discovered that the original tag of a VND329,000 ($14.50) pink suit coded CF-G127011 was replaced by a CF (Con Cung Fashion) tag indicating Made in Thailand.

Vinh called the firm to clarify the issue, but instead of explaining the origin of the item, Con Cung apologised and gave him a VND1 million ($44.24) voucher. Dissatisfied with the way the firm attempted to sweep the issue under the rug, Vinh sent a letter of complaint to the Vietnam Competition Authority.

I do not mind the firms apology or the compensation, said Vinh. I just want the firm to clarify the issue because the quality of the goods.

On the evening of July 26, Con Cung released a statement detailing information on the origin of the CF-G127011 product. This information included bills, the process used in offering the product to the market, and a letter which confirmed the manufacturers mistake in tags placed on the product batch.

However, Con Cung made no mention of its other products which have been confiscated by the local authorities.
Hanois Transport Department has asked the Ministry of Transport to fix cracks and subsidence that have reappeared on the surface of Thang Long Bridge over the last few months, threatening road safety.-Photo tienphong.vn

Thang Long Bridge, spanning about 3,116 metres, was built with Russian assistance in 1985, crossing the Red River to connect Noi Bai Airport with downtown Hanoi.

The bridge is under the management of the ministrys Directorate for Roads of Vietnam. Since 2009, the ministry wanted to transfer the Bac Thang Long  Noi Bai Route (now known as Vo Van Kiet Street) including Thang Long Bridge to Hanoi for management because of the citys expansion in 2008, the whole route is within Hanois territory, making it an urban road.

However, the transfer was delayed as the bridge was being repaired at that time.

Authorities spent roughly VND100 billion ($4.8 million) on resurfacing the bridge in 2009, but severe cracks have since reappeared.

According to experts, one of the reasons for the poor quality of the road surface is that the rolling and pressing process of the stone mastic asphalt was below 120 degrees Celsius, negatively affecting the surface quality. Rainwater drainage systems have also not worked properly, leading to stagnant water and damaging the bridges surface.

Head of Road Management Department 1 under the directorate Tran Hung Ha told Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper that after the major maintenance in 2009, cracks would reappear on the bridge surface, especially after prolonged rain or heat with temperatures reaching over 40 degrees Celsius.

Under harsh weather conditions, the bridge surface cracks and asphalt concrete breaks, weakening the structure with the weight of vehicles, Ha said.

Last year, about VND1.4 billion was spent on fixing the bridge surface and in 2016, the maintenance cost over VND1 billion, he said.

Hanois hesitation in taking ownership of the bridge is blamed on these high maintenance costs.

Hanoi asked the Transport Ministry and its relevant agencies to examine and fix the bridges surface before handing it over to the city.
A crane loads cargo at Tien Sa Ports container yard in Da Nang. The city plans to develop a logistics complex with total investment of US$620 million.-VNS Photo Cong Thanh

The complex will be located in the northwest part of the city on 312ha with total investment of VND14 trillion (US$620 million).

The decision was announced at the citys peoples council meeting in July. Da Nangs complex will include a series of logistics centres linked by a system of roads and rail lines. The major nodes in the complex will be the newly designed Lien Chieu deep-sea port, Hoa Nhon; the newly built Kim Lien railway station; an airport and hi-tech park with international-standard warehouses; an inland clearance depot railway and entry point to road connections.

Vice chairman of the citys Peoples Committee Dang Viet Dung said the city intended to build the Lien Chieu port as a key entry point into logistics chains providing services for the central and central Highlands regions, as well as the import-export exchange among ASEAN partners via the East-West Economic Corridor (EWEC) that links Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.

We aim to build up Da Nang as a regional logistics centre to meet import and export needs among domestic and foreign direct investment enterprises. Partners in ASEAN could boost trading with Vietnamese businesses along the EWEC transport system and via Da Nang ports, Dung said.

The logistics complex will provide 50 per cent of logistics services via the airport and sea ports and 40 per cent via the railway system by 2050, he said.

He added that a single railway line will be built to connect the Kim Lien cargo railway station with the airport cargo logistics and high-tech park. A road system will link the National Highway No 1 with Lien Chieu port.

General director of Da Nang port joint-stock company Nguyen Huu Sia said the city has potential to develop into a key logistics centre of Viet Nam and ASEAN.

The city is situated in central Vietnam and at a convenient cross-roads of the railway and road system as well as the airport. It sits at the end of the EWEC and near the complexes of industrial parks and economic zones in Thua Thien-Hue, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai and Quang Tri provinces, Sia said.

The city also has a deep-sea port system and well-invested infrastructure in connection with the newly-built Da Nang-Quang Ngai Expressway, the north-south national highway and railway system, he added.

He said the sea port system, which was designed for handling 12 million tonnes of cargo each year, currently hosts 23 cargo ships from 15 shipping agencies from Europe, the US, Hong Kong and Singapore per week.

Tien Sa port alone could allow access to 70,000DWT (deadweight tonnage) ships, 4,000TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) container ships and 150GT (gross tonnage) cruise ships, he added.

Sia said the citys port system, including Tien Sa, Lien Chieu and Son Tra, would handle 29 million tonnes of cargo by 2030, while the ports warehouse could accommodate 500 TEU.

As planned, the city will upgrade Lien Chieu port as an integrated port to ease the overloading at Tien Sa  which will handle mainly cruise ships and fewer cargo ships. Lien Chieu is scheduled to begin operation as a cargo port in 2022.

Sia, however, said that one major challenge was the poor quality of some 1,450km of roads on the EWEC transport corridor. This meant cargo transported via the road system to the Da Nang port was limited. According to a report, only 3 per cent of cargo from the EWEC is cleared via the Da Nang port, while tourism linkages between Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Viet Nam are not yet strong.

According to the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), smoother traffic and procedures on the 1,450km road of EWEC will help Da Nang boost its Regional Gross Domestic Products by 2.29 per cent more than current projections for 2025.

Poor service

Director of the Joint-Stock Transimex-Sai Gon Corporation, Da Nang branch, Nguyen Tan Man said Da Nang and the central region lacked completed logistics centres as well as international standard storage.

We have not yet seen logistics providers that could supply comprehensive services from manufacturing and cargo management to forwarding to final consumers in Da Nang and the central region, Man said.

The local logistics companies could only handle part of logistics chains such as transport, customs clearance or warehouse service only. Thats the reason big investors still hesitate to pour funds into the region, or they (investors) have to use logistics service from foreign companies, he said, adding that local logistics companies operated as sub-contractors of logistics service from foreign logistics companies.

Man also pointed out that the number of international standard warehouses in Da Nang and central Vietnam is small. There are only four or five warehouses with total capacity of 60,000 tonnes (meeting just five per cent of demand).

Meanwhile, unloading services at ports in the region are seen as still poor with 10 to 15 minutes needed for unloading a container, compared to only five minutes in HCM City.

He also said logistics companies had few choices for ports in the central region as Da Nang was seen as the only key port where container ships can dock.

Man said his company had invested VND80 billion ($3.5 million) to build the first international standard cold/chilled storage space at Hoa Cam Industrial Zone (IZ), serving local and FDI investors in the region with a high quality warehouse for worldwide exports.

The tailor-made SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) storage also provides various logistics services of air and sea freight, bulk cargo and trucks in connection with the trading route in the East-West Economic Corridor and a system of deep sea ports at Tien Sa and Lien Chieu, as well as airports.

According to Chairman of Vietnam Logistics Association (VLA) Le Huy Hiep the central region has 20 deep sea ports, but the system only handles 55.5 million tonnes of cargo  13 per cent of the countrys sea ports per year.

There are only 40 foreign shipping companies in Vietnam, accounting for only 5 per cent of the countrys total number of shipping firms, but they transport up to nearly 90 per cent of Vietnamese import and exports, mostly to Europe, the US, the Middle East and Africa.

Production capacity in industrial zones (IZs) across the region has not yet developed to supply enough cargo for logistics businesses.

According to Yoshitaka Kurihara, senior advisor to the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) HCM City Office, chaotic road traffic, slow rail traffic, a shortage of warehouse space and poor condition of seaports preclude investment.

As scheduled, Da Nang has been working with Japanese consultants to develop the first stage of the Lien Chieu Port at an estimated cost of US$247 million.

It is expected that the Lien Chieu Port, which currently handles 50,000 DWT (deadweight tonnage) container ships, will be able to handle 100,000 DWT ships with a loading capacity of 8,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEUs) starting from 2025.
Pham Cong Chinh, the founder of Tam Khoe

Promoting the aquaponic model

Pham Cong Chinh has just flown to Singapore, where he met with a business partner. The two sides are about to sign a cooperation agreement. After more than three years of operations, his company has found a financial investor with an investment value of nearly VND50 billion ($2.2 million).

All of Chinhs business decisions usually come after careful consideration. Sometimes, potential financial investors set profit margins beyond their capacity, forcing project leaders to choose whether to continue or refuse. I did not find investors, they found me. During the process, I had to refuse many offers, Chinh said.

After a period of studying and experimenting with three production methodsaquaponics, hydroponics, and organicsChinh chose to use the first, an integrated system that combines growing vegetables and raising fish based on natural production principles.

Elaborating on his chosen method, Chinh described it as an automatic, indoors, organic, hydroponic vegetable growing and fish raising system with three nos: no land use, no fertiliser use, and no need for watering, but still producing green vegetables and fresh fish.

Water from the aquaculture system is fed into the hydroponic system, where the by-products are broken down by nitrifying bacteria, initially into nitrites and subsequently into nitrates that are utilised by the plants as nutrients. The water is then re-circulated into the aquaculture system.

This ensures that the producers do not use any chemicals during production. If they do, the fish will die immediately, Chinh said.

His company, Tam Khoe, is making efforts to expand its material growing areas and to control product quality.

In fact, the supply volume to feed the markets needs has yet to be stabilised. Some days, only several hundred kilogrammes of products are sold, while sales might reach dozens of tonnes on other days, depending on product types and customers, who consist of retail consumers and supermarket chains.

There are also multiple opportunities for Tam Khoe to increase the exports of its products, as the company has orders to export several hundred tonnes of products per week to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia.

Pham Cong Chinh is proud of the technologies currently in use at the farm, particularly those related to tracing products origins, a decisive requirement for the products to be chosen by export partners.

Pham Cong Chinh is proud of the technologies currently in use at the farm, particularly those related to tracing products origins, a decisive requirement for the products to be chosen by export partners.

The company is perfecting its product standards and linkage chains in packaging to be able to export about 100 tonnes of tomatoes a week to Singapore.

Building a prestigious agricultural brand

The largest hindrance for a stage director to act as a businessman does not lie in accounting or finding suitable growth strategies, as to tackle these issues, one only needs to recruit good people, Chinh said.

I have employed an US expert to fill the post of financial director. What caused me headaches at the start was pests and how to make bioproduce, while I had no trouble finding the people to fill empty posts in the system, Chinh shared.

Chinh majored in cultural works management, acted as a stage director for several programmes, and later established a media firm which failed after a while.

In the end, Chinh found that agriculture fit him the most and was his passion.

Initially, Chinh built Tam Khoe with just 1,000sq.m of land in Binh Chanh District of Ho Chi Minh City. The brand has been developing quickly and now covers about 400ha of agricultural land (including aligned and self production) in various provinces and municipalities.

Initially, Chinh reached his customers by giving the products to his friends and neighbours for trial use for more than a month. As of now, his company has more than 3,000 retail customers with order values averaging VND300,000 ($13) three times a week from each, in addition to corporate customers.

This year, Tam Khoe is set to slash all intermediate phases as well as accept low profits to expand its customer base.

Delivery is also a thorny issue to Tam Khoe, as it affects the products freshness and customers trust.

I am mulling over either building a specialised delivery team or outsourcing the service, Chinh said.

His ultimate target is to build a prestigious agricultural produce brand. In the not-too-distant future he also aims to diversify the product range to include fruit juice as well as dried and pickled items in a ready-to-eat form.

Chinh said a new push is needed to spur Tam Khoes growth, and he welcomes mergers and acquisitions in order to bring his companys brand value to new heights.
Agribank has an IPO roadmap in 2019.- Photo vietnamfinance.vn

At a recent forum on mergers and acquisitions (M&A), Hue said that many foreign banks are also interested in M&A deals with weak domestic banks.

The Vietnamese Government was speeding up the resolution and restructuring of the countrys credit institutions, Hue said, adding that for commercial banks, the Government encouraged the M&A of small-sized banks into large-sized ones as the number of banks in Viet Nam is still quite large and a reduction is inevitable.

Earlier, the Government also said that it expected restructuring of the banking sector through more M&A would help Viet Nam have several major banks in the Southeast Asian region by 2021.

Besides, Hue said, the Government will organise the equitisation and divestment of State-owned banks in the future.

According to Hue, Agribank - one of Viet Nams largest banks - has an initial public offering (IPO) roadmap set for 2019 while the Government also plans to reduce the State capital at the two large banks of BIDV and Vietcombank through share sales to foreign and domestic investors.

We have negotiated with some banks and partners who are interested in the deals, " Hue said.

After a long period of staying quiet about M&A, some banks, including healthy ones, have recently revealed plans involving M&A.

At this years annual general meeting of shareholders in April, LienVietPostBank said that it was considering raising the charter capital, restructuring shareholders, completing a merger.

According to experts, M&A is an opportunity for banks to enhance financial capacity, expand markets and reach scale to achieve stronger growth. Besides, thanks to M&A, the Government does not have to exert much effort to handle the consequences of weak banks and help stabilise the financial market.
Within a very short period, locals in Xuan Dinh suburban area, about 10 kilometres from Hanoi city centre, witnessed the opening of four VinMart+ stores owned by local giant Vingroup.

We have a lot more choice for shopping now, local housewife Nguyen Thi Mui told VIR. I often go to traditional markets to buy goods, but now I can also visit a VinMart+ store near my house.

Mui is just one of thousands of Xuan Dinh residents visiting the stores every day, where they can buy thousands of items. A few months ago, no modern store like VinMart+ could be found in the area.

VinMart+ said that it opens more than 50 new stores every month across the nation. The firm currently has more than 1,000 stores nationwide.

Also in racing to open convenient stores, Vietnamese retailer Saigon Co.op, within single week last month inaugurated five Co.op Food stores in Hanoi, raising the total number of its stores in the city to 233. The first Co.op Food store in Hanoi was opened in last November.

Currently, Saigon Co.op also has nearly 100 supermarkets nationwide.

Retail stores have been popping up across Vietnam as purchasing power rises

According to the General Statistics Office (GSO), VinMart+ and Saigon Co.op are not the only firms expanding operations in the wholesale and retail sector, which sits atop the GSOs seven-month list of sectors with the most newly-established enterprises.

Specifically, since the beginning of the year, there were about about 25,700 newly-established wholesale and retail businesses in Vietnam, accounting for 33.9 per cent of the total newly-founded enterprises.

Many major retailers have also decided to expand their operations in the country during the months. Japans AEON Group has recently commenced the construction of a $180 million mall in the northeastern port city of Haiphong. The 9.3 hectare project is expected to become operational in 2020.

In March 2018, AEON also began construction of its mall in Hanois Hadong District, with the total capital of about $90.4 billion. This is the second AEON mall in Hanoi, and the fifth in Vietnam.

Meanwhile Japans 7-Eleven is said to be planning to open 100 stores in three years and 1,000 stores in the coming decade in Vietnam after entering the market mid-2017.

South Koreas Lotte Mart was also reported to plan opening 60 stores in Vietnam by 2020, while its compatriot GS25 will also open 2,500 stores in 10 years after launching its first shop in Ho Chi Minh City in late 2017.

According to the Korea Chamber of Business in Vietnam, foreign enterprises are finding ways to approach the Vietnamese retail market via mergers and acquisitions with local firms, such as the ones between Lotte and Bibica, CJ and Cau Tre, F&N and Vinamilk, Masan and Vissan, Vingroup and Ocean Retail, and Central Group and Casino Group.

The GSO also reported that during the first seven months of this year, the huge domestic purchasing power has enabled total revenue from retail sales and services to grow by 11.1 per cent on-year, the highest climb during the period since 2014, to a total of nearly VND2.5 quadrillion ($110.62 billion).

Vietnam also received more than nine million international tourist arrivals in the period, up 25.4 per cent on-year, which also greatly contributed to the rise in total retail service revenue.

According to a recently released survey conducted by Thailands Kasikornbank in April 2018, Vietnam is forecast to be the fastest-growing convenience market in Asia by 2021, with the growth rate of 37.4 per cent for 2017-2021.

Under the survey, many domestic retailers were found to have a big number of stores, including Vietnams VinMart+ (1,000), the US Circle K (264), Japans FamilyMart (165), Thailands Bs mart (154), and Malaysias Shop & Go (107).

The survey also stated that the Vietnamese online retail market currently accounts for only 1.3 per cent of the total retail market value. However, it looks promising, with a 22 per cent annual growth rate and its turnover is expected to reach $3.7 billion in 2020.

Currently, Vietnam has a population of 96 million people, with nearly 1,800 convenience stores.
HCM City households have been encouraged to install rooftop solar panels and now there are 475 connected to its grid with total capacity of nearly 5.3MW.-Photo thanhnien.vn

Due to its climate and population, HCM City is the biggest electricity consumer in Vietnam, Pham Quoc Bao, deputy general director of the corporation, was quoted as saying by the Government website.

In the first half of this year demand increased by 7 per cent year-on-year, he said.

The corporation has exhorted consumers to save electricity by turning off all unnecessary devices.

To prevent overloading the grid, it has warned them not to use many devices at the same time, especially during peak hours.

In 2016 17 the city saved 800 million kWh, equivalent to VND1.5 trillion (US$66.6 million) under an electricity saving programme.

The corporation is also persuading residents to install and use solar energy.

It is renewable, eternal, and environmental friendly energy, Bao added.

Solar energy does not create noise or smoke, costs nothing to generate and maintenance costs little.

Besides, people can sell their surplus solar energy.

The corporation therefore connects consumers solar energy systems with the electrical grid and instals two-way meters for free.

With these meters, electricity company staff can measure both the electricity that consumers draw from the grid and the power they sell to it.

It pays them VND2,000 (9.35 cent) per kWh.

The corporation has also set up solar panels at its 16 subsidiaries headquarters, and plans to expand it by installing them at all its offices.

It has urged the Ministries of Industry and Trade and Finance to create a legal framework for signing electricity buying contracts with customers.

It has asked the city Peoples Committee to instruct industrial parks, processing zones, high-tech parks, schools, hospitals, and all State offices to instal solar panels.
Pham Thai Lai

Siemens was officially established in Vietnam in 1993, but its influence in the country dates back to 1979, when the company supplied and installed two industrial steam turbines at Bai Bang Paper Mill. Siemens now has three Vietnamese offices located in Hanoi, Danang, and Ho Chi Minh City, together with a manufacturing site in the southern province of Binh Duong.

Since our establishment, Siemens has successfully participated in numerous infrastructure projects within Vietnam and we are currently a market and innovation leader in the fields of power and gas, energy management, power generation services, mobility, building technologies, digital factory, process industries and drives, as well as in healthcare.

Siemens has been contributing extensively to the development of Vietnams energy sector and is helping to solve the threat of power shortages by participating in a number of important power projects, including the 740-megawatt Phu My 3 combined cycle power plant (CCPP), the 1,500MW Ca Mau 1 and 2 CCPP, and the 750MW Nhon Trach 2 CCPP.

In 2017, Siemens and Gamesa combined business ventures to shape the wind- energy landscape of tomorrow and to create one of the worlds largest wind power companies. Currently, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy is installing and commissioning the Dam Nai wind farm with 39 MW, with the completion target set to be mid-2019.

Last Friday in Hanoi, Siemens celebrated its 25th anniversary of official presence in Vietnam with about 300 stakeholders

Last month, Siemens won a contract to supply systems to Trung Nam Group in Vietnam and to put the countrys largest solar farm into operation. The farm is Siemens first solar project in Southeast Asia, and has a capacity of 204 megawatts-peak. The project will deliver up to 425 gigawatt-hours per year. This is enough to supply approximately 200,000 households with electricity and saves around 250,000 tonnes of CO2.

Siemens is one of the leading suppliers of power transmission and distribution in Vietnam. Thousands of 110kV substations, hundreds of 220kV substation, and dozens of 500kV substations are being equipped with Siemens high-medium voltage products. Some of the 500kV substations include Doc Soi, Quang Ninh, Song May, and Son La.

We are also the leading company in the area of automation in Vietnam. Our automation solutions have helped customers in water treatment, food and beverage, paper, cement, machinery, chemical, metal, and other industries to assist in the enhancement of their productivity, energy efficiency, and flexibility, while at the same time mitigating the impact on the environment. For example, Siemens Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) helps Vietnamese customers reduce engineering time by 30-50 per cent, significantly decreasing costs and increasing energy savings. Siemens provides the integrated drive system for Thu Duc 3 Water Plant, helping to mitigate the water pressure for four outer districts and parts of two central districts in Ho Chi Minh City, especially during the dry season. Recently, we executed a modernisation process for Saigon New Port, which helps our clients to increase the efficiency of their operational fleet.

Siemens Building Technologies Building Management System (BMS), which has outstanding features in energy efficiency, security, safety, and convenience, has been installed in many large construction projects throughout Vietnam. These include Bitexco Financial Tower in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi Museum, and My Dinh National Stadium. Most recently, Siemens supplied the BMS and fire alarm system for the German House in Ho Chi Minh Cityone of the most sustainable office buildings in Vietnam.

In terms of the mobility sector, Siemens has successfully implemented a number of projects, including the design and supply of 16 diesel-electric locomotives to Vietnam Railways, the supply of airfield lighting systems to Noi Bai Airport in Hanoi as well as Lien Khuong Airport in Lam Dong, and the provision of the material handling system to Tan Son Nhat Airport in Ho Chi Minh City. Siemens mass transit systems can help to address the growing demand for transportation in densely populated cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, with Siemens Intelligent Transportation System assisting in reducing traffic problems in these cities.

Siemens Healthineers is considered the leading supplier of diagnostic and imaging equipment in the healthcare sector, providing high-quality medical services at an affordable price for hospitals and clinics in Vietnam, as well as enabling more efficient diagnoses and more effective treatments. Every year, thousands of doctors and healthcare practitioners are trained in clinical talks and continuing medical education courses organised by Siemens Healthineers.

Notably, Siemens AG has established a hub of qualified Vietnamese staff to work in site management, construction, commission, and quality control for Siemens power projects worldwide. So far, more than 20 Vietnamese engineers have been recruited and trained to work at 33 power plant projects in 19 countries worldwide.

Siemens commits to being a good corporate citizen in Vietnam. We advance engineering and manufacturing education and training in Vietnam by helping establish automation training centres, donating large amounts of equipment, and providing free software to many technical universities countrywide. In 2011, through the Higher Engineering Education Alliance Programme, Siemens provided software with a commercial value of $71 million for five technology-based universities in Vietnam. 200 Solid Edge licences have recently been granted by Siemens to Hanoi University of Science and Technology with a commercial value of approximately $6 million.

Siemens has also been supporting Vietnamese universities with training kits, curriculum development, technical workshops, and career talks, especially in introducing the Industry 4.0 concept. We are working closely with our customers to train and develop their workforce for the journey to becoming a digital enterprise. Were also a thought leader on emerging topics such as Industry 4.0, sustainable energy, and smart cities. Last year, in co-operation with the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the German Embassy in Vietnam, we organised a series of conferences about these topics and attracted much attention from related stakeholders.

Over a period of nearly three decades, Siemens Vietnam has been receiving valuable support from the Vietnamese and German governments. Particularly, in July 2017, we had the honour to welcome Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on a visit to our gas turbine factory in Berlin. This factory produces the largest gas turbines in the world, including those provided to Ca Mau 1 and 2 and Nhon Trach 2 power plants in Vietnam.

2018 marks an important milestone in our history in Vietnam as we celebrate our 25th anniversary of official presence. We are proud to be able to support Vietnam in improving the quality of life, propelling economic development, fostering human capital and innovation, and sustaining the environment. We have created sustainable values for our customers, for our employees, and society to build a better life for everybody. We make real what matters to Vietnam.

By Pham Thai Lai - President and CEO, Siemens Vietnam
The National Salary Council proposed increasing the minimum wage by 5.3 per cent. Photo: VTV.vn

On August 13, the National Salary Council organised the third meeting to discuss increasing regional minimum wages in 2019. After discussions, the authorities and representatives of employers and employees reached a compromise at the rate of 5.3 per cent, equalling an average of VND175,000 ($7.74) per month. The National Salary Council will seek the governments approval.

Once the 5.3 per cent is approved by the government, the minimum wage of Region I will increase by VND200,000 ($8.84) per month, while the raise will be VND180,000 ($7.96) in Region II and VND160,000 ($7.07) in Region III and IV.

Previously, at the first meeting, the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL) proposed increasing the regional minimum wage by 8 per cent, equalling VND220,000-330,000 ($9.55-14.32) per month.

Meanwhile, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) proposed not to increase the regional minimum wage at all.

At the second meeting, the parties changed their stances. Accordingly, VCCI proposed an increase of 2 per cent, while the Vietnam Cooperative Alliance requested 4 per cent.

In December 2017, the government issued Decree No.141/2017/ND-CP, amending the regional minimum wage for workers employed under a labour contract. Accordingly, the minimum wage was officially increased from January 1, 2018 by an extra VND180,000-230,000 ($8.07-10.13), depending on the region.
These Novaland projects are Can Tho Marina serving passengers, cargo, and tourists on 3.5 hectares in Ninh Kieu District and Con Son Tourism Area, located on 74.4 hectares in Binh Thuy District.

The Can Tho Peoples Committee signs the MOU with representatives from investors, including Novaland

The MoU was signed at the 2018 Investment Promotion Conference of Can Tho in the presence of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and representatives from central and local authorities as well as international organisations such as the World Bank and the trade promotion centres of Japan and South Korea.

According to Bui Xuan Huy, general director of Novaland, different economic sectors need to cooperate to make the 13 cities and provinces in the Mekong Delta in general and Can Tho in particular an attractive tourism destination.

We are now negotiating and going to sign management contracts with world-leading operators like Marriott, Wyndham, Novotel, and Banyan Tree to manage Novalands tourism projects in the coming time, Huy said.

He added that Novaland is cooperating with its consultant Boston Consulting Group and leaders of other provinces of the Mekong Delta to find suitable tourism models which can combine local advantages and elevate the region to international standard while keeping the environment pristine and local cultural characteristics undisturbed.

Previously, in March 2018, Novaland, the Can Tho Peoples Committee, Boston Consulting Group, and MB Bank signed a strategic agreement to implement a project named Development of the Mekong Deltas Tourism Sector for Climate Change Adaptation.

2018 is the first year Novaland joins tourism and resort projects. The group has also recently opened Azerai Can Thoits first resort project in Vietnam.

Azerai Can Tho, Novaland's strong first step into tourism in Vietnam.

The group plans to develop several tourism projects in other provinces with great tourism potential such as Dong Nai, Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Danang, Phan Thiet-Binh Thuan, Cam Ranh-Khanh Hoa, Phu Yen, Quy Nhon-Binh Dinh, and Dalat-Lam Dong.
CJ CGV Vietnam operates Viet Nams largest multiplex cinema, CGV-Photo vov.vn

CJ CGV Vietnam operates Viet Nams largest multiplex cinema, CGV.

On Wednesday, Phuong Nam Cultural Corporation (PNC) sent a written notice to the General Meeting of Shareholders to consult them about the sale of its capital in CJ CGV Vietnam.

The decision to sell comes in the wake of financial distress faced by the corporation. PNC will announce consultation results on August 27, tinnhanhchungkhoan.vn reports.

As of June 31, PNC owned a 20 per cent stake in CGV. However, on June 28th, PNC shareholders approved the sale of 12.5 per cent of CGV Vietnam shares to Black Diamond Investment Joint Stock Company, reducing Phuong Nams holding to 7.5 per cent.

The sales aim to help PNC pay off its debt. By the end of the second quarter of this year, PNCs liabilities amounted to VND 548.7 billion, 93 per cent of its total capital, of which the short-term loans borrowed from Cross Junction Investment was VND161 billion.

PNC has suffered accumulated losses of more than VND98.3 billion.
PV Power chairman Ho Cong Ky addressing the meeting with its partners and advisors

PetroVietnam Power Corporation (PV Power) last week met with advisors, partners, and local and foreign banks to introduce its latest project series on liquefied natural gas (LNG). Attendees included senior representatives from the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and Vietnams state-run oil and gas group PetroVietnam.

PV Power CEO Nguyen Xuan Hoa stated that between 2018 and 2022, PV Power will focus on building the Nhon Trach 3 and 4 thermal power plants in Ong Keo Industrial Zone in the southern province of Dong Nai, while its sister company, PV Gas, takes responsibility for LNG in its Thi Vai storage terminal.

Based on the approved plan, the Thi Vai storage terminal will begin operations in the second quarter of 2022, while the Nhon Trach plants will begin operations in late 2022 or early 2023. Hoa hoped that the two projects would pave the way for maturation of Vietnams LNG industry, which is still in its infancy.

The Nhon Trach 3 and 4 plants are the first power factories in Vietnam to use imported LNG, Hoa said. These two plants will help the southern region of Vietnam combat the chronic problem of energy shortage and diversify sources of power. He added that LNG could gradually reduce the use of and eventually replace coal, which is known to cause environmental pollution.

At the meeting, speakers from PV Gas, Poyry, SS&A, and Citibank also gave their thoughts on power projects that use imported LNG, providing examples and sharing experiences. Topics discussed included how to raise capital for these projects, the right kind of turbines to be used, and how to execute the project smoothly.

As a major shareholder at both PV Gas and PV Power, PetroVietnam promised to do anything in its power to help the two subsidiaries. Nguyen Tien Vinh, a board member at PetroVietnam, emphasised that they would ensure that the two projects will be carried out on time and in sync, as this is crucial to the success of this project.

In March, PV Power announced that the two thermal power plants, which cover an area of 34 hectares, will need VND33.3 trillion ($1.47 billion) of financing. The generation capacity for each plant ranges from 750 to 800 megawatts.
Renkon is also a venture of Indochina Capital, one of the leading property developers in Vietnam.

Located in Ho Chi Minh Citys District 1, Renkon represents a bold new movement in the Vietnamese hospitality scene.

Renkon brings stylish Izakaya dining to Ho Chi Minh City

Raising the benchmark for local dining, this modern iteration of the traditional Japanese izakaya brings together premium food and drink, upbeat service, curated hip-hop, and world-class design in a friendly gastropub ambience on par with Asias best drinking and dining venues.

Literally a shop to stay and drink sake, izakaya are lively and informal Japanese bars popular for after-work drinks. Renkon brings a contemporary local interpretation of the concept to Saigon.

Designed by celebrated architect Sean Dix, whose past projects include Hong Kongs Yardbird and Ho Lee Fook, Renkons interiors combine raw concrete and blonde wood to create a striking brutalist aesthetic.

Renkon is more than a restaurant: its a piece of art, said co-founder of The Eight Four Collective, Michael Piro.

It challenges the notion that neighborhood dining in Vietnam must be cheap and cheerful, bringing together all the best elementsa passionate service culture, high-quality food and drinks, great music, beautiful design, and a fun, lively atmosphere. It pays tribute to old Vietnam, but embraces modernised values, raising the standard of local F&B to an international level, said Piro.

The Eight Four Collective chose the name Renkon, a derivation of the Japanese word for lotus root, symbolising the groups deep connection to Vietnam. As the flagship project, Renkon also represents the foundation of The Collectives upcoming developments.

Renkon is the Collectives second project to date, following Sake Central Saigon. A third project, the Japanese-inspired lounge and cocktail bar Irusu, is set to open later this year.
Companies from around the world attend the Vietnam Manufacturing Expo

According to Capgeminis Digital Transformation Institute, in the next five years, smart factories may contribute as much as $500 billion in added value to the global economy. Smart technologies offer a significant competitive advantage for manufacturers, allowing them to increase output, quality, and consistency. But they are not easy to implement.

Suttisak Wilanan, deputy managing director of exhibition organiser Reed Tradex, said, 76 per cent of manufacturers have an ongoing smart factory initiative or are working towards one, and only 14 per cent are satisfied with their level of success.

However, manufacturers should not feel overwhelmed, especially in a country in the early stages of manufacturing development like Vietnam, and those embarking on their journey should not change too much too soon or do so without the proper counsel, he added.

This year, the Vietnam Manufacturing Expo saw the participation of over 200 leading brands and experts in the industry, with four international pavilions from Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and Taiwan.

The term smart factory denotes a range of manufacturing technologies that fuse the physical and digital worlds, with breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, metrology, and 3D printing seen as the main drivers.

Universal Robots, the worlds first company to successfully produce commercial collaborative robots (or cobots), joined the Vietnam Manufacturing Expo 2018 with the intent of introducing a robot that could serve as a tool for factory workers.

Shermine Gotfredsen, general manager of Universal Robots in Southeast Asia and Oceania said, A cobot is a robot designed to collaborate with human workers. Beyond their innate Industry 4.0 compatibility, cobots have played a major role in enabling companies that might not have been able to afford industrial robots to start automating their processes. Because they are versatile, easy to programme, small, lightweight, and affordable, cobots are being deployed at small- and medium-sized enterprises, to retrofit older factories belonging to companies that might not be in a position to build a turnkey Industry 4.0 facility, and at companies of all sizes in developing countries.

By democratising robotic automation in this way, cobots will help companies everywhere join the latest wave of automation, even if they are not ready to go all the way to Industry 4.0 solutions, according to Universal Robots.

She added, Some manufacturers have had mechanical systems in place for over 50 years. In an increasingly competitive industry, it is important that manufacturers replace outdated machinery, not just upgrade it. For the reason, we decided to co-operate with Reed Tradex to hold a Cobot Showcase at the Expo 2018 to help Vietnamese manufacturers get better understanding of cobots, their capacities, and how to apply them in production chain in the most efficient, economical, and safe way.

Hoang Van Tan, country sales manager of Creatz3D Pte Ltd., emphasised the role of 3D printing in the era of Industry 4.0, saying, Currently, design and rapid prototyping are two of main processes that benefit from 3D printing. It also useful in low-volume production.

As speed, quality, and materials improve, those that exploit the new possibilities will be the winners. The 3D printing of today has already gone beyond prototyping. 3D printing allows manufacturers to speed up engineering and design cycle, creating a whole new manufacturing possibility: desktop manufacturing. 3D printing should be considered a brand new, disrupting technology on the level of personal computing or smartphones.

Initially, industrial 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM), mainly created visual and functional prototypes and made repeatability easier, enabling endless duplication of parts that require the utmost precision. 3D printing has grown into a $6.06 billion industry, grew by 17.4 per cent in worldwide revenue in 2016, and boasts a footprint in a wide span of industries. With its huge potential in terms of customisation and the ability to keep zero products in stock, 3D printing is considered a central element of Industry 4.0.

Metrology technology is another critical technology showcased to support the concept of smart factories at Vietnam Manufacturing Expo 2018. Nguyen Thanh Dat, sales manager of Keyence Vietnam Co., Ltd., said, Metrology technology is applied with process control techniques to ensure that a machining process is within specifications and that the resulting part meets the design requirements of fit, form, and function.

He believed that it is time for Vietnamone of the most promising markets in the ASEAN region for manufacturing and industrial worksto prepare to meet the ever-changing demands of the market. There is a need for more new requirements for human capital in the wake of Industry 4.0. A nurtured and invested, tech-savvy population will be equipped to operate IoT technologies or smart factories that are deployed in various business operations, Dat said.
The Tra Vinh Province Peoples Committee has given the go-ahead to three investors to build the Hiep Thanh Wind Power Plant with a total investment of VND3.37 trillion (US$146 million).-Photo nld.com.vn

The plant has a design capacity of 78MW from 18-19 turbines, and covers an area of more than 2,700ha in the coastal commune of Hiep Thanh in Duyen Hai Town in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta.

The investors are Ha Noi-based Ecotech Viet Nam, a renewable energy company, Singapore-based Janakuasa Pte Ltd, and Tra Vinh-based Ecotech company.

The plant is the fourth wind energy project receiving in-principle investment approval, according to the provinces Management Board of Economic Zones.
Abundance of fake labels

Fake clothing labels on sale on Shopee

As labels play a great part in determining the origins and the price of goods, small traders often enter into co-operation with label manufacturers to slap the labels of famous fashion brands or Vietnamese exports on their products.

Clothes labeled this way can then be sold for dozens of times more than otherwise, but at the same time, it goes at the expense of customer confidence. However, fake labels are rampant in the market with extremely cheap prices.

Just by searching purchasing clothing labels on Google and e-commerce platforms like Lazada and Shopee, thousands of results pop up immediately. Accordingly, the price of labels depends on the material and the popularity of the brand in question.

On Hang Bo Street (Hoan Kiem District) it is not hard to find garment stores specialised in selling labels from Zara, H&M, Adidas, and others, with prices going from VND300,000 to VND1 million ($13.2-44.2) for more than 1,000 labels.

In addition to neck labels, stores on e-commerce platforms also sell batch mark labels, which provide information on the clothing materials and user guidance. Accordingly, one cotton roll including 3,000 labels fetches VND500,000-700,000 ($22.1-30.9) and one satin roll goes for about VND1 million ($44.2).

Limited choices for shopping

Even giants like Con Cung and Khaisilk have been hit with label frauds, and high-quality and original goods remain an expensive luxury for shopperswhich, after Khaisilk, is not even guarantee anymore. A large number of consumers, especially young people who have limited finances, are coming to accept the situation.

Ngoc Mai (Hung Yen province) told VIR: I know that the goods are fake, but I still buy them because I need them.

Nhu Uyen (Danang) said, There are so many fake goods on the market, how do I even know what is counterfeit and what is genuine?

Minh Ha (Danang) said, As long as the designs are beautiful, the clothes fit me well, and the prices are reasonable, fake goods and counterfeits are fine.

More than three years after the Market Surveillance Agency seized millions of fake labels at Ninh Hiep market (Hanois Gia Lam District), the related proceedings are still on-going.

At the Ministry of Industry and Trades 2017 Review Conference held on January 26 this year, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai said that the abilities and specialist knowledge of the Market Surveillance Agencys divisions are unequal to the task. The agencys force is too small to effectively roll back the violations going on such a massive scale.

Lawyer Kieu Anh Vu from KAV Law Firm told VIR that the violations should draw administrative fines of VND30 million ($1,327) and VND45 million ($1,991), in accordance with Decree No.185/2013/ND-CPs Article 13 and Article 14 on selling and producing counterfeit labels and packages.

The fines are simply not high enough because the profit earned from the violations may be much higher than the fines. Civil proceedings in such cases are difficult because it is hard to prove the violation, Vu added.
Simona Halep of Romania watches the ball against Sloane Stephens in the final of the Rogers Cup. (Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images/AFP)

In a gruelling 2hr 41min battle, French Open champion Halep prevailed 7-6 (8/6), 3-6, 6-4 over Stephens in a repeat of the duo's meeting in the final of Roland Garros earlier this year.

The victory was Halep's 18th career title and her second in Montreal following her success in 2016.

The 26-year-old sealed the win with an ace on her fourth match point, capping an enthralling duel marked by several momentum swings.

Halep had taken the first set on a tie-break, after saving four set points against American third seed Stephens.

Halep made the stronger start, dictating rallies from the baseline to race into a 4-1 lead after twice breaking Stephens in the opening five games.

Yet reigning US Open champion Stephens rallied superbly to claw her way back into the contest, breaking twice to level at 4-4.

That however proved to be the cue for Halep to respond, breaking back after a net cord sat up invitingly for the Romanian, who crushed a winner into the corner for 5-4.

Another poor service game from Halep though gave the initiative back to Stephens, who broke for 5-5 and then held for a 6-5 lead.

Stephens appeared to be closing in on the first set in the next game, when a wild forehand from Halep - her 20th unforced error - handed her opponent two set points.

But Halep dug deep to save both points and then forced the tie-break.

Stephens again looked to be on the brink of the first set after surging into a 5-1 lead which soon became 6-4 in the tiebreak.

But once again the American was unable to seal the deal, Halep recovering to win the next four points for 8-6.

Stephens responded brilliantly in the second set however, breaking Halep twice in the first three games before advancing into a 5-3 lead.

Once again though Stephens appeared to be on her way to squandering the momentum, wasting three set points in the ninth game before finally converting her to force a decisive third set.

Both players traded early breaks in the decider before Halep secured the 13th break of the match in the fifth game for a 3-2 lead.

A hold left her 4-2 up and she bagged another break in the seventh game to go 5-2 ahead when Stephens wearily duffed a straightforward volley into the net.

Stephens refused to go quietly though, saving a match point before breaking for 5-3, and then saving two more match points to hold.

Halep was not to be denied however, thumping down an ace to seal a memorable win on her next service game.
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A region that holds one of the biggest concentrations of people on Earth could be pushing against the boundaries of habitability by the latter part of this century, a new study shows. Research has shown that beyond a certain threshold of temperature and humidity, a person cannot survive unprotected in the open for extended periods  as, for example, farmers must do.

Now, a new MIT study shows that unless drastic measures are taken to limit climate-changing emissions, Chinas most populous and agriculturally important region could face such deadly conditions repeatedly, suffering the most damaging heat effects, at least as far as human life is concerned, of any place on the planet.

The study shows that the risk of deadly heat waves is significantly increased because of intensive irrigation in this relatively dry but highly fertile region, known as the North China Plain  a region whose role in that country is comparable to that of the Midwest in the U.S. That increased vulnerability to heat arises because the irrigation exposes more water to evaporation, leading to higher humidity in the air than would otherwise be present and exacerbating the physiological stresses of the temperature.

The new findings, by Elfatih Eltahir at MIT and Suchul Kang at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, are reported in the journal Nature Communications. The study is the third in a set; the previous two projected increases of deadly heat waves in the Persian Gulf area and in South Asia.

While the earlier studies found serious looming risks, the new findings show that the North China Plain, or NCP, faces the greatest risks to human life from rising temperatures of any location on Earth, Eltahir said:

The response is significantly larger than the corresponsing response in the other two regions.

The three regions the researchers studied were picked because past records indicate that combined temperature and humidity levels reached greater extremes there than on any other land masses. Although some risk factors are clear  low-lying valleys and proximity to warm seas or oceans  we dont have a general quantitative theory through which we could have predicted the location of these global hotspots, he explains. When looking empirically at past climate data: Asia is what stands out, he says.

Although the Persian Gulf study found some even greater temperature extremes, those were confined to the area over the water of the Gulf itself, not over the land. In the case of the North China Plain: This is where people live, Eltahir says. The key index for determining survivability in hot weather, Eltahir explains, involves the combination of heat and humidity as determined by a measurement called the wet-bulb temperature.

It is measured by literally wrapping wet cloth around the bulb (or sensor) of a thermometer so that evaporation of the water can cool the bulb. At 100 percent humidity, with no evaporation possible, the wet-bulb temperature equals the actual temperature. This measurement reflects the effect of temperature extremes on a person in the open, which depends on the bodys ability to shed heat through the evaporation of sweat from the skin.

At a wet-bulb temperature of 35C (95F), a healthy person may not be able to survive outdoors for more than six hours, research has shown. The new study shows that under business-as-usual scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions, that threshold will be reached several times in the NCP region between 2070 and 2100.

This spot is just going to be the hottest spot for deadly heat waves in the future, especially under climate change, Eltahir says.

And signs of that future have already begun: There has been a substantial increase in extreme heat waves in the NCP already in the last 50 years, the study shows. Warming in this region over that period has been nearly double the global average  0.24 degrees Celsius per decade versus 0.13. In 2013, extreme heat waves in the region persisted for up to 50 days, and maximum temperatures topped 38C in places.

Major heat waves occurred in 2006 and 2013, breaking records. Shanghai, East Chinas largest city, broke a 141-year temperature record in 2013, and dozens died. To arrive at their projections, Eltahir and Kang ran detailed climate model simulations of the NCP area  which covers about 4,000 square kilometers  for the past 30 years.

They then selected only the models that did the best job of matching the actual observed conditions of the past period, and used those models to project the future climate over 30 years at the end of this century. They used two different future scenarios: business as usual, with no new efforts to reduce emissions; and moderate reductions in emissions, using standard scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Each version was run two different ways: one including the effects of irrigation, and one with no irrigation. One of the surprising findings was the significant contribution by irrigation to the problem  on average, adding about a half-degree Celsius to the overall warming in the region that would occur otherwise.

Thats because, even though extra moisture in the air produces some local cooling effect at ground level, this is more than offset by the added physiological stress imposed by the higher humidity, and by the fact that extra water vapor  itself a powerful greenhouse gas  contributes to an overall warming of the air mass.

Irrigation exacerbates the impact of climate change, Eltahir says.

In fact, the researchers report, the combined effect, as projected by the models, is a bit greater the sum of the individual impacts of irrigation or climate change alone, for reasons that will require further research.

The bottom line, as the researchers write in the paper, is the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to reduce the likelihood of such extreme conditions. They conclude:

China is currently the largest contributor to the emissions of greenhouse gases, with potentially serious implications to its own population: Continuation of the current pattern of global emissions may limit habitability of the most populous region of the most populous country on Earth.

This is a solid piece of research, extending and refining some of the previous studies on man-made climate change and its role on heat waves, says Christoph Schauer, a professor of atmospheric and climate science at ETH Zurich, who was involved in the work.

This is a very useful study. It highlights some of the potentially serious challenges that will emerge with unabated climate change.  These are important and timely results, as they may lead to adequate adaptation measures before potentially serious climate conditions will emerge.

Schauer adds that while there is overwhelming evidence that climate change has started to affect the frequency and intensity of heat waves, century-scale climate projections imply considerable uncertainties that will require further study. However, he says:

Regarding the health impact of high wet-bulb temperatures, the applied health threshold (wet-bulb temperatures near the human body temperature) is very solid and it actually derives from fundamental physical principles.

Provided by: Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.]

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Emmy Insider The 2018 Emmy race is here, and Vulture will take a close look at the nominated contenders until voting closes on August 27. Photo: Getty Images

After plugging away in Hollywood for three-plus decades, Ann Dowd has found her place at the table among todays most celebrated actors. When the 62-year-old arrived at last years Emmy ceremony, she was a first-time nominee with a pair of nominations to her credit: Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Patti Levin in The Leftovers, and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for playing Aunt Lydia in The Handmaids Tale. She walked away with the latter Emmy, which shell compete for again this year. Vulture recently caught up with Dowd to talk about the importance of loving ones characters, the benefits of finding success later in life, and the right way to say Aunt Lydias name.

First of all, congratulations on the Emmy nomination.

Thank you very much.

Did hearing your name among this years nominees feel different than it did last year?

I was in Australia, so the time for me was 1:30 a.m. when it would be announced, and I dont have the nerve to listen. I dont think I could take it. I didnt listen last year, either. I had a 5 a.m. pickup the next morning, so I thought, Youre going to bed at 9:30 or 10 and youre going to sleep because youre a full-grown adult and this is how were doing it. I woke up a few times, but then I woke up at 2:20, and my friend had texted me. A big smile, and then off to sleep. About as lovely as it can get.

Last year, you walked into the Emmys as a first-time nominee with two nominations. Terrifying or exhilarating?

Both. Exhilarating until the moment arrives, and then youre terrified. And then, of course, exhilarating. Theres nothing quite like winning that, Ill tell you.

Are you able to articulate what winning felt like?

The sensation of that moment, I will never forget as long as I live. The rest of it around it is somewhat of a blur, but that actual moment is very, very clear in my psyche. It was just an extraordinary moment. And not overrated, let me tell you.

In general, what is it that attracts you to a character?

I would say their strength. What is it they want in their given circumstances. The writing, of course. I dont have a set kind of person I like to play  there are so many interesting people and characters  but just the strength, and the singular purpose, and the complexity of where she might be coming from.

Do you have to like a character to connect with her?

As corny as this may sound, I think its kind of a love story, and thats essential. I dont think it can be a mediocre. I dont think it works that way. I think it has to be all-in. It has to be cultivated, meaning a relationship that grows over time, and that begins without judgment. Thats huge. Ill tell you about me, you tell me about you, and lets see how we do. I find that thrilling, and I think its the case with this role.

Aunt Lydia is often painted as the shows villain, but do you think thats too simplistic a label? You might say shes also a woman committed to her beliefs and her faith and her job.

Her perspective is quite different, of course. She feels that the world is lost. That the gifts God gave us  the beauty of nature, the wonder of babies  that has gone away. Weve destroyed the very basic things we were given. I think she feels that its almost past repair, but not without hope. And she knows that unless she takes an extremely strong stance and approach, that the balance will not be righted.

The Handmaids Tale has become a point of reference for many political conversations. Protesters around the world are dressing up like Handmaids, and even Margaret Atwood has weighed in. Do you feel that the political climate played a part in developing season two?

I think the writers are not interested in echoing or mirroring what is going on in the present culture. Theyre on their own story trajectory, but its fair to say that the goal might be to make sure people are paying attention, listening, and are awake rather than specific references to what is going on in the present. I think its more in general. You know, by the time you put your phone down, it was too late. Its just that message. Stay alert. Stay active. Dont let the small things go by. Look at whats happening.

Is there something special for you about finding such recognition you have now later in your career? Do you think that your approach to the success that youre having wouldve been different had it happened 20 or 30 years ago?

The benefit of having it happen later is perspective. I have a family and children I adore and a husband whos wonderful. Knowing that there are ups and downs, even in a given day shooting a scene, and that you will manage it, I would say I feel more confident just because I can let certain things go.

I had been a premed student, and the way you got through premed was to work extremely hard and then harder. That was my approach [to acting] early on, so what it did for a bit there was to take the joy out of it. I had to remind myself, Darling, this is make-believe. This is play at its best. So in this case, being older is a great gift, and I appreciate it immensely.

The general consensus in Hollywood has always been that there arent a lot of great roles for women once they hit middle age, but that seems to be changing  in TV in particular. How do you think Hollywood is changing for women and older women in particular, if at all?

As you said, there is more opportunity. Theres more content. More women are writing. More women are directing. These stories are interesting stories, and people want to see them. I think because theres so much more opportunity, and women are so much more involved, it has to shift. With roles for older women and middle-aged women, theres lots of interesting stuff in there  and its not as though it represents a very small part of the community of the world. It doesnt. Its got a large audience, and may it continue.

Warren Littlefield dropped a spoiler recently when he confirmed that Lydia is not dead.

Yeah, I was very happy to know that. Before I read the episode, Bruce Miller very kindly said: She lives. Dont worry. That was very thoughtful. Because that happened in The Leftovers for a season, and I couldnt believe it. I was crushed, and then suddenly, Patti was back. It was quite extraordinary.

Ive saved my most important question for last: You were born and raised in Massachusetts, as was I. And the show is set in Boston, where we pronounce Aunt as ahnt, not ant. So shouldnt she be Ahnt Lydia?

Oh, isnt that funny? I say Ahnt Lydia, definitely.

You do, but everyone else says ant.

That is funny, honey. No one else has ever brought that up. I just figure, to each his own, but I quite agree with you. It should be Ahnt. And Im going to make that point. Its Ahnt. Im going to make sure that gets cleared up.

I appreciate that. And I look forward to watching Lydia school the Handmaids on their pronunciation next season. Though I do appreciate that no one is attempting a Boston accent.

Oh yeah, that done poorly is a nightmare, isnt it?

Its awful. A lot of us lose our accents later in life, usually intentionally, so theres no need to attempt it.

Yes, we do  and thats a gift to the world.

This interview has been edited and condensed.
Lucky You, by Erika Carter

Three young waitresses at an Arkansas dive bar face antipathy and anxiety in Erika Carters perceptive debut novel. When one of the womans mildly charismatic and rich boyfriend proposes to go off the grid and live off the land in a remote cabin in the Ozarks, the other two are fully onboard, believing that this is the solution to all their problems. Will their cynicism melt away as they learn to separate themselves from the ills of modern-day society, or will they just end up malnourished and smelly? Join them as they unplug their phones and get the hell of out of Dodge, all while listening to their leader spout platitudes about the freedoms of living as one with nature. Spoiler alert: Thoreau he is not. The womens journey of self-discovery, or lack thereof, make them perfect 21st-century heroines.
Photo: Getty Images

Spike Lees BlacKkKlansman declares right off the bat that its all about the fo real, fo real shit, following Colorado Springs detective Ron Stallworths (John David Washington) bold infiltration of the local Ku Klux Klan chapter in the late 1970s. But theres at least one character whos pure invention: Laura Harriers Patrice Dumas, the fierce black activist whom Stallworth meets while hes undercover at a lecture by Black Panther Party leader Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins).

Harrier, 28, was on a European beach vacation when Lee called and told her to get to New York City, telling her little else about the film that went on to win the Grand Prix Award at Cannes in May. At that point, she didnt know if hed seen her as Peter Parkers super-smart love interest Liz Allan in Spider-Man: Homecoming, or spotted her in a Louis Vuitton ad. But when they met, he put her through her paces before giving her the role of the self-assured student leader who stirs Stallworths heart  and raises his social consciousness.

Ahead of the films opening, Vulture spoke to Harrier about immersing herself in the 70s Black Power movement, improvising her nerve-racking Soul Train line dance, Stallworths recent phone call from David Duke, and the celebratory way in which the crew honored living legend Harry Belafonte on the last day of filming.

I read you were on a Greek isle when Spike called and said your holiday was over and to get to New York. Did he tell you why he wanted to see you? Had he seen you in Spider-Man? It sounds like he didnt say anything about the film.

No, he just said he had a new project, and he wanted to meet me, and to get to New York, the next day [laughs]. But I think he had seen Spider-Man, and I think he also saw a completely separate audition tape that Id made that was passed on to him by his casting director [Kim Coleman].

It sounds like he then put you through your paces  having you attend one of his NYU film school classes, and doing a nearly hour-long taped improvisation  before giving you the part. How nervous were you  and did you know what you were auditioning for at that point?

I was terrified [laughs]. He told me a bit about the character, but not really. He was like, Youre a strong soul sista, [whos an] activist, and he gave me the context of the scene. But I didnt read the script; he wouldnt release it. I dont think I [even] knew that it was a period piece, just that she was a leader, and that it was about Black Power.

I read that you and the cast met and talked to Kathleen Cleaver at Spikes house. Is that who the writers primarily based Patrice on?

You would have to ask them. I know what influences I drew from, which were Kathleen, and Angela Davis, obviously. But also various people that I spoke to who were in the Black Student Union at Colorado College. I watched a ton of interviews and documentaries, and Spike gave me a big reading list. He really guided me into finding this character. He had me write an entire autobiography of Patrices life before we started filming to figure out who this person was, so I could create a fully rounded character.

Did the Black Student Union really have a female president in the 70s?

No, they didnt. That was the writers creation.

You said Patrices big Afro, leather jackets, and aviator frames helped you find the character. How would you describe her?

I would describe her as intelligent and very driven, very ready to take on the responsibility that she sees to uplift her community. But I also think shes vulnerable and feminine, and really has feelings for Ron. It was important for me to show her humanity, and not just be this figurehead of this movement. In speaking to Kathleen, [I realized] its really easy to look at figures from the Black Panthers and Black Power movement and see them outside of themselves. She was really young when she did all of these things, and had a relationship with this guy [Eldridge Cleaver]. She was just trying to figure it out as she went along, like most of us are [laughs].

Patrice would like to slug the racist cop (Frederick Weller) who touches her during the traffic stop with Kwame Ture.

Yeah, she was sexually assaulted, so of course she was really upset. But its a situation where people lose their lives all the time, so you cant really [react]  its a powerless position to be in. Spike does such a brilliant job of juxtaposing that with the [previous scenes] rally celebrating Black Power: putting these characters into a situation where all of a sudden thats taken away from them due to racism.

I read that John David did his karate moves between takes to relieve the stress of doing scenes filled with hate speech, and thats how they wound up in the film. Were there things you improvised or created for Patrice?

Im sure there were some lines. But the biggest thing was my Soul Train dance. We had a choreographer, but only for the chorus [of Too Late to Turn Back Now]. To go down the Soul Train line  which is very nerve-racking, by the way  Spike was like, Just go  dance. At first, I was totally nervous to be dancing onscreen and singing, because thats not what I do. But it was really fun. It was probably one of my favorite days on set.

When Ron meets Patrice, he tells her he works in construction, and its not until later, when he warns her about the planned KKK attack, that she finds out hes a cop. Was there a real KKK plot to attack protesters?

Yes there was, and Ron stopped it. Heres really a hero, and he saved a lot of peoples lives.

But he was undercover at that point, so he couldnt go to the scene?

Yeah, I think he was undercover, so the other detectives had to go  the white cops who were working with him.

Patrices activism has a big impact on Ron, but meanwhile hes lying to her, pretending to be someone hes not  and reporting back to the police. Did you talk about that relationship dynamic?

Yes, John David and I talked about it quite a bit. We tried to figure out how to make their dynamic seem believable and real. We had that conversation of how does she not know what he does for a living? What does she think, and what are the lies that hes telling her  trying to figure out the history between them. I think that she starts to get some red flags, of course. But she also wants to believe in this person whom she really cares for. Its obviously a huge betrayal when she finds out that hes not who he says he is. So even though he saved her life, her morals wont let her stay with someone who does something [for a living] that she doesnt believe in.

Harry Belafontes scene as Jerome Turner, telling the student union about witnessing Jesse Washingtons lynching and burning by a white mob was chilling. Belafonte did his scene on the last day of filming, and Spike had the crew wear tuxedos in his honor. Did Spike wear one too, and what was the mood on set that day with the civil-rights icon recounting that harrowing true story?

Yeah, Spike wore a suit. Everyone was really grateful that this huge icon of the civil-rights movement  and of American history in general  was there. The mood was intense because of the story he was telling, which I didnt know. And the fact that they took those pictures to sell as souvenirs. I dont know how you could do that. That its a true story is so horrifying and shocking  made all the much more so by hearing it from Mr. Belafonte. It really lent weight to the message. But at the same time, it was the last day, and we were celebrating wrapping the film, and the fact that Harry Belafonte was there with us. It was incredible. There was lots of Champagne at the end.

You grew up in Evanston, and youve said your parents never talked about the fact that your fathers black and your mothers white. What was it like growing up there?

Evanston is a really liberal and diverse place. My high school was pretty much 50 percent black and 50 percent white. I had friends of every color.

You dont shy away from activism on Instagram, advocating for trans rights, gun control, and gender equality. Youve also said youve witnessed racial discrimination firsthand. Can you talk about that?

I think its just an unfortunate fact of being a person of color. I dont think I know anyone who hasnt experienced some form of racism. I dont have a big racist story. Its more just like smaller everyday things, like being in these spaces where youre clearly not welcome: being followed in a store, or being questioned when youre going to a nice restaurant to have dinner. Everyday racism is a reality in America, unfortunately.

BlacKkKlansman is being released on the anniversary of the Charlottesville white-supremacist rally, and the death of Heather Heyer  footage of which is in the film. Have you seen Laura Ingrahams latest anti-immigrant rant that got David Dukes seal of approval on Twitter?

No, I didnt see that; thats so gross and creepy. I saw that David Duke called Ron Stallworth.

Called him recently? Did Ron say what the conversation was about?

Yeah, he called the other day. Ron talked about it in an interview with Lester Holt. He said that Duke wanted to know how he was going to be portrayed in the film. He was concerned about looking bad. Hes got a lot more to be concerned about [than that].

I read that Ron showed the cast his actual KKK membership card.

Yes, he did during our first read-through of the script, which is when we all met him. He keeps it in his wallet, and its signed by David Duke. He told his story, and spoke for, I dont know, maybe half an hour. This is all very real. It really happened.

You said you hope the movie has an impact. What would you like to see happen?

I just hope it starts a conversation. That it gets people talking and reflecting on the current situation in this country, so maybe theyll handle things a little differently. I dont want to tell anyone what to think because everyone will take away something different. But I do hope it gets people talking.

Youve said youre drawn to films and scripts with female directors and writers. So whom would you like to work with, and whats your dream role?

Id love to work with Lena Waithe, with Melina Matsoukas, Sofia Coppola. I would love to portray people that I didnt really get to see growing up onscreen. There were so few characters that I identified with, so Id like to be a part of changing that. There werent many girls that looked like me [laughs] until very recently. There wasnt a love interest in a big superhero movie who was black until it was literally me. So just being able to, hopefully, be part of changing what movies look like.

This interview has been edited and condensed.
Omarosa. Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Omarosa Manigault Newman, former White House staffer and, according to President Trump, newly minted lowlife, is in the midst of the press tour for her upcoming White House tell-all Unhinged. The Apprentice star has already described POTUS as experiencing mental decline and has played a recording of her firing by White House chief of staff John Kelly on Sundays Meet the Press, but, in a much lighter reveal from her book, she also reportedly says President Trump floated the idea of foregoing a Bible during his 2017 inauguration, and instead being sworn into office on a copy of his own 1987 book Trump: The Art of the Deal.

The Art of the Deal is a best seller! the president allegedly told his then-employee when she balked, according to Slate. Its the greatest business book of all time. Its how Im going to make great deals for the country. Just think how many copies Id sell  maybe a commemorative inauguration copy?! Omarosa says Trump ended up playing off the suggestion as a joke, but she felt he had pitched the idea in earnest. And frankly, why shouldnt he?

Despite what some might mistakenly believe, one does not have to swear on a Christian Bible, or a text of any religious nature at all, to enter office. While some might recoil at the idea of vowing to uphold the presidency on ones own ghostwritten business memoir (and he probably was just joking), it would have really set the pace for the rest of Trumps presidency. We know, we know. Save some surprises for the second term!
Photo: Phillip V. Caruso/Showtime

We shouldve known. It was there at the beginning, right in front of us all along: Alisons death foreshadowed in The Affairs tumultuous opening credits, set to Fiona Apples Container, a song written just for the show. I have only one thing to do and thats / Be the wave that I am and then / Sink back into the ocean. The last part has repeated, again and again, pushing us into the start of each episode. Its been right there, just out of order much like everything in The Affair, a show that constantly plays with perspective  not quite telling lies, but more so presenting different truths.

The penultimate episode of season four is no different. The previous episode revealed Alisons death, how they found her in the ocean (as promised), and how it looked to be a suicide. It didnt feel particularly surprising. Not to us, watching, but also not to most of the people in Alisons life  except for Cole, whose California walkabout has him rushing back to tell her that he loves her. Maybe thats why hes the one to doubt the suicide angle, because he saw their future together so clearly.

In Secondary Drowning (both the name of the rare condition that killed Alisons son, and also now a reference to her own death), we get two perspectives. But in a twist on The Affairs familiar structure, both of them are Alisons. The first is a dream in which everything goes perfectly. Ben appears at her door, even-toned and ready to tell her everything. After he fixes her sink, hes admits that hes married. (She already knows.) He has two sons, and one is named Gabriel (who shares a name with Alisons dead child). He killed a child while on tour in Afghanistan, mistaking an inoperative weapon for the real thing. But the marriage thing, its now over, officially, and hes wants to be with Alison. Shes at first resolute in her refusal, but shares the story of her sons death, how he died of secondary drowning, how his lungs filled with fluid overnight. How she imagines him in her dreams as a teenager.

They slow dance. Kiss. Make love on the deck. He promises never to her hurt her again. We wonder what could possibly lead to Alisons body being found the next day in the sea. But she gets up, heads inside, and as we hear thunder outside, we also hear a pounding on the door. The sink is still broken. It was all a dream.

Its Ben at the door, again, but this version of the story is immediately darker. And, we have to assume, much closer to the real thing. Its clear now where things are heading. This Ben is on edge, aggressive and frustrated when Alison wants to talk instead of going to straight to dinner. She asks him point blank: Are you married? Do you live alone? Do you have kids? He lies to her, straight-faced, each time. He then starts pounding shots, while telling her a different version of the Afghanistan story. In this one, he deliberately killed the unarmed child. And he didnt care. She asks him why. Why do you kill an ant, Alison? he responds. Why do you kill a mouse? Because you dont want it running around your house. You dont want it bothering you.

She tells him shes going to bed. Alone. Hes drunk now, and her refusal angers him. He shoves himself on her, again and again, and she refuses, again and again. She tells him she knows hes married, that shes met his wife. If you ever fucking say anything  he starts, and she says she wont, if hell just leave. He blames her for his relapse, and he says she seduced him: You broke up two marriages, but that wasnt enough for you? He slams her up against the wall and then across the room and into cabinet. Blood rushes from her head, and we know shes dead.

As a storm rages, Ben carries Alison across the rocks and drops her into the sea. It wasnt suicide after all. It was murder.
A former Decatur City High School teacher has resigned amid accusations of sexual conduct with students. Carrie Witt submitted her resignation during a special meeting for the Decatur City Board of Education. The Board originally scheduled a termination hearing for August 14th, but that meeting has been cancelled since Witt offered her resignation.

Witt had been on paid administrative leave for two years after she was accussed of having sex with two students between the ages of 16 and 19. During those two years Witt was paid a salary of $116,412. Morgan County Court Judge Glenn Thompson dismissed the charges against Witt calling the law on sex between a teacher and student unconstitutional. An appeal court recently reveresed the Thompson's ruling sending the case back to court.

Witt could face between two to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

This is the statement emailed from the Decatur City School Board of Education:

"The Decatur City Board of Education is pleased to have been able to bring closure to personnel

proceedings involving Carrie Cabri Witt by securing Ms. Witts resignation. The Boards

approval of Ms. Witts resignation does not in any way signify its acceptance of or agreement

with her denial of culpability. Carrie Witt was a former teacher at Decatur High School, who,

according to Court records, was arrested on March 21, 2016, for alleged violation of Code of

Alabama 13A-6-81, School Employee engaging in a sex act with a student under the age of 19

years which is a class B felony, carrying a range of punishment from two years to twenty years

in prison.



The termination hearing was delayed by order of The Circuit Court of Morgan County. Decatur

City Schools appealed this delay to the Supreme Court of Alabama. The Supreme Court

unanimously ruled in the Boards favor, reversing the injunction. A termination hearing was

scheduled as soon as possible, for Tuesday, August 14, 2018. This resignation negates the

necessity of the termination hearing. Although legal complications beyond our control delayed

resolution of the case, the determination to pursue it to conclusion confirms the Boards

unwavering commitment to ensuring that our faculty and staff adhere to the highest standards of

professionalism in their dealings with students."
Police arrested a doctor in Montgomery, Alabama for overprescribing opioids to his patients.

A woman says she pleaded with Doctor Richard Stehl to stop prescribing drugs to her sister, but he refused.

Investigators checked the doctor's prescription records and found out Stehl was in the top 0.9 percent of percent of prescribers in the whole state.

He will appear before a judge Thursday afternoon, and will remain in federal custody until his bond hearing.
The congregation at Grace Baptist Church are extending their prayers next door.

"It's a sad situation, but we want to let them know Grace Baptists Church is here for the people in our community," said Pastor Matt Ellis.

Huntsville Police are still investigating the domestic related death at a home on Pulaski Pike, which is right next to Grace Baptist Church.

The victim is 49-year-old Dale Jones Senior.

Pastor Matt Ellis told WAAY 31 he's a man of God, but still realizes there's evil in the world.

"If we humble ourselves, pray and seek God. That's what America has gotten away from. We're not seeking him anymore," Ellis said.

When he stopped by Grace Baptist Church Saturday night, he saw the yellow tape around the house next door. So he decided to speak with the family of the victim Dale Jones.

"I was able to meet with the family and have prayer with them and to let them know that we're here if they need anything," Ellis said.

Ellis said it's shocking when something like this happens so close to you.

"I'm here throughout the week and I've talked to them a few times," Ellis said.

Ellis has only lived in Alabama for about two months, but he's noticing several domestic related homicides happening in North Alabama this summer.

"There's evil in the world. There's different places where evil comes from. Murder, that's evil," Ellis said.

His sermon this morning was on "Seeking God." He only hopes it helps people become less violent.

"He knows what's going to happen before we do. It's tough sometimes. Sin involved in this world and that's what causes this stuff," Ellis said.

Family members of Dale Jones do not want to talk right now.

Huntsville Police said the roommate of Jones is also being interviewed at this time.
Two 17-year-olds in Nevada are now behind bars for killing their mother. They told police they were sick of their mother's parenting according to Fox 5.

Police said Dawn Liebig was killed around July 20th, by her sons, Dakota Saldivar and Michel Wilson. The teens were arrested last week and will be charged as adults.



The teens allegedly beat and stabbed Liebig to death. Liebig adopted Wilson when he was 12.

According to police, the teens waited for their mom to go to sleep and then attacked her.

Saldivar told police in an interview, his mom screamed out for her sons to help because she didn't realize it was them.

A neighbor told reporter that Liebig loved two things most in life; her sons and her cats.

On the victims Facebook profile, it reads, "I'm a mom that hopes she did ok. I live for them."

Saldivar and Wilson are facing multiple charges including trying to clean up inside the home.

They reportedly buried their mother in the front yard.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Aug. 11, 2018 | PADUCAH

By West Kentucky Star Staff Aug. 11, 2018 | 09:46 PM | PADUCAH

Mayor Brandi Harless, Mayor Pro Tem Sandra Wilson, and City Manager Jim Arndt will represent Paducah at the 43rd Annual Governors Local Issues Conference being held Tuesday through Thursday in Louisville.



While en route to the conference, Mayor Harless will also attend the Kentucky Innovation Day conference in Frankfort on Monday. The attendees will learn about the worldwide entrepreneurship network known as Techstars, which has a mentor network that spans 150 countries and more than 300,000 alumni.



Due to the conferences, Tuesday's meeting of the Paducah Board of Commissioners is cancelled. There will be a called commission meeting at 5:30 pm on Tuesday, August 21.



Mayor Harless said, The Local Issues Conference is an incredible opportunity to network and learn from the various State Cabinet directors and staff. Those face-to-face conversations build relationships that will be vital as we work through local and state initiatives.



Some of the workshop topics on the Local Issues Conference agenda include Developing Kentuckys Workforce; Kentuckys Opportunity Zones; KY Innovation: Strengthening Regional Entrepreneurship Ecosystems; Kentucky Wired: Transforming Kentuckys Technology Landscape; Federal Grant Opportunities; Public Private Partnerships: How to Imagine, Finance, and Build Infrastructure in Your Community; and Secrets of Economic Development.




By West Kentucky Star Staff Aug. 13, 2018 | 06:52 AM | PADUCAH

The board of directors of the Oscar Cross Boys & Girls Club of Paducah announced Monday the resignation of Executive Director Bjarne Hansen. The board accepted Hansens resignation, as he has decided to pursue a separate career opportunity.

Hansen was hired in March of 2016. During his employment, the board said Hansen has improved many aspects of the club that allows it to thrive today. He has built strong relationships in the community, increased funding sources, elevated staff and student morale, and positively influenced the lives of hundreds of area youth in Paducah and McCracken County.

Hansen's resignation is effective Friday, August 17. The board is now conducting a nationwide search for the next executive director/chief executive officer.



My time with the Oscar Boys & Girls Club has been amazing. I was honored to have been able to work alongside such an outstanding board and staff. Thank you to all of the remarkable kids and youth. I truly believe that great futures start at the Oscar Cross Boys & Girls Club, Hansen said.

Right now, the club is thriving in ways we couldnt imagine five years ago, Chustz added. Were excited about the future and hiring the next executive director.

That individual must have a heart and passion to make a positive impact on kids' lives. Candidates must be eager to lead the overall planning and operation of the organization while providing leadership, direction and support to the Board of Directors. Additional information on the job opening can be found at www.ocbg.club or by calling 270-444-9124.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Aug. 13, 2018 | 07:27 AM | GRAVES COUNTY

Two people were injured in a two-vehicle head-on collision Sunday in Graves County.

According to the Graves County Sheriff's Office, the crash happened on State Route 58 East, near Millers Farm Road. Witnesses told deputies a car driven by 39-year-old Roy Marchand, of Benton, was traveling east on State Route 58 East at a high rate of speed, weaving all over the road.

Marchand's car reportedly crossed the center line and struck a truck head-on. Marchand's car flipped several times, ejecting Marchand and his passenger, 31-year-old Samantha McCoy, also of Benton.

Marchand was taken to Baptist Health Paducah, then airlifted to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for treatment of his injuries. McCoy, and the driver of the truck, 18-year-old Haley Prince, were transported to Jackson Purchase Medical Center. Prince was later released with no injuries.

Witnesses told deputies that McCoy attempted to get them to conceal a backpack and watched her toss a can of compressed air into the woods. Deputies uncovered evidence of drug usage inside the backpack and in Marchand's car.
WHEELING, WEST VIRGINIA  Daniel P. Sprowl, of New Martinsville, West Virginia, was sentenced today to 33 months incarceration for possessing child pornography, United States Attorney Bill Powell announced.

Sprowl, age 54, pled guilty to one count of Possession of Child Pornography in April 2018. Sprowl admitted to possessing images of child pornography involving children under the age of 12 in November 2016 in Wetzel County.

Sprowl was also ordered to pay $8,000 in restitution and ordered to forfeit his electronic devices used in the crime.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen L. Vogrin prosecuted the case on behalf of the government. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the West Virginia State Police investigated.

Senior U.S. District Judge Frederick P. Stamp, Jr., presided.
1968 HHS GRADUATE & N.Y. CONGRESSMAN CHRIS COLLINS SUSPENDS RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN AFTER INSIDER TRADING CHARGES

A 2013 INDUCTEE INTO THE HENDERSONVILLE HIGH SCHOOL "HALL OF FAME"

A STRONG SUPPORTER OF PRESIDENT TRUMP

HAS HELD A "SAFE" GOP CONGRESSIONAL SEAT SINCE 2013

THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTS: Days after federal prosecutors charged him with insider trading, Representative Chris Collins announced over the weekendy that he was abandoning his re-election bid amid worries that his legal troubles could make vulnerable his otherwise solidly Republican district in western New York.

How exactly the suspension of Mr. Collinss campaign would play out was not immediately clear, as the process to get off the ballot can be onerous in New York, and Mr. Collins did not say how he would remove himself.

Mr. Collins, who was the first member of Congress to endorse Donald J. Trump for president in 2016, had initially vowed to stay on the ballot this fall but said on Saturday that he had decided it was in the best interests of his district, the Republican Party and President Trumps agenda to suspend his bid.

Federal prosecutors have charged Mr. Collins with using his seat on the board of a small Australia-based drug company, Innate Immunotherapeutics, to tip off his son and others that the company had failed a critical scientific trial before that information was made public.

His son and others allegedly dumped shares in a frantic rush and averted hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.

I look forward to having my good name cleared of any wrongdoing, Mr. Collins said on Saturday, adding that he would stay in Congress through the rest of his term.

His district, which covers the areas between Buffalo and Rochester, is one of the states most conservative, and one in which Mr. Trump had his strongest showing in New York, with nearly 60 percent of the vote in 2016.

Mr. Collinss indictment immediately thrust his seat onto the national battleground map. But if Republicans can successfully remove him, whoever they replace him with would have an edge given the districts conservative tilt. Even after the indictment of Mr. Collins, nonpartisan political handicappers said winning the seat would be a steep climb for Democrats.

One Republican official familiar with the discussions said the party would probably try to nominate Mr. Collins for a county clerkship somewhere else in New York, in an effort to meet the legal requirements to remove him from the congressional ballot.

The fact that Republicans are willing to even consider the embarrassment of nominating Collins  who has been indicted  for another local G.O.P. position, makes clear just how nervous national Republicans are about losing the House, said Meredith Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Further complicating matters are New Yorks byzantine election laws: Mr. Collins is slated to be on the ballot not just on the Republican line but also as an Independence Party candidate. That party, too, would have to agree and find a way to remove him.

Mr. Collins is also the nominee of the Conservative Party. Michael R. Long, the party chairman, said on Saturday that he had spoken with Mr. Collins and would do whatever was necessary to remove him from the ballot. If he so desires, thats fine with me, Mr. Long said.

The Democratic candidate in the race, Nate McMurray, the town supervisor of Grand Island, had only $80,000 in his campaign account when the indictment was announced  far less than is typically needed to wage an aggressive challenge.

Mr. McMurray had not been the preferred candidate of Democratic leaders in New York, led by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who had recruited Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul for the seat. She declined and instead ran for re-election.

Mr. McMurray called on Mr. Collins to resign immediately, saying he should not be running for this or any other seat, a fact that the local Republican Party knew full well when they endorsed and celebrated him while he was under investigation for securities fraud.

Mr. Collinss decision to suspend his re-election bid set off an immediate scramble for the Republican nomination, with Stefan Mychajliw, the Erie County comptroller, announcing his candidacy within hours. In a preview of what will most likely be a polarized and partisan race over the next three months, Mr. Mychajliw called Mr. McMurray radical three times in a four-paragraph statement.

If Mr. Collins is successfully removed, local party leaders, not the voters, will select the Republican nominee. Others candidates are expected to vie for the nomination.

Democrats hope to use the details of the charges against Mr. Collins outlined in the indictment to help paint both the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress with the broad brush of a culture of corruption.

I respect Chris Collinss decision to step down while he faces these serious allegations, Representative Steve Stivers, an Ohio Republican and the chairman of the House Republican campaign committee, said in a statement. As Ive said before, Congress must hold ourselves to the highest possible standard.

While no other lawmakers in Congress have been charged with any wrongdoing related to Innate Immunotherapeutics, five other Republican congressmen also purchased stock in the company in January 2017: John Culberson of Texas; Michael K. Conaway of Texas; Doug Lamborn of Colorado; Billy Long of Missouri; and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma. Mr. Long and Mr. Mullin serve on the same health subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee as Mr. Collins.

Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney in Manhattan who announced the indictment, declined to say if other lawmakers were currently under investigation. No comment, he said on Wednesday after the charges were announced against Mr. Collins.

The issue of Innate first burst into public a year and a half ago, when it was revealed that Tom Price, Mr. Trumps nominee to serve as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, had received privileged shares of the drug company, in which Mr. Collins was the largest shareholder.

Mr. Price resigned last September in an unrelated scandal about his use of chartered flights.

Mr. Collins had previously faced an ethics investigation in Congress for his dual role as a congressman and an investor in Innate, which was testing an experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis.

In announcing the indictment of Mr. Collins, Mr. Berman said, Congressman Collins, who by virtue of his office helps write the laws of our nation, acted as if the law did not apply to him
The case broke with a tip about starving children in a squalid New Mexico compound.

Investigators discovered 11 emaciated children wearing rags and no shoes. They also found the decomposed remains of a young boy.

It's still not clear whether the remains are those of Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, a boy allegedly abducted by his father. He would have turned four the day the remains were discovered.

But now the boy's father, his wife, his two sisters and another man are each accused of 11 counts of child abuse for the horrors inside the rural compound.

They have all pleaded not guilty and are expected to appear in court Monday afternoon. Here's what we know about the five adults, who may have been the last people to see Abdul-Ghani:

The father

New Mexico authorities suspected Siraj Wahhaj, 40, and his son were at the compound after learning about the abduction in May, Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said.

Authorities did not seek a search warrant at the time. The big breakthrough came with the tip about hungry children that led to the raid and arrest of Wahhaj and his wife, Jany Leveille.

Wahhaj and Leveille are the biological parents of nine of the 11 children found near the rural unincorporated community of Amalia.

How the family ended up in New Mexico and what happened to Abdul-Ghani remains a mystery.

The boy's mother, who lives in Jonesboro, Georgia, last saw him in November, when Wahhaj said he was taking him to the park. They never returned. She filed for a divorce from Wahhaj the following month. An arrest warrant for the alleged abductor was issued in January.

Nearly two weeks after Abdul-Ghani's disappearance, his father flipped a Ford Explorer on Interstate 65 in Alabama.

A 5-year-old boy and Leveille were taken to a hospital, according to a police report on the December incident.

Six other children in the car ranged in age from three to 15. The birth date listed for the 3-year-old did not match Abdul-Ghani's birth date.

The boy's mother, Hakima Ramzi, said he suffers from hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. He cannot walk and suffers from seizures, requiring constant care and medical attention, she said.

Investigators had reason to believe Wahhaj planned an exorcism and was denying Abdul-Ghani his medication, according to the search warrant used in the New Mexico raid.

The boy's paternal grandfather, a New York imam also named Siraj Wahhaj, said his son and Leveille had become "concerned" with the idea of possessions. But he said he knew nothing about plans for an exorcism.

Ramzi told CNN she never claimed Wahhaj sought to perform an exorcism. She said she told police he wanted to perform "ruqya" on the boy.

Ruqya is generally described as an Islamic version of exorcism -- though the targets are jinn, or spirits, rather than Satan.

"He just wanted to pray for Abdul-Ghani to get better," Ramzi said.

The elder Wahhaj disputed a law enforcement characterization of his son's religious beliefs as extreme. He said his son's behavior could be "extreme." He described him as high-strung, the kind of person who became angry when stopped at the airport by immigration officers.

But "to do something as extreme as this doesn't make sense," he said.

The imam said he has not spoken with his son since late 2017.

During the raid, Wahhaj was "heavily armed with an AR-15 rifle, five loaded 30-round magazines, and four loaded pistols, including one in his pocket when he was taken down," according to the Taos County sheriff's office.

New Mexico prosecutors said at least one child at the compound was being trained to commit school shootings.

The elder Wahhaj had "no knowledge" of the alleged training, said his spokesman, Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid.

The imam told reporters in New York that "everybody in my family is perplexed" by what authorities found in New Mexico.

The younger Wahhaj faces 11 counts of child abuse.

The aunts and the stepmother

The three women arrested during the raid are believed to be the mothers of the 11 emaciated children. The kids have been turned over to child welfare authorities.

Hujrah Wahhaj, 38, and Subhannah Wahhaj, 35, are sisters of suspect Siraj Wahhaj. Their sister-in-law Jany Leveille, 35, is married to Wahhaj.

The Wahhaj's father said he hasn't heard directly from his two daughters in months. The three adult children had "cut ties" with the rest of their family, he said.

"Those who know them say this is strange, so we want to find out what happened," he said of his three children. "I feel bad as a parent that they didn't feel comfortable enough to come to me."

Subhannah Wahhaj is the author of "How I Found Myself in Egypt," according to her father.

The book jacket, on Amazon.com, describes it as the story of a young Muslim woman who leaves the US for Egypt with her husband and has her faith tested when he makes plans to marry another woman.

"That book went all over," said the elder Wahhaj, who on the jacket describes the book as "extraordinary and riveting."

He said Hujrah Wahhaj is a well-known public speaker. YouTube videos describe her as a motivational speaker.

"That's why it's surprising," he said of the allegations against her.

"Siraj, who has my name, my two daughters -- Subhannah and Hujrah Sepana -- I love them very much. To me ... obviously something (is) happening, some mental disorder. I don't know what it is. This doesn't seem like them."

Less is known about Leveille.

When Wahhaj was involved in the Alabama auto accident last year, the car was registered to Leveille, according to the police report. She was listed as a Georgia resident.

At the time of the accident, the group told police they were headed to New Mexico to go camping.

The three women each face 11 counts of child abuse "related to the neglect and abuse of the children involved," authorities said.

The family friend

After the auto accident, Lucas Morten picked up the group in Alabama, according to CNN affiliate KOAT.

Investigators said the most dangerous encounter during the raid came when they tried to arrest Morten and Wahhaj.

Both men initially refused to follow verbal orders, and Wahhaj was heavily armed, the sheriff's office said.

Morten is charged with 11 counts of child abuse and with harboring a fugitive.

One of the rescued children alleged that "Uncle Lucas" had buried Abdul-Ghani at the New Mexico property after washing the body twice, Hogrefe wrote in a court document.

New Mexico's chief medical investigator said the identification of the remains would take time because of decomposition.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a neighbor of the compound told CNN about exchanging texts with Morten in recent months.

The texts, which CNN is unable to verify independently, appear to show Morten asking for supplies, and asserting that under "God's orders" he could drive only from dusk until dawn.

"Good morning Big guy! Can i give u some gas cans and cash could uy hook me up. ... Please and thanks in advance," reads one of the texts, sent on April 26.

"Hey Bud I got $50 towards gas or whatever so my wife can ride along with your wife to get some groceries," reads another, sent on the same day.
Congresswoman Claudia Tenney is preparing for her fundraiser event this afternoon that will be hosted by President Donald Trump.

While the time and location of the event were not included in the invitation for the fundraiser, Trumps public schedule that was released for Monday says he will arrive at Griffiss International Airport at 4:05 p.m., and arrive at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Utica at 4:30 p.m. for the event.

Its a very exciting day to welcome the President of the United States to Utica on this very historic day, very historic visit, Tenney said Monday afternoon when we caught up with her outside Hotel Utica.

Tenney says she will be at Griffiss International Airport to greet the president when he steps off of Air Force One. She says the White Houses Advance Team and Secret Service will meet with her prior to Trumps arrival to provide more details about the itinerary for his visit.

Tickets for the fundraiser event were $1,000 per individual to attend the reception, $5,000 per individual to attend the reception and get a photo with the president, and $15,000 per individual to attend the reception, get a photo with the president and participate in a roundtable with the president.

Theyre going to discuss issues that are relevant to our region and relevant to our nation, and thats people that would like to get access to the president, Tenney said. This is surely an affordable way to get access. So, most of the people in the roundtable are local and there are some that are not, theyre coming from New York City or Sullivan County, or counties around the state because, quite frankly, I know theres a lot being made about the price of this but its unprecedented that the president would charge, give this much access for this amount of money in Utica, New York.

Tenney says the president is doing that because he recognizes that Utica needs our assistance.

RELATED: Claudia Tenney: What she has to say about Trump's visit to Utica

Were hoping that he will come back for another event, maybe a rally, where we can get thousands of people to attend, Tenney said.

The congresswoman says theyre doing their best to get a wide variety of people to the event. Some special guests who will be at Griffiss International Airport for Trumps arrival will include Tenneys son, who is an active duty captain in the Marine Corps.; Vince Scalise, who is the executive director of the CNY Veterans Outreach Center; several Gold Star families; and Brian Wyman, the father of Oneida County Sheriffs Deputy Kurt Wyman, who was killed in the line of duty in 2011.

RELATED: Anthony Brindisi: What he has to say about his fundraiser and Trump's visit

Were doing what we can to get as many people in our community as possible to be able to meet the president, especially those people who have suffered and people like the Wymans and some of the Gold Star Families who have, their families have paid the ultimate sacrifice, their loved one," Tenney said.

Tenney's challenger for the 22nd Congressional District race, Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi, will be hosting his own fundraiser in Utica while Tenney's funraiser with Trump is going on. Brindisi's fundraiser will be at 6 p.m. at Chesterfield Restaurant, and it is $10 to attend.
LITTLE FALLS- Larry Sharpe, the libertarian candidate for governor, made a stop in Little Falls Sunday. Sharpe addressed his constituents on the street outside of Burke Park on E. Lansing Street.

According to Sharpes campaign, he was scheduled to meet and greet people at Burke Park Sunday afternoon, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. After Sharpe showed up, he was asked to politely leave the park since a car show was also taking place.

We are outside the park because it seems like Republicans are mad at me again, said Sharpe. They are mad their candidate is not who they want and Im actually better for New York State than their own guy is.

WKTV spoke with the main organizer of the car show, who said he didnt want the show to become political, therefore he asked him to leave.

Sharpe says he is strictly campaigning in upstate New York because he thinks he can help upstate New Yorkers.

I'm the only candidate actually talking about helping the counties of New York State, said Sharpe. I want to get rid of unfunded mandates, allowing schools to be better, to let teachers teach, allowing the money to not just go to bribes but also to support small business. These are things no one else is talking about this is going to help upstate.

Sharpe has three more months until election day and challenges his voters to one thing.

Come out and ask me any question and push me with any comment, and I will give you my honest opinion, said Sharpe.

Marc Molinaro is the Republican candidate and Cynthia Nixon will be facing Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary election September 13th.
President Donald Trump arrived at Griffiss International Airport ahead of his fundraiser event for Congresswoman Claudia Tenney in Utica.

Air Force One touched down at Griffiss at 4:05 p.m. Monday, where Trump met with Tenney, Tenneys son, the parents of Kurt Wyman, a group of Trump supporters and others.

Air Force One arrives at Griffiss International Airport in Rome on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Air Force One arrives at Griffiss International Airport in Rome on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018.

From Griffiss, Trump traveled in his presidential limo to DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Utica, by way of State Route 49, for the private fundraiser event.

According to Trumps public schedule, he will make a speech at the fundraiser at 5:30 p.m. Prior to that, he will have a roundtable with those who paid the $15,000 ticket price to participate in it. Other tickets were priced at $1,000 and $5,000.

Trump is scheduled to leave Hotel Utica at 6:05 p.m. and depart from Griffiss International Airport at 6:30 p.m.
Ahead of his trip to Utica on Monday afternoon, President Donald Trump was at Fort Drum to sign the National Defense Authorization Act.

The $716 billion defense bill, which is designed to build up the military, is named after one of the presidents most vocal critics, Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain. Increasing the size of the military is an idea that many Republicans say took a step backward after years of budget caps during the Obama administration.

President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One at Morristown Municipal Airport, in Morristown, N.J., Monday, Aug., 13, 2018, en route to Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field in Fort Drum, N.Y. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One at Morristown Municipal Airport, in Morristown, N.J., Monday, Aug., 13, 2018, en route to Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field in Fort Drum, N.Y. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Vice President Mike Pence was also at Fort Drum with Trump. The bill signing took place at Hangar 2060 on the Fort Drum Army base.

From Fort Drum, Trump flew into Griffiss International Airport, where he arrived at 4:05 p.m. From there, Trump made his way to DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Utica for a fundraiser event for Congresswoman Claudia Tenney.
LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI)  Eight juveniles have been arrested after two separate fighting incidents at T.C. Harris School over the weekend.

The school is on Rome Drive near Creasy Lane and, according to its website, is a "private school that works to stabilize student's behavior in a therapeutic setting."

Police were first called to the school around 11:30 Saturday night for a report of a large fight between students. Police said employees called dispatch when a group of students were being aggressive with staff members about going back into their rooms.

According to police, the students then wouldn't cooperate with officers when they arrived. Five girls were arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting law enforcement. Two of the five also face preliminary charges of Battery on Law Enforcement, after they allegedly punched an officer while being handcuffed. Police said the officer just has minor injuries.

Police were then called back to the school Sunday night for another fight. Two girls and one boy were arrested the second time.

News 18 reached out to T.C. Harris School for a comment, but have yet to hear back.
CARROLL COUNTY, Ind. (WLFI)  Five people are facing charges after a home was searched and a vehicle stopped in Carroll County.

Carroll County Sheriff's Deputies, Delphi Police Officers, and Indiana State Police Troopers searched a home on Sleepy Hollow Road in Monticello on Saturday.

Dan Ard from North Judson and Simon Shell from Beecher, IL, were both arrested when the vehicle they were in, was stopped by the Indiana State Police.

Ard was arrested for Meth & Paraphernalia Possession and Shell was arrested for Meth Possession. Delphi Police stopped Ashley Anderson and arrested her for Meth Possession.

Ard, Shell, and Anderson have since posted $5,000 bonds and have been released from the Carroll County Jail. Their court date is set for August 28.

Jason Creque, of the same Sleepy Hollow Road address, was arrested for Dealing Meth. Eric Garvin from Idaville, was also arrested during search for Meth Possession, Syringe Possession, and several arrest warrants from surrounding counties. Creque and Garvin remain in the Carroll County Jail.

Creque's bond is set at $7,500 cash, and Garvin's bond is at $5,000. A large amount of illegal drugs were taken during the search, specific amounts are unknown at this time.

Carroll County Sheriff's Deputies will continue to investigate.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  A working group has recommended to Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb that the state improve student safety by boosting funding for security improvements and school resource officers.

The report from a special working group that Holcomb convened also recommends that every Indiana school conduct active shooter drills and that the state expand students' access to mental health services. Holcomb released the report Friday.

Holcomb directed the State Budget Agency identify costs associated with the recommendations and how they might be funded.

The working group conducted a survey of schools officials, teachers, first responders and security experts to help develop the recommendations.

Republican legislative leaders have said boosting school safety will be a top priority during the next legislative session.




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Fire crews rescue two people from discount store roof

This article is old - Published: Monday, Aug 13th, 2018

The North Wales Fire and Rescue Service took part in an unusual rescue at a town centre store.

Three police cars and a fire crew attended B&M Bargains in Wrexham yesterday evening after reports of two individuals on the roof of the store.

The special platform unit was used to reach the roof, taking the two people down safely one by one.

A spokesperson for North Wales Fire and Rescue Service confirmed they were called to the Central Retail Park at 6:29pm and an aerial ladder was used.

The Central Retail Park store has been home to B&M Bargains since September last year when they took over the entire PC World and Au Naturale units on the retail park.
Police & Council offer innovative extra support after concerted attempt to take drug dealers out of circulation

This article is old - Published: Monday, Aug 13th, 2018

An innovative approach to cutting out the supply of drugs in Wrexham and supporting the victims and local communities who are fed up with the criminality on their doorstep, has been launched.

Last week Wrexham.com reported that five men had been arrested in the Caia Park area as part of Operation Loot  an ongoing effort aimed at tackling the circulation and supply of drugs in the Wrexham area.

But along with what has been described as a concerted attempt to take drug dealers out of circulation, Operation Loot aims to provide a wraparound service to substance users and local communities.

Speaking to Chief Inspector Mark Williams on Friday, Wrexham.com asked why he felt the somewhat unusual response after the drugs related raids had been taken and why he believed it was needed.

Were trying to look wider at the knock on effects of the positive action we are taking, explained Chief Insp Williams.

We are very conscious of the fact that when we do take out drug suppliers we are left with firstly users who are effectively victims of these criminals.

Friday saw the start of a week-long programme of events aimed at offering reassurance to the Caia Park community and additional support to service users.

This include enhanced support at the care hub in Rhosddu (more here) along with additional partners and agencies provided signposting to additional services going forward.

Elsewhere in Caia Park there was a police mobile unit on Whitegate Industrial Estate offering crime prevention advice; along with officers, volunteers from AVOW and the fire service visiting residents and offering reassurance on the action taken and plans for the future.

Chief Insp Williams said: The operation and the arrests has been ongoing for three months. In more recent weeks we decided to adopt this wraparound service to try support the community in Caia Park and across Wrexham.

The action came about from information from members of the public, so we want them to know what we have done.

Were out door knocking and telling them the expected outcomes of what has happened, thanking them and trying to building confidence and support so they continue to tell us the information we need to carry on with the enforcement action.

Going into this week there will also be an increase in support in the Caia Park area, with North Wales Police teaming up with Wrexham Council, North Wales Fire and Rescue Service and third sector agencies to carry out a series of community activities.

These include a clean-up, grass cutting, graffiti removal, litter picks and skips for residents to dispose of any rubbish they may have.

Its all about making it look and feel nicer down here as a result of some of the positive work that has gone on, explained Chief Insp Williams.

He added: This is a trial and its an approach that we havent done before. If it successful and the feedback continues positively, it is something we will look to do with other major arrests.

We feel the action taken will have some impact on the drugs supply in Caia Park in particular and across Wrexham. We feel duty bound to support those maybe affected, be that the general community or users themselves.

The police efforts has been welcomed by Queensway Councillor Carrie Harper, who said: The police work in the area recently has been outstanding and Id like to thank local officers and PCSOs for their efforts, which will undoubtedly help to improve quality of life for local people.

Ive been out knocking doors with our local PCSOs and street pastors today and I know the increased visual presence in the area is helping to reassure residents.

There is of course often a lot of work going on behind the scenes that residents arent aware of and its good to reassure people theres plenty happening.

Im also aware that partnership working is proving very effective to try and reduce crime and anti-social behaviour in the area generally and would also praise Wrexham Council, the fire service, community safety partnership, AVOIW, Cais and Kaleidoscope for their efforts.

Cllr Harper added: Id also like to take the opportunity to encourage local residents to pass any information they feel is relevant to the police to help them with their work.

There are lots of ways to get in touch, you can call in to the mobile police station this weekend, or get in touch via the 101 line, the north Wales police web chat, or by contacting Crimestoppers which you can do anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Local councillors also welcome residents getting in touch, you can get our details from the council website and if issues are housing related or involve fly tipping etc, residents can also contact their local estate office or email contact-us@wrexham.gov.uk to report information through.

North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones also praised the work, stating: The supply of drugs is a priority in my Police and Crime Plan and I welcome this successful operation by North Wales Police.

The children of Caia Park deserve to be protected from these unscrupulous individuals as do children everywhere. I am committed to targeting serious and organised crime groups operating in North Wales.
Traffic lights in place on Horseshoe Pass as firefighters continue to tackle hotspots at Llantysilio

This article is old - Published: Monday, Aug 13th, 2018

A traffic light system is in place on the Horseshoe Pass as firefighters continue to deal with the aftermath of a fire near Llangollen.

Fire crews have been at the scene of the fire at Llantysilio mountainside since the end of July. At its peak 12 fire engines were at the scene  with smoke seen from 25 miles away.

This afternoon North Wales Fire and Rescue Service confirmed crews remain at Llantysilio and are dealing with hotspots.

However the Horseshoe Pass has now reopened and has traffic lights in place.

We remain at the scene of the #Llantysilio fire near #Llangollen as we continue to deal with hot spots. The #Horseshoe pass is now open with traffic lights.  North Wales Fire (@NorthWalesFire) August 13, 2018

Last week drone footage was released showing the extent of the fire being tackled by crews and the large amounts of damage caused by the blaze.

Previously Kevin Roberts, Senior Fire Safety Manager, North Wales Fire and Rescue Service has said: Fires like this one in Llantysilio, where access is extremely difficult and water supply is limited, place tremendous pressure on our resources. Our firefighters have been tied up for a considerable length of time working to bring it under control.

Its still too soon to determine the exact cause of this fire but we continue to strongly urge people to take extra care when they are out and about in the countryside to help reduce the risk of such fires  especially in such unprecedented dry weather.

You can view the drone footage released by North Wales Fire and Rescue Service, below:
Jose Antonio Rueda Bermudez, a former Amazon employee at the San Fernando de Henares fulfillment center outside Madrid, Spain, remembers the day he came home to find all of his familys furniture in the street.

Weeks earlier, Rueda, his wife, and their now 10-year-old daughter had been forced to move in with relatives because they could no longer pay the rent in their own home. Since food was scarce, their relatives kicked them out.

I had to sell my cell phone to pay for food, Rueda told the World Socialist Web Site. We had to call friends and family and ask them to keep our furniture and our possessions for us. We were in the street and we needed a roof.

Family and friends have helped Rueda and his wife and daughter rent an apartment, but he does not know how long they can stay. We wont be able to stay here long, Rueda said. It is hard to find a place but we cant live in the streets.

In 2015, Rueda was injured at the Amazon fulfillment center where he worked as a contract worker through the US-based employment firm Manpower Group. Ruedas job was to lift and move hundreds of heavy boxes each day, a tiring task that must be done quickly, with management looking over your shoulder to ensure maximum speed and efficiency.

One day in July, Rueda was moving a box when he felt an excruciating pain slice through his body. Though he was only 28 years old at the time, doctors now tell him he suffers from chronic lumbago and chronic Sacroiliitis, an inflammatory condition that causes severe pain and will likely remain with him for his entire life. His job prospects are limited because he cannot stand on his feet for long periods of time.

The World Socialist Web Site first spoke to Rueda in June 2017. At that time, the WSWS reported that Amazon had fired Rueda for his injury and blamed him for it.

They told me the injury was my fault, he said. Amazon refused to pay for the medical care to which he has a legal right. Now Im not receiving a single euronot for medicine, not for anything.  My life has been destroyed by Amazon.

At the time of the first interview, Rueda was awaiting a February 2018 court date and hoped a judge would require Amazon to pay him for his injury. Rueda also filmed a YouTube video which he sent to the media and believed would attract press attention. He contacted various political parties and unions and was hopeful that the UGT, CCOO and Podemos would come to his defense.

Now, Rueda reports all of these organizations ignored his repeated appeals for help and told him there was nothing they could do.

The courts, the media and the unions are like the mafia. My opinion is this is a great shame, he said.

I sent my video to [Podemos leaders] Pablo Iglesias and Inigo Errejon. Neither of them did anything. I saw the other day that Iglesias visited the fulfillment center where I worked and posed with workers. But he never answered me. They didnt do anything.

Rueda also sent his video to the trade unions: The unions told me specifically that their leaders had seen my video. But they told me they couldnt help me. The unions are another mafia. All of them. The UGT called me and I went to their offices. They said they would help me but they didnt do anything. Nothing.

In July, the unions held a three-day strike at the facility where Rueda used to work. During the strike, which coincided with Amazons Prime Day sales, a union leader from the CGT, Marc Balmes, told the media that the unions gave Amazon a month to stockpile goods and move products around the strike.

Though the overwhelming majority of the 2,000 workers at the San Fernando de Henares facility wanted to conduct a real struggle, many workers saw the strike for what it was: a sham that was not intended to halt production or damage Amazons massive bottom line. This did not stop the police from handling strikers with extreme brutality. Police beat workers with truncheons, causing one worker to bleed profusely from the face. Three strikers were arrested.

Rueda explained that he went to the fulfillment center on the day of the strike:

I went down to the fulfillment center for the strike. Telemadrid and a number of other television stations were there and they began to interview me about my case. I told them about my injury and about how Amazon stopped me from receiving help for my work-related injuries.

When union representatives saw me speaking to the press, they came up to me and started talking to me. They stood around and watched me to make sure I didnt say anything negative about the unions. In the end, the TV channels didnt report anything about my case. There are many powerful interests that want to keep my story secret. When the reporters sent the interviews with me to the station, they probably said, This we cannot publish. I also sent letters to the major TV stations to ask them to report on my case and the injustice against me. Nobody published anything.

Rueda has also lost faith in the judicial process. When he went to court in February 2018, he got a lesson in how the courts make it impossible for the working class to address its grievances.

Before the hearing started, I was sitting in a room with my lawyer and the lawyer representing Amazon and the lawyer representing Mutua Universal [a company that works with the government to link injured workers to public services]. I realized how rigged it was. They were all glaring at me, sharing papers with one another, handing documents back and forth.

In the courtroom, Rueda presented his paperwork to the judge. He kept diligent records of his injury and had confidence that justice would be done. But Amazons lawyer argued that Rueda did not work at Amazon and did not deserve any money.

Rueda recounts, When Amazons lawyer said this, the judge at first accepted it as true and suspended the hearing. Then my lawyer corrected Amazons lawyer and said the injury did happen at Amazon. At this point, the judge kept the case going, but even though there was apparently a ruling in my favor, it will now be eight to 12 months before I get another update on my case.

His conclusion?

The government doesnt want the justice system to work for the workers. If it is cheaper for the companies for you to die, then you die. They will not pay you what they owe.

Ignored by all official channels of communication, Rueda sought to use Facebook to publish his story. He used a Facebook account with a different first name so he could avoid retribution from Amazon and the courts. But one day when Rueda went online to share his story with other groups of workers, he found he had been barred from using his Facebook account.

Facebook blocked me. They asked for my national ID and my personal information. They wanted me to scan documents and I did not want to do this so they blocked me. They did not let me get into my account.

While Rueda and his family face possible homelessness, Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, are hoarding unprecedented levels of cash. Earlier this year, Bezos net worth hit $150 billionthe product of hyper-exploitation of workers like Rueda. Each second, Bezos makes $2,950, more than the annual salary of an Amazon worker in India. If Bezos wealth were divided evenly among all Amazon workers, Rueda and his coworkers would receive checks for $300,000 each.

At times, Rueda has felt discouraged over the fact that everyone from the unions to the media to the political parties has told him they will do nothing on his behalf. He worries about his daughters future and cannot afford to wait another year for the money he deserves.

Rueda recently contacted the WSWS after viewing a Facebook video of Texas Amazon worker Shannon Allen denouncing Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders and the Teamsters Union for using her video to advance their pro-capitalist agendas.

I see her story and she puts herself in defense of us, Rueda said, referencing Allens specific appeal that American workers defend striking Amazon workers in Spain. You see her talk about her health, her economic situation, the way they threw her out like garbage, and that nobody helped herit hurts me, he continued.

You go work for Amazon and then you see the reality. You see that neither the unions, which are supposedly for the workers, that they dont do anything. You see that the legal process is so, so slow.

He said watching the video and speaking to the International Amazon Workers Voice made him realize something:

My problem is not an isolated problem. When they leave you in a very precarious situation, when they take your house, your necessities, when you dont have money to go to the doctor and you cant work because of your injuries, you have to fight. Some workers are afraid and not everybody fights at first. The companies play us against one another. But if there was unity among workers, everything would change.
The widespread opposition among UPS workers to the sellout contracts agreed to last Thursday by a national meeting of Teamsters officials has widespread support among autoworkers, with many calling for joint nationwide strike action.

The WSWS Autoworkers Newsletter spoke to workers in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois about the efforts of the Teamsters at UPS to ram through the contracts. They include the creation of a second tier of lower-paid hybrid delivery drivers and the maintenance of poverty-level pay for part-time workers.

Speaking about the spread of low-paid, part-time jobs at UPS, a worker at the Ford Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan said, Its terrible. It has to stop Hell yes, we need joint strike action nationwide!

Currently 70 percent of the 240,000 employees of the shipping giant are part-time, performing everything from loading trucks in warehouses to delivering packages during peak periods. Top pay for a part-timer will reach only $15.50 per hour at the end of the proposed agreement.

The aim of the joint conspiracy of the Teamsters and corporate management in introducing a second tier of delivery drivers is to force out older workers and reduce the entire workforce to poverty conditions and casual employment.

Among autoworkers, there is growing anger over the proliferation of tiers and highly exploited temporary part-time (TPT) workers, and widespread support for a united struggle. As with UPS workers, autoworkers face a joint offensive of corporate management and the United Auto Workers in enforcing concessions.

I think they should vote no on the sellout, said a worker at Jeep in Toledo, Ohio. Addressing himself to the workers at UPS, he added, Dont let [Teamsters President] Hoffa trick you. You should have just one wage, the top wage, no tiers. To have people doing the same job and being paid differently is unconscionable.

We are no longer able to afford the cars we build. It says something about how far things have gone today.

At Fords Chicago Assembly Plant, a worker with six years there said that she supported the UPS workers struggle. Her best friend works part-time at UPS, and the situation is the same at Ford. Theres not that big of a difference between us, Amazon and UPS, she said. Were all in the same boat.

Theres enough money for everyone to be paid well, she continued, but the corporations are hiding it and spending it on themselves, making us fight for it.

Another high-seniority worker at Rouge reporting for the night shift commented, I am what they call a legacy worker [that is, a senior worker with higher pay and benefits]. But I have two sons who are TPTs [Temporary Part-Time workers], one at Flat Rock and one at the stamping plant here at Rouge.

My daughter-in-law was a TPT for two years. She had to quit because she couldnt get hired in full time.

The worker recalled that when he was hired, it only took 90 days to get full pay and benefits. This is horrible, he concluded. Their [TPT] pay is lousy. They get no benefits. They have no rights on the shop floor. We have to do something to stop it.

A TPT worker at Rouge took the newsletter, saying, Im in an impossible situation. When I hired in, the union told us we would be full time after 90 days. That was a lie. I have been here two years, and Im still not hired in.

Its horrible, added another TPT. They are doing it everywhere. There should be a nationwide strike against it.

A legacy worker agreed. Thats whats coming is a nationwide strike, he said. I really believe that.

Another worker agreed but was more reflective. A nationwide strike I hope so, he said. This has gone on too long.

He continued by recalling the 100-year anniversary of the Russian Revolution. I am Russian, he said. I believe the world would be different if Lenin had lived longer. Following a discussion of the fight by the Trotskyist movement against the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union, he concluded, Yes, Trotsky was right. Socialism has to be international.

In addition to second-tier and TPT workers, the UAW has accepted a third category of low-paid, disenfranchised employees called Short-Term Supplementals, or STSs, under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoA) with the company. MoAs are secret deals, signed behind the backs of the rank-and-file, but that are included in the stack of agreements between the UAW and the company that are used to legally straitjacket workers.

All STS and TPT workers, said one worker, think that unions are structured like the military where you work up the ladder. But it doesnt work that way, he concluded. You dont improve your situation.

I was a TPT last year, another agreed. Now Im an STS, but its still the same. As a TPT you have no representation. They make you think that after one year your situation will change for the better. But then you find out you have no guarantees, and they cut your hours.

I have worked here for years, added another STS employee. I dont trust politicians or unions. But, you can only squeeze a cactus so much until theres no water left, he concluded. Eventually the tables will turn.

The WSWS urges UPS and autoworkers to build their own organizations of struggle, rank-and-file committees in every factory, hub and warehouse, to unite their struggles and prepare for a coordinated offensive against the corporations.

For more information, sign up for the UPS Workers Newsletter and the Autoworker Newsletter .
On Saturday afternoon, a Baltimore police officer violently and without provocation assaulted Dashawn McGrier, a 26-year-old city resident.

A video of the incident shows officer Arthur Williams pushing McGrier against a wall, with his hand on his chest. In response, McGrier can be heard saying So what, dont touch me! as he tried to move Williams hand away.

Baltimore cops filmed repeatedly punching man on the street

Williams then launched a vicious attack, landing multiple punches to McGriers face and tackling him to the ground, where he continues to punch McGrier in the face, before arresting him. At no time did McGrier attempt to fight back. Nonetheless, the officer threw at least 10 punches at McGriers face in about a 12-second span. No charges were filed against McGrier who had to be hospitalized, with X-rays taken of his jaw, nose and ribs for suspected fractures.

A second officer accompanying Williams did nothing to prevent his colleague from carrying out the completely unprovoked attack. The assaulting officer and McGrier are both African American.

In response to popular outrage over the video of the beating, the Baltimore police department announced Sunday that it had accepted Williams' resignation and limited the second officer to administrative duties while it supposedly carries out an internal investigation. Even these incredibly mild reprimands are only due to the video evidence quickly emerging of the officers actions. It is highly likely that without the video no action would have been taken against either officer.

In June, according to McGriers attorney, the same officer had previously confronted McGrier without justification. The attorney, Warren Brown, told the Baltimore Sun It seems like this officer had just decided that Dashawn was going to be his punching bag. And this was a brutal attack that was degrading and demeaning to my client, to that community, and to the police department.

According to a police statement, the Saturday incident began when the two officers encountered McGrier on the sidewalk. As Brown noted, the police had absolutely no probable cause to stop McGrier. According to the police, after initially releasing McGrier, the two officers again approached to give him a citizen contact sheet. Police issue such documents as an acknowledgment that a person has had an encounter with an officer. Brown said Williams told McGrier to stop without providing any reason. According to Brown, McGrier told the officer What is this all about? You dont even have probable cause.

Despite the fact that Officer Williams already knew McGrier from the prior June incident, he then asked McGrier to provide identification. When McGrier refused, Williams quickly escalated the situation by pushing McGrier against the wall and then assaulting him.

Shantel Allen, who witnessed the assault, told the Baltimore Sun, I was speechless. I was enraged. I was hurt. I was shocked more than anything. That is really something you dont expect, she said. I truly feel as though this officer needs to be dealt with in a very serious manner, so none of his fellow officers or anyone else in the criminal justice system feels like they can use this kind of force. This is a crime. You cant just go around putting your hands on people.

Far from an anomaly, Saturdays actions fit a long-pattern of police misconduct in Baltimore. In 2015, Freddie Gray was murdered by the police while being transported in their custody. In what is known as a rough ride, the police put the handcuffed Gray in the back of a police wagon and did not buckle him.

As a result of the criminally negligent police actions, Gray suffered fatal spinal injuries. While criminal charges were brought by state prosecutors, all six officers responsible for Grays death were either found not guilty or had all charges dropped.

In the wake of mass protests following Grays death, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) undertook a review of the Baltimore police, which found widespread violations of constitutional rights by officers.

After examining police stops, arrests and court documents from 2010-2016, the DOJ found that Baltimore police officers routinely engaged in unjustified stops and searches, arrests without cause, racial profiling, use of excessive force, sexual discrimination, and retaliation against actions protected by the First Amendment, including detaining and arresting people simply because they used speech perceived to be critical or disrespectful towards the police.

In April 2017, a federal district court judge in Baltimore approved a consent decree between the Baltimore Police and the DOJ. Among other measures, the decree calls for restrictions on when and how officers can engage individuals and, in essence, spells out in detail the actions of police that fall within, and outside of, the bounds of the Constitution.

Officer Williams actions against McGrier violated the consent decree in numerous ways. Of particular relevance to Saturdays incident, the decree provides that, in the event where there is no probable cause, officers can engage in either voluntary contacts or field interviews with Baltimore residents for the purpose of gathering information.

The consent decree explicitly states, however, that when such encounters occur, the community member does not have to respond to questions and is free to leave  Officers conducting a Field Interview shall  [r]efrain from using words or actions that would tend to communicate that the person(s) are not free to leave or must answer questions  During Field Interviews, officers who ask individuals to provide a physical form of identification, such as a drivers license, must inform the individuals that providing identification is voluntary.

Additionally, the consent decree states that Officers engaged in, or attempting to engage in, a Voluntary Contact or Field Interview may not use a persons failure to stop, failure to answer questions, decision to end the encounter, or attempt or decision to walk away to establish reasonable suspicion to justify an Investigatory Stop or Detention, Search, Citation, or Arrest of the person.

The police actions on Saturday expose the 2017 consent decree as an entirely toothless document which will not deter police from continuing their unconstitutional actions against Baltimore residents.

Earlier this year, in another notorious example of Baltimore police officers engaging in rampant illegality, eight members of a now-defunct elite Baltimore police task force either pleaded guilty or were found guilty at trial regarding crimes ranging from robbery and extortion to fabricating evidence. The officers were members of the Gun Trace Task Force, ostensibly set up in 2007 to focus on illegal gun possession in order to reduce the number of guns in the city.

Instead, the members of the group systematically violated the Constitutional rights of Baltimores residents and used their authority to steal drugs and cash to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The leader of the taskforce, Wayne Jenkins, admitted in his plea bargain to providing cocaine and marijuana to an associate to resell on the streets and splitting the profits from the sales, netting himself between $200,000 and $250,000. Additionally, Jenkins admitted to stealing dirt bikes and reselling prescription drugs taken during the 2015 protests following Freddie Grays murder.

In another indication of the corruption pervading the department, then-newly appointed Police Commissioner Darryl De Sousa resigned in May after being charged in US District Court with willfully failing to file his federal tax returns for 2013, 2014 and 2015.
Over the past months, the Trump administration, with minimal opposition from the Democratic Party, has intensified the most dramatic right-wing shift in US immigration policy. While mass roundups and the expansion of internment camps for immigrants have become the new normal, major attacks on the public benefits, health, well-being and immigration status of the working class is underway.

After leaked draft executive orders in January 2017, January 2018 and March 2018, an NBC report earlier in August revealed the administrations plans to change existing immigration rules to deny permanent residency and citizenship to legal immigrants who might have accessed any kind of public benefits for themselves or their family members or dependents before submitting their application.

This change was anticipated by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), which had earlier in the year published a report, CHILLING EFFECTSThe Expected Public Charge Rule and Its Impact on Legal Immigrant Families Public Benefit Use. As the report made clear, every legal immigrant using a social program is in danger of being labeled a public charge and therefore found ineligible for citizenship. Immigrant parents could be penalized for their childrens use of social programs, even if the children were US citizens. This in turn would have a negative impact on the most vulnerable section of the working class as a whole, preventing them from accessing the much needed social programs.

The expected rule, which could come into effect very soon, makes it more difficult for immigrants to obtain green cards, get temporary visas extended for themselves or dependents or use public benefits or tax credits for which they qualify. In addition, the use of public benefits by legal immigrant noncitizens might even lead to their deportation.

The MPI report estimates the share of noncitizens being considered within the framework of public charge would expand from 3 percent of the total legal immigrant population under existing rules that were introduced by the Clinton administration to 47 percent. This would effectively codify a class quota for citizenship and migration. Furthermore, if the rule is used as grounds for the deportation of legally present noncitizens, the size of the population at risk of removal could increase significantly beyond the current unauthorized and otherwise removable noncitizen populations.

More than 10 million noncitizens live in benefit-receiving families and the total number of people facing public charge determination may increase more than 15-fold. The report presents a compelling argument that there will be a broad withdrawal from public benefits usage by vulnerable sections of the population once the new rule comes into effect. Data collected after the enactment of the 1996 welfare reform reveal that food stamp use fell by 53 percent among US citizen children in families with a noncitizen parent between 1994 and 1998. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) use also fell 44 percent among noncitizens and 78 percent among refugees, while Medicaid usage fell by 17 percent and 39 percent within those populations.

These patterns from the 1990s suggest a 20 to 60 percent decline of immigrants using public benefits and services. The report shows that of the 82.6 million US residents using public benefits in the 2014-16 period, only 14 percent were immigrant noncitizens while the remaining 86 percent were US born. However, 42 percent of immigrants resided in families receiving benefits. Fifty-five percent of adult immigrants receiving these benefits were employed.

Because the new rule also targets the use of state (i.e., non-federal) benefits, it will have a direct impact on California and New York in particular, which account for 41 percent of immigrants residing in families that receive public benefits. Additionally, these states extended benefits to some legal immigrants excluded by the 1996 welfare law. California, the home to the largest number of immigrants (10.7 million out of the nations 43.7 million in 2016), offers the CalFresh Food Assistance Program, which provides nutrition assistance to low-income households and the Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), providing state-funded assistance to low-income noncitizens who are disabled or seniors but ineligible for SSI because of their immigration status.

A major impact will be felt by children. A wide range of benefits is intended to promote their development, well-being, health and nutrition, as well as prenatal care. Reduced access to health care, higher poverty levels in general, increase in severe and chronic health issues, limited early childhood education, and negative psychological outcomes are likely to follow. In times of the most right-wing immigration policy in recent history, service providers have already reported decreased benefits use of those who are eligible out of fear of deportation.

Ultimately, millions of workers will go without basic needs, food, housing and health care because they fear to lose or not receive their immigration status. While immigration and access to public benefits will be limited, the ability to become self-sufficient is not only hindered, but a large number of people will be impoverished and later scapegoated for societys ills.

Politicians in both the Democratic and Republican parties will cite cuts in the use of social programs to justify further cuts. Concretely, the defense of immigrant rights and social programs is important for the defense of the rights of the working class as a whole.

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Trump administration plans to limit citizenship for 20 million legal immigrants

[8 August 2018]
Indonesias Lombok Island was struck on August 9 by a third earthquake in the space of just several weeks. The disaster has exacerbated widespread death and destruction, with more than 13,000 injured and 387 killed this month.

The latest quake registered a magnitude of 5.9 on the Richter scale. It followed a 6.9 quake on August 5, the most powerful in the islands recorded history, and a 6.4 magnitude shock on July 29 that killed 16 people. More than 500 tremors and aftershocks have also been recorded.

A week after the August 5 disaster, thousands have yet to receive assistance. Disaster relief efforts have been hampered by poor infrastructure and rescue services on the island, failing telecommunication networks and damaged bridges and roads.

Aid agencies have warned of a developing humanitarian crisis on Lombok. Arifin Hadi, a spokesperson for the Red Cross, said that tens of thousands are without clean water, food, medicine and shelter. More than 387,000 people have been displaced, with many of them homeless, and over 68,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed.

National disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said that the death toll will grow because many victims are suspected to be buried under landslides and collapsed buildings.

The Indonesian Red Cross reported that in North Lombokthe most devastated areaaround 334 people have died, some 20,000 people require aid, and approximately 80 percent of the buildings have been destroyed. An estimated three quarters of northern Lombok has been without power for over a week.

Residents have expressed anger over the inadequate government response. Many have said that food and water have been slow to arrive or not arrived at all. They have told the media that while neighbours and community members have assisted one another, virtually no government assistance has been forthcoming.

On August 7, surviving residents who spoke to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said people were still trapped underneath rubble of a collapsed mosque in West Pemenang, more than two days after the August 5 disaster, but that the government had not yet attempted to rescue them.

Hasbi Haer, a village elder in Sembalun Bumbung, told Fairfax Media on August 8 that government promises of assistance had yet to materialize. President Widodo promised that the government will assist with 50 million rupiah [about $4,600] for each house flattened, but we dont know when that will be, he said. We are now just thinking of surviving. Hasbi added that it could be at least six months before his family were able to move out of the tents that they were staying in.

Grieving families have had to bury their dead relatives. Thousands still require medical attention, due to a shortage of medical personnel. Budhiawan, a village head, told the New York Times last week that many people were unable to be admitted to the local hospital because of a lack of space. He said that many were forced to deal with broken bones and other injuries in the traditional way at home.

The Tanjung Public Hospital in North Lambok was badly damaged by the quakes. Many patients had to be transferred to the islands capital, Mataram. Reports last Wednesday indicated that only six of the seven ambulance services were operating out of the facility due to fuel shortages.

Speaking to the Strait Times last week, Dr Mohammad Rizki, a local pathologist, said my colleagues have been doing back-to-back surgery since morning. Most cases have involved head injuries and broken bones. The whole West Nusa Tenggara province [which includes the Lombok and Sumbawa islands] has only two neurosurgeons and not many orthopaedic surgeons.

The West Nusa Tenggara province has approximately 4.7 million people, according to the 2014 census, and is one of the poorest in the country.

The Indonesian political establishment is fearful of mounting anger over the inadequate official response. President Joko Widodo last week sought to ease tensions by pledging to rebuild damaged buildings.

Widodo also said he had instructed security minister Wiranto to send in the armed forces and national police. The mobilisation is aimed at suppressing the anger and frustration of the population.

Indonesia is one of the most earthquake prone regions in the world, sitting on the Ring of Fire, an area with substantial plate movements and volcanic activity. According to a 2015 Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance Report, between 1970 and 2009, earthquakes accounted for more deaths and people affected than any other disaster type in Indonesia including tsunamis.

The devastation has been exacerbated by lax building safety standards. In 2012, the Australian Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction (AIFDR) said that building codes in the country were a decade out of date and did not incorporate lessons learned from recent damaging earthquakes or advances in earthquake hazard science.

Authorities have estimated that the damage across Gilis islands and Lombok could easily exceed 1 trillion rupiah ($A94.5 million).

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and the Australian Red Cross have promised a paltry $150,000 in assistance, while USAID has provided $US60,000. Such meagre sums will do next to nothing to address the crisis facing those affected by the disaster.
The Parker Solar Probe was launched early Sunday morning and has begun its three-month journey to get closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft.

For the first time, a spacecraft will venture into the Suns outer atmosphere, the corona, to take measurements of the complex thermal and magnetic interactions that have been observed from afar in different forms for more than one and a half centuries. The probe will study the flow of heat into the corona, examine the structure and motion of the solar wind and investigate the mechanisms that transport and accelerate particles from the Suns surface to Earths orbit and beyond.

Once it is fully deployed, the Parker Solar Probe will join the ten other spacecraft that are currently studying different aspects of the Sun and its influence on Earth and the solar system in general. The total cost is estimated at $1.5 billion over the lifetime of the mission, about a tenth of the US Navys new Gerald R. Ford-class supercarrier.

During its first week of operations, the spacecraft will deploy its high-gain antenna for ship-to-Earth communications and its magnetometer boom, which will study changes in the solar magnetic field.

Later, the crafts hundreds of researchers, engineers and technicians will begin the four-week process of calibrating five main scientific instruments and ensuring that all flight systems are ready to face the extreme heat that the probe will experience when it is studying the Sun at a distance of 24 million kilometers, half the distance of Mercurys orbit. The first close-up observations are expected to begin by December.

The mission is slated to last until 2024, using a series of seven flybys of Venus to get progressively closer to the Sun. At its closest approach, the probe will dive to just 6 million kilometers away from the Sun and will whip around the star at 692,000 kilometers per hour. For comparison, the New Horizons mission to Pluto is only traveling out of the Solar System at just under 51,000 kilometers per hour.

To survive the intense radiation so close to the Sun, the Parker Solar Probe uses a specially designed heat shield that has to resist radiation that is 475 times the intensity Earth receives. The heat shield consists of a layer of highly reflective aluminum oxide, a carbon-carbon composite and a carbon foam, which reduces temperatures of 1,370 degrees Celsius (hotter than lava erupting from a volcano) to about 30 degrees Celsius (slightly above room temperature).

While this technology is not new, it places enormous constraints on the operations of the instruments because they must study the corona and magnetic field while avoiding direct sunlight, under conditions where the Suns apparent disk is 28 times as large as it appears from Earth.

The protection of the instruments also depends on onboard algorithms to constantly correct the spacecrafts orientation. As the spacecraft flies around the Sun, it is too far away to be controlled by anyone on Earth and so must correct the probes orientation without any human aid. And unlike a landing on Mars, which requires computer guidance and correction for about seven minutes, Parker Solar Probe will have to correct its course by itself for seven years.

Once the spacecraft begins to collect data, it will provide critical insights into solving two problems in solar physics that have puzzled astronomers for decades: the hot temperatures of the corona and the fast speeds of the solar wind.

The corona is the thin outer layer of the Suns atmosphere. It consists of free electrons and ions that flow around the Sun and out from it in patterns guided by the Suns myriad and constantly fluctuating magnetic fields. Much of the solar activity that reaches Earth originates in the corona and can interfere with radio communications, harm satellites and astronauts and even break power grids and oil pipelines. A full understanding of the corona is similar to understanding climate patterns on Earth, both interesting from a pure research standpoint and essential to ensure the continued functioning of society.

While the first scientific observations of the corona were made in 1869, the results were not understood until 1940, when Swedish physicist Bengt Edlen determined that the light from the corona revealed the presence of iron atoms that had 13 out of their 26 electrons stripped off. Using the developments in quantum mechanics in the preceding three decades, Edlen calculated that the energy required to remove so many electrons from iron meant that the temperature of the corona had to be at least one million degrees Celsius.

There was immediate skepticism of the result. Temperatures in the core of the Sun, the source of the stars energy, reach fifteen million degrees Celsius, but they steadily decrease to about six thousand degrees Celsius on its surface. It was counterintuitive that the temperature further from the Suns core would increase. As every observation since then has confirmed, however, going from the surface of the Sun into the corona, the temperature spikes to between one and ten million degrees Celsius, akin to moving away from a fire and yet getting hotter.

There are currently three main hypotheses to explain this transfer of heat, including slow-moving sound waves that travel between different layers of the Suns atmosphere, energy stored and transferred via magnetic fields and small jets of particles originating from just above the Suns surface. None of them have been wholly rejected or confirmed and in fact all may play a role in powering the corona.

The speed of the solar wind is related to the high coronal temperature. In 1958, the spacecrafts namesake Eugene Parker (1927- ) predicted that material in the corona is so hot that it can escape the Suns gravity and accelerate into the Solar System. This was confirmed a year later by data collected by the Soviet spacecraft Luna 1 and analysis done by Konstantin Gringauz. The results were replicated by the Soviet Luna 2, Luna 3, and Venera 1, and the NASA spacecraft Mariner 2.

Continued work predicted that these particles begin accelerating 2.8 million kilometers above the surface of the Sun. This was the accepted theory until the 1990s when observations by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft showed that the acceleration of the solar wind occurred four times closer to the Sun than Parkers prediction. Given that, there must be something more than the heat of the corona driving the solar wind.

There have been several ground- and space-based experiments to try to resolve this discrepancy, but none have been so far successful. The leading hypotheses involve still unknown magnetic and gravitational interactions between particles in the corona and the Sun as a whole.
Railway trade union leaders unilaterally shut down indefinite strike action yesterday after a morning meeting with Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and members of a railway cabinet sub-committee. None of the workers demands were granted and no mass meetings called to discuss the betrayal.

Desperate to end all industrial action the rail union leaders, like the government itself, feared that the strike could escalate out of control, drawing in other sections of the working class to challenge Colombos social austerity and cost-cutting privatisation agenda.

The hurriedly convened Sunday morning meeting was held at Sirisenas private residence in Polonnaruwa, his traditional parliamentary constituency.

Speaking to journalists outside Sirisenas residence after the meeting, rail union leaders repeated their usual pathetic claims: The president has promised to provide solutions to our demands. These lines that have been used at least half a dozen times in the last few years in order to shut down strike action by railway workers.

Government minister and spokesman for the cabinet sub-committee Sarath Amunugama, however, detailed the terms agreed by the unions. The sellout deal includes the following:

1) Railway, health and education sectors will be transformed into closed services with concrete proposals for these changes to be presented to the next cabinet meeting.

2) There should be no new recruits and examinations held in the railways until the next discussion between the two parties.

3) Matters regarding administrative and salary issues of railway officers are to be discussed with the representatives of the relevant trade unions.

4) No disciplinary action will be taken against trade union officials involved in the strike.

5) The railway strike to be stopped, with immediate effect.

Even a cursory glance at these conditions makes clear the grotesque nature of the betrayal.

The first condition was a recommendation already made by the cabinet sub-committee as an initial first step in the process of privatising the railways.

Beginning under British rule, the Department of Railways has always existed as a government owned enterprise. Privatisation of Sri Lankas rail service, which has been demanded by the International Monetary Fund, has been consistently and vehemently opposed by rail workers.

The second condition goes against workers demands that all job vacancies be filled at the department in order to reduce workloads. Consecutive Sri Lankan governments and rail management have refused to fill these job, claiming that the department has too many employees and this discourages prospective private buyers.

The third condition is aimed at breaking up the Railway Trade Union Alliance (RTUA), the joint union organisation involved in last weeks strike. The next round of negotiations will separate engine drivers, station masters, railway guards and supervisors.

The fourth condition, that there be no disciplinary action against union officials involved in last weeks strike, is a basic democratic right and won by workers long ago.

These are the retrogressive conditions, re-packaged by unions as a promised solution by President Sirisena, now being imposed on railway workers.

From the very outset, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government made clear it was determined to defeat the strike and that none of the railway workers demands would be granted.

Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera told a cabinet meeting that wages cannot be increased out of fear for strikes while Minister of Youth Affairs and Southern Development Sagala Rathnayake denounced the strike as a terrorist act.

Rathnayake said the strike would be crushed in the same way the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam was defeated We will take every possible action to defeat this ugly trade union terrorism.

Meanwhile, Sirisena declared that it is a myth if the workers thought that the strike is going to hurt the government.

Railway officials were instructed to recall all relevant retired railway workers to run the trains while the Sri Lankan military supplied drivers and transport vehicles to supplement the additional road transport provided by the Sri Lanka Transport Board. Government- and privately-owned media units were directed to launch a vigorous provocative campaign to instigate the public against the strike.

The unions did everything they could to prevent strike action and when that was not possible betrayed the walkout at the first opportunity. This agenda is not just an expression of the bankrupt and anti-working class character of the RTUA but the reactionary role played by the trade unions nationally and internationally.

In the face of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe governments strike-breaking and other class-war actions, the RTUA did nothing to mobilise the support of other railway employees, let alone the rest of the Sri Lankan working class who are subjected to the same declining social conditions.

Behind the governments attacks on workers wages, conditions, jobs and social welfare services is the deepening economic and political crisis of the world capitalist system and its sharp expression in Sri Lanka.

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government faces a mounting financial crisis with falling export earnings and a massive foreign debt of $50 billion.

In July, Central Bank governor Indrajith Kumaraswamy revealed that Sri Lanka will have to pay an average $3.9 billion per year for the next four years to cover current loan instalments and interest. This means, he said, that the country needs to borrow at least $2.5 billion, every year, from international markets.

We have very little room to manoeuvre and if we lose fiscal discipline and lose the IMF program, we will be downgraded by the rating agencies, Kumaraswamy said.

This year, the government hopes to borrow another $1.5 billion from China and $250 million from the Asia Development Bank.

Yesterday a Sunday Times editorial stated: The government is clearly facing a financial crunch. In such circumstances, calls for higher wages seem unreasonable. The foreign reserves of the country are dwindling by the day, merely to prop up the rupee vis-a-vis the US dollar.

Finance capital demands that the entire burden of the crisis be imposed on the working people. The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government, like all other capitalist rulers around the world, is determined to fulfil these demands. The political orientation of the working class must be based on an understanding of this objective reality and a new political program.

It was on this basis that the Socialist Equality Party statement on August 11 on the railway workers strike advanced the following program and one that has been vindicated by the RTUAs betrayal:

Railway workers must take the initiative and build rank-and-file Action Committees to organise a united struggle of all railway employees, and call for active industrial and political support from workers in the state, private and plantation industries and from the oppressed masses.

Railway workers are involved in a political struggle against the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government and all other sections of the Sri Lankan ruling elite. This can only go forward on the basis of a socialist and internationalist perspective to establish a workers and peasants government to implement socialist policies, as part of the wider perspective of establishing a socialist federation of states in South Asia and internationally.

This is the program of the Socialist Equality Party, the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International. We call on all class-conscious workers, the rural poor and youth and students of all communities to join the SEP and take forward this fight.
An explosion at US Steels Great Lakes Works Zug Island mill in River Rouge, Michigan, near Detroit on Friday night sent 15 boilermakers to local hospitals. Police and fire crews were called to the scene after the explosion. According to a statement released by US Steel on Saturday, all workers affected were contract employees hired through Songer Services, a heavy industrial general contracting firm. As of Saturday, 12 of the workers had been released and three remained in treatment.

The full extent of the injuries suffered by workers is unknown at this time and press reports indicate an ongoing investigation into the cause of the blast. According to the companys statement, the explosion occurred at the D4 Blast Furnace and involved the dust catcher.

Boilermakers contacted by a local news outlet said the workers had been told by supervisors to clean out the dust separator, which was packed with ash, but they initially resisted, saying it was a safety issue.

As a result of the ensuing explosion ash fell on all 15 boilermakers. One boilermaker crawled on his hands and knees to pull another boilermaker out of the ash. He and two others are still hospitalized with serious injuries, including severe burns.

A blast furnace is the first step in the steel-making process. Its role is to purify iron ore, which consists of iron minerals and impurities, into a molten metal of about 95 per cent iron content. The temperatures inside these massive furnaces can reach over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Large amounts of dust can accumulate in plants that are inconsistently and improperly maintained. Dust explosions occur under conditions when the dust is suspended in air, ignites under exposure to high heat and is confined such that damaging pressures can accumulate. The risk of dust explosions is reduced significantly with the implementation of proper engineering controls, ventilation, training and regular maintenance.

In 2015, then US Steel CEO Mario Longhi worked with Chicago-based industrial consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to develop a plan to cut operating costs across the company in order to increase profits and maintain the wealth of its top executives and shareholders after losing $1.5 billion in 2014 in the face of declining steel prices and rising competition. McKinsey & Co. advised US Steel to cut costs by implementing mass layoffs and hiring more contract workers.

This resulted in the loss of experienced workers, many of whom worked in maintenance positions, and the hiring of underpaid contract workers who are not granted the same benefits as full-time employees, including safety and job training.

After seven months of negotiations in which workers labored without a contract from 2015 to 2016, the United Steelworkers Union pushed through concessions contracts at US Steel that implemented these cost-cutting measures in addition to freezing wages and cutting health and retirement benefits. After the 2015 contracts were pushed through, 12,000 steelworkers were laid off nationwide.

During the negotiations, the USW isolated workers at US Steel, ArcelorMittal and specialty steelmaker Allegheny Technologies in order to aid the global corporations in restructuring the international steel industry at the expense of the working class.

The terms of the rotten agreements pushed through by the USW have increased the number of injuries and deaths suffered by steelworkers over the past decade. The USW, closely allied with the Obama and now Trump administrations, has made the lowering of wages, cutting of healthcare and retirement benefits and cuts to safety measures a part of its economic strategy to help maintain the competitiveness of the steel corporations.

The recent explosion is one of many incidents at Great Lakes Works in which both contract and regular workers have been killed or injured.

On January 5, 2008, 27-year-old contract pipefitter Thomas Pichler Jr. was killed after being crushed by a pipe dislodged by a gas explosion. His parents sued the company, claiming that it allowed flammable gas to enter an inactive pipe, a practice which the Occupational Safety and Health Administration deemed to be extremely dangerous.





On December 15, 2013, 31-year-old remote control crane operator Antonino Palazzolo was killed after being struck by flying shrapnel after a malfunction with a basic oxygen furnace caused 190 tons of molten iron to spill out, hitting the snow and flash freezing to cause multiple explosions.





On April 4, 2014, 36-year-old contract worker Chris Castro was killed while operating a crane which tipped over near the plants number two oxygen furnace.





On April 19, 2015, 41-year-old shipping worker Heather Warren was killed after she was struck by a semitrailer that she was spotting at the plants Cold Mill Shipping facility. After her death, Warrens sister complained to the media that she had not been trained for the job she was performing when she was killed.





In April 2017, five crane operators became severely ill after exposure to gas while working the night shift at the plant. A Facebook account, which detailed the experience, was posted by one of the workers, Nicholas Doyle, and was shared over 15,000 times.





On July 31, 2017, five workers were injured in an explosion whose cause remains unknown at the plants 80-inch hot strip mill south of Detroit.

There has been virtually no discussion of safety and environmental issues facing steelworkers during the current contract negotiations between the USW and US Steel and ArcelorMittal. The current contracts are set to expire September 1 and cover workers at these corporations across the US.

In an August 3 memo to union members on its website, the USW stated: The most substantial discussion we have had with the company so far in 2018 revolved around Repair and Maintenance (R&M) and Capital Expenditures (CAPEX) While there are differences between how our union and management approach these issues, we recognize that working together to make our plants more efficient and profitable will make all of our jobs more secure.

The USW is involved in joint safety and environmental health committees in which they work with company management to cut costs to safety and maintenance programs in the plant in the name of increasing efficiency. Thus any concerns that the USW professes to raise for workers health and safety are completely empty.

In addition, there have been no discussions of wages and benefits during the current negotiations while details of the discussions are being kept hidden from the workers.

For workers to win their demands for a safe workplace will require a fight against the steel corporations and the USW, which has worked hand-in-hand with the steel companies to attack workers living standards. Meanwhile, it has lined up with the steel companies and the Trump administration in launching trade war against the foreign rivals of US capitalism, attempting to pit American steelworkers against their brother steelworkers in Canada, Mexico, Germany and around the world. As in the 1930s, the launching of trade war presages the development of armed conflict between the major powers.

In order to carry out their struggle, steelworkers need to organize independently of the USW to form rank-and-file committees to put forth their demands, oversee negotiations and fight to link their struggles with those of steelworkers internationally. Only if steelworkers are organized on this basis can they win their struggle against the corporations for the right to a safe workplace, decent working hours and good wages and benefits.
Monday, August 13, 2018 Former Dem Governor Apodaca Endorses Pearce But Logic Seems Confused; Pearce A "Moderate?" Plus: Jeff Apodaca Still On Trail Despite Primary Loss Gov. Apodaca It must be personal. How else to explain a former Democratic Governor lamenting what he sees as his party's abandonment of "moderation" and then turning around and endorsing the Republican gubernatorial nominee, one of the most conservative members in the US House?



The former Governor in question is 83 year old Jerry Apodaca who served from 1975-79 and whose son, Jeff Apodaca, lost a bitter primary '18 battle for the Dem nod for Governor to Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham.

A post-primary meeting between Jeff and Michelle is said to have gone badly, with Apodaca's supporters claiming he was dissed by the nominee in the short session. And in his op-ed endorsing Pearce, the senior Apodaca notes he was also jilted by her:

. . . Friends recently suggested I sit down with both gubernatorial candidates to discuss the concerns I outlined above. . . I never heard from Congresswoman Lujan-Grisham. I did receive a call from Congressman Pearce. I was surprised how open he was and how we agreed on about 80% of the issues that plague New Mexico. I found him to be straightforward and an honest man. In fact, he reminded me of the moderate Democrats and Republicans of the past I worked with for the betterment of New Mexico.

s "sympathetic to the Tea Party movement. The Freedom Caucus is considered the farthest-right grouping within the House Republican Conference."



The left wing of the Democratic Party can be seen as forsaking Apodaca, who described himself as a "JFK Democrat" in endorsing Pearce. Say what? That's like saying McGovern would endorse Nixon. Alligators asked if Jerry wrote this stuff or was it Jeff?



However, Lujan Grisham has separated herself--some say would say startlingly so--from that left wing. For example, she has denounced calls to abolish ICE and even condemned the Medicare for all proposal. On top of that, she described herself in an interview as a



So while the Bernie Sanders wing may have left Jerry in the dust, Lujan Grisham appears to be right in his "moderate" wheelhouse--and to the chagrin of liberal Dems.



And then there is Jeff Apodaca's run for Governor. Wasn't he the candidate who decried Lujan Grisham as a member of the "establishment" and who eagerly assumed the mantle of the "progressive" in the race?



The confusing logic used by the former Governor in endorsing Pearce reflects the campaign run by his son who started as a moderate businessman but morphed into a progressive and whose mixed message ultimately doomed his campaign.



Now in another turnabout Jeff Apodaca is back to hugging conservatives or at least hanging out with them. He is doing



Governor Apodaca had plenty of reason not to endorse Lujan Grisham after the alleged shabby behavior she showed his son while basking in her victory. He could have stuck to that reasoning for ditching her, rather than muddling his legacy by asserting the conservative candidate for Governor isn't actually conservative and abandoning the party he supported for a lifetime and which sent him to the highest levels of political power.



PACKMAN PACKS



Packman This is a corrected version on the hiring of political consultant Alan Packman by the administration of Mayor Keller. The first said he would be working in constituent services in the Mayor's office under Alan Armijo.



High profile Dem political consultant Alan Packman, who served as Mayor Keller's campaign manager, is packing up and moving into new digs. Packman, the city confirms, will be working in the Department of Technology and Innovation which oversees the



Keller, Packman and his Rio Strategies firm came under fire during Keller's mayoral campaign over financial improprieties. Packman



Packman's star was dimmed after he ran into the ethics buzzsaw. Rio Strategies had been charging clients as much as $10,000 a month for consulting services. His last campaign was for Garrett VeneKlasen who lost the Dem nomination for state land commissioner in the June primary.



Insiders point out that Mayor Berry also hired his campaign manager. Her starting salary they say was $109,000.



THE BOTTOM LINES



In a headline last week we used the term "unphased" and several readers pointed out it should read "unfazed.". . . Heather Nordquist is the write-in candidate in the state House race in Santa Fe County running against Democrat Andrea Trujillo. There is no Republican running. Nordquist is a Democrat.



This is the home of New Mexico politics.







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( c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2018 In TV ads Pearce has recently presented himself as the moderate Apodaca says he found him to be. But Pearce's conservative credentials are what have always made him stand out. He is a member the House Freedom Caucus , described on Wikpedia asympathetic to the Tea Party movement. The Freedom Caucus is considered the farthest-right grouping within the House Republican Conference."The left wing of the Democratic Party can be seen as forsaking Apodaca, who described himself as a "JFK Democrat" in endorsing Pearce. Say what? That's like saying McGovern would endorse Nixon. Alligators asked if Jerry wrote this stuff or was it Jeff?However, Lujan Grisham has separated herself--some say would say startlingly so--from that left wing. For example, she has denounced calls to abolish ICE and even condemned the Medicare for all proposal. On top of that, she described herself in an interview as a "fiscal conservative." So while the Bernie Sanders wing may have left Jerry in the dust, Lujan Grisham appears to be right in his "moderate" wheelhouse--and to the chagrin of liberal Dems.And then there is Jeff Apodaca's run for Governor. Wasn't he the candidate who decried Lujan Grisham as a member of the "establishment" and who eagerly assumed the mantle of the "progressive" in the race?The confusing logic used by the former Governor in endorsing Pearce reflects the campaign run by his son who started as a moderate businessman but morphed into a progressive and whose mixed message ultimately doomed his campaign.Now in another turnabout Jeff Apodaca is back to hugging conservatives or at least hanging out with them. He is doing a weekly broadcast to discuss the views of the Governor candidates on conservative radio talker KKOB radio.Governor Apodaca had plenty of reason not to endorse Lujan Grisham after the alleged shabby behavior she showed his son while basking in her victory. He could have stuck to that reasoning for ditching her, rather than muddling his legacy by asserting the conservative candidate for Governor isn't actually conservative and abandoning the party he supported for a lifetime and which sent him to the highest levels of political power.High profile Dem political consultant Alan Packman, who served as Mayor Keller's campaign manager, is packing up and moving into new digs. Packman, the city confirms, will be working in the Department of Technology and Innovation which oversees the 311 service . That's the centralized call center for all non-emergency inquiries and services. His official title will be Integration Specialist at a salary of $75,000. It's a perch from which he can be expected to deal with constituent issues that impact Keller's political standing.Keller, Packman and his Rio Strategies firm came under fire during Keller's mayoral campaign over financial improprieties. Packman solicited $30,000 in cash donations but listed them as "in-kind" services to the Keller campaign. The city ethics board ruled the Keller campaign had violated the ethics code but did not mean to and did not fine or reprimand him.Packman's star was dimmed after he ran into the ethics buzzsaw. Rio Strategies had been charging clients as much as $10,000 a month for consulting services. His last campaign was for Garrett VeneKlasen who lost the Dem nomination for state land commissioner in the June primary.Insiders point out that Mayor Berry also hired his campaign manager. Her starting salary they say was $109,000.In a headline last week we used the term "unphased" and several readers pointed out it should read "unfazed.". . . Heather Nordquist is the write-in candidate in the state House race in Santa Fe County running against Democrat Andrea Trujillo. There is no Republican running. Nordquist is a Democrat.This is the home of New Mexico politics. E-mail your news and comments. (jmonahan@ix.netcom.com) It must be personal. How else to explain a former Democratic Governor lamenting what he sees as his party's abandonment of "moderation" and then turning around and endorsing the Republican gubernatorial nominee, one of the most conservative members in the US House?
25 years ago: Clinton unveils health care reform to cut costs for corporate employers

Hillary Clinton presenting the Clinton administration's health care "reform" plan

In a speech to the National Governors Association on August 16, 1993, President Bill Clinton outlined the substance of his proposed health care reform program. Speaking to the group that he previously headed while governor of Arkansas, Clinton largely dropped the reformist pretenses associated with his promises to working people and explained in blunt language that the purpose of the reform was to cut costs for the government and corporate employers.

Clinton pointed to the steadily rising cost of health care as a proportion of US Gross Domestic Product. If we dont change this, were going to go from 14 percent to 19 percent of our income going to health care by the end of the decade. It is going to be very difficult for us to compete and win in a global economy with that sort of differential.

A week earlier, in a speech in Charleston, West Virginia, Clinton declared, We have got to do something to provide health security to all Americans in a way that is good for the private sector, good for our employers and controls the costs without sacrificing quality.

Clintons managed care plan would preserve the entire structure of profit-making medicine, including private insurance companies, private hospitals, private drug monopolies and manufacturers of medical equipment, and private medical practices for doctor-capitalists.

Hillary Clinton, in her role as chairman of the health care reform task force established by her husband, sounded similarly right-wing themes in a speech to the annual convention of the American Hospital Association. We have to eliminate the all-too-prevalent state of mind that there is a free lunch, that there is something for nothing, she said, referring to popular demands that health care should be a right to which everyone was entitled, regardless of ability to pay.

The centerpiece of the Clintons plan was to extract $30-$40 billion in cost savings from Medicare and Medicaidby means that were not specified in detailand using those funds to subsidize small employers who were otherwise not be able to afford health care benefits for their employees. Another $10 billion or more in regressive taxes on cigarettes and alcoholic beverages, which fall most heavily on lower-paid workers, would be added to the subsidy pool.

The Clintons also proposed increased flexibility for state governments to conduct social experiments on their Medicaid populationin other words, various forms of rationing, in which states denied coverage for some medical procedures for the poor to offset the cost of expanding the number of people covered by the program.

50 years ago: Soviet Politburo agrees to invasion of Czechoslovakia

Deng Xiaoping and Brezhnev with Nicolae Ceausescu in Bucharest, 1965

Meeting in Moscow August 17, 1968, members of the Soviet Politburo voted unanimously to provide assistance and support to the Communist Party and people of Czechoslovakia through the use of armed forces. This set in motion planning for the Warsaw Pact invasion of the country. This decision came just two weeks after the Bratislava Declaration, a supposed thaw in tensions, was signed between the Warsaw Pact countries and Czechoslovakia.

Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was dissatisfied with Czechoslovak leader Alexander Dubceks actions following Bratislava. In a letter to Dubcek on August 16, Brezhnev outlined some of his grievances. He wrote, the fraternal parties that met in Bratislava, attach enormous importance to these talks  it seems without question the main thing now is to fulfill the programmatic clauses of the document and to take practical measures to fulfill the agreements. The letter suggested that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia had stated their agreement for the positions laid out in the Bratislava Declaration but not carried them out.

But Brezhnevs evidence for this claim was that the course of events shows that the mass media have begun describing the results of the talks from right-wing positions and are continuing their anti-Soviet, anti-socialist attacks. In other words, Brezhnevs complaint was that Dubcek had continued to allow the Czechoslovak media to publish free and open criticisms of the soviet bureaucracy rather than routinely publishing the line of the Stalinist press.

The Soviet Politburo, as made clear in Brezhnevs letter, saw that the openness of the press and other Dubcek reforms were weakening the Stalinist regimes stranglehold over the Czechoslovakian working class. This, Moscow decided, warranted an invasion and the preemptive suppression of workers before a full-scale mass movement against the bureaucracy could erupt.

75 years ago: Churchill, Roosevelt meet in Quebec

The Quebec conference, with Roosevelt (left) and Churchill (right) on either side of Canadian Prime Minister William Mackenzie King

On August 17, 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt, along with military leaders from both countries, met in Quebec for a secret military conference. They were deadlocked on the opening day over the location and timing for the Allied assault against Germany in continental Europe.

Up until then, the British had been able to concentrate Allied military activity in the Mediterranean and were proposing entry into Europe through Italy, along with military operations in the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean.

But with the conclusion of the military campaign in North Africa and the successful invasion of Sicily, the US military contribution of war materials and manpower rivalled and surpassed the British. American imperialism now stubbornly demanded that the overriding priority be given to an invasion of Europe across the English Channel into France.

Britains Mediterranean strategy was oriented towards its colonial interests in the Middle East. But it also intended to use the Italian campaign as the basis for the invasion of south-central EuropeVienna was the major targetwhich would forestall the Red Armys advance into and conquest of these territories. During a recess of the conference Churchill even spoke of war with the Soviet Union.

The Quebec conference was the culmination of the long-festering dispute over a Mediterranean versus a cross-channel strategy. Although Churchills position was bolstered by the news of an Italian offer to surrender, the superior weight of American imperialism proved decisive.

The US-British meeting ended with an agreement that the invasion of Italy would be diversionary, aimed at pinning down German troops while the main strike was prepared against northern France. Signaling the preeminent role of the US, Churchill agreed that Operation Overlord, a massive invasion of Europe launched from southern England, would be headed by an American general.

100 years ago: AFL and business leaders discuss how to fight Bolshevism

Samuel Gompers

On August 13, 1918, a top-level conference between officials of the National Civic Federation and American Federation of Labor President Samuel Gompers and other members of the US delegation to the upcoming British Trades Unions Congress discussed methods of counteracting Bolshevism. The AFL-led mission was to include financiers, labor leaders publicists and others.

The Federation, founded in 1898 by oil magnate John D. Rockefeller and other leading capitalists, was the leading proponent of labor-management cooperation, i.e., corporatism. Gompers had been associated with the organization for years, along with the right-wing leaders of various craft unions. In January 1916, Gompers chose a speech before the National Civic Federation to announce that he was abandoning his longtime pacifism in favor of pro-war preparedness.

The purpose of the August 13 meeting was to gain the consensus of American opinion to be presented to the Trades Union Congress, as well as to labor leaders in other Allied countries which the mission will visit.

Among those attending were Wall Street financier and president of New York Citys IRT subway line, August Belmont, Otto H. Kahn, Judge William H. Wadhams, Isidor Straus and British suffragette leader Emmaline Pankhurst.

The resolutions adopted by the conference declared, according to a press report, it to be the first duty of the United States to concentrate every energy, that the cause of justice, freedom, and democracy (i.e., the Allied imperialist war effort) shall find its triumphant conclusion....

The conference also recognized the patriotic and constructive attitude of the American labor movement as one of the most important and effective agencies in combating the folly, disloyalty, and destructiveness of tendencies and agitations in this country and abroad, which are akin to Bolshevism in Russia.
KOKOMO, Ind. (AP)  An Indiana doctor is warning patients to be careful when purchasing cannabidiol following the recent state law that authorized the widespread sale of the cannabis-derived oil.

Dr. Gary Gettelfinger, who practices out of IU Health Pain Center in Bloomington, has provided the supplement to more than 500 patients since it first became legal in Indiana to treat children with epilepsy, the Kokomo Tribune reported . CBD is believed to have therapeutic benefits and help with anxiety, insomnia, depression and epileptic seizures.

Some versions of cannabidiol, commonly referred to as CBD, can be toxic and cause a user to fail a drug test, Gettelfinger said.

"There are a hundred companies out there selling this stuff, and there are a lot of scammers among those companies," he said.

Gettelfinger recommends users buy products that are organic and certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He said to check the product's absorption to ensure that it isn't too oily.

Gettelfinger said buyers also should check the levels of THC, which is the psychoactive compound found in cannabis plants. Indiana law prohibits CBD oil sold in the state containing more than 0.3 percent of THC.

A report issued by the World Health Organization earlier this year found that there aren't any adverse health outcomes to CBD. However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration hasn't approved using CBD for treating any condition.

Gettelfinger said he's seen the products bring health benefits to his patients.

"You just have to try it to see if it's going to work for you," Gettelfinger said. "If you can afford it, and you get a good product ... it's worth giving it a try."
BRANDON, Miss. (AP)  A man is pleading guilty in Mississippi to two in a series of killings and shootings of which he's accused.

Alex Deaton pleaded guilty Monday in Rankin County Circuit Court to murder, drive-by shooting and motor vehicle theft.

A judge is sentencing Deaton to life in prison.

Deaton admits that he killed his girlfriend, stole her SUV and shot a jogger in February 2017 in the suburbs of Jackson.

Police say Deaton then carjacked a New Mexico couple, fled to Kansas, shot a store clerk and stole the clerk's car.

Deaton pleaded guilty in July 2017 in Kansas to attempted first-degree murder and aggravated robbery. He was sentenced there in October to nearly 13 years in prison.

Deaton is also indicted for killing a woman near Philadelphia, Mississippi.
QUITMAN, GA (WALB) - On August 12, about 11:30 pm, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was requested to assist the Quitman Police Department with the homicide of Jasmine Davis, 29.

Davis was found shot off of South Culpepper Street at approximately 10:20 pm when they were located in an alley by a passerby.

EMS responded and transported Davis to the hospital where they were later pronounced dead.

Davis's body has been taken to the GBI Crime Lab in Macon where an autopsy will be conducted.

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call the Quitman Police Department 229-263-7556 or GBI Thomasville Office at 229-225-4090.

Copyright 2018 WALB. All rights reserved.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The Tallahassee Police Department is asking for help naming their newest K9s.

According to the department's Twitter page, the department has received two female Belgian Malinois dogs and one male German Shepard.

#PatrolDogs We are proud to introduce you to our three new K9's! They have a lot of training to go through but they've already started. We are in search of the perfect names for them and need your help! What do you suggest? And go.... pic.twitter.com/aQ5chnQaxl  Tallahassee Police (@TallyPD) August 13, 2018

All under two years old, TPD says the dogs have already started their training, however, they are in need of names.

So, the police department is taking suggestions.

WTXL has reached out to TPD to meet the newest additions to the team in person. We're waiting to hear back.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 01:20:19|Editor: yan

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DAMASCUS, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- The Islamic State (IS) on Sunday published a footage of the hostages snatched late last month in the southern province of Sweida amid progress of the Syrian army in the battle with the group in Sweida countryside.

The video, circulated by local media, showed two women speaking about the tough circumstances of their captivity, as over 30 people were abducted by IS during the sudden offensive on July 25 in Sweida countryside.

Two of the hostages had already died, including a 19-year-old man slaughtered by IS and a woman who died from worsening medical condition.

In the video on Sunday, one of the women said she had given birth ahead of the time, which led to the death of the baby.

The video purported to show the well-being of the hostages, as IS has been bargaining their release in exchange for the acceptance of the Syrian army to allow IS militants to flee to the desert region.

Activists said the negotiations between the Syrian army and IS were not fruitful at a time the Syrian army is on a wide-scale offensive to stamp out IS from the desert region of in the eastern and northeastern countryside of Sweida.

Meanwhile, state news agency SANA said the army has secured the eastern administrative border of Sweida on Sunday, besieging IS in the al-Safa hilltops northeast of Sweida.

On the opposition side, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor group said the Syrian army has captured the entire desert region after broad offensive on IS that has begun nearly a week ago.

The Britain-based watchdog said the entire province of Sweida has returned under the government control.

Sweida, which is predominantly inhabited by people of the Druze minority, has been largely safe during the country's more than seven-year-long war except for the countryside of Sweida, as IS controlled parts of it near the desert.

The Syrian army has recently captured the provinces of Quneitra and Daraa in southern Syria and the recapture of the al-Safa hilltops will mark the liberation of the entire southwestern region.

However, the fate of the kidnapped people is still unknown with no clear deal on the horizon amid a state of fear in Sweida for their lives, after IS attack led to the killing of 260 people in Sweida late last month.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 03:40:38|Editor: yan

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AMMAN, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Jordan on Sunday announced to have completed a raid by security forces against a cell of terrorists in the city of Al Salt, northwest of Amman.

Jordan's Minister of State for Media Affairs Jumana Ghunaimat said the concerned security bodies completed the operation that resulted in the arrest of five terrorists and killing of three others. Four officers were also killed during the operation which started Saturday.

"Security forces continued to comb the area after the demolition of the remaining part of a building that the terrorists blew up on Saturday," she said in a statement.

The minister said the terrorists blew up a building they were hiding in when the security forces stormed it.

She added that the security forces were on alert to protect the safety of citizens and residents of the country, offering condolences to the families of the fallen officers.

In a meeting Sunday, King Abdullah II of Jordan said the country will continue its war against terrorism until uprooting all radical groups, adding that such "cowardly attacks" will only increase the resolve and strength of Jordanians.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet, but some experts said it bears the hallmarks of the Islamic State group.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 07:31:10|Editor: ZD

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MEXICO CITY, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- The outgoing Mexican government will leave Mexico's public finances in a weaker position than the past three governments did, a report released by the Center for Economic Studies of the Private Sector (CEESP) said on Sunday.

The report said that "it is fundamental to insist on the strengthening of the sources of recurrent resources and for a review of spending."

In its weekly report, CEESP said a stronger state of law is needed to "inhibit the corruption and impunity that have left our country among the worst placed in the diversion of public funds."

According to the Finance Ministry's most recent figures, investment in the public sector has fallen 10.3 percent in the first half of 2018.

The administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto will conclude November 30 this year with the government of the president-elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, taking office December 1.

The new government is aiming to put an end to the deep-rooted corruption, high levels of violence, and inequality that blights Mexico.

The future president has proposed to review millions of the public contracts handed out by the Pena Nieto administration and to reverse some of the structural reforms.
Photo on taken at Aug. 12, 2018 shows the National Library of Australia in Canberra, Australia. (Xinhua/Pan Xiangyue)

CANBERRA, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Visitors were greeted with gifts such as balloons and books as well as exploration tours in the National Library of Australia as the grand building celebrates its 50th birthday on Sunday.

Sitting on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, the marble building is the largest reference library in the country. With columns all around, it echoes the appearance of the Parthenon in Athens.

While the National Library remained an iconic building in Canberra throughout the years, Margaret Goode, a 64-year-old volunteer in the library, noted that it changed so much.

History of the library could be dated back to the early years after the Australian Federation in 1901, when the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library served both the Parliament and ordinary citizens.

The library was moved from Melbourne to Canberra in 1927, and 33 years later, an Act formally separated the Parliament library and the national one.

Today, the national library is home to more than 10 million items in the collection, including more than 3 million books and 600,000 photographs. If lined up one after another, books in the library could stretch to more than 300 km from Canberra to Sydney.

Volunteers give a free lecture for visitors at the National Library of Australia in Canberra, Australia, on Aug. 12, 2018. (Xinhua/Pan Xiangyue)

Goode, who led free tours on Sunday to tell visitors stories about the library, has been working as a volunteer here for eight years.

"I was trained in the university as librarian," she told Xinhua. She later worked in the consulting business, but use the national library quite often.

"When I was going to retire, I wanted to find myself something to do," she said.

During the past eight years, she observed that the trove grew bigger and digital materials were shared by more people.

Anna Gressier, a media officer with the library, noted that each year there are half a million visitors entering the library through the door, but many others outside Canberra use the digital library.

"Because we are a national library, we need to make sure people elsewhere have access to the materials," she said to Xinhua reporter.

Volunteers wait to offer free "Oral History & Folklore" tour for visitors at the National Library of Australia in Canberra, Australia, on Aug. 12, 2018. (Xinhua/Pan Xiangyue)

Another change is the use of robots.

A man who only gave his first name as Chris has used the library for 15 years. He visited on Sunday especially to see the robots.

According to the Canberra Times, the library has four delivery robots sending material to and from the stacks and the reading rooms. Stack attendant Paul Nordern was quoted as saying that he believed "we are the only library in the world using these robots."

Apart from the improvement of technology, Goode also saw changes in the readers.

"There are now a lot of small children, and more foreign students using it," she said.

Dong Daoyi, a 40-year-old man originally from China, visited the library on Sunday with his wife and two children.

"I have lived in Canberra for 10 years, and I always take my children here because there are always events for the children," he said.

Dong has an eight-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter.

"Maybe this is what some Chinese libraries could learn from," he said, "to have more children's activities so that they could fall in love with books from an early age."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 09:47:07|Editor: mmm

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Local people watch as a vendor uses a crane to bring a bull down from the rooftop of his three-story house for the upcoming Eid al-Adha festival in Karachi, southern Pakistan, on Aug. 12, 2018. Muslims in Pakistan will celebrate the annual festival of Eid al-Adha, or the Festival of Sacrifice, on Aug. 22. (Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 10:36:39|Editor: mmm

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VIENTIANE, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Lao military personnel and a rescue team from Singapore are continuing the search for the 98 people still missing in the wake of the dam burst, with the number of dead confirmed at 36, local daily Vientiane Times reported Monday.

The search for those still missing after the district was inundated following the collapse of a dam wall involves teams from the Lao army and a rescue team from Singapore, who are scouring the area in hopes of finding other victims.

Phalom Linthong, deputy director general of the General Political Department, Lao People's Army, said "On Saturday, we found the body of a three-year-old girl in Hinlath village. This brings the number of known fatalities to 36, including three injured people who died in hospital."

Some 585 army personnel and 17 rescuers from Singapore are still continuing the search for missing people but they are hampered by thick mud, which makes it difficult to locate bodies, he said.

"The operation is not easy because many areas remain flooded after a week of rain and we are constantly encountering challenges caused by the thick mud, sand, and buried objects," he added.

"We need more equipment to help penetrate the mud. Soldiers and the Singapore rescue team are having to wade and walk through muddy water, mud, fallen trees and buildings in the search for the missing," Brigadier General Phalom said to media on Sunday.

The two groups are now focusing on Mai, Hinlath, and Thasaengchan villages of Attapeu Province.

When the flood hit on July 23, rescue teams from Thailand, China, the Republic of Korea and Laos arrived on the scene to aid in the search, rescue and relief operation, the daily noted.

Authorities in Sanamxay have now moved the camps set up to accommodate those made homeless to asphalt roads after lower parts of the district flooded following several days of rain.

The rebuilding of the road and bridges to the disaster-hit areas is being accelerated to enable relief supplies transportation.

An under-construction saddle dam of the Xe Pian-Xe Nam Noy hydropower project, invested by South Korean, Thai and Lao companies, collapsed on July 23, unleashing a large amount of water into some 13 villages of Sanamxay district.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 11:06:43|Editor: mmm

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VIENTIANE, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Large numbers of people living in camps in flooded Sanamxay district of southern Laos' Attapeu Province are still in need of food and cooking equipment, local daily Vientiane Times reported Monday.

Khai Damdikeokhounmy, 40, from Thahin village, is a homeless villager living in a camp in the center of the district, some 560 km southeast of Lao capital Vientiane.

"I have lost my wife and two-year-old girl. Now I don't have anything because the flood killed my family and took everything from me ... I need everything -- a home, rice, food, drinking water, cooking equipment and other essentials," he told journalists.

Chanthavy Xayasena, 25, from Khokkong village, also requested assistance, "My family of five has been staying at camps in the center of Sanamxay for two weeks. We need food, cooking stoves, cooking equipment and other basics, but we have received some tents, clothing and blankets. My family has lost over one tonne of rice together with household equipment, and my house was also badly damaged."

Fon Linthong, 45, from Khokkong village, mirrored similar sentiments. "I have been staying here for two weeks since we had to leave our village. When the flood hit, my family and 10 other people had to climb onto the roof of my house. We stayed there for eight hours until authorities came to help," she said.

"We too need food, beef, fish, pots and cooking equipment because there just isn't enough. My family has lost five buffalos, three pigs and over 20 chicken and ducks, as well as two tonnes of rice, while two hectares of rice fields are under water and thick mud," she said.

Director of the province's Labor and Social Welfare Department Amkha Sihalath said that "Many people have submitted requests to authorities for rice, cooking stoves, pots and cooking equipment but we cannot supply them yet. We have makeshift kitchens in the temporary centers and have been providing them with food."

"When the temporary housing in five locations is complete, we will relocate people and supply rice, food, drinking water, cooking equipment and other consumer items to all families," she said.

Lao authorities are building temporary housing at Hadyao Primary School and in Dongbak, Hadyao, Donbok, Pindong and Tamoyoth villages.

Permanent housing in Tamoyoth, Pindong, Nonthasengchan and Dongbak villages, as well as essential infrastructure, was also being planned, according to local authorities.

A total of 13,067 people in 13 villages have been affected by the disaster. More than 6,000 displaced people are being accommodated at five temporary centers in Sanamxay district while others have gone to stay with relatives in Attapeu and other provinces.

An under-construction saddle dam of the Xe Pian-Xe Nam Noy hydropower project, invested by South Korean, Thai and Lao companies, collapsed on July 23, unleashing a large amount of water into some 13 villages of Sanamxay district.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 11:11:47|Editor: mmm

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LA PAZ, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Bolivian President Evo Morales on Sunday proposed that candidates for the 2019 presidential elections disclose their financial information.

"There must be an end to the secrecy of bank accounts, especially for politicians," said Morales in a media interview.

"Those who want to be involved in politics ... must remove the secrecy around their bank accounts," he said, adding that those candidates unwilling to reveal their financial statements will be treated with suspicion.

Morales and Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera have already voluntarily publicized their financial accounts to demonstrate their transparency.

The ruling party that Morales heads, Movement for Socialism (MAS), wants all 2019 presidential candidates to make their finances public.

Victor Borda, an MAS deputy, said on Sunday that he plans to include an article on the removal of financial secrecy in a draft law to be drawn up by the Plurinational Electoral Organ, one of the highest bodies of constitutional power in Bolivia.

Norma Pierola, an opposition deputy, told Xinhua by phone that the draft law should not only apply to presidential candidates but to all authorities.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 11:31:50|Editor: Liangyu

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by Xinhua writer Li Jia

MINSK, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- At a time when human society is facing many challenges and the current global governance system is inadequate in addressing them, China provides efficient and mutually beneficial solutions for improving global governance, a Belarusian expert has said.

"At present, the rapid development of human society has also brought related problems, including environmental problems and cooperation problems caused by unbalanced development," said Sergei Kizima, head of the International Relations Department of the Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Belarus.

"The regional chaos caused by war has led to new refugee flows and some problems have also triggered threat from terrorism," Kizima said in an interview with Xinhua.

According to Kizima, the current system of global governance is not satisfactory in addressing the challenges and threats to humanity.

He said that the big powers do not abide by the decisions of relevant international organizations and want to impose their own will on them, which result in the failure of international organizations to fully play their role.

"Not only has the U.S. been especially vocal in recent years, but it has encouraged its allies to work together to thwart attempts by international organizations to consider interests outside the West," the expert said.

"In the logic of the Americans, if international organizations do not carry out the will of the United States, then its operation is abnormal," he said.

"Under such circumstances, it is necessary to improve global governance, and it is natural for China to propose new global governance initiatives," he added.

Kizima said that the principle of "achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration" proposed by China to improve global governance is of great significance.

The principle proposed by China is fully compliant with the concept that all mankind must change from traditional confrontation between different countries or different camps to the development for the benefit of all mankind, he said.

China's specific proposal on promoting global governance under the principle is aimed at building a more harmonious world in which each country has its own voice, Kizima noted.

He also believed that the cooperation between the BRICS countries, the cooperation within the framework of Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative will have an important impact on the formation of a new global governance architecture that takes into account the interests of all mankind.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 11:36:50|Editor: Liangyu

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CANBERRA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- One in seven Australian university students regularly cannot afford to eat, a national survey released on Monday found.

The Universities Australia Student Finances Survey revealed that one quarter of indigenous university students and one in five from the poorest quarter of households regularly skipped meals.

The survey of 18,500 students from across the country found that the financial position of students had improved slightly since the last survey in 2012.

However, that improvement was the result of students spending less while wage growth has stalled.

"Students studying full-time are only living on 18,000 Australian dollars (13,000 U.S. dollars) a year -- that's well below the poverty line," Catriona Jackson, chief executive of Universities Australia, said in a media release on Monday.

"Education is meant to come first when you are studying, but we know that for some groups of students who live life on the financial edge, that's just not their reality.

"Many students are trying to get rent and bills paid, and some are trying to keep food on the table for their own children, while juggling paid jobs and their studies.

"Our students should have the basic financial security and stability to perform at their best. Yet that's simply not the case for many students from disadvantaged groups."

Two out of every five respondents said they believed their paid work was having a negative impact on their university work while 33 percent regularly missed lectures because of work.

Approximately 60 percent of students identified their finances as a source of stress and 10 percent deferred studying because they could not afford to continue.

"For some, this is a chance to gain valuable work experience and skills that will help fast-track them into a full-time job after they graduate," Jackson said of working students.

"But for many, the amount of work they need to do to support themselves financially comes at a cost to their studies."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 11:41:51|Editor: Liangyu

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UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Picturesque rivers and mountains, silver beaches, an open-air banquet held by dressed-up minority groups, a smiling old lady sitting at the doorway of her home in "Longevity Village"...

These are just a few of the dozens of pictures exhibited at a recent tourism show featuring the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China, held at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

"They are so beautiful. I've been to China a few times but mostly stayed in the big cities. I would like to go to Guangxi someday to see these sceneries in person," Caroline Bergonzi, a Monacan artist viewing the show, told Xinhua.

Apart from the exhibition of pictures, the promotion show included a video of sceneries and ethnic cultures, a presentation punctuated with rewarded Q&A activities, and an introduction of airlines, attracting some 150 participants from governments, the tourism industry, airline companies and media, from both China and the United States.

Li Bin, vice chairman of the government of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, said Guangxi hopes to learn New York's experience as a metropolitan city attracting a great number of visitors, and aims to build a series of recreational areas centered around Guilin, Beibu Bay, Bama, and China-Vietnam border features.

Deputy Consul General of Consulate General of China in New York Qian Jin said both China and the United States are major tourism countries.

Mutual visits by the two peoples have not only enriched the knowledge of each other's food, scenery, culture and history, but also have promoted mutual understanding and trust, Qian said.

"Tourism has become a bridge between our two countries," he said.

He encouraged the participants to put Guangxi onto their travel plans and pledged on behalf of his office to continue to play an active role in promoting bilateral tourism exchanges and cooperation.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio sent a congratulatory letter to the tourism promotion show, wishing it a great success.

Remysell Salas, a representative from the mayor's office in charge of Manhattan community affairs, told Xinhua that he thinks the event is "phenomenal" and "educational," saying he is willing to let his community know what great fun Guangxi will offer. "I am excited. I am willing to buy the ticket to go!"

Official figures show that since 2012, China has been the No. 1 outbound tourism expenditure country in the world, and last year over 3 million Chinese citizens visited the United States.

Guangxi received 520 million visits last year. Some 5.125 million visits from outside China's mainland stayed at least one night in Guangxi, and 135,000 visits were from the United States.

At the same time, the number of Americans visiting China has been growing steadily, averaging about 2.1 million annually.

Veteran tourism worker Simone Bassous started her exploration across China almost 40 years ago. In 1980, she went to Guilin. "The first time I went (to China), it was on the Li River. It was fantastic. It was so simple."

Over the years, Bassous' list of destinations in China has grown longer to include Mogao Caves and Tibet, but she always thinks "east or west, Guangxi is the best."

"It's a dream ... People should not miss it. They should make sure they visit Guangxi," Bassous said.
Photo taken on Aug, 9, 2018 shows submerged houses due to heavy rains in Idukki, the southern Indian state of Kerala. (Xinhua/Stringer)

NEW DELHI, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Indian authorities have sounded a fresh rain alert in Kerala state till Aug. 15, even though the monsoon showers subsided and floods receded in the past 24 hours after three days of devastation that claimed 37 lives and rendered 34,000 homeless.

"Though there have been improvement in rain situation mainly in the worst-hit districts of Idukki and Wayanad, the fresh alert has been sounded after the weather department's forecast of heavy rains till Aug. 15," a disaster management official said Sunday.

"Flood warning has also been issued in some low-lying areas of the southern state. Fishermen have also been urged not to venture into the Arabian Sea," he added.

In Idukki district, which mostly bore the brunt of the devastation and recorded the maximum number of deaths, rainfall was recorded at 40 mm this morning from 90 mm of showers for a period of 24 hours on Saturday morning, a weather official said.

Moreover, there has been a decrease in the water level in the Idukki dam, the biggest arch dam in Asia which was opened for the first time this week to release excess water after a gap of 26 years.

"From its maximum of 2,403 feet in the past few days, the water level in the dam declined to some 2,399 feet this morning," the disaster management official said.

Apart from the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF), Indian Army, Navy and Air Force have been pressed into rescue work. "Some 14 NDRF teams and 10 columns of the army are now in action in Thrissur, Ernakulam, Alappuzha, Wayand, Kozhikode and Idukki districts," sources said.

"The Indian Air Force and the navy have also deployed their aircraft and choppers for airlifting those stranded in flood-hit areas," sources added.

Meanwhile, Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh is on his way to undertake an aerial survey of the state later in the day, along with senior officials, a day after Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan did the same, along with the leader of opposition.

"Heading to Kerala to take stock of the situation in the state. Shall conduct a survey of the flood affected areas and also visit the relief camp sites," the home minister tweeted before taking a special flight to the state.

Immediately after Saturday's aerial survey of flood-hit districts, Vijayan described the grim situation as "an unprecedented natural disaster."

"We face an uphill task in rebuilding devastated areas. We need help from all quarters," he told the media.

The chief minister has also announced a compensation of 400,000 rupees (5,600 U.S. dollars) to families of those killed in floods and rainslides who lost their loved ones, and up to 1 million rupees for those who have lost both their land as well as house.

On the other hand, several tales of bravery have started doing the rounds on social media, including that of a dramatic rescue of a child by a disaster relief personnel and the bark of a pet dog that saved a family from getting washed away in floods.

The young disaster relief personnel holding tight a child in his arms running across a sinking bridge in Idukki district on Friday is now the most-viewed footage that has gone viral on social media. Moments after they cross the bridge, it was washed away in floods.

This is the worst floods witnessed by Kerala in recent years though last month's rains claimed 40 lives.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 12:01:55|Editor: Liangyu

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SYDNEY, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Australian scientists have tested an automated submarine in the country's deepest lake before setting it to use beneath the freezing waters of Antartica later this year.

The seven meter, 1,600 kilogram unmanned autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) will be deployed beneath sea ice and ice shelves to collect important data from these extremely difficult to access areas.

"This summer the vehicle will be going to Antarctica for the first time," AUV facility manager Peter King told Xinhua on Monday.

"So in advance of that we did a bit of a dress rehearsal at Lake St Clare which is a high altitude, very deep, cold water lake."

Lake St Clare is located in Australia's southernmost State of Tasmania, which due to its extreme southerly latitude, acts as a base for much of the nation's Antarctic research.

The University of Tasmania led project aims to provide new insight into the role of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean in the global climate system, exploring over 1,000 metres beneath the frigid Antarctic waters.

For it's maiden mission, the team will launch the vehicle from the Davis research station before travelling 11 km to the Sorsdal Glacier, during which time the AUV will travel along the surface of the water, controlled by a team in a small chase boat.

However, once the AUV dives beneath the surface to start collecting data, it will be completely independent from the research team, mapping the shape of ice formations and collecting water and sediment samples autonomously.

"Once we get out to our destination and want to run an actual mission we basically program it a set of tasks and waypoints," King said.

There is not a lot known about the conditions the team will be exploring meaning the first steps will be to test the AUV's capacity, slowly increasing reach and depth as it proves its capability.

"There are examples of AUVs that have gone underneath the ice before and a couple have gone underneath the ice shelf," King said.

"But it's a very small club."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 13:12:03|Editor: mmm

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SYDNEY, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Prolonged warm, dry conditions across the Australian State of Queensland (QLD) resulted in a harrowing weekend for fire and emergency Services, with hundreds of personnel working around the clock to contain 230 separate wildfires.

"The weekend was a clear sign the fire season is about four to six weeks ahead of schedule," Queensland's fire and emergency services minister Craig Crawford said on Monday.

"We are talking about conditions very different to what we would normally experience at this time of year -- conditions we haven't seen for some time, and conditions conducive to the rapid spread of fire."

"We have more fuel on the ground than we've seen in a long time and soil moisture is extremely low with no immediate rain forecast."

Although there were no fatalities over the weekend, a number of homes, sheds and cottages were destroyed along with a several vehicles.

Two firefighters also suffered injuries including minor burns and severe heat stress.

With such an ominous warning ahead of the hotter summer months, Crawford urged the public to be vigilant and ready to act.

"I'm asking residents to finalize their bushfire survival plans, including contingencies for pets and livestock should fire threaten their area," he said.

"The weekend was just an example of the conditions we can regularly expect to see in coming months, particularly in western areas such as the Ipswich, Somerset, Scenic Rim and Lockyer Valley regions."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 13:17:04|Editor: mmm

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NEW DELHI, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Former speaker of lower house of the Indian parliament (Lok Sabha) Somnath Chatterjee died Monday at a hospital in India's eastern city of Kolkata, officials said.

The 89-year-old Chatterjee was admitted last week to hospital with a kidney ailment.

"Chatterjee, who was admitted at Belle Vue hospital on Aug. 8, was put on ventilator support after he suffered a heart attack. His condition turned critical yesterday and today he breathed his last," an official said.

The 10-time Indian parliamentarian was not feeling well during the last two months and had been in and out of the hospital.

According to doctors he was undergoing dialysis.

Chatterjee was associated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for most of his life, though he was independent in the last decade of his life.

He served as speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009 when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by Congress party's Manmohan Singh came to power.

He was expelled from the CPI-M in 2008 after he rejected to step down as the speaker and vote against the government during the trust vote. His party had withdrew support from the government over the India-U.S. nuclear deal and wanted him to follow the party line.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and opposition Congress party Chief Rahul Gandhi expressed their condolences over the demise of the leader.

"Former Member of Parliament and Speaker Somnath Chatterjee was a stalwart of Indian politics. He made our Parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise. My thoughts are with his family and supporters," Modi wrote on his Twitter account.
Indias renewed Cordon and Search Operations are proving a nightmare for Kashmirs women.

By Qadri Inzamam |

August 13, 2018|

Zareena (name changed on request) remembers every detail of that evening: There was a commotion outside. A group of policemen made their way into the lawn and started kicking and breaking whatever their eyes fell on. We were looking through the window of our kitchen. They banged on the door and broke it open. After that, they started smashing everything in the living room. The TV, the vases, photo frames and wall-hangings, and everything. We were crying, pleading them to leave but they were in a stupor of rage and frenzy.

This happened in January 2018. Redwani village in Jammu and Kashmirs Kulgam district was sealed by units of Jammu and Kashmirs Special Operation Group, Central Reserve Police Force, and Indian Army. They had received a tip-off that militants were hiding in a house in this village.

Acting on this information, the Indian forces had launched a Cordon and Search Operation (CASO), in the village and searched almost every house.

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It seemed they were not looking for any militant. They had come with a determination to smash everything. Why else would they smash the TV and break the refrigerator? A militant cannot be hiding in there, an angry Zareena said.

When Zareena, her mother, and two sisters pleaded with the policemen to leave and tried to assure them no militant was hiding in their house, the policemen resorted to verbal abuse and swearing.

I have not heard those abuses ever before in my life. It made me cringe in shame. Among those angry strangers, who carried guns and could have killed me, I felt naked when they were hurling abuse at me, Zareena said.

One of the policemen, whom Zareena described as tall, heavy-built, and the angriest of the group, hit her in the back with his gun butt. For a moment, she gasped for breath.

He hurled such abuses at me that I could not even stand there in front of my mother and sisters. He said I was hiding militants in my house to get sexual favors from them. Then he said a thing that made me cry incessantly, Zareena recalled, without telling what, exactly, the policeman had said to her.

CASO was recently re-introduced in the Kashmir Valley after a gap of over 15 years. The decision to re-introduce the operation was taken after the killing of Indian Army Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz by militants in May 2017.

CASO, in its new form, is seen by the local populace as a more brutal form of anti-militancy operation. However, the security forces describe it as a successful tactic used to flush out the militants from the residential areas.

However, there have been myriad repercussions from the new policy. Frequent resistance by the locals during CASOs and subsequent civilian killings have accompanied this operational procedure. More so, reports of the excesses committed by the security forces during these operations have also been in the news. Cases of sexualized abuse and harassment of women  like that experienced by Zareena  are not uncommon among the locals who have witnessed these search operations, particularly in Kashmirs southern districts.

On the afternoon of January 13 this year, a large contingent of Indian forces entered Midur village in Awantipora town in South Kashmir. A door-to-door search operation in several residential houses was launched to check if any militants were hiding inside.

Thirty-year-old Rumaisa (name changed on request), her 24-year-old brother, and her mother had just finished their afternoon tea. Her father had gone to Awantipora town to meet someone. As she was washing the dishes, she heard pro-freedom slogans from a distance. At first she ignored it, thinking it was blaring from a loudspeaker, as happens sometimes in the villages of South Kashmir. But when the outer gate of her home flung open and a dozen security forces rushed in, she knew what was coming.

None of them said anything, Rumaisa remembered. They just kept smashing window panes with sticks, guns and stones that were laying around.

Inside, on the first floor of their house, Rumaisa and her family witnessed it all while they tried to escape from the glass shards that lay all around in every room. When the security forces were done smashing the windows, Rumaisa recalled, they barged into the house. By that time, the entire family had come down to try in vain to stop the security forces from vandalizing anything else.

Crockery, the refrigerator, the TV, showpieces, and many other things which Rumaisa could not recall were broken beyond repair. But the security forces did not stop there.

All of them pounced upon my brother and started kicking him everywhere. For a moment, I thought he would be killed. There was nothing I could do to stop them, so I jumped over my brother to cover him from them. But they did not even spare me, Rumaisa said, recounting the horrific details of that afternoon.

While a few of them were busy smashing things, and checking rooms, said Rumaisa, one of the security personnel groped her, twisted her arms behind her back, and said, I will drag you to Tral chowk, strip you naked and shove this gun inside you. Rumaisa did not wish to recall anything further, saying she feels too ashamed.

While her brother lay next to her, almost unconscious and howling in pain, Rumaisa broke into a sweat and could not say a word to the security forces.

I, being a mother, wanted to die then, Rumaisas mother said. He [the security personnel] hurled such abuses at my daughter that I wished all of us should die right there. When he threatened to rape her in front of the village, I was sure he would do something terrible to her, so I quickly flung my headscarf under his feet and begged him to leave him my daughter.

He pushed her away, kicked her brother again, and left along with the others.

Vandalizing property, beating civilians, and sexual harassment and abuses are common during CASOs, said Kashmirs human rights lawyer Parvez Imroz.

According to Imroz, during a CASO, the entire locality is deemed hostile and thus the security forces do not discriminate between men and women; they harass and abuse both.

Though the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) gives the Indian Army the powers to launch CASO, Imroz said, the draconian nature of the Act gives them a free hand to commit excesses with impunity. The complaints against these excesses are thus ignored by the security forces.

For example, when locals complained of excesses by the security forces in Midur village, a report in a local daily quoted Awantipora Superintendent of Police Muhammad Zahid Malik as issuing a blanket denial: The forces did not vandalize properties or beat up the people.

However, the report also cited Malik as saying he will look into the accusations. Seven months after the incident, though, the security personnel have not been made answerable. And the beatings of civilians, sexual abuse and harassment of women, and ransacking of homes, have not come to an end.

When Indian forces launched a massive search operation in South Kashmirs Pulwama district in July this year, almost half a dozen villages were cordoned off and door-to-door home searches were conducted to check for militants.

In Puchal village, the locals said the forces broke their windows, doors, vehicles, and whatever met their eyes.

Sixty-two-year-old Saja said her daughter, who is in her 30s, was hit on the head with a gun by the security forces when they were conducting the searches.

We let them in. We did not resist. But when they started smashing window panes, my daughter objected. The trooper hit her head with his gun and she fell down, Saja said.

It did not end there. Saja, who was crying all this while, pleading and trying to get her daughter out of the clutches of the security forces, said an army trooper put foot on her daughters chest and started wiggling, causing more pain to her as she was already writhing on the ground with a head injury.

He spat on her, made vulgar gestures and hurled abuses at her. I was sure he would do something terrible to her, so I had made up my mind to kill myself even before that calamity would hit, Saja said.

But then one of the troopers leading the group of army men directed them out of the house. They did not find anyone here, so they left in frustration. They smashed everything.

But Saja is not sorry about the broken things. She says she is just relieved that her daughter was not raped.

Had my son been home and witnessed how his sister was abused and how she was pinned beneath the boots of the army man, I swear he would have joined the militancy, Saja said.

Qadri Inzamam is a freelance journalist based in Indian Administered Kashmir. His work has been featured in The Diplomat, Al Jazeera, Caravan, and BBC India.

Courtesy: Diplomat
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 13:52:09|Editor: ZD

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TALUQAN, Afghanistan, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Five civilians, including women and children, were killed and six others sustained injuries as a rocket slammed into a residential area in the northern Takhar province on Monday, police said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 14:17:12|Editor: mmm

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SEOUL, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) agreed Monday to hold a third summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang in September.

The agreement was reached after the high-level talks between the two sides at the border village of Panmunjom.

The joint statement, adopted after the talks, said the two Koreas agreed to hold the Moon-Kim summit in Pyongyang before the end of September.

The three-sentence statement, however, failed to detail schedule.

Ri Son Gwon, chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland who led the delegation from the DPRK, told reporters after the senior-level talks that detailed schedule for the summit was already agreed upon.

Asked about the result of the talks, Ri said the dialogue was done well, according to local joint press corps.

There had been local media speculations that the two Koreas already agreed upon the date and venue for the third Moon-Kim summit as the two sides had working-level contacts before the high-level dialogue.

The high-level inter-Korean dialogue started at 10 a.m. local time (0100 GMT) in Tongilgak, a DPRK building in the border village. The South Korean delegation was led by Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 14:22:13|Editor: mmm

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TALUQAN, Afghanistan, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Five Afghan civilians, including women and children, were killed and six others sustained injuries as a rocket slammed into a residential area in the northern Takhar province on Monday, police said.

"A rocket or possibly mortar mine fired from unknown direction struck a residential area in Arab Kakal village of Dasht-e-Qala district this morning, killing five civilians including women and children on the spot and wounding six others," provincial police spokesman Abdul Khalil Asir told Xinhua.

Without identifying those behind the attack, the official said an investigation had been initiated to ascertain the culprits.

Villagers said that the warring sides, possibly Taliban or security forces might have fired the rocket.

Neither Taliban nor any other factions involved in Afghan fighting have claimed responsibility for the attack.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 14:27:14|Editor: mmm

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WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of far-right activists, some carrying U.S. flags and hiding their faces under bandannas, walked from Foggy Bottom Metro station in Washington under heavy protection to the White House on Sunday, marking the first anniversary of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The "Unite the Right" demonstration last year held by white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and members of other hate groups in Charlottesville turned violent, killing one person and wounding 19 others.

Before the far-right activists reached their final destination of "Unite the Right 2" rally, Lafayette Park, a green wooded lot just across the street from the White House, thousands of people already converged there, shouting "Shame," "Go home Nazis!"

To prevent conflicts, nearly 100 Washington policemen on bicycles and motorcycles created a protective buffer around the far-right activists, keeping vigilant for any counter-demonstrators who might be trying to sneak into the circumference.

The two sides insulted each other, but once the air became particularly charged, the police would rev their motorcycle engines to discourage further escalation.

To prepare for the event, the police had already separated the park with a sturdy wired fence, and allocated different groups to different sections. Two streets by the park were also cordoned off.

Elsewhere in Washington, counterprotesters dominated squares and plazas to denounce the far-right activists, whom they say are racists, xenophobes and white supremacists.

Activist groups comprising African Americans, minority ethnic groups, Muslims, women, and immigrants were seen participating in the demonstrations under the sweltering heat.

"No Nazis, No KKK, No fascist in the U.S.A!" a group chanted on Freedom Plaza, just blocks away from the White House.

Kristen Minogue, who joined the event from the neighboring state of Maryland, said the far-right activists don't represent the United States. "We are a country that embraces diversity and as a white person I am not afraid to be a minority."

Antifa, a group known for using violent means to oppose far-right activists, was also seen among the demonstrators. Most of its members were dressed in black, many wearing helmets and equipped with sticks and protective gear, to prepare for any potential brawls.

However, the tense atmosphere was dampened by rain that dispersed the crowd.

The far-right activists stepped into police vehicles and headed to Virginia.

On Sunday evening, streets in central Washington and Lafayette Park were almost empty, with just a small number of people lingering around.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 14:27:14|Editor: Yamei

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Joan Young greets a mini donkey at Joy Miniature Donkeys farm in Belmount Forest, less than 60 km away from Canberra, Australia, Aug. 11, 2018. (Xinhua/Pan Xiangyue)

CANBERRA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- When she flew across the country, Australian woman Joan Young is CEO of a research company. But when she returned to her farm, the 51-year-old put on her farmwear and became a breeder.

As soon as she entered her farm in Belmount Forest, less than 60 km away from Canberra, her miniature donkeys, 90 cm tall at most, gathered around her. She caressed each one of them and called their names like "Silver Lady" and "Sophie".

"I saw them born and brought them up," she said. "They have different personalities and they look different. It is easy to recognize them."

Young said her love for the animal stemmed from a childhood wish. "When I was little I always wanted a pony," she said. "They say what you couldn't get at the age of seven you will always want when you are adult."

Now she has 125 miniature donkeys, among which she called the male "Jack" and the female "Jenny".

In fact, miniature donkeys, less than two-thirds of the height of ordinary donkeys, are becoming popular as pet among the Aussies.

Young's farm, Joy Miniature Donkeys, is the biggest farm in Australia breeding the small donkeys, covering 125 acres (about 50 hectares). Fifteen pregnant donkeys were kept separately, enjoying extra meals and care. Some old donkeys and newborns wore coats in cold and wet days.

Young started breeding miniature donkeys about 20 years ago, when she began keeping donkeys on a neighbours farm for 10 Australian dollars a week each. But by the time she had 10 donkeys at the farm it was more cost effective to buy her own farm.

In 1999 she had her first farm, which covered 15 acres. As there were then less than 10 in the country she was initially only able to source one purebred and two part-bred American Miniature Mediterranean donkeys in Australia and so had to import donkeys from New Zealand and United States and use miniature Irish donkeys to increase the gene pool of miniature donkeys.

As numbers grew she began to sell donkeys not needed for her breeding program and found an ever increasing demand for both gelding and breeding stock.

Prices ranged from 2,500 Australian dollars (1,818 U.S. dollars) for a gelding to 12,000 (8,727 U.S. dollars) plus for imported purebreds.

Young would always sell in pairs for pets, "They are social animals" she said, or packages, with one Jack and several Jennies for breeders.

"I ask buyers to sign a purchase agreement," she said. "If they can no longer look after them, I will buy them back. For instance, sometimes people need the money, cannot buy hay, or they become ill or get older and so can no longer care for them."

She only sold donkeys to overseas buyers once, to Thailand 10 years ago. "Then I was worried, because I couldn't track them. I hadn't been able to find out how they lived." So she stopped selling them to abroad.

Young said there are some up to 30 breeders in Australia selling miniature donkeys. Throughout the years she saw an increasing number of people buy donkeys as pets and she specializes in helping breeders set up their studs.

To help people know the animal better, she takes them to different agricultural shows. An Australian Broadcast Corporation creature feature was made to tell their stories.

Now she could sell 20 to 30 donkeys a year, with more buyers on the waiting list.

"They cannot be sold until six months after birth, because when they were young, they must be with their mom," she said. Now there are six people on the waiting list.

Those who buy the donkeys are usually people having a few acres who would like to have a pet their grandchildren can play with.

"Donkey is among the oldest domesticated animals," she said. "They are close to people. Each one of them is special."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 14:52:19|Editor: xuxin

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NEW DELHI, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- At least 24 people were injured Monday during stampede inside a Hindu temple in India's eastern state of Bihar, officials said.

The stampede occurred at Garibnath Temple in Muzaffarpur district, about 70 km north of Patna, the capital city of Bihar.

"This morning a huge rush of devotees at the temple was witnessed in view of the third Monday of the Shravan month of the Hindu calendar, following which a stampede broke out and people fell upon each other," a police official posted in Muzaffarpur said.

"Around two dozen people were injured and some of them fell unconscious but everyone is stable."

According to the official, the injured were immediately taken to a nearby medical facility and provided treatment.

Officials at district magistrate office said the stampede was triggered after devotees reportedly broke few barricades.

"There was huge rush and devotees in a bid to be the first ones to pay obeisance tried to ignore the barricades, which created a stampede like situation," an official posted at the district office said. "However, the timely action from police and rapid action force personnel deployed there regulated the rush and prevented situation from turning ugly."

In 2016, at least 24 people were killed and dozens injured during stampede at a religious gathering in northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 15:22:23|Editor: xuxin

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DHAKA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- A special tribunal in Bangladesh capital Dhaka sentenced five men to death on Monday for crimes against humanity during the country's war of independence in 1971.

The International Crimes Tribunal, led by its Chairman Justice Shahinur Islam, found the suspects Md Esahaque Shikder, Abdul Gani, Md Awal, Md A Sattar Pada and Solaiman Mridha guilty of the charges brought against them.

The charges include rape, murder, confinement and torture of unarmed civilians.

According to the investigation agency of the war crimes tribunal, the accused were involved with the Muslim League and Al-Badr, an auxiliary force of the then Pakistani occupation army, in the country's Patuakhali district, some 204 km south of Dhaka.

All the accused, who are in police custody, were taken to the tribunal for verdict delivery at 10:30 a.m. local time Monday.

The verdict stated that the five convicts should be hung until they were dead.

In line with law, the death row convicts have the opportunity to appeal the decision at the Supreme Court within a month of the verdict.

After returning to power in January 2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Bangladesh's independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, established the first tribunal in March 2010, almost 40 years after the 1971 war.

Five opposition Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party leaders -- Mir Quasem Ali, Motiur Rahman Nizami, Abdul Quader Molla, Muhammad Kamaruzzaman and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid -- have already been executed for the 1971 war crimes.

Apart from them, Salaudin Quader Chowdhury, leader of ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was also executed for war crimes.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh was called East Pakistan until 1971. The government of Hasina said about 3 million people were killed in the war.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 15:22:24|Editor: xuxin

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South Korean delegation and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) delegation hold talks at Tongilgak, a DPRK building in the border village of Panmunjom, Aug. 13, 2018. South Korea and the DPRK agreed Monday to hold a third summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang in September. (Xinhua/Press Corps)

SEOUL, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) agreed Monday to hold a third summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang in September.

The agreement was reached after the senior-level talks between the two sides at Tongilgak, a DPRK building in the border village of Panmunjom.

The joint statement, issued after the talks, said the two Koreas agreed to hold the Moon-Kim summit in Pyongyang before the end of September.

The three-sentence statement, however, failed to detail schedule.

Ri Son Gwon, chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland who led the delegation from the DPRK, told reporters after the talks that detailed schedule for the summit was already agreed upon.

Asked about the result of the talks, Ri said the dialogue went on well, according to local joint press corps.

There had been local media speculations that the two Koreas already agreed upon the date and venue for the third Moon-Kim summit as the two sides had working-level contacts before the high-level dialogue.

If Moon visits Pyongyang around the DPRK's National Day on Sept. 9, it would be a dramatic event as Sept. 9 marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the state.

However, South Korea's presidential Blue House said the summit could be held in mid or late September.

"To add a little, I believe (holding the summit) in early September might be a little bit difficult," Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told reporters.

Moon and Kim met in Panmunjom on April 27 for the first time, agreeing to hold another summit in Pyongyang in fall. They met again on May 26.

Before the Moon-Kim summit, the inter-Korean summit meetings had been held only twice in 2000 and 2007 both in the DPRK's capital of Pyongyang.

Following the first Moon-Kim summit, the two leaders signed the Panmunjom Declaration to improve inter-Korean relations and strengthen cooperation and exchange.

The two Koreas agreed to hold the reunion of Korean families separated across the heavily-armed border since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice. The Korean Peninsula remains technically in a state of war.

The reunion event is scheduled for Aug. 20-26 in the DPRK's scenic resort of Mount Kumgang.

A series of working-level talks between the two Koreas were held to modernize and eventually connect the railways and roads across the inter-Korean border along the eastern and western corridors of the peninsula. Forestry cooperation between the two sides was also underway.

During the high-level talks, the two Koreas sincerely discussed issues to actively implement the April 27 agreement while reviewing the implementation to date, the joint statement said.

The high-level dialogue was the fourth of its kind to enforce the April 27 agreement.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 15:37:28|Editor: xuxin

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MANILA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 60,000 are still in evacuation centers after severe flooding in the Philippines caused at least two deaths and one missing, a government disaster agency said on Monday.

The National Disaster Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said a total of 248,080 families or 1,057,767 people in 713 villages across the country have been affected by flooding triggered by southwest monsoon rain since last week.

The NDRRMC said in a report that a total of 13,724 families or 59,108 people are sheltered in temporary government shelters.

A 36-year-old male and a 61-year-old female have drowned in Metro Manila, the agency said.

A 50-year-old man was reported missing also in Metro Manila.

The NDRRMC warned that many areas, including in the Philippine main Luzon Island, will continue to experience "occasional rains" caused by the southwest monsoon. The agency also warned of "possible flooding and landslides due to scattered rains and thunderstorms."

Moreover, it warned some provinces in the Visayas region in the central Philippines and in Mindanao in the southern Philippines will also experience isolated showers and thunderstorms that could trigger flash floods and landslides.

The bad weather has also damaged over 3,000 houses, roads, bridges, power supply and seaports, according to the report.

Philippine Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said that a total of 133.8 million pesos (about 2.5 million U.S. dollars) worth of assistance provided by the government has been extended to the affected Filipinos.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 15:47:31|Editor: Liangyu

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BEIJING, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The upcoming 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) will become a new starting point for fully fostering the China-Africa comprehensive strategic and cooperative partnership, Dhia Khaled, Tunisian Ambassador to China, said in an interview with Xinhua in Beijing.

Calling the summit a "historic meeting," Khaled said it will create opportunities for China and African countries to deepen cooperation, promote development, and increase mutual understanding.

He added that the summit will usher in a new future of China-Africa cooperation in economy and trade, culture, education, and science and technology.

"I call on African countries to make full use of the summit to strive for the well-being of the people of both China and Africa," Khaled said.

Khaled expressed his hope that the summit will help expand Chinese investment in Africa and spoke highly of the development of relations between China and African countries under the principle of mutual respect, equal cooperation, and mutual benefit.

China and Tunisia signed a memorandum of understanding on the Belt and Road Initiative in July. Khaled said Tunisia has placed great attention on the initiative and is ready to actively participate in the building of the Belt and Road.

Khaled hailed China's reform and opening-up policy, saying the policy has contributed to the country's development and its cooperation with other countries, especially with Arab and African countries.

Khaled also noted that China is the fourth largest trade partner of Tunisia, which has also become an increasingly popular destination for Chinese tourists.

In 2017, Tunisia began to offer visa-free entry to Chinese tourists and the number of Chinese tourists rocketed to around 20,000 that year, 12,000 more than in 2016, Khaled said, noting that Tunisia expects to receive 30,000 to 35,000 Chinese tourists this year.

"We are capable of and are willing to have more Chinese tourists visit our country," Khaled said. "Tunisia values cooperation with China in tourism and looks forward to a higher level of cooperation."
1 dead in Rolpa jeep accident

A girl died after a jeep fell off the road at South Rolpa on Monday.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 15:47:32|Editor: xuxin

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ISLAMABAD, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan has decided to release 30 Indian prisoners, including 27 fishermen on Monday, the Foreign Ministry said.

"This is a humanitarian gesture to mark Pakistan's Independence Day on August 14," a Foreign Ministry's statement said.

Pakistan and India got independence from the British colonial rule in August 1947.

"This is in line with Pakistan's consistent policy of not politicizing humanitarian issues. It is our hope that the Indian side will also reciprocate in a similar manner," the Foreign Ministry statement said.

Pakistan freed Indian fishermen as a goodwill gesture amid tensions with India over cross-border firing exchanges in the disputed Kashmir region.

The Indian fishermen had been arrested for intrusion into Pakistani waters for illegal fishing and were freed from a prison in the Pakistani port city of Karachi.

The freed fishermen will be handed over to the Indian authorities at the Wahga border, officials said.

Pakistan and India routinely arrest fishermen who cross water boundaries for illegal fishing, but the two bitter neighbors have not yet reached an agreement on maritime boundaries.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week spoke to Imran Khan, Pakistan's prime minister-in-waiting, and congratulated him on the victory of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party in the parliamentary elections on July 25.

Imran Khan in his victory speech on July 26 offered dialogue to India and peaceful solution to problems.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 15:52:34|Editor: xuxin

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JAKARTA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia's National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said on Monday that the death toll from a devastating earthquake on the tourist island of Lombok has reached 436.

Of the total death toll figure, BNPB spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said 259 have been identified with administrative letters related to their deaths.

"The large remaining part were still waiting for the letter issuance. Most of them were killed by debris and rubbles that fell on them when the earthquake took place," Sutopo said in a statement.

Most of the deaths occurred in North Lombok, the hardest-hit regency on Lombok island, with 374 ones.

Other casualties were reported in other regencies on the island and in adjacent resort island of Bali.

According to BNPB, the earthquake also injured 1,353 people and displaced over 370,000.

The Health Ministry planned to build and open a temporary hospital in Tanjung, North Lombok regency, to serve the earthquake victims.

The temporary hospital would replace the regency hospital as 90 percent of its premises were severely damaged by the powerful 7.0-magnitude quake on Aug. 5.

The North Lombok temporary hospital was expected to operate normally within two weeks.

Achmad Yurianto from the ministry's Head of Health Crisis Department said the hospital would function like the one established in Aceh in the aftermath of a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2004.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 15:57:35|Editor: xuxin

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ULAN BATOR, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from floods in Mongolia has risen to 65 after the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) registered two deaths on Sunday.

"Two deaths were reported near Airag soum (soum is an administrative subdivision) in eastern Dornogovi province on Sunday," raising the death toll through the year caused by the flood to 65, NEMA said Monday in a statement, urging residents to take precautions against the flood.

According to the National Agency for Meteorology and Environmental Monitoring, rainfall exceeded 80 mm per hour in Airag soum on early Sunday, causing flooding.

At least 11 houses were destroyed by the flood in the soum, displacing around 33 people.

Heavy downpours have been hitting Mongolia since the beginning of July, triggering massive floods in some areas.

Meteorologists said the heavy rainfall will continue in large parts of the country over the next few days.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 16:07:37|Editor: Li Xia

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BEIJING, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Domestic brands dominated mobile phone shipments in China in the first seven months of the year as domestic manufacturers accelerated innovation, an industry report showed Monday.

Mobile phone shipments in the country totaled 233 million units during the January-July period, with those made by Chinese manufacturers accounting for 90.5 percent of the total, according to the report from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a government IT think tank.

Total shipments fell 17.3 percent from the same period last year, while those of domestic brands went down 17.4 percent year on year.

In July alone, shipments of domestic-brand mobile phones fell 10.5 percent from one year earlier to 35.17 million units, or 95.1 percent of the total, the report showed.

Most of the phones are smartphones using Android operating systems and the 4G network, according to the report.

It showed the number of newly-launched mobile phone models was 489 for Jan.-July, with domestic brands accounting for 91.4 percent of the total.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 16:22:43|Editor: xuxin

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MANILA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the dismissal and court martial of a general and a colonel in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) for their alleged involvement in "corruption activities," his spokesman said on Monday.

Spokesman Harry Roque said several high-ranking AFP officials, including AFP Health Service Command (AFPHSC) Commander, Brigadier General Edwin Leo Torrelavega, and the Logistics Office of the AFPHSC Colonel Antonio Punzalan, and employees of the AFP Medical Center "undertook anomalous purchases of equipment and engaged in fraudulent transactions including ghost purchasing, splitting of contract to circumvent mandatory bidding processes, and conceiving fictitious suppliers."

One "ghost delivery" alone amounted to 1.49 million pesos (roughly 28,000 U.S. dollars), Roque told a news conference.

Roque, quoting AFP chief of staff Carlito Galvez, said a total of 20 officers will be relieved and the names of the other officials involved would be publicized in the coming days.

"That's just one case. According to the (AFP) chief of staff (Gen. Carlito Galvez) and I had a conversation with him, (the amount could go as high as) hundreds of millions of pesos," Roque said.

He added that Duterte "has ordered the relief and court martial proceedings against the top military brass without prejudice to the investigation to be conducted by the Deputy Ombudsman for the Military and Other Enforcement Offices."

The presidential spokesman said a whistle-blower exposed the anomalous activities of the officers, prompting the AFP and the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission to launched an investigation.
Workers are working on the dam, built by Chinese power construction company Sinohydro, which passes through mountains in El Kef province in northwestern Tunisia. (Xinhua photo)

TUNIS, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Wearing red and white safety helmets, around 20 Chinese and Tunisian mechanics were binding reinforcement bars on the floor at a dam project which is under construction.

"I have worked in this dam construction for one year," said the 24-year-old Wael Torkhani, a local resident. "I not only learned skills from my Chinese colleagues, but also earned enough money to support my family."

Passing through the mountains in El Kef province in northwestern Tunisia, the dam is built by Chinese power construction company Sinohydro, over the Mellegue River, which provides major water resources for over 240,000 inhabitants in the province.

"The main function of the dam is irrigation and flood control," said Qiu Yusheng, the project manager. "The El Kef province always suffers from water shortage, causing slow development of agriculture, a major economic mainstay of this region."

Sinohydro signed a contract with Tunisian government in 2016, according to which the dam will be completed in 2022 and become one of the largest dams in Tunisia.

"This dam, with a total storage capacity of 190 million cubic meters of water, will protect the region from flood and meet the needs for irrigation and domestic use of water in the region," said Qiu.

The dam, built by Chinese power construction company Sinohydro, passes through mountains in El Kef province in northwestern Tunisia. (Xinhua photo)

In recent years, Tunisians from underdeveloped inland areas, especially those from the west and south, are demanding for more jobs. According to latest data, Tunisian unemployment rate reached as high as 15.3 percent in the country, a total of 628,000 people.

Torkhani told Xinhua that around 30 young men in his neighborhood worked at this dam. Before he was employed at the project, he used to work everywhere, barely making ends meet. The dam construction gave his life a leap.

"Under the current disappointing economic situation, I think such projects help desperate Tunisian youth ensure daily livelihood," he said.

Naji Touhami was a 54-year-old father of two and an experienced crane operator for 32 years. He joined Sinohydro one and a half years ago.

"The salary here is good, above the average level in this region," said Touhami. "I almost have everything I need, enough to make my family happy. I'm very satisfied."

According to Qiu, the dam project has recruited more than 130 local workers so far, and plans to recruit over 400 in the next few years.

"During the construction, we also train local personnel. Six to seven Tunisian mechanics work with a Chinese technician, who patiently teaches them to master the necessary skills," said Qiu.

For Cheng Faji, a 56-year-old Chinese technician, it was his third time participating in a project in Tunisia. He works with six Tunisian apprentices at the dam.

"I used to work in Tunisia in 1993 and 2001," said Cheng. "at first, the communication was a big problem for me, gradually I learned the local language and now get along well with Tunisian workers, like friends."

Touhami said Chinese colleagues helped him learn the key skills for better efficiency, "there is a lot for me to learn from Chinese, such as their punctuality, discipline as well as flexible management in human resources."

Since 2011, the provinces in west Tunisia near the border with Algeria have become main stronghold of armed extremists. Qiu said even though the dam's location was near the borders with Algeria, they felt safe here.

"There are two sentry posts nearby, and six armored vehicles patrolling around the camp and construction site 24 hours every day, responsible for our security," said Qiu. "We are grateful that Tunisian government attaches great importance to our safety."

According to the Chinese Embassy in Tunisia, the Sino-Tunisian hydroelectric cooperation dates back to the 1970s. Since then, China has built a series of hydroelectric infrastructure projects including dams and irrigation systems to improve Tunisia agricultural production.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 16:57:48|Editor: xuxin

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SEOUL, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The upcoming summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), was forecast to be a "breakthrough" in the process of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

High-level officials from the two Koreas held the fourth round of dialogue, which aims to implement the Panmunjom Declaration signed by Moon and Kim after their first summit in April, at the border village of Panmunjom Monday.

During the high-level talks, the two sides agreed to hold the third Moon-Kim summit in Pyongyang before the end of September. The first and second summits between Moon and Kim were held on April 27 and May 26, respectively, at the border village.

Before the Moon-Kim summit, the inter-Korean summit meetings had been held only twice in 2000 and 2007 each at the DPRK's capital city.

The third Moon-Kim summit would come amid the recent deadlock in the denuclearization talks between the DPRK and the United States, according to No Cut News, a daily newspaper run by local broadcaster CBS.

The newspaper said denuclearization talks between Pyongyang and Washington have been in the standoff for about a month though dialogue mood was ripe with the inter-Korean summits and the historic DPRK-U.S. summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore on June 12.

The standoff came from disagreement between Pyongyang and Washington over how to denuclearize the peninsula, according to the newspaper.

The DPRK demanded the declaration to end the 1950-53 Korean War as a first step to guarantee the DPRK regime, but the United States urged Pyongyang to take more actions for denuclearization before the war-ending declaration.

Kim and Trump agreed at the Singapore summit to completely denuclearize the Korean Peninsula in exchange for security guarantee for the DPRK.

The DPRK demolished its main nuclear test site in May and launched the dismantlement of its missile engine test site recently, which Trump welcomed, according to media reports.

The No Cut News estimated that the DPRK may have proposed the senior-level talks with South Korea to find ways to "rekindle" the stalled denuclearization dialogue with Washington through talks with Seoul.

Choo Mi-ae, chairwoman of Moon's ruling Democratic Party, said before the high-level talks that dialogue between senior officials of the two Koreas was anticipated to find a "breakthrough" as they would discuss issues on the third Moon-Kim summit.

She said the talks came amid the standoff between Pyongyang and Washington over the denuclearization and the war-ending declaration, noting that the previous Moon-Kim summits led to the landmark DPRK-U.S. summit.

Yonhap news agency forecast that the third Moon-Kim summit can give a new impetus to negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington as South Korea can play a mediator role through the inter-Korean summit.

If the DPRK-U.S. negotiations gain speed after the Moon-Kim summit, it could lead to the war-ending declaration that can be made during the UN General Assembly scheduled for late September, Yonhap estimated.

The mood was amicable and friendly during the senior-level talks. Ri Son Gwon, chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland who led the DPRK delegation, said in his introductory remark that the DPRK and South Korea just became very close friends who cannot go against each other's will.

Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, a chief delegate of the South Korean delegation, told Ri that the two Koreas got to have the same heart as the two sides were in the same boat.

The two-hour high-level talks adopted a three-sentence joint statement. According to local media reports, the two sides had working-level contacts before the senior-level talks.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 16:57:48|Editor: xuxin

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BEIRUT, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Owners of private generators in Lebanon will submit a claim against Caretaker Economy Minister Raed Khoury for accusing them of taking advantage of people by increasing the prices of their services, local media reported Monday.

"We want to know if there is a personal issue between the minister and owners of private generators," said Abdo Saade, head of the Syndicate of private generators owners, as quoted by Elnashra, an independent online newspaper.

Saade said that owners of private generators are committing to the new prices set by the ministry and only 5 percent are violating the law.

Lebanese government insisted Tuesday on regulating private generators business after the sector refused to lower its prices to the level set by the Energy Ministry amid energy shortage in the country.

Authorities will regulate the sector by installing meters to private generators to measure the exact consumption of electricity in order to determine the exact prices that should be paid by citizens.

Some of the owners of private generators voiced their objection to the Energy Ministry's decision to reduce their prices, prompting the economy minister to warn them of facing imprisonment if they do not comply with the new laws.

Khoury has earlier accused owners of private generators of taking advantage of Lebanese citizens by increasing their prices in a random way.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 17:22:53|Editor: mmm

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A Russian military police officer is seen at the Jdaidet Yabous crossing border between Syria and Lebanon on Aug. 13, 2018. Around 150 Syrian refugees returned to their country Monday from Shabaa in Lebanon, local media reported. This is the fourth batch of Syrian refugees returning to their homeland from Shabaa. (Xinhua/Ammar Safarjalani)

BEIRUT, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Around 150 Syrian refugees returned to their country Monday from Shabaa in Lebanon, local media reported.

"Around 150 women and children used seven buses and a number of trucks to move their luggage through Rashaya under a strict supervision by security forces," according to Elnashra, an independent online newspaper.

This is the fourth batch of Syrian refugees returning to their homeland from Shabaa.

Around 1,000 Syrian refugees returned from Shabaa to Golan Heights two months ago.

More than one million Syrian refugees are registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Lebanon. The government estimated the true number of Syrians in the country to be 1.5 million.

The Russian Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs drafted a strategy last month to secure the safe return of Syrian refugees to their homeland.

The strategy aims at securing the return of 890,000 refugees to Syria.

Elnashra also reported that Lebanese Caretaker Foreign Affairs Minister Gebran Bassil will travel to Moscow on Aug. 20 to discuss with Russian officials the details of the strategy.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 17:32:55|Editor: xuxin

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ISLAMABAD, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- At least four laborers were killed and nine others injured in a coal mine explosion in Pakistan's southwest Balochistan province, local reports said on Monday.

According to the reports, the incident happened on Sunday night in Sanjawi area, some 30 km from Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan province.

The explosion was caused by the accumulation of poisonous gas in the mine, local media Abb Takk News said quoting rescue sources, adding the mine partially caved in following the explosion, trapping 15 miners who were working in the mine at the depth of 3,500 feet (1,050 meters) inside the debris.

Rescue teams later recovered four bodies and nine injured laborers from the rubbles. Rescue operation continued to recover the remaining trapped workers.

The injured miners were shifted to a nearby hospital where several of them are said to be in critical condition, said hospital sources.

Caretaker chief minister for Balochistan Alauddin Marri expressed deep grief and sorrow over the loss of precious lives in the incident. He has directed the concerned authorities to expedite the rescue operation and provide best medical treatment to the injured people.

Mining is considered highly dangerous in Pakistan where dozens of miners are killed each year due to the lack of up-to-date mining facilities, training and modern equipment.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 17:52:59|Editor: xuxin

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KABUL, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- An Afghan police officer and an assailant were killed, and another police officer wounded in a suicide bomb blast near an Afghan election commission office on Monday, police said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 17:58:01|Editor: xuxin

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GAZA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- More than 95 percent of the industrial factories in the Gaza Strip have stopped production due to the closure of the commercial crossing point of Kerem Shalom between Israel and the coastal enclave, officials said Monday.

Ali Hayek, chairman of The Palestinian Businessmen Association in Gaza said in an emailed press statement that after most of the industrial factories stopped its production, "around 75,000 workers and labours remained unemployed."

Last month, Israel closed the only commercial crossing point between southeast Gaza Strip and Israel to exert pressure on Islamic Hamas movement to stop releasing arson balloons and kites from Gaza into Israel which caused severe losses in Israel.

The commercial crossing point wasn't completely shut down, where Israel only allowed basic needs of food to be shipped into the Gaza Strip and prevented hundreds of various kinds of raw-materials used for industrial and agricultural products.

"Unfortunately, the closure of the only main commercial crossing point of Kerem Shalom and banning the shipment of raw-material had left more than 95 percent of factories in the Gaza Strip inoperative," said Hayek.

He warned that the ongoing closure of the commercial crossing and the closure of factories "would increase the rates of poverty and unemployment in the Gaza Strip that would lead to more humanitarian disasters due to the Israeli tightening measures."

Israel has been imposing a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip and considered it a "hostile entity" right after Islamic Hamas movement had violently seized control of the territory and routed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas security forces.

Meanwhile, Jamal al-Khudari, a Palestinian independent lawmaker and chairman of the committee to defy the Israeli blockade said in a statement that Gaza crossing points are humanitarian and have to be excluded from any political or security disputes.

He unveiled that after closing Kerem Shalom commercial crossing point last month, losses in the Gaza Strip economy have reached 100 million U.S. dollars.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 18:13:12|Editor: xuxin

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Pakistan Peoples Party's (PPP) Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari talks to media upon his arrival at the National Assembly to attend the first session of the parliament after the general election, in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan on Aug. 13, 2018. The newly elected members of the National Assembly or the lower house of Pakistan's parliament on Monday took the oath, which marks the formal inauguration of the new parliament following the July 25 general elections. (Xinhua/Ahmad Kamal)

ISLAMABAD, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The newly elected members of the National Assembly or the lower house of Pakistan's parliament on Monday took the oath, which marks the formal inauguration of the new parliament following the July 25 general elections.

The outgoing Speaker of the National Assembly, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, administered the oath to the new members. He welcomed newly elected members in brief comments.

Prime Minister-in-waiting Imran Khan was among the senior political leaders who took the oath. Others include President of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan Peoples Party's (PPP) Co-Chairperson and former President Asif Ali Zardari, and PPP Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

The members later signed the roll in alphabetical order to be the members of the house.

The National Assembly will elect speaker and deputy speaker on Wednesday. The outgoing speaker said that nomination papers for the two posts would be received by the National Assembly Secretariat until Tuesday.

The new prime minister of Pakistan will be elected by the house on Aug. 17. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) or Justice Movement, has nominated its chairman Imran Khan a candidate for the post of the prime minister. Khan will be challenged by Shehbaz Sharif who will contest for the post as the joint candidate of the opposition parties' alliance.

The PTI, which emerged as the single largest party by winning 116 seats, has increased its tally to 158 seats in the house after taking nine independent elected members, 28 reserved seats for women and five reserved seats for religious minorities. While the PML-N is second top in the house with 82 seats followed by PPP with 53 seats.

Pakistan's National Assembly consists of 342 seats out of which 272 are directly elected by the public while the remaining 60 seats are reserved for women and 10 for religious minorities.

Besides the National Assembly, members-elect of three provinces -- Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan -- were also sworn-in on Monday in their respective provincial headquarters.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 18:18:13|Editor: xuxin

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BEIJING, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese mainland official on Monday mourned Taiwanese victims who died in a hospital fire and sent condolences to their families and the injured.

"We are saddened by the accident," Ma Xiaoguang, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said in a press release.

Nine people have died and more than ten were injured after a fire broke out in a hospital in New Taipei City at dawn Monday.

"We express our sincere condolence to the families of the deceased and those who were injured," Ma said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 18:28:15|Editor: Chengcheng

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NEW DELHI, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- An Indian student leader at country's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Monday escaped unhurt after a man fired upon him, police said.

Umar Khalid, according to police, was shot at by an unidentified man at the Constitution Club near Indian Parliament in New Delhi, the capital city of India. However, the bullets missed the intended target and Khalid escaped unhurt.

Khalid was at the venue to attend an event Khauff Se Azaadi' (Freedom from fear), put together by the United Against Hate organization.

"There is an atmosphere of fear in the country, and anybody who speaks against the government is threatened," Khalid told media after the attack.

Reports said the attacker fired shots from the pistol and then managed to escape.

The attack comes two days ahead of India's independence day when authorities say they have heightened security across the country at sensitive locations.

Khalid along with other students leaders was arrested in 2016 on charges of sedition in connection with an event in JNU where anti-India slogans were raised allegedly.

In June, Khalid filed a complaint with the police alleging death threat.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 18:33:18|Editor: Chengcheng

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KABUL, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- A police officer and an assailant were killed, and another police officer wounded in a suicide bomb blast near an Afghan election commission office on Monday, police said.

The incident occurred in Pul-i-Charkhi neighborhood at midday when a police officer identified a terrorist and intercepted him for approaching a demonstration site outside the Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC), then the attacker detonated his explosive.

Earlier on Monday, supporters of disqualified election candidates gathered in the area to protest against disqualification of 35 parliamentary election candidates.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.

Over the past few months, Afghanistan, especially Kabul, has witnessed waves of terror attacks by the Islamic State (IS) outfit and Taliban insurgents opposing the country's long-delayed parliamentary elections scheduled for October.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 18:43:20|Editor: Li Xia

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by Julia Pierrepont III

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Colors blazed across the stage of the plush Luckman Theater at California State University, Los Angeles, on Saturday as a dramatic night of original dance unfolded, inspired by Chinese traditional and ethnic folk dances presented by nearly 100 America-born Chinese teenagers.

In dazzling costumes of Chinese red, lime green, electric blue and more, Chinese-American students from all over the U.S. came together to celebrate their ancestral cultural heritage at the annual dance concert hosted by the Sino U.S. Performing Arts Organization.

None of them were professional dancers. They were students from a training program of the host organization, whose aim is to foster communication and collaboration between dance professionals in the U.S. and China.

Performing to a packed auditorium, the fresh-faced students took to the stage in a mixed program of traditional Han and ethnic minority dances, Peking Opera, and innovative modern interpretations, wowing the audience.

Susie Shu, CEO of the host organization, said she had no idea that the youngsters would perform so well . "They had (only) one month to rehearse. I was amazed at the quality of their performance in such a short time," she beamed proudly.

"Chinese dances are beautiful, full of meaning," she told Xinhua. "I thought it would be so nice to teach them to students here in America. Combine the Eastern and Western cultures in a new, unique, artistic way everyone can appreciate."

Seasoned professional dancers, many from the renowned Beijing Dance Academy, were also invited to perform at the event.

"Dance conveys the basic elements of human nature. Every person in the world experiences happiness, hardship, joy, and suffering. These feelings are the same for everyone," Gao Du, a professor at the academy and an advisor to the dance program, said.

The program concluded with a rousing dance drama, Yellow River, performed by two Chinese cultural dance and ballet schools, New Century Dance School of San Francisco and the Shin Dance Academy of Los Angeles.

It featured an energetic troop of sashed "farm women" who tilled the land and twirled their threshing baskets to woo a bountiful harvest and celebrate a hopeful future.

The musical accompaniment was an intriguing combination of traditional Chinese and Western classical blended with some more modern experimental elements.

"We hope these dance dramas will convey the message that life's journey is the same for all people," Gao said. "True art is a bridge that can help people understand each other better. That is the very nature of art, dance and culture."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 18:48:20|Editor: xuxin

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DUSHANBE, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- All climbers and crew on board a helicopter that made a "hard landing" in the mountains of Tajikistan are alive, the country's emergency service said Monday, after earlier reports that the passengers were feared to have been killed.

Thirteen climbers and three crew members on board an Mi-8 were lost in a mountainous region after their helicopter made an emergency landing on Sunday at around 1130 GMT. Initial reports said they were feared to have died.

"Rescuers are on their way to help them," the emergency committee said, according to Russian news service Sputnik.

The climbers were returning from an expedition to Ismoil Somoni Mountain, the highest peak in Tajikistan.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 18:53:21|Editor: xuxin

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LONDON, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- A 130 million-U.S. dollar program to help thousands of vulnerable people was announced Monday as part of a government drive to end rough sleeping on the streets of Britain.

People sleeping in shop doorways in major towns and cities across Britain has become a familiar sight.

Official estimates announced recently show that around 4,700 people in England sleep outdoors on any given night. Statistics have also revealed that rough sleeping in England has increased for a seventh consecutive year, and is up almost 170 percent since 2010.

Prime minister Theresa May, who has backed the new plan, said: "We recognize this is a complex issue and as well as ensuring people have somewhere to live, we have to deal with underlying problems and ultimately help people turn their lives around."

Under a new "prevention, intervention and recovery" strategy unveiled by communities and housing secretary James Brokenshire, the most vulnerable will undergo rapid specialist assessment and support.

The strategy sets out the next steps by the government towards achieving an aim of supporting everyone off the streets and into a home, and to end rough sleeping entirely by 2027.

The focus will be on stopping people from becoming homeless in the first place and providing them with the right support to find work and live independently.

But the main opposition Labour Party criticized the timescale of almost 10 years, blaming spending cuts on housing and welfare schemes.

Britain's main charity for the homeless, Shelter, welcomed what is said was an important step from the government in tackling what it described as a "rough-sleeping emergency that's led to people dying on our streets".

Shelter CEO Polly Neate said: "This is a step forward and not a total fix for homelessness. We still need to tackle the chronic lack of genuinely affordable homes, deep instability of renting, and problems with housing benefit that are leaving so many without a home."

"If the government wants to eradicate rough-sleeping for good, this strategy must be quickly followed by a new plan to build many more social homes and efforts to create real security for those struggling with their rent."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 18:53:21|Editor: xuxin

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MADRID, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Around 300 people were injured after a wooden platform collapsed during a music festival in Spain, local officials said Monday.

People were watching a rap artist in Vigo, a town in northwestern Spain, on Sunday night when the platform, 30 meters long and 10 meters wide, collapsed, Vigo Mayor Abel Caballero said at the scene.

"The causes have yet to be determined. Everything indicates that no one is trapped underneath," he said.

Videos of the accident shot by bystanders on their phones showed scenes of panic as people tried to get to safety. Some were reported to have fallen into the sea and teams of divers were sent for their rescue.

The mayor said a full investigation will be conducted to determine the cause of the accident.
Biratnagar blast: Police yet to nab perpetrators

Police are yet to nab the perpetrators involved in the explosion of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) outside the office of Biratnagar Mayor Bhim Parajuli in Morang district on Sunday afternoon.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 19:03:23|Editor: Li Xia

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BEIJING, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- China welcomes Michelle Bachelet's appointment as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and is ready to work with her on the development of international human rights, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said Monday.

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday approved the former Chilean President as the next UN human rights chief.

Bachelet will replace Jordanian diplomat Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, and begin her 4-year term starting Sept. 1, 2018 and expiring Aug. 31, 2022.

"China hopes and believes that after taking the office, Bachelet will work in a fair, objective and non-selective manner, make balanced advancement of civil political rights, economic, social and cultural rights as well as development rights, and further improve global human rights governance," Lu said.

Lu said China had always supported the high commissioner and the office to work according to authorization and was ready to work with Bachelet on international human rights.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 19:13:26|Editor: Liangyu

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People perform traditional dance to welcome Chinese naval hospital ship Ark Peace in Nukualofa, Tonga, Aug. 13, 2018. The Chinese naval hospital ship Ark Peace arrived in the Tongan capital of Nukualofa on Monday for an eight-day goodwill visit and humanitarian medical service. (Xinhua/Jiang Shan)

SUVA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese naval hospital ship Ark Peace arrived in the Tongan capital of Nukualofa on Monday for an eight-day goodwill visit and humanitarian medical service.

Escorted by a Tongan navy patrol boat, Ark Peace, which is on Mission Harmony - 2018, arrived at Vuna Wharf of Port Nukualofa.

At a grand welcome ceremony attended by Tonga's Acting Prime Minister Semisi Sika, Chinese Ambassador Wang Baodong, local citizens as well as overseas Chinese and representatives of the Chinese enterprises, the Tongan royal military band played the national anthems of both China and Tonga, the local people presented garlands to the commanders of the Chinese mission and the young Tongans performed local dance.

Semisi Sika warmly welcomed Ark Peace's second visit to Tonga on behalf of the Tongan government and conveyed his heartfelt appreciations for the support and assistance rendered by the Chinese government and its people.

For his part, Wang said that on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of diplomatic ties between China and Tonga, Ark Peace's visit to Tonga is of paramount importance, which will help enhancing the mutual benefit and cooperation between two countries in terms of health and military and strengthen the friendship between the two peoples.

The commander of Mission Harmony - 2018 also said Ark Peace will help more people as always with sincere love, medical skills and services and fulfill the consensus reached by top leaders in Beijing in March with concrete action, so that their strategic partnership can further develop and the two peoples can benefit from the bilateral cooperation and exchanges.

The VIPs from the Tongan side were invited to tour the Chinese ship onboard.

Tonga is the fourth stop of Ark Peace's current mission, which had visited Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Fiji. The ship paid her first visit to the South Pacific island nation in 2014.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 19:13:27|Editor: xuxin

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BANGKOK, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Thailand is expected to export an estimated 11 million tons of rice throughout this year, said a senior government official on Monday.

The 11-million-ton rice for export throughout this year projected by the Ministry of Commerce's Department of Foreign Trade compared to some 9.5 million tons earlier forecast by the Thai Rice Exporters Association.

According to Adul Chotinisakorn, Director General of the Department of Foreign Trade, some 6.7 million tons of the Thai rice has already been exported so far this year.

The Thai rice sales volumes have apparently increased due to rising demands in the world rice market, including Indonesia which has accounted for a 679 percent increase in the purchase orders of the Thai rice, Malaysia which has accounted for a 53 percent increase and the Philippines which has marked a 25 percent increase, Adul said.

During the last seven months, the 6.7-million-ton rice export so far this year has brought 116.28 billion baht (about 3.42 billion U.S. dollars) in sales and accounted for a 9.8 percent increase in sales value, compared to the same period last year, he said.

The Thai rice export for the rest of this year is forecast to remain on an uptrend, according to the department chief.

Meanwhile, Adul said, China is scheduled to negotiate with Thailand for the purchase of one million tons of rice from this country by the end of this month. That is a second batch of one million tons of Thai rice, as much in volume as the first batch, which China has planned to buy.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 19:18:29|Editor: xuxin

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SUVA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Fijian Police has slammed speculation of missing people being abducted or linked to human trafficking as 22 cases of the 100 missing people reported this year alone remained pending.

Fiji Police Chief Operations Officer Maretino Qiolevu said Monday the possibility of human trafficking was not true as the majority of people that went missing were found safe and well after failing to communicate with their families.

The police are calling on parents and guardians to keep an open line of communication with their loved ones during the two weeks holiday that started Monday.

There's often a spike of missing persons' reports during the second term school break due to various social and sporting activities taking place in Fiji with the Hibiscus (Red Flower) Festival and the annual Methodist Church conference where people living in rural Fiji flock to the capital city of Suva.

The Police are concerned with missing persons' reports after receiving 100 reports from January to July of which 78 have been found after a period of one or two days either staying with relatives or friends.

Of these figures, 22 cases are pending of which two have drowned but the bodies of the victims are yet to be found.

Four are still missing at sea, leaving 16 cases pending which are being pursued by Fijian police.

Police confirmed that the majority of the cases involved were between the ages of 15-30 years of age where a disagreement with loved ones led them to run away from home.

Parents and guardians are therefore advised to communicate with each other as there have been cases where a child stays at a friends or relatives home without informing their parents.

Fijian police are encouraging the public to work together to avoid the unnecessary panic and stress caused when an individual is reported missing.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 19:18:30|Editor: xuxin

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CAIRO, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian security forces on Monday killed six terrorists during security raids in Sixth of October city, south of the capital Cairo.

The Egyptian Interior Ministry said in a statement that the national security agency received information that a terrorist cell is taking a shelter in an apartment in Sixth of October city.

According to the information, the terrorist cell is planning a series of hostile attacks to target some vital installations, places of worship, police and army personnel during the upcoming al-Adha feast celebrations.

Police raided the apartment and killed six terrorists in a shootout, the statement said, adding that three of the terrorists were identified.

Three machine guns, a birdshot rifle and bullets were seized during the raid.

Egypt has been fighting a wave of terrorism that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers, as well as civilians, since the military removed former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.

A Sinai-based group loyal to the regional Islamic State terrorist group claimed responsibility for most of the terrorist attacks in Egypt over the past few years.

Meanwhile, the security forces killed hundreds of terrorists and arrested thousands of suspects during the country's anti-terror war.
Some of the Ethiopian students look at their scholarships in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, Aug. 8, 2018. (Xinhua/Michael Tewelde)

ADDIS ABABA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-nine Ethiopian university students have won scholarships provided by the Chinese government to pursue further studies in China.

The 29 recipients will pursue graduate studies in Chinese universities both in social and natural science disciplines, majority of them set to take on their doctoral studies, it was noted.

Samuel Kifle, Ethiopia's Deputy Minister of Education, told Xinhua that the scholarship grant from the Chinese government to Ethiopians depicts "one of the best partnerships in the world in all the diplomatic, cultural and economic arenas."

"We will continue to have this strong relationship, because we are sending another 29 bright students who will make the difference in this country's future," Kifle said.

Noting the Ethiopian government's commitment in strengthening access to higher education, Kifle has also commended the support from the Chinese government in filling the gap in terms of access to higher education.

"As we are investing in our human capital, the contribution from China, mainly in terms of scholarship provision, is immense," he said.

"I would like to thank the people and government of China for supporting all our endeavors of development, mainly in the education sector," he said.

Tan Jian, Chinese Ambassador to Ethiopia, who reiterated his country's commitment to support African countries' efforts in the education sector, also said that partnership in education is "very meaningful and important work."

Tan Jian (R), Chinese Ambassador to Ethiopia awards an Ethiopian student a scholarship in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, Aug. 8, 2018. (Xinhua/Michael Tewelde)

Tan further called on scholarship recipients to serve as the connecting bridges in the people-to-people relations among the two countries, which he said is the basis for the comprehensive, strategic and cooperative partnership that the two countries are successfully celebrating presently.

Birhan Teka from Ethiopia's Aksum University, who is one of the recipients, also commended the opportunity.

"I have been looking for opportunities to further my doctoral education, which I had not been able to do since we don't have any academic institution in Ethiopia with PhD in archaeology," she told Xinhua.

"I am very happy, because this is a great opportunity for me given how many years I have waited for this to happen," she said.

"I hope I will be able to further improve my contribution to my country and people with the academic knowledge and potential I will have after finalizing my education in China," she added.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 19:28:33|Editor: xuxin

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BANGKOK, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Nine provinces across Thailand remained under floodwater during current monsoon season, a senior government official said on Monday.

According to Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation director general Chayapol Thitisak, the provinces - Ubon Ratchathani, Yasothon, Kalasin, Sakon Nakhon, Nakhon Phanom and Bueng Kan in the northeastern region, Phetchaburi in the western region, and Ranong and Surat Thani in the southern region - were hit by flooding which had affected more than 61,000 villagers and inundated vast areas of farmland, following days of heavy rains since earlier this month.

In the northeastern region, Mekong River overflowed and flooded the riverside and low-lying areas, including provincial capital of Nakhon Phanom, Chayapol said.

Thailand is expected to be hit by monsoon rainstorms throughout this month, but authorities have taken measures to alleviate the flooding as well as possible landslides and mudslides in those provinces and elsewhere of the country, the DDPM chief said.

The Royal Irrigation Department is currently closely monitoring the water level in major dams such as Bhumibol dam in the western province of Tak, Sirikit dam in the northern province of Uttaradit, Nam Un dam in the northeastern province of Sakon Nakhon and Rajjaprabha dam in the southern province of Surat Thani to see to it that any excessive water will be promptly released and will not cause critical spill-overs.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 19:33:33|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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Zimbabwe's president-elect Emmerson Mnangagwa (C) delivers a speech at the commemoration of Heroes Day in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Aug. 13, 2018. Emmerson Mnangagwa on Monday urged Zimbabweans to focus on rebuilding the economy following the July 30 polls with the outcome being contested by the opposition MDC Alliance in court. (Xinhua/Shaun Jusa)

HARARE, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe's president-elect Emmerson Mnangagwa on Monday urged Zimbabweans to now focus on rebuilding the economy following the July 30 polls whose outcome is being contested by the opposition MDC Alliance in court.

In a speech to commemorate the country's departed heroes and heroines who sacrificed their lives for the attainment of Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980, Mnangagwa said the time for politics was over and all efforts should now be placed on reviving the economy for Zimbabwe to become a middle-income economy by 2030.

"It is now time to put elections behind us and for us to embrace the future. The task facing us today is a great one. Let us unite as Zimbabweans, revive our economy and rebuild our great nation," Mnangagwa said.

He urged Zimbabweans to shun political differences and unite for the good of the nation.

"It is indeed important for us to close ranks and collectively push forward the national agenda and forge our country to new frontiers of economic development. Let us move forward with single mindedness, determination and unity of purpose," he said.

He reiterated that Zimbabwe held a free, fair and credible election despite opposition claims that the election outcome was rigged in his favor.

The opposition MDC Alliance president Nelson Chamisa on Friday filed a constitutional court petition challenging Mnangagwa's victory, a move that stalled his inauguration planned for Agu.12.

According to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), Mnangagwa polled 50.8 percent of the vote, against his nearest rival Chamisa's 44.3 percent.

Chamisa is claiming that ZEC tampered with the votes to deny him victory in an election he also says was marred with several irregularities.

He wants the constitutional court to either declare him the winner or call for a fresh election.

In his address Mnangagwa once again blamed the MDC Alliance for instigating the post-election violence on Aug. 1 that resulted in the death of six civilians when soldiers opened fire to disperse the protesters.

He urged political parties in the country to remain peaceful and to always strive to do that which is in the public good and in the national interest.

Mnangagwa urged the nation to continuously cherish the political independence from Britain and always safeguard national security and territorial integrity.

"Let us never allow our differences to separate us, cause animosity or stir violence among us," he said.

The nation, he said, should also strive to develop solutions to its challenges in its quest to grow the economy.

"At the national level we will continue to scale up efforts to attract investment into our country and ensure we become the prime investment destination for increased wealth creation and decent jobs," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 19:38:34|Editor: Li Xia

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BEIRUT, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's public transportation drivers will halt their protests until the beginning of September, local media reported Monday.

"We have decided to stop all our protests until next month," head of the General Labor Union Bechara El Asmar announced Monday following his meeting with President Michel Aoun, according to Elnashra, an independent online newspaper.

Lebanon's public transportation drivers threatened last Thursday to block the airport road this week if Lebanese authorities do not meet their demands.

Public drivers called on the government to take control of the automotive inspection centers and to keep current employees while protecting their rights.

Unions representing public transportation drivers have on many occasions voiced their opposition to the privatization of the automotive inspection centers and the increase in the cost of automotive inspections.

The drivers' demands also included the need by the government to track cars with forged plates in addition to stopping foreign drivers from operating and competing with local drivers.

They also urged for putting an end to the chaotic increase in fuel prices and drafting a local transportation strategy to solve traffic problems.

Meanwhile, head of Lebanese drivers' syndicate Bassam Tlais said that public drivers will hold a meeting on Sept. 3 to discuss next measures to put pressure on the government to implement their demands.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 19:48:35|Editor: xuxin

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BERLIN, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- German Social Democrats (SPD) leader Andrea Nahles has called for the break-up of major U.S. technology companies on Monday to prevent the formation of digital monopolies.

Writing in the newspaper Handelsblatt, Nahles urged policymakers to use antitrust regulation to "reign in internet giants" like Facebook, Google and Amazon as soon as their behavior began to "contradict the principles of the social market economy."

Amongst others, she proposed a "data-for-all" law which would require companies which had acquired a dominant market position to give away a share of their anonymized data for free.

Furthermore, Nahles warned that digital monopolists which failed to assume their responsibility to society would have to face the prospect of involuntary disintegration at the hands of competition authorities.

"In such cases, we will have to hold discussions in the European Union (EU) over whether a corporate break-up is necessary," the SPD leader said.

In hindsight, Nahles argued, it had been a mistake to allow the concentration of digital market power in a handful of companies as had occurred during the takeover of WhatsApp by Facebook. However, she noted that it would not be unprecedented for governments to reverse these mergers again. It was hence in the "enlightened self-interest" of the sector to take recent criticism of industry business models to heart to avoid the need for such radical steps.

The SPD leader is not the first senior German politician to demand reforms of the way data-driven Silicon Valley companies operate in the EU. Earlier, chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) proposed introducing a tax on data in the digital economy.

"The pricing of data, especially that of consumers, is the central injustice issue of the future," the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader said. She emphasized that such data had become fundamental to the business model of many companies in the digital economy which generated income with targeted advertising.

According to Merkel, ongoing discussions in the EU over how to tax large U.S. companies like Google and Amazon only underscored the urgency of problems in the current regulatory regime governing e-commerce. The situation raised the question of whether traditional corporation tax models were still appropriate, or whether policymakers should instead resort to revenue-taxing to ensure a level playing field between digital and non-digital firms.

Many online businesses pay considerably less tax in Europe than traditional industrial manufacturers or brick-and-mortar retailers. The digital companies hereby benefit from their non-locational character which allows them to channel European profits through low-tax jurisdictions such as Ireland and Luxembourg.

The EU Commission has already announced tentative plans to tax the revenue of large digital companies with at least 750 million euros in annual global revenue and online sales worth 50 million euros in Europe at a three percent rate. The taxes would be levied in the countries where users are physically based.

But the plans also require unanimous consent from EU members, which remains elusive on the issue. While Germany and France are seen as the major driving forces behind the changes, low-tax countries like Ireland, Luxemburg and Malta have warned that the reforms could open a new front in the temporarily-stalled trade war between Brussels and Washington.

Writing on Monday, Nahles insisted nevertheless that closer regulatory scrutiny of the commercial activities of major digital technology firms was required in the bloc. She argued that digitalization would only become a force for good when its potential was harnessed by society as a whole, rather than an elite circle of corporate beneficiaries.
Bishwokarmas son files habeas corpus petition

Son of Khadga Bahadur Bishwokarma, a leader of the Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal (CPN), has filed a habeas corpus petition at the Supreme Court on Sunday, arguing that his father is being detained illegally.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 19:53:37|Editor: xuxin

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PHNOM PENH, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia on Monday told sea travelers and fishermen to be extra-vigilant as the country is forecast to suffer from the impact of Tropical Storm Bebinca on Aug. 17-18.

The storm, originating from the south of China, is expected to hit northern Vietnam's coastal provinces on Thursday, said a Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology statement.

The statement said after the storm dies down, a depression will occur and brew over the Mekong River basin in neighboring Thailand and Laos.

With the impact of the storm and the depression, there will be heavy rain with strong wind and high waves at coasts, especially in the Cambodian provinces of Preah Sihanouk and Koh Kong, it said, adding that there will also be heavy rainfall in the Mekong River basin in the country's part.

"The Ministry would like to inform the public, particularly fishermen and travelers by sea, to be extra-vigilant in order to avoid any possible dangers," Lim Kean Hor, Minister of Water Resources and Meteorology, said in the statement.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 19:58:38|Editor: Li Xia

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BEIJING, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The heads of all five countries bordering the Caspian Sea on Sunday signed a landmark convention on the legal status of the world's largest inland body of water after two decades of negotiations, settling a long-standing dispute over whether the Caspian is a sea or a lake.

In addition, six documents for strengthening cooperation among the bordering countries were also signed at the Fifth Caspian Summit in the Kazakh city of Aktau.

The convention banned non-littoral states from deploying military force on the sea, which essentially prevents external countries from intervening in regional issues with military power, and finally laid a legal foundation for the cooperative development of the offshore gas and oil reserves.

PROSPECTS FOR COOPERATION AMONG CASPIAN STATES

The convention defined and regulated the rights and obligations of the littoral countries with respect to the use of the Caspian Sea, including its waters, bottom, subsoil, natural resources and airspace over the region. However, it neither defined the Caspian Sea as a sea nor as a lake.

According to the convention, the 15 nautical miles of waters extending from the coastline of the Caspian Sea countries are the territorial waters of a country. The waters extending beyond the territorial sea for 10 nautical miles are the exclusive fishing areas of the country. The other water bodies and the fishery resources of these water bodies will be jointly owned by the five countries along the Caspian Sea.

The convention also clarified the right of the littoral states to lay underwater pipelines, which means the parties may lay underwater cables and pipelines along the bottom of the Caspian Sea, subject only to the agreement of the states whose sectors the pipelines or cables will pass through.

In addition to the convention, the five states also signed agreements to enhance cooperation in areas of transportation, trade, economy and anti-terrorism.

The signing of the documents will enhance mutual trust and cooperation among the Caspian countries, consolidate regional security and stability, and enhance the competitiveness of the Caspian countries, said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin.

The documents will also help the Caspian countries attract foreign investment, facilitate the implementation of their joint development projects and reduce various risks in the region, he added.

Zhumabek Sarabekov, a research fellow with the Institute of World Economics and Politics under the Foundation of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, said the convention will remove many of the contentious issues which have been preventing effective cooperation among the Caspian countries.

Andrei Grozin, a Russian expert on international issues, believes that the convention has at least provided the Caspian countries with a legal basis for solving various problems.

With a series of transport and logistics cooperation expected to be implemented in the Caspian countries in the future, Grozin estimated that the dialogue mechanism among the five heads of the Caspian states is very likely to evolve into a regional forum or organization.

Rasim Musabekov, a member of the Azerbaijani parliament, said the signing of the convention would significantly ease tensions between Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkmenistan over the division of underseas resources in the waters south of the Caspian Sea.

Meanwhile, the presidents of the five Caspian states have begun to look forward to the benefits of increased cooperation among nations.

Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said Turkmenistan hopes to export gas to European countries in the future. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested the Caspian countries strengthen cooperation in such areas as transportation and tourism.

He also suggested that the Caspian countries strengthen foreign policy coordination, and that the intelligence agencies and border agencies of the Caspian countries strengthen cooperation to cope with the complex situation in the surrounding region.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, for his part, wanted the five Caspian countries to sign a treaty of mutual military trust.

FOREIGN MILITARY FORCES BANNED FROM ENTERING CASPIAN SEA

The convention stated that non-Caspian countries are banned from stationing troops in the Caspian Sea, and the Caspian states may not provide their territories to third countries for military operations that endanger other Caspian countries.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani further disclosed the contents of the convention at a press conference, saying that non-Caspian countries are not allowed to have military bases in the Caspian Sea.

Their warships and submarines are not allowed to operate in the Caspian Sea, their aircraft are not allowed to fly over the Caspian Sea, and their military materials are not allowed to be transported through Caspian states, he added.

Consensus has been reached that the provisions are mainly aimed at North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries led by the United States.

In recent years, some Caspian states have attempted to take advantage of outside forces to strengthen their own voice on the issue of the Caspian Sea, while Western countries, mainly the United States, expect to make full use of the Caspian countries to penetrate into the region.

As the dominant powers in this region, Russia and Iran have been worried that Western countries will expand their influence in the Caspian Sea. In particular, NATO plans to open a cargo transshipment center for the U.S. military in Afghanistan in the Caspian ports of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, causing great dissatisfaction and concern in Russia and Iran.

Against such a backdrop, the signing of this convention puts an end to external powers' attempts to expand their military presence in this region.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 20:23:43|Editor: xuxin

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech during Turkish ambassadors' conference at Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, on Aug. 13, 2018. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced the Lira crisis as a "plot against Turkey," warning that his country will forge new alliances and markets in response to a bitter rift with long-time ally the United States, which has caused the Turkish currency to hit record lows. (Xinhua/Turkish Presidential Palace)

ANKARA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced the Lira crisis as a "plot against Turkey," warning that his country will forge new alliances and markets in response to a bitter rift with long-time ally the United States, which has caused the Turkish currency to hit record lows.

"ECONOMIC WAR"

"The fluctuation in the Turkish Lira is a plot against Turkey, but the Turkish people will not give in," the Turkish president defiantly said on Sunday in a live speech in northwestern province of Trabzon, sharply criticizing the United States of waging an "economic war" against his country.

Relations between the United States and Turkey had plunged to their lowest in decades following unprecedented sanctions declared by the United States on Turkey over U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson, who faces terrorism charges and up to 35 years in prison if found guilty.

Turkey scrambled a delegation to Washington last week to stave off the crisis but no deal has been reached.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said on Thursday that although the two sides "had wide-ranging meetings at the State Department and with other departments here in Washington," the U.S. side "would define progress as Pastor Brunson being brought home."

Erdogan vowed also in Trabzon there would be no easing of the law in Brunson's case, said that the United States tried to "give us ultimatums and deadlines to free the priest. We have not made concessions on justice so far, and we will never make any."

The Turkish Lira has slide rapidly since the United States slapped sanctions on two Turkish ministers, and extended its slide Monday morning to a new record low, at over 6.8 to U.S. dollar at the opening of European and Turkish markets.

"I here declare that we have seen your plot and we are challenging it," said Erdogan. "There is no economic reason for the present (currency plunge) situation. This a plot to force Turkey to surrender in every field from finance to politics, to make Turkey and its people to kneel down."

The Turkish strongman also pointed out that Turkey was considering other markets and political alternatives to its "strategic partnership" with Washington.

"If you come at us with your dollars we will try to find other ways to manage our affairs. We will respond to those, who declared trade war on the entire world and included Turkey in it, by steering towards new alliances, new markets," he said.

In addition, Erdogan also threatened the United States to "start looking for new friend and allies," if the row isn't resolved soon.

"Washington must give up the misguided notion that our relationship can be asymmetrical and come to terms with the fact that Turkey has alternatives," wrote the Turkish strongman in the New York Times on Saturday.

"You (the United States) are trying to sacrifice our strategic relations on the sole basis of a priest," said Erdogan Sunday, warning furthermore that Turkey will eventually say "farewell" to its American ally.

ACTION PLAN

Turkey has drafted an economic action plan and has started implementing it "as of tonight" to ease investor concerns, Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak tweeted Sunday night.

Albayrak described the Lira's weakness as "an attack," echoing President Erdogan, who is his father-in-law.

Albayrak also announced a plan has been prepared for banks and the real economy, including small to mid-sized businesses which are most affected by the foreign exchange fluctuations.

Albayrak dismissed any suggestions that Turkey might intervene in dollar-denominated bank accounts, saying any seizure or conversion of those deposits into Lira was out of the question.

The Turkish central bank announced Monday morning for its part a list of measures in which banks will be provided all the liquidity they need in light of the currency plunge, "to support the effective functioning of financial markets."

Erdogan rejected speculation that Turkey would seek a rescue package from the International Monetary Found.

TRADE SANCTIONS

U.S. President Donald Trump announced a punitive doubling of tariff rates on steel and aluminum products from Turkey to 50 percent and 20 percent respectively.

"Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!" Trump tweeted.

The United States is the biggest destination for Turkish steel exports with 11 percent of the Turkish export volume. And as Turkey is heavily dependent for its energy imports, consumers will suffer from imminent price hikes, said analysts.

On Friday, Erdogan called on its citizens to convert their hard currency and gold into lira to prop up the plunging currency with a "domestic and national stance."

The Lira has lost more that 45 percent of its value against dollar this year not only because of the latest diplomatic rift, bus also due to the Turkish economy showing signs of vulnerability after years of continued growth.

The falling Lira would hit Turkish companies that have to repay foreign currency debt estimated at more than 200 billion U.S. dollars.

Turkey has weathered several tough economic crises over the decades. Erdogan himself was elected prime minister in 2003 on the back of a major crisis two years earlier, but has traditionally always had Washington's staunch support.

Turkey and the United States have disagreed on a number of issues in recent years, including the war in Syria and a U.S. refusal to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a cleric Erdogan claims is behind the botched attempt to unseat him.

The Trump administration has imposed sanctions against several countries in recent months, including Turkey, Iran and Russia.

Washington's hostility against Ankara has fueled speculations that it would further push Turkey towards Russia. The two countries already cooperate regarding Syria and have established close energy and trade ties.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is to hold talks on Monday in Ankara with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, focusing on bilateral ties and the Syrian crisis in the midst of escalating tensions between Ankara and Washington.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 20:43:45|Editor: Li Xia

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BEIJING, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Forty Taiwan college students started a 10-day visit of mainland Internet enterprises Monday.

The activity was jointly launched by Xinhua's official website Xinhuanet.com and Taiwan-based Want Want China Times Group, to enhance exchanges between young people across the Taiwan Strait.

The students will visit several enterprises, including online retailer JD, ride-hailing platform Didi, coffee chain Luckin and Xinhuanet.

"The Internet has become a driving force for economic growth on the mainland," said Xinhuanet chairman and president Tian Shubin.

Tian said he hoped the visit would open up opportunities for Taiwan's young people.

"I really look forward to seeing how the amazing Internet ride-hailing industry came into being," said Lin Kunsong, a sophomore from Soochow University in Taipei.

The students are from more than 20 universities, including Taiwan University, Cheng Kung University and Sun Yat-sen University.

The visit has been organized for two years in a row.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa attends a rally in Marondera, Mashonaland East Province, Zimbabwe, on July 21, 2018. (Xinhua/Shaun Jusa)

HARARE, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe's president-elect Emmerson Mnangagwa on Monday urged Zimbabweans to now focus on rebuilding the economy following the July 30 polls whose outcome is being contested by the opposition MDC Alliance in court.

In a speech to commemorate the country's departed heroes and heroines who sacrificed their lives for the attainment of Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980, Mnangagwa said the time for politics was over and all efforts should now be placed on reviving the economy for Zimbabwe to become a middle-income economy by 2030.

"It is now time to put elections behind us and for us to embrace the future. The task facing us today is a great one. Let us unite as Zimbabweans, revive our economy and rebuild our great nation," Mnangagwa said.

He urged Zimbabweans to shun political differences and unite for the good of the nation.

"It is indeed important for us to close ranks and collectively push forward the national agenda and forge our country to new frontiers of economic development. Let us move forward with single mindedness, determination and unity of purpose," he said.

He reiterated that Zimbabwe held a free, fair and credible election despite opposition claims that the election outcome was rigged in his favor.

The opposition MDC Alliance president Nelson Chamisa on Friday filed a constitutional court petition challenging Mnangagwa's victory, a move that stalled his inauguration planned for Agu.12.

According to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), Mnangagwa polled 50.8 percent of the vote, against his nearest rival Chamisa's 44.3 percent.

Chamisa is claiming that ZEC tampered with the votes to deny him victory in an election he also says was marred with several irregularities.

He wants the constitutional court to either declare him the winner or call for a fresh election.

In his address Mnangagwa once again blamed the MDC Alliance for instigating the post-election violence on Aug. 1 that resulted in the death of six civilians when soldiers opened fire to disperse the protesters.

He urged political parties in the country to remain peaceful and to always strive to do that which is in the public good and in the national interest.

Mnangagwa urged the nation to continuously cherish the political independence from Britain and always safeguard national security and territorial integrity.

"Let us never allow our differences to separate us, cause animosity or stir violence among us," he said.

The nation, he said, should also strive to develop solutions to its challenges in its quest to grow the economy.

"At the national level we will continue to scale up efforts to attract investment into our country and ensure we become the prime investment destination for increased wealth creation and decent jobs," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 21:13:50|Editor: Li Xia

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YANGON, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) has provided relief fund for Myanmar people in flood-affected areas in Yangon Monday.

On behalf of the RCSC, Chinese Ambassador Hong Liang handed over 100,000 U.S. dollars' relief fund to Myanmar Red Cross Society.

Hong expressed his belief that these fund could be a help in carrying out the relief operations in flood-affected areas and pledged to provide more assistance if necessary.

"China has been providing assistance for the disaster-affected people in Myanmar. We really appreciate China's assistance and promise to use the fund in our relief operations," Mya Thu, chairwoman of Myanmar Red Cross Society, told Xinhua.

In accordance with the figures from the National Natural Disaster Management Committee and the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, at least 20 people were killed by flooding across Myanmar, especially in southern part of the country recently.

Relief operations and provision of humanitarian assistance to the flood-victims are being carried out by the authorities.

Due to the torrential rainfall and strong wind, houses, bridges and roads have also been destroyed by flooding in some regions and states in southern part of the country.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 21:13:50|Editor: xuxin

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by Anna Strumpel and Philipp Requat

BERLIN, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- When more than a million asylum seekers arrived in Germany in 2015, the country's initial reaction was summed up by its veteran chancellor Angela Merkel in three words: "We can do it!" And Merkel reiterated whenever questioned about the challenges that the influx of refugees would create.

Three years later, Merkel's fourth governing cabinet has moved away from what became known as the "open door policy" in September 2015. The federal government has now swerved decisively to the right on migration, a move that was underscored by a recent compromise reached to resolve bitter infighting over asylum policy between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Christian Social Union (CSU) conservative sister party and coalition partner.

CDU-CSU SPAT OVER ASYLUM POLICY

Following the publication of his ambitiously-named "migration master plan" in June, interior minister and CSU leader Horst Seehofer threatened to resign unless Merkel endorsed the complete document or found a comparable solution on a European level within the course of two weeks. Most controversially, Seehofer wanted to refuse asylum access to German territory if migrants had formally entered the Schengen zone via another country.

The ultimatum imposed by Seehofer on the chancellor marked a historically unprecedented show of cabinet disobedience in Germany, which threatened to unravel the entire ruling grand coalition.

At least initially, Merkel was critical of the "migration master plan." She warned of a potential domino effect in the European free travel area caused by its unilateral border control provisions, as neighboring states rush to shutter their internal Schengen borders in response.

Yet instead of sacking the rebellious minister, the chancellor hurried to a meeting in Brussels, where she managed to secure a vague agreement from Germany's European partners to toughen and expand their joint asylum policies. Upon return to Berlin, she then struck a deal with Seehofer to resolve the CDU-CSU spat by establishing "transit centers" on German-Austrian borders, where asylum seekers who are already registered in the European Union (EU) will be detained before being transferred on to the responsible member state.

The outcome raised eyebrows in European capitals, with many observers arguing that the negotiated agreement was much closer to Seehofer's "master plan" for a strict and national asylum regime than Merkel's vision of European solidarity around the issue.

HARDENING STANCE ON MIGRATION

The hardening of Berlin's stance on migration was also seen to have occurred with peculiar timing, in light of official data that pointed to a steady decline of new asylum applications and related pressures in Germany since 2015.

The latest step taken by the interior ministry towards the implementation of the "migration master plan" is a case in point. The interior minister recently announced that the Spanish government had offered to take back asylum seekers from Germany who were already registered in Spain. Responding to a query by Handelsblatt newspaper, Seehofer's ministry admitted, however, that not a single individual would have been affected by the bilateral agreement during the past two months.

Madrid's offer to help prevent so-called "secondary migration" of asylum seekers within the Schengen free-travel area specifically applies to individuals who are intercepted at the German-Austrian border. Although eight asylum seekers who were pre-registered in Spain were registered in Germany during the past two months, none of them had entered the country from Austria.

Given the geographic location of Spain in the far West of Europe, it is highly unlikely that refugees and other irregular migrants will take a detour to Germany via its South-Eastern neighbor Austria. The data was thus seen by critics of the deal, and Seehofer's politics more generally, as evidence that the CSU leader is unnecessarily stoking popular fears with anti-immigrant symbolism.

According to the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), the number of first-time asylum applications in Germany has plummeted from 722,370 applications in 2016 to 198,327 applications in 2017. The German Federal Criminal Police Office's (BKA) further reported that overall criminal offences declined by 9.6 percent from 2016 to 2017, contrary to suggestions by some that the mass arrival of refugees in the country would unleash a national crime wave.

Speaking to Xinhua, Kai Unzicker, a senior project manager at the Bertelsmann Foundation, argued that as once predicted by Merkel, Germany had in fact coped well under the pressure of the "refugee crisis." "Cities and communities have achieved enormous successes in collaboration with an active and open civil society."

Unzicker readily admitted that "housing and catering for such a large amount of people on such notice was logistically and financially challenging." Nevertheless, the situation "relaxed again" quickly as of 2016, when the number of new arrivals began to drop.

As a consequence, Unzicker argued that the federal government's harsher rhetoric on asylum owed more to psychological and political factors than any significant deterioration in citizens' quality of life.

"Racist and xenophobic appearances and stances have poisoned the public debate in Germany. Even though crime and unemployment rates are at all-time lows, fear and insecurity are being promoted," he warned.

CHANGING PUBLIC ATTITUDES AHEAD OF ELECTIONS

A visible sign of changing popular attitudes was found in a poll in July, in which the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party overtook the German Social Democrats (SPD) as the country's second largest party. In turn, the SPD publicly attacked the CSU for damaging the reputation of the government by attempting to "drag it to the right-wing spectrum of politics."

That the CSU is attempting to change its tune may reflect the party's growing desperation ahead of looming regional elections in its Bavarian homestead. Polls suggest that the CSU is set to lose its long-standing legislative majority in the state, as the AfD attracts growing numbers of voters who feel disenfranchised by what they view as an aloof political elite.

In spite of the AfD's evident momentum, Robert Vehrkamp, senior advisor at the Bertelsmann Foundation, argued that the CDU and CSU would both benefit politically from a consensus on abstaining from copying the language and rhetoric of right-wing populists.

Vehrkamp also cautioned that centrist parties risked legitimizing populist adversaries if they simply copied their strategies.

So far, the CSU's efforts to ward off a challenge from the AfD do appear to have born little fruit.

In an opinion survey published by Deutsche Welle shortly after the CDU and CSU reached their compromise on asylum, Seehofer's approval rating plummeted by 16 percent to 27 percent.

By contrast, Merkel only witnessed a slight monthly drop in her reading to 48 percent (minus two percentage points). When it comes to the chancellor, it seems the German electorate is still forgiving of the ideological pragmatism which she has repeatedly demonstrated during over 12-year rule.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 21:23:51|Editor: Liangyu

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Emile Abayisenga (2nd R), principal of Integrated Polytechnic Regional College Musanze and chairman of Musanze district council, instructs students at a workshop in the college in Musanze district, northern Rwanda, on Aug. 8, 2018. As the largest polytechnic in northern Rwanda, the college, constructed by Chinese enterprise China Geo-Engineering Corporation using funds from the Chinese government, is playing an important role in training technical persons in Rwanda. (Xinhua/Lyu Tianran)

by Xinhua writer Lyu Tianran

MUSANZE, Rwanda, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Located at the foot of the Virunga volcanic mountains, Integrated Polytechnic Regional College Musanze (IPRC Musanze) is playing an important role in training technical persons in Rwanda.

The college, constructed by Chinese enterprise China Geo-Engineering Corporation using funds from the Chinese government, is the largest polytechnic in northern Rwanda, said Emile Abayisenga, principal of IPRC Musanze and chairman of Musanze district council.

Covering an area of three hectares, IPRC Musanze situated in Musanze district has 1,200 students, the number of which increases from 170 at the beginning of its operation in 2015. Its first batch of around 170 graduates graduated in June this year with diploma. Besides, more than 700 students have completed short courses in the college.

The huge increase of the students within three years shows the school is really needed in Rwanda, said Abayisenga, who studied in China.

IPRC Musanze has the second highest number of applicants for admission among eight IPRCs across the country, after IPRC Kigali in Rwanda's capital, which has established for 10 years, according to him.

The college offers five advanced diploma and diploma programs including Agriculture and Food Processing, Civil Engineering, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Hospitality Management as well as Irrigation and Water Engineering, and provides 10 short courses such as carpentry, culinary arts and electrical domestic installation.

The programs provided in IPRC Musanze fall into the country's priorities, said the principal, noting that the college is contributing to developing skilled people and bridging the gap of shortages of technical people in Rwanda as the central African country is investing in technical schools.

"The support from the Chinese government is very significant, not only because of the students we train, but also surrounding community who benefit from this school," Abayisenga told Xinhua.

Residents from surrounding community get jobs in the college that has more than 100 staff and receive training of different skills like agriculture from the college, he said. They also get shelters constructed by students who learn construction, and cows from the college which are also used to teach students agriculture, he added.

Level three student Marcel Nyirimihigo majoring in irrigation and water engineering has completed his final project of designing a concrete gravity dam in Rwanda's Eastern Province to deal with water shortage during the dry season.

"Agriculture in Rwanda is like a foundation in our daily life. I want to modernize Rwanda's agriculture through irrigation and that's why we conclude to design that dam," said Nyirimihigo, who was helping his schoolmates do a final project at a workshop within the college.

Agriculture accounts for 33 percent of Rwanda's gross domestic product and engages 70 percent of the population, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

"This institution funded by China is important for us students. China put infrastructure that has helped and will help our study," he said.

INJECTING NEW ENERGY

The governments of China and Rwanda have signed an implementation agreement on the expansion project of the college. China will fund the expansion project and provide necessary equipment to IPRC Musanze.

The cooperation between China's Jinhua Polytechnic and IPRC Musanze also injects new energy into skill training in the landlocked country.

Jinhua Polytechnic in Zhejiang Province, eastern China, and IPRC Musanze jointly launched Jinhua Polytechnic's oversea campus in IPRC Musanze in July 2017, which includes a technical skills development center and a Chinese language learning center.

Two management staff from Jinhua Polytechnic has been working in IPRC Musanze since April 2018. They have completed research of labor marketing conditions in the region in order to making a cooperation plan in line with conditions of Rwanda and the college.

The Chinese polytechnic together with a Chinese enterprise have provided equipment to its Rwandan counterpart to support practical education of the college, and invited staff of IPRC Musanze to receive training in China, whose expenses will be fully covered by Jinhua Polytechnic.

It is not the only effort that Jinhua Polytechnic has made to help Rwanda cultivate technical persons. It has been providing scholarships to Rwandan students to study at Jinhua Polytechnic since 2014. As of April 2018, 78 Rwandan diploma students were studying at the polytechnic.

Denys Makuza came back Rwanda from China this July after completing study at Jinhua Polytechnic, where he studied vehicle inspection and repair for three years and Chinese language for one year.

"Studying in China indeed helps me a lot. I learned high level skills, Chinese language and Chinese culture, as well as working methods and efficiency of Chinese people," Makuza told Xinhua in fluent Chinese.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 21:33:52|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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Jordan's Minister of State for Media Affairs Jumana Ghunaimat speaks during a press conference in Amman, Jordan, on Aug. 13, 2018. Jordan on Monday said that terrorists in the city of Al Salt, who carried out attacks killing five officers, were plotting other attacks on security targets and civilians. (Xinhua/Mohammad Abu Ghosh)

AMMAN, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Jordan on Monday said that terrorists in the city of Al Salt, who carried out attacks killing five officers, were plotting other attacks on security targets and civilians.

Minister of Interior Samir Mubaidin said investigations were underway as five of the terrorists were arrested in Al Salt, some 27 km from the capital Amman.

The minister said the security forces found large quantities of highly explosive materials buried under the ground in Al Salt along with weapons and ammunition.

"The terror cell was coordinating with some others and many were arrested," he said.

All the terrorists in the city are Jordanians, said the minister, adding that three terrorists were killed, and others in connection with the attack were arrested.

"The terrorists are supporters of the Islamic State and they were not fighting in Syria but were residents in the kingdom," he said.

He commended the security authorities for their success to locate the terrorists in a short time, adding that the terrorists anticipated the raid by the security forces and blew up the building.

Minister of State for Media Affairs Jumana Ghunaimat said Jordan will continue the war on terrorism, adding that investigations will continue to reveal more details.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 21:43:54|Editor: xuxin

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LAS VEGAS, the United States, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has gradually infused itself into our lives, making its potential threats something that we cannot ignore.

As a global platform for exploring AI and information security, GeekPwn focused this year on AI security at DEFCON, the world's largest yearly hacking convention, which just ended in Las Vegas.

"GeekPwn hopes to establish a bridge between white hat hackers and other technical fields, and let white hats explore wider horizon fields by adopting hacker-like thinking," Wang Qi, founder and CEO of The KEEN Team, a white-hat hacking collective in China that organizes annual GeekPwn competitions, told Xinhua.

During DEFCON, widely regarded as the birthplace of the competition of cyber-attack and defense technology, GeekPwn debuted the first global CAAD CTF (Competition of Adversarial Attacks and Defense, Capture the Flag) event.

"It is the first CTF in machine learning field, surpassing the limitations of A&D of traditional cybersecurity competitions," Wang told Xinhua. "For the first time, participants can view the complexities of conducting attack and defense in the AI world."

The contest utilized a randomly on-site matching mechanism, which placed six top AI security research teams to create adversarial samples to defraud and attack other teams' defense algorithms.

The event was joined by experts from institutes such as Tsinghua University, UC Berkeley, Cornell University, Yale University, JD.com and others.

After a close contest, the TSAIL team from Tsinghua University emerged champion of the CAAD CTF contest.

In addition to the AI attack and defense battles, GeekPwn2018 in Las Vegas also brought 10 latest research results on AI security and adversarial samples.

The topics covered included autonomous vehicles, speech recognition systems, anti-virus software and neural networks, which are highly watched by AI entrepreneurs, practitioners and scholars.

Jia Yunhan, a senior researcher from Baidu Security Lab, brought a demo of "Blind Eye Magic" from the automatic driving industry, revealing how the use of adversarial machine learning technology can possibly deceive automotive radar systems.

Rohan Taori and Amog Kamsetty, graduate students from the University of California at Berkeley, shared the topic of directional "black box" attack analysis for audio systems.

Bo Shi, director at the Tencent Security Yunding Lab, shared contents of dogfight weapon GAN, explaining how malware and viruses fight against anti-virus (AV) software.

"The industry is benefiting from the growing need of cyber security solutions and services in the defense," Wang told Xinhua. "Security risks are always making the world realize the importance of prevention and value of white hat hackers."
Centre to limit number of foreign volunteers

The government is planning to limit the number of foreign volunteers as well as the areas where they are mobilised.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 21:48:55|Editor: xuxin

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NAIROBI, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) plans to mediate between Kenya and Zambia trade dispute, officials said on Monday.

Francis Mageni, COMESA Director for Trade Customs, told journalists in Nairobi that Zambia has prevented milk and palm oil exports from Kenya over health standards and rules of origins respectively.

"We are working closely with officials from Kenya and Zambia in order to resolve the issue in order to promote intra-regional trade," Mageni said during the Fourth COMESA Heads of Customs Sub-Committee meeting.

Mageni said Zambia has rejected milk imports from Kenya because it contains a total bacteria count beyond the maximum levels permitted in Zambia.

"It has been argued by Kenya that whatever the bacterial count, milk that has gone through the ultra heat treatment (UHT) kills all pathogens making it safe for human consumption," Mageni added.

In order to unlock the trade impasse, scientists from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization have also been consulted to determine if Kenya's milk is safe for Zambian consumers.

The director said that whether the trade dispute will be resolved hinges on the COMESA member states but there is no set deadline.

"Timelines are good to gauge progress or achieve results but there are certain things if you fix timelines you set up yourself for failure," he added.

The COMESA official said that Zambia officials have already being invited to inspect the safety of Kenya's milk value chain in order to find a holistic solution.

Zambia has also imposed restrictions on Kenyan palm oil exports because it doubts whether they have enough local content to get preferential access into the Zambia market.

Mageni said that COMESA has facilitated Zambian officials to visit Kenyan palm oil production facilities to confirm if the edible oils are produced in Kenya.

He said the trading bloc has managed to eliminate over 150 Non Tariff Barriers (NTB) between the member states over the past two decades.

He noted that the most difficult NTBs to remove is where influential players who own industries encourage their government to put in place barriers that will shield domestic industry from foreign competition.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 21:48:56|Editor: xuxin

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by Abdul Haleem

KABUL, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants in a surprise move launched massive and multi-pronged attacks on the strategically important Ghazni city, capital of Afghanistan's eastern Ghazni province over the weekend.

Hundreds of insurgents, according to locals and media reports have left their bastions in Helmand and Wardak provinces to join the Taliban in attacking Ghazni city, 125 km south of Kabul.

The attack, which began in the early hours of last Friday from different directions, according to Ghazni's police chief Farid Ahmad Mashal, targeted important entities including a police department, national directorate for security and provincial governor's office.

Afghan political analysts described the massive offensive on Ghazni city as a Taliban maneuver to demonstrate its military power ahead of any political dialogue for achieving a negotiated settlement to Afghan's lingering conflicts.

"Ghazni city is the gate to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. The Taliban by launching such a massive offensive on such an important city wants to demonstrate its power to the Afghan government as well as to the world," retired army general and military-political analyst Atequllah Omarkhil told Xinhua.

"They especially want to show those backing the government in Kabul that the Taliban can't be ignored," said Omarkhil.

"The Taliban cannot control Ghazni city even if the militant group can capture it," the expert said. Nevertheless, he believes that the Taliban can get maximum benefit in the propaganda war and claim that it can target any city at any time if it wants.

Afghan observers have also warned that the fall of Ghazni city could destabilize more provinces including Wardak, Paktia and Kandahar bordering Ghazni province.

The main road linking the Afghan capital city Kabul to the southern provinces including key Kandahar city and western region including Herat passes through Ghazni city, and if the Taliban militants were able to overrun Ghazni city and capture the road, the southern and western regions could be destabilized.

Taliban militants launched the attack on Ghazni amid Afghan government's efforts to bring the armed outfit to the negotiating table.

"One of the messages of the attack on Ghazni city is to clarify that the Taliban group can't be isolated in any talks on Afghanistan," said the analyst.

The former afghan army general also believes that "Afghan imbroglio can't be solved militarily and the ongoing fierce fighting in Ghazni in the presence of thousands of the U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan is proof of this fact."

Echoing the notion, Amanullah Kamrani, the deputy to Ghazni Provincial Council, has warned that overlooking the sensitivity of situation in Ghazni by the central government would lead to the fall of Ghazni and will eventually weaken the security in the neighboring provinces.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 22:09:01|Editor: xuxin

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KABUL, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Islamic State (IS) militants are making new inroads into Afghanistan to disturb peace talks with the Taliban and try to turn Afghanistan into its main headquarters for extending activities in central Asia, a military expert said.

"Since its emergence, with more or less than 8,000 fighters in Afghanistan, the IS outfit has renewed violent activities in the eastern and northern provinces with a dream of turning the country into their main headquarters to reach countries in the region," Gen. (Rtd) Atiqullah Amarkhil, a political and military analyst, told Xinhua.

The momentum intensified brutally after talks were reportedly resumed between the Taliban officials and the U.S. representatives in the Gulf state of Qatar, he added.

On Sunday, an army soldier identified an IS suicide bomber before he detonated his explosive in a busy traffic circle in Jalalabad city, capital of eastern Nangarhar province, in the latest attack claimed by the IS.

The soldier named Mohammad Omar was killed together with the attacker and five people were wounded.

The mountainous Nangarhar region has been regarded as IS militants' hotbed in the country where the IS emerged in early 2015. The group mostly consists of disaffected Taliban and members of extremist jihadist groups.

The U.S. military dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb on the Achin district of Nangarhar, on an IS target in April last year, however the bombing and ensuing massive military operations failed to uproot the group in Nangarhar.

Two IS suicide bombers attacked a mosque while people were offering Friday prayers in Gardez, capital of neighboring Paktia province last Friday, killing 39 people and injuring 80 others.

Amarkhil blamed the outfit for using youths and teenagers as military recruits, misleading them and diverting their minds towards Islamic extremism, as recently seen in Jawzjan province, where most of the 250 IS's fighters who surrendered to the government, were young children.

As to why IS fighters have chosen eastern provinces to easily destabilize the country, the military analyst said that Afghanistan has many strategic regions and impassible points in the east, closely extending to the gates of Kabul and they can threaten Kabul and then the north if they succeed to consolidate strong and well-equipped bases in these regions.

Regarding IS fighters' clandestine return from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan, he said "Afghanistan is geopolitically suitable for military activities and is the heart of Asia, from where the jihadist radicals can threaten any part of the world."

More than 2,300 militants loyal to the IS have been killed and over 500 others sustained injuries in 2017 in four Afghan provinces, including Nangarhar, according to Afghan military officials.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 22:19:03|Editor: xuxin

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by Raheela Nazir

ISLAMABAD, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- As Independence Day draws near, the hot and humid weather of Pakistan has not deterred the nation's patriotic zest as markets are flooded with children, elders and youngsters busy finalizing their preparations to celebrate the day on Aug. 14.

A number of stalls with buntings, flags, badges, banners, balloons, Independence Day dresses and other decorations have been set-up at various places in cities across the country. All major public and private buildings, roads and avenues are being colorfully lit and decorated with national flags.

People are also decorating their vehicles with green flags to express their love for their motherland.

The most enthusiastic are the children who have been busy choosing different sized flags, stickers, badges and buntings with so many designs to mark this biggest festival. National flag colored bangles are also immensely popular among the young patriotic girls.

Zahra Perveen, who was shopping for Independence Day celebration with his four children at a stall carrying Independence Day-themed products in the federal capital city of Islamabad, told Xinhua that for her family Independence Day is no less than an Eid festival and that they celebrate the day with national zeal and fervor.

"My children are so happy and excited for the day. They have bought buntings, small flags and dresses in green and white, which are the Pakistani flag's colors. They have also purchased special Independence Day colors to paint the national flags on their faces," Parveen said.

To celebrate the special day, numerous food outlets are offering Independence Day deals and discounted rates to attract foodies. Families are planning to visit the restaurants of their choice to enjoy special discounted food deals rather than cooking at home.

Other than that, various brands and shops are offering discounts on a wide range of men's and women's clothing and other accessories to attract the customers, especially women. Flag colored garments, handbags and other products are being sold by various local and foreign brands at attractive rates with up to 50 percent discount.

Allezy Khan, while shopping at a famous Pakistani clothing and accessories outlet which was offering up to 40 percent discount on the 71st Independence Day, told Xinhua that "women in Pakistan celebrate every event with style and the latest fashion. They spend more money than men in buying clothes, shoes and other things on special occasions."

Educational, political, social and literary institutions will also organize special programs to mark Independence Day.

Commemorative programs will also be aired on TV channels to highlight the importance of the day and to pay homage to the national heroes who devoted their lives to the freedom movement and made sacrifices to attain Pakistan's independence.

A changing of the guard ceremony will be held at the mausoleum of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.

All government, non-government organizations, educational institutions and markets will be closed on Aug. 14 to mark Independence Day.

A comprehensive strategy has been devised by law enforcement agencies to provide fool-proof security to the citizens and traffic management on Independence Day, said local reports.

Shakeela Aftab, an educationist based in the country's eastern Gujranwala city, said "we should celebrate the day with great spirit. On this day, on Aug. 14, 1947, we achieved independence from British rule. For this, many people sacrificed their lives to see us breathe the free air. We should not let their blood go wasted and should work hard to build this country."

"Pakistan has given us identity and enormous respect and now it is time to give it back by making every possible effort to make Pakistan a peaceful and prosperous welfare state as envisioned by founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah," she said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 22:29:05|Editor: xuxin

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ANKARA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out against the United States on Monday, criticizing that the NATO ally seeks to "stab Turkey in the back" by the use of sanctions.

In an address to Turkish ambassadors gathered for an annual meeting in Ankara, the Turkish leader said that "attacks on the economy are likely to continue for a while," but Turkey will take steps to respond.

Turkey's economy has been under punitive sanctions from the United States over the ongoing detention of a U.S. pastor, Andrew Brunson. Turkey has held the cleric since 2016 and has alleged that he was involved in a failed coup attempt that year.

Erdogan also said the country is under an economic "siege" that has nothing to do with its economic indicators, insisting that Turkey will overcome the "attack" on its economy.

He said Turkey's economy remains strong and argued that the national currency, which has lost around 45 percent of its value since the start of this year, would soon settle "at the most reasonable level."

The Turkish leader's remarks came after authorities launched investigations into hundreds of social media accounts for false reports on the country's economy.

Spreading false news about Turkey's economy is "treason," said Erdogan.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 22:34:06|Editor: yan

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by Zhang Yongxing, Jiang Shan

SUVA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Diana, a six-year-old Fijian girl, with long eyelashes, had a severe malformation on her right hand, left leg and on her toes, which had inflicted restrictions upon her daily movements.

On the evening of Aug. 4, Diana received plastic surgery conducted successfully by doctors of the Chinese naval hospital ship Ark Peace.

"She was born with the defects," said Diana's mother. "She is neither willing to extend her hands before her companions nor to be dressed in skirt."

On Aug. 3, a day after Ark Peace's arrival in Suva, Diana boarded the ship together with her mother for treatment. On the second day after she was admitted as inpatient, a two-hour operation was conducted under general anesthesia on the little girl following pre-examinations, and the malformation on her hand and foot were successfully corrected.

Before checking out of the hospital ship, a new dream came to the little girl following the success of the operation.

"After growing up, I now wish I could go to China to thank you by dancing a ballet," Diana told the Chinese nurse who had accompanied her during her treatment.

Fijians from all walks of life have appreciated the free medical services offered by Ark Peace, which last Thursday wrapped up her eight-day goodwill visit to the South Pacific island nation with a population of more than 880,000 people.

During the visit, the second of its kind since 2014, Ark Peace, which is on Mission Harmony 2018, deployed 12 batches of medical teams to local health centers to provide medical services while conducting all-weather consultations and treatments on the major platform onboard.

A rescue helicopter carrying a medical team was dispatched to the island of Vatulele, more than 100 km away from the Fijian capital city of Suva, to provide the most needed medical services for the islanders. The hospital ship provided consultations and treatments to a total of 6,577 persons, auxiliary examinations for 3,074 people and surgical operations for 32 cases, while admitting 26 inpatients.

Fijians have been more than satisfied with the medical services provided by the Chinese medical teams who have done their best to help solve local people's health problems.

Some of the medical teams' exploits have touched the hearts of the Fijians seeking free medical services.

Marisia Daurewa Vasunyla, a 71-year-old teacher of Fijian nationality, had been suffering from eye trouble. She has been a teacher for 50 years and has worked as a teacher in Vanuatu over the past couple of years.

When Ark Peace was in Vanuatu for her first visit in 2014, she missed the opportunity due to her busy schedule. She was very happy after learning that Ark Peace would visit Vanuatu for a second time as she could take this opportunity to get treated.

The doctor of ophthalmology from Ark Peace carefully examined her and diagnosed her with a cataract on her left eye. But there was not enough time for the surgery as Ark Peace was to depart shortly from Vanuatu for Fiji.

"Fiji is my home country and I'd like to go to Fiji for the surgery," said Vasunyla excitedly. She immediately booked an air ticket and arrived in Fiji two days before Ark Peace's arrival at Port of Suva.

On Aug. 4, Vasunyla boarded Ark Peace with her husband and she successfully received cataract ultrasonic emulsification and intraocular lens implantation.

"What a cross-border appointment is this!" said Vasunyla. "You are the envoys of brightness from China and I will bear your kindness and help in my mind forever..."

As for Fiji's former President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, he boarded Ark Peace twice and experienced the medical treatment.

"When Ark Peace was in Fiji four years ago, I was the then president and witnessed Fijian people's openness and gratitude to Ark Peace. For this visit, I can feel the same openness and gratitude from the Fijian people as before. Whenever Ark Peace comes to Fiji, I will be always ready to greet you!" he said.

In addition, Fiji's Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama boarded the hospital ship three times. He inspected the guards of honor onboard and visited the medical staff and local patients.

Bainimarama lauded Ark Peace's humanitarianism, acknowledging that the visit has further deepened the traditional friendship between the two peoples and shown the world the good bilateral ties between Fiji and China.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 22:49:09|Editor: yan

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BERLIN, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- German economy minister Peter Altmaier has criticized the trade and sanctions policies of U.S. president Donald Trump on Sunday.

Speaking to the newspaper "Bild am Sonntag", Altmaier warned of the harmful impact of unilateral economic measures adopted by Trump.

"This trade war slows and destroys economic growth, while producing new uncertainties," the minister said. He argued that U.S. consumers would hereby themselves bear the brunt of costs created by punitive import tariffs.

Altmaier offered careful praise for recent developments in the trade conflict between the European Union (EU) and United States. The minister emphasized that the concessions won by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in negotiations with Trump could "only be a first step" towards a wider reversal of the U.S. trend towards more protectionism.

"Our goal is a global trade order with lower tariffs, less protectionism and open markets," Altmaier told the newspaper. Whereas the interim agreement between Juncker and Trump would protect "hundreds of thousands of jobs in Germany and Europe", it remained to be seen whether Washington would hold actually off on earlier threats to expand tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from the bloc to automotive products more generally.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and German business associations have repeatedly called for mutual tariff reductions as a means to repair strained transatlantic ties and help improve the export competitiveness of the U.S. economy.

Besides criticism of U.S. protectionism, the minister also voiced German opposition to the re-imposition of economic sanctions by Trump against Iran.

"We will not let Washington dictate to us with whom we can do business, and we will therefore uphold the Vienna Nuclear Agreement to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Iran," he said.

Dagmar von Bohnstein, German business delegate in Iran, has highlighted in a public plea for help to the federal government in Berlin that domestic firms in Iran are in urgent need of political solutions which enable them to complete financial transactions while bypassing U.S. capital markets.

"The biggest problem is to find corporate banking providers which can complete transactions with Iranian counterparties without being penalized by U.S. sanctions," von Bohnstein told press.

Speaking to "Bild am Sonntag", Altmaier stressed that Berlin would continue to support domestic companies operating in Iran regardless of U.S. sanctions, and was working together with other European partners to establish alternative payments systems to prevent a resulting interruption of trade and investment flows.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 23:14:13|Editor: yan

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NAIROBI, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Kenya is considering putting in place a policy to enhance investment in Arid and Semi Arid Lands (ASALs) areas to promote inclusive growth, a senior government official said on Monday.

Eugene Wamalwa, the Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of Devolution and ASALs, told a media briefing in Nairobi that a multisectoral taskforce has been appointed to develop the policy that will guide investments into the remote areas.

"Once the policy is in place the ASAL regions will be the new frontiers for economic growth in Kenya," Wamalwa said.

The policy will for the first time coordinate national, country governments and donor funding in the ASALs regions that account for more than 70 percent of the country's land mass.

Wamalwa said the policy will provide a framework to align ASALs development plans and priorities to the national development blueprint Vision 2030, the third medium term plan, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as well as the President Uhuru Kenyatta's development blueprint.

Wamalwa noted that in the past, arid areas have received limited government support as they were considered unproductive regions.

"As a government we have now realigned our prioritizes to ensure that no region is left behind in order to promote equitable development across the country," he said.

In order catalyze the economic transformation of the ASAL regions; Kenya plans to host the inaugural ASAL conference from Sept. 5 to 7.

Wamalwa said the three-day event will help Kenya to take stock of the opportunities, challenges and progress to inform development of the ASALs regions.

"The conference will be used a peer review mechanism for all development agencies in the underdevelopment regions," he added.

According to the conference organizers, the meeting will focus on four broad areas namely: Economic, Environment, Governance and socio-cultural issues that are instrumental in unlocking the potential of ASALs development.

At the end of the event, delegates will be expected to come up with resolutions that will form the framework for the all development in the ASALs.

Wamalwa said the resolutions by the stakeholders will be binding in terms of planning and implementation of programs and projects.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 23:39:22|Editor: yan

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DHAKA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Bangladeshi government Monday signed a 510 million U.S. dollars financing agreement with the World Bank to enhance the quality and effectiveness of secondary education system in the country.

This will benefit 13 million students studying in Grades 6-12, said the Washington-based lender.

The Transforming Secondary Education for Results (TSER) program will support the government's Secondary Education Development Program (SEDP). It will focus on improving education quality and access, and that students especially girls and children from low-income households complete secondary education and the program will support stipends and school grants.

"Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in advancing access to education, and has achieved gender parity in secondary education," said Rajashree Paralkar, acting World Bank country director for Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal.

"Continuing to invest in quality education is critical for Bangladesh to achieve its vision of becoming a middle-income country. For this, the program will support modernization of curriculum and ensure professional development, management, and accountability of teachers."

The program will provide training to 500,000 school teachers and school principals to enhance quality of secondary education. It will also support learning assessments of students in grade 6, 8 and 10 to identify learning gap and suggest policy actions.

The Global Financing Facility (GFF) will provide a 10 million U.S. dollars grant, which is aimed at improving adolescent health and school retention. The program will construct separate toilets for girls. In addition, the program will also support incorporating topics on general health and hygiene in the curriculum.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 23:39:23|Editor: yan

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BERLIN, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Salzgitter profits more than doubled during the first half of 2018 in spite of the recent imposition of punitive U.S. tariffs on European steel imports, earnings figures published on Monday by the German steel producer showed.

Gross revenue held steady at 4.6 billion euros (5.3 billion U.S. dollars) between January and June 2018, while net profits rose significantly to 135.4 million euros -- compared to 64.7 million euros in 2017 -- during the same period. Profits were at their highest level since 2008. The company mainly attributed the development to cost savings and booming sales of flat steel in its European home market.

Nevertheless, Salzgitter chief executive officer (CEO) Joerg Fuhrmann warned at the presentation of the figures that U.S. President Donald Trump's protectionist policies continued to pose a serious risk to the steel industry.

According to Fuhrmann, "unpredictable trade policy developments" could hurt Salzgitter's earnings, as well as derail "fragile growth" in the global economy.

As a consequence, Salzgitter merely reaffirmed an earlier annual forecast instead of raising its outlook in response to the strong half-year performance. The company now expects to record pre-tax profits of between 250 and 300 million euros in 2018 alongside slight revenue growth to more than nine billion euros.

As of June 1, European producers are now subject to a 25-percent tariff on steel and a 10-percent tariff on aluminium exports to the United States as part of Trump's "America First" doctrine. The EU has so far reacted to U.S. imposition of punitive tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from the bloc by filing a World Trade Organization lawsuit against Washington and unveiling retaliatory measures targeting specific U.S. exports.

On Sunday, German economy minister Peter Altmaier drew attention once again to the harmful impact of unilateral economic measures adopted by Trump. "This trade war slows and destroys economic growth, while producing new uncertainties", he told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

Aluminium and steel are both important resources for German industrial manufacturing companies. Nevertheless, business representatives and economic think tanks have so far downplayed the implications of the new U.S. tariffs, while highlighting the greater risk posed by potential additional tariffs on car imports threatened by Trump as well.

Salzgitter recorded a steel output of roughly seven million tons in 2017, making it one of Europe's largest producers.
Children are starving in Bajhang

Last month, Sabita Nepali was rushed to the local health centre after her condition continued to worsen. The eight-month old infant, who weighed three kilos at birth, was recorded at two-and-a-half kilos when she was brought to the Deura Primary Health Centre in Bajhang.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-13 23:39:24|Editor: yan

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MOSCOW, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres discussed the situations in Syria and Ukraine in a telephone conversation Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Lavrov and Guterres discussed the prospects of the UN expanding its conflict prevention and peacemaking work while exchanging views on the conflict in Syria, according to a ministry press release.

Russia maintains an airbase and a naval base in Syria to support the Syrian government forces, and Moscow is also actively mediating between conflicting factions in the war-torn country.

During Monday's phone conversation, Lavrov also informed Guterres of the contact between the human rights commissioners of Russia and Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine have detained several people from each other's respective countries amid their tense relations due to Crimea and the armed conflicts in eastern Ukraine.

In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko agreed that the two countries' human rights commissioners should visit Russian citizens detained in Ukraine and Ukrainian detainees in Russia.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 00:24:42|Editor: yan

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BERLIN, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Deniz Zvizdic, Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), on Monday described the goal to join the European Union (EU) as its "most important foreign policy priority" following a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"With regards to European integration, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains on a European path and this is its most important foreign policy priority," Zvizdic said during a joint press conference with Merkel in Berlin.

The two leaders drew attention to significant improvements in international cooperation between the Western Balkans and the EU which had been during the recent decades.

Brussels has offered all regional states the theoretical option to become members of the continental bloc, subject to institutional reforms ensuring compliance with judicial and constitutional principles enshrined in the so-called "acquis" of existing EU law.

"I think that, as a whole, cooperation has improved a lot in the Western Balkans in spite of remaining issues," Merkel told the press conference.

However, the German leader also pointed a lasting need to overhaul the BiH legal code to limit corruption, combat organized crime and offer foreign firms more security when operating in the country.

Merkel argued that, in turn, Germany could assist BiH's economic development with direct investments, as well as vocational training programs to create a more skilled labor force.

"The most important thing is that the youth (in Bosnia and Herzegovina) gains a promising perspective on the future -- economic development is of great importance in this context," she said.

Additionally, Merkel proposed setting up a scientific foundation to promote more academic cooperation and noted that BiH also had the chance to form closer military ties with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by activating its so-called Membership Action Plan to apply for entry into the defense alliance.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 00:29:43|Editor: yan

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CAPE TOWN, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Unidentified gunmen stormed a police station in a South African township on Monday, the latest in a series of attacks on police stations in the country.

The attack took place early Monday at the Ngangelizwe police station in Mthatha, Eastern Cape Province, police said.

After subduing the police officers on duty, the gunmen killed a man in police custody, National Police Commissioner General Khehla Sitole said.

The deceased man, aged 38, had been arrested on July 29 for possession of firearms.

"It is alleged that four suspects in possession of firearms entered the community service center just after midnight and held the members on duty at gunpoint," Sitole said.

They fled the scene after killing the man, according to Sitole.

The motive for the killing remains unknown.

A multidisciplinary team consisting of specialized units and seasoned police investigators would investigate the killing, Sitole said.

Sitole said a manhunt has been launched to track down these perpetrators who have total disregard for human lives as well as the authority of the state.

Sitole pledged to give "the highest priority" to security at police stations and the safety of officers.

In South Africa which has one of the highest crime rates in the world, police stations have become targets of criminals recently.

Earlier this month, armed men attacked a police station in Kareedouw, Eastern Cape Province, held an officer on duty at gunpoint and making off with a number of firearms from the safe.

In February, gunmen attacked a police station in Nqcobo, also in Eastern Cape Province, killing five police officers and an off-duty soldier, and stealing quantities of weapons and a vehicle before fleeing.

Police stations in the Free State and Western Cape provinces also came under attack in 2017.

A total of 57 police officers were killed in 2016/17, according to official statistics.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 00:29:43|Editor: Yamei

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ABUJA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Seven people were confirmed killed following an outbreak of cholera in some communities in Nigeria's capital Abuja, local health authorities said Monday.

The outbreak has so affected six communities, said Humphrey Okoroukwu, head of the public health department at the Federal Capital Territory Administration.

Okoroukwu said the deaths were recorded in four communities in Abuja.

He told reporters that health personnel had been dispatched to the affected areas to curtail the outbreak.

The official said health education had also been intensified in the communities in the Nigerian capital to sensitize residents on the prevention and management of the disease.

Cholera is a highly virulent disease characterized in its most severe form by a sudden onset of acute watery diarrhea that can lead to death by severe dehydration.

The outbreak is common in Nigeria due to the poor water supply systems, especially in densely populated areas.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 00:44:44|Editor: yan

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KIRYANDONGO, Uganda, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Construction of Uganda's largest hydropower plant has entered its final phase, with installation works taking over physical building.

Working in tunnels below River Nile in the northern Ugandan district of Kiryandongo, Chinese engineers and their Ugandan counterparts carefully install machinery for the 600 MW plant.

They work in day and night shifts to ensure that the 1.688 billion U.S. dollar Karuma Hydro Power Plant is completed within the next year.

"More than 85 percent of the work is complete. It's not an easy job because it involves designing the structure, installation and connecting cables," Li Huiting, the deputy project manager, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Li is optimistic that by the end of this year, the installation of the first out of the six units would be complete.

Construction of the plant, the first in east and central Africa to be built underground, started in August 2013.

In addition to the anticipated capacity of 600 MW, the project has had a major skills transfer, especially among the youth, according to the government.

Chinese engineers and technicians work closely with their Ugandan counterparts, Li, the deputy project manager, said.

More than 6,000 youths have been employed at the construction site, according to Sinohydro, a Chinese company contracted to build the plant.

Andrew Kamagara, a local engineer, told Xinhua that he was originally a water engineer but has since expanded his knowledge base.

"I used to be scared of the structural bit, but when I came to Karuma Hydro Power Project I gained that information and it increased my confidence in structural design," he said.

Tezita Muzahamu, another employee, told Xinhua that he has gained skills in metal welding besides rock blasting.

"I had a rough idea about welding, but right now I am an expert," Muzahamu said. "Even if Synohydro goes and there is no blasting job yet, I can make my own workshop and start making my things."

Development in villages near the construction site has also shown the positive effects.

Severino Opio, the local council leader of Karuma village, told Xinhua that some of the youths employed at the construction site have been able to buy land and build houses.

Karuma is a major stopover of buses to the central and northern part of the east African country. Supermarkets, saloons, hotels have sprung up, thanks to the construction of the power plant.

At the national level, the power plant is seen as a major investment that will address the country's rising demand for electricity.

Since 2005, the share of Uganda's population with access to electricity has increased from 9 percent to 22 percent, with the total number of customers having grown from 292,000 to more than 1.1 million, according to government figures.

The country's power generation and installed capacity is estimated at 930 MW, according to government data.

It is estimated that 1,131 MW will be required to meet the national electricity demand by 2020.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 00:44:44|Editor: yan

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WARSAW, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Three massive unexploded bombs dating back to World War II were lifted from the bottom of the Baltic Sea close to the resort town of Kolobrzeg, north-western Poland on Monday.

Hundreds of people living in proximity were evacuated but later allowed to return to their homes.

Three unexploded bombs and two objects of unknown origin were lifted by a team of bomb disposal experts and divers. Several hundred policemen and firefighters took part in the removal effort in addition to bomb disposal experts and soldiers.

According to spokespeople working at the site, there are no more unexploded objects in the area. The three bombs, which were "potentially dangerous", were removed in good shape, including explosives and detonators. Two of them were about 250 kg.

The bombs are expected to be detonated at a military exercise site in the town of Drawsko Pomorskie.

The bombs were found a few days ago by a policeman. On Saturday, an emergency management center was established by the Kolobrzeg authorities.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 00:49:45|Editor: yan

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ADDIS ABABA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopian President Mulatu Teshome on Monday said Chinese investment plays an indispensable role in the East African country's industrialization drive.

Speaking after visiting the Chinese built Eastern Industry Zone, 37 km south of Addis Ababa, he said the industrial zone, which has more than 80 factories in it, is a showcase in how with right management and planning Ethiopia's transition from an agriculture-based economy into an industrial powerhouse in the next 10 years can be successful.

The Eastern Industry Zone inaugurated in 2010 is Ethiopia's first industry zone that inspired the Ethiopian government towards establishing more industry parks across the country towards becoming the manufacturing hub of the African continent.

"A decade ago the land the Eastern Industry Zone currently lies on was just an agricultural land, but with hard work it has become today a showcase of high quality industrial factories in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, pulp and textile," said Teshome.

"I hope our local entrepreneurs will learn from the success of Eastern Industry Zone and take this opportunity to enter into the manufacturing sector," he further said.

Chinese Ambassador to Ethiopia Tan Jian, who accompanied the Ethiopian president in his visit to the Eastern Industry Zone, said the bilateral relationship can be a model of South-South cooperation.

Ethiopia has the biggest economy in the East African region and the second largest population in Africa with around 100 million people, he said.

In that regard, China's cooperation with Ethiopia can be seen as a model for China-Africa and South-South cooperation, Tan told Xinhua.

Chinese investment and expertise have been crucial to build a 4 billion U.S. dollars 756 km electrified rail line from Addis Ababa-Djibouti, helping ease the bottleneck for landlocked Ethiopia and assisting the East African country maintain its double-digit economic growth over the last decade, said Tan.

Ethiopia-China partnership can be strengthened, be it infrastructure development sector, industrial park development, agricultural sector development and human resource development, said Tan.

"As part of our multifaceted cooperation every year we provide 400 scholarships to Ethiopians, as we see human resource development is very important for our bilateral partnership," said Tan.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 00:54:48|Editor: yan

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JUBA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- At least 23 people have been killed and 52 others injured during fresh tribal violence in the western South Sudanese town of Tonj over the weekend, a local government official said on Monday.

The violence started on Friday after four local pastoralists from the rival Dinka tribe were killed during a foiled cattle raid, Tonj State Minister of Information James Ayiik Dak told Xinhua by phone.

Dak said the community of the slain herders launched a counter attack on a neighboring community which they suspected to have carried out the failed raid, leading to scores of causalities.

He said calm has since returned to the region after a joint military force made of army soldiers and police was deployed.

"After the clashes ended on Aug. 11, we confirmed a total of 23 people dead and 52 wounded from both sides," Dak said. "Calm has returned to the area and there is no major security threat."

For decades, livestock-related violence has been a major challenge among pastoralist communities in South Sudan as thousands of people are estimated to have been killed in violent cattle raids.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 00:54:48|Editor: ZD

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Participants attend a dialogue between UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and Chinese representatives in Geneva, Switzerland, on Aug. 13, 2018. China's mid-term assessment of the implementation of the National Human Rights Action Plan (2016-2020) is ongoing, and generally speaking, good progress has been made in achieving the goals set concerning the ethnic minorities, a Chinese official said here Monday. (Xinhua/Xu Jinquan)

GENEVA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- China's mid-term assessment of the implementation of the National Human Rights Action Plan (2016-2020) is ongoing, and generally speaking, good progress has been made in achieving the goals set concerning the ethnic minorities, a Chinese official said here Monday.

Xu Hong, Director-General of the Department of Treaty and Law of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, made the remarks during a dialogue with UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) which is reviewing China's report on implementation of the related Convention.

He told CERD members that the right of China's ethnic minorities to participate in the deliberation and administration of state affairs has been earnestly ensured.

Currently, he said, all the 55 ethnic minority groups in China are fully represented at the National People's Congress, or the national legislature of China, and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the country's top political advisory body.

The head of administration of China's 155 ethnic autonomous localities, including prefectures, counties and banners, are led by officials from ethnic minorities, he added.

According to the official, ethnic minorities and areas inhabited by ethnic groups have witnessed rapid economic and social development. In 2017, the eight multi-ethnic regions or provinces saw their investment in fixed assets grow by 11.8 percent, 4.6 percentage points higher than the national average.

Poor population in ethnic minority areas has dropped from 14.11 million in 2016 to 10.32 million in 2017, and 21 out of the 28 poor counties that have successfully eradicated poverty in that year are located in the western and ethnic minority areas, Xu said.

Also education for ethnic minorities has developed rapidly, since China has exempted rural students from all tuitions and fees for compulsory education, provided students from financially difficult families with free textbooks and students of boarding schools with living allowances and increased the public funding for primary and secondary schools providing compulsory education in rural areas.

Ethnic minorities' right to use and develop their own languages has been effectively protected, Xu said, adding that so far, 14 ethnic minority projects have been put on the UNESCO's "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity", and 479 ethnic minority works have been put on the catalogue of national intangible cultural heritages.

CERD is the body of independent experts that monitors implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by its State parties. All States parties are obliged to submit regular reports to the Committee on how the rights are being implemented.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 01:04:50|Editor: yan

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VALLETTA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Malta's armed forces rescued 114 migrants from a sinking dinghy 53 nautical miles south of Malta, the government said Monday in a statement.

On Monday morning, during a routine border patrol, the armed forces sighted a rubber dinghy in difficulty, it said.

The rubber dinghy was taking in water. All migrants were eventually rescued by a patrol vessel.

Also on Monday, Malta's government issued anther statement with reaction to the NGO vessel Aquarius's request to enter Maltese ports.

According to the statement, Aquarius was made off the Libyan coast, Tunisia and Italy (Lampedusa) in an operation which was coordinated by the Libyan authorities.

"Malta was neither the coordinating nor the competent authority for such a rescue, and therefore has no legal obligation to make the arrangements to provide for a place of safety. The requests for such vessel to enter ports are unwarranted and without legal standing," the government statement said.

The government also said it is monitoring the situation and in touch with overseas counterparts.
Chinas Anker looks to make a splash in Nepal

Chinas leading consumer electronics brand Anker is looking to make a splash in Nepal. The brand is famous for its range of advanced portable electronic goods such as Anker power banks, portable projectors, USB cables and more.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 01:04:51|Editor: yan

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MANDERA, Kenya, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- At least three people were killed and two others seriously injured on Monday after their civilian vehicle ran over an improvised explosive device in Mandera, northeast Kenya, along the Somali border, police confirmed.

Mandera East Divisional Police Commander Daniel Chacha, who confirmed the incident, said the victims were involved in the construction of a border wall.

They were clearing a road along the security wall when the explosion happened on Monday morning.

Mandera South Deputy County Commissioner Paul Kemei also confirmed the incident, saying the team was headed to their work station when the device exploded.

"The victims were hit by what we suspect to be an improvised explosive device," he said.

Kemei said the team is usually given security escort to the site and wondered why police officers did not accompany them on Monday.

The incident is likely to cause panic among the workers who have been helping Kenyan army officers in the construction works.

The wall is manned by Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) soldiers who are already on the ground. A surveillance road is also being built, running parallel with the barrier, for easier monitoring of the border.

Kenya began constructing the security wall that runs to the coastal town of Lamu in April 2015 to help prevent Somali militants from crossing into Kenya to carry out terror attacks.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 01:19:54|Editor: yan

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OSLO, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- This summer's drought has made it difficult to obtain enough forage for animals, and due to higher prices more horse owners have to slaughter their horses, public broadcaster NRK reported Monday.

"Last month there were almost daily requests from desperate horse owners who did not know what to do, and the reason was the tragic drought," Norwegian butcher Jens Eide told NRK.

"It is so tragic, it is so demanding, and the farmers who are to deliver the other animals deliver them far earlier than they should, because the animals have not reached slaughter age," Eide said. "But when there is not enough food, they must be slaughtered."

"With horse, there is another challenge, because they are pets that make them friends in a completely different way," Eide added.

Horse owner Linn Elisabeth Eidsaa has barely collected enough food for her 40 horses at a very high cost and has seen that many horse owners now put their horses for sale.

"Everyone wants the animals to live, but if you do not get food, it is a better choice than letting them starve," she said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 01:24:54|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Security Council on Monday welcomed the recent steps taken by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) towards the successful holding of presidential and legislative elections scheduled at the end of the year.

In a press statement, the members of the council noted the the completion of the candidate registration and President Joseph Kabila respects for his commitment to abide by the Congolese Constitution and the provisions of the 31 December 2016 political agreement.

Kabila, who came to power in 2001 after the assassination of his father, former President Laurent Kabila, by law cannot run again after his mandate ended in December 2016.

Elections were originally scheduled to be held on Nov. 27, 2016 to determine a successor to Kabila, but were delayed with a broken promise to hold them by the end of 2017. The polls are finally set to take place on Dec. 23 this year.

Earlier in August, Kabila announced that he will not run again in the elections. Former interior minister Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary was designated as the candidate of Kabila's ruling coalition.

In Tuesday's statement, the members of the council underlined the importance of the entire DRC political class and the institutions responsible for organizing the elections remaining committed to ensure the success of the rest of the electoral process, leading to a peaceful transfer of power.

They encouraged all DRC stakeholders to ensure that the polls take place "with the requisite conditions of transparency, credibility and inclusivity, including the full and effective participation of women at all stages."

Also, the members encouraged the Congolese government and the Independent National Electoral Commission to ensure that any request to MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping force in DRC, for logistical and technical support is made on time, in order to enable it to provide it.
Picture taken on October 30, 2013 shows employees in protective gear holding a dummy grenade during a demonstration in a chemical weapons disposal facility in northern Germany. (Xinhua/AFP)

MOSCOW, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday slammed the United States for questioning its commitment to eliminate chemical weapons after Washington announced new sanctions over the alleged attack in Salisbury of an ex-spy.

The U.S. State Department said on Aug. 8 that Washington will impose new sanctions on Russia over the alleged nerve agent attack on ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the British city of Salisbury in March.

"They prefer to ignore the fact that the Russian program for the destruction of chemical weapons, completed last year, was implemented under strict international control in full compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said it considers the "groundless" U.S. allegations as another attempt to portray Russia as an irresponsible global player.

It said the allegations look "especially hypocritical" as the United States itself is in no hurry to destroy its arsenal of chemical weapons and remains the only state party in the CWC with a significant stockpile of chemical warfare agents.

The ministry said Washington's current actions pose a threat to the integrity of the chemical weapons convention and damage the credibility of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The United States once again demonstrated a disdain for the international law and the desire to use existing multilateral arms control mechanisms to advance its own political agenda, it said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 02:20:05|Editor: yan

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JERUSALEM, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a secret meeting with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo in May over the issue of the Gaza Strip, the Hebrew-language Channel 10 TV news reported Monday.

The Israeli prime minister's office was not immediately available for comments.

Channel 10 quoted anonymous U.S. officials as saying that Netanyahu and a few of his advisors took a flight to Cairo on May 22 to meet with Sisi.

The meeting focused on Egypt's efforts to advance a diplomatic solution to the situation in Gaza, which includes the reinstatement of the Palestinian National Authority's rule in Hamas-run Gaza and a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, according to the report.

In return, Israel and Egypt would significantly ease their 11-year crippling blockade imposed on the Palestinian enclave to enable its rehabilitation.

The two leaders also discussed the new U.S. peace plan that the White House has been working to advance for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The latest severe escalation of fighting between Israel and Gaza came last week, as Israel struck hundreds of sites in Gaza, killing three, while Gaza militants launched about 200 rockets toward southern Israel without causing casualties.

Egypt and the United Nations have been key players in the efforts to achieve a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

Sisi and Netanyahu held their first official meeting in New York in September 2017, when they discussed possible ways to restart the long-stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
JUBA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- At least 23 people have been killed and 52 others injured during fresh tribal violence in the western South Sudanese town of Tonj over the weekend, a local government official said on Monday.

James Ayiik Dak, Tonj State Minister of Information, told Xinhua by phone that the violence started on Friday after four local pastoralists from the Dinka tribe were killed during a foiled cattle raid.

Dak said the community of the slain herders launched a counter attack on a neighboring community which they suspected to have carried out the failed raid, leading to scores of causalities.

He said calm has returned to the region after a joint military force made of army soldiers and police was deployed.

"After the clashes ended on August 11, we confirmed a total of 23 people dead and 52 wounded from both sides. But calm has returned to the area and there is no major security threat," Dak told Xinhua.

According to statistics from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the East African country is home to more than 38 million livestock, mainly cattle, goats and sheep.

But for decades, livestock-related violence has been a major challenge among pastoralist communities in South Sudan as thousands of people are estimated to have been killed in violent cattle raids.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 02:40:08|Editor: yan

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BAGHDAD, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Monday that his government would not abide by any other U.S. sanctions on Iran except the U.S. dollar ban in transactions.

"I did not say we abide by the U.S. sanctions against Iran. Iraq's decision with respect to Iran is not to deal (with Iran) in U.S. dollar," Abadi told a press conference after his weekly cabinet meeting.

Abadi's comment came a week after he pledged that Iraq will follow the U.S. sanctions on Iran for the sake of protecting Iraq's interests.

"We will abide by them to protect the interests of our people," Abadi said, citing that non-compliance with the U.S. sanctions will harm Iraq's interests.

On Aug. 7, the United States reimposed the first round of economic sanctions on Iran, which had been eased under the 2015 landmark nuclear deal, months after U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the deal in May.

The sanctions target Iran's trade in precious metals, transactions in U.S. dollar, as well as Iran's auto sector.

The second round of sanctions will take effect in November, which will include a ban on Iranian oil exports and business with Iran's central bank.

Under the 2015 deal, the United States agreed to lift the crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for a halt to Iran's controversial nuclear program and the access of international inspectors to relevant facilities.
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko attends a press conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg during a summit of heads of state and government in Brussels, Belgium, July 12, 2018. (AP Photo)

KIEV, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Monday that Ukraine's new law on national security has won the support from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The legislation, which is aimed at reforming Ukraine's defense sector, was positively assessed by all of Ukraine's partners in NATO, Poroshenko wrote on Facebook.

The law on national security, which lays down general principles and goals of Ukraine's policy in the security and defence sectors, came into the force last month.

The law aimed to bring the Ukrainian armed forces in line with NATO standards and defined Ukraine's integration into the North Atlantic Alliance and the European Union as the "fundamental interests" for Kiev.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 03:45:22|Editor: yan

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KIGALI, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Campaigns for Rwandan parliamentary elections started on Monday, as Rwandans will go to the poll from Sept. 2 to 4 to elect members of the lower house.

The number of candidates is 521, including 302 from political parties, four independent candidates, 26 for the youth, 10 for people living with disabilities, and 179 for women slots.

The elections of the lower house Chamber Of Deputies use one single nationwide constituency, where 53 seats will be directly elected by proportional representation. The other 27 seats reserved for special interest groups including women, the young and the disabled will be elected indirectly.

The ruling party Rwandan Patriotic Front launched its campaigns in Rulindo district in northern Rwanda with a huge turnout of voters.

Francois Ngarambe, the RPF Secretary General, rallied voters to vote for the RPF candidates at the party's inaugural rally, saying the government needed to maintain a majority in the parliament in order to make enabling laws to implement its seven-year program.

The RPF manifesto for the 4th parliament highlights job creation, agriculture transformation, private sector development, urban development, and enhancing economic development among other pledges.

The Social Democratic Party, an opposition party, launched its campaigns in Ngoma district in eastern Rwanda, with a promise to promote democracy while the Liberal Party (PL) launched its campaigns also in Rulindo district.

PL seeks to enhance health services by putting up health posts across the country, said Donatille Mukabalisa, party president.

The Democratic Green Party of Rwanda started campaigns in Muhanga district in southern Rwanda, where party president Frank Habineza pledged to push for establishment of an import and export bank to ease access to funds for businesses.

Independent candidate Phillip Mpayimana, who was one of the three candidates running for the presidency in 2017, rallied in the capital Kigali. He promised to work closely with voters once elected.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 04:05:25|Editor: ZD

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TEHRAN, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Iran will never enter a new round of talks with the United States over the 2015 nuclear deal as Washington is "bullying and cheating" in negotiations, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Monday.

Khamenei's remarks came in response to the recent U.S. gestures for unconditional renegotiation of the 2015 landmark Iranian international nuclear deal after its astounding withdrawal in May.

Tehran will not again sit at the negotiation table with the "cheating" U.S. government, Khamenei's official website said.

"Over the past 40 years, Americans have requested for negotiations for many times, but only met with Iran's negative answers," he was quoted as saying by Press TV.

"During negotiations, Americans only give promises using apparently assuring words, but want real concessions from the opposite side and do not accept promises," he said.

Negotiations with the United States at the present time will certainly be to Iran's disadvantage and are "forbidden," the Iranian top leader noted.

"We can only embark on negotiating with the United States after we reach the economic, political and cultural power that we have in mind so that the U.S. pressures and ballyhoo would not be able to affect us," he added.

Earlier in the day, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also said a recent proposal by the United States to enter into negotiations with Iran over Tehran's nuclear issue while re-imposing sanctions against the country is nothing but propaganda.

"Iran will never change its policies in the region under the U.S. sanctions and pressure," Zarif was quoted as saying by state TV.

"Iran will also never hold negotiations about its missile program, because our missiles do not threaten anybody," he added.

A day earlier, Zarif dismissed reports that Iran has plans to talk with the United States on the sidelines of the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting.

On Friday, Majid Takht Ravanchi, Iranian deputy foreign minister for European and American affairs, also said he doesn't see "any reason" for talks between Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the 73rd UN General Assembly meeting next month.

"What expectations could you have from a person who pulls out from international engagement and now says let's hold talks," Ravanchi noted.

U.S. President Trump withdrew Washington from the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, on May 8.

Since then, the Trump administration has slapped a number of sanctions on Iran while vowing to apply more.
Explosion outside Biratnagar mayors office

An improvised explosive device was set off outside the office of Biratnagar Mayor Bhim Parajuli on Sunday afternoon.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 04:15:28|Editor: yan

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KHARTOUM, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Sudan on Monday condemned the recent terrorist attack on a patrol in Jordan's Fuheis, 20km northwest of the capital Amman, which killed one officer and injured six others.

"Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses its strong condemnation of the terrorist attack," said the ministry in a statement.

The ministry described the incident as "a crime contradicting all humanitarian values and principles."

It expressed condolences to the families of the victims and to the government and people of Jordan, wishing a speedy recovery for the injured.

It also stressed Sudan's full solidarity with Jordan in whatever measures it takes to preserve the security and safety of its citizens in the face of terrorist and criminal acts.

The Jordanian Interior Ministry earlier said the attack targeted a joint patrol of the Jordanian Gendarmerie and Public Security Department forces by an explosive device.
Protesters, part of a 500,000 strong crowd, take part in the Women's Rally on the one-year anniversary of the first Women's March, when millions marched around the world to protest U.S. President DonaldTrump's inauguration, in Los Angeles, California on January 20, 2018. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO)

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Seven in 10 American women aged between 18 and 35 years old are dissatisfied or angry about the Donald Trump's presidency, the highest percentage of any age group of women in the United States, according to a poll released on Monday.

Only 9 percent of them say they are happy with Trump in the White House, the CBS News-Refinery29 survey found.

Among this woman age group, 53 percent think Trump's policies have mostly hurt women, while 70 percent feel their rights and liberties are being threatened rather than protected by what's going on in Washington.

By more than three to one, younger women prefer the Democratic Party win control of Congress. More of these women identify as Democrats than Republicans in the first place, the poll showed.

However, it isn't certain that many of them will turn out, the poll revealed, citing this women age group is the least likely of any age group to say they will definitely vote in the 2018 midterm election: only 30 percent say they definitely will, far lower than among older women (76 percent say they will vote).

The top reason of these women who say they may not vote this year is not being interested in politics and elections (31 percent), followed by not feeling like their vote matters (19 percent), not liking the candidates running (14 percent), and being too busy (14 percent).

The CBS News-Refinery29 survey is conducted by YouGov which interviewed 2,093 U.S. female adults online between July 26 and 30.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 04:50:35|Editor: yan

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KHARTOUM, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Sudan Monday called on the international community to support the peace process in South Sudan.

The appeal was made by Sudanese Foreign Minister Al-Dirdiri Mohamed Ahmed during his meeing with ambassadors of the United States, Britain, Norway and the EU in Khartoum, according to a ministry statement.

Ahmed urged the United States, Britain, Norway to provide direct support for the South Sudan peace agreement signed in Khartoum on Aug. 5, as their support "represent one of the guarantees for sustaining the peace in South Sudan."

He also proposed a joint meeting for foreign ministers of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, an East African trade block that brokered the South Sudan peace deal, and the three countries as soon as possible.

On Aug. 5, South Sudan's conflicting parties signed a final deal in Sudan's capital Khartoum on power-sharing and security arrangements.

The deal was signed by South Sudanese President Salva Kiir, major opposition leader Riek Machar and representatives of other South Sudanese opposition factions.

It stipulates that Kiir will continue to serve as President of Sudan during the transitional period, while Machar will be the first Vice President among the four vice presidents from different political parties.

Under the agreement, the transitional cabinet would be composed of 35 ministers, including 20 ministers from the government, and nine from Machar-led Sudan People's Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO).

The deal further stipulated a transitional national legislative body composed of 550 members, with 332 from the government, and 128 from the SPLM-IO.

South Sudan has been witnessing a civil war since December 2013, which has left about 10,000 dead and millions of others displaced.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 04:55:35|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- In an upsurge of violence in the Syrian civil war, more than 130 people were killed, including "many children" in three governorates over the weekend, the United Nations said on Monday.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), based at the UN Headquarters, said ongoing hostilities in northwestern Syria have killed at least 134 people, including many children, over the weekend in Idlib, Hama and Aleppo governorates.

"At least 59 civilians were reportedly killed, 17 of them children, when a weapons and ammunition depot exploded in a residential building near Sarmada town in northern rural Idlib Governorate," UN Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters at a regular briefing.

The UN Children's Agency (UNICEF) counted "28 children were reported killed in Idlib and western Aleppo in northern Syria" in the last 36 hours, he said.

"Three UNICEF-supported health facilities were attacked," Haq said. "Two of them - providing aid to women and children - are now out of service."

Education authorities reportedly suspended all school activities in Khan Shaykun, Maarrat An Numan and Kafr Nobol in Idlib for three days due to hostilities," he said.

"We remind all parties to the conflict of their obligation to protect all civilians and civilian objects, including schools and health facilities; and to allow safe, sustained and unimpeded humanitarian access to all in need in compliance with international humanitarian law," the deputy spokesman said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 05:40:49|Editor: yan

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MINSK, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Belarusian Potash Company (BPC) will export a new type of potash fertilizer to China, the press service of the BPC said on Monday.

The BPC and China's Sinochem Group signed a five-year exclusive memorandum on the supply of granular potash fertilizers which is halurgic granular white muriate of potash with the addition of zinc and sulphur.

The document was signed during a Sinochem Group delegation's visit to Belarus, the press service said.

According to the memorandum, the new potash fertilizers will be supplied to the Chinese market for 5 years from 2019 to 2023 with the right to sign annual contracts based on the current market situation.

The document said that the total supply for 5 years will make up 700,000 tonnes.

Established in April 2005, the BPC is one of the largest suppliers in the world potash market. The company supplies mineral fertilizers to more than 100 countries of the world and continues to develop new markets.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 05:55:52|Editor: yan

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GABORONE, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Fernand de Varennes, arrived in Gaborone, capital of Botswana, on Monday, to gather first-hand information on minorities situation, and identify good practices and key areas requiring more effort, the UN Human Rights office in Gaborone said in a statement.

According to the statement, as required by his mandate, de Varennes will examine how the country is implementing the 1992 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities through legislation, policy and practice.

During his 12-day mission, the special rapporteur will travel to Gaborone and other regions and localities relevant to his mandate and where minority communities are located, including Francistown, Maun, Ghanzi and Kasane, the statement said.

He will meet senior government officials, representatives of civil society and members of minority tribes, and members of the deaf community with regard to, among other things, their rights as members of a linguistic minority.

The special rapporteur will also examine steps to implement the rights of minorities to an adequate standard of living, and the impact of economic and development policies, including developmental projects and business activities in regions with a minority presence.

The special rapporteur will present a comprehensive report of his visit to Botswana during the 40th session of the UN Human Rights Council in March 2019.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 05:55:53|Editor: Liangyu

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UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Youth of China, the third album of a Chinese classical literary song trilogy, was released Monday at the UN headquarters in New York, the first working day after the International Youth Day that fell on Sunday.

The album was composed by You Jingbo, a Chinese American artistic director at the American National Music Center, and sang by Jing Mengtao, a vocal performance student at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia.

"We worked very hard and made sure that we see both Chinese and Western elements in this project," said You at the release ceremony, recalling their eight months of collaboration together.

He explained that the songs' lyrics are Chinese classical poetry, and their melodies are composed with traditional Chinese music notes, but their presentation styles are mostly Western, including rap, folk and R&B.

The 10 songs in the new album included Ospreys, a love poet from China's Book of Songs dating back to over 2,000 years ago, and Song of Mulan, a folk song about a female soldier in disguise of a man in North Wei (386-534 BC), whom the Disney cartoon Mulan was based on.

"A country's strength depends on the country's youth. I hope that, by sharing my appreciation and understanding of my culture, I can inspire and encourage more teenagers to embrace the beauty of their own culture," Jing said.

He also hopes to "help contribute in a small but meaningful way, the spreading of ancient Chinese civilization and legacy across an international platform."

Before making Youth of China, You recorded two other albums of Chinese classical literary songs, with their lyrics selected from Tang and Song Dynasties' poetry.

The three albums as a trilogy will be made available soon in about 180 countries around the world on digital music distribution platforms such as QQ Music, Kougou, Amazonmusic, Spotify and Deezer.

You hopes these songs could help promote Chinese classical literature education among the new generation of children, and that the Chinese immigrants around the world could relate to or resonate with these songs.

At the ceremony, the World Harmony Foundation presented the Award of World Youth Harmony Ambassador certificates to a group of Chinese music teachers and their pupils, who had put on a performance singing one of You's works, in recognition of their musical teaching or performance "in a way that spreads traditional Chinese music globally" and in celebrating the International Youth Day.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 06:05:56|Editor: yan

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NAIROBI, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- A total of 33 Kenya Airways' passengers and one driver were injured in a bus accident in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi early Monday, the airline said.

The Kenyan carrier said in a statement that 30 of the injured have been successfully treated and discharged while three of the passengers are still undergoing treatment.

The Chinese embassy in Kenya confirmed that the 33 injured include five tourists from the Chinese mainland and 15 from Taiwan.

The airline said the passengers were injured when a shuttle van traveling along Nairobi's busy Mombasa road was hit from behind by a trailer, and the van went off the road.

"Our main priority remains our guests' wellbeing. We have opened a guest support center at the airport offering guidance and information to the affected family and friends. Dedicated family lines are now active for family members," it said.

The airline said the passengers were scheduled to leave Nairobi on Sunday night but due to a technical problem on the scheduled aircraft, the flight was rescheduled, prompting the airline to accommodate the passengers at a hotel.

Kenya Airways said its security and the police were deployed to the scene at the time of the accident.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 06:20:57|Editor: ZD

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LONDON, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- A crucial round of negotiations to try to resolve the issue of a post-Brexit border between Northern Ireland and the neighboring Irish Republic are to be held Thursday in Brussels, Britain's Department for Exiting the European Union said Monday.

The future of the 500 km border between the two is one of the biggest unresolved issues as Theresa May's government seeks to find a way of ensuring a frictionless border on the island of Ireland.

Brexit Seretary Dominic Raab and the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier will not be taking part in the new round of discussions. Instead high ranking negotiators from both sides will seek a way through the current deadlock.

On Friday the negotiations will switch to a proposed future relationship between Britain and the EU's remaining 27 member states after next March.

Meanwhile, new figures Monday from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed the Irish Republic accounts for 27 percent of Northern Ireland's international export trade. The United States accounted for 25 percent, making it Northern Ireland's second biggest international export partner.

Northern Ireland's biggest export across the border into Ireland was food and live animals, particularly dairy products, which represented 33 percent of total exports to the Irish Republic.

More than two thirds (68 percent) of exporting businesses in Northern Ireland were small companies employing up to 49 workers.

Commentators in Britain and Ireland have warned that a no-deal Brexit could have serious consequences for industries that have extensive cross-border supply chains.

Last month May made her first visit to the Irish border since the 2016 Brexit referendum. She held talks with workers and business representatives from both sides of the border.

During her two-day visit May reaffirmed her commitment to a Brexit that avoids a hard border and protects the Belfast Agreement which brought to an end decades of conflict and troubles in Northern Ireland.

In a government white paper Britain has ruled out any kind of hard border.

"Daily journeys will continue to be seamless and there will be no checks or infrastructure at the border to get in the way of this," said May.

"I've also been clear we will not accept the imposition of any border down the Irish Sea and we will preserve the integrity of the UK's internal market and Northern Ireland's place within it," she added.

Media reports in Brussels said later that EU negotiator Barnier had rejected key elements of Britain's new trade proposals outlined in May's blueprint for a future post-Brexit trading relationship with the bloc.

Barnier made clear British offers to collect customs duties for the EU as part of efforts to avoid friction on Northern Ireland's new EU border had failed to convince already skeptical Europeans.

Both sides are aiming to have draft deal in place by October, but observers fear a no-deal outcome is looking increasingly possible.

Last week Britain's international trade secretary Liam Fox said the chance of a no-deal Brexit is growing, blaming the "intransigence" of the European Commission. Fox put the chance of failing to come to an agreement at "60-40", but 10 Downing Street has insisted the British government remains confident it can get a good deal with Brussels.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-08-14 06:35:59|Editor: yan

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LAGOS, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Nigerian government on Monday refuted claims that operatives of Department of State Services (DSS) allegedly recovered money and dangerous weapons from the residence of sacked director general of the DSS.

The videos in circulation on the alleged recovery of items from the house of Lawal Duara were fake, Tony Opuiyo, a spokesperson for the secret police, said in a statement reaching Xinhua.

The items allegedly recovered included 400 assorted and sophisticated small arms and light weapons or rifles and thousands of Permanent Voters Card (PVCs) belonging to Niger Republic immigrants.

"So far, no such recovery operations have been undertaken by the anti graft police or any other security agency at DSS office or residences of the former Director-General," the spokesperson added.

In another video also in circulation, some persons believed to be personnel of a security outfit were seen forcing open safes stocked with money.

The security operatives were said to be executing a recovery operation at the northwest Katsina home of the former DSS boss.

Opuiyo said different interests had continued to give varied accounts of last week's incident at the national assembly.

He said the presidency had pledged to carry out a detailed investigation regarding the blockade of the national assembly.

The former secret police chief was sacked by acting president Yemi Osinbajo for ordering the unauthorized blockade of the national assembly last week.
Gold smuggling probe stalls

Despite the completion of a report that said 293 individuals are directly and indirectly involved in the 33 kg gold-smuggling scandal, the fate of the case remains in limbo as the government fails to make progress in the investigation.
The number of poor declined to an all-time low in Hungary from 2012 to 2016, a labour market expert told public news channel M1.

In the period under survey, Hungary witnessed the biggest decline in this respect from among all European Union member states, Piroska Szalai said, citing data from Eurostat, the EUs statistics office.

The number of severely materially deprived people fell from 2.2 million in 2004 to 1.7 million by 2007, but then rebounded to 2.7 million by 2012.

In the subsequent four years, however, it decreased by about half, she said. Hungarys economy started to perceivably decline in 2006, two years before the outbreak of the global economic crisis, with shrinking employment, decreasing real wages and growing unemployment.

The decline, however, came to a halt in 2010, and real wages started to increase again in 2012, Szalai said.
As the government proposes to cancel the accreditation of gender studies university degree programs, left-wing and liberal pundits accuse the government of ideology driven interference in higher education. Conservative commentators are divided on the proposed ban.

On Thursday, the Ministry of Human Resources circulated a draft decree that would withdraw the accreditation of gender studies MA programs. Universities were given 24 hours to comment the draft.

Gender studies programs are currently offered by two universities, ELTE and CEU. The Ministry of Human Resources said that gender studies education is economically not justified, and there is no public need for it anyways.

The ELTE has announced that it accepts the ministrys decision and comply with the new regulation. Government politicians have claimed in the past that gender studies should be regarded as ideological indoctrination rather than meaningful university education, and its core doctrines are contrary to the governments values.

In Heti Vilaggazdasag, David Dercsenyi accuses the government of shutting down gender studies for ideologically reasons.

The left-wing liberal columnist contends that the move is motivated by the governments drive to express its commitment to traditional Christian values and underscore its anti-multiculturalism and anti-immigration stance. Dercsenyi speculates that the government would also ban abortions in the name of Chrstian values if it did not fear public uproar.

On 24.hu, Attila Kalman interprets the draft decree as a weapon in the governments cultural warfare. By vilifying gender studies and feminism, he suggests, the government is creating an imaginary enemy against whom it can claim to defend Hungarians from disruptive Western progressive ideologies.

The left-wing commentator characterizes this strategy as a common feature of populist right-wing parties.

I hope all this is fake news, Gabor Bencsik comments the draft decree on Facebook. The conservative pundit believes that it is scholarly relevant and socially important to study the role of biological sex in society.

Without learning the implications of gender, it is not possible to boost the birth rate and restore family love. Bencsik admits that some gender studies departments follow radical feminist and extreme liberal ideologies, thinks nonetheless that most gender studies departments are valuable. He calls on Christian conservative intellectuals to protect the government from an ill-advised decision.

Pesti Sracoks Tamas Pilhal welcomes the governments plan to sweep universities clear of gender-agitators.

The pro-government blogger thinks that gender studies should not have been accredited in the first place. Pilhal disagrees with Bencsik and likens gender studies departments to Satanist sects, noting that gender studies are unlikely to help us regain our reproductive capacity.

He adds that gender studies is a fashionable Western stupidity. Citing gender studies scholars, Pilhal notes that gender studies education does indeed try to facilitate the social acceptance and toleration of homosexuality and even of sex reassignment procedures.

168 Oras Gyozo Matyas finds the suggestion that gender studies want to advance transsexual norms absurd. The left-wing columnist contends that gender studies is the scientific investigation of the construction of gender roles in society.

Matyas, however, acknowledges that some contemporary radical feminists activists including Andrea Dworkin and Judith/Jack Halberstam advocate hair-raising ideas and use gender studies for dogmatic political purposes. Matyas thinks nonetheless that strong open societies can tolerate the discussion of such ideas, and only authoritarian regimes want to ban them.

In a Facebook comment, Andras Stumpf finds the governments plan to ban gender studies nauseating.

The conservative pundit finds transgender identities ridiculous, and describes the suggestion that biological sex is fully socially constructed as an absurd proposition. Nevertheless, he warns against what he calls a Bolshevik tradition of infringment with institutional freedom in education.

Fruzsina Skrabski agrees with the government that culture and science are dominated by a liberal minority ideology. But the conservative columnist also finds it undesirable for the government to change liberal hegemony through decrees. Instead, Skrabski calls for an open discussion between conservative demography scholars and gender studies professors.

This opinion does not necessarily represent the views of XpatLoop.com or the publisher. Your opinions are welcome too - for editorial review before possible publication online Click here to Share Your Story
The Holy Crown of Hungary, also known as the Crown of Saint Stephen (Szent Korona), was the coronation crown used by the Kingdom of Hungary for most of its existence. Since 2000, this Holy Crown has been on display for visitors to see in the central Domed Hall of the Hungarian Parliament.

Due to national holiday, on 20th August 2018 there will be an open day in the House of Parliament. Visitors will have the chance to get a glimpse of the Grand Hall, the Dome Hall and the Holy Crown from 12 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Preliminary registration is not required, the admission is free for all visitors. The approach direction to the Building is from Alkotmany Street. A security check is required prior to entering the House of Parliament. Visitors must not enter the building with large bags, packages or objects capable of causing personal injury, such as pocket knives, knives, gas spray etc.

Along of expected great attendance, long queueing up is probable.

During the open day  from 12 a.m. to 6 p.m.  regular visits led by trained guide are also available. These groups depart from the Visitor Centre.

"One thousand years of Hungarian legislation" permanent exhibition in the Visitor Centre can be visited from 12 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Lapidarium and the In memoriam 1956 October 25. - memorial and exhibition on the Kossuth Square is open from 12 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Click here to see the House of Parliament Visitor Centre online

More About the Holy Crown

The Crown was bound to the Lands of the Hungarian Crown (sometimes the Sacra Corona meant the Land, the Carpathian Basin, but it also meant the coronation body, too). No king of Hungary was regarded as having been truly legitimate without being crowned with it.

In the history of Hungary, more than fifty kings were crowned with it, up to the last, Charles IV, in 1916 (the only kings who were not so crowned were John II Sigismund, Gabriel Bethlen and Joseph II).

The enamels on the crown are mainly or entirely Byzantine work, presumed to have been made in Constantinople in the 1070s.

The crown was presented by the Byzantine Emperor Michael VII Doukas to King Geza I of Hungary; both are depicted and named in Greek on enamel plaques in the lower crown. It is one of the two known Byzantine crowns to survive, the other being the slightly earlier Monomachus Crown, which is also in Budapest, in the Hungarian National Museum.

However, the Monomachus Crown may have had another function, and the Holy Crown has probably been remodelled, and uses elements of different origins. The date assigned to the present configuration of the Holy Crown varies, but is most commonly put around the late 12th century.

The Hungarian coronation insignia consists of the Holy Crown, the sceptre, the orb, and the mantle. The orb has the coat-of-arms of Charles I of Hungary (13101342). In popular tradition the Holy Crown was thought to be older, dating to the time of the first King Stephen I of Hungary, crowned in 1000/1001.

It was first called the Holy Crown in 1256. During the 14th century, royal power came to be represented not simply by a crown, but by just one specific object: the Holy Crown.

This also meant that the Kingdom of Hungary was a special state: they were not looking for a crown to inaugurate a king, but rather, they were looking for a king for the crown; as written by Crown Guard Peter Revay. He also depicts that "the Holy Crown is the same for the Hungarians as the Lost Ark is for the Jewish".



Click here to learn more about the Holy Crown

Photo: parlament.hu
Twenty-seven ethnic groups from twelve countries participated in the Kurultaj Tribal Assembly of the Hun-Turkic Peoples, a biannual meeting of peoples of nomadic origin from the Central Asian steppe held in Bugac, in south-central Hungary.

The assembly, held last weekend, celebrated ancient traditions.

In remarks made at the opening of the assembly, House Speaker Laszlo Kover said the psyche of the Hungarian people originates in the East. Hungarians are the westernmost people from the East and will never forget their Eastern brethren, he added.

Kover said Kurultaj sends the message that millions of Hungarians expect state and scholarly institutions funded with taxpayer money to support, rather than restrict, Hungarian cultural self-determination in the 21st century.

Nearly 400 groups showcased traditions they have preserved to visitors to Bugac. The first Kurultaj was held ten years ago and has since become the largest cultural event of its kind.

MTI Photo: Ujvari Sandor
To most of us, August 20th is just another day... But to Hungarians, it's Szent Istvan's Day - the National Holiday celebrating the founding of the Hungarian State. So, it's a pretty big deal and Budapest pulls out all the stops and really showcases the best of Hungarian culture.

It all culminates in a spectacular fireworks display on the Danube, with rockets shooting into the sky with the Budapest skyline as the backdrop.

Once you have wandered your way around the craft fairs, food stalls and events throughout the day, make your way down to the river bank and grab the best seat in the house with Budapest Boat Party.

We will be hosting a very special Szent Istvan's Day cruise to celebrate in style.

What's included?

4 Hours Unlimited Beer, Wine, Prosecco and Soft Drinks (20:00 - 00:00)

2 Hot Dogs (Vegetarian Equivalent available)

Free Glitter and Facepaint and the usual sick beats and photographers

How much is it?

50,00EUR / HUF 15,000

Strictly over 18s only

Event Info

Boarding from: 20:00

Location: Petofi Ter Dock 9 Budapest 1052, Jane Haining Rakpart

The boat will remain docked until safety marshalls have instructed we can depart after the Fireworks Display (Approximately 21:30)

The boat will then cruise until 00:00 when our events team will guide guests to the free after party at Morrisons 2.



Click here to book your ticket now



MTI Photo: Szigetvary Zsolt
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Coun Perez reiterates warning to barangay leaders involved in drugs

07 Aug 2017 Hits:37 Comments(0)

Liga ng mga Barangay President, Councilor Jerry Perez yesterday reiterated his warning to all barangay officials from using or selling drugs. Perez said he is closely monitoring the activities of all the barangay officials and vowed sanctions against erring leaders. Aqui gane na mio barangay ya quita ya iyo na puesto cunel dos barangay leaders quien mas temprano ya sale positivo na...
Tom McCaney, Associate Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, and Sister Nora Nash Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, pose for a photograph at the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia Convent is Aston, Pa. Monday, July, 2, 2018. Read more

From Disney to Chevron, from Hasbro to Wells Fargo, publicly traded companies in many industries have been touched by the influence of a Franciscan nun.

Sister Nora Nash, director of corporate social responsibility for the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, based in Aston, is a shareholder activist who spends her days lobbying executives of some of the nation's most powerful companies.

"In working with corporate social responsibility, we have an opportunity to ask all those who have a better lifestyle to remember that it's important to support people of all dimensions," Nash said. "People whose lives have been impacted by poverty, by climate change, and by both inequality and inequity."

Nash and her top associate, Tom McCaney, focus on more than 70 companies. The key to their access is the retirement fund for the sisters. They tap the fund to invest in companies  and then use their shareholder status to pressure those businesses and file corporate resolutions.

Nash, who took her vows in 1961, declined to provide details about the fund or share its financial reports. Those documents are not publicly available because the fund is run by a religious organization, she said, though each sister receives a copy of the fund's annual report.

The investment aspect of the work is important, McCaney said, not just because it gives them greater access to the company, but also because it shapes their attitude toward the businesses.

"As investors, we have a vested interest in the company doing well," he said. "We're not there to tear them down. We're there to, as Sister Nora said, hold them accountable but hopefully do well by doing good."

Nash and McCaney make their stock buys depending on the cause at hand. In a division of labor, Nash focuses on drilling for natural gas or fracking, labor issues, and human rights; McCaney tackles health, food, and drug issues.

They have pushed companies to make some highly publicized changes over the years. Nash worked with the Walt Disney Co. on its 2015 pledge to no longer depict smoking in its movies. McCaney urged McDonald's Corp. to include more healthy options on its menu.

The summer used to be calmer for Nash and McCaney, but now there is no downtime. Nash had a conference call with Lowe's Cos. just before the Fourth of July; she spoke with executives about the home-improvement chain's chemical footprint.

She's also working with Hasbro, the toy company, on the same issue, but she is familiar with that company. Nash said she built a relationship with Hasbro when she worked with it on improving toy safety. When she recently wrote to the company to raise a new issue, an executive responded in two days.

Not that it's always so harmonious. When companies ignore her letters, she said, she may file a shareholder's resolution, a bid to have an issue put before shareholders for a vote.

Recently, Nash made headlines by leading a drive for a shareholder resolution calling on Wells Fargo & Co. to be more transparent about the bank's 2016 scandal, in which it admitted to opening unauthorized bank accounts, among other abuses. Nash and other members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility  a faith-based shareholder organization of which the Sisters of St. Francis is a member organization  withdrew the proposal when Wells Fargo agreed to review its practices.

"We will continue to work with the company, but we also have a very serious responsibility to make sure that they're accountable, and that all of those people who have been affected by any aspect of their business are remunerated," she said. "Many people are still suffering because they have not been made whole."

Josh Zimmer, chief executive of the Interfaith Center, said in an email that Nash's "genius" stems from her ability to communicate with both corporate executives and members of struggling communities.

"Sister Nora may speak softly, but everyone listens," he said.

Not everyone is a fan of her kind of advocacy. In a 2016 report to shareholders, Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co., named "self-serving shareholder activity and proposals not intended to benefit the company" as one of the reasons for a dramatic U.S. decline in the number of public companies.

Heeding that sort of analysis, a Republican-backed measure pending in Congress would make it tougher for advocates to file resolutions.

Under current rules, a shareholder must own at least $2,000 worth of a company before filing a shareholder proposal. The pending proposal would say a shareholder would have to own at least 1 percent of all stock to file one.

Last year at JPMorgan's annual meeting, Nash denounced the proposal, pointing out that it would require her to buy $3 billion in stock in the investment giant. This, she said, was an "intentionally planned impossibility."

Some critics of the corporate social responsibility movement say that a company's only responsibility is to make money, while others dismiss the movement as largely ineffective.

Joanne Bauer, an expert on the social-responsibility movement who teaches at Columbia University, says many corporations have in effect co-opted the movement, trivializing it by using it as a marketing device. She praised Nash, saying she had resisted that kind of manipulation.

Nash said the work "does go on and on" as new issues surface.

"Whether you are a retail store or a bank, you are responsible to work for the common good of the community," she said. "And I think many of them do try, and with our work, it has been very pleasing to see how some really have responded."
From left, David Carosiello, operations manager, Joey Torres, lead painter, and Joshua Ramos, supervisor, pray during a staff meeting at Productive Plastics in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Thursday, August 2, 2018. Productive Plastics is a plastic fabrication company that brings in two faith-based motivational speakers once a month to speak with its employees. Read more

Just inside the entrance to the workroom at Productive Plastics Inc., which molds plastic into parts for manufacturing companies, is a place to post prayers.

A sign above the section reads, "Welcome to Our Prayer Wall," in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, and a notepad and pen hang at the bottom of the space. Tucked into the wall are folded pieces of paper, each left by an employee and containing prayers offered up anonymously.

The company's goal is an audacious one: To encourage all members of Productive Plastics to pray together for each other.

The wall was the focus of much discussion during the company's monthly Caring Team meeting Aug. 2, when a group of nine people  including managers, employees, and two "corporate ministers"  gathered to discuss the well-being of employees and ways in which the company can better reflect its core values.

The group debated ways to share offerings on the prayer wall and solve real problems while respecting employees' privacy. One popular idea came from workroom supervisor Joshua Ramos, who suggested using two pads of paper  one white and one yellow  to color-code prayers, ones that employees were comfortable sharing and those they wanted to remain private.

Ramos, a Caring Team member since it was started over a year ago, said participants are chosen by peers rather than managers. Co-workers recommend peers after noticing "there's fruit in their lives showing the vision of this company," Ramos said.

Productive Plastics, a privately held firm in Mount Laurel, is an openly Christian business that works with two corporate ministers who counsel employees. The company, family-owned since 1955, makes plastic enclosures for Siemens CT scanners and plastic parts for the Kawasaki rail cars on Long Island Railroad and Metro-North routes in the New York area, as well as parts of interiors for PATCO trains.

Revenues are in the $12 million to $13 million range, and the firm has seen 20 percent growth in each of the last three years, said John Zerillo, vice president of sales.

Many of the company's 58 employees work in the plant's workroom, where temperatures rival those of a certain biblical locale, climbing above 100 degrees from the ovens in machines used to mold plastic sheets. Zerillo said the Caring Team approach has helped lower turnover from about 10.5 percent to about 9.1 percent from 2017 to the present. "We're not losing people like we used to," he said.

The firm's CEO, Hal Gilham, is a member of the Philadelphia chapter of C12, a network of Christian CEOs, business owners, and executives. Before he was baptized in 2010, however, Gilham felt "there was no place for this Christian living" in his life, and his family was regularly raising concerns about his drinking habits, he said in a reflection that was shared with the Caring Team this month. After connecting with his faith, Gilham decided to extend his born-again Christian values to the way he runs Productive Plastics.

Experts say it can be dangerous to speak openly about faith in the workplace, because nonspiritual employees and co-workers can feel alienated and dislike what they see as proselytizing. Joe Holt, a business professor at the University of Notre Dame who has taught classes on spirituality and religion in the workplace, said a focus on faith and corporate ministry in business is not "all that common" but "also not unheard of."

The challenge for companies, Holt said, is creating a space where everyone feels comfortable while also allowing employees to gain a sense of personal satisfaction from their work, by connecting it to their faith or otherwise. He said if businesses succeed in fostering that environment, they could see increased productivity from their employees.

"People are at their most engaged, happy, and productive when they see a connection between the work that they are doing and the values and beliefs that define them," he said.

Executives at Productive Plastics say they do not force religion on anyone. "We're not there to proselytize," Zerillo said. "We're there to care for the needs of the people."

Zerillo said the company does not ask employees any questions about their religious affiliations, but through conversations between co-workers he knows there are non-Christian employees at the company, including at least one Muslim and one Jew.

Beside the prayer wall in the workroom is a family sharing board, where employees can post updates about their personal lives they would like to share with coworkers. A rack of pamphlets on issues such as addiction, depression, and anger sits in the lunchroom. A Christian flag hangs on the building's flagpole underneath the American flag.

Each shift starts with a "Take 5" meeting. The first four minutes of these five-minute meetings are mandatory; time employees receive company notices and the meeting leader discusses manufacturing concepts to keep in mind during work. The last minute is optional and consists of a description of a short scripture passage of the day.

Productive Plastics itself has four core company values, the first of which is to "honor God in all that we do" and the second of which is to "develop people." Next are the "relentless pursuit of excellence" and the need to "grow profitability."

Will Seright, who has worked at Productive Plastics for a little over a year, forming parts to fit various appliances, said the heat is the only thing he doesn't like about working at the company. He said he is "glad religion is accepted" because it has always been a big part of his life but was never a part of his work before now. "You've got a lot of love here," Seright said. "It's like a family."

Other employees who spoke privately to a reporter made similar statements.

About two years ago, Productive Plastics began working with corporate ministers Paul and Amy Shumski, a married couple who founded Lifeguide  a corporate chaplaincy service  in December 2014 after serving in traditional pastoral work. Paul Shumski said their goal was to provide "compassionate employee care" for the companies they work with.

He said Lifeguide, which has two full-time and two part-time employees besides the Shumskis, charges around $5 per week per employee at the companies that hire them. He said they have worked with 13 companies since its founding and now have nine clients. Lifeguide always encounters skepticism from employees when it first partners with a company, he said, but what makes Productive Plastics stand out is that the Shumskis say they haven't encountered any employees who don't seem to have bought into the company's mission.

"There's always a percentage that just like to complain or just like to get off the clock [in conversations with the Shumskis], but honestly, here, I don't think that's at all here," Paul Shumski said. "The employees that work here, they enjoy working here. They're loyal." He said Productive Plastics is also the only company with a Caring Team.

Although the Shumskis can offer general thoughts about how to improve conditions during Caring Team meetings, their conversations with employees remain confidential. The Shumskis can only share information with the permission of the employee or if they believe someone is a danger to him or herself or others (both of the Shumskis are mandatory reporters, legally bound to alert others to those concerns).

Amy Shumski said she and her husband "respect all beliefs" in their work and primarily "try to help give them skills to help handle their situation" rather than solving problems for others. They work with companies for the benefit of employees' mental health, she said, which often gets overlooked in business.

"There are many needs out there," Amy Shumski said, "and just by bringing chaplains in, Productive Plastics is recognizing that those needs are on many levels."
Scientists warn that unless we take action, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. But while retailers and governments around the world are banning straws, coffee stirrers, and other single-use plastic items, we need to remember that straws are just the tip of the plastic iceberg. If we really want to stem the tide of plastic pollution that's choking our oceans and killing marine animals, we'd be better off banishing cod and tuna from our plates and skipping trips to the local fishing hole.

Fishing  whether for food or for "fun"  and the garbage that it generates inflict far more harm on wildlife than straws ever will.

It's easy to understand why plastic straws are under fire, though. No one who has seen the video footage of a straw being pulled out of a sea turtle's nostril will ever be able to forget it. But according to Adam Minter, author of Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade, even if every plastic straw littering coastlines around the world suddenly washed into the oceans, "they'd account for about .03 percent of the 8 million metric tons of plastics estimated to enter the oceans in a given year."

>> READ MORE: Banning meat in the workplace? What else could corporate nannies do? | Opinion

Sea turtles and other animals are much more likely to be harmed by lost and discarded fishing gear. Scientists affiliated with The Ocean Cleanup, a group working to reduce plastic pollution, determined that, by weight, fishing nets make up at least 46 percent of the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating pile of rubbish that's three times the size of France. Eel traps, baskets, ropes, and other abandoned fishing gear, also known as "ghost gear," make up the majority of the rest.

Some 640,000 tons of ghost gear enter the world's oceans every year  and can mutilate and kill marine animals for many years afterward.

It's a gruesome death. Whales who become entangled in heavy fishing gear can drown, die of exhaustion after weeks of struggling to free themselves or slowly starve to death if the gear is lodged in their mouths and prevents them from feeding. As I write this, rescue crews in Canada have just freed an endangered North Atlantic right whale entangled in fishing gear near Grand Manan Island.

>> READ MORE: Avoiding plastic straws? Try this metal version to ease environmental guilt

In July, three young girls who were playing on Chic's Beach in Virginia found a commercial fishing net with 10 live seahorses trapped inside. Those animals were "lucky"  they were rescued by the quick-thinking girls. But millions of sea turtles, whales, dolphins, sharks, birds, and other animals who are maimed and killed by discarded fishing gear every year aren't so fortunate.

Recreational anglers aren't off the hook, either. Wildlife rehabilitators have told PETA that discarded fishing line and other tackle is the greatest threat to aquatic animals today.

A reporter in Pennsylvania recently wrote about finding a juvenile bald eagle who had died from swallowing a fish hook in his neighborhood. Eight inches of fishing line, topped by a sinker, trailed from the eaglet's mouth. And in a little over two weeks, a wildlife center in Virginia had to euthanize both a bald eagle and an osprey after they had become entangled in fishing line. The more animals trapped in monofilament line struggle, the tighter it becomes, and those who don't die can sustain severed wings or feet.

>> READ MORE: Twitter can't agree on Starbucks' straw ban

Baby birds can also be strangled if their parents unwittingly use bits of fishing line when weaving their nests. In its leaflet Angler Alert: Fishing Line Can Kill! the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that at least 5 to 10 percent of osprey nests in the Chesapeake Bay area contain fishing line.

Banning plastic straws isn't nearly enough. People who care about animals and the oceans need to consider not just what they use to drink their beverages but also what they eat and what they do for recreation. Less fishing means less deadly fishing gear, plain and simple.

Paula Moore is a senior writer for the PETA Foundation.
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Patna: New facts are emerging in the mysterious deaths of two mentally challenged women inmates of 'Aasra' shelter home in Patna's Nepali Nagar locality.

The women, one aged 17 and other 40, were allegedly asked to escape the state-run shelter home by a man.

The man had also tried to lure them with gifts, reported news agency PTI.

A controversy emerged after hospital authorities and Bihar social welfare department providing conflicting narratives and reportedly keeping police in the dark.

The women were brought dead to the hospital on the intervening night of August 10 and August 11, said Rajiv Ranjan Prasad, Superintendent, Patna Medical College and Hospital.

A postmortem examination has been conducted. However, the reasons behind the inmates' mysterious death have not yet been revealed.

The shelter officials, on the other hand, claimed that the inmates were brought in following complaints of diarrhoea and high fever and that they died during treatment.

"Our department official who accompanied the two inmates of 'Aasra' shelter home to the hospital claimed that they died during treatment, but the hospital authorities say otherwise," said Raj Kumar, Director, Social Welfare Department.

The police blamed the hospital and shelter home authorities for not informing about the incident to the police station concerned.

"It was a lapse on part of the shelter home authorities and the hospital administration as neither of the two informed the police stations concerned before the postmortem was conducted. We came to know about the deaths only this morning," N H Khan, Inspector General of Police (IG), Patna Zone, said.

An enquiry has been launched into the matter.

According to Manoj Kumar Sudhanshu, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Law and Order (Patna), the body of the 17-year-old inmate was cremated by NGO 'Anumaya' which runs the shelter home.

However, the last rites of the second woman were not performed since her religion was not clear.

The shelter home came into news when it was recently reported that four of its inmates had tried to run away.

Two people were arrested on Sunday in the case, said police.

The incident comes close on the heels of Muzaffarpur shelter home rapes, where more than 30 minor girls were sexually abused over a period of time.

With agency inputs
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New Delhi: A class 6 student of Delhi's prestigious St Columba's School lost a portion of his right hand's ring finger when it got stuck in a door, following which his parents accused the school authorities of negligence.

The school administration formed a three-member fact finding committee today to probe the issue after a group of parents staged protest outside the school premises. "I got a call from the school on Friday that there is a cut on my son's hand and he needs to be taken to the hospital. Neither the school officials made any effort to rush him to get medical aid nor I was informed that the injury was this serious," the student's mother said.

"When I took him to a hospital later, the doctor asked us for the lost portion of the finger. I called up the school who later tried to find out the portion and by the time the cut part was brought to the hospital, the doctor informed us it was not possible to stitch back the portion now and this will be a permanent deformity," she added.

The mother accused the school authorities of showing a "lackadaisical attitude".

The incident was caused after two boys pushed him towards the foyer door which resulted in his hand being caught in it and thus the portion being cut. The school has no idea about who were those two boys and no action has been taken yet, she said.

The school authorities said a probe committee has been formed. "A three-member fact finding committee has been formed to probe the issue and the school is committed to ensure a speedy and thorough investigation of the matter," a senior administrative official of the school said.
CHENNAI: Days after M Karunanidhi's death, the DMK on Monday appeared headed for a fresh succession war the party patriarch's estranged son M K Alagiri claiming all loyal party workers are with him.

Karunanidhi had expelled Alagiri and his supporters from the party in 2014 at the height of his fight with his younger brother M K Stalin over establishing supremacy in Tamil Nadu's main opposition party.

Stalin is now the working president of the DMK and looks set to assume its reins.

Alagiri, a former union minister, today paid tributes to his father at his grave on the Marina Beach and fulminated against Stalin, whom he accused of blocking his return into the DMK and selling party posts.

"All the true and loyal supporters of Thalaivar, Kalaignar (The leader and the artiste, sobriquets used for Karunanidhi) are with me, they are supporting me...Time will provide the answer," Alagiri, who has been leading a life away from the media glare in Madurai since his expulsion, told reporters.

Later, speaking to an English TV news channel, Alagiri said, "Even if I am inclined to rejoin the party, they (Stalin and his supporters) are not in a mood to let me in."

"The DMK will dig its own grave if it does not take me back," he said, adding nobody from the Karunanidhi family was interested in talking to him to facilitate a reunion.

The Karunanidhi family had presented a united face when the DMK stalwart was fighting for life at a city hospital. Alagiri was present at the hospital and was seen at his father's funeral.

However, close watchers of Tamil Nadu politics expected him to flex his political muscle once Karunanidhi was gone.

The former union minister wields considerable influence in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu. He was the party's secretary for these districts before his expulsion.

When asked why there was opposition to his returning to the DMK fold, he shot back, saying "How do I know? You (media) have said I have a good reputation and the cadre likes me....They (Stalin and his backers) have that fear.... There could be a thought that I might become the party chief if I am taken back...That may be the reason."

Alagiri said several people in the DMK were in touch with Tamil film superstar Rajinikanth, who has said he will launch a political party.

"The party will crumble if it loses the Lok Sabha polls. Party posts are being sold," he said, adding "Thalaivar will punish them... His soul will not allow them go scotfree."

The development came a day ahead of the DMK's executive committee meeting that has been ostensibly convened to condole Karunanidhi's death but where a decision may be taken about summoning the party's general council for putting its seal of approval on Stalin's elevation.

Though Stalin sits firmly in the saddle and his ascension as DMK president is only a matter of time, Alagiri's tough posturing may prod his supporters in Madurai and adjoining districts to come out openly against the new party chief.

If that happens, the DMK, which has lost two successive assembly polls and failed to open its account in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, may encounter fresh electoral reverses in the general elections next year.
NEW DELHI: Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah on Monday stepped up the party's demand for simultaneous assembly and Lok Sabha polls in the country. In a letter to the Law Commission, Shah said constantly being in 'election mode' strains national resources and often halting important decisions due to Model Code of Conduct being in place.

Dismissing claims that holding two sets of polls was against the federal structure of the country, he called the opposition's argument "baseless". He, infact, claimed that the process would strengthen the federal structure of the country. "There is no relation between Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. Voters vote on different issues in both polls. Therefore, we must have faith and trust the voters," he said.

In his letter to the Law Commission, Shah said holding simultaneous polls is not only a concept, but a principle which can be implemented.

BJP President Amit Shahs letter to the Law Commission for One Nation One Election. #Delhi (2/2) pic.twitter.com/3NWZogpmzy  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

A BJP delegation on Monday met the Law Commission Chairman Justice BS Chauhan to hand over Shah's letter, said that necessary amendments to the Constitution should take place to realize the "One Nation, One Election" idea.

The law panel, which is examining the feasibility of holding simultaneous polls, had sought the views of the political parties before finalising its report. Both the BJP and Congress had stayed away from consultation organised by the commission in this regard last month.

The Congress had met the Commission top brass recently where it had opposed the concept of simultaneous polls. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has all along supported the concept of simultaneous polls.
DELHI: Fire broke out at Ashoka Hotel in Chanakyapuri area on Monday. According to news agency ANI, the fire that erupted in the basement of the hotel and was brought under control soon after.

Vinod Bharadwaj from District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) said that the fire broke out in the record room of Central Bank of India. No documents were damaged in the fire, Bharadwaj confirmed.

Seven fire tenders were rushed to the hotel.

(This is a developing story, more inputs are awaited)
Kolkata: Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who was put on ventilator support in a Kolkata-based hospital following a heart attack, died on Monday.

Chatterjee, 89, was suffering from a kidney-related ailment. He was moved to the hospital on Tuesday. A 12-member team of doctors was keeping a constant watch on the veteran politician.

Last month, Chatterjee had suffered a haemorrhagic stroke.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi took to Twitter expressing grief about the saddening incident. "I mourn the passing away of Shri Somnath Chatterjee, 10 term MP and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha. He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief," he said.

I mourn the passing away of Shri Somnath Chatterjee, 10 term MP and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha. He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief. #SomnathChatterjee  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 13, 2018

Chatterjee was a 10-time Lok Sabha MP and was a central committee member of the CPI(M). He had stepped into the world of politics in 1968.

He served as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.

The veteran leader was expelled from the CPI(M) in 2008 for refusing to resign as the Speaker after his party withdrew support to the UPA-I government.

(With inputs from PTI)
New Delhi: He had gone missing from Jaipur 36 years ago. His family searched for him near and far but their perseverance came to nothing for over three decades. All of that changed earlier this year though when Gajanand Sharma was traced to Lahore's Central Jail and on Monday, he finally crossed the Indo-Pak border at Wagah - to his family, home and freedom.

Pakistan government released 29 Indian prisoners, including 26 fishermen at #Punjab's Attari-Wagah Border today, as a humanitarian gesture. pic.twitter.com/33qOTl4zlV  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

Gajanand was 32 when he went missing. He is 68 now. It has been a long journey - one that a short walk across the border can hardly ever highlight. It, nonetheless, was a walk that he would remember for the rest of his life - a life that has been full of struggles and a never-dying hope of returning to loved ones one day.

That he is alive was a news that came like a bolt out of the blue to Gajanand's family earlier this year. They came to know about him when some documents to verify his citizenship were received by the office of Superintendent of Police (Rural), Jaipur from Pakistan. When the police reached out to Gajanand's family members, they were left in a state of shock after hearing that he was lodged in Lahore Central Jail.

Gajanand's younger son Mukesh Sharma identified his father from the photos shared with him. Gajanand's wife Makhni Devi's only wish was to get a glimpse of her husband who was long separated from her by a bad stroke of fate. And it was a wish that finally came true on Monday - just days before India's Independence Day celebrations. For Gajananad, the words independence and freedom would have a much more significant meaning.
NEW DELHI: Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan broke down while remembering veteran politician Somnath Chatterjee who died on Monday. Mahajan said that Chatterjee was 'like an elder brother' to her.

Chatterjee, who served as the Lok Sabha speaker from 2004 to 2009 passed away on Monday morning after suffering a cardiac arrest. Somnath had been admitted to a hospital in Kolkata owing to a kidney-related ailment last week. He was undergoing dialysis and was admitted to the ICCU.

#WATCH: Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan tears up while talking about #SomnathChatterjee who passed away this morning; says, 'he was like an elder brother to me' pic.twitter.com/ff1EXtdUXI  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

Somnath had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke last month and had been undergoing treatment for over the last 40 days. He was discharged from the hospital for just three days after his health showed signs of improvement. However, he had to be admitted again following a decline in his health.

Apart from Mahajan, several politicians also paid tributes to the stalwart.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recalled his contributions saying: "He made our Parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable."

Congress president Rahul Gandhi said Chatterjee was an institution and greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines.

BJP chief Amit Shah said Chatterjee was an excellent parliamentarian. His long years as a member of the House enriched parliamentary traditions, he added.

"He was a remarkable human being, an eminent parliamentarian and a very clear headed speaker of the Lok Sabha. I convey my heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family," said former vice president M Hamid Ansari.
Kolkata: A mother and her daughter were mercilessly thrashed in West Bengal's Asansol on the suspicion that they support Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Their house was also ransacked and damaged.

The incident took place in Railpar locality of Asansol where Mutri Singh and her daughter were beaten allegedly by Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers on Sunday night. It has been alleged that TMC leader Deepak Gupta and around 20 of his men reached Murti Singh's house and began thrashing her and her daughter. Even as the two were covered in their own blood but the accused reportedly went on to next ransack their house. Mutri Singh said that the accused broke several items inside their rather modest accommodation.

The two were eventually rushed to a local hospital where they were provided medical aid.

While a police complaint has been registered against him, Gupta has denied the charges made against him. He has countered by saying that it is Mutri Singh who had bought land by duping one of his associates and that when the matter was brought up with her, it was she that launched the first physical attack. Gupta has said that he too has lodged a police complaint.

The BJP could use this incident as yet another weapon against TMC - a party it accuses of resorting to violence against its workers and supporters. TMC has repeatedly countered the charge saying that it is BJP that is trying to create an atmosphere of fear in West Bengal.
Islamabad: Pakistan on Monday released 30 Indian prisoners, including 27 fishermen, from jail as a goodwill gesture ahead of the country's Independence Day on Tuesday. The release of the prisoners "is in line with Pakistan's consistent policy of not politicising humanitarian issues," Foreign Office Spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said in a statement.

The 30 prisoners being set free also include 27 fishermen, it added. "This is a humanitarian gesture to mark Pakistan's Independence day on August 14," he said.

"It is our hope that the Indian side will also reciprocate in a similar manner," he said.

Over 470 Indians, including 418 fishermen, are detained in Pakistani jails, according to a government report submitted before the country's Supreme Court in July.

The 27 fishermen today reached Lahore and will be handed over to the Indian authorities at the Wagah Border.

Senior jail superintendent at Malir jail in Karachi, Ghulam Baksh said that they had released the fishermen yesterday and sent them via train to Lahore after getting orders from the interior ministry. "The fishermen have been released as a goodwill measure," he said.

Faisal Edhi of the Edhi welfare trust said the fishermen were obviously delighted at being released some of them had spent the last two years in jail. "We have taken care of their expenses, including sending them by train to Lahore and taking them to the Wagah Border. We have also given them cash and gifts as a sign of goodwill," he said.

Pakistan and India frequently arrest fishermen for allegedly trespassing in the territorial waters in the Arabian Sea and these fishermen do not have boats equipped with the technology to know their precise location, authorities say.

A number of non-governmental organisations in both India and Pakistan have raised the issue of jailed fishermen, pressing their governments to release them without delay.
New Delhi: Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardip Singh Puri announced the latest Ease of Living Index on Monday and said that Pune had come out on top, followed by Navi Mumbai, Greater Mumbai, Tirupati and Chandigarh.

Interestingly, major metro cities of Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata did not figure in the top 10 list which saw Thane, Raipur, Indore, Vijaywada and Bhopal as the other top-ranked cities. In the list, Delhi figures far down at the 65th spot while Chennai takes the 14th place. Puri said Kolkata refused to participate.

The Ease of Living Index ranks 111 cities across the country based on institutional, social, economic and physical parameters. "This was first launched as a litmus test to help assess the progress made in urban environment through various initiatives," said Puri.

Evaluation of the cities was done on a 100-point scale across 78 indicators.

Globally, Indian cities lag far behind others even if surveys follow different guidelines and parameters. According to Mercer's 20th annual Quality of Living Survey released in March of this year, Vienna was ranked best for the ninth year in a row - among 231 cities. Auckland in New Zealand (3rd), Sydney (10th), Wellington (15th), Melbourne (16th), Perth (21st) and Singapore (25th) were the top-ranking cities from Asia-Pacific region in the list.

Even in most other similar surveys of global cities - like EIU's Global Liveability Ranking and Monocle's Quality of Live Survey, Indian cities fail to make their presence felt.
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NEW DELHI: Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Monday threw an open challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for an open debate on the controversial Rafale fighter jets deal.

Rahul also alleged that Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has lied to the people of the country regarding the deal. "Nirmala Sitharaman ji has lied to the youth of the nation. She said India and France have a secret pact and so they can't reveal the price of Rafale aircraft. I asked France President if this is true and he denied," Rahul alleged while addressing a rally in Bidar in Karnataka.

Attacking the Centre over fugitive tycoons like Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya, the Congress chief accused the Prime Minister of sheltering the rich businessmen in the country. "Modi is not the Prime Minister of country but of 15 super rich businessmen", he alleged.

Congress has been attacking the government for inking the deal at a much higher price than the one the previous UPA regime had negotiated. Rahul has been accusing PM Modi of corruption in the deal for the French fighter planes, saying that he had favoured his 'businessman friend' Anil Ambani by getting him the contract.

However, Anil Ambani's Reliance Group on Sunday denied receiving any contract from the Defence Ministry and termed the allegations "unfounded and incorrect" being deliberately made to "mislead people and cloud the issue."

The group told news agency PTI that Dassault, the French firm that is to supply 36 Rafale fighter jets, chose Reliance Defence Ltd to meet its 'offset' or export obligation in the contract and the Ministry of Defence has no role in the selection of Indian partners by the foreign vendors.

Reliance Defence Ltd CEO Rajesh Dhingra said the government-to-government deal requires all 36 aircraft to be delivered in a 'fly-away' condition which means "they are to be exported from France by Dassault" and "HAL or anyone else cannot be the production agency for the simple reason that no aircraft are to be produced in India."
New Delhi: Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee died on Monday at 89 following a cardiac arrest. Chatterjee, who was admitted in a Kolkata-based private hospital on August 10, breathed his last at 8.15 am.

Chatterjee, 89, was suffering from a kidney-related ailment. He was moved to the hospital on Tuesday. A 12-member team of doctors was keeping a constant watch on the veteran politician.

Last month, Chatterjee had suffered a haemorrhagic stroke.

Political leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi expressed grief about the saddening incident.

"Former MP and Speaker Shri #SomnathChatterjee was a stalwart of Indian politics. He made our Parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise. My thoughts are with his family and supporters," tweeted PM Modi.

President Kovind said, "Sorry to hear of the passing away of Shri #SomnathChatterjee, former Lok Sabha Speaker and a veteran parliamentarian who had a forceful presence in the House. A loss for public life in Bengal and India. My condolences to his family and innumerable well-wishers."

"Saddened by the demise of former LS Speaker, Shri #SomnathChatterjee. He was an outstanding Parliamentarian, who was elected to LS 10 times. He was always affable and highlighted people's problems. He firmly stood by the principles he believed in," VP Naidu said.

Taking to Twitter Rahul Gandhi said, "I mourn the passing away of Shri Somnath Chatterjee, 10 term MP and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha. He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief."

Chatterjee was a 10-time Lok Sabha MP and was a central committee member of the CPI(M). He had stepped into the world of politics in 1968.

He served as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.

The veteran leader was expelled from the CPI(M) in 2008 for refusing to resign as the Speaker after his party withdrew support to the UPA-I government.

(With inputs from PTI)
New Delhi: Security forces are leaving nothing to chance in Jammu and Kashmir as the state joins others in celebrating India's 72nd Independence Day on Wednesday.

Speaking to news agency ANI, SP Vaid - DGP J&K - said that people would be at no risk from elements that could potentially cause trouble. "Security arrangements are in place. We have made elaborate arrangements. I am sure 15th August will pass peacefully. People will be able to participate without fear or any danger," he said.

(Also read: Delhi turns into a fortress ahead of Independence Day)

In the weeks leading up to August 15, there have been intelligence inputs about terrorists - supported by Pakistan's ISI - planning to target Army installations in sensitive areas of the state. A tight vigil has been placed in key installations to ensure no untoward incident takes place.

The spotlight on August 15 is usually at Srinagar's Bakshi stadium where thousands of people join political leaders in celebration. The stadium has a capacity of 18,000.
Srinagar: Terrorists on Monday barged into the house of a resident and abducted him in Jammu and Kashmir. The incident took place in Pulwama's Murran. This incident took place on Sunday night.

Identified as Gulzar Bhat, his bullet-riddled body was recovered from nearby fields.

A case has been registered in connection with the incident.

As per initial investigation, Zahoor Thokar and Showkat Dar-led terrorist outfit Hizbul Mujahideen is behind the attack said Jammu and Kashmir Police.
The Karnataka government has questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the Centre over the decision to shift the 22nd edition of Aero India show from Bengaluru to Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow.

Hitting out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led NDA government, Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy asserted that Bengaluru was the proper place for Aero India show, pointing that the Karnataka capital had all infrastructure needed.

Speaking to mediapersons on Sunday, the Janata Dal Secular (JDS) leader said, Our BJP friends in Karnataka must answer. We also requested the defence minister and told her that Bengaluru is the proper place for the Aero show event and we have all infrastructure in place as well. I dont know why the Centre took such a decision.

The remark from the Karnataka Chief Minister came after state Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara accused the central government of taking away key defence projects from the state.

"Reports of #AeroIndia being moved out of Bengaluru are very unfortunate. We have been India's Defence Hub since Independence, but under the NDA we are constantly losing key defence projects and flagship programs. I request @nsitharaman to clarify her stand on the issue," he posted on microblogging site Twitter.

He had attacked the NDA government earlier as well pointing that Karnataka had been conduction Aero India show successfully since 1996. According to Parameshwara, the Centre was keen on ending Bengalurus dominance in the defence sector.

He had tweeted, Plan to snatch Aero India Show away from Bengaluru in favour of Lucknow is very unfortunate. We have been conducting it successfully since 1996. This comes after HAL was snubbed for Rafael deal. Centre seems to be keen on ending Bengaluru's dominance in the defence sector.

Though there has not been any official confirmation or formal announcement by the Ministry of Defence in this regard, reports have suggested that the event is likely to be held in Lucknow in October-November.

If this happens, it will be for the first time in 22 years that Aero India show will be hosted outside Bengaluru since its inception in 1996.
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Two of the four priests, accused of sexually abusing and blackmailing a married woman in Kerala's Malankara Orthodox Church, surrendered before the authorities on Monday.

Father Sony Varghese and Father Jaise K George surrendered before Thiruvalla Sessions court.

The Supreme Court had earlier rejected their anticipatory bail pleas and had directed them to surrender.

The top court had also asked both the accused priests George and Varghese, to surrender their mobile phones to the police to ensure that the investigation would be carried out properly.

The Supreme Court division bench, headed by Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan, had asked both the accused priests to surrender before the police by August 13.

"The petition of accused persons is devoid of merits and, thereby, we dismiss their prayers," the two-judge bench of the top court had observed.

A case was registered in June this year against four priests of Malankara Orthodox Church for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman in Kottayam.

The accused allegedly threatened to disclose the victim`s confessions, made in church.

The incident came to light when the victim`s husband recovered an audio clip related to the case, following which investigation was initiated by the church.

The Malankara Orthodox Church had suspended all the priests after the complaint was filed. One out of the four priests of accused in the case surrendered on July 12.

Meanwhile, the police have questioned more people in Punjab`s Jalandhar city in connection with the case.

With agency inputs
New Delhi: Actor Anil Kapoor, who worked with Sridevi in several films, remembered the late actress on her 55th birth anniversary. Anil took to Twitter to share a photo of Sridevi, in which she is sharing the frame with her husband Boney Kapoor and her daughters -- Janhvi and Khushi.

In a heartfelt post that he shared on his Twitter handle, Anil said how Sridevi's daughters Janhvi and Khushi have become an ultimate reflection of their beautiful mother. He also mentioned how there's not been a single day when the great actress has not been missed.

He wrote, ''A true star that shone brightly on-screen & lit up the lives of everyone she touched. Not a day goes by when we dont miss you Sri. We see your reflection in #JanhviKapoor & #KhushiKapoor every day. You live on in our hearts & minds...''

A true star that shone brightly on-screen & lit up the lives of everyone she touched. Not a day goes by when we dont miss you Sri. We see your reflection in #JanhviKapoor & #KhushiKapoor everyday. You live on in our hearts & minds... pic.twitter.com/VD9Bx3jAnw  Anil Kapoor (@AnilKapoor) August 13, 2018

For the unversed, Anil and Sridevi gave many iconic hits in the past such as 'Mr. India', 'Lamhe', 'Judaai' and many more. Their sizzling hot chemistry won many hearts, raising the bars for many contemporary actresses.

Sridevi, aged 54, breathed her last on February 24, 2018, in Dubai where she had gone to attend a family wedding. Indian cinema's first female superstar's died due to accidental drowning, as per the forensic report.

Earlier, this year, Sridevi was conferred with the Best Actress award (posthumously) by the Indian government for her performance in 'Mom' at the 65th National Film Awards.
Washington D.C.: Australian actor Ruby Rose has quit Twitter after receiving backlash over her casting as lesbian superhero Batwoman in a new CW show. In an emotional social media post last week, Rose had announced that she is set to play the first LGBTQ lead in a TV series.

However, according to The Hollywood Reporter, two days after the announcement, the 32-year-old deleted her Twitter account after some fans expressed their anger over the casting.

Before bidding adieu to Twitter, 'The Meg' star responded to criticism in a series of tweets. The actor wrote that she wished "we would all support each other and our journeys."

"Where on earth did 'Ruby is not a lesbian therefore she can't be batwoman' come from -- has to be the funniest most ridiculous thing I've ever read. I came out at 12? And have for the past five years had to deal with 'she's too gay' how do y'all flip it like that? I didn't change. I wish we would all support each other and our journeys," Rose wrote.

"When women and when minorities join forces we are unstoppable... when we tear each other down it's much more hurtful than from any group. But hey/ love a challenge I just wish women and the LGBT community supported each other more, My wish was we were all a little kinder and more supportive of each other...Sending everyone my love and gratitude, it's been a rollercoaster of a year, this month especially," she continued.

The 'xXx: Return of Xander Cage' star concluded by saying that she is "looking forward to getting more than four hours of sleep and to break from Twitter to focus all my energy on my next 2 projects. If you need me, I'll be on my Bat Phone."
New Delhi: Bollywood actress Sonali Bendre, who is currently battling cancer in New York has received immense support from her fans and friends all over the industry. The actress opened up about her illness on social media and revealed that she is suffering from high-grade cancer that has metastasised. Recently, Sonali's BFF Sussanne Khan has posted a heartfelt message for the actress.

Sharing some pictures on her Instagram handle, Sussanne wrote, "What I know for sure... I know for sure that no matter what the tide brings in we have each other to carry on our backs n swim safely to the shore...

I know for sure in a world filled with question marks these have all my answers... and I definitely know how beautiful the future gonna be.... coz I have them to share it with... my force field @iamsonalibendre, @gayatrioberoi #shibster."

Interestingly, Sonali celebrated Friendship Day with her besties Sussanne and Gayatri at New York. She even shared a picture posing with her BFFs and posted a beautiful caption.

Not many are aware of the fact that the actress is an avid reader and she even has a book club going. Being a voracious reader herself, Sonali started off Sonalis Book Club on social media propagating the idea of reading amongst people.

And this year in March it completed a year. Taking on from here, her closest friends Sussanne Khan and Gayatri Oberoi were joined by Dia Mirza in their initiative to keep Sonali's love for books going. In fact, all these lovely ladies share one thing in common and it's their love for books.

Sonali regularly updates about her condition on social media and often shares pictures and videos. She has documented each phase of braving the disease and has emerged as a really strong person.
North and South Korea agreed to hold an inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang in September, the South's Unification Ministry said on Monday.

North and South Korean officials held high-level negotiations at the border truce village of Panmunjom on Monday to discuss the summit.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met in April and agreed to have another summit in autumn, this time in the North's capital, Pyongyang.
Shree Airlines gets nod to add three new Bombardier aircraft

Nepals domestic aviation market is set for a major shake-up as the new entrant, Shree Airlines has been given approval to add three Bombardier Q400 turboprop aircraft into its fleet, a year after it commenced service with its first CRJ 200 aircraft.
Three Ukrainian mothers are watching, totally powerless, as their sons, imprisoned illegally in Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea, become dangerously weak on hunger strike. The world knows mainly of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, however the danger to the life of 47-year-old Volodymyr Balukh, after almost 150 days of total or near total hunger strike makes intervention critical. 28-year-old Oleksandr Shumkov has been on hunger strike in solidarity with Sentsov since 24 May, and is very evidently weakened.

Brutality in full view

A day after Sentsovs cousin Natalya Kaplan and his lawyer Dmitry Dinze warned that the situation was catastrophically bad, Russia produced photos of Oleg Sentsov, claiming them to be very recent. Since it has systematically lied about Sentsovs state of health, his citizenship and the charges against him, it seems much safer to believe Dinze who saw Sentsov very recently

Disinformation can be a weapon, and Kaplan issued a plea on 12 August to all those who, during the previous night, believed a Facebook post suggesting that Sentsov was saved and on a plane out of Siberia. The author of the report, a journalist, was seemingly deceived, and believed what she was writing. It is harder to understand those who shared the information as though it were fact, and impossible to fathom how anybody could have phoned Lyudmila Sentsova in the middle of the night with the false news about her sons release. The 74-year-old is already living in terror that she will not live to see her son, whom Russia sentenced to 20 years imprisonment on fabricated charges, because of his opposition to its invasion and annexation of Crimea.

Kaplan also stresses that even if, as we hope, there should be genuine news of Sentsovs release, nothing should be said until he has safely left Russia. Any premature reports could cause harm.

Skeletal and in danger away from the cameras

78-year-old Natalya Balukh saw her son for the first time in eight months on 9 August. She told the Crimean Human Rights Group of the shock of seeing him so desperately thin. Hes just a skeleton, she said, adding that 47-year-old Balukh looks like an old man. She stressed that Volodymyr himself does not say anything about his health so as not to worry her, however his very appearance cannot fail to frighten her. She too fears that she will not live to see her son released.

There are strong grounds for concern. Although, from his mothers words, it is clear that he is on nearly full hunger strike, he is taking the absolute minimum needed to prevent the occupation authorities using force-feeding. On 19 March, he went on total hunger strike, but was persuaded after 25 days to take what is essentially a bare minimum to slow down the collapse of his organs. He had then resumed the full hunger strike on 23 June in protest at a second fabricated criminal case, initiated while he was already imprisoned.

During that trial, he looked dangerously frail, and that was almost two months ago.

Balukh has long complained of chest pain, and is currently held in a police holding centre in Razdolne without even minimal medical care.

Russia has already imprisoned Balukh for the Ukrainian flag he refused to remove from his home, and his unwavering loyalty to Ukraine. It is now risking his life.

Oleksandr Shumkov

The 28-year-old from Kherson is currently on trial in Russia, charged in all seriousness with alleged involvement, while in Ukraine, in the Ukrainian Right Sector party and specifically in protests against Russias annexation of Crimea. Shumkov has been on hunger strike since 24 May and is looking very thin. He mother, Lyudmila, says that he is feeling very weak and cannot cope when there are three or four hearings in his trial in a week. He pleads for a break, although his request is only sometimes heeded.

Oleg Sentsov; Volodymyr Balukh and Oleksandr Shumkov have all been recognized as political prisoners by the authoritative Memorial Human Rights Centre.

Read the original article at Human Rights in Ukraine.
The militants attacked at the Ukrainian positions 57 times over the past 24 hours and 10 times since midnight, as the colonel Oleksandr Motuznyak said from Ukraines Defence Ministry press office, 112.ua reports.

In total, on August 12 the Joint Forces units recorded 57 adjusted attacks from the Russian occupation troops side, he noted.

24 adjusted attacks were documented in Luhansk sector.

Yesterday evening the militants were conducting provocative attacks at the Ukrainian defenders near Luhanske from 120-mm mortars. Five 120-mm shells exploded near the Ukrainian positions located there.

Moreover, the occupants launched six shells from 120-mm mortars near Mayorsk and used 82-mm mortars near Krymske. Six explosions were documented there. Five explosions of 82-mm shells were recorded near Zaitseve. The occupants applied infantry fighting vehicles at the defenders of Pivdenne.

Additionally, the enemy was performing provocative attacks from grenade launchers of various types, heavy machine guns and small arms near Zolote, Pivdenne, Svitlodarsk, Novotoshkivske and Novoluhanske.

In Donetsk sector, the units of the Joint Forces came under the enemys fire 33 times.

It was note quite neat Hnutove yesterday  the enemy shot at our defenders from 122-mm tube artillery and launched 26 shells. Besides, the Russian militants fired at these positions from 120- and 82-mm mortars, having launched four and seven shells respectively.

The Russian occupation troops were firing from 120-mm mortars at the defensive works near Vodyane and Lebedynske. Our defenders recorded five explosions. Moreover, the enemy shot at these positions from 82-mm mortars having launched six shells.

The enemy violated ceasefire near Avdiivka, Marinka, Mykolaivka, Novomykhailivka, Novotroitske, Opytne, Pavlopil, Chermalyk and Shyrokyne.

The occupants were conducting fire at the defenders of Hnutove from infantry fighting vehicles. The enemys observer-shooter team was active near Mykolaivka.

The Ukrainian military opened fir 27 times as a response.

As a result of the combat actions, two Ukrainian soldiers were injured.

According to our intelligence, one occupant was eliminated yesterday and six wounded.

The Ukrainian military recorded ten adjusted attacks since midnight as at 9 am on August 13.

In Luhansk sector, the Russian occupation troops were firing from 120-mm mortars at the defenders of Troitske. Besides, the militants applied grenade launchers and small arms near Krymske and Novotoshkivske.

It was not quite in Donetsk sector in the morning as well. The enemy launched six shells from 120-mm mortars at the defenders of Viktorivka.

Moreover, the enemy violated ceasefire near Vodyane, Lebedynske and Shyrokyne.

From the beginning of the current day, one Ukrainian solider was injured as a result of the battle actions.
In the result of the conflict between the pro-Russian militant, the shooting took place; due to this the fire occurred at the armament depot

The shooting between the pro-Russian militants led to the detonation of the ammunition in occupied Novoazovsk, Donetsk region. In the result of this, a few people were burned. Colonel Oleksandr Motuzianyk from the press service of Ukraine's Defense Ministry claimed this as 112.ua reported.

According to him, the incident took place in one of the front position of the ninth separate regiment of the Marine Corps (Novoazovsk) of the first Army Corps of the Russian occupation forces.

"In the result of the conflict between the soldiers of the neighboring detachments the shooting took place. In the result of the firing, the grass caught fire and the fire occurred at the armament depot. In the result of the detonation and explosion, the ammunition stock of one of the detachments was destroyed, a few Russian soldiers were injured and severely burned," Motuzianyk said.

Moreover, according to the Chief Intelligence Department of the Defense Ministry, the number of the conflicts between the soldiers of the different detachments increased in the first (Donetsk) and second (Luhansk) Army Corps of the Armed Forces of Russia.

Particularly, in Yasynuvata, the representatives of the local military government severely injured a detained military of the 11th separate regiment of the first Army Corps during the questioning and he died in the building of the government.

The command of the occupants was forced to attract the additional forces to prevent the escalation of the incident to the armed clashes between the soldiers of the detachment where the killed soldier served and the representatives of the local military government.

As we reported Russian tourist was detained in the area of the Joint Forces Operation in Donbas. He filmed the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on his mobile phone.

Also, the monitors of OSCE SMM claim that the occupational forces are building strongholds in the gray zones in Donbas, and delivering trains and trucks with weapons and ammunition.
The occupants impeded the process of citizens crossing towards the territory of Ukraine intentionally, which caused a cluster of more than 40 vehicles at the checkpoint from the side of the territory beyond Ukraines control

The militants tried to commit a provocation having left 40 cars for a night in the grey zone near Marinka checkpoint, as the JFO HQ reported on Facebook.

It was noted that the occupants impeded the process of citizens crossing towards the territory of Ukraine intentionally, which caused a cluster of more than 40 vehicles at the checkpoint from the side of the territory beyond Ukraines control.

When it was ten minutes before the checkpoint closes at 8 pm, the civilians were allowed to move towards Ukraine. Therefore, more of these people had to spend a night in a so-called grey zone before the Ukrainian checkpoint, when the attacks are likely to be performed, the HQ informs.

To avoid negative consequences, the Joint Forces command continued the operation of the checkpoint for 30 minutes longer. Therefore, everyone who remained in the grey zone got on the territory of Ukraine.

Earlier, it was reported that the militants shot at the Ukrainian positions 57 times over the past 24 hours and ten times since midnight.
According to the intelligence, one militant was eliminated, six were injured

Since the beginning of August 13, the militants shelled Joint Forces positions 8 times, as a result of which one Ukrainian serviceman was injured. This was reported by the press service of the Joint Forces Operation HQ on Facebook page.

"Over the course of the day, Russian occupation forces opened fire on our positions eight times in the areas of the Krymske, Novotoshkivske, Troitske, Vodyane, Lebedynske and Shyrokyne.

"One soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was wounded," the report said.

According to the intelligence, one militant was eliminated, six were injured.

As it was reported earloier, two Ukrainian military were wounded in the area of Joint Forces Operation in Donbas the other day. It is noted that since the beginning of the day the militants have violated the truce 20 times.

Earlier Russian tourist was detained in the area of the Joint Forces Operation in Donbas. He filmed the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on his mobile phone. The detainee turned out to be a Russian citzen. He said, he came to travel across Ukraine.
It is noted that the index of the profitability improved in the second half of 2018

Open source

The program of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the support of Ukraine is a key factor of the creditworthiness as it mitigates law outside liquidity and reduces the risks of the refinancing as the international rating agency Fitch Ratings reported.

The agency emphasized that the increase of the exchange rate and monetary policy that was oriented for the stability of the prices and bank settlement promoted the improvement of the macro-economic stability of Ukraine.

It is noted that the law outside liquidity is the key weakness of the sovereign credit. The flexibility of the exchange rate and moderate external imbalances should restrict the short-term pressure of the balance of payments but the IMF program is the key to the observation of the international reserves and increase of the amount of the payments on the sovereign debts.

"Pension reform, an updated privatisation bill, and passing a law to set up an independent anti-corruption court, including an amendment to meet international commitments, highlight the government's efforts to finalise the review. The main outstanding issues are potential modifications to the 2018 budget to meet the programme's 2.5% of GDP deficit target, and adjusting household heating tariffs," the report says.

The agency provided that the index of the profitability improved in the second half of 2018 in Ukraine, however, probably, it will be needed to hold the underestimation of costs for the achievement of the deficit target levels. The end of the consideration of the program will allow to pay the fourth IMF tranche (possibly $1,9 billion) and increase the reserves and unblock other multilateral and potentially market financial funds.

" Sovereign external debt amortisations are USD1.8 billion for the rest of 2018 and increase to USD3.3 billion in 2019 and USD3.9 billion in 2020 (including bond repayments of USD1.6 billion in September 2019 and USD2.4 billion in 2020)".

Fitch does not expect that the further IMF payments will surpass the fourth tranche as the program will end in 2019.

At the same time, it is emphasized that the continuation of the cooperation with the IMF and international partners will play an important role for the maintenance of the improving of the macro-financial stability, restriction of the reforms and safe access to the official and market financing.

Ukraine cooperates with the IMF since 1992. Kyiv got nine tranches during this time.

Ukraine partially repaid the IMF under the stand-by program of 2014. Kyiv repaid two tranches - $37 billion and $87 billion.

The loan program for Ukraine in the amount of $17,01 billion was approved by the IMF at the end of April 2014. The first tranche of the stand-by loan in the amount of $3,19 billion was sent to Ukraine at the beginning of May.

The IMF Board of Directors approved the allocation of $17,5 billion for Ukraine in March 2015 by the EFF (Extended Fund Facility) four-year program instead of the stand-by program.

The stand-by program was replaced by the scheme of extended funding due to the long-term need of Ukraines pay balance.

Ukraine received the first $5 billion tranche under this program in March of 2015, the second one  $1,7 billion in August of 2015, the third one - $1 billion in September of 2016, and the fourth one - $1 billion in April of 2017.
Ilon Musk himself owns 20% of Tesla, he is the company's principal shareholder

Open source

Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund Public Investment Fund (PIF) intends to increase its share in Tesla company, as Bloomberg reports.

The fund, which recently built a stake just shy of 5 percent, is exploring how it can be involved, the people said on condition of anonymity. The potential transactions staggering $82 billion price tag means Tesla is still likely to need to tap other sources of cash, the news agency reads.

At the same time, more than $60 billion is needed to purchase the entire business from the public shareholders.

The PIF sees its investment in Tesla as a strategic way for the worlds biggest crude producer to hedge against oil. The Saudi fund hasnt made any firm decisions on whether to increase its stake, or by how much, but talks are ongoing, Bloomberg informs.
Dmytro Svyatash, Ukraines Member of Parliament, did not mention the financial obligations to the bank in 2015 declaration

Open source

Ukraines National Agency for Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) informed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) concerning Dmytro Svyatash, Ukraines Member of Parliament, who did not mention his debts in the amount of more than $980 in 2016 declaration, as the press office of the service reports.

NAPC sent NABU reasonable conclusions concerning the declaration of unreliable information in the amount of more than 250 living minimum wages of the able-bodied people, the message says.

Svyatash did not mention the purchase of flight tickets and financial obligations to the bank in 2015 declaration. Moreover, he did not include the financial obligations to the bank in the declaration of 2016.

Earlier, National Agency for Prevention of Corruption started a full inspection of e-declarations of top-officials over 2017 on April 10. Last year, 816,5 declarations were submitted.
We could hear explosions during classes and the sound of helicopters flying overhead. But no one understood what was happening or how long it would last, recalls Anna Gladchenko, a 23-year-old student at the Donetsk National Medical University in Ukraine.



When war broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014, 150,000 college students and 10,000 faculty and staff were thrown into an uncertain situation.



We were urgently evacuated. I was worried that I wouldnt be able to continue my education and Id have to start all over again, Gladchenko said.



As militants from the self-declared Donetsk Peoples Republic (DNR) and Luhansk Peoples Republic (LNR) began to seize university buildings, students and professors were forced to flee.



Armed men came right to the central university building and told us we had a few hours to clear out, recalled Olga Prokuyan, a rector at a former Luhansk-based university, in a 2018 film about displaced universities.



In total, eighteen universities have relocated from the occupied areas: nine from Donetsk Oblast, eight from Luhansk Oblast, and one from Crimea. Two institutions went to KyivLuhansk State Academy of Culture and Arts and Taurida National University. The rest moved to Kramatorsk, Severodonetsk, Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, and other cities.



For up to eighteen months, universities employed long-distance learning tools, enabling students to carry on in the safety of their own homes.



The UN Refugee Agency estimates that two million people have been displaced from their homes as a result of the conflict. According to the Coordination Center for Displaced Universities (CDU), at least 43,000 students and 4,000 research and teaching staff have been displaced.



About one-third of the student and teacher population remained behind, some for financial, family, or health reasons, while others supported the pro-Russian ideology.



Amid the chaos, a grassroots movement to relocate the universities grew in strength.



It was spontaneous and organic. Each university has a unique story. Sometimes students precipitated the move while at other times, teachers or directors took charge, said Alex Kulga who directs the CDU.



In July 2015, Kulga and other students from universities in the east created the CDU and by January 2016, a Council of Rectors for Displaced Universities was set up.



According to Kulga, Alex Ryabchin, a member of Ukraines parliament and an associate professor at Donetsk National University, played an integral role in the CDUs creation by helping them secure initial funding. The CDU is financed by grants.



In 2016, at the urging of the CDU and others, the Ukrainian parliament set up a legal framework and introduced certain privileges to displaced universities. The CDU began collaborating with international foundations and developed a plan to help universities transfer out of separatist-controlled areas.



It wasnt easy.



We lost most things during the movepersonal items, books, furniture, and more. We had to basically start from a clean slate, Kalga said.



According to the National Institute for Strategic Studies, an estimated $4.9 billion in educational infrastructure in the east was lost.



But losses werent limited to the east.



The story behind Taurida National Universitythe only displaced university from Crimeais not as simple or well known. Students and teachers fled a different kind of danger.



In January 2015, the occupying authorities created the Crimean Federal University, shutting down seven Ukrainian universities and colleges and five research centers.



Taurida National University Rector Vladimir Kazarin estimates that of a university population of 76,000 before annexation, Crimea lost 50,000 people in three years, including 20,000 students who left for the mainland. Many teachers left for Russia, mainland Ukraine, or went abroad.



Theyre being brainwashed. The continuing flow of Crimean students to mainland Ukraine is prime evidence [of the occupying authorities ongoing battle to recruit young minds], the rector said.



After annexation, the occupying authorities attempted to create favorable conditions to woo the universitys staff to stay. Teachers received increased pay. But after a year or so, the salary not only reverted back to the normal level, it decreased. Some stayed while others wanted out.



Rector Kazarin said the student population in Crimea has to undergo so-called patriotic education. Portraits of pro-Russian militants and Soviet flags are displayed in educational institutions there.



The occupying authorities tried to prevent the exodus of teachers and students by closing the road into mainland Ukraine. So, people went instead by boat to Odesa and eventually made their way to Kyiv.



Taurida National University relocated to Kyiv in mid-2016. Staff worked on a voluntary basis for the eight months since they could not secure any funding. About twenty-five people were transferred from Crimea to Kyiv each month. Admissions remained open until September 2017 to give students time to find a safe way to travel to Kyiv.



At the beginning of 2018, the university population numbered an estimated 5,000.



About 25 percent of students are from Crimea, and just under 30 percent are from the Donbas. The rest are from different regions of Ukraine.

The relocation changed the learning environment, breaking down boundaries between students, teachers, and directors. Everyone became closer. If before you had to submit a letter to join a certain class, now you could just open the door and walk in, said Kulga.



Now settled, graduates from Ukraines displaced university are caught in the same dilemma facing all graduates: stay or migrate to more prosperous countries where one can easily make three or four times more.



Dentistry student Gladchenko wants to work in Spain but shes not sure that its worth the time and effort.



For many graduates like Kolvah, the uncertainty about their future is linked to questions about the future of Ukraine.



We are in a deep crisis and only God knows when it will end, said Kolvah.



He said that he continues to work in civil society to figure out if theres a real opportunity to change the country or whether this period is just a facade. For now, we dont know.

Read the original text here.
Through the forest

In recent years, Nepals forest stakeholder have had some good news. A globally reputed community forestry has been established across the country, conflicts between the public and parks have been settled, and medicinal and non-timber forest products have enjoyed promotion in the international market.
Also, the MFA of Finland calls for Russia to release all Ukrainian political prisoners

Timo Soini, Head of the MFA of Finland called Russia to provide Oleg Sentsov, Ukrainian filmmaker with necessary medical treatment. According to the message of the institution on Twitter.

The health condition of Ukrainian political prisoner Oleg Sentsov is rapidly deteriorating in the prison. We expect that Russia will provide him with a medical treatment, the official added.

Also, in his request, he called for Russia to release all Ukrainian political prisoners.

As is known, the native of Crimea, film director and political activist, Sentsov has been serving time in the Russian penal colony in Labytnangi since May 2014. This spring, he announced a hunger strike, demanding to release all Ukrainian political prisoners, illegally held by the Kremlin.

Oleg Sentsov was illegally detained in Crimea in 2014, then taken to Russia. They judged him and sentenced him to 20 years of imprisonment at a high-security penal colony. The prosecutors charged Sentsov with preparing terrorist acts in the occupied Crimea. Sentsov denies his guilt. Ukraine's government, common citizens and the international society - politicians, artists, public figures - urge the Kremlin to release him.

Sentsov enjoys the wide support of the many in Ukraine and abroad. Rallies, where participants urge to release him, are held worldwide - in Ukraine, Russia, the EU and the U.S.
US Ambassador called on the European Union not to invest in the Iranian economy, stressing the need for "permanent and significant" changes in this country

US Ambassador to United Kingdom Woody Johnson called on London to stop supporting the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. This was reported by Reuters agency.

Despite opposition from European allies, U.S. President Trump in May pulled the United States out of a deal between world powers and Tehran under which international sanctions were lifted in return for curbs on Irans nuclear program.

Since then, Britain, France and Germany have sought to keep the deal alive, while Trump has prepared new sanctions, saying a broader and more balanced deal is needed. Iran has denounced the sanctions as U.S. unilateralism.

U.S. Ambassador to Britain Woody Johnson criticized Tehran for funding proxy wars and malign activities instead of investing in its economy. He said Iran needed to make tangible and sustained changes to behave like a normal country.

Until then, America is turning up the pressure and we want the UK by our side, Johnson wrote in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
"If we fulfill them and the international community sees that nothing changes then we can fall into a fair anger," Iryna Tyran added

Before accusing Russian of not fulfilling Minsk Agreements, Ukraine has to fulfill them itself, as the journalist Iryna Tyran said on air of 112 Ukraine.

We got used to accuse Russia of violating Minsk Agreements. Doesnt Ukraine violate? Lets start with ourselves. If we fulfill them and the international community sees that nothing changes then we can fall into a fair anger, she said.

Minsk Agreements were not signed just like that, they were signed under the patronage of the European countries, which are the guarantors of these agreements. If Ukraine, as a weak country, can be manipulated and put into the conditions, then everyone will consider the European partners, she added.

Reportedly, according to Viktor Medvedchuk, Leader of Ukrainian Choice, peace in Donbas without implementation of the Minsk agreements is impossible, and there are no alternatives to the agreements. According to him, if Kyiv followed the Minsk agreements as well as they adopt pro-Western laws, the conflict in Donbas would be resolved a long time ago.
According to the experts estimations, VEB loses more than $346,1 million from closing Prominvestbank

Open source

Russian Vnesheconombank (VEB) intends to close its bank subsidiary in Ukraine  Prominvestbank, yet the final decision will be made in November, as Kommersant reports referring to the sources.

VEB is breaking off the relations with its last buyer  Pavlo Fuks, a Ukrainian-Russian businessman, as he could not coordinate the deal with the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) in any aspect, the news agency reads.

VEB press office did not comment on this.

VEB has actually refused to sell its subsidiary PIB to Ukraine. Now, the bank is canceling active operations  it stopped providing loans and attracting investments.

According to the experts estimations, VEB loses more than $346,1 million from closing Prominvestbank.

99,7% of Prominvestbank belongs to VEB. According to the report for the first half of 2018, the banks assets exceed $653,8 million. PIB is on the 11th place in assets on the Ukrainian market. Banks loss for six months was $15,5 million, the message says.

Besides, the source of the news agency noted that the bank had issues leaving the Ukrainian market: banks balance has loans which expire no sooner than in four years. Moreover, the bank owns real property in Ukraine worth around $50 million and its selling takes time.

There are five Russian banks in Ukraine: Sberbank, VTB, BM Bank, Prominvestbank and VS Bank that are under the sanction. The government banned them from the holding of the financial operations for the benefit of the connection to them establishments and persons, including the parent structures.
The Minister stressed that he hoped two cases against Russian Federation would be considered in late 2018  early 2019

Open source

Apart from six lawsuits Ukraine filed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Ukraine has also filed some to the UN International Court, as Pavlo Petrenko, Justice Minister, said at the briefing on Monday, August 13, 112.ua reports.

There are also two cases in the UN International Court which concern the ban of funding terrorism (Russias violation of these Conventions), prohibition of discrimination on any grounds. And the third case is in the International Tribunal concerning violations of Ukraines rights for subsoil assets and landscapes, which Russia occupied, he said.

The Minister stressed that he hoped two cases against Russian Federation would be considered in late 2018  early 2019.

Earlier, Ukraines Justice Ministry has filed six lawsuits against Russia to the European Court of Human Rights as of today. The last one concerns the rights of the political prisoners.

In particular, Ukraine asks the ECHR to impose individual sanctions on the Russian officials and offers to create a Ukrainian Magnitsky's list.
The last lawsuit concerns the political prisoners, the previous ones - the events in Crimea and Donbas

Ukraines Justice Ministry has filed six lawsuits against Russia to the European Court of Human Rights for today, as Pavlo Petrenko, the Justice Minister, said at the briefing on Monday, August 13, 112.ua reports.

Six interstate appeals against Russia were filed by Ukraine as of today. Literally, on Friday (August 10, - ed.), Ukraine filed the 6th lawsuit about which we will tell you today in details. It concerns the political prisoners, he said.

The previous appeals concern the events connected with Crimeas annexation, mass violations of Ukrainians rights (kidnapping, murder, imprisonment, property rights violation, violations of rights to a fair trial). Moreover, the lawsuits are also about the events in Donbas during the battle actions and mass violation of human rights by the Russian Federation.

The fifth lawsuit concerns the kidnapping of Ukrainian orphans, when Russian terrorists moved the orphans from Ukraine who were in the boarding school in Luhansk region.
Open source

The Russian border guards confiscated a pistol from a citizen of Ukraine during the cross of the checkpoint at the administrative border with annexed Crimea as TASS reported citing the FSB Border Guard Division.

"After the check of the documents for the cross of the state border with Russia, an owner of Ford car provided her car for the check, during which, the border guards found a pistol of unknown model and eight 9-mm bullets under the driver's seat," the message said.

It was noted that the Ukrainian intended to cross "Armiansk" checkpoint.

"A woman explained the presence of the items forbidden for the passage via the border and said that her father owns it and used to take it for the self-defense," the division noted.

The Russian "border guards" confiscated the weapon for the expert study. However, a woman was not detained.

As we reported Russian Police detained Serhei Bahaichuk, a guide from Rivne at the railway station in Moscow. He is accused of arms sale.

Also, three Ukrainians were detained  they were walking to Russia with more than $43,950 under the clothes.
112 Agency

The Ukrainian side is studying scenarios regarding the resolution of the situation in the Sea of Azov. The issue is complex, and we are not talking about a violation of law by the Russian Federation, but about its abuse. This was announced by Deputy Minister for Temporary Occupied Territories Georgiy Tuka, Apostrophe reports.



"The situation is very complicated, but I can not say that we lost the Sea of Azov. I'm not ready to disclose certain scenarios that we are currently studying, including the use of force to solve the problem. The question is very complicated. I just would not want to talk about the forthcoming actions without a definite decision, "he said.



Tuka is sure that Russia is openly abusing its right.



"... there is still such a term as abuse of right: Russia openly abuses its right, and this also applies to our domestic legislation regarding citizens, for example, when activists begin to break the door, going somewhere and telling: We have the right! This is an abuse of law, there are certain scenarios about how to improve the situation, of course, not independently, but with the help of our allies and partners. Such opportunities exist, "the deputy minister added.



We recall, on July 15 in the Sea of Azov, Russia seized 148 vessels for review. In this regard, the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko instructed the Minister of Defense, the Chief of the General Staff and the Ukrainian Navy Commander to take measures to stop Russian provocations with regard to blocking the entry of ships into Ukrainian ports on the Azov Sea.



Ukraine also advocates the imposition of sanctions against the Black Sea ports of the Russian Federation due to the blockade of the Sea of Azov.

Related: Manafort started working for Trump after he lost most lucrative client - Viktor Yanukovych, - media
God willing soon we will have liberated more places and made more areas safe, he said

Turkey had finalised preparations to create more safe areas in Syria, which would allow the return of refugees who have fled the civil war. President Tayyip Erdogan said that at his AK Partys provincial headquarters in the Black Sea city of Trabzon, Reuters reported. A quarter of a million people had already returned to liberated areas in Syria.

God willing soon we will have liberated more places and made more areas safe, he said.

Erdogan said diplomatic and military efforts in Syria's Idlib province had been accelerated to avoid a "catastrophe" like those seen in other parts of Syria.

Turkey is host to 2.7 million refugees from Syria.

Turkey is carrying out an offensive in northern Syrias Afrin region against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara considers a terrorist organization linked to Kurdish militants waging an insurgency on Turkish soil.

The Afrin campaign is Turkeys second cross-border operation during Syrias seven-year-old civil war. The first, dubbed Euphrates Shield, targeted Islamic State and Kurdish fighters further east than Afrin, and was completed in early 2017.

In January 2018, the Turkish military launched an Olive Branch military operation in the SDF-controlled Afrin District and the Tell Rifaat Subdistrict. The offensive was against the Kurdish-led Democratic Union Party in Syria (PYD), its armed wing People's Protection Units (YPG), and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) positions surrounding the Syrian city of Afrin. Turkey has also said that it is fighting ISIL.

On 18 March, the Turkish-backed forces had taken full control of the centre of Afrin city. With the capture, many civilians fled from the Turkish-backed rebels who then looted the homes and businesses of the local population after their departure.

It was the first major military operation by Turkey in Syria since Operation Euphrates Shield.
Kyiv police personnel is searching the attackers. The law enforcers urged everyone who possesses any data to inform the details of the incident

The culprits who robbed a pawnshop in Kyiv earlier and shot its security guard, are probably foreigners, as Viktor Nechytaylo, the Head of Kyiv Police, stated, the press office of the service reports.

According to him, the attackers were communicating in a foreign language, and they addressed to the security guard and vendor in Russian.

Having analyzed all the gathered data, we can say that the attackers have arranged the robbery accurately: they have chosen a convenient time, when there are no traffic jams in the city, thought over the escape routes and the place for the car. Even the fact that the car used during the attack was burnt means that they were trying to destroy all the material evidence: the weapon they might have used during the robbery was found in the cars interior, the representatives of the police informed.

The law enforcers noted that it took several minutes to perform the robbery. The preliminary cost of damage done is around $192 thousand.

Kyiv police personnel is searching the attackers. The law enforcers urged everyone who possesses any data to inform the details of the incident.

Earlier, we reported that three men shot a security guard dead and robbed a pawnshop near Kyivs Nyvky metro station. Two criminal proceedings were opened.
Time to revise policy on foreign aid disbursement

The government has planned to mobilise foreign assistance either through budgetary control system or by setting up a separate basket fund in order to ensure effective utilisation of the foreign aid and grants, government officials told the parliamentary Finance Committee meeting on Sunday.
The termination of the trade-economic relations with the Russian Federation will cause the enormous damage to Ukraine's economy and lower living standards even more. Viktor Suslov, the former Economy Minister of Ukraine claimed this as 112 Ukraine reported.

"I think Ukraine rightly fights for the maintenance of the transit through its territory, however, these services bring more money to the Russian budget. The offer of Yushchenko to completely terminate the trade-economic relations is an offer that will cause the enormous damage to the economy of Ukraine and lower living standards even more. It is the dozens of billion dollars of losses per year," he said.

Suslov noted that Russia is the biggest trade partner of Ukraine.

"If we talk about the countries, Russia is the biggest trade partner of Ukraine for today, and let's talk directly  it is good for Ukraine as it gives a significant market to it for the distribution of the goods and a possibility to purchase critically important goods for Ukraine. For example, Ukraine buys nuclear fuel in Russia and it is important for the work of the nuclear power plants that produce more than a half of the electricity in Ukraine. And there are many other examples. There are the examples, when the cooperation stopped, such as in the cosmic sphere. In the result, Ukraine stopped to produce the rockets and does not participate in the launch of the spacecraft," he noted.

Earlier former president of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko claimed that it is unacceptable for Kyiv to hold the trade relations with Moscow.

As we reported, the government of Ukraine terminated 'Program of economic cooperation of Ukraine and Russia for 2011-2020'. The decision was made on March 21

Earlier it was claimed that Ukraine is considering to terminate the railway traffic with Russia. Russia switched the railway traffic to the ways which pass over Ukraine since December 11, 2017. The relevant decision came into force on November 15.
Ukraine asks the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to impose the additional sanctions against the officials involved in the violation of the rights of the Ukrainian political prisoners in its sixth lawsuit. Also, it is planned to offer the forming of the sanctions list such as "Magnitsky List". Ukraine's Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko claimed this as 112.ua reported.

"The lawsuit describes the mass violations of the human rights that are allowed against the Ukrainian political prisoners at the territory of Russia with the particular surnames of the Russian officials involved in the, including the office-holders. It gives us an argument before our international partners on the imposing of the additional personal sanctions against almost all governance of the Russian Federation and those, who involved to these politically motivated persecutions of the officials working in Russia," he said.

Petrenko emphasized that the Justice Ministry also intends to offer the international partners to form the separate sanctions list such as "Magnitsky List". It will include the list of persons involved in the kidnappings, deprivation of liberty, mockery and tortures of the Ukrainian citizens who are the political prisoners in Russia.

The Justice Minister expects that the ECHR will operatively consider this case and it will be passed as the preferential.

As we reported Ukraine has filed six lawsuits against Russia to the European Court of Human Rights. The previous appeals concern the events connected with Crimeas annexation, mass violations of Ukrainians rights (kidnapping, murder, imprisonment, property rights violation, violations of rights to a fair trial). Moreover, the lawsuits are also about the events in Donbas during the battle actions and mass violation of human rights by the Russian Federation.
A hybrid form of yoga that combines traditional yoga postures with modern yoga moves and a silk hammock. Pre-registration required.

Please note: Aerial Yoga at the Yoga Art Space studio requires pre-registration through our website at www.YogaArtSpace.com/calendar. If no one registers for a class, the class may be cancelled between 6-12 hours prior to the class start time. Though this event is shown as a regular, weekly class each week on the Alabi calendar, there are occasionally times when the class will be cancelled in advance such as for certain holidays. All updates and cancellations are on the studio calendar at www.YogaArtSpace.com/calendar.

What is Aerial yoga?

Aerial Yoga is a hybrid form of yoga that combines traditional yoga postures infused with modern yoga moves and an silk fabric hammock.

Do I need Previous Yoga Experience?

No previous yoga experience is not necessary to enjoy an Aerial yoga class. In fact it can be easier than normal yoga! The silk hammock acts like a support whenever you require it, almost like having your own personal yoga teacher giving you assistance throughout the entire yoga class! Another advantage of having the support of the hammock is that 90% of students are able to complete more challenging poses, such as handstands!

Can Everybody do Aerial Yoga?

Yes and no. Students who have had a previous injury can find Aerial yoga much easier to participate in then normal yoga. This is due to the the weight being evenly distributed between your body, the hammock and the earth.

People who suffer any of following contraindications are advised NOT to participate in an Aerial yoga class: if you have had recent surgery of any sort, if you suffer glaucoma, if you are pregnant, if you suffer a heart condition (including very high or low blow pressure), if you get vertigo, if you have had a recent stroke or a hernia, if you have osteoporosis or any bone weakness, if you have carpal tunnel syndrome, or if you have had botox in the last six hours.

What Should I Wear?

All jewellery items must be removed before participating, a t-shirt must be worn to cover the armpit area and leggings are advised to avoid the silk rubbing on the skin and creating irritation. Please have clean feet or, alternatively, bring a pair of socks with you.
1. Yes. It makes me wonder why Killeen is having the problem and other cities arent.

2. Yes. The city also had water issues after the winter storm, so this is rather troubling.

3. No. Its good that the city is dealing with the problem and playing it safe with consumers.

4. No. Its more of an annoyance than a concern. The city will take the necessary steps.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say until more information about the issue becomes available.

Vote

View Results
By Damali Mukhaye

Burundi today hosts the 26th Annual Nile Council of Ministers meeting in its capital Bujumbura.

Ministers in charge of Water Affairs from the 10 Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) Member States meet to discuss and provide strategic guidance and direction on cooperative management and development of the shared Nile Basin water resources so as to contribute to improved quality of life of Nile Basin citizens.

They will also consider the NBI annual workplan and budget, review performance the previous years performance and make decisions relating to the financing strategies and resource mobilisation action plan.

Burundis Minister of Environment, Agriculture and Livestock, Deo Guide Rurema says in addition, Burundi will assume political leadership of the NBI from Ethiopia.

Accordingly, Burundis Minister of Environment, Rurema will succeed Ethiopias Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, Dr Seleshi Bekele.
By Frederic Musisi

The Sudanese government and the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) have set August 19th to negotiate and finalise discussions on the remaining aspects of the South Sudan peace deal

Sudanese Foreign Affairs Minister Al-Dierdry al-Dhikheri told the IGAD meeting last Thursday in Khartoum that discussions on the revitalized agreement on resolution of conflict in South Sudan must be finalized by Sunday, signed by the warring parties and IGAD heads of state before the Islamic festival of Eid Al-Adha on August 21st.

Among the key aspects that must be covered, are the amendments from chapters 3 to 8 of the agreement that cover humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, economic and financial management, traditional justice and reconciliation.

The others are Parameters of permanent constitution, joint monitoring and evaluation commission, supremacy of the agreement and procedures for amendment of the agreement.
By Shamim Nateebwa

President Yoweri Museveni, also the NRM national chairman is expected in Arua Municipality today to drum up support for the party flag bearer Nusura Tiperu.

According to the NRM Secretary General Justice Lumumba Kasule, the president will address two rallies, one in each of the two Divisions of Arua Hill and River Oil.

Senior party officials led by Central Executive Committee Members Sam Engola have been camped in the district for nearly two weeks to canvass support.

Meanwhile the former FDC party president Dr Kiiza Besigye is also camped in Arua in a last minute vote hunt for their flag bearer Bruce Musema ahead of Wednesdays parliamentary bi election.

Kyadondo East MP Robert Kyagulanyi has also joined a group of opposition politicians including senior FDC members in supporting former MP Kasiano Wadri, an independent.

The Arua Municipality by-election race has attracted 12 candidates. The seat fell vacant following the death of the area MP Ibrahim Abiriga.
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.
15:15 | Capaso (Puno region), Aug. 13.

Led by President Martin Vizcarra's administration, the campaign aims at protecting High-Andean residents from low temperatures.





According to the official, the State is present in the most remote places of the national territory and takes effective actions to support the citizens affected by frost and friaje (cold spell)





"We won't forget about you no matter the distance, altitude or weather. We've come on behalf of the President to bring you aid , in an articulated manner, with all sectors," Minister Zeballos expressed.

"This isn't a palliative, it's a Government strategy," he added.





Teams from the Health, Agriculture, Education, Development and Social Inclusion Ministries; the National Civil Defense Institute (Indeci); the Army; and the National Police joined efforts to provide medical attention, bales of hay for the cattle, cold-proof clothes, and blankets , among others, to the vulnerable population.





These are preventive actions since the district has been declared in state of emergency due to a new cold wave forecasted to hit Capaso in the next few days.





The State will continue to provide support, the minister promised.





To this day, non-perishable foods, warm clothes, and veterinary kits have been distributed to over 2,000 people in the area.




Musical Matchmakers

"For years following 2008, we were close to death's door," Sharon Kalbfleisch says.

by Cynthia Furlong Reynolds

From the August, 2018 issue

Kalbfleisch is on the board of Great Lakes Performing Artists Associates. Founded forty years ago with the dual mission of representing musicians and building audiences for them, it was hit hard by the Great Recession.



"We almost went under," says board president Susan Darrow. "Pfizer, once a major sponsor, left Michigan. The auto industry was suffering. Our grant money dried up. We only survived because of the generosity of a number of people who volunteered a lot of time and commitment to keep the organization running when we couldn't afford a staff person."



Like for-profit talent agencies, GLPAA represents and places musical performers. But it also gives them guidance in business affairs and marketing, including technical support and website tutorials. If necessary, it can even help them master English and find appropriate performance attire. And if a venue can't afford an artist's full fee, it may even underwrite part of the cost.



"Our mission is to help our artists build new audiences for music and to introduce audiences throughout the Great Lakes region to new forms and interpretations of music," explains executive director Aileen Rohwer.



"Music enriches our lives in so many ways," says Bob Whitman, longtime former vice chair with Darrow. "Music is history told in sound, a unique and moving method of communication that connects the past and present."



GLPAA owes its existence to the late Theodore Lettvin, who headed the U-M graduate program in piano from 1977 to 1987, and his wife, Joan. Lettvin "was distressed by the number of his graduates who left the Great Lakes region because of its lack of local performance opportunities," Kalbfleisch says. Encouraged by fellow Ann Arbor musicians Connie Barron, Judy Dow, and Elizabeth Humes, the Lettvins founded the GLPAA as a way to identify emerging artists of exceptional talent and give them opportunities to remain in the Midwest by creating and promoting performance opportunities in many different venues: college campuses, churches, community centers, regional orchestras, schools, libraries, and

...continued below...

festivals.Volunteers carried it through the recession. "Two long-time supporters, Elizabeth Humes and Corrine Nair, kept it alive by putting their heart and soul into the organization," Kalbfleisch says. "Individual board members made extremely generous donations to keep the doors open."Rohwer was hired in 2014 to implement new initiatives. "I saw a very worthy organization on shaky ground financially but with untapped potential for building new partnerships," she recalls. "We've come a long way in a short time." She's updated GLPAA's technology and business practices, introduced social media marketing, and created strong networks with other musical organizations.Currently, GLPAA represents seventeen ensembles, ranging from vintage brass toand fourteen soloists who play everything from classical guitar to boogie-woogie piano. Recently, however, board members have become increasingly concerned with another challenge: graying audiences."We realized that with cuts to programs in the arts in schools and communities, we need to introduce young people to professional musicians and their work," Whitman says. "That became part of our mission."GLPAA's Caravan Educational Outreach Program now funds performers' visits to regional schools, where they offer live concerts, master classes, workshop residencies, and other educational programs. More than twenty GLPAA artists have already met with thousands of students in Caravan events. In another new initiative, the Stone Chalet, the former Unitarian church turned bed-and-breakfast and event center on Washtenaw Ave., now hosts frequent performances. Darrow adds that GLPAA also works closely with the Hands-On Museum and the Ann Arbor School of Performing Arts to connect outstanding artists with music students and young audiences.Board members are beginning to allow themselves to take a deep breath. After nearly four decades, Whitman retired from the co-presidency and moved to Massachusetts with his wife, Marina. Now the board is reaching out for new members and new ideas.---[Originally published in August, 2018.]
YEREVAN, AUGUST 13, ARMENPRESS. Several participants of the Step Towards Home program will visit the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, and the rest will visit the Loft self-development center on August 13, the Armenian Diaspora ministry told Armenpress.

Meeting with repatriates is expected.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, AUGUST 13, ARMENPRESS. Ten people have been killed in a fire at a hospital in Taiwan, the local media reported.

BBC reports 16 others, including patients and staff, are in critical condition.

The cause of the fire is still unknown, though media reports say it could have been started by an electrical fault in a moveable bed.

33 patients and 3 staff members have been evacuated.

The police found during the investigation that the ward was not equipped with "required smoke exhaust equipment".

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, AUGUST 13, ARMENPRESS. On August 13, as of 11:00, all roads are passable in Armenia, the ministry of emergency situations told Armenpress.

On August 13, as of 10:40, blasting preparation operations are being carried in the road to Geghard monastery, therefore, the road will be closed for nearly 5 hours.

The emergency situations department of the Georgian interior ministry informed that the Stepantsminda-Lars highway is open for all types of vehicles.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, AUGUST 13, ARMENPRESS. Deputy prime minister Mher Grigoryan on August 13 received Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to Armenia Jun Yamada, the deputy PMs Office told Armenpress.

Deputy PM Grigoryan congratulated the Ambassador on appointment and wished success in his responsible mission. Mher Grigoryan attached importance to the further expansion and deepening of the Armenian-Japanese cooperation in all spheres of mutual interest, in particularly highlighting the information technologies sector.

In his turn, the Japanese Ambassador thanked for the warm reception and introduced his impressions on Armenia. He said Japan and Armenia have many commonalities, highlighting the respect of the two countries towards their cultures and histories.

During the meeting the officials touched upon the Japanese investments in Armenia and the Armenian-Japanese cooperation prospect in the economic sector. Deputy PM Grigoryan introduced the advantages of running a business in Armenia and stated that Armenia should be viewed in Japan not only as a separate market, but also as a gateway to other member states of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The Japanese Ambassador assured that he will present Armenias attractive and favorable investment environment in Japan and will make efforts to further develop the Armenian-Japanese cooperation.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, AUGUST 13, ARMENPRESS. The Court of Appeals has approved the appeal of attorneys against the decision of the 1st instance court to remand 2nd President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan in custody, Kocharyan's attorney Robert Sahakyan told reporters, reports Armenpress.

45 MPs signed a petition to change Kocharyans precautionary measure, but the Prosecutor Generals Office rejected it.

The Court of Appeals has examined the appeal of attorneys for two days after which it was announced that the courts ruling will be released on August 13, at 16:00.

Robert Kocharyan has been charged on July 26 over the 2008 March 1 case, under the Article 300.1 part 1 of the Criminal Code for breaching the constitutional order of the Republic of Armenia. He has been remanded into custody. His attorneys appealed the court ruling.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
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YEREVAN, AUGUST 13, ARMENPRESS. First President of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan is ready to assist the investigation of the 2008 March 1 case, Aram Manukyan, member of the Armenian National Congress party, told reporters on August 13, reports Armenpress.

Anyone, who can contribute to disclosing the case, should be happy to come to the Investigation Service and provide materials. There is no one in this country who is more interested in the discovery of the March 1 case than Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Manukyan said.

He informed that during these ten years they have collected all materials which they are ready to provide to the structure conducting justice.

We have collected materials, published books, shot films, applied to all international European structures and prepared the list of all possible criminals during these ten years. We have the list of all police officers who gave false testimonies, the names of prosecutors who launched fake charges. We have done the last work before the 10th anniversary of the March 1 case. After publishing the collection of documents we have sent the samples to all concerned sides. Its a whole collection which is enough for discovering the March 1 case. The material is so huge that it completely proves the fact that the March 1 crime was pre-organized and implemented, Aram Manukyan said.

He stated that the precautionary measure against 2nd President Robert Kocharyan should remain the courts ruling to remand him in custody.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, AUGUST 13, ARMENPRESS. The elimination of Robert Kocharyans precautionary measure, which was preventive detention, by the Criminal Court of Appeal is illegal, the press service of the Special Investigation Service (SIS) of Armenia informed ARMENPRESS.

The decision of the Criminal Court of Appeal of the Republic of Armenia is illegal and the court has crossed the limits of its powers. We hope the Prosecutor's office will file a cassation complaint, SIS said.

The press service of the General Prosecutor's office mentioned that as soon as they receive the full decision of the Court of Appeal, they will start to discuss the possibility of applying to the Cassation Court.

The Court of Appeals approved on August 13 the appeal of attorneys against the decision of the 1st instance court to remand 2nd President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan in custody.

Edited and translated by Tigran Sirekanyan
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday that the United States plans to establish a Space Force by 2020, an idea floated by President Donald Trump and questioned by many top officers at the Pentagon.



US Vice President Mike Pence announces the creation of the United States Space Force to service members during a briefing at the Pentagon, Aug. 9, 2018

(Credit: DoD/US Air Force Tech. Sgt. Vernon Young Jr)

"The time has come to establish the United States space force," Pence told a gathering at the Pentagon, citing Trump's directive earlier this year to form the sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces.

"It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space and so we will," Pence said in his speech.

In concurrence with Pence's speech, the Pentagon laid out its plans to form the new branch of the U.S. military in a 15-page report, identifying immediate steps of action. This includes establishing a Space Development Agency, which is "a joint organization charged with rapidly developing and fielding next-generation capabilities."

The report also called for the creation of a Space Operations Force, which it said will be comprised of career space experts who are "trained, promoted and retained as space war fighting professionals."

Also part of the plan is a United Combatant Command-level Space Command, which will have the task to "improve and evolve space war fighting."

Although not clearly outlined in the report, Pence announced that the Pentagon will create a new Assistant Secretary of Defense of Space, the top civilian position to oversee the creation of the new branch who will report to the Pentagon chief.

Pence said funding for the new military branch will be requested in the fiscal year 2020 defense budget. He called on Congress to approve an "additional eight billion dollars in space security systems."

With foreseeable opposition from Congress and top officers in the Pentagon, Pence said that "creating a new branch of the military is not a simple process."

Jim Inhofe, a Republican Senator and the number two at the Senate Committee on Armed Services, has openly rebuked the suggestion of creating a new branch of the military. "I know the president has strong feelings. I think we can do that without a new branch," he told media early this month.

Trump said in June that he was moving to establish a space force as the sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces.
If theres anything social media has taught us, its that expectation versus reality can sometimes leave us pretty disappointed when it comes to the real thing.

Thats definitely not the case when it comes to playing tourist in Cuba.

A riot of colour and charm, Cuba is everything youd imagine it to be. Photo: Be

From feisty locals chatting on every street corner, to earsplitting salsa music blaring through the streets, heres five of the most iconic experiences you need to treat yourself to when visiting the charming country.

Vintage car tour

Whether youre a seasoned travel pro to a holiday rookie, checking out Cuba can be daunting. Theres so much to see and do  and no wifi when youre on the ground  so how do you know where to book and get started?

Get a different perspective of the streets in an epic vintage car. Photo: Be

After getting stuck in a spiraling black hole of pre-holiday planning (we wont lie, there may have been a travel spreadsheet involved), it all became too much. Luckily, Be was put in touch with Cuba Holidays who help pull together activities and tours to give you a taste of the city without the organisational nightmare. Cue the huge sigh of relief as we handed ourselves over for a tailor-made itinerary to tick off all the iconic must-dos in Havana  starting with an incredible vintage car tour.

You might have seen them in movies, but nothing can really prepare you for the sight of beautiful old cars cruising through the streets. Locals barely bat an eyelid as these grand old dames, which are often used as communal taxis, cruise the streets. While its pretty easy to get around Cubas capital Havana on foot, nothing beats sitting in the back of gorgeous old car with the wind in your hair.

Cigar rolling

Even if youre not a smoker, theres something almost charming about Cubas affinity with cigars  plus if theres any where youre going to try a cigar, it should be here.

Cuba is the place to smoke a cigar, so let the experts show you how its done. Photo: Be

At Finca Montesino, a third-generation tobacco producer you get a run through of the process from planting tobacco plants to harvesting, curing and rolling.

Story continues

Ask nicely and youll get one handrolled for you right there and then.

Sunset drinks overlooking El Capitolio

Nothing screams holiday like taking in a sunset with a drink in your hand, so give it a Cuban twist by heading to the rooftop of the iconic Hotel Saratoga and sipping on a mojito.

Grab a drink and soak up the scene on the top of the iconic Hotel Saratago. Photo: Be

With views overlooking Fraternity Park and the landmark El Capitolio building, youll be able to see why this beautiful colonial-style hotel was Beyonces choice when she stayed in Havana.

Check out a salsa club

Salsa lovers, welcome to your spiritual home. Famed for their love of live music and shimmying until the small hours, Cubans are the first to hit the dance floor and the last to head home.

Dont be shy on the dance floor  the locals definitely arent. Photo: Be

For one of the most iconic salsa experiences, head to the open air dancefloor of Casa de la Musica, located in the quaint historic town of Trinidad.

Boasting live music almost every single night, those with two left feet can head there during the day for a sneaky lesson or two before showing off their skills when the sun goes down.

Explore Vinales

Tourists might flock to the charmingly captivating urban sprawl of Havana, but those keen to explore a little further afield should head west to the town of Vinales.

A little bit weird and all kinds of wonderful, the Mural de la Prehistoria sits pride of place in Vinales. Photo: Be

Lusciously green and perfect for nature lovers, take in the sweeping landscape of UNESCO World Heritage Site Vinales Valley, before heading to Cueva del Indio, or the Cave of the Indian for a boat trip inside.

Not to be missed: the Mural de la Prehistoria, an enormous 120-metre high mural painted in 1959, featuring of all things, huge snails and dinosaurs.

Got a story tip? Send it to tips@yahoo7.com.au

Want more celebrity, entertainment and lifestyle news? Follow Be on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram.
An Australian woman has been left blind in one eye after a cosmetic injection, in a worldwide trend doctors have labelled alarming.

The woman ended up at Sydneys Prince of Wales Hospital in April, where doctors were unable to restore her sight in one eye, according to a Four Corners report.

She received the filler by a nurse at a clinic, and reportedly no doctor was present. Dr John Downie, Prince of Wales Hospital ophthalmologist, who treated the patient at the hospital, said it is alarming this could happen after a cosmetic procedure.

Especially given they are often marketed as simple and relatively risk-free.

An Aussie woman has lost sight in one eye after a cosmetic filler. Photo: Getty

The problem I get is that people perceive a cosmetic procedure to have limited or no risk, and thats not the case, Dr Downie said.

He explained that the blindness happens if an artery is blocked by the dermal filler, if it is accidentally injected into a blood vessel in or under the skin around the eye.

That material goes back along that artery to one of the bigger arteries around the eye, and then it can flow and block off the blood vessels going to the eye, or inside the eye, he explained.

The most shocking thing is, this isnt the first time something like this has happened. As of 2015, there had been nearly 100 similar incidents reported internationally.

A study in 2017 even highlighted the risks associated with certain cosmetic procedures.

There have been almost 100 reported cases of blindness caused by fillers. Photo: Getty

The study from South Korea  where the highest number per capita of cosmetic surgery procedures are performed  was published in the Journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, and involved a total of nine female patients between the ages of 26 and 45.

They were injected with hyaluronic acid, and the patients all suffered permanent vision loss. Worse still, according to the reports and studies, no cure has yet been found for this type of vision loss.

At the time a release from the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons said people need to be aware that the use of fillers and anti-wrinkle injections are essentially invasive procedures and are not risk-free.

Story continues

The organisations president, Dr. Mark Ashton, warned that these cases of blindness can occur after injections administered not just around the eyes. Injections near any part of a facial artery can put the patient at risk  such as near the nose, forehead, cheeks, and lips.

Patients can also be at risk if fillers are around nose, cheeks or lips. Photo: Getty

The material can travel along the artery all the way up to the corner of the eye, and then that goes into the retina, he told news.com.au.

The Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons priority is patient safety, and we are concerned that the general public thinks cosmetic procedures such as injectables, fillers, and lasers are not hazardous and therefore pose no risk, he said.

Got a story tip? Send it to tips@yahoo7.com.au

Want more celebrity, entertainment and lifestyle news? Follow Be on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram.
Between 20,000 and 30,000 Islamic State fighters remain in Iraq and Syria despite the jihadist group's defeat and a halt in the flow of foreigners joining its ranks, according to a UN report released Monday. The report by UN sanctions monitors estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 IS jihadists were based in Libya while some of the key operatives in the extremist group were being relocated to Afghanistan. Member-states told the monitors that the total IS membership in Iraq and Syria was "between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals, roughly equally distributed between the two countries." "Among these is still a significant component of the many thousands of active foreign terrorist fighters," said the report. The sanctions monitoring team submits independent reports every six months to the Security Council on the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, which are on the UN terrorist blacklist. IS once controlled large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, but last year it was driven out of Mosul and Raqa -- the twin seats of power of the Sunni extremist group. By January 2018, IS was confined to small pockets of territory in Syria, although the report said the group "showed greater resilience" in eastern Syria. IS "is still able to mount attacks inside Syrian territory. It does not fully control any territory in Iraq, but it remains active through sleeper cells" of agents hiding out in the desert and elsewhere, said the report. Some member-states raised concerns about new IS cells emerging from the densely populated Rukban camp for internally displaced persons in southern Syria, on the border with Jordan, where families of IS fighters are now living. - Relocating to Afghanistan - The flow of foreigners leaving IS "remains lower than expected" and no other arena has emerged as a favorite destination for foreign fighters, although "significant numbers have made their way to Afghanistan", said the report. There are an estimated 3,500-4,500 IS fighters in Afghanistan and those numbers are increasing, according to the report. The flow of foreign fighters toward IS "has essentially come to a halt," it added. IS finances are drying up, with one member-state estimating that its total reserves were "in the low hundreds of millions" of US dollars. Some revenue from oil fields in northeastern Syria continues to flow to IS. IS commands only 250 to 500 members in Yemen, compared to between 6,000 and 7,000 fighters for Al-Qaeda. In the Sahel, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara is active mostly at the border between Mali and Niger but has less of a foothold than the Al-Qaeda-linked Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JMIN). The Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab dominates in Somalia but the report said that IS "has the strategic intent to expand to central and southern Somalia". Some Somali IS fighters may choose to relocate to Puntland, said the report. A member of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) removes an Islamic State group flag in the town of Tabqa, just west of Raqa, the former IS capital in Syria
Records kept in notebooks of the kinds used by schoolchildren are bringing down titans of Argentina's industry in a multimillion-dollar corruption scandal. Dirty dealings are nothing new in Argentina. What sets this case apart is the large number of people going down -- around 20 so far, with additional names surfacing regularly -- and their high-flying status in the business world. The scandal involves under-the-table payments to the governments of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, the Peronist couple who ruled before the current president, Mauricio Macri. One big mystery is whether the money went to enrich government officials personally or was helped finance election campaigns. Investigative Magistrate Claudio Bonadio is raising eyebrows by aggressively ordering the arrest and questioning of so many business leaders, from both ends of the political spectrum in Argentina. Most of the arrests happened on August 1. "It is not the first time that major businessmen have gone to jail. What is new is the number and the reason," said Sergio Morresi, a political scientist at San Martin National University. - Tycoons under arrest - Prosecutor Carlos Stornelli has said bribes paid in the so called "corruption copybooks" case total $160 million. Bonadio began jailing tycoons after the publication of the records by Oscar Centeno, who worked as a driver for the deputy planning and public works minister Roberto Baratta. In these notebooks, Centeno meticulously recorded the alleged receipt of sacks of money from 2005 to 2015. The whistleblower had been expelled from the army for bad behavior. "There is no doubt that the copybooks describe in detail the way in which the Kirchners raised money illegally for seven years without any alarm going off at any oversight agency," said Nicolas Solari of the consultancy Poliarquia. So far, eight business leaders have confessed and struck plea-bargain deals. Angelo Calcaterra, a cousin of Macri, acknowledged having ordered the payment of cash requested as a bribe in order to receive government contracts. Testifying before the judge, he said he thought this was a mandatory election campaign contribution. Leaders of big multinational companies such as Argentina's Techint and Isolux of Spain have paid a visit to Bonadio's office. "The indictment and arrest of business leaders is new, and considering the unpopularity and impunity that big business people enjoy, it will probably be well received by public opinion," said sociologist Ricardo Rouvier. - Privileged - Morresi, the political scientist, said "one possible result is real progress in transparency and criminal convictions." The Buenos Aires stock market has taken a hit with the arrests. Alberto Fernandez, who served as chief of staff to the late Nestor Kirchner, has complained that only business leaders who supported the Kirchners and their leftist Peronist governments have ended up behind bars -- not those close to the current, conservative Macri government. A dozen or so people from the planning and public works ministry have gone before the judge -- though they have not yet been charged over the case -- and Cristina Kirchner's turn comes Monday. She now holds a seat as a senator. Ex-planning minister Julio de Vido and his deputy Jose Lopez have been in prison for corruption since 2017 and 2016, respectively. They managed the federal government's public works projects under the Kirchners and were the only two ministers to survive the various cabinet reshuffles across the couple's 12 years in power. Lope was caught red-handed hiding 160 suitcases and duffel bags containing $9 million in a convent with the help of a nun. Argentine vice president Amado Boudou (R), seen here standing next to then president Cristina Kirchner on March 1, 2014, is serving a prison sentence for corruption Boudou attends his trial on corruption charges in Buenos Aires on August 7, 2018 Luis Betnaza, an executive of Italian-Argentinian engineering company Techint, arrives to testify in court in Buenos Aires on August 10, 2018 Angelo Calcaterra, a cousin of current President Mauricio Macri, acknowledged having ordered the payment of cash requested as a bribe in order to receive government contracts Former vice minister of public works Jose Lopez is accused of trying to stash some $9 million in cash and jewels at a convent
It's barely 6:00 am and Alfred is already busy milking cows. But when his chores on the farm are done, he won't be going home -- he'll be returning to his prison cell. In Sweden, which prioritises rehabilitation over long prison sentences, Alfred is one of 60 inmates preparing to reintegrate into society at a minimum security "open prison" functioning as a farm in the town of Mariestad, about 300 kilometres (185 miles) southwest of Stockholm. Imprisoned since April for illegally possessing a gun, Alfred, a grandfather in his 50s who is due to be released in November, can't hide the joy he gets from spending time with the animals. "I like them... they calm me down," he says with a sigh, wearing a cap, his arm covered in tattoos. In this agricultural prison called Rodjan -- the biggest of the Swedish penitentiary system's three farms -- his routines are the same every day. He meets up with his work assignment partner Sofian (both names have been changed to protect their identities) in the morning for two and a half hours of work and then once again in the evening. "I clean (the udder) to avoid the bacteria, then I disinfect it" before pulling the teats, Alfred says enthusiastically. Other inmates work on the farm watering the plants, repainting the gates, and mowing the lawn. And a dozen of them are in charge of the livestock. - Prisoners in freedom - Sweden is among the countries with the fewest prisoners in the world: there are 0.5 inmates per 1,000 inhabitants, which is half of that in France (one per 1,000), Swedish and French prison data show. The Scandinavian nation spends twice as much as France on each detainee, including those placed under surveillance, and works hard to avoid confinement. Instead, it prefers to put people on probation, favours widespread use of ankle monitors, sentences people to community service, and releases prisoners after two-thirds of time served. Sweden also invests heavily in reintegration through language classes and vocational training. "It's our system for bringing people out into society in a good way, so they don't come back to prison again," Britt-Marie Johansson, head of the Rodjan institution, tells AFP. In Sweden, just under a third of prisoners re-offend after leaving jail or serving their term, which is half of that in France, according to the Swedish and French prison statistics. As in all penitentiaries across Sweden, inmates have their own cells. At Rodjan, they're unlocked. There are no security cameras, no gates, no barbed wire, and inmates are allowed to move about freely. Sweden has more than a dozen open prisons across the country. Inmates at Rodjan are serving sentences for all types of convictions, ranging from driving without a licence to tax crimes or assault, but prisoners placed there are all considered to not pose a threat to society. "We count the prisoners in the morning, during the day and in the evening, and we know where they are all the time," assures Johansson. "If they do something wrong, they go to a higher security level" facility, she adds. Closing the fence to the meadow after he finishes milking the cows, Alfred jokes that the cows are more locked up than the prisoners. - Work 'incredibly well' - The inmates work 35 hours per week with two days off and are paid 13 kronor (1.2 euros, $1.15) an hour. On his days off, Alfred admits that he regularly steps into the barn "to see if everything is fine". Other inmates have been known to call the prison while on their days off if they know the cows are due to give birth, to ask "How did it go? Did it go well with the calf?" Johansson says, amused. Michael Henningsohn, the farm's production manager, praises the detainees' work. "Many work incredibly well despite never having done this before. It's fascinating to see their attitudes" after only a few days of training, he says with a smile. In 2012, the farm received an award from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf for the quality of its milk. The establishment's key to success lies in the strict routines required for running a farm, according to Henningsohn. Despite enjoying his time with the cows, Alfred does not see himself staying in the farming business after completing his sentence, even though he grew up surrounded by cows on his grandparents' farm. "I saw how it went for them... it's too hard," he says. Sweden has three open prisons functioning as farms where inmates work to help prepare them to reintegrate into society Some 60 inmates work at Sweden's minimum security "open prison" functioning as a farm in the town of Mariestad, about 300 kilometres (185 miles) southwest of Stockholm Inmates at the Rodjan open prison functioning as a farm water plants, repaint gates, mow the lawn and look after livestock Michael Henningsohn, the Rodjan prison farm's production manager, praises the detainees' work Sweden is among the countries with the fewest prisoners in the world: there are 0.5 inmates per 1,000 inhabitants, which is half of that in France, Swedish and French prison data show
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Page: 1 2 Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter? Loosey Fur

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User ID: 440008

08-13-2018 09:49 PM



Posts: 2,668









Post: #1 Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

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Finally some justice.



http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/08/13/sho...ghter.html Has now been arrested for manslaughter.Finally some justice. Izzy nli

lop guest

User ID: 421592

08-13-2018 09:53 PM











Post: #2 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

Great news...hopefully he'll be convicted and all the other cowards who think they can get away with just shooting/killing someone for any dam reason with using "stand your ground" as a defence will think twice. Isabella

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08-13-2018 09:55 PM



Posts: 26,767









Post: #3 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

Loosey Fur Wrote: (08-13-2018 09:49 PM) Has now been arrested for manslaughter.



Finally some justice.



http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/08/13/sho...ghter.html

"A Florida man was arrested on a prosecutor's warrant Monday in connection with a fatal shooting last month that a sheriff said was justified under the states "Stand Your Ground" self-defense law.



Michael Drejka, 47, was charged with manslaughter in the July 19 death of 28-year-old Markeis McGlockton during a dispute over a handicapped parking spot at a convenience store in Clearwater." "A Florida man was arrested on a prosecutor's warrant Monday in connection with a fatal shooting last month that a sheriff said was justified under the states "Stand Your Ground" self-defense law.during a dispute over a handicapped parking spot at a convenience store in Clearwater." Archangel

Michael

User ID: 441975

08-13-2018 10:09 PM



Posts: 14,103









Post: #4 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

Now we'll have a trial and sort this case properly. I thought it was sketchy when it happened. There's stand your ground, and there's starting and stirring up stuff, getting a fight going, then claiming stand your ground.



May justice be served. zacksavage

Registered User

User ID: 451766

08-13-2018 10:14 PM



Posts: 1,086









Post: #5 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

Archangel Wrote: (08-13-2018 10:09 PM) Now we'll have a trial and sort this case properly. I thought it was sketchy when it happened. There's stand your ground, and there's starting and stirring up stuff, getting a fight going, then claiming stand your ground.



May justice be served.

That's what I thought as well. That dude had been reported to have been agitating to use his gun on someone.

Had he been hassling my girlfriend/wife at the drivers window of my car I would have reacted the same as the dude he killed.



Having said that, I still believe people should be allowed to stand your ground in the face of a criminal with no repercussions...



This case was BS from get-go.



Z That's what I thought as well. That dude had been reported to have been agitating to use his gun on someone.Had he been hassling my girlfriend/wife at the drivers window of my car I would have reacted the same as the dude he killed.Having said that, I still believe people should be allowed to stand your ground in the face of a criminal with no repercussions...This case was BS from get-go. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 456252

08-13-2018 10:15 PM











Post: #6 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

Oooh called it. Not that it was complicated.. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 456521

08-13-2018 10:16 PM











Post: #7 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

Isabella Wrote: (08-13-2018 09:55 PM) Loosey Fur Wrote: (08-13-2018 09:49 PM) Has now been arrested for manslaughter.



Finally some justice.



http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/08/13/sho...ghter.html

"A Florida man was arrested on a prosecutor's warrant Monday in connection with a fatal shooting last month that a sheriff said was justified under the states "Stand Your Ground" self-defense law.



Michael Drejka, 47, was charged with manslaughter in the July 19 death of 28-year-old Markeis McGlockton during a dispute over a handicapped parking spot at a convenience store in Clearwater."





good.



obviously he's not as well connected at George zimmerfat. good.obviously he's not as well connected at George zimmerfat. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 456540

08-13-2018 10:44 PM











Post: #8 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

LoP Guest Wrote: (08-13-2018 10:16 PM) Isabella Wrote: (08-13-2018 09:55 PM) "A Florida man was arrested on a prosecutor's warrant Monday in connection with a fatal shooting last month that a sheriff said was justified under the states "Stand Your Ground" self-defense law.



Michael Drejka, 47, was charged with manslaughter in the July 19 death of 28-year-old Markeis McGlockton during a dispute over a handicapped parking spot at a convenience store in Clearwater."





good.



obviously he's not as well connected at George zimmerfat.

+1 +1 LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 456252

08-13-2018 10:45 PM











Post: #9 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

LoP Guest Wrote: (08-13-2018 10:16 PM) Isabella Wrote: (08-13-2018 09:55 PM) "A Florida man was arrested on a prosecutor's warrant Monday in connection with a fatal shooting last month that a sheriff said was justified under the states "Stand Your Ground" self-defense law.



Michael Drejka, 47, was charged with manslaughter in the July 19 death of 28-year-old Markeis McGlockton during a dispute over a handicapped parking spot at a convenience store in Clearwater."





good.



obviously he's not as well connected at George zimmerfat.

Not even close to the same scenario/.



Not even the same ballpark. That community had a problem with break ins and trey trey was trying to kill zimmerman Not even close to the same scenario/.Not even the same ballpark. That community had a problem with break ins and trey trey was trying to kill zimmerman PopEye

Halloween PopEye

User ID: 436592

08-13-2018 10:53 PM



Posts: 12,441









Post: #10 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

Loosey Fur Wrote: (08-13-2018 09:49 PM) Has now been arrested for manslaughter.



Finally some justice.



http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/08/13/sho...ghter.html

Excellent. Excellent. The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who haven't got it.

George Bernard Shaw

____________________ LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 456541

08-13-2018 10:57 PM











Post: #11 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

LoP Guest Wrote: (08-13-2018 10:45 PM) LoP Guest Wrote: (08-13-2018 10:16 PM) good.



obviously he's not as well connected at George zimmerfat.

Not even close to the same scenario/.



Not even the same ballpark. That community had a problem with break ins and trey trey was trying to kill zimmerman

Zmmernan was also the agressor. Any normal person would react to being stalked. Zmmernan was also the agressor. Any normal person would react to being stalked. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 452131

08-13-2018 11:17 PM











Post: #12 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

Loosey Fur Wrote: (08-13-2018 09:49 PM) Has now been arrested for manslaughter.



Finally some justice.



http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/08/13/sho...ghter.html



Because telling someone they're in a handicapped and shouldn't be there deserves to be blind-sided by the approaching husband with two brutal hits to the chest? I'd shot him too. Because telling someone they're in a handicapped and shouldn't be there deserves to be blind-sided by the approaching husband with two brutal hits to the chest? I'd shot him too. *%

Registered User

User ID: 443293

08-13-2018 11:38 PM



Posts: 30









Post: #13 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

Ah



no comment Isabella

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User ID: 421592

08-13-2018 11:49 PM



Posts: 26,767









Post: #14 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

LoP Guest Wrote: (08-13-2018 10:45 PM) LoP Guest Wrote: (08-13-2018 10:16 PM) good.



obviously he's not as well connected at George zimmerfat.

Not even close to the same scenario/.



Not even the same ballpark. That community had a problem with break ins and trey trey was trying to kill zimmerman

Same ballpark, same kind of coward with a gun just itching to use it. Same ballpark, same kind of coward with a gun just itching to use it. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 456551

08-13-2018 11:51 PM











Post: #15 RE: Remember that Florida stand your ground shooter?

Isabella Wrote: (08-13-2018 11:49 PM) LoP Guest Wrote: (08-13-2018 10:45 PM) Not even close to the same scenario/.



Not even the same ballpark. That community had a problem with break ins and trey trey was trying to kill zimmerman

Same ballpark, same kind of coward with a gun just itching to use it.

this^^^^ this^^^^ Advertisement




















The family of a Thai model dying of leukemia has begged a potential stem cell donor to save his life, after the donor backed out of the procedure.

I dont know who you are but if you see this message, our family would like to beg you to change your mind and donate the stem cells to Pram, the family of model Pramthat Pram Sinkang, posted on August 11, according to The Star.

The fashion model was told by doctors that he would die from leukemia within six months, unless he received a stem cell donation.

The family of a Thai fashion model with leukemia, Pramthat Pram Sinkang, posted on Facebook begging a stem cell donor to change his mind about a life saving donation. Source: Facebook/Pramthat Pram Sinkang

Pram underwent chemotherapy and became stronger, however on July 23 doctors told him that his cancer had advanced and that chemo was no longer an option. Only a stem cell donation could save his life.

While Prams doctors identified a possible stem cell donor in February, the donor later changed his mind as his family did not approve of the procedure.

In allogeneic stem cell transplants, the stem cells are donated by another person whose tissue type is compatible with the patients and can be harvested or collected from bone marrow, blood stream or umbilical cord blood.

The fashion model was told by doctors that he would die from leukemia within six months, unless he received a stem cell donation, but his potential donor has backed out of the procedure. Source: Facebook/Pramthat Pram Sinkang

However, according to the Leukemia Foundtion, unless you have an identical twin, your tissue type is different to the tissue type of almost everyone else in the world.

In Australia, people may put themselves on the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry so that those in need can search them as potentially life saving donors.
Georgia's overly punitive drug laws cause severe and unjustifiable harm, Human Rights Watch said Monday, calling on the government to decriminalise personal use and possession of drugs. "Drug prosecutions for consumption and possession often lead to long prison sentences and prohibitive fines against people who have not harmed others, but who acquired small amounts of drugs for personal, recreational use," the group said in a report. It added that Georgian law fails to define what amounts to a small drug quantity and that even possessing traces of narcotics -- such as residue in a syringe -- can lead to a minimum of five years' imprisonment. Possession of more than one gram is considered a "particularly large amount" and could result in life imprisonment, said the report entitled "Harsh Punishment: The Human Toll of Georgia's Abusive Laws." The organisation denounced the "nearly 100-percent" conviction rate for drug offences. "Locking people up for no more than using drugs causes tremendous harm and does nothing to help those who need and want treatment," said Giorgi Gogia, HRW's regional director for Europe and Central Asia. The tiny Black Sea nation's government has been under constant pressure from rights activists to relax its hardline stance since it tightened anti-drug legislation in 2006. In May, thousands rallied for several days in the capital Tbilisi to protest against allegedly heavy-handed police raids in two popular nightclubs. Officers said they had arrested eight suspected drug dealers. The government has been partially liberalising drug laws since 2012, reducing penalties for drug possession and consumption. It also adopted a National Strategy and Action Plan to fight drug addiction. Last month, the Georgian Constitutional Court abolished fines for using marijuana but stipulated that growing and selling the drug would remain an offence. Thousands of Georgians rallied in the capital Tbilisi in May to protest allegedly heavy-handed police raids in two popular nightclubs and the government's harsh drug policy
Norway's rightwing Fisheries Minister Per Sandberg quit on Monday after breaching security protocol when he went on holiday to Iran with an Iranian-born former beauty queen, in a major media scandal. The deputy head of the anti-immigration Progress Party -- which is part of the ruling coalition -- admitted he had travelled to Iran in July with his new girlfriend Bahareh Letnes, 28, without informing the prime minister's office in advance. The 58-year-old also admitted bringing his work phone with him. Norway's intelligence agency regularly lists Iran as one of the countries most likely to carry out espionage, alongside China and Russia. "Per himself asked to step down, and I think it was the right decision," Conservative Prime Minister Erna Solberg told reporters. "He didn't show the necessary common sense when it comes to handling security issues," she said. The story has been making headlines in Norway, fuelling criticism from members of the opposition and Sandberg's own party, which is in a coalition with the Conservatives and the Liberals. Letnes had her asylum request rejected three times in Norway and was expelled, but finally obtained a residency permit on the grounds that she risked being subjected to a forced marriage in Iran. The Progress Party favours a strict immigration policy, calling for rejected asylum seekers to be expelled swiftly. It is also highly critical of foreigners who return to their native country after receiving asylum in Norway. Sandberg issued an apology in a bid to quell the criticism, but with new details emerging daily he ultimately decided to resign. Among other things, it emerged he had also broken security protocol in May when he took his work phone to China. "It's sad," he told reporters on Monday. "I had hoped to finish up a few projects," he added, refusing to comment on the personal aspects of the affair. Norwegian intelligence services have opened a probe into Letnes, who denies any ties to the Iranian regime. Sandberg will be replaced by Harald Tom Nesvik, a member of his own party, and has also stepped down as deputy head of the party. Norwegian minister Per Sandberg's private trip to Iran with his new Iranian girlfriend has drawn criticism from his anti-immigration Progress Party
Iran's supreme leader said Monday there would be neither war nor negotiations with the United States, and that the country's problems were the result of government mismanagement more than renewed sanctions. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's comments add to the pressure on President Hassan Rouhani following a collapse in the currency and widespread protests over high prices and corruption. They also appeared to rule out any hope of fresh talks with Washington, which US President Donald Trump had proposed after walking out of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal and reimposing sanctions. "Beside sanctions, they are talking about war and negotiations... let me say a few words to the people: THERE WILL BE NO WAR, NOR WILL WE NEGOTIATE WITH THE U.S.," Khamenei said via his official Twitter account in English. There was also a show of military resolve as Defence Minister Amir Hatami unveiled a next generation short-range ballistic missile and vowed to further boost the country's missile capabilities. State broadcaster IRIB said the new Fateh Mobin missile had "successfully passed its tests" and could strike targets on land and sea. - 'Problems are internal' - Despite renewed sanctions, many Iranians -- including many at the highest levels of the establishment -- see US hostility as only a contributing factor to long-standing problems inside the country. "Today's livelihood problems do not emerge from outside, they are internal," Khamenei said in another tweet. "Not that sanctions don't have an impact, but the main factor is how we handle them," he added. Khamenei mirrored recent criticism of Rouhani's economic management from senior members of the clergy and the Revolutionary Guards -- particularly over the collapse of the rial, which has lost around half its value since April. A fortnight ago, Guards commander Mohammad Ali Jafari told Rouhani to take "revolutionary actions to control prices and prevent the enormous increase in the price of foreign currency and gold," in an open letter published by the conservative Tasnim news agency. But Khamenei criticised conservatives who called for Rouhani's resignation, saying they were inadvertently "playing into the hands of the enemy". "The government must stay in office and powerfully carry out its duties to resolve the problems," he said. - Crackdown - Part of the strategy has been an effort to show action against Iran's deeply entrenched corruption, which Khamenei once described as "a seven-headed dragon". The judiciary said Sunday it had arrested 67 people under a sweeping corruption crackdown and prevented 100 government employees from leaving the country. Khamenei approved a written request from the head of the judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, to set up special revolutionary courts to try people quickly for economic crimes. Some lawmakers have criticised the move, with high-profile MP Ali Motahari saying on Monday that parliament must not be "by-passed" when writing new rules. With the nuclear deal crumbling, Rouhani finds himself with little to show for his five years in power and increasingly under fire from all sides. Although the other parties to the agreement -- Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia -- have vowed to resist US sanctions, many foreign companies have already abandoned projects in Iran for fear of US penalties. A significant cut in oil sales is also expected when the US reimposes a second phase of sanctions in November -- with some analysts estimating a drop of 700,000 barrels per day from its current level of 2.3 million. State news agency IRNA reported on Monday that Iran is offering oil and gas at a discount to Asian customers in a bid to retain sales. Khamenei's tweets followed a speech in Tehran, in which he described Trump's offer of talks as "a dangerous game" and his administration as a "bullying, fraudulent regime". "Even if we ever -- impossible as it is --negotiated with the US, it would never ever be with the current US administration," he added. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gestures during a rally in the capital Tehran on August 13, 2018 A man exchanges Iranian rials for dollars at a money changer in Tehran on August 8, 2018
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Monday defended his stance on US sanctions against Iran in the face of harsh criticism from Tehran and its allies in Baghdad. "Some people want to put pressure on us to place the interests of gangs ahead of those of the Iraqi people," he told a news conference. "This is not possible." Abadi has cancelled a visit to Iran, his press office said Sunday, after announcing last week that Iraq would reluctantly comply with renewed US sanctions against Tehran. "We don't support the sanctions because they are a strategic error, but we will comply with them," said Abadi, whose country is an ally of both Tehran and Washington. "In general, sanctions are unjust," the prime minister added. His position has drawn fire from several groups close to Tehran, especially the Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Badr paramilitary movements. On Sunday, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative in Baghdad also lashed out at Abadi. "It's a disloyal attitude towards the honest position of Iran and the blood of the martyrs this country has spilt to defend the land of Iraq" against jihadists, said Moujtaba al-Hussein. "We are saddened by this position which shows he has been defeated psychologically in the face of the Americans," he said. Abadi stood firm on Monday, although Baghdad is in the midst of political jockeying to form a new government after the results of May's parliamentary elections were finalised last week following a recount. "Our economic situation is also difficult and we sympathise with Iran," said Abadi, who was appointed prime minister in 2014 with Western backing and by consensus between the leading factions in Iraqi politics. "But at the same time I will not make grand slogans that destroy my people and my country just to make certain people happy," he said. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi delivers a speech in the holy city of Najaf on January 7, 2018
Polish police on Monday said they had detained an Israeli teenager after security cameras caught him exposing his rear at the former Nazi German death camp Majdanek. The 17-year-old male, who was visiting the site near the eastern Polish city of Lublin with others from Israel, "pulled down his trousers while turning his back to the camp barracks" on Friday, local police press officer Andrzej Fijolek told AFP. Police notified the teenager that he would be charged with "desecrating a monument or memorial," an offence that can result in either a fine or jail time. "He admitted to the act and said he was willing to accept punishment," Fijolek said. Before returning to Israel, the teenager handed over the 1,000 zloty (230 euros, $270) he had on him to go towards his future fine, Fijolek added. Management of the museum located at the site told AFP that it "strongly condemns" the "indecent" and "revolting" act. Nazi Germany set up the Majdanek camp in occupied Poland in 1941 and ran it until 1944. A quarter of a million people, including more than 100,000 Jews, died at the camp, according to Polish historians. Every year hundreds of thousands of people visit the former death camps installed by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. In March, an Israeli teenager was fined 1,200 euros for urinating at the largest of these sites, Auschwitz-Birkenau. A Polish court also jailed the organisers of an anti-war stunt that saw a dozen people strip naked at Auschwitz-Birkenau before one of them slaughtered a lamb last year. Stones marked with the names of the former Nazi concentration camps Majdanek (L), where an Israeli teen was detained after he was caught exposing his rear, and Buchenwald are seen near Weimar, Germany in 2016
A $35 million private jet owned by a playboy financier at the centre of a Malaysian corruption mega-scandal will be returned to the country as soon as possible, the prime minister said Monday. The plane, thought to currently be in Singapore, is the latest asset Malaysia is seeking to claw back that was allegedly bought by businessman Low Taek Jho with money looted from sovereign wealth fund 1MDB. Last week a $250 million super-yacht allegedly owned by the financier, an adviser to 1MDB often referred to as Jho Low, was returned to Malaysia after being impounded by authorities in Indonesia. Allegations that huge sums were plundered from 1MDB contributed to the shock election defeat in May of former premier Najib Razak, who set up and oversaw the fund. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that Low's Bombardier Global 5000 jet would be returned to Malaysia "as soon as possible", but that it would need to be serviced first as it had been grounded for some time. "Jho Low's jet will be brought here as soon as we can make it fly," the 93-year-old told reporters at his office in administrative capital Putrajaya. Authorities are seeking to arrest Low -- who had close ties to Najib's family -- but his current whereabouts are unknown. The financier has previously denied any wrongdoing over the multi-billion-dollar scandal. Najib, his family and cronies are accused of overseeing the plundering of 1MDB to buy everything from US real estate to artworks. The US Department of Justice, which is seeking to recover items allegedly bought with stolen 1MDB cash in America, estimates that $4.5 billion in total was looted from the fund. Since his election loss, Najib has been charged with corruption and money laundering over the scandal. Mahathir also said Monday a series of massive, Chinese-funded infrastructure projects in Malaysia, which were agreed by the former government, may be dropped or modified. The new government has already suspended some projects, including a major rail link. Mahathir will visit China at the end of this week. Allegations that huge sums were plundered from 1MDB contributed to the shock election defeat in May of former premier Najib Razak, who set up and oversaw the fund
Dozens of Syrian refugees left Lebanon by bus on Monday in the latest of a wave of returns to their war-torn country, Lebanese authorities said. An AFP photographer in the southern town of Shebaa saw women and children wait to board buses, while men loaded belongings on the back of a large pick-up truck. Lebanon's General Security agency "secured the voluntary return of 137 displaced Syrians from the areas of Shebaa and central Bekaa through the Masnaa border crossing towards Syria," it said it a statement. Lebanon hosts around 1.5 million Syrians who fled the civil war across the border, many of them in the Bekaa Valley in the east of the country. Lebanese state news agency NNA said "several refugees returned to Syria with their own private vehicles" through Masnaa, without giving a figure. Syrian state news agency SANA said the returnees had begun arriving in Syria. It earlier said preparations had been made to "receive hundreds of displaced returning from Lebanon to their homes in the Damascus countryside". Since April, more than 2,000 Syrians have headed home from Lebanon in such returns coordinated by the authorities in Beirut and Damascus, according to an AFP tally of official figures. Human rights groups have warned that Syrians returning to their homeland should do so voluntarily and with full knowledge of the risks. According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, around 13,000 Syrians went home from Lebanon during the first six months of this year. More than 350,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since Syria's war started with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011. But President Bashar al-Assad has called for displaced Syrians to return since his regime ousted rebels and jihadists from large parts of the country following a massive military intervention by regime ally Russia. Last month, Russia presented the United States with plans for the coordinated return of refugees to Syria. The proposal includes the establishment of working groups in both Lebanon and Jordan, involving US and Russian officials. Earlier this month, Syrian state media said the government was to set up a committee to coordinate repatriating millions of its nationals. Last week, Lebanon's General Security agency announced it had opened 17 centres across the country to receive applications for Syrians who want to travel back home. Syrian refugees gather their belongings as they prepare to return home from the southern Lebanese village of Shebaa
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Page: 1 2 West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court Uppity Me

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06-21-2018 05:10 PM



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Post: #1 West Virginia Supreme Court justice indicted

Advertisement

(this is our 'leadership' and this is who makes the laws)



https://www.yahoo.com/news/west-virginia...02556.html



CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP)  In public, West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Allen Loughry gave speeches about honesty and integrity in government. In private, federal prosecutors say, he was raking in money by defrauding others.



FBI agents arrested Loughry on Wednesday morning and took him to the federal courthouse in Charleston to face a 22-count federal indictment.



U.S. Attorney Mike Stuart said Loughry, who was suspended from the bench earlier this month, is charged with 16 counts of mail fraud, two counts of wire fraud, one count of witness tampering and three counts of making false statements to a federal agent. The indictment says his fraud scheme began in 2013, shortly after he was elected. Quote: Les pauvres n'ont-ils des Euros ?

Alors laissez les pauvres 'sh*t' dans les rues West Virginia Supreme Court justice indicted(this is our 'leadership' and this is who makes the laws)CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP)  In public, West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Allen Loughry gave speeches about honesty and integrity in government. In private, federal prosecutors say, he was raking in money by defrauding others.FBI agents arrested Loughry on Wednesday morning and took him to the federal courthouse in Charleston to face a 22-count federal indictment.U.S. Attorney Mike Stuart said Loughry, who was suspended from the bench earlier this month, is charged with 16 counts of mail fraud, two counts of wire fraud, one count of witness tampering and three counts of making false statements to a federal agent. The indictment says his fraud scheme began in 2013, shortly after he was elected. (This post was last modified: 06-21-2018 05:11 PM by Uppity Me .) LoP Guest

lop guest

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06-21-2018 05:49 PM











Post: #2 RE: West Virginia Supreme Court justice indicted

Will be replaced by a jesuit, count on it. Uppity Me

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06-21-2018 08:26 PM



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Post: #3 RE: West Virginia Supreme Court justice indicted

LoP Guest Wrote: (06-21-2018 05:49 PM) Will be replaced by a jesuit, count on it.

more of same more of same Quote: Les pauvres n'ont-ils des Euros ?

Alors laissez les pauvres 'sh*t' dans les rues Uppity Me

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User ID: 449159

08-13-2018 11:53 PM



Posts: 37,644









Post: #4 West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court

West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court Justice



https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/...rt-Justice



The West Virginia House voted to impeach Justice Allen Loughry 64-33 on Monday. This came after two hours of debate and almost two months after Justice Loughry was arrested and indicted on 32 counts of intentionally defrauding the people of West Virginia. It was just a few days ago that the West Virginia House Judiciary Committee approved 14 articles of impeachment against four of the sitting West Virginian Supreme Court Justices.



This is all a result of reports concerning the spending habits of the WV Supreme Court justices. Specifically, an investigation uncovered particularly egregious spending on the part of Justice Loughry in renovating his offices and using tax payer-funded gas cards. The West Virginia House voted to impeach Justice Allen Loughry 64-33 on Monday. This came after two hours of debate and almost two months after Justice Loughry was arrested and indicted on 32 counts of intentionally defrauding the people of West Virginia. It was just a few days ago that the West Virginia House Judiciary Committee approved 14 articles of impeachment against four of the sitting West Virginian Supreme Court Justices.This is all a result of reports concerning the spending habits of the WV Supreme Court justices. Specifically, an investigation uncovered particularly egregious spending on the part of Justice Loughry in renovating his offices and using tax payer-funded gas cards. Quote: Les pauvres n'ont-ils des Euros ?

Alors laissez les pauvres 'sh*t' dans les rues Damrod

lop guest

User ID: 455249

08-14-2018 12:08 AM











Post: #5 RE: West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court

2 repubs and 2 dems...



there was 6



1 already resigned 1 is up for criminal charges so he is already out



I live in WV



don't speak of things you do not know about LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 426905

08-14-2018 12:10 AM











Post: #6 RE: West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court

Sounds like SOP for government employees. I figured it would be running a call boy ring from his house. Oh that's right you can't be impeached for that. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 456263

08-14-2018 12:19 AM











Post: #7 RE: West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court

Damrod Wrote: (08-14-2018 12:08 AM) 2 repubs and 2 dems...



there was 6



1 already resigned 1 is up for criminal charges so he is already out



I live in WV



don't speak of things you do not know about

Well now we know what's wrong with you...Ain't nothing but dumbasses in WV Well now we know what's wrong with you...Ain't nothing but dumbasses in WV LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 426905

08-14-2018 12:35 AM











Post: #8 RE: West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court

Almost heaven ... LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 455306

08-14-2018 01:18 AM











Post: #9 RE: West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court

Republican State Supreme Court Justice Will Strike It Down. Damrod

lop guest

User ID: 455249

08-14-2018 01:38 AM











Post: #10 RE: West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court

LoP Guest Wrote: (08-14-2018 12:19 AM) Damrod Wrote: (08-14-2018 12:08 AM) 2 repubs and 2 dems...



there was 6



1 already resigned 1 is up for criminal charges so he is already out



I live in WV



don't speak of things you do not know about

Well now we know what's wrong with you...Ain't nothing but dumbasses in WV

Yep...that's right...



you make sure to stay far away Yep...that's right...you make sure to stay far away Damrod

lop guest

User ID: 455249

08-14-2018 01:39 AM











Post: #11 RE: West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court

LoP Guest Wrote: (08-14-2018 01:18 AM) Republican State Supreme Court Justice Will Strike It Down.

Nope...he's the one indicted for criminal activity...he's looking at hundreds of years in jail if half of the charges stick Nope...he's the one indicted for criminal activity...he's looking at hundreds of years in jail if half of the charges stick Loosey Fur

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User ID: 440008

08-14-2018 02:29 AM



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Post: #12 RE: West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court

Damrod Wrote: (08-14-2018 12:08 AM) 2 repubs and 2 dems...



there was 6



1 already resigned 1 is up for criminal charges so he is already out



I live in WV



don't speak of things you do not know about

Lol no Dems in WV. Lol no Dems in WV. Uppity Me

Registered User

User ID: 449159

08-14-2018 03:18 AM



Posts: 37,644









Post: #13 RE: West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court

Damrod Wrote: (08-14-2018 12:08 AM) 2 repubs and 2 dems...



there was 6



1 already resigned 1 is up for criminal charges so he is already out



I live in WV



don't speak of things you do not know about

I'm glad they caught the F'uckers I'm glad they caught the F'uckers Quote: Les pauvres n'ont-ils des Euros ?

Alors laissez les pauvres 'sh*t' dans les rues Blastbeat Industries

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User ID: 453134

08-14-2018 03:23 AM



Posts: 1,695









Post: #14 RE: West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court

Don't the Rockefellers own everything in West Virginia? Kanye West used to be the real vice-president.

Censorship is still un-American. udis

Philosopher

User ID: 456274

08-14-2018 03:40 AM



Posts: 32,099









Post: #15 RE: West Virginia House just voted to impeach indicted Republican State Supreme Court

Justice Loughry was arrested and indicted on 32

counts of intentionally defrauding the people of West Virginia.



But One Has to Ask HOW a Judge is in ANY Position to Committ

32 counts of intentionally defrauding the people of West Virginia.



Who in gods NAME gave Judges access to the "PEOPLES" Money?  This Claim Is Disputed Pending Fact Checkers.  udis

 The Ministry Of Thought Crime. Does Not Approve Of Your Thoughts!   Advertisement


















Police have charged a driver after she was photographed smoking from a glass pipe while driving.

The 31-year-old was captured as she drove along the Kwinana Freeway in Perth on Saturday afternoon, allegedly swerving between lanes as she inhaled from the pipe.

A woman was photographed smoking a glass pipe while driving. Source: 7 News

She has been charged with careless driving, but can get behind the wheel between now and her court date.

Rockingham detectives searched a home in Bertram on Monday afternoon and charged the woman with careless driving, but could not find the pipe from the photo.

Police say the woman is likely to face a fine and lose demerit points, but not her licence.
The United Arab Emirates, a key player in Yemen's war, says it is determined to wipe out Al-Qaeda in the country and denies making deals with the jihadists. The UAE entered Yemen's complex war in 2015 alongside regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia, after Iran-backed Huthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa and swathes of the country from the government of Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. But that summer, as Emirati-backed government forces retook five southern provinces of Yemen, they found themselves facing another powerful enemy: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The group, seen by the US State Department as the most dangerous branch of the global Al-Qaeda franchise, had taken advantage of the chaos gripping Yemen to carve out its own territory. In April 2015, the group seized Mukalla, capital of the vast Hadramaut province, which it controlled for a year until being ousted in an Emirati-led operation. Emirati forces have established a major military presence across the country's south and commanders say they are determined to wipe out AQAP. "Irrespective of what happens in the wider Yemen conflict, the UAE will continue until AQAP is broken as a regional and global threat," a senior Emirati military official said during a recent press tour in the country's south. - 'Nothing to negotiate' - More than two years since the jihadists were ousted from the city, Hadramaut governor General Faraj Salmin al-Bahsani, described the operation. "We set up a local force of soldiers from the region, with Emirati help," said Bahsani, who is also commander of government forces across a chunk of southern Yemen. "Coalition air forces paralysed Al-Qaeda forces before they were ousted from the region," he said, sitting in his office in the provincial government headquarters, its wall adorned with a picture of Hadi. Experts said the jihadists, who had imposed a reign of terror on the city, opted to cut their losses by withdrawing without a fight to remote mountain areas. But a press report published earlier this month detailed secret deals allegedly made between AQAP and the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen. Payments were reportedly made to some jihadists to convince them to retreat, while others were allowed to leave with their weapons. The claims were dismissed as "false accusations" by Brigadier General Musallam al-Rashedi, from the Emirati Armed Forces, who said he was angered by the report. "There is nothing to negotiate with these guys," he told journalists Monday in Dubai. - Dependant on UAE - In Mukalla, a semblance of normality has returned. Its port, a key trading point serving the entire province, is a hub of activity. Cargo ships come and go, directed into the dock by a tugboat provided by the UAE. The city is heavily dependent on its Emirati backers. The UAE has pumped some $3.8 billion (3.3 billion euros) of aid into the country since 2015 and provides much of the support that keeps hospitals, schools, courts and the port running, according to its governor. Abu Dhabi's police force has even sent 170 cars and 500 brand new motorcycles to the city, an Emirati general said. The Emirates have also trained and equipped some 60,000 Yemeni fighters, 30,000 of whom were directly involved in the fight against Al-Qaeda, according to an Emirati military official. He said Al-Qaeda's activities have dramatically decreased. The group launched just five attacks in southern Yemen in the first half of 2018, as compared to 77 over the same period of 2016. He added that until 2016, the jihadists had a major presence in cities and towns which are home to some 850,000 people, giving the group with a major source of funding and new recruits. That is no longer the case. Emirati operations and a long-running American drone campaign against the group have hit its capabilities hard. Some 1,000 AQAP fighters have been killed in Yemen since 2015, including 13 of the group's top 18 leaders, the official said. A further 1,500 have been captured. General Rashedi said that since the start of 2016, the jihadists have lost "half the territory" they controlled in southern Yemen. "Their capacity to carry out terrorism globally has been seriously hampered," he said. AQAP claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo magazine in January 2015. In July this year, Amnesty said human rights violations in a string of UAE-run Yemeni prisons could amount to war crimes, a report rejected by Abu Dhabi. Despite Emirati successes, Bahsani admits that AQAP is still active in Hadramaut, alongside the Islamic State group which has recently established a presence in southern Yemen. He blamed both groups for a string of killings targeting security officials. A soldier in front of a mural of the late UAE founder in the Yemeni port city of Mukalla on August 8, 2018, pictured during a press trip organised by the UAE government UAE-trained cadets of the Yemeni police march during their graduation in Mukalla on August 8, 2018, during a press trip arranged by the UAE The Yemeni port city of Mukalla on August 8, 2018, pictured during a trip organised by the UAE's National Media Council A Yemeni soldier speaks to a woman riding a bus in the port city of Mukalla on August 8, 2018. Pictured during a UAE-planned press trip
An Emirati minister, whose country belongs to the Saudi-led coalition battling rebels in Yemen, on Monday bemoaned the "ugly" side of war following the killing of dozens of Yemeni children in an air strike. "This war has been and remains an ugly war," Anwar Gargash, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) minister of state for foreign affairs, told a news conference in Dubai. A coalition strike last Thursday hit a bus in Huthi rebel-held northern Yemen, killing at least 29 children, according to the International Committee for the Red Cross. Huthi officials gave a death toll of 51, including 40 children, and labelled the raid a "crime by America and its allies against the children of Yemen". The coalition announced afterwards that it had ordered an investigation into the strike, which it initially said had targeted Huthi rebel combatants. "In this war we have seen civilians shot at, bombed, killed and, unfortunately, this is really part of any confrontation," Gargash said, adding that both sides in the conflict had been to blame. "War is not something that can be actually a clean operation," said the UAE minister. Gargash played up the coalition's probe into the incident. "In various conflicts many parties have not allowed neutral or independent investigations," he said. The minister said those calling for independent investigations should instead urge the coalition "to tighten the rules of engagement". Mourners held a mass funeral Monday for the victims of the bus attack in the northern Yemeni city of Saada, where demonstrators vented their anger at Saudi Arabia. The coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015 in a bid to restore the internationally recognised government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after the Iran-backed Huthis drove his government out of the capital Sanaa. The war has left around 10,000 people dead, the vast majority of them civilians, and triggered what the United Nations has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Yemenis attend a mass funeral in the northern city of Saada, a stronghold of Huthi rebels, for children killed in an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition last week
Britain's Ken Loach, Canada's David Cronenberg and dozens of other filmmakers called Monday on Russia to free Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov, who has been on hunger strike for nearly three months in a Siberian jail. In an open letter in French daily Le Monde, around 120 actors and directors, joined by French Culture Minister Francoise Nyssen, warned that "to do nothing would be to let Oleg Sentsov die" and called on the EU and UN to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into freeing him. "With his health apparently deteriorating rapidly with each passing day, it is time to act. And fast," they wrote. Sentsov, a 42-year-old filmmaker and Kremlin opponent is serving a 20-year-sentence on terrorism charges after being convicted three years ago of arson in his native Crimea following its annexation by Russia. Last week, his cousin warned that his health was "catastrophically bad", prompting French President Emmanuel Macron to take up his case in a telephone call with Putin. Russia has denied any deterioration in his health, but Putin promised to respond to Macron's proposals on ending Sentsov's hunger strike, according to a French statement. In their letter, the group of mostly European directors, including French-Swiss film legend Jean-Luc Godard, accused Moscow of trying to silence Sentsov. "Today, a filmmmaker is dying because he is a dissident," they said comparing his plight to that of dissident novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent seven years in a Soviet gulag. Citing claims by Sentsov's lawyers that he has lost 30 kilogrammes since the start of his fast on May 14, the signatories of the letter said to let him die "would be to accept that one can be killed for one's ideas, opinions and stances." Sentsov's fate has become a cause celebre in the West, with Johnny Depp and Stephen King among the celebrities campaigning for his release, alongside Western governments. His lawyer said Friday he was "ready to die" but Russian authorities have consistently played down fears over his health. In a statement on Saturday, the prison service said he was "not seen to be underweight and a worsening in his state of health is not observed." It added that it was "taking all the necessary measures", including giving him nutritional supplements to protect his health, which it described as "satisfactory". Sentsov himself has refused to be taken to hospital. Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov is seen here at the "White Bear" colony in Siberia, in a handout picture released by the office of Russia's High Commissioner for Human Rights on August 9
AUBURN  Unions representing the city's firefighters and police officers support the Democratic candidate in the 50th Senate District race.

Auburn Police Local 195 and Auburn Firefighters Union Local 1446 endorsed John Mannion for state Senate. Mannion, D-Westvale, is running to succeed retiring Republican state Sen. John DeFrancisco.

The Republican candidate in the race is Onondaga County Comptroller Bob Antonacci.

Auburn Police Local 195 met with Mannion nearly a month ago, according to Chris Major, a member of the union and a school resource officer in the Auburn Enlarged City School District.

Major said Mannion, an Advanced Placement biology teacher at West Genesee High School in Camillus, understands the public sector and "speaks the same language we do."

"He's kind of a breath of fresh air," Major said. "I think he'll do an excellent job. He's a man of the people."

Sean Corcoran, president of the Auburn Firefighters Union Local 1446, agreed. He lauded Mannion for his commitment to being an independent voice for the 50th district.

"It's great that we're sending someone (to Albany) with labor, but we're also sending somebody down there that's not a part of anybody's party politics," Corcoran said.

At a press conference Monday at the Phoenix Building in Auburn, Mannion reacted to the endorsements.

"I have great respect for public employees, especially those who keep us safe," he said. "We need to value these employees and we trust them with our lives and our safety. I value those people myself. I value them to protect my children and to protect my family."

The endorsements may give Mannion a boost in Auburn and in the nearby Cayuga County towns in the district. The race is expected to be one of the most competitive state Senate campaigns in New York.

DeFrancisco has held the state Senate since his election in 1992. Before that, former state Sen. Tarky Lombardi was in office for a quarter century. Mannion hopes to end Republican control of the seat.

The race is considered a top priority for both parties because of the ongoing fight for majority control of the state Senate. Democrats and Republicans each have 31 members in the 63-seat chamber. A New York City Democrat, state Sen. Simcha Felder, caucuses with the Republicans.

If Mannion wins in November, it could give Democrats the 32nd seat they need to win the majority. If Antonacci wins, Republicans will retain control of the chamber.

Online producer Robert Harding can be reached at (315) 282-2220 or robert.harding@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @robertharding.

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LOS ANGELESAdult film star Wesley Woods says he and his best friend were the victims of a violent assault on the street last week just because they are gay.

In a one-minute video Woods posted on his Twitter page on Saturday, Woods tells his fans that he and his friend were assaulted on Wednesday, August 8th, while walking down the street in West Hollywood.

My best friend and I were brutally attacked by three straight, white, hetero men in West Hollywood, California. Why, you might ask? For being gay, Woods says in the video. Now we werent technically being gay at that moment. We were just walking down the sidewalk. You see, being gay is the act. Thats when you have a dick in your ass. We just happened to be walking down the sidewalk minding our own business.

Woods continues, Im not posting this video for sympathy. Im posting this video for awareness. Youre not always safe in the places that you think you are. Always have someone next to you. Always be aware of your surroundings. And be prepared to fight for your life. Im not saying that is a first means and is always necessary, but in some cases it is. I wish you love. I wish you happiness and I hope if you guys see me out this weekend baring my scars youll say hello.

Woods went to the emergency room at Cedars Sinai hospital after the fight, where he received 12 stitches on the inside and outside of his lip. He also has a black eye from the altercation; his friend suffered several bruises but both are recovering.

Im country. Im redneck. I grew up a little rough. Im OK, Woods tells AVN. Physically and emotionally, Im still processing it, but Im good. I feel like theres a little like PTSD going on. Ive been real jumpy at just really random things. I walk everywhere around LA. The other day someone got out of their car and it scared me half to death. There was a plastic bag blowing down the sidewalk and that noise startled me. But Im good, I thinkMy lip hurts. My ego is a little sore. I wish I couldve whooped their fucking asses.

Woods met with the police while in the ER and filed a full report about the incident but the suspects had not been arrested at post time.

I dont really think theres much that they can do, Woods says. I dont think [the assailants] are from LA. I dont. I really dont know what there is to do. My lip will heal up. Im fine. My message was more of just like, please protect yourself, be smart and be aware. Theres still a war going on with people and gays. I dont really know how else to put it.

Whether theyre coming into clubs and shooting us up or now theyre in our neighborhoods. If you cant believe that happened here [in West Hollywood] of all places, thats the problem.

Woods, a five-time GayVN Award nominee, won the Cybersocket Surfer Choice Award for Best Porn Star in January.

In addition to his career as a performer, Woods is also a stand-up comedian originally from East Texas. He has taken his comedy act to various clubs in LA, Vegas hotels and special events across the country before he started his porn career in 2015. He also has reached the finals of LA's Funniest Comic.

Woods explains that the trouble started when he and his friend were walking back to his friends apartment after trying to go to McDonalds on Sunset Boulevard.

We were on Crescent Heights in between Sunset and Fountain and it was about 2:30-3 a.m. in the morning, Woods recalls. We had just left some of the bars in West Hollywood. I wanted some McDonalds, I was hungry. Instead of going our normal way we cut up to go to Sunset.

LA people know that Sunset is very hetero; its very different than Santa Monica Boulevard. McDonalds happened to be closed and we were walking back to my friends house, which is just two blocks downsouth of the McDonalds. And theres three guysstraight obviouslyout-of-towners. And they were walking towards the McDonalds where we were at.

Woods says the guys were yelling homophobic slurs at them and then began to follow them.

I reacted and I told them, Shut the fuck up. Get the fuck out of our neighborhood. And that heightened things. So they continued to follow us, Woods says.

This was so fucking weird. Theyre walking directly behind us and if you were to look at us you would think that we were walking together. Thats how close they were to us. And there was no one on the street. It was dead quiet. It was a Wednesday night in the middle of the week. Looking back I now know that they were sizing us up.

How the altercation started is they got in between me and my friend, kind of separating us. It was a predatorial movelike separating someone from the herd.

I knew we were in trouble as soon as that happened. Your instincts kick in. Something felt off, I could feel it.

Woods, who stands 6 feet, 180 pounds, says the two bigger guys jumped him and the third guy tackled his friend.

Thats when shit was on, he says. It all happened so quick and it was terrifying. My lip was probably cut right at the beginning of the fight. One of them got in a very good hit. I was dazed and startledit knocked me out a bit. So I was trying to gain consciousness and theyre hitting me and kicking me and my reality is holy shit this is not going very well for me. But in my mind Im thinking about my friend. I dont know how or why but that moment and that memory will stick with me forever. It was so survivalist.

It was soI dont know how to even explain itlike holy shit this isnt going well for me, but whats happening to him? Whats really hard to get over is in that moment I couldnt do anything for someone I love. I wish I couldve done more for both of us.

Woods continues, But we ended up fighting and gaining control of the situation to the point where one of their friends ends up running and there were two still fighting. Then the second one leaves and Im on top of the third guy and he ends up running and fleeing the scene, too. Then I turn to immediately to check on my friend once they ran away. I initially thought I lost my tooth. That was how bad it was.

He says the brawl happened right in front of the steps to his friends apartment building.

I dont think they were prepared for us to fight like we did, Woods says. I really truly believe that in my heart.

My mama raised me that you dont you ever start a fight but if someone lays a hand on you, then you do whatever it takes and I was fighting for my goddamn life.

My hand is sore, my knees are scraped up. His [are], too. There is blood all outside of the apartment building from me. Im glad we werent drunk. We had been celebrating one of my friends performing a drag show and we wanted some goddamn fast food.

Woods had to cancel one shoot on Friday but is maintaining a positive attitude about the whole incident.

Im a very happy person, very positive and optimistic, Woods says. Im full of life and love. I cant not do that, especially for people who do pay attention to me and do follow my life. I cant hideor they win.

Im working through forgiving them right nowthats kind of where Im at. Ive been writing the past few days about why I love them and why I forgive them and why they dont understand who we are. I dont know them so I cant say theyre bad people. I think they made a very bad decision.

I truly try to live a life connected to the light and to god. I cant allow my thoughts to be negative or filled with hatred. Ive always been told what you think about and what you talk about you bring about. Thats from my mom. She had a crazy life. Things happen in your life for a reason, for a purpose. Im grateful for the opportunity. I feel alive. It couldve been much worse. Im grateful to have this human experience and grow and learn from it and hopefully others will, too."

Woods adds, Its too easy to slip and think why me? And be pissed. In reality with good and bad theres always purpose in it and you have to find the meaning. Thats why were here. If youre not doing that youre not living; youre not actively partaking in life. Im grateful to be as conscious as I am in this body in this present day. I want to spread the love and spread the awareness.
Trump administration promises more subsidies but won't say who'll get them, as tobacco growers fear loss of biggest consumer market: China

North Carolina's largest industry is riddled with angst.As China tangles with the President Trump over trade, North Carolina growers fear a collapse in demand, and say that even Trump's proposed $12 billion boost in farm subsidies won't stanch the billions they would bleed in a prolonged trade war.said Larry Wooten, president of the N.C. Farm Bureau.There's one other problem with the proposed subsidy: Government programs already exist to protect farmers, said Daren Bakst, Heritage Foundation senior research fellow.said Bakst, a former researcher at the John Locke Foundation.Agriculture and agricultural products were, as of 2016, an $84 billion industry in North Carolina.The government has been subsidizing farmers since the Great Depression and the droughts of the 1930s ravaged agriculture. The early programs, which stabilized prices by paying farmers not to farm, were meant as a temporary measure, but the programs have only evolved over the decades instead of going extinct.Today, three programs exist to give farmers a safety net, but critics say that net more closely resembles a "layer cake" of subsidies that could cost taxpayers $20 billion a year, according to a study by the Cato Institute.By far the most important program is crop insurance subsidies, in which taxpayers foot more than half of the cost of insurance premiums for some farmers. This program alone has cost $83 billion since 1995, not including the payments to crop insurance companies, according to the Environmental Working Group.Congress created the other two programs in 2014 to replace the controversial direct payment system. Farmers now choose between Price Loss Coverage that pays farmers if prices drop below a federally set floor price, and the Agricultural Risk Coverage that uses county averages to guarantee a certain revenue.Bakst said.Almost all of that money goes to the biggest farms in the United States. The aid is tethered to the acreage and crops farmed, so the largest producers receive the largest subsidies.said Craig Cox, senior vice president of Agriculture and Natural Resources at EWG.In North Carolina, Uncle Sam doled out more than $8 million to just one farm, while the next 15 farms got more than $5 million each since 1995. That's not counting crop insurance payments, which are far less transparent but far more substantial, the EWG says.Bakst said.Farmers disagree. They say that without crop insurance they could never get a loan to put crops in the ground because of the risk associated with farming.said John Fleming, president of the Soybean Producers Association.Most farms in America aren't receiving subsidies. Only six commodities qualify for federal help, and so 94 percent of the payments went to crops that only account for 28 percent of agricultural receipts since 2014, according to the Congressional Research Service The White House has not disclosed details about how the $12 billion will be distributed.Cox said.Cox was also skeptical that the farm subsidies would be a one-time payment.Cox said.But if the subsidies don't last, the loss of trade from a prolonged trade war might. It took years for U.S. farmers to enter foreign markets, but trade deals could collapse within months.Wooten said.Industries have already started wrangling over who deserves federal tariff relief, sparking concerns that more federal bailouts might be forthcoming. Maine Democrats are demanding aid for fisheries, and in North Carolina, even agriculture interests are divided.The proposed subsidies don't include tobacco farms, which is the state's top cash crop. The tobacco industry relies heavily on China. That country has more smokers than there are U.S. citizens, and North Carolina growers exported $156 million in leaf tobacco to China in 2017.For the state's tobacco farmers, the trade war has felt like "shark week," as growers scramble to hold onto their Chinese customers, said Tobacco Growers Association of N.C. Executive Vice President Graham Boyd.Boyd said.
Should Beaufort County's commissioners be resolved to ask the federal government to defend our Southern Border by ending the Biden /Harris Open Border policy in regards to that one border that is intentionally made OPEN?

Yes, Illegal Migrants are a huge expense to local governments.

No, the cost of Undocumented Immigrants is insignificant in our providing a pathway for the "Browning of America".
Main issue isn't Second Amendment but First, which prevents prior restraint on speech by government, legal analysts say

Some First Amendment experts say a federal judge in Seattle erred in blocking a company from publishing blueprints for plastic guns, and N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein is wrong for supporting the decision because it's an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech.Stein posted on Twitter, and copied his post on the state Department of Justice website Tuesday, July 31:Ferguson was among attorneys general in eight states and the District of Columbia who sued the Trump administration to block Texas resident Cody Wilson's Defense Distributed nonprofit organization from putting plans online to make plastic guns by computer download and 3D printer.U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik, a President Clinton appointee, issued a temporary restraining order barring release of the technical plans. He said it would cause irreparable harm, but acknowledged free speech issues are at play. He set a hearing for Aug. 10.Stein's office didn't respond to attempts to get further information about his stance in the case, which critics say is unprecedented, as it seeks to stop publication of material that has been publicly available for years.Raleigh-based media lawyer Mark Prak, a seasoned defender of First Amendment issues, said Wednesday. He thinks Lasnik's ruling was ill-advised.before it is made except in a few very narrowly defined circumstances, Prak said.He said the fundamental precepts of American constitutional law disfavor prior restraints on speech.he said.Prak said this case is no different than murder-for-hire publications, textbooks giving instructions for anti-social activities, or magazines and social media postings on how to build car bombs or pressure-cooker explosives.While the speech is protected,Prak said.The Constitution's Framers understoodPrak said.he said.Greg Wallace, a constitutional law professor at Campbell University School of Law, agreed.Wallace said.He said officials in anti-gun states judge-shopped to find someone to rule their way, and Lasnik quickly issued his order.Wallace said.He said the concerns about 3D-printed guns are overblown.Wallace said.Wallace said. It's always been lawful for people to make 3D-printed guns at home, subject to federal laws prohibiting making guns that are undetectable by metal scanners. A federal license is required to make guns that are sold or distributed to others.Wallace said.Jeff Powell, a law professor at Duke University, where he is director of its First Amendment Clinic, believes relevant provisions of the Undetectable Firearms Act making publication of blueprints illegal are constitutional.said Powell, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice.That case involved an ordinance passed by the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates requiring a license to sell marijuana bongs, pipes, and rolling papers, and banning advertising that promoted illegal activity. All eight Supreme Court justices who heard the case upheld the village ordinance.on the blueprints issue, Powell said.Powell said.It's necessary to consider limitations on what is considered speech, he said.Powell said.John Dinan, a political science professor and expert in state constitutional law at Wake Forest University, said the Defense Distributed case is complicated.Dinan said.State attorneys general increasingly are playing a key role on everything from immigration to environmental policy. Plaintiffs in the Defense Distributed case filed lawsuits without success in federal district courts around the country in recent days before the Seattle judge issued his nationwide order.Dinan said.Dinan said.
Lawmakers, FDA, and state ag department wrong to suggest consumers can't tell difference between plant-based beverages and dairy products

"These are efforts of a powerful industry to use the levers of government to suppress the [claims] of the makers of plant-based milk - that their products are healthier, better for the environment, and do not require the harmful exploitation of millions of cows or other 'hooved mammals.'"

We've had no shortage of goofiness at the General Assembly in the past few weeks. And we're not just talking about the recently convened short session, which seems to have little purpose other than trying to fix embarrassing mistakes in the election process the same General Assembly has made over the past two years.Meantime, federal regulators are looking at a controversy dealt with in the General Assembly's farm bill regarding non-dairy beverages labeled milk. And state Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler got in on the act.The farm bill became law in late June over Gov. Roy Cooper's veto. It includes a provision defining milk, for commercial labeling purposes, asHooved mammals include, generally speaking, the family groups of cattle and sheep, camels, deer, and horses.It bans "the sale of plant-based beverages mislabeled as milk," including beverages made from soybeans, almonds, or coconuts (my emphasis). For example, Blue Diamond Growers' Almond Breeze would have to be labeled "almond beverage" rather than "almond milk." DanoneWave couldn't market its Silk beverage as "soy milk." It would become "soy beverage."This is yet another example of lawmakers using the coercive power of government to protect a politically powerful - though important - industry by planting irrational fears that greedy businesses are deceiving consumers. It's protectionism based on an argument that individual North Carolinians are too dumb to know what they're buying.(Full disclosure: My late mother grew up on a farm in Catawba County and I have several cousins in the dairy business there.)The Food and Drug Administration has become interested, as well. For years, the FDA has defined milk as "lacteal secretion ... of cows," but it hasn't enforced the rule. It may start.Commissioner Scott Gottlieb launched a hearing process in late July to crack down on plant-based beverages "masquerading" as milk. He's not going after goat milk or sheep milk, even though they violate the federal rule just as much as Almond Breeze and Silk do. Plant-based beverages, however, seem to pose some special threat.Troxler issued a press release Wednesday, urging Gottlieb to get with the program.The dairy industry's justifications for enforcement don't hold, er, water. The packages of these beverages list the ingredients. For original Almond Breeze, they begin with filtered water, almonds, and evaporated cane juice.And anyone who's seen a Tarzan movie, or endured an episode of "Gilligan's Island," should know that coconut milk doesn't come from an animal.In 2013, a federal judge in California got it right. He dismissed "with prejudice" a class-action lawsuit in which the plaintiffs tried to enforce the FDA definition. U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti threw out the case, saying,And don't get me started about peanut butter or root beer.If the FDA decides to make a big deal about milk labels, the rulemaking process may take at least a year. And litigation will follow if the feds place any new restrictions on plant-based beverages.Cornell law professor Michael Dorf thinks any ban on "mislabeled" milk products could be tossed as a violation of the First Amendment. For the legal website Justia , Dorf noted the regulation isn't an attempt to protect public safety or even a plausible argument about fraud.Instead, Dorf wrote,If the state's law or the federal rule is enforced, the only thing we know for certain is that lawyers will be paid. And well. And since the government's involved, taxpayers will get the tab.This is America, after all.
Plaintiffs say state hasn't kept up payments from a 2008 court order for school technology spending

DURHAM The N.C. School Board Association and school districts are suing several state agencies to extend a 2008 court order.The order requires the state to hand over nearly $730 million in civil fines and penalties to N.C. public schools for their technology needs. About 20 school districts joined NCSBA in filing the complaint.The plaintiffs announced the lawsuit Wednesday, Aug. 1, at George Watts Montessori Magnet School.Minnie Forte-Brown, president of NCSBA, said.In 2008, Superior Court Judge Howard Manning issued a court order requiring the state to transfer into the Civil Penalty and Forfeiture Fund more than $747 million collected by state agencies between 1996 and 2005. The General Assembly created the fund in 2005 and required the money to go toward school technology.School districts have received $18 million of the $747 million owed.With the 2008 order scheduled to expire in August, NCSBA filed a complaint to extend the deadline.Forte-Brown said.Forte-Brown, who sits on the Durham school board, said of the 21 computers in George Watts' computer lab, 20 are about 10 years old.Forte-Brown said.Rod Malone, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said his clients are willing to work with the state to develop a payment plan. Once the money is collected into forfeiture fund, each school district would get its share, which would be based on student population.Since the original court order, a handful of lawmakers tried to pass legislation to address the issue, but the bills never gained traction. Rep. Jason Saine, R-Lincoln, filed House Bill 554 on April 5, 2017. That bill would have allowed for over collection of fines and penalties toward payment of the 2008 court order. H.B. 554 failed to move out of the House K-12 education committee. Phoebe's Law , which would have created a new fund from speeding fines in school zones, was introduced several times. It failed, too.The 2008 court order came during the Great Recession. Leanne Winner, director of governmental relations at NCSBA, said the organization knew then it would be difficult to get the money but was willing to be patient. The economy has improved but the state still hasn't paid.Winner on March 29 wrote the General Assembly's senior leadership asking for cooperation in reaching a settlement. The letter went unanswered.Joseph Kyzer, spokesman for House Speaker Rep. Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, placed the blame on Democratic lawmakers for the problem.Kyzer wrote in an emailed statement.Bill D'Elia, spokesman for Senate Leader Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said they haven't seen the filing yet and will need time to review it.D'Elia said in an emailed statement.
Sometimes things happen slowly and then all at once, like love or bankruptcy. Sometimes they just happen suddenly, like a car accident or hitting the jackpot on a slot machine. A big win can mask small failures, and a big loss can wipe out years of steady gains. Casinos and insurance companies are built on earning enough small gains to offset large payouts. Nicholas Nassim Taleb first described this in his book Fooled by Randomness and the rest of his Incerto series.Our modern world in some ways is the result of a series of bets with some significant changes in fortune, but enough good over the past 500 years to produce standards of living unimagined in human history. What we consider extreme poverty ($1.90 per day) was the average income for our ancestors. The order that made this progress possible is fragile and rare in the universe. Disorder, chaos, and entropy are the norm. Civilization is fragile. Michael J. Totten attributed part of the popularity of The Walking Dead and other zombie fiction to the common understanding of this fragility.Social movements of the past decade, from the Tea Party and Occupy to Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and the 2016 election have been the political manifestation of popular responses to this fragility. Each threatened group has gathered in response to challenge the unfairly obtained power of its persecutors. Elite responses have spanned the range from confusion to contempt. Neither the Republican nor Democratic establishment could find a way to contain Donald Trump, and so he is a year and a half into his presidency. Academics and experts still tend to see Trump as an aberration instead of the sudden culmination of gradually accumulating grievances.Nowhere is the gradual nature of Trump's rise clearer than in the sphere of international relations. The post-World War II order began to unravel in 1971 when the United States abandoned the gold standard. Despite the Reagan reversal of American malaise, Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers became the touchstone for America's imperial overreach that made a case for taking a peace dividend after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Even the "Washington consensus" of the value of free markets and free trade was accompanied by bailouts of developing countries and American bankers at the expense of assembly line workers. Given the scale of time international scholars consider, it is not surprising that they are more attuned to the tectonic shifts that erupted in the emergence of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Brookings Institution scholars Robert Kagan and Thomas Wright recently discussed the crumbling foundations of that world order.The gradual erosion of solid ground is also noticeable at the state level. North Carolina's past brushes with fiscal disaster led to the creation of the Local Government Commission, the Savings Reserve, and an obsessive pride in being one of only a dozen states with Triple-A ratings from all three credit rating agencies. The 2007 financial crisis, still recent enough for many in government but ancient history to a growing number of voters and financial professionals, provided a stark lesson in how quickly markets can contradict rating agency assurances of safety.The Pew Charitable Trusts pointed to the Local Government Commission's successful history of keeping North Carolina's counties, cities, and towns solvent, but State Auditor Beth Wood and Revenue Secretary Ronald Penny recently warned their fellow commissioners about the increasing financial risks smaller municipalities are taking. Similarly, the state pension system is among the five healthiest in any state, but State Treasurer Dale Folwell has repeatedly warned that the pension liability is understated, that retiree health care costs exceed $30 billion, and that failure to get both of these debts under control could harm the state's credit rating and the government services citizens depend upon.The good work of the General Assembly since 2011 ensured that government grew at a sustainable rate, but it is also a tenuous proposition. Their work has been aided by a good institutional structure with a single committee in charge of spending that is separate from the committee on taxes and a strong, balanced budget requirement. They have added strong institutions such as eliminating the threat of government shutdown if there is no budget by July 1 and setting baseline budgets set to the previous year's spending instead of its programs and activities.Good habits and good institutions can disappear overnight. Nassim Taleb has explained that is no good to say all swans are white once you see a black swan. It is not pessimistic or doomsaying to point out cracks in the foundation, but instead, it is a necessary diagnostic step. It takes work and luck to keep something good going. We in North Carolina have it very good and have been very lucky. We have work to do if we are to remain as lucky.
In May, The Chronicle of Higher Education asked four academics from across the country to weigh in on the "adjunct crisis." The results were predictable, with most of the blame directed at the usual suspects: bean-counting administrators, complacent, tenured faculty members, tight-fisted state legislators, and, of course, those evil Republicans.Solutions generally involved pressuring colleges and universities to fork over more money for tenure-track positions-irrespective of enrollment and at the expense of students and taxpayers.Here's an idea that wasn't considered: What if we awarded fewer PhDs?A scarcity of humanities PhDs, rather than a glut, would create more demand, drive up wages, and place institutions in a position where they have to offer full-time jobs with benefits in order to attract decent candidates. The adjunct "crisis," to the extent that it is actually a crisis, exists primarily because the market is flooded. Institutions pay adjunct wages because they can.Almost 10 years after William Pannapacker's watershed column in The Chronicle, aptly titled "Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go," the message seems not to have gotten through. According to a 2017 article in Inside Higher Ed, the number of humanities PhDs awarded has increased each year since 2007 even as the market has steadily shrunk.We must stop perpetuating the fantasy that any significant percentage of humanities PhD candidates will ever find secure, full-time faculty positions.Yet there are still those like my fellow columnist at The Chronicle, Fordham University English professor Leonard Cassuto, who promote the idea that more people should pursue doctorates in the humanities. In a February column , "The Grief of the Ex-Academic," Cassuto asserted, "The wider world needs more PhDs."To be fair, Cassuto is talking in that piece mainly to people who already have PhDs but can't find full-time teaching gigs. He recommends that they peddle their degrees elsewhere and castigates graduate programs for creating a climate in which a tenure-track faculty position is the only acceptable outcome for PhD recipients. I applaud him for that and am quite sure his heart is in the right place.Unfortunately, Cassuto perpetuates another myth: that there is a significant job market for humanities PhDs outside of academia, with corporations and other entities lining up to hire people with doctorates in English, history, and the arts.If that were true, we wouldn't constantly be having these conversations about "what to do with your PhD." Corporations would be snatching people up before the robing ceremony was concluded, the way they do now with top business school graduates.Please note that I'm talking about PhDs in the humanities, not in STEM fields. There clearly is a market outside of academia for PhD-trained scientists capable of conducting genuine research. That's why graduates from top programs are routinely courted by drug companies, technology firms, and government agencies. (Unfortunately, inside academia , they don't fare much better than their humanities counterparts.)But note the term "genuine research." Much of the "research" published in humanities fields these days, as Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein revealed in his 2009 expose , is essentially worthless: redundant, derivative, virtually unread (not to mention unreadable). Its primary purpose is not to expand our horizons but to bolster the tenure and promotion bids of the hordes of humanities professors already in place.I'm not saying all humanities research is worthless. A handful of scholars are doing truly groundbreaking work, unearthing previously unknown information and/or changing our understanding of what we already "know." But most humanities "scholars" are not in that category-nor do we need them to be. As Bauerlein suggests, there isn't enough groundbreaking work left for them to do, even if all of them were genuinely original thinkers capable of doing it; most aren't.Okay, so not all humanities professors are going to be cutting-edge researchers. But what about their roles as teachers? Don't we still need lots of teachers?Unfortunately, that too turns out to be problematic, as bachelor's degrees in the humanities have been steadily declining since 2012. With fewer majors, many departments are kept alive primarily by the required "service courses" in their area, like first- and second-year writing, history, and appreciation courses. And, as I pointed out in this essay a few years ago, you don't need a PhD to teach those courses.All of this is causing humanities PhDs to look elsewhere for steady, (relatively) high-paying jobs and giving rise to a new genre of literature on alternatives to academic careers, or "alt-ac." As Cassuto suggests, for those who already possess humanities PhDs but have been unable to establish a viable career in academia (i.e., the majority), considering an alt-ac career is certainly a good idea, if not a necessity.But does that mean it's a good idea to earn a PhD in the humanities in order to land a job in the alt-ac market? In a word, no.For one thing, the alt-ac jobs those humanities PhDs might be able to find generally don't require a PhD-nor does having a PhD appear to offer any particular advantage in the eyes of employers. Yes, PhD-level training, generally speaking, equips people with superior thinking, writing, and research skills-along with, all too often, convictions of superiority. Except for the last, all are useful in most professions.But people with humanities MAs have those same skills, if perhaps not to the same extent (although that's debatable). So do most people with humanities bachelor's degrees. Or master's or bachelor's degrees in other fields. Or law degrees.For non-academic employers, there's little value added in a doctorate. PhD education prepares someone to conduct highly focused, long-term research in an extremely narrow field. With rare exceptions, like museum curator, that's not what non-academic employers (outside of the sciences) are looking for. They need people who can think broadly and communicate in ways non-academics can understand (something else humanities PhDs often struggle with). We may mock the term "over-qualified," but sometimes it really is apt.Of the thousands of people now in humanities graduate programs, only about 25 percent , if that, will ever become tenured professors-and that number is likely to shrink as tenured lines disappear while the ranks of PhDs continue to swell. The rest, if they remain on their present course, are doomed to become life-long adjuncts. Why should they invest all that time, effort, and money (including average debt at graduation of over $22,000) into an academic career that, odds are, will never materialize?For the vast majority, William Pannapacker's decade-old dictum still rings true: Just don't go to graduate school in the humanities. Any other advice is frankly irresponsible.
What about the likes of Palesa Mosa  who was arrested as a 13-year-old pupil in 1976 for being an activist for freedom, then jailed, tortured, and robbed of an education? Will the expropriation of land improve her life socially and economically? Will her child, who cant go to university because national student financial aid funding is restricted to public universities, get those funds?

But, putting aside the rule of law and other complex implications of expropriation, is that promise real or an illusion?

Today, one of the pillars of hope for historically disadvantaged people centres on the ANCs much-hyped promise to confiscate land without compensation, which some believe is their way out of extreme poverty and inequality.

So it is fantastic to see South Africans riding on the pedestal of hope again, if I may borrow from President Thabo Mbekis address on taking over from the first democratic president of SA, Nelson Mandela, in 1999.

The proverb "Hope does not kill" has universal resonance. Without hope we have no strength to carry on, and people risk turning on each other  a Lord of the Flies scenario.

Mosa is a potent symbol of those left behind. I met her on June 16 last year, at her former place of incarceration, the womens jail at Constitution Hill. Today, she works there, selling cheap cosmetics.

Having told her story at the Thuma Intergenerational Democracy Dialogue (#Demologue), Mosa said she feels betrayed. Some days she goes to bed without food when she hasnt been able to make any sales. With tears in her eyes, she said: "We fought for freedom but only got democracy. We are not free. Poverty is the new pass."

We fought for freedom but only got democracy. We are not free. Poverty is the new pass

The participants applauded approvingly. You and I know that democracy should incorporate freedom  but thats not how many who are left behind feel.

The land promise reminds me of a fable my mother told me when I was young. A poor family in a village where people were dying due to famine and a bitterly cold winter decided to travel back to the wifes native village at her suggestion. Her selling point was that there, "kudliwa imbuthuma"  that is, the people eat "imbuthuma".

Fuelled by hope, the starving family made the great trek. When they got there, the wifes family welcomed them into a warm room with a big fire at the centre. They waited for ages. Eventually, the husband asked when the "mbuthuma" would be served. He was then told that the "mbuthuma" was the fire; the village had no food.

Im not entirely sure what I was meant to learn from the story, but what I took away was that hope carries us through adversity  but hope premised on an illusion can be exceptionally dangerous.

Back to land: talking of expropriation without compensation buys government time and, maybe, votes from those looking for a way out of poverty and inequality.

Tardy pace

Its not debatable that land restitution must be expedited. But is the constitution to blame for the tardy pace? Section 25 currently requires fair compensation  the test for which incorporates how the land was acquired originally.

But its not true that the block to land reform is due to the lack of constitutional authority to expropriate land without compensation. The reality is that government has failed to implement section 25, and failed to align the law with the constitution. As it stands, the state expropriates land, including from historically disadvantaged communities, for public purposes such as roads, but not for restitution.

In that context, is it a meaningful promise for the ruling party to focus simply on acquiring land, without laying out a comprehensive socioeconomic inclusion strategy? Or is it simply a distraction? Could the land promise be the proverbial "mbuthuma" or even worse for the likes of Mosa?

If it is the latter, what happens when the people discover they have been left behind? What happens when, five years later, Mosa and her daughters potential has still not been freed and her life improved? After all, as the UN Global Compact puts it, none of us can claim to enjoy sustainable peace and development as long as there is injustice somewhere.

Madonsela is chair of social justice at Stellenbosch University and founder of the Thuma Foundation

In https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/opinion/on-my-mind/2018-03-15-thuli-madonsela-sas-land-fable/
Davao CityThe City Government of Davao looks forward to a bigger tribal village in the future that will showcase the culture of the 11 tribes of the city. City Tourism Operations Office head Gene Rose Tecson said Davao is now targeting a cultural center structure that will preserve and showcase the culture of citys indigenous peoples. In the future, what we hope is to really have a Kadayawan tribal village that is huge where we can really set up a cultural center, and instead of just one house per tribe maybe we can make it a small community, Tecson said. The city is now looking for a property where the cultural center can be built, she added. The Kadayawan Village has attracted local and international tourists and has become a tourist destination in the city. The NCCA (National Commission for Culture and the Arts) is very much interested with the tribal village and they want to turn it into a hub for culture and peace, Tecson said.Currently, the tribal village is located inside Magsaysay Park, with a house showcasing each tribe. Tecson said the Kadayawan Village has improved significantly a year after it was established. This year, visitors have more interaction with the tribal residents and can even try their traditional clothes. After its establishment during last years Kadaywan Festival, the village has become a primary tourist destination in the city, she said. It also exhibits how peaceful Davao City is through the unity of the 11 tribes.
Customs agents seized P125 million worth of smuggled rice at the Manila International Container Port on Monday. The 50,000 sacks of rice came from Thailand and were processed by customs broker Diosdado Santiago. The shipment arrived on June 14 without the necessary import permit from the National Food Authority, Bureau of Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapena said in a statement. The shipment was consigned to Sta. Rosa Farm Products Corp., a rice importer with a pending case before the Department of Justice for supposedly importing 200 containers of rice without the required documents, Lapena said. He said the rice would be auctioned off after it is tested and found fit for human consumption. The Bureau of Customs has filed smuggling charges against five traders and warehouse owners over a foiled attempt to spirit into the country agricultural products, fake branded cigarettes, rice, sugar, used clothing and other highly taxable items.Lapena said the filing of charges against the traders and importers is in line with the strict directive of President Rodrigo Duterte to intensify the drive against smugglers and violators of customs laws. Charged were Justine Lim, operator of the warehouse located at Tondo, Manila where various fake cosmetic products and fake perfumes such as Ralph Lauren, Hugo Boss, Polo Sport, Georgio Armani, and Clinique Happy were found; Erlinda D. Rico a.ka. Linda Chua, owner of the other three warehouses at Toctocan St., and Kanlaon St. in Quezon City, and Sta. Cruz, Manila where counterfeit Marlboro, Fortune, Mighty and Winston brand cigarettes, Silka products, Cetaphil, Knorr pork cubes, and Knorr Sinigang sa Sampaloc mix were discovered by customs agents. Vito Barcelo Also charged were Kaidar Ismael and Rowena Pasiloc. Ismael was the owner of Al-Khong Trading, while Pasiloc was a licensed customs broker. The total amount of seized fake products amounted to more than P206 million, Lapena said. Vito Barcelo
Fatal Food Poisoning: English Mom Dies After Eating Uncooked Chicken in Greece

"Natalie started to eat hers and as she cut the chicken the chicken oozed red blood to which point I commented it looked bloody." Not the start you want to a meal while on vacation.

That was widower Stewart Rawnsley, describing food from a restaurant buffet in Corfu, Greece. His late wife, Natalie, immediately returned the chicken for another piece, but not before consuming a bite. That bite would turn out to be deadly, as Natalie's condition deteriorated from food poisoning to fatal over the course of that night. Natalie Rawnsley passed away less than 48 hours after consuming the uncooked chicken -- so what happened?

The Wrong Genes

"It seems like Mrs. Rawnsley had the wrong genes -- to put it crudely," infections expert Professor Sebastien Lucas told the Hertfordshire Mercury. "It depends on what your genes are. Assuming it is an E-Coli infection -- coming from uncooked chicken seems a very reasonable theory."

"There's a tipping point when it starts producing DIC," Lucas added. "By definition, once it starts doing that, you are doomed." DIC refers to disseminated intravascular coagulation, which happens when proteins that control blood clotting become overactive, causing small blood clots in the blood vessels and cutting off the normal blood supply to organs such as the liver, brain, or kidneys. Rawnsley was initially diagnosed with gastroenteritis, inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract that can be caused by ingestion of E. coli bacteria, and can be linked to DIC.

The Wrong Restaurant

"I screamed out and her brother screamed out," Stewart Rawnsley told a coroner's court, after Natalie's heart rate monitor became weaker in the hospital. "We were outside the door and they were in there five or ten minutes and then the same nurse came out and apologised as there wasn't anything more she could do, and Natalie died."

She had been moved to a hospital in Corfu after her condition worsened overnight. Stewart says Natalie started throwing up in the hotel bathroom around 3 a.m. and was still sick at 11 a.m. the next day. "The second doctor said because she had been sick for so long she needed additional medical help so she was going to the medical centre a number of kilometres away from the hotel," Rawnsley said. Doctors allegedly wanted to fly Natalie to a hospital on the Greek mainland, which had better facilities, her condition worsened, making travel impossible.

There's no word on whether Rawnsley will take legal action against the hotel that served the raw chicken. But lawsuits can be filed to hold restaurants accountable after food poisoning incidents, including wrongful death claims if the incident proves fatal.

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The European Parliament has passed a resolution calling on the European Commission (the EU's civil service) to craft rules that will severely limit planned obsolescence in electronics by forcing manufacturers to design products to facilitate repair by third parties, extend first-part warranties, warrant and support software, label products with an estimate of their overall life-expectancy, and publicly track and disclose how long products last in the field before breaking down.



The European Parliament also hopes the resolution will also stimulate job creation, because it should result in more independent repair services. The second-hand market should also benefit from the resolution, because products will get a new lease on life.



EU wants to tackle planned obsolescence [Yoni Van Looveren/Retail Detail]

(Image: Ekolist, CC-BY-SA)
I'm a proud Canadian. I'm proud that my nation took a stand against the human rights practices in Saudi Arabia. Maybe you've read about it. Earlier this week, Canada's Minster of Foreign Affairs tweeted that our nation was less than impressed with Saudi Arabia's arrest of a woman's right activist. It's a sentiment echoed by Human Rights Watch and the United Nations.

From The Guardian:

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch said Saudi Arabia had arrested the women's rights activists Samar Badawi and Nassima al-Sadah. The arrests were the latest in a government crackdown on activists, clerics and journalists. More than a dozen women's rights activists have been targeted since May. Most of those arrested campaigned for the right to drive and an end to the country's male guardianship system, which requires women to obtain the consent of a male relative for major decisions. On Friday, Canada said it was gravely concerned about the arrests, including Badawi's. Her brother Raif Badawi, a dissident blogger, has been imprisoned since 2012. His wife, Ensaf Haidar, lives in Canada and recently became a Canadian citizen.

As a result of Canada commenting on the Saudi treatment of these individuals, the Saudi Arabia kind of lost its shit: After tweeting that no one would be allowed to dictate how the nation administrated its people, the Saudi government called its ambassadors to Canada home and gave Canada's ambassador to the nation 24 hours to get out of Dodge. The Saudis followed up by ordering many of its citizens who were attending university at Canadian institutions home and messing with established trade deals it holds with Canada.

Canada's response to the Saudi temper tantrum came from our Foreign Affairs Minister, Chrystia Freeland, issued a statement saying, "Canada will always stand up for the protection of human rights, very much including women's rights, and freedom of expression around the world," she said. "Our government will never hesitate to promote these values and believes that this dialogue is critical to international diplomacy."

Cool, cool, cool.

Except for the fact that, as enraged as my nation purports to be about the rampant civil rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, we're apparently still very ok with the notion of selling them military-grade weaponry and vehicles.

The deal was initially struck by former Prime Minister Steven Harper's government, back in 2014, to the tune of 15 billion dollars. The contract, between General Dynamics Land Systems Canada and the Saudi government would see the company supply weaponized military land vehilcles (in this case, Light Armored Vehicles, or LAV IIIs,) to the Saudis over a 15-year period. According to The Globe & Mail, the LAVs would most likely ship overseas, armed with "two gun systems, including a medium-calibre weapon and the Cockerill CT-CV 105HP, which it advertises as a "high-pressure gun with an advanced autoloader to deliver high lethality at very light weight," one with the capacity to fire 105-mm shells and a heavy-armour-penetrating missile." This is a weapon system designed for military-grade murder. The sort of thing you want backing up your infantry (a LAV III is designed to carry troops into combat as well as laying down fire,) as they go into combat with a foreign aggressor.

But here's the thing: there's some pretty compelling evidence that the Saudi government has used Light Armoured Vehicles against its own civilian population.

As the Globe & Mail points out, the LAV featured in the video was not made in Canada. But one has to ask: if the nation was willing to use such means against its citizens in the past, what keeps them from doing so in the future, with Canadian-made arms?

I applaud my government's condemnation of a foreign power's human rights violations (despite the fact that Canada's treatment of its Indigenous Peoples still has a VERY long way to go). I appreciate that Canada has stood up to an oil-rich nation when so many of our allies have stayed silent on the topic of the rights abuses and arrests of activists that occur in Saudi Arabia on a routine basis.

But I'm having a hard time with our condemning a country's human rights practices while we continue to sell arms to them. It's duplicitous bullshit. Until such time that the contract is broken as part of an embargo against the nation, Foreign Affairs Minister Freeland's speech about Canada standing up against human rights violations will be nothing but a gust of hot air.

Image via Wikipedia Commons
A famous 27-year-old Thai actor was arrested after a 22-year-old Finnish millionaire complained that the actor had bilked him out of 5,564 bitcoin (worth $35 million) in an investment scam. Jiratpisit "Boom" Jaravijit, 27, was filming a movie when police took him to jail.

The Finnish millionaire, Aarni Otava Saarimaa, said Boom approached him with an opportunity to invest in a stake in a Macau casino that accepted a cryptocurrency called Dragoncoin. Saarimaa handed over his Bitcoin and waited for that sweet, sweet Dragoncoin to start pouring in. But Boom suddenly went silent, and the promise of casino-derived lucre never materialized.

Saarimaa went to the Thai police, who turned the case over to its Crime Suppression Division (CSD), which investigated and found that Boom, his brother (who has an existing warrant on an unrelated embezzlement charge), his sister, and two other people who are members of a Thai gang had simply converted the bitcoin into local currency and deposited it into their personal bank accounts. Boom is out on bail, but police are hunting for his siblings. Boom's elder brother, whom the CSD suspects is the ringleader of the scam, is thought to be hiding out in the United States.

Image: phanurak rubpol/Shutterstock
I can't believe that it's been five years since the final episode of Breaking Bad hit the air. I also can't believe that I could be having breakfast with Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston, thanks to this fun new contest from Omaze.

By making a donation, you'll not only be giving to two exceptional causesThe National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Kind Campaignyou'll also have the chance to cook AND nosh the most important meal of the day with Cranston and Paul in the RV from Breaking Bad. What's not to like?

Oh, one thing Not everyone who lives in an RV has to shit in a bucket. I'm just saying. We have bathrooms. Also, ditches and bushes.
The Australian reports that Facebook media relations chief Campbell Brown privately disclosed that Mark Zuckerberg is indifferent to publishers and offers the news media a simple choice: "Work with Facebook or die."

A senior Facebook executive has privately admitted Mark Zuckerberg "doesn't care" about publishers and warned that if they did not work with the social media giant, "I'll be holding your hands with your dying business like in a hospice".

That's a strange thought, isn't it? Right down to how an attempt at intimidation is undermined its own awkward spitefulness.

Still, she (invoking he), is effectively threatening to destroy news publishers unless they comply with Facebook's vision for their future. So everyone has work to do.

Brown was hired last year after to help Facebook "smooth over its strained ties to the news media."

But Facebook executives said they were hiring Ms. Brown for her understanding of the news industry as a onetime White House correspondent, co-anchor of "Weekend Today" and primary substitute anchor of "Nightly News" at NBC News, and prime-time anchor on CNN, which she left in 2010. Some commentators noted Ms. Brown's ties to the Republican donor Betsy DeVos, Mr. Trump's nominee to lead the Department of Education. Ms. DeVos's family foundation funds The 74, an education-focused journalism site co-founded and led by Ms. Brown.

Hiring a DeVos crony to deal with fake news and media relations quickly became the Facebook Executives Puzzled By Human Emotion trainwreck it promised to be: Brown was last in the news threatening to sue The Guardian for breaking the Cambridge Analytica story.
Philosopher Jacob Bohme had a small but enthusiastic following who created stunning fan art of his ideas. The William Law editions of his writing have beautifully designed plates that open up thirteen successive layers of illustrations nested inside one another.

Bohme was a big influence on Lord Byron and William Blake, and his superfans constructed fan art of the highest order. Of these William Law went to great pains to present Bohme's esoteric philosophy in a way that was visually appealing.

Law was an Anglican clergyman, barred from the pulpit for refusing an oath of allegiance to King George the First. He served as tutor to the historian Edward Gibbon, who spoke highly of Law despite the latter's admiration for "the incomprehensible visions of Jacob Behmen." Law gained fame and readership as a controversialist who embroiled himself in just about every religious dispute of the age and took on everyone from Deists to Papists, Rationalists to Methodists.

Beyond the philosophy, this is really remarkable work for anyone who appreciates the arts of engraving and bookbinding.

The full text is available at Internet Archive. Learn more about Bohme at this modern-day superfan site.

 Eighteenth Century Pop Up Book (YouTube / Chetham's Library)




" Ibalik niyo sa amin ang mga kampana ng Balangiga . Sa amin iyan. Ang mga iyan ay pag-aari ng Pilipinas. Bahagi ng aming pamanang pambansa," ("Give us back those Balangiga bells. They are ours. They belong to the Philippines. They are part of our national heritage,"). President Rodrigo R. Duterte SONA 2017, July 24, 2017 .





Lookback: Before turning Samar into a 'howling wilderness' US first mastered the technique in MARINDUQUE by establishing concentration camps in all the towns, burning houses by the hundreds (in one account 324 houses were burned in just one town in five days), burning tons and tons of rice so the people would go hungry, killing cattle, carabaos, horses and treating males 15 years old up as enemies. Some 600 males were taken to Polo island in Sta. Cruz as prisoners. In Samar it was worse, 'Kill everyone over 10' was the order.









But of the Marinduque experiment Gov.Gen. William H. Taft said: 'The severity with which the inhabitants have been dealt with would not look well if a complete history of it were written out.'









MANILA, Philippines  Taken as war booty by American soldiers more than a century after they last tolled to signal an attack on their comrades, the Balangiga bells may finally return home.





The United States embassy in Manila yesterday confirmed the intention of the US Defense Department to return the Balangiga bells to the Philippines.





Trude Raizen, the embassys deputy press attache, said Defense Secretary James Mattis has notified the US Congress of their intention to return the bells more than a century after they were removed by US soldiers from the church of Balangiga town, Eastern Samar in 1901.





No specific date has been identified for the return of the bells. Weve received assurances that the bells will be returned to the Catholic Church and treated with the respect and honor they deserve, Raizen told The STAR.





We are aware that the Bells of Balangiga have deep significance for a number of people, both in the United States and in the Philippines, she added.





The return of the Balangiga bells was among the constant demands of President Duterte from the US government.









On Friday, prominent Eastern Visayas historian Rolando Borrinaga shared initial information about the possible return of the bells.





He cited Bellevue, Nebraska Mayor Rita Gomez Sanders, a Filipino-American, who heard of the news from her district congressman.





Borrinaga said the announcement was apparently made to time with the fiesta of San Lorenzo de Martir in Balangiga last Friday.





Asked why Mattis has to notify the US Congress of their intention, Borrinaga said concurrence of the legislators is necessary as provided for in the US National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2018.





I think the lobbying for the concurrence would not be as bloody as the lobbying for inclusion of the provisions to return the bells in the NDAA 2018, he told The STAR yesterday.





The ringing of the bells signaled an attack by Filipino guerillas on US troops belonging to the 9th US Infantry Regiment. The attack killed 48 US soldiers, including their commander.





In retaliation, Gen. Jacob Smith ordered troops sent on a punitive mission to turn Samar into a howling wilderness. The US soldiers set the town on fire and killed all Filipinos 10 years old and above or those fit enough to carry a rifle, as ordered by Smith. The operation left more than 2,500 Filipinos dead.





One of the bells is currently in the possession of the 9th Infantry Regiment in South Korea, while the other two are in F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.













It was in 1994 during the Ramos administration that a request for the return of the bells was first made. No action was taken on Ramos request, which was repeated in 1996.





In 2012, Wyoming Governor Matt Mead wrote a letter to then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta opposing the return of the bells.- Philstar





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Steve West, an anti-semitic conspiracy theorist who said Hitler did nothing wrong, defeated three other GOP candidates in the party's primary election for Missouri's 15th district. He now faces Democratic incumbent Jon Carpenter in November.

He won with 49.5 percent of the vote; the second-place finisher had 24.4 percent.

"Looking back in history, unfortunately, Hitler was right about what was taking place in Germany. And who was behind it," West said on KCXL radio in January 2017, The Kansas City Star reported Thursday.

He has spoken of "Jewish cabals" that are "harvesting baby parts" from Planned Parenthood, abuse children and control the Republican Party. West also has a YouTube channel on which he has made homophobic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and racist statements, according to The Star.
- Jon-Jon was looking for new hiking spots when he heard a man's cry for help

- He found the man, Jim, bleeding from two gunshot wounds

- Jon-Jon managed to stabilise him until paramedics arrived

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A man in Krugersdorp, Gauteng, has been hailed a hero after he saved the life of a cyclist who had been shot twice on Saturday, 11 August.

Jon-Jon Pietersen, a hiking enthusiast, shared the experience on his Facebook page, Briefly.co.za gathered.

He said he was driving around with a friend looking for new hiking spots when he heard a man, named Jim, crying out for help.

They found Jim bleeding from two gunshot wounds after apparently being robbed. Although all he had was a box tape, rubber glove, and towel, Jon-Jon managed to stop Jim's bleeding.

Paramedics arrived about 20 minutes later and airlifted the victim to Milpark Hospital, where he's in a critical but stable condition.

READ ALSO: ANC plans to cut 30,000 jobs to save money

An emotional Jon-Jon wrote, "I never thought I knew I could but I did. Today I saved a mans life."

His Facebook post has gone viral, drawing over 13,000 reactions, 4,700 comments and 5,900 shares so far. Commenters praised his heroic act and wished him well.

Source: Facebook/Jon-Jon Pietersen

Twitter users also commended Jon-Jon for his heroism.

READ ALSO: Video of toddler who speaks Xhosa goes viral again

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Source: Briefly.co.za
- Women in KZN's uMgungundlovu District Municipality previously struggled with farming

- A new project by SANBI and University of KwaZulu-Natal helped them

- They are now overcoming poverty and uplifting their families

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Women farmers in KwaZulu-Natal's uMgungundlovu District Municipality are overcoming poverty thanks to a new project by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI)

Previously, the farmers struggled to grow their crops due to the effects of climate change such as drought and heavy rains, Briefly.co.za learned.

As vukuzenzele.co.za reports, SANBI and the University of KwaZulu-Natal stepped in with the R102m uMgeni Resilience Project.

KZN women farmers have benefitted from the R102m uMgeni Resilience Project. Source: vukuzenzele.co.za

The project's aim is to help communities adapt to the effects of climate change. As a result, women now grow climate resilient crops.

They also use organic fertilisers as well as new ploughing methods. One of the farmers, Matu Gwala, said she now makes a profit from her farm produce:

I managed to buy furniture for my house and invested some of the money for my childrens school fees.

READ ALSO: SA man finally pops the question after 10 years and the proposal is breathtaking

Winnet Dhladhla also lauded the project, saying she's now able to support her family and make some savings.

SANBIs strategic grants manager, Michael Jennings, said women in the area are encouraged to form agricultural co-operatives.

These would help to disseminate new farming knowledge and practices, he explained. The project has also improved community infrastructure to further support farming.

READ ALSO: Rags to over-the-top riches: How the Mpisane family made their luxury lives a reality

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Source: Briefly.co.za
News / National

by ZimVigil

With the new Zanu PF regime pulling in different directions, there is a growing belief that it is the army that is now in charge in Zimbabwe  and that it is ready to pull the trigger at any provocation.Whatever the outcome of the MDC's legal challenge to the microscopic lead declared for Mnangagwa in the presidential election, the army is considered unlikely to allow a handover of power.The chair of the British all-party parliamentary committee on Zimbabwe, Kate Hoey MP, has called for the dismissal of the Vice-President, General Chiwenga. Ms Hoey, who has been observing the elections, urged the West not to soften its policy towards Zimbabwe in the light of the bloody scenes in Harare.The Americans, for their part, have been equally outspoken, alarmed by the violence and the treatment of the MDC's Tendai Biti, illegally bundled out of Zambia, where he had appealed for political asylum.Is it not strange at this juncture that General Chiwenga has flown to Moscow on a special mission' to deliver a message to President Putin? What could that be  except help!Meanwhile Mnangagwa, in an interview with the British Daily Telegraph blames it all on the NGOs and the trouble-making independent press. No doubt he is supported by his fellow travellers in the gutless Southern African Development Community where the Zanu PF virus is increasingly poisoning their own politics.Thanks to those who came early to help set up the table and put up the banners: Viola Chihota, Enniah Dube, Jonathan Kariwo, Marian Machekanyanga, Patricia Masamba, Joyce Mbairatsunga, Esther Munyira ,Sipho Ndlovu and EphraimTapa. Thanks also to Marian, Patricia and Enniah for looking after the front table and to Enniah, Joyce and Viola for handing out flyers.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Zimbabwe will continue to re-engage the United States of America despite the regrettable signing into law of the amended Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Amendment Act (ZIDERA), Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Dr Sibusiso Moyo has said.Further, Dr Moyo said post-election violence which erupted in Harare on August 1 should not be allowed to blemish the country's recent peaceful polls and its commitment to re-engage with the international community.Last week, US President Donald Trump signed into law the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Amendment Act of 2018 which is an amendment to the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001.Speaking to journalists at his Munhumutapa Offices yesterday, Dr Moyo said some of the issues raised in the amended ZIDERA had already been addressed by Government since the ushering in of the new dispensation in November last year."While we regret that ZIDERA continues to exist in any form, we are determined to continue in the re-engagement with the US administration, as we together seek to restore our bilateral relations to normalcy," he said."ZIDERA remains a challenge in that it is an extra territorial law, as Zimbabwe is not legally bound by another State's domestic laws. However, some of the issues it raises, (such as) rule of law and enjoyment of freedoms, have been ushered in by the new dispensation."The rule of law, freedom of expression, free and fair elections have already been accomplished in the new dispensation."Reforms of political and economic laws are ongoing endeavours in the new dispensation. The unprogressive aspects however, of the amended act refer to some issues which are being addressed by the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission."Dr Moyo said the recent holding of free, fair, violence-free elections answered even more of ZIDERA's queries on governance in Zimbabwe. He said several USA NGOs were among several international observers in the recent country's harmonised elections. With regards to Zimbabwe's international debt, Dr Moyo said though it remained a challenge to address World Bank and African Development Bank loan arrears, the amended ZIDERA acknowledged some economic reforms already achieved by the new Government."Addressing World Bank and African Development Bank loan arrears remains a challenge, the USA still vetoes new loans to Zimbabwe until those arrears are addressed," Dr Moyo said."The bill does however, acknowledge some economic reforms already achieved and more in prospect as well as noting that the country has paid its debt arrears to the IMF and calls further for re-engagement."Dr Moyo however noted that there were some progressive aspects to the amended Act.He said ZIDERA was not only affecting a few individuals in Government but the entire country. Dr Moyo said all international business transactions by Zimbabwean people were blocked by the US Government through the Office of Foreign Assets Control. He said events of August 1 where six people lost their lives in violent demos were regrettable and President elect Mnangagwa had promised to set an independent commission to investigate the matter.
News / National

by Simbarashe Sithole

MDC Alliance activist Daniel Hanyana (57) of Mutenzi village, ward 5, Nyanyadzi in Chimanimani west constituency got his kitchen hut torched by a suspected ZANU PF supporter on Sunday afternoon.District chairman for MDC Alliance Freddy Dziwande confirmed the case saying villagers from Hotsprings are under fire from ZANU PF supporters after their polling station at Hotsprings primary voted in favour of MDC Alliance from ward level."ZANU PF threatened doom for Hotsprings villagers after Hotsprings polling station voted in favour of MDC Alliance so we are very sure that Hanyana's kitchen was burnt by ZANU PF supporters," confirmed Dziwande.Dziwande alleges a ZANU PF activist Tawanda Chimukuwe threatened to burnt houses of MDC Supporters houses four days ago."We suspect Chimukuwe is the one who burnt the kitchen because he threatened two of our supporters Patience Billy and Tawanda Bishau saying their polling station voted for MDC Alliance hence their houses were going to be torched."A police report was made at Nyanyadzi police station under RRB number 30975 and they attended the scene where kitchen utensils were erased.Efforts to contact ZANU PF Manicaland province chairman Mike Madiro were futile.In another case MDC Alliance deputy national chairman Chamunorwa Madya has gone into hiding after security details reportedly harassed him over a MDC Alliance polling agent advert that had his number.Madya said he left his Chitungwiza homestead after receiving threatening calls from suspected military intelligence details.He further alleges that he the intelligence details have been using a silver commuter omnibus and a Toyota twin cab white in colour registration number AEC 6090 to raid his house at any time of the day."I am in hiding as I am talking to you suspected intelligence details took my number on our polling agents advert, they are accusing us of inciting violence that claimed lives weeks ago, but surprisingly our advert was before elections since we wanted polling agents in all constituencies," lamented Madya.
Power Financial (TSX:PWF) reported record second-quarter results August 3 which included a 6% increase in earnings per share to $0.92 from $0.87 a year earlier.

That might not seem like a big deal, but given Power Financials operating subsidiaries  Great-West Lifeco Inc., Putnam Investments, and IGM Financial Inc.  are all facing secular changes in their respective segments of the financial services arena, the record performance was significantly better than analyst expectations, yet investors have given it and its parent Power Corporation of Canada (TSX:POW) very little love since then.

Why is that?

Holding company discount

Is it better to buy a holding companys stock or that of its publicly traded operating subsidiaries?

Most experts would go with the operating subsidiaries, because its widely believed that investors value holding companies like Power Corporation at a discount.

Although Power Corporation owns 65.5% of Power Financial, investors value the majority ownership at less than the implied market value of that ownership. So, 65.5% of Power Financial would be worth $14.3 billion in the hands of an individual  $2.2 billion more than Power Corporations entire market cap.

Yet Power Corporation owns plenty of other assets that generate profits for the company that get little or no value as a result of that discount.

Fool contributor Ryan Vanzo did a good job explaining the holding company discount in a 2015 article about the company. You might want to read it to get a better understanding of why value investors are attracted to Power Corporations stock in the first place.

Why I like Power Corporation

Although Im not a big dividend investor, its 5.3% yield is desirable, especially when you consider that its grown the dividend paid out by 26% over the past three-and-a-half years.

To pay those dividends, a company uses cash flow to do so. In 2017, Power Corporation generated $6.9 billion  the most in a decade. Although its cash flow in the first six months of the year was 9% less than in the same period a year earlier at $2.6 billion, it will have plenty to invest in new businesses after paying out approximately $680 million in dividends for the entire fiscal year. Power Corporation is a cash flow machine.

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Power Corporation operates some private equity funds including Sagard Holdings (North America focus), Sagard Europe, and Sagard China. Operating the private equity business since 2002, the company has invested $1.7 billion in the three geographic areas, received $957 million in distributions, and is sitting on a portfolio of investments worth $2 billion.

While its Chinese private equity funds have delivered a good return on investment, its European and North American investments (the oldest) havent performed nearly as well. That being said, Sagard, along with its investment in China Asset Management Corporation and its other smaller hedge-fund investments, generated $212 million in income in the first six months of the year  144% higher than a year earlier, demonstrating that private equity investments tend to be cyclical and require patient capital.

The Desmarais family, who control Power Corporation, are the most patient of investors.

As Ive said in previous articles, it is the companys FinTech investments, including Wealthsimple, that hold the greatest promise. To date, the company has invested $193 million in Wealthsimple, a company thats revolutionizing asset management for average Canadians who dont want to pay the high fees of a full-service financial advisor but desire professionally managed investments.

Wealthsimple could be the biggest diamond in the rough given its expansion into the U.S. Five years from now, $193 million will seem like peanuts.

The bottom line on Power Corporation stock

Its easy to understand why very few investors want to own its stock, but for those who like solid dividends and have a bit of a contrarian streak in them, I see the next three to five years being good ones for the company, despite the headwinds Power Financial faces.

At $29, I dont see much downside, and you get paid 5% to wait for investors to come to appreciate the companys various assets.

And if it doesnt happen, at least you can bank the healthy dividends.

More reading

Fool contributor Will Ashworth has no position in any stocks mentioned.




For the most part, Canada tries to maintain friendly relationships with countries around the world. But Canadian leaders also have a habit of speaking out against abuses, especially when it comes to human rights.

Thats what happened last week when Amnesty International called out the Saudi government for detaining two female activists: Samar Badawi and Nassima al-Sada.

This unprecedented level of persecution of human rights defenders in Saudi Arabia is a disturbing sign that the crackdown is far from over, Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty Internationals Middle East research director, said on Aug. 1. The international community must push Saudi Arabian authorities to end this draconian crackdown and targeted repression of human rights activists in the country.

This prompted Global Affairs Canada to respond to the call for action by issuing a statement on Twitter two days after Amnesty International spoke out to say the Canadian government is gravely concerned.

Canada is gravely concerned about additional arrests of civil society and womens rights activists in #SaudiArabia, including Samar Badawi. We urge the Saudi authorities to immediately release them and all other peaceful #humanrights activists.  Foreign Policy CAN (@CanadaFP) August 3, 2018

The statement seemed to spark outrage in Riyadh. The Saudi Arabias Ministry of Foreign Affairs also took to Twitter, firing off multiple statements warning the Canadian government not to meddle in the kingdoms internal affairs.

The Saudi government claimed the activists were lawfully detained and Ottawas statement was not based in any accurate or true information, making it an example of blatant interference in Saudi affairs.

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The kingdom has acted swiftly in response. All new trade between the two countries has been halted. Riyadh ordered thousands of Saudi students studying in Canada, medical patients receiving treatment and their own ambassador to Canada to return home. Canadas ambassador to Saudi Arabia has been asked to leave the kingdom. The Saudis even cancelled all flights between the two countries on its state airline, effective August 13.

#Statement | Throughout its long history, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has never accepted any interference in its domestic affairs by, or orders from any country. pic.twitter.com/sUrj7XIqTV  Foreign Ministry  (@KSAmofaEN) August 6, 2018

Canada has made a mistake and needs to fix it, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Aug. 8. The ball is in Canadas court.

But Ottawa refused to back down on the matter. On Aug. 6, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said she was very comfortable with Canadas position. Two days later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau backed up that statement.

Canada will always speak strongly and clearly in private and in public on questions of human rights, Trudeau said.

Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, seen here in April 2018, appears to have taken exception with the Canadian governments recent comments on female activists detained by the kingdom. Photo from The Associated Press.

This isnt the first time Canada has had diplomatic tensions with a foreign nation before. Below is a list of six other countries that have been involved in diplomatic disputes with Canada over a wide range of issues.

Russia

Relations between Russia and Canada have deteriorated in recent years due to the Russian annexation of Crimea and military intervention in Ukraine, which occurred after the 2013 mass protests in Kiev.

Canada has a considerable Ukrainian population, and has long opposed Russian interference in Ukraine.

A spokesman for former prime minister Stephen Harper says before a G20 summit in November 2014, Russian President Vladmir Putin approached Harper and extended his hand. I guess Ill shake your hand but I have only one thing to say to you: You need to get out of Ukraine, Harper reportedly told Putin.

In October 2017, the so-called Magnitsky Act became law, which allows the Canadian government to impose bans and sanctions on foreign officials for corruption and human rights violations. The law is named after a Russian lawyer who was killed in a Moscow prison after he accused Russian officials of tax fraud.

The Russian Embassy responded to the legislation by saying Canada committed an irrational act that has caused irreparable damage to the Canada-Russia relationship. Before it became law, Russia vowed such a move will not be left without an adequate response.

This photo shows Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper shaking hands at the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, in September 2013. Fourteen months after this handshake, Harper reportedly told Putin to get out of Ukraine. Photo from Getty Images.

Iran

Under Harpers direction, Canada closed its embassy in Tehran and expelled diplomats from Ottawa in September 2012.

We have terminated our diplomatic presence there precisely because we are concerned by the behaviour and the capacity for increasingly bad behaviour of the government of Iran, Harper said at the time, the National Post reported. The reality is our influence and that of our partners on Iran is minimal.

An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman slammed the Canadian government as racist and referred to the decision as hostile behaviour.

The move ended diplomatic relations between the two countries until Canadian officials under Trudeau visited Tehran in May for the first time since 2012. An unnamed source told CBC News the move was a sign that Canada is committed to re-engaging with the Iranians, who are consistently at political odds with allies such as Israel and the U.S.

Canada also played a key role in the 1979-80 Iranian hostage crisis by sheltering six U.S. officials and helping them secretly flee Iran.

Canada closed its embassy in Tehran and expelled diplomats from Ottawa in September 2012. Photo from Getty Images.

North Korea

Canada has a long history of grievances with North Korea, dating back to hostilities that reached its boiling point when Canadians fought in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. An armistice ended the violence, but Canada did not recognize the North Korean government until 2000, 51 years after recognizing South Korea.

In 2010, Canada imposed tight restrictions against North Koreans in response to aggressive actions. In October of that year, Canada introduced a controlled engagement policy that would limit diplomacy between Ottawa and Pyongyang.

Lawrence Cannon, the foreign affairs minister at the time, announced Canada was taking a principled stand against those who recklessly commit acts of aggression in violation of international law.

Ottawa has been in line with much of the international community in a bid spearheaded by the U.S. to punish North Korea for their rocket tests and nuclear program that threatens U.S. allies South Korea and Japan.

In August 2017, there was a glimmer of hope in the relationship between the two countries when Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim was released from imprisonment in North Korea after spending two years in detention. A top Canadian security official travelled to North Korea to help secure the release.

Brazil

Canada and Brazil have been at odds over trade issues. In February 2017, Brazil filed a complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO) over Canadas $372.5-million loan to Montreal-based Bombardier, an aerospace competitor to Sao Paulo-based Embraer.

In April 2018, the WTO sided with Brazil in a preliminary ruling, but a final decision isnt expected until the end of the year, Reuters reported.

Disagreements are a natural part of human relations, Marcelo Ramos Araujo, the head of the economic affairs section at Canadas Brazilian embassy, told the Globe and Mail.

But this most recent trade dispute between Canada and Brazil could escalate like it has in the past.

Canada has previously threatened to impose hefty trade sanctions against Brazil over low-interest loans given to Embraer. Canada lost a WTO complaint over low-interest loans in 2001, which is similar to what happened to Brazil, after the organization determined trade rules were being violated.

Both countries have filed trade complaints against the other. Canada has invested billions of dollars in their homegrown aerospace company, which employs thousands of workers.

Brazil and Canada have not seen eye-to-eye on multiple trade disputes, most recently over Canadas treatment of Bombardier. Photo from Buda Mendes/Getty Images.

Philippines

Canadas government describes its relationship with the Philippines as strong and friendly, but theres been a recent spat over human rights concerns.

In November 2017, Trudeau claimed to have a frank conversation with Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte, who told reporters he was angered by a foreigner, without mentioning Trudeau by name.

I said I will not explain. It is a personal and official insult, Duterte said.





Human rights activists have been speaking out against Dutertes war against alleged drug dealers and users, which is reported to have killed least 7,000 people. Many of the reported executions have taken place without due process, critics say.

Trudeau insisted the conversation was cordial and the president was receptive. The prime minister also publicly admitted that Canada does not have a perfect record on human rights, citing the past treatment of First Nations.

More than 600,000 people with Filipino ancestry reside in Canada, according to 2011 census data.

Canadas government describes its relationship with the Philippines as strong and friendly, but theres been a recent spat over human rights concerns. Photo from Getty Images.

Afghanistan

After 24 Canadians were killed by Al Qaeda terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, then prime minister Jean Chretien pledged Canadas complete support in combating terrorism, as documented by the Canadian Encyclopedia.

In the following month, Canada participated in the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, where the terror group was believed to be, sheltered by the ruling Taliban.

Canadian special forces took part initially, who were then followed by around 1,200 infantry troops months later, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. Canadians engaged with Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters while also supporting humanitarian efforts and the new government in Afghanistan.

Canadas government says diplomatic relations were restored in 2002 after the fall of the Taliban, who had previously controlled the country. Since then, former prime minister Harper visited Afghanistan three times (2006, 2007 and 2011) and the Afghan president came to Canada in 2006.

Canada has pledged to spend $557 million on development assistance and supporting troops in Afghanistan through 2017, according to the federal government.
By Haia Dakwar TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters rallied in Tel Aviv on Saturday against Israel's new law declaring it the nation-state of the Jewish people, legislation that has angered the country's Arab minority and drawn criticism abroad. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defended the law, which says only Jews have the right of self-determination in the country and downgrades Arabic from an official language, saying it is necessary in order to fend off Palestinian challenges to Jewish self-determination. The protesters, mostly Israeli Arabs, waved Palestinian flags and held up signs that read 'equality' in Arabic and Hebrew. "The law legitimizes racism," said Laila al-Sana, 19, from a Bedouin village in Israel's southern Negev desert. "It's very important to show we are here, to resist," she said. Israel's Arab population comprises mainly descendants of the Palestinians who remained on their land after the 1948 war at the time of the creation of the modern state of Israel. Hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes or fled. Many of Israel's Arab citizens also identify as Palestinian. They make up about a fifth of the state's 9 million people. Israeli law grants them full equal rights, but many say they face discrimination and are treated as second-class citizens. "When I heard about the law I felt I should defend my hometown, our land, the land of my ancestors," said 68-year-old Sheikha Dabbah at the rally. Largely declarative, the law was enacted just after the 70th anniversary of the birth of the state of Israel. It stipulates that "Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it". It also downgrades Arabic from an official language alongside Hebrew to a "special status." "I feel ashamed that after 70 years I have to accentuate my nationalism instead of being generous toward all those who live here," said Gila Zamir, 58, a Jewish Israeli from the Arab-Jewish city Haifa. Netanyahu posted on his Twitter page a video from the demonstration of a few protesters waving the Palestinian flag and chanting: "With spirit, with blood we shall redeem you, Palestine" and wrote: "There is no better evidence of the nation-law's necessity." Separate TV footage showed a few Israeli flags being waved. Critics have said the new law is undemocratic because it differentiates between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens. Its defenders say civil equality is guaranteed in existing legislation. Arab leaders in Israel have said the law verges on apartheid. Rights groups and Jewish groups in the Diaspora have spoken against the legislation, as have the EU, Egypt and Israel's own president. Last Saturday a protest against the law by Israel's Druze community, which numbers about 120,000 citizens, drew a far larger crowd. The Druze are ethnic Arab members of a religious minority that is an offshoot of Islam incorporating elements of other faiths. Their outrage over the law has had more resonance in Israel, despite their small numbers, because of their reputation as loyal supporters of the state. Unlike the wider Arab population, many Druze serve in Israel's conscript military and security forces, and some have risen high in the ranks. Druze leaders have voiced a deep sense of betrayal over the law, striking a chord among many Israelis. However, efforts by Netanyahu to appease the Druze community have so far failed. (This story has been refiled to fix typo in paragraph 1) (Reporting by Haia Dakwar; Writing by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
The Liberal government is moving soon on its plan to give federally-regulated workers paid time off to deal with the trauma and turmoil of domestic violence.

Consultations with stakeholders, employers and unions will begin this fall on the proposed benefit, which will allow survivors 10 days off  five of them paid. It's meant to give people time to leave their abusive partners, deal with police, get medical treatment or seek legal advice.

About 900,000 employees in federally regulated private sector workplaces  such as banks, marine shipping, air and rail transportation and telecommunications  will be eligible for the new federal benefit.

Changes to the Canada Labour Code require a legislative and regulatory process that could take two years, but Labour Minister Patty Hajdu's office said the government wants to move quickly.

Barb MacQuarrie, community director of Western University's Centre for Research and Education on Violence against Women and Children, said studies have shown that violence at home has a major impact on productivity and security in the workplace. Financial barriers and the fear of losing a job can trap victims in abusive situations.

"It's not that workplaces want to keep people locked in abusive relationships," she said. "But inadvertently, by not giving them the time they need to take care of the myriad ... legal issues, finding housing, child support and dealing with the health care issues that can arise from abusive relationships ... they can be keeping them stuck."

MacQuarrie said she hopes the legislation also will help end the stigma around domestic violence, leading to more open dialogue, better public education and collaboration between various groups and governments.

New Zealand gives 10 days paid leave

The Liberal government initially pledged a 10-day unpaid leave benefit in its 2017 budget, then improved the benefit this year to make five of those days paid.

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NDP MP Sheila Malcolmson, her party's critic for women's equality, said the Liberal plan is too little, too late. She noted that New Zealand recently brought in 10 days of paid leave and said Canada should do the same.

"Survivors of domestic violence have gone through extremely traumatic experiences and they shouldn't be left high and dry by their workplace when they're dealing with serious issues," she said. "The Liberals need to stop dragging their feet and implement this crucial measure for those recovering from these awful situations."

Several provinces, including Ontario and Manitoba, already have leave programs and others have similar benefits in the works.

While the leave benefit will be available to private sector employees in federally-regulated workplaces, the government's own employees will have to bargain for it through their public service unions.

Top priority for PSAC

The largest public service union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), says the benefit will be a top priority for bargaining units and that they will push for 10 days paid leave.

Tara Peterson, who advocates for women and human rights for PSAC, said many victims stay in bad relationships due to financial restraints.

"Financial control is one of the main tools that abusers or perpetrators of domestic violence use to keep their victims trapped. So being able to keep your job is really, really important when you're experiencing domestic violence, to have financial independence and also (be) able to access resources," she said.

According to Hajdu's office, employees claiming the benefit will be required to give written notice of the reasons for the leave and the length of the leave they intend to take. The employee also may be required to provide documentation to support the claim "if it is reasonably practicable" for them to obtain and provide it.

Peterson said the burden of proof must be as low as possible to ensure victims don't feel stigmatized or shamed. Research in other jurisdictions shows abuse of such programs has been minimal, she said.

Keetha Mercer, manager of community initiatives with the Canadian Women's Foundation, said domestic violence is one of the key reasons for women's poverty in Canada. On any night, about 3,300 women  plus their children  sleep in shelters after fleeing violence at home.

"Protecting women's jobs so they have somewhere to go back to, so that they can deal with the trauma and also support their children, is really important," she said

Hajdu's spokeswoman Veronique Simard said the proposed benefit shows the government understands the realities victims of domestic violence face, including the financial strain.

The government has earmarked $200 million for a federal strategy to prevent and address gender-based violence.
By Jess Macy Yu TAIPEI (Reuters) - Vowing that "no one can obliterate Taiwan's existence," President Tsai Ing-wen left on Sunday for the United States and two of Taipei's remaining diplomatic allies, amid pressure from China to try to stamp out references to the island internationally. China, which claims self-ruled and democratic Taiwan as its own, has stepped up a campaign against the island as it tries to assert Chinese sovereignty. Beijing has ordered foreign companies to label Taiwan as part of China on their websites and is excluding Taiwan from as many international forums as it can. Also, China has also been whittling down the number of countries that recognize Taiwan - now just 18 - with Burkina Faso and the Dominican Republic switching relations to Beijing this year. Speaking before her flight to Los Angeles, where she was stopping en route to Belize and Paraguay, Tsai struck a defiant tone. "In going abroad, the whole world can see Taiwan; they can see our country as well as our support for democracy and freedom," Tsai said. "We only need to be firm so that no one can obliterate Taiwan's existence." Tsai arrived in Los Angeles on Sunday and was scheduled to address a banquet for Taiwanese-Americans there on Sunday evening, then pay a visit to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library outside of Los Angeles on Monday, according to Phi Lin Chuang, a Taiwanese government spokeswoman. China, which believes Tsai wants to push for Taiwan's formal independence, has already complained to Washington about her U.S. stopovers, which include Houston on her way back. The trip starts one day after Taiwan's state-run refiner CPC Corp announced a deal valued at $25 billion to purchase liquefied natural gas from the United States over the next 25 years. The deal was aimed at boosting trade relations with the United States by reducing its trade surplus and was also a sign of goodwill ahead of Tsai's visit, a person familiar with the government's thinking told Reuters. Tsai, who says she wants to maintain the status quo with China, will also be looking to reaffirm Washington-Taipei ties and to shore up support ahead of local elections in Taiwan in November amid the escalating pressure from China. During her U.S. stops, Tsai intends to meet Ed Royce, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, according to two people with knowledge of the plans. She will also meet with business representatives to discuss how Taiwan could drum up investment and procurement with the United States, they said. Washington has no formal ties with Taiwan but is the island's strongest ally and sole foreign arms supplier. Tsai's U.S. stopovers come as China and the United States are engaged in a trade war, adding to Beijing's irritation with Washington. (Reporting by Jess Macy Yu; Additional reporting by Yimou Lee; Editing by Ben Blanchard, Richard Borsuk and Cynthia Osterman)
A veteran fisherman from Prince Edward County is handing the reins of his company over to a 21-year-old Syrian newcomer in an effort to keep the only fish processing operation left in the county alive.

Kendall Dewey, 66, was desperately looking for someone to take over the commercial fishing business that had been in his family for four generations.

If Dewey Fisheries closed, shops and restaurants in the area could be left without a source of local seafood. So Dewey contacted employment agencies and scouted people locally who might have an interest.

His search was falling short until he met Slieman al-Jasem, a refugee from Syria who'd never cleaned a fish before  but had a knack for learning quickly and a desire to run his own company.

"He had worked in Lebanon, starting at a very early age  13 or 14 years old  at a stone quarry, trying to earn money for his family," Dewey told CBC Radio's Ontario Morning last week.

"He had rather nasty experiences in Lebanon working for people. And he saw this as an opportunity to have his own business and not work for anybody else."

'Getting too old'

Dewey and his wife Joanne had been starting their days before dawn, seven days a week. They'd been spending more than 70 hours each week laying and hauling traps, weighing and processing the daily catch and meeting with suppliers and buyers.

Last year, Dewey said, they decided they were "getting too old" and wanted to retire.

"We did contact government employment agencies and basically said [that] we have... a ready-made occupation, a job, we have facilities that can be used until someone can get on their feet," he told Ontario Morning.

"They weren't of any assistance."

Passing on the torch

The family met al-Jasem at a local diner, where they watched a documentary about his life.

After a few more meetings, they chose him as their heir to the business.

Now al-Jasem is learning how to scale and fillet the fish, and may eventually take over the fishing license as well. In just a few days, Dewey said, al-Jasem became faster than he was at processing the catch.

"I didn't want to see [our company's] particular value to the overall fishery, what's left of it anyhow, lost," Dewey said.

"He's carrying it on  and I hope he continues to do it in the future."
By Khalil Ashawi AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - A "National Army" being set up by Syrian rebels with Turkey's help could become a long-term obstacle to President Bashar al-Assad's recovery of the northwest - if they can end factional rivalries that have long blighted the opposition. The effort is at the heart of plans by the Turkish-backed opposition to secure and govern a strip of territory that forms part of the last big rebel stronghold in Syria. The presence of Turkish forces on the ground has helped to shield it from government attack. Assad, backed by Russia and Iran, has vowed to recover "every inch" of Syria, and though he has now won back most of the country, the Turkish presence will complicate any government offensive in the northwest. Turkey's role has gone beyond supporting allied Syrian forces to rebuilding schools and hospitals. At least five branches of the Turkish post office have opened in the area. Colonel Haitham Afisi, head of the National Army, says setting up the force has been no easy task over the last year. "We are at the beginning. We face many difficulties but we are working to overcome them," Afisi told Reuters in an interview in the town of Azaz near the Turkish border. Recently, he had to issue an order instructing fighters to stop "randomly opening fire", wear uniforms and cooperate with a newly established military police that represents "the force of law and justice and not a rival to any other faction". Factions have also been banned from operating their own jails and courts and from carrying out extra-judicial arrests. The project has also faced attack: a number of recruits were wounded on Aug. 5 when their graduation ceremony in the city of al-Bab was shelled. Afisi said it was the work of an "enemy of the revolution, be they internal or external". The perpetrator had been identified, but he declined to say it who was. IDLIB EXPANSION? The National Army compromises some 35,000 fighters from some of the biggest factions in the war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced some 11 million people from their homes over the last seven years. Many previous efforts to unite the rebels have failed, obstructed by local rivalries and at times by the competing agendas of foreign states that once backed many of the rebels in the Syrian war. The National Army could be different because of Turkey's presence on the ground. The Turkish military pushed into the northwest in two campaigns. The first, "Euphrates Shield", which got underway in 2016, drove Islamic State from territory between Azaz and Jarablus. The second, "Olive Branch", captured the adjoining Afrin region from the Kurdish YPG militia earlier this year. The area is important to Turkey because of what it views as the national security threat posed by the YPG, which it sees as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey. Assad says Turkey is illegally occupying Syrian land. "All the support for the National Army is from Turkey, there are no other states partnering in this matter," Afisi said. The Turkish foreign ministry did not respond to questions from Reuters. Turkish support includes fighters' wages, logistical support "and weapons if necessary". He listed three enemies: Assad, the PKK and Islamic State. Turkey has also set up 12 military posts in Idlib province and adjoining areas which are located southwest of Afrin, under an agreement with Russia and Iran. The stated aim is to observe a "de-escalation" agreement in the Idlib area. Assad has indicated Idlib could be his next target. Afisi said the National Army could be quickly merged with Turkish-backed rebels in Idlib if necessary. The situation in Idlib is complicated by the presence of well-armed jihadists that have fought with the other groups. "We are ready and extend our hand to all groups that represent the goals of the revolution," he said. (Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Kim Coghill)
Police have identified the victim of Friday's deadly road rage incident as Willis Charles Hunt, 33, of Vancouver.

Just after 1:30 a.m. PT, police received a 911 call about a man shot underneath the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge, near Bridgeway Street.

First responders arrived soon after the call, but Hunt died at the scene.

A 32-year-old woman who was in the vehicle with Hunt was treated for minor injuries.

The two were driving in a grey Toyota Matrix, while the suspect was in a white sedan.

Police say no arrests have been made yet and the investigation is active.

"It is still very early in this investigation and our detectives are working to confirm the circumstances that led to this man's death," said Vancouver Police Constable Jason Doucette.

Homicide investigators are asking the public for information, specifically anyone with dash camera footage who was driving around McGill and Renfrew Streets between 1:30 a.m. and 2 a.m. PT on Friday to contact investigators at 604-717-2500 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

The incident was Vancouver's 14th homicide of 2018.
It was a different name and a different approach for the company formally known as Casa Fernandez at this years IPCPR. The company unveiled its new name Aganorsa Leaf. At the same time, the company started to implement its new branding and showcased a couple of new releases.

Aganorsa is an acronym for Agricola Ganadera Nortena S.A.- the Fernandez familys growing operation in Nicaragua that grows its signature tobacco. This tobacco is used in the companys own brands as well as other brands. The operation has a reputation for producing some of the best Nicaraguan tobaccos in the business. Over the years, it has been used in the branding of some Casa Fernandez products. Since the company considers the tobaccos it grows as a major differentiator in the marketplace, they opted to now make it the company name. As for the Casa Fernandez line, it will still exist on many of the brands the company makes.

Prior to the IPCPR Trade Show, Aganorsa Leaf announced one new cigar line, the Aganorsa Leaf Signature and one line extension, the Casa Fernandez Aniversario Perfecto. This is a change from the past where most of the companys releases were unveiled at the show. According to new company Senior Vice President Terence Reilly, the change was made to generate interest and excitement to get people to the booth.

Aganorsa Leafs new line is the Aganorsa Signature. This was a project spearheaded by Eduardo Fernandez and his son Max. The Aganorsa Leaf Signature Selection is a Nicaraguan puro utilizing the companys signature Aganorsa farm tobaccos. The wrapper utilizes a Jalapa grown Rosado Claro Corojo 99 wrapper. The binder and filler consist of Aganorsa grown Corojo 99 and Criollo 98 tobaccos from Jalapa and Esteli. The filler also utilizes a half a leaf of the rare high priming Medio Tiempo the Aganorsa farms are known for.

The Aganorsa Leaf Signature is available in four sizes presented in 25-count boxes. The sizes include a Robusto (5 x 52), Toro (6 x 52), Belicoso (6 1/4 x 52), and a Corona Gorda (6 x 44). The Belicoso will feature a Cuban style 109 cap while the Corona Gorda will have a butterfly cap. Production for 2018 is limited to 500 25-count boxes per size. This line is already shipping to retailers.

The Casa Fernandez Aniversario Perfecto is the fifth size released in the Aniversario line  and first new addition since 2015. The Aniversario Perfecto features 100% Nicaraguan tobacco grown on the Aganorsa farms. The cigar features a Corojo 99 wrapper over binder and fillers from the Jalapa and Esteli regions. The perfecto is a 6 1/4 x 52 perfecto offering rolled at the companys Miami, Florida factory. Production is being limited to 250 ten-count boxes. This cigar is already shipping to retailers.

The Buena Cosecha line underwent a major packaging change  aligning it with the companys strategy around tying it into the Aganorsa Leaf name.

Buena Cosecha Corojo is Spanish for Good Harvest Corojo. Its a blend of Aganorsa farm Corojo 99 and Criollo 98 tobaccos highlighted by a Corojo 99 wrapper. Its a blend produced at the companys SABOR (Sabor Aganorsa S.A) in Jalapa. Casa Fernandez acquired this factory a little over a year ago.

The cigar is offered in three sizes: Robusto (5 x 50), Toro (6 x 50), and Torpedo (6 1/4 x 54). Each size is presented in 20-count boxes.

Two years ago, Aganorsa Leaf released the Aganorsa Leaf TABSA Connecticut, the companys first regular Connecticut Shade offering. It now gets a slight name change with the cigar now being known as Aganorsa Leaf Connecticut. Like Buena Cosecha, the packaging for Aganorsa Leaf Connecticut also is now aligning with the overall company strategy. This is a box-pressed Connecticut Shade offering over Nicaraguan binder and filler.

Reilly says more changes are coming to some of the companys other offerings to bring them into the new branding strategy.

2018 Product Reports

Photo Credits: Cigar Coop
TRI to reveal 3D Micro Components Inspection Solutions at SEMICON Taiwan 2018 Published: 13 August 2018 by Chelsey Drysdale by Chelsey Drysdale

[July 17, 2018  Taipei, Taiwan] Test Research, Inc. (TRI), the leading test and inspection systems provider for the electronics manufacturing industry, will join SEMICON Taiwan 2018. TRI will showcase state-of-the-art 3D Automated Micro SMD Inspection Solutions. SEMICON Taiwan will be held at the Nangang Exhibition Center in Taipei, Taiwan, from September 5th to 7th, 2018. Visit TRI at booth # I2100 to discover High-Precision Inspection for the Semiconductor Industry.

TRI's VP of Sales and Marketing Jim Lin commented on the occasion, "We are delighted to share how TRI's newest 3D technology for Zero Escapes and Zero False Calls help our customers achieve microscopic-level inspection and increase production efficiency.



Presenting an integrated solution for the Advanced Packaging production line, TRI will exhibit the Global Technology Award-winning TR7007Q 3D SPI with Shadow-free Precision Inspection and High Repeatability and Reproducibility. TRI will also showcase the internationally acclaimed 3D DFF AOI TR7700Q with unprecedented 1um High-Resolution. Increase Yield and Reduce Rework with TRI's Innovative Precise Inspection with Leading High-speed CoaXpress Imaging Technology. Test Research, Inc.'s Metrology grade inspection is suited for the Semiconductor industry that continues to shrink the size of electronic devices. With 1um High Resolution Inspection TRI catches up with the miniaturization trend and ensures higher yields and fewer failure rates in the Semiconductor Packaging Production Lines.



Discover TRI's new Micro SMD and Packaging Inspection solutions at booth # l2100 of SEMICON Taiwan 2018.



Register now for PCB WEST, the leading trade show for the printed circuit design and electronics manufacturing industry! Coming Sept. 11-13 to the Santa Clara Convention Center.
MONDAY, Aug. 13, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- Children born to women who got the Tdap vaccine during pregnancy have no greater risk of autism than other kids, a new study finds.

The Tdap vaccine protects against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, which is better known as whooping cough. U.S. health officials advise pregnant women to get a booster shot in order to protect their newborns from whooping cough.

Young infants are at greatest risk of life-threatening complications from the respiratory infection, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When a pregnant woman gets the Tdap vaccine, she passes along antibodies that will protect her baby in the first months of life, explained Tracy Becerra-Culqui, the lead researcher on the new study.

Infants get their first vaccination against whooping cough at the age of 2 months.

Parents, of course, want to know that the vaccine is safe, as well, Becerra-Culqui pointed out. Research has shown there is no link between Tdap vaccination during pregnancy and the risks of preterm delivery or low birth weight.

Now the new findings, published online Aug. 13 in Pediatrics, show no association with autism, either.

"If a woman has had any hesitancy about getting the vaccine, this can help reassure her that it's safe," said Becerra-Culqui, a postdoctoral researcher with Kaiser Permanente, in Pasadena, Calif.

The notion that vaccines could be related to autism goes back to the 1990s -- starting with a small, and now-debunked, study that linked the childhood MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, to a heightened autism risk.

In the years since, research has consistently turned up no connection between autism and any vaccine or vaccine ingredient, according to the CDC.

The new study adds to that large body of evidence, said Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

"Any parent can understandably be concerned that vaccines given during pregnancy might inadvertently affect their unborn child," said Offit, who was not involved in the study.

These findings, he said, add to the "mountain of evidence" showing that vaccines given during pregnancy -- including Tdap and the flu shot -- are safe for women and their children.

The findings are based on medical records for nearly 82,000 children whose mothers were in the Kaiser Permanente Southern California health plan. All of the women gave birth between 2011 and 2014.

Among more than 39,000 women who received the Tdap vaccine during pregnancy, between 1.2 percent and 1.8 percent of their children were later diagnosed with autism -- depending on the year they were born.

Among children born to moms who did not get the vaccine, the rate ranged from 1.5 percent to 1.9 percent.

The study did find differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated mothers-to-be: Those who received the Tdap shot were more educated and more likely to have their pregnancy go full-term, for example.

But even when the researchers factored in those differences, there was no link between vaccination and autism risk.

Dr. Lisa Waddell is deputy medical officer at the non-profit March of Dimes.

"This study adds to the body of literature clearly showing this vaccine is safe," said Waddell, who was not involved in the research.

And while some people may think whooping cough is a disease of the past, that's not the case, Waddell pointed out: The United States sees outbreaks annually, and the infection has actually been on the rise in more recent years.

That, according to the CDC, is partly because immunity from the current vaccine wanes over time.

Because immunity declines, women need to get the Tdap vaccine with each pregnancy, Waddell said. And anyone who cares for the baby should also get a booster, she explained.

"It's a potentially deadly infection. Often, an infant will get sick very quickly and just stop breathing," Waddell said.

"This vaccine is the best way to protect your newborn from whooping cough," she added.

More information

The CDC has more on Tdap vaccination.
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New York, August 13, 2018 Mohammad Daud Anwari, a media technician for the state-run broadcaster Radio Television Afghanistan, was killed on August 10 during an attack by the Taliban on Tape-e-Television, an area of Ghazni city where many local media antennas are located, the Afghan Journalist Safety Committee (AJSC) reported.

The attack came as part of the Talibans assault on and around the provincial capital Ghazni, which is located 148 km (92 miles) south of Kabul, according to news reports.

The ongoing attacks in Ghazni province and the death of media worker Mohammad Daud Anwari are indicative of the dangerous landscape Afghan journalists operate in and the pressures they face from all sides, said Steven Butler, CPJ Asia Program Coordinator from Washington D.C. The destruction of media antennas only further perpetuates Afghan peoples suffering and access to information.

According to a tweet from AJSC, the Taliban also burned down a building housing privately owned Ghaznavian Radio-TV in Ghazni.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid denied that the Taliban intentionally torched the citys television boosters, the news website Pajhwok reported.

Landlines and cellphone links to the city were cut off as many of Ghanzis telecommunications masts were destroyed in the fighting, The Associated Press reported.

Since fighting began on August 10, at least 100 Afghan police and soldiers, and at least 20 civilians have been killed, according to The AP.

Afghanistan is the deadliest country for journalists so far this year, according to CPJ data.

Editors Note: The first and third paragraph of this alert have been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Mohammad Daud Anwaris name.
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On June 19, Abdulhamit Bilici, the last editor-in-chief of the now-shuttered Turkish paper Zaman, tweeted about the decline of press freedom in his home country. If you can see his tweet, you are probably not in Turkey because it is among the over 1.5 million tweets belonging to journalists and media outlets censored there under Twitters country withheld content (CWC) policy.

Since 2012, 13 countries have used Twitters CWC tool to effectively censor content, according to the social media platforms transparency reports. Governments usually cite laws around national security, counter-terrorism, defamation, or hate speech when requesting removals.

Figures from Twitter transparency reports show that legal demands to remove content on the platform went from 432 requests in the first part of 2014 to 6,651 requests in the second part of 2017. Turkey and Russia were responsible for 74 percent of all requests during that period. As legal demands can specify more than one account and/or tweet, over 78,000 accounts were reported by governments during that period. Twitter complied fully or partially with 24 per cent of legal demands from Turkey, compared with about 9 percent for the rest of the world. Facebooks transparency reports for the same period show it made close to 154,000 content restrictions worldwide. In the second part of 2017 in Turkey, more Twitter accounts were withheld and Facebook content restricted than in any other country.

When CPJ reviewed a Buzzfeed News database of over 1,700 accounts withheld in one or more country, along with court orders uploaded by tech companies to Harvard Universitys Lumen database, tweets, Twitter lists, and news reports, it was able to identify at least 59 Twitter accounts that belong to journalists and media outlets censored using the CWC tool in Turkey. As of late July, those 59 accounts had a combined following of over six million, in a country of about 11 million Twitter users.

Journalists whose accounts have been censored by CWC requests told CPJ that Twitter is inconsistent with its compliance with such requests and complained about the lack of remediation options.

Bilici told CPJ, It is a shame that Twitter silences a journalist already silenced by an authoritarian government. The journalist is living in exile in the U.S. after Turkey seized and then shuttered his paper for its close ties to the Hizmet movement that Turkey accuses of being a terrorist organization and being behind a failed attempted coup in July 2016.

Bilici said, I challenge both Twitter and the Turkish government to [find in my tweets] anything that can be considered illegal or harmful. My only crime is being a journalist.

Efe Kerem Sozeri, a Turkish researcher based in the Netherlands, said, Twitter, Facebook, [and] Googleare responsible to their shareholders primarily, I dont consider them as guardians of the free speech. But the imbalance in the tools they offer to users versus governments make them complicit in the authoritarian rulers crackdown against opposition.

Twitters co-founder Jack Dorsey has previously tweeted that his platform stands for speaking truth to power, but its policy and data show that Twitter may comply with requests to withhold content if the platform receives a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity.

Colin Crowell, Twitters head of global public policy, told CPJ, If [we] dont use CWC, then the alternative is to remove [the content] globally [then] nobody can see it.

A screenshot of how a withheld tweet would appear on the feed of Twitter users in Turkey (Twitter)

Soon after Twitter recorded its first CWC use in Turkey during a two-week ban on the platform in 2014, then-Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay told the press that Twitter now toes the line. Since then, Turkey has used the tool to withhold 1,482 accounts (82 percent of all accounts ever withheld worldwide), and 9,552 tweets (67 percent of all tweets withheld worldwide), according to Twitters transparency reports.

Asked whether Twitter is worried that Turkey might be misusing the tool to silence journalists, Crowell told CPJ, We are obviously concerned about it to the extent we go to court to challenge it.

It is rare, however, for Turkish courts to accept Twitters legal objections. Between 2014 and 2017, they accepted less than 3 percent, according to Twitters transparency reports.

Getting a court order to censor journalists is not a hard task in Turkey which, according to CPJ research, is the worlds worst jailer of journalists. Human Rights Watch said in 2014 that Turkish courts have tended to accede to government requests to block websites with apparent minimal, if any, scrutiny.

The countrys court system has also been criticized by the Council of Europe Venice Commission. In an opinion on Turkeys peace judgeships, which rule on cases of internet blocking via a horizontal process in which appeals are heard by other peace judges rather than higher courts, the commission found courts could be capable of becoming an instrument of oppression. It found that peace judges, who gained new powers under the state of emergency, were burdened with ruling on traffic offenses, in addition to more pressing cases. The judges rubberstamp all administrative bans, basically converting them into court orders, Sozeri said.

Court documents viewed by CPJ show how an Ankara court in August 2016 ordered Bilicis Twitter account, which has over 210,000 followers, to be blocked for promoting terrorism, violence, and threatening national security and public order. The order, made under law 5651 that regulates internet publications, specifies tens of other websites and Twitter accounts, including those of journalist Celil Sagr, who is also in exile, and jailed journalist Hanm Busra Erdal. Sagr had four of his Twitter accounts blocked in Turkey between 2014 and 2016.

Amendments to law 5651 in 2014 gave authorities power to block sites without a court order. Google transparency reports show that since the amendments came into effect, the majority of removal requests came from judicial rather than executive orders.

Law 5651 is a very fast-track system [to block content] with almost no checks, Sozeri said.

Erkan Saka, an assistant professor at the School of Communication at Istanbul Bilgi University who met with Twitter during its meetings with members of Turkish civil society and the private sector in 2014, said that without being blocked, [some Turkish users] stopped tweeting orwent underground, [as they are] frightened to speak out.

Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, and YouTube are not the only social media sites affected by Turkeys crackdown through legal demands. Between July and December 2016, 75 of the 96 government takedown requests reported by Tumblr in its transparency reports came from the Turkish government, affecting 144 blogs. Tumblr complied in 16 percent of cases.

After Gezi, internet blocking was intensified by legal measures, but also beyond legal measures, there were political trolls, and more technical measures like centralized governance of the internet, centralized filtering system, internet throttling, and most likely deep packet inspection-based surveillance, said Saka, referring to the nationwide Gezi park protests in 2013.

In his U.N. report on regulation of user-generated online content published earlier this year, David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, recommended that companies should recognize that the authoritative global standard for ensuring freedom of expression on their platforms is human rights law, not the varying laws of states or their own private interests.

Crowell told CPJ that Twitter already incorporates these considerations.

Bilici said that the international community, including tech companies like Twitter, need to stand with the Turkish people, not the government. I expect from all my colleagues in the democratic world toremind themselves that Turkish people are struggling to turn back to democracy, and all the democratic world should support their aspirations.
India has handed over 404 houses built for Indian-origin people in Sri Lankas tea plantation areas at Dunsinane Estate in Nuwara Eliya city. This is first lot of houses built under Indian Housing Project in Plantation Areas in Sri Lanka.

Indian Housing Project in Plantation Areas

Under this project close to 47,000 houses so far have been completed out of total 60,000. With grant of over US $350 million, it is Indias largest assistance project in any country. Houses built under it are provided to Indian-origin people, mostly Tamils in Sri Lankas tea plantation areas. India is also considering to sign agreement for construction of additional 10,000 houses at cost of 12 billion Sri Lankan Rupees under this project.

Background

Indian-origin Tamils, mostly employed in tea and rubber plantations in Sri Lanka, lack proper housing. They are mostly residing in central hill areas of the island country. They were brought from India by British rulers during 19th century to work in coffee plantations in Sri Lanka. More than million are still associated with tea and rubber plantations. Though they have been given the Sri Lankan citizenship, housing is one of the major issue for these workers employed as daily wagers. Earlier, Sri Lankan Government led by President Maithripala Sirisena had formulated ational plan of action for the plantation workers and planned for construction of 55,000 houses till 2020.
The Jordanian government said Sunday state forces pulled out the bodies of three suspected terrorists of a sleeper terror cell, which engaged in a shootout with state forces on Saturday in Salt, a town near capital Amman.

Joint forces made of security and army troops on Saturday encircled a four-storey building in Salt, 15 km from Fuhais; a Christian-dominated town, where a bomb, targeting a police van, blew up on Friday near a music festival, killing one security force.

The joint forces engaged Saturday a chase of a terror cell believed behind the bomb blast and raided the apartment. The suspected terrorists holed up in the building fired back at government forces, killing three, government spokesperson Jumana Ghneimat said on Sunday in an update.

The suspects refused to surrender and opened heavy fire at a joint security force, she said in a statement.

The suspects blew up the building in which they were hiding, and which they had booby-trapped earlier, she added.

Part of the building collapsed after one of the terrorists blew himself up, authorities believe.

Three bodies of the alleged terrorists were removed from the rubbles. Five members of the cell were arrested.

The shootout left at least 20 people injured, including women and children living in the area. They had been taken overnight to a hospital in the capital, Reuters reports citing medical sources.

The operation ended on Sunday and concluded with the seizure of automatic weapons during a search in the remaining part of the building. The standing part of the building was later demolished.

Authorities have not named any terror group connected to the Friday and Saturday incidents. It is unclear if the two incidents were connected.

Jordan has been spared by terror attacks unlike other countries of the region, which have been grappling with unrest and surge in radicalism since 2011, known as the year of Arab Spring.

With the defeat of the Islamic state group (ISIS) and other terror groups in Syria and Iraq, Jordan has become a hideout for the fleeing groups.

King Abdullah in a meeting of the cabinet on Sunday, reportedly vowed to defeat terror cells.

We will fight the Khawarij and strike at them without mercy and with all strength and determination, he said.

The Khawarij is a term used for radical groups such as Islamic State.
Tamil Nadu: Kin of dead fishers face

by M K Ananth

August 13,2018 | Source: The Times of India

Widows and kin of the three fishermen in Ramanthurai and Mulloorthurai coastal villages in Kanyakumari district, who were killed in the ship-boat accident off the Munambam harbour in Kerala, are yet to recover from the shock. While the bodies have been buried, the future of the families is at stake.



The tragic incident has affected them psychologically and is also affecting them economically as their breadwinners are gone. Some of the families are interdependent and the death of the fishermen and fishermen who are missing will not only affect their families but also other dependants, said South Asian Fishermen Fraternity (SAFF) general secretary Churchil.



Among the three was R Yuganathan, 46, of Ramanthurai, the sole breadwinner of the family. He and his wife Vijula, 41, have three unmarried daughters. Both Anisha, 22, and Ancy, 20, could not study beyond standard XI and X respectively as their father could not pay their fees. He had enrolled his youngest daughter Aswini, 18, in a private college at Ammandivilai for BCom first year. However, being a self-financing college, she will have difficulty in continuing studies. The family is also worried about getting the three girls married without Yuganathan.



Another fisherman who died was Sahayaraj (son of Simon), 46, of Mulloorthurai. It was a double tragedy for his wife Violet Mary, 41, as her brother Sahayaraj (son of Sesayan), 32, who went fishing in the same boat is also missing and feared dead. Violet Mary is the mother of two boys, Sahaya Sarjai Dasan, a class 11 student, and Aswin Thoson, who is in class 8. The death of her husband will also affect the family of her elder sister, who Sahayaraj has been supporting after her husband died many years ago. Violet Marys brother Sahayaraj did not get married as he was supporting the families of his five sisters.



Among the seven fishermen of Ramanthurai who are missing are three brothers, B Yesubalan, 36, B Rajesh, 29, and B Dinesh, 25. Yesubalan is also one of the two partners of the two-year-old trawler boat (estimated at about Rs 1 crore) that was sunk by the cargo ship, said Churchil.Yesubalans eldest son Absin Balan, 8, is searching for his father while his two brothers, Asvin Balan, 5, and Sarjin Balan, 2, have no idea why many are coming to their houses to mourn. Their mother, Mary Sweetlin Subha, 27, and their uncle Rajeshs wife Josephine, 25, are sisters.



Meanwhile, the incessant rains that flooded waterbodies and reservoirs in Kerala has affected the search for the nine fishermen who went missing after a cargo ship crushed their trawler boat 45 in the wee hours of Tuesday. Officials from Tamil Nadu who are camping at Munambam harbour said that torrential rains across Kerala and opening the sluices of reservoirs have resulted in heavy outflow into the sea turning the sea very rough. Fisheries officials supervising and assisting the search have been directed to carry out safety measures of the local coastal population.



Despite these conditions, INS Sunayna, INS Sutlej, ICGS Aryaman and Vikram were continuing search for the missing fishermen and remains of their boat. A Dornier was also on standby mode to be deployed for the search when the weather is favourable. Relatives of the fishermen continued their search in five fishing vessels. Families of the fishermen who were killed and had gone missing in Ramanthurai village led by Killiyoor MLA S Rajesh Kumar resorted to a fast at Ramanthurai on Friday afternoon.
West Bengal: Govt imposes ban on catching young hilsa

August 13,2018 | Source: Uni India

The West Bengal Government is now implementing strict rules on the catching of young hilsa. The activity is already banned in Bangla; however a few fishermen continue to do so. The issue with this is that catching the young fishes deprives people of getting eat the adult fishes, which are much tastier. Its a loss for fish-sellers and cultivators as well, because the big fishes garner much higher prices. It has been determined by experts that April 15 to June 14 is the period when most hilsa in India lay eggs.



Hence these 60 days comprise the ban period, as determined by the Government of India  when catching hilsa in both rivers and seas is banned. Catching of the young fishes has been increasing over the last few years because of the increased demand. To cater to this demand, the State Fisheries Department has been increasing the rearing of hilsa. Also, more and more fish cultivators are being given incentives to cultivate hilsa.
Gujarat: Finally, Gujarat takes to the sea for farming

August 13,2018 | Source: The Times of India

Gujarat boasts of the country's longest coastline spanning 1,600 km. Yet, it never tapped into the commercial potential of seaweed farming, successfully done in countries such as Japan, Korea, China, Philippines and Indonesia. But, that is about to change. With seaweeds climbing to the superfood charts worldwide, the state has ambitious plans to take the plunge into seaweed farming. Gujarat-based CSIR-Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSMCRI) in Bhavnagar has completed the training of the first batch of 18 farmers to commercially grow non-edible seaweed 'gracilaria dura' near Simar and Rajpara village coasts in Gir-Somanth district. These farmers have also collectively earned Rs 1.15 lakh in two cycles (each cycle involves 40 days) for harvesting 5.9 tonnes of dry seaweed, said CSMCRI scientist, Dr Monica Kavale.



A total 162 farmers will be trained by 2019. CSMCRI has got a Rs 2-crore grant for this from the National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB). Experts said gracilaria dura is used to extract agar and agarose gel - widely used in the pharma and research industries. What's more, if all goes well, patrons at Sushi restaurants and superfood stores might soon find a Gujarati flavour to their favourite edible seaweeds as the institute plans to give a shot to farming edible seaweeds like porphyra, ulva and enteromorpha at specific villages along Indian coasts, including Simar.



Interestingly, Tamil Nadu pipped Gujarat to begin seaweed farming way back in 2005. CSMCRI was successful in convincing TN farmers to exploit the potential of another non-edible seaweed called 'kappaphycus alvarezii'. Last week, CSMCRI signed a Rs 4-crore agreement with the TN fisheries department to expand its scope and include more farmers. Senior CSMCRI scientist Vaibhav Mantri said the kappaphycus sap has proved to be an efficient bio-stimulant. In a pan-India study, CSIR-CSMCRI conducted 335 on-farm trials across 20 states. The study revealed the use of kappaphycus sap had improved average yield. Tamil Nadu-based CSMCRI scientist K Eswaran told TOI, "PepsiCo was among the first to source kappaphycus from TN farmers to export it to a Malaysian firm which extracted carrageenan, which is used in jams, jellies and even in shoe polishes and cosmetics."




The drug company quickly moved to appeal the judges order, leaving uncertain whether the execution will still take place as planned.













State officials are planning to execute Moore  who has lived more than half his life under sentence of death  on Tuesday in Lincoln, the state capital. Relatives of the victims in his case  Reuel Van Ness and Maynard Helgeland, both killed in 1979  have said they are ready to be done with decades of waiting. Moore has said he does not want to stop his execution or have anyone else stop it for him, though he also belittled state officials who have been unable to execute him for decades as either lazy or incompetent to do their jobs or both.





Whether Moore will be executed as planned was thrown into question this week when the drug company Fresenius Kabi filed a federal lawsuit accusing Nebraska of improperly  and possibly illegally  obtaining its products to use in the execution. In its lawsuit, the company said it restricts the use of certain drugs to try to keep them from being used in lethal injections, a practice that other firms also have in place.





While Fresenius Kabi takes no position on capital punishment, Fresenius Kabi opposes the use of its products for this purpose and therefore does not sell certain drugs to correctional facilities, the company said in the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska.





The company said it sells these restricted drugs to wholesalers and distributors under conditions that are meant to keep the products from being sold to prisons, penitentiaries or jails. According to the lawsuit, though, Fresenius Kabi thinks that it manufactured two of the four drugs Nebraska intends to use next week.





One of the drugs, potassium chloride, is intended to stop Moores heart. Another drug, cisatracurium besylate, would paralyze his muscles. The other two drugs Nebraska intends to use are diazepam, a sedative better known as Valium; and fentanyl, the synthetic painkiller that has helped fuel the countrys opioid epidemic and would be used to render Moore unconscious.





The company says its drugs could only have been attained through improper or illegal means because of the restrictions they put into place regarding their products, and it asked for the courts to bar Nebraska from using its drugs and to order the state to return them.





The office of Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson responded to the lawsuit with a one-sentence statement: Nebraskas lethal injection drugs were purchased lawfully and pursuant to the State of Nebraskas duty to carry out lawful capital sentences.





In court filings, Petersons office pushed back against the companys arguments, saying it obtained the drugs from a licensed pharmacy and not through any fraud, deceit or misrepresentation. Nebraska officials also disputed the firms contention that it would suffer great reputational injury if its drugs are used, saying that only the companys own lawsuit drew attention to its potential involvement.





Petersons office also said they were facing a ticking clock to carry out Moores execution, saying that the ongoing shortage of available drugs leaves them unable to know when or if they could get more.





Lethal substances used in a lethal injection execution are difficult, if nearly impossible, to obtain, Scott R. Frakes, director of Nebraskas Department of Correctional Services, said in an affidavit filed in federal court. This problem is not limited solely to Nebraska, but exists in other death penalty states.









Supporters of capital punishment argue that opponents have forced states to pursue inferior options because of what Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. once called a guerrilla war against the death penalty.





Frakes said he contacted at least 40 potential suppliers and half a dozen other states while searching for lethal injection drugs, but only one supplier  which he did not identify beyond calling it a licensed pharmacy  was willing to provide them. That same supplier will not provide more substances, Frakes said, adding that he does not have any backup options for purchasing any additional drugs.





With one drug in question  potassium chloride  expiring at the end of August, Frakes said, any court order blocking Nebraska from using any of the drugs would keep them from being able to execute Moore and essentially change his final death sentence into a de facto sentence of life in prison.





With one drug in question  potassium chloride  expiring at the end of August, Frakes said, any court order blocking Nebraska from using any of the drugs would keep them from being able to execute Moore and essentially change his final death sentence into a de facto sentence of life in prison.





On Friday, Richard G. Kopf, senior U.S. district judge, rebuffed the drug companys request to block Nebraska officials from using the drugs in question. Kopf said in an order that there was no evidence that the cisatracurium Nebraska will use was manufactured or distributed by the company, nor did he think the company would face any blame or that its reputation would be harmed if it was associated with the execution.





Kopf, who called it a very strange suit, noted that lawmakers in Nebraska decided to kill the death penalty, and after that, and very recently, the people decided to resurrect it. As such, he explained, the public interest sided with the state officials seeking to carry out Moores death sentence.





The drug company is disappointed in the judges order, emphasizing that its main purpose is to provide lifesaving medicines to people who care for patients, Matthew Kuhn, a spokesman, said Friday.





Spokesmen for Nebraskas governor and attorney general did not respond to requests for comment on the ruling and the companys move to appeal. An attorney for Moore declined to comment.





Danielle Conrad, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska, said in a statement after Kopfs order that the group commends Fresenius Kabi for taking action to ensure their products were not obtained illegally or used for illicit purposes.









These legal fights have drawn the attention of attorneys general in more than a dozen other states, including active death-penalty states Florida, Texas, Georgia and Alabama. In a brief filed by Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and signed by 13 other attorneys general, they argued that the lawsuit in Nebraska is part of the latest nationwide campaign being waged by anti-death-penalty activists to deny states access to drugs necessary to carry out lawful executions. Most of these officials made a similar argument in the Nevada case, which is still pending.









In a statement, Rutledge accused the pharmaceutical firms of trying to circumvent the rule of law by using 11th-hour litigation tactics to stall these lawful executions and pledged to continue to fight for justice.













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Carey Dean Moore, who faces the death penalty next week for killing 2 taxi drivers in Omaha in 1979, has stopped fighting his looming execution. But his life may be extended by a German drugmaker that says it produced 2 of the drugs that are to be injected into Mr. Moore's veins.





Fresenius Kabi, one of Germany's largest companies, has asked a judge to block the use of its drugs in Nebraska's 1st execution in 21 years and its 1st-ever lethal injection. Use of the drugs, the company says, will cause grave harm to its reputation if products intended to help treat people are used to kill.





A hearing is planned for Friday afternoon in Federal District Court in Lincoln, and if the judge grants the company's request for an injunction it could delay the execution, scheduled for Tuesday.





2 drugs Fresenius says it manufactured, along with 2 other drugs, are set to be used in Mr. Moore's execution.





Fresenius says it takes no position on capital punishment, but that it has strict contracts with distributors that ban sales to prisons for executions or to anyone other than hospitals and other medical users. It says Nebraska illegally obtained both a muscle relaxant and a drug that, when given at extremely high doses, can stop a beating heart.





In Nebraska, any delay could further complicate matters because the state's supply of 1 of the drugs, potassium chloride, expires in 3 weeks, and its supply of the other, cisatracurium, expires on Oct. 31, according to Scott R. Frakes, the state corrections director. The drugs used in lethal injection have become increasingly difficult to obtain as pharmaceutical companies try to clamp down on their use and death penalty opponents argue that new drug protocols are unproven or inhumane.





On Thursday night, Tennessee carried out its 1st execution since 2009, putting Billy Ray Irick to death for the rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl in 1985. The state used a combination of drugs that Mr. Irick's lawyers had argued could make the condemned feel like they were burning alive and drowning.





According to The Tennessean newspaper, Mr. Irick "was coughing, choking and gasping for air" and "his face turned dark purple as the lethal drugs took over."





In its lawsuit, Fresenius has raised the specter that use of the drugs could lead to a botched execution, saying that its drugs, when obtained improperly, are at risk of being handled or transported in ways that leave them adulterated and chemically altered. For example, it says cisatracurium, the muscle relaxant, loses effectiveness when not refrigerated in the carton between 36 and 46 degrees Fahrenheit, but that Nebraska's execution protocols call for the drugs to be stored at "room temperature storage conditions."





The company says it determined it was the maker of the potassium chloride because an inventory of drugs kept by the state showed that its stockpile came in vials of 30 milliliters. Fresenius says it is the only manufacturer that packages the drug in vials of that size.





"We made no sales to the Department of Correctional Services, nor have any of our authorized distributors," Fresenius Kabi wrote in a statement. "So we can only conclude Nebraska may have acquired this product from an unauthorized seller."





Nebraska is fighting separate legal efforts to force it to disclose where it got the drugs. A statement issued by Attorney General Doug Peterson said the drugs "were purchased lawfully and pursuant to the state of Nebraska's duty to carry out lawful capital sentences."





But neither the statement, nor state officials on Thursday, said which company manufactured the drugs, what temperature they are being stored at or whether an injunction would delay the execution. The offices of Mr. Peterson and the Nebraska governor, Pete Ricketts, did not respond to messages on Thursday.





The planned execution of Mr. Moore, 60, is also notable because it would be the first-ever lethal injection in the United States that uses fentanyl, a powerful opioid that is at the heart of the nation's overdose crisis. Mr. Moore has ceased efforts to prevent his execution.





It is also the 2nd time in a month that pharmaceutical manufacturers have sought to block a state from using their drugs in an execution.





In July, the execution of Scott Dozier in Nevada was delayed after a drug maker, Alvogen, said 1 of the drugs in the state's execution protocol had been obtained illicitly. 2 other companies that also make drugs that Nevada wants to use in the execution, Sandoz and Hikma Pharmaceuticals, have also sought to block the state from using their products.





Maya Foa, the director of Reprieve, a human rights organization in London, said there is now consensus in the pharmaceutical industry that it should fight to prevent its products from being used in executions.





"We've come to a tipping point in terms of the industry's desire to see their contracts and rights respected and enforced," Ms. Foa said.





On top of that, she said, state governments are undermining public health by using murky or illegal drug distribution channels to traffic in powerful narcotics and other drugs.





"That's scandalizing in a climate where we're seeing a hundred people dying every day from the opioid epidemic," she said.





The drug companies' aggressive maneuvers have put officials in some death penalty states on the defensive. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the Nevada Supreme Court in the Dozier case, 15 other states contend that the drug companies' arguments are groundless.





Their lawsuits "do not even need to succeed on the merits in order to achieve the desired outcome and prevent an execution," their brief states. "Instead, they merely have to obtain an injunction preventing a state from carrying out an execution on the scheduled date. And that alone might delay an execution long enough that a state's drugs could expire."





Leslie Rutledge, the attorney general of Arkansas, one of the 15 states, argued that the companies "are being pressured by anti-death-penalty advocates to stop supplying the drug to carry out lawful executions," adding: "The families of these victims deserve justice."





The other states supporting Nevada's effort to execute Mr. Dozier over the drug companies' objections are Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.

With no other drug source, execution window closes Aug. 31, Nebraska prisons director says

Nebraska's prisons director said Thursday the window to execute Carey Dean Moore closes Aug. 31 because the state has no other source for the lethal injection drug that expires on that date.





So granting a restraining order to block next week's execution would have the effect of changing the death sentence "into a de facto sentence of life in prison for Carey Dean Moore," said Scott Frakes, director of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.





Frakes filed an affidavit Thursday in response to allegations raised in a federal lawsuit filed this week by drug manufacturer Fresenius Kabi. The German-based corporation has asked a court to block Nebraska from using potassium chloride it manufactured in Tuesday's execution of Moore.





In the lawsuit filed Tuesday, the company alleged the state obtained the drug improperly or illegally.





A federal judge will hold a hearing at 3 p.m. Friday in Lincoln to rule on a temporary restraining order sought by the drug company.





Frakes said in his affidavit that the state legally purchased its four death penalty drugs from a licensed pharmacy. Frakes said he found the pharmacy after contacting at least 40 suppliers and 6 states in an unsuccessful search for drugs.





"That supplier is unwilling to provide additional substances," Frakes stated. "I do not, at present nor at any time in the future, have an alternative supplier for any of the four substances to be administered for execution by lethal injection."





Moore, who has spent 38 years on death row, says he's ready to die in a lethal injection scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday. He has not participated in the drug lawsuit or other legal challenges to prevent his execution.





One of the longest serving death row inmates in the nation, Moore, 60, was sentenced to death for the 1979 slayings of Omaha cabdrivers Reuel Van Ness and Maynard Helgeland in Omaha.





Nebraska prisons director says state can't buy execution drugs again

Nebraska prisons Director Scott Frakes has told a federal court it did not obtain any drugs to be used in Carey Dean Moore's execution by fraud, deceit or misrepresentation, as an Illinois-based drug manufacturer says.





Furthermore, Frakes said, if the court prevents the state from carrying out Tuesday's scheduled execution, it would likely change the death sentence into a de facto life sentence for Moore.





The state doesn't have any other way to buy the drugs that comply with Nebraska law and the department's protocol, Frakes said.





The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services responded Thursday to a legal request by drug manufacturer Fresenius Kabi to stop the use of 2 drugs in Tuesday's execution.





A hearing on the matter is set for 3 p.m. Friday to decide whether to grant a temporary restraining order.





Manufacturer Fresenius Kabi filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday saying the cisatracurium and potassium chloride the state plans to use next week are manufactured by the company.





State inventories of the drug show the potassium chloride, which could be used to stop Moore's heart, are in 30-milliliter vials. The company alleges it is the only one with vials of the drug distributed in that size.





The department has not revealed the sources of its lethal injection drugs, despite a district court order, which it has appealed.





In his affidavit filed Thursday with the U.S. District Court of Nebraska, Frakes said the drugs were obtained from a licensed pharmacy in the United States, and it did not circumvent Fresenius Kabi's distribution controls.





The department's supply of potassium chloride will expire Aug. 31. Frakes said he has no other source or supplier for the drugs to be used next week or any time in the future.





The people of Nebraska have waited more than 20 years to carry out Moore's sentence, Frakes said. Moore has raised no objections to the sentence or tried to stop or delay it, he said.





"Lethal substances used in a lethal injection execution are difficult, if nearly impossible, to obtain," Frakes said in the affidavit.





It's a problem not only here but in other death penalty states, he said.





Frakes said he has tried to purchase additional execution drugs from the supplier of the current substances and that supplier is unwilling to provide them. He has no alternative supplier for any of the four drugs, he said.





Fresenius Kabi contends the department obtained the drugs improperly or illegally, and allowing their use would injure the company's reputation and damage business and investor relationships.

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,

but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

: New York Times, August 10, 2018: Omaha World-Herald, August 10, 2018: Lincoln Journal Star, August 10, 2018
Saudi Arabia continues to use barbaric methods of execution claiming they are justified by the Quran and its traditions





Saudi Arabia has some of the most barbaric and bizarre punishments in the world. Public beheadings, amputations, eye for an eye retribution and flogging all form part of the justice system.





As The Sun reported this week, a murderer was crucified after being found guilty of repeatedly stabbing a woman, his body hung on a cross after execution.





Crown Prince Salman wants to make the desert kingdom a tech savvy 21st century nation and has introduced liberal reforms.





Yet for all his ambitions, the country still has the trappings of one caught in a altogether different era, particularly when it comes to its justice system.





Saudi Arabia retains the death penalty for a large number of offences including drug trafficking and "sorcery" as well as murder.





The majority of death sentences are carried out in public by beheading, drawing comparisons with the shocking brutality of the Islamic State.





The system is based on Shariah law, which the Saudis say is rooted in Islamic tradition and the Quran.





While they insist trials are conducted to the strictest standards of fairness, evidence has emerged from the country to suggest the opposite.





Trials are reported to have lasted a day and confessions extracted under torture.





The country has no written penal code and no code of criminal procedure and judicial procedure.





That allows courts wide powers to determine what constitutes a criminal offence and what sentences crimes deserve.





The only means of appeal is directly to the King, who decides whether the condemned lives or dies.





The list of punishments makes for grim reading.





Beheading





Last year the kingdom year carried out 146 executions, the 3rd highest rate in the world behind China and Iran, according to Amnesty International.





In the first 4 months of this year alone it has carried out 86 beheadings, 1/2 of them for non-violent crimes such as drugs offences.





There has been a surge in executions since last month, with at least 27 people executed in July alone, say Amnesty International.





Beheading remains the most common form of execution and the sentence traditionally carried out in a public square on a Friday after prayers.





Deera Square in the centre of the capital Riyadh is known locally as "Chop Chop Square".









Warning: Graphic Content









Public beheading in Saudi Arabia









The work maybe grim but country's chief executioner appeared to take pride in his work.





After visiting the victim's family to see if they want to forgive the prisoner, they are then taken for beheading.





"When they get to the execution square, their strength drains away," the BBC reported Muhammad Saad al-Beshi as saying.





"Then I read the execution order, and at a signal I cut the prisoner's head off.".





A recent surge in rate of executions led to ads placed for 8 executioners on the civil service jobs website.





In Saudi Arabia, the practice of "crucifixion" refers to the court-ordered public display of the body after execution, along with the separated head if beheaded.





In one case pictures on social media appearing to show 5 decapitated bodies hanging from a horizontal pole with their heads wrapped in bags.





The beheading and "crucifixion" took place in front of the University of Jizan where students were taking exams takes place in a public square to act as a deterrent.





Paralysis





The ability of courts to decide for themselves sentences that fit the crime has led to sentences of "qisas" or retribution.





The most high profile example was that of Ali al-Khawahir, who was 14 when stabbed a friend in the neck, leaving him paralysed from the waist down.





10 years later was sentenced to be paralysed unless he paid a million Saudi riyals to the victim.





At the time Amnesty International said the sentence was "utterly shocking" even for Saudi Arabia.





In such cases, the victim can demand the punishment be carried out, request financial compensation or grant a conditional or unconditional pardon.





Stoning





Stoning remains a punishment for adultery for women in Saudi Arabia.





According to 1 witness, the accused are put into holes and then have rocks tipped on them from a truck.





In 2015 a married 45-year-old woman, originally from Sri Lanka, who was working as a maid in Riyadh, was sentenced to death by stoning.





Her partner, who was single and also from Sri Lanka, was given a punishment of 100 lashes after being found guilty of the same offence.





Eye Gouging





Abd ul-Latif Noushad, an Indian citizen, was sentenced to have his right eye gouged out in retribution for his role in a brawl in which a Saudi citizen was injured.





He worked at a petrol station and got into an altercation about a jump lead a customer wanted a refund for and in the ensuing struggle struck the other man on the head, hitting his eye.





A court of appeal in Riyadh has reportedly merely asked whether the Saudi man would accept monetary compensation instead, according to Human Rights Watch.





On September 16, 2004, the Saudi newspaper Okaz reported that a court in Tabuk ordered the right eye of Muhammad `Ayid Sulaiman al-Fadili al-Balawi to be gouged out.





The court gave him the option of paying compensation within one year and it was reported he had raised the 1.4 million riyals required.





Another Saudi newspaper, ArabNews, reported on December 6 that a court had recently sentenced an Egyptian man in to having his eye gouged.





He was accused of throwing acid in the face of another man, who subsequently lost his eyesight.





Flogging





Those convicted of insulting Islam can also expect to be flogged.





In a case that has brought international condemnation, blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes as well as 10 years behind bars.





Video shows a crowd cheering as the first 50 lashes of his sentence was carried out, an ordeal which his wife Ensaf Haidar, who says nearly killed him.





Last year a man was sentenced 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for expressing his atheism on Twitter.





The 28-year-old reportedly refused to repent, insisting what he wrote reflected his beliefs and that he had the right to express them.

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,

but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
A man who pleaded guilty to the 2011 killing of a South Dakota prison guard is set to be executed in the fall, the state's attorney general said Wednesday.





Attorney General Marty Jackley said in a statement that Rodney Berget, 56, is scheduled to be executed between Oct. 28 and Nov. 3.





Jackley's office said the warden of the state penitentiary will choose the specific time and date, which will be announced within 48 hours of the execution.





Circuit Court Judge Bradley Zell issued a warrant of execution for Berget, who would be the 1st person put to death in South Dakota in roughly 6 years.





"We will be ready to carry out the order of the court," Department of Corrections Secretary Denny Kaemingk said in a statement.





Berget pleaded guilty in April 2012 to killing Ronald "R.J." Johnson in a failed prison escape attempt in April 2011 along with fellow inmate Eric Robert, who was executed in 2012.





An attorney for Berget wasn't immediately available to comment to The Associated Press. Berget's mental status and death penalty eligibility have played a key role in court delays.





Berget in 2016 appealed his death sentence, but later asked to withdraw the appeal against the advice of his lawyers, the Argus Leader reported.





"I want this to be the last day I appear in court," Berget said at a September 2016 hearing.





The last execution in South Dakota was the lethal injection of Donald Moeller on Oct. 30, 2012, for the killing of Becky O'Connell.





State Department of Corrections policy says lethal injections involve 1 to 3 drugs, depending on drug availability and the date of the prisoner's conviction. State law makes a drug supplier confidential.





Robert Dunham, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, said U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers have distribution policies that prohibit the sale of their medicines for non-therapeutic uses.





The "secrecy" provision in South Dakota law raises serious questions about how the drugs are obtained, Dunham said.





"The big problem is that with secrecy we can't have any assurances," Dunham said. "Given the history of behavior of many of the states that have carried out executions, 'Trust me I'm the government,' is not a satisfactory explanation."

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,

but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Associated Press, August 13, 2018
An aerial view of the city of Bahrain is a good precursor to what you can expect to see in this archipelago of islands. The turquoise blues and greens merge with the sandy browns to create a landscape that is straight out of a painting. Even as you enter the city of Manama, the first thing you see is a large life-size colourful camel sculpture Caravan of Peace. This is part of a project by artists and students of different areas of Bahrain to promote national unity and the idea of citizenship and co-existence among Bahrainis. And much like the rest of the experiences here this is a country that is as warm as it is friendly and welcoming.

Sights & Sounds

A good place to start your exploration is the Bahrain National Museum that will take you on a trip down memory lane, and acquaint you with the 4,000-year-old history of the country. With nine halls housed in a beige hued building, the museum is spread over three levels. The ground floor has sections dedicated to graves, the history of Dilmun as well as the customs and traditions. On the first floor, you can check documents and manuscripts, Tylos and Islam, and trades and crafts. The lobby level has an art gallery, invested in culture exhibitions, temporary exhibition spaces, a cafe, gift shop and auditorium. Do look at the brilliant sculptures on the exterior of the museum that are framed by stunning sea views. Adjacent to this is the Bahrain National Theatre spread over 12,000 square metres with a seating capacity of 1,001. Opened in 2012, the architecture of this building has been inspired by 1001 Arabian Nights. A visit to the Qalat Al Bahrain or The Bahrain Fort is also recommended, especially towards th

e evening as you can visit the fort as well as see the fantastic light and sound show that takes you through the countrys history, the legend of Gilgamesh as well as Dilmun and the pearling journey. Also make time for the Beit Al Quran a museum dedicated to the Quran that has a number of Qurans some dating back to the 1st century.

Modern architecture in Manama.

Cosmo Vibes

In spite of being a relatively small country, Bahrain has a vibrant night life scene replete with pubs, bars, night clubs and lounges, especially in most five stars. These are extremely popular with the youth. Among some of the popular watering holes in Manama are Club XS, W Club Lounge and Apollo Club Bar. Thursdays at W-Night at Bushido Lounge are recommended for DJ Alberts thumping music. Women must check out Klub 360, every Sunday and Wednesday as they can enjoy free drinks and also take part in raffles to win spa vouchers, perfumes and designer bags.

Exhibits at the National Museum.

When in Manama, a great way to spend your evening is to visit Adliya, Block 338. This is a locality that has a motley mix of art galleries and restaurants but it is its vibrant street art that is its most attractive feature. Of course, the food choices here are great an eclectic mix of Indian, Arabic, Mediterranean, Japanese, there is never a dull culinary moment here. The locale is filled with art galleries like the Al Riwaq Gallery that displays art by emerging artists from Bahrain and the region as well as the Al Bareh Gallery, a private space that hosts exhibitions by regional artists. Being neighbours with Saudi Arabia, a short 25 minute drive on the King Fahad Causeway brings you to the border of Saudi. From this spot, it is lovely to see the azure vast expanse of the ocean, especially in the evening. For some shopping, you must check out the local souk Bab Al Bahrain where you can buy traditional souvenirs. The Seef Mall is a good place for urban shoppers. Of course, all race buff have to visit the Bahrain International Circuit, for a spot of adventure where you can experience a 4X4 land rover drive that is full of thrills and spills.

Street art at Adliya, Block 338.

Getting Arty

A stop at the Al Jasra Handicraft Centre is a must whether you love arts and craft or not, simply because this is a space where you can get up close with all traditional arts and crafts of the country under one roof. There is a separate room dedicated to each craft form whether it is production of musical instruments, boat building, weaving, gypsum engraving, traditional chest making and pottery. The artisans work here so you can also interact with them. A small store retails these products so you can buy a piece of Bahrain for your home. This is a country that lives up to its tourism tagline Ours. Yours. And its yours to discover.

 Photographs by Bindu Gopal Rao
Hyderabad: A drug dealer was arrested for selling cocaine in Banjara Hills at Road no 36. The police recovered 31 grams of cocaine and Rs 7 lakh in cash from him. He mainly sold the drug to clients in the IT corridor.

The person was identified as Abdul Hameed, 38, hailing from Adilabad. He migrated to Hyderabad in search of livelihood. According to police, the accused ran a travel agency named Rehbar Tours and Travels. As part of his job he used to visit Goa frequently.

He met a person called Max who was a cocaine dealer. Max lured Hameed with a deal. Hameed accepted it and acted as a dealer and sold the cocaine on Maxs behalf.

The accused had been selling drugs for three months. He used to transport 70 grams per week from Goa to Hyderabad. Assistant Excise Superintendent (Enforcement) N. Anji Reddy said, We have been observing him for a week and caught him red-handed while he was delivering drugs to some students on Sunday night. Through his contact history we have identified 26 members and allotted an investigating officer to the case. Cocaine is used by people who are suffering from depression.

During our preliminary examination of mobile phones of the accused, we observed that there were quite a few Whatsapp messages which read as follows I want a fish, I want a Ice Pack which indirectly implies cocaine. He saved the contacts as pillar no 270, pillar no 260 along with some hotel names which were the delivery points, Reddy added.

Deputy Commissioner of Excise Vivekananda Reddy said, The accus-ed used to sell cocaine in a Hyundai car with the number TS 04 ER 7655. He used to sell 1 gram of cocaine for Rs 6,000 and take a commission of Rs 2,000 per gram. He used to sell mainly in areas like Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills, Madhapur and Gachibowli. He used to take orders through his mobile. The police have seized his car and mobile phone and identified 26 suspicious phone numbers from it.

Psychologist Diana Monteiro said, Cocaine and heroin, goes to the brain and gives users a wonderful feeling of pleasure. People who are working in jobs where there is a lot of stress especially in the IT sector get easily attracted to such coping strategies like drugs and get addicted to them. Peer pressure was also one of the main reasons for people to get addicted to these drugs, Monteiro added.

The Assistant Excise Superintendent (Enforcement) requested parents not to allow their children for a tour to Goa. It is the place where people get acquainted with drugs, he added.
Thanjavur: Reaching water to tail-end Cauvery delta districts remains a major problem even in surplus years not because there are no rivers and canals, ponds and lakes in the districts, but because of poor irrigation and water resource management.

Consider the reality: Mettur dam has surplussed, i.e. crossed its full level of 120-ft twice this year that too within a short span of time-on July 23 and now again on August 11.(Water level touched 120 ft on Friday evening. Inflow into the dam was 1,32, 755 cusecs). But demand for water comes from farmers in tail-end areas, more so Pudukkottai and Tiruvarur districts.

Water was released from Mettur dam on July 19 this year when desilting and maintenance works were still going on in many rivers, canals and lakes. Many of the works could not be completed. So water could not be stored, In some places, at the upper reaches, because of poor maintenance of river bunds, canals breached and water wasted. It is unfortunate that water is going waste into sea even though Mettur dam reached its full level twice this year. Immediately PWD engineers could do one thing. They can give water to Chennai city and fill up Veeranam, said S. Ranganathan, secretary, Cauvery Delta Farmers Welfare Association, who was happy that copious showers in catchment areas have filled up Mettur dam but very much concerned over wastage of water.

In Tiruvarur district, water has not reached many areas and farmers have announced agitations demanding water. According to P.R. Pandian, coordinator of the Thamizhaga Anaithu Vivasaya Sangangalin Orunginaippu Kuzhu, 25,000 acres of land could not be cultivated as water has not been let out into Vadavar extension canal. Fifty per cent of the Kudimaramathu works taken up have not been completed. There is large scale corruption in utilising the funds allotted for PWD works. Because of this, though Mettur dam has suplussed twice this year, ponds, lakes, canals remain dry in Tiruvarur district. Chief Minister Edappadi K.Palaniswami should visit delta areas and see water reached tail-end areas, Pandian urged.

Farmers of Pudukottai district also have been demanding water. Though water had been released into GA canal, it has not reached system tanks in Pudukottai district. Major portion of the district is rain-fed, but the major crop cultivated is paddy. If water fills up system tanks of GA canal and other tanks which are rain-fed fill up, one paddy crop can be taken successfully. Out of the total gross cropped area of 1,23,722 hectares, paddy is raised on 90,000 hectares. Paddy needs large quantity of water and hence farmers depend upon system tanks mainly fed by GA canal.

Pudukottai district has 5,451 tanks in the district. According to S. Somasundaram, district development manager, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) they should be regularly rejuvenated which includes clearing of inflow channels, outflow channels, deepening of tanks strengthening of bunds, strengthening of Kalingu (excess water will flow through this to other tanks). Most of the tanks created during royal period have excellent water connections with each other. Encroachments in the inlet to rivers, improper desilting, lack of renovation of tanks have made them not in a position to get and store water. Encroachments should be removed and PWD should take up desilting, deepening, strengthening of bunds, works, said farmers of Pudukottai district.
The Egyptian interior ministry Sunday said seven people have been arrested in connection with a foiled terror attack against a Coptic church on Saturday in capital Cairo.

Security forces rounded seven people, including two women. The detainees were plotting a series of hostilities, the interior ministry said in statement.

One of the arrested women living in the upscale Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek played a prominent role  in promoting extremist ideas and providing financial support, the statement added.

The seven individuals are believed connected to the thwarted bomb attack at a Coptic church in Qalyubiyah, a governorate north of Cairo.

A man wearing a bomb belt blew himself, 250 meters from the church on seeing security forces who were guarding the religious site.

No one was hurt in the blast. The ministry identified the bomber as 29-year-old Omar Mohamed Ahmed Mostafa from Cairo.

The Egyptian Coptic minority, which represents 10 per cent of Egypts nearly 100 million population, had been the target of several attacks by the Islamic State group (ISIS), which has been battling with Egyptian security forces, mostly in the Sinai Peninsula.

Two deadly bombings on Palm Sunday in April 2017, another bomb attack on Cairos largest Coptic cathedral in December 2016 killed dozens of churchgoers. Eleven other people were killed in December in church shooting.

Islamists target the Copts for their backing to President Fattah Al-Sisi who first came to power in a military coup that unseated Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. The Egyptian President has banned the Muslim Brotherhood movement and imprisoned thousands of its members, including Morsi himself and other bigwigs.
Ooty: Good tidings for Ooty potato growers this season, as exporters to Sri Lanka are eying these tasty potatoes. The Ooty-grown potatoes have been fetching premium prices in the auctions for the past couple of weeks.

The scenario has been good this potato harvesting season that began in June. The price for the Ooty-grown potatoes even touched Rs 1,800 per bag containing 45 kgs which is colloquially called as oru thundu potato, at the potato auction centres at Mettupalayam in the foothills of the Nilgiris. It generally used to be around Rs 900 per bag. While potato price slightly dipped down to Rs 1,200 for a bag of 45 kgs in the auction in late July, the situation over the past couple of weeks has changed and it has again begun to fetch over Rs 1,500 per bag in the auction.

Sources in the auction centres said that around ten tonnes of Ooty potatoes are being purchased in a day by traders for export to Sri Lanka. Earlier it used to be around two tonnes per day. It is learnt that potato imports from China to Sri Lanka has come down in recent times. So, exporters have turned their eyes to the Ooty potato as it is known for its quality, taste and long lasting trait, sources added.

B. Krishnamoorthy, president of the Nilgiris Potato and Vegetable Growers Association, said that though it is good news that the demand for Ooty potato has soared in Sri Lanka, the fact is there is less availability of potato in Ooty as in the last sowing season, many farmers opted for carrot instead of potato. The present trend that is bringing a premium price in the auction centre for the Ooty potato is expected to continue for some more time, he noted.
The NDA government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has under nine months till the next Lok Sabha election. Multilaterally, the UN General Assembly session that is commencing next month and the November East Asia Summit in Singapore may be on the Prime Ministers diplomatic itinerary. The New Pakistan Prime Minister, Imran Khan, is likely to pitch strongly for a Kashmir solution, and is expected to be the star at his first UNGA in New York. But overall, as the governments attention turns towards vote consolidation by focusing on selective issues, often with a divisive agenda, foreign policy will have to take a back seat for the time being. Nevertheless, some matters will continue to demand attention.

The news leak that US President Donald Trump would be the Republic Day chief guest next January was neither confirmed nor denied by New Delhi. The government may have seen it as a likely public relations triumph on the eve of a crucial do-or-die Lok Sabha election, or possibly may have backpedalled, fearing the Trumpian propensity for off-script self-projection or seeking transactional concessions in trade and defence purchases that may play badly domestically. It is also possible that the White House did not bite the bait. But as the much delayed 2+2 meeting of the foreign and defence ministers of India and the US takes place next month, three issues with broader geopolitical ramifications overhang it.

One, while the Presidents of the US and Russia act as buddies, the US is sanctioning Russia over its poisoning of civilians in Britain, its Ukraine policy and alleged cyberwarfare. The Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (Caatsa), which applies secondary sanctions to countries engaging in energy or defence business with Moscow, casts a shadow over Indo-US relations. India can hardly abandon its defence relationship with its oldest defence equipment supplier, or afford pushing it deeper into the Pakistan-Chinese embrace. A waiver, if it actually materialises, will enjoin India to gradually reduce its defence purchases from Russia and to favour US supplies. After the Opposition uproar over the inexplicably opaque tweaking of the Rafale fighter deal with France, giving in to such US pressure would be politically expensive domestically.

Second, India-Iran relations are at a critical point. Reports indicate that the Indian Oil Corporation is set to reduce its current 140,000 barrels offtake per day of Iranian crude. But India cannot abandon the Chabahar port project, critical to obtaining connectivity to Afghanistan and Central Asia. China gained greater access to Iranian oil, gas and goods market after UN sanctions were imposed in 2006. China may simply resurrect its alternative yuan-based financial networks that bypass Western controls. China is unlikely to abandon either its Iranian oil imports or investment in oil and gas sectors. CNPC has a 30 per cent stake in South Pars gas field and the North Azadgan oil field, which was offered to India in 2003-04. But if Total withdraws, China alone lacks the capability to establish LNG terminals at South Pars. Russia has toyed with letting Gazprom and Lukoil invest in Iran, but strategically it suits Russia that Iranian gas remains unextracted as that safeguards its European market, already threatened by Americas shale gas.

The third critical issue is China. Trade skirmishing, if not war, is already underway between the US and China. Initial reports indicate rising concern in China over a possible misread of Mr Trump. On the other hand, Mr Trump doesnt see India as a strategic necessity in his containment of China, as did his two predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Thus, Prime Minister Modi undertook some corrective measures after the two-month-long Doklam standoff last year. Beginning with India attending the Brics summit in September last year and then the informal summit at Wuhan this year, there is a gradual softening of Indias confrontational cross-Line of Actual Control stance.

Meanwhile, President Trump is ratcheting up his Iran-baiting by encouraging the development of a Sunni Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), consisting of the six GCC members, Jordan and Egypt, minus of course Turkey. He will meet their leaders in Singapore, perhaps on the sidelines of the East Asia summit. Such a grouping presupposes Mr Trump settling serious intra-GCC differences over Saudi Arabia and the UAE pillorying Qatar, supported in turn by Iran and Turkey. Oman and Kuwait prefer neutrality in that quarrel. Russia appears reluctant to help resolve the Syrian imbroglio if that is at the cost of long-time ally Bashar al-Assad, or the Yemen mess which keeps its oil rival Saudi Arabia tied down. Mr Trumps Iran policy may end up as his Vietnam, as he will only complicate the scenario with more divisive alliances.

These geostrategic developments show the marginalisation of India as a global or even regional player. The Indian response began with kowtowing to China, perhaps tactically to await Chinese embroilment in a trade war. Our Saarc neighbours are also readjusting, some unwisely, to the perceived new reality. The Maldives is cheekily forcing the return of Indian helicopters. Bangladesh must be aghast over the mass declaration of 40 million people in Assam as stateless, implying most are Bangladeshis. This will play into its domestic politics. Pakistan has a charismatic new leader close to the military, thus producing both opportunity, which the Modi government may not risk ahead of a crucial election, as indeed the risk of a new voice globally to Pakistans warped logic, despite Pakistans financial mess which may compel China to write another bailout cheque, with the IMF seeking tough concessions. In Nepal, the Communist rulers are re-balancing between India and China, tilting towards the latter. Finally, Bhutan has received the Chinese vice-foreign minister, ending its India-only approach, although reportedly New Delhi was kept informed. All are assuming a permanent Chinese ascent, appearing already unsteady after the first trade war blows.

Against this background Indian diplomacy has few options but, in sporting terms, to play defence rather than offence till the next Lok Sabha election or until greater geopolitical clarity emerges.
Auto maker Thaco to pump in $1 billion for HAGL firefighting

Chairman Doan Nguyen Duc has successfully persuaded Thaco to make big investments in HAGL. Photo by VnExpress

Truong Hai Motor Company has announced a strategic tie-up with the Central Highlands-based Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL).

HAGL chairman Doan Nguyen Duc revealed that in early 2018 he had pleaded with Tran Ba Duong, chairman of Truong Hai Motor (Thaco), for investment at a critical time when HAGL lacked the funds to grow fruit trees and debts fell due.

After trips to HAGLs farms in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and ongoing property projects in Myanmar, Thaco decided to invest in both.

In March Duong helped fix debts of VND1.58 trillion ($67.4 million) owed by Agrico, HAGLs agriculture company, and invested in its orchards.

Recently, on August 3, Thaco signed a strategic agreement with HAGL to invest in Agrico and HAGL Land Myanmar.

Thaco paid VND3.8 trillion ($168.8 million) for one-year convertible bonds issued by Agrico (HNG), equivalent to over 221 million shares, which will give the carmaker a 35 percent stake.

A subsidiary of Thaco, Dai Quang Minh Real Estate Investment, paid VND4 trillion ($177 million) for a 51 percent stake in HAGLs realty firm in Myanmar.

Dai Quang Minh plans to increase its holding to 65 percent and take over construction of the delayed Melia Yangon at an estimated cost of $200 million.

Duc said Thacos total investment would come to VND22 trillion, or almost $1 billion.

Thaco chairman Duong said he saw HAGLs current difficulties but also great ambitions in its projects.

Duong said he would take charge of the overall restructuring of HAGL.

Thaco would invest VND12 trillion ($533 million) in plantations and adopt high-technology and digitization and mechanization in the production chain.

Thaco and Dai Quang Minh will spend another VND7.4 trillion ($328 million) on the Myanmar project which is set to be completed in 2020.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc called the strategic tie-up between Thaco and HAGL a "good match", and hailed their huge agricultural ambitions.

Dong Nai-based Thaco was established as an auto and commercial vehicle maker in 1997 by Duong. It has a plant in Quang Nam and 89 showrooms and 53 dealerships.

It makes trucks and buses and assembles cars for brands like Kia (South Korea), Mazda (Japan), and Peugeot (France).

Agrico has been growing fruits since 2016. Last year passion fruit, banana, chili, and dragon fruit fetched the company VND1.6 trillion ($71 million), or around 49 per cent of its total revenues. Its main fruit markets are China and Thailand besides Vietnam.

Agrico, which has 100,000 hectares of land, cheap labor and 83 cold storage facilities in Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Vietnam and 25 major distribution partners, said its fruits are sold to a market of three billion in China, India, Japan, South Korea, and other ASEAN member countries.

In the last three months the Agrico share price has risen 2.5-fold, giving it a valuation of VND15 trillion ($666.6 million).
Layout plan for Long Thanh terminal. Photo by the Airports Corporation of Vietnam

Vietnam's key transportation projects have drawn special interest from Japanese investors.

Japan is interested in the Long Thanh International Airport in Dong Nai Province - whose construction the government wants to start soon - Japan's Secretary of State Tsukasa Akimoto told Vietnams Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Ngoc Dong at a recent meeting.

It also wants to invest in Vietnam's high-speed north-south railway, Akimoto noted.

The Ministry of Transport is set to report on the high-speed railway to the National Assembly next year, Dong said.

It is also consulting various agencies, including Japanese, on a feasibility study for Long Thanh Airport, which is expected to be approved by the government at the end of next year, he added.

Long Thanh Airport is set to be built in three phases over three decades.

The first part is scheduled for completion in 2025, at the end of which the new airport will be able to handle 25 million passengers a year. The next two phases will run from 2030 to 2035 and from 2040 to 2050.

Regarding the railway project, for the 2020-2030 phase, construction will begin with electrified train operating at speeds ranging from 160 kilometres per hour to less than 200 kilometres per hour.

It is envisioned that the railway will be completed by 2050. After that, it is expected that the train can run at a maximum speed of 350 kilometres per hour.

Almost 1,800 Japanese businesses had invested in Vietnam as of June this year, the highest among ASEAN countries, according to the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in ASEAN (FJCCIA).

This number accounts for 24.6 percent of total number of Japanese firms investing in ASEAN countries, FJCCIA said.
Consumer goods is the most promising sector for M&A in Vietnam. Photo by VnExpress

The most promising sectors for mergers and acquisitions in Vietnam are consumer goods and real estate, says a global advisory firm.

Food and beverage (F&B) tops the list followed by pharmaceuticals and real estate in joint second position and fast moving consumer goods, KPMG said in its latest outlook report for M&A released at the Vietnam M&A Forum (MAF) 2018 in HCMC last week.

The firm came up with the report following a survey of more than 300 professionals working for private equity firms, securities companies and M&A advisory firms besides company owners.

F&B takes the lead thanks to a booming young middle class, stable economic growth of 6.5 percent and increasing exposure to new concepts and cultures especially influenced by globalization.

As for pharmaceuticals and life sciences, the survey found that while some foreign companies in this industry could see M&A as a faster means of obtaining the necessary licenses in Vietnam, several other arguments were also made in support of this trend: such as the governments plan to simplify licensing policies and reforming regulatory frameworks, and the increasing demand for healthcare.

Besides, the countrys rapid urbanization rate means the real estate sector will continue to remain a magnet for investment, especially the residential and hospitality segments.

A report of the MAF 2019 stated that foreign investors in the consumer goods sector do not just have an eye for local brands but also their distribution networks.

Thai and South Korean investors have expressed interest in Vietnams consumer goods sector since M&A deals will help them access established channels to distribute Thai and Korean goods in the Vietnamese market, said the report.

As for the real estate sector, it noted foreign investors are interested in M&A because it often takes long to complete procedures for new real estate projects in Vietnam, and acquiring local firms would be a shortcut.

Besides, the availability of land for new projects is limited, with local firms already buying up most of them, making it difficult for foreign investors to strike out on their own.

MAF 2019 data showed that the total M&A value in Vietnam last year was $10.2 billion, the highest ever and 175 percent up from 2016.

In the first six months of this year the figure was $3.55 billion, up 55 percent.

Consumer goods and real estate accounted for the biggest slices of the M&A pie last year, with 57 percent and 27 percent, respectively.

In H1 this year real estate surged to the top, accounting for 66.75 percent, followed by finance-banking with 19.06 percent.

Experts at the forum said this year the M&A value could be lower at $6.5-6.9 billion.

Last year it had been boosted by the biggest ever divestment deal in the country when Thai Beverage paid nearly $5 billion for a 54 percent stake in Vietnams top brewer Sabeco.

KPMGs survey found that Japan, South Korea and China would continue to be the top sources of M&A deals in the next three years.

Warrick Cleine, chairman and CEO of KPMG in Vietnam and Cambodia, said the wave of investments from Asia into Vietnam would be huge and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) that Vietnam signed in March with 10 other Asia-Pacific countries would make Vietnam's market even more attractive to investors from Japan and South Korea.

Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue told the forum the government is amending and finalizing policies related to management of state-owned equity.

The government will continue to push with its equitization of state-owned firms and tighten up rules to ensure those that have already launched IPOs list on the stock market, he said.

The government is seeking to make things easier for investors. The target is to cut 30-50 percent of business procedures within this year. Now 15 percent of such procedures has been axed. We will do the same with specialized inspection procedures to improve the investment environment in Vietnam to make it easier for the establishment of new firms as well as M&A activities, the deputy PM added.

Pham Van Thinh, CEO of advisory firm Deloitte Vietnam, said as the government continues to facilitate foreign investment and make the economy more open, Vietnam would remain an attractive market for the next five to 10 years.

However, as most companies in Vietnam are small or medium-sized, which means many of them do not have strategic policies for long-term development, there is not much scope for strong growth in M&A in future, he said.

Dominic Scriven, executive chairman of Dragon Capital, one of the top investment funds in Vietnam, said he is optimistic about the M&A prospects in Vietnam.

But he noticed three factors that should be sorted out to bolster the M&A landscape: the governments policy to attract foreign investment, a change in attitude of local firms many of whom still want to handle everything themselves and do not look at M&A as a solution to become stronger and how effectively Vietnam can handle possible disputes between partners in M&A deals.
Cambodia has arrested a Chinese national who attempted to smuggle in nearly 100 kilograms of MDMA pills in pet food shipments. Photo by AFP

Cambodian authorities have seized nearly 100 kilograms of ecstasy intended for distribution locally and in Vietnam.

Police announced the bust on Monday, after charging a Chinese national in connection with the record haul.

The suspect, identified as Yao Zeye, was arrested on August 7 after coming to the Phnom Penh central post office to pick up the boxes from Germany, said National Anti-Drugs Authority deputy secretary-general Mok Chito.

In total 98 kilograms of MDMA pills -- better known as ecstasy -- were discovered in the shipment, which was intended for distribution locally and in Vietnam.

"This is the biggest bust of ecstasy" in Cambodia, Chito told AFP, adding that one pill of the party drug sold for between $20 and $80 and the total haul was worth "millions" of dollars.

Yao Zeye was charged over the weekend with drug trafficking and faces up to life imprisonment if convicted, as police look into possible accomplices.

Cambodia has taken a hard line on drugs in recent years in response to smugglers turning to the country as a transit point, particularly for heroin and methampetamine.

Heavy sentences are passed down for drug trafficking, with hundreds arrested including senior officials and foreigners.

In June a court jailed a Belgian man for life after he was found guilty of smuggling a kilogram of cocaine into the kingdom through a suitcase.

The same month authorities in a separate case seized 120 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine smuggled in from Laos.

The kingdom has also cracked down on safrole oil, an ingredient in cosmetics that can be used as a precursor in making ecstasy. The oil is derived from the rare M'rea Prov Phnom tree in Cambodia's protected forests and production of it was banned in 2007.
A man herds his flock of domestic ducks at an abandoned project in Me Linh District, Hanoi. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy

Inspectors have found 211 approved projects in Hanoi leaving 44 million square meters of land untouched for years.

In a report on projects approved for private investment in the 2012-2017 period, inspectors from the Hanoi Peoples Council, the municipal legislature, said that more than 44 million square meters (10,870 acres) of land had not been used for many years.

They said some projects have been left untouched and stayed as vacant land from earlier than 2012.

District-level authorities put the actual number of projects at 383.

According to the councils inspectors, there are projects that appear in reports by district authorities but do not show up in reports of Hanoi's Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

They also said local authorities have done a poor job of handling violating projects. The Peoples Council had brought to their notice specific projects that have remained dormant for years and recommended their closure since 2012 but nothing has been done since then.

In one instance, the municipal natural resources department even forgot to submit reports to the municipal Peoples Committee, which is in charge of acting on proposals by the Peoples Council, to cancel a delayed project in Ba Vi District.

The inspectors have suggested that the Hanoi administration conducts a general review to count the exact number of approved projects that private investors have delayed for years.
The visit Iraqi Prime Minister was to pay to Tehran later this week will not take place as planned after Iranian authorities cancelled the trip over the Iraqi leaders comments that he will abide by U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic though he is opposed to such sanctions.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was initially expected this week in Turkey and Iran for state visits.

An Iraqi official, who asked not to be named because not allowed to speak on the matter, told the Associated Press (AP) that the Iran leg of the trip will no longer go ahead after Iran cancelled the trip.

Iran was irked by Abadis comments that U.S. sanctions on Iran were unfair but that he will however stick to them.

Can I, the Prime Minister of Iraq, endanger the interests of Iraqis just to take a stand? he said.

We dont sympathize with the sanctions, we dont think they are appropriate and we dont interact with them, but we are committed to protect our people.

U.S. President Donald Trump last week signed the executive order for renewed sanctions against Iran as result of Washingtons withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal.

Trump also warned that companies doing business with Iran cannot do business with the U.S.

Abadi, in power since 2014 has played equilibrium between the U.S. and Iran, which has deepened its influence in the country since the U.S. intervention in 2003.

Abadis forces backed a U.S.-led coalition that overcame the Islamic State group (ISIS) in December. Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary forces also endorsed the Iraqi forces.

The Iraqi leader who is currently leading a caretaker government finished third in May elections with his bloc. He is seeking to retain his position as Prime Minister after entering into alliance with Shia cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr whose joint list came out as larger seats (54) winner. An Iran-backed joint group, which also finished first runner-up with 46 seats, is part of the joint alliance.

The Turkey leg of the trip, which will kicks off Tuesday, will go ahead, the anonymous official said.
People gather for a rally to protest against provisions of a draft law on Vietnam's three Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in Ho Chi Minh City on June 10. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Nguyen

Vietnams Public Security Minister says many people who participated in recent demonstrations were paid to do so.

Drug addicts and HIV infected were among the people paid to join the protests against the special economic zones (SEZ) planned by the government, according to Senior Lieutenant-General To Lam, Minister of Public Security.

Investigations have found that between VND200,000 ($8.59) to VND400,000 was paid to hire demonstrators, Lam told a meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Monday.

Lawmakers said at the meeting that the demonstrations had seriously affected social security, tainted the countrys image and evoked public concern.

As demonstrations broke out in many provinces and cities across the country over controversies surrounding Vietnams proposed draft law on special economic zones and a cybersecurity bill, some people instigated violent acts, he said.

Lam said the public security sector would study the problems and identify solutions to tackle illegal protests in the future.

Lam said he has instructed police forces to make plans to deal with illegal demonstrations, riots and acts of terrorism; and ensure safety at key industrial parks.

Meanwhile, relevant authorities would continue to track down criminals and prevent them from joining public protests, he added.

Thousands of people took to the streets in Hanoi, Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh City and several provinces on June 10 and 11, with banners and signs calling for the SEZ and cybersecurity draft laws to be scrapped.

Many objected in particular to an SEZ law provision that would allow foreign investors to lease land for 99 years, saying that such a law would allow foreign countries to undermine Vietnams sovereignty.

The bill, which was scheduled to be passed in June, has been postponed for further parliamentary discussions in October. The Cybersecurity Law was passed on June 12.

With passing of the Law on Demonstration delayed several times, all actions to incite public protests are deemed illegal.

Following the demonstrations, police detained hundreds of protesters and said they uncovered evidence that the protests were anti-state actions incited by organizations based in other countries using false, distorted information on the draft laws.
Trong said that the diplomatic sector must dare to think outside the box and take actions at regional and global levels. Photo by Giang Huy

Vietnam should be vigilant about power politics and attendant challenges, the nations top leader says.

The rise of unilateralism and disrespect for international law in the world are among the challenges confronting the nations diplomatic sector, Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong said Monday.

Vietnam should not be caught napping by the rapidly changing world situation and should be ready to respond appropriately, he said, adding that the diplomatic sector must dare to think outside the box and take actions at regional and global levels.

Addressing a diplomacy conference in Hanoi on Monday, Trong said Vietnam needs to carefully assess the impacts of the rapidly changing world situation and not remain passive in response.

The country's diplomatic sector must consider important issues including the complicated, unpredictable foreign affairs environment and unstable political, security and economic environment in the region and the world.

"Strategic competition between major powers will be fierce, and power politics is returning in a strong manner, especially in the region. Our overarching mission of maintaining a peaceful, stable environment will therefore face many challenges," Trong said.

Vietnam's national interests at sea will confront complex fluctuations including calculations of involved countries, the rise of unilateralism and disrespect for international laws, he said.

He noted that existing mechanisms to control disputes and crises in the region have been ineffective.

Multilateral institutions were struggling to reach a sufficiently strong common ground, and the risks of conflict and confrontation still loomed large, he added.

Vietnam was also facing new challenges on the economic front, with protectionism on the rise in the country's major export markets and a trade war breaking out between major powers, the Party leader said.

He said the roles of large multilateral institutions such as WTO and APEC are being threatened by the rise of power politics which favors bilateral trade, while some new multilateral mechanisms focus on competition between major powers.

Meanwhile, ASEAN is still struggling to reinforce its central role in the region.

All this requires that Vietnam needs to build a new mindset and approach to relations with other countries, both bilaterally and multilaterally, Trong stressed.

For issues at the core of Vietnams interests, the country must develop a stronger voice and a more active stance in foreign relations, firstly in the region, he said.

In following the nations current foreign policy principle of independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation and development as well as a policy of openness, diversification and multilateralization, Vietnam needs to continue creating common strategic interests with other countries to prevent conflict, avoid confrontation, isolation and dependence, Trong said.

Vietnam must play its role in building the ASEAN community and reinforcing ASEAN's central role in regional security structures. The country also needs to prepare necessary conditions to accomplish well its role as ASEAN's chair for 2020 and to effectively implement its international commitments, especially commitments to ASEAN, CPTPP and WTO, the Party leader said.

Precarious situation

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh also stressed at the conference that competition between major powers and the rise of populism were making the security situation more precarious.

The situation in the East Sea, internationally known as the South China Sea, is also becoming increasingly complex, threatening security and stability in the region, as well as the legitimate rights and interests of many countries, including Vietnam, he said.

"This context requires the diplomatic sector to constantly adapt, be creative in its thinking, modern in its implementation and focus on effectiveness in implementing the policies and resolutions of the 12th Party National Congress," Minh said.

About 700 delegates are attending the 30th Conference on Diplomacy, including former and current foreign ministry officials as well as heads of Vietnam's diplomatic missions in foreign countries.

The conferences main agenda includes the situation in the region and the world since the 29th conference in 2016, important foreign affairs issues that could heavily impact Vietnam's security and development, as well as the direction of the country's foreign policies for the next 3 years.

Delegates will also prepare for Vietnam to assume important international responsibilities including the ASEAN Chairmanship for 2020 and candidacy for a non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council for 2020-2021 term.

The conference is scheduled to close on Friday.
Ho Chi Minh City plans to upgrade Nguyen Hue pedestrian street in District 1, famous for its annual flower festival. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

Plans are afoot to give a new look to one of Saigon's busiest promenades, Nguyen Hue Boulevard.

The city administration has instructed the Department of Planning and Architecture to mull over a plan to improve facilities on Nguyen Hue, where a strip along the middle was earmarked for pedestrians in April 2015.

It will get additional multicolored water fountains and lights.

The department has also been instructed to build more restrooms, parking lots and automatic drink vending points to serve a large number of visitors who could come when the city hosts major festivals and other events.

City officials have called for setting up street food stalls along the street in an effort to enhance control on street vending on the boulevard.

City Chairman Nguyen Thanh Phong said the department should consider connecting the pedestrian street with the area in front of the Municipal Theater and other spaces along Nguyen Hue, Ton Duc Thang and Ham Nghi streets.

The street, which stretches from the city government office to Ton Duc Thang Street along the Saigon River, hosts the annual flower festival during the Lunar New Year and attracts thousands of visitors every day.

It is one of the few public spaces in the city center, and is usually crowded during weekends and holidays.

But it has dramatically deteriorated with lots of cracks on its granite pavements.
Escaped inmates gather for a meeting with local authorities in Tien Giang Province in southern Vietnam on August 12. Photo by VnExpress/Hoang Nam

Inmates of a rehab center in Vietnam claim they were forced to kneel for hours, and thrashed when their backs slumped.

Such brutality provoked 242 inmates to escape from a rehabilitation center for drug addicts in Chau Thanh District of the southern Tien Giang Province, they told authorities on Sunday.

Police are still looking for 18 missing inmates after 224 returned to the facility after escaping on Saturday morning. The returnees were either forced by the police or persuaded to do so by their families.

The inmates told the police that they were very harshly treated by the rehab center.

We had to work 8 hours a day, which is itself tiring. But if we made the smallest mistake, like not folding our blankets as neatly as they required, we would be beaten and made to kneel for three hours.

And if we could not keep our backs straight when kneeling, there would be more thrashing, one of them said at a meeting with the authorities after returning.

Nguyen Xuan Lap, head of the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs' department of social vices prevention and combat, promised that he will work with centers staff on the inmates complaints.

Pham Minh Tri, director of Tien Giang Department of Labor and Social Affairs, told VnExpress that punishment for the inmates is autonomously decided at the center, and he will review these and make proper adjustments.

On Saturday morning, a disagreement between a group of addicts with the staff escalated into an assault, with inmates wielding knives and bricks and encouraging others to break down the door. A staff was injured in the scuffle.

Images and videos circulating on social media showed dozens of men, many shirtless, wandering on a highway near the rehab center.

The center in Chau Thanh manages more than 650 inmates. They are supposed to treat the addicts and provide them with vocational training.

Vietnam has 132 rehab centers in total, and there are around 220,000 drug addicts on official records.

Several breakouts have occurred in recent years at rehab centers.

Vietnam developed its approach to drug addiction based on the presumption that it represents a social evil that can be cured with abstinence and re-education.

Following international criticism, the government established a timeframe in 2013 to gradually replace compulsory detention centers with community-based, voluntary treatment regimens.

The transition, however, has proven tricky given inconsistencies in the legal system, the widely-held belief that drug addiction stems from moral failure and the lack of competent doctors, therapists and equipment.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during their summit at the truce village of Panmunjom, North Korea, in this handout picture released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on May 27, 2018 via Reuters.

North and South Korean officials are scheduled to hold high-level negotiations on Monday.

One South Korean newspaper report suggesting the two sides could be planning for a summit in Pyongyang later this month.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met in April at a truce village along their mutual border and agreed to have another summit in autumn, this time in North Koreas capital, Pyongyang.

Citing an unidentified South Korean official, the newspaper Kookmin Ilbo reported on Monday that summit could be held as soon as late August.

The schedule had mostly been coordinated with North Korea and the summit would likely be held in Pyongyang, it said.

A spokesman for South Koreas presidential Blue House said on Sunday officials hoped such details would be decided at Mondays talks.

We hope that the timing, venue and the size of the delegation that will visit North Korea will be decided, South Koreas presidential office Blue House spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said, declining to comment on specifics.

North Koreas Kim has a held a flurry of diplomatic summits with the leaders of South Korea, China, and the United States this year.

Moon and Kim also had a surprise meeting at the border in May, making Moon the only South Korean leader to have met a North Korean leader twice. A visit by Moon to Pyongyang would be the first to be held this year in North Koreas capital.

The North has been heavily sanctioned over its pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles but Kim and Trump agreed at their landmark summit in Singapore in June to work towards the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

North Korea has denounced U.S.-led efforts to maintain sanctions despite what Pyongyang says are goodwill gestures, including halting its weapons testing and returning the remains of U.S. troops killed in the 1950-1953 Korean War.

U.S. officials familiar with the talks, however, told Reuters that North Korea had yet to agree to a timeline for eliminating its nuclear arsenal or to disclose its size, which U.S. estimates have put at between 30 and 60 warheads.
Exports of apples from Ukraine soar by 3.2 times in 2017-2018 season

Ukrainian farmers in 2018 plan to harvest 400,000  500,000 tonnes of fruit and berries.

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Russia's VEB gives up idea of selling Ukrainian subsidiary, mulling its closure

The final decision is expected in November 2018.

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Ukraine boosts poultry meat exports by 23% in H1

The Netherlands was the major buyer of Ukrainian poultry meat in the first six months of 2018.

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Ombudsman: Thousands Have Been Detained Illegally by Russia-Controlled Guards

By Gvantsa Gabekhadze

Georgian Public Defender Nino Lomjaria cites Russian and de-facto leadership sources that the number of persons detained on the occupation line of Abkhazia amounted to 15, 000 in 2009-2017 and the number of detainees on the occupation line of the Tskhinvali region was 1, 063 in 2016-2017.Cases of deprivation of life have also occurred on the occupation lines, Lomjaria says in a special statement on the 10th anniversary of the Russia-Georgia war which made two Georgian regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali controlled entirely by Russia.Lomjaria says that the conflicts in the 90s and 2008 affected more than half a million people.278, 103 out of them became internally displaced persons. 20 percent of the territory of Georgia is occupied. These figures indicate the challenges faced by our country and the huge responsibility of the central government, the ombudsman said.She says that the general analysis of the IDPs' rights situation shows that their main problems remain the same over the years.58 percent of the registered IDPs are still waiting for shelter. In some facilities, IDPs have to live in severe conditions; former collective centers have been poorly rehabilitated and repaired; the social and economic situation remains a challenge.To realize the rights of internally displaced persons, the Public Defender considers that the following is neccesary: 1. Priority should be given to resettlement of IDPs from the facilities that threaten their lives or health; 2. A model focused on IDPs needs should be developed, Lomjaria said.Lomjaria states that the rights situation of people living along the occupation lines has worsened after 2008.The 350 km-long occupation line of the Tskhinvali region is controlled by 1 200 border guards of the Russian Federation, and 1 500 border guards control the 145 km-long dividing line of Abkhazia. Erection of barbed wire fences directly damaged more than 50 villages of Shida Kartli and Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti regions on the Georgian-controlled territory, she stated.Lomjaria says that locals daily face unlawful detentions, military exercises at the bases of the Russian Federation, the problem of drinking and irrigation water, as well as the poverty caused by the loss of agricultural lands as a result of the occupation.In 2016-2018, two Georgian citizens, Giga Otkhozoria and Archil Tatunashvili, became victims of illegal actions of de facto law-enforcement agencies when they were passing checkpoints fully controlled by the border troops of the Russian Federation. Therefore, the Russian Federation, as a country exercising effective control on the occupied regions, is directly responsible for the violation of the Georgian citizens right to life, Lomjaria said.Lomjaria stated that she welcomes any initiative of the Government of Georgia aimed at protecting the rights of the population living in the occupied territories and building trust between the communities split by conflicts. To achieve this goal, she believes, it is necessary to:Allocate additional funds to equip medical and educational institutions operating on the occupied territories, as well as to help pharmaceutical and academic personnel; provide scholarship or other encouraging programs for students living in the occupied territoriesResume funding for outpatient diagnostics within the framework of the Referral Service State Program for patients from the occupied territories, while persons having documents confirming Georgian citizenship and living in the occupied territories should not face problems while enjoying the referral programDevelop a social assistance mechanism for persons with disabilities living in the occupied territories, as well as lonely older adults, large families, etc.The War in Abkhazia from 1992 to 1993 was fought between Georgian government forces for the most part, and Abkhaz separatist forces, Russian armed forces and North Caucasian militants. The separatists received support from thousands of North Caucasus and Cossack militants and the Russian troops stationed in and near Abkhazia.Between 13,000 to 20,000 ethnic Georgians and approximately 3,000 Abkhaz have been reported killed, more than 250,000 Georgians became internally displaced, or refugees and about 2,000 are considered missing.Among the missing, about 1,500 are ethnic Georgians, up to 200 are ethnic Abkhazians and about 100 are ethnic Ossetians.101 bodies have been identified and transported to Georgia over the course of last years.The Russia-Georgia 2008 War was a war between Georgia, Russia and the Russian-backed self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.The war displaced 192,000 people and while many returned to their homes after the war, 20,272 people, mostly ethnic Georgians, remained displaced.35 Georgians and 6 Ossetians remain missing since the war.Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Nauru, and Syria have recognized Abkhazia and Tskhinvali as independent states since the 2008 war. The rest of the international community says the regions are integral parts of Georgia.
Why would a U.S. Government agency specializing in administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance, concern itself with religious freedom in the countries where it works?

At USAID, we see freedom of worship as an essential element in our pursuit of government that is citizen-centered and citizen-responsive, said USAID Administrator Mark Greene. It is inseparable from freedoms of expression, assembly, association, and freedom from discrimination.

But a more practical reason is that faith-based organizations frequently work with USAID to deliver development assistance or humanitarian relief to marginalized people. Faith-based partners are often uniquely trusted in those forgotten communities, said Administrator Green. Religious liberty matters because it enables faith-based groups to work with USAID and others without surrendering their essential faith character.

Religious intolerance, on the other hand, frequently drives violence and oppression, marginalization, and persecution of entire populations. To see what unchecked intolerance looks like, we need look no further than ISIS and the atrocities it has committed.

At USAID, because we really look at freedom of worship as a core human right, we're supporting programs to address religious hate speech and interfaith conflict, to promote the strengthening and enforcement of laws that protect religious freedom, and to increase the capacity of civil society to advocate for it, said Administrator Green. This includes technical assistance and financial support for civil society.

USAID is presently undertaking reforms to its partnership and procurement process to make partnering with NGOs and civil society groups easier.

At the same time, to help prevent the worst manifestations of religious intolerance before they cause harm, USAID is working to assemble metrics to measure capacity and commitment in the countries where it is active, such as the capacity of civil society, and the inclusiveness of government policies.

Finally, working with its partners, USAID aims to reinforce and strengthen ethnic and religious pluralism where it has historically existed.It isn't about the content of faith; it never has been, said Administrator Green.It's about society's tolerance for multiple faith traditions. We believe that religious pluralism, which is part of a cultural mosaic, we believe it is worth preserving as a matter of development, as well as an expression of our values.
Government to make decision on Lydian Armenia by end of August (video)

The Government will make a decision on Lydian Armenia by the end of August Lydian Armenia company employees are holding a protest action in front of the Armenian government building demanding to open the road to Amulsar and ensure the restoration of their constitutional right to work. They demand the Government to intervene and allow them to carry out their work at the Amulsar Mine. It should be reminded that for a long time a group of environmental activists closed the road leading to Amulsar mine, hindering the mine work. "It is absolutely impossible to work. The government must take actions to stop the demonstration," said one of the staff members. They demanded a meeting with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, but Mikayel Nahapetyan, assistant to Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan, went to listen to them. The latter offered 5 people to meet with the head of the vice-premier Tigran Avinyan's office, Varag Siseryan. In response to Lydian Aremnia's staff, Varag Sisseryan mentioned that in any case it is necessary to avoid violence. "First of all, we must exclude violence, both villagers, and environmentalists, and employees should understand that. The government has set up a working group, which should make a conclusion, we are waiting for it. Our work is done, we do everything we can to ensure that the working group works calmly, and the working group should come to the conclusion by the end of this month. Based on that conclusion, we must make a decision, we must understand what we will do," said Varag Sisseryan and offered to wait a little bit to solve this issue without violence.
Mother, who lost his son, blames RA Prosecutor General (video)

Ruzanna Adalanyan from Gyumri blames the RA Prosecutor General for not punishing the real guilty of his son's murder. His 25-year-old son, Artyom Adalianyan, was killed in his home in Gyumri in 2014. Artur Martirosyan was the only one who appeared on the defendant's chair, and on January 23, he was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Artur Martirosyan said in his trial that he did not want anybody's death, he only saved his life. "The prosecutor's office notes that Hovsep Topchyan, who killed my son, is not found. I found the pictures about the latter's presence and presented to the prosecutor general." Mrs. Adalianyan assures that there is a tendency to conceal the case of his son's murder, and the law enforcement agencies also support this. She is convinced that a very superficial investigation was carried out during the preliminary investigation on this case. On Marcg 13, the Prosecutor's Office of RA has considered the claims of Ruzanna Adalelyan unfounded, nonfactual and illogical. At present, the case is in the Court of Appeal. The claim of the victim's legal successor is to cancel the verdict, to send the case to the same court of first instance, to conduct a new investigation. And, the defense party, in its turn, requires an excuse or at least a review or a reduction in punishment.
UNIGHT TO UNITE. UCOM CELEBRATED ITS REBIRTH

Ameriabank and HSBC Armenia to provide their customers access to each others ATMs without additional fees

Ameriabank. 62.5% Growth in Taxes YOY

Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans have provided 300 million AMD to overcome the infertility in Armenia

UCOM has officially launched the sale of IPHONE 13

Six servicemen were wounded by the attack of the Azerbaijani armed forces in Artsakh, two of them in critical condition

S&P Improved the Outlook on Ameriabank to Positive

Ararat Mirzoyan to visit to Minsk

Foreign Minister of India visits the Memorial of Armenian Genocide

1217 new cases

Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia

Statement by the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group

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Ameriabanks Special Offer for New Clients of Hrazdan Branch

"Fall forward": Gurgen Khachatryan, the Co-Founder of the Galaxy Group of Companies, addressed a message to young people in Armenia

UCOM hosted interns of Russian CBOSS corporation for a month

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The 20-episode Bloody bet thriller to be broadcast on Ucom's Armenia Premium TV channel

Statement by the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group

UCOM offers affordable gadgets at bigger discount

Foreign Minister of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan will pay a working visit to New York

Governments preventing publication of Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper during state of emergency

UCOM prolongs the unlimited internet offer for the level up 4700 and level up 5500 subscribers

Ucom employees received recognition for their services to the homeland

Karen Vardanyan has allocated 105 million AMD to rescue the Yerevan Botanical Garden.

"The Power of One Dram" to overcome childhood cancer

Generation A 13  your chance to be the change

President of the Artsakh Republic Arayik Harutyunyan met with Russian Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Igor Khovayev

"uDays" special offer at Ucom: discounts for all smartphones and accessories for 2 days only

For more than 3 hours, 50 or more Azerbaijani servicemen have blocked the interstate road
LUIS SANTANA | Times Family and friends of Markeis McGlockton, the 28 year old man that was shot and killed during a parking lot altercation in front of his children gathered in front of the location where he was shot. The shooter was not arrested because authorities said it fell within the criteria of Florida's "stand your ground" self-defense law. Protesters gathered to voice their concerns and seek an arrest in the case. [Sunday July 22, 2018] [Photo Luis Santana | Times]

The shooter in Florida's latest, high-profile "stand your ground" shooting was arrested on Monday and charged with manslaughter, sparking immediate reaction from those running to be Florida's next governor.

Michael Drejka, 47, was booked into the Pinellas County Jail, where he will be held in lieu of $100,000 bail, according to the Pinellas County Sheriffs Office. Drejka was not immediately arrested after he shot 28-year-old Markeis McGlockton on July 19 because of the controversial self-defense law, called "Stand Your Ground," that eliminated ones duty to retreat before resorting to force.

The case has drawn the national spotlight and renewed debate over racial injustice and the controversial law. Drejka, the shooter, is white and McGlockton was black.

The two Republican candidates for governor, Ron DeSantis and Adam Putnam, got into a nasty disagreement over the case that started on Twitter and then spilled into last week's debate in Jacksonville. DeSantis said that Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri had not "analyzed the law properly" in his decision to apply the "Stand Your Ground" law in this case, and Putnam accused him of improperly criticizing law enforcement and "siding" with Democrats.

Democrats universally celebrated the arrest and some renewed calls for a repeal of "Stand Your Ground." National civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton, who visited Clearwater after the shooting, said in a statement on Monday that the arrest is a "ray of hope," while the state law is "an abomination" that allows "vigilante justice that consistently provides cover to racists and bigots for murdering innocent Black Americans."

Here are the candidates' reactions, all provided via statements, unless otherwise noted:

Republicans:

Adam Putnam: "I support the State Attorneys decision. The process worked."

Ron DeSantis: His campaign has not yet responded to a request for comment. This post will be updated if a statement is received.

Democrats:

Andrew Gillum: "I'm relieved Markeis McGlocktons family and the people of Clearwater will be heard in this horrific tragedy. ... However, Stand Your Ground still created the environment where the shooter believed he had a legal right to murder Markeis McGlockton. I again call on Governor Rick Scott to declare a state of emergency and suspend this law before someone else gets hurt or killed."

Gwen Graham: "Todays decision to charge Michael Drejka is a step toward justice for Markeis McGlockton  but it also exposes the fatal issues with Floridas Stand Your Ground law. ... As Governor, I will lead an effort to repeal the law and examine legislation that protects those who are legitimately defending themselves, without creating a legal loophole for criminal behavior. I will also create a task force of prosecutors, community and civil rights leaders to take a look at every self-defense case where a death occurs to ensure that the law isn't allowing criminals to slip through the cracks."

Jeff Greene: "Todays (delayed) decision to arrest and charge Michael Drejka means justice may finally be served in the senseless killing of Markeis McGlockton. I am proud that our voices and calls to action made a difference here  but the fact remains that an innocent, unarmed father was shot to death in front of his children in the middle of the afternoon. Stand Your Ground is legalized murder. It must be repealed."

Chris King: "The state attorneys office is doing what Sheriff Gualtieri has failed to do thus far  seeking justice for the death of Markeis McGlockton. This community is crying out for action and the McGlockton family deserves justice, and thats why Ive been calling for leaders to act since this tragedy occurred. Todays decision is another example why Floridas broken stand your ground law must be repealed so that justice in this case and every other tragedy can never be delayed or denied."

Philip Levine, who spoke to a Times reporter at an event in Tampa: "(The arrest is) a first step in the right direction. Im surprised it took that long. I think the Sheriff was wrong in not arresting him immediately on the scene because clearly there was probable cause. Im not a lawyer, but based on what I saw, he shouldve been arrested there instantly."

Tampa Bay Times reporter Steve Contorno contributed to this report.
The European Business Association (EBA) has appealed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the directorate of the World Bank in Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine with the request to support the second level of pension insurance in Ukraine, which is proposed by bill No. 6677.

"The business supports the idea of financial defined contributions. The mechanism for its implementation is qualitatively explained in draft law No. 6677 ... The EBA urges the IMF and the World Bank to support this document. We hope that this will help launch the process of building the second level of pension insurance, stabilize the pension system in principle," the report says.

This bill has more than ten positive reports from domestic and international experts, and its provisions are in line with the directive of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, the EBA experts note.

The EBA also noted that there are about 12 million people of retirement age in Ukraine, the deficit of the Pension Fund exceeds UAH 200 million. Given the steady growth in the number of persons of retirement age, as well as the growing disparity in the ratio between the number of taxpayers and pensioners in the country, the experts of the association believe that the most convincing solution to the problem is the introduction of the second level of pension insurance from January 1, 2019.

"The system minimizes corruption risks, due to the diversification of public accumulations among tens of non-state pension funds. The state Pension Fund will be only an administrator of the funds, while they will be actually managed by non-state pension funds. And secondly, every citizen will have the opportunity to monitor the state of his savings on a daily basis, the correctness of profit accounting," the EBA said.
Naftogaz Ukrainy on August 9 signed an agreement worth EUR 18 million with the Norwegian company Wikborg Rein Advokatfirma AS, which carries out legal support in the framework of the litigation of Naftogaz with Russia's PJSC Gazprom.

According to a report in the ProZorro procurement system, in particular, EUR 8 million will be paid for Wikborg Rein Advokatfirma's services within the framework of arbitration proceedings, and EUR 10 million for lawyers' services for compulsory enforcement of arbitration decisions.

As part of the contract, Wikborg Rein Advokatfirma, in particular, will provide legal support for three appeal proceedings and new arbitration proceedings initiated by Gazprom and Naftogaz (to review the rate of transit fees).

As reported, the Norwegian company has been providing support to arbitration proceedings under the claim of Naftogaz against Gazprom since 2014. Agreements worth more than EUR40 million are signed between the companies.
A mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be working in Kyiv from September 6 to September 19, IMF Resident Representative in Ukraine Goesta Ljungman has said.

"At the request of the Ukrainian authorities, an IMF mission will visit Kyiv during September 6-19, 2018, to discuss recent economic developments and policies," Ljungman said in a statement on August 13.

The mission will also discuss next steps, including financial assistance from the IMF in support of policies to maintain macroeconomic stability and keep the economy on a path toward sustainable and inclusive growth.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will continue providing assistance to Ukraine, including Donetsk region, in the next five years. Currently, relevant project plans are being developed.

Such plans were announced by Farhad Ghaussy, the Director of the Office of Economic Growth, USAID/Ukraine, at a meeting at Donetsk region's military and civilian administration, chairman of the administration Oleksandr Kuts wrote on Facebook on Monday, August 13.

"According to him, special attention will be paid to the front-line zone, improving services, developing small businesses and civil society, and supporting the media (especially to improve the quality of content and media literacy of the population). The need to coordinate efforts of international organization and the regional administration was discussed separately - this is necessary to avoid a duplication of projects, cover more areas and improve efficiency," Kuts added.

He thanked the USAID team for a number of projects implemented in Donetsk region and proposed that administration personnel be more actively involved in developing an action plan for the next five years.
A Normandy Four summit can be held only after all previous agreements reached between the leaders are implemented, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

"We stand for the Normandy Four's active work, but not when these meetings end in agreements, which aren't implemented. Many times we provided examples related to the Normandy Four summit in Paris in 2015 and then in Berlin in 2016. A very specific agreement was reached during these summits, the leaders themselves determined on the map three populated localities, which the disengagement of forces and hardware should have taken place," Lavrov said.

The disengagement was conducted at the first two populated localities, but at the third one, Stanytsia Luhanska, the Ukrainian side is looking for any excuses to prevent that, he said. In particular, it said that a seven-day-long ceasefire observance is necessary for it.

"The OSCE mission has already announced 22 times that a seven-day-long complete ceasefire was recorded, and Ukrainian representatives said at once that this is the OSCE's statistics, while they recorded a couple of attacks," the minister said.

As for another agreement reached in Paris, on the Steinmeier formula of entry into force of the law on Donbas' special status, it has not been implemented as well, the Russian foreign minister said.

"This is why we asked our colleagues, who want to convene a Normandy Four high-level [meeting] again, to do that after all previous agreements are fulfilled at least out of respect to the heads of state," he said.
Ukrainian army positions in Donbas have come under almost 60 attacks, and three soldiers have been wounded in the past 24 hours, the press center of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) has reported on Monday.

"The enemy launched 57 attacks on our positions, including 12 attacks involving heavy weapons, over the day. Three servicemen of the Joint Forces were wounded as a result," the press center said.

The enemy opened effective fire using grenade launchers, heavy machineguns, and small arms, while weapons of infantry combat vehicles and anti-tank guided missiles were used in some areas, it said.
A minibus accident occurred on the territory of the Hungarian region of Nograd, on 59th km of the motorway No. 2, on Saturday afternoon, August 11, resulting in injuries of varying severity to 13 passengers - citizens of Ukraine, as well as the driver of the vehicle - a Hungarian citizen.

"Thirteen Ukrainian citizens were injured along with the driver, a Hungarian citizen. All were given first aid and hospitalized with various injuries. It is known that eight Ukrainian citizens were seriously injured and five citizens received minor injuries. No casualties reported," the Ukrainian Embassy in Hungary reported on Sunday afternoon.
New anti-Russian sanctions announced by the United States in connection with a chemical attack in Salisbury, the UK, in March will make it possible to significantly limit the capabilities of the Russian defense industry to create new types of weapons used against Ukraine and lower the military potential of the Russian Federation, experts from the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies (CACDS) believe.

The estimates of the Ukrainian analytical center are posted on the center's website in connection with the upcoming launch of a new package of anti-Russian sanctions.

"The new sanctions list will deal a devastating blow to the Russian high tech industries, in particular, the defense industry complex. Taking into account the dependence of the Russian defense industry on foreign technologies and components, the sanctions could significantly limit the capabilities of the Russian defense industry to produce modern weapons," the military experts predict.

"In the period from 2010 to 2014, Russia carried out mass purchases of weapons abroad, in particular, it is advisable to cite the example of Orlan-10 drones (which actually consist of American, German and Japanese components), Forpost drones (Israel's Searcher drones), and Zastava drones (the Israeli Bird Eye 400 drones)," the center said, stressing that "all these drones, in particular, are used by the Russian Armed Forces in combat operations against Ukraine."
Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies have nothing against crew of Mekhanik Pogodin vessel, but vessel and property are under sanctions  Denisova

Ukraine's Ombudswoman for human rights Liudmyla Denisova has said Ukraine's SBU Security Service and State Border Service have told her that Ukraine has nothing against members of the crew of the Mekhanik Pogodnin vessel arrested in Kherson's sea trade port.

"Yesterday I received information from the SBU and State Border Service that Ukraine has nothing against the sailors of the vessel. A dozen sailors, including the captain are Russian citizens. They all passed through customs control and are free to go. No one is holding them. They are not under sanctions," Denisova said on her Facebook page on Sunday morning. She added that the sailors are staying with the ship, however.

"The ship and its cargo, which belongs to VEhB Leasing, are in the sanctions list of July 27, 2018. A court hearing on the matter will be held tomorrow," she said, adding that she left her telephone number with the vessel's captain, just in case.

As earlier reported, during the evening of August 10, 2018 Ukraine's Permanent Representative for Crimea Borys Babin said the SBU had arrested a vessel in the sanctions list. He said the vessel would not soon been leaving Kherson's port.

On August 11, Russia's Ombudswoman for human rights Tatyana Moskalkova asked Denisova to check into the matter.
Deputy Minister for Temporary Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons Heorhiy Tuka assesses the situation with Russian expansion in the Sea of Azov as very complex and claims that the Ukrainian authorities are studying certain scenarios for Russia's response.

"The situation is very complicated, but I cannot say that we lost it. I'm not ready to unveil certain scenarios that we are currently studying, including the use of force to unblock it. The issue is very complicated. And I simply would not like now, without having a certain decision, talk about the upcoming actions," Tuka said in an interview with the media outlet Apostrof published on Sunday.

According to him, there are certain scenarios on how to improve the situation, but for their implementation, Ukraine will need the help of allies and international partners, and "we have such opportunities."

"I do not see a real way how we can cope with this situation on our own, because I do not see a purely military path. As for a diplomatic solution, according to existing norms, both Ukrainian and Russian law enforcement agencies have the right to stop and inspect ships. It's not about violating the law, it's about abusing the law. These are absolutely different things. There is no instant solution, but we have to work in this direction. And we will be working," he said.

At the same time, he noted that the strategy for improving the situation of Ukraine in the Azov Sea will not be made public until it is implemented, and this is unlikely to happen this year.

"This will be possible with the help of our international partners if they agree to this. This is a difficult question," Tuka added.

As reported, on August 10, Secretary of the Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov visited the area of the Joint Forces Operation, where he checked the readiness to counteract Russian aggression in the south of Ukraine, organizing coastal defense and protecting the coast of the Azov Sea.

He discussed the deployment of a naval force to the Sea of Azov with the Ukrainian Navy command.

The naval presence in this area should be enhanced by "redeploying some ships and hovercraft of the Ukrainian Navy, placing additional posts for observation of the coastline and the waters, and forming groups to respond quickly to provocations staged by Russia in the Sea of Azov," Turchynov said.

Turchynov met with the heads of the State Border Service at the Mariupol Seaport to set goals regarding the provision of equipment and the strengthening of the maritime component of the protection of the southern border.

"We are witnessing Russia's attempt to begin a military and economic blockade of the Ukrainian coast of the Sea of Azov," he said.
Philip Levine's campaign said Monday that they've sent a cease-and-desist letter to the television stations airing a Jeff Greene campaign commercial attacking one of Levine's signature projects as Miami Beach mayor.

Greene last week began airing a "Latrine Levine" commercial that attacked Levine over a "snapshot" study that found the city's flood pumps were sending tidal water tainted with high levels of human fecal bacteria back into Biscayne Bay. The ad also focuses on the response to the study by Levine and the city's government, which involved attacking the scientists who published the findings and the Miami Herald's coverage.

Levine's campaign quickly pointed out that the commercial uses stock images from China, Russia and other foreign countries to illustrate scenes of pollution that don't actually exist in Miami Beach. On Monday, they announced that a campaign attorney, former U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of Florida Kendall Coffey, sent a letter to the stations airing the ad, demanding that the commercial be taken down. He called the ad "false and defamatory."

During his only other competitive campaign, when Levine ran for mayor in 2013, he was aggressive in fighting negative ads and fought to have some commercials taken down. Claire VanSusteren, a spokeswoman for the Greene campaign, said their attorney will be responding to Coffey.

"The visuals are aides - the headlines are facts. We stand by the ad," VanSusteren said. "Levine is a bully. He tried to silence scientists and members of the press who told the public the truth about dangerous and disgusting fecal bacteria being dumped in the bay  but Jeff Greene wont be bullied."

Here's the letter.

August 11, 2018

Re: Cease and Desist Broadcasting of False Political Advertising

To Whom It May Concern:

We represent Philip Levine, a candidate for Florida Governor.

It has come to our attention that your broadcast station has been airing a political advertisement that falsely asserts that the City of Miami Beach pumped millions of gallons of human waste annually into Biscayne Bay during Mr. Levines tenure as Mayor of Miami Beach, and depicts misleading stock video images of sewage pouring from open pipes to create the false impression that the City dumps sewage directly into the Bay.

As you will see from the attached memorandum from Miami Beachs City Manager, the Citys sewer system does not directly discharge into Biscayne Bay, as the advertisement falsely suggests. Moreover, the images of fouled water and open sewer pipes in the ad are not from Miami Beach, but are misleading stock images of sewers from Russia, China, Serbia and the Czech Republic. The links below confirm that the stock images used in the advertisement do not depict Miami Beach, Biscayne Bay or even Florida waters:

The misleading use of these stock images from overseas sewers is false and defamatory. And, as the Citys Memorandum makes clear, the advertisements suggestion that the City of Miami Beach pumped human waste into Biscayne Bay from open pipes also is false and defamatory.

We therefore respectfully insist that, by 5 p.m. today, your station cease and desist the broadcasting of this advertisement or any advertisements that state or imply that the City of Miami Beach discharged human waste into Biscayne Bay from its sewer system. At a minimum, these ads should be taken down pending a legal review.

Please govern yourself accordingly,

Regards,

Kendall Coffey, Esq.
In the event of the withdrawal of forces and equipment in the vicinity of the settlement of Stanytsia Luhanska, Thermal Power Station of Luhansk (town of Schastia) and a bridge that connects the occupied and unoccupied territory of Luhansk region will fall under fire, and an escalation of the conflict may occur in this region, Iryna Verihina, ex-head of the Luhansk regional state administration has said.

"I remember how we defended every piece of land in Stanytsia Luhanska in 2014. And now it is just a strategic object, and it's simply impossible to withdraw forces there because the Thermal Power Station in the village of Schastia will fall under fire. And we will completely surrender the bridge that today is "the bridge of life" that connects the occupied territory of Luhansk region and unoccupied territory. Thus, we will surrender a part of our territory, and this will lead to an escalation of the conflict," Verihina told on the 112.Ukraine TV channel on Monday.

She also recalled that earlier agreements were reached on opening a checkpoint in the settlement of Zolote, but this has not happened yet. "Why? As on the other side [occupied territory of Luhansk region] the road that is now occupied, has been mined, and there is Russian equipment there. And no one wants the OSCE to keep records of this Russian equipment in the territory that is captured by the militants," she said.

At the same time, she said, the observers of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission indicated in the last report that the Ukrainian-Russian border is constantly being violated by the occupied territory, and military equipment and people were recorded.

As reported, on August 12, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recalled that during the Normandy Four summits in Paris in 2015 and in Berlin in 2016, an agreement was reached and three settlements were identified on the map in which the disengagement of forces and means was to take place. According to him, such a disengagement took place in the first two settlements, while in the third (Stanytsia Luhanska) it didn't take place. He laid the blame for the delay in disengagement of forces in Stanytsia Luhanska on the Ukrainian side, which, in his opinion, is looking for any excuses so that it does not take place.

Verihina was acting head of the Luhansk Regional State Administration in May-September, 2014.
Ukraine will insist on urgent consideration by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) of a lawsuit against Russia about Ukrainian political prisoners and expects that the fact of filing a suit will be the basis for Ukraine's international partners to impose additional personal sanctions against those involved in violating the rights of Ukrainians, Ukraine's Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko has said.

"As new information is received for every Ukrainian who has been illegally incarcerated by Russia's law enforcement system, we will supplement our application to the ECHR. Our goal is to obtain a decision from ECHR that enumerates violations of all the specified norms of conventions and Russia's obligation to free Ukrainians, and to return them to the territory of Ukraine," Petrenko said at a briefing in Kyiv on Monday.

"Ukrainians ... are persecuted in Russia on grounds of nationality, on the grounds of religion ... on the basis of their political or public views," Petrenko said.

"We will appeal to our international partners with a proposal to form a separate sanctions list akin to the 'Magnitsky list,' in which those persons involved in kidnapping, imprisonment and torture of Ukrainian citizens will be listed," Petrenko said.
On Wednesday, August 15, at 11.00, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference titled "Crimes of Prison Staff in Occupied Crimea: Eyewitness Accounts" with the participation of the political prisoner of the Kerch penitentiary No. 2 Murad Aliyev. Representatives of the Prosecutor's Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the NGO KrymSOS are expected to participate (8/5a Reitarska Street). Admission requires press accreditation. More information by phone: (093) 004 28 51 (Jemil).
On Tuesday, August 14, at 13.00, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference titled "UN report: on Crucified Boys of Ilovaisk. Torture and Execution of Civilians: War Crimes or Information Sabotage?" Participants include founder and honorary commander of the battalion Donbas Semen Semenchenko and the second commander of the Battalion Donbas Anatoliy Vinohrodsky (8/5a Reitarska Street). Press accreditation by phone: (098) 596 23 02 (Olha).
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has blamed the Islamic Republic's ongoing economic crisis on the Rouhani administration, and has forbidden negotiating with the United States, during a speech in Tehran on Monday August 13.

In an unprecedented comment Khamenei said, "It was my mistake to allow negotiations with America," to forge the nuclear deal with the West, the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) quoted him as saying.

However, he added that the Iranian negotiating team "crossed the redlines" he had "set for negotiations" with the West.

Khamenei added, "the Imam [Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini] forbade negotiations with America, and I forbid it once again."

Although he blamed the negotiating team, few believe that the nuclear talks lasting from 2013-2015 did not have Khameneis approval at every turn.

At the same time he ruled out a military confrontation with the U.S. "Recently, American officials have been talking blatantly about Iran ... they are talking about war and negotiations ... They are exaggerating about possibility of a war with Iran. There will be no war ... We have never started a war and they will not confront Iran militarily," Khamenei retorted.

Elsewhere in his speech Khamenei described "the devaluation of the country's national currency as one of Iran's main problems," adding hat "the devaluation was caused by reasons originating inside the country."

This was also an unprecedented comment as so far Khamenei earlier was attributing all problems including the economic crisis and the social unrest it caused to foreign countries. This can be seen as a U-turn as Khamenei was in denial of Iran's economic crisis for several years.

Khameneis sudden turnaround on major issues might be a sign of certain nervousness at the top of the Iranian hierarchy as renewed U.S. sanctions and internal dissent create a desperate situation for the leadership.

Meanwhile he expressed concern that the serious devaluation of the national currency makes life harder for low-income employees.

He admitted that sanctions were to blame "to some extent" but "the main reason for the sharp decline in the value of the Iranian currency (rial) was the government's performance. He further blamed "the lack of prudence and timely measures" by the government as the main reason for Iran's ongoing economic crisis.

Criticizing the mishandling of the foreign currency problem by the government, Khamenei said, "I am not saying this was an act of treason, but what happened marked serious mismanagement in policy-making and controlling the market."

During recent days every US dollar was exchanged for over 105000 rials. The rate of exchange more than tripled in seven months in the Iranian markets.

Khamenei's remarks on Monday are in line with other Iranian hardliners' verbal attacks on Rouhani. Conservative officials and other hardline political figures have recently blamed Rouhani's poor performance for the country's economic problems and demanded major changes in his cabinet.

The pressures have so far led to the impeachment and dismissal of Rouhani's labor minister, and the replacement of his Central Bank governor.

Although structural problems, mismanagement and widespread corruption played a major part in bringing the Iranian economy to the verge of collapse, Iran's economic situation dramatically worsened after the United States withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran in May.

In recent months, economic crisis coupled with political dissent brought thousands of Iranians to the streets of Tehran and other cities where they chanted slogans against Khamenei and Rouhani and questioned the Islamic Republic's legitimacy.
Baghdad, Aug 12, 2018 (AFP) -

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has cancelled a visit to Iran, his press office said Sunday, as the premier came under strong Iranian criticism over his stand on renewed US sanctions against Tehran.

Abadi will still go ahead with a planned visit to Turkey on Tuesday but has scrapped the Iran leg of the trip "because of his busy schedule", his office said.

An Iraqi official had said Saturday that Abadi would visit both neighboring Turkey and Iran to discuss economic issues.

According to Iraqi political sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, Iran initially agreed to the visit but changed its mind because it was unhappy about Abadi's remarks.

The premier said last Tuesday that Iraq -- which relies on neighboring Iran as a source of cheap imports -- would reluctantly comply with US sanctions against Tehran that took effect the same day.

"We don't support the sanctions because they are a strategic error, but we will comply with them," said Abadi, whose country is an ally of both Tehran and Washington. "In general, sanctions are unjust."

On Sunday, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative in Baghdad lashed out at Abadi as the Tehran visit was called off.

"These irresponsible remarks have already been condemned by many people. It's a disloyal attitude towards the honest position of Iran and the blood of the martyrs this country has spilt to defend the land of Iraq" against jihadists, said Moujtaba al-Hussein.

"We are saddened by this position which shows he has been defeated psychologically in the face of the Americans," he said.

The US sanctions were reimposed after President Donald Trump withdrew from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

In Tehran, the foreign ministry was more guarded about a possible visit by Abadi.

A ministry spokesman said he had "so far not received any official news or information whatsoever about this trip", the semi-official ISNA news agency reported.
OSLO, Aug 13 (Reuters) -

Norway's fisheries minister resigned on Monday following his earlier admission that he breached government security protocols during a holiday to Iran last month.

Per Sandberg, who initially failed to notify colleagues of his whereabouts and also took his government-issued mobile phone to Iran, had been rebuked by Prime Minister Erna Solberg for violating the cabinet's travel rules.

Sandberg, 58, deputy head of the anti-immigration Progress Party, has also faced criticism from within his party for going on the trip with his girlfriend, Iranian-born Bahareh Letnes, 28, who obtained residency in Norway a decade ago.

Ruling in a minority with a coalition cabinet of her Conservatives as well as Progress and the Liberals, Solberg's government has slumped in opinion polls after news of Sandberg's trip broke.

The prime minister said she had ordered Sandberg to hand his phone to police for safety checks, but still faced criticism in parliament from opposition parties questioning the government's competence on issues of national security.

The government requires ministers to inform the prime minister's office of where they are going, regardless of destination. It also forbids the use of government-issued phones in a country with which Norway does not have established security cooperation.

The new fisheries minister will be Progress Party veteran Harald Tom Nesvik, the prime minister's office said.

Norway is the world's largest producer of farmed salmon, and seafood is the Nordic country's second-largest export industry after oil and gas.
A former commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says "the United States and Israel have set up an intelligence organization in Iran."

Hossein Alaee also says that Israel has been operating "an extensive intelligence network" to monitor Iran's "political, economic, nuclear and missile activities for 15 years," Khabar Online, a news website close to Iran's Majles (parliament) Speaker Ali Larijani reported on Sunday August 12.

It is not clear if Alaee was speaking with official approval or not.

In recent years several reports indicated that a number of Iranian intelligence officers have been arrested on charges of espionage for Israel or having a part in the assassination of Iran's nuclear scientists and triggering a major explosion at a garrison near Tehran, killing several officers including Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam, the mastermind of Tehran's missile program.

Ala'i, who has held top military posts such as the commander of IRGC naval forces and the chief of IRGC joint staff, also told Khabar Online that foreign-based outlawed opposition group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK) has always had its own intelligence organization and operation center in Iran.

He accused MeK of cooperating with Israel and the United States, "although the two countries have been operating their own independent intelligence network in Iran too," Alaee added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu revealed in late April that Israeli intelligence agents had stolen a whole archive of secret documents about Iran's nuclear program in Tehran and shipped them to Israel.

He said the documents weighed half a ton and included about 100,000 documents and 183 CDs and showed that Iran was working on a secret nuclear weapon program codenamed "Emad" which was aimed at mounting powerful nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles.

Israel later invited three reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal to Israel to examine the documents.

According to the papers, Israeli agents entered a building in Tehran that housed 32 safes containing nuclear documents. The place was being used as an archive storage after the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

The documents were stored at a commercial building that did not attract attention. The building was not guarded after office hours, and Israeli agents had only 6 hours to steal the most important documents as well as hundreds of CDS, maps and tapes, the papers wrote.

Last year, Iranian activist Reza Alijani told Radio Farda that two Iranian agents who manned the Israel Desk at the Intelligence Ministry and IRGC Intelligence were arrested on charges of spying for Israel and were subsequently executed.

Other reports said a man who gave maps and information about IRGC garrisons to Israeli agents was also arrested.

Israel was further said to have sabotaged Iran's missile programs but reports about the infiltration have not been confirmed by independent sources.

Another incident in which Israeli agents have been implicated was a major explosion at an ammunition depot near Tehran in 2011 which killed the mastermind of Iran's missile program, Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam.

However, Israel rejected the reports about its agent's involvement in the blast.

In another development in early 2010s Israeli agents reportedly assassinated four Iranian nuclear scientists. Iran executed one man and arrested 20 others on charges of carrying out the assassinations as Israeli agents.

Israel has not confirmed the involvement of its agents in the assassinations.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 12

Trend:

Military units of the armed forces of Armenia violated ceasefire 79 times throughout the day, using large-caliber machine guns, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said August 13.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 13

Trend:

Azerbaijani army serviceman Samit Israfilov was wounded as a result of ceasefire violation by Armenian Armed Forces on the Armenian-Azerbaijani (Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic) border on Aug. 12, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said in a message on Aug. 13.

The soldier has immediately been provided with medical care, there is no threat to his life.

Armenia is purposefully continuing to tense the situation in the Nakhchivan direction, said the ministry's message.

The responsibility for what is happening on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border lies entirely with the military-political leadership of Armenia, the ministry said.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 13

Trend:

Muraz Rahimov, a participant of the Ganja events, was eliminated as he put up armed resistance during an operation of the Azerbaijani Interior Ministry in Sumgait on Aug. 10.

Rahimov had planned to assassinate Ganja's imam and police officers during an Ashura ceremony, the law enforcement told Trend on Aug. 13.

Having inclinations toward radical religious tendencies, Rahimov intended to stage an explosion in Baku before the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012. He was convicted after the police found a grenade in his apartment.

While being in the correctional facility, Rahimov was again brought to criminal responsibility and convicted because of prohibited object possession.

While in prison, he joined the "Muslim Unity" movement and took a more aggressive stance.

After participating in the Ganja unrest on July 10, Rahimov came to Baku to avoid arrest and hid in various rented apartments.

Earlier, the Prosecutor General's Office of Azerbaijan reported that as a result of urgent investigative actions and searches carried out by an investigative group of the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Security Service on the Ganja events, 61 people were charged, arrest was chosen as a preventive measure, special services eliminated four people who put up armed resistance, 13 people were put into the wanted list.

Weapons, pistols, ammunition, grenades were seized during the operational measures in Ganja.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 13

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Fifth Summit of heads of state of the Caspian countries, defining the legal status of the Caspian sea, has become a great historical event, Member of the Council on State Support to NGOs under the auspices of President of Azerbaijan, Chairman of the International Relations Research Center, Philosophy Doctor of Political Sciences, Political Scientist Rufiz Gonagov told Trend Aug. 13.

"A summit on the status of the Caspian sea was held in the Kazakh city of Aktau with the participation of the presidents of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan. The signing of the Convention defining the legal status of the Caspian sea by the heads of state of the five Caspian countries was the result of discussions that lasted for 22 years. The summit agenda included three main issues: the legal status of the water basin, cooperation in the Caspian sea, regional and global security issues," the political scientist said.

He noted that the strong interest on a global scale has been shown in the signing of the Convention.

"A large number of reporters from around the world kept track of the summit. Of course, this is also conditioned by the geopolitical location of the Caspian sea, because the Caspian sea is not just a water basin, it contains billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic meters of confirmed gas reserves," he said.

Gonagov added that one of the most controversial issues of the long years of discussions was related to the dilemma whether the Caspian should be considered as a sea or a lake. This factor was decisive in determining its status. The general agreement has been reached on the status of the Caspian sea as the sea according to the signed Convention," Gonagov noted.

The political scientist also said that one of the important features of the Convention is that the Caspian countries can lay gas and oil pipelines on the seabed, for which it is sufficient only to obtain the permission of the countries owning the sector through which the pipeline passes, according to article 14 of the document. This gives a "green light" to transportation of hydrocarbon reserves of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan through Azerbaijan to Turkey and Europe, Gonagov noted.

"The Caspian states take direct responsibility for man-made accidents in their sectors according to the Convention. Only the naval fleets of the Caspian countries can navigate in the Caspian sea according to the agreement. Three additional protocols on mutual activities to combat organized crime, terrorism, as well as border protection were also signed within the framework of the summit," Gonagov said.

The political scientist added that the signing of this Convention will not only ensure stability in the Caspian region, but will further strengthen the role of Azerbaijan as an international transit country, increase its economic power.

The ceremony of signing documents was held Aug. 12 at the Fifth Summit of the heads of state of the Caspian countries in the Kazakh city of Aktau.

Convention on the legal status of the Caspian sea was signed by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of Iran Hassan Rouhani and President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 13

By Matanat Nasibova - Trend:

The Convention on the Status of the Caspian Sea will significantly strengthen Irans relations with Azerbaijan, which is important in conditions when new projects are being started and major mutual investments are being discussed, Farhad Ibrahimov, Russian political scientist, expert of the Center for Post-Soviet Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Trend Aug. 13.

He said that Iran was the only country that didnt agree to make concessions.

Iran was in favor of dividing the Caspian Sea as a lake, and in this case Iran had a right for 20 percent of the Caspian Sea, he noted. Kazakhstan disagreed because in this case it would lose about 9 percent of its sea territory. Russia and Azerbaijan supported Kazakhstan. The fact that Iran has made certain concessions, agreeing with Moscows position, can have different reasons - from geopolitical ones to the countrys internal problems. Iran isnt in the best economic condition now, relations with Washington worsened again, and Iran understands well that it is necessary to make compromises with its neighbors in order to somehow alleviate the situation.

He added that the meeting of leaders of the Caspian states influenced the decision of Iran to make concessions.

He said this decision will allow resolve all issues with the division of the Caspian Sea into sectors and the summit of the heads of the Caspian states in Aktau can be considered a breakthrough.

He noted that the decision on the absence of third parties in the Caspian Sea was also an important moment for Iran and Russia.

Ibrahimov added that leaders of the countries came to a compromise in order to settle all unresolved issues that were impeding the development of relations among the countries for more than 20 years.

On August 12, the Kazakh city of Aktau hosted a ceremony of signing documents on the legal status of the Caspian Sea at the 5th summit of heads of the Caspian states.

The Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea was signed by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of Iran Hassan Rouhani and President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 13

By Elchin Mehdiyev  Trend:

The exclusion of the Southern Gas Corridor from the new anti-Iran sanctions once again demonstrates the importance of the project, Vugar Rahimzade, member of the Political Council of the New Azerbaijan Party, editor-in-chief of Iki Sahil newspaper told Trend.

For many years Azerbaijan has been attracting the world's attention with its global projects, he said.

"Today, the world powers express gratification with the cooperation with our country and stress the importance of further expansion of these relations," Rahimzade said. Of course, the Southern Gas Corridor project, being implemented at the initiative of our country and having already changed the world energy map, is an important contribution to international cooperation, peace and security."

He added that the Southern Gas Corridor project, one of its main segments Shah Deniz 2, the expansion of the South Caucasus Pipeline, TANAP and TAP are priority projects for the EU.

"As is known, through this project, the gas to be extracted from Shah Deniz 2 will be supplied to Turkey and from there to Europe, he said. Thanks to the Southern Gas Corridor, six billion cubic meters of gas will be transported to Turkey and 10 billion cubic meters will go to Europe.

The exclusion of the Southern Gas Corridor from the new US sanctions on Iran once again demonstrates the importance of the project, he said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 13

By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:

Purposeful activity of Azerbaijani diplomacy has become decisive in defining the legal status of the Caspian Sea, editor-in-chief of the Baki Khabar newspaper Aydin Guliyev said.

He said that the fruitful work in this direction began in the mid-1990s and was based on continuous and concrete principles.

Azerbaijan and President Ilham Aliyev personally played a decisive role in bringing the question of the legal status of the Caspian Sea to an active discussion and successfully conclude the negotiations after many years, Guliyev said.

Guliyev noted that the Convention on the Status of the Caspian Sea is one of the achievements of Azerbaijani diplomacy in providing a golden mean in the relations of the Caspian littoral states, which is a source of pride.

There have been attempts to sow discord among the Caspian littoral states, to turn the Caspian Sea into an open arena for the military forces of countries not related to this sea, not only five Caspian littoral states, but also close countries to a certain extent wanted to join the processes around the Caspian Basin, he said. Azerbaijan played a major role in the destruction of these plans, which were a source of threat in the region. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan made decisive efforts in preserving the Caspian Sea as a security arena and cooperation. The words of President Ilham Aliyev that the presence of military forces and military activities in the Caspian Sea should be carried out on the basis of the principles of ensuring equal security conditions for all the Caspian littoral states will remain as a special thesis in the history of all processes leading to the signing of the convention.

Guliyev said that Azerbaijani diplomacy created an even firmer guarantee of sustainable peace and security in the Caspian region and said that a new era of large transit, transport and logistical opportunities of Azerbaijan along the North-South and East-West corridors is now beginning.

Guliyev believes that all the resources of the Caspian Sea will be fully accessible for use in the name of the well-being of peoples. He said that Azerbaijans strategy to turn the Caspian Sea into a sea of security and cooperation has won.

On August 12, Kazakh city of Aktau hosted the ceremony of signing documents on the legal status of the Caspian Sea at the 5th summit of heads of the Caspian littoral states.

The Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea was signed by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of Iran Hassan Rouhani and President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 13

Trend:

Bakcell has introduced a convenient e-care app, which allows the customers to perform all necessary transactions, with no need for calling or visiting the customer care center

Bakcell, the First Mobile Operator and Leading Mobile Internet Provider of Azerbaijan, has introduced My Bakcell application, the first of its kind and most innovative customer care method on the countrys telecommunications market.

Aiming to provide the customers with a convenient, transparent and enjoyable user experience the Company has designed the My Bakcell  a virtual customer care application.

Bakcell always was and continues to be the pioneer in bringing the most cutting-edge technologies, and latest products and services to the local telco market. Being the first in everything, we just had to become the first in introducing the most innovative and convenient customer care tool on the local telco market. Our new My Bakcell application is the beginning of a whole new era of convenience, transparency and innovative approach to telco customer service says Nikolai Beckers, Bakcell CEO.

By using this app, Bakcell customers will be able to perform all the necessary transactions with the account and get detailed information about their number, including the remaining balance, active bonuses, dates of expiration, available megabytes of internet and etc. without a need to call or visit a customer care office.

For instance, by means of My Bakcell, the subscribers will be able to easily:

Activate or deactivate services, internet and roaming packages;

Learn the expiration dates and balance for used internet packages;

Get information and join the available tariffs and offers;

Moreover, users of the new app will enjoy a maximum level of transparency, being able to have a full access to their numbers usage history, covering the list of called numbers, time and duration of calls, as well as all the subscriptions, charged amounts and purchased additional services.

Being the most customer-focused and innovative telecommunications services provider in Azerbaijan, Bakcell is always focused on introducing new state-of-the-art products and services, in combination with the best digital customer experience, and all of this supported by our superior network, said Todor Dimitrovski, chief marketing officer of Bakcell. Taking into consideration the needs and demands of our customers, we decided to provide them with a maximum level of convenience and transparency in usage of mobile services. Thanks to the new My Bakcell app, our subscribers will never again lose time visiting the customer care or calling the contact center. All they need to do is to use the app and enjoy customer care directly from their smartphones.

The new My Bakcell app is available for download from Google Play and Appstore for devices running under Android and iOS. Note that once registered, the subscribers will be able to use My Bakcell not only as a mobile app, but as a Desktop version as well from all the available devices, such as laptops or tablets. More detailed information, as well as the download links is available at https://www.bakcell.com/en/my-bakcell

Im proud to say that Bakcell became the first ever operator to offer such a unique possibility on the whole telecommunications market of the country, he added. We observe a great demand to this unique product and great satisfaction of Bakcell customers using this service.

A demo about the usage of the application can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aTUxAvyFSI

Bakcell, the First Mobile Operator and Leading Mobile Internet Provider of Azerbaijan, offers a wide range of products and Services to users of modern mobile communications Services. The company provides its customers with the best-in-class mobile communication and 4G mobile internet.

With more than 7000 base stations, Bakcell network covers 99% of the population and 93% of the land area of the country (except for the occupied territories).

After proving itself to provide the best 3G mobile internet service in the country, Bakcell has announced the commercial launch of 4G LTE services on 5th of May 2015.

4G ensures a significant increase of mobile internet speed and is especially useful for those users who wish to stay mobile at all times, having an access to high-speed mobile internet at all locations. Currently, in addition to Baku and Absheron peninsula, residents of Ganja, Quba, Qusar, Khachmaz, Shabran and Siyazan regions are able to benefit from the high-speed 4G internet of Bakcell. In the year 2018, Bakcell continues to expand its LTE network to other regions of Azerbaijan. Bakcell became the first mobile operator in the country to launch 4G service in Baku subway.

In the year 2017, Bakcell network has been recognized as the Best in Test in Azerbaijan by P3 Communications, being the international leader and most trusted independent authority in mobile benchmarking. According to tests, implemented in August 2017, Bakcell has the best score overall network experience in Azerbaijan and the best mobile internet network in test in Baku and other big cities.

For more information about Bakcell products and services, please visit www.bakcell.com or call 555. For press releases please see www.bakcell.com/az/news (or www.bakcell.com/en/news for press releases in English).

If you are not a Bakcell subscriber, but wish to find out about Bakcell and its products and services, please call 012 498 89 89.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 13

By Matanat Nasibova  Trend:

Additional investments in the expansion of the Yalama Agricultural Park in Azerbaijan will amount to 2.5 million manats, Director of the Agricultural Park Zaur Aliyev told Trend.

He noted that the Agricultural Park is currently actively conducting a feasibility study for establishment of a milk processing factory with a daily capacity of 50 tons.

"It is planned to establish a dairy factory worth 12 million manats in the territory of the Yalama Agricultural Park. Butter, milk powder and cheese will be produced at the enterprise. Along with the processing of milk, which will be produced in a farm attached to the factory, it is also planned to procure milk from farmers of adjacent villages, and after its processing to supply finished products to the domestic market, as well as export them abroad," Aliyev said.

He said 23 million manats were invested in the establishment of the Agricultural Park with an area of 523 hectares at the first stage of work.

"Many activity plans have been envisaged. It is planned to build an additional grain storage, as well as to purchase grain harvesters. The work in this direction has already begun," he said.

He noted that a livestock complex for 3,000 thoroughbred cattle (including 1,000 dairy cows), a large grain farm on an area of 385 hectares with a modern irrigation system, a forage factory with a production capacity of five tons per hour have been established at the initial stage of the project.

Aliyev said the agricultural parks actively promote the development of entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector, they are of particular importance for acceleration of socio-economic development, the production of competitive agricultural products, the expansion of export potential and employment.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 13

By Fikret Dolukhanov  Trend:

The Belarus concern Bellegprom and the Tashkent region of Uzbekistan signed a protocol of intent with the aim of expanding cooperation in the textile industry, the concern said.

The document was signed following a meeting between the head of the Tashkent regional administration and the chairman of the Bellegprom concern.

The parties showed interest in developing cooperation in the textile and leather-shoe industries between the enterprises of Belarus and Uzbekistan.

In 1H2018, the exports of Bellegprom to Uzbekistan amounted to $293,900, which is 5.1 percent more compared to the same period last year. Export deliveries grew primarily due to an increase in the export of fabrics (3.4 times), hosiery (7 times) and corsetry (1.7 times).

The main exports are sewing and knitted goods, linens made from cellulosic fibers (Iscozh OJSC), artificial and synthetic fabrics (Mogotex OJSC, Kamvol OJSC), knitted fabrics (Belfa JSC), textile haberdashery (Lenta OJSC), etc.

Exports from Uzbekistan to Belarus mainly consist of cotton yarn, cotton fiber and knitted cotton linens.

It was earlier announced that the Tashkent region of Uzbekistan is interested in joint production of furniture with the Minsk region of Belarus.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @FDolukhanov
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Aug. 13

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

The Foreign Ministry of Turkmenistan held a meeting with a delegation from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) led by the senior adviser of Credit Department Kenji Hosono, said a message from the Turkmen Foreign Ministry.

The parties noted the productive nature of the cooperation established between Turkmenistan and the largest Japanese companies.

It was also noted at the meeting that the promising areas for partnership are oil and gas and chemical sectors, electricity, industry and transport spheres.

The representatives of the Japanese bank expressed interest in the intensification of relations and expressed their readiness to take an active part in the implementation of large-scale projects in Turkmenistan, the message says.

The State Bank for Foreign Economic Activity of Turkmenistan and JBIC signed an agreement on cooperation in 2013.

The website of the Turkmen bank said "the government of Turkmenistan plans to build a number of petrochemical factories and factories for the production of fertilizers using natural gas as raw materials."

A number of agreements and contracts were signed between Turkmengaz, Turkmenkhimiya and Turkmennebit (Turkmenoil) state concerns and Japanese Sojitz, Chiyoda, Nippon, ITOCHU, JGC, Kawasaki, TOYO, Mitsui, Tsukishima, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo companies in 2013.

It was reported then that the total cost of the planned joint projects exceeded $10 billion.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 13

By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

Signing of the convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, which was expected for over 20 years, has become a very significant event for all five Caspian littoral states (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan), the Transport Corridor Europe Caucasus Asia (TRACECA) international transport cooperation program national secretary on Azerbaijan Akif Mustafayev told Trend Aug. 13.

He said that this agreement will open new prospects for the development of logistics and expansion of cooperation in this sphere among the Caspian littoral states.

The Caspian Sea is of great importance for Azerbaijan, because it connects the country with Central Asia, he said. A lot of transit cargo traffic passes through the Caspian Sea between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, as well as Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Besides, cargoes heading from China to Europe pass through the Caspian Sea. In this regard, the interaction among the Caspian littoral states has always been at a high level, and the signing of the convention will open even greater opportunities and prospects for the development of transit cargo transportation.

On the other hand, the signing of the convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea will make it possible to implement a number of promising projects that couldnt previously be implemented, he added.

This document will make it possible to transport great volumes of gas in the future from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan via the pipeline through the Caspian Sea, and these volumes will be further transported to Turkey and European countries via the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), he noted.

Earlier, construction of such a pipeline was impossible, but after signing the agreement, there were almost no obstacles left. Thus, the signing of the convention creates great economic prospects not only for Azerbaijan, but also for Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. In a word, the signing of the convention will lead to significant increase in all types of cargo transportation, enhance security in the region, as well as improve the ecological state of the Caspian Sea.

On August 12, Kazakh city of Aktau hosted the ceremony of signing documents on the legal status of the Caspian Sea at the 5th summit of heads of the Caspian littoral states.

The Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea was signed by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of Iran Hassan Rouhani and President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov.

In addition, heads of the respective structures of the Caspian littoral states signed other important documents stemming from this Convention - the Protocol on Cooperation in the Fight against Organized Crime in the Caspian Sea, the Agreement on Trade and Economic Cooperation among the Governments of the Caspian Littoral States, the Agreement on Cooperation in the Transport Sphere among the Governments of the Caspian Littoral States, the Agreement on the Prevention of Incidents in the Caspian Sea and the Protocol on Cooperation and Interaction of Border Agencies.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anvar_Mammadov
23:53

Gangster Arun Gawli, serving life sentence for murder, has topped an exam based on Gandhian thoughts.

An inmate of the Nagpur central prison, Gawli scored 74 out of 80 marks in the examination, based on the concept of the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi.

Around 160 prisoners appeared for the examination, conducted by NGOs Sahyog Trust, Sarvoday Ashram and Mumbai Sarvoday Mandal in October last year. The result was declared last week, Sahyog Trust trustee Ravindra Bhusari said.

Appearing for the exam is not mandatory and prison inmates appear for it out of choice, Bhusari told PTI.





In the exam, inmates have to answer 80 objective type questions. Those who pass the exam receive a certificate and Khadi clothes as a prize.

"Before the exam, study material on Gandhiji's books was provided in the jail," he said. The examinees included convicts, under trials and those serving jail terms, he added. Gawli, currently lodged in the Nagpur central jail, is serving a life sentence for the 2007 murder of Shiv Sena corporator Kamalakar Jamsandekar.

Gawli and 11 others were convicted in 2012 for the offence, and it was the first conviction against Gawli, who has had a long list of criminal cases against him.

Known as 'Daddy' in Mumbai's Dagdi Chawl area, Gawli later joined politics and floated his own party named the Akhil Bharatiya Sena.

Last year, a biopic on him was released.





Actor Arjun Rampal essayed his character in the film titled Daddy. PTI
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Aug. 13

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Turkmenistan plans to start building railway ferries, Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers Manmathan Chakaev said.

Chakayev made the remarks in his report to the country's President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, local TV channel "Altyn Asyr" broadcasted.

This type of carriage of wagons by sea without intermediate cargo handling in the port is one of the most highly productive methods, its use allows for significantly saving the time for loading operations.

Berdimuhamedov noted that this is a very popular mode of transport for long-distance destinations. It also opens up great opportunities for transit, for example, of trains from Uzbekistan, which gains access to the sea through the port in Turkmenbashi.

The railway ferries are vessels intended for the carriage of railway vehicles.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 13

By Leman Zeynalova - Trend:

Tashkent will host the Uzbek-Chinese business forum with participation of representatives of the textile enterprises of the Uztekstilprom Association, said a message posted on the Association's website.

The event will be held August 15 as part of the visit of a delegation of China National Textile and Apparel Council.

The Chinese delegation arrived in Tashkent on August 10. The delegation includes the heads of 33 Chinese associations and major textile companies.

The event will be attended by the heads of the ministries of economy, foreign trade, the State Tax Committee of Uzbekistan, as well as representatives of departments, companies and concerns of Uzbekistan and China.

At the forum, the Chinese guests will be provided with detailed information about the opportunities and benefits created.

It is planned to sign a number of bilateral documents following the business forum.

During the visit, the delegation of China National Textile and Apparel Council intends to familiarize itself with the investment potential of the Uzbek regions.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug.6

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania Interconnector (AGRI) remains an important project for Romania and for the European Union (EU), Iulian-Robert Tudorache, Romania's Deputy Minister of Energy, told Trend.

"The AGRI project is a unique initiative in the Black Sea region, covering both the energy security component (by diversifying the energy routes and sources) and the regional cooperation component, which is a major common goal of the Energy Union. For these reasons AGRI remains an important project for Romania and for the European Union (EU). On a wider note, AGRI highlights the important contribution that liquefied natural gas (LNG) could bring to the EUs energy security, in line with the objectives of the European Commission Strategy for LNG and natural gas deposits," he said

Tudorache pointed out that AGRI aims at opening a new gas transport corridor from the Caspian region, especially from Azerbaijan, as a new entry point for imported gas to the EU market.

"The corridor was specially designed as the shortest, most direct and independent gas transport route connecting the gas source to the EU gas market. The discovery in the Black Sea of important hydrocarbon reserves may confer an additional significance to the project. Furthermore, AGRI may be considered as additional supply route for the BRUA (Bulgaria-Romania-Hungary-Austria) interconnector currently under execution."

The AGRI Feasibility Study has already been finalized, with positive conclusion in both scenarios considered (in terms of projected delivery capacity), the he said.

Further steps towards the development are assessed in view of the progress of other regional energy projects, as well as of the availability of Caspian gas resources, added Tudorache.

As far as the financing options are concerned, he noted that these might include special EU financing programs for energy - such as Common Interest Projects (CIP), Energy Community Common Interests Projects (ECCIP) and Mutual Interest Projects (MIP)  and/or the banks specialized in financing energy/infrastructure projects.

"Over the past years there has been an increase in the EU demand for natural gas, a trend that is expected to continue in the future. At the same time, the EU pays special attention to the need to diversify the energy routes and sources and to identify sustainable alternatives in these respects. The development of LNG sector in Central Europe will continue to play an important role in lowering the EU dependency on gas imports from traditional sources," noted Tudorache.

Moreover, he pointed out that the ongoing strengthening and expansion of trans-European energy infrastructure opens new opportunities both for the buyers as well as for the producers of LNG. "Owing to the efforts made so far, the Central and Eastern Europe region is becoming more connected to new international gas sources and transportation corridors, and the LNG terminals already prove themselves to be viable supply options."

AGRI project envisages transportation of Azerbaijani gas to the Black Sea coast of Georgia via gas pipelines. Azerbaijani gas delivered to Georgia's Black Sea coast will be liquefied at a special terminal and following this, it will be delivered in tankers to a terminal at the Romanian port of Constanta.

Further, it will be brought to the gaseous state and sent via Romanian gas infrastructure for meeting the demands of Romania and other European countries.

The project is the first of its kind to be developed in the Black Sea, aiming the transport of natural gas from Caspian region to Europe.

The participants of the AGRI project are SOCAR, Georgia's Oil and Gas Corporation, as well as MVM (Hungary) and Romgaz (Romania). The parties established the SC AGRI LNG Project Company SRL with the purpose of developing the Feasibility Study.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug.13

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

ICGB AD has nominated the National Archaeological Institute with museum for contractor of a public procurement procedure for archaeological studies of archaeological sites found along the route of the gas interconnector Greece-Bulgaria, the company told Trend.

The public procurement award contract was signed on August 6.

The contractor - National Archaeological Institute with museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Science (BAS) - commits to perform archaeological excavations of presumed archaeological sites found in the process of engineering and which are within the easement of IGB, as well as monitoring of the construction activities in accordance with the requirements of the Cultural Heritage Act. The value of the contract is BGN 1 893 010, VAT excluded, and comprises study and monitoring of 58 sites along the 150 km gas pipeline route on Bulgarian territory.

By awarding the archaeological studies, ICGB proceeds with field activities on preparation of the route for the actual start of construction of the gas pipeline. Along with the implementation of the developmental proposal the investor will take all measures required to preserve the cultural heritage of Bulgaria and not to allow any activities which may threaten the sites found along the route of the gas pipeline.

IGB is a gas pipeline, which will allow Bulgaria to receive Azerbaijani gas, in particular, the gas produced from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz 2 gas and condensate field. IGB is expected to be connected to TAP via which gas from the Shah Deniz field will be delivered to the European markets.

The initial capacity of IGB will be 3 billion cubic meters of gas.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, August 13

Trend:

A member of Iranian Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters Union said talks between Tehran and Baghdad over the export of Iranian gas to Iraq are underway.

The (Iraqi) oil ministry plans to replace (Irans) natural gas with gasoil and oil products, Hamid Mohseni told ISNA news agency on August 13.

He added that the Iraqi side is keen to import natural gas from Iran and use it in the Arab countrys sectors of industry and urban development.

The official noted that Baghdad is in negotiations with Tehran to strike a new deal over import of oil and gas products.

About 12 mcm/d of gas per day are transferred to Baghdad, making Iraq the second largest gas customer of Iran after Turkey, which imported about 21 mcm/d in 2016, according to the latest BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

Iraq's second largest city Basra is also on the agenda to receive gas from Iran via another pipeline.
Baku, Azerbaijan, August 13

Trend:

The Iranian energy minister said the government is in negotiations with Azerbaijan to export electricity to Russia.

Reza Ardakanian, speaking to IRNA news agency on August 13, added that the country would start exporting power to Russia as soon as talks with Baku are finalized.

We are seeking to join the European power network and there are several scenarios for this, he stressed.

One of the scenarios is to get help from our northern neighbors and get connected to the European electricity network, Ardakani said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug.13

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

According to secondary sources, total OPEC-15 crude oil production averaged 32.32 million barrels per day in July, an increase of 41,000 barrels per day over the previous month, the cartel said in its Oil Market Report.

Crude oil output increased mostly in Kuwait, Nigeria, UAE and Iraq, while production showed declines in Libya, I.R. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

The share of OPEC crude oil in total global production decreased by 0.2 percentage points to 32.8 percent in July compared with the previous month.

Estimates are based on preliminary data from direct communication for non-OPEC supply, OPEC NGLs and non-conventional oil, while estimates for OPEC crude production are based on secondary sources.

In December 2016, at a meeting of oil producers in Vienna, 11 non-OPEC member countries, including Azerbaijan, agreed to cut oil production by a total of 558,000 barrels a day. The agreement was concluded for the first half of 2017 and was extended until the end of the first quarter of 2018 at a meeting on May 25, 2017.

At the last OPEC meeting in Vienna, the agreement was again extended until the end of 2018. Azerbaijan supported the decision.

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Follow the author on Twitter:@Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 13

By Huseyn Veliyev  Trend:

The new state duties for registration of IMEI codes of mobile devices will come into force from now on, a source in Azerbaijan's telecommunications market told Trend.

The preventive work is underway currently to update the system, and the work in this direction will be completed during the day, the source told Trend.

"After the technical update of the system, user information regarding the new duties, as well as all related information will be made public both on the imei.az page, as well as on e-GovPay self-service terminals, through which registration of IMEI codes of mobile devices is also available. In addition, the users can also get detailed information about the new state duties through the post office," the source said.

This refers to the application of a differentiated method of registration, which involves the classification of duties by mobile phones of high, medium and low price segment. This will allow for determining a fixed duty for mobile phones depending on their cost and model. For example, the duty on expensive iPhone models will be different from the duty on phones of cheaper price segment.

Thus, the registration of mobile devices with a market value of up to $100, which do not have access to the internet, photo and video functions, will cost 20 manats.

For all other mobile devices, the cost of registration will be 30 manats (for mobile devices with the market price of up to $100), 50 manats (with the market price from $101 to $200), 60 manats (with the market price from $201 to $400), 70 manats (with the market price from $401 to $700), 100 manats (with the market price from $701 to $1000), 150 manats (with the market price from $1001 and above).

The registration of IMEI-codes of mobile devices in Azerbaijan was carried out earlier for five manats for personal use and for 1.6 manats for commercial sale regardless of their market price.

The registration system began to operate in Azerbaijan from May 1, 2013. Registration is carried out within 24 hours from the date of submission of application.

Mobile devices imported into the country for private use (in the networks of mobile operators of Azerbaijan) must be registered within 30 days. Registration of mobile devices available on the imei.az website, at "Shebeke" service centers, through eGovPay payment terminals and on smartpay.az.

The official exchange rate on August 13 is 1.7 AZN / USD

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Follow the author on Twitter: @h_veliyev
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Aug. 13

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

The exchange of ratification documents of the Strategic Partnership Agreement between Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, signed on April 18, 2017, took place in Aktau, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry said in a statement Aug. 13.

The above-mentioned agreement establishes the relations of strategic partnership between the two countries on the basis of equality, mutual trust and comprehensive cooperation, and also brings the bilateral relations to a qualitatively new level, corresponding to the potential and actual needs of the Turkmen-Kazakhstan cooperation, the message says.

The document will enter into force on September 11, 2018. The Agreement on Strategic Cooperation between Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan was signed in Astana based on the results of the high-level talks. The presidents of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and Nursultan Nazarbayev also signed an agreement on carrying out demarcation work on the Turkmen-Kazakh state border.

In addition, the parties signed an agreement on the intergovernmental commission on trade, economic, scientific, technical and cultural cooperation, a program of cooperation between the ministries of Foreign Affairs of the two states for 2017-2018, an anti-money laundering and anti-terror financing cooperation agreement, an agreement on mutual protection of confidential information, an agreement on cooperation between the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Turkmenistan and the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs of the Republic of Kazakhstan "Atameken".
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Aug. 13

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

The next VI summit of the heads of the Caspian states will be held in Turkmenistan within the agreed time frame, the final communique of the fifth Caspian summit, held yesterday in Aktau reads, the Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan said in a statement.

The signing by the leaders of the five states of the basic international treaty, developed on the basis of consensus and mutual consideration of the interests of all parties - the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian sea was the main event of the fifth Caspian summit.

The communique also says the signing at the fifth Caspian summit of the agreement on trade and economic cooperation between the governments of the Caspian states and the agreement on cooperation in the field of transport between the governments of the Caspian states was accepted with deep satisfaction.

In addition, it was proposed to hold the first Caspian economic forum in 2019 in Turkmenistan in order to develop contacts between entrepreneurs and business entities of the five countries.

The need to prepare a five-party agreement on cooperation in the field of maritime transport in the Caspian sea was noted. The signing during the summit of the intergovernmental agreement on the prevention of incidents in the Caspian sea is aimed at the implementation of the basic principles of cooperation between the states.

In order to ensure the interests of the coastal states in the sphere of security, the presidents confirmed the need to develop and adopt coordinated confidence-building measures in the Caspian sea in the field of military activities at sea.

The presidents welcomed the signing of the protocols on cooperation in the field of combating terrorism, organized crime, cooperation of border agencies attached to the agreement on cooperation in the sphere of security in the Caspian sea dated November 18, 2010, aimed at countering current challenges and threats, as well as suppressing illegal activities. The leaders paid close attention to the environmental issues in the Caspian sea.

The most important outcome of the efforts of the Caspian states in this direction was the signing on July 20, 2018 in Moscow of the protocol on environmental impact assessment in the transboundary context attached to the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian sea dated November 4, 2003.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, August 13

Trend:

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Affairs Gholam-Reza Ansari said the country plans to use small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe to circumvent the new sanctions imposed by Washington against Tehran.

"There are 23 million small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe that we can get help from to circumvent US sanctions," Ansari said, ILNA news agency reported.

He added, "We need to use the European enterprises capacities in order to be able to meet our economic needs in tough times."

"We are seeking to create a working group made up of experts in order to promote such enterprises in the country," the official said.

The United States reimposed stiff economic sanctions on Iran on Monday, ratcheting up pressure on the Islamic Republic despite statements of deep dismay from European allies, three months after President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.

A first set of reimposed US sanctions affect financial transactions that involve US dollars, Iran's automotive sector, the purchase of commercial planes and metals including gold.

A second batch of US sanctions targeting Iran's oil sector and central bank are to be reimposed in early November.

Trump warned that those who don't wind down their economic ties to Iran "risk severe consequences."
Baku, Azerbaijan, August 13

Trend:

A delegation comprised of Iranian economic experts has traveled to Syria to explore investment opportunities and finalize the reconstruction plans of the war-stricken country.

Economic experts and senior officials from Irans ministry of road and urban development have traveled to the Syrian capital of Damascus to pursue the Arab countrys reconstruction plans, Mehr news agency reported on August 13.

Upon his arrival in Damascus, deputy minister of roads and urban development, Amir Amini, said, Iranian investors and industrialists are seeking to play a key role in the reconstruction of Syria.

He added that the continuation of strategic cooperation would serve the two countries interests.

The delegation will hold several meetings with senior Syrian officials during their three-day visit.

Many urban hubs across Syria, particularly around Damascus, have been hard-hit by hostilities, and President Bashar Assad said this month that rebuilding would be his top priority.
Baku, Azerbaijan, August 13

Trend:

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the Islamic Republic could overcome the new US sanctions via better management and planning.

With better management and planning we would be able to resist the sanctions and overcome them, Ayatollah Khamenei said on August 13 addressing people from different walks of life in Tehran, Khamenei.ir reported.

He further noted todays economic problems emanate from inside not outside.

Today's livelihood problems do not emerge from outside; they are internal. If actions are taken more efficiently, more prudently, more swiftly and more firmly, sanctions cannot have much effect and they can be resisted.

Khamenei further said this is the economic mismanagement that is harming peoples lives more than the US sanctions.

I do not call it betrayal but a huge mistake in management, he said.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Khamenei referred to Washingtons war rhetoric against Iran, stressing, In this regard, let me say a few words to the people: There will be no war, nor will we negotiate with the US.
Iran's Defense Ministry on Monday unveiled a new homemade ballistic missile, which can "evade radars and hit targets with pinpoint accuracy," Tasnim news agency reported.

Defense Minister Amir Hatami unveiled the new generation of Fateh (Conqurer) missiles in a ceremony on Monday.

The new generation of Fateh, "an agile, radar-evading and tactical missile with pinpoint accuracy, has been fully designed by the local experts and successfully test-fired," he said.

Mass-production of the new missile will help Iran make major strides in boosting its defense capabilities and deterrent power, the general added.

The Iranian Armed Forces will never back off from plans to promote the missile industry and enhance the capabilities of homemade missiles, he said, adding that the foreign interference in Iran's defense capabilities and the attempts to cap Iran's missile power are unacceptable.

"Iran will never allow the outsiders to interfere in its domestic issues," he was quoted as saying.

The Islamic republic has rejected the U.S. calls for negotiations on Iran's defense power.

On Monday, the Iranian army's ground force exhibited the latest products developed in cooperation with the local knowledge-based companies.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 13

By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:

The role of Azerbaijani diplomacy in reaching an agreement on the status of the Caspian sea is undeniable, political scientist Arzu Nagiyev told Trend Aug. 13.

In his opinion, only the strong political will of the heads of state of the "Caspian five", in particular the Azerbaijani side, the commitment to the policy of good neighborliness and good intentions allowed to overcome all obstacles to the signing of this Convention.

"Azerbaijan has worked constructively at all stages of the preparation of this document, and, like other Caspian countries, has contributed to the signing of this document. With the signing of the Convention, all projects related to both natural resources and the bottom of the Caspian sea will be carried out with the direct participation of Azerbaijan," Nagiyev said.

Nagiyev stressed that the signing of the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian sea will open up new opportunities for joint cooperation, the definition of standards for national sectors and the protection of the Caspian environment.

The ceremony of signing of the document took place Aug. 12 at the V summit of the heads of state of the Caspian countries in the Kazakh city of Aktau.

Convention on the legal status of the Caspian sea was signed by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of Iran Hassan Rouhani and President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov.
An explosion in a residential building thought to be storing weapons and ammunition in Syria's rebel-held Idlib killed at least 39 people including 12 children on Sunday, a war monitor said, Reuters reported.

The explosion happened in the town of Sarmada, which is near the Turkish border and north of the provincial capital Idlib city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that 12 children were among the 39 dead.

Syrian civilians, displaced during the country's seven-year long war, were living in the building which was also used by an arms dealer, the Observatory said.

The Syrian White Helmets, a group of rescue workers established in rebel-held areas of the country, also said on Twitter that 36 people were dead and dozens were wounded in the explosion, and that so far 10 people had been pulled alive from the rubble after the dawn explosion.

They said the cause of the blast, which brought down the whole multi-story building block, was unknown.
The Munich District Court rejected on Monday a request by Audi CEO Rupert Stadler to be released from police custody after being imprisoned eight weeks ago in the course of ongoing "dieselgate" investigations in Germany.

A spokesperson for the court told press that Stadler remained under urgent suspicion of having known of diesel emissions-cheating practices at Audi without halting the sale of affected vehicles.

Additionally, the arrest warrant delivered to the CEO was not overturned because of a danger of collusion still posed by the 55-year-old suspect.

Stadler had filed a legal complaint in the hope of being set free as he is awaiting the formal opening of a court trial to probe Audi's involvement in the "dieselgate" scandal.

Stadler and another unnamed senior manager at the Volkswagen Group subsidiary Audi are suspected of offenses of criminal fraud and "indirect false certification" in the marketing of diesel vehicles which were fitted with defeat devices to understate their actual Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) emissions.

German investigators believe that the Ingolstadt-based luxury carmaker has sold at least 210,000 diesel vehicles with illegal emissions-cheating software in the United States and Europe since 2009.

The suspended CEO has already provided a first testimony to prosecutors while imprisoned at the Augsburg-Gablingen penitentiary facility near Munich. It remains unclear, however, whether or not he denied the accusations against him.

Stadler has been temporarily replaced in his role on the Audi management board by Bram Schot. Volkswagen has hesitated to fire Stadler prior to a conclusion of judicial proceedings against him and has only suspended the jailed CEO whose regular contract is scheduled to expire in 2022.

The arrest marked the first time that a member of the management board of a German carmaker was taken into police custody in the "dieselgate" scandal.
Egyptian security forces have arrested seven alleged militants suspected of involvement in a foiled church bombing outside Cairo on Saturday, the interior ministry said on Sunday, Reuters reported.

A militant wearing a suicide vest blew himself up 250 meters from a Coptic Christian church in Qalyubiyah, a governorate north of Cairo, killing himself but no one else according to eyewitnesses and state media.

The attack was the latest directed at Egypts large Christian minority, who make up around 10 percent of the countrys 96 million people.

Islamist militants carried out two deadly bombings on Palm Sunday in April 2017 and a blast at Cairos largest Coptic cathedral in December 2016 that killed 28 people, while a church shooting last December killed eleven.

State news agency MENA said Saturdays bomb attack was thwarted by a strong security presence around the church that prevented the assailant from getting too close.

An interior ministry statement identified the attacker as 29-year-old Omar Mohamed Ahmed Mostafa from Cairo but did not link him to a particular militant group.

No group has claimed responsibility.

The statement said the seven arrested were plotting a series of hostilities and that among them were two women, including one living in the upscale Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek who played a prominent role ... in promoting extremist ideas and providing financial support.

Egypt has fought an insurgency led by Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula that has killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen in recent years, but attacks in the countrys mainland are less common.
Egyptian security forces have killed 12 suspected militants in raids on their hideouts in north Sinai, Reuters reported citing state news agency MENA.

The deaths raised to at least 325 the number of suspected militants killed in the Sinai campaign which began in February, according to a Reuters count based on military statements. At least 35 military personnel have also been killed.

The state news agency said security forces came under fire when they raided a walled compound in al-Arish, the capital of North Sinai province, without giving a time frame for the incident.

It said the raiding forces responded in kind and 12 suspected militants were killed in the shootout. The authorities were trying to verify their identities.

Five rifles, four of them automatic guns, were recovered from the scene as well as some ammunition and two ready-to-use bombs, MENA said.

There were no reports of casualties among security forces.

Sisi was re-elected in March in a landslide victory against one opponent seen as a token candidate. His critics say his presidency has brought a harsh crackdown on dissent, but supporters argue the measures are needed to stabilize Egypt, which was rocked by years of unrest after protests toppled veteran leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
A fire at a hospital in Xinzhuang, New Taipei City, early Monday has left at least 9 patients dead and 16 injured, ten of them seriously, EFE reported.

The incident took place around 04.20 am Monday on the seventh floor of the Weifu hospital, in Xinzhuang district, where over 200 firemen evacuated dozens of patients, but at least nine of them were dead before reaching other hospitals.
Officials from the North and South Korea began their talks on preparations for the planned high-level bilateral summit on the northern side of the truce village of Panmunjom, located in the demilitarized zone between the neighboring countries, Sputnik reported citing media.

The talks started at around 10:00 a.m. [01:00 GMT], the South Korean Yonhap news agency reported.

South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyo leads the delegation from Seoul, according to the outlet. North Korea is represented by a group of officials led by Ri Son Gwon, the chairman of the country's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification.

"With preparations underway for yet another summit in Pyongyang between the leaders of the North and the South, I believe that when we discuss this matter, we can come up with answers going forward to things that our people want and wish for," Cho said during the meeting, as quoted by Yonhap.

The outlet suggested that the talks would address the details of the planned intra-Korean summit, including the date and venue of the meeting. Moreover, the negotiations would be dedicated to what had been achieved by the two sides since their previous summits, the outlet suggested.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held two bilateral meetings earlier this year amid burgeoning diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula.

During their landmark summit in Panmunjom in late April, Moon promised to visit Pyongyang for a meeting in fall.
To share with friends and brethren The Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (the Everlasting Gospel), and to prepare a people to stand when He returns to redeem His remnant. Also, to share relevant information of current events, and to show how they relate to prophecy; By means of articles, editorials, opinions, scripture readings, and poetry.

Disclaimer

Endrtimes does not necessarily endorse or agree with every opinion expressed in every article/video posted on this site. The information provided here is done so for personal edification; It's up to the reader to separate truth from error, and to examine everything (like the Bereans) from a Biblical perspective. Let the Holy Scriptures be you guide! - - - FAIR USE NOTICE: These pages/videos may contain copyrighted () material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available to advance understanding of ecological, POLITICAL, HUMAN RIGHTS, economic, DEMOCRACY, scientific, MORAL, ETHICAL, and SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior general interest in receiving similar information for research and educational purposes.
Justice Devan Ramachandran asked whether the police was not aware of the law dealing with antiques.
Online "citizen science" data initiatives may be able to help map the distribution of rare species in the wild, according to a study published August 8 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Yifu Wang of McGill University and colleagues.

Species distribution maps are essential tools for understanding an organism's ecology, forecasting how it will be affected by climate change and other activities, and planning management strategies. But detailed knowledge of most species' ranges is lacking, since the number of professional field biologists contributing information and specimens to museum collections--the principle source of range information--has been small. Further, as the climate changes, ranges shift, and professional observations to track those shifts is rarer still.

To test the potential of online citizen scientist observations to contribute to detailed species mapping, the authors combined information from online databases containing observations by citizen scientists and museum collections for two spider species, the Northern black widow (Latrodectus variolus) and the Black purse-web spider (Sphodros niger). They modeled distribution for each, using a variety of statistical tests and modeling tools to remove questionable observations and increase the validity of the final range prediction model. They also compared current predicted range to historical range to test for the occurrence of range shift over time.

They predict that the purse-web spider's range may have shifted since 1960, contracting in the southwest corner (including Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee), and expanding along the northern edge in Canada. The northern edge of the black widow's range may also have increased over time. The most important environmental factor determining predicted current range for the purse-web spider was the mean temperature of the coldest three months of the year, while for the black widow it was the mean temperature of the warmest three months.

"Our models show the first reliable distribution maps of these two species," say Wang et al., though noting that both species have potential distribution ranges beyond currently documented regions. "The logical next step is to conduct sampling efforts in typical habitats associated with these species in our predicted range to further validate the models. We propose to call on citizen scientists by launching a monitoring project through a platform such as Bugguide and iNaturalist to produce a large-scale sampling effort. This would represent a rapid, low-cost, highly efficient, and innovative way to test these large scale predictive models."

Wang summarizes: "Distributions of spiders are relatively poorly known, and range maps are often based just on where scientists have found the species. Using Northern black widow spider and Black purse-web spider as examples, this paper illustrates that we can (and should!) incorporate citizen science data and distribution modeling techniques to help bridge the knowledge gaps of less-studied species."

###

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0201094

Citation: Wang Y, Casajus N, Buddle C, Berteaux D, Larrivee M (2018) Predicting the distribution of poorly-documented species, Northern black widow (Latrodectus variolus) and Black purse-web spider (Sphodros niger), using museum specimens and citizen science data. PLoS ONE 13(8): e0201094. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201094

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
LAWRENCE -- A group of Americans and Europeans has relocated to a Costa Rican community in recent decades, and despite the government cheering the economic jolt, their isolation from locals there more highlights the privilege of these migrants who drastically transform coastal villages, according to a study by a University of Kansas researcher.

"Americans and Europeans are not thought of as migrants, more like expatriates or tourists," said Erin Adamson, a doctoral candidate in sociology. "But they have a really large economic impact on the places they go."

Adamson is presenting her findings Aug. 12 at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in Philadelphia.

In her research, Adamson conducted interviews with locals and two months of participant observation in a Costa Rican Caribbean coastal town identified with the pseudonym Los Reyes. She sought to give voice to the local understandings about the utopian idea of tropical beaches and rainforest there as "paradise" that they see as attracting migrants to live and work on the coast.

Instead, the process has left likely unintended consequences, including a type of gentrification when U.S. and European migrants build large housing and businesses and price out locals in places where they traditionally lived.

"The biggest influences are the land development and also the economic impact because many of the migrants are becoming employers," Adamson said. "Most of them end up opening up tourist-centered business, and the locals often experience them as the boss, even though the migrants think of themselves as someone opting out of the system back home to go live at the beach."

The flux of wealthier migrants in the community has also created a de facto racial segregation in a community that before was home mostly to black locals because the white migrants tend to build in their own housing developments and even send their children to private schools. She said the perception is interesting because most of the white migrants are likely politically liberal and see themselves as egalitarian people who want to experience another culture.

"I don't think that's what they are intending to create, but it is what is being created," Adamson said.

The locals do see some benefit to the influx of migrants as well.

"People also talk about how important lifestyle migrants are to the economy and providing jobs," Adamson said. "So they don't say all negative things."

For sociologists, studying this type of migration that has good intentions on the surface is important, she said.

"It is a kind of migration that is increasing globally," Adamson said. "There are a lot of countries with the exact same situation going on. You can call it neo-colonialism, but it is often ignored in that sense because those governments want the foreign investment. In some ways, they will bring real material investment that can pay for nice roads and infrastructure, but the long-term impact is that local people will get pushed out over time."

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The White House is having trouble naming one single African-American in a senior role in the West Wing.

When asked by NBC News to identify identify any African-American serving in a senior role in the West Wing, it took White House communications officials two days to reply with the name Henry Childs II. According to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Childs is working at the White Houses Office of Public Liaison on loan from the Commerce Department and has taken on many of the responsibilities that were once carried out by Omarosa Manigault-Newman, who was fired from the White House in December 2017 and is also African-American. Childss title is different from the one Manigault-Newman had.

Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to the president, was asked separately to name African-Americans working in the White House during an appearance on ABCs This Week. She first named the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, who does not work in the White House and then named JaRon Smith, whom she said helps Jared Kushner on the issue of prison reform. Smith doesnt work at the White House either, but a White House spokesperson later told NBC that Childs and Smith also collaborate on economic development issues for urban communities and urban revitalization.

The timing of the question of African-American representation in the White House highlighted the urgency of the issue. The U.S. marked the anniversary of a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that turned violent and left one counter-protester dead. In addition, Manigault-Newman kicked off a book tour about her time at the White House by saying President Trump was truly a racist and claiming she had heard a recording of the president using the n-word. After Manigault-Newman was fired in December 2017, Sanders said the White House was committed to hiring more African-Americans for senior leadership roles.
On Aug 8, China retaliated with 25% tariffs on $16 billion worth of U.S. goods that include cars and motorcycles. Automakers are already feeling the heat of tariffs and the recent announcement is only going to make things difficult. Also, Chinas automobile sales declined 4% in July, with U.S. carmakers losing considerable market share.

Trade war fears have started taking its toll on automakers. The rising price of imported steel and aluminum is already affecting the auto industry, which has forced a number of automakers to raise prices of certain models in China, while others are being compelled to absorb the increased costs.

China Retaliates, Automakers Feel the Heat

Last week, China retaliated with 25% tariffs on $16 billion worth of U.S. goods that include large passenger cars and motorcycles. Understandably, this will escalate the cost of U.S.-made cars in China. U.S. carmakers are already bearing the brunt of additional tariffs that have pushed up the cost of imported steel and aluminum, resulting in higher car costs.

This has forced a number of automakers to raise prices of certain models. Tesla, Inc. TSLA has already hiked the price of its Model X and S cars in China by 20% each. Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft BAMXF) and Daimler AG DDAIF, which make cars in the United States and sell in China, too have hinted at raising prices. Tesla carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

On the other hand, Harley-Davidson, Inc. HOG last month said that it will move part of its production out of the United States to avoid European Union tariffs. General Motors Company GM too has said that it will be making its new Chevrolet Blazer at its Mexico plant to avoid tariffs.

China Auto Sales Fall in July

Meanwhile, automobile sales in China dropped 4% in July from the year-ago quarter to 1.89 million vehicles, as U.S. automakers continue to lose market share. Chinas auto market had started rebounding after a slump in February. Julys sharp sales decline follows two consecutive months of growth. Auto sales jumped 9.6% and 4.8% in May and June, respectively.

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The United States exported around 276,000 vehicles to China in 2017. Understandably, higher tariffs could lower this figure considerably this year. Julys decline hints at tariffs finally impacting auto sales. Moreover, on Aug 10, Ford Motor Company F reported that its China sales fell 32% in July from a year earlier. Ford is the third largest U.S.-made car exporter to China, while BMW and Mercedes hold the number one and two spot, respectively.

Impact Not Limited to Prices

Its not only the price that is likely to get affected by increasing trade disputes. A number of U.S. automakers have been expanding their operations in China in order to capture the worlds fastest-growing car market.

General Motors is presently the second-largest automobile manufacturer in China and has been constantly investing and expanding its plants in China. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. FCAU and Ford too are trying to fast catch up by expanding in China. Also, Tesla in July said that it plans to open its first production unit in Shanghai. However, with trade disputes escalating, such plans may face a roadblock if China decides to delay or cancel these programs.

Moreover, a study by a U.S. auto dealer group reveals that tariffs on cars could cut domestic auto sales by 2 million vehicles annually and cost more than 117,000 in auto dealer job cuts, which is 10% of the workforce. The group also said that 25% tariffs would raise the price of U.S. vehicles by $83 billion annually. Understandably, tariffs will not only raise the price of cars but also lead to huge job losses that will deal a severe blow to the U.S. economy.

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Tabrez Noorani's Love Sonia wins big at The Indian film festival of Melbourne 2018

Melbourne, Mon, 13 Aug 2018 NI Wire

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Mumbai, 13th August 2018: Filmmaker Tabrez Noorani's Love Sonia has been honored by the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne 2018 with two awards, winning the Best Indie Film and the Best Supporting Performance Award to actress Richa Chadha. The film was also the opening film at the festival.

It has been a strong start for Love Sonia from a well applauded UK premiere to a standing ovation at the Melbourne screening and now bagging the awards.

Actress Freida Pinto too won the diversity award at the festival.

The film also found strong support with popular Bollywood personalities present at the festival including Rajkumar Hirani and Vicky Kaushal.

Director Tabrez Noorani shares, Love Sonia is an important film, not only for me but also for the inspiring cast and crew that gave this movie their all. To have this recognized by the IFFM means a lot.

Actress Mrunal Thakur says, I am extremely happy to know that a film like Love Sonia is getting appreciations and winning awards, I always wanted my film to be such where it leaves an impact on audiences hearts and they take home a message. I really appreciate the teams effort and glad that Tabrezs efforts are being recognized as its his dream project.

Co-Producer Amar Butala expressed, Love Sonia has made a great start in both London and Merlbourne. We hope the film finds the same love as it makes it back home to India.

Executive Producer Pravesh Sahani said, Love Sonia has been Tabrezs dream and we are so glad it has turned into a reality. As Tabrezs partner and producer, I feel very fortunate that I have been a part of this journey. Hope Love Sonia can bring light to the issue of sex trafficking. I am really proud of this movie and extremely happy for Tabrez.

After watching Love Sonia at IFFM 2018 filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani expressed, The most disturbing film I have ever seen in life and I am saying it in a good way. It requires tremendous courage and empathy to do this, a big salute to the entire team of Love Sonia.

After watching Love Sonia Actor Vicky Kaushal shared, Stunned and shocked and so moved after watching Love Sonia. Every moment, every performance is as real as it can get. Kudos to Director Tabrez Noorani for his brilliant research and direction and to each and every actor in the film for their performance.

The film which is a hard-hitting story of a 17-year-old girl who risks her life to rescue her sister from the sex trade is shot in India, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles.

The film has a strong ensemble cast including Freida Pinto, Manoj Bajpayee, Rajkummar Rao, Richa Chadha, Anupam Kher, Adil Hussain, Sai Tamhankar, Sunny Parwar, Demi Moore, Mark Duplass, Noorani is introducing Mrunal Thakur as the lead character, as well as Riya Sisodiya.

Love Sonia is scheduled to release in India in September.

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It's been about two weeks since hundreds of cases of a possible foodborne illness outbreak were reported at an Ohio Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG) restaurant. In a surprise twist, the stock market collectively shrugged, almost as if investors are no longer fazed by such developments.

But since Chipotle dramatically altered its food-handling and food-processing procedures after a spate of outbreaks two years ago, the market may also realize that this is not the same fast-casual restaurant chain it once was.

Chipotle Mexican Grill serving station

Investors are unperturbed by a foodborne illness outbreak at an Ohio Chipotle. Image source: Chipotle Mexican Grill.

It's different this time

Health officials are investigating claims by nearly 700 people who say they felt sickened after eating at a Powell, Ohio, Chipotle restaurant. Symptoms include nausea, diarrhea, and fever, but the cause has not been determined.

Chipotle Mexican Grill closed the restaurant so that officials could inspect it but reopened two days later after "the inspection team found no reason for the facility not to reopen." No new cases have been reported since.

Chipotle has been on tenterhooks since its reputation was sullied in late 2016 following repeated illness outbreaks across the country that ranged from norovirus infections to E. coli poisonings.

The possibility of new outbreaks has largely kept its stock grounded. However, earlier this year, a strong earnings report and plans for growth by the chain's new CEO sent shares soaring 24%. Solid revenue growth, along with a potential new marketing push that would highlight Chipotle's "food with integrity that's craveable," elated investors who had become inured to unpleasant tidings.

A new foodborne illness outbreak could have been enough to derail investor enthusiasm. But though the stock did dip sharply momentarily, its quick rebound indicates that investors are no longer holding the chain to a standard they don't apply to other restaurants.

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A sickening development

McDonald's (NYSE: MCD), for example, recently had its own food safety scare when hundreds of people were sickened after eating the fast-food burger shop's salads. McDonald's removed the offending items from more than 3,000 restaurants across 13 states. And while the burger joint's stock is down a fraction of 1% from where it was prior to the news, that's hardly the sort of damage that was inflicted on Chipotle Mexican Grill during its big food scares.

Maybe it's the frequency of outbreaks these days that's causing shareholders to ignore the news. Salads and wrap products sold at Kroger, Walgreens, and Trader Joe's were just recalled for possible E. coli contamination; Kellogg's Honey Smacks and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish were also recalled for potential salmonella poisoning. There are reportedly 48 million cases a year of food poisoning in the U.S.

It's also possible that investors forgave Chipotle because it's still not certain that whatever was ailing people was actually tied to the chain. Reports of illnesses first began appearing on a website called IWasPoisoned.com, but stool samples from people who reportedly felt ill have come up negative for E. coli, norovirus, salmonella, and shigella, which suggests the possibility that a large number of cases could be attributable to mass paranoia.

Key takeaway

Chipotle Mexican Grill has dramatically reformed its food safety procedures since 2016, but though its stock recovered this time, it is still going to remain volatile if similar events continue to be reported. Investors, however, can perhaps stop worrying that the stock will plunge every time there is a report of foodborne illness associated with the chain.

That doesn't mean this is the time to buy into the fast-casual chain. Chipotle stock trades at almost 80 times trailing earnings and 40 times next year's estimates, while McDonald's goes for just 20 times earnings.

Chipotle Mexican Grill may be able to return to its prior growth trajectory, but with the stock up 68% year to date, investors might be better off waiting for the chain to prove that last quarter wasn't a fluke. After all, Chipotle was up against an easy year-over-year comparison, and this latest food-safety episode indicates it might not be on firm ground yet.

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Rich Duprey has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Chipotle Mexican Grill. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
BOJA vs. SBUX: Which Stock Should Value Investors Buy Now? BOJA vs. SBUX: Which Stock Is the Better Value Option?

Itau Unibanco Holding S.A. ITUB recently announced that it has received consent from the Central Bank of Brazil to execute investment in XP Investimentos S.A. (XP Holding), which was announced in May 2017. In March 2018, the Administrative Council for Economic Defense had given its approval to the acquisition.

Itau Unibanco signed a share purchase agreement with XP Controle Participacoes S.A., G.A. Brasil IV Fundo de Investimento em Participacoes and Dyna III Fundo de Investimento em Participacoes. Per the agreement, Itau Unibanco will gain the rights of a minority shareholder and will be eligible to appoint two out of seven members of the XP Holding's board of directors.

Also, Itau Unibanco signed a concentration control agreement promising the Central Bank of Brazil that it will make no move to acquire the control of XP Holding for a period of eight years.

Itau Unibanco would be acquiring 49.9% of the total share capital of XP Holdings through a capital increase of R$600 million and the acquisition of shares issued by XP Holding that were held by the above-mentioned parties for a total of about R$5.7 billion. The deal is expected to be completed by August 2018.

Itau Unibanco does not expect any material effect on its earnings in this fiscal from the deal. However, its CET1 fully loaded ratio with Basel III rules is likely to impacted by 90 basis points.

The companys focus on expanding business in Brazil is reflected through this acquisition and keeps us encouraged of its strong financial position. Further, the merger with CorpBanca has fortified its footprint in Latin America, while the buyout of Citibanks operations has aided growth. However, elevated expenses and stressed conditions in Brazil keep us apprehensive.

Shares of Itau Unibanco have lost 11.2% so far this year compared with 10.5% decline of the industry.

Currently, the stock carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

Some better-ranked stocks in the same space are Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son NTB and DNB ASA DNHBY, both sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and Hang Seng Bank Ltd. HSNGY, carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Sons earnings estimates were revised upward by nearly 1% for the current year, in the last 30 days. Also, its share price has jumped 58.7% over the past year.

DNB ASAs Zacks Consensus Estimate for current-year earnings was revised 16.9% upward, over the last 30 days. Further, its shares have rallied 9.1% over the past 12 months.

Hang Seng Bank witnessed 6.1% upward earnings estimates revision for the current year in the last 60 days. Moreover, its shares have gained 21% over the past year.

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TOKYO, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Japanese discount retailer Don Quijote Holdings Co Ltd said it would be interested in buying Walmart Inc's Japanese supermarket chain Seiyu.

"If it came up for sale we would be interested and it is attractive," Don Quijote Chief Executive Koji Ohara told a news briefing on Monday.

Business daily Nikkei reported last month the U.S. retail giant would sell the unit. Walmart has said it has not decided to sell and is continuing to develop the business. (Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
Sleep

Image Point Fr/Shutterstock

I've been an avid user of Airbnb, the popular home-rental service, for nearly a decade, using the platform to visit 30+ countries.

In recent years, I've noticed a shift on the platform from regular people renting out their own apartments and spare bedrooms to a more professionalized service with hosts who operate multiple locations.

From my perspective, the shift has meant that apartment listings are equipped in a more basic and economical manner.

My chief complaint is that many professional hosts dress beds with cheap, low-quality pillows, leaving me with a poor night's sleep.

If Airbnb or hosts don't acknowledge and work toward fixing the issue, I'll be using Airbnb less and less in the future.

Since I started traveling in my early 20s, I've visited 30+ countries. While traveling that much might have been prohibitively expensive in decades past, Airbnb, the popular home-rental service, has made traveling affordable.

Listings on the platform are generally a fraction of the cost of hotels, while providing a lot more space and something like a local's perspective.

For a long time, it's been a great deal. But over the last couple of years, I've noticed a change that may turn me off the platform forever. It all comes down to pillows.

I know what you may be thinking: pillows? He's complaining about pillows? Let me explain.

When I first began using Airbnb in 2011  about three years after the company launched  most of the listings on the site were someone's actual apartment. Either you were renting the spare bedroom in the apartment or your host was staying somewhere else for the days you were there.

It was a communal vibe where you felt like a real exchange was taking place: You were helping them offset their rent, and they told you their favorite restaurants and bars in the neighborhood.

But somewhere over the last few years, the dynamic shifted. Now, in my experience, you are almost always renting from a host who manages Airbnb listings for a living or for a lucrative side-hustle.

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Usually, they own  or rent, depending on how strict a city's laws are  multiple properties and use all of them for Airbnb. In effect, they are operating a makeshift inn spread out across the city.

While Airbnb hasn't released official statistics, a 2017 report from CBRE Hotels' Americas Research found that the company's growth in the US is being driven by hosts renting out multiple units or entire homes. The report found that revenue from hosts with multiple listings was the fastest growing on the platform, and 64% of hosts in the US were renting out an entire home.

As the report was issued for the American Hotel & Lodging Association, take it with a grain of salt, but I've also seen the shift toward professional hosts in my personal experience.

Just in the last 6 months, I've stayed at 14 Airbnbs, from Athens to Seoul. And what I've seen doesn't bode well.

Airbnbs are losing their charm

Last year, Airbnb began "nudging," in the words of one host, its hosts to standardize the Airbnb experience.

Now the company is encouraging use of its "Instant Book" feature, establishing standards of cleanliness, and recommending that hosts carry "essential amenities" like toilet paper, towels, soap, clean linens, and at least one pillow per guest.

And, earlier this year, the company even announced that it was adding hotels to the platform.

classical apartment airbnb

Airbnb

Those two shifts  Airbnb pushing standardization and hosts becoming more professional  has changed Airbnb from its idealistic home-sharing roots to a booking site for cheaper, ad-hoc hotels, inns, and bed and breakfasts.

That change is necessary in a lot of ways. People are using Airbnb for work travel now, myself included, and more casual users expect a level of standardization.

My issue with the professionalization of Airbnb is from a user's perspective. As more and more of the properties listed on Airbnb come from professional hosts (people operating the property solely as an Airbnb location or operating multiple locations at once), the properties begin to resemble each other.

It is a business after all.

You can see the hallmarks of such properties: cheap furniture, spartan decorations, a few wall prints, a kitchen with the barebones necessities. Of course, the professional, light-filled photos on the listing always make the apartment look dreamy.

But in the process, you lose much of Airbnb's charm  from staying in a local's home, getting to browse their bookshelves  and its function  like access to a kitchen stocked with spices or getting to use their fancy Argan Oil shampoo.

About those pillows

And the truth is, for me, all of that would be fine  if wasn't for the pillows.

Let me put it to you this way: Most people don't buy crappy pillows for themselves. They're critical to a decent night of sleep. So if you stay in an Airbnb that is someone's actual home, you can be pretty sure you'll have decent pillows to sleep on.

Not the case with the professional Airbnb properties.

33China HuashanMountain MostDangerousHike

Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider

The property being the professional Airbnb hosts' primary business, they try to outfit the property as cheaply and efficiently as possible. That generally means you are getting cheap bedding and cheap pillows, some that might be better described as a few pieces of stuffing shoved into a cloth. It doesn't make for a good night of sleep.

While traveling for Business Insider over the last six months, I used Airbnb a lot in the beginning. In many ways, it's my ideal way to travel.

But as Airbnb property after Airbnb property that I rented had crappy pillows, I was increasingly turned off. Waking up night after night exhausted from a bad night of sleep is no fun.

Recently, I began booking boutique hotels or bed and breakfasts, many of which are around the same price-point as Airbnb nowadays because they know they have to compete.

And at least with a hotel or bed and breakfast, I can be pretty sure they will have good pillows.

In some ways, the pillows are a metaphor for where Airbnb is at right now as a platform: stuck between the professionalization and standardization it needs to grow, while trying to hold onto the home-sharing ideal that made it what it is.

Pushing the platform one way or the other will likely solve the issue. But until they do, I'll be using it less and less.

NOW WATCH: How Columbia House sold 12 CDS for $1

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SEE ALSO: We tried the 'Airbnb for cars,' and it could upend the car-rental industry

DON'T MISS: I stayed at Hong Kongs first 'capsule hotel' to see what it's like to live in micro  and the experience was a nightmare
Aug 13 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

- The five countries with shorelines on the Caspian Sea agreed on Sunday to a formula for dividing up the world's largest inland body of water and its potentially vast oil and gas resources. The leaders of Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, which the Kremlin said in a statement "reflected a balance of interests" of the seashore nations. https://nyti.ms/2wavx8L

- Atop three columns of flame at 0331 am Eastern time, NASA's Parker Solar Probe lifted toward space on Sunday. The launch was the second attempt to carry the spacecraft, which NASA touts will "touch the sun" one day, into orbit after a scrub early on Saturday. https://nyti.ms/2waxP7R

- Venture capital money going into ad tech start-ups is falling sharply, helping push a wave of consolidation. Financing reached a high of $2.92 billion in 2015, but this year, it is on pace to be less than half that, according to CB Insights, a financial research firm. https://nyti.ms/2w2jB8H (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)
QUALCOMM Incorporated QCOM recently announced that it has reached a settlement with the Taiwan Fair Trade Commission (TFTC) in an anti-trust case for about $93 million to safeguard its patent-licensing business.



The company was debarred from a hostile takeover bid by rival Broadcom Inc. AVGO and was itself forced to abandon the buyout of NXP Semiconductors N.V. NXPI amid trade-related hostilities between the United States and China.



The latest development annuls a fine of nearly $778 million imposed by the TFTC in 2017, when it accused the mobile chip maker of refusing to sell chips to mobile handset makers that didnt agree to its patent-licensing terms. The company was also accused of cutting Apple Inc. AAPL a royalty discount in exchange for the exclusive use of QUALCOMM's modem chips in the past.



QUALCOMM has also agreed to invest $700 million in Taiwan over the next five years. It will have to provide reports every six months to Taiwanese officials for five years to show that it is negotiating in good faith with handset makers in patent-licensing deals.



In addition, the company will drive certain commercial initiatives in Taiwan over the next five years for the benefit of the mobile and semiconductor ecosystem, SMEs and consumers, including 5G collaborations and new market expansion.



QUALCOMM has contributed broadly to the development of Taiwan's mobile and semiconductor industries to achieve shared success in Taiwan and globally for more than two decades. Its significant R&D investments in fundamental mobile technologies and its broad-based licensing of those technologies to mobile phone suppliers have facilitated the explosive growth of the mobile communications industry in Taiwan and worldwide, ultimately benefiting consumers.



The stock has gained 14.3% compared with 4.2% growth for the industry in the past three months.









QUALCOMM currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



Wall Streets Next Amazon



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samsung galaxy note 9 4x3

Samsung

Samsung announced the Galaxy Note 9 smartphone on Thursday during an event in Brooklyn, New York.

The phone comes with high-end specs and design, as well as the Note line's signature S Pen stylus.

Samsung added new features to the S Pen stylus, like remote camera control.

The base model of the phone will cost $1,000, similar to the iPhone X's price tag.

Samsung announced its Galaxy Note 9 smartphone on Thursday during its Unpacked event in Brooklyn, New York.

The Galaxy Note 9 is Samsung's largest smartphone model to date, with a 6.4-inch screen, and it comes with an S Pen stylus that brings a bunch of unique functionality to the phone.

The Galaxy Note 9 runs on high-end specs, including the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor that turns the wheels inside most high-end smartphones in 2018. It also has a minimum of 6 GB of RAM  with an option to go up to 8 GB  which should make for smooth performance.

galaxy note 9

Samsung

Noteworthy is the Galaxy Note 9's 4,000-mAh battery that's large for any smartphone and should give it superior battery life. We'll have to see for ourselves how much longer the Galaxy Note 9 will last on a single charge.

As for the S Pen stylus, used for note-taking and general navigation around the phone, Samsung has added a few features. You can now use it to control the phone's camera remotely. By pressing the S Pen's button, you can turn on the camera, switch between the rear and selfie cameras, and take a photo.

galaxy note 9 pink

Samsung

App developers will also have the ability to integrate the S Pen's functionality into their apps.

The Galaxy Note 9's dual-camera system is also getting Samsung's new "intelligent camera" feature that recognizes what kind of object you're photographing and adjusts the settings automatically to take the best shot. This is something we'll have to test further when we try the phone.

Both cameras in the dual-lens system have 12 megapixels. One is for regular photos and can adjust its aperture for low-light shots, while the other is a "telephoto" lens for 2x optical zooming, which is better than digital zooming on phones without a telephoto lens.

Story continues

galaxy note 9 back

Samsung

Samsung also announced that the popular "Fortnite" battle-royale game would be available exclusively on Galaxy devices, starting with the Galaxy S7 and up, for "a few days" before a wider rollout. Galaxy Note 9 users will also have exclusive access to a specific character skin.

Oddly, the Galaxy Note 9 will come running Android 8.1, despite Android 9's release on Monday. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's not the best either. Android phones running older versions of the operating system cause Android's signature problem: fragmentation.

The Galaxy Note 9 will be available to preorder on Friday. Carriers will start selling the $1,000 128 GB model of the Galaxy Note 9 with 6 GB of RAM on August 24. The 512 GB Galaxy Note 9 with 8 GB of RAM will cost $1,300.

NOW WATCH: Everything Samsung just announced  the Galaxy Note 9, Fortnite, and more

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SEE ALSO: A full unboxing of Google's big upcoming smartphone was leaked, and it shows you almost everything you need to know
man beach surfboard costa rica zachary-shea-577599-unsplash

As we checked our backpacks at the airline counter, the agent asked us, How long will you be in Costa Rica?

Three months, I responded.

Oh, youre trust-fund kids, huh?

Um, what? Where did that come from?

I responded, Nope. My wife is starting graduate school this fall and we realized that it would be cheaper for us to spend the summer in Costa Rica than to continue renting our apartment. Because my work is remote, we can go to where the cost of living is lower. Yes, its an adventure  but one thats saving us money.

Read More: The Best and Worst US Vacation Cities for Your Wallet

As with many Americans that Ive met stateside, this guy assumed that traveling and living abroad was a luxury for the wealthy. But thats not the case. There are thousands of Americans living abroad because its actually more affordable.

Yes, a short-term luxury vacation is expensive. However, a well-planned extended trip can save you money.

Why We Chose to Spend Our Summer in Costa Rica

After considering several locations around the world, we settled on Costa Rica for a few reasons. First, my wife wanted to improve her Spanish, and that would be hard to do in, say, Thailand or Croatia. Second, remaining in a U.S. timezone made it easier for me to connect with clients. Finally, because its easy to find cheap flights to Costa Rica (we used credit card points), multiple friends and family members would be able to visit us throughout the summer.

Costa Rica isnt the cheapest place to live, but its a great place for Americans. Everyone is friendly, many people speak English and their healthcare system is on par with the United States.

Check Out: 10 Financial Risks and Rewards of Retiring Abroad

Our Cost of Living in Costa Rica

As with many parts of the world, if you want to live like an American, life can get expensive. However, if youre willing to live like a local, your money goes pretty far. We chose a middle-of-the-road approach.

Story continues

We spent most of the summer in a very unique two-room house with a private pool, overlooking the ocean, for $800/month. This included utilities and internet. It was pretty awesome but we also had limited air conditioning, a lot of insects and our water was hit-or-miss. We could have lived in a cheaper place for about $400/month or found a more Americanized house for $1,500-2,000 a month.

Because we were on the Nicoya Peninsula, food prices were only slightly less than at home. We enjoyed fresh mango, papaya and pineapple daily, and were able to eat meals out for $5-15 per person.

Lastly, public transportation is incredibly affordable in Costa Rica. A bus ride into town, 15 minutes away, was $0.50 each way.

In total, for the three months we were in Costa Rica, our expenses averaged $1,200/month, including a $50/month storage container for our belongings back in the U.S. If you ask me, thats pretty frugal for two trust-fund kids.

More on Living Abroad: 50 Cheapest Countries to Live In

Are You Ready to Live Abroad?

Today, many careers can be pursued remotely, so living abroad has never been easier. Costa Rica was actually my fourth extended trip outside of the U.S. For me, living and working in other countries is an amazing adventure and a great way to save money. My experiences abroad are the foundation for some of my most enjoyable memories and richest relationships. Spending time abroad has given me the freedom to launch new businesses and transition careers without the level of financial stress I would have had if I made these moves in the U.S.

If youre thinking about living abroad yourself, here are a few questions to ask yourself first.

How much will my required standard of living cost? Just because you can live somewhere on $10 a day, it doesnt mean it will be enjoyable.

Will I be able to establish a strong social network? Moving somewhere new can be very lonely. Have a strategy for your social life before taking the leap.

Can I separate work from pleasure? Living abroad means its not a vacation. You still have to work. You just get to enjoy somewhere new on your evenings and weekends.

What is my backup plan? When will I return to the U.S.? Regardless of how long you plan to live abroad, its a good idea to know how to return when youre ready.

What do I hope to gain from this experience? You cant run away from your problems by leaving the country, but you can grow as a person and save money to start a new business. Know your whys before taking the leap.

Are you thinking about starting a business, going back to school or writing a novel? If the financial burden seems overwhelming, do a little research  living abroad may give you the monetary flexibility you need to take the leap.

Read More: Investors Should Consider Properties in These Countries, Study Says

More From Our Smart Money Squad:

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: How We Saved Money Living the Good Life in Costa Rica
elon musk

Kiichiro Sato/AP

Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote in a blog post Monday that he left a meeting on July 31 with "no question that a deal with the Saudi sovereign fund could be closed."

The blog post offers new details into Tesla's plan to go private at $420 per share, which the billionaire announced last week, saying funding had been secured.

Shares initially surged to an all-time high, before wiping out all their gains as lawyers said the tweet may have broken securities laws and reports of the SEC investigating.

Follow Tesla's stock price in real-time here.

Shares of Tesla sank about 0.8% Monday, after initially surging 3% in early trading, after CEO Elon Musk published an update on his plans to take the company private at $420 a share.

Despite tweeting on Tuesday that funding had been secured, Musks newest blog post appears to contradict that claim.

After meeting with the Saudi Public Investment Fund about their purchase of a 5% stake in Tesla, Musk said the delegation asked for another meeting, which took place on July 31.

"During the meeting, the Managing Director of the fund expressed regret that I had not moved forward previously on a going private transaction with them, and he strongly expressed his support for funding a going private transaction for Tesla at this time," Musk said. "I understood from him that no other decision makers were needed and that they were eager to proceed.

"I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a deal with the Saudi sovereign fund could be closed, and that it was just a matter of getting the process moving," he continued. "This is why I referred to "funding secured" in the August 7th announcement."

Tesla opened at $355 Monday, an 18% discount to the $420 Musk singled out in his tweet. That price "would only be used for Tesla shareholders who do not remain with out company if it is private," Musk said.

Story continues

"My best estimate right now is that approximately two-thirds of shares owned by all current investors would roll over into a private Tesla."

Musk also said additional debt  a major concern of Wall Street analysts in Teslas struggle to turn a profit  will not be necessary as part of a transaction to go private, and that any capital required will be raised through equity.

There are still few specifics for the timeline of leaving public markets. Musk says he will continue to talk to investors and advisers to "obtain a more precise understanding" of the intricacies of the deal. Many analysts  including those who are still bullish on the stock  say a deal to go private is unlikely.

"Doing our best with the limited information we have, we come to the conviction that Tesla is unlikely to go private, and anticipate the board will reject Elon Musks offer or approach," New Street's Pierre Ferragu, who has a $530 price target for the stock, said in a report Monday.

"The go-private offer cannot fly for a simple structural reason: there is no material value in moving Tesla private. It therefore cannot justify enough of a public-private valuation spread."

Shares of Tesla are now up 13% this year, but still below their $362 price at the time of Musks first tweet about going private around 1 p.m. Tuesday.

Following the announcement of Tesla's plans to potentially go private and reports that Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund had amassed a 5% stake, shares surged as high as $389  a new record. But doubts over the financing of a transaction to go private, and warnings from securities lawyers and experts that his tweet could have broken the law, wiped out most of the stocks gains over the course of the week.

"I made the announcement last Tuesday because I felt it was the right and fair thing to do so that all investors had the same information at the same time," Musk said.

"If the board process results in an approved plan, any required regulatory approvals will need to be obtained and the plan will be presented to Tesla shareholders for a vote."

Now read:

Tesla stock price

Markets Insider

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Global markets continue to see red, after Turkey's financial troubles sparked fear of contagion and the country's lira currency took a deep slide.

The U.S. Treasury is scheduled to auction $51 billion in 13-week bills and $45 billion in 26-week bills.

U.S. government debt prices slipped into the red on the first trading day of the week.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was higher at around 2.862 percent at 6:00 a.m. ET, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was in the black at 3.033 percent. Bond yields move inversely to prices.

Global markets continue to see red, after Turkey's financial troubles sparked fear of contagion and the country's lira currency took a deep slide. On Friday, the lira temporarily tumbled 20 percent against the U.S. dollar , after President Donald Trump said he supported doubling metal tariffs on Ankara.

While the lira pared some losses over the weekend  after the Turkish central bank moved to improve liquidity and while Turkey's finance minister said the government had outlined an action plan to alleviate concerns  it still lost more than 45 percent of its value during this year alone, according to Reuters.

Elsewhere, concerns over the U.S.' future relations with major economies including China will remain in focus, as trade war tensions continue to escalate.

Little economic data is due Monday. The U.S. Treasury is scheduled to auction $51 billion in 13-week bills and $45 billion in 26-week bills. The size of a four-week bill, due to be auctioned Tuesday, will also be announced.

No speeches by the Federal Reserve are scheduled for Monday.





More From CNBC


Cryptocurrency Vietnam Bitcoin

After months of deliberation, Vietnam has moved to halting imports of cryptocurrency mining equipment according to a customs department in the country.

Domestic businesses and individuals have stopped importing crypto mining equipment altogether since the beginning of July, according to the Ho Chi Minh City (HCM) Customs Department, as reported by Viet Nam News on Monday.

Officials from Vietnams largest city said individuals and firms had imported as many as 3,664 application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) devices in the first half of 2018. 3,000 machines were notably imported by four enterprises involved in mining operations with the rest imported by individuals and organizations who did not include import tax codes, the authority said. A majority of the devices were revealed to be Antminer models, a brand of cryptocurrency mining equipment developed by industry giant Bitmain.

As reported previously, Vietnams Ministry of Finance (MoF) first proposed the blanket ban in June after authorities in the nation increased their scrutiny into the domestic crypto sector following a nationwide ICO-fraud that reportedly conned an estimated $660 million from 32,000 domestic investors. The fallout led Vietnams prime minister ordering six government ministries, the police, and the central bank to investigate the scam.

As a consequence, the MoF said it requires State management agencies to take strict control measures with the import and use of this [crypto mining] commodity, leading to the eventual proposal of the ban. In July, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), the countrys central bank, agreed with the MoFs proposal and backed the ban.

According to figures from Vietnam Customs, some 9,300 ASIC devices were imported into Vietnam in 2017, predominantly into Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, Vietnams capital.

As things stand, cryptocurrencies are outlawed as payments in the country after the central bank refused to include them among the recognized exceptions of non-cash payments that include checks, payment orders and bank cards. The law, which came into effect at the turn of 2018, forbids the issuance and usage of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as legal tender with the threat of criminal prosecution and fines of up to $9,000 for adopters.

Featured image from Shutterstock.



The post Vietnam Confirms Suspension of Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency Miner Imports appeared first on CCN.


Hundreds of Taliban militants launched a major assault on a provincial capital in Afghanistan, killing at least 14 members of Afghan security forces before being pushed back with the help of U.S. air power, Afghan and U.S. military officials said.

The August 10 attack on Ghazni, some 150 kilometers southeast of Kabul, also wounded at least 20 members of the security forces, said Baz Mohammad Hemat, the administrator of the Ghazni city hospital.

The attack on Ghazni, the capital of the province with the same name, began early in the morning, with heavy fighting in several areas of the city, according to provincial police chief Farid Ahmad Mashal.

Mashal said there were more than 100 casualties but he could not give a breakdown of the dead and wounded. He said most of the casualties were militants.

The army helped the police bring the city back under the control of government forces, Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammad Radmanish said.

House-To House Searches

U.S. warplanes, drones, and helicopters came to the aid of the Afghan forces before they managed to repulse the Taliban assault.

"U.S. forces responded with close-air support (U.S. attack helicopters) and conducted one strike (drone). In addition, U.S. aircraft conducted a show of presence," Lt. Col. Martin L. ODonnell, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told TOLOnews.

O'Donnell said the fighting ceased at around 8 a.m. Kabul time. However, some residents reported that sporadic gunfire could still be heard in the city by mid-morning.

The fighting prompted authorities to close the highway linking Ghazni to Kabul, and police special forces helped block the Taliban advance on the city.



After repulsing the attack, police conducted house-to-house searches for any remaining Taliban fighters.

An investigation was also underway into how the insurgents had managed to infiltrate so deep into the city, officials said.

Conflicting Claims

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed parts of Ghazni had been seized and scores of people killed.

But Mashal rejected the claim, saying that sporadic clashes were ongoing only on the outskirts of the city -- in the Khogyani, Khwaja Omari, and Zanakhan areas.



Several bodies of dead Taliban fighters remained on the street after Afghan forces pushed the militants from Ghazni, Mashal said.

He said the bodies of 39 Taliban fighters were recovered from under a bridge on the southern edge of the city.



The Taliban have so far not confirmed being behind an earlier attack in the western Herat Province in which at least six police officers were killed at a district checkpoint.

The attack on Ghazni was the latest in a series of attempts by the Taliban to capture urban centers.

A U.S.-led coalition drove the Taliban from power after Al-Qaeda militants whose leaders were being sheltered in Afghanistan carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

But the Western-backed government has been struggling to fend off the Taliban and other militants since the withdrawal of most NATO troops in 2014.

In May, the Taliban attacked the western city of Farah. After a day of intense fighting, Afghan commandos and U.S. air strikes drove the group to the outskirts of the city.

Taliban leaders have ignored an offer by the government to conduct direct peace negotiations.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Afghan Service, AP, AFP, Reuters, and Tolo News
SHEBERGHAN, Afghanistan -- Clad in a dusty blue burqa and clutching a piece of stale bread, Khaleda cowers in front of her three wailing young children in a makeshift refugee camp in northern Afghanistan.

The 35-year-old, who only goes by one name, is among thousands of people who recently escaped the brutal rule of the Islamic State (IS) extremist group in the Darzab district of Jawzjan Province, a stronghold of the militants for the past year.

Now living among hundreds of other families in a bulging camp on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Sheberghan, Khaleda recalls the horrors of life under the militants.

"They took young girls away and forcibly married them," says Khaleda, holding her 3-year-old daughter who is clutching a water bottle. "I saw them kill people from my village. They forced young boys to fight for them. We couldn't do anything."

The IS group's local affiliate in Afghanistan has gained an unrivaled reputation for brutality, regularly beheading their rivals or forcing them to stand on land mines.

But while forced marriages and rape have been committed by the extremist group in Iraq and Syria, they have been less reported in Afghanistan, where sexual violence is a social taboo.

But stories like those told by Khaleda have emerged in recent weeks as thousands have fled Darzab.

IS militants were ousted from Darzab by a rival militant group, the Taliban, and Afghan security forces on July 31 after weeks of fierce clashes. Dozens of IS fighters were killed and over 200 surrendered to government forces.

Many residents fled during the fighting to Sheberghan, where thousands like Khaleda live off of food and water handouts from the local government and foreign aid groups.

"It was in the middle of the night," says Khaleda, a native of the village of Sardara whose husband works as a laborer in neighboring Iran. "We got on a motorcycle. We only had the clothes we were wearing. We left everything else behind."

Khaleda says she, like many others, remains wary of returning to their homes over fears IS may return.

'They Raped Her'

Maryam, who fled Darzab last week, lives with her husband and two children in the makeshift camp in Sheberghan. The 28-year-old recalls how her 15-year-old sister was kidnapped by IS fighters.

"Daesh fighters came to my mother's house," says Maryam, using the Arabic name for the IS group. "They killed my brother-in-law. They took away my youngest sister to another village. They raped her and forced her to marry a Daesh leader."

Maryam says she does not know her sister's whereabouts or if she is even alive.

Besides brutalizing women, IS fighters have also killed local elders and those who they considered government sympathizers. Locals say the militants also used children as soldiers, a claim supported by the high number of children or young men among the IS fighters who surrendered to government forces.

Fatima, another resident of Darzab, lost her husband to the extremists. "My husband was a villager elder," says the elderly woman, who lives in a crowded tent in Sheberghan with her relatives. "The Daesh fighters came to our house and killed him in front of me. They committed many cruel acts."

The stories from Afghanistan mirror those in Syria and Iraq, where IS militants systemically enslaved and raped women, publicly executed prisoners, and used children as soldiers and suicide bombers.

Small But Potent

IS militants have a small but potent presence in Afghanistan, where they first emerged in 2015.

In 2017, the militants captured Darzab and the district of Qush Tepa in Jawzjan, a remote province that borders Turkmenistan and is on a key drug-smuggling route. The militants were ousted from the province after months of U.S.-Afghan air strikes and ground operations that killed local IS leaders. The IS fighters had to also deal with a massive Taliban offensive in the area.

Despite its setback in Jawzjan, the IS group has a foothold in the eastern province of Nangarhar, along the Pakistani border, from where it has attacked Afghan and international security forces, religious minorities, and foreign workers in cities like Jalalabad and the capital, Kabul.

The IS affiliate in Afghanistan is not a monolithic group nor a direct extension of the extremist group in Iraq and Syria -- representing more of an alliance of splinter groups from the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban with elements of regional militant groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e Jhangvi.

There are some 2,000 IS fighters in Afghanistan, where U.S. and Afghan forces have waged a relentless campaign to destroy the group. Washington and Kabul have claimed their campaign has killed hundreds of militants and commanders, including its leaders, although residents in eastern Afghanistan say the extremists retain control over significant territory.
Residents of the beleaguered southeastern Afghan city of Ghazni have warned of an impending humanitarian disaster as Afghan forces continued to battle the Taliban for the fourth consecutive day.

They say that a lack of security, health care, and diminishing food supplies are endangering tens of thousands of residents who are caught up in the fighting, which broke out on August 9. Hundreds of insurgents, soldiers, and civilians have been killed so far.

Fareed Takal, a Ghazni resident who escaped to Kabul on August 13, says healthcare services in the city have completely collapsed.

For four days now, more than 100 bodies have been moved to Ghaznis civilian hospital, where they are just lying around, he told Radio Free Afghanistan. Only one nurse is tending to more than 150 injured admitted to the same hospital. It is difficult to even feed all these people, let alone treat them.

Ghazni, located halfway between the capital, Kabul, and the southern city of Kandahar, Afghanistans second city, is strategically located on the highway connecting the two. The historic city attracts visitors from across Afghanistan to the tombs of various Sufi saints dotting its landscape.

Hekmatullah, another Ghanzi resident who goes by one name only, says civilians are running out of food supplies and fighting has forced most of Ghaznis markets to close. Several roads, including the main highway connecting Kabul to Kandahar, have been intermittently closed by fighting.

If this government is capable, it should reach out to its people, he told Radio Free Afghanistan. Authorities should supply food and medicines. They should immediately open all the roads linking Ghazni and ensure that residents can freely move within the city.

Backed by U.S. airpower, Afghan security forces continued to battle Taliban fighters inside Ghazni. The battle is a huge blow to Afghan President Ashraf Ghanis attempt to negotiate peace with the Taliban. The fighting also overshadows planned parliamentary elections in October.

The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) expressed concern over the deteriorating conditions in Ghazni.

With fighting and clashes reportedly still ongoing, we have received initial reports of a number of civilian casualties and of people trying to reach safe areas outside of the city, Richard Peeperkorn, acting Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan, said in an August 13 statement.

He said that with medication becoming scarce, it was difficult to treat casualties.

Many families have reportedly taken shelter in their houses and are unable to leave their homes, he said. Vital telecommunications networks and the electricity supply are down in the city of 270,000 people, which has impacted the water supply, and food is also reportedly running low.

In Kabul, Ahmad Jan Naeem, a deputy minister for public health, told Radio Free Afghanistan that although they have lost contact with the ministry staff and hospital in Ghazni, they believe the hospitals are still working.

Naeem said that, if needed, Kabul would seek assistance from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Najib Aqa Fahim, Afghanistans disaster management and humanitarian affairs minister, vowed to assist Ghazni residents.

We are on standby with supplies in the neighboring province of Wardak and here in Kabul, he said. Whenever we have the opportunity, we will dispatch these supplies.

Meanwhile, late on August 13, Afghan Defense Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami told journalists that more than 1,000 new troops had been sent as reinforcements to Ghazni.

I am confident we will have some positive news for our people during the next 24 hours, he said.

With reporting by Radio Free Afghanistan correspondents Khan Mohammad Seend and Arzoo Ghiasi.
Hot Sulphur Springs

Hot Sulphur Springs was an ideal landing spot after a 44-mile ski expedition. That was completed in 1911 by Carl Howelsen, the namesake of Steamboat Springs famous hill here in northern Colorado, and his Norwegian comrade, Angell Schmidt. They wowed crowds with a ski jump competition and had the option of a relaxing soak in town, the unassuming seat of Grand County built upon a humble resort.

Hot Sulphur Springs Resort and Spa maintains that William Byers, with the help of the U.S. Cavalry, somewhat deviously took control of the hot springs and eventually named the little town Hot Sulphur Springs. He discovered the waters in 1840, long after native hunters had rested in them during their winter hunts around the canyon now named Byers Canyon. Peace was proclaimed in 1997, when after extensive renovations, the resort invited a Ute tribal leader to bless the place.

The mineral springs are said to rise 35,000 feet from underground, feeding the resorts 21 pools and baths, which sit at temperatures between 95 and 112 degrees. Basic motel rooms, cabins and apartments are the lodging options, with camping also available at the town park or at the more remote Williams Fork Reservoir. Thats a destination for anglers, who are known to pull lunkers from the nearby reaches of the Colorado River.

Rules: Suits required. No smoking, alcohol, food or glass around pools. Kids younger than 12 limited to five pools.

Address: 5609 Spring Road, Hot Sulphur Springs, 80451

Hours: 8 a.m.-9:45 p.m. every day, no admissions after 9:15 p.m.

Contact: 970-725-3306, hotsulphursprings.com

Getting there: Go west on Interstate 70 to exit 232 for U.S. 40 east and follow into town.
Last Monday started like any early August morning at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

The grizzly bears lounged around boulders in Rocky Mountain Wild. Reticulated giraffes munched on lettuce treats in the African Rift Valley. Daisy, the Muscovy duck, crashed a neighbors birthday party and upstaged the guest of honor, who didnt seem to mind.

The zoos operations center had been keeping an eye on a supercell thunderstorm moving into the area, but such systems tended to bank east toward the plains before really baring their teeth. This storm was expected to do the same, and by early afternoon, it still seemed as though it might. The sun was shining on visitors, keepers and more than 750 animals at Americas highest-altitude zoo, a network of habitats, enclosures, and exhibits built into the eastern flank of Cheyenne Mountain in southwest Colorado Springs.

As she walked between buildings after lunch that day, animal care manager Dina Bredahl looked up at the ominous cloud bank rolling in. She recalls remarking to a co-worker that it looked kind of like Ghostbusters sky.

We knew something was coming, but there was nothing happening, not a drop of anything, Bredahl said.

That changed around 2 p.m., when dark harmonics of atmosphere and altitude turned a slow-moving storm into an unprecedented, 15-minute burst of brutality directly over the zoo. The shower of softball-size hailstones injured 21 guests and staff members, killed five animals and caused as-yet-untallied millions in property damage.

The zoo reopened Saturday, less than a week after the most destructive weather event  and longest closure  in its nearly 100-year history.

The devastation was intense and complete, from a car and skylight standpoint, and it happened in a relatively short period of time, said zoo President and CEO Bob Chastain, whose staff was joined that day by emergency crews from the Colorado Springs Fire Department. They did an amazing job getting things organized and helping get people off the mountain. We know people got injured, and were sorry about that, but what could have been much worse was made a lot better by people who were organized and ready.

Guests and staff had just finished celebrating Carlotta the tapirs 24th birthday, and Daisys showboating, when things turned bad, animal care manager Joanna Husby said.

We were singing her Happy Birthday  and Daisy the duck was playing in the pool, chasing the bubbles in the waterfall  and splashing around so much there were actually guests getting splashed, Husby said.

As the birthday party crowd dispersed, zoo spokesperson Jenny Koch was gazing out the window of a meeting room, at a sky plunged into darkness.

The hail came moments later, fast, furious and the size of fists.

It just happened so fast. It didnt start small and get big. There wasnt really even any rain, Koch said.

Bredahl was preparing to head out of the zoos office building with her storm gear when she heard what sounded almost like a meteor shower.

I could tell something giant was hitting that awning, she said. Really soon, I started hearing screaming, so I opened the door and all these guests were running for cover.

Keeper Bruce Dunbar had just finished moving the wallabies inside when the potentially deadly hail starting slamming down, trapping him in a building that lay an uncovered sprint away from the reptiles he also oversaw in the skylight-roofed Scutes Family Gallery.

Basically we had to sit and watch. It was a helpless feeling, said Dunbar, who kept an ear to his radio, waiting for a break in the storm so he could dash up to the reptile center.

In the lull between squalls, he made his move through the campus to Scutes, where the floor was a solid carpet of glass shards, but guests and animals were, miraculously, unharmed.

It was one of those surreal moments where youre just looking through things trying to make sure everybodys safe, Dunbar said. Thats our first priority.

He moved everyone  humans first, then animals  to the buildings basement. A few blocks away in the office building, Bredahl had done the same with guests whod sheltered there, hunkering down as far away from windows and skylights as they could get.

By then, though, the fury had been spent.

Three hours after the storm started, between 600 and 900 patrons had been evacuated and the sun was again shining, this time on shattered roofs, totaled cars and a riot of debris that, after three days of round-the-clock cleanup and reconstruction, would overflow three 30-yard dumpsters.

Rocky Mountain Highlands keeper Rebecca Zwicker was off work last Monday, but heard the news and was on her way up to lend a hand when she got a call from a co-worker whod been injured by a hailstone. Zwicker gave her colleague a ride home from the hospital then made her way to the zoo, where she joined in sifting through the rubble, accounting for all animals and triaging those with injuries.

Because it took us so much by surprise, there was a lot of mad dashes for shelter and panic among both humans and animals, Zwicker said. We want to lay eyes on everybody, no matter who they are. Some of the smallest animals that we care for, (such as) a little merganser duck, Missy Franklin, that lives in the moose pool  seeing them, I felt very comforted.

As zookeepers soon began to discover, however, an unfortunate few of the zoos residents were not so lucky.

Casualties included two members of the zoos free-roving group of peacocks, Katy Perry and Snoop; a 13-year-old rare Cape vulture, Motswari; and a meerkat pup keepers believe most likely died in a collapsed burrow.

Also among the dead was 4-year-old Daisy the duck.

Husby said its comforting to think Daisy spent her final hours at the zoo where shed been born doing what she loved, and what patrons loved her for.

At least three young guests came up after (the birthday party) and said, Who is that duck? I want to get to know that duck, Husby said. Its just really great to know that small of a creature, on her unfortunate last day, was able to be such a great animal ambassador and have such a great impact on our guests lives.

In life, even a creature smaller than a hailstone can send a mammoth-size message.

On his way to an emergency staff meeting in the hours after the storm, Dunbar spied a contingent of the zoos peacock population. Three peahens and their tiny chicks were picking their way through the mess of branches and fallen leaves by the monkey building.

One chick I dont think was even three weeks old, smaller than some of the hail that was falling  and they were all OK, just hopping along, Dunbar said. Seeing them out and about after the storm was one of those things reassuring (me) that were going to get through it. Animals are resilient, and we are, too.
During the Angelus Pope Francis met almost 100,000 young Italians who came to Rome on pilgrimage. [I]t is necessary to live coherently with the promises of Baptism, renewed in Confirmation, not with hypocrisy: these promises have two aspects: renunciation of evil and attachment to goodness, he said. It is good not to do evil, but it is evil not to do good". The pontiff singled out priests and nuns to thank them for their patience with young people. He blessed the images of Our Lady of Loreto and the San Damiano Cross that were handed over to a delegation from Panama, site of the next World Youth Day.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  Pope Francis greeted almost 100,000 young people gathered in St Peter's Square and along the Via della Conciliazione, who arrived yesterday on pilgrimage from many Italian cities to meet him.

In his address, the pontiff told them, "Dear young people, you have walked a lot these days! Therefore, you had a workout and I can tell you: walk in charity! Walk in love! Let's walk together towards the next Synod of Bishops whose theme is 'Young people, the faith and vocational discernment'.

Half an hour before the Angelus at noon, as the pope-mobile slowly drove around the square, Pope Francis mingled with the crowd greeting people, kissing children and newborns, receiving hats and t-shirts from the multicoloured crowd.

Francis had already met them yesterday at the Circus Maximus, where young people had arrived after a pilgrimage on foot. Many of them stayed behind for a vigil in St Peter's Square. This morning everyone participated in the Mass in the parvis of St Peters Basilica, led by Card Gualtiero Bassetti, head of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Italy.

When Francis arrived in the parvis, Card Bassetti addressed his greetings and the thanks of the Italian Church.

At the start of his address, Francis spoke about the passage in the Epistle to the Ephesians from today's Mass (19th year, B, Ephesians 4:30-5:2), in which Saint Paul exhorts his Christians to "not grieve the holy Spirit of God".

"But I ask myself: how does the Holy Spirit become sad? We have all received it in Baptism and Confirmation, so in order not to make the Holy Spirit grieve, it is necessary to live coherently with the promises of Baptism, renewed in Confirmation, not with hypocrisy: these promises have two aspects: renunciation of evil and attachment to goodness. To renounce evil means to say "no" to temptations, to sin, to Satan. More concretely, it means saying "no" to a culture of death, which manifests itself in the flight from the real towards a false happiness that is expressed in lies, fraud, injustice, in contempt for others."

"To all this must be said: no". Extemporising a dialogue with young people, he said: "What do you say to all this?". The crowd: No!" What? I cant hear [you]": (an even louder) no followed.

"It is not enough not to do evil to be a good Christian; it is necessary to attach oneself to goodness and do good ... Many times, we hear some people who say: 'I do not hurt anyone'. And that person believes they are a saint. All right, but are you good? How many people do not hurt, but neither do they do good, and their life goes on amidst indifference, apathy, lukewarmness. This attitude is contrary to the Gospel, and it is also contrary to the character of you, young people, who are by nature dynamic, passionate and courageous."

The pope again strongly emphasised this point citing Saint Albert Hurtado: "Remember this and repeat it: It is good not to do evil, but it is evil not to do good". He then asked the young people to repeat it.

"Today, he went on to say, I urge you to be main players in [doing] goodness! Do not feel good when you do not do evil; everyone is guilty of the good they could have done and did not do. It is not enough not to hate, it is necessary to forgive; it is not enough not to have a grudge, we must pray for our enemies; it is not enough not to be a cause of division, we must bring peace where it does not exist; it is not enough not to speak evil about others, we must stop [others] when we hear them talk evil. Stop the chatter. If we do not oppose evil, we tacitly nurture it. It is necessary to intervene where evil spreads because evil spreads where there are no daring Christians who oppose it with goodness, liv[ing] in love' (cf. Ephesians, 5:2) as it were, heeding the warning of Saint Paul.

Dear young people, you have walked a lot these days! Therefore, you had a workout and I can tell you: walk in charity! Walk in love! Let's walk together towards the next Synod of Bishops whose theme is 'Young people, the faith and vocational discernment'. May the Virgin Mary sustain us with her maternal intercession, so that each of us, every day, through [our] deeds, can say 'no' to evil and 'yes' to good."

After the Marian prayer, Francis thanked Card Bassetti and the Italian bishops. He also singled out with special greetings "the priests" and "the nuns" who live "every day" with the young, with love and "patience" ("because it takes a lot of patience to work with you", Francis said jokingly).

In greeting young people, the pontiff added: "As you go back to your communities, bear witness before your peers and all those you meet of the joy of brotherhood and communion that you have experienced during these days of pilgrimage and prayer".

In concluding, the Holy Father blessed the images of Our Lady of Loreto and the San Damiano Cross, which young Italians handed over to a delegation from Panama, as a sign of unity with the Church that will host the next World Youth Day (22-27 January 2019).
No matter how Coloradans vote Nov. 6 on whether to change how the state draws congressional district boundaries, the people who draw the lines after the 2020 Census likely will have a little more work to do.

Colorado is expected to gain an eighth seat in Congress after the next national headcount, according to the latest census estimates as analyzed by The Washington Post.

The Post says Colorado is one of six states projected to gain one or more congressional districts after the next census. If so, the first election for that eighth seat would come in 2022.

Fast-growing Texas is projected to gain three seats after 2020; Florida, two; and Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina and Oregon one apiece.

Meanwhile, a seat is expected to be lost in Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia.

Under the Constitution, members of Congress shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers as determined every 10 years by the census.

The U.S. House has 435 members. Every decade, fast-growing states get more seats, and states that lose population or grow more slowly than others lose seats.

Colorado last gained its seventh congressional seat after the 2000 Census.

This isnt the first time the possibility of an eighth Colorado congressional seat has come up. Pollster Floyd Ciruli discussed the possibility in a January 2016 Colorado Politics opinion piece, but he said then that Colorado is not certain to gain a seat.

But the Post now says its expected to happen.

The states congressional district boundaries are set by a vote of the Legislature, subject to a gubernatorial veto.

But Amendment Y on the fall ballot would create a bipartisan commission to do the job.

One potential obstacle to Colorado gaining a seat is what state House Speaker Crisanta Duran, D-Denver, has called a chilling effect through our Latino communities from a proposed census question about citizenship.

The Trump administration wants to ask about citizenship on the main census questionnaire. Colorado and 17 other states have sued over the proposal, with Gov. John Hickenlooper suggesting that asking for citizenship information could scare immigrants into avoiding the census, possibly leading to an undercount of Colorados population.

The census traditionally has counted all residents, whether in the country legally or not.
A former El Paso County sheriffs deputy who was forced to resign after a complaint was filed about his use of force in the jail has flied a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination and retaliation for supporting another deputys sexual harassment claim.

Patrick Smith, who is African-American, was employed by the Sheriffs Office for nearly 14 years before resigning June 12, 2017, one month after he used force against an inmate who flipped him off, the lawsuit filed this month in U.S. District Court stated.

The professional standards complaint made by Undersheriff Joe Breister stated Smith responded by punching (the inmate) in the face and knocking him to the ground. The lawsuit contends video shows he didnt punch the inmate and a memo from an Internal Affairs sergeant says Smith redirected (the inmates) arm away from his face and took him to the ground and handcuffed him.

From January 2017 through June, four jail deputies have faced serious disciplinary consequences for uses of force at the jail, according to documents provided by the Sheriffs Office. Smith was one of two deputies who resigned in lieu of termination. The other two were suspended for 40 hours.

The decision to place Smith on immediate, unpaid administrative leave, then refer him for disciplinary action and ultimately recommend that he be fired were motivated by his race and his protected activity, the lawsuit says.

A Sheriffs Office spokeswoman didnt respond to a request for comment Friday.

In February 2017, a female deputy made a complaint of sexual harassment against the Sheriffs Office, the lawsuit says. She later complained of retaliation. Smith participated in the investigation by providing a statement about how the deputy had been treated.

When he heard co-workers calling her a b---h or accusing her of trying to bring down a male employee, he would remind them that like all employees of the EPSO, (she) had a right to work in an environment free from harassment or discrimination, to complain about mistreatment, and that criticizing her for doing so was inappropriate, the lawsuit says.

About 1:10 a.m. May 12, 2017, Smith used force on an inmate in the jail, the lawsuit says. He prepared a report about the incident about 8:10 a.m., and by 10 a.m., he received a memo placing him on leave pending an investigation  an unusually quick response that deviated from the Sheriffs Offices usual policy of having immediate supervisors review use of force incidents before forwarding them to professional standards, the lawsuit says.

The female deputy sent an email to El Paso County Human Resources on May 15, 2017, saying she believed Smith was retaliated against for his involvement in the investigation into her complaints and discriminated against because of his race, the lawsuit says. Smith later made a formal complaint of racial discrimination and retaliation to Human Resources and the county Attorneys Office.

The EPSO only disciplines employees for use of force incidents in extremely rare circumstances, and in those extremely rare cases of disciplinary action for use of force incidents, the disciplinary action of termination is so rare as to be almost unheard of, the lawsuit says.

Smith reportedly is aware of many other employees, the lawsuit contends, who are not African-American and/or had not engaged in protected activity, engaged in uses of force that did not result in them being placed on immediate administrative leave, referred to the Disciplinary Action Board, or disciplined.

That includes members of a fight club at the jail  an off-the-books contest in which deputies at the jail tracked each time they used force against an inmate, ranging from handcuffing to punching and kicking, and awarded bragging rights to the winners, as previously reported by The Gazette.

The Gazettes Rachel Riley contributed to this report.
English Lithuanian

On 5 September 2018 the Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of Public limited liability company Novaturas, code 135567698, registered at A. Mickeviciaus st. 27, Kaunas, the Republic of Lithuania (hereinafter, the Company), is being convened (hereinafter, the Meeting) upon the initiative and decision of Board of the Company.



The place of the Meeting  hotel Radisson Blu Hotel Lietuva, conference centre (Konstitucijos ave. 20, Vilnius). The Meeting commences at 9.30 a.m. (registration starts at 8.30 a.m. and ends at 9.15 a.m.).

The meeting of the Board was convened in accordance with request of the Shareholder Central European Tour Operator S.a.r.l., personal code B133714, registered address at L-1653 Luxembourg 2, avenue Charles de Gaulle which holds 3,700,874 ordinary registered shares of the Company, which constitute 47.4% of all the shares issued by the Company and votes carried thereby in the General Meeting of Shareholders of the Company (hereinafter  the Shareholder), dated 8 August 2018, to convene the Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders. The purpose of the Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders is to pay dividends for the period shorter than the usual financial year.

The Meetings accounting day  29 August 2018. The persons who are shareholders of the Company at the end of accounting day of the General Meeting of Shareholders or authorized persons by them, or the persons with whom shareholders concluded the agreements on the disposal of voting right, shall have the right to attend and vote at the Meeting.

The Board of the Company initiates and convenes the Meeting, which on 9 August 2018 approved the following agenda of the Meeting:

Agenda of the meeting:

Announcement of Interim Report of Public limited liability company Novaturas for the period of six months as of the end of 30 June 2018.

Draft decision proposed:

The Interim Report of Public limited liability company Novaturas for the period of six months as of the end of 30 June 2018, was announced for the Shareholders of the Company. The decision is not adopted on this matter of the agenda."

Approval of the set of audited interim financial statements for the period shorter than financial year as of the end of 30 June 2018.

Draft decision proposed:

"Approve the set of Interim Financial Statements of Public limited liability company Novaturas for the period of six months as of the end of 30 June 2018 audited by UAB DELOITTE LIETUVA, the Companys auditor.

The allocation of dividends for shareholders of Public limited liability company Novaturas for the period shorter than financial year as of the end of 30 June 2018.

Draft decision proposed:

"Considering the fact that all conditions for the allocation of dividends for a period shorter than the financial year set out in Paragraph 5 of Article 601 of the Law on Companies of the Republic of Lithuania are fulfilled, to approve for Shareholders of Public limited liability company Novaturas the allocation of dividends in the amount of 0.77 EUR per share of Public limited liability company for the period of six months as of the end of 30 June 2018."

Election of the auditor for the performance of audit services for annual financial statements of the companies of the group of the Company and determination of the conditions of audits services for the 2018  2019 period.

Draft decision proposed:

To elect auditor UAB DELOITTE LIETUVA for the performance of audit of annual financial statements of the companies of the group of the Company for 2018 and 2019 and determine that the payment for the performance of the audit services shall not be paid more than EUR 85,000 excluding VAT in 2018 and EUR 95,000 excluding VAT in 2019.

The right to receive dividends will only apply to those, who are shareholders of Public limited liability company Novaturas at the end of 19 September 2018. In accordance with Article 60 Item 5 of the Company Law of the Republic of Lithuania the Company will pay allocated dividends not later than within one month from the day of the adoption of a decision on the allocation of dividends.

The total number of the Companys shares of EUR 0.03 par value each and the number of shares granting voting rights during the general meeting of shareholders is the same and amounts to 7,807,000.



ISIN code of the Companys shares is LT0000131872.

The Company shall not provide the possibility to participate and vote in the Meeting through electronic communication means.



Draft resolutions on agenda issues, documents to be submitted to the Meeting and other information related to the exercising of the shareholders rights are available on the website of the Company www.novaturasgroup.com on the menu item For investors. This information will also be available for the shareholders at the head office of the Company (A. Mickeviciaus st. 27, Kaunas, the Republic of Lithuania) on business days from 8 a.m. till 4 p.m.



The shareholders holding shares that grant at least 1/20 of all votes shall have the right of proposing to supplement the agenda of the Meeting by providing the draft resolution on each additionally proposed issue or in case no resolution is required  the relevant explanation. The proposals to supplement the agenda shall be submitted in writing or by e-mail. The proposals shall be presented in writing to the Company on business days or by sending them to its registered mail address, A. Mickeviciaus st. 27, LT-44245 Kaunas, the Republic of Lithuania. The proposals submitted via e-mail shall be sent to tomas.staskunas@novaturas.lt . The proposals to supplement the agenda with the additional issues shall be received in the Company till 22 August 2018, 4 p.m. In case the agenda of the Meeting is supplemented the Company will notify on it no later than 10 days before the Meeting in the same manner as on convening of the Meeting.



Each shareholder holding shares that grant at least 1/20 of all votes at any time before the general meeting of shareholders or during the meeting shall have the right of proposing draft resolutions on the issues already included or to be included in the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders, as well as the additional candidates to the members of the Supervisory Council of the Company (if elected). The proposed draft decisions must be presented in writing sending them by registered mail or providing them against signature at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice.



The shareholders shall have the right to present questions related to the issues of the agenda of the Meeting to the Company in advance in writing. The shareholders shall present the questions not later than 3 business days before the Meeting via electronic mail to tomas.staskunas@novaturas.lt . The Company undertakes to respond to the submitted questions via electronic mail till the Meetings day, except the questions related to the Companys commercial (industrial) secret, confidential information, as well as if the questions will be received in the Company later than 3 business days before the Meeting.



Responses of a general character shall be posted on the Companys website www.novaturasgroup.com . The Company will not respond personally to the shareholder if the respective information is posted on the Companys website.



Each shareholder shall have a right in the manner established by the laws to authorise other (natural or legal) person to attend and vote at the general meeting of shareholders on his/her behalf. At the general meeting of shareholders an authorised person shall have the same rights as would be held by the shareholder represented by him/her, unless the authorized persons rights are limited by the power of attorney or by laws. The authorized person must provide a power of attorney certified in the manner established by laws. A power of attorney issued in a foreign state must be translated into Lithuanian and legalised in the manner established by laws.



Shareholder shall also have the right to authorize through electronic communication means another person (natural or legal) to participate and vote in the Meeting on shareholders behalf. Such authorization shall not be confirmed by the notary public. The power of attorney issued through electronic communication means must be confirmed by the shareholder with a safe electronic signature developed by safe signature equipment and approved by a qualified certificate effective in the Republic of Lithuania. The shareholder shall inform the Company on the power of attorney issued through electronic communication means by e-mail tomas.staskunas@novaturas.lt no later than on the last business day before the Meeting by 4:00 p.m. The power of attorney and notification shall be issued in writing. The power of attorney and notification to the Company shall be signed with the electronic signature but not the letters sent via e-mail. By submitting the notification to the Company the shareholder shall include the Internet address from which it would be possible to download free of charge software to verify an electronic signature of the shareholder.



Each shareholder or representative thereof shall have the right to cast his/her vote in advance in writing by filling in a general ballot paper. The form of a general ballot paper is provided on the Companys website www.novaturasgroup.com on the menu item For investors. Upon a written shareholders request, the Company no later than 10 days before the Meeting shall send a general ballot paper by registered mail or hand it in person against signature. The general ballot paper filled shall be signed by the shareholder or his/her representative. In case the ballot paper is signed by the shareholders authorized representative, such person together with the filled ballot paper shall submit the document confirming the voting right. The ballot paper filled and the document confirming the voting right (if required) shall be submitted in a written form to the Company by its registered mail address, A. Mickeviciaus st. 27, LT-44245 Kaunas, the Republic of Lithuania, or by submitting it to the Company. Valid will be dully filled-in ballot papers, received in the Company until the Meeting.

Attached:

General voting ballot; Interim financial statements with Interim Report.

Attachments
Dublin, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Computer-Aided Drug Discovery Services Market, 2018-2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The early stages of research related to drug discovery, including the identification of a relevant biological target and a viable lead compound, play a crucial role in the overall success of a drug candidate in preclinical and clinical studies. It is also worth noting that the process of drug discovery is extremely demanding, both in terms of capital requirements and time. Moreover, there is always a high risk of failure associated with R&D programs and, considering the increasing regulatory stringency, the approval of new drugs has become significantly more difficult.



Given the increase in complexity of the drug discovery process, the overall R&D spending in the pharmaceutical/biotechnology sector has grown from around USD 128 billion in 2008 to USD 158 billion in 2017. As a result, the industry is currently under tremendous pressure not only to meet the expectations of a growing patient population, but also to identify ways to mitigate the risks associated with novel drug discovery programs to avoid failure.



Over the years, various computational tools and services have emerged, enabling the selection, modeling, analysis and optimization of potential lead candidates. The predictive power of computer-aided drug discovery (CADD) has proven to be extremely advantageous, allowing researchers to bypass the random screening of billions of molecules across hundreds of biological targets. As a result, players offering novel in silico drug discovery services, such as CADD, have now become an integral part of the pharmaceutical industry.



According to industry experts, almost 30% of the total cost and time invested in developing a new drug can be saved by utilizing such services. Owing to the significant cost benefits offered by such approaches, the adoption of CADD is anticipated to increase in the coming years. Furthermore, the growing number of drug discovery projects, coupled to their rapid progression through various stages of drug discovery, is expected to continue to create an increasing demand for computational services.



The Computer-Aided Drug Discovery Services Market, 2018-2030' report features an extensive study on the current landscape and the likely future potential of the players providing CADD services for drug discovery. The study provides an in-depth analysis, highlighting the capabilities of a diverse set of companies that offer such services across different stages of drug discovery, such as target identification, target validation, hit generation, hit-to-lead and lead optimization.

Amongst other elements, the report features:

An overview of the current market landscape, featuring a comprehensive list of over 120 players that offer CADD services, and detailed analysis based on a number of parameters, such as the location of headquarters, employee count, type of business model used (contract service providers, software/technology providers and consulting service providers), number of drug discovery step(s) for which the company offers CADD services (target identification, target validation, hit generation, hit-to-lead and lead optimization), type of molecule(s) (biologics and small molecules), type of clientele (pharmaceutical/biotechnology companies and academic/research institutes), CADD approach adopted (structure-based drug design, ligand-based drug design and fragment-based drug design) and type of CADD service(s) offered (docking, molecular modeling and virtual screening etc.). In addition, the report features a year-wise analysis of the number of players that have been established over the past three decades.

An analysis of the most active regions based on the presence of CADD service providers; the report contains a schematic world map representation indicating the geographical location of key hubs with respect to outsourcing activity within this domain.

A logo landscape of the industry players engaged in this domain, distributed on the basis of the location of their respective headquarters and company size (very small-sized (50 employees) and large (>200 employees)).

Elaborate profiles of established players that offer a comprehensive range of CADD services and have received funding in the past two decades. Each profile provides an overview of the company, its financial performance (if available), funding information (if available), information on its CADD specific service(s) portfolio, and a comprehensive future outlook. In addition, each profile features a peer group-based benchmark comparison matrix for the players based on several parameters, such as the number of CADD service(s) offered, number of drug discovery step(s), type of molecule(s), type of clientele and experience of the company.

Tabulated profiles of emerging players (mid-sized companies or start-ups, established after 2012), featuring details on company headquarters, year of establishment, number of employees, key executives, funding information (if available), CADD service portfolio, CADD technology(if any), key developments related to CADD (if any) and business strategy.

An analysis of investments made in this domain; these include seed financing, venture capital financing, debt financing, equity crowdfunding and grants/awards received by the companies that are operating in this area.

An elaborate valuation analysis of companies involved in providing CADD services to the pharmaceutical/biotechnology industry. For this purpose, we have focused only on companies that have received funding in the past two decades, and built a multi-variable dependent model to estimate the current valuation of the aforementioned players.

A detailed analysis of the cost saving potential in the drug discovery process that can be brought about by the adoption of CADD.

A discussion on the upcoming computational approaches (such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing) that are being adopted for drug discovery and are likely to impact early stage research over the coming years.

One of the key objectives of this report was to evaluate the current opportunity and the future potential of the CADD market over the coming decade. Based on several parameters, we have provided an informed estimate of the likely evolution of this market in the short to mid-term and long term, for the period 2018-2030.



Example Highlights

During our research, we identified over 120 players that are actively involved in providing a wide array of CADD services for drug discovery; lead optimization, hit-to-lead and lead generation are amongst the most popular drug discovery steps for which such services are offered. Around 15 companies offer end-to-end CADD services for drug discovery, starting from target identification to lead optimization. Examples of such one-stop-shops include (in alphabetical order)Allesh Biosciences Labs, CompChem Solutions, Evotec, Gfree Bio, GVK Biosciences, Quantitative Medicine, Sai Life Sciences, Shechter Computational Solutions and SilicsBio.

The current market is characterized by the presence of several established, as well as emerging players. Of these, 23% are large companies (more than 200 employees), 15% are mid-sized companies (50-200 employees), while 62% are small-sized players (less than 50 employees). Examples of established players with more than 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical sector include (in alphabetical order) AMRI, Charles River Laboratories, ChemDiv, Evotec, RTI International, Schrdingerand XRQTC. Some of the new players that have recently entered this domain include (in alphabetical order) ChemBio Discovery Solutions, Discover Drugs, Fractal Therapeutics, Micar Innovation, Nostrum Biodiscovery and NovaData Solutions.

Around 80% of the CADD service providers are located in North America and Europe. It is also worth highlighting that there are several such players based in certain emerging regions within Asia Pacific, namely India and China. Examples of some of the large companies based in these locations include (in alphabetical order) ChemPartner, Excelra Knowledge Solutions, GVK Biosciences, Jubilant Biosys, Medicilon, Pharmaron, Sundia MediTech, Syngene, TCG Lifesciences, Viva Biotech and WuXi AppTec.

CADD solutions/services have been shown to significantly reduce the cost and time spent in early stage drug discovery. The computation approach is estimated to save as much as 30% of this cost and also enables researchers to expedite the overall process, saving a significant amount of time. By 2030, we anticipate net annual cost savings of over USD 9 billion to be brought about by the adoption of CADD in the drug discovery process.

Driven by the rising number of drugs in the discovery stage across various therapeutic areas, the market is expected to continue on its growth trajectory in the foreseen future. We expect the CADD market to grow at an annualized rate of ~12.4% between 2018 and 2030. In terms of therapeutic areas, oncological disorders (46%), neurological disorders (13%), immunological disorders (7%) and infectious diseases (6%) are expected to capture a significant fraction of the market by 2030.

Hit and lead related services are expected to possess the largest market share (over 85%) by 2030, followed by target-based services (which include target identification and target validation). Although, the current market is largely driven (over 70%) by small molecules, large molecule drugs are expected to make a relatively larger contributions in the foreseen future; upcoming CADD technologies are likely to provide the necessary impetus to fuel this growth.

In terms of geography, majority (~70%) of the market share is likely to be distributed between North America and Europe in 2030; other countries, such as China and Japan, are expected to grow at a relatively faster rate (~14%) in the coming decade.

Companies Mentioned



Aaranya Biosciences

Agilux Laboratories

Aisling Capital

A-Level Capital

Allesh Biosciences Labs

Almi Invest

AMRI

Andy Jennings Consulting

APEIRON Biologics

Aprecia Pharmaceuticals

Aptuit

Aquila BioMedical

Aragen Bioscience

Aris Pharmaceuticals

Asahi Kasei Pharma

Asclepia MedChem Solutions

AstraZeneca

ATHOS Service

Atlas Ventures

Aurora Fine Chemicals

Avistron Chemistry Services

Banco Santander

Bayer

BenevolentAI

BIANA

Bienta

BioAscent

BioDiscovery Group

BioDuro

BioGenerator

Biognos

Bionomics

BioNTech

BioSolveIT

Biotechnology Value Fund

Biovista

Blue Stream Laboratories

BOC Sciences

Brains On-Line

Broad Institute

CAChe Research

candidum

Carna Biosciences

Carrick Therapeutics

Cascade Investment

Center for the Development of Industrial Technology

Celgene

Celsis

Charles River Laboratories

ChemAxon

ChemBio Discovery Solutions

ChemDiv

ChemEnvision

Chemical Computing Group

ChemModeling

ChemoGenics BioPharma

Chemotargets

ChemPartner

China Canada Angels Alliance

ChrysCapital

CITIC M&A Fund

Clearlake Capital Group

Cloud Pharmaceuticals

CloudScientific

Colorado Computational

CompChem Solutions

Concept Life Science

Confluence Discovery Technologies

Conifer Point Pharmaceuticals

Creative Biolabs

Creative Biostructure

Crelux

Cresset

Crowdcube

CXR Biosciences

Cyclica

Cyprotex

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

DCM Ventures

Deep Knowledge Ventures

Discover Drugs

DIVERCHIM

Eagle Pharmaceuticals

Edelris

Eli Lilly

EligoChem

Enamine Biology Services

Entelos

Epic Capital Management

Equinox Pharma

European Investment Fund

Euticals

Evotec

Excelra Knowledge Solutions

Exscientia

Fidelity Management & Research Company

Fidelta

Formex

Fractal Therapeutics

Galapagos

Genedata

Genentech

Genmab

Genomodel

Gfree Bio

GL Capital

GLSynthesis

Government of Singapore Investment

Greenpharma

GreenSky Capital

GTCR

GVK Biosciences

H3 Biomedicine

Harvard University

HH&E Ventures

IBM

Icagen

Innovate UK

Innovative Informatica Technologies

Inserm

Insilico Medicine

Inte:Ligand

Invus

IOTA Pharmaceuticals

Janssen Pharmaceuticals

Janus Henderson Investors

JPT Peptide Technologies

Jubilant Biosys

Juno Capital

KWS BioTest

Laxai Life Sciences

Lead Discovery Siena

Lead Molecular Design

LeadInvent Technologies

Legend Capital

Liatris Biosciences

Life Chemicals

Longbow Capital

LU Innovation, Lund University

Mascot Industries

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Medicilon

Medisyn Technologies

Medit

Menarini Group

Merck

Micar Innovation

Michaelson Capital Partners

MIG Fonds

Mind the Byte

Molcode

Molecular Cornerstones

Molecular Discovery

Molecular Forecaster

Molsoft

Morphic Therapeutics

MPI Research

Nanosyn

National Institutes of Health

New England Discovery Partners

NiKem Research

Nimbus Therapeutics

Nodthera

Nostrum Biodiscovery

NovaData Solutions

NovaLead Pharma

NovAliX

NovaMechanics

Novartis

Novo Holdings

Novo Informatics

National Science Foundation

NuChem Therapeutics

Numerate

Oncotest

Ono Pharmaceutical

OTAVAchemicals

Oxford Bioscience Partners

Paraza Pharma

Pars Silico Bioinformatics Laboratory

PathoQuest

Peakdale Molecular

Petra Pharma

Pharma Inventor

Pharmacelera

Pharmaceutical Product Development

Pharmaron

Phoenix Equity Partners

Porton Pharma Solutions

Prestwick Chemical

Princeton BioMolecular Research

Profacgen

Prosarix

ProSciens

ProtoQSAR

Provid Pharmaceuticals

ProXyChem

Pyxis Discovery

Qsol Services India

Quantitative Medicine

RASA Life Science Informatics

Rebexsess Discovery Chemistry

Redmile Group

Redox Scientific

Resource & Environmental Consultants

Rosa

Rosetta Design Group

RTI International

Sai Life Sciences

Sandexis

Sanofi

SARomics Biostructures

Schrdinger

Scientific Analysis Laboratories

SciLifeLab

Selvita

Shechter Computational Solutions

Shire

SilcsBio

Simulations Plus

SmiLe Incubator

Spectris

Startup Health

Struengmann Family Office

Sundia MediTech

Sygnature Discovery

Syngene

Synsight

Taros Chemicals

TCG Lifesciences

The Carlyle Group

Leukemia and Lymphoma Society

Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute

True PharmaChem

Uni-Innovation Group

University College London

Van Drie Research

Victrix Computational and Medicinal Chemistry Consultancy

Vipergen

Virtua Drug

Viva Biotech

VLife Sciences Technologies

VLS 3D

Wellcome Trust

WIL Research Laboratories

Wildcard Pharmaceutical Consulting

Wilmington PharmaTech

WuXi AppTec

Wyss Institute

XRQTC

XtalPi

ZoBio

Zorilla Research

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/pxmwsb/150_bn?w=12




MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bee Vectoring Technologies (BVT) (TSXV: BEE) announced today that it has entered a third year of sunflower trials using BVTs proprietary dispenser system that utilizes bumble bees to efficiently deliver its patented microbial-based organic biofungicide, BVT-CR7 to control fungal disease. In sunflowers the fungal disease sclerotinia causes high levels of crop loss and there are currently no effective, economically viable, treatments.



We anticipate that this third year of sunflower trails will support the use of our technology as a cost-effective viable solution for the reduction of sclerotinia head rot disease in sunflowers, and will position us well to begin our commercialization efforts for this crop in addition to our expected commercialization in the strawberry market this year, said Ashish Malik, CEO of BVT. Sunflowers provide an excellent example of a crop where the economics do not support using foliar spray to deliver of a control agent while delivery using bees is inexpensive and highly effective. The highly specific and selective delivery of organic, naturally sourced, biologic control agents to unique crop locations, such as the flower head, represents a paradigm shift in thinking and the future of farming.

Top researchers at North Dakota State University (NDSU) Extension, will conduct trials at sites near Langdon and Carrington, ND. Trials using BVTs new honeybee dispenser system will also be conducted in several commercial fields with key growers in Minnesota and North Dakota. Sclerotinia develops deep in the flower head which, in sunflowers, is largely inaccessible to foliar spray applications. Bees, however, can deliver BVT-CR7 at pollination and the control agent maintains its protection as the flower head, and seeds, mature.

Sunflower growers in North Dakota and Minnesota are looking for tools to manage sclerotinia, said Dr. Venkat Chapara, Assistant Research Professor of Crop Protection at NDSUs Langdon Research Extension Center. For the last two years, trials with the BVT system have given promising results and we are hoping with this third year we can refine the grower use recommendations thus allowing for this technology to be used commercially.

It is common practice to have multiple seasons of trials before a solution is commercialized in the agricultural inputs industry to fully refine its value proposition given the inherent fluctuations in external conditions. Several factors, including weather, can affect the severity of fungal diseases that attack a crop in any given year and so repeating the crop studies allows to best characterize a products effectiveness, in a variety of conditions, to ensure the grower optimizes their crop treatment plan.

Two previous seasons of trial work of the BVT system in sunflowers showed a 47% and 36% reduction (respectively) in disease incidence, and a 20% and 22% reduction in disease severity, of sclerotinia head rot. Additionally, the use of BVTs system resulted in plants that where healthier, had improved vigor and increased sunflower seed yield of 8% per acre in 2016 (yield measurements were not quantified in 2017).

In the U.S. alone, sunflowers accounts for nearly 1.4 million planted acres for both oil production and confectionary segments. BVT estimates that the market opportunity for its technology in sunflowers is around CAD $30 million annually.

About Bee Vectoring Technologies International Inc .

BVT has developed and owns patent-pending bee vectoring technology that is designed to harmlessly utilize bumblebees and honeybees as natural delivery mechanisms for a variety of powdered mixtures comprised of organic compounds that inhibit or control common crop diseases, while at the same time enhancing crop vigor and productivity. This unique and proprietary process enables a targeted delivery of crop controls using the simple process of bee pollination to replace traditional crop spraying, resulting in better yields, superior quality, and less impact on the environment without the use of water or disruptions to labour.

Additional information can be viewed at the Companys website www.beevt.com

For further information, please contact:

Ashish Malik, President & CEO

Tel: 530-219-7808

marketing@beevt.com

Babak Pedram, Investor Relations

Virtus Advisory Group

Tel: 416-995-8651

bpedram@virtusadvisory.com

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute "forward-looking information" as such term is defined in applicable Canadian securities legislation. The words "may", "would", "could", "should", "potential", "will", "seek", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions as they relate to the Company, annual revenue potential, are intended to identify forward-looking information. All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forward-looking information. Such statements reflect the Companys current views and intentions with respect to future events, and current information available to the Company, and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including: planted acres of sunflowers, selling price of competitive chemical pesticides and the US to Canadian dollar exchange rate. Material factors or assumptions were applied in providing forward-looking information. Many factors could cause the actual results, performance or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking information to vary from those described herein should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize. These factors include changes in law, competition, litigation, the ability to implement business strategies and pursue business opportunities, state of the capital markets, the availability of funds and resources to pursue operations, new technologies, the ability to protect intellectual property rights, the ability to obtain patent protection for products, third-party intellectual property infringement claims, regulatory changes affecting products, failing research and development activities, the ability to reach and sustain profitability, dependence on business and technical experts, the ability to effectively manage business operations and growth, issuance of debt, dilution of existing securities, volatility of publicly traded securities, potential conflicts of interest, unlikelihood of dividend payments, the potential costs stemming from defending third-party intellectual property infringement claims, the ability to secure relationships with manufacturers and purchasers, as well as general economic, market and business conditions, as well as those risk factors discussed or referred to in the Companys Filing Statement dated May 29, 2015, filed with the securities regulatory authorities in certain provinces of Canada and available at www.sedar.com. Should any factor affect the Company in an unexpected manner, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information prove incorrect, the actual results or events may differ materially from the results or events predicted. Any such forward-looking information is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement. Moreover, the Company does not assume responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of such forward-looking information. The forward-looking information included in this press release is made as of the date of this press release and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information, other than as required by applicable law. All figures are in Canadian dollars.
Before they will consider a settlement, the striking teachers demand [ #permalink

vikaschanumolu wrote:

Why not B?

and establishes payment scales guaranteeing cost of living increases.

I request that he write to her (instead of he writes to her)

She asked that they be told immediately (instead of they were told)



the striking teachers demand that the school board fire the substitute

to

'to' distorts the parallelism

Only option D satisfies the above. Hence, D

Only those who risk going too far, can possibly find out how far one can go Signature Read More

Before they will consider a settlement, the striking teachers demand that the school board fire the substitute teachers(B) and to establish payment scales that would guarantee cost of living increasesSubjunctive verb 'demand' requires base form of the verbsuch as (a)(b)Similarly in the above sentence we have "" (Instead of fires). We have a conjunction here 'AND' which means we need to maintain parallelism. Here in this sentence, 'fire' and 'establishes' must be parallel ( Verb base form 'Fire' is parallel to 'Establish').For Option B - We have 'and to establish', 'establish' is not parallel to 'fire' (). The term 'establish' is parallel to 'fire'.Hope this helps_________________
VeritasPrepKarishma wrote:

rajathpanta wrote: The points (-2,1) and (4,1) form the diameter of the circle. So the center lies somewhere between these two points. Since y coordinate does not change we need to see where the X co-ordinate falls. It becomes clear that 1 is the x co-ordinate. So the point is (1,1).



@veritasKarishma- Do you think this approach will work always??



We know that the three points lie on the same circle but we don't know that (-2,1) and (4,1) form the diameter of the circle. The given 3 points could be any 3 points on the circle. So no, given some different values, this approach may not work. We know that the three points lie on the same circle but we don't know that (-2,1) and (4,1) form the diameter of the circle. The given 3 points could be any 3 points on the circle. So no, given some different values, this approach may not work.

PhD in Applied Mathematics

Love GMAT Quant questions and running. Signature Read More

In our case we do know that (-2,1) and (4,1) form the diameter of the circumscribed circle, because FG is perpendicular to GH (we can check by computing the slopes of the lines FG and GH, see my previous post). Two points uniquely determine a diameter, but of course, it depends on the third point whether it is on that specific circle.A right triangle is inscribed in a circle having its hypotenuse as diameter (inscribed angle of 90 degree is half of the central angle of 180 degree).What I meant in my previous post was that GMAT will not ask for any non-special triangle to find its circumscribed circle's center. It's no point testing distance computations, besides knowing of course the property of the center. For a right triangle, one has to know about testing perpendicularity using slopes, one has to know that a right angle is inscribed in a half-circle, so the hypotenuse is the diameter...many things to test beside just distance calculation. Similarly, for an equilateral triangle.Regarding areas as well, I cannot remember GMAT asking for the area of some non-special triangle. Either one can compute the area by adding/subtracting some areas of some other known geometrical shapes or the triangle is special - right, isosceles, equilateral (well, except the easy case when we have a base and the corresponding height explicitly given). GMAT is not testing advanced geometry formulas for areas like Heron's formula, not even 0.5absinC.That's why I suggest always first test what type of triangle we have._________________
goingtobs09 wrote:

Thanks guys, this is already giving me some color.



gmatmba: here is my profile. maybe you can give me your view.



PROFESSIONAL

will have 4years of experience when starting the program:

- 2y in investment banking, where I worked in a front-office position and also wrote an educational book for the bank, 150pages long, that was published in 40'000 copies. Worked in both Zurich and London

- 2y in asset management business development, mainly related to hedge funds. Based in Zurich, partly working in London.



UNIVERSITY

Master Degree Level in Economics, studied in Switzerland. Graduated cum laude, thus not stellar, but not too bad either. Did one year exchange in Italy.



LANGUAGES

Fluent in 5 languages oral and written, good conversation level in 6th



PERSONAL

29y, will be 30 when starting programme. Born in Eastern Europe, raised in Switzerland.



EXTRA-CURRICULAR

Co-launched lifestyle magazine that tanked. Founded party series at university that was successfull. Helped launch a beverage company (ongoing). Last year, volunteered helping immigrants find jobs.



Thx!

Compared to 98% of the folks on this forum, you have a very impressive profile. For the top 5 schools, its still quite good, but probably somewhat more common. (I've met several PE / hedge fund / associate IB / etc people at the GSB)Personally, if you want to maximize chances, retaking the GMAT for a 700+ can't hurt, but with a Cum Laude under your belt and a masters I don't think a 680 will be cause for concern. Somewhat ironically, and based solely on anecdotal evidence I have from this years app season, it appears the schools in the top 8-12 are actually more GMAT sensitive than those at the top. That makes sense in a backwards kind of way - those in that range are trying to make moves in rankings whereas those already at the top are somewhat more secure.One of the key elements of your application will clearly be explaining what,exactly, you seek an MBA for. With a masters degree in Economics - you will need to address what it is about an MBA that you require in order to achieve your goals. Particularly given your impressive work history ( I imagine you are not a career switcher), the traditional argument for an MBA would not apply to you. As such, you should dig "deep" to create a compelling argument as to why you seek an MBA at this stage in your career. Think of what it is you want to do and how it might integrate well with an MBA. Be specific where you can. If you get lost, one very easy argument to make is that an MBA provides breath across disciplines, whereas your masters in economics provides a focused depth, that while valuable, does not provide you with adequately broad skills to achieve your goal of X. Think through that argument for a bit and I'm sure you will be able to come up with quite specific examples.I'd also play up the entrepreneurial part of your history - failure or not - a willingness to take risks is a key element of almost any definition of "leadership" you can imagine - and you have clearly demonstrated that. If I had that history -- granted I know very little about your background -- I'd milk the !(@# out that story.The international background and work experience is a positive as well. (BTW, I lived in Chesiers-Villars near Aigle, on the other side of Les Diablerets for 2 yeaars. If none of that is familiar, it's not too far from Montreux). Don't be afraid to leverage that.Without knowing any more about you, I'd say that you have an impressive profile. Someone with your background should not have to dig too deep to find good quality examples of leadership, risk taking, teamwork, extracurriculars, etc.If properly executed, you just might find yourself cherry picking where you go next year. Be forewarned however: Execution is absolutely critical.
Re: Jason deposits money at a bank on a Tuesday and returns to the bank 10 [ #permalink

Bunuel wrote:

Jason deposits money at a bank on a Tuesday and returns to the bank 100 days later to withdraw the money. On what day of the week did Jason withdraw the money from the bank?



(A) Monday

(B) Tuesday

(C) Wednesday

(D) Thursday

(E) Friday

So, 2 Additional days after Tuesday = Thursday, Answer must be (D)

100/7 = 14 Weeks + 2 Additional days after Tuesday_________________
LBS (London) MBA Essay Topics, 2018-2019

Required Essay:

Optional Essay:

Essay Analysis by:

What are your post-MBA goals and how will your prior experience and the London Business School programme contribute towards these? (500 words)Is there any other information you believe the Admissions Committee should know about you and your application to London Business School? (500 words)_________________
noboru wrote:

for GMAT Review, 11th Edition, 2005



Practice Question

Question No.: CR 116

Page: 501

The pharmaceutical industry argues that because new drugs will not be developed unless heavy development costs can be recouped in later sales, the current 20 years of protection provided by patents should be extended in the case of newly developed drugs. However, in other industries new-product development continues despite high development costs, a fact that indicates that the extension is unnecessary.



Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the pharmaceutical industrys argument against the challenge made above?



(A) No industries other than the pharmaceutical industry have asked for an extension of the 20-year limit on patent protection.



(B) Clinical trials of new drugs, which occur after the patent is granted and before the new drug can be marketed, often now take as long as 10 years to complete.



(C) There are several industries in which the ratio of research and development costs to revenues is higher than it is in the pharmaceutical industry.



(D) An existing patent for a drug does not legally prevent pharmaceutical companies from bringing to market alternative drugs, provided they are sufficiently dissimilar to the patented drug.



(E) Much recent industrial innovation has occurred in productsfor example, in the computer and electronics industriesfor which patent protection is often very ineffective. The pharmaceutical industry argues that because new drugs will not be developed unless heavy development costs can be recouped in later sales, the current 20 years of protection provided by patents should be extended in the case of newly developed drugs. However, in other industries new-product development continues despite high development costs, a fact that indicates that the extension is unnecessary.Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the pharmaceutical industrys argument against the challenge made above?(A) No industries other than the pharmaceutical industry have asked for an extension of the 20-year limit on patent protection.(B) Clinical trials of new drugs, which occur after the patent is granted and before the new drug can be marketed, often now take as long as 10 years to complete.(C) There are several industries in which the ratio of research and development costs to revenues is higher than it is in the pharmaceutical industry.(D) An existing patent for a drug does not legally prevent pharmaceutical companies from bringing to market alternative drugs, provided they are sufficiently dissimilar to the patented drug.(E) Much recent industrial innovation has occurred in productsfor example, in the computer and electronics industriesfor which patent protection is often very ineffective.



Veritas Prep GMAT Instructor



Learn more about how Veritas Prep can help you achieve a great GMAT score by checking out their KarishmaVeritas Prep GMAT InstructorLearn more about how Veritas Prep can help you achieve a great GMAT score by checking out their GMAT Prep Options > Signature Read More

The Pharmaceutical companies:- New drugs will not be developed unless heavy development costs can be recouped in later salesHence, extend the current 20 year protection.The author:- In other industries new-product development continues despite high development costsSo the extension is unnecessaryWe need to support the pharma companies.(A) No industries other than the pharmaceutical industry have asked for an extension of the 20-year limit on patent protection.If they haven't asked for extension, doesn't mean they don't need it. Irrelevant already.(B) Clinical trials of new drugs, which occur after the patent is granted and before the new drug can be marketed, often now take as long as 10 years to complete.Of the 20 years granted to them, pharma companies lose out 10 years on trials. Hence, it brings to the fore the need for extension for pharma companies and supports their cause.(C) There are several industries in which the ratio of research and development costs to revenues is higher than it is in the pharmaceutical industry.Here is a possible trap answer. One reason why pharma companies may need extension is "low returns every year" i.e. if the returns in the pharma sector are not as high as those in the other sectors, relative to the research and development cost. But this option is opposite of that. It says that the ratio of research costs to revenues is lower in pharma sector (which means that either research cost is low or revenue is high). This does not help the extension request of pharma sector.(D) An existing patent for a drug does not legally prevent pharmaceutical companies from bringing to market alternative drugs, provided they are sufficiently dissimilar to the patented drug.If alternative drugs can be brought in, a patent does not help in recovering the cost anyway. Here is the problem then - how will extending the patent help in recovering the cost? If the patent is ineffective, how will extending an ineffective solution help?This is similar to saying - there is a law against teenage drinking that fines $100 for first offence. But most teenagers are not caught because they drink the liquor available at home. We should increase the fine to $150.When the law is not effective, how will increasing the fine help? We need to get some more stringent laws in to remedy the situation.Hence (D) is not the answer.(E) Much recent industrial innovation has occurred in productsfor example, in the computer and electronics industriesfor which patent protection is often very ineffective.It may help explain why other industries may not care about longer patent periods but it doesn't help explain how longer patent periods will help pharma.Answer (B)_________________
ezinis wrote:

Cancellation Fees Days Prior to Departure Percent of Package Price 46 or more 10% 45 - 31 35% 30 - 16 50% 15 - 5 65% 4 or fewer 100%

The table above shows the cancellation fee schedule that a travel agency uses to determine the fee charged to a tourist who cancels a trip prior to departure. If a tourist canceled a trip with a package price of $1,700 and a departure date of September 4 , on what day was the trip canceled?



(1) The cancellation fee was $595

(2) If the trip had been canceled one day later, the cancellation fee would have been $255 more The table above shows the cancellation fee schedule that a travel agency uses to determine the fee charged to a tourist who cancels a trip prior to departure. If a tourist canceled a trip with a package price of $1,700 and a departure date of, on what day was the trip canceled?(1) The cancellation fee was $595(2) If the trip had been canceled one day later, the cancellation fee would have been $255 more

Statement One Alone:

Statement Two Alone:

Cancellation Fees Days Prior to Departure Percent of Package Price 46 or more 10% 45 - 31 35% 30 - 16 50% 15 - 5 65% 4 or fewer 100%

Statements One and Two Together:

The table above shows the cancellation fee schedule that a travel agency uses to determine the fee charged to a tourist who cancels a trip prior to departure. If a tourist canceled a trip with a package price of $1,700 and a departure date of September 4, on what day was the trip canceled?(1) The cancellation fee was $595.(2) If the trip had been canceled one day later, the cancellation fee would have been $255 more.We are given a tourist canceled a trip with a package price of $1,700 and a departure date of September 4, and we need to determine the day on which the trip was canceled.The cancellation fee was $595.Since we know the total price of the trip as well as the cancellation fee, we can determine the range of days prior to departure in which the trip was canceled.(595/1700) x 100 = 35%Thus, the trip was canceled between 31 and 45 days (inclusive) before September 4. However, we cannot determine the exact date of the cancellation. Statement one alone is not sufficient. We can eliminate answer choices A and D.If the trip had been canceled one day later, the cancellation fee would have been $255 more.In the provided table, we are given the following:We note that the customer may be subject to a penalty of 10%, 35%, 50%, 65%, or 100% of the cost of the trip ($1,700), and therefore the customer may pay $170, $595, $850, $1105, or $1700 depending on how many days prior to the trip the cancellation is made.If the customer cancels the trip one day later, and therefore must pay the cancellation fee of the next interval, then the fee may increase as follows:595 - 170 = $425850 - 595 = $2551105 - 850 = $255or1700 - 1105 = $595Since there are two possibilities that may cause in an increase of $255 (31 days and 16 days prior to the departure), we cannot determine the exact date on which the trip was cancelled.Statement two alone is not sufficient to answer the question. Eliminate answer choice B.Using statements one and two, we know that the trip was canceled between 31 and 45 days (inclusive) before September 4 and that had the trip been canceled one day later, the fee would have been $255 more. From this information, we can determine that the trip was canceled 31 days before September 4, because had it been canceled 30 days before the trip, the fee would have been $1,700 x 0.5 = $850, which is $255 more than the fee of $595.Since we know that the trip was canceled 31 days before the trip, we can determine the exact date on which it was canceled.Answer: C_________________
Russia appoints Steven Seagal as its special representative for Russian-U.S. humanitarian ties

U.S. actor, martial artist, and reserve sheriff, Steven Seagal has just been bestowed with a special mission and title by Russia.

It is said to be one of the toughest roles he has ever played

This past week the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that Seagal will be its special representative for Russian-U.S. humanitarian ties to help promote cultural and humanitarian links

The announcement was made on Russias foreign ministrys Facebook account saying Seagal would now serve as Special Representative for Russia-US Cultural Links, Cultural and Historical Heritage.

Seagal then announced on Twitter:

I am deeply humbled and honoured to have been appointed as a special representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry in charge of Russian and American Humanitarian ties.

I hope we can strive for peace, harmony and positive results in the world.

I take this honour very seriously pic.twitter.com/LTuUxsk1aZ  Steven Seagal (@sseagalofficial) August 5, 2018

Russian president Vladimir Putin is a friend of Seagal and the two see eye to eye on many issues and both are big martial arts practitioners. After the announcement, the Russian President said that Seagals new appointment would serve as a symbol of improving ties between Moscow and Washington.

In the past, Seagal has even called Putin one of the greatest leaders in the world.

In 2016, Putin gave Seagal a Russian passport.

After receiving his passport, Segal stated, I will never ever falter. Never!

Putin is not the only powerful Russian comrade Steven Seagal has befriended. In 2016, he was photographed hanging out with who is called Europes last dictator, Belarus president  Aleksander Lukashenko.

Just last year, he appeared like a Boss in Kyrgyzstan during the Nomad Games competition dressed like Russian-Mongolian Royalty riding a horse in a full suit of armor.

His grandfather and grandmother were Russian Jewish immigrants and his wife is Mongolian Erdenetuya Batsukh (Mongolian:  ), better known as Elle.

Seagal has agreed with the Kremlins views on many issues like when he rejected allegations that Russia meddled in the U.S. 2016 election, telling a British television show it was stupid to think so. He embraced Putins position on Crimea which helped get him banned from Ukraine in 2014.

I will leave you with a quote from his film, Code of Honor, where Seagal plays a special-forces colonel who avenges the fatal drive-by shooting of his wife and child by going after criminals.

Seagal prophetically says in a Southern drawl, I still love my country, I still love my family, and I am still an honorable man. If I am the bad guy, what does that make you?
For the second year in a row, Hoards Dairyman has captured the top three webinar awards from the American Agricultural Editors Association (AAEA). In five of the past six years, we have won the best webinar. We also have claimed eleven other second and third-place honors during that time. Thats a total of 16 out of 18 possible webinar awards!

We diversified our approach to webinars this past year. For the first time, we had a dairy producer and an author as presenters. This shift produced our winning and third-place webinars.

The judges watch the submitted archived webinar entries and evaluate the content and delivery of the presentations. They also take into consideration the number of live attendees and archived views.

The announcement was made at AAEAs annual Ag Media Summit, held in Scottsdale, Ariz., last week. Ag Media Summit attendees go to workshops and network with others in the agricultural communications field. There are also awards recognizing excellence in photography, writing, design, marketing/communications, and digital and social media. Editorial team members Mike Rankin and Maggie Seiler were on hand to accept the awards won by the Hoards Dairyman and Hay & Forage Growers editorial teams.

The monthly webinars provide timely and valuable information for dairy producers and those who serve and support their businesses. Industry experts, university researchers, and veterinarians fill the one-hour time frame with the latest dairy information to a world-wide audience. Live-presentation viewers have come from 31 states, eight Canadian provinces, and 29 foreign countries.

Over the years, we have had a solid core of attendees who are with us each month, while some listeners join us depending on the topic. Generally, about one-third of our live audience is made up of dairy owners or managers, with consultants and advisors being the next largest group, shared Abby Bauer, the Hoards Dairyman staff member who co-hosts the webinars with Mike Hutjens of the University of Illinois.

There is no cost to register and participate thanks to the generous support of our sponsors. Once people are enrolled, they receive a link via email with access to the live presentations. The webinars are held on the second Monday of each month at noon (Central time).

About one week after the live presentation, we post the archived video, including the question and answer period, on our website. Since 2011, the archives have been viewed nearly 150,000 times.

The success of the webinars is due to the combined work of our production teams at Hoards Dairyman and the University of Illinois, the presenters, and our monthly sponsors. But our webinar attendee feedback really proves the value of this digital offering. Together, the webinars have grown into an industry standard, remarked John Mansavage, Hoards Dairyman Director of Marketing.

If you have not taken advantage of this resource, maybe it is time to watch an award-winning Hoards Dairyman webinar! Today, Mike Hutjens, University of Illinois, will present Whats different about Jerseys . . . and whats not.

Or, take a peek at our 92 archived webinars including our latest winning presentations:

1st place: Animal Fats: Separating Fact from Fiction, by Nina Teicholz, New York Times best-selling author (February 2018)

2nd place: Monitoring and managing metabolic diseases in the transition cow, by Daryl Nydam, D.V.M., Cornell University (June 2017)

3rd place: How they achieve 40,000 pounds per cow, by Tom Kestell, Ever-Green-View, and Steve Woodford, dairy nutritionist (January 2018)

The author is the online media manager and is responsible for the website, webinars, and social media. A graduate of Modesto Junior College and Fresno State, she was raised on a California dairy and frequently blogs on youth programs and consumer issues.
As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ
The reality is that it is a threat to the regime and it is clear that the regime has seen it as one for a long time because it has run sophisticated and elaborate smear campaigns against the MEK.

At the end of last year, protests broke out across the country and the people of Iran were calling for regime change. The protests were organised and the demands of the people were precise, specific and focused and the MEK played a big role in the organisation and mobilisation of the protests.

During the Free Iran gathering in Paris at the end of June, the widespread support inside and outside Iran for the Resistance was evident. A video from inside Iran showing the protesters holding placards in support of the Resistance and speaking about the huge role of the MEK shows that it is highly regarded and valued by a large portion of the population. Furthermore, it was shown that there is a huge following in every single one of Irans provinces  its support is not just centred around large cities.

Iranian regime officials can no longer deny that the Resistance is hugely significant and in recent days and weeks we are hearing about the reality of the situation.

At the end of July, the regimes labour minister Ali Rabiei said that the opposition is an enemy of the regime and referred to its role during recent labour strikes. He said: Today our enemies, particularly the MEK, are targeting the labor issues in the country, something that was very apparent in the issue of the truckers () Various networks were activated to transform this demand as a protest by the MEK in the shortest possible time.

At the beginning of August, a member of Majlis (parliament), Ahmad Salek, who is part of the pro-Khamenei faction, said: The slogans that were chanted in the demonstration were directed by the MEK through foreign news channels.

An op-ed in a media outlet that is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) recently warned about the increasing influence of the MEK. It said that the protests (which it describes as illegal) have evolved. In December and January, the protests were less focused than the most recent ones.

The publication also showed that the regime is fearful of what is to come next. Recently, [Massoud] Rajavi gave a call to the so-called resistance units and has promised that the turmoil will continue and escalate every day. He claims that the protests are becoming increasingly organized and the government doesnt have the capacity to stop them. Its worth reminding that the U.S. government expressed support for the protests in December and Maryam Rajavi stipulated that her organization was involved in the protests. The MEK is more ready than ever and has become directly involved in the chaos.

The MEK is an organisation that has been, and continues to be, a great support to the people of Iran. It is not responsible for starting the protests in Iran  the Iranian regime is responsible for that. Without the Iranian regimes corruption, neglect, mismanagement and interference abroad, the people in Iran would have no reasons to take to the streets.
There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have. - Don Herold

Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane. - Phillip K. Dick

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.- Frank Zappa
A witness in US special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation was cited for contempt on Friday after he refused a court order to appear for a grand jury.

Miller was ordered to appear before the Mueller grand jury last week after a federal judge rejected his attempt to quash the subpoena on the grounds that Mueller's appointment was unconstitutional.

Miller attorney Paul Kamenar told reporters after the judge's ruling that he actually wanted to be held in contempt of court so that they could appeal the decision in front of a different judge at the court of appeals.

Although previous challenges to Mueller's legitimacy have failed, Miller's attorney, Paul Kamenar, argued that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein did not have the authority to appoint someone with sweeping powers like those given to Mueller, saying such powers can only be granted to USA attorneys approved by the Senate.

After months of investigation Mueller now appears to be focusing on Stone, a longtime adviser to Trump who was a political consultant during his 2016 election campaign.

A NY bank executive testified Friday that Paul Manafort received more than $16 million in loans after the bank's chairman expressed interest in joining Donald Trump's Cabinet if he won the 2016 presidential election.

Miller, who runs a St. Louis house-painting business, hasn't worked for Stone for three years, according to a person familiar with the matter, except for one week of the Republican National Convention, when he came in to coordinate Stone's schedule, the person said.

That former associate, Andrew Miller, is now facing contempt charges. Rosenstein appointed Mueller after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation.

Stone told CNN's Anderson Cooper earlier this week that he has not been contacted by the special counsel's office and said that while he "would not rule out cooperating", with the investigation, he would not testify against Trump. Stone said that he was "highly confident she will testify truthfully if called upon to do so".

Miller plans to appeal. The statement from lawyer Grant Smith said the exchange "provides no evidence of collaboration or collusion with Guccifer 2.0 or anyone else in the alleged hacking of the DNC emails".
Province 2 State Minister Sharma turns himself in, court release him on general date

Province 2 State Minister Abhiram Sharma, who is accused in the murder of Armed Police Force (APF) Assistant Sub-inspector Thaman BK in Jaleshwor during the 2015 Madhes Movement, has been released on general date.
Patrol policemen, a K9 team, forensic experts and investigators are working on the spot.

A security guard was killed by three unidentified men who broke into a pawnshop in Kyiv on Sunday evening and stole jewelry.

Bystanders reported that three masked men had run into the premises, fired on the guard several times, taken jewelry, gotten into a dark blue Peugeot car, which drove towards the Nyvky metro station, the Kyiv police's press service said.

The guard, 57, died of wounds on the scene.

Read alsoRange Rover reportedly with crime boss attacked outside Kyiv, driver shot dead (Photo)

Police received a report about the attack, which happened on Kyiv's Danyla Shcherbakivskoho Street, at 20:00 Kyiv time on Sunday, August 12.

Patrol policemen, a K9 team, forensic experts and investigators from Kyiv's main police department and Shevchenkivsky district police station are working in the area where the incident took place, examining the venue and interviewing witnesses.

Law enforcement officers also introduced a special plan to search and detain the criminals.

Police later reported they had found the burnt Peugeot 307 car on a garage cooperative's territory on Nechuya-Levytskoho Street.
The Florida man who invoked the "stand your ground" self-defense after shooting a black man in a dispute over a parking space was charged Monday with manslaughter, officials said.

Monday morning, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office issued the update on behalf of the State Attorney's Office, explaining that charges were being filed.

McGlockton's girlfriend, Britany Jacobs, says Drejka started a confrontation with her while McGlockton was inside.

Michael Drejka shot and killed Markeis McGlockton during an argument over a handicapped parking spot at a convenience store in Clearwater, Florida; Phil Keating reports from Miami.

Drejka was booked at the Pinellas County Jail and bond was set at $100,000. She said Drejka got out, walked to the back of Jacobs' auto, looked at the license plate, and then went to the front, apparently looking for a handicapped sticker there.

After last month's shooting, the owner of the Circle A store told FOX 13 that Drejka had confronted others for parking in the handicapped spot before.

"It took four seconds for Mr. Drejka to make that decision, the conscious decision to murder Markeis McGlockton", Rayner said as she dramatically counted off four seconds.

"I support the State Attorney's decision and will have no further comment as the case continues to work its way through the criminal justice system", Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said in a statement.

The law was changed a year ago to put the burden of proof on prosecutors to disprove a stand your ground claim, instead of on the defense to prove one.

Surveillance footage shows McGlockton walking out of the store and shoving Drejka to the ground.

"He believed that McGlockton was going to come back at him, and he fired in a very short amount of time - four-seconds, probably; somewhere in that range. If you're outraged by the law and don't like the law, then change it".

Michael McGlockton, the dead man's father, told reporters at a news conference days later that his son was protecting his family when he shoved Drejka. "Stand Your Ground laws are wrong and have no place in a civilized society".

Last week, Al Sharpton and the family of Treyvon Martin, who was shot and killed in 2012 by George Zimmerman, attended a rally in Clearwater protesting the controversial law.

"This is a big step forward in the direction of justice, not only for Markeis' family but also for society as a whole", Rayner said in a statement.
Nauru's Baron Waqa - "Doesn't want journalists to investigate the living conditions of refugees"

SRI KRISHNAMURTHI | Pacific Media Centre

AUCKLAND - There has been much wringing of hands over Naurus ban on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for next months Pacific Islands Forum leaders summit.

But there are even more perplexing reports about Canberras relative silence on the issue.

The elephant in the room about the ABC ban that has people tip-toeing through the frangipani and whispering in hushed tones is Canberras asylum seeker detention centre in the small Pacific state of Nauru.

Nauru is the host of the Pacific Islands Forum leaders summit on September 3-6 and the ban on the ABC has been widely condemned by media freedom groups, including the Pacific Media Centre.

The Nauru detention centre has become a significant part of Naurus economy since 2001.
Mexico's Economy Minister said on Friday that bilateral talks with the United States over the future of the NAFTA trade deal will drag into next week, and the timing of Canada's return to the negotiations will depend on how fast they resolve issues.

But the USA negotiators do not want to apply the same guarantees to new Mexican auto plants, the officials said, as the potential threat of 25 percent tariffs would discourage new automotive investment in Mexico to serve the US market.

These officials said U.S negotiators had essentially agreed that a new NAFTA trade deal would exempt existing Mexican auto plants from any "Section 232" tariffs that Trump may impose.

U.S. President Donald Trump took to Twitter Friday evening, praising Mexico and threatening Canada.

At the close of the 3rd consecutive week of discussions in Washington, Guajardo said a deal was still possible by the end of the month.

"We are working like we've been doing for the last 3 weeks and making a lot of advancements".

"Today more than ever, we see an important window of opportunity, a very significant possibility that (pending issues) will be resolved", said Cervantes, who serves as an industry adviser to the Mexican negotiating team.

Before entering the meeting with Lighthizer, Guajardo was asked by reporters whether Canada would take part next week in the talks, and he said "possibly".

Talks are due to continue Friday and include Jesus Seade, economics adviser to Mexico's President-Elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Their Tariffs and Trade Barriers are far too high.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray discussed addressing irregular migration through Mexico and the region, a State Department spokesperson said.

A US-proposed so-called sunset clause that would kill a NAFTA deal unless it is renegotiated every five years has been another major stumbling block in the talks.
DC Police Defies Union and Makes Room to Personally Escort Racist to DC Rally

White Nationalist Jason Kessler and his Klan escorted by DC police.  Getty Image

Over the weekend Donald Trumps racist supporters held a rally in DC on the anniversary of Charlottesville where a woman was killed by a white nationalist last year. The events last year put on full display Trumps compassion for the terrorist group. He has since denounced the group due to an outpour of detest due to his leniency of the groups.

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However over the weekend According to the Washington Post, some D.C. officials including council members Robert C. White Jr. and Charles Allen, and Local 689 are now furious that the D.C. Metro allowed trains to be used to give special treatment.

Giving white supremicists & hate groups a private Metro railcar is so unbelievably wrong & disgraceful. Beyond the horrible precedent it sets, what does it tell the riding public & operators? Plus, its the exact opposite of what @WMATA said theyd do. https://t.co/GSw6lIXjfH  Charles Allen (@charlesallen) August 12, 2018

A little over a week ago, it was announced that D.C. Metro was considering providing separate trains to transport the Klan to downtown D.C. where theyd protest near the White House on behalf of white civil rights.

That idea was supposed to be a no go due to protests, including from the Metros largest union, Transit Union Local 689, which unequivocally said that it was not about to transport white supremacists.

More than 80% of Local 689s membership is people of color, the very people that the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist groups have killed, harassed and violated. The union had declared that it would not play a role in their special accommodation, Union President Jackie Jeter said in a statement.

Turns out a higher power allowed the Klan access to the Vienna Metro Station and were given police escort to board the rear car of a train heading toward Foggy Bottom.The Post reports, once the train arrived at Foggy Bottom, all other passengers were asked to exit first, before the white nationalist were escorted off the train. Counter-protesters who were at the station were kept some 60 feet away. Metro spokesperson Sherry Ly apparently didnt want no problems and claimed that the decisions on escorting the group were made by D.C. police.
Kams Kapsules: Weekly Previews That Make Choosing a Film Fun

For movies opening August 17, 2018.



WIDE RELEASES

Alpha (PG-13 for intense peril) Ice Age tale of survival chronicling the unlikely friendship forged between a lone wolf abandoned by its pack and an injured young man (Kodi Smit McPhee) separated from his tribe. With Leonor Varela, Jens Hulten and Natassia Malthe.

Crazy Rich Asians (PG-13 for profanity and suggestive content) Adaptation of Kevin Kwans semi-autobiographical best seller of the same name revolving around the hostility encountered by a Chinese-American college professor (Constance Wu) when she accompanies her wealthy boyfriend (Henry Golding) home to Singapore for his best friends (Chris Pang) wedding. Cast includes Gemma Chan, Michelle Yeoh, Dr. Ken Jeong and Awkwafina. (In English and Mandarin with subtitles)

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Mile 22 (R for graphic violence and pervasive profanity) Espionage thriller starring Mark Wahlberg as the leader of a tactical CIA team assigned to extract an asset with valuable information (Iko Uwais) from a foreign country before the enemy closes in on him. With John Malkovich, Ronda Rousey and Lauren Cohan. (In English, Russian and Indonesian with subtitles)

INDEPENDENT & FOREIGN

Alt-Right: Age of Rage (Unrated) Political documentary revisiting last summers neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia leading to the murder of counter-demonstrator Heather Heyer. Featuring commentary by Antifa activist Daryle Lamont Jenkins and White supremacist Richard Spencer.

Billionaire Boys Club (R for sexuality, violence, drug use and pervasive profanity) Remake of the 1987 of the fact-based crime thriller, set in L.A. in the Eighties, about a gang of preppies who murder an investor (Kevin Spacey) in their get-rich-quick Ponzi scheme. Co-starring Ansel Elgort, Taron Egerton, Bokeem Woodbine and Emma Roberts.

Do You Trust This Computer?(Unrated) Cautionary documentary warning of the perils of the impending Artificial Intelligence era in which self-learning computers are apt to control virtually every aspect of our lives.

Juliet, Naked (R for profanity) Adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel of the same name about a diehard rock fan (Chris ODowd) whose jaded girlfriend (Rose Byrne) falls in love with the obscure musician (Ethan Hawke) hes become obsessed with. Supporting cast includes Jimmy O. Yang, Megan Dodds and Lily Newmark.

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Minding the Gap (Unrated) Rust Belt documentary, set in Rockford, Illinois, chronicling a dozen years in the lives of three skateboarding BFFs from adolescence to facing adult responsibilities.

A Whale of a Tale (Unrated) Eco-expose revisiting Taiji, the Japanese fishing village denounced for dolphin hunting in the 2010 Oscar-winning documentary, The Cove. (In Japanese with subtitles)

The Wife (R for profanity and some sexuality) Glenn Close plays the title character in this adaptation of Meg Wolitzers best seller of the same name about an aging woman who comes to question the 40 years of self-sacrificing which enabled her husband (Jonathan Pryce) to win the Nobel Prize for literature. With Christian Slater, Max Irons and Elizabeth McGovern.
WATCH: Michael Browns Mom Announces Her Run for Ferguson City Council

ST. LOUIS  The Missouri governors office said Friday it doesnt have the authority to appoint a special prosecutor reinvestigate the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, despite pressure from Browns mother to do so.

Lezley McSpadden said earlier in the day that shed launched an online petition seeking a new investigation into her 18-year-old sons death, a case that sparked months of protests and helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement nationally. McSpadden also announced that she planned to run for a seat on the Ferguson City Council in April.

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A spokeswoman for Republican Gov. Mike. Parson said his office has no legal authority to appoint a special prosecutor in any case. In Missouri, judges can appoint special prosecutors, often at the request of prosecutors who seek to avoid conflicts of interest.

McSpadden has been an activist since her sons death but has never held public office. On Friday, she said had been surrounded by people who provided her with support and motivation, and they knew what happened was wrong and didnt give up the fight.

I learned to walk again, she said. And this is one of my first steps: running for Ferguson City Council.

Her son was unarmed when he was fatally shot during a confrontation with Ferguson officer Darren Wilson, who is white, on Aug. 9, 2014. Witnesses initially said the black teenager had his hands up in surrender at the time of the shooting, though an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice didnt find those accounts credible.

Michael Brown / Darren Wilson

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Wilson, who resigned from the Ferguson police force that November, was later cleared of wrongdoing by a St. Louis County grand jury and the U.S. Justice Department.

McSpaddens appeal to Parson comes just days after longtime St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch lost his seat in the Democratic primary to Wesley Bell, a black Ferguson city councilman. McCullochs announcement in 2014 that no charges would be filed against Wilson sparked widespread protests.

Bell, who faces no Republican challengers in November, ran on a progressive platform that included holding police more accountable. On Friday, it was unclear if Bell would consider reopening the investigation himself. Text and phone messages left with Bell were not returned.

McSpaddens petition says Bells win is a clear mandate from the people of St. Louis to reform the criminal justice system, which first begins with securing justice for my son.

McCulloch, first elected in 1992, drew considerable criticism for not charging Wilson himself and relying on a grand jury to consider the case. He was also accused of guiding the grand jury to its decision, a charge he has strongly denied.

Calls to reopen the Brown investigation also came Friday from Justin Hansford, the executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center. He wrote in an op-ed in a Washington Post that Bells win over McCulloch is a sign of hope and change and that Bell should reopen the case when he becomes prosecutor.


A Chinese official has denied that over 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities are being held in re-education camps in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The official, Hu Lianhe, was answering questions Monday raised by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Hu told the group, The argument that 1 million are detained in re-education centers is completely untrue.

Hu said officials in Xinjiang officials protect the human rights of all citizens equally.

But Hu also said that those who are deceived by religious extremismshall be assisted through resettlement and education.

Last Friday, UN committee member Gay McDougall cited reports that estimate 1.1 million people in Xinjiang are being held in political re-education camps. McDougall also noted reports of an additional 2 million people being required to take part in open re-education camps. Those people are permitted to return to their homes each evening.

The camps are considered outside of Chinas legal system. The Associated Press has reported that many remain in camps for months without formally being charged with anything.

Chinese government officials say they are fighting a rise in Islamic extremism as well as a separatist movement that calls for an independent Uyghur nation.

Earlier on Monday, the state-run Global Times newspaper said the countrys security measures in Xinjiang have helped prevent great tragedy. It said such measures have stopped Xinjiang from becoming Chinas Syria.

McDougall noted on Monday that China did not deny that re-education programs are taking place.

You said that was false, the 1 million. Well, how many were there? Please tell me, McDougall said. And what were the laws on which they were detained?"

In recent years, China has introduced one of the worlds most aggressive policing programs in Xinjiang. Security checkpoints and high-tech surveillance cameras are everywhere.

Since April 2017, witnesses and rights groups have reported that large numbers of Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang have been disappeared and sent to so-called re-education camps.

Last week, the New York Times reported that one of the best-known experts of Uyghur culture, Rahile Dawut, has not been heard from for eight months. Family, friends and others feel sure the professor is being secretly held in a re-education camp.



This story was adapted for VOA Learning English based on reports from Reuters, the Associated Press and the New York Times. Hai Do was the editor.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

deceive - v. to make (someone) believe something that is not true

formally - adv. made or done in an official and usually public way

tragedy - n. a very sad, unfortunate, or upsetting situation

cite - v. to mention (something) especially as an example or to support an idea or opinion

surveillance - n. the act of carefully watching someone or something especially in order to prevent or detect a crime


North and South Korean officials say their leaders will meet in North Koreas capital, Pyongyang, in September.

The announcement followed high-level talks between representatives of both sides on Monday. Officials met in Panmunjom, the neutral village in the border area that separates the two Koreas.

In their statement, the officials did not include a date for the meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.



Kim and Moon met in April for the first time in Panmunjom. In May, they met there again. Moon would become the third South Korean leader to visit Pyongyang if the September meeting takes place.



The meeting would continue a series of diplomatic moves between the two Koreas.

Tensions between the sides eased when Kim accepted Moon's offer for North Koreans to take part in the Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang in February. That helped lead to historic talks between Kim and American President Donald Trump in June. The two leaders met and signed an agreement in Singapore.

The agreement included a promise from North Korea to work toward denuclearization of the Korea Peninsula.

Im Caty Weaver.

VOA News reported this story. Caty Weaver adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter was the editor.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story said that Moon would be the first South Korean leader to visit Pyongyang. Moon would be the third.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

denuclearization - v. to remove nuclear weapons from a country or place
People who request asylum after entering the United States illegally are much more likely to be denied than approved.

That information comes from the U.S. Department of Justice. Out of around 120,000 asylum requests by people who entered the country illegally in 2017, only about 7,000 were approved.

That makes Sergio very lucky. Sergio is a 64-year-old man from Mexico who asked to only be known by his first name. In Spanish, he told VOA his reasoning for coming to the U.S. I came to the United States in 1992 because there was not a lot of work down there, he said.

But under the zero tolerance policy of the administration of President Donald Trump, Sergio was targeted for deportation. That happened after he was arrested for drunkenness in May of last year.

Asylum requests that are made after an illegal entry are called defensive asylum requests. They are handled by the Department of Justice. Asylum requests made by people who came to the U.S. legally are called affirmative asylum requests. They are handled by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

The chances of being approved for defensive asylum got a little better in the first half of 2018. Requests fell to less than 86,000. But approvals remained around 7,000. The approval rate remains extremely low. Even for affirmative asylum requests in 2016, only 10 percent of more than 115,000 were approved.

Disagreement with guard

Sergio was moved to a jail in Orange County, near Los Angeles, where he says a guard insulted him early in his nine months there. Sergio said the guard accused him of being disrespectful and reminded him that he was prisoner.

I said, No, Im not a prisoner,' Sergio answered. 'Im in detention for immigration. I havent committed any crimes.

He says his relationship with the guards got worse from there.

Joel Frost-Tift works for the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project of Catholic Charities. He is Sergios lawyer and requested asylum for him. He said that Sergio suffered from mental illness.

"He did have some medical treatment in detention, but it was clearly very inadequate. He ended up attempting suicide a month before he was released. So I think that's a sign that his medication wasn't right; he wasn't getting adequate care while he was detained.

Getting asylum

A judge agreed with the lawyer that Sergio would not receive good care if he were sent back to Mexico. The judge approved asylum for Sergio on February 15.

But, Frost-Tift said, because the judge did not make a full written or spoken statement, there is no way to know his reasoning.

"Some judges have found that conditions in mental health institutions cause people to face a reasonable possibility of persecution, he said, and in some cases even that they are more likely than not to be tortured."

Petitioners for asylum must prove they have a "reasonable fear" of persecution in their home country. The United Nations defines reasonable fear as at least a 10 percent chance of persecution.

Asylum seekers must also officially request asylum within a year of their arrival in the U.S. Sergio did not do that.

"There are two exceptions to this rule," Frost-Tift explained.

First, the person can show changes to their situation which affect their right to asylum. Or, they must show that a highly unusual situation caused them to delay making their asylum request. He said that both of these things are true for people with mental illness.

Trump administration officials say asylum requests have risen sharply because many people are abusing a broken system.

Michael Bars is a spokesman for USCIS. In a written statement, he said that changes to the agencys interview process have helped slow the large number of requests. But, he said, the current system is often abused and this prevents real asylum seekers from being processed in a timely way.

Sergio is still waiting for the government to send him a visa. He says he is pleased to have been given asylum, but also frustrated. Im frustrated, he said, because Im staying at a shelter.

Free and living in a homeless center in central Los Angeles, Sergio's health has improved and he is ready to start his new life.

Im Alice Bryant.

Mike Sullivan wrote this store for VOA News. Alice Bryant adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story



lucky adj. producing a good result by chance

tolerance n. the willingness to accept feelings, habits or beliefs that are not you own

drunkenness n. caused by drinking too much alcohol

petitioner n. a person who asks for a legal case to be decided by a court

persecution n. to treat someone cruelly or unfairly especially because of race or religious or political beliefs

frustrated adj. to be angry, discouraged or upset because of being unable to do or complete something

interview - n. a meeting at which people talk to each other in order to ask questions and get information
"I ban holding any talks with America".

President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from Iran's nuclear deal with world powers in May and last week the USA began restoring sanctions, exacerbating a financial crisis in Iran that has sent its currency tumbling.

The Associated Press, meanwhile, reported that Khamenei said that negotiation "with the bullying and very eager government of the US means giving it an instrument through which it can add to its hostility". "The corrupt people (officials) should be punished firmly", Khamenei said told a gathering attended by thousands of Iranians, state TV reported. They are exaggerating about possibility of a war with Iran. "Even if we ever-impossible as it is-negotiated with the USA, it would never ever be with the current USA administration", he adds in a follow-up tweet.

The United States reimposed strict sanctions against Iran on Tuesday, with Trump threatening to penalize businesses from third countries that continue to operate in the Islamic Republic.

In remarks carried by state television, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said "along with sanctions, Americans have recently raised two more options, war and talks. We have never started a war and they will not confront Iran militarily", Iran's top authority said in a televised speech.

Trump has been a frequent critic of the Iran nuclear deal and put the sanctions back in place after pulling the United States from the agreement. "I do not call it betrayal but a huge mistake in management".

"Our will to enhance our defense power in all fields will increase if the pressure mounts on Iran", Defence Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami said after unveiling the "fully home-made precision-guided" missile.
A new political party in South Africa wants the government to expel all foreigners.

The African Basic Movement party claims that foreigners bring crime into the country. It also says they are responsible for high unemployment.

Political observers say the party is unlikely to win many seats in the South African general elections next year. But they say its appearance shows that the wave of nationalist, populist politics in other countries has come to South Africa.

Thembelani Ngubane is the head of the African Basic Movement, which he started last year. Ngubane says his group already has tens of thousands of members and signatures that support a plan to expel all foreigners by the end of the year. Those numbers could not be independently confirmed.

The party recently registered to compete in the 2019 elections. But critics question whether its goals follows South Africa's progressive, inclusive constitution. They also wonder whether the party's positions are dangerously close to hate speech, which is illegal in South Africa.

"We should get rid of all foreigners who are here, they are taking South Africa's jobs," Ngubane told VOA.

"They sleep with our sisters. They give them children. They get married to them, so that they get South African citizenship. When they get them, they abandon them ... So South Africa is like chaos. And they are criminals. We can't catch them. They have no fingerprints because they are from other countries."

Dangerous direction

About two million foreign nationals live in South Africa. The latest population count shows that most come from neighboring countries, such as Zimbabwe. However, the actual number is thought to be higher.

The rise in xenophobic politics is extremely worrying, says Sharon Ekambaram of the rights group Lawyers for Human Rights. She warns it could lead to xenophobic violence because South Africa sometimes experiences violent clashes between unsatisfied citizens and foreign nationals.

"I can't even articulate how dangerous this is for our democracy," Ekambaram said, talking about the rise of Ngubane's party.

"This is clearly a group that is racist. They're xenophobic  and I don't think there's a place for those kinds of people in our country.

She also said that, if the group has registered as a party, election officials should then investigate whether that is constitutional.

Ekambaram added that the party's ideas are weak. She said researchers have found that foreign nationals are often job creators, and do not cause more violent crime than South African citizens.

ANC opens the door

Another observer, Ralph Mathekga, says he is concerned, but not that the African Basic Movement will beat the ruling African National Congress or ANC in the elections. What worries him, he says, is that the movements extreme ideas will enable other nationalist beliefs to gain standing.

Mathekga believes the many corruption cases involving the ANC and its inability to reduce unemployment and poverty make it easier for other parties to compete.

"I'm not surprised," he told VOA about the rise of the African Basic Movement.

"South Africa's politics is going in that direction, of populism. You have always had that level of leftist populism that has been there within South African politics. But the thing that is very, very different is the emergence of nationalist populism.

Pointing to the United States, Ngubane praises President Donald Trump's policies against illegal immigration. He shares the U.S. leader's beliefs.

"Donald Trump is putting Americans first. Here, we are putting South Africans first. You see, you cannot let your child sleep on [an] empty stomach and feed your neighbor's child. That is the problem. Here in South Africa, our children sleeps on empty stomach. Our neighbors like Pakistan, Chinese, they sleep on full stomach. We don't want that."

Im Phil Dierking.

Anita Powell reported this story for VOANews.com. Phil Dierking adapted her report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

What do you think is the correct policy to have toward immigrants and illegal immigrants? Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

__________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

abandon - v. to leave and never return to (someone who needs protection or help)

articulate - v. able to express ideas clearly and effectively in speech or writing

chaos - n. complete confusion and disorder

emergence - n. the act of becoming known or coming into view

fingerprints - n. the mark that is made by pressing the tip of a finger on a surface

rid - v. to no longer have or be affected or bothered by (someone or something that is unwanted or annoying)

signature - n. a person's name written in that person's handwriting

stomach - n. the organ in your body where food goes and begins to be digested after you swallow it

xenophobic - adj. fearing or hating strangers or foreigners
The cost of living in the United States is going up, notes writer Alissa Quart. As reported in the New York Post, Quart points to the costs of housing, education, health care and child care in particular.

At the same time, a new study found that half of Americans born in the 1980s are falling behind their parents economically. The study is a project of researchers at Stanford University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Their report is called The Fading American Dream.

Together, these findings show that many younger adults are experiencing downward mobility. In other words, they are not doing as well, either socially or economically, as their parents were at the same age.

Will things always get better?

The idea of downward mobility is especially troubling for Americans, writes Robert Samuelson in The Washington Post. He says most U.S. citizens believe that, over time, the amount of money they earn will rise and life will get easier.

And for some, that belief has come true.

In the Fading American Dream study, researchers found that 90 percent of Americans born in the 1940s grew up to earn more than their parents. That percentage is so high, say the researchers, partly because of historical events. In the 1930s, the U.S. economy was in a severe depression, and most peoples earnings went down. But in the 1950s, the economy expanded, and most peoples incomes went up. As a result, almost all Americans born in the 1940s experienced upward mobility.

But among members of this generation, only about 60 percent of their children earned more money than they did. And only 50 percent of children born in the following 10 years were earning more than their parents at the same age.

In other words, Americans ease of living is going down. In technical terms, the economists write, Absolute mobility has fallen sharply over the past 50 years.

The middle class

Alissa Quart wrote a book about the financial difficulties of everyday Americans. It is called Squeezed: Why Our Families Cant Afford America.

In her book, Quart tells about teachers who are struggling to pay for housing, child care and other regular costs. One high school teacher said he drives for ride sharing service Uber at night to earn more money. He corrects students papers between riders.

Another man, a college professor, only earns enough to pay for simple food, such as pasta and potatoes, for his children. A different college professor turned to government assistance to feed her child and pay for a doctor.

Quart says even lawyers increasingly cannot earn an income that enables them to meet their needs. The problem of decreasing incomes in their field is made worse by debt they may have from law school.

What caused these problems?

Quart and the economists who studied these issues say many things have led to lower incomes and downward mobility.

The economic recession of 2007 to 2009 is partly to blame, they say.

Modern technology also plays a part. Quart says robots threaten to reduce the earnings of health care workers, truckers, reporters, and people who work at supermarkets, drug stores and tax preparation services.

In The Washington Post, Robert Samuelson noted that poor schools, a weak housing industry and too many government rules also are to blame.

With all these things  and more  partly responsible, what is the solution? These experts say the answer is complex. But all point to one issue that needs to be examined: economic inequality. Quartz writes that while America is one of the richest countries in the world, it also has one of the biggest divides between the wealthy and the poor.

The researchers in the Fading American Dream study make a similar observation. They say raising GDP -- the gross domestic product  will not significantly improve the economic situation of most Americans. A higher GDP may help only those who are already doing well.

Instead, the economists say, the United States could try to repeat something Americans born in the 1940s experienced. As those children grew up, they almost all benefited from a better economy.

Im Jonathan Evans.

Kelly Jean Kelly reported this story for VOA Learning English. Her story was based on material from VOANews.com, The New York Post, The Washington Post, the Brookings Institution, and the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report. George Grow was the editor.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

fading - adj. of or related to losing strength

downward mobility - n. the movement of people into lower economic or social groups

upward mobility - n. the movement of people into higher economic or social groups

squeezed - adj. being pressured or forced

afford - v. to be able to pay for something

gross domestic product - n. the value of goods and services produced in a country during a year

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When Google first launched Chrome OS, it was basically an operating system built to support a single app: the Chrome web browser. The idea was that you could use Chrome to access thousands of web apps and millions of websites but early Chromebooks were often criticized for being virtually useless if you didnt have an internet connection or if there wasnt a web app that could do what you needed.

In recent years web apps have gotten more powerful (often adding offline capabilities, among other things), and Chrome OS has gotten a lot more useful thanks to the addition of support for Android apps and the Google Play Store. Theres also beta support for running Linux apps. And soon you may be able to install Windows 10 on a Chromebook too.

According to a report from xda-developers, it looks like Google may be planning a new feature called Campfire that allows you to install Windows on a Chromebook and switch between Chrome OS and Windows by rebooting.

The feature would sort of be Googles answer to Apples Boot Camp feature, which makes it possible to dual boot macOS and Windows on a single Mac computer. Apple added the feature for folks that want to use Mac hardware and software but who may need to run some applications that are only available for Windows. Its likely that Googles Campfire feature would serve the same purpose.

Technically Chromebooks are just laptop computers that happen to run Chrome OS instead of Windows, Mac, or another Linux-based operating system. But since theyre designed for Chrome OS they tend to have keyboards with some Chrome-specific keys and they tend to have some security features that keep you from doing things like loading an alternate operating system and dual booting unless you enable developer mode (which also disables some of those security features).

Xda-developers says Campfire will allow you to dual boot Windows and Chrome OS without switching to developer mode, which means you get all the benefits of Chrome OS and Windows.

There is one major catch though: Windows takes up a lot more disk space than Chrome OS. There are a lot of cheap Chromebooks on the market with just 16GB or 32GB of eMMC storage. You wont be able to install Windows 10 on any of those devices.

According to xda-developers, youll need a computer with at least 40GB of storage space (10GB for Chrome OS and 30GB for Windows), and youll probably want even more than that.

Its not clear at this point if Google plans to make Campfire available for every Chromebook with more than 40GB of storage or just for specific models. It wouldnt be surprising to see the feature included in upcoming Google PIxelbook laptops or to be rolled out as a software update for previous-gen Google Chromebooks with 64GB of storage or more. But theres no word on whether youll be able to install Windows on existing or upcoming Chromebooks from companies like Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, or Lenovo.

I also wouldnt hold my breath waiting for Windows support for Chromebooks with ARM-based processors. While Microsoft has developed a version of Windows 10 that runs on computers with ARM chips, you cant currently buy Windows 10 on ARM and install it yourself. You need to buy a computer that comes with it pre-installed, and I somehow doubt that Microsoft is going to want to encourage PC makers to ship computers with Windows 10 and Chrome OS pre-loaded.

A couple of years ago a handful of PC makers wanted to ship tablets that could dual boot Windows and Android, but Microsoft pressured them to drop those plans.

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The push for what would be the leaders' third summit since April comes amid renewed worries surrounding a nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang.

The announcement released after almost two hours of talks led by the rivals' chiefs for inter-Korean affairs was remarkably thin on details.

The exact date and location of their next meeting have yet to be decided, but at their historic April summit in Panmunjom they agreed Moon would visit Kim in Pyongyang during the autumn.

US officials familiar with the talks, however, told Reuters that North Korea had yet to agree to a timeline for eliminating its nuclear arsenal or to disclose its size, which USA estimates have put at between 30 and 60 warheads.

While a cease-fire exists between the USA and North Korea due to an armistice, the two governments never agreed to a truce to declare peace after the Korean War.

The rapid rapprochement between the two neighbours that began this year paved the way for a landmark meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.

Ri Son Gwon, the head of the North Korean delegation, told reporters that officials agreed on a particular date, but wouldn't say when because he wanted to "keep reporters wondering", the Associated Press reported.

He said the next summit in Pyongyang would help improve cross-border ties by allowing the two leaders to discuss the North's denuclearization and how to establish peace on the Korean peninsula. A string of North Korean weapons tests a year ago, during which Pyongyang claimed to have completed its nuclear arsenal, had many in Asia anxious that Washington and Pyongyang were on the brink of war.

Cho said the two sides had exchanged views on the North's denuclearization and on a peace mechanism to replace the armistice that ended fighting during the Korean War. "Washington wants North Korea to be more forthcoming about its nuclear weapons stockpiles, production facilities and a timetable for getting rid of them".

Seoul has been preparing for possible economic collaboration with Pyongyang that could go ahead when sanctions are lifted.

The South Korean envoy said he urged Pyongyang to accelerate its current nuclear negotiations with the United States.

Cho said that he urged North Korea to speed up its nuclear talks with the U.S., while Ri said that Pyongyang was making efforts to disarm.

The North has urged the United States to end the sanctions, saying it had made goodwill gestures, including a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests, the dismantling of a nuclear site, and the return of the remains of some USA soldiers killed in the Korean War. For its part, Washington cancelled an annual joint military exercise with South Korea that had taken place in August in previous years.
The theft of an empty plane by an airline worker who performed dangerous loops before crashing into a remote island in Puget Sound illustrated what aviation experts have long known: One of the biggest potential perils for commercial air travel is airline or airport employees causing mayhem.

The greatest threat we have to aviation is the insider threat, said Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent and transportation security expert. Here we have an employee who was vetted to the level to have access to the aircraft and had a skill set proficient enough to take off with that plane.

Video showed the Horizon Air Q400, a turboprop plane that seats 76 people, doing large loops and other dangerous maneuvers as the sun set on Puget Sound. The flight lasted about 75 minutes, and ended when he crashed into the small island after being chased by military jets. The two F-15C aircraft scrambled from Portland didnt fire the plane, authorities said.

Southers said the man could have caused mass destruction.

If he had the skill set to do loops with a plane like this, he certainly had the capacity to fly it into a building and kill people on the ground, he said.

A U.S. official briefed on the matter told The Associated Press the man was Richard Russell. The official wasnt authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity. He is presumed to have died in the crash.

Officials said he was a 3.5-year Horizon employee and had clearance to be among aircraft, but that to their knowledge, he wasnt a licensed pilot. He took the empty plane from a maintenance area.

Its unclear how Russell attained the skills to do loops in the aircraft, authorities said. Ground service agents direct aircraft for takeoff and gate approach and de-ice planes, as well as handle baggage.

Gary Beck, CEO of Horizon Air, said it wasnt clear how the man knew to start the engine, which requires a series of switches and levers. At a news conference, officials from Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air said that they are working with authorities.

Last nights event is going to push us to learn what we can from this tragedy so that we can ensure this does not happen again at Alaska Air Group or at any other airline, said Brad Tilden, CEO of Alaska Airlines. Investigators expect they will be able to recover both the cockpit voice recorder and the event data recorder from the plane.

Russell could be heard on audio recordings talking to air traffic controllers, who tried to convince him to land the airplane. There is a runway just off to your right side in about a mile, the controller says, referring to an airfield at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Oh man. Those guys will rough me up if I try and land there, Russell responded, later adding This is probably jail time for life, huh?

Later Russell said: Ive got a lot of people that care about me. Its going to disappoint them to hear that I did this [] Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess.

Russells family said in a statement that they are stunned and heartbroken. They referenced the recordings and said and that its clear Russell, who went by the nickname Beebo, didnt intend to harm anyone and he was right in saying that there are so many people who loved him. AP
China may be holding as many as one million members of its Muslim Uighur minority in re-education camps in its western region of Xinjiang, according to United Nations human rights experts.

Speaking in Geneva on Aug. 10 during the opening session of a two-day review into Chinas policies, Gay McDougall, a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, cited credible reports that China had turned the western region into something resembling a massive internment camp, shrouded in secrecy, according to reports by Associated Press.

Earlier, Yu Jianhua, Chinas ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, pointed to economic progress and improved living standards in the region.

Xinjiang, a Chinese region the size of Alaska, has become one of the worlds most heavily policed places. Bloomberg reported in January on government experiments with facial recognition systems that alert authorities when targeted people venture more than 300 meters beyond designated safe areas.

Local governments have also ordered residents to install satellite-tracking systems in their cars, while people must submit to facial scans to enter markets, buy fuel or visit places such as the capital Urumqis main bus terminal.

Chinas President Xi Jinping said the country should strike first against Islamist extremism after deadly attacks involving Uighurs in 2013 and 2014, as well as reports of some fighting in Syria.

Asked about the re-education camps in a regular briefing on July 27, Chinas Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said: The Chinese government fully respects peoples religious freedom, and we guarantee that in accordance with law. All ethnic groups and the people in all regions in China enjoy full freedom of religious belief. Bloomberg
Two more Chinese drug developers are seeking initial public offerings in Hong Kong, adding to the growing wave of biotech firms taking advantage of the citys new listing rules.

Suzhou Kintor Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Frontier Biotechnologies are planning Hong Kong stock offerings that could each raise about USD300 million, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The companies could list as soon as this year, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private.

Ascletis Pharma Inc. was the first biotech firm to list in Hong Kong after the stock exchange introduced new rules that allowed IPOs from unprofitable companies from the sector. Cancer-treatment developer Innovent Biologics Inc. and U.S.-based Stealth BioTherapeutics Inc. are among the biotech firms that have filed listing applications since the rule change.

Shares of Ascletis and Chinese drugmaker BeiGene Ltd., which completed a secondary listing in the city this week, are both trading below their offer prices.

Listing preparations for Frontier and Kintor are at an early stage, and details of the potential offerings could change, the people said. A Hong Kong-based external representative for Kintor said she couldnt immediately comment, while Frontier didnt immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kintor focuses on treatments for cancer and cardiovascular diseases. The company recently hired Eugene Huang, a former Jefferies Financial Group Inc. research analyst, as its chief financial officer. In June, it delisted from Chinas National Equities Exchange and Quotations, an over-the-counter market known as the New Third Board.

Nanjing-based Frontier, whose backers include Huaxin Century Investment Group and Shenzhen Capital Group, is a clinical-stage drug developer that focuses on HIV treatments. Bloomberg
A German man has learned the hard way that practicing journalism in China, even for a class project, could lead to serious trouble.

David Missal, 24, was pursuing a masters degree in journalism and communication at prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing. He was due to return to Germany yesterday after immigration authorities told him his student visa was canceled and he had a week to leave China.

Missal said he thinks thats because he reported on the plight of jailed human rights lawyers in a journalism class. Missal said a Tsinghua representative this year warned him twice against pursuing the politically sensitive subject, but he went ahead anyway because he wanted to get to learn Chinese society and politics.

In a way, the last two months I did get to learn more Chinese society and politics, Missal said, referring to his own case.

China detained 300 people nationwide on July 9, 2015, as part of its biggest crackdown on human rights lawyers and activists. Several received lengthy sentences for subversion of state power while a few still await sentencing.

That action against Missal underscores Chinas extreme sensitivity to foreign attention to the crackdown, word of which has rarely appeared in Chinas entirely state controlled media and on the heavily policed Chinese internet.

Missal said his work was never published beyond his personal blog and YouTube, which he thinks was seen by less than 100 people.

Tsinghuas propaganda office said it could not immediately comment and had to look into the case. AP
Dear Sir,

Under article 20 of Law n. 7/90/M, of August 6, I hereby use my lawful right to reply to the news published by Macau Daily Times, on July 31, 2018, page 3, regarding the statements made by Mr. David Quartermain, about Macao Polytechnic Institute (MPI). Consequently, I request the below statement to be published in one of the two subsequent publications of your newspaper in accordance with the law:

It is not true that David Quartermain was a professor at Macao Polytechnic Institute. Nor was he full-time faculty, according to the existing Personnel Charter of Macao Polytechnic Institute. It appears that, perhaps due to the specialized nature of his work, that he has not provided a clear understanding of the overall picture of teaching and scientific research work at MPI. This may have led to his ungrounded statements and complaints about MPI. In actual fact, he was an ESP Trainer at the MPI-Bell Centre of English, and as such was hired by MPI on the basis of the Contract of Management between Bell Educational Services, Cambridge, and Macao Polytechnic Institute. This means he only had responsibilities for English language training.

MPI-Bell Centre of English was established in 2003 through the Contract of Management between Bell Educational Services Ltd and Macao Polytechnic Institute. Under the provisions of this, MPI granted David Quartermain a fixed-term contract in June, 2003, which was then renewed multiple times by mutual consent.

David Quartermain informed the MPI Board of Management by letter on April 11, 2018, of his intention to resign from his job and unilaterally terminate the contract. As a result, the heading that states End of contract, reason unknown for David Quartermain cannot be the true story.

David Quartermain did not give a true description about the work at the Gaming Teaching and Research Centre (GTRC). After David Quartermain agreed in writing to work at GTRC in November 2016, on the basis of a new contract, the MPI Board of Management ended his appointment as the Deputy Director at MPI-Bell Centre of English and assigned him to GTRC as an ESP trainer. Due to his qualifications and experience in English teaching, GTRC arranged for him to teach English to a class of foreign students. At the same time, he was asked to do a range of other tasks, such as revising and proofreading English manuscripts, working a total 36 hours a week. All of the other teachers at GTRC carry a full workload. In addition, The Gaming Teaching and Research Centre at Macao Polytechnic Institute has always dealt with all cases of suspected cheating according to the relevant MPI Regulations. In the 2017/2018 academic year, three cases of suspected cheating were flagged up at GTRC; two of them have been dealt with seriously  the students involved have been disciplined. The third case is in the process of appeal according to the MPI Regulations. Therefore, there has been no cover up of students cheating. David Quartermains complaints about cheating at GTRC cannot, therefore, be true.

The MPI-Bell Centre of English has investigated the alleged behavioral incident in Xinjiang and has concluded that no such reported incident occurred during the period in question. In October 2017, a complaint was made regarding the alleged inappropriate use of a slang term from a pop song. The Centres management immediately met with both parties involved after receiving the complaint. Following the established procedures, a written notice was issued. All parties accepted this outcome.

On behalf of

Macao Polytechnic Institute

LEI HEONG IOK

PRESIDENT

Editors Note: We publish the letter from IPM in full in accordance with the invoked legislation. However, part of the IPMs allegations were published by MDT on August 6 (IPM planning to file lawsuit against whistleblower, page 3). Moreover, in his letter, Dr Lei Heong Iok confirms that some of the facts which we exposed did occur, but he has a different version of events for each matter and declares that all issues were dealt with. Dr Lei also says the heading that states End of contract, reason unknown for David Quartermain cannot be the true story. I commend a re-reading of the text to Dr Lei, which refers to Mr Quartermains dismissal as deputy director of MPI-Bell Center in 2016 and not to his quitting IPM in July 2018. Last, but not least, IPM failed to comment upon and clarify other issues and accusations much more important to the public, like the hiring of unqualified teachers, lack of teacher and student assessment, as well as guangxi over merit-based promotions. We tried to make inquires to the institute on those matters, but so far, we have received no answer. PC
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak failed Friday to win a court order barring the media from discussing the merits of corruption charges against him ahead of the start of his trial on Feb. 12.

Najib has pleaded not guilty to seven charges of criminal breach of trust, abuse of power and money laundering in a case related to the alleged multibillion-dollar looting of the 1MDB state investment fund that led to his stunning electoral defeat three months ago.

After hearing lengthy arguments from both prosecutors and defense lawyers, High Court Judge Mohamad Nazlan Mohamad Ghazali ruled that a gag on the media would be a major incursion on freedom of speech and expression.

He said there are existing laws on contempt and defamation, and the risk of prejudice is quite remote since Malaysia doesnt have a jury system. A gag order does not promote the law as an instrument of justice, the judge said, and set trial dates spanning two months from Feb. 12.

Najibs lawyers said they will appeal the judges decision because public sentiment wanting Najib to be convicted had led to many articles inferring his guilt, which could deny him a fair trial.

Najib, 65, has accused Malaysias new government of seeking political vengeance and vowed to clear his name in his trial. He didnt speak to the media Friday but wrote on Facebook a day earlier that he was confident of winning the trial.

Through a fair trial, I am confident I can defend myself. I am confident I will be found not guilty of all the charges, he said.

All of the charges against him involve the transfer of 42 million ringgit (USD10.3 million) into his bank accounts from SRC International, a former unit of the 1MDB fund that international investigators say was looted of billions by Najibs associates.

Abuse of power and breach of trust carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each count. Each money-laundering count carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison and a fine of not less than five times the sum laundered.

Najib set up 1MDB when he took power in 2009 for the stated purpose of promoting economic development, but the fund amassed billions in debts and is being investigated in the U.S. and several other countries for alleged cross-border embezzlement and money laundering.

Public anger led to the defeat of Najibs long-ruling coalition in May 9 elections and ushered in the first change of power since Malaysia gained independence from Britain in 1957. The new government reopened investigations stifled under Najibs rule and barred him and his wife from leaving the country. Police also seized jewelry and valuables valued at more than 1.1 billion ringgit ($270.2 million) from properties linked to Najib. AP
NASA successfully launched a spacecraft toward the sun on Sunday, hoping to increase scientific understanding of how our star works.

The Parker Solar Probes departure promises to set a plethora of records, including speediest spacecraft, highest velocity while leaving Earth and closest solar approach. It will also mark the first robotic visit to a uniquely hostile environment: the unstable atmosphere of a giant ball of perpetual nuclear fusion.

The probe lifted off at 3:31 a.m. Eastern time from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket sporting a rare third stage, giving it extra oomph to boost the payload into an interplanetary trajectory. The launch speed of 43,000 miles per hour (69,000 kilometers per hour) was expected to be the fastest of any previous launch because of the pace required to set a course directly to the sun.

The probe failed to launch in its original Saturday slot after missing a 45-minute window, NASA said.

We always say that luck has absolutely nothing to do with this business, but I will take all that I can get, ULA Chief Executive Officer Tory Bruno said in an interview Friday. The alliance is a joint venture of Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp.

With a gravity boost from the sun, the Parker will attain a top speed of 430,000 mph  about 120 miles a second  at its closest approach of only 3.8 million miles, becoming the fastest human-made object to hurtle through the solar system.

The probe will investigate two key questions about solar physics: How does the solar wind start and attain speeds of as much as 1.8 million mph? And why is the suns surface, at 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 Celsius), just a tiny fraction of the million-plus degree corona?
Political science and international relations expert Arnaldo Goncalves, who is a visiting professor at the Macau Polytechnic Institute, has been conducting research into the relations between Portugal and China and has authored eight books in the areas of political thought, law, political science and international relations.

Recently, Goncalves participated in the 25th World Congress of Political Science held in Brisbane, Australia, where he presented a paper titled Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions (SARs): Chinas Southern Frontier?

Interviewed by the Times, Goncalves touched on issues such as the premature integration of the SARs into the Chinese province of Guangdong before the treaties that guarantee both territories autonomy from the mainland expire.

Macau Daily Times (MDT)  You believe a premature integration of the SARs in the Chinese province of Guangdong has been occurring. Can you explain to us your perspective on the topic that you took to the International Political Science Association (IPSA) World Congress in more detail?

Arnaldo Goncalves (AG)  What we have been seeing in the last 20 years is that, even though there are no changes to the law and the statute of the SARs, the same does not happen regarding the environment. There is a very high [degree of] pressure on the State Council and the Office for Hong Kong (HK) and Macau [of the State Council] to not just follow the policies [in] general terms but also to address the concrete policies and this has created a situation that I consider bizarre because there are two Chief Executives (CE) in the SARs, with each one of them having several secretaries in charge of sectorial policies and we start to understand that there are messages passed [from the Central government directly] to each of the sectorial policies, like a parallel government. This situation is particularly visible in the limitations to the actions of the CEs, not just on the major topics, but also regarding the daily interventions, creating a situation that leads to the constant use of slogans in a Maoist style.

My communication is on the fact that from the official point-

of-view, the borders of China [are] in the Border Gate and on the border that separates [Hong Kong] from Shenzhen. Due to the basic laws and the joint declarations, in fact, what we have seen in the last 20 years [is] the displacement of such borders to the coastal borders of Hong Kong and Macau, blurring the borders of control of people and goods that existed between Hong Kong and Shenzhen and Macau and Zhuhai to the point [that] they [have almost] vanished.

MDT  What is the relation of this border movement with regional integration projects such as the Greater Bay Area?

AG  The [Greater Bay Area] policy is clearly to seduce businessmen to join the Guangdong strategy of projecting the provinces importance [in the context of China and worldwide]. Since the companies held by these tycoons are completely entangled with economic interests in the Guangdong province in a way that sometimes it is even hard to differentiate them, what it does is to mobilize them for such strategies and all initiatives that can happen in relation to that.

[On] paper, the change of Hong Kong and Macau to statutes close to the other provinces of China would happen in 2047 and 2049, respectively, but in reality this is accelerating in a vertiginous way. This period of 50 years is being shortened also due to the fact that, as I mentioned, the business community of Macau and Hong Kong are deeply rooted in the Guangdong province. They travel a lot to such cities to check on their businesses and that is one of the reasons why they often praise the policy of the Greater Bay Area. This policy is in fact, an old project with a new name, which means the absorption of the Special Administrative Regions by Guangdong province.

MDT  Will the Hong Kong-

Zhuhai-Macau (HKZM) Bridge be a catalyst for that process? What are the consequences?

AG  The Bridge will constitute a psychological factor to accelerate this territorial integration, physically, economically and in my perspective, politically [too]. The great challenge that I think will be in place for the observers will be to see how this political transition will occur in terms of the leadership of the two SARs. I think Macau residents need to prepare themselves [for] the fact that sooner or later the Chief Executive will stop coming directly from the [local] community and will be someone appointed by Beijing, from the Chinese community, from the Chinese diaspora that settled in the SARs, who is of course [someone] that fulfills the criteria of the seven years [to be a permanent resident] and be a supporter or very close to the [Chinese] Communist Party.

Thats the position of Xi Jinping, contrary to the [position of] Deng Xiaoping that had a clear separation between the State and the party. Xi says China is the State and the State is the Party, without any separations. This was very clear starting from the end of Xis first mandate and the start of the second one. Xi assumed himself as the Paramount Leader of China or how Chinese say, the Core Leader and [] assumed a posture that is in all similar to the Maoist tradition. Sooner or later, we are going to see the road links connecting all the new landfills to the Peninsula and the Islands [Taipa and Coloane] but also to the other islands that are under [the jurisdiction of] China. I think maybe in 20 years (or maybe less), all this will be connected and will not have any separation anymore.

MDT  Is local society opposed to this premature absorption?

AG  There is no opposition in Macau; we dont even know what [that is]. And, in fact, as I see it, the [possible] strategy of such opposition has not been well disclosed. I can say that the opposition in Macau [to Beijings ideas] has been frozen in time due to the political battles of the 1990s, after the events at Tiananmen [Square].

The ideology, the values and the goals are the same as the ones back in the 1990s and not similar to the goals or the aims that exist in 2017 or 2018.

The political message of [for example] New Macau [New Macau Association] easily became obsolete and only with the new blood of Sulu Sou and Jason Chao [has it] had some update, but even in this case, this happened by imitating Hong Kong and not something generated locally.

This is why Macau does not face any problems [of opposition to the government], contrary to what happens in Hong Kong, and the current CE and all the upcoming ones just need to obey loyally  the guidelines that come from Beijing and annually go to Beijing to pay homage to the leaders and ensure things work fine in this mechanical way.

MDT  Why do you think there is not an opposition like that in Hong Kong?

AG  Firstly, it is because Macau always had little political conscientiousness and then its just like the Belt and Road initiative. Whats the real possibility of Macau, a place of a little over 30 square kilometers of area and of a little over 600,000 people of participating from a project of such nature? There isnt one! Where are the service companies, the marketing, the information and new technologies? There is no business structure that allows Macau to add anything to this project. It just doesnt exist! In Hong Kong, yes, there are some. Hong Kong can be considered a Congress and Exhibition Center, [whereas] Macau doesnt have the capacity to stand alone with this. I think that it is a bit naive to use [] such wording in the official speeches and to classify Macau as a Conference [and Exhibition] Center.

MDT  Do you anticipate any changes at that level in economic terms?

AG  I cant see [or perceive] any changes [to] the economic model of Macau. Macau will always be led by the gaming sector and all the other sectors are secondary and small add-

ups. Our only differentiating factor that Macau possesses and that the CEs [current and former one] have been addressing, either by their initiative or by order of China or both, is the connection of Macau to the Portuguese-speaking countries, which is something that Hong Kong cannot do.

Another area in which Macau could develop would be in terms of heritage; there isnt a realistic or courageous policy for the heritage protection. There are trade-offs happening and this happens because the people that have interests in the real estate business are inside the Legislative Assembly (AL) and the policies need the ALs approval. They will never accept policies that will go against their interests. This is really a shame.

MDT  What are some of the concrete measures that could be taken?

AG  In all big cities, the area of the historical center is not open to traffic and its solely dedicated to pedestrians. This opens the historical center to the city to the population so they can make a proper use of it. In Macau, this was never possible and the historical center is crushed by the buildings and its crushed by the thousands of people that visit it in very poor conditions, without any space or any tranquility to visit these places.

They are like mobs that invade the city escorted by tour guides that drag them through places where they dont possess any mood or peace of mind to enjoy whatever they are visiting. We could have a real policy for these visits, a modern thing, but for that we need to have political courage and determination from the government, as well as [the] capacity to state that to the interests that surround real estate. Unfortunately, that does not happen.

Lisbon to host the 26 th ipsa world congress in 2020

The International Political Science Association (IPSA) has announced that the city of Lisbon, Portugal, has been selected to host the 26th IPSA World Congress of Political Science. The event will be held at Universidade Nova de Lisboa from July 25 to 30, 2020. The scientific association expects to draw a huge participation from its over 3,500 members around the world, in a city that the committee described as a top tourist destination known for its art, culture and cuisine. Arnaldo Goncalves told the Times that he will represent Macau in this congress.
Severo Portela

If the Legislative Assembly members were only about establishing it as a space of free speech, no matter how spirited or spicy the exchanges between peers may sound in-house, should they be amplified outside through the essential work of a free press, we would take it as another ordinary Saussure day without any man biting a dog.

However, the heated rounds the nine legislators (mostly Chief Executive nominated or appointees) fired upon pro-democracy Sou Ka Hou went well-beyond fair political criticism, bordered on harassment and intimidation; in a word, it was ugly. But given the apparently orchestrated blitzkrieg against the directly-elected legislator, fresh from an infamous suspension, the Legislative Assembly will regret it as the day it put up a chorus to fry the New Macau Associations Sulu Sou; and while doing the roast, the up-titled gang of nine severely denounced a particular pathos. We will select from the accusations, inconveniences, improprieties, as we see it, not least a discrepancy here or a slander there.

In short, the nine Legislative Assembly members joined voices to criticize Sulu Sou on his views and means by which he challenged the re-creation of a Municipal Affairs Bureau untainted by popular representation. Albeit, the real motive to smear Sou looks likely to originate from one of the copycat AL rules and procedures that allows for a last-minute proposal to amend the final draft of a law. While Sulu was away, the Legislative Assembly voted to replace the Municipal Affairs Bureau with the Public Security Police as the authority to notify whenever residents decide to exert their Right to Freedom of Assembly (Basic Law; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).

Perhaps due to an understandable unease to trust the process of notification of demonstration and public assembly to the police authority that in the end may or may not give the go ahead for a political right, Sulu Sou tried to insert an amendment to upgrade the process to the political level: Chief Executive or its government. That is what and why the bell rang in the club of the gentlemen appointees.

Back to the floor, as we stated above, the roasting of Sulu Sou denounced a rather dangerous pathos not dissimilar to the one that inspired the retouching of the judiciary and legal system the cause of so many shipwrecks.

If we care to notice the rationale that pervades the criticism which the nine meted out to pro-democracy legislator Sou Ka Hou, we find it was about democracy, yes, democracy, and parliamentary culture, yes, parliamentary.

Lao Ngai and Pang Chuan not only accused Sulu of breach of solemnity in the Nam Van Lakes House that still remembers how tolerant it was of foul-mouthed Fong (a nice gentleman, indeed) but tried also to link him rather inappropriately to putative pro-democracy pairs in the Legislative Council of a region they did not name as Hong Kong.

Veteran conservative in the local lingo, Kou Hoi In accused Sulu of abuse of the rules, theater, boastfulness, and to end strongly with a curious statement, He uses democracy to cover up his absolutist ideas.

Ma Chi Seng, who some like Vickers contend will be the one to take over as CE as the princeling of the last of the three historical families, went further to demonstrate that what Sulu does cannot be democracy because it is not based on truth, on facts, just slogansso does not qualify as democracy.

Finally, Kou Hoi In found that those who are arrogant and uncompromising, who abuse their power, do not respect the rules and do not have the qualities to be a democrat (forgive us the capitals but we are quoting here) CANNOT TALK ABOUT DEMOCRACY.

P.S.: Spooky and more.
Estimates vary on how many white nationalist protesters will show up. The changes will go into effect at 6 p.m. Friday.

But similar far-right protests have been dwarfed by counterprotesters.

As reported previous year, following Heyer's death, "about 1,000 people attended a memorial service for Heyer in Charlottesville".

What is this protest about?

According to The Week, "Charlottesville will be subject to a heavy police presence this weekend, and the primary organizer of last year's white nationalist event, Jason Kessler, was denied a permit for a concurrent demonstration this year".

For much of Saturday, the city appeared mainly focused on healing, with a number of vigils and memorial services scheduled throughout the weekend.

Last year's rally came amid debate over the renaming of two parks honoring Confederate generals.

"The statue itself is symbolic of a lot of larger issues", Kessler said a year ago.

Fistfights and screaming matches broke out, and the rally officially was called off.

And a march from a morning Washington Park remembrance of last year's tragedy to Fourth Street, where a driver plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring many more, became heated when police blocked access to the Downtown Mall from Water Street, where entrance already was restricted to First Street and Second Street SE. An Ohio man accused of driving the auto was charged with second-degree murder in Heyer's death.

Members of 40 anti-racism groups plan to protest near Lafayette Square. For example, the Shut It Down D.C. Coalition is producing a "Still Here, Still Strong" rally to counter "Unite the Right 2" starting at noon Sunday. We made sure there was no traffic this time.

It's not that Fox never mentions neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

Today we honor the memory of Heather Heyer, whose spirit we see in every person who stands up to reject hatred and bigotry.

What are police doing about security?

Charlottesville authorities came under criticism last year for underestimating the potential for violence, and they're trying to mitigate conflict this year.

As the anniversary of last year's deadly Charlottesville riots approaches, states of emergency have been declared for the city of Charlottesville, parts of Northern Virginia and the state of Virginia.

The most intense moments occurred in the evening at the University of Virginia campus at the "Rally for Justice", where a group of some 200 Antifa activists shouted at riot police lines, "Black Lives Matter!" and "No Nazis, No KKK, No Fascist USA!".

As he said that, shouts could be heard down Fourth Street, and when asked what was going on, he said, "They're yelling at police".
A newspaper of the ruling Communist Party said Saturday that no religion is above the law in China, urging officials to stay firm while dealing with a rare protest over the planned demolition of a massive mosque in the northwest.

The Global Times said that local officials in the town of Weizhou in Ningxia, a region thats home to many ethnic minority Hui Muslims, must act against what it described as an illegal expansion of a religious building.

Thousands of Hui people gathered at the towering Grand Mosque on Thursday and Friday to prevent authorities from demolishing the structure, residents contacted by The Associated Press said. It was a rare, public pushback to the partys efforts to rewrite how religions are practiced in the country.

People are in a lot of pain, said Ma Sengming, a 72-year-old man who was at the protest from Thursday morning until Friday afternoon. Many people were crying. We cant understand why this is happening.

Ma said the group shouted Protect faith in China! and Love the country, love the faith!

The protest comes as faith groups that were largely tolerated in the past have seen their freedoms shrink as the government seeks to Sinicize religions by making the faithful prioritize allegiance to the officially atheist Communist Party. Islamic crescents and domes have been stripped from mosques, Christian churches have been shut down and Bibles seized, and Tibetan children have been moved from Buddhist temples to schools.

Such efforts were clearly behind the planned demolition of the mosque in Weizhou, where dozens of men, women and children milled about on the mosque steps, on plastic chairs and in the large dirt parking lot early Saturday before dawn prayers. Above them hung long banners from the second story of the mosque that read in Chinese: Stick to directives of Sinicized religion.

The mosque, an imposing white building lit at night with gold, green and yellow, dwarfs the surrounding dim warren of brick and concrete homes. Its architecture of four minarets and nine domes tipped with crescent moons would be at home anywhere in the Islamic world, save for the large red and yellow Chinese flags fluttering from the ramparts and the wide central staircase.

Authorities were clearly nervous about the unrest. Early Saturday morning, men in plainclothes, including one who identified himself as police, prevented AP reporters from conducting interviews at the mosque and chased them away.

Later Saturday, police stopped the reporters at a checkpoint in the direction of the mosque and detained them for more than an hour before ordering them to turn around, and tailing them with two cars to ensure they did not change course.

The residents of Weizhou were alarmed by news that the government was planning to demolish the mosque despite initially appearing to approve its construction, which was completed just last year.

The authorities now planned to take down eight out of the nine domes topping the mosque on the grounds that the structure was built larger than permitted, said Ma Zhiguo, a resident in his late 70s. But community members were standing their ground, he added.

How could we allow them to tear down a mosque that is still in good condition? he said, adding that the mosque conducts prayers attended by about 30,000 Muslims and was built using believers personal funds.

Officials in the county and city propaganda offices said they were not aware of the situation. Other local authorities could not immediately be reached for comment.

But the Global Times newspaper said in an editorial Saturday that the authorities had to send a message to all religious groups that none of them are above the law.

Demolishing the mosque is sure to earn the ire of local religious followers. However, if the local government does not react to the illegal act, it will fuel the idea that religions are superior over Chinas laws, the paper said.

In May, the county disciplinary inspection commission published a notice saying that Weizhou authorities had failed to properly inspect what it said was illegal expansion in the construction of the Grand Mosque. As a result of lax supervision, the notice said, four mosques in the county had received a total of 1.07 million yuan (USD156,148) in foreign donations. It did not specify whether the Grand Mosque was among the four.

Ma Sengming said protesters remained at the mosque through the night from Thursday to Friday and were twice visited by a local official who encouraged them to go home. Ma said the official did not make any specific promises, but tried to assure the protesters that the government would work with them on the matter.

More than 100 police officers surrounded the mosque, but did not attempt to stop the protest, according to Ma.

Public demonstrations are rare in China, where the government is often quick to quash any hint of dissent. Under President Xi Jinping, the Communist Party is cracking down on religious expression and attacking what it calls radical ideas among the countrys more than 20 million Muslims.

In the far west region of Xinjiang, following sporadic violent attacks by radical Muslim separatists, hundreds of thousands of members of the Uighur and Kazakh Muslim minorities have been arbitrarily detained in indoctrination camps where they are forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the party.

Compared to those ethnic groups, the Hui are culturally much closer to Chinas Han majority, similar in appearance and speaking a variation of the mainstream Mandarin language.

But recently, reports said authorities have shut down Hui religious schools and Arabic classes and barred children from participating in Muslim activities.

James Leibold, a scholar of Chinese ethnic policies at Melbournes La Trobe University, said the proposed demolition of the Weizhou mosque appeared to be an effort to assimilate ethnic minorities.

The ultimate agenda is to erode minority identity and create a sense of belonging and connection to Chinese identity and Chinese culture, Leibold said . Sam McNeil, Yanan Wang, AP
Some 200 Indonesians gathered yesterday to celebrate Indonesias 72nd year since the Proclamation of Independence, offering a series of colorful and lively performances.

Annually celebrated every August 17, the commemoration is normally celebrated with different events that aim to promote unity in diversity.

In Macau, the one-day commemoration featured performances from different migrant groups, including migrants from the Philippines, Vietnam and Timor Leste.

The vibrant celebration kicked off with an Indonesian traditional singing performance followed by a interpretive dance folk from Myanmar.

Organized by the migrant association, Peduli Indonesian Migrant Workers Concern Group, the event featured a performance offered by their compatriots from Hong Kong  who performed one of Indonesias famous dances, Reog Ponorogo.

The Reog Ponorogo dance comes from East Java, where it is accompanied by gamelan instruments.

Historically, Reog was used to gather the masses and worked as a communication channel for the rulers.

It is a very big festival today, said Jusjus Romlah, president of Peduli.

This is a celebration of Asian cultural dance, and a celebration of our Independence Day. We invited friends from Hong Kong to join this event, she added.

According to the association, the group was expecting around 200 to 300 of its compatriots to celebrate their Independence Day.

Peduli also marked its ninth year in the region yesterday.

George Young, an adviser of the association, said that the festival is also one of the ways to strengthen the bond of the community in the region.

We have a lot of activities, but this is the biggest, said Young.

Representatives from the Indonesian Consulate General in Hong Kong also came to the city to offer consular services, particularly registration for next years election in Indonesia.

General elections will be held in the country in April next year, when for the first time, the president and members of the assembly will be elected on the same day.

The community is encouraged to become registered voters in a bid to minimize the queue for upcoming registrations.

Most of our compatriots have their day off on Sundays so this is also an opportunity for the consulate to come and promote next years elections, said Young.

Meanwhile, Peduli president noted that high agency fees still remain a concern amongst the group.

According to Romlah, Indonesian associations are doing their best to assist each other in seeking for jobs in order to avoid incurring expensive placement fees.

We have a group chat where we can help them to be referred to employers we know [] need domestic employees. We help each other find work, in this way, we will not have to undergo high agency fees, she added.
Republican strategist Steve Bannon weighed into British politics yesterday in a wide-ranging interview in which he defended former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnsons comments about Muslim face veils and praised a controversial British far-right leader.

The former aide to President Donald Trump said Johnson had nothing to apologize for and should not bow at the altar of political correctness after he was criticized for saying women who wear burqas look like letterboxes and bank robbers.

Johnson made the comments in a newspaper column that argued against banning full-face veils, as Denmark has done.

Excuse me, didnt he actually support the wearing of the veil? Bannon told the Sunday Times. His entire argument revolves around not wanting to ban the burqa, but arguing that he agrees that its an oppressive garment and that there is no scriptural basis for it in the Quran, which is true. I think the substance got lost because of his throwaway line.

Johnson has been criticized by Muslim groups and politicians, including Prime Minister Theresa May, who urged Johnson to apologize. Johnsons representatives have said he wont apologize.

The hysterical mainstream media can never separate the signal from the noise fortunately, the populists can, Bannon said.

Bannon has said he wants to establish a Europe-wide movement uniting populist and nationalist voters in the European elections next year. He has said he plans to spend 70 percent of his time in Europe following the November midterm election in the United States.

Johnson, a former mayor of London, is one of Britains best-known politicians and is often cited as a potential candidate for prime minister. He quit Mays Conservative government last month in a dispute over the countrys departure from the European Union, accusing the prime minister of killing the Brexit dream with plans to continue close economic ties with the EU after the U.K. leaves the bloc in March.

Bannon suggested that Johnson need not copy Trump to be successful.

Boris just needs to be Boris  true to his nature and his calling  and I think he has potential to be a great prime minister, not a good one, he said.

Bannon also praised another controversial U.K. figure  Tommy Robinson, founder of the now-defunct English Defence League. He compared Robinson to rapper Kanye West, describing him as a rising star and a force of nature.

Robinson, 35, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is a self-styled commentator who has given Britains far-right media the verve it has lacked. His YouTube channel has accumulated more than 6 million views, including videos purporting to show him fighting migrants in Italy and being attacked by masked men outside a McDonalds restaurant in London.

He was recently freed from prison after an appeals court threw out his conviction for contempt of court and ordered a retrial. The case stems from allegations that Robinson used social media to broadcast details of a trial that was subject to blanket reporting restrictions.

His supporters said he was jailed because of his far-right political beliefs.

Tommy is not just a guy but a movement, Bannon said. He represents the working class and channels a lot of the frustration of everyday, blue-collar Britons [] He is a force of nature  like Kanye [West]  not built to be managed. Danica Kirka, London, AP
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen departed yesterday for Latin America, traveling to a region shes already visited three times in two years. She doesnt have many other options.

As Tsai crosses the halfway mark of her first four-year term, an eight-day swing through Paraguay and Belize is a reflection of how Taiwans diplomatic isolation has worsened in the midst of a suffocating Chinese pressure campaign. Just 18 countries  mostly clustered in Latin America, the South Pacific and Caribbean  still maintain formal ties with the self-ruling island, down from 22 when Tsai entered office in 2016.

Along with luring away Taiwans allies, China, which considers the island its territory, has frozen contacts with Taipei and sought to constrict its contact with international organizations. Its also bringing increasing economic pressure and most recently has browbeat international airlines and businesses into referring to Taiwan as part of China, a move condemned by Taipei and its ally, the United States.

Still, maintaining even a reduced pool of diplomatic allies is important to maintaining Taiwans image of itself as a sovereign democracy, and affords its leadership with the occasion to assert their presence abroad. Tsai will also be transiting in Los Angeles and Houston, providing opportunities to meet with overseas Taiwanese civic leaders and American officials.

Although Tsai leads Taiwans Democratic Progressive Party, which favors declaring formal independence from China, she has pursued a moderate China policy since taking office. But that hasnt appeased Beijing, which has demanded that Tsai explicitly acknowledge an informal 1992 agreement that recognizes Taiwan as a part of China.

As a result, Beijing has gradually rolled out punitive measures across the entire spectrum of activity and interactions, said Jonathan Sullivan, director of China Programs at the University of Nottingham. Going after allies is high profile and rich in symbolism.

Faced with Beijings diplomatic onslaught, Tsai has prioritized cementing its ties with remaining allies and backers like the United States and Japan, with which it maintains close relations in the absence of formal diplomatic ties.

At the same time, shes facing a dip in her domestic poll numbers, possibly, Sullivan said, due to a combination of Chinese pressure in the international arena and disappointment in her reform agenda at home.

On her trip this week, Tsai will attend the inauguration of Paraguayan President-elect Mario Abdo Benitez and address the National Assembly in Belize.

China has traditionally moved carefully in Latin America, which it sees as falling under the U.S. sphere of influence, but has scored wins by flipping Panama and the Dominican Republic in the last 14 months at Taiwans expense, said Zhu Songling, a professor at the Institute of Taiwan Studies at Beijing Union University.

The Dominican Republic ditched Taiwan in May after it refused to match a multi-billion-dollar aid package offered by China. Flavio Dario Espinal, an adviser to the Dominican presidential office, told reporters in May that socioeconomics reality now force us to change course and embrace China, its USD2 billion-

a-year trading partner.

The Chinese government has long respected the strategic thinking of the U.S. and we have shown restraint in the Americas, Zhu said. But these countries feel its in their national interest to flip to China, whose economic clout and attractiveness is on a whole different level compared to Taiwans.

Tsai is increasingly coming under fire from her political base for her moderate approach to China, which has not ameliorated Chinese pressure.

Tsai has been criticized in Taiwan for being over-cautious, Sullivan said. It is a tricky line to steer, but it is becoming increasingly evident that Beijing has decided not to work with the DPP administration and is doing everything it can to undermine it in the short and longer term. MDT/AP
In a rare diplomatic foray and the strongest sign yet of increasing Taliban political clout in the region, the head of the insurgents political office led a delegation to Uzbekistan to meet senior Foreign Ministry officials there, Uzbek and Taliban officials said.

Taliban political chief Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai represented the insurgents in the four-day talks that ended on Friday and included meetings with Uzbekistans Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov as well as the countrys special representative to Afghanistan Ismatilla Irgashev. The meetings follow an offer made by Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev in March to broker peace in Afghanistan.

Suhail Shaheen, spokesman for the Talibans political office in Qatar, said in a statement to The Associated Press on Saturday that discussions covered everything from withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan to peace prospects and possible Uzbek-funded development projects that could include railway lines and electricity.

Shaheen said Uzbek officials discussed their security concerns surrounding the development projects. The Taliban also exchanged views with the Uzbek officials about the withdrawal of the foreign troops and reconciliation in Afghanistan, he said in the statement.

Uzbeks Foreign Affairs Ministry website offered a terse announcement on the visit, saying the sides exchanged views on prospects of the peace process in Afghanistan. 

Still, the meetings are significant, coming as the Taliban are ramping up pressure on Afghan security forces with relentless and deadly attacks. Washington has held preliminary talks with the insurgents in an attempt to find a negotiated end to Afghanistans protracted war.

The Taliban have gained increasing attention from Russia as well as Uzbekistan, which view the insurgency as a bulwark against the spread of the Islamic State group in Afghanistan. The United States has accused Moscow of giving weapons to the Taliban.

Still, Andrew Wilder, vice president of Asia programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace said Washington would welcome a constructive Russian role in finding a way toward a peace pact in Afghanistan.

What wouldnt be helpful would be if the Uzbek efforts to facilitate lines of communication with the Taliban are not closely coordinated with the Afghan government, he said. High profile talks by foreign governments with the Taliban that exclude the Afghan government risk providing too much legitimacy to the Taliban without getting much in return, Wilder said.

Yesterday, Ehsanullah Taheri, the spokesman of Afghanistans High Peace Council, a wide-encompassing body tasked with finding a path to peace with the governments armed opponents, said Uzbek officials had the Afghan governments approval for the meeting.

Afghan government welcomes any effort regarding the Afghan peace process, especially those attempts which can lead us to an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led peace process, said Taheri.

Still, there was no indication from either side that progress toward substantive talks between the Taliban and the government was made.

For Uzbekistan, the IS presence is particularly worrisome as hundreds of its fighters are former members of the radical Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a declared terrorist group considered the architect of some of the more horrific attacks carried out by IS in Afghanistan.

Last year, there were reports that the son of Tahir Yuldashev, the powerful Uzbek leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, who was killed in a U.S. missile strike in Pakistan in 2009, was leading efforts to help expand IS influence in Afghanistan.

Last week, Afghan security forces reportedly rescued scores of Afghan Uzbeks who had declared their allegiance to IS when they came under attack by Taliban fighters in northern Afghanistan, not far from the border with Uzbekistan. The rescued Uzbek warriors subsequently declared they would join the peace process.

Most of those rescued were Afghan Uzbeks loyal to Afghanistans Vice President Rashid Dostum who wet over and joined IS after Dostum fell out with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and fled to Turkey in May last year to live in self-imposed exile there.

Coincidentally, the rescue of Afghan Uzbeks from the battle with the Taliban came just days after Dostum returned to Afghanistan and reconciled with Ghanis government. AP
Tens of thousands of protesters in Okinawa vowed to stop the planned relocation of a U.S military base, saying they want it off the southern Japanese island entirely.

Opponents of the relocation say the plan to move U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from a crowded neighborhood to a less populated coastal site would not only be an environmental debacle but also ignore local wishes to remove the base.

About 70,000 people gathered Saturday at a park in the state capital of Naha under pouring rain ahead of an approaching typhoon and observed a moment of silence for Okinawas governor, Takeshi Onaga, who died Wednesday of cancer.

Onaga, elected in 2014, had spearheaded opposition to the relocation and criticized the central government for ignoring the voices of Okinawans. He had filed lawsuits against the central government and said he planned to revoke a landfill permit issued by his predecessor that is needed for construction of the new base.

Deputy Gov. Kiichiro Jahana, representing Onaga at Saturdays rally, said he will follow through with the revocation process as instructed by the governor and succeed his strong determination and passion.

Okinawans are trying to block the government plan to start dumping soil into Henoko Bay within days to make a landfill for the new site of the Futenma base. Environmental groups say construction at the bay risks corals and endangered dugongs.

The protesters held up signs saying Henoko new base, NO! and Okinawans will not give up, as they chanted slogans. They also adopted a resolution demanding the central government to immediately scrap the relocation plan.

Japans government says the current plan is the only solution, but many Okinawans want the base off the island. About half of the 50,000 American troops in Japan are stationed on Okinawa.

Onaga had said Tokyos postwar defense posture under the Japan-U.S. security alliance was built on Okinawas sacrifice.

The dispute over the Futenma relocation reflects centuries-old tensions between Okinawa and the Japanese mainland, which annexed the islands, formerly the independent kingdom of the Ryukus, in 1878. Okinawa was Japans only home battleground in the final days of World War II, and the island remained under U.S. rule for 20 years longer than the rest of Japan.

Okinawa is still forced to sacrifice for the interest of the mainland, Onagas son Takeharu, an Okinawa assemblyman, told the rally.

The [relocation issue] is pushed to Okinawa because nobody on the mainland wants it, he said, urging the rest of the country to also think about the issue. Let us keep fighting so we can achieve my fathers unfinished goal and give him good news. Mari Yamaguchi, Tokyo, AP
An Indian lawmaker has appeared in Parliament dressed like Adolf Hitler with a toothbrush moustache and wearing a khaki coat with swastika symbols on his pocket and arm. His demand: More funds for the development of his state in southern India.

Naramalli Sivaprasad also raised his hand in a Nazi salute for the media on Thursday. His appearance did not trigger any protests from legislators. He said he wanted to send a message to Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to follow Hitler. He complained that Modi had gone back on a promise to provide extra funds for his Andhra Pradesh state. He does not get the pulse of what people want and I want to urge him to not be like him [Hitler], he said. Modis government denies the charge.
China has announced plans for a new leap forward after the first meeting in four years of the Communist Partys Central Committee.

The blueprint unveiled by the committee shows Pekings determination to spread the words of leader Mao Zedong and purge all those who have followed the path of capitalism.

According to news broadcast on Radio Peking, the committee wholeheartedly endorsed Chairman Maos purge and rectification programme described as the great proletarian cultural revolution.

The radio report said the committee had strongly reaffirmed the nations hard line at home and abroad.

It also called on people for renewed efforts to fulfil economic goals.

Chairman Mao attempted to stimulate agricultural and industrial production during the first Great Leap Forward in 1958.

By reorganising small collectives into great communes he hoped to release workers for industry with the aim of driving up steel production.

But the plan backfired  grain output declined leading to the countrys biggest famine while industry began producing masses of unwanted, shoddy goods.

Todays report from the Central Committee confirms that conditions now exist for a new leap forward  four good successive harvests, progress in nuclear technology and the invigorating revolutionary atmosphere prevailing in the country.

According to Chinese News Agency reports, Chairman Mao received a tumultuous reception three days ago when he visited supporters in Peking and called on them to carry the great proletarian cultural revolution through to the end.

Editorials in the Peoples Daily and Red Flag newspapers subsequently called on the nations revolutionary masses to expose the bourgeois rightists who were marching on the capitalist road.

The recent dismissal of Pen Cheng, the Mayor of Peking, who ranked sixth in the partys Politburo, can now been seen as a warning to leaders of equally high rank, such as, Premier Chou En-lai, who has been associated in the past with more moderate policies.

The Central Party says anti-socialist right-wingers should receive severe punishment  but they should also be given a chance to repent and begin a new life.

It suggests any errant party leaders should overcome their fear of becoming the objects of struggle by engaging in sincere self-criticism.

Thirty-five million copies of The Selected Works of Mao Zedong are to be printed within the next 18 months so his thoughts can be relayed to the masses said to be eagerly waiting to study and apply Maos work.

Courtesy BBC News

In context

The Cultural Revolution heralded a dramatic purge of Maos rivals.

He mobilised the Red Guards, bands of radical students who were ordered to destroy the four olds in the country, customs, habits, culture and thinking.

Colleges were shut so they could concentrate on revolution but the Red Guards began to terrorise almost anyone who stood for authority, attacking teachers and even parents, many of whom were tortured or beaten to death.

Altogether around three million people were denounced and tens of thousands died in prison.

At the same time Mao removed many of his opponents from within the party and retook absolute control of the party hierarchy.

The revolution ended officially only with Maos death in 1976.
INDONESIA The battle lines for Indonesias 2019 presidential election are drawn as the incumbent Joko Jokowi Widodo formally registered as a candidate after choosing a conservative Islamic cleric as his running mate.

MALAYSIA Former Prime Minister Najib Razak has failed to win a court order barring the media from discussing the merits of corruption charges against him ahead of the start of his trial on February 12. More on p13

JAPAN Tens of thousands of protesters in Okinawa vowed to stop the planned relocation of a U.S military base, saying they want it off the southern Japanese island entirely.

PAKISTAN Police say they have detained eight Chinese nationals who tried to enter a power plant with weapons in the eastern Punjab province.

CASPIAN SEA Leaders of the five countries along the Caspian Sea  Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan  have signed a convention aimed at ending decades-long uncertainty over exploitation of its resources.

YEMENs Shiite rebels are backing a U.N. call for a probe into a Saudi-led coalition airstrike in the countrys north that killed dozens of people, including many children, in an attack that drew wide international criticism.

SYRIA An explosion in northern Syria killed at least 36 people yesterday and wounded many others, but the cause of the blast wasnt immediately known, opposition activists said.

ROMANIA Tens of thousands of Romanians flocked to an anti-government protest from places near and far, urging the left-wing government to resign and call an early election.

BRITAIN Ten people, including two children, were injured yesterday when shots were fired after a Caribbean carnival in the northern English city of Manchester.

PORTUGAL Authorities say they have brought under control a major wildfire in the south of the country after a weeklong effort.

US Prosecutors say a father tossed his dead 7-month-old son into the water in New York City, fled the country to Thailand and later texted the childs mother that she would never see her son again.

VENEZUELA Officials have released a videotaped statement from an opposition lawmaker accused of having a role in an assassination attempt on President Nicolas Maduro.
A Tesla spokesman declined to comment on behalf of the company and Musk. The country's Public Investment Fund, which has built up a stake of nearly 5 per cent in Tesla in recent months, is exploring how it can be involved in the potential deal, according to Bloomberg.

In a letter to employees on Tuesday, Musk suggested a choice for shareholders of selling their shares for $420 each or remaining investors in a private Tesla. While the entrepreneur owns 20 percent of Tesla, more than $60 billion would be needed to buy the business from public shareholders.

A Saudi sovereign wealth fund is in talks that could make it a significant investor in Tesla if it is taken private.

The board will make a decision on whether to hire advisers and launch a formal review of Musk's take-private proposal in the coming days, based on how much detail on the financing plan it receives from Musk, another source said.

Musk is interested in having a wide pool of investors rather than few stakeholders.

The 47-year-old investor and engineer stunned financial markets on Tuesday when he said on Twitter that he was considering a take-private deal for Tesla, an auto manufacturing pioneer that developed the world's first luxury all-electric sedan vehicle. He is yet to back up his claim that he has financing for the transaction.

According to Reuters, the separate lawsuits by Kalman Isaacs and William Chamberlain accuse Tesla and Musk of issuing statements that are in violation of securities law, artificially boosting the stock price, and putting a squeeze on short sellers. At least two investors have sued Musk and Tesla alleging share-price manipulation.

Musk argued any such move would protect the company from swings in the stock market, and improve Tesla's ability to think long term, as opposed to chasing quarterly targets.

Tesla was reportedly courted by Japan's SoftBank in April of previous year, though sources told Bloomberg on Monday that the conglomerate isn't planning to participate in deals for Tesla's buyout as it has already vested interest in other auto makers and autonomous vehicle programmes, like General Motors.

The fund has not yet made any concrete plans with Tesla on increasing its stake, sources told Bloomberg, but talks are ongoing, and continued investment in the company is seen as a strategic step toward diversifying the Saudi economy away from oil.
His visit to the state fair came a day before he headlines the Wing Ding Dinner, an Iowa Democratic fundraiser that has always been a proving ground for presidential hopefuls.

He has not made any formal moves toward a presidential run, but he toured the Iowa State Fair on Thursday and was set to appear at the Democratic Wing Ding in Clear Lake on Friday.

'Tonight I want to suggest a different course.

"I mean, seriously, I don't need more notoriety", he said, arguing that if someone polls his name identification with Democratic voters he would place in the "top half, maybe the top third" of people considering a run.

He also said that he was not considering to run for president for publicity's sake. Organizers of the fundraiser for county Democratic organizations said they were happy to welcome him to an event that has drawn heavy hitters like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in past years. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of NY - are avoiding Iowa so far. But Avenatti says times have changed, adding, "Democrats need to nominate somebody who can actually beat this guy".

Known for his combative cable news appearances, Avenatti offered a relatively traditional political address that stressed his record as a self-made businessman, an advocate for underdogs and a formidable foe to President Donald Trump. "Dumb's not one", she said.

Avenatti shared the stage Friday with Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, Maryland Rep. John Delaney and businessman Andrew Yang.

Then, turning to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Burnett asked, "would you support a Michael Avenatti?". Trump allegedly paid off Daniels for an affair that occurred in July 2006. Avenatti represents children two Honduran girls shipped to NY after being separated from their parents at the Mexican border. He also dismissed criticism that he is generating buzz about a potential White House bid in an effort to raise his own profile, saying that he "would never think to come to Iowa in order to use the state".

Avenatti said he hopes his message to Democrats will be well received.
To encourage innovation in health care, governments need to move away from current siloed funding to funding that encourages collaboration among providers in managing patients who need care in a variety of settings, argue the authors of an analysis in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal)

Funding in silos is a barrier to innovation, especially to improving transitions of care for patients who need multiple types of care in different settings. In Canada's health system, no player is well-positioned both to make the investment in an innovative model of care and to easily claim back the financial benefits.

"Although we often focus on who pays for health care (i.e., private versus public), how we fund health care providers also deserves attention," says Dr. Noah Ivers, a family physician at Women's College Hospital and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario. "To better integrate care, we may need funding to be integrated, and then providers must learn to work together to make the most of that funding."

A key challenge for modern health care systems is to implement evidence-based health care. This is especially difficult when patients transition from one sector to another, such as after hospital discharge, or when multiple health care professionals are working with the same patient in an uncoordinated fashion.

There are many promising pilot projects to improve integration of care, but these typically are not implemented. One reason may be that current approaches to funding health care providersboth individuals and organizationsinvolve many independent, siloed budgets. The result is that even if a proven strategy can be implemented in one part of the system (e.g., primary care), to improve patient outcomes and produce savings in another part of the system (e.g., fewer hospitalizations) it may be impossible to find the funds to invest in that strategy.

Health systems around the world are experimenting with novel funding strategies to address this problem.

"A true learning health system would commit to experimenting with, and evaluating, changes in how we fund health care providers to constantly strive for better patient outcomes," he says.

Explore further Mandate patient access to primary care medical records

More information: Noah M. Ivers et al. Aligning innovations in health funding with innovations in care, Canadian Medical Association Journal (2018). Journal information: Canadian Medical Association Journal Noah M. Ivers et al. Aligning innovations in health funding with innovations in care,(2018). DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.171312
Senior author Assistant Professor Alex Swarbrick with co-first authors Dr. Aurelie Cazet and Dr. Mun Hui. Credit: Garvan Institute of Medical Research

Australian researchers have uncovered a secret communication hotline between breast cancers and the normal cells surrounding them. Importantly, the messages sent back and forth between the normal and tumor cells encourage the cancer to survive and to become more aggressive.

Working primarily in mouse models of disease, and also in people (through a Phase I clinical trial), the researchers have shown that triple negative breast tumourswhich are the most aggressive and have the fewest treatment optionsmight one day be treated with a drug that cuts the 'phone lines' between normal cells and tumour cells.

The findings, which have just been published in the leading journal Nature Communications, stem from a collaboration between researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research (Sydney), the Centre for Cancer Biology (Adelaide), and GEICAM, Spain's leading breast cancer research group.

Dr. Aurelie Cazet and Dr. Mun Hui worked with A/Prof Alex Swarbrick (all Garvan) to investigate the role of non-cancerous cellswhich, along with cancer cells, are a part of every breast tumour. The researchers analysed the genetic output of thousands of individual cells within the tumour.

Importantly, they found that cancer cells send signals to neighbouring non-cancerous cells (known as cancer-associated fibroblasts or CAFs). And CAFs talk back: they send back their own signals that help the cancer cells become drug-resistant and enter a dangerous state the researchers call 'stem-like'.

The researchers disrupted the hotline between CAFs and cancer cells by using a drug called SMOi, which targets CAFs and stops them from pushing tumour cells towards a 'stem-like' state (see below). In mouse models of triple negative breast cancer, treatment with SMOi reduced the spread of cancer, slowed tumour growth, increased sensitivity to chemotherapy and improved survival.

Following the success in mice, A/Prof Swarbrick worked with GEICAM to carry out a Phase I clinical trial in 12 advanced triple negative breast cancer patients who had relapsed after previously being treated with chemotherapy. Patients were given SMOi together with a standard chemotherapy drug (docetaxel) to determine whether the combination was tolerated by patients.

While the combination treatment did not halt cancer progression in nine patients, disease was stabilised in two patients and tumours fully disappeared in one patient.

"The combination of SMOi plus docetaxel produced a tumour shrinkage in some individuals with triple negative breast cancer, who were not expected to have such responses with docetaxel alone," says Professor Miguel Martin, Chairman of GEICAM and principal investigator of the trial. "The challenge now is the identification of the molecular characteristics of the patients most likely to respond to the combination."

"We observed that the trial participants who responded best to the treatment were the ones with evidence of the highest levels of chatter between CAFs and tumour cells," remarks Dr. Hui. "This is a preliminary finding, but is exciting, because it suggests that it might be possible in the future to identify patients who would respond best to this approach."

A/Prof Swarbrick, who led the research, says it has led to a major step forward in our understanding of how CAFs can drive aggressive cancer.

"It's the stem-like cells in breast tumours that are particularly bad players, as they can travel to distant parts of the body to create new tumours and are resistant to treatment," says A/Prof Swarbrick. "We knew that CAFs played a role in turning cancer cells into a stem-like state, but now we know one way in which they communicate with tumoursand how to stop them talking to one another."

A/Prof Michael Samuel (Centre for Cancer Biology) worked with A/Prof Swarbrick and Drs Cazet and Hui on the new research.

"We found that when they received signals from cancer cells, CAFs produced large amounts of collagen, a protein that forms a dense scaffold in the tumour, which increased its stiffness and helped to maintain the stem-like state of the cancer cells. When we disrupted the hotline in our models, collagen density was reduced and the cancer cells weren't as stem-like anymore," A/Prof Samuel says.

The breadth of this study, from cutting-edge single cell genomics (which explores which genes are turned on and off in thousands of individual cells) through to human clinical trials, has painted a comprehensive picture of how CAFs and tumour cells communicate to drive breast cancer progression and how this knowledge may be used to design more effective treatment.

"Single cell genomics was crucial for this research," adds Dr. Cazet. "We were able to take a tumour, separate out the cancer cells from the CAFs, and look in detail at the genes that were switched on and off in each cell type. In this way, we were able to uncover their communication strategy, and found the first ever evidence that we may be able to target this communication channel to improve outcomes in triple negative breast cancer."

Phase I clinical trials in a small number of patients are now complete, and A/Prof Swarbrick and his medical collaborators are currently working on designing and funding Phase II trials to test the effectiveness of this treatment in a larger group of patients. In parallel, A/Prof Swarbrick has plans to investigate prostate cancer, where the same communication may be happening.

"We have preliminary clinical evidence that targeting the hotline between cancer cells and CAFs may be effective in breast cancer," says A/Prof Swarbrick, "but we certainly hope that this strategy will have applications in other cancer types. We also hope this story will encourage others to look for answers outside the box or rather, outside the tumour cell."

Explore further Researchers discover a potential new therapeutic strategy for pancreatic cancer

More information: Aurelie S. Cazet et al, Targeting stromal remodeling and cancer stem cell plasticity overcomes chemoresistance in triple negative breast cancer, Nature Communications (2018). Journal information: Nature Communications Aurelie S. Cazet et al, Targeting stromal remodeling and cancer stem cell plasticity overcomes chemoresistance in triple negative breast cancer,(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-05220-6
Asking about patients' sexual orientation is not routine, even among medical professionals who specialize in sexual health.

About half of the medical professionals surveyed by John Hopkins Medicine researchers said they asked patients directly about sexual orientation, according to a study published July 31 in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, while about 40 percent said sexual orientation is irrelevant to patients' care.

The survey's co-author, Dr. Amin Herati, urology professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said that men who mostly have sex with men are at higher risk of some sexually transmitted infections, so if doctors don't know men are gay, for example, their care might not include that consideration.

The researchers suggested that the 84 medical professionals surveyed were more likely to ask about sexual orientation because all are members of the Sexual Medicine Society of North America.

Asking about a patient's sexual orientation has risks and benefits, said Naomi Goldberg, policy and research director at the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank that works toward equality for LGBT people.

Overall, she said, the benefits of tailoring care toward patients outweighs risks, but the way that someone's orientation is sought is important.

"Any time you ask about sexual orientation or gender identity, that's sensitive information that needs to be treated carefully," she said.

And that information should be safeguarded, she said.

As far as how to ask, questions regarding sexual orientation could be included on intake forms, she suggested, along with other questions ascertaining age and ethnicity. Boxes could include whether patients think of themselves as lesbian, gay or trans, for example. They could also ask what gender they were assigned at birth and how they identify now.

"If someone currently identifies as a woman and checks 'woman,' and may not check 'trans,' and if you ask what sex were you assigned at birth and she checks 'male,' then a physician might be able to have a discussion" more specifically tailored to her health, for example.

Goldberg pointed out that with more information, for example, a doctor might bring up the possibility of using PrEP, the pill that can reduce the risk of HIV infection. Also, knowing that LGBT people might be more at risk for depression could help doctors better monitor mental health.

"Those are the kinds of things that might get left out because doctors may make assumptions about their patients," Goldberg said.

She noted that for many people, clinics and community centers that are LGBT-focused are a way to seek care in a safe space, but not everyone has that option.

A report released this week by the Movement Advancement Project shows that these centers are often understaffed and underfunded, but serve more than 40,000 people each week across the 40 states surveyed.

"Going to an LGBTQ community center or somewhere like Howard Brown (in Chicago) that's focused on LGBTQ people, that is a really nice option for some people," Goldberg said, adding that those who live elsewhere in the state have fewer options. "We need to also make sure that the primary care physicians at your local community health clinic or at the local hospital are also aware of the issues."

Explore further Survey of Sexual Medicine Society members reveals only half ask for patients' sexual orientation

2018 Chicago Tribune

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Ive said it before that so often hunting comes down to pure luck. You can have the best gear, skill and knowledge and come home empty-handed. You never know what will happen, but the best hunters have the most patience.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Early childhood seizures result from a rare disease that begin in the first months of life. Researchers at University of Utah Health have developed high-tech tools to uncover the genetic cause of the most difficult to diagnose cases. The results are available online on August 13 in the journal Nature Genomic Medicine.

"These tools let us peek in the dark corners and under the rug of the genome that other methods do not," said Aaron Quinlan, Ph.D., associate professor of Human Genetics and Biomedical Informatics at U of U Health and senior author on the paper. "With this approach rather than undergoing multiple tests, families can receive results faster, limiting their medical odyssey, at ultimately a lower cost."

According to Betsy Ostrander, M.D., early infantile epileptic encephalopathy (EIEE) begins with intractable seizures in the first months of life.

"Most patients are on four to five medications and still suffer from frequent, debilitating seizures, from once a week to 50-times a day," said Ostrander, assistant professor of Pediatrics at U of U Health and the Division of Pediatric Neurology at Primary Children's Hospital and first author on the paper.

If the condition is not diagnosed early and treated with the available medications, the seizures hinder normal development, leading to intellectual impairment and often an early death. Although more than 50 genes are associated with the disease, routine genetic tests fail half the time to pinpoint the cause of the illness, limiting the medical practitioner's ability to alleviate the child's symptoms.

Ostrander and her colleagues turned to experts in bioinformatics at the university to help them sift through the volume of genetic information obtained from 14 patients and their parents.

All of the patients in the study had previously undergone several rounds of genome testing, such as clinical gene panels and chromosomal microarrays, but these methods failed to find the genetic cause of their illness. According to Quinlan, these tests were too low resolution or only focused on already identified causative genes to identify the mutation.

Quinlan and his team have created an array of computational tools that contain powerful algorithms to scrutinize the genetic data and identify errors that lead to disease. They applied their suite of computational tools to all of the genetic information from the patients and their parents to pinpoint changes in the genome responsible for disease development.

In the study, they found a spontaneous mutation was responsible for EIEE for 12 of the 14 patients. In one of these patients, the mutation was found on a gene not previously associated with the disease. The researchers also identified large structural changes (a translocation and a duplication) in the genome of the remaining two patients. These structural changes affected genes previously linked to EIEE but were undetectable through standard genome testing techniques.

"These families have been drifting through expensive prolonged testing with little hope of finding an answer," Ostrander said. "We can now identify the genetic cause of EIEE and select medications best suited to each patient to decrease the frequency of seizures earlier and hopefully prevent developmental delays."

Quinlan admits that cost is still a limiting factor in deploying this approach more widely. In addition, not every rare disease is associated with a clear genetic change.

The computational tools in this study, developed by the University of Utah computational teams (RUFUS, GEMINI, GENE.IOBIO and LUMPY) are available to researchers on the USTAR Center for Genetic Discovery website.

"Our unique team of computational biologists are building just the right kind of software tools to cast a wide net, making sure that no or few disease-causing genetic variations or mutations are missed," said Gabor Marth, DSc, professor of Human Genetics at U of U Health and co-director of the USTAR Center for Genetic Discovery. "Ultimately, it is really the combination of the high-quality data that was collected and the comprehensive and accurate methods we developed [that] was the key to achieving the high diagnostic success rate for [these] children."

The work is published as Whole-genome analysis for effective clinical diagnosis and gene discovery in early infantile epileptic encephalopathy online in Nature Genomic Medicine on August 13.

Explore further Regulatory mutations missed in standard genetic screening lead to congenital diseases
(HealthDay)Controversial state laws that promote vaccinating kids against the human papillomavirus (HPV) do not increase the likelihood that teens will engage in risky sexual behavior, a new study contends.

"Parents and caregivers, as well as policy makers, should not be wary of policies or legislation related to HPV education or [vaccine] access, as our study does not show any negative effects of legislation on teen sexual behaviors," said lead study author Erin Cook.

The finding is not surprising, added Cook, who led the study as a doctoral candidate at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. She noted that other research also has shown that HPV vaccination does not lead to higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in teens.

The new finding stems from an analysis of 15 years' worth of teen surveys. The polls plumbed the sexual histories of nearly 887,000 U.S. high school students at a time when many states were enacting laws that urge parents to immunize kids against HPV. The virus, which can cause cancers such as cervical cancer, is spread through sexual contact.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends all kids get immunized between the ages of 11 and 12. But Cook's team noted that HPV vaccine rates remain relatively lowless than 50 percent among girls and 38 percent among boys.

Why? For some families, cost is a barrier; others lack access. The difficulty of completing a series of several shots, and safety concerns are also barriers. But the big reason more kids don't get the shot, experts say, is parents' fear that doing so may give their teens license to engage in risky sex.

That reluctance led 24 states to pass laws to encourage parents and caregivers to get kids vaccinated. Some of those states now require proof of immunization in order to enroll in school.

Dr. Diane Harper is physician director of community outreach and engagement at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. She said, "For those few parents that are worried about the sexual disinhibition issue, this study should be reassuring."

Cook's team looked at data drawn between 2001 and 2015 from a state-by-state survey of 9th- through 12th-graders. During that time, HPV vaccine laws were passed in 16 states.

The surveys found that 224,000 of the teens25 percentreported having had sex in the preceding three months. About 97 percent of them said they had used condoms during their last sexual encounter.

But researchers found no evidence that state passage of an HPV law affected the likelihood of risky teen sex.

Lead author Cook stressed that the investigation focused on the impact of HPV laws on teen sex, and not on actual vaccination patterns.

She and her colleagues published their findings in the Aug. 13 online issue of Pediatrics.

Gregory Zimet, co-director of the IUPUI Center for HPV Research at Indiana University, reviewed the study findings.

He called the vaccine a safe and effective way to prevent serious disease. HPV is a cause of a whole host of cancers, including cervical, vaginal, vulvar, anal, penile, and head and neck cancers.

"HPV is very easily transmitted by intimate contact, not requiring intercourse," Zimet said. And that means "HPV infection is incredibly common, affecting the vast majority of individuals at some point during their lifetimes."

The vaccine, meanwhile, is "extraordinarily effective" against the types of HPV it is designed to prevent, he said, and protection lasts at least 10 to 12 yearsand probably much longer.

"HPV vaccination, quite simply, is cancer prevention," Zimet said.

Harper said the current study underscores what other investigations have confirmed again and again: "Having healthy options available does not lead to an increase in promiscuity."

She compared the findings to prior research demonstrating that "prescribing birth control pills does not increase sexual activity; having the 'morning-after pill' available over-the-counter does not increase sexual activity; (and) providing condoms through vending machines does not increase sexual activity."

More information: Erin E. Cook, M.P.H., Sc.D., associate, Analysis Group Inc., Boston, and former doctoral student, department of epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston; Diane Harper, M.D., M.P.H., physician director of community outreach and engagement, University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, Ann Arbor, Mich.; Gregory D. Zimet, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics and clinical psychology, and co-director, IUPUI Center for HPV Research, Indiana University, Indianapolis; Aug. 13, 2018, Pediatrics, online. Erin E. Cook, M.P.H., Sc.D., associate, Analysis Group Inc., Boston, and former doctoral student, department of epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston; Diane Harper, M.D., M.P.H., physician director of community outreach and engagement, University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, Ann Arbor, Mich.; Gregory D. Zimet, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics and clinical psychology, and co-director, IUPUI Center for HPV Research, Indiana University, Indianapolis; Aug. 13, 2018,, online. Learn more about the HPV vaccine from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Journal information: Pediatrics

Copyright  2018 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Researchers at The University of Western Australia and King Edward Memorial Hospital have teamed up with an Australian molecular diagnostics company to develop a new low-cost test to identify women at risk of delivering a preterm baby.

Professor Jeeffrey Keelan, Head of Laboratories at UWA's Division of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Deputy Director of Women and Infants Research Foundation (WIRF) at King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEMH), said preterm birth was the single major cause of death and disability in children aged under five in the developed world. Around 15 million babies worldwide are born preterm each year, including around 25,000 Australian babies.

The UWA research team, including Head of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Professor John Newnham, and research fellow Dr. Matt Payne have been working with molecular diagnostics company SpeeDx Pty Ltd to develop a test to identify women at risk in mid-pregnancy. The test involves taking a vaginal swab and testing it for a specific set of bacteria to determine which women would benefit from targeted treatment.

"Women who test positive for the bacteria are at significantly increased risk of delivering preterm (less than 37 weeks' gestation)," Professor Keelan said.

"We know that bacterial infections of the womb are a major cause of early birth but until now we haven't been able to identify women at risk with any degree of accuracy, so antibiotic treatment hasn't been particularly successful or widely adopted.

"The new test enables us to identify women at risk early in pregnancy, allowing timely treatment with antibiotics and probiotics to remove the bacteria, restore a healthy vaginal microbiome and enable the pregnancy to continue until full term."

The research team aims to recruit more than 6000 Australian women to take part in a clinical trial, part-funded by a $1.7 million grant from the Federal Government's National Health and Medical Research Council. The research comprises part of WIRF's Preterm Birth Prevention Initiative: The Whole Nine Months

Professor Keelan said introduction of the combined test and treatment program could reduce the preterm birth rate in Australia by up to 30 per cent. Babies born prematurely, particularly before 34 weeks' gestation, are at increased risk of serious complications involving the gut, lungs, heart and brain and often have lifelong health problems associated with their vision, hearing and mental capacity.

"The new test and treatment could prevent the premature birth of thousands of Australian babies each year, particularly the most premature and vulnerable infants, greatly reducing the rates of death and serious handicaps and saving more than a billion dollars each year in perinatal healthcare costs," he said.

The new test and treatment program will be assessed over the next four years through a randomised clinical trial. If successful, routine screening and treatment could be instigated in early pregnancy to lower the rates of prevent preterm birth, providing a healthier start to many lives in Australia and worldwide.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

When Dr. Michael Hole was a pediatrician in Boston, he discovered a key to unlocking a healthier future for many families  help with taxes.

"Simply put, wealth is health," says Hole. "Poverty can have negative impact on a child's health and learning."

Hole is a new joint faculty member at The University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs and Dell Medical School, and he is a co-founder of StreetCred, a national nonprofit helping low-income families file taxes, claim refunds and build wealth in a trusted, underused space: pediatricians' waiting rooms.

Hole believes helping his patients' families get more money in their pockets will improve their lives more than a standard check-up can. Many need help  1 in 5 families eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit do not claim the assistance. During the past two years, StreetCred has returned more than $1.6 million to about 800 families, including 2,000 children.

Hole started the program in Boston in 2016. StreetCred is now offering free help this tax season at nine clinics nationally, including two in Austin at People's Community Clinic North and CommUnity Care Southeast Health & Wellness Center.

We spoke with Hole about how taxes are linked to our health, why so few families take advantage of available credits and what changes could improve our futures and our wallets.

How are taxes, health and public policy connected?

MH: Medicines do very little for hunger, homelessness, low income and many other social problems known to affect health.

If we're to improve health and curb health care costs, addressing economic disparities and other social determinants of health will be core to solutions.

How did you get the idea to offer tax help as a doctor?

MH: When I was pediatrician in Boston, I was speaking to a patient's mom about her trouble filing her taxes at a tax prep center: unreliable public transportation on two buses and a train across town, confusing tax paperwork, expensive fees, and so on.

She asked me a question, which was the impetus for StreetCred. She said: "I waited on you for 30 minutes today. Why can't we just do my taxes here?" One year later, StreetCred filed her taxes for free at the doctor's office.

What are tax credits?

MH: Generally speaking, tax credits are money given to taxpayers based on specific criteria, such as income, marital status and number of dependents. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), in particular, offers more than $66 billion in annual tax refunds and is one of the few antipoverty government programs in the U.S. often enjoying bipartisan support. The EITC encourages and rewards employment and is tied to improved health, education and workforce productivity.

Do you think they are working as well as they could be?

MH: Despite certain triumphs, the EITC's impact is dampened by two challenges. First, an estimated 20 percent of families eligible for the EITC do not receive the credit yearly because they lack awareness of the benefit, misunderstand their eligibility, or face access barriers, such as time and transportation constraints. Second, low-income families already strapped for funds are losing nearly $2 billion of tax credit annually to the for-profit tax preparing services.

How do these credits impact American health?

MH: These tax credits are a social determinant of health. The money from the credit is used to pay for debts, utilities, fresh groceries, new clothes, rent and transportation, all of which impact health, functioning, risks and quality of life for these families. Tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) are linked to improved infant birth weight, less maternal stress, higher employment rates of single mothers, improved school performance and increased future earnings. Combined with the Child Tax Credit, the EITC lifts about 32 million persons, including 13 million children, from poverty yearly.

Should learning about this be part of the medical training?

MH: I think doctors, as patients' most trusted allies, can and should lead these discussions. I think doctors should learn how to treat asthma, while also learning how to best advocate for safer housing. That is a core part of Dell Med's new curriculum and the collaboration with the LBJ School.

Who is working to help file the taxes at StreetCred?

MH: Many StreetCred volunteers are students: undergraduates, medical students and graduate students from UT's various schools. Some earn IRS certification and actually prepare clients' tax returns in our health clinics, while others help us with client outreach, fundraising, data evaluation and interpreting for non-English speakers.

I hope StreetCred inspires young Longhorns to apply their UT education for social goodto build careers, regardless of industry, they can use to help the world's most vulnerable people.

Do you have any tips for people applying for taxes now? Or how to prepare for next year?

Taxes can be confusing, so ask for help early and often to make sure you get back all the money you've earned. And StreetCred isn't the only free, professional tax preparation in Austin. We work closely with Foundation Communities, a local nonprofit with several nearby tax prep sites.

Explore further Free tax services in pediatrics clinics yield high returns
(HealthDay)Researchers have found that having friends who gain weightespecially friends of the same genderraises your chance of becoming overweight by more than 50 percent. That's far more than if your spouse gains weight.

But they've also found that the same type of social influence can help you lose weight. In fact, sharing a fitness goal through your social network can help everyone in it. The team approach is most effective for people 18 to 35 years old, but has been successful for older Americans as well.

One large-scale example took place in Rhode Island. With resources from the wellness company Shape Up, now part of the Virgin Pulse group, the state encouraged thousands of people to start teams to promote weight loss and physical activity, and compete with each other.

In one year alone, nearly 1,000 small teams, some with just a few members, participated. Self-selected captains recruited team members, monitored their group's progress, and motivated members by sending encouraging messages and updates.

New York City has its own Shape Up NYC, an initiative that offers communities throughout its five boroughs a variety of fitness options. It reported that 65 percent of participants lost weight and experienced improved health benefits, and 83 percent said they felt an increase in energy.

Successes in Rhode Island and New York validate the team approach to weight loss, the researchers say. But you don't need to live in an area that sponsors such a program to start a team among your own circle of friends or co-workers. Set goals and initiate a friendly challenge to help everyone stay on track.

Explore further Four rules to avoid regaining lost weight

More information: Health.gov has Health.gov has 7 challenges to start with co-workers for weight loss and fitness goals.

Copyright  2018 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
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NASA successfully launched a spacecraft toward the sun on Sunday, hoping to increase scientific understanding of how our star works.

The Parker Solar Probes departure promises to set a plethora of records, including speediest spacecraft, highest velocity while leaving Earth and closest solar approach. It will also mark the first robotic visit to a uniquely hostile environment: the unstable atmosphere of a giant ball of perpetual nuclear fusion.

The probe lifted off at 3:31 a.m. Eastern time from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket sporting a rare third stage, giving it extra oomph to boost the payload into an interplanetary trajectory. The launch speed of 43,000 miles per hour (69,000 kilometers per hour) was expected to be the fastest of any previous launch because of the pace required to set a course directly to the sun.

The probe failed to launch in its original Saturday slot after missing a 45-minute window, NASA said.

We always say that luck has absolutely nothing to do with this business, but I will take all that I can get, ULA Chief Executive Officer Tory Bruno said in an interview Friday. The alliance is a joint venture of Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp.

With a gravity boost from the sun, the Parker will attain a top speed of 430,000 mph  about 120 miles a second  at its closest approach of only 3.8 million miles, becoming the fastest human-made object to hurtle through the solar system.

The probe will investigate two key questions about solar physics: How does the solar wind start and attain speeds of as much as 1.8 million mph? And why is the suns surface, at 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 Celsius), just a tiny fraction of the million-plus degree corona?

Well be going where no spacecraft has dared go before  within the corona of a star, said project scientist Nicky Fox of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland, which designed the probe and manages the mission.

The Parker will make 24 orbits of the sun over almost seven years, using Venus to help slow down and reduce its orbital distance to the sun. Parkers first approach, at 15 million miles, is expected on Nov. 1. So far, the Helios 2 spacecraft has made the closest approach, which flew within 27 million miles in 1976.

The probe will fly close enough to observe solar winds, assess their speed and study the formation of high-energy solar particles, which are associated with flares that can wreak havoc on Earth.

Cooling Off

Four suites of instruments will measure the suns magnetic field, solar-wind speed and the density and temperature of wind particles. The devices are protected from 2,550-degree heat by a 4.5-inch (11.4-centimeter) carbon-composite shield that will keep the equipment at a cozy 85 degrees during the journey.

The $1.5 billion probe is named after Eugene Parker, 91, a University of Chicago physicist who theorized in 1958 that the sun creates a solar wind  a notion that his peers found ridiculous until 1962, when the National Aeronautic and Space Administrations Mariner 2 mission to Venus confirmed the theory.

Now read: Build your own Mars rover using plans from NASA
Quay Snyder flies more than 130 times a year on commercial flights. As an aerospace medicine specialist, pilot and flight instructor, he feels perfectly safe in the air. But after each flight, to put his wife's mind at ease, he'll call her to say he has arrived without incident. "I joke with my wife," he says. "I give her a call and I say: 'I'm starting the most dangerous part of my journey - I'm driving home.' "

His point: Commercial airline travel is rarely dangerous. One person has died in the U.S. on a commercial airline in the past nine years, compared with nearly 40,000 a year who die in vehicle crashes in this country. Snyder's job, in the field of aviation medicine, is to help people stay healthy while flying. As president and CEO of Aviation Medicine Advisory Service, based in Centennial, Colorado, he assists pilots with health problems, advising them on how be to in top condition while in the air and on how to maintain their FAA medical certification. He also consults with professional pilot and aviation safety organizations on optimizing human performance and enhancing safety. He shared this advice for travelers on how to make wellness a priority while flying.

Separate fact from fiction when it comes to contagion

Snyder is quick to point out that travelers are not more likely to get sick on an airplane than they are in other spaces. In fact, he says, they may be less likely to catch a virus. That's because air is exchanged more frequently on the plane than it is in typical offices and school buildings, and filters on airplanes remove about 99 percent of germs from the air. To catch a virus, he says, you need to be sitting pretty close to someone who is sick. "They really need to be within about one or two rows of someone who is actively coughing and not actively suppressing that cough to be at risk for respiratory transmission," he says. "The risk is actually higher in the airport and even in the lines or the jetway or the restaurants at the airport."

Choose a window seat

Snyder opts for the inside seat, when possible. He says that's because airplanes are designed so that the air flow comes down from the top of the cabin and exits from vents on the floor by the window, so when you choose the window seat you benefit from that air flow. "That's a relatively safer place, even though the overall environment is safe," he says.

Wipe down flat surfaces

Germaphobes cringe at the idea of touching a tray table that's been touched by countless passengers before them, and for good reason. Snyder advises travelers to pack wipes (with at least 62 percent alcohol) and use them to wipe down tray tables, arm rests and seat belt buckles.

Keep your medications - and a list of those drugs - handy

Your carry-on is the best place for toting any medications you might need during your trip. That way, even if your plane is delayed or your luggage is lost, you still have them close at hand. Snyder also suggests carrying a list of the medications you're taking along; on long flights, you may want to carry notes about your medical history. The information will be accessible to medical professionals should you become sick or unable to communicate.

Get moving

Deep vein thrombosis can happen when a blood clot forms within a vein. While airplane travel itself doesn't cause deep-vein thrombosis, sitting in one place for a long period of time can contribute to it. "If you were on a train for eight hours, you'd have the same risk," Snyder says. On long flights, he suggests walking up and down the aisle or doing exercises in your seat to move your toes up and down and flex your calf muscles.

If you're sick or recently underwent surgery, visit a travel medical professional before flying

A number of health problems can be exacerbated by altitude, including lung, heart and intestinal ailments. Those who struggle to breathe on the ground may find it more difficult in the air. Same goes for heart problems. And the plane's pressure changes can cause gas and bloating, which might be a problem for someone who has recently undergone gastrointestinal surgery. Snyder says it's a good idea to make an appointment with a travel medicine specialist to address any potential concerns before flying. He or she will probably know more about the topic than your family doctor. "I would say the overwhelming majority of physicians don't take the physiological challenges of altitude into consideration," he says.

Drink lots of liquids (except alcohol and coffee)

Snyder says that the humidity level on an airplane is low, which is why travelers sometimes become dehydrated. Counteract it by increasing your water intake, and avoid drinking alcohol and caffeine, which are diuretics. He points out that dehydration isn't the only reason to avoid those little bottles of liquor on the plane. Altitude makes alcohol go to your head quickly, because less oxygen is getting to your brain. Alcohol can also disrupt sleep and worsen jet lag, Snyder says. "Just put it in the vernacular: you're stupider when you're on alcohol at altitude," he says.

Use common sense

Before you travel, get a good night's sleep. Eat a healthy meal. Drink lots of water. Exercise. Manage your stress. All of the tips that physicians - and moms - give year-round are also the kind of advice you should heed before hitting the skies.

Snyder also advises all travelers to wear their seat belts, listen to flight attendants during the safety briefing and read the safety card. He says that's something he does whenever he flies. "I probably irritate people by pulling out the safety card every time," he says. But just as he goes through a safety checklist when he's in the pilot seat, he says he wants to make sure, as a passenger, he's ready and able to do what he needs to do to stay safe.
This year, cryptic signs for something called Juul began appearing in the windows of the 7-Eleven on my block. On vacation in Miami, where smoking is still allowed in many clubs, I noticed a pretty young woman pull a Juul from her purse and lay it on the bar, next to her cocktail. This summer, I saw Juuls at a Fourth of July crab crack and Juuls on the city bus.

Juul, if you havent heard, has quietly become the most popular new way to smoke since the old coffin nail itself, claiming more than half of the booming market for electronic cigarettes.

Where early e-cigs tended to mimic cigarettesand hilariously generated more smoke than a fog machinethe Juul is as far removed from a cigarette as you can get. A sleek little brick that looks like a USB flash drive, it flickers with colored light, puffs discreetly and smells like nothing at all. It is the iPhone of smoking, and the kids are wild for it.

So, I needed one. I bought Juul from a neighborhood head shop where the man behind the counter informed me that he sells so many of the things he cant keep count, though it has nothing to do with marijuana. It plays to the same sensibilities, however: Juuling (yes, its a verb now) isnt necessarily about a search for a high, but for an aura of cool.

Every generation discoversor appropriatesa vice and polishes it to the appropriate social sheen. Juuling upstaged smoking, and on it goes, the generations grasping for signifiers and identities separate from the adults.

For the young, the Juul is this years incarnation of the fidget spinner.

Instagram is filled with models such as Bella Hadid, who is a tender 21, claiming to smoke mango, and girls who simply post brief videos of themselves puffing on Juuls. There are memesso, so many memesabout the panic that sets in when your Juul goes missing, and kids stuffing their mouths with Juuls and emitting one massive vaporous cloud. On YouTube, just one blurry video showing you how to smack Juul into party mode had more than 100,000 views.

But Juuling, health professionals say, also carries the dangers of the death stick of the past. It is raising alarms by hooking youth on nicotine at a time when old-fashioned smoking has been hitting a steep decline.

First, some basics.

A Juul is nothing without its pods, tiny pure nicotine capsules flavored like fruit or mint or Virginia tobacco (whatever that is). These give the device, and the user, the kick. (The Juulers, the man at the shop offers helpfully, really like the cucumber.)

For roughly $70, I take home a Juul and five podsthe nicotine equivalent of five packs of cigarettes. When I put it to my lips, it tastes faintly like an Andes mint and makes me feel deeply out of touch.

Over the next month, I take Juul to bars and puff flagrantly in front of bartenders. They dont stop me, but they glare.

I hit Washington, D.C.s trendiest, most aggressively hipster venueslike that new ax-throwing placeand dont encounter a single other Juul. One night, I dig to the bottom of my purse and toss the device onto a patio table, triggering a flicker of colored lightswhite, lavender, pink, blue, green. (Party mode, apparently.) A friend takes a drag of his Marlboro 27 and grimaces.

Is this that EDM thing the kids are always going on about?

The secret to Juuls controversial success may be a twist on the age-old story of smoking as an outlet for teenage rebellion. The popularity of Juul seems to grow in tandem with the uproar: Sales of Juul are up more than 700 percent from a year ago, according to Nielsen data.

Schools across the country say they are confiscating fistfuls of the things from their underage charges. Three lawsuits were recently filed against Juul Labs; each argues that users as young as 14 became addicted to Juul, and that the product was marketed as safe.

And last month on Capitol Hill, the American Association for Cancer Research convened a briefing on e-cigarettes exploding popularity with youth; the conversation revolved entirely around Juul.

Ive heard lots of stories from kids whove used Juul in front of teachers, and they think its so funny that their antiquated teacher doesnt realize that its, in fact, an addictive drug that theyre using, said Benjamin Toll, chief of tobacco cessation and health behaviors at the Hollings Cancer Center of the Medical University of South Carolina, who was on the panel.

When I ask her about the growth in the number of young vapers, Ashley Gould, chief administrative officer of Juul Labs, said that the flock of underage Juulers was not anticipated and completely unexpected to us.

The company, Gould said, is now working to scrape the Internet of social media posts of young people using Juul, and the unauthorized sellers who happily provide them.

No adult who has never used nicotine should ever use our product, she added.

That doesnt quite jibe with the marketing: In one ad produced by the company, its a young woman in a bomber jacket and crop topnot a leather-skinned 45-year-old trying to shed his 30-year dependence on Marlboroscoolly blowing smoke. The Virginia Slims glamazon has come a long way, baby.

American puffing peaked in 1970, when almost half of all adults smoked cigarettes. Smoking had been popularized by television and movies and celebrity. James Dean smoked. Marilyn Monroe smoked. When Jimi Hendrix picked at his upside-down Fender with his eyes closed, a lit cigarette invariably was dangling from his mouth.

The feeling of subversiveness, the heady high of believing we were truly cool, helped lift the cigarettes to Americans lips; we kept doing it, despite the pervasive stink on our clothes and the tar that yellowed our teeth, because of nicotine, because it is addictive.

Even the surgeon generals landmark warning in the late 1960s that linked smoking to cancer couldnt get Americans to quit. Instead, they gave it up at a glacial paceby 2016 just 15.5 percent of adults smoked, according to the most recent CDC data, and it was largely thanks to a culture shift that cast the small circles of smokers whod gather to puff outside of office buildings and bars as deeply uncool. They were addicts.

It was around the same time that e-cigarette makers swooped in to woo smokers suddenly desperate to quit. They looked like cigarettes, with tips that lit up. They were unequivocally silly.

Those proto e-cigarettes also never really caught on because they didnt give users the instant smack of nicotine that one puff on a cigarette could. But Juul, introduced by vape company Pax in 2015 and spun off in 2017 as an independent San Francisco-based company called Juul Labs, was engineered to give you what smokers call throat hit. Which is to say, it smokes like a cigarette. It crackles like a fire.

And Juul kept the nicotine and chucked out all the restthe thin casing of paper that always seemed to fall apart in the bottom of our purses, the flakes of tobacco, the tar, the carbon dioxide, the smell, the very form of the cigarette.

All of our smoking actual tobacco has gone way, way down, said Brian Maslowski, an instructor of alcohol, drug and tobacco seminars for Fairfax County [Virginia] Public Schools. The kids he encounters Juuling, he says, are very much aware of the risks and consequences of smoking.

They just dont believe that what theyre doing is smoking.

To Allan Brandt, a historian and author of The Cigarette Century, Juul is anything but new and different.

It represents the cultural norms and notions of the cigarette, which was very much youth-oriented, he said. It was kind of forbidden; it was extremely cool.

And, paradoxically, If you tell a youthful generation, This is really for adults, that makes it incredibly appealing.

Could it be that with Juul, its just a different generation simply doing what young people have always donetesting boundaries, sneaking independence? Teen pregnancy is down, and marijuana is practically normalized. Perhaps Juul is just the new boogeyman to replace all the old ones.

Jack Waxman, a college-bound 18-year-old from Scarsdale, New York, has become one of the few kids to speak out against Juul, a position hell acknowledge is an unpopular one on social media. He said he was alarmed when he started noticing his classmates puffing on cucumber and mango last summer. But he maintains that Juul may be worse for his generation than marijuana or alcohol, which he sees as weekend vices. With Juul, Waxman said, I saw my friends using these things they could not put down.

It spread like wildfire, for two reasons, he said. The first reason is the flashy flavors like creme brulee. The flavors are responsible for bringing the kids in, the nicotine keeps them.

Its almost as if its the cigarette industry come full circle, no?

I think the history of this tells me, dont trust these industries, said Brandt, the smoking historian. Juul can say, Were not interested in kids; were going to fight the use of this in kids. But with flavors like mango, and cool cucumber. . . .

Cigarette makers have always said they didnt want kids to smoke, he continued. But bad news about children lighting up on the schoolyard, he said, was always great news for the tobacco companies.

I think back on my own generation, which was in its teens when we watched Kurt Cobain on MTV, coolly dragging on a cigarette between strums of his acoustic guitar. And then, for a brief while, I smoked Parliaments on stoops in New York, too, till it became too expensive to continue. We straddled the time when all the fun kids loitered outside smoking, and the moment when, abruptly, the cigarette became social napalm.

Perhaps thats why, in the weeks that I toted around Juul, none of my friends, a group almost entirely in its 30s, seemed the least bit intrigued in the blinking thing in my palm. And I hated puffing on it. Too embarrassing. It sits in the bottom of my purse now, where only the obnoxious flash of party mode alerts me to the fact that its there, calling out not to me, but to the kids.
Community organizer Xulio Soriano announced his candidacy for the Napa Valley College Board for Area 4. He expects to be running against incumbent Kyle Iverson.

Sorianos community work has focused on assisting marginalized groups within the indigenous and Latino communities, he said in his news release. He is currently executive director of Movimiento Cultural de la Union Indigena, a nonprofit that serves those populations.

Soriano was born in Oaxaca, Mexico to a farmworker family with indigenous (Mixteca) roots. He immigrated with his family to Napa when he was 9 years old and attended Shearer Elementary School. After graduating from Vintage High School, Soriano attended Napa Valley College where he was active in student government as a voting member of the Associated Students of Napa Valley College.

Soriano participated in Leadership Napa Valley in 2014 as a member of Class 27. He was also honored by the Napa County Hispanic Network with a Friends of the Network award last year.

Soriano has continued to further his education at the college, taking classes as recently as last year. In addition, through his community work, he has continued to collaborate with various campus groups on projects of common interest, such as organizing legal observer trainings through the North Bay Rapid Response Network.

I became a U.S. citizen last year and am now eligible to run for elected office, said Soriano. I decided to run for the college Board, because I want to be a voice and advocate for students, and help shape and oversee the policies and laws that affect them.

Area 4 includes part of the city of Napa with Lincoln Avenue to the south, California Boulevard to the west, and Trower Avenue to the north, and extends east beyond Big Ranch Road.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect the name of the non-profit where the candidate is executive director.

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Beating a dead horse with a stick or beating a horse with a dead stick? Is the Bureau of Reclamation a dead horse no longer functioning, or is the influence of Napa County just a dead stick when encountering bureaucratic inertia? Its been a long time since the original promise by the Bureau of Reclamation of a seamless transition at Lake Berryessa followed by many years of total chaos leading to the destruction of a local community and economy you see here now.

After the Pensus fiasco of 2010, Reclamation officials appeared to finally understand the serious damage they had done to our community. They scrambled from August, 2013 to January, 2014 to prepare various detailed plans for five concession areas. In July, 2015 Reclamation released its latest Concession Bid Prospectus. In February, 2016 Reclamation announced that no acceptable bids were received - a major disaster for the Lake Berryessa community.

There was a period after that last failed bid process that Reclamation felt enough guilt to agree to work towards a Managing Partner Agreement with Napa County to allow the county to take over management of the resorts and create its own bid package and subsequent concession contracts.

Napa County kept its word. It funded a detailed study showing that Lake Berryessa is a recreational gem that should provide significant financial incentive for resort companies to bid on running the lake resorts. At a Dec. 13, 2017 meeting, both Lake Berryessa supervisors, Alfredo Pedroza and Diane Dillon, spoke positively about the potential outcomes. Supervisor Pedroza said, Weve made great progress in working with the Bureau of Reclamation that will renew the vibrancy and allow sensible development at the lake.

In January 2018, Reclamation said that it also was dedicated to coming to a Managing Partner Agreement (MPA) with the County. An MPA would allow Napa County to manage concession contracts with terms that were previously not available through Reclamation, leading to the revitalization of the whole region.

But then something non-happened - everything stopped. One hang-up seems to be the typical bureaucratic off like a herd of turtles syndrome. The other is the federal government approving 50-year terms for new concession contracts rather than the 30-year terms originally proposed by the Department of the Interior.

Napa County is well managed with a dedicated professional staff. They have done their due diligence, and all indications are that various departments are prepared to move forward with the bid process and concession management plans.

But where is the Bureau of Reclamation? Well, it appears - nowhere. Weve lost another month, now four months behind schedule, due to bureaucratic bungling on the part of the Bureau of Reclamation. Apparently no one in that bureaucracy is willing to stand up and make a decision about the 50-year contract term. This is a betrayal of magnificent proportions.

I am very concerned that the Bureau of Reclamation is once again ignoring the needs of the Lake Berryessa community. Why has Reclamation unilaterally delayed this important process? Why has Reclamation not followed through with the critically important approval of 50-year contract terms - which all research has shown to be necessary to attract competent recreation companies to invest in new facilities?

It is sobering to think that I've been in this fight since 1998 -- 20 years. And we've lost more than 10 years of family recreation. Tens of thousands of families and children -- almost a whole generation -- have been denied the pleasures of having fun at the largest and cleanest lake in Northern California.

Peter Kilkus

Lake Berryessa
A Parliamentary panel has suggested in its draft report that India should encourage Bhutan to ensure increase in the deployment of soldiers around Northern Doklam in the Sikkim sector to check activities of Chinese military in the sensitive region.

A report appearing in the The Times of India stated that the Parliamentary Panel on External Affairs, headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, felt that increasing the number of soldiers in North Doklam was important for safeguarding Indias strategic interests in the region. The draft report, circulated among the panels members on August 6 last, did not clarify whether the committee was favouring increasing the deployment of Indian troops in the region.

Troops of India and China were locked in a 73-day standoff in Doklam in the Sikkim sector from June 16 last year after the Indian side stopped construction of a road in the disputed tri-junction by the Chinese Army. Bhutan and China have a dispute over Doklam and both the countries have been holding talks to resolve the issue.

The report further stated that the parliamentary panel also suggested that India should remain alert and watchful in the Doklam area even though last years face-off between Indian and Chinese Armies was resolved peacefully.

Also Read: Former top Indian diplomat said possible Chinese still in Doklam after face-off ended

It is crystal clear that Chinas Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) took advantage of the absence of Bhutanese soldiers in Batangla-Merugla Sinchela ridgeline, which is in Bhutan, the panel noted. Therefore, the committee recommends deployment of higher number of soldiers in Northern Doklam. India should encourage Bhutan for it so that the Chinese Army could be stopped from pushing the limit of the tri-junction point, it said.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi is a member of the 31-member panel, where a majority of the members are from the BJP. Some members of the committee travelled to Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh to take stock of ground situations and meet senior officials there. The panel has been briefed several times on the situation in Doklam by S Jaishankar, former Foreign Secretary, and his successor Vijay Gokhale. The Foreign Ministry officials had informed the panel that Bhutan was firmly with India on the issue, sources in the panel said. They said during discussions, Gandhi had questioned Foreign Ministry officials on Chinas objective and why Beijing chose Doklam to trigger a confrontation.
Story Highlights 47% of Democrats view capitalism positively, down from 56% in 2016

57% of Democrats now view socialism positively, little changed from 2010

Republicans very positive about capitalism; 16% positive on socialism

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- For the first time in Gallup's measurement over the past decade, Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism. Attitudes toward socialism among Democrats have not changed materially since 2010, with 57% today having a positive view. The major change among Democrats has been a less upbeat attitude toward capitalism, dropping to 47% positive this year -- lower than in any of the three previous measures. Republicans remain much more positive about capitalism than about socialism, with little sustained change in their views of either since 2010.

Views About Capitalism and Socialism: by Party Positive view of capitalism Positive view of socialism % % Democrats/Leaners 2018 47 57 2016 56 58 2012 55 53 2010 53 53 Republicans/Leaners 2018 71 16 2016 68 13 2012 72 23 2010 72 17 Gallup

These results are from Gallup interviewing conducted July 30-Aug. 5. Views of socialism among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are particularly important in the current political environment because many observers have claimed the Democratic Party is turning in more of a socialist direction.

Socialist Bernie Sanders competitively challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, and more recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a candidate with similar policy views and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, won the Democratic nomination in New York's 14th Congressional District. Several candidates with socialist leanings lost their primary bids in Aug. 7 voting, however, raising doubts about the depth of Democrats' embrace of socialism.

The current survey is the fourth time Gallup has measured Americans' overall views of capitalism and socialism in this format. The question wording does not define "socialism" or "capitalism" but simply asks respondents whether their opinion of each is positive or negative.

Democrats' and Republicans' sharply contrasting views of the two economic systems are not unexpected, given the history of the two parties. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have notably positive views of capitalism and negative views of socialism. Democrats, by contrast, are less unified in their views, but by 10 percentage points are more positive about socialism than about capitalism.

Fewer Than Half of Young Americans View Capitalism Positively

Americans aged 18 to 29 are as positive about socialism (51%) as they are about capitalism (45%). This represents a 12-point decline in young adults' positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68% viewed it positively. Meanwhile, young people's views of socialism have fluctuated somewhat from year to year, but the 51% with a positive view today is the same as in 2010.

Older Americans have been consistently more positive about capitalism than socialism. For those 50 and older, twice as many currently have a positive view of capitalism as of socialism.

Views About Capitalism and Socialism: by Age Positive view of capitalism Positive view of socialism % % 18-29 2018 45 51 2016 57 55 2012 56 49 2010 68 51 30-49 2018 58 41 2016 54 37 2012 65 42 2010 58 36 50-64 2018 60 30 2016 69 27 2012 64 36 2010 64 31 65+ 2018 60 28 2016 63 24 2012 57 26 2010 54 30 GALLUP

Taken as a Whole, Americans More Positive About Capitalism

A majority of Americans have retained a positive view of capitalism over the past eight years, but this year's 56% positive rating is by four points the lowest recorded since 2010. This modest drop in positive attitudes toward capitalism was driven, as reviewed above, by the less positive attitudes among Democrats.

Despite the increasing prominence of socialism in the public discourse in recent years, little has changed in Americans' attitudes toward the concept at the national level. Americans' positive views of socialism have varied only between 35% and 39%, with this year's reading of 37% right at the trend average.

Americans Remain Most Positive About Small Business, Entrepreneurs

The Gallup question asking Americans about their views of capitalism and socialism included five other entities: big business, small business, entrepreneurs, the federal government and free enterprise.

As in the past, Americans are most positive about small business, entrepreneurs and free enterprise, and less so about big business. Views of the federal government are, along with views of socialism, the least positive of any of the seven concepts measured.

Americans' positive views of several of the eight items tested are slightly less positive this year than in 2016, including a six-point drop in positive views of free enterprise.

Just off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of each of the following? % Positive 2016 2018 Change % % pct. pts. Small business 96 92 -4 Entrepreneurs 87 86 -1 Free enterprise 85 79 -6 Capitalism 60 56 -4 Big business 53 50 -3 The federal government 44 39 -5 Socialism 35 37 +2 GALLUP

As might be expected, Republicans are significantly more positive than Democrats about free enterprise and big business, consistent with their more positive views of capitalism. There are smaller differences in partisan views of small business and entrepreneurs (both groups are quite positive toward these) as well as the federal government (with well less than half of both groups holding positive views).

Bottom Line

A majority of Democrats have viewed socialism positively each time Gallup has measured the concept since 2010, and -- despite the increased visibility given to the concept this year -- those views have not changed substantively. But the drop in Democrats' positive views of capitalism this year has for the first time left Democrats more positive about socialism as a concept than about capitalism.

It's possible that the drop in Democrats' positive views of capitalism is related to Donald Trump's presidency. Trump is an enthusiastic capitalist, and his administration's efforts to roll back regulations on business and industry, as well as the tax cut law that is advantageous to businesses and corporations, may have caused Democrats to view the entire capitalist enterprise with less positive eyes.

The talk about the Democratic Party moving more toward socialist policies in its platforms in this year's midterm elections was muted with the failure of several socialist candidates to capture their party's nomination in recent primary voting. And, although a majority -- even if not an overwhelming one -- of Democrats nationwide react positively to the word "socialism," the strong antipathy toward socialism among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents suggests a political campaign favorable to socialism would not play well in a general election.

Socialism as a concept is open to many interpretations. Gallup was describing socialism in questions asked in the 1940s in terms of government ownership of businesses -- something that Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and most other left-leaning Democratic candidates have not advocated. Instead, socialism today seems to embody sets of programs by which the government helps regulate and in some instances run and pay for social programs focused on basic population needs in health, education, housing and employment.

Socialism clearly sounds better as a concept to young people than to those who are older, as it has over the past eight years. Evidence for this is found in the strong support younger voters gave Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential campaign (despite his septuagenarian status) and in the candidacy of Ocasio-Cortez (who is herself 28 years old). Whether the appeal of socialism to young adults is a standard function of idealism at that age that dissipates as one grows older, or will turn out to be a more permanent part of the political beliefs held by the cohort of millennials who have come of age over the past decade, remains to be seen.
The representation of the Vatican in Morocco strongly denounced in a statement the political use by the Polisario of the children of the Tindouf camps.

The Tindouf camps in the Algerian territories are home to Saharans who are held against their will in harsh conditions as the separatists continue to trade in their suffering denying them the right to freely return to their homeland Morocco or chose asylum elsewhere.

The Vaticans statement came after a picture portraying the Pope and children from the Tindouf camps to whom separatists gave flags of the self-proclaimed SADR republic that Algeria wants to create in Southern Morocco through its proxy, the Polisario, in a bid to contain the North African Kingdom.

The Vaticans response to the propaganda relayed on the separatist fronts media, funded by Algeria, was swift and clear-cut. The Holy Sees statement made it clear that the Pope met the children just as he would meet any other pilgrims from around the globe.

The meeting is of pastoral nation and has no political connotation, the Vatican said through its representation in Morocco.

The Polisario has been for long lambasted by international rights organizations for indoctrinating children. The Algeria-backed separatists have also separated children from their families to be sent for communist military training in Cuba since the 1970s.
Hey Mr Donald, ask O'Neill what he's doing about our six-year wait for an ICAC

EDDIE TANAGO | Act Now!

PORT MORESBY - It is now six years since prime minister Peter ONeill promised Papua New Guinea an Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Yet that vision is no closer to being realised today than it was in 2012.

Peter ONeill has totally failed to live up to his promises in both the 2012 and 2017 Alotau Accords that the government would establish an ICAC.

The impact of not having a dedicated anti-corruption agency that is politically independent, fully resourced and that has full powers of arrest and prosecution has been devastating for our economic well-being and the quality of life for ordinary people.

Delegates at last weeks APEC anti-corruption and transparency workshop repeatedly spoke about how corruption inhibits development and is a serious threat to economic growth yet PNG had almost nothing to show in terms of progress under the United Nations Convention on Corruption.

In PNG we repeatedly hear that a large-proportion of the national budget is lost every year to corruption, taking money directly from health and education services.

We also hear about the high costs that businesses have to endure as a result of corruption, which act to reduce profits, lower employment and limit investment. Yet the government has just dragged its feet for year after year over an ICAC.

Act Now! says that PNG, Australia and China are spending more than K1.1 billion on the whole APEC extravaganza, a tiny proportion of that money would have been sufficient to fund the operations of a robust, independent and well-staffed ICAC for more than a decade.

Ridding PNG of the scourge of corruption would do far more to assist development in PNG and ensure the well-being of our citizens than a huge party for the worlds leaders and their entourages.

We hope that in November, when the leaders from the worlds two biggest economies will be here in PNG, they will ask the prime minister why he has not established an ICAC and whose interests he is protecting.
In the first five months of 2018, more than 100,000 Chinese tourists visited Morocco, which lifted the visa on Chinese nationals in 2016.

Last year, they were 120,000 Chinese tourists among nearly 11 million tourists who visited the North African kingdom where Chinese restaurants are mushrooming.

At the China-Morocco Tourism Forum held in Casablanca in February this year, Moroccan tourism minister Mohammed Sajid announced the ambitious target of attracting 500,000 Chinese tourists every year by 2020.

As it seeks to diversify its tourist emitting markets, Morocco sees enormous opportunities in the Chinese market, which has 130 million tourists traveling abroad annually and spending generously.

Reinforcing air links will be Moroccos bridge to increase Chinese tourist arrivals as the national flag carrier, RAM, is reportedly planning to open air routes to China.

Contacts have also been made to explore the possibility for Chinese airlines to fly to Morocco.

So far, Moroccos carrier has improved its connectivity with China through establishing partnerships with three key international airlines  Etihad Airways, Turkish Airlines and Air France  with a view to increasing the number of regular flights between Chinese cities and Moroccos prime tourist destinations.

Moroccos tourism promotion office has also signed an agreement with the Confucius Center to train tourist guides to speak mandarin, a language that is also taught at some top Moroccan universities with graduates having prospects to work as tourist guides.
French President Emmanuel Macron is reportedly planning a visit to Morocco in September to be centered on migration, media reports said.

If confirmed, the visit, Macrons second to Morocco since his election, will come at a context of a surge of illegal migration attempts from Morocco to Spain as migrants shun the Libyan route in favor of the more secure Western Mediterranean crossing.

The EU announced earlier, in the wake of the increase in illegal crossings, that it will increase aid to Spain and Morocco to 60 million.

So far this year, Spain has overtaken Italy as the main entry point of illegal migrants to the EU with more than 20,000 illegal migrants this year.

Morocco, a destination for migrants itself, is asking for more support from the EU to tackle the new wave of migrants.

In a congratulations message to King Mohammed VI on the Throne Day, Macron praised Morocco for its migration policy and leadership saying that the 11th World Forum on Migration next December in Marrakech would offer a chance to learn from the policy launched by Morocco in 2013 to manage migration and asylum.

Morocco along with Algeria, Libya and Tunisia have rejected the EU idea of creating migrant disembarkation platforms on their soil.
Algeria, France and Mali are said to have reached a secret deal under which they will grant asylum to Al Qaeda and other terrorists in return for laying down arms, the Middle East Eye reported.

The media cited an Algerian security source who asked not to be named. The news came after the surrender of Larbi Khelifa  also known as Abu Ayoub  at Tamanrasset near the border with Mali.

Khelifa, who had been wanted since 2010, is the emir of the al-Furqan cell of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a small group responsible for a rocket attack on a gas plant in the Algerian Sahara in March 2016.

The surrender and laying down of arms, according to an army statement, will give them immunity from prosecution, a policy which has benefitted slightly more than 40 militants since the end of 2017 in the border zone of Tamanrasset, 2,000km south of Algiers.

The Algerian source told Middle East Eye the surrender was made possible thanks to a secret agreement signed in July 2017 between Algiers, Bamako and Paris.

But such media reports are difficult to believe as long as they have not been made official yet, especially in view of Algerias reluctance to engage in security cooperation with France in the Sahel.

Over the last few years, Algeria has been rebuked for laxity in countering Sahel terrorism. Algiers has also been blamed for ties with Iad Ag Ghali who facilitated the merger of four terrorist groups operating in the Sahel into one group pledging allegiance to Al Qaeda and its Jordanian leader Azarkawi.

The four terrorist groups were brought together under the command of Ag Ghali. The new terrorist organization bears the name of Jamaat Nasr Al islam wa Al mouminin (Group for the Defense of Islam and the Muslims).

The bloody attacks on Burkina Faso by Nusrat Al Islam wal Muslimin group raises question marks. Despite strong presence of G5, French and American troops, no senior terrorist leader could be arrested in the region. The only remaining explanation to the surge of terrorism is that terrorist groups have found safe haven in the Algerian desert.

Analysts see that Algeria has been manipulating terrorism in the region for three main reasons. First, connivance between Algerian security services and some terrorist groups dates back to the black decade in the 1990s where domestic intelligence service (DRS) used extreme GIA members to discredit the FIS Islamists.

Later, with the disbanding of the GIA and its retreat to the mountains and the Sahara, Algerias security operations pushed these terrorist remnants of the black decade to operate in the Sahel where they engaged in trafficking and criminal activities.

Algeria has also used terrorist leaders in the Touareg community such as Iyad Ag Ghali to thwart nationalist ambitions of the Touaregs in Mali who were on the verge of establishing a state they call Azawad. Algeria, which has a large Touareg community of its own, will never allow the establishment of a Touareg state in Northern Mali. It found in terrorist groups led by Iyad Ag Ghali a much-needed ally to discredit the Touaregs.

Algeria is also keen to have the upper hand on counter-terrorism effort in the region in implementation of its regional hegemony attempts of becoming the Wests single interlocutor when it comes to security issues in the Sahel.

Algerias unilateral approaches and patronizing attitude with its Sahel neighbors have so far backfired. Instead of being invited to key security meetings, Algeria is isolated more than ever by its Sahel neighbors.
As the migration crisis in Europe has worsened and as illegal migration attempts from Morocco to Europe, particularly to Spain, have surged, some European countries are turning towards the North African Kingdom for help.

In this connection, some European leaders have scheduled visits to Rabat to address this issue with Moroccan authorities, reports Al Massae daily in its Monday issue.

The Italian Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini will shortly visit Morocco part of a tour that will also take him to Tunisia and Algeria.

Italy announced early August it will give the three Maghreb countries funds in order to restrict the immigration flow to Europe. Matteo Salvini said that the funds will be allocated to investments in agriculture, trade, and fishing.

French President Emmanuel Macron advanced a scheduled visit to Morocco to September precisely because of the migration crisis in Europe. The visit will take place just after the summer holidays, the daily said, noting that this will be the second visit of the French president since his election.

Quoting well-informed sources, the daily said migration issues will be on top of Macrons agenda.

Spain and Germany also stress the need to find, with Morocco, a solution to the migration crisis, Akhbar Al Yaoum, another local daily, reported Monday. It recalled that the two European countries have just signed an agreement providing for support to Morocco to help it cope with the waves of migration from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the new head of the Spanish government, Pedro Sanchez, announced Saturday, in a press briefing after a meeting in Andalusia, their support for Morocco to prevent that the North African Kingdom becomes a major crossing point for thousands of migrants seeking to reach Europe.

Morocco is suffering from the pressure of migratory flows from sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, we need to strengthen our cooperation, not only with the countries of origin but also with transit countries like Morocco, the daily quoted Pedro Sanchez as saying during the joint press conference with the German Chancellor.

The Head of the Spanish government recalled, in this vein, that the conclusions of the European Council held last June reflect the commitment of all EU institutions and EU Member States to the need to strengthen cooperation with Morocco given the key role it has to play in the management of migratory flows.

Early July, the EU approved a 55 million fund to assist Morocco and Tunisia to combat migration. Morocco then requested resources estimated at 60 million for border management and migration control.

For her part, the German Chancellor stressed that the EU must intensify its cooperation with Morocco in migration matters and increase cooperation funds destined to the Kingdom and to Tunisia, two border countries that need help, she said.

She also noted that Morocco, a country that plays a very important role in the issue of migration, is also a partner with whom we have economic relations and close contacts, the daily added.
The numbers of terrorist attacks and deaths worldwide declined in 2017 for the third consecutive year, according to latest data released by the University of Marylands National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START).

Last year, there were 10,900 terrorist attacks around the world, which killed more than 26,400 people, including 8,075 perpetrators and 18,488 victims, show the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), a compilation of attacks published yearly by the University of Maryland.

Terrorist violence peaked in 2014 to nearly 17,000 attacks and more than 45,000 total deaths.

While three consecutive years of decreases is encouraging, terrorist violence remains extraordinarily high compared to historical trends, said Dr. Erin Miller, GTD program manager.

In the decade prior to the September 11th attacks, the frequency and lethality of terrorist violence worldwide each year was less than one-third of what we saw last year, he added.

In 2017, terrorist violence remained heavily concentrated in certain locations, and coincided with other types of political violence. More than half of all attacks took place in four countries: Iraq (23 pc), Afghanistan (13 pc), India (9 pc) and Pakistan (7 pc). More than half of all deaths took place in three countries: Iraq (24 pc), Afghanistan (23 pc) and Syria (8 pc).

The deadliest terrorist attack in 2017 took place in October, in Mogadishu, Somalia. Assailants detonated explosives in a truck near the Safari Hotel. More than 580 people were killed, and more than 300 others were injured.

The ISIS extremist group was responsible for the most terrorist attacks (1,321) and deaths (7,120) in 2017. The Taliban and al-Shabaab were the next most deadly group with 907 attacks (4,925 deaths) and 573 attacks (1894 deaths).

In the Middle East and North Africa, the number of attacks decreased to 3,780 in 2017, from more than 6,110 the year prior. Thats a decrease of almost 40 pc. And the number of deaths caused by terrorism in the region fell by almost half.

The major drops were recorded in Iraq, Turkey, Libya, Yemen and Syria. ISIS retreat in 2017 contributed to the decline. The terror drop in the Middle East, Asia and Africa has been the main driver of a global decline in terror. Attacks around the world went from about 17,000 three years ago to 10,900 last year.

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) is supported by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

START uses state of the art theories, methods and data from the social and behavioral sciences to improve understanding of the origins, dynamics and social and psychological impacts of terrorism.

Posted by North Africa Post North Africa Post's news desk is composed of journalists and editors, who are constantly working to provide new and accurate stories to NAP readers.
Harriet Nomi Namusoke is using her experience as a teacher in the UK as well as connections in the diaspora to champion the education of unprivileged children in a rural village in Kakiri and beyond, writes Justus Lyatuu.

Namusoke has an unquenchable passion for teaching that goes back to the eighties. After completing her grade III teaching course at Shimoni Teachers College, she taught in various schools such as Kampala Parents School, St Savio Kisubi and St Marys primary school Nabbingo.

She moved to the United Kingdom determined to fulfil her passion and enrolled at Southwark College, where she obtained a diploma in pre-school learning. She later joined Middlesex University, where she attained a degree in primary education and has since then taught in various schools in London.

Harriet Namusoke (R) teaches learners at Two Bridges community school

Her speciality is the proper teaching of reading and writing English using phonics. She returned home for the first time in 2013 and felt the need to share her expertise.

Together with her partner, John Senteza, they set up Basena Agro Creativity Centre in Kabowa, a Kampala suburb. The aim is awakening and strengthening creativity among young learners. We wanted a place where children would learn with practical examples, she says.

In 2015, as they went about stocking the centre, she learnt about a rundown primary school in Kakiri, Wakiso district and the community needed help to revamp this hub for three neighbouring villages.

We were not keen at first but when we reached there, indeed, help was needed and it was hard to turn our backs on those children; we had to help, says Namusoke.

They took on the task of rescuing this school, which had about 120 learners. It is now called Two Bridges community primary school, named so because it is nestled between two bridges in the village of Kawalira.

Luckily, we have made friends and well-wishers at home and in the diaspora, who provide some help, she says. We are happy with the progress so far, especially seeing children smiling, enjoying school life and progressing in their learning.

The experience of teaching in two different settings is helping her integrate the phonetic approach at Two Bridges.

I work alongside the teachers and then assess the children; so far Im impressed with the progress, she says. I also reach out to other teachers in different schools by organising workshops and on general guidance of teaching.

Namusoke (R) with visiting students from Royal Russell

Currently, the school has approximately 160 children whose parents struggle with the very minimal fees. Some do work at school and engage in activities such as cooking, building, digging or carpentry.

Others simply offer maize and beans as form of school fees, she says. Im happy parents are trying though a lot still needs to be done for the school to meet the challenges of modern teaching and learning.

Namusoke co-authored a research titled Fabulous Phonics: A creative approach to teaching reading and writing in The Guardian in which she details the values of the phonetic approach.

In 2016, Two Bridges was selected for partnership by a UK team of educationists because of its creative approach to teaching.

Life-changing experience

Two weeks ago, a group of students from Royal Russell School in London visited Two Bridges to establish links.

They stayed in the village working alongside the teachers to help the learners. They also got involved with the local community, creating an unforgettable experience for all. Prior to the visit, the visiting students organised fundraising events that enabled three classrooms to be built.

When these students come and help the school meet some of these challenges, the community is highly appreciative, says Namusoke.

Explaining the choice to partner Two Bridges, Paul Endersby from Royal Russell says Namusokes extensive experience offers learners with an imaginative, thematic and pupil-centred approach to learning.

I have noted that learners work alongside teachers to deliver this teaching style which has enabled pupils to make accelerated progress, he says. Im glad they are learning to be problem solvers.

Zack Allen, the spokesman for the group, said: This experience has been the most profound and life-changing of my life so far.

The visit came with renewed hope in the community because every school-going child is given an opportunity.

Such visits offer learners a much-needed exposure and improve their self-esteem, Namusoke says.

We try as much to make them critical thinkers and problem solvers equipped with techniques which enable them discover for themselves. They have to see to believe. For example, why should a teacher introduce fractions on the blackboard when he/she can guide them cut an orange or fold a piece of paper?

Looking ahead, Namusoke hopes to turn Two Bridges into a demonstration centre for other schools in the region.

justuslyatuu89@gmail.com
President Yoweri Museveni has called for a review of government's free education programme in both primary and secondary schools.

Museveni said he is still confused on which side to take as some people are suggesting that parents can afford contributing something towards the education of their children. Others however claim that parents are too poor to afford paying schools fees for their children.

He tasked the National Youth Council to enquire from village council leaders on whether Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Secondary Education (USE) should be reviewed to allow monitory contributions from parents.

Museveni disclosed this while presiding over the International Youth Day celebrations at Kampiringisa Rehabilitation Centre playgrounds in Mpigi district yesterday under the theme "Safe Spaces for Youths".

President Museveni has called for a review of government's free education policy Museveni explained that government spends huge sums on UPE and USE yet many government schools charge parents, which calls for a policy review. Museveni explained that government spends huge sums on UPE and USE yet many government schools charge parents, which calls for a policy review.

"When I try to ask some people they ask parents are capable of paying but just pretend. So the question then is, are parents capable of paying or are just pretending. We need an answer of all the villages. They should tell us because if they are too lazy to pay that means they can afford but are pretending. But if they cant afford and we force them that means children will not go to school. So I need advice from you because youre the people in the villages. Youre the one to tell me that this is the way to go. I challenged you the youth." he said.



Many schools, especially those in urban areas resolved to levy an optional Shs 10,000 for lunch and Shs 10,400 for utility bills like water and electricity.



Museveni says he has failed to understand how the matter should be handled and therefore called from resolutions from village council leaders whom he believes are much aware of the status of people in their villages.

"I told you to go back to the villages and ask the LC1s whether we should allow school charges to come back or we should stop themCan the families afford to pay the school charges or can they not afford? Because now am being tossed around. We spend so much money on UPE, so much money on USE yet government schools are charging and you find children are out of school. I need a resolution from LC1s to tell me what to do." said Museveni.



He says government will take a decision after hearing from the local leaders. Government rolled out UPE in 1997 and abolished all kinds of fees. Primary school enrolment increased from 3.1 million pupils in 1996 to 7.6 million in 2003 following the introduction of UPE.



Government introduced Universal Secondary Education ten years later to enable eligible primary school graduates enrol in secondary and vocational training institutions.



While government promised to pay the fees, parents were expected to provide scholastic materials and midday meals for the learners. However many parents especially in rural areas do not to provide meals to their children, saying they are too poor.

Recent reviews by civil society organisations have found UPE and USE schools struggling to meet costs of operation as government funds are most of the times delayed, swindled or a times not released altogether.

The quality of education in the UPE and USE has also come under scrutiny after government ordered for automatic promotion of all students.
A few days after Elon Musk shocked Wall Street and investors by tweeting that he would take Tesla private at $420 a share, speculation is still high on who could invest in what could be the biggest-ever buyout deal. One of the potential financiers of the US$82-billion taking-Tesla-private deal could be Saudi Arabias sovereign wealth fund Public Investment Fund (PIF), which was said to have acquired just below 5 percent in Tesla before Musk tweeted about his idea to make the EV maker private.

PIF is in talks to take part in any pool of investors that would fund the buyout, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday, citing people with knowledge of the Saudi funds plans. PIF explores ways on how it could be involved in the possible going-private deal, for which Musk prefers to have a larger group of investors instead of just one or two large stakeholders, Bloombergs sources say.

According to those sources, PIFs talks started before Musk tweeted last Tuesday about considering taking Tesla private. The Saudi fund sees its stake in Tesla as a strategic way to hedge against oil, according to Bloombergs sources who noted that PIF hasnt made any decision yet on if it would increase its interest in Tesla.

However, according to sources familiar with the plans who spoke to Reuters, PIF has not yet expressed interest in investing in a buyout, despite the fact that it has now become a minority shareholder in Tesla.

Musks email to Tesla employees posted on Teslas website on the day of the tweet explained the rationale for the going-private plan, but Musk has yet to prove that the funding secured part of his tweet was true.

On the day following the tweet, Teslas Board of Directors members Brad Buss, Robyn Denholm, Ira Ehrenpreis, Antonio Gracias, Linda Johnson Rice, and James Murdoch said that Elon Musk had opened a discussion with the board in the previous week about taking the company private.

This included discussion as to how being private could better serve Teslas long-term interests, and also addressed the funding for this to occur. The board has met several times over the last week and is taking the appropriate next steps to evaluate this, the directors said.

The SEC has asked Tesla if Musk had facts to back up his claim on Twitter that funding is secured, people familiar with the regulators inquiry told the Wall Street Journal last week.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Chinese refiners and the U.S. oil industry welcomed a decision by Beijing last week to exclude crude oil exports from a list of goods worth US$16 billion, on which China will impose a 25-percent tariff in response to the latest U.S. round of tariffs on Chinese goods with the same value. Since the decision was announced, markets have been rife with speculation over Beijings motives for excluding oil exports.

What is known, as per news reports from China, is that the local state refiners actively lobbied the government to have crude oil removed from the tariff list. Chinese refiners are in the middle of a shift from processing heavy and sour grades to sweeter, lighter grades, such as U.S. crude as part of a government initiative to reduce pollution levels, so U.S. oil is important to them.

A Bloomberg report from the end of last week suggested that the exclusion highlighted how important U.S. oil has become for the world as a whole. When China began reducing U.S. crude orders in anticipation of tariffs, other Asian buyers stepped in to buy the cargos. The report does not, however, mention whether these other Asian buyers, including Indian Oil Corp., South Korean SK Innovation, and Taiwanese and Thai refiners, absorbed all the oil that had been shunned by Chinese refiners. This is important for the future implications of Chinas oil import policy.

Some believe that Chinas move aims to keep oil as a bargaining chip for future negotiations on tariffs or Iranian sanctions. Although China has stated it will continue buying crude from Iran, some analysts are talking about Beijing keeping the oil card as a means to secure sanction waivers. This is an interesting take, given that China may not need to secure such waivers: recent negotiations between Washington and Beijing saw Beijing agree to not boost Iranian oil imports, but to keep taking them in. This strongly suggests that it does not need U.S. sanction waivers to keep buying Iranian crude.

The Bloomberg report seems to suggest that U.S. oil sellers can easily replace China with other buyers from the region. This may be true, since the cost of U.S. crude has fallen enough to make it competitive with traditional suppliers from the Middle East and Russia; the fact is that China is the biggest single buyer of U.S. crude. The latest export data by the EIA shows a monthly 13.227 million barrels of U.S. oil exported to China in May, with Canada a distant second with 8.965 million barrels imported during that month, and the UK an even more distant third, with imports of 6.098 million barrels. The Chinese portion represents more than a fifth of U.S. exports, which in May totaled 62.165 million barrels. Related: Saudi Crackdown On Canada Could Backfire

On the other hand, U.S. shipments to China account for just 3 percent of the countrys total imports, and these imports satisfy as much as 70 percent of local consumption. The bulk of Chinese imports actually come from Saudi Arabia and Russia. In other words, U.S. producers depend more on China for their exports than China depends on them for its importseven Iran imports account for more than twice the portion of U.S. oil, at 7 percent of Chinas total.

So why did China leave crude oil out of the latest tariff list? Probably for all of the above reasons. Demand for lighter, sweeter crude is rising in Chinese refineries, so U.S. oil definitely has a place on the Chinese market, reducing the countrys dependence on Saudi Arabia for these crude grades. Yet China will be sure to play the oil card if bilateral tensions continue to deepen and Washington continues to add more goods to its tariff lists. Hailing last weeks decision by Beijing as a win for U.S. oil may be a little premature.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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Airbnb supporters hold a rally on the steps of New York City Hall on October 30, 2015. Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

Nearly half of the 50,000 Airbnb listings in New York City are illegal, according to a study from earlier this year. Renting out your apartment while youre away for the weekend? Illegal, under New Yorks state and city laws, which are stricter than almost any others in the country. Listing the second unit in your brownstone duplex? Illegal. Even renting out spare rooms is illegal if they have separate locks for the guests.

Not that theres ever been much risk in breaking those laws. The maximum penalty is a fine, and enforcement has been spotty at best. But that could soon change. This week, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a bill that will force all home-sharing businesses, including Airbnb, to hand over names, addresses, and other data on all its New York hosts each month. The mayor and the bills chief sponsor, Carlina Rivera, cited concerns that Airbnbs presence drives up rent costs by taking apartments off the market for permanent city residents. Years before I was a member of the Council, I worked as a housing organizer on the Lower East Side, Rivera said in a statement. I heard countless stories from tenants and organizers about illegal short-term rentals jolting them out of the security and stability of an affordable home.

Theres no telling exactly how it will play out. Christian Klossner, the citys chief of enforcement, says having the data will make it easier to target the worst actors, like a property-management company in Hells Kitchen that allegedly turned 26 rent-stabilized apartments into illegal sublets. Klossners staff will be able to look for patterns, like multiple listings connected to the same host. After a similar law took effect in San Francisco last year, requiring Airbnb hosts to register directly with the city, the number of Airbnb listings dropped from more than 10,000 to 5,500. Now that apartments there are in higher demand, the average daily rate this summer has been up 8 percent from a year ago, from $262 to $283, according to the independent analytics company AirDNA.

As this political fight has raged in New York over the last five years, its often appeared to be a proxy war between two powerful business interests: the hotel industry on one hand, for which New York is the most profitable market in the world, and Airbnb on the other, which cant afford to withdraw from New York as it prepares for its initial public offering.

Airbnb claims the mayor and the City Council, which approved the bill 45-0, are in thrall to the hotels. We are disappointed Mayor de Blasio chose to sign this hotel industry-backed bill instead of defending the needs of middle class New Yorkers who rely on sharing their home to get by, said Josh Meltzer, the companys head of Northeast policy, in an emailed statement. In June, the company published figures on how much campaign money certain council members had received from a powerful hotel union, which amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last five years.

Arun Sundararajan, a professor at NYUs Stern School of Business, who has collaborated with Airbnb on research, says cities around the world are still grappling with how to regulate the company; but nowhere else, in his opinion, has the hotel industry exerted so much influence. Were so far off kilter, relative to the rest of the world, he said. A few years ago, he added, when home-share services started gaining ground, hotels could have owned this business model by partnering with luxury apartment buildings to offer superior accommodations  but instead they painted themselves into a corner by saying its illegal.

Adrianne Smith, who uses Airbnb to rent out half of her duplex in Harlem, is incensed about the new law. For large actors like a hotel lobbyist to come in like this  how dare they? she said in a phone interview. How dare they come in and essentially control what a small-business owner, a homeowner, does in our community? She went on to compare home-sharing with the Great Migration of the early 20th century, when thousands of African-Americans who were moving from the South to the North depended on family and friends to give them temporary places to stay. Its been a part of the fabric of our community forever.

Smith is an ideal testament to Airbnbs claims of helping middle-class New Yorkers. She bought her duplex in Harlem 15 years ago, eight years after coming to New York from Alabama, and now, as a freelancer in the advertising industry, she depends on income from the second apartment when business is slow. You eat what you kill, as an entrepreneur, she said. Theres not always prey out in the streets to kill. She used to rent the place out on a yearly basis, she said, but she makes far more money with short-term guests.

But the issue has divided liberal advocates into two camps. Even within Harlem, black ministers have been arguing about it publicly. Some, including Al Sharptons lieutenant Kirsten John Foy, who has received payments from Airbnb, argue that the citys new law will cut off a crucial source of income for working minority families; but others say its not worth the tradeoff. In June, two Harlem pastors published an open letter to the company in the Amsterdam News, a long-standing neighborhood newspaper. As faith leaders in communities of color across New York City, weve seen many companies come into our communities making bold promises, only to provide very little in the way of opportunity for local residents, it reads. Thats not the case with Airbnb. What youre doing is actually far worse. Study after study has shown that your predatory housing schemes are displacing tenants and driving up rent for those left behind.

About those studies: Theyre politicized too.

The city comptrollers office released a report in May, finding that Airbnb cost New Yorkers an extra $616 million in rent in 2016. The company was responsible for 9 percent of the rise in rent since 2009, it said. In neighborhoods like Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Murray Hill, tenants pay more than $100 a month in extra rent because of its presence. But AirDNA, whose data they used, later attacked the reports methodology, saying the researchers misinterpreted the numbers. Its no surprise that AirDNA would attack a credible report when their own bottom line depends on Airbnbs success, the comptrollers spokesperson shot back.

Another report from McGill University in Montreal recently found that Airbnb has spurred a $380 rent increase for the median New York tenant, and that its benefits flow disproportionately to white hosts; even in predominantly black neighborhoods, it said, Airbnb hosts are five times more likely to be white than black. The study, however, was commissioned by the major hotel union.

Airbnb collaborated on its own study last year with several NYU faculty members, including Arun Sundararajan, using more authoritative data, and found that the effect on rent was negligible. But opponents have argued that if the company were serious about gaining the publics trust, it could release its data for independent studies  which it hasnt done.

Theres been talk of a compromise that would protect one- and two-family homes from enforcement, so that homeowners like Adrianne Smith would be free to rent out the extra units in their duplexes. Robert Cornegy, a council member from Bed-Stuy, introduced a bill to this effect in June, but so far its been left by the wayside. Meanwhile, the law de Blasio signed will take effect in February.
It took more than 20 years for littoral states of the Caspian Sea to reach an agreement that would lay the legal foundations for the full utilization of the regions resources. The Fifth Caspian Summit in Aktau, Kazakhstan, brought the long-sought breakthrough after leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Iran signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea  a remarkable feat considering that heretofore, barring bilateral deals, the Caspian has been governed by an obsolete 1940 convention between the Soviet Union (of which four current littoral states were a part) and Iran. As the current Convention incorporates a plethora of tradeoffs between countries, lets look at them in greater detail so as to grasp the implications of the deal.

The Convention stipulates that relations between littoral states shall be based on principles of national sovereignty, territorial integrity, equality among members, non-use of threat of force (it was only 17 years ago that Azerbaijan and Iran almost started a full-blown naval war over contested fields) and non-intervention. The military-related clauses of the document can be considered a net diplomatic success for the Russian Federation as it prohibits the physical presence of any third-party armed forces, along with banning the provision of a member states territory to acts of aggression against any other littoral state. Since Russia is by far the most power nation in terms of both general military clout and military presence around the Caspian, this will placate Russian fears about any potential US (or other) encroachment in the area.

Then theres energy Although the Convention establishes a general legal framework for territorial disputes to be solved, it refrains from any particularities. Therefore prolonged negotiations are to be expected with regard to many disputed oilfields, stemming predominantly from Irani and Azerbaijani claims. Iran advocated throughout the entire negotiation process an egalitarian approach to delimiting the seabed (each nation would get 20% of the coast), running counter the other countries aspirations. The things is that when Russia concluded its seabed delimitation agreements with Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in 2001 and 2003, respectively, the parties split their parts using the median line. Point 8.1. effectively keeps the delimitation task in the hands of relevant governments, thereby providing a very modest boost to the demarcation of the Southern Caspian (the Northern part is fully delimited). Related: Saudi Arabia And Iran Reignite The Oil Price War

There are two main territorial conflicts to be settled  the Irani-Azerbaijani and the Azerbaijani-Turkmen disputes. The row between Baku and Teheran revolves around the Araz-Alov-Sharg field (discovered in 1985-1987 by Soviet geologists), the reserves of which are estimated at 300 million tons of oil and 395 BCm of natural gas. Even though the field is only 90 kilometers away from Baku and should seemingly be under Azerbaijans grip, if one is to draw a straight line from the Azerbaijani-Irani border most of the field ought to be allotted to Iran (the median would keep most of it in Azerbaijan). As those old enough to remember the 2001 naval ship hostilities would attest, it does matter at what angle the final line is drawn.

The Serdar/Kapaz field (estimated to contain 50 million tons of oil) is the bone of contention between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Considered to be an extension of Azerbaijans main oil-producing unit, the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field, Baku sees it as an indispensable element in its quest to mitigate decreasing oil output numbers. Geographically, Serdar/Kapaz is closer to Turkmenistan, yet here too Azerbaijan might come out the ultimate winner. The Apsheron peninsula stretches out some 60km into the Caspian Sea, in effect extending Azerbaijans geographical reach. Absent previous demarcation agreements between Baku and Ashgabat, the settlement will once again boil down to getting the angles right, as in the case of Araz-Alov-Sharg. However, it must be said that a resolution might come about as a by-product of new gas endeavors. Related: Who Profits From Irans Oil Major Exodus?

Clause 14, dealing with laying subsea pipelines and cables, is the one most coveted by energy analysts, since it has the potential to significantly alter Europes gas supply options. According to point 14.2., all parties have the right to construct subsea pipelines given that they comply with environmental standards (which are particularly strict in the Caspian Sea). With no further caveat included, some analysts might be tempted to think that Russia will inevitably use the environmental protection card when trying to stop the construction of the Trans-Caspian pipeline (TCP) from Turkmenistan, a pipeline it spent many years to halt. Under current circumstances, when US-Russian relations falling ever deeper into an insurmountable ditch, Moscows decision to allow for the construction of the mightily Washington-backed TCP to take place might be perceived as a massive omission.

Since the Turkmen gas is unlikely to find demand in Azerbaijan or Turkey, it would need to take the whole route via the South Caucasus Pipeline, TANAP and TAP. Merely the transportation tariffs from these pipelines would render any transportation economically unviable unless European gas prices rise substantially to levels above $300/MCm. Moreover, the estimated cost of building the subsea TCP of $2 billion is a disabling burden for either Turkmengaz or SOCAR. Thus, allowing the construction of Trans Caspian gas pipelines might be a brilliant ruse from the Russians  cognizant of all the deficiencies above, they can wield it as a sign of good will in their never-ending negotiations with the European the economics for supplying gas to Europe via the Southern Gas Corridor are far from being Union.

This being said, there are natural impediments to see the TCP implemented anytime soon. Azerbaijan might be interested in getting transit fees for Turkmen natural gas, yet it lacks the required infrastructure to include the above volumes in its traditional conduit via Turkey. All in all, the Caspian convention is a good basis for further negotiations, even though it falls short of being an all-encompassing legal framework. Territorial disputes will most likely remain frozen for quite some time and no new gas pipeline projects will see the light of day unless market conditions change.

By Viktor Katona for Oilprice.com

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Oil smuggling has been a thorn in the side of the Philippine government for decades, with both overt oil smuggling, the transfer of oil cargoes from one vessel to another off shore and away from the watch of the Philippine Coast Guard or customs officials, as well as the even more difficult to catch, so-called technical smuggling.

When global oil prices tanked between 2015 and 2017, oil smuggling declined as well. However, with global oil prices now hovering in the high $60s to mid $70s range per barrel, oil smugglers are once again seizing the chance to make handsome profits at the expense of the government.

How they do it

First, there is what has been labeled high seas smuggling where fuel products usually come from nearby countries where petroleum prices are much lower due to government subsidies. Smaller ships withdraw fuel from the mother ship for delivery to customers to be resold in the new country.

With direct smuggling some oil companies actually bring in vessels, dock in small ports, and discharge the fuel directly to waiting tanker trucks who then deliver to service stations. Some of the largest oil refining companies in the Philippines have at one time of another been accused of engaging in direct smuggling, though most claim to have active programs to fight against the practice.

Petron, the countrys largest oil refiner, said two years ago that it cut ties with five major service stations to avoid the risk of being associated with oil smuggling. However, in the Philippines large companies accused of smuggling, the media, and government and customs officials often battle each others accusations and innuendos over oil smuggling, while the problem is mostly unsuccessfully dealt with.

Technical smuggling usually involves the import of oil products being declared as another less valuable product, with lower duties collected. At times, its more pervasive with customs agents looking the other way, usually for a bribe.

There is also subsidy abuse where higher-priced, non-subsidized, and taxed fuels are diluted with smuggled lower-priced or subsidized fuels. This affects governments irrespective of their fuel policies, with tax evasion on higher-priced fuels, and subsidized fuels being diverted from their intended beneficiaries. Related: U.S. Drillers Add Double Digit Oil, Gas Rigs

To prevent fuel fraud, governments like the Philippines have developed comprehensive fuel-marking programs, using advanced technology molecular markers and sophisticated management systems that result in timely, actionable intelligence, allowing governments to mitigate tax evasion and subsidy abuse, minimize financial losses, and raise revenue.

A recent Asian Development Bank (ADB) report said that all countries are susceptible to fuel fraud, but for developing countries where every dollar in revenue counts, fuel fraud can substantially reduce a governments total revenues. The report added that oil smuggling costs the Philippine government around US$750 million a year in lost revenue, a massive sum for the still developing Southeast Asian nation.

The government strikes back

To battle the resurgent problem, on August 8 the Philippine Bureau of Customs (BOC) said it had formed a team to oversee the implementation of its new fuel marking program. For 2018, about 21.9 billion liters of fuel are expected to enter the Philippines 25 ports and sub-ports.

However, implementing the fuel marking system can take time and is not fail proof. A first step under most marker systems is to reveal the quality and condition of the downstream fuel supply chain by examining it at every stage. This begins with the countrys refineries or fuel depots, following products through wholesale depots and the transport network (including trucking firms and pipelines), and eventually verifying how petroleum products are sold at the retail level.

To ensure the integrity of the entire fuel supply chain, safeguards need to be implemented into every phase of the process, which includes requiring marker and analyzer technologies that integrate security measures directly into the different types of fuel. Related: What Happens To Syrian Oil Post-Civil War?

Marker technologies that blend an invisible marker with the fuel at very low concentrationsoften measured in parts per billionprovide the highest level of security for the entire supply chain. Even at very low concentrations, their presence or absence in fuel can be detected at retail outlets with sophisticated but easy-to-use analyzers.

In the Philippines, two bidders for the implementation of the new nationwide fuel marking plan submitted bids in late July for plans to be part of a part of a larger tax and anti-oil smuggling plan.

According to a report in the Manila-based Philippine Inquirer the winning firm will assist in establishing and operating a fuel marking system that will supply and inject fuel markers in all taxable oil products, except Jet A-1, Avgas, Crude Oil and LPG. The company that wins the bidding round will also implement and manage a fuel testing program, including fuel analysis and data management nationwide, and train and ensure technology transfer to the BOC and Bureau of Internal Revenue personnel.

By Tim Daiss for Oilprice.com

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The two-decade-long dispute on the statute of the Caspian Sea, the world largest water reserve, came to an end last Sunday when five littoral states (Russia, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan) agreed to give it a special legal status - it is now neither a sea, nor a lake. Before the final agreement became public, the BBC wrote that all littoral states will have the freedom of access beyond their territorial waters, but natural resources will be divided up. Russia, for its part, has guaranteed a military presence in the entire basin and won't accept any NATO forces in the Caspian.

Russian energy companies can explore the Caspians 50 billion barrels of oil and its 8.4 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, Turkmenistan can finally start considering linking its gas to the Turkish-Azeri joint project TANAP through a trans-Caspian pipeline, while Iran has gained increased energy supplies for its largest cities in the north of the country (Tehran, Tabriz, and Mashhad)  however, Iran has also put itself under the shadow of Russian ships. This controversy makes one wonder to what degree U.S. sanctions made Iran vulnerable enough to accept what it has always avoided  and how much these U.S. sanctions actually served NATOs interests.

If the seabed, rich in oil and gas, is divided this means more wealth and energy for the region. From 1970 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1991, the Caspian Sea was divided into subsectors for Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan  all constituent republics of the USSR. The division was implemented on the basis of the internationally-accepted median line. Related: What Would A Hard Brexit Mean For British Oil?

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the new order required new regulations. The question was over whether the Caspian was a sea or a lake? If it was treated as a sea, then it would have to be covered by international maritime law, namely the United Nations Law of the Sea. But if it is defined as a lake, then it could be divided equally between all five countries. The so-called lake or sea dispute revolved over the sovereignty of states, but also touched on some key global issues  exploiting oil and gas reserves in the Caspian Basin, freedom of access, the right to build beyond territorial waters, access to fishing and (last but not least) managing maritime pollution.

The IEA concluded in World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2017 that offshore energy has a promising future. More than a quarter of todays oil and gas supply is produced offshore, and integrated offshore thinking will extend this beyond traditional sources onwards to renewables and more. Caspian offshore hydrocarbon reserves are around 50 billion barrels of oil equivalent (equivalent to one third of Iraqs total oil reserves) and 8.4 trillion cubic meters of gas (almost equivalent to the U.S. entire proven gas reserves). As if these quantities were not themselves enough to rebalance Eurasian energy demand equations, the agreement will also allow Turkmenistan to build the Trans-Caspian pipeline, connecting Turkmenistans resources to the Azeri-Turkish joint project TANAP, and onwards to Europe  this could easily become a counter-balance factor to the growing LNG business in Europe.

Even though we still dont have firm and total details on the agreement, Iran seems to have gained much less than its neighbors, as it has shortest border on the Caspian. From an energy perspective, Iran would be a natural market for the Caspian basins oil and gas, as Irans major cities (Tehran, Tabriz, and Mashhad) are closer to the Caspian than they are to Irans major oil and gas fields. Purchasing energy from the Caspian would also allow Iran to export more of its own oil and gas, making the country a transit route from the Caspian basin to world markets. For instance, for Turkmenistan (who would like to sell gas to Pakistan) Iran provides a convenient geography. Iran could earn fees for swap arrangements or for providing a transit route and justify its trade with Turkey and Turkmenistan as the swap deal is allowed under the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA, or the DAmato Act). Related: Global Oil Supply Could Become Very Challenging

If the surface water will be in common usage, all littoral states will have access beyond their territorial waters. In practical terms, this represents an increasingly engaged Russian presence in the Basin. It also reduces any room for a NATO presence, as it seems to be understood that only the five littoral states will have a right to military presence in the Caspian. Considering the fact that Russia has already used its warships in the Caspian to launch missile attacks on targets within Syria, this increased Russian presence could potentially turn into a security threat for Iran.

Many questions can now be asked on what Tehran might have received in the swap but one piece of evidence for what might have pushed Iran into agreement in its vulnerable position in the face of increased U.S. sanctions. Given that the result of those sanctions seems to be Iran agreeing to a Caspian deal that allows Russia to place warships on its borders, remove NATO from the Caspian basin equation, and increase non-Western based energy supplies (themselves either directly or indirectly within Russias sphere of geopolitical influence) it makes one wonder whose interests those sanctions actually served?

By Olgu Okumus for Oilprice.com

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Iran-affiliated militia Hashd al-Shaabi is smuggling oil from the Kirkuk province in Iraq into Iran, a former Iraqi MP told media. Amira Zangana added that the group raided houses in the city of Kirkuk, looting money, jewelry, and sometimes even cars.

"The militias of Hashd al-Shaabi have occupied the oil fields in Kirkuk, and according to sources, they smuggle the oil to Iran through Sulaimaniya, and of course the October 16 traitors are also involved in this," Basnews quoted Zangana as saying.

The traitors are a group within the patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the biggest parties in the semi-autonomous region, who have been accused by other political entities of collaborating with the Baghdad forces that took control of Kirkuk and the oil fields around it in an offensive following an ill-fated independence referendum.

This is not the first report of oil smuggling by the Shia militia. In April this year, a Baghdad MP told Kurdish media that Hashd al-Shaabi was using the money it gets for the smuggled oil to strengthen its positions in Iraq while the government in Baghdad remains oblivious. The militias are responsible for ensuring the security of Kirkuk and surrounding areas and are using this position to illegally pump oil from the local fields and sell it in Iran.

But Hashd al-Shaabi is not the only one smuggling oil, it seems. Last year, a member of the Iraqi Integrity Commission, a body responsible for investigating corruption in state agencies, told local news outlet Rudaw that Oil smuggling is a serious thing in Iraq. Weve investigated many such cases with the ministry of oil and therere political parties that carry out smuggling of crude oil.

The official, Ardalan Nuraddin, went on to say that billions of dollars worth of crude had been smuggled from Iraq in the five years to 2017, with corruption rife in the oil ministry of OPECs second-largest producer, and the government is powerless to stop it.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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Traditional clean energy sources like solar and wind power are expected to play a leading role in helping countries reach near-term emissions reduction goals, But its the higher-tech solutions, like fusion and advanced nuclear plants, that could play a crucial role in longer-term energy plans. Here are some of the technologies drawing the most attention.1/FUSION Fusion is the process that fires the sun. It works when the nuclei of two atoms are subjected to extreme heat. That leads them to fuse into a new larger atom, giving off enormous amounts of energy in the process. However, no facility has yet performed a fusion reaction that releases more energy than it requires  the usual fuel hydrogen must be heated to 150 million degrees Celsius.2/ADVANCED NUCLEAR Advanced nuclear plants would be smaller than today's massive nuclear reactors. They could theoretically be used in remote locations, complement wind and solar power, and some versions could use nuclear waste as fuel. But advanced reactors are a challenge to build. Critics also say they will create more concentrated waste and would run on enriched uranium, which could make some advanced reactors and their supply chains attractive to bad actors. In the U.S., Bill Gates wants to build a Natrium reactor in Wyoming for about $1 billion and have many of the plants providing power to the grid in the 2030s. 3/CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE Last month in Iceland, Climeworks AB partnered with carbon storage company Carbfix to open the worlds largest plant to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and pump it underground where it becomes rock. It is one of 15 direct air capture plants in the world that together suck about 9,000 tonnes of CO2 a year out of the sky. Sounds impressive, but that is only about the amount that comes out of the tailpipes of 2,000 cars. Proponents say the high costs will fall as the technology improves. 4/HYDROGENLong used in rocket fuel, hydrogen can be mixed with natural gas to make a cleaner-burning fuel, or used in a fuel cell vehicle, releasing water vapor as exhaust. The holy grail is so-called clean hydrogen produced with wind, solar or nuclear power  todays grey hydrogen is made with fossil fuels. But that costs about four times as much. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, is planning a $5 billion plant at its futuristic city NEOM to produce clean hydrogen. 5/GEOTHERMAL POWER PLANTS Geothermal power plants tap heat up to 700 degrees Fahrenheit far below the Earths surface. This creates steam that powers electricity-generating turbines. But the technology needs to ramp up greatly to play a significant role in providing an alternative to fossil fuels. And high upfront costs hold back investments.
NatureLynx, a recently-launched app focused on Alberta nature, allows users to take photos and log basic information about what they see, ask questions and communicate with a like-minded community of Alberta nature lovers. Credit: Thinkstock

A new University of Alberta app is encouraging Albertans to get back to nature and talk about it.

Based on an Instagram-type model, NatureLynx allows users to take photos and log basic information about what they see, and ask questions and communicate with a like-minded community of nature lovers.

"If you know the species name, great, if not, no problem. The idea is our expert community will help verify it," explained Tara Narwani, information centre director of the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, which created the app.

She said NatureLynx allows userswhether they are venturing into the woods for the first time or are seasoned naturaliststo become citizen scientists to collect observations of whatever captures their curiosity, and then share those findings.

"NatureLynx is Alberta's nature app," she said, adding that to date, almost 3,000 Albertans have downloaded the app.

"Albertans have collected data and observations that they wanted to share and they seem to be excited to have a platform that is Alberta-specific to do that," said Narwani.

Missions and groups

Narwani said the app includes a newsfeed and a species profile button that allows enthusiasts to scroll through hundreds of profiles of Alberta species but perhaps more importantly, it contains Missions and Groups functions, which begin to fulfil the notion of creating a biodiversity network.

With Groups, ABMI is trying to create virtual real estate for formal and informal organizations or groupings of people who have common interests.

"For example, we have an informal group that popped up out of Calgary formed around molds, mosses and lichens," said Narwani. "Anyone can find that group, join it and any sighting they make that are applicable to the group can be tagged.

"It is a really simple way for organizations to aggregate their data specifically for their interests and attract new users to the group and the group's activities."

Missions is a more specific call to action, she said.

For example, municipalities, naturalist groups and other environmental stakeholders will often hold "bio blitzes," which asks volunteers to meet at a specific location and time to collect data.

"With the Missions feature, our goal is to reach out to all the groups and people who are sponsoring groups and missions, and support them in their effort of collecting their data," she said, adding it's a great way for municipalities with limited resources to find out more about the local habitat.

Narwani said there have been a lot of bird and flower images posted on the app, but was surprised by the level of interest in Alberta's insects.

"It's not even that people are posting saying 'what is this creepy crawly and how do I get rid of it?' The postings are out of pure interest," she said.

She is also amazed at how many formalized naturalist groups there are within the province.

"There are a lot of these folks out there doing this kind of work, making observations, collecting their own data, and sharing them often within their own organizations and peers, but don't have the capacity or infrastructure to share that information more widely."

Ultimately, Narwani said her main hope for the app is that it affords Albertans a fun way to encounter the great outdoors.

"Who's to say if there are going to be new species identified. There are definitely going to be sighting of things in locations people didn't expect them to be in," she said.

"We want to support whatever people want to do with the app and the data, and help facilitate the collection of data in such a way that it is robust enough to help support decision making."

NatureLynx can be downloaded for free through NatureLynx.ca or by going to the App Store or Google Play.

Explore further Avoid these top five assumptions that may lead to drowning
Cornell researchers are taking a new approach to understanding how voters' attitudes about immigration, race and gender influence contemporary U.S. politics.

An innovative study using three waves of surveys will show how voters' views on those topics influence the midterm elections in November and whether those attitudes shift leading up to the elections.

"We're especially interested in race, immigration and gender attitudes and the midterm elections, but we're also interested in the broader political environment, including the relationship between these issues and voters' support for President Donald Trump," said Peter K. Enns, associate professor of government and executive director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell. Enns and Jonathon P. Schuldt, associate professor of communication and a faculty affiliate at the Roper Center, are working with Adrienne Scott, a Cornell Ph.D. student in government, on the project.

The 2018 midterm election study, funded by Cornell's Center for the Study of Inequality, is surveying a nationally representative sample of nearly 1,400 likely voters of all political persuasions. The first survey was conducted in early July; subsequent surveys will take place in late August or early September, and again in October. The results are just in from the first survey and are available at the Roper Center. Researchers also will make data from the subsequent two surveys available at the Roper Center.

The study is unusual in several ways.

Its three-wave structure means the same individuals are interviewed at three points prior to the midterm election in November. Some questions will be repeated every survey, some will appear in the first and last, and others will be unique to each survey. The questions asked in the first and last survey are especially important, the researchers say.

"Repeating questions in July and October means that instead of simply observing whether or not racial bias or immigration attitudes are correlated with vote choice, we can observe if a change in bias corresponds with a change in vote intention," Enns said. Schuldt added, "As the congressional campaigns unfold, we will actually be able to observe what factors correspond with shifts in vote choice."

Some questions are designed to help reveal racial attitudes, such as "Do you support or oppose the movement called Black Lives Matter?" and "[To what degree do you agree or disagree that] many groups in the U.S., like Irish, Italian and Jewish people, have overcome prejudice and worked their way up, and blacks should do the same without any special favors?" The first of the three surveys found that 89 percent of those who strongly support Black Lives Matter indicate they would vote for the Democratic candidate. Among those who strongly oppose the movement, just 8 percent indicate a Democratic vote intention. Similar patterns emerge with the question on prejudice toward immigrant groups.

The study also is attempting to untangle racial bias against African-Americans and anti-immigrant bias, which the media and academics have routinely lumped together in the past few decades, Enns said. "Measuring those two biases through separate questions and allowing them to be separate concepts is a really important part of the survey research design."

The July survey asked questions on immigration, race, gender, political leanings and attitudes about Trump.

In terms of immigration, most respondents  35 percent  said it's not very likely that recent immigration will take jobs away from people already in the U.S. Additional findings about immigration were featured in Political Wire.

When asked how they would vote if the election for the U.S. House of Representatives were held today, 51 percent said they would vote Democrat, 40 percent said Republican, and 9 percent said they would vote for neither party. When asked how they would vote if the election for the U.S. Senate were held today, 52 percent said they would vote Democrat, approximately 40 percent said Republican, and 7 percent said they would vote for neither party.

The researchers used a standard survey question to separate Democrats and Republicans into different groups: those who say they are independent but "lean" toward their respective parties, those who identify with their parties, and those who strongly identify with their parties. They then combined this question with a unique approach that allowed them to determine how likely voters rank Donald Trump relative to other Republican politicians.

The survey found strong Republicans rank Trump over other Republican leaders including former Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. However, despite conventional wisdom, the survey showed that Trump's political base is weaker than it seems. That's because many media reports don't factor in the differing levels of party affiliation, Enns said.

" Portraying Trump's support among Republican voters as unflinching is missing a major piece of the picture," the study's co-authors wrote in an Aug. 7 Washington Post opinion piece.

The team will continue to analyze implications of the results of the surveys over the next two years, they said.

Explore further Among voters lacking strong party preferences, Obama faces 20 percent handicap due to race bias
Bayer just completed its $63-billion (55-billion-euro) merger with Monsanto earlier this year, but could face an onslaught of lawsuits over the pesticide Roundup

A cancer victim's surprise court victory over US pesticide maker Monsanto could open the floodgates to a slew of similar lawsuits, potentially leaving the firm's new German owner with a major case of buyer's remorse.

From the toxic legacy of Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller to fears about its use of genetically modified seeds, here's what you need to know about the $63-billion (55-billion-euro) merger between Bayer and Monsanto.

Heroin

Founded in Germany in 1863, Bayer is still best known for making aspirin. More infamously, it briefly sold heroin in the early 20th century, marketed as a cough cure and morphine substitute.

During World War II, Bayer was part of a consortium called IG Farben that made the Zyklon B pesticide used in Adolf Hitler's gas chambers.

Through a series of acquisitions over the years, Bayer has grown into a drug and chemicals behemoth and now employs some 100,000 people worldwide.

Agent Orange

Monsanto was established in St. Louis, Missouri in 1901, setting out to make saccharine.

By the 1940s, it was producing farm-oriented chemicals, including herbicide 2,4-D which, combined with another dangerous chemical was used to make the notorious Vietnam War-era defoliant Agent Orange.

In 1976, the company launched probably its best-known product, the weed killer Roundup.

In the 1980s, its scientists were the first to genetically modify a plant cell. Monsanto then started buying other seed companies and began field trials of GM seeds.

It eventually developed soybean, corn, cotton and other crops engineered to be tolerant of Roundup.

Goodbye 'Monsatan'

Dubbed "Monsatan" and "Mutanto", the US firm has for decades been in the crosshairs of environmentalists, especially in Europe, who believe that GM food could be unsafe to eat.

Campaigners also abhor Monsanto's production of glyphosate-based Roundup, which some scientists have linked to cancer although other studies dispute this.

Hoping to ditch Monsanto's poisonous reputation, Bayer has said it plans to drop the company's name from its products.

Roundup has been Monsanto's signature product and it developed genetically-modified versions of oybean, corn, cotton and other crops engineered to be tolerant of the pesticide

But Friends of the Earth, which has dubbed the merger a "marriage made in hell", said it would simply switch its protests to Bayer so long as it continues Monsanto's practices.

Another complaint about the latest consolidation in the industry is that it leaves the global seeds and pesticides market in the hands of just a few playerspotentially pushing up prices and limiting choices for farmers and consumers.

Hello, lawsuits?

A California jury last week ordered Monsanto to pay nearly $290 million in damages to a dying groundskeeper after finding that the company failed to warn him that using Roundup products might cause cancer.

Observers say the landmark win by Dewayne Johnson, who has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, could pave the way for thousands of cases against Monsanto.

Bayer's share price plunged more than 10 percent in response.

Monsanto has vowed to appeal the ruling, while Bayer insisted that herbicides containing glyphosate are "safe".

Analyst Michael Leacock of MainFirst bank said the legal setback was "an unlucky outcome" for Bayer just two months after sealing the takeover.

"It is highly likely that investors will take a very dim view of the recent deal," he said.

High price to pay

In an industry preparing for a global population surge with many more mouths to feed, Bayer was keen to get its hands on Monsanto's market-leading line in GM crop seeds designed to resist strong pesticides like Roundup.

It was also lured by Monsanto's data analytics business Climate Corp, believing farmers will in future rely on digital monitoring of their crops.

But the takeover, one of the largest ever by a German firm, comes at a high cost.

As well as the eye-watering price tag, Bayer had to give up much of its seeds and agrichemical business to satisfy competition concerns.

Those divestitures have gone to none other than Bayer's homegrown rival BASF, the unexpected beneficiary of the mammoth deal.

And following the California court verdict, Bayer may now have to set aside huge sums to settle future Roundup claims.

"The total cost, in our view, could easily reach $10 billion" if Bayer were to settle with a still larger number of plaintiffs, said Leacock.

Explore further Bayer shares plunge after Monsanto cancer ruling

 2018 AFP
Young black males feel less safe when they go to neighborhoods with a larger white population than occurs in areas they normally visit, a new study suggests.

Researchers gave 506 black youths in Columbus smartphones that tracked their locations for a week and asked the participants to rate how safe they felt (among other questions) five times per day.

Results showed that African American boys felt less safe even in areas that were only modestly more white than where they usually spent time, said Christopher Browning, lead author of the study and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University.

"It doesn't have to be a majority white neighborhood for African American boys to feel more threatened," Browning said. "It just has to be more white than what they typically encounter."

When outside their own neighborhoods, black teens in the study visited areas that were, on average, 13 percent more white.

Unlike boys, black girls did not report feeling significantly less safe in whiter areas.

Browning presented the research Aug. 13 in Philadelphia at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

The results are consistent with the hypothesis that young black males expect increased scrutiny, surveillance and even direct targeting when they are in white areas, according to Browning.

"We've seen a lot of stories in the media lately about the police being called on black people going about their business in white areas," he said.

"This may help explain why black youth felt more threatened in parts of town where they were exposed to more white people."

Data for the study came from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study, which Browning leads. The AHDC is examining the lives of 1,405 representative youths living in 184 neighborhoods in Franklin County, Ohio. This includes Columbus and its suburbs.

This particular study involved 506 black youths aged 11 to 17 when the study was done from 2014 to 2016. They carried a smartphone with a GPS function that reported their location every 30 seconds. Five times a day they were sent a mini-survey to answer on their phones. By the end of the study, the researchers had collected 7,398 of these surveys.

In one question, participants were asked to rate on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) if the place they were currently at was a safe place to be.

Participants reported either strongly agreeing or agreeing that they were in a safe place about 91 percent of the time. That makes sense, Browning said, because the teens reported being at home about 71 percent of the time when they received the survey.

Much of the research that examines safety among black youth focuses on the neighborhood they live in. But this research suggests that the immediate neighborhood may not be the most important area to focus on, he said.

What seemed to matter was how the places they visited differed from the areas where they spent most of their time.

Black boys felt less safe when they were in neighborhoods that were significantly poorer than ones they generally frequented, as well as in neighborhoods that were whiter.

"Part of the experience for black kids is having to leave their home neighborhoods to go to places that might not be as welcoming," Browning said.

"They are typically going to places with amenities like restaurants and movie theaters that may not be available in their neighborhoods. And these places are probably going to be whiter than the places they live."

The findings were similar for African American boys no matter where they lived in the Columbus area.

"Even black boys who were regularly exposed to integrated neighborhoods felt less safe when they went to white-dominated areas," he said.

Although African American girls in this study didn't report feeling less safe in whiter areas, Browning said that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't experiencing negative effects.

It may be that there are different features of neighborhoods not picked up in this study, such as the number of men in the immediate vicinity, that may affect whether black girls felt safe in a particular location, he said.

Explore further Smartphone tracking shows fear affects where youth spend time
Not just another Ocasio-Cortez. Photo: Charles Krupa/AP

In the days and weeks after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs shock Democratic primary victory over New York congressman Joe Crowley in June, pundits and assignment editors searching for The Next Big Thing  the next young, charismatic, progressive woman who could topple an older male veteran of Washington  zeroed in on Boston. It took almost no time for Ayanna Pressley to be proclaimed, over and over, the next Ocasio-Cortez. The shoe almost fits.

Almost.

From afar, the parallels are obvious: Pressley, an energetic, progressive African-American city councilor whos risen to fame among party activists for her impassioned speeches and her willingness to jump into an uphill race no one once thought she could win, is taking on ten-term congressman Mike Capuano in a district thats so unassailably blue that the primary winner is essentially assured of a victory come November. (Capuano won the district, which was once represented by John F. Kennedy, by 72 points in 2016.) Shortly after Ocasio-Cortezs victory, the two women started expressing support for each other, and now the Queens congresswoman-to-be is a frequent topic of discussion around Pressley. At a meet-and-greet with about a dozen Harvard Medical School biomedical students on Thursday, Pressleys introducer invoked the New Yorker almost immediately. Pressley has leaned into a particularly politically potent divide on policy between her and Capuano  she wants to abolish ICE, he wants to reform it  and her argument against him is, in large part, that its time for generational change. I am primarying a 20-year Democratic incumbent who has not only been serving for a generation, has not had a challenge in a generation, she told the students gathered around her in a comfy common room. He earned 23 percent of the vote 20 years ago, and has not gotten challenged for 20 years.

Yet raise the parallels to New York in front of Capuano, and youll get a withering look. Ive been in five different places today, no one asks that question, they dont even know what happened, he said later on Thursday, tie slightly undone, on the sidelines of a packed campaign event in Somerville with a few dozen members of the local carpenters union. I dont know how you run a campaign in New York City, I know how you run a campaign here. Its not just that Pressley and Capuano actually agree on almost every major issue. Capuano is also far better prepared than Crowley, who largely wrote off his challenger until the last second. Whereas New Yorkers foresaw no trouble for Crowley and thus didnt mobilize for him, the tight race in Massachusetts is no surprise to local power-brokers who know Pressley well. But Capuano  who riled up the carpenters in the Holiday Inn ballroom with an impassioned speech that covered the importance of strong organized labor, his frustration with Trump, and his hopes for an infrastructure bill, all without mentioning Pressley once  has the backing of much of the areas political elite, including a number of major unions, Boston mayor Marty Walsh, and former governor Deval Patrick. In recent weeks Pressley has picked up the support not only of Ocasio-Cortez, but of Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey and the national Indivisible group. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and Congressman Seth Moulton opted early on to stay neutral  a reflection of Pressleys local clout.

Now in its final stretch, the twist-filled contest between Pressley and Capuano keeps testing the limits of the conventional wisdom about the shape of todays Democratic Party. The strength of Capuano has shown that the left-wing fury washing over 2018, and in particular female and young voters, is not always directed squarely at incumbents. Its shown that Democrats anti-Donald Trump fervor hasnt yet fully translated into a re-engagement of some minority voters who the party hopes it can activate after turning them away in recent years. Its revealed that primary voters may sometimes value experience as much as they appreciate a willingness to brawl. And its become the starkest reminder yet that Ocasio-Cortezs earthquake-like June win doesnt always align so seamlessly with some of the campaigns aiming to follow in its footsteps  and that the differences can sometimes work to others advantage.

Capuano is the favorite, but in recent weeks much of his campaign has been focused on reminding constituents of his own progressive history. Hes confident that drilling down on his record of results, and left-leaning politics, is enough to mobilize voters. Its not just the national party thats moved left, after all; the district has, too. Recent polling shows most voters there, eager to see Trump impeached, dont think Democrats are doing enough to stand up to him. The same survey revealed a majority of the districts voters also strongly support replacing the national health care system with a single-payer plan. Shortly after Crowleys loss, Capuano circulated a memo in Washington focused on his differences with Crowley, and the literature his campaign laid out for the carpenters to distribute on Thursday proclaimed prominently, A Progressive Champion. Indeed, hes been a prominent lefty for years, backing a Medicare for All plan early and even writing the first sanctuary city ordinance in Somerville back when he was a city councilor. At the same time, Pressley, 44, is hardly the kind of Bernie Sandersstyle democratic socialist crusader as the 28-year-old Ocasio-Cortez  she was a campaign surrogate for Hillary Clinton starting early in the 2016 contest. Shes no political neophyte, either. Pressley has served on Bostons city council since 2009, when she was the first black woman elected to the body, and she previously worked for both former congressman Joe Kennedy and Senator John Kerry. Indeed, shes been a superstar-to-be in Boston politics for years, with a new measure of national recognition in recent years after her well-received acceptance speech for EMILYs List rising star award in 2015.

As such, both candidates are known quantities. Thats helped Pressley gain credibility, but Capuanos lead appears steady, suggesting that in this case youthful insurgency may not be quite enough to overcome progressive incumbency. MassInc/WBUR polling showed him 12 points ahead in February, and 13 points up earlier this month.

The final weeks of the contest will test whether Pressley can mobilize minority voters whove traditionally stayed home to vote in this hyperenergized environment, much as the national party is eager to convince those base Democrats who sat out 2016 to turn out for midterms. While Capuano, 66, leads Pressley by wide margins among white and older voters, she does much better in the district  which she calls the countrys most progressive and most unequal  among younger voters and voters of color. The district is the only one in Massachusetts that is majority-minority, yet the electorate tends to be primarily white.

A lot depends on who turns out to vote. In the polling weve seen elsewhere in the country, there have been surges among young people and people of color. If that happens, it would be good for Ayanna Pressley, but the people who traditionally come out in primaries are good for Mike Capuano, explained MassINC pollster Steve Koczela.

To win, Pressley needs to rewrite the electoral math in a primary where she faces strange timing, and therefore unpredictable turnout: the vote comes right after Labor Day, in the first week of school, with no early voting process. As a result, both campaigns are relying heavily on organizing, with Pressley in particular now aiming at low-propensity voters, including many African Americans in the district whove stayed away from previous elections. But even this task is less straightforward than it might seem here. Pressley often says her experience as a black woman whose father was incarcerated gives her unique insight into the problems of the district, and she bristles at commentators who say she and Capuano are similar just because of their similar policy preferences. (How dare people fix their mouths continually to say, Save for her age, race, and gender, they are the same. What a moronic statement, she said Thursday.) Yet the Congressional Black Caucus PAC backed Capuano, who is white, in May, and civil rights hero John Lewis traveled to the district to campaign for him soon after.

As the race grows increasingly complex, the conversation continually floats back to the question of the role of a Democrat in the Age of Trump. Central to Capuanos pitch is the reality that he has seniority and experience on Capitol Hill, which lets him bring money, projects, and opportunities home to his district: It does take a while to learn how to get things done in Congress, he said at the last debate between the two candidates. Ive been there for a while, and my record speaks for itself.

The first question Pressley faced from the students on Thursday came from a supporter in need of advice on how to win over a friend whos supporting Capuano because she thinks his experience matters. I just remind us that the Democrats were in the majority, and weve had members that have seniority. For the Seventh, what Im focused on is addressing the systemic inequality, transit equity, environmental justice, safety in our community, access to safe and healthy food, housing that is affordable. If your seniority was not leveraged to address that, to me it doesnt matter, Pressley said. Before long, she turned to the topic of Trump: The hate coming out of that White House wont be defeated by a vote, so to say that you vote the right way, that youre a reliable vote, isnt good enough. We have to demand and expect more than that. When you take a vote, thats where the work begins, its not where it ends. The flyers her team handed out to voters Thursday blared, CHANGE CANT WAIT.

The homestretch question, then, is whether the party is as attuned to the newly emboldened grassroots as it purports to be, or whether the activist wing will remain a wing rather than Democrats new heart.

If you happen to live in a district that is Democratic and liberal as the Seventh District of Massachusetts  and I think this is true in other places  [youre asking], What role does the congressperson from that district play in Washington? And I think the case that Ayanna makes, [which] I hope is part of a broader trend, is, in a district like this, voting right is a good place to start, but its not enough, said John Walsh, a former Democratic Party chairman in the state who remains an influential operative there. Hes backing Pressley.

The people of this district, and count me in this, really like Mike Capuano, Walsh said. But in the room where the decisions are being made, is the congressperson from this district pushing the party to the left?
A giraffe in the Burunge Wildlife Management Area in Tanzania. A new study by Penn State biologist Derek Lee shows that this management area, which is managed by local villages in exchange for a share of tourism revenue, has positive effects on wildlife including giraffes. The study is one of the first to demonstrate the ecological effects of community-based natural resource management areas on wildlife. Credit: Derek Lee, Wild Nature Institute/Penn State

Putting land management in the hands of local communities helps the wildlife within, according to new research by a Penn State scientist. A new study demonstrates the positive ecological impacts of a community-based wildlife conservation area in Tanzania. The research is summarized in a paper that appears online [date] in the Journal of Wildlife Management.

"Community-based natural resource management has become one of the dominant paradigms of natural resource conservation worldwide," said Derek E. Lee, the author of the paper, associate research professor at Penn State, and principal scientist at the Wild Nature Institute.

"This type of strategy transfers the resource management and user rights from central government agencies to local communities. The impact of these projects on wildlife is rarely rigorously assessed, so we compared wildlife densities inside and outside the community conservation area. My data demonstrate that one of the first areas of this type in Tanzania has had positive ecological outcomes in the form of higher wildlife densities and higher giraffe population growth," said Lee.

In Tanzania, efforts to decentralize wildlife management to local communities occur through the creation of Wildlife Management Areas, whereby several villages set aside land for wildlife conservation in return for a share of tourism revenues from these areas. Nineteen Wildlife Management Areas are currently operating, encompassing 7% (6.2 million hectares) of Tanzania's land area, with 19 more planned. Tourism in Tanzania generates around $6 billion US dollars annually, which represents about 13% of their total gross domestic product, so there is good incentive for villages to participate in these management areas.

"For six years, I studied the Burunge Wildlife Management Area in Tanzania, which was formally established in 2006 and added increased wildlife protections in 2015," said Lee. He observed higher numbers of wildlife inside the protected area compared to the village lands just outside the area as well as lower densities of livestock, including cattle, sheep, and goats. He also observed higher numbers of wild ungulateshooved mammalsand lower numbers of livestock in the management area after the increased wildlife protections began.

"This suggests that the specific management activities implemented in 2015 have a positive effect on wildlife within the Burunge Wildlife Management Area," said Lee. "These include performing anti-poaching activities to protect wildlife, reducing wood cutting, preventing livestock encroachment, and providing training and equipment to village rangers so that they can perform these activities."

The change to management activities also improved survival and population growth of giraffes within the management area. Lee did not observe any change in giraffe demographics outside of the management area in the adjacent Tarangire National Park over the same time period.

"It is very gratifying to see the positive role of community conservation areas in saving Africa's endangered and declining species," said Philp Muruthi, Senior Director of Conservation Science for the African Wildlife Foundation who was not involved in the study. "Clearly to save the giraffe will take more than the formal national parks. And the benefits to the species and landowners are immense into the future."

This study highlights the usefulness of monitoring wildlife to evaluate specific management strategies as well as the general concept of community-based natural resource management. In particular, locally based monitoring schemes could lead to more sustainable community-based conservation.

"We know from this and previous studies that these management areas can have positive effects on wildlife," said Lee. "But there have been some social and economic critiques of wildlife management areas. For example, there is higher incidences of poverty around protected areas compared to other rural areas. Although it can be challenging for community-based natural resource management to achieve both conservation and human development goals, the concept appears to be the best opportunity for Tanzania to retain its place as one of the most famous and profitable wildlife tourism destinations while also sustainably developing local communities."

Explore further Ecological success of community-based wildlife conservation in Tanzania

More information: Derek E. Lee, Evaluating conservation effectiveness in a Tanzanian community wildlife management area, The Journal of Wildlife Management (2018). Journal information: Journal of Wildlife Management Derek E. Lee, Evaluating conservation effectiveness in a Tanzanian community wildlife management area,(2018). DOI: 10.1002/jwmg.21549
Solar panels help the SOLACE flat-pack houses produce more energy than needed. Credit: SOLACE

Wealth-generating, flat-pack solar houses and a profit-sharing scheme that incentivises retrofitting are bringing sustainable living to people who would otherwise not be able to afford it.

"One of the biggest problems that we see right now is (the creation of) a big gap between the lower and the middle classes. Everyone is talking about this growing inequality gap," said Bart Glowacki, co-founder of SOLACE, a start-up based in Warsaw, Poland, set up with the aim of making sustainable housing widely affordable.

Tighter mortgage controls, job insecurity and high student debts in Europe has meant that it is increasingly difficult for young people to buy their own homes.

"Ordinary people are no longer able to afford their basic needs. Millennials, who are the future leaders, can't even afford an apartment or a house," said Glowacki.

Yet, as inequality grows, public awareness about the environment, climate change, energy efficiency and sustainability are on the rise. According to a 2017 Eurobarometer climate change report, about three-quarters of Europeans believe climate change is a serious problem while 90% have taken actions to combat it.

With these issues in mind, SOLACE has developed an energy-neutral flat-pack house targeted at people aged between 28 to 38.

SOLACE makes, sells and ships the house parts. Right now, they have built one house that will serve as an exhibition model for potential clients, but Glowacki says that small-scale production will start soon and they hope to secure more funding to scale up.

SOLACE's house costs 25,000 and is delivered in a package of about 6m long. It can be assembled by four people using a crane, but the start-up supplies assembly teams if required. The house consists of a small kitchen, a 20m2 living-dining room and a small bathroom on the ground floor, and a mezzanine level bedroom.

Surplus energy

While other flat-pack houses exist, SOLACE's innovation is a roof of solar panels which powers the home, but also earns income for the homeowner by producing surplus energy which in certain countries can then be sold to the local power grid.

"We believe that SOLACE house is the first house in Europe that actually can produce more energy than the average family consumes," said Gowacki, although he admits that customers in countries with less sun exposure during the winter months would only benefit from reduced environmental impact and energy bills.

"When a family spends more than 40% of their disposable income (on heating and electricity costs), they will pretty much cash out every end of the month, because the housing overburden is too heavy for them, said Gowacki, who believes that utility costs financially cripple households. "We think that SOLACE can really fight this."

But it's not just individuals who could have an incentive to invest in sustainable housing. A pilot project called LEMON plans to assist and encourage private companies to invest in retrofits for existing social housing in Italy through an EU scheme.

The scheme, usually applied to large public construction projects, enables investors to profit from the energy savings generated by the retrofits. It's the first time that such an initiative has been rolled out in Italy, according to Dr. Claudia Carani, coordinator of LEMON.

"We need to show a different business model that could be really interesting to accelerate investment," said Dr. Carani.

27 towns

LEMON will tender contracts in September and retrofitting will begin in 2019 in 27 towns in two Italian provinces, Reggio Emilia and Parma. The 622 houses that will be retrofitted are currently highly inefficient, averaging a G rating according to the EU energy labelling schemein which A is highly efficient. LEMON plans to bring these homes up to a C rating by replacing the windows, changing the heating system for a modern boiler-based one and installing smart temperature control systems. Dr. Carani says these changes would generate 15,290 million in energy savings.

The project also plans to teach the residents, a mix of locals and migrants, how to use the new retrofits which will provide better insulation and reduce heating costs.

Elsewhere, grassroots organisation Czech Sustainable Houses wants to make sustainable homes more widely available by driving the need for such housing. Part of how they do this is by pushing innovation for sustainable housing forward  not least, through their annual architecture student competition.

Currently in its third year, the contest asks students in the Czech Republic and Slovakia to design sustainable, attractive and economically viable houses.

"A large part of our activities is making sure that we communicate in a way that people get excited and give them a good feeling that there is a good future waiting for them," said founder Pavel Podruh.

While the contest criteria change every yearthis year's brief is to design a complex of five buildings each with three apartmentsPodruh says a critical test is viability.

The prize is judged by a jury comprising of architecture, science and energy experts and the winners receive 30,000 Czech koruna, equivalent to EUR 1,170 while their sketch is converted into a life-size liveable prototype. The first two will be completed next year. When the prototypes are ready, the public will be able to rent them out for short stays to experience sustainable living.

"Anyone can stay in these houses and try this new way of living and see that it's not so different to what they are used to," said Podruh, whose organisation won first prize in the Young Energy Leaders category of the EU Sustainable Energy Awards in June.

The organisation has no plans to commercialise the prototypes. Instead, their goal is to highlight the need for sustainable housing initiatives and spur governments, policymakers and private companies into action.

"We really want to create a large demand for houses. We are intentionally creating this pressure on the market to adjust, to innovate," said Podruh. "We never wanted to be a construction companywe show novel ways to build houses, and we create the demand but we don't satisfy it  intentionally."

Explore further Retrofitting homes to improve energy ratings and reduce emissions
In this April 20, 2013 file photo, male greater sage grouse perform mating rituals for a female grouse, not pictured, on a lake outside Walden, Colo. Some Western governors say a new Trump administration directive threatens to undermine a hard-won compromise aimed at saving a beleaguered bird scattered across their region. The directive, issued in late July 2018, severely limits a type of land swap involving federal property. Critics say that eliminates an important tool for saving habitat for the shrinking population of greater sage grouse. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

Some governors in the U.S. West say a new Trump administration directive threatens to undermine a hard-won compromise aimed at saving a beleaguered bird scattered across their region.

The directive, issued in late July, severely limits a type of land swap involving federal property. Critics say that eliminates an important technique for saving habitat for the shrinking population of greater sage grouse.

"It took one of our tools out of the toolbox," said John Swartout, an adviser to Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Hickenlooper told federal officials in an Aug. 2 letter that he opposes the change. Nevada, Oregon and Utah also expressed opposition or concern.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which issued the directive, said the agency would work with the governors on "adjusted" plans.

Greater sage grouse are spiky-tailed, ground-dwelling birds about the size of chickens. They are best known for the males' showy displays in springtime mating dances.

They once numbered in the millions, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now estimates the population at 200,000 to 500,000. Experts blame energy development that broke up the bird's habitat, along with disease, livestock grazing and other causes.

Their range covers about 270,000 square miles (699,300 square kilometers) in parts of 11 Western U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The largest concentrations are in Wyoming, Montana, Nevada and Idaho.

In 2010, the Obama administration said the bird would need protection under the Endangered Species Act, which would have brought restrictions on drilling, mining, ranching and other development.

But in 2015, the administration reversed course, announcing an intricate agreement called the Sage Grouse Initiative that relied on federal agencies, states, ranchers and others to save the bird without invoking potentially stricter limits under the endangered species law.

One tool states planned to use was requiring developerssuch as energy companies drilling for oilto replace destroyed or damaged habitat with similar land elsewhere. The practice is called "off-site compensatory mitigation" and is envisioned as a last resort, if the damage cannot be avoided or minimized.

But the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees about 388,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) of public land, announced on July 24 that it would no longer use mandatory off-site compensatory mitigation on most federal land.

The bureau said it did not have the legal authority to enforce the requirement. It was one of numerous Obama-era environmental regulations and practices rolled back by the Trump administration.

Some state officials and environmental groups worry that the government's decision to back away from the mitigation tool could weaken the Sage Grouse Initiative and make it harder to save the bird.

Hickenlooper, a Democrat, wrote a letter to the Bureau of Land Management saying the move "jeopardizes BLM's ability to implement or enforce critical components" of the federal plan for the greater sage grouse in his state. He withdrew his support for the most recent version of the plan.

Jason Miner, an adviser to Oregon Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, told federal officials that the state was "concerned and unsupportive."

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, both Republicans, also expressed concern and asked for more information.

"Compensatory mitigation is an important part of Utah's conservation plan for sage grouse, which is why the state is requesting a meeting with the BLM to discuss this potential conflict," Herbert spokesman Paul Edwards said in a written statement.

But Wyoming officials said they believe the new directive still allows them to require off-site mitigation plans, with Bureau of Land Management agreement.

Bureau spokeswoman Heather Feeney said the agency would still consider mandatory mitigation plans if they are required by states or other third parties, but she left open the possibility they would be rejected.

Federal officials could not provide details on how often the mitigation plans have been used.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is often consulted by other agencies on such plans and ever year provides tens of thousands of comments and recommendations on them, said Gary Frazer, the agency's assistant director for ecological services.

Frazer said mitigation plans have been used for species ranging from condors to the desert tortoise, but a comprehensive list wasn't available.

"I don't think we know what the implications will be," Frazier said of the Bureau of Land Management directive.

Colorado officials said they were optimistic the states and the bureau could come up with a workable solution. Utah officials said they were happy with most of the rest of the bureau's sage grouse plans.

Environmental groups were worried.

"Right now, the compensatory mitigation requirements are a key tool," said Nada Culver of The Wilderness Society. "Without them, there is no way to ensure we don't keep losing sage grouse habitat."

Explore further Forest Service weighs changes to protections for sage grouse

 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Credit: Interstellar Technologies Inc.

Japanese startup Interstellar Technologies Inc. (IST) has revealed high-definition videos of the unsuccessful June 30 launch of its MOMO-2 rocket. The new footage, captured by industrial high-speed cameras, shows the failure in unprecedented detail.

The 33-foot (10-meter) tall MOMO-2 fell to the ground and exploded shortly after its launch from a test site near the town of Taiki on Japan's island of Hokkaido. IST recently released a high-definition multi-camera video of the launch, and now the company has released to the public another recording of the failed liftoffthis time, shot by high-speed cameras at the rate of 1,000 fps.

Developed by Photron, the FASTCAM cameras were set at two positions at the launch pad in order to record the whole sequence of the launch from the upper and lower angles. Unexpected fire emerging from the side of the vehicle's injector is clearly observed in these super-slow videos. Given that the exact cause of the launch failure is still being investigated by IST, the new footage could be helpful in determining what triggered the malfunction.

Takahiro Inagawa, IST's CEO, told Astrowatch.net that verifying those videos from high-speed cams leads to the initial assumption that the cause of the failure was in the side jet thruster.

MOMO2 rocket high-speed video (high-angle shot). Credit: Interstellar Technologies Inc. (IST)

"IST is currently conducting reproduction experiments of the malfunction. Later, IST plans to upload the telemetry and other data found onto GitHub to share the knowledge of cause investigation," Inagawa added.

The history of IST reaches back to 1997, when a group of space enthusiasts created a hobbyist organization aiming to develop a compact and convenient rocket , as well as to build a prototype engine to power a launch vehicle aloft. The company plans to become the first Japanese company to send a rocket into space.

MOMO2 rocket high-speed video (low-angle shot). Credit: Interstellar Technologies Inc. (IST)

The MOMO-2 rocket launch was IST's second test mission that ended in failure. The first rocket developed by the startup, MOMO-1, was launched in July of 2017 but communications with it were lost about a minute after it had left the pad.

Despite two setbacks, the company is currently working toward its next missionMOMO-3. However, although the exact date of the launch has not been disclosed yet, Inagawa recently revealed that MOMO-3's flight should be expected within months.

Explore further Interstellar Technologies continues work on its own rocket despite MOMO-2 launch failure

Provided by Astrowatch.net
The island-scrub-jay, the only North American island-endemic bird species. Credit: Cameron Ghalambor/Colorado State University

In nature, organisms are constantly adapting to their surroundings. It's why animal or plant populations with the same set of genes will do different things in different environments.

These adaptive divergences can occur within fewer generations, and at smaller spatial scales, than classic evolutionary theory would have us believe. Launching a new study, Colorado State University biologists are diving into the question of just how small these scales could be. To find out, they're studying a rare, isolated bird that, it turns out, is a bit of a homebody.

Researchers led by Cameron Ghalambor, professor in the Department of Biology, are launching a National Science Foundation-supported study of what evolutionary biologists term "microgeographic" adaptation strategies of island scrub-jays, North America's only island-endemic bird. Island scrub-jays live exclusively on Santa Cruz Island, one of the Channel Islands off the southern California coast.

The study is aimed at understanding how isolated species like scrub-jays somehow manage to genetically diverge, creating sub-populations that reflect specific, adaptive traits. That's despite living in an area of less than 100 square miles, with plenty of opportunity to interbreed. What the researchers learn could provide new insight into the mechanisms by which individuals in a single population diverge across habitats, and what that could mean for conservation biology, biodiversity and evolution.

Supported by a three-year, $850,000 NSF grant, Ghalambor will be joined by longtime collaborator W. Chris Funk, professor in biology and director of the Global Biodiversity Center in the School of Global Environmental Sustainability; and biology graduate student Rebecca Cheek. The project includes collaborators Scott Sillett and Brandt Ryder from the Smithsonian Institution, Scott Morrison from the Nature Conservancy and Paul Hohenlohe from the University of Idaho.

The study will build on the foundational work of former biology graduate student Katie Langin, who spent several months on Santa Cruz Island between 2009 and 2011 documenting island scrub-jays' divergent sub-populations from one end of the island to the other. During that previous study, Langin observed peculiar differences between scrub-jays found on different parts of the 22-mile-long island.

First, even on such a small island, east side birds tended not to go to the west side, and vice versa; they are true homebodies and stay close to their parents' territory. Second, as if speaking different dialects, east side and west side birds had distinct vocalizations. Finally, Langin found that birds in three distinct, isolated pine forests on different parts of the island all had longer, thinner bills suitable for opening pine cones and extracting seeds. This was in contrast to the scrub-jays in more extensive oak forests, which had shorter deep bills that are more suitable for extracting acorns.

Surprisingly, birds in each pine stand were not genetically more closely related to each other, but instead were more closely related to birds in nearby oak forests. This suggests there have been three independent cases of birds moving into pine habitats and evolving differences in bill shape. The scientists were puzzled by how such distinct differences could arise and be maintained, despite the pine and oak-preferring populations being right next to each other.

A bishop pine cone stand on Santa Cruz Island. Credit: Cameron Ghalambor

"We were seeing these differences at extremely small spatial scales, and these patterns are repeated across all three pine stands," Ghalambor said.

Such adaptive divergence patterns are more commonly found across broad scales, many miles apart, where there is little opportunity for organisms to mate with each othernot in such close proximity as the Santa Cruz scrub-jay populations. Theory states that if the birds in adjacent pine and oak forests are mating and exchanging genes with one another, it would be very difficult to maintain such distinct traits so close together.

In field work that will start later this year, the team will return to Santa Cruz Island to further study how much the birds move and overlap with each other. They will use genomic analysis to identify genes that differ between birds from either the pine or oak habitats.

They will also trap birds and outfit them with bird-sized GPS backpacks to observe their patterns of movement. "If you were born in a pine stand, do you prefer to go back to pine? Or will you also go to oak?" Ghalambor said. "Especially in those places where oak and pine are closer to each other, and the birds really do have a choice, what choice do they make?"

Finally, the researchers will study whether males and females show a preference for birds that sound like they do. That would be a potential explanation for how scrub-jays maintain trait differences within such small geographic boundaries, and sustain them.

Results from the study could offer new insights into a little-studied type of biodiversity that involves subtle variations within species. This variation could be fueling larger, more obvious and better-documented biodiversity patterns.

"The jays provide a window into letting us understand those processes and mechanisms in which a single population can then become diversified into many forms."

The work could lead to conservation strategies for the island scrub-jay, which is labeled vulnerable according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Information about scrub-jays' microgeographic differences could inform future efforts to repopulate neighboring Santa Rosa Island with the bird, which disappeared from there 200 years ago due to habitat destruction.

The researchers will also partner with the College of Natural Sciences Education and Outreach Center to design "jay kits" appropriate for K-12 students to learn about adaptation and survival in nature. The educational kits will be modeled after existing Trinidadian guppy kits that Ghalambor also helped design during a previous project.

Explore further Jays and crows act as ecosystem engineers
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk says he is in talks with the Saudi government's sovereign wealth fund as part of his efforts to take Tesla private

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk disclosed Monday that he was in talks with Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and other investors to take the electric automaker private.

The revelation came after Musk claimed in an August 7 Twitter post that financing for a deal to take Tesla private had been "secured."

Musk said in a blog post on Monday he had "no question" that the Saudis would finance such a transaction following a July 31 meeting.

"I continue to have discussions with the Saudi fund, and I also am having discussions with a number of other investors, which is something that I always planned to do since I would like for Tesla to continue to have a broad investor base," Musk wrote.

"It is appropriate to complete those discussions before presenting a detailed proposal to an independent board committee."

The transaction would be structured with equity so as not to burden Tesla with crushing debt, Musk added.

Musk's surprise comments last week sparked speculation he would need to borrow massive amounts to take Tesla private, a move that could allow the company to operate without requirements for financial reports and other pressures of a publicly traded firm.

But the comments also raised questions about whether Musk ran afoul of securities laws by claiming backing without a firm financial commitment.

The disclosures about Saudi interest "helps reduce the legal risk fallout for Tesla," said Efraim Levy, an equity analyst at CFRA Research.

"It also helps clarify the going private situation even if the transaction is ultimately not consummated."

But Levy said taking the company private would be a mixed blessing for Tesla and Muskthe company could avoid short-term pressures from Wall Street but also reduce its access to capital markets.

"They've had significant benefits from having access to capital markets, and the media attention has provided priceless free advertising," Levy said.

If Tesla goes private, it would avoid many of the requirements and scrutiny of a publicly traded firm

"Despite Musk protestations, we think remaining public has and will benefit Tesla," he added.

Tesla shares failed to sustain an early surge and ended with a small gain of 0.26 percent at $356.41.

Less than $70 billion

In his blog post Monday, Musk said that reports that more than $70 billion would be needed to take Tesla private "dramatically overstate the actual capital raise needed" because he expected some shareholders to remain invested in the firm.

His comment that he wanted to launch a buyout at $420 a share "would only be used for Tesla shareholders who do not remain with our company if it is private," Musk said in the post.

"My best estimate right now is that approximately two-thirds of shares owned by all current investors would roll over into a private Tesla."

Musk added that the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund "has approached me multiple times" starting in early 2017 about taking Tesla private and had already taken a stake of nearly five percent though share purchases.

He said the Saudis were interested "because of the important need to diversify away from oil" and added that the sovereign fund "has more than enough capital needed to execute on such a transaction."

Loup Ventures analysts Gene Munster and Will Thompson said in a research note that Musk has answered the question "where would the money come from?" but still faces a number of challenges.

"If Musk can help it, we believe he will limit additional investors to 20 percent equity (he owns 22 percent), which implies the Saudi fund could only invest $16 billion," the analysts wrote.

"We still believe there is a greater than 50 percent chance Tesla is private in a year, and the blog post slightly increased those odds."

California-based Tesla has become one of the most valuable automakers on expectations it will disrupt the industry, although it produced only slightly more than 100,000 vehicles last year.

The company has been struggling to boost production of its Model 3, which is less expensive than its first models and could held expand Tesla's base.

Explore further Tesla boss Musk rattles Wall Street with tweet on going private (Update)

 2018 AFP
Early illustration of a scarlet macaw drawn in Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots, by Edward Lear in 1832. Credit: Edward Lear, PD-US

Somewhere in the American Southwest or northern Mexico, there are probably the ruins of a scarlet macaw breeding operation dating to between 900 and 1200 C.E., according to a team of archaeologists who sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of bird remains found in the Chaco Canyon and Mimbres areas of New Mexico.

Remains of a thriving prehistoric avian culture and breeding colony of scarlet macaws exist at the northern Mexican site of Paquime, or Casas Grande. However, this community existed from 1250 to 1450, well after the abandonment of Chaco Canyon, and could not have supplied these birds to Southwest communities prior to the 13th century, said Richard George, graduate student in anthropology, Penn State.

Historically, scarlet macaws lived from South America to eastern coastal Mexico and Guatemala, thousands of miles from the American Southwest. Previously, researchers thought that ancestral Puebloan people might have traveled to these natural breeding areas and brought birds back, but the logistics of transporting adolescent birds are difficult. None of the sites where these early macaw remains were found contained evidence of breedingeggshells, pens or perches.

"We were interested in the prehistoric scarlet macaw population history and the impacts of human direct management," said George. "Especially any evidence for directed breeding or changes in the genetic diversity that could co-occur with different trade networks."

The researchers sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of 20 scarlet macaw specimens, but were only able to obtain full sequences from 14. They then directly radiocarbon-dated all 14 birds with complete or near complete genomes and found they fell between 900 and 1200 CE.

"We looked at the full mitochondrial genome of over 16,000 base pairs to understand the maternal relationships represented in the Chaco Canyon and Mimbres regions," said George.

Scarlet macaw (A.M. cyanoptera) walks on the ground. Credit: Lakdos

Mitochondrial DNA exists separate from the cell nucleus and is inherited directly from the mother. While nuclear DNA combines the DNA inherited from both parents, mitochondrial DNA can show direct lineage because all siblings have the same mtDNA as their mother, and she has the same mtDNA as her own siblings and mother, all the way back through their ancestry.

Scarlet macaws in Mexico and Central America have five haplogroupsgenetically similar, but not identical mitochondrial DNA linesand each haplogroup has a number of haplotypes containing identical DNA lines. The researchers found that their scarlet macaws were all from haplogroup 6 and that 71 percent of the birds shared one of four unique haplotypes. They report the results of this analysis today (Aug 13) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers found that the probability of obtaining 14 birds from the wild and having them all come from the same haplogroup, one that is small and isolated, was extremely small. A better explanation, especially because these specimens ranged over a 300-year period, is that all the birds came from the same breeding population and that this population existed somewhere in the American Southwest or northern Mexico.

"These birds all likely came from the same source, but we don't have any way to support that assumption without examining the full genome," said George. "However, the genetic results likely indicate some type of narrow breeding from a small founder population with little or no introgression or resupply."

However, no one has found macaw breeding evidence dating to the 900 to 1200 period in the American Southwest or northern Mexico.

"The next step will be to analyze macaws from other archaeological sites in Arizona and northern Mexico to narrow down the location of this early breeding colony," said Douglas Kennett, professor and head of anthropology, Penn State, and co-director or the project.

Explore further Scarlet macaw skeletons point to early emergence of Pueblo hierarchy (Update)

More information: Richard J. George el al., "Archaeogenomic evidence from the southwestern US points to a Pre-Hispanic scarlet macaw breeding colony," PNAS (2018). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Richard J. George el al., "Archaeogenomic evidence from the southwestern US points to a Pre-Hispanic scarlet macaw breeding colony,"(2018). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1805856115
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Long before humans started injecting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal, the level of atmospheric CO2 rose significantly as the Earth came out of its last ice age. Many scientists have long suspected that the source of that carbon was from the deep sea.

But researchers haven't been able to document just how the carbon made it out of the ocean and into the atmosphere. It has remained one of the most important mysteries of science.

A new study, published today in the journal Nature Geoscience, provides some of the most compelling evidence for how it happeneda "flushing" of the deep Pacific Ocean caused by the acceleration of water circulation patterns that begin around Antarctica.

The concern, researchers say, is that it could happen again, potentially magnifying and accelerating human-caused climate change.

"The Pacific Ocean is big and you can store a lot of stuff down thereit's kind of like Grandma's root cellarstuff accumulates there and sometimes doesn't get cleaned out," said Alan Mix, an Oregon State University oceanographer and co-author on the study. "We've known that CO2 in the atmosphere went up and down in the past, we know that it was part of big climate changes, and we thought it came out of the deep ocean.

"But it has not been clear how the carbon actually got out of the ocean to cause the CO2 rise."

Lead author Jianghui Du, a doctoral student in oceanography at Oregon State, said there is a circulation pattern in the Pacific that begins with water around Antarctica sinking and moving northward at great depth a few miles below the surface. It continues all the way to Alaska, where it rises, turns back southward, and flows back to Antarctica where it mixes back up to the sea surface.

It takes a long time for the water's round trip journey in the abyssalmost 1,000 years, Du said. Along with the rest of the OSU team, Du found that flow slowed down during glacial maximums but sped up during deglaciation, as the Earth warmed. This faster flow flushed the carbon from the deep Pacific Oceancleaning out Grandma's root cellarand brought the CO2 to the surface near Antarctica. There it was released into the atmosphere.

"It happened roughly in two steps during the last deglaciationan initial phase from 18,000 to 15,000 years ago, when CO2 rose by about 50 parts per million, and a second pulse later added another 30 parts per million," Du said. That total is just a bit less than the amount CO2 has risen since the industrial revolution. So the ocean can be a powerful source of carbon.

Brian Haley, also an Oregon State University oceanographer and co-author on the study, noted that carbon is always falling down into the deep ocean. Up near the surface, plankton grow, but when they die they sink and decompose. That is a biological pump that is always sending carbon to the bottom. "The slower the circulation," Haley said, "the more time the water spends down there, and carbon can build up."

Du said that during a glacial maximum, the water slows down and accumulates lots of carbon. "When the Earth began warming, the water movement sped up by about a factor of three," he noted, "and that carbon came back to the surface."

The key to the researchers' discovery is the analysis of neodymium isotopes in North Pacific sediment cores. Haley noted that the isotopes are "like a return address label on a letter from the deep ocean." When the ratio of isotope 143 to 144 is higher in the sediments, the water movement during that period was slower. When water movement speeds up during warming events, the ratio of neodymium isotopes reflects that too.

"This finding that the deep circulation sped up is the smoking gun in this mystery story about how CO2 got out to the deep sea," Mix said. "We now know how it happened, and the deep Pacific is the culprita partner in crime with Antarctica."

What concerns the researchers is that it could happen again as the climate continues to warm.

"We don't know that the circulation will speed up and bring that carbon to the surface, but it seems like a reasonable thing to think about," Du said. "Our evidence that this actually happened in the past will help the people who run climate models figure out whether it is a real risk for the future."

The researchers say their findings should be considered from a policy perspective.

"So far the ocean has absorbed about a third of the total carbon emitted from fossil fuels," Mix said. "That has helped slow down warming. The Paris Climate Agreement has set goals of containing warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees (Celsius) and we know pretty well how much carbon can be released to the atmosphere while keeping to that level.

"But if the ocean stops absorbing the excess CO2, and instead releases more from the deep sea, that spells trouble. Ocean release would subtract from our remaining emissions budget and that means we're going to have to get our emissions down a heck of a lot faster. We need to figure out how much."

Explore further Stronger west winds blow ill wind for climate change

More information: [26] Flushing of the deep Pacific Ocean and the deglacial rise of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, Nature Geoscience (2018). Journal information: Nature Geoscience [26] Flushing of the deep Pacific Ocean and the deglacial rise of atmospheric CO2 concentrations,(2018). www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0205-6
Amber McEwan (front) and a volunteer collect kakahi at Lake Kohangapiripiri. Photo: Owen Spearpoint. Credit: Victoria University

Echyridella menziesii and E. aucklandica are freshwater mussels, which live in soft-sediment habitats in New Zealand's rivers and lakes. Both species are known as kakahi throughout the lower North Island. They are taonga species to Maori, valued both as a traditional food source and for providing tools.

"Kakahi are pretty amazing. They have fascinating life cycles involving a parasitic attachment to native fish (including the whitebait species, which are now rare)," says Amber. "Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence suggests that kakahi are far less common now than they once were."

E. menziesii is classified as 'At RiskDeclining', and E. aucklandica as 'Threatened-Nationally Vulnerable' by the Department of Conservation.

Like many native freshwater species, kakahi suffer from human activity. Runoff from cities has seen an increase in copper, lead and hydrocarbons in waterways. Deforestation and erosion has increased the amount of fine sediment in lakes and rivers, which is smothering habitats. And the intensification of dairy farming means that effluent and fertiliser have entered the water, causing catastrophic changes.

"Translocation is one of the tools we can use to help save these species from extinctionthis will be the first well-studied kakahi translocation in New Zealand. From this we can develop a set of translocation guidelines for future efforts," says Amber.

Last week 200 kakahi were translocated to the upper lake of the Kaiwharawhara Stream catchment, located in Zealandia ecosanctuary. It is hoped that, as well as contributing to the restoration of the ecosystem, the kakahi will have other positive effects. Freshwater mussels wear many hatsthey are known to be pollution biomonitors, nutrient providers and trophic engineers. A single mussel can filter more than a litre of water in an hour, and it is hoped that the kakahi will play an important role in keeping the lake clean.

Amber collaborated with Zealandia, Greater Wellington Regional Council, the Cawthron Institute, NIWA, Kahuguni Ki Wairarapa, Rangitane O Wairarapa and Taranaki Whanui for the translocation and will continue to monitor the population via tiny microchips attached to the mussels' shells.

"The translocation of two species of kakahi to a location in which they are not currently present will provide a unique and valuable opportunity to examine multiple ecological phenomena, such as colonisation and dispersal processes, niche formation, predation and competition," says Amber.

Explore further Researcher looks into declining Texas mussel populations
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The huge moorland fires at Saddleworth and Winter Hill in northwest England have shown just how serious a problem wildfires can be in the UK. Now the fires are out, it is time to look at how such catastrophes can be prevented in the future and why this critical environmental issue needs to be on the political agenda.

Our research has shown how informal local and national partnerships helped keep the flames under some form of control and can reduce the risk of future fires on this scale. But the government needs to support these partnerships and see wildfire as more than a fire service problem. Climate change will make such fires more common so the country must be ready.

Managing moorland wildfire risk is not just about putting out fires. It is also about reducing the risk of fires starting and spreading. This involves the cooperation of many diverse interest groups, so fire and rescue services work collaboratively with other stakeholders such as mountain rescue groups, local councils, police forces and government agencies. As the Scottish government wildfire manual (section 8A.20) acknowledges, it would be impossible for fire and rescue services to attempt to address the risks in isolation.

Partnerships in action

Fire crosses property and administrative boundaries so cooperation between agencies and interest groups is vital. Informal partnerships have developed to coordinate efforts. Local fire groups have formed to share expertise and firefighting equipment. The Peak District Fire Operations Group (FOG was one of the first. It is six local fire services, three water companies, amenity groups and other landowners working together to prevent and prepare for wildfires. There are now at least 20 such groups across the UK, spurred by bad fire seasons in 2003, 2006 and 2011. These collaborations, championed by Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service among others, have changed the approach to fighting UK wildfires.

Fire groups train together and share resources. Standard gauge hoses now mean that fire brigades can join them together in a "water relay" to reach remote fires. The Peak District group includes Pennine helicopters  seen on the news dumping water on the moorland fires in Lancashire and Greater Manchester. The Lancashire FOG uses the Bay Search and Rescue's large all-terrain vehicle  normally used to traverse Morecambe Bay's sands  to ferry people and heavy equipment across soft peat moorland. Bolton Mountain Rescue served as tactical lookouts, spotting flare-ups at the Winter Hill fire. Land managers provide all-terrain vehicles and "fogging units" with fine sprays to wet vegetation, while countryside rangers and landowners bring local knowledge of the terrain.

Formal multi-agency working is also required at major incidents, including help from other emergency services, the military and utility companies.

Sharing the lessons

There is no separate national fire service for wildfires. Instead, the UK's 54 fire services help each other, so wildfire training is vital for all crews.

Saddleworth Moor fire crews had help from a Wildfire Tactical Advisor, one of a new national "flying squad" of specially trained regional officers, recently set up by the National Fire Chiefs Council Wildfire Group.

The England and Wales Wildfire Forum and its Scottish equivalent share good practice nationally and raise awareness of wildfire issues. Although unfunded, they have become the "go-to" bodies for government on wildfire issues.

They collaborate with UK wildfire researchers to match practitioners' needs with wildfire research expertise, although many research gaps still remain. Critically, the UK does not have a suitable fire danger rating system to predict when and where wildfires will occur and their impacts.

Key fire service personnel in the UK have also gained valuable skills through international collaboration  for example, with the Pau Costa Foundation in Catalonia and the US's Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX). They learned how to predict wildfire behaviour by reading the landscape. Fire travels faster upwards on sunlit slopes and with the wind. Crews now use this knowledge in what is called indirect attack  this involves "starving" strategic locations in the fire's path of fuel by mechanical clearing or controlled "defensive burning".

National policy

A more robust planning and prevention approach to wildfire has evolved over the last 20 years, thanks to these informal local and national partnerships and international training. But the UK's wildfire problem has only recently been recognised by national policy. Major fires in 2011 were a catalyst for severe wildfire to be included in the National Risk Register. The Natural Hazard Partnership now includes wildfire in its daily hazard assessments.

Local and national partnerships have proved an effective response, despite stretched resources, and deserve government support. Without these bottom-up initiatives, fire crews fighting the blazes on Saddleworth Moor and Winter Hill would have had an even more arduous task.

Wildfire is more than just a fire service issue. Any change in land use or land management which affects ignition sources (people) or fuel (vegetation) can also change wildfire risk, whether deliberately or unintentionally. Either way, planning ahead to manage wildfire risk should be firmly on the political agenda.

Explore further Firefighters tackle second wildfire in northern England

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
The photo Corbyns sick of seeing. Photo: Embassy of the State of Palestine in Tunisia

U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose party has been increasingly dogged by associations with anti-Semitism in recent months, is in a war of words with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid allegations that Corbyn once commemorated a notorious Palestinian terrorist group.

On Saturday, the Daily Mail published a story that showed Corbyn clutching a wreath at a 2014 ceremony in Tunisia, one year before he became Labour leader. Corbyn has said that he was there to remember dozens of people killed by an Israeli air strike on a Palestinian Liberation Organization base in 1985. (The PLO was classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Israel at the time, so even that explanation could be seen as controversial.)

But the paper determined, after visiting the site, that Corbyn was actually standing in a different part of the complex during the proceedings  close to the graves of high-ranking members of the group Black September, which murdered several Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

Corbyn, who is a longtime and fierce advocate for Palestinian causes, was asked about the story by a reporter on Monday. He said, I was present at that wreath-laying, but that I dont think I was actually involved in it. He did not clarify what, exactly, the ceremony was for.

I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere because we have to end it, he continued. You cannot pursue peace by a cycle of violence. The only way you pursue peace is a cycle of dialogue.

That hazy explanation wasnt enough for Netanyahu, who, given their vast political differences, is probably more than happy to make Corbyns life difficult.

The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorist who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone  left, right and everything in between  Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) August 13, 2018

Corbyn then responded in a manner that is unlikely to help his case, nor help change the subject.

Israeli PM @Netanyahu's claims about my actions and words are false.



What deserves unequivocal condemnation is the killing of over 160 Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli forces since March, including dozens of children.https://t.co/H5nXqi3pnU  Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) August 13, 2018

In response to the article and ensuing controversy, the U.K. Home secretary has said that Corbyn should resign as leader, and a Jewish Labour member of Parliament called for him to apologize.

With Prime Minister Theresa May stuck in a Brexit-shaped quagmire, Corbyn has a chance to seize momentum and maybe even make a run at becoming prime minister. At the moment, though, his worst enemy appears to be himself.
During the Fire Lab study, CIRES and NOAA scientists burned over 100 fires made from various fuels found in the western United States and sampled the emissions continuously with state-of-the art instruments. Credit: Henry Worobec/ University of Montana

When wildfires burn, they don't only damage land, homes, and businesses. Wildfire emissions, which can be transported over long distances, can be toxic and contribute to the formation of secondary pollutants such as ozone and fine particles in the atmosphere. Those emissions affect human health and the environment, so scientists want to know what's in wildfire smoke. According to new research from CIRES and NOAA, what matters most is not what kind of fuel is burning, but the temperature at which it burns.

"If we know the temperature of a fire, we can better estimate what comes out of it, independent of what's burning," said Carsten Warneke, a CIRES researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder working in the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory and a co-author on the paper, published July 3 in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. "With that information, we'll be able to simplify the emissions models, better predict the downwind impacts of wildfires, and get much better forecasts for air quality."

It looks like lower-temperature fires actually produce more tiny particles called aerosols, which can get into people's lungs and mix in the atmosphere to form haze and other air pollutants downstream.

The U.S. West faces a future with more frequent and intense wildfires, according to climate projections and in part because of policies that have long encouraged fire suppression. Against that backdrop, scientists from CIRES and NOAA are teaming up with scientists from NASA to lead a multi-year field campaign called NOAA-NASA FIREX-AQFire Influence on Regional to Global Environments Experimentand Air Qualityto better understand the air quality and climate effects of wildfires. The new paper came out of an early FIREX investigation in 2016 in the Missoula, Montana-based Fire Lab, run by the U.S. Forest Service.

In the 2019 FIREX-AQ field campaign, CIRES and NOAA researchers, with partners including NASA, will study the impact of western U.S. wildfires on the atmosphere and climate, with the goal of developing policy-relevant information and tools to help manage fires. Credit: CIRES & NOAA

Fires produce complex emissions, releasing thousands of different volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are often difficult to measure. Scientists initially thought wildfire emissions are mostly dependent on the type of fuel burnedfor example, Douglas fir, Ponderosa pine, or sage brush. The goal of the Fire Lab study was to better understand emissions of vegetation burning in a simple and controlled environment. To do that, a team of CIRES and NOAA scientists burned over 100 fires made from various fuels found in the western United States and sampled the emissions continuously with state-of-the art instruments.

The new research suggests understanding these emission patterns may be much simpler than researchers previously believed: it's the temperature of the burn and not what's burning, that's key to understanding fire emissions. Researchers could explain around 85 percent of the variability of the VOC emissions once they knew how hot a fire was: some VOCs were emitted primarily from high-temperature burns, while others were emitted from low-temperature burns. Over its course, a single fire burns at both higher and lower temperatures, releasing different VOCs at various stages. Those compounds released from low temperature burns have properties that make them more likely to form aerosols in the fire plumes.

"These results completely change the way we understand VOC emissions from wildfires," said James Roberts, a NOAA scientist and FIREX-AQ principal investigator. "Instead of looking at the type of fuel burned, we can focus on the temperature of the burn, something that can potentially be measured from satellites."

Those initial results from Fire Lab will help the CIRES and NOAA researchers and their colleagues during the FIREX field campaign, slated for the 2019 fire season. The team will study the impact of western U.S. wildfires on the atmosphere and climate with the goal of developing policy-relevant information and tools to help manage fires.

Credit: University of Colorado at Boulder

As part of a newly-announced partnership, the NASA DC-8 aircraft will carry a payload of NOAA instruments, among others, on wide-ranging flights targeting western U.S. wildfires and also agricultural and prescribed burns across the southeast United States. One NOAA Twin Otter aircraft will fly over western wildfires and prescribed fires at night, sampling emissions along the way. Another NOAA Twin Otter will measure windfields feeding the fires. Mobile labs and stationary instruments will collect emission samples on the ground, and researchers will also use satellite data to help pinpoint fire temperature and track emissions on regional to global scales. And a CIRES and NOAA team will deploy an instrumented unmanned aircraft system, or UAS, over some wildfires at night. See "Sending a UAS Above The Flames" below.

"Wildfires are one of the larger remaining issues for air quality in the United States," said Roberts. Their FIREX study could provide answers to many outstanding questions. "By doing our homework in the lab, we have identified what's in emissions and the actual process of how emissions are made," said Warneke. "Now we need to go into the field to understand real fires."

Sending a UAS Above The Flames

Wildfires burn differently at night because meteorological conditionsincluding temperature, energy from sunlight, humidity, and windsaren't the same as during the day. Health effects downwind from wildfires can be more severe at night, because those conditions can trap smoke closer to the ground, concentrating emissions. High-resolution nighttime observations of a fire's size, location, and heat output can provide key inputs to fire weather models to improve fire weather forecasts.

While manned research and firefighting aircraft don't usually fly near wildfires at night for safety reasons, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are well-suited for the job. For that reason, NOAA's Nighttime Fire Observations eXperiment (NightFOX) is slated to take part in the FIREX-AQ field campaign. Working with CU Boulder's department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and the NOAA UAS Program Office, NOAA and CIRES researchers at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory will send an instrument-equipped small UAS to make nighttime wildfire measurements. In addition to monitoring a fire's temperature and extent using multi-spectral remote sensing instruments, NightFOX will measure carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide to determine how the fire is burning and aerosols in the fire plume to characterize emissions that lead to local and regional health impacts.

Explore further Aircraft campaign to clarify chemistry of wildfire smoke

More information: Kanako Sekimoto et al. High- and low-temperature pyrolysis profiles describe volatile organic compound emissions from western US wildfire fuels, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (2018). Journal information: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Kanako Sekimoto et al. High- and low-temperature pyrolysis profiles describe volatile organic compound emissions from western US wildfire fuels,(2018). DOI: 10.5194/acp-18-9263-2018
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A simple and fast microwave experiment with the common chemical element phosphorus at Flinders University has opened the prospect of more affordable and effective super-thin solar cells.

In a world in need of cheaper, sustainable energy solutions, Flinders University nanotechnology researchers made flakes of phosphorene only a few atoms thick. Phosphorene is a 2-D form of phosphorus, which could not only boost the energy capacity of popular dye-sensitised solar cells (DSSC) but potentially remove the need for the expensive component platinum.

Sheets and flakes of this few-layer phosphorus, just a few billionths of a metre thick, could improve the efficiency of certain types of photovoltaic cells, the research team led by Professor Joseph Shapter claim.

Solar cells based on carbon nanotubes and silicon are promising as a cheaper and easier-to-manufacture alternative to crystalline silicon cells. However one challenge with these new solar cells is boosting the efficiency they convert sunlight into electricity.

One approach is to include a layer of ultra-thin nanoflakes of phosphorene in the solar cell which has all the right properties to make it suitable for increasing solar cell efficiency. The microwave method to produce phosphorene, developed at Flinders University, involves immersing phosphorous in a special liquid and exposing it to microwaves for only 10 minutes in contrast to previous protocols taking 15 hours.

The results of the microwave experiments to produce phosphorene  and its potential application in the solar industry  has been published in leading international chemistry journals Angewandte Chemie, Advanced Functional Materials and Small Methods.

In the first study, the Australian team used phosphorene, to fabricate DSSCs. The cells had superior photovoltaic efficiency of 8.31% which outperforms expensive platinum-based cells.

DSSC is an emerging field of thin-film, semi-flexible and semi-transparent solar cells which are simple to make but limited by quite costly components such as platinum and ruthenium.

In the second study, the team again used the fast and efficient microwave method of manufacturing high-quality phosphorene flakes and then added them to carbon nanotubesilicon solar cells to show a significant improvement in the cells' power conversion.

"With these promising early results, further studies with the microwave technique and other solvents will help improve stability and durability of phospherene and allow us to look at ways to produce larger amounts of phosphorene for possible commercial applications, says co-author Dr. Christopher Gibson, from the Flinders College of Science and Engineering.

Project leaders Professor Shapter, Dr. Gibson, Dr. Munkhbayar Batmunkh and Mrs Munkhjargal Bat-Erdene are among a team of Flinders Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology researchers looking to improve solar cell efficiency  also including a more sustainable material called perovskite.

Explore further Sticky tape & phosphorus the key to ultrathin solar cells
Omarosa Manigault Newman, left, and Donald Trump. Photo: Michael Reynolds - Pool/Getty Images

President Trump hired an unqualified employee for a high-ranking White House position. Despite her poor performance, abusive behavior toward co-workers, and frequent failure to attend work, he overruled the advice of his chief of staff and retained her. His reason for doing so, despite having little contact with this toxic employee, is that she flattered him.

This devastating account of Trumps managerial incompetence does not come from the anonymous insiders who constantly supply White House reporters with brutal portraits of the presidents ineptitude. The source, rather, is Donald Trump himself. He said this in public today. On purpose!

Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

...really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

It is not the first time Trump has accused himself of hiring terrible people. He accused his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, of having lost a crucial Senate seat for his party, leaking false information to the media, and having lost his mind. All in all, a reprehensible person to pick as your chief political strategist.

After former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg told the New York Times that Trump mistreated Michael Cohen, Trump attacked Nunberg as a drunk/drugged up loser. Trump also insisted at the same time that Michael Cohen is a fine person.

Trump has since changed his mind on Cohen, too. He recently accused his former attorney of fabricating stories and having been involved in criminal activity in New York:

.....I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr. Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam (Taxi cabs maybe?). He even retained Bill and Crooked Hillarys lawyer. Gee, I wonder if they helped him make the choice!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2018

Trumps current attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has called Cohen a pathological liar. Sounds like Trump picked a bad person to be his fixer, then.

Trump has likewise called his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, very weak, disgraceful and, most uncontroversially, beleaguered. (Which he is surely is, by Trump.) So Trump failed at his job of appointing a non-weak, non-disgraceful person for one of the most important jobs in government.

On top of this, Trump has repeatedly slammed his own appointments in private, according to numerous reports. He has dismissed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross as past his prime, called Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ditsy, subjected Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielson to a lengthy tirade in which he called her a total failure at his highest domestic priority, and so on.

American politics is bitterly divided, and Trump has shown an amazing talent to persuade his supporters to support his most unhinged and fallacious claims. But on one issue, Trump and his staunchest critics are in full agreement: Trump hires the worst people.
11 hours ago

Sofi Technologies Stock Can Rise Against the Grain

Digital financial services company Sofi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) stock is gaining a new resurgence as it attempts to climb towards all-time highs. The fintech has expanded its financial services to become a one-stop shop for banking, investing, lending, budgeting, wealth planning, and credit cards suited for Millennials and Gen-Z customers.

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Judge Ellis (L) and star witness Rick Gates (R), as depicted by a courtroom artist last week. Photo: Dana Verkouteren via Associated Press

U.S. Senior District Judge T.S. Ellis is among a handful of judges in the country who know some of the deepest secrets of the Russia investigation. When lawyers for Paul Manafort asked him, unsuccessfully, to dismiss a slew of charges against their client accusing him of tax evasion and bank fraud, Ellis asked the office of special counsel Robert Mueller to hand over, without any redactions, an otherwise highly classified memorandum containing the scope of his authority to investigate Donald Trumps former campaign chairman and other crimes.

More than anything, Ellis seemed to want to make sure Mueller wasnt some loose cannon, going above and beyond his mandate as special counsel. Even then, he gave the government some time to produce the memorandum, mindful that other parts of the executive branch might have objections. I think its perfectly appropriate for you to consult with other parts of the government, particularly intelligence agencies. If they feel some of it is classified, Im prepared to look at it ex parte under seal, Ellis said at the May hearing, meaning hed let Muellers team submit the memo without letting Manaforts side or the public get a look at it. Highly sensitive trials and government secrets, he added, are nothing new to him.

When came time to rule, it wasnt even close. Muellers prosecutorial authority, as outlined in his appointment order of May 2017, isnt limited to federal crimes concerning election interference or collusion, Ellis wrote in a 31-page decision, but rather, the Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes that arise out of his authorized investigation. He added: And the crimes charged in the Superseding Indictment clearly arise out of the Special Counsels investigation into the payments defendant allegedly received from Russian-backed leaders and pro-Russian political officials.

Count me among the skeptics who doubt that Elliss scoldings and outbursts during the first two weeks of Paul Manaforts trial in Virginia, as reported in the press, mean much of anything in the grand scheme. As I observed last week, the first public trial of the broader Russia saga is, for lack of a better term, a show trial  a minuscule part of the far more serious charges and revelations that Manafort is expected to answer for in the coming months in Washington.

And yet somehow we cant look away. Or stop following the drip-drip-drip of trial developments. Or stop worrying that Ellis may somehow be biased against the prosecution or unduly prejudicing jurors to see things his way. Political and court journalists stationed at the judges Alexandria courtroom, God bless them, arent helping things, bringing us breathless tidbit after breathless tidbit as if the fate of the republic depended on it.

In the week that just ended, it was star witness Rick Gatess showstopping testimony that led nearly every news report, and with good reason: As a longtime Manafort protege and associate, he knows better than most where the bodies are buried. But even during his time in the spotlight, it was suggestions of serial lying and marital infidelity on his part, which the Manafort defense may have let linger to cast doubt on his credibility as a witness, that had court watchers and worriers wondering about what might happen to the prosecutions case  which, in the eyes of many, had better be airtight, lest the president of the United States dance on the grave of the special counsels phony witch hunt.

I am here to reassure you that rumors of the demise of the Virginia prosecution against Paul Manafort have been greatly exaggerated. And that the heated confrontations between Judge Ellis and prosecutors  to the extent they happened in front of the jury  are just a foretaste of what the defense is likely to get when it starts to lay its cards on the table.

So far, all jurors have seen is one side of the case. And when its time for Manaforts legal team to mount what Politico describes as mission impossible, it may consist of no more than attempts to paint its client as a victim, a highly sophisticated lobbyist who didnt know better, or simply someone who was too busy working for Ukrainian interests to mind the minutiae of reporting his offshore taxable income or true liquid assets when he procured outsize bank loans the moment his political fortunes ran dry. A man too wealthy to keep good track of his own money or its whereabouts, if you will. Good luck with that.

More important still, for all the flashy testimony to come out of the trial, including from people who had direct knowledge of Manaforts wheeling and dealing, jurors have already seen reams of documentary evidence  emails, invoices, and business records that paint a picture of the scheme Manafort is accused of orchestrating. In significant ways, the oral testimony simply corroborates or adds to the foundation prosecutors have already laid with the documents entered into evidence.

As for Ellis, whose ornery treatment of prosecutors has gotten him undue attention for all the wrong reasons, its best to not read too much into it. Again, because the defense is likely to catch fire from him too, but also because benchslapping is something that trial lawyers have to live with  and its not a good barometer of how jurors will ultimately decide a case.

Judicial intemperance is common and, for better or worse, dealing with it is part of a litigators job, Ken White, a longtime criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, observed in an NBC News column. Trial lawyers know that judicial grumbling is not a reliable predictor of results. Its often just sound and fury signifying nothing.

Ellis, more than just about anyone else in America, knows a wealth of extremely sensitive details about the Russia investigation, and his apparent drive to cut no slack for the prosecution also indicates that he wants their side to have a solid trial record in the event of an appeal. Riding prosecutors and limiting their evidence doesnt necessarily signal that Ellis thinks theyre in the wrong  it may signal that he thinks theyre likely to convict Manafort, and he wants to make the result as clean and error-free as possible, added White.

Either way, its not like the Mueller team is letting the judge play them for fools. Early on Thursday, the prosecutors filed a prehearing motion calling on Ellis to correct the record about something he had done a day earlier: letting them have it for allowing an IRS agent who was also a witness watch the weekly proceedings in the courtroom, which he had permitted but seemingly forgotten about. It appears I may well have been wrong, Ellis said in an unlikely moment of humility, according to Reuters. But like any human, and this robe doesnt make me anything other than human, I sometimes make mistakes.

Expect jurors to credit that contrition  and the prosecution for holding the judge to his own rules. And dont believe the hype: This trial thus far is going far worse for Manafort than it is for Mueller.
Over a dozen journalists in Belarus have been detained in recent days in an aggressive attack by the government against independent media. Police have also searched journalists offices and their homes, seizing computer equipment and other personal information. Authorities have accused the group of unlawfully obtaining information from the state-run news agency BelTA. Deutsche Welle journalist Paulyuk Bykowski, and editor-in-chief of BelaPAN news website Irina Levshina were released on August 10. RFE/RL Belarus Service Director Alexander Lukashuk explains.
Kellyanne and Omarosa, in less contentious times. Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Omarosa Manigault Newman has changed her story on whether shes heard a recording in which President Trump uses the N-word, but one does not need a possibly nonexistent tape to demonstrate that the administration does not have the greatest record on race.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway provided yet another example on Sunday while discussing Manigault Newmans forthcoming tell-all book on ABCs This Week. Jonathan Karl asked her to name the most prominent, African-American high-level adviser on the West Wing staff, now that the former Apprentice star has departed.

First Conway went with Ben Carson, but Karl noted that while Trump may occasionally work with his secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the White House, hes not part of the West Wing staff. Pressed for an answer, Conway named JaRon who has been very involved with Jared Kushner and President Trump on prison reform.

"Omarosa was the most prominent, high-level African-American serving in the West Wing on Pres. Trump's staff. Who now is that person?" @jonkarl asks Kellyanne Conway.



Here's how Conway responded https://t.co/P6iz1j1VA4 #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/wVnz5WZ97I  This Week (@ThisWeekABC) August 12, 2018

Later on the program former White House aide Marc Short revealed that JaRon has a last name: Smith. While he may be doing important work, theres a reason most people havent heard of him.

JaRon Smith is a mid-level aide in the EEOB. https://t.co/nN5w7HX8wx  Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) August 12, 2018

Smith works in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the West Wing, and its unlikely that hes had much interaction with the president. As ThinkProgress explains, the highest rank among White House aides is assistant to the president. Thats the position held by Conway, Chief of Staff John Kelly, National Security Adviser John Bolton, and formerly, Manigault Newman. The rank below that is deputy assistant to the president, a position held by more than two dozen White House officials. Below deputy assistant is special assistant to the president, which is where youll find Smith and about 80 other people on the payroll, such as the presidents social secretary, the associate director of the personnel office, and the executive assistant to the chief of staff.

Conway brushed off the implications of Karls question, saying diversity within Trumps White House shouldnt matter because the president is doing great things for all Americans.

There are plenty of people  if youre going by that and not by the actions of the president, which you probably should, then you should look at the fact that we have a number of different minorities, she said. And the fact is that this president is doing well for all Americans.

It is, of course, true that there are a number of different minorities working in the Trump administration, but the numbers arent all that impressive. The New York Times found that Trumps Cabinet is the whitest and most male since the Reagan administration. There has been no black senior adviser in a public-facing White House role since Manigault Newmans departure.

There is no comparison. Black diversity in the White House is almost oxymoronic at this point, former Republican National Committee Michael Steele, who was the first African-American to serve in that role, told the Guardian.

Its not for a lack of names or people who qualify  This continued pretense that its so hard to find [people of color] to do the job is just ridiculous at this point.
It takes more than vague legal threats to stop Omarosa. Photo: NBC NewsWire/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

As rumors swirled about the White House gossip contained within Michael Wolffs Fire and Fury, President Trumps legal team tried to block the books release by threatening to sue the publisher. This foray into book banning only managed to drum up more interest in the tome, and move up its release by a few days.

Nine months later, the administration is facing the release of another book full of wild allegations about life in the Trump White House. But rather than trying to prevent Omarosa Manigault Newmans Unhinged from hitting bookshelves on Tuesday, Trump allies are making vague claims about how the former director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison might have broken the law by secretly recording conversations in the White House. They may be able to convince more Americans that the former Apprentice villain has a lack of character and integrity, as White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Sunday. But it seems unlikely that she violated any laws, and pressing the point raises new questions about security in Trumps White House.

Sunday on Meet the Press, Manigault Newman released a tape publicly for the first time, playing a recording of White House chief of staff John Kelly firing her. Since the conversation took place in the Situation Room, many conservatives declared it was not just illegal, but a threat to national security.

Secretly recording conversations in the Situation Room isn't just wildly inappropriate, it's a threat to our national security. If she broke federal law, she should be prosecuted.  Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) August 12, 2018

Omarosa recording a conversation in the Situation Room would not only mean she broke the law, but that she deserved to be fired.  Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) August 12, 2018

Gonna be amazing when the first actual Trump White House official to go to jail is Omarosa  Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 12, 2018

White House officials picked up on this idea, issuing a vague legal warning on Sunday evening. ABC News reported:

Omarosa Manigault Newmans former White House colleagues are looking into legal options to stop her from releasing more tapes and to punish her for secretly recording her conversation with Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly, White House officials tell ABC News.

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer told ABC News that Manigault Newman had top secret security clearance at a minimum, which would have involved agreeing to security protocols, so she might have violated federal law.

Its an unbelievable violation of protocol and the law, Spicer said. You can lose your security clearance for bringing your device into SCIF  to bring it in is a violation but to willfully record it  youre entering a whole other realm.

But of course, the conversation was about Manigault Newman losing her job entirely. And NBC News reported in February that internal White House documents showed she had no clearance at all.

Spicer didnt elaborate on this new realm of legal consequences. Washington, D.C., has one-party consent on recordings, so merely flicking on her recorder without telling Kelly isnt illegal. (As Law & Crime notes, she could be in trouble if she secretly recorded conversations at Mar-a-Lago, as Florida has two-party consent.) Legal experts and former national security officials said that while the security implications are concerning, the recording probably isnt illegal.

Ned Price, who was a National Security Council spokesman for the Obama administration, told the Washington Post that the Situation Room is the inner sanctum within an already-secure facility where the most sensitive of the most sensitive information is discussed. He added, Its where negotiations with Iran were hashed out. Its where contingency plans for nuclear launches have been developed. The fact that she was recording a conversation in there really raises alarm bells in the minds of people who have worked in that room.

But while cell phones and recording devices are barred from the room, Price said that in his experience there was no screening process. Its a system based on honor and integrity, and theres a sign outside that says, Place your phones here,  he said.

National security lawyer Bradley Moss said that as long as classified information wasnt discussed, merely recording a conversation in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility isnt a crime.

Was any law broken by Omarosa's apparent recording inside Situation Room? @BradMossEsq: "In and of itself, there is no criminal provision implicated. If there isn't national defense information or classified involved, merely recording...in a SCIF is merely a security violation"  Tim Mak (@timkmak) August 12, 2018

That would be the fastest Supreme Court smack down against a President.



Maybe ever. https://t.co/BCwZDYP7zp  Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) August 13, 2018

Tommy Vietor, another former Obama NSC spokesman, agreed, saying that despite the Situation Rooms history and mystique, its just a bunch of conference rooms.

I can't get that worked up about Omarosa taping Gen Kelly in the Situation Room. Yes, it's against the rules. Yes, it's a SCIF. But ultimately the sitroom is just a bunch of conference rooms. He didn't read the PDB aloud and then fire her it was an unclassified discussion.  Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) August 12, 2018

Theres two distinct issues here in my mind. One is a party thats lost its collective mind and wants to imprison opponents. The other is the rules in a SCIF. No one frisks you on the way into the sit room. Its sloppy, against the rules and bad opsec but its on her.  Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) August 12, 2018

After initially suggesting that Manigault Newman might have broken the law, Lawfare executive editor Susan Hennessey said thats probably not the case since didnt have security clearance.

I actually didn't realize Omarosa didn't hold any kind of security clearance. That makes it hard to understand why they were in Situation Room but also means it is far less than "likely" that she violated federal law as opposed to just breaking dozens of rules and regulations.  Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) August 12, 2018

TPMs Josh Marshall also questioned why Kelly opted to fire Manigault Newman in the Situation Room, since its not just a place to have a private chat, but a large conference room complex specifically designed for handling national security briefings, remote conferences and crisis management.

Manigault Newman asked the same question, wondering on Meet the Press, Why not have the meeting in the chief of staffs office? Why put me in the Situation Room and lock the door? She suggested the location was part of an effort by Kelly to intimidate her, but Politico reported that he chose the location precisely to prevent her from recording their conversation:

Going into the conversation, Kelly had anticipated a fight, according to two senior administration officials. And rumors had also begun to spread through the White House that Manigault Newman was recording conversations, according to a former senior administration official. Those people said thats why Kelly took Manigault Newman into the Situation Room, where officials are asked to surrender their electronic devices, which are put under lock and key, before entering.

Apparently Kelly didnt take sufficient steps to make sure a person being fired for, as he puts it, some pretty serious integrity violations, actually followed the rules. And theres the larger question of why Trump thought it was a good idea to hire a notorious TV villain to work in the White House.

But at this point, it doesnt look like theres much Trump officials can do to stop Manigault Newman from dishing on her time in the administration. ABC News reported that Trump administration sources are afraid of what she might release next  which may be why theyre floating the dubious possibility of legal consequences.

People now understand that she has a lot, a former White House official said. Its stopping people from punching back.

Another former official added, If you pissed off Omarosa, buckle up  its going to be a tough couple of weeks.
" " Jeremy T. Hetzel , Used Under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 License Sanibel Island, Florida, has had a seashell poaching ban in place since 1995. The results have left its beaches full of shells.

As humans, we're intrinsically drawn to the ocean, so it makes sense that we want to take a piece of it home with us. But be warned: Beachside souvenir-hunting can land you in prison if you're not mindful of the law.

Case in point: Early in summer 2018, a Texas woman was fined $500 and sentenced to 15 days in jail by a Florida judge for illegally harvesting 40 queen conch shells on her Key West vacation.

Queen conchs are marine snails who live in gorgeous shells of their own making. Florida allows people to collect the vacant shells, but it's illegal to take one that's still occupied by a live conch. Unfortunately for the aforementioned Texan, the seashells she grabbed had living, breathing mollusks in them.

Floridians have a vested interest in these nautical treasures. On the shell-loaded island of Sanibel (a barrier community near Fort Meyers), beachcombing is a major draw for tourists. And when residents noticed their precious commodities were vanishing, they took action. In the late 20th-century, locals started worrying that out-of-towners were pillaging too many shells. As a conservation measure, Sanibel banned the collection of any shells with their original mollusks living inside, as well as any sand dollars, starfish and sea urchins. The ban took effect in 1995 and has since been extended throughout Sanibel's home county.

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Crime and Clams

If you've noticed seashell depletion on the beaches you visit, just know that it's not just a matter of light-fingered vacationers. Organized poaching has become a serious global concern. Vincent Nijman is an anthropology professor at Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. In a 2015 study he co-authored, Nijman documented the illegal trade of Indonesia's protected shells.

The Indonesian government keeps a list of mollusks that are illegal to trade or collect within the republic's jurisdiction. Chambered nautiluses, Triton's trumpets and some giant clams are among the creatures ostensibly protected by law there.

Yet poaching is rampant. Nijman's paper tells of 20 illegal shipments that were intercepted by the Indonesian authorities between 2008 and 2013. Put together, these busts yielded more than 42,000 shells  valued at $700,000  of protected species.

"It is very important to note that we are not talking about individual tourists collecting a couple of shells on the beach, putting them in their suitcase and bringing them home," Nijman says in an email. "We are talking about [a] large-scale, commercial trade where the shells are collected ... by active fishing (scuba diving, cages, etc.) and where entire sections of the ocean floor are emptied."

He stresses that poachers like to grab occupied shells and then destroy the mollusks within them. "When alive, the shell is in pristine condition," he says. This means it will fetch a higher price because shells "that are washed up on the beach are often damaged."

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Shell-shocked

Mollusks aren't the only animals who've been hurt by the reckless overhunting of seashells. When snails, nautiluses and other sea animals die of natural causes, other creatures like to move into their former shell homes. "The most obvious examples are hermit crabs, which use empty shells as protective armor," says Michal Kowalewski, an ecologist at the University of Florida whom we spoke to via email. "There are in fact many marine habitats where it is hard to find an empty shell ... [because] hermit crabs inhabit almost all of them." Indeed, it appears that shell availability is an "important limiting factor" for the vagabond crustaceans.

And housing is just one service that unused shells offer. "There are many other organisms that bore into shells for shelter or to mine them for calcium carbonate," Kowalewski adds. "Boring sponges are a good example." Certain other animals prefer to latch themselves onto the outsides surfaces, turning them into sturdy anchors. "[A] whole variety of organisms utilize shells that way, including mollusks, arthropods (barnacles), bryozoans, foraminifera, annelid worms and many others." Even birds have a use for shells: Vasa parrots will ingest ground-up seashells as a mineral supplement.

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Bad for Beaches, Bad for the Economy

Llarga Beach is a pretty little slice of the Iberian Peninsula. Located in Salou, Spain, it's a hot vacation destination that's enjoyed increasing popularity. Wanting to know more about how this rise in human activity was affecting the ecosystem, Kowalewski rolled up his sleeves and hit the scene. From July 1978, through July 1981, he and his colleagues put together monthly catalogs of all the seashell material they could find on Llarga Beach. Kowalewski returned decades later for a new round of surveys beginning in 2008 and ending in 2010.

His discoveries were not encouraging. Tourism data revealed an almost threefold increase in visitation between 1980 and 2010. During that same period, the number of seashells on Llarga Beach fell by more than 60 percent. Coincidence? Probably not.

Other beachside communities should be worried about the same kind of decline in seashells  and not just for environmental reasons. Shells tend to break up into particles that are bigger than typical sand grains. That helps beaches fight erosion. Seashell fragments, as Kowalewski puts it, "can form pavements that may make it harder" for winds, waves and water currents to move shoreline sediment around. If we remove too many seashells, it'll become harder for our beaches to resist the forces of erosion.

"To belabor the obvious," Kowalewski says, "shoreline erosion may have substantial consequences for us because coasts are heavily populated and [it] can affect buildings and other infrastructure."

So what's the solution? "In many countries there are excellent laws in place to prevent overharvesting," Nijman notes. "Companies and individuals ... should follow the existing regulations and the authorities should enforce [them]." He adds that prosecutors and judges must take large-scale poaching operations more seriously. "It is an economic crime and should be handled as such."

Meanwhile, it might behoove the rest of us to take more pictures and fewer keepsakes from the beaches we all love.

NOW THAT'S Funny A conch shell is the emblem of the greatest fake revolution in American history. In 1982, the federal government put a border patrol roadblock on U.S. Route 1, which was the only road linking mainland Florida to the Keys. The islands claimed it hurt tourism, and as a tongue-in-cheek protest, they announced they were seceding from the Union. Key West Mayor Dennis Wardlow was named prime minister of the newly minted fake country  which called itself "The Conch Republic." At a public address on April 23, Wardlow declared war on the U.S., surrendered immediately, and requested $1 billion in foreign aid.
" " This angiogram CT scan shows the amazing organ that is the human brain. Callista Images/Cultura/Getty Images

Being human isn't all complex tool use and introspection. We also have to live with the side effects of our evolutionary ascent.

For instance, walking upright allowed us to better use our hands, but it also leads to back pain, knee problems and foot aches. Our large brains, combined with our narrow hips, resulted in a more arduous birthing experience and the necessity of such helpless young.

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Now, an August 2018 study published in The American Journal of Human Genetics suggests that neuropsychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder might be evolutionary byproducts, too. These disorders are heritable and occur in roughly 3 percent of the human population, reports the study. They do not occur in nonhuman species.

According to the Stanford University researchers behind the study, changes in genes controlling brain size, connectivity and function may have made the human mind as we know it today possible, while also opening the door for neural disorders. Of particular note is the CACNA1C gene, which belongs to a family of genes responsible for making calcium channels that support cells in multiple ways. On this gene, highly repeated sequences of DNA displayed abilities to activate gene expression and were tightly linked to genetic markers for bipolar and schizophrenia susceptibility.

As such, the researchers hypothesize that the expanded genetic sequence in the CACNA1C gene may have given us an evolutionary advantage, while also opening the door to human-specific neuropsychiatric diseases. As ever, more work is required, but the results also could aid in the diagnosis and genotype-targeted treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Now That's Interesting Has schizophrenia always existed in human beings? The word "schizophrenia" itself is barely more than a century old, coined in 1909. Yet inventories of Greek and Roman writings on mental disturbances, for instance, turn up nothing. This conundrum has led some writers to wonder if the condition might be a recent phenomenon linked to the spread of civilization. Others, however, point to descriptions in ancient Egyptian, Vedic and Chinese texts that may well describe the disease's symptoms.
" " HaloSat was launched into orbit in May aboard a Cygnus spacecraft and released from the International Space Station over Australia on July 13, 2018. It is charged with studying the halo of hot gas surrounding the Milky Way as part of a mission to search for matter missing from the universe. NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

The HaloSat satellite, which was transported to the International Space Station in May and deployed in orbit in mid-July by astronauts, is only about the size of the box your last pair of sneakers came in, and it weighs just 26 pounds (12 kilograms).

But don't let that fool you. The $3.7 million satellite is designed to perform a big scientific mission  studying X-rays from the gigantic halo of hot gas surrounding the Milky Way galaxy. Those measurements could help explain what happened to a third of the mass from the early universe, which seems today to be missing.

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The diminutive probe also is a prime example of how technological advances and standardization have ushered in a new age of efficiently designed miniature satellites, which can perform more science for a fraction of what such research once might have cost.

Philp Kaaret, HaloSat's principal investigator and a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa, explains in an email that scientists have used measurements of the cosmic microwave background  radiation dating back to 400,000 years after the Big Bang  to calculate the amount of mass that existed back then, in the form of ionized hydrogen and helium. "When the universe was young, the matter was all in the same form, so it was easy to measure," he says.

After that, the universe began coalescing into forms  such as stars, galaxies, planets, and hot and cold intergalactic gases  that exist in the cosmos today, Kaaret says. But when scientists measure what they can see in the universe, they can only account for two-thirds of the mass that would have existed in the young universe, he explains.

Most likely, that missing third of matter is in the form of hot gas, which is either gravitationally bound to galaxies in the form of halos, or else suspended on filaments that stretch between galaxies, Kaaret says.

Until now, it's been difficult for scientists to make measurements to determine which explanation is correct. "We're pretty bad at observing hot gas," he explains. Hot gas is measurable due to the X-rays that it gives off, but that radiation can only be observed from space, and existing orbital X-ray observatories are only designed to take pictures of a relatively small part of the sky, which has made it difficult to study the Milky Way's hot gas halo.

Smaller, Cheaper Modern Satellites

HaloSat is designed to remedy that problem. Despite its tiny size, it contains three X-ray detectors, and is capable of taking in a field of view that's 10 degrees across  roughly, the equivalent of 10 full moons, Klaaret explains. "It's going to look at the entire sky," he says. "We're actually more efficient at surveying large parts of the sky because we have this big field of view, even though we're this tiny telescope."

While HaloSat isn't quite sensitive enough to detect the X-rays from gas in intergalactic filaments, it will be able to provide information about the Milky Way's halo, which then could be extrapolated to calculate the amount of hot gas in galactic halos elsewhere in the cosmos.

HaloSat also is an example of how modern satellites  which can be designed to fit standard size specifications and utilize many of the same components as other probes  are revolutionizing space research. HaloSat, for example, is powered by a solar array that originally was created for other satellites and contains a star-tracking device that uses inexpensive sensors similar to those found in cell phones. Ten years ago, such a device would have cost around $1 million, but now it can be built for a few thousand dollars, Kaaret says.

HaloSat also has provided an opportunity for young scientists. Kaaret, who previously developed a radiation detector for a satellite built by Radio Amateur Satellite Corp. to measure the Earth's Van Allen Belts, enlisted a team of undergraduate and graduate students who helped to design the HaloSat and write its computer code, according to this University of Iowa media release.

Now That's Interesting The KalamSat, a student-designed probe carried into space on a suborbital flight by a NASA research rocket in June 2017, weighed just 64 grams (2.26 ounces), according to Quartz. The probe was designed to measure Earth's acceleration, rotation and magnetosphere.
Strzoks impassioned defense of his texts wasnt enough to save him. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who became a favorite target of President Trump and other Republicans when it was revealed that he had sent anti-Trump text messages in the run-up to the 2016 election, was fired from the agency on Monday.

FBI Deputy Director David L. Bowdich ordered the dismissal, which went against a previous FBI recommendation that Strzok be suspended for 60 days. His willingness to opt for a maximumly severe punishment gives off the appearance that he bowed to political pressure, months after another Trump foil at the FBI, Andrew McCabe, was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions just days before being able to collect his pension.

Strzok headed up the FBIs investigation into Russian electoral interference in 2016, and also led the probe into Hillary Clintons emails in 2016. He was folded into Special Counsel Muellers Russia team before being dismissed after the texts were revealed.

At issue are messages sent between Strzok and Lisa Page, a fellow agent with whom he was having an affair. In one exchange from August 2016, Page messaged Strzok that Trump might actually be elected, and Strzok responded, No. No he wont. Well stop it.

For months, the pairs behavior has been the subject of many (bizarre) Trump tweets, cited as evidence that the supposed witch hunt investigation into Trump was biased from the start. (Those assertions have ignored the fact that a large part of the Republican Establishment held similar views about Trump at the time Strzok sent his texts, or that Strzok also inveighed against Bernie Sanders.)

On Monday, the president rejoiced.

Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

An inspector generals report released in June found no evidence that Strzoks political views influenced his actions, but did conclude that the texts spoke to a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidates electoral prospects.

Last month, Strzok defended himself in hours of fiery testimony before House Republicans. He said that he had been particularly disgusted with Trumps rhetoric against war hero Khizr Khan before sending the well stop it message, and that at no time in any of these texts did those personal beliefs ever enter into the realm of any action I took.

In a statement, Strzoks lawyer Aitan Goelman said that his firing should be deeply troubling to all Americans.
I had the the opportunity to talk to Elad Laor, festival director of the Jerusalem Film Workshop, a six-week program for creative filmmakers aged 19-27, seeking an opportunity to gain professional skills and tell their own special story of Jerusalem.

Supported by Onward Israel, the Jerusalem Film Workshop offers participants comprehensive knowledge of film production and the opportunity to expand their professional network, while living in Jerusalem and traveling round Israel.

Even though I couldnt meet Laor in person, we managed to exchange e-mails, in which he told me quite a bit about his background as a documentary filmmaker, and his role as the director of such an ambitious film workshop.

Tell me a little bit about your background as a filmmaker.

I am director of film projects and a documentary filmmaker. I founded a video therapy organization for at-risk youth, and directed projects connecting international filmmakers with Israeli communities. I have created documentaries in Ethiopia, Costa Rica and Thailand. The latter (Cluster, with Hadar Reichman) has won an international film competition in summer 2017. I am currently developing a screenplay funded by an Israeli film fund.

How did the Jerusalem Film Workshop start?

It started with the vision of Gal Greenspan and Roi Kurland, founders and CEOs of GREEN Productions, in the year 2014. The project aimed to connect international young filmmakers to Israel, through their own passion and dreams of becoming more proficient with film. Founding such an elaborate project out of nothing was a very challenging mission. However, with the leadership of Gal Greenspan, the workshop kept growing and evolving year after year. Now we can proudly say it is a very well established and esteemed program.

Were you called to be a part of it, or were you part of the founding of the Festival?

I am very new to the JFW, I joined the team in April 2018.

Why did you choose to focus on documentary filmmaking?

There is nothing like meeting a place through a documentary lens. Documentary film, rather than the narrative genre, makes you open your eyes to the actual people who live in the place youre working on. It makes you ask questions about the true nature of the culture youre visiting, about your own personal connection to it. Through this unique documentary perspective, the bond you form with the place and the people you choose to portray, is stronger, much more real, and makes the experience bilateral  as the film you leave behind stays as a lifelong gift to the people you put on your film.

What constitutes your day-to-day work for the Festival?

Directing all the aspects of the program.

What are the challenges specific to organising a film workshop in Jerusalem?

Probably the biggest challenge is the fact that there is SO MANY fascinating things to meet in Jerusalem, so many one-of-a-kind stories everywhere you turn. Therefore, this year we have decided to focus on one street only, the diverse Haneviim (Prophets) street, to create one theme and setting for the project.

In general terms, what are criteria for selecting the participants?

We are looking for people who have a true passion for filmmaking, people who are at professional level at their field (directing\producing\cinematography\editing), and with that  people who are team players, and are able to create a fun and prolific working atmosphere with 19 other young and talented filmmakers from all around the world.

Where do you see the Festival in the next five or ten years? How would you like it to change and/or evolve?

I believe the JFW will keep evolving its ways of producing the most engaging final product, along with creating a once in a lifetime experience, both extremely fun and highly developing professionally, for all of its participants. I believe that over the years the workshops reputation will continue to grow, its films will reach wider audiences around the world, and well be able to facilitate even a higher number of participants each year.
Frasers Logistics & Industrial Trust

Price  $1.05

Target  $1.18

Frasers Logistics & Industrial Trusts 3Q18 results came in within our expectations with gross revenue and NPI rising 22.6% and 21.7% respectively. This was driven largely by contribution from acquisitions in Australia, annual fixed rental increment in the groups Australia portfolio as well as incremental NPI from its Europe portfolio acquired in May-18. As a result, DPU improved 3.2% to $0.0541. Overall portfolio metrics remained healthy with high occupancy at 99.3% and only 0.1% and 3.4% of its leases expiring for 4Q18 and FY19, while aggregate leverage stood at 36.3% following the completion of Europe portfolio acquisition. Although there has been an increase in industrial supply in Sydney and Melbourne, demand continues to be strong which can be seen from the 4.6% growth in prime grade net face rents for Sydney in 2Q18. For Melbourne, prime grade net face rents grew 1.1%. Maintain BUY. OCBC Investment (3 Aug)

Hi-P International

Price  $1.15

Target  $1.27

Hi-P Internationals (HIP) 2Q18 net profit fell 19% despite a surprising 8% increase in sales on higher volumes. The sales growth was mainly achieved through higher volumes for metal components which yield a lower margin than plastic counterparts. As HIP prefers sacrificing pricing in order to secure sufficient volume to cover fixed costs, this made the group a price taker susceptible to steep price pressure from its customers. While 3Q18 product ramp-up appears intact, the outlook for 4Q18 would be dependable on the reception of HIPs key wireless customers products which present many uncertainties. The new Suzhou plant is on track for completion in 4Q18 and management has indicated interest in acquiring a European-based automotive precision components company. Going forward, possibly volume disruption caused by the indirect effects of the trade war could lead to underperformance to our current expectations. Maintain HOLD. Maybank Kim Eng (3 Aug)

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Singapore Technologies Engineering

Price  $3.36

Target  $4.10

Singapore Technologies Engineering (STE) has scaled down its exposure to commercial O&M shipbuilding sector. While we still expect the shipbuilding segment to continue to see sequential revenue decline, y-o-y losses are likely to narrow due to the low-base effect. Meanwhile, the Singapore Navys 6 missile corvettes will be retired by 2025 to be replaced by new multi role combat vessel (MRCV). ST Marine is likely to be a major supplier given that five of the former were built by STE. Electronics division will be a key earnings driver as STE has guided earlier that smart city related revenue was expected to more than double to $2b in 5 years. Furthermore, STE has also affirmed that the imposition of tariffs on steel is unlikely to impact existing contracts for the marine sector. At 1.61x P/S below 10-year average P/S of 1.64x and at -1SD to long term mean P/E, STE is trading below historical valuations. Maintain BUY. UOB-Kay Hian (3 Aug)

China Aviation Oil

Price  $1.50

Target  $2.03

China Aviation Oil (CAO) surprised with a 2Q18 gross profit of US$16.4m propped up by better performance of other oil products division. 2Q18 other oil product volumes rose to 5.4m tonnes driven by higher trading volumes of crude oil. However, this was offset by sequentially lower associate earnings on softer Shanghai Pudong International Airport Aviation Fuel Supply (SPIA) contributions. 2Q18 SPIA earnings fell to US$15.7m impacted by foreign exchange losses. Nonetheless, refuelling volumes have increased implying that operationally all is well. We see CAO as a proxy for Chinas growing outbound travel and like its healthy balance sheet, with higher product volumes and associate earnings as potential catalysts. Maintain ADD. CIMB Research (1 Aug)
Golden Mile Complex  the sequestered haven for authentic Thai food here  will undergo an en bloc sale. The Straits Times reported that over 80 percent of the owners of units in the iconic building have signed a collective sale agreement, and with that required quota met, demolition is due to make way for whatever the lands new owners want to develop.

Formerly known as the Woh Hup Complex, construction was completed in 1973 at the steep cost of SGD18 million. As part of the governments urban renewal scheme in the 60s, the 16-story complex was envisioned as a megastructure, being one of the first buildings in the country to integrate shops, offices, and residences together under one roof.

The stepped terraced design was attractive  residential units in the brutalist building were in high demand thanks to the gorgeous sea view of the Kallang Basin and clever planning that facilitated natural lighting and ventilation.

Vertical slum

Though the complex was internationally recognized as an exemplary example of a megastructure, it faded away into a shadow of its former glory. Fires, violence and poor maintenance soured the image of Golden Mile  so much so that Nominated Member of Parliament Ivan Png called it a national disgrace and a vertical slum in 2006.

The building also attracted a sleazy reputation with the opening of numerous discos, while the toilets became known as one of the filthiest in the country. The New Paper reported in 2010 of a man who was arrested for his involvement in a glory hole sex act on the second floor of the complex, an activity that apparently has been going on for six years in the building.

As a residential area popular with Thais living in here, it became an ethnic enclave with the opening of shops that catered for all their needs. Today, it remains to be one of the best spots to get some proper Thai food, and one of the remaining specks of old-city grittiness in squeaky clean Singapore.

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The combination of Golden Mile Complexs ill-repute, rundown appearance and the fact that its sitting on prime real estate off Beach Road prompted a few attempts for building owners to put the whole place up for sale. All have failed  until earlier this month, that is. With its days now numbered, now would be a good time to explore the place before its gone for good.

The post From acclaim to sleaze to sale: iconic Golden Mile Complex to go en bloc appeared first on Coconuts.
When Wang Jinfeng looks at her son, rendered silent and handicapped by epileptic seizures, her anguish is palpable.

He is eight years old and doesnt speak, she said. He needs to lie down at home. When he goes out he is in a wheelchair. He needs constant care.

The boy, Wang Haicheng, was just three days old in May 2010 when he suddenly fell unconscious. Upon awakening four days later, he began having frequent epileptic seizures.

Wang has speculated that her sons attacks were connected to the hepatitis B and BCG vaccinations he had received after his birth under Chinas national immunisation programme .

He was fine during [my] pregnancy test and after [his] birth, but he wouldnt eat after the BCG jab, she recalled in an interview. His body then turned blue and [he] fell into unconsciousness.

When Wang pursued compensation from the health authorities for vaccination-related injuries to her son, she was informed in an official notice in January 2011 that the close timing of the vaccination and the onset of the epileptic symptoms were coincidental, resulting in her requests rejection.

She was stunned. But she was not alone.

Dozens of families in China  stung by the categorisation of ailments as coincidental  have been seeking compensation for harm done to their children after a series of disputes involving vaccines.

They object to the compensation systems strictness and ambiguous rules.

Vaccine maker found to have forged production data for over four years

Their ire has been fuelled by a policy that compensates the families of vaccine-related injury victims only when authorities deem the vaccine had been produced up to standard, stored properly and administered correctly and the victim was not sickened by an illness caused by a vaccination risk.

The applicant then must file a petition and provide a medical history for the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or a local medical committee to decide whether the petition is acceptable.

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The unfriendliness of such a system shines light on vaccine injuries in China and whether Beijings strict compensation programme is failing the victims and their families who face years of care-related costs.

Many refuse to give up the fight.

On a scorching summer morning in July, dozens of families advocating for children like Wang Haicheng massed at the entrance of National Health Commission in Beijing and urged the government to shoulder more responsibility for vaccine injuries.

Carrying banners and chanting slogans, the protesters demanded that Beijing create legislation to allow victims and their families to be compensated or supported for the consequences of joining Chinas national immunisation plan.

It was the latest demonstration at the entrance to the national health authority by the exasperated families, who also have launched online appeals for help in recent years.



India bans imports from Chinese vaccine scandal firm

Wang said her family bears a huge financial burden because of years of visiting hospitals with her son in her hometown of Yinchuan, Ningxia and cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

She has faced her money woes alone since, she said, the near insurmountable challenges of controlling the boys epilepsy drove away her husband, leaving her to sell vegetables and sundry items near hospitals to pay for the boys care.

She has been unable to get the boy into a school that can deal with his issues because of the prohibitive cost, she said.

I feel he understands what is going on, Wang said of her son. He sometimes smiles at me and cuddles me to sleep.

Seeing damaged children at hospitals she has visited across the country over the years has strengthened her suspicions that a problem with the hepatitis vaccine caused her sons ailment, she said.

But getting help from Beijing remains frustrating. In 2005, China established its strict no-fault compensation system for vaccine injury victims.

While the policy, in theory, allowed parties to collect compensation for a lasting injury, loss of body function or death tied to immunisation, only a local disease control and prevention authority and medical committee could determine whether the injury was in fact vaccination-related.

How Chinas protectionist vaccine policy has backfired on Beijing

Although authorities consider numerous factors in evaluating a disease, far more recipients have been found to be afflicted with a coincidental [illness] than a serious vaccine injury, according to Liu Ye, a lawyer specialising in medical lawsuits who is a former immunologist.

While minor reactions such as swelling around the injection site and fever tend to be recognised as adverse events following immunisation, or AEFI, damages to the brain or neurological system [tend to be regarded] as coincidental, according to Liu.

Chinese authorities have been ruling out vaccines as a cause of various individual health issues for years.

For instance, none of 17 baby deaths reported in various provinces after the infants had received a hepatitis B vaccine produced by a Shenzhen company in November and December 2013 was determined to be vaccine-related.

The CDC also said in 2014 that just 18, or 9.6 per cent, of 188 baby deaths over 13 years from 2000 to 2013 were related to the vaccine.

China promises tough penalties in vaccine scandal

In Shandong province, just three, or 5.8 per cent, of 52 baby deaths that followed vaccinations from 2011 to 2016 were determined to be AEFI, while 43 were deemed coincidental; nine were labelled inconclusive.

I think a serious medical event following an immunisation should be considered as related to the vaccination unless it is proved the person is suffering from a disease, Liu said. You mustnt deduce backwards that the recipient must be in the incubation period of a serious disease.

Since the doctors who are assigned to review whether an AEFI is a vaccine injury are from the medical system, they might reach a conclusion that is contrary to what an independent doctor will give from logic and common sense, he said.

Tao Lina, an immunisation expert with Shanghai CDC, said reviewing experts presume the claimed injury is not vaccine-related unless a causal relationship can be established.

No gold standard exists against which evaluations of vaccine injuries can be compared, he said, adding that the findings also are influenced by the reviewers experience.

People have been underestimating the safety of vaccines, Tao said. A conclusion that does not rule out the role of vaccine in damages following immunisation is dangerous and irresponsible.

Adverse publicity around vaccines, however, creates the wrong perception that a vaccine is not safe and might lead the public not to vaccinate, damaging public health as a result, he said.

Fake data  the disease afflicting Chinas vaccine system

Jia Xiaolong, an associate professor with Lanzhou Polytechnic Universitys law school, wants the government to set up a more lenient financial help system for parents of vaccine injury victims.

The move would be justified on humanitarian grounds and would boost public confidence in Chinas immunisation programme, the professor said.

Although other countries also require families of vaccine injury victims to prove that a causal relationship existed between a vaccination and an ailment to receive compensation, their rules usually are less strict than Chinas.

In the US, a no-fault national vaccine injury compensation programme established in 1988 allows any individual to file a petition if a vaccine listed on an official table is believed to have caused an affliction.

If symptoms appear within a specific period and match a given description, it is presumed the vaccine caused the injury or condition.

Since the programmes launch, it has paid claimants US$3.9 billion, compensating 68 per cent of 5,492 petitioners from 2006 to 2016. Around 80 per cent of its awards have come from settlements negotiated by the parties.

In Britain, those who have suffered more than 60 per cent impairment after a vaccine can apply for lump-sum support. Britain awarded 73 million pounds (US$94.5 million) to 931, or 15.5 per cent of claimants, out of some 6,000 claims from 1979 to 2014.

In Japan, a preventative vaccination law, amended in 1976, provides no-fault compensation in cases where a vaccination resulted in an injury or death.

Policies needed to ensure orderly vaccinations

An award can include coverage of medical and funeral expenses, a disability pension, an annuity for people caring for a disabled individual and a death benefit. No statistics were available for the Japanese law.

China has released no vaccine-related national compensation figures. However, compensation levels differ between areas, given contrasting local economic standards.

For instance, affluent cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have compensation levels that are hundreds of thousands of yuan higher than those in less developed areas such as Guangxi.

A paper published in the Chinese Journal of Vaccines and Immunisation by a researcher from Henan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention last year said the province paid out 14.75 million yuan from 2011 through 2016 to 276 vaccine recipients  about 18 per cent of the group , averaging 53,400 yuan each. During the period, 38,261 AEFI were reported and 1,537 recognised as genuine by Henan CDC.

The highest compensation amount was paid to recipients of the oral polio vaccine, averaging 202,000 yuan.

In far more developed Guangdong province, vaccine recipients were awarded 74,500 yuan in 2012 and 2013.

The compensation level is too low to be of any real use for us, said Yu Tongan, whose son was diagnosed with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis after being inoculated with meningitis vaccine in school in 2005.

Before he was vaccinated, the boy won a Jiangmen city essay competition at age 12. Today, he is unable to write his own name at 25. He neither attends school nor works, and lives off the financial support his father provides.

Health care booking agents cash in on Chinas vaccine scandal

Guangdong CDC concluded his sons illness was coincidental and unrelated to the vaccine. Yu fought the case in court and was awarded 120,000 yuan on the principle of being fair. Neither party was declared responsible for the injury.

The compensation barely covered the 450,000 yuan that Yu, 53, spent on the boys medical treatment.

He wants legislation created to ensure that children with vaccine-related injuries will receive proper care for the rest of their lives.

I can take care of my child for all my life, but what will happen to him after I die? Yu said.

This article How Beijings strict compensation system fails the families of Chinas vaccine injury victims first appeared on South China Morning Post

For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivers a speech during a ceremony marking the death anniversary of the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in Tehran, Iran, June 4, 2017. TIMA via REUTERS

ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday ruled out the possibility of any military confrontation with the United States, Iranian state TV reported.

"Recently, American officials have been talking blatantly about Iran ... they are talking about war and negotiations ... They are exaggerating about possibility of a war with Iran. There will be no war ... We have never started a war and they will not confront Iran militarily," Iran's top authority said in a televised speech.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Catherine Evans)
Maria Tam denies Beijing intervened in Hong Kong separatists FCC speech, saying there is zero tolerance for Hong Kong independence

Beijing did not intervene in the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Clubs plan to host a talk by separatist party leader Andy Chan Ho-tin, pro-establishment camp heavyweight Maria Tam Wai-chu said on Sunday.

Tam, now the vice-chairwoman of the Basic Law Committee, brushed aside accusations that Beijing was undermining freedom of speech in the city, and also said she supported the decision by Leung Ka-wing, the head of RTHK, the citys public broadcaster, not to live stream Chans speech on Tuesday.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not intervene with anything, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs commented, Tam said.

FCC vice-president Victor Mallet had earlier said the ministrys office in Hong Kong had contacted the club regarding Chans talk.

In a statement on August 3, Beijings Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it resolutely opposes any external forces providing a platform for the independence forces to spread their absurd ideas.

Tam said: I totally support [the ministry], because there is zero tolerance for Hong Kong independence.

The FCC does not need to provide a platform to advocate for independence to prove the city has freedom of speech.

Citizens hoping to voice criticism on a particular matter or person can simply call radio programmes, she said.

Tam, a former deputy of the National Peoples Congress, backed the decision by Leung, the director of broadcasting at RTHK, and said streaming Chans monologue may give the impression the broadcaster sympathised with his pro-independence ideals.

The FCC has said it will go ahead with Chans talk, titled Hong Kong Nationalism: A Politically Incorrect Guide to Hong Kong under Chinese Rule.

The event, which will include a question-and-answer session, will be live streamed on Facebook.

Chans group, the Hong Kong National Party, has been embroiled in a series of debates after the police recommended banning it under the Societies Ordinance last month.

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It would be the first time a political group was banned since Hong Kongs return from British to Chinese rule in 1997.

Chans party has been asked to submit a written reply to Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu by September 4 to argue against the ban.

This article Maria Tam denies Beijing intervened in Hong Kong separatists FCC speech, saying there is zero tolerance for Hong Kong independence first appeared on South China Morning Post

For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018.
Youre likable enough, Don. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

With all the reporting on his meeting with Kremlin-connected Russians at Trump Tower, Donald Trump Jr. has taken a beating in the press, but on Sunday night he finally drew some Ivanka-esque coverage from the mainstream press. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that while hes possibly facing trouble from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the good news is that Trump Jr. has become a popular speaker and fundraiser on the campaign trail.

In the opening anecdote, his dad even offers him some praise:

President Trump was watching Fox News Channel with aides in his private dining room off the Oval Office recently when Donald Trump Jr. flashed across the giant flat screen.

Dons gotten really good, Trump said, according to someone who was present. My people love him.

The report goes on to explain why this is so significant. Trump Jr. has had a complicated relationship with his father, and the Trump name, throughout his life. Actually, it dates back to before he was born. In her 2017 memoir, his mother, Ivana Trump, said that when she suggested naming the boy after his father, the future president said, You cant do that! What if hes a loser?

The president has long harbored these doubts about whether his son can live up to his expectations, according to the Post, and sources say the father and son still speak infrequently. But Trump did give the paper a statement about his boy.

Don has proven to be a very good public speaker and was a very likable presence on the campaign trail, Trump said in the statement to The Post. People like when he represents me in front of groups of people. I always get a favorable response . . . Don likes and enjoys politics, but he likes seeing great results for the American people even better, and that is why he is involved. He truly believes that I am making America great again and loves being a part of it.

Note that there was a whole sentence all about Don Jr. before his dad started talking about himself. Their relationship is really progressing!
* Samsung says nothing decided about its Tianjin operation

* Samsung has less than 1 pct of China market

* Recent phone factory investments have gone to India, Vietnam (Adds details on Samsung China market share, recent investments)

By Ju-min Park

SEOUL, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is considering suspending operations at one of its mobile phone manufacturing plants in China due to slumping sales and rising labour costs, the Electronic Times reported on Monday.

Samsung might stop producing mobile phones this year at Tianjin Samsung Telecom Technology, located in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, the South Korean newspaper said, describing the move under consideration as a potential withdrawal.

The world's biggest smartphone maker said on Monday that nothing had been decided on the fate of its Tianjin operation.

"The overall smartphone market is having difficulties due to slowing growth. Samsung Electronics' Tianjin telecom enterprise aims to focus on activities that increase competitiveness and efficiency," it said in a statement to Reuters.

Just five years ago, Samsung had 20 percent of the Chinese market only to see that fall to less than 1 percent this year, outgunned by Huawei, Xiaomi and other Chinese brands, particularly on pricing.

The South Korean tech giant is also under pressure to jump-start faltering smartphone sales after posting its slowest quarterly profit growth in more than a year, as rivals nip at its heels with cheaper, feature-packed models.

In addition to the Tianjin plant, Samsung also another Chinese phone factory in Huizhou.

In recent years, Samsung has focused its major mobile phone investments on production facilities in Vietnam and India. It opened the world's biggest smartphone factory outside New Delhi last month, which is slated to become an export hub.

According to the Electronic Times, its Tianjin plant in China produces 36 million mobile phones a year and its Huizhou plant makes 72 million units a year, while the two factories in Vietnam combined make 240 million units a year. (Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
Although vaccines are considered safe and effective and serious side effects are rare, there have been some major scandals across the world that have led to tougher regulation of vaccines.

CHINA

China, which has seen repeated vaccine scandals over the years, did not officially report any victims of faulty vaccines. In 2013 following the deaths of 17 babies who had been injected with a hepatitis B vaccine, the manufacturer, Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products, was ordered to halt production. The conclusion was then reached that none of the deaths was related to the vaccine.

The mysterious rise and fall of Chinas scandal-hit vaccine queen

Public confidence in vaccines plummeted in March 2016 after a scandal revealed vaccines worth 570 million yuan (US$83.4 million) had been improperly stored and sold to 24 provinces since 2011.

There was no record of there being any victims of that scandal and a later investigation found that in terms of effectiveness these vaccines were up to standard.

The State Council required that all those vaccines which citizens have to pay for, must be subject to the same regulations as the state-mandated free vaccines, and must be bought directly from an approved provincial-level platform. This would result in less corruption at the grass-roots level and a drop in vaccine prices.

India bans imports from firm at centre of Chinese vaccine scandal

The authority said that 357 government employees involved in the scandal had been punished, but their names and the positions they held were never made public.

Last month, in the worst vaccine scare, around 500,000 children in Chongqing, Hebei and Shandong provinces were found to have been immunised with substandard diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus vaccines, eight months after drug regulators announced the batch number of the affected vaccines produced by Wuhan Institute of Biological Products and Changchun Changsheng Biologicals.

The two were being investigated and the latter was shut down after the regulators found it had forged production data and violated manufacturing protocol.

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AUSTRALIA

In 1928, 21 children in Australia were immunised with diphtheria toxin-antitoxin that was later found to be contaminated with Staphylcoccus aureus. Twelve children died within 48 hours.

Known as the Bundaberg Disaster, an investigation concluded that contamination with Staphylococcus bacteria was due to the way the mixture was stored in a dark multi-dose bottle. There was no labelling forbidding reuse and so it was reused over 10 days during hot weather.

Chinese President Xi Jinping orders crackdown over appalling vaccine scandal



The tragedy brought changes in immunisation protocols in Australia and around the world, which had an impact on bottling, capping, labelling and packing vaccines and how they were administered. Modern vaccines are stored in sterile single dose transparent vials.

UNITED STATES

In 1955 more than 200,000 children in the United States received a polio vaccine where the process of inactivating the live virus had been defective. The vaccine, produced by the California-based family firm Cutter Laboratories, caused 40,000 cases of polio. Ten children died and 200 were left with varying degrees of paralysis.

The Cutter Incident led to the formation of the Division of Biologics Standards to oversee vaccine safety and regulation in the country. It later became part of the Food and Drug Administration and is now called the Centre for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

Chinese vaccine maker found to have forged production data for over four years

The scandal opened the litigation floodgates, and with pharmaceutical companies concerned about facing multiple lawsuits, many opted not to produce vaccines, leading to concerns of a shortage. Because of this the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Programme was set up. Citizens can seek compensation through this programme instead of using the courts. The aim was to ensure pharmaceutical firms could keep making vaccines.

JAPAN

Before disposable syringes, it was a common practice in Japan to share needles during group immunisation programmes for children to save on cost and there was no adherence to strict sterilisation codes of conduct. Five patients filed a damages lawsuit with the Sapporo District Court in 1989 after they claimed they had been infected with blood-transmitted diseases such as hepatitis B when being immunised. The protracted lawsuit which spread to include plaintiffs from all over Japan ended in 2015 when the government reached a settlement of 3.2 trillion yen (US$32 billion) settlement.

This article Vaccine scandal like one in China have eventually led to reforms and safer drugs first appeared on South China Morning Post

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Long before he was caught in the political maelstrom of the moment, Andy Chan Ho-tin spent his Saturdays trying to outdo the singing aunties of Mong Kok.

But the young graduate was jostling with the boisterous buskers in the areas famous pedestrian zone to the beat of his own ideological drum.

If the aunties were off-key in their melodies, as was often the case, Chan was low-key in his methods.

Some time between 2015 and 2016, Chan and his clutch of 10 friends distributed leaflets to the crowds each Saturday evening and took turns speaking into their portable microphones, their voices drowned out by the din. But they were undeterred.

Those were the heady days after Occupy, the 79-day street demonstration to call for political reform. The movement had ended with no closure and many student participants, spirits high, were determined to carry the fight forward. Chan was among them.

Chans group was named Common Sense, taking inspiration from the title of a 50-page pamphlet penned by political theorist Thomas Paine in 1776 which had paved the way for the independence of America. Made up mostly of young graduates, the group peddled their views on political development each weekend in Mong Kok. Among their ideas was the stunningly dangerous possibility of Hong Kong breaking away from China. The idea of secession goes against the very first article of the citys mini-constitution, the Basic Law, which states Hong Kong is an inalienable part of China.

But no one seemed to be buying the idea. After a year of not making much progress and even fewer converts, Chan decided to change his strategy.

The impact was way too small, the Polytechnic University graduate, now 27, recalled of the sultry Saturday evenings spent fighting for the attention of indifferent shoppers.

What would be more influential than forming our own party and running for elections? Someone had to break this taboo, I felt, Chan told the Post in a recent interview.

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The timing could not have been better. The 2016 Legislative Council election was just months away.

Chan and his friends knew they were risking the wrath of the central government when they announced the formation of the Hong Kong National Party (HKNP). They had a suspicion they might be barred from contesting  they just did not know how  and as it turned out, they were right. A last-minute declaration form for candidates whipped out by the government effectively blocked them from even getting to the starting block.

From that brief foray into the limelight, Chan retreated into obscurity over the ensuing months as others more well known were disqualified from Legco or from even contesting.

But last month Chan and the HKNP found themselves thrust into the spotlight again. Police decided to invoke a clause in the Societies Ordinance  a law passed by the British colonialists to target pro-China political parties in the past, but more often used to ban triads  to propose dissolving the party in the name of national security. Their decision was based on two years of monitoring the party, never mind the inconvenient fact the HKNP has never been legally registered as a society.

Police claimed what the HKNP did  such as propaganda through media channels, school infiltration, street booths, alongside Chans quashed bid to run in the Legco polls and his declarations on the use of violence  was tantamount to an imminent threat to national security and public safety.

The party has until September 4 to show cause why it should not be banned.

In two years, Chan has navigated the citys politics into uncharted waters, not once but twice  forming a party pledging to take up the cudgels against the Communist Party of China to separate Hong Kong from the motherland, and now being possibly the leader of a banned political party. Just who is he, anyway? And why are the authorities so alarmed? Why act now?

Andy Chan, rebel with a cause larger than Occupy

Before his Mong Kok days, Chan was one of the thousands of students who took to the streets during Occupy. An emotional low point for him  and many others  was seeing police use tear gas on fellow Hongkongers. Chan decided there and then that there was no turning back.

Like the others who continued to press on after Occupy ended, Chan said it was during those nights out on the streets that he had the epiphany that the only way for the city he loved to be free to do what it wanted was to secede from China.

I was completely apolitical before. I didnt know anything about universal suffrage when I took part in the movement. I came out only for the feeling that Hongkongers were being bullied by China  it was more about an identity issue, he said.

He recalled the confusion he felt one day in the occupied zone in Admiralty, when several protesters near him suggested they tear off a national flag that was on a truck.

I was puzzled at the time. I saw no reason to do that as we were only there to fight for democracy, Chan recalled. But soon after I realised Hong Kong was denied democracy not because of the local government, but China. That was when I began thinking of cutting our ties.

After Occupy, he made the headlines briefly when he pushed for his universitys student union to pull out from the Hong Kong Federation of Students  one of the movements key leaders  because he felt it was feckless. While waiting for the weekends to come around so he could mobilise in Mong Kok, Chan also hosted a current affairs programme at the online My Radio, an outfit with close ties to localist group Civic Passion.

In March 2016, Chan called a press conference at a Tuen Mun factory office of about 1,000 sq ft  an impressive size given he was the only one present  to announce the setting up of the HKNP. He pledged to use whatever effective means to achieve their cause.

I realised Hong Kong was denied democracy not because of the local government, but China. That was when I began thinking of cutting our ties

Andy Chan

Staging marches or shouting slogans is obviously useless now. Regarding using violence, we would support it if it is effective to make us heard, Chan declared then.

Effective means also meant beating up someone to vent his anger at lawmakers, he went on to suggest on a radio show later that week.

When someone asked [the legislature] to approve the funding request concerning hundreds of millions of dollars, it would be great if we could at least punch him, he said. We might not be able to block [the funding request] but at least we could vent the anger by hitting him.

Another unnamed member of the group said on the same radio show they could emulate opposition parties in Kosovo by releasing tear gas inside the chamber.

Since then, only Chan and HKNP spokesman Jason Chow Ho-fai are known to the media. The group claims to have 30 to 50 members but has declined to produce them, citing fears for their safety. Some of them had already become victims of surveillance, Chan claimed in the interview with the Post. Chow could not be reached for an interview. When the Post visited the office unit, which property agents estimated costs about HK$7,000 a month to rent, the door was locked and junk mail was stacked on the grilled gate. Chan said the unit was borrowed from a friend.

From day one, Chan has insisted members fund the partys operations from their own savings. In 2016, he claimed the party had no more than HK$100,000 (US$12,820) in its accounts.

When the party was formed, pro-Beijing media commentators tripped over themselves trying to condemn Chan and company. One sneered that it was a revolution launched by a group of mentally ill patients. Another called them clowns.

After one controversial attempt to hand out fliers outside secondary schools and a public rally that same year, the party remained largely low-profile. Chan went to Taiwan and Japan for exchange tours.

Despite attacks from pro-Beijing media over his Taiwan visits, police have maintained the case against the HKNP remains focused on it posing a threat to national security, rather than its connections with foreign political outfits, which potentially could trigger a ban under the same Societies Ordinance.

Meanwhile, Chan claimed that even as they shifted focus to building overseas connections because of increasing restrictions in Hong Kong, the party had throughout remained active in the city.

Chan emphasised that no money changed hands between the Taiwanese organisations and his party, saying at most the civil groups had subsidised his trip.

Pressed on how he would go about pushing for independence when it seemed a futile cause, Chan said he would still want to foster a sense of identity among Hongkongers and, with time, persuade them that if they cared for democracy then they should seek to resist the Chinese Communist Partys control as it would not tolerate democracy for the city. Asked if he was making it tougher for others with more modest plans to keep the one country, two systems policy firmly in place, he shrugged it off as the price to be paid.

With the exception of pro-Beijing media occasionally hectoring them, Chan had been ignored by just about every other politician in town  until now.

A calculated move?



Pan-democrats and legal scholars have slammed the polices case, arguing strenuously that the move would put Hongkongers freedom of association and expression at risk.

Many are baffled that the authorities have decided on a sledgehammer approach to crush an almost inactive, isolated and barely influential party at a time when any semblance of pro-independence sentiment is on the wane.

One look at the mild-mannered, fresh-faced Chan and the cognitive dissonance that he could pose a security threat is apparent.

Things, however, are not so simple and the political calculations far more intricate.

Of course, Chan provided easy fodder with his talk on violence. Even if empty, security agencies will see it as a red flag to future action.

For some pan-democrats, the proposed ban is a move designed to force them to denounce pro-independence groups unequivocally and draw a firm red line not just on action but, more worryingly, on speech.

Many are therefore finding themselves having to tiptoe around the issue, balancing between speaking up fiercely against the ban but also at once stating up front their anti-independence stance. It is a nuanced position that has just ended up making them look mealy-mouthed, some indicated to the Post.

So, while they have forged a united front to condemn the ban which they argue will erode the citys freedoms, many laced their salvoes with solemn statements about being against the independence movement. Worse than that, the ban could be the Trojan horse to assail other players in the pro-democracy camp, they warned.

The authorities are trying to portray a picture that the notion of Hong Kong independence has won a lot of support here as an excuse to further crack down on the pro-democracy bloc, said a lawmaker who spoke on condition of anonymity.

We have to speak up for the party as the government is trying to set a precedent in using the same trick to ban others in future, but at the same time we have to be very careful to avoid being framed.

The conundrum has forced the camp to be cautious. At a protest against the ban held last month, only six lawmakers showed up among the hundreds of others  a small demonstration by most standards.

The lawmaker described the authorities as very cunning by targeting the HKNP. Being neither active nor popular, they know they can act with impunity as there will be little public support for the party.

The question being asked nervously in their circles: who will be next?

Chan said he believed Demosisto, the political group co-founded by Occupy student leader Joshua Wong Chi-fung, could be the next target, just ahead of district council elections due next year.

Demosisto has not called for independence but self-determination for Hong Kong  an agenda which the authorities earlier cited as grounds to ban its member, Agnes Chow Ting, from contesting in elections.

Political watcher Ma Ngok, of Chinese University, said the proposed ban was coming at a time where Hongkongers were getting used to the governments tougher approach to dissent.

He cited a 2013 journal article by Alberto Simpser, in which the Mexico-based political scientist argued that while governments manipulation in elections would trigger public backlash, the legitimacy loss it suffered declined time after time as citizens determination to resist wore thin.

The governments unprecedented legal bid to unseat six pro-democracy lawmakers last year for their improper oath-taking had already left young people frustrated and the Occupy generation out in the cold, Ma said.

The administration probably found the legitimacy loss to be triggered by the proposed ban would not be huge, he said.

In other words, fatigue has set in and resistance will be futile.

But another stark fact about the timing is this  doing nothing was not an option for the Hong Kong government and dithering and delaying any action was also not possible. It had to act because the directive came from the top. In July last year, when he visited the city, President Xi Jinping warned Hongkongers against crossing the red line of undermining Chinese sovereignty even as they disagreed with the central government issues.

Although some Hongkongers might find the HKNP insignificant, Beijing has zero tolerance over any attempts to take advantage of the two systems to harm the one country, said Tam Yiu-chung, the citys sole delegate to the National Peoples Congress Standing Committee, the countrys top legislative body.

Such a bid has to be suppressed, no matter if it has prevailed or not.

And Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has had no choice but to act, he said.

A slippery slope

Scholars said the proposed ban had once again underscored the difficulties of implementing one country, two systems  the guiding principle for Hong Kong until 2047.

While Beijing will not tolerate any separatist attempts, Hongkongers freedoms and rights  enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights  are protected by the citys mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

Observers suggested that the latest move showed the authorities were now willing to resort to what critics have labelled draconian laws which they had resisted from doing in the past.

Two past incidents of such restraint are noteworthy. The first was during the lobbying by the pro-Beijing camp for the Falun Gong to be banned in Hong Kong after the sect was prohibited in mainland China in 2001.

Authorities reportedly studied the possibility of crushing the sect under the Societies Ordinance  which states such a ban could be justified in the name of national security or public safety  but they did not push ahead after finding no evidence of illegal action.

Second, during the 2003 debate over the aborted national security law, the citys officials tried to soothe the public by repeatedly emphasising that speech alone  in the absence of violence or illegal acts  would not be prosecuted. The bill was eventually shelved after half a million Hongkongers took to the streets.

But with the proposed ban on the HKNP, police are asking for preventive measures before any act or evidence of violence.

Johannes Chan Man-mun, former law dean of the University of Hong Kong, argued that given there was no clear definition of national security or territorial integrity under the Societies Ordinance, these concepts should be narrowly defined lest they be abused to be a catch-all to curb all manner of dissent. Therein lay the danger of the slippery slope of citizens freedom of expression being restricted, he warned.

If not properly defined, there was the risk that even speaking for independence of Taiwan, Tibet or even saying the Diaoyu Islands should belong to Japan, could very well fall under the definition in the law, he said.

Chan also warned that the authorities move could put the court in the invidious position of having to deal with what is meant by national security if it is asked to decide such a ban is legitimate. What happened if the court chose to disagree with the ban? Would Beijing then intervene by interpreting the Basic Law, he asked.

Senior Counsel John Reading, the citys former deputy director of public prosecutions, said the case against the HKNP was a bit of a stretch as there was no treason or sedition law in force.

Triads are banned because they are put together for an illegal purpose, [such as] drug trafficking, gambling [and] all sort of things, Reading said.

He cautioned that it might be hard to argue the HKNPs purpose had breached any existing criminal law.

But Grenville Cross, previously the citys director of public prosecutions, said the Societies Ordinance had defined national security in terms of safeguarding the territorial integrity and the independence of China, and thus the concerns of the police over the HKNP could not be dismissed as illusory.

No civilised society, however great its commitment to democratic rights, can be expected to tolerate organisations which directly threaten its national security or the safety of its people, he said, citing Britains effort in 2016 to proscribe National Action, a neo-Nazi group, and the decision of South Koreas constitutional court to ban the United Progressive Party, which was accused of supporting North Korea-style socialist systems and posing a threat to the countrys liberal democracy.

The latter ban, however, sparked criticism in South Korea with Amnesty International arguing security concerns must never be used as an excuse to deny people the right to express different political views.

Cross, however, argued such a limitation was observed by international civil rights guarantees, which recognise freedoms and rights are not absolute.

Maria Tam Wai-chu, vice-chairwoman of a committee advising Beijing on Hong Kongs mini-constitution, also said there was sufficient evidence from their activities that the HKNP was plotting something and therefore the ban was legally justified.

For now, however, another side battle has erupted to put September 4 in the background while all eyes turn to another date  August 14.

That is when Chan is due to give a lunch talk at the citys Foreign Correspondents Club. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has asked the club to cancel the talk, a request it roundly rejected.

Former chief executive Leung Chun-ying then joined the fray, crossing swords with the clubs first vice-president Victor Mallet, who argued that the value of the FCC centred on a system that differed from the mainlands. Press freedom, Mallet said, was endorsed locally and views from people across the political spectrum were permitted.

Leung charged that the clubs move to invite Chan had nothing to do with press freedom, and, upping the ante, he suggested the FCC had its leased premises by the generosity of the government and most private landlords would not welcome tenants who hosted such speakers. Why should the Hong Kong government be any different, he asked, taunting the club.

Incumbent leader Carrie Lam also described the clubs move as regrettable and inappropriate.

Ironically, even as the government maintains drawing the red line on separatists is not about curbing freedom of speech, the sideshow with the FCC is threatening to reduce the issue to just that.

Chan can be expected to protest his stance at the talk, just as he insisted to the Post he had done nothing wrong in crossing the red line.

He declined to reveal his next moves but admitted going underground might be inevitable. Now an employee of an engineering firm, he said he had been stalked for some time and had received several dubious calls the night before the police visited his home last month to inform him of the ban. He believed the callers might have wanted to track his location. His family members, including his mother, sister and her boyfriend, also received calls allegedly from authorities wanting to confirm their residential address.

Shrugging his slight shoulders, the 27-year-old declared that the burden of pushing for the cause of independence was not his alone to bear.

His failure was everyone elses, he suggested. Many people said fighting for independence is not a viable option  but actually fighting for democracy in Hong Kong is equally impossible as the central government would like to exert control on everything, he said.

Additional reporting by Alvin Lum

This article Why does the Hong Kong National Party rile Beijing so much, and just who is Andy Chan Ho-tin? first appeared on South China Morning Post

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China is printing foreign currencies on a massive scale as Beijing seeks to increase its influence on the world economy and geopolitics.

Multiple sources in the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation confirmed to the South China Morning Post last month that money production plants across the country were running at nearly full capacity to meet an unusually high quota set by the government this year.

Most of the demand comes from participants in the Belt and Road Initiative and one source, who asked not to be named due to the confidential nature of the information, said that Chinese yuan bills only made a small proportion of the orders.

The state-owned company, headquartered in Beijings Xicheng district, describes itself as the worlds largest money printer by scale. With more than 18,000 employees, it runs more than 10 strictly guarded facilities for the production of paper notes and coins.

By contrast, its US counterpart, the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing, employs a tenth of the staff at two currency factories; the worlds number two, the British firm De La Rue, had slightly more than 3,100 employees at the end of last year.

In China, the rise of mobile payments in recent years has significantly reduced the use of and demand for banknotes.

From big cities to remote villages, smartphones have become wallets, with most transactions in grocery stores now carried out digitally, leaving many printing plants short of work.

But the resulting lull ended suddenly earlier this year.

The nations largest currency paper mill in Baoding, Hebei province, sprang into action with the sudden arrival of big orders, according to an employee working in the 604 Factory, a subsidiary of the corporation.

Our machines have been running at full steam for months, according to another employee working at the facility.

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Indeed, the sudden rush in orders has left the factory scrambling to keep up.

The process of producing banknotes involves turning fine cotton and linen fibres to pulp, which is then made into high quality money paper with anti-counterfeiting water marks.

But the process requires a lot of steam, supplied by the local generating plant, and the resulting power demands have left the whole city struggling to maintain the accelerated pace of production.

The steam shortage remains a headache. We have filed a complaint to the city government. They are looking for a solution. So far the steam shortage has not had too much of an impact on the output, another employee said on Monday.

Another currency paper mill in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, reported a similar change.

Last year was particularly bad. We had almost nothing to do, an employee said.

We had no choice but to make marriage certificates and driving licences to keep the production line from rusting. This year the workload is full, he said.

Most of the banknotes the mills were producing were not yuan, the employee said.

The processing is different. Currency paper varies from country to another and each client has its own requirements.

The employees all requested not to be named due to the secrecy of their work.

According to Liu Guisheng, president of the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation, China did not print foreign currencies until recently.

But in 2013, Beijing launched the belt and road plan, a global development blueprint involving about 60 countries from Asia, Europe to Africa to stimulate economic growth with large-scale capital investment and infrastructure construction projects.

Two years later, China started printing 100-rupee notes for Nepal, Liu wrote in an article in China Finance, a bi-monthly journal run by Chinas central bank in May.

Since then, the company seized the opportunities brought by the initiative and successfully won contracts for currency production projects in a number of countries, including Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, India, Brazil and Poland, he said.

That could be just the tip of the iceberg. The actual number of countries that plan to outsource currency printing to China could be much bigger, according to one source in the corporation.

Some governments have asked Beijing not to publicise their deals because they worry that such information could compromise national security or trigger unnecessary debates at home, the person said.

Hu Xingdou, a professor of economics at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said that a country must have considerable trust in the Chinese government to allow it to print its banknotes.

The world economic landscape is undergoing some profound changes. As China becomes bigger and more powerful, it will challenge the value system established by the West. Printing money for other countries is an important step, he said.

Currency is a symbol of a countrys sovereignty. This business helps build trust and even monetary alliances.

Beijing has regarded money printing capability as being as crucial as its atomic bomb programme to its national security amid fears its enemies could use fake notes to disrupt the economy.

The international money printing market has been dominated by Western companies for more than a century and some governments outsource printing to several different companies.

De La Rue, for example, has more than 140 countries as clients, according to information on its website.

Other major players include Giesecke & Devrient in Germany, which serves about 60 nations, and Crane Currency, based in the United States and with more than 200 years in the trade.

The main drawback of having money printed outside the country is the security risk.

Seven years ago, during the downfall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, the British government seized nearly US$1.5 billion worth of dinars printed by De La Rue, causing serious cash shortages that increased the pressure on the regime.

De La Rue did not respond to the Posts queries.

Modern money printing facilities are also extremely sophisticated and expensive to operate and use technology beyond the reach of ordinary business to reduce the risk of replication.

Security features like embedded thread, metallic ribbon and colour-shifting ink require considerable licence fees; many countries cannot afford to print all the banknotes they need.

Zhongchao Special Security Technology, a subsidiary of China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation, is now the worlds biggest supplier of security features for banknotes, according to De La Rue.

The British companys most recent annual report said that the Chinese firm now has a third of the global market share, four times that of its own.

Sources in the industry say that one of its major advantages in this area is its ability to provide security features at a relatively low cost, compared with more technologically advanced Western rivals.

China is the only country that has the capacity to perform intaglio printing  raised printing simultaneously on both sides of a banknote. Chinese researchers also won an international innovation award in 2015 for ColorDance, a new holographic feature that can significantly increase a currencys security for relatively little expense.

But not everyone is optimistic about the future of money printing as cashless payments grow in popularity around the world.

I wont let my children work in this factory. Paper currency is doomed, said an employee in the Kunshan facility.

According to the Peoples Bank of China, only about 10 per cent of payments in retail sales were made in cash in 2016 due to the prevalence of mobile phone payment methods.

The share may be even lower now, but the central bank did not respond to requests for comment.

Police arrest three men and seize HK$1.37 million in fake cash during raid on Kowloon flat

The number of people working in the Chinese money printing industry fell by more than 2,500 between 2013 and the end of last year, according to the central bank.

In the face of this, the factory worker said that China would face enormous challenges taking business from well-established Western printing companies.

There is still a technological gap between us and the West. To fill the gap requires some talented young people. But now most PhDs under the age of 40 in our factory have left.

With their knowledge and experience they have easily found jobs in private companies, which offer them much higher salaries and benefits, said the employee.

And we are state companies. We are crippled by inefficiency in competition against private companies.

This article Why other countries are giving China a licence to print money first appeared on South China Morning Post

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After having the seized the RM1 billion (US$250 million) super-yacht belonging to fugitive financier Jho Low, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad now has his sights set on acquiring Lows alleged former private jet that was confiscated by Singaporean authorities in February of last year.

Our neighbors south of the Causeway impounded the Bombardier Global 5000 jet, alleging that it was part of the assets acquired using over RM4 billion (US$1 billion) that was siphoned from 1MDB funds.

Speaking to local media, Prime Minister Mahathir spoke of the inevitability of bringing the plane back to Malaysian airspace: Yes, I think so. We have to bring it back.

Reports emerged early last year that the private jet, registered under the number N689WM, was currently grounded at Singapores Selatar airport.

However, when pressed for further details over the planes whereabouts and what kind of talks were transpiring, the PM became effusive with his answers, claiming he wasnt sure that that somebody else is doing it.

When asked to elaborate at an event opening a university art exhibition, Mahathir would only say:

We are trying to get back all the money that has been stolen from us. We know who has it but we dont know where they are. And the need for us to access the money depends on us proving that it is our money.

Last week, the PM was hit by allegations coming from Lows legal team, alleging that Malaysias leader was putting words into the mouth of US authorities regarding the super-yachts return to Malaysia.

Never one to pass of a sharp comeback, the 93-year-old responded:

I am very proud that I can put words in the mouth of the US Government. I must be greater than Trump (US president Donald Trump).

You can ask the US authorities whether I put words into their mouths, whether I typed out the words and shoved it down their throat.

CRUNCH.

The back and forth comes after Lows spokesperson claimed that no evidence was able to tie the yacht to its infamous squatter, and rather it was Mahthirs administration that found him guilty.

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Ok, Jho.

The PM has countered that the US Department of Justice had given Malaysia assurance that the yacht was bought using diverted 1MDB funds.

Lows alleged plane seats up eight passengers comfortably, and we have one single burning question:

Is this the same plane that flew Jamie Foxx into two New Years back to back?

The post Yachts not hot: Mahathir now looking to seize Jho Lows alleged private jet appeared first on Coconuts.
President Trump Photo: KEVIN DIETSCH/Getty Images

Running an effective foreign policy for a global hyperpower is always tricky when the president happens to be a personally corrupt authoritarian bigot who is concealing shady ties to a strategic adversary. The problem gets even harder when the president is unable to grasp some of the basic facts and principles of diplomacy. Politicos Daniel Lippman rounds up several harrowing new details of Trumps attempts to interact with world leaders.

Trumps shortcomings as a global strategist include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

Knowing all the countries. Maps indicate the world contains a bunch of countries whose existence Trump was never made aware of previously. Trump appeared confused by Nepal and Bhutan, which lie sandwiched between India and China, a person familiar with one meeting tells Lippman. He didnt know what those were. He thought it was all part of India. He was like, What is this stuff in between and these other countries? One of the things they dont tell you when you start running for president is, there are just so many countries.

Knowing how to read the names of the countries after seeing them. In one case, Trump, while studying a briefers map of South Asia ahead of a 2017 meeting with Indias prime minister, mispronounced Nepal as nipple and laughingly referred to Bhutan as button, according to two sources with knowledge of the meeting.

Its like having Homer Simpson as president, but dumber:

Time zones work, how do they work? Trump reportedly gets the urge to dial up foreign leaders, and has trouble understanding that they may not be working or awake at that moment if they are located on the opposite side of the planet. He wasnt great with recognizing that the leader of a country might be 80 or 85 years old and isnt going to be awake or in the right place at 10:30 or 11 p.m. their time, a former Trump National Security Council official tells Lippman. When he wants to call someone, he wants to call someone. Hes more impulsive that way. He doesnt think about what time it is or who it is.

A source tells Lippman the time zone problem comes up on a constant basis. Holding their daylight hours during inconvenient times is just another one of the ways all these foreign countries are ripping us off.

Which countries dont like each other. Trump can intuitively grasp the concept that some countries will have better or worse relations with the United States. The idea that these countries may have different levels of relations with each other, independent of the United States, is a far trickier concept. During one meeting with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, Trump repeatedly praised Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, reports a source, who notes that everyone was cringing.

Why world leaders have phone calls. Traditional world leaders have busy schedules, and use phone calls to focus on specific points of negotiations. Trump just calls world leaders for no reason. He especially likes to stalk French president Emmanuel Macron. Trump has developed what one former Trump national security official calls a bizarre fascination with calling French President Emmanuel Macron, reports Lippman. He wanted to talk to him constantly  Macron would be like: Hey what are we talking about?

Most of your world leaders dont have hours of executive time for watching television and rage-tweeting, so they need to use phone calls in order to advance a specific policy agenda.
The Hated Skateboards presents their first promo the Hateboarding Mixtape, filmed around London and Paris over the last few months. Coming straight out of the rugged slums of the city of London, this sees a number of those involved with Gyppo Army during the mid to late 2000s including Marcus Adams, Kev McKeon, Aaron Sweeney and Alex Lally, alongside various friends from across the capital skating a wide variety of terrain and trying with varying degrees of success to dodge the London Metropolitan Police.

Footage from Paris comes in the midst of a barrage of street and skatepark bangers across London, from the familiar confines of Southbank, Cantelowes and Victoria Park to the still fresh concrete of Crystal Palace  a park which, coincidentally, will be hosting its official opening jam on Saturday the 25th of August. That will definitely be an event worth getting too, though it will have to see a pretty heavy turn out to bear witness to some of the shit Kev McKeon has been putting down in the deep end  and thats to say nothing of his Victoria Park ender

This is a solid ten minute look at the always thriving London scene, from older heads to some of the younger up and coming rippers, and acts as the precursor to the already in the works full length video from The Hated  which is due sometime next year, so keep your eyes peeled! In the meantime, enjoy nearly ten minutes of London ripping below and then check out The Hateds website for an idea of their product.

Featuring Kev McKeon, Marcus Adams, Nelly Mayele, Aaron Sweeney, Alex Lally, me, Jeremy Jones, Husayn Smart and more.
Photo-Illustration: Jed Egan, Photos: Getty Images

When Kathryn Montgomery walked into the Digital Kids conference in New York, she didnt know what to expect. This was 1995  the internet was new and full of promise. She still believed that access to books and unlimited information could mean a lot for childrens development.

But sitting through presentations on online playgrounds populated by the likes of Chester Cheetah and Ronald McDonald  places where kids could build personal relationships with these corporate mascots  she began to feel panicked. The internet was supposed to be something different, but the ad men from Madison Avenue just saw a new opportunity. They wanted one-to-one advertising and they wanted to target kids.

Montgomery went back to Washington, D.C., and told her husband, Jeff Chester, and the rest of their team at the Center for Media Education about what shed seen. Right away, they began working on a report that would become Web of Deception, a study that documented the way companies were using websites to target children. They filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and, within two years, the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) passed through Congress and was signed into law.

That 1998 legislation, which has been updated by the FTC multiple times since its passage, is still the most stringent internet privacy law on the books. Today, kids under 13 are the only class of American internet user who must opt in rather than opt out of having their data collected. (Children under 13 were identified as a class especially vulnerable to the effect of targeted marketing.) At the time, Chester explained the collection of cookies  small bits of information about a users browsing history that travel with that user  as Orwellian to the press. Two decades later, the characterization seems quaint. Today, Montgomery and Chester face a much more existential fight for privacy online: the Internet of Things. Theyre helping to lead a cadre of activist groups in a battle against some of the largest companies on the planet, and Apple, Google, Amazon, and the rest of the tech world are now entrenched forces in Washington. Chester admits: We would never have been able to get COPPA through Congress today.

Even at a time of growing public distrust of social media, consumers are rushing to put the tech industrys voice-activated devices into their homes. In April, there was reporting about an Amazon patent which posited technology that could eavesdrop on all conversations around Alexa and then send recommendations to users. Though the patent is forward-looking, it led to a news cycle of Big Brotherfueled fear regarding Amazons devices. And yet, sales of smart speakers in the United States more than tripled from 2016 to 2017, according to research from the Consumer Technology Association. A Canalys report from January projects 2018 U.S. sales to eclipse 38 million units.

Montgomery remembers the moment she first saw a television  she was four or five and her father lugged it home to set up in the living room. Montgomery and Chesters daughter, who is in her mid-20s, is of the generation that remembers their first connected device (this writer remembers playing BrickBreaker on his fathers Blackberry at the age of 15). But the next generation will have spoken to a device before they form memories. When all of this becomes part of the automobile that you drive, the appliances that you use, when its all become so much a seamless part of your everyday life, Montgomery explains, it will be easy to forget what the potential is of this system to really do harm by invading our privacy.

The husband-and-wife team believe the moment to regulate privacy in IoT is right now, before everyone has a voice-activated speaker in every room. So the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the subsequent piqued interest in privacy and data protection seemed fortuitously timed for their mission. But seeing senator after senator stumble through their questioning of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discouraged the activist couple. It was embarrassing, Montgomery says. And the Internet of Things, of course, is now moving forward so quickly and nobody quite grasps that either.

Its instructive to think of Jeff Chester as an Old Testament prophet or Howard Beale from Network. He speaks quickly, rarely finishing his sentences before hes onto another point. Hes an expert on the internet, and that expertise keeps him perpetually annoyed  from the start, hes seen the World Wide Web as yet another medium built to sell. By the mid-90s, Chester began to understand that included in the internets business model was the promise of one-to-one marketing. A company could have a personal relationship with consumers by understanding their preferences through data like their browsing tendencies. When he and Montgomery realized internet advertisers were aiming their individualized marketing tools at kids, he became inflamed (which, to be fair, is not a rare state for Chester). The idea that these companies are designing the products and the services in a way that is gonna take advantage of your child just makes you damn mad! he told me.

Everyone quickly mentions Chesters love of confrontation (one person, speaking on his reputation among defense lawyers, put it succinctly: Jeff is not liked). Josh Golin, the executive director of Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC), views Chester as a mentor, but that doesnt mean he hasnt been on the receiving end of one of Jeffs blowups. Yet for Golin, the fire is understandable, even laudable. Chester has a rare birds-eye view of the industry  his disgust is far from ungrounded. He really was, for many years, the one doing this work, Golin says.

In the 1980s, Montgomery was part of a task force in Santa Monica to protect against possible intrusions of privacy via another new medium: cable television. One day, a passionate producer from a radio program came in to interview her colleague, who was charmed by the confrontational, intelligent Brooklynite, so out of place in L.A. He said, You gotta meet this guy! Montgomery remembers, laughing. She finally did meet Chester at a conference at UCLA about satellite legislation (arcane, wonky policy stuff)  this summer marks 30 years of marriage.

Montgomery  a Californian, an academic, and a self-described consensus builder  is the perfect yin to Chesters yang. In 1991, the two co-founded the Center for Media Education (in 2001, their organization became the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD)). Throughout the 1990s, the nonprofit successfully fought on behalf of childrens rights in media  in 1996, they helped secure an FCC mandate that channels show three hours of educational programming for kids each week. But nothing the group has done has come close in scale or prescience to COPPA.

In the late 90s, there was a whole suite of privacy laws being pushed by activists, but only COPPA made it to President Bill Clintons desk. As UC- Berkeley Law professor Chris Hoofnagle explains, while people tussle over the details, there is agreement on the underpinnings of COPPAs mission: kids should be protected online. (It remains one of the few bipartisan issues in todays Washington.) But without Montgomerys spotlight-shining report and without a still fortifying defense from the tech industry, even COPPA wouldnt have passed into law. It was a marvel of mission and timing. The industry, the internet, was still in its infancy, Golin says. Obviously, the same cant be said for todays fight.

In May of this year, CDD and CFCC released a joint statement denouncing Amazons Echo Dot Kids, an Alexa-enabled device targeted at children. On the same day, two of the groups longtime legislative allies, Massachusetts senator Ed Markey and Texas representative Joe Barton, sent a letter asking twelve targeted questions about Amazons kids-facing products, specifically around their strategies for securing childrens data and complying with COPPA. Golins group had successfully convinced the toy company Mattel to pull Aristotle, a similar voice-activated device, from the market in October of 2017.

But Amazon is not Mattel, so the Alexa for Kids product remains on sale. And in reality, the act of naming a product Echo Dot Kids is actually a self-regulating action by Amazon. COPPA only covers products marketed to children, so the Echo Dot Kids will be required to allow parents to opt in to the collection of their childs data and will need to delete collected data after a period of time. In reality, many more children are already interacting with Siri, Google Assistant, and Amazons adult Echo. (Amazon and Apple declined to comment for the story.)

The process of teaching language to these voice-activated devices is (unsurprisingly) tedious. For Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa to work, the AI must be able to understand a broad range of languages (Siri can speak 21, while Google Assistant is fluent in 5, and Alexa in 3), but also decipher accents, regional colloquialisms, and differentiate between the speaker and background noise. A Reuters article from March detailed the process that Apple uses to train Siri on a new language. The company brings in voice actors to read passages in a variety of accents, then transcribes the recordings by hand, and then feeds the information, now matched to the script, back into the database. The database continually grows (and is continually transcribed by hand) as bits of recordings from users in the wild are captured and incorporated into the AI. Over time, Siri becomes more and more fluent.

Obviously, teaching AI assistants to understand children is an extra challenge. There is a much higher likelihood of outlier accents and word choice among kids than adults. The task is extra difficult because any collected data of kids under 13 must be discarded every two years under COPPA. So in order to comply with the law, any data collected in the wild and used to train the AI assistants must be specially tagged as belonging to a kid and then scheduled for deletion. Even for parents its a challenge to learn to speak fluent 5-year-old; COPPA makes it an extra challenge to teach AI to converse with kids.

A Google spokesperson explained that the Google Assistant has Assistant for Families settings, which minimize data collection and allow a family to teach the Assistant to recognize their childs voice, which then automatically halts voice-data storage. On top of that, users under 13 must get parental consent to set up an account on the Google voice-activated devices. But for child internet activists, leaving the responsibility with parents rather than the company is still not enough.

As Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), explains, the system is set up to be difficult for parents to fully understand. He sees most sites terms of service as purposefully convoluted (You can have a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford and still not understand these things, he says), and points out that in some cases, agreeing to data collection is the only way to use a website.

He asked me to imagine if the same regulatory structure was used for the auto industry. Its absolutely true that before you get in your car, there has to be a sufficient brake pad on the brake lining against the rotor to make sure that your brakes work when they need to, he says. But to ask a typical driver to take out a pair of calipers and figure out if their brake lining is at least three millimeters is just nuts. We dont do it.

Montgomerys dream is an FTC with regulatory teeth to force the industry to take a simple stance when creating devices and apps for kids: First, do no harm.

The biggest change to Americans privacy rights online in years actually comes from across the pond. In late May, the European Unions General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect, leading to a wave of emails from companies asking users to consent to new terms of service (and, of course, a wave of memes). The law only protects European citizens, but so far, many American companies working within Europe have widely applied the same stricter privacy practices. The law states that companies must disclose data breaches within 72 hours, allow users access to the data that has been collected on them, and expand the definition of personal data to include browsing history, among other things  the law is enforced with an aggressive fine. For Chester and Montgomery, the GDPR is invigorating, if similar to the suite of privacy laws they fought for in 1998. But they also find it troubling that the E.U. rather than the U.S. government is the one to finally regulate the industry.

Professor Hoofnagle explains that the FTC, which is tasked with all but childrens privacy/data collection enforcement, has institutional wariness against overreach because of a disastrous attempt to curtail ads aimed at kids in the late-70s. The backlash was so fierce it led to the agencys temporary dissolution. The argument lodged by opponents of the regulatory effort, dubbed KidVid, was that Washington was attempting to create a Nanny State  in an editorial from the era, the Washington Post argued, The proposal, in reality, is designed to protect children from the weakness of their parents. Shades of the same argument are made today.

Golin and Montgomery both vocalized that it was having kids that humbled them and let them see the impossibility of keeping todays children away from screens, advertising, and data collection. It helps clarify your vision of what you think childhood should be, Golin says.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal has been swallowed up by three or thirty more scandals that have come in its wake. The publics attention has been aimed in a thousand directions. Facebook stock dipped following congressional hearings regarding its slow response to Russian interference and to fake news, but then fully recovered the $134 billion in lost value within two months. Late last month, the stock collapsed again, losing $119 billion in a single day. But this time investors were punishing the company for focusing too much on eliminating nefarious actors rather than growing the user base. The lesson to tech giants can fairly be understood as: customers will always choose convenience over privacy, and Wall Street would prefer less investment in safety and security.

But Hoofnagle disagrees. The Berkeley Law professor cites a referendum in North Dakota to overturn a 2001 law where banks gained the right to sell personal data. Seventy-two percent of voters said they wanted to protect their private data and overturned the law. And this year, after a California real estate developer became an unlikely privacy activist and managed to gather 600,000 signatures for a GDPR-like ballot referendum, the California legislature scrambled to pass a law to grant Californians far more control over their online data. (The legislature opted for hasty legislation rather a referendum, because referendums can only be amended by subsequent referendums. Some worry the law may be incrementally weakened by the powerful tech lobby in California, which had been expected to spend $100 million to defeat the ballot initiative.) Hoofnagle says that though people desire the convenience of IoT, he doesnt believe that they disvalue privacy. They just have yet to be given the choice. I want these tools, you want these tools, everyone wants these tools, Hoofnagle says. The question is: on what terms are they offered to you?

Chester and Montgomery are entering their fourth decade in the fight for childrens rights and privacy. They met over wonky satellite policy, and have fought against the commercialization of cable television and the commercialization of the kids section of the internet. Now theyre diving headlong into the battle over the commercialization of kids IoT. Chester has mellowed out a bit and Montgomery has gotten a bit more confrontational  but theyre still pissed and passionate and ready for a fight. Its going to be an uphill battle.
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #32

Posted on 12 August 2018 by John Hartz

Story of the Week... Opinion of the Week... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Video of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review...

Story of the Week...

On climate change, its time to start panicking

The crisis over global warming warrants an unparalleled response

(Getty/Photo Montage by Salon)

It is time for us to panic about global warming. Indeed, a proper state of panic is long overdue.

Global warming has made the news for a number of reasons this week: The Supreme Court rejected a request by President Donald Trump to halt a lawsuit by children and teenagers to force the federal government to address man-made climate change; Trump's Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation took new steps to reverse President Barack Obama's rules requiring car manufacturers to steadily reduce greenhouse gas pollution from their vehicles; former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denounced those same Trump policies as "stupid"; and The New York Times ran a brilliant piece documenting how, between 1979 and 1989, the world had the opportunity to effectively address man-made climate change... and squandered it.

Yet this is one of those issues in which  because there are so many twists and turns and overwhelming details  it is easy to lose sight of a crucial fact: If we do not resolve the problem of man-made climate change, it could quite literally spell the end of human civilization.

"There will be and already is major consequences and they grow over time. It does not look good," Kevin Trenberth, a a Distinguished Senior Scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, told Salon by email. "The effects are always local but there are more and more of them and the consequences are major. These includes floods and drought, heat waves and wild fires." He also pointed Salon in the direction of a paper he co-authored that elaborated on how Hurricane Harvey in particular could be linked to climate change.

On climate change, its time to start panicking by Matthew Rozsa, Salon, Aug 5, 2018

Opinion of the Week...

Dont despair  climate change catastrophe can still be averted

The future looks fiery and dangerous, according to new reports. But political will and grassroots engagement can change this

A new scientific report says that even fairly modest future carbon emissions could set off a cascade of catastrophe. Wild fire in Athens, Greece. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

This is the summer when, for many, climate change got real. The future looks fiery and dangerous. Hot on the heels of Trump, fake news and the parlous state of the Brexit negotiations, despair is in the air. Now a new scientific report makes the case that even fairly modest future carbon dioxide emissions could set off a cascade of catastrophe, with melting permafrost releasing methane to ratchet up global temperatures enough to drive much of the Amazon to die off, and so on in a chain reaction around the world that pushes Earth into a terrifying new hothouse state from which there is no return. Civilisation as we know it would surely not survive. How do we deal with such news?

As a research scientist in this field, I can give some nuance to the headlines. One common way of thinking about climate change is the lower the future carbon dioxide emissions, the less warming and the less havoc we will face as this century progresses. This is certainly true, but as the summer heatwave and the potential hothouse news remind us, the shifts in climate we will experience will not be smooth, gradual and linear changes. They may be fast, abrupt, and dangerous surprises may happen. However, an unstoppable globally enveloping cascade of catastrophe, while possible, is certainly not a probable outcome.

Dont despair  climate change catastrophe can still be averted, Opinion by Simon Lewis, Comment is Free, Guardian, Aug 7, 2018

Toon of the Week...

Quote of the Week...

"I would place a price on carbon," Michael E. Mann, a Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State, told Salon by email. "Whether this takes the form of a carbon tax (a revenue-neutral carbon tax? fee and dividend? cap-and-trade?), I leave that to the policymakers to determine as long as they accept, as the premise for policy, what the science has to say about the reality and threat of climate change. The price on carbon needs to be set such that it leads to a reduction in carbon emissions of several percent a year for the next few decades. If we do that, we can avoid a catastrophic 2C (~3.5 F) warming of the planet."

On climate change, its time to start panicking by Matthew Rozsa, Salon, Aug 5, 2018

Video of the Week...

Mike Mann provides a clear explanation of the relation between climate change and current extreme weather around the world, and the imperative to reduce carbon emissions.

Via https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/climate-change-is-making-wildfires-more-extreme-heres-how

Climate change fuels wildfires. Heres how, ClimateState, Aug 7, 2018

Coming Soon on SkS...

Trump reignited his war with California, but his Tweet got burned (Dana)

(Dana) What does mean actually mean? (Kevin Cowtan)

(Kevin Cowtan) Guest Post (John Abraham)

(John Abraham) Climate change and wildfires  how do we know if there is a link? (Kevin Trenberth)

(Kevin Trenberth) New research this week (Ari)

(Ari) 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #33 (John Hartz)

(John Hartz) 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #33 (John Hartz)

Climate Feedback Reviews...

[To be added.]

Poster of the Week...

SkS Week in Review...
After years of films that left many yearning for a return to form, BlacKkKlansman reacquaints us with Spike Lees uncanny ability to make movies that are simultaneously of the moment and timeless. In this film, Lees best in years, characters say seemingly anachronistic things like America first and make America great again that are in fact not anachronistic at all because white supremacists have been uniting under those banners for decades. Then, in a bold move, Lee ends with a montage of footage from the Unite the Right rally held last year in Charlottesville, Virginia. One might think it unwise to anchor a film in a contemporaneous hot-button issue, that such a choice might make a film seem dated when viewed years later. But a closer look at Lees filmography reveals a history of situating recent incidents of racial injustice within a centuries-long system of racialized inequality and violence.

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Spike Lee has a history of situating recent incidents of racial injustice within a centuries-long system of racialized inequality and violence.

I initially noticed Lees ripped from the headlines approach to filmmaking during my senior year of high school, in March of 1999. This was when I first watched Do the Right Thing, and it changed how I thought about movies. In February of that year, Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea, was killed by four NYPD officers who mistook him for a suspect in a sexual assault that happened the year before. They thought the wallet he pulled out to identify himself was a weapon and opened fire, shooting at him 41 times, killing him on site. He was unarmed. The nation was in an uproar over the senseless killing, and watching Radio Raheem strangled at the end of Do the Right Thing by New Yorks Finest was an emotionally devastating experience. The film informed me that Diallos shooting was not the first of its kind. It was, in fact, just the latest in a vicious tradition of violence against black bodies.

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As timely as Do the Right Thing felt, it had been released 10 years earlier, in response to the death of Michael Stewart by police chokehold. In fact, you can hear bystanders in the crowd shouting things like they did it againjust like Michael Stewart. Another person in the crowd shouts Eleanor Bumpurs, murder, calling the name of a black woman who was shot and killed by the police in 1984. The film was responding to an incident that happened 15 years before I first saw it, but the narrative still felt all too relevant. Fifteen years later, I watched it again, and I was once again taken aback by how the climactic scene could have just as easily been responding to the death of Eric Garner. The point wasnt lost on Lee, either. He underlined it when he edited together videos of the two deaths by asphyxiation at the hands of the NYPD.

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This, and BlacKkKlansman, are just two examples of how Lee, at his best, uses the medium of film to show how little things have changed for black Americans. At the end of Lees title sequence for the 1995 film Clockers, he includes a headline about the real-life 1994 shooting of 13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr., a black boy who was playing with a plastic toy gun in a Brooklyn stairwell when he was shot and killed by a NYPD police officeran incident that prefigured the Nov. 22, 2014, shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland. (Rice was carrying an airsoft gun replica.) Lee might not have known how neatly and tragically history would repeat itself, but he was apparently confident enough that the headline would remain relevant.

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It is often in his title sequences that Lee makes these connections. In the opening credits of his magnum opus, the 1992 film Malcolm X, Denzel Washingtons Malcolm preaches over footage of the infamous Rodney King beating, which had happened just the year before the films release. In putting that speech and those images together, Lee connects the overt racism about which X is speaking in the 1950s or 1960s to the acts of violence that persisted in the 1990s.

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In the opening of his 1996 film Get on the Bus, the credits are interspersed with images of a black man in iron shackles, and upon first glance, it is difficult to tell whether the film is set in 1996 or 1796. However, as the narrative begins, we realize that images we saw were preparing us for a contemporary story about a young man in chains because he is ensnared in what Michelle Alexander calls The New Jim Crow, a system that disproportionately imprisons black men and women. Indeed, the plot itself is about 1995s Million Man March, an event largely inspired by the fact that 1963s March on Washington wasnt enough to bring full equality.

What will it feel like to watch BlacKkKlansmanwith its cries of America first, its calls to make America great again, and its footage of violent, white supremacist rallies20 years from now? We can hope it will feel dated, but as BlacKkKlansman argues, and the previous three decades of Lees movies have taught us, its likely to feel as pertinent as ever. Time may pass, but the struggle against racism in America remains largely the same.
V.S. Naipaul, the award-winning writer born in Trinidad who settled in England and wrote an astonishing number of great novels and searing works of nonfiction, died over the weekend at the age of 85. After publishing a novel, The Mystic Masseur, and a number of short stories about Trinidad in the late 1950s, he began writing the books that, with their near flawless prose and withering insights, would ensure his reputation as one of the most important writers of the 20th century. This is despite the fact that many of his accounts of foreign countries were unreliable, his cruelty and bigotry palpable, his reading of history often simplistic. What follows is a short guide to some of his best, most vital work, and some of the great work written about him.

Naipaul published The Mystic Masseur in 1957, but A House for Mr. Biswas is his first truly brilliant novel. This fictionalized account of the life of his father, who worked as a journalist in Trinidad, is one of the great novels of the 20th century: hilarious, sad, moving, andfor perhaps the very last time in Naipauls careerloving.

The first of Naipauls three nonfiction books about India, Area cannot be trusted as history or sociology. But this account of Naipauls early visit to the homeland of his ancestors is a stunning piece of writing that viscerally captures the way that a foreigner in India can feel overwhelmed and panicked after initially arriving in the country. In Naipauls case, it was clearly connected to his sense of physical shame at his appearance and Indian background; the book is, as Pankaj Mishra has said, a brilliant guide to the neuroses of the man. But beware: If you have never read about or visited India, this is certainly not the first thing you should read about the country.

Naipaul won the Booker Prize for this novel in three parts, which includes the story of an Indian servant who travels to Washington with the diplomat he serves, and a gay official on edge in what is clearly Uganda. It is Naipauls first major foray into writing about issues of power and sex in Africa, which would win him great acclaim as well as considerable criticism.

Generally deemed, along with Biswas, Naipauls masterpiece, this novel about an Indian man in an African country (unnamed, but clearly Mobutu Sese Sekos Zaire) got Naipaul compared to Joseph Conrad and also attacked for his depiction of a continent deteriorating, thanks to dictatorship and the legacy of colonialism. Its misogyny and violence can be tough to take, and the bleakness of its vision is harrowingone may wonder whether, in some final reckoning, a serious writer can simply allow the wretchedness of his depicted scene to become the limit of his vision, Irving Howe wrotebut it is a remarkable book.

Naipaul traveled to four countriesIran, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysiaand came away convinced of opinions that are often contested and should not be taken as historically accurate. Still, his eye for detail and his ability to capture characterhe visited the same countries again nearly two decades later, for Beyond Beliefmake this a fascinating book, especially in its sections on post-revolutionary Iran.

Some critics found this novel, which recounts Naipauls journey to England and gives an account of his life in the English countryside, where he eventually settled, too slow. But it contains some of his most stunning writing. His feel for the physical earth, and the history underneath it, is entrancing: And then one afternoon it began to snow. Snow dusted the lawn in front of my cottage; dusted the bare branches of the trees; outlined disregarded things, outlined the empty, old-looking buildings around the lawn that I hadnt yet paid attention to or fully taken in; so that piece by piece, while I considered the falling snow, a rough picture of my setting built up around me.

This long book essentially consists of Naipaul journeying around India, talking to people, and telling their stories in his own prose. He shows a real generosity of spirit, letting peoples own narratives come through, often at great length, without too much judgment or analysis. One of the great travel books ever written, it also displays an almost eerie foreboding that the Hindu right (with which Naipaul sympathized) was on the verge of real power in India. To awaken to history was to cease to live instinctively. It was to begin to see oneself and ones group the way the outside world saw one; and it was to know a kind of rage. When I was there last year India was full of this rage. There had been a general awakening. But everyone awakened first to his own group or community; every group thought itself unique in its awakening; and every group sought to separate its rage from the rage of other groups.

Naipauls last truly great work is almost impossible to summarize: It is a series of linked narratives that combines a history of the new world with another look at Naipauls background and an examination of politics in the Caribbean.

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Naipaul also wrote a huge number of fine essays, sometimes on writers, sometimes on places he traveled. Many of them are collected in The Writer and the World, and two of them appear in Finding the Centre. A number of them first appeared in the New York Review of Books. As is always the case with Naipaul, do not trust everything you read; his biases and prejudices sometimes overwhelm his commitment to accuracy. His reports from Argentina in the 1970s, for instance, made broad generalizations about the country based on the supposed sexual behavior of its inhabitants. (Naipauls mistress was Anglo-Argentine.) But his willingness to listen, and his eye for the ways in which his subjects exhibit pride or humiliation or anger, always make him worth reading.

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Id also recommend this moving and essential collection of letters between Naipaul and his father.

And then there is the stuff written about him. Frenchs biography itself is a real achievement. There have also been some wonderful essays on Naipaul. My favorites are by James Wood, Teju Cole, Pankaj Mishra, and Robert Boyers.* Paul Therouxs Sir Vidias Shadow is a bizarre book which nevertheless gives a good sense of many of Naipauls troubling character traits, including his need to be cruel to those who loved him, or aided his career, from his first wife Patricia Hale to the novelist Anthony Powell. Naipaul, French wrote, was never willing to forgive a past favor.

Correction, Aug. 16, 2018: An earlier version of this article misspelled Pankaj Mishras last name.

Also in Slate: The Impossible Legacy of V.S. Naipaul
V.S. Naipaul, the Nobel Prizewinning author who explored issues of colonialism, race, and identity in a strikingly brilliant series of novels, essays, and travel books, died this weekend at the age of 85. As much as any single great writer of the 20th century, Naipaul is present in everything he wrote. His life story; his caustic, penetrating, often callous opinions; his cruelty; his genius: All are there, in his novels and nonfiction. Naipaul inflicted extreme psychological abuse on his first wife, Patricia Hale; beat his mistress; and seemed defiantly proud of his racism, misogyny, and toxic political views; to talk about separating the art from the man seems especially futile in his case. Indeed, the best way to consider the depth of his literary achievement is to view his writing as the partial result of his anger and abiding sense of humiliation, which allowed him to explore the human condition and the legacy of imperialism with a tireless and unflinching gaze, or what one critic called a terrifying honesty.

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Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932; his grandparents had arrived a half-century earlier from India as indentured laborers. He was able to leave for England in the early 1950s, a move he quite clearly considered an escape. Once he graduated from Oxford, he settled down with Hale, who would become a crucial reader of his work, a tireless supporter of his travels, and a poignant victim of his moods and his viciousness. (It could be said that I had killed her, he told his biographer, Patrick French, after treating her with extreme disregard while she battled cancer decades later. It could be said. I feel a little bit that way.)

By the late 1950s, he had produced short stories and a novel set in Trinidad; from that point forward, he began five decades of fiction writing and travel, especially to India, Africa, and the Caribbean. He eventually married Nadira Alvi, a Pakistani journalist he met before Hales death; he invited her to live in the home he had shared with Hale on the day after her cremation, in February of 1996.

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Naipaul came under serious criticism from writers such as the St. Lucian Derek Walcott for depicting places like Trinidad as half-made societies that seemed doomed to remain half-made. (That is from a reflection Naipaul wrote on Joseph Conrad, with whom he is often compared.) But Trinidad, and his background, would nevertheless exert a magnetic pull on the rest of his career. He would constantly return to the story of his journey to England, which made him part of the so-called Windrush generation of immigrants to Great Britain from the Caribbean, no matter how much Naipaul considered himself unique in supposedly transcending the circumstances of his birth. (His younger brother, Shiva, would make a similar journey years later and also became a successful novelist before dying at a young age.) Naipauls views were often simplistically described as imperialist; in fact, he could trenchantly depict the psychological damage colonialism inflicted, but these insights did not lessen his bigotry, or his oft-stated contempt for the mimicry adopted by colonialisms victims.

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By the time I interviewed Naipaul, in 2012, he was staying primarily in London, barely writing, and moving very slowly under Nadira Naipauls watchful eye. He seemed to fully have embraced his increasingly common popular image as a grumpy reactionary, skeptical of all manner of social change and pessimistic about the fate of postcolonial societies around the world. He was intimidating and austere, and after a testy interview in which he seemed to get annoyed with most of my questions, and refused to talk about Frenchs recent controversial biography, we sat down to lunch. (His reluctance was due largely, one assumes, to its revelations about Hale, whose diaries Naipaul had allowed French to use, in what French himself wrote was an act of narcissism and humility.)

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Naipaul finally opened up when discussing the death of his cat, Augustus, informing me that he no longer wanted to stay in the Wiltshire house Augustus had lived in because it made him too sad. The terrible part of it is that people suggest to me that I get a new cat, that I invite this new cat into the home I shared with Augustus, he continued. As if this one should just be replaced so soon. It shows a lack of understanding.

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I asked Nadira some basic questions about her time as a journalist in Pakistan, and after answering several of them she smiled and asked if I knew what Pakistan needed. I informed her that I did not. A dictator, she replied. At this her husband laughed.

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I think they have tried that, I said, doing my best to stay stoic.

No, no, a very brutal dictator, she answered. I told her they had tried that, too. No, no, she answered again. Only when a real dictator came in and killed the religious people in the country, and enough of them that the streets would run with blood, could Pakistan be reborn. It was as if she was parodying a gross caricature of Naipauls worst viewsand also misunderstanding his pessimism about the ability of colonial societies to reinvent themselves, even through violencebut he smiled with delight as she spoke.

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Thats so American of you, she then blurted out, before I had said anything. My face, while she had been talking, must have taken on a look of shock or disgust. You tell a nice young American boy like yourself that a country needs a brutal dictator and they get a moralistic or concerned look on their face, as if every country is ready for a democracy. They arent. The man who liked to say that Indian women wore a dot on their foreheads because they wanted to signal my head is empty, and who stated that the destruction of a famous Indian mosque by Hindu fanatics was India striving to regain her soul had found his soulmate. I was also uncomfortably reminded of what the leftist Trinidadian writer C.L.R. Jamespart of whose life is captured to tantalizing effect in Naipauls A Way of the Worldsaid of Naipaul: that much of what he wrote was what the whites want to say but dare not. It felt as if the clouds that had always obscured so much of what I loved about Naipaul were beginning to conceal everything.

Also in Slate: Where to Start With V. S. Naipaul
Better Life Lab is a partnership of Slate and New America.

Last spring, a photo made the rounds in nanny and parenting Facebook groups. The photographer or context unknown, it depicted a toddler in a stroller who had allegedly been left unattended by a nanny outside a coffee shop. As the photo circulated among a group of New York City nannies at a meetup I attended, another question was brought up: What was the nannys race? If she was black and Caribbean, like most of the women at this meetup were, they all stood to have their reputations tarnished. Racial stereotypes, one of the nannies said, were like a knife, hidden but ready to be brandished against them at the first local news incident or social mediafueled rumor.

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Everyone shook their heads in disapproval of the neglectful nannys conduct. But they also empathized with the experience of being spied on and publicly shamed online. They all knew that if the nanny had been photographed, her career would have been jeopardized, and possibly over. Thats because online spaces have enabled new kinds of employer surveillance.

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In-home care workers are used to being watched. Surveillance of domestic employees has been a common practice, whether it involves posting surreptitious photos of nannies online or installing nanny cams at home (legal in all 50 states, with or without consent). As this surveilling impulse has thrived online, it has also influenced the hiring process. Digital first impressions have become a stand-in for older, more involved ways of brokering relationships between care workers and employers. Traditionally, agencies and referrals from past employers played a more significant role in this process. In our research, we found that a growing number of nannies, babysitters, home health aides, and house cleaners are instead using online marketplaces like Care.com and similar sites to find work.

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These places can feel a lot like online dating sites, encouraging employers to rely on gut instincts when browsing prospective hires, who are encouraged to upload profile pictures; upload videos of themselves to highlight bubbly, warm, or fun personalities; write up biographical narratives; or add links to their social media accounts. Employers can filter search results by ZIP code or other criteria, such as nonsmokers, and initiate contact via private message with individual care workers or vice versa. And like dating apps, they seem to offer a near endless array of options to choose from.

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A hiring guideline on Care.com, one of the largest marketplaces for hiring domestic work, advises that while background-check companies avoid social media screening in order to comply with employment discrimination law, doing the online snooping on prospective hires yourself is fair game and even encouraged: Many people have no privacy settings on their personal pages and treat them like a tell-all. Look for objectionable photos and status updates. Pay careful attention to the persons Facebook friends and those who comment on their page. Even a job candidates Pinterest board, the guide adds, might hold further clues to her character and fitness to care for your child.

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In other employment contexts, this type of scrutiny might get backlash for being invasive or potentially discriminatory. But the hiring norms for domestic work have always been different, in large part due to the intimacy of the work. Entrusting someone with caring for ones child or elderly parent requires an immense degree of intimacy and can be an anxiety-inducing process. Moreover, few formal pathways for skills credentialingsuch as certificates or degrees that stand as evidence of ones qualificationsexist for this line of work, so employers rely on more intangible qualities, like personality.

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Online marketplaces have attempted to assuage these anxieties by trying to scale and fast-track the process of building trust between employers and care workers. They do this in part by implementing rating systems, increasingly common in industries spanning ride-hailing to the restaurant industry, as one of several ways that workers can be assessed by past employers. As my colleagues wrote in 2016, ratings give these judgments an air of objectivity, even if they may be reproducing the biases of consumers. In our research, we found that employers sometimes leave bad ratings as a form of retaliation against workers on these platforms for understandable actions such as turning down a job offer. Like the nanny photos and rumors that informally circulate on social media, bad ratings can damage a care workers reputation and access to work but come with little context for potential employers to assess their fairness.

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Most domestic workers are well aware of the prevailing hierarchies in the industry. The National Domestic Workers Alliance reports that black and Latina domestic workers across the U.S. are paid less than their white counterparts for the same work. Other research has shown that a care workers race and/or immigration status inform the expectations placed on her by employers and limit access to some jobs. For instance, an immigrant woman of color may be more likely to be expected by employers to do double duty as a house cleaner for no additional pay. Given that workers are judged by different, stereotype-driven rubrics, then the reputation systems built into online marketplaces are likewise going to be uneven playing fields.

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Compounding the problem is that these biases can be hard to recognize and prove. I interviewed a West African immigrant in her 50s who was struggling to find work on Care.coms app in between her long hours working as a hotel housekeeper at a major hotel chain. Prior to her hotel job, she had been a seasoned in-home care worker, with more than a decade of experience working as a nanny. But the kids she cared for grew up, and she had to find new work. The hotel work is hard on her health, the commute from the Bronx is long, and the long hours leave her too exhausted at the end of each day to complete her English homework for the language courses she was taking.

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While she applied to dozens of jobs each day on her somewhat battered but still functional smartphone, she was, at that point, unable to secure even an interview. She had a suspicion that her Care.com profile was to blame: It was only partially filled out because she had found many of the sections to be confusing. While she had done her best to narrate her qualifications in broken English, she struggled to replicate the resumelike prose that online bios seem to demand. And ultimately, what did her ability to self-brand have to do with her ability to care for peoples children?

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Online marketplaces may not be the root cause of individual employers biases, but their design is not neutral. They are built with a particular archetype of what an entrepreneurial domestic worker looks likeone who feels at home in the world of apps, social media, and online self-brandingand ultimately replicates and can even exacerbate many of the divisions that came with our predigital workplaces. As platform companies gain growing power over the hiring processes of a whole industry, they will need to actively work against the embedded inequalities in the markets they now mediate.

The kinds of technology-enabled scrutiny by employersfrom stroller-spying to Facebook snoopingcan leave care workers feeling hypervisible. But in a context where a Care.com search for a child care provider within a 10-mile radius of a Manhattan ZIP code turns up more than 34,000 care worker profiles, the other risk is not being seen at all.
Hate to say it, but it appears our president may have tweeted inaccurate information Monday morning. In a little breather from his morning assault on Omarosa Manigault-Newman, President Trump offered the following commentary on the narrow result in last weeks Ohio special election.

The very unpopular Governor of Ohio (and failed presidential candidate) @JohnKasich hurt Troy Baldersons recent win by tamping down enthusiasm for an otherwise great candidate. Even Kasichs Lt. Governor lost Gov. race because of his unpopularity. Credit to Troy on the BIG WIN!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

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The Ohio governor, who hasnt ruled out a primary challenge to the president, responded with a GIF of Russian President Vladimir Putin laughing.

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Heh? Eh.

What Trump meant to tweet was that he saw Kasich on the Sunday shows and didnt appreciate what he heard. In a Meet the Press interview, Kasichwho had endorsed Balderson in a widely played adsaid that in spite of the (apparent) Republican win, it wasnt a good night, because this is a district that you should be winning by, you know, overwhelming numbers. The close margin was a message from the voters to the Republicans that youve got to stop the chaos and youve got to get more in tune and stop alienating people and try to figure out how do families do better.

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That interpretation did not support Trumps interpretation that he had personally carried Balderson to a great victory. Instead, the president took it as a personal slight, and responded with these attacks on Kasich. They dont really add up.

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First, Kasich is not very unpopular. There hasnt been much polling of his job approval this year, but its good. Failed presidential candidate, though, is absolutely correct.

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But what about the assertion of Kasich tamping down enthusiasm? Another way to look at the situation would be that Trump failed to build enthusiasm among his voters.

The more rural counties in Ohios 12th Congressional District that broke the strongest for Balderson also had the poorest turnout. In Democrat Danny OConnors strongest county in the districtFranklinhe won 97 percent of the votes that the Democratic candidate won in the district in 2016. In Baldersons strongest county by margin, though, he won just 42 percent of the votes that ex-Rep. Pat Tiberi received in 2016. In his home county of Muskinghum, it was 48 percent. Overall turnout in the Franklin County portion of this district was 59 percent of what it was in the 2016 general election. Morrow was 46 percent, while Muskingham was 51 percent.

So what went wrong here? Could it be that Republicans in rural counties didnt turn out because they were sick of seeing John Kasichs face on television, or because Trump, with his visit to the district, failed to turn them outbut did mobilize Democrats to turn out against him? Maybe neither is an adequate explanation and there are structural factors at play. But the latter is more likely.

And thats the story behind one of Trumps tweets on Monday morning!
President said Friday that a trade deal with is "coming along nicely".

Asked as he arrived for Friday's talks in Washington if he could finish the US-Mexico issues on Friday, Guajardo said "I don't think today but we are very close".

The steps to reach agreement could allow Canada to rejoin talks next week, he told reporters as he entered meetings for the second day with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

Trump took a different tact, however, with Canada.

Guajardo stressed that the most hard issues had been left to the end, including the USA demand that NAFTA be approved every 5 years, a provision known as a sunset clause.

"We keep working, we are advancing and progressing with various issues, this morning we covered a good number of them", Guajardo said.

Sask. government fears trade disturbance during Canada-Saudi Arabia dispute

The consultancy said Germany and Poland were the leading wheat exporters to Saudi Arabia but poor weather could hit their exportable surplus this year.

He said any deal with Mexico must take care of American autoworkers and farmers, but he praised the new president of Mexico, calling him "an absolute gentleman".

"It benefits the United States to continue being a major ally of Mexico, as a neighbor and as a regional economy, which combined makes us the most powerful in the world", he said.

In response, Canadian officials announced "dollar for dollar" retaliatory tariffs, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called them at the time, to the tune of over C$16 billion in US imports.

Mexico's President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has vowed that his country would not be threatened by a wall.

But the USA side was sticking to a hard stance in the final stretch of the year-old NAFTA talks, trying to extract concessions as another late August deadline for a deal approaches, one industry representative said.
An FBI official at the center of Trumps attacks against the Mueller probe has been fired from the bureau, it was reported on Monday. Peter Strzok was terminated on Friday, his lawyer told multiple outlets, by the deputy director of the FBI, David Bowdich.

Strzok had been an FBI employee for more than 20 years but has come under fire after his text messages critical of Donald Trump were uncovered. The agent had been working on two of the most controversial and high-profile investigations in recent memory: a probe into Hillary Clintons email server and and one into whether the Russian government infiltrated or collaborated with the Trump presidential campaign. He had exchanged the critical texts with Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer with whom he had been having an affair. Trump has repeatedly tweeted about Strzok and Page, as he has attempted to depict the Mueller investigation as a rigged witch hunt.

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On Monday, the president responded to the news with apparent glee.

Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

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Their texts, which were critical of Trump and a number of other prominent figures, were discovered by the Department of Justice inspector general, and Strzok was kicked off the Mueller team shortly thereafter.

In a later report, the inspector general said Strzoks textsincluding one where he told Page, No. No he wont. Well stop it, about Trumps potential electionimplie[d] a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidates electoral prospects. The report also concluded that it had found no evidence that Strzok had taken any such action. Strzok later told a congressional committee that his anti-Trump texts were just his personal opinion and didnt ever enter into the realm of any action I took.

Strzoks lawyer suggested to the Washington Post that Strzoks firing was politically motivated, saying the director of the FBI office that normally handles employee discipline had decided Strzok should face only a demotion and 60-day suspension.

Two other senior FBI officialsDirector James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabewere also fired following the Clinton and Trump investigations.
Slates expanded voting rights coverage is made possible by the support of Slate Plus members and readers like you.

It has never been clear whether Kris Kobach understands what his job is. As Kansas secretary of state, a position hes held for nearly eight years, Kobachs main responsibility is to serve as the states chief elections officer. But instead of ensuring that Kansas elections run smoothly, Kobach has used his office to foment nativist hysteria around the nonexistent problem of voter fraud, attempting to purge and prosecute voters while tormenting immigrants. This campaign raised his national profile and lined his pockets with taxpayer money. But it did not improve Kansas elections system, which Kobach allowed to atrophy despite mounting evidence that future races could be thrown into chaos.

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Now that chaos has arrived, in the very election that will determine Kobachs political future. The Aug. 7 primary between the secretary of state and incumbent Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer remains too close to call due to Election Day errors that left thousands of ballots in limbo. Kobachs lead of 110 votes could disappear depending on if (and how) these votes are counted, decisions the secretary of state may be able to affect despite having ostensibly recused himself from the process. The whole mess is an absolute nightmare for Kansas Republicans, one they richly deserve. For years, the state GOP allowed Kobach to abuse the powers of his office for political gain while failing to perform basic duties. Now his negligence has come back to haunt the party, which faces an internecine brawl that is spiraling toward catastrophe.

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When Kobach ran for secretary of state in 2010, he coasted to office promising to pass a slew of voter-suppression measuresmeasures he deemed necessary to counteract the fake scourge of dead people casting ballots. At Kobachs urging, the GOP-dominated Legislature passed a law in 2011 requiring individuals to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Republican Gov. Sam Brownback signed the bill despite there being serious doubts over its legality. Kobach also urged the Legislature to grant him authority to prosecute voter fraud, which it did over unanimous Democratic opposition.

The bungled 2016 Kansas election was a model of proficiency by comparison to last weeks calamity.

Although Kobach claimed to have identified 100 cases of possible double voting, he has only secured a handful of convictionsmostly confused seniors, not nefarious immigrants. His work did catch the eye of Donald Trump, who put him in charge of the presidential voter-fraud commission. But the panel collapsed after Kobach illegally iced out one Democratic commissioner, spurring a lawsuit. And in June, a federal judge permanently blocked Kobachs signature proof-of-citizenship law when he could not provide any evidence of voter fraud in court. (Kobach defended the measure himself and performed so badly at trial that the judge ordered him to attend continuing legal-education classes.)

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Meanwhile, as ProPublica and the Kansas City Star recently reported, Kobach moonlighted in courts across the country defending anti-immigrant ordinances he drafted and championed. He identified small, majority-white towns experiencing influxes of nonwhite immigrants and encouraged them to drive out these newcomers by excluding them from housing and employment. When his ordinances were challenged in court, Kobach defended them at a steep price, earning $800,000 in total and at least $150,000 while in office. One town required a state bailout to pay for his services; another had to raise property taxes. Not a single Kobach-authored ordinance is in effect today.

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As Kobach pursued these pet causes, it quickly became obvious that he wasnt performing the job hed been elected to do. The secretary of state devoted remarkably little time and energy to registering voters, supervising election officials, or upgrading election technology. Instead, he delegated key tasks to subordinates and allowed county-level election commissions to run as semi-autonomous fiefdoms. When Kobach failed to follow a court order blocking his proof-of-citizenship law, he threw these commissions under the bus, insisting he could not make them follow his instructions. (The judge rejected this absurd claim.)

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Kobachs neglect had dire consequences for Kansas elections. When the legislature changed the date of school-board elections in 2015, it directed Kobach to educate voters about the shift. He did not, and turnout plummeted. In 2016, a botched vote tabulation in Johnson County, the states largest county, created a substantial delay in election results. Johnson County Election Commissioner Ronnie Metsker, the official in charge of the process, was appointed by Kobach, who did nothing to prepare the state for a pre-election surge in voter registrations. (At that point, he was already busy defending his proof-of-citizenship measure.)

But the bungled 2016 Kansas election was a model of proficiency by comparison to last weeks calamity. Once again, Kobach and Metsker failed to predict a substantial turnout, leading to lengthy lines and an all-night delay in results. The countys new voting machinespurchased this summer at a cost of $10.5 millionalso suffered glitches.

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Im embarrassed for our county, Metsker told the Kansas City Star. Its embarrassing for our office, its embarrassing for me, for our team and for the vendor.

Kobach should be embarrassed too. Its no surprise that Kansans were enthusiastic about the 2018 primary, yet his office did startlingly little to help county commissions prepare for an influx of voters. And while his appointee Metsker has now overseen two consecutive elections that were universally regarded as humiliating administrative disasters, Kobach has totally dissociated himself from the mayhem in Johnson County.

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Equally disturbing was Kobachs initial refusal to recuse himself from the vote-tabulation process on the grounds that he would not participate directly in the recount. (He would still have influence over the acceptance or rejection of challenged ballots.) Kobach partially reversed himself after his office mysteriously subtracted 100 votes from Colyer and allegedly gave inaccurate guidance to county officials. But he handed over duties to his hand-picked deputy, Eric Rucker, a move that Colyer asserts does not resolve Kobachs conflict of interest.

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By Monday, the fight between Kobach and Colyer focused on the question of provisional ballots. Poll workers are supposed to give these ballots to voters who cannot verify their identities on-site. On Aug. 7, however, some officials reportedly gave provisional ballots to voters who could verify their identities and were trying to declare a political party. Kansas law lets unaffiliated voters register with a party at the polls, then cast regular ballots. It appears that a number of poll workers misunderstood this rule and instead forced unaffiliated voters to cast provisional ballots. (This problem might have been avoided had Kobachs office provided clear guidance on the issue.)

Naturally, a skirmish broke out between Kobach and Colyer over whether these ballots should count. Rucker, the Kobach deputy, told officials not to count the provisional ballots of unaffiliated voters who didnt register with a party. Colyers attorney argued that, to the contrary, officials should count all unaffiliated voters provisional ballots, construing them as evidence of voter intent. Metsker sided with the secretary of states office, agreeing to count only those provisional ballots that were accompanied by party registration.

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That decision is a tough break for Colyer, who seems to think that unaffiliated voters might lean away from his reactionary opponent. But Colyer is squaring off against a political machine that he helped to create. Kobach and his many loyal deputies amassed power with the near-total acquiescence of the Kansas Republican establishment. Colyerwho served as lieutenant governor for seven years before assuming the governorship in Januarydid not see fit to criticize Kobach until he ran against him. He now describes Kobach as a tendentious bomb thrower who could lose the November election to a Democrat. But its extremely difficult to take these accusations seriously when Colyer, a major player in state politics, appeared to embrace Kobach for years.

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Republican legislators too are beginning to voice concerns over the increasingly nasty battle. (Its worth noting that Colyer has remained fairly civil, while Kobach has bitterly accused his opponent of undermining faith in the election.) Lawmakers held a unity breakfast in the hopes of putting this intramural scrimmage behind them. (Democrats are overjoyed by the clash.) On the campaign trail, Kobach repeatedly promised to drain the swamp in Topeka, alleging that the state capital has a culture of corruption. Because Republicans have a stranglehold on the legislature, his insults seemed to be aimed at GOP lawmakersmany of whom voted to give him unprecedented prosecutorial powers just a few years ago.

Colyer and other anxious Republicans are now facing the same hardball tactics that Kobach used against immigrants and voters for years. And they are suffering the consequences of a dilapidated electoral system that withered as the secretary of state ignored his day job to gain fame and money elsewhere. Had Kansas Republicans revolted against Kobach early in his tenure, they might have halted his ascent. Now they have discovered it is far too late to rein in the man whose rise to power they abetted at every turn.
Book-flogging former White House aide and Apprentice villain Omarosa Manigault-Newman continued her tour dtapes on the Today show on Monday morning, playing a recorded phone call she says she had with President Donald Trump after John Kelly fired her.

#Breaking: @OMAROSA provides @NBCNews with this exclusive excerpt of a recording of a phone call that she says she received from President Trump the day after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fired her. pic.twitter.com/OJe47RdcDC  TODAY (@TODAYshow) August 13, 2018

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The phone callif it was really recorded the day after her firingindicates that Trump doesnt necessarily have the best handle on the goings-on with his staff, or that he is willing to lie to avoid confronting them. He says, Omarosa, whats going on? I just saw on the news that youre thinking about leaving? When Omarosa says that chief of staff John Kelly had told her that he wanted her to leave, Trump responded, You know, they run a big operation, but I didnt know it, I didnt know that. Goddamn it!

This is a White House where everybody lies  I had to protect myself and I have no regret about it, she said on Meet the Press on Saturday in an interview during which she released a secretly recorded tape of Kelly firing her.

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This marks at least the second either senior White House staffer or Trump confidante to have surreptitiously recorded the then candidate or president. Last month, CNN published a taperecorded during the 2016 electionof former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and Trump discussing a possible payoff to keep Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, from talking publicly about an alleged extramarital affair with Trump.

Trump tweeted on Monday morning that Omarosa was objectively a bad employee and that Kelly wanted to fire her when he became chief of staff, but that Trump told him to try working it out because she spoke well of the president.

Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

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...really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

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If theres one thing for which its impossible to fault Donald Trump, it is the clarity of his intentions.

As he has emphasized in scores of tweets and public statements, he believes that the investigation into his campaigns ties to Russia is illegitimate and that the president should have much greater sway over the decisions of the countrys law enforcement agencies.

This conviction is the reason why he keeps attacking Robert Mueller. It is the reason why he and his allies have orchestrated a ferocious campaign to undermine the senior leadership of the FBI and the Department of Justicefrom Andrew McCabe, who was fired in March, to Rod Rosenstein, who is still holding onto his job by a thin thread. And it is, as Trump himself admitted Monday, also why he has long called for the head of Peter Strzok, the senior FBI agent who sent private text messages that were highly critical of Trump and who was unceremoniously fired Monday.

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Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

In the wake of this news, talking heads and opinion writers are battling about whether Strzok did anything sufficiently egregious to justify his firing. It is true that there is considerable evidence that he at times fell short of the FBIs exacting professional standards. As a report by the bureaus inspector general pointed out, he may have been at fault in not moving fast enough to investigate an additional trove of Hillary Clintons emails recovered from Anthony Weiners laptop. He violated standard security policies by forwarding the draft of a search warrant affidavit containing highly sensitive information to his private email address. And while employees of the FBI are of course at liberty to express their personal political views in private conversations, the careless phrasing of some of his text messagesasked whether Trump could ever become president, he responded: No. No he wont. Well stop it.could reasonably undermine public confidence about the independence of the bureau.

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However, there is also strong evidence that Strzoks personal views did not affect his professional conduct and even more compelling evidence that they did not sway the actions of the bureau as a whole. And while some of Strzoks text messages do sound damning when taken out of context, the overall exchange makes it amply evident that he was not proposing some deep state plot to undermine Trumps candidacy. As the inspector generals report concluded, we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions we reviewed.

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But the minutiae of Strzoks conduct are ultimately a distraction. The most important question right now is not Were Strzoks failings sufficiently grievous for him to get fired? It is, rather: Did he get fired because of his failingsor did the FBI buckle under the enormous pressure exerted by Donald Trump?

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That question is, unfortunately, far easier to answer. Testifying in front of Congress in June, the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, promised that the investigation into Strzok would be done by the book. But that is emphatically not what happened. The bureaus Office of Professional Responsibility merely recommended that Strzok be demoted and suspended for 60 days. But it was then overruled by David Bowdich, the deputy director of the FBI As Bradley Moss, a leading national security lawyer, has pointed out, that step was highly unusual. Maybe legal but definitely not standard practice.

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This should make us very concerned about the impending clash between Trump and his real target: Robert Mueller.

And this is why the crux of this complicated saga is actually pretty straightforward. Strzok stood accused of undermining public trust in the independence of the FBI through his carelessness. This is indeed a significant offense, one that liberals and conservatives alike should take very seriously. But by caving to a massive campaign of vilification by the president, and publicly violating Wrays promise that the investigation into Strzok would be done by the book, the bureaus leadership has undermined that trust in a much more public, deliberate, and grievous manner than the man they scapegoated ever did.

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Even at this late stage, many commentators still take it for granted that Trumps attempts to curb the independence of key political institutions will miraculously be foiled by the Constitution. But Strzoks firing is only the latest in a series of cases in which high-ranking civil servants have been personally attacked by the president and then been forced to leave office under highly unusual circumstances: At this point, Trump has managed to dispatch the FBIs director, its deputy director, its general counsel, and the head agent of its investigating agency.

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This is worrying for two important reasons. First, it sends a clear message to rank-and-file bureaucrats across different agencies: If you value your career, you better stay in the presidents good books. It will take years or decades until we gain the full measure to which this message may already be swaying supposedly apolitical decisions at all levels of the government. And if the message keeps being sent in ever more high-profile cases, we will have to start worrying that political pressure could influence the behavior of key institutions in ways that are directly inimical to the proper functioning of a democracy (like, for example, an investigation of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate on trumped-up charges).

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Second, it should make us very concerned about the impending clash between Trump and his real target: Robert Mueller. As Rep. Devin Nunes recently reminded us in his shocking remarks at a private fundraiser, many Republican legislators are now determined to defend the president against any meaningful investigation at just about any cost. The received wisdom remains that Trump cannot possibly win such an open confrontation. If Trump removes Mueller, the smart money says, it would mark the effective end of his presidency. But so far, Trump has amassed a strikingly strong batting average when it came to getting the targets of his ire fired from their jobs.

So if the strange saga of Peter Strzok does nothing else, it should refocus our attention on the urgency of defending the independence of our key political institutions, including the FBI and the Mueller probe.

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As the experience of countless other countries, from Russia to Turkey, shows, attacks on the rule of law often start with the politically motivated purge of comparatively minor figures whose record is not entirely clean. Once institutions that are supposed to be independent from the head of state become accustomed to yielding to political pressure, the demands keep ratcheting up. Before long, any critics of the government know that they are unlikely to receive the same treatment as other citizens.

We are still far from that dystopia. But despite Strzoks undoubted failings, the highly irregular manner of his firing is another early link along the chain that leads from the rule of law to what the Founding Fathers rightly deplored as the rule of men.
The meager turnout at the Unite the Right rally in D.C. on Sunday offered real confirmation that the alt-rights organizing capabilities have seriously atrophied in the wake of last years Charlottesville rally as a consequence of both infighting and resistance. Jason Kessler, an alt-right leader and one of the organizers of both rallies, told the National Park Service that between 100 and 400 demonstrators could be expected to show up in front of the White House. The violence that broke out around Charlottesvilles rally and the killing of counterprotester Heather Heyer led city officials and counterorganizers alike to fear the worst in the lead-up to this weekend. The citys emergency level was heightened, and widely criticized provisions to escort Kesslers demonstrators in private Metro cars were made. More than three dozen activist groups signed on to participate in counterprotest efforts, all but ensuring that those demonstrators would be vastly outnumbered. Even so, the extent to which Kesslers rally was dwarfed was a surprise. All of about 30 ralliers ultimately came for the event, which proved nearly impossible to see or hear behind the thousands of chanting demonstrators and throngs of journalists who packed into Lafayette Square for the big showdown. By 5:30 p.m., the time Kessler had scheduled the rally to begin, both Kesslers posse and most counterdemonstrators had started off home in the rain.

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In the year since Charlottesville, many in the alt-right movement have been forced from online fundraising, social media, and publishing platforms. They have been forced, too, from the streets and their workplaces by anti-fascist activists whose tactics were widely maligned as counterproductive by a number of pundits throughout the past year. Confrontation, doxing, and de-platforming, conventional wisdom went, could bolster the movements claims to martyrdom and repression and might ultimately embolden its leaders. Precisely the opposite has happened. Unite the Right holdout Richard Spencer, still perhaps the alt-rights most prominent figure, has spoken frankly about the challenge antifa has posed to his own organizing efforts ever since he was punched in the face by a protester on Inauguration Day in 2017. In March, he announced that he would no longer hold well-publicized public events. When they become violent clashes and pitched battles, they arent fun, he said. Antifa is winning. Andrew Anglin of the flagship neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer was among the alt-right figures who warned followers not to participate in Sundays rally. This isnt the same as the little demonstrations we did before Charlottesville, he wrote in a post last week. If you show up at this event, and you are identified, your life will be ruined. You wont be able to get into a university or get a good job, you probably wont be able to even get into a trade school or join a union.

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This wariness and Kesslers humiliation on Sunday suggest that the alt-rights days as a public-facing movement might be numbered for now, which isnt to say that the movement is dead. It seems plausible, in fact, that sympathizers might be more willing to join up if leaders arent asking them to risk physical harm or reputational damage in public demonstrations. The alt-right began as an online subculture and will remain one with real staying power, given the salience of far-right ideology among more Americans than we, until very recently, have been willing to admit.

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A national survey conducted after last years Unite the Right rallies suggests that about 10 million Americans believe they mostly agree with white supremacistsa number about the size of the self-described LGBTQ population. Most will never don swastika armbands or out themselves in any obvious way given the difficultynow and alwaysof separating much of the far rights rhetoric on race and immigration with the rhetoric of the conservative mainstream. Last week, Fox News Laura Ingraham lamented, to about 2.4 million viewers, the death of the America we know and love in some parts of the country.

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Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people, Ingraham said. And they are changes that none of us ever voted for and most of us dont like. Tucker Carlson, whose also highly rated show has been an ongoing experiment in the laundering of white-nationalist language for respectable audiences, has cast Democrats as a threat to the values of Anglo-American civilization and accused the party of plotting a coup via the immigration of minorities.

There are moreover five or so far-right figures running for office as Republicans across the country, including a neo-Nazi who ran unopposed in an Illinois congressional primary who will be on the partys ballot line come November. The Republican Partys nominee for Senate in Virginia, Corey Stewart, has been associated with Jason Kessler and white-nationalist types, as have some of his staffers. On Friday, the Independent Journal Review reported that Stewart will retain campaign adviser Rick Shaftan, who tweeted after 2014s protests in Ferguson that only a fool would start, finance or insure a business in a black neighborhood, alongside other similar racial commentary. Last week, Stewarts own Twitter account sent out a tweet calling former Michigan gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is a Muslim, a far left ISIS commie.

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Of course, no Republican politician means more to the far right than the president, and one hopes that those who gathered in Lafayette Square looked beyond and literally behind the gaggle of idiots marching about to appreciate fully the totality of what the far right has won since 2016. The protests and acts of resistance against Kirstjen Nielsen, Stephen Miller, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders over the administrations child-separation policy and the demonstrations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities have been at least as meaningful as Sundays counterdemonstrations, oriented as they are against the individuals and agencies working to actually implement some of the far rights objectives as policy. Those protests took the putative aim of Kesslers rallies as a foregone conclusion. The right is already united. The Kesslers and Andrew Anglins of this country, the president, his administration, his party, and millions of ordinary Americans share a common anxiety about the erosion of white power and influence over the direction of our society. On some days, that anxiety is an invitation to murder. On others, it reshapes our immigration policy from the White House. But it is the same concern. There is occasion, given this, for taking to Lafayette Square every daywhether or not 30 or so alt-righters have convened a pitiful assembly in the rain.
The Unite the Right 2 rally ended up being a big bust for white supremacists. Organizers had predicted hundreds of people would attend, and in the end only somewhere between 20 and 30 people showed up. They were vastly outnumbered by the counterprotesters who gathered to make sure the white supremacists knew they arent welcome in Washington. After around two hours, the rally ended and police escorted the demonstrators back to Virginia.

The counterprotesters made their feelings about the white supremacists evident with the help of signs. Below, some of the best signs seen throughout the day.

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This gentleman at the #unitetheright counterprotest has a tuba that lights up with Fuck Trump when he plays it. pic.twitter.com/kISoIYZM8k  Ellie Hall (@ellievhall) August 12, 2018

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Walt McGuire brought his daughter, Summit, to the counterprotest in Freedom Plaza. Its dumb, 9yo Summit said of the white nationalists and their message. I want people to know it doesnt matter how young you are. You can make a difference and you should speak out. pic.twitter.com/ccoQaD90o6  Christal Hayes (@Journo_Christal) August 12, 2018

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Make tiki torches non-political again, is one of the many signs out here at the counter protest today. #UniteTheRight2 pic.twitter.com/4HZi16p39w  Adam Sabes (@asabes10) August 12, 2018

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ICONIC:

Roses are red

Taxis are yellow

Id take snakes on a plane

Over Nazis on Metro#UniteTheRight2 #ShutItDownDC pic.twitter.com/iiirViKlXU  Daniel Frank (@daniel_frank16) August 12, 2018

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Rena Finkel originally came to D.C. for an anime convention, #Okaton, but after hearing about #UniteTheRight, she decided to ditch the final day to join a counter proteststill in full costume. I couldnt possibly just stay at my convention, she said https://t.co/mb9BdDRslV pic.twitter.com/Rs6Q3tzinK  The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) August 12, 2018

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These two from Maryland say they are proud to be a part of this demonstration. #ShutItDownDC #UnitedAgainstHate pic.twitter.com/o7lqRnGXEj  WUSA9 (@wusa9) August 12, 2018

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Attending Unite the Right 2 and counter-protests today. First: Unite Against Hate in Freedom Plaza. pic.twitter.com/KRe370gZo3  Richard Cooke (@rgcooke) August 12, 2018

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Just spotted this at the counterprotester rally: Remember when presidents liked journalists better than nazis #UnitedAgainstHate pic.twitter.com/iksakowMKI  Christal Hayes (@Journo_Christal) August 12, 2018
Def Con, one of the most prominent annual hacking conferences in the world, was held in Las Vegas over the weekend. The conference is essentially a cavalcade of terrifying reminders that the technology that we rely on to maintain a somewhat functioning society is not as secure as we think. Here are some of the most jaw-dropping device vulnerabilities that hackers revealed at this years Def Con.

Amazon Echo

Researchers from the Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent presented the results of a months-long project to devise a way to surreptitiously convert Amazons Echo smart speaker into a surveillance device on Sunday. Wired reports that Tencent representatives Wu Huiyu and Qian Wenxiang said that the research team managed to string together multiple bugs in the second-generation Echo that would allow a hacker to remotely stream audio from the devices microphone. However, Echo owners need not fretthe researchers already notified Amazon of their methods, and the company rolled out automatic security updates to the speakers last month. Plus, the attack is fairly sophisticated and requires access to a targets Wi-Fi network, so Echo owners who arent being hounded by highly trained and dedicated hackers wouldve been safe anyway.

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The researchers found that they could alter an Echo by retrofitting the flash chip with their own firmware and then use it to attack other Echos via the local network that allows the devices to communicate with each other. The infiltration method would have been particularly effective against Echos in hotels, schools, or other places where a large group of people are sharing the same Wi-Fi.

Voting Machines

This is the second year that Def Con organizers have filled a conference room with the same types of voting machines that will likely be deployed for the midterms so that hackers can try their hand at election tampering. Participants ultimately managed to upload their own software to the machines and manipulate the vote tallies. One hacker even found a way to make a voting machine loop the Supa Hot Fire GIF.

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A hacked voting machine tweaked to show SUPA HOT FIRE pic.twitter.com/3VoTPX84Zm  alfred  (@alfredwkng) August 10, 2018

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In addition, organizers had around 40 children between the ages of 6 and 17 attempt to infiltrate replicas of the election board websites for several swing states. The kids exploited vulnerabilities that allowed them to tamper with vote tabulations and change the names of candidates to Bob Da Builder, Richard Nixons Head, and other spoof terms. An 11-year-old reportedly hacked into a mock-up of the Florida secretary of states website and changed the voting results within 10 minutes.

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Voting machine manufacturers and some election officials predictably indicated that they were unimpressed with the results, arguing that the Def Con tests did not accurately simulate all of the security features and time restrictions that a hacker would face at an actual polling place.

Police Body Cameras

On Saturday, a consultant named Josh Mitchell from the cybersecurity firm Nuix reported the results of a test he had conducted on five different body camera models that surveillance companies are marketing to U.S. law enforcement. With the exception of one device made by Digital Ally, Mitchell was able to remotely download, alter, and then re-upload footage onto the cameras without leaving a trace.

Mitchell also devised a way to livestream footage from the cameras, potentially allowing a criminal to track a cops location and predict upcoming law enforcement actions. He further found that he could infect some of the cameras with malware, which could then spread to other databases and systems in a police department when an officer syncs the device with a computer connected to the network.

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Voicemail

Hacker Martin Vigo presented research showing that a vulnerability in voicemail could allow a nefarious actor to access a targets accounts for online services like PayPal and WhatsApp. According to Vigo, most major carriers have failed to update the security of their voicemail features and still rely on easily guessable PINs as passwords.

People who dont set their own PINs are particularly at risk because the default is usually just the last four digits of their phone numbers. Yet even people who have changed the code from the default are still vulnerable to brute-force attacks, since most voicemail systems dont have a limit on the number of times you can guess the password. Once hackers have broken into the voicemail system, they can request that WhatsApp send the targets code via a phone call. If the target doesnt pick up, the call is transferred to voicemail where the hackers can hear it.

Vigo claims that slight variations on this scheme allow hackers to break into PayPal, eBay, LinkedIn, and other accounts.
Last year, a video posted to Twitter captured two Facebook employees using a soap dispenser in an employee bathroom. The white employee places his hand under the dispenser and receives soap without incident. But when the black employee holds his hand under the dispenser, nothing happens. The sensor cannot recognize his hand.

It was a small example of a problem that plagues the design industry. If you have ever had a problem grasping the importance of diversity in tech and its impact on society, watch this video, wrote Chukwuemeka Afigbo, who published it. Afigbos interaction with the soap dispenser demonstrates a failure in its design. Its hard to imagine the same outcome would have occurred if the dispensers design team had tested the product with black users, or if the design team consisted of racially diverse employees.

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Examples of product design that fail on the ethics front are all too easy to findlike news feeds promoting fake news, ride-hailing companies psychologically exploiting workers, and virtual home assistants perpetuating negative gender stereotypes. Its not that product designers dont care about the ethical ramifications of their workfar from it. Its that, too often, they assume that such considerations fall outside of their job description.

Mike Monteiro, co-founder and design director of Mule Design and author of the influential essay A Designers Code of Ethics, says that this ignorance has become an issue with the rapid change in scope of design over the past decade. Designers have been running fast and free with no ethical guidelines, he told me. And that was fine when we were designing posters and sites for movies. But now design is interpersonal relationships on social media, health care, financial data traveling everywhere, the difference between verified journalism and fake news. And this is dangerous.

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Ethical design means considering the context of the product you create.

Increasingly, though, the industry is taking ethics seriously. Every year at SXSW, John Maeda, the global head of computational design and inclusion at Automattic, presents the Design in Tech Report, which serves as a kind of State of the Union on design in technology. This year, Maeda focused on inclusion as the future of design. Maeda defines inclusive design as designing products for a broader audiencewhether thats people with disabilities, people living outside of the U.S., people of color, or older people. On his list of the top 10 most critical issues and challenges currently facing design, ethics in design came in third, behind design not having a seat at the table  (No. 1), and diversity in design and tech (No. 2).

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While Maeda said in a direct message over Twitter that hes not trying to make a business case for ethics in design, his argument at least partially relies on a business imperative: Inclusive design expands your products total market. (And in an industry soon to be dominated by artificial intelligence and machine learning, its a very useful, very human skill for a designer.) To illustrate the relationship between business and ethics in Maedas argument, take his analysis of an adjacent industry: Hollywood. In the final slides of his SXSW report, Maeda references the recent hit movie Black Panther as proof that inclusion pays off financially: A film featuring predominantly black and female characters has earned more than $1 billion worldwide.

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Maedas argument assumes that a business goal aligns with a moral one. But what about the case of the soap dispenser? A product that can recognize a wider range of skin tones could come with a higher price tag because it requires more advanced optic sensors. Similarly, Facebook and other tech companies that profit from advertising face calls to design less addictive productsan ethical move that would contradict business sense. Monteiro, who has been an advocate for ethics in design for years, points out the danger inherent to this kind of win-win argument: They say you cant ignore women because women have a lot of money, you cant ignore gay people because gay people have a lot of money. So when do we start paying attention to refugees? When do we start paying attention to the poor? The business case cant be the reason why we start acting like human beings because it leaves a lot of people out in the cold. We have to be better than that.

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Vivianne Castillo, a user experience researcher at Weight Watchers with a background in counseling and human services, had a different reaction than Maeda to the success of Black Panther. She too references the film as a sign of inclusions potentialbut she sees its financial success as a byproduct of, not the main incentive for, inclusion. More than money, the benefit is that little boys and girls are seeing themselves as strong women or heroes, she says. Theyre not the help, theyre not thugs. Theyre respected and valued for what they have to contribute to the world.

Monteiro says that a lot needs to happen before designers can properly address ethical standards. He suggests taking cues from other industries, like medicine and law, where practitioners are regulated rather than assumed to behave ethically. Echoing the recent push for ethics classes in engineering higher education, Monteiro suggests that design education should include ethical training and that passing an ethics test should be a requirement for earning a design degree. Moreover, professional designers need to be licensed and reviewedjust like doctors and lawyers. Sure, there are bad actors in those fields, but at least there are mechanisms to deter or discipline them.

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What would this kind of training and monitoring entail? Ethical design means considering the context of the product you create. Designers need to learn how to think about moral questions for themselves: What are the long-term problems facing the industry youre designing for? How does your design problem relate to or intersect with or contribute to them? At what environmental, cultural, and social cost does your design solution come? Who is your design solution serving, and who is it not serving? Are your team and testing representative of the populations impacted? How does your solution play into your users values, preferences, and behaviors?

Take Airbnb as an example. Designers created the home-sharing platform with the intention of cultivating trust between hosts and guests, working from the research insight that this would eliminate users main apprehension. Their solution: Guests apply for a stay by mandatory sharing of a photo and personal information, creating a profile that the host then accepts or denies at his or her discretion. While this design solution aptly addresses the short-term question of how to convince users to book housing with Airbnb, it fails to consider the larger context in which the product existsnamely, an industry historically rife with discriminatory practices. Airbnbs designers have inadvertently created an environment conducive to racism and discrimination by basing housing approval on information about a guests identity. Guests reported that their reservations were being denied or canceled based on their race or gender identity.

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After a Harvard study showed guests with stereotypically black names received fewer bookings on the platform than those with white-sounding names, the company planned to improve the situation. In addition to policy changes, Airbnb tasked its designers with delivering a more ethical design solution. This included creating a booking process that relies less on guest photos, designing a feature that prohibits hosts from accepting reservations for any time period that has already been denied to someone else, adding tools to flag discrimination or hate speech, and promoting the sites instant booking option that does not require host approval. These design changes offered major improvement to Airbnbs product from an ethical standpoint.

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As a product designer, I know that no mandate exists to integrate these ethical checks and balances in our process. While I may hear a lot of these issues raised at speaking events and industry meetups, more practical considerations can overshadow these conversations in my day-to-day decision making. When they have to compete with the workaday pressures of budgets, roadmaps, and clients, these questions wont emerge as priorities organically.

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Most important, then, is action. Castillo worries that the conversation about ethics in design could become a cliche, like empathy or diversity in tech, where its more talk than walk. She says its not surprising that ethics in tech hasnt been addressed in depth in the past, given the industrys lack of diversity. Because most tech employees come from socially privileged backgrounds, they may not be as attuned to ethical concerns. A designer who identifies with societys dominant culture may have less personal need to take another perspective. Indeed, identification with a societys majority is shown to be correlated with less critical awareness of the world outside of yourself. Castillo says that, as a black woman in America, shes a bit wary of this conversations effectiveness if it remains only a conversation.

You know how someone says, Whyd you become a nurse or doctor? And they say, I want to help people? asks Castillo. Wouldnt it be cool if someone says, Whyd you become an engineer or a product designer? And you say, I want to help people. 

Inclusion is a significant way for designers to do so. Other ethical design practices include considering the intersecting issues of accessibility, privacy, and time and attention. This is the vision we need to embrace for todays designersbut it will only happen by design.
While ratcheting up pressure on Tehran, the sanctions are worsening rifts between the United States and European allies, and other world powers, which say they remain committed to the nuclear deal, and will not comply with the USA sanctions. We the first batch almost seven months ago and the second batch is about to be transferred back to Iran.

"In general, sanctions are unjust", he said.

"America is turning up the pressure and we want the U.K.by our side", Ambassador Woody Johnson, who owns the New York Jets with his brother, wrote in an op-ed published Sunday in the Telegraph. "We are asking global Britain to use its considerable diplomatic power and influence and join us as we lead a concerted global effort toward a genuinely comprehensive agreement", Johnson said.

Until then, America is turning up the pressure and we want the United Kingdom by our side'.

Tensions between Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani have ratcheted up in recent months amid USA -imposed sanctions on Iran.

The US leader is set to impose a second wave of sanctions in November on Iran's energy and petrochemical industries, which are seen as lifelines for the Middle Eastern nation's economy. Ignoring all the agreements signed by the preceding US presidents, Trump is "acting like a bully and engaging in a street fight by racketeering and intimidating", according to a review covered in Chinese media.

Canada in holding pattern as US, Mexico work on bilateral NAFTA issues

Mexico's President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has vowed that his country would not be threatened by a wall. President said Friday that a trade deal with is "coming along nicely".

"We won't let Washington dictate us with whom we can do business and we therefore stick to the Vienna Nuclear Agreement so that Iran cannot build atomic weapons", Altmaier said. The punitive measures, a follow-up to the USA decision in early May to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, restrict Iranian access to USA currency, gold, and other precious materials.

"Only by presenting a united front can we exert the maximum possible pressure on the Iranian regime, and get it to finally change course and put an end to its malign and reckless activities both at home and overseas", said the ambassador.

Johnson said Tehran had used money going into the country after the 2015 deal and the easing of sanctions not to improve the lives of ordinary Iranians but to increase spending on the military and proxy forces in the Middle East, including sponsoring Hezbollah in Lebanon, arming militants in Yemen, and launching cyber-attacks against Western democracies.

In Tehran, the foreign ministry was more guarded about a possible visit by Abadi.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said last week that Trump's repudiation of the nuclear deal was illegal and Iran would not yield to Washington's renewed campaign to strangle Iran's vital oil exports.

During a press briefing last week, Abadi said Iraq would not react to the US-Iran dispute but said Baghdad would abide by the sanctions "to protect the interests of our people".
German investors keep coming to Slovakia, bringing more automation

Corruption remains to be a problem, companies say.

Established in 1991, Volkswagen Slovakia has developed into the biggest private employer in Slovakia. (Source: Courtesy of Volkswagen Slovakia)

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Jurgen Knie (Source: Courtesy of the Slovak-German Chamber of Commerce)

The murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee, Martina Kusnirova, shocked not only Slovakia but also made headlines abroad. The Slovak-German Chamber of Commerce was one of the organisations that responded to the murders with an official stance. In its statement headlined, The Time for Responsibility, the chamber condemned the murders and called for a more effective fight against corruption and better law enforcement.

Anti-corruption laws have been tightened and processes to increase transparency and facilitate criminal prosecution have been introduced in Slovakia, read the stance. Thus, the shortcomings in rule of law do not lie in legislation but primarily in practical law enforcement.

Corruption and the fight against it is a topic that repeatedly top lists of barriers for doing business in Slovakia. The Slovak Spectator spoke with the president of the Slovak-German Chamber of Commerce, Jurgen Knie, about this issue, along with Slovak-German business relations, and the operation of the chamber in Slovakia.

The Slovak Spectator (TSS): Why did the Slovak-German Chamber of Commerce respond to the double murder of Jan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova?

13. Aug 2018 at 6:30 | Jana Liptakova
The biggest car maker, energy company and family businesses have found their way to Slovakia

Seven different stories of German investments in Slovakia.

(Source: Courtesy of T-Systems Slovakia)

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A unique space for young people about to be created in Bratislava

The Old Dining Room opens its doors in the spring of 2019, but a large community action is already being prepared to take place this September.

The building of the former dining room on the Krasnany housing estate in the Bratislava  Raca district was still dilapidated three years ago. But today, this is no longer the case. A group of active parents from Krasnany and organisations the Mladez ulice (Street Youth) and Rodinne centrum Racik (Family Centre) joined their forces. They decided to build a community centre for young people who do not attend any clubs or other organised extracurricular activities.

"In the town, there is almost no space for older children in teenage age to spend their free time. On children's playgrounds, there is a warning sign that they are only for children under 12 years of age. Not all families, however, can afford to fill children's afternoons with clubs and training," remarks Miroslav Dudlak from the Stara Jedalen (Old Dining Room). He thinks that in their adolescence, children also need an unorganized time which does not focus just on performance, competition, and talent. This is exactly what they will be able to find in the Old Dining Room.

"We want to create a safe space for children and also provide them with a support programme led by social workers from the organisation Street Youth. It should help them go through the pitfalls of adolescence and influence them to become good and loving people," adds Dudlak. The Old Dining Room community centre is a creation by ten people who have been working on making this dream come true as a part of their day jobs or as volunteers during their evenings.

The activists were given the premises of the former dining room on Pekna cesta by the local government in a very bad state. In the first year, they have reconstructed the roof, cleaned the interiors and the surrounding premises, changed windows and made electrical installations.

Even though the refurbishment of premises has not yet been completed, in the summer of 2017, the organizers involved in the activities of the Old Dining Room also the children from the housing estate for the first time. "We invited them in and let them decorate the dining room with sprays, of course, under the guidance of renowned graffiti artists. Music band Chalani z chartce (Boys from the Hut) from Moldava nad Bodvou played for us and also participated in the graffiti decoration," says Dudlak.

Grafitti Workshop (Source: Miro)

In addition, the activists have organised several events, including a concert by the band Para  Brutalna zostava. Their forerunners were young people from the music band FUSION from Raca.

"In the first half of 2018, we had to stop working for a while due to the construction bustle. However, we are planning a large community action for the end of September. Preparations are currently in full swing. Today, I can reveal only so much that there will also be a cyclo-cinema, where the audience will paddle on 10 bicycles and produce electricity for the projection and sound," says Dudlak.

The organizers lack the last 15 percent of resources for reconstruction today. At the occasion of the International Youth Day, you can contribute too. Just click on the link with password Support.

The Slovak Spectator has teamed up with Dobra Krajina (Great Country) to create a space for stories of people and communities who need our help. Each article in the series F or a great country will give you the opportunity to support a specific project and actively contribute to building a great country.

13. Aug 2018 at 12:39 | Simona Fiabane (Pontis Foundation)
General prosecutor will release 44 people from confidentiality in kidnapping case

The German side will check medialised information.

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Prosecutor General Jaromir Ciznar announced on Monday, August 13 that he plans to release 44 people from the obligation to preserve confidentiality in the case of the kidnapping of Vietnamese citizen Trinh Xuan Thanh.

The interviews are in progress, and the order of the interviews is determined by those who are carrying them out, said Ciznar, as cited by the TASR newswire.

Ciznar also said that the German side has not requested an interview with the ministrys chief of protocol Radovan Culak. This was confirmed for Ciznar by German Prosecutor General Peter Frank, whom he met on Friday, August 10. Frank told him that Slovakias legal assistance was highly professional.

Read also:

Read also: Dennik N: This is what the Vietnamese kidnapping looked like Read more

One of the topics discussed at the meeting was the idea of setting up a joint investigation team.

The German side is not interested in creating a joint investigation team, said Ciznar. The Germans are investigating a crime committed on their territory.

The German prosecutor general told Ciznar that he has no knowledge of the medialised information from the investigation file that relates to the alleged abduction of Thanh by a Slovak governmental plane.

He did not deny its existence, however, according to Ciznar. The German general prosecutor promised to check the medialised information and keep him informed.

The Dennik N daily informed on August 2 that the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily published a report, according to which German investigators no longer doubt that the Slovak governmental plane was used during the abduction of Trinh Xuan Thanh.

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Read also: Abduction: The accusations are absurd, Kalinak said Read more

13. Aug 2018 at 23:42 | Compiled by Spectator staff
Tucked away in the small mountain town of Pinedale, Wyoming youll find Pine Coffee Supply, a little coffee bar with a growing reputation. Open since summer 2017, the shop has already garnered national attentionFood & Wine Magazine called it the best coffee in Wyoming in March of 2018. Roasting happens in-house, and a lot more besidesthis place is a fascinating and beautiful expression of coffee culture set at the foot of the Wind River Mountains.

Sat on a corner lot on the citys main street, Pine Coffee occupies a former mechanic shop. An extensive remodel was undertaken by shop founders Jim and Cody Hamilton, a father and son duo with deep Wyoming roots, which included hand-built pine furniture, benches, and accents. They kept the original garage door and leave it open on warm summer days opening up their bar to a patio. Their front room wall is adorned with a hand-stenciled mural of all things coffee, while further back in the shop, youll find a cozy couch in front of a fireplace and around the corner a huge pine community table and space perfect for public events.

Their coffee bar is equipped with a Mavam espresso machine, PuqPress, KafaTek Monolith grinder for espresso, Technivorm Grand Brewer, and Mahlkonig batch grinder. They also just recently started roasting their own coffee on a one kilogram Aillio Bullet roaster, but have used Middle State Coffee out of Denver as their resident roaster since opening while rotating different roasters monthly.

Thats a lot of gear and quality for a little town in Wyoming, and Jim Hamiltonthe elderadmits to having some nerves about opening up here. My biggest fear coming into Pinedale was, can any coffee shop really survive in a small town? Further doubt clouded their vision after seeking advice from longtime friend and previous business partner, Tom Billions of The Coffee Ethic in Springfield, MO, who simply said, dont do it.

Everything changed a month later when Billions unexpectedly passed away. His life and his passing affected a lot of people back in Springfield and shed light on the positive impact a coffee shop can have in a community. Jim and Cody had a change of heart and knew it was time to open Pine Coffee Supply. We knew how behind the times coffee was in the whole state and we wanted to bring third wave in, Cody Hamilton tells me. We said no at first, this wont work, but then came back to it.

Truly its a family affair at Pine Coffee Supply. Today Cody is the director of tech, coffee, and roasting, while Jim works as the CFO and numbers guy. Tina HamiltonJims wife, Codys mommanages books and details, while Maddie HamiltonCodys wifeis the director of purchasing and supplies as well as the master of scheduling. And last but not least their daughter, Wren (age 10), is the barista in training.

If it all sounds like something out of a frontier novelLittle Coffee Shop In The Mountainswell, thats just fine with the Hamiltons. People are moving back to small towns, Maddie Hamilton tells me, and Cody agrees. We wanted to change the pace of life. Mission accomplished here in this tiny town of just 2,000, of whom the Hamiltons are now a community fixture.

Up next, Cody has big plans for their in-house roasting program as well as future coffee subscriptions. In the meantime, should you ever find yourself in Pinedale, Wyoming, Id say Pine Coffee Supply counts as a must-visit. There may not be many other specialty shops around to compete with, but you cant hold that against the Hamilton family. Coffee doesnt have to come from the big city in order to be delicious. In fact, one might argue that small town coffee offers something special you cant find anywhere else.

Tarra Culbertson is a contributor based in Salt Lake City. Read more Tarra Culbertson on Sprudge.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

What could be a happier moment? You starting work with the setup process of a brand new Mac.

What could be an unhappier moment? You starting work with the setup process of a brand new Mac.

Excuse the quiz writers for puzzling over an answer key, as news unfolds that hacking would be possible via Apple's enterprise hardware management setup tools.

The result would be gaining remote access to the Mac.

It appeared that the new Mac could be compromised even before the user were to take it out of the box.

The researchers' findings were discussed at the recent Black Hat USA 2018 in Las Vegas. Jesse Endahl, chief security officer of Apple device management firm Fleetsmith, and Max Belanger, a staff engineer at Dropbox, were at the show to explain their findings.

"We found a bug that allows us to compromise the device and install malicious software before the user is ever even logged in for the very first time," Endahl said, in Cult of Mac.

What's it all about?

Simply put, the mischief maker can construct, as Mikey Campbell in AppleInsider wrote, " a man-in-the-middle attack that downloads malware or other malicious software before a client logs in to a new Mac for the first time."

The "enterprise tools" involved and being talked about at length are the Device Enrollment Program and Mobile Device Management platform.

"The attack takes advantage of enterprise Macs using Apple's Device Enrollment Program (.pdf) and its Mobile Device Management platform," said Buster Hein at Cult of Mac. "The enterprise tools allow companies to completely customize a Mac shipped to an employee straight from Apple. However, a flaw in the system allows attackers to put malware on the Macs remotely."

These very tools work in tandem so that companies can look forward to easy IT setup regimens in deploying a large number of devices to their workers, said AppleInsider.

As Wired also said, "The idea is that a company can ship Macs to its workers directly from Apple's warehouses, and the devices will automatically configure to join their corporate ecosystem after booting up for the first time and connecting to Wi-Fi."

And that advantage would make sense for businesses where some of the workforce are in a satellite office or working from their homes.

A Black Hat conference briefing item on the same said, "Our talk walks through the various stages of bootstrapping, showing which binaries are involved, the IPC flows on the device, and evaluates the network (TLS) security of key client/server communications. We will follow with a live demo showing how a nation-state actor could exploit this vulnerability such that a user could unwrap a brand new Mac, and the attacker could root it out of the box the first time it connects to WiFi."

Hein in Cult of Mac went on to explain that "when enterprise Macs use MDM [Mobile Device Management] to see which apps to install off the Mac App Store, there is no certificate pinning to verify the manifest's authenticity. Hackers could use a man-in-the-middle exploit to install malicious apps to access data. Making matters worse, the flaw could be used to hack an entire company's computers."

Campbell also looked at "certificate pinning," which is intended to authenticate web servers through the configuration process. "In particular, the researchers found a bug in Apple's MDM sequence that, when the process hands the machine over to the Mac App Store, fails to complete pinning to confirm the authenticity of an app download manifest, the report said. The hole provides an opportunity for hackers to install malicious code on a target Mac remotely and without alerting the end user."

Lily Hay Newman referred to "certificate pinning" in Wired as "a method of confirming that particular web servers are who they claim."

A problem during one step was spotted by the researchers. "When MDM hands off to the Mac App Store to download enterprise software, the sequence retrieves a manifest for what to download and where to install it without pinning to confirm the manifest's authenticity."

Endahl said in his company 's news release that "under the hood, the DEP and MDM implementations involve many moving parts, and the bootstrapping process exposes vulnerabilities when a device is brought to a fully-provisioned state."

Apple's response? According to reports, Apple addressed the issue when notified by the researchers, in that the vulnerability was patched in macOS High Sierra 10.13.6.

 2018 Tech Xplore
Some demonstrators lobbed rocks, bottles, and smoke bombs at riot police.

Riot police responded with baton charges.

"I firmly condemn riot police's brutal intervention, strongly disproportionate to the actions of the majority of people in the square", he said on his Facebook page.

In addition to protesters, some police officers were also injured when protesters retaliated, with some reportedly throwing bottles.

"Any form of violence is unacceptable", he said.

Press outlets around the world covered the protest that took place in Bucharest, Romania on August 10, dubbed the "Diaspora's protest" as Romanians who live overseas travelled back to the country to protest the Dancila government and demand snap elections to take down the PSD-ALDE coalition, which has a strong majority in the Parliament.

Around four million people have left the country - one of the European Union's poorest - in the last 15 years, seeking a better life than that offered by Romania's average monthly wage of just 520 euros. Smaller protests were also held in other cities across the country. No official figures were available.

Several more thousands protesting against graft and politicians' attempts to decriminalise several corruption offences gathered in the Transylvanian cities of Cluj, Sibiu and Brasov, in Timisoara on the border with Serbia, and in the eastern city of Iasi.

The demonstrations in Bucharest turned violent late on August 10 as riot police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse what the police said were "provocateurs" who joined the rallies.

A group of protesters tried to break into the government building in Bucharest, but were held back by the police security cordon.

Former cycling champion Ullrich detained after attack on prostitute

Ullrich was arrested and then released the next day, although a restraining order was taken out against him by Schweiger. Mr Ullrich said he was only trying to talk to his neighbour.

This time, the protest was peaceful, with no violent clashes.

Over 400 people received medical care at the square that night and two gendarmes were attacked, it said.

There were also several arrests outside the seat of government in the capital.

People shine the lights of their mobile phones during a protest outside the government headquarters in Bucharest.

"Have no fear! Romanians will rise up!" they yelled.

Iohannis, the European Commission, and the U.S. State Department criticized the proposed changes to judicial legislation, saying they could derail the rule of law.

Social Democrat leader Liviu Dragnea was sentenced to three and a half years in prison by the Supreme Court in June for incitement to abuse of office, a ruling which is not final as it is pending an appeal.

Iohannis in July signed a decree to remove the popular chief anticorruption prosecutor from her post. Those changes made it through parliament but are now being challenged in the country's constitutional court.

Under Kovesi's leadership, corruption conviction rates rose sharply in one of the EU's most corruption-plagued members.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared to extend an olive branch on Wednesday, saying he would keep pressing Saudi Arabia on civil liberties but also saying the Gulf Arab state had made some progress on human rights.

The diplomatic dispute between Canada and Saudi Arabia which was sparked by the Canadian government voicing support for Raif and Samar Badawi, two sisters who have been imprisoned in the Islamic Kingdom for protesting for human rights for women, has escalated, the New York Post reports.

"We are not able at this time to fully assess the effect on the SNC-Lavalin Group's current and future business opportunities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia".

The consultancy said Germany and Poland were the leading wheat exporters to Saudi Arabia but poor weather could hit their exportable surplus this year.

But while Saudi Arabia has been getting messages of support from regional allies and even rivals like Russia, Canada's Western allies - even those who had experienced similar Saudi outbursts in the past, such as Germany and Sweden - have chose to keep out of the latest dispute, at least publicly.

The top diplomats exchanged views on regional issues, the statement said, adding that the phone call also addressed the recent rift between Canada and Saudi Arabia.

Arsenal's uncomfortable Petr Cech earns 5/10 as Gunners struggle vs

The Gunners signed five players in the summer transfer window to bolster Emery's squad ahead of the new Premier League campaign. The France striker injected more urgency into Arsenal's attacks and sent an effort just wide only moments after coming on.

"We are witnessing a democratic constitutional state such as Canada being shown up and disciplined by Saudi Arabia, a state that tortures [citizens and] shows contempt for human rights", spokesman Martin Lessenthin said.

Saudi Arabia, angered by Canada's demand last week that jailed activists in the kingdom be freed immediately, expelled the Canadian ambassador, blocked imports of Canadian grain and ended state-backed educational and medical programs in Canada.

The 140-character limit, or 280 in some cases, is not enough to allow for the level of nuance that is required in diplomatic relations and tweets may not be subjected to the same rigorous review process, including sign off by the ambassador, that an official statement would be, he said.

Many Saudi media outlets and online personalities have taken to the web and airwaves to criticize Canada for everything from the opioid epidemic to its treatment of Indigenous Peoples.

"We should lead by example with them, not sort of bludgeon our trading partners with our Canadian principles". "We will continue to use the full range of methods of communication as appropriate".
A spokesman for the US military, Lt. Col. Martin O'Donnell, said the city "remains under Afghan government control, and the isolated and disparate Taliban forces remaining in the city do not pose a threat to its collapse, as some have claimed". Local television station 1TV says the number of fatalities has risen to more than 100, but there is no official confirmation.

The city of about 140,000 people was in lockdown as residents stayed indoors and reported sporadic gunfire.

"Afghan security forces in the next two days will be able to restore peace and stability to Ghanzi and reopen the highway to enable our countrymen to travel from south and west to Kabul", vowed the army chief.

But information about who controlled the city was hard to confirm with power and mobile services cut to the area after the Taliban destroyed a telecommunications tower, according to Ghazni MP Shah Gul Rezaye. "The Taliban are roaming everywhere in and around the city", shopkeeper Mohammad Haleem said hours after the assault began.

Likewise, most residents were trapped inside the city.

Videos circulating on social media, reportedly from Ghazni, show heavily armed Taliban fighters patrolling the city amid a large plume of smoke and flames.

Yet any time the Taliban are invading key cities on major highways in Afghanistan, it's consequential, even if the city didn't fall in the first push.

"The security situation in Ghazni is under control". While in control of the city, fighters destroyed multiple government facilities, seized military equipment, executed opponents and freed prisoners from the city's jails. Just this week, American Special Forces were deployed to the city to help train local forces and guard against renewed attacks.

Danish confirmed that 25 Afghan security forces, as well as one Afghan journalist, had been killed in the fighting.

Woods wows US PGA with vintage display

His birdie on the closing hole brought him up to second, serving notice that he can continue to be a force in major championships. But he made a bad swing at 12, the 452-yard par-four at Bellerive Country Club, and followed that up with some bad judgment.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the insurgents had taken the district centre of Khwajaumari, north of the city, and several areas in other districts of Ghazni province. After a day of intense fighting, Afghan commandos and U.S. air strikes drove the group to the outskirts of the city.

U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Martin O'Donnell, a spokesman for the U.S. -led military coalition in Afghanistan, told reporters that initial reports suggested "minimal" casualties among Afghan forces.

Fighting flared in seven neighborhoods of Ghazni, including three pockets within a half-mile of the governor's residence, said Nasir Faqiri, a member of the provincial council. But Abdul Wakil managed to escape and reach a checkpoint into Kabul.

Anticipation had been mounting about the possibility of a government ceasefire announcement for the Islamic holiday of Eid-al Adha later this month.

The attack was the largest tactical operation launched by the Taliban since an unprecedented truce in June brought fighting between security forces and the Taliban to a temporary pause, providing war-weary Afghans some welcome relief.

The meetings in Afghanistan's northern neighbour follow recent reports that the Taliban sent similar delegations to China, illustrating the group's rising ambitions to engage in independent talks with foreign governments as momentum for a peace settlement in the country builds.

A spokesman for USA forces in Afghanistan also described the fight for Ghazni as a clearance operation, with sporadic clashes between security forces and insurgents punctuating relative calm.

"His most likely move would be to revert to his earlier preference to more or less pull out of Afghanistan, leaving only a bare-bones counterterror presence, possibly secured by contractors", Markey added. "Whichever side controls Ghazni, [it] can control the neighbouring provinces of Paktika and Zabul as well", he said.
The troubles of turbulence-hit Jet Airways are showing no signs of abatement. Days after Naresh Goyal-owned airline deferred the quarterly financial results, audit firm BSR & Co, an affiliate of KPMG India, has reportedly refused to sign the first quarter results of Jet Airways due to differing views over interpretations of some accounting rules, The Economic Times reported. It added that BSR might even consider resigning from the account if the issue is not resolved.

In another report, the daily said that the debt-laden airline has initiated a formal stake-sale process to raise $350-400 million from global private equity firms. The full-service carrier is going through rough weather owing to rise in fuel costs and pile up of interests due to huge debt on its books. It added that Jet Airways has put out feelers to PE funds including Blackstone, TPG and Indigo Capital Partners.

The troubled airline is planning to monetise its JPMiles programme. Jet Airways had sold the majority stake of its frequent flyer loyalty programme to Etihad Airways in 2014. The Gulf-based carrier had picked up 50.1 per cent stake in JetPrivilege for $150 million. Goyal, who raised Jet Airways from the scratch after India opened its skies for private carriers in 1991, has roped in an investment bank to offload some of the stake, the report said.

In 2013, Jet Airways had sold 24 per cent equity to Etihad Airways for $379 million after the government allowed foreign airlines to take up to 49 per cent stake in Indian carriers.

Jet Airways' negative net worth is well over Rs 7,000 crore with total liabilities of Rs 19,743 crore against total assets of Rs 12,501 crore. In May 2018, ratings agency ICRA lowered credit ratings on its short-term and long-term loans due to weakening finances. The airline's cost of fuel as a percentage of operations shot up from nearly 40 per cent 2 years ago to nearly 65 per cent today.
This week on Anhs Brush with Fame the subject is Associate Professor Munjed Al Muderis.

Anh invites ground-breaking surgeon Associate Professor Munjed Al Muderis to share his gruelling journey from Saddams Iraq to an outback detention centre in Australia, and how he has gone on to make his name in revolutionary robotic prosthetics.

Munjed had a privileged upbringing in Baghdad, but always had a sense that he wanted to help the victims of war that he saw around him. Early in his medical career, he was confronted with a brutal ultimatum by members of Saddams regime, and he made the snap decision to flea his homeland or else face dire consequences.

After a gruelling journey at the hands of unscrupulous people smugglers, his overcrowded boat was intercepted off Christmas Island, where Munjed would experience one moment of great kindness that taught him to take any available opportunity to help others. He was detained at Curtin Detention Centre in the Australian outback, where he was considered a trouble-maker for trying to improve conditions in the camp, before being granted release and refugee status one year later.

Working to have his Iraqi medical qualifications recognised, Munjed found a position at a rural Victorian hospital and devoted all his time to his dream of becoming an orthopaedic surgeon. He has been instrumental in developing robotic prosthetics and integrative surgery in the hope of improving quality of life for amputees.

Anh admires Munjeds self-belief and optimism and hopes to capture a sense of that in his portrait. Will Munjed like it?

8pm Wednesday on ABC.
By Nathan Layne, Sarah N. Lynch and Karen Freifeld

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters) - Rick Gates, a longtime business associate of U.S. President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, on Monday testified that he helped Manafort file false tax returns and hide his foreign bank accounts.

Gates is the government's star witness in its case against Manafort, who is accused of bank and tax fraud. Gates, who also served on Trump's campaign, pleaded guilty in February and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors under a deal that could lead to a reduced sentence.

Taking the stand on the trial's fifth day, Gates admitted to helping Manafort doctor financial statements, hide foreign income and cheat on his taxes. He said he was aware Manafort was acting as an unregistered foreign agent in lobbying for Ukraine. He said he engaged in the wrongdoing at Manafort's direction.

"At Mr. Manafort's request we did not disclose foreign bank accounts," Gates told the jury in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.

Manafort's defense hinges on pinning the blame on Gates, who they accuse of embezzling millions of dollars from Manafort.

Gates, who first met Manafort working for him as an intern fresh out of college, has been described by witnesses as Manafort's right-hand man in his multimillion-dollar political consulting business.

Throughout his testimony, Gates largely avoided making eye contact with Manafort, who appeared to be watching him.

In addition to assisting in Manafort's alleged crimes, Gates told the jury he had failed to report income he routed through his bank accounts in the United Kingdom and said he stole several hundreds of thousands of dollars from Manafort by filing false and inflated expense reports.

Those admissions are likely to become a focal point for Manafort's defense team when he is cross examined on Tuesday.

Manafort has pleaded not guilty to 18 counts of bank and tax fraud and failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. The charges largely predate his five months on the Trump campaign. His case is the first to go to trial arising from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

Story continues

The jury has heard how Manafort made tens of millions of dollars for work with pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. Mueller is also investigating possible coordination between Trump campaign members and Russian officials in the election campaign, but the charges against Manafort do not address that.

CYPRUS ACCOUNTS

Gates also testified about how wealthy Ukrainian businessmen paid Manafort millions of dollars for his political services through wire transfers to Cyprus-based accounts that were set up for Manafort by a lawyer and local politician known as "Dr. K."

"He indicated that the Ukrainian businessmen...had directed him to set up Cyprus accounts because the payments would be coming from Cyprus," Gates said when asked to explain the payment structure.

Gates also testified that both he and Manafort had control over the foreign accounts, as well as Manafort's business associate Konstantin Kilimnik.

Kilimnik is a Russian-Ukrainian political consultant who was indicted in June on charges stemming from the Mueller probe. In court filings, Mueller has accused Kilimnik of having ties to Russian intelligence services, an allegation he has denied.

Gates testified that Manafort told him to report overseas income as loans to lower Manafort's taxable income, supporting the testimony of his accountant.

"When income came into the company, Mr. Manafort directed whether it would be treated as income ...or loans," Gates said.

The jury heard testimony on Friday and Monday from accountant Cynthia Laporta, who described how Manafort and Gates doctored financial statements and backdated loans.

Gates admitted in testimony on Friday that he had lied to Laporta, as well as other accountants and Manafort's bookkeeper.

In questioning Laporta on Monday, a prosecutor asked her about a $10 million loan purportedly received by Manafort from Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska in 2006. Laporta said she had no indication that the loan from Deripaska had been paid off.

Since the trial started before U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis last Tuesday, Manafort's lawyers have kept their cross-examinations brief and at times refrained from attempting to rebut damaging testimony in detail.

But Laporta's testimony raised the stakes for Manafort. Testifying under immunity, she was the first witness to admit she knew accounting maneuvers Manafort and Gates requested of her were wrong and could be crimes. One accounting trick saved Manafort $500,000 in taxes, she said.

Under cross examination on Monday, defense attorney Kevin Downing attempted to show that Gates was the point person in dealing with the accountants. But while Laporta acknowledged that she regularly communicated with Gates, she said she believed Manafort was in the know.

"In most instances it was clear Mr. Manafort knew what was going on," Laporta said.

On redirect, prosecutor Uzo Asonye used a spreadsheet to show that Manafort's firm had earned $31 million in gross receipts between 2010 and 2014 - half the amount prosecutors say he netted during the same time frame in Ukraine.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne, Sarah N. Lynch and Karen Freifeld in Alexandria, Virginia, Warren Strobel; Editing by Grant McCool and Lisa Shumaker)
(Reuters) - Papa John's International Inc <PZZA.O> on Friday said it would lower royalties and fees charged to its U.S. and Canadian franchisees as sales at the U.S. pizza chain decline following the acrimonious exit of it founder.

The company will cut royalties, food-service pricing and online fees through 2018, while also funding the rebranding of the chain.

This comes days after the company said its North American comparable sales for July had fallen 10.5 percent and would continue falling in the coming months.

Founder John Schnatter resigned as chairman of the board in July following reports that he had used a racial slur on a media training conference call.

"We appreciate the assistance being extended to our franchisees and believe the assistance program will help mitigate the impact that the founder's inexcusable words and actions have had on franchisees," Vaughn Frey, president of Papa John's Franchise Association said in a statement.

(Reporting by Karan Nagarkatti in Bengaluru; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
FILE PHOTO: Royal Bank of Scotland signs are seen at a branch of the bank, in London, Britain December 1, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/File Photo

(Reuters) - A group of MPs has criticised the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for not taking further action against Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc <RBS.L> after an investigation into the bank's treatment of business customers.

"The APPG is naturally disappointed and extremely concerned by the announcement that no further action will be taken by the FCA with regard to the investigation into RBS' treatment of business customers," Kevin Hollinrake, co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Fair Business Banking, said in a letter to FCA chief executive Andrew Bailey, dated Aug. 9.

Hollinrake said the current regulatory framework was ill-equipped to deal with "scandals" seen over the past years, and called for a public inquiry over banking scandals.

The letter was made public on Sunday.

The FCA said in July that it was taking no enforcement action against RBS or staff in the bank's Global Restructuring Group (GRG) unit, after the bank had been accused by small firms of stripping their assets between 2008 and 2013.

MPs have already called for the FCA to get new powers to regulate business loans after it was unable to punish RBS.

Hollinrake in his letter called for a comprehensive report that deals with all the questions surrounding the FCA's decision not to investigate, and asked it to release all of its findings thus far.

The FCA's Bailey had previously said the watchdog's powers to take such action were very limited given that commercial lending is largely unregulated.

"Bearing in mind that the FCA states that it has such limited powers with regard to enforcement, we have deep concerns regarding other investigations currently underway, in particular Lloyds and HBOS Reading," Hollinrake added.

The group had already expressed its concerns about Lloyds Banking Group <LLOY.L> and its HBOS Reading division in a letter last month.

The FCA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday. RBS did not have an immediate comment on the matter.

(Reporting by Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru and Emma Rumney in London; Editing by Susan Fenton)
About Me Scott Because prophetic scriptures are found throughout the bible, it is obvious that a comprehensive, systematic approach would be useful, if not necessary, for the understanding of prophecy. Past prophecies have been fulfilled in a literal manner, as confirmed by the dating of these writings and historical records of confirmation. These past prophecies also serve as a model of how to interpret future prophecies. A literal view of prophecy clearly indicates a certain sequence of events will occur within a single generation, concluding with the Tribulation and Second Advent and these events will be obvious. The prophetic signs appear to be present in this generation and we believe these signs are revealed in the news from around the world. View my complete profile
Brogan-Lei Partridge in her hospital bed in Birmingham after having her second foot amputated. Source: Caters

WARNING  GRAPHIC IMAGES

A schoolgirl has lost both her feet after a severe bout of meningitis which could have developed from swimming in the sea.

Nine-year-old Brogan-Lei Partridge first complained of feeling unwell during her parents honeymoon in Cornwall, in the UK, back in June 2016.

Parents Aimee, 27, and Craig, 31, initially thought she had an infection after she began vomiting during the holiday, which took place days after her parents wedding.

But after returning to the family home in Bartley Green, Birmingham, her parents rushed her to hospital after realising that something wasnt right.

She quickly developed a terrible rash across her legs as doctors diagnosed Brogan with meningococcal meningitis and septicaemia.

Photo of Brogan-Lei was diagnosed with meningitis before her first foot was amputated. Source: Caters

The brave youngsters family were given the grim news she would have to have her left foot removed due to the damage the condition had caused.

Now, two years later and having endured dozens of excruciating operations in an effort to save her right foot, Brogan has finally had the remaining foot amputated as well  but is still smiling despite the unbearable pain.

Wed been in and out of the sea all week so, at first we thought the first signs of the meningitis were conjunctivitis caused by swimming in the ocean, her mum Aimee said.

It was heartbreaking being told shed have to have the first amputation.

Doctors thought her right foot would heal, so she had hours worth of surgery to keep it.

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Shed cry out in the night because of the pain. Shed say I just want to be normal and to play with friends at school like everyone else.

Story continues

Despite the agony, Aimee said that Brogan has shown huge courage throughout her journey as she now faces the prospect of life without her feet.

The young girl endured dozens of excruciating operations in an effort to save her right foot. Source: Caters

Brogans parents have already found a wheelchair which shell need.

Shes been very brave and has always tried her best and been realistic, Aimee said.

She didnt like the treatment but knew it was for the best and trooped through it all. Shes wise beyond her years.

The wheelchair is 2,000 so its going to be a stretch for us  but well do our best.

Im annoyed because I cant move around properly, Brogan said from her hospital bed.

But all the doctors are being nice, and I cant wait for the wheelchair.
By Antonio Denti

ON BOARD THE AQUARIUS (Reuters) - Italy on Monday denied safe harbour to 141 people rescued by a humanitarian ship off the coast of Libya last week, setting up another standoff with European Union allies over taking in migrants who try to cross the Mediterranean.

The Aquarius, run by Franco-German charity SOS Mediterranee and Doctors without Borders (MSF), picked up the people in two separate operations and is in international waters between Italy and Malta.

Malta said it had no legal obligation to berth the ship and Spain said its ports were not the safest destination.

Italy called on Britain to welcome the Aquarius because it was registered in Gibraltar, but the British territory on Spain's southern coast said it should go to an Italian port.

More than 650,000 migrants have come to Italy's shores since 2014, and Rome has accused its EU peers of not sharing the burden of taking in those who arrive on the bloc's southern border.

The Aquarius spent nine days at sea in June after Italy's new populist government took office and shut its ports to all humanitarian boats, calling its operators a "taxi service" and accusing them of helping people-smugglers  charges the charities deny.

"It can go where it wants, not in Italy!" far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said on Twitter on Monday, mentioning France, Germany, Britain or Malta as possible destinations.

"Stop human traffickers and their accomplices," he wrote.

Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli, who oversees ports and the coast guard, tweeted that, because of the Gibraltar connection, Britain "should assume its responsibility to safeguard the castaways".

The Gibraltar government said in a statement the ship could no longer fly a Gibraltar flag from Aug. 20 and should revert back to the "underlying owners' flag," which is Germany.

Meanwhile, the Aquarius should be allowed to disembark "safely and promptly" at an Italian port.

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The European Commission was in touch with several EU states and trying to help resolve the situation, a spokesman in Brussels said. While Britain could theoretically be considered as a destination port, it was not practical to bring the ship there.

MALTA REJECTION

Malta rejected any suggestion the Aquarius should dock in its ports, saying the latest rescue was made closer to Libya, Tunisia and Italy than to its own shores.

"Malta was neither the coordinating nor the competent authority (and) ...the requests for the vessel to enter our ports are unwarranted and without legal standing," it said in a statement.

Earlier on Monday, Malta's armed forces rescued 114 migrants from a rubber dinghy taking on water 53 nautical miles (100 km) south of Malta and brought them back to the island.

In June, the Aquarius ended up taking some 630 migrants to Spain, which welcomed it. But on Monday, a government spokeswoman in Madrid said: "Spain is not the safest port because it is not the nearest one" for the ship to dock.

The ship's search and rescue coordinator Nick Romaniuk said some migrants on board were sick and wounded and "need to be disembarked as soon as possible" for proper medical care.

Due to pressure from Italy and Malta, most charity ships are no longer patrolling off the coast of Libya.

Though departures from Libya have fallen dramatically this year, people smugglers are still pushing some boats out to sea and an estimated 720 people died in June and July when charity ships were mainly absent, Amnesty International estimates.

Protracted feuds between EU states over how to handle immigrants have thrown the issue back onto the European agenda. That is despite overall Mediterranean arrivals having dropped sharply since peaking at around 1 million in 2015.

EU border agency Frontex said on Monday it counted 73,500 "irregular border crossings" into the bloc so far this year via the sea and the Western Balkans route, more than 40 percent fewer than in the first seven months of 2017.

(Additional reporting by Chris Scicluna in VALLETTA, Francesco Guarascio and Gabriela Baczynska in BRUSSELS, Andres Gonzalez and Isla Binnie in MADRID and Kylie MacLellan in LONDON, Writing by Steve Scherer and Gavin Jones; Editing by Toby Chopra and John Stonestreet)
One of two rescue missions carried out by Aquarius on Friday (Guglielmo Mangiapane / SOS MEDITERRANEE)

The UK government is under pressure to help 141 people rescued at sea by a humanitarian rescue ship that is being denied safe harbour by nearby countries.

The Aquarius, which is run by charity SOS Mediterranee and Doctors without Borders, rescued the group, which includes 67 children and two pregnant women, from wooden boats on Friday.

The ship is now in international waters waiting to be given the go-ahead to land in the nearest European country. However, both Italy and Malta have refused it permission.

Now the Italian government, which has been led by a populist coalition since March, is calling on the UK to take responsibility for the ship because its flying under the Gibraltar flag.

Its transport minister, Danilo Toninelli, wrote on Twitter: The boat is now in Maltese waters and has a Gibraltar flag. At this point, the United Kingdom should take responsibility for the shipwrecked.

L'Ong #Aquarius e stata coordinata dalla Guardia Costiera libica in area di loro responsabilita. La nave e ora in acque maltesi e batte bandiera di Gibilterra. A questo punto il Regno Unito si assuma le sue responsabilita per la salvaguardia dei naufraghi.  Danilo Toninelli (@DaniloToninelli) August 13, 2018

Matteo Salvini, the countrys far-right populist interior minister, also wrote: It can go anywhere it wants, NOT in Italy.

The new governments closed-door policy led to more than 600 people on the same ship being stranded at sea for nine days in June before Spains socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez offered to let it dock in Valencia.

The Spanish government has refused to repeat the act on this occasion, insisting it is not the safest port.

A European Commission spokeswoman said there could be a case for a flag state to be responsible for the ship but cautioned that it may not be practically feasible.

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She added that the commission is providing support to a number of member states to achieve a swift resolution of the incident.

A UK government spokesperson said: We are deeply concerned for the welfare of 141 migrants who have been rescued from the Mediterranean by sailing vessel Aquarius.

It is well-established that responsibility for arranging disembarkation, at a nearby safe port, is assumed by the relevant regional Maritime Rescue and Co-ordination, and in accordance with the wishes of the ships Master.

Charity rescue ship, the Aquarius, which carries the Gibraltar flag (Getty)

The UK is committed to working with European partners long-term to tackle the shared challenge of irregular migration.

The people on board were rescued in the Mediterranean in two search and rescue operations by Aquarius on Friday.

They first found 25 people drifting on a small wooden boat without an engine and believe they had been at sea for 36 hours.

Hours later, Aquarius 116 people, including 67 children, from what organisers called an overcrowded wooden boat.

SOS Mediterranee say the medical condition of those on board, 70% of whom are from Somalia and Eritrea, is stable but warned many are weak and malnourished.

The group said many reported they had been held in inhumane conditions in Libya.

What is of utmost importance is that the survivors are brought to a place of safety without delay, where their basic needs can be met and where they can be protected from abuse, said the groups search and rescue coordinator, Nick Romaniuk.

Frontex, the EUs border and coast guard, reported today that the number of people entering the EU on the four main migratory routes has fallen by 18% over the last year.




ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday ruled out the possibility of any military confrontation with the United States, Iranian state TV reported.

"Recently, American officials have been talking blatantly about Iran ... they are talking about war and negotiations ... They are exaggerating about possibility of a war with Iran. There will be no war ... We have never started a war and they will not confront Iran militarily," Iran's top authority said in a televised speech.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Catherine Evans)
CORRECTS SPELLING OF LAST NAME TO COLYER INSTEAD OF COYLER - Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer, left, alongside Lt. Gov. Tracey Mann, addresses the media at the Kansas Statehouse in Topeka, Kan., Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2018, a day after his primary race against Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. (Chris Neal/The Topeka Capital-Journal via AP)

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP)  The Latest on the unsettled Republican primary race between Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer and Secretary of State Kris Kobach (all times local):

6:15 p.m.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach's lead over Gov. Jeff Colyer stands at only 110 votes after late mail-in ballots were added to previous vote totals Friday in their hotly contested Republican primary race.

Colyer has accused Kobach of advising county election officials not to count some late mail-in ballots that legally should be counted. Kobach said his advice on their handling has followed the law.

State law says mail-in ballots would be counted if they were postmarked Tuesday and arrived by Friday.

Kobach's lead had been 191 votes when statewide results were first reported Wednesday morning. More than 313,000 ballots were cast in Tuesday's primary.

Counties still must review almost 9,000 provisional ballots given to voters at the polls when their eligibility is in doubt.

___

3:55 p.m.

An aide to Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer says Secretary of State Kris Kobach's top deputy also shouldn't advise county election officials while their tight Republican primary battle hangs in the balance.

Colyer spokesman Kendall Marr said the governor objects to Kobach having Assistant Secretary of State Eric Rucker take over Kobach's election duties while the race is unresolved.

Kobach announced Friday that he's stepping away from those duties until after the final primary vote is certified by the state. Colyer had called on him to stop advising county official on yet-uncounted ballots.

Marr said that while Rucker is "a good and decent man," assigning Kobach's duties to an employee that Kobach can fire does not end conflicts of interest. Colyer has said the state's attorney general should advise counties.

___

2:40 p.m.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach says he's stepping aside from his duties as the state's top elections official while his hotly contested Republican primary race with Gov. Jeff Colyer remains unresolved.

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Kobach announced his decision Friday in a letter to Colyer. Colyer had demanded Thursday that Kobach stop advising county election officials on the handling of uncounted ballots in Tuesday's governor's race and let the attorney general do it.

The secretary of state said he is handing his election duties over to Assistant Secretary of State Eric Rucker. He said Rucker also will serve in his place on the state board that certifies the final primary election results.

Colyer is a member of that board, and Kobach suggested that the governor step aside and let Lt. Gov. Tracey Mann step in.

___

2:30 p.m.

Kansas counties are reporting updated vote totals in the contested Republican primary between Gov. Jeff Colyer and Secretary of State Kris Kobach that reflect late mail-in ballots.

The secretary of state's office was updating results Friday as it received them from individual counties.

With the first 25 counties reporting, Kobach's lead almost doubled to 241 votes from 121. That's still a tiny margin with more than 311,000 ballots cast.

Kansas law says mail-in ballots are counted if they are postmarked Tuesday and arrive by Friday.

Colyer accused Kobach of advising county election officials to not count some late-arriving mail-in ballots that should be counted. Kobach's office was planning a formal response later Friday.

___

1:20 p.m.

Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer's re-election campaign plans to have a representative in all 105 counties next week as local election officials review mail-in and provisional ballots to arrive at final official vote totals.

Colyer and Secretary of State Kris Kobach are locked in a tight race for the GOP nomination for governor. The primary was Tuesday. Kobach led by 121 votes out of more than 311,000 cast as of Thursday.

The counting in their race is not complete because state law says mail-in ballots that are postmarked Tuesday can be accepted by the counties as late as Friday. County officials also must review perhaps several thousand provisional ballots, given to voters at the polls when their eligibility is in question.

Colyer's spokesman said the governor believes Kobach's office is advising county clerks to discard mail-in ballots that by law should be counted, and the campaign representatives will be at canvass meetings to be sure that they are.

____

10:35 a.m.

Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer says he's "not entirely" comfortable with the vote-counting process in his still-unsettled Republican primary race with Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

Colyer said Friday on Fox News that he wants to make sure every legitimate vote is counted. Kobach led by 121 votes out of more than 311,000, with perhaps several thousand votes uncounted.

Kobach promised Thursday night that he would remove himself from further counting but said the move would be "symbolic" because counties do the actual work.

He did so after Colyer demanded in a letter that he stop advising county election officials. Colyer told Fox News that he believes Kobach has advised them not to count some ballots that should be counted.

Kobach's office has not responded to those allegations.

___

9:25 a.m.

An aide to Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer says Secretary of State Kris Kobach's promise to remove himself from further counting in their contested Republican primary race is not enough.

Colyer spokesman Kendall Marr on Friday reiterated the governor's demand that Kobach stop advising county election officials on handling perhaps several thousand as-yet uncounted ballots in the governor's race.

Kobach led by 121 votes out of more than 311,000 cast after discrepancies were found Thursday between two counties' totals and those reported on the secretary of state's website.

The secretary of state advises counties, which handle actual counting. Kobach noted that Thursday night on CNN but said he would stay out of further counting because of Colyer's demand in a letter Thursday.

But Marr says Colyer wants Kobach to step aside from "his actual" advising role.
US Marines Alaska winter Arctic Edge 18

US Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. Tanner Seims

The Pentagon has been reorienting its forces for what it sees as emerging great-power competition with Russia and China.

For the Marine Corps, that likely means shifting away from the Middle East and refocusing on Europe and the Pacific.

To keep preparing for conditions in those places, Marines may soon find themselves spending more time in Alaska.

The US military has been shifting its focus to preparing for a potential great-power conflict, changing how it uses its weapons and where it operates. For the Marine Corps, that increasingly means getting ready to fight at the top of the world.

"The Marines are looking at spending a lot more time in Alaska," Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska, told reporters on August 8 during a trip to the state with Army Secretary Mark Esper.

The Navy and Marine presence in Alaska is currently small. Some sailors are stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, on Alaska's southern coast. There are also some Marines there, assigned to a reserve unit.

US Marines machine gun Alaska winter Arctic Edge

US Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. Cody J. Ohira

Marines took part in the Arctic Edge exercise in March this year, joining roughly 1,500 soldiers, sailors, and airmen in Alaska "to train military forces to fight and win in the Arctic," Air Force Lt. Gen. Ken Wilsbach, head of Alaskan Command, said at the time.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller said prior to the exercise that the Corps was looking for ways to spend more time in Alaska as it seeks more training opportunities in extreme conditions.

A few weeks after the exercise, he told Sullivan during a Senate hearing that Marines "have gotten back into the cold-weather business."

"We cant assume that we're going to fight in a desert. It's not going to be a temperate climate. It could be in an Arctic climate," Neller added. "We're moving in the right direction and doing our best to get more deployments for training to Alaska to take advantage of the terrain and the climate."

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US Marines Army Chinook helicopter winter snow Alaska Arctic Edge

US Marine Corps/Sgt. Brianna Gaudi

The Marine Corps has also sought out cold-weather environments elsewhere.

A rotational force has been stationed in Norway since the beginning of 2017  the first foreign force stationed on Norwegian soil since World War II. They have carried out training and exercises with Norwegian and partner forces. Norway has requested that the Marines' rotation be extended and that they be based closer to the country's border with Russia.

While visiting the rotational force in Norway at the end of 2017, Neller outlined the change in focus he saw coming, underlining why places like Alaska and Norway are of more interest.

US Marines Norway ski winter snow

US Marine Corps/Cpl. Careaf L. Henson

"I think probably the focus, the intended focus is not on the Middle East," Neller said when asked by a Marine about where the force saw itself fighting in the future. "The focus is more on the Pacific and Russia."

Neller also urged Marines there to be prepared to face rising threats, predicting a looming "big-ass fight."

"I hope I'm wrong, but there's a war coming," he said, according to Military.com. "You're in a fight here, an informational fight, a political fight, by your presence."

The Marine Corps and the Army have both made changes to their gear that reflect that shift in operational focus.

US Marine Corps

US Marine Corps/Cpl. Careaf L. Henson

Earlier this year, the Army's 10th Mountain Division went out on winter training operations with new gloves, headgear, socks, gaiters, parkas, and trousers  equipment focused on the "face, hands, and feet," one member of the unit said.

The Marine Corps has made requests for more caps and gloves for use in intense cold and plans to spend nearly $13 million to equip some units with NATO ski systems.

"No Marine is going to leave here unless they know how to ski," Neller told Marines in Norway during his December visit.

US Army soldiers winter snow Alaska Arctic Edge

US Air Force/Tech. Sgt. Efren Lopez

Sullivan made his comments about Marines spending more time in Alaska during a trip through the state with Esper, the Army secretary.

Esper also underscored the utility of Alaska's location and climate for the military as it prepares for "long-term strategic competitions with China and Russia," which the the most recent National Defense Strategy report called the "principal priorities" of the Defense Department.

"It doesnt take much to look at the map and understand Alaskas geography with regard to Russia and China  the importance of Alaska in that geo-strategic game," Esper said during a joint press conference with Sullivan. "Not just geography, but then knowing how to operate function, and, as I like to say, deploy, fight, and win in an arctic environment."

NOW WATCH: Step aboard the USS Kearsarge, the US Navy workhorse that takes Marines to war

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FILE PHOTO: Per Sandberg, named as interim justice minister after the resignation of Sylvi Listhaug, in Oslo, Norway March 20, 2018. Hakon Mosvold Larsen/NTB Scanpix/via REUTERS/File Photo

By Terje Solsvik and Ole Petter Skonnord

OSLO (Reuters) - Norway's fisheries minister resigned on Monday following his earlier admission that he breached government security protocols during a holiday to Iran last month.

Per Sandberg, who initially failed to notify colleagues of his whereabouts and also took his government-issued mobile phone to Iran, had been rebuked by Prime Minister Erna Solberg for violating the cabinet's travel rules.

Sandberg, 58, deputy head of the anti-immigration Progress Party, has also faced criticism from within his party for going on the trip with his girlfriend, Iranian-born Bahareh Letnes, 28, who obtained residency in Norway a decade ago.

Ruling in a minority with a coalition cabinet of her Conservatives as well as Progress and the Liberals, Solberg's government has slumped in opinion polls after news of Sandberg's trip broke.

The prime minister said she had ordered Sandberg to hand his phone to police for safety checks, but still faced criticism in parliament from opposition parties questioning the government's competence on issues of national security.

The government requires ministers to inform the prime minister's office of where they are going, regardless of destination. It also forbids the use of government-issued phones in a country with which Norway does not have established security cooperation.

The new fisheries minister will be Progress Party veteran Harald Tom Nesvik, the prime minister's office said.

Norway is the world's largest producer of farmed salmon, and seafood is the Nordic country's second-largest export industry after oil and gas.

(Editing by Alison Williams)
By Andrew Hay

AMALIA, N.M. (Reuters) - One of the leading members of a group prosecutors accused of abusing children at a New Mexico compound struggled with his plan to live off the grid after he underestimated a harsh mountain desert climate and settled on the wrong plot of land.

Relatives and neighbours say things began to go downhill for Lucas Morton, 39, shortly after he arrived in this vast alpine valley about 40 miles (64 km) north of Taos in a white moving van last December.

His brother-in-law Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, wanted in Georgia for child abduction, soon joined them together with his wife, sister and children.

The families set up home on a 10-acre plot of land that was near to one owned by Morton, a carpenter, but which actually belonged to U.S. Army veteran Jason Badger. The vet filed a court complaint but the Morton and Wahhaj families stayed on the land.

With snow and bitter north winds, the families began to suffer. At the suggestion of neighbours, Morton dug a hole and put a camping trailer in it to seek shelter.

Land is cheap in the valley, around $850 an acre, but winter temperatures can drop to -30 Fahrenheit (-34 C). Attempts at communal living in northern New Mexico have struggled or failed, going back to 1970s' communes.

The adults and 11 children used wood to cook, hauled water from neighbours' wells and got heat from propane heaters. Their shelters kept blowing away, a neighbour said.

Morton was one of five adults arrested at the compound on Aug. 3 on child abuse charges and accused by prosecutors of giving weapons training to a child to carry out school shootings.

No-one was specifically charged over the school shooting accusation and Defense Attorney Aleksandar Kostich told reporters that prosecutors had provided no evidence of the allegation, which came from a foster parent who is caring for one of the children.

Morton was also charged with harbouring a felon, Ibn Wahhaj, who was armed with an AR-15 rifle, five magazines of ammunition, and four handguns when arrested, according to police.

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Ibn Wahhaj is accused of abducting his seriously-ill, three-year-old son Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj in December from his mother in Georgia. On Monday a body, believed to be that of the boy was found buried at the compound, police said.

Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe first referred to the suspects as "extremist of the Muslim belief," but declined to elaborate when later asked about it by reporters.

Public defenders representing the five adults, who are in Taos County jail, did not respond to requests for comment.

'GET OUT OF SOCIETY'

Morton and his 15-year-old nephew Mohammed last November attended a four-week, $2,500 course in Taos on how to build an "earthship" - an eco house made largely of earth-filled tires.

"All they wanted to do was get out of society, get away, homestead and live a peaceful life by themselves," said Morton's father Gerard Jabril Abdulwali, 64.

Inside Morton's abandoned van at the compound, "I love my family" is written over hearts drawn on the first page of a notebook belonging to "Aisha," one of his four children.

There are signs the group made friends locally.

A local man gave Morton hundreds of tires to build an earthship home. A neighbour gave him wood to build bunk beds, and another helped them hook up solar panels.

These people said police drones began to circle the area in late May or June. Badger told local media he had earlier informed Georgia police that the abducted boy was at Morton's home.

In the next months the home began to look more like a compound. The families stacked tires around it and built what look like defensive walls. A 150-foot tunnel leads to what appear to be escape holes among sagebrush and chamisa bushes.

"I got the feeling Lucas didn't want what he was in anymore," said neighbour Tyler Anderson, 41, a car-body technician, who showed Morton how to wire up solar panels.

Anderson said near daily target shooting at the house stopped once the drones appeared.

The arrests at the compound made one neighbour, who described himself only as "Quincy," stand at his gate and cry.

He and other locals disputed police reports the Morton and Wahhaj children were found ragged and starving.

"I made sure everyone in that place had shoes and clothes. They weren't hungry," said the man.

Morton's wife Subhannah Wahhaj, 35, regularly went grocery shopping with Quincy's wife. Their last trip, was on Aug. 2, Quincy said. Police launched the raid the next day.

(The story was refiled to add the name of the army veteran in paragraph 4 and to correct the name to Morton from Morgan in paragraph 5)

(Reporting by Andrew Hay; Editing by Alistair Bell)
Sharon Larson died just days after receiving a small nip from her dog (not pictured). Images: KRBC

A woman who contracted an extremely rare bacterial infection has died just days after she was nipped by her puppy.

Sharon Larson, 58, started experiencing flu like symptoms on June 20, the day after she received a minor cut to her hand from her puppy, Bo. The next day, she felt so weak that she couldnt even hold a glass of water.

The Wisconsin grandmother was rushed to the emergency room where doctors told her husband, Daniel Larson, that her kidneys were failing.

Two days later, Ms Larsons blood tested positive for capnocytophaga canimorsus, common bacteria found in the mouths of dogs and cats. Though the bacteria are common, its extremely rare for them to cause serious illness.

Doctors treated her with antibiotics, but she died the next afternoon.

Ms Larsons heartbroken family have remembered her as amazingly kind and caring.

Her smile will live on through her five grandkids and a sixth on the way, her adult daughter, Stacy Larson-Hruzek, told NBC.

Her death comes just weeks after another Wisconsin resident, Greg Manteufel contracted the same infection, ultimately leading to the amputation of parts of his arms and legs.

Despite their close proximity, experts have insisted their cases arent linked.

(Left) Greg Manteufel lays in his hospital bed at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee and (right) with his beloved pet dog. Source: Greg Manteufel

The risk posed by a dog is really low, Scott Weese, a professor at the Ontario Veterinary Colleges Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses, told HuffPost.Most dogs are carrying this bug in their mouth, but few people get sick.

People with low immune systems are most at risk, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but even then infection is unlikely.

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Dr Silvia Munoz-Price, an infectious disease specialist with Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin, said that Mr Manteufels case is an extremely rare occurrence and that pet owners need not panic.

More than 99 percent of the people that have dogs will never have this issue. Its just chance, she said.

Surgeons have had to amputate his legs and hands after he contracted a rare blood infection from a dog lick. Source: AP

Mr Manteufels family said they were hoping the surgeries would stop there, however after further analysis, surgeons made the decision to amputate to mid-forearm on both arms due to extensive damage to the tissues and muscles.

We cant wrap our heads around it that all of the sudden, hes 48 years old and been around dogs all of his life and this happens, Ms Manteufel said.

Mr Manteufel, who owns a female pit bull, says he never had a health issue stem from petting a dog before.

Ive been around dogs my whole life, having them lick at me in my face and hands and everywhere, he told People.

The doctors told me I could have probably hit the lottery five times that day before I should have got what I got that day from a dog.
A group of women riding a rainbow unicorn  an inflatable one that is  got stuck in a weedy lake in Minnesota, prompting a giggle-filled rescue from Chisago County Sheriff deputies on Saturday, August 11.

The two deputies were driving by Fish Lake, near Stark, Minnesota, when they spotted the women and their inflatable unicorn stranded offshore.

With a handful of laughs and some mad rescue roping skills they were pulled back to the dock! said the Chisago County Sheriffs Office in a tweet that showed the video clip of the amusing rescue, complete with a rainbow and a unicorn emoji. Credit: Chisago County Sheriffs Office via Storyful
Fusion Antibodies shares crashed on Monday morning after the Belfast-based researcher revealed that year-to-date trading had been "slower than anticipated".

The AIM-listed antibody engineer warned investors that trading had been hindered by "increasing competition" and "consequential pricing pressures", as well as delays in securing several large contracts.

While Fusion anticipates its results for the year ended 31 March to be in line with market expectations, the firm cautioned that its results for 2019 would likely be "significantly behind current market expectations".

However, based on the group's current pipeline, Fusion's board still expects to achieve a "modest year-on-year revenue growth".

Fusion will turn in its results for the year ended 31 March on 16 August.

In other news, Fusion has completed its laboratory capacity expansion on time and within budget as the group attempted to continue to build upon its sales and marketing capabilities across the globe.

As of 0825 BST, Fusion shares had sunk 32.51% to 82p.
London stocks were set for a downbeat open on Monday amid growing concerns about the crisis in Turkey and the potential for contagion.

The FTSE 100 was called to open 37 points lower at 7,630.

London Capital Group analyst Jasper Lawler said: "Recent sessions have been a stark reminder that trading in August is not for the faint hearted. With the US and Europe on summer holidays, liquidity can be light making big swings more likely.

"The panic that engulfed the markets at the end of last week is showing no signs of going anywhere at the start of the new week. Traders were met with a sea of red as indices dived across the Asian session; investors shunned riskier assets overnight while safer havens such as the Japanese yen and Swiss Franc firmed; jitters surrounding the Turkish currency crisis were showing few signs of moving on."

In corporate news, a tough first quarter coupled with a weaker dollar contributed to a fall in interim profits at shipping services company Clarkson.

Pre-tax profits fell to 18.0m from 21.9m on revenues of 152.6m, down from 156.8m year on year. The dividend was increased to 24p a share from 23p.

The company said conditions picked up in the second quarter when the breadth and diversity of our business again provided opportunity irrespective of volatility in the market and it remained confident in the mid to long-term.

Elsewhere, Brewin Dolphin announced the appointment of Siobhan Boylan to the board as finance director.

The wealth manager said Boylan, who has been the chief financial officer of Legal & General Investment for the last five years, is likely to join early next year.

Boylan worked at Aviva for 12 years, where she held several senior roles, including CFO of Aviva North America and CFO of Aviva Investors from 2007 to 2011. Before that, she worked 10 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she qualified as an ACA.
The UK high street crisis has cost the economy 1.5bn in lost GDP this year as 25,000 jobs have been cut in the first half of 2018 and a further 8,300 jobs are under threat, new analysis has found.

The latest closures come from DIY chain Homebase, which is expected to announce the shut down of 80 stores, plus Marks & Spencer said it will shut seven more clothing stores as part of a transformation plan that will see the closure of 100 shops by 2022.

Weak consumer confidence and a boom of online shopping is pulling the noose tight around high street businesses, with calls from the retail industry for the government to intervene with emergency action, including a cut to business rates.

Toys R Us, Poundworld and Maplin have already collapsed this year, while many others including Mothercare and Carpetright have announced their plans to close a number of their stores.

Alfie Stirling of the New Economics Foundation said the economy is beginning to "flex and buckle" in response to a shift towards online purchasing.

With shops continuing to close there is a need for new businesses to emerge to reinvent the nations high streets, said Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium. "But that cannot happen if the burden of business rates they face continues to rise year on year, which is why were calling for a freeze in business rates in the Chancellors next Budget."

Furthermore, the recent shut down of bank branches are another reason worsening the high street crisis and are putting retailers out of business.

A Nottingham Building Society survey found 46% of retailers said a local bank closure had an impact on their business. Since 2015, 2,500 banks have been lost.

Gary Womersley, the head of branch network at the Nottingham Building Society, which commissioned the research, said: Financial institutions play a major role in local high streets drawing customers to shops and boosting sales and business. This is particularly true in market towns, where much of our focus is placed.

Sadly, there are now as many as 1,500 towns in the UK that used to have branches but no longer do.

The society predicted the shut down of another 2,400 banks which would lead to 12,000 jobs put at risk.
Chemring Group said production at its flare manufacturing factory has been suspended after a blast left one worker dead and another badly injured.

A full investigation has been launched in co-operation with the local regulatory authorities after the explosion late on Friday afternoon at a Chemring Countermeasures facility, near Salisbury, causing damage to parts of manufacturing operations.

Local police confirmed the man killed was a 29-year-old from Southampton. The second man caught up in the explosion was a 26-year-old from Pewsey.

As a result of the incident, Chemring said full year underlying operating profit from the countermeasures arm is now likely to be 10-20m lower than the 15m previously expected for the the final quarter of the financial year to 31 October 2018. There is likely to be a corresponding impact on the group's operating cash flow and net debt.

Management said a detailed analysis of the possible impact of the incident on the group's financial prospects has begun but the precise impact on 2018 and 2019 financial years "cannot be accurately quantified at this stage as it will be dependent on insurance recoveries, the timeline for the investigation to be completed and the site to re-open, remediation work to be completed and at what rate production resumes".

Chemring said a further update will be provided when it publishes its next trading statement, which is expected on 4 September.

Fusion Antibodies shares crashed on Monday morning after the Belfast-based researcher revealed that year-to-date trading had been "slower than anticipated".

The AIM-listed antibody engineer warned investors that trading had been hindered by "increasing competition" and "consequential pricing pressures", as well as delays in securing several large contracts.

While Fusion anticipates its results for the year ended 31 March to be in line with market expectations, the firm cautioned that its results for 2019 would likely be "significantly behind current market expectations".

However, based on the group's current pipeline, Fusion's board still expects to achieve a "modest year-on-year revenue growth".

Fusion will turn in its results for the year ended 31 March on 16 August.

In other news, Fusion has completed its laboratory capacity expansion on time and within budget as the group attempted to continue to build upon its sales and marketing capabilities across the globe.
London's second-tier index was down 0.32% at 20,601.77 in afternoon trade on Monday.

Georgian duo TBC Bank and Tbilisi-headquartered Bank of Georgia saw declines in their share prices, continuing a trend that started last week, ahead of the release of the latter firm's first-half results on Wednesday.

In addition, the duo were subject to market jitters as the uncertainty surrounding Turkey's lira was little assuaged by new measures announced by the nation's central bank, including a pledge to provide "all the liquidity the banks need" in order to ensure stability.

Emerging markets-focused asset manager Ashmore also suffered a decline as Turkish uncertainty continued to spread.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said: "Fund management group Ashmore is widely seen as the London-listed bellwether for emerging markets and its shares are unsurprisingly being sold off in the wake of the crisis in Turkey."

"The read-across to Ashmore is fairly straightforward. By selling down its shares, investors are betting that Ashmore could report a big outflow of assets under management when it next updates on trading."

Airline operator and travel firm Thomas Cook, which has exposure to Turkey through its flights and destinations, also suffered fallout from the currency's weakness with its shares dropping in afternoon trading.

Dixons Carphone saw its shares take a hit after the Sunday Telegraph reported that an attempt by new boss Alex Baldock to extract more favourable terms from mobile operators has met firm resistance, threatening his pledge to improve returns on smartphone contracts.

The paper reported that multiple sources have said that Vodafones British arm is finalising a deal to continue its relationship with Dixons Carphone on substantially the same terms for two more years.

Meanwhile, Hill & Smith's shares continued to slump on the back of its poor first-half results last week, in which the company reported falling profits following bad weather and project delays.

Over on the more positive side of things, insurance firms Hastings and Esure racked up healthy gains after the latter confirmed that it had received an unsolicited proposal from private equity firm Bain Capital at 280p per share in cash.

The firm reported that it is in the advanced stages of discussing the possible offer, which represents a premium of around 37% to the closing price of Esure on Friday and a 29% premium to the volume-weighted average price over the last three months.

In response to the news, RBC Capital Markets reiterated its 'outperform' rating on Esure, with a target price of 280p.

Shipping firm Clarkson received a boost despite a tough first quarter and a weaker dollar contributing to a fall in interim profits. The company reported that its pre-tax profits fell 18% to 18.0m on revenues of 152.6m, down 3% year on year, but increased its dividend to 24p a share from 23p after conditions perked up towards the end of the period.

Liberum saw fit to upgrade its outlook on the firm from 'hold' to 'buy' following the results, stating that its confidence in the short-term outlook has improved following the in-line interim results and signs of firmer current trading.

Oilfield services provider Petrofac jumped after it secured a $300m new term-loan from its banks, due to mature in 2020, and won a near-$370m contract in Iraq. It also revealed that it had won a further lump-sum contract from Basra Oil Company for the expansion of a central processing facility in the Majnoon Field, Southern Iraq, following an original engineering, procurement and construction contract in 2011 to build the facility.

Meanwhile, Peel Hunt upgraded its rating of Senior to 'hold' with a target price of 290p, sending the manufacturing and engineering company's shares higher.

Market Movers

FTSE 250 (MCX) 20,601.77 -0.32%

FTSE 250 - Risers

esure Group (ESUR) 268.70p 31.72%

Clarkson (CKN) 2,836.77p 9.74%

Hastings Group Holdings (HSTG) 260.20p 4.08%

Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 642.30p 3.43%

AA (AA.) 118.95p 3.34%

Kaz Minerals (KAZ) 627.20p 2.42%

Capita (CPI) 140.05p 2.41%

Contour Global (GLO) 247.80p 2.40%

Equiniti Group (EQN) 215.50p 2.38%

Senior (SNR) 313.20p 2.15%

FTSE 250 - Fallers

Bank of Georgia Group (BGEO) 1,599.71p -6.46%

Ashmore Group (ASHM) 339.60p -4.87%

Hill & Smith Holdings (HILS) 1,031.00p -4.80%

Intu Properties (INTU) 162.45p -4.41%

Thomas Cook Group (TCG) 84.85p -3.41%

Just Group (JUST) 97.20p -3.38%

TBC Bank Group (TBCG) 1,600.00p -3.03%

Dixons Carphone (DC.) 170.75p -2.96%

SSP Group (SSPG) 682.70p -2.94%

Hammerson (HMSO) 494.30p -2.50%
Col. Joshua D. Wright has been around the world with the U.S. Army, serving in places such as Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Bosnia and Haiti.

His latest assignment brings him to the University of North Georgia (UNG) as the new professor of military science. Just down the road from where his wife was born and raised in Cumming, Georgia, Wright is grateful for his new job, which started July 31.

"I'm absolutely excited to be here," Wright said.

It is not Wright's first time in northeast Georgia. One of his previous tours included stops at the 5th Ranger Training Battalion at Camp Merrill in Dahlonega in 2007 and 2009.

He already knew about UNG before being named to his new role, as he has worked with multiple UNG alumni in the armed forces. One of those, Col. Rich Timmons '90, was his second company commander and remains close friends with Wright.

Dr. Billy Wells, senior vice president for leadership and global engagement, said Wright is a great addition.

"Col. Wright was selected from many imminently qualified candidates," said Wells, a retired Army colonel and a former professor of military science at UNG. "He is an outstanding infantry officer and decorated combat veteran. We welcome Josh to the preeminent Army ROTC program in the nation."

With more than two decades of Army service, Wright is focused on developing leaders at UNG. A regular Army officer, he has led Army formations from platoon through brigade command.

"Where I'm at career-wise, I think it's an opportunity for me to take a couple of decades' worth of experience and make sure it doesn't go to waste, and give it back to the future," Wright said.

He said helping cadets have the right idea of leadership is crucial in preparing them for service once they graduate.

"They need to be given opportunities to lead and develop. They need opportunities to fall on their face. They need opportunities to get picked back up and put back into position," Wright said. "Better to learn in these four years than struggle going into their first assignments."

He knows about different and sometimes difficult assignments. His latest tour before UNG was a year in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, where he was the Multinational Force and Observers Task Force Sinai commander, MFO Deputy Commanding Officer and MFO Chief of Staff. It is a place the United States has maintained a presence since the Camp David Accords of 1978 followed by a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979.

Wright holds a Master of Science degree in management leadership and organizational effectiveness from Troy University, a Master of Science degree in strategic studies from the Air War College and a Bachelor of Science degree in geology from Eastern Illinois University.

His awards and decorations include the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medals, Meritorious Service Medals, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, Iraq Campaign and Afghanistan Campaign Medals and MFO Medals, Presidential Unit Award, Meritorious Unit Citations, Superior Unit Awards, Combat Infantry Badge, Expert Infantry Badge, Ranger Tab, Senior Parachutist and Air Assault Badges.

Wright said while multinational coalitions are commonplace today, they require even more cultural understanding and the ability to form relationships quickly.

"What the world presents is complexity," Wright said. "And we don't go anywhere alone."

Wright said cadets' four years on UNG's Dahlonega Campus are all about preparation.

"You have to put folks in positions where they're going to be challenged, they're going to have opportunities to stumble, they're going to have opportunities to succeed," Wright said. "Otherwise you can't really get a good sense of who they are and how they'll fit."

He said treating people with dignity and respect is one of the most important things he can teach cadets. And he is looking to be available.

"That door is open all the time. That's what I tell people," Wright said. "There's no problem too big or too small. And you don't have to come see me with a problem."

Wright already met a few cadets in his first week by commissioning 11 cadets as part of summer commencement Aug. 3. He said UNG's 145 years of producing military leaders is impressive, and he hopes to continue that tradition of excellence.

"I'm absolutely focused on producing the best," Wright said.

Wright is married to Cheryl Wright. They have a son, Mitchell, and two daughters, Sydney and Hannah. Being so close to his wife's family that lives in Cumming, Wright is thankful for his appointment.

"For us, it's kind of a dream come true," Wright said. "Not too many times in your Army career will you get your first choice."
The Taj Mahal faces possible destruction if the government of India does not follow through on an order issued by the Supreme Court in July, the Weather Network reported on August 11. The historic building, frequently referenced as one of the top Wonders of the World, has faced a continual barrage of pollution and bug waste.

The Taj Mahal, which is more than four centuries old, has not fared well with the elements the building has encountered since 1653. Indias two-judge Supreme Court reprimanded the government for its neglect of the monument. The court warned, Either we shut down the Taj Mahal or it may be demolished or restored, but something must be done, according to the Telegraph (UK), which covered news from the court when it broke in July.

Government failed to address environmental degradation, court says

In rendering its decision about the monument, the court also pointed out environmental degradation that was met with less than an efficient and effective response by the government. Federal judges were also in court, representing the government. According to the government, the Indian Institute of Technology, located in Kanpur, has been assessing pollution levels, notes the Telegraph.

The marble has fallen prey to a combination of environmental pollutants: particulate matter associated with nearby industries, diesel and kerosene from household generators, and insects borne from garbage in the adjacent Yamuna River form clusters all gravitate to the marble monument.

Naturally occurring oxidization is another element the building has faced as a facet of a hostile surroundings, so wrote the Weather Network.

The Taj Mahal is wasting away, and it may too late to fix it: https://t.co/bQWCLlQJil pic.twitter.com/UiX5YbeYAU  The Weather Network (@weathernetwork) August 11, 2018

Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built after his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, died from childbirth complications.

Discuss this news on Eunomia

With approximately 400 years of survival since its completion, the monument, built as a testament to enduring love, the Smithsonian Magazine believes Indias high court is bluffing. The federal government, however, is not willing to run the risk that the court is pulling no punches.

Government to produce 100-year plan for Taj Mahal

In response to the courts mandate to restore the beloved and much-visited Taj Mahal, the government conveyed that it was submitting a 100-year plan. The plan will reportedly entail a two-prong approach to the pollution in the Yamuna River. Pollution will be cleaned up and prevented.

Cleaning up the Taj Mahal is a massive undertaking and investment for India, yet the rewards will be worth it, Smithsonian pointed out. The monument draws approximately 700,000 visitors each day. The Taj Mahal is Indias top tourism magnet.

View of the Taj Mahal pic.twitter.com/P4aWXQuYfB  Pure Nature (@PureNature17) August 6, 2018

Lessening environmental impact on monument means decreasing daily visitors

With people, there is an inevitable human imprint, such as oil from visitors hands.

To help remedy and reduce the level of pollutants, the Archaeological Survey of India is endeavoring to see visitors capped at 400,000 a day. A time limit of three hours has also been imposed for each tourist.

Another approach to help the Taj Mahal remain standing was proposed in July by The Diplomat, suggesting that the government implement its Adopt A Heritage program. By so doing, private and public sectors in India can pool resources and become responsible for the care of the monument.

Critics of the plan prefer that smaller monuments be tried as an initial test before outsourcing the responsibility of one the countrys most treasured and historic icons.

Dr. Rakesh Behari is an Agra-based conservationist.

He stated that a system of checks and balances should be intact before such a big step as including the Taj Majal in the Adopt A Heritage program is used as an option.

Be sure to follow Blasting News for the latest information.
Alaska Airlines lost one of its planes when it was stolen from Seattle by an employee who was engaged in maintenance activities and was not authorized to fly planes. It was an empty 76-seater Horizon Air turboprop Q400 and the man has been identified as Rich, probably an abbreviation of Richard. That is how the air traffic controllers referred to him during communication.

Daily Mail UK reports that Rich is a 29-year-old who was born in Key West, Florida and moved to Alaska as a child. He married in 2010 and went into a bakery business but it failed to click.

The couple then moved to Seattle in 2015 where he took up a job in an airline. He hoped to work in a management position. He also dreamt of becoming an officer in the military. However, nothing was happening. That could have probably been preying on his mind, and he went into depression harboring suicidal thoughts.

<Alaska Airlines Plane, FBI> Authorities investigate how employee was able to hijack jet plane https://t.co/3DgVhkRS9O  Alberto Allen (@albertoallen) August 11, 2018

Theft of Alaska Airlines plane led to a scare

Loss of any plane is a matter of concern for the authorities and this one, involving an Alaska Airlines plane, was no exception. Pierce County Sheriff's Office informed that F-15 fighter jets were scrambled from Portland to intercept it.

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said that President Donald Trump had been apprised about the situation. Sheriff Paul Pastor has confirmed that this was not any terrorist related activity. He described it as a joyride gone terribly wrong. The man did something foolish and may well have paid with his life.

Air traffic controllers at Seattle-Tacoma Airport had been in conversation with Rich for nearly 20 minutes to persuade him to abandon his plans.

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However, the 76-seater plane finally ended up in a ball of fire in Ketron Island which is a densely wooded area inhabited by very few people. There is no report of any casualty.

Record of conversation could be useful

According to Sky News, the staff of the air traffic control at Seattle and Rich, who was piloting the Alaska Airlines plane, has been released.

That could provide an insight into the mental condition of the young man who chose to end his life the way he did. It seems he has told the ATC that he was "just a broken guy".

Witnesses have captured the action on videos as it was performing different maneuvers in the air before plummeting into the ground in Ketron Island. The sheriff's office believes that the crash was a result of doing stunts in air or lack of flying skills". There is no information about whether the man knew how to fly a plane. Of course, he had handled the plane like someone who knows the intricacies of flying a transport plane like a 76-seater Horizon Air turboprop Q400.
Last Tuesday (August 7), Travis Scott released his third studio album, "Astroworld," and it has already surged up the charts. The new project was inspired by the tearing down of the Six Flags Astroworld theme park in Houston, Texas, where Scott is from. The hip-hop star will try to bring back the fun of the theme park experience with a full-fledged "Astroworld" festival scheduled for November in the area.

Travis wants to bring the fun back

For months, Travis Scott and Kylie Jenner have been occupied with their baby Stormi and other projects. As XXL reported, Travis and Kylie rented out the Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park in Valencia, California this past April.

The occasion was a celebration of Scott's birthday. Just recently, Scott was on hand for Kylie's 21st and fittingly, "Astroworld" was part of the party background music. Now he's going to combine those two themes for a music festival.

Scott previously told British GQ, in 2017, about his new album being based on the torn down theme park he wanted back. Scott said, "Thats what [the music is] going to sound like, like taking an amusement park away from kids. We want it back. We want the building back. Thats why Im doing it. It took the fun out of the city."

The result of that concept is "Astroworld," an album which features 17 tracks and guests including Drake, Nav, and Frank Ocean. The album was on top of the iTunes hip-hop charts until it was recently dethroned by the new Nicki Minaj LP.

However, both albums are among the top five overall on iTunes and Scott's will likely have a strong Billboard debut.

The new LP is the second-biggest in terms of first week sales for 2018, per SOHH website. The album has sold over 550,000 copies over that span of time, ranking it only behind fellow hip-hop star Drake. His popular "Scorpion" album, which was recently released, has broken streaming and sales records all over the place.

Discuss this news on Eunomia

'Astroworldfest' details

Travis Scott posted the official announcement on his Twitter account on Friday (August 10). A poster for the event is on display indicating that "Astroworldfest" will take place on November 17 at NRG Stadium. There's also an official website, Astroworldfest.com, where people can enter their email and phone number to get a special pre-sale code for the event.

Right now, the specifics of who will perform at the "Astroworldfestival" are unknown. Clearly, Travis Scott will be one of the main attractions on stage, but it will be interesting to see which other hip-hop stars he'll bring along. Possibly, Scott will include some of the guests on his album, along with acts like Migos, Future, and others he has collaborated with in the past.
Becky Gates, a fourth-year student at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine in Roanoke, Virginia, received the Outstanding Oral Presentation Award at the annual meeting for the International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE), held in Las Vegas this June.

I originally submitted my research to the conference hoping for a poster presentation. Then they asked me to do an oral presentation, which I accepted to challenge myself and push myself out of my comfort zone, Gates said. Before the conference, I was looking at the abstracts for each oral presentation and noticed about 10 presenters, including myself, out of the 60 presenters there had stars next to our names, indicating we were finalists for the award. I think I was the only student nominee.

The IAMSE used a multiphased, peer review process and educational scholarship criteria to select the award finalists. During the conference, peer-reviewers observed and assessed the finalists presentations, selecting a winner from three categories: poster presentations, oral presentations, and reviewers.

Gates said she never expected to win, especially given she was up against faculty with many more years of experience in teaching and research. One of her competitors was a friendly face: Richard Vari, senior dean for academic affairs at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine who also currently serves as president of IAMSE.

I am very proud of Becky. You know we are doing something right at the VTC School of Medicine when our students earn awards over their teachers, Vari said. Our students learn to teach from the very beginning of their medical education through our small-group, problem-based learning curriculum. In addition, they work on a substantial research project across their four-year education, so they gain a real expertise in their project.

Over the past three years under the mentorship of David Musick, associate dean of faculty affairs at VTCSOM, as well as previously mentored by Lauren Penwell-Waines, who is now with Novant Health in North Carolina, Gates has researched several aspects of health care professional burnout, a topic of growing concern. Some studies have found about half of clinicians face burnout, which the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality defines as a long-term stress reaction marked by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of sense of personal accomplishment.

Burnout can lead to lower levels of patient care and/or increased medical errors. The professional may also face depression, abuse of drugs or alcohol, or increased risk of suicide.

Gates presented at IAMSE about her findings on how the three factors of burnout  high emotional exhaustion, high depersonalization, and low personal accomplishment  are related to perceived wellbeing for various groups of health care professionals at Carilion Clinic.

We found emotional exhaustion is universally important and has the larger relationship with perceived wellbeing compared to the other two variables for perceived wellbeing, Gates said. There were interesting trends among groups. For instance, personal accomplishment was more closely associated with perceived wellbeing in resident physicians and medical students than in another other group, while depersonalization did not impact medical students perceived wellbeing as much as other groups. This makes sense because residents and students are trainees. Both groups are constantly being evaluated and students in particular arent always interacting with patients as much as nurses or providers, especially in the preclinical years of medical school.

"Since IAMSEs conference in June, weve been looking into these trends a bit more and testing them for statistical significance. Were hoping to publish a paper in the near future.

In addition, Gates found that people who had higher levels of depersonalization had better perceived wellbeing, which was the opposite relationship of what they expected to see. Were working now on determining whether that relationship is true or if theres a confounding variable, Gates said. It could be a coping mechanism to overcome emotional exhaustion. Im interested to see what we find when we dig a little bit more.

Gates will continue her research during her fourth and final year of study at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. Every student is required to complete a robust study of publishable quality over their four-year education in order to graduate.

I did basic science bench work as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech, and it was fun. But when I went to choose a project here, I wanted to choose something where I felt like I could make an impact right away, Gates said. The field of health professional wellbeing is evolving. It's a hot topic. You can collect data, use it tomorrow, and help a lot of people  not only the health care professionals but also the patients they are caring for and that appealed to me.

While continuing research, Gates also will begin applying for residency to continue her medical training after graduating from VTCSOM in May. She has decided to pursue general surgery as her specialty.

She also plans to participate in next years IAMSE conference, which will be hosted by what will then be her alma mater, the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. It will be June 7-11, 2019, and is expected to draw about 500 basic science and clinical educators from across the globe to Roanoke, Virginia.
by Katrin Trustedt

With very little international attention, a major terrorism trial is entering its final stage in Munich, Germany. Beate Zschape, the only survivor of a right-wing terrorism trio, is facing charges of complicity in ten homicides, two bomb attacks, and 15 armed robberies, as well as membership in a terrorist organization, attempted murder, and arson. The victims are mostly people with a Muslim migration background. If the situation had been reversed with a Muslim group assassinating Germans for over a decade, then international interest would most likely have trumped the reporting on the recent Paris or Brussels attacks. This attentional asymmetry is in many ways also what the trial is about.

Over the course of more than a decade, the self-declared National-Socialist Underground (NSU) managed to go on a killing spree across the country, and, in some troubling sense, they did so on the government's watch. Germany's domestic intelligence agency (Verfassungsschutz) was aware of the right wing terror cell before they went underground in 1998 and began their series of assassinations. And yet, for more than a decade, the police who were investigating the individual murder cases never considered the possibility of a right wing background as a motivation for the killings. Instead, in all of the various instances, the police only investigated the assumed criminal backgrounds of the victims as possible leads, presuming hidden ties to some Turkish mafia or criminal masterminds abroad. When people from the Turkish community suspected xenophobic motives, they were labeled as conspiracy theorists, as police documents show. The media went along with these assumptions and reported accordingly, and we all ate it up. The extent not only of right wing terror in Germany, but also of stupefying institutionalized racism in the Verfassungsschutz and the police, major fuck ups in the investigations, and collective blindness slowly came to light since 2011. All of this happened before the recent rise of the new right in Germany and elsewhere that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

The precise role of various institutional involvements and the question of how this could have been going on for over a decade is one of the biggest issues in this case. The domestic intelligence agency, called Verfassungsschutz, literally protection of the constitution, is supposed to do just that: protect the constitution. The first paragraph of the German constitution reads: The dignity of man is inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all public authority. The Verfassungsschutz has not only failed to do its job by preventing the enemies of the constitution from doing what they did, but they in fact enabled them. As has become known in parliamentary hearings, the Verfassungsschutz retained a number of informants in the Neo-Nazi scene, who actually used the money they received from the Verfassungsschutz to sponsor and support the very scene they were supposed to observe. And one informant was present at one of the NSU crime scenes at the time of the murder, although, allegedly, only accidentally. In the case of the NSU, the Verfassungsschutz in fact perpetuated what it was created to prevent. But whether or not this institutional failure can actually be addressed as part of this trial is controversial and contested within the current trial procedure.

Legal trials focus on individual responsibility. Since the two male members took their own lives before the police got to them, this trial concentrates on the only remaining member of the NSU, Beate Zschape. What did she know, support, initiate? What was her relationship with the two guys, both called Uwe? Does she have a drinking problem? How does she interact with her lawyers? (After having selected them for the Nazi sound of their namesSturm, Heer and Stahlshe then repeatedly tried to have her lawyers fired). The exclusive focus on the individual's accountability, on her as well as of a handful supporters, diverts attention from the more fundamental aspects of this case that nevertheless seem to uncannily re-appear in the proceedings in court.

Sitting on the visitor's bench in this small court room, I see the defendants closest to me. I also see the judges, the state attorneys, and other state personnel. But I can only see the very tip of the relatives of the victims with their lawyers, who comprise the accessory prosecution. They are ascribed only a supplementary role in this trial, supporting the state attorneys in leading the prosecution of the defendants. By far the biggest party in this trial, they are barely visible to the public. Delegated to seats under the elevated box for the press and the public, the survivors are, like us, both part of and not part of the trial. But from the space where I am sitting overlooking them, it feels like they have literally been swept under the rug. From that supplementary position, however, they prove to be a driving force. With questions and motions about the role of the respective institutions and their informants in the Neo-Nazi scene, various lawyers from this sideline repeatedly attempt to broaden the limited scope of the prosecution that insists on focusing solely on the individual responsibility of Zschape and some of her individual helpers. One of the most pressing controversies of this trial is thus occurring not between the prosecution and the defense, but instead between the prosecution and the survivors' lawyers. Representing the victims' families, these lawyers sometimes find themselves in the position of having to form strategic alliances with the defense lawyers, who are eager to reduce their clients' individual responsibility by shifting some blame to the enabling institutions. So the survivors can find themselves in a situation where they act in a way that might paradoxically serve the people who not only killed or injured their family members, but then also celebrated it in a video featuring the pink panther. One of the defendants has Die Jew Die tattooed on his chest.

In her play on the trial, Das schweigende Madchen (The Silent Girl), Elfriede Jelinek has one of the judges open the court session with the words I now name the representatives of the survivors with their clients. You won't remember them anyways. The setting of this trial is determined by the constellation that enabled the decade-long killing spree that brought us here in the first place. Looking at Zschape and her supporters, we are sitting above the victims' families; we see enough of them to not be able not to know that they are there, but we don't actually see them.
by Jalees Rehman

Accused not of crimes they have committed, but of crimes they will commit. It is asserted that these men, if allowed to remain free, will at some future time commit felonies. From The Minority Report by Philip K. Dick

In the science fiction short story The Minority Report by Philip K. Dick, mutant precogs are able to see one to two weeks into the future and their precognitive prophecies are decoded by a computer which then passes on the analyzed data to the Precrime police which pre-emptively arrests would-be perpetrators prior to them committing a crime. In the story-line, the idea of multiple futures is proposed, which explains why crimes can indeed be averted because the pre-emptive arrest leads to a shift in the time path towards an alternate future in which the crime does not place. But the story raises the fundamental question of how a man can be arrested and imprisoned for a crime that he did not commit if indeed the alternate future begins upon his arrest. This dilemma of pre-emptive arrest is one of the many questions pondered by the Austrian philosopher Armen Avanessian in his most recent book Miamification.

Miamification is basically a journal written during Avanessians two week stint as an artist-in-residence in the city of Miami in the fall of 2016, just weeks before the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Each chapter of the book represents one day of his stay in Miami, containing musings on so many topics that it feels more like a bricolage than a collection of traditional philosophical essays. The stream-of-consciousness style of writing filled with several digressions and side-notes, reflects not only the journal-like nature of the book but perhaps also our contemporary fragmented intellectual discourse of snappy phrases and soundbites that are so well-suited for social media conversations. The book cover of the German edition lists several of the topics Avanessian ruminates about: Trump, Big Data, Beach, Pre-emptive Personality, Make American Great Again, Immigration, Climate Change, Time Complex, Post-Capitalism, Post-Internet, Recursion, Deja-vus, Algorithms  just to name a few.

Understandably, none of these topics are exhaustively discussed in this short book, and some readers may struggle with the Ideenuberflutung (idea flooding) that one encounters in each chapter. But each short chapter provides the reader with the lingering pleasure of having continuous food for thought and questions to ponder for weeks to come.

Even though the chapters are not thematically structured, common themes do appear throughout the book. The Disappearance of the Subject is one such theme that was recently discussed in a brilliant essay by Adrian Nathan West. Another central theme is that of temporal discordance.

Miamification begins with physical and biological manifestations of temporal discordance, one that many who have traveled across time zones can easily relate to. Avanessian experiences jet-lag after flying from Berlin to Miami but his jet lag is not limited to having difficulties sleeping or waking up early. When reading his emails, he feels that he is continuously lagging behind. The work day in Europe is nearly over while he is just getting started and people appear to be expecting responses in real-time. This temporal disconnect between expectations and reality may also undermine our ability to think through complex ideas. We need time to analyze and ponder concepts but the reality of being perpetually connected to the world by our smartphone exposes us to continuous emails and social media pings which prevent us from devoting the necessary time. Avanessian also observes other absurd examples of temporal discordance in Miami. Instead of enjoying a swim in the warm water, many tourists appear to be more obsessed with taking selfies of themselves standing in the water so that they may capture this moment for posterity  delaying gratification in order to subsequently enjoy the memory of a time when they decided to forgo gratification.

After watching the movie Minority Report (loosely based on the Philip K. Dick short story) on his third day in Miami, Avanessian broadens his inquiry into our relationship with time. Even though contemporary police forces do not use mutant precogs to prophecy the future, we are surrounded by computational algorithms which aim to predict the future. Law enforcement agencies heavily rely on predictive algorithms to identify individuals who are at risk of committing terrorist acts in the near or distant future. Corporations such as Amazon prompt us with products that we could purchase based on algorithms that analyze our past purchases. At what point do these algorithms become self-fulfilling prophecies? Are individuals who are continuously monitored and questioned by law enforcement perhaps more likely to radicalize? At what point do online suggestions by algorithms become a subconscious mandate to buy consumables in order to remain true to our past self?

The temporal assault occurs at several fronts: Surveillance agencies and corporations use predictive algorithms about our future behavior to define and create present behavior. But these algorithms are rooted in past behaviors  thus limiting our ability to change. At the same time, we are being bombarded with clickbait, social media posts and sensationalist news  all appear to glorify and obsess about the present. Their rapidity does not allow us to analyze them in the context of the past or the future. Lastly, we are seeing the rise of reactionary forces in many countries of the world who conjure up bizarre images of a glorious past that we ought to be striving towards. Avanessian specifically mentions Donald Trump and his supporters in their Make American Great Again fervor as an example  weeks before the 2016 presidential election in the USA.

How do we best handle this dysfunctional relationship with the Past (reactionary and revisionist glorifying of the past), Present (barrage of mindless and meaningless information about the present) and the Future (predictive algorithms which predetermine our future instead of allowing us to define our own future)? Lead a poetic life. Avanessian uses the word poetic in the original Greek sense: Poiesis  to create and produce. Poiesis requires some degree of disconnecting ourselves from the algorithms which are dictating our behavior. Corporations prompting us to buy certain products as well as political extremists goad us into algorithmic behavior. For example, scandalous and sensationalist tweets with racist statements lead to an understandable backlash and visceral reactions by those who are opposed to racism. But this recursive cycle ends up undermining our ability to be creative and escape the algorithmic life.

Poiesis creates the unexpected and unpredictable and thus generates a reality that eludes predictive algorithms. Art, music, literature, philosophy, science provide poietic paths but the challenge for us is to integrate these poietic paths into our social, economic and political lives. Political poiesis may be especially important in our current time to counter the rise of the far right. One of the reasons for the success of the far right political movements is that they conjure up images of a glorious past as well as the supposed danger of a bleak future unless society returns to the status quo of the glorious past. But progressive movements now have the opportunity to offer a poietic vision of the future.

One such poietic success in the United States during the past decade has been the revolution in the perception of access to healthcare as a right. In most countries of the developed world, all members of society have enjoyed access to universal healthcare for several decades. Up until recently, Americans accepted the fact that they might face bankruptcy and denial of health insurance coverage if they were afflicted by a devastating disease such as cancer. Through the joint efforts of patients, healthcare professionals, community organizers, politicians and most importantly  citizens from all socioeconomic backgrounds  American society began to recognize access to healthcare even for those with pre-existing medical conditions as a human right. Townhall meetings, marches and door-to-door engagement, medical journal articles, new collaborations across communities and professions were all needed to bring about this change. The sheer scale of the efforts and the creativity of the proponents took right-wing opponents by surprise who had assumed that the American public would stick to its traditional distaste for anything that resembled a universal healthcare system that was so common in other industrialized countries. All subsequent efforts by right wing politicians to abolish the fundamental achievement of the universal healthcare movement to enshrine the right to obtain medical insurance despite pre-existing medical conditions have failed. The success of the movement could serve as an inspiration for all who struggle under the yoke of algorithmic and reactive behavior. Our willingness to dream and create can allow us to break the algorithmic mold.

Reference

Avanessian, A. (2017). Miamification. Merve Verlag.

This book is also available in an English translation published by Sternberg Press.
by Katrin Trustedt

The major National-Socialist Underground trial ended this summer in Munich, under the applause of neo-Nazis and with little international attention. A recent US research study found that while white and rightwing terrorists carried out nearly twice as many terrorist attacks as Muslim extremists between 2008 and 2016, terrorist attacks committed by Muslim extremists receive 357% more press coverage than those committed by non-Muslims.

Thats right: 357%.

In many ways, this massive asymmetry is what the NSU case is about. For more than a decade, the self-declared National-Socialist Underground went on a killing spree across the country, assassinating nine foreigners (mostly Muslim men with migration background) and a police officer, carried out two bomb attacks and committed 15 armed robberies. Only after they released a video claiming responsibility did the police, the investigators, and the press realize what happened. Instead of considering right-wing terrorist attacks, the police was blaming the victims themselves, suggesting they must have been involved in criminal activities. The press referred to the crimes as the Doner murders.

What the trial has brought to light is, among other things, the fantasmatic scenarios of this right wing extremism, attacking the present German state as weak and aiming for a nation state of masculine strength and potency. At the announcement of the verdict, many neo-Nazis were in the audience. Their behaviour was explicitly signaling an attempt to dominate the courtroom. We are many, one of them said to a woman entering who expressed surprise at seeing the neo-Nazis in the audience next to Turkish speaking people. To these foreigners, to the court, and to the world at large, they aimed to show whos really the Man.

And quite literally the Man. All the victims assasinated by the NSU  with the significant exception of a female police officer  were male foreigners, mostly with Turkish backgrounds. The reasons for choosing the particular victims are unclear, but aside from being non-white, they were all supposed to be male, and in the age group of having procreative capacity, according to documents by the NSU introduced in the trial. Such a focus anticipates the current phantasm of threats from young male Muslims overrunning a decadent Europe too weak to defend itself. The neo-Nazis in the courtroom seemed to echo the signals that these terror acts were meant to demonstrate: That they are in fact doing what the state fails to do  deciding upon who should be allowed to enter and become a member of the state and who is not, and ultimately extinguishing those who supposedly do not belong. For such a fascist job, the current state is, in their eyes, just too weak. What became palpable in the courtroom and throughout the whole trial was the ambiguous and strangely asymmetric relation between the right wing extremists and the institutions of the state.

On the one hand, the state appears to have been complicit in several ways with the right wing terrorism it has now put on trial. The scandal of this case was the involvement of state institutions enabling both passively and actively right wing extremism. The police failed to investigate the possibility of racist motives for the assassinations for years, instead assuming they had to be related to gang and drug criminality in the German-Turkish population, given the migration background of the victims. Over the course of the trial it also emerged that Germanys domestic intelligence agency (the so called Office for the Protection of the Constitution, BfV), must have been aware of the NSU and the possibility of terrorist activities. The large network of the intelligence services paid informants not only had contact to the supporters of the NSU, but in fact used their payments by the BfV to finance the neo-Nazi scene. During one of the assassinations  that of Halit Yozgat , an intelligence agent had been present at the time and place of the murder, but failed to officially report the incident. During the trial, an employee at the BfVs headquarters admitted to destroying files on seven informants a few days after the existence of the NSU came to light. Parliamentary fact-finding commissions covering the failings of the intelligence agencies were initiated in five German states. There are many indications that the domestic intelligence agencies were protecting its informants and actively sabotaging the prosecutions investigation. Germanys domestic security chief Hans-Georg Maassen, president of the BfV, has just been accused to have met several times with the leaders of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), to advise them about internal party issues and how to avoid investigation by his own office. Given the state institutions activities (or lack thereof) it is hard not to get the impression that the institutions of the state regard right wing terrorism  targeting only foreigners, not us  as much less of a threat than Islamic terrorism. It is in this sense that the state appears in certain ways  however implicitly or even unconsciously  complicit.

There are many critics of the judgments the court arrived at now, pointing to the surprisingly lenient sentencing of Andre Eminger, an important enabler of the NSU, that was met with frenetic applause by neo-Nazis. One of the most persistent issues, however, was the unwillingness of the prosecution to consider the involvement of state institutions. The judge, in closing the case, did neither address this intractable relation nor reflect the historical dimension of this trial that far exceeds the sentences concerning the individuals on trial. While some argued that such challenges would exceed the framework of such a criminal proceeding, the selections and limits of the scope of this trial seems to portrait right wing terrorism as limitable and manageable.

While the state seems in these various ways complicit with right wing extremists, the neo-Nazis, on the other hand, were not only fighting the threatening foreigners, but attacking the state itself, while happily taking the money it channeled through the BfV informants. Their target is what they consider the weak state  the state that lets the foreigners in and protects them, thereby betraying the German Volk. The only exception to the victim principle of targeting male foreigners at an age of procreative capacity was one female German police officer. While the motive here remains even less clear, it is obvious that she was a representative of the hated weak, i.e. feminized state, like chancellor Merkel, hate object par excellence in right wing circles, who is being perceived as not only soft on immigration but as even inviting it. In this sense she seems to embody the very opposite of the current demand of walls projecting a stark image of power. Trumps call for his great wall is not just his attempt to shift the overton window, as it has been claimed, in order to make it possible to enact stricter immigration laws. It seems most of all an attempt to reinvigorate a phantasmatic image of sovereignty, potency, clear-cut solutions, and containment. The attitude of the neo-Nazis at the Munich trial  We are many  does not only refer to their dominance in the courtroom. We are many also seems to resonate with the current uptrend of chauvinist right wing populism, empowering them to keep taking the job of the weak state into their own hands.

This is, perversely, exactly the charge levelled against people rescuing refugees in the Mediterranean: interfering in the business of the responsible state. While the terrorists are executing people in the name of a fascist state, these NGOs and activists are indeed covering duties of the state, but by doing the reverse: saving people from imminent death, where the state officials are increasingly failing or refusing to do so. They are intervening in that border area that seems to be the realistic correlate of the phantasma of a sovereign wall  the Mediterranean Sea. Everything is liquid here, including the zones of sovereignty, nothing is contained or clear cut, but incredibly chaotic. This border zone is no less deadly, but not due to the active strength the neo-Nazis fantasize about and try to execute in their terrorism, but rather due to passive and active neglect. The EU is deferring and externalizing the problem, mainly to Lybia, in spite of the knowledge the EU has of all the massive human rights violations. This border is not one of concrete, but one constantly drawn and re-drawn by techniques of regulation; the violence not physical, but one of transferral and denial. It seems much more likely that this will be the future of our borders.

As Seyla Benhabib recently pointed out, the European discourse surrounding refugees is a symbolic one. Europes population includes 508 Million people; there are 3 million refugees here. That is not even one percent, receiving what feels like overall 357% of negative attention. The discourse projecting a threat by young male refugees taking over Europe as well as the imagined solution of strong borders and ultimate actions against them seems not just symbolic, but rather phantasmatic. Instead of refueling the idea of a threat from outside by participating in these delusional discourses, we should maybe talk about what type of community and what kind of state we actually want to live in.
by Lexi Lerner

Traveling to a place where no one knows you, nor where anyones particularly interested, is terrestrially analogous to Carl Sagans Pale Blue Dot. So far away from home, you look over your shoulder at that bright, dense pinprick of everything youve ever understood, valued, loved, identified as and think to yourself: That means nothing out here.

Of course there is the celebrated, luxurious trope of finding yourself through travel. But after staring for a long while at the Pale Blue Dot, a disconcerting tannin lingers: a smallness, an inconsequentiality, that renders you and that dense dot mutually invisible, mutually unintelligible. While everything in the universe gravitationally pulls at each other  Voyager 1 to the Dot, me to you  distance makes that attraction faint to the point of unaccountability, or (the semblance of) estrangement. A homelessness that cannot be shaken once felt, even after some sort of return or reconciliation. Its not finding, its losing  irrecoverably.

If all the contextual factors that justified my personhood, that explained the aggregate of my experiences, carved a river of my self, moving to Vienna caused that river to pool out into senseless water: atomized, oceanic, dilute it could no longer be called a river, or anything at all, really. No house of language could domesticate this gargantuan puddle.

And perhaps there was no river from the start  just a canal calling itself destined so it could keep flowing when it needed to.

First week field notes:

In summertime the Viennese expel themselves into the countryside like fry from a seahorse. The city is left flabby, its stretch marks the too-wide streets and the too-wide sidewalks. In fact, two sidewalks often run parallel to each other on the same side of the road, accompanied by a stately line of maples, plus an extra bike lane or two, then six lanes of traffic, and the same pedestrian palace road mirrored on the other side. Anticipating throngs that never come.

There is a preoccupation with modern interior design: mod shapes in natural fibers like wool and wood and cotton and bamboo, the furniture interesting as art pieces but wholly unwelcoming to engage with. In every living room hangs the same Ikea light fixture that looks like a dandelion made of spikes. The chairs purse their lips as you sit. Most dont have arms.

Vienna has shoe culture (no trekking dirt into any room past the foyer.) Yet the Viennese dont walk quietly. Boots clomp on hardwood, on cobblestone. But the architecture is so gaping that it leaves enormous space for silence. That silence fills space.

The same wind roars through the Augarten tree corridors and the Untergrundbahn tunnels. Its a kind of wind that sneaks up on you, where you only hear it and see it as you feel it.

From one part to the other, the city seems to continue, in perspective, multiplying its repertory of images: but instead it has no thickness, it consists only of a face and an obverse, like a sheet of paper, with a figure on either side, which can neither be separated nor look at each other. (Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, trans. William Weaver, 1974, p. 105)

Lately Ive noticed that subway windows are more telling mirrors than true mirrors are. Come with me. Youre sitting on a train and it makes a booting-up spaceship sound, and the station starts accelerating, slipping away from you, a film reeling by, and suddenly the world outside turns pitch black backlit by fluorescent lighting, the kind that makes you look as old as you feel, you see yourself dimly in the window reflection, as well as everyone behind you and this is where Ive noticed people doing the best analyses of themselves, their true selves (not with their focus lodged between their two front teeth or stuck in a zit or crouched in a cowlick), looking in that dim light at an intimate merging of private and public, both avoiding the eyes of the passengers next to them yet unabashedly meeting their glances when reflected, curiosity and awe and pensive content and then the outside world bursts into light and the tunnel runs away from you, the window reflection so dim that the passengers behind you disappear and instead the people standing on the platform of this new station come into focus almost imperceptibly, your own image is superimposed onto the scene outside, more accurate than a mirror since you see yourself in the context of your total surroundings, behind you as reflection and in front of you as transparency, colliding, merging, superimposing, competing, coming in and out of focus depending on the shifting light the closest you will ever come to being a third person observer of yourself, your own god the city reels by as you stay constant, measuring yourself up, you versus the not-you.

At times the mirror increases a things value, at times denies it [N]othing that exists or happens is symmetrical: every face and gesture is answered, from the mirror, by a face and gesture inverted, point by point. (Calvino, 54)

A 30-something-year-old passenger with heavier bags under her eyes than in her hands sits in the train booth across from mine. A single red rose peeks out of her bag, but the tone of her face isnt elated enough to justify it. Who was the giver? Where was the rose clipped? Where will she put it? Will she hang it from the rafters, press it in a book, trash it, let it crumble? I wait for the scenery to go dark to watch her reflection in the mirror window. Through some fateful trigonometry, we lock eyes. Her knuckles tighten and blanch, the stem transformed into a hilt.

[S]taring at me as if demanding recognition, as if to recognize me, as if they had already recognized me. (Calvino, 95)

Slowly Ive dared myself to dare people wherever I go. Hold their eyes until they hold mine back. Catch them staring and dont relent, forcing us into the same plane. Naschmarkt. Prater. Votivkirche. Its dangerous, desirous, teetering work, cupping your hands around eyes in case stories are blinked out of tear ducts.

I turned my gaze aside; I no longer dared look anyone in the face. I thought: If Adelma is a city I am seeing in a dream the dream frightens me. If Adelma is a real city the resemblances will dissolve, alien faces will appear, bearing anguish. In either case it is best for me not to insist on staring at them. (Calvino, 94)

Second week field notes:

Is the alien hypo- or hypervisible? Perhaps the most serious blunder the tourist makes is thinking theyre invisible, since it renders them all the less so. I feel anonymous, a Danish traveler admitted when I caught him staring awkwardly at a spot on the wall just over my right ear. But as I perambulate silently in unmarked clothes knowing no one in my neighborhood, I know that if I disappeared, there wouldnt even be a hole in the air where I was snatched.

On a dark street at three in the morning, a group of men catcalled me, almost blocking my path, almost threatening to follow. But it was in Deutsch so I had no understanding and thus no response. What was I supposed to do  pause and say, Sorry, could you repeat that in English? Only the question mark followed me to the apartment; but it was pervasive, buzzing like their confused muttering, which I vigorously splashed away with cold water on my face.

Vienna phases in and out of linguistic understanding. I latch onto everything from gesticulations to cognates to the occasional sign in bona fide English, the latter of which is dedicated to reel in tourists and expats like me  See, there is a place for you here, there is a place for English everywhere. Despite the hegemony of the English language and American culture (songs in taxis, stores, and music festivals are all in English and hail from stateside studios), the individual nonbelonger ghosts through daily life, melting into alley walls and market aisles, as conversations that could have  should have?  happened, cannot.

And there are so many levels of mediation  of media separating one expression, one utterance of the soul from another, slowing it, distorting it. The Google Translate app is distortion; your agape mouth and hands pulling words from the air are distortion; the traumas heavier than our checked bags, that you cant believe made it all this way, that make denotation ooze connotation, are distortion.

There is no language without deceit. (Calvino, 48)

Perhaps a universal language would be one without medium. Beyond the corporeal, perhaps even beyond the sensate. Some of the dead feel more real than the shimmering, untouchable living.

All the rest of the city is invisible Your footsteps follow not what is outside the eyes, but what is within, buried, erased. (Calvino, 90-91)

A few years ago Christopher Wools work was at the Guggenheim and I spent a long time with one particular painting. It was as large as a closet and had black letters stenciled onto a white background. THE HARDER YOU LOOK THE HARDER YOU LOOK. But if you looked very closely at the second half of the sentence, its evident this was a revision, that there was a different message underneath: THE HARDER YOU LOOK THE HARDER IT LOOKS BACK.

Signs form a language, but not the one you think you know. (Calvino, 48)

Around the Wiener Staatsoper I noticed that the little green person on the pedestrian traffic lights had been pluralized into two little green people. When Austria hosted Eurovision three years ago, these lights were installed as a queer-friendly initiative. Some of the figures wear dresses, some not. In case holding hands was not clear enough, a tiny LED heart hovers between their heads.

Halfway through the crossing my hand felt cold; by habit, it reached into my back pocket for the phone to text my own little green person. They live six thousand kilometers and many opportunities away. But supposedly LEDs have exceptional battery life. If we had a tiny diodic heart, it would be hovering somewhere along the North Atlantic, battered and salt-sprayed but still luminous.

Could I love you? I thought as I gazed at the Donaukanals graffitied underpass. The dynamic movement of the water against the backdrop of Jugendstil and Baroque, different histories coexisting through competition  the iconic, the excessive, the colorful, the established, the anachronism of old and new, the land and its undercurrent, eroding and fertilizing

If, of two arcades, one continues to seem more joyous, it is because thirty years ago a girl went by there, with broad, embroidered sleeves (Calvino, 90-91)

I recently encountered a social experiment conducted by the comedian Nathan Fielder. He sat a pink-haired stranger across from him and asked her to look him in the eyes and say, I love you. She did. Again, he prompted. I love you, she answered. Pause.

Again. I love you. Again. I love you. Again. I love you. Again. I love you. Again. You have tears in your eyes

[T]here runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence. (Calvino, 149)

Everywhere I search for her, the girl with broad, embroidered sleeves. In the rainbows that refract off the Votivkirche windows at sunset. In the bottoms of coffee cups and at pale pink roses. But mostly in eyes: the Polish boy searching for supermarket seltzer, the Roma man selling four priceless violins, the Slovenian girl cradling her cat as a makeshift pulpous heart. The spray-painted frowning face I found in an alley, captioned: Meine Tranen sind dein.

[E]ach of their actions is, at once, that action and its mirror-image, which possesses the special dignity of images, and this awareness prevents them from succumbing for a single moment to chance and forgetfulness. (Calvino, 53)

When you toast, you need to look into the other persons eyes, he told me as the shot burned my throat. I wasnt sure what I was drinking, and I wasnt sure why I was drinking it  a vial of clear liquid with a viscosity between soap and water.

Why?

Its just what we do. Youll be forgiven because youre foreign, but still. He ashed his cigarette. He was Austrian but his parents were not.

Was there anything else Im missing?

No. Just that.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. (Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994)

No hint other than the way his eyes met mine in delayed toast. The kind of forgiveness that comes from having once been forgiven.

I didnt drink any more that night or since. But Ive been practicing even when served water: you look into my eyes, I look into yours, the glasses clink at our singular moment in time and space. Even Voyager 1 stared six billion kilometers into darkness to celebrate with the tiny Pale Blue Dot  that strangely fertile point of everything weve ever understood, valued, loved, identified as  the glory of being so far away yet nearly touching.

After three weeks it has begun. The rain last night sounded like rain. The seaboard recycled into urban shower, downpouring the foreign and indigenous, crying, relieving, each molecule sourced from a different river, conglomerating into distinct drops and releasing into utter wetness as I sprinted for shelter, under awning, clouds, stars.

(And from far, far away the gentlest tug)
by Niall Chithelen

Our first act of communication is to look in each others eyes, or not to. Many descriptors center subtly on the gaze: I might be shifty if Im looking away from you too often and too purposefully, diffident if I cast downward when I ought to be looking you in the eyes, or unsettling if I never stop looking at you.

And in observing others interactions, it seems body movements have to catch your attention; you were not looking at a persons hand until they put it on anothers shoulder. But what were you watching before?

The Maltese Falcon is a classic noir centered on private detective Samuel Spade. It is not a verbose novel, but it is a novel of details. Despite featuring morally grey characters who share a deep wariness of one another, it reads as intimate, taking place mostly in closed rooms as these people become embroiled in a plot that isolates themand usfrom the world around them. The author, Dashiell Hammett, does not explain his cast, he has them interact until we start to understand them. Character introductions are mostly physical; the novel opens with the protagonists jaw, chin, and mouth, and then makes its way around his face such that we learn he looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.

Within his physical sketches, Hammett permits the eyes a special depth. The next character, Spades secretary Effie Perrine, has eyes that are brown and playful, and the novels femme fatale, Miss Wonderly, appears in the doorway with cobalt-blue eyes that were both shy and probing. These descriptions are coy, as we have not quite been told that Effie herself is playful or that Miss Wonderly is shy and probing. We simply know what their eyes suggest, and with such guarded or duplicitous speech from the characters, we cannot trust that the eyes tell us a more honest story.

Strip back the description and dialogue in the first scene and read only the eyes. Miss Wonderly, shy and probing, enters; her eyes are uneasy, then pleading; she goes on, and then Spades eyes [brighten]; Spades partner Miles Archer enters and all we learn of his gaze is that it is a bold appraising one in a lewd sense, inappropriate to the situation as we can tell he himself may be; we learn that Miss Wonderlys villain has eyes that are blue-grey and watery, though not in a weak way; then Miss Wonderly leaves and Archer remarks that it doesnt matter for his purposes if Spade saw her first. We can gain additional insights through their smiles and what they do with their hands, but there is not much to know about this scene that the eyes do not tell us (except, of course, the plot).

Read in this way, conversations in the novel have four elements: in what the characters are saying, in what they are doing with their eyes, in what they are doing with their faces (smiling, grinning, etc.), and in how they move. Hammett weaves these four tightly together. Take, for example, this moment in the midst of a confrontation:

Cairos eyes, holding worry and a question, met Spades mocking gaze. Spade winked at him and sat on the arm of the padded rocker. Well, boys and girls, he said, grinning at the Levantine [Cairo] and at the girl with nothing but delight in his voice and grin, we put it over nicely.

Repeatedly in The Maltese Falcon, the dialogue seems to be catching up to or failing to reflect where the characters are in their glances, smiles, and movements, even while we do not know which, if any, reflects the characters true feelings. That almost every scene involves this interplay might explain how a rather cold novel feels so intimatewe spend much of it looking closely at peoples faces and positioning. And it explains how such ostensibly sparse prose feels so denseeach scene happens effectively in quadruplicate.

When the pattern breaks, the novel moves into a different register. After a number of scenes dictated by action, the final chapter builds to a conversation between Spade and Miss Wonderly (who we have learned is actually named Brigid OShaughnessey). They are by now spiraling in a doomed romance. Spade has realized OShaughnessey double-crossed him, and he speaks, for once, volubly: he details eight reasons that he has to hand her over to the police to avoid incriminating himself, and then he provides the only reason he might not hand her over: All weve got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you.

The power in this moment comes not only from the sentiment itself, but from the fact that this might be the only instance in which a character is completely emotionally honest. By this point, we hold a deep mistrust for these people after witnessing how their betrayal and deceit, either through larger plots or small momentssmiles, comforting hands, and words we suspect are fake. But here Hammett allows a character to speak honestly, and in doing so he lets the carefully entwined strands of prevarication burst apart. There is no physical description accompanying what Spade says about love, no glance or grin to complicate it. He has expressed simply the truth of his and OShaughnesseys situation. And in a novel built of deception, openness means brokennessSpades recourse to truth is actually his resignation to fate.

It is easy to read The Maltese Falcon without noticing that Hammett writes scenes with such a consistent, even repetitive, style (unless we are attempting to trace such a pattern). Perhaps this is because Hammett follows interactions as we do: if we read faces and bodies as we converse, it shouldnt be distracting to read about faces and bodies in a scene of conversation. And when the faces and bodies slip away for a moment, and a character starts to just speak, we might know intuitively that what hes saying finally matters.

***

Work Cited

Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. EPUB.

Quotations above can be found in chapters 1, 8, and 20.
by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

The danger in being the peoples poet is that the poet may end up being reduced to the limited capacity of his peoples reading, his message shrunken to reflect their superficial grasp of his poetry, his work bent out of shape, and the complexity, depth and subtlety critical to understanding it, utterly lost. While he may remain their beloved representative voice, the peoples poet is ultimately as shallow or enlightened as his people, and no one is less deserving of the punishment of being misconstrued than a poet whose lifes work is to define his peoples angst in all the rawness and refinement due to a poetics honoring both the political truth of the moment as well as the larger forces of history and culture that shape the language in which it is expressed; this is undoubtedly tricky terrain, because he bears the simultaneous (and contradictory) burden of being a singular visionary and having mass appeal. In order to have a reasonable appreciation of such a poets message, his people need to step up, and reach for better comprehension.

In recent days, a new rendition of hum dekhain gay, a poem by Pakistans best loved revolutionary poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, elicited a strong response on social media, exposing not only political biases but also the extent to which the impassioned debaters understood the poem.

Serving as the preview of Coke Studios new season, the video of Hum Dekhain Gay showcases an impressive array of performers, a remarkably diverse mix of artists of various linguistic, ethnic, religious backgrounds (Christian, Hindu, Muslim) gender/transgender identities, and genres as wide-ranging as pop, qawwali, classical, folk. Released weeks before Independence Day, the song is a popular lyric expressing collective sentiment: a typical choice for Coke Studios season-premier which loosely commemorates the spirit of Independence Day. Whether by design or not, the release date coincided with the day the election results were announced, a move that proved controversial.

Hum dekhain Gay is a poem that is easy to love because the refrain lends itself to a shared sentiment of reclaiming the power that rightfully belongs to the people; the refrain is simple, inclusive, powerful, empowering. It is also easy to appropriate for the same reasons it comes across as the anthem of the people, electrifying, easy to use and abuse, easy to imagine having ownership of it. This poem, in fact, is quintessentially pluralistic, and not, as the following article claims, aimed exclusively at Pakistans military, the historical prompt for the poet notwithstanding: https://theprint.in/opinion/what-coke-studio-did-to-faizs-song-pakistan-is-doing-to-its-people/88955/). This poem/song has been appropriated by various political parties over the decades and diminished in its scale and scope by readers with political biases It is ironic that appropriation is the very thing the poem challenges, and scale is its primary gesture, as it defies those that claim authority and ownership of the truth, the supreme balance being the divine scale and the awe-inspiring spectacle of the day of judgment. The greatest quality of the poem is not the populist appeal of the refrain; it is the subversion of rigid, dictatorial religious orthodoxy (as well as all man-made hierarchies and power structures), using tropes that themselves originate from the sacred from the Quraan and from Sufi literature.

A staunch Marxist, journalist and political activist, but also a poet whose work honors Islamic heritage in its spirit and aesthetics, Faiz brilliantly employs imagery from the Quraan (such as mountains floating like cotton-wool) to make the point that those who appropriate religion to control and oppress the masses are the ones that will face the ultimate accountability on judgement day divine scrutiny and punishment. The ordinary, unorthodox and oppressed, the true pure-of-heart are Allahs beloved people who will be favored over the oppressors.

The Coke studio rendition is profoundly true to the poem in its inclusiveness and enactment of solidarity, even in the varied textures/gestures of music, but there is a curious omission of a verse. While the missing verse may have been the result of music edits/modification of the poem into its song-video version, this powerful verse is not Faizs boldest gesture in the poem, as those who dislike the video claim (a claim that comes from a paranoia of censorship and is conflated with PTIs victory and its relationship with the military). The most daring verse, in my opinion, is the anthem of ana al Haqq rising the Sufi concept of God residing within, the concept which is ultimately egalitarian to Faiz: elevating ordinary people to the highest stature. This is where the poem really plays with fire, recalling Hallajs controversial mystical statement, where the poems discussion could actually be more interesting than a blanket association of the video with the winning political party. What a pity, the people of the poem never plumbed the depths, or rose to the lofty vision of the poem.
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In my last column, I wrote about Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obradors letter to U.S. President Donald Trump in which he states that the issues most crucial to the U.S.-Mexico relationship are commerce, immigration, development and security.

In the letter, AMLO, as hes known, also proposes that the North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiations should be accelerated and wrapped up as quickly as possible, so as to not create prolonged uncertainty over NAFTA that could put a halt to new investments in the medium to long term. On July 20, Trump sent AMLO a letter in response.

Trumps letter to AMLO states that he agrees with the four issues outlined by the Mexican president-elect and that he has directed his team to redouble those efforts with your incoming team. Trump tells AMLO that Both of our countries benefit from an economically prosperous North America. But we can do better.

He then echoes AMLOs position on NAFTA by stating, I believe a successful renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement will lead to even more jobs and higher wages for hard-working American and Mexican workers  but only if it can go quickly, because otherwise I must go a much different route. It would not be my preference, but would be far more profitable for the United States and its taxpayers. What this specific route might be or why it would be far more profitable for Americans is not clarified.

Trump then addresses AMLOs points on immigration: America welcomes legal immigrants from around the world, but we cannot accept illegal immigration. Like you, I believe that meeting the challenge of illegal immigration involves more than just strong border security. And in reference to AMLOs call for the U.S. to involve itself more in Central American countries where people have been fleeing to the U.S. via Mexico, Trump states, We are prepared to further address the economic development and security issues that drive migration from Central America, but we must also increase cooperation to protect the rule of law and the sovereignty of both our countries, as well as vulnerable migrants who are victimized by violent criminal organizations. Trump ends the letter with, A strong relationship will lead to a much stronger and more prosperous Mexico, which frankly would make me very happy!

Several things stand out about the communication between the two men. Both agree that their respective nations will benefit from a prosperous North America, and this will happen with a renegotiated NAFTA. Trump goes out on a limb, stating that this will create more jobs and higher wages for the workers of both countries, exactly the opposite of what he stated on the campaign trail when he accused Mexico of stealing U.S. jobs, and that NAFTA was the worst trade agreement ever. The NAFTA renegotiations, which Trump and his team thought would take only to the end of 2017 to complete, have become a political problem for Trump. His attacks on NAFTA have resulted in strong pushback from organizations such as the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the Association of American Railroads, the American Petroleum Institute and the American Chemistry Council. He has backed himself into a corner with the renegotiations, which have become a distraction during this congressional election year. He needs to put this issue to bed as quickly as possible.

On the other hand, AMLO wants to settle the NAFTA issue out of the gate to show that he can successfully negotiate with the U.S. and that he is a moderate rather than a leftist politician who would oppose free trade with the U.S. Coming to an agreement with the U.S. on NAFTA would also bring him enhanced standing on the world stage as the new president of Latin Americas second-largest economy.

Trumps statement that America welcomes legal immigrants from around the world does not jibe with the actions of his administration, which has been making it harder to legally emigrate to the U.S., particularly from developing countries. Perhaps the U.S. and Mexico will jointly work on immigration reform that will more easily provide American industrial sectors with badly needed labor in jobs that Americans tend to not want any more.

Finally, it is positive that both men agree that a key in solving illegal immigration to the U.S. from Central American refugees is for both countries to take a more active role in that region. This would supposedly come in the form of promoting security so that Central Americans do not feel terrorized by gangs or corrupt governments; and by working with Central American countries to create economic opportunities that would allow people from that region to earn a living to be able to raise their families in their native lands.

Most presidential administrations start with hope and promise. However, campaign platforms differ from implementation and governing. Time will tell if the cooperation being espoused by Trump and AMLO can result in positive results that benefit the citizens of both countries.

Jerry Pacheco is the executive director of the International Business Accelerator, a nonprofit trade counseling program of the New Mexico Small Business Development Centers Network. He can be reached at 575-589-2200 or at jerry@nmiba.com.
Should a large corporation, by virtue of its economic might, be allowed to tell small-business people how to communicate with their customers?

Were not talking subsidiaries or even affiliated companies. If an independent small company does business with the large corporation, does it thereby surrender its right to offer certain kinds of discounts and even to speak certain words out loud in a customers hearing?

Why, yes, it does, when the large corporation in question is American Express. So said the Supreme Court at the end of June. But, as any lawyer would be quick to say, free speech and business autonomy were not the issue in the case. They were mere collateral damage.

Seventeen states and the federal government brought an antitrust challenge to the anti-steering provisions in credit-card companies contracts with retailers. When a retailer accepts your credit card as payment for a purchase, it agrees to pay a certain amount to the credit card issuer  a swipe fee. Of the big four credit card companies (Visa, MasterCard, Amex and Discover), Amex has traditionally charged the highest swipe fee. That gives retailers an obvious incentive to steer customers into using one of its competitors instead. As explained by Justice Breyer, A merchant might tell the customer, for example, American Express costs us more, or please use Visa if you can, or free shipping if you use Discover.'

To combat the pernicious habits of free speech and customer discounts, Amexs contracts prohibit merchants from implying a preference for non-Amex cards; dissuading customers from using Amex cards; persuading customers to use other cards;  or promoting other cards more than Amex. In short, Amex dictates what merchants are allowed to tell their customers, and what discounts and incentives they may offer.

In the late 1990s, Discover, by far the smallest of the four, tried lowering its swipe fee. It hoped that stores would pass the savings along to their customers, giving them a reason to switch to Discover. But the gambit failed because of the gag rules in Amexs, MasterCards and Visas contracts. Eventually Discover gave up and raised its rates.

Its difficult to imagine a clearer example of a business practice that prevents competition based on price, resulting in higher prices for consumers. And that sure looks like an unreasonable restraint on trade, which is prohibited by the venerable Sherman Act (named after its author, Ohio Sen. John Sherman, brother of Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman  I told you it was venerable). The case seemed so open-and-shut that Visa and MasterCard, who were originally named as Amexs co-defendants, quickly settled, agreeing to rescind the anti-steering provisions in their contracts. Only Amex fought on to the bitter end.

Its persistence paid off. Justice Thomas, writing for the Supreme Courts 5-4 majority, concluded that the competition-stifling, price-raising effect on merchants and consumers was irrelevant. Rather, the only question was whether Amex was unreasonably restraining competition in the market for credit-card services, a market with only four players. Visa has 45% of the market as measured by transaction volume. Amex and MasterCard trail with 26.4% and 23.3%, respectively, while Discover has just 5.3% of the market. The issue, as framed by Thomas, was whether Amexs anti-steering provisions prevented Visa and MasterCard from competing with it.

Far from it. When viewed strictly in terms of the battle of the four giants, Amexs practices were the only thing that allowed it to remain in the fight. If merchants were allowed to steer their customers in a way that maximized their own profits  if, in other words, the free market were allowed to decide the matter  the viability of the entire Amex network would be endangered and Visa would approach ever-nearer to monopoly.

And so, years after Visa and MasterCard voluntarily revoked their anti-steering provisions, Amex gets to keep its own. Merchants who accept American Express have to pay whatever swipe fee the company demands and keep quiet about it.

Still, ultimate power remains with the merchants. They have no reason to accept Amex unless doing so increases their profit. So even with the gag rule in place, market forces retain limited room to work their magic.

One more thing: The case is a classic example of the unfortunate way law fossilizes social science. Justice Thomass economic analysis relies on various secondary sources, which presumably reflect the thinking of some actual economists. But he doesnt cite their arguments in the spirit of academic debate. Rather, by treating economic theory as immutable law, he transforms it into just that. The field of economics will continue to develop. But until the Supreme Court revisits the issue, antitrust law wont.

Joel Jacobsen is an author who recently retired from a 29-year legal career. If there are topics you would like to see covered in future columns, please write him at legal.column.tips@gmail.com.
NEW YORK  A Rhode Island software company that sells primarily to businesses is nonetheless making sure it complies with a strict California law about consumers privacy.

AVTECH Software is preparing for what some say is the wave of the future: laws requiring businesses to be upfront with customers about how they use personal information. California has already passed a law requiring businesses to disclose what they do with peoples personal information and giving consumers more control over how their data are used  even the right to have it deleted from companies computers.

Privacy rights have gotten more attention since news earlier this year that the data firm Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed Facebook user information. New regulations also took effect in Europe.

For AVTECH, which makes software to control building environmental issues, preparing now makes sense not only to lay the groundwork for future expansion, but to reassure customers increasingly uneasy about what happens to their personal information.

People will look at who theyre dealing with and who theyre making purchases from, says Russell Benoit, marketing manager for the Warren, Rhode Island-based company.

Aware that California was likely to enact a data law, AVTECH began reviewing how it handles customer information last year. Although most of the companys customers are businesses, it expects it will increase its sales to consumers.

While it may yet face legal challenges, the California Consumer Privacy Act is set to take effect Jan. 1, 2020. It covers companies that conduct business in California and that fit one of three categories: Those with revenue above $25 million; those that collect or receive the personal information of 50,000 or more California consumers, households or electronic devices; and those who get at least half their revenue from selling personal information.

Although many small businesses may be exempt, those subject to the law will have to ensure their systems and websites can comply with consumer inquiries and requests. That may be an added cost of thousands for small companies that dont have in-house technology staffers and need software and consulting help.

Under Californias law, consumers have the right to know what personal information companies collect from them, why its collected and who the businesses share, transfer or sell it to. That information includes names, addresses, email addresses, browsing histories, purchasing histories, professional or employment information, educational records and information about travel from GPS apps and programs. Companies must give consumers at least two ways to find out their information, including a toll-free phone number and an online form, and companies must also give consumers a copy of the information theyve collected.

Consumers also have the right to have their information deleted from companies computer systems, and to opt out of having the information sold or shared.

The law was modeled on the European Unions General Data Protection Regulation, which took effect May 25. The California Legislature passed its law to prevent a more-stringent proposed law from being placed on the November election ballot.

Frank Samson hopes the California law will help prevent what he sees as troubling marketing tactics by some in his industry, taking care of senior citizens. When people inquire about senior care companies online, its sometimes on sites run by brokers rather than care providers themselves.

It may be in the fine print, or it may not be: Were going to be taking your info and sending it out to a bunch of people, says Samson, founder of Petaluma, Calif.-based Senior Care Authority.

That steers many would-be clients to just a handful of companies, he says, and can mean seniors and families get bombarded with calls while dealing with stressful situations.

But many unknowns remain about the California law. The state Attorney Generals Office must write regulations to accompany several provisions. There are inconsistencies between different sections of the law, and the Legislature would need to correct them, says Mark Brennan, an attorney with Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C., who specializes in technology and consumer protection laws. Questions about the law might need to be litigated, including whether California can force businesses based in other states to comply, Brennan says. There are similar questions about the European GDPR.

In the meantime, small business owners who want to start figuring out if theyre likely to be subject to the California law and GDPR can talk to attorneys and technology consultants who deal with privacy rights.
Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

Elizabeth Whitefield officially retired as a judge in 2016, but she never really left New Mexicos 2nd Judicial District Court.

Whitefield maintained a regular presence at the Albuquerque courthouse, volunteering to assist her Family Court colleagues however she could, whether processing paperwork or presiding over hearings. Friends say Whitefield, who died Saturday after a long illness, was still helping as a pro tem judge as recently as a few weeks ago.

She had a genuine passion for the work, they said, citing her desire to make the court experience as seamless as possible for families already enduring emotional and complicated situations.

She loved the law, she loved being a judge, she loved the District Court, Chief Judge Nan Nash said. She loved helping families.

Gov. Bill Richardson appointed Whitefield, a longtime family law attorney and co-founder of the New Mexico Womens Bar Association, to the bench in 2007. Fellow Family Court Judge Deborah Davis Walker said Whitefield brought so much wisdom and expertise to her role as a judge and was an innovator always seeking ways to improve processes. Walker said Whitefield helped establish the courts Peter H. Johnstone Day, a chance for families without legal representation to get help settling cases from volunteer attorneys.

I think her legacy is that she was always looking for a better way to help people get through the system without putting their kids in the middle and having all these hideous, conflicted hearings, Davis Walker said. She was a proponent of mediation and facilitation and just resolving cases in a more reasonable way.

Whitefield, who battled cancer for many years, had in more recent years made headlines as an advocate for aid-in-dying legislation. She testified in support of the End of Life Options Act during the 2017 legislative session, which would have allowed her to legally seek a doctors help to end her own life. It did not pass.

A Pennsylvania native, Whitefield earned both her bachelors degree and law degree from the University of New Mexico and made Albuquerque her home. Survivors include her husband of 32 years, Paul Thorne.

They were magic together, Mary Torres, an Albuquerque attorney and longtime friend, said of the couple.

Torres said she and Whitefield forged a fast and lasting friendship after meeting in 1995. They always roomed together at state bar conventions and were shopping partners and zealous deal-hounds who called themselves the glamour girls.

But Torres also saw Whitefield as a mentor and routinely sought her professional advice. She says she still keeps a Post-it with some of Whitefields guidance  Respond, dont react  on the counsel table during court proceedings.

Who wouldnt trust her? Torres said. She was a brilliant lawyer, a brilliant woman.
Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to delete some portions of the South Valley Superfund site from its National Priorities List.

Groundwater near Broadway and Woodward SE was contaminated by operations of a General Electric jet engine manufacturing plant, which closed in 2010, and chemical distributor Univar, which continues to operate there.

Clean-up of the site began in the 1980s after contamination was detected in wells in the area and a list of six actions were identified by the EPA to remediate the site.

Three of those  called operable units  have been proposed for removal, as they have already been completed.

These operable units they are proposing for delisting have shown that theyve met the remediation goals and requirements, said Diane Agnew, a water quality hydrologist with the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority. The other units are still active. They are making steady progress on them, the biggest one being the deep groundwater contamination that theyre continuing to actively treat and monitor.

Among the chemicals in the groundwater are industrial solvents trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene.

There is no threat to drinking water, as Agnew said the nearest city well is more than three miles from the contamination.

Among the units proposed for removal from the list include the installation of a replacement well by the EPA completed in 1987, the plugging of contaminated wells by General Electric completed in 1994 and the decontamination of shallow groundwater and soil, also by GE.

Typically, EPA does full site completions, and therefore, waits until all remedial activities are completed, EPA spokeswoman Janie Acevedo-Beauchamp wrote in an email. However, in certain cases, partial deletions are done. In the South Valley case EPA granted General Electrics request for a partial deletion, of which, included remedial activities that had been completed several years ago.

The proposal has been signed off on by the New Mexico Environment Department.

The (NMED) is pleased by the partial delisting of one of New Mexicos first Superfund sites, spokeswoman Katy Diffendorfer said in an email. The delisting will provide many positive development opportunities for the South Valley of Albuquerque, and opens the door to economic growth for the community.

A public comment period on the proposal is open and will end Aug. 30.

Work to decontaminate other areas of the groundwater at the site continues by Univar and GE.

Acevedo-Beauchamp said there is no timeline associated with total completion of the clean-up.
Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

Albuquerque police say they know who shot and killed a man who tried to thwart an attempted robbery outside a popular New Mexican brunch spot last summer  with enough certainty for the lead detective to deem the case exceptionally cleared and turn it over to the district attorney for prosecution.

The DAs Office assured the detective, and victim Jaime Dimas family, it would file charges before the suspect was released from jail on unrelated charges.

But a typo by a jail employee resulted in the suspect being released early, and he is now on the run with three unrelated felony warrants.

Jaimes mother, Anna Dimas, said the whole ordeal has been a road through hell.

Im disgusted and frustrated, she said, standing feet from her sons grave at an ornate cemetery in Southwest Albuquerque. Theyve known for months and months who it was  all that time.

Anna Dimas said the prosecutor in the case, Daniel Roberson, told them murder charges would be filed before the suspect was released  something he also told the lead detective, according to her case file.

Unbeknownst to Roberson, the suspect was already in the wind by that time  thanks to a human error on the part of a Metropolitan Detention Center employee.

Murder charges have yet to be filed in Dimas shooting and a spokesperson for DA said they were awaiting another warrant before moving on the case.

Gunfire outside restaurant

Just before 1 p.m. on July 7, 2017, gunfire rang out as families ate lunch at Tia Betty Blues, on San Mateo and Ross SE, sending a bullet through the restaurants wall, leaving shaken diners running and ducking for cover.

Across the street, officers found Dimas lying in a bush. Rescuers rushed him to a hospital, where he died. The autopsy showed a single bullet had pierced his heart.

Multiple witnesses and employees at Tia Betty Blues told investigators the shooting started after a car full of people followed a man on a bike into the restaurant parking lot.

Police say witnesses watched as the driver got out of the car and pulled a black handgun on the man on the bike, demanding he empty his pockets.

A restaurant employee told investigators the man made a break for the restaurant and, as he did, the robber fired once into the building.

Thats when police say Dimas, who happened to be standing across the street, started throwing rocks at the shooter.

Witnesses told police the gunman got back in the car, drove by Dimas and fired out the window at him before fleeing.

The case file that detective Jodi Gonterman turned over to the DAs Office in May spans a year of investigation. It includes police incident reports, witness statements to multiple officers, video surveillance, and interviews with the suspect as well as his acquaintances and accomplices who were there on the day of the shooting.

This case will be considered exceptionally cleared and forwarded to the Bernalillo County District Attorneys Office for review and possible prosecution, Gonterman wrote at the conclusion of the case file.

Clerical error

According to the reports, Roberson told Gonterman that the case would be set for a preliminary hearing before the suspect was released at the earliest in July. Anna Dimas said she was told the same thing.

That didnt happen and, in fact, the suspect was set free in May.

I checked (Metropolitan Detention Center) records and found that (the suspect) had been released, Gonterman wrote on July 13.

MDC officials said an employee made a mistake on May 8 after Judge Stanley Whitaker ordered the suspect be remanded to the jail for a year on stolen vehicle charges.

A MDC employee provided the wrong pre-sentencing confinement credit dates  which were used to calculate when an inmate was released  The error specifically involved the wrong year of incarceration, MDC Chief of Corrections Greg Rees wrote in a statement. MDC has investigated this mistake and has determined it was the result of human error.

Judge Whitaker ordered the suspect released, believing he had already served his year sentence based on the incorrect information.

MDC spokeswoman said the mistake is an employee personnel matter that would be appropriately addressed.

A mothers pain

By the time the DAs office discovered the error, the suspect was gone.

He could be out here and hurt somebody else, Anna Dimas said. Let it be on their heads.

She is still waiting, and dwelling, on the last thing her son told her.

He said, Mom lock your door; its crazy out here,' she said. He never told me that before.

The next day she learned of Jaimes death after her husband identified their son from a tattoo of Isabel, his adult daughters name, at the hospital.

She said she was not surprised Dimas was killed trying to stop a robbery.

He would do that if somebody was getting hurt or bullied, she said. If he knew you or didnt know you.

Despite run-ins with the law and drug abuse issues, Dimas said the 37-year-old was a giving person who would help anybody and never judged others.

Thats what he taught me, Anna Dimas said.  You need to learn not to judge somebody, because that was me at one time, mom. 

Since the suspects release from jail, Anna Dimas said the DAs Office has fallen silent.

I have no faith in them, they cant even return my phone calls, she said. What does that tell you?

Second Judicial District Attorney spokesman Michael Patrick said Roberson disputes those claims and has returned the familys calls and messages.

But Dimas said it wasnt Roberson or someone from the DAs Office but Gonterman who called the family to tell them the suspected killer had been set free.

It was like they shot me in the heart. They might as well kill me, Dimas said, her voice shaking through tears. Its what theyre doing, theyre killing me. Theyre killing me.
Mayor Tim Keller has nominated Albuquerque-native Katy Duhigg to serve as the next city clerk, pending City Council confirmation.

As city clerk, Duhigg would serve as the citys chief records custodian, conduct municipal elections and manage administrative hearings related to vehicle seizures, animal appeals, handicapped parking and personnel matters.

The city clerk is responsible for promoting transparency at the city, and Katy Duhigg has the experience we need to improve those processes, Keller said in a statement. She has spent over a decade working to make government more open and responsive. I look forward to working together to bring our city to the next level in these areas as we serve the people of Albuquerque.

Duhigg graduated from the University of New Mexico School of Law and is managing partner of the Duhigg Law Firm. For 10 years, Duhigg has been focusing on election law and consumer protection cases. She also serves as the vice president of Common Cause New Mexico, a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to fair elections.

Sunport nursing: Nursing mothers soon will have a more comfortable experience at the Sunport while traveling thanks to a new nursing room located just south of the security checkpoint.

The room was furnished by mothers who work in the Aviation Department and is slated to open to the public this week.

The mothers nursing room is equipped with comfortable furniture for mothers to sit while feeding their children, a changing station and a sink with a mirror.

We are very excited to be unveiling the new mothers room here at the Sunport, said Nyika Allen, the citys director of aviation in a statement. Part of my vision for the airport has been harnessing community feedback, and as the airports first female leader it was important to me to provide traveling mothers with a comfortable place for breastfeeding their children.

OH SHENANDOAH: City Councilor Cynthia Borrego on Friday recognized Bob Slagle and Jaden Ortiz for their volunteer efforts in the Shenandoah neighborhood in the northwest part of Albuquerque.

The pair rebuilt and painted two Shenandoah neighborhood signs with no thought toward compensation.

Borrego presented Ortiz with a $250 check for her college fund in recognition of her and Slagles efforts.

Steve Knight: sknight@abqjournal.com
She thought about what she might say, if she had the chance, if the man accused of killing her husband had been found guilty.

How she would explain what it felt like to learn that the father of her four children, one of whom he never had the chance to meet, was shot repeatedly in the back as he fled from the bullets. What it felt like to learn that her husband, a deputy with the Santa Fe County Sheriffs Office, was killed by a fellow deputy.

How she would describe the anguish of sitting through not one but two murder trials, each one ending in a mistrial. How now a third trial was anything but certain. How Tai Chan, the deputy accused of her husbands death, might walk away from it all a free man.

And how, Sarah Martin thought, she would help her children understand that actions have consequences and that justice prevails.

Because it doesnt feel that way to her.

Its the worst nightmare that you have to live through, said Martin, speaking publicly for the first time since that nightmare began when her husband, Deputy Jeremy Martin, was killed in a Las Cruces hotel in 2014. And then you try to justify things to them that you cant even understand.

Last week, a special prosecutor dismissed the first-degree murder charge against Chan, adding that the case possibly needs to be re-indicted for voluntary manslaughter with a firearm enhancement to cure issues that had been raised by Chans defense attorneys.

It was another step in a case fraught with missteps, prosecutors blaming law enforcement, defense attorneys blaming prosecutors, a major judicial error and two juries unable to reach a verdict.

Sarah Martin has silently endured every moment, under the advice of the prosecution, unable to respond to what defense attorneys said on behalf of their client and against her husband.

Its like a stake through your heart how the defense refers to the man youve been married to for 12 years, the father of your children, a Christian man who helped his community as the dead guy over and over, she said. They slander him, beat him up, and its like watching your husband die, again and again.

Las Cruces District Attorney Mark DAntonio, who sought the special prosecutor after the second mistrial, said Friday he will decide soon whether to retry the case on a lesser charge.

But with a third trial up in the air, Martin said this may be her last chance to say something about the case to the public.

I want to put out the facts and these are the facts, she said. This man shot my husband five times from the back and pursued him down the hallway.

Of those facts, there is little question. But what Chan has argued  and apparently what jurors from both trials have snagged upon  is that he fired his service weapon some 10 times in self-defense on Oct. 28, 2014, after a night of heavy drinking.

Chan, then 27, maintains he shot Martin, 29, after the two had gotten into an argument  first at one of the bars the two men had visited, then in their seventh-floor room at the Hotel Encanto. The men were staying in Las Cruces on their way back from transporting a prisoner to Arizona.

Chan testified that an enraged Martin pointed Chans own gun at him. The two struggled for the gun, one of the rounds striking Martin in the back of his right arm as he ran out of the room.

Chan then pursued Jeremy out the door and into the hall where he proceeded to discharge his gun in a negligent manner, endangering everyone staying on the seventh floor, Sarah Martin said. Chan admitted to never seeing a weapon in Jeremys hand while Jeremy was fleeing for his life down that hallway, and still Chan proceeded to shoot Jeremy four more times in the back, targeting his vital organs.

An autopsy report indicated that Jeremy Martin suffered five gunshot injuries  three in his back, one in the left buttock and the one to his right arm  all striking Martin from behind.

According to testimony, he was found slumped in a pool of blood near the hotel elevator, a bullet hole piercing the elevator door at what would have been level with Martins head.

With all of this on record and under oath, Chan will have the opportunity to return to our community and have nothing to inhibit him from returning to the law enforcement field, Sarah Martin said.

She was pregnant with the couples fourth child when she learned that her husband had been killed.

I cant even explain the whirlwind emotion of going into labor and bringing a child into this world all by yourself, she said. Ive had to navigate the media alone and the court system alone. I had to try to be there for my children and the emotional turmoil that theyre going through, to try to give them hope.

It wasnt supposed to be this way.

We were 17 and 18 when we met at church, in a youth group, she said. We were so young, but we just knew. You know when you meet your soulmate, when you find the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with.

She paused.

We were very blessed with a full life, she said.

And now she knows what she would say if she had the chance  how she misses him, how he should still be here, how justice sometimes works in a way that seems unfathomable, how there is no way to explain that to children, to anyone.

UpFront is a front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
For 13 years the Latino Education Task Force tried to get the legislative and executive branches to address the Latino education crisis. Latino students make up 65 percent of all students, and schools are failing to graduate more than half our kids. 

The achievement gap between Latino and white children was so vast that one expert said that at the rate we were going, it would take 104 years to eliminate that gap. We sounded the alarm years ago. We demanded immediate intervention. But there was none. Years passed and New Mexico inherited the crown of being the worst state to raise a child. Four years ago we finally turned to the courts for relief. The Indian community followed suit. And the court responded.

The recent landmark decision of Judge Sarah Singleton now mandates lawmakers and the governor follow existing laws and provide sufficient money and programs to correct this disgraceful condition. Singletons ruling means the state must now do something about N.M.s most important crisis: the continuing failure to graduate more than half of our future workforce.

So, we have won a major battle, but we must now win the war. There will be more money for education. But more important is deciding how to spend the money. What has to be done to educate our culturally distinct Latino, Indian and black students that make up 77 percent of New Mexico students?

There are lots of ideas that are being fleshed out by a nonpartisan group known as the New Mexico Education Action Alliance, whose mission is the complete elimination of the achievement gap. They include, CEOs, Ph.Ds, GEDs, education, professional, young and old and grass-roots leaders who have been doing things for years. A few:

 To ask folks, especially media, to stop using euphemisms like: low-income, at-risk, limited-English, disadvantaged, etc. Those being devastated by our education system are Latino, Indian and black children. We need to speak out loudly and push for their specific needs. Lets also put the magnitude of the groups in their proper context. Latinos make up 65 percent, Indians 10 percent, blacks 2 percent while white students make up 23 percent of N.M.s 230,000 students.

 Where will the money come from? We dont care. Find it. Higher taxes? From the business sector  especially from rich outside corporations that are not paying a fair share of taxes? Or from our $17 billion Land Grant Permanent Fund, which is among the richest in the country? Sure. Note: These are often called rainy day funds but Democrats and Republicans have grudgingly doled out crumbs to help New Mexicans, among the poorest and worst-educated in the country. A rainy day? During the last rainy day like like this, Noah built an ark.

Its important that before a cent is spent there be an organized approach including:

 All stakeholders: parents, educators, unions, business and government sectors convened to produce a comprehensive plan to create new education paradigm that will completely eliminate the achievement gap.

 Fix our failing universities, which continue to churn out unqualified teachers. Higher education has escaped with little scrutiny for its failure to prepare teachers to educate three-quarters of New Mexicos culturally distinct future workforce. New Mexico is unlike other states. Teachers need cultural competency skills and a relevant curriculum to educate our majority-minority students. Teachers should be fluent in two languages of the Southwest. Students should also command two languages and be allowed to go to college tuition-free.

To contribute ideas or to take action, contact armas@swcp.com.
Journal readers not familiar with the Yazzie/Martinez v. New Mexico lawsuit had to be confused when the news story New Mexico Loses Education Lawsuit was published July 20. In actuality, Judge Sarah Singletons decision was a resounding victory for everyone. (The July 22) editorial claims to analyze the judges decision, yet the Journal paints a decidedly negative picture that egregiously distorts what is at stake. At a time when public education is gravely at risk, Journal editors blame the victims of a failed education system rather than focus on how to strengthen it.

The Journal cant have it both ways. To say that we dont need to add resources to improve public education on Sunday and then give kudos to United Ways Mission: Graduate on Monday is contradictory. Our students are not getting the education they deserve, or they wouldnt need additional services of this kind. While we are genuinely grateful for Mission: Graduate, Judge Singletons decision makes it clear: Our children have been short-changed when it comes to public education.

Is there a need for additional funds? Lake Arthur Superintendent Michael Grossman testified that principals supply clothing and food to their students using money from their own pockets, and stated, I go to sleep at night praying for cooler summers and warmer winters because districts cant keep up with rising utility costs. Espanola Associate Superintendent Myra Martinez described the historically rich cultural context of Espanola, the unique needs of her district and their attempts to support their teachers and their students, which fall short due to lack of funding. When asked about the 61 percent graduation rate, she responded, All I can see is the 40 percent that dont make it.

It is premature to discuss where additional funds will come from. Our districts do need money, but this suit is about so much more. This suit challenges the existing paradigm that frames students of color as needing to be fixed and schools such as Rio Grande High School as a school that can never be fixed. Instead, the decision requires that districts and the state follow existing laws and provide a sufficient education in terms of recognizing and using our students culture, languages and heritage as assets. To say that RGHS has failed is not a fair comparison. While money has, indeed, been poured into bilingual education programs and bilingual teachers received bonuses, the PED admitted under oath that bilingual services are not monitored and that resource personnel inconsistently and rarely offer technical support. Our state has deprived its students who are not, as the Journal labels, white middle-class students. To pit students against each other by ethnicity, disability or class in 2018 is exactly the root of the education problems facing students of color or in poverty.

The urgency of this case was captured when Judge Singleton stated, The school children who are now caught in an inadequate system and who will remain there if an injunction is not entered will be irreparably harmed if better programs are not instituted. In 2012, the Latino Education Task Force worked with Rep. Sheryl Stapleton, D-Albuquerque, to pass House Memorial 67, which develops a Comprehensive Education Plan. While the memorial passed unanimously in the House, there have never been funds to develop this plan. Journal readers may not realize that New Mexico students of color comprise 76 percent of the public-school student population. It is time we stopped calling them the minority. It is time we provided the resources that districts need to provide equity in education across the state for all students of all income levels.

Although we, in our community, began this lawsuit, relying on community organizations to fill the holes is not taking responsibility for providing a sufficient education. We have all the faith in the world that a state that values its children will want them to be prepared to compete with graduates in other states and countries across the world.
MADISON, Wis.  Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Nicholson both came out Monday against boycotting Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson, the day after President Donald Trump said it would be great if there was a boycott.

Trumps Sunday tweet forced Walker and other Republicans to take a position on the sticky political issue involving an iconic Wisconsin company just ahead of Tuesdays primary where Trump allegiance has been a central focus.

Trump on Sunday tweeted it was great that many Harley owners planned to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas, continuing a steel tariff dispute hes had since June with the company.

Walker, Wisconsins most prominent Harley owner, faces a tough re-election bid in November. He tweeted Monday afternoon that of course I dont want a boycott of Harley-Davidson. That came after Walker initially on Sunday did not directly address the boycott call.

Nicholson, who faces state Sen. Leah Vukmir in a Republican Senate primary on Tuesday, said on WTMJ radio that I dont want to see Harley-Davidson boycotted, but didnt think a boycott would be necessary because Trumps approach to trade was succeeding and opening new markets.

Both Nicholson and Walker backed Trumps approach to tariffs, saying they support moving to having no tariffs as soon as possible.

Democrats running in the Tuesday primary for a chance to take on Walker teed off on his unwillingness to strongly defend Harley-Davidson.

By attacking Wisconsin workers to cover for failed economic policy President Trump took a page right out of Scott Walkers playbook, said Mahlon Mitchell, one of eight Democratic candidates and the head of the state firefighters union. He has more backing from labor unions than any other candidate.

Another Democratic candidate, Kelda Roys, accused Walker of cowering before Trump and the presidents attempts to destroy an iconic Wisconsin business.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who is also up for re-election in November, was more forceful than Walker in her reaction to the Trump tweet.

You cant run our economy with tweets, Baldwin tweeted to Trump. Wisconsin businesses like @harleydavidson need better trade deals, not tweets and trade wars.

Nicholson pushed back against Baldwin on Twitter.

We do need better trade deals, not the ones engineered by you and other members of the political class, Nicholson tweeted at Baldwin. We must bring trade partners back to the table and do away with tariffs. You dont fight for WI and you dont understand our economy.

Vukmir, who won the endorsement of the Wisconsin Republican Party, was making a final campaign swing in southeast Wisconsin, including a stop with retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan. She did not address Trumps boycott call in a statement calling Harley a point of pride not only for our state, but also our nation.

I trust they will not abandon their Wisconsin roots, and the best way for that to happen is to get rid of tariffs like the president is working to do, Vukmir said.

In July, Harley-Davidson said it expects new tariffs to cost the company as much as $100 million annually.

A spokesman for Harley-Davidson declined to comment both Sunday and Monday.

Polls have shown the Senate race to be a dead heat. State Superintendent Tony Evers had a double-digit lead in the Democratic gubernatorial primary based on polls in the months leading up to the election.

But others in the race who had raised enough to advertise on television  including Mitchell and Roys  were hoping for a late swing in their favor, particularly among younger voters.

Whoever wins the Democratic primary will enter the final three months of the race at a financial disadvantage to Walker. He had $4.8 million cash on hand in August, while the top tier Democrats were likely to be tapped out after spending on the primary.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party and the Democratic Governors Association have been raising money and building infrastructure in preparation for Wednesday, to help the winner of the primary get a fast start against Walker.

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Albuquerque Police Department detectives are investigating a homicide after a man was found dead inside an apartment at the Villa Hermosa complex, near Coors and Interstate 40, Monday morning.

APD spokesman Simon Drobik said officers were called to the complex at 2600 Americare NW for suspicious activity. He said when they arrived they found blood in the stairway leading up to an apartment.

Officers knocked on the door but there was no response, Drobik wrote in an email. Officers feared for the safety of the resident and conducted a safety sweep of the apartment.

He said inside they found a man dead. He did not say how the man died or know if he lived in the apartment, but he did say they are investigating the case as a homicide.

Detectives canvassed the area, located several key witnesses and wrote a search warrant for the affected apartment, Drobik said.

He said no suspects have been identified and the mans family have not been notified.

This is the second violent crime at the apartment complex this year. In March, 42-year-old Adrian Johnson was shot and killed in the parking lot. No arrests have been made in that case.

Journal staff photographer Greg Sorber contributed to this report.
New Mexico Health Connections is continuing its legal battle against the federal government over millions of dollars it owes under the Affordable Care Act.

The health insurance co-op filed suit Monday in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque seeking to block an emergency rule the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services adopted that would require Health Connections to pay a net sum of about $5.6 million. It argues that the rule, to take effect on Oct. 22, was adopted in a rush and did not follow a legal requirement to solicit public comment first.

Health Connections since 2016 has been fighting the so-called risk adjustment program, which transfers payments from insurers with healthier patients to those with sicker clientele within the individual and small group markets. The co-op has argued that the methodology for calculting the risk payments was flawed.

Health Connections won a victory earlier this year when U.S. District Judge James O. Browning agreed with its argument and vacated the rule requiring risk adjustment payments.

CMS responded several months later by suspending the payments, but it then reinstated the requirement with the new emergency rule. That is the action Health Connections is now challenging.

Its request for summary judgment notes that three courts around the country have struck down other CMS regulations for similarly denying the publics right to notice and comment on proposed rules.

We contend that the emergency regulation continues a risk adjustment formula that disadvantages small, new, and lower-priced health plans in favor of their larger, more expensive competitors, Marlene C. Baca, Health Connections CEO, said in a written statement.

The formula penalizes any type of plan that is trying to be innovative, Baca said in an interview. If we have improved medical management or health outcomes, that should then lower premiums. Instead, the formula really hurts the consumers we serve  because it is so unpredictable and because it does inflate the members premuim.

Health Connections is one of four co-ops remaining out of the 23 created by the Affordable Care Act. A 2016 congressional report found that risk penalties were one of several factors that led to the demise of many of the co-ops.
WASHINGTON  A year after the Trump administration introduced its strategy for Afghanistan, the Taliban are asserting themselves on the battlefield even as U.S. officials talk up hopes for peace. Thats raising questions about the viability of the American game plan for ending a war that began when some of the current U.S. troops were in diapers.

A Taliban assault on Ghazni, a key city linking areas of Taliban influence barely 75 miles from Kabul, has killed about 100 Afghan security forces and 20 civilians since Friday, the Afghan Defense Ministry said. That has demonstrated the militants ability to attack, if not hold, a strategic center on the nations main highway, and highlighted the vulnerability of Afghan security forces.

In a reminder that U.S. troops and their families are paying a heavy price, even with Afghan forces in the lead combat role, the Pentagon announced Monday that a 36-year-old soldier, Staff Sgt. Reymund Rarogal Transfiguracion of Waikoloa, Hawaii, died Sunday of wounds sustained on a combat patrol in the Helmand province.

Against that turbulent backdrop, some wonder whether President Donald Trump can resist pulling the plug on a war in which the U.S. is still spending $4 billion-plus a year just to keep Afghan forces afloat. He said when he introduced his strategy on Aug. 21, 2017, that his instinct was to withdraw entirely.

Fighting across the country has intensified in recent weeks despite a fleeting outbreak of peace earlier in the summer. Taliban and the Afghan government called separate, briefly overlapping, national cease fires in June, and the administration has made its own contact with the Taliban in hopes of nudging them into talks with Kabul.

The strategy revisits an approach that was tried, and failed, under President Barack Obama: increasing military pressure to push the Taliban into peace negotiations with the Afghan government. Signs point to Trump pressing ahead; he is about to send a new Army general, Scott Miller, to take charge of the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul.

David Sedney, who has worked on Afghan issues as a civilian, including multiple years in Kabul and at the Pentagon, since the war began in October 2001, said he believes the chances for peace are the best theyve been.

That doesnt mean theyre great, he said in an interview. It just means theyre better.

Among the meaningful factors at play, Sedney says, is Trumps announcement a year ago that the U.S. would no longer set time limits on its military support for Afghanistan. This introduced an element of uncertainty for the Taliban, he said. On the other hand, the current U.S. push to draw Taliban leaders into peace negotiations with Kabul must succeed soon, he said, or risk following the failed path of previous efforts.

Trump also gave the U.S. military more leeway to attack the Taliban, and a few thousand additional U.S. troops were sent to Afghanistan this year as part of an effort to improve the effectiveness of training and advising Afghan ground forces, while also developing a small Afghan air force. The battlefield results have been mixed, however, as the Taliban have managed to preserve their influence in numerous districts.

Early in 2018 the U.S. military declared Afghanistan to be its top combat priority, supplanting the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Key U.S. warplanes, including A-10 ground attack aircraft, were switched to Afghanistan, and the Pentagon introduced a newly formed outfit called a Security Force Assistance Brigade of U.S. soldiers assigned to help Afghan forces closer to the battlefield.

With Ghazni under threat, the U.S. has dispatched military advisers to assist the Afghan forces in retaking the besieged city, and has launched airstrikes.

Seth Jones, a longtime watcher of Afghanistan and director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was unlikely the Taliban will be able to hold populated areas of Ghazni for long. The militants have lacked sufficient popular support and military power to hold population centers.

But the Talibans ability to mass forces in multiple areas of Afghanistan at virtually the same time_including in Ghazni, Faryab, Baghlan, and Kunduz provinces  should worry Afghan and U.S. officials. Tribal leaders and local officials had been repeatedly warning Afghan policymakers in Kabul that the Taliban was preparing for a broad offensive in Ghazni, Jones said.

He remains skeptical the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan will work as he sees no sign that Trump is willing to take what could be a game-changing move: to target the top Taliban leaders in their Pakistan sanctuaries.

Much like Bush and Obama, the Trump administration has other areas of the world that it would rather focus on, whether its the Korean Peninsula or Iran or China more broadly, and to move on, if possible, from Afghanistan, Jones said. If a settlement is the way to do that, then they are willing to give that a shot. The challenge, though, is that it is still not clear to me that the Taliban is seriously interested in peace negotiations in terms that would be acceptable to the U.S. and the Afghan governments, including making a formal, public break with al-Qaida.

The Taliban is willing to talk a little bit about talks, but not to sit down and formally negotiate, he added. I think they view time as in their favor and that the longer the war continues, the better their negotiating position.

The group has growing regional clout. The Taliban assault on Ghazni began as the head of its political office was wrapping up a rare diplomatic foray in neighboring Uzbekistan.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who helped persuade Trump last summer not to quit Afghanistan, says its too early to render judgment on whether peace talks will emerge anytime soon.

No doubt the strategy has confronted the Taliban with a reason to go to cease fires  and to go into discussions about potential negotiations, he said Aug. 7. But it is still early in that reconciliation process.
SANTA FE  Another Cabinet secretary in Gov. Susana Martinezs administration plans to leave for a new job.

Department of Information Technology Secretary Darryl Ackley will step down effective Aug. 27, the Governors Office announced today.

Ackley has led the agency since February 2011, just weeks after Martinez took office.

The agency has an annual budget of roughly $66.9 million, though only $845,000 of that amount comes from state general fund dollars.

Ackleys new job will be chief technology officer at the Institute for Complex Additive Systems at New Mexico Tech in Socorro. Ackley previously worked there before taking his current state job.

In a statement, Martinez described Ackley as a tremendous asset to New Mexico and cited his work helping to modernize the state governments oft-maligned central computer system and on other digital initiatives.

However, the Department of Information Technology also came under criticism in recent months from legislators for missing and outdated information on the state Sunshine Portal, a state-run website intended to bolster government transparency.

Meanwhile, Deputy DoIT secretary Estevan Lujan will serve as acting agency secretary upon Ackleys departure, Martinez also said.

The two-term Republican governor is barred from seeking a third consecutive term in office and will step down at years end.

Given that backdrop, several other Cabinet secretaries and Governors Office staffers have stepped down from their positions in recent months  including Workforce Solutions Secretary Celina Bussey and former communications director Larry Behrens.
It has been a good quarter for Biswashish Ghantayet, a channel partner for seven FMCG companies in Rourkela. His efforts over the last three months in scaling up the business and meeting the sales targets set for his distribution venture have exceeded by 30%. He was incentivized through a rewards program account, which he could verify on his mobile phone. Through this he can instantly redeem his earned points maybe by selecting a travel gift card to go on a luxury holiday to Australia. He is happy that he has rightfully earned a reward and is able to choose a gift of his choice. Along with him, there are over 150,000 happy channel partners across India, who are the driving force for leading FMCG companies across India.

Impactful advertising campaigns by FMCG brands are also required to be strategically reinforced by innovative trade marketing initiatives to ensure targeted product placement and sampling. These functions are accomplished by the channel partners who measure up to meeting the set business objectives. The success mantra in getting that reach and coverage to a FMCG brand lies in its multi tier model that it follows which includes the stockists, super stockists, dealers/distributors, wholesalers and retailers. Alongside, this implies that trade marketing programs are also required to be designed and executed in resonance with the needs and desired of this partner segment.

Can we use the same marketing techniques used with consumers for channel partners too? B2B marketing is a different ball game altogether. A key aspect for a brand is to build a good relationship, trust and loyalty with their channel partners in the long run. To build these foundations, there is a greater need to appreciate as well as reward them in the right way.

Since channel partners play a critical role, brand owners have realized the importance of appreciating and giving them the due rewards that they deserve in a timely manner. In fact, distributors not feeling properly incentivized is an existential scenario in the network. This leads to them not being motivated and slowly will have an impact on the brand sales.

In the FMCG sector, brands reward their channel partners generally during popular festive seasons. In the past, a cash based bonus was the most common way to reward and appreciate a channel partner. Cash proved to be an easier way of incentivisation for the brand as they didnt know the personal preferences of their channel partners. Slowly this moved to giving high value aspirational products such as motorcycles, gold coins, home appliances, smartphones and experiences such as travel to giving educational perks to the children of the channel partners. When they receive it for the first time they will be delighted, but how many times can you keep giving these products again and again? Who will keep track of what you have given your channel partner last year to this year? What if he/she already has a washing machine at home and you giving the same product is not going to motivate them or show that they matter to you.

Noticing this gap, brands realised that one size does not fit all when it comes to channel incentive programs and there is the complexity of different levels of performers. In FMCG, there is also the complexity of one distributor working for multiple brands giving a greater need to achieve loyalty through such programs.

Thanks to technology and its convenience, brands are finding newer avenues in engaging with their channel partners by offering innovative and more meaningful rewards. This is when personalized rewards programs came into existence and use tools such as gift cards to woo their channel partners. Brands also can avail the option of personalizing the gift cards for different occasions, based on the achievement and adding that personal touch. Channel partners are also evolving and prefer to do their own shopping using these gift cards and vouchers. Loyalty programmes coupled with artificial intelligence is used to provide personalized rewards and also gives the flexibility to change the reward points depending on the sales on a real time basis. These innovations have also made the entire process transparent and there is no bias involved thus enabling the best channel partner get his/her deserving reward.

Technology based incentive programs will continue to evolve. In fact, social loyalty will take its course into these programs where your channel partner will be given badges of honour to be displayed on their Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter. There will be better use of analytics in the near future. Since brands are expanding into newer markets, their loyalty programs will also have the glocal flavour thus catering to their channel partners across the globe.

It is no wonder that gift cards are gaining popularity as ultimately they give the power of choice to the receiver, which in this case is the channel partner! Ensure that your channel partners are adequately rewarded this year by presenting them with a personalized gift card and thus giving them the freedom of choice.

Needless to say, building a strong network of partners is based on factors such as trust, faith and collaboration.

(Mr Pratap TP is the Co-founder & CMO at Qwikcilver Solutions. QwikCilver Solutions Private Limited provides gift card and stored value solutions for various brands and retailers).

Click here to read more authored articles.
London Stansted experienced a rate of growth of 7.4% year on year to serve 2.8m passengers in July, its busiest ever.





The increase was driven by brand new long haul routes to Dubai and New York, new summer short-haul links to Frankfurt, Reykjavik and Vilnius and more passengers than last year jetting off to existing summer favourites like Alicante (+40%) and Malaga (+16%).



Cargo figures at London Stansted were also up in July, growing by 4.5%.



Ken OToole, CEO, London Stansted Airport said: As the main summer holiday season firmly gets underway, July is always a very busy month for us and this year we have welcomed a record number of passengers to the airport.



We always work hard to ensure that going into the peak season our passengers have the best possible service and this year we introduced a number of improvements to our operation including recruiting more security staff, the introduction of new Airport Ambassador roles, creating more check-in desks, improved access to the forecourt and the opening of a new 350 seat restaurant.



Over the next five years we are investing 600 million in transforming the airport experience for passengers, the main elements of which will be the construction of a new arrivals terminal, a re-vamp of the existing terminal, upgrades to the baggage system and more car parking spaces.



With limited spare capacity at other airports in the South East, Stansted will deliver 50% of Londons expected passenger growth over the next decade. Given this anticipated growth, we have applied for permission to raise the number of passengers we serve to 43 million a year, with a firm commitment to do so without any additional flights or noise impacts beyond our current permissions.




An oasis for artists and artisans, Gaza Citys Arts and Crafts Village is struggling for survival after parts of it were destroyed following Israeli airstrikes on the neighborhood last month. The artists' hopes for reconstruction of the village largely depend on whether they can get international support.

A small haven of traditional Islamic architecture in western Gaza City's al-Remal neighborhood, the Arts and Crafts Village consists of four houses made of red clay. The interior walls and floors are covered with ceramics, and traditional artisanal tools hang on the walls.

The villages director, Nihad Shakalia, told Al-Monitor: "The village, a cultural center affiliated with the Gaza municipality, aims to preserve Palestinian heritage and artisanry from extinction. It includes four traditional houses, each dedicated to one traditional craft. We have the House of Embroidery, the House of Rugs, the House of Copper and the House of Wood. There is also an exhibition hall, which is active throughout the year with events that showcase Palestinian heritage to local and foreign audiences.

The village was established in 1999, with funding from the United Nations Development Program. The Gaza municipality presently runs the village on an extremely frugal budget.

The village organizes art exhibitions for talented artists and artisans from Palestine and abroad, Shakalia said. We also hold cultural and artistic festivals to commemorate national events, such as Earth Day, Prisoners' Day, Nakba Day and Palestinian Heritage Day. We organize summer camps for children and teach them various crafts, such as embroidery, weaving rugs and pottery.

The artisans in the village also restore antiques  tools, rugs, looms, wood engraving and embroidery  and sell them, mostly to the tourists.

But their efforts of the last 19 years were interrupted on July 14, when Israeli warplanes targeted and destroyed a nearby building, leaving the village and many of its artisanal works under rubble. On the day of the attack, Israeli forces launched a major offensive against the Gaza Strip, targeting al-Katiba Park, right next to the village, with heavy shelling, injuring 14 people and killing two children. Some believe that Israeli aircraft actually wanted to hit the village, in an effort to destroy Palestinian heritage.

The villages administration said it would rebuild the destroyed parts of the village and carry on with cultural activities, even if it means erecting a small tent in front of the village. A group of artists and institutions displayed their artwork atop the dust and rubble of the village in protest of the Israeli airstrikes, demanding Israel stop its violations against cultural centers.

Shakalia said it will cost an estimated $300,000 to renovate the village so it can function as a full-fledged cultural center.

This is an impossible sum for the artists and artisans in the village to raise on their own, as the number of foreign visitors who visit the village and buy their work has shrunk over the years. Before the Israeli blockade on Gaza, the village would sell over 70% of its artistic products to locals and to foreigners," Shakalia said. "However, Europeans and Arabs have not visited as much over the past 10 years and the village has only been selling 10% of its products. She attributed the decline in sales and visits to closed border crossings, low salaries and poor economic conditions. Local families can barely afford to put food on the table, let alone by art, she added.

Shakalia explained that to compensate for the lack of visitors, the village has coordinated with schools, universities and institutions to arrange artistic and cultural field trips to the village.

In light of the recent bombing, some activities will be suspended, but not entirely, so as not to disrupt cultural activity altogether, she added.

Shakalia said that many parties are trying to find support to rebuild the village. EU delegations visited to inspect the damage after the destruction, including a Swiss delegation that came specifically for this purpose on July 30.

But the international cooperation and support that helped establish the village is also fading. Shakalia explained that about two months before the attack, a Belgian artist interested in glass art and lighting was working on cultural exchange between Belgium and Palestine. She visited the village every Saturday to see the work and discuss art with over 70 artists from the Gaza Strip. However, the Saturday of the bombing was her last visit. The artist left for Belgium and the project was suspended until further notice, Shakalia said.

The Arts and Crafts Village is a springboard for many local artists. Artist Shareef Sarhan told Al-Monitor that he had his first photography exhibition at the village in 2006. Artist Aya Juha told Al-Monitor that she participated in the villages three-day exhibition, Jerusalem is Calling You, at the beginning of 2016. Juha noted that every exhibition at the village gives her the chance to introduce her work to new people and to meet new artists and admire their work.

Speaking about the impact of the Palestinian political division on the village, Shakalia explained that it was impossible for the Gaza municipality to keep supporting the village, as it has other priorities, such as providing basic services to Gaza City and building basic infrastructure. "Still, the municipality is doing its best despite meager means," she said.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Aug. 7 that Iraq will abide by US sanctions on Iran to protect Iraq's own interests. Abadi spokesman Saad al-Hadithi confirmed Aug. 13 that Iraq will not violate US sanctions on Iran and that Iraq's stance toward the US sanctions imposed on Iran stems from the general interest of Iraq, and was not impetuous or hasty, but was subjected to study, and was not affected by the positions of other states or political parties.

After Iraq said it would abide by US sanctions, several Iranian officials raised their voices against Iraq, calling it traitorous and demanding the country pay compensation for damages caused in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War that took place under Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who was executed in 2006.

The controversy over Iraqi acceptance of the US sanctions and then Irans demands for war compensation has divided the Iraqi street into two opposing camps.

Pro-Iranian Shiite parties and militias slammed the prime minister for turning his back on Iran and supporting the hostile US position against Iraq's neighbor.

The Iraqi Shiite militia Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq said in a statement Aug. 8, "We regret the issuance of such a position by the Iraqi prime minister, and we believe he did not need to commit himself and oblige the Iraqi state to such a commitment, especially as his government is working outside its electoral period and without parliamentary cover." The militia said, "This position is not binding to the next government, which we hope to be based on Iraqi interests and will take into account the sovereignty of Iraq and not be part of the Trump administration in its reckless policies regarding the region and the world."

Hassan Salim, a leader in the Fatah coalition, which came in second in Iraq's still-inconclusive May elections, called on the Iraqi government to "repay Iran's favor," referring to the help provided by Iran in removing the Islamic State from Iraqi territory.

Former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also criticized Abadi, saying, US sanctions on Iran are a flagrant violation of international law and Iraq must not abide by them, just as it did not abide by earlier US sanctions on Syria.

Mojtaba al-Husseini, the representative in Iraq of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, launched an attack on Abadi because of the prime minister's stance on US sanctions against Iran, calling him an irresponsible and defeated character. A prominent pro-Iranian cleric in Baghdad, Jalal al-Din Ali al-Saghir, also criticized Abadi's position of supporting an unjust action against "a Muslim country and neighbor and ally of Iraq in all its positions." Saghir called Abadi's decision a scandal that cannot be covered by any pretext. The grand Sunni mufti of Iraq, Mahdi al-Sumaidaie, who is close to Iran, also slammed Abadi. Sumaidaie said he will be the "first to support Iran against US sanctions."

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, in an attempt to repair the gap between Iran and Iraq, issued a statement Aug. 8 criticizing US sanctions on Iran and expressing Iraq's gratefulness to Iran for supporting Iraq in fighting the Islamic State. Abadi's office also had announced that he would visit Iran and Turkey very soon to discuss Iraq's relations with the two neighboring countries, but the visit to Iran was later canceled due to his busy schedule, which indicates escalating differences between the two countries.

On the other side of the divide in Iraq, several politicians criticized Iran for demanding war compensation in reaction to Iraq's announcement to abide by US sanctions against Iran. Jawad Boulani, a former Iraqi interior minister, said in an interview with the Al-Sharqia TV channel, It is Iraqs legitimate right to follow its own interests in its relations with other countries and Iran has no right to complain or ask for compensation. The Iraqi government should put an end to Iran's illegitimate demands for compensation. It is worth mentioning that UN Security Council Resolution 598, when ended the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, did not oblige Iraq to pay compensation to Iran, and that the negotiations between the two countries over the war ended in 1991.

Iraqi member of parliament Faiq Al-Sheikh Ali also replied to Irans demand for war compensation from Iraq, saying, On behalf of the families of the victims of terrorism, I ask Iran to pay compensation for 1 million Iraqis killed when Iran brought al-Qaeda to our country beginning in 2003 under the pretext of fighting the Americans. He also called on the Iraqi government to consult with the UN in order to receive a legal opinion regarding the Iran-Iraq war compensation.

Finally, the rising tensions between Iran and Iraq regarding the US sanctions against Iran indicate that Iran will use all its means to bring one of its allies to head the new Iraqi government in order to prevent Iraq from getting closer to the United States. As Abadi has already made his decision to stay in the US orbit and distance himself from Iran, the Islamic Republic will do all possible to replace him with a Fatah or another Islamic Dawa Party leader who is closer to Iran.
As the Syrian government is now in full control of most parts of the war-torn country, the role of Iran, as a main ally of President Bashar al-Assad, appears to be undergoing significant change.

On Aug. 1, the Russian presidents special envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, said Iranian forces, together with their allied Shiite groups, had pulled back from southwestern Syria to a distance of 85 kilometers (53 miles) from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The Iranians withdrew and the Shiite formations are not there, said Lavrentiev, underlining that the heavy weapons in the hands of those forces have also been withdrawn beyond the same distance.

Indeed, the move came against the backdrop of frequent calls by Israeli officials for Irans complete withdrawal from Syria, claiming that Irans presence poses a direct threat against the security and interests of Israel. As such, Lavrentievs remarks could lead us to the question of whether the recent development is indicating Irans imminent exit from other parts of Syria as well, or whether its just a tactical move aimed at readjusting Irans Syrian strategy with regard to the rapidly changing equations on the military and political fronts.

Reviewing the wider scene of recent developments regarding the Syrian crisis, it could be said that Irans withdrawal from southern Syria has been caused by two sets of military and political factors. First of all, the news about Irans withdrawal from the south came just one day after the successful end of the Syrian armys six-week military campaign to recapture the southwestern region bordering the Golan Heights. Almost three weeks earlier, on July 12, the army had managed to retake the main rebel stronghold in that area, Daraa, known as the birthplace of the revolt against Assad in 2011.

As such, it could be said that in the current situation, the southern areas are not a priority anymore for the Syrian army and its allies in military terms and the next phases of massive military operations in Syria are expected to include areas in the northern and eastern parts of the country that are still under the control of armed groups. In a recent interview, Lavrentiev directly pointed to this issue, saying three areas in Syria have yet to be targeted by Syrian army operations. He said, Those areas include Idlib [in the northwest], al-Rakban camp in al-Tanf area [in the east], as well as the areas under Kurdish control close to the Iraq-Syria border.

Pro-Iran forces started to evacuate the southern areas when the mission there was accomplished and their presence was no longer vital in determining the military equations on the ground. In a broader framework, it could be said that the pullback was even necessary in order for the Syrian government to consolidate its positions in the south. In other words, as the presence of Iran and its allied forces in the southern parts of Syria has always been used by the Israelis as a reason to conduct strikes against various positions inside Syria, the continuation of the Iranian presence there would mean that the Israeli strikes would continue as well, forcing Assad to deal with a persistent headache that would tie his hands in planning further military moves elsewhere in the country.

Meanwhile, on the political front, it seems that an important factor that has caused Iran to limit the scope of its active military presence in Syria is Russias changing diplomatic role regarding the Syrian crisis. On the one hand, while Russia appears determined to continue playing a balancing role between Iranian and Israeli interests in Syria, it seems that the Russians have shifted toward using a more coercive approach in this regard. On July 30, Russia's ambassador to Tel Aviv, Anatoly Viktorov, adopted a controversial stance on the issue, saying that while Russia cannot compel Iranian forces to quit Syria, it could equally do nothing to prevent Israeli military strikes against Iranian forces. The remarks clearly meant that Moscow is unable to prevent an open confrontation between Iran and Israel in Syria unless Tehran and Tel Aviv come to a middle ground concerning their activities in the country. Limiting the scope of Irans activities in exchange for the halt of Israeli strikes seems to be that middle ground agreed to by both sides in order to prevent a devastating escalation.

On the other hand, after the July 16 summit between the presidents of Russia and the United States in Helsinki, in which possible cooperation between the two sides in Syria was discussed, among other issues, Moscow has increased its diplomatic pressures on Washington to limit its military role in the Arab country. On Aug. 3, Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces called on the United States to close down its military base in al-Tanf, saying the base has become a center for harboring Islamic State (IS) terrorists. As Washington has openly declared that its main goal in Syria currently is to counter Irans growing influence, limiting Irans presence in the country could be Russias selling point to compel the Americans to limit their own presence. As the US military presence in Syria is perceived by both Tehran and Moscow as a threat to their longer-term interests, its hard to believe the notion that Iran has been reluctant to provide Russia with an additional diplomatic asset to deal with this common challenge.

Finally, it seems that Iran itself is in a process of redefining its role in Syria, which has mostly been derived from the impression that the end of the war is close and now is a time to focus on safeguarding Iran's interests through political and diplomatic measures. In this vein, Iran is shifting its strategy from playing an active military role toward more actively participating in the diplomatic frameworks regarding Syria. Hosting the upcoming summit of Astana partners, which is due to be held in Tehran in September, could be interpreted as a sign to this end. Irans active participation in the establishment of Syrias Constitutional Committee, which is tasked with developing a new constitution for the country, is another sign of Irans changing approach.

All in all, it could be said that the recent withdrawal of Iranian and pro-Iran forces from southern Syria has more to do with Iran updating its Syria strategy and adapting it to be in line with the new political and military developments, rather than a decision to leave Syria due to Russian or Israeli pressures.
In an Aug. 13 speech, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addressed a wide range of issues pertaining to his country, from the economic problems and the currencys collapse to the possibility of negotiations with the United States and a military confrontation between the two countries.

There will be no war because just like before, we will not begin war, said Khamenei. And the Americans will not attack because they know 100% it will be to their detriment. The Islamic Republic has proven that any invader will be dealt a bigger strike.

On the contradictory statements by President Donald Trump, who said the United States would be willing to talk with Iran without preconditions, and by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who later walked backed the president's position, Khamenei said, This issue for them is a game, a cliche, and politically worthless. One person says no preconditions, another person sets preconditions.

Khamenei continued, Contrary to the opinion of some domestically, the request from the Americans to negotiate is not a serious issue, and in the last 40 years has been repeated numerous times and been met with by a negative answer from Iran. Khamenei referenced the secret 1986 trip to Tehran by President Ronald Reagans former national security adviser Robert McFarlane in an effort to begin high-level talks; the attempt wound up being rebuffed.

They have a specific formula for negotiations, Khamenei said of the United States. He added that normal negotiations are based on a give and take but that the United States pursues one primary goal in talks and never budges on its primary goal. He said that after the negotiations, the United States then reneges on its own end of the bargain.

Khamenei said that Iran has experienced this when it comes to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iranian nuclear deal, and that North Korea has experienced something similar. He also said some of the red-lines that Iran had designated in the nuclear deal were crossed, but did not specify which ones.

Khamenei asked, For what reason should one sit down at the negotiation table with a bullying regime that negotiates like this?

He said that anyone who negotiates with America will encounter problems unless they align their policies with the United States. He added, however, that even Europe, which is aligned with most US policies, is being bullied by the current US administration.

Khamenei added that Iran would enter negotiations only when it has reached a desirable level of political, economic, and cultural strength, but that currently, negotiations with the US will be detrimental and are forbidden. He said that if Iran ever negotiates with the United States, it will not be with the current US administration.

On the economic issue, Khamenei said, People are experiencing livelihood problems today; a certain group of people is truly under pressure. The drop in the value of the national currency is one of the current economic problems. When the price of the rial drops like this, it is the day laborer who has nothing left.

Khamenei continued, Economic experts and many officials believe that on this issue the prime agent is not foreign but domestic. Not that sanctions dont have an impact, but the majority of the impact is [due to] our own performance.
A careful look at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus popular and otherwise active Facebook and Twitter accounts during the last round of fighting in Gaza gives no indication of what was actually happening on Israels southern front. Netanyahu effectively silenced his accounts from Aug. 8 to 10, for a total of three days. At the time, Hamas was firing rockets at Jewish localities in the western Negev; the Israeli air force was bombing targets in the Gaza Strip; the Cabinet had met for a lengthy emergency session; and the overall feeling across the country was that all-out war was just short of inevitable.

Even in the days leading up to his net silence, Netanyahu did not mention the tensions in the south. His posts and tweets focused on how vital the Nationality Law is to the country, and he directed readers to an article in his home paper, Israel Hayom, which reported on Aug. 6 that he chastised the Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Marie Eriksen Soreide over allowing money from her country to fund left-wing groups, which, he claimed, attempt to delegitimize Israel.

On that same day, he released an unusually exuberant post, praising US President Donald Trumps decision to reimpose economic sanctions against Iran. Two days later, on Aug. 4, he boasted about how the S&P credit-rating agency decided to raise Israels credit rating. As Netanyahu described it, the decision was made in recognition of Israels economic strength and his own economic policies. Not a word was said about escalating tensions in Gaza, which was the most pressing issue at the time, interrupting the lives of tens of thousands of the people living in settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu only returned to Facebook two days after the cease-fire with Hamas, and even then, he did not refer to Gaza. It was not as if the problem disappeared. It simply dropped off the agenda temporarily. When he started posting again, the prime minister stuck to his national and nationalist agenda, which inevitably includes the delegitimization of the left and Israeli Arabs. By doing this, he was able to draw attention away from the major issue on Israelis minds only two days earlier: the possibility that Israel was about to face another war with Hamas in Gaza. On the night of Aug. 11, he posted a video of the demonstration against the Nationality Law, which took place in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, in which Israeli Arabs were seen waving Palestinian flags. Alongside it he wrote, There is no greater evidence of the necessity of the Nationality Law.

If you give it the slightest thought, you will find that it is both amazing and disturbing that the Israeli prime minister was able to avoid being called to account by his supporters over what had been happening in Gaza for the past few days. He did not call a press conference, post a video or explain who Israel negotiated with in exchange for a cease-fire. He did not mention what the cost of that cease-fire was or what his long-term plans for Gaza might be. Nor was this the first time that Netanyahu relied on Israelis short memories. So many Israelis are on their summer holiday and do not want to be bothered by the escalating conflict in Gaza.

At best, this behavior in the hours leading up to the cease-fire explains how Netanyahu and the members of his Cabinet ignored their obligation to tell the people they lead about what is really happening in Gaza. At worst, they are actually lying to them.

Shortly before midnight on Thursday, Al Jazeera cited Egyptian sources, saying that a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas had been reached in Gaza. A foreign diplomat who knew about the negotiations confirmed this, noting that the two parties had agreed to stop firing at each other, and that the agreement would go into effect at midnight. A senior Israeli source denied this report in statements to political and military journalists. Then, the next day, after a quiet night, it turned out that Al Jazeera and the Egyptians were right, and that the lies were coming from the Israeli side.

Neither Netanyahu nor any of his people said a word about the cease-fire, even though that is what actually happened on the ground. This makes it look like the top Israeli leadership was trying to obscure the fact that Netanyahu is conducting negotiations with Hamas. Veteran political and military reporters expressed their rage in tweets about the misleading statements. They even ridiculed the government, saying that Al Jazeera was more reliable.

What made them especially angry was that this was not the first time Netanyahu provided a distorted picture of the situation to conceal that he was actually engaged in negotiations with Hamas. The same thing happened last May, during the last round of fighting. Cairo reported that there was a cease-fire, and Israeli denied it. Then, it became quite clear that the Egyptians were right, and that someone has been deceiving journalists and the Israeli public. The same exact thing happened after Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014.

Netanyahu cannot allow himself to be perceived as a prime minister who maintains contacts with Hamas. He is, after all, Mr. Security, who ran in the 2006 election under the unforgettable slogan: Strong against Hamas. Then again, everybody knows the truth, including the most right-wing members of the Cabinet: Under Netanyahus leadership, Israel did negotiate with Hamas this week, and it wasnt the first time either.

Much has been written about Netanyahus adroitness at spinning a story and redirecting the countrys agenda. He gets better and more sophisticated at it from one year to the next. It is the same media strategy that he used with the investigations into his alleged corruption: Delegitimize groups conducting the investigation, chief among them the Israel Police and the police commissioner. At the same time, he kept a very busy schedule and traveled overseas much more frequently. The message was clear. Despite the petty investigation, Israel still has a prime minister who is an international statesman. After all, his Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts are packed with photos of him meeting world leaders.

There is no doubt that Netanyahu is able to behave on social networks as if he is living in a parallel universe in which he can focus exclusively on whatever is convenient for him, while ignoring those problems that cause him harm. With more than 2 million followers on Facebook, Netanyahu can push the reality that suits him best, without ever being called into account. He can ignore the fact that he spoke with Hamas. After all, anyone who says he did is labeled a leftist or a traitor.
The spokesman of Gen. Khalifa Hifter, who heads the Libyan National Army (LNA), called on Moscow Aug. 8 to intervene into Libya "to get rid of foreign players in the country. Ahmed al-Mismari told Russias state-owned media Sputnik that the situation in Libya requires a Russian presence similar to that in Syria, and urged President Vladimir Putins personal intervention to directly eliminate foreign players in Libya such as Qatar, Turkey and Italy.

He added, "We are very confident that Russia is a superpower and its words will be heard if it holds talks with Italy, Turkey and Qatar or other countries such as Sudan, regarding the smuggling of terrorists into Libya."

Mismari also argued that Russias intervention in Syria was successful, noting that its role in eliminating foreign players there was "prominent."

Whats happening in Syria is happening in Libya. The Libyan people are looking for a strong ally like Russia," he concluded.

The words of one of the top man in the LNA hierarchy demonstrate that Russias influence in the Middle East continues to increase. In late July, members of the Ansar Allah movement from Yemen also asked Moscow to intervene to stop the war in their country. Moreover, every side of both Libyan and Yemeni conflicts wants Russia to take a more active stance in the peace settlement process.

At the same time such statements made by the LNA show that the positions of Hifter and his allies have substantially diminished and their situation has become worse. The armys leaders are trying once again to seek Russias attention and persuade it to become their new patron, particularly after Hifters closest partners  the United Arab Emirates (UAE), France and Egypt  refused to support him and the Tobruk government in their decision to place the oil export ports in the so-called Libyan Crescent under the administration of the National Oil Corporation in Benghazi, a company controlled by groups close to Hifter. As a result, on July 10 the Tobruk government was compelled to return these ports under the authority of the legitimate National Oil Corporation (NOC) in Tripoli. Basically, such hasty, irrational decisions were made by Hifter too as a reaction to his own failures.

For instance, the operation conducted by a small independent unit made up of former Petroleum Facilities Guard militants, led by Ibrahim Jadran, as a result of which the LNA had lost control over strategically important Sidr and Ras Lanuf ports for several days in mid-June substantially damaged the reputation of Hifters forces. This was the second time that the LNA failed to provide security for these crucial energy industry objects and lost control over the oil crescent ports. In March 2017, the Benghazi Defense Brigades managed to take over Ras Lanuf and Bin Jawad ports. Naturally, all this raises uncertainty among foreign players about the LNAs ability not only to provide constant oil supplies, but also to keep order on the territories they control.

Moreover, the politicians in Tobruk are concerned that the presidential and parliamentary elections planned for late 2018 may fail or be rejected due to the positions of numerous leading nations, particularly Italy, which suggest conducting elections only after national peace is reached. Many Libyan factions, which have refused to acknowledge the Paris agreements between Tripoli and Tobruk on national elections, also support this opinion. This may deal a serious blow to positions of the Tobruk government as a whole and Hifter in particular, as they risk losing a chance to restore their legitimacy. In this context, Hifter will most likely continue to seek Moscows support to bring the Paris agreements into life. This is why Mismari mentioned Italy among the countries from which Russia should protect Libya.

At the same time, it is not the first time that Hifter makes populist statements about Russian support. A source in Russian diplomatic circles told Al-Monitor that Moscow repeatedly had to explain its position to the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli about certain statements the LNA representatives had made in regard to receiving aid from Russia or Russias willingness to provide military support to them, which had nothing to do with the real state of affairs and had only been used for Hifters own political objectives. Nevertheless, those words and actions have partly reached their goal, as on a few occasions they have been able to hinder cooperation between Moscow and Tripoli.

Despite the rumors spread by the Tobruk government, Moscow essentially plays a much less substantial role in supporting Hifter than, for instance, France, Egypt or the UAE. Unlike Russia, these countries provide the leaders in Tobruk with direct military aid. In particular, Egyptian and French special forces have repeatedly taken part in the LNAs assaults against Libyan militant groups affiliated with al-Qaeda; while the UAE and Egypt have been providing the LNA with aviation backups and weapons supplies.

Russias own record of direct military aid for the LNA is murky: injured LNA soldiers received medical treatment in Russian hospitals and the Russian government authorized Belarus to supply the UAE with Russian-made weapons such as Mi-24/35 helicopters that were later handed over to the LNA. Besides, some Russian private military contractors such as the RSB Group have worked in LNA-controlled areas; however, their activities reportedly included only demining of civilian industry objects in Benghazi  in particular, a factory that had belonged to the Libyan Cement Company.

At the same time, Russia has also been developing a dynamic relationship with the GNA in Tripoli. The parties have been establishing cooperation in the security field, while bilateral interagency contacts between them are actually more intensive than those between Moscow and Tobruk.

Moscow is also rather wary of Hifter. First, the Russians never forgot that the self-proclaimed field marshal lived in the United States for about 20 years after he had left former President Moammar Gadhafi in the early 1990s. This fact may refer to his possible ties to the CIA. Moreover, the Russians are concerned with the UAEs extensive influence on the Tobruk government, supposing that Abu Dhabi strives to use Moscow as a tool to facilitate the maintenance of its own creation. Also, Russia cannot ignore Hifters overtures to local Salafists who make up a major part of his forces. The Salafi religious institutions held in authority by the Tobruk government openly make direct proclamations where they push other Islamic groups of Libya (i.e., Ibadhi Berbers) out of the countrys Muslim community.

At the same time, appeals by Hifters supporters to Moscow should not be seen merely as populism or propaganda as they are aimed at a certain part of the Russian government. For instance, although the Kremlin includes a prominent faction requesting to avoid providing Hifter with excessive support and expecting great benefits from the cooperation with Tripoli, mostly in economic aspects, there are groups in the government, particularly in power and military industry structures, that lobby for Hifter.

Their interest in supporting the LNA is reinforced by Hifters proclaimed willingness to buy Russian weapons in bulk if it is legalized and freed from the sanctions, as well as by his capability to provide in Eastern Libyan ports such as Tobruk and Benghazi, which Russian military leaders have already visited, for military bases. Moreover, Hifters image as a resilient fighter against political Islam is quite appealing for many Russian politicians, so that they are ready to overlook his relationships with the Salafists.
As the United States piled pressure on Turkey over a detained American pastor, the leaders of Turkeys Christian and Jewish minorities issued a joint declaration July 31 asserting they enjoy religious freedom in the Muslim-majority country. The declaration may have pleased Ankara as a show of support in the row with Washington, but has triggered controversy and objections with the minorities themselves.

Signed by 18 spiritual and community leaders, the declaration said, As the religious representatives and foundation administrators of ancient communities of different religions and faiths that have been rooted in this country for centuries, we are free to live out our faiths and practice our worships in line with our traditions. Statements alleging and/or alluding to oppression are completely untrue and go beyond purpose.

Agos, the newspaper of Turkeys Armenian community, ran a sarcastic headline that roughly translates as Lo and behold, we have been free but we didnt know it. Asked why they chose such a headline, the papers editor-in-chief Yetvart Danzikyan told Al-Monitor, They say there are no obstructions to our worships. Then why do the police stand guard at the door when Armenians in particular hold services in their churches? The declaration does not fully correspond to reality.

Garo Paylan, an Armenian parliament member for the Peoples Democratic Party, was even harsher. When I read the declaration, I felt once again that all those spiritual leaders are hostages, Paylan told Al-Monitor.

Referring to the modern Turkish republic, founded in 1923 on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, he said, Throughout republican history the spiritual leaderships of the remaining [non-Muslim] minorities have been used as hostages. Only a hostage could sign such a declaration at a time when we are unable to elect our patriarch [due to government interference], religious institutions are denied autonomous status, Armenian foundations are unable to hold elections [due to bureaucratic hurdles] and the great sins committed against us in the past remain unacknowledged. This was a ritual of loyalty and all [spiritual leaders] took part in it.

The declaration was signed by the representatives of almost all Christian and Jewish communities in Turkey, including Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I, the acting Armenian patriarch, Archbishop Aram Atesyan, Chief Rabbi Rav Isak Haleva and acting Syriac Patriarch Yusuf Cetin as well as representatives of smaller groups such as Orthodox Bulgarians and Chaldean Catholics. As such, it was unprecedented.

According to Danzikyan, community leaders have always felt compelled to stay on good terms with the Turkish state. This has been the case throughout republican history.  Minority representatives feel compelled to be on the states side in such [sensitive] situations. The Greek Orthodox representatives have done so in times of problems with Greece and the Armenian ones have done the same at times of controversy over the Armenian genocide, Danzikyan said.

He stressed, however, For the first time a declaration was signed by so many minorities. In this context it was a historic one. For Danzikyan, this in itself casts doubt on the policy of reconciliation that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has claimed to employ vis-a-vis the non-Muslim minorities. The AKP government used to say that it is not like the other governments of the republican era and that it wanted to be on good terms with them as the Ottomans did. Yet the fact that so many minority representatives felt compelled to jointly pen such a declaration shows that this is not the case, he added.

Paylan believes the declaration was issued at the prompting of the government amid the escalation with Washington over Pastor Andrew Brunson, who is being held on disputed charges of collaboration with terrorist groups.

Danzikyan noted, As an Armenian living in this country, I was dumbfounded when the declaration was released. As I got over the astonishment I grabbed the phone and talked to one of the signatories. I was told that [US Vice President] Mike Pence said there was no religious freedom in Turkey, and that the declaration was penned in response to his statement. I was not aware of such a statement. They sent me the speech. Pence was talking about 'one victim of religious persecution, an American' [Brunson]. I guess a group [within the minority leaders] took it upon themselves to do something and drew up a declaration.

Pence made the remarks July 26 at an international gathering on religious freedoms. Later in the day, both he and President Donald Trump threatened sanctions on Turkey unless Brunson was released. Washington made good on the threats five days later. As previously reported by Al-Monitor, some Christian community members claimed that it was Ankara that asked for the declaration, but through indirect channels.

A day after the declaration, the spiritual and community leaders of the non-Muslim minorities met with presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin, which, according to them, was just a coincidence. At the meeting, they raised an array of ongoing problems, including the continued closure of the Greek Orthodox theological school, which prevents the training of clergy, the authorities failure to return confiscated community properties and legal hurdles blocking the holding of elections at community foundations, which is crippling their activities.

If so many problems persist, does this not contradict the freedom declaration?

Al-Monitor put the question to Atesyan, the Armenian spiritual leader who was among the signatories of the declaration and one of the participants at the meeting with Kalin. He argued that the fact that some problems persist did not mean that non-Muslim minorities were deprived of religious freedom in Turkey.

In the meeting with Ibrahim Kalin, we raised our problems. We frequently do that. Yet those problems are one thing, freedom of religion is another, Atesyan said. Some of our problems have been resolved under the AKP [Justice and Development Party] and some of them have not. And we continue to raise the unresolved ones.

Asked about the criticism directed at the declaration, he said, We spoke the truth in the declaration. We have freedom of religion.  There is criticism and there always will be. Those who are against the state, against the government and against us would say the opposite."
Alabama's first Shake Shack will open at The Summit at Birmingham on Wednesday, Aug. 22.

The hamburger restaurant at 200 Summit Blvd., the northern corner of the shopping center, will open at 11 a.m. The first 205 people in line when doors open will receive a free order of Big Bob's Cheese Fries.

The Birmingham Shake Shack, which was first announced in March, is now in the process of hiring between 80 and 90 full-time and part-time employees. No previous experience required. Apply online by clicking here or text ShackAlabama to 77948.

Shake Shack is a critically acclaimed, modern day "roadside" burger stand known for its 100 percent all-natural Angus beef burgers, chicken sandwiches and griddled flat-top dogs (no hormones or antibiotics  ever), fresh-made frozen custard, crispy crinkle cut fries and more.

The worldwide hamburger and hot dog restaurant concept began as a food cart in New York's Madison Square Park. It has since earned a cult-like following.

In addition to the Shack classics, the Birmingham Shack will be offering up a unique selection of frozen custard concretes:

Pie Oh My: vanilla custard and slice of Four & Twenty Blackbirds seasonal pie

Birming Graham: vanilla custard, lemon curd, marshmallow sauce and graham crackers

Shack Attack: chocolate custard, fudge sauce, chocolate truffle cookie dough, Mast Brothers Shake Shack dark chocolate chunks, topped with chocolate sprinkles

The menu will also feature a Birmingham-exclusive fry in collaboration with Alabama favorite, Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q. The Big Bob's Cheese Fries feature crinkle-cut fries topped with Big Bob Gibson's pulled pork and cheese sauce.

Guests can wash their burgers down with local brews from Avondale Brewing Co., Good People Brewing Co., Back Forty Beer Company and Cahaba Brewing Co. Wine lovers can enjoy a glass of Shack Red and Shack White wine from the Gotham Project.

As part of Shake Shack's mission to "Stand For Something Good", the Birmingham Shack will donate all proceeds from soft opening, as well 5 percent of sales from the Pie Oh My concrete throughout the life of the shack, to Cahaba River Society, an organization that restores and protects the Cahaba River watershed and its rich diversity of life.

The 3,520-square-foot Shake Shack will feature an outdoor patio and ample seating for guests.

In keeping with Shake Shack's commitment to green architecture and eco-friendly construction, the Birmingham Shack's tabletops will be made by CounterEvolution using reclaimed bowling alley lanes; chairs will be designed by Uhuru using sustainable materials; and booths will be crafted by Staach using lumber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.




Guwahati : Assam Rifles troops had busted a temporary camp of NSCN (IM) in Nagalands Peren district.





According to the reports, based on specific information regarding presence of armed NSCN (IM) militants in general area New Ngaolong of Peren district, Jalukie Battalion of Assam Rifles launched a search at the area.





A top official of Assam Rifles said that, the column during search, noticed presence of a group of 10-15 NSCN (IM) militants in a temporary camp, which is a noticeable violation of Ceasefire Ground Rules (CFGR).





The column approached the camp and asked the NSCN (IM) militants to surrender peacefully as per CFGR guidelines. However, the militants responded by bringing down heavy volume of automatic fire on the Security Force column. The NSCN (IM) militants abandoned the camp and fled taking cover of the thick jungle and foliage. Later, the temporary camp established by militants of NSCN (IM) was destroyed by the Assam Rifles column, the Assam Rifles official said.





This act of NSCN (IM) is a gross violation of the CFGRs signed between the Government of India and the NSCN (IM), the Assam Rifles official said.




The Pentagon has given an Alabama company a $522 million contract for inflatable field antennas. The new contract is an extension of an earlier contract making a total value of more than $960 million.

GATR Technologies Inc. of Huntsville first won the contract in 2013. The company said then that this would move the antenna into wider use beyond the special operations units that adopted them first.

The antenna look like giant beach balls with tie-downs to point them in the right direction. The antenna is actually reflective fabric inside.

The contract was announced Friday in the Pentagon's daily contract report.
Brian Michael Bendis -- the writer behind (in collaboration with others, of course) Jessica Jones, the biggest Marvel events of the last 20 years and now, after moving to DC, Superman -- has a fascination with tattoos. It's the comic book writer in him, perhaps, at his core mystified by a talent wielded with such precision by others and yet somewhat off-limits to him as a Jewish man. "Nothing could be more personal," he says. "And you're asking someone to put it on your body."

"Pearl" #1, cover

So, doing as writers do, he collected stories of the "beauty and art and passions" of tattoo artistry that, along with research into organized crime and the Japanese Yakuza syndicate, resulted in the creation of "Pearl," a new six-issue miniseries that begins this week with Jessica Jones artist Michael Gaydos for Bendis' Jinxworld imprint at DC.

As "Pearl" #1 opens, the titular lead character -- a tattoo artist with a special skin condition -- is plying her trade in San Francisco, but she soon becomes ensnarled in a mob conflict that threatens everything in her life.

"A lot of people I feel are born into a situation and then they grow and get to certain parts of their lives and go, 'Why am I here? Who put me here? Why am I living these rules that nobody asked me my opinion of?' And then at certain point, you take charge of that -- you change your life or you establish yourself in the world that you're in," Bendis said. "And so this is the story of Pearl, who was born in this situation. She's either going to rescue herself from it, or she's going to make the most of it."

"Pearl" #1, unlettered interior art

Building a new (Jinx)world at DC

"Pearl" #1 marks the beginning of Bendis' creator-owned work at DC, a start that will soon be followed with the next chapter in his revolutionary saga "Scarlet" at the end of this month and "Cover" (a series about comic creators recruited into international espionage) in September. And, despite having worked at the highest levels of the comic book industry for almost 20 years, he said he is as nervous as ever for the launch of "Pearl" and his other new books.

"I was literally just a couple days ago talking to a peer of mine in the airport," Bendis said. "Everyone in Portland makes comic books for a living, so it's very easy to express your anxiety and frustrations, and I said, 'I cannot believe that I am this far into this, and I have opening night jitters and all of those feelings you can have, and it's quite a rollercoaster of excitement and dread and panic and exuberation -- all of it comes in one big package of emotions, and they're all there just like they were the first time I put out a comic back in college.

"'Crazy.'"

His manager and "life partner," wife Alisa Bendis, mitigates some of that anxiety by handling the business side of comic book creating, and Bendis credited her for making the Jinxworld agreement with DC and its subsequent creative output possible.

"She really made the deal and created this whole situation in which I could thrive and survive and create," Bendis said. "She literally does all of the hard work and facilitated a setting to let me and my friends produce and -- create an environment as publisher -- in which we can do our best work."

Yet after a MRSA infection landed him in intensive care and nearly ended his life, a reflective Bendis said he only had one primary emotion as Jinxworld begins anew.

"There was a real sense that it wasn't going to happen," Bendis said. "So relief is my biggest feeling when we talk about these being released and the partnership with my wife and new deal with DC."

"Pearl" #1, unlettered interior art

A Dark Knight backup

Before Bendis signed his first deal with Marvel in 2000, he wrote a six-page story for "The Batman Chronicles" #21 titled "Citizen Wayne." ("Get it?" he asks with a wink in his voice.) The artist on the story was, by cosmic coincidence, Michael Gaydos, who would go on to create with Bendis both Jessica Jones and now "Pearl."

"And I said to DC, 'I don't think a lot of fans knew we actually did a Batman. Instead of running ads or a letter column we don't have letters for yet, let's put this story in the back as a surprise, kind of like to drop a little thank you.' Because honestly the support we've been given from fans and retailers has been enormous, and everywhere I can I'm looking for some way to say thank you," Bendis said. "So this was a great way to surprise the fans. You get to meet Pearl. You've got Michael Gaydos at his absolute best, and then you've got a flashback to 20 years ago doing this Batman 'Citizen Kane' book.

"And we got, as someone pointed out, the only creator-owned book in the history of comics to have a Batman backup."

"Pearl" #1, from Brian Michael Bendis, Michael Gaydos, Joshua Reed and Jinxworld/DC, goes on sale Wednesday.

"Pearl" #1, unlettered interior art
A Birmingham man has been sentenced to prison after being convicted of killing a 55-year-old mother last year.

Henry Williams Gosha, 59, was convicted of murder on June 15 after a jury trial. He was sentenced last week by Jefferson County Circuit Judge Bill Cole to life in prison.

Gosha spoke before his sentence was announced, court records show, and said he was sorry for his crime and asked for forgiveness. Representatives from the victim's family also spoke at the hearing.

Originally, Gosha was charged with capital murder in the death of 55-year-old Cassandra "San" Cherry; but, a grand jury indicted him on the lesser charge of intentional murder.

Cherry was found slain in her Goldwire Place home on Feb. 4, 2017. Birmingham police responded to the scene after neighbors reported hearing gunshots coming from inside the home, and found Cherry shot multiple times. She was pronounced dead on the scene.

Shortly after Cherry, a mother and employee of Brookwood Medical Center, was found dead, Gosha called police to turn himself in.

At the time, Birmingham police said the shooting was domestic in nature.

"What actually happened before the shooting is unknown," Sgt. Bryan Shelton said. "We have few domestic reports on file involving the two parties, but they don't appear to be violent in nature. Bottom line, it's a horrible situation."

Deputy District Attorneys Ashley Patterson and Joe Roberts prosecuted the case; Gosha was represented by Public Defender David Luker and Assistant Public Defender Christa Wininger.
The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld the capital murder conviction of Richard Burgin, who is sentenced to spend the remainder of his life in prison.

Burgin, 55, was convicted last year for the fatal stabbings of 74-year-old Anthony Jackson and 69-year-old Terry Jackson. The Jackson brothers were volunteering at the West Huntsville United Methodist Church food pantry. Burgin showed up to rob them of money so he could fuel his drug habit, Madison County prosecutors argued at trial. Anthony Jackson died at the bloody scene in the church fellowship hall; Terry died at Huntsville Hospital.

Attorney General Steve Marshall in a news release today announced the appeals court decision. He commended Assistant Attorneys General Laura Irby Cuthbert and Thomas Leverette for the work in the case.

At trial the case was prosecuted by Madison County District Attorney Rob Broussard's office. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, but the jury voted to sentence Burgin to life without parole. Circuit Judge Karen Hall later upheld the jury's recommendation and handed down the sentence.

Just days after sentencing, defense lawyers Larry Marsili and Chad Morgan filed motions alleging their client was denied a fair trial and that the evidence against him was insufficient for a conviction. Hall denied their request for a new trial or acquittal.

The trial jury took a field trip to the crime scene, where they walked or rode along the path where a Huntsville police K9 tracked human scent and evidence. The jurors also toured the church fellowship hall where the brothers were killed.

Burgin is serving his sentence at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility.
Two Alabama cities have landed on a list of the worst places in America to raise children.

24/7 WallStreet looked at a number of education, health and safety measures to determine where children face the greatest struggles. The ratings include information on preschool enrollment and high school graduation rates, as well as access to areas for physical activity and violent crime rates.

Of the 25 cities named to the worst list, 9 are located in the west, in states like California, New Mexico and Oregon; 14 are in the South. Two of those Southern cities - Anniston and Gadsden - are in Alabama.

The Anniston-Oxford-Jacksonville area was number 10 on the list.

Preschool enrollment in the area was 33.2 percent and the population with access to areas for exercise was 48.2 percent, both in the lowest 10 percent in the country. The violent crime rate was 894.7 per 100,000 residents, placing it in the highest 10 percent in the country.

The high school graduation rate - 92.2 percent - was a bright spot for the area. That percentage places Anniston in the top 10 percent for high school graduates.

Coming in at number seven on the list was Gadsden.

"In addition to reporting poor educational outcomes among the area's children, Gadsden is one of the most violent metro areas in the country. The violent crime rate, which is 712 reported instances per 100,000 residents, is particularly driven by assault. There were 569 aggravated assaults per 100,000 residents reported, which is more than double the national rate. Living in an area with serious violent crime issues can reduce a child's sense of well being and hinder emotional development," 24/7 WallStreet noted.

Preschool enrollment is 38.2 percent with a high-school graduation rate of 84.1 percent. The percent of the population with access to areas for exercise was 43.6 percent, some 40 points lower than the national average.

Here's the bottom 10 places in the U.S. to raise children. You can see the complete list here.


Three Alabama residents contracted the mosquito-borne Zika virus this year while traveling out of the country, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health.

One of those cases involves a Shelby County resident, according to an advisory from UAB. The Shelby County Health Department didn't respond to requests for comment from AL.com about the case.

The virus wasn't contracted in Alabama or in the U.S., according to state officials.

"There has been no evidence to date in 2018, in 2017 and 2016 of mosquitos in Alabama carrying this virus," said Jodie Dionne-Odom, assistant professor in UAB's Division of Infectious Diseases. "The people who have been identified in our state so far have imported this virus from other places where we know the Zika virus exists."

She said residents who don't plan on traveling to Central or South America or other countries where Zika is known to be endemic shouldn't be concerned about the virus.

According to the Alabama Department of Public Health, there have also been several cases of West Nile virus in Alabama residents.

Infection with the Zika virus causes only mild symptoms in the majority of the cases, but the biggest risk is to pregnant women, according to the Department of Public Health.

Zika is known to cause birth defects and other poor pregnancy-related outcomes if infection occurs during pregnancy.

Pregnant women shouldn't travel to areas with risk of Zika, Dionne-Odom said. Women who have traveled to countries with Zika should wait at least two months before attempting to get pregnant.

Only one out of five people with the Zika virus have symptoms, she said. These mild symptoms include low-grade fever, headache, joint pain in hands and feet or rash.

Dee Jones, state public health veterinarian, says, "The best way to avoid getting a disease from a mosquito is to reduce the risk of being bitten."

Follow these recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to keep mosquitos off your skin and out of your yard:

When going outdoors, use EPA-registered repellents containing 20 percent DEET on skin or permethrin on clothes. Follow label instructions carefully when using any repellent. Repellents should not be used on infants less than 2 months old.

Wear loose-fitting long sleeves and long pants.

Install or repair screens on windows and doors. Use air-conditioning, if available.

Empty standing water from items outside homes such as flowerpots, buckets, old tires and children's pools.

Clean clogged gutters and clear drainage ditches and pipes of debris.

Public health environmentalists often conduct courtesy yard inspections in neighborhoods to help educate the public on mosquito control around the home and mosquito bite prevention.
Nancy Worley said she is thankful for those who ignored pressure from within her own party and elected the former school teacher to another term leading the Alabama Democratic Party.

"I thank the courageous members of the State Democratic Executive Committee who stood up and voted for me in spite of extreme arm twisting," Worley said in a Sunday Facebook post.

The executive committee reelected Worley on Saturday by a vote of 101 to 89 over challenger Peck Fox. Fox, a Montgomery attorney and lobbyists, was nominated by Doug Jones, the Democrat who upset Republican Roy Moore in the December race for the U.S. Senate seat once held by current Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Jones is the first Democratic Senator elected from Alabama in 25 years and the only party member to hold statewide elected office in Alabama.

Before the vote, Jones said the party needed change. He later said he was disappointed in Worley's reelection.

"Our candidates are going to have to go it alone, just like I did," Jones said.

In her Facebook post, Worley pointed to the Jones' election as a highlight for Democrats in the state.

"I am also proud that we qualified a record number of candidates for the 2018 election, and elected a Democratic U.S. Senator to serve the remaining two years of a vacated seat," she wrote. "One person does not determine the outcome of most elections, but one single person going to the polls or voting absentee, one single new person added to the list of registered voters, one single dollar contributed to each Democratic candidate, or one positive Democratic message on social media, in the workplace, or in a school or place of worship can help achieve more Democratic victories."

Worley has held the unpaid role of Democratic party chair since 2013.
Prosecutors charged a white man with manslaughter Monday in the death of an unarmed black man whose videotaped shooting in a store parking lot has revived debate over Florida's "stand your ground" law.

Michael Drejka, 47, has been charged with the July 19 death of Markeis McGlockton outside a Clearwater convenience store, Pinellas County State Attorney Bernie McCabe said. Drejka was being held at the county jail on $100,000 bail. It is unknown if he has an attorney.

McCabe declined further comment, referring reporters to court records that were not immediately available.

McGlockton's girlfriend, Britany Jacobs, who was seated in the couple's car with two of their children, ages 3 years and 4 months, said Drejka confronted her for being parked in a handicapped-accessible space. McGlockton, 28, had gone into the store with their 5-year-old son. Jacobs said Drejka was cursing at her. Video shows McGlockton exited the store and shoved Drejka to the ground. Seconds later, Drejka pulled a handgun and shot McGlockton as he backed away.

McGlockton family attorney Benjamin Crump -- who gained national prominence representing the family of Trayvon Martin after the black teen's fatal shooting by a Hispanic man in 2012 -- said in a statement Monday "it's about time" Drejka was arrested. The family, civil rights groups and others had been holding protests demanding he be charged.

"This self-appointed wannabe cop attempted to hide behind 'Stand Your Ground' to defend his indefensible actions, but the truth has finally cut through the noise," Crump said. "I have full faith that this truth will prevail to punish this cold-blooded killer who angrily created the altercation that led to Markeis' needless death."

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri originally declined to charge Drejka, saying one day after the shooting that the man was protected by Florida's stand-your-ground law. The sheriff passed the case to prosecutors for a final decision. The law says people can use deadly force if they believe they are in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and have no obligation to retreat. Under a change made by the Legislature last year, if a suspect raises a stand-your-ground defense, prosecutors must prove the law doesn't apply.

"I support the State Attorney's decision and will have no further comment as the case continues to work its way through the criminal justice system," Gualtieri said in a statement Monday.

The soundless store security video shows the confrontation began about a minute after Jacobs pulled into a handicapped-accessible spot in the parking lot. Jacobs told reporters last week McGlockton had just picked her up from her job as a nursing assistant, the parking lot was busy and they were only stopping for a minute. McGlockton and his oldest son got out and entered the store.

Drejka pulled up in his SUV seconds later, parking perpendicular to Jacobs, according to the woman's account. She said Drejka got out, walked to the back of Jacobs' car, looked at the license plate, and then went to the front, apparently looking for a handicapped sticker there. He appears to say something to Jacobs and points to two empty spaces nearby.

The video shows he then walked to Jacobs' window. He is speaking from about a foot (0.3 meters) away and gesturing with his hands. A man entering the store about 15 feet (5 meters) away stops to look and a woman glances over.

McGlockton then exits the store, walks toward Drejka and -- just as Jacobs gets out of the car -- shoves Drejka with both hands. Drejka lands on his back and McGlockton takes a step toward him. Drejka sits up, pulls his gun from his right front pocket and points it at McGlockton, who takes three steps back, his arms at his side. Drejka fires, hitting McGlockton, who runs back into the store clutching his chest. Witnesses said he collapsed in front of his son, waiting inside.

Michael McGlockton, the dead man's father, told reporters at a news conference days later that his son was protecting his family when he shoved Drejka.

Crump also represented the family of Martin, a 17-year-old black youth who was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a Hispanic man who was his Orlando-area neighborhood's watch captain. Zimmerman had confronted Martin, who was walking back to the home of his father's fiancee after making a purchase at a convenience store.

Zimmerman said he thought Martin might be a burglar casing homes. They fought and Zimmerman fatally shot him. There were no eyewitnesses or videos. Zimmerman said he feared Martin, who was unarmed, was about to kill him and a jury acquitted him of second-degree murder.
So far this summer, members of Trump administration have been cursed at while picking up takeout, heckled by protesters while eating dinner, confronted in cafes by strangers demanding they resign, and, in the case of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, even asked to leave a restaurant in the middle of a meal. Inevitably, these confrontations lead to endless discussions about civility and whether public officials have the right to eat in peace.

This weekend, however, the reverse happened in Houston. A popular Tex-Mex restaurant served dinner to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, calling it an "honor" on Facebook. In response, left-leaning Houstonians called for a boycott, and the restaurant received so much criticism on social media that it deleted all of its accounts.

Sessions had traveled to Houston on Friday to discuss his plans to cut down on violent crime, according to the Houston Chronicle. During his speech, he called for a crackdown on illegal immigration and a ban on sanctuary cities.

"This should be obvious: if we want to reduce violent crime we should reduce illegal immigrant crime," he said.

That same night, El Tiempo Cantina posted a picture of Sessions with co-owner Dominic Laurenzo on the restaurant's Facebook page.

"We had the honor to server [sic] Mr. Jeff Sessions, Attorney General of the United States," the caption said. "Thank you for allowing us to serve you."

The post got an immediate response on social media, and quickly spawned the hashtag #BoycottElTiempo.

Antonio tweeted "Jeff Sessions continues to target immigrants and enable Trump's discriminatory policies yet @ElTiempoCantina is 'Honored to serve him'".

tamara villanueva "When you're job is to serve, keeping it professional at all times is perfectly fine @ElTiempoCantina. But boasting & saying it was an honor to serve someone who has a hand in the horror that is hurting ppl & our nation is just plain irresponsible & disheartening. #eltiempocantina"

Others jumped in to defend the restaurant, with some conservatives pledging to eat there in the future.

Steve Mudflap McGrew tweeted "El Tiempo will get the same giant economic boost Chick-fil-A got when loony libs went after them. Congrats El Tiempo. I'll eat there next time I'm in Houston"

John Hazle tweeted "Congratulations to the El Tiempo Cantina owners and staff. You displayed great culture and Texas hospitality. It looks like you provided GREAT service while having a civil discussion on immigration with some differing views. If only others had the class you showed"

On Saturday, Roland Laurenzo, Dominic's father and the restaurant's co-owner, disavowed the administration's immigration policies in a Facebook post.

Neither of the Laurenzos could be reached for comment late Sunday night. But in an interview with KHOU11 on Saturday, Roland Laurenzo said that the company's social media manager - who he didn't name, and who couldn't be identified through an online search - had written the post that thanked Sessions.

"In retrospect, it was a mistake because it angered so many people," he told the station. "We have gotten so many complaints and comments. And threats, death threats. This has been extremely shocking to our family."

The company doesn't agree with Sessions' views on gay rights or family separation, Laurenzo said, adding that his son, Dominic, had discussed fajitas with the attorney general.

But the controversy didn't die down after that. On Saturday afternoon, the restaurant shut down all of its Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook pages, the Houston Chronicle reported. Early Monday morning, those accounts were still offline.

"People are insulting us in such a dramatic fashion, and we feel like we don't deserve it," Roland Laurenzo explained to ABC13 on Sunday. "At least temporarily I had it taken down because I don't want to be insulted, my children to be insulted, my family to be insulted."

He also expressed regret over the post thanking Sessions, calling it "inaccurate in terms of the totality of what we would be thinking."

That prompted even more ire - this time from Trump supporters.

According to the restaurant's website, Roland and Dominic Laurenzo opened El Tiempo Cantina in 1998. Roland's mother, Ninfa Laurenzo, had previously owned a popular Tex-Mex restaurant where she "blended traditional Mexican family recipes with Italian traditions from her husband's side," but it went bankrupt in the late 1990s. The chain currently has eight locations in the Houston area. In 2017, the Houston Press named it the best Tex-Mex restaurant in the city.

El Tiempo's owners have taken political stances before: In October 2016, the Houston Chronicle reported that the restaurant was allowing Trump supporters to hold a rally outside the East End location and film a music video for a pro-Trump anthem written by one of the leaders of the Houston Latino Trump Coalition. Counterprotesters also received permission to gather outside the restaurant, but Dominic Laurenzo told the paper that he was personally supporting Trump.

It's unclear how Sessions decided to dine at El Tiempo, but it was his second Mexican meal of the day. That morning, he had huevos rancheros and bacon with Houston police chief Art Acevedo at La Mexicana, a long-standing Mexican restaurant in the city, the Chronicle reported.

While the irony was duly noted by commentators on Twitter, La Mexicana didn't tout Sessions' visit on social media, and the restaurant hasn't faced the same level of backlash.

Manager Zulema Gonzales told the Chronicle that they, too, had received an inquiry about security at the restaurant but didn't know that Sessions would be eating there until he arrived on Friday morning.

"I don't know why they picked this place," she said, adding, "We treat everybody the same."

Sessions has yet to publicly comment on the controversy over his dinner.
A new petition wants to bring Chick-fil-A to U.S. military bases.

Senior Airman Emily Carby's petition on Change.org asks for the U.S. government to contract with Chick-fil-A to open restaurants on military bases. Carby said the restaurant is "one of the most wholesome, happy and beloved fast food chains to exist in America today" and a good fit to military installations.

"An encounter on any given day within a Chick-Fil-A restaurant is full of manners, smiles and "my pleasures," which could raise the morale and warm the black hearts of even the crustiest," Carby wrote. "Their ice cream machine is never broken. Never have I seen a cancerous, viral fight video leaked...involving any of their employees.

"Also, when have you ever met someone who didn't like Chick-Fil-A?" she added. "Exactly."

More than 57,000 people have signed the petition.

Chick-fil-A said its corporate officials are aware of the petition.

"We are always exploring new opportunities to serve our customers, however, we have no plans to expand onto military bases at this time," the company's marketing agency said in statement to the Panama City News Herald. "We will continue to look for ways to serve great food and remarkable service while supporting the military locally with events such as Military Appreciation Night, in-restaurant commemorations and more."

The Army and Air Force Exchange Service currently operates 2,200 fast-food restaurants on military bases, including Church's Chicken, Captain D's and Subway.
The Southern District of Florida blog was started in 2005 by David Oscar Markus , who is a criminal trial and appellate lawyer in Miami, Florida. He frequently practices in federal courts around the country, including his hometown, the Southern District of Florida and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. He is a former law clerk to then-Chief Judge of the District, Edward B. Davis.
On July 25, investigators from four Texas agencies descended on a small religious boarding school outside tiny Bertram Texas.

Inside were eight boys ages 10-17, all of whom were from out of state. With them was Pastor Gary Wiggins, who is no stranger to having his schools raided by authorities.

The multi-agency investigation led Texas authorities to remove all eight boys at the school and transfer them into the custody of child protective services.

The raid came at the end of several weeks of investigations by a total of 11 Texas agencies into allegations of abuse, neglect, labor violations, fraud, licensing violations and human trafficking.

Wiggins, the man at the center of it all, has not yet been charged.

Back in 2016, Wiggins was running the Blessed Hope Boys Academy in Seminole, Ala. It was raided by sheriff's deputies in December 2016 after two boys escaped to a neighbor's house and said they were victims of abuse. All 22 boys, ages 8 to 17, were removed from the school, which advertised itself as a religious school for troubled boys.

Wiggins denied any abuse occurred and charges were never filed. Five months later, Alabama passed a law that would allow the state to inspect schools like his. Previously, boarding schools that claimed a religious exemption to state law could operate with virtually no oversight and follow no regulations regarding the health and safety of the students at the school.

Wiggins shuttered Blessed Hope and took off for Missouri, where there are no such regulations. He brought with him some of the boys who'd been at Blessed Hope. In a remote area of southwest Missouri near a town called Pineville, he opened the Joshua Home.

But a few months later, the McDonald County Sheriff's Department began getting calls. After a sheriff's deputy went out to do a well-child check on one of the students, Wiggins packed up again and headed for Texas. The sheriff's deputy said the child seemed to be fine.

Burnet County Sheriff Calvin Boyd told reporters on July 27 that his office was looking into whether the Joshua Home may have been using the boys illegally for a lawn care service and a moving company, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

The Sheriff's department is looking into the Joshua Home, the nonprofit Joshua Home Ministries, Joshua Home Lawn Care, Joshua Home Movers and JJW Home Services. Anyone with information can call 512-756-8080 and cidadmin@burnetsheriffcom.
Marla L. Andrews put on her glasses, held the small plastic bag close and strained to see the gold ring inside.

Her vision is poor, and the opaque bag made it impossible for her to see the inscription on the inner surface of the ring: "P.D.," a heart with an arrow through it, and "L.E.D. 5-31-43."

P.D. was her mother, Phyllis Dickson. L.E.D. was her father, the World War II Tuskegee fighter pilot, Capt. Lawrence E. Dickson. May 31, 1943, was his 23rd birthday.

Thursday afternoon Andrews, 76, sat in her living room here and struggled to make out the artifact that had just become a piece of her history, and that of the United States.

Last month, the Defense Department announced that it had accounted for Dickson, among more than two dozen black aviators known as Tuskegee Airmen who were still missing from World War II.

Dickson, who had trained at the Tuskegee Army Flying School, was 24 when he crashed in mountainous southern Austria on Dec. 23, 1944, while on an escort mission.

Seventy-three years later, his ring was found in the dirt by a University of New Orleans graduate student, Titus Firmin, during a dig last summer at the crash site near Hohenthurn.

Charred remains and other small personal items were also found, along with parts of the airplane.

On Thursday, Michael Mee, the identifications chief for the Army's Past Conflict Repatriations Branch, presented Andrews with the ring and a formal report on how her father was accounted for.

Andrews sat in a black skirt and colored blouse, wearing gold hoop earrings and holding a tissue and a black marker.

The 14-karat Art Deco ring was a prize, the physical link to a man Andrews barely knew, and to a different life that might have been, had he come home.

There had been talk for months that a ring had been found during the dig. Now, here it was, encased in bubble wrap, inside a larger plastic bag that Mee pulled from his black briefcase.

"This is the ring," he said.

"Wow, guys," she said quietly.

"Want me to take it out for you?" Mee asked, referring to the plastic bag.

"No," she said.

(She said later she didn't want to remove it because she wasn't ready.)

The excavation had also found the ring's aqua-colored stone, which had broken loose and was in a separate bag. Andrews said her mother had loved the color aqua, and she guessed that her mother had bought the ring for her father's birthday.

Mee also turned over a small remnant of a harmonica that was found at the crash site, and a small cross.

Capt. Dickson had loved music. He had taught himself to play the guitar and had taken an electric guitar with him when he went overseas. It was never returned to his family after his death, according to his records.

Mee, who was accompanied by Army Maj. Phillip Richardson, explained how the scientific identification was made.

DNA had been extracted from arm and leg bone fragments found at the crash site and matched with DNA from Andrews, a nephew and a distant cousin the Army had found but whom Andrews had never heard of.

The report contained pictures of the pieces of Capt. Dickson's ribs, hands, spine, arms and legs recovered from the site. "Highly fragmented, small quantity of remains," Mee said.

Andrews, who sat on a floral-patterned couch, looked somber when Mee explained that some of her father's bone fragments were charred from the plane's crash.

These were "perimortem" injuries, which happened at or near the time of death, he said.

"Some of the remains are blackened," Mee told her. "There was a fire. The aircraft caught fire. . . . This is very typical of an aircraft accident."

Capt. Dickson, of the 100th Fighter Squadron, was among the more than 900 black pilots who were trained at the segregated Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama during the war.

They were African-American men from all over the country who fought racism and oppression at home and enemy pilots and antiaircraft gunners overseas.

More than 400 served in combat, flying patrol and strafing missions, and escorting bombers from bases in North Africa and Italy. The tail sections of their fighter planes were painted a distinctive red.

The dig was conducted by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, the University of New Orleans, and the University of Austria at Innsbruck, with help from the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

There are 26 Tuskegee Airmen still missing from the war.

Lawrence Dickson had married Phyllis Constance Maillard in November 1941. (She remarried and died Dec. 28, 2017, in Nevada at the age of 96.) The couple lived in New York City. Marla was born July 14, 1942, in Harlem's old Sydenham Hospital.

Two days before Christmas 1944, Dickson took off from his base in Italy, in a P-51D Mustang nicknamed "Peggin," headed for Nazi-occupied Prague.

He was on his 68th mission and had already been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for meritorious service.

He was leading a three-Mustang escort of a fast but unarmed photo reconnaissance plane, according to the account of a wingman, 2nd Lt. Robert L. Martin, many years later.

(Martin died July 26 at the age of 99 at his home in Olympia Fields, Illinois)

The four planes headed over the mountains for Prague. About an hour into the trip, Dickson radioed that he was having engine trouble and began losing speed.

His wingmen stayed with him as he dropped back. The twin-engine reconnaissance plane sped on and was soon out of sight.

Dickson decided to turn for home in his crippled plane, and his buddies stuck with him.

He looked for a spot to land or bail out. Martin saw him jettison the canopy of his cockpit before bailing out, but then he lost sight of the airplane.

The two wingmen circled, looking for a parachute, a column of smoke or burning wreckage. There was nothing but an empty, snow-covered valley.

After the war, the Army searched for Dickson in northern Italy, where Martin thought he went down. Other crashed planes and remains were found, but not his.

In 1949, the Army recommended that his remains be declared "nonrecoverable."

Last August, Andrews got a phone call at her home from the Past Conflict Repatriations Branch, saying experts, armed with new data on the crash location, were investigating her father's case anew.

On Thursday, Mee said the captain's remains, now in a laboratory in Nebraska, would be placed in a coffin, and wrapped in a traditional Army blanket fastened with a large safety pin.

Andrews said she would like her father to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Mee said it might be possible for the modern 100th Fighter Squadron, with the tails of its jets painted red, to make a flyover at the funeral.
Nichole Ulmer had never heard the name before - Rayfield Davis. But Davis was her cousin. And she unknowingly had grown up playing in the Alabama ditch where his fatally beaten body had been found years earlier.

Ulmer's family had never talked about the 1948 killing in her presence. It wasn't until five years ago that the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project contacted Ulmer about the death of her cousin, who was black, and delivered a particularly unsettling bit of news: That a white man who confessed to killing Davis - according to news reports at the time - was still alive and still free.

"It was a shocker to me to learn about this killing," Ulmer, 49, told The Washington Post. "I never had a clue."

The incident is among hundreds of cases of racial violence that occurred between 1930 and 1970 that have been investigated by the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University School of Law, according to project director Kaylie Simon. Most of these killings went without justice, Simon noted, and they often faded from collective memory because of lost records and passing time.

CRRJ's mission is to keep these stories alive by creating memorials and alerting communities and families of a past that was lost to them.

This month, the city of Mobile, Alabama, will host an event to dedicate a street to Davis next to the ditch where his body was found. City Council member C.J. Small, who will lead the commemoration, told The Post in an email that "it's important to [Davis'] family, the community and for us all to face our past and always be rededicating ourselves to seeking justice."

Davis met Horace Miller one day in March 1948 after his shift had ended at Brookley Air Force Base, nearly six miles from downtown Mobile. Miller, then 20, told reporters that Davis, 53, invited him home for a drink. Miller, an airplane mechanic, refused; appalled that a "Negro" would suggest such a thing. He claimed that after his refusal, Davis, a janitor at the base, then went on a rant about racial equality and civil rights.

"President Truman is our good friend and he will give us our equal rights," Davis said, according to Miller's account to the Associated Press at the time. In 1948, Truman was courting black voters in his bid for reelection.

"This sort of talk kept making me madder," Miller told the AP, admitting to hitting Davis with his hands. Miller said he intensified the attack after seeing what appeared to be Davis "fumbling" for what he thought was a weapon.

Miller beat Davis to death, though he claimed he didn't know the beating was fatal until the next morning when he read reports of a black man's body found in a ditch, according to a report from the Montgomery Advertiser.

Davis' face and neck sustained extensive swelling and there was a three-eighths-inch cut above his upper lip, according to the coroner's report obtained by The Washington Post.

Police charged Miller with murder. And in Mississippi, his home state, a defense fund for the $2,500 bond and legal fees began within days of Miller surrendering to authorities. Alabama prosecutors took the case before a grand jury, with Miller's signed statement of confession provided by his lawyer, according to the AP. His mother and brother testified to attest to Miller's character.

Despite Miller's admission of guilt, the grand jury declined to indict him.

"The grand jury investigation of the case was very thorough," then-Alabama Solicitor Carl M. Booth told the AP. "Every witness connected with the case was summoned to testify and Miller's statement was also read and studied by the jury."

It wasn't uncommon at the time for white people to evade prosecution for crimes against black Americans, even after admitting to killing another human being. This was a time when white supremacists lynched black people with no legal repercussions, a time when white men freely raped black women. Seven years after Davis' death, authorities would find Emmett Till's mutilated body floating in the Tallahatchie River in Money, Miss.

Davis' killing had largely faded from Mobile's memory and natural disasters had destroyed most of the old records, city officials told The Post, when CRRJ approached them and Davis' family in 2013 with archived newspaper clippings about the case.

But beyond wanting to know more about Davis' life and how the national coverage of his killing impacted her now-deceased family members, Ulmer wanted to speak with Miller and his family.

"Racism is a learned behavior," Ulmer said. "I just want to know where his heart is now after all these years. . . . And I know he's suffered throughout the years knowing that he took a man's life. But I want him to know there's not a man that God won't forgive."

When The Post contacted by phone, Miller, now 90, declined to comment.

"I don't have anything to say or discuss regarding that," he said.

The upcoming commemoration in Mobile is part of CRRJ's restorative justice effort - a type of justice that focuses on the rehabilitation of people directly and indirectly harmed by an incident.

"Whole communities have lived with the reality of injustices that happened," said Simon. "And almost a century later, people in power recognize that their reality is true."

Ulmer, a Mobile native, collected hundreds of signatures from neighbors to ensure the street's renaming. She hopes it will serve as a reminder for future generations of what can happen when hate and systemic racism get in the way of decent humanity.

"We've come a long way as a black race," Ulmer said. "But we haven't gotten there yet. If one person has a change of heart, my cousin's death wouldn't have been in vain."

One Sunday after church, Ulmer returned to the site of the killing with her father and two of her sons. Like Ulmer, her sons, 10 and 15, played in the same ditch where Davis' body was found - catching crawfish and throwing rocks into the still water.

The family walked around for a bit. They took pictures and watched as cars passed by. Before long, Ulmer told her children of the killing that took their relative's life.

"Right there?" the 15-year-old asked his mother, pointing to an abandoned bike with chipping pink paint, realizing his relative 70 years ago was abandoned there, too.

"For someone to be thrown in a ditch like it's nothing. . ." he said, as he started to cry.

"Our blood runs through that ditch," Ulmer said. "When people pass this street sign, they will know Davis' story."
As some look West, others choose to remain on the continent despite financial uncertainty to create music with meaning.

Dakar, Senegal  In the lively neighbourhood of Medina in Dakar, horse-drawn carts jingle around crowded buses and makeshift stalls sell everything from clothes to mobile phones.

In a narrow alley, behind a bustling street, noisy beats pulsate from a colourful building, a community centre.

Inside, Jah Moko invites young people to write some lyrics on pieces of paper. The Malian born musician is trying to encourage them to become the voice of their communities through music.

Music is our spiritual battle. It is an engagement to sensitise and educate young people to love our continent and have faith in themselves, he says.

While some African artists want to move to Europe to pursue opportunities, Jah Moko quit his career as a music producer in France after 10 years to settle in Senegal and create the Jah Moko Family project, a band based in Dakar.

The bands musical influences include West-African reggae and Afro-beat and they use traditional African sounds.

Malian born artist Jah Moko left a successful career as a music producer in France to create the Jah Moko Family music project in Senegal [Fragkiska Megaloudi/Al Jazeera]

The players form a multicultural group  the nine members come from Mali, Senegal, Benin, Central African Republic and France.

They sing in the local languages of Bambara and Wolof but also French and English.

Our music is not easy because it is a statement, says Moko, who is the lead vocalist and songwriter. We talk about things that matter to all, such as corruption, immigration, war, justice and access to education. Through our music, maybe we can make people think and change behaviours.

Johann Gibault, 27, is the bass player and songwriter. He and his mother recently fled their native Central African Republic, exiled by the war, to start a new life in Senegal.

As long as I can remember, war has always been part of our lives. In Senegal, I found the peace I needed to express myself as an artist, he says. Back home everybody had a weapon to kill. My weapon is my music. We do not need guns to fight, we have a powerful gun which is our voices and our words. And we can bring change.

Despite an annual growth rate of 6.8 percent, unemployment is high in Senegal and the World Bank estimates that only one in four people have a full-time job, while three in five have only seasonal work.

With an estimated 500,000 Senegalese overseas, many families rely on remittances to survive  in 2016 they accounted for 12.6 percent of the countrys gross domestic product (GDP).

But a new generation of activists, artists and entrepreneurs is now trying to change that.

Elodie Diatta, known as Melody, is a journalist who presents a music show called Gospel Challenge on DTV. She also produces a radio show that introduces hip-hop and reggae artists to the public.

She believes that young musicians in Senegal are playing an increasingly influential role in shaping the future of the music industry in the country.

There is a new generation of musicians that choose to produce their music outside major labels and engage with their fans primarily through social media and radio. Take for example artists such as Aklhou Brick, Omzo Daller, Dip Doundou Guiss, Ngakka blinde, all part of the growing hip-hop, rap and reggae scene that makes socially engaged music, she says.

Pape Matar Faye is a professional architect but also the lead guitarist of the Jah Moko Family band. He believes that music can give life skills [Fragkiska Megaloudi/Al Jazeera]

Senegal has long been celebrated as one of the most dynamic music centres in West Africa, producing international stars such as Youssou NDour, Baaba Maal, or Thione Seck.

But according to Diatta, the messaging in music and production have evolved over recent years.

The previous generation of musicians was making music that reflected their personal experiences but artists today want to speak about problems that society faces such as unemployment, corruption, exclusion, migration. And they want our politicians to bring answers on these issues,  she concludes.

However, a lack of infrastructure and government support means most artists struggle to survive on music alone.

Dakar is one of the most musically vibrant cities in Africa, but an independent artist in Senegal cannot make a living from music, says Birom Ceptik Seck, a rapper and slam poet.

There is no financial support or any kind of job security and it is extremely difficult to secure a contract or find a venue to play. Performance venues are inaccessible to artists due to the high costs. I have been in the music industry for more than 20 years and I have four albums. I had to invest a lot of money in my music and if I did not have another job, I would not have been able to do so.

Born in Gabon and living in Senegal, he believes that artists should be encouraged to be more entrepreneurial, to attract advertisers that could sponsor events and concerts.

The labour market is already saturated, add to this the lack of infrastructure and proper guidance and you have a recipe for failure. But it is difficult to produce quality work when you have no money, he says.

Birom Ceptik Seck is a music and visual arts expert. Musicians can hardly make a living from music in Senegal but Ceptik has managed to build a name as a slam poet and rapper [Fragkiska Megaloudi/Al Jazeera]

In the Ouakam neighbourhood, the orange-painted walls of Mandinko Records stand out.

Mandinko is an independent label founded by Freeman, a young Senegalese artist and entrepreneur who wants to help young artists produce quality material and contribute to the growth of the African music industry.

The label, like most of its rivals, is small and cash-strapped, but Freeman remains confident.

We continue to make music against all odds. When we started we did not know what was going to happen, but we took the risk to invest our money and create a cultural space for African artists. Music can build an identity, stir emotions and engage people to take actions.

In the labels brand new recording studio, Jah Moko Family is rehearsing for live shows that begin next week in Les Mamelles. Lead guitarist Pape Matar Faye, 29, is playing his last solo.

Matar is an architect, designing houses in the morning and making music in the evening.

African countries face many challenges, bad governance, poverty, kids who do not go to school. Music can give to the most destitute a life skill to earn a living but most importantly it can give hope and a vision of the future.

For Matar making music offers a great opportunity to reach a large audience and convey messages.

We are the young generation of Africa and it is time that we stand up and change perceptions and stereotypes.
The arrival of 550-plus Yemeni asylum seekers on South Koreas Jeju island has sparked protests in Seoul and online.

Seoul/Jeju, South Korea  Ko Minja has yet to meet one of the 550-plus Yemeni asylum seekers who arrived on South Koreas Jeju island earlier this year, or visit any of the areas they are living.

Still, the 59-year-old restaurant owner has no second thoughts about not wanting them on the island.

The Yemenis are scary. They will rape our women, take our jobs and take over the country. Im scared of going to the areas where they are living, she told Al Jazeera.

Almost 2.2 million migrants are based in South Korea but it was the April arrival of people from war-torn Yemen on Jeju that sparked online outcry and protests on the island, as well as the capital, Seoul.

These people are well known for their reckless behaviour and its causing fear among Jejus citizens, said Minja.

Her views are based on what she has heard from other people, read online and seen on TV, and according to analysts, hers is a similar case to many Koreans who  due to the ignorance and lack of knowledge of the outside world  have turned up their voices against these Yemenis.

South Koreas refugee acceptance rate stands at around four percent. From 1994 to June 2018, it received 42,009 refugee applications. Out of the 20,974 completed applications, only 849 were granted refugee status (1,550 were given humanitarian status, a temporary permit allowing individuals to work after six months but one that needs to be renewed).

Jeju has a population of around 600,000 and a recent survey with 500 islanders revealed 90 percent felt insecure about going outside since the Yemenis arrival.

Most people here in Korea werent aware that we already had refugees in the country. I dont think the public knows who refugees are, said Miah Park, IOM head of office in Korea.

When they arrived on Jeju island, although quite small in number, it was a big influx for Korea. When that made news, people who werent familiar with the issue got worried after looking at whats happening in Europe.

A rise in fake stories and anti-Islam propaganda online has also spurred on the protesters in South Korea but, according to Il Lee, a human rights lawyer, the anti-refugee sentiment is not new in Korea. There are also worries that the spread of false information is going by unnoticed and the governments apparent lack of involvement in the matter has failed to calm down the situation.

There is a strong phenomenon in Korea that people blame foreigners for everything that goes wrong, said Lee.

If there is low employment rate, they say migrants have taken our jobs. When it comes to womens safety, they say things will worsen if we take on more refugees.

Lawyer Il Lee reckons anti-refugee sentiment has been present in Korean society for a long time [Faras Ghani/Al Jazeera]

But when it comes to the Yemeni asylum seekers, there is a strong anti-Islam sentiment. This situation shed light on the refugee issue and people are against that. The situation is getting more dire because not many Koreans have the experience of living with Muslims and have never met one in their lives.

On Saturday, around 100 anti-refugee campaigners hosted a fourth protest outside Seoul Station to demand from the government to deport all the fake refugees from Jeju and not accept any other asylum seekers.

The Yemenis are termed fake refugees because, according to locals, Koreans have this image in their minds where refugees are poor people without money or clothes.

If you see pictures from various articles, most of them are men. I find this weird. Its hard to understand that people who are desperate for survival possess iPhones and iPads. They look like tourists, said a 38-year-old protester in Seoul who refused to give his name.

I dont want the government to accept refugees at all, especially those from Muslim countries. Their culture and religion are very different from us. I dont want to see this bad religion in our country where our children will grow up and it will bring harm to them.

When questioned on the reason behind the anti-Islam stance and sentiment, the organisers, most of them having their faces covered, said anyone who did not agree with their views should not be present at the protest.

If you ask these people what is Islam, they wont have a clue. And this is why this issue is becoming so huge, said Jumin Hong, director of Korea Diaconia.

This fake news about Islam is very provocative. They are saying Muslims are terrorists, sexually abuse and harass people and all this is being shared very openly on social media.

Ko Minja says she has never seen or met a Yemeni but has heard that they are scary people and Koreans should stay away from them [Faras Ghani/Al Jazeera]

Most of the politicians in Korea have not talked on the issue while some of the civil bodies and relief organisations working for the Yemenis cause have been threatened. In June, Yemen was taken off the list of countries that were allowed visa-free arrival on Jeju island.

For Koreans, having fear of the unknown is very natural, said IOMs Park. Although a lot of young people have been exposed to the outside world, majority have a very limited understanding. They probably wont know where Yemen is and whats happening in the country.

More than 700,000 South Koreans filed an online petition urging the government to stop its visa-free policy for Yemen and send the fake refugees back home.

In response, the government announced plans to tighten the countrys Refugee Act, a move seen by critics as supportive to the protesters demands.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Choo Mi-ae, chief of Koreas ruling party, admitted there was lack of understanding and room for improvement.

The Korean public didnt have many opportunities to encounter cultural diversity, said Choo.

But like other countries, we have certain procedures to go through but you shouldnt term the whole country as anti-refugee based on the actions of a few people and the online petition. This country helps out a lot financially abroad and one of the former UN chief was Korean.

Back at the protest in Seoul, the anti-Islam slogans got louder and louder.

Those who supported the refugees observed from the sidelines as organisers showed videos of the wars ravaging the Middle East, warning locals of what might happen in Korea if the government grants them refugee status.

But despite the threats and sentiments, the majority of those helping the Yemenis in Jeju are Koreans  and in Seoul, many expressed hope that the government would take a stronger stance on the issue.

I am sorry for all this. I am sorry for what you are seeing. This is not the Korea that I know. I hope we can all educate ourselves and help each other out, a 19-year-old university student said as she walked away from the protest.

With additional reporting by Hayeon Kim.
Ortega denies controlling the pro-government armed groups that rights groups accuse of working with the police.

On July 17, footage emerged online of masked men hoisting a red-and-black flag emblazoned with the letters FSLN in what they said was Monimbo, a neighbourhood in the south Nicaraguan city of Masaya.

Long live the Sandinista Front! the men shouted, some of them pointing rifles into the sky.

Sandino lives, the fight continues! they chanted, clenching their fists in the air.

Just before, pro-government gunmen and police took control of the neighbourhood, which had been an opposition stronghold, after several hours of clashes with demonstrators who had set up barricades in the streets.

The capture of the neighbourhood by forces loyal to President Daniel Ortega was described by Reuters news agency as a symbolic blow to those trying to remove the embattled leader.

The mobs

Scenes of masked gunmen travelling in convoys of Toyota Hiluxes became prevalent in Nicaragua after anti-government protests over social security reforms broke out in mid-April.

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These groups have been referred to in Spanish as las turbas (the mobs) and parapolicias (parapolice) as well as paramilitary groups. They have been accused of carrying out much of the repression of protesters on behalf of President Ortega and his Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) party. Ortega has denied any involvement.

Demonstrations against planned pension reforms quickly spiralled into calls for the resignation of Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, after reports emerged of a deadly crackdown against protesters.

Since April, 317 people have been killed in the unrest according to the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR), which is part of the Organisation of American States (OAS). The Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights (ANPDH) put the death toll closer to 450.

The government has said that between April 19 and July 25, 197 people have died as a result of the protests, including 22 police officers.

The United Nations Human Rights Commissioner in June said killings happened almost entirely at the hands of police forces and by armed pro-government groups.

During so-called clean-up operations in July, police and masked pro-government gunmen were accused of carrying out raids of pro-opposition neighbourhoods in and around the city of Masaya  including the one in Monimbo.

Pro-government gunmen occupy Monimbo on July 18 [Alfredo Zuniga/The Associated Press]

Around the same time, pro-government groups trapped around 200 students inside a church by gunfire amid an operation to clear student protesters from the campus of the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN), where they had barricaded themselves in. They were later freed, but at least two students were killed.

Ortega himself has denied responsibility for the armed groups, but Elvira Cuadra, an associate and former director at the Nicaragua-based Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP) told Al Jazeera it is evident there is a close and direct relationship between Ortegas government and the pro-government armed groups.

She said the armed groups are alerted by the government, have been equipped with vehicles by police and other institutions and work together and in plain sight of police.

Their principal objectives are to put fear into the population, kidnapping youth who then appear in police jails [and] carrying out armed actions with high-calibre weapons of war, she said.

They have become a big danger and a risk for the rest of the population in Managua and the countrys other major cities.

Normal resident

Government supporters have denied there is a link between the gunmen and Ortegas government.

After the capture of Monimbo, one man in a black ski mask and blue t-shirt told AP news agency he was a normal resident, denying he and others were government-backed paramilitaries.

In a rare televised interview with Fox News broadcast in July, Ortega denied responsibility for the actions of the armed groups and said they instead work for political organisations that oppose his government.

There has been a campaign of lies, terrible lies, to try to hurt the image of Nicaragua and of its government, Ortega told the US broadcaster.

He denied any peaceful protesters had been attacked and said, without providing evidence, the armed groups had been financed with money from drug trafficking and in some cases had tried to attain funding from the US.

In a later interview with Euronews, Ortega said the armed groups were volunteer police.

Government supporters stand in front of a church in Diriamba [Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters]

FSLN symbols

Independent security consultant Roberto Orozco said he believed the FSLN flags brandished by masked men in Nicaraguan localities such as Monimbo tell a different story.

The use of FSLN symbology by the parapolice groups show the links that the FSLN and Daniel Ortega have with them, he told Al Jazeera.

The existence of armed groups outside of Nicaraguas regular army is nothing new, Orozco explained, and is partially the result of the FSLNs history as a rebel force.

Ortega was among the Sandinista leftists who in 1979 overthrew Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. Since then, the FSLN, which went on to rule Nicaragua until 1990 and again from 2007 onwards, has always maintained an armed element, Orozco said.

The FSLN fighters who have stuck with Ortega are the smallest part [of the pro-government armed groups] and make up the most fundamentalist, orthodox and fanatic part, Orozco said.

Since 2007, after Ortega won elections again, Nicaragua has seen the strengthening and creation of pro-government groups with other types of members, including ex-military staff and, according to Orozco, criminals and gang members recruited by political secretaries operating in the barrios (neighbourhoods).

Members of the Juventud Sandinista, the FSLNs youth wing, which was founded in 1979, and plain-clothes police officers have reportedly also carried out attacks on anti-government protesters.

While these armed groups have long been in the possession of arms, Orozco said, they have recently upgraded from small weapons such as pistols and shotguns to weapons of war.

Since the start of the unrest, there have been reports in Nicaraguan media of the armed groups using weapons including AK-47s, RPG-7 rocket launchers and Dragunov sniper rifles.

Orozco said the loyalty of these armed groups has less to do with left-wing Sandinista ideology and more to do with direct or indirect economic benefits through association with the FSLN.

Some members of pro-government groups are paid, Orozco alleges, while for others their relationship with FSLN might award them a degree of impunity in running illegal businesses. There are some for example who can traffick drugs and arent captured, Orozco claimed.

An unnamed source reportedly connected to Nicaraguas police told opposition website Confidencial that the vigilante groups are made up of Managua City Hall employees, civilian-dressed police officers, former officers, veteran guerrilla fighters and gang members from Managua and other cities. The source said they are paid 300 to 500 cordobas ($9 to $16) and are given fuel vouchers for their motorbikes or, if they travel in pick-up trucks, full tanks.

High degree of collaboration

The IACHR, which has had a monitoring mechanism in place in Nicaragua since late June, has not yet investigated the membership of the pro-armed groups.

It did not comment on the identity of the masked individuals carrying out the attacks, but the organisation has spoken out about cooperation between the national police force and pro-government armed groups.

At the beginning of the protests, it was more acquiescence [on the part of the police]  but the last two weeks we have registered a high degree of collaboration between the national police and the [third armed] groups and actually they havent even been hiding it, IACHR Nicaragua Commissioner Antonia Urrejola told Al Jazeera.

In a statement, the IACHR said that during the clean-up operations in and near Masaya, police officers and masked parapolice forces would coordinate their actions to perpetrate violence, repress, harass and persecute civilians as well as to remove tranques [barricades].

Urrejola said there were also testimonies of third-party groups that are detaining and mistreating people and then giving them to the police force who take them to jails.

Nicaraguas National Police did not respond to Al Jazeeras multiple requests for comment.

While many protesters have remained peaceful, Urrejola added that IACHR also has information on very small armed groups that have been using violence against government supporters.

The increasing social violence in the country is something that really worries us. We have seen reactions that go beyond the scope of peaceful protests, she said.

Amnesty International echoed the findings by the IACHR on cooperation with police.

We have documented that pro-government armed groups work in collaboration and with the support or acquiescence of the police, Central America researcher Astrid Valencia told Al Jazeera.

Thats what makes the Nicaraguan state responsible for the acts of these groups.

One more invention

Nicaraguas regular army, meanwhile, has distanced itself from Ortega by saying it would not crack down on protesters.

We dont have a reason to repress, protesters, Colonel Manuel Guevara told AFP news agency in May.

We think dialogue is the solution, the military spokesperson said.

Since the operations in Masaya and at the UNAN campus have ended, Nicaragua has entered a period of relative calm.

In late July, IACHR Executive Secretary Paulo Abrao said Nicaragua had entered a third phase of the crackdown. He characterised it as bureaucratic repression and uses the criminal and justice system to detain people.

On Friday, the Associated Press reported that more than 2,000 people have been arrested since protests broke out. Students who had been detained told the news agency police had been joined in the interrogation by paramilitaries.
In Nicaragua, students at the heart of the anti-government protests say they want another revolution.

Lyris Solis Gonzalez didnt realise her classes had been cancelled when she turned up at the University of Engineering (UNI) in Nicaraguas capital Managua on April 19.

Until then, the 19-year-old architecture student didnt have much of an interest in politics. She didnt vote in the 2016 general elections because there was no one she wanted to back.

The night before her class, Solis Gonzalez had seen some Facebook live videos about protests, but she had not been involved herself. So when students started running outside of the university building, holding rocks, she wasnt sure what was going on.

I didnt know what was happening so I ran outside too, she told Al Jazeera.

There, she saw who she identified as members of the Juventud Sandinista, the youth organisation of the Central American countrys ruling Frente Sandinista party (FSLN) and paramilitaries.

I understood this was the same thing that happened the night before, I watched them shoot rubber bullets, she said.

The next day, Solis Gonzalez attended a protest at Managuas cathedral. Paramilitaries appeared again, she said. And this time, they were using bullets.

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I couldnt believe it, Solis Gonzalez said.

Its one thing watching it happen on your phone and another thing living it. After those two days, I couldnt stay without doing something.

Students at the forefront

Today, Solis Gonzalez is one of the many Nicaraguan students who live in a safe house, hiding from the persecution that has seen many of her peers arrested, injured, or even killed.

Since April 19, at least 317 people have been killed in the violence, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The government said that between April 19 and July 25, 197 people were killed, including 22 police officers.

In recent weeks, many students have fled to neighbouring Costa Rica. They were among the first to hold rallies against proposed social security reforms  and they were among the first to be met by lethal repression.

A sign reads The people clamour for justice! They were students at a May protest [File: Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters]

By the time President Daniel Ortega scrapped the pension reforms that initially ignited the protests the week before, nearly two dozen people  many of them students  had been killed, further fomenting outrage among Nicaraguans.

The youth and particularly university students have been at the heart of this mobilisation, said Elvira Cuadra, an associate and former director at the Nicaragua-based Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP).

Cuadra said the generation at the helm of todays protests are different from their parents in that they belong to a post-revolution generation.

They grew up listening to the discourse of democracy, of human and civic rights, and have new values and principles of politics that are more democratic and civic, she told Al Jazeera.

University occupations

Early on in the protests, a number of universities became sites for protester sit-ins. Students and other protesters barricaded themselves in at the campuses of the Polytechnic University (Upoli) and the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua in Managua (UNAN).

In July, police reportedly assisted by pro-government gunmen who overran students barricaded in at UNAN, the last university to be occupied. About 200 students took refuge in a nearby church and were trapped inside by gunfire overnight. The siege reportedly killed two and injured 10.

Relatives reunite with the students who were stuck inside a besieged church near the UNAN campus [File: Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters]

Video footage of some of the students pleading for mercy as gunfire is heard in the background went viral.

They were later freed after Catholic Church leaders negotiated their release.

The IACHR later accused police and so-called parapolice groups of a disproportionate use of force  including lethal force at young protesters. FSLN-controlled news website El 19 Digital had reported earlier that the university was occupied by thieves and terrorists rather than students.

They started shooting

Solis Gonzalez, too, occupied her university  though it was short-lived. On May 28, she was one in a group of students who staged what she called a symbolic protest after UNI authorities had ignored her organisations calls for change.

One of the guys in our movement, a bullet grazed his head leaving a wound of some 10cm. Another was shot with rubber bullets in the head and in his back Lyris Solis Gonzalez, 19

Late in the morning, gunmen arrived, she recalled, identifying them as police and paramilitary groups.

They started shooting, we had to evacuate ourselves, she said.

One of the guys in our movement, a bullet grazed his head leaving a wound of some 10cm. Another was shot with rubber bullets in the head and in his back.

Amnesty International reported one person died in the attack on the university, while 41 students had been injured, most of them by gunfire. The human rights organisation said the attack had been carried out by Sandinista mobs and then by riot police.

A new attack against students in #Nicaragua. Our director Erika Guevara-Rosas was there covering the repression live. How much more violence needs to happen? a tweet by Amnesty International containing footage of the attack said.

Un nuevo ataque contra estudiantes en #Nicaragua. Nuestra directora @ErikaGuevaraR estuvo alli cubriendo la represion #EnVivo. Cuanta mas violencia tiene que pasar? Comparte este video usando #SOSNicaragua  pic.twitter.com/PBhLpfvkJ5  Amnistia Internacional Americas (@AmnistiaOnline) May 28, 2018

In a press release, national police mentioned the university had been taken by hooded individuals but did not comment on the clash.

After the incident, the students retreated. That day, Solis Gonzalez, who had already been receiving threats for her activism, went into hiding.

Not little angels

Since April, Ortega and Murillo have persistently denied culpability for the deaths of protesters, accusing, both the US and opposition parties of fomenting the unrest in an effort to topple his government.

In May, during a meeting that was part of a Church-mediated political dialogue, Ortega accused universities of housing criminals and referred to police as victims of violence.

You cant go around attacking police stations. Because its not little angels out there  there are guns, too, shooting at police, he said. In its latest report on Nicaragua, IACHR said that 21 police officers were among the dead.

The embattled leader has had the support of Nicaraguas National Student Union (UNEN), a national student organisation allied with Ortegas Sandinista party.

In a statement issued on July 18, the student body blamed various political actors for waging a hate campaign aimed delegitimising our institutions with the goal of creating chaos and fear in the population.

As part of this campaign, UNEN said, universities were taken and turned into battle trenches and into operation centres for crime, theft, illegal drug trafficking, terrorism and organised crime.

Luis Andino Paiz, the president of the national student union and a supporter of Ortega acknowledges the historic links between UNEN and the FSLN, but emphasises that the organisation represents all students  not just Sandinistas.

Andino Paiz believes Nicaraguans have fallen victim to manipulations and terrorism perpetrated by coup-mongers.

He blames the hijacking, looting and destruction of a number of public universities on elements foreign to the universities.

Even if some of them were matriculated in the university, they would immediately lose this status because no one would allow them to destroy the peoples heritage, he said.

Andino Paiz added that the number of student deaths has been overstated in international media, citing a recent police statement that put the number of student deaths at 10 out of a total of 197 people killed in the unrest.

Official numbers on the number of deaths have been lower than those provided by human rights groups and the IACHR from the beginning of the crisis. For example, the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, a campaigning coalition seeking democratisation, said 137 students had died in the protests.

Memories of war

Many of Nicaraguas young people grew up supporters of 72-year-old Ortega.

In 1979, he was a commander in the Sandinista army that overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza in what is known as the Nicaraguan Revolution.

He swiftly became the head of the countrys military government and in 1984 was elected president, maintaining a Marxist rhetoric and allying himself with the Soviet Union.

During the 1980s, his Sandinista government fought the US-backed Contra rebels army in a bloody civil war which led to the death of as many as 50,000 people.

I used to believe in the Sandinista party Allan Blandon, 28

After losing elections and ceding power in 1990, Ortega made a comeback in 2006. He was re-elected in 2011 and once more in 2016, after seeing through a change in the constitution that allowed him to run for a third consecutive term.

I used to believe in the [Sandinista] party, said Allan Blandon, a 28-year-old tourism professional from Granada. I think most of my family is Sandinista.

During the revolution and the civil war, my mother helped Sandinista soldiers with food and things like that. My dad was one of them  thats how my parents met.

Blandon praises Ortega for the projects he rolled out to help the poor in a country that is the second-poorest in the western hemisphere. The problem, he said, is that [Ortega and Murillo] stayed for so many years. They started to control everything.

Seeing videos of students from his alma mater, the Central American University, getting repressed spurred him into joining marches himself.

I said to myself, this is enough because this has become a dictatorship, he told Al Jazeera.

A sign reads: In memory of our fallen student combatants [File: Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters]

Civic uprising

After years of growing concerns over Ortegas grip on power, the crackdown on the student-led protests against social security reforms was the final straw, giving way to what Monica Baltodano has termed a civic uprising.

In the 1970s, Baltodano was a Sandinista commander who fought alongside Ortega. She is one of the many original guerrilla fighters who have since broken with the FSLN and become some of Ortegas fiercest opponents.

We feel represented by the students, todays youth, she told Al Jazeera.

Baltodano believes that todays student movement stands for many of the same ideals her generation fought for.

Its impressive that 40 years later, we are raising the flag of democracy, the flag of the right to free mobilisation, free speech  that is our flag, she said.

We feel represented by the students, today's youth Monica Baltodano, former Sandinista commander

What is different, she believes, is that this time around [the revolution] will succeed without weapons.

Arming the anti-government movement, Baltodano said, would mean a victory for Ortega.

[The government] has the army, they have the weapons, she said. It would mean a return to war, take a lot of time and cause thousands of deaths.

Our parents and grandparents still feel the hurt of the civil war of the 1980s. They are still suffering, said Solis Gonzalez.

We grew up with the consciousness of how civil war can hurt us as a society. Thats why we dont have weapons.

Though the student protests have been mostly peaceful, some have armed themselves with rudimentary weapons such as rocks, Molotov cocktails and homemade mortars. The Washington Post reported that during the siege of UNAN, a few students carried firearms.

These are the bullets that the Nicaraguan government forces are firing at the students inside the church. pic.twitter.com/QZbPmgssiS  Joshua Partlow (@partlowj) July 14, 2018

Solis Gonzalez said social media is her most important weapon. She has used platforms such as Twitter to share videos of anti-protester violence and make contact with other people involved in the protests.

Footage of protests and denouncements of the Ortega regime have gone viral on Twitter under the hashtag #SOSNicaragua.

While no firm leadership of the student movements has emerged, students have formed a number of organisations. One of the most well-known groups is the April 19 University Movement (MU-19A).

Baltodano believes the protesters face the challenge to organise themselves more strongly.

Total spontaneity has its disadvantages in the face of a vertical, authoritarian government, she said.

This is a revolution

These days its too dangerous to protest on university campuses, Solis Gonzalez said.

Sometimes, she still attends marches, though only in the relative safety of a big group.

In its most recent report on the situation in Nicaragua, IACHR expressed concern over legal persecution and criminalisation practices of, among others, students.

The Associated Press recently reported more than 2,000 people have been arrested since the beginning of protests. The report added that the Nicaraguan Centre for Human Rights (CENIDH) believed at least 400 were still being held.

We are trying to make a change and not just change the president Lyris Solis Gonzalez, 19

From her hiding spot, Solis Gonzalez said she tries to put pressure on the government through social media and by organising with other universities. She also believes there is still a role to play for a stop-start political dialogue that has been mediated by the Catholic Church.

We are trying to make a change and not just change the president, but to change the way that this country is working and making a change in the conscience of the people, she said.

This is a revolution, because we are trying to make things right.
Bucharest, Romania  Thousands of Romanians protested for the third day in a row on Sunday demanding the resignation of the government and Prime Minister Viorica Dancila.

Violent clashes occurred on Friday night between riot police and protesters in the biggest anti-corruption protests since January 2017.

More than 450 people, including 30 riot police, were hurt and needed medical attention, according to officials. Security forces fired tear gas grenades and water cannon to disperse the crowd, after several violent outbursts with bottles and stones being thrown at police.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis condemned the polices use of force in a comment on his Facebook page. I firmly condemn the riot polices brutal intervention, strongly disproportionate to the actions of the majority of people in the square, he said.

Interior Minister Carmen Dan said riot police hadnt intervened against peaceful protesters, but against dangerous hooligans who attacked the states authority.

Similar demonstrations were held in major cities such as Cluj, Sibiu, Timisoara, and Iasi as many Romanians returned from abroad angered by entrenched high-level corruption and the weakening of the judiciary.

Most Romanian diaspora are economic migrants. Low local wages have driven about four million Romanians to work abroad, almost one-quarter of the countrys population.
Naipaul personified what European colonialism, racist to the very core of its logic, had done to his and to our world.

VS Naipaul has died. VS Naipaul was a cruel man. The cruelty of colonialism was written all over him  body and soul.

VS Naipaul was a scarred man. He was the darkest dungeons of colonialism incarnate: self-punishing, self-loathing, world-loathing, full of nastiness and fury. Derek Walcott famously said of Naipaul that he commanded a beautiful prose scarred by scrofula. That scrofula was colonialism.

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul had abbreviated his history to palatable capitalised initials the British could pronounce. He was born in rural Trinidad in 1932, where the British had ruled since 1797, adding Tobago to it in 1814. By 1889 the two colonies were combined and Indian labourers  of whom Naipaul was a descendant  were brought in to toil on sugar plantations. He was born to this colonial history and all its postcolonial consequences.

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By 1950 Naipaul was at Oxford on a government scholarship, just as the supreme racist Sir Winston Churchill was to start his second term as prime minister. Can you fathom an 18-year old Indian boy from Trinidad at Oxford in Churchills England? You might as well be a Muslim Mexican bellboy at Trump Tower.

In a famous passage the late Edward Said wrote of Naipaul: The most attractive and immoral move, however, has been Naipauls, who has allowed himself quite consciously to be turned into a witness for the Western prosecution. This alas was far worse than mere careerism. Naipaul was, at his best and his worst, a witness for the Western prosecution. He did not fake it. He was the make of it.

Naipaul personified what European colonialism, racist to the very core of its logic, had done to his and to our world. He basked in what the rest of us loathe and defy. He made of his obsequious submission to colonialism a towering writing career. He was Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin, CLR James and Edward Said gone bad. In them we see defiance of the cruel colonial fate. In him we see someone bathing naked in that history. In them we see the beauty of revolt, in him the ugliness of impersonating colonial cruelty.

Naipaul saw the world through the pernicious vision British colonialism had invested and impersonated in him. He became a ventriloquist for the nastiest cliches European colonialism had devised to rule the world with arrogance and confidence. He proved them right. He wrote, as CLR James rightly said, what the whites want to say but dare not. This of course was before Donald Trumps America and Boris Johnsons England  where the racist whites are fully out of their sheets and hoods carrying their torches, burning their crosses, and looking for their letterboxes in the streets of Charlottesville and London.

Naipaul took the English language from his masters, as we all do, turned it upside down to fit the form of his colonised soul. He indeed wrote the English prose masterfully, but of the slavery of a mind suspicious of triumphant resistance. James Baldwin also wrote English prose beautifully, as did Edward Said, but reading them ennobles our souls, reading Naipaul is an exercise in self-flagellation.

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Naipaul was an Indian Uncle Tom catapulted to the Trinidad corner of British colonialism  exuding the racist stereotypes and prejudices his British masters had taught him to believe about himself and his people.

Yes he was a racist bigot  the finest specimen of racism and bigotry definitive to the British colonialism that crafted his prose, praised his poise and knighted him at one and the same time.

He was a misogynist for that was what the British liberal imperialism had taught him he was. He acted the role to perfection. He crafted a dark soul in himself to prove his racist masters right. When he wrote of our criminalities his masters loved it, you see he is one of them but he writes our language so well, and when he acted like a brute his masters sniggered and said, you see still the Indian from Trinidad. For them he was win-win, for us, lose-lose.

Naipaul loathed Trinidad and he detested England  he wanted to hide where came from and destroy the place where he could not call his. He belonged to nothing and to nowhere. He sought refuge at his writing desk. In his first three books  The Mystic Masseur (1957), The Suffrage of Elvira (1958) and Miguel Street (1959) he retrieved what was left of his Caribbean childhood. In A House for Mr Biswas (1961) he sought to project his relations with his own father in what his admirers consider his masterpiece. In his published correspondences with his father, Between Father and Son: Family Letters (1999), he crafted and killed his parentage in one literary move.

Throughout his travels  in Africa he saw darkness, in India banality and destitution, in Muslim lands fanaticism and stupidity. The world, wherever he went, was the extension of his Trinidad, the darkened shadows of his own brutally colonised soul.

I read his Among the Believers (1981) cover to cover when I was writing my book on Iranian resolution  shaking with disgust at his steady course of stupidity, ignorance, and flagrant racism. He knew next to nothing about Iran or any other Muslim country he visited. In all of them he was a vicious Alice in a whacky wonderland of his own making. How dare he, I remember thinking, writing with such wanton ignorance about nations and their brutalised destines, their noble struggles, their small but lasting triumphs!

In both his brilliance and in his banality, in his mastery of the English prose and cruelty of the vision he saw through it, VS Naipaul was a witness, as Edward Said rightly wrote. But under what Said saw as witness for the Western prosecution dwelled a much nastier truth. Naipaul was the walking embodiment of European colonialism  in fact, fiction, and flesh. He was a product of that world  in his fiction he mapped its global spectrum, and in his person, he thrived and made a long lucrative career proving all its bigoted banalities right.

We may never see the likes of VS Naipaul again. May we never see the likes of VS Naipaul again.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.
Reinforcements are being sent to aid Afghan forces as they continue to battle the Taliban for control of Ghazni city.

A Taliban assault on the Afghan strategic city of Ghazni has entered its fourth day, with the death toll climbing above 300, including civilians, security forces and Taliban fighters, according to government officials.

Defence Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami said on Monday about 100 security forces were killed in the intense fighting, as well between 20 and 30 civilians.

Speaking at a press conference in the capital, Kabul, Bahrami said 194 Taliban fighters, including 12 of their key commanders had also been killed, mostly by US air raids.

According to the US military headquarters in Kabul, US aircraft conducted at least nine air raids over Saturday and Sunday.

Afghan forces are battling the Taliban after the group stormed Ghazni city, the capital of the province with the same name and a strategic point linking Kabul with southern Afghanistan  on Friday.

Information coming out of the city remains patchy and difficult to confirm after fighting destroyed most of the telecoms masts and local news media stopped broadcasting.

Roads in and out of the city have been damaged and obstructed by Taliban forces to prevent Afghan reinforcements arriving, but residents who escaped the violence on foot have described seeing dead bodies in the street and buildings on fire.

They were burning buildings and there were dead bodies everywhere in Ghazni city and the fight was ongoing. The situation was very bad and all shops were closed, said Abdul Wakil, a witness who fled from Ghazni.

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Rik Peeperkorn, acting UN humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan, expressed concerns for civilians caught up in the fighting in Ghazni city, where he says hospitals are running out of medicine and conditions are too dangerous to transport those in need to hospital.

[Ghaznis residents] have seen their city turn into a battlefield since Friday morning  parties across the conflict need to ensure that access to medical services is not denied and respect for medical facilities and staff is upheld, he said in a statement.

The attack comes as a severe blow to President Ashraf Ghani and has dampened hopes of possible peace talks with the Taliban to end the nearly 17-year-old war.

Government officials in Kabul admitted to having been taken by surprise by the attack but insisted on Monday that Ghazni would not fall to the Taliban and that Afghan forces remained in control of key government positions and other institutions there.

Najib Danish, the Interior Ministrys spokesman, said reinforcements have been sent Ghazni and were trying to clear it of the Taliban.

Previous reinforcements have fallen prey to Taliban ambush and Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said on Twitter that Taliban forces are blocking all roads to Ghazni.

The United States have also sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces and are conducting air attacks to support Afghan troops on the ground.

The attack on Ghazni is the largest tactical operation launched by the Taliban since an unprecedented truce in June brought fighting between security forces and the armed group to a temporary pause.
Patients relatives say they heard a blast and suspect an oxygen tank might have exploded.

A fire at a hospital in Taiwans most populous city killed nine people and injured 15 others early on Monday.

The blaze broke out on the seventh floor of the building, which was used for hospice care, according to the New Taipei City Fire Department.

Media footage showed patients being wheeled out of the building in their hospital beds, while medical workers took others out on stretchers and into ambulances.

Fire Chief Huang Te-ching said the cause of the fire was still being investigated and denied reports that a sprinkler system malfunctioned.

The sprinkler device was on but theres some distance between its location and where the fire started so the fire couldnt be immediately put out, he told reporters.

Patients relatives said they heard a blast and suspected an oxygen tank might have exploded, causing the fire, local media reported.

Prime Minister William Lai said the health ministry was overseeing rescue efforts at the hospital in New Taipei City. He apologised to the public and expressed condolences over the tragedy.

We will review the cause of the incident to prevent a similar situation from happening again, said Lai.

President Tsai Ing-wen, on a stop-off in the United States on Monday on her way to visit two of Taiwans remaining diplomatic allies, Belize and Paraguay, expressed grief for the dead and hope for the injured, the government said.
Human Rights Watch wants international inquiry into killing of Mohamed Morsi supporters during sit-in protest in Cairo.

A human rights group called for an international inquiry into a deadly crackdown on supporters of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood during a 2013 protest in Egypt.

Human Rights Watch said on Monday that Egyptian authorities have failed to investigate or prosecute a single member of the security forces responsible for the assault on Cairos Rabaa al-Adawiya Square.

The rights group said the attack on the sit-in demonstration killed more than 800 protesters in a matter of hours in the largest mass killing in Egypts modern history.

Five years on from the Rabaa massacre, the only response from authorities has been to try to insulate those responsible for these crimes from justice, said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRWs director for Middle East and North Africa.

The response from Egypts allies to the crimes at Rabaa and to the lack of justice for the victims has been complete silence.

The bloody dispersal came weeks after Mohamed Morsiwas overthrown following mass protests against his one-year rule. Egypts government said many demonstrators were armed and 43 police officers were killed.





Since then hundreds of protesters, including leaders of Morsis Muslim Brotherhood, have been convicted at mass trials. An Egyptian court in July sentenced 75 people to death for participating in the protest.

Presidential immunity

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi last month approved a law giving senior military officers immunity from prosecution tied to the unrest that followed Morsis overthrower.

Without justice, Rabaa remains an open wound. Those responsible for the mass killings of protesters shouldnt count on being able to shield themselves from accountability forever, Whitson warned.

Among those still awaiting a verdict are prominent photojournalist Mahmud Abu Zeid, widely known as Shawkan, who in May received UNESCOs Press Freedom Prize.

The Muslim Brotherhood was banned following Morsis overthrow in July 2013 in a coup led by Sisi, who became the countrys president a year later. Sisi was re-elected in March this year.
Blast brought down six-storey building in the Syrian rebel-held town of Sarmada, close to the Turkish border.

An explosion flattened a residential building in Syrias war-torn northwest, killing at least 36 people including 12 children.

The blast brought down the six-storey building in the town of Sarmada, 350km north of the capital Damascus, close to the Turkish border.

The White Helmets rescue group, also known as the Syrian Civil Defence, described the scene on Sunday as one of destruction and death, adding 10 people had been rescued from under the rubble.

The group said the cause of the blast was unknown.

With no end to the carnage in sight, 36 dead civilians and dozens of wounded are the current count of victims of the massive explosion in #Sarmada city at dawn today. #WhiteHelmets are working tirelessly, searching and rescuing, in unbelievable areas of destruction and death. pic.twitter.com/fr1bZGq3O1  The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) August 12, 2018

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said the building was believed to be storing weapons and ammunition. It said civilians displaced during the countrys seven-year war also resided there.

In recent weeks, the Syrian government and its main ally Russia have stepped up an offensive to defeat rebels holding territory in Syria, capturing a string of villages straddling the southern provinces of Deraa and Quneitra, as they edge closer to a 1974 demilitarised zone with Israel .

Backed by Russian air power, Syrian government forces have been able to seize control of most of southwestern Deraa province, including the provincial capital of the same name.

Deraa city was the cradle of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad more than seven years ago.

The government is currently fighting rebels in Idlib, the oppositions last major stronghold in the country.

Idlib province  with an estimated two million people, including thousands of internally displaced from other parts of Syria  was part of a de-escalation deal signed by Iran, Russia and Turkey, which calls for the cessation of hostilities between rebels and government forces.

The Syrian civil war started as a largely peaceful protest against Assad in March 2011, but quickly developed into a full-scale war after the Syrian leader refused to concede power.

UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has estimated at least 400,000 people died over the first five years of conflict.
Gazas cancer patients between siege, political failure

Gaza runs out of drugs for treating cancer patients and its not just because of the Israeli siege.
Supreme leader rejects Trumps offer as foreign minister questions whether US president is serious about talks.

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ruled out negotiations with the administration of US President Donald Trump, going toe-to-toe with him in a series of social media posts.

Even if we ever  impossible as it is  negotiated with the US, it would never ever be with the current US administration, Khamenei said on Monday.

Khamenei, who has the final say in Irans most important political decisions, said that as demonstrated in the 2015 nuclear deal, his country will only enter into negotiations in the position of strength so that US pressures and uproars wont affect us.

Recently, US officials have been talking blatantly about us. Beside sanctions, they are talking about war and negotiations. In this regard, let me say a few words to the people: THERE WILL BE NO WAR, NOR WILL WE NEGOTIATE WITH THE US, Khamenei continued.

In another post, he also listed a litany of reasons why Iran is not negotiating with the US, including Washington DCs refusal to retreat an inch from the self-asserted goals.

Why do we not negotiate with the U.S.? pic.twitter.com/4LDBfDjRw1  Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) August 13, 2018

In recent days, Trump, who withdrew the US from the landmark deal in May and has repeatedly criticised Irans deal, has said that he is willing to negotiate with Iran and meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani without preconditions.

But US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo quickly walked back on some of the presidents comments, listing several demands for such a summit to take place.

Rouhani responded to Trump saying that Tehran will not negotiate while the country is under sanctions, but did not rule out direct talks altogether.

Washington reimposed sanctions against Iran on August 7. A second round of sanctions targeting Irans biggest exports  oil and gas  will take effect in November.

Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, echoed Khameneis comments in an interview with Al Jazeera.

We have no problem with dialogue but is Mr Trump really serious about talks? Zarif said.

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If he is serious about talks without preconditions, well the secretary of state put some conditions for talks two hours after Trumps comments  impossible conditions.

The first question is, if they themselves have reached an agreement inside the US about talks with or without preconditions? Our policies in the region are totally clear. Its the US who needs to be accountable for policies in the region, Zarif said.

In the interview Zarif also strongly condemned and criticised Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for carrying on a war in Yemen.

He blamed Europeans and Americans for supplying the Saudis with weapons of war needed to wage a campaign in Yemen that has resulted in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.

Despite mounting US pressure on Iran to curb its regional activities, Zarif said Iran will not rein in its influence in the Middle East.

Iran will not change its policies in the region because of US sanctions and threats, added Zarif.

Additional reporting by Ted Regencia in Tehran, Iran
Report by UN sanctions monitors says up to 30,000 ISIL fighters still remain despite the armed groups defeat.

Between 20,000 and 30,000 members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, remain in Iraq and Syria despite its defeat and a halt in the flow of foreigners joining its ranks, according to a new United Nations report.

Released on Monday, the report by UN sanctions monitors estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 ISIL fighters were based in Libya, while some of the key operatives in the armed group were being relocated to Afghanistan.

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Member-states told the monitors that the total membership in Iraq and Syria was between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals, roughly equally distributed between the two countries.

Among these is still a significant component of the many thousands of active foreign terrorist fighters, said the report.

The sanctions monitoring team submits independent reports every six months to the Security Council on ISIL, also known as ISIS, and al-Qaeda.

ISILs initial aim was to create a so-called caliphate across Iraq, Syria and beyond.

In early 2014, it took over the Syrian city of Raqqa and declared it its capital. A few months later, the group conquered the Iraqi city of Mosul, where its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate in June 2014.

Within a year, ISIL took control of most of eastern Syria and about one-third of Iraqs territory.

In the same year, an international coalition of 77 countries was formed with the aim to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL.

By 2017, the group was militarily defeated and largely driven out of all major cities, including its capital.

By January 2018, ISIL was confined to small pockets of territory in Syria, although the new report said the group showed greater resilience in eastern Syria.

In Syria, ISIL is still able to mount attacks. It does not fully control any territory in Iraq, but it remains active through sleeper cells of agents hiding out in the desert and elsewhere, the report added.

Foreign fighters

The flow of foreigners leaving ISIL remains lower than expected and no other arena has emerged as a favourite destination for foreign fighters, although significant numbers have made their way to Afghanistan, said the report.

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There are an estimated 3,500  4,500 fighters in Afghanistan and those numbers are increasing, according to the report.

The flow of foreign fighters towards the group has essentially come to a halt, it added.

ISIL finances are drying up, with one member-state estimating that its total reserves were in the low hundreds of millions of US dollars. Some revenue from oil fields in northeastern Syria continues to flow to the group.

ISIL commands only 250 to 500 members in Yemen, compared to between 6,000 and 7,000 al-Qaeda fighters.

In the Sahel, the group is active mostly at the border between Mali and Niger.
Saada attack: Mourners vented anger against Saudi, UAE

Funerals of victims of the Saada bus attack gathered angry mourners who shouted slogans against Saudi Arabia and what they say is its biggest ally and arms supplier the United States.
Beji Caid Essebsi says the measure was a long time coming but some are sceptical about the proposals motivations.

Tunisias President Beji Caid Essebsi says he will submit a bill to parliament granting women and men equal inheritance rights, in line with a proposal put forward by a government-backed committee.

A report by the Individual Freedoms and Equality Committee (COLIBE) released in June sought to address a number of issues related to individual freedoms and gender equality, but drew the ire of the countrys conservative forces.

In a televised address marking Womens Day in Tunisia on Monday, Essebsi, 91, described the inheritance equality measure as long overdue.

I propose that equality in matters pertaining to inheritance be signed into law by modifying the code of personal status, he said, referring to a series of laws initiated post-independence in the mid-1950s that revolutionised womens rights, most markedly through abolishing polygamy and legalising abortion.

This should have been done in 1956 but the constitution did not provide for it then, Essebsi, of Tunisias secular Nidaa Tounes party, said.

The presidents proposal, however, stopped short of demanding an equal share for all women, with the president insisting that families wishing to continue observing the existing laws surrounding inheritance may continue doing so.

Currently, the inheritance law  which derives from Islams sacred text, the Quran  restricts women to half of what men are entitled to.

Demonstration right now in downtown Tunisa celebrates national women's day, a commemoration of the passage of the Code of Personal Status of 1956 guaranteeing key women's rights. Fight over personal liberties vs Islamic principles/identity is heating up after #COLIBE report pic.twitter.com/qbNDPfYQxk  Fadil Aliriza (@FadilAliriza) August 13, 2018

COLIBE, set up by the president in August 2017, was mandated with the task of harmonising the countrys laws with a constitution that was passed four years ago.

The 2014 constitution places a strong emphasis on the rights and dignity of individuals, elements long neglected during the rule of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was toppled in the aftermath of mass protests in 2011 that quickly spread to other countries throughout the region.

The committees inheritance equality proposal has stirred heated debate in the Muslim-majority country, along with a separate recommendation for the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

The COLIBE report also called for the freedom of conscience, the abolition of capital punishment, the right to take the mothers last name as well as the right of Tunisian women to pass on citizenship to their foreign husbands.

Politically motivated

On Saturday, thousands of protesters gathered outside parliament in the capital, Tunis, to denounce the committees proposals, which they said  if passed  would amount to anti-Muslim legislation.

The demonstration was organised by the National Coordination for the Defence of the Quran, the Constitution and Equitable Development, a conservative group whose director, Noureddine Khadmi, was a former religious affairs minister.

Protesters carried signs saying that COLIBEs recommendations constituted an affront to Gods word and described them as a threat to the countrys Islamic identity.

But Bochra Belhaj Hmida, the committees head, complained last week that a number of preachers had manipulated and distorted some of her bodys recommendations.

Hmida, a member of parliament and lifelong human rights advocate, emphasised that COLIBE was not looking to legalise gay marriage, nor did it seek to ban the call to prayer or circumcision.

She also stated her committees immediate goal was to start a debate about the state of individual freedoms in the country.

A demonstrator in Tunis with a sign that reads No to change Gods speech [Hassene Dridi/AP]

The Muslim Democrat Ennahda party  one of the countrys foremost political forces  expressed its support for some of the committees recommendations, such as the revocation of the death penalty, while steering clear of the more controversial issues.

Experts said that while Essebsi may be genuine in his pursuit of reforms, there might also other factors in play.

By elevating culture war issues and reactivating the secular-Islamist cleavage, Essebsi is able to distract attention away from the poor economic situation and help re-unify the secular or modernist forces ahead [of] the 2019 elections, Sharan Grewal, a PhD candidate in politics at Princeton University, told Al Jazeera.

Ennahda has worked hard to present itself internationally as a moderate, even progressive, Muslim Democratic party open to gender equality. Publicly opposing the COLIBE report, especially equal inheritance, would undermine this international reputation.

The other issue, related to my point about the President using COLIBE against Ennahda, is that this is reawakening the polarization between secularism and Islamism in the country, in preparation for 2019. Ignorant and poor masses will be the cannon fodder for this battle.  Youssef Cherif (@Faiyla) August 13, 2018

Observers also note Essebsis ideological proximity to Tunisias founding father, Habib Bourguiba, who spoke vociferously in favour of womens emancipation.

Having served as one of Bourguibas close advisers, the president would be looking to emulate Tunisias first post-independence leader by creating a legacy for himself and coincidentally also championing womens rights, argued Grewal.

Given his age, that desire for a legacy is I think his primary motivation, he added.

Reporting by Ramy Allahoum. Follow him on Twitter @rallahoum
Charities welcome move but call on government to do more to tackle the causes of homelessness.

Authorities in the United Kingdom have vowed to eliminate rough sleeping in England within the next decade as part of efforts to end a recent surge in the number of people living homeless.

In a strategy document published on Monday, the UKs Housing Secretary James Brokenshire described the human cost of homelessness as unacceptable and pledged 100m ($128m) of funding over the next two years to ensure nobody was left sleeping on the streets by 2027.

These people, some of the most vulnerable in our society, deserve our full support, Brokenshire said.

Homelessness has soared since 2010 in England, the largest country within the UK, with the number of people sleeping rough increasing by more than 168 percent, from 1,768 at the turn of the decade to 4,751 last year, according to government data.

The figure is likely to be an underestimate, according to anti-homelessness charities, and does not include people living in homeless shelters or temporary accommodation.

In a bid to overcome the crisis, the governments newly-adopted Rough Sleeping Strategy will fund housing schemes, mental health support services and training for staff working with homeless people.

Step forward

While welcoming the announcement as a step forward, several charities called on the government to do more to tackle the causes of homelessness.

In a joint statement on Monday, the Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel, made up of seven anti-homelessness charities, called on the government to build significantly more social housing, to foster greater security for renters [and] to ensure people have access to benefits and other support they need to help them keep their homes.

We also need to see a reversal of policies that leave migrants homeless and destitute, and healthcare, mental health and substance misuse services that are available and truly accessible to those who need it, the statement added.

According to the UKs Local Government Association, the national body for local authorities, more than 79,000 homeless families  including 123,000 children  are currently being housed in temporary accommodation by councils in England and Wales, the third-largest country within the UK.

Lord Porter, the associations chairman, said on Monday that rough sleeping was only the tip of the iceberg and urged the government to go much further, much faster by building more social housing and increasing funding to local authorities.

The UKs opposition Labour Party, meanwhile, described the governments plans as feeble.

This  plan lacks any urgency, Shadow Housing Secretary John Healey said, adding that rough sleeping had spiked since 2010 thanks to decisions made by Tory [Conservative Party] Ministers.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has vowed to end rough sleeping within five years if elected.

Under this Tory Government homelessness has doubled and 130,000 children are without a home. A target of ending rough sleeping by 2027, with no new money, is meaningless to the people on the streets now. Labour will end rough sleeping in our first term.https://t.co/cdpOhCLtrJ  Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) August 13, 2018

Cynicism and suspicion

The ruling Conservative Party has dramatically cut local authority budgets and welfare provisions since 2010 as part of a government-enforced austerity programme rolled out in an effort to reduce Britains national debt levels.

Central government funding of local authorities has fallen by nearly 50 percent since 2010, according to the National Audit Office.

The UKs Institute for Fiscal Studies, meanwhile, estimates housing benefit cuts carried out by the government since 2011 have impacted some 2.5m households, affecting more than six million people.

As a result, cynicism and suspicion are rife among homeless people over the governments new proposals, said Mat Amp, deputy editor of The Pavement, a UK-based magazine for homeless people.

Theres a worry in that it looks like they havent really consulted anyone with lived experience of homelessness, he told Al Jazeera on Monday.

But there are specific things in this [plan] that are quite forward-looking, such as the health provisions  [and] its good to hear the government giving a realistic timeframe.
Opposition leader Soumaila Cisse says he will reject the results of Malis presidential runoff vote, urging people in the country to rise up.

Sundays poll, which was marked by a low turnout amid security concerns and voter apathy, pitted Cisse against incumbent President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

Ballot counting was under way on Monday across the country, with official second-round results expected for a few days.

The fraud is proven; this is why there are results we will not accept, Cisse told reporters on Monday at his partys headquarters in the capital, Bamako.

I call on all Malians to rise up  We will not accept the dictatorship of fraud, he said.

Cisse had accused the government camp of cheating in the first round, which saw him securing 18 percent of the vote against Keitas 41 percent.

We have a large lead. We do not accept that our voice is stolen, Cisse, who heads the Union for the Republic and Democracy (URD) party, added on Monday.





This fight is in your hands, dear supporters Lets get engaged to save Mali.

Cisses party told AFP in the early hours of Sunday that ballot papers were already circulating, several hours before polls opened.

In at least six stations in the capital of Bamako, voting reports  which give the number of voters and votes cast for each candidate  were signed before the numbers were filled in, an AFP journalist witnessed.

But Mohamed Dileita, head of an observation mission from the Paris-based OIF, a federation of French-speaking nations, said that everyone has more or less accepted the verdict  the vote took place.

At the time I speak, at least, it is a calm election, credible. At the moment we do not see any reason why it changes, Dileita told Radio France Internationale.

The three main opposition candidates had mounted a last-ditch legal challenge to the first-round result, alleging ballot-box stuffing and other irregularities, but their petition was rejected by the Constitutional Court.

Low turnout

But the elections were also marked by voters staying away from the polls.

Threats by armed fighters forced nearly 500 polling stations  about two percent of the total  to stay closed during Sundays runoff, the government said. One election official was killed in northern Niafunke, in Timbuktu region.

Most of the shuttered polling stations were in the Timbuktu region and the conflict-hit central region of Mopti, Security Minister Salif Traore told reporters.

Thousands of troops had been deployed across Mali to protect voters after widespread violence in the first round.

Security fears severely dampened the turnout, which a civil society group, the Mali Citizen Observation Pool (POCIM), estimated at just over 27 percent of the eight million registered voters. Turnout is usually about 40 percent in Malian elections.





Voters did not mobilise much to fulfil their civic duty, POCIM said in its report.

The reasons given relate to the security problem and the lack of enthusiasm following the publication of the results of the first round.

It reported isolated incidents of ballot stealing and attacks on polling stations, including two which were torched.

A report by the European Union (EU) observer mission will be important for the credibility of the election, though it was not clear on Monday when it would be published.

On Sunday the EU mission said the voting had passed peacefully for the most part, although it had no monitors in Mopti, Kidal and Timbuktu regions due to the security threat.

Mali, a landlocked nation home to at least 20 ethnic groups where the majority of people live on less than $2 a day, has battled attacks by armed groups and intercommunal violence for years.

Peace agreements signed in 2015 by the government and rebel coalitions raised hopes of stability, but their meaningful implementation has been challenging.

As a result, the security situation remains fragile in the face of continued violent attacks, mainly in the countrys north and central regions.
About the show

A weekly programme that examines and dissects the worlds media, how they operate and the stories they cover. Watch The Listening Post every Saturday at 0830GMT
Mosque demolished in 2018 in Hotan in Xinjiang is one of many damaged or destroyed by China in campaign against Uighurs.
Chariots of Death and Indecision

The collective eco-political swoon over the concept of electric cars and their self-driving capabilities is hitting a few unnerving speed bumps on the way to the promised land of an accident-free and nonpolluting transportation nirvana. Replacing the human intelligence, or lack thereof, behind the steering wheel will be a system of sensors conveying a myriad of bits and bytes to an all-wise on- board computer. The output of this never tiring, never distracted, never emotional silicon brain is to provide society with a multitude of benefits which are said to include fewer accidents and fewer traffic jams. Your silicon chauffer comes endowed with artificial intelligence (AI), a term which raises concerns for me (must be a luddite). Why does it have to be artificial intelligence? Such a term evokes an immediate distrust of not having genuine intelligence at the wheel, a situation not unknown to parents of teenage drivers. I would rather that nothing artificial were in charge of my life as I am being driven down the highway or weaving through traffic jams.

By way of a progress report, a look back at where the incentive and push to deploy these life savers originated is instructive. There was no spontaneous collective cry from the driving public demanding an autonomous car. What began as a science-fiction notion in the 1930s was taken up by various automotive developers and commercial companies over the ensuing decades as is well-documented in a recent publication. Insurance industry statisticians provided a compelling case for savings in car accident and medical payouts. Urban planners saw the future in which a maze of closely spaced cars all moved to their destinations without accidents and with maximum efficiency in roadway use. Better fuel usage and fewer vehicle emissions appealed to the environmentalists. Government agencies envisioned a vehicle tracking system able to find any vehicle, anywhere, all the time. Over the years, test vehicles by Mercedes, Toyota, and Google were able to fulfill their engineers goals of completing a series of self-driving exercises without incident in a controlled environment. Arguments for and against autonomous driving cars are many. However much these idealized visions of an autonomous car future may appeal to some, their record of recent traffic accidents and fatalities, including a Tesla vehicle, indicate that fully autonomous cars are not yet ready for the open road. Major automotive companies are taking a more cautious approach by offering bits and pieces of the technology, and labeling them as driver aids. Hazard warning, getting too close automatic braking, holding the car within its lane are now options for the new car buyer. How well do these systems work? An August 7, 2018 report, Reality Check, from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) illustrates the shortcomings when the latest silicon technology meets the road. When subjected to real world driving control of a car, these current systems from top-tier automotive manufacturers all flunked basic drivers education, in one manner or another. Whether it was failure to keep the car centered in the lane, holding to a curving roadway, or stopping in time to avoid an object in the road, these systems demonstrated their need to go back to driving school. Humans do a much better job of distinguishing a reflection of the open road ahead on a shiny truck body and stopping their car than a slow learning AI algorithm which drives into the open road image and truck. However alert the AI driving aid may be, if it is not 100 per cent reliable, it becomes just another driving hazard. If a driver must be alert to the unpredictable foibles of an AI-empowered car, he or she must be alert all the time a state which should characterize all drivers anyway. The automotive conundrum presented by the new technology is a cross between Groucho Marxs You Bet Your Life and a game of Russian Roulette. The AI intelligent car is a safer one, except when it isnt, but there is no way to tell ahead of time. How relaxing is it to relinquish your full attention to your computerized driving aids knowing that at any moment they may experience a misjudgment requiring your immediate attention to correct? The objective results of this IIHS report argue against any such reliance. Those few drivers who actually read their car instruction manual will probably find that corporate lawyers have included exculpatory language which states that the driver takes fully responsibility for operating the vehicle at all times. Nothing reliable has been gained by adding AI features, except an extra layer of complexity between the driver and control of the car. Shut your eyes for a moment while driving and neither AI or nor your brain may prevent death. Rather spend the money on continuing drivers education, more frequent coffee stops, and smart phone restrictions for the driver. No mention was made of the potential for malicious computer hacking of targeted AI cars, and the complete loss of driver and on-board computer control. AI-controlled commercial trucks present a tempting target for a new generation of computer hackers and truck hijackers. Look ma, no hands driving is a bit further down the road than advertised. Charles G. Battig, M.S., M.D., Heartland Institute policy expert on environment; VA-Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment (VA-SEEE). His website is www.climateis.com
The Ten Most Hateful Americans and Why they Matter

The American Left is stoking hatred and its tearing us apart. Our media is guilty of not only of failing to shame those responsible, in many cases they egg them on, giving them a platform. The volume of irrational hatred spewing into our ether is extremely unhealthy, even dangerous for our republic and the broader American culture. To be sure, there has been excessive rhetoric from the man who could well go down as the most accomplished and successful president in our history at the rate his achievements mount. But President Trumps willingness to verbally punch back at his political enemies, sometimes crudely, pales in comparison to the level of hate being spewed out by leftists.

Our country is 242 years old. One has to wonder how it can survive much longer as the decibels of hate, particularly from the left, continue to rise almost hysterically. Weve already had one civil war. That one cost over 600,000 lives. We dont need another one. At a minimum, those pumping out the hate need to be identified, shamed and shunned. This is what an active media should be doing. So who are we talking about? Heres my list of the top 10 most vicious and dangerous haters in America today. 10. Louis Farrakhan -- Even the progressive hate group called The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies Farrakhan's virulently racist, homophobic, anti-American and anti-Semitic Nation of Islam (NOI) as a hate group and black separatist organization. As the leader of NOI, Farrakhan has preached the organization's theology that blacks are superior to whites, that whites were created 6,600 years ago as a "race of devils" by an evil black scientist named Yakub and that "white people deserve to die." Farrakhan accused Jews of being involved in the September 11 attacks. In a speech this year, Farrakhan described "the powerful Jews" as his enemy. "Now that nation called Israel never has had any peace in 40 years and she will never have any peace because there can be no peace structured on injustice, thievery, lying and deceit and using the name of God to shield your dirty religion under His holy and righteous name. Thats right, he calls the religion of Moses, who gave the world the Ten Commandments, dirty. 9. Robert DeNiro  At the Tony Awards, DeNiro shouted F--k Trump. Then doubled down, Its no longer down with Trump, but f--k Trump as he shook his fists in the air. At a Brown University commencement address, he called President Trump an idiot. In 2016 he said, (Trumps) a punk, hes a dog, hes a pig, hes a con, a bull***t artist, a mutt who doesnt know what hes talking about, doesnt do his homework, doesnt care, thinks hes gaming society, doesnt pay his taxes. He talks (about) how he wants to punch people in the face? Well, Id like to punch him in the face. Sadly, Hollywood is full of folks with this highly intolerant mindset. 8. Te-Nehisi Coates National Book Award-winning memoir, Between the World and Me, is a wealth of "pseudo-Marxist legalisms observes Daniel Greenfield. Coates says police officers and firefighters who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could  with no justification  shatter my body. He wants U.S. taxpayers who were never slave owners and some of whose ancestors died to end slavery pay reparations to descendants of slaves who themselves were never slaves. He says America has no right to judge terrorists "in a country built on theft, blood and slavery." Coates has been richly rewarded for his racist, anti-American screeds. He received a $600,000 genius award, an editorial position at the Atlantic, and a lectureship at MIT even though he never graduated from college. Greenfield says, His only struggle is deciding which frustration with a taxi, waiter or butler to turn into a column about racism this week." Coates has called President Trump a loathsome racist. This is one bad dude. The adulation he has received from liberal elites is enough to make you vomit. 7. George Soros has been careful not to be quoted with inflammatory language. But his is a classic case of actions speaking louder than words. Through his Open Society Foundation, he is a funder of numerous hard left hate groups including Media Matters for America, Immigrant Voters Win PAC, Tides Foundation, Black Lives Matter and Antifa. George Soros is one of the most dangerous men in America today, but he is hardly ever mentioned by the leftwing media. 6. Whoopi Goldberg This TV and movie star has a big following on a show called The View. When her former colleague Judge Jeanine Pirro came on the show, Whoopi not only showed extremely bad manners but according to Piro told her to get the f*k out of here after a disagreement about Trump and then spat in her face. Pirro said, As I walked out, people started coming around because they heard her cursing at me. At that point, I just walked out as I was being thrown out. As I was walking out, she was following me cursing at me. . . All I can tell you is that I was shocked. I always liked Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar. I co-hosted that show before and Im not afraid to talk to anybody. But this is a real problem in this country and its happening from the left to the right all the time. Well said, judge! 5. Sarah Jeong is the new darling of the New Times Editorial Board. Shortly after Jeongs hire, Twitter users unearthed disgusting, highly racist tweets in which she expressed an extreme distaste for white people. Dumbass f--king white people marking up the Internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants, she tweeted in 2014. #Put white people in ovens. Another tweet reads, Oh man its kind of sick how much joy I get from being cruel to old white men. There are scores of tweets just like these including F--k the police. . . why dont we ever talk about banning the police? But the NYT didnt see that as a reason not to hire her. What else do you need to know about the NYT? 4. Alicia Garza is regarded by Fortune Magazine as among 50 of the most influential world leaders. What did she do to deserve this highly questionable accolade? Shes one of three co-founders of Black Lives Matter, formed after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a white Hispanic found not guilty of murder following the deadly fight in which Treyvon Martin was shot and killed as Zimmerman defended himself from assault. Garza calls BLM an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. Oh, she also maintains that blacks face deadly oppression and that extrajudicial killings of blacks is a regular feature of our society. She claims Blacks are uniquely, systematically, and savagely targeted by the state and this has led to black poverty, genocide, and mass incarceration. Is it possible she actually believes this nonsense? 3. John Brennan was Obamas CIA director who once voted for Communist Gus Hall for president. This Deep State denizen, who many believe helped organized the Obama spying on the Trump camp during the election, is suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Following Trumps meeting with Putin, he tweeted Donald Trumps press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of high crimes & misdemeanors. It was nothing short of treasonous. Treasonous? What about Obamas bromance with Putin and using the IRS to interfere in the 2012 elections and DOJ/FBI/CIA in 2016? 2. Linda Sarsour is an rabid pro-Palestinian activist, BDS supporter and anti-Zionist speaker. This 37-year-old Palestinian-American wants closure of NYC schools on Muslim holidays and elimination of racial profiling. She co-organized the 2017 Womens March on Washington. Sarsour says Islamophobia is solely based on racism and not the chaos and terrorism caused by Islamic fundamentalists, the Shiite-Sunni schism and regimes like Syria. She rants against America, where you have fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes reigning in the White House. The most astonishing thing is she has an active following and is a favorite of liberal Democrats. 1. Maxine Waters is a highly polarizing Democrat and leading political hate monger. She recently called on fellow Democrats to harass and abuse Republicans anywhere in public. Let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere. We've got to get the children connected to their parents." Waters is a leader of the so-called resistance movement against Trump. She refused to attend his inauguration and State of the Union address. She has been calling for his impeachment since his inauguration. And then this. [Trump is] one of the most deplorable people Ive ever encountered in my life. Ah, deplorable. Theres that word again. Cant think of a stronger endorsement for Trump. Graphic by Max Pixel Frank Hawkins is a former US Army intelligence officer, Associated Press foreign correspondent, international businessman, senior newspaper company executive, founder and owner of several marketing companies and published novelist. He currently lives in retirement in North Carolina.
Today, when we look at the delusion and deceit surrounding at least five Democrat members of the U.S. Senate, the question now becomes Is this the best we have? Lets look at a few.

When delivered by Ronald Reagan, the question Where do we get such men? used to be the ultimate contemplation about the people who make this country great. Not anymore.

When Cory Booker moved to Newark, New Jersey, he had it all: multiple degrees from Stanford, a Rhodes scholarship, a winning smile and a willingness to lie his keister off about a central feature of his earlier campaigns.

He also had an imaginary friend, T-Bone -- a drug-dealing, streetwise guardian angel of Cory Booker -- as he tried to convince the people of Newark he was not just a little rich kid, he was one of them, bursting with street cred.

Booker trotted out the T-Bone stories at every early campaign stop in his races for mayor: T-Bone told him this, T-Bone told him that. And of course, as brilliant as T-Bone was, he was still on many occasions the recipient of Cory Bookers sage counsel.

But T-Bone was never there.

The Star Ledger and National Review broke this story of delusion almost at the same time. An excerpt from Bookers home town paper:

When he was first elected mayor of Newark, the tale of T-Bone was a staple of Cory Bookers speeches. "I said hello to this guy and Ill never forget he leaped off the steps where he was standing and looked at me and threatened my life," Booker said during a 2007 speech at the New School in New York. "I later got to know this guy and his name was T-Bone and Im a vegetarian so that was a particularly vicious threat," Booker said to big laughs. Months later, The Star-Ledger tried to find T-Bone, to no avail. Those who knew Booker then said the character was a fabrication.

Fabrication? When did the media get so delicate about their accusations of deceit?

Jimmy Stewart chased a big white rabbit around and they wanted to put him in a padded cell. Cory Booker does way worse, way more often, and the people of New Jersey beg for more. Maybe they belong in the padded cells.

Lets stay in New Jersey: over the last six years, Senator Bob Menendez has gone through two criminal trials and an ethics investigation. During all these legal proceedings, there was very little disagreement about the facts: Menendez received hundreds of dollars in gifts and favors from Dr. Salomon Melgen -- a doctor who is now sitting in the hoosegow for 17 years for Medicare fraud.

These gifts include sexual tourism trips to Central America, where Menendez later used his office to try and get his concubines into the United States as residents.

The list of sordid activities is long and not in dispute: But Menendez successfully convinced enough people that he was just doing favors for a friend, and vice versa. Thus, it was within the bounds of the law.

Enough people (and jurors) bought it that he is up for re-election in a few months. From imaginary drug dealing thugs to real-life hookers on an unlimited expense account, all we know for sure is that its good to be a king in New Jersey.

Up the freeway in Massachusetts, the now infamous Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren found herself with a tenured position at Harvard Law school after spending the better part of an adult lifetime telling people she was a native-born Native American.

And if you dont believe her, just check her cheekbones.

But she took it to another level, submitting recipes for an American Indian cookbook -- which she plagiarized -- and she stood by while Harvard bragged about her Native American birthright. The first on the faculty of Harvard Law.

None of that is true. In fact, some say that if Warrens ancestors were on the Trail of Tears, it was as a guard or a captor. Not an Indian. At this point, what difference does it make?

In Connecticut, when Senator Richard Blumenthal first ran for the Senate, he was fond of telling stories about his time as a combat soldier in Vietnam. He had lots of stories, full of details, especially how veterans were abused when they came home.

As it turned out, Mr. Blumenthal never served in Vietnam, said the New York Times. And that is all there is to say about the Stolen Valor of Senator Blumenthal.

News of the latest and strangest case of pure Democrat malfeasance in the U.S. Senate came earlier this month, when it was revealed that a driver and office worker for Senator Dianne Feinstein was actually an employee of the Chinese State Security Services. A spy.

Curiously, the FBI allowed the spy to retire five years ago after they could find no evidence he turned over any actionable intelligence to the Chinese.

Anyone who has spent any time with any member of Congress (as I did for several years with my father-in-law who was a member of Congress) knows how much you learn by just hanging around. There were lots of phone calls to cabinet officials, lobbyists, other members of congress, you name it.

I knew who was in, who was out, for starters.

Recently we learned he was more than a driver, more than an office boy. He was a full-fledged, whisper in her ear at the right time staffer for a major member of the U.S. Senate.

Feinstein knew all the secrets. But apparently, she did not know of the hundreds of ways a person can give away a secret, without ever even knowing. Frowns, eyebrows, smiles, limo companions, friends, enemies.

And lets not forget the easy access this spy had to her hometown office after hours.

I dont know where we get creatures with such a dubious acquaintance with reality. But even more importantly, I cannot imagine why we keep them around.

There are tons more examples that I dont have the time to find: the story of Teddy Kennedys adventures at Chappaquiddick is on pay per view and I have to get back to that.

Colin Flaherty is the author of that scintillating best seller Dont Make the Black Kids Angry, which CNN says is very naughty book for telling the truth about black violence and how it is wildly out of proportion.
Marx was born May 5, 1818 to a middle-class family in the old Germanic kingdom of Prussia. His father was an attorney, and his mother came from a prosperous business family. Marx grew up in a ten-room home, received a private education, and married a wealthy heiress. He never held a real job, living off his benefactors (those being his wife Jenny, writing partner Friedrich Engels, and wealthy uncle Benjamin Philips). Despite residing in posh European capitals, Marx raised his family in a dirty flat, languishing in poverty until he died of pleurisy in 1883. His governmental and economic theories, published in his books Manifesto of the Communist Party and Das Kapital, were not broadly adopted during his lifetime.

Two hundred years have passed since Karl Marx and Frederick Douglass, a pair of important 19th-century historical figures, were born. Marx's collectivist ideas are surging among America's young, while Douglass, a champion of civil rights and the first black man to receive a nominating vote for president of the United States, sits largely unnoticed in pop culture. The admiration lavished on Marx  whose communist ideology has led to hunger, misery, and tyranny wherever it has been implemented  should be accorded to Douglass, an iconic American scion of liberty.

Douglass was born a slave in Maryland, likely in February 1818; because of scanty birth records, he did not know the exact date. He never knew his father, and his mother died sometime in the 1820s. Douglass had no formal education, and his mistress was excoriated by his slavemaster for teaching him to read. He experienced extreme deprivation, abandonment, hunger, beatings, false imprisonment, betrayal, and dehumanization until he completed a fantastic escape from bondage on September 3, 1838. Douglass eked out a living as a day laborer and was a fugitive until the mid-1840s, when sympathetic British supporters purchased his freedom. Thereafter, Douglass grew into the most prominent antebellum abolitionist orator, met thrice with Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, published three widely read autobiographies, and received federal appointments as marshal of the District of Columbia and ambassador to Haiti. In spite of his achievements, Douglass faced ridicule and racism from his opponents until his death in 1895.

Despite these resumes, the modern left, with its mainstream media mouthpiece, lionizes Marx and engages in willful blindness of Douglass. How is it that the smart set in our country today largely ignores the life lessons of a self-made ex-slave who rose to the height of international acclaim while glorifying the teachings of an obscure, slovenly grifter who left his offspring impoverished?

The left abhors the concept of republicanism, so it is easy for leftists to praise Marx, who did not subscribe to republican governing principles. Furthermore, as a European, Marx had nothing to do with the Republican Party. As feckless as the GOP has been in many eras of its existence, of the two major American parties, the Republicans have been better than the Democrats regarding the historical advance of freedom and representation. In Douglass's day, they were the anti-slavery party and were in favor of civil rights and the nascent women's suffrage movement. The left cannot permit any recitation of these facts, and, because Democrat journalists significantly outnumber Republicans, the media bury this information. To be a Republican today means constant media antipathy unless one is willing to criticize other Republicans. It would thus be quite inconvenient for America's journalistic Jacobins to praise Frederick Douglass  having grown up a slave under a tyrannical Democratic regime in the 1820s and 1830s  who explicitly labeled the Democrats the enemy of black Americans:

There was no path out of the Republican Party that did not lead directly into the Democratic Party  away from our friends and directly to our enemies.

And, famously:

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.

Leftists romanticize violent agitators and are enamored of pie-in-the-sky utopianism, so they exalt Marx  a dreamer who advocated the use of force to create his socialist nirvana. As he wrote:

There is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.

The left must be reluctant to acknowledge Douglass in this regard because he shunned "revolutionary terror." Douglass declined when John Brown invited him to participate in his raid on the federal armory in 1859; thus, he lived to fight the political battle against slavery while Brown was captured and executed. He spent his post-Civil War career promoting the constitutional principles that "man's rights rest in three boxes ... the ballot box, jury box, and the cartridge box," yet Douglass was circumspect about government interventionism to address the problems of the freedmen. In 1865, Douglass proclaimed:

What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice[.] ... Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, "What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us[.] ... [I]f the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs!

The modern left rails against the "1 percent" and uses taxation to confiscate the private property of individuals for collectivist ends. This amounts to legalized theft  a soft form of slavery in which the output of one man's labor is legally taken from him for consumption by another. The use of government force to impose this seizure of economic liberty would be fine and dandy with Marx, whose "theory ... may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."[i] Douglass as a bondsman had the fruit of his labors stolen from him with legal imprimatur, until he managed to reach free soil. Taking his first job as a free man, Douglass described the joy of keeping his own pay:

[T]he dear lady put into my hand two silver half-dollars. To understand the emotion which swelled my heart as I clasped this money, realizing that I had no master who could take it from me  that it was mine  that my hands were my own, and could earn more of the precious coin  one must have been in some sense himself a slave.[ii]

Finally, and most potently, the left cannot possibly tolerate raising awareness of the man for whom H.R. 2989 was signed into law. Not only does this 2017 act intend to bring the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass to the fore, but it was authorized by leftists' most hated enemy in presidential history: Donald Trump. The left cannot allow the American people to positively associate President Trump with an entrepreneurial, free-thinking black civil rights hero. Instead, they uplift Marxist acolytes like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and publish puff pieces on the old wannabe despot (such as fashion magazine Teen Vogue's glowing profile) in order to keep the grubby Karl Marx in the limelight.

John Steinreich has an M.A. in Church history from Colorado Theological Seminary. He has authored two Christian-themed books available on Kindle: The Words of God? and A Great Cloud of Witnesses. His works are also on Lulu Press. He is currently developing a stage production on the life of Frederick Douglass: www.facebook.com/freementheater.
Campaigning for Kelli Ward

Nothing gives you a better insight into a political campaign like being there; boots on the ground. Our Conservative Campaign Committee team is in Arizona implementing various initiatives to secure a victory for Dr. Kelli Ward in the August 28th GOP U.S. Senate primary. To remind voters of the election, our team waves Kelli Ward signs on street corners in key cities. We invite local supporters to join us. From our first sign-wave, we have been joined by enthusiastic Kelli Ward/Donald Trump supporters. I want to give heartfelt thanks and a shout-out to a great patriot, Marlene. Despite her extremely limited mobility, Marlene showed up to our sign-wave at Kingman using her walker. Marlene realizes how important it is to send rock-solid conservative warriors like Kelli Ward to Washington D.C. to support Trump's mission to Make America Great Again. Marlene was accompanied by her husband Dean.

Lisa brought her beautiful, extremely bright teenage daughter Lexi to wave signs. Lisa said, I'm teaching her to be a conservative. It is impossible to remember the names of all the excited loyal Kelli Ward-ians. Patricia said she has been a Kelli Ward fan for several years. Jinhui said he supports Kelli because she is honest and puts actions behind her words, unlike many politicians. All the volunteers we've encountered thus far give Kelli an A+ on her commitment to conservatism and courage to fight for it. Wearing our Kelli Ward shirts, we stopped in Walmart for water, ice, and supplies. Walmart shoppers gave us thumbs up for Ward and some asked us about her. Here is a picture of me with national recording artist Diana Nagy. Monday, Aug 13th at 11:30am, we'll be sign-waving in Tucson at the corner of W Ina Rd and N Thornydale Rd. Thanks for your support. Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American Help Lloyd spread the Truth http://lloydmarcus.com/
The latest military news from China signals a shift toward offensive warfare, and offers grim prospects to its neighbors in Asia, first and foremost Taiwan. (China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and threatens a military takeover if peaceful reunification fails.) An article by Kristin Huang of the South China Morning Post tells the story of a new fighter aimed at offensive warfare:

Expanded line-up of multirole all-weather aircraft will help to launch strikes deep into enemy territory and destroy key strategic assets, analysts say Chinas expanding line-up of multirole, all-weather J-16 fighter jets will help the air force to launch strikes deep into enemy territory and destroy key strategic assets like airfields and bridges, military analysts say. (snip) the Shenyang J-16 will become a key part of PLA Air Force operations and any strategy against Taiwan or to deter US military intervention, they said. Chinas air force announced last week that a squadron of J-16s would soon be combat ready.

It is based on the Russian Sujhoi-30 fighter, but with a Chinese engine and:

While the aircraft design is largely based on the Su-30, the J-16 features a Chinese radar and tracking system. It also has a provision for in-flight refuelling  giving it the capacity to strike deep into enemy territory and greater operational range. An electronic attack version, the J-16D, is also under development. China wants that fighter jet to be equivalent to the US EA-18G Growler  the most advanced airborne electronic attack platform.

The intent is obvious and chilling:

Electronic warfare is seen as the key to winning any conflict over the Taiwan Strait, with the ability to overwhelm enemy radar systems in the first few hours considered crucial. Military experts said the J-16, with its large payload and long range, could transform Chinas defensive air force into an offensive one. Before the J-16, the PLA has had to rely on a limited number of Russian-built Su-30s, whereas the indigenous J-10 lacks the range and payload to qualify as a true deep-strike fighter, said Collin Koh, a research fellow with the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

China is a far more threatening strategic rival for America than Russia, orders of magnitude larger in population and GNP, and growing far more quickly. Its ongoing large scale theft of intellectual property has powered both its economy and military weapons programs.

In addition to building up its air force, China is building and deploying aircraft carriers and may have as many as 7 deployed by 2025. Aircraft carriers are incredibly huge and complex, and China is having some issues with its sole combat ready carrier deployed at present, but new ones already in the works promise more capability. Ryan Pickrell of Business Insider writes:

The capabilities of China's current carrier force are severely limited by several serious weaknesses, making it vastly inferior to the US Navy, but the one it has in the works is where the world could start to see the Chinese navy closing the gap with its primary competitor.

Developing a carrier force to match the US globally is a much longer term challenge. China has not even come close to being able to use a nuclear reactor to power its carriers, for instance, and also faces issues in pilot training for carrier operations. But Chinas current aim is regional domination, sitting as it does in the middle of the fastest-growing area of the world, a region that it dominated for thousands of years as the Middle Kingdom.

Virtually everyone in China looks at their country as the natural hegemon in the world, temporarily (for roughly four centuries) knocked out of its position of dominating East Asia and its status as the biggest and richest country in the world, by Western imperialism that brought mass opium addiction and social collapse. Return to the natural order of things with China on top is a goal that most tacitly, if not actively, support.

Flag/map of China via Wikimedia Commons
High Noon in Charlottesville

Charlottesvilles $2 million emergency shutdown came to an anticlimactic ending Sunday as rain moved in over the city around 3:30 p.m. In anticipation of possible violent demonstrations on the one-year anniversary of last summers Antifa riot, police closed off the downtown mall and both ends of Water Street with barricades and dump trucks, and only pedestrians were allowed access to the site where Heather Heyer was killed when James Fields allegedly drove his Dodge Charger into a crowd of Antifa protesters. By 4 p.m., police were vacating the streets in a light rain and dump trucks were being driven away. Earlier in the afternoon, the historic grounds at the University of Virginia (UVA) were all but empty, and the barricades had been removed from the Lawn after yesterdays address by new UVA President James Ryan. The Lawn had been cordoned off for a ticketed event in Old Cabell Hall titled The Hope That Summons Us: A Morning of Reflection and Renewal. Around 2 p.m. this afternoon, a small prayer group assembled at the steps of the Rotunda in preparation for a march to the downtown site of Heather Heyers death. Bishop Harry Jackson of the Hope Christian Church in Maryland spoke to the group, and relayed his thoughts about meeting with President Trump this week in the White House. After meeting with Trump, Bishop Jackson was roundly criticized as Uncle Tomming by other black leaders.

Meanwhile, downtown, protesters were facing off with police at the intersection of Water Street and 4th street, which has been named Honorary Heather Heyer Way. The crowd size was no more than a few dozen, but it was surrounded by dozens more photographers and spectators. In the apparent absence of any political opponents, the protesters turned on police to vent their anger. Protesters chanted Quit your job! at the police, and Why are you in riot gear, aint no riot here! At one point, State Police appeared to reposition two troop carriers at one end of Water Street, and the protesters moved to form a human shield across the street, as if they expected the troop carriers to move against them to disperse the crowd. The protest line remained in place until the rain began to fall. Most of the crowd melted into the available doorways to take cover or left the scene. Thus, the one-year anniversary of the Antifa riot in Charlottesville passed without any violent confrontations. It was all theater and posturing and virtue signaling. The university had its forum for the new president to introduce his bona fides as an anti-Nazi, the clergy had their time in the streets to face off with the police (over exactly what, who knows?), and the police had a chance to show that they were in charge after their disastrous stand-down last summer. All the parties seemed to get something from the drama, except the taxpayers, who now have to foot the bill. James G. Robertson is a University of Virginia alumnus and Charlottesville resident. Bishop Harry Jackson speaks to a prayer group at the steps of the Rotunda. Prayer group leaves UVA grounds for the mile walk to the downtown protest site. Police barricaded Water Street where protesters gathered at the site of Heather Heyers death. Police in riot gear at the corner of Water Street and Honorary Heather Heyer Way. Protester angry at the police. Clergyman speaking to protesters. Clergy stare down police troop carriers. Clergywoman faces the police. State police manning a troop carrier. Clergy form a human shield across Water Street. Protesters on Water Street. Clergy and protesters face a state police troop carrier on Water Street.
A Chicago bike-safety activist, who made it her business to erect bicycles spray-painted white on city streets where cyclists were killed as a reminder to drivers to look out for cyclists, decided that that issue wasn't all that important in cases where the driver is illegal. Which turned out to be her own assault by an incautious illegal alien driver. In her mind, being illegal trumped the very bike safety she spent time erecting monuments to.

One set of laws for us, another set of laws for them, which is the height of lefty insanity. Here's what Streets Blog Chicago reported:

On Tuesday, July 31, Green was biking home from her job a barista when an elderly female driver struck her in a Lincoln Square bike lane. (Green asked that we not publish the exact location so as to avoid incriminating the motorist.) She was pedaling north when the southbound driver executed a sudden U-turn as the light turned red and hit her. She thinks the drivers sightlines may have been blocked by a northbound motorist who was turning left. The cyclist hit the pavement face-first, suffering a gash in her chin that required four stitches, a black eye, and road rash. Her bike was also badly damaged. Green, who is uninsured, launched a GoFundMe page to cover her medical expenses and lost wages.

After that, the driver, who was here illegally, (and apparently without a driver's license that she might not have been able to get anyway due to the impairments of her advanced age) rushed out of the car and rather than voice any concern for the cyclist she had just dragged across the road and left a bloody mess, alongside her wrecked bike, expressed only thoughts for herself, pleading in Spanish (apparently) that she didn't want to be deported. Never mind about the bleeding woman in front of her that she had just badly injured. It was all about her and the importance of protecting herself from any consequences.

Instead of calling the cops on such an amazingly selfish person, the lefty cyclist excused her then, and allowed her to go off on her merry way, because she ... wanted to protest Trump.

I did what I had to because NO person should be begging for their life and family, Green wrote. She grabbed the womans hand and pulled her off the ground, spilling blood on her yellow dress, then helped her back to the wheel of her car and turned the ignition key for her. Green wrote that as the woman drove away, Green began sobbing. I am diehard believer in [justice for cyclists] to the fullest extent of the law, she wrote. But she added that she chose not to report the crash and press charges because my silence became my only weapon against a much bigger war [over] invisible borders carried out and perpetuated by our careless world leaders.

Now I am not without compassion for a case like this. A couple of decades ago, in San Francisco, I did the same thing when an illegal hit me from a car as I was exiting a street car in the Sunset. The guy was an Irish illegal, and he said he was sorry and didn't make anything of his being illegal as reason not to deport him. I underestimated my bone-jangling injuries at the time and told him it was ok, assuming he didn't have any more money for medical care than I did. Then I went to suffer on my own as the pain got worse. I was young and didn't know much at the time. So I kind of understand.

But this case was much worse because of the obvious unfitness of the driver, and her selfish me-first attitude in the face of live bleeding injuries in front of her, along with the economic and mobility damage to the person she injured.

Ummm, ma'am, it was you that was begging for your life, ripped up and bleeding in the road with a wrecked bike, not her. She'd do fine back in El Salvador or wherever, because plenty of people back home drive like that. Was she really saying she'd be right there with the lawsuit and police report had the driver been American?

What an awful picture. Green released an obviously dangerous driver back onto the road without consequences, free to hit someone else, all because she was illegal. And up until now, she's been a bike-safety activist!

What it shows is that the left considers being here illegally as some kind of shibboleth, some sacred inviolable right that means protection from any consequences of any bad behavior.

The story concludes, not with the illegal or the illegal-American community doing anything to help the injured lefty, (or for that matter, the state doing anything) but the legal American ordinary citizens coming to help her, via GoFundMe. To be honest, I hope she gets the help she needs since she's so feckless. But there's no excuse for releasing a bad driver out on the streets to mow someone else down again. If someone else gets injured by this age-impaired, immigration-impaired lawbreaking woman, she better be right there with the GoFundMe page for the illegal's next victim.

And maybe it's time for one set of laws for everyone. This case shows that the special protections for illegals are not just the work of leftist crazies on city councils and in one-party statehouses, they are also the work of feckless individual lefties.
While we are seeing a lot of doom and gloom talk in the endless 'analyses' you always see in Pacific Rim affairs on the economic side of things, including China itself declaring there will be ' no winners ' (typical for the nation that is facing disaster itself), along with some stories of Pacific Rim states getting ready to profit from the whole thing, or else band together against the U.S,, there is a strategic trend that is worth watching: Some Pacific Rim nations are actually standing up to China.

President Trump's trade war with China is a multi-pronged thing, given how closely the east Asian states of the Pacific Rim are being affected. Those states are all U.S. allies, and the reason we project so much naval power in the Pacific.

I see two obvious cases, and think there could be more to follow.

Nation One, Malaysia. The news now is that President Mohamad Mahathir is telling China its lousy infrastructure deals have got to go. Bloomberg had the story a couple weeks ago and here's what MalayMail, via Yahoo! News, reports today:

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 13  Putrajaya will attempt to cancel suspicious infrastructure projects previously awarded to Chinese firms, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said ahead of his visit to China later this week. The prime minister told the Associated Press in an interview that he was committed to keeping ties with China cordial, but said this must not come at the detriment of Malaysian interests. Among items that he most intends to terminate are two gas pipeline projects worth RM9.4 billion awarded by the previous Barisan Nasional administration and which his finance minister previously alleged was almost fully paid despite no progress in work delivery. We dont think we need those two projects. We dont think they are viable. So if we can, we would like to just drop the projects, he was quoted as saying.

For years, China has been rolling in to underdeveloped nations with investment promises in a bid to snap up resources, most notably in Africa and Latin America. Malaysia is not underdeveloped, but it has had a recent corrupt government that was thrown out, and it's in character for Mahathir, who is a nationalist like Trump, to take a cue and start seeking better deals. I suspect he's following Trump's lead and since this is Asia, a chain reaction quite possibly could follow.

Here is Nation Two: Taiwan.

According to Nikkei Asian Review:

TAIPEI -- Authorities in Taiwan are considering countermeasures against foreign airlines that have bowed to Beijing and are now referring to the island as part of China on their websites. The island's government is considering airport facility restrictions against airlines that have decided to appease Beijing, the United Daily News reported in its Monday morning edition. However, many politicians appear reluctant to impose restrictions, arguing that applying political pressure on private companies is the same strategy Beijing used and has been maligned for.

Again, we see a nationalist move, with Taiwan defending its national interests. Let's face it, Taiwan is its own nation with much to be proud of and ought to be treated as such. They aren't going to reward nations that kowtow to China's bullying as it seeks to advance its interests in the South China Sea and threatens tiny Taiwan to boot. One can say that too is a nation following Trump in his willingness to challenge the Chinese behemoth on another trade front.

The reason this sticks out to me is that up until now, the Asian Pacific nations have been all too willing to go along with China's 'let's get rich together' allure as a trading partner. Now that Trump has upset that apple cart, with the argument that the trade deals aren't actually fair, we see a breakup of that soggy stance.

It certainly isn't universal at this point. Right now, we see Indonesia and Thailand simply saying to themselves that they will do their best to leverage the trade war and make off from it at this point. (Malaysia, too.) We see Europe doing some odd measures to align with Japan against Trump. We see Philippines and Vietnam just sort of despairing and hunkering down. We see Singapore and Burma affirming the status quo.

But the little spike of self-interest that considers the full scope of the nation's interests - and includes not being mown down by China - is worth noting. If all of these nations got together and stood up to China as one, there really might be some free trade. China would either have to do really equal deals with Asia as a group or suffer the trampling of elephants going at it. And they do have reason to do so: China has been throwing its weight around in the South China Sea, interfering with vital sea lanes that are used for trade. They all know that is a problem. Now it's a bargaining chip and with the U.S. a part of this, they can all bargain together.

It's a good sign to see some of them standing up to China as a result of Trump's lead. I suspect it may be a trend and I am going to be watching the more nationalistic of them, Indonesia, along with Vietnam and Thailand, for comparable moves.
Police shootings are statically quantifiable. Harvard Professor Roland Fryer analysed them and concluded , On the most extreme use of force -- ocer-involved shootings -- we nd no racial dierences...

The assertion that people who support Trump are racist has never been credible. There are two arguments advanced to bolster this assertion: a racial disparity in lethal police shootings, and examples of white people dehumanizing black people.

Ive concluded that the widely circulated examples of whites behaving rudely toward blacks are real. None of these incidents involve Trump supporters. They all come from the left.

Theresa Lund, Executive Director, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, sneers at a black woman. Theresa didnt approve of the lady playing with her children in her own yard. Are you one of the affordable units or are you with Harvard? In the video its, Theresa thinks she's the victim.

Everyones aware of the video depicting the woman calling the police to report an eight-year-old black girl, selling bottled water in front of her own apartment building. Ill bet this single woman living in San Francisco, who owned a cannabis-related business, does not own a MAGA hat.

A Black university student ate lunch in a common room. The police were called. Things like that dont happen at conservative colleges. This happened at Smith College.

This video shows the police arriving at Yale. A white woman student called the police because a a black woman student slept in a common room. The police needed to verify that the young woman had a right to be there. Fair enough. Except its clear from the video that that the Ph.D. candidate who called the cops knew the sleeping student. Still, I had every right to call. Youre not supposed to sleep there. Every conservative Ive known wouldve either ignored what is obviously a nap, or would have gently awakened the young lady. About 50% of the liberals Ive known would call the cops. In most Liberals their generalized sense of sympathy crowds out individual empathy. Liberals call the police, because, of course, they are the victim.

This video shows a charming group of black people BBQing near a lake. A white woman harasses them and calls the police. The woman is over the top and is not a Trump supporter. She appears to be an environmental activist. By their tolerance of this shrew, these folks are a class act. I would love to attend their next BBQ.

A white woman moved to Harlem and declared war on a Mr. Softee ice cream truck. A recent Harlem transplant is trying to silence the ice cream man who parks on her block and plays his truck's jingle in the evenings, and some of her neighbors could not be rolling their eyes harder about it. Mackenzie, who asked that we withhold her last name for fear that she be pigeonholed as an entitled white lady whining about her new neighborhood Why would anyone pigeonhole her for calling the cops on an ice cream truck?

When you move into a neighborhood you adapt. Its possible to negotiate change over time, but its inappropriate to demand accommodation to your whims. The link contains the noise in her apartment. Listen carefully.

I agree with Larry Elder, Racism is not a major issue in this country. I also agree with the sentiments of the people who posted these videos. People on the right, who Hillary labeled as deplorable, are not guilty. The behavior of these Liberal white people is deplorable. These people use the term, white privilege. Now we know who theyre describing.
Donald Trump's surprise 2016 victory in Wisconsin is a distant memory. Democrats have won several state legislative elections in the last 18 months, as well as a seat on the state's supreme court. Now, there are no less than 8 serious Democratic contenders for the gubernatorial nomination, as unions, activists, and party officials finally believe that Walker's time is up.

Some call him Wisconsin's "Mr. Invincible." But in what many expect to be a Democratic year at the polls, the two term Republican Governor Scott Walker, who also survived an intense recall challenge, may find his quest for a third term an uphill climb.

But is it?

The Hill:

Democrats are so excited by the prospect of beating Walker that a bevy of candidates jumped into the race right away. But none of them are stars  the Democratic bench has been so decimated in Wisconsin in recent years that the party has few standouts left who might have been able to scare away potential rivals. Those who did enter the race are little known outside their own distinct bases, and few have raised the financial resources necessary to run robust paid media campaigns. The large field split Democratic money among a lot of candidates, said Charles Franklin, a political scientist who conducts polling for Marquette Law School. Franklins latest survey tells the story of such a fractured field. The only candidate with any kind of statewide base, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers (D), leads with 31 percent. None of the other candidates  including firefighters union chief Mahlon Mitchell (D), who has heavy labor backing, and former state Rep. Kelda Roys (D), who has support from EMILYs List  have cracked double digits. Even Evers isnt that well-known. The Marquette poll showed 60 percent of registered voters, including 54 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters, do not have an opinion of a candidate who has been elected to statewide office three times. The Democratic candidates largely agree on the platform one of them will use to run against Walker in the fall: Most oppose tax breaks for Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer setting up a new factory outside Milwaukee. They favor new spending on education and on roads, weak spots in Walkers record that Democrats hope to highlight. But only four of the eight Democrats have been able to afford television spots.

In truth, Walker is not popular with the voters. His approval has hovered around 40% most of the year. Walker's ill-fated presidential campaign didn't sit well with Wisconsin voters and Trump is not very popular in the state.

But the article above points out why Walker has a better than 50-50 chance to prevail. He may not be popular, but compared to anyone in the Democratic field, he is a known quantity. Plus, Walker has been counted out on at least two occassions, most significantly, when Democrats and the far left ganged up on him to force a recall vote in 2012.

Walker and the Republican legislature had passed a public union collective bargaining reform bill that enraged unions and national Democrats. They poured resources into the state while keeping the pressure up by massive demonstrations in front of the capitol.

But Walker had out of state allies too and with their help, he became the first governor in US history to survive a recall vote.

His re-election campaign in 2014 was close, but he eventually prevailed by 6 points. The upshot here is that while Wisconsin is a nominally Democratic state, Republicans can do well with the right kind of message - and the right kind of candidate.

Walker doesn't set the house on fire with his public speaking. He has largely steered clear of major controversy since early in his first term. But unless Democrats can turn one of their toads into a Prince Charming, Walker should prevail again.
After three years of bloody conflict that saw three million people dead, the two neighboring countries, North and South Korea, entered into an armistice in 1953 agreeing to end all hostilities of the Korean War but never quite agreeing to peace. As a result, the border between the two countries is still one of the most heavily armed regions in the world enclosed by barbed wire fences and dotted by land mines, and surrounded by hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

As part of the armistice signed, a 4-kilometer strip of buffer zone called the DMZ or the Korean Demilitarized Zone, stretching the entire 250-kilometer-long border was created separating the two countries. Both nations were required to evacuate their part of the DMZ of all civilian settlements, except one that each nation was allowed to keep or create. These sole outposts, thinly masquerading as working villages, were built for propaganda to extol each side's superior way of life. They sit directly opposite each other.

A massive flagpole in the North Korean Peace village as seen from the South. Photo credit: Mattis Kaminer / Shutterstock.com

On the South Korean side is Daeseong-dong, or Freedom Villagehome to some 226 residents. These people were either original inhabitants of this region before the Korean War broke out, or are their descendants. No one else is allowed to stay at or enter Daeseong-dong. Despite its name, there is little freedom hereresidents have to carry special IDs, and must pass through countless checkpoints each time they enter or leave the village. They must all be home by sundown, and at 11 PM every night a headcount takes place to account for any unwanted intruders that might sneak in from North Korea. According to LA Times, these intruders from the north sometimes attempt to kidnap villagers and later claim they defected to North Korea.

Although living under the shadow of guns, villagers of Daeseong-dong enjoy some unique benefits. The inhabitants, all of which are farmers, are allotted large patches of land for farming, and enjoy some of the highest household income in the country. They have the same rights to vote and receive education, but are exempt from paying provincial taxes and serving in the military. The villages elementary school receives extra attention from the government, as part of propaganda, and its special funding allows the school to buy equipment and facilities found in no other school in the country.

On the North Korean side, directly across Daeseong-dong stands Kijong-dong, or Peace Village. From afar it looks modern enough with brightly-painted multi-story buildings and low-rise apartments that create a silhouette of an urban skyline. At nightfall, the apartments light up with electric bulbs which was something unheard of in the north or south in the 1950s.

But its all a big sham. Daeseong-dong is a ghost village. Nobody lives there. The buildings are actually concrete shells with no interiors. Electric lights operate on an automatic timer, and the only people in sight are maintenance workers who sweep the streets to give the illusion of activity and life in the village.

Of course, the Supreme leader Kim Jong-un and his government denies all of it. Its a farming village, they say, and houses over 200 local families. The village has a child-care center, a kindergarten, a primary school, a secondary school, and a hospital.

Then, there are these massive flagpoles.

The flagpoles of South Korea (left) and North Korea (right).

In the 1980s, South Korea erected a 98-meter-tall flagpole in Daeseong-dong, flying a 130-kg South Korean flag. North Korea responded by building a 160-meter-tall flagpole with a flag that weighs a humongous 270 kg and requires a small gale to unfurl. It is currently the fourth tallest flagpole in the world.

Southerners call Kijong-dong a Propaganda Village, although that term could be applied to both. Until recently, both sides harangued each other with long propaganda audios blared through massive speakers mounted on top of buildings and directed towards the other. Originally, DPRK broadcasts extolled the Norths virtues and urged disgruntled soldiers and peasant farmers to walk across the border into the supposed paradise of North Korea. When that didnt work, they switched to anti-Western speeches, Communist operas, and North Korean military songs.

In return, South Korea teased their arch rivals by blasting songs from popular K-pop girly groups in high decibels. These broadcasts are so loud that the loudspeakers can be heard up to 10 km into North Korean territory during the day, and up to 24 km at night.

Members of the South Korean pop group Apink performing onstage. Photo credit: Ahn Young-joon/AP

K-pop is quite a powerful means of propaganda, says Professor Roald Maliangkay, director of the Korea Institute at The Australian National University. It depicts South Korea as a hyper-modern, wealthy nation solely populated by passionate and attractive people.

K-pop group songs sound upbeat and powerful and the lyrics of the songs selected portray the image of a strongly unified South Korean front, he told The Outline.

Aside from K-pop, South Korean speakers also relayed cultural programs and news from abroad which are censored by Kim Jong-uns regime, as well as favorable discussion of democracy, capitalism and life in South Korea, and comments on corruption and mismanagement in the North. These broadcasts so grated on the nerves of Mr. Kim that he threatened to blow up South Korean speakers.

The speakers have been playing on and off since the 1960s. In 2004, both countries agreed to end their loudspeaker broadcasts at each other. But in 2016, following escalating tensions as a result of nuclear tests by the North, the speakers resumed operations. Weeks before the historic summit in April 2018, where leaders from both the nations met, the speakers again fell silent as a gesture of goodwill, but for how long?

The panel of loudspeakers on the South Korean side. Photo credit: Chung Sung-Jun

The North Korean Peace village as seen from the South through powerful telephoto lens. Photo credit: modusoptimus.com

The North Korean Peace village as seen from the South through powerful telephoto lens. Photo credit: Kurt Wahlgren
Cybersecurity researchers discovered 47 new major vulnerabilities of Android-based firmware and default apps of 25 smartphones from LG Electronics, ASUS, and a number of other original equipment manufacturers, many of which are based in China. The findings that were presented at the latest edition of Las Vegas, Nevada-based Def Con conference encompass a wide variety of issues, ranging from potential privacy vulnerabilities to openings for full-fledged remote code execution. Four handsets from ZTE were found to be affected by some of the discovered problems, though only two were previously sold in the United States  the ZTE Blade Spark and Blade Vantage. Sonys Xperia L1 was also on the list of vulnerable devices, being affected by one exploit that can allow attackers to screenshot its notification bar.

A similar issue was found inside the Android Oreo implementation running on the Nokia 6, but not the variant thats sold in the U.S. ASUS, Alcatel, Vivo, OPPO, Essential, DOOGEE, LEAGOO, MXQ, Orbic, SKY, Coolpad, and Plum were also listed among the manufacturers that have some patching work to do in the future, provided they choose to address the new discoveries. IoT security company Kryptowire is credited with the findings that it hunted for in order to fulfill a grant given by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

While state-sponsored, the study isnt meant to be reflective of the federal governments stances on the state of mobile security. Regardless, with ZTE being one of the more high-profile names on the newly published list, the development marks yet another occasion on which the companys devices were presented as posing a potential security risk to American consumers. Refer to the banner below for a full list of at-risk Android devices discovered by Kryptowire. Administrators with affected devices being active in their ecosystems are advised to take immediate action to mitigate the risk of having their users compromised as its currently unclear whether any of the listed manufacturers will be addressing the discovered vulnerabilities in the immediate future.
South Korean smartphone maker Samsung is reportedly considering to shutdown one of its two smartphone manufacturing units in China. The concerned factory is located in Tianjin, northern China, where, the company plans to suspend its operations within a year before completely shutting the unit down. Sluggish smartphone sales in the local market and rising labor costs are two of the few reasons cited by the industry sources with knowledge of the matter to reason this step taken by Samsung. The sources further add that the company has already informed its suppliers about its plans for Tianjin Samsung Telecommunications (TSTC) plant. A Samsung executive, on the condition of anonymity, informed that smartphone production at Tianjin plant has already been reduced and the company plans to continue doing so in the near future, though, the decision to halt the production couldnt be confirmed.

The firm has lost a major chunk of its smartphone business to Chinese players including Huawei, that recently became the worlds number two smartphone seller overtaking Apple, besides holding the top position in China. The report adds that sales from the Tianjin plant were 11.41 trillion won ($10 billion) in 2014, which reduced to 6.93 trillion won ($6.1 billion) the next year, with this downward slope continuing in 2016 as well. Once a global smartphone production hub, the manufacturing facility was established in 2001 and it continued to grow until 2013 when it touched the sales figure of 15 trillion won ($13.2 billion). After the production at this plant is halted, Samsungs smartphone production base in the Asian country will be confined to only one factory that is based in Huizhou, southeastern China. Lately, the South Korean firm has been shifting its manufacturing base to other Asian countries including Vietnam and India, which is another reason provided for the closure of the Chinese plant besides lackluster sales.

Just last month, Samsung inaugurated the worlds largest smartphone manufacturing facility in Noida, northern India. The company had expanded its existing plant that was established in 1996 to almost double its smartphone production from the plant to 120 million units annually. With this unit in place, Samsung plans to meet 50 percent of its global smartphone demand from the Indian facility, while the numbers currently stand at 10 percent. While sales in the Chinese market havent met Samsungs expectations, the situation is opposite for the south Asian market where the company holds a majority market share.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is expected to outsell its predecessor, the Galaxy Note 8. These predictions are coming from the companys President, Koh Dong-jin (also known as DJ Koh), according to The Investor. Now, this may sound a bit odd considering that the companys Q2 operating profit for the IT and mobile business is down 34-percent compared to a year earlier, and industry watchers attributed that to not-so-great sales of the Galaxy S9, but it seems like theyre expecting the Galaxy Note 9 to do better than the Galaxy Note 8.

Samsung Mobile President, Koh Dong-jin, on the other hand, said that the Galaxy S9 even outpaced the Galaxy S8 in some regions, so it doesnt seem like he thinks that the Galaxy S9 is the real reason the companys operating profit for that specific sector was that much lower than last years. Koh Dong-jin also added that the Galaxy S9 still has plenty of room to catch up to the Galaxy S8 as it went on sale in March this year. Koh Dong-jin agrees with industry watchers, it seems, as hes expecting the Galaxy Note 9 to outsell the Galaxy Note 9, as the device is basically an improved version of the Galaxy Note 8, and as one of its main selling points, he sees the phones new and improved stylus. The Galaxy Note 9s stylus does support Bluetooth connectivity, unlike the Galaxy Note 8s, so you can use it as a remote shutter, as a presentation tool, or to launch some apps on the Galaxy Note 9 wirelessly. Samsung will open APIs for it in the near future, so developers will be able to create new and interesting ways to utilize that stylus.

Koh Dong-jin also confirmed that the company will continue releasing mid-range smartphones, as the competition is fierce, and that will not change anytime soon. The Galaxy Note 9 actually resembles its predecessor in terms of the design, quite a bit, and in case youre interested in getting more info on the device, click here.
The triple camera setup expected to be featured on the back of at least one Galaxy S10-series device has been detailed in a new report from South Korean outlet ETNews, with industry sources suggesting Samsung will be taking a different approach to three-lens imaging than Huawei did earlier this year with the P20 Pro. Instead of prioritizing resolution, Samsung is understood to have opted for lens versatility as the main goal of solution used by its 2019 Android flagship, as the device is said to leverage two wide-angle glass modules and another telephoto unit. The main lens will reportedly be installed in front of a 12-megapixel sensor, whereas a super-wide-angle one is expected to sit in front of a 16-megapixel sensor. The telephoto camera will use a 13-megapixel module and support 3x optical zoom at a minimum, according to the same report.

Compared to this years Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 9, it appears that Samsung will be ennobling its imaging formula with the addition of an extra wide-angle lens that will likely improve the landscape photography capabilities of its next flagship lineup and improve low-light performance, though its still unclear how the additional module will work in conjunction with the main camera of the Galaxy S10. Only the Galaxy S10 Plus has previously been mentioned in the context of using a triple-lens system, but insiders now suggest the regular Galaxy S10 will use such a solution as well, whereas the Galaxy S10 Lite thats also said to be coming will supposedly have a more conventional dual-camera configuration.

Samsung is also understood to be planning to equip select Galaxy A (2019) models with a three-camera setup as well, though its mid-range lineup will be more focused on the megapixel count than high-quality lenses, sources claim. That approach may see the companys top 2019 mid-ranger adopt a sensor with a resolution of up to 32 megapixels, accompanied by 8- and 5-megapixel units, as per the same report. Samsung is likely to announce the Galaxy S10 line at the next edition of Barcelona-based MWC in late Q1 2019.
A report from GizChina claims that Sony will update six of its handsets to Android 9 Pie. The devices that will reportedly receive the latest version of the operating system include the Sony Xperia XZ2, XZ2 Compact, XZ2 Premium, XZ1, XZ1 Compact, and the XZ Premium. The report claims that the rollout will begin in September and it will be completed by November 2018. It should be noted that the Xperia XZ2 has been receiving beta versions of the operating system in the last few months as part of Googles Android P Beta program. Google recently confirmed that this device, along with other smartphones from Xiaomi, HMD Global, OPPO, Vivo, and OnePlus, will be receiving Android 9 by the end of fall.

Once the handsets are upgraded to Android Pie, users could take advantage of features like Adaptive Battery, improved notifications management, and App Actions. The Adaptive Battery feature limits the resources available for applications that are not used often, which should increase the handsets battery life. Meanwhile, the operating system will automatically ask the user if they want the application to continue receiving notifications from an application if the software detects that users repeatedly dismiss the apps notifications. The App Actions feature uses machine learning to understand how people use their smartphones at different times of the day. The functionality will then show a set of app actions below the top row of applications which will change depending on the time of the day. Other new features of Android Pie include adaptive brightness, redesigned multitasking screen, modified media controls, new screenshot tools, and gesture controls.

Aside from Sony, Huawei and HTC have also announced that they will roll out Android Pie to select handsets soon. For example, HTC recently stated that four of its devices, the HTC U12 Plus, the U11, the U11 Plus, and the U11 Life will all receive Android 9, although it did not specify the exact dates that the handsets will receive the operating system upgrade. Meanwhile, Huawei already started an Android 9 Pie beta program for four of its devices, including the Huawei P20, the P20 Pro, the Mate 10, and the Mate 10 Pro.
 Spotlighting challenges surrounding an Eighth Amendment jurisprudence defining adulthood at 18 | Main | "Algorithmic Risk Assessments and the Double-Edged Sword of Youth" 

A helpful readers alerted me to a lengthy opinion handed down this morning by a Third Circuit panel in US v. Peppers, No. 17-1029 (3d Cir. Aug. 13, 2018) (available here). I suspect only hard-core Johnson-habeas-ACCA fans will read all 48 pages of this notable ruling, and its introduction helpfully summarizes what is to be found within:

Ronnie Peppers was sentenced in 2003 to fifteen years of imprisonment for being a felon in possession of a firearm. That was the mandatory minimum under the Armed Career Criminal Act (the ACCA or the Act), and the District Court imposed it because of Pepperss previous convictions. Peppers now challenges that sentence as unconstitutional in light of the Supreme Courts decision in Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), which invalidated a clause of the ACCA  the residual clause  as unconstitutionally vague. He argued in District Court in a motion under 28 U.S.C.  2255 that he was impermissibly sentenced under that invalid clause. But that  2255 motion was not his first, and  2255 itself, through subsection (h), places limits on any effort to file a second or successive collateral attack on a criminal judgment. The District Court denied Pepperss second  2255 motion after determining that his prior convictions remained predicate offenses for ACCA purposes because they are covered by portions of the Act that survived Johnson. Because we disagree with the District Courts conclusions, we will vacate its decision and remand the case for further proceedings.

Five holdings lead to our remand. First, the jurisdictional gatekeeping inquiry for second or successive  2255 motions based on Johnson requires only that a defendant prove he might have been sentenced under the now-unconstitutional residual clause of the ACCA, not that he was in fact sentenced under that clause. Second, a guilty plea pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(C) does not preclude a defendant from collaterally attacking his sentence in a  2255 motion, if his sentence would be unlawful once he proved that the ACCA no longer applies to him in light of Johnson. Third, a defendant seeking a sentence correction in a second or successive  2255 motion based on Johnson, and who has used Johnson to satisfy the gatekeeping requirements of  2255(h), may rely on postsentencing cases (i.e., the current state of the law) to support his Johnson claim. Fourth, Pepperss robbery convictions, both under Pennsylvanias robbery statute, are not categorically violent felonies under the ACCA, and, consequently, it was error to treat them as such. Fifth and finally, Peppers failed to meet his burden of proving his Johnson claim with respect to his Pennsylvania burglary conviction. We will therefore vacate the District Courts order and remand for an analysis of whether the error that affected Pepperss sentence, i.e., the error of treating the robbery convictions as predicate offenses under the ACCA, was harmless in light of his other prior convictions.
President of Omnium CulturalThose who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'. Viktor Frankl

Last Monday I was able to bake my first mugs in the oven. Pottery and meditation help me to stay in peace and focused, as well as to live in prison happily and to the full. Today it is August 12 and it has been 300 days since Jordi Sanchez and I were taken into custody and, once again, I want to thank you for your support 300 million times.

Leadership, trust and courage: nobody is redundant, here. I do not believe those who claim either that prison and exile are pointless or that it is up to us to do everything. We need to make the most of the existing leadership whilst new leaders arise. There isnt enough prison and exile to stop so much democracy. The anti-repressive struggle is one of the main unitary fronts for the pro-independence camp and it would be absurd to shun that because it is a basic tool for any national liberation movement willing to make progress.

Predictions such as if the Guardia Civil seize a single ballot box, we will have won and Europe will not allow the Spanish governments violence have been proven wrong. We always said that everything would come at a price. Now we know to what extent they are prepared to twist their own legal system for the sake of Spains unity.

So lets be straight with each other: we need to strengthen our leadership and reach the sort of massive consensus that has always yielded results for us. And we also need leaders in our institutions and in the streets in order to achieve that. For instance, with clear actions in response to Catalonias energy poverty and housing issues. We need to manage the interim period without relinquishing the ground we have conquered already.

My friend Manuel Delgado asked me: If we were bold enough to fight, why werent we bold enough to win?. I do not have a definitive answer and I am unable to throw anything back in anyones face, but an observation by Eduard Voltas is a key starting point: There needs to be more of us, and more determined. A prisons walls cannot set the boundaries of the resistance and perseverance of the independence movement, and we cannot afford to strengthen the legitimacy of the decisions taken at the expense of eroding our much-needed majorities. Therefore, not only do I believe that we can win, but I believe that we are winning already.

Now we need to overcome the massive blow dealt by the Spanish State (batons and direct rule included) as soon as possible. Yet we must remain very proud of how Catalan society has withstood, peacefully and without any outside support, the onslaught of such a mighty State. On such an uneven playing field, endurance also means victory.

The Rights and Liberties manifesto, signed by 200 prominent names from all over Spain, also provides some respite for democrats. Indeed, we cannot but keep denouncing ours as a trial against a legitimately elected government, as well as against the representatives of grassroots groups: it is an unprecedented instance of ideological and cultural repression within the EU that can only presently be compared to Turkey and Russia.

Swiss lawyer Olivier Peters gave me a copy of Amnistie, a book that includes a quote by K. Liebknecht during his trial in Berlin in 1916: I am here to accuse, not to defend myself. This must be our attitude during our trial: rather than defend ourselves, we must accuse the Spanish State of blatantly infringing upon our basic rights and, at the same time, we must query the public opinion at large about the democratic regression that we are experiencing.

We, the political prisoners and exiles, provide democratic leverage: we must persuade the international community to denounce our imprisonment. We mustnt give in to the attempt by Spains justice system to conceal this judicial outrage, with baseless, disproportionate accusations. A German court of law has confirmed that much, as they would have done in Switzerland, Belgium and Scotland.

In the meantime, we must keep strengthening Catalonias collective imaginary with a militant attitude in our shared struggle to turn culture into the main antidote against intolerance and totalitarianism.

Far from weakening my resolve, each and every one of these 300 days I have spent in prison has strengthened my democratic convictions: for months now I have felt that no penalty will be hefty enough to bend me. I am convinced that, as the years go by, our sentences will be a heavier burden for them to bear than for us. I am also convinced that honest, unconditional dialogue is the only way forward out of this political conflict. Meanwhile, we will persevere with our dignity untouched, like anyone who refuses to see their smile and their mad lust for life taken away from them.

Good health, tenderness, understanding and republic.
Puig de les BassesThe days go by with hours that are tremendous, regimented, round and undistinguishable, with matching sleepless nights. Every night the thick summer heat dampens our knee-pits. This is my first visit with Dolors Bassa since she was moved to a Catalan prison. As ever, there are four of us. We are an odd, sisterly, fun, wild bunch: Natza Farre, Helena Garcia Melero, Silvia Soler and myself. We arrange to meet in Figueres, at cafe Astoria (Silvia is a local and has given us directions). From there, we drive to the Puig de les Basses facility to visit the lady who pens her letters with a green felt tip in beautiful, polite longhand and writes about all sorts of prison stuff, about the hopeless, directionless women that she is staying with.

It is a modern prison, this is. The guards recognise us from TV, radio or St. Georges Day. As always, you show your ID and state your postal code. Is this your current address? We go in five minutes late, so they might take it off the total time we are allowed. Ours is booth number 31. We walk through a maze: twenty, twenty-five, twenty-nine. She is there already. Shes put on eye make-up for the occasion (an unwritten rule among women: Ill make an effort). I am the one with some prison-visiting experience, the others have none. I sit and huddle on a marble surface. The others keep standing because they darent pick up a chair; and for that gesture, just for that gesture, I would kiss them till my lips hurt. Natza ought to be the toughest, but she is the most devastated of us. Her lips are puffy and her eyes are tearful. Afterwards we agree that her piece will be about the problems that Dolors encounters for being a woman. Silvia manages to put on the bravest of faces. In her bag, Dolors is carrying Silvias latest book, Els vells amics (The Old Friends), the one with paintbrushes on the cover. Ive got the hardcover edition, but were only allowed paperbacks in here, Dolors says. Helenas blue eyes, so sincere, open wide and are about to well up as her hands cover her mouth. These are my friends.

Dolors is a chatterbox. She rests the palm of her hands against the glass partition, she smiles, like a teacher, like a sister, and she tells us things. We ask her about the trial. How can you know what you have been charged with, if you have no internet access?. She explains that now they have been allowed to read the case file (60,000 pages long) off a USB drive. The judge has charged her and so he holds her in custody because [as Catalonias Employment Minister] she set the minimum services for the general strike on October 3 last year. And he thinks those services were too minimal, which means that many more people took to the streets and, therefore, they could have behaved violently. We put our hands against the glass, we gnaw on our fists.

Theres more. One day Jaume Soler came to see me he was the mayor of Arbucies and asked me to help him get in touch with [Foreign Minister] Raul Romeva so they could discuss something to do with cooperation with Latin America. Well, it totally slipped my mind, you know. A few days later Jaume sent me an email which read: Minister, do you recall that you said youd get Romeva to get in touch?. She has got our full attention. Well, now they are saying that Jaume Solers email proves that we had plans to travel to Latin America to discuss independence.

Lets hope this is all worth our while

We ask her whether she thinks that the trial will be broadcast so that these shocking fabrications, all this simmering, deliberate wickedness may be exposed. She says she doesnt think so. She explains that she is horrified at the prospect of being transferred back to Madrid for the trial. They get you up at 5 am, take you to court and leave you locked up in a cell the size of this booth, with only a toilet. You are not even allowed any writing paper. The hours go by and by the time its your turn to appear in court, you are in bits.

Its time to leave. All four of us step outside and we are hugging each other when, suddenly, we realise that she is watching from the corridor. So she has seen us cry, which we didnt want. But perhaps its better this way. Maybe she has a point: I hope my time in prison is not a waste, that its worth something.

We go out. Outside we meet her sister and her son, who live very close by. We hold each other like strangers do, we kiss each other and lick off our tears. Who would have known, years ago, that we would be crying over this sort of thing? Over an innocent woman held in prison who writes letters with a green felt tip pen? She told me: you know, I havent smelled a scent for months, her sister says. We look at her. And she adds: Now I send her letters dabbed with perfume.
 While I was on road, did others notice that we "stopped being a civilized nation and accepted barbarism"? | Main | Big new Third Circuit opinion sorts through various post-Johnson habeas ACCA headaches 

Beth Schwartzapfel has this effective new Marshall Project piece on the Supreme Court's recent juvenile sentencing jurisprudence under the headline "The Right Age to Die?: For some, science is outpacing the High Court on juveniles and the death penalty." Here are excerpts:

When 15-year-old Luis Cruz joined the Latin Kings in 1991, he was a child by almost any measure: he couldnt legally drive, drop out of school, or buy a beer. But was he still a child a few years later when  just months after he turned 18  he murdered two people on the orders of gang leaders?

Earlier this year, a federal judge in Connecticut said yes. The judge decided that a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that forbade mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles should apply to 18-year-olds like Cruz, and granted his request to be resentenced. Its one of a small but growing number of cases in which courts are grappling with what to do with young adults who commit the most serious crimes....

When it comes to the most extreme punishments, the Supreme Court has ruled so far that 18 is a bright line. If youre under 18 at the time of your crime, you cant be executed. You also cant be sentenced to life without parole without a hearing to consider your maturity level. But the high court has never extended those protections past age 18.

The qualities that distinguish juveniles from adults do not disappear when an individual turns 18, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in Roper v. Simmons, the first of four modern cases in which the court has laid out its thinking on these issues. However, a line must be drawn. The high court has not revisited that line since Roper was decided in 2005. But state and lower federal courts have begun to consider whether people between the ages of 18 and 21  the period psychologists now call late adolescence  should have the same kind of special consideration that younger teenagers get before they face sentencing for murder.

The Roper case was decided at a time when researchers had recently begun imaging adolescents brains. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI  like the technology doctors use to look inside the brain for tumors or strokes  researchers were able to observe how young peoples brains responded to various situations.... But it wasnt until recently that scientists began to research what happens to the brain in late adolescence and young adulthood, says Laurence Steinberg, a leading researcher into adolescent development who helped write the American Psychological Associations briefs before the Supreme Court and who has testified in many of the more recent lower court cases. And when they did, they found that those same youthful qualities seem to persist until the early- to mid-20s.

In one recent study, Steinberg and his colleagues gave a series of tests to more than 5,000 children and young adults across 11 countries. They found that the impulse to chase thrills and look for immediate gratification peaks around age 19 and declines into the 20s. Steinberg describes this system of the brain like the gas pedal in a car. The brake system  the ability to plan ahead and consider consequences  takes longer to catch up: it isnt generally fully mature until the 20s. Steinberg says if he had to draw a new bright line, he would draw it at 21.

Knowing what we know now, one couldve made the very same arguments about 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds that were made about 16- and 17-year-olds in Roper, he testified in a recent Kentucky case.In that Kentucky case, a judge found the states death penalty statute unconstitutional because it allows people who were under 21 at the time of their crime to be executed. If the science in 2005 mandated the ruling in Roper, the science in 2017 mandates this ruling, he wrote. A Pennsylvania court last year considered an appeal from a woman who was sentenced to mandatory life without parole after serving as a lookout, at 18, during a botched robbery that ended in murder. The court rejected the appeal on technical grounds, but called 18 an arbitrary legal age of maturity and said an honest reading of the Supreme Courts ruling would require courts to reconsider it....

Justice Kennedy, who was often the Supreme Courts swing vote in close cases and who voted in favor of all four of the courts major rulings extending these protections to juveniles under 18, retired this summer. The court is widely expected to tack right when President Donald Trumps pick assumes Kennedys seat. In light of that, opponents of juvenile life without parole are aiming to keep these cases in lower courts for now, said Marsha Levick of the Juvenile Law Center, which has submitted briefs in support of many of these defendants. Theyre not likely to get a friendly hearing on the question of whether 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds are less culpable than adults from the newly composed high court, Levick said.

In the meantime, Steinberg, the psychologist, says he has been hired by the attorneys for Nikolas Cruz, who faces the death penalty as the accused gunman in Februarys Parkland school shooting in Florida. Cruz was 19 when he allegedly killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Steinberg struggled about this a lot, he said. But in the end its really hard logically to say, People your age are too immature to be sentenced to death, unless you do something really, really bad.
The Lebanese army received on Sunday the fourth batch of eight Bradley fighting vehicles from the United States, local media reported. "The Lebanese army received eight Bradley vehicles within the framework of the U.S. military assistance program for Lebanon," according to Lebanon Files, a Lebanese news website.



In 2017, the Security Assistance Command delivered its first shipment of Bradley Fighting Vehicles and other foreign military sales materiel to Lebanon to support the Middle East nation in its fight against ISIS

(Credit: US Army)

On June 13, the United States delivered four A-29 Super Tucano aircrafts to the Lebanese army. The four aircrafts were the remaining of the six the U.S. had delivered in its latest military aid package to Lebanon. The first two were delivered in October 2017.

While this latest multimillion dollar delivery was a significant provision, it was just the most recent in a long-term, security assistance partnership that began decades ago. And since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the United States has invested more than 1.5 billion U.S. dollars in training and equipping over 32,000 Lebanese troops.



The M2A2 Bradley AIFV (Armoured Infantry Fighting Vehicle) was introduced in the U.S. Army in 1988, it's an improved version of the standard vehicle Bradley M2A1.



The improvements include the following: enhanced vehicle survivability by restowing ammunition; internal armour protection of key components; spall liners and mounting provisions for improved vehicle smoke screening; additional armour protection including additional armour for the hull and turret; a ballistic shroud provided for the commander's back-up sight; and improved drive train and suspension.
COP26 may be a cop-out in the making COP26 is just about a month away. Delayed for a year by the Covid-19 pandemic, the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference has built up even more expectations and momentum during the intervening months
According to the Vietnam Customs, in July alone, the country imported around 6,600 built-up cars totally worth $134 million, an increase of 96.2 percent in the quantity and 63.6 percent in the value against June.



Of the amount of the CBU cars, around 5,044 units worth $90 million were from Thailand in July; accordingly.

Vietnam also bought 975 CBU cars from Indonesia in July and in the first seven months it imported 986 units from Indonesia.

In addition, Vietnam also imported 140 CBU units from China, 114 units from the US, 110 units from Japan and 62 units from South Korea.

By LAC PHONG  Translated by UYEN PHUONG
Jan Heuvels, international partner at Ince & Co, has stepped down from the role to focus on the firms Asia growth strategy.

Heuvels became senior partner in 2015 and in 2017 relocated from London to Hong Kong but he says that its time for a change.

The time is right for me to pass on the leadership baton of the firm and I will continue to spearhead our Asia Growth Plan from Hong Kong. It has been an honour for me to lead Ince & Co since 2015 and I look forward to working closely with our new International Senior Partner following their appointment, he said.
The firm sees the new service as a natural step in the evolution of its commitment to WA.

We have always been about helping WA to thrive and grow by advising global businesses operating in our state as well as locally grown organisations. JacMac+ is no exception, Sandover said. Were unashamedly focused on helping our clients perform to their optimum in Western Australia, whether they have global, Australasian or WA footprints. We believe that its this connection and commitment to our state that really makes JacMac+ stand-out.

WAs largest independent law firm also recognises that the needs and goals of lawyers are also changing. The driving force behind JacMac+ are partners Isla McRobbie and Liz Tylich, the firm says.

Its about diversity of opportunity and enabling lawyers to work in a range of different ways, said McRobbie, who chairs the firms diversity committee. JacMac+ offers the opportunity for high quality, stimulating work on a flexible basis. It will suit people who enjoy that kind of variety, or who want to combine their legal career with other interests. This is a fantastic development, not just for Jackson McDonald but also for lawyers in WA.

Tylich said that the firm will also approach JacMac+ with the same driving principles and culture that has made the firm successful.
Whyte will join the firms malpractice and health law practice led by Dr Andrew Lu OAM, who the firm recruited in June to spearhead the practice in Perth.

As we grow our health industry portfolio under Dr Lu, Toby will also assist in the resolution of vocational and disciplinary matters involving health practitioners and at inquests involving doctors and hospitals, Ablong said.

Whyte will also work in the motor injury insurance practice led by partner Ruth Slater. Her focus will include personal injury matters, such as medical treatment liability and motor injury cases, for some of the firms key clients, the firm said.

She is renowned for providing timely, proactive claims management advice to her clients based on the principles of early intervention, accurate advice and effective risk management, Ablong said. In Toby, we have gained wisdom of experience thanks to her handling of matters involving complex issues of medical causation, as well as her ability in giving advice on liability and quantum for dependency claims that arise from more serious accidents.

Whyte said that the move is personally and professionally exciting for her. HBA is known for its collaborative partnership with clients and its creative and pragmatic approach to problem solving. The firm meets client needs via a bespoke fee structure that takes into account challenges faced by the client, she said.


(By Katty2016/Shutterstock.com) (By Katty2016/Shutterstock.com)

Australia's population has exceeded 25 million, increasing by the equivalent of one person every one minute and 23 seconds, according to official figures, amid calls for migration to be targeted towards regional areas.Much of the growth is led by people moving to Australia to live and work, with one person arriving to live in Australia every minute, the data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) population clock shows.ABS director of demography, Anthony Grubb, explained that Australia's population has experienced major changes with numbers up six fold since 1901 when it was 3.8 million.By 1918 it had grown to five million, it then doubled to 10 million by 1959 and reached 20 million in October 2004. It has been just over 2.5 years since it reached 24 million in January 2016.There has also been change in terms of where people go to live. In 1901 some 36% of Australians lived in capital cities and 64% in other urban and rural areas in Australia. In 2017, this has reversed with 67% living in capital cities and 33% in other urban and rural areas.Over the past three years, Australia's population has grown by around 400,000 people per year. If this trend continues, the country's population would be expected to reach 26 million in about three years' time.It is hoped that more overseas workers arriving in Australia can be persuaded to take up jobs outside of the main cities. For example, 87% of skilled migrants who arrived last year moved to Sydney and Melbourne.Citizenship Minister Alan Tudge said in a speech to the Business Council that more needs to be done to create a greater geographic spread of migration, to relieve pressure on housing and infrastructure.'At the moment, nearly all the migration is to our two largest cities. Meanwhile, we have other parts of Australia wanting more people. South Australian premier Steven Marshall, for example, has said that they would like an additional 15,000 migrants a year. I have regional mayors telling me they want hundreds more in their area,' he pointed out.'We want the best and brightest from the around the world. We need to not just be open to facilitating skilled migrants coming here, but in the case of the global super talent, actively seeking them out,' he explained.Tudge indicated that the Government is looking to formal programmes to push migration to regional areas where there is a demand for particular skills. One plan under consideration is customised labour agreements negotiated directly between a business bringing in workers and the Department of Home Affairs to cover specific regional areas.
In regards to bank statements / proving we live in the same address, I moved into my partners place about a year ago, he has been living there since about 2015.



We do have a lease but I was going to submit my bank statements which highlights proof I have been living with him since a year ago ie shopping in grocery stores. Would he have to do the same...? Would this even be necessary considering the lease? because he pays for the rent (he's a high earner) and I just pay for groceries/food.



Also how much bank statement proof would I need to provide? do I have to submit a full 12 month worth of bank statements? (seems too much) or can I just do selected extracts? ie a few transactions on jan, some from april - with months apart.
The car will begin delivering to customers this October, after production of the model has begun at the carmaker's facilities.In October, only the model equipped with the 1.5L i-VTEC engine - which develops 130 PS and maximum torque of 155 Nm at 4,600 rpm - will be made available. A sportier turbo version of the engine will be made available from spring 2019.The engine now on offer has been tweaked to offer improved performance. Honda added the so-called advanced plateau honing tech to it, allowing for a lower friction level between the pistons and the cylinder bores. This, in turn, leads to reduced long-term wear and increased engine efficiency.For the new model year, the Japanese carmaker made a few styling changes and interior updates as well. For the higher-grade version, for instance, the company will be offering a new 17-inch alloy design, unique chrome finisher on the exhaust and full LED lights for both the front and the rear.Visually, the front bumper received deeper air intakes that house circular fog lights. All models get daytime running lights as standard.At the interior, redesigned seats for the driver and front passenger incorporate changes to the seat cushion and backrest. With the help of new insulating material around the car, Honda says its subcompact is now quieter than ever.Since it began selling in 2015, the Honda HR-V has enjoyed an increasing success, fueled by the rising appetite of the consumers for this type of vehicles. In 2017, some 94,000 units of the HR-V were sold in the U.S. alone. On the European market, the model registered a slight decrease last year, to a total of nearly 30,000 vehicles.
Affected by the lack of sunlight caused by the huge storm , Opportunity entered sometime in June minimal operations mode, essentially shutting down to protect itself. As the skies begin to clear over the Red Planet, NASA began hoping the rover will power back up and start transmitting again.Unfortunately for NASAs engineers, the news so far isnt encouraging. Despite trying to raise the rover including by playing Wham!'s "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" in the control room, theres no response from the Opportunity."That's a long time to not hear from your rover, and we don't know what it's doing," Michael Staab, one of JPLs engineers, was quoted as saying by Space.com "This is the first time she had stopped talking to us and not resumed communication when we expected."The fact that NASA hasnt given up on the rover is backed by the lack of any additional information, offered by means of an official statement. This can be a clear sign that the agency will be trying some more before officially declaring the rover lost in action.Opportunity is perhaps the most iconic and extraordinary machines ever built by NASA. It arrived on Mars in 2004, and was supposed to be operational for only 90 days. It beat the odds and celebrated 14 years on the job this January.Opportunitys brother rover, the Spirit, managed to exceed its live expectation as well, but NASA lost contact with it in 2011.On the other side of the planet, NASAs other functional rover, the Curiosity, is powered by a nuclear generator instead of solar power, managed to weather the storm a lot better.
According to Business Times , Stadlers release was denied by a German federal court who found that the claims of the prosecutors  namely that he knew about and ignored emission cheating  are backed by evidence. Stadler was arrested by German prosecutors on June 18, and is suspected of having concealed evidence in the now three-year-long emissions scandal. The executive is said to have allowed rigged engines to be fitted into cars despite knowing they were tampered with."He allowed the engines to be deployed and to be sold despite knowing about the manipulation or deliberately turning a blind eye on the manipulation," the courts said in a document according to the source.Audi is involved in Volkswagens emissions scandal ever since its onset. The carmaker is accused of having tampered with at least 210,000 diesel cars with a so-called defeat device, which allowed them to trick emission measuring tools. The practice is said to go back as far as 2009.Stadler is the first high-ranking Volkswagen Group executive to be charged in Europe as part of the Dieselgate scandal. Ever since the scandal broke, VW has denied top-level executives were involved in the cheating and subsequent cover-up.Back in May, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) formally charged former VW CEO Martin Winterkorn with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and customers, wire fraud, and conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act.According to the papers filed in court, the CEO was at one point informed of the illegal practices of the company and decided to cover them up.One day after his arrest, Volkswagen removed Stadler from his position on the groups Supervisory Board and from Audi , at Stadlers request. His place was taken by Abraham Schot.
Image: KUTV

A professional pilot, Duane Youd, stole his employers Cessna Citation 525 jet and deliberately crashed it into his own house, in Payson, Utah, about 2:30 a.m. Monday, according to police reports. Youds wife and a boy, who were in the house, escaped without injury, but he died in the crash. Youds relation to the boy was unclear, according to Payson Police Sgt. Noemi Sandoval. The house was heavily damaged and the jet was destroyed by fire. Youd, age 47, had been arrested about 7:30 p.m. on Sunday in a nearby canyon after witnesses called police to report he was assaulting his wife. He was held in a local jail for several hours and then released on bail. The couple had gone to the canyon to talk over their problems, and reportedly had been drinking, according to Sandoval.

Within hours of his release, Youd drove to the Spanish Fork-Springville Airport, about 15 miles north of his home, and took off in his employers jet. He flew directly to his neighborhood and smashed into the house, Sandoval said. The jet clipped a nearby shed, which could have altered the jets trajectory. We dont know what his ultimate goal is, whether he meant to hit [the house] low like he did or he meant to hit it higher, Sandoval said. The lucky thing for us, if anything, in this whole situation is that we have destruction of property and we have one male deceased, but it could have been so much worse than what it was. Court records show Youd had previously been charged with disorderly conduct after a domestic violence incident in April, and was released on probation and ordered to attend counseling.
Six months after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., some of the surviving students are only becoming more organized and more ambitious  ringleaders of a vocal, demanding, tech-savvy strata of their generation.

Why they matter: This looks a lot like the '60s. The students aren't much younger  and some are the same age  as the Kent State shooting victims of 1970. They're smart, snarky in a witty way, and  like the Woodstock generation  wise for their age. But they seem a lot less self-destructive.

What's happening: I traveled this weekend with a group of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School alumni, who finished a summer-long bus tour yesterday in Newtown, Conn., home of Sandy Hook Elementary School.

I traveled this weekend with a group of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School alumni, who finished a summer-long bus tour yesterday in Newtown, Conn., home of Sandy Hook Elementary School. The Parkland activists are aware of the sheer spectacle of many baby boomers and millennial adults throwing up their hands over gun laws  and placing their hope for change in high school students.

The student-led uprising is one of the most dramatic dimensions of an escalating, two-year run of U.S. activism that includes a record number of women running for public office, and teacher strikes in a half-dozen states.

An anti-establishment strain runs through it. On right and left, those in the streets are feeding massive energy into the midterms, and could be decisive in both local and national races.

When 17 of their classmates and teachers were killed on Feb. 14, the Parkland students collectively shouted: "Never again." But 12 more schoolhouse killings followed around the country.

With the summer, the school violence stopped. On Wednesday, classes resume at Stoneman Douglas, and at countless other U.S. schools in the subsequent days and weeks.

the school violence stopped. On Wednesday, classes resume at Stoneman Douglas, and at countless other U.S. schools in the subsequent days and weeks. "It's going to take a cultural shift" before U.S. gun laws change significantly, Jaclyn Corin, president of the incoming senior class at Stoneman Douglas, told Axios at a raucous gathering yesterday in Newtown. "And a cultural shift always takes a generation or two."

The shooting's aftermath made web and TV stars of seniors Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg (pictured above). But now there's a deep bench:

A group of Parkland classmates, following this spring's March for Our Lives, pulled off a 59-day summer bus campaign.

following this spring's March for Our Lives, pulled off a 59-day summer bus campaign. They hit some 80 cities and towns in two dozen states, working to register young new voters who might help defeat political leaders supported by the National Rifle Association, their main target. (The Parkland students say they're not anti-Second Amendment. Here are their stated demands).

some 80 cities and towns in two dozen states, working to register young new voters who might help defeat political leaders supported by the National Rifle Association, their main target. (The Parkland students say they're not anti-Second Amendment. Here are their stated demands). In New York on Friday, the group had swelled into a band of powerful high school orators from around the nation  Chicago, St. Louis, L.A.

This fall, the students plan something even bigger: a get-out-the-vote drive that will leverage their vaunted influence on social media, especially Twitter.

But at event after event, apart from the traveling students themselves, there appeared to be far more adults than their 18-and-older intended audience.

after event, apart from the traveling students themselves, there appeared to be far more adults than their 18-and-older intended audience. Registration of voters 18-29 this year has barely budged from the pre-Parkland average, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Be smart: The young organizers are going all-in on a strategy of not changing votes, but turning non-voters into voters.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 18 for bilateral talks on Syria, violence in eastern Ukraine and energy issues, according to a German government spokesman.

Why it matters: The energy question will be of particular interest to the U.S. because of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, a project that President Trump has repeatedly criticized. Trump has said Germany is "totally controlled" by Russia because of the planned pipeline and wants Germany  an enormous gas purchaser  to buy liquefied natural gas from the U.S. instead.
Sometimes, a computer science researcher produces a paper whose findings, if published, might lead to societal harm. Now, some experts are questioning the default course of action: publishing the paper anyway, potential damage be damned.

Why it matters: The call to suppress some research challenges decades-old principles in computer science and could slow work in a field that drives the economy, helps define the future of work and is the subject of intense global competition.

The big picture: If the field does decide to withhold some work, it would join several scientific disciplines, including nuclear, military and intelligence research, that often keep results under wraps.

"A very core principle in the computer science community has been that openness is a fundamental good," said Brent Hecht, a Northwestern professor who co-authored a proposal for how the field should address potentially harmful research. But he said "recent events have made me and my colleagues question that value."

Potentially harmful research should be published, says Hecht, but should include a discussion of "complementary technologies, policy, or other interventions that could mitigate the negative broader impacts."

The other side: No, it shouldn't be published, at least in rare cases, says Jack Clark, strategy and communications director at OpenAI, and Paul Scharre, director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.

One reason for suppressing would be if a harmful finding was difficult to discover but easy to reproduce, Scharre says.

Would research be set back by selective openness?

Definitely, says Clark, but it's a worthwhile tradeoff. Choosing not to pump the brakes is like "saying scientific progress is more important than societal stability," he said.

A potential model comes from the field of computer security, several experts told Axios.

When security researchers find a critical vulnerability in computer code, they generally notify the software developers before announcing their findings publicly, giving engineers time to patch the problem. This is known as responsible disclosure.

For other types of computer science research, responsible disclosure could involve waiting to publish potentially harmful results until an effective countermeasure is ready for publication, too.

A middle-ground approach might see researchers withhold some details while still publishing their results. For instance, a paper might withhold computer code or training data that could easily be repurposed in a harmful way.

Go deeper: Confronting AI's demons.
Migrants fleeing civil wars and insecurity at home in unseaworthy boats are being refused assistance from ships passing them in the Mediterranean Sea, an European humanitarian group said Sunday, per the AP.

The details: SOS Mediterranee, which had rescued 141 migrants on Friday in waters off Libya, said Italys and Maltas recent refusal to allow vessels from docking on their shores could be the reason why ship operators are unwilling to get involved amid fear that they would be stranded at sea with migrants on board. The group found itself in the middle of a diplomatic standoff in June when one of its rescue ships was allowed to dock by Spain's government after being refused by other nations.
Randy Atkins is trying to make coal great again, but not how President Trump has promised.

The intrigue: Atkins company, Ramaco Carbon, is working to open what would be Wyomings first coal mine devoted not to electricity, but to high-tech products like carbon fiber or 3D printing material. Atkins represents the leading edge of what could be a new, high-value market for coal after decades of being Americas cheapest power source.

The big picture: Coals share of U.S. electricity mix has plummeted from nearly 50% to 30% in just the past decade, fueled by growth in cheap, cleaner-burning natural gas and tougher environmental regulations. Trump has promised to revive coal and is directing his Energy Department to bolster economically struggling coal plants (and similarly challenged nuclear reactors).

Atkins, whose career has spanned energy and financial firms for more than 35 years and whose father founded Arch Coal, says finding new uses for coal is a better long-term bet.

Market forces always in the end predominate one way or another, good or bad. If you create an artificial demand, at some point that will probably go away. And so we have to have a real demand for a product to have some longevity perspective.

 Randy Atkins, CEO, Ramaco Carbon

A high-tech carbon industry could support an average of 2,600 jobs annually through 2035 in Wyoming, which is about a quarter of the states current manufacturing workforce. That's according to a report released today by American Jobs Project, a nonpartisan California-based think tank that looks at how advanced energy tech can drive local economies.

Atkins company is set to begin construction within weeks on a research center in Wyoming for high-tech coal products. Longer term, he plans to build an industrial park in the mold of Silicon Valley  but for coal. Wyoming is America's No. 1 coal producer, accounting for 40% of all coal mined.

The types of products that coal could be refined into seems limitless, Atkins said, and could replace other hydrocarbons  namely oil and natural gas. Cost is the main challenge, with no existing manufacturing base to refine coal like there is for oil and gas. Some of attractive products include:

Carbon fiber as a lighter weight and stronger replacement for steel and aluminum in cars, wind turbines and more.

Building materials like concrete.

Chemicals used in a wide variety of everyday products, from cosmetics to shoes, which currently come from refined oil and gas.

To some historians, this may sound familiar. America used coal for things other than electricity more than a century ago (and experimented with its use as a liquid fuel in the 1970s and 1980s). But today's technology enables much higher tech, according to a scientist at an Energy Department lab in Pittsburgh, which has stepped up its research in this area since 2015.

"Theres been a renewed interest to use coal in manufacturing because we have new scientific tools and a better understanding of the physics and chemistry of coal than we had 100 years ago. This allows us to think about things we never would have thought about even 10, 15 years ago, like making carbon fiber."

 Christopher Matranga, National Energy Technology Lab

It wouldn't be a total replacement for coal jobs lost from electricity use decline, but it could still provide an economic boost. The sheer quantity of coal needed for power dwarfs what could be refined into high-tech material.

Volumes of high-tech carbon could reach 100 million tons, compared to the 725 million tons of coal the U.S. mined last year, according to a presentation Atkins shared with lawmakers when testifying on the topic last month. The mantra driving Atkins and others is quality over quantity  and much higher profit margins.

Youre using less coal but creating higher value products that may have similar effects in the local economy because of good wages, said Kate Ringness, co-director of the American Jobs Project.

The environmental and climate change impact of high-tech coal is less compelling than its potential to reap high economic values.

Coal is still being mined, which has environmental and public-health impacts.

From a climate perspective, turning coal into products gets at just half the problem: avoiding emissions from burning it for electricity. Using captured carbon dioxide emissions and turning that into products would be most optimal from a climate perspective, experts say. But on a cost basis, coal is cheaper than captured CO2.

You cannot make that economic argument in the absence of a climate context, said Volker Sick, a University of Michigan professor. Last week he helped launch a new initiative at the school injecting millions of dollars into technology capturing carbon emissions and turning that into similar products Atkins is aiming to create with coal.

Whats next: The National Coal Council, a federal advisory committee to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, is preparing to write a report examining how coal can expand beyond electricity into products. It has asked Atkins to chair the effort, according to a draft letter viewed by Axios.

The council expects to receive an official directive from Perry to conduct the report next month. An Energy Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi held a secret summit in Egypt on May 22nd to launch efforts toward a Gaza stabilization deal, U.S. officials told me.

Why it matters: This meeting was pivotal in the Egyptian-led efforts over the last three months to reach a deal between Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority on stabilizing Gaza. The Egyptians updated the Trump administration about their efforts and got the backing of the White House.

Netanyahu traveled to Egypt on May 22nd with a very small group of advisers and security guards. He stayed in Egypt for a few hours and went back to Israel after midnight. Netanyahu's trip stayed secret and most of the members of his security cabinet were kept out of the loop.

According to U.S. officials, Netanyahu and Sisi discussed a deal that included a long-term ceasefire in Gaza as well as...

Easing the Israeli and Egyptian siege on Gaza.

The return of the Palestinian Authority to the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip.

The reconstruction of critical infrastructure in Gaza.

Solving the issue of Israeli soldiers and civilians held by Hamas.

During the meeting, the Egyptian president told Netanyahu that any solution in Gaza must include the return of the Palestinian Authority to the strip in order to gradually retake control from Hamas.

Sisi stressed in the meeting that the full demilitarization of Gaza shouldnt be a precondition to the initiative.

Sisi's message to Netanyahu was that Israel, the Sunni Arab countries and the international community must put pressure on Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to go back to administrating Gaza, regardless of his reluctance to do it.

The leaders also discussed the Trump administration's long-anticipated Middle East peace plan.
A scene that caught the attention of West Wing officials and national security lawyers today: Omarosa let NBC's "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd play tapes of White House chief of staff John Kelly, whom she secretly recorded while he was firing her.

Why this matters: It's extraordinary enough to secretly record a White House colleague and then play the tape on television. But it's even more stunning that the conversation happened in the Situation Room  the most secure area in the West Wing, reserved for the most sensitive conversations, many of them dealing with highly classified intelligence.

Behind the scenes: I spoke to several Trump officials who've spent time in the SitRoom. They say Kelly and the White House lawyers  especially Uttam Dhillon, who was recently appointed to head the Drug Enforcement Administration  used the SitRoom to talk with staff they were accusing of serious breaches, including problems with their clearances.

You have to lie and intentionally subvert the rules to get a recording device into the SitRoom, which is actually a group of several secure meeting rooms.

When White House officials enter the secure area  after getting buzzed in while a security officer watches through a keyhole camera  they immediately enter a lobby with a wall of lockers. They are required to put their phones and any other electronic devices, like Apple watches, in the lockers. They hold onto the locker key while they take their meeting in one of the conference rooms.

In the recording Omarosa played on "Meet the Press," Kelly refuses to elaborate on the "pretty serious integrity violations" he tells her she committed.

The bottom line: Omarosa says Kelly threatened her and she made her secret recording to protect herself. And to be clear: the conversation was not classified, meaning she may not have broken federal law. But national security lawyers I've spoken to say its nonetheless disturbing.
On a White House conference call with Iran experts last week, a senior administration official said the Trump administration will reimpose sanctions on financial messaging services later this year. That might sound boring. But the administration official was referring to what could soon become another major fight between the Trump administration and Europe.

Why this matters: In the context of Iran sanctions, "financial messaging services" refers to SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication)  a linchpin of the global financial system that facilitates payments across borders and connects more than 11,000 banks around the world.

SWIFT cut off Iran from the global financial system in 2012 as a result of American pressure on the Europeans to crack down on Tehran. Then SWIFT reconnected Iran after Obama secured the nuclear deal with Iran.

"SWIFT is the backbone of the global financial system and without access to SWIFT Iran can't move money around the world, cannot get paid for oil, pay for their imports and would have a difficult time financing its activities abroad," said Mark Dubowitz, an Iran hawk who heads the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and was on the call last week.

"The administration seems committed to financially and economically squeezing the regime using all instruments of national power," Dubowitz added, "and has already signaled that it will bring back the SWIFT sanctions to deny Iranian banks access to the SWIFT system."

Behind the scenes: Following Trump's withdrawal from the Iran deal, in May, the Europeans have been fighting to keep the deal alive and to make sure that enough money is flowing to placate Iran's leaders. A big part of that is ensuring that Iranian banks remain plugged into the SWIFT network.

A U.S. source in close touch with senior European officials tells me they want to shield SWIFT from U.S. pressure to expel Iranian banks.

But Trump officials are signaling they may even sanction SWIFT officials if they keep Iran connected to the global financial system.

What's next? SWIFT is governed by a board of directors, including senior executives from the world's largest banks. In November, the board will have to decide whether or not to call Trump's bluff.

"Regardless of the views of European political leaders, SWIFT may want to protect the integrity of its financial messaging platform from the illicit financial activities of Iranian banks that will be re-sanctioned by the administration," Dubowitz told me.

If they do call Trump's bluff, the president will have to decide whether to take the unprecedented step of sanctioning top executives from the world's leading banks, like Citi and J.P. Morgan.

The bottom line: This issue isn't getting much attention yet, but it could become one of the biggest brawls between the Trump administration and the EU.
Judge Dabney Friedrich, appointed by President Trump to the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C., ruled Monday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia is constitutional, reports Politico.

Why it matters: This is the fourth federal judge to strike down efforts to invalidate Mueller's probe. The latest appeal was leveled by Russian company Concord Management, which was indicted for funding the social media "troll farm" known as the Internet Research Agency.
Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan has met with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoygu in Moscow to discuss Russian-Armenian military ties and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

According to the Armenian Defense Ministry, Tonoyan and Shoygu discussed current issues and upcoming tasks in bilateral defense cooperation. They attached importance to consistent implementation of agreements based on mutual trust and joint strategic interests, the ministry said in a statement.

Speaking about military-technical cooperation, the Armenian and Russian defense ministers stressed the importance of timely realization of ongoing programs in this area, it added in an apparent reference to Russian arms supplies to Armenia.

Last October, Russia provided Armenia with a fresh $100 million loan for buying more Russian weapons at discounted prices. The Russian Kommersant daily claimed on August 2 that the planned delivery of those weapons is now in serious doubt. The paper pointed to a rare diplomatic spat between Moscow and Yerevan sparked by criminal charges brought in Armenia against the secretary general of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, Yuri Khachaturov.

Russian Deputy Defense Minister Aleksandr Fomin denied the Kommersant report when he visited Armenia on August 3. Everything is on track, Fomin told reporters.

Speaking to RFE/RLs Armenian service in Moscow on Friday, Tonoyan expressed confidence that all Russian-Armenian defense agreements will be mutually realized. At least, we are getting no indications to the contrary, he said.

In its official press release on Shoygus talks with Tonoyan, Russias Defense Ministry only cited the Armenian ministers comments on the annual International Army Games organized by the Russian military. Tonoyan attended, together with Shoygu and other foreign dignitaries, the closing ceremony of the latest games held near Moscow.

According to his press office, Tonoyan also briefed Shoygu on the current situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone and, in particular, Armenias border with Azerbaijans Nakhichevan exclave.Yerevan has reported increased tension at some sections of that border where Azerbaijani troops have moved their positions closer to Armenian army posts in May.

The Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman, Artsrun Hovannisian, on Monday accused the Azerbaijani side of resorting to more provocations there. The Armenian armed forces yesterday responded with fire to Azerbaijani provocations in the Nakhichevan direction, he wrote on Facebook. As a result, we do not exclude Azerbaijani combat casualties.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry reported that one of its soldiers serving in Nakhichevan was shot and wounded by Armenian forces on Sunday. It accused Yerevan of continuing to systematically escalate the situation in the Nakhichevan direction.
By Rashid Shirinov

Prices in the Baku real estate market increased by 2.06 percent in July 2018 compared to June, said Nusret Ibrahimov, Director General of the MBA Group consulting company and real estate expert.

He noted that the price increase has affected almost all segments of the market over the past month, except for commercial facilities.

Prices in the primary housing market have increased by 0.28 percent in a month, in the secondary market  by 0.1 percent, in the land market  by 3.71 percent, in the market of private and country houses  by 2.64 percent, the expert told Trend on August 12.

As for rental housing prices, they have risen by 3.98 percent, while rentals for commercial facilities increased by 1.32 percent, and prices in the commercial property market decreased by 0.26 percent in July.

Ibrahimov noted that the rise in prices in July is a usual recovery for the real estate market after the decline in June.

The expert added that compared with the end of July 2017, prices in the real estate market have increased by 1.7 percent, and the growth is mainly due to the rise in prices in the commercial property rental market and the land market.

Compared with the end of July 2017, prices in the secondary housing market increased by 5.44 percent last month, in the land market  by 12.1 percent, and in the market of commercial facilities rental  by 14.51 percent, he said.

Meanwhile, prices in the primary housing market decreased by 1.55 percent, in the commercial property market  by 8.98 percent, in the rental market  by 3.56 percent, and in the market of private and country houses  by 5.22 percent.

Earlier Ibragimov mentioned that prices in the Baku real estate market can grow by six percent by the end of the year. In general, real estate in the capital is becoming more expensive, and this is mainly due to the markets of commercial housing, land, private and country houses according to the expert.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By Rashid Shirinov

Iran is negotiating with Azerbaijan for the transit of electricity through the country to Russia, Iranian Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian told Iranian media on August 13.

We are seriously following the plan of Irans accession to the European electric power systems, he said, adding that joining them through Irans northern neighbors is one of the possible scenarios.

The minister also noted that Iran seeks to exchange electricity with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Iraq.

It is noteworthy that in April this year, the energy ministers of Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran discussed the possibility of creating a working group for the unification of the power systems of the three countries.

The working group will consist of 18 people (six from each country). The group should prepare a feasibility study of integrating the electric power systems of the three countries.

At the April meeting, the parties noted the great potential of such a format of cooperation and stressed that the integration of Azerbaijan, Russia and Irans power systems will create an opportunity to expand export-import operations.

The integration will allow Azerbaijan to strengthen its position as an exporter and country for electricity transit. Currently, the generation capacity of the electric power system of Azerbaijan is more than 7,000 megawatts, which makes it possible to generate about 24 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. This enables Azerbaijan to export 2.1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By Laman Ismayilova

The weather will be changeable cloudy, occasionally gloomy in Baku on August 14.

Short rain is predicted in some places of the peninsula in the morning.

Mild north-west wind will blow.

The temperature on the peninsula will be +20-23C at night, +25-27C in afternoon in Absheron peninsula, +21-23C at night, + 25-27C in the afternoon in Baku, the Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry reported.

Atmospheric pressure will be 761mm; relative humidity will be 70-80% at night, 55-60% in the afternoon.

sea water temperature will be 23-24 degrees on Absheron beaches (Sumgayit, Novkhani, Pirshaghi, Nardaran, Bilgah, Zagulba), the sea water temperature will be 24-25 degrees in southern beaches (Turkan, Hovsan, Sahil, Shikh).

Strong north-west wind will blow, as a result of which going to beaches is not advisable.

In the regions of Azerbaijan, rain is expected in some areas. West wind will blow. The temperature will be +18-23C at night, +25-30C in daytime, +5-13C in mountains at night, +14-19C.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By Trend

The Foreign Ministry of Turkmenistan held a meeting with a delegation from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) led by the senior adviser of Credit Department Kenji Hosono, said a message from the Turkmen Foreign Ministry.

The parties noted the productive nature of the cooperation established between Turkmenistan and the largest Japanese companies.

It was also noted at the meeting that the promising areas for partnership are oil and gas and chemical sectors, electricity, industry and transport spheres.

The representatives of the Japanese bank expressed interest in the intensification of relations and expressed their readiness to take an active part in the implementation of large-scale projects in Turkmenistan, the message says.

The State Bank for Foreign Economic Activity of Turkmenistan and JBIC signed an agreement on cooperation in 2013.

The website of the Turkmen bank said "the government of Turkmenistan plans to build a number of petrochemical factories and factories for the production of fertilizers using natural gas as raw materials."

A number of agreements and contracts were signed between Turkmengaz, Turkmenkhimiya and Turkmennebit (Turkmenoil) state concerns and Japanese Sojitz, Chiyoda, Nippon, ITOCHU, JGC, Kawasaki, TOYO, Mitsui, Tsukishima, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo companies in 2013.

It was reported then that the total cost of the planned joint projects exceeded $10 billion.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By Kamila Aliyeva

Uzbekistan intends to build a solar photovoltaic power plant with a capacity of up to 100 MW.

The government of the country approved a roadmap for the implementation of a pilot project to attract private investment for the construction of a solar photovoltaic plant with a capacity of up to 100 MW in the Navoi region.

The resolution of the cabinet notes that the State Committee for Investments, Uzbekenergo and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, signed an agreement.

According to the document, the IFC will provide financial advisory services in the search for and attraction of private investors on a competitive basis for the design, financing, construction and operation of facilities for photovoltaic energy with investment up to $ 1 billion on the basis of public-private partnership.

Within the framework of the agreement it is planned to implement a pilot project to attract private investments for the construction of a solar photovoltaic plant with a capacity of up to 100 MW in the Navoi region.

In accordance with the roadmap, an international tender for the project will take place in March 2019. It is expected that the agreement on the project with the investor will be signed in August 2019.

In September 2019, the government of Uzbekistan plans to hold talks with the IFC on the terms, volumes and deadlines for implementing the agreement at other sites with a total volume of up to 900 MW.

---

Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By Kamila Aliyeva

Uzbekistans natural gas production in January-July exceeded 34.33 billion tons thus showing an increase of 6.6 percent, according to the Uzbek State Statistics Committee.

At the same time, the Central Asian country reduced oil production, which totaled 437,500 tons, by 9.9 percent.

In the mentioned period, Uzbekistan also produced 1.23 million tons of gas condensate, thus showing an increase of 16.1 percent.

Uzbekistans gasoline production went up by 2.9 percent and amounted to 657,100. The output of diesel fuel went up by 17.7 percent in the reporting period and amounted to 650,600 tons.

This year, after a six-year break, Uzbekistan resumed gas supplies to neighboring Tajikistan and from 2018 the country intends to increase gas supplies to China up to 10 billion cubic meters per year.

In April last year, Gazprom gas concern signed a five-year contract with Uzbekistan on the purchase of 4 billion cubic meters per year starting from 2018. The document provides for a reduction in the volume of purchases compared to 2016, when Gazprom acquired about 6.2 billion cubic meters of gas in Uzbekistan.

Natural gas production in Uzbekistan amounted to 56.417 billion cubic meters in 2017. Meanwhile, the country reduced oil production by 6.3 percent to 806,000 tons in 2017.

Over the past few years, Uzbekistan has been systematically facing an acute shortage of gasoline and some other petroleum products.

In Uzbekistan in 2010-2016, gasoline production decreased by 26.2 percent, diesel fuel - by 8.3 percent, while imports of hydrocarbons increased 1.3 times.

The total capacity of the three refineries currently reaches about 10 million tons, but due to a significant reduction in the reserves of raw materials in the country's active fields, the volumes of extraction of black gold are steadily declining.

The loading of the production capacities of the republican refineries reaches, in total, only 60 percent. To ensure their full supply from this year, the Uzbek authorities intend to import oil from Kazakhstan and Russia - up to 1 million tons in total.

On November 20, Kazakh company Kaztransoil began shipping Russian oil to Uzbekistan. Oil is pumped via the KazTransOil pipeline system en route Omsk-Pavlodar-Shymkent- Shagyr oil loading point, from where it is poured into railway tanks and then transported by rail to Uzbekistan.

In late April 2017, Uzbekistan started construction of a new refinery in Zafarobod district of the countrys Jizzakh region, which is expected to operate using the crude imported from Kazakhstan and Russia.

The refinery has design capacity of processing of five million tons of oil per year, production of 3.7 million tons of car fuel, over 700,000 tons of aviation fuel and 300,000 tons of associated oil products.

---

Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By Trend

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the Islamic Republic could overcome the new US sanctions with better management and planning.

With better management and planning we would be able to resist the sanctions and overcome them, Ayatollah Khamenei said on August 13 addressing people from different walks of life in Tehran, Khamenei.ir reported.

He further noted todays economic problems emanate from inside and not outside.

Today's livelihood problems do not emerge from outside; they are internal. If actions are taken more efficiently, more prudently, more swiftly and more firmly, sanctions cannot have much effect and they can be resisted.

Khamenei further said this is economic mismanagement that is harming people more than the US sanctions.

I do not call it betrayal but a huge mistake in management, he said.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By Kamila Aliyeva

The passenger car production in Uzbekistan amounted to 94,370 units in January-July 2018, thus showing an increase of 18.8 percent compared to the same period in 2017, according to the Uzbek State Statistics Committee.

In January-July 2018, the output of trucks was 1,920 units, which is 18.2 percent less compared to the same period in 2017.

Production of buses in Uzbekistan in the reported period 2018 amounted to 303 and registered a decrease of 36.5 percent compared to January-July 2017.

Meanwhile, Uzbekistan increased the output of tractors by 7.5 times to 2,400 units.

Car industry occupies one of the leading places in the economy of Uzbekistan. A significant number of the country's population is employed in this sector of industry.

The vast majority of automotive enterprises in Uzbekistan are joint ventures with foreign partners. This shows that the country is successfully working to create a favorable investment climate.

The main production companies are GM Uzbekistan, SamAvto, JV MAN Auto-Uzbekistan and GM Powertrain Uzbekistan.

The automotive industry has undergone significant reform last year. Simplification of the procedure for buying cars is intended to increase the demand for them, and the expansion of export opportunities will make this Uzbek brand even more popular abroad.

Since 1998 Uzbekistan has been a member of the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (OICA).

---

Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Upon receiving a report of an active shooter, staff at Mercy Hospital Southwest followed their training and sheltered in place behind locked d
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For roughly half a century, Robert Rauschenberg's collage painting "Barely There" has been just that  barely there.

After changing hands several times, attracting little notice from the art world and even the family of the world-renowned artist, the piece has made a remarkable return to Rauschenberg's hometown of Port Arthur, where it has been on display since July at at the Museum of the Gulf Coast.

The painting began its journey sometime in the early to mid-1960s, when the artist gave it to Ralph Rosenthal, owner of a deli on 51st Street near Rauschenberg's studio. According to Mary Rosenthal, the painting was to cover the artist's deli tab from his early starving-artist days.

After the death of her father-in-law and husband, she traded it for considerably more.

John Schumacher gave a piece of Cartier jewelry and $10,000 in cash for the painting in the fall of 2000. He kept the piece for 10 years before he traded it for land in Belize and it wound up with Charles Trois of Fredericksburg, a well-known collector of guns, antiques and fine art.

With each successive owner, "Barely There" was gaining value  and moving closer to Rauschenberg's roots.

The painting completed another leg of its return trip to Southeast Texas in July 2016, when Tony Webber, president and CEO of Southwest Museum Services in Houston, bought it from Trois.

Although at that point the painting had not been forensically authenticated, it was appraised at $4 million after the purchase.

Origins and authentication

The piece is consistent with Rauschenberg's early "combines"  assemblages of paint, film negatives, buttons and other materials from the streets of New York City, where Rauschenberg lived beginning in the early 1950s. Visible beneath a layer of sepia and orange paint is a copy of an advertisement for Max Factor's latest makeup line and the painting's namesake, "Barely There," which came on the market in the early '60s.

Knowing that official verification would be necessary to have the work formally recognized and accepted into the artist's catalog, Webber brought the painting to Emily MacDonald-Korth in Miami.

MacDonald-Korth, art conservationist and developer of the Art Preservation Index, a scientific rating system for fine art, performed a 21-point scientific analysis of the painting and its components. Microscopic and chemical analysis established that the inks, paint, canvas and film strip negatives were consistent with materials available in the '50s and '60s.

After being converted in Photoshop, the photographic negatives revealed a portrait of a New York gallery owner who exhibited Rauschenberg's work and a photo of himself with close friend and one-time lover Jasper Johns, another rising star in the 1960s art scene.

Although the signature was questioned because it deviated from that on Rauschenberg's later signed works, a handwriting analysis was able to match core elements.

Exhibition and acclaim

After spending $21,000 for a thick volume of scientific evidence under his belt, Webber is taking the next steps toward official recognition.

"One of the questions they ask is if it has been exhibited," he said.

Webber plans to show the piece at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Smithsonian in Washington, among famous venues. But its exhibition tour is beginning where Rauschenberg himself did  in Port Arthur.

Webber, whose company created the Museum of the Gulf Coast exhibits with founding director Sam Monroe and is working with current director Tom Neal on an expansion, asked about showing the piece in the museum's Rauschenberg Gallery.

"He said, 'Would you be willing to show this painting for the first time?' " Neal said.. "Of course, I couldn't say yes fast enough."

In July, the painting arrived in an armored truck accompanied by a security team and was hung in the gallery.

It has already attracted viewers, who have learned about the painting's existence through media and the internet. One family came from England earlier this month to see the painting after learning about it at a Rauschenberg exhibit in London. Fans of the artist's work, they made Port Arthur the first destination of their holiday abroad.

Art critic and filmmaker Amei Wallach and her crew, who are working on the documentary "Taking Venice: The Rauschenberg Factor" were at the museum last week to interview Neal and Webber and film the painting.

Neal said the prestige of showing the work here goes beyond getting first dibs on its public display.

"You almost become part of the history of the piece being the first to see it now since its discovery," he says.

"Barely There" will be on display through the end of this month before moving to other museums. As its exhibition presence grows, so do its chances of going from obscurity to a place in the canon of Rauschenberg artwork. If the painting eventually receives official recognition, its value could soar, Webber said.

"Barely There," originally traded for a deli tab of sandwiches and cream sodas in the 1960s, could potentially fetch as much as $20 million, Webber said.

kbrent@beaumontenterprise.com
Three separate shootings were reported Saturday night, including two that are still under investigation, Beaumont Police said.

The incidents came less than 24 hours after a Beaumont man was shot and killed on Avenue C on Friday night.

Read more: Two suspects wanted in Beaumont shooting investigation

A 49-year-old man was shot in his left thigh and right foot during an altercation in the 800 block of Plum Street before 7 p.m. Saturday, BPD said.

The man arrived at Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital in a personal vehicle, where police were called just after 7 p.m.

"The investigation revealed that a 49 year old Beaumont man and a 26 year Beaumont man got into an altercation," BPD said, and the younger man shot the 49-year-old, whose injuries were not life-threatening.

BPD said Masontha Merchant Jr., 26, is a person of interest in the shooting.

About an hour and a half later, another man arrived at the hospital in a personal vehicle after he was shot during a fight in the 1400 block of Washington Boulevard.

Officers were called to a "chaotic scene" just after 8:30 p.m. and "discovered two men got into a fight," BPD said.

Ronnie Walker, 45, was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly shooting a 26-year-old, who has not been identified.

BPD said an investigation remains ongoing into the third assault, which was reported by a 22-year-old woman around 9 p.m. Saturday.

The woman told police that she was approached by a man wearing all black who took her backpack, shot her and fled.

She was approached in the 4100 block of Maida while walking between two sets of apartments at the Northridge Manor complex, she said, and the man fled north, according to BPD. Her injuries were also not life-threatening.

"Officers attempted to locate the suspect but officers weren't contacted until 30 minutes or more after the incident," BPD said. "There were several inconsistencies in the victim's statement," and the investigation is ongoing.
A Honduran man illegally in the United States was sentenced to 2 years and 9 months in prison following a 2017 incident that injured the son of a Hardin County law enforcement officer.

Santos Alfredo Paz-Ruiz received the 33 month sentence today after pleading guilty on May 10 to being an "illegal alien in possession of a firearm," according to information from the U.S. Attorney's Office.
A man is dead after being stabbed by another man, according to information from the Port Arthur Police Department.

On Friday police responded to a call about a stabbing near the 3700 block of Gulfway Drive.
Signs across the City of Bevil Oaks proclaim it "Hawk territory" and its residents proud to be part of Hardin-Jefferson ISD, a welcome change for parents and a hopeful spark for growth in the small west Jefferson County town.

Many Bevil Oaks residents haven't returned since Tropical Storm Harvey inundated the city of roughly 1,200, according to Martha Vautrot, a city councilwoman and local restaurant owner.

WATCH: Construction begins on new Vautrot's location

"We're hoping to get people with young children to move back in because we have Hardin-Jefferson," Vautrot said.

Bevil Oaks tried to leave Beaumont ISD several times in the past 30 years and was finally released by BISD in early March, according to previous Enterprise reporting. Families like Vautrot's are "really excited" to return to school on Aug. 20, this time as a Hardin-Jefferson Hawk.

"It's not that we didn't like Beaumont," said Vautrot, whose two granddaughters are enrolled in H-JISD. "We just didn't see a future in Beaumont with them."

BISD's Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School on Avenue A, to which Bevil Oaks students previously commuted, is roughly twice as far by car as Hardin-Jefferson's Henderson Middle School.

One bus that transported Bevil Oaks students to Beaumont picked up students around seven in the morning,according to Vautrot, bringing them back home around 5 p.m. "exhausted."

Vautrot said she hopes joining Hardin-Jefferson's "really good schools" will play a deciding factor for families looking to move to the area.

Bevil Oaks has a lot to offer, she said.

Bevil Oaks parent Bonnie Byrd said joining HJISD was something she "felt would ensure the vitality of the neighborhood."

Before Harvey, many homes in Bevil Oaks were owned by older residents who may not need larger homes or lots in the next five years, Byrd said, making it "important to fill those homes with families in order to sustain the city."

Byrd said she believes the draw to keep tax dollars going in Bevil Oaks is "what anyone looks for in a home  a school district that fosters pride in their children."

"It has never been a demographic issue," Byrd said. "It's always been distance and school performance."

According to the Texas Education Agency, 60 percent of BISD students are African American, 23 percent are Hispanic and 11 percent are white. Almost 80 percent are considered economically disadvantaged, compared to 39 percent in Hardin-Jefferson.

BISD, the region's largest district, has more than 19,000 students. H-JISD has about 2,200 students, and about 78 percent are white.

RELATED: Beaumont ISD projects $1.6M revenue decrease

Both districts were overall rated "met standard" by the Texas Education Agency for 2016-17, according to previous Enterprise reporting, but BISD had 10 of its campuses rated "improvement required," while all H-JISD schools met state standards.

While the merger's effect on Bevil Oaks taxes remains unclear, Vautrot said the council is currently working on the city's budget.

Either way, Vautrot said she "doesn't mind" a potential increase.

"I'm glad to give my money to H-J and help the community. I think that's going to do all the good in the world," she said.

While Harvey stunted the city's growth, Vautrot said it appears people are starting to "move around and buy homes" as neighborhoods rebuild, with many houses for sale or currently undergoing construction.

ICYMI: Bevil Oaks flood history sign gets new benchmark

One Bevil Oaks home was listed at $55,000 on Feb. 14. with just "concrete and rafters" inside, according to Beaumont Realtor Hester Bell. However, the Capital Drive home was recently relisted on Zillow, a real estate site, at $159,900.

While Bevil Oaks' merger with Hardin-Jefferson ISD "definitely" has an effect on home values, Bell said she believes it's ultimately "hard to say."

"It has impacted the prices and maybe raised them a bit, but overall, it's the fact that it's completely new inside," Bell said. "Schools have a positive impact on the values, but nobody can say exactly how much."

Bell, who's been in real estate for more than 40 years, said it always seemed that Bevil Oaks was more a part of Sour Lake's "smaller community" compared to Beaumont's larger community.

Mandy Fortenberry, director of communications at H-JISD, said school registration is ongoing and campus enrollment numbers are not yet in.

Nevertheless, Fortenberry said she did not anticipate "a huge jump in enrollment" after the merger.

Most students from Bevil Oaks have either transferred in already or have been attending the school because of staff members who work with the district, Fortenberry said.

"I think for the most part, they feel like they're part of our community already, it's just nice to put a label on it," Fortenberry said.

Phoebe.Suy@BeaumontEnterprise.com

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Surgical Care Affiliates' Cedar Park (Texas) Surgery Center hosted its second Kid's Night.

Here are three quick facts:

1. About 50 children of all ages attended.

2. ASC team members and surgeons brought their kids to the facility.

3. The children participated in hands-on activities in preoperative spaces, operating rooms and the post-anesthesia care unit.
Intel Corp. said it sold at least $1 billion in artificial intelligence processor chips during 2017, according to Reuters.

Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's data center group, made the announcement Aug. 8 during an event for Wall Street analysts at the company's Santa Clara, Calif.-based headquarters. The $1 billion milestone marks the first time Intel has disclosed its revenue from AI processor chips.

Mr. Shenoy said Intel has spent the past several years modifying its central processor units to become better at AI training, which drove $1 billion in sales of its Xeon processors during 2017. That year, Intel's total revenue was $62.8 billion.

Naveen Rao, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel's AI products group, told Reuters in an interview the $1 billion is an estimate from customers who told Intel they purchased processor chips for AI, along with separate calculations on how much of a customer's data center is dedicated to AI.

"Honestly, it's probably a lot higher," he said. "We left a lot on the table because we wanted to be conservative."
An independent cybersecurity researcher in Europe said he discovered an online database that exposed the personal information of 2.3 million patients in Mexico, according to Infosecurity Magazine.

Bob Diachenko, who previously worked at the Kromtech Security Center in Germany, said he found the database Aug. 3 using Shodan, a search engine that enables users to find internet-connected devices. He detailed his findings in a LinkedIn blog post.

The database reportedly included personal data from patients in Mexico, including full name, data of birth, home address and insurance policy number. Upon analyzing the patient data, Mr. Diachenko alleged the database belonged to Hova Health, a telemedicine vendor based in Mexico City.

Mr. Diachenko argued the information exposure occurred after Hova Health misconfigured a MongoDB database. MongoDB is a free, open-source database program on which users store information, mostly in the form of documents.

Hackers have a history of targeting MongoDB databases that run on unsecured default settings or that haven't applied appropriate security protections, such as logins or passwords. In September 2017, three separate groups of hackers targeted roughly 26,000 databases on MongoDB with ransomware.

"It is unclear how long the data was publicly exposed or who else except myself had access," Mr. Diachenko wrote in his blog post. "This is yet another warning to any company or service provider that handles and stores personal medical data."

Mr. Diachenko said the database's administrators responded with the following statement after he notified them of the exposure: "All the areas that work on this project are reviewing exactly what happened and checking all our infrastructure to avoid this kind of events."

Editor's note: Becker's Hospital Review reached out to Hova Health for comment and will update as more information becomes available.
The American Hospital Association and three member facilities filed a court brief Aug. 10 seeking a deadline-based remedy to address the Medicare appeals backlog.

Nine things to know:

1. In the brief, the AHA, Baxter Regional Medical Center in Mountain Home, Ark.; Covenant Health in Knoxville, Tenn.; and Rutland (Vt.) Regional Medical Center asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to reconsider a deadline-based remedy to reduce the backlog of Medicare billing appeals awaiting a decision by administrative law judges.

The AHA and the hospitals wrote in the brief that "making a deadline binding and not just aspirational will keep HHS from backsliding" and "entering a deadline with fixed reduction targets each year along the way gives HHS an aggressive goal and ensures steady interim progress."

2. In the brief, the AHA and the hospitals said they also continue support for non-deadline remedies, including Recovery Audit Contractor program reforms, such as imposing a financial penalty on recovery audit contractors with a high turnover rate at the administrative law judge level, and requiring HHS to "demonstrate its commitment to good-faith, evidence-based settlements by documenting its settlement activity under seal."

3. The brief is the latest action in a lawsuit brought by the AHA and hospitals. The lawsuit focuses on resolving Medicare claims appeals at the administrative law judge level within 90 days.

4. Once the lawsuit was filed, a federal judge ordered HHS to incrementally clear pending appeals by the end of 2020.

5. HHS asked Judge James Boasberg with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to reconsider the order, but that request was denied in January 2017.

6. After HHS appealed the decision, the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia overturned the order in August 2017, permitting the lower court to decide whether, as HHS contended, it would be impossible to comply with the order's timetable for reducing the backlog.

7. In February, the AHA asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to reinstate the HHS deadline for clearing the appeals backlog, saying HHS "has not shown it is impossible to clear the backlog  minus, perhaps, some claims with serious program-integrity concerns  within five years."

8. Judge Boasberg then called on the AHA to "elaborate and expand upon ... recommendations it has made over the course of litigation for clearing the backlog," according to the AHA.

9. The AHA provided its feedback in a brief filed June 22, which was reiterated in the Aug. 10 brief.

Ayla Ellison contributed to this report.
The integration of Atlanta-based Emory Healthcare and Decatur, Ga.-based DeKalb Medical will include Emory paying off DeKalb Medical's debt.

Emory spokesperson Janet Christenbury said Emory will assume or repay around $168 million of DeKalbs outstanding bond debt as part of the merger. In addition, Emory has agreed to provide $239 million in post-transaction capital investments in DeKalb Medical facilities over seven years.

The Georgia Attorney General's Office earlier this month approved the integration of Emory, a nonprofit health system with seven hospitals and 200 provider locations in and around Atlanta, and DeKalb Medical, a nonprofit health system consisting of three hospital campuses with a combined 627 beds. Dekalb Medical is slated to integrate into Emory Sept. 1.

Editor's note: This story was updated Aug. 16.

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While the three hospitals within Lewistown-based Central Maine Healthcare have recently begun to voice their concern with the system's executive leadership, many current and former staffers claim conditions for staff within the system have been on the decline for at least the past fiscal year, according to the Portland Press Herald.

The Portland Press Herald notes at least a dozen current and former hospital employees spoke with the Sun Journal under a condition of anonymity about conditions at CMHC, which owns and operates three hospitals and a collection of medical practices in 15 communities statewide.

Tension between the medical staff and system executives came to a head last month after the staff at all three hospitals voted no confidence in system CEO Jeff Brickman. However, the health system's board voiced its support for Mr. Brickman earlier this month and altered its bylaws to give physicians more authority. The day after the board's meeting, the president of two of the system's three hospitals resigned.

"Every couple of days there are several more resignations," an anonymous provider said, according to the Portland Press Herald.

However, physician discontent has been brewing across the system for at least the past year. CMHC officials told the publication roughly 80 of its 300 physicians have left this past fiscal year, which ended in June  a 27.1 percent turnover rate higher than the national average of 18.6 percent, according to data cited by the Portland Press Herald.

System officials said the 27.1 percent turnover rate is lower than it had been the past two years.

"Change is hard and [some physicians] may decide that they aren't up for the change," David Tupponce, MD, president of Lewiston-based Central Maine Medical Center and executive vice president of the system, told the Portland Press Herald.

A CMHC spokesperson reiterated Dr. Tupponce's sentiment to the publication: "Significant change has been necessary to ensure the organization's financial stability. We recognize that change can be difficult and may create a sense of disruption or uncertainty. We encourage our staff to ask questions and raise concerns, and it is certainly not our practice to terminate employees for doing so."

After the votes of no confidence, several staffers told the publication they understood the need for change, but were dissatisfied with Mr. Brickman's management style, which they claimed was neither collaborative nor cooperative.

"From my perspective, it seems like the goal of healthcare has shifted from more of something that's focused primarily on quality more toward the quality we can afford[,] going from, 'Let's do this the best way we can,' to, 'As long as we can do it good enough, that seems to be OK,'" a CMHC staffer said.

In an Aug. 13 prepared statement to Becker's Hospital Review, CMHC said the system "has undergone a period of significant transition and redesign over the past two years, ensuring financial solvency and stability in support of a clear strategic vision for future growth. Unfortunately, local media coverage does not reflect the accomplishments associated with our transformation, such as physician recruitment and strategic growth in key areas of focus including surgery, trauma, heart and vascular and oncology.

"As one of the few non-Medicaid expansion states, we are faced with a particular set of challenges and must press forward with an aggressive agenda. We recognize that provider turnover can be disruptive and CMH is working aggressively to minimize any inconvenience while ensuring that our patients receive the care they need. The turnover information provided in the media represents all departures, including retirement and relocation, as well as those for other professional and person reasons. Not everyone who leaves an organization is 'fleeing' and it is irresponsible to suggest so.

"In these times of intense media focus and attention, it is important to remember that CMH, our staff, providers, patients and communities all share the same goal  to ensure that safe quality care is available to all who need it."

To access the full report, click here.

Editor's note: This article was updated at 4:25 p.m. Aug. 13 to include additional comment from CMHC.
Universal healthcare is a controversial issue, and many pundits are split on whether healthcare should be considered a fundamental right.

The Charlotte Observer reached out to dozens of state leaders in a variety of industries to gauge their opinions on universal healthcare. Here are five of those responses:

Liz Chen, co-founder of MyHealthEd

"In order to achieve universal healthcare, North Carolina's first step should be to expand Medicaid so that more North Carolinians have health insurance and therefore more access to care."

Frank Emory, chair of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina

"I am wary of designating healthcare as a right. Doing so suggests that the citizen has no responsibility for his/her care and the expense of it. It is, however, clearly a public good. Figuring out how to pay for [universal healthcare] would be a critical first step. Second, one would need to determine if 'universal' means anyone within the borders of the state at any given time."

Carol Folt, chancellor University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

"More than 70 years ago, the World Health Organization adopted a tenet in its constitution: The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition. As a nation, we must be equally committed to these fundamental rights for all of our citizens."

Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo

"Healthcare is far too complicated to be solved with sweeping pronouncements, such as making universal healthcare a fundamental right. There is considerable disagreement with what 'universal healthcare' and 'fundamental right' actually mean. North Carolinians should have access to high quality health care facilities, which they largely do. The issue is how you pay for it. I do not believe that North Carolina should emulate the policies of the poorest countries of the world because their circumstances, capabilities and expectations are far different from what they are here."

Kit Cramer, CEO of the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce

"If North Carolina wanted to be a leader in universal healthcare we would not only expand Medicaid, wed invest in population health and the social determinants of health. There is a lot of research out there to support these approaches."
In this special Speaker Series, Becker's Healthcare caught up with Tom Boehning, CEO of Optum360.

Mr. Boehning will speak during the Becker's Hospital Review 4th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference on "The Best Ideas to Improve Revenue Cycle Now," at 9:00 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 20. Learn more about the event and register to attend in Chicago.

Question: What is the biggest barrier to the price transparency in the healthcare industry?

Tom Boehning: The biggest barrier to price transparency in healthcare is the disconnect between payers and providers. Optum360 is working to create a future so seamlessly interconnected that no claim is ever denied. Strategically situated in the center of the cycle, we are uniquely positioned to identify and seize opportunities that drive positive financial performance for all stakeholders.

For example, offering a patient a cost-of-care estimate at the time of service is complex, and to create such an estimate, there needs to be participation by both parties. It requires payers to be willing to share contract information, the plan design of the patient needs to be considered, and all of this must be presented within the provider's workflow.

The benefit of making these connections for providers can have incredible value. We work with a large diagnostic services provider that had more than $300M in patient bad debt annually  primarily due to the complexity of providing an accurate estimation of the patient's responsibility at the point of care. By working with payers to solve this problem, Optum has helped them achieve over 10 percent improvement in patient bad debt on an annual basis. That's a significant positive result for that provider.

Q: What is the most exciting thing happening in health IT right now? And what is the most overrated health IT trend?

TB: The use of artificial intelligence is very exciting in my opinion. For many, it's a buzz word that is overused and really just means analytics. But the combination of multiple data sets  clinical, claims, patient behaviors and morecoupled with machine learning and natural language processing that is powered by clinical intelligence can help take the complexity and administrative cost out of a healthcare system that is tremendously inefficient. We can do more with AI than what we can do with analytics alone.

Specifically within the revenue cycle, application of clinical natural language processing can improve coding, achieve real results in clinical documentation improvement, and allow clinicians to focus on care rather than the administrative burden that pulls on them for billing. Optum has invested in AI and enabled several of our health system clients to take the cost out of revenue cycle so that resources can be invested in care delivery improvements.

One health IT trend to be cautious of is the idea that one large software suite will solve all problems, including billing, for a given payer or provider. Clients need the complementary technology and skilled experts focused on revenue cycle efficiency to get results.

Q: How has your organization improved the revenue cycle process for providers in the past year?

TB: Optum has delivered several innovations that improve the revenue cycle for providers. Powering the revenue cycle with machine learning and artificial intelligence, for one. Through the use of these technologies, we are making tremendous strides in the accuracy and defensibility of documentation, and in medical necessity review. Our physician advisors have more knowledge, power and tools at their disposal than ever before and are proactively managing the holistic portrait of the patient to ensure the documentation truly reflects the severity of illness and supports inpatient billing status.

Administrative collaboration between payers and providers is another key improvement. We are facilitating clinical information sharing between these two trading partners at much greater levels  in the claim workstream  to reduce friction, while improving denial rates and reimbursement at first pass. Our success in bringing these groups together is a core capability in our comprehensive perspective of how to improve the revenue cycle.

Our clinically-aware natural language processing solution is creating tremendous improvements in coding and documentation, including abstracting key clinical elements in the encounter that are not addressed in the physician's documentation and ensuring these diagnoses are captured.



And finally, through our advanced technologies, methodologies and proficiency of our employees, we provide end-to-end capabilities to manage the revenue cycle process from pre-registration through the final bill, taking the burden off of providers so they can focus on patient care and clinical improvements.
Jackson-based Mississippi Baptist Medical Center fired an employee after a cellphone video depicted him using a racial slur at a doughnut shop while off duty, according to WJTV-12 News.

The hospital told WJTV-12 that employee Kyle Thomas worked in the facility's radiology department.

An employee at the Donut Palace in Flowood, Miss., recorded an Aug. 11 encounter with Mr. Thomas during which he became upset about the service and uttered a racial slur targeting African-Americans.

Mississippi Baptist told the television station in a prepared statement: "We are aware of the confrontation captured on video involving one of our off duty employees at a local donut shop. We take this situation very seriously. This employee's language and behavior does not represent our organization's values and his employment has been terminated."

"We want our patients, employees, physicians and our community to know that we find the language used in the video to be completely unacceptable and inconsistent with what we expect from employees or anyone associated with our organization. We are committed to a work environment that is inclusive and where everyone is respected and valued," the statement continued.

The doughnut shop employee said Mr. Thomas came back to the establishment and apologized to her boss for his behavior and for causing a disruption, but did not apologize to her for using the slur.

To access the full report, click here.
Providers with Minneapolis-based Minnesota Neonatal Physicians plan to leave Children's Minnesota, also in Minneapolis, by the end of the year, according to the Star Tribune.

The approximately 13-member physician group will instead provide services at the neonatal intensive care units at Maple Grove (Minn.) Hospital and Robbinsdale, Minn.-based North Memorial Health Hospital. An executive with the group told the publication the move will be costly, as physicians will ultimately lose income from the switch and may not be able to perform the broad range of services they are able to perform at Children's Minnesota.

Physicians with Minnesota Neonatal Physicians told the Star Tribune hospital officials were asking them to cede too much control over how they practice and aimed to transition the group from private practitioners to hospital employees.

Instead, Children's reached an employment agreement with physicians from St. Paul, Minn.-based Associates in Newborn Medicine.

Marc Gorelick, MD, president and COO of Children's Minnesota, told the publication the NICU generates a substantial portion of the hospital's revenue and necessitated the physician group's transition from private providers to hospital staff members. Other hospital physicians, however, can remain in private practice.

Both organizations are reportedly still open to having Minnesota Neonatal Physicians return to the hospital on a limited basis.

The physician group also filed a lawsuit against the hospital earlier this year, claiming one of the hospital's board members called the physician group "crooks" and accused them of accepting kickbacks for sending patients to specialists, according to the report.

To access the full report, click here.
Police said foul play is suspected in the death of a physician who was found dead last week in his Beachwood, Ohio, home, according to Cleveland.com.

Here are five things to know:

1. Richard Warn, DPM, was found dead in his home Aug. 9. He died of multiple gunshot wounds, according to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office.

2. Dr. Warn's body was discovered after his wife called 911. On the call, she can be heard saying she thinks her husband is in their home, but she is unable to get inside. "I just got back home from vacation with my family and I didn't have a key to come in the house," she tells the dispatcher. "I was knocking on the door trying to get in."

3. Police said foul play is suspected, and there were no signs that someone had broken into the home where Dr. Warn's body was found.

4. On the evening of Aug. 10, police officers went to a second home that belonged to Dr. Warn in South Euclid, Ohio, to execute a search warrant. As officers approached the home, someone began shooting at them. After a 12-hour standoff, officers deployed a gas agent and entered the home. Two male suspects were found dead inside the home, according to the Cleveland Heights Patch.

5. Police said the two men were persons of interest in Dr. Warn's death. Their identities have not been released, according to News 5 Cleveland.

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A car crashed into a wall at Inova Alexandria (Va.) Hospital Aug. 11, injuring the driver of the vehicle, according to The Washington Post.

The Alexandria Fire Department told the publication the driver was taken to George Washington University Hospital, a level 1 trauma center in Washington, D.C., for treatment. The driver's condition was not immediately available, according to the Post.

The car crashed into a wall at the hospital about 4 p.m. and stopped halfway inside the facility, according to the Alexandria firefighters' union.

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A Minnesota family claims Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic held their then 18-year-old daughter hostage after she was admitted to the hospital for a brain aneurysm in December 2016, according to CNN.

Here are seven things to know:

1. Alyssa Gilderhus, now 20, was admitted to the Mayo Clinic on Dec. 25, 2016, for a ruptured brain aneurysm. Two months later, she remained hospitalized at the facility.

2. Her parents told CNN although the neurosurgeons at the facility saved their daughter's life, they were dissatisfied with the care she received. They said they repeatedly asked Ms. Gilderhus' providers to transfer her to another hospital, but that Mayo refused to do so.

3. Ms. Gilderhus' parents said they began to suspect the hospital was trying to get a new guardian appointed to Ms. Gilderhus to make all medical decisions for her. On Feb. 28, 2017, they concocted a plan to tell nurses and other hospital staff Ms. Gilderhus' grandmother wanted to see her, but could not make it all the way up to her room. Ms. Gilderhus' parents were able to get her to the hospital's main entrance and into their waiting vehicle.

Ms. Gilderhus told CNN the escape felt "phenomenal," like "the biggest weight was lifted off [her] shoulders."

4. Mayo Clinic officials told police Ms. Gilderhus had been abducted from the facility and that she "[could not] make decisions for herself" and that her mother could not take care of her "because [she had] mental health issues." Hospital officials told police they "understood there was no formal diagnosis" for Ms. Gilderhus' mother. Ms. Gilderhus' mother told CNN there is no history of mental illness in her family.

An adult protective services officer told police, "Mayo was requesting [assistance] in gaining guardianship of Alyssa because they were concerned for the mother's mental health and the medical decisions that were being made for Alyssa," the report states.

5. The day Ms. Gilderhus left the Mayo Clinic, physicians wrote in her discharge notice that "Alyssa's medical condition, medical status, cognition and physical impairments require an ongoing inpatient level of medical care. She was not medically or functionally safe to leave the hospital at the time of her removal from the hospital by her stepfather," and that she was at risk for pneumonia, malnourishment, dehydration, aspiration, infection and falling.

6. Less than 12 hours after leaving the hospital, Ms. Gilderhus and her parents arrived at the emergency room for Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Medical Center. Physicians there disagreed with Mayo physicians on two critical issues: Ms. Gilderhus did not need to remain in a hospital setting and she had the mental capacity to make her own decisions. When police learned of the Sanford physicians' recommendations, they ended their search for Ms. Gilderhus and did not intervene further. No charges were filed against Ms. Gilderhus' parents.

7. Several days after visiting the Sanford hospital, Ms. Gilderhus and her parents received a letter from the Mayo Clinic dated March 1 informing them they would not treat the family.

"We have made this decision because of your actions which demonstrate a lack of trust and confidence in Mayo," the administrator wrote in the letter, according to CNN.

8. In an Aug. 13 statement to KIMT3 News, the Mayo Clinic said: "Patient safety is always our highest priority, and it is at the forefront of the care we deliver to each patient. We are unwavering in our dedication to do what is best for every patient, every time. This patient's case was no exception. This case was escalated to the highest level of leadership, and the care team worked with this family on a daily basis to listen to them and resolve their concerns. The same care, focus on her well-being and level of professionalism that this patient experienced during her life-saving surgery were also part of her post-surgery experience. This was a very complex situation with very challenging dynamics.

"Following a thorough and careful review of the care in question, we have determined that the version of events provided by certain patient family members to CNN are not supported by the facts nor do they track with the direct observations of numerous other providers on the patients care team. Our internal review determined that the care team's actions were true to Mayo Clinic's primary value that the patient's needs come first. We acted in a manner that honored that value for this patient and that also took into account the safety and well-being of the team caring for the patient."

To access the full report, click here.

To access Mayo Clinic's media statement in response to CNN's report, click here.

Editor's note: This article was updated at 9 a.m. Aug. 14 to include additional information from the Mayo Clinic.
Lakeport, Calif.-based Sutter Lakeside Hospital reopened Aug. 10, 12 days after a deadly wildfire pushed its way into the region, forcing the evacuation of the 25-bed hospital, according to the Lake County News.

The critical access hospital is again offering full inpatient and emergency care services. Elective procedures have been postponed. .

While the hospital was closed for 12 days, patients were transferred to nearby community hospitals.

The hospital received the first evacuation order at 4:15 p.m. July 28. The hospital reopened for emergency and obstetrics services the morning of July 29 but was forced to evacuate again that night after the fire worsened.

"We safely evacuated 20 patients, all our staff and physicians," said Teresa Campbell, chief nursing executive, Sutter Lakeside Hospital. "Only a small group of us stayed behind to protect the hospitals resources. We also held our breath, along with the rest of the community, waiting to see what the winds would do."

When the evacuation order was lifted, staff worked around the clock to prepare the facility to reopen.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed first-in-the-nation legislation last week that aims to improve Alzheimer's treatment and diagnosis, The Boston Globe reports.

"No other state in the country has something like this," Daniel Zotos of the Alzheimer's Association told the Globe.

The legislation requires physicians, physician assistants and nurses to receive training in diagnosing, treating and caring for patients with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia before they can obtain or renew their licenses.

Physicians who have diagnosed a patient with Alzheimer's must also tell a family member or legal representative about the diagnosis.

The law requires all hospitals to develop and implement a plan for recognizing and managing patients with dementia by no later than Oct. 1, 2021.

Patricia Noga, PhD, RN and vice president of clinical affairs for the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association, said hospitals already had begun developing their Alzheimer's plans before the bill was finalized.

Meeting that requirement will be a challenge for Massachusetts hospitals. Margaret Foley, BSN, MSN and director of care management at Concord, Mass.-based Emerson Hospital, told the Globe about changes ahead for the 179-bed hospital.

Emerson plans to post a purple information sheet in each patient room to help staff interact with dementia patients. The sheet includes the patient's nickname, their pet's name, their past, what makes them anxious and what calms them down.

The hospital also is examining ways to identify dementia patients when they arrive in the emergency room and find a location for them away from stress-inducing noises.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill Aug. 10 to create a hospital report card designed to provide patients with more insight into maternity care quality, the Asbury Park Press reports.

The report card is anticipated to consider a hospital's number of cesarean deliveries and the rate of complications.

The state Department of Health will develop the New Jersey Report Card of Hospital Maternity Care, which will be on its website and updated each year.

New Jersey consumer advocates have been urging the state to improve hospitals' maternity care, in part by curbing unneeded C-sections.

Over a third of births were C-sections in 2016 across New Jersey, trailing only Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida, and well above the federal government's target rate of 23 percent, according to the CDC.

Women who have unnecessary C-sections are exposed to increased risks of hemorrhage, infection, uterine rupture and cardiac events and are more likely to have C-sections in subsequent births.

A recent USA Today investigation documented how the U.S. is considered to be one of the most dangerous places in the developed world to give birth, and New Jersey fares especially poorly. It ranks 47th among the 50 states in maternal death, according to America's Health Rankings, a report by the United Health Foundation.

State hospitals have been working to tackle these potentially dangerous procedures, with each of New Jersey's 49 hospitals that delivers babies getting involved in an initiative to cut unnecessary C-sections.
Matthew Levy, MD, performed knee replacement surgery using the ConforMIS iTotal implant, Cleveland Jewish News reports.

Here are three things to know:

1. Dr. Levy is a board-certified attending orthopedic surgeon at Cleveland-based Vincent Charity Medical Center.

2. He is one of the first surgeons in northeast Ohio to use the patient-specific iTotal knee implants.

3. ConforMIS uses the patient's CT scans to create the customized implant.

"As our industry embraces the technology out there, it is inevitable that there will be advances with computer technology and 3D printing," Dr. Levy told Cleveland Jewish News.
Medical City Dallas (Texas) opened a Scoliosis & Advanced Spine Center, as well as Medical City Children's Hospital Orthopedics & Spine. Both facilities are based in Dallas.

Here are three details to know:

1. The centers are led by spine surgeons Richard Hostin, MD, Shyam Kishan, MD, and Ioannis Alexander Avramis, MD.

2. The centers will treat scoliosis deformities and perform revision and complex spine surgeries.

3. Dr. Avramis will continue his research into studying graft material, investigating a MRSA vaccine, exploring ways to prevent postsurgical deformities and analysis of preoperative evaluations to predict good outcomes.
Costa Ricas Supreme Court ordered deemed banning same-sex marriage as unconstitutional.

As a result of the ruling, the countrys legislature has 18 months to legalize it through implementing law changes, according to PinkNews. If not, same-sex marriage will become legal automatically anyway, since the current ban will no longer be in effect.

Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada was open to the law and stated his intended encouragement for its implementation.

Our commitment to full equality of rights remains intact, he said in a statement. We trust that respect for human rights and the rule of law will prevail, whether the Legislative Assembly recognizes equal marriage in the next 18 months, or failing that, once the time limit expires and the current law is made invalid.

Many of the countrys lawmakers are evangelical and strongly oppose same-sex marriage, but the presidents pressing to implement a new law may push back against their opposition.

We will continue to boost actions that guarantee no person will face discrimination for their sexual orientation or gender identity, he added.
Actor Allu Arjun who is predominantly seen in Telugu movies, has joined the list of actors to support the victims of Kerala floods, by donating money for the relief. Earlier, Suriya, Karthi, the Nadigar Sangam, Sripriya and others had donated for the cause. Allu Arjun has apparently donated Rs. 25 Lakh. He took to Twitter to mention this:



"People of Kerala will always occupy a special place in my heart for the unmatchable Love & Affection they shower . Their Love & the Loss is Unmatchable. But still I take the Honour to do my bit. I hereby pledge to donate 25,00,000 for the #KeralaFloodRelief . Love MAllu Arjun"



He was last seen in Vakkantham Vamsi's Naa Peru Surya Naa Illu India. He is currently working on Chiranjeevi's Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy, that has an ensemble cast including Vijay Sethupathi, Nayanthara, and Amitabh Bachchan.
The first easyHotel in Northern Ireland has officially opened its doors in Belfast.

Opening ahead of schedule, the super budget hotel is part of a a UK-wide brand. It has been brought to Belfast, by David Crowe from Holywood and Kevin Baird from Belfast, who worked with local contractors and designers to make their first venture in the hospitality industry a success.

The hotel boasts four floors, free WiFi throughout and a range of rooms including family rooms, double rooms, superior rooms and facilities to cater for those with disabilities, attached to the entrance is Coffee 24 Howard Street.

However, the project was previously in doubt as to whether or not it would be opening, after some of the bedrooms were deemed too small.

The development involved the conversion of offices into bedrooms, and it is understood that some of the rooms did not meet the 13 sqm stipulated in Northern Ireland legislation.

All accommodation must be certified by Tourism Northern Ireland, with requirements set out in the Categories of Tourist Establishment (Statutory Criteria) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1992.

Located on Howard Street, Kevin Baird said that the budget hotel has experienced a strong momentum in first booking and looks set to have a good first quarter in operation.

Talking about his excitement for the new project, Kevin explained how guests will be able to us their smart phones to check in.

He said:We offer super-budget, affordable accommodation that doesnt shy away from quality. This is something that we wanted to ensure throughout. With a modern and sleek design, easyHotel guest accommodation offers everything you need to have a fabulous and comfortable stay in Belfast.

Using smartphones, our guests have the ability to unlock their room without even having to check-in. It is a new concept, but it is one that meets the needs of the modern traveller and I think we will be seeing a lot more of in major cities.
A global software company is to set up its international base in Belfast, creating up to 15 jobs.

Lightyear, a specialist in the accounts payable and procurement sector, is establishing the base Invest NI support.

Founded by local brothers Chris and Roger Gregg, who have spent most of their careers working between Sydney and Silicon Valley in the US, Lightyear received 118,000 in support towards its research and development activities.

The brothers said Belfast's "emergence as a leading innovation hub for fintech", alongside Invest NI's support, persuaded them to bring their work home to Catalyst's Innovation Centre in the Titanic Quarter.

Lightyear chief executive Chris Gregg said: "Belfast was the clear winner. The calibre of tech talent, particularly in the areas of AI and machine learning, is world-class. Belfast also offers a great entry point to the European and US markets and allows us to offer near 24/7 global support in partnership with our Australian office.

"Invest NI's engagement convinced us that this was the right move. Being a Northern Ireland native, I am excited to support the local economy and create our next global success story from right here in Belfast."

Alan Wilson, Invest NI's director of international investment, added: "The company's confidence in Northern Ireland is underpinned by the high level of fintech, software and DevOps skills available here.

"Lightyear may be our first fintech investment from Australia, but we will be exhibiting at Sibos 2018 in Sydney in October to make more Australians aware of Northern Ireland's position as a top European location for high-value financial services investment."
Dimply skin: Cellulite is the number one concern for half of women

Cellulite is said to affect 90% of women, and while for some it's a mild irritation they just ignore, for others it can really knock confidence - with new research showing that it's the number one body concern for half of women.

In the study carried out on behalf of Cellfina, 74% of women said cellulite impacted their outfit choices on holiday and 48% revealed they would think twice about going away with extended family because they wouldn't want to reveal their dimply skin.

Of course, cellulite is perfectly natural and if you choose not to treat it, all power to you, but if you do want to reduce the appearance of so-called orange peel skin, we're here to help.

But first things first. Why do we get cellulite?

"Cellulite is caused by tiny connective tissue filaments (called fibrous septae) that anchor the skin to the underlying tissue and have fat in between," explains Dr Nick Rhodes. "These filaments can pull down on the skin's underside and create dimples."

"Connective tissue can be weakened by hormones, lack of exercise and muscle tone, and poor circulation," he says, so it can be tackled through working out, as long as you do a combination of cardio and muscle-toning activities.

But, Dr Rhodes warns: "Whilst it will reduce body fat, an important factor - it's not a miracle cure for smoothing out the skin."

He recommends a treatment called Cellfina, the only aesthetic treatment in the UK clinically proven to reduce cellulite.

However, at 2,500, it's not for everyone. Luckily there are a number of affordable at-home techniques that have shown positive results.

You'll notice that they all include a physical component, because one thing's for sure; there's no such thing as a magic potion that will airbrush your skin in an instant.

From a simple 6 tool to high-tech gadgets, here are six ways to tackle cellulite at home...

1. The FasciaBlaster

A huge hit Stateside, where more than 700,000 have been sold, this strange-looking tool is covered with a series of claws that open the fascia (the connective tissue that envelopes and surrounds our muscles) and break up 'adhesions', which can cause numerous problems, including cellulite.

'Scrubbing' the FasciaBlaster over problem areas is shown to reduce dimpling. Watch inventor Ashley Black's videos on YouTube to find out exactly how to tackle each area, and don't be alarmed if it causes bruising - that means it's working.

2. The GloPro

Used on your face, the GloPro Microneedling tool is meant to help with the absorption of skincare products and reduce wrinkles, while the MicroTip Body Attachment Head smooths uneven skin all over your body.

Larger than the standard roller, it's covered in 1,680 stainless steel micro-needles which, when rolled over the skin, causes a rejuvenation response.

3. The Mio massage

Mio Shrink To Fit Cellulite Smoother uses a powerful active called adiposlim to improve the appearance of cellulite, but it must be used in conjunction with massage to have the desired effect. Here's what Mio recommends doing every day for 30 days:

"Using short, deep strokes, start with your calves and work up to your lower back, whilst paying special attention to the fronts of your thighs - and always rub in an upward motion.

"Ideally add some skin rolling into your massage technique. As you massage upwards, try to grab a roll of your thigh between your thumbs and fingers and work that roll upwards, pinching and releasing as you move up. It takes a little practise and does actually feel like a proper pinch."

4. Dry brushing

By far the cheapest way to fight back against the dreaded dimples is with dry brushing, which should be done in slow, circular motions two or three times a week before you shower.

Not only do the bristles exfoliate the surface of the skin, the pressure helps to stimulate circulation and lymphatic drainage.

Follow your brushing with E'lifexir's Bodylift anti-cellulite cream, which has been getting rave reviews on the Holland & Barrett website and has an overall rating of 4.6 out of five.

5. The ultrasonic tool

The Assome! massager combines ultrasonic vibrations and high frequency radio waves to target cellulite beneath the skin's surface.

The tool, which should be massaged over cellulite-prone areas for five minutes three times a week, also improves skin's appearance with red and blue light, while the Ultrasonic Serum uses xymenynic acid to reduce that orange peel texture.

6. Cupping

Another form of massage, cupping uses suction to mimic the pinching and rolling movements a massage therapist would make.

Apply an anti-cellulite gel or oil first, then simply squeeze the sides of the rubber cup, place it over your skin then release and drag the cup along, moving vertically, then horizontally, and finally in a zig-zag motion.

For optimum cellulite-busting results, cupping should be done three or four times a week for between five and 10 minutes.
A 14-year-old boy has been charged with a number of offences.

A 14-year-old boy has been charged with a number of offences after incidents in Belfast on Sunday morning.

He has been charged with offences including robbery, attempted robbery, possession of a knife and possession of a firearm.

The charges follow a number of incidents in the Donegall Place and Library Street areas

The boy will appear at Belfast Youth Court on September 7.

A 17-year-old male who was also arrested remains in custody at present.

As is normal procedure the charges will be reviewed by the PPS.
The PSNI had the second highest overtime bill among UK police forces over the last five years, shock new figures have revealed.

The bill for overtime policing in Northern Ireland has now hit 236.4m. Only the UK's largest force, the Metropolitan Police, spent more, at 490.8m.

By contrast, between 2013 and 2018, Police Scotland paid out 106.8m, the third highest amount on overtime.

A BBC investigation has found that overtime spending has now reached its highest level since 2013 as the number of officers continues to fall.

Earlier this year, the Belfast Telegraph revealed how the PSNI is spending 125,000 a day on overtime as it struggles to plug gaps in its workforce.

In the 12 months to last April, a total of 45.5m was spent on overtime here - equivalent to 124,730 a day. Over 1,787,400 hours of extra work were recorded in that time.

Last month PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton urged Secretary of State Karen Bradley to provide assurances that the number of police officers here will be increased to deal with Brexit.

He believes the post-Brexit workforce should be in the region of 7,000 officers rather than the current 6,600.

PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Alan Todd said yesterday that due to peaks in demand and the often unpredictable nature of policing, officers are expected to work extra hours in order to keep people safe.

He commented: "This may entail working additional hours on top of their normal shifts, rest days and public holidays.

"As an organisation we seek to manage this in a way that both meets the demands on us and also provides for the welfare of our people."

Mr Todd continued that spending on overtime had been lower in the 2017/18 financial year.

"This reflects reduced overtime budgets within overall budget and officer number reductions rather than a reduction in the various demands on policing or the terrorist threat faced by police officers daily as they go about protecting communities," he explained.

Chairman of the Police Federation, John Apter, said the overtime bill represented the "hidden reality of policing" which was not a "nine to five" job.

He also pointed out that officers could not "just down tools and clock off the moment their shift is due to end".

"As such overtime is sometimes inevitable and often compulsory but it should not be used as a crutch to prop up the service enabling it to meet ordinary day to day demand," Mr Apter added.

The Home Office said it was investing 460m into the policing service and had a Police Special Grant scheme through which forces could apply for extra funding when resources were likely to be stretched.

A spokesman added that any decisions around recruitment and resourcing were a matter for chief constables and police crime commissioners.
Relatives of those killed in the Ballymurphy massacre take part in the March for Truth event yesterday

Relatives of those killed in the Ballymurphy massacre take part in the March for Truth event yesterday

Relatives of those killed in the Ballymurphy massacre take part in the March for Truth event yesterday

Soldiers must face the due process of the law for crimes committed during the conflict, Sinn Fein MLA Linda Dillon told yesterday's annual Ballymurphy massacre commemoration.

Speaking at the March for Truth event, Ms Dillon said she felt the current campaign around the statute of limitations for veterans who served in Northern Ireland was adding to the distress of families.

Her remarks come just days after Lord Bramall, a former head of the armed forces, called on the government to stop what he called the "macabre charade" of threatening Northern Ireland veterans with legal action.

The Mid-Ulster MLA, who is the party's spokesperson for victims, branded recent comments from Prime Minister Theresa May and senior military figures as "offensive, insulting and demeaning to the memory of the deceased".

Lord Bramall has accused the PSNI of "harrying" Northern Ireland veterans - many now in their 70s - over events from almost half a century ago.

He told the Daily Telegraph that it would be difficult for police to gather enough evidence to bring charges against the veterans because of the length of time that has passed.

"In the interests of justice, fair play and even-handedness, the government must, by whatever means, put a stop at once to this macabre charade," he said.

Ten people, including a Catholic priest and a mother-of-eight, were killed in Ballymurphy during three days of trouble involving members of the Parachute Regiment in August 1971.

Another man died of a heart attack following an alleged violent confrontation with troops in the west Belfast estate.

The incident has become known as the Ballymurphy Massacre.

"These soldiers, like everyone else, must face due process of the law and if they have done nothing wrong they have nothing to fear," Ms Dillon said.

"In fact, if they have nothing to hide, why don't they co-operate fully with any investigation to clear their names? Why don't the MoD co-operate with families and the Coroners Office to locate Paras that were involved in the massacre in Ballymurphy?

"This brutal policy of execution, cover-up and lies carried on over many years."

SDLP deputy leader Nichola Mallon also offered her support for the Ballymurphy families' campaign.

"You are winning the fight," she told the event.

"As we will do today and every day, we stand with you all in your campaigns for truth and justice.

"As young and old march side by side, as grandparents, parents and children march side by side, the message to the British Government is loud and clear, victims' issues and pain are intergenerational and while you continue to cover up, families will continue to fight."

Ms Dillon also urged the public to take part in the current consultation process on establishing the legacy bodies as envisaged in the Stormont House Agreement.

"I would appeal to everyone to engage with the consultation," she said.

"It will be an opportunity to try to shape the legacy mechanisms and to do so based on your life experiences.

"Every story must be told right across the board."

In 2010, then-Prime Minister David Cameron apologised for the actions of the members of the Parachute Regiment on Bloody Sunday.

His apology came after a long-running public inquiry by Lord Saville found the shootings had been unjustified.

The victims posed no threat, the report found.

However the government has rejected calls for a probe on a smaller scale into the events in Ballymurphy.

It insisted that such an inquiry would not be in the public interest.
Four people have sustained serious injuries following a car crash in Kilkeel, Co Down.

Police are appealing for witnesses following the incident during the early hours of Sunday August 12.

The PSNI received a report at 2:50am that a red-coloured Seat Leon had collided with a wall on the Newry Road.

Police attended the scene, along with the Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service and the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service.

The five occupants of the vehicle - three males and two females aged in their teens and early 20s - were all taken to hospital for treatment, four having serious injuries and one male was detained for observation.

"I am appealing to anyone who was on the Newry Road around this time and saw what happened to contact police on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference number 248 of 12/08/18," Inspector Denise Graham said.
Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters including Mr Paisley's daughter Emily, left, serve tea to journalists as supporters meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters including Mr Paisley's daughter Emily, left, serve tea to journalists as supporters meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters including Mr Paisley's daughter Emily, centre, serve tea to journalists as supporters meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters including Mr Paisley's daughter Emily, left, serve tea to journalists as supporters meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters including Mr Paisley's daughter Emily, centre, serve tea to journalists as supporters meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters including Mr Paisley's daughter Emily, left, serve tea to journalists as supporters meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters including Mr Paisley's daughter Emily, centre, serve tea to journalists as supporters meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters serve tea to journalists as supporters meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters serve tea to journalists as supporters meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters serve tea to journalists as supporters meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters including Mr Paisley's daughter Emily, left, serve tea to journalists as supporters meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters serve tea to journalists as supporters meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

Press Eye - 13th August 2018 - Suspended MP Ian Paisley's supporters including John Finlay (centre) meet in Ballymena to show their support to the North Antrim politician who is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. Picture by Matt Mackey / Presseye.com

PACEMAKER BELFAST 13/08/2018 DUP MP Ian Paisley's supporters will meet on Monday to show their support. The North Antrim politician is currently suspended by the House of Commonsafter he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government. The DUP MP apologised in the Commons, but will face a by-election if 10% of his constituents sign the petition. He is also suspended by the DUP "pending further investigation into his conduct". Young demrocrates of the DUP offerAlan Lewis of the press tea or coffee.

DUP MP Ian Paisley's supporters meet to show their support. The North Antrim politician is currently suspended by the House of Commonsafter he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government..

Ian Paisley has apologised to his supporters at a meeting in Ballymena.

Councillor John Finlay, who represents Ballymoney on Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council, organised the meeting of his supporters on Monday evening.

Speaking after the meeting, Cllr Finlay told the BBC the DUP MP apologised for his actions and said he made a mistake.

Mr Paisley, who represents North Antrim, is currently suspended by the House of Commons after he failed to declare family holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government.

He is also suspended by the DUP "pending further investigation into his conduct".

Expand Close Alderman John Finlay welcomes Ian Paisley to the special meeting. / Facebook

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A recall ballot has begun at venues in Ballymena, Ballymoney and Ballycastle where voters can sign a petition calling for a by-election.

The Recall of MPs Act 2015 requires a petition to be signed by 10% of the 75,478 eligible registered voters.

On Monday evening, his supporters, including his daughter Emily, served tea to waiting journalists.

SDLP councillor Declan O'Loan said that organising the event was "hypocritical" and showed that the DUP did not recognised the severity of the situation.

Cllr O'Loan said: "The SDLP have been clear that through encouraging constituents to sign the recall petition, we are not playing party politics but rather we want to see integrity reinstated to political office.

"It is only right and proper that the DUP should not lend support to Paisley until his suspension has ended.

Our party will be taking a message of integrity to the doors of North Antrim and by doing so, ensuring the electorate that it doesnt have to be this way."
Irish President Michael D Higgins will make the keynote address at a Civil Rights Festival commemorating the 50th anniversary of a historic civil rights march in Londonderry.

A four-day Civil Rights Festival is planned to mark the anniversary of the Duke Street Civil Rights March.

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The festival will take place from October 4 to 7 with President Higgins addressing the festival on Saturday October 6.

The October 5 1968 march is considered by many to be the official start of the Troubles.

It was a key moment in the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland and was followed by two days of unrest in Derry.

The protest, organised by Derry Housing Action Committee and supported by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), was held in the city to highlight the lack of housing, jobs and electoral fairness.

Banned by the Stormont government at the time, the parade route was blocked by the RUC.

The RUC used heavy-handed tactics including water canons and batons against protesters to break up the march.

Footage was captured by television crews attending the protest and beamed around the world, drawing attention to the situation in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein are planning to hold a commemorative parade on October 6, following the route of the original parade.

Expand Close Civil rights marchers are confronted by a strong force of police in Duke Street, Derry on October 5 1968. / Facebook

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Mayor of Derry John Boyle said that President Higgins was joining an impressive line-up of speakers.

I am delighted that President Michael D Higgins has accepted an invite to attend. His officials have confirmed that he will be joining an impressive line-up of speakers and performers who have now committed to attend the Festival," the SDLP councillor said.

"The Mayors office is continuing to work along with the festival organisers to secure other contributors from the across the political spectrum on these islands.

Professor Paul Arthur, Chair of the Civil Rights Commemoration, said the festival would host a wide range of events.

"We hope that the programme has begun to address the malign legacy of the Troubles by recognizing that the Civil Rights movement has been an amalgam of the generational, class, gender and ideological struggles that continue to face issues such as spatial segregation, racism, sectarianism and challenges to the LGBT, travelling and migrant communities," he said.

We want to move away from the adversarial debate of them and us by creating a dialogue of recognition and reciprocity. It is appropriate that we are bringing this together in Derry - the site of that historic event fifty years ago - a truly seminal moment in the struggle for civil rights."
Driver Joe Bongiorno captured two of three Pennsylvania Sire Stakes events for three-year-old pacing colts and geldings at Harrah's Philadelphia on Sunday, Aug. 12, teaming up with Albergo Hanover and Done Well, both of whom earned new lifetime marks in their respective divisions.

In the $54,805 first division, the door opened for Bongiorno and Albergo Hanover with five-sixteenths to go when odds-on favourite Grand Teton broke stride after stalking second-over cover. After pacesetter Odds On Lauderdale dismissed an outside challenge from Shadow Cat through a 1:22 three-quarter split, Albergo Hanover found clearance up the open stretch and surged to a 1:49.4 score by one-and-one-half lengths. Odds On Lauderdale held second by a neck over Larry Karr.

Gestion J Y Blais Inc. owns Albergo Hanover, now a five-time winner in his career. For the son of Well Said, it was his fourth win in six starts for trainer Jenn Bongiorno. He paid $6.80 to win.

Bongiorno came back in the $55,205 second division with Pepsi North America Cup runner-up Done Well, calling all the shots in progress to a 1:51 score. The Well Said colt strode clear from post four and controlled splits of :26.3, :54.3 and 1:22.4 before turning aside a first-over challenge from Aleppo Hanover and keeping the late-gaining Captain Deo two-and-a-half lengths at bay. This Is The Plan circled three wide through the far turn to take third.

James Stambaugh, Wingfield Brothers LLC, Milton Leeman and Alan Keith own six-time winner Done Well. He returned $5.60 to win.

Hayden Hanover ($6.20) rounded out the trio of Sire Stakes winners with a 1:50.1 victory in the $55,205 third division. Matt Kakaley had the son of Somebeachsomewhere in play from the outset, part of a three-way battle with Somebaddude and Nutcracker Sweet through a :26 first quarter. After initially protecting inside position, Hayden Hanover yielded to Nutcracker Sweet with a circuit to go and rode the pocket to the open stretch, where he pounced and drew off by a length. Macadoodledoo rallied off the cover of Babes Dig Me to take second narrowly over Nutcracker Sweet.

Julie Miller trains three-time winner Hayden Hanover for the Pinske Stables, Andy Miller Stable Inc., T L P Stable and Deo Volente Farms LLC. He paid $5.80 to win.

A $30,000 Great Northeast Series event for open pacers headlined the undercard with Graduate final-winner Donttellmeagain eclipsing More The Better N for the second straight week, scoring in 1:49.1 in rein to Victor Kirby.

The four-year-old Dragon Again gelding worked clear of Rodeo Romeo after a :26.3 quarter before yielding to odds-on choice More The Better N with a circuit to go. As More The Better N was worn down by millionaire Sunfire Blue Chip, Donttellmeagain set sail up the open stretch and draw a length clear at the winning post.

Jim King Jr. trains 17-time winner Donttellmeagain for the Paton Racing Stables Inc.

For the second straight card, multiple players had the winning 20-cent Jackpot Hi-5 combination, resulting in a carryover of $1,118.61 to the fifth race on the Wednesday, Aug. 15 program. First post is 12:25 p.m. (EDT).

(Harrah's Philadelphia)
'The PSNI said the Broad Road between Limavady and Coleraine was closed last night following the collision' (stock photo)

Ambulance teams were called out to two road traffic incidents last night.

A motorcyclist was taken to Altnagelvin Hospital in Londonderry for treatment following what police described as a serious collision between a bike and car outside Limavady.

He had earlier received first aid from Ambulance Service paramedics.

The PSNI said the Broad Road between Limavady and Coleraine was closed last night following the collision.

Diversions were put in place between Drumalief Road and Drumsurn Road.

Motorists were also asked to avoid area and seek alternative routes.

Elsewhere, at Hillsborough roundabout on the A1, three ambulance crews were dispatched as well as a rapid response paramedic following a collision between a bus and a car.

It's believed two women were injured in the incident, but there were no further details available last night.
Conal McKee died at the weekend after being in a coma since August 3

Tributes have been paid to a young Co Down father who passed away in Florida in the US at the weekend.

Conal McKee died in Miami shortly after 6am local time on Saturday. It's believed Mr McKee had been living in Florida, where he had begun a new life with his girlfriend Kata and infant son Danny.

An online fundraising page to support his family stated that he had been in a coma in West Boca Medical Centre since Friday, August 3.

Dundrum GAC chairman Mark Fitzsimons said: "It is with the deepest sadness that we learned this morning of the death of one of our own, Conal McKee (RIP). We as a club are devastated. We send our heartfelt condolences to his family at this most difficult time."

South Down Sinn Fein MP Chris Hazzard extended his condolences to Mr McKee's family.

He commented: "This is a heartbreaking time for Conal's family and the Dundrum community.

"Conal was a very likeable and popular young man who represented Dundrum GAC.

"My thoughts and the thoughts of everyone in South Down are with all the family and friends at this tough time."

Dundrum United FC posted a photo on Twitter of the team that played its first official match almost three years ago, which included Mr McKee.

"We are saddened to learn of the loss of one of the team from that day, Conal McKee RIP," the tweet added.

Friend David Campbell wrote on Facebook: "Too soon Conal, way too soon. You were one of the genuine good guys that everyone loved to be around."
This year's Apprentice Boys parade was a shining example of how marches in Northern Ireland can he held peacefully, the PSNI has said.

Up to 20,000 people and 145 bands took part in Saturday's annual celebration in Londonderry.

Participants and spectators came from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Canada and Australia to mark the 329th anniversary of the Relief of Derry.

The day started with a parade around Derry's Walls and a wreath-laying ceremony at the cenotaph.

At noon a pageant featuring firing guns marked the start of a three-hour parade across Craigavon Bridge and around the city.

Tourists joined locals who had lined the route from the bridge up to the Diamond with deckchairs.

PSNI chief inspector Johnny Hunter praised those who worked behind the scenes to make the day run smoothly.

He said: "Derry/Londonderry is an example to how problems around parading in the past have been overcome through working together, various parties talking to each other, the police working collaboratively with our partners, and solving issues so that everyone can have their day."
Tributes have poured in for Queen's University chancellor Dr Tom Moranian

Tributes have been paid to Queen's University chancellor Dr Tom Moran, who has died in the United States.

The 65-year-old Irish-American businessman was appointed Chancellor of the Belfast university in 2015.

Queen's vice-chancellor Professor Ian Greer said last night: "It is with great sadness that I announced the death of our chancellor, Dr Tom Moran. Tom has passed away peacefully in New York following a short illness.

"We are grateful for Tom's unwavering support and commitment to the university since he was appointed chancellor. Tom considered it a privilege and honour to be our Chancellor, and embraced the role with passion and excitement.

"Tom was a real inspiration to all those who knew him, and will be sorely missed."

Prof Greer offered his deepest sympathy to Dr Moran's wife Joan and the family circle.

A New Yorker with ancestral roots in Ireland, Mr Moran was listed as one of the top 100 Irish-American business people in the US.

He served as president and chief executive officer of the Mutual of America Life Insurance Company, and was the first person to have been appointed president from within the company.

He also held the post of chairman of Concern Worldwide (US) Inc, an international humanitarian relief organisation.

Dr Moran contributed to several humanitarian and community causes, including acting as one of a group of unofficial peace envoys to Northern Ireland throughout the 1990s.

PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton tweeted last night: "Sad to hear of the passing of Tom Moran in New York earlier today.

"A great friend - full of honesty, candour and wisdom. Authentic advocate for policing and the peace process.

"Many of us in leadership will miss his support, counsel and humour."

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney was among the many prominent figures who praised Dr Moran's contribution to the peace process.

"I learned with sadness today of the death of Tom Moran in New York," Mr Coveney said on social media.

"Tom made a very significant positive impact on Irish-American relations, in particular supporting peace in Northern Ireland."

Dr Moran was born in 1952 on Staten Island, one of three children of an Irish-Italian-American mother and an Irish-American father, with roots in counties Fermanagh and Tipperary.

In 2015 Dr Moran was among those honoured at the Presidential Distinguished Service Awards in Dublin.

Senior SDLP figure Mark Durkan said: "Tom Moran had a head for big business but heart for small causes.

"His outreach in support of our peace process and Good Friday Agreement spanned right across and beyond party divides with encouragement and good counsel given straight."

Former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams TD issued a statement of condolence on behalf of the party leadership.

He said: "It is with very deep regret that we heard the news of Tom Moran's death in New York.

"Tom, introduced to the peace process by Bill Flynn, became a crucial player in his positive involvement with political representatives of loyalism, making clear his main aim was a shared understanding of the peace process and building support across all communities. He will be deeply missed."

Former PUP politician Dawn Purvis said: "So sad that a great friend and supporter of the peace process, Tom Moran, has passed away in his native New York.

"Rest easy my friend."
A superbike racer from Co Londonderry says he is lucky to be alive after being hit by an over-zealous fan's selfie stick as he leaned into a corner at 170mph.

Magherafelt rider Paul Jordan (28) was on the first lap of the MCE Ulster Grand Prix Superstock race on Saturday when the terrifying incident happened.

The spectator was reportedly taken to hospital with a suspected dislocated shoulder.

"If it had have hit me in the face I would be dead," Jordan said.

"I wouldn't have had a chance."

The national and international road racer finished sixth in his first race of the day at the Dundrod circuit near Lisburn, but said the baffling mishap affected his performance.

"I was going through the first right hand corner and I felt a massive bang on my shoulder," he recalled.

"I thought I was bleeding, but wasn't in a position to check - it was only afterwards I realised that my leathers had been ripped clean off my back.

"It definitely took my concentration because I had to keep turning the same corner on subsequent laps and I didn't want to be hit again, but I didn't have a clue what I was trying to avoid."

Jordan, who edged a thrilling Supersport 600 opening race in Armoy at the end of July, was already anxious about getting to grips with his new Dafabet Devitt Racing Kawasaki machine.

He was selected to replace the team's original rider Ivan Lintin who was seriously injured in a four-machine pile-up at the Southern 100 in the Isle of Man last month.

The crash claimed the life of Gortreagh Printing rider James Cowton.

"It's a learning curve - you have to get comfortable on the bike so this was the last thing I needed," Jordan continued.

He has no recollection of seeing the selfie stick responsible, but race organisers said they believe that was the cause of Saturday's incident.

"I saw a spectator and he appeared to be on a ladder at the gate-post of a field on the corner, he was right at the edge hanging over onto the road," he said.

"He must have been taking photos with his phone.

"You can understand people wanting to get close to the action, but you don't expect people to go that far."

In a series of tweets on the Ulster Grand Prix's social media account, officials warned fans of the dangers posed by selfie sticks, drones and flash photography which are all strictly forbidden.

"As Paul Jordan found out earlier, selfie sticks can do a lot of damage," one tweet read.

Jordan, who went on to finish fourth in Saturday's Superbike race, said the "eejit" responsible threatens to ruin the sport for all fans.

"As a rider you are putting everything on the line - I don't need some stupid eejit doing this," he stated.

"They will ruin it for everyone because it will probably result in spectators being pushed even further back, but if they are going to jeopardise our safety then that's probably for the best."

Only three races were able to go ahead on Saturday due to bad weather.

The opening Superstock race was abandoned following a crash which left French rider Fabrice Miguet (49) critically ill.

The Kawasaki/Optrimark team racer, who underwent surgery following the collision, remains in hospital.
The memorial to the soldiers killed by the IRA in 1971

A Sinn Fein councillor has condemned those who stole a memorial to three soldiers murdered by the IRA 47 years ago.

The monument to the three Scottish men, who were shot at White Brae near Ligoniel in north Belfast, was removed at the weekend.

Brothers John (17) and Joseph (18) McCaig from Ayr, and Dougald McCaughey (23) from Glasgow, were killed on March 10, 1971.

The trio from the Royal Highland Fusiliers had been socialising in Belfast city centre when they were lured to the remote site by a woman and then murdered.

There have been numerous attacks on the monument since its erection eight years ago.

Sinn Fein councillor Ryan Murphy condemned the theft of the monument.

He urged anyone who knows of its whereabouts to come forward.

He said: "This latest attack on a memorial to British soldiers on the White Brae is just one of many in recent years.

"These actions are not reflective of this local community and they need to stop.

"All families deserve to remember their loved ones in peace.

"If people have any information on who carried this out or the location of the memorial stone that was stolen, they need to bring that forward to myself or the police."

PUP councillor Julie-Anne Corr-Johnston also condemned the theft, saying it was another attempt to cause hurt.

"Not content with their cold-blooded murder and hell-bent on causing more hurt and suffering upon their families, thugs have once again returned to desecrate the memorial to three Royal Highland Fusiliers," she said.

"This isn't just another sectarian attack, this is a vicious, repulsive and repetitive campaign of hatred.

"The perpetrators are absent of human decency.

"They can remove stones and wreaths but the memory of these three men will forever live on in the hearts and minds of their families, friends and the people of north Belfast."

The mother of the McCaig brothers asked for a memorial to her boys in 1972, but one was not erected until the Royal British Legion raised money for it in 2010.
Republicans gather at City Hall during the Anti-Internment League parade on Saturday

Ulster unionist members of Belfast City Council are seeking a meeting with the Parades Commission and PSNI to voice their concerns surrounding a controversial anti-internment parade on Saturday.

Hundreds of dissident republicans paraded through Belfast city centre for the first time in four years after the Anti-Internment League was granted permission by the Parades Commission.

The annual parade, which started in 2013, marks the beginning of detention without trial, introduced at the height of the Troubles in 1971.

There was a heavy security operation as around 500 republicans and a number of flute bands gathered in Writers' Square before making their way along Royal Avenue to the City Hall, where speeches were made.

There had been concerns that trouble could erupt as two loyalist counter-demonstrations took place along the route.

However, despite a number of verbal exchanges between loyalists and marchers, the day passed off peacefully.

Organisers chose a route used by other less contentious marches in order to persuade the Parades Commission to allow it to take place.

However, restrictions were placed on the numbers who could attend.

The crowd was due to disperse at 2pm at City Hall, but the organisers notified the Parades Commission on Friday of their intention to hold a return parade through the city centre, finishing at Castle Street.

The Parades Commission ruled that participants could walk the return leg which, according to the organisers, was to provide a dispersal point for marchers.

But councillor Jim Rodgers said his party wanted to meet with senior police officers and the parading body as a matter of urgency.

He questioned why the parade's return leg was granted permission outside the 28-day notification period.

He said: "You are supposed to give 28 days' notice, and unless there is a good reason for this, you can face charges or be brought before the courts.

"This has happened in the past to those who break the rules.

"Furthermore, quite a few of the marchers were wearing paramilitary clothing and some of them have criminal convictions.

"We have received a large number of complaints from people who were in the city centre on Saturday afternoon to say that this was totally unacceptable.

"From the word go, we felt that it was wrong to allow this parade to proceed, particularly as it came up Royal Avenue, past a memorial to two murdered UDR soldiers."

Organiser Dee Fennell said: "We have decided to use this route this year. It is a route used by many campaigns, such as the LGBTQ campaign, May Day rallies, peace rallies and numerous others, so we wanted to utilise this route the same way other campaigns do," he said.

The Parades Commission said that in reaching its decision, it "considered the fundamental rights of citizens to exercise freedoms of assembly and expression at Belfast city centre in balance with the competing rights of others, and in full consideration of the potential impacts of the parade on community relations and community life, and the potential risks of public disorder". In 2015 there were clashes between the PSNI and republicans after officers stopped the anti-internment march from entering the city centre.

The previous year the parade went ahead amid a massive police operation, which saw streets blocked off hours in advance.

In 2013 around 56 PSNI officers were injured after loyalist protesters attacked the police during a parade.

The main speaker at the event, Mandy Duffy, who is vice-chair of dissident republican party Saoradh and sister-in-law of leading Lurgan republican Colin Duffy, told the crowd that republicans were being held in prisons under "draconian legislation".
Entries for the fifth revival of the Prix DEte race at the Hippodrome 3R are due by 11:00 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 14.

The Prix DEte purse is $200,000 and will be held on Sunday, Aug. 19. The race is restricted to only four-year-old pacers that have made all three of the prior sustaining payments.

There are no supplement entries allowed in the Prix DEte and Lasix is not allowed in the province of Quebec. The race is sponsored by the Quebec Jockey Club.

The drawing of post position the Prix DEte will be done live at the Hippodrome 3R Tuesday evening after the fourth race on the wagering card.

For more information on the Prix DEte race please contact Murielle Thomassin at [email protected] or Steven Wolf at [email protected].

(Quebec Jockey Club)
Two of the most prominent female Irish Catholics have clashed over a disputed invitation to a symposium on women's empowerment due to take place on the day Pope Francis arrives in the Republic.

Businesswoman Norah Casey, who will co-chair the Voices of Impact symposium on Saturday August 25, and has been heavily involved in fundraising efforts for the Pope's visit, claimed she had invited former Irish President Mary McAleese to attend the event.

Ms Casey told RTE the symposium will see a host of high-profile women from Ireland and abroad speak about their roles to an audience of 1,000 women from 116 countries.

"Of course, I've invited Mary McAleese, Mary Robinson and all female politicians, a lot of male politicians and the Taoiseach," Ms Casey said.

When programme presenter Brendan O'Connor informed Ms Casey that Mrs McAleese's son Justin had contacted the programme to say his mother had not been invited, she dismissed his claims.

"I sent it myself because there was about 200 that went out on last Friday week and I went back into the server to make sure all of those emails were sent.

"I'm obsessive about things like that. I'm 100%," she said.

However, Mrs McAleese, who is originally from Ardoyne in north Belfast, said she has not received an invitation so far.

"I was surprised to hear Norah Casey claim on radio she had emailed an invitation to me a week ago. Since I did not receive it, I have asked her to kindly resend it," Mrs McAleese said.

The former head of state has been highly critical of the Catholic Church over its treatment of women, accusing it of misogyny.

She added that friends of hers, who had been invited to the event, had rung to ask if she had been invited.

They revealed that the first invitations to the Voices of Impact event had been sent in the name of the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, almost six weeks ago.

"A week ago, another friend got in touch to say she had just been emailed an invitation and was surprised at the late notice.

"She asked if I had been invited and did I know anything about the event. I explained I had not been invited and knew nothing about it," Mrs McAleese said.

Asked if she would attend the symposium, she said when she receives an invitation and knew more about it, "I will be in a position to reply".

Meanwhile, an opinion poll has found strong public support for Mrs McAleese's severe criticism of the Catholic Church.

The Sunday Independent/ Kantar Millward Brown poll found more than half agree with Mrs McAleese who said the Church does not treat women equally.

Almost two-thirds support her views in favour of female priests and another two-thirds of those questioned believe Catholic priests should be allowed to marry.

The poll found 55% support her view that the Church does not treat women equally, with only 15% not in agreement, a further 15% said 'it depends', and 15% said they did not know.
The dispute resulted in a fifth day of strike action on Friday (Niall Carson/PA)

Talks aimed at resolving the long-running dispute between Ryanair and its Irish pilots have got under way.

The budget airline and Forsa, which has been representing the Irish pilots, are attempting to seek a resolution over conditions under mediator Kieran Mulvey.

Mr Mulvey, the former head of the Workplace Relations Committee, has set aside three days for the negotiations.

The dispute resulted in a fifth day of strike action on Friday.

About 100 of Ryanairs 350 Irish-based pilots joined colleagues in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden in a series of strikes.

The airline said 396 flights were cancelled as a result, disrupting thousands of passengers.

A spokesman for Forsa said Mr Mulvey had asked both parties to refrain from public comment while the process is under way.

A Ryanair spokesman said mediation was required after five strikes failed to achieve anything other than to regrettably disrupt some customers.

He added 95% of the airlines flights and the majority of its pilots had operated on those days.

Mediation should ensure Forsa takes control of their side of the process, take these negotiations more seriously and remove unwanted interference, the spokesman said.

Talks, not strikes, will move this forward and allow Ryanair to make the same progress we are making with other unions elsewhere in Europe.

Forsa has not served notice of further strike action while the process of mediation is under way.

Union representative Bernard Harbor told RTE Radio Ones Morning Ireland programme that there was a lot of ground to be made up and a lot of time had been wasted.
Pope Francis will be driven around in a Skoda car while he is in Ireland.

Irish businesswoman Norah Casey - who is helping to raise 21m (18.7m) to fund the World Meeting of Families event in Dublin later this month - confirmed the pontiff would be travelling in the vehicle.

Appearing as a panellist on RTE Radio One's Marian show yesterday, Ms Casey said the car brand was providing vehicles for the World Meeting of Families.

"He's driving a Skoda while he's in Ireland. Travelling in it," she said.

Host Brendan O'Connor - who was standing in for Marian Finucane - said the fact the Pope would be seen travelling in a Skoda would "probably be invaluable to them".

The former Czech brand was incorporated into the Volkswagen group two decades ago, and has become a 'mid-market' brand favoured by Irish families.

It is not known which type of Skoda model the pontiff would be travelling in - it could be its top-of-the-range Superb or Kodiaq models. Or perhaps the Pope - a modest man who eschews luxury and extravagance - might opt for the Fabia or Citigo models.

Ms Casey also told the programme that they were seeking to raise 21m in sponsorship to cover the entire visit, which also includes a trip to Knock, Co Mayo, on Sunday, August 24.

She said the cost of staging the papal Mass in Phoenix Park would come to 1m (892,000) alone.

Ms Casey declined to say how much has been raised so far, but did reiterate that there was no State funding for the event.

Half-a-million people are expected to attend the Mass in the Phoenix Park, which also features some 7,000 general volunteers, 3,000 papal volunteers in the choir, and another 2,000-plus assisting with the holy communion.

The Office of Public Works (OPW) has assumed responsibility for preparing the park and the thousands of volunteers.

The OPW says there will be "multiple food and drink stations" throughout the park, along with designated 'Rest Zones'.

The World Meeting of Families team has warned those attending the Phoenix Park event that they can expect to walk up to 7km in the approach to the venue and in to the park itself.
More than 1.4 billion euro worth of Ulster Bank loans are to be sold to a US vulture fund.

The bank confirmed it had agreed the sale of 5,200 non-performing mortgage loans to Cerberus Capital Management.

The portfolio includes about 2,300 residential loans and around 2,900 buy-to-let mortgages.

This difficult decision comes a decade after the financial crisis began and the continued extension of forbearance cannot be maintainedUlster Bank

A bank spokeswoman said: Ulster Bank can now confirm that it has agreed terms for the sale of a portfolio of non-performing mortgages of c 1.4 billion euro, as announced for sale in May to a purchaser managed by affiliates of Cerberus Capital Management LP.

This portfolio does not contain any performing home loans or any home loans in an arrangement.

This difficult decision comes a decade after the financial crisis began and the continued extension of forbearance cannot be maintained.

Not all mortgages are sustainable and we are obliged to reduce the level of non-performing loans on our balance sheet.

For mortgages that are not sustainable, additional forbearance will not bring them back to a performing position.

The net effect of the transaction remains that another bank is outsourcing its dirty work to a US vulture fundFianna Fail finance spokesman Michael McGrath

Ulster Bank said it would be contacting affected customers and giving 90 days notice of the sale instead of the 60 days it was required to provide.

Fianna Fail finance spokesman Michael McGrath criticised the sale.

The net effect of the transaction remains that another bank is outsourcing its dirty work to a US vulture fund, Mr McGrath said.

What tools does Cerberus have at its disposal for dealing with these loans that Ulster Bank doesnt have?

The bottom line here is the banks and the Government are simply washing their hands of the problem.

The opposition TD said it was hard to see many of these mortgage holders managing to negotiate a restructuring solution with the bank and that Ulster Bank needed to clarify whether the mortgages were being purchased by a regulated or unregulated entity.

Sinn Fein TD David Cullinane said the raft of loan sales by banks during the Dail recess showed they have the implicit acceptance of Government.

Mr Cullinane claimed a banks-first policy had been adopted by Finance Minister Paschal Donohue in line with his predecessor Michael Noonan.

While Ulster Bank say no performing loans are included, this does not exclude the possibility that mortgages meeting their restructuring arrangement are included  this must be clarified immediately, he said.

Without political direction this summer will be remembered as the Summer of the Vultures.
A number of people have been arrested in connection with the death of a British man in Ibiza, police said.

Conor Spraggs has been described as a gentle soul with a heart of gold.

Friends and loved ones of Mr Spraggs, believed to be 23 and from Stevenage, paid tribute to the holidaymaker after his death on the popular holiday island.

A JustGiving page has been set up to bring his body home and cover his funeral costs.

The page description read: Conor was tragically killed on his last day of his holiday in Ibiza.

We are trying to raise enough money to fly his body home so he can be back with his family and put to rest in his home town.

Conor was a gentle soul, with a heart of gold who is going to be deeply missed by family and friends and anyone who knew him.

More than 5,000 has been raised after the page was set up late on Sunday.

Those who donated to the fund remembered Mr Spraggs as a top lad who had not a bad bone in his body.

Conor was a gentle soul, with a heart of gold

According to media reports, Mr Spragg died after a fight in the early hours of Sunday morning following an altercation with a group of males in the resort of San Antonio.

The Diario de Ibiza news website reported that four Britons had been arrested.

Spanish police told the Press Association that the investigation is still open and confirmed there had been some arrests made.

A spokeswoman for the Guardia Civil declined to give details on the number of people arrested, their ages, genders or nationalities.

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: Our staff are providing assistance to the family of a British man who has died in Ibiza and are in touch with the local authorities, who are investigating.

Mr Spraggs is the latest British holidaymaker to die this summer in the popular destination.

Last week, a 24-year-old was found floating in a marina in San Antonio

In July, the body of a 19-year-old man was pulled from a pool in Sant Josep in the early hours of the morning.
Boris Johnson brings tea for the press to drink outside his house in Thame (Aaron Chown/PA)

Boris Johnson has sought to move on from the furious row about his comments on the burka by devoting his latest Daily Telegraph column to proposals to encourage house building.

The former foreign secretary called for cuts to absurdly high stamp duty and warned of an oligopoly of construction companies reducing the supply of new homes by land-banking.

Mr Johnson has yet to respond to allegations of Islamophobia resulting from an article a week ago in which he compared Muslim women in face-covering veils to letter-boxes and bank robbers, or to demands for an apology from Theresa May and Conservative chairman Brandon Lewis.

He refused to comment to reporters at his Oxfordshire home after his return from a holiday in Italy, instead emerging from the house to offer them cups of tea.

We are hopeful that the party will not allow any whitewashing of this specific inquiryMuslim Council of Britain

The Muslim Council of Britain is expected to tell Theresa May on Monday that the investigation launched by the Conservative Party into Mr Johnson must not be a whitewash.

In a letter, obtained by The Guardian, the MCB said: We are hopeful that the party will not allow any whitewashing of this specific inquiry currently in process.

No-one should be allowed to victimise minorities with impunity.

The Tell Mama project, which monitors anti-Muslim violence, has reported an increase in incidents of abuse aimed at women wearing the niqab or hijab over the past week.

Mr Johnson was accused of casual courting of fascism by a former David Cameron aide, Lord Cooper.

But Brexit-backing MP Jacob Rees-Mogg denounced the investigation launched into Mr Johnsons remarks as a show trial.

And a ComRes poll for the Sunday Express found that 53% of voters believe Mr Johnson should not be disciplined for his comments, against 40% who think he should.

"I have nothing to say about this matter except to offer you some tea..." @BorisJohnson greets the media armed with a tray of mugs amid burka row pic.twitter.com/5wknsuUBTH  ITV News (@itvnews) August 12, 2018

Far-right US activist Steve Bannon, who was in contact with Mr Johnson during his recent visit to the UK, urged him not to bow at the altar of political correctness by apologising.

The former aide to Donald Trump told the Sunday Times that Mr Johnson had nothing to apologise for and would be a great prime minister.

Former first secretary of state Damian Green, who was Mrs Mays de facto deputy, said he feared Mr Johnson was being turned into a martyr by the alt-Right, which would be a disaster for him and the Conservative Party.

Writing for the Mail on Sunday, he said: I am particularly concerned by reports that President Trumps sacked adviser Steve Bannon is forming a Europe-wide far-Right campaign group  and has been in touch with Boris.

I hope that no Conservative politician, including Boris, is taking advice from him about how the Conservative Party should behave.

Mr Johnson made no mention at all of the furore in his latest Telegraph column, in which he described the shortage of housing as the single biggest and most urgent crisis we face.

Writing as Mrs May launched her plans to tackle homelessness, Mr Johnson warned of a crisis of confidence in capitalism if young people are unable to buy a home.

He called for a cut in stamp duty and the ditching of affordable housing targets.

This is meant to be Britain, the great home-owning democracy, but we now have lower rates of owner-occupation for the under-40s than France and Germany, wrote Mr Johnson.

That is a disgrace. And you cannot expect young people to be automatically sympathetic to capitalism when they find it so tough to acquire capital.
A paediatrician convicted of gross negligence manslaughter over the death of six-year-old Jack Adcock said she was very pleased after winning her bid to be reinstated to the medical register.

Hadiza Bawa-Garba fought a decision made in January by two High Court judges to substitute erasure for the lesser sanction of a years suspension imposed by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal (MPT) in June last year.

The ruling followed a successful appeal by the General Medical Council (GMC), which argued that suspension was not sufficient to protect the public or maintain public confidence in the medical profession.

On Monday, the Court of Appeal unanimously allowed her challenge and said her name should be restored to the medical register forthwith.

Expand Close Six-year-old Jack Adcock died at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 2011 (PA) Press Association Images / Facebook

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Her case was remitted to the MPT for review of the suspension, which will remain in place in the meantime.

Dr Bawa-Garba told the BBCs Panorama programme: Im very pleased with the outcome but I want to pay tribute and remember Jack Adcock, a wonderful little boy that started the story.

I want to let the parents know that Im sorry for my role in what has happened to Jack.

I also want to acknowledge and give gratitude to people around the world from the public to the medical community who have supported me. Im very overwhelmed by the generosity and Im really grateful for that.

Jack, from Glen Parva, Leicestershire  who had Downs syndrome and a heart condition  died at Leicester Royal Infirmary in 2011 after he developed sepsis.

In 2015, at Nottingham Crown Court, Dr Bawa-Garba was sentenced to two years in prison suspended for two years.

The judge said neither she nor a nurse who was on duty gave Jack the priority which this very sick boy deserved.

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Jacks mother Nicola branded the ruling an absolute disgrace.

She told ITV News: It makes a mockery of the justice system. If shed (Dr Bawa-Garba) have done what she should have done that day I know my son would still be here 99.9% and I will never budge from that.

Giving the appeal courts ruling, the Master of the Rolls, Sir Terence Etherton, said: Undoubtedly, there are some cases where the facts are such that the most severe sanction, erasure from the medical register, is the only proper and reasonable sanction. This is not one of them.

Once it is understood that it was permissible for the tribunal to take into account the full context of Jacks death, including the range of persons bearing responsibility for that tragedy and the systemic failings of the hospital, as well as the other matters relied upon by Dr Bawa-Garba, and that the tribunal plainly had in mind its overriding obligation to protect the public for the future, it is impossible to say that the suspension sanction imposed by the tribunal was not one properly open to it and that the only sanction properly and reasonably available was erasure.

He added: The present case is unusual.

No concerns have ever been raised about the clinical competence of Dr Bawa-Garba, other than in relation to Jacks death, even though she continued to be employed at the hospital until her conviction.

The evidence before the tribunal was that she was in the top third of her specialist trainee cohort.

The tribunal was satisfied that her deficient actions in relation to Jack were neither deliberate nor reckless, that she had remedied the deficiencies in her clinical skills and did not present a continuing risk to patients, and that the risk of her clinical practice suddenly and without explanation falling below the standards expected on any given day was no higher than for any other reasonably competent doctor.

The tribunal was an expert body entitled to reach all those conclusions, including the important factor weighing in favour of Dr Bawa-Garba that she is a competent and useful doctor, who presents no material continuing danger to the public, and can provide considerable useful future service to society.
A plea for Poldark fans to avoid two beaches featured in the hit TV series has been made by a Cornwall tourism boss.

Huge numbers of visitors were making a beeline for just two out of the countys 400 beaches  Kynance Cove and Porthcurno.

Visit Cornwall chief executive Malcolm Bell warned the surge was causing gridlock and asked tourists to consider visiting less popular spots.

On particular peak days and especially at weekends, we have suffered from gridlock in these places, he said.

For anybody who loves and knows our Cornwall, these particular beaches are down quite windy roads so its not always that easy to just quickly drive on because you have got to turn round.

Its about informing and distributing so people have a great holiday and enjoy Cornwall rather than getting frustrated at being stuck down one of our beautiful Cornish lanes.

Dear Mr Aidan Turner and his wonderful chest and thighs walking down the water is better advertising than we could ever hope to getMalcolm Bell, Visit Cornwall chief executive

Mr Bell insisted Cornwall still wanted to welcome tourists to the area and he was grateful for the popularity generated by the BBC One show, which he said had caused a 10% increase in visitors.

Dear Mr Aidan Turner and his wonderful chest and thighs walking down the water is better advertising than we could ever hope to get, he said.

There are actually lots of other beaches he is filmed on and we can point people to, because we have 400 miles of coastline and a beach for every mile.

Holywell Bay often features in BBC's Poldark. Discover all of the beautiful beaches in and around Newquay here:https://t.co/814FKChSGq#Poldark #LoveCornwall #Newquay pic.twitter.com/xAOxuAZ6Uz  Visit Cornwall (@ILoveCornwallUK) February 13, 2018

A tourist tax would not be the answer either, Mr Bell insisted, particularly with one in three Cornish households and 53,000 employees reliant on the tourism industry.

About 30% of all tourist tax goes on tax already, he said, pointing to VAT and employment tax.

Its not a matter of another tax but whether some of that money should come back from London.

Maybe there is an argument about Treasury gain versus local pain.
A British man who died in Ibiza was described as a gentle soul with a heart of gold.

Friends and loved ones of Conor Spraggs, believed to be 23 and from Stevenage, paid tribute to the holidaymaker after his death on the popular island.

A JustGiving page has been set up to bring his body home and cover his funeral costs.

The page description read: Conor was tragically killed on his last day of his holiday in Ibiza.

We are trying to raise enough money to fly his body home so he can be back with his family and put to rest in his home town.

Conor was a gentle soul, with a heart of gold who is going to be deeply missed by family and friends and anyone who knew him.

More than 3,000 has been raised after the page was set up late on Sunday.

Those who donated to the fund remembered Mr Spraggs as a top lad who had not a bad bone in his body.

According to media reports, the victim died after a fight in the early hours of Sunday morning following an altercation with a group of males in the resort of San Antonio.

A police investigation has been launched.

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: Our staff are providing assistance to the family of a British man who has died in Ibiza and are in touch with the local authorities, who are investigating.

Mr Spraggs is the latest British holidaymaker to die this summer in the popular destination.

Last week, a 24-year-old was found floating in a marina in San Antonio

In July, the body of a 19-year-old man was pulled from a pool in Sant Josep in the early hours of the morning.
Afghan security forces are battling the Taliban in a key provincial capital for the fourth straight day after insurgents launched a massive assault on the eastern city last week.

Najib Danish, Interior Ministrys spokesman, says reinforcements have been sent to Ghazni and were trying to clear it of the Taliban.

Tonight I chaired the Commander in Chiefs emergency meeting to take stock of the situation in Ghazni Province. In the meeting I spoke with the Provincial Governor, Commander of 203rd Thunder Corps, and Provincial Police and NDS Chiefs.  Ashraf Ghani (@ashrafghani) August 12, 2018

After detailed review of the reports, the meeting decided that in order to consolidate operational gains, further reinforcements should be dispatched to the province on urgent basis.  Ashraf Ghani (@ashrafghani) August 12, 2018

The assault on Ghazni, the capital of Ghazni province, was a major show of force by the Taliban, who had infiltrated deep into the city and attacked from several directions.

The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces in Ghazni.

Col Fared Mashal, the provinces police chief, says the majority of the insurgents fighting in Ghazni are foreigners, including Pakistanis and Chechens.

Col Mashal says hundreds of Taliban have been killed so far in Ghazni.
Former Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez has denied wrongdoing after recent accusations that she was responsible for a corruption scheme involving public works contracts.

Fernandez said in a written statement presented to a federal court that the accusations are false and politically motivated.

More than a dozen people have been arrested in the case. They include business leaders and former officials who served in Fernandezs 2007-15 administration.

Expand Close Cristina Fernandez is surrounded by media outside her home as she leaves for the court hearing in Buenos Aires (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Cristina Fernandez is surrounded by media outside her home as she leaves for the court hearing in Buenos Aires (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

The case is based on an investigation by La Nacion newspaper into alleged corruption over more than a decade during the governments of Fernandez and her late husband, Nestor Kirchner.

The newspaper says the driver of one of the accused kept notebooks with detailed information on bribes.

Fernandez is currently a senator, a post that grants her immunity from prosecution.
Syrian Ahmed Ahjam attends customers at his newly opened Middle Eastern pastry stand at the Mercado Agricola in Montevideo, Uruguay (Matilde Campodinico/AP)

A former inmate of the US prison camp in Cubas Guantanamo Bay has opened a pastry shop in Uruguay.

Ahmed Ahjam opened a small stall selling Arabic pastries at a public market in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo.

He was one of six former detainees accepted by Uruguay in 2014 after US authorities decided they posed no threat but could not be sent to their homelands.

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Mr Ahjam and the others have struggled to adapt to the South American country.

But the former jeweller from Syria says he has learned to make sweets with recipes from his sisters and he has been earning money selling them at fairs and private events.

Uruguayan officials helped him open the small new business but government subsidies for the six are scheduled to end this year.
Malians have voted in a runoff presidential election to determine if incumbent Ibrahim Boubacar Keita will remain in office in the sprawling West African nation threatened by rising extremist violence.

Mr Keita faced off against opposition leader Soumaila Cisse.

Sundays polls had low turnout by closing amid attacks and threats of violence by Islamic extremists.

The chairman of Arkodia village in the north Niafunke commune in Timbuktu region was killed, four election workers were physically harassed and the polling station there was burned, according to the Citizen Observation Pool of Mali, which had more than 2,000 observers.

The organisation reported several incidents on Sunday.

Two polling stations were burned in Keltamba and election officials were harmed by gunmen in Ngouma commune in central Mali, observers said.

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Whatsapp Ibrahim Boubacar Keita casts his ballot (Annie Risemberg/AP)

In north and central Mali, more than 50 polling stations had closed before noon because of the threats by extremists in those regions, the organisation said.

In the polling centres covered by its observers, the organisation said the participation rate was about 8.1%.

It said 14.4% participated in Timbuktu, and only 4.8% in Bamako.

However, their observers did not cover all voting areas, and the election commission has not yet given its estimate of voter turnout.

In the July 29 first-round presidential vote, extremists killed three election workers and destroyed some voting materials.

Nearly 43% of voters made it to the polls last month and at least 671 polling stations were closed.

Despite the relatively low turnout, officials called the vote well-conducted.

Mali has grown more insecure since Mr Keita beat Mr Cisse in a second-round election in 2013.

Malian authorities arrested three jihadists on Friday who said they were preparing to carry out an attack during the vote in Bamako, said Mali army spokesman Colonel Idrissa Traore.

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Whatsapp Soumaila Cisse casting his vote (Boubacar Sada Sissoko/Union for the Republic and Democracy via AP)

Extremists are staging more bold attacks that have spread to central Mali, where both Islamic State and al Qaida-linked militants are present.

Deadly communal clashes between ethnic groups and accusations of heavy-handed counter-terror operations have caused even deeper tensions and mistrust of the state.

Still, a second term for Mr Keita, 73, seems likely.

He received 41.7% of the vote in the first round from a field of 24 candidates and has gained endorsements from some other candidates.

Dressed in his traditional white boubou, Mr Keita voted near his home in Bamako on Sunday.

I hope that everyone will be very vigilant, he said, saying that any suspected attempts at fraud should be reported to police.

Ultimately this election must end as it should, with the celebration of democracy  This is what we hope for in our hearts.

Mr Cisse, 68, who placed second in the first round with nearly 18% of the vote, has blamed Mr Keita for insecurity, violence and corruption.

His opposition party also alleges there was voting fraud in July.

Mr Cisse has not received major endorsements from failed candidates but does have the backing of a popular spiritual leader, Mohamed Ould Bouye Haidara.

This time, I have a good feeling, Mr Cisse has said.

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His campaign director Tiebile Drame claimed there were cases of stuffing of ballot boxes in several northern locations.

However, the constitutional court on Wednesday said it has registered more than 10 requests from the opposition over various anomalies in the first round, but most were declared inadmissible.

On Saturday, the opposition organised a march to warn against the fraud.

Issa Namory Keita, a 57-year-old retiree, said he would vote for the incumbent Mr Keita.

Unlike his challenger, my candidate knows the country well and it is he who has the solution to the problems, he said.

Another voter who was unrelated but with the same family name, Fanta Keita, said she will also vote for the current president.

He is a man who loves his country, he is a worker who has opened several development sites and I hope he continues his work, she said.

Voter turnout trickled throughout the day and was expected to remain low.

Some people have fled areas of violence until the vote is over.

In central Mali, attacks have become more frequent amid communal clashes as neighbours suspect one another of being recruited by extremist groups.

Meanwhile, Malian soldiers in recent months have been accused of abuses, including extrajudicial killings, during counter-terror operations.

On Wednesday, armed men attacked the Boni prefecture, according to a Malian security official, killing the prefects secretary.

Malian authorities have tried to reassure the public and encourage them to go to the polls for the second round.

Residents in central Mali, however, have said they do not see the increased security.

Many in the municipalities of Pignariba, Lowel-Gueou and Bara-Sara said they probably would not be able to vote.
South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, right, and his North Korean counterpart Ri Son Gwon arrive for their meeting at the northern side of Panmunjom in the Demilitarised Zone, North Korea (South Korea Unification Ministry/AP)

The rival Koreas have agreed to hold a third summit between their leaders in Pyongyang sometime before the end of September.

The agreement between the two countries unification ministers comes amid an ongoing nuclear stand-off between Washington and Pyongyang.

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The two sides did not announce an exact date for the summit.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un first met in April in a highly publicised summit and then again in May for more informal talks.

Expand Close South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, second from left, talks with his North Korean counterpart Ri Son Gwon, second from right, during a meeting at Panmunjom in the Demilitarised Zone, North Korea (South Korea Unification Ministry/AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, second from left, talks with his North Korean counterpart Ri Son Gwon, second from right, during a meeting at Panmunjom in the Demilitarised Zone, North Korea (South Korea Unification Ministry/AP)

The Koreas said in a statement that they had reviewed ways to set up agreements made at the past summits, during nearly two hours of talks at a North Korea-controlled building in the border village of Panmunjom on Monday.

The meeting between delegations of senior officials from Seoul and Pyongyang comes as experts see slow progress on efforts to disarm North Korea since a June summit between Mr Kim and US President Donald Trump.

Ri Son Gwon, the head of the North Korean delegation, told pool reporters at the end of the talks that officials agreed on a specific date for the summit in Pyongyang sometime within September, but he refused to share the date, saying he wanted to keep reporters wondering.

The South Korean unification minister, Cho Myoung-gyon, told reporters after the meeting that officials still had some work to do before agreeing on when exactly the summit would happen.

He said the two sides will again discuss when the leaders would meet but did not say when.

It was not clear why Mr Ri and Mr Cho differed on the issue of the date, and Mr Cho would not answer a specific question about the discrepancy.

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Mr Cho, the chief of the South Korean delegation, said the two sides also talked a lot about international sanctions meant to punish the North for its development of nuclear weapons, but he did not elaborate.

Seoul has been preparing for possible economic collaboration with Pyongyang that could go ahead when sanctions are lifted.

Pyongyang has urged Washington to ease the economic punishments, but the United States says that cannot happen until the North completely denuclearises.

The South Korean envoy said he urged Pyongyang to accelerate its current nuclear negotiations with the United States. The North said it was making efforts to disarm, but Mr Cho said there were no new details on those efforts.

Experts say there has been slow progress on those efforts since the Singapore summit.
Zimbabwes president has called on the troubled country to unite and put the election period behind us and embrace the future as he made his first public address since winning the disputed poll.

Emmerson Mnangagwa spoke at the Heroes Day holiday to commemorate the lives of those who died in the southern African countrys 1970s war against white minority rule.

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Mr Mnangagwa was to have been inaugurated on Sunday, but the swearing-in ceremony was postponed because of the legal challenge to the election results lodged by the main opposition MDC party at the Constitutional Court.

The July 30 vote was largely peaceful and many had hoped it would usher in a new era, but the capital Harare was rocked by post-election protests in which the military opened fire, killing six people.
The cross-community service in Omagh yesterday to mark the 20th anniversary of the appalling terrorist bombing in August 1998 underlined yet again the horror of violence, and the enormous continuing suffering.

The Real IRA blast was the single worst outrage of the Troubles. It killed 29 people and unborn twins, and left many more injured.

How pitiful it was to witness the families in Omagh gathering together yesterday to remember their dead.

Two decades have passed since the bombing, but in recent days the horror of Omagh has returned to the public consciousness through the shared painful remembrances of those who lost relatives, those who survived, and those who offered help in the aftermath.

The Omagh experience is an example of how the Troubles here are remembered. The multiple victims of major atrocities are brought to mind as the various anniversaries come round, but perhaps not so directly the thousands who died in ones or twos in many of the other dreadful incidents.

However, these people are most vividly remembered by their families and friends who have cause to think about them not just on the anniversaries, but every day because they are still haunted by their trauma, grief, anguish and sense of injustice.

Most shockingly, as we reveal today, around a third of the people directly affected by the Troubles have attempted to take their own lives.

There are also many people waiting for compensation, including those affected by Omagh.

The difficulty of addressing fully the violence of the past is illustrated by the strong reaction of many people to the proposals issued by the Victims' Commissioner - currently out for consultation - with some relatives believing that they have little chance of getting justice.

It is impossible to ignore such continued suffering so long after each atrocity occurred, and two decades after the Good Friday Agreement.

It is disappointing, indeed appalling, that we have not yet been able to assuage the sorrow and suffering of these people, with their still raw and painful emotions and their sense of injustice.

The drawn and stricken faces of the survivors and families of those killed and injured in Omagh in 1998 show the stark reality of grief felt by all victims and their loved ones which, tragically, will not go away.
Indonesias counter-terrorism police Densus 88 arrested 16 suspected militants in different regions of the country over the past several days.

The new arrests brought the number of terrorist suspects rounded up by police to about 300 since May suicide attacks by two families at churches and a police headquarters in Indonesias second largest city, Surabaya, killed 14 bystanders.

Five suspects were arrested Sunday in three locations in West Sumatra province  Padang, Bukittinggi and Payakumbuh  provincial police spokesman Senior Commissioner Syamsi told BenarNews.

Two guns were seized from the suspects, said Syamsi who uses one name.

Syamsi said those arrested are suspected of having links to the Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), a militant network blamed for a series of deadly terrorist attacks in recent years and was outlawed last month by a Jakarta court.

They are part of JAD, Syamsi said.

A neighborhood chief in Padang, Susi Khastri, said one of the suspects, identified only by his initial J, had rented a house and lived with his wife and two children for three years.

Nothing suspicious about them. They sell salt. They were often visited by some people, but thats normal, she said.

East Indonesia Mujahidin Network

Police also arrested a suspect believed to be a member of the East Indonesia Mujahideen (MIT) militant network, identified as M (alias Ato), in East Luwu district in South Sulawesi on Monday, provincial police spokesman Dicky Sondani said.

He said the arrest came after police apprehended two suspects in East Luwu last week and confiscated 15 kilograms of explosive materials.

They were plotting to blow up a number of places in Indonesia, Dicky told BenarNews, without giving more details.

Separately, police nabbed two suspects Bone district, about 450 km (280 miles) from East Luwu.

Dicky said they all had ties to Santoso, the MIT leader who was killed a police anti-terrorism operation in 2016.

Densus 88 also arrested six suspected militants linked to JAD in several locations in Bengkulu on Sumatra island, local police spokesman Sudarno told local media. He did not give details on the arrests.

Meanwhile in Malaysia, a primary school teacher could face up to seven years in jail if convicted on charges filed Monday that he had six images and 16 videos of the Islamic State terror group on his mobile phone.

Muhamad Naseefullah, 47, (alias Heawian Einie) allegedly belonged to a WhatsApp group called the rise of the soldiers of Allah. The group allegedly was linked to a failed terror plot against an October 2017 beer festival in Kuala Lumpur that was cancelled following objections from Muslim groups.
Catholic nuns, including Australias Sister Patricia Fox (right), light candles after a mass at the Black Nazarene Basilica in Manila, June 18, 2018.

An 84-year-old Australian national detained by Philippine immigration authorities denied Monday alleged links with communist insurgents or any terror groups active in the country, including joining political rallies against governments war on drugs that has left thousands of people dead.

Gill Boehringer, a professor from Australia who also holds an American passport, was prevented entry into Manila last Wednesday. He was charged with violating visa rules for allegedly joining protests against President Rodrigo Dutertes bloody anti-drug campaign.

The National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) had also accused him of associating with communist terror groups.

That is preposterous. It seems that in the Philippines today almost anyone can be labelled a terrorist or in association with terrorists. I deny the accusation. I certainly am not a supporter of terrorism from whatever source, Boehringer told reporters.

He said that in February he did join a trip in the southern Mindanao region to visit a school for primary school children run by a tribal program.

But he said there was no rally or political activity there, and the trip was purely for research. Boehringer, a former dean at Macquarie University Law School in Sydney, said he was studying the circumstances for indigenous groups as an academician.

I believe there is no basis for my exclusion from the Philippines in what was an educational experience for myself, the others who travelled with me into the mountain district, and also, I like to think, for those we met with there, he said.

Boehringers lawyer, Maria Sol Taule, told reporters that the immigration bureau had yet to decide on a request for her client to stay in the country on medical grounds.

Taule said Boehringer still remained at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on Monday, since his detention last week upon arrival from Sydney to visit his Filipina wife.

But Immigration spokeswoman Dana Krizia Sandoval explained that they denied the visit of the foreigner after he joined an anti-government demonstration in 2015 in violation of an order that prohibits foreigners from participating in political activities in the country.

She denied that the Australian had been detained, emphasizing that the cause of his delay was due to health reasons.

Boehringer said that he had been accused of joining an anti-globalization rally in Manila in November last year. The charge is false, he said.

It is true that as an individual  a devils advocate perhaps  I have been a critic of some of the policies and practices of three successive governments since coming to the Philippines as an International Election Observer in 2007 and 2010. Are those the activities of a terrorist? Surely not, he said.

Gill Boehringer, a former law dean at Sydney's Macquarie University, (right) talks to a lawyer inside the immigration holding room of the Manila airport after Philippine officials denied him entry for being a threat to public order, Aug. 8, 2018. [Reuters]

Deported after investigating alleged abuses

Earlier this year, three foreign activists  an American, and two African missionaries  were deported after visiting the southern Philippines to investigate alleged abuses blamed on the army, particularly the killing in December of at least eight members of an indigenous community in Lake Sebu province.

A fourth missionary, Catholic nun Patricia Fox of Australia, was ordered deported by Duterte himself.

Duterte had been angered by protests led by the Catholic Church questioning his governments anti-drug war.

Duterte won the presidency two years ago on a vow to rid the country of crime and he has given the police wide latitude in conducting its war on drugs, which he blamed as the root of all crime. More than 4,000 suspected pushers and addicts have died in police encounters, though rights groups say the estimate could go as high as 12,000.

Fox, 71, won a reprieve from the justice department, but the immigration bureau, recently upheld its decision to deport her. She has filed an appeal, but has said that if she loses, she was prepared to leave the country she has served for almost 28 years.

He has been coming here for years, Fox said of Boehringer. On my part, I am still awaiting for response for our motion for reconsideration.

Felipe Villamor from Manila contributed to this report.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis (right) introduces Vice President Mike Pence during an event at the Pentagon, Aug. 9, 2018. Mattis has notified the U.S. Congress that the Department of Defense intends to return the church bells of Balangiga to the Philippines, according to the U.S. Embassy in Manila. [AP]

The United States has agreed in principle to return bells it has taken as war booty from the Balangiga church in the central Philippines more than a century ago, potentially ending a bitter chapter in bilateral relations, officials said.

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis has informed the American Congress that his department intends to return the Bells of Balangiga at a still unspecified date to its Southeast Asian ally, the American embassy said on Saturday.

This comes following the signing of the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act in 2018, giving the defense secretary the chief authority to return the bells. Mattis reportedly signed the documents favoring the return of the bells last week.

We've received assurances that the bells will be returned to the Catholic Church and treated with the respect and honor they deserve, said Trude Raizen, the embassys deputy press attache.

"We are aware that the bells of Balangiga have deep significance for a number of people, both in the United States and in the Philippines, she said.

The news was welcomed by historians and the people of Balangiga, who have been actively pursuing the bells return for years.

Manila has been informed of the development, calling it a welcome development that would serve to improve bilateral relations, which has been strained by President Rodrigo Dutertes frequent verbal attacks against the US.

We welcome this development as we look forward to continue working with the United States government in paving the way for the return of the bells to the Philippines, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said on Sunday.

When Duterte became president two years ago, he had signaled a diplomatic policy shift as he forged closer ties with Washingtons traditional rivals China and Russia.

He had also cursed former U.S. President Barrack Obama and warned that he would kick out all American troops serving as consultants in Philippine bases.

But his stand softened when Donald Trump succeeded Obama, and local officials said the bells were among the topics briefly discussed when the two leaders met last year on the sidelines of a regional conference in Manila.

American forces had also provided intelligence support  a much-needed military boost that Duterte had appreciated  that helped Filipino forces defeat Islamic State extremists who had taken over the southern Philippine city of Marawi.

Prior to that, Duterte had frequently used examples of past U.S. cruelty, including the massacre of Filipino Muslims in the south during Washingtons pacification campaign more than 100 years ago.

He had also reminded America that U.S. troops in 1901 were sent to the town of Balangiga to avenge the death of some 48 men killed in an attack on a U.S. garrison by Filipino soldiers.

In retaliation, U.S. gunboats and patrols were sent to Balangiga, Samar, with the order to make a desert of Balangiga and to reduce Samar into an island of howling wilderness, where every male citizen from the age of 10 and above, and capable of bearing arms, would be put to death, Duterte said last year during an address to Congress in July.

The church bells of Balangiga were seized by the Americans as spoils of war, he said.

But those bells should serve to remind Filipinos that their forebears resisted the American colonizers, he said.

Give us back those Balangiga bells. They are ours. They belong to the Philippines. They are part of our national heritage, Duterte said. You should return them.

Major breakthrough and victory

Local historian Rolando Borrinaga, who has been working with descendants of those who survived the fighting, said he considered it a major breakthrough and victory.

But he said the concurrence of the U.S. Congress would need about three months, where new lobbying was needed.

But I think the lobbying this time wont be as bloody as the one for the inclusion of the provision of the Balangiga bells in the NDDA 2018 that was enacted into law in December, he said.

While Dutertes actions may, at first glance, seem to have spurred the development, others pushing for the return of the bells may have actually complicated things.

Negotiations have been going on for the return of the bells prior to Duterte becoming the president, and his rants against the U.S. probably delayed the return of the bells.

The supportive veterans, however, chose to ignore the political sideshow and pushed on, leading us to where we are now, one source said.

The nationalist umbrella group Bells of Freedom lauded it as a positive step toward correcting what it called centuries of "historical injustices" perpetrated by U.S. forces.

"The United States should complete the correction of historical injustice committed against the Filipino people after the return of the bells by ensuring that all other war booties be properly returned to the Philippines," the group said in a statement.

Washington must also acknowledge its past war actions by "way of formally apologizing to the Filipino people, it said. "Never again should another series of colonial wars of aggression be experienced in the country.

Felipe Villamor in Manila contributed to this report.
Moncks Corner, SC (29461)

Today

Mostly cloudy early, then clearing overnight. Low 49F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy early, then clearing overnight. Low 49F. Winds light and variable.
On August 13th 1961, exactly 57 years ago, the GDR leadership locked in its own people. Shortly afterwards that led to an escalation that made the world hold its breath...

Berlin  US Army military police officer Vern Pike (82) received a clear order from General Lucius D. Clay (1898-1978): If they are Volksarmee, we go to war.

In the late afternoon of 26 October 1961, seven US tanks and eleven Soviet T-54s stood against each other at Checkpoint Charlie, at the corner of Friedrichstrae and Zimmerstrae. Their tank guns were facing each other.

All markings on the Soviet tanks were covered, so that it was unclear whether Red Army or GDR soldiers were sitting in them. Tanks of the GDR dictatorship  which was not recognized by the US  would have meant a violation of the Allies agreements.

If someone had lost their nerve at this moment and had shot a bullet or shell, there could have been a nuclear war of extermination between the world powers. The divided German city would have been at its centre.

Former Soviet ambassador Valentin Falin (1926-2018) later remembered: We were only seconds and metres away from disaster.

A dangerous mission

Pike (24 back then) tells BILD how he experienced the crisis. He entered his Opel Sedan, drove from West-Berlin (today Kreuzberg) into the capital of the GDR (today Berlin-Mitte) via Checkpoint Charlie.

He climbed onto one of the 36-ton-monsters and entered it. There was no solider in there, but he found a Red Army newspaper in Cyrillic writing. He says that he was not afraid. We were Americans; we had no fear of anybody.

When Pike then eavesdropped on a group of uniformed men without insignia who were talking in Russian, he was certain: This is not the Peoples Army! So no war, for the time being.

Auch Interessant



It was that close, says Wayne Daniels (78), military police veteran of the US Brigades, putting his thumb close to his index finger.

During the crisis, Daniels (21 back then) held out in the drivers seat of a military jeep in front of the checkpoint for 15 hours.

It was the very jeep that can be seen on a world-famous photo of the duel between the tanks. Among them are Shermans that Daniels had previously guided through the West-Berlin rush hour.

Your but was about that tight, he says. He was determined to stay alive. Just 17 days prior to his Berlin mission, the conscript from Montana had married his wife, Gayle (77).

How the world crisis arose

Approximately two and a half months earlier, on 13 August 1961, the GDR leadership decided to lock its people in. Barbed wire was followed by concrete structures. Up until then, up to 3000 refugees had escaped into freedom every day.

After the Wall was built, of the former 80 open crossing points only seven guarded crossing points remained. The only one for allies and diplomats was Checkpoint Charlie on Friedrichstrae.

Berlins Four Power Status only allowed Soviet, British, French, and American allied soldiers to control passports.



When on 22 October, the deputy head of the US mission in Berlin, Alan Lightner, wanted to drive to the theatre in the East with his wife, as he often did, GDR Peoples Policemen suddenly wanted to see his papers.

This was a clear, deliberate provocation that Lightner refused to tolerate. Escorted by military police, he proceeded over the border  straight past the Peoples Policemen.

In order to emphasize the enforcement of existing law, the US military police officers, by command of General Clay, repeated this dangerous game with further civil cars in the following days  about 13 times. Pike: The order was: if anybody stops you, shoot.

Then the escalation. Soviet tanks rolled up Friedrichstrae, followed by American tanks. The whole night, diplomats negotiated intensely.

Eventually, a hot war was averted. US President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) indicated that he did not support general Clays extremely tough stance. Clay had already installed bulldozer shovels at the tanks in order to tear down the Wall. He wanted to make Swiss cheese out of the Wall, says Pike.



General Lucius D. Clay was military governor of the U.S. Zone in Germany from 1947 to 1949. He gave the order for the Berlin Airlift. During the Berlin Wall crisis President John F. Kennedy brought him back to Germany in 1961 Foto: Getty Images Editorial

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) convinced the Americans that the GDR passport controls for US representatives had been a solo effort by Chairman of the State Council, Walter Ulbricht (1893-1973). Just before 11 a.m., on 27 October, it was over, and the tanks withdrew.

Veterans reunion in Berlin

When BILD meets Pike and Daniels in a hotel in Berlin-Steglitz, other veterans of the US Brigades are also present who were protecting the West at the time of the German division. Every four years, they come back to Berlin with their families, at their own expense.

Gayle Daniels, who got her Wayne back safe, says: When I see this wonderful city, I know hes done the right thing.

Many veterans think that General Clays tough stance would work against an expansionist Vladimir Putin (65) today.

Pike: It was always a totalitarian dictatorship. First the tsars, then the communists, now a KGB-Oberst  what has changed? Pike thinks that the US are heading in the right direction. Our military is building itself up again.

US ambassador honors the veterans

We drive back to the fateful site with the veterans  where, these days, tourists are taking pictures of a rebuilt checkpoint with fake soldiers. Pike doesnt like it.



He thinks this should be a solemn place. Fondly he remembers: One of the great joys of our assignment to Berlin were the Berlin people. They appreciated the fact that we were here. I will take that to my grave.

Carefully guarded, the new US ambassador, Richard Grenell (51) has walked over on foot in order to honor the veterans. Im humbled everyday by these heroes, he tells BILD. Living in Berlin you cant help but being thankful.

A US army brochure from 1980 reads: Symbolically the Allies have never built a permament structure in Friedrichstrasse, because they believe that Checkpoint Charlie and the Wall that produced it cannot last forever. Someday Berlin must be again one city.

And thats what happened.
After barrages of rockets from Gaza, aimed at Israeli civilians, Israel hit back at Hamas targets. Would any country tolerate such attacks on their civilians?

Via Honest Reporting.

Residents of southern Israel spent the night in bomb shelters as Palestinians fired a heavy barrage of rockets and mortars (nearly 200, according to the most recent numbers I saw). The IDF retaliated with air strikes on more than 100 Hamas terror sites.

As we expected, we came across a few headline fails. Headlines matter because many people dont read articles, just skimming their newspaper, web site or social media feed. Headlines also matter because studies show that they frame the way people read and remember a story. So if a headline omits key information or context, it ultimately misinforms readers.
The blood tests are based on Lucences patented liquid biopsy technology, which detect genetic mutations from tumor DNA circulating in the blood.

Singapore  Lucence Diagnostics, a genomic medicine company focused on inventing advanced cancer diagnostics, and Singapore Diagnostics (Philippines), the largest pure clinical laboratory in the country, announced a partnership to market Lucences advanced cancer blood tests in the Philippines.

Singapore Diagnostics will distribute Lucences range of blood tests for cancer diagnosis and treatment in the Philippines. The blood tests are based on Lucences patented liquid biopsy technology, which detect genetic mutations from tumor DNA circulating in the blood. This allows doctors to select the most appropriate cancer treatment according to the genetic mutations identified.

Compared to conventional tissue biopsy, Lucences liquid biopsy approach is noninvasive and faster. The tests target the most common cancers in Asia like breast, colon, lung and nasopharyngeal cancer.

Lucences blood tests can also diagnose early stage nasopharyngeal cancer before symptoms show and check whether a person is predisposed to cancer by detecting genes commonly associated with increased risk of cancer.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, one out of every 10 deaths in the country is caused by cancer. Singapore Diagnostics is one the largest laboratories in the Philippines handling 200,000 tests every month. It is part of a group of regional laboratories operating in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Singapore Diagnostics currently serves 500 hospital and clinic laboratory sites in Metro Manila. With this partnership, Lucence's cancer blood tests will now be made available to all its customers in the Philippines.

We are delighted to work with Lucence to provide their advanced cancer blood tests in the Philippines. Singapore Diagnostics always strives to be at the forefront of innovation in our industry by seeking out the latest medical technologies and exploring its applications in clinical settings. Through our partnership with Lucence, we can now provide the most advanced cancer technology for cancer detection and treatment to our customers. We look forward to working closely with Lucence to drive better cancer care in the Philippines, said Mr. Ritche Evidente, CEO, Singapore Diagnostics.
The efficacy of Galafold was demonstrated in a six-month, placebo-controlled clinical trial in 45 adults with Fabry disease.

Singapore  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved Galafold (migalastat), the first oral medication for the treatment of adults with Fabry disease. The drug is indicated for adults with Fabry disease who have a genetic mutation determined to be responsive (amenable) to treatment with Galafold based on laboratory data. Fabry disease is a rare and serious genetic disease that results from buildup of a type of fat called globotriaosylceramide (GL-3) in blood vessels, the kidneys, the heart, the nerves and other organs.

Thus far, treatment of Fabry disease has involved replacing the missing enzyme that causes the particular type of fat buildup in this disease. Galafold differs from enzyme replacement in that it increases the activity of the bodys deficient enzyme, said Julie Beitz, M.D., director of the Office of Drug Evaluation III in FDAs Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

Fabry disease is an inherited disorder caused by mutations (alterations) in the alpha-galactosidase A (GLA) gene located on the X-chromosome. Fabry disease is rare and affects both males and females. It is estimated that classic Fabry disease (the most severe type) affects approximately one in 40,000 males. The later-onset type is more frequent, and in some populations, may occur in one in 1,500 to 4,000 males. Patients with Fabry disease develop slowly progressive kidney disease, cardiac hypertrophy (enlargement of the heart), arrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythm), stroke and early death.

The efficacy of Galafold was demonstrated in a six-month, placebo-controlled clinical trial in 45 adults with Fabry disease. In this trial, patients treated with Galafold over six months had a greater reduction in globotriaosylceramide (GL-3) in blood vessels of the kidneys (as measured in kidney biopsy samples) as compared to patients on placebo.The safety of Galafold was studied in four clinical trials which included a total of 139 patients with Fabry disease.

Galafold was approved using the Accelerated Approval pathway, under which the FDA may approve drugs for serious conditions where there is an unmet medical need and where a drug is shown to have certain effects that are reasonably likely to predict a clinical benefit to patients. A further study is required to verify and describe the clinical benefits of Galafold, and the sponsor will be conducting a confirmatory clinical trial of Galafold in adults with Fabry disease.

The FDA granted approval of Galafold to Amicus Therapeutics U.S., Inc.
In addition, Cipla also announced Dr. R. Ananthanarayanan as Global Chief Operating Officer.

Cipla has announced the appointment of Dr. R. Ananthanarayanan (Ananth) as its Global Chief Operating Officer (GCOO), effective 8 August 2018.

In his role at Cipla, Ananth will oversee R&D, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, the API business and the key geographies of North America, Europe and Emerging Markets to help leverage and grow Ciplas generics portfolio and competencies in these markets. He will report to Umang Vohra, Managing Director & Global Chief Executive Officer.

In addition, Cipla also announced Q1 FY19 results demonstrating strong growth momentum across home markets and key differentiated approvals for US.

Major highlights are:

The company showed strong YoY sales growth of 12% with EBITDA growing by 12%.

R&D investments stood at ~INR 278cr i.e. ~7% of sales

Strong growth across India (+22% YoY), South Africa

(+14% YoY adjusted for animal health) and API business (+48% YoY) were seen

The key differentiated launches in the US were Isoproterenol HCI Injection and Testosterone Cypionate Injection

It received EIR for Goa & Indore Plants

I am pleased with our performance in the quarter which demonstrates our strong foothold and continued growth momentum in our home markets. The limited competition launches in the US were in-line with our expectations and we are looking forward to more interesting

launches in the coming weeks. Business development efforts saw a significant boost - India partnership with Roche and Eli Lilly, in-licensed biosimilars in emerging markets and the proposed acquisition of Mirren (Pty) Ltd in the South African OTC space. These efforts will help

drive portfolio build-up and sustainable growth in these markets. We continued to retain our focus on quality with EIR received for our Goa & Indore plants. We will continue to play to our strengths in pursuit of our purpose of Caring for Life
American Martyrs Catholic Church officials arrived at the place of worship for Sunday morning Mass earlier this month and discovered an exterior wall and a sidewalk on the building's north side had been defaced with the hateful messages written in spray paint, police say.
This Amazingly Effective Avocado Oil Therapy Is The Best Solution For Acne! Beauty lekhaka-Mamta Khati

When it comes to treating acne and breakouts, do you think of using oil? Pretty sure you won't, but you will be surprised to learn that certain oils can do wonders for your skin. As we all know that excess production of oil on the skin is the main culprit for acne as the excess oil accumulates on the pores of the skin making it a breeding ground for bacteria.

So, like we said certain oils can help ward off acne and today we will focus on the benefits and usage of avocado oil. Avocado oil can make your face even-toned, radiant, smooth and clear. So, ladies, keep your chemical-based products aside and nourish your skin with the richness of avocado oil.

Is Avocado Oil Good For Acne?

 Avocado oil is greenish yellow coloured oil that's extracted from avocado fruit. Avocado oil contains rich ingredients and nutrients that are really beneficial for the skin.

 It contains vitamin E that helps to fight acne-causing bacteria and fades acne scars.

 It also contains antioxidants that help to fight free radicals that damage the skin.

 Avocado oil also contains monosaturated fats like oleic acid that helps to moisturise and nourish the skin.

 The anti-inflammatory properties present in it provides relief from pain, redness and swelling.

 It also restricts the production of excess oil from the sebaceous glands.

 It contains biotin which helps to revitalize cracked and damaged skin.

 Avocado oil protects the skin from harmful factors that lead to acne and other skin problems.

To get the desired result, you should opt for cold pressed and organic avocado oil.

Now, let us see how we can use avocado oil to treat acne, shall we?

1. Avocado Oil:

The antioxidants, anti-inflammatory compounds present in avocado help to treat skin inflammation and prevent clogging of pores and treat acne.

Materials:

 Cold pressed organic avocado oil.

 Cotton swab.

How To Use:

 Wash and dry your face.

 Dip a cotton swab in avocado oil and then apply it on the affected area.

 Leave it on for the night.

 Wash it off with normal water.

 Do this every night until you get the desired result.

2. Avocado Oil And Turmeric Face Mask:

Turmeric contains antimicrobial compounds that ward off bacteria that cause acne and heal the skin. It is a natural exfoliant, meaning it gently slough off dead skin cells and prevents impurities from building up.

Materials:

 A pinch of turmeric.

 4-5 drops of avocado oil.

How To Use:

 In a small bowl, mix these two ingredients and make a paste.

 Apply this paste on the affected areas and leave it on for 10-15 minutes.

 Wash it off with a mild cleanser.

 Use this every day until the acne fades away.

3. Tea Tree Oil And Avocado Oil:

Tea tree oil contains antibacterial and antimicrobial compounds that effectively fight against acne-causing bacteria. This oil penetrates deep into the skin and helps to unclog pores.

Materials:

 3-4 teaspoons of tea tree oil.

 1 teaspoon of avocado oil.

How To Use:

 Wash and pat dry your face.

 In a bowl, mix these two ingredients.

 Massage this mixture on your skin using your fingertips.

 Let the mixture sit on your face for 10-15 minutes.

 Wash your face with warm water.

 Use this mixture every day.

4. Castor Oil And Avocado Oil:

Castor oil has antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral properties that help to prevent acne breakouts. It also contains ricinoleic acid that gently aids in fighting off acne-causing bacteria.

Materials:

 1 teaspoon of avocado oil.

 3-4 drops of castor oil.

 Cotton ball.

How To Use:

 Mix all the ingredients in a clean bowl.

 Dip a cotton ball and apply it to the affected areas.

 Leave the oil on the skin for 10 minutes.

 Wash it off with a mild cleanser.

 Use this remedy every day.

5. Avocado Oil And Lavender Oil:

Lavender oil can help treat acne because it contains antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. It also helps to increase blood flow to the skin tissue, therefore, providing oxygen to the skin.

Materials:

 1 teaspoon of avocado oil.

 4-5 drops of lavender oil.

How To Use:

 In a bowl, mix these two ingredients.

 Now, apply this mixture on the affected area with the help of your fingertips and leave it on.

 Reapply this mixture 2-3 times in a day.

6. Avocado Oil And Juniper Oil:

Juniper oil contains raw, pure detoxification, antibacterial and antimicrobial properties that help to kill acne-causing bacteria. It has the natural ability to treat skin irritation, insect bites and acne.

Materials:

 1 teaspoon of avocado oil.

 2-3 drops of juniper oil.

How To Use:

 In a small bowl mix these two ingredients.

 Massage this mixture with your fingertips on acne prone areas and leave it on.

 Reapply this mixture 2 times in a day.

 Use this every day for best result.

Precaution:

 Before using avocado oil on to your skin, make sure you do a patch test. Apply a small amount of avocado oil on the back of your wrist and see how your skin reacts to it. If it itches and burns, then do not use this.

 People with latex allergies can be allergic to avocado.

Avocado oil is quickly absorbed by the skin and a very good carrier oil that helps to fight off acne. So, this oil is a good choice when making homemade remedies. Isn't it simple? What are you waiting for, ladies? Try out these amazing tips and see the difference for yourself. Stay beautiful!
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VANCOUVER, Aug. 13, 2018

VANCOUVER, Aug. 13, 2018 /CNW/ -

TSX VENTURE COMPANIES

ATLANTIC GOLD CORPORATION ("AGB.WT")BULLETIN TYPE: Warrant Expiry-DelistBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Effective at the opening Wednesday, August 15, 2018, the Share Purchase Warrants of the Company will trade for cash. The Warrants expire August 20, 2018 and will therefore be delisted at the close of business.

TRADE DATES

August 15, 2018 - TO SETTLE  August 16, 2018August 16, 2018 - TO SETTLE  August 17, 2018August 17, 2018 - TO SETTLE  August 20, 2018August 20, 2018 - TO SETTLE  August 20, 2018

The above is in compliance with Trading Rule C.2.18  Expiry Date:

Trading in the warrants shall be for cash for the three trading days preceding the expiry date and also on expiry date. On the expiry date, trading shall cease at 12 o'clock noon E.T. and no transactions shall take place thereafter except with permission of the Exchange.

________________________________________

CANSTAR RESOURCES INC. ("ROX")BULLETIN TYPE: Reverse Takeover - Completed, Private Placement - Non Brokered, Consolidation and Resume TradingBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX VENTURE Tier 2 Company

Reverse Takeover-Completed

TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange") has accepted for filing the Reverse Takeover following the completion of the acquisition of the Newfoundland base-metal exploration assets of Adventus Zinc Corporation for 86,681,695 pre consolidated shares of the Company and the Daniel's Harbour zinc project from Altius Resouces Inc. for 12,095,120 pre consolidated shares of the Company as described in the Company's Information Circular dated June 28, 2018.

As a result of the Transaction, a total of 6,339,849 Resulting Issuer Shares are escrowed pursuant to an Exchange Tier 1 Value Escrow Agreement, 12,095,120 Resulting Issuer Shares are escrowed pursuant to an Exchange Tier 2 Value Escrow Agreement and 86,681,695 Resulting Issuer Shares are escrowed pursuant to an Exchange Tier 2 Surplus Escrow Agreement. On a post-consolidated basis, there is a total of 21,023,333 shares subject to Exchange escrow.

The Resulting Issuer is classified as a Tier 2 Mining Issuer (NAICS Number: 212299).

For further information, please refer to the Company's Information Circular dated June 28, 2018, available on SEDAR.

Resume Trading:

Further to TSX Venture Exchange's Bulletin dated February 20, 2018, trading in the securities of the Resulting Issuer will resume at the opening on Wednesday, August 15, 2018.

Concurrent Private Placement Financing

The Exchange has accepted for filing documentation with respect to a Private Placement (the "Financing") announced on February 21, 2018. The financing included 12,500,000 Flow-Through Subscription Receipts at $0.08 and of 8,333,699 Non-Flow-Through Subscription Receipts at $0.06 for the gross proceeds of $1,500,021. Each subscription receipt entitles the holder to receive either one flow-through or one non-flow through pre consolidated common share.

Number of Resulting Issuer Shares:

1,666,740

Purchase Price:

$0.30 per consolidated share

Number of Resulting Issuer Flow-Through Shares:

2,500,000

Purchase Price:

$0.40 per consolidated share

Number of Placees:

18 Placees

Insider / Pro Group Participation:

Name

Insider = Y /

Pro Group = P

Number of Shares

2 Subscribers

P

370,000

In connection with the Private Placement, a total of 754,200 broker warrants was paid to finders. Each Broker Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one pre consolidated Common Share at a price of $0.06 until April 17, 2020. The warrants were consolidated on a 5 old for 1 new basis. No cash commission has been paid.

The Company has confirmed the closing of the Financing via a press release dated April 18, 2018.

For further information, please refer to the Company's Information Circular dated June 28, 2018 available on SEDAR.

Consolidation

Pursuant to the Transaction, shareholders approved the Company's capital consolidation on a 5 old share for 1 new share basis. The figures below reflect the consolidation.

Capitalization:

Unlimited number of common shares with no par value of which 44,500,473 shares are issued and outstanding

Escrow:

21,023,333 common shares

Transfer Agent:

TSX Trust Company (Toronto office)

Trading Symbol:

ROX (no change)

CUSIP Number:

138081302 (new)

Issuer Contact:

Karen Willoughby, Director Corporate Communications

Issuer Address:

56 Temperance Street, Suite 1000, Toronto, ON, M5H 3V5

Issuer Phone Number:

(647) 557-3442

Issuer email:

[email protected]

____________________________________

ORLETTO CAPITAL II INC. ("OLT.P")BULLETIN TYPE: New Listing-CPC-Shares, HaltBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

The Capital Pool Company's ("CPC") Prospectus dated June 21, 2018 has been filed with and accepted by TSX Venture Exchange, the Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario Securities Commissions and the Autorite des marches financiers, effective June 22, 2018, pursuant to the provisions of the Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec Securities Acts. The common shares of the Company will be listed and admitted to trading on TSX Venture Exchange, on the effective dates stated below.

The gross proceeds to be received by the Company for the Offering are $400,000 (4,000,000 common shares at $0.10 per share).

Listing Date:

At the close of business (5:01 p.m. EDT) on August 14, 2018.

Commence Date:

The common shares will commence trading on TSX Venture Exchange on Wednesday, August 15, 2018, upon confirmation of closing.

The closing of the public offering is scheduled to occur after the market opening Wednesday, August 15, 2018. Trading will be HALTED at the opening on Wednesday, August 15, 2018, pending confirmation of closing of the public offering. A further notice will be issued upon receipt of closing confirmation.

Corporate Jurisdiction:

Canada

Capitalization:

Unlimited number of common shares with no par value, of which 6,800,000 common shares are issued and outstanding

Escrowed Shares:

2,800,000 common shares

Transfer Agent:

AST Trust Company (Canada)  Montreal and Toronto

Trading Symbol:

OLT.P

CUSIP Number:

68666R102

Agent:

Haywood Securities Inc.

Agent's Options:

400,000 non-transferable stock options. One option to purchase one share at $0.10 for a period of 24 months from the date of the listing.

For further information, please refer to the Company's Prospectus dated June 21, 2018.

Company Contact:

Benoit Chotard, President and Director

Company Address:

70, Dalhousie Street, Suite 300, Quebec City, Quebec, G1K 4B2

Company Phone Number:

(778) 996-4676

Company Fax Number:

(418) 523-5391

Company E-mail:

[email protected]

Seeking QT primarily in these sectors: unspecified

CAPITAL ORLETTO II INC. ( OLT.P )TYPE DE BULLETIN : Nouvelle inscription-SCD-Actions, Arret de la negociationDATE DU BULLETIN : Le 13 aout 2018Societe du groupe 2 de TSX Croissance

Le prospectus de la societe de capital de demarrage ( SCD ), date du 21 juin 2018 a ete depose aupres de et accepte, le 22 juin 2018, par Bourse de croissance TSX ainsi que les commissions des valeurs mobilieres de l'Alberta, de la Colombie-Britannique, de l'Ontario et l'Autorite des marches financiers, et ce, en vertu des dispositions des Lois sur les valeurs mobilieres de l'Alberta, de la Colombie-Britannique, de l'Ontario et du Quebec. Les actions ordinaires de la societe seront inscrites et admises a la negociation aux dates enumerees ci-apres.

Le produit brut a recevoir par la societe en vertu de l'appel public a l'epargne est de 400 000 $ (4 000 000 d'actions ordinaires au prix de 0,10 $ l'action).

Date d'inscription a la cote :

A la fermeture des affaires (17 h 01 HAE) le 14 aout 2018.

Date d'entree en vigueur :

Les actions ordinaires de la societe seront admises a la negociation a la Bourse de croissance TSX le mercredi 15 aout 2018, sous reserve de la confirmation de la cloture.

La cloture de l'appel public a l'epargne se tiendra apres l'ouverture des marches le mercredi 15 aout 2018. La negociation des titres sera arretee a l'ouverture des affaires le mercredi 15 aout 2018, en attendant la confirmation de la cloture de l'appel public a l'epargne. Un avis additionnel sera emis apres reception de la confirmation de la cloture.

Juridiction de la societe :

Canada

Capitalisation :

Un nombre illimite d'actions ordinaires sans valeur nominale, dont 6 800 000 actions ordinaires sont emises et en circulation.

Titres entierces :

2 800 000 d'actions ordinaires

Agent des transferts :

Societe de fiducie AST (Canada)  Montreal et Toronto

Symbole au telescripteur :

OLT.P

Numero de CUSIP :

68666R102

Agent :

Haywood Securities Inc.

Options de l'agent :

Un total de 400 000 options non-transferables. Chaque option permet de souscrire a une action au prix de 0,10 $ l'action pour une periode de 24 mois apres l'inscription a la cote.

Pour plus d'information, veuillez vous referer au prospectus de la societe date du 21 juin 2018.

Contact de la societe:

Benoit Chotard, President et Administrateur

Adresse de la societe :

70, rue Dalhousie, bureau 300, Quebec, Quebec, G1K 4B2

Telephone de la societe :

(778) 996-4676

Telecopieur de la societe :

(418) 523-5391

Courriel de la societe:

[email protected]

Secteurs vises pour l'operation

admissible :

non specifie

______________________________________

RESOLVE VENTURES INC. ("RSV")BULLETIN TYPE: Name Change and ConsolidationBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Pursuant to a director's resolution dated July 23, 2018, the Company has consolidated its capital on a 1.5 old for 1 new basis. The name of the Company has not been changed.

Effective at the opening Wednesday, August 15, 2018, the shares of Resolve Ventures Inc. will commence trading on TSX Venture Exchange on a consolidated basis. The Company is classified as a 'Mining Exploration and Development' company.

Post - Consolidation

Capitalization:

unlimited shares with no par value of which

4,813,864 shares are issued and outstanding

Escrow

nil shares are subject to escrow

Transfer Agent:

Computershare Trust Company of Canada

Trading Symbol:

RSV

(UNCHANGED)

CUSIP Number:

76117A 50 3

(new)

________________________________________

VATIC VENTURES CORP. ("VCV")("VCV.RT")BULLETIN TYPE: Rights Offering-UnitsBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Further to TSXV Exchange (the 'Exchange') bulletin dated June 22, 2018, and expiry of the Company's Rights Offering on July 25, 2018, the Exchange has accepted for filing the Rights Offering pursuant to which 1,122,736 Units will be issued. Each Unit consists of one (1) common share and one (1) Common Share Purchase Warrant. Each Common Share Purchase Warrant entitles the holder to purchase an additional common share for a two year period at an exercise price of $0.25 per common share. The Common Share Purchase Warrants will not be listed for trading.

For further information, please refer to the Company's news release dated July 27, 2018.

________________________________________

18/08/13 - TSX Venture Exchange Bulletins

TSX VENTURE COMPANIES

AEQUUS PHARMACEUTICALS INC. ("AQS")BULLETIN TYPE: Private Placement-Non-BrokeredBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

TSX Venture Exchange has accepted for filing documentation with respect to a Non-Brokered Private Placement announced August 9, 2018:

Number of Shares:

3,875,000 shares

Purchase Price:

$0.20 per share

Warrants:

1,937,500 share purchase warrants to purchase 1,937,500 shares

Warrant Exercise Price:

$0.30 for a four year period. The warrants are subject to an accelerated exercise provision in the event the VWAP is greater than $0.45 for 10 consecutive trading days.

Number of Placees:

7 Placees

Insider / Pro Group Participation:

Insider=Y /

Name

ProGroup=P

# of Shares

Aggregate Pro Group Involvement

P

500,000

[1 placee]

Finder's Fee:

Raymond James Ltd. - $14,000.00 and 70,000 Finder's Warrants that are exercisable into common shares at $0.30 per share for a two year period.

M Partners Inc. - $19,250.00 and 96,250 Finder's Warrants that are exercisable into common shares at $0.30 per share for a two year period.

Pursuant to Corporate Finance Policy 4.1, Section 1.11(d), the Company issued news releases dated August 10, 2018 announcing the closing of the private placement and setting out the expiry dates of the hold period(s). Note that in certain circumstances the Exchange may later extend the expiry date of the warrants, if they are less than the maximum permitted term.

________________________________________

CANADIAN PLATINUM CORP. ("CPC")BULLETIN TYPE: Remain HaltedBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Further to the TSX Venture Exchange ('TSXV') Bulletin dated August 7, 2018, trading in the shares of the Company will remain halted pending receipt and review of acceptable documentation regarding the Fundamental Acquisition pursuant to Listings Policy 5.6(d) of Exchange Policy 5.3

This regulatory halt is imposed by Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, the Market Regulator of the Exchange, pursuant to the provisions of Section 10.9(1) of the Universal Market Integrity Rules.

________________________________________

EDGEWATER WIRELESS SYSTEMS INC. ("YFI")BULLETIN TYPE: Warrant Term ExtensionBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

TSX Venture Exchange has consented to the extension in the expiry date of the following warrants:

Private Placement:

# of Warrants:

6,167,625

Original Expiry Date of Warrants:

August 24, 2018

New Expiry Date of Warrants:

August 24, 2020

Exercise Price of Warrants:

$0.50

These warrants were issued pursuant to a private placement of 6,250,625 shares with 6,250,625 share purchase warrants attached, which was accepted for filing by the Exchange effective August 31, 2016.

________________________________________

GOURMET OCEAN PRODUCTS INC. ("GOP")BULLETIN TYPE: HaltBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Effective at 9.58 a.m. PST, August 13, 2018, trading in the shares of the Company was halted at the request of the Company, pending news; this regulatory halt is imposed by Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, the Market Regulator of the Exchange pursuant to the provisions of Section 10.9(1) of the Universal Market Integrity Rules.

________________________________________

GOURMET OCEAN PRODUCTS INC. ("GOP")BULLETIN TYPE: Remain Halted BULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Further to the TSX Venture Exchange ('TSXV') Bulletin dated August 13, 2018, trading in the shares of the Company will remain halted pending receipt and review of acceptable documentation pursuant to Listings Policy 5.9

This regulatory halt is imposed by Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, the Market Regulator of the Exchange, pursuant to the provisions of Section 10.9(1) of the Universal Market Integrity Rules.

________________________________________

HPQ-SILICON RESOURCES INC. ("HPQ")BULLETIN TYPE: HaltBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Effective at 5.50 a.m. PST, August 13, 2018, trading in the shares of the Company was halted at the request of the Company, pending news; this regulatory halt is imposed by Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, the Market Regulator of the Exchange pursuant to the provisions of Section 10.9(1) of the Universal Market Integrity Rules.

________________________________________

HPQ-SILICON RESOURCES INC. ("HPQ")BULLETIN TYPE: Resume TradingBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Effective at 8.15 a.m. PST, August 13, 2018, shares of the Company resumed trading, an announcement having been made.

________________________________________

JAYDEN RESOURCES INC. ("JDN")BULLETIN TYPE: HaltBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Effective at 6.31 a.m. PST, August 13, 2018, trading in the shares of the Company was halted at the request of the Company, pending news; this regulatory halt is imposed by Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, the Market Regulator of the Exchange pursuant to the provisions of Section 10.9(1) of the Universal Market Integrity Rules.

________________________________________

JAYDEN RESOURCES INC. ("JDN")BULLETIN TYPE: Remain HaltedBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Further to the TSX Venture Exchange ('TSXV') Bulletin dated August 13, 2018, trading in the shares of the Company will remain halted pending receipt of the share purchase agreement.

This regulatory halt is imposed by Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, the Market Regulator of the Exchange, pursuant to the provisions of Section 10.9(1) of the Universal Market Integrity Rules.

________________________________________

NORAM VENTURES INC. ("NRM")BULLETIN TYPE: HaltBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Effective at 9.39 a.m. PST, August 13, 2018, trading in the shares of the Company was halted at the request of the Company, pending news; this regulatory halt is imposed by Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, the Market Regulator of the Exchange pursuant to the provisions of Section 10.9(1) of the Universal Market Integrity Rules.

________________________________________

NORAM VENTURES INC. ("NRM")BULLETIN TYPE: Resume TradingBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Effective at 12.00 p.m. PST, August 13, 2018, shares of the Company resumed trading, an announcement having been made.

________________________________________

ORGANTO FOODS INC. ("OGO")BULLETIN TYPE: Private Placement-Non-BrokeredBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

TSX Venture Exchange has accepted for filing documentation with respect to a Non-Brokered Private Placement announced June 7, 2018:

Number of Shares:

20,000,000 shares

Purchase Price:

$0.08 per share

Warrants:

10,000,000 share purchase warrants to purchase 10,000,000 shares

Warrant Exercise Price:

$0.25 for a one year period. The warrants are subject to an accelerated exercise provision in the event the Company's shares trade at $0.25 or greater for 10 consecutive trading days.

Number of Placees:

23 Placees

Insider / Pro Group Participation:

Insider=Y /

Name

ProGroup=P

# of Shares

Steven Bromley

Y

1,540,500

Credipresto S.A. de C.V. Sofomen (Javier Reyes)

Y

1,023,000

Robert Giustra

Y

587,500

Peter Gianulis

Y

677,900

Jeffrey Klenda

Y

312,500

Ralf Langner

Y

567,650

John Rathwell

Y

625,000

Claudio Schreier

Y

170,950

Thibaudier Financial Consulting B.C.

(Peter Thibaudier)

Y

375,000

Pursuant to Corporate Finance Policy 4.1, Section 1.11(d), the Company issued a news release dated August 1, 2018 announcing the closing of the private placement and setting out the expiry dates of the hold period(s). Note that in certain circumstances the Exchange may later extend the expiry date of the warrants, if they are less than the maximum permitted term.

________________________________________

PROGRESSIVE PLANET SOLUTIONS INC. ("PLAN")BULLETIN TYPE: Private Placement-Non-BrokeredBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

TSX Venture Exchange has accepted for filing documentation with respect to a Non-Brokered Private Placement announced July 30, 2018 and Aug 10, 2018:

Number of Shares:

8,650,000 shares

Purchase Price:

$0.05 per share

Warrants:

8,650,000 share purchase warrants to purchase 8,650,000 shares

Warrant Initial Exercise Price:

$0.10

Warrant Term to Expiry:

2 Years

Number of Placees:

22 Placees

Insider / Pro Group Participation:

Name

Insider=Y /Pro-Group=P

# of Shares

England Communications Ltd.

Y

200,000

(Michael England)

Dave Cross

Y

200,000

Stephen Harpur

Y

200,000

Dwayne Melrose

Y

300,000

Derek Knight

Y

100,000

Note that in certain circumstances the Exchange may later extend the expiry date of the warrants, if they are less than the maximum permitted term.

Warrants are subject to an acceleration clause.

The above information is a summary only. Neither TMX Group Limited nor any of its affiliated companies guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this document. Readers should consult the issuer's continuous disclosure record for complete details of the transaction.

________________________________________

RATHDOWNEY RESOURCES LTD. ("RTH")BULLETIN TYPE: Warrant Term ExtensionBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 1 Company

TSX Venture Exchange has consented to the extension in the expiry date of the following warrants:

Private Placement:

# of Warrants:

7,190,000

Original Expiry Date of Warrants:

August 11, 2018

New Expiry Date of Warrants:

February 11, 2019

Exercise Price of Warrants:

$0.24

These warrants were issued pursuant to a private placement of 7,190,000 shares with 7,190,000 share purchase warrants attached, which was accepted for filing by the Exchange effective September 13, 2016.

________________________________________

SKYHARBOUR RESOURCES LTD. ("SYH")BULLETIN TYPE: Private Placement-Non-BrokeredBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

TSX Venture Exchange has accepted for filing documentation with respect to a Non-Brokered Private Placement announced Jul 17, 2018:

Flow-Through Shares:

Number of FT Shares:

2,462,256 flow through shares

Purchase Price:

$0.45 per flow through share

Warrants:

1,231,128 share purchase warrants to purchase 1,231,128 shares

Warrant Initial Exercise Price:

$0.60

Warrant Term to Expiry:

2 Years

Non Flow-Through Shares:

Number of Non-FT Shares:

3,712,586 non flow through shares

Purchase Price:

$0.40 per non flow through share

Warrants:

3,712,586 share purchase warrants to purchase 3,712,586 shares

Warrant Initial Exercise Price:

$0.60

Warrant Term to Expiry:

2 Years

Number of Placees:

78 Placees

Insider / Pro Group Participation:

Name

Insider=Y /

Pro-Group=P

# of Shares

Jordan Trimble

Y

380,000

David Cates

Y

30,000

Richard Kusmirski

Y

30,000

Aggregate Pro-Group Involvement [8 Placees]

P

352,300

Finder's Fee:

Canaccord Genuity Corp.

$18,464.00 cash; 31,108 warrants

Echelon Wealth Partners Inc.

$3,150.00 cash; 7,000 warrants

PI Financial Corp.

$945.00 cash; 2,100 warrants

Laurentian Bank Securities Inc.

$17,500.00 cash; 38,889 warrants

Finder Warrant Initial Exercise Price:

$0.60

Finder Warrant Term to Expiry:

2 year term

Note that in certain circumstances the Exchange may later extend the expiry date of the warrants, if they are less than the maximum permitted term.

The above information is a summary only. Neither TMX Group Limited nor any of its affiliated companies guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this document. Readers should consult the issuer's continuous disclosure record for complete details of the transaction.

________________________________________

TRISTAR GOLD INC. ("TSG")BULLETIN TYPE: Private Placement-Non-BrokeredBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

TSX Venture Exchange has accepted for filing documentation with respect to a Non-Brokered Private Placement announced May 25, 2018:

Number of Shares:

10,250,000 shares

Purchase Price:

$0.20 per share

Warrants:

5,125,000 share purchase warrants to purchase 5,125,000 shares

Warrant Initial Exercise Price:

$0.25

Warrant Term to Expiry:

Other

Number of Placees:

15 Placees

Insider / Pro Group Participation:

Name

Insider=Y /

Pro-Group=P

# of Shares

Nicholas Appleyard

Y

1,000,000

Finder's Fee:

MMG Capital Limited

$3,500.00 cash; 17,500 warrants

Finder Warrant Initial Exercise Price:

$0.25

Finder Warrant Term to Expiry:

Exercisable until February 3, 2021, 30 months from the closing date.

Note that in certain circumstances the Exchange may later extend the expiry date of the warrants, if they are less than the maximum permitted term.

The above information is a summary only. Neither TMX Group Limited nor any of its affiliated companies guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this document. Readers should consult the issuer's continuous disclosure record for complete details of the transaction.

________________________________________

UGE INTERNATIONAL LTD. ("UGE")BULLETIN TYPE: HaltBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Effective at 6.20 a.m. PST, August 13, 2018, trading in the shares of the Company was halted at the request of the Company, pending news; this regulatory halt is imposed by Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, the Market Regulator of the Exchange pursuant to the provisions of Section 10.9(1) of the Universal Market Integrity Rules.

________________________________________

UGE INTERNATIONAL LTD. ("UGE")BULLETIN TYPE: Resume TradingBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018TSX Venture Tier 2 Company

Effective at 7.15 a.m. PST, August 13, 2018, shares of the Company resumed trading, an announcement having been made.

________________________________________

NEX COMPANIES

CARACARA SILVER INC. ("SILV.H")BULLETIN TYPE: HaltBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018NEX Company

Effective at 10.31 a.m. PST, August 13, 2018, trading in the shares of the Company was halted at the request of the Company, pending news; this regulatory halt is imposed by Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, the Market Regulator of the Exchange pursuant to the provisions of Section 10.9(1) of the Universal Market Integrity Rules.

________________________________________

ROSS RIVER MINERALS INC. ("RRM.H")BULLETIN TYPE: Remain HaltedBULLETIN DATE: August 13, 2018NEX Company

Further to the TSX Venture Exchange ('TSXV') Bulletin dated August 8, 2018, trading in the shares of the Company will remain halted pending receipt and review of acceptable documentation regarding the change of business and/or Reverse Take-Over pursuant to Listings Policy 5.2

This regulatory halt is imposed by Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, the Market Regulator of the Exchange, pursuant to the provisions of Section 10.9(1) of the Universal Market Integrity Rules.

________________________________________

SOURCE TSX Venture Exchange
Accused child rapist denied right to be examined by his own psychiatrist

CHIEF Justice Margaret Ramsay-Hale has ordered that accused paedophile 36-year-old Kenrick Forbes be examined by a Government appointed psychiatrist.





The decision sparked some contention between the judge and Forbes defence attorney Courtenay Barnett when the matter came up for mention in Grand Turk Supreme Court recently.





The Five Cays man was first charged and taken before the Magistrates Court in May this year with the offences of unlawfully having intercourse with a child and indecently assaulting a child.





He was granted bail in the sum of $10,000 but has since been unable to pay it, as such he remains an inmate at Her Majestys Prison.





Forbes attorney has since been petitioning the court for his client to be evaluated by a private psychiatrist with no affiliation to the Government.





But those efforts proved futile, sparking some tension among the bench and the defence table when the attorney expressed his dissatisfaction with the ruling.





Barnett then told the judge that he would be returning with the application for his client to be examined by a private doctor by way of a constitutional motion.





The lawyer intends to challenge the legality of the chief justices decision to deny his client the right to be examined by a doctor of his choosing, with suggestions that his clients constitutional rights would be violated were he to be examined by a Government appointed psychiatrist.





The matter has been adjourned to a later date.





Kevino Bah Smiths alleged killers for March 2019 trial

Last week two men charged with murder were told that they will be standing trial for their alleged crimes sometime in March 2019.





Lamar Griffith and Conrad Thomas Jr are charged jointly with the murder of Kevino Bah Smith.





Smiths dismembered remains were found discarded in a busy area in Breezy Brae, Grand Turk, in late April 2015 following an aggressive police search effort.





The 25-year-old man had gone missing after last being seen having a heated confrontation with several people.





The Weekly News has been reliably informed that the prosecution and the defence have both agreed to have the men tried in a judge only trial.





Reports also state that the prosecution is seeking to have a special prosecutor possibly flown in to the Turks and Caicos Islands to handle the Crowns case.





The men are represented by attorneys Oliver Smith and Keith James.





Cortez Simmons for new trial in March 2019

A Supreme Court judge will once again preside over the trial of convicted murderer Cortez Simmons in March 2019.





Last December, Simmons won his appeal against the conviction and life sentence for the 2013 murder of Kaziah Burke.





The appellate court thereby sent the case back to be retried.





The Weekly News has been reliably informed that the new trial is slated to be tried by a judge alone, with no jury present.





Trinidadian attorney Evans Welch will return to the Turks and Caicos Islands to act as special prosecutor to once again present the Crowns case.





Welch was the prosecutor responsible for Simmons first conviction in 2015 on a case built entirely on circumstantial evidence.





That conviction was overturned by the appellate court on a technicality.





Simmons was convicted on a jury vote of 11 to 1 for the murder of the 25-year-old father on April 13, 2013, at Uncle Does bar on Airport Road, Providenciales.





Burke died on the scene from the eight gunshots inflicted on him from a 40-calibre weapon allegedly wielded by Simmons in an act of revenge.





An autopsy of his body later revealed damage to several of his organs and arteries.





The jury deliberated for some six hours before announcing its deadlock to the judge, who then sentenced the defendant to life in prison.





Simmons was at the time represented by English criminal lawyers Roy Ledgister and Laurie Anne-Power of the UK based Bedford Row Law Chambers in London.





The lawyers worked through local attorney Alvin Garlands law firm at that time.





Second jitney robber also jailed

Jitney robber Renaldo Clarke was recently sentenced to three years in prison by the chief justice.





Clarke joins his now-convicted co-accused Elvis Smith at the Grand Turk penitentiary.





The men will both serve the same sentence for a string of robberies they carried out on jitney hire car drivers in Providenciales during April 2017.





Hospitality worker charged with indecent assault of colleague

Levern Dave Stewartson, an employee of a popular resort in Providenciales, has been charged with indecently assaulting a woman in a jitney hire car.





Reports are that Stewartson and the young lady were both travelling in the same jitney to their different destinations when the incident occurred.





During the car ride, the man allegedly and without invitation, reached between the womans legs to grope her private area.





The matter was reported to the police and Stewarton was arrested and subsequently charged.





He has since pleaded not guilty to the charge before the Chief Justice and the matter has been adjourned for trial.





Dominican trio on trial for conspiring to rob murdered Gary Mead

Last week Monday, July 30, Justice Shiraz Aziz heard the matter of the three Dominican men who conspired to rob murdered casino owner Gary Mead on September 30, 2016.





The men, Carlos Pena, Alexander Cuesta and Joselito Campusano, came up for mention in Grand Turk Supreme Court last week.





The matter was then scheduled for trial sometime later this year.





The men are accused of plotting together to rob Mead, whom Pena is also charged with gunning down, in the parking lot of the Slots-O-Fun casino, Airport Road, Providenciales, during the commission of the robbery.





Pena is also charged with robbing Mead of an undisclosed sum of money and items valued between $21,000 to $31,000 and possession of a firearm.





Cuesta was charged with two counts of keeping a firearm and one count of keeping 10 rounds of ammunition.





At the time of the mens arrests, it was revealed that the firearm which Cuesta was charged with, fits the description of the gun court officials believe was stolen from Mead before he was killed.





The defendants are represented by attorneys Glenda Clarke, Noel Skippings and Chal Missick, respectively.




By Olivia Rose

THE GOVERNMENT has allocated $1.9 million to support to the work of the Turks and Caicos Islands Integrity Commission.





The move comes as part of a bid to foster greater transparency and accountability, particularly among "persons in public life.





During this years budget address Premier and Minister of Finance Sharlene Cartwright Robinson stressed the importance of the TCI Integrity Commission and other organisations that support and promote the effectiveness of democracy and governance.





She said: "Our administration is committed to paying its fair share for those things which are required in a modern society.





The almost $2 million subvention represents a 30 percent increase in allocation to the commission.





The premier said the allocation speaks to her administrations commitment to integrity and honour in public service.





"The commission must not sit there in name only, but must be equipped to do its work, she said.





"And so the level of subvention to many of these bodies are either maintained or increased.





The hefty payment is expected to cover administrative costs as well as the hiring of two additional workers that are key in helping the commission to do its work.





They include a financial investigator and an IT technical investigator.





Cartwright Robinson also announced that the Government raised the annual subvention to the Financial Intelligence Unit to over $370,000.





The unit is a crucial part of the countrys democratic architecture, she said.





"We are in a different time, under a different administration where honesty in office matters; and where we understand that people should not use high office to cut low deals below.





"And that the art of governance is to from a national agenda, where the peoples interest matters, rather than a personal mobilisation scheme.





"These long sordid days of graft, shady deals are over, and now this is a Government in the sunshine.





She said that money spent on supporting these institutions are investments in the defence of national identity and the protection of credibility.





The Integrity Commission of the Turks and Caicos Islands is an independent, anti-corruption agency enshrined in the TCI Constitution as one of the institutions protecting good governance.





The commission functions through a chair and five other members who meet at least once every month to decide on all matters within its constitutional and statutory remit.




The wife and mother of missing man Jeffrey David Freiheit have flown to Germany to see what they can do to help in the search for him.

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This article was published 13/8/2018 (1173 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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The wife and mother of missing man Jeffrey David Freiheit have flown to Germany to see what they can do to help in the search for him.

Wife Selena said it has been a whirlwind few days, reporting on Sunday that she and Kathy had safely made it to Bad Tolz, Germany, where Freiheit was last seen on Aug. 2.

FACEBOOK PHOTO Jeff Freiheit, pictured shortly before friends and family became unable to connect with him on Aug. 2.

She said that they have connected directly with local police, who have assured them that they are doing all they can to search the area where Freiheit was last sighted.

The 32-year-old Brandon educator was travelling alone along a hiking trail called Der Traumpfad (The Dream Way), which spans from Munich to Venice.

Selena pointed to a story on German news outlet merkur.de as carrying the latest information on her husbands disappearance.

Previous cloud cover had dissipated, allowing a police helicopter to fly over the area Freiheit was last seen, passing over the area several times and at different altitudes, merkur.de reported.

The Alpine Police Task Force and Lenggries Mountain Guard have also been searching at the base of a ridge.

"In the current weather, with temperatures that are not too low, (police chief commissioner Fritz) Schwarm considers it quite possible that the man has survived to the present day if he has crashed and injured," the report continued.

Freiheit had booked overnight accommodations along the path he intended to hike, but failed to show up.

"Our thoughts are with the family and friends of the Canadian citizen reported missing in Germany," a Global Affairs Canada spokesperson said last week. "Canadian consular officials in Munich are working with local authorities to gather information, and are providing consular services to the family during this difficult time."

Brandon Police Service Sgt. Dallas Lockhart said last week that they have connected with authorities in Austria and Germany, with all involved opening up a clean line of communication.

"Thank you for all the love and support," Selena wrote on Facebook on Sunday afternoon, encouraging people to keep her husband in their prayers.

 tclarke@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB
A 1m startup fund has been announced for overseas entrepreneurs and experienced business professionals.

This will come in the form of two Competitive Star Funds, with up to 10 applicants in each set to receive 50,000.

The fund is aimed at start-ups based overseas but willing to 'relocate' to Ireland and the successful applicants will also be given a place in a three-month business development programme from DCU Ryan Academy.

Enterprise Ireland says the second fund is has been designed for professionals who have 25 years or more of relevant business experience in Ireland or abroad.

Business, Enterprise and Innovation Minister Heather Humphreys said: "By attracting talented entrepreneurs to Ireland from overseas and encouraging the development of business ideas by mature, highly-skilled professionals, the CSF is crucial for the development of Irelands start-up ecosystem.

Sarita Johnston, HPSU Start Manager at Enterprise Ireland, added: "The start-up ecosystem in Ireland is talent-rich community - however we understand that there is a significant number of entrepreneurs that are keen to relocate to Ireland.

"The CSF for overseas entrepreneurs is specifically for these entrepreneurs and successful applicants from outside the EU will be eligible for Startup Entrepreneur Visa."

More information is available on www.enterprise-ireland.com
Joe Dermody

Business is booming for the top accountancy practices, with demand for expert advice in data analytics and cyber-security, plus constant demand for the traditional audit-and-tax services.

EY is creating 520 jobs across its seven Irish offices. This will include 305 graduates, plus 215 experienced new hires. In all, 145 of the new roles will be based in EYs two Dublin offices, with 65 in EYs Munster offices: 35 in Cork, 15 in Limerick, 15 in Waterford.

These hires will take EY staff numbers over 3,000 for the island of Ireland.

The 65,000 average salary for EYs experienced hires indicates that this is a quality sector seeking top talent. In January, EY Ireland acquired the DKM Economic Advisory practice, who are offering expert Brexit strategy advice to public and private sector clients.

We expect that business to continue growing quickly, as well, said John Higgins, managing partner of EYs Cork office and head of transaction advisory services. The traditional areas of audit and tax are continuing to grow, but the big growth opportunities are in new areas, like data analytics, cyber and risk management. Around 60% of the growth weve experienced in the past year has been in non-traditional areas.

There was a time, in the past, when youd see people queuing up in EYs office in Cork, waiting to meet with their accountant. Now, its all Skype calls and Bloomberg screens. We have invested significantly in digital, and in talent

EYs Munster clients will know that its 20,000 sq ft of offices in City Quarter, Cork, have been completely modernised. Its offices in Limerick and Waterford are also equipped with the latest technology.

The way clients interact with EY has changed markedly. This is reflected in the popping-up of thinking spaces, like EY Wavespace, in London, the physical, mental and digital space, where, together with our clients, we ask better questions and explore new ideas that will help them thrive in the transformative age.

Then, theres EY Seren, which has an office in Dublin. It offers expertise in innovation, design, and optimisation. Listed case studies include: an innovative, new product for a payments company; new product ideas for a global media group; a global innovation programme for a car brand.

EY Seren is also delivering new, customer-focused ideas and products for broadband companies, banks, an internet TV business, capturing online business for cruise lines and optimising online sales for leading retailers.

Our clients realise that we are a full-service firm, said John Higgins.

Were working on all sorts of projects, such as smart-metering for utilities companies, working with health services, loan-transaction projects with banks, and agri-food projects. Our clients are experiencing change, and technology is at the heart of most of that change

We regularly host workshops and breakfast briefings on diverse topics, from cyber-security and GDPR to Brexit.

It is amazing also to see so many high quality candidates entering the EY Entrepreneur of the Year awards. There are some fantastic companies in, again, this year, and we can see plenty more in the pipeline for next year.

EYs strength in Munster is backed by a diverse portfolio of business clients, from FDI corporations in life sciences and pharma, to big wholesale groups and rapidly evolving smaller companies.

EY had double-digit revenue growth of 10% in Cork in 2017, and 18% growth in 2017 across Munster. The company has had a 70% increase in headcount at EY Cork in the last five years. The current headcount is at around 220 in Cork, with an ambition to grow to 250 in the next 18 months.

The new EY Cork office space at City Quarter, Lapps Quay, was designed by MCM and Henry J Lyons; it features a spacious, open-plan layout and was developed to create a more progressive work environment. EYs new office embraces the firms global EY@Work model, which is based on developing modern office space supported by the latest technology, design, and environmental standards.

As part of its efforts to attract and retain top talent, EY has 15 people who are working in Munster by choice, while delivering national roles. These people take on the roles knowing theyll most likely spend three days each week in Dublin.

For instance, on this basis, EY recruited Sean Casey in the new role of advisory head of energy and assets. He was formerly COO of Ervia, the parent company of Irish Water.

We are doing a lot of work in the utility space, and Sean said he wanted to work from Cork, said John Higgins. Weve a lot of people in Cork and Limerick who fit into that work model. For some quality people, well make that work for them.

EY Cork has also recruited Niall Barrett, formerly director of finance with Gilead Sciences. EY Irelands assurance partner, Ronan Clinton, is based in EYs Waterford office; he joined the firm from accountants, Clinton Flynn, in Waterford, where he was one of the partners.

EYs creation of 520 new roles follows double-digit growth for four consecutive years and a 36% increase in headcount in the last two years.

EY is actively recruiting candidates to fill a variety of roles in areas including data analytics; IT advisory and transformation; risk; cyber; digital strategy and customer experience. Ongoing demand in the firms core audit, tax, and corporate finance practices has also led to the creation of these new roles, including fast-growth areas, such as economic advisory; tax-and-audit innovation and automation.

www.ey.com

Leaders Left-Right: Keith Faga, Chin Ru Foo, Cillian Leonowicz, Vincent Hodder and Claire M Murphy

Keith Fagan, country manager of Molson Coors Ireland, has been elected as chairperson of The Irish Brewers Association (IBA), the voice for the brewing industry in Ireland. He has also previously held senior roles with United Biscuits Ireland and Nestle Purina. The IBA chair became vacant when outgoing chair Maggie Timoney, CEO of Heineken Ireland, stepped down due to her appointment as CEO of Heineken USA. Jonathan McDade, head of the IBA, said he looks forward to working with Keith Fagan on the issues that are pertinent to the beer industry in Ireland; he also paid tribute to Maggie Timoneys contribution to the brewing sector in Ireland over the past five years.

Maarten Schuurman has been appointed as managing director of Heineken Ireland, effective September 1. He is with Heineken 22 years in global and general management roles, notably in the Netherlands; he was MD of the firms operating companies in Suriname, South America and Burundi in East Africa. His current role is head of global sales, based in the companys international HQ in The Netherlands. For the past three years, he shaped and delivered Heinekens global sales agenda including revenue management and its e-commerce across all continents. He joined the firm in 1996 as a management trainee. He will succeed Maggie Timoney who has been appointed CEO of Heineken USA after five years with the firm in Ireland.

Chin Ru Foo has been named as a global brand director with William Grant & Sons, the independent, family-owned distillers. She will manage the Irish and American Whiskey and Trailblazer brands, including Tullamore D.E.W. Irish whiskey. She was previously Baileys global strategy and content creation manager having spent 10 years working for Diageo across senior positions in Singapore, London and Dublin. She succeeds Caspar MacRae, who is now marketing director for William Grant & Sons UK and Ireland. She said: 2018 will be the year we amplify Tullamore D.E.Ws exciting new platform. Weve only scratched the surface of the Beauty of Blend campaign.

Cillian Leonowicz has been appointed as director of business development in Deloittes EMEA Blockchain Lab in Dublin, which has helped more than 100 clients deliver blockchain proof of concepts and solutions. He has worked in consulting, financial services and tech sectors for the past 10 years. He joined Deloitte in 2015 as a fintech lead for pioneering new blockchain initiatives. He was previously global head of digital and client solutions consulting for Fenergo; and he was DST Systems business development lead for South East Asia, based in Singapore. He holds a Law degree from UCC and an MBS in Management Consulting from the Smurfit School at UCD.

Vincent Hodder has been appointed as CEO of LEVEL, the low-cost airline brand of International Airlines Group (IAG). He brings 25 years experience with airlines including low cost carriers such as Jetstar in Australia and Asia and VivaAerobus in Mexico. He is currently chief strategy officer at UK regional airline Flybe where he was instrumental in turning around revenue performance and refining the strategic direction of the business. He holds a BComm from the University of Melbourne and an MBA from Melbourne Business School. He is also a fluent Spanish speaker. LEVELs current fleet of A330-200 planes will expand to seven aircraft next year.

Claire M Murphy has been appointed as group general counsel and company secretary with open-access network provider enet. She will lead all legal workstreams for the group, as well as corporate governance matters; she is now also head of shared services, leading HR, business transformation initiatives, and regulatory matters. She brings 13 years of legal experience in industry, in the utility and card payments sector, and in private practice with law firms. She studied Business and Law and a Commercial Law Masters in UCD. She qualified as a solicitor with the Law Society of Ireland; she holds diplomas in Intellectual Property and Intellectual Technology, as well as In-house Legal Practice.
As much as you love your name, sometimes you curse your parents for giving it to you because it comes with so many complications they probably never even thought about.

Well, this comedy sketch group have nailed this struggle in their latest video while also channeling their inner Destinys Child.
Sarah Jessica Parkers family vacation in Donegal has come to an end for another year.

Her and her husband, Matthew Broderick, own a holiday home in Kilcar, and after spending a month travelling around Italy with her family, they decided to spent the last few weeks relaxing indoors in the rainy Irish village.
A charity that helps homeless people in Dublin has criticised the latest offer of housing for a mother-of-seven.

Margaret Cash, 28, was forced to sleep in Tallaght Garda Station due to lack of emergency homeless accommodation on Wednesday night last.

She circulated pictures of her children sleeping there on social media after she said she could not take any more.

Ms Cash and her seven children  Johnny, 11, Tommy, 10, Rebecca, nine, Miley, seven, Jim, four, Rocky, two, and Andy, one  have been in emergency accommodation for over a year after her landlord went bankrupt and their house was repossessed.

Inner City Helping Homeless (ICHH) continues to accommodate Ms Cash and her children while discussions are ongoing with the council and homeless services regarding long-term accommodation for the family.

The charity said South Dublin County Council's latest offer of accommodation does not meet the family's needs.

"The Cash family have been offered unsuitable emergency accommodation tonight in South Dublin," said ICHH CEO Anthony Flynn.

"The accommodation offered is for one night only and leaves the family back to square one tomorrow. This is, yet again, a disingenuous offer from the Dublin Region Homeless Executive.

"Inner City Helping Homeless have secured suitable private emergency accommodation for the family for the coming days giving them some stabilization and routine around their day.

If they accepted the one night offer then Ms Cash and her children would be expected to return to the streets on Tuesday and start this process again and this is completely unacceptable.

"The council is lacking in sincerity and compassion. The council cannot take Ms Cash in tonight and turf herself and her children back out tomorrow morning first thing.

"This is an extraordinary case and needs to be dealt with in a proper manner."

Margaret Cash with six of her seven children (Aoife Moore/PA)

A spokesperson for Dublin Region Homeless Executive said the offer is for evening and night-time only but they are working to source alternative emergency accommodation.

"The family have been offered emergency accommodation on a continuous basis until alternative emergency accommodation can be sourced.

"The accommodation is evening / night time only, but the family will return to the same place every evening, until an alternative is sourced. This is accommodation the family have stayed in previously.

"We really appreciate how difficult this situation is for Ms Cash and her family and both the DRHE and SDCC are working very hard to find alternative emergency accommodation for them, unfortunately considering the demands on the provision of emergency accommodation there is limited supply available to local authorities."
The family of a young GAA player murdered in County Mayo have made a fresh appeal for information on the first anniversary of his death.

Joe Deacy's uncle Paul says "someone knows" why he was found in the driveway of his friend's house this day last year.

21-year-old Joe, from Hertfordshire in England, was on a two-week visit to his family home in Ireland when he was beaten to death.

Joseph Deacy of Butt Field View, St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK was discovered outside a house at Gortnasillagh, Swinford on August 12, 2017, by a passer-by.

His mother Alison Thebald, who was at the anniversary mass with her husband Adrian Deacy and daughter Charlotte over the weekend, had told Dublin Coroner's Court in her written deposition last November: I was advised that the cause of death was a single blow to the head.

Gardai in Mayo arrested two men in their 20s in connection with the death, but they were released without charge.

His uncle Paul said today they will never stop looking for the truth.

He said: "Horrific, is the only word I can use to sum up the last year. My father is the shadow of the man he used to be, him and Joe were so close.

"There was a Mass held in Bohola for Joe and Adrian went up to the altar and made a passionate plea to stop praying for Joe now and pray for the people who are not coming forward. We need to find answers."

#JusticeforJoe is the hashtag that was used and someone knows something. - Joe's uncle Paul.

"It's disappointing for a tight community like in Mayo that people aren't coming forward. There will never be closure, Joe will never be forgotten, it will help to get the answers on what happened that night."

According to the Independent Joe's father, Adrian told parishioners in the Church of the Immaculate Conception and St Joseph that his son "died in a manner not befitting an animal".

Mr Deacy had said that mourners should pray for "those who know what happened my beautiful boy".

"Without doubt (those persons) are also suffering. Hopefully someone, somewhere, possibly in this parish, will have the courage to come forward."

- Digital Desk
Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin is facing fresh calls to concede to a leadership contest from one of his General Election candidates.

Cllr Martina Genockey, who is the party's candidate in the Dublin South-West constituency has argued a contest would re-energise the flagging party's fortunes.

Ms Genockey said she disagreed with 16 of her council colleagues who said now is not the time for the leadership issue to be dealt with.

In a statement, she said: I agree with a lot of the statement released by the 16 councillors last week - we have excellent reps working extremely hard for their constituents and the party, and also in relation to the issues on which they say we should focus".

"However, I disagree that now is not the right time for a leadership election. I do not feel that such a contest would hinder the work of the party on these, and other important issues, but in fact give the party the chance to listen to members all over the country about how to get the party back to its best," she said.

She said she and her colleagues need to focus the party on those that need it most.

"I feel that a significant amount of reps, members and voters  both current and former  either dont feel that is the vision of the party at the moment, or that we are not communicating that vision to the public," she said.

"There has been over two years since the last general election and over four since the last leadership contest in the party. In that time the party has continued to lose support both in elections and in the polls.

To that end I think that a leadership contest would give those involved a chance to lay out their vision for the Labour Party and give a renewed sense of urgency to the rebuild of the party.

Mr Howlin was elected leader in 2016 in controversial circumstances after former deputy leader Alan Kelly was denied a chance to contest the post.

Mr Kelly said he would give Mr Howlin six months to change the party's misfortune but later backed away from those comments.

The party's poll ratings have languished at below 10%, and has dropped to just 3% in some polls.
Update 3.39pm: Talks aimed at resolving the long-running dispute between Ryanair and its Irish pilots have got under way.

The budget airline and Forsa, which has been representing the Irish pilots, are attempting to seek a resolution over pay and conditions under mediator Kieran Mulvey.

Mr Mulvey, the former head of the Workplace Relations Committee, has set aside three days for the negotiations.

The dispute resulted in a fifth day of strike action on Friday.

About 100 of Ryanairs 350 Irish-based pilots joined colleagues in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden in a series of strikes.

The airline said 396 flights were cancelled as a result, disrupting thousands of passengers.

A spokesman for Forsa said Mr Mulvey had asked both parties to refrain from public comment while the process is under way.

A Ryanair spokesman said mediation was required after five strikes failed to achieve anything other than to regrettably disrupt some customers.

He added 95% of the airlines flights and the majority of its pilots had operated on those days.

Mediation should ensure Forsa takes control of their side of the process, take these negotiations more seriously and remove unwanted interference, the spokesman said.

Talks, not strikes, will move this forward and allow Ryanair to make the same progress we are making with other unions elsewhere in Europe.

Forsa has not served notice of further strike action while the process of mediation is under way.

Union representative Bernard Harbor told RTE Radio Ones Morning Ireland programme that there was a lot of ground to be made up and a lot of time had been wasted.

- Press Association

Earlier: Ryanair: We are closer to a resolution than union are saying

Update 6.37am: Talks aimed at the resolving the Ryanair dispute begin this morning.

The industrial action by pilots has so far seen five strike days forcing the cancellation of more than 100 flights.

Over the past month, thousands of Ryanair passengers have had their travel plans thrown up in the air because of this dispute.

Around a quarter of Irish based pilots are unhappy with their working conditions.

This morning Kieran Mulvey, the former head of the Workplace Relations Commission, will try and break the deadlock between both sides:

Bernard Harbour from the FORSA trade union  which represents the pilots  is optimistic.

He said: "This isn't the hardest problem we've ever seen in industrial relations, it can be resolved, so let's get down to business and try and do that."

Ryanair says it too wants to see a deal reached at the talks which get underway this morning.

Kenny Jacobs from Ryanair says it is in the airline's best interest to end the dispute.

Mr Jacobs said: "We hope that we quickly conclude the negotiation because we think we are closer than FORSA are indicating to the media.

"We want a resolution in place that means that there will be no more strikes here."

- Digital Desk
Two men have fled the scene of a robbery after they foiled their own attempt to raid a McDonald's.

The break-in at one of its Dublin restaurants happened early this morning.
Ulster have been dealt a major blow ahead of the new season with their star Ireland wing Jacob Stockdale sidelined by injury.

Stockdale, Six Nations player of the tournament earlier this year, faces six to eight weeks out.

Ulster tweeted: "Jacob Stockdale suffered a grade 2 hamstring strain in training and is expected to return to play in 6-8 weeks."

INJURY UPDATE  | Jacob Stockdale suffered a grade 2 hamstring strain in training and is expected to return to play in 6-8 weeks pic.twitter.com/foRu7K2jtR  Ulster Rugby (@UlsterRugby) August 13, 2018

Ulster launch their Guinness PRO14 campaign against the Scarlets on September 1.

The 22-year-old scored a Six Nations-record seven tries in last season's tournament, and is a key member of the Ulster squad.

An eight-week absence would see Stockdale available again just before the Heineken Champions Cup begins in October.

Ulster are in the same Champions Cup group as Leicester, Racing 92 and Scarlets.

Ulster star Stockdale has made an outstanding start to his international career, scoring 11 tries in 11 Tests.

He played a pivotal role when Ireland swept to the Six Nations title in Grand Slam fashion five months ago, and he was also part of their successful Australia tour earlier this summer.

Ireland's opening Test of the 2018-19 season is against Italy in Chicago on November 3, which is followed by Dublin appointments with Argentina, world champions New Zealand and the United States.

PA
Christmas tree crops across Europe have been hit by this Summer's drought.

In Ireland, producers are reporting losses of about 30%.

The Ardennes in Belgium is the biggest Christmas tree producing region and it has lost around 10-15% of its stock.

Tree producers in Sydney say they will have fewer trees this year and they will be a lighter green, almost yellow, colour.

In the UK, there are similar warnings of festive tree shortages.

- Digital Desk
Australia's best-known honey brand Capilano is hoping to tap into the huge Chinese market after announcing a proposed $200 million deal with a private equity firm.

"We're at a stage where our business has been growing over recent years, and now the export markets that we're entering into, like China and so on, take a fair bit of investment," said Capilano managing director Ben McKee.

Dr McKee said while Capilano had decent market share in parts of Asia it was was yet to have "significant sales" in China.

Capilano Honey boss Ben McKee says the proposed deal to take the company private is a good deal for shareholders.

"Getting our brand known and our history and our company and the quality of our products, and the therapeutic credentials of some of our products known in China, is going to take some investment. And I think China is a long-term market for us and needs to develop over time," he said.
Rail freight operator Aurizon has pulled the plug on the sale of its Queensland intermodal business to Pacific National and Linfox, but vowed to exit the business as soon as it is free to do so.

The news came as it announced that higher coal volumes and productivity and cost savings helped it lift full-year underlying net profit 10 per cent to $542.1 million.

Aurizon's terminated the agreement to sell the intermodal business after the competition regulator won a Federal Court injunction that temporarily put a pause on the deal. It requires Aurizon to continue to operate the intermodal business, which transports container goods by rail, until a further hearing in November.

"Aurizon will comply with the orders of the Federal Court today but intends to exit that business when it is free to do so," it said.

Aurizon said it remained committed to getting approval for a separate agreement to sell its Acacia Ridge Terminal near Brisbane to Pacific National.
The Sydney basin faced the prospect of more coal mining after the Berejiklian government sought submissions of interest in what would be the first new exploration licence in the region in more than two decades. It also applied for the extension of several other licences.

South32's Endeavour Coal is indicated an interest in exploring for coal in a 4087-hectare region just north of Picton on Sydney's south-western edge, according to the Government Gazette.

The last licence to be issued in the Sydney basin was in 1993. The government, though, has also applied to have three much larger exploration licences in the basin renewed after they expired, and has sought to have a fourth renewed before it expires next May.

Kate Smolski, chief executive of the NSW Nature Conservation Council, said it beggars belief that the government has done this just one week after it declared the whole of NSW drought-affected.
The man fatally stabbed with a samurai sword in Sydney's inner west on Friday has been remembered as a luminary of the Sydney hip-hop scene.

Jett McKee, who performed under the name Scepaz, was heard arguing with a man and a woman inside a home in Hereford Street in Forest Lodge at lunchtime on Friday, then staggered onto the street with what has been described as a "massive" head wound.

Emergency services were called, but by the time they arrived Mr McKee was lying dead in the middle of the street.
A Rainbow Beach tour company accused of racial vilification after a Maori Niuean employee was given an empty sunscreen canister labelled Black Guy Repllent [sic] last year claims the incident was simply a practical joke between friends.

The canister was given to Mr Tupetagi in November 2017, he claims.

On Friday, Rainbow Beach Adventure Company filed its response to a statement of facts made by its employee, McDuff Tupetagi, in the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission last week.

The company, owned by travel and tour conglomerate Website Travel Group, and two of its employees, Mervin ONeill and Joel Mahon, were named in court documents filed by Mr Tupetagi, who is suing all three for racial vilification.

Employed as a mechanic at the company since 2014, Mr Tupetagi alleges he was frequently called "the black fella" and made the butt of jokes, as well as being told he didnt need a sunshade because of his skin tone.
Pope Benedict XVI made an uncomfortable claim in his 2006 Regensburg address: contemporary Muslim terrorism may owe something to Islams conception of God.

A year later, Father James V. Schall SJ wrote a book about the address which, as Acton Director of Research Samuel Gregg says, placed it in the wider context of a set of religious and philosophical challenges that many Westerners still cant bring themselves to address:

Over the past sixteen years, Schall has written numerous articles on this more general topic, the most important of which have been gathered together in his latest book, On Islam: A Chronological Record, 2002-2018. In one sense, the title is somewhat misleading. For this is really a book about the West and how its inability to think (let alone speak) clearly about the primary causes of Muslim terrorism reflects some significant intellectual pathologies presently plaguing Western intellectual life. As the texts subtitle indicates, these essays proceed chronologically. They begin with a 2003 article about Hilaire Bellocs views about Islam, and end with a 2018 piece in which Schall presents some reflections about the Koran itself. Between these two essays are sandwiched 24 articles in which Schall explores questions ranging from how the physicist-priest, the late Stanley Jaki, regarded the natural sciences place in Islam, to how the secular mind grapples with Muslim terrorism.

Read more . . .
A man suspected of the hit-run killing of a Dutch national on a bicycle in South Yarra has been arrested in Melbourne's CBD.

The man, 26, was arrested in Bourke Street about 5.30pm after a member of the public recognised him from images released by police on Sunday.

Police say the man, who has no fixed address, is being interviewed. No charges have been laid.

A female cyclist was killed in the collision. Credit:Luis Ascui

A witness who saw police arresting the man told The Age the man looked "dishevelled" and was in handcuffs.
RMIT students have complained about being set recycled exam papers, and say it's giving their peers an unfair advantage.

In two recent incidents in the College of Business, students have been provided with exams before theyve even sat them.

Business students have complained about their exams.

In May, Master of Finance students enrolled in a Corporate Finance subject sat a mid-semester test that was identical to the one students sat the previous year.

And last year, students claim their teacher gave them a mock exam that was identical to the actual exam they sat for their Principles of Finance subject weeks later.
The West Australian government is going ahead with a 12-month trial of new SMART drumline technology to try to prevent shark attacks.

Drum lines are a key feature of NSW's shark bite mitigation measures.

Fisheries Minister Dave Kelly says the trial is needed because a NSW trial didn't provide enough information to determine if the technology would work in WA.

The independent trial, to be conducted by Chief Scientist Peter Klinken, will catch, tag, relocate and release sharks around the Gracetown area over 12 months.

Surf breaks around Gracetown have a notorious reputation, with several fatal shark attacks taking place over the past 10 years.
A woman whose body was found floating in the Swan River in a suitcase in 2016 had sustained 25 blunt force injuries to her head and face, a Perth court has been told.

Ah Ping Ban, 65, and his daughter Tiffany Wan, 25, appeared in the WA Supreme Court on Monday for the start of their murder trial over the death Annabelle Chen in 2016.

Annabelle Chen and one of the tiles found inside the suitcase dropped at the Fremantle Traffic Bridge.

Mr Ban is Ms Chen's former husband, while Ms Wan is her daughter. Both deny the murder charges brought against them.

Ms Chen, a 58-year-old who lived in Mosman Park, was found dumped in the Swan River by two fishermen on July 2, 2016.
Foreign-owned businesses make 40 times their expected economic contribution to Australia, new figures show, fuelling concerns inside the Coalition economic growth will be at risk if it dumps its signature company tax cuts before the next election.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Treasurer Scott Morrison have built their economic policy around the argument that tax cuts for all businesses were needed to keep foreign investment flowing as other countries cut their tax rates.

Mr Morrison said when Australia cut its rate to 30 per cent in 2001, there were 19 OECD countries with a higher company tax rate.

Treasurer Scott Morrison. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

"Now there are only two. And when Frances legislated company tax cut takes effect, Australias rate will be the second highest amongst advanced economies," he told Fairfax Media. "This means Australian jobs going offshore.
Federal Labor member for Canberra Gai Brodtmann has announced she won't contest the next federal election, saying she wants to spend more time with her mother and family.

Ms Brodtmann was elected to the seat of Canberra in 2010 and had until recently planned on nominating for the new electorate of Bean at the next federal election.

Gai Brodtmann has announced she will resign from politics. Credit:Jamila Toderas

"My decision has been made for entirely personal reasons," Ms Brodtmann said in a statement, referring to her mother Faye Anderson, who turned 79 last week.

"My mother is now one of the reasons why I am not nominating. By her own admission, Mum has years not decades left. I want to be there for those years."
And indeed in the past, Labor and the Greens, including Territory Senators, have had no problem voting to overturn Territory laws they dont like, such as the Northern Territory laws on mandatory sentencing.

This debate and subsequent vote will be a matter of conscience, just as the 1997 Andrews Bill was. On other occasions when the question has been territory rights, as some claim this bill is exclusively about, political parties have had no problem enforcing party rule, so to allow a conscience vote here points to the real issue at stake.

And while people in Canberra have mixed views on the Bill, their ultimate opinion usually reflects their view on the issue of assisted suicide as Canberrans also have very mixed views on just how much power their local Assembly should have. When considering the Andrews legislation, Labor MP Lindsay Tanner put the tension well when he asked whether people would have a different view of territory rights if it was a different issue, such as capital punishment.

Which brings us onto the issue at the heart of the bill, assisted suicide. I oppose assisted suicide. And if this Bill passes, I have no doubt assisted suicide will become law in the ACT.

Its impossible not to be moved by the plight of terminally ill Australians who are enduring real suffering. But the question we have to ask as legislators is  will crossing this ethical threshold lead to better or worse outcomes for Australians, particularly our most vulnerable  the sick, the elderly, the disabled, the depressed, the lonely?

Experience overseas suggests that it will not.

Only recently we saw shocking reports that a nine year old and an eleven year old became the youngest ever to be euthanised under Belgian law.
Council minutes show five of the councillors - Crs Sutherland, Charlton, Greer and Cr Koliana Winchester and Cr Matt Constance - cited having attended Shane Newcombes wedding as a reason for the perceived conflict of interest. Cr Constance also revealed he had been the celebrant at the wedding. Cr Darren Grimwade declared a perceived conflict because he is a friend of Mr Shane Newcombe, the chairman and CEO of MBRIT. Cr Adrian Raedel declared a perceived conflict as he has an employee of MBRIT who could be classed currently as a friend. None of the councillors who have received political donations from Moreton Futures Trust mentioned this in their declarations and Crs Flannery and Houghton, both of whom were funded by MFT, made no declaration at all. The Newcombe family owns Village Motors, which runs dealership franchises in the Redcliffe and North Lakes area for Holden, Nissan and Renault, as well as the Brisbane Isuzu truck dealership. MBRIT, an unlisted public company set up in 2015, charges fees to local businesses and claims 300 members on its website, where it describes itself as a not-for-profit organisation that works on behalf of  organisations from a range of sectors, including: accommodation providers, tour operators, transport providers, restaurants and cafes, trades, professional services, community services, retail and many more.

It runs the annual kite festival at Clontarf, organises regular business conferences to attract investment and other events. Council records show MBRIT was awarded an initial $6.7 million, three-year contract in July 2016. No disclosures have been made about any changes to this arrangement. The agenda for the May 29 council meeting stated: Having achieved the strategic outcomes of the existing service level agreement, MBRIT is looking to expand these activities. Given the success of these activities, it is recommended that council increase its support for this regionally beneficial enterprise. The meeting was closed on the basis the matter involves other business for which a public discussion would be likely to prejudice the interests of council or someone else, or enable a person to gain financial advantage. Cr Flannery said he had seen no reason to declare a conflict at the meeting.

He said Cr Sutherland had told him and other councillors prior to the awarding of the initial MBRIT contract in 2016 that they need not worry about a conflict based on relationships with Mr Newcombe because Shane Newcombes business is separate from his mothers business. Mr Newcombes mother, Marlene, is the majority shareholder in Newcombes Holdings, which made a $20,000 donation to Moreton Futures Trust ahead of the 2016 local elections. Shane Newcombe has been a co-director since 2008. There is no suggestion of impropriety on the part of the Newcombes. Cr Flannery said the approach to managing conflicts had since changed. At a meeting last month to award contracts for council vehicles, several councillors declared perceived conflicts because of their friendship with Mr Newcombe and his mothers ownership of Newcombe Holdings. Others mentioned the connection to Mr Newcombes father Alan and his ownership of Brisbane Isuzu.

Although the (Local Government) Act says we dont have a conflict with the (Moreton Futures) Trust, now the public perceives there can be a conflict, Cr Flannery said. Cr Flannery said councillors had sought advice from the chief executive prior to the meeting to discuss the MBRIT contract because Mr Newcombes wedding had taken place just a week earlier. Cr Flannery said the early contract renewal had been to give some more security to MBRIT. They wanted a bit more longevity, to employ people on longer-term contracts, he said. But Cr Flannery said he was unsure about what had happened since the meeting.

Fairfax Media has learned the CCC began investigating the matter involving MBRIT last month after receiving a detailed complaint from a ratepayer about the handling of the contract renewal and councillors declarations of conflicts of interest. A CCC spokesman said: The CCC can confirm that it has received a complaint involving Moreton Bay Regional Council and is currently investigating this matter. As the investigation is ongoing it would not be appropriate for the CCC to comment further. Moreton Bay Regional Council did not respond to questions by deadline, with a spokesman blaming the Ekka Day public holiday in the region. Comment has been sought from Mr Newcombe. In its Operation Belcarra report, published in October last year, the CCC singled out Moreton Bay Regional Council as having a poor record in councillors declaring conflicts of interest. It noted that councillors had failed to declare conflicts when deciding on development applications by donors to Moreton Futures Trust and that when they were cross-examined about this in public hearings, they had claimed not to know who the donors were.

The notion that a conflict of interest is somehow washed away by a donation being made via a third party is completely unreasonable and raises serious questions about the intentions behind using the (Moreton Futures Trust) model, the CCC wrote in its report. It seems to the CCC that some councillors are particularly failing to recognise perceived conflicts of interest arising from donations, having little or no regard for how the donations they receive may be seen by members of the public to compromise the performance of their duties. Mr Newcombe has also been a political donor to the LNP, giving $5000 to the party in 2010, according to Electoral Commission Queensland records. MBRC is the third-largest local government in Australia with a $622 million annual budget and well over 400,000 residents. The CCC probe into MBRC means south-east Queensland councils representing a total population of about 1.5 million people are now the subject of corruption investigations.
The Royal Flying Doctor Service will receive an additional $4 million to help struggling rural communities, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced on Monday.

Farmers will also receive extra subsidies to get fodder  needed for struggling herds  from further afield, because much of New South Wales is also hit by drought.

The money is part of a $9 million boost for drought relief over four years announced by the Queensland government as 59 per cent of Queensland is covered by government drought declarations.

Premier annastacia Palaszczuk announces a $9 million drought funding package to regional Queensland. Credit:AAP

Drought declaration allows properties and local authorities to claim subsidies for transport and rent relief from the state government.
Opposition Leader Mike Nahan has said he has been "black banned" by The West Australian and its reporters will not attend Liberal press conferences or include comments from shadow ministers in its stories.

Dr Nahan said his office had been told by the newspaper it would not be providing the Opposition with any "vehicles for us to communicate" after he said in a Liberal party conference speech on Sunday that voters in the Darling Range byelection were not listening to traditional media.

But he denied the speech was meant as a criticism of the state's only daily newspaper.

"It wasn't an attack on The West Australian, it was me telling my Liberal colleagues that in the future, if we're going to duplicate Darling Range, we're going to have to go more grassroots, social media and door knocking," he said.
Putrajaya: Malaysia's prime minister will seek to cancel multibillion-dollar Chinese-backed infrastructure projects that were signed by his predecessor as his government works to dig itself out of debt, and he blasted Myanmar's treatment of Rohingya Muslims as "grossly unjust."

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad made the comments days before he heads to Beijing for his first visit there since returning to power in an electoral upset three months ago.

Mahathir, 93, said he wants to maintain good relations with China and welcomes its investment, so long as the projects benefit Malaysia.

But he took his toughest stance yet on Chinese-backed energy pipelines and a rail project along peninsular Malaysia's eastern coast that were struck by his predecessor, Najib Razak, who faces trial on multiple charges related to the alleged multibillion-dollar looting of the 1MDB state investment fund.
Washington: Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who came under fire by Republicans for sending politically charged text messages that disparaged President Donald Trump, was fired from the bureau late on Friday, his lawyer said.

Strzok is the third high-ranking person to be fired from the FBI during the Trump administration.

Trump, who has used Strzok to constantly question the integrity of the special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, responded on Twitter.
Latest News Inside the 'tech arms race' to bring down turnaround times How lenders are competing against each other to balance risk, compliance and speed for brokers

Reaction as inflation spike causes RBA interest rate rethink The RBA is again under pressure as inflation jumps 0.8% in a quarter, putting ultra-low rate era in firing line

Last week the Australian population reached 25 million  a milestone achieved 33 years sooner than expected.

While its good news for the countrys economic growth, housing supply must remain strong to guarantee affordability for future generations, according to the HIA.

Clearly growth has occurred faster than the experts predicted, HIA deputy managing director Graham Wolfe said in a statement. If these predictions are to be realized we must find a way to keep new, affordable homes coming into the market to ensure supply is maintained across the country. To do otherwise would see Australia continue a pattern of undersupply, ongoing affordability challenges and further reductions in home ownership rates.

According to Wolfe, Australia needs to maintain an annual supply of 230,000 new homes across all states for the next 30 years if the country wants to keep its housing supply growth in line with its population growth.

While aware that the steep cost of supplying new housing primarily affects the affordability challenge, with nearly 40% of new house and land packages made up of taxes and charges, Wolfe recognises a stable supply chain sustains greater assurance in affordability.

Governments must recognise that growth in the housing sector and improvements in housing affordability will not be realised by making ad hoc changes to negative gearing, capital gains tax or charges on foreign investors, Wolfe said.

He also encouraged both state and Federal governments to reach a unified agreement on developing mechanisms that will measure and manage land supply across the nation, so a consistent supply pipeline can be sustained to meet housing demand.

For Wolfe, a strong housing sector amid a population boom doesnt just mean more affordable houses; it also means more jobs and generally a more prosperous economy.

The first Intergenerational Report in 2002 estimated the countrys population would reach 25.3 million in 2024. The 2007 report predicted the number would be reached in 2027. By 2010, the population was already 22 million, and the IGR estimated the number would go beyond 25 million by 2020. The 2015 report sees the population climbing to 39.7 million by 2055.

Related stories:

New home sales post first gain in 2018

Developer confidence in housing market
Arab leaders should emerge as negotiator to end war in Yemen

Huthi rebels in South Yemen on Monday buried the dozens of children killed in a Saudi-led coalition air strikes on a bus on Friday. It is the latest tragedy in Yemen war. Over 40 children were killed on the occasion leaving 56 wounded. The number of casualties is bigger taken the older people to the count.







It occurred no sooner had another such air strike killed 55 civilians and wounded 170 in an attack on a hospital and fish market only few days back on August 2 in the strategic city of Hodaida. Such attacks are frequently reported making civilians victims of the war to show how innocent people are paying their lives in a senseless war.







We must say the civilized world can't sit idle while the war has already taken over 10,000 death tolls creating the worst humanitarian crisis in our time. Millions of people are dying in hunger and diseases for shortage of food and medicine and thousands of children are suffering from malnutrition to face untimely death.







We must say the war must come to an end. Killing of children must stop; it can't win the war but create more hatred.







The Saudi-led coalition want to win the war at whatever cost to wipe out the Iran backed Shiite Huthis on its southern border. This is part of a complex proxy war that the Saudi coalition backed by other Sunni states in the region and the USA is carrying out although there is no end in sight.







We would like to say that the Arab leaders and particularly the Arab League must initiate urgent move how to find out a political solution to the conflict. They must show their worth and leadership when war can't bring any solution.







What is crucial is that the coalition is using airpower, as they have no significant hold on the ground to restore the Saudi backed Yemeni government now expelled from capital Saana and exiled in Riyadh. Huthis are vast majority and control the vast swath of the land making the war for the Saudi coalition difficult. So only a political solution can end the war and Arab leaders should not waste time.







They should set at least one example that discussion not war and destruction is useful to end such bloody war. We want Saudi southern border must be protected but killing of Huthis will not bring this protection. Saudis must look for its internal security themselves; but Saudi-Israel alliance against Iran may backfire in the Muslim world.





Huthis are controlling the strategic Baab-al-Mandeb shipping passage to the Red Sea through which big oil vassals move towards Suez Canal for European destinations. Huthis hit two such Saudi vassals in the past month to show how critical their hold in this region. They are also firing missiles to hit Saudi targets showing their capacity to run the war.







It is indeed difficult for the Saudis to tolerate but in our view is that they should accept the reality in the ground and use their petro-dollar to help develop Yemen, which is the poorest nation in the region instead of using the money to kill innocent people.







Arabs are fighting aimless wars destroying themselves. Leadership must come from within to change the policy and work for co-existence and peace.





The UN envoy in Yemen said warring parties agreed to sit in Geneva on September 6 to hold talk on how to end the war. Our point is that Shia-Sunni hatred must end and Arab nations in the region should take conciliatory moves to guide this conference to a success.







We want to see the modern minded Arab leaders should emerge as peace broker among the Muslim countries. The situation is complicated but Saudi Arabia cannot bomb and kill children. Modern war makes innocent people die and suffer most. That is why even in extreme situation we have to accept how terrible the unintended consequences are. It is always worth trying peaceful solution with collective assistance.






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The Undead Archives

I have finally salvaged my pre-Blogger TDR archives and added them into Blogger. They are almost totally in the form of one giant post for each month. And the formatting strayed from the originals. Sorry. But historians everywhere can rejoice that this treasure trove of my thoughts is restored to the world.
Infosys has finally decided to go ahead with its plan to set up operations in Kolkata without the proposed centre getting the SEZ status, a key demand which has made the IT services major delay the project for quite some time. The Bengaluru-based IT major on Monday announced the commencement of work for building a software development centre with an initial investment of Rs 1 billion without any kind of tax sops from the state government.

Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

We, however, have a request.



As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.



Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard.



Digital Editor
Cab hailing company on Monday said it has appointed Ben Legg as managing director of its UK operations.

Earlier this month, had said it has obtained licences to operate in Greater Manchester and South Wales. It is slated to launch its operations in South Wales in the coming weeks.

Legg will lead and develop the senior leadership team, drive strategy and operations and establish a UK nationwide presence by the end of 2018, said in a statement.

He joins Ola from AdParlor, the New York-based global marketing technology company, where he was CEO for two years. Prior to this, he was Group CEO of Adknowledge and has also worked as chief operating officer for Google Europe. He also held senior roles at Coca-Cola and McKinsey, the statement said.

"Ben has a diverse set of experiences that span strategy and operations and is best placed to drive the development of the business in one of the world's most evolved transportation markets," Ola co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said.

Ben Legg said the company is committed to working in partnership with policymakers and regulators in all local markets in the UK.

"I, for one, don't own a car and strongly believe that through innovative services like Ola working in conjunction with local authorities we can help to reduce traffic congestion and pollution, improve mobility, and eventually redesign our cities, towns and public spaces for the better," he added.

The UK is the second international market after Australia for the Bengaluru-based company.

In Australia, Ola offers its services in seven major cities including Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and claims that over 40,000 drivers have registered with it since the launch in February in the country.

Ola has previously said it will be the only ride-hailing app in the UK to offer passengers the option of Private Hire Vehicles (PHVs) and Black Cabs through one app, which will see additional transportation options being incorporated in the future.

In the UK, ride hailing apps that currently connect commuters with black taxis include Gett and Mytaxi.

Ola will also compete with US-based rival Uber. The two companies, which count SoftBank as a common investor, have been locked in an intense battle in the Indian and Australian markets.

The UK is an important market for Uber but the company has also faced criticism over issues like passenger safety and treatment of drivers.

Transport for London (TFL) had stripped Uber of its licence last year but a court granted Uber a 15-month extension on its London licence last month.
on Monday posted 14 per cent year-on-year growth in consolidated net profit at Rs 2.69 billion during June quarter.

The company's profit from continuing operations after tax stood at Rs 2.36 billion in the corresponding quarter last year, the company said in a release.

Its total income grew by 11.96 per cent during the quarter under review at Rs 28.6 billion, compared with Rs 25.46 billion in the same quarter of FY18.

Net debt of the company went down to Rs 15.06 billion, against Rs 18.6 billion last year.

managing director R Mukundan told reporters that the 'basic chemistry' products business registered a robust performance on the back of improved operational efficiencies, a better sales mix and better realisations.

"On the global front, the performance of the North American operations reflects planned to shut down and Kenyan operations were impaired by heavy rains," he added.

The consumer business reported a 33 per cent growth on the back of higher volumes from Tata Salt, which continued its leadership and the business expansion path under the Tata Sampann brand, according to Mukundan.

"We introduced a range of all natural chutneys, while products launched earlier this year like Nutrimixes and organic pulses were well received in the market. We continue to focus on improving our market reach and availability for these products," he said.

Going forward, according to him, the revenue growth will come from consumer and specialty products segments where most of the investments are happening.

"In the long term, we are aiming for 50 per cent of our revenue to come from these two segments," he added.

Mukundan said is expanding its consumer segment portfolio and will introduce new products in all category almost every quarter.

For FY19, the company has a capex of Rs 5 billion for the basic chemical segment and around Rs 4.5 billion for the speciality products segment, he said.

Further, he said, "In line with our growth focus on speciality business, we are happy to complete the recent acquisition of precipitated silica business."



Meanwhile, Rallis India, a subsidiary of Tata Chemicals, registered good performance with a normal monsoon and the seeds business in Metahelix continued its growth trajectory, according to Mukundan.

The company's stocks ended 0.25 per cent up at Rs 674.85 apiece on the BSE today, against 0.59 per cent decline in the benchmark.
Tata Steel Ltd's quarterly net profit more than doubled, but still came in well below market expectations, hurt by rising expenses and a one-off charge. The country's biggest steel producer by assets said it took a one-time charge of Rs 3.44 billion on a consolidated basis. The bulk of this came from an exceptional charge of Rs 3.35 billion at its Indian business, mainly due to a provision made for additional interest on differential royalty paid on coal. Net profit was Rs 19.34 billion ($276 million) in the three months to the end of June, compared to a profit of Rs ...
Former Lok Sabha speaker died, aged 89, on Monday at a private hospital in Kolkata, following a cardiac arrest and prolonged illness, news agencies quoted nursing home sources.

"He died at 8.15 a.m.," Bellevue Clinic CEO Pradip Tondon told IANS.

Chatterjee was critical following the heart attack he suffered on Sunday. He was also suffering from a kidney-related ailment and was admitted to the clinic in a critical condition on August 7.

A 10-time Lok Sabha MP, Chatterjee was a central committee member of the CPI(M), which he had joined in 1968.

He was the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.

The veteran leader was expelled from the in 2008 for refusing to resign as the Speaker after his party withdrew support to the UPA-I government.
Some unidentified men targeted JNU student leader and gunshots were heard at the Constitution Club near Parliament today, but he escaped unhurt, police said.

Witnesses claimed that two shots were fired when Khalid was at the entrance of the club.

The student leader was at the venue to attend an event titled 'Khauff Se Azaadi', organised by an organisation named 'United Against Hate'.

Saifi, who was accompanying Khalid, said, "We had gone to have tea when three people came towards us. One of them got hold of Khalid which he resisted."



"There was a melee as a gunshot was heard. But Khalid was not injured. While the accused were fleeing, they fired one more shot"



Later Khalid said, "There is an atmosphere of fear in the country and anybody who speaks against the government is threatened."Police are at the spot and are investigating the matter. They have seized the weapon that was dropped by the accused while fleeing.
In London, miles away from his house in the quaint village of Wiltshire where he lived with his wife Lady Nadira Naipaul and his cat Augustus, Sir V. S. Naipaul died aged 85. Naipaul was indisputably a global voice.

The Nobel laureate cast his shadow on all things that were relevant in the world in which he lived  the ironies of exile, the various beliefs and portraits of the post-colonial worlds. In 2001, the Swedish Academy described Naipaul as a literary circumnavigator, only ever really at home in himself, in his inimitable voice. It was true. He was a ...
V S Naipaul, who towered over the landscape of post-colonial literature, died on Sunday. He was my friend, my mentor, my teacher. I learned about his death from a one-line email from his widow, Nadira: Vidia has gone gently into the night. Vidia, as Naipaul was known to his friends, was born in 1932 in Trinidad to a family of Indian origin who had come as indentured labor after the abolition of slavery. Over a 50-year career, he gave young writers like myself  in India, in Africa, in the Islamic world and in South America  a searing glimpse of our own ...
The first US sanctions have been reimposed on Iran with little sign of either side softening its position. Curbs on oil exports will follow in early November and the effect will be bigger and swifter than last time around. Oil forecasters don't seem to have grasped that yet.

Theres no doubt that President Donald Trump will be tougher on Iran than Barack Obama was, with no gradual ratcheting-up of pressure. Importers are expected to have tapered off oil purchases by November 5, when the curbs come into effect. Any waivers granted to buyers will still require much ...
India's dependency on imports will continue in the medium-term, though urea imports are likely to decline as a new manufacturing capacity comes on-stream under the New Investment Policy 2012, according to a report.

Returns from the new urea manufacturing capacity coming on-stream are likely to be strong, subject to the timely receipt of subsidy and offtake above 85 per cent, India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) said in a report. Ind-Ra estimates urea imports to decline to nil by FY21.

"We do not have domestic reserves of MOP and hence will continue to import 100 per cent of potash. Globally, the potash market is controlled by five companies, given their proximity to the raw material. The usage of muriate of potash (MOP) in India largely depends on the price payable by the end-user," the report added.

Meanwhile, di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) is produced either from rock phosphate (RP) or phosphoric acid (PA) domestically or is imported directly.

Given that India has limited resources of RP, with RP mines in Rajasthan being owned by Rajasthan State Mines and Minerals, most of the RP/PA is imported in the country.



Ind-Ra expects lower direct imports of DAP in the country, but higher imports of RP/PA as more conversion facilities are set up in the country, it added.

Apart from urea, DAP and MOP, companies are increasingly focusing on customised NPK fertilisers (nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium), to address the specific agro-climatic needs of farmers.

This benefits not only the farmers but also the manufacturers, as they earn better realisations and profitability on these customised products, it said.



The country consumes 55 million tonne of fertilisers annually, of which 72 per cent is domestically produced while the rest is imported, India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) said in a report.

Of the 15.5 million tonne of fertilisers imported, urea, DAP and MOP constituted 6 million tonne (39 per cent), 4.3 million tonne (28 per cent) and 4.7 million tonne (31 per cent), respectively, during FY18.
Richwood, TX (77531)

Today

Clear. Gusty winds diminishing after midnight. Low around 45F. NW winds at 20 to 30 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph..

Tonight

Clear. Gusty winds diminishing after midnight. Low around 45F. NW winds at 20 to 30 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.
Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency has discovered another 15 accounts with transactions worth Rs 6 billion, the top probe agency's chief Bashir Memon informed the Supreme Court on Monday.

During the hearing of a case regarding the alleged of Rs 35 billion through fake accounts, a three-member apex court bench headed by Chief Justice Saqib Nisar was informed by Memon that the money transferred through fake accounts was collected through bribery, the Express Tribune reported.

Memon told the bench comprising Chief Justice Nisar, Justice Umar Ata Bandiyal and Justice Ijazul Ahsan that the has discovered another 15 accounts with transactions worth Rs 6 billion.

However, Justice Bandiyal asked the senior official to not "label them as corrupt people."



The defence team strongly reacted to Memon's statement and said the official should provide evidence of before passing such statements.

The hearing of the case was adjourned till Wednesday when the apex court will consider FIA's suggestion regarding the constitution of a joint investigation team (JIT), comprising personnel who were part of the JIT that led the Panamagate case probe.

Former president Asif Ali Zardari, his sister Faryal Talpur, former Pakistan Stock Exchange chairman Hussain Lawai, Summit Bank Senior Vice-President Taha Raza are among those being investigated by a seven-member JIT led by Additional Director General Najaf Mirza for allegedly facilitating 29 'fake' accounts in Summit Bank, Sindh Bank and United Bank Limited.
The victorious Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) has said that it is set to appoint renowned economist Abdul Razak Dawood as an advisor to Prime Minister-designate

The party issued a press release saying that Razak would guide the PTI chief on a number of issues including investment, economy, trade, and related issues, according to Geo News.

Asad Umar, the party's likely nominee for the finance minister of the country, had earlier stated that the PTI is unlikely to privatise Pakistan's loss-making state companies like Airlines Corp (PIA) and Pak Steels.

ALSO READ: Imran Khan's party bags 33 reserved seats; PTI NA tally stands at 158

The state-owned firms will be moved into a wealth fund in order to remove them from political interference and that there will be no relief for people in the first 100 days of the new administration, added Umar.

Prime Minister-in-waiting will take oath at the President House in Islamabad on August 18, instead of August 11.
The head of Royal Dutch Shell's global refining operations Lori Ryerkerk will step down at the end of the month after five years in a job where she oversaw a vast overhaul of the business, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. Ryerkerk will be succeeded by Robin Mooldijk, who currently serves as Vice-President Manufacturing Americas, responsible for the Anglo-Dutch company's refining and chemical plants in the United States, Canada and Argentina. Ryerkerk played a key part in the transformation of Shell's refining operations in recent years ...
Nispana's 4th Annual Sustainable Smart Cities India Conference is scheduled to take place on 6th - 7th of September in Bangalore. With support of Smart City, Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs, Government of India, this event is all set to create a benchmark of success.

With 5 weeks to go, the programs is packed with smart city case studies, practical analysis and real-time exercises to reinforce the theory, meaning you return to work with new knowledge on current smart city trends.

The key presentation topic includes:

India Smart City Mission and Future Ready Smart Cities

Smart Solutions for Smart Cities - Mobility, Lighting and Waste Management

Smart and Sustainable Infrastructure

Smart Cities Technology Innovation, Deployment and Adoption?

The experts will discuss the latest smart city developments and also look at the threats and challenges of future. Don't missoutthis great opportunity to expand your network of potential clients and contacts. Join us as we provide you a platform to generate new leads and develop new relationship.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Karnataka government on Sunday expressed its displeasure after the Ministry of Defence shifted its 22nd 'Aero India' show from Bengaluru to Uttar Pradesh this year.

While seeking an answer from the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government over venue change, Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy said that Bengaluru is the proper place for the show as the state has all infrastructure in place.

"Our BJP friends in Karnataka must answer. We also requested the defence minister and told her that Bengaluru is the proper place for the Aero show event and we have all infrastructure in place as well. I don't know why the Centre took such a decision," Kumaraswamy told the reporters.

Meanwhile, Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara also targeted the Government via his official Twitter handle. He wrote, "We have been India's defence hub since Independence, but under the NDA, we are constantly losing key defence projects and flagship programs."

He also urged Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman "to clarify her stand on the issue".

It is for the first time since its inception in 1996 that the Aero Show is being held out of its home venue in Bengaluru. The last show took place in Bengaluru in February 2017 in the Yelahanka Air Force Station in Bengaluru.

As per media reports, the event is likely to be held in Uttar Pradesh's capital city Lucknow in November or December this year.
Australian actor Ruby Rose has quit Twitter after receiving backlash over her casting as lesbian superhero Batwoman in a new CW show.

In an emotional social media post last week, Rose had announced that she is set to play the first LGBTQ lead in a TV series.

However, according to The Hollywood Reporter, two days after the announcement, the 32-year-old deleted her Twitter account after some fans expressed their anger over the casting.

Before bidding adieu to Twitter, 'The Meg' star responded to criticism in a series of tweets. The actor wrote that she wished "we would all support each other and our journeys."

"Where on earth did 'Ruby is not a lesbian therefore she can't be batwoman' come from -- has to be the funniest most ridiculous thing I've ever read. I came out at 12? And have for the past five years had to deal with 'she's too gay' how do y'all flip it like that? I didn't change. I wish we would all support each other and our journeys," Rose wrote.

"When women and when minorities join forces we are unstoppable... when we tear each other down it's much more hurtful than from any group. But hey/ love a challenge I just wish women and the LGBT community supported each other more, My wish was we were all a little kinder and more supportive of each other...Sending everyone my love and gratitude, it's been a rollercoaster of a year, this month especially," she continued.

The 'xXx: Return of Xander Cage' star concluded by saying that she is "looking forward to getting more than four hours of sleep and to break from Twitter to focus all my energy on my next 2 projects. If you need me, I'll be on my Bat Phone.

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Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) leader Manish Sahani on Monday was shot dead inside his office premises in the Jandaha area in Bihar's Vaishali district.

Two people on a motorcycle killed Sahani and fled the spot. However, details of the killers are yet to be confirmed.

Triggered by the same, supporters of Sahani protested outside the Jandaha police station. However, the protest took a turn for the worse after Sahani's supporters started pelting stones at the police station, forcing the police to open aerial firing.

At least 10 people were reportedly injured in the police firing and were later taken to a nearby hospital.

In the wake of the incident, Union Minister and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) leader Upendra Kushwaha criticised Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and questioned how the killers fled the spot, despite a police station being in the vicinity.

Expressing his dismay over Sahni's demise, Kushwaha also questioned Nitish's silence in a series of tweets.

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A British-Pakistani stand-up comedian was recently probed by the police after he used a derogatory term in his act 'Meet Abu Hamsta and Paki Bashir".

The comedian, Jeff Mirza was dressed as a butcher 'Paki Bashir' at the show. He was questioned by the Edinburgh police after they received a complaint from a man of Pakistan origin, who claimed that he was offended on seeing the 'Paki' word in a poster, the Daily Star UK reported.

Mirza, on seeing the man at a police station in Edinburgh, tried to explain him why it was alright to use the P-word.

He was quoted by the paper saying, "I told him my daughter at the age of four had been racially abused while playing at  Valentines Park in Ilford and for many years after that, I had been angry when I heard that word."

Mirza said that he is a proud "Paki" and added that there was nothing wrong in using the term.

The word Paki is a racial slur referring to the people of Pakistani descent which is considered derogatory. The term is commonly used in the United Kingdom and Canada for inciting racist violent attacks against the Pakistani people. The term was coined in the late 1960s and is still being used even today.

In 2008, the derogatory word was spray painted on a campaign sign of an Alberta Liberal Party candidate in Edmonton.

In 2009, Prince Harry earned international attention when he was rebuked and forced to undergo sensitivity training as he was caught on video, calling a military recruit as "our little paki friend".

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China has denied reports claiming that the country held a million Uighur Muslims captive in mass detention camps in Xinjiang province after a United Nations human rights panel expressed grave concerns over the issue.

Defending its record before a United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which was hearing the issue over the implementation of the provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, China called the reports "completely untrue", CNN reported.

Gay McDougall, a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination raised the claims at the opening session of a two-day review of China's policies here, saying that Beijing had turned the autonomous region into "something resembling a massive internment camp, shrouded in secrecy, a sort of no-rights zone," in a bid to tackle religious extremism, The New York Times reported.

McDougall expressed concerns that the Uighurs were being treated "as enemies of the state solely on the basis of their ethnoreligious identity." She cited this as per reports from scholars and activists that most of them had disappeared.

She claimed that over a hundred Uighur students, who returned to Xinjiang province from abroad, had disappeared, while others were either detained or died in detention. The 50-member Chinese delegation did not respond to McDougall's allegations so far, as per the New York Times report.

Meanwhile, China's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Yu Jianhua, hailed China's policies towards the minorities and said they were focused on promoting harmony and unity. He added that 20 million people were pulled out from poverty due to economic development in the region.

The Uighurs are a majority in the Xinjiang province, situated in western part of China and is officially designated as an autonomous region.

Many international human rights organisations have accused China of cracking down on the Uighurs by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and sending the minority community to undergo some form of forceful re-education or indoctrination.

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Union Water Resources and Ganga Rejuvenation Minister Nitin Gadkari on Monday affirmed that cleaning the River Ganga was the top priority of the government.

Addressing the media here, the Union Minister said necessary arrangements will be made to clean the river before the commencement of the Kumbh Mela in January next year.

"We will provide funds to Uttar Pradesh government to clean drains which pollute Ganga before Kumbh Mela near Allahabad and will send four dredgers for dredging Ganga from Allahabad to Varanasi. Clean and pure Ganga is our priority," Gadkari said after reviewing the cleaning work at the bank of the River Ganga here, along with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Gadkari said the Centre is investing Rs 1700 crore in the dredging of Ganga and four river ports will be constructed in Allahabad.

He further said that by November end, the Ministry will also launch Airboat services with a capacity of 40 people that will function between Allahabad and Varanasi.

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A youth was apprehended on Monday in connection with the car vandalism case that was reported from Moti Nagar area here during the Kanwar Yatra.

The youth, identified as Yogesh, was apprehended from JJ Colony area, where he helps run a food stall along with his parents.

Last week, violence broke out in South Moti Nagar area after a group of 'Kanwariyas' or devotees of Lord Shiva vandalised a vehicle and broke its windscreen and windows.

The group, armed with iron rods and sticks, smashed the car after a driver allegedly tried to brush past one of them while moving on a busy road.

Two days after the incident, one man was arrested by the Delhi Police in connection with the case.

Taking cognisance of the matter, the Supreme Court directed the police to take strict action against those responsible for erupting violence and breaching laws.

A three-judge bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra, and comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud, reiterated an earlier verdict, which stated that videography of every procession should have to be made.

The top court, while citing the 2009 judgement, also said that the organisers were responsible for any violence reported during the procession.

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Equity99.com, a Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) registered investment advisor has released a buy report on Bharat Agri Fert and Realty Ltd. Bharat Agri Fert and Realty, a Mumbai-based company engaged in the manufacturing of fertilisers (single super phosphate) has three other divisions - realty, resorts, and pharmaceuticals.

The company that was trading between 130-135 for a long duration has hit a high of Rs. 184 recently and currently trading between Rs. 160-165. They suggest that it's a short term as well as long-term buy and could reach a target of Rs. 409 in long-term.

The company has been a Single Super Phosphate (SSP) manufacturer since inception. With a total installed capacity of 132,000 MT, the manufacturing factory is located in Wada, Palghar on company's owned land parcel of 18.36 acres. The business contributed around 60 percent of the revenue last year financial year ended March 31, 2018, that is around Rs. 20.1 crores. Owing to normalcy in business post Goods and Service Tax (GST) and good monsoon in Maharashtra so far, the capacity utilisation has improved drastically to 60 percent.

According to the report, Bharat Agri's fertiliser business is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 36 percent for the next three years to Rs. 50 crore in FY21 with a positive operating margin of 7 percent. Favourable Policy changes will enhance the production of SSP. Implementation of Nutrient Based Subsidy (NBS) policy, the inclusion of sulphur under NBS, encouragement of micro-nutrients fortified with zinc and boron etc. has led to enhancement in the production of SSP, which can be seen from the higher capacity utilisation of 60 percent in the current financial year (FY18-19). Subsidised fertilisers fortified with zinc and boron are eligible for an additional subsidy of Rs. 500 per tonne and Rs. 300 per tonne respectively under NBS policy.

Bharat Agri as it owns a freehold of around 106 acres of surplus land at Wada district, Palghar. This land parcel is valued at around Rs. 106 crores on a conservative basis calculated at Rs. 1 crore/acre. This is excluding its 18.3 acre land on which it has its fertiliser factory operating and 8 acre land on which it has its resort. As of now, this surplus land is categorised under 'Agricultural land'. However, the company has already applied for it to be changed to 'Non-Agricultural land' and expects to get the permission soon. This will be a major game changer for the company as it plans to expand its resort business once they have the approval.

Apart from this, the company also owns 6.25 acre freehold land at Majiwada, Thane. Of which Phase I project on 3 acre land is already completed. The total saleable area has been around 3.65 lakh sq.ft. It has so far sold 348 flats. The unsold stock of OC received flats will be sold in the current financial year. The company has sold 3 flats in the first quarter and expects to sell the remaining eight flats by end of this financial year. Average ticket size for each flat is around Rs. 1.30 crore for a saleable area of 1111 sq. ft. Since the cost has already been recognized in previous years, the entire cash collected from the sale of 11 flats will flow directly to the bottom line in this year. Analyst Rs. 13-15 crore cash coming from unsold inventory.

Phase II to kick start soon. The company plans to launch its phase II project soon at Majivada on the balance 3.25 acre land. The company is eligible for stilt + 30 floors which are pending with TMC & MOEF and will complete both buildings in the next few years with 3,00,000 sq. ft. saleable area. It will have a mix of 1BHK and 2BHK, which will be completed in three years. With several new infrastructure projects, Thane has emerged as the preferred choice for any real estate investment. Besides the relative affordability factor, it offers as compared to any other area in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), several new-age home-buyers are zeroing in on a property in this part of the Central suburbs.

Bharat Agri's land location at Majivada is a big benefit as it is just 12 minutes away from Central Thane Railway Station and just 5 minutes away from the Proposed Kapurbawdi Metro Station. Due to this, the prices for this area have gone up by 20-30 percent in the last two years despite the overall real estate market being stagnant. This bodes well for the company, as this project itself will generate about Rs. 360-400 crore of revenue for the company at prevailing market rate of Rs. 12,000 per sq. ft.

They also own a 11000 square feet place Bharat house valuing 125 crores at flora fountain area.

The 150 acre resort is just 80 kms away from Mumbai and a perfect getaway from the tussle of day to day life. The resort has 20 rooms and only caters to elite class. The average ticket size per room is around Rs. 22,000 per night for a couple. The occupancy rate is currently around 60 percent. With the hotel industry witnessing a tailwind, the occupancy rate is set to only improve in the next 3 to 5 years. With the current inventory in hand, the company can generate total revenue of around Rs. 10 crore in FY19. The management has plans to increase its room strength from 20 to 80 in order to accommodate more people as it is considering introducing 'Destination Wedding' as one of the major marketing strategies at the Anchaviyo Resort.

With a Networth of Rs. 75.6 crore, the stock trades at 1x P/BV at cmp of Rs. 148.8. The company is at an inflection point with all its business verticals are at the cusp of massive growth. The Fertilizer business is set to do well with better capacity utilization and improved working capital cycle will lead to higher profitability. This business is set to touch revenue of Rs. 50 crore by FY21. We value this business at Rs. 75 crore at 2x sales of FY20.

The surplus land parcel of 106 acres that the company owns at Wada is valued conservatively at Rs. 106 crore. The unsold inventory of 11 flats of Phase I Majiwada project will cash in Rs. 15 crore for the company in this year. Phase II Project of Majiwada is valued conservatively at 1x sales of Rs. 360 crore. Overall, the realty business is valued at Rs. 481 crore. Coming to the Resort Business, with Hotel industry facing tailwinds, the company is well set to do a business of Rs. 10 crore this year and Rs. 13 crore next year. We value their Resort Business at 2x FY20 sales to Rs. 26 crore which is well within the average industry valuation of 3x sales. The company has no long-term borrowings and Rs. 17.5 crore as short-term borrowings for working capital requirements. As on March 31, 2018 the company had Rs. 5.8 crore of liquid assets.

The combined intrinsic value of all the business net of debt comes to Rs. 570 crore while the market cap for the company today is just Rs. 79 crore. This gives a potential upside of seven times over an investment of 3 to 4 years. We recommend a strong buy from short-term as well as long-term point of view due to multiple triggers.

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Afghanistan's Interior Ministry on Monday confirmed that 70 police officers have been killed ever since the Taliban launched an attack in Afghanistan's Ghazni city on August 10.

The terrorist group said that it entered the city from "different sides". The clashes between the Taliban and government forces are still going on.

Afghan Interior Minister Wais Barmak said that the process of recovering the bodies is underway and assured that all steps were being taken to bring the situation in Ghazni city under total control, TOLOnews reported.

According to Sputnik, over 100 people were killed and 133 injured in the siege. Of the deceased, at least 90 were either military or law enforcement personnel, while civilians accounted for 13 of the deaths.

Officials confirmed that the Taliban set many Independent Election Commission (IEC) offices ablaze and blocked the Kabul-Kandahar Highway. Foreign troops have extended assistance along with air support to flush out the terrorists from the city.

The IEC recently deferred the upcoming parliamentary polls in the area due to the increasing instability in Ghazni province.

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The victorious Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) has said that it is set to appoint renowned economist Abdul Razzaq Dawood as an advisor to Pakistan Prime Minister-designate Imran Khan.

The party issued a press release saying that Razzaq would guide the PTI chief on a number of issues including investment, economy, trade, and related issues, according to Geo News.

Asad Umar, the party's likely nominee for the finance minister of the country, had earlier stated that the PTI is unlikely to privatise Pakistan's loss-making state companies like Pakistan International Airlines Corp (PIA) and Pak Steels.

The state-owned firms will be moved into a wealth fund in order to remove them from political interference and that there will be no relief for people in the first 100 days of the new administration, added Umar.

Prime Minister-in-waiting Imran Khan will take oath at the President House in Islamabad on August 18, instead of August 11.

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India on Monday repatriated seven Pakistan civilian prisoners, the Ministry of External Affairs confirmed.

"India attaches high priority to addressing humanitarian issues including early release and repatriation of Indian fishermen and prisoners in Pakistan's custody. Release of 178 Indian prisoners, including 174 fishermen, has been secured in 2018, so far," read a statement from the Ministry.

Earlier in the day, Islamabad had released 29 Indian prisoners to mark Pakistan's Independence Day on August 14.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement: "This is in line with Pakistan's consistent policy of not politicising humanitarian issues. It is our hope that the Indian side will also reciprocate in a similar manner."

Among the 29 Indian prisoners released is Gajanand Sharma, who was imprisoned at Central Jail in Lahore for the past 36 years.

"This is a gift for our entire nation from the central government on the Independence Day," Punjab-based activist Sehdev Sharma, who received Gajanand Sharma at Attari-Wagah border, told ANI.

Fishermen from both sides of the International Border occasionally stray into each other's waters, owing to lack of clear demarcation of maritime boundaries during their fishing trips and are caught and put into jails for a longer period of time. However, civil society organisations around the world have been urging New Delhi and Islamabad to enter into an agreement for defining and enforcing proper international maritime laws.

On August 7, India repatriated 14 Pakistani fishermen, two months prior to which Pakistan repatriated an ailing 20-year-old Indian prisoner, Jitendra Arjunwar, on humanitarian grounds. Arjunwar, who is suffering from Thalassemia, unintentionally crossed into Pakistan following an argument with his family in 2013.

In January, Pakistan set free 147 Indian fishermen as a goodwill gesture, who later crossed into India through the Wagah border.

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Internationally acclaimed Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan, who is currently undergoing treatment for cancer in London, on Monday pulled out of upcoming political satire series 'Gormint'.

Earlier in March, the 'Life of Pi' actor announced that he had been diagnosed with a rare high-grade neuroendocrine cancer.

Khan, in a statement, said that it was one of his favourite projects and that he had a fun time on the sets, but only to discover his current physical condition, reported The Hollywood Reporter.

Further in his statement, the 52-year-old actor, with a heavy heart, added that he is truly disappointed that after much work was done in the show, he would not be able to fulfill his commitment to his favourite show.

The 'Hindi Medium' actor also added that despite exiting the project at an unusual time he is excited to see the final outcome, as he finds this show to be unique in the Indian satire space.

'Gormint', which was earlier titled 'The Ministry' has been created by a well-known Indian comedian, Gursimran Khamba.

Irrfan was last seen in the recently released Bollywood film, 'Karwaan'.

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The two Koreas on Monday decided to hold their third meeting in September. The meeting will take place between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang. The date of the third-inter Korean summit between the two leaders would be announced later.

The consensus for the meeting was reached following high-level talks between the two countries on the northern side of Panmunjom in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), the de facto border separating North and South Korea, Yonhap News Agency reported.

In a joint statement, officials from the two Koreas said: "We agreed to hold an inter-Korean summit within September in Pyongyang. We reviewed the implementation situations of the Panmunjom Declaration and held consultations in a sincere manner on matters related to its more active enforcement."

While the four-member South Korean delegation was led by the country's unification minister Cho Myoung-gyon, Ri Son-gwon, chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, led the North Korean side.

This was the fourth time the high-level talks took place, with the last one being held in June, the report said. On April 27, the first inter-Korean summit between Moon and Kim took place on the southern side of Panmunjom, wherein the two leaders signed the Panmunjom Declaration, which called for ceasing of hostilities against each other and signing a permanent peace treaty in the near future to replace the armistice agreement adopted during the 1950-53 Korean War. The two Koreas are technically at war since no peace agreement was signed. On May 26, the two leaders met on the northern side of Panmunjom for the second time.

The high-level talks also come amid growing concerns that North Korea's denuclearisation process had slowed down than expected and Pyongyang's constant belittling of the United States on its "gangster-like" demands, for the former to give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Many international organisations and countries have repeatedly urged Pyongyang to halt its nuclear development programme if the latter wanted to achieve and ensure a stable and peaceful Korean Peninsula.

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The Maharashtra Anti-terrorism Squad (ATS) seized close to ten pistols from the safe houses of Vaibhav Raut and his accomplices, who have been accused of plotting terror activities in the state.

The recovery was made from Pune and a safe house in Nalasopara area of Mumbai respectively.

The recovered weapon cache from Nalasopara included five Countrymade pistols and three partially made Country made pistols. Eleven cartridges of 9mm and thirty cartridges of 7.56mm were also recovered. Various weapons making accessories were also recovered, such as springs triggers, etc.

Meanwhile, the Pune safehouse primarily stored electronic equipment such as one laptop, six hard discs, five pen drives, nine mobiles and several sim cards. Along with this one car, a motorcycle and several documents were also recovered from the place.

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Actress and now Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle had a 'fairytale' wedding with Prince Harry at the Windsor Castle on May 19, with tens of thousands of people lining the route.

The Duchess of Sussex looked beautiful in a pure white silk Givenchy gown and a Tiara.

Daniel Martin, Meghan's makeup artist and friend, shared the sweetest description of the actress to People Magazine, saying, "You literally felt the energy and the happiness and the love. You could just hear the wave of cheers coming into the church."

Martin further revealed that when Markle came walking in, it was almost like an eruption as he was trying to control his tears so hard. He added, "And then she walked in and she had this giant smile on her face. And then I just lost it."

Prince Harry, sixth in line to the British throne, and Markle sealed their wedding vows with a kiss outside Windsor Castle's St. George's Chapel, cheered on by thousands of delighted crowds.

The couple - now the Duke and Duchess of Sussex - had exchanged rings in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II and 600 celebrity guests. The Dean of Windsor, the Right Reverend David Conner, conducted the wedding service while the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby had officiated it.

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In the closely contested Castrol Super Mechanic All-India finale for car mechanics in Mumbai, Manish Kumar Sharma, Sunil Dhopatkar and Sachin Tiwari proved their mettle and emerged victorious.

The winning trio will now head to Malaysia for the Castrol Asia Pacific Super Mechanic regional Finale for cars, where champion mechanics from six other countries will battle it out for the ultimate title of 'Castrol Super Mechanic - Asia Pacific'. The winning team of the Asia-Pacific event will be invited to experience the technical precision and speed alongside the Renault F1 Pit Crew at the prestigious Singapore Airlines Singapore Grand Prix in September.

The qualifying rounds for the Castrol Super Mechanic for Cars were held in Delhi and Mumbai, with top six finalists from each location, qualifying to compete in the finals. The exciting grand finale saw four teams, comprising of three mechanics each, competing to win the prestigious title. The final round included a quiz and a practical round, which tested the mechanics on their vehicle servicing and repair knowledge and skills.

According to Kedar Apte, Vice President Marketing, Castrol India, "The Castrol Super Mechanic programme was initiated with an aim to recognize and reward one of the most undervalued communities in our country - the mechanics - one of our key stakeholders, who keep India moving. The programme gives them a platform to showcase their knowledge and skills and updates them on the latest trends and technologies emerging in the automotive and lubricant industries. We are delighted with the response we got for the Castrol Super Mechanic programme this year, and are looking forward to a more exciting and engaging event next year."

One of the winners, Sunil Dhopatkar, said, "I am really excited to win the Castrol Super Mechanic competition for cars and proudly look forward to representing India at the Asia Pacific finale. Castrol Super Mechanic contest has helped me develop and improve my skill set and knowledge. The judges, training and interaction with instructors at the contest gave me rich exposure to new technologies and techniques which I would not have had the opportunity to access.

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Several Pakistani citizens expressed anguish over visuals of former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif being taken to the National Accountability Court (NAB) in Islamabad in an armoured vehicle. People felt that being a former Prime Minister Sharif, proper protocol should have been followed while transporting him to the court in full public glare.

Sharif on Monday appeared before the NAB that was hearing two corruption cases against him and his family. He was taken to the court in an armoured vehicle from Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi.

Central Vice President of the Awami National Party (ANP) Bushra Gohar compared an image of Sharif and former senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) of Malir district, Rao Anwar describing the protocols both the leaders had received. She said that the three-time Pakistan Prime Minister was being transported as a "black terrorist", while Anwar, an accused in the Naqeebullah murder case is being escorted to the court with full protocol.

"Image of a 3 times elected PM transported as a black terrorist in armoured vehicle vs image of a mass murderer #RaoAnwar in the court with full protocol. #NawazSharif being taught a lesson for asserting his Constitutional powers as PM. Condemnable display of #PindiDictatedJustice," Gohar wrote on Twitter.

Former Pakistan Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal tweeted a post showing Sharif in the armoured vehicle and wrote on the micro-blogging site: "'Vote ko izzat do' ki saza" (The punishment of respecting the vote)

Prominent Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar said that she was not happy in looking at the images. "No, I'm not happy looking at images of Nawaz Sharif in an armoured vehicle being brought to a court. I'd never be gleeful about someone's bad time, whether it was brought upon him by his own deeds or accelerated by the establishment-judiciary nexus or both," she tweeted.

Sharif, who is currently lodged in Adiala Jail, is serving a 10-year jail sentence after being convicted in the Avenfield reference case. The case pertained to Sharif family's purchase of the upscale Avenfield apartments in London. He was brought to the court in an armoured vehicle, Geo News reported.

The two remaining graft cases, Al-Azizia and Flagship Investment, was heard by Accountability court Judge Arshad Malik. Wajid Zia, who is the head of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) and the prosecution's star witness also appeared before the court for the hearing. The court adjourned the hearing of the Sharif family's cases till August 15.

On August 7, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) ordered to transfer the pending corruption cases against the Sharif family to another court. A two-member bench comprising Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb and Justice Aamer Farooq had ordered the transfer of the cases on Sharif's plea.

The IHC had rejected the bail requests of Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Captain (retd) Muhammad Safdar, who were all convicted in the Avenfield case on July 17.

While Maryam and Safdar were named and convicted in the Avenfield case, Sharif and his UK-based sons, Hussain Nawaz and Hasan Nawaz, were accused in all the three corruption cases - Avenfield reference, Flagship Investment, and Al-Azizia reference. Sharif's sons were declared as proclaimed offenders by the court since the proceedings against the Sharif family began in September last year.

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The key element that makes the modern woman a symbol of strength, versatility and independence is being financially self-sufficient.

To establish her identity and individuality whether at home, work or society, it is imperative women free themselves from financial dependence, these platforms are helping women to gain financial independence hence making them assertive and empowered:

Momspresso

Momspresso is India's largest multilingual content platform that offers support to moms across the country. A blogging site where the content is created by, of and for mothers, helps not just in their journeys as parents but also in their lives as wives, daughters, and - most importantly - as women. Momspresso that also has a video based content has so far has created earning opportunity through these blogs for 6000 mums who have driven a whopping 50,000 blogs across the seven languages. The company also helps brands like Dettol, Pampers, Mother Dairy etc. to influence their target audience i.e. Mothers through these blogs.

UrbanClap

UrbanClap.com is recognized as the fastest-growing startup in India. A mobile marketplace for local household services but provide an equally exciting opportunity for all the women. It provides a lucrative platform to all women where they can monetize their skills and knowledge by offering classes/ trainings/guidance to enthusiastic beginners and get paid for it. It also helps individuals with profiting out of their independent skills and create a business opportunity out of it.

JobsForHer

JobsForHer is an online connecting a portal which seamlessly enables women on a professional break to restart their careers and achieve their full potential. JobsForHer connects them with suitable job opportunities, reputed companies, and curated experts in a plethora of restart resources such as re-skilling, community building & networking, etc. The platform helps your mom choose jobs - whether full-time, part-time, or work from home - as per her convenience. JobsForHer's vision is to reverse female brain-drain from within the Indian workforce.

LiveMe

LiveMe is a live broadcasting and streaming platform that allows users to communicate with each other 'live'. There are many talented and creative woman artists who are gaining popularity by uploading their videos on the platform. The app allows fans to send virtual gifts to their idols which is easily redeemable via PayPal. LiveMe is not only helping women to become financially independent but also support their family, by providing top artists the opportunity to work with them as a host in their live shows.

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Former President Pranab Mukherjee offered condolences to the family of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and recalled his relationship with the latter.

"I had a very good and cordial relationship with him (Somnath). The country has lost one of the most outstanding parliamentarians, Bengal has lost a very tall leader. My deepest condolences to his family and to his numerous admirers," he said.

Somnath, aged 89, passed away on Monday morning after a prolonged illness. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) veteran was suffering from a kidney ailment and was put on ventilator support from Saturday.

Former Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) state chief Biman Bose, who arrived at Chatterjee's residence to pay his last respects, was reportedly asked to leave by the former speaker's son. However, Bose downplayed the situation and said "I don't mind his behaviour. He is completely broken by the loss of his father. He was actually not liked by his father also."

Born on July 25, 1929, Chatterjee was a ten-time Lok Sabha MP. He was one of the longest-serving parliamentarians in India. He served as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.

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President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid their tributes to former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who passed away in Kolkata on Monday morning.

President Kovind took to his official Twitter handle to describe Chatterjee's demise as "a loss for public life in Bengal and India."

"Sorry to hear of the passing of Shri Somnath Chatterjee, former Speaker of the Lok Sabha and a veteran parliamentarian who had a forceful presence in the House. A loss for public life in Bengal and India. My condolences to his family and innumerable well-wishers," he wrote.

Prime Minister Modi termed Chatterjee a "stalwart of Indian politics" on the micro blogging site.

"Former MP and Speaker Shri Somnath Chatterjee was a stalwart of Indian He made our Parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise. My thoughts are with his family and supporters," he wrote.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi also extended his condolences and compared Chatterjee to "an institution."

"I mourn the passing away of Shri Somnath Chatterjee, 10 term MP and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha. He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief," Gandhi tweeted.

Lamenting the death of the former Lok Sabha Speaker, the Congress Party, via their official Twitter handle, said that Chatterjee was "universally admired for being a tough but fair Lok Sabha speaker."

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said that despite the "ideological differences" between her and Chatterjee, they "cherished a very cordial relationship."

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh heaped praise for Chatterjee for his "value based "

"Deeply saddened to learn of the demise of former Lok Sabha Speaker and senior leader, Shri Somnath Chatterjee. An erudite & seasoned parliamentarian, Somnathda was known for value based He rose above partisan politics on several occasions. My condolences to his family," Singh tweeted.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also condoled Chatterjee's death, saying, "Saddened at the passing away of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath (Da) Chatterjee. My condolences to his family and admirers. This is a great loss for us all."

Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said that chatterjee was "n outstanding Parliamentarian," adding that he "firmly stood by the principles he believed in."

"Saddened by the demise of former Lok Sabha Speaker, Shri Somnath Chatterjee. He was an outstanding Parliamentarian, who was elected to Lok Sabha 10 times. He was always affable and highlighted people's problems. He firmly stood by the principles he believed in. #Parliament," Naidu tweeted.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that Chatterjee was "one of the greatest parliamentarians of contemporary times," adding that "he will be remembered among the greatest Lok Sabha Speakers India ever had."

Former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram praised Chatterjee for being a "democrat, a liberal and a champion of enlarging the constituency for social democracy," while also mentioning, "When he came into conflict with his political party, he stood by his convictions and was a glue that held progressive parties together."

Chatterjee, who was admitted in a private hospital in Kolkata on August 10, breathed his last at 8.15 am today. He had a cardiac arrest, according to the doctors.

One of the longest-serving parliamentarians in India, Chatterjee was suffering from a kidney ailment and was put on ventilator support on Saturday. He suffered a hemorrhagic stroke in July.

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The Railway Ministry on Monday released the third party survey report on station cleanliness conducted by Quality Council of India (QCI). Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal was present to grace the event.

The audit-cum survey was conducted by the Railways to increase the level of cleanliness standards and also to motivate states governments across the country to engage in a healthy competition when it comes to promoting railway stations.

Speaking on the occasion, Goyal said, "The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan launched by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi encouraged the Railway Ministry to prioritize cleanliness in stations across India."

Goyal further added, "In last four years, the Swachh Rail Swachh Bharat campaign has witnessed tremendous improvement in terms of cleanliness standards in platforms, trains, toilets, and trains."

Launching the survey, Goyal asserted, "To be very honest, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has been the greatest tribute to Mahatma Gandhi. For instance, during the last 4 years, the sanitation coverage in the country has gone up to 83% from just 38% in 2014. This is a major improvement."

The third survey declared Jodhpur as the cleanest railway station in the country followed by Jaipur and Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh.

In A category stations, Marwar has been placed at the first position, while Phulera station takes the second spot. Both the stations are from North Western Railway in Rajasthan. Warangal station of South Central Railway in Telangana has been placed at the third spot.

The third cleanliness survey covered 407 stations, including 75 stations in A1 and 332 stations in A category stations.

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Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh opined that the Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) rally in London exposed the total lack of ground support for the Referendum 2020, even outside India. In a statement, Singh dismissed the entire affair as a futile exercise by a sham organisation to create trouble in India, particularly Punjab.

"The Sikhs for Justice (SJF) are just a group of fringe elements that are playing into the hands of Pakistan's ISI to divide India, but they have failed, and will continue to fail in their nefarious designs. The presence of Pakistani politicians at the rally confirms that it was out and out an ISI plot, which fell through, just as their attempts to create trouble in India have been failing all these years," the stamen read.

Amarinder further lashed out at the UK government for allowing the protestors to use Trafalgar Square, instead of the usual Hyde Park, and claimed that this showed the total complacency of the British government in the issue.

He further said that the entire referendum business was nothing but a money-making racket of the SFJ, with no takers for the so-called campaign either in India, or even outside, as is evident from the poor show at the rally.

"There was virtually nil local support for the rally and whatever little support they had managed to garner was of similar fringe elements from various countries. Some of these Kashmiris were forced to wear turbans to make them look like Sikhs," he claimed, citing ground reports and the handful of Sikhs around had evidently been forced to come, he added.

The Chief Minister warned the SFJ and all other such anti-India forces to stay out of the country and refrain from any attempt to foment trouble in Punjab, or any other part of India.

"Their efforts will backfire on them, he said, adding that his government would deal with such elements with an iron hand. Nobody would be allowed to disturb the peace and the communal harmony in the state," he cautioned.

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Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday announced that former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee will be given the highest state honour in the West Bengal Assembly.

Banerjee also said that the mortal remains of Chatterjee would be taken to the private hospital where he had donated his body for medical research.

Giving details of his last journey, the chief minister said, "Chatterjee's mortal remains will be taken from Belle Vue Clinic to the High Court since he was associated with it for quite a long time. From the court, he will be taken to the State Assembly where he will be given the highest state honour. After keeping (his body) there for few hours, his family will take the mortal remains to their residence and then to SSKM Hospital where he had donated his body for medical research," she said.

Somnath Chatterjee served the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for four decades, from 1968 to 2008. A well-learned leader, Chatterjee was respected across party lines.

Earlier in the day, Banerjee condoled Chatterjee's death by calling it a great loss. "Saddened at the passing away of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath (Da) Chatterjee. My condolences to his family and admirers. This is a great loss for us all," she tweeted.

President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, former vice-president Mohd Hamid Ansari, Congress president Rahul Gandhi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and former finance minister P. Chidambaram also paid their tributes to Chatterjee.

The octogenarian leader was admitted to a private hospital in Kolkata on Friday. He breathed his last today at 8.15 am following a cardiac arrest.

One of the longest-serving parliamentarians in India, Chatterjee was suffering from kidney ailment and was put on ventilator on Saturday.

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Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan got emotional while remembering former speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who passed away in Kolkata on Monday.

Teary-eyed Mahajan, while speaking to ANI, said, "Somnath Da (Chatterjee) was like an elder brother to me. Our ideology was different but still, from the time I entered Parliament in 1989, I used to see how he used to raise issues while following every rule. His tenure as a speaker was a guidance for me. Today, we lost a very good person and a politician."

Recalling how the late leader always said "Parliament is Supreme", Mahajan shared how she learnt about the conduct of Parliament from Chatterjee, who was the speaker of the Lower House from 2004 to 2009.

"He always used to call that "Parliament is Supreme". I have learnt a lot from him. He taught me how to handle the situation when Parliamentarians shout or raise their voice in the House," she said.

Somnath Chatterjee, an octogenerian, was a veteran of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), who served the party for four decades- from 1968 to 2008. He was a well-learned leader, who was respected across party lines.

Former vice-president Mohd Hamid Ansari defined Chatterjee as a great erudite.

"He was a very eminent parliamentarian and a man of great erudition, a speaker who added luster to the chair. In his passing away, we have a lost very eminent personality. He has left behind a void. People will remember him," Ansari said.

Earlier in the day, President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, Congress president Rahul Gandhi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and former finance minister P. Chidambaram paid their tributes to Chatterjee.

Chatterjee, who was admitted to a private hospital in Kolkata on Friday, breathed his last at 8.15 am today. He had a cardiac arrest, according to the doctors.

One of the longest-serving parliamentarians in India, Chatterjee was suffering from a kidney ailment and was put on a ventilator on Saturday.

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Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Abhishek Banerjee on Monday sent a legal notice to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah for the latter's alleged defamatory statements and insinuations in a public rally held in Kolkata on August 11.

Shah, while addressing the 'Yuva Swabhiman Samavesh Rally' in Kolkata, had alleged that the funds released by the Centre worth Rs 3.59 lakh crores to West Bengal ended up with the Abhishek, who is Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew, and syndicates.

"The residents of the villages in Bengal, has the money reached your village? Prime Minister Modi had sent it. Where did Rs 3,59,000 crores go? This has been gifted to the nephew and the syndicate," Shah had said in the rally.

The TMC MP in the notice stated that the allegation made by the BJP president in the speech was, "malicious, and defamatory."

Banerjee also asked for an unconditional apology within 72 hours from Shah for his statement and added that failing to do so would initiate strong action, both civil and criminal, in accordance with the law.

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Jawaharlal Nehru University student activist Umar Khalid was attacked by an unidentified gunman on Monday before an event at Constitution Club where he was supposed to speak. Khalid escaped unhurt.

Khalid was scheduled to speak at an event titled - 'Towards a Freedom Without Fear' organised by United Against Hate Initiative. According to an eyewitness, who identified himself as Khalid Shafi: "One man in white shirt pushed Khalid down on ground and fired on him while he was standing at a tea stall outside the Constitution Club. The shot missed him and the gunman fled from the spot leaving behind his pistol as people standing near Khalid rushed towards him."

The police that reached the spot, escorted Khalid out to a safer place.

Further details are awaited.

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Hours after he was attacked by an unidentified gunman outside Constitution Club, Jawaharlal Nehru University student activist Umar Khalid has asked Delhi Police to provide him protection.

Khalid was supposed to attend an event at Delhi's Constitution Club, situated nearly one kilometer away from the Parliament.

"I was attacked right before my program was scheduled to start at the Constitution Club. I was having tea opposite the venue when a man attacked me from behind. He pushed me to the ground and aimed his gun at me. I somehow pushed him away, after which a gunshot was fired, but I escaped. I have received threats in the past too, but this was the first time there was an assassination attempt. I have sought police protection now," Khalid told ANI after recording his statement with the police.

Joint Commissioner of Police Ajay Choudhary said, "Umar Khalid, along with some others, was drinking tea outside the Constitution Club when someone attacked from behind. Police is investigating the case, FIR will be registered soon and all legal action would be taken. One weapon has been recovered from the spot, we are investigating that. We are also talking to the eyewitnesses. This matter will be investigated strictly. He is now safe."

Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Member of Parliament Menakshi Lekhi also visited the spot, said and implied that the attack could be for sensationalism.

The Constitution Club of India is situated in the heart of Delhi, facing offices of several ministries and media houses. Coming just two days before the Independence Day celebrations, when the security is on high alert, the attack has left a trail of doubts.

Khalid was scheduled to attend an event titled - 'Towards a Freedom Without Fear' organised by United Against Hate Initiative.

According to an eyewitness, who identified himself as Khalid Shafi, "Khalid was standing at a tea stall when one man wearing white shirt pushed him down and fired at him. The shot missed him and the gunman fled the spot leaving his pistol behind.

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Ahead of the 72nd Independence Day, the Uttar Pradesh government on Monday issued instructions to all the madrasas (Islamic schools) across the state to hoist the flag and pay homage to all the freedom fighters.

The decision has been taken to inculcate patriotism among students.

The state government's order came two days after the Uttar Pradesh Shia Waqf Board mandated reciting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' slogan during the Independence Day programmes to be held on Waqf properties on August 15.

In an order issued on Saturday, Waqf board warned of "strict action" in case the directive was not complied with.

Last year, the Yogi Adityanath-led government was criticised after it directed the madrasas to hoist the flag and ordered the madrasas to make a video of the event in addition.

However, the state government has not asked the madrasas to make videos this year.

In 2017, a Muslim cleric had opposed the government orders making it mandatory for madrasas to unfurl flag and sing the national anthem on Independence Day.

Speaking to ANI, Mufti Mukkaram, a cleric from Delhi, said such orders shouldn't be passed which question the loyalty and patriotism of the Muslims.

The Madrasa board had also asked the students to take out a ' Tiranga rally' last year.

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The aviation sector which was showing an immense promise till about a year ago, is facing head winds with most of the airlines battling a survival issue, hit by rising fuel costs and other expenses even as a cut - throat competition is making the aviation firms bleed, the ASSOCHAM has said. Expressing concern over the sector slipping into a worsening financial situation, week on week, the ASSOCHAM said airlines need a hand -holding across the board, irrespective of their status -whether they are in the private or public sector.

"While the government is injecting funds into Air India, the private sector airlines can be given support by way of reduced taxation on the aviation turbine fuel and a host of other levies by the Centre and the state governments, "the ASSOCHAM Secretary General Mr D S Rawat said in a statement. It is a highly employment-oriented sector, which needs to be protected. He said aviation firms which were commanding a fair valuation in the stock market till about a year ago, are attracting a least amount of interest among the investors, resulting into a massive erosion between 15 and 35/40 per cent in their market capitalisation. "This has resulted in the inability of the operators to raise any fresh resources either through the equity or even the debt routes.

While equity is not commanding much of valuation, the debt is becoming even more expensive,".

The ASSOCHAM said if the sector does not improve as a whole, it would be a long haul before Air India could be nursed back to health and put on offer for privatisation. "Even the schemes like UDAN, which are good innovative services for making the air travel affordable , would be impacted by the deteriorating health of the sector," the chamber said , seeking a thorough policy review as regards the taxation and other levies are concerned. Seeking support from the Aviation Minister Mr Suresh Prabhu, the ASSOCHAM said there is a huge cascading effect of the worsening health of the airlines. "The entire value chain - be it the flying operations or the downstream services like airport operations and then the ground fleet, the impact is felt all across,". Mr Rawat said. He said, the crude oil prices hold the key, but it does not seem to be declining, if not scaling up any further. "Every time, there is a slight geo-political problem in the Middle East, the first sector to be hit is the aviation," the ASSOCHAM said, the tail winds have turned into head winds .

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The stock is quoting at Rs 1401, up 1.12% on the day as on 12:49 IST on the NSE. Infosys Ltd is up 42.75% in last one year as compared to a 16.33% jump in NIFTY and a 40.02% jump in the Nifty IT index.

Infosys Ltd is up for a third straight session today. The stock is quoting at Rs 1401, up 1.12% on the day as on 12:49 IST on the NSE. The benchmark NIFTY is down around 0.32% on the day, quoting at 11393.35. The Sensex is at 37738.75, down 0.34%. Infosys Ltd has gained around 5.11% in last one month.

Meanwhile, Nifty IT index of which Infosys Ltd is a constituent, has gained around 1.42% in last one month and is currently quoting at 14679.25, up 0.99% on the day. The volume in the stock stood at 18.38 lakh shares today, compared to the daily average of 40.64 lakh shares in last one month.

The benchmark August futures contract for the stock is quoting at Rs 1408.35, up 1.35% on the day. Infosys Ltd is up 42.75% in last one year as compared to a 16.33% jump in NIFTY and a 40.02% jump in the Nifty IT index.

The PE of the stock is 18.71 based on TTM earnings ending June 18.

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About 100 soldiers of the Afghan Special Force have gone missing in the Ghazni province, where government troops are battling Taliban militants backed by US airstrikes, authorities said on Monday.

According to Tolo News, "10 personnel of the missing unit had been killed and 20 others discovered alive" in Ajristan district.

Ghazni, the capital of Ghazni province 125 km south of Kabul, is in its fourth day under siege after hundreds of Taliban fighters launched an attack on the city in the early hours of Friday.

Meanwhile, President Ashraf Ghani has ordered more troops to be sent to Ghazni.

The clashes erupted after hundreds of Taliban insurgents stormed important government entities including the National Directorate for Security (Afghanistan's Inteligence Agency) and the provincial governor's office.

Ghazni lies on the Kabul-Kandahar highway, an important artery connecting the capital to the country's southern provinces and some of its western ones.

--IANS

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At least six people have been killed and eight are still trapped following a gas explosion in a coal mine in Pakistan's Balochistan province, police said on Monday.

The accident occurred late on Sunday after an explosion in a mine in Sanjdi area, police spokesperson, Aziz Sadique, told Efe.

Although emergency teams have been deployed to rescue the trapped, the success of the operation remains doubtful partly due to the great depth of the mine, he added.

"I don't think we will rescue them alive," said Sadique.

The precarious safety condition in Pakistani mines make them highly prone to accidents.

In May, 23 miners were killed in two mine accidents in Balochistan.

In 2011, 50 miners died in Balochistan after a series of explosions caused by gas leaks in a coal site.

--IANS

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The dominance of and of digital has led to the number of independent and smaller ad tech companies falling 21 per cent since 2013 to 185 in the second quarter of 2018, the media reported.

According to a report in The New York Times on Sunday, venture capital money going into ad-tech start-ups is falling sharply.

" companies have struggled for several years as and solidified their grip on digital dollars, slowing revenue for the others," added the report, citing global marketing research firms including LUMA Partners.

While spending for was more than $88 billion last year, over 90 per cent of that went to or

" is also making inroads into advertising, with a new arm, raising the possibility that it will become a top competitor," said the report.

The company generated $2.2 billion in revenue from its advertising business in the second quarter this year.

While Facebook had been predicting its ad revenue to decelerate in 2017, it actually saw a strong growth of 48.8 per cent.

According to a recent report, brands will invest 55 per cent more in digital marketing by 2023.

" such as Google will lose some of their appeal for shopping as and other retail websites gain favour and advertiser dollars over the next few years," said

The move signifies a shift in the way consumer shopping habits continue to change as they are headed toward and retail websites for shopping and toward Google and Bing for answers to questions.

"The shift gives Amazon a reason to strengthen its search features -- text and voice -- for organic traffic, as well as its search advertising platform," said the report.
Ahead of the Indian and Pakistan Independence Day celebrations, authorities on Monday decided to suspend the Amarnath Yatra from Jammu for three days to ensure safety and security of the pilgrims.

No pilgrim was allowed on Monday to proceed towards the Kashmir Valley from Jammu's Bhagwati Nagar Yatri Niwas, police said.

The pilgrimage from the two base camps of Baltal and Pahalgam, however, would continue towards the Cave Shrine during these three days, a police officer said.

Tension mounted in the valley around August 14 and August 15 coinciding with the Independence Day celebrations in Pakistan and India.

To attract international attention, militants have always tried to carry out attacks in the Valley around these days over the last 30 years since armed insurgency broke out.

Heavy deployments of security have been made here and in other places to prevent any attack.

Nearly 2.79 lakh pilgrims have already performed this year's Amarnath Yatra that started on June 28 and will end on August 26.

--IANS

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Thousands of anti-protesters gathered in several locations in Washington on Sunday, hours before a controversial right supremacist rally is scheduled.

The protesters gathered in Lafayette park, just across the street from the White House, and the freedom plaza, just blocks away.

The protesters gathered in the country's capital to mark the one-year anniversary of the deadly Charlottesville protest, during which a white supremacist killed a female anti protester, sparking nationwide furore, Xinhua reported.

To prevent potential conflict, Washington law enforcement came onto the street in force to maintain order. An entire section of Pennsylvania adjacent to the White House has been sealed off.

Organizers of the the far right rally, officially named United the Right 2, claim their purpose was to advocate "White civil rights", but were slammed as promoting racism and xenophobia. The far right rally is set to begin in Lafayette park at 5:30 p.m.

Anti-protesters held up signs denouncing racism, fascism and calling for pluralism, and at time broke out in chants and sing alongs.

Debbie Wagner, an anti protester from neighbouring state of Maryland, said she was shocked by the tragedy at Charlottesville last year, and found many around her have become more politically vocal in the past year.

"White Supremacism is a terrible thing, I hope America can continue to be a place of diversity," she said.

Last summer's "Unite the Right" rally in historic Charlottesville, held on August 12 to protest US cities taking down Confederate statues, attracted national attention when white supremacists, fascists and neo-Nazis violently clashed with counter-protesters.

A 32-year-old woman was killed and 19 others were injured when an Ohio man associated with white nationalist groups allegedly drove a car into the crowd of counter-protesters.

US President Donald Trump drew a firestorm of criticism last year following the deadly when he said "both sides" were to blame for the violence.

--IANS

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Mafia don Arun Gawli, currently incarcerated for life in Nagpur Central Jail, has not only passed but topped the 2017 Gandhi awareness exam, surprising many, an organizer said on Monday.

"Gawli scored 74 correct answers out of the 80 in the question paper in the open-book exams. We are happy that he has made a serious effort to imbibe Gandhian principles in his life in prison," Ravindra Bhusari, Trustee of Sahyog Trust, told IANS.

A total of 160 prisoners, including 12 on death row, several serving life-terms, and many undertrials, voluntarily took part in the exam held on October 1, 2017.

The results, usually declared on January 30, were delayed by seven months this year on account of "certain security issues."

Incidentally, topper Arun Gulab Ahir, alias Arun Gawli, was not even an original applicant for the 2017 exam, said Bhusari.

"It was only after Gawli saw the advance study material and other literature despatched from the Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal (BSM), Mumbai, to all the candidates, that he expressed his desire to participate in the exam," Bhusari said.

Gawli went to the examination hall along with the other 159 candidates and patiently answered all the 80 questions in the hour-long session, scoring the highest, 74 correct answers.

On Saturday, a function was organized by the Sahyog Trust and the top winners were awarded a gift hamper of khadi clothes and Gandhian literature, besides, handkerchiefs, Gandhian books, a pen and diary to write their experiences on the Gandhi awareness exam.

"The Sahyog Trust affiliated to BSM, Mumbai, have been conducting these exams for 11 years in various jails across Maharashtra with huge participation among the inmates," said BSM head T.R.K. Somaiya.

"We want to encourage them further by requesting the government to allow a remission of, say 5 days per annum, in their sentence. For every prisoner who appears successfully in the Gandhi exam, it would mean a lot," said Bhusari.

Popular as 'Daddy' among his supporters, Gawli, 64, was active in the Mumbai underworld in the 1970s and bitterly opposed absconder mafia don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar's gang till the 1990s, with bloody gang wars between them.

He was convicted in 2012 in the murder of a Shiv Sena leader and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he is currently serving in Nagpur Central Jail.

In 1997, Gawli floated a political party, Akhil Bharatiya Sena (ABS) and was elected a Maharashtra legislator. His wife Asha also served as a legislator, while his daughter is a municipal corporator in BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation.

Gawli's uncle Hukumchand Yadav is a legislator in Madhya Pradesh, while his nephew, Sachin Ahir is a former Maharashtra minister and currently the Mumbai head of the Nationalist Congress Party.

--IANS

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The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) on Monday termed the attack on student leader Umar Khalid "cowardly" and a result of Narendra Modi government's "hate-filled propaganda" against the university students.

"It is with grave concern that we wish to stand in complete solidarity with Umar Khalid... We see this cowardly act as a culmination of the hate-filled propaganda that this Modi government ... has spewed against Umar, JNU students and all those voices who have questioned this regime," the Union said in a statement.

It also raised the issue of mob lynchings -- the instances of which have hogged the media reports in recent months -- as another phenomenon which has aggravated the law and order situation.

"From the JNUSU, we would like to make it clear that no voice can be curbed and the students movement will continue to produce fearless voices. We also demand that the Delhi Police take all appropriate actions against the conspirators behind the attack," it added.

An unidentified man on Monday afternoon reportedly opened fire at JNU scholar Umar Khalid outside the Constitution Club here, in which he escaped unhurt.

Khalid was at the club to attend a gathering organised by a civil society group called "United Against Hate".

He, along with two other JNU students, Kanhaiya Kumar and Anirban Bhattacharya, was rusticated last month by the university for raising anti-national slogans during a poetry-reading gathering inside the campus on February 9, 2016.

--IANS

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A Munich Court on Monday rejected a request by Audi CEO Rupert Stadler to be released from police custody after being imprisoned eight weeks ago in the course of ongoing "dieselgate" investigations in Germany.

A spokesperson for the court was quoted by Xinhua as saying that Stadler remained under urgent suspicion of having known of diesel emissions-cheating practices at Audi without halting the sale of affected vehicles.

Additionally, the arrest warrant delivered to the CEO was not overturned because of a danger of collusion still posed by the 55-year-old suspect.

Stadler had filed a legal complaint in the hope of being set free as he is awaiting the formal opening of a court trial to probe Audi's involvement in the "dieselgate" scandal.

Stadler and another unnamed senior manager at the Volkswagen Group subsidiary Audi are suspected of offenses of criminal fraud and "indirect false certification" in the marketing of diesel vehicles which were fitted with defeat devices to understate their actual Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) emissions.

German investigators believe that the Ingolstadt-based luxury carmaker has sold at least 210,000 diesel vehicles with illegal emissions-cheating software in the United States and Europe since 2009.

The suspended CEO has already provided a first testimony to prosecutors while imprisoned at the Augsburg-Gablingen penitentiary facility near Munich. It remains unclear, however, whether or not he denied the accusations against him.

Stadler has been temporarily replaced in his role on the Audi management board by Bram Schot. Volkswagen has hesitated to fire Stadler prior to a conclusion of judicial proceedings against him and has only suspended the jailed CEO whose regular contract is scheduled to expire in 2022.

The arrest marked the first time that a member of the management board of a German carmaker was taken into police custody in the "dieselgate" scandal.

--IANS

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A Bangladesh court on Monday sentenced five convicts to death for crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War.

The International Crimes Tribunal's three-member panel of judges led by Justice Shahinur Islam announced the verdict, reports bdnews24.

The five were sentenced for killing 17 people, vandalism, arson, abduction and torture in Itabaria village of Patuakhali during war.

They were also sentenced to death for the rape of at least 15 women from the same village.

The court said that the convicts had used rape as a weapon and that their victims had to live with the repercussions of those attacks for the rest of their lives.

"These women are our true war heroes. It is time to recognise them," the tribunal said in the verdict.

The convicts will however be able to appeal against the ruling at the Supreme Court within a month of the verdict.

According to the prosecution, all the convicts were supporters of Conventional Muslim League prior to 1971, but they were involved with the local wing of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) at the time of their arrests in 2015.

The Tribunal had indicted them on March 8, 2017.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The West Bengal government on Monday urged the Supreme Court to lift a stay on the notification of results of candidates elected unopposed to rural local bodies as it was hampering the release of funds.

Describing the petitions by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Communist Party of India-Marxist that alleged large-scale irregularities as political in nature, senior counsel Vikas Singh told the bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud that "it is clearly an attempt to bring into the electoral process."

The counsel referred to the Finance Commission report that said that money could only be released to the elected panchayats.

The top court ordered the State Election Commission on May 10 not to notify the results of candidates declared elected unopposed.

It also stayed the May 8 High Court order permitting e-filing of nomination papers by candidates.

The court is hearing a SEC plea against the Calcutta High Court's May 8 order permitting e-nominations and reading the provision of the Information Technology Act into the Representation of the People Act, 1954.

On July 3, the apex court had said that it would examine whether the High Court, in exercise of its powers under Article 226 of the Constitution, could do so.

Appearing for the West Bengal State Election Commission, senior counsel Amaendra Sharan cited statistics from other states to buttress his stand that the "political phenomenon" of uncontested candidates in the panchayat elections is present in all the states.

"In every state, there are a large number of uncontested candidates," Sharan said. Those aspiring to contest panchayat elections were given the option to file nomination papers at the offices of Block Development Officers or the District Magistrates.

He said that there were no complaints by individual candidates that they were denied an opportunity to file nominations and that the court had been moved by political parties.

Justice Chandrachud said: "They may not have filed the complaints out of fear... a large number of seats going uncontested... if it was because of fear and intimidation."

To this, Sharan said that it was presumptive on the part of the bench since none of the candidates had filed a complaint.

Besides Vikas Singh, Sharan, other senior counsel Siddhartha Luthra and lawyer turned lawmaker Kalyan Banerjee focused on the point that political parties had moved the apex court and not individual candidates and that such a practice was unknown to jurisprudence involving electoral laws.

Flagging the issue of purity of an electoral process as pivotal to democracy, senior counsel P.S. Patwalia said that out of 58,692 candidates, as many as 20,159 were elected unopposed and wondered that all these belonged to the ruling Trinamool Congress.

Appearing for the BJP, Patwalia told the court: "I understand that an individual has to file a complaint and raise the issue, but what happens in this situation?"

He referred to an earlier court judgment, arguing that when there are large-scale irregularities, and the entire election process is polluted, it is no more a question of an individual but the electorate is vicariously a party to the matter.

The hearing will continue on Tuesday.

--IANS

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Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma on Monday said there has been match-fixing between the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

"It's match-fixing between BJD and BJP or else what is the reason that the BJD supports every wrong decision of the BJP. They are supporting each other," said Sharma.

He said since the BJP will not get the required number of seats at the Centre to form the government and there is no chance of increasing its tally in the eastern states including Odisha in the 2019 polls, the BJP will seek the support of the BJD if new political equations arise to form the government at the Centre.

Criticising the BJD for supporting the BJP during the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman poll, Sharma asked why did Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik not raise the Mahanadi water dispute and the super specialty hospital at Rourkela with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, when the latter made a phone call seeking the BJD's support.

"If you (BJD) are secular, why are you supporting BJP and not raising issues like mob lynching. What is the reason for your support?" asked Sharma.

Alleging that central agencies are used in a targeted vendetta against political opponents, he said there might be the use of such central agencies against the Naveen Patnaik government and that's why he readily agrees when he gets a phone call.

The Congress leader said the institutions of the state are under assault under the BJP government at the Centre.

"Hatred and intolerance have engulfed the country under this BJP government while mob lynching in 21st century has shamed our country across the globe," he added.

He held the Prime Minister solely responsible for making a "mess" of the economy.

Sharma said Modi and the BJP have betrayed the people of the country as the promises of two crore jobs every year, women security and a robust economy are yet to be fulfilled.

"Investments have dropped substantially. Lakhs of people have lost jobs and business houses have been shut down in the aftermath of demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax implementation. Modi has betrayed the country," he said.

He also demanded a white paper on the state of the economy.

The Congress leader demanded that the government make public the GDP numbers as per the old formula for the last 10 years.

Alleging that the Rafale fighter jets deal is the biggest scam in the country, he said it was the Prime Minister's arbitrary decision to acquire 36 jets at three times the price negotiated by the UPA.

"It was his decision to cancel the deal negotiated for complete transfer of technology and manufacture of 108 jets by HAL without authorisation. This has been done to benefit the capitalists of the country," he added.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The BJP on Monday upped its demand for simultaneous assembly and Lok Sabha polls with its President Amit Shah writing to the Law Commission asserting that this would cut the huge expenses running into thousands of crore of rupees spent on elections.

In his letter, handed over by a party delegation headed by Minister M.A. Naqvi, Shah said a perpetual election process strained national resources and that in a progressive democracy like India development works and policy decisions get halted when the Model Code of Conduct for elections was enforced.

"There is no relation between Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. Voters vote on different issues in both polls. Therefore, we must have faith and trust the voters," he said.

Shah said criticism of the Bharatiya Janata Party's "One Nation, One Election" idea was being done for political reasons.

He said due to elections in one state or another throughout the year, works of both the state and central governments get affected.

Simultaneous elections, he said, would lead to cutting down on electoral expenditure.

The BJP delegation that met the Law Commission Chairman Justice B.S. Chauhan said necessary amendments to the Constitution should take place to realize the "One Nation, One Election" idea.

"There are over 9.30 lakh poll booths and over one crore workers are posted during polls. Rs 1,6-1,700 crore were spent in 2011 and Rs 4,000 crore in 2014 polls. 'One Nation, One Election' would reduce the cost. This exercise has been successful in several countries," BJP MP Bhupendra Yadav said.

He was speaking to reporters after the BJP delegation, which included Vinay Sahasrabuddhe and Yadav and party spokesperson Anil Baluni, met the law panel.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nearly six months after the alleged assault on Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash, Delhi Police on Monday named Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia and 11 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs as accused in its chargesheet.

The chargesheet, filed in the Patiala House Court before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal, also names Amanatullah Khan, Prakash Jarwal, Nitin Tyagi, Rituraj Govind, Sanjeev Jha, Ajay Dutt, Rajesh Rishi, Rajesh Gupta, Madan Lal, Parveen Kumar and Dinesh Mohania.

"On February 20, a case was registered on a complaint of Prakash. After completion of the investigation and upon collection of evidence on record, a chargesheet has been filed in the court," Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Harinder Singh said.

The court will take cognizance of the chargesheet, filed on the basis of investigation conducted on the complaint of Anshu Prakash, on August 25.

The accused, charged under 13 sections, may get a maximum of a seven-year jail term if found guilty.

The accused have been charged under IPC sections -- 186 (obstructing a public servant), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant for doing his duty), 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement) and 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant to discharge his duties).

In the chargesheet, the police have charged the accused of insult with intent to provoke breach of peace, criminal intimidation, criminal conspiracy, punishment of abetment and unlawful assembly among others.

Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta demanded Kejriwal's and Sisodia's resignation. "They have lost right to continue in their high offices and govern Delhi," Gupta said.

However, in a joint statement, Delhi cabinet ministers Gopal Rai, Satyendar Jain, Kailash Gahlot, Rajendra Pal Gautam and Imran Hussain called the chargesheet "bogus" and "politically motivated".

Stating that the chargesheet was based on "imaginary and false allegations", the ministers termed it a "witch-hunt against the Delhi government".

"It is the latest example of the central government's ongoing unprecedented witch-hunt against the Delhi government, elected with the highest-ever mandate in India's electoral history," the statement said.

The ministers claimed the chargesheet would be torn to shreds when put to legal scrutiny.

The Aam Aadmi Party called the case a "midnight conspiracy to defame the Delhi Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister and 11 MLAs in a false and laughable case".

"The AAP is of the clear view that Anshu Prakash, who has been associated with senior BJP leaders for long, was posted as Chief Secretary of Delhi with a sinister plan to paralyse the elected Delhi Government," AAP chief spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj said.

"The concocted story of Anshu Prakash is a bundle of contradictory, false, misleading and defamatory statements and unnatural conduct," he added.

The Delhi Chief Secretary in February had alleged that he was beaten up by AAP MLAs in the presence of Kejriwal at the Chief Minister's residence on the night of February 19 where he had been called for a late-night meeting.

The case was filed the next morning and Amanatullah Khan and Prakash Jarwal were arrested and sent to judicial custody. Later, they were released on bail.

The police in May questioned Kejriwal and Sisodia for nearly three hours.

The alleged assault had triggered a bitter tussle between the Ministers and Delhi's IAS officers, who refused to attend any meetings called by the Ministers for about four months.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi Police on Monday filed a chargesheet against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia and 11 other Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs for allegedly assaulting Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash in February.

The chargesheet, filed in the Patiala House Court on the basis of investigation conducted on the complaint of Prakash, also names Amanatullah Khan, Prakash Jarwal, Nitin Tyagi, Rituraj Govind, Sanjeev Jha, Ajay Dutt, Rajesh Rishi, Rajesh Gupta, Madan Lal, Parveen Kumar and Dinesh Mohania.

"On February 20, a case was registered on the complaint of Prakash. After completion of the investigation and upon collection of evidence on record, a chargesheet has been filed in the court," a Delhi Police official said.

The Chief Secretary had alleged that he was beaten up by AAP MLAs in the presence of Kejriwal at the Chief Minister's residence here on the night of February 19, where he had been called for a late-night meeting.

However, in a joint statement, Delhi Cabinet ministers Gopal Rai, Satyendar Jain, Kailash Gahlot, Rajendra Pal Gautam and Imran Hussain called the chargesheet "bogus" and "politically motivated".

Stating that the chargesheet is based on "imaginary and false allegations", the Delhi ministers termed it a "witch-hunt against the Delhi government".

The chargesheet, "filed by the politically motivated Delhi Police", is based on "imaginary and false allegations", they said.

"It is the latest example of the Central government's ongoing unprecedented witch-hunt against the Delhi government, elected with highest-ever mandate in India's electoral history," the statement said.

The ministers also said that ever since the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) President Amit Shah have suffered the "worst-ever electoral humiliation of their political career" in February 2015, they have not "forgiven the elected government of Delhi".

"They have relentlessly unleashed all their agencies with full might to crush the AAP government to fulfil their arrogant desire of seeking complete revenge," read the statement.

They also said that the Modi government has not learnt any lesson from its previous attempt of booking elected MLAs in false cases in the last three-and-half years.

"It is now a documented fact that the fast-track courts in Delhi during the last five months have acquitted/ discharged elected MLAs in 19 out of 22 cases registered against them since February 2015," the statement added.

They also said that no stone has been left unturned in paralysing the Delhi government.

"The latest sinister conspiracy has been hatched through a handpicked bureaucrat of the BJP's Central government to defame the Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister in a totally false and untenable case.

"This entire conspiracy to name the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister in a fake and laughable criminal case is the result of the extreme frustration of the Modi government, which has so far miserably failed in all its attempts to dislodge the Delhi government elected by a historic mandate," the statement said.

The ministers also claimed that the chargesheet would be torn to shreds when it is put to legal scrutiny.

--IANS

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Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee had played "a critical and important role" as the Chairman of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation and he performed "onerous task of regaining investors' confidence" for promotion of industries in the state, said industrialists on Monday.

"He had a very critical and important role to play because for the first time the then Jyoti Basu government (then Left Front government) came out with an industrial policy probably in 1994 and he was made Chairman of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation at that time to take forward the industrialisation of the state," said Chairman of the Ambuja Neotia Group's Chairman Harshavardhan Neotia.

"It was a major shift in the policy. I had the privilege travelling with him to many countries," said Neotia.

He was a passionate leader who wanted to showcase opportunities in Bengal, he said.

"I think he created a positive atmosphere which was subsequently built on by others. He had brought a lot of energy and enthusiasm in the promotion of industries in the state," he told IANS.

The 10-time parliamentarian was the Chairman of the nodal agency for industrial development in the state and visited many countries to promote the state as an attractive investment destination.

R.P. Sanjiv Goenka Group's Chairman Sanjiv Goenka described the demise of Chatterjee as the "end of an era."

"The passing away of Somnath Chatterjee snaps a family tie which began many years ago when my father, the late Rama Prasad Goenka, studied in Presidency College. An outstanding lawyer, a legendary parliamentarian and an ardent lover of his country, Chatterjee will be remembered for the sacrifices he made," Goenka said.

Echoing Neotia, Merchants' Chamber of Commerce & Industry President Ramesh Agarwal said Chatterjee was "entrusted the challenging task of reviving industrialisationa in West Bengal when the "state was struggling an image crisis in the mid-1990s and a flight of entrepreneurial capital."

"He contributed significantly to drafting the state industrial policy, 1994. As the Chairman of WBIDC, he performed the onerous task of regaining investors' confidence as he enjoyed the confidence of the business community despite his known political affiliation," Agarwal said.

Expressing condolences, CII's Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said: "We have lost not only a brilliant lawyer, politician, and a Parliamentarian, but also a statesman."

He also said the industry body interacted with him closely in West Bengal and later, on many areas which he was passionate about, viz promoting sustainability in industry, robust water management and a vision for India.

Chatterjee died at 8.15 a.m at the Bellevue Clinic, where he was admitted on August 7.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Indonesian authorities on Monday raised the death toll from a devastating 7-magnitude earthquake that struck the island of Lombok on August 5 to 436.

Of the 436 victims, National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said 259 have been identified, reports Xinhua news agency.

"Most of the victims were killed by debris and rubbles that fell on them when the earthquake took place," Sutopo said.

Most deaths occurred in North Lombok, the hardest-hit, with 374 victims.

According to BNPB, the earthquake also injured 1,353 people and displaced over 370,000.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The death toll in the flooding caused by a dam collapse in Laos has climbed to 36 while 98 are still missing, national daily Vientiane Times reported on Monday.

On Saturday, we found the body of a three-year-old girl, bringing the number of known fatalities to 36, including three injured people who died in hospital, Deputy Director General of the General Political Department, Lao People's Army, Phalom Linthong said.

Laos army teams and rescue teams from Singapore are scouring the area for those still missing, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The operation is not easy because many areas remain flooded after a week of rain and we are constantly encountering challenges caused by thick mud, sand, and buried objects," Linthong said.

Rescue teams from Thailand, China, the Republic of Korea, and Laos arrived on the scene, when the flood hit on July 23, to aid in the search, rescue and relief operation, the daily noted.

Camps are being set up to accommodate the homeless after lower parts of Sanamxay district was flooded following several days of rain.

The rebuilding of roads and bridges in the disaster-hit areas is being accelerated to enable relief supplies transportation.

An under-construction saddle dam of the Xe Pian-Xe Nam Noy hydropower project, invested by South Korean, Thai and Lao companies, collapsed on July 23, unleashing a large amount of water and hitting some 13 villages of Sanamxay district.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Google on Monday announced the "2018 Doodle 4 Google" contest inviting creative, art-loving students from across India to bring their imagination to life for the search engine giant's logo.

This year's theme for the doodle is "what inspires you". The doodle, incorporating letters G-o-o-g-l-e, can be created using crayons, clay, water colours and graphic design.

The winner would win a Rs 5 lakh college scholarship, along with the opportunity to share their inspiration through their artwork, the company said in a statement.

The winning doodle would also get featured on Google's homepage on Children's Day.

The contest is open to students from Class 1 to 10 and the last date of submission is October 6.

A panel of guest judges including the original doodle team leader at Google, Ryan Germick, will review the entries this year.

The internal judging and jury votes would finally shortlist the top 20 doodles that would be put up for public voting from October 23 to November 5, the statement said.

The first edition of "Doodle 4 Google India" was held in 2009 and the theme was "My India".

The same contest also runs in regions including Canada, Latin America and other Asian countries.

--IANS

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"Dangal" star Fatima Sana Shaikh has been announced as the brand ambassador of watch label Fossil India.

"The brand is rooted in a distinctive modern-vintage design aesthetic. It is all about celebrating individuality and uniqueness. I am excited to be on board and look forward to working with its youthful appeal and spirit to re-energize today's youth," Fatima said in a statement to IANS.

The brand announced actors Varun Dhawan and Shruti Hassan as their endorsers last year; Fatima's collaboration with the label will aim to amplify Fossil's proficiency in creating timeless classics through inspired designs.

She will be endorsing the watch and the leather categories. Fatima will be seen alongside Varun in an upcoming campaign, which will celebrate creativity, authenticity and optimism.

--IANS

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A Muslim man, Imtiazur Rahman, who was denied permission to perform the final rites of his dead Hindu wife at a temple here last week because of his religion, has finally been able to hold the ceremony with the help of a Bengali philanthropic cultural society in Delhi.

People associated with the Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Memorial Society in the largely Bengali-populated area of Chittaranjan Park in south Delhi said Rahman, his daughter, some family members and friends attended the ceremony on Sunday.

"They were given a room in the society (premises) and his daughter (Ihini Ambreen) performed the ceremony. We were of course disappointed to learn (he was refused permission by the Kali temple society)," a person, who was present at the ceremony, told IANS.

Founded in 1973, the philanthropic society, which runs a non-profit medical centre, library, cultural classes, rents out its premises for social functions.

Rahman, based in Kolkata, lost his wife Nivedita Ghatak in the capital after she suffered multi-organ failure last week. The couple had married 20 years ago in accordance with the Special Marriages Act that allows inter-faith weddings of couples irrespective of their individual faith.

Ghatak was cremated as per Hindu rites at Delhi's Nigam Bodh Ghat but the family could not perform shradh -- a set of Hindu rituals performed for the deceased.

Rahman had booked an August 12 a slot at Kali Mandir Society in Chittaranjan Park after paying Rs 1,300. But he was later told by the temple society that his booking has been cancelled "for obvious reasons".

Ashitava Bhowmik, the president of the temple society, told IANS that the woman could no longer be considered a Hindu after marrying a Muslim "because a woman adopts the surname and belief system of her in-laws and becomes a part of that society".

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now.

Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market.

In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender.

India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex.

Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted.

But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted?

Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner.

If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems.

I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now.

I want more variation in masturbation

I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own.

If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end.

What is sex toys for Indian?

Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation.

It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms.

They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable.

Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner.

The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner.

It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past.

In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping.

Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order.

In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing.

Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome.

Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own.

But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance.

More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around.

Sextoy situation in India

Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years.

In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India.

Mumbai

Kolkata

Bangalore

Delhi

Chennai

Hyderabad

These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India.

In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well.

If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too.

If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it.

What are Sextoys for beginner?

Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms.

Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy.

I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion.

I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy.

If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma.

Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it.

Advantages of using sextoy for Indians

There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians

You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways.

Can have stimulating sex

Can develop new sexual zones

If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern.

However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways.

You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation.

Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever.

There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure.

This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it.

When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems.

It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms).

For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles

[Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou...

Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India.

Sextoy for beginner men in India

So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners.

For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men!

The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men

Masturbator

Cock rings

Love Doll

Sex Lubricants

Toys for the prostate

Lets check each one in detail.

Masturbator

The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products.

It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands.

Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands.

They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.)

Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much.

Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! !

Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa   SEXToys India PR  (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018

Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood.

If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here

Really pleasant male masturbation and how to do it Are you in a rut with your daily masturbation routine? I'm going to show you five ways men masturbate that you might ...

[For Beginners] How to choose and use a male masturbator without fail Gentlemen.Have you ever used a masturbator? The person who sees this article is probably the one who has not experien...

Cock Ring

A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis.

It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow.

It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber.

In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection.

Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction.

It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it.

Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time.

Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function.

Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy.

You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect.

[Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat...

Love Doll

Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex.

There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women.

Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price.

The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true.

You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste.

There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice.

You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls.

If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here

Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to...

Sex lubricants

Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules.

It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution.

Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse.

There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent.

Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent.

If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here.

What is sex lubricant?Explain the difference and usage of each ingredient The word "sex toy" may seem like a hurdle to overcome, but lotion is actually one of the most familiar sex toys. Many...

Toys for the Prostate

Another sextoy for men is prostate toys.

The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line.

Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men.

Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men.

What is the prostate?

The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm.

You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus.

By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms.

Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.)

The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation.

Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure.

sextoy for beinner women in India

The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy.

The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy.

Vibrator.

Dildo

Electric Masserger

Lets check out what each one is in detail.

If you want to check out womens toys, click here.

[BEST25]Sex Toys for Women in IndiaThat Can Help You Have an Orgasm There are many women who pretend to feel orgasm during sex. But don't worry, you don't have to pretend to feel orgasm...

Vibrators

A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator.

Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy.

It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy.

Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women.

For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators.

Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex.

Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself.

This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual.

Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men.

When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons.

Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most...

Dildo

A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis.

It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass.

A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it.

They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well.

It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device.

A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo.

Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands.

For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis.

This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one.

To learn more about dildo, please click here.

What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th...

Electric Masserger

A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores.

It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low.

Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels.

Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation.

It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure.

For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm.

It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out.

If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager?

To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here.

What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th...

How to choose a sextoy for Indian

Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one.

Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points:  Does the size fit you (the partner)?

Does the size fit you (your partner)?

Is the environment able to produce sound without problems?

Price range

First of all, the choice of size is quite important.

Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women.

For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage.

Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems.

Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise.

If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level.

Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it.

Finally, there is the price range.

The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest.

Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy.

Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy?

I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance.

For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics.

If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out.

How to buy sextoys in India

The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping.

For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below.

Sextoy is one of them.

Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping.

SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India.

They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry.

Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card.

To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy.

ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal.

Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on.

Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture.

Cautions for Indians using sextoy

When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind

Keep sex toys clean

Watch out for electrical leakage

Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy

As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone.

Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there.

It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case.

In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness.

Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful.

If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it.

You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly.

Summary

What did you think?

In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India.

The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future.

As India is a rather closed-minded country, it can be difficult to be open about ones sexual habits and values.

However, being faithful to ones desires by properly dissolving ones sexual desire is very effective for ones physical and mental health.

If this is your first time to learn about sextoy, or if you are interested in using sextoy, why not give it a try?

Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women.

I want to read more! If you think its a great idea, please bookmark it.
Two officials of a Patna shelter home arrested in connection with the death of two women inmates were sent in three-day police remand as the police on Monday registered an FIR against four persons, including these two, an official said.

A doctor and a nurse at the shelter home were among those booked but are absconding.

Chitranjan Kumar and Manisha Dayal were sent in police custody for questioning in connection with the death of two 'Aasra' inmates, aged 40 and 18, on Friday night at the Patna Medical College and Hospital here.

Kumar is Secretary and Dayal the Treasurer of 'Aasra' home that shelters women with mental disabilities. Both have denied any wrongdoing and claimed that they have documentary evidence to prove it.

Patna District Magistrate Kumar Ravi has ordered a probe, Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj has said that a Special Investigation Team has been constituted to probe the deaths, the cause of which is not known.

Though shelter home officials maintained that the two women died at the hospital, the latter's officials on Sunday denied it and said that the inmates were "brought dead".

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a first of its kind initiative, principals of four Delhi government colleges were appointed as the Licensing Authority for issuing Learner's Driving License for students.

In a notification issued by the Transport Department on Monday, the directors and principals of GB Pant Institute of Technology, Industrial Training Institute, Pusa, Acharya Narendra Dev College and Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies will be giving the licenses.

"Directors/principals of these educational institutes are hereby appointed/empowered as Licensing Authority for the issuance of Learner's Driving License to their students subject to the conditions," reads the notification.

Slowly, more colleges will be added to the list, a government official told IANS.

A Learner's Licence is valid for up to six months. The initiative will help about two lakh students from various colleges, polytechnics and ITIs in Delhi.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Residents of Japan's Fukushima city have demanded the removal of a statue of a child in a protective suit, saying it gives the impression that the area is unfit for human habitation as a result of the 2011 nuclear disaster.

The statue, by Kenji Yanobe, depicts a child dressed in a yellow Hazmat-style suit, with a helmet in one hand and an artistic representation of the sun in the other, the Guardian reported on Monday.

Yanobe said his "Sun Child", which was installed by the municipal government after appearing at art exhibitions in Japan and overseas, was intended to express his desire for a nuclear-free world.

The artist said he did not mean to give the impression that local children needed to protect themselves from radiation more than seven years after the Fukushima Daiichi plant became the scene of the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

He pointed out that the child was not wearing the helmet and that a monitor on its chest showed radiation levels at "000".

"I wanted to make a work that encourages people (in Fukushima)... And made the statue of a child standing up bravely and strongly against any difficulties it faces," Yanobe said.

His statue drew criticism on social media and in messages to the city government after it went on display this month, reports the Guardian.

Others pointed out that the monitor reading of zero was misleading, since areas that have not been affected by nuclear leaks have varying levels of background radiation.

The row over the statue comes as local authorities are trying to persuade families to return to evacuated neighbourhoods.

In Naraha, about 12 miles south of the plant, only several hundred people among the pre-disaster population of 7,400 have returned since the town was declared safe in September 2015.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Gujarat Government on Monday announced that it has planned to move an ordinance recommending harsh punishment of seven to 10 years in jail for chain-snatching.

Minister of State for Home Pradeepsinh Jadeja told reporters here: "The state government has taken yet another solid step towards women's safety. We propose to amend Section 379 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) by adding a few clauses and promulgate an ordinance, which will be sent to the Governor."

According to the Minister, the present punishment of three-year imprisonment and financial penalty for chain-snatching is not adequate. Through the Ordinance, two clauses, IPC 379(A) and 379(B) will be added.

According to these clauses, the person attempting to snatch chains will undergo imprisonment of five to 10 years and be penalised Rs 25,000. The person committing the crime will be sentenced to seven to 10 years in jail with a penalty of Rs 25,000.

According to sub-clause 379 (A)4, if during such an attempt, the victim is harmed physically, an added punishment of three years will be recommended.

Jadeja said drug-peddling was another issue bothering the state government and some action was being planned to check this.

"Comprehensive steps to track down drugs network will be taken up by the government," the Minister said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Four days after busting a terror plot involving some Hindu right-wing activists in Palghar, the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) has found a mini arms making unit and is now probing their links in Uttar Pradesh and Assam, official sources said on Monday.

On Friday, the ATS created a sensation by claiming to have unearthed a terror plot targeting Mumbai, Pune, Satara and Solapur ahead of Independence Day celebrations and the upcoming Bakri Eid festival.

In the ATS swoop, three right-wing activists were arrested - Vaibhav Raut, 40, Sharad Kalaskar, 25, both from Nala Sopara in Palghar, and Sudhanav Gondhalekar, 39, from Pune.

Over a dozen other associates or suspects have been interrogated to ascertain their connections in other parts of the state or outside and certain email exchanges between the accused with references to Uttar Pradesh and Assam shall be probed.

Continuing the raids and probe over the weekend in Palghar, around 60 km north of Mumbai, the ATS has found a mini arms production unit and seized at least five country-made pistols, three incomplete pistols, 11 cartridges of 9 mm pistols and 30 cartridges of 7.65 mm pistols, springs, triggers and other material.

In the Pune raids, the ATS seized a laptop, six hard disks, five pendrives, nine mobiles and many SIM cards, a WiFI dongle, scores of documents and papers, besides a car and a motorcycle.

During the raids in Palghar on Friday, the ATS seized 20 crude bombs and material that could be used to make at least two-to-four dozen more bombs.

The seizures included 22 non-electronic detonators, 1,500 gm of explosive powder, wire bundles, resistors, transistors, 10 batteries of six volts each and a connector, multimeters, switches and circuits, connectors, gelatin sticks, two bottles marked as 'poison', diagrams and literature, all of which have been sent for forensic analysis.

While Raut is described as a prominent 'gau-rakshak' and linked with Hindu Janjagran Samiti, Gondhalekar is connected with the Shri Shivpratisthan, spearheaded by the controversial 85-year-old Sambhaji Bhide alias Bhide Guruji.

Charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the trio was produced before a Mumbai Sessions Court and presently remanded to police custody till August 18.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A hippopotamus attacked and killed a Chinese tourist in Kenya over the weekend, according to wildlife authorities.

The attack took place Saturday evening at Lake Naivasha, about 58 miles from from Nairobi, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) tweeted on Sunday.

Chang Ming Chuang, 65, was with a colleague taking pictures of the hippo on the shores of the lake when the animal attacked, reports CNN.

Chuang was taken to the Naivasha District Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Chuang's colleague, Wu Peng Te, 62, survived the attack with minor bruises and is recovering at the Naivasha Sopa Resort, the wildlife service said. KWS is tracking the hippo.

Known as one of the most dangerous animals on the planet, hippos can snap a canoe in half with their strong jaws, according to National Geographic.

Hippos kill about 500 people in Africa each year and can run at the same speed as humans for short distances when faced with danger.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Eminent Persons' Group (EPG) on Nepal-India Relations has recommended the idea of "smart border" and limiting the cross border movements only from the designated border points.

The move has been proposed in order to check infiltration, curbing criminal activities and keeping records of people crossing either side of the border, an official said.

At present, people crossing the border do not have to produce any kind of identity cards and there is no prohibited entry or exit point.

But, as per the report, which is yet to be made public, the EPG has recommended carrying electronic national identity cards mandatory and that movement should be limited to designated border points only.

If the EPG's suggestions are executed, Nepal and India would have to work on installing equipment at the border where both sides should issue the electronic identity cards to its citizens or should categorise what kind of cards, like passports, driving licence or any other, can be accepted if electronic identity cards are not in place.

The EPG was set up in 2016 by Nepali and Indian governments to work on a mutually agreed document within two years, and also recommend ways to strengthen bilateral ties.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ahead of the Independence Day, Indian authorities have asked security forces to increase vigil along the international borders with Bangladesh and Myanmar, officials said on Monday.

Border Security Force troopers are guarding India's border with Bangladesh while the Assam Rifles are deployed along the country's frontier with Myanmar.

"We have asked the BSF to further intensify vigil along the India-Bangladesh border to check any trespassing and clandestine trans-border movements," Tripura's Inspector General of Police (law and order) K.V. Sreejesh told IANS.

Additional security in all entry and exist points of Tripura were deployed and CCTV cameras were installed to closely monitor the movement of vehicles and people, he said.

"Security was also stepped up at the airports, railway stations, bus terminus, shopping malls, market and crowded places. Close vigils are being kept at all places that are sensitive and important," Sreejesh said.

"Night patrolling has been increased. Bomb and dog squads are doing constant rounds," he added.

Besides the border forces, Tripura police, Tripura State Rifles and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) are also keeping vigil within the state.

In Aizawl, an Assam Rifles official said that their troopers were on high alert along the unfenced India-Myanmar borders to curb infiltration.

Smuggling of drugs and arms has also come down to a large extent, the official said.

While Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Assam share an 1,880-km border with Bangladesh, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh share a 1,640-km unfenced border with Myanmar.

An official of the Airports Authority of India said entry of people, except for passengers, into the terminal buildings across the northeast has been barred. The restrictions will continue till August 18.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Indian Army plans to scale the fifth highest mountain peak in the world, Mount Makalu (8485 metres), the government said on Monday.

Makalu is an isolated peak and is located in the Mahalangur Himalayas, 19 km southeast of Mount Everest, on the border between Nepal and Tibet, China.

The Ministry of Defence said Director General of Military Training on Monday flagged off the journey from Delhi.

Under the protection of Army Adventure Wing, an expedition to Mount Kamet (7756M), Joshimath (district Chamoli, Uttarakhand), is also being conducted from August to September.

"A 47-member team led by Maj Manoj Joshi will leave for Joshimath from Delhi on Aug 16, 2018. The team will establish the Base Camp at Vasudhara lake and Advance Base Camp at Purvi Kamet Glacier," the ministry said.

Mount Kamet is the third highest peak of India after Kanchanjunga and Nandadevi and the only highest peak available to climb within the country.--IANS

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An Indian Naval ship on Monday reached a Fijian port and over the next three days would be conducting activities in collaboration with the government there.

INS Sahyadri is visiting the Republic of Fiji en route to India after participation in the RIMPAC 2018 at Hawaii and will be celebrating India's 72nd Independence Day in the Port of Suva on Wednesday.

During the visit, the Indian Naval ship personnel will have professional interaction with their Fiji counterparts. The ship will have an open day for the general public on Tuesday.

Apart from the interaction, officers from INS Sahyadri, Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) bands and Indian High Commission will also be participating in mangrove/sandalwood planting activities the second day.

On Wednesday, a medical camp will be organized in collaboration with the Fijian government where doctors from both the countries will jointly perform free health screening from 10 am to 4:30 pm at Ratu Sukuna Park, Suva.

The day will also see the Indian Navy and RFMF bands perform between 11:30 am and 1:30 pm.

INS Sahyadri (F49) is the third and latest ship among the Shivalik Class of indigenously built stealth frigates and forms a part of the Eastern Fleet of Indian Navy.

Built by the Mazagon Dock Limited in Mumbai, INS Sahyadri was launched into the sea in 2005. She undertook sea trials for over a year in 2011-12 and was finally commissioned along with her sisters INS Shivalik (F-47) and INS and Satpura (F-48) into the Indian Navy on July 21, 2012.

The Shivalik-class frigate ship draws her name from the age-defying Western Coast (also known as Sahyadri ranges) stretching across 1,600 km along the Western Coast of India.

INS Sahyadri has also won the Best Ship trophy in the Fleet Award Function of 2018 for its immense contribution in carrying out massive maritime operations in the Eastern front.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Trend





The new cargo transportation route proposed by the Georgian side through the railway from Georgia to Russia via Azerbaijan as an alternative to Upper Lars may be attractive for Georgia, Azerbaijan and Russia and to some extent will expand the Russia-Georgia trade and economic relations that are being improved, famous Georgian expert Archil Sikharulidze told Trend.

Sikharulidze was commenting on the prospect of the transit of Georgian cargoes through Azerbaijan to Russia, recently proposed by public figure, businessman and founder of the "Foundation for the Revival and Development of Russian-Georgian Relations" David Tsetskhladze.

The Georgian railway project developer thinks that the railroad in Upper Lars will not be overloaded due to this route, it is quite rational in terms of saving time for tourists traveling to Georgia, as well as for Georgian food suppliers to enter the Russian markets.

Tsetskhladze's proposal was viable, Sikharulidze added. Its economic and political benefits must be at the same level.

"I think that this proposal can be considered in Georgia after the presidential election, which is expected in the autumn 2018," the analyst said.

By the way, the initiative put forward in Georgia caused serious resentment in neighboring Armenia, where serious problems arose related to the transit of local agricultural products, which are transported through the Upper Lars checkpoint for the delivery of goods to Russia.

The Upper Lars checkpoint at the Georgian-Russian border is the only way for Armenian carriers to supply agricultural products to Russia.

But due to traffic jams, including a big flow of tourists from Russia and the neighboring regional countries traveling to Georgia, Armenian trucks often stand idle on this railroad for weeks, which causes great damage to the Armenian economy.

According to the Armenian media, this problem has aggravated in summer due to the continuous flow of Russian tourists traveling to Georgia via this railroad.

Meanwhile, the new route does not solve the problems of Yerevan, as the transportation of Armenian cargoes through Azerbaijan is completely excluded due to the occupation policy of Armenia.

For Armenia, the initiative of the Georgian side could be attractive in case of the settlement of relations with Azerbaijan, the Georgian expert added.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars corridor has been already used for transit from Central Asia and South-East Asia. The cargoes are transported to Russia via the North-South corridor, which currently connects Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia and having prospects for extension to India and the countries of the Persian Gulf.

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.
US Ambassador to India Kenneth I. Juster on Monday told Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju that his country was keen on continuing the ongoing homeland security dialogue between the two countries to jointly counter the threats posed by terrorism.

Juster's remarks came during half-an-hour meeting with Rijiju at his North Block office where they took up homeland security issues.

"The US Ambassador and other embassy officials reiterated the strong resolve of India and US to jointly counter the threats posed by terrorism to two of the world's biggest democracies as well as world peace," a Home Ministry statement said.

In the meeting Juster expressed his country's keenness to "continue the ongoing Homeland Security Dialogue to a concrete conclusion," the statement added.

The envoy was accompanied by other officials of the US Embassy.

During a joint meeting on July 18, senior officers from both sides had agreed to work out modalities to address issues relating to security cooperation, customs and immigration, aviation security and capacity building.

On August 7, Juster also held a meeting with Jammu and Kashmir Governor N.N. Vohra.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Iranian Ministry of Defense on Monday unveiled its latest short-range ballistic missile, which has been successfully tested, in spite of Washington's demands that it halts all ballistic missile programmes.

The Fateh missile is an "agile, radar-evading, tactical missile with pinpoint accuracy" capacity against land and sea targets, designed in Iran and successfully test-fired, Efe quoted Defence Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami as saying at a ceremony in Tehran.

"Mass-production of the new missile will help Iran make major strides in boosting its defense capabilities and deterrent power," the Brigadier General added.

General Hatami also warned that Iranian Armed Forces "will never back off from plans to promote the missile industry and enhance our national capabilities".

Hatami also denounced foreign interference in Iran's defense sphere and attempts to cap Iran's missile power, adding that "Iran will never allow outsiders to interfere in its domestic issues".

Iran's ballistic missile programmes was one of the reasons stated by US President Donald Trump on August 7 to unilaterally withdraw his country from the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and reinstate economic sanctions against the Islamic republic.

"I remain open to reaching a more comprehensive deal that addresses the full range of the regime's malign activities, including its ballistic missile program and its support for terrorism," Trump said in a written statement last week.

Meanwhile Iranian authorities insist their missiles are of a purely defensive and deterrent nature.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gajanand Sharma, who was recently traced in a Pakistani jail more than 36 years after he was reported missing from his Jaipur home was released on Monday, officials said.

Gajanand was among 30 Indian citizens, including 29 fishermen, who were released by Pakistani authorities two days before the Independence Day.

The Indian citizens were brought to Wagah border from Karachi in a train. "They entered the Indian territory on Monday around 3.30pm," said Sahdev Sharma who went to Wagah to receive Sharma on behalf of Vipr Foundation, an NGO.

Sahdev said Sharma was unwell and could not walk properly. "He was helped by security personnel," said Sahdev.

Gajanand may reach Jaipur by tomorrow after clearing formalities, said Shankarlal Sharma, another member of the organisation.

Sharma disappeared in 1982 and his family members were clueless about his whereabouts till May 4, 2018 when they received a letter from the local police asking for verification.

On August 9, Jaipur MP Ramcharan Bohra, accompanied by Sharma's wife, their son and local BJP leaders, had met Union Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh and sought Sharma's early release.

Bohra had said Gajendra Sharma was initially jailed for two months, but due to lack of consular access, he had to spend over three decades behind bars in a Pakistani jail.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
JNU scholar Umar Khalid, accused of raising anti-national slogans in 2016, on Monday survived an attempt to kill him in the heart of the capital, saying he escaped only because of his friends.

Police, however, said it was not clear whether the gunshot fired by the attacker was aimed at him or not.

A shaken Khalid told the media that a man approached him with a gun when he was outside the Constitution Hall, tried to overpower him and shoot him down.

"Thankfully, my friends were there with me. They tried to overpower him but he ran away and he fired from across the road.

"I was very scared at that moment when he pointed a gun at me. At that moment, I was reminded of what happened to (writer activist) Gauri Lankesh. I thought that moment has arrived," Khalid said.

Joint Commissioner of Police Ajay Chaudhary said preliminary investigation showed that an unknown man dragged Khalid when he was with five friends at a tea stall outside the Constitution Club, not far from Parliament.

"A scuffle took place between them," the officer said. "The accused managed to escape. It is not clear yet whether the attacker fired or not with his weapon."

He said the case was being probed from all possible angles. A weapon found at the spot was being examined. "We have deployed the best officers to nab the attacker."

Khalid went to the Constitution Club to attend a "United Against Hate" programme where the listed speakers included noted lawyer Prashant Bhushan, MP Manoj Jha and journalist Amit Sen Gupta.

Arif, a witness to the crime, said Khalid was with him when they were targeted. He said there were at least two attackers. But police spoke about only one attacker.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Madhur Verma earlier quoted Khalid as saying that someone pounced on him and pushed him around 2.30 p.m.

"Thereafter he tried to fire at Khalid. But the person couldn't fire immediately," Verma said.

The officer said the local police were not informed about the programme at the Constitution Club, a popular venue for seminars, meetings and press conferences.

The incident took place about half-a-kilometre from Parliament and behind the high-security Reserve Bank of India. The Constitution Club is itself located in a block of apartments, many of which are allocated to MPs.

Khalid was rusticated and fined by the Jawaharlal Nehru University last month after he along with two others -- Kanhaiya Kumar and Anirban Bhattacharya -- were found guilty of raising anti-national slogans at a poetry-reading event in the campus on February 9, 2016.

Khalid said he felt that Monday's incident was an attempt to silence anyone who raise their voice against the Modi government.

He said that in the last two years, since the JNU episode which led to his jailing, "there has been misinformation everywhere" about him and his He accused a section of the media of spreading propaganda against him.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An unidentified man opened fire at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) scholar Umar Khalid outside the Constitution Club here on Monday, police said. Khalid escaped unhurt.

The attack took place around 2.30 p.m. when Khalid was at a tea stall.

"According to Khalid and his friends, two men approached them. One of them with a pistol opened fire. The attackers then fled the scene. Khalid escaped unhurt," said a police officer.

The officer said a pistol was recovered from the spot.

Khalid went to the Constitution Club to attend a "United Against Hate" programme.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Jodhpur and Marwar in Rajasthan were declared the cleanest railway stations, while Varanasi, the prime minister's Lok Sabha constituency, slipped to the 69th position in the third cleanliness survey released on Monday.

Releasing the survey report, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said: "Jodhpur has emerged as the cleanest station in A1 station category. Last year, Vishakaptnam was at the first spot," he said.

He said Rajasthan capital Jaipur is at number two and Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh at number three.

In the last survey, Jodhpur was at the 17th spot, while Jaipur and Tirupati were at the 18th and 19th spot respectively.

The railway station in Varanasi, which was ranked at 14th position in 2017, slipped to 69th spot this year, among the 75 busiest stations in the country.

Mathura railway station was declared the dirtiest station in the A1 station category.

Darbhanga, which was declared as one of the most dirtiest stations in 2017, this year was placed at 52nd place.

In the A1 category stations, Anand Vihar railway station in Delhi retained its spot of the 5th position, while Nizamuddin and Old Delhi stations slipped to 54th and 60th positions. Last year, Old Delhi and Hazrat Nizamuddin were positioned at 23rd and 24th place.

Clean toilets at platforms, clean tracks and dustbins at stations were some of the criteria for judging railway stations for cleanliness.

The railways had conducted a third-party survey for assessment of cleanliness. The survey was conducted by the Quality Council of India (QCI) covering 407 major railway stations -- 75 in A1 category and 332 in A category stations. The first survey was conducted by the IRCTC in 2016, the second by QCI.

The Minister also said that in A category stations, Marwar in Rajasthan topped the list, followed by Phulera in Rajasthan at number two, and Warangal in Telangana at number three.

Marwar was at the 168th spot in the 2017 cleanest station list, while Phulera was at 219th place and Warangal at the eighth place in 2017.

The list declared Shahganj in Uttar Pradesh as the dirtiest railway station in A category stations.

Goyal also said that the North Western Railway (NWR) topped the list in the cleanest zone category.

"NWR was at the eighth spot last year. This year it topped the list, that shows how the team has worked tremendously in last one year," Goyal said.

The South Central Railway (SCR) was declared the second cleanest zone. The SCR was at the fourth spot last year.

The East Coast Railway (ECR) was placed at the third spot in the cleanest zones.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Colombia's Santiago Arias on Monday said during his presentation as Atletico Madrid's new right-back that joining the Spanish club would help him become a better player.

The 26-year-old Colombian international came to Atletico on a five-year deal after spending the same amount of time at PSV Eindhoven, where he made a total of 172 appearances, reports Efe.

"I am very happy and proud to have signed for this huge club. I hope to have success here," Arias said in a statement published on the club's website.

"I am going to fight for my spot with a great player like Juanfran (Torres). I am here to give it my all," he added.

Atletico's president Enrique Cerezo addressed Arias saying that he was to "find attractive and exciting objectives" at the club.

Atletico was gearing up for the UEFA Super Cup match against Real Madrid on Wednesday in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Jordan on Sunday announced to have completed a raid by security forces against a cell of terrorists in the city of Al Salt.

Jordan's Minister of State for Media Affairs Jumana Ghunaimat said the concerned security bodies completed the operation that resulted in the arrest of five terrorists and killing of three others. Four officers were also killed during the operation which started on Saturday.

"Security forces continued to comb the area after the demolition of the remaining part of a building that the terrorists blew up on Saturday," Xinhua quoted her as saying in a statement.

The Minister said the terrorists blew up a building they were hiding in when the security forces stormed it.

She added that the security forces were on alert to protect the safety of citizens and residents of the country, offering condolences to the families of the fallen officers.

In a meeting Sunday, King Abdullah II of Jordan said the country will continue its war against terrorism until uprooting all radical groups, adding that such "cowardly attacks" will only increase the resolve and strength of Jordanians.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet, but some experts said it bears the hallmarks of the Islamic State group.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Korean-American film and music video director Joseph Jun-hee Kahn has accused BTS music band members of having plastic surgery.

Recently Kahn took to his Twitter account and shared some controversial remarks on band members, which has garnered a lot of criticism from the fans of BTS, reports metro.co.uk.

He posted a photo of the BTS boys and tweeted: "They all have plastic surgery. They all wear lipstick. This is what crazy rich Asians actually look like."

Resharing his original tweet, the "Without me" music video director continued saying that boys were searching for the 'pretty boy' look and 'they want to look like idols or celebrities.'

BTS, also known as the Bangtan Boys, is a seven-member South Korean boy band that made debut in 2013 and rose to fame with their hit albums including "Dark and wild" and "The most beautiful part in life, Part 2".

The band comprises musicians V, Jeon Jung-Kook, Jimin, Jin, Suga, RM and J-Hope.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy on Monday mourned the death of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, describing the veteran parliamentarian as a towering figure in Indian

"Somnathda was known for stirring parliament speeches, which motivated a generation of Indians. We lost a conscientious leader who fought for social justice and harmony. May his soul rest in peace," tweeted Kumaraswamy.

Deputy Chief Minister G. Parameshwara said he was saddened to know about the death of a gentlemanly politician who always upheld the spirit of the House with great dignity.

Senior Congress leader and former parliamentarian Margaret Alva said Chatterjee was a much-respected personality, who was able to bring all parties together in the conduct of the House.

Chatterjee died in Kolkata on Monday. He was 89.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Trend





President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev has hosted an official reception in honor of participants of the 5th Summit of the Heads of State of the Caspian littoral states in Aktau.

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev attended the reception.

X X X

President Ilham Aliyev completed his visit to Kazakhstan.
In an endeavour to pay respect to soldiers and inculcate a feeling of patriotism among the citizenry, around five lakh persons will form a human chief on August 14 in four border districts of Rajasthan, an official said on Monday.

The human chain will cover a total distance of 700 km in Sri Ganganagar, Bikaner, Jaisalmer and Barmer districts along the India-Pakistan border.

It will start from Bikaner at 11 a.m., followed by the other three districts.

Under the state government's programme 'Shahadat ko Salaam', the programme will be supported by the Indian Army and the Border Security Force.

Jaisalmer Superintendent of Police Jagdish Prasad Sharma said that arrangements have been made to make the initiative a success.

Patriotic songs and performances by folk artistes will be part of the event.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Maldives asking India to take back its military helicopters and personnel deployed there reflects the country's "increasing desire to rid itself of the excessive Indian influence", Chinese state media has said.

A commentary in the Global Times said it was wrong on the part of Indian diplomats and security officials to think that the move by the island nation came at the behest of China, which does not interfere in any country's internal affairs.

The paper said the move also sends a signal to the Quad bloc -- consisting of India, Australia, the US and Japan -- in the Indo-Pacific that plans to "contain" China. The revival of the bloc unsettles Beijing.

Last week, the Maldivian ambassador told a media outlet that his country has asked India to take back military helicopters and personnel posted there following the expiry of a pact in June.

India has had considerable influence in the Maldives, an archipelago which sits near the world's busiest shipping lane in the Indian Ocean.

However, their ties have come under strain under the government of Abdulla Yameen who is said to be pro-China, which unnerves India.

"New Delhi has long regarded the South Asian island nation as its backyard and sphere of influence, with a strong desire to tighten its grip on the capital city of Male and exclude other countries' influence," the paper said.

"As an independent sovereign country, the island republic increasingly desires to rid itself of excessive Indian influence and maximize its interests by developing diplomatic ties with all major powers.

"The request for the withdrawal of the helicopters and personnel is an embodiment of such a desire and sends an important message to all major powers in the Indo-Pacific region," according to the article.

China, which opened its embassy in the Maldives in 2011, is involved in building big infrastructure projects in the country, which is of immense strategic significance in the Indian Ocean.

"The Maldives doesn't want to become a certain country's sphere of influence or take sides between major powers, nor other South Asian and Southeast Asian smaller nations. China opposes a spheres-of-influence order of the kind that dominated the Cold War," the Global Times said.

After laying claims on the South China Sea and building infrastructure in the contested waters, China has increasingly been sending ships to the India Ocean, which has worried New Delhi.

"Any attempt to seek or sustain a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific region, such as India's desire to strengthen its control over the Maldives or the US Indo-Pacific strategy, is doomed to fail, as it runs counter to the development demands of countries in the region," the article said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Debutant Dipesh Jain's "Gali Guleiyan", for which Manoj Bajpayee was feted with the Best Actor Award at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM), will hit the screens on September 7.

The Hindi psychological drama -- also known as "In The Shadows" -- has travelled to almost 20 international film festivals. It even won a Special Jury Mention at the gala in Melbourne on Sunday night.

Manoj features in a heart wrenching portrayal of a man trapped within the walls and alleys of old Delhi and his own mind, and it is about how he attempts to break free to find a human connection.

The critically acclaimed actor was competing at IFFM with actors like Akshay Kumar ("Pad Man"), Ranbir Kapoor ("Sanju"), Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor ("Padmaavat") and Varun Dhawan ("October").

Manoj said it's a fantastic feeling to win the award especially when "so many actors who have all done such a great job" were in competition.

"My character in 'Gali Guleiyan' is a very complex one with many layers and the film itself is a difficult one to make. Hats off to our director Dipesh, who despite being a newcomer, came up with such a great idea, made this challenging film and has taken it to festivals across the world.

"The adulation that the film has received has been overwhelming and we are very excited to now take it to our audience as the film sets up for its release in theatres worldwide on September 7."

Jain, who is from Los Angeles, hopes the audience comes forward to support the movie.

"I'll encourage everyone to come watch our film in theatres as it surely will give them an immersive psychological experience like never before."

While Manoj plays the main protagonist, he is supported by an ensemble cast of Ranvir Shorey, Neeraj Kabi and Shahana Goswami along with debutant child actor Om Singh.

It is produced by Shuchi Jain of Exstant Motion Pictures.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Spanish World No. 1 Rafael Nadal defeated Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece while Romania's Simona Halep overcame the tenacious resistance of America's Sloane Stephens in the final of the Rogers Cup here.

It was Nadal's fourth time to win the tourney - and his 80th title overall, a figure attained only by Switzerland's Roger Federer and by Americans Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl, reports Efe.

It took Nadal an hour and 43 minutes on Sunday to down his rival 6-2 and 7-6 (4)

Nadal, 32, had lost the first game of the first set, but handily won the next five. And in the second set, the Greek who turned 20 on Sunday battled hard to turn things around, but ultimately fell in a tiebreak.

The Spaniard made it to the final after his quarter-finals victory on Friday night over Croatia's seventh-ranked Marin Cilic and his semi-finals win on Saturday over 22-year-old Russian Karen Khachanov, who had routed the Netherlands' Robin Haase 6-3, 6-1 in the quarter-finals.

Earlier on Sunday, Halep overcame Stephens, ranked No. 3, to win the women's Montreal tourney title, which she had won two years ago.

Halep needed three sets -- 7-6(6), 3-6 and 6-4 -- and two hours and 39 minutes to knock off the US player, whom she had defeated in the Roland Garros final two months ago.

Halep, who won the tourney in 2016 after getting to the final but losing in 2015, and being knocked out in the semi-final round last year, added her third title this year - after wins at Shenzhen and Roland Garros - to make 18 career triumphs.

Meanwhile, Stephens, who won in Miami and was a finalist in Paris, seemed to fumble the match each time she managed to gain some measure of control over the flow of play.

Although she went behind 1-4 in the first set, Stephens had battled back to challenge her rival, but ultimately lost in a tiebreak. She then, however, nicely won the second set, and was running even in the first four games of the third when Halep managed to break her serve and pulled ahead 4-2, after which the Romanian never looked back until the match was in the bag.

The Rogers Cup is one of the nine ATP World Tour Masters 1000 events and a key tune-up for the US Open, which gets under way on August 27.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Spain's Rafael Nadal announced on Monday his withdrawal from the 2018 Cincinnati Open to have some rest, following his recent victory at the Canadian Open.

On Sunday, Nadal claimed his 33rd ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title, earning a total of 80 career titles, after his victory in Toronto 6-2, 7-6(4) against Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, reports Efe.

"I am very sorry to announce that I won't be playing in Cincinnati this year. No other reason than personally taking care of my body and trying to keep as healthy as I feel now," Nadal posted to his Twitter account.

The 32-year-old, world No. 1, thanked the tournament director Andre Silva for his understanding and apologized to the fans who have always showed him "great support".

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday led the nation in paying glowing tributes to former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, one of the country's most respected parliamentarians who died here in the morning.

Calling him "a veteran parliamentarian who had a forceful presence in the House", the President tweeted: "A loss for public life in Bengal and India. My condolences to his family and innumerable well-wishers."

Modi described Chatterjee, a 10-time MP, as a stalwart of Indian who made parliamentary democracy richer.

He said that Chatterjee "was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise".

Congress President Rahul Gandhi hailed him as "an institution".

"He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief," he tweeted.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who came to prominence incidentally with her triumph over Chatterjee in the Lok Sabha polls from Jadavpur consituency in 1984, termed it a great loss.

"Saddened at the passing away of Somnath Da. My condolences to his family and admirers. This is a great loss for us," the Trinamool Congress chief tweeted.

Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal said he was "extremely sad" over his death and remembered him as "one of the greatest parliamentarians of contemporary times. He will always be missed".

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said: "A stalwart parliamentarian, popular amongst people and one of greatest Speakers of Lok Sabha. A huge loss to the Indian democracy."

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also paid homage to Chatterjee.

In Kolkata, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Biman Bose said Chatterjee always used to talk in favour of the masses. "He was a distinguished, big hearted and highly respectable parliamentarian.

"Somnath Da's demise is a colossal loss to parliamentary .. We were in touch with him despite not being a party member. So his demise is also a loss to revolution of the poor," Bose told the media.

CPI-M state Secretary Surya Kanta Mishra added: "He used to raise voice whenever democracy and secularism were attacked. He attended meetings and programmes to support for democracy even after his retirement from active "

Trinamool Congress leader and Lok Sabha member Saugata Roy pointed out that it was under Chatterjee's watch that the Zero Hour was telecast live from July 5, 2004. A 24-hour Lok Sabha television channel also came into being in 2006.

"In Indian politics, he is a colossus. We all know that between 2004 to 2009, Somnath Chatterjee had done exceedingly well as Speaker of the Lok Sabha," Roy said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday led the nation in paying glowing tributes to former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, one of the country's most respected parliamentarians, who died here in the morning.

Calling him "a veteran parliamentarian who had a forceful presence in the House", the President tweeted: "A loss for public life in Bengal and India. My condolences to his family and innumerable well-wishers."

Modi described Chatterjee, a 10-time MP, as a stalwart of Indian who made parliamentary democracy richer.

He said that Chatterjee "was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise".

Congress President Rahul Gandhi hailed him as "an institution".

"He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief," he tweeted.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who came to prominence incidentally with her triumph over Chatterjee in the Lok Sabha polls from Jadavpur consituency in 1984, termed it a great loss.

"Saddened at the passing away of Somnath Da. My condolences to his family and admirers. This is a great loss for us," the Trinamool Congress chief tweeted.

Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal said he was "extremely sad" over his death and remembered him as "one of the greatest parliamentarians of contemporary times. He will always be missed".

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said: "A stalwart parliamentarian, popular amongst people and one of greatest Speakers of Lok Sabha. A huge loss to the Indian democracy."

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also paid homage to Chatterjee.

Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy described the veteran parliamentarian as a towering figure in Indian

"Somnathda was known for stirring parliament speeches, which motivated a generation of Indians. We lost a conscientious leader who fought for social justice and harmony. May his soul rest in peace," tweeted Kumaraswamy.

In Chennai, Tamil Nadu leaders also condoled his death. Chief Minister K. Palaniswami said Chatterjee expertly presided over the Lok Sabha.

PMK founder S. Ramadoss said Chatterjee was a man of impeccable integrity and earned the respect and friendship of all party leaders.

DMK leader M.K. Stalin said Chatterjee was a good friend of his late father and DMK President M. Karunanidhi.

Maharashtra Chief Minster Devendra Fadnavis also mourned the death, saying the country lost "a tall and influential Communist leader".

"A universally respected person, his long career in parliamentary served to inspire and guide the leaders and workers alike. His role as the Lok Sabha Speaker will always be remembered for the way he upheld the Constitution and democratic norms," he said.

Maharashtra Congress President Ashok Chavan said he was "deeply saddened".

Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar described Chatterjee as "a dignified person who set high standards of conduct during his stint as Lok Sabha Speaker".

In Kolkata, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Biman Bose said Chatterjee always used to talk in favour of the masses. "Somnath Da's demise is a colossal loss to parliamentary politics...He used to always think of the masses," Bose told the media.

CPI-M state Secretary Surya Kanta Mishra added: "He attended meetings and programmes in support for democracy even after his retirement from active politics."

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nine people were killed and 16 injured as fire engulfed a hospital in Taiwan's New Taipei City on Monday, officials said.

The incident took place on the seventh floor of the Weifu hospital, in Xinzhuang district, where over 200 firemen evacuated dozens of patients, but at least nine of them were dead before reaching other hospitals, Efe reported.

Some witnesses said they heard the sound of an explosion before the start of the fire.

A statement from the Office of Disaster Prevention of the Taiwanese Ministry of Health and Welfare said that 33 patients, two employees and a nurse were rescued.

The fire started in a building of the Weifu Hospital and 76 rescue vehicles and some 276 firefighters were deployed to the scene to control the fire, which was extinguished within an hour.

The victims were transferred to the Yadong, Xintai, Hulong, Beima and Fudan hospitals.

The cause of the fire is still unknown and the police of New Taipei have initiated an investigation.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
There is no move to shift "Aero India 2019" from Bengaluru to Lucknow, as clarified by Defence Ministry officials, said Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Ananth Kumar on Monday.

"I have spoken to (Defence Minister) Nirmala Sitharaman, who has confirmed the same -- no decision on shifting Aero India 2019 venue out of Bengaluru to Lucknow," said Kumar in a tweet.

Kumar is a six-time Lok Sabha member from Bengaluru South constituency, while Sitharaman is a Raya Sabha member from Karnataka.

"There were similar rumours last time too, which were proved to be unfounded," added Kumar, referring to media reports then that the 2017 air show would be shifted to Goa, from where former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar hailed.

Kumar's tweet came within hours after Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention to ensure that the February 2019 five-day biennial event is held in this tech hub only.

"I seek your indulgence for conducting the 12th edition of Aero India-2019 in Bengaluru, where the mega event was held successfully for 11 times biennially since 1996," said Kumaraswamy in the letter to Modi.

The letter was written following media reports that the Defence Ministry was planning to shift the upcoming air show to Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, ahead of the general elections in mid-2019.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday mourned the death of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, describing him as a stalwart parliamentarian.

"Shocked and extremely sad to learn the passing away of Shri Somnath Chatterjee. A stalwart parliamentarian, popular amongst people and one of greatest Speakers of Lok Sabha. A huge loss to the Indian democracy. May his family and near & dear ones get the strength to cope," the Chief Minister tweeted.

Chatterjee died in Kolkata at a private clinic following a cardiac arrest and prolonged illness on Monday. He was 89.

He suffered the heart attack on Sunday.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amanat Holdings, a top healthcare and education investment company, has reported a net profit of Dh27.9 million ($7.6 million) in the first half (H1) of 2018, delivering double-digit growth of 12 per cent over the same period last year.



The strong half-yearly performance is underpinned by the firms active deployment of capital, a statement said.



Total revenue generated in the first half of 2018 reached Dh51.9 million, up7.4 per cent compared to H1 2017. Income from associates stood at Dh26.1 million in the half a notable year-on-year increase of 42.2 per cent.



This is a further testament of the progress Amanat has made in recent months in deploying its capital, enhancing returns through deployment in Abu Dhabi University Holding Company (acquired in March 2018) and from the additional 5.3 per cent stake in Taaleem Holdings (acquired in December 2017), the statement added.



The end of the first half saw Amanat also closing its second investment of the year, acquiring 100 per cent of the real estate assets of North London Collegiate School Dubai for Dh360million in June 2018, further diversifying the firms asset base and bringing an additional, stable income stream in line with Amanats long-term commitment to dividends and value creation for its shareholders.



Taking into account the acquisitions completed in the first half of the year, total deployments since inception stood at Dh1.5 billion as at 30 June, equivalent to almost 58 per cent of Amanats capital (Dh2.5 billion). Following the period end, Amanat completed the acquisition of Middlesex University Dubai, the branch campus of Middlesex University London, achieving 73 per cent deployment of its capital to date.



The companys excess cash was efficiently utilized during the first half of the year, delivering a net yield of 3.43 per cent in H1 2018, compared to 3.24 per cent in the same period last year, the statement said.



Hamad Abdulla Al Shamsi, chairman of Amanat, said: Amanats strong financial performance in the first half of the year is testament to our investment strategy which has proven to be effective very early on.



In addition, Amanat is well placed to deliver solid progress as we continue to create value in our existing portfolio and further diversify our asset base with the acquisition of high-quality education and healthcare assets in the GCC and other markets. We are optimistic about unlocking the full potential of our investments to create sustainable value and impact for our shareholders, partners and society at large.



Dr Shamsheer Vayalil, vice chairman and managing director of Amanat, said: Amanat has made investments amounting to Dh1.1 billion between December 2017 and August 2018, demonstrating our active approach to investing in high-quality assets with the potential to grow and generate excellent long-term returns for our shareholders.



Following our recent investments in Middlesex University Dubai, we have now successfully deployedcirca73 per cent of our paid-up capital, which is a remarkable milestone. As we move forward into the second half of the year, we remain focused on leveraging our expertise and capabilities to help our partners create sustainable value.  TradeArabia News Service
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday invited a business delegation of Fujian province of China to participate in the Make in Odisha conclave scheduled in November this year.

A six-member Fujian delegation led by H.U. Changsheng (head of the organisation of the CPC Fujian Provincial Committee) on Monday met the Chief Minister at the state secretariat to seek business ties with Odisha.

The Chief Minister said a state delegation led by Odisha Industries Minister Anant Das will visit Fuzhou on August 31 to showcase the investment opportunities to Chinese industries.

While showcasing the investment potentials of the state, the Odisha delegation will invite the Chinese investors for the biennial investors' meet scheduled from November 11-15.

The Chief Minister said resource-rich Odisha is one of the top three states of the country in attracting live manufacturing investments.

He also informed the Chinese team about the conducive business environment, infrastructure and skilled workforce of the state.

The Chief Minister said Odisha intends to facilitate growth in six focus sectors: food processing, electronics manufacturing, petrochemicals, textiles, metal downstreams and tourism.

IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Over 300 people, including 100 government troops and 30 civilians, have been killed in the intense fighting between Taliban militants and the security forces in Afghanistan's Ghazni city, the country's Defence Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami said on Monday.

The militant group started its offensive in the city last Friday. "As of midday today, the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces recaptured control of nearly all parts of Ghazni city and the Taliban militants would be expelled from the city soon," Bahrami said at a joint press briefing with Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak.

He said that up to 100 government security force members, 30 civilians and over 194 Taliban militants were killed during the four-day clashes between security forces and Taliban militants in the city, Xinhua news agency reported.

At least 147 militants were injured. The US was supporting the Afghan government forces in conducting airstrikes tageting the Taliban.

Within the past 24 hours, the Defence Ministry deployed reinforcement in Ghazni city and its adjacent areas. Fresh troops will bring considerable changes in the security situation of the city in the next 24 hours, Bahrami added.

Last week, Taliban militants launched a massive attack on Ghazni, 125 km south of Kabul, in a coordinated effort to take back the city. Hundreds of Taliban insurgents stormed important government entities including the National Directorate for Security (Afghanistan's Intelligence Agency) and the provincial governor's office.

"The Afghan police and Army will soon clear Ghazni city from the Taliban and normalcy and peace will return into the city as soon as possible," the Interior Minister said.

The clashes also blocked a main road connecting Kabul to southern and western provinces and scores of travellers were stranded.

According to authorities, about 100 soldiers of the Afghan special force were missing in the Ghazni province. President Ashraf Ghani ordered more troops to be sent to the city.

Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that residents of Ghazni were struggling to access basic services and medical care.

"Medication at the main hospital is reportedly becoming scarce... Main access roads both north and south of the city to larger cities where medical facilities are available are contested and unsafe for people to travel," the OCHA said in a statement.

"We call on all parties to the conflict to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect the lives and rights of civilians and to protect civilian infrastructure," it said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan on Monday released 30 Indian prisoners, including 27 fishermen, in a goodwill gesture ahead of the country's Independence Day.

"This is a humanitarian gesture to mark the country's Independence Day on August 14," the Pakistan Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"This is in line with Pakistan's consistent policy of not politicizing humanitarian issues. It is our hope that the Indian side will also reciprocate in a similar manner," it added.

The Indian fishermen were arrested for intrusion into Pakistani waters for illegal fishing and were freed from a prison in the port city of Karachi.

Pakistan and India routinely arrest fishermen who cross water boundaries for illegal fishing, but the two neighbours have not yet reached an agreement on maritime boundaries.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The inaugural session of Pakistan's 15th National Assembly (NA) was underway here on Monday during which 331 members of the Lower House of Parliament took oath after their election in the July 25 general elections.

Outgoing NA Speaker Ayaz Sadiq administered the oath to the members in the 342-member house, reports Dawn news.

Prime Minister-in-waiting and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan and other prominent political leaders, including Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shahbaz Sharif, Pakistan People's Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and former President Asif Ali Zardari, were present in the assembly for the oath-taking.

Television footage showed the PTI chief shaking hands with Bilawal, who is entering the NA for his maiden term.

After administering the oath to the MNAs, the Speaker will prorogue the NA session until August 15, when the new speaker and deputy speaker of the assembly will be elected.

The nomination papers for the same will be submitted on Tuesday.

Sessions are also set to begin in the provincial assemblies of Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan for the MPAs-elect to take oath.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The maiden session of Pakistan's newly-elected National Assembly began here on Monday, with the outgoing speaker administering the oath to 329 members of the Lower House of the Parliament as part of the country's second democratic transition of power.

Presiding over the 15th Parliament session, Speaker of previous National Assembly Ayaz Sadiq administered the oath to the new members in the 342-member house. This was followed by signing of the "Roll of Members", marking their presence in a register, Dawn online reported.

The session, summoned by President Mamnoon Hussain, commenced with the National Anthem and was followed by the recitation of the Holy Quran.

Prime Minister-in-waiting and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan was among those sworn in, along with other prominent leaders including Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, former President Asif Ali Zardari and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) President Shehbaz Sharif.

Bilawal Bhutto, who has been elected to the National Assembly for the first time, shook hands with Khan as the members took their seats.

Elections for Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly will be held on August 15.

The PTI has already nominated former Speaker of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Asad Qaiser for the office of National Assembly Speaker while the joint opposition, comprising 11 political parties, fielded PPP's Syed Khurseed Shah for speakership.

Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) President Maulana Fazlur Rehman's Asadur Rehman was nominated for the post of deputy speaker.

Elected members of Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan provincial assemblies were also sworn in. The Punjab Assembly session, on the other hand, is slated for August 15.

According to the poll body's figures, the PTI now has 158 members in the National Assembly after the joining of nine Independents and bagging of 33 seats reserved for women and minorities.

It faces a strong opposition from the PML-N with 82 seats, followed by PPP's 53 seats and MMA with 15 seats. These three had earlier joined forces to take on Khan.

The PTI chief is scheduled to take the oath of office on August 18 at the President's House. Shehbaz Sharif is the joint candidate of opposition parties for the top post.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The central government on Monday dismissed former Allahabad Bank Managing Director Usha Ananthasubramanian on the day she was to superannuate from service, according to an official notification.

In May this year, Ananthasubramanian had been divested of all her powers as MD of Allahabad Bank after being named in a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chargesheet in the Rs 14,000 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud allegedly committed by absconding diamantaire Nirav Modi, but had continued to remain an employee of the bank.

Ananthasubramanian was Chief Executive of the PNB between August 2015 and May 2017, before moving to Allahabad Bank. She was earlier Executive Director at PNB from July 2011 to November 2013.

Official sources said on Monday that government has given permission to the CBI to prosecute Ananthasubramanian and former PNB Executive Director Sanjiv Sharan in the scam in which Modi's uncle Mehul Choksi is co-accused and who is also absconding.

In the chargesheet filed in May in a Mumbai court, the CBI alleged that Ananthasubramanian and other senior PNB officials were aware of the fraud going on for some time but did not take any corrective action.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress on Monday attacked Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, saying he is "a habitual offender in weaving lies" and is "brazenly misleading people sewing together a web of lies" to save Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Rafale deal.

The party demanded that Modi government immediately set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the Rafale scam and must answer to the questions raised by Congress President Rahul Gandhi.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday hit out at Gandhi, saying he is spreading a "blatant lie" against Prime Minister Modi and his government over alleged corruption in the Rafale deal to escape the Income Tax Department inquiry against him related to the National Herald case.

Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said: "Modi government's Law Minister is a habitual offender in weaving lies based on figments of his imagination.

"Today again he brazenly misled the people by sewing together a web of lies to save his master, Narendra Modi," he said.

Surjewala asked: "Who benefitted from the unilateral Rafale deal which snatched the Rs 30,000 crore ... contract from HAL, thereby benefiting a private entity...?"

"Why did BJP President Amit Shah deliberately hide his son's contingent liabilities and credit facilities worth Rs 97.35 crore and how did 'Shah-Zaada' multiply his earnings by 16,000 times?" he said.

Surjewla said the Congress President on Monday asked the same questions that he has been asking from the Prime Minister as to what is the reason of secrecy behind the Rafale scam deal.

"Why did PM Modi bypass the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS)? Why was Rs 41,000 crore loss caused to public exchequer by 300 per cent rise in the purchase price of Rafale planes from Rs 526 crore per aircraft to Rs 1,670 crore per aircraft?" said Surjewala.

"Why was India denied the transfer of technology to manufacture Rafale aircraft? Why was defence procurement procedure violated with impunity? The country feels sorry for the Law Minister, because instead of talking on the issue at hand, he was busy deflecting public attention by joining imaginary issues," he added.

Since Ravi Shankar Prasad was speaking about the secrecy clause and repeating the alibi which Modi gave during the "No-Confidence motion" debate, he should refer to the agreement between India and France concerning the protection of classified information and material in the field of defence and tell which paragraph states that the commercial cost of defence deals cannot be revealed, he said.

"During the No Confidence Motion debate, Modi was conveniently hiding behind the statement of French Government for not disclosing the price.

"PM's stand is inconsistent with the statement made by French President Emmanuel Macron on March 8, 2018 in an interview to a prominent news channel, stating that 'if the Modi government wanted to disclose some of the details to the opposition and Parliament, he won't interfere in such a discussion'.

"Where does the French President say that the commercial cost of the Rafale deal cannot be disclosed?" Surjewala said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pune is the most liveable city, followed closely by Navi Mumbai and Greater Mumbai in a ranking of 111 Indian cities with the national capital ranked at a lowly 65 on the Ease of Living Index released by the government here.

Thane is the fourth Maharashtra city that made it to the top 10 in the list. Other cities ranked among the best 10 are Tirupati, Chandigarh, Raipur, Indore, Vijaywada and Bhopal.

Notably, none of the cities in big states like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have made it to the top 10.

Chennai has been ranked 14, Hyderabad at 27 and Bengaluru at 85. Kolkata had refused to participate in the survey.

Gurugram is at the 88th spot. Rampur in Uttar Pradesh is at the bottom of the list that has Jammu and Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir at 95 and 100.

The Ease of Living Index was launched by Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Monday.

The survey based on four parameters -- governance, social institutions, economic and physical infrastructure -- was conducted in 111 cities across the country.

It is an initiative of the ministry to help cities assess their liveability on the bases of global and national benchmarks.

The survey was started to encourage cities to move towards an outcome-based approach to urban planning and management.

Its framework comprised four pillars -- institutional, social, economic and physical which are further broken down into 15 categories and 78 indicators.

The minister said evaluation of cities was done on a 100-point scale with the institutional and social pillars carrying 25 points each, five points for the pillar on economic and 45 points for the physical pillar.

A ministry official said the cities submitted data on more than 50,000 points. Secondary audit of 10,000 documents, physical audit of 14,000 units and survey of more than 60,000 citizens were completed which led to finalization of the index.

The assessment standards, according to the government, are closely linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and will provide a strong impetus to India's effort for systematic tracking progress of the goals in the urban areas.

Of the 17 SDG goals, eight are directly linked to India's ease of living assessment framework.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Monday dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a debate on the Rafale jet deal with France, reiterating his graft charge against the government.

He said that he was ready for a debate with Modi at any place and time to prove that the government will get each Rafael jet for Rs 1,600 crore against the Rs 540 crore when the contract was signed during the earlier UPA rule.

Addressing a meeting of party workers, he said that Modi could not look him in the eye when he spoke in Parliament on the aircraft deal.

"I spoke before the 'chowkidar' with a 56-inch chest. He was looking everywhere but towards me. A corrupt person when told about his theft can't see you in the eye," Rahul Gandhi said.

The Congress President said that during his 1.5-hour reply to the debate, Modi did not speak a single word about the Rafale deal.

He reiterated his charge that Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had lied to the nation that the aircraft price can't be revealed as per a pact between India and France.

The Congress leader had claimed that the French President had told him that there is no such pact and that the Indian government can reveal the price to anyone it wants.

Rahul Gandhi recalled that the UPA government led by his party had given the contract for 126 aircraft to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited because it had been making aircraft for 70 years. He said that when Modi visited France, the contract was snatched from HAL and given to "his (Modi) friend".

"Modi's friend did not make aircraft in his life. That businessman is in Rs 45,000-crore debt," Rahul Gandhi alleged.

He said that the contract was given to a company formed only 10 days before the contract.

Rahul Gandhi accused the Modi government of snatching jobs from the Indian youth as manufacture of the aircraft by HAL would have provided employment to lakhs of Indians.

The Congress leader said that the Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) of banks shot up to Rs 12 lakh crore during NDA rule from Rs 2.5 lakh crore under the UPA rule. He claimed that the entire Indian banking system has jammed.

The Congress President targeted Modi for failing to fulfil the commitments made to both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh at the time of the bifurcation of undivided Andhra Pradesh.

He said that if voted to power, the Congress would fulfil all commitments, including special category status for Andhra Pradesh.

Aiming at Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, Rahul wanted to know why he supported Modi on demonetisation, the Goods and Services Tax and other issues when the Prime Minister failed to fulfil commitments given to Telangana.

Rahul Gandhi said that Telangana has become the "capital of corruption" as only one family is reaping all the benefits.

He said that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi chief was no less than Modi in making false promises.

He said that if Modi promised Rs 15 lakh in every bank account and two crore jobs every year, Rao promised a job for every family and double bedroom houses to all the poor in the state.

Gandhi said that during the last four years, the TRS government had filled only 10,000 of the one lakh vacancies in government departments and built only 5,000 of the promised 22 lakh houses.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Landslides caused by rains in northern districts of Kerala like Malappuram and Kozhikode on Monday gave some anxious moments, but there was no loss of life or property since these occurred in uninhabited areas.

In Kozhikode, heavy rain resulted in small landslides in the hilly areas at Thiruvambady while a partially damaged bridge in Munipuzha was washed away by gushing waters.

Landslides were also reported from the interiors of Nilambur in Malappuram district even as authorities there were holding a meeting to review relief and rescue work.

The Chaliyar river was also swollen but things were said to be under control.

A minor landslide occurred near the Malampuzha dam in Palakkad district, though no damage was reported.

On Monday, people in some relief camps in Ernakulam and Thrissur returned to their homes.

Moderate rains were reported in Wayanad district, but those lodged in relief camps there and getting ready to return to their homes were asked by authorities to stay back as a precautionary measure.

Roshy Augustine, an opposition lawmaker from Idukki, said that Monday had passed off without any major incident in the district.

"Water level in the Idukki dam has come down further to 2,397 feet, the lowest since Wednesday, though no decision has been taken to close its five sluices. The water flowing down the Periyar river and its tributaries has not caused any fresh problems so far," Augustine told IANS.

The state Cabinet will meet on Tuesday in the state capital to take a decision on Idukki dam floodgates as well as other issues.

Eight of the 14 districts of Kerala have been affected by the monsoon, with thousands of persons displaced due to the downpour. Over three dozen persons have been killed, even as the defence forces were deployed for rescue and relief operations.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Engaging with potential job seekers online is positive for a company's employer branding and is demanded by 94.7 per cent of the regions job seekers, according to poll conducted by Bayt.com, a leading job site in the region.



Two-thirds of these job seekers (66.5 per cent) said they follow companies on job sites to learn about their work environment, said the report titled Employer Branding in the Middle East and North Africa.



That being said, the majority (82.3 per cent) of respondents believe that it is currently difficult to learn about company culture and work environment before applying for a job, including three in every four respondents (76.1 per cent) who say that it is very difficult. Only one in 10 respondents claimed that finding out sufficient information about the company culture and work environment was easy (10.9 per cent).



The Employer Branding Imperative



About 93.6 per cent of job seekers believe that a companys employer brand is important for its success, with 85.9 per cent stating that it is very important. When asked about the benefits of employer branding, seven out of 10 Mena respondents said ease of attracting job seekers (70.2 per cent).Others also mentioned recognition as an employer of choice (3.4 per cent), and better employee engagement (2.2 per cent).



Nine in every 10 respondents claim that online employer branding helps increase talent retention rates (89.8 per cent) and 79 per cent agreed that it can also help reduce long-term hiring costs.



Two-thirds of respondents believe that the most harmful thing for an employer brand is not communicating with talent (67.4 per cent), this is followed by an unprofessional work environment (6.6 per cent), unclear job descriptions (2.5 per cent), and lack of information on job sites (2.3 per cent).



When asked about who in the company was responsible for employer branding, a majority of the respondents answered that the onus lay on the HR department (69.1 per cent), followed by all employees (15.2 per cent), the marketing department (10.3 per cent), and the companys senior management (3.6 per cent).



The recent technological advancements and trends, which make information easily and readily accessible, have rendered employer branding one of modern-day essential business practices, said Suhail Masri, vice president, Employer Solutions, Bayt.com.



Indeed, in todays hyper-connected world, and amidst the ongoing battle to hire and retain the best talent, companies that manage their online presence and create a powerful online brand are able to better position themselves as an employer of choice among top talent.



Bayt.com provides employers around the region the essential tools to elevate their employer brand and become a more attractive workplace for potential job seekers. In fact, a full branding platform is now launched on Bayt.com to allow companies to share more information with their target talent, attract more applicants, and track and measure their brand power in real time, he added.



The Importance of an Employers Digital Presence



In todays digital era, one of the best ways to let people know about your work environment is by being active online and engaging with your audience. Humanizing the digital approach is essential to make potential employees relate to your company.



In fact, more than three quarters of Mena respondents believe that online job sites (79.9 per cent) work best for employer branding. Other channels such as social media (9.6 per cent), a companys own website (5.2 per cent), PR and media (2.2 per cent) and offline events and marketing (0.7 per cent) are reported to be less effective.



Nine out of 10 Mena respondents (93 per cent) say that they research a company online before applying for a job, while only 7 per cent do not. Job seekers in Mena follow companies on job sites to learn about their work environment (66.5 per cent), to find and apply for jobs (15.4 per cent), to evaluate a job offer (1.9 per cent), as well as to check the latest news and updates (1.8 per cent), and to prepare for an interview (1.6 per cent).



At 62 per cent, reputation and culture rate high on the list of priorities as an important type of information respondents need to know about companies. This, in addition to work environment and facilities, perks and benefits, and rewards and recognition are all important points of consideration for a quarter of Mena respondents (24.2 per cent).



The newly launched Bayt.com Branding Platform allows companies to target custom audiences through tailor-made mailers and ads with premium placement and homepage integration, as well as the ability to create a customized company profile to share more information with online talent, and real-time analytics for assessing employer branding performance.  TradeArabia News Service
Real Madrid's Spanish right back Alvaro Odriozola is to miss the UEFA Super Cup clash against Atletico Madrid with a right leg abductor injury, the Champions League reigning champion announced on Monday.

Although the La Liga club did not reveal for how long 22-year-old Odriozola would be sidelined, the recovery from this kind of injury could take between 1-2 weeks, reports Efe.

"After the tests carried out by the Real Madrid Sanitas Medical Services on our player Alvaro Odriozola, he has been diagnosed with a grade one injury in the abductor of the right leg. His recovery will continue to be assessed," the club said in a statement on its website.

The rest of the team, meanwhile, trained hours before travelling to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, the venue for Wednesday's clash.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A local RLSP leader was shot dead on Monday in Bihars Vaishali district, triggering angry protests by residents who went on a rampage forcing police to open fire and injuring several demonstrators.

Manish Sahni, the Prakhand Pramukh of Jandaha block, was targeted by unidentified men in broad daylight in the premises of the block office. Sahni was from the RLSP, whose top leader Upender Kushwaha is a Union Minister.

Angry over the murder, residents attacked the block office, damaged public property and set ablaze the police station.

The police then opened fire to disperse protesters, injuring seven people, police sources said.

RLSP is part of the ruling NDA, Kushwaha said he was shocked by killing of his colleague.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The authorities at the famed Hindu temple Sabarimala on Monday decided not to allow devotees as the Pamba river is overflowing -- a situation described as unsafe for devotees by the temple administration.

The temple is situated along the banks of the Pamba and devotees visiting the temple usually take a dip in the river.

Speaking to the media, A. Padmakumar, president of the Travancore Devasom Board (TDB) which manages the Sabarimala Temple, said that while all pujas and religious activities starting Wednesday will go on as usual, new devotees will now not be allowed.

"Orders have been given to see that if any devotee comes without knowing this directive, they will be sent back as the police have erected barricades. The river Pamba is overflowing and hence we have decided that it's not safe to allow devotees," said Padmakumar.

The decision of the TDB was taken after the shutters of a few small dams in Kerala's Pathanamthitta district were opened following heavy rain in the past two days.

The restrictions will remain in place till further orders.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In its first reaction to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's published interview, BJP ally Shiv Sena on Monday described it as "akin to sheer propaganda".

"The reporters sent questions to the PMO, which sent written replies. Many have treated it as an an interview. In other words, it is propaganda," the Sena said in 'Saamana' and 'Dopahar Ka Saamana,' the party's mouthpieces.

"It happens in China, Russia and Communist countries, a case of one-sided dialogue," it added.

The Sena pointed out how, in a direct interview, many questions could have been asked and any "fake statement" would have been detected by the interviewer. "That much freedom must be allowed to journalists.

"The incumbent Prime Minister seems to have ended this tradition. He answers what he deems proper and the interviews are published accordingly," the Sena said in a commentary.

It noted that in the interview, the Prime Minister indicated that seven million jobs were created in one year, of which 4.5 million came up between September 2017 and April 2018.

"The implication is that by 2019, double and triple number of jobs will be created, the PM feels," the Sena pointed out.

"If the interview had been conducted face-to-face, the journalist would have got the opportunity to ask supplementaries such as in which sectors these jobs have been created and how to verify (the claims).

"If so many jobs have indeed been created, then why do unemployed youths rampage on the streets for employment and job reservations?" it asked.

It said barely two years ago after demonetization, there were huge job losses, both in the organized and unorganized sectors.

"Mumbai's core job-creating sectors such as construction, production and service industries now resemble a desert," the Sena said.

"In the recent (Maratha) agitation, over 500 factories were attacked in Aurangabad and Pune, thanks to the government's policies," it said.

"In the past four years, the PM did not hold a single press conference, but expressed his mind through (radio program) Mann Ki Baat which the media reported, but it brought no laurels to Modi," Saamna said.

"Before the (2014) elections, Modi was a friend of the media, but after becoming the PM, he has retreated into a cage... If this continues, then many journalists may lose their jobs."

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chaterjee died at a Kolkata nursing home on Monday following a cardiac arrest and prolonged age-related ailments. Congress President Rahul Gandhi hailed him as "an institution", respected by all parliamentarians.

"I mourn the passing away of Somnath Chatterjee," Gandhi said after news came of the demise of the former 10-time parliamentarian.

"He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief," Gandhi tweeted.

Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal remembered him as "one of the greatest Lok Sabha Speakers India ever had".

"Extremely sad news about Somnath Chatterjeeji. One of the greatest parliamentarians of contemporary times he will always be missed by this country," Kejriwal tweeted.

Chatterjee died at 8.15 a.m at the Bellevue Clinic, where he was admitted on August 7.

He was critical following the heart attack he suffered on Sunday. He was also suffering from a kidney-related ailment and his condition was critical.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who died on Monday in a clinic, will be accorded a gun salute at the West Bengal Assembly. Later, his body will be donated to the state-run SSKM Hospital in line with his pledge.

First his body would be taken to the Calcutta High Court, with which he was associated for a long time. "Then it will be taken to the State Assembly where we will give him the gun salute, the highest honour of the state," Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said.

"Later his body will be taken to his residence and then to the SSKM hospital," she said.

Chatterjee had pledged to donate his body to the medical college in 2002.

The former Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader died at the Bellevue Clinic, where he was admitted on August 7 after a heart attack. He was also suffering from a kidney-related ailment.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee's family on Monday turned down the CPI-M leadership's request to drape the expelled member's body in a red flag and allow him to be taken to the party's West Bengal headquarters here and even barred one of the leaders from entering his house.

"The party had requested us that they want to take the body to the state headquarters for partymen to pay their respects. But we said, we don't want. The party had requested that they wanted to drape the body in red flag. We refused," Chatterjee's daughter Anushila Basu said.

Chatterjee, a 10-time Lok Sabha member -- nine times as CPI-M candidate and once as an independent backed by the party -- was expelled in July 2008 for refusing to resign as the Lok Sabha Speaker after the party withdrew support to the UPA-1 government protesting against the India-US civil nuclear deal.

Chatterjee died at a Kolkata nursing home on Monday, aged 89.

West Bengal Left Front Chairman and Communist Party of India-Marxist stalwart Biman Bose, who went to Chatterjee's South Kolkata residence to pay his homage, was red faced after Chatterjee's son Pratap Chatterjee asked him: "Why have you come here?"

Chatterjee told the security personnel that Bose was unwelcome.

Bose left but returned in the evening with CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury. But Chatterjee again asked him to leave.

Speaking to the media later, Chatterjee accused Bose of having "insulted and said bad things" about his father after his expulsion.

Anushila recalled that she had seen her father shed tears the day the CPI-M expelled him.

"I was in Delhi then. I told my father that from now on you are a free bird. My father asked me whether he has been show caused? I told him the truth... After some time, I went to see him at his chamber. I found him sitting ... with tears rolling down his eyes," she said.

Anushila said neither Chatterjee nor any other family member could accept the harsh decision.

However, she said Chatterjee to the last had a deep love for the CPI-M.

"We often tried to provoke him to speak against the party. But he never uttered a word against the party. So deep was his fondness.

"The divorce was only on pen and paper. But mentally, he was not divorced from the party," she said.

Anushila said a number of other parties and others had come to his father with many lucrative offers. "But his answer was always the same - No."

As per the CPI-M constitution, an expelled member has to apply for re-entry into the party. Feelers were sent to Chatterjee in that regard but he refused to apply on his own. But Chatterjee let it be known that he would be game if the party on its own took him back.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sri Lanka's Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundara on Monday said 25 new police posts will be set up covering all main the tourist spots across the country for visitors' security. And police personnel have been asked to learn Hindi.

The decision was taken after discussions with the Chairman and senior officials of the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA), Xinhua news agency quoted Jayasundara as saying.

He said a new uniform would be introduced to the Tourist Police Division.

In a few years, the tourism sector was expected to become the largest foreign exchange earner for the country. Therefore, ensuring safety of the foreigners visiting Sri Lanka will be a top priority for the police force, Jayasundara said.

"Officers of the Tourist Police Division should pay special attention to language training. In addition to English, they should also learn widely used international languages such as Chinese, Hindi and French," Jayasundara said.

Sri Lanka's tourism industry, once heavily scarred by a 30-year ethnic conflict, has become one of the leading industries after it was dubbed one of the world's greatest tourist hot spots by several international publications.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In the first major setback for the BJP government in Tripura, the Tripura High Court on Monday, rejecting the state government's decision, allowed a tribal based party to hold a demonstration here in support of their demands including introduction of the NRC.

One of the oldest tribal based parties -- the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) -- had sought permission from the police to hold a demonstration in Agartala on June 28, but the police refused to give consent forcing the party to move the High Court, which allowed it to organise the sit-in demonstrations.

"After June 28, we applied to the Tripura Police twice to allow us to hold the demonstration on July 7 and between July 15 and 19. But the state police denied permission citing law and order problems," INPT President Bijoy Kumar Hrangkhawal told the media.

He said: "After three rejections of permission to hold the demonstration, we sought the Tripura High Court's intervention in this regard. After four hearings of our petition, the High Court Chief Justice Ajay Rastogi today (Monday) allowed us to hold the demonstrations. We are yet to finalise the fresh date of our agitation."

Hrangkhawal, along with INPT General Secretary Jagadhish Debbarma, while briefing the media on Monday said that the Chief Justice while giving his verdict told the state government's lawyer that "government can not hold back the fundamental rights of an organisation and individual".

"The Chief Justice has referred several judgments of the Supreme Court on the same issues."

The tribal leaders said they would organise the demonstration within this month in support of their 3-point agenda, including introduction of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Tripura and withdrawal of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha in July 2016 to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955.

The INPT is also demanding more power to the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC), which has jurisdiction over two-thirds of the state's 10,491 sq km area, home to over 12,16,000 people, mostly tribals.

The TTAADC is a constitutional body first set up in 1982 under the seventh schedule of the constitution and later upgraded in 1985 under the sixth schedule of the constitution.

Debbarma said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) alliance government "wanted to destroy democracy in Tripura".

"For the first time in Tripura, a recognised political party was disallowed to hold a political programme and forced to go to the court to get justice. Democracy was upheld after the decision of the High Court," he stated.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Monday ruled out any truck with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), saying that his Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) will "remain a secular party".

He rubbished allegations by opposition Congress that he had entered into a secret understanding with the BJP.

He reiterated that both the Congress and the BJP had "miserably failed" and that a qualitative change in is required to ensure the country's rapid growth.

Rao, however, defended his meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he would meet him to discuss issues related to the state.

KCR, as the TRS chief is known, met Modi early this month. His second meeting with Modi in less than two months triggered speculations of an alliance with the BJP for the elections to the Assembly and the Lok Sabha.

The Chief Minister told a news conference that the TRS will go it alone in the elections and announce its candidates next month.

Asked if he is going for early Assembly polls, the TRS leader said the party were ready for any eventuality.

"It can't be called early polls as the Election Commission of India can hold elections any time six months before the end of the house term," he said.

He was briefing on the decisions taken at a meeting of TRS Executive, which set off speculations of polls being advanced.

KCR also made it clear that he still stands by his plans to form a non-Congress and non-BJP federal front for the Lok Sabha elections.

"The federal front may take a little time but it will become a reality. I am not in a hurry," he said.

The TRS Executive passed nine resolutions, which will be sent to the Prime Minister, urging him to fulfil commitments made to Telangana during the bifurcation of undivided Andhra Pradesh.

KCR criticised the NITI Aayog for allegedly failing to promote federal spirit.

The TRS chief also slammed Congress President Rahul Gandhi for what he called "uttering lies" while addressing meetings in Hyderabad earlier in the day. He advised Rahul to grow up by checking the facts.

On Rahul's remark that there is one-family rule in Telangana, the Chief Minister said that it is better than the Gandhi family.

He alleged that the Gandhi family want to keep others as their slaves. "People are not ready to let go their freedom and self-respect," he said.

He exuded confidence that the TRS will win over 100 seats in 119-member Assembly.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Kleindienst Group, developer of The Heart of Europe, a cluster of six islands on The World in Dubai, today unveiled the first Sweden Beach Palace at Sweden Island.

A tour was led by Josef Kleindienst, chairman of Kleindienst Group, who showcased the ultra-high-end property as part of the project to pioneer the freehold second home market in the UAE.

The Sweden Beach Palaces will consist of nine luxurious palaces, plus one super-sized version, set in the beautifully landscaped, lush green surroundings of Sweden Island. Each property will have its own private section of beach, and unique to the palaces, a fully-owned piece of the marine area plot, including a private coral reef.

The properties have been designed as second homes; Dubais first purpose-built luxury area for UAE residents to own a holiday property in their own country.

The second home market is a new concept for Dubai. While New York has The Hamptons and multiple cities in Europe have their own countryside and seaside getaway spots, Dubai has lacked an area where people leave their primary property and head to a second home for the weekend, says a statement.

Kleindienst said: The Heart of Europe is a unique and ambitious project aiming to develop Dubais luxury freehold second home market in an idyllic island location. Kleindienst Group, the biggest European real estate company in Dubai, is committed to playing a key role in the economic development of the UAE and support Dubais vision of becoming the worlds leading tourism destination. Catering to residents and visitors who are looking for a dynamic, cultural experience, our developments at The Heart of Europe will boost tourism in the UAE. It will also offer investors the opportunity to choose from a range of high quality holiday properties that will be part of a vibrant touristic destination that includes hotels, restaurants and world-class attractions.

Our journey to date has taken us to the unveiling of the Sweden Beach Palaces, one of the most luxurious freehold second homes in the UAE. Our vision is now turning into reality as we make real progress towards completing our project.

The first Sweden Beach Palace features seven plush bedrooms, each with its own en-suite bathroom. Five of the palaces will be fitted out with Bentley Home interiors, while the remaining properties will be bespoke to the individual owners.

Each property will incorporate a full gym and fitness centre including weights, cardio machines and stretching area, while the standout relaxation features include the Swedish temperature-controlled sauna, massage and spa room for therapy treatments, plus an extra special snow room that can be set as low as minus 5 deg Celsius. This brings residents the health benefits of traditional Swedish hot and cold therapy.

There will be an entire floor dedicated for guests, including plush rooms encouraging natural light and panoramic vistas. The master floor incorporates the master bedroom which has an exquisite freestanding bath made from a single piece of Italian marble. A stunning dressing room, with finely-finished wardrobes leads from the en-suite bathroom, featuring waterfall rain experience showers and a large multi-jet Jacuzzi.

Residents may choose from multiple options for relaxation and for hosting. The ground floor has a large open-plan area that is suitable for dining and unwinding, combined with breathtaking floor-to-ceiling windows and French-doors. These glass doors slide open onto a pool terrace, ideal for entertaining guests on a beautiful evening.

Stretching out from the terrace is a 115-sq-m infinity pool, with separate plunge pool and outdoor Jacuzzi/whirlpool. Surrounding the whole property are 67 varieties of plants, flowers and trees, creating a green canopy around the property and embedding the feeling of being away from the stresses of modern life in your very own tropical paradise.

For larger get-togethers, the piece de resistance is a 570-sq-m roof floor, with 360-degree views of The Heart of Europe, the Arabian Gulf and the twinkling skyline and coast of Dubai. The roof itself has been designed to mimic the upturned hull of a Viking boat, harking back to the roots of Sweden and its heritage. Residents and their guests may even head higher to the top of the roof, where there is a 75-sq- m open-air rooftop lounge terrace, ideal for stargazing and watching the world go by, says the developer.  TradeArabia News Service
US President Donald Trump said it was "great" that consumers might boycott American motorcycle manufacturer, Harley-Davidson if it moves some of the company's production overseas.

The President tweeted about the potential boycott on Sunday, reports CNN.

"Many @harleydavidson owners plan to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas. Great!" Trump wrote.

"Most other companies are coming in our direction, including Harley competitors. A really bad move! US will soon have a level playing field, or better."

Tensions have been brewing between the Trump administration and Harley-Davidson for months.

It started when the President imposed hefty tariffs on steel and aluminium imports earlier this year in an effort to bolster domestic manufacturing.

The European Union (EU) responded by pledging to raise tariffs on a list of goods that are imported from the US, including Harley motorcycles, CNN reported.

Harley said it stands to lose as much as $100 million a year, and the company pledged to shift some of its production abroad so that it could avoid the added tariffs on motorcycles sold in the EU.

Trump accused Harley of using the European retaliatory tariffs as "an excuse" for moving manufacturing abroad.

The President also said last month his administration was "working with other Motor Cycle companies who want to move into the US".

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two of the five sluices of the Idukki dam, opened after a gap of 26 years on Thursday, were ordered to be closed by the Kerala government on Monday after the water at the reservoir came down to the "safe" level.

Officials of the Kerala State Electricity Board, which manages the dam, briefed authorities that the water level at the dam now stood at 2,397 feet and hence the flow could be regulated.

The remaining floodgates will soon be lowered to 1.1 metres from 1.8 metres, officials said.

With this development, the flow of 7.50 lakh litres of water per second into the Periyar river will get reduced to three lakh litres.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two Malankara Orthodox Church priests accused in a rape case of a woman parishioner, Monday surrendered as per the directive of the Supreme Court.

Father Sony (Abraham) Varghese and Father Jaice K. George had moved the Supreme Court. The court asked them to surrender before a probe team on or before the Aug 13.

These two priests were on the run and had approached the Supreme Court, which for a while stayed their arrest till the case was disposed of. Early this month they were asked to appear before the probe team by Aug 13.

While Varghese appeared before a court in Thiruvalla, George appeared before the police at Kollam.

Varghese was later remanded in judicial custody till Aug 23 and George will be produced before a court tomorrow.

In this case the Crime Branch has charged four Kerala priests, including the two who have now secured bail, Father Job Mathew and Father Johnson V. Mathew.

The victim who regularly visited the church had accused five priests of sexually abusing her for a decade. Her husband had complained that she came under pressure from at least five priests.

It was one priest in the beginning who first exploited his wife and then started blackmailing her.

When she sought help from another priest, he too, threatened her and shared her contact with a fellow priest and she was eventually victimised by five of them.

The National Commission for Women is monitoring the case. One of the priests escaped action as the victim had mentioned only four names, according to the police.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday condoled the demise of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who died at the age of 89 at a Kolkata hospital.

In the condolence message issued by his office, Adityanath reminisced the value addition brought about by the late leader to the rich and illustrious traditions of Parliament.

He also credited Chatterjee with prioritising the welfare of the poor, marginalised and weaker sections of the society.

While praying for peace to the departed soul and extending his condolences to the bereaved family, the Chief Minister said Chatterjee's services as the Lok Sabha Speaker and a parliamentarian would always be remembered.

Chatterjee died at 8 a.m., on Monday following a cardiac arrest and prolonged illness.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US Ambassador to India Kenneth I. Juster called on Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju here on Monday.

The meeting at Rijiju's North Block office lasted half-an-hour, a Home Ministry spokesperson said.

The envoy and Rijiju discussed various issues for strengthening India-US relations, said the spokesperson.

On August 7, Juster held a meeting with Jammu and Kashmir Governor N.N. Vohra in Srinagar where they discussed matters relating to further strengthening of the rapidly advancing India-US understanding on several fronts.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Monday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence on incidents of rape across the country.

Addressing a meeting of women Self-Help Groups (SHGs) here, he said though Modi gave the slogan of "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao", he is maintaining silence on rape of women and girls in different states.

"A BJP MLA in Uttar Pradesh raped a woman but the Prime Minister was silent. In Bihar minor girls were raped but he did not speak a word. Incidents of rape are taking place across the country but he is not opening his mouth," he said.

Rahul, who arrived here on a two-day visit, kicked off the party's campaign for the coming elections to Telangana Assembly and Lok Sabha.

He said that Congress strongly believes that the country cannot progress without women and they should get their due in politics, economy and other spheres of life.

Stating that SHGs are key to women empowerment, Rahul said if Congress party comes to power in Telangana and at the Centre, it would extend all help to SHGs like its previous governments had done.

Rahul interacted with the women, who complained that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government has stopped bearing interest component for bank loans taken by SHGs. They also spoke about non-implementation of "Abhay Hastam", a contributory pension scheme for SHG members launched by the previous Congress government in undivided Andhra Pradesh.

The Congress president promised that if Congress is voted to power, it will bear interest of SHG loans and revive the pension scheme.

Rahul targeted Narendra Modi government for what he called waiving loans of 15 rich industrialists to the tune of Rs 2.5 lakh crore but not waiving loans of women, farmers, and small and medium enterprises.

He alleged that the demonetization was aimed at taking money from the pockets of poor and waive the huge bank loans of top industrialists and businessmen.

Terming GST (Goods and Services Tax) as "Gabbar Singh Tax", the Congress President reiterated that if voted to power, his party would implement GST with single slab and there will be no need for people to fill different forms every month.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Describing the pro-Khalistan rally in by the Sikhs as a conspiracy to divide the country, the on Monday questioned the Narendra Modi-led government's silence on it.

"As a sinister conspiracy is hatched to revive militancy in Punjab, why are BJP-Akali Dal mum? Why has the 56' been stunned into a conspiratorial silence? Isn't it a conspiracy to break the country? Why silence then?" spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala said in a tweet attaching a news report about the pro-Khalistan rally.

The Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), a human rights advocacy group with radical leanings, held what it calls a " Declaration" on an independence referendum for at Trafalgar Square in on Sunday.

Thousands of Sikhs and their supporters gathered to demand a 'Referendum 2020' campaign in

They also brandished banners reading "Free Punjab, End Indian occupation", " Referendum 2020 for Khalistan" and "We will re-establish Punjab as an independent country".
Anantara Hotels & Resorts in UAE invites guests to celebrate Eid Al-Adha with an array of different offers and culinary delights to create the ideal getaway.



This Eid, guests can choose from Anantaras collection of distinct, thoughtfully designed luxury hotels and resorts across the Emirates to make the most of the long weekend.



With Eid Al-Adha right around the corner, Anantara has put together some tailor-made deals for GCC travellers:



Eastern Mangroves Hotel and Spa by Anantara

Located in Sheikh Zayed Street, just minutes from downtown Abu Dhabi, Anantara Eastern Mangroves is set in the citys protected mangroves. Best seen from the resorts signature infinity pool and sun terrace, this tranquil backdrop is one of the many unique selling points of the stunning five-star resort.



This Eid-Al-Adha, there is a selection of stays to suit every need, starting with the Short Breaks Special. Designed for those booking a two-day or more stay and starting from Dh900 ($244.9) per night, guests will receive daily complimentary breakfast, 25 per cent off dining, 20 per cent off selected spa treatments throughout the stay and a complimentary room upgrade subject to availability.



For spa junkies looking to unwind over the long Eid weekend, Anantara Eastern Mangroves has created a Spa Essence package including daily complimentary breakfast and a signature 45-minute spa experience for two.

Rates start from Dh650 ($176.9).



Anantara Sir Bani Yas Island Al Yamm Villa Resort

Set on the sandy shores of Sir Bani Yas Island, Al Yamm Villa Resort is an eco-friendly resort delivering a one-off luxury beach experience on the edge of a nature reserve. Reminiscent of an old fishermens village, 30 spacious villas boast ocean and mangrove views.



UAE residents wanting to add exciting exploration to their Eid-Al-Adha staycations will love the Wild Adventure Special. Including a private villa stay, daily breakfast, two island activities and return boat transfers, rates start from Dh1,900 ($517.2) per room, per night.



Guests planning ahead can also enjoy the Advance Purchase Special from Dh1,640 ($446.4) per night, with exclusive savings of up to 30 per cent on rooms, as well as a delicious breakfast for two every day. Aimed at parents, the Family Island Getaway includes accommodation in a Deluxe Sea View Room for two adults and up to two children, complimentary daily breakfast, lunch and dinner plus a choice of one activity including Archery, Lagoon Kayaking and a Wildlife Drive. Rates start from Dh1,450 ($394.7).



Desert Islands Resort and Spa by Anantara

Desert Islands Resort is the perfect resort where guests can surrender to the fascination of nature in a desert island sanctuary; the resort offers a perfect getaway for families with up to two children, enjoying full board dining and a choice of unforgettable activities.

Rates start from Dh1,450 ($394.7).



Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort by Anantara

Located in the legendary RubAl Khali, the largest uninterrupted sand desert in the world, and with only a two-hour drive from Abu Dhabi, Qasr Al Sarab offers palatial luxury in the heart of the Empty Quarter. For Eid-Al-Adha guests can indulge in a luxurious Anantara Pool Villa including daily breakfast starting from Dh1,999 ($544). One of the true highlights of the resort is exploring its surrounding golden dunes, with the Desert Discovery. This includes two desert activities and complimentary breakfast for those staying two nights or more with rates starting from Dh1,390 ($378.3).



Anantara The Palm Dubai Resort

Ideally located for a Dubai staycation, Thai-Inspired beach haven Anantara The Palm Dubai Resort has a great offer for a family-friendly Eid-Al-Adha. Guests can have the pick of a beach pool villa with private swimming pool and direct access to the beach or a beautiful overwater villa, with those booking through the resort website receiving a credit for up to Dh300 ($81.6) per stay to be used on food, drinks or pampering at Anantara Spa. The resort features three chilled, giant lagoon pools that flow throughout the resort as well as a large infinity pool and a pristine beachfront. - TradeArabia News Service
Senior BJP leader and former minister Lal Singh, who has often courted controversy with his remarks, on Monday asked people of the Jammu region to hoist the tricolour at their houses on the Independence Day as they are "nationalists to core unlike the people of Kashmir".

Singh accused Kashmir-based rulers of discriminating with the Jammu region over the past seven decades and said his recently launched outfit called 'Dogra Svabhiman Sangathan' would fight to restore the pride of Dogra community.

"We appeal to the people of the region to hoist the tricolour at their houses on the Independence Day and celebrate the day with great enthusiasm. Jammu is about absolute We are 100 per cent nationalists unlike those from Kashmir," the former minister said.

He said Kashmir-based leaders have ruled the state for the last 70 years and now it's time for the people of Jammu region to come to power.

"All the governments have not done justice with Jammu which faced worst kind of discrimination over the past 70 years and used it as a ladder (to grab the power)," the BJP leader told reporters.

Singh has made several controversial remarks in recent past, including on the Kathua rape case and after the killing of senior journalist Shujaat Bukhari in Srinagar.

He had said the Kathua rape case was a "conspiracy" against the people of Jammu.

Singh had to quit soon after his remarks on the Kathua case involving alleged gangrape of a minor girl from a nomadic community.
President on Monday slammed the as "Gabbar Singh Tax" and said that one slab would be implemented when the " party-Government" comes to power at the Centre.

Speaking at an interactive meeting with women Self-Help Groups, organised by the Pradesh Committee, he also attacked the NDA government, saying it waived loans of Rs 2.5 trillion of the 15 richest businessmen in the country during the past two years.

"No, (it is) Gabbar Singh Tax. This is a way of removing money from the pockets of the poor. This is not GST, this is Gabbar Singh Tax. When the Congress Party government comes (to power), we will give you -

In that, there will be only one tax level. There will not be five different taxes. In that, you will not have to fill different (compliance) forms every month", he responded to a woman who complained about being levied GST.

Gandhi arrived in Hyderabad to a rousing reception on a two-day visit, his first to after becoming the party President.

The Congress leader also said he would not make false promises and pointed out that the Karnataka government, in which Congress was also part of, was implementing the farm scheme.

While talked about the implementation of MSP to the tune of Rs 100 billion for the entire country, the Congress Government in Karnataka had implemented of Rs 300 billion he said.

Even as the poor stood in queues at banks for their money after demonetisation was announced in November 2016, the cash deposited by them was used to cater to of the rich, he alleged.

He also attacked the TRS government in

"Today, one-family government is running in Telangana.All benefits are being given to one family.

Lands of farmers are being snatched, women SHGs are not helped, support required to be given to farmers is not given and only corruption is seen," Gandhi said, targeting the family of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

Tomorrow, Gandhi would hold a teleconference with 31,600 booth committee presidents, mandal and district Congress presidents and also state unit office bearers.

Later, he would address about 150 young industrialists and CEOs from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

In the evening, would attend a public meeting of students and unemployed youth at Saroornagar stadium.

He would leave for Delhi by 8.30 PM that night.
Union Minister K J Alphons today termed Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Isaac's comment that the Centre's relief of Rs 100 crore for the flood-hit state was inadequate, a "political" one and alleged that he did not visit the worst-affected areas.

This comes a day after Home Minister Rajnath Singh sanctioned a grant of Rs 100 crore to flood-ravaged Kerala where 39 people have lost their lives in unprecedented rainfall, with the state pegging its damages at Rs 8,316 crore.

The Kerala government had sought an assistance of Rs 1,220 crore from the Centre to tide over the crisis.

Today, Isaac took to Twitter to say the "precious" Rs 100 crore was "from the regular disaster management fund due to Kerala".

During a media interaction at the Indian Women's Press Club in the national capital, Union Tourism Minister Alphons said "Thomas Isaac is complaining all the time. This is a completely political statement. During the UPA rule, the ministers from Kerala never visited the state in the event of a disaster unlike under the current regime.

"We went there; the home minister, I, MoS (home) Kiren Rijiju, we all went. Isaac never visited his constituency Alleppey during these floods. What is he talking about? I have asked for a special package for Kerala."



Alphons further said that there are clear guidelines for providing relief for disaster-hit states and the government has followed prescribed norms to offer assistance to Kerala.

He said there was no scope for any "discrimination" against any state.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had earlier said rebuilding affected areas will be arduous task and that he has been personally campaigning to get generous donations to the relief fund.

The state government is providing Rs 4 lakh for those who lost houses and Rs 6 lakh for those who lost land, apart from Rs 3,800 per family in affected parts.

The usual range for the first two categories is around Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3 lakh, and the Rs 3,800 aid is unprecedented.

Beyond these, the Kerala government has announced that it would provide compensation for farm-related damages by providing thrice the amount of what central rules mandate.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Four days of ferocious fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban over a key provincial capital has claimed the lives of about 100 Afghan policemen and soldiers and at least 20 civilians, the defence minister said today.

The staggering numbers provided by Gen. Tareq Shah Bahrami were the first official casualty toll since the Taliban launched a massive assault on Ghazni, the capital of Ghazni province, last Friday.

The multi-pronged assault overwhelmed the city's defences and allowed insurgents to capture several parts of it. It was a major show of force by the Taliban, who infiltrated deep into this strategic city barely 120 kilometers from the capital, Kabul.

The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces.

The fall of Ghazni, a city of 270,000 people, would mark an important victory for the Taliban. It would also cut off a key highway linking Kabul to the southern provinces, the Taliban's traditional heartland.

Bahrami, the defence minister, spoke to reporters at a press conference in Kabul today.

He said the casualty figures are not yet definite and that the numbers might change. He didn't offer a breakdown of the casualties but Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak said nearly 70 policemen were among those killed.

Bahrami said about 1,000 additional troops have been sent to Ghazni and helped prevent the city from falling into Taliban hands. He also said 194 insurgents, including 12 leaders, were killed with Pakistani, Chechen and Arabs foreign fighters among the dead.

The attack on Ghazni began on Friday, with insurgents infiltrating people's homes and slipping out into the night to attack Afghan forces.

The Taliban also destroyed a telecommunications tower on the city's outskirts, cutting off all landline and cell phone links to the city and making it difficult to confirm details of the fighting.

Afghan authorities have insisted that the city would not fall to the Taliban and that Afghan forces remained in control of key government positions and other institutions there.

Najib Danish, the Interior Ministry's spokesman, said earlier today that reinforcements have been sent to Ghazni to clear the remaining Taliban.

Col. Fared Mashal, the province's police chief, said the majority of the insurgents fighting in Ghazni are foreigners, including Pakistanis and Chechens.

"The Taliban have failed in reaching their goal," Mashal added.

Over the past months, the insurgents have seized several districts across Afghanistan, staging near-daily attacks on Afghan security forces, but have been unable to capture and hold urban areas.

The US and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, but have since then repeatedly come to the aid of Afghan forces as they struggle to combat the resurgent Taliban.

The United Nations has expressed its concerns for the civilians caught up in the fighting in Ghazni.

Ghazni's residents "have seen their city turn into a battlefield since Friday morning, with fighting and clashes reportedly still ongoing. We have received initial reports of a number of civilian casualties and of people trying to reach safe areas outside of the city," said Rik Peeperkorn, acting U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan.

Ghazni's hospitals are running out of medicines and people are unable to safely bring casualties, Peeperkorn's statement added. Electricity, water supply and food are also running low, the statement said.

"Parties to the conflict need to ensure that access to medical services is not denied and respect for medical facilities and staff is upheld," Peeperkom said.

Meanwhile, the International Federation of Journalists and the Afghan Independent Journalists Association jointly put out a statement condemning the violence in Ghazni and attacks on journalists there.

Media technician Mohammad Dawood was among those killed in Ghazni, the statement said, and also condemned the torching of Ghazni's radio and television station.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 15-year-old girl was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Ramban district of Jammu and Kashmir following which her relatives staged a protest on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway, a police official said today.

Simran Rakwal, a Class 9 student, was found dead inside her house at Karool village yesterday, he said.

A police party was rushed to the spot and it took the body for postmortem while inquest proceedings were started to ascertain the cause of her death.

After completion of all legal and medical formalities, the body of the deceased was handed over to her family for last rites, the official said.

Meanwhile, a group of people, including family members of the girl, today took to streets and blocked the Jammu-Srinagar national highway near Ramban, demanding a thorough probe into the mysterious death of the girl.

"Senior police and civil officials visited the protesters and persuaded them to disperse assuring a fair investigation in the case," the official said.

According to preliminary investigation, the girl had apparently committed suicide over some issue, he said.

"We are awaiting the postmortem report and things will get clear once it is received," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The maiden session of Pakistan's newly-elected Parliament began today with the outgoing speaker administering oath to 331 members as part of the process of transition and handing over powers to the new government.

Ayaz Sadiq, speaker of the previous National Assembly, presided over the 15th Parliament's session and administered oath to the new leaders in the 342-member lower house. The new members signed their presence in a register.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two brothers were killed and six others injured when their car overturned in an attempt to save a cow in Rajasthan's Sikar district today, a police official said.

The car was on its way to Salasar from Jaipur, said Ghasiram, a sub-inspector posted at Sadar police station.

The deceased were identified as Ashish Saini (26) and Nikhil Saini (22).

Three critically injured people were referred to a hospital in Jaipur, the sub-inspector said.

The bodies were handed over to family members after postmortem and a case was registered against the car driver, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a novel protest, around 250 people got themselves tonsured in neighbouring Mahoba district demanding statehood to Bundelkhand region, spread over parts of Uttar Pradesh and contiguous areas in Madhya Pradesh.

Under the banner of Bundeli Samaj, they demanded carving out of a separate Bundelkhand state from Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh on the lines of Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Telangana.

Convenor of the Bundeli Samaj, a social organisation, Tara Patkar said, "For the last 46 days, nearly 250 people have been sitting on a fast in Mahoba demanding a separate Bundelkhand state. Until the demand is met, labourers and working class of the region will continue to suffer."



Patkar claimed that the BJP has forgotten its promise of giving a separate Bundelkhand state to the people.

Bundelkhand is a hilly region spread over Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Seven districts in Uttar Pradesh -- Banda, Mahoba, Hamirpur, Lalitpur, Jhansi, Jalaun and Chitrakoot -- and eight districts in Madhya Pradesh fall under this region.

"Yesterday, around 250 supporters of a separate Bundelkhand state got their heads shaved off at Ambedkar Park near Alaaha Chowk in Mahoba. For this, as many as 10 barbers were employed and it took them almost three hours to complete the task," Patkar said.

The protestors also said they would intensify their stir in the coming days.

The demand for splitting Uttar Pradesh into Harit Pradesh (western UP), Poorvanchal (eastern UP), Bundelkhand and Awadh is raked up from time to time and come elections, it gains momentum.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), headed by Mayawati, was once a strong supporter of the demand when the Samajwadi Party was in power, on development and law and order issues, maintaining that smaller states could be governed better.

Dalit icon B R Ambedkar, the architect of the Constitution had recommended division of Uttar Pradesh in his book 'Bhashayi Rajya'.

As the chief minister, Mayawati had first raised the issue in 2007 and her government had even adopted a resolution in the Assembly seeking division of the state into four parts.

Both the BJP and the Congress had supported the resolution brought by Mayawati in the 403-member House.

But, as Mayawati lost power in 2012 after winning just 80 seats against 206 seats in 2007, her demand lost steam.

The BJP-led NDA had carved out Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh from UP, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh respectively, giving rise to speculation that it might favour further division of the most populous state.

Besides the RLD, Raja Bundelas Bundelkhand Congress, Kalyan Singh's erstwhile Jan Kranti Party, Amar Singh's now defunct Rashtriya Lok Manch and Ayub Khan's Peace Party too had time to time pitched for division of the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least 18 people were killed in Himachal Pradesh while nine died in Uttar Pradesh as heavy rains pounded several parts of north India triggering landslides in hill states and many rivers flowing above the danger mark.

A four-year-old girl died at Roorkee in Uttarakhand's Haridwar district after falling in an irrigation canal which was at spate following rains, while a woman was injured when the thatched roof of a house collapsed.

The weather department has warned of heavy to very heavy showers in at least eight districts of the state till tomorrow and asked tourists visiting the hilly areas and people living in the low-lying areas to remain alert.

The State Emergency Operations Centre has issued instructions to the district magistrates to maintain vigil as there is possibility of cloudbursts.

In Himachal Pradesh, incessant rains since yesterday triggered landslides at several places, closing roads and forcing authorities to advise tourists to reschedule their visit to the state.

Six national highways were among 923 roads closed due to landslides during heavy rains in Himachal Pradesh since yesterday, a state government official said.

People residing in low-lying areas have been asked not to go near the Beas River as water is being released from the Pandoh Dam in Himachal Pradesh's Mandi district.

Kinnaur district officials said the Rispa bridge was washed away due to heavy rains and efforts are on to restore traffic movement by setting up a span bridge.

BJP chief Amit Shah's proposed visit to Shimla on August 16 has been cancelled due to persistent rains, a Himachal Pradesh BJP leader said today.

While all government and private schools in Shimla, Kinnor and Kullu districts will remain closed tomorrow, authorities in Kangra, Mandi, Una, and Hamirpur have ordered closure of all educational institutes there.

Schools in several districts in the state remained shut today due to heavy rains.

According to information received at the state headquarters, eight people were killed in Solan district, four in Mandi, two each in Hamirpur and Kangra districts and one each in Bilaspur and Una.

The Himachal Pradesh government has released Rs 96.50 crore for relief and rescue operations following loss of human life and the property, an official said.

In Uttar Pradesh, three people died in Basti, two each in Sitapur and Kannauj and one each in Sonebhadra and Bijnore in rain-related incidents since last night as thundershowers lashed several parts of the state, officials said.

The Ghaghra river at Elgin Bridge in Barabanki, Ayodhya, and Turtiparin Ballia was flowing above the red mark, while the Sharda river was flowing above the danger mark at Palia Kalan, a Central Water Commission report said.

The Ganga at Narora, Fatehgarh, Gumtia, Ankin Ghat and Kanpur, and the Yamuna at Prayag Ghat in Mathura, Sai at Rae Bareli, Rapti at Balrampur and Bansi, Quano at Chandradeep Ghat flowed at dangerous levels.

Rains lashed many places in Haryana and Punjab, with Chandigarh, the joint capital of both states, receiving 21.2 mm of rains during the day.

In Haryana, heavy rains lashed Panchkula district and Ghaggar and Tangri rivers were in spate. There were reports of rain waters entering some slums in low-lying areas.

Punjab's Mohali, Rupnagar, Patiala, Jalandhar were among other places which received heavy rains.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Twenty six Indian fishermen and three others were today set free from jails by Pakistani authorities in a goodwill gesture.

The freed prisoners were handed over to authorities at the joint check post at Attari-Wagah border, officials said.

India also released seven Pakistani prisoners who were handed over to the concerned authorities today, they said.

Among the prisoners released by Pakistan was Gajanand Sharma who was missing from Jaipur since 1982.

Sharma's family was unaware of his whereabouts until they were informed by the Pakistan embassy few months back, officials said. In Sharma's absence, his wife worked as a domestic help to look after their children, they said.

All released prisoners crossed over to India on the basis of an 'Emergency Travel Certificate' issued by the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.

After the repatriation, medical examination of all prisoners was conducted by a team of doctors.

On crossing over to the Indian side, the prisoners bowed down and kissed the soil. Many had their eyes moist while some looked relieved.

Fishermen from Pakistan and India are frequently detained on charges of illegal 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 being drifted away.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dusit International has signed a management agreement with Vogue Pranang Bay Resort to operate the dusitD2 Ao Nang, slated to open in Krabi, Thailand at the end of this year.



The dusitD2 Ao Nang will be the second Dusit property in the popular resort area of Krabi.



Located 25 kilometres from Krabi International Airport, the new dusitD2 Ao Nang is tucked away amidst lush jungle greenery on a hillside in downtown Ao Nang, yet within walking distance to the beach, providing convenient access to all of Krabis main attractions.



The downtown location of dusitD2 Ao Nang will also enable guests to be within walking distance to nearby facilities such as supermarkets and convenience stores as well as cafes and fast-food outlets.



DusitD2 Ao Nang comprises 173 modern guest rooms and suites with a choice of sea, mountain or pool views. The hotel offers all amenities for a fun and comfortable getaway, including an indoor and outdoor all-day-dining restaurant, a lobby bar, an outdoor swimming pool with a separate kids pool, a fitness centre, a spa, and a 200-square-metre ballroom. For families travelling with children, dusitD2 Ao Nang also features an extensive kids playground that will keep the hotels youngest guests entertained throughout their stay.



Popular activities in Krabi around dusitD2 Ao Nang include jungle trekking, sightseeing excursions and boat trips to some of Thailands most stunning beaches and islands, located within protected national marine parks, for snorkelling, scuba diving, kayaking and bird-watching.



Krabis famous limestone hills and caves also attract climbers from around the world, especially the limestone rock faces at Railay Beach, where several popular rock-climbing schools can be found.



We are very happy to be bringing the dusitD2 brand to Ao Nang, said Suphajee Suthumpun, group chief executive officer, Dusit International. This beautiful area has always been very popular with visitors and adventure-seekers from Thailand and all over the world. We look forward to welcoming all our guests to the new dusitD2 Ao Nang, which combines modern comfort, convenience and connectivity with the excellent service and hospitality that is the hallmark of all Dusit hotels.



Watcharaphon Deechaisettha, Vogue Pranang Bay Resorts chief business development officer, said: "Krabi is one of the fastest-growing destinations, especially amongst younger travellers. We are very pleased to work with Dusit to present a fresh new option to meet the needs of the tourists who seek a mix of relaxation and recreation in this resort area. We believe that our knowledge of Krabi, and the proven management expertise and Thai graciousness that Dusit will bring to this project, will create a successful collaboration."



The upscale mid-market dusitD2 Ao Nang is a rebrand of the previous Vogue Resort and Spa in this popular seaside town. The property has been entirely refurbished and updated, with new additions to the existing buildings.



Dusit International currently operates 27 hotels across four brands worldwide and is rapidly expanding its footprint in key global markets. DusitD2 Ao Nang will be the third dusitD2 branded hotel in Thailand, following dusitD2 Chiang Mai and dusitD2 Kao Yai. - TradeArabia News Service
The Gautam Buddh Nagar administration will provide five free plants to farmers tomorrow as part of the Uttar Pradesh government's green initiative for the Independence Day, officials said.

"All farmers across the district can visit their nearest mandi tomorrow to get five saplings free of cost," District Magistrate Brajesh Narayan Singh said.

"The farmers can plant these saplings along their farms or around their houses. Besides the environmental benefits, the plants can later help them with wood and financially," he said, according to an official release.

The initiative is part of the Yogi Adityanath government's for enhancing green cover across the state on the Independence Day.

Principal Secretary, Agriculture, UP,Amit Mohan Prasad said the state government has decided to launched a massive afforestation drive on August 15.

"The Agriculture Department and the Mandi Parishad have joined hands to provide every farmer with five saplings each on August 14 to be planted on the Independence Day," Prasad said.

Separately, the Noida Authority is already gearing up to plant 86,725 saplings across the city on August 15.

The saplings will be planted at 37 locations, including parks, on the side of roads and under metro rail corridors,Noida Authority General Manager Rajeev Tyagi had said. PTI KIS



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Five hardline Islamists were sentenced to death today by a special Bangladeshi tribunal for committing crimes against humanity and siding with the Pakistani troops in carrying out the genocide during the Liberation War in 1971.

A three-member panel of Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal led by Justice Shahinur Islam handed down the capital punishment to the five men for raping at least 15 women of Itabaria village of Patuakhali during the Liberation War.

They were also sentenced to death for killing 17 people, vandalism, arson, abduction and torture in the same village in 1971, the bdnews24 reported.

The judges said the convicts had used rape as a weapon and that their victims had to live with the repercussions of those attacks for the rest of their lives.

"These women are our true war heroes. It is time to recognise them, the tribunal said in the verdict.

Pronouncing its verdict, the said that the five convicts -- Md Esahaque Shikder, Abdul Gani alias Gani Howlader, Md Awal, Md A Sattar Pada and Solaiman Mridha alias Soleman Mridha -- should be hung until they were dead.

According to the prosecution, the convicts were supporters of the Conventional Muslim League (CML) prior to 1971, but they were involved with the local wing of the Bangladesh National Party at the time of their arrests in 2015.

The CML was a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League that split-off in 1962, in support of the military regime of the then Pakistani president General Ayub Khan.

The International Crimes Tribunal had indicted the five men on March 8 last year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said today that there are about 50,000 self-help groups (SHGs) in the state which can generate employment on a big scale.

He appealed to all the banks to achieve the target of connecting 5 lakh people of the state with the BHIM App for transactions by Diwali this year.

"If one SHG gives employment to 10 persons then through SHGs, about 5 lakh people would get self-employment opportunity," he said.

While addressing people in a function organised on the promotion of digital transactions, the BHIM App and disbursal of loans organised by the Finance Department and Lead Banks in Karnal, the chief minister urged the people to make their transactions through the app.

He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promoted economic revolution by getting bank accounts opened under the Jan Dhan Yojana, implementing the Goods and Services Tax (GST), linking Aadhaar cards to bank accounts and taking the step of demonetisation.

"The bank system has vital contribution to the economic revolution. Before the implementation of the Jan Dhan Yojana, there were 3.50 crore bank account holders in the country and later, it increased to 31.50 crore account holders, which is more than the population of several countries in the world," he said, according to an official release.

Khattar said that there are 4,800 branches of various banks in Haryana which have done transactions to the tune of Rs 2,34,699 crore.

He also urged the people to help the poor workers in getting loan under the Differential Rate of Interest (DRI) loan scheme, which would provide the benefit of about Rs 2,300 crore to the poor.

Finance Minister Abhimanyu said that each branch of banks has been entrusted with the responsibility to add every small shopkeeper or trader to this app.

This would change the way of transactions, bring transparency and save time, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A methane gas explosion in a coal mine in Pakistan's Balochistan province has killed eight miners while six others were still trapped, officials said today.

At least 13 miners were trapped thousands of feet under the ground when the mine, situated in Sanjadi area, about 50 kilometres east of the provincial capital Quetta, collapsed following an explosion last evening.

Bodies of eight miners were retrieved from the mine, they said.

The Balochistan Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) had earlier said that bodies of six miners were recovered while efforts were on to rescue the trapped miners.

According to Deputy Commissioner Quetta, Capt (retd) Tahir Zafar Abbasi, at least 13 miners were trapped after the underground methane gas explosion.

"According to our estimates, at least 13 miners were trapped in a 4,000 feet deep pit inside the coal mine," Abbasi was quoted as saying by the Express Tribune.

Senior officials, including Balochistan's Chief Inspector of Mines, have also reached the accident site to monitor the rescue efforts, which has slowed down due to lack of electricity in the area, the report said.

"It's going to be difficult to get them (trapped miners) out as rescue work is being slowed down because there is no electricity in the area," a local engineer said.

Meanwhile, Balochistan's caretaker chief minister Alauddin Marri has expressed his sadness on the incident, and directed authorities to rescue the trapped miners.

According to media reports, it is the fourth mine accident in as many months in Baolchistan province.

Four labourers had died on June 3 after they got trapped under the debris following a gas explosion in a mine in Sanjadi area. On May 6, at least 23 miners were killed when two coal mines collapsed near Quetta, GeoTV reported.

The first accident had occurred in Marwaarh, about 45 kilometres east of Quetta, due to a gas explosion. Later that day, another coal mine collapsed in Sooranj, in which seven miners were killed. Two miners were rescued in unconscious state, while bodies of two others were recovered later, the report said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Airports Authority of India will invest Rs 413 crore in the upgradation and expansion of the Jabalpur airport in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh.

The upgradation work include construction work of new domestic passenger terminal building with enhanced peak hour handing capacity of 500 passengers from existing 150 passengers besides extension of runway length to 2,750 metres from the current 1,988 metres, the AAI said in a release.

The Jabalpur airport will be developed at a total cost of Rs 413 crore, for which the foundation stone was laid by Union civil aviation minister Suresh Prabhu along with his junior colleague, Jayant Sinha, and a host of other dignitaries, it added.

An extended runway will make the airport suitable for A-320 type of aircraft operations, according to the release.

The proposed terminal building with an area of 9,350 square metre will be built with eco-friendly sustainable material and equipped with solar photovoltaic system and energy efficient equipment, it said.

An efficient solid waste management system, reuse of treated water for horticulture purposes and rain water harvesting system with sustainable urban drainage system are few other green features of the airport upgradation project, the AAI release added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Aam Aadmi Party slammed Delhi Police over an attack on student leader Umar Khalid by an armed man near the Constitution Club today, saying it was a "major security breach" in the national capital before Independence Day.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, however, termed the incident as "dicey" and demanded a thorough probe into it by Delhi Police.

Senior Aam Aadmi Party leader and spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj alleged it was a "failure" of Delhi Police that was "busy" "framing" Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other AAP ministers and legislators in false cases.

"It is a major security breach that an armed man attacked Umar and fired from a gun. Police should probe how a man carrying a gun attacks someone in Lutyens' Delhi where security arrangements are tightened in view of Independence Day," Bhardwaj said.

Senior BJP leader and New Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi demanded the police conduct a thorough probe into the incident.

During the incident, Lekhi was present at the Constitution Club to attend a party worker's meet held there.

"Police should conduct a thorough probe into this incident to expose those who are trying to create an atmosphere that anyone can be attacked like this manner," she told PTI.

The BJP MP said that there were certain things about the incident like no one was injured in the firing and that the gun was left behind by the attacker and also slogan shouting during the incident that need to be looked into by the police.

After learning about shooting, she went to enquire about the incident. She went into the hall at the club where senior Delhi Police officers were getting details of the incident from Khalid.

"I had gone to enquire about his wellbeing only," she said.

BJP legislator and Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta also demanded a thorough probe by police.

"It is premature to say anything about the incident but it looks dicey, prima facie," he claimed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An advocate has approached the Madras High Court seeking a direction to the Tamil Nadu government to punish police officials for the alleged security lapse during Congress president Rahul Gandhis visit to Rajaji Hall to pay homage to late former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi.

"There was a serious security lapse...at the hall on August 8. Rahul was literally isolated and made to go through a huge crowd of emotionally charged people on the overcrowded staircase to the hall, the advocate AP Suryaprakasam said.

Video-clipping shows that only one security officer was in front of the Congress leader and another security officer was precariously clinging to the railing of the staircase, both exposing their pistols and other arms they were carrying, the advocate said.

This apart, three people were killed, and scores others sustained serious injury because of the stampede, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After the Marathas, the Dhangar (shpeherd) community members in Maharashtra today staged protests seeking quota in jobs and education and blocked roads in some places during the largely peaceful agitation.

Leaders of the community, which is seeking quota under the scheduled tribes category, said the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), which is preparing a report relating to reservation for the community, must come out with it by August 26.

They warned that the protest would be intensified if the report is not submitted to the government by that date.

Led by various organisations, including the Dhangar Sangharsh Samiti Maharashtra Rajya (DSSMR), the community staged protests in parts of Mumbai, Western Maharashtra, North Maharashtra and Vidarbha.

Roads were blocked at some places in Ahmednagar district. Congress MLA Bhausaheb Kamble also joined the protesters in Ahmednagar district.

Members of the Dhangar community, now listed as Vimukt Jati and Nomadic Tribes (VJNT), staged a sit-in protest outside the district collector's office in Kolhapur, police said.

In Vasai in Palghar district, local Dhangars staged a sit-in, while in Alibaug they took out a protest march.

Similar protests were carried out in Latur, Parbhani and Jalna districts of Marathwada region.

"The protests we staged today were peaceful. In other states, Dhangars are referred to as Dhangad. In Maharashtra, none is listed as Dhangad, but Dhangars," Rajya Sabha MP Vikas Mahatme, who represents the Dhangar Sangharsh Samiti Maharashtra Rajya, said.

"Dhangar or Dhangad, both are same. The government should treat both as one," he said.

Mahatme said his organisation has already discussed the community's issues with the government, which he said is positive on the matter.

"But no priority is given to fulfilling our demands. There has to be a certain time frame within which the demand is to be fulfilled. We will wait till August 26 for the TISS report to be submitted. Or else, we will intensify our protest after discussions with community members," he said.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had in his televised address on August 6 said the report would be submitted to the government by the end of August.

Dhangars form roughly nine per cent of Maharashtra's around 13 crore population.

A youth from Dhangar community in Parbhani district allegedly committed suicide yesterday over the governments delay in granting reservation to the community, police said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
State-owned Air India today termed the aircraft grounding for maintenance a common practice, a day after one of its pilot unions alleged that as many as 19 aircraft were on ground due to lack of spares.

"It is a common practice for every airline to ground some of its aircraft for routine maintenance and checks periodically by its engineering department so that the aircraft are fit to fly in conformity to laid down standards," Air India said in a statement.

Asserting that it accords "top-most priority" to safety of the aircraft in its fleet, the airline said, "Our aircraft also go for these checks without affecting our flight schedule and causing inconvenience to our passengers."



Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA), which represents Air India's narrow-body fleet, had yesterday alleged that as many as 19 aircraft, including nine Airbus A321s, were taken out of flying due to want of spares, resulting in a significant loss of revenue to the carrier besides flight cancellations.

Besides, there are also aircraft fleet swaps which result in last minute change of inventory, the ICPA said in a letter to Air India chairman and managing director Pradeep Singh Kharola today.

"Almost 23 per cent of the Air India fleet is grounded for lack of spares. To put this into perspective, aircraft worth approximately USD 3.6 billion or approximately Rs 25,000 crore (at today's list price) are lying idle in the hangars," the ICPA had said in its letter.

The 19 aircraft which were on ground also included wide-body Boeing 777s, which are used for ultra-long operations, as well as B787 Dreamlines, which caters to airline's European network, it had said.

"Additionally, a significant number of flights are getting cancelled/rescheduled on a daily basis. There are also aircraft fleet swaps which result in last minute change of inventory resulting in non-optimal revenue management and utilisation," the ICPA had alleged.

Sources at the DGCA have also said that the regulator has completed a financial audit of the airline and will soon be submitting its report.

The financial audit of airlines, which has been conducted in the past too, is done to assess their fiscal health and also ensure that they are not compromising on safety due to financial stress.

The audit of Air India was necessitated as the airline has been defaulting on salary payments to its employees, besides grounding a number of aircraft due to payment issues with vendors, the source had said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Signalling resumption of the family feud over DMK stalwart M Karunanidhi's legacy days after his death, his estranged son claimed on Monday all loyal party workers were with him and that the DMK will "dig its own grave" if it does not take him back.

Karunanidhi had expelled Alagiri and his supporters from the party in 2014 at the height of his fight with his younger brother over establishing supremacy in Tamil Nadu's main opposition party.

Stalin is now the working president of the DMK and looks set to assume its reins.

Alagiri today paid tributes to his father at his grave on the Marina Beach and fulminated against Stalin, whom he accused of blocking his return into the DMK and selling party posts.

"All the true and loyal supporters of Thalaivar, Kalaignar (The leader and the artiste, sobriquets used for Karunanidhi) are with me, they are supporting me...time will provide the answer," Alagiri, who has been leading a life away from the media glare in Madurai since his expulsion, told reporters.

Later, speaking to an English TV news channel, Alagiri said, "Even if I am inclined to rejoin the party, they (Stalin and his supporters) are not in a mood to let me in."





"The DMK will dig its own grave if it does not take me back," he said, adding nobody from the Karunanidhi family was interested in talking to him to facilitate a reunion.

The Karunanidhi family had presented a united face when the DMK stalwart was fighting for life at a city hospital. Alagiri was present at the hospital and was seen at his father's funeral.

However, close watchers of Tamil Nadu expected him to flex his political muscle once Karunanidhi was gone.

The former union minister wields considerable influence in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu. He was the party's secretary for these districts before his expulsion.

When asked why there was opposition to his returning to the DMK fold, he shot back, saying "How do I know? You (media) have said I have a good reputation and the cadre likes me....they (Stalin and his backers) have that fear.... there could be a thought that I might become the party chief if I am taken back...that may be the reason."



Alagiri said several people in the DMK were in touch with Tamil film superstar Rajinikanth, who has said he will launch a political party.

"The party will crumble if it loses the Lok Sabha polls. Party posts are being sold," he said, adding "Thalaivar will punish them... his soul will not allow them go scotfree."





The development came a day ahead of the DMK's executive committee meeting that has been ostensibly convened to condole Karunanidhi's death but where a decision may be taken about summoning the party's general council for putting its seal of approval on Stalin's elevation.

Though Stalin sits firmly in the saddle and his ascension as DMK president is only a matter of time, Alagiri's tough posturing may prod his supporters in Madurai and adjoining districts to come out openly against the new party chief.

If that happens, the DMK, which has lost two successive assembly polls and failed to open its account in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, may encounter fresh electoral reverses in the general elections next year.
JACKSON COUNTY, Mississippi -- Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell said his department is investigating three separate cases of arsonists setting fire to vehicles in western Jackson County early Monday morning.

Ezell said two cars parked at a house in the Latimer community were set on fire around 2:45 a.m. Then, at roughly 5 a.m., another car was set on fire at the Oak Ridge Apartments in the St. Martin community.

There are currently no suspects in either fire, Ezell said, and it's unclear if the two incidents are related.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the JCSO at 228-769-3063 or Mississippi Coast Crimestoppers at 877-787-5898.
The deviant fantasy that has enveloped the weak minds of most Americans with respect to Russia conjure the image of a gleeful Putin, keen on conquering the world, lusting for blood and running a global criminal syndicate. And there stands Ma and Pa Kettle, our mom and dad, our brother and sister. It is up to us, the humble, peaceful Americans, who must lead the charge in thwarting this malevolent tyrant. This is the bullshit that is drowning the media in the United States and most appear quite willing to imbibe this toxic sludge.

How long can American citizens continue to display such an astonishing degree of ignorance when it comes to the topic of Russia and meddling in political affairs? The media is pounding away like a hyperactive child with a new drum--bang, bang, bang--insisting that Russia is every where in our political system and is controlling our destiny. This kind of bald faced lie goes beyond egregious. It is diabolical. It has only one purpose--provoke confrontation with a nuclear power. If that does not qualify as the true definition of insanity, then you are beyond the reach of reason.

1. The United States has carried out unlawful military operations in Russia. Russia has never done the same in the United States.

The U.S. Army's 339th Infantry Regiment, was sent in 1919 to Archangel, Russia and carried out attacks on Bolshevik forces along the ailroad between Archangel and Lake Onega. Nikita Kruschev recalled America's Russian Expedition by saying "We remember the grim days when American soldiers went to our soldiers headed by their generalsNever have any of our soldiers been on American soil, but your soldiers were on Russian soil. These are facts."

2. Since 1990, the United States has sent its military forces to fight wars in Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, Panama, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. Russia? It has supported rebels in the Ukraine and annexed Crimea after a national election. Total deaths from U.S. actions? Approaching 1 million. Total deaths from Russian military operations? Less than 5,000.

3. The United States continue to conduct multiple, annual military exercises, on a bilateral and multilateral basis, in countries that border Russia. These include naval exercises in the Baltic Sea and in the Black Sea. Russia has never conducted a military exercise in Canada or Mexico nor has it carried out naval and/or air exercises off either the Atlantic or Pacific coasts. Yet we claim that Russia is the aggressor.

VAZIANI TRAINING AREA, Republic of Georgia - Militaries from four nations participated today in the first ever helicopter troop insertion exercise by Georgian Special Operation Forces at the Vaziani Training Area, Georgia on Aug.6, 2018. The exercise included the U.S. Army, U.S. Army National Guard, Ukrainian Infantry Marines and mechanized infantry from the German Bundeswehr. This training evolution is one of many during Noble Partner 18. It is a Georgian and U.S. Army Europe-led exercise in its fourth iteration. The exercise is intended to support and enhance Georgian, participating nations, regional partners and U.S. readiness and interoperability during a multinational operation.

Exercise Rapid Trident 2018 will take place Sept. 3-15, 2018, at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center, Ukraine. Rapid Trident is an annual, multinational exercise involving approximately 2,270 personnel from 14 nations. The exercise is composed of:

 a multinational, brigade-level, computer-assisted command post exercise, that is

 integrated with a battalion-level field training exercise, and

 a platoon-level situational training exercise.

Saber Strike--Around 18,000 troops from 19 mostly NATO countries begin annual U.S.-led military exercises in Poland and the Baltic states on Sunday to boost combat readiness on the alliances eastern flank. The key objective of the eighth Saber Strike, which runs until June 15, is training and exercising NATOs four enhanced forward presence battle groups in land missions, with the usual U.S. focus on interoperability and joint operational capability.

Atlantic Resolve--is a demonstration of continued U.S. commitment to collective security through a series of actions designed to reassure NATO allies and partners of America's dedication to enduring peace and stability in the region. Since April 2014, U.S. Army Europe has led land forces efforts on behalf of the U.S. military, by conducting continuous, enhanced multinational training and security cooperation activities with allies and partners in eastern Europe.

BALTOPS--This year's installment (2017) of the annual exercise, known as Baltic Operations (BALTOPS), has gathered 55 aircraft, 50 ships and submarines and about 4,000 personnel from 14 nations, mostly members of NATO, to rehearse military maneuvers in the strategic European region. This year's large-scale drill deeply involves NATO's Forward Presence, the codename given last year to U.S.-led NATO's military buildup against what it perceives to be Russian military and political aggression in Europe.

4. Since the inception of the Soviet Union, the United States and the government in Moscow have waged a global information war against one another. It has only been in the last ten years that Russia's efforts in the information sphere have lagged behind what used to be the norm. The United States has been particularly aggressive in propagandizing the Russians. There was Radio Free Europe, there was the Voice of America and there were numerous CIA covert actions designed to flood the Soviet Union with "truth."

The United States, until recently, paid little attention to Russian covert information operations. Why? Because when we had an open society that stood in stark contrast to the rigidly controlled information in the Soviet Union, it was easy to spot foreign lies and was extremely difficult to control information and manipulate public opinion. The rise of the internet and the growing concentration of the media in the hands of a few corporations, especially in the West, has created a bizarre situation. On the one hand, it is more difficult for any government to control information flow. The variety of social media outlets provides a fertile ground for any aspiring writer . On the other hand, the concentration of the electronic and print media in a shrinking number of corporate giants, makes it easier to control who gets access to sanctioned media platforms.

If you watch any of the so-called "news" shows on U.S. cable you will quickly realize you are viewing a video version of the UK tabloids. It has little to do with news and a lot to do with shaping a message of the day. The fact that FOX News has a different message from CNN and MSNBC is more a commentary on the editorial and marketing decision to appeal to a narrow group of viewers. Total viewers of the most popular programs for the three main cable networks is less than 6 million a day. But that does not stop the push of a message that Russia is an enemy and must be stopped.

This phenomena is not confined to the U.S. It is rampant in the United Kingdom as well. Ironically, there is greater state-control of information in the U.S. and the U.K. than in Russia. It is the West that is moving towards what the old Soviet Union once was in embracing lies and pushing bizarre fantasies. Such as? Iran is the greatest sponsor of terrorism (it is not, most terrorism over the last 15 years has been carried out by Sunni groups with no ties to Iran). Or, our Department of Defense has been impoverished and is being rebuilt (fact--The U.S. defense budget is more than three times the size of Russia's and China's budget combined).

But why focus on facts when you distract and confuse the public with propaganda designed to paint Russia as an implacable, insatiable foe. That kind of language justifies multi-billion dollar defense budgets, expensive weapon systems and bloated intelligence bureaucracies. Paring back and cutting defense systems is verboten. Anyone who dares propose such nonsense is, by definition, a puppet of Putin and keen on selling America out to tyrants. Scary times.
Days after M Karunanidhi's death, the DMK today appeared headed for a fresh succession war the party patriarch's estranged son M K Alagiri claiming all loyal party workers are with him.

Karunanidhi had expelled Alagiri and his supporters from the party in 2014 at the height of his fight with his younger brother M K Stalin over establishing supremacy in Tamil Nadu's main opposition party.

Stalin is now the working president of the DMK and looks set to assume its reins.

Alagiri, a former union minister, today paid tributes to his father at his grave on the Marina Beach and fulminated against Stalin, whom he accused of blocking his return into the DMK and selling party posts.

"All the true and loyal supporters of Thalaivar, Kalaignar (The leader and the artiste, sobriquets used for Karunanidhi) are with me, they are supporting me...time will provide the answer," Alagiri, who has been leading a life away from the media glare in Madurai since his expulsion, told reporters.

Later, speaking to an English TV channel, Alagiri said, "Even if I am inclined to rejoin the party, they (Stalin and his supporters) are not in a mood to let me in."



"The DMK will dig its own grave if it does not take me back," he said, adding nobody from the Karunanidhi family was interested in talking to him to facilitate a reunion.

The Karunanidhi family had presented a united face when the DMK stalwart was fighting for life at a city hospital. Alagiri was present at the hospital and was seen at his father's funeral.

However, close watchers of Tamil Nadu expected him to flex his political muscle once Karunanidhi was gone.

The former union minister wields considerable influence in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu. He was the party's secretary for these districts before his expulsion.

When asked why there was opposition to his returning to the DMK fold, he shot back, saying "How do I know? You (media) have said I have a good reputation and the cadre likes me....they (Stalin and his backers) have that fear.... there could be a thought that I might become the party chief if I am taken back...that may be the reason."



Alagiri said several people in the DMK were in touch with Tamil film superstar Rajinikanth, who has said he will launch a political party.

"The party will crumble if it loses the Lok Sabha polls. Party posts are being sold," he said, adding "Thalaivar will punish them... his soul will not allow them go scotfree."



The development came a day ahead of the DMK's executive committee meeting that has been ostensibly convened to condole Karunanidhi's death but where a decision may be taken about summoning the party's general council for putting its seal of approval on Stalin's elevation.

Though Stalin sits firmly in the saddle and his ascension as DMK president is only a matter of time, Alagiri's tough posturing may prod his supporters in Madurai and adjoining districts to come out openly against the new party chief.

If that happens, the DMK, which has lost two successive assembly polls and failed to open its account in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, may encounter fresh electoral reverses in the general elections next year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP president Amit Shah today batted for holding Lok Sabha and assembly polls together, saying it would check expenditure and ensure that the nation is not in "election mode" throughout the year.

In a letter to the Law Commission, he said holding simultaneous polls is not only a concept, but a principle which can be implemented.

Shah said the claim that holding two sets of polls was against the federal structure of the country is a "baseless" argument.

On the contrary, he said, it would strengthen the federal structure of the country.

In his eight-page letter, the Bharatiya Janata Party chief said the opposition to simultaneous polls seems to be politically motivated.

The law panel, which is examining the feasibility of holding simultaneous polls, had sought the views of the political parties before finalising its report.

Both the BJP and Congress had stayed away from consultation organised by the commission in this regard last month.

The Congress had met the Commission top brass recently where it had opposed the concept of simultaneous polls.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has all along supported the concept of simultaneous polls.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Leader of Opposition Y S Jaganmohan Reddy mourned the demise of former Speaker of Lok Sabha Somnath Chatterjee.

In Somnath's death, India today lost an outstanding parliamentarian, who was elected to the Lok Sabha for a record 10 terms, the Chief Minister said in a message.

"As a longstanding parliamentarian, Somnath rendered exemplary services to the nation. He strove for the uplift of the poor and the downtrodden," Naidu said.

Somnaths death left a deep void that could not be filled, he said and extended sympathies to the bereaved family.

Expressing grief over Somnath's death, the YSR Congress president, Reddy noted that the former Marxist leader stood by values and embellished parliamentary decorum.

"The country has lost one of the most revered and articulate leaders driven by morals and values," he said.

AP Congress vice-president and former Assembly Speaker Nadendla Manohar too condoled the veteran Communist leader's death.

"As a parliamentarian and Speaker, Somnath enhanced the dignity of the House," Manohar recalled.

Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan also mourned the death of the former Speaker.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.

An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you've used privacy settings that say they will prevent it from doing so.

Computer-science researchers at Princeton confirmed these findings at the AP's request.

For the most part, Google is upfront about asking permission to use your location information. An app like Google Maps will remind you to allow access to location if you use it for navigating.

If you agree to let it record your location over time, Google Maps will display that history for you in a "timeline" that maps out your daily movements.

Storing your minute-by-minute travels carries privacy risks and has been used by police to determine the location of suspects such as a warrant that police in Raleigh, North Carolina, served on Google last year to find devices near a murder scene. So the company will let you "pause" a setting called Location History.

Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where you've been. Google's support page on the subject states: "You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored."



That isn't true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.

For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are.

And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like "chocolate chip cookies," or "kids science kits," pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude accurate to the square foot and save it to your Google account.

The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Google's Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search.

Storing location data in violation of a user's preferences is wrong, said Jonathan Mayer, a Princeton computer scientist and former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission's enforcement bureau.

A researcher from Mayer's lab confirmed the AP's findings on multiple Android devices; the AP conducted its own tests on several iPhones that found the same behaviour.

"If you're going to allow users to turn off something called 'Location History,' then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off," Mayer said.

"That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have." Google says it is being perfectly clear.

"There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people's experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services," a Google spokesperson said in a statement to the AP.

"We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time."



To stop Google from saving these location markers, the company says, users can turn off another setting, one that does not specifically reference location information.

Called "Web and App Activity" and enabled by default, that setting stores a variety of information from Google apps and websites to your Google account.

When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account. But leaving "Web & App Activity" on and turning "Location History" off only prevents Google from adding your movements to the "timeline," its visualization of your daily travels. It does not stop Google's collection of other location markers.

You can delete these location markers by hand, but it's a painstaking process since you have to select them individually, unless you want to delete all of your stored activity.

You can see the stored location markers on a page in your Google account at myactivity.google.com, although they're typically scattered under several different headers, many of which are unrelated to location.

To demonstrate how powerful these other markers can be, the AP created a visual map of the movements of Princeton postdoctoral researcher Gunes Acar, who carried an Android phone with Location history off, and shared a record of his Google account.

The map includes Acar's train commute on two trips to New York and visits to The High Line park, Chelsea Market, Hell's Kitchen, Central Park and Harlem. To protect his privacy, The AP didn't plot the most telling and frequent marker - his home address.

Huge tech companies are under increasing scrutiny over their data practices, following a series of privacy scandals at Facebook and new data-privacy rules recently adopted by the European Union.

Last year, the business site Quartz found that Google was tracking Android users by collecting the addresses of nearby cellphone towers even if all location services were off.

Google changed the practice and insisted it never recorded the data anyway.

Critics say Google's insistence on tracking its users' locations stems from its drive to boost advertising revenue.

"They build advertising information out of data," said Peter Lenz, the senior geospatial analyst at Dstillery, a rival advertising technology company. "More data for them presumably means more profit.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The foundation stone for a High Court building in Arunachal Pradesh was laid by Chief Minister Pema Khandu at Naharlagun, near here, yesterday.

Calling it as a "historic day" for the state, Khandu expressed hope that the justice delivery system would be smoothened and fastracked with the coming up of the building.

"This is a dream that came true after 18 years since the permanent bench of the Gauhati High Court in Itanagar was inaugurated here exactly on this day in 2000," he said.

The chief minister said the new building would be built entirely from the states own resources without depending on the Centre.

He set a target of two years for its completion.

"For development to pick up pace, the state needs to have efficient justice delivery system and law and order in place," the chief minister said.

The chief minister thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister for Law and Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad for their support.

Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court Ajit Singh, Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein, state Assembly Deputy Speaker Tumke Bagra and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.

The chief minister lauded the service of Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court for his advisory role in strengthening the justice delivery mechanism in Arunachal Pradesh with the creation of new courts and manpower in the last two years.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senior bureaucrat Ashish Kumar Bhutani has been appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), according to an order issued by the Personnel Ministry today.

Bhutani, a 1992 batch IAS officer of Assam-Meghalaya cadre, has been appointed to the post till May 9, 2020, it said.

Launched in 2016, the PMFBY is in line with one nation one scheme theme.

It incorporates the best features of all previous schemes and at the same time, all previous shortcomings and weaknesses have been removed to ensure faster insurance services or reliefs to farmers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Assam Governor Jagdish Mukhi, Chief Minister Sarbanadna Sonowal and Leader of Opposition Debabrata Saikia today condoled the demise of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee.

The veteran Communist leader's stint as the Speaker of Lok Sabha would always be remembered as he took the integrity of the Speaker's independent position altogether to a new height and enriched Indian with his political prudence, Mukhi said in a statement.

"A prudent and towering personality in Indian politics, his death is a great loss to the country. Mr Chatterjee was a symbol of value-based and his long career as Parliamentarian is characterised by value and principle," he said.

Sonowal too expressed his condolences over the death of the veteran Communist leader, who breathed his last this morning in Kolkata.

"During his long career as Parliamentarian, he practised value-based and strengthened the foundation of democratic traditions in the country. Widely respected across the country cutting across the party line, his death is an irreparable loss to the country," Sonowal said.

The chief minister said his role as the Speaker of Lok Sabha between 2004 and 2009 gave a new meaning to the Chair.

Sonowal said Chatterjee can be considered as an ambassador who took the values of Indian democratic traditions throughout the world.

Saikia expressed his condolences at the demise of Chatterjee and said his death has deprived the nation of a towering Parliamentarian.

"Chatterjee's performance as Speaker of the Lok Sabha could serve as a lesson on how to conduct a House in a Parliamentary democracy," he added.

Assam Industries and Commerce Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary also condoled the death of Chatterjee.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Drug firm AstraZeneca Pharma India today reported a 10.36 per cent rise in its net profit to Rs 6.39 crore for the quarter ended June 30.

The company had posted a net profit of Rs 5.79 crore for the corresponding period previous fiscal, AstraZeneca Pharma India said in a BSE filing.

The company's revenue from operations stood at Rs 161.43 crore for the quarter under consideration. It was Rs 128.46 crore in the same period a year ago.

Shares of AstraZeneca Pharma India today closed at Rs 1,722.70 per scrip on BSE, down 2.08 per cent from its previous close.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least 100 security forces have been killed in the ongoing fight to push the Taliban from the embattled Afghan city of Ghazni, a government minister said today, four days after the fighting began.

"About 100 security forces have lost their lives and between 20 and 30 civilians have been killed," said defence minister Tariq Shah Bahrami during a press conference in Kabul.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union called the attack on its leader Umar Khalid today as a "culmination of the hate-filled propaganda spewed by the Modi government" against him and against all those who have questioned this regime.

Some unidentified men targeted Khalid at Constitution Club in the high security area near Parliament and gunshots were heard, but he escaped unhurt, according to eyewitnesses, even as the police asserted it will verify the incident.

"It is with grave concern that we wish to stand in complete solidarity with Umar Khalid. Today, an unidentified man opened fire on him. We see this cowardly act as a culmination of the hate-filled propaganda that this Modi government onwards has spewed against Umar, JNU students and all those voices who have questioned this regime," the JNUSU said in a statement.

In the new India, mob lynching and attacks on common people have become the norm and cow vigilantes are being given impunity which has further aggregated these incidents, they said.

"From the JNUSU, we would like to make it clear that no voice can be curbed and the students movement will continue to produce fearless voices. We also demand that the Delhi Police take appropriate action against those conspirators behind this attack. In this need of hour, we shall unconditionally stand by Umar Khalid and demand speedy justice," they said in the statement.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Mukhtar Ahmad

Whenever any community , sect, group or section gives a call for unity , it always implies unite against a common enemy. In the present scenario the call given by Muslim leaders / well-wishers is to unite among themselves as well as with other secular people to defeat BJP in election of 2019. Similarly all opposition parties are working for alliances to face BJP united. The Political alliance may benefit the parties in opposition to secure power in 2019 and therefore their efforts are understandable. But simply winning the elections with different alliance partners may not help them to work to stem the rot that we are in. As the country is passing through worst form of communal polarization, a strong government is needed with full commitment to restore mutual bond of love and friendship among various communities. Unfortunately the present scenario in the country is totally biased towards winning elections in shortest possible time without working with different sections of society with long term planning to restore communal harmony. Another major issue that has been neglected by the present government is proper economic policy. It has totally surrendered to the policies of RSS in all the fronts including economic.

For Muslims simply defeating BJP in this election may not result in ending their miseries or reducing the communal tensions. Surely the patronising of the government to the lumpen elements will not be available to them but the amount of hatred that has been filled in the mind of both communities will not go overnight. It is therefore, essential for Muslims to plan a strategy to reduce the communal tension in the society. Since Muslims are the major sufferers they must take the lead in reaching out to their Hindu neighbours . Unfortunately Muslims have also more or less behaved in much the similar manner as upper caste Hindus in dealing with lower caste Hindus. Specially in UP and Bihar.

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Since we do not expect from any political Muslim leader to really work at grass root level, we in Aligarh mostly retired teachers of AMU have decided to take a lead in this direction. We have decided to take the help of BAMSEF in reaching out to Scheduled caste and other most backward communities among Hindus. Our aim is to sensitize the Muslim community towards the suffering of these extremely backward communities and their own plight and work together to galvanize towards a common goal. It is long term solution which may not be visible in few years from now. But surely with concerted efforts this will b a major force in Indian political scene.

Mukhtar Ahmad is former professor of Electrical Engineering AMU Aligarh.
The Delhi Police on Monday claimed it was not intimated about the event at the Constitution Club which student had gone to attend when he was attacked by an unidentified gunmen.

Questions were raised about security in Lutyens's Delhi after the attack on Khalid, who escaped unhurt.

"We were not aware about the programme since we were not intimated about it. As soon as we were informed about the incident, our team reached the spot since a police station is also nearby," said Ajay Chaudhary, Joint Commissioner of Police, New Delhi range.

The event, 'Khauff Se Azaadi' (Freedom from Fear), was organised by United Against Hate and featured speakers such as lawyer Prashant Bhushan, Delhi University professor Apoorvanand and the late Rohith Vemula's mother Radhika Vemula, among others.

Former Rajya Sabha MP Anwar Ali, who was one of the speakers at the event, raised concerns over the security in Lutyens' Delhi.

"Even Lutyens' Delhi is not safe anymore. Today, was attacked right here in the Constitution Club. This could have happened with anyone of us anywhere," he added.

Activist Shabnam Hashmi also expressed similar concerns.

"The politics of violence is responsible for it along with certain media houses maligning him. When violence is encouraged in the society by those in power this is bound to happen irrespective of security zone or not," she added.
Politicians, student leaders and activists condemned the alleged attack on JNU student leader Umar Khalid outside the Constitution Club here today saying the incident was the fallout of a "hate campaign" against him on social media and mainstream media.

Some unidentified men targeted the JNU student leader and gunshots were heard but he escaped unhurt, according to witnesses even as the police asserted it will verify the incident.

Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah tweeted against the attack and said, "Wage a motivated hate campaign against individuals & sooner or later someone will feel emboldened enough to take the law into their own hands. The attack on @UmarKhalidJNU is the direct result of the relentless hate campaign using both social & mainstream media. Glad he's well."



Tagging the official Twitter handle of PMO India, Dalit leader and Independent MLA from Gujarat Jignesh Mevani claimed that last month when Umar Khalid, Shehla Rashid and I had received death threats, we had sought police protection and even till today, none of us have been given any kind of security



"Even those media groups, who are working to help BJP achieve political gains, and call Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid as members of 'tukde tukde gang' and 'anti-nationals' are also to be blamed for the attack," he posted on Twitter.

JNU student leader Shehla Rashid said the incident was the "direct result of hatred whipped up by ... and other hate media" and called it "shocking and condemnable".

Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur opined it was time the online mob took to the streets against such incidents.

"I want to say I'm shocked and surprised but I'm not. It was only time the online mob came out on the streets. And God forbid something happens tomorrow to someone the blood will be on our hands for not condemning the hatred enough.

"Gauri Lankesh, Kalburgi, Shujaat Bhukhari and now an attack on @UmarKhalidJNU. History tells us that these are the warning signs before a perfectly normal, thriving nation turns into a battlefield. How are we still this ignorant and keep missing them?" she posted on the microblogging site.

Social activist Kavita Krishnan also blamed certain channels for the "murderous violence" against Khalid. ?



"Shocking attempt to kill #UmarKhalid - ironically outside Construction Club in Delhi. The hate speech and fake by channels targeting him and others as 'anti national' directly results in such murderous violence, she wrote on Twitter.

JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar tweeted in Hindi and said, "What could be a bigger evidence of jungle raj in the country that the copies of the Constitution are burnt and Umar Khalid is fired at, close to the Parliament. The confidence of criminals has increased under the current government and media."



Actress and JNU alumnus Swara Bhasker also posted on Twitter, "What are we becoming?!???!? A lawless anarchic state of affairs.. so damaging to our institutions and credibility at a responsible State. Even if you don't like umar's views! #UmarKhalid."



Comedian Kunal Kamra posted on social media, "If this doesn't chill your spine what will? If you choose silence now when will you speak? If this is not wrong, what is wrong?In Solidarity.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Politicians, student leaders and activists condemned the alleged attack on JNU student leader Umar Khalid outside the Constitution Club here today, saying the incident was the fallout of a "hate campaign" against him on social media and mainstream media.

Some unidentified men targeted the JNU student leader and gunshots were heard, but he escaped unhurt, according to witnesses even as the police asserted it will verify the incident.

Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah tweeted against the attack and said, "Wage a motivated hate campaign against individuals & sooner or later someone will feel emboldened enough to take the law into their own hands. The attack on @UmarKhalidJNU is the direct result of the relentless hate campaign using both social & mainstream media. Glad he's well."



Tagging the official Twitter handle of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) India, Dalit leader and Independent MLA from Gujarat Jignesh Mevani claimed that "last month when Khalid, Shehla Rashid and I had received death threats, we had sought police protection and even till today, none of us have been given any kind of security".

"Even those media groups, who are working to help BJP achieve political gains, and call Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid as members of 'tukde tukde gang' and 'anti-nationals' are also to be blamed for the attack," he posted on Twitter.

JNU student leader Shehla Rashid shared the screenshot of a threat message she had allegedly received from one Ravi Poojary after the attack on Khalid.

"Meanwhile, got this death threat from right-wing Hindutvawadi fundamentalist Ravi Poojary. He warns Umar Khalid, Jignesh Mevani and me to shut up! Threat by SMS #DigitalIndia," she posted on Twitter.

The message shared by her read, "Just Shut Your Mouth Or we will Shut Your Mouth Forever. Tell Umar Khalid and Jignesh Mevani Also. MAFIA DON RAVI POOJARY."



She said the attack on Khalid was the "direct result of hatred whipped up by... and other hate media" and called it "shocking and condemnable".

Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur opined it was time the online mob took to the streets against such incidents.

"I want to say I'm shocked and surprised but I'm not. It was only time the online mob came out on the streets. And God forbid something happens tomorrow to someone the blood will be on our hands for not condemning the hatred enough.

"Gauri Lankesh, Kalburgi, Shujaat Bhukhari and now an attack on @UmarKhalidJNU. History tells us that these are the warning signs before a perfectly normal, thriving nation turns into a battlefield. How are we still this ignorant and keep missing them?" she posted on the microblogging site.

Social activist Kavita Krishnan also blamed certain channels for the "murderous violence" against Khalid. ?



"Shocking attempt to kill #UmarKhalid - ironically outside Construction Club in Delhi. The hate speech and fake by channels targeting him and others as 'anti national' directly results in such murderous violence," she wrote on Twitter.

JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar tweeted in Hindi and said, "What could be a bigger evidence of jungle raj in the country that the copies of the Constitution are burnt and Umar Khalid is fired at, close to Parliament. The confidence of criminals has increased under the current government and media."



Actress and JNU alumnus Swara Bhasker also posted on Twitter, "What are we becoming?!???!? A lawless anarchic state of affairs.. so damaging to our institutions and credibility at a responsible state. Even if you don't like Umar's views! #UmarKhalid."



Comedian Kunal Kamra posted on social media, "If this doesn't chill your spine what will? If you choose silence now when will you speak? If this is not wrong, what is wrong? In Solidarity.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Politicians and activists red-flagged the "attack" on JNU student leader Umar Khalid today, alleging it was a "brazen incident" of lawlessness that shows that even the high-security zone of Lutyens' Delhi is "not safe".

According to eyewitnesses, a gunshot rang out at the Constitution Club in the high-security area near Parliament this afternoon when an unidentified man targeted Khalid, who escaped unhurt.

The incident found echoes at an event at the IIC in the evening, titled, ironically, 'The Politics of Violence', organised by Centre for Policy Analysis.

AIDWA leaders Subhashini Ali, Rajya Sabha MPs Danish Ali and Manoj Jha, AAP leader Ashutosh, and veteran politician Mani Shankar Aiyar took part in a panel discussion at the event. Activist Swami Agnivesh and Dr Kafeel Khan also participated in the event during which recent incidents of mob lynching also came up for discussion.

"Mob lynching has become a part of our lives. Society has accepted that violence is the new normal. Fringe has become mainstream and the vocabulary of violence is not challenged," Jha alleged.

Rajya Sabha lawmaker from JD(S) Danish Ali also alleged that "lynching and politics of violence has become routine now".

Referring to the Constitution Club incident, he said, "When you are facing this is Luteyns' Zone, you can imagine what will happen in interior areas of the country."



Swami Agnivesh, who was recently assaulted in Jharkhand's Pakur town by a mob which he had said belonged to BJP-affiliated youth groups, called today's incident a "brazen" act of lawlessness.

"A high-security zone like Lutyens' Delhi and that too the Constitution Club near Parliament shows that the act was state-sponsored. It was also a warning to others to either align or face similar consequences," he alleged.

The attacker dropped the weapon and fled the spot, police and eyewitnesses said.

Police sources said they had seized the weapon.

Giving his version of what had happened, Khalid said he was going back inside the complex, which also houses the Mavlankar Auditorium and MP quarters on Rafi Marg, after having tea when somebody tried to fire at him.

"I was returning after having tea. One person came from behind, pushed me down and tried to fire at me. I ran for my life. He fled from there," Khalid told reporters.

Aiyar, when asked about the incident, said, "We are living in very dangerous times."



Dr Kafeel Khan, who has alleged that he was made a scapegoat in the Gorakhpur childen tragedy case, said, "Lutyens' Delhi is considered safest place in India. And, then you have this attack on Umar Khalid. Hatred and violence is spreading and its is being celebrated on social media.

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Bangladesh's High Court today granted six-month bail to imprisoned former prime minister Khaleda Zia in a defamation case over her "derogatory remarks" about the 1971 Liberation War and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country's first post-independence president and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's father, media reports said.

The 72-year-old three-time former premier, however, will have to stay in jail as other cases are pending against her.

In 2015, a defamation case was registered in Narail against Zia after she raised questions about the number of martyrs in the 1971 Liberation War during a discussion at the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh, Dhaka Tribune reported.

She said: "There are controversies about how many were martyred in the Liberation War. There are also many books and documents about the controversies."



The bench of Justice Muhammad Abdul Hafiz and Justice Kashefa Hussain passed the order, granting her six-month bail, after hearing a petition filed by Zia's counsel, the report said.

Earlier on August 5, a Narail court rejected her bail petition.

According to the case, she had used "derogatory remarks" about freedom fighters and Bangabandhu, the country's first post-independence president and Hasina's father.

She had alleged that the Awami League had not wanted freedom in 1971 but instead was looking for power.

"He (Bangabandhu) wanted to be the prime minister of Pakistan, he did not want an independent Bangladesh," she had said.

Bangabandhu is known as the Father of the Nation.

Zia was jailed for five years in February in connection with the embezzlement of 21 million taka (about USD 250,000) in foreign donations meant for the Zia Orphanage Trust, named after her late husband Ziaur Rahman, a military ruler-turned-politician.

She is lodged in a 200-year-old prison in Dhaka since then.

The charges against her has already led to her boycotting polls in 2014, which triggered widespread protests at the time. The BNP had termed the elections as "farcical".

The BNP has claimed that the cases against Zia are politically-motivated to keep its party chief out of the national elections scheduled for December.

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Five hardline Islamists were sentenced to death today by a special Bangladeshi tribunal for committing crimes against humanity and siding with the Pakistani troops in carrying out a genocide in a village during the Liberation War in 1971.

A three-member panel of Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal led by Justice Shahinur Islam handed down the capital punishment to the five men for raping at least 15 women of Itabaria village of Patuakhali during the Liberation War.

They were also sentenced to death for killing 17 people, vandalism, arson, abduction, confinement and torture in the same village in 1971.

The judges said the convicts had used rape as a weapon and that their victims had to live with the repercussions of those attacks for the rest of their lives.

"These women are our true war heroes. It is time to recognise them, the tribunal said in the verdict.

Pronouncing its verdict, the court said that the five convicts -- Md Esahaque Shikder, Abdul Gani alias Gani Howlader, Md Awal, Md A Sattar Pada and Solaiman Mridha alias Soleman Mridha -- should be hung until they were dead.

All the five convicts were present on the dock as Justice Islam pronounced the verdict.

According to the prosecution, the convicts were members of the infamous Razakar Bahini, an auxiliary force of the Pakistan Army in 1971, but they were involved with the local wing of the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) at the time of their arrests in 2015.

The judgment came nearly three months after the tribunal wrapped up the hearing.

As per legal provisions, the convicts can now challenge the tribunal's verdict only in the apex Appellate Division of the Supreme Court.

Since 2010 when Bangladesh launched the belated process of trying 1971 war criminals, the tribunal has executed six convicts, five of whom were leaders of fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami and one was associated with the BNP.

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Condoling the demise of former Lok Sabha speaker and veteran parliamentarian Somnath Chatterjee, a section of CPI(M) leaders in West Bengal today "expressed regret" for not being able to re-induct him into the party.

Chatterjee was expelled from the CPI(M) in 2008 for refusing to resign as speaker after his party withdrew support to the UPA-I government over the India-US nuclear deal.

He passed away at a city hospital this morning at the age of 89 after battling a prolonged illness.

Senior CPI(M) leader Nepaldeb Bhattacharya said many leaders visited Chatterjee in the last few years to convince him to rejoin the party, but the issue could not be resolved.

"It will be a lifelong regret for all of us that we could not take him back into the party. We are facing a tough situation today and it would have been of great help if he was with us. We tried to woo him back in the past, but failed in our efforts," he added.

Sujan Chakraborty, a central committee member of the CPI(M), said Chatterjee's relation with the party members continued even after his expulsion.

"We always shared a very cordial relation with him. I wish he had continued as a member of the party... His death is an irreparable loss to all of us," he stated.

Hailing Chatterjee as a parliamentarian who fought for secular and democratic forces, CPI(M) state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra said leaders across the political spectrum loved and respected him.

"He was not in touch with the party in the last few years but that does not matter, he was above the party. The role he played in parliamentary democracy and for secular and democratic forces cannot be seen in context of a party...

"Even after giving up his responsibilities, he stood for secular and democratic forces," Mishra said.

Another CPI(M) leader, who did not wish to be named, said the "arrogance" of the then leadership of the party had led to his expulsion.

Lok Sabha MP Md Salim, senior party leaders Shyamal Chakraborty and Rabin Deb were among those who visited the city hospital today to pay tributes to Chatterjee.

The CPI(M) state committee postponed its meeting after the of Chatterjee's death reached the party headquarters in the morning.

A 10-time Lok Sabha MP, Chatterjee was a member of the CPI(M) from 1968 to 2008.

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The Bhim Army is planning to stage a protest on the Parliament Street on August 19 demanding release of its founder Chandrashekhar Azad who is in jail on charges of engineering caste riots in Saharanpur last year.

The Dalit organisation is also demanding withdrawal of cases against those who have been jailed in connection with the April 2 Bharat Bandh violence.

"We will stage a protest on the Parliament Street and march to the Parliament demanding release of Chandrashekhar Azad and dropping of charges under the Nation Security Act (NSA) against him," Bhim Army National President Vinay Ratan Singh told reporters here.

"The rally is necessary as there is a civil war-like situation emerging from the government's failure to check issues relating to Dalits and caste discrimination," he alleged.

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A special court here today extended by one day the police remand of a hostel director accused of raping and molesting four deaf and mute women



inmates, a senior official said.

Ashwini Sharma, director of a hostel for deaf and mute women in Awadhpuri in Bhopal, has been accused by four women of rape and molestation and police have invoked sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act against him.

Sharma was presented today before special judge Pankaj Gaud of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act court which extended his police custody by one day, Superintendent of Police (SP) South Rahul Kumar Lodha told PTI.

Lodha, who is heading a special investigation team (SIT) constituted to probe the case, said that police had to speak to more inmates of Sharma's hostel since it believed that more inmates could have been sexually assaulted.

Sharma was arrested by Awadhpuri police on August 8 based on the complaint of a deaf and mute tribal girl who accused him of repeatedly raping her during her stay in the hostel over the last three years.

On August 9, two sisters, who had previously stayed in the hostel, also filed a case of molestation against the accused, following which the police slapped charges under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act since one of them was a minor when the alleged incident took place in 2017.

On August 11, a fourth victim filed a complaint accusing Sharma of raping her after showing her pornographic material.

The opposition Congress has alleged that Sharma's hostel was funded by the Madhya Pradesh government, a charge denied by its Social Justice Minister Gopal Bhargava.

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Unidentified gunmen today shot dead newly elected head of Jandahan block panchayat samiti in Bihar's Vaishali district triggering violent protest by locals, a district official said.

Six others also suffered bullet injuries in the attack while local people and supporters of panchayat head Manish Sahni resorted to arson at Jandahan bazar, block office and police stations besides resorting to firing in the open, the official said.

The deceased was elected as "Pramukh" (head) of Jandahan block panchayat samiti recently, Vaishali District Magistrate Rajiv Roshan confirmed the death.

Sahni was also secretary of Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) of Vaishali district.

The incident occurred while Sahni was coming out of his chamber at Jandahan block office when unidentified bike borne assailants fired indiscriminately on him.

The critically injured Sahni was taken to a nearby primary health centre at Jandahan where doctors referred him to Hajipur, where he died during treatment at a private nursing home.

"Six persons were also injured in the firing. We have heard about the death of another person but it is yet to be verified," the DM said.

Roshan said police resorted to firing in the open to disperse the agitating mob.

Considering the situation prevailing in Jandaha, the DM said Prohibitory order under section 144 CrPC has been clamped with immediate effect in the area, he said.

Police personnel have been deployed in the area.

The DM said situation is tense but under control.

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Wondering why Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has been supporting the NDA government's "wrong" decisions, senior Congress leader Anand Sharma today said the BJP and the BJD might go for some post-poll understanding in 2019.

The people of Odisha have the right to know as to why Patnaik, also the ruling BJD president, frequently supports Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decisions even eight years after their break up, Anand said.

The BJD had snapped its 11-year-old ties with the BJP before the 2009 Lok Sabha election over the seat sharing issue.

"If you are secular why do you support Narendra Modi while all secular parties have been opposing him," said the former union minister.

Sharma was referring to the recent election for the post of deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha where nine MPs of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) supported NDA candidate Harivansh.

He said despite request by many non-BJP leaders, Patnaik preferred to go with the NDA candidate.

Asked whether Congress president Rahul Gandhi had called Patnaik seeking support of the BJD MPs in the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman's election, Sharma avoided a direct reply.

"I do not want to embarrass a chief minister. Many leaders including chief ministers have reached out to Patnaik seeking BJD MPs support. But, he preferred to go with the NDA after getting a phone call from the prime Minister," he said.

On whether he foresees revival of the BJD-BJP alliance, Sharma said the two parties might opt for post-poll understanding.

"They may not go for alliance before elections. But, the BJP has been keeping relationship with the BJD because the BJP knows that their seats will drastically fall in many states (in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls)," he said.

He mentioned states such as Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi where the BJP would lose seats.

So, in a "Look East policy", the BJP has been eyeing Odisha, West Bengal and Assam and trying to secure more seats from these three states.

"As they may not win many seats in Odisha, the BJP may get support of the BJD after the elections," Sharma said.

To a query about reason behind Patnaik's support to Modi, Sharma said the BJP has been misusing central agencies like the CBI, the ED and others to settle scores with political opponents.

He, however, did not say whether the BJD is also being threatened by the BJP.

Sharma also referred to the reported statement of Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan yesterday that Patnaik might have some compulsion to support the NDA.

"Therefore, we want to know from Patnaik what is the reason behind his party's support to the BJP," Sharma said, adding that a "match fixing is there between the BJD and the BJP and their opposing each other in the state is just an eyewash".

The Congress leader said Patnaik has supported the Centre on demonetisation, GST, no-confidence motion and now in the elections for deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha.

Sharma also came down heavily on the NDA government over issues such as decline in GDP rate, frail economic growth, decline in investment ratio and alleged corruption in Rafale jet deal.

The country has been passing through a crisis ever since the NDA government came to the power and there is an effort to nullify all the institutions, he claimed.

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The on Monday made a strong pitch for simultaneous polls to "curb expenditure", amid indications in some quarters that efforts can be made to hold the election with that for 10-11 assemblies early next year by delaying elections in three BJP-ruled states and advancing the same for others scheduled for later in 2019.

sources, however, maintained no concrete proposal is there for deferring and advancing of state polls and the idea has not been discussed formally within the party, as constitutional validity of any such step would need to be taken into account.

With the tenure of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh assemblies expiring in January next year, a party leader indicated that a brief spell of governor's rule may be explored for these BJP-ruled states so that assembly elections there could be held with the polls early next year. He, however, clarified that no concrete proposal has been formulated so far.

The tenure of the assembly in the Congress-ruled Mizoram is also ending in December this year.

Former secretary general and constitutional expert P D T Acharya, however, questioned the legal validity of imposing the governor's rule in states where assembly elections are due before the Lok Sabha polls.

The governor's rule can be imposed only in case of constitutional breakdown, he said.

The Lok Sabha elections, which were last held in April-May 2014, are as such expected to be held early next year along with assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Telangana.

Some states such as Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra -- all under the BJP's rule -- are scheduled for assembly polls later in 2019 and the idea being floated is to advance the elections there to hold them along with the parliamentary election.

Another state where talks of advancing assembly elections are doing the rounds is Bihar, where the election is due in 2020-end. The (BJP) is a junior partner in the state government led by Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United).

The has in public pooh-poohed the suggestion that the state election be held with the Lok Sabha polls but many political watchers believe that it may suit Kumar as well as he may be given a larger pie in seat-sharing for the assembly and lesser seats for Lok Sabha.

Earlier on Monday, president wrote to the Law Commission supporting holding Lok Sabha and assembly polls simultaneously. He dubbed the opposition to simultaneous polls politically motivated, and asserted that it will curb expenditure and ensure the nation is not in "election mode" throughout the year.

Shah said the BJP is committed to this idea and explicitly believes that in a progressive democracy like India elections should be held at a fixed time and for a fixed tenure so that people's representatives can carry out their duties effectively.

Shah's letter to the law panel was handed over by a BJP delegation which met the commission's top brass on Monday afternoon.

Holding simultaneous polls is not merely a principle and it was also successfully practised between 1952 and 1967, he said, adding that several institutions, including the Election Commission, Law Commission and parliamentary committee, have supported it since then.

Several opposition parties including the has been opposing the idea of holding simultaneous polls, calling such a step against democratic practices. Political observers believe that the BJP is pitching for holding Lok Sabha and together to tackle the anti-incumbency factor and for maximising the appeal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during campaigns.
Taking a jibe at BJP chief Amit Shah's claim that the saffron party will win 73-plus of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh in 2019, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav said today the BJP was saying this as the shaping up of opposition unity had frightened it.

"Samajwadi people are ready (for the Lok Sabha elections). What is our strategy, we will not disclose. But its implementation has begun and see their condition," Yadav told reporters here today.

They are saying they will win 73-plus seats, he said. "Forget 73-plus, you have just lost three seats in bye-elections," Yadav, a former UP chief minister, said.

He said the BJP should first correct its arithmetic.

The SP chief was distributing laptops to meritorious students at the party headquarters here.

To a question on the possibility of a SP-BSP alliance, he said, "Big interviews about this tie-up are appearing in newspapers. A 'Mahagathbandhan' will be formed. It is there and will stay in the future too. As far as UP is concerned, an alliance will be here also."



Earlier, on August 5, BJP president Amit Shah while addressing a gathering in Chandauli had claimed that the opposition was "spreading the rumour about the impact on the poll equation in UP if the SP and the BSP come together."



"Even if Bua (BSP chief Mayawati), bhatija (Yadav) and Rahul (Gandhi) join hands, our tally (in Lok Sabha from UP) will be 74 instead of 73 now and not even 72," he had said.

Shah had exuded confidence that BJP and its allies will perform better than 2014 when they wrested 73 of the 80 seats in UP.

In an apparent response, Yadav said today that the people of the state had seen how the BJP had "deceived" the people and how it had "driven a wedge into different communities for political interest, how it triggered spread of hatred among people of different religions."



As the Lok Sabha elections are approaching, the BJP will forget issues like demonetisation, and rake up new issues like defence industrial corridor, Yadav said.

"When ordinary roads are not being made and permissions are not being given for construction of bridges, then how and when such a corridor will be built?" he asked.

Referring to the laptop distribution initiative, he said it was not a political stunt.

Today, the laptop is a necessity for every child, so the SP during its regime distributed laptops, he said. We distributed then, and are doing it today as well, he added.

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Rajasthan BJP legislator Kishna Ram Nai's son died after his car was hit by an unidentified vehicle on the Bikaner-Jaipur national highway, police said today.

The accident took place last night near Sikhwal Vatika.

Jeevraj Nai was rushed to PBM Hospital in Bikaner, where doctors declared him brought dead, the police said.

Union Water Resources Minister Arjunram Meghwal, former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot, former ministers Devi Singh Bhati, B D Kalla and various other political leaders expressed their condolences.

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BJP president Amit Shah has come out in support of holding Lok Sabha and assembly polls simultaneously, saying it will check government expenditure and ensure the nation is not in "election mode" throughout the year.

In a letter to the Law Commission today, Shah said holding simultaneous polls is not only a concept, but also a principle which can be implemented.

Shah said two sets of polls will strengthen the federal structure of the country. He told the panel that during elections the Model Code of Conduct is in force which adversely impacts development works and policy decisions.

Shah maintained that there is no relation between Lok Sabha and assembly elections. He pointed out that Prime Minster Narendra Nodi, President Ram Nath Kovind and former President Pranab Mukherjee have all supported the idea of 'one nation, one poll'.

For the best-possible legal framework, there is a need for an "open, free and frank" debate among parties and stakeholders, he wrote.

Shah's letter to the law panel was handed over by a BJP delegation which met the commission top brass this afternoon.

In his eight-page letter, the Bharatiya Janata Party chief said the opposition to simultaneous polls seems to be politically motivated.

The law panel, which is examining the feasibility of holding simultaneous polls, had earlier sought the views of political parties before finalising its report. Both the BJP and Congress had stayed away from the consultation organised by the commission.

The Congress had met the commission top brass recently where it had opposed the concept of simultaneous polls.

A paper by the Law Commission had recently recommended holding the Lok Sabha and assembly polls in two phases beginning 2019.

Political parties are divided on the issue. Besides NDA ally Shiromani Akali Dal, the AIADMK, the Samajwadi Party and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti have supported it.

Congress, Trinamool Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, DMK, Telugu Desam Party, Left parties and the JD(S) have opposed the proposal.

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The Mizoram election department has conducted revision of voters lists of Bru refugees in theri Tripura camps before the repatriation, despite opposition from the civil societies, officials today said.

The move came in the wake of the latest instruction from the Election Commission (EC) that directed the state government to conduct revision of electoral rolls in the relief camps of the Bru refugees.

Civil society members were not happy with the order and a section of them had prevented several election department officer from entering Tripura on August 10 at Zawlnuam village bordering Tripura, but that could not stop the revision, the official said.

At a meeting with civil societies and political parties on August 8, Mizoram Home Minister R Lalzirliana had said the state government recently received instructions from the EC to conduct revision of voters' lists in the relief camps. Its earlier order had said revision would be conducted in Mizoram after completion of the repatriation process.

"We have to implement the instructions of the Election Commission of India by conducting the electoral roll revisions in the relief camps," he had said at the meeting.

The civil societies and the political parties, however, were not happy with the latest instruction of the EC.

The Centre, state governments of Mizoram and Tripura and the Mizoram Bru Displaced People's Forum (MBDPF), the apex body of the Bru community in the relief camps, have on July 3 signed an agreement for repatriation of all the Bru refugees from Tripura before September 30.

Repatriation of over 32,000 Bru refugees staying in six relief camps in North Tripura district to Mizoram is scheduled to start from August 25.

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Judges of the Calcutta High Court led by Chief Justice Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya paid their last respects to Somnath Chatterjee, whose body was brought to the court premises where he practised for several years as a barrister.

The Bar Library Club, of which he was a member, the Bar Association and many lawyers also paid floral tributes to the departed former speaker of the Lok Sabha.

Apart from the chief justice, justices Debasish Kargupta, Joymalyo Bagchi, Dipankar Dutta and Arijit Banerjee were among the judges who laid wreaths on the body of Chatterjee.

Bar Library Club president Jayanta Mitra paid rich tributes to Chatterjee, with whom he had worked for many years from the early 1970's.

"I was privileged to have worked with him. I witnessed from close quarters his advocacy, his astute legal brain and personality in court," Mitra, a former advocate general of West Bengal, said.

"He used to dominate wherever he appeared, whether in courts or as a member of Parliament and as a speaker," Mitra said.

The Bar Library Club took a resolution not to attend high court today as a mark of respect. The resolution was also adopted by the Bar Association and Incorporated Law Society.

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The Centre today extended the terms of non-executive chairmen of Canara Bank and Bank of India for two years, according to an official order.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) has approved renomination of Thothala Narayanasamy Manoharan as part-time non-official director on the board of Canara Bank for two years with effect from tomorrow, the order issued by the Personnel Ministry said.

The ACC has also extended his term as the non-executive chairman of the bank's board for the same period, it said.

Similarly, Gopalaraman Padmanabhan has been renominated as part-time non-official director on the board of Bank of India for two years with effect from tomorrow, the order said.

His term as the non-executive chairman of Bank of India has also been extended for the period, the ministry said.

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A CBI officer probing the Aircel-Maxis case allegedly involving former finance minister P Chidambaram and his son Karti Chidambaram was today given a two-year extension by the central government, according to an official order.

The central government has approved extension in deputation tenure of Vineet Vinayak and Bhanu Bhaskar, both working as Joint Directors in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), it said.

Vinayak, a 1995-batch IPS officer of Sikkim cadre, will have extended tenure till September 9, 2020, the order issued by the Personnel Ministry said.

He is looking into the Aircel-Maxis case and also the in-charge of probe in the case of data breach by the UK-based firm Cambridge Analytica (CA).

P Chidambaram and his son were named in the charge sheet filed by the CBI in the Aircel-Maxis case on July 19.

The CBI is probing as to how P Chidambaram, who was the finance minister in 2006, granted a Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) approval to a foreign firm, when only the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) was empowered to do so.

The senior Congress leader's role has come under the scanner of investigating agencies in the Rs 3,500-crore Aircel-Maxis deal and the INX Media case involving Rs 305 crore.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is also probing a separate money-laundering case in the Aircel-Maxis matter, in which P Chidambaram and Karti Chidambaram have been questioned by the agency.

The Chidambarams have denied the allegations levelled against them by the CBI and the ED.

The CBI has initiated a preliminary enquiry against Cambridge Analytica for alleged illegal personal data harvesting of Indians from social media giant Facebook.

Vinayak is the joint director in Economic Offences wing of the federal probe agency.

Besides him, Bhaskar has also got extension till August 5, 2020.

He is posted in the national capital and in-charge of Patna zone in the agency.

Bhaskar's team is investigating alleged mental, physical and sexual exploitation of minor girls at a Bihar government-funded shelter home in Muzaffarpur.

He is a 1996-batch IPS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre.

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The Bombay High Court asked the Union Ministry of Finance today to ensure allotment of new premises for the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in the city after the existing office was shut following a fire.

A bench of justices AS Oka and RI Chagla said the government must not take an adversarial stand on the issue, and instead, work on eliminating any holdups that might be coming in the way of providing a new office space for the tribunal.

The bench also dismissed the argument made by the Union government counsel Rui Rodrigues that lack of funds was one of the reasons for the delay in providing a new space for the tribunal in the financial capital.

The DRT had been operating out of the Scindia House building in the Ballard Estate area in South Mumbai, but the premises was shutdown in June following a fire.

Since then, the tribunal has been functioning from a temporary space inside the Punjab National Bank office in Ballard Pier, also in South Mumbai.

The bar association of the tribunal approached the HC last month, seeking a direction to the Union government to allot appropriate space for the DRT's office.

The petitioners told the bench today that members of the DRT bar as well as the litigants approaching the DRT were not permitted to use the lift in the current building.

Instead, they were all expected to climb up to the fifth floor (where the temporary office is located) using an old spiral stair case.

Earlier, the Union government had informed the court it had identified office space in the MTNL building in South Mumbai and in the Mumbai Port Trust Area to house the DRT.

However, today, Rodrigues informed the bench that besides lack of funds, the delay in identifying and allotting a new office space for the DRT had been caused because some officers of the Finance Ministry had submitted that the HC had ruled out the allotment of the space in MTNL building.

The bench, however, noted that it had never made such an observation, or passed any orders against the allotment of space in the MTNL building.

"Who is this officer who is misreading the court's order? You are liable for contempt proceedings because of misreading our orders and for delaying the allotment," the bench warned.

It rapped the Union government for taking an "adversarial stand" on an issue that concerned the public.

"We can't believe this is the condition of the DRT. You (the Centre) expect litigants and the bar to climb up all the way using the spiral staircase?" the bench asked.

"We never expected that the Centre will take an adversarial stand on the issue.

"You must remember that there already exists an apex court judgement that says lack of funds cannot be expected as a valid argument by the government when it comes to providing infrastructure for courts and tribunals," the bench said.

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Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.
Over Rs 320 crore has been released by the Centre to the Kerala government as calamity relief fund during 2018-19, the Home Ministry said tonight.

The allocation of the State Disaster Relief Fund (SDRF) for 2018-19 was Rs 214 crore, of which the central government's share was Rs 160.50 crore and the state government's share was Rs 53.50 crore.

The balance available in the SDRF account as on April 1 this year as reported by the state accountant general Rs 348.45 crore, a home ministry statement said.

The first instalment of the central share of the SDRF for 2018-19, released on July 20 this year was Rs 80.25 crore, while the corresponding state share was Rs 26.75 crore.

The second instalment of the central share of SDRF for 2018-19, released on August 10, 2018 was Rs 80.25 crore and the corresponding state share was Rs 26.75 crore.

The central government supplements the effort of the Kerala government by providing assistance for relief of immediate nature through the SDRF and the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) as per the established procedure, the statement said.

A State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) has been constituted for each state.

The central government contributes 75 per cent for general category states and 90 per cent for special category states of the assessed SDRF each year.

The first charge of relief expenditure is on the SDRF and in the cases of calamities of severe nature, it is supplemented from the NDRF as per the established procedure.

Financial assistance under the SDRF/NDRF in the wake of natural calamities is by way of relief and not for compensation of loss as suffered/claimed, the ministry said.

Additional expenditure, if any, incurred over and above or on other than approved items/norms, is required to be met by the states from their own resources.

In the case of notified natural calamities, as per the established procedure, the state government is required to submit a detailed memorandum indicating the sector-wise details of damage and requirement of funds for relief operations of immediate nature.

On receipt of a memorandum, an Inter-Ministerial Central Team (IMCT) is deputed for an on-the-spot assessment of damages and additional requirement of funds.

The report of the IMCT is considered by the Sub-Committee of National Executive Committee (SC-NEC) headed by the Union Home Secretary and then by a High Level Committee (HLC), chaired by the Union Home minister for approving the quantum of additional assistance, from the NDRF.

In the instant case, based on a preliminary memorandum submitted by the Kerala government for additional assistance of Rs 831.10 crore the IMCT was constituted immediately on July 25 this year.

The IMCT have visited flood/landslides affected areas in the state from August 7-12 this year. Upon receipt of report from the IMCT, it will be processed for placing before the SC-NEC and HLC for consideration, as per the established procedure.

Though enough funds are available in the SDRF, however the Union Home minister has announced release of Rs 100 crore in advance from the NDRF to help the state in providing relief measures to the affected people.

In the instant case, the central government has been providing full support to the Kerala government by mobilising/providing timely logistics and financial resources to supplement the efforts of the state government to deal with the situation effectively in the wake of floods/landslides.

The logistics support provided includes 14 teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Indian Air Force andthe Coast Guard helicopters, Army columns, Navy and Coast Guard personnel along with necessary rescue equipments, the statement said.

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Leaders across party lines today condoled the death of former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee, describing him as an outstanding parliamentarian who enriched Indian

Chatterjee, 89, passed away at a private hospital in Kolkata this morning following multiple organ failure.

Tributes poured in as came in of the death of the 10-time Lok Sabha MPwho had joined the CPI(M) in 1968. Chatterjee was speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.

He was a stalwartof Indian politics, Prime Minister Nzrendra Modi said.

"He made our parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable," an "anguished" prime minister said, adding that his thoughts were with Chatterjee's family and supporters.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi said Chatterjee was an institution and greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines.

Conveying his condolences to Chatterjee's family and supporters, BJP chief Amit Shah said Chatterjee was an excellent parliamentarian. His long years as a member of the House enriched parliamentary traditions, he added.

"He was a remarkable human being, an eminent parliamentarian and a very clear headed speaker of the Lok Sabha. I convey my heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family," said former vice president M Hamid Ansari.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal echoed him and termed Chatterjee one of the "greatest parliamentarians" of contemporary times who will also be remembered as one of the greatest Lok Sabha Speakers India has ever had.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said Chatterjee and she shared a very cordial relationship despite their ideological differences.

He was principled and scholarly, and played a significant role in India's parliament, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.

Union minister Arun Jaitley said he will be remembered for his contributions which enriched Indian and was an outstanding Parliamentarian.

According to former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, Chatterjee had through his life been a democrat, a liberal and a champion of enlarging the constituency for social democracy.

NCP supremo Sharad Pawar said Chatterjee was a dignified person who set high standards of conduct during his stint as the Speaker of Lok Sabha.

The passing away of "Somnath Da" is great loss for us all, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said in her condolence message.

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China vehemently denied today allegations that one million of its mostly Muslim Uighur minority are being held in internment camps, insisting all ethnic groups in the country were treated equally.

A Chinese official told a UN human rights committee in Geneva that tough security measures in China's far-west Xinjiang region were necessary to combat extremism and terrorism, but that they did not target any specific ethnic group or restrict religious freedoms.

"Xinjiang citizens, including the Uighurs, enjoy equal freedom and rights," Ma Youqing, the director of China's United Front Work Department, told the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

During the first day of China's review before the Geneva-based committee on Friday, one of the 18 committee members, Gay McDougall, voiced deep concern at "numerous and credible reports" that China had turned the region into "something that resembles a massive internment camp."



She cited reports from rights groups that upwards of one million ethnic Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities are being held in counter-extremism centres, while another two million "have been forced" into reeducation camps for "political and cultural indoctrination".

Ma, who was among around 50 high-level Chinese officials answering questions from the committee Monday, insisted that "the argument that one million Uighurs are detained in reeducation centres is completely untrue."



Chinese authorities have long denied the existence of such camps despite mounting evidence from both official documents and testimonies from those who have been held in them.

Ma also flatly denied McDougall's claim that the region had been turned into a no-rights zone", saying this was "completely against the facts."



"There is neither deliberate targeting at a particular ethnic minority, nor suppressing or restricting the rights or the freedom of religious belief of the Uighur people," he said.

McDougall appeared unimpressed by Ma's comments. "I heard a flat denial of allegations about detentions in the Uighur area," she said.

"You said I was false on the million, well, how many were there? Please tell me. And what were the laws on which they were detained?"



"We have to have more than a denial of allegations," she insisted.

China has stepped up a crackdown in Xinjiang against what it calls Islamic extremism and separatist elements but many Muslims in the region accuse Beijing of religious and cultural repression.

In a region that shares borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, Muslims face regulations banning beards and veils as well as the distribution of unauthorised Korans.

But China's state-run Global Times newspaper insisted Monday that the tough security measures in the region had prevented it from turning into "China's Syria" or "China's Libya".

The Global Times defended the crackdown in an editorial, accusing the West of trying to "stir trouble for Xinjiang and destroy the hard-earned stability in the region".

"The turnaround in Xinjiang's security situation has avoided a great tragedy and saved countless lives," the newspaper wrote in its English and Chinese editions.

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Chinese courts are imposing 'cooling-off' periods to couples seeking legal separation to reconsider their decision in a bid to check the sharp increase of divorce rate in the country.

In the past two years, cooling-off periods -- lasting from two weeks to three months -- have been imposed on couples filing for divorce in 118 courts across Beijing and Sichuan and Shandong provinces, the state-run China Daily reported today.

The move is part of a two-year pilot programme to reform hearings involving domestic disputes implemented by the Supreme People's Court in 2016.

During the period of reflection, courts do not deliver any verdict and instead investigate the family's situation or offer marriage counselling to couples, the report said.

The move came in the wake of divorce rate rising rapidly since 2002 in the Communist nation. As per a Ministry of Civil Affairs data, over four million couples in China ended their marriages in 2016, while between January and June last year, 1.85 million couples had filed for divorce.

Guo Jie, a judge at the Intermediate People's Court at Sanming in Fujian province, welcomed the cooling-off period, saying that the concept has played a major role in alleviating conflict, especially between newly-weds and couples having children aged 16 or younger.

However, she noted that cooling-off period would not be appropriate for all divorce proceedings, especially those involving domestic violence where approvals are usually granted without delay.

Some critics argue that the move interferes with the freedom to divorce, but Wang Peng, a judge's assistant at Dongcheng District People's Court in Beijing, said the final decision lies solely with the litigants.

"The period of reflection doesn't mean that a couple must remain married. In fact, some people spend the time clarifying the division of property and arranging child support. We want to solve domestic disputes effectively and minimize the damage to litigants, not interfere in their decisions," he said.

Chen Aiwu, a law professor at Nanjing Normal University in Jiangsu province, said it is essential for courts to establish that a marriage can be saved before they impose a period of reflection.

"If some litigants display extreme behaviour before going to court, such as threatening to commit suicide, judges should provide psychological aid, not mediation," he said.

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India, once called as the vaccine capital, is slowly losing its sheen because of various reasons, primarily the aggressive marketing strategy of China and Korea and the lacklustre policies of the government of India, say experts.

Vaccine exports from the country plunged by eight per cent during 2016-17 and nearly four per cent in the previous fiscal year.

India exported vaccines worth USD 653.40 million in 2017-18 while it was USD 679.28 million in 2016-17, according to data of the Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council, a body under the Ministry of Commerce.

Over 70 per cent of vaccines were exported based on UNICEF requirement, which recently changed its procurement policy from yearly indent to quarterly, resulting in uncertainty over production schedule, said chairman and managing director of Bharat Biotech Krishna Ella.

The method adopted by the international body on vaccine procurement gave an edge to Korea and China on price bargaining resulting in price erosion, Ella said.

Serum Institute of India, Bharat Biotech and Biological E Limited were the leading suppliers to UNICEF.

He said the government of India needs to shed bureaucracy-centric policies and develop science-oriented ones to encourage vaccine-manufacturers.

"The country should have a strategy, make policies and pricing transparent. Besides, the government should sit with the industry and take on China and Korea in the next five years. If the government does not do that, we would lose our grip on the vaccine market in another two years," Ella told PTI.

According to industry sources, some of the Korean companies such as LG Chem and Samsung were spending millions of dollars on expansion and modernising their facilities.

Koreans and Chinese have become aggressive, both were getting into the markets of developed countries which India has been exporting to, the sources said.

When contacted, Director General of Pharmexcil Uday Bhaskar said vaccine constituted 3.78 per cent of the total pharmaceutical exports last year.

Though there has been a negative growth of 10.25 per cent till February last year, it recovered in March and ended up at 3.81 per cent, Bhaskar said.

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An official Communist Party newspaper is defending China's campaign of pressure and internment against the country's Uighur Muslim minority, saying it had prevented the far-northwestern region of Xinjiang from "becoming 'China's Syria' or 'China's Libya.'"



Today's Global Times editorial comes after a UN anti-discrimination committee raised concerns Friday over China's treatment of Uighurs, citing reports of mass detentions that is said "resembles a massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy."



Following attacks by radical Muslim separatists, hundreds of thousands of members of the Uighur and Kazakh Muslim minorities in Xinjiang have been arbitrarily detained in indoctrination camps where they are forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the party.

Global Times said that was merely "a phase that Xinjiang has to go through in rebuilding peace and prosperity.

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China is printing currencies for the governments of several countries, including Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Brazil, the Chinese media reported, quoting a top official of the state-owned banknote printer.

Liu Guisheng, Chairman of China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation, wrote in an article in May in China Finance, a bi-monthly journal run by China's central bank, that China obtained the first international commercial order for printing money from Nepal in 2015.

The state-owned firm won the bids of 100 rupees, 1,000 rupees and 5 rupees from Nepal, Liu said.

Since then the company had "seized the opportunities brought by the initiative" and "successfully won contracts for currency production projects in a number of countries" including Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Brazil and Poland, Liu wrote.

The 'China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation' confirmed that money production plants across the country were running at near full capacity to meet an unusually high quota set by the government this year, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

It said that most of the demand comes from participants in the 'Belt and Road Initiative' (BRI).

Chinese yuan bills only made "a small proportion of the orders" as most of the Chinese now got used to mobile or digital payments, it added.

The BRI focuses on improving connectivity and cooperation among Asian countries, Africa, China and Europe. China says over 60 countries have signed up for BRI investments. The BRI includes the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a project over which India has protested as it traverses through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

The 'China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation', headquartered in Beijing, describes itself as the world's largest money printer by scale. With more than 18,000 employees, it runs more than 10 strictly guarded facilities for the production of paper notes and coins, the paper said.

The nation's largest currency paper mill in Baoding, Hebei province, sprang in to action with the sudden arrival of "big orders", according to an employee working in the 604 Factory, a subsidiary of the corporation.

"Our machines have been running at full steam for months," the paper quoted an employee working at the facility as saying.

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China is insisting that there is no "arbitrary detention" and there are no "re- centres" in the Xinjiang region after a UN human rights committee raised concern over reported mass detentions of ethnic Uighurs.

Beijing responded today to questions raised by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

A committee member cited estimates that over a million people from Muslim minorities are held in "counter-extremism centres" and another 2 million have been forced into "re- camps."



China's delegation told the panel that "there is no arbitrary detention ... there are no such things as re- centres."



It said Xinjiang provides convicted criminals with skills to reintegrate themselves at "vocational education and employment training centres."It said: "the argument that a million Uighurs are detained in re-education centres is completely untrue.

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Six people, including a Chinese national, have been arrested by customs officials at the airport here for allegedly trying to smuggle 3.1 kg gold worth nearly Rs one crore into the country, an official statement said today.

The accused were held in separate incidents of gold smuggling reported over the past three days at Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA).

Four Indians, including two women, were intercepted after their arrival from Bangkok yesterday, the statement said.

A detailed personal and baggage search resulted in recovery of multiple gold rods, crudely given the shape of bangles and collectively weighing 1.4 kgs, from them, it said, adding that the value of the seized gold was ascertained to be Rs 43.6 lakh.

In another case, an Indian man was intercepted after his arrival from Dubai on Saturday. He was carrying 855 grams gold, valued at Rs 25.46 lakh, concealed in the pockets of his jeans.

The accused was arrested and the gold was seized, the statement said.

A Chinese national, who arrived from Kunming on Friday, was held for illegally carrying two gold pendants and belt buckles each, weighing 863 grams and worth Rs 25.63 lakh, it said.

He had coated the gold items with white metal polish apparently to dodge the customs authorities, it said.

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Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today invited a Chinese delegation to the 'Make In Odisha Conclave' to be held later this year, an official said.

The 'Make In Odisha Conclave-2018', the flagship biennial business event of the state Government, would be held between November 11 and 15. It would be the second editin of the Conclave.

Patnaik extended the state's invitation to a business delegation from Fujian province of China when they met the chief minister at the state secretariat here.

The six-member delegation met the chief minister with an objective to seek business ties with Odisha, the official said.

Patnaik informed it that a state delegation led by the industries minister would visit Fuzhou on August 31 to showcase the investment opportunities in Chinese industries.

He also sought the support of Fujian provincial government for a successful visit of the Odisha delegation.

Patnaik said the resource rich Odisha is one of the top three states of the country in attracting manufacturing investments.

He said Odisha intends to facilitate growth in six focus sectors - food processing, electronic manufacturing, petro-chemical, textile, metal downstream and tourism.

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Chinese telecom service provider, China Unicom today launched a "5G NEXT" plan as part of its effort to set up a faster wireless 5G networks in the Chinese capital in the near future.

China Unicom's Beijing subsidiary will pilot the commercialisation of 5G technology and test the 5G networks in the capital in 2018, according to China Unicom's vice general manager Wang Chuanbao.

With an aim to build an "open, sharing, prosperous, and win-win" 5G ecological system, the subsidiary will build 300 5G base stations this year in Beijing, one of the 16 pilot cities previously announced, he was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua agency.

Other cities to pilot 5G technology include Tianjin, Qingdao, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, Guiyang, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Fuzhou, Zhengzhou, and Shenyang.

Beijing will apply the 5G technology in major projects and events in the next five years, such as those in Tongzhou District, Beijing's subsidiary administrative centre, the capital's new international airport, the International Horticultural Exhibition 2019, and Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, Jiang Guangzhi, an inspector from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology was quoted as saying in the report.

The Beijing branch also said that they will work with companies to deploy 5G technology in the fields of self-driving, logistics, and unmanned aerial vehicles, it said.

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Militants shot dead a civilian after abducting him from his house in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir, police said today.

"Terrorists in Murran area of Pulwama last night barged inside the house of Gulzar Ahmad Bhat and abducted him," a police official said.

The official said police recovered Bhat's bullet-riddled body from a nearby field.

"Police have registered a case and initiated investigation, which suggest involvement of local militants Zahoor Thokar and Showkat Dar of the Hizbul Mujahideen outfit," he added.

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Top Tamil star Rajinikanth today suggested that Chief Minister K Palaniswami and his entire cabinet should have attended the burial of late DMK President M Karunanidhi last week at the Marina beach.

The actor said he would have launched a protest if the government had appealed against a Madras High Court verdict, directing it to provide burial space to the Dravidian stalwart on Marina beach.

Speaking at a memorial event organised by the South Indian Artistes Association for Karunanidhi, the actor said that many leaders, ranging from state Governor Banwarilal Purohit to Congress President Rahul Gandhi, were present during the burial of Karunanidhi at the Marina.

"For his burial, the whole of India came. State honors were given by members of the three armed forces. He was given a 21 gun salute.

But one thing remains. The Governor, many Chief Ministers and Congress president Rahul Gandhi had come. Tamil Nadu's first citizen, the Chief Minister, shouldn't he have come? Should not the entire cabinet have come? What will people think? Are you MGR (AIADMK founder M G Ramachandran) or Jayalalithaa," he asked.

Both Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa were considered rivals of Karunanidhi.

On the controversy over allocation of burial space for Karunanidhi,which was done by the state government on a court directive, Rajinikanth said he himself would have launched a protest if the government had appealed against the order.

Heaping praise on his 'friend' Karunanidhi, Rajinikanth said while many thousands had entered due to him, "many hundreds became leaders" because of him.

DMK working president M K Stalin also attended the memorial event.

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The Karnataka government today stepped up pressure on the Centre to conduct the "Aero-India" 2019 edition here itself, amid reports that the venue for the prestigious air show hosted by the city for over two decades might be shifted to Lucknow.

As a political slugfest broke out, state chief minister H D Kumaraswamy dashed off a missive to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitaraman, insisting that Bengaluru would be the "best choice" for the biennial event.

"Bengaluru being the hub for defence and aviation majors of the country, is certainly the most suitable place to conduct the show," he said in the letter.

There are reports that the event, organised by the Defence Ministry, would be held in Lucknow but the defence minister had made it clear a few days ago that no announcement had been made, but added that "people in many places are asking for that (the show)."



Ever since its inception in 1996, Bengaluru has been playing host to Asia's biggest air show, in which 549 global and Indian companies from 51 countries participated at the 11th edition, held in February 2017.

Reports about shifting the venue have triggered a public spat between the Congress and BJP.

The KPCC has written to Sitaraman, telling her that as a Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka, she had to protect the interests of the state and ensure that Aero India show was retained in Bengaluru.

A miffed Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara had said last week that under the NDA regime, the state was losing key defence projects to other states.

Speaking to reporters at Gadag in north Karnataka, opposition BJP leader in the Assembly B S Yeddyurappa today said the party, its MPs and central ministers from the state would make all efforts to retain the show in Bengaluru by bringing pressure on the Centre.

He accused Congress leaders of creating "unnecessary confusion" over the issue.

When the defence minister had made it clear that no formal announcement on the venue had been made yet, it would not be proper to discuss about the change now, the state BJP chief said.

In his letter, Kumaraswamy noted that Bengaluru has become synonymous with Aero India.

In order to aid and assist the defence ministry, the state has also suitably upgraded its infrastructure in terms of roads, public amenities and smooth flow of traffic, he said.

Kumaraswamy said Bengaluru, with its past experience in conducting the show successfully, "beautiful" weather conditions and favourably located defence and aviation industries, would be the best choice to conduct Aero India.

"As chief minister of the state, it will be my bounden duty to ensure best possible assistance by Team Karnataka," he added.

More grist was added to the reports about shifting the venue after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath urged the defence minister to hold the event in his state as it would benefit the defence production there.

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Communist veteran and former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee passed away at a private hospital here this morning following multiple organ failure, a senior hospital official said.

He was 89 and survived by wife, a son and two daughters.

Chatterjee passed away at around 8.15 am after his condition deteriorated following yesterday's "mild heart attack", the official said.

Chatterjee was suffering from a kidney-related ailment and was admitted to the hospital in a critical condition on Tuesday last.

"He suffered a multiple organ failure and had stopped responding to treatment since late last night. He passed away this morning at around 8.15 am," the official told PTI.

He had suffered cardiac arrest, systemic sepsis, renal failure along with respiratory problems and underlying diabetes, a senior doctor, who was treating Chatterjee, said.

Chatterjee had suffered a mild heart attack yesterday morning, but was revived.

Last month, the former speaker had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke.

He was under treatment for the past 40 days and was discharged from the hospital just for three days after his health had shown signs of improvement.

However, his condition deteriorated last Tuesday and he had to be hospitalised again, the official said.

Leaders across party lines condoled the death of Chatterjee, describing him as an outstanding parliamentarian who enriched Indian politics.

Condoling his death, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was a stalwart of Indian politics.

"He made our parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable," the prime minister said.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi said Chatterjee was an institution and greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians across party lines.

Former Vice President M Hamid Ansari in his condolence message said, "He was a remarkable human being, an eminent parliamentarian and a very clear headed speaker of the Lok Sabha. I convey my heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family".

Condoling his death, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said, "Saddened at the passing away of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath (Da) Chatterjee. My condolences to his family and admirers. This is a great loss for us all".

Governor K N Tripathi also expressed heartfelt condolences at the passing away of Chatterjee.

CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty said, "It's a big setback for us. Today, West Bengal lost its guardian. Its a big loss to the nation."



A 10-time Lok Sabha MP, Chatterjee was a central committee member of the CPI(M), which he had joined in 1968.

He was the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.

The veteran leader was, however, expelled from the CPI(M) in 2008 for refusing to resign as Speaker after his party withdrew support to the UPA-I government.

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The Congress today accused the Maharashtra government of clearing bills of a private company tasked with producing a programme called 'Mi Mukhyamantri Boltoy' (This is Chief Minister Speaking) despite the firm not having "filmed or aired" it since October last year.

Maharashtra Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant alleged that the government paid Rs 2.36 crore to Effervescent Private Limited for the 'Mi Mukhyamantri Boltoy' programme of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis despite it not filming a single episode since October last year.

The Directorate General of Information and Public Relations (DGIPR), however, dismissed Sawant's allegation, saying his charges were "false" and based on "incomplete" information.

The DGIPR said the company was hired to produce several other programmes other than episodes of 'Mi Mukhyamantri Boltoy', adding that payments were made only for work it had completed.

According to Sawant, the firm was supposed to produce the programme between October last year and June this year but it was last aired on October 1, 2017.

The chief minister, he alleged, has not given time for filming episodes of the programme since then.

"The programme was neither filmed nor aired (for 10 months). Yet the company was paid Rs 2.36 crore. The company was paid this amount despite it using manpower and machinery of the DGIPR for free. This is a big scam," Sawant told reporters here.

The Congress leader also questioned the criteria for awarding the contract to the company.

"When the DGIPR has the latest technology and capable manpower to come out with such a programme, why was the contract given to a new private company, which was barely three months old?" he questioned.

According to Sawant, the company was floated only in March 2017.

Attacking Fadnavis further, Sawant said, "The Marathas and Dhangars are protesting over quota. The government employees went on strike. Several such issues are there. Why did the chief minister not address people through the programme all this while?"



Rebutting the charges, the DGIPR said that the company was entrusted with producing various government programmes other than 'Mi Mukhyamantri Boltoy'.

"Most importantly, the company has been paid only for the work it has done. No payment has been made for the work it has not done yet," the DGIPR said in a statement.

The company was selected after seeking tenders online, the DGIPR said.

The company has produced 339, 195 and 12 episodes of 'Dilkhulas', 'Jai Maharashtra' and Mi Mukhyamantri Boltoy programmes respectively, it added.

'Dilkhulas' is a radio chat show with government officials while 'Jai Maharashtra' is a chat show with ministers and senior government officials.

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After separatist Sikhs staged a pro-Khalistan rally in London yesterday, the Congress today questioned the silence of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government and the Akali Dal in Punjab over the issue.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala also took a dig at the prime minister and his "56-inch chest", which he boasted of ahead of coming to power, while talking of strong action at the border with Pakistan.

"As a sinister conspiracy is hatched to revive militancy in Punjab, why are BJP-Akali Dal mum?



"Why has the 56-inch Modi government been stunned into a conspiratorial silence?," he asked on Twitter.

Referring to the London rally of separatists, he asked, "Are these activities not a conspiracy to divide the country into pieces? Then why the silence?"



Pro-Khalistani supporters yesterday assembled at Trafalgar Square in London in a rally organized by the Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), intended to raise awareness for a non-binding referendum in 2020, calling for the Sikh-majority state of Punjab to be granted "independence".

Interestingly, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today said the "no-show" London rally by the SFJ for a separate state has exposed the "total lack of ground support" for the 'Referendum 2020' even outside India.

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Alleging non-disclosure of Rs 25 crore worth liabilities in his election affidavit, the Congress today approached the Election Commission against BJP president Amit Shah with a plea seeking his disqualification as a Rajya Sabha member and registration of a case.

A delegation of senior Congress leaders Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Singhvi and Vivek Tankha met Chief Election Commissioner Om Prakash Rawat here and handed over a memorandum to him.

The BJP has rejected the Congress charges as "bogus" and has said there is no violation of rules by Shah, who was elected to Rajya Sabha from Gujarat last year.

The Congress leaders alleged Shah has violated rules and was liable for action by not disclosing these liabilities in his affidavit filed before the Election Commission while contesting the Rajya Sabha election.

They alleged that Shah had taken a loan of Rs 25 crore while mortgaging a piece of land owned by him but it was not mentioned in the 'liabilities' section in the affidavit.

"The act of wilful non-disclosure by the Member of Parliament in his affidavit amounts to the offence of 'filing of false affidavit' under Section 125A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. Such an offence is punishable by up to 6 months imprisonment, or with fine, or with both," the memorandum said.

The Congress leaders said it is clear the offence is not a minor one and is "a serious act of corruption through wilful and deliberate suppression".

Sibal said the Election Commission of India must take immediate note of this and initiate appropriate proceedings to suspend the membership of Amit Shah to the Upper House with immediate effect.

He said the EC should also communicate to the Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha to start the procedure laid down under the relevant rules to determine what further penalties may be imposed for breach of privilege.

Asked about the EC asking the petitioner to move court in this case, he said, "We want that the EC should move court since the affidavit has been filed before it."



"The ECI must initiate proceedings against Mr Amit Shah for the filing of a false affidavit, which attracts up to six months' imprisonment, and/or a fine. We hope the Commission treats this matter with the attention that it deserves and initiates immediate action to take the issue forward," the memorandum by the Congress leaders said.

Singhvi said it is a "very serious matter" as the Supreme Court has held that the requirement to disclose all assets and liabilities is mandatory and any evasion or suppression is absolutely not permissible.

He said a mortgage is a liability for the person who mortgages it to a bank and therefore it was a liability for Amit Shah, which has not been disclosed.

"This has two serious consequences. One consequence is criminal... Secondly and separately, Rajya Sabha and its Chairman can and should take cognisance of this and it can lead to his suspension and disqualification," Singhvi told reporters.

"It is a clear-cut case which requires no argument that something which he has mortgaged to a bank, but he on his own simply is not disclosing," he said.

Citing Section 75A of the Representation of Peoples Act 1951, he said it mandates all MPs to file an affidavit declaring their criminal records (if any), their assets and liabilities and educational qualifications.

"This mandatory requirement is further elaborated upon in the Members of Rajya Sabha (Declaration Of Assets And Liabilities) Rules, 2004 made under the aforementioned Section 75A of the 1951 Act. Rule 3(1) (ii) of the 2004 Rules expressly includes 'his liabilities to any public financial institution'," he said.

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The Mumbai Congress staged today a protest against the alleged burning of a copy of the Constitution in New Delhi and demanded that those responsible for the act be booked for sedition.

The Delhi Police arrested a 40-year-old man on Saturday for allegedly burning a copy of the Constitution in protest against the amendments in the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

Leaders and workers of the Mumbai Congress held a protest outside the Dadar railway station here and strongly condemned the incident, which they said, disrespected the Constitution and its chief architect B R Ambedkar.

Former Congress MP from South Central Mumbai Eknath Gaikwad, who led the protest, said, "Just arrest is not enough. We demand that the accused be slapped with sedition charges so that nobody dares to do such a thing again."



Gaikwad accused the BJP-led government at the Centre of "instigating" such elements.

The protesters shouted slogans against the Modi government, accusing it of trying to "dilute" the basic characters of the Constitution.

Anil Tanwar, the national in-charge of the Akhil Bhartiya Bheem Sena, had filed a complaint at the Parliament Street police station on Saturday, alleging members of the Youth for Equality burnt the copy of the Constitution and shouted slogans against Ambedkar.

The complainant also submitted a CD containing a video of the incident, police had said.

During investigation, it was revealed that on August 9, two different organisations -- the Youth Equality Foundation (Azad Sena) and the Arakshan Virodhi Party -- held a joint protest at the Parliament Street, the police said.

The Arakshan Virodhi Party participated in the protest under the leadership of Deepak Gaur and Youth Equality Foundation was headed by one Abhishekh Shukla. Three police teams were formed to nab the accused.

The teams raided the houses of suspects in different parts of Delhi, Haryana and Utar Pradesh but they were found absconding.

Subsequently, the police nabbed Gaur from Faridabad.

During interrogation, he revealed that he and Shukla conspired to burn the copy of the Constitution with an intention to bring the attention of government against the amendments in the SC/ST Act, the police said.

The amendments restored key provisions of the Act that were "diluted" by the Supreme Court in March.

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An FIR was lodged against a police constable in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district today for allegedly taking a bribe from a person to get his son appointed in the department.

Mohammad Aslam, a resident of Sathra Tehsil of Mandi, lodged a complaint alleging that Nazir Hussain Shah had demanded and accepted Rs 75,000 from him in lieu of getting his son recruited as a constable in the police department, a statement from the J&K State Vigilance Organisation (SVO) said.

A preliminary inquiry prima facie established the allegations, leading to the registration of a case against Shah under various sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act, the statement said.

The accused has not been arrested so far, it added.

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The West Bengal CID today arrested three persons from the industrial town of Durgapur in West Burdwan district when they assembled to murder a businessman there, a senior officer said here.

Acting on a tip-off, CID sleuths picked up "most wanted contract killers" Rabi Chowrasia, Ajit Singh and Jitendra Kumar during a raid at Durgapur's Uttarpally.

Two pipe guns, one pistol, seven rounds of 8mm cartridge, two rounds of 7.65 cartridge and 280 gm of heroin were seized from their possession, the officer said.

"Rabi Chowrasia brought the two others to kidnap and murder one businessman of Durgapur after he was hired by a criminal in Jamshedpur who is now absconding," he said.

Preliminary interrogation revealed that the trio had planned to flee to Balasore in Odisha after the crime.

"They had also planned to murder another person in Kharagpur. Their interrogation is still on," he said.

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Police constable Parvez Ahmad, killed in a gunfight with terrorists in Srinagar, was laid to rest today with full honours at his ancestral village in Rajauri district near here with a large number of people, including senior Army and police officers, attending his last rites braving incessant rains.

Ahmad's body reached his village Dhandote near Budhal town of the district around 3 pm from Srinagar and was laid to rest at his ancestral graveyard with full honours, a police official said.

A selection grade constable, Ahmad was killed yesterday while fighting militants during a raid on their suspected hideout in Batmaloo locality of central Srinagar.

A pall of gloom descended on the village and adjoining areas after the of Ahmad's death spread and the people started assembling at his residence to join his funeral prayers.

Senior officers, including Rajouri's Senior Superintendent of Police Yougal Manhas, Colonel T P Sharma, the Commanding Officer of 60 Rashtriya Rifles, Commandant Liaqat Chowdhary, the in-charge of the second battalion of Indian Reserve Police and Assistant Commissioner (Revenue) Abdul Quyoom Mir attended the funeral procession of the martyr and paid rich tributes to him, the official said.

He said Deputy Superintendent of Police (Operations) Sukhdev Singh, Manjakote's Sub-Divisional Police Officer Imtiyaz Ahmed and Budhal's Executive Magistrate Khursheed Tantray were also present on the occasion.

Thousands of people from the village and adjoining areas braved the incessant rains to attend the funeral prayers for the slain policeman, he said.

The official said the mourners also visited the bereaved family to express their solidarity with them.

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A small white supremacist rally took place outside the White House when only some 20 far-right supporters showed up, but they were massively outnumbered by counter-protesters.

Washington police closed streets and threw a ring of steel across a park where the rally was held yesterday to keep the demonstrators and counter-protesters apart.

The day appeared to end without major incident, though officers used pepper spray on rowdy anti-fascists a few blocks from the White House.

The tiny group of demonstrators trickled in from nearby Vienna, Virginia under heavy police escort at Washington's Foggy Bottom Metro station -- and were met by hundreds of counter-protesters screaming "Shame!" and "Get out of my city!"



Most of the demonstrators wore masks, prompting counter-protesters to taunt them as cowards for hiding their identity.

Heavy rain helped bring the so-called "Unite the Right 2" demo to an early end, hours before the scheduled finish of what had been billed as a "white civil rights rally" protesting, among other things, the social media shut down of some voices on the extreme right.

After marching to Lafayette Square in front of the White House, the group was driven in police vans back to a different Metro station outside of Washington.

"Behold the master race," one counter-protester mockingly yelled.

By the end of the day, only six individuals remained, protected from angry counter-protesters by a ring of police officers.

"The US is for all of us, NOT just some of us," one counter-protester sign read, while another said, "Fighting Nazis: An American Tradition."



One year ago torch-bearing white supremacists in the first "United the Right" event marched through Charlottesville, Virginia in two days of chaos, chanting slogans such as "Blood and Soil" - the English version of a Nazi chant - and "White Lives Matter".

That event culminated with a man driving a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 people.

Some of the white demonstrators in Charlottesville carried guns, including assault rifles, but all firearms were barred from Sunday's rally.

Yesterday the demonstrator chants, if any, were drowned out by the counter-protesters.

"Pro-white" march organizer Jason Kessler, who wore a grey suit and no mask, told reporters that he was not a white supremacist but a "civil rights advocate for white people" and wanted to "tell the truth about Charlottesville," which he claimed was "sabotaged" by city officials.

In a video posted on the Politico website, Kessler said that many sympathizers failed to show up because they were "terrified that they are going to be attacked" by counter-demonstrators.

"It would be a major mistake if we allowed fascists to just walk into the nation's capital and go in unopposed," said Kei Pritsker, 22, a volunteer with the Answer Coalition that organized the counter-protest.

The white supremacist movement is enjoying a sense of empowerment under President Donald Trump, Pritsker said.

Trump drew broad criticism immediately after last year's Charlottesville clashes when he appeared reluctant to condemn the extreme right-wingers -- many of whom have rallied behind him since his election.

On Saturday, the president issued a generic condemnation of "all types of racism and acts of violence" via Twitter.

An African-American counter protester who only gave his name as Jim said that Trump has "emboldened" white racists.

"It was subtle, now it's not subtle, it's in your face. It's like Nazi Germany," he told AFP.

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Former prime minister Manmohan Singh today condoled the death of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, saying the country has lost a "great leader".

Singh offered his condolences in a letter to Chatterjee's wife Renu, describing him as a good orator, an exceptional public servant and an outstanding parliamentarian.

"In his death our country has lost a great leader who always stood for the cause of the poor and the downtrodden classes of society.

"He was a very good orator, an exceptional public servant, and an outstanding member of parliament, especially in the role of speaker of the Lok Sabha, which made him eligible for the 'Outstanding Parliamentarian Award'," he said in his letter.

Singh, who was the prime minister during the United Progressive Alliance government, said Chatterjee's ability and personality was such that people from all walks of life and from all political parties loved and respected him.

"His services to the nation will be remembered for many years to come," he said, while conveying his heartfelt condolences to the family on the bereavement.

Communist veteran and former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee passed away at a private hospital in Kolkata this morning following multiple organ failure, a senior hospital official said.

He was 89 and survived by wife, a son and two daughters.

Chatterjee passed away at around 8.15 am after his condition deteriorated following yesterday's "mild heart attack", the official said.

He was suffering from a kidney-related ailment and was admitted to the hospital in a critical condition on Tuesday last.

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A Delhi court today sent two alleged ISIS sympathisers, arrested from Hyderabad, to ten days' NIA custody in a case of allegedly radicalising Indian youngsters for carrying out terror strikes on behalf of the banned international outfit.

The agency produced the accused before District Judge Poonam A Bamba and sought a 15-day remand for custodial interrogation of the accused.

The accused -- Hyderabad-based MohammedAbdullah Basith (24) and Mohd Abdul Qhadeer (19) -- were arrested by the agency to ascertain the details of an alleged conspiracy and their role in furthering the ISIS ideology to carry out terrorist acts in India.

The NIA is probing a case since 2016 where it is alleged that the members of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) "were involved in a conspiracy to identify, motivate, radicalise, recruit and train Indian Muslim youths on behalf of the proscribed outfit ISIS to carry out terror activities.

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It's barely 6:00 am and Alfred is already busy milking cows. But when his chores on the farm are done, he won't be going home -- he'll be returning to his prison cell.

In Sweden, which prioritises rehabilitation over long prison sentences, Alfred is one of 60 inmates preparing to reintegrate into society at a minimum security "open prison" functioning as a farm in the town of Mariestad, about 300 kilometres southwest of Stockholm.

Imprisoned since April for illegally possessing a gun, Alfred, a grandfather in his 50s who is due to be released in November, can't hide the joy he gets from spending time with the animals.

"I like them... they calm me down," he says with a sigh, wearing a cap, his arm covered in tattoos.

In this agricultural prison called Rodjan -- the biggest of the Swedish penitentiary system's three farms -- his routines are the same every day.

He meets up with his work assignment partner Sofian (both names have been changed to protect their identities) in the morning for two and a half hours of work and then once again in the evening.

"I clean (the udder) to avoid the bacteria, then I disinfect it" before pulling the teats, Alfred says enthusiastically.

Other inmates work on the farm watering the plants, repainting the gates, and mowing the lawn. And a dozen of them are in charge of the livestock.

Sweden is among the countries with the fewest prisoners in the world: there are 0.5 inmates per 1,000 inhabitants, which is half of that in France (one per 1,000), Swedish and French prison data show.

The Scandinavian nation spends twice as much as France on each detainee, including those placed under surveillance, and works hard to avoid confinement.

Instead, it prefers to put people on probation, favours widespread use of ankle monitors, sentences people to community service, and releases prisoners after two-thirds of time served.

Sweden also invests heavily in reintegration through language classes and vocational training.

"It's our system for bringing people out into society in a good way, so they don't come back to prison again," Britt-Marie Johansson, head of the Rodjan institution, tells AFP.

In Sweden, just under a third of prisoners re-offend after leaving jail or serving their term, which is half of that in France, according to the Swedish and French prison statistics.

As in all penitentiaries across Sweden, inmates have their own cells. At Rodjan, they're unlocked. There are no security cameras, no gates, no barbed wire, and inmates are allowed to move about freely. Sweden has more than a dozen open prisons across the country.

Inmates at Rodjan are serving sentences for all types of convictions, ranging from driving without a licence to tax crimes or assault, but prisoners placed there are all considered to not pose a threat to society.

"We count the prisoners in the morning, during the day and in the evening, and we know where they are all the time," assures Johansson.

"If they do something wrong, they go to a higher security level" facility, she adds.

Closing the fence to the meadow after he finishes milking the cows, Alfred jokes that the cows are more locked up than the prisoners.

The inmates work 35 hours per week with two days off and are paid 13 kronor (1.2 euros, $1.15) an hour.

On his days off, Alfred admits that he regularly steps into the barn "to see if everything is fine".

Other inmates have been known to call the prison while on their days off if they know the cows are due to give birth, to ask "How did it go? Did it go well with the calf?" Johansson says, amused.

Michael Henningsohn, the farm's production manager, praises the detainees' work.

"Many work incredibly well despite never having done this before. It's fascinating to see their attitudes" after only a few days of training, he says with a smile.

In 2012, the farm received an award from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf for the quality of its milk.

The establishment's key to success lies in the strict routines required for running a farm, according to Henningsohn.

Despite enjoying his time with the cows, Alfred does not see himself staying in the farming business after completing his sentence, even though he grew up surrounded by cows on his grandparents' farm.

"I saw how it went for them... it's too hard," he says.

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The Delhi Police today named Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia as accused in its charge sheet in connection with the alleged assault on Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash in February.

The charge sheet, which was filed before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal, has also named as accused 11 legislators of the Aam Aadmi Party -- Amanatullah Khan, Prakash Jarwal, Nitin Tyagi, Rituraj Govind, Sanjeev Jha, Ajay Dutt, Rajesh Rishi, Rajesh Gupta, Madan Lal, Parveen Kumar and Dinesh Mohania.

In its around 1,300 page charge sheet, the police has alleged that Kejriwal, Sisodia and others had criminally conspired to threaten the Chief Secretary of death or grievous hurt, obstructed him in discharging his public function and caused hurt.

It has also accused the AAP leaders of other offences punishable under sections of IPC, including wrongfully confining any person, assaulting or using criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of duty, insulting him to provoke breach of peace and abetment of the offence.

They were also charge sheeted for offence committed under section 149, which says if an offence is committed by any member of an unlawful assembly, every other member of such assembly shall be held guilty of the offence.

The court has put up the charge sheet for consideration on August 25. If convicted, the accused may get a maximum of seven year jail term.

The Delhi Police had on May 18 questioned Kejriwal for over three hours in connection with the alleged assault on Prakash.

Prakash was allegedly assaulted during a meeting at Kejriwal's official residence on the night of February 19. The police said the chief minister was present when the alleged assault took place.

The police have already questioned 11 AAP MLAs present at the chief minister's residence for the meeting. Two of the party MLAs -- Amantullah Khan and Prakash Jarwal --were arrested in the case.

The alleged assault on the chief secretary had triggered a bitter tussle between the Delhi government and its bureaucrats.

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The death toll from the earthquake that rocked the Indonesian island of Lombok a week ago has passed 400 and the government is estimating economic losses of at least several hundred million dollars.

The national disaster agency said Monday the August 5 quake killed 436 people, most of whom died in collapsing buildings.

It said damage to homes, infrastructure and other property is at least 5 trillion rupiah (USD 342 million), calling that a temporary figure that will rise as more assessments are made. The agency said rebuilding will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The magnitude 7.0 quake flattened thousands of homes and according to the disaster agency's latest estimate has displaced about 350,000 people.

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The Defence Ministry has received requests from a number of countries including Gujarat, Rajasthan, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh to host the next Aero India, amid reports that the mega aerospace event is being moved out of its traditional venue of Bengaluru.

Official sources said the Defence Ministry is examining the requests from various states and yet to take a call on the venue for the next edition of the event.

"The ministry has received requests to host the event from Gujarat, Rajasthan, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and several other states," said a source.

There have been reports that the biennial event -- considered the largest aerospace exhibition in Asia -- may be organised at the Bakshi Ka Talab air force base in Lucknow in October.

Aero India has traditionally been organised at Indian Air Force's Yelahanka air base on the outskirts of Bengaluru.

At an event on Saturday, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath made a request to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to select Lucknow as the venue for the Aero India.

Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy today sent a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, insisting that Bengaluru would be the "best choice" for the event.

"Bengaluru being the hub for defence and aviation majors of the country, is certainly the most suitable place to conduct the show," he said in the letter.

Since its inception in 1996, Bengaluru has been hosting the air show.

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The Delhi government has directed all schools in the national capital to discourage students from flying kites and sensitise them about the danger it can pose for humans and birds.

"Flying of kites is a common feature in Delhi as a hobby of youth and generally increases before festivals and national holidays. Flying of kites sometimes leads to accidents causing harm and injury to humans, animals and birds," the Directorate of Education (DoE) said in a communication to schools.

"It becomes lethal and hazardous because of metal coated string used in flying kites. Often accidents involving kite flying have been reported causing injuries - small, grievous and sometimes fatal.

"It is a matter of grave concern and therefore, the passion for it among the students should be discouraged by creating awareness about the danger it can pose for people, animals and birds around," it added.

The government has directed that school principals should direct staff members during the school assembly about problems caused by flying of kites.

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As Aftab Pureval campaigns for Congress in southwest Ohio, he sometimes smilingly introduces himself as "a brown dude with a funny name."



The Ohio native is the son of a Tibet-born mother and India-born father. He first upset the Cincinnati political order in 2016, winning the Hamilton County clerk of court's post that had been in Republican hands for a century. Now the 35-year-old attorney-turned-politician wants to unseat veteran Republican Rep Steve Chabot.

"He's had his chance," Pureval says of the 65-year-old Chabot, a fixture on the Cincinnati-area political landscape for three decades who hasn't had a tough race since seats were redrawn after the 2010 census.

"It's our time now." Their matchup is among dozens of House contests playing out in districts that have largely been afterthoughts in recent elections. It's these kinds of races beyond the 25 districts that elected a Republican member of Congress in 2016 despite Hillary Clinton defeating Donald Trump there that could determine whether Democrats gain the 23 seats they need to retake the House.

Pureval is among the Democratic hopefuls looking to reclaim districts that span the nation's small and midsize cities and their surrounding suburbs and small towns much of it political territory where Democrats were swept away in Republicans' 2010 midterm romp.

Democrats felt encouraged by the tight battle in last week's congressional special election in Ohio. While Trump claimed victory for Republican state Sen Troy Balderson, the race against Democrat Danny O'Connor was considered too close to call, with a recount possible.

The two will have a rematch in November for the seat vacated by Republican Pat Tiberi, who won by 37 points two years ago. Democrats got a boost in a March special election in Pennsylvania, where Democrat Conor Lamb won a congressional district Trump carried by nearly 20 percent in 2016.

Pureval is among 60-plus names on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's "Red to Blue" list of candidates the national party believes are its best shots to flip GOP seats.

The list is a mix of Clinton-won districts and the next tier of targets.

Dan Sena, the DCCC's executive director, says the "historic and diverse battlefield" will force tough Republican decisions on "who to defend and who is a lost cause." Those dynamics mean legitimate House races in districts as varied as Salt Lake City, where Mayor Ben McAdams is aiming to unseat Rep. Mia Love in a district Trump carried by 7 points (Love won in 2016 by 12 points.) to West Virginia coal country, where Democratic state Sen. Richard Ojeda voted for



Trump and now is aiming for an open seat in a district the president carried by 50 points. (Outgoing Republican Rep. Evan Jenkins last won by 44.) It's a stunning turn two years removed from just 16 House races coming within 5 points, with an average victory margin of 37 points across all 435 districts.

Democrats are employing a range of candidates across that wide field.

Pureval is the millennial rising star. National Democrats noticed him after he scored the major upset to become Hamilton County clerk.

He ran promising to modernise and cut costs, backed with memorable TV ads that highlighted his unusual name with an Aflac duck-like puppet squawking "AF-TAB!"



Pureval shows up at nearly any parade, festival or other large public event in the district and at home gatherings hosted by volunteers. He talks about economic development, helping the middle class and bringing generational change, trying to tap into demographic shifts without delving too much into the daily Trump-driven national narratives.

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Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today said development of tourism sector was the priority of his government as it would lead to economic development of the state, besides generating employment opportunities.

Tourism will attract visitors from all over the world and bring foreign currency to our country, Das said.

The state government, he said, remains committed to develop tourist spots such as Rajrappa, Itkhori, Parasnath, Anjanidham, Deoghar, Bashukinath and Maluti.

The chief minister was addressing a gathering after performing 'Jalabhisekh' (offering holy water) to Lord Shiva at Surya Mandir at Sidgora on the third Monday of the auspicious month of 'Shravan', an official release said here.

Hailing the media for giving exposure to 'Shravani Mela', he said it has become an international event and will help boost the tourism potential of the state.

Speaking on the occasion, the chief minister also said, "Our aim is to make Jharkhand a prosperous state by 2022."



The state was moving forward on the path of development with its welfare policies, Das said.

He also appreciated the contribution of women in the overall development of the state.

Accompanied by thousands of kanwarias (Lord Shiva devotees), Das lifted holy water from Baridih bustee chat ghat, then walked about 1.5 km with the kanwarias and offered holy water to Lord Shiva at the temple in East Singhbhum district.

Das prayed for the prosperity and all round development of the state, the release said.

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Natco Pharma today said its co-development and marketing partner Dr Reddys Laboratories Ltd has filed an application with the European Medicines Agency for marketing a cancer drug in Europe.

In a press release here, Natco said the duxorubicinhydrochloride liposome injection, a therapeutic equivalent to the generic version of Jessens Doxil, is for intravenous use for treating metastatic breast cancer, advanced ovarian cancer and progressive multiple myeloma.

The Doxil brand of 2mg/ml had sales of approximately USD 130.5 million in Europe, for the 12 months ending December 31, 2017, Natco said citing market reports.

The shares of Natco closed at Rs 769.35 per share down 1.12 per cent while Dr Reddys closed at Rs 2247. 15 up at 1.49 per cent over the previous close on BSE.

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Easter Island may have harboured a highly sophisticated society, where the people shared information and collaborated, according to a study.

The remote island 3,700 kilometres off the coast of Chile is known as "the place with the giant stone heads."



It has has long been seen as a place where Polynesian seafarers set up camp, built giant statues, and then destroyed their own society through in-fighting and over-exploitation of natural resources.

"For a long time, people wondered about the culture behind these very important statues," said Laure Dussubieux, a scientist at Field Museum in the US.

"This study shows how people were interacting, it's helping to revise the theory," Dussubieux said.

The study, published in the Journal of Pacific Archaeology, analysed the chemical makeup of the tools used to create the big stone sculptures, hinting at a more complex story.

"The idea of competition and collapse on Easter Island might be overstated," said Dale Simpson, an archaeologist from the University of Queensland in Australia.

"To me, the stone carving industry is solid evidence that there was cooperation among families and craft," Simpson said.

The first people arrived on Easter Island (or Rapa Nui in the local language) about 900 years ago.

"The founding population, according to oral tradition, was two canoes led by the island's first chief, Hotu Matu'a," said Simpson.

Over the years, the population rose to the thousands, forming the complex society that carved the statues Easter Island is known for today.

These statues, or moai, often referred to as "Easter Island heads," are actually full-body figures that became partially buried over time.

The moai, which represent important Rapa Nui ancestors, number nearly a thousand, and the largest one is over seventy feet tall.

According to Simpson, the size and number of the moai hint at a complex society.

"Ancient Rapa Nui had chiefs, priests, and guilds of workers who fished, farmed, and made the moai.

"There was a certain level of sociopolitical organization that was needed to carve almost a thousand statues," said Simpson.

Recent excavations of four statues in the inner region of Rano Raraku, the statue quarry, were conducted by researchers at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the US.

The researchers took a detailed look at twenty one of about 1,600 stone tools made of volcanic stone called basalt that had been recovered in recent excavations.

About half of the tools, called toki, recovered were fragments that suggested how they were used.

"The majority of the toki came from one quarry complex - once the people found the quarry they liked, they stayed with it," said Simpson.

"For everyone to be using one type of stone, I believe they had to collaborate. That's why they were so successful - they were working together," he said.

To Simpson, this level of large-scale cooperation contradicts the popular narrative that Easter Island's inhabitants ran out of resources and warred themselves into extinction.

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The Election Commission has issued a show cause notice to John Leslee K Sangma, an independent candidate in Meghalaya, for an alleged hate speech he made during campaigning, ahead of the August 23 bye-elections to South Tura seat, an election official said.

The Deputy Commissioner of West Garo Hills, Ram Singh, confirmed that the notice had been served to the candidate yesterday though a reply from the former legislator is still awaited.

He was asked to reply to the show cause notice by today noon.

The National Peoples Party (NPP) general secretary Mathias N Marak in his complaint to the Returning Officer had accused John Leslee K Sangma of making a hate speech against former legislator Agatha Sangma and her late father, P A Sangma, at a meeting at Nikrang Ading locality on August 7.

As per the complaint, the "inflammatory" speech was intended to hurt the religious sentiments of the people.

According to the complainant, the meeting held between 8pm and 10 pm on August 7 was held without the permission from the Returning Officer and was a violation of the Model Code of Conduct.

The notice referred to a Supreme Court ruling that religion and caste cannot be used by anyone while making any statement during electioneering or otherwise.

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The Election Commission (EC) would arrange to ferry physically challenged voters from their homes to polling booths in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls slated for later this year, a senior official said today.

The EC's Deputy Election Commissioner Chandra Bhushan Kumar today held a preparatory meeting in connection with the forthcoming polls with returning officers and police officials of 16 districts of Bhopal, Narmadapuram, Gwalior and Chambal divisions attending it.

"The volunteers appointed by the returning officers of districts would ensure to bring physically challenged electors to the booths and drop them back to their homes," Kumar said.

He said that block level officers would identify such persons and said that poll personnel would be given training to carry out this initiative.

Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Madhya Pradesh V L Kantharao said that there are about 4.5 lakh physically challenged voters in the state.

Kumar said that people could also use a recently launched app - cVIGIL to register their complaints about rigging or violation of model code of conduct in the polls.

"The complainant can upload videos or photos about any irregularity during polling or the violation of model code of conduct. Our flying squad would immediately act on such complaints. However, action can also be taken against the complainant in case of a false complaint," the Deputy Election Commissioner said.

On the demand of some parties to adopt ballots instead of electronic voting machines (EVMs), Kumar said, "If any political party has doubts about the EVM, then we will always be ready to mitigate it."



When asked about the announcements of dates for Madhya Pradesh Assembly election, he said that EC would make it public at a suitable time.

Kumar also informed that the date of the second summary revision of the state's voters list, which was to conclude on August 21, had now been extended to August 31.

The final publication of the voters list in the state is scheduled for September 27.

Rao said that there were 5.07 crore voters registered in the electoral rolls published in January this year, which had reduced to 4.94 crore after the revision.

The decrease was registered as there were double entries and cases where some voters were absent during the revision while others had shifted elsewhere or had died.

Rao informed that necessary directives had been issued to officers to take action against vehicles installing hooters and violating norms.

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The Enforcement Directorate today approached a Delhi court seeking cancellation of the bail of an accused in the over Rs 5,000-crore bank loan fraud case, alleging that he refused to appear before it despite repeated summons.

In the application filed before the Additional Sessions Judge, the ED's special public prosecutors N K Matta and Nitesh Rana urged the court to cancel the relief granted to Delhi-based businessman Gagan Dhawan, who was earlier arrested by the ED and is currently out on bail.

The agency claimed that he refused to appear before it for confrontation with Ranjit Malik, who had allegedly sent Rs 25 lakh cash to the official residence of a senior Congress leader here.

The court, which today extended by three days the ED custody of Ranjit Malik alias Johny, issued notice to Dhawan and directed him to respond to it by tomorrow.

Rana told the court that Dhawan was required to be confronted with Malik, who was arrested for allegedly sending Rs 25 lakh through one Rakesh Chandra to '23, Mother Teresa Crescent' which is the official address of Congress leader Ahmed Patel.

However, the period of delivery of cash was not disclosed by the agency.

Asked about it, Patel had earlier said, "I don't know anything about this. Let the law take its own course".

Malik was produced before the court on expiry of his 10-day ED custody and the agency moved an application through advocate A R Aditya seeking further custodial interrogation by four days.

Dhawan was arrested on November 1 last year and the ED had alleged that he had facilitated the directors of Gujarat-based pharma firm Sterling Biotech Ltd (SBL) in the purchase of several properties and helped in misuse and diversion of the credit facilities of several bank totalling Rs 5,000 crore.

He was granted bail by a court here on January 4 this year and the judge had put various conditions on him, including that he will appear before the agency as and when called for.

Malik was arrested earlier this month by the agency.

The CBI had booked Sterling Biotech, its directors Chetan Jayantilal Sandesara, Dipti Chetan Sandesara, Rajbhushan Omprakash Dixit, Nitin Jayantilal Sandesara and Vilas Joshi, chartered accountant Hemant Hathi, former director Andhra Bank Anup Garg and some unidentified persons in connection with the alleged bank fraud case.

It had alleged that the company had taken loans of over Rs 5,000 crore from a consortium led by Andhra Bank which had turned into non-performing assets.

The FIR had also alleged that the total pending dues of the group companies were Rs 5,383 crore as on December 31, 2016. The ED had taken a cognisance of this FIR to file a money laundering case against them.

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Egypt's Interior Ministry says police killed six suspected Islamic militants in a shootout in a Cairo suburb.

Today's statement says the fighting erupted when police raided a suspected militant hideout in the suburban Sixth of October district.

The statement says police seized weapons during the raid.

It didn't say when the raid took place or whether any security forces were killed or wounded.

Egypt, which has been under a state of emergency since April last year, has been battling Islamic militants for years, but the insurgency gained strength after the 2013 overthrow of elected but divisive Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

The militants have mainly targeted security forces and Christians.

In February, Egypt launched a major security operation against militants, mainly in the Sinai Peninsula but also elsewhere in the country.

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At least 18 people were killed in different areas of Himachal Pradesh as the state experienced incessant rains since yesterday evening, an official said.

According to the information received at the state headquarters, eight persons were killed in Solan district followed by four in Mandi, two each in Hamirpur and Kangra districts and one each in Bilaspur and Una, he said.

Interim relief was distributed by the local district administration to the affected families, he added.

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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today accused the United States of seeking to stab Turkey "in the back" over a diplomatic row sparked by the detention of an American pastor that has sent the lira into a tailspin.

"You act on one side as a strategic partner but on the other you fire bullets into the foot of your strategic partner," Erdogan told a conference in the capital Ankara.

"We are together in NATO and then you seek to stab your strategic partner in the back. Can such a thing be accepted?" Erdogan asked.

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As per the initial investigation of the police, Roman Catholic Bishop of Jalandhar Franco Mulakkal abused his position and repeatedly raped a nun from Kerala, a special team probing the case told the Kerala high court today.

Responding to a petition seeking speedy investigation, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Kottayam, K Subhash informed the court that the investigation was proceeding effectively and impartially.

After the submission by the officer, the HC disposed of the petition with a direction to the police to investigate the case properly.

The government counsel told Justice B Sudheendra Kumar that a decision on arresting Mulakkal, who has so far claimed innocence, will be taken after he is interrogated and evidence is examined.

In the statement, Subhash said he and his team would continue their investigation in Jalandhar.

The police statement was based on initial investigation and available evidence. It is revealed that the accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal committed unnatural offence and committed rape repeatedly on the nun against her will, the statement read.

The bishop confined the nun to a guestroom in St Francis Mission Home in Kuravilangad in Kottayam district of Kerala, the statement alleged.

No laxity or indifference has been shown till date in the investigation of the case, it said.

The petition was filed by the Kerala Catholic Church Reformation Movement (KCRM), which claimed that the police were not taking speedy action in the case.

In her complaint lodged with Kottayam district police, the nun accused Mulakkal of raping and having unnatural sex with her multiple times between 2014 and 2016.

State police chief Loknath Behera on August 1 reviewed the progress of the case and permitted the investigation team to proceed to Jalandhar, New Delhi and other cities as part of the investigations.

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The DMK today appeared headed for a fresh succession war days after the death of its patriarch M Karunanidhi, with his estranged son and former union minister M K Alagiri claiming all loyal party workers are with him.

Karunanidhi had expelled Alagiri and his supporters from the party in 2014 at the height of his fight with his younger brother M K Stalin over establishing supremacy in Tamil Nadu's main opposition party.

Stalin is now the working president of the DMK and looks set to assume its reins.

Alagiri today paid tributes to his father at his grave on the Marina Beach and made his intentions clear when he claimed all loyal party workers were with him.

"All the true and loyal supporters of Thalaivar, Kalaignar (The leader and the artiste, sobriquets used for Karunanidhi) are with me, they are supporting me...time will provide the answer," Alagiri, who has been leading a life away from the media glare in Madurai since his expulsion, told reporters.

He said he prayed at his father's grave over his "grievances and frustration" about which the media would not know now.

When asked if those related to the family or the party, Alagiri said it was the latter.

The development came a day ahead of the DMK's executive committee meeting that has been ostensibly convened to condole Karunanidhi's death but where a decision may be taken about summoning the party's general council for putting its seal of approval on Stalin's elevation.

When asked to comment on the tomorrow's meeting, Alagiri said," I am not in the DMK. Do not ask me about it."



"I don't know," was his terse reply to a question about whether he would be back in the party again.

Alagiri and Stalin have been at loggerheads for years over who will inherit Karunanidhi's legacy.

Before his expulsion, a mercurial Alagiri had famously questioned if the DMK was a "mutt" where the pontiff could anoint his successor, an apparent reference to their father.

The Karunanidhi family had presented a united face when the DMK stalwart was fighting for life at a city hospital. Alagiri was present at the hospital and was seen at his father's funeral.

However, close watchers of Tamil Nadu expected him to flex his political muscle once Karunanidhi was gone.

The former union minister wields considerable influence in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu. He was the party's secretary for these districts before his expulsion.

Though the sibling rivalry for control of levers of power in the organisation was present for a long time, it came out in the open in January 2014 when Karunanidhi said Alagiri had talked about the death of Stalin in three months, a charge the Madurai strongman dismissed as baseless.

"He (Alagiri) has some unknown hatred against Stalin. Alagiri even said Stalin would die in three months. No father can tolerate such words against a son. As the party chief, I had to tolerate them," Karunanidhi had said and expelled Alagiri and his supporters from the party.

Stalin was a clear favourite of Karunanidhi as he diligently worked his way up the DMK hierarchy, holding party posts since his youth. He was the party's treasurer and youth wing secretry for three decades.

Alagiri, on the other hand, lay in the background. It was only in 2009, after the Tirumangalam bypoll victory of the DMK in Madurai, that Alagiri was named the party's south zone organising secretary. He faced allegations of ditributing cash to voters during the bypoll.

When Stalin embarked on an aggressive campaign for the 2016 Assembly election with his voter outreach programme "Namakku Naame Vidiyal Meetpu Payanam" (We for ourselves, journey to retrieve the dawn), Alagiri called it a "comedy show."



Recently, Alagiri asserted true party workers were only with him and taunted Stalin and his supporters.

He had even questioned Stalin's leadership in the wake of the DMK's drubbing in last year's RK Nagar assembly bypoll in Chennai where the party candidate forfeited his deposit against winner AMMK's TTV Dhinakaran.

Alagiri had claimed after the defeat that the DMK cannot win any election under Stalin.

"Not just the RK Nagar bypoll, the DMK will not henceforth win any election. There is no chance of that as long as this working president (Stalin) is there," he had said.

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Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis expressed grief today over the demise of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee.

Chatterjee, 89, died at a private hospital in Kolkata this morning following multiple organ failure.

"We have lost someone from who was loyal to principles," Fadnavis said in his condolence message.

Chatterjee was respected by all political parties, he noted, adding that his long political career would guide those working in public life.

A 10-time Lok Sabha member, Chatterjee had joined the CPI(M) in 1968. He was the Lok Sabha speaker from 2004 to 2009.

"The loyalty he showed towards India's democracy and the Constitution while discharging duty as the speaker would always be remembered. The stands he took in that role enrich the parliamentary traditions," Fadnavis said.

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A group of farmers in Maharashtra has received bank notices for loan recovery of about Rs 40 lakh to Rs 50 lakh each though they claimed they have not taken any loan, prompting the police to launch a probe.

Crime Branch of the Nagpur Rural police has started an inquiry into complaints received from farmers of Sinzar village in Narkhed tehsil of Nagpur district, an official said today.

According to the police, 11 farmers have filed complaints with the Jalalkheda police station, stating they have received notices for "defaulting" on loans worth Rs 40 lakh to Rs 50 lakh each from a public sector bank.

However, the farmers claimed they have not taken any loan from the bank.

One of them, Prakash Gaikwad, told PTI over the phone that around 10 days back, his family received a bank notice for non-payment of instalments on a loan of about Rs 50 lakh.

Gaikwad and the other farmers suspect a man, who had taken documents from them on pretext of registration in some government scheme, may have misused them and also forged their signatures to secure farm loans on their behalf from the bank.

The man remains unidentified.

Inspector G R Tamte confirmed receiving complaints from 11 farmers. "Considering the seriousness of the issue, the department has asked the local Crime Branchto inquire into the matter," said Tamte.

Sanjay Purandare, Inspector, Nagpur Rural Crime Branch, said, "We have started the inquiry into the complaints received from the farmers of Sinzar village."



"We will be probing all the stages involved in securing a bank loan like application process and verification of documents. All relevant information will be sought from the bank during the inquiry," he said.

Role of bank officials, if any, and whether there was any middleman will be known only after the inquiry is completed, Purandare said.

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Fear is palpable in Madapur village here, nearly two months after a man was allegedly lynched and another brutally assaulted by a mob over allegations of cow slaughter.

The incident occurred on June 18 in the fields near a stream, equidistant from the Muslim-majority Madapur and the Hindu-dominated Bhajeda Khurd.

Samiuddin, 65, of Madapur was brutally assaulted, while Qasim of nearby Pilakhua was killed by the mob from Bajheda alleging that the two were involved in cow slaughter.

Villagers in Madapur, under Mustafabad assembly constituency in Hapur district, claim they have become cautious of their movement outside the village since the incident.

The fear was amplified as a video appeared on social media in the past two days in which the accused persons are purportedly seen bragging about how they assaulted the duo.

Hearing a plea in the case by Samiuddin's brother, the Supreme Court today directed the Meerut inspector general of police (IGP) to investigate the case.

"Clearly there is an atmosphere of fear. When they are saying this clearly in the video, it's possible that anyone could be harmed," a man, in his early thirties, said.

He added that people are now scared of venturing out of the village, even to the forests nearby.

"It's not that we don't know them or they don't know us. They know many of us by name, and where we live. Now if the administration takes any action which leads to worsening of the situation, anybody could be in danger. While we are going out of the village or returning from outside anything might happen during that time. That is dangerous," said the man, who did not wish to be named.

Asked about the Supreme Court's order today for providing the victims' families with security if they so desired, the villagers said no one from the administration or police came here today to talk about it.

The villagers said that they were not aware of the Supreme Court order on security.

Another man, in his fifties, told PTI that the locals were no doubt "hesitant" to venture out.

"With the kind of statements they have been made in the new video, anybody would become cautious," he said.

Asked if there is any message by the elderly in the village for the youth, he said that peace and harmony should not be breached and patience lost.

"The almighty is above and down here we have the judiciary and we are hoping for justice," he said.

"It's not that all Indians are like this. It's only a handful of people, which could be in the majority or the minority. But whoever they are, what is wrong is wrong," he said.

Another villager, alluding to the video clip, said when the accused are blatantly saying this, fear is obvious.

"When the administration is with them, we will automatically be scared," the man, in his late 60s, said, adding that Qasim kept begging the mob for water even as a policeman stood there.

"Now either the government will do us justice or the God. We are not for any confrontation," he added.

A young man from Havaal village, which falls in between Madapur and Bakheda Khurd, expressed worry if Bakrid later this month would witness more tension.

"We have already seen the violence. Every one is exercising caution. The festival is on August 22, I hope nothing untoward happens," the man from Havaal, another Muslim-majority village, told PTI.

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The finance ministry today said that safeguard duty will not be insisted upon on import of solar cells for the "time being" in deference to interim directions passed by the High Court of Orissa.

Last month, India had imposed safeguard duty on solar cells imports from China and Malaysia for two years to protect domestic players from steep rise in inbound shipments.

The duty was imposed following recommendations by the Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) under the commerce ministry.

"...in compliance to the interim directions issued by Hon'ble High Court of Orissa..., it has been decided not to insist on payment of safeguard duty, for the time being," the finance ministry said in a circular.

It further said that till further direction from the revenue department, solar cells whether or not assembled in modules or panels "would, in respect of safeguard duty, be assessed provisionally" on furnishing of simple letter of undertaking/bond by the concerned person.

Abhishek Jain, Tax Partner with EY India said that while the circular would provide interim relief from payment of safeguard duty to the solar cell importers.

Further, given that it is only an interim relief, whether the solar players should factor the safeguard duty as a cost or not would still be an important decision point, he added.

India is targeting to 100 gigawatt (GW) solar capacity by 2022.

Solar cells, electrical devices that convert sunlight directly into electricity, are imported primarily from China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan.

Imports of the cells from these countries account for more than 90 per cent of the total inbound shipments in the country.

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Five members of a family, including three children, were injured when a part of a house collapsed in Nimayu village in the district, police said today.

The incident occurred last evening under Charthawal police station, they said.

Charan Singh (52), his wife Sunita (50) , Anmol (4), Harsh (6) and Adarsh (7) were later shifted to a hospital, they added.

In another incident, over 4,000 chicks were killed when the wall of a poultry farm collapsed during rains in Gharidolat village of Shamli district yesterday, they said.

The loss was estimated to be worth to lakhs of rupees.

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Ahead of the Monsoon Session, Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly Speaker Hriday Narayan Dixit today directed officials of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited to fix the signal problem in the Closed User Group phones being used by the state legislators.

"The speaker also said that telephones must be installed at all designated places and in case there is issue of space, then alternate arrangements should be made," an official statement from the office of the speaker read.

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A flood alert has been issued to people living on the banks of Bhavani River in Mettupalayam in the district as 6,000 cusecs of water was being released from the Pilloor Dam, officials said today.

With heavy rains being experienced in Coimbatore and neighbouring Nilgiris and other districts, the dam, already full, was receiving 10,000 cusecs of water, they said.

Besides, surplus water from Kunda Dam in nearby Nilgiris district was also being let into Bhavani river and hence there could be possibility of it overflowing, District Collector T N Hariharan said in a statement.

Considering the safety of the dam, authorities were releasing 6,000 cusecs of water through two sluice gates, he said advising people living on the banks to move to safer places.

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The operators of the migrant ship Aquarius today called on Europe to find a safe haven for 141 people rescued in the Mediterranean, saying Italy and Malta had again refused to let it dock.

The Aquarius, which was left stranded with 630 migrants aboard in June after being turned away by Rome and Valletta, resumed rescue operations off the Libyan coast last week.

On Friday, it picked up 141 people in two separate operations, half of them children, but it has again struggled to find a port to bring them ashore.

Sophie Beau, president of the vessel's operator SOS Mediterranee, said the ship, which is currently situated between Malta and the Italian island of Lampedusa, had again received "official negative replies" from the two countries.

"We're asking all European countries to find a solution. We're asking them to be responsible and find a safe port in the Mediterranean," she said, accusing Italy and Malta of flouting international maritime law.

Tove Ernst, a spokesman for the European Commission, said it was in contact with "a number of member states that have approached us regarding the incident" to try to find a "swift resolution" to the standoff.

Since June, Italy's new far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has regularly turned away rescue ships operated by foreign NGOs such as the Aquarius, accusing them of playing into the hands of people smugglers.

On Saturday, he said the Aquarius would "never see an Italian port" again.

His hardline stance has sparked a row among EU members, underscoring their failure to come up with a common approach to the influx of people trying to escape conflict, persecution or poverty in Africa and the Middle East.

In June, Spain stepped in and welcomed the Aquarius.

France, which was within closer range but did not allow the boat access, took in 78 of the migrants after they landed.

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: A 50-year old French tourist was found murdered in a village in the district and a local acquaintance arrested for allegedly killing him, police said today.

The killing came to light yesterday after the half-burnt body of M Pierre Boutier wrapped in a gunny bag was found in an irrigation channel.

Police arrested 29-year old Thirumurugan, a resident of Avikkottai village in the district, on the charge of killing the French national whom he had befriended during a visit to Mahabalipuram recently.

According to police, Thirumurugan, who surrendered on his own yesterday, 'confessed' to the crime.

The two were allegedly in an homosexual relationship and Boutier had come to Avikottai on August 5 on an invitation by Thirumurugan.

Some days ago, when both were consuming liquor an argument broke out and Thirumurugan allegedly attacked the Frenchman, killing him on the spot.

He subsequently attempted to burn the body and wrapped it in a gunny bag and dumped it into the Ullikottai irrigation channel, police said.

On being informed by the locals, police recovered the body and also found Boutier's passport.

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Gangster Arun Gawli, serving life sentence for murder, has topped an exam based on Gandhian thoughts.

An inmate of the Nagpur central prison, Gawli scored 74 out of 80 marks in the examination, based on the concept of the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi.

Around 160 prisoners appeared for the examination, conducted by NGOs Sahyog Trust, Sarvoday Ashram and Mumbai Sarvoday Mandal in October last year. The result was declared last week, Sahyog Trust trustee Ravindra Bhusari said.

Appearing for the exam is not mandatory and prison inmates appear for it out of choice, Bhusari told PTI.

In the exam, inmates have to answer 80 objective type questions. Those who pass the exam receive a certificate and Khadi clothes as a prize.

"Before the exam, study material on Gandhiji's books was provided in the jail," he said. The examinees included convicts, under trials and those serving jail terms, he added.

Gawli, currently lodged in the Nagpur central jail, is serving a life sentence for the 2007 murder of Shiv Sena corporator Kamalakar Jamsandekar.

Gawli and 11 others were convicted in 2012 for the offence, and it was the first conviction against Gawli, who has had a long list of criminal cases against him.

Known as 'Daddy' in Mumbai's Dagdi Chawl area, Gawli later joined politics and floated his own party named the Akhil Bharatiya Sena.

Last year, a biopic on him was released. Actor Arjun Rampal essayed his character in the film titled 'Daddy'.

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A 16-year-old girl allegedly committed suicide by hanging herself from the ceiling fan of her house in Nimthur village of Rajasthan's Baran district, police said today.

She had on Sunday lodged a rape case against a 25-year-old youth, they said.

Yesterday, the girl had consumed some poisonous substance when her family learnt about her relationship with the youth.

She was rushed to a government hospital at Chabda from where she was referred to Baran district hospital, SHO Tara Chand said.

The girl was discharged from the hospital around noon yesterday and in the evening she approached Chabda police station with her parents and lodged a case of rape against the youth.

A case under section 376 of the IPC and sections of the POCSO and ST/SC Act was registered against the 25-year-old, Chand said.

A love affair between the two could not be ruled out, he said.

However, the exact reason behind the suicide could be known only after the investigation is over and post-mortem report is received, the SHO said.

Her body was this morning handed over to family members, he said.

Police said it added section 306 of the IPC in the case against the accused after the girl committed suicide last night, he added.

The accused, Rafique, was today arrested and he would be produced before a court tomorrow, they said.

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Goa's archives, considered to be one of the oldest in Asia, will now be digitised under the Centre's 'Smart City Mission', minister Vijai Sardesai said.

The archives -- a collection of lakhs of historical documents and records providing information about the coastal state and its people -- are presently housed in a Portuguese- era building in the state capital Panaji.

People fear for the safety of these records due to the dilapidated condition of the building, Sardesai said.

"Also, photo-copying these ancient inscriptions and descriptions is considered a retrograde practice that should be replaced by digitisation," the state archives and archaeology minister said yesterday.

But, the archives department does not have sufficient funds for the purpose, he said.

Therefore, a proposal has been mooted to take up digitisation of archives under the Panaji Smart City Mission, an initiative of the Union government, Sardesai said.

The government has given an in-principle nod to the proposal, he added.

Goa has several records in its archives dating back to the time when the state was under the Portuguese rule.

The state was liberated from the 450-year-old colonial rule in 1961.

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Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri today announced the launch of a cleanliness survey to be conducted next year as part of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban).

According to the ministry, the 'Swachh Survekshan 2019' is proposed to be conducted from January 4 to 31 in all cities, which would encourage "large scale" citizen participation ensuring sustainability of initiatives taken towards garbage-free and open defecation-free cities.

Talking to reporters here, Puri said that the survey under the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) will provide "credible outcomes" which will be validated by third party certification.

In a statement, the ministry said that the SBM ODF Plus and SBM ODF Plus Plus protocols that are planned to be launched are geared towards this objective.

"While the SBM ODF Plus protocol focuses on sustaining community/pubic toilet usage by ensuring their functionality, cleanliness and maintenance, the SBM ODF Plus Plus will focus on achieving sanitation sustainability by addressing complete sanitation value chain, including safe containment, processing and disposal of faecal sludge and septage," it also stated.

Meanwhile, the web-based platform was also launched which aims to allow stakeholders to participate in volunteering opportunities around neighbourhoods.

"Swachh Manch will enable uploading of pictorial evidence of citizens and organisations participating in the initiatives, as well as record the number of hours volunteered, as acknowledgement of citizens'/organisations' efforts and contributions to the cause of 'swachhata'," it added.

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The defence ministry today approved a long-pending proposal to procure six indigenously manufactured next generation offshore patrol vessels (NGOPVs) for the Navy at a cost of Rs 4,941 crore, officials said.

The go ahead for the project was given by the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), the ministry's highest decision making body on procurement.

The meeting of the DAC was chaired by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

The DAC accorded approval for the procurement of six indigenously designed and manufactured offshore patrol vessels at an approximate cost of Rs 4,941 crore, the officials said.

The NGOPVs will be built in Indian shipyards and will be fitted with state-of-the-art sensor suite with increased endurance, they said.

These platforms will be used for multitude of operational roles which include protection of offshore assets, maritime interdiction operations and search and seizure operations, surveillance missions, mine warfare and counter infiltration operations, the defence ministry said.

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Seeking to evolve a consensus on holding simultaneous election to Lok Sabha and state assemblies, the government is mulling convening an all-party meeting on the issue after the Law Commission recommends a legal framework on the matter.

Sources in the government said an all-party meeting could be convened in the coming days to widen the ambit of discussion among politicians on the issue of simultaneous polls.

But no final decision has been taken as yet on convening the meet.

The government, they said, is awaiting the report of the law panel which would lay down the legal framework of holding the two elections together.

They said once the report is with the government, it will have broad talking points.

The law panel, which is examining the feasibility of holding simultaneous polls, had earlier sought the views of political parties before finalising its report. Both the BJP and the Congress had stayed away from the consultation organised by the commission.

The Congress had met the commission top brass recently where it had opposed the concept of simultaneous polls.

A paper by the Law Commission had recently recommended holding the Lok Sabha and assembly polls in two phases beginning 2019.

Political parties are divided on the issue. Besides NDA constituent Shiromani Akali Dal, the AIADMK, the Samajwadi Party and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti have supported it.

The Congress, Trinamool Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, DMK, Telugu Desam Party, Left parties and the JD(S) have opposed the proposal.

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Attempts are being made to erase the legacy of the country's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and it is becoming a part of the policy under the current dispensation, journalist-turned-politician Kumar Ketkar said today.

Ketkar said the government was selectively highlighting only the shortcomings of the first prime minister.

"The government is trying to erase the legacy of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. In fact, this is becoming part of the policy. Look at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library or any other institution," Ketkar said.

He was speaking at the launch of a book by Uttam Khobragade, a former IAS officer from Maharashtra, who has now joined the Congress.

Known to be close to the Nehru-Gandhi family, the Congress sent veteran journalist Ketkar to the Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra this year.

Khorbragade said it is because of Nehru that democracy survived in the country.

Former Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde also attended the event.

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Gujarat Agriculture Minister R C Faldu today threatened to file a defamation suit against Congress leader Paresh Dhanani for his remarks that the former's kin were members of a Jamnagar-based co-operative society allegedly involved in what the party claimed was a groundnut procurement scam.

Addressing the press, Faldu asked Dhanani, leader of Congress Legislature Party in the state Assembly, to prove the "personal allegations" levelled against him, failing which he would file a defamation suit.

In response, Dhanani issued a statement saying he expressed his "heartfelt apology" for making a personal allegation against the agriculture minister.

"Dhanani said Haripar Co-operative Society (in Jamnagar) is involved in a groundnut scam, and members there are my relatives. The way you have attached my name with the society has hurt me personally. I checked with them and they said every transaction there is transparent. I ask Dhanani to prove if there is scam in groundnut purchased from that mandli (co-operative society)," Faldu said.

"I am very hurt. You have tried to defame my character, so bring in the open whatever scam has happened there. Dhanani should prove this or else I will take legal route for defamation," the minister added.

While apologising for his statement, Dhanani said Gujarat was seeking an answer as to who was shielding those involved in the "groundnut scam".

The Congress has called it a Rs 4,000 crore scam alleging that groundnut procured by various co-operative societies in the state, especially in the Saurashtra region, were adulterated with sand and pebbles.

During 2017-18, the Gujarat government procured over 10 lakh tonne of groundnuts at a rate of Rs 4,500 per quintal.

"Despite Congress demanding on June 12 that the state government should stop procurement of groundnut in light of the scam, 4.75 lakh tonnes were procured, which were found to be mixed with sand and pebbles," Dhanani said in a statement.

"Why is the government threatening legal action against those who are exposing the truth?" he asked.

"I express my heartfelt apology if you (Faldu) are personally hurt. But Gujarat is seeking an answer whether it is the agriculture minister, chief minister or the entire government which is trying to shield people involved in the groundnut scam," he said.

Meanwhile, the Congress today organised statewide protests demanding a judicial probe into the issue and said it would protest tomorrow at the district collectorates.

Recently, Rajkot police arrested several people after it came to light that groundnut procured by the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) and stored at a rented warehouse was mixed with sand and pebbles.

Cases of groundnut godowns catching fire have also been reported.

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The Gujarat BJP will launch an enrolment drive from Independence Day to boost its cadre strength with the party stating that it undertook such drives once every three years.

State BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya said that BJP Gujarat unit chief Jitu Vaghani will launch the drive in his home district of Bhavnagar, while other leaders will start the enrolment process in different parts of the state.

The drive would continue till August 21 and people could join the party by giving a missed call on a designated number, Pandya informed.

"To further increase the workers' base of the party in the state, BJP will launch an enrolment drive from Independence Day. Such worker enrolment drives are organised every three years," Pandya said.

The BJP had won all 26 Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 general elections but it managed to win only 99 out of 182 Assembly seats in the state polls in 2017.

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The Child Welfare Committee (CWC) of Gurgaon district served a notice on a shelter home today for allegedly allowing 16 overseas students to stay there without prior permission of the adminstration.

The CWC has asked the shelter home, Deep Ashram near Atul Kataria Chowk in Gurgaon, to respond to its notice within a week.

During a surprise check yesterday, CWC chairman Shakuntala Dull found that the shelter home officers allegedly gave shelters to 16 students hailing from Italy for three days.

"We conducted surprise check at the shelter home and found 16 Italian students illegally staying there. Moreover, the officials of the shelter home did not intimate the CWC and other authorities in the district. This is in complete violation of laws. Hence, we have served notice on the shelter home," she said.

"The surprise check was done following reports of sexual assault of inmates in homes in Bihar's Muzaffarpur and Deoria in Uttar Pradesh," she said.

Gurgaon has over a dozen shelter homes run by different NGOs.

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The Delhi High Court today dismissed a PIL seeking quashing of the Centre's decision to deploy 2G technology in Arunachal Pradesh and two districts of Assam, saying it was a "policy matter".

The PIL had questioned the decision to purchase "outdated" technology at a "huge" cost and alleged it was done to benefit two companies.

"It is a policy matter of the government as to where to have 2G and 4G. The government is in a better position to decide. If the people of those two states are aggrieved, they can challenge it," a bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice C Hari Shankar said and dismissed the plea by NGO Telecom Watchdog.

The petition alleged that the decision was discriminatory, without application of mind and contradictory to the central government's policy of Digital India.

Appearing for the NGO, advocate Pranav Sachdeva argued that huge amount of public money was being wasted by the deployment of outdated technology.

The plea sought quashing of a January 16, 2018 agreement between the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), alleging that "outdated 2G technology is sought to be purchased at huge cost of Rs 2,258 crore from two private companies under mysterious circumstances".

The NGO has claimed that the agreement was entered into despite the fact that the DoT's Telecom Commission had in December last year decided to procure 2G-cum-4G spectrum for all future projects



According to the plea filed through Sachdeva, BSNL has completed the tender process for procuring equipment from two Delhi based-companies -- Vihaan Networks Ltd, and Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd -- for providing 2G network in Arunachal Pradesh and Karbi Anglong & Dima Hasao districts of Assam.

The PIL alleged that the decision was taken to "benefit the two private companies at the cost of exchequer, and at the cost of the users in the two states".

It claimed that purchasing 2G spectrum was very expensive and in support of its contention cited figures allegedly submitted to DoT by BSNL in November last year in a Detailed Project Report (DPR).

The petition said that in the DPR, BSNL has said it would require Rs 11,811.51 crore for setting up 4G technology at 100,000 sites across India.

"This means Rs 11.81 lakh per tower site. Compared to this, '2G-cum-4G' is Rs 2.54 crore per tower site. Thus, for 50,000 uncovered villages, 4G will cost Rs 5,905 crore and 2G-cum-4G will cost Rs 1,27,000 crore, which is a difference of Rs 1,21,095 crore," the NGO claimed while seeking quashing of the agreement or in the alternative, inclusion of 4G spectrum in it.

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The Delhi High Court today sought the Centre and the Jamia Millia Islamia University's stand on a plea seeking setting aside of the reinstatement of a professor who was removed from the varsity over allegation of plagiarism.

A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice C Hari Shankar issued notice to the Centre and the university seeking their reply to the petition which has sought contempt action against various officials of the varsity for allegedly fabricating a court order to facilitate the professor's re-instatement.

The plea, by a former student of the university, has alleged in that the professor had copied from a book -- Media, Markets and Democracy -- in his book -- Democracy and Media.

The petition has said that the university had in May 2011 removed the professor who had challenged the decision in the high court where a single judge in September 2011 and a division bench in April 2012 had affirmed the step taken by the varsity.

Thereafter, in 2015 the varsity amended a provision of the Jamia Millia Islamia Act that dealt with removal of academic staff to allow review of such a decision, the plea has said and added that subsequent to the amendment, the professor moved a representation seeking a re-look into his removal.

The varsity upheld its earlier decision, and the professor challenged it in the high court which in August 2016 dismissed his plea, against which he filed an appeal before a division bench, the petition by Hamidur Rehman has claimed.

The professor, Deepak Kem, also filed a review plea against the 2012 decision of the high court, the petition said and alleged that this was not disclosed to the court.

Thereafter, the university told the high court that it has decided to review the professor's plea for re-instatement and based on the submission, Kem's appeal of 2016 was disposed of, the plea has said.

Kem was then re-instated as a professor in the varsity but the decision has now been challenged in the high court by the former student of the university.

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The Allahabad High Court today turned down an Uttar Pradesh government's plea to prevent media from reporting on the infamous Deoria's women shelter home case involving suspected sexual exploitation of its inmates.

A bench of Chief Justice DB Bhosale and Justice Yashwant Varma, which had taken suo motu cognisance of the media reports on the suspected sexual racket, allegedly run by the Deoria-based Maa Vindhyavasini Mahila and Balika Sanrakshan Grih, turned down Additional Advocate General Manish Goel's request to prevent media from reporting on the case.

While refusing to pass the gag order, the bench however, cautioned media against identifying the victims in the case.

Taking cognisance of the case earlier on August 9, the bench had asked the counsel for the state government and the CBI to submit it the copies of the statements of all the victim girls and women inmates of the shelter home by August 13. The bench had also sought the presence of investigating officer of the case.

During a brief hearing of the case in the forenoon session today, the bench asked the law officer to apprise it of the actions taken against the erring police officials in the case and slated the matter for hearing again at 2 pm.

During the 2 pm-hearing, the AAG submitted to the bench that the government has taken a stern view of the matter and is all set to take severe actions against all the erring police officials.

The court later heard the case in-camera and slated it for next hearing on August 20.

During its earlier hearing, the bench had asked the state government to examine the video footage of the CCTV cameras installed in and around the shelter home and apprise it of its outcome, but the AAG today said nothing much came out of it.

The bench had also asked the counsel to apprise it of the owners of the cars, reportedly seen parked outside the shelter home during evening hours and used for ferrying girls and women from the shelter home for a night out.

On this count, the AAG submitted that the matter is still being probed.

The Deorai police had raided the shelter home on August 5 night after a 10-year-old girl had escaped from it and apprised the police of various misdeeds there.

During the raids, the police had rescued 24 women, but had found 18 others missing.

The police have arrested shelter home manager Girija Tripathi, her husband Mohan Tripathi and their daughters Kanchan Lata Tripathi and Kanak Lata Tripathi.

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Somanth Chatterjee's strict conduct of proceedings as the Lok Sabha Speaker earned him the sobriquet of 'headmaster' and his admonitions for unruly members came to be widely quoted and became part of public debate.

Adjournments within a few minutes of the House sitting, and sometimes also witnessed by visiting foreign delegations, embarrassed him acutely.

A 10-time Lok Sabha member representing the CPI(M), Chatterjee was the Speaker of the lower house from 2004 to 2009. He passed away at a private hospital in Kolkata this morning following multiple organ failure.

"The admonitions I handed down from the Chair at regular intervals are eloquent. They earned me the sobriquet of 'headmaster', which I did not mind as the position of a headmaster is an honourable one," the CPI-M leader wrote in his autobiography "Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a Parliamentarian" that was published in 2010.

He mentions several of his admonitions in the book.

"I can only say that more and more we are showing that we are not fit for democracy"; "I know the Chair has no respect in this House. We have sufficiently decimated its authority"; "People are looking at us. We are fighting for more money for ourselves. I thought that people will say 'No work No pay'," were some of these.

When members come to the Well of the House and refuse to budge, Chatterjee would warn them: "Are you not ashamed of yourselves? What are you doing? Is this the way Members of Parliament should behave? You have no right to be here."



He also mentioned how foreign delegations were not impressed by what the parliamentarians did in India.

"A Norwegian delegation put a charitable gloss on the disruptions by terming it as an example of our democratic vibrancy! The Swedish Speaker, who was on a visit, expressed his hope that his members would not learn from my members!" he wrote in the book published by HarperCollins India.

Sometimes, Chatterjee seemed to get emotional while dealing with MPs as he used to tell them, "Now if any member wants to do whatever he or she likes, then there is neither the necessity of the Chair nor the list of business nor the rules."



Or at times he would say, "I am sorry I have to say that you are all working overtime to finish democracy in this country. It is a matter of great sorrow for me."His strongest words would be, "I think the Parliament of India is reaching its lowest position Nadir. The whole country is ashamed of the parliamentarians."He would also sarcastically tell, "This House of People should be adjourned sine die. People's money will be saved. Useless allowances should not be given to all of you. I think that is the best thing to do. You do not deserve one paisa out of public money."Chatterjee often rued that important matters were not taken up for serious deliberation by the members purely for extraneous considerations.

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Haryana will launch its pilot health project Ayushman Bharat Haryana from August 15 in 22 district hospitals, one ESI and one medical college.

Besides this, a target of opening 200 such health centres by year-end has been fixed.

Announcing this here today, Health Minister Anil Vij said under this scheme medical facility upto Rs 5 lakh will be provided for free to 15.50 lakh families.

The minister said initially this facility will be provided in government hospitals, which would later be started in empanelled private hospitals.

He said each health centre will have Ayushman Mitr, who would be deputed to guide patients to avail benefits under this health scheme.

Currently, 170 persons are being trained in Chandigarh for the Ayushman Mitr job.

He said the government has given approval for the construction of 400 wellness centres in the state.

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More than 250 people have been injured, five of them seriously, after part of a wooden promenade collapsed at a music festival in Spain, local officials said today.

The seafront platform, which was 30 metres (98 feet) long by 10 metres wide, was packed with people watching a rap artist in the northwestern city of Vigo when it suddenly collapsed just before midnight yesterday, Vigo mayor Abel Caballero told reporters at the scene.

"The causes have yet to be determined. Everything indicates that no one is trapped underneath," he added.

Witnesses told Spanish media that people struggled to scramble for safety from under the debris of the structure.

A total of 266 people were injured, five of them seriously with broken bones requiring hospitalisation, the regional health minister in the northwestern region of Galicia, Jesus Vazquez Almuina, told local radio.

"These are provisional figures, patients are still being evaluated. At the moment 266 patients have been treated, the vast majority are light injuries for bruises," he said.

"There are five hospitalisations, mainly broken bones and some head injuries," he added.

The promenade collapse happened as Mallorcan rap artist Rels B was performing as part of the two-day O Marisquino festival in Vigo, a city of around 300,000 people.

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Watching the on a mobile phone, Makhni Devi's eyes well up as she sees her husband Gajananad Sharma walk back into India through Wagah-Attari border after languishing in a Pakistan prison for almost four decades.

"Yes, he is my husband, but he has become very weak and lean," she says sitting before a small place of worship in her house in a narrow lane of Brahmpuri area here. She is surrounded by her family members and neighbours.

The man Makhni Devi identified as her husband appears frail and is seen walking with the help of a BSF soldier.

"My husband is in a bad state just because of Pakistan and my heart is cursing Pakistan for keeping him away from me and making his so weak. He was in good health before he went missing," Makhni Devi told reporters.

Gajanand, now 68, went missing in 1982 and was part of the 30 Indian prisoners released today by Pakistan as a goodwill gesture ahead of the country's Independence Day on August 14.

His arrival was confirmed by Jaipur MP Ramcharan Bohra.

"I spoke to the authorities who have confirmed that Gajanand has arrived in India. After completing the formalities, he will be reaching Jaipur in a day or two," the BJP MP told PTI.

Bohra said he has sent four men to the Wagah border to facilitate Gajanand's return.

The sexagenarian's family came to know in May this year that he is lodged in a prison in Lahore after Jaipur (Rural) police received a request for verification of his nationality.

However, it is not yet known how Gajanand reached Pakistan.

Makhni Devi said she is eager to meet her husband and is waiting for the moment when he will finally be home.

"I will definitely ask him how he reached Pakistan and how he spent all these years, but I will not complain. I have had a tough time while he was gone and waited for him all these years. I kept my hope alive," she said.

Gajanand's younger son Mukesh Sharma said it was a dream come true for the family.

"I cannot express my feelings in words. This is a dream which turned into reality. We will decorate our house and will organise a feast for our family, relatives and friends to celebrate my father's arrival after 36 years," said the elated son, who was only 12 years old when his father went missing.

"Today is 'Hariyali Teej', a special festival for women, and my mother has got her biggest blessing on this day," he said.

'Hariyali Teej' commemorates the union of Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati.

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Four people were arrested for allegedly manufacturing firearms illegally at a factory in Gujarat's Rajkot district, a police official said today.

Acting on a tip-off, a Special Operation Group (SOG) of the Rajkot Police raided the factory, located in Kothariya Road area, last night and seized some pistols and raw material used for making the firearms, he said.

The factory owner and three other persons were nabbed following the raid.

"We raided the factory and seized 17 country-made pistols and some raw material which the accused were using to make the weapons," SOG police inspector S N Gadu said.

The factory owner, Hiren Sardhara (32), and his three accomplices - Harshad Hothi (28), Alpesh Vasani (35) and Balu Sisodiya (38) - were arrested, he said.

The police were trying to ascertain where and to whom the accused were selling these weapons, he added.

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It was fairly early in the morning as we came across a family of lion who were hanging out along a rivers edge. We were all excited to see the cubs and started taking photos right away. Our guide pulled up nice and close so that we could get some nice shots of the mothers and cubs interacting, and we were treated to some great playful moments.I was taking photos of the female with the one playing cub when the adult female turned around to check on one of her other cubs. It was great morning sunlight on their faces and I thought I had the best shot of the morning......but as I kept shooting with my Canon 1D X Mark II and Canon 100-400mm lens , mom decided to grab onto the tail of the oncoming cub, while the other cub looked with this great expression. This is one of my favorite photos from the Botswana trip.We sat there photographing the cubs for a while, when all of a sudden, they all started moving towards the water.I have seen many lions in Africa, but never seen them in the water. I watched as this cub prepared to jump across a small stream of water.I waited for the jump and fired off a couple of shots.The large female crossed the larger flowing river and waited to make sure that each of the cubs would successfully make their way from one side to the other.You can see the one cub climbing up the rivers edge as mom watched on. Our guide told us that the adults were concerned about crocodiles in the water.These little cubs were so cute.I watched as this one cub walked towards the flowing river and reminded our guests to shoot wide and include the great reflection in the water.Many of the other lions came over and joined the one cub, giving us an even better reflection shot. All of us were excited to photograph this scene.We were driving back to our lodge when our guide spotted this owl in one of the nearby trees. We were happy to get a nice shot of the owl in really nice light.At the end of the day, we had a sundowner at the edge of this water hole filled with hippos. It was fun to photograph the sunset with the camera in one hand and a cold gin and tonic in the other hand.After our sundowner, we packed up the vehicles and made our way back towards our lodge. On the drive back, we saw a couple of male lions hanging out.I reminded our group to increase the ISO of their cameras, since the sun had already set and we did not have a lot of light to work with. Even though we were shooting at ISOs of 6400 or more, the photos came out nicely.As always, we waited to see if either of the males would yawn, giving us this type of shot. As if on command, this one male did just that. Another great ending to yet another amazing day in Botswana!__________________________________________________________________________Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE __________________________________________________________________________If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.__________________________________________________________________________Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.
Tobacco Institute of India (TII) today asked the government to undertake prior consultation with farmers and industry stakeholders before the WHO tobacco control conference in October.

The tobacco industry lobby group also demanded inclusion of 'stakeholder representatives' in the official Indian delegation to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Conference of Parties (FCTC COP8) meeting to be held in Geneva from October 1-6.

"Framing of tobacco control policies at the conference without the involvement of tobacco farmers, whose livelihood is seriously threatened, is unfair and unprincipled with the risk of their genuine concerns being subverted and severely compromised," TII Director Syed Mahmood Ahmad said in a statement.

Stating that "millions of small and marginal retailers" derive their livelihood from sale of tobacco products in India, he said, "Policy development without cognising for the genuine concerns and apprehensions of this stakeholder group will have serious livelihood consequences resulting in huge unemployment and poverty issues."



TII, which represents leading cigarette manufacturers such as ITC, Godfrey Philips and VST, further said despite repeated appeals by tobacco growers and farmer organisations over the years from across the world, their participation in the Conference has consistently been denied.

"We request the government of India to engage extensively with the industry stakeholders on the FCTC articles contained in the COP8 agenda and also include industry stakeholders and representatives from the farming community in the official Indian delegation to the conference," it added.

This is extremely important in order to arrive at a balanced and pragmatic position on various proposals and guidelines at the conference, TII said.

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As Independent India turns 71 on August 15, restaurants and other eateries here are raising a toast to the country's diversity by whipping up special menus featuring traditional Indian dishes.

While five-star restaurants are laying out specially curated menus, smaller cafes and chains are dishing up a 'tiranga storm' with barfis, dhoklas, sandwiches, biryani and even sushi and dimsums dressed up in saffron, white and green to celebrate the national flag.

Head to Kiyan at The Roseate and DEL at The Roseate House for a two-week culinary extravaganza, beginning August 15 to celebrate the "Unsung Recipes of India", which were until now tucked away from mainstream fine dining menus.

Featuring a large selection of non-vegetarian as well as vegetarian options, the spread will have on offer gastronomical delights like Atta Chicken (Kot Kapura, Punjab), Railway Mutton Curry (Colonial India), Multani Paneer (Multan, Undivided Punjab), Ranjitshahi Paneer (Punjab), Bhooni Makai ki Raab (Rajasthan), Sepu Badi (Himachal Pradesh) and Mash ki Dal (Hyderabad).

"Each dish featured on the menu unveils a timeless story as well as flavours that will linger on with diners long after the meal experience," a spokesperson from The Roseate House said.

The restaurants have also planned a special Independence Day Thali on August 15 that will be available for both lunch and dinner.

The thali will feature delicacies such as Murgh Makhni, Saag Meat, Paneer Butter Masala, Palak Makai Khumb as well as assorted tricoloured desserts.

The Westin in Gurgaon will bring to the table the signature dishes of all Indian states and union territories.

The brunch will feature Kashmiri Rajma, Punjabi Chole, Laal Mass from Rajasthan, Hyderabadi Biryani, Rava Fish Fry from Lakshadweep and more, alongside a platter full of Indian desserts like Ghewar, Raj Bhog, Jalebi and Imarti.

"The brunch has been designed around an interesting concept of showcasing all that our country has to offer. A classic dish from every state will be served with a story to tell," a restaurant spokesperson said.

Foodies can revel in the flavours of the erstwhile Hindustan at Caf Knosh at The Leela Ambience Convention Hotel here.

An a la carte menu themed 'Mera Hindustan' will have on offer celebrated dishes from across pre-Independence India.

"We have chosen certain dishes from the provinces and princely estates of British ruled India to give our guests the taste of the regions they came from," said Rohit Tokhi, executive chef at Cafe Knosh.

Dishes like Murg Lahori, Haak ka Saag, Alu Gosht and Dakbangla Chicken will be among the highlights on the platter.

The menu at the Taj Mahal Hotel's Machan boasts an array of vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes from across the country.

Their signature Tiranga Pulao, Alleppey Fish Curry, Dal Machan and tricoloured sabz kebabs will be complemented with desserts such as south Indian filter coffee crme brle and tricoloured macaroons.

Other restaurants who are coming up with tri-colour dishes to roister in the spirit, include Biryani by Kilo with its tricolour biryani handi, and Tanoshii Trail with tri-colour sushi and dim sums.

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India is all set to promote its Buddhist Circuit to attract tourists from China which provides the biggest outbound visitors in the world at 144 millions a year, Tourism Minister K J Alphons said.

The number of Chinese tourists visiting India reached 2,47,000 in 2017, a mere two per cent of the total 10.18 million foreign tourist arrivals, according to data available with the Ministry of Tourism.

"China provides the biggest outbound tourists in the world. I want to increase the number of Chinese tourists visiting India to 14 million in the next five years. We will conduct promotional roadshows and continuously engage with the people so that we can build confidence," said Alphons who will be visiting Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and Guangzhou during his trip.

Alphons, speaking at an event here, said that the ministry was taking a lead out of the UAE's strategy which increased its footfall of Chinese tourists by 119 per cent in the past three years by conducting 40 roadshows across the country.

"We will promote our heritage, the Buddhist Circuit will indeed be the focus. However, we need to improve our infrastructure and we will start with Sarnath. I have already had discussions with Roadways and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari and we are set to build a four- lane highway connecting the Buddhism-related cities," he said.

The minister also said that given that there are around 490 million Buddhists across the world and since Buddha lived only in India -- in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, a big chunk of these tourists should be attracted towards the country.

"They are big spenders. For them it's a pilgrimage, not just a journey."



The Buddhist Circuit is a route that follows in the footsteps of the Buddha in India. The sites on the route all over 2,500 years old are among the most significant and revered for all Buddhists. They include Bodh Gaya in Bihar where the Buddha attained enlightenment, and Sarnath and Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh, where he gave his first teachings and died.

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India's second largest software services firm Infosys today said it will set up a new software development centre in Kolkata with an investment of Rs 100 crore.

The centre is expected to provide employment to about 1,000 engineers.

"As part of this project, spread over 50 acres, Infosys will invest approximately Rs 100 crore in the first phase of construction to build a 525,000 sq ft facility, in which the company will create employment for 1,000 engineers initially," Infosys said in a filing.

The first phase of the project will be completed within 15 months from the date of obtaining all statutory clearances, it added.

The centre's foundation stone was laid by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at the Bengal Silicon Valley Hub in Kolkata, where the project is located.

Infosys CEO and Managing Director Salil Parekh commended the chief minister for giving the company a unique opportunity to be a part of the Bengal Silicon Valley Hub project, and further strengthen its presence across the country.

Last month, Infosys had said it will invest about Rs 750 crore in the first phase of its upcoming facility in Noida, Uttar Pradesh to build a 2.7 million sq ft facility that can accommodate a total staff strength of 5,000.

The UP government has allocated 27.5 acres of land in Noida to the company for the project.

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To ramp up bilateral relations with Fiji, Indian Naval Ship (INS) Sahyadri today entered the Port of Suva on a goodwill visit, the Indian Navy said today.

Sayhadri is visiting Fiji enroute to India after participation in the RIMPAC ( the Rim of the Pacific Exercise) 2018 at Hawaii.

During the visit, the Indian Naval Ship personnel will have professional interaction with their Fijian counterparts and the vessel will have an open day for general public on August 14.

INS Sahyadri (F49) is the third and latest ship among the Shivalik Class of indigenously built stealth frigates and forms a part of the Eastern Fleet of Indian Navy. INS Sahyadri draws her name from the beautiful, age-defying western coast (also known as Sahyadri ranges) stretching across 1,600 Kms along the Western Coast of India, the statement said.

A medical camp will be organised in collaboration with Fijian Government where the doctors from India and Fiji will jointly perform free health screening on August 15 at Ratu Sukuna Park, Suva.

Officers from INS Sahyadri and Indian High Commission will also be participating in mangrove/sandalwood planting activities on August 14.

The ship will also be celebrating the 72nd Independence Day of India in the Port of Suva.

India and Fiji share robust bilateral ties. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the island nation on November 2014.

Fijian Minister of Defence and National Security Ratu Inoke Kubuabola visited India for signing a memorandum of understanding for strengthening defence and security ties with India, including in defence production and military training in May 2017.

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Iran is selling oil and gas at a discount to Asian customers as it prepares for the return of US sanctions, state agency IRNA reported today.

The "informed source" in Iran's oil ministry did not give details of the discount, but sought to downplay the move as common industry practice.

"Discount is part of the nature of the global markets being offered by all oil exporters," the source told IRNA.

Bloomberg reported on Friday that the state-run National Iranian Oil Company was reducing official prices for September sales to Asia to their lowest level in 14 years, compared with Saudi crude.

The United States will seek to block Iran's international oil sales from November 5, when the second phase of sanctions are reimposed as part of Washington's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal.

Several key buyers, including China and India, who account for roughly half of Iran's sales, have said they are not willing to make significant cuts to their energy purchases from Iran.

But analysts predict Iran could still see its oil sales drop by around 700,000 barrels per day from their current level of around 2.3 million.

Much will depend on the European Union, which has vowed to resist US sanctions on Iran, but whose companies and financial institutions are more vulnerable to US financial pressure than their Asian counterparts.

French energy giant Total has already said it is pulling out of its multi-billion-dollar investment project in the South Pars oil field in southern Iran as a result of the renewed sanctions.

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Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said today that there would be neither war nor negotiations with the United States.

"Recently, US officials have been talking blatantly about us. Beside sanctions, they are talking about war and negotiations," he said via his official Twitter account in English.

"In this regard, let me say a few words to the people: THERE WILL BE NO WAR, NOR WILL WE NEGOTIATE WITH THE U.S." There has been widespread speculation over whether Iran would be forced back to the negotiating table following Washington's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal and reimposition of sanctions.

But Iran has rejected fresh talks, saying the US can no longer be trusted after violating its commitments under the deal.

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Pakistan's Chief Justice Saqib Nisar said today that the officers of the spy agencies - the Military Intelligence and the ISI - were included in the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) in the Panama Papers case probe against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to "spice it up", according to a media report.

Chief Justice Nisar made the remarks during the hearing of a suo motu case regarding Rs 35 billion worth shady transactions from and to the account of Zardari Group, a business owned by the former president and Pakistan Peoples Party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur.

During the hearing, the top judge hinted at forming a JIT as it was made in the Panama Papers case against Sharif, who is now lodged in the Adiala jail after being convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison in the Avenfield case by an accountability court.

The chief justice asked Federal Investigation Agency Director General Bashir Memon to inform the three-member bench about the members of Panamagate JIT, to which, the apex court was told that the team was consisting of six members, the BBC Urdu website reported.

Memon started reading out the names of the JIT members and when he mentioned Brigadier (retd) Nauman Saeed's name the top judge asked, 'from which department this man belonged to?'



The bench was told that Brigadier (retd) Saeed belonged to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), it said.

In response, Chief Justice Nisar said that the spy officials were added to the JIT, which probed financial dealings of Sharif family, for "spicing it up", the website reported.

He also said that there was no need to include spy officers in the shady transactions case. The hearing of the case was adjourned till Wednesday.

In April 2017, a five-judge Supreme Court bench had set up a six-member JIT comprising officials from different agencies including those from powerful spy agencies - the ISI and the Military Intelligence - to investigate the graft allegations against Sharif and his family.

The other agencies in the JIT include the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), and the Security and Exchange Commission of Pakistan.

At the time, Sharif had objected to the inclusion of the ISI officer in the JIT.

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A prominent Jewish-American commentator who has been critical of Israel says he was detained by Israeli airport authorities and interrogated about his political views before he was allowed to enter the country.

Peter Beinart, a contributor to The Atlantic and a CNN commentator, said he was pulled aside when he arrived with his family on Sunday to attend a relative's bat mitzvah.

He says he was sent to a small room where a security official asked about his political activities and past participation in a nonviolent West Bank protest. He says he was freed over an hour later after calling an Israeli attorney.

"The conversation was depressing but not frightening," he told The Forward. "Israel, like America, is getting uglier." The prime minister's office called the incident an "administrative mistake.

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Another round of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip is inevitable, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said today, despite attempts to reach a long-term truce.

Lieberman said in a video statement distributed by his office that "the question is not to know if the next confrontation (with Hamas) will take place, but when".

Lieberman also appeared to suggest that all Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since protests and clashes along the border began on March 30 were linked to Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the enclave.

"Hamas has suffered 168 dead, 4,348 wounded and dozens of terror infrastructures destroyed," he said.

Many of those killed have been young people protesting or clashing with soldiers near the border fence in the blockaded Gaza Strip. Two journalists and, according to the World Health Organisation, three medics have been among those killed.

Israel says its actions are necessary to defend the border and stop infiltrations or attacks. One Israeli soldier has been killed since March 30.

There have also been three major military flare-ups between Israel and Hamas since July on top of the months of tension along the border.

Thursday saw extensive Israeli air strikes in retaliation for the launching of more than 180 rockets and mortar rounds by Hamas and its allies beginning on Wednesday night.

Three Palestinians were killed in the Israeli strikes, including a mother and her 18-month-old daughter, while seven Israelis were wounded by Palestinian rocket fire as hundreds took refuge in bomb shelters.

It was one of the most serious escalations since the 2014 Gaza war and followed months of rising tensions.

There have been efforts by UN officials and Egypt to secure a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas, though Israeli officials have not commented on them. Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza have fought three wars since 2008.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a rare, secret visit to Egypt in May for talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Israeli television reported.

There was no immediate confirmation of the visit from official sources, but the private Channel 10 station said yesterday the leaders met on May 22.

That followed a day of huge protests on May 14 along the Gaza border against the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem, sparking clashes which left 63 Palestinians dead.

Gaza lies between Israel and Egypt, which has previously mediated between Netanyahu's government and the Islamist Hamas movement that controls the coastal enclave.

According to American sources quoted by Channel 10, Netanyahu and Sisi discussed the possibility of a long-term truce in the Strip, where Israel has since 2008 fought three wars with Hamas.

The Islamists seized power in the territory after a virtual civil war with the Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, and Gaza has been under a crushing Israeli blockade for a decade.

Netanyahu and Sisi also examined the possible return of the Palestinian Authority to the territory, an easing of Israel's blockade and reconstruction of Gaza's war-scarred infrastructure, the report said.

The Egyptian presidency was not immediately available to comment on the Channel 10 report.

Gaza has seen mass protests since the end of March as Palestinians demand the right to return to homes their families fled or were expelled from in 1948 during the war surrounding the creation of Israel.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday that another round of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was inevitable, despite attempts to reach a long-term truce.

There have also been three major military flare-ups between Israel and Hamas since July, on top of the months of tension along the border.

At least 169 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since March 30, mostly during clashes sparked by demonstrations.

One Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper in July. There have been efforts by United Nations officials and Egypt to secure a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas, though Israeli officials have not commented on them.

A fragile truce came into effect Thursday night, mediated by Egypt and the UN, according to a source close to the negotiations.

Thursday saw extensive Israeli air strikes in retaliation for the launching of more than 180 rockets and mortar rounds by Hamas and its allies beginning on Wednesday night.

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Italy's transport minister says Britain should take in 141 migrants picked up by a rescue ship that sails under the flag of the British territory of Gibraltar.

Italy continues to refuse port to ships run by humanitarian groups, and Danilo Toninelli said Monday on Twitter that Britain should take responsibility for the migrants aboard the Aquarius, operated by French humanitarian groups.

Toninelli said the rescue was coordinated by the Libyan coast guard and that the ship was now in Maltese waters.

The French aid groups SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders have called on European nations to identify a close port of safety so the 141 migrants picked up in two rescues Friday could disembark.

Most of the migrants are from Somalia and Eritrea and include 67 unaccompanied minors.

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Jain Irrigation Systems today reported 84 per cent increase in its consolidated net profit to Rs 81.75 crore for the first quarter ended June 30.

Its net profit stood at Rs 44.33 crore in the year-ago period, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Total income increased to Rs 2,152.82 crore during the first quarter of the 2018-19 from Rs 1,746.86 crore in the corresponding period previous year.

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Japanese police have launched a massive manhunt for a robbery and rape suspect who fled from a police station after reportedly stealing an officer's sneakers.

Local police said today that Junya Hida fled from a consultation room at the Tondabayashi police station in Osaka after meeting his lawyer yesterday.

Police placed the 30-year-old suspect on a nationwide wanted list and deployed 3,000 officers to search for him.

Police said Hida, who was not handcuffed, apparently forced open an acrylic panel that separated detainees from an area for visitors and then escaped.

Police were not aware of his disappearance until nearly two hours later.

Hida reportedly stole a policeman's sneakers before escaping, leaving behind his sandals.

Police told neighborhood schools to lock their windows and stay vigilant.

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Confident of winning 2019 general elections and Odisha assembly poll, Union minister Prakash Javadekar today said the party is working to strengthen its base in the state.

Javadekar, who is party-incharge in four Lok Sabha seats in the state, reviewed organizational activities at the booth level in Berhampur parliamentary constituency for upcoming Lok Sabha and state assembly polls.

"We are reviewing the partys activities at booth level of the Parliamentary constituency assembly wise discussing with the party functionaries in each segments, said Javadekar.

He said in the next 15 days, the party will review the organizational activities.

On the first day,he held discussion with the party functionaries of Gopalpur, Chikiti, Mohana, Paralakhemundi and Berhampur assembly segments. Tomorrow he will meet the party functionaries of Chhatrapur and Digaphandi, party sources said.

Earlier, on July 1, BJPs national president Amit Shah during his visit to Odisha, had assigned tasks to different office bearers as part of the partys "Mission 120 plus".

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A jawan was killed as the Army today foiled an infiltration bid by militants in the Tangdhar sector of Jammu and Kashmir, officials said.

In a separate incident, another soldier was killed in a blast in Uri sector last evening, they said.

An Army official said Sepoy Pushpendra Singh laid down his life while foiling an infiltration bid along the Line of Control (LoC) in Tangdhar.

A wreath laying ceremony will be held for Sepoy Pushpendra Singh at the Badamibagh Army headquarters here tomorrow, the official said.

In another incident, a jawan -- Kuldeep Singh Rawat of 4 Garhwal rifles, was killed in the Uri sector yesterday in a blast, a police official said.

It was not immediately clear as to how the blasts took place, he added.

Earlier, an official had said that Pushpendra Singh had also lost his life in a blast.

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Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today condoled the death of former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee, describing his contribution to parliamentary tradition as incomparable.

Chatterjee, 89, passed away at a private hospital in Kolkata this morning following multiple organ failure.

"The passing away of former Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has created irreparable damage to the countrys politics. His contribution to Parliamentary tradition has been incomparable," Das said in his condolence message.

Former chief minister Arjun Munda also condoled the death of Chatterjee.

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Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today offered prayer at a Surya Mandir in East Singhbhum district, an official release said.

Accompanied by thousands of kanwarias (Lord Shiva devotees), Das lifted holy water from Baridih bustee chat ghat.

He then walked around 1.5 km with the Kanwarias and offered holy water to Lord Shiva at the Surya Mandir at Sidgora on the occasion of the auspicious month of 'Shravan', it said.

Das prayed for prosperity and all round development of the state, the release added.

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A gunshot rang out at Constitution Club in the high security area near Parliament today when an unidentified man targeted JNU student leader Umar Khalid, who escaped unhurt, eyewitnesses said.

The attacker dropped the weapon and fled the spot, police and eyewitnesses said.

Police sources said they had seized the weapon.

As confusion persisted over what had actually happened and how many people were involved, Ajay Chaudhury, joint commissioner of police, New Delhi range, said police was investigating whether shots were fired or not.

Giving his version of what had happened, Khalid said he was going back inside the complex, which also houses the Mavlankar Auditorium and MP quarters on Rafi Marg, after having tea when somebody tried to fire at him.

"I was returning after having tea. One person came from behind, pushed me down and tried to fire at me. I ran for my life. He fled from there," Khalid told reporters.

He said he could not see the face of the attacker.

"I do not know whether it was handiwork of some group and if others accompanied the attacker. It's ironic that it happened as I have come to participate in an even against mob lynching.

"There is an atmosphere of fear. If you speak against the government you will be branded and then anything could happen to you," he said.

Some witnesses claimed two shots were fired when Khalid was at the entrance of the club, where he was going to attend a conference, 'Khauff Se Azaadi' (Freedom from Fear), organised by United Against Hate and featuring speakers such as lawyer Prashant Bhushan, Delhi University professor Apoorvanand and the late Rohith Vemula's mother Radhika Vemula.

"Khalid said he was attacked. Somebody pounced on him and tried to fire at him but the person could immediately not fire. People started chasing him. According to Khalid, he tried to fire in the air. CCTV is being examined to verify the incident," said Madhur Verma, deputy commissioner of police (New Delhi).

Narrating what had happened, Saifi, who was with Khalid, said they had gone to have tea and three people approached them.

"One of them got hold of Khalid which he resisted. There was a melee as a gunshot was heard. But Khalid was not injured. While the accused were fleeing, they fired one more shot," he told reporters at the spot.

Ban Jyotsana Lahiri, who was also there at the time, added that a man carrying a gun came from behind them and grappled with Khalid.

"There was a scuffle. He shot from the gun after which he fled,"



Eyewitnesses also said a man in a white shirt who appeared to be the main attacker could be seen running towards Parliament Street.

The incident, which took place around 2.30 pm, comes two days before Independence Day when the city is on security alert.

Delhi Police's top officials reached the spot as of the incident came in.

The student leader recently filed a complaint with the Delhi Police that he and Gujarat's Independent MLA Jignesh Mevani had received death threats from a man who identified himself as fugitive gangster Ravi Pujari in June.

Khalid had said he was informed by Mevani about the threats, and had not received any call himself.

He hit the headlines in 2016 when he and former JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar along with three others were charged with sedition for allegedly raising anti-national slogans during an event on campus to protest the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

The university recently refused to accept his PhD thesis following which he had moved court.

Last year, an invitation to him for a seminar on "Culture of Protests" at Delhi University's Ramjas College, which was withdrawn by the college authorities following opposition by the ABVP, led to clashes and violence in North Campus.

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Some unidentified men targeted JNU student leader Umar Khalid and gunshots were heard at the Constitution Club near Parliament today, but he escaped unhurt, police said.

Witnesses claimed that two shots were fired when Khalid was at the entrance of the club.

The student leader was at the venue to attend an event titled 'Khauff Se Azaadi', organised by an organisation named 'United Against Hate'.

Saifi, who was accompanying Khalid, said, "We had gone to have tea when three people came towards us. One of them got hold of Khalid which he resisted."



"There was a melee as a gunshot was heard. But Khalid was not injured. While the accused were fleeing, they fired one more shot"



Later Khalid said, "There is an atmosphere of fear in the country and anybody who speaks against the government is threatened."Police are at the spot and are investigating the matter. They have seized the weapon that was dropped by the accused while fleeing.

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The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association condemned the attack on the varsity's student leader Umar Khalid.

An unidentified man targeted the JNU student leader outside the Constitution Club here and gunshots were heard, but he escaped unhurt, according to witnesses even as the police asserted it will verify the incident.

As teachers of the JNU it is unbearable to see our students being rendered so vulnerable, said the JNUTA in a statement.

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association would like to express deep anguish at the way JNU as a community have been vilified through an organised political campaign, they said.

"Violence against JNU students, especially from marginalised backgrounds is being normalised and routinised everyday in this manner on social media and electronic media. The university lawyers stand in courts of law and vilify its own students," the JNUTA added.

For over a year, the Delhi Police has been unable to find a single clue to lead to Najeeb Ahmed, who was made to disappear from the campus.

"We condemn the attack on our student in unequivocal terms. The Delhi Police must expedite the investigation and arrest Umar Khalid's attacker immediately. We demand that this state of lawlessness and a witch-hunt against JNU and its students be halted immediately," the statement added.

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Rajasthan's Jodhpur and Marwar railway stations have emerged the cleanliest among the major stations in the country in the latest round of cleanliness assessment study.

While Jodhpur secured first position in A1 category stations for this year, Marwar took the pole position in A category, according to the study report released by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal today.

Both the stations fall under North Western Railway zone.

A1 and A category stations contribute 80 per cent of the passenger revenue. The stations are categorised as A1 and A based on revenue generated and footfalls.

Releasing the report, Goyal suggested making the annual study a half-yearly exercise for bringing about greater competitiveness among the stations and ensuring a "test check" in maintaining cleanliness standards.

None of the major stations in the metros found a place in the top 10 list save for Anand Vihar in New Delhi which came in at fifth position.

New Delhi station was ranked 39th, a position it had held last year too.

In the A1 category, Jaipur has been ranked second and Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh ranked third. Vishakapatnam had emerged at the top in last year's ranking of the A1 category station. It has slid to 10th position this year.

Phulera in Rajasthan took the second place among A category stations, while Warangal in Telengana was ranked third.

When asked about the worst performing station in the cleanliness chart, Goyal did not name the station but said the north central railway has come at the 16th place, indicating it was worst performing among all the zones in terms of cleanliness.

The railways is divided into 16 zones.

"Last year, it was at the 15th place. We will take it up," the minister said, highlighting the unique challenges confronting the zone.

"The zone is saturated, has overutilized infrastructure and passing through difficult times," he said.

The zone is headquartered in Allahabad and the routes passing through it have over 110 per cent capacity utilisation.

The North Western Railway topped in cleanliness zone-wise, followed by South Central Railway while East Coast Railway was ranked third.

According to the survey report, compared to 2017, there is nine per cent improvement in top 100 stations, 14 per cent in the next 100.

The cleanliness ranking, conducted by the Quality Council of India, was started in 2016. Since then, according to the study, there has been a significant improvement in the cleanliness aspect.

In 2017-18, average cleanliness of stations went up by 18 per cent, and 61 per cent of all citizens covered in the latest round of the study said the cleanliness was "above average", QCI chairman Adil Zainulbhai said.

Significantly, 47 per of the citizens felt train toilets are "cleaner now", he said.

According to the study, 39 stations scored over 90 per cent, a major jump given that last year none of them were in this bracket. Besides, 161 stations scored over 80 per cent in the latest survey.

The parameters adopted for conducting the survey were 'evaluation of process of cleanliness in parking, main entry area, main platform, waiting room, direct observation by QCI assessors of cleanliness and passenger feedback, with each of the parameters carrying 33.33 per cent.

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Several mediapersons from Kerala were allegedly assaulted by a group of private security guards at the Bishop House in Jalandhar in Punjab today.

The Delhi-based journalists were in Jalandhar to report on the police investigation and questioning of Roman Catholic Bishop Franco Mulakkal, who had allegedly abused his position and repeatedly raped a nun from Kerala.

According to some of the journalists, the guards manhandled them and damaged their cameras and equipment while they were capturing the visuals of Bishop Mulakkal who had just returned to his headquarters from Chandigarh.

No official comment was immediately available on the alleged assault of journalists.

A special team of Kerala Police earlier reached the Bishop House to question the Bishop but was unable to do so since he was in Chandigarh.

Punjab Police then asked the Bishop to return and appear for questioning. Interrogation is now underway.

The state government earlier today told the Kerala High Court that a decision on arresting Mulakkal, who has so far claimed innocence, will be taken after he is interrogated and the evidence examined.

As per the initial investigation of the police, Bishop Mulakkal abused his position and repeatedly raped a nun from Kerala, a special team probing the case told the Kerala high court today.

Responding to a petition seeking speedy investigation, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Kottayam, K Subhash informed the court that the investigation was proceeding effectively and impartially.

The police statement before the high court was based on initial investigation and available evidence. It is revealed that Bishop Franco Mulakkal committed unnatural offence and committed rape repeatedly on the nun against her will, the statement read.

The bishop confined the nun to a guestroom in St Francis Mission Home in Kuravilangad in Kottayam district of Kerala, the statement alleged.

In her complaint lodged with Kottayam district police, the nun accused Mulakkal of raping and having unnatural sex with her multiple times between 2014 and 2016.

State police chief Loknath Behera on August 1 reviewed the progress of the case and permitted the investigation team to proceed to Jalandhar, New Delhi and other cities as part of the investigations.

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An umbrella organisation of working journalists in Nepal has demanded early implementation of the increase in minimum wage of scribes as fixed by the Minimum Wage Fixation Committee (MWFC).

The MWFC has set the minimum salary of journalists at Rs 19,500.

The central committee of the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) in a



recent meeting has also urged the government to endorse a model law on mass communications drafted by it to guarantee freedom of the press and of expression.

"FNJ strongly demands that the federal, provincial and local level governments give uniformity to media-related laws in line with the policy and to ensure formulation of laws friendly to press freedom.

"The federation draws the attention of the authority concerned to formulate special safety laws for journalists and mass media in a way to exercise the constitutionally-guaranteed full press freedom, reads the decision made public following the meeting.

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Kerala's worst-affected Idukki district continued to reel under the impact of unprecedented floods today even as fresh rains were reported from several other parts of the state.

The weatherman has issued a fresh warning asking fishermen not to venture into the sea, saying the coasts of Kerala and Lakshadweep may experience winds at the speed of 35 to 45 kmph, sometimes going up to 60 kmph.

The water level in the Idukki hydro-electric dam has receded to 2,397.58 ft, alleviating concerns about floods in fresh downstream areas, particularly in Ernakulam district, officials said. The current level does not warrant issuing any warning, they said.

However, the five shutters of Cheruthoni dam, part of Idukki reservoir, will continue to remain open.

Water level in the dam had come down to 2,398.68 ft last evening.

Meanwhile, Ernakulam district authorities said more people who had taken shelter in relief camps in the district have gone back to their homes.

At present, 3,095 people are lodged in 17 camps in the district.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had made an aerial survey of two rain-ravaged districts--Ernakulam and Idukki- and said the situation in the state was "very serious". He had also announced an aid of Rs 100 crore as immediate central relief.

The minister had said the rains and floods had caused "massive damage" to the farm sector and infrastructure.

The state government has submitted a memorandum to the Centre seeking urgent sanction of Rs 1,220 crore from the National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF) to cope with the situation.

In the memorandum, the Chief Minister had said preliminary estimates suggested that Kerala suffered a loss of Rs 8,316 crore due to the calamity.

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Fresh rains lashed several parts of Kerala today as the state continued to reel under the impact of unprecedented floods, even as the weatherman issued a warning cautioning fishermen against venturing into the sea, officials said.

Some respite appeared on the the horizon for the worst-hit Idduki hill district where the water in the Idukki dam receded to 2,397.58 ft, alleviating concerns about floods in fresh downstream areas, particularly in Ernakulam district. The current level does not warrant issuing any warning, they said.

Over 60,000 people have been displaced and rendered homeless with the death toll rising to 39.

The weatherman has issued a fresh warning asking fishermen not to venture into the sea, saying the coasts of Kerala and Lakshadweep may experience winds packing speeds of 35 to 45 kmph, sometimes going up to 60 kmph.

Ten columns of Army, a unit of Madras Regiment along with personnel of Navy, Air Force and the NDRF were engaged in relief and rescue operations in badly-hit districts including Kozhikode, Idukki, Malappuram, Kannur and Wayanad, defence sources said.

Large parts of the state known for its verdant valleys and plantations looked like a massive swamp, with houses flattened and marooned, and crops destroyed.

Rolling down menacingly from upper reaches, flood water wrecked a large number of homes in these districts.

Distraught victims could be seen gathering utensils, cots and other belongings from the debris before shifting to safer places.

Sources said the five shutters of Cheruthoni dam, part of Idukki reservoir, will continue to remain open.

Water level in the dam had come down to 2,398.68 ft last evening.

The massive deluge has also wrecked the state's travel and tourism industry and seriously impacted its plantation sector.

Just as the tourism industry was recovering from the cancellation of bookings at hotels and resorts following the Nipah outbreak, heavy rains and floods came as a huge blow, say industry sources.

The state's tourism department was all set to organise the famed snake boat races, which have mesmerised visitors for decades, by giving it an new format-- Champion's Boat League (CBL)-- on the lines of the Indian Premier League (IPL) from August 11 this year. The event has now been postponed.

"We will find a new date. The government is currently busy with relief and rescue operations due to the floods and landslids in various parts of the state," Director of Kerala Tourism P Bala Kiran told PTI.

The Responsible Tourism Mission under the tourism department had drawn up a programme for organsing feasts at countryside homes for tourists during the onam festival next week. The flood-hit areas are now certain to be excluded, sources said.

According to E M Najeeb, senior vice president of the Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO),70-80 per cent of hotel bookings in scenic Idukki, Munnar and Kumarakkom, the most preferred tourist destinations, have been cancelled.

The blooming of 'Neelakurinji' flowers in the hills of Munnar, an event that occurs once in 12 years and is eagerly awaited, has also been affected by the rains.

Idukki produces over a dozen varieties of spices, including pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and turmeric, besides many others, and the destruction has been widespread. Spices board sources 35-40 per cent cardamom and pepper crops have been destroyed.

According to Ajit B K, the secretary of the Association of Planters of Kerala, the tea, coffee, cardamom and rubber planters have suffered losses of about Rs 600 crore so far.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had announced an aid of Rs 100 crore as immediate central assistance to the state.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had submitted a memorandum to Singh, who visited the state yesterday, saying the state has suffered a loss of Rs 8,316 crore so far due to the floods.

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Two more Kerala priests, accused of sexually abusing a woman, surrendered before police today, officials said.

Fr Abraham Varghese alias Sony surrendered before a court at Thiruvalla while Fr Jaise K George at the crime branch office in Kollam this morning, the police said.

The clergymen surrendered after the Supreme Court cancelled their interim protection from the arrest and asked them to surrender by today.

A bench of Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan had said the two priests were at liberty to seek regular bail once they surrendered.

The two had moved the apex court seeking anticipatory bail in the case after their plea was rejected by the Kerala High Court on July 11.

Two other priests accused in the case - Fr Job Mathew and Johnson V Mathew - had already surrendered before the police and granted bail by the high court.

The four priests, attached to the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church, were accused of sexually abusing a 34-year-old married woman by using her confessional statement.

The victim's husband had accused them of using her confession to "blackmail" and "sexually abuse" her.

The crime branch of the Kerala Police had on July 2 registered a case against them on the basis of a statement given by the woman belonging to the same church. She accused them of sexually assaulting her on many occasions.

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Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar will inaugurate the first civil airport of the state established at a cost of Rs 12.36 crore in Hisar on August 15, state Civil Aviation Minister Rao Narbir Singh said today.

He said the airport has been set up in a "record time" with the support from the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

The passenger terminal to be dedicated to the public would comprise of all facilities including X-ray baggage scanning, reception area, as well as security hold area as per the norms of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Singh said in an official statement here.

According to Singh, the airport was selected by the Ministry of Civil Aviation under the regional connectivity scheme (RCS)--UDAN, in which one airline, Pinnacle Airways Limited, has bid for two routes -- Delhi-Hisar and Hisar-Chandigarh. Six flights a week have been planned on both routes, he added.

He said the airline is in the process of obtaining the requisite approvals from the AAI and the DGCA and is expected to commence operations from October 15, 2018.

The state government intends to invite non-scheduled operator permit holders to operate on mutually acceptable routes from the Hisar Civil Airport, for which it would provide attractive incentives, Singh said.

"The chief minister would inaugurate the passenger terminal under Phase-I of the integrated aviation hub project and also sign a Memorandum of Agreement with SpiceJet Limited for collaboration in development of Phase-II and III of the integrated aviation hub to come up on 4,200 acres of land which has been earmarked for the project," he said.

Singh said that under Phase-II, the existing airstrip of 4,000 feet would be extended to 9,000 feet with state-of-the-art navigation facilities including night landing and parking for larger aircraft like Airbus A-320.

In addition, a Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility would be established for maintenance and repair of aircraft, he said, adding that the new airport would help decongest the Delhi airport.

"These would help decongest the Delhi airport and provide basing, parking, maintenance and repair facilities for the aircrafts. Meanwhile, simultaneously, a Detailed Project Report (DPR) would be prepared for phase III for establishment of International Passenger and Cargo airport, aviation academy and aerospace and defence industry.

"It is planned to complete the execution of phase II activities and DPR for phase III within the next 18 months," he said.

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Indian captain Virat Kohli today lost his number one position in the ICC Test rankings for batsmen, dropping to second after a forgettable performance in the lost second Test against England.

Kohli lost the position to former Australian captain Steve Smith, who is currently serving a one-year ban owing to his role in the ball-tampering scandal against South Africa earlier this year.

The India captain played knocks of 23 and 17 even as his side succumbed to 107 and 130 for an innings and 159-run loss at the Lord's.

The low scores and one-sided defeat have led to a fall in rankings for most India players with off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin being the notable exception.

He has moved up in the list for batsmen from 67th to 57th, with defiant innings of 29 and 33 not out.

Ashwin has also leap-frogged South Africa's Vernon Philander to grab the third position among all-rounders. On the other hand, all-rounder Hardik Pandya has moved up 25 places to take the 74th spot among bowlers.

England paceman James Anderson has become only the seventh England bowler and the first in 38 years from his country to breach the 900-point mark in the rankings for after an excellent performance in the second Test against India, the ICC said in a statement.

Anderson's match figures of 9/43 enabled him to reach 903 points and join a select group comprising Sydney Barnes (932), George Lohmann (931), Tony Lock (912), Ian Botham (911), Derek Underwood (907) and Alec Bedser (903), all of whom peaked at over 900 points during their careers.

England's all-time leading wicket-taker in Tests with 553 scalps, Anderson is the only one to claim 100 Test wickets at Lord's. He is the first England bowler to breach the coveted mark since Botham touched 900 points in August 1980.

Anderson now leads second-placed South Africa fast bowler Kagiso Rabada by 21 points in the bowlers' list.

Another one to make a mark in the Lord's Test and whose performances reflect strongly in the latest rankings update is player of the match Chris Woakes, whose splendid century and useful bowling efforts see him move up all three charts - for batsmen, bowlers and all-rounders.

Woakes, who slammed an unbeaten 137 in England's only innings and chipped in with four wickets in the match, has gained 34 places to reach a career-best 50th position among batsmen while also moving up three places to 32nd among bowlers and by five places to seventh among all-rounders.

Another England player to catch the eye in the latest rankings is wicketkeeper-batsman Jonny Bairstow, whose 93-run knock has lifted him back to the top 10, in ninth place. Stuart Broad (up one place to 12th) among bowlers, and batsmen Jos Buttler (up one place to 69th) and Ollie Pope (125th), have also done well with regard to rankings.

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North and South Korea will hold a summit in Pyongyang in September, the South's Yonhap agency reported today as the two sides held high-level talks in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula.

Yonhap did not immediately cite a source for the information. If the South's President Moon Jae-in went to the North's capital it would be the first such trip for more than a decade.

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Lt Governor Anil Baijal today directed the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) to complete the process of conversion of fuels to piped natural gas (PNG) in industrial areas by next month.

According to a statement issued by the L-G's office, Baijal has directed the DPCC to ensure that industrial units operating in Delhi switch to PNG from any other fuel source they are currently using by September 30.

Baijal also directed authorities to prepare for coming winter season so that air pollution is checked in the national capital.

The lieutenant governor today chaired a meeting convened by the Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA).

According to a statement issued by the L-G's office, the DPCC informed the lieutenant governor that the work of converting fuels to PNG in industrial areas, including in Patparganj, Jhilmil and Friends Colony, is going on.

"The L-G directed the DPCC to speed up the process of conversion of fuels to PNG in industrial areas and complete it by September 30," it stated.

In the meeting, the L-G was informed about the traffic management near Anand Vihar ISBT.

"The Delhi Police informed that traffic police has deployed staff at all 5 major choking points on daily basis. The EPCA chairperson expressed the desire that the posted officials should remain present throughout the day," it also stated.

EPCA Chairman Bhure Lal further directed the Uttar Pradesh Police to make similar arrangements, it added.

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Sri Lanka's Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundera has directed the country's tourist police personnel to learn international languages including Hindi, Chinese and French as the tourism sector is set to be the biggest forex earner for the island nation.

With 206,337 tourists visiting Sri Lanka during the first six months of 2018, India continues to be the leading contributor to the country's inbound tourism market.

At 136,294, the next highest number of arrivals were from China, the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) said.

We have to understand the important role played by the tourism sector in the country's economy. In a few years, it is expected to become the largest foreign exchange earner for the country. Therefore, ensuring (the) safety of the foreigners visiting Sri Lanka will be a top priority for the Police force, Jayasundera said.

Officers of the Tourist Police Division should pay special attention to language training. In addition to English, they should also learn widely used international languages such as Chinese, Hindi, and French, he added.

The police chief further said 25 new Tourist Police stations would be established across the country to ensure the safety of tourists.

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Bihar Governor Satya Pal Mallik and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today condoled the death of former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee, hailing him for his adherence to high political ideals and concern for the downtrodden.

In his condolence message, Mallik said Chatterjees political career was marked by probity, commitment to principles and a genuine concern for the downtrodden.

Nitish Kumar hailed Chatterjees adherence to high political ideals which helped the veteran Marxist leaders unanimous election to the Lok Sabha speakers post.

The Chief Minister also recalled that it was during Chatterjees tenure that live broadcast of zero hour proceedings began.

Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi recalled Chatterjees deep commitment to democracy and democratic values.

Leader of the opposition in the state Assembly Tejashwi Yadav, RJD Rajya Sabha MP Misa Bharti, MLA and ex-minister Tej Pratap Yadav and MLC and former Chief Minister Rabri Devi issued a joint statement recalling the close ties their family had with the deceased leader.

A statement issued from Mumbai by RJD MLA Bhola Yadav, who is with Lalu Prasad in the western metropolis where the latter is undergoing medical check up, quoted the party supremo as having expressed grief and described Chatterjee as a bold leader who always upheld democratic norms.

Former Chief Minister and Hindustani Awam Morcha president Jitan Ram Manjhi also mourned the death of the former Lok Sabha Speaker.

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A local BJP leader was booked for allegedly raping a teenager in the tribal-dominated Jashpur district of Chhattisgarh, police said today.

Police said that the parents of the 19-year-old girl had filed a case of rape at Kansabel police station on August 7 against Motilal Bhagat (45), president of the Kansabel Janpad Panchayat in Jashpur.

The complaint had alleged that Bhagat had raped the girl in October 2016 while she was a class 12 student staying in Kansabel in a rented house.

The complaint stated that Bhagat had married her in Odisha in January this year despite he being already married.

Bhagat left the girl in June following which her parents filed a complaint, the official said, adding that Bhagat had been charged with rape, kidnapping and criminal intimidation.

Sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act were also invoked as the girl was a minor when the accused had raped her earlier.

He said that efforts were on to nab the accused.

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The Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL), India's largest hospitality company behind the Taj brand of hotels, today announced plans to open a new Taj Vivanta in London by 2021.

The IHCL signed a partnership agreement with the Hayre Group Limited last week for the new 108-room hotel at Heathrow Airport in London.

The new hotel will be the Tata Group's second Taj hotel in the British capital, besides the iconic St James' Court Hotel and Suites near Buckingham Palace in central London.

IHCL was the first Indian hospitality company to foray into the United Kingdom with the iconicSt James' Court hotelin 1982. We are proud to partner with Hayre Group Limited in bringing the first Vivantabranded hotel to London, said Puneet Chhatwal, IHCL Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer.

He said the partnership agreement with Hayre was in line with the company's growth strategy of adding hotels in key locations globally.

The new Taj Vivanta hotel is a Greenfield project, slated to open in 2021, and will be located across from Terminals 1, 2 and 3 at Heathrow Airport.

The company said the new hotel will have around 108 spacious rooms, an all-day-diner, a bar and lounge, gym as well as banqueting and meeting space facilities.

Additionally, it will house the fourth outpost of the popular Indian restaurant, Bombay Brasserie, famed for its eclectic Indian cuisine.

Talwinder Hayre, Director, Hayre Group Limited,said: We look forward to bringing the legendary Indian hospitality to London Heathrow, one of the busiest airports in the world.

Hayre Group, established in 2004 in the UK, claim to be among the leading emerging real estate developers in the world. Currently, the Group has in excess of 300,000 square feet of pipeline in the UK across hospitality, residential and commercial sectors.

IHCL, South Asia's largest Indian hospitality company in terms of market capitalisation, brings together a group of Taj brands since founder Jamsetji Tata opened the Taj Mahal Palace in Bombay in 1903.

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The Madras High Court today issued a notice to the Vedanta group's Sterlite copper plant on a petition seeking Rs 750 crore towards rehabilitation of people affected by pollution allegedly caused by it and relief for victims of the police firing during a protest in May.

Petitioner Vijaya Nivas sought a court direction to the company to pay Rs 620 crore for rehabilitation of people in and around its plant in Tuticorin, apart from a compensation of Rs 10 crore each for the 13 people killed in police firing during the anti-Sterlite agitation on May 22 and 23.

When the matter came up for hearing, Justices M M Sundaresh and Satheesh Kumar issued notices to Sterlite Copper chairman Anil Agarwal and the central and state governments.

The petitioner claimed that the environment within an area of 25 sq km around Tuticorin had suffered because of the pollution, which had also affected the groundwater.

Hence, the company should pay Rs 620 crore to rehabilitate the affected people, Nivas submitted.

Thirteen people were killed in police firing on May 22 and 23 when violence broke out during the protest by locals demanding closure of the plant.

The state government subsequently issued an order for "permanent closure" of the Sterlite copper smelter, following which the company moved National Green Tribunal to challenge it.

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Malaysia's prime minister says he is seeking to hike the price of water sold to the neighbouring country of Singapore by more than ten times as his country searches for ways to pay off massive debts.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told The Associated Press today that a decades-old treaty governing the water agreement needs to be revised to reflect increases in the cost of living.

Malaysia currently sells water to Singapore at 3 sen (0.7 US cents) per thousand gallons and buys treated water at 50 sen (12 cents) per thousand gallons.

The water deal has long been a point of contention between the two countries. Mahathir said in June he wants to renegotiate the deal.

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Malian opposition candidate Soumaila Cisse said today he would reject the results of a presidential runoff marred by accusations of fraud, calling on the population "to rise up."



"The fraud is proven, this is why there are results we will not accept," Cisse told reporters at his party's headquarters in Bamako. "I call on all Malians to rise up... We will not accept the dictatorship of fraud," he added.

Vote counting was underway across the vast West African country.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, 73, is the clear frontrunner in a reprise of his 2013 faceoff against former finance minister Cisse, 68.

The opposition leader, in a meeting where hundreds of supporters had gathered on Monday afternoon, also said the programme his party uses to count votes -- which had put him in the lead until then -- was hacked overnight.

Six members of Soumaila Cisse's campaign team, including four who are French, were arrested on Sunday, the team and Salif Traore, the minister of security, said.

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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today accused the BJP of being "anti-Bengalis" and wrly asked the saffron party if hilsa fish, Jamdani saree, sandesh and mishti doi, which are originally from Bangladesh, would be branded as "infiltrators or refugees".

Banerjee made the remarks as she escalated her attack on the Centre over the exclusion of 40 lakh people in the draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam.

Asserting that these 40 lakh people are "very much Indians", she questioned the criteria on which they have been excluded.

Banerjee said even she would not be able to produce the birth certificate of her parents if the government asks for it.

"Do not know my parents' birth dates. I only know the dates of their death. I would not be able to provide any documents for their date of birth but there should be a clear system about such cases...you cannot blame the layman," she told reporters at her chamber in the state assembly.

Banerjee has been relentlessly attacking the BJP government at the Centre over the NRC which has excluded names of over 40 lakh citizens in Assam in the draft for want of necessary documents.

Taking a swipe at the BJP, she asked whether hilsa fish, Jamdani saree, sandesh and mishti doi, which are originally from Bangladesh, would be branded as "infiltrators or refugees". Sandesh and mishti doi are famous Bengali sweets.

"What is going on in the country is injustice. The BJP with their extremist ideology is trying to create division among the people. I think they are playing the politics of revenge among the countrymen. We are not for this kind of politics," she said.

She accused the BJP of being "anti-Bengalis" and "anti-West Bengal".

"They (the BJP) must not forget that speaking Bengali is not a crime. It is the fifth most spoken language in the world. What is BJP's problem with (West) Bengal. Are they scared of the intellect of the Bengalis, their culture. They must not forget that (West) Bengal is the cultural mecca of the country," she said.

The TMC chief said "the culture practised by them does not have any respect for people speaking Hindi, Bengali, Maratha and the South Indian (languages)".

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A man bit off a part of his wife's nose, suspecting her of having illicit relations with other men, the police said today.

A native of Palhora village in the district, Arjun bit off his wife Geeta's nose in a fit of rage, when she insisted upon going out of the house yesterday, City Superintendent of Police Dinesh Tripathi said today.

After the incident, the 32-year-old woman was rushed to the district hospital and admitted there for treatment, said the SP, adding that the man too has been arrested.

Tripathi said Arjun was angry with his wife over her visit to Bareilly five days ago without informing him and when she had returned home, the man had fought with her accusing her of being adulterous.

The matter that day too had reached police, which had intervened to sort it out, Tripathi said.

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A 38-year-old man was today arrested here on the charge of possessing and selling cocaine, Deputy Commissioner of Excise Department C Vivekananda Reddy said today.

Abdul Hameed of Adilabad district, running a travels agency, was caught while selling the drug, he said.

A total of 31 gm of cocaine and Rs 7 lakh in cash besides a car were seized from Hameed and a case was registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, Deputy Commissioner of Excise Department C Vivekananda Reddy told PTI.

Preliminary investigation revealed that Hameed, while making trips to Goa, had established contact with a drug smuggler who gave the former a list of customers in Hyderabad and offered him Rs 2,000 as commission for sale of one gm of cocaine that cost Rs 6,000, the official said.

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A special court here sentenced a man and his son to 10 years of imprisonment in a drug case today.

Judge Jagdeep Sood convicted Gurcharan Singh and his son Malkiat Singh, according to prosecution.

A fine of Rs 2 lakh each was also imposed on them.

They were arrested by the Anti-Narcotics Cell of Punjab police for bringing 80 kg of poppy husk in a truck in July 2014.

The two men were booked under relevant sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

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Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi thanked the Corporate Affairs Ministry today for making it mandatory for all companies to disclose that they have complied with the Sexual Harassment at Work Place Act.

Under the amendment to the Sexual Harassment at Work Place Act, 2013, both private and public companies would need to set up committees for any women who believe she has been harassed at work place, Gandhi said.

Calling it a "major" step towards making women safer at their work place, especially in private companies, she thanked the Corporate Affairs Ministry for making it mandatory for all companies to disclose that they have complied with the Sexual Harassment at Work Place Act.

"I have set up the guidance and training material on the WCD. I would request both at the compliance cell and women at work place to access this material," she said.

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs has amended the Companies (Accounts) Rules, 2014, issued under Section-134 of the Companies Act, by inserting clause to disclose that both private and government companies have complied with the Sexual Harassment at Work Place Act.

"A statement that the company has complied with provisions relating to the constitution of Internal Complaints Committee under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013," according to the notification of the Corporate Affairs Ministry dated July 31, 2018.

Gandhi also stated that she will be requesting the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to suitably incorporate this disclosure in the Corporate Governance reports of the companies.

"This will cast as ever higher responsibility on the Directors of these Companies for implementation of the Act," Gandhi said in a statement.

Section-134 of the Companies Act, 2013 provides the disclosure framework which the directors of every company are required to comply with in the annual reports.

This section also includes the penal provisions for non-disclosure. The inclusion of the compliance under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act in the non-financial disclosures will ensure that the issue gets in the focus into the board of directors of the companies



In a bid to promote formation of internal committees to fight sexual harassment at work place, the WCD Ministry has empanelled a number of entities who can provide training to any organisation on effective implementation of the provisions of the Act.

The ministry has provided a facility to all working women to file complaints under this Act directly with the ministry through the SHE-Box, the statement said.

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Manipur today observed Patriots' Day in memory of state heroes who laid down their lives fighting the British during the Anglo-Manipuri war of 1891.

A state function was held this morning at Hicham Yaichampat and Thangal General Temple complex, in the heart of Imphal, to pay tributes to Bir Tikendrajit and Thangal General, who were hanged to death on August 13, 1891 for waging a war against the colonialists.

The programme was attended by Chief Minister N Biren Singh, council of ministers, top police officers and civil officials among others.

A contingent of Manipur Rifles also paid gun salute to the martyrs on this occasion.

At another programme organised by the BJP Manipur Pradesh later in the day, the CM urged the youth to imbibe in them a sense of patriotism.

"Our forefathers fought the war with courage and valour, despite knowing that the British Empire was more powerful than them," he said.

The 1891 Anglo-Manipur War, between March 31 and April 27, ended in a British victory.

"The present government will never compromise the territorial integrity of the state," the CM added.

In a statement issued by the Raj Bhavan, Governor Najma Heptullah today extended her best wishes to the people of Manipur.

"August 13 is observed as Patriots' Day every year in memory of those who laid down their lives resisting the British colonial designs in 1891," she said.

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Not all advice is good even if it comes from Luke Skywalker.

"Star Wars" actor Mark Hamill has revealed that he once suggested an up and coming actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to lose his accent and change his last name.

"Arnold Schwarzenegger asked me for advice when he was just starting out. I told him to lose his accent for a wider range of roles & to change his last name since no one could pronounce it. He did the opposite & became one of the biggest stars EVER," Hamill, 66, tweeted.

Schwarzenegger, 71, responded with kindness, saying it was not a bad advice even though he chose to ignore it.

"Your advice was absolutely correct under any normal circumstances, and those were the rules back then. I just happen to be a rule-breaker," the Austria-born actor said.

The actor, one of the most prominent action stars in Hollywood, stuck to his surname and went on to be a star of money-minting franchise films such as "Terminator" and "Total Recall".

He became equally successful as a politician and was eventually elected as the governor of California.

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The weather department issued today a warning of heavy to very heavy rain at isolated places in at least eight districts in Uttrakhand in the next 24 hours, following which authorities were asked to stay alert to deal with any untoward situation.

The local MeT office has predicted heavy to very heavy rain in parts of Dehradun, Tehri, Pauri, Chamoli, Nainital, Udham Singh Nagar, Champawat and Pithoragarh districts in the next 24 hours.

It has forecast torrential rain at isolated places in the state capital Dehradun, Haridwar, Tehri, Pauri, and Udham Singh Nagar during the period.

In view of the rain forecast, the weather department has asked tourists visiting the hilly areas and people living in the low-lying areas to remain alert.

The State Emergency Operations Centre has issued instructions to the district magistrates to maintain vigil as there is possibility of cloudbursts and lightning affecting normal public life during heavy rain. It has advised the officials concerned to remain prepared to deal with any untoward situation.

It has also asked the district magistrates to impose a ban on vehicular movement in the hilly areas between 8 pm and 5 am. However, it has exempt ambulances or vehicles carrying patients, emergency service vehicles, military and paramilitary vehicles from the ban.

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MG Motor India, a wholly-owned arm of China's SAIC Motor Corp, today appointed Gaurav Gupta as its Chief Commercial Officer - Customer Experience & Marketing (CEM).

Gupta joins the company from Bridgestone Tire Indonesia where he was serving as the President Director, MG Motor India said in a statement.

He will oversee the marketing, sales, customer delight and dealer development functions, it added.

"Gaurav brings rich industry experience in customer-facing areas, which are critically important for success in India," MG Motor India President and Managing Director Rajeev Chaba said.

The company, which plans to launch an SUV in the country by the second quarter of next year, has also recently appointed Rakesh Sidana as National Sales Head and Rajesh Mehrotra as the National Service Head.

MG Motor India plans to launch one new product each year in India from 2019.

In 2017, MG Motor India had completed the acquisition of General Motors manufacturing plant at Halol in Gujarat.

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Tech giant Microsoft today said it has partnered with the Central Board of Secondary (CBSE) to run a pilot to digitally encrypt question papers for class 10th compartmental examinations, aimed at enhancing security and seamless distribution of the papers.

The solution was successfully tested as a pilot project in the recently held Class 10th compartmental examinations across 487 centres with about 4,000 students, Microsoft said in a statement.

It added that the Controller of Examination could track the entire process using a software solution built on Windows 10 and Office 365 and that the technology was deployed by CBSE without a security breach.

The overall process was automated to be highly secure with encryption, two-factor authentication and access to download the exam papers at the examination centre was given only 30 minutes prior to the start time, the statement explained.

The solution leverages features in Office 365 to encrypt and watermark the papers. This watermark has the centre's code imprinted on it, which allows for localisation and traceability in the eventuality of a paper leak.

A CBSE administrator initiates the distribution of exam papers, which results in the generation of e-mails to the respective centres with a link to One Drive, containing the exam paper.

This digitisation process, Microsoft claimed, saves significant time and cost for exam administrators due to online paper generation, automated delivery process and reduction in approval cycles.

"Innovative implementation of technology has the potential to solve some of the most pressing issues faced by the sector. The success of this partnership with CBSE is proof of that potential," Anil Bhansali, Corporate Vice President (Cloud and Enterprise) and Managing Director at Microsoft India (R&D), said.

Microsoft said for the pilot test, multiple mock trials were conducted before the Class X compartmental examination date with the entire CBSE team, including various exam centres along with the company's experts, to ensure seamless adoption and familiarity with the process.

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Activist-lawyer Prashant Bushan today accused the BJP government of creating an atmosphere of fear in the country and targeting those who speaks against the dispensation.

Speaking at an event titled 'Khauff se Azaadi' (Freedom from Fear) here, minutes after Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Umar Khalid was allegedly attacked by unidentified men, Bhushan said, "This was done to create fear. So, that no one speaks or fights against the government."



"Individuals like Umar Khalid and Kanhaiya Kumar are being targeted and termed anti-nationals and Naxalite for speaking against the government. We are abused on social media, while women receive rape threats," he added.

Khalid was supposed to address the gathering at the Constitution Club near Parliament, but could not after the attack on him.

Terming the Bharatiya Janata Party government "fascist", Bhushan urged the people to fight against such tendencies.

"We can see symptoms of fascism in this government. People in power are addressing provocative speeches, trying to hamper communal harmony. Muslims are being termed terrorists. People in opposition are termed anti-nationals," the senior Supreme Court lawyer said.

He alleged that fake were being spread and big media houses were brought under the government's control. "The government is even trying to change the electoral system," he added.

Raising concerns over the safety, former Rajya Sabha MP Anwar Ali said even Lutyens' Delhi was not safe anymore.

"Today, Umar Khalid was attacked right here at the Constitution Club. This could have happened with anyone of us anywhere," he said, adding that the word mob-lynching had become a small issue now.

"The issue of mob lynching should not be made an issue of Muslim. Those currently in power term every Muslim a terrorist and Dalits as Naxalite. There's an political and ideological battle," he said.

Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha, who was also at the event, added that living in fear was also a form of mob-lynching and urged people to fight against the government.

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Altogether 776 people have lost their lives, 187 of them in Kerala, in incidents related to rains, floods and landslides in seven states during the monsoon season so far, the Home Ministry said today.

According to the Home Ministry's National Emergency Response Centre (NERC), 187 people lost their lives in Kerala, where 2,406 villages in 14 districts were badly hit by the rains and floods and over 26,400 hectres of crops were damaged.

As many as 171 died in Uttar Pradesh, 170 people in West Bengal, 139 in Maharashtra, 52 people lost their lives in Gujarat, 45 in Assam and 10 in Nagaland.

A total of 27 people were also missing in Kerala (22) and West Bengal (5), while 245 others received injuries in rain-related incidents in the states.

The deluge and rains have hit 26 districts in Maharashtra, 23 in Assam, 22 in West Bengal, 14 in Kerala, 12 in Uttar Pradesh, 11 Nagaland and 10 in Gujarat.

Nearly two lakh people have been living in relief camps in Kerala while 14 teams of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) consisting of 399 rescuers and 34 boats were deployed in the state.

The Indian Air Force has deployed one Advance Light Helicopter (ALH), two Mi-17V chopper, four AN 32 aircraft, the Indian Navy has deployed One ALH, 20 divers.

The Army has deployed one column of Military Engineering Group with 37 persons at Calicut, one column with 37 persons at Idukki and one column with 32 persons at Aluva.

One column of Army has been deployed at Chunkathara Nilambur, one is also expected to be deployed at Devikulam, Idukki. One Army unit with 25 people and one column of Defence Service Corps with 80 people were deployed in Kannur.

The Coast Guard has deployed one ALH, a 14-member team in Kochi, a 12-member team at Aluva. One team has been moved from Beypore to Munambham and one team has been on stand by at Cochin.

One unit of the Territorial Army has also been deployed in Kerala.

In Assam, 11.45 lakh people have borne the brunt of the rains and floods, which also hit crops in 27,552 hectares of land.

Altogether 15 teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were engaged in rescue and relief operations in Assam, the NERC said.

A team of the NDRF comprises 45 personnel.

Nine NDRF teams were deployed in Uttar Pradesh, eight in West Bengal, seven in Gujarat, four in Maharashtra and one in Nagaland.

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After Dubai and Kuala Lumpur, "Mughal-E-Azam: The Musical" will travel to Singapore for a three-day show.

Directed by Feroz Abbas Khan, who won fame with theatre productions like "Dinner With Friends" and "Mahatma Vs Gandhi", the musical was introduced to Indian audiences two years ago.

Speaking about the comparisons between the 1960 film and the musical, Khan, 59, said "I am not calling it a 'modern' version."



"It remains at heart the original, but while the film was more masculine in some respects, in the play, the women's characters are very strong. They have a voice and, because of that, value-wise it is very contemporary," Khan told The Straits Times.

The story revolves around the ill-fated romance between the young Prince Salim and a dancing girl of the Mughal court, who would gain fame throughout the empire as Anarkali.

The sumptuous production - there are 550 costumes designed by the acclaimed Manish Malhotra - is brought Singapore by Anu Samtani of Action Replay and Maniza Jumabhoy of Limelight Arts.

"I have done every play that Feroz has brought here," said Jumabhoy.

"But this is the biggest so far. It has amazing sets and even with Singapore's advanced facilities, the most expensive item so far has been the lighting, a lot of which we had to import from Dubai."



According to Samtani, the cast and crew will number 120, which makes the Singapore version about midway between the play put on in New Delhi and Mumbai, the city where it was first staged.

Of the eight songs in the musical, six are drawn from the movie and two were scored for the play.

Singapore audiences who do not follow Hindi or Urdu can follow the drama through the English translations on giant LED screens placed off stage, according to the Singapore daily.

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A 45-year-old police constable died of a heart attack in the morning today while he was on his way to attend his sister's funeral in Pune, an official said.

Vijay More was posted with Azad Maidan police station in south Mumbai since 2015, he added.

More's sister had died in Pune yesterday and the constable, along with relatives, was on his way to the attend the funeral when he suffered a heart attack near Vashi in neighbouring Navi Mumbai, the official informed.

More was rushed to a nearby hospital where authorities declared him dead on arrival, he said.

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The Muslim Students Organisation of India (MSOI), a conglomerate of Muslim students and youths in India, appealed to the government to involve the community's youth in national security policy and cautioned about certain extremist ideologies which led to terrorism.

At a day-long conference held here yesterday, Muslim scholars and youths deliberated about the issues faced by the community, stressing that efforts should be made to maintain social harmony. They also favoured the implementation of the Sufi spiritual experiments in this context, a release issued by the MSOI said.

Mufti Ashfaq Hussain, the president of Tanzeem Ulama-E-Islam and the president of the assembly, said the country and the world were under serious threat from certain extremist ideologies which led to terrorism.

"If the Indian government wants to understand, we can help them. The love of Muslims increases with the country while it gets a share in the policy. Participation in the policy should be considered than participation in power because the policy is regulated frequently," he said.

Convener of the conference and editor of Kanzul Iman, Maulana Zafruddin Barkati, said the nature of India was rooted in unity in diversity. Therefore, the challenge of communal elements in front of the country could not be underestimated.

"Every community should deal with it, in which the best is the Sufi ideology among Muslims," he said.

Syed Muhammad Qadri, chief speaker and former president of the organisation, said India was a pluralistic country and the youths could play the most important role in maintaining its unity.

"An environment is being created in the country most of the time that Indian Muslims are not responsible citizens, whereas our claim is that the inclusion of Muslims in the national security policy will be an accurate assessment of the role of Muslim youths towards national unity," he said.

Shahnawaz Ahmad Malik Warsi of the Aligarh Muslim University, Kerala Center, said the challenges facing human rights and social justice in the country were being taken seriously in the society.

In the conference, the MSOI presented a six-point report on the issues related to the security of the country, social justice, terrorism and fundamentalism, employment and skill management, social programs and environment.

Those present in the conference included Qari Sageer Rizvi, Maulana Abdul Wahid, Imran Qureshi, MSOI Delhi State Secretary Saqib Barkati, Mumtaz Attari, as well as students from Delhi University, Jamia Milia Islamia, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

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World number one Rafael Nadal on Sunday withdrew from next week's ATP Cincinnati Masters event as he prepares for this month's US Open.

The 32-year-old scooped the 80th title of his career earlier Sunday with victory at the Toronto Masters.

However the Spaniard said in a statement following the win that he had decided to adjust his schedule in order to preserve his fitness.

"I am very sorry to announce that I won't be playing in Cincinnati this year," Nadal said.

"No other reason than personally taking care of my body and trying to keep as healthy as I feel now. I am very thankful to my friend Andre Silva, Tournament Director of the Cincinnati tournament, who after speaking to him on the phone understood what I said to him and understands the situation.

"I am sure the tournament will be a success and I wish him and his team all the best." The withdrawal leaves Roger Federer as the tournament's highest seed in second. The Swiss did not play Toronto in order to conserve his resources, an example being followed by his main rival.

Nadal will be replaced in the draw by a lucky loser.

Nadal had signalled he was planning on withdrawing following his 6-2, 7-6(4) win over over Stefanos Tsitsipas earlier Sunday.

"I need to make a decision about what is going on in the next week and the next couple of weeks," he said. "We also have the Davis Cup semi-finals after the US Open.

"We need to think about the things that we can do or the things that about we can't do, no? So it's all about the decisions.

"I only want to play, I want to be everywhere. I love this sport. I don't like to miss events. But at some point if I don't stop for myself, my body stop me. So that's the experience that I have.

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With a view to ensure proper monitoring of all government schemes in a transparent manner, Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio today launched "CM Dashboard", an electronic window.

The CM Dashboard (www.nl.cmdashboard.nic.in) is an electronic window which gives a comprehensive view of various e-Governance projects and schemes running in the state.

It provides information about some important measurable parameters or progress called KPIS (Key Performance Indicator).

The system will enable the Chief Minister to assess the performance of the projects on the click of a button and take immediate actionable decisions with regard to the projects or schemes.

The Chief Minister also launched Electronic National Pension System (e-NPS) developed in integration with Personal Information Management System.

It is to meet the urgent requirements of the state government to manage the contribution of the department employees who are subscribing towards the NPS and subsequently downloading the File Preparation Utility to upload in National Securities Depository Limited portal.

The portal for e-NPS is www.pimsnagaland.in/nps.

Inaugurating the two major schemes at the Secretariat Conference Hall, Rio said that Nagaland being a state dependent on flagship programmes of the Central government, this initiative will help in informing the people about the details of the various projects being implemented in the state.

Rio mentioned that as of now, there are 22 schemes of 11 state government departments, and that the other departments will also follow suit.

On e-NPS, Rio said that this web system will help the government in effectively maintaining the NPS records and contribute to the welfare of the citizens.

As of now, e-NPS is being launched only in Kohima district, and will be covered very soon in the rest of the districts, he added.

Commissioner and Secretary to the CM, Abhishek Singh said that the CM Dashboard has been customised as per the requirements by including not only the flagship programmes of the Government of India but also including the state schemes, projects and programmes that are relevant to the state of Nagaland.

OSD Finance Department, V. Kezo, in his power-point presentation on e-NPS, mentioned that the system will give accurate and authentic data values for which Department of Treasuries & Accounts will only have to download and upload the FPU monthly when the District DDOs and District Treasury Offices submits the respective contribution, challan numbers and challan codes into the system.

He also said that e-NPS is a three-tier system (a) DDO level access (b) Sub-Treasury Level (c) e-NPS Super Admin Level i.e. Directorate of Treasuries & Accounts, and this system is mainly developed to minimise paper transactions.

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Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today condoled the death of veteran parliamentarian Somnath Chatterjee, describing him as one of the greatest speakers of Lok Sabha.

Chatterjee, 89, passed away at a private hospital in Kolkata this morning following multiple organ failure.

"Shocked and extremely sad to learn the passing away of Shri #SomnathChatterjee. A stalwart parliamentarian, popular amongst people and one of greatest Speakers of Lok Sabha. A huge loss to the Indian democracy. May his family and near & dear ones get the strength to cope. #RIP," Patnaik tweeted.

Chatterjee was the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.

Odisha's Information and Public Relations minister Pratap Jena also condoled sad demise of Chaterjee.

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Alia Bhatt today said she doesn't believe in reacting to rumours about her marriage but feels she is in a happy place, both personally and professionally.

The "Udta Punjab" star is currently dating Ranbir Kapoor and there have been speculations that the couple might tie the knot next year.

When asked about the same, Alia told reporters, "I don't react to rumours. Rumours are not meant to be reacted upon. As long as you aren't entering my bathroom, I am fine because if you are not talking about me then maybe I am not relevant enough.

"But honestly, I am in a very good place both personally and professionally so no issues whatsoever," she added.

In an interview to a fashion magazine earlier this year, Ranbir had opened up about his relationship with Alia. The duo will share screen space for the first time in "Brahmastra".

When asked if it adds to the performance if one is dating their co-star, Alia said, "When you're an actor, your job is to act. When you're in front of the camera, it doesn't matter who you are dating, not dating, whether you're tall or short or fat or unhappy or very happy.

"Sometimes, there have been days when I've been very upset but I had to dance around and feel very excited. So that's the process of being an actor."



Alia was speaking at the launch of the new collection of Caprese bags, for which she also walked the ramp.

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Prisoners, including politicians, who have been convicted in cases of murder, rape or corruption, will not be released as part of an amnesty scheme announced by the government for the year-long celebrations to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi beginning October 2.

Women convicts aged 55 years and above and male convicts of 60 years or more, who have completed half of their sentence, and a few other categories of prisoners in jails across the country will be released under the amnesty scheme on October 2, 2018, April 6, 2019 and October 2, 2019, Home Ministry officials said.

The central government has already conveyed to all states the guidelines on who all eligible for amnesty and asked them to prepare a list by August 15 so that the first batch could be released on October 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

The following categories of prisoners, who have consistently maintained overall good conduct, will be eligible for special remission:



Women convicts of 55 years of age and above, who have completed half of their actual sentence period, without counting the period of general remission earned by them;



Transgender convicts of 55 years of age and above, who have completed half of their actual sentence period, without counting the period of general remission earned by them;Male convicts of 60 years of age and above, who have completed 50 per cent of their actual sentence period, without counting the period of general remission earned by them;Physically challenged/disabled convicts with 70 per cent disability and more, duly certified by a medical board, who have completed half of their actual sentence period;Terminally ill convicts, duly certified by a medical board;Convicted prisoners who have completed two-third (66 per cent) of their actual sentence period;However, the special remission is not to be granted to persons convicted for an offence for which the sentence is death penalty or where death sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment.

The other categories of prisoners who will not be considered for amnesty are:



Persons convicted for an offence for which punishment of death has been specified as one of the punishments;



Persons convicted for an offence for which punishment of life imprisonment has been specified as one of the punishments.

Cases of convicts involved in terrorist activities or persons convicted under Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1985 (TADA), The Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002 (POTA), Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA), The Explosive Substances Act, 1908, The National Security Act, 1982 (NSA), Official Secrets Act, 1923, Anti-Hijacking Act, 2016;



Prisoners convicted for dowry death;



Those convicted for counterfeiting currency notes (FICN) - cases under section 489 (A to E) of Indian Penal Code;



Prisoners convicted for the offence of Rape, human trafficking and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO), Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956;



Cases of prisoners convicted under Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA), Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015;



Cases of prisoners convicted under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS);



Prisoners convicted under the Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities), Act, 2005;



Those convicted under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988;



Prisoners convicted for offences against the State (Chapter-VI of IPC); and prisoners convicted under any other law which the state government and union territory administrations consider appropriate to exclude.

Since prisons and persons detained therein are 'State' subjects, the state governments have been advised to constitute a state level committee to examine cases of eligible prisoners satisfying and fulfilling the conditions, an official said.

The state governments will place the recommendation of the committee before the Governor for consideration and approval in exercise of his power under Article 161 of the Constitution of India and in case of Jammu and Kashmir under Section 34 of its Constitution.

Cases where approval of the central government is required as per law may be sent to the Ministry of Home Affairs. The foreign nationals, who have been convicted, shall be released with the concurrence of the Ministry of External Affairs, another official said.

The official made it clear that prisoners, including politicians, who are serving sentence for rape, murder or corruption, will not be released under the scheme.

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Taking a lesson from the violence that occurred during a Tiranga Yatra on the Republic Day this year, the local administration in Kasganj has denied permission for any such procession on the Independence Day.

"No permission has been given to any yatra on the Independence day by the administration. If school students want to take out a tableau, they are allowed. No other yatra will be allowed by the administration which is not taken out traditionally," Additional Superintendent of Police, Kasganj, Pavitra Mohan Tripathi told PTI over phone.

During Tiranga Yatra on the Republic Day, a 22-year-old youth, identified as Abhishek Gupta alias Chandan, was shot dead by some people after which a series of violence and arson incidents had taken place in Kasganj.

Security personnel have been deployed in Kasganj to maintain law and order, and over 100 suspected people are bound under Section 116 (3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), officials said here.

Prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC have been enforced in the district, they said.

Various organisations had sought permission to organise Tiranga Yatras on August 15, claiming that it was a tradition but the district magistrate has not granted any permission to them.

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Norway's fishery minister has stepped down after harsh criticism for not informing the government of his private trips abroad to Iran and China.

Per Sandberg, 58, gave no reasons why he failed to tell his bosses about the trips in advance a summer holiday in July to Iran with his Iranian-born girlfriend and a trip to China in May.

In Norway, government members are required to report before going to another country on private trips.

After returning from Iran, his work phone was given to Norway's domestic intelligence service to make sure it was not hacked.

The PST agency considers Iran "a high risk country" when it comes to electronic surveillance.

He was replaced in the fisheries post today by Harald Tom Nesvik.

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Odisha Governor Prof Ganeshi Lal today released the Odia edition of "Exam Warriors", a book written by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on how to tackle examination woes.

In his address, Lal said a common student can be a superman with his strong determination and will power.

With 25 super mantras, advice to parents and teachers, and a set of useful yoga asanas, Modi has done what perhaps no other head of a country has done - prepare students to face examinations without the accompanying stress, he said.

Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said it was his dream to make the book available in Odia and it should be reached to every student of Odisha.

This book would be very helpful for all students who are going to appear various examinations and interviews, he said.

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The Orissa High Court today granted bail to senior IAS officer Vinod Kumar, arrested in a corruption case, and directed the vigilance court to set the bail conditions.

Justice J P Das accepted the bail application of Kumar who was sentenced to three years rigorous imprisonment by the vigilance court and arrested on Friday.

The special vigilance court in Bhubaneswar had also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on Kumar in the 2001 case.

Justice Das today directed the vigilance court to set the conditions as it deemed fit before releasing the jailed officer on bail.

For a default appeal memo, the high court had last week adjourned the case to today.

The court also granted bail to co-convict Purna Chandra Dash in the case. Three others involved in the case were granted bail by the high court earlier.

Last month, the special vigilance court in Bhubaneswar found Kumar guilty of financial irregularities to the tune of Rs 55 lakh during his tenure as managing director of Odisha Rural Housing Development Corporation in 2000.

The 1989 batch IAS officer is currently posted as an officer on special duty in the state's higher education department.

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Pakistan Navy's sophisticated maritime security ship 'Kashmir' arrived today in Sri Lanka on a four-day goodwill visit, the second port call by a Pakistani naval vessel in less than three months.

Captain Azhar Mahmood, commanding officer of the Pakistan Maritime Security Ship (PMSS) Kashmir, called on the Commander of the Sri Lankan Navy Vice Admiral Sirimevan Ranasinghe at the Naval Headquarters, the Sri Lankan Navy said in a statement.

The Commanding Officer of PMSS Kashmir and Sri Lanka Navy Chief shared views on matters of bilateral importance. The Defence Advisor of the High Commission of Pakistan in Sri Lanka, Colonel Sajjad Ali was also present on this occasion, the statement said.

During their stay at Colombo, the officers and men of the ship will take part in various professional activities with Sri Lankan Navy.

Pakistan Navy ships frequently pay port calls to Sri Lanka, as both countries enjoy warm diplomatic and strong military ties, the Pakistan High Commission said in a statement.

In May end, Pakistan Naval Ship Azmat had visited Sri Lanka.

The 1,500-tonne PMSS Kashmir, a 94-metre multipurpose patrol vessel is capable of undertaking multifarious missions such as surveillance, policing, anti-smuggling and anti-poaching operations, security and law-enforcement patrolling in maritime zones.

It is the fourth in a series of six multipurpose patrol vessels (MPVs) and was commissioned in the Chinese city of Guangzhou in July.

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A Pakistan-born bishop in the UK has called for a near-total ban on wearing of burqas in public places in the country as he backed former British foreign secretary Boris Johnson's criticism of the practice, according to a media report.

Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, said the burqas should be outlawed in a wide range of situations where people interact, including in hospitals, doctors surgeries, universities and schools, Daily Express reported.

Earlier this month, Johnson triggered a controversy when he wrote in a newspaper column that women in burqas resemble "bank robbers" and "letter boxes."



Ali said for "reasons of national security alone" the burqa should not be allowed in Parliament or even town halls.

"We have all seen how even male terrorists have escaped arrest by donning a burqa and making an effective getaway," he said.

He added: "It is true that some women choose to wear the burqa or niqab because they feel it makes them more observant Muslims. It is also true however that the burqa or niqab is being weaponised by Islamists to impose what they consider to be 'Islamic' character on communities, neighbourhoods and even nations."



The controversial call from the Pakistan-born bishop was backed by former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey.

Ali has earlier sparked controversy during his time as bishop between 1994 and 2009. He received death threats for saying in a newspaper that Islamic extremists created "no-go areas" for non-Muslims in Britain.

Ali was the first non-white diocesan bishop in the Church of England. He was the 106th bishop at Rochester, the second oldest cathedral in the country.

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Pakistan today expressed solidarity with Turkey in its current spat with the US over Ankara's refusal to extradite a US preacher imprisoned in the country.

Turkey's dispute with the US has centered on the continued detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson, who is on trial for espionage and terror-related charges.

The US has responded by slapping financial sanctions on two ministers and later doubled steel and aluminum tariffs on Turkey, driving the concerns over Turkey's economy which are rattling international financial markets.

Pakistan's Foreign Office (FO) said in a statement that Pakistan, in principle is opposed to imposition of unilateral sanctions against any country.

The FO said Pakistan acknowledges and greatly appreciates Turkey's invaluable role towards regional and international peace and stability. It said that Turkey was a vital member and engine of the global economy.

"The people and the Government of Pakistan reiterate their strong support for the Government and the people of Turkey in their quest for peace and prosperity, and as always, will continue to stand by them towards the achievement of these shared goals," said the FO.

It said solution to any and all issues should lies in dialogue, mutual understanding and goodwill and any steps or actions to the contrary only undermine the peace and stability and make the solution to a problem more difficult and intractable.

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Pakistan today released 30 Indian prisoners, including 27 fishermen, from jail as a goodwill gesture ahead of the country's Independence Day tomorrow.

The release of the prisoners "is in line with Pakistan's consistent policy of not politicising humanitarian issues," Foreign Office Spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said in a statement.

The 30 prisoners being set free also include 27 fishermen, it added.

"This is a humanitarian gesture to mark Pakistan's Independence day on August 14," he said.

"It is our hope that the Indian side will also reciprocate in a similar manner," he said.

Over 470 Indians, including 418 fishermen, are detained in Pakistani jails, according to a government report submitted before the country's Supreme Court in July.

Yesterday, it was reported that the fishermen had been arrested by the authorities for allegedly trespassing into Pakistan's territorial waters.

They were shifted to Cantt Railway Station from Karachi's Malir jail and will be taken to Lahore. The fishermen will be handed over to Indian border officials at Wagah border.

Pakistan and India frequently arrest fishermen as there is no clear demarcation of the maritime border in the Arabian Sea and these fishermen do not have boats equipped with the technology to know their precise location.

Owing to lengthy and slow bureaucratic and legal procedures, the fishermen usually remain in jail for several months but they also periodically set them free as goodwill gesture.

A number of non-governmental organisations in both India and Pakistan have raised the issue, pressing their governments to release the arrested fishermen without delay.

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A young Pakistani couple have been arrested for allegedly kissing and cuddling in a car here, a media report said today.

The couple, aged around 18-19 years, have been booked for 'obscene acts', an offence punishable with imprisonment for up to three months, or with fine, or both, The Express Tribune reported.

Investigating officer Zulfiqar Ahmed said that police received a complaint yesterday that the couple were "kissing and cuddling" in a car parked in Islamabad's city centre.

Ahmed claimed that the couple were still busy kissing and cuddling when the police reached the spot.

The couple were taken to the Karachi Company Police Station in Islamabad where they were booked and later released on bail, the report said.

Senior police officer Muhammad Basheer also claimed that the couple were "kissing".

Young couples visiting parks and shopping centres in Islamabad are often harassed, blackmailed and extorted by police officials in the conservative Muslim-majority country, the report said.

Several officials in the past have been booked for harassing and extorting young couples in public places.

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Parents of a section of students of a school mirred in a controversy over posting of a woman Dalit cook today petitioned the Tirupur District Collector seeking action against her for 'negligence' which they alleged led to food poisoning of 12 wards recently.

The parents who came to the Collectorate along with their wards raised slogans against Pappal, who cooks the noon meal at the school, and demanded action against her, police said.

The parents submitted a memorandum, seeking an inquiry by the department into the incident, which had occurred a day after the husband of Pappal sought police protection to his family.

Twelve of the 31 students of the government high school in Thirumalaigoundenpalyam had complained of nausea and vomiting after eating noon meal on August 7 and were hospitalised.

It was alleged that a dead lizard was found in the food and based on a complaint by headmistress Sasikala, police had registered a case against the cook under IPC section 337 (endangering human life or personal safety of others).

Rejecting the charge, Pappal has claimed that she and her daughter had consumed the same food and there was a conspiracy to remove her from the school.

Pappal was transferred to another school last month after the parents of children of Gounder community had opposed to her posting as the cook at the school and exerted pressure on the authorities concerned to shift her.

However, she was later reinstated at the school after the issue reached higher officials.

The National Commission for Scheduled Castes has also taken cognisance of the matter and sought explanation on the 'humiliation' meted out to the Dalit woman.

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What could have Partition meant to a 12-year-old girl who had a Hindu father and a Muslim mother? Her letters to her mother in her diary journal give a poignant insight to what went through her mind during the troubled times.

On the eve of her 12th birthday, Nisha receives a journal to record the thoughts she can never seem to say aloud as she starts to see the world through older eyes.

But it's not just Nisha who is changing. She doesn't even recognise her country anymore.

It's 1947, and India, newly freed from British rule, was divided. Many people are killed crossing borders as tensions among Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and others flare. Nisha doesn't know which side she's supposed to be on or why she has to choose. After losing her mother, who dies giving birth, she can't imagine losing her homeland, too.

Her mother was Muslim, but now she's gone. Her father is Hindu, and says it's no longer safe for them to stay in Pakistan. And so Nisha and her family become refuges and embark on a dangerous journey by train and by foot to reach their new home on the other side of the border.

Told through the letters Nisha writes to her mother in her journal, "The Night Diary", published by Penguin, is the story of one of the most dramatic moments in history and of one girl's search for home, her own identity, and a hopeful future.

In her letter of August 15, 1947, Nisha writes, "So as of today, the ground I'm standing on is not India anymore We're aupposed to leave and find a new home."



According to author Veera Hiranandani, "The fictional family depicted in this novel and their experiences are loosely based on my father's side of the family."



Hiranandani's father, with his parents and siblings, had to travel across the border from Mirpur Khas to Jodhpur just like the main character, Nisha, does in the book.

"My father's family made the journey safely, but lost their home, many belongings, and had to start over in an unfamiliar place as refugees. I wanted to understand more about what my relatives went through which is a big reason why I wrote this book," she says.

Nisha and her family embark first by train but later on foot to reach her new home. The journey is long, difficult, and dangerous. But even if her country has been ripped apart, Nisha still believes in the possibility of putting herself back together.

Hiranandani, who teaches creative writing at New York's Sarah Lawrence College's Writing Institute, says "Nisha and her family's journey was harder than some, including my father's, and easier than others. This story is a combination of known history and imagined scenarios to create one possible story that could have taken place at this time.

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The manager and secretary of the NGO, which ran the shelter home for mentally-challenged women where two inmates died under mysterious circumstances, have been arrested, police said today.

The shelter home is located in the Nepali Nagar locality under the Rajiv Nagar police station area of the capital city.

An FIR was registered late last night against four persons. Among them, Chirantan Kumar and Manisha Dayal, manager and secretary of the NGO 'Anumaya', respectively, were arrested, Station House Officer (SHO) of the Rajiv Nagar police station Rohan Kumar said.

The other two accused -- a doctor and an auxiliary nurse midwife attached to the shelter home -- have been absconding since the deaths were reported, he said.

The deaths in the shelter home 'Aasra' came close on the heels of the Muzaffarpur shelter home sexual abuse case.

Chirantan and Manisha, a former model, were arrested last night and they were being quizzed by a high-level inquiry committee which includes District Magistrate Kumar Ravi and Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj.

Ravi told reporters, "Post-mortem reports of the two inmates rule out the possibility of any external injury. But their viscera has been preserved for further investigations."



The inmates - Poonam (17) and Babli (40) - had fallen severely ill on the intervening night of August 10-11 and were rushed to the PMCH hospital where they were declared brought dead.

Hospital sources claimed that the post-mortem was conducted in the presence of two sub-inspectors of police, but senior police officials have taken serious note of their failure to inform the police stations concerned.

Bihar Social Welfare Director Raj Kumar has stated that while the PMCH authorities claim the two women were brought dead, a department official who had accompanied them says that they had died while undergoing treatment.

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Two key officials of the NGO running a shelter home for mentally challenged women, where two inmates died under mysterious circumstances recently, were sent to three days in police custody today.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Abhijit Kumar granted police remand for Manisha Dayal and Chirantan Kumar - Secretary and Manager, respectively, of the NGO "Anumaya Human Resources Foundation", which runs the "Aasra" shelter home in Nepali Nagar locality here.

The duo was arrested late last night after death of two inmates, aged 17 and 40 years, came to light.

An FIR was lodged at Rajiv Nagar police station against four persons, including the arrested accused, under IPC sections relating to causing death by negligence and criminal breach of trust.

The other two accused -- a doctor and an auxiliary nurse midwife attached to the shelter home -- are absconding since the deaths were reported.

The deaths in the Patna-based shelter home coming close on the heels of the Muzaffarpur shelter home sexual abuse case has caught national attention once again on sorry state of affairs in the government-funded centres managed by the social welfare department.

According to Inspector General of Police, Patna Zone, Naiyar Hasnain Khan, police remand was sought "since we have not been able to interrogate them properly".

He said an SP rank official has been directed to "look into the entire episode minutely, from all possible angles, and submit a supervision report which could be used in the investigation".

Asked about reports that the concerned police stations were not informed about the deaths even though post-mortem was conducted at the Patna Medical College Hospital in presence of two sub-inspectors, the IG said there was "no lapse".

"The problem arose because those who got the two women admitted to the hospital only entered the address without mentioning that they had been staying at a shelter home. This prevented the sub-inspectors from realising the gravity of the matter at hand," Khan said.

"We are also awaiting the forensic report on the viscera of the two deceased," he said, adding that as per norms, police have written to the Indian Medical Association that it needs to take into custody a doctor attached to the shelter home, named in the FIR, and expressed confidence that the fourth accused - an auxiliary nurse midwife - would be "nabbed soon".

Meanwhile, a controversy arose with pictures of the glamorous-looking former model Dayal with a number of senior leaders of political parties going viral.

The photographs were purportedly taken from her Facebook account, which was deactivated this afternoon. In the photographs, Dayal could be seen sharing space with senior JD(U) MLA Shyam Rajak, state minister and BJP leader Vinod Narayan Jha and RJD legislator Shivchandra Ram.

All the leaders, however, told regional channels that being public figures they were required to meet many people whom they did not know properly.

Some reports claimed that Dayal was a close relative of the wife of senior RJD leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui. Talking to a portal, Siddiqui acknowledged that he had known Dayal for quite some time but denied any family ties with her.

Meanwhile, Bihar Congress working president Kaukab Qadri expressed alarm on the Patna shelter home incident, which comes close on the heels of the Muzaffarpur sex scandal.

In a statement, he asked the Nitish Kumar government to "cancel the outsourcing of all shelter homes to NGOs and take up the responsibility for administration of these".

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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is to make an official visit to Israel next month, his government said today, nearly two years after he sparked outrage by likening his deadly drug war to the Holocaust.

The September 2-5 trip will be the first by a Filipino leader since diplomatic ties were established between the two countries in 1967, a foreign department statement said.

Duterte and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will discuss how to develop ties on issues including security and counter-terrorism, according to the statement.

Israel has been a key weapons supplier to the Philippines, which is fighting Islamic militants as well as communist guerrillas.

An Israeli firm supplied the thermal imaging system for an armoured military unit that killed the top leader of Islamic State group-linked militants who seized the southern city of Marawi last year, the unit has told AFP.

Duterte faced global condemnation in September 2016 when he compared his crackdown on drugs to Adolf Hitler's genocidal drive in World War II.

"Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now there are three million drug addicts (in the Philippines). I'd be happy to slaughter them," he said. Most mainstream historians say six million Jews died in the Holocaust.

Duterte later apologised to the Jewish community over his remarks, which he said were aimed at critics who had likened him to the Nazi leader.

His government also pointed out the Philippines gave refuge to around 1,300 Jews fleeing the Holocaust.

Duterte, 73, won elections in 2016 by a landslide after a campaign dominated by his pledge to rid society of drugs by killing tens of thousands of people.

Since Duterte took office, police say they have killed 4,354 drug suspects, with many others murdered by unknown killers. Rights groups allege the total dead in the campaign is more than 13,000.

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A court today provided pilgrims more time to pay obeisance to the principal deity of Bankey Bihari Temple in Vrindavan during Hariyali Teej festival tomorrow.

A civil judge ordered that the pilgrims can pay obeisance at the temple during the morning hours, after a gap of 16 years.

Confirming the court order, Umesh Saraswat, assistant manager of the temple, said the timing for paying obeisance has been extended by four hours.

Earlier the pilgrims were allowed to pay obeisance in the evening only. Tomorrow, they can offer prayers during the morning hours as well, another official said.

The Hindu festival of Hariyali Teej is dedicated to Goddess Parvati as it marks her reunion with Lord Shiva.

Security has been beefed up in Vrindaban for Hariyali Teej festival, District Magistrate Sarvagya Ram Mishra said.

He said that the entire Mela area has been divided into three zones and senior officers given charge for maintaining law and order.

Police in plain clothes have also been posted at strategic points to avoid any untoward incident, he said.

Mishra said the entry of even small and medium vehicles have been banned in Vrindaban tomorrow.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit Gujarat on August 23, where he will take part in a slew of programmes, officials said today.

He will attend various programmes in Valsad, Junagadh and Gandhinagar during his day-long visit, they said.

The prime minister was supposed to visit his home state on July 20, but his trip was put off due to heavy rains in several parts of the state, especially in south Gujarat.

As per the new schedule announced by authorities, Modi would start his visit by dedicating two lakh houses built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana to beneficiaries at a function in Valsad town in south Gujarat on August 23.

From the same venue, he would perform a ground-breaking ceremony for a water supply project meant for the tribal population of Dharampur and Kaprada talukas, said Valsad Collector C R Kharsan.

Modi would also address a gathering during his visit to Valsad, he said.

He would then visit Junagadh town in the Saurashtra region to inaugurate some projects, including a newly-built hospital of the Gujarat Medical and Education Research Society (GMERS).

Modi will also inaugurate two fisheries science colleges at Veraval town in adjoining Gir Somnath district, an official said.

The prime minister would also address people at a function at the Police Training College ground near Junagadh, he said.

In the evening, Modi is scheduled to be in Gandhinagar to attend the convocation ceremony of the Gujarat Forensic Science University. He is expected to leave for New Delhi after the ceremony, the official said.

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Union Minister and LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan has described Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the "biggest Ambedkarite" in the country in the backdrop of Parliament restoring the stringent provisions in the SC & ST Act.

He was addressing "Dalit, Adivasi, Pichhra, Atipichhra Adhikar Sammelan" organised by his party LJP and Dalit Sena, an organisation run by him, here yesterday.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the biggest Ambekarite (Ambedkarwadi) in the country. By maintaining the stringent provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act...PM Modi has proved himself as the biggest follower of Dr B R Ambedkar," Paswan said.

Parliament had last week passed a Bill to overturn the Supreme Court order relating to certain safeguards against arrest under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

The conference was attended by party's parliamentary board chairman Chirag Paswan, Member of Parliament Ram Chandra Paswan, LJP Bihar unit chief and minister in Bihar government Pashupati Kumar Paras, Member of Parliament Veena Devi and other senior leaders of the party.

Paswan- who is a union Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution minister in Narendra Modi-led NDA government- said his party would organise similar conferences in various parts of the country to express gratitude towards the Prime Minister besides making people aware about the NDA government's work and achievements.

He charged Congress with being an"anti-backward" party.

On reservation in promotion for SC & ST being implemented in Bihar, the union minister said Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has expressed his priorities towards the community by implementing reservation in promotion.

On Muzaffarpur shelter home scandal, Paswan slammed the opposition for attacking Bihar government over the issue, saying "since they want to do on the matter, they have taken it to Delhi from Bihar".

He said whatever has to be done has been done by the state government on the matter.

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The Shiv Sena today alleged Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen a "short cut of e-mails" for media interviews and called the exercise a "propaganda" and "a kind of monologue" prevalent in some communist countries.

In an editorial in the party mouthpiece Saamana, the BJP's bickering ally said the prime minister should instead give answers to questions people have in their minds through "face-to-face" interviews.

Reacting to the prime minister's interviews published by some media organisations, the Sena alleged Modi has not addressed any press conference after becoming the prime minister and this "does not behove" his personality as he was a "friend" of journalists till the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

"But after becoming prime minister, he has created a cage around himself," the Sena said.

"Journalists would soon lose their jobs in case the prime minister continued with giving interviews through e-mails and that he only would be tasked with making available employment for them," the Saamana editorial said.

The Sena said, "Prime Minister Modi has suddenly given interviews through e-mail. That means those were not face-to-face (interviews). Journalists sent questions to the Prime Minister's Office and they were given written answers."



Claiming that many journalists gave it a nature of the prime minister's interview, the party said, "In other words, it is called a campaign or propaganda".

Calling this practice "a kind of monologue", the Sena said such interviews are carried out in countries like China or Russia where communism is prevalent.

Asserting that journalists get a chance to ask questions in face-to-face interviews if an unfounded claim is made, it said, "Of course, the present prime minister has ended such a practice and given only suitable answers."



People have questions in their minds on issues like unemployment and it was required of Modi "who considers himself as the pradhan sevak (prime servant)" to answer those, it added.

"But instead the short cut of e-mail interviews was chosen," the Sena said.

The party also referred to the prime minister's monthly radio programme and said "he says (something) through Mann ki Baat and media carries it".

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A special CBI court today took cognisance of the sanction granted by the President to prosecute Usha Ananthasubramanian, former managing director of Punjab National Bank and Allahabad Bank, in the Rs 14,000 crore PNB scam.

Ananthasubramanian was today dismissed from service by the government, according to an official notification. She was to superannuate today.

Prior sanction from competent authorities is required for the court to take cognisance of an offence alleged to have been committed by a public servant under the provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act as well as the Indian Penal Code.

Judge J C Jagadale of the special CBI court today took cognisance of the President's sanction to prosecute Ananthasubramanian under section 19(1)(A) of the Prevention of Corruption Act and section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), the agency's counsel said.

He said that the special CBI court would now proceed with the matter and accordingly she will have to appear before it.

Ananthasubramanian can apply for bail and the trial would then begin, he added.

Ananthasubramanian was three months back divested of all her powers as MD of Allahabad Bank, after being named in a CBI charge sheet in the Rs 14,000 crore PNB fraud case but had continued to be an employee of the bank.

Ananthasubramanian had enjoyed leadership roles in PNB in two stints. She headed the bank between August 2015 and May 2017, before moving to Allahabad Bank.

The CBI, in its charge sheet in the PNB bank scam, has said that Ananthasubramanian as well as some other bank officials were aware of the "fraudulent" dealings with diamond merchant Nirav Modi but kept "misleading" the RBI.

She has been charged under section 409 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of IPC and Section 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

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On Tuesday or Wednesday, the leaders of the ruling party Georgian Dream (GD) will gather for a meeting to solve the issue of concern for all politicians and experts in the country: whether Bidzina Ivanishvili's party nominates its own presidential candidate or supports an independent, non-partisan candidate, former Ambassador of France to Tbilisi Salome Zourabishvili.

A few days ago, a high probability of Zurabishvili's support was openly spoken by all the status persons of the GM party. Such a position was dictated by the leader of the party - Bidzina Ivanishvili himself was the initiator of the refusal to nominate a party candidate for the post of head of state and hinted (though not directly) that Zurabishvili's candidacy was acceptable for him.

Just one day after Ivanishvili's statement, the former French ambassador to Tbilisi, who previously headed the Georgian Foreign Ministry, began the consultations with the official Paris on the rejection of the second, French citizenship, as Georgian legislation prohibits persons with dual citizenship from holding the highest office.

It seemed to be not the major problem, since Salome Zurabishvili, being a descendant of Georgian emigrants of the first wave and aristocrat by origin, enjoys great popularity in the society. She is considered an impersonation of Georgias European orientation. Her chances were further enhanced by the open support of the billionaire and his party.

But then, an incident took place, which, if not overturned the unspoken agreement with the GM, made its implementation much more problematic. On August 6, on the eve of the anniversary of the Five-day war, Zurabishvili unequivocally stated that Georgia started the war in South Ossetia ten years ago. Further, despite the violent attack from the media close to President Saakashvili, she not only did not refused her own words but repeated this thesis several times during the past few days, laying the blame on the ex-president.

Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze, answering journalists' questions on the subject, clearly tried to avoid the sharp edges. He did not directly support Zurabishvili, but he ventured into the vague arguments that on the eve of that fateful August, Western friends of Georgia warned Mikheil Saakashvili not to succumb to provocations, but he could not avoid being drawn into the gamble.

Whether all these verbal exercices are the improvisation of the scandal's figurants, or the home preparation and a positive signal to Moscow, we will yet to see, when the Georgian Dream will make a final decision on the presidential election.

In the same speech, Bakhtadze, as usual, urged Moscow to implement the agreement of the Presidents of France and Georgia on August 12, 2008 on the complete withdrawal of troops. At the same time, the Georgian authorities do not want to spoil relations with Russia, when the Russian market and tourists help to keep the economy and national currency of the country afloat.
Thousands of Yemenis vented anger against Riyadh and Washington today as they took part in a mass funeral for children killed in an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition.

At least 29 children were among those killed in the air raid Thursday on a bus in a crowded market in Dahyan, Saada province, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The mass funeral was held in Saada city, a stronghold of the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, with images broadcast by the rebels' Al-Masirah television.

Around 50 vehicles brought coffins into a large square in the city.

The coffins were covered with green drapes and portraits of the victims were lined up on the ground, where relatives cried over them and the Islamic prayer for the dead was recited.

Mourners raised pictures of the children and shouted slogans against Saudi Arabia and its ally and key arms supplier, the United States.

"America kills Yemeni children," read several banners.

The Saudi-led coalition has taken part in Yemen's conflict since 2015 in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's government in its fight against the Huthis.

The head of the rebels' revolutionary council, Mohammed Ali al-Huthi, took part in the funeral and slammed the raid as a "crime by America and its allies against the children of Yemen". The Huthis' health ministry said that 51 people were killed in the raids including 40 children.

It also said 79 others were wounded, including 56 children. Al-Masirah did not say how many victims were buried on Monday. Some families had already buried their loved ones, according to residents.

The coalition said Friday it would launch a probe to "assess the events (and) clarify their circumstances", while the United Nations Security Council has called for a "credible investigation".

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Nineteen years after it redefined the concept of cinema-viewing in the city, SPI Cinemas, whose 71.69 per cent stake was acquired by PVR LTD, today said the deal would enable the brands' combined strength to transform movie-going experience.

PVR, the country's largest multiplex chain, had yesterday acquired the stake for about Rs 633 crore in an all cash deal.

SPI cinemas are owners of Sathyam Cinemas, one of the largest screen exhibitors in South India.

"While it (deal) is only natural for you to wonder what this means for brand SPI, we want to let you know that this decision is not solely a business decision but one that is based on the larger picture," SPI Cinemas Chief Executive Officer Kiran Reddy said.

"Our intent is to combine best practices and learnings from two successful brands and use our combined strength to really, truly transform your movie going experience, at scale," he said in a tweet.

The acquisition involves buying of SPI's 61.65 per cent from SS Theatres LLP and 10.04 per cent equity from S V Swaroop Reddy.

"The SPI Culture will continue to be what it has always been -- passionate, pioneering and inclusive," he said.

"The core SPI team led by Swaroop (Founder) and I, will continue to nurture and shape your experiences by preserving everything you love about us -- from the people, to the food, to our commitment to excellence, all of it will remain intact," he said, tracing the history of the multiplex.

Reddy said, despite many ups and down, the one thing that remained constant was the "unwavering support and love" received from the movie-goers.

SPI, which has a presence states like Tamil Andhra Pradesh, Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka and Kerala, has total assets of Rs 319.63 crore and turnover of Rs 308.60 crore as on March 31, 2018.

SPI Cinemas operates 76 screens across 17 properties in 10 cities under several brands Sathyam, Escape, Palazzo, The Cinema, S2 Cinema.

Post the transaction, PVR will have 706 screens operational across the country and the company said the acquisition would make it the number 1 operator in top three cities of South India -- Chennai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad.

PVR CMD Ajay Bijli has said the transaction is a significant step in helping PVR achieve its vision of having 1000 screens by 2020.

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Ratcheting up his criticism of the Prime Minister over alleged corruption in the Rafale deal, Congress president Rahul Gandhi today dared him to a debate and claimed Narendra Modi will not be able to answer his questions on the issue "even for a second".

Gandhi, on his first visit to Karnataka after his elevation as the Congress chief, targeted Modi on a variety of issues, including the recent incidents of rape of small girls in BJP-ruled states, farm loan waiver and the GST.

"Let there be a debate for however long you want.... Narendra Modi will not be able to answer my questions even for as second, because Narendra Modi has stolen from India.

"Narendra Modi favoured his friend Anil Ambani, whose company never had any experience of making an aircraft, in bagging the contract. The company was born 10 days before the contract was signed," Gandhi said, addressing a public rally, which the Congress had named "Jana Dhwani" (the voice of the people).

The Ambani group, which has been in the eye of a raging political storm over the fighter jet deal, had yesterday denied receiving any contract from the Defence Ministry and said "unfounded and incorrect" allegations were being made to "mislead people and cloud the issue".

Answering questions ranging from lack of experience to state-owned HAL being overlooked for the deal, the group said Dassault, the French firm that is to supply 36 Rafale fighter jets, chose Reliance Defence Ltd to meet its 'offset' or export obligation in the contract and that the defence ministry had no role in the selection of Indian partners by foreign vendors.

Gandhi said the previous UPA government had signed the contract so the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Limited could make the aircraft through technology transfer and create employment for the youth of Karnataka.

"One day Narendra Modi goes to France and changes the terms of the contract. My dear young people, Modiji has taken away your jobs from you. If he has the guts, a 56-inch chest, bring your (the BJP's) prime Minister in front of me, in front of the country.

"Why is he silent? Why is he scared? Why is he running away? Why is he not answering my questions looking into my eyes?.....Because chowkidar (the watchman) has become bhagidar (collaborator)," he said.

India had inked an inter-governmental agreement with France in September last year for procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of around Rs 58,000 crore.

Rahul Gandhi has been repeatedly alleging that the cost of Rafale jets was inflated under the new terms of the contract.

He also accused Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman of "lying" when she said the new price of the fighter aircraft could not be disclosed due to a secrecy clause in the contract.

"I met the French prime minister and he said there was no secrecy clause in the contract. Manmohan Singh (former prime minister) and Anand Sharma (Congress leader) were present," he said.

BJP president Amit Shah had on Friday rejected allegations of corruption in the deal, saying credence should be given to the statement of the defence minister who has said the base price of the Rafale fighters negotiated by the Modi government is less than what was finalised by the UPA dispensation.

Gandhi also attacked Modi over recent incidents of rape in BJP-ruled states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, saying the prime minister gave the slogan of 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' but he did not say from whom the girl child needed to be saved.

"Rape happens in Uttar Pradesh and a BJP leader is caught. When small girls in Bihar are raped, we see BJP leaders hanging around the place. But the prime minister does not speak a word about it," he said.

He assailed the prime minister over non-waiver of agricultural loans despite farm distress in many parts of the country.

Gandhi said the Congress-JD(S) coalition government in Karnataka waived farm loans days after coming to power. He dared the Centre to share half of the financial burden the waiver will entail.

"You only make big promises. I challenge you to share 50 per cent of the burden of the loan waiver in Karnataka, as your party had also made such a promise in its manifesto.... If you have the guts, a 56-inch chest, do it," he said.

Gandhi said as soon as a Congress government assumes power at the Centre, it will convert the "Gabbar Singh Tax" into a GST that benefits people as also the small businesses.

Targeting the government over price rise, the Congress president said the prime minister was taking steps that benefited only his "super-rich" businessmen friends.

"He says he is the prime minister of India. He is not the prime minister of the country, but of 15 super-rich businessmen friends," he said.

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Floods due to the unprecedented monsoon fury in Kerala has wrecked the tourism industry and seriously impacted the plantation sector, which are among the major revenue sources for the state.

Just as the tourism industry was recovering from the cancellation of bookings at hotels and resorts following the Nipah outbreak, heavy rains and floods came as a huge blow, say industry sources.

The plantation sector is estimated to have suffered huge losses due to the landslides and flooding that have claimed 39 lives and rendered over one lakh homeless in the latest phase of monsoon rains since early this month.

The picturesque high-range districts of Idukki and Waynad, the most sought after destinations by tourists, are among the worst hit.

Landslips are continuing in various places and many pockets of the two districts are still flooded and road network also affected.

According to Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) Senior Vice-President E M Najeeb, already 70 to 80 per cent cancellations had taken place in Idukki, Munnar, Kumarakkom, which are among the most preferred destinations by domestic and international tourists.

The loss was being assessed, he said.

According to a 2017 report of the State Planning Board, the share of tourism in Kerala's Gross State Domestic Product is about 10 per cent.

The downpour has played spoilsport for the tourism department's plans to organise the famed snake boat races, which have mesmerised visitors for ages, under a new league.

Snake boats or 'Chundan Vallams', in local parlance, are canoe style boats which are 100 to 120 feet long and hold up to 100 rowers.

The Champion's Boat League on the lines of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and other sport leagues was supposed to have kick started from August 11 this year.

The annual Nehru Trophy boat race, expected to mark the beginning of the league in Alapuzha, had been postponed in view of the natural calamity.

"We will find a new date. The government is presently busy with relief and rescue operations due to the floods and landslides in various parts of the state," Kerala Tourism Director P Bala Kiran told PTI.

The rains would also dampen the proposal to organise feasts at homes of people in villages for tourists under the Responsible Tourism Mission of the Tourism department during the annual Onam festival next week.

Another casualty of the incessant rains is the blooming of 'Neelakurinji' flower in the hills of Munnar, a once in 12 year occurrence which attracts large number of tourists.

The floods and landslides have wrecked havoc to the plantation sector in the hilly regions of the state which produces spices, rubber and tea.

Idukki, once known as the spice capital of the world, produces over 12 varieties of spices, including pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, and turmeric, which are largely exported.

The loss suffered by tea, coffee, cardamom and rubber planters due to the rains since the onset of the South West Monsoon on May 29 has been pegged at Rs 600 crore, secretary of Association of Planters of Kerala Ajit B K said.

The estimated loss of tea plantations alone was between Rs 150 crore to Rs 200 crore, he told PTI, adding around 100 acre had been lost in landslides and flooding of tea fields in Waynad.

In case of cardamom, around 40 per cent of the crop loss was estimated in Idukki and Waynad districts. Due to heavy winds at the start of the monsoon, standing crops were damaged and 25 per cent of the area needs re-planting, Ajit B K said.

According to Spices Board sources, there is a roughly 35 to 40 per cent loss of cardamom and pepper in Idukki according to feedback from farmers.

Onam, the harvest festival of Kerala, is the time when consumer durable companies flock the state for sale of their new products, but retail sales were likely to be affected this year due to the rains.

The state government has put the overall loss suffered by the state so far due to the floods at Rs 8,316 crore.

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Ayyappa devotees have been advised by authorities not to visit the hill shrine here in the coming days as the Pampa river at the foothills is overflowing due to heavy rains.

The Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the shrine, district authorities and police have issued alerts to devotees and decided to stop them at various points till the water level recedes.

A large number of pilgrims are flocking to the famed Lord Ayyappa temple as it will be opened for the 'niraputhari' ritual and festivities of 'Chingam' this week.

The river, flowing on the foothills of Sabarimala, breached its banks at several places, submerging many shops, damaging buildings, flooding pathways and uprooting electric posts.

Heavy rains in the catchment areas of the Sabarigiri hydroelectric project and opening of the shutters of the Pampa and Anathode dams caused overflowing of the river, authorities said.

The shutters of Moozhiyar and Kakki, the other dams in Pathanamthitta districts, were also opened.

Two bridges across the river at Triveni, which devotees use to cross to reach the shrine, were inundated, they said.

"As the Pampa river is overflowing and the bridges are submerged, pilgrims will be unable to cross them and reach Sabarimala," TDB President A Padmakumar said.

"As a precautionary step and to avoid calamities, we request pilgrims to avoid travelling to the shrine till the water level dips," he said.

Police said necessary alerts were being given to pilgrims, saying it would be difficult for them to trek to the shrine if the heavy rains continued.

Barricades have been set up and ropes tied at Pampa to prevent people from travelling to the shrine,they said, adding that those who arrive there ignoring the alerts would be stopped and sent back.

The Sabarimala Lord Ayyappa Temple will be opened for the 'niraputhari' pooja tomorrow evening.

The annual 'niraputhari' ritual will be held on August 15.

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(RCom) today said it has reinstated bank guarantees worth Rs 7.74 billion with the telecom department, much ahead of the timelines set by the telecom tribunal.

The move not only staves off a looming crisis that the company had faced after the telecom department's show-cause notice to it on spectrum and licence cancellation, but clears the way for the asset monetisation plan of the debt-ridden company.

" and its subsidiary Reliance Telecom Limited have today reinstated bank guarantees aggregating Rs 7.74 billion with the (DoT), four weeks ahead of the last date of September 10, 2018 as granted by... (TDSAT)," said in a statement.

The reinstatement of the bank guarantees will ensure that the company's licence and spectrum value of Rs 113 billion "stands fully protected", the statement said, adding is fully compliant with the stipulated guidelines.

"The company's asset monetisation programme of approx. Rs 250 billion for sale of MCNs (media convergence nodes), tower, optic fibre and spectrum is fully on track, and will be completed expeditiously," it said.

The first tranche of asset monetisation proceeds has been received last week, the statement said without divulging details.

RCom had recently got breather from the telecom tribunal on the licence and spectrum cancellation show-cause notice served by the DoT.

The Anil Ambani-led company had asked the to set aside and quash the show-cause notices dated June 19, 2018 and June 22, 2018 and "restrain" the telecom department from terminating or revoking the licences or revoking the spectrum held by the company.

RCom has entered into an agreement with to sell spectrum and other telecom assets for an estimated about Rs 170 billion and clear its debt partially. If the DoT had cancelled licence or revoked spectrum of RCom, the present deal would have been hit.

RCom is currently under the debt resolution process under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC).
The West Bengal government today announced the creation of a silicon valley hub at New Town near the metropolis, where companies like Reliance Jio and Infosys Ltd will set up projects.

The foundation stone of the Bengal Silicon Valley Hub, to come up on 100 acres, was laid by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Banerjee said West Bengal was an industry and technology-friendly state, with "one of the least attrition rates", along with low operational costs.

State Chief Secretary Moloy De said that following Reliance Industries' Chairman Mukesh Ambani's announcement at the last Bengal Global Business Summit, Reliance Jio would set up a data centre on 40 acres within the hub.

Meanwhile, IT giant Infosys Ltd said it has commenced work on a new software development center inside the hub.

As part of project, spread over 50 acres, Infosys will invest around Rs 100 crore in the first phase of construction, which will "create employment for 1,000 engineers initially," the statement said.

The first phase of the project will be completed within 15 months from the date of obtaining all statutory clearances, it said.

The West Bengal government has also collaborated with Amazon Internet Service and FujiSoft for high-end IT solutions, State Finance Minister Amit Mitra said.

Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh added that an international summit on SMEs would be held for the first time in India at Kolkata in January, which would be attended by around 2,000 delegates.

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The Madras High Court today directed the Ariyalur district collector and its sub-collector to recover the government land encroached upon by the Chettinad Cement Corporation Ltd within two weeks.

Also, the court said the Tamil Nadu government should probe into the collusion with the authorities concerned in letting the corporate encroach upon the land.

Justice S M Subramaniam, disposing of a petition from the cement company, said, "In this case, it is categorically admitted even by the petitioner that the government poramboke lands, which are water bodies, have been encroached upon by the petitioner."



"Thus, there cannot be any leniency or misplaced sympathy in respect of such encroachments of the land and the authorities are duty-bound to protect the land", the judge said.

The petition was filed by the Chettinad Cement Corporation Ltd, Ariyalur, seeking to quash the proceedings initiated by the sub-collector directing the company to vacate the land in their possession.

The company had sent a letter to the revenue secretary in 2009 seeking permission to utilise the government poramboke lands in exchange of the patta land.

It is alleged by the corporate when their representation for the use of the poramboke land was pending consideration by the government, the sub-collector, who is the subordinate officer, directed the firm to remove the railway track laid by it as it had exceeded the jurisdiction and not obeyed the orders of the superiors.

When the representation sent by the petitioner was pending before the government, no action can be taken by the sub-collector, who is only a subordinate authority.

If the corporates start encroaching upon the public land with the fond hope that they can violate the rule of law and get permission from the government in their own way, then the courts cannot be a mute spectator, the judge said.

Stating that the court cannot have any objection to the development of an industry, he said, "Such industries cannot encroach upon the government land, which is not only a water body, but also used as a pathway by the villagers and the people in the locality."



Thus, the collusion in this regard by the authorities are also to be investigated into by the government, the judge said.

There is a possibility of corruption also and the investigating authority must examine that based on the internal correspondence shared between the respondents for several years and thereby allowing the petitioner to enjoy the land for many years, he said.

On the order challenged by the Chettinad Cements in the petition, the judge said, On perusal of the impugned order, the sub-collector has categorically made a finding that the petitioner has encroached upon the land and laid railway tracks by digging up the land for a depth of 30 feet and a breadth of 60 ft. Besides, the land suggested for exchange was classified as 'cart track poramboke land".

Therefore, the petitioner has made an attempt to cheat the government by providing another government land in exchange, he said, adding that this warrants action under the Tamil Nadu Land Encroachment Act, 1905.

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RentoMojo, a startup that allows customers to lease furniture, appliances and bikes, today said it will now offer a similar service for high-end mobile phones like Apple's iPhone X, Samsung's Galaxy S9+ and Google Pixel 2 through its platform.

This new service, it expects, will help bring in more customers to its platform and increase transaction volumes as well, according to RentoMojo founder and CEO Geetansh Bamania.

"Consumers can now subscribe to or obtain smartphones on lease, through our RMI (Rental Monthly Instalments) system, as opposed to purchasing and owning," he said.

The company currently offers smartphones from brands like Apple, Google and Samsung on monthly rentals starting from Rs 2,099 up to Rs 9,299 for a period of 6, 12, 18 and 24 months.

Bamania said the company is also in discussions with other players to make more devices available on its platform.

The service is currently available in Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai and Noida and will be expand to Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune in the next quarter, he said.

"This arrangement offers the perfect opportunity to users to upgrade and keep up with the latest device innovation, frequently and at a significantly lower cost. In addition, a subscriber also has the option of owning the product by paying a certain sum, post the lease period," Bamania said.

He further that the company expects mobile phones category to become 40 per cent of its overall revenue at scale and increasing its customer base by 50 per cent in the next few quarters.

The company, which has so far raised USD 17 million from investors like Accel Partners, IDG Ventures, Bain Capital and Renaud Laplanche, currently operates in eight cities -- Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida.

While Bamania declined to comment on the revenue numbers, he said the company has been growing at 100 per cent year-on-year and expects to break-even by March 2021.

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The Reserve Bank has backed the idea of state-owned Rural Electrification Corporation's proposal to form an asset reconstruction company (ARC) dedicated to take over stressed assets in the power sector.

Sources said the RBI in its representations to a panel headed by Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar had said that it is open to proposal of REC setting up an ARC.

The power sector is grappling with non-performing assets of about Rs 1.74 lakh crore.

The apex bank in its written submission said "it is open to considering the suggestion by REC that there could be an ARC specifically to take over the banks' stressed power assets".

The proposal should be premised on a level-playing field and based on transparent price discovery, it said.

The panel was formed in compliance of the order of the Allahabad High Court.

The High Court on May 31 stayed the February 12 RBI circular on companies other than willful defaulters and directed the finance ministry to hold a meeting of all stakeholders on resolutions.

Acting on the direction, a meeting chaired by the financial services secretary with all stakeholders was convened on June 22. On the basis of meeting, a report was prepared and sent to the power ministry for further action as per the court order.

Besides, the report suggested setting up of a high level empowered committee (HLEC). In line with the report, the government last week constituted a high-level empowered panel under the cabinet secretary to resolve and revive 34 stressed power projects.

The HLEC will have representatives from the ministries of railways, finance, power, coal and the lenders having major exposure to the power sector.

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Iran's supreme leader said Monday there would be neither war nor negotiations with the United States, and that the country's problems were the result of government mismanagement more than renewed sanctions. As SBS News writes in an article "Iran's supreme leader says the country will not talk with the US.", Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's comments add to the pressure on President Hassan Rouhani following a collapse in the currency and widespread protests over high prices and corruption.

They also appeared to rule out any hope of fresh talks with Washington, which US President Donald Trump had proposed after walking out of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal and reimposing sanctions. "Beside sanctions, they are talking about war and negotiations... let me say a few words to the people: THERE WILL BE NO WAR, NOR WILL WE NEGOTIATE WITH THE U.S.," Khamenei said via his official Twitter account in English.

There was also a show of military resolve as Defence Minister Amir Hatami unveiled a next generation short-range ballistic missile and vowed to further boost the country's missile capabilities. State broadcaster IRIB said the new Fateh Mobin missile had "successfully passed its tests" and could strike targets on land and sea.

'Problems are internal'

Despite renewed sanctions, many Iranians - including many at the highest levels of the establishment - see US hostility as only a contributing factor to long-standing problems inside the country. "Today's livelihood problems do not emerge from outside, they are internal," Khamenei said in another tweet. "Not that sanctions don't have an impact, but the main factor is how we handle them," he added. Khamenei mirrored recent criticism of Rouhani's economic management from senior members of the clergy and the Revolutionary Guards -- particularly over the collapse of the rial, which has lost around half its value since April.

A fortnight ago, Guards commander Mohammad Ali Jafari told Rouhani to take "revolutionary actions to control prices and prevent the enormous increase in the price of foreign currency and gold," in an open letter published by the conservative Tasnim news agency. But Khamenei criticised conservatives who called for Rouhani's resignation, saying they were inadvertently "playing into the hands of the enemy". "The government must stay in office and powerfully carry out its duties to resolve the problems," he said. Part of the strategy has been an effort to show action against Iran's deeply entrenched corruption, which Khamenei once described as "a seven-headed dragon". The judiciary said Sunday it had arrested 67 people under a sweeping corruption crackdown and prevented 100 government employees from leaving the country.

Khamenei approved a written request from the head of the judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, to set up special revolutionary courts to try people quickly for economic crimes. Some lawmakers have criticised the move, with high-profile MP Ali Motahari saying on Monday that parliament must not be "by-passed" when writing new rules.

With the nuclear deal crumbling, Rouhani finds himself with little to show for his five years in power and increasingly under fire from all sides. Although the other parties to the agreement - Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia - have vowed to resist US sanctions, many foreign companies have already abandoned projects in Iran for fear of US penalties. A significant cut in oil sales is also expected when the US reimposes a second phase of sanctions in November - with some analysts estimating a drop of 700,000 barrels per day from its current level of 2.3 million. State news agency IRNA reported on Monday that Iran is offering oil and gas at a discount to Asian customers in a bid to retain sales.

Khamenei's tweets followed a speech in Tehran, in which he described Trump's offer of talks as "a dangerous game" and his administration as a "bullying, fraudulent regime". "Even if we ever - impossible as it is - negotiated with the US, it would never ever be with the current US administration," he added.
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today directed the finance department to make available a short-term advance of Rs 90 crore to Milkfed for clearing pending payments of dairy farmers.

He also ordered Milkfed to chalk out a comprehensive policy to suggest ways and means to ensure uniform milk prices across the state, according to an official release.

The instructions were issued at a meeting with a delegation of Progressive Dairy Farmers Association (PDFA) here at his official residence this afternoon.

The chief minister constituted a four-member committee, headed by MD Milkfed Manjit Singh Brar, with Director Dairy Development Inderjit Singh, Secretary Animal Husbandry Karnail Singh, and president PDFA Daljit Singh Gill as its members, for this purpose.

The committee has been mandated to evolve a time-bound action plan to implement uniform milk price structure in order to remove the glaring disparities between milk prices prevailing in different districts.

Earlier, the MD Milkfed apprised the chief minister that the fall in milk prices was primarily due to lower milk procurement than their processing capacities by private players.

He pointed out that Milkfed's share in total procurement of milk from dairy farmers was 20 per cent while the remaining 80 per cent was supposed to be lifted by private companies.

But failure of these companies to lift the remaining forced Milkfed to enhance its quota of milk procurement by another five lakh litres daily at remunerative prices to assist dairy farmers.

Expressing concern over the reported adulteration of milk and milk products, the Chief Minister emphasized on the need to crack down on unscrupulous elements who were playing havoc with the lives of innocent people.

In response to a demand of the delegation, Amarinder asked his Chief Principal Secretary to set up at least three more food testing laboratories to bring efficacy in the system of checking adulterated food items.

He asked the Financial Commissioner Cooperation to take all possible steps to strengthen the cooperative milk unions so as to enhance the production of milk and its processing at the Milkfed plants in the state.

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Actor Ruby Rose has quit Twitter following a backlash over her casting as lesbian superhero Batwoman in "Arrowverse".

With the casting, Rose becomes the first LGBTQ lead actor in a live-action superhero series but the Australian actor had to delete her Twitter account after fans criticised her for not being one in real life.

The actor addressed the negativity in her last message on Twitter.

"Where on earth did 'Ruby is not a lesbian therefore she can't be batwoman' come from -- has to be the funniest most ridiculous thing I've ever read. I came out at 12? And have for the past 5 years had to deal with 'she's too gay' how do y'all flip it like that? I didn't change," Rose wrote.

"When women and when minorities join forces we are unstoppable... when we tear each other down it's much more hurtful than from any group. But hey/ love a challenge I just wish women and the LGBT community supported each other more. My wish was we were all a little kinder and more supportive of each other... I am looking forward to getting more than 4 hours of sleep and to break from Twitter to focus all my energy on my next 2 projects. If you need me, I'll be on my Bat Phone," she added.

Rose is not the first star to face criticism on social media as severe criticism had once forced "Star Wars" stars Kelly Marie Tran and Daisy Ridley to delete their accounts.

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South Africa's top court today ruled that the country's chief prosecutor had been incorrectly appointed and ordered that he be replaced, a decision that adds to criticism of former president Jacob Zuma's record in office.

The Constitutional Court ruled that Shaun Abrahams had been named to the job after his predecessor, Mxolisi Nxasana, had been ousted by Zuma in a "constitutionally invalid" process entailing a large compensation package.

Shaun Abrahams was named director of public prosecutions by Zuma in 2015. He has often been accused of allegedly protecting Zuma and his associates.

"Advocate Shaun Abrahams is a beneficiary of an abuse of power. It does not matter whether he was part of the abuse of power," Judge Mbuyiseni Madlanga said, reading the court's judgement.

The ruling was seen as a boost for President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has vowed to tackle government corruption that he has admitted was a serious problem during Zuma's nine-year reign.

Zuma, 76, was forced to resign in February as criticism grew from within the ruling ANC party over multiple corruption scandals.

The former president has been charged with 16 counts of graft linked to an arms deal from before he became president and could face trial later this year.

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Pune, which ranked first in the government's Ease of Living Index today, is preferred by people because of its pollution-free environment, better job opportunities and safety, but it still has a long way to go to become a city of international standard, according to experts.

The 'Ease of Living Index', which surveyed 111 cities, was first-ever exercise undertaken by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to rank the country's major cities on the basis of four parameters of Ease of Living -- governance, social, economic and physical infrastructure.

The ministry said evaluation of cities has been done on a 100-point scale across 78 indicators -- institutional and social pillars carried 25 points each, 5 points were given for economic pillar and 45 points for the physical pillar.

Prominent voices in the fields of business, education, governance, law and enforcement and civil society expressed happiness over Pune being adjudged the most liveable city in India, but they said there is always a scope for improvement in its infrastructure and other areas.

Anant Sardeshmukh, Director General and member of the Board of Mahratta Chamber of Commerce Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA), said Pune has been long considered a favoured destination for global industries.

"We have seen international players coming here and setting up their offices. Information technology and manufacturing industries have created many (job) opportunities over the years," he told PTI.

"Due to such opportunities, people are coming here from all over the country for jobs. Because of its robust ecosystem and overall standard of living, people prefer to stay here for a longer duration or even settle down," he said.

Sardeshmukh said it's good that Pune has topped the list, but looking at the migration into the city, development of its infrastructure needs to be tacked first.

"No doubt, projects like Smart City has started here but it is in the early stage so infrastructure development issues such as traffic, mass transit, road development need to be be tackled first," he added.

Vasudev Gade, former Vice-Chancellor of the Savitribai Pune Phule University, said there is no doubt Pune has emerged as an education hub and students from across the country prefer it over other cities.

"As far as comparing Pune with other cities in Maharashtra is concerned, we are the best. However, when it comes to comparison at the national and international level, we have a long way to go.

"If you compare the standard of schools, colleges and research in Pune with schools, colleges in Delhi, we are nowhere. Students still prefer Pune because of its pollution-free environment, safety, standard of living and overall business ecosystem and job opportunities," Gade said.

Police Commissioner K Venkatesham said compared to other cities, people feel more safe here and this is one of the main reasons for Pune topping the Ease of Living Index.

"This feeling of safety among citizens reflects the fair play of the police, easy accessibility for common people and safe environment in the city," he said.

Rajendra Jagtap, CEO of the Pune Smart City Development Corporation Ltd, said so far as Smart City project is concerned, Pune is doing better than other cities.

"With this raking, we have successfully managed to set a benchmark at the national level and now our aim would be to move to the global standard," he said.

Anagha Paranjape Purohit, architect and environmental planner, said there are multiple aspects which make the city a favoured place for people to come and live.

"As far as citizen awareness is concerned, the city has no comparison. Take the example of waste segregation, you will not find the same in other cities and on such parameters, it is the most liveable city in the country.

"In terms of institutional arrangements too, the civic body leads from the front. Overall governance is better in the Pune Municipal Corporation than other cities," she added.

She said as far as mechanism to address the grievances of citizens is concerned, the civic body has a dedicated social media platform.

Through the platform, citizens can draw the attention of civic body officials in no time and get their issues resolved, Purohit said.

"Today, people are preferring Pune over other cities. Students, working professionals are choosing Pune and reason behind this is its better living condition in terms of weather, safety, education and job opportunities," she said.

However, as far as infrastructure development is concerned, a lot needs to be done, Purohit said.

Releasing the index in New Delhi, Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said this assessment is first-of-its-kind globally in terms of scale and coverage and the ranking marks a shift to a data-driven approach to urban planning and management and promotes healthy competition among cities.

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Rajkumar Hirani's "Sanju" emerged as the top winner of the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) this year, bagging four awards, including the best picture and best director.

Actor Ranbir Kapoor was honoured with the Vanguard Award for his phenomenal performance in the film while Vicky Kaushal picked up the award for the best supporting role at the festival.

"I am humbled and honoured to be here and I love Melbourne," Hirani said.

The gala last night was attended by several Bollywood stars including Rani Mukerji, who won the best female actor award for her film "Hitchki". Manoj Bajpayee, Simi Grewal, Malaika Arora, Freida Pinto, Richa Chadha, Keerthy Suresh and Ali Faizal were also in attendance.

"This is my first award after being a mother.. this award is kind of special because it raises the awareness on the Tourette's syndrome," Rani said.

Bajpayee won the IFFM Best actor award for his film "Gali Guleiyan", while Rani picked her second award in the category of the Excellence In Cinema.

Chaddha shared the supporting performance award with Kaushal for her film "Love Sonia" that bagged best indie film award this year.

Pinto, 33, was given the diversity award while the Equality In Cinema Award was given to "Mahanati", the Telugu-language biographical film based on the life of actor Savitri.

"It's a great responsibility when you are among the few people who represent your people, your country, their stories, their emotions across the world.

Thanking the "Sanju" team, Hirani said, 'I am humbled and honoured to be here and I love Melbourne."



Rani also served as the chief guest of the festival and hoisted the tricolour at the iconic Federarion Square building on Saturday to mark the Indian independence celebrations.

''I think it's a matter of national honour for anyone to hoist their national flag. And the fact that I am doing it in Australia so far away from home is even more special and makes it more patriotic.

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The ambitious Saras project to manufacture small passenger aircraft, which was in cold storage, has been revived and in the next three years its commercial use will start under the UDAN scheme, Union minister Harsh Vardhan said today.

Commercial modification and implementation process were underway, he told reporters after inaugurating the UAV design and integration facility at the National Aeronautics Limited here, he said.

"The project was stopped after a tragedy but now it has been revived and test flights are in progress..," he said.

"In the next three years, the 19-seater aircraft will be utilised for commercial purpose," Vardhan said.

The vehicle would be useful for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's project UDAN for revival of many defunct aerodromes including those commissioned by the British during colonial era, he said.

On March 6, 2009, the indigenous light transport aircraft's Prototype 2 crashed at Bidadi on the city outskirts killing two wing commanders and a squadron leader.

"Saras and the revival of aerodromes will give impetus to regional connectivity and fulfil prime minister's dream of common man flying in aeroplanes," the minister added.

Vardhan, who visited various facilities at NAL here, said India was among the 3 to 4 countries where carbon fibre composite airframe components are being manufactured.

The project was started many years ago but due to technical reasons it was stalled sometime back. However, the team under Dr Jitendra J Jadhav has revived it again, he said.

The carbon fibre has use in multiple places, Vardhan said, adding that besides DRDO and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mishra Dhatu Nigam Limited (MIDHANI), a PSU under the defence ministry, is in the process of setting up a 300 'TPA' manufacturing unit for carbon fibre with the technology devised by NAL.

"Private sector too is keen on this project (of carbon fibre). I have been told that Reliance has shown interest,"Vardhan said.

The UAV design and integration facility the minister inaugurated today satisfies the requirements of various users, both from the strategic and civil sectors, NAL officials said.

These include autopilot, control loss, ground control station software, vision processing algorithms and processes for small manufacturing light weight composite structures.

A specialised wind tunnel facility to study low 'Reynolds Number' effects has also been established,they said.

The minister said these facilities would help in surveillance, mapping, search and rescue operations too.

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The Supreme Court today directed the Tamil Nadu government to give retiral benefits to five former judicial officers, who were appointed as fast track judges from the Bar and were later relieved.

The apex court set aside the April 1, 2015 verdict of the Madras High Court, saying it had erred in rejecting the claim of pension of the five officers.

The five former judicial officers were appointed as fast track judges from the Bar in Tamil Nadu, consequent to creation of fast track courts (FTC) under the Eleventh Finance Commission Report of the Government of India.

A bench of justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan directed the state government to sanction superannuation pension to former judicial officers K Anbazhagan and P G Rajagopal, who were relieved on account of attaining 60 years of age.

The top court also directed the authorities to sanction compensation pension to the other three former judicial officers, Selvi G Savithri, R Radha and A S Hassina, who were relieved by the high court as fast track courts were converted into permanent courts of additional district judge by a government order of August 26, 2011.

"When the appellants (officers) are entitled for grant of pension, they are obviously entitled for grant of gratuity," the bench said and allowed their pleas.

It directed the authorities to permit encashment of earned leaves of the officers subject to a maximum of 240 days and said that all these retiral benefits be computed and paid to them within two months from today.

In the event payments are made after two months, the appellants shall be entitled for such payments along with the simple interest at 7 per cent per annum, the bench said.

On February 14, 2002, the high court had appointed the persons, who all were advocates, as additional district and sessions judge (FTC) on ad-hoc basis, initially for five years, which was later extended.

After being relieved, in 2011-2012, the officers filed pleas for their absorption as additional district and sessions judge in the regular cadre, which was dismissed by the high court.

Thereafter, they sought grant of pension and other retiral benefits, which were also rejected by the high court on April 1, 2015. They moved the apex court challenging the high court's decision.

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The Supreme Court today directed the Meerut inspector general of police (IGP) to investigate the alleged Hapur lynching case, in which one person was killed and another brutally assaulted by a mob on the pretext they were involved in cow-slaughter, and file a report within two weeks.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra also issued notice to the Uttar Pradesh government on the plea filed by Samiuddin, who was allegedly brutally assaulted by the mob in the incident, seeking an independent SIT probe into the incident and transfer of investigation and the subsequent trial outside the state.

A bench, also comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, directed the Superintendent of Police of Hapur district in Uttar Pradesh to consider the request of the sole surviving victim on being granted the protection.

"Issue notice. In the meantime, Inspector General of Meerut range shall conduct an inquiry and submit a report in regard to the incident within two weeks," the court ordered.

The bench has now posted the matter for further hearing on August 28.

The bench considered the submission of a lawyer representing Samiuddin, 64, that he along with 45-year-old meat trader Qasim Qureishi were brutally assaulted on June 18 by a mob on the pretext that they were involved in cow slaughter and the Hapur police has registered a case of road rage instead of mob lynching.

Qureishi died later.

The plea has also sought cancellation of bail granted to the accused, including alleged key offender Yudhishthir Singh Sisodia.

It referred to a minute-long video that had surfaced on social media to highlight the issue that it was a case of mob lynching and not of road rage as registered by the Hapur police.

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The Supreme Court today directed a senior Uttar Pradesh police officer to probe the Hapur lynching case in which one person was killed and another brutally assaulted in the name of cow vigilantism, while terming the allegations of the survivor as "serious".

It sought a response from the Uttar Pradesh government on the matter and directed Meerut's Inspector General of Police (IGP) to investigate the incident and file a report in two weeks.

Terming as "serious" the allegations of Samiuddin, the survivor of the alleged mob attack, a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra directed the IGP to "facilitate the recording" of victim's statement before a judicial magistrate regarding the incident in which 45-year-old Qasim Qureishi was beaten to death at Hapur on June 18.

"In the meantime, the IGP, Meerut (Range) shall submit a report with regard to the incident in question. We have so directed keeping in view the serious allegations/ assertions made in the writ petition," the bench, also comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, said.

It took note of the submission of senior advocate K V Vishwanathan, representing petitioners Samiuddin, his brother Yaseen and Dinesh Tomar, that they were living in a state of fear as the police had forced them to register a case of road rage instead of mob lynching.

"In addition to what we have stated ..., if the petitioners do harbour a feeling of sense of insecurity, they shall bring it to the notice of the Superintendent of Police, Hapur, who shall provide them adequate security and do the needful so that they do not remain in a state of fear," it said.

It asked lawyer Vrinda Grover, the counsel for the three petitioners, to serve a copy of the petition to the additional advocate general of Uttar Pradesh government and listed the plea for further hearing on August 28.

The plea has sought setting up of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to ensure "an impartial, competent and fair investigation" into "the barbaric incident of mob lynching on June 18 in Hapur district of Uttar Pradesh, wherein Samiuddin (the Petitioner No. 1) and Qasim, both belonging to the minority community, were targeted and mercilessly assaulted by a mob of the majority community from the neighbouring village, in the name of cow vigilantism."



Besides the state government, the court has also issued notices to the IGP, Additional Director General of Police and Superintendent of Police of Hapur district.

The plea has sought "setting up a SIT comprising of police officers with impeccable career records of integrity and competence from outside the state of Uttar Pradesh, which shall be charged with the responsibilities and duties of investigation, in respect of all issues relating to the matters concerning and arising from the incident".

It has sought a direction that the SIT "shall report to and be responsible to this court through the filing of periodic status reports and shall also keep this court informed of any major developments".

It also sought a direction to UP authorities to lodge a fresh FIR on the basis of statements made by Samiuddin with regard to the nature of incident that had taken place on June 18 that had led to the "gruesome killing of Qasim" and the attempt to murder the surviving victim.

The victim, in his plea, has sought a test identification parade to ascertain the identity of the culprits by the SIT.

"Issue a writ ...or direction to the state to take all necessary steps and measures in pursuit of cancellation of bail granted to the accused by the sessions court, holding that the orders granting bail to the accused by the Sessions Court were prima facie obtained on the basis of gross misrepresentation of facts," it said.

The plea has sought a direction to the SIT to complete the probe into facts and offences relating to the incident within three months and the state government to initiate time-bound criminal and departmental proceedings against the errant police officers for changing the nature of the offence.

Besides seeking appointment of a counsel of "integrity and professional competence" as special prosecutor to conduct the trial in the case, it has sought a day-to-day trial in the matter.

The plea has also sought a direction to the state government to compensate the victim for his medical treatment. It said Qasim had died as a consequence of the lethal mob lynching, while Samiuddin survived the attempt on his life but suffered multiple fractures, wounds and egregious injuries.

It said Yaseen and Dinesh Tomar, brother and a family friend, were subjected to "grave threat and coercion" by Circle Officer Pawan Kumar Singh of Pilkhuwa Police Station for lodging a false complaint of road rage instead of mob lynching.

It has also sought cancellation of bail granted to the accused, including alleged key offender Yudhishthir Singh Sisodia.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Markets regulator Sebi today ordered the release of bank and demat accounts of Alka Securities after recovering dues of Rs 16.17 lakh.

The amount recovered by the Sebi from Alka Securities includes interest and cost towards full and final settlement, the regulator said.

In an order, Sebi directed banks, depositories -- NSDL and CDSL -- and mutual funds to "release the bank accounts/ lockers, demat accounts and mutual fund folios" of Alka Securities.

In 2014, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had issued notices against Alka Securities, attaching its bank and demat accounts of the firm to recover Rs 10 lakh.

The notices had come after the firm failed to pay a fine of Rs 10 lakh for failing to make correct disclosures to the the exchange, BSE on several occasion and thereby violating PFUTP (Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices) regulations.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)




I was hoping for a nice sunset, and looking for an elephant or good tree to put in the foreground. Well...the sunset was not as vibrant as I had hoped it would be, and we didn't find a great foreground subject. Then I realized that we had the best foreground subjects in our vehicle. I asked each of the guests to hop out and let me get a silhouette shot of each of them. This was a shot of Pat wearing his trademark outback safari hat. And so another day had come and gone, with only one left before we flew home. But it was an epic one. Stay tuned!

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Arms supplies on credit are a usual practice. Almost all countries involved in the sphere of military-technical cooperation practice it. The reasons for this may be different, but usually they are of purely political nature: this is the way a country that provides a state export credit for the purchase of weapons produced in the same country indicates that the recipient country is considered as if not an ally, then a very close partner, friend, the Independent Military Review writes.

That's who the Republic of Armenia (RA) was for Russia for a long time. Yerevan received both political and military support (including the Russian military base) and economic preferences from Moscow. The Kremlin's position on Nagorno-Karabakh was also quite clear. That is why no one was surprised when in 2015 the Russian Federation agreed to provide the RA with a $200 million loan to buy weapons. Last month, deliveries under this loan agreement, which entered into force in February 2016, were completed.

Armenia received Smerch multiple rocket launcher systems, Igla-S short-range man-portable air defense systems, Autobase-M passive radar systems,Heavy Flamethrower systems TOS-1A 'Solntsepek', armored cars 'Tiger', guided missiles 9M113M, RPG-26 anti-tank rocket launchers and so on. Armenia's Defense Minister David Tonoyan noted: "Armament provided under the agreement is modern, modernized, not even in Russia's inventory."

In recent years, the balance of forces in the South Caucasus has been violated because of the growing military power of Azerbaijan, which threatened the resumption of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Arms supplies from Russia will help to slow down the escalation of the conflict, bringing the military advantage of one of the parties to an approximate equality.

But not everyone is happy to see the military-technical cooperation of Moscow and Yerevan. According to Worldwide Threats Assessment report of the director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, "both sides' reluctance to compromise, mounting domestic pressures, Azerbaijan's steady military modernization, and Armenia's acquisition of new Russian equipment sustain the risk of large-scale hostilities in 2018."

Perhaps it was the reason for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's visit to Brussels in July and his meeting with the Western leaders and the Secretary General of the alliance on the sidelines of the NATO summit. Pashinyan said at the summit that Yerevan is a party to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and he "sees Armenia in this organization and in this security system." The Prime Minister considers Russia a close ally, but hopes to develop relations with it, but also with NATO, the European Union and the United States. They do no miss an opportunity to discuss current regional problems within the framework of the NATO Partnership for Peace program. At the same time, according to media reports, the Armenian side will be included in the joint gas transportation system in the South Caucasus and in the "road map", where Armenia is viewed in a strategic partnership with the US and NATO.

Many experts have noticed the change in Yerevan's position. And how could you not notice the arrest of the CSTO Secretary General Yury Khachaturov, is charged in connection with a break up of protests on March 1, 2008. The court, however, agreed to release him on bail, but the charges were maintained. How can it be: talking about adherence to the interests of the CSTO and immediately arresting the Secretary General of this organization after it? After all, they could discuss this issue with other CSTO members in advance and stop Khachaturov's authority first, and only then arrest him. Such actions strike a blow to the organization with such a force, the only thing it compares to is direct aggression against CSTO members. And here Armenian Minister of Defense David Tonoyan, praising Russian weapons at a meeting with journalists, adds that although the Armenian-Russian good-neighborly relations are strengthened by many treaties, it is impossible to exclude revision of certain items in these documents if necessary.

Or maybe it's better keep it simple - not to sell modern weapons on credit, which is often, as historical experience shows, not returned for economic reasons or even not recognized, but to deliver it for "real" money. Then it would be a fair play.
The State Election Commission informed the Madras High Court today that its hands are tied against conducting local body elections immediately in view of the recent amendments to the Tamil Nadu local bodies Act.

"The provision, which was made available to conduct the elections without completing the delimitation process, based on the latest census, has been removed. Now we cannot conduct the elections without completing the delimitation process," the SEC said.

The Commission said that in view of the statutory mandate, it had already commenced the delimitation process, based on the 2011 census. It would be completed by August 31 and a detailed proposal made to the state government.

"Once the state approves the proposal, the next stage would be to conduct a street-wise survey to ascertain the Scheduled Caste and Tribe concentration for reservation of wards as such data is not available with the directorate of census which would take at least two months," C S Vaidyanathan, senior counsel for the SEC, said.

After the state approves the reservation, the election notification can be issued and the entire election process can be completed 75 days from the date of notification, he added.

Recording the submissions, the special bench, comprising Justices M Sathyanarayanan and M Sunder, asked senior counsel for the state Aryama Sundaram as to what was the time required for approving the delimitation proposal.

To this, Sundaram said "We can give a tentative time only after getting the proposal from the delimitation committee. It depends on the time required for the scrutiny of the proposal.

"I would suggest the court to post the matter a week after August 31 so that we can go through the proposal and will be in a position to give the time required," he said.

As senior counsel P Wilson for the petitioner DMK wanted to submit his arguments, the bench posted the contempt plea to August 14 for further hearing.

The Madras High Court had lambasted the State Election Commission on July 31 for not implementing its order and directed it to submit the poll schedule on August 6.

The court had given the direction during hearing of a contempt petition filed by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), seeking to punish the SEC for not implementing the court's September 4, 2017 order.

On August 6, the SEC informed the court that it could issue the election schedule notification within three months from the day the state government accepts the delimitation proposal, likely to be submitted by August 31.

The matter relates to the contempt petition filed by R S Bharathi of the DMK against State Election Commissioner Malik Feroz Khan and its secretary Rajasekhar, for not complying with the September 4 order of the court, directing that the local body polls be completed by November 17 last year.

The local body polls were originally slated to be held in October 2016, but was cancelled by a single judge bench of the high court on a petition by the DMK, seeking among others appropriate reservation as per the latest census and rotation of seats according to the norms.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ahead of Independence Day celebrations on Wednesday, security arrangements have been beefed in the Kashmir valley and summer capital Srinagar.

Stringent security measures have been put in place. The police is alert, director general of police (DGP) S P Vaid told reporters here.

The police and other security forces will ensure that the people celebrate Independence Day without any fear, Vaid said.

Referring to the anti-militancy operation at Batamaloo here, yesterday, the DGP said police was alert and had information on the presence of militants in the area.

The terrorists managed to escape because of the congested locality, but they are injured. We did not want any collateral damage, he said.

A police official said huge number of security men have been stationed near important function areas. The venues have also been sealed, the official said.

The Sher-e-Kashmir Stadium in Srinagar, where Governor N N Vohra will unfurl the Tricolour as part of the main Independence Day event, has been turned into a virtual fortress, the official said.

He added that the security apparatus is not taking any chances after yesterday's encounter with militants.

The usual security drill is being followed, but some extra measures have been put in place to ensure the day passes peacefully, he said.

A number of check-points have been set up at various junctions and main entry-points to Srinagar, further vehicles are being checked routinely, the official said.

Meanwhile, a full-dress rehearsal for the Independence Day celebration was held today at Sher-i-Kashmir Stadium. Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir, Baseer Ahmad Khan, unfurled the national flag, inspected the parade and took salute at the march past, a police spokesman said.

He said top officials from the civil and police administration were present for the dress rehearsal.

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Security forces arrested two Maoists from Kulhi jungle in Jharkhand's Garwah district, police said today.

On a tip-off that a group of Maoists were present at Kulhi jungle, the security forces launched a search operation on Friday night, they said.

In course of the search operation, the security personnel detected two persons trying to escape under the cover of the forest and arrested them following a chase on the early hours of Saturday, they said.

The two arrested persons confessed during interrogation that they were members of Maoist squad, the police added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Four persons have been arrested for allegedly running a sex racket in Bhayander in Maharashtra's Thane district and three women were rescued during a raid conducted at the lodge from where it was being operated, police said today.

Based on a tip-off, the Uttan coastal police raided a lodge in the early hours of Sunday and arrested Sharad Shetty, Vasusingh Sandhu, Shivprasad Shetty and Akhil Dafedar for operating the racket, said Assistant Superintendent of Police Atul Kulkarni of the Thane Rural police.

Before carrying out the raid, police had sent a decoy customer to ensure that the tip-off was correct, an official said.

Kulkarni said that the four had been charged under relevant sections of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act while the rescued women were sent to rescue homes.

The official added that the Anti-Human Trafficking Cell of the police were carrying out further investigations into the case.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP chief Amit Shah today condoled the death of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, describing him as an excellent parliamentarian.

Chatterjee, 89, passed away at a private hospital in Kolkata this morning following multiple organ failure.

"Saddened to learn about the demise of Somnath Chatterjee, former Speaker of Lok Sabha," Shah tweeted.

"He (Chatterjee) was an excellent Parliamentarian, whose long years as a member of the House, enriched our Parliamentary traditions. My condolences to his family and supporters in this hour of grief," Shah said.

Chatterjee was suffering from a kidney-related ailment and was admitted to the hospital in a critical condition on Tuesday last.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP president Amit Shah's deposition for former Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani, an accused in the 2002 Naroda Gam riot case, supports testimonies of prosecution witnesses who said she was seen in the affected area on the day of rioting, victims' lawyer told a court today.

In a written argument submitted in a special court presided over by judge M K Dave, the victims' lawyer, Shamshad Pathan, said while Shah was brought in as a defence witness, his deposition does not support the defence in the riot case.

He said Shah's deposition does not support either Kodnani, an former BJP MLA, or others who "conspired" for the riot at Naroda Gam, a suburb of Ahmedabad, which broke out in the aftermath of the torching of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra.

As per the arguments put forward by the victims' side, Shah, who deposed for Kodnani in September last year, had told the court that on the day of rioting, he saw her in the state assembly in Gandhinagar at around 8.30 am and then at the Sola Civil Hospital (in Ahmedabad) at around 11-11.15 am.

Shah, a former Gujarat minister, had told the court that he had no idea where Kodnani was in between.

Kodnani was seen near the area where the riot broke out along with other accused at around 9-9:30 am, "asking others to do things as planned", two witnesses - Habib Miyan and Umraobanu - have testified before the court, Pathan told the court in his written argument.

At least seven to eight other witnesses have also testified that they saw Kodnani at Naroda Gam between 9 am and 9.30 am on the day of rioting in the area, he said.

Thus, the BJP chief's deposition supports the prosecution, which has also said Kodnani was present in the riot-hit area around that time, Pathan maintained.

These witnesses have said in their deposition they saw Kodnani, along with other accused, including former VHP leader Jaideep Patel and Ashok Patel, in the area at around 9-9.30 in the morning on February 28, 2002, he said.

Eleven members of a minority community were killed in the riot at Naroda Gam on February 28, a day after the Godhra train fire.

Babu Bajrangi, a former Bajrang Dal leader, was heard admitting in a sting operation video of prosecution witness Ashish Khetan that he gathered "weapons beforehand and accused No. 58 (Jaideep Patel) was part of the entire episode," which supports the conspiracy angle in the case, Pathan said.

The prosecution had recently told the court that Shah's deposition was "not believable" and one of the reasons is that it was made 15 years after the crime.

The Naroda Gam case is one of the nine major 2002 communal riot cases investigated by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT).

A total of 82 people are facing trial in the case, including Kodnani (62).

The former minister was sentenced to 28 years in jail in the Naroda Patiya riot case by the trial court in 2013. However, the Gujarat High Court acquitted her in April this year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two siblings died today after a speeding auto-rickshaw ran over them in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district, a senior police officer said.

The incident happened this afternoon near Kerma village in Kudhni police station area of the district when Mohammad Sahil (10) and Atika Hasan (8) were returning home from school, DSP (West) Krishna Murari Prasad said.

"The children, residents of Raghuram Sarmasta village of Muzaffarpur, were rushed to a private hospital, where they succumbed to their injuries," the officer told reporters.

The driver of the auto-rickshaw, however, fled the spot, leaving his vehicle behind, he said.

An irate mob blocked the Kerma-Baghi road after the accident and set the auto-rickshaw on fire, prompting police to take control of the situation, Prasad said.

"The blockade was lifted only after an FIR was filed in the case," he added.

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Six climbers and a crew member were rescued from the site of a helicopter accident in a remote mountainous region of Tajikistan while nine others remain missing after a "hard landing", emergency services said.

The Tajik Committee for Emergency Situations told AFP that a rescue helicopter reached the site in the east of the country and brought back the first group of six mountaineers and a crew member of the Mi-8 accident.

"Some of the climbers suffered injuries. They are receiving help," the committee said.

It added that two other rescue helicopters were on their way to the site, around 300 kilometres east of the capital Dushanbe.

Earlier authorities said 16 people were feared dead in the accident that took place yesterday at 1130 GMT, the committee said and two helicopters were sent on a rescue and recovery mission to the crash site.

The emergency committee said the group had been climbing the Ismoili Somoni mountain that was once known as Peak Communism and was the highest in the Soviet Union.

The statement did not identify the climbers or the crew.

The accident comes two weeks after four Western cyclist tourists were killed in an attack initially reported as a hit-and-run road accident, striking a blow to the country's emerging tourism sector.

The attack that saw the tourists rammed with a car before being attacked with knives was claimed by the Islamic State group, although the authoritarian government refused to acknowledge the group's claim.

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At least six miners have been killed and 13 others were trapped after a methane gas explosion in a coal mine in southwestern Pakistan's Balochistan province, officials said today.

The explosion took place last evening in the mine situated in Sanjadi area, about 50 kilometres east of the provincial capital, Quetta.

Rescue workers have so far recovered the bodies of six miners while efforts are on to rescue those trapped inside the coal mine, the Balochistan Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) said.

According to Deputy Commissioner Quetta, Capt (retd) Tahir Zafar Abbasi, at least 13 miners were still trapped after the underground methane gas explosion.

"According to our estimates, at least 13 miners are still trapped in a 4,000 feet deep pit inside the coal mine," Abbasi was quoted as saying by the Express Tribune.

Senior officials, including Balochistan's Chief Inspector of Mines, have also reached the accident site to monitor the rescue efforts, which has slowed down due to lack of electricity in the area, the report said.

"It's going to be difficult to get them (trapped miners) out as rescue work is being slowed down because there is no electricity in the area," a local engineer said.

Meanwhile, Balochistan's caretaker chief minister Alauddin Marri has expressed his sadness on the incident, and directed authorities to rescue the trapped miners.

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Six national highways were among 923 roads closed due to landslides during heavy rains in Himachal Pradesh since yesterday, a state government official said today.

The state government has released Rs 96.50 crore for relief and rescue operations following loss of human life and the property, he added.

Himachal Pradesh Chief Secretary Vineet Chawdhry disclosed this while presiding over a review meeting on the damage caused due to the rains. The chief secretary directed all deputy commissioners to see that educational institutes were closed on August 14 for the safety of students in view of predictions of inclement weather.

At least 18 people were killed in different areas of Himachal Pradesh due to incessant rains since yesterday evening, according to officials.

The Manali national highway was blocked due to constant landslides, an official said. In Kangra district, traffic was affected on 85 roads while the Pathankot-Mandi road was cleared for light vehicles and the people stranded in Lambagaon were being rescued, officials said.

Adequate men and machinery were deployed to restore the roads, water and electric supply and funds were released to DCs and concerned departments and there was no shortage of essential commodities, the chief secretary said in the meeting.

Traffic movement was brought back to normal in Shimla and electric supply restored in all the areas by evening, an official said. In Hamirpur district, two casualties were reported in Bhoranj area due to landslips.

Meanwhile, the deputy commissier of Solan informed the meeting that there were eight casualties reported from the district.

In all, 102 roads were damaged in the district out of which traffic was restored on 62, officials said. The Kumarhatti-Nahan road was also been reopened for light vehicles.

In Bilaspur district, the Swarghat national highway and Bilaspur-Shimla road were



reopened for traffic while work on restoring the interior roads was in progress, officials said.

In Kinnaur district, Maling Nallah and Skibba roads were restored. The road to Sangla valley where a few tourists are stranded was also expected to be opened soon.

In Lahaul-Spiti district, Sumdo-Kaza-Gramphu road was blocked due to landslide and Meling-Kaza road was restored.

One casualty was reported in Mandi district and the vehicular traffic was suspended on the main road near Hanogi on national highway-21. Two persons have been killed in Kangra district, a district official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
One of the key applied problems arising after the signing of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea is an understanding of how to unite five countries in a single complex of economic activities: where exactly their interests fit together and how new relationships can be developed. We will start this review with the Russian Caspian Sea region uniting the most developed economic potentials of neighbors - Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

Complex characteristics of the Russian region

To date, the Russian Caspian Sea region should be viewed in several systems of the political-economic coordinates. In addition, it has multiple, multidirectional characteristics that affect the strategic planning of its socio-economic development.

1. The region is influenced directly not only by the subjects of the Russian Federation located on the shores of the Caspian Sea (Astrakhan Region, Dagestan, Kalmykia), but also by the associated territories - the Volgograd Region, the Samara Region, the Rostov Region, up to the regions of the Central Federal District, along the Volga-Don hydrohubs connecting the basins of the Caspian and Azov Seas, integrating the regions that make up the North Caucasian Federal District (NCFD), and wider to the South of Russia to the Krasnodar Territory (the Novorossiysk port is the main export hub for the oil and other products of the Caspian states, the fifth in Europe in terms of cargo transshipment).

The factor of geographic and direct transport connectivity of the Russian Caspian Region with four Caspian states turns the region into a communication junction of the center of Eurasia, where the borders of the Greater Middle East, South Caucasus, and Central Asia are linked up. Such a location feature has created the unique historical prerequisites for the formation of a modern international traffic intersection, including the water area, airspace, coastline and riverbeds. To date, the Caspian transport hub has been formed by the meridian and latitudinal intersection of the global transit and local regional infrastructures.

2. The region is formed by two free trade zones - the Customs Union of the EAEU and the CIS (agreements of 1994 and 2011) - several integration associations (CSTO, SCO), as well as the bilateral relations with neutral states from among the main partners of the Russian Federation. In addition, the WTO conditions and external factors partially influence the region, including the pressure of anti-Iranian and anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the US and the EU. The Caspian region is the region of Russia's main partner in the EAEU- Kazakhstan region, the trade turnover with which amounts to $ 17.2 billion, (growth of 32.22% comparing with 2017). Russia's foreign trade turnover with the countries of the EAEU grew by 27.6% (to $ 50.8 billion), most of it is formed by the regional trade.

The region of Azerbaijan is the main partner of the Russian Federation from the near neighborhood zone of the CIS. In 2017, the trade turnover amounted to $ 2.1 billion, (an increase of 4.3%).

The Caspian region unites the main importers of Russian products in the CIS, and also affects adjacent territories - Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan (the share of the CIS countries in the Russian trade turnover was 12.4% in 2017).

The Caspian countries account for the bulk of trade with the CIS countries, with the exception of Belarus. However, Belarus is a subject of the region's foreign trade activity due to the Caspian communications.

3. International transit. The region accounts for no more than 3% of the transit of goods between the PRC and the EU. However, from the point of view of the Russian economy, the Black Sea-Caspian region (South of Russia) is a connecting element in Russia's trade with APEC and the EU.

Ports and railway communications of the Black Sea-Caspian basin (in addition to the Far East) to a considerable extent form the flows of foreign trade turnover of the Russian Federation with the countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the share of which amounted to 30.5% in 2017 ($ 178.2 billion).

In addition, the freight flows are being formed in the region for the current needs and prospective consumers of Iran, India, the countries of the Persian Gulf and East Africa.

4. The region of external investment activity and North-South, West-East development corridors.

From the political point of view, the Caspian region is not homogeneous - a separate geopolitical unit. It is under the influence of Russia and China - the main investors. A significant role in its formation is played by the extra-regional players. The EU countries (Germany, Italy) are the main trade partners of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. France is one of the key investors in Iran. The US is extending the infrastructure of the military operation in Afghanistan to Central Asia and the Caspian region. Thus, the region is in an indirect intersection of several security spaces, which affect the picture of its long-term socio-economic development and set corresponding tasks for Russia to strengthen its influence.

Development goals

Let us consider several targeted infrastructure tasks, some of which have already been identified as a program of actions in the framework of President Putin's Decree "On national objectives and strategic tasks of Russian Federations development in the Period up to 2024":

- logistics of transportations

To increase the efficiency of regional transport communications, it is necessary to create a single logistics company that unites the processes of delivery and transportation of goods with local stevedore companies in ports. In addition, a unified tariff policy is necessary (for a number of regional areas, commercially viable tariffs have not been developed). Within this task, it is necessary to carry out a comprehensive modernization of the transport system (road and rail communications and port infrastructure).

- modernization of railways

The railway is one of the main means for cargo transportation to the ports of the Caspian Sea - it delivers about 48% of cargo to the ports of the Caspian Sea without taking into account pipelines. In the three ports of the Caspian Sea (Astrakhan, Olya, Makhachkala) there is a significant skew in the direction of exports of goods supplied by railroads. In 2015, its volume amounted to 1017 thousand tons, which is 18% more than in a previous year. The most loaded railway routes at the moment are the entrances to the ports, where the average load of the infrastructure is estimated at 91%. At the same time, there are sites that work with overload, and such places are found both on the Volga railway, leading from Astrakhan to the central part of Russia, and on the North Caucasian railway connecting Makhachkala with other capitals of the subjects of the North Caucasus Federal District. At present, JSC Russian Railways implements a number of projects aimed at increasing the throughput and carrying capacity of the basin ports designed for the period up to 2020.

- modernization of highways

In 2015, the volume of cargo transportation by road to the three ports of the Caspian Sea amounted to 484.9 thousand tons, which is 1.5 times more than a year ago. At the same time, 150.7 thousand tons of various cargo were sent from the ports along the roads, which is 60% below the level of 2014. Although the carrying capacity of the main roads still has reserve capacity for growth, there are problematic places that impede traffic along the Caspian coast. First of all, we are talking about the federal significance road P-215 Astrakhan-Kochubei-Kizlyar-Makhachkala. Its length is 526 km, of which 123 km do not have asphalt covering.

The most loaded highway in the region is the federal significance road P-217 Vladikavkaz-Grozny-Makhachkala-Azerbaijan border with a length of 388 km. At the moment, its capabilities are completely exhausted, and the load is 100% with the planned capacity of 70%. In this regard, the project for the construction of the M-29 Caucasus road is being implemented. The upgraded P-217 road will be linked to the Caucasus road. The project of reconstruction of the route P-22 Caspian, connecting Moscow, Tambov, Volgograd and Astrakhan is being implemented and planned to be completed by the end of 2018.

- modernization of seaports, the Volga-Don Shipping Canal, airports

The main direction of cargo transportation through the port of Astrakhan in 2015 was export - 75.4%, while almost all cargo volume amounts on dry cargo (grain, ferrous metals, timber and lumber). The expected growth of container trade with India and other countries through the territory of Iran is constrained by restrictions on the length and depth of container ships imposed by the lock characteristics in Russia's inland waterways.

Within the framework of the development of the EAEU Agreement on Navigation, it is possible to create a number of investment stimulation measures: investment of the countries of the Caspian Five into the infrastructure of the Volga-Don, or attraction of external banks for infrastructure development. It is also necessary to improve the mechanisms for attracting investments for the development of the infrastructure of airlines, Caspian airports, airfield equipment, and an increase of entry/exit points into the airspace of the states of the region.

Within the framework of the optimal scenario for the economic development of the region, including through the full FTA between the EAEU and Iran, it is expected to implement a project to build a new deep-sea ice-free port in the vicinity of Derbent (as an option, the modernization of the Makhachkala port) with a container terminal. In this case, it is possible to increase the container turnover to 265,000 TEU by 2030.

By 2030, the container freight turnover between Russia and India could grow to 461 thousand TEU, of which 40% can be redirected to the Caspian ports.

- creation of electronic trading platforms for goods and raw materials (an interstate network of information and marketing centers)

Considering the expected impulse of the development of electronic communications, it makes sense to create an integrated information system of mutual and foreign trade in the region, with a functional link to all global markets. This platform can be created by integrating the information systems of Kazakhstan - JSC Eurasian Trading System (www.ets.kz), Kazakhstan International Stock Exchange (www.mtbk.kz), Russia - St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (www.spimex.ru) and the National Commodity Exchange, a part of the Moscow Exchange (www.micex.ru) group of companies, Uzbekistan - Uzbek Republican Commodity and Raw Materials Exchange (www.uzex.com) , Belarus (www.icetrade.by, the information system Tenders provides complex information support of purchases on the competitive basis), the Portal of export information support (www.export.by), Azerbaijan - Digital Trade Hub (www.azexport.az).

- industrial and innovation zones

It is necessary to think over the establishment of several industrial parks having connected production in the region within a single technological chain. An example: the assembly of GAZ vehicles, production of advanced aircraft components (The Irkut MC-21 projects in Russia with a partial localization in Kazakhstan, as well as promising options for the renewal of the cargo planes line of the AN family in Azerbaijan). As a prologue to such a network of industrial parks, the project Aurora in the Karabudakhkent district of Dagestan can be used. It is assumed that residents of the Aurora industrial park will mainly be enterprises engaged in machine building, instrument making and metal processing, food industry, furniture manufacturing, metal-plastic and construction materials production. In the process of implementing this project, more than 1,700 jobs will be created (the expected production output of the residents of the park will be about 6 billion rubles a year).

It is necessary to think over the development of the Caspian park of the creative industry (film production, advertising, IT applications, computer games, and other related creative industries). The Russian-Kazakh socio-cultural space along with other Caspian countries can develop fruitfully at the crossroads of modern arts, business, and new digital technologies. According to experts, the tax revenue of the joint projects of the RF-EAEU-Caspian Five can amount to 7 -10 billion rubles per year.

- development of electric power industry

As a part of the creation of the common electric power market of the EAEU, it is necessary to create an algorithm for the development of an integrated network of the electricity market around the Caspian Sea (to create pricing mechanisms for interstate transmission of electricity, facilitate the cross-border electricity trade), taking into account the specific features of the domestic markets in the Caspian territories.

Taking into account the development of the region's trade and industrial potential, it is necessary to assess the need for the construction of a modern nuclear power plant. Such a project will give a serious impetus to the entire region and increase its linking to the Russian economy as a whole.

- stimulation of the Russian logistics operators on the parallel transport corridors

Among the challenges to the interests of the Russian Federation in the Black Sea-Caspian basin is the use of the Soviet communications on the territory of Ukraine, simplifying the flow of goods to the EU markets. They create the additional competitive pressures for the Russian trade routes. This problem can be solved by involving of the Russian logistics operators to the new regional corridors for increasing our own advantages.

In particular, the Russian loading of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railroad with goods for the Turkish and Georgian markets (rolled metal, grain, coal, timber, lumber) will create channels for the effective performance of the Central Asian and Iranian producers on the European southeast markets bypassing Ukraine. Thus, the strengthening of the Russian-Turkish business capacities will supplant competitors in other logistical directions.

Network partnerships compatibility scenario

Obviously, security and political stability of the Caspian states depend on the infrastructure connectivity of the region.

However, the geographical and infrastructural connectivity does not mean compatibility. In an ideal scenario, an institutional and contractual framework is needed (within one or more conjugated integration projects), a prologue to this is the gradual build-up of the socio-political partnerships at the level of business and public associations.

In other words, the compatibility is determined not only by the availability of physical infrastructure (roads, ports, logistics centers, etc.) but also by the opportunities for various entities from physical to legal persons to freely use this infrastructure. It is necessary to work out the following issue - the extent to which the peculiarities of national legislation and the provisions of interstate treaties make possible the unhindered movement of goods, services, capitals and labor across the borders and between different integration associations.

To solve this problem, from the point of view of Russia's interests, it is necessary to pursue a conscious policy of regional integration within the framework of the strategy of flexible partnerships through the following provisions:

- creation of a common foreign exchange market. Usually, this is a fairly high degree of integration, difficult to achieve in practice. However, the creation of quasi-currency unions to avoid mutual trade in the US dollars is one of the constantly discussed topics in the format of the EAEU, the SCO and the Islamic Eight D-8 (the so-called Eight of the most developed countries of the Islamic world, established in the framework of the OI in 1997) ;

- unified trade terms. Promotion of the mutual export on the level of medium and small business is one of the ways to arrange regional integration;

- practical and continuous modernization of infrastructure - transport, pipelines, power grids, and waterways;

- development of tourism and visa-free travel. Actually, these are the main points of support for the creation of a common labor market;

- development of the military-technical cooperation. On the one hand, this is certainly a boost for the Russian manufacturers. And by the gradual transfer of technology, it will become a form of support for the high-tech industries of the consumer countries (Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey). At the same time, within the framework of such a development, the foundations for a possible proto-military bloc atop the previous political limits dictated by NATO are laid.
More than 2,000 people were evacuated today while Polish navy experts removed three World War II bombs from the Baltic Sea bed at the vacation resort of Kolobrzeg, officials said.

The spokesman for the local navy unit, Jacek Kwiatkowski, said the bombs were hoisted out of the sea and onto a special truck and were taken to a test range for controlled detonation.

Each bomb weighed some 300 kilograms (660 pounds) and their impact radius was estimated at some 2 kilometers (1.2 miles).

Two other metal objects found at the site turned out to be parts of an old anchor and some scrap metal.

Dariusz Trzeciak, a Kolobrzeg city official, said some 2,000 residents and 200 vacationers were evacuated in their own cars or in buses. They were later allowed to return.

Kolobrzeg was part of Germany during the war and was the site of fierce fighting in the conflict's last phase.

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Some Dera Sacha Sauda followers had allegedly planned to 'eliminate' Sikh preacher Baljit Singh Daduwal, according to a report prepared by Punjab police's Special Investigation Team, probing sacrilege incidents.

The contents of the SIT report were today shared with media by AAP MLAs Sukhpal Singh Khaira and Kanwar Sandhu here.

SIT chairman Ranbir Singh Khatra, who is also the DIG of Ludhiana Range, submitted his report in the month of June to the Justice (retd) Ranjit Singh Commission which was constituted to investigate various incidents of sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib and other religious texts.

In the report, the SIT mentioned that sacrilege incidents which took place in Faridkot district in 2015 were the "result of a conspiracy hatched by some Dera Sacha Sauda followers."



According to the SIT report, main conspirator Mohinderpal, who was part of a 45-member committee of the Dera along with some other members, had allegedly planned to eliminate Daduwal who, according to them, was protesting against the Dera.

However, later the plan was called off, as per the report. The police had already arrested Mohinderpal and some other followers in connection with sacrilege incidents at Bargari in Faridkot in 2015.

According to the report, Mohinderpal was the mastermind behind the theft of a 'bir' of the Guru Granth Sahib from the gurdwara at Burj Jawahar Singh wala village.

Addressing a press conference here today, Khaira and Sandhu sought a probe "into the role of Dera Sacha Sauda head in sacrilege incidents".

They asked the Congress government in Punjab to take an action against those involved in Behbal Kalan and Kotkapura firing incidents in 2015.

Meanwhile, Khaira said a march will be taken out from Bargari till district administration office complex in Faridkot on August 20 seeking a prompt action in sacrilege incidents.

They also demanded a special session of the state Assembly to discuss Bargari incident report prepared by the Justice (retd) Ranjit Singh Commission.

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An outstanding parliamentarian, Somnath Chatterjee was the first communist to become the Lok Sabha Speaker and had once famously refused to accept a Supreme Court notice, demarcating the jurisdiction of the judiciary and the legislature.

The 10-time MP was associated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for most part of his life and will be remembered as one of the most illustrious speakers of the Lok Sabha.

A close associate of Marxist leader Jyoti Basu, Chatterjee was unanimously elected as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha in 2004 during the UPA-I government.

After his party CPI(M), then under the general secretaryship of Prakash Karat, withdrew support from the UPA government in July 2008, Chatterjee refused to step down from his position holding that the Speaker's post is above any party

He was expelled by the CPI(M) on July 23, 2008 for "seriously compromising the position of the party".

He had described that day as "one of the saddest days of my life".

"The speaker of Lok Sabha, like the speakers of other elected assemblies, while acting as such does not and cannot represent any political party," he had said.

Chatterjee in his autobiography "Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a Parliamentarian" had criticised Karat who he called an 'arrogant and intolerant man' and blamed his "misguided and disastrous policies" for weakening of the Left in the country since the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

Despite his expulsion, his love for the party and its ideology remained undiminished. After Sitaram Yechury took over the reins of the CPI(M), there were rumours that the party might take him back if he wrote to the leadership. But Chatterjee always felt he did no wrong in presiding over the trust vote as a speaker and there was no question of apologising.

During his tenure as Speaker, Chatterjee had famously said in 2005 that the Supreme Court had crossed the 'lakshman rekha' in sending a notice to him regarding the power of the Lok Sabha to expel its members, in connection with the cash-for-query scandal.

Chatterjee, as the Speaker, had then refused to submit himself to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in hearing this matter.

Later he had told PTI in an interview, "I am not a dummy.... My issue is very simple. Constitutionally our functioning comes under Art 122 and I cannot accept the Supreme Court's directions (to the legislature).

"According to me the lakshman rekha was crossed. To me the Constitution is supreme. Neither the legislature nor the Supreme Court is above the Constitution. ... I am supreme in my area and the courts are supreme in theirs. But to put this matter as 'legislature versus judiciary' is an artificially created controversy."



He was also instrumental in bringing Parliament closer to the people and on his initiative the proceedings of the Zero Hour were telecast live from July 5, 2004.

A full-fledged 24-hour Lok Sabha Television Channel also came into being in July, 2006 during his tenure as speaker.

Chatterjee was elected to the Lok Sabha 10 times on party ticket beginning in 1971 when he was elected as a CPI(M)-backed independent candidate to a seat in an interim election necessitated due to the death of his father.

He was defeated only once in 1984 by Mamata Banerjee, who incidentally came to limelight with this win.

The next year (1985) he had shifted to Bolpur Lok Sabha constituency after the seat fell vacant due to death of sitting party MP. Since then Chatterjee had won the seat for seven consecutive terms till 2004.

Chatterjee was the leader of the CPI(M) in Lok Sabha from 1989 to 2004.

He was born at Tezpur in Assam on July 25, 1929, to N C Chatterjee, who was once president of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, and Binapani Debi and was educated in Kolkata and the United Kingdom.

A Barrister-at-Law from Middle Temple in UK, Chatterjee was a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for four decades from 1968 to 2008, till he was expelled in 2008.

Conferred the "Outstanding Parliamentarian Award" in 1996, Chatterjee was known for his debating skills with extensive knowledge of national and international issues, delivered in his deep baritone voice, interspersed with wit and humour.

He adorned several parliamentary committees as chairman or as a member and was respected by leaders across the political arena.

Chatterjee retired from active following the end of his tenure in 2009.

He shared a close relation with CPI(M) stalwart Jyoti Basu who had also made him the chairman of West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, trusting him with the responsibility to turn the state around in bringing in investments and starting new ventures.

The lawyer-turned politician had acknowledged Basu's role in guiding him, saying "he has always given me unstinted support and encouragement.

Just like his mentor Jyoti Basu, Chatterjee was known as "Bhadralok (gentleman) Communist".He did not belong to the legion of hardcore, dogmatic apparatchiks. In fact, he was from the breed of aristocratic, foreign-bred, legal luminaries.

Chatterjee retired from active following the end of his tenure in 2009.

He is survived by wife Renu Chatterjee, a son and two daughters.

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The United States announced today it would grant Sri Lanka USD 39 million to boost maritime security as China develops its strategic hold on the Indian Ocean island.

The State Department will provide the funds as "foreign military financing", pending congressional approval, the US embassy in Colombo said.

"We look forward to discussing with the government of Sri Lanka how this contribution can support our Bay of Bengal initiative and Sri Lanka's humanitarian assistance and disaster response priorities," it said.

It comes as China, the world's second-largest economy, increases investment in ports and other building projects in Sri Lanka -- a key link in its ambitious "Belt and Road" infrastructure initiative. Last week, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka announced it had secured a USD 1 billion Chinese loan as the island develops closer relations with Beijing.

The US had stopped arms sales to Sri Lanka during the height of the island's Tamil separatist war that ended in 2009. The global power has also been highly critical of the human-rights record of the former government of strongman president Mahinda Rajapakse. Several senior military commanders from the Rajapakse regime have been denied visas to visit the US.

The US funding for Sri Lanka is part of a USD 300 million package Washington is setting aside for South and Southeast Asia to ensure a "free, open, and rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region".

China has vowed to keep providing financial help, including loans, to Sri Lanka despite warnings about the island nation's mounting debt.

Sri Lanka last year granted a 99-year lease on a strategic port to Beijing over its inability to repay Chinese loans for the $1.4 billion project.

The port in Hambantota straddles the world's busiest east-west shipping route and also gives a strategic foothold to China in a region long dominated by India.

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A state-level function to commemorate the martyrdom day of Karnail Singh -- the first Punjabi martyr of the Goa liberation movement -- will be organised at his native village in Punjab's Ludhiana district on Wednesday.

Chief Minister Amarinder Singh will attend the function at a grain market in Isru village near Khanna town -- around 40 km from Ludhiana city. Several state cabinet ministers, MPs, MLAs and others will attend the function, an official release said.

Ludhiana Deputy Commissioner Pardeep Agrawal today held a review meeting at the grain market and issued necessary directions to the officials, the release said.

The deputy commissioner visited the temporary helipad as well as the statue of Karnail Singh in Isru. He directed the officials to ensure that all necessary arrangements were put into place, it said.

Khanna Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Dhruv Dahiya informed that the traffic would be diverted on this day in the area, it added.

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The Chhattisgarh government today opposed in the Supreme Court a plea seeking an independent probe into the August 6 incident in which 15 alleged Maosist were gunned down in an encounter in Sukma district, claiming that "bogus claims" have been made in the plea.

The state government told a bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud that photographs attached with the plea were not of the alleged incident.

Senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Chhattisgarh, told the apex court that the petitioner has claimed that one woman was also killed during the August 6 encounter, but no such thing has happened.

"Bogus petition has been filed in support of the Maoists," Rohatgi told the bench, which asked the petitioner to file a better affidavit in the matter.

The apex court posted the matter for further hearing on August 29.

The petitioner, an NGO, has sought a probe into the encounter by either the CBI or a special investigation team. It has also sought a judicial inquiry by a sitting judge of high court in the matter.

After the alleged August 6 encounter, the bodies of 15 persons, alleged to be rebels, were recovered.

Two alleged Naxals, including a woman who was injured in the gunbattle, were also arrested from the encounter site.

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External Affairs Minister on Monday held talks with General Assembly President-elect Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces on key issues such as revitalisation of the world body, including reform of the Security Council and strengthening global counter legal framework.

Swaraj welcomed the president-elect of the 73rd Session of the General Assembly here and held wide-ranging discussions with her, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

Garces' meeting with Swaraj comes after she called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Friday and discussed the need for a stronger action on major global challenges, including

The minister and and the president-elect held wide-ranging discussions on the revitalisation of the UN, including reform of the UN Security Council, strengthening global counter legal framework, and other global issues, Kumar said.

Garces, an Ecuadorian national, is fourth woman president to assume this position. India's Vijayalakshmi Pandit was first-ever woman president of the

The UN General Assembly in June had overwhelmingly elected Garces as its next president.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today held talks with UN General Assembly President-elect Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces on key issues such as revitalisation of the world body, including reform of the Security Council and strengthening global counter-terrorism legal framework.

Swaraj held delegation-level talks with the president-elect of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly here during which she emphasised the need for the UNSC reforms, especially continuation of the Inter Governmental Negotiations, as well as early finalisation of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, a Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) statement said.

The External Affairs minister also highlighted India's commitments as part of the south-south cooperation, it said.

Garces, who is on India visit from August 10-14, outlined her priorities in the next one year as president of the UNGA, especially revitalisation of the United Nations, including the General Assembly as well as the Security Council reforms.

Swaraj and the UNGA president-elect held wide-ranging discussions on the revitalisation of the UN, including reform of the UN Security Council, strengthening global counter-terrorism legal framework, and other global issues, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

The minister conveyed her congratulations to Garces on becoming the fourth woman president of the UNGA in its history and reiterated India's support to the president-elect in carrying out her duties.

Garces' meeting with Swaraj comes after she called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Friday and discussed the need for a stronger UN action on major global challenges, including terrorism.

During her four-day visit to India, Garces also visited Dilli Haat where she interacted with various NGOs involved in womens' development projects and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

She inaugurated "Delhi Process-IV', an event commemorating BAPA+40 (United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation) here, and also delivered a speech on "Revitalization of the United Nations" at the Indian Council of World Affairs.

Garces, an Ecuadorian national, is fourth woman president to assume this position. India's Vijayalakshmi Pandit was first-ever woman president of the UNGA.

The UN General Assembly in June had overwhelmingly elected Garces as its next president.

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A teenage girl was allegedly gang raped at a madrasa in Ghosi area, here, the police said today.

As per the FIR, registered by the victim's mother, the incident took place on August 4 when the madrasa manager's brother and four others held the 16-year-old captive and raped her, Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Shailesh Kumar Srivastava said.

He added that the main accused has been arrested and hunt is on to nab the rest.

The accused threatened the girl from talking to the police and the accused took photographs of the girl, the complainant alleged.

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Contrary to the optimistic expectations, political changes in Armenia have not yet contributed to the settlement of the Karabakh conflict. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has undertaken a radical transformation of many policy directions, but it has not affected Yerevan's position on the Karabakh settlement. In searching for causes, perhaps, one should turn to the mentality of the Armenian people, which is built on historical events that took place in the distant past, at least several centuries ago. The current generation of Armenians has nothing to do with those events, and continues to live in a virtual world, completely ignoring the existing realities. Mamikon Babayan, a columnist of Vestnik Kavkaza, analyses the reasons for such a situation.

Political changes in Armenia do not contribute to the settlement of the Karabakh conflict - Yerevan still does not want to withdraw its armed forces from the occupied territories. The high-profile criminal arrests and persecution of former politicians and officials only mean that Armenia's current political establishment is "setting things in order," striving to consolidate the right to rule the republic. However, in the aftermath of high-profile exposures, accusations of former high-ranking officials, including former Armenian President Robert Kocharian, the new leadership of the republic is leaving out the most important aspect in solving the Karabakh problem, namely, the mental perception of the conflict in Armenian society.

What is the modern Armenian national policy? By and large, modern Armenia is the fifth state machine, apart from the short period of the First Republic of Armenia (1918-1920) and the Soviet Armenia, which in fact was an ordinary union republic. Four previous historical periods - the Yervandid period (520-200 BC), the Artaxiad period (including the Arsacid period 190 BC - 428 AD), the Bagratuni period (885-1045), the Cilician period (1080-1375) - are considered the most important in the history of the Armenian presence in Transcaucasia.

True, there are other concepts in covering the history of statehood in this territory. For example, many historians the history of Caucasian Albania as the history of Albania, which has nothing in common with the history of Armenia. Let us recall that the Albanian Apostolic Church was abolished in 1836 by Nicholas I at the insistence of the Armenian church, and the property of the Albanian church was transferred to the Armenian church.

Nevertheless, a centuries' old history was not enough for Armenians to create a truly strong state capable of ensuring its own security. For this reason, all previous Armenian states were either conquered or incorporated into larger state entities (Byzantine, Turkish, Russian empires, Arab Caliphate, Persian kingdom). It created a stable idea in the national consciousness of the constant struggle of Armenians for the right to create their own state. In other words, any territorial acquisition, no matter whether it is legitimate or not, is perceived by the Armenians as a "restoration of historical justice." Such ideologies are dangerous, since they can threaten the territorial integrity of any Armenian neighbor. Moreover, the concept of "historical justice" does not exist in international law, therefore, it cannot justify a legitimate right to any territorial acquisition.

An entire people has a kind of complex which developed because of the territorial problem. Armenia is the homeland of most Armenians. Armenia still lives by the idea of a permanent danger from outside, which threatens to take possession of the Armenian territory, including within the borders of Soviet Armenia.

Manipulating Armenian public opinion through the restoration of historical memory and tragic events was not unique. The memory of the 1915 events was supported in the Ottoman Empire by the Soviet leadership, as evidenced by the construction of the Tsitsernakaberd memorial complex. It is known that in the 1920s the young Soviet state sought to establish friendly relations with the Turkish Republic, as evidenced by the 1921 Moscow and Kars agreements. However, Turkey and the Soviet Union took different paths eventually and in order to securely secure the southern borders of the Soviet state, Soviet ideologists made a bet on historical memory, allowing the construction of a grandiose complex. Thus, the Soviet leadership, in one way or another, made efforts to maintain hostility between Turks and Armenians, which subsequently acquired a more ambitious character.

An attempt to restore historical memory was made on the part of the ideologists of the separatist Karabakh movement, who tried to link the events in the Ottoman Empire with the events in Baku and Sumgait (1988 and 1990), which had nothing in common. According to the political scientist Sergey Kurginyan (Sergey Kurginyan on Sumgait tragedy - VK), the events in Sumgait had own orchestrators and performers. But it was not enough for the organizers of the artificial conflict. The organization of the pogrom in multinational Baku, where a "Baku nation" representing all ethnic groups of the city was formed, was a shock for everyone.

But it was the fear that the tragedy can be repeated, coupled with the eternal Armenian territorial phobia, that had the most negative impact on the idea of the political process in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, as a result of which the Karabakh war acquired the character of national liberation in the minds of Armenians. Thus, national-cultural revanchism has become a universal argument in the issue of the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.

The idea of revanchism remains Armenia's fundamental internal political doctrine, which, by the way, Nikol Pashinyan refuses to change, obviously, not wanting to touch upon acute issues related to the national mentality. Pashinyan just needs to convince the population that the Armenian position on the Karabakh issue is firm, despite the fact that Armenia's position is unconstructive and is aggravated by the desire to withdraw the republic from the negotiation process. Nevertheless, the change of power in Armenia and the resignation of the former leadership, whose hands are elbowed in the blood of the Azerbaijani and Armenian peoples, is welcomed in Azerbaijan as well. Baku opposes the war, arguing that the only real reason for the resumption of hostilities is the presence of the Armenian Armed Forces in the occupied territories, the withdrawal of which can guarantee peace between the two peoples and states. In the end, the history of peaceful coexistence of Armenians and Azerbaijanis could be traced back at least ten centuries. In this sense, Nikol Pashinyan has a real historic chance to restore good-neighborliness between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as between Armenia and Turkey, and be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Modern Armenian national policy exists outside of Armenia as well. The diaspora makes efforts to draw the attention of the international community to the tragic events in the history of the people, thereby prolonging the existence of the myth of the centuries-old struggle of the Armenians. In this sense, Armenians do not care who visits the republic in the days of national mourning. It can be both the heads of European states and popular artists, including representatives of western bohemia - the key factor is the popularity of guests.

Unfortunately, some Armenians live in a virtual world, detached from realities. This fact affects the strong and well-organized Armenian diaspora, which has ample opportunities in such countries as the United States and France. Drawing world attention to the problem of the Karabakh Armenians, the diaspora seeks to maximally legitimize support for the occupation regime, since the majority of the Karabakh population is poor peasants who need material support from Armenia and their relatives working in Russia.

Overcoming the mental crisis is very difficult, because the problem is to change the perception of the Karabakh conflict in the modern consciousness of Armenians, to explain that this is not a war of nations, but a complex geopolitical game, like those observed during the First World War, as well as that there are forces today trying to maintain hostile relations between Armenians and Azerbaijanis by all forces, the Turks and it has to be said, they have so far succeeded in doing so.
Describing Telangana as the 'corruption capital' Congress chief Rahul Gandhi today hit out at the TRS dispensation, alleging that only 'one family' government is running the state.

Speaking at a public meeting at Serilingampally here, the Gandhi scion also dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to come for an open debate on the controversial Rafale deal.

"Today Telangana has become the capital of corruption... wherever you see somebody's land is snatched, only one-family government is here. Benefits are only for one family", he said targeting the family of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

The 'style' of Modi and Chandrasekhar Rao were the same as they only make tall and empty promises, alleged Gandhi, on his first visit to Telangana after become the party President.

Rao promised land for Dalits and Adivasis, but that was not honoured, he said.

"The government promised double bedroom houses,but in the last four years, not even 5,000 houses were built.In Telangana in the last four years, 4,000 farmers have committed suicide.

When Congress was in power (in undivided Andhra Pradesh) it was a revenue surplus state. Today it is deep in debt," he further said, charging the TRS Government with not fulfilling its poll promises.

He alleged that though there were one lakh job vacancies in the government, the KCR-Government could fill just 10,000.

Gandhi's charges drew a sharp response from Rao, who 'advised' him to be more 'mature' while making remarks against the government.

"Rahul Gandhi should improve his maturity. He should not read a script written by someone else. He should know the facts about the state's finances," he told reporters here.

The Chief Minister said nearly one lakh jobs have been announced by the State Public Service Commission, a fact which Rahul Gandhi could verify.

He said the Congress leader could also verify the status of the two-bedroom house scheme being implemented across Telangana.

Gandhi urged the people to vote the Congress to power, assuring them that once the party comes back to the helm of affairs, it would fulfil all promises made to both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana during the bifurcation.

Claiming that industrialist Anil Ambani was Modi's friend, he alleged that the Rafale contract was snatched from HAL and given to the businessman despite his inexperience in the field even as he defaulted on Rs 45,000 crore to various banks.

The Ambani group, which has been in the eye of a raging political storm over the fighter jet deal, had yesterday denied receiving any contract from the Defence Ministry and said "unfounded and incorrect" allegations were being made to "mislead people and cloud the issue".

"Wherever, either in Parliament house or anywhere, keep Modi on one side and keep me on another side,we will debate on Rafale. The truth will come out what is right and what is wrong and where the 'theft' took place," Gandhi said.

He alleged that Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had misled the public when she said the new price of the fighter aircraft could not be disclosed due to a secrecy clause in the contract.

Gandhi said when he spoke to the French President during his visit to India, he was told that there was no such secrecy clause and that India was free to disclose it to anybody.

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Three Russian climbers and two Tajik crew members have died in a helicopter "hard landing" in Tajikistan's remote mountainous region, emergency services said today.

Twelve other climbers and a third crew member survived the accident, which took place yesterday at 1130 GMT, and were evacuated from the site for medical treatment, authorities said.

Of the 12 surviving climbers, all are Russian except for a Belarusian and a Spanish national.

The site where the Mi-8 chopper crashed is some 480 kilometres (300 miles) east of the capital Dushanbe in the Pamir range, a key tourist destination.

Emergency services said the climbers had been climbing the Ismoili Somoni mountain, which was once known as Peak Communism and used to be the highest in the Soviet Union.

The accident comes two weeks after four Western cyclist tourists were killed in an attack initially reported as a hit-and-run road accident, striking a blow to Tajikistan's emerging tourism sector.

The attack that saw the tourists rammed with a car before being attacked with knives was claimed by the Islamic State group, although the authoritarian government refused to acknowledge the group's claim.

The cyclists - two Americans, one Swiss citizen and one Dutch citizen, had been travelling through the Pamirs, which are often referred to as "the roof of the world".

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Three persons, allegedly in an inebriated state, were arrested today for creating public nuisance in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district, police said.

Police were on routine patrolling on a highway stretch when a chaos like situation was seen in Siot market, they said.

During questioning, it was found that three persons boarded in a car were in a drunken state and creating nuisance at a public place, police said.

According to police, the accused, identified as Davinder Singh, Jatinder Singh, and Inderpal, were arrested and their car was seized.

A case was registered against the accused at Dharamsal police station, they said.

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Three people, including a father-son duo, were killed and two others injured in a clash between two groups over a land dispute in Gujarat's Morbi district, police said today.

Twelve people have been arrested in connection with the incident, they said.

A group, led by one Dhanji Dabhi and his accomplices, attacked members of another group late last night with sharp weapons on Leelapur Road, around 90 km from Rajkot, Morbi taluka's police sub-inspector S A Gohil said.

Three members of the other group were seriously injured in the attack, he said.

"They were rushed to the Morbi Civil Hospital where doctors declared them dead," he said.

The deceased were identified as Dilawarkhan Pathan (55), his son Momin (30) and nephew Afzal (22).

Two members of the group led by Dhabi were also injured in the clash and admitted to hospital, he said.

"Based on a complaint lodged by a relative of the deceased, the police arrested 12 people of the Satwara community, who were named in the FIR," Gohil said.

"A land dispute is suspected to be the reason behind the clash," he added.

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Trinamool Youth Congress president Abhishek Banerjee, nephew of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, today sent a legal notice to BJP



president Amit Shah alleging defamatory statements against him at a public rally on August 11 here.

The legal notice demanding an apology from Shah for allegedly making defamatory statements against Abhishek Banerjee, a Lok Sabha MP, was sent to the state BJP headquarter here, his lawyer Sanjay Basu said.

Basu asked Shah to "issue an unconditional apology in an appropriate press conference within 72 hours from receipt of the instant notice retracting the virulent and mala-fide statements made against my client."



The notice to Shah said, "In the course of your speech you had made various allegations against my client by making a flimsy and thinly veiled reference and/or insinuation to the "bhatija" (nephew) of the Hon'ble Chief Minister of the State of West Bengal.

"Since, it is well known that my client is the nephew of Smt. Mamata Bannerjee and is actively involved in politics, the contents of your speech left little to the imagination of my client's well-wishers that you were referring to my client."



The lawyer claimed that the "false statements" against his client has caused grave loss and prejudice to his client's reputation amongst his well-wishers and the citizens of India.

Basu said his client Abhishek Banerjee "denies the allegation that he is involved in any purported diversion of public and/or government funds to the tune of Rs 3,59,000 crore or any other sum purportedly allotted from the Centre to the State of West Bengal."



He sought Shah desist from making or circulating any defamatory comments, statement, causing publication of the same in any media against his client.

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Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami, DMK Working President MK Stalin and other political leaders today condoled the death of former Lok Sabha Speaker and CPI(M) veteran Somnath Chatterjee.

The 89-year old Chatterjee passed away at a private hospital in Kolkata this morning following multiple organ failure.

In a statement, Palaniswami expressed grief over the veteran's demise and recalled Chatterjee's long association with CPI(M), besides his 10-time stint as MP.

"He had the distinction of being the longest serving Parliamentarian and was known for placing strongly his views during debates in the House," he said.

"As Speaker of Lok Sabha from June 2004 to May 2009, he efficiently handled the proceedings and was respected by all members of Parliament," he added.

He recalled Chatterjee being awarded with the "Best Parliamentarian" honour in 1996.

The Chief Minister expressed his sympathies with the bereaved family members of Chatterjee and prayed that his soul rested in peace.

Stalin, also Leader of Opposition in the state, expressed 'shock' over the veteran's death and described his demise as a "great loss" for the country.

He was a "close friend" of the late DMK President and his father M Karunanidhi, Stalin said in a statement, adding, Chatterjee always upheld the ethos of Parliamentary democracy.

He conducted Parliamentary proceedings without any party considerations, he added.

"He allowed healthy political views and constructive debate in the Parliament and protected the democratic values. His demise is a great loss to democracy and the country," he said.

The ruling AIADMK also condoled the death of the veteran leader.

AIADMK Coordinator O Panneerselvam and Joint Coordinator Palaniswami condoled Chatterjee's demise in a party statement, recalling his contributions as an MP and later as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha.

They hailed his public service and 'deep insight' while dealing with problems.

TNCC President Su Thirunavukkarasar, AMMK leader TTV Dhinakaran and PMK founder S Ramadoss also condoled Chatterjee's demise.

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The Tamil Nadu government today moved the Supreme Court challenging the National Green Tribunal (NGT) order allowing mining major Vedanta to enter the administrative unit inside its Sterlite copper plant in Tuticorin.

On August 9, the NGT had allowed Vedanta to enter its administrative unit inside the plant, observing that no environmental damage would be caused by allowing access to this section.

The green panel had said that the plant would remain closed and the company would not have access to its production unit and asked the district magistrate to ensure it.

The tribunal had directed Tamil Nadu State Pollution Control Board to submit an analysis of the baseline pollution data of the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd in Tuticorin (Thoothukudi) to ascertain the level of pollution. It had posted the matter for further hearing on August 20.

Tamil Nadu government had on May 28 ordered the state pollution control board to seal and "permanently" close the mining group's copper plant following violent protests over pollution concerns.

After Sterlite announced its plans to expand the Tuticorin plant, villagers around it started fresh protests that continued for over 100 days, culminating in the May 22 police firing on protestors that claimed 13 lives and left scores injured. Following these protests and police firing, the plant was closed on March 27.

On July 30, the NGT had refused to grant interim relief to Vedanta which has challenged Tamil Nadu government's order to permanently shut down the copper plant. The company has termed the government action as "political".

On July 5, the tribunal had issued notices to the state and pollution control board seeking their responses after Tamil Nadu had raised preliminary objections with regard to maintainability of Vedanta's plea.

Earlier in April, the Tamil Nadu pollution control board had rejected Sterlite's plea to renew the Consent To Operate certification, saying the company had not complied with the stipulated conditions. Following this, the government had issued a permanent closure notice to the plant.

The Sterlite plant had made headlines in March 2013 when a gas leak had led to the death of one person and injuries to several others, after which then chief minister J Jayalalithaa had ordered its closure.

The company had then appealed to the NGT which had overturned the government order. The state had then moved the top court against it and the case is still pending.

The Supreme Court had then ordered the company to pay Rs 100 crore as compensation for polluting

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Tobacco acreage and production in the country have started declining as the government is encouraging farmers in ten states like Andhra Pradesh to shift to alternative crops in a big way, a senior government official said today.

Alternative crops like foodgrains, cereals, pulses, oilseeds, vegetables, sugarcane, oil palm, and even dairy and poultry activities have been identified for tobacco growing areas in different states, he said.

"Both area and production of tabacco are declining every year because the government is supporting with funds to encourage the tobacco growers to shift to alternative crops," the official said.

About Rs 9.5 crore was released to the tobacco growing states in the 2017-18 fiscal to shift to alternative farming. Funds are being provided under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), he said.

As per the latest data, the tobacco area has declined by 14.56 per cent to 3.99 lakh hectares in 2016-17 from 4.67 lakh hectares in 2014-15. Even tobacco output has come down to 8.05 lakh tonnes in 2016-17 from Rs 8.55 lakh tonnes in 2014-15.

"India's tobacco production is higher than Brazil but much lower than China. Efforts are being made to reduce both area and production in our country," the official said.

More awareness is being created in the growing states and even the Tobacco Board is distributing pamphlets on package of practices for alternative crops to Flue Cured Virginia (FCV) tabacco, he said and added this will yield positive results.

The Telangana government has informed that tobacco farmers in the state have shifted to alternative crops like bengal gram and chillies, while in Odisha farmers have diversified to vegetables like tomato, cauliflower, cabbage, chillly and hybrid maize, sunflower and others.

In Karnataka, farmers have shifted to crops like soyabean followed by sugarcane during 2017, he added.

Besides, the central government is supplementing the states efforts through implementation of various crop development programme like National Food Security Mission (NFSM).

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Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today said the "no-show" London rally by Sikhs for Justice (SJF) for a separate state has exposed the "total lack of ground support" for the 'Referendum 2020' even outside India.

Singh also dismissed the entire affair as a "futile exercise" by a "sham" organisation to create trouble in India, particularly Punjab.

"The SJF is just a group of fringe elements that is playing into the hands of Pakistan's ISI to divide India, but they have failed, and will continue to fail in their nefarious designs," the chief minister said in a statement here.

"The presence of Pakistani politicians at the rally confirms that it was out and out an ISI plot, which fell through, just as their attempts to create trouble in India have been failing all these years", he said.

Reacting to the UK rally, the chief minister said it turned out to be a "damp squib" participated by a handful of elements.

He, however, felt the UK government should have put its foot down and not allowed its soil to be used to propagate anti-India campaign.

Further castigating the UK government, Singh said that by allowing the protestors to use Trafalgar Square, instead of the usual Hyde Park generally used for such purposes, it had shown its total complacency in the issue.

The entire referendum business is nothing but a "money making racket" of the SFJ, with no takers for the so-called campaign either in India, or even outside, as is evident from the poor show at the rally," Singh added.

He said that there was virtually "nil local support" for the rally and whatever little support they had managed to garner was of "similar fringe elements" from other countries.

"The presence of Pakistani leaders, including Nazir Ahmed who openly spoke of dividing India and splitting Kashmir, Punjab and Nagaland from it, made it clear that the rally was a game plan of the ISI - a fact further endorsed by the presence of separatist Kashmiris living in UK," Singh added.

Citing ground reports, the chief minister claimed that some of those Kashmiris were forced to wear turbans to make them look like Sikhs.

And a handful of Sikhs around had evidently been forced to come, Sing said.

Describing the SFJ fringe elements as mere "social media tigers", who are trying to create hype even when they have no support, both in India and abroad, Singh said the Sikhs were a patriotic community who have always stood for the unity and integrity of the country.

As many as 90,000 Sikhs are serving in the Indian Army, defending the country's borders, he pointed out, adding that the SFJ could "never succeed in misleading the community" into falling for their "selfish" designs.

Singh warned the SFJ and all such "anti-India" forces to stay out of the country and refrain from any attempt to foment trouble in Punjab, or any other part of India.

Their efforts will backfire on them, he said, adding that his government would deal with such elements with an "iron hand".

Nobody would be allowed to disturb the peace and the communal harmony in the state, he said.

Pro-Khalistani supporters yesterday assembled at Trafalgar Square in London in a rally organized by the SFJ, intended to raise awareness for a non-binding referendum in 2020, calling for the Sikh-majority state of Punjab to be granted "independence".

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Traffic on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway was suspended today after being blocked by multiple landslides triggered by heavy rains in Ramban and Udhampur districts of Jammu and Kashmir, officials said.

However, Mughal road is open for two-way traffic.

The nearly 270-km Jammu-Srinagar National Highway, the only all-weather road linking Kashmir with the rest of the country, was blocked by landslides at Seri in Ramban district and Kheri in Udhampur district, they said.

They said no damage or casualty was reported in the landslides but it led to a massive traffic jam leaving hundreds of passengers stranded.

Over 300 vehicles were stranded at various places en route, they said.

The men and machines of BRO are working to clear the highway of landslides and make it trafficable, they said.

Traffic officials said the Mughal Road, connecting the twin districts of Poonch and Rajouri in Jammu region with south Kashmir's Shopian district, was open for two-way traffic.

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On June 1, sometime between the US withdrawal from the JCPOA in early May, and its demand in late June that Asian buyers fully halt Iranian oil purchases, PetroChina snuck in a shipment of Iranian crude through Myanmar to its Yunnan Petrochemical refinery in southern China. As S&P Global Platts writes in the article Will Myanmar become a conduit for Iranian crude into China?, on any other route, this would have been just another Iranian oil shipment. But using the Myanmar-China oil and gas pipeline brings new complications. Thats because the pipeline has a new avatar  it is now a part of Chinas Belt and Road Initiative, along with other large infrastructure projects that were not originally a part of BRI, but were included later to boost the profile of the program.

Sending Iranian crude through an oil pipeline with the Belt and Road label removes any doubts of whether BRIs projects have political motives or not. For critics of BRI, it adds fodder to the narrative that the infrastructure plan is a tool for China to undercut the influence of the US. BRI already has a serious public relations problem and is viewed with suspicion, sometimes for good reason.

Earlier this week, the renewal of US secondary sanctions on Iran faced strong opposition from the remaining JCPOA signatories. China has made it clear it will continue to import Iranian barrels, and using a BRI project to do so will give the US ammunition to criticize BRI openly, potentially leaving the host country open to US reprisals.

BRI has not been particularly polarizing so far, and its participants have included US allies. Oil and gas pipelines are magnets for controversy, however. From the Sumed pipeline in the Middle East to Nordstream 2 in Europe, there hasnt been an international oil or gas pipeline that was devoid of geopolitics. Myanmar will be no different.

The Panama-flagged Dore delivered its cargo of Iranian crudes at Maday Island on June 1, the only vessel to have shipped oil from Iran to Myanmar since the 13 million mt/year (260,000 b/d) Yunnan Petrochemical refinery in southern China started operations in August last year.

Dores cargo of 948,000 barrels of crude oil included 474,000 barrels of Iranian South Pars condensate. The refinery said it also processed 56,000 mt of Iranian Heavy crude received via the 1,420 km pipeline, Platts reported previously.

This was the first batch of Iranian Heavy crude processed by a PetroChina refinery, and is unlikely to be the last. Iranian grades contain a relatively higher amount of metallic and chloride contaminants that corrodes refinery units, due to which some of PetroChinas biggest refineries like Dalian Petrochemical and Guangxi Petrochemical, were unable to crack the crude.

Yunnan Petrochemical has a 1.2 million mt/year delayed coking unit that enables it to process Iranian crude, and it has already tested the first cargo successfully. Other major Chinese refineries under Sinopec have used Iranian crudes and found them attractive because of a high naphtha yield, which is needed for petrochemical products.

All of this paves the way for the China-Myanmar pipeline to become a conduit for Iranian crude, even if it is for just one refinery, which if fully utilized will account for nearly a third of Chinas intake of Iranian crude. Chinas imports of Iranian crude were around 638,000 b/d in the first half this year. The Myanmar-China pipeline runs from Maday Island, near the town of Kyaukpyu in Rakhine state, and connects with Chinas domestic pipeline to Kunming city in Yunnan province. It is fed by a deepwater VLCC terminal and tank storage farm, and was negotiated with the former military government of Myanmar. State-owned Chinese media now call it a pioneer project of BRI. The final question is around the implications for Myanmar, and the legal complications for players in the Iran crude supply chain, like pipeline operators, shipowners, ports or banks involved.

In respect of persons involved in transporting or storing petroleum from Iran, there is a risk that they could be subject to US sanctions, Clyde & Co Partner Avryl Lattin said.

Sanctions or other punitive measures of the Trump administration are often considered on a case-by-case basis, such as special waivers given to India to import Russian military equipment because of its position as a budding strategic partner of Washingtons Indo-Pacific strategy, Collin Koh, Research Fellow at the Maritime Security Programme of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Singapore, said.

It depends a lot on how the target country weighs in significance within the US strategic calculus. Myanmar is certainly not one country that the US can afford to alienate now, Koh said. There are signs that Myanmar wants to turn towards China due to the Rakhine issue, but at the same time Naypyidaw is more amenable to Western concerns and interests than ever before, He said. Due to this, even India and Australia are careful in their treatment of Myanmar. So the US may not want to exacerbate the situation by imposing punitive actions on Myanmar just because Iranian oil was piped through its territory to southern China, Koh added. The concerns are long-term geopolitics, he said.
Ruling TRS MP D Srinivas' son Sanjay was arrested on charges of sexually harassing 12 students of his college in Nizamabad, police said today.

Sanjay was arrested when he appeared before Nizamabad Assistant Commissioner of Police M Sudarshan yesterday after his anticipatory bail plea was rejected by the high court recently.

He presented himself for interrogation in response to a notice and after questioning he was arrested, the police said.

He was produced before a local court which remanded him to judicial custody till August 24, they said.

"Sanjay has been accused by 12 girls of sexual harassment and indecent behaviour on the college premises and other places," Sudarshan told PTI.

Earlier this month, 12 BSc students of the college complained to state Home Minister Nayini Narsimha Reddy that Sanjay had harassed them and misbehaved with them.

A case was registered against him under relevant sections of the



IPC following the complaint, the police said.

Sanjay subsequently went absconding even as he had applied for the anticipatory bail which was later dismissed by the high court.

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President Donald Trump has signed a USD 716 billion defence policy bill named for John McCain but included no mention in his remarks of the Republican senator, who is battling brain cancer at home in Arizona.

Trump and McCain are engaged in a long-running feud that dates to Trump's 2016 presidential run.

At campaign rallies, Trump regularly castigates McCain without outright naming him for casting a dramatic thumbs-down vote that doomed Trump's effort last year to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which was enacted by President Barack Obama.

Trump said there was "no better place than right here at Fort Drum" to celebrate passage of the defense bill, which will boost military pay by 2.6 per cent, giving service members their largest increase in nine years.

The bill formally named the John S McCain National Defense Authorization Act but referred to by Trump as simply the National Defense Authorization Act will introduce thousands of new recruits to active duty, reserve and National Guard units and replace aging tanks, planes, ships and helicopters with more advanced and lethal technology, Trump said.

"Hopefully, we'll be so strong we'll never have to use it. But if we ever did, nobody has a chance," he said.

The bill also authorizes billions of dollars for military construction, including family housing.

Besides setting policy and spending levels, the bill weakens a bid to clamp down on Chinese telecom company ZTE. It allows Trump to waive sanctions against countries that bought Russian weapons and now want to buy US military equipment.

The bill provides no money for Trump's requested Space Force but authorises the military parade he wants in Washington in November. The White House has said it will outline a budget for the space force next year.

The measure also addresses child-on-child sexual assault at US military bases worldwide, an issue an Associated Press investigation revealed this spring.

The compromise bill removes a provision reinstating penalties against ZTE and restricting the company's ability to buy US component parts.

ZTE was almost forced out of business after being accused of selling sensitive information to nations hostile to the US, namely Iran and North Korea, in violation of trade laws.

Trump warned in May that the ban was causing heavy job losses in China, and the Commerce Department reached a deal to lift the ban in June, allowing business with U.S. companies to resume. The bill retains language blocking US government purchases and contracts with ZTE.

The measure also includes provisions designed to improve how the Defense Department handles reports of sexual assaults among the tens of thousands of children and teens who live and go to school on the military bases where their parents serve. An AP investigation documented broad failures of justice when military kids report incidents.

Among the changes, the bill creates new legal protections for students at Department of Defense Education Activity schools and requires the school system and the Pentagon to develop new policies for responding to reports on bases more generally.

The annual measure sets policies and a budget outline for the Pentagon and will be followed by a later appropriations bill.

Trump and McCain have had a strained relationship for years. During his election campaign, Trump declared that McCain, who was a prisoner of war for more than five years in Vietnam, was not a war hero, and he has publicly and privately blamed McCain for submarining the Republican health care bill last year.

In May, a West Wing aide dismissed McCain's negative opinion on Trump's CIA nominee during a closed-door meeting by saying of the senator that "he's dying anyway." Trump, who has long prided himself on never apologising, believing it shows weakness, did not apologize, but the aide was later fired.

Yesterday, McCain expressed pride in the bill signing in a statement he issued afterward.

"I'm proud the NDAA is now law & humbled Congress chose to designate it in my name. As Chairman of the Armed Services Cmte, I've found high purpose in service of a cause greater than self_the cause of our troops who defend America & all that she stands for," he tweeted.

His wife, Cindy McCain, meanwhile, retweeted a tweet from CBS that noted Trump had neglected to mention McCain at the signing.

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Two persons have been arrested for allegedly raping a girl in Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir, police said today.

On August 9, three men from Salalpur Marheen village raped a girl in Chabe Chak area of Rajbagh. The survivor's family registered a police complaint.

The police arrested two of the accused yesterday and a search is going on for the third suspect, said an official from Rajbagh police station.

The arrested were identified as Kulvinder Kumar alais Nanku, who is the main accused, and Ganesh.

In a second incident in Rajouri district, police booked two persons -- Rafiq and Yousef -- for alleged raping a girl in Manjakote area of the district yesterday, the police said. A complaint was filed by the girl's family. A manhunt has been launched to nab the accused.

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Two Army jawans were killed in separate incidents along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir over the past 24 hours, an official said here today.

Sepoy Pushpendra Kumar was critically injured in a blast near the LOC in Kupwara district yesterday, a police official said.

Kumar, who belonged to the 20 Jatregiment, succumbed to injuries, he added.

In another blast in Uri sector yesterday, Kuldeep Singh Rawat of 4 Garhwal rifles, was killed, the official said. It was not immediately clear as to how the blasts took place, he added.

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Two overground workers (OGWs) of militants have been arrested for a failed rifle snatching bid from a bank guard in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir, police said today.

On 10 August, two persons barged inside the Jammu and Kashmir Bank branch at Khrew in the south Kashmir district and attacked bank guard Mumtaz Ahmad with pepper spray and a sharp-edged weapon in an attempt to snatch his 12-bore rifle, a police spokesman said.

He said Ahmad successfully foiled the bid to snatch his rifle but suffered injuries, following which he was rushed to Khrew hospital. The accused persons fled the spot, the spokesman said.

A case under relevant sections was registered and the investigation was initiated, he said.

During the course of investigation, the involvement of two OGWs, Yasir Ahmad Wani a resident of Babapora and Yawar Sultan a resident of Shar Shali Khrew, surfaced in the commission of crime, the spokesman said.

He said both were subsequently arrested and the case is being probed.

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Two sisters died after falling off a ferris wheel from a height of 45 feet when the their seat overturned unexpectedly, police said today.

Anjli (18) and Deepmala (25), along with a few members of their family, had gone to ride the ferris wheel on the occasion of Teej festival at Hathikhana Temple ground in Ambala cantonment yesterday evening, they said.

The sisters sat on a two-seater car of the giant ferris wheel and they fell on the ground when it overturned. They were taken to civil hospital with serious head injuries and were declared brought dead by doctors there, police said.

After the incident, the manager of the fair fled. A case has registered against him on charge of gross negligence, SHO of Ambala Sadar police station, Vijay Kumar said.

Police have started probe into how the fair organisers had managed to install swings at the site without taking any permission either from temple committee or from district administration.

The guilty would be nabbed soon, the police said.

Heath minister Anil Vij, who is an MLA from Ambala Cantonment, visited the civil hospital and ordered an inquiry into the incident.

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Two smugglers were arrested and 38 animals rescued in four separate incidents in Jammu and Kashmir, police said today.

A police team rescued seven animals during a routine patrolling in the Rajouri district last evening, they said, adding the smuggler was arrested on the spot.

An hour later, a police team intercepted a vehicle at Chatyari area of the district and rescued five animals. The smuggler was nabbed, they said.

In a similar incident, police intercepted a truck at Narwal area of the Jammu city and rescued 10 head of cattle last night, they said, adding the smuggler managed to escape.

In the Kathua district, 16 head of cattle were rescued while the smuggler managed to escape, they said.

Cases have been registered in all the smuggling attempts, they said.

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Unidentified miscreants today shot dead newly elected head of Jandahan block panchayat samiti in Bihar's Vaishali district triggering violent protest by locals.

Local people and supporters of panchayat Pramukh Manish Sahni resorted to arson at Jandahan bazar, block office and police stations besides resorting to firing in the open.

The deceased was elected as "Pramukh" (head) of Jandahan block panchayat samiti recently, Vaishali District Magistrate Rajiv Roshan confirmed the death.

Sahni was also secretary of Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) of Vaishali district.

The incident occurred while Sahni was coming out of his chamber at Jandahan block office when some unidentified bike borne assailants opened indiscriminate firing on him.

The critically injured Sahni was rushed to a nearby primary health centre at Jandahan where doctors referred him to Hajipur, where he died during course of treatment at a private nursing home.

The DM Rajiv Roshan said that police resorted to firing in the open to disperse the agitating mob.

Considering the situation prevailing in Jandaha, the DM said section 144 has been clamped with immediate effect in the area.

Heavy force along with police personnel from adjoining police stations have been deployed in the area.

The DM said situation is tense but under control.

Though, three persons were injured in the exchange of firing but, the officials have not confirmed so far about any person getting injured in the arson and violence.

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Uttar Pradesh Shia Waqf Board has told all madrassas functioning from its properties to celebrate the Independence Day by chanting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' after the hoisting of the national flag and the singing of the national anthem.

"We have directed all the madrasas running under the Shia Waqf Board to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' after hoisting the national flag and singing of the national anthem," Board Chairman Waseem Rizvi told PTI.

The board has warned of "strict action" against those not complying with the order.

Rizvi said there are over 1,500 madrassas and schools running on Waqf properties in the state and they will have to abide by the directive.

The nation will celebrate its 72nd Independence Day on August 15.

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The US today designated an Iran-based Bahraini national as a global terrorist for his involvement in a plot to assassinate prominent figures in Bahrain and target three oil pipelines.

Qassim Abdullah Ali Ahmed, who also goes by the name Qassim al-Muamen, was put on the list of the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) under federal rules which impose sanctions on foreign persons who have committed, or pose a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism.

The designation seeks to deny al-Muamen the resources to plan and carry out terrorist attacks.

Under the designation, all of al-Muamen's property and interests subject to US jurisdiction are blocked, and US persons are prohibited from engaging in any transactions with him, the State Department said in a statement.

Al-Muamen is an Iran-based leader of al-Ashtar Brigades (AAB), a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) and SDGT that seeks to overthrow the Bahraini government. He has recruited terrorists in Bahrain, facilitated training on weapons and explosives for AAB members, and supplied them with funding, weapons, and explosives to carry out attacks.

In November 2017, Bahraini authorities identified al-Muamen as being involved in an AAB plot to assassinate prominent figures in Bahrain and target three oil pipelines, the State Department said.

The designation notifies the US public and the international community that al-Muamen has committed, or poses a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism. Designations of terrorist individuals and groups expose and isolate them, and deny them access to the US financial system, it said.

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The 5th summit of the heads of the Caspian states was held in Kazakhstan's Aktau on August 12. Presidents of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of Iran Hassan Rouhani and President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov discussed issues of the legal status of the Caspian Sea, cooperation in the Caspian in the sphere of economy, transport, ecology, security and others. The main outcome document of the summit was the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, work on which was conducted for more than 20 years. Nursultan Nazarbayev said that all issued related to the interaction in and around the Caspian Sea have been agreed, a historic decision will be made at the summit in Aktau.

Head of the Center for Eurasian Studies at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry Ali Mustafabeyli, called the signing of the convention a landmark event: "The work on the legal status of the Caspian Sea continued for 20 years. The work was not easy and extremely important for all the Caspian states. It was necessary to work out certain rules for cooperation in the Caspian - a very important space for Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Russia, Iran ... Sensitivity and deep understanding of each other helped to develop a unified position."

The head of the Sustainable Development Department at the Academy of Public Administration of Azerbaijan, Chingiz Ismailov, believes that the issues of delimitation, use of resources and the construction of oil and gas pipelines will be resolved in the interests of the Caspian countries after the convention is signed. "As for security, we should not limit ourselves to the Caspian littoral states. It should concern the security of all countries and the Caspian region, the Caucasus and Central Asia. There are countries that regard the Caspian as a possible military theater. But Azerbaijan's priority in the Caspian is economic interests, therefore, Azerbaijan considers security in the context of cooperation of all the Caspian countries. They are all confident, they all pursue an independent policy. Why is the issue of some non-Caspian countries even raised? No country is interested in fueling tension," Chingiz Ismailov said.

He focused on the need to address environmental problems: "We must make joint efforts in the use of biological, recreational, hydrocarbon resources."

"If the point on the possibility of laying underwater oil and gas pipelines appears in the documents, it will be in the interests of all countries. Even if the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline, opposed by a number of the Caspian countries, is launched, in conditions of increasing U.S. sanctions towards Russia and Iran, it will give a new opportunity to connect Russia and Iran to the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline. It is a very interesting option of cooperating and solving economic problems. I think that all the Caspian states can take advantage of these opportunities," Chingiz Ismailov said.
The US Ambassador to India, Kenneth I Juster, today called on Union Minister Kiren Rijiju and discussed with him various security issues, including ways to jointly deal with threats posed by terrorism.

During the 30-minute meeting, Juster and other officials of the US Embassy here expressed the US' keenness to continue the ongoing homeland security dialogue with India for a concrete conclusion, an official statement said.

The Union minister of state for home and the US ambassador reiterated the strong resolve of India and the US to jointly counter the threats posed by terrorism to two of the world's biggest democracies as well as to world peace, the statement said.

"I'm happy to meet U.S. Ambassador to India Mr Kenneth I. Juster. We had a fruitful discussion on wide ranging security and other issues to strengthen Indo-US relations," Rijiju said in Twitter.

Juster tweeted: "Productive meeting with @KirenRijiju, Minister of State (Home), on the strategic importance of the #USIndia relationship and the excellent cooperation in the areas of law enforcement and security".

A home ministry spokesperson said various measures for strengthening Indo-US relations were discussed at the meeting.

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VHP and Bajrang Dal today staged a protest here demanding that the Telangana government immediately revoke the orders externing the head of Sri Peetham of Kakinada, Swami Paripoornananda, from Hyderabad city.

Police took several protesters into preventive custody and later released them, police sources said.

The seer was externed on July 10 for six months for allegedly making provocative speeches targeting other communities and their leaders.

BJP MP Bandaru Dattatreya, who took part in the protest, demanded that the state government come out with the reasons behing the externment.

"It is sheer vote bank politics of the state government. The ban on Swami Paripoornananda should be lifted immediately," Dattatreya said.

BJP MLC Ramchander Rao also participated in the protest.

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A warning has been issued for tourists and people residing in low-lying areas not to go near the Beas River as water is being released from the Pandoh Dam in Himachal Pradesh's Mandi district today, an official said.

Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) authorities have been releasing the water from Pandoh Dam since 9 am in view of the alarming situation of the silt in the reservoir as heavy rain has caused huge inflow in Beas River, the official said.

BBMB authorities have informed the district administration that the outflow would increase gradually and the release of water from the dam would continue till 3 pm tomorrow, he said adding tourists and the people residing in low-lying areas have been warned not to go near the river.

The district administration is keeping a close watch on the situation, he added.

Kangra Deputy Commissioner Sandeep Kumar said residents can call 1077 in case of an emergency.

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Remembering wife Sridevi on her 55th birth anniversary, Boney Kapoor today said that the void left by the actor could never be replaced, but her memories is something the family can live by.

Sridevi passed away on February 24 due to accidental drowning in her hotel bathtub in Dubai.

"Today this vacuum, this void cannot be replaced but the good wishes and the goodwill that she has left behind is something that we can live with... She is with me, in my memories...with my children," a teary-eyed Boney told reporters here.

"I feel the loss of her every second of my life, not just me even my children do. This is something that we have to live with. Unfortunately, she was snatched away from us sooner than anybody expected," he added.

The producer was in the capital, along with their daughters Janhvi and Khushi, for a retrospective on the veteran actor organised by the Films Division, Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

In the retrospective, Sridevi's films such as "Mom", "Lamhe", "English Vinglish", "Chandni" and "Sadma" will be open for showcase.

Boney thanked close friend and Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh, who was the guest of honour, for organising the two-day programme.

"I thank the Government of India, I and B Ministry for giving this honour to my wife. We are grateful and humbled by the kind of honour that has been bestowed on her by the ministry, by the Government of India and my friend Amar Singh ji," he said.

Boney said Sridevi may not be amongst her family and admirers today, but like a true artiste, the National Award-winning actor will continue to live throughout her legacy.

He praised the actor for her "remarkable journey" that was spread across different languages and spanned an almost 50 year-long career.

"She wanted to do a film in Bengali too. She was quite keen to do films in all the Indian languages," he said.

"I admire her sincerity, dedication and the understanding with which she played every character. Her biggest USP was that she never tried to act but would disappear in a character," he added.

Reminiscing his love story with Sridevi, Boney said it took him 10-12 years to win her heart.

"I fell in love with her when I saw her for the first time on the screen. It was one sided love since the beginning. I chased her in the sense that I went to Chennai to sign her but unfortunately she was not available at that time. I was in awe of her, her work.

"The aura that she had created around as an actor was something that I admired. Maybe, all these reasons contributed to me falling in head over heels for her," he said.

"My love story with Sridevi is an open book. Whatever matters of the heart that can be shared is all in the public domain. What is most close (about her) will remain in the heart. That's my support system for life," he added.

Boney said his children, Arjun and Anshula from first wife Mona, too have been his strength through these tough times.

"The way they have accepted Janhvi and Khushi... That has made me feel very relieved. My all four children are my strength," he said.

Veteran classical dancer and nominated Rajya Sabha MP Sonal Mansingh was the chief guest.

The event was also attended by former actor-MP Jaya Prada, a frequent co-star of Sridevi's.

Prada, who worked with the actor in over 16 films such as "Tohfa", "Mawaali", "Mundadugu" among others, said Sridevi's passing is a "great loss" to the industry.

Janhvi, who found it difficult to keep herself together through the reminiscences session, broke down in her father's arms while leaving the premises.

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The Delhi High Court today asked the Centre why it has not yet notified the law to prevent discrimination against HIV and AIDS patients despite the statute receiving Presidential assent in April last year.

A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice C Hari Shankar issued notice to the Ministry of Health and the National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) seeking their reply to a PIL which has sought immediate notification of the law to protect rights of the people living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (PLHIV).

"You make a law and are not notifying it. Why?" the court asked the ministry and listed the matter for hearing on November 26.

The petitioner, a Delhi university student, has claimed that due to delay in notifying the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) (Prevention and Control) Act, 2017, the rights guaranteed to PLHIV under the statute are being curtailed.

According to the plea by Shebani Rose Verma, filed through advocate Sija Nair Pal, there are over 2.1 million PLHIV in India giving it the dubious distinction of being home to the third largest population afflicted by this disease.

The Act, which received Presidential assent on April 20 last year, prohibits discrimination against PLHIV in accessing healthcare, getting jobs, renting accommodation or in admission to public and private educational institutions.

Violation of the Act by publishing information about PLHIV or advocating hatred against them would attract imprisonment ranging from three months to two years or a maximum fine of Rs one lakh or both, the petition has said.

Apart from immediate notification of the Act, the plea has also sought a direction to the Centre to submit a report on why there was a delay of more than a year in notifying the statute.

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Describing the UN Security Council reforms as a "big challenge", UN General Assembly President-elect Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces today said she will push for a dialogue to achieve consensus on the "divisive" issue and revitalise the process during her presidency.

Garces said the UNSC reforms had come up for discussion during her meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week along with other important issues such as climate change, the International Solar Alliance and South-South cooperation.

Asked about the long-pending UNSC reforms process at an event at the Indian Council of World Affairs here, Garces said, "I think that is a pending issue -- very contentious, very divisive. My role is going to be to listen carefully to the member states. Security Council reform is a member driven process, very complicated, and I will do my best to push for dialogue for consensus and revitalise the process itself."



Noting that it was a process that had taken more than 25 years, she said that it was "one of the big challenges" for the organisation.

"I will use my role as a facilitator, as convenor, as a bridge, and bring closer the different positions on this issue," said Garces, a former Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, who will be the fourth woman president of the UNGA.

India's Vijayalakshmi Pandit was first-ever woman president of the UNGA.

To queries about her meeting with the prime minister and their discussion on UN Security Council reform, she told reporters, "The prime minister is totally aware of all the challenges that the UN faces. Of course, one of pending issues is the Security Council reform process. I am in the process of appointing two co-facilitators to bring forward this issue."



India, along with Brazil, Germany, and Japan, is aspiring to become a permanent member of an expanded United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The countries, known as the G4, are supporting each other's bids for permanent membership of the UNSC.

Garces, who is on a visit here from August 10-14, said that during her meeting with Prime Minister Modi they discussed several issues of multilateral agenda and the seven priorities of her presidency, including gender equality, migration, the issue of peace and security from a preventive approach and the role of youth.

The president-elect of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) said she also discussed the revitalisation of the UNGA with Prime Minister Modi.

On the issue of combating terrorism and the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, she said, "I am totally aware that more than 20 years ago, India already proposed the need to establish a normative international framework on counter terrorism. The organisation and member states are still discussing the issue. It is not an easy issue. Sometimes it can be divisive."



Noting that there was no agreement on the very definition of terrorism, Garces said that more than ever there was a need in the present times to have a common understanding of terrorism because it was a global problem that needs to be addressed by the multilateral system.

Earlier, in her speech on 'Revitalisation of United Nations' at the ICWA, she said that multilateralism was "under threat" and there was a need to change that narrative.

"We see this in the current trade wars that threaten to undermine development and peace and security. We see this in the abandonment or neglect of global agreements and treaties. And we see this in the willingness, ill-intended or otherwise, to turn a blind eye to the plight of millions who suffer daily under the threat of violence, displacement, conflict," Garces said.

A return to unilateral decision-making and action, reluctance to fund and support bodies and agencies that have helped move the world towards a better direction are indicative of mistrust and misunderstanding of an increasingly 'go it alone' approach, she said.

Garces asserted that there was a need to change this narrative which would require willingness to acknowledge geopolitical developments and a "dare to change".

She said the UN or the UNGA cannot afford to remain static and must be "nimble", responsive and be adaptable to new global realities.

"I have committed to an open door presidency, working hand in hand with the member states and the UN secretary general and in alignment with the presidents of the ECOSOC and the Security Council," she said.

Garces said that in recent years, the UNGA has taken steps to ensure full transparency in its actions and decisions.

She said it was a challenge for the president-elect of the General Assembly to spend the very short transition period seeking resources for a trust fund to allow this essential office to operate.

"I am therefore grateful for the generosity of member states such as India to have provided support to the trust fund," she said.

Garces asserted that revitalisation of the UNGA would be done by teaming up with India and other friendly countries.

She said that as the president of the UNGA, she would put forward an agenda of DARE -- delivery, accountability, relevance and efficiency. She also hailed a global pact on migration, agreed upon earlier this year, which will be formally adopted during a conference in Morocco in December.

India's former permanent representative to the UN Asoke Mukerji and former Indian envoy to Pakistan T C A Raghavan were also present at the event.

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Rains pounded several parts of Kerala today, triggering landslips and compounding the woes of people already reeling under unprecedented floods and downpour which have claimed 39 lives so far, officials said.

Landslides were reported from various places in Malappuram, Kozhikode, Idukki and Wayanad districts, as nearly one lakh people rendered homeless due to the deluge took refuge in hundreds of relief camps.

In the picturesque Wayanad district alone, over 14,000 people have taken shelter in 124 relief camps, the state's disaster control room said.

Some respite appeared on the the horizon for the Idduki hill district, ravaged by floods, with the water in the Idukki dam receding to 2,397.58 ft, alleviating concerns about floods in fresh downstream areas, particularly in Ernakulam district. The current level does not warrant issuing any warning, they said.

The weatherman has issued a fresh warning asking fishermen not to venture into the sea, saying the coasts of Kerala and Lakshadweep may experience winds packing speeds of 35 to 45 kmph, sometimes going up to 60 kmph.

Large parts of the state known for its verdant valleys and plantations looked like a massive swamp, with houses flattened and marooned, and crops destroyed.

Rolling down menacingly from upper reaches, flood water wrecked a large number of homes in these districts.

Distraught victims could be seen gathering utensils, cots and other belongings from the debris before shifting to safer places.

The massive deluge has also wrecked the state's travel and tourism industry and seriously impacted its plantation sector.

Just as the tourism industry was recovering from the cancellation of bookings at hotels and resorts following the Nipah outbreak, heavy rains and floods came as a huge blow, say industry sources.

The state's tourism department was all set to organise the famed snake boat races, which have mesmerised visitors for decades, by giving it an new format-- Champion's Boat League (CBL)-- on the lines of the Indian Premier League (IPL) from August 11 this year. The event has now been postponed.

"We will find a new date. The government is currently busy with relief and rescue operations due to the floods and landslids in various parts of the state," Director of Kerala Tourism P Bala Kiran told PTI.

The Responsible Tourism Mission under the tourism department had drawn up a programme for organsing feasts at countryside homes for tourists during the onam festival next week. The flood-hit areas are now certain to be excluded, sources said.

According to E M Najeeb, senior vice president of the Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO),70-80 per cent of hotel bookings in scenic Idukki, Munnar and Kumarakkom, the most preferred tourist destinations, have been cancelled.

The blooming of 'Neelakurinji' flowers in the hills of Munnar, an event that occurs once in 12 years and is eagerly awaited, has also been affected by the rains.

Idukki produces over a dozen varieties of spices, including pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and turmeric, besides many others, and the destruction has been widespread. Spices board sources 35-40 per cent cardamom and pepper crops have been destroyed.

According to Ajit B K, the secretary of the Association of Planters of Kerala, the tea, coffee, cardamom and rubber planters have suffered losses of about Rs 600 crore so far.

Rampaging flood waters have wreaked havoc with crops in an estimated 3171 hectares.

Tourist town of Munnar in Idukki received the highest rainfall of 11 cm, followed by Vadakara in Kozhikode 9 cm and Mananthavady in Wayanad 8 cm. Kannur and Palakkad also received heavy rainfall, weather office said.

With heavy rains forecast over the next few days, fears mounted over rise in the water level of Periyar, Bharathapuzha and Kabini rivers.

As the rain-fed Pampa rose menacingly, the authorities asked Ayyappa devotees not to travel to the hillock shrine in Sabarimala in Pathanamthitta district.

Besides Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the shrine, the district authorities and police have issued alerts to devotees and decided to stop them at various points till the water receded.

A large number of pilgrims are flocking to the famed Lord Ayyappa temple as it will be opened for the 'niraputhari' ritual and festivities of 'Chingam' this week.

The Pampa river flowing on the foothills of Sabarimala breached its banks at several places, damaging buildings and shops, flooding pathways and uprooting electric poles.

Heavy rains in the catchment areas close to the Sabarigiri hydroelectric project and the opening of the shutters of the Pampa and Anathode dams caused the flooding, authorities said.

The sluice gates of Moozhiyar and Kakki, the other two dams in Pathanamthitta district, were also opened after the water level rose sharply.

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The Police Control Room van of the Delhi Police doubled up as a labour room recently when a woman delivered baby in it en route to hospital in north Delhi's Burari, the police said today.

On August 12, a PCR van stationed at Burari received a call about an ailing woman in Satya Vihar, Burari.

The staff comprising assistant sub-inspector Jitender, and head constable Mahender, rushed to the spot and reached there soon after.

On reaching there, they found a 22-year-old woman in advanced labour pain. The staff immediately shifted the lady to the PCR van and sped away from there for hospital.

On the way, in between Wazirabad and Majnu-Ka-Tila, they noticed that the woman was in acute pain and was close to delivering the baby, the police said.

They informed another PCR van, having base at ISBT in which a woman constable was available.

The staff of the other vehicle comprising assistant sub-inspectors Pitam Singh and Virender, and woman constable Komal, also reached the first van.

With the help of constable Komal, the woman in labour delivered a girl child and later they were admitted to Aruna Asaf Ali Hospital where they are doing fine, said SD Mishra, Deputy Commissioner of Police (PCR).

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A 24-year-old woman was allegedly raped repeatedly over six months by a man following which she became pregnant, police said today.

The woman was raped over six months by Shoib, who also made a video of the act. When she became pregnant, the accused's family tried to force her to abort the child, Circle Officer Harish Bhadoria said.

Later, she revealed about the incident to her family members.

Yesterday, a case was registered against Shoib, his father Badru Hasan, his mother Nagma and his brother Arif, the CO said.

The police were searching for the accused, he said.

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Yellow Tie Hospitality today said it will invest USD 5 million (around Rs 35 crore) to open 25 stores of UK-based quick service restaurant, Wrapchic in the next three years in India.

The company, which has acquired the master franchise rights of the Indian burrito brand, said it has opened the first outlet in Chennai.

Wrapchic Founder Mahesh Raikar said the food industry in the country has been booming in the recent times, which provides a great opportunity for expansion.

"We plan to expand to 10 other countries by 2020 and expansion in India will be a pivotal point for our company," Raikar added.

Yellow Tie Hospitality Founder and CEO Karan Tanna said Wrapchic has done very well amongst the local population of UK and Dubai.

"We are planning to invest five million USD in the next three years with 25 stores at PAN India level across malls and corporate parks. We are very optimistic to grow Wrapchic not only in India but across Asia," he added.

Yellow Tie Hospitality has eight brands, including Genuine Broaster Chicken, Dhadoom and Just Falafel, in its portfolio under franchise model.

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Spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrooz Kamalvandi said that remaining in the nuclear deal is better than withdrawing from it.

"The impact of sanctions cannot be ignored, but if Iran stays in the JCPOA, the sanctions, both politically or economically speaking, will not be as effective as the previous round," the spokesman said.

Kamalvandi noted that many small and medium-sized countries could not do business with Iran due to European Union and United Nations sanctions, but this time they are able to cooperate despite the US pressures,he said in an interview with ISNA.

"As our countrys leaders have vowed we should keep fighting on this battlefield to make the Americans realize that the sanctions will not succeed," Mehr cited the spokesman as saying.

"I personally believe that remaining in the JCPOA is better than leaving it," Kamalvandi stressed.
Former Congress President Sonia Gandhi and party leader Oscar Fernandes today moved the Delhi High Court challenging the reopening of their assessments by the Income tax Department regarding the Young Indian-National Herald transactions.

The separate petitions filed by Gandhi and Fernandes are listed for hearing tomorrow before a bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and A K Chawla.

A similar plea filed earlier by Congress President Rahul Gandhi is also listed for hearing tomorrow before the same bench.

The court had on August 8, listed Rahul's plea for hearing tomorrow after Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Tushar Mehta had opposed issuance of any interim order by the court.

The bench had rejected the oral plea of Rahul's lawyers to prohibit the media from reporting or publishing the court proceedings.

According to the tax department, Rahul's assessment for the years 2011-12 was decided to be reopened as he did not disclose that he was a director in the company -- Young Indian Pvt Ltd (YI) -- since 2010.

As per the department, the shares Rahul has in YI would lead him to have an income of Rs 154 crore and not about Rs 68 lakh, as was assessed by it earlier.

The department has in the instant case applied section 147 of the Income Tax Act, which provides for bringing under the tax net any income which has escaped assessment in the original assessment.

Rahul's lawyers had said the query put to their client during the scrutiny of his assessment was whether he had any interest in any company or sister concern in which he was a director. He had replied in the negative as YI was a Section 25 company, a non-profit entity, and hence no director would have any interest in it.

The tax department has already issued a demand notice for Rs 249.15 crore to YI for the assessment year 2011-12.

YI, which was incorporated in November 2010 with a capital of Rs 50 lakh, had acquired almost all the shareholding of Associated Journal Ltd (AJL), the owner of the National Herald newspaper.

The IT department's move followed its probe on a complaint alleging that the Gandhis had misappropriated AJL's assets while transferring their shares to the newly formed Young Indian.

BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, in a private criminal complaint filed before a trial court, had accused Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and others of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by paying just Rs 50 lakh, through which the YI had obtained the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore which the AJL owed to the Congress party.

All the accused, also including Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda, have denied the allegations levelled against them.

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By Abhinav Ramnarayan and Lawrence WhiteLONDON (Reuters) - Barclays has begun shifting direct ownership of its French, German and Spanish branches from a British-based entity to its Irish bank, according to sources with direct knowledge of the plans, ahead of Britain's exit from the European Union.The move shows Barclays putting its Brexit contingency plans into action, in common with other banks which are not waiting for the outcome of negotiations over how financial services will operate after Britain leaves the EU in March. The British bank outlined plans to expand its EU-based Irish ...
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Shares in Bayer plunged more than 10 percent to their lowest in almost two years after a California jury ordered the German company's subsidiary Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages last week.A jury found Monsanto liable in a lawsuit alleging that the company's glyphosate-based weedkillers, including its Roundup brand, caused cancer. The case against Monsanto, which Bayer acquired this year for $63 billion, is the first of more than 5,000 similar lawsuits across the United States.Monsanto said on Friday that it would appeal against the verdict. "Today's decision does ...
By Kevin Yao and Fang ChengBEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese banks extended 1.45 trillion yuan ($210.69 billion) in net new yuan loans in July, above analysts' expectations, as a growing trade battle with the United States threatens to pile more pressure on the slowing economy.China's policymakers have been pumping in more cash to encourage banks to lend to struggling firms, but there are signs that lenders are turning cautious as defaults rise, complicating efforts to channel money to sectors that need it.Moreover, some China watchers fear Beijing's shift in focus to supporting growth may spell a ...
By Kevin Yao and Fang ChengBEIJING (Reuters) - China's new yuan loans exceeded expectations in July while growth of broad money supply rebounded to a five-month high, as the central bank sought to step up policy support for the economy amid a growing trade battle with the United States.China's policymakers have been pumping in more cash to encourage banks to lend to struggling firms, but there are signs that lenders are turning cautious as defaults rise, complicating efforts to channel money to sectors that need it."New loans exceeded expectations due to policy support," said E Yongjian, an ...
By Kevin Yao and Fang ChengBEIJING (Reuters) - China's new yuan loans exceeded expectations in July while growth of broad money supply rebounded to a five-month high, as the central bank sought to step up policy support for the economy amid a growing trade battle with the United States.Chinese banks extended 1.45 trillion yuan ($211 billion)in net new loans in July, data from the People's Bank of China showed on Monday, in line with that released by China's banking and insurance regulator on Saturday.Analysts polled by Reuters had predicted new yuan loans of 1.2 trillion yuan, down sharply ...
By Muyu Xu and Josephine MasonBEIJING (Reuters) - A vessel carrying U.S. soybeans was unloading its cargo worth at least $23 million at the Chinese port of Dalian on Monday, becoming one of the first shipments to incur hefty new import duties as the trade row deepens between Beijing and Washington. The docking of the vessel after five weeks anchored off China's coast ended long-running speculation over the fate of the cargo, which had captured public attention.China's state grains stockpiler Sinograin confirmed in a fax to Reuters it will pay the additional 25 percent import tariff on its ...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc said on Monday that Jud Linville, the head of global cards and consumer services, is leaving the company as part of a reorganization of executives in its global consumer banking businesses.David Chubak, currently global retail banking head, will also oversee global branded cards and consumer lending, the bank said. Anand Selva, the current head of consumer banking in Asia, will become head of U.S. consumer banking, including branded cards, digital banking and wealth management.The changes were described in a memo from Stephen Bird, chief executive of ...
By David HenryNEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc restructured its consumer bank on Monday, elevating one executive and triggering the departure of another, as the third-biggest U.S. bank moved to improve results.The changes will "harmonize" Citigroup's consumer business with operating models of units in Asia and Mexico that have produced better results, Stephen Bird, chief executive of Citigroup's global consumer banking business, said in a memo seen by Reuters.With the new structure, Jud Linville, who had been head of global cards and consumer services and a member of Citigroup's operating ...
BERLIN (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Monday that Turkey's economic situation was causing great concern and that Ankara could do more to improve diplomatic ties with both the United States and Germany which would also ease its economic woes. "Yes, the developments that are currently going on in Turkey are causing great concern," Maas said during a news conference in Berlin when asked to comment on Turkey's economic situation.Turkey's relations with United States and Germany have been strained by its decision to arrest several citizens from both countries. Maas said ...
Azerbaijani army serviceman was wounded as a result of ceasefire violation by Armenian armed forces on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in the direction of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic yesterday, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said.

The soldier - Samit Israfilov - has immediately been provided with medical care, there is no threat to his life.

The Azerbaijani ministry said that Armenia is purposefully continuing to tense the situation in the Nakhchivan direction and stressed that the responsibility for what is happening on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border lies entirely with the military-political leadership of Armenia.
By Saeed Azhar, Marwa Rashad and Pamela BarbagliaDUBAI/RIYADH/LONDON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) has shown no interest so far in financing Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk's proposed $72 billion deal to take the U.S. electric car maker private, despite acquiring a minority stake in the company this year, two sources familiar with the matter said.The 47-year-old investor and engineer stunned financial markets on Tuesday when he said on Twitter that he was considering a take-private deal for Tesla, an auto manufacturing pioneer that developed the world's first luxury ...
By Ron BoussoLONDON (Reuters) - The head of Royal Dutch Shell's global refining operations Lori Ryerkerk will step down at the end of the month after five years in a job where she oversaw a vast overhaul of the business, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.Ryerkerk will be succeeded by Robin Mooldijk, who currently serves as Vice President Manufacturing Americas, responsible for the Anglo-Dutch company's refining and chemical plants in the United States, Canada and Argentina.Ryerkerk played a key part in the transformation of Shell's refining operations in recent years into a major ...
By Poppy McPherson and Shoon NaingYANGON (Reuters) - A fire broke out in a hospital in Myanmar's largest city of Yangon late on Monday, forcing staff to evacuate patients on stretchers and in wheelchairs, rescuers said.There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries from the blaze that started in a room in Yangon General Hospital's cancer department, a fire department official said.Smoke rose from the colonial-era building in the city centre. Emergency crews removed medical equipment as staff waited in pitch-black corridors in other parts of the hospital after a power cut.About 60 ...
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan's Foxconn, the world's top contract electronics maker and an Apple supplier, posted surprisingly lower quarterly net profit on Monday, extending a downward streak to a second quarter in a row. The tepid results from Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, underline a muddy outlook for sales in a plateauing global smartphone market ahead of the traditionally busy second half of the year when new products are launched. Apple has projected above-consensus revenue for the northern hemisphere autumn, when it typically launches new iPhone models. ...
(Reuters) - Tata Steel Ltd's quarterly net profit more than doubled, but still came in well below market expectations, hurt by rising expenses and a one-off charge.India's biggest steel producer by assets said it took a one-time charge of 3.44 billion rupees on a consolidated basis. The bulk of this came from an exceptional charge of 3.35 billion rupees at its Indian business, mainly due to a provision made for additional interest on differential royalty paid on coal.Net profit was 19.34 billion rupees ($276 million) in the three months to the end of June, compared to a profit of 9.21 billion ...
By Nidhi VermaNEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Oil Corp.'s planned $5.10 billion expansion of its unit Chennai Petroleum, partly owned by Iran, is not expected to be hit by U.S. sanctions against Tehran, Chairman Sanjiv Singh said on Monday.Chennai Petroleum plans to invest up to 356.98 billion rupees to replace its 20,000 barrel per day (bpd) Nagapattinam refinery in Southern Tamil Nadu state with a 180,000 bpd plant, it informed stock exchanges last year.Naftiran Intertrade, the Swiss subsidiary of National Iranian Oil Company, holds a 15.4 per cent stake in Chennai Petroleum, while IOC has ...
(Reuters) - Indian information technology company Infosys Ltd said on Monday it would open a software development centre in the West Bengal, with an investment of about 1 billion rupees ($14.28 million).The first phase of construction on the 525,000-square feet facility will be able to accommodate 1,000 employees, the country's second-biggest software services exporter said.The first phase is expected to be completed within 15 months from the date of obtaining regulatory clearances, the company said.($1 = 70.0150 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; Editing by ...
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian Oil Corp's plans to expand its Chennai refinery are not likely to be threatened by the impending U.S. sanctions against Iran, Chairman Sanjiv Singh said on Monday.IOC wants to continue buying oil from Iran due to better terms and is also interested in getting into a long-term deal to buy U.S. oil, Singh said.He said the current sharp fall in the rupee poses challenges and could push up retail fuel prices.The rupee hit a record low of 69.86 per dollar earlier in the session. (Reporting by Nidhi Verma in NEW DELHI; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)(This story has not ...
By Sam NusseyTOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese discount retailer Don Quijote Holdings Co Ltd said it would be interested in buying Seiyu if Walmart Inc puts the Japanese supermarket chain up for sale, as it expands its presence in the domestic market.This comes after business daily Nikkei reported last month that the U.S. retail giant would offload its Japanese unit. "If it came up for sale we would be interested and it is attractive," Don Quijote Chief Executive Koji Ohara told a news briefing on Monday. Walmart has struggled to replicate the success of its low-price model with Seiyu, which has ...
The United States has to learn that it cant achieve results with sanctions, threats and pressure on Turkey, the Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, reiterating that Ankara is ready to find to a solution to the ongoing row through dialogue and diplomacy.

"Its impossible for us to accept these sanctions and threats. Our expectation from the U.S. is to remain loyal to our traditional friendship and our NATO alliance," the minister said.

"The U.S. is in a confusion. Should we resolve this problem with Turkey or should we maintain it until November elections?'" Hurriyet cited Cavusoglu as saying.

He stressed that the U.S. should learn that they will not achieve any results with sanctions while calling for more dialogue and diplomacy.

"Turkey has done enough to repair ties," the foreign minister said, underlining that the culture of compromise requires both sides steps for resolving questions.

Cavusoglu also recalled that the U.S. has not taken any concrete step on Turkeys extradition request for Fethullah Gulen.
By Kane WuHONG KONG (Reuters) - Private equity firm KKR & Co said it will acquire a 60 percent stake in India's Ramky Enviro Engineers Ltd (REEL) for $530 million, adding it was one of India's largest buyouts.KKR will buy the stake via a combination of primary and secondary investments, in a deal that gives the waste management company an enterprise value of $925 million.The deal comes at a time when the country is focused on reducing pollution and improving sanitation infrastructure via its Swachh Bharat (Clean India) Mission - an initiative launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.The main ...
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia is seeking to repossess a $35 million private jet owned by financier Low Taek Jho as part of investigations into a multi-billion dollar scandal at state fund 1MDB, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Sunday.The financier, also known as Jho Low, bought the Bombardier Global 5000 jet for $35.4 million in 2010 using funds allegedly taken from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has said. Authorities in Malaysia and the United States are investigating how billions of dollars went missing from 1MDB. The DOJ says over $4.5 ...
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia is seeking to repossess a $35 million private jet owned by financier Low Taek Jho as part of investigations into a multi-billion dollar scandal at state fund 1MDB, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has said.The financier, also known as Jho Low, bought the Bombardier Global 5000 jet for $35.4 million in 2010 using funds allegedly taken from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has said. Authorities in Malaysia and the United States are investigating how billions of dollars went missing from 1MDB. The DOJ says over $4.5 ...
(Reuters) - Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has expressed support for funding a deal that could take the electric car maker private.Musk last week shocked investors with his announcement on Twitter to take Tesla private for $72 billion, but provided no details on funding except that it was "secured". "Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private," Musk wrote in a blog post https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-taking-tesla-private?redirect=no. (Reporting ...
(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has been pushing to take electric carmaker Tesla private in talks with Chief Executive Elon Musk dating back nearly two years and also backed the deal last week, Musk said in a blog post on Monday.Musk last week shocked investors with his announcement on Twitter that he was looking to take Tesla private at $420 a share, valuing the company at $72 billion. He provided no details on funding except that it was "secured". "Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla ...
By Supantha Mukherjee(Reuters) - Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Monday he was still in talks with potential backers of a possible buyout of the company, including Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, but had not completed securing the funding.In a blog post, Musk said the Saudi fund had been pushing to take the electric carmaker private in talks dating back nearly two years and also backed the deal last week.The post fleshed out the Silicon Valley billionaire's shock announcement on Aug. 7 that he was considering taking the company private and had "secured" funding. But Tesla shares ...
(Reuters) - Netflix Inc Chief Financial Officer David Wells will step down after eight years in the role, the video streaming company said on Monday.Wells will remain with Netflix until his successor is found, a search that will consider both internal and external candidates, Netflix said."Personally, I intend my next chapter to focus more on philanthropy and I like big challenges but I'm not sure yet what that looks like," Wells said.Wells joined Netflix in 2004, two years after the company went public, and was responsible for content operations and strategic planning. He was made vice ...
By Christopher JohnsonLONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices slipped on Monday as trade tensions and troubled emerging markets dented the outlook for fuel demand, though U.S. sanctions against Iran pointed towards tighter supply ahead.Benchmark Brent crude oil was down 10 cents at $72.74 a barrel by 0850 GMT. U.S. light crude was 15 cents lower at $67.48 a barrel.Turkey's financial crisis has raised the risk of contagion throughout emerging economies, dragging down South Africa's rand, Argentina and Mexico's pesos as well as the Russian rouble. It has also dented emerging market stocks while curbing ...
By Henning GloysteinSINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices dipped on Monday as rising trade tensions and economic woes in emerging markets dented the outlook for fuel demand growth, but U.S. sanctions against Iran still pointed towards tighter supply.Front-month Brent crude oil futures were at $72.57 per barrel at 0702 GMT, down 24 cents, or 0.3 percent, from their last close.U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $67.43 a barrel, down 20 cents, or 0.3 percent from their last settlement.Traders said the demand outlook for oil was dimming due to ongoing trade disputes between the ...
By Stephanie KellyNEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices edged lower on Monday as troubled emerging markets and trade tensions dented the outlook for fuel demand, though U.S. sanctions against Iran could mean tighter supply ahead.Brent crude futures fell 14 cents to $72.67 a barrel by 11:18 a.m. EDT (1518 GMT). U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell 29 cents to $67.34 a barrel.Futures have struggled to find a footing since Wednesday, after they fell about 3 percent as a trade dispute between the United States and China escalated further and after Chinese import data showed a slowdown in ...
Turkey has reached the final stage of preparations for its new military operations in the neighboring Syria, the countrys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

"We are at the last stage of preparations for increasing the number of regions in Syria, where we have provided stability through the Euphrates Shield and the Olive Branch operations," Anadolu agency cited the Turkish president as saying.

According to him, with God's help, the country's army will liberate new territories in the near future and bring security there. Erdogan added that 250,000 people have returned to the places, where Turkey had held its military operations.
By Christopher JohnsonLONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices slipped on Monday as trade tensions and troubled emerging markets dented the outlook for fuel demand, though U.S. sanctions against Iran pointed towards tighter supply ahead.Benchmark Brent crude oil was down 10 cents at $72.71 a barrel by 1130 GMT. U.S. light crude fell 30 cents to $67.33.Turkey's financial crisis has raised the risk of contagion throughout emerging economies, dragging down South Africa's rand, Argentina and Mexico's pesos as well as the Russian rouble. It has also dented emerging market stocks while curbing growth and the ...
LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC on Monday forecast lower demand for its crude next year as rivals pump more and said top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, eager to avoid a return of oversupply, had cut production.In a monthly report, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said the world will need 32.05 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude from its 15 members in 2019, down 130,000 bpd from last month's forecast.OPEC said its oil output in July rose to 32.32 million bpd, above the demand forecast, despite a surprise cut in output by Saudi Arabia just weeks after OPEC and its allies had agreed ...
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Salzgitter, Germany's No.2 steelmaker after Thyssenkrupp, on Monday warned of a rise in imports into the European Union, a consequence of U.S. tariffs that forces suppliers to sell their products elsewhere.Despite a strong first half, which saw pre-tax profit nearly double to 198.6 million euros ($225.97 million), Salzgitter stuck by its financial guidance for the current year, citing "uncertainty from trade policies and their possible impact".The group still expects sales of more than 9 billion euros and pre-tax profit of 250 to 300 million euros in 2018.Shares in the ...
By Ju-min ParkSEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is considering suspending operations at one of its mobile phone manufacturing plants in China due to slumping sales and rising labour costs, the Electronic Times reported on Monday.Samsung might stop producing mobile phones this year at Tianjin Samsung Telecom Technology, located in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, the South Korean newspaper said, describing the move under consideration as a potential withdrawal.The world's biggest smartphone maker said on Monday that nothing had been decided on the fate of its Tianjin ...
By Noel RandewichSAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Short sellers betting against Tesla Inc trimmed their exposure to the electric car maker's stock on Monday after Chief Executive Elon Musk gave new information about his proposal to take the company private.Data showed traders continuing to reduce bets against Tesla after short interest on Friday dipped to 26.9 percent of the company's float, the lowest since June, according to S3 Partners, a financial analytics firm."I'm seeing a little bit of covering, but it's not indicative of a change in conviction. It's more just people cutting a little fat ...
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese officials have been mostly measured and moderate in their response to U.S. President Donald Trump's ratcheting up of a trade war with Beijing in recent weeks through his announcement of a series of punitive tariffs. They have generally avoided adding to tensions, allowing the Communist Party's official media to make the most bellicose comments. But the mood on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai is a little less accepting. Reuters talked to a cross section of 50 people, mainly from the two cities, about how concerned they are about the trade war, what ...
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore-listed commodity trader Wilmar International Ltd posted a five-fold rise in second-quarter net profit, helped by its oilseeds and grains segment that benefited from higher volumes and crush margins.The company, whose top shareholders include U.S. agricultural trader Archer Daniels Midland Co, reported a net profit of $316.4 million for the three months ended June, compared with $59 million a year earlier.Wilmar posted a core net profit, which excludes non-operating items, of $351.8 million, compared with $36.1 million a year earlier.The company's oilseeds and ...
Kishore Biyani-led Future Retail could close a deal with a foreign investor in the next two months. The Group is reportedly in talks with Amazon to sell its 10 per cent stake to the latter. India doesn't allow overseas investment in multi-brand retail, but Amazon can invest in a retail company through its investment arm, the Economic Times reported today.

Amazon's investment arm is registered as a foreign portfolio investor that can acquire up to 10 per cent in an Indian entity as a single firm, the report said.

"Ultimately, it's all about how formidable we all are as players get bigger and you need alliance. We can't sell more than 10 per cent and foreign portfolio investor (FPI) is the only route available. It should take 2-3 months for any deal to fructify," the business daily quoted Biyani as saying.

Earlier in May, it was reported that Amazon did not want Future Retail to continue with its e-commerce expansion while it was looking at an exclusive tie-up.

In its Q4 FY18 investor presentation, Future Retail claimed to have 1,035 retail stores spanning 14.5 million sq.ft spread out across India in 321 cities. It had also seen over 340 million customer footfalls in FY17, a number that could only have grown further in the last fiscal.

Future Retail owns Big Bazaar, EasyDay, Foodhall, Nilgiri's and Foodworld, among others.

This could be Amazon's strategy to kill future competition as it is already facing a stiff fight from Flipkart, especially after the recent Walmart deal. India's e-commerce market is projected to grow at a compounded rate of 21 per cent over the next decade to USD 202 billion.

Last week, Future Retail posted a 3.56 per cent rise in net profit at Rs 153.12 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2018. According to a regulatory filing by Future Retail, total income during the April-June quarter stood at Rs 4,541.94 crore. It was Rs 4,707.44 crore in the year ago period.
BJP leaders have often called the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY), launched on April 8, 2015, as the flagship scheme for employment generation in India but the reality on ground seems different. An RTI query has revealed that under this much-touted scheme, over 90 per cent of the loans are small loans (up to Rs 50,000), which, as experts believe, are not enough to create substantial jobs.

The Mudra scheme was aimed at fulfilling Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 2014 election campaign promise of providing jobs to youngsters. PM Modi had himself said during 'No Confidence Motion' brought in by the Opposition that "we gave loans to 13 crore youngsters through the Mudra scheme". He said this in Parliament recently, while responding to Congress President Rahul Gandhi's charge that the government has failed to fulfil the promise of creating one crore jobs. IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had also said in November 2017 that the BJP-led government had provided "loan worth Rs 4-lakh crore to 80 million people". "Even if each employed at least one person, 40 million jobs created automatically".

During the launch of the programme, Finance Minister Arun Jaitely in his Budget speech in 2015 had said the scheme would provide loans in three categories -- up to Rs 50,000 is given under sub-scheme 'Shishu'; between Rs 50,000 and 5 lakh under the sub-scheme 'Kishore'; and between 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh under sub-scheme 'Tarun'.

Loans taken under the Mudra scheme do not require collaterals as they are aimed at boosting the confidence of small businesses, and young, educated and skilled workers to enable them to become first generation entrepreneurs.

Considering these claims, India Today filed an RTI query to the Department of Financial Services, asking total loans availed and total amount disbursed under the Mudra Scheme to date? Other questions included loans availed up to Rs 50,000; between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh; Rs 1 lakh and Rs 2 lakh; Rs 2 lakh and Rs 5 lakh; and Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh. The RTI also sought to know how many people availed loans up to Rs 10 lakh and how many of them had repaid to date?

Interestingly, the RTI reply received on August 8 revealed a majority of such loans, around 93 per cent, fell in the lowest category of Rs 50,000. Nearly 13.5 crore loans have been disbursed so far, of which around 93 per cent (12.2 crore) are 'Shishu', which is up to Rs 50,000, said the RTI reply. "Such micro loans are only useful for small businesses like single cattle dairy farmers or some 'thala wala' but it will not be sufficient to create substantial employment," Economist Ajit Ranade said.

Also, over 1.4 crore loans disbursed under the Mudra scheme were between Rs 50,000 and Rs 5 lakh (Kishore category) and over 19.6 lakh loans were over the size of Rs 5 lakh. This means that the 'sizable loans' only formed 1.45 per cent of the total loans given under the scheme. The department of finance, however, chose not reveal the number of individuals who received the maximum Rs 10-lakh loans under the scheme. Also, no data was revealed regarding total money disbursed and loans repaid.

(Edited by Manoj Sharma)
In what appears to be a big relief to CNG car owners, Indraprastha Gas Limited (IGL) is planning to come up with 50 more CNG pumps across Delhi-NCR. This is likely to be done by February 2019. As mentioned by an official, the new CNG stations are to come up across Delhi, Noida, Greater Noida, Rewari and Ghaziabad. These stations are expected to have more than 150 dispensing units and will bring down the queues across Delhi-NCR significantly, as mentioned in a report in Hindustan Times.

This decision comes after IGL told the Supreme Court-mandated EPCA - Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority - that it is looking to take up several measures to reduce CNG queues across the city and the nearby regions. The apex court directed the gas distributor to set up more stations to meet the growing demand.

Most CNG stations witness serpentine queues at any given point of the day. At present, there are 45 CNG-filling stations in Delhi-NCR. Some of the most crowded ones are the CGO Complex, Sarai Kale Khan and Nizamuddin. Vehicle owners from neighbouring regions also come to Delhi for CNG, which only adds to the queue. Hence, to increase capacity of existing stations, IGL is installing additional 40 to 50 dispensers by August-end.

IGL the sole supplier of CNG in the city has been facing problems when it comes to acquiring land for setting up of more stations. Hence, the supplier has also introduced a new model where people can offer their plot/land to set up stations.

An official spokesperson said, "Since acquiring land takes a lot of time, the gas utility has come up with 'Dealer Owned Dealer Operated' model asking land owners for setting up CNG stations on their plots. Until now, seven such allocations have been done in the region." The IGL has received applications from both Delhi and Greater Noida for the same scheme.

The gas supplier is also in talks with Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) to set up CNG-filling stations in their terminals and depots for the public.

(Edited by Anwesha Madhukalya)
The 5th Caspian Summit was held in Aktau yesterday, during which the heads of the Caspian states signed the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, a document that had been prepared for 22 years.

Vestnik Kavkaza asked the Azerbaijani experts about the main results of the historic summit and changes the Caspian region will face.

The Deputy Director General of the Trend information agency, political commentator Arzu Nagiyev, stressed that the Convention, signed in Aktau yesterday, is indeed the Constitution of the Caspian, as the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev said.

"At the summit, decisions were made on two main issues. The first one was the non-presence of military bases and military vessels of non-littoral states on the territory of the Caspian Sea without consent of five states. The second issue was territorial, because in the Soviet times, 10 miles of fishing water were divided between Iran and the Soviet Union, and now they are assigned to five states. In addition, there are neutral areas," the expert said.

Perhaps somebody in the West does not like the agreement, Arzu Nagiyev suggested, but the agreement between the five countries opens up very broad economic opportunities for Azerbaijan. In addition, it will determine the new standard in the Azerbaijani sector, in particular, in the issues of environmental protection and use of natural resources. According to him, the Convention plays a progressive role for Azerbaijan, since all future economic projects related to the sea will directly concern Azerbaijan.

"Now we can say that the issue is solved to some extent, because the heads of all states have expressed their opinion, including the Azerbaijani president, who said that it opens up great opportunities for the implementation of the new economic project. The Turkmen leader spoke on Turkmen gas, the Iranian leader - about biological resources and the non-presence of non-littoral states. The Russian leader said that military intervention and such moments are excluded due to the fact that all issues will be resolved between the five states. I think that Kazakhstan holds a similar opinion," the expert said.

"Now there are five countries to decide the fate of the sea. They have a certain document that can be referred to," the expert concluded.

Head of the expert council of Baku Network, Elkhan Alasgarov, also described the Aktau summit as a historic event.

First, according to the expert, a lot of moments were settled, including the status of the Caspian: it is neither a lake nor a sea, but has a special status. "Second, economicopportunities, because Azerbaijan is rich in hydrocarbons. The third point is the prospects of a gas and oil pipeline in the Caspian Sea zone that will be carried out taking into account environmental problems. The fourth is the biological resources of the Caspian Sea. The signing of the Convention will be followed by the strengthened coordination in the matter of preserving the biological resources of the Caspian Sea," Elkhan Aleskerov explained.

He suggested that a joint economic activity program will be developed in this zone in the future, recalling that Azerbaijan has built a transport and communication policy, according to which Baku connects North-South and West-East routes, and the Caspian is the bridge from which these cargoes are transported.

"That is, there are a lot of points, for example, tourism issues, introduction of cruise flights. I think the summit will give impetus to more reasonable joint use of those opportunities provided by the Caspian Sea," the head of the expert council of Baku Network noted.

The expert noted that the most urgent issue will be economic cooperation in the Caspian zone. "The signing of the joint document is an impetus to the creation of a joint economic bloc. Second, joint ventures, joint activities in the sphere of conservation of biological resources," he stressed.

Elkhan Alasgarov drew attention to the fact that signing a joint declaration is an element of trust. "Each country had some mistrust in its relations with other countries. And I think that having found a foothold in the Caspian, these countries will trust each other, because the Caspian unites us. It must not separate us and this summit was an obvious evidence of it," the expert concluded.
The rupee tumbled 79 paise against the US dollar to its lifetime low of 69.62 in early trade as Turkey's financial turmoil fuelled fears contagion might spread to other emerging markets. The currency's previous record low stood at 69.13 on July 20, 2018.

Increased demand for the US currency from importers and banks amid fresh foreign fund outflows mainly hit the rupee sentiment, forex traders said.

On Friday too, the rupee had lost 15 paise to end at 68.83 against the resurgent dollar.

"Emerging market currencies have declined sharply as Turkish lira has fallen to all time low level after US president Donald Trump imposed sanctions and tariffs on Turkey. The crisis is unlikely to resolve anytime soon. An absence of aggressive intervention by the RBI has also hurt the rupee. Market is nervous ahead of India's CPI data due later today. The dollar has strengthened to multi-month high on expectations of aggressive interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve in coming months as the US economy is experiencing strong growth momentum. Hence, due to all these factors, the rupee has declined to all-time low level today," Rushabh Maru, Research Analyst at Anand Rathi said.

Investors are uneasy over whether Turkey's government can cope with a plunging currency, a diplomatic spat with Washington and other problems. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accumulated more and more control over Turkey's financial system and central bank.

US President Donald Trump said Friday he will authorise higher tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium. That came after Turkey put an American pastor on trial on spying charges. Erdogan promised Sunday his government will take unspecified "necessary actions" to calm markets.

Investors preferred safe-havens such as the US dollar and the yen after a plunge in the Turkish Lira sent all emerging market currencies sharply lower.

The lira has fallen about 45 percent against the greenback this year on worries over Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's increasing control of the economy and a deepening diplomatic rift with the United States.

A weak trend in Asia coupled with sell-offs on Wall Street last week and a slump in the Turkish lira dampened the sentiment globally, brokers said.

Meanwhile, the Sensex fell over 288 points and the Nifty dipped below the 11,400-level in opening trade today on heavy losses in PSUs, auto, metal and banking counters amid a global rout in equity markets.

Asian stock prices were trading lower on fears that financial crisis in Turkey could spread to other economies.

The Shanghai Composite Index lost 1.7 percent to 2,746.90 and Tokyo's Nikkei 225 retreated 1.9 percent to 21,885.45. Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 1.8 percent to 27,850.55 and Seoul's Kospi retreated 1.6 percent to 2,249.65. Sydney's S&P-ASX 200 declined 0.5 percent to 6,246.80. Benchmarks in New Zealand, Singapore, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur also fell.

Written and edited by Aseem Thapliyal
HDFC Bank Managing Director and CEO Aditya Puri on Monday said that he would get a replacement for Paresh Sukthankar by the end of the month. He also said that the exit of Deputy Managing Director Paresh Sukthankar would not impact the bank's future strategy. Puri said this while addressing the investors through conference call early Monday morning.

Puri said that Sukthankar left because of some personal reasons and his exit had nothing to do with HDFC Bank's succession plan. He, however, said that Sukthankar was among the contenders for CEO position.

Last week, HDFC Bank announced Paresh Sukthankar's departure without citing any reason. In a regulatory filing, the bank said: "We hereby inform you that Paresh Sukthankar has tendered his resignation as Deputy Managing Director of the bank, to be effective 90 days from the close of business hours of today."

Sukthankar has been with HDFC Bank since its inception in 1994 and at present is responsible for overseeing the bank's credit, finance and human resources functions. He was appointed to the post of Deputy Managing Director of HDFC Bank in March 2017.

His resignation came almost nine months ahead of HDFC Bank initiating talent search for replacement of its Managing Director Aditya Puri. With his resignation, speculations are rife that he may join rival banks at the top level.

Prior to joining HDFC Bank, Sukthankar worked in Citibank for around nine years, in various departments including corporate banking, risk management, financial control and credit administration. He has been a member of various Committees formed by Reserve Bank of India and Indian Banks' Association.

He has done his Masters in Management Studies (MMS) from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute (Mumbai) and the Advanced Management Program (AMP) from the Harvard Business School.

(With inputs from PTI)
Nearly three months after Allahabad Bank divested its MD & CEO Usha Ananthasubramanian from all functional responsibilities, the government today dismissed her from service, according to an official notification. Ananthasubramanian is the former CEO & managing director of scam hit Punjab National Bank.

Ananthasubramanian was named in a CBI charge-sheet in the Rs 14,000 crore PNB fraud case but had continued to be an employee of the bank. She was to superannuate today but has been dismissed from the service.

The government has also given permission to the CBI to prosecute Ananthasubramanian and Sanjiv Sharan, former executive director of the PNB, media reports said.

Ananthasubramanian, who completed her one year as the CEO & MD of Allahabad Bank on May 6, served as the Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of Punjab National Bank from August 2015 to May 2017. In an earlier stint, Ananthasubramanian also served as the Executive Director of Punjab National Bank from July 2011 to November 2013.

During her long career spanning about 34 years, Ananthasubramanian has also worked as the CMD of erstwhile Bharatiya Mahila Bank. She was head of the core management team constituted by the Ministry of Finance for coordinating the process of formation of a women-centric bank.

Early this year, Ananthasubramanian became the first woman to be elected as the chairman of the Indian Banks' Association, the 71-year old industry body for banks.

Usha Ananthasubramanian holds a Master's Degree in Statistics from the University of Madras and a Master's Degree in Ancient Indian Culture from University of Mumbai. She began her banking carrier with Bank of Baroda, where she worked as a Specialist Officer in February 1982. Ananthasubramanian was closely associated with the transformation project of Bank of Baroda including rebranding and innovative HR initiatives.

Ananthasubramanian served as the Chairman of the Board of Punjab National Bank (International) Limited from January 11, 2016 to May 5, 2017 and PNB Housing Finance Limited from August 26, 2015 to May 5, 2017. She served as the Chairperson at PNB Gilts Ltd. from September 24, 2015 to May 5, 2017. She has also served as a Director of Export-Import Bank of India since November 27, 2015 until May 24, 2017.
France deems unacceptable a European Commission proposal to exclude French ports from a re-routing of a strategic trade corridor between Ireland and mainland Europe after Brexit, the government said.

At the moment much of Ireland's trade with the continent goes via Britain in trucks. However, with less than eight months to go until Britain leaves the European Union there is still little clarity on its future trade relations with the bloc, nor the nature of the Irish Republic's border with the British province of Northern Ireland.

The new route put forward by the Commission would connect Ireland by sea with Dutch and Belgian ports including Zeebrugge and Rotterdam. French ports such as Calais and Dunkirk would be bypassed.

"France and Ireland maintain important trade channels, both overland via Britain and via direct maritime routes. The geographical proximity between Ireland and France creates an obvious connection to the single market," French Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne wrote to the EU's transport commissioner in a letter dated Aug. 10.

"Surprisingly, the Commission proposal in no way takes this into account. This proposal therefore is not acceptable to France."

At stake are jobs, millions of dollars' worth of port revenues and possibly EU infrastructure funding.

Borne said that French ports had the necessary resources to ensure they could handle the likely increase in trade flows, hinting at concerns of congestion in ports such as Calais, France's busiest passenger port. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
The Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys TD, has announced two new Competitive Start Funds (CSFs) totalling up to 1 million to support international entrepreneurs and start-ups led by experienced business professionals. The funds, which will run simultaneously, will be administered by Enterprise Ireland.

The CSF for international entrepreneurs is a competition specifically for start-ups that are currently internationally-based but are willing to relocate to Ireland, while the CSF for experienced business professionals is directed at highly experienced business professionals with 25 years or more of relevant business experience in Ireland or abroad, of which at least 10 years should be at a senior or leadership level.

Each fund will provide up to 50,000 in equity funding for up to 10 successful applicants and will open for submissions on Tuesday, 21st August and will close on Tuesday, 4th September.



As well as securing up to 50k in funding, the successful applicants to the CSF for experienced business professionals will have the opportunity to participate in a business development programme delivered over three months by DCU Ryan Academy.

The CSF is part of Enterprise Irelands strategy for increasing the number and quality of High Potential Start-Up Companies (HPSUs) that have the potential to employ more than 10 persons and achieve 1 million in export sales within three years.



Launching the fund last week, Minister Heather Humphreys said, "Ireland is a hub of start-up activity and by attracting talented international entrepreneurs to Ireland and encouraging the development of business ideas by mature, highly-skilled professionals, the CSF is crucial for the development of Irelands start-up ecosystem."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Its (almost) the end of the summer and educators are preparing to go back to school. Nearly every state has an approved Every Students Succeeds Act plan ready to implement.

So this question from a reader who wished to remain anonymous seems especially timely: Whats the toughest part of the Every Student Succeeds Act for districts to get a handle on?

Thats a somewhat subjective question, and we werent sure how district leaders would answer it. So we asked a few experts.

The biggest concern for superintendents is that ESSA doesnt seem to be a very big departure from the law that it replaced, the much-maligned No Child Left Behind Act, said Noelle Ellerson Ng, the associate executive director for policy & advocacy at AASA, the School Superintendents Association.

Theres a recognition that the promise of decreased paperwork, individualized accountability [for districts] isnt a reality, Ellerson Ng said. State plans look a lot like NCLB 2.0. ... The full benefit of the law isnt being felt.

Districts also anticipate challenges with the test-participation portion of ESSA. The law says that schools that test fewer than 95 percent of their students must face some sort of consequence. But it also allows states to pass laws affirming parents right to opt their kids out of testing, as Oregon does, for example.

And superintendents want to make sure they live up to ESSAs push for more equitable funding between high-poverty schools and other campuses. But its a challenge to figure out how to ensure dollars are fairly and reliably distributed at the per-pupil level, Ellerson Ng said. (ESSA includes some new reporting requirements on fiscal equity that you can read about here .)

Some districts are also confused by a lack of clarity surrounding Title IV of ESSA, the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants, which districts can choose to use on several programs, said David DeSchryver, a senior vice president and director of research at Whiteboard Advisors. (DeSchryver also works with the National Association of Federal Education Program Administrators, a membership organization based in Alabama.)

Hes also heard concerns about a requirement that districts, as well as local health agencies, ensure that students in foster care are able to stay in their school of origin (a term ESSA doesnt define), even if its no longer their neighborhood school.

And DeSchryver is beginning to hear questions about a requirement in ESSA that schools and districts use evidence-based interventions with their lowest-performing schools. That might be trickier than it sounds on paper.

Once you begin to unpack how to do it well, you realize it opens up other questions and requires protocols and procedures districts may not be ready to do right out of the box, he said.

Jeff Simering, the director of legislative services for the Council of the Great City Schools, an organization representing urban district leaders, said he hasnt been hearing much complaining from his members about ESSA implementation just yet. He expects that districts may have more questions as states finalize changes to accountability plans, requirements for English-language learners, and reporting requirements.

Do you agree that these are the toughest parts of ESSA? Think theres another part of the law that wont be easy to put in place? Or do you have another ESSA question for us to tackle? Email us at aklein@epe.org , or aujifusa@epe.org .

Want to see what other readers are wondering? Here are links to past installments of this feature:

How Does Funding For ESSAs Testing Requirements Work?

Does ESSA Require Teachers to Be Highly Qualified?

Can Districts Use ESSA Funds to Buy Crossing Guard Signs?

How Are States Handling Testing Opt-Outs Under ESSA?

Can Districts Use the SAT or ACT for School Accountability Without State OK?

Which States Are Eschewing School Grades?

How Can Districts and States Use ESSA to Bolster STEM and Computer Science?

Whats Going on With Testing Audits?

Whats Up With ESSA Block Grant Funding?

Is Testing the Only Way a Student Can Achieve Success Under ESSA?

Want to learn more about the Every Student Succeeds Act? Heres some useful information:

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 . And follow the Andrew Ujifusa half of Politics K-12 @AndrewUjifusa .
The 5th Caspian Summit was held in Aktau yesterday, during which the heads of the Caspian states signed the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, a document that had been prepared for 22 years.

Vestnik Kavkaza asked the experts about the main results of the historic summit for Iran and changes the Caspian region will face.

Head of the Center for Central Asia and Caucasus Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Stanislav Pritchin, drew attention to the fact that the full-fledged international agreement was signed following the summit, not a declaration or communique.

"This is a full-fledged international agreement that regulates cooperation and security, protection of the environment, regulation of navigation in the Caspian Sea region. This document included the results of the 22-year talks between different countries," the expert said.

Pritchin added that the principles of ensuring international security achieved in the agreement, which prohibit the deployment of military facilities of non-littoral states in the Caspian, are of particular importance.

"It is one of the main points for Iran. The parties also have no right to grant their territory for any aggressive actions against their Caspian neighbors, and all disputes will be resolved through negotiations. These are the three key points in terms of ensuring security," the expert continued.

He added that the convention, however, did not remove all relevant issues from the agenda. "The communique notes that the next summit will be held in Turkmenistan on time. It means that the parties are interested in continuing the dialogue and maintaining this five-sided format," Pritchin concluded.

Senior researcher of the Analytical Center IMI of the Russian MGIMO Leonid Gusev, in turn, noted that the countries have finally come to an international agreement on the status of the Caspian Sea. According to him, in general, Iran acted like other Caspian states in this matter. He also noted that the issue of regional security was the main one for Tehran.

"The main thing is that military bases of foreign states cannot be located on the territory of the Caspian countries. There were some rumors that military bases of other countries may be located on the territory of Turkmenistan or Kazakhstan, but now this issue is out of question," he explained.

The expert also added that the settlement of disputes over the Caspian Sea's waters, shelf and bottom is also important for Iran.

At the same time, Gusev did not rule out that certain issues can again provoke disputes between countries, but at the moment the situation looks like solved. He also expressed hope that after the signing of the convention, economic cooperation between the countries will be strengthened.

"We can hope that cooperation in the fishing sector and shipping will be intensified. There may be some joint oil and gas projects, since all five countries have significant potential in this area. Russia said once that they want to cooperate with Iran on gas and oil," Gusev specified.

"The most important thing is that now the Caspian Sea is a zone of our states only, and all foreign representatives cannot have bases there, which is also very important for mutual cooperation and development in the region," the expert concluded.
news, latest-news

Good morning Canberra. It's a chilly start, with a low of 0 degrees but reaching 17 later on a mostly sunny Tuesday. Typical winter weather in the national capital, but with about three weeks until spring, there's not long to go until a change. Here are the main headlines today. In a decision that took everyone by surprise, local Labor MP Gai Brodtmann has said she won't stand at the next election. She had previously intended to run in the new federal seat of Bean after the redistribution creating a third electorate for the ACT. Yesterday afternoon, she made a shock announcement that she wouldn't seek re-election at the next federal poll, which adds to Canberra's already rather complicated preselection situation. Sally Whyte with this report on Ms Brodtmann's surprise call. ACT farmers are battling some of the driest conditions in living memory as a drought grips the country. Now they'll receive financial support from the territory government, and Environment Minister Mick Gentleman will unveil a 50 per cent freight subsidy scheme based on the one announced in NSW last week. Eligible farmers will be able to save up to $20,000 on the cost of transporting fodder, water or stock. The ACT subsidies are designed to relieve the financial strain on farmers who have had to fork out thousands of dollars extra to source feed from interstate. Blake Foden explains how the government plans to help people struggling through the drought. ACT Liberal senator Zed Seselja will vote against restoring the rights of territories - including his own - to legalise voluntary euthanasia. The Senate is due on Tuesday to debate a private members' bill from Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm that would repeal the 21-year-old Andrews Bill, which stopped the ACT from bringing in a euthanasia scheme. Senator Seselja said his decision was not about territory rights, but human rights, fearing the passage of Senator Leyonhjelms bill would lead to euthanasia becoming legal in the ACT under a regime with minimal safeguards. Katie Burgess wrote about the ACT senator's position on the controversial bill. Barry Skinner hates chasing payments owed to his Fyshwick business. But he spends about 10 hours a week doing it. He says his company, electrical contracting firm Pathway Communications, has lost about $100,000 in the last two-and-a-half years because other businesses had failed to pay invoices on time, or at all. The businessman said he had been "burnt" by several firms going insolvent, while some had said they couldn't pay their bills because they were waiting on money themselves. Blake Foden spoke to him about the frustration, and cost, of chasing unpaid invoices. They can lift more than 300 kilograms at the push of a button. They're being hailed as tools that will keep paramedics and patients safer. And they're coming to the ACT's ambulances. Five new state-of-the-art ambulances fitted with electric stretchers and power loaders arrived in Canberra on Monday, while three ambulances already in the fleet have been retro-fitted to include the technology. It could help cut injuries on the job, as figures show two-thirds of ACT paramedics' accepted compensation claims from 2011 to 2016 were for musculoskeletal injuries suffered as a result of lifting and transporting patients. Blake Foden explains the move to make work safer for paramedics.

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news, crime

A former Anglican priest who raped a young girl on the pew of a Canberra church had a long-history of molesting children. Justice Michael Elkaim on Monday sentenced John Philip Aitchison, 67, to nine years jail on five charges of sexual intercourse with a young person and seven counts of acts of indecency on a young person. The ACT Supreme Court heard he had been convicted of offences against children in the United Kingdom, NSW, Victoria, and the ACT. However, he had only served two years behind bars. Justice Elkaim said the offender had been "dealt with leniently" in the past, on one occasion a NSW court found he had pyschological issues. "[This] was incorrect. He is unquestionably a paedophile," Justice Elkaim said. The court heard Aitchison still maintains his innocence and has shown no remorse. The offender had fought the charges, but was found guilty by ACT Supreme Court jury in April. The trial heard graphic evidence from Aitchison's victim, who he repeatedly abused between July 1987 and October 1989, when she was about 13 or 15. In one harrowing account, the woman said she had been practicing her music at the All Saints' Anglican Church in Ainslie when Aitchison told her if she prayed, God might let her see her dead dog. He then he raped her, while he himself prayed for forgiveness. Aitchison also raped and molested her in the church hall and at her home. The woman on Monday read a victim impact statement which described the effects Aitchison's offending had had on her life, including ongoing physical and pyschological issues. The woman described how music and animals had given her life drive, purpose, and an identity, but Aitchison had taken that away. "[He] took away the things that gave me comfort, security and happiness at the very point where I was reconstructing myself," she said. "Worse, he took away my faith, my career and my memories of my best friend, my dog." "He rewrote who I was meant to be." Justice Elkaim said he agreed with the woman's description of Aitchison as "effortlessly careless, casual, commanding, authoritarian, and coolly arrogant." The judge said the offences had a number of aggravating features, including taking advantage of his position as a religious official and breaching the victim's trust. Justice Elkaim found Aitchison would be unlikely to reoffend "if only as a result of his age and the limited access he will have to potential victims". Aitchison will be eligible for parole in April 2023.

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news, federal-politics

Federal Labor member for Canberra Gai Brodtmann has announced she won't contest the next federal election, saying she wants to spend more time with her mother and family. Ms Brodtmann was elected to the seat of Canberra in 2010 and had until recently planned on nominating for the new electorate of Bean at the next federal election. "My decision has been made for entirely personal reasons," Ms Brodtmann said in a statement, referring to her mother Faye Anderson, who turned 79 last week. "My mother is now one of the reasons why I am not nominating. By her own admission, Mum has years not decades left. I want to be there for those years." Spending more time with her sisters and extended family has made Ms Brodtmann realise she had missed too many significant moments through her career as a politician. "Representing the people of Canberra has been an enormous honour and privilege and brought me inestimable pride and joy. I love my community. I love being a fierce advocate for it. I will continue to fight for it as long as I am the Member for Canberra," Ms Brodtmann said. Most recently Ms Brodtmann has served as shadow assistant minister for cyber security and defence. She has also been deputy chair of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories and has campaigned for funding and research into endometriosis. Labor leader Bill Shorten paid tribute to Ms Brodtmann's service to parliament. "Gais decision today comes from the heart. Its driven by that most powerful force, her love for her family. Every one of us can relate to the things Gai feels like she has missed and all of us can understand why she wants to spend more time with the people who mean the most to her in the world," Mr Shorten said in a statement. "Like all Gais Caucus colleagues, I will miss her calm counsel, her policy insights, particularly on national and cyber security issues, her command of the 90 second statement, and her deep understanding of, and affection for, our nations capital beyond the parliamentary triangle." Fellow federal Labor MP Andrew Leigh said in a statement he was sorry to hear Ms Brodtmann was resigning. "Gai and I entered parliament together in 2010. I have valued her company and her counsel. I will miss her in the next parliament, but I know that she will continue to play a valued role in the Canberra community and on the national stage," the shadow assistant treasurer said. "As shadow assistant minister for cybersecurity and defence, Gai has held the government to account on national security and defence procurement. She has also played a national role on issues of organ donation and chemical contamination on defence facilities, as well as initiating an urgent conversation in parliament and the community to increase awareness of and action on endometriosis. Before entering parliament Ms Brodtmann was a public servant and communications consultant. She is married to Channel Nine's political editor Chris Uhlmann. The resignation comes in the middle of fraught preselection battles for ACT Labor in the Senate and the neighbouring electorate of Canberra, with two lower house seats now without an incumbent.

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Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has cancelled a visit to Iran, his press office said, as the PM came under strong Iranian criticism over his stand on renewed US sanctions against Tehran.

Abadi will still go ahead with a planned visit to Turkey on August 14, but has scrapped the Iran leg of the trip "because of his busy schedule", his office said.

An Iraqi official had said Saturday that Abadi would visit both neighbouring Turkey and Iran to discuss economic issues, the AP reported.

According to Iraqi political sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, Iran initially agreed to the visit but changed its mind because it was unhappy about Abadi's remarks.

Earlier, the PM said that Iraq would reluctantly comply with US sanctions against Tehran that took effect the same day: "We don't support the sanctions because they are a strategic error, but we will comply with them. In general, sanctions are unjust."
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Photo: CTV

Alaska's North Slope was hit Sunday by the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the region, the state's seismologist said.

At 6:58 a.m. Sunday, the magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck an area 42 miles (67 kilometres) east of Kavik River Camp and 343 miles (551 kilometres) northeast of Fairbanks, the state's second-biggest city. The U.S. Geological Survey says the earthquake had a depth of about 6 miles (9.9 kilometres.)

State seismologist Mike West told the Anchorage Daily News that the earthquake was the biggest recorded in the North Slope by a substantial amount. "This is a very significant event that will take us some time to understand," he told the Daily News.

The previous most powerful quake in the North Slope was in 1995 at magnitude 5.2, West told the newspaper.

The jump from a 5.2 to Sunday's 6.4 is significant because earthquakes rapidly grow in strength as magnitude rises, he said. A magnitude 6.4 earthquake is 15.8 times bigger and 63.1 times stronger than a 5.2 earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

"That's why at 6.4 this changes how we think about the region," West said. "It's a little early to say how, but it's safe to say this earthquake will cause a re-evaluation of the seismic potential of that area."

Later Sunday, another magnitude 6.1 earthquake hit at 1:15 p.m. near the city of Kaktovik on Alaska's North Slope, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The epicenter was (65 kilometres) southwest of Kaktovik, which has about 290 people.

The magnitude 6.4 earthquake that hit Sunday morning was felt by workers at the oil-production facilities in and around Prudhoe Bay, the Daily News reported.

The newspaper says that Alyeska Pipeline said the earthquake did not damage the trans-Alaska pipeline. The company says in a tweet that "there are no operational concerns" related to the earthquake, but the pipeline will be inspected.

Several aftershocks were reported across northern Alaska.

The Alaska Earthquake Center says the earthquakes were felt across the eastern part of the state's North Slope Borough and as far south as metro Fairbanks. The centre adds that there are no reports of damage.
Kyrgyzstan considers the development of relations with Russia to be a priority area of its foreign policy, the republic's President Sooronbay Jeenbekov said at a meeting of the National Council for Sustainable Development in Bishkek.

"We lay special emphasis on the development of friendly relations with neighboring countries, including with our strategic partner, Russia," TASS cited him as saying.

According to the Kyrgyz president, Bishkek is committed to further strengthening comprehensive cooperation with the member-countries of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). "These are our strategic objectives," Jeenbekov said.

He stressed that Kyrgyzstan raised its relations with China to a strategic level. "We will continue our work in this direction," the president added.

Jeenbekov mentioned cooperation with Turkey, Japan, the US and the European Union members among the foreign policy priorities.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The Trump administration doesn't have the legal authority to sideswipe Canada and sign a bilateral trade deal with Mexico, Quebec's chief NAFTA negotiator said Monday.

Raymond Bachand, an ex-Quebec finance minister, said "there is no worry whatsoever" the current one-on-one talks between the United States and Mexico will end in a trade deal signed without Canada.

Bilateral NAFTA negotiations between the two countries have been building momentum in recent weeks, while Canada has yet to return to the table this summer.

U.S. President Donald Trump recently stated a deal with Mexico "is coming along nicely" and "Canada must wait."

The president has also said he would be interested in signing separate deals with both countries.

Even if Trump really wanted that, Bachand said, he couldn't get it.

"If the U.S. wanted a bilateral deal  and they don't, they've repeated often they want a trilateral deal  they don't have legal authority.

"They have the authority from Congress to negotiate a trilateral NAFTA deal in a fast-track way  meaning Congress votes yes or no on the final deal once it's been reached. They don't have that (fast-track) authority for a bilateral deal."

Bachand made the comments in Stowe, Vt., during the two-day annual conference between governors of New England states and the premiers of Quebec and the eastern Canadian provinces.

Not a single U.S. governor or senator has asked to pull their country out of NAFTA, Bachand said, which is Canada's true trump card in the negotiations, he added.

"So all the so-called modernization attempts the president wants with NAFTA, there is a kind of red line," Bachand said. "NAFTA will continue because the power in the U.S. Senate is very strong in commercial decisions, and governors also have a big influence."

On Sunday, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard signed a joint declaration on economic co-operation, despite the trade tensions between the two countries.

Scott said the agreement "acknowledges our intertwined economies and solidifies our commitment to building cross-border trade."

Couillard said Monday one of the ways a new NAFTA deal will be reached is by convincing Americans who live outside the states that border Canada of how critical trade is for the economies of both countries.

Quebec's premier said he had breakfast with the eastern premiers and New England governors Monday and they "almost exclusively" talked about NAFTA.

"The border states understand well the level of integration of our economies," he said. "It's the rest of the country and the White House we have to work on."
Brazil cement sales fall 3% YoY in July

ICR Newsroom By 13 August 2018

Domestic cement sales in Brazil slipped 2.5 per cent to 4.589Mt in July when compared with the year-ago period when sales reached 4.709Mt, according to the countrys cement association, SNIC. Exports increased by a third to 8000t from 6000t in July 2017.



In the first seven months of 2018, cement sales fell 1.7 per cent to 29.969Mt from 30.48Mt in the 7M17. Apparent consumption, which includes imports, decreased 2.1 per cent YoY to 30.1Mt.



Exports from Brazil during the January-July 2018 period edged up to 50,000t from 48,000t, representing a 4.2 per cent rise.



SNIC President, Paulo Camillo Penna, commented that "the sector projected to close 2018 with growth of cement consumption between one per cent and two per cent, but the results accumulated so far have reversed this trend."

SNIC expects sales to fall between 1-2 per cent in 2018, thus registering a fourth-consecutive year of contraction.





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Florida made history in 2005 when it passed the first Stand Your Ground law in the United States. The law allows anyone who reasonably believes they face an imminent danger of death or bodily harm to fight back with deadly force. The threatened person also has no duty to retreat when faced with a violent or threatening situation, as the Sun-Sentinel explains. They can respond with force right away, without first attempting to back away.

Gun rights advocates have backed stand your ground laws, often with the support of groups like the National Rifle Association. But the laws are controversial, with opponents arguing that they are linked to an increase in murders and that they are particularly harmful to people of color. (Research has found that when a white person kills a black person in a stand your ground state it is more likely to be ruled a justifiable homicide than if a black person kills a white person.)

These states have Stand Your Ground laws

Half of states have laws saying that a person has no duty to retreat if they are attacked in a place where they are legally permitted to be, according to the National Conference on State Legislatures. They include:

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Florida

Georgia

Idaho

Indiana

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Michigan

Mississippi

Missouri

Montana

Nevada

New Hampshire

North Carolina

Oklahoma

Pennsylvania

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

West Virginia

Iowa and Wyoming have also recently enacted Stand Your Ground laws.

Even if they dont have Stand Your Ground law, most states have laws on the books that permit people to defend themselves if they are being attacked. California, for example, doesnt have a stand your ground law, but does permit people to use deadly force if someone breaks into their home and they believe theyre in imminent danger. (This is a kind of law is commonly known as a castle doctrine.) In California, a homicide might also be justifiable if its committed in self-defense.

Whats the future of Stand Your Ground?

Stand your ground laws have been controversial from the beginning, and theyve been back in the news recently. On August 13, a Florida man was charged with manslaughter after shooting an unarmed black man in during a dispute over a parking space.

Initially, the Pinellas County sheriff said he wouldnt arrest Michael Drejka, who fatally shot Markeis McGlockton after McGlockton shoved him to the ground, because his actions were protected under the states Stand Your Ground law. But State Attorney Bernie McCabe later announced he would file charges in the case. Video of the incident appears to show that McGlockton retreated after he shoved Drejka, which could mean that Drejkas claim that he felt imminently threatened wont hold water.

Democratic candidates for Florida attorney general said the states stand your ground law should be repealed. Even one of the Republican candidates for governor said that the sheriffs decision to not pursue charges wasnt correct and that he stood by the state attorneys decision, though he supports Floridians right to self-defense.

However, efforts to repeal stand your ground laws havent found much success. A 2017 attempt to repeal North Carolinas stand your ground didnt advance. Backing away from stand your ground laws is likely to prove difficult. Despite concerns over the laws, past polls have found that the majority of Americans support Stand Your Ground legislation.
Russia's chemical disarmament has been confirmed by the OPCW, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, commenting on the new round of U.S. sanctions over the Skripal case.

"Three years ago, based on the results of all conceivable inspections we weve received confirmation, within the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) framework, that the process of chemical disarmament by Russia has been completed," the Russian foreign minister said.

Lavrov stressed that the U.S. had to complete its chemical disarmament "within roughly the same timeframe as us." "But they again asked for a reschedule  this time now until early 2020s. So, we should rather be speaking about problems with chemical disarmament in the US," the minister noted.

"We didnt close our facilities to the inspectors. They visited everything they wanted to visit and came to the conclusion, which I just mentioned," RT cited the top diplomat as saying.

The minister reiterated that Russia rejected the U.S. accusations, saying that anybody, who is at least slightly familiar with the so-called Skripal case, understands the absurdity of the statement [on Moscow being guilty] contained in the State Departments official paper," Lavrov said.
Public Utilities Commission hears concern over nuclear energy

A Colorado Public Utilities Commission hearing was held at the El Pueblo Museum Oct. 28 where activists opposed the possibility of a nuclear power plant.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani met on the sidelines of the Caspian Summit in Kazakhstan on Sunday, according to the Kremlin website.

The two presidents addressed ways in which they can settle the world's most acute crises, particularly in the Middle East.

Vladimir Putin expressed satisfaction with the opportunity to personally meet with Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the summit and "exchange opinions on a whole range of various issues." "We have many issues to address regarding the worlds acute crises, including that in Syria. I would like to inform you about the progress of our contacts with our partners on this complicated problem. Although our colleagues are in constant contact with each other, personal meetings at such level are highly important," the Russian leader said.

Rouhani, in turn, said that he was very glad to meet with Putin, and that with each year our relations are developing positively.

"Recently, Iran has officially reinforced its cooperation with the Eurasian Economic Union. This may make for the development of trade between our countries," he recalled.

According to the Iranian president, another sphere of interaction is fighting terrorism. "Our common goal is to establish stability and peace in the whole region and provide security for the regions countries. The world has witnessed how, with the help from Iran and Russia, the Syrian army was able to play a vital role in fighting terrorism in Syria." Rouhani pointed out, noting that today all measures being taken by Tehran, Moscow and Ankara are helping to establish peace and security in Syria.

He recalled that in the recent years, they have reached two important achievements: the cooperation between Iran, Russia and other countries in achieving agreements on the Iranian nuclear deal and the cooperation between Iran, Russia and Turkey in establishing peace and security in Syria.

"We are committed to the elimination of any hurdles and the settling of any global crises solely within the framework of dialogue and talks," Hassan Rouhani stressed.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will hold a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 18 in her residence in Meseberg, German Cabinet Spokesperson Steffen Seibert said.

"They will discuss the bilateral agenda, definitely touch upon the topic of the Syrian conflict, which has been a cause for our concern for a long time, as well as the situation in the east of Ukraine and energy issues," Seibert listed.

The parties will also discuss the issues of Russian gas transit via Ukraine after the launch of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. According to Seibert, on Saturday, Russian and German leaders will make statements to the press before the meeting, around 18:00 local time (19:00 Moscow time).

Seibert did not specify the composition of the Russian delegation. He also does not have information about whether there will be any ministerial meetings. Neither did he mention on whose initiative the meeting would take place, TASS reported.

Earlier, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov informed that at the end of the week, Putin would make a foreign visit, without specifying the details.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev following the Fifth Caspian Summit in Kazakhstan, according to the Kremlin website.

"Our bilateral relations have been developing in all areas. This year, we will have an interregional meeting in Petropavlovsk, and a CIS meeting in Dushanbe, as far as I remember. During all these meetings, you and I meet separately to discuss our bilateral relations; this helps us resolve all our issues," Nazarbayev said.

"Among the questions we have yet to discuss is the issue of CSTO Secretary-General, which has become a problem now," the Kazakh president said, adding that Kazakhstan's economic ties within the EEU and bilateral ties with Russian are on the upswing.

The Russian leader in the first place congratulated Nazarbayev on the results of the summit of heads of the Caspian states.

"This is a major event that we have been striving to reach for two decades; we held frank discussions and sought out a solution, and this solution has been found at last. This will contribute to the development of our cooperation in the Caspian region," Putin stressed.
Rick Warren's Saddleback Church Becomes First in US to Baptize 50,000 People; Pastor Hails 'Miracle' Christian Post Contributor | 13 August, 2018 by Stoyan Zaimov

Pastor Rick Warren has hailed the congregation at his California-based Saddleback Church as it became the first in U.S. history to baptize 50,000 people.

"I never stop being amazed by you. You are extraordinary people, and I continually thank God for what you mean to me," Warren stated in a letter to the people of the megachurch, shared Saturday on Facebook.

The pastor looked back over the 38 years of milestones that Saddleback has been achieving, such as becoming the first to grow to 10,000 in worship without owning a building, and the first to send the Gospel to all 197 officials nations in the world.

This weekend marked another major milestone, as the 50,000th person was baptized into the faith at Saddleback.

"Imagine all the amazing personal stories of changed lives behind that number! 50,000 individual lives transformed by Jesus since Saddleback Church began. This is unprecedented in history! YOU are likely one of those stories of a changed life!" read Warren's letter.

The best-selling author said that "love" is the main reason why the church has been so successful.

"YOU genuinely love people and you want them to go to Heaven with you! Every day, you bring your friends, co-workers, and family to Jesus," he said.

"Honestly, I've never seen a group like you anywhere else in the world. I'm humbled to be your pastor, and I could not be more proud of you."

Warren revealed that all 50,000 people who have been baptized at Saddleback over the past 38 years were recognized over the weekend, with people bringing photos of their ceremonies to be shared.

The California preacher recalled his small town and small church upbringing, and how he was inspired by the large ministries of other Christian leaders to dream of big things.

He also reflected on growth of the first Christian church in Jerusalem, pointing to Acts 2:47 in the Bible, which reads: "Everyday the Lord added to their number those who were being saved."

Warren wrote: "Think about that. Daily! That means, at the very least, the first church baptized at least 365 new members annually!"

"Not many churches have ever matched that kind of growth. But YOUR CHURCH has!" he added.

"This phrase 'Every day the Lord added to their number' has been true of Saddleback for 38 years. Since beginning at Easter, 1980, we've baptized almost 4 changed lives every single day. (Precisely 3.7 people every day) YOU'RE PART OF A MIRACLE!"

Some who were baptized by Warren talked about their experience in an article with Newsmax.

"I don't know how to describe it," said 51-year-old Irvine resident Irene Anderson. "It's very special, very different, very gentile. (Warren) is just looking at you with love. I feel like Jesus is in him and he's in Jesus. It was a great experience. I felt I really had a connection with God, like a strong bond."

The Saddleback Church Twitter account added in a message of its own on Sunday:

"50,000 lives and counting. Each of these lives represents an individual changed by and committed to a relationship with Jesus Christ. We are in awe of what God has done in the last 38 years and are hopeful and expectant for what he will do in the years to come. Thank you, God!"

On his website, Warren further explains the importance of baptisms in the Christian community.

Read more about Saddleback Church on The Christian Post.
A U.S. Army chaplain is facing a dereliction of duty charge and potentially six months in a military prison after not accepting a same-sex couple in a marriage retreat, even though he ensured the two women they could take part in the next scheduled retreat with a different chaplain, according to his attorney.

U.S. Army Chaplain Maj. Scott Squires  who is Southern Baptist  faces the charge on a technicality. The Army report says the lesbian soldier who requested attendance at the Strong Bonds marriage retreat was denied a service due to her sexual orientation. But the same Army report says the charge is not for denying her a service but instead for not following Army policy in accommodating her until after a complaint was filed.

Squires, though, said he followed Army policy. As a chaplain endorsed by the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, he is prohibited from endorsing same-sex relationships. His chaplain assistant, SSG Kacie Griffin, faces a similar charge by the Army.

First Liberty is representing Squires.

The United States Army, acting under the command of Major General Sonntag, is threatening to punish one of its chaplains because he followed the rules, said Mike Berry of First Liberty. The Army, or Congress, must hold Major General Sonntag accountable for allowing this aggressive anti-religious hostility against its military chaplains to occur under his command.

First Liberty contends Squires complied with Army and Southern Baptist Convention rules when he promptly rescheduled the marriage retreat with a new chaplain within three business days for the sole purpose of ensuring the same-sex couple could attend.

Squires said he did what Im required to do under Army regulations and my endorsers rules.

I am shocked that I would even be investigated, let alone threatened with punishment, for following the rules, he said.

Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), who also is a military chaplain, spoke out in favor of Squires.

The case of Chaplain Scott Squires highlights how imperative it is that we protect freedom of conscience for every individual in the U.S. militaryincluding the chaplains who minister to them as they carry out the militarys mission together, Collins said. The process surrounding this investigation remains extremely concerning, and Army officials now have the opportunity to deliver a swift, fair resolution after months of prolonging the case.

Michael Foust is a freelance writer. Visit his blog, MichaelFoust.com .

Publication Date: August 13, 2018

Photo Courtesy: Thinkstock
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Born with a severe disability, no one thought she would be able to sit up, much less graduate from college, marry, and bear children.

But Melissa Davert's strong faith in God and his plans for her life proved all the doubters wrong.

"If I ever started to feel down or sad or sorry for myself my parents would say, 'Look, there's a reason and a purpose for your disability," Melissa says on a Facebook video. "'You might not know what it is now, but you will someday. You just have to have faith and trust in God and His plan.'"

Melissa grew up in a Christian home in Bay City, Michigan, one of seven children. She was born with a disability known as osteogenesis imperfecta or brittle bone disease. It results in bones that break easily, short height, loose joints, hearing loss, heart and breathing problems.

Melissa on skateboardDoctors prepared Melissa's parents for the possibility that she would never sit up on her own. But to their surprise, Melissa not only sat up, she found a skateboard and used her arms to move throughout the house before she got a wheelchair.

"My parents didn't set any limits on me and I didn't set any limits either," she notes on the video. "My entire family made sure I grew up self-determined, not to feel sorry for myself, with a good sense of humor and strong faith.

As a child she heard about God, but one evening she experienced Him in a personal way.

"One night I had a broken bone and I was laying in bed and prayed to God please help it be better. In the morning it was (better). It was a lot better. From then I realized He is here with me. Times will be tough but He will be here with me."

Melissa graduated from Bay City Central High School and then attended Northwood University where she earned a bachelor's degree in Business Administration.

Melissa's graduation from college (Facebook screen grab from Faith Video)Later, as an advocate for the disabled, she hosted a weekly TV program, Access Mid-Michigan, which aired on community television. She hosted the program while serving as the director of the Center for Independent Living in Midland, a position she held for more than 10 years.

Melissa and KenShe met and married her husband, Ken Davert, in 1992. Ken was born with cerebral palsy.

They never planned to have children because Melissa thought she could not conceive. Then they were surprised and excited to discover she was pregnant, but lost the baby at 12 weeks for unknown reasons.

They decided to try again. "The second time we found out we were going to have twins," she says.

Melissa's doctors, however, were less than enthusiastic. Medical books had no cases where a woman Melissa's size  two-feet eleven inches  had ever delivered twins. One significant concern was that the twins might grow up into Melissa's heart and lungs, causing her to suffocate.

Several doctors proposed that Melissa abort one of the babies. They suggested a test to determine if either baby had Melissa's disability. They advised her to abort (kill) the baby with the disability.

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Why is it that organizations like the SPLC can designate conservative Christians as hate groups while ignoring radical leftists like Antifa? Why is that Facebook and Google and YouTube and Twitter appear to punish conservatives disproportionately for alleged violations of community guidelines?

The answer is as disturbing as it is simple. The left believes it is so morally and intellectually superior to the right that it can see nothing wrong with its extreme positions and hostile words. Is it wrong to be intolerant of bigots? Is it wrong to hate (or even punch) a Nazi?

In short, if I'm a member of the KKK, is it wrong for you to disparage and mock me? If I'm a dangerous homophobe, is it wrong for you to vilify and exclude me? If I'm a hate-filled propogandist spreading dangerous lies, is it wrong for you to mark me and marginalize me?

Of course, there are double standards on all sides of the debate, on the right as well as on the left. And there is more than enough hypocrisy to go around, from the most progressive to the most conservative.

All of us also have our share of blind spots, so we tend to condemn in others what we justify in ourselves. Welcome to human nature.

Still, it is conspicuous that the same behavior gets treated differently by the leftist elite (including many a university professor) and by watchdog groups like the SPLC and by the internet giants.

Back in 2004-05, when I first began to address gay activism, I was widely mocked for saying, "Those who came out of the closet want to put us in the closet."

The response was consistent: "No one wants to put you in the closet!"

A few years back, I noticed a change in tone: "Bigots like you belong in the closet!"

But of course!

While being interviewed on a Christian TV program back in 2011, I quoted the comment of a Christian attorney. He told me that those who were once put in jail (speaking of pioneer gay activists) will want to put us in jail.

For having the audacity to say this on Christian TV, I was vilified and maligned.

Yet when Kim Davis was jailed in 2015 for refusing a court order to grant same-sex marriage licenses, there was widespread rejoicing on the left: "Kim Davis is ISIS! Lock her up!"

Again, I'm aware of double standards on all sides, and it's a point of personal reflection and self-examination in my own life.

For example, I believed that, in 2004, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsome should have been disciplined for issuing same-sex marriage licenses in violation of the law. Yet I believe that Kim Davis was within her rights in refusing to issue such licenses and her home state of Kentucky failed to protect her, under the law.

These are debates we can (and should) have.

What I'm talking about here has to do with fundamental attitudes, with the basis of our judgments, with the inability to see wrong on one's own side. I'm talking about a dangerous hypocrisy. (For the record, I never compared Gavin Newsome to Muslim terrorists.)

In my May, 2016, article "Is Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg a Well-Intended Liberal with a Massive Blind Spot?", I referenced the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann, the notorious Nazi mass murderer, who was apprehended by two Israeli agents while living quietly with his family in Argentina.

They had to wait for several weeks before smuggling him out of the country, during which time they spent many hours in private conversation with him, somehow managing to restrain themselves from taking the law into their own hands.

During one of the conversations, one of the agents realized that Eichmann had given the order to exterminate the village in which his wife's family lived, killing every single one of them.

When asked how he could do such a thing, Eichmann seemed perturbed, responding, "But they were Jews."

Of course he gave the order to kill them. What else was he to do?

Again, to be clear, I am not comparing the SPLC or Facebook or Google to Eichmann and the Nazis. That would be as bad as leftists comparing conservatives to Nazis. Not a chance.

I'm simply pointing out that in Eichmann's twisted world, he was only following orders and doing what was right.

So also, in Antifa's twisted world (although, again, I emphasize, not as twisted as that of the Nazis), they are doing what is right in violently opposing the tyrannical right. Somebody's got to do it!

Thankfully, there is an ongoing, healthy push-back against this liberal hypocrisy. In fact, just this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called out the SPLC for using hate group labels to "bully" conservatives. Let their hypocrisy be exposed.

But remember: You have been prejudged as guilty, so your mistreatment is well-deserved.

It is this highly bigoted attitude we must overcome with truth, reason, determination, and love.
Turkey has drafted a economic action plan and will start implementing it this morning to ease investor concerns, the country's Finance Minister Berat Albayrak said.

In an interview with Hurriyet newspaper, Albayrak described the lira's weakness as "an attack," and said the action plan was ready.

"From Monday morning onwards our institutions will take the necessary steps and will share the announcements with the market," Albayrak said, without giving details on what the steps would be.

Albayrak also said a plan has been prepared for banks and the real economy sector, including small to mid-sized businesses which are most affected by the foreign exchange fluctuations. "We will be taking the necessary steps with our banks and banking watchdog in a speedy manner," he said.

The minister also dismissed any suggestions that Turkey might intervene in dollar-denominated bank accounts, saying any seizure or conversion of those deposits into lira was out of the question.

Albayrak said budget policies were important to support and strengthen the central bank's monetary policies. "We will be entering a strong period in terms of fiscal policies," he said.

The currency has lost more than 45% of its value this year. On Friday, the lira tumbled as much as 18% at one point, its biggest daily drop since 2001.
It's personal: What I learned about God from a helpdesk

It's a cliche to say I left my heart in Donegal but it's also a bit true. I just spent four days there with my family as part of an Irish holiday tour and we were smitten. Donegal is beautiful, with sweeping coastlines and spectacular cliff views. It's also an incredibly relaxing place to be  nothing is rushed, people are friendly and you very soon feel at home.

There was one moment where I realised that I'd fallen for the place.

I've always loved the idea of visiting islands and one evening I booked the ferry for us to travel across to Arranmore the next day. With my phone battery draining and internet reception poor I booked the ferry online. Half an hour later I got a bit twitchy that I'd had no confirmation. My inner control freak wasn't happy so I thought rather than stewing on it I'd call the office and double check. I got straight through and explained that I'd booked but hadn't heard anything further. Now mostly when we call a helpdesk we fear a long drawn out process. Not so in this case. 'Is that Dave?' came the reply and instantly I knew all was well.

God is at pains in the Bible to tell us that we are known by him. He knows us by name. He made us after all. Just as my anxiety drained when I spoke to the lady in the ferry office, God wants to speak to us to tell us that he knows us, he knows what's going on and he is with us all the way.

Many years ago I went to church one night feeling full of angst. I chose to sit in the balcony where I could engage with proceedings from a distance. Unbeknown to me a guy from North Wales had come along and sat behind me. He was there because a friend from Sheffield had shown some interest in faith so he came over to bring him to church. Part way through the service I got a tap on the shoulder and the man passed me a slip of paper with a Bible reference on it. The reference was Revelation chapter 3:8. I picked up one of the church Bibles and looked it up. It said: 'I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.'

I was gobsmacked. It summed me up to a tee. I was plodding along in my faith, persevering but full of questions about where my life was going. It was a huge reassurance to hear that God knew all that and would take the trouble to let me know that he knew and that there was a future to hang on for.

In my experience, the nature of life and faith is that sometimes everything is great. Other times there are problems but you really sense that God is with you. Other times you feel like you are out in the desert all alone.

God wants us to know we are not alone and he often does that through others. The problem is that sometimes when we are struggling we have a tendency to withdraw from community. We think consciously or unconsciously that the best plan is to sort ourselves out when we need the encouragement and guidance of others more than ever.

I have a problem with the US TV evangelist model where people are encouraged to link into (and give into) people's ministries. It's not that I don't think they don't have anything worth sharing. You have to judge each person on their own merit and fruit and I've received some good teaching in the past from some of these guys.

My problem is that these ministries approach of encouraging a following of individual subscribers perpetuates the idea that faith is all about an individual relationship with God. Now, I absolutely believe we each need to do business with God but the Bible is very clear that the context for this is as part of the church community. Extraordinarily Jesus says that the church is his body  his representation on the earth.

Let's be honest: being a part of the church is not all sunshine and flowers. It can be tough. People can hurt and infuriate us. But that of course is because they're broken sinners. Just like us.

There is nothing I know that has the transformational power of the church community. We would be lost without it and wouldn't have become the people we are without the love, wisdom and good old fashioned service people have poured into our life.

In an age of loneliness and isolation, God does not just call us into relationship with him. He calls us into community and once we're there we become part of his hope to the world around us. Maybe the next person to speak a word of encouragement to a person on the edge could be us.

Dave Luck is the author of 'What Happens Now? A journey through unimaginable loss' and blogs weekly on www.daveluckwrites.co.uk. Follow him on Twitter @dluckwrite or on Facebook at the 'Daveluckwrites' page.
William Blake: The Christian prophet determined to open our immortal eyes

On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered in a damp, London cemetery called Bunhill Fields for the unveiling of a gravestone. They'd heard about the event on the news or picked it up on social media. They were addressed by figures from the poet and priest, Malcolm Guite, to the heavy metal rock star, Bruce Dickinson. Together, they assembled to celebrate the prophetic life and witness of one man, William Blake.

Blake was buried in a common grave on the site when he died in 1827. The wooded land, near Old Street, was used for the interment of dissenters, and Blake's views had shocked the establishment. 'Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion,' he wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. But the exact location of his mortal remains was unclear, until 2006 when it was pinpointed by two fans.

Having verified the findings, the Blake Society raised the money needed to commemorate the poet properly. The ceremony and celebration took place on the 191st anniversary of his death.

It was an inspiring occasion and led me to wonder. What do people see in Blake? What do they seek from him?

Bruce Dickinson proclaimed that Blake was one of the 'greatest living English poets, artists'  and he meant 'living'. Blake never really dies, he added. He's like Shakespeare or Dickens or Jane Austen.

There's much about his uniqueness that draws people, too. A Blake print is instantly recognisable. He railed against the artistic conformity of his day, which is why he never made much money from his work. As a result, he's become the patron saint of those engaged in the profound struggle to develop their own, distinctive voice.

Then there's his politics. Blake loathed the soul-sapping 'satanic mills' of the industrial age and wrote poems such as The Chimney Sweeper. It quietly excoriates the hypocrisy of a social morality that could send children up chimneys  clothing them 'in clothes of death', as Blake put it  while simultaneously parading into church, 'to praise God & his Priest & King'.

Blake loved liberty, throwing off the 'mind-forged manacles'. He was exuberant, kissing 'the joy as it flies'. He was ethically fearless: 'A Robin Red breast in a Cage, Puts all Heaven in a Rage.'

And he was also a visionary, and a Christian visionary at that. He conversed with angels, saw saints, experienced ecstasy and understood that he had a vocation, blessed by Christ. It was 'to open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes Of Man'.

Malcolm Guite reminded the crowd of this side of Blake as he read lines from Blake's epic poem, Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion. It declares what Blake saw to be the heart of Christianity. It's not that we might be saved from the Fall, a notion that Blake believed was incompatible with the divine image to be found in all people. It's not that we must adhere to creeds, or believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, which Blake felt took power from the Spirit alive in us and handed it to this-worldly, religious authorities.

Rather, Christianity is at heart an awakening, a realisation, a perception. Guite read out these words: 'I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination. Imagination the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow & in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more.'

It's Blake's mysticism that draws people today, be they Christian, of other faiths, or none. He cuts across boundaries, he bridges worlds, because he focuses on direct knowledge of the divine. His life was driven by what he called his 'visionary studies', 'that I may converse with my friends in Eternity, See Visions, Dream Dreams & prophecy & speak Parables'.

This is what people sense in him. They want it, too. He draws them because today's establishment has reinvented the satanic mills and routinely ridicules people's immortal eyes.

But, secretly, we know we are destined for eternal worlds. William Blake followed that way and, because we seek that way, people today go to see his new gravestone in a damp, London cemetery called Bunhill Fields.

Mark Vernon's new book, 'A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling, and the Evolution of Consciousness', will be published next year. For more, see www.markvernon.com
It was the sight of three tall chocolate fountains that pulled me into Chocolat Zeina, the charming new Syrian chocolate cafe in Briargrove Plaza, 6100 Westheimer. Encased in glass pillars, they cascaded in glossy streams of deep sable, cocoa and ivory, pulsing ever so slightly.

My friend and I had been eyeing the crisp black-and-white woven bistro chairs on Zeina's front patio after dinner at nearby Amalfi. We had to see what those fountains were about. They're the source of drizzles galore for the cafe's waffles and crepes, it turns out. Or you can ask for a chocolate tracery to be poured on a scoop of their gelato, too, where it turns into a thick crackle of magic shell.

Inside, the room is fresh and pretty. A long, L-shaped counter sparkles with chocolates and all kinds of sweetmeats wrapped in shiny cellophane. Swaths of aqua define a perforated chocolate-colored wall, which ends in vintage black and white photo murals of downtown Damascus.

That's where the Slik family operated its well-known chocolate business before they came to Texas in 2014, in the wake of Syria's civil war. Owner Bashar Slik and his son Mohammed, who is the resident chocolatier, run the new cafe that opened July 28. They've parted ways with an in-law investor who arranged for them to come to Texas to open Slik Chocolatier a few blocks down Westheimer and then "robbed us of our name," according to Mohammed Slik. (That shop is now named Sleek Chocolatier.) He says the business dispute is in court.

WHERE TO EAT: Alison Cook's Top 10 Houston restaurants

Some of the traditional Middle Eastern candied fruit and nut sweets for which the Slik family is known still arrive in their newest Houston shop from Syria. They're the ones wrapped in cellophane, and collectively, they're known as "Turkish Delight." But the dark, milk and white chocolates are made in-house. I've fallen hard for both.

The dark, bittersweet chocolate in particular is marvelous stuff, smooth and rich as satin. I liked it best robing long curls of candied orange rind, or sheathing a pistachio paste with the texture of soft ground coconut, topped with a crunch of walnuts.

Like so much on offer here, it's an irresistible blend of European and Middle Eastern ideas.

WELCOME TO TOWN: Semiramis Fine Chocolates makes U.S. debut with Houston store

So is a long, skinny log of Turkish delight swathed in dark or milk chocolate, or a milk chocolate baklava square that's all honey and phyllo shreds and plenty of pistachio nuts.

Yes, I worked my way through a skinny 10-by-3-inch boxful over the weekend. I couldn't help myself. A chewy white nougat square; a suaver, softer form of apricot fruit leather, rolled into a log and mined with nuts; an elastic cylinder involving rosewater and honey and yet more pistachios. Prettiest and wildest of all was a pistachio studded roll swaddled in deep pink rose petals.

The Turkish Delight candies go for $25.99 per pound; the chocolates cost $28.99 per pound. My treasure box weighed in at $17.46, a price which I found eminently fair.

I can't wait to go back and replenish my supply. Maybe sit in the dining room over a coffee and a waffle; or linger outdoors watching the parade of well-dressed clientele  many of them young  as the evening wears on.

HOW THE COOKIE CRUMBLES: Where to find Houston's best chocolate chip cookie

The staff and owners are unusually hospitable. As we waited to have our boxes filled and totaled, a door to the back room opened and my friend caught some savory aroma on the breeze. "What's that?" she asked.

A few minutes later, as we sat outside over a gelato, a young man appeared with a small tray of sectioned shawarma wraps and sides, left over from their family meal, which he pressed upon us. "When someone is curious about our food, it's our pleasure to share," he said. It turns out his sister-in-law owns the Shawarma Spot on Almeda, just south of Brays Bayou.

That unexpected gesture made our evening even sweeter. I'm still mooning over that bright, creamy hummus and sharp, parsleyed tabbouleh. And I'm thinking hard about the immigration patterns that make Houston such a rich and interesting place.

Alison Cook is the Chronicle's James Beard Award-winning restaurant critic. Follow her on Twitter, and keep up with Houston's latest dining and drinking news and reviews by subscribing to our free Flavor newsletter.
Aug. 3

 At 10:58 a.m., police dispatch broadcasted emergency tones, advising units, of a disturbance in progress in the 4200 block of Bellaire. It was reported to police that there was a subject inside the facility disturbed and throwing things around the center. The suspect was charged with Criminal Mischief.

 An officer was dispatched to the 5700 block of Weslayan in reference to a two vehicle minor accident. Upon arrival, it was discovered that the driver of one of the vehicles had left the scene without providing the required information. An offense report for Failure to Stop and Give Information was generated.

 An officer was dispatched to Houston Police Department southeast jail facility to pick up a prisoner in custody with outstanding West University Place warrants. The prisoner was transferred to the West University Jail facility and booked without incident.

 An officer was patrolling the 2600 block of Bissonnet and observed a subject urinating in a parking lot in view of the public. The subject was cited for disorderly conduct and released to a responsible party.

Aug. 4

 At 4:03 p.m., an officer observed a vehicle traveling 41 mph in a posted speed zone at 30 mph northbound in the 6400 block of Buffalo Speedway. A traffic stop was conducted and after further investigation the driver was issued a citation for Possession of Drug Paraphernalia and No Operators License.

Aug. 5

 At 3:11 p.m., an officer was dispatched to the West U PD Lobby to speak with a victim in regards to fraud that already occurred.

 An officer was dispatched to the Harris County Sheriffs Office Jail to pick up an individual with outstanding warrants out of the City of West University Municipal Court. The individual (Zoey Flores) was taken into custody and transported without incident.

Aug. 6

 An officer was dispatched to the West U PD Lobby in regards to an identity theft report.

Aug. 7

 An Officer was dispatched to the West U PD Lobby to take custody of a subject from the Houston Police Department who had outstanding warrants with our city.

 An Officer observed a vehicle traveling 49 mph in a 30 mph zone, southbound in the 6400 block of Buffalo Speedway. The Officer initiated a traffic stop and upon further investigation, the subject (Ross Lasris) was arrested for the offense of Possession of a Dangerous Drug.

Aug. 9

 At 9:19 a.m., an officer observed subject going door to door, soliciting, in the 4000 Block of Amherst St. Solicitation is against city ordinance, unless properly registered with a permit from the city. Contact was made with the subject, to identify and verify. The subject provided a name and date of birth, and upon further investigation it was revealed the subject provided false information to police. The subject was subsequently identified through fingerprints and it was determined the subject had an outstanding warrant for Parole Violation. He was arrested and additional charge of Failure to Identify- Fugitive was filed.

 At 2:33 p.m. all units were dispatched to a disturbance in progress in the 5800 block of Kirby. Upon arrival, officers encountered an irate female destroying the property. Officers attempted to detain the subject and while doing so the subject bit the police officer. The subject (Teborah Howard) was arrested and charged with criminal trespassing, the Harris County District Attorneys office refused to charge the subject with Assault on a Peace Officer for the bite.

 An officer observed a vehicle, with defective equipment, run the red light at Buffalo Speedway and Rice Blvd. A traffic stop was conducted and after further investigation, the driver (Darius Battles) was arrested for Failure to ID-Fugitive from Justice and a Parole Violation warrant.
Oil fell as Turkey's economic strife sparked an emerging-market sell-off, fueling fears of broader market turmoil.

West Texas Intermediate futures dropped 0.4 percent. The Turkish lira extended declines to a record low, sending tremors across global markets and spurring a shift to haven assets. OPEC published its monthly report, showing the group's output increased in July.

Turkey's currency has been a casualty of a deepening crisis spurred by the administration's growth-at-all-costs agenda and a worsening spat with the U.S., which has sanctioned the country. The slide continued after Turkish policy makers made their first move to bolster the financial system. In the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, declining crude output from Iran and Venezuela was offset by Kuwait and Nigeria.

"The key risk to oil is the contagion risk to other emerging markets, especially those representing a major share of demand growth," said Ole Sloth Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank A/S. Traders "are most certainly looking for Turkey to contain the situation and come up with viable solutions."

WTI crude for September delivery fell as much as 44 cents to $67.19 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and traded at $67.38 as of 8:54 a.m. local time. The contract climbed 82 cents on Friday. Total volume traded Monday was about 35 percent below the 100-day average.

Brent for October settlement held steady at $72.76 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange, and traded at a $6.07 premium to WTI for the same month. The global benchmark crude advanced 74 cents on Friday.

Iran Sanctions

Oil rose earlier on Monday amid supply concerns as Iran's foreign minister said the OPEC nation won't meet with the U.S. at the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September. The Trump administration has forecast that international buyers will cut Iranian imports by as much as 1 million barrels a day once renewed American sanctions take effect, according to people familiar with the matter.

In the U.S., the number of working oil rigs rose by 10 to 869 last week, the highest level since March 2015, Baker Hughes data showed. Producers have recently announced billions of dollars of new investments in the Permian Basin and elsewhere as they chase oil prices near three-year highs.

Other oil-market news:

OPEC boosted crude production by 41,000 barrels a day in July, despite sliding output in Libya, Iran and Saudi Arabia, the group said in its monthly report. Five Caspian Sea states reached a breakthrough agreement on sovereign rights to the sea, paving the way for new oil and gas extraction -- and pipelines -- after more than two decades of disputes. Hedge funds cut bets on rising prices for WTI and Brent, and total positions in both benchmarks shrank for a fifth straight week -- the longest stretch of declines since 2016. Royal Dutch Shell Plc said its head of global manufacturing, a business that includes refineries and chemicals plants, will step down at the end of August.
The Hardin Senior Center in the rural area of Liberty County was packed to hear Congressman Brian Babin address the Liberty County Republican Party at their quarterly meeting Tuesday night, Aug. 7.

Home on his summer break, the former dentist and his wife were spending the time campaigning across the district in preparation for the November general election.

Kitty Key, of Hull, sat nervously waiting her turn to address the congressman, but his speech would come first.

In front of the mostly Republican and Libertarian crowd, Babin satisfied them with plenty of red meat, towing the party line.

The thought of Nancy Pelosi becoming the next Speaker of the House Speaker makes me nauseous, Babin told the enthusiastic crowd.

He began touting the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of December 2017, the biggest overhaul of the tax code since 1986 when President Ronald Reagan was in office, he said.

Babin explained the tax cut for the average person in his district equated to approximately $2,133 every year.

Ten years of that is $21,330. Thats not crumbs! he shouted over enthusiastic applause.

That might be to a multi-millionaire who lives in a mansion in California overlooking the Pacific Ocean, but to those of us who work for a living down here, thats money, he continued.

The congressman also reminded his constituents that 84 million Americans, including those in his district, also received a break on their electric bills adding up to millions of dollars in savings to taxpayers across the country.

Babin praised Trumps economic policies, which has lead to the creation of 3.7 million jobs since he entered office.

Weve gone from a place of where is the jobs, to where are the workers, he said.

He said the country is at the highest optimism for the economy thats been seen in 20 years.

With record low unemployment rates in history for Hispanics and African Americans, and the lowest for the rest of the country in 40 years he told the voters, We are bringing jobs and business back into the country to the tune of more than a trillion dollars.

Babin reflected on his entry into politics.

Those were the dark years for me, he said. When I retired from dentistry back in 2012, I thought I was going to raise cows, visit with my grandkids, and do a little dentistry part-time. I even started raising deer, he told State Rep. Ernest Bailes who was present.

But things changed with former congressman Steve Stockman and many of Babins friends encouraged him to jump into the race for Stockmans congressional seat.

The few turned into a chorus urging him to make a run.

Babin and his wife prayed about it before making the decision to jump in and represent nine counties and 750,000 constituents.

My wife woke me up at 4:30 in the morning and told me, You need to do it, he said.

He did and became the last man standing in a crowded race of 12 opponents.

It is an honor to represent the people of the 36th Congressional District of Texas, he said.

Before taking questions, he focused on the district.

The biggest issue in my district is immigration, Babin said.

The cost of illegal immigration to the American people, he said, is $150 billion every year and he said he believed that was only the tip of the iceberg.

Illegal immigration is not the answer. If we have to bring people in, they need to be legal. We need to know who they are, where theyre from, and how long theyre going to stay here, the congressman said emphatically.

No nation can remain sovereign under the constitution if they dont have a secure border.

In questions from the audience, he said he believed Yale Law School graduate Judge Brett Cavanaugh will be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice.

One of Trumps legacies will be his appointment of judges, including Gorsuch, he said.

Wesley Thomas quizzed the congressmans willingness to carry a bill that he and others have authored that would redraw the lines of jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary that does not include abortion.

The constitution doesnt guarantee the right for an abortion, Thomas said.

Absolutely! Babin responded. He wanted to look at it before presenting it to his colleagues for consideration.

The congressman was also asked to weigh in on his feelings about the teacher retirement system and social security by Emily Kebodeaux Cook.

If you pay in to Social Security and you get enough quarters, you should get your social security, he said.

Weve got school teachers that paid into social security, and when they go to retire, all they get is their teachers retirement. They dont get their social security even though they paid in. Its simply not right.

Babin continued saying that there is legislation to address it, but he didnt know the chances of it passing.

Lastly, Key waited patiently for her questions, too many, she said so she wrote them down and gave them to one of the congressional aides.

Im here representing about 256 families who are concerned about flooding, she said, specifically following Hurricane Harvey, but Key said their homes have flooded on more than one occasion in thelast several years.

I personally visited almost 100 of those flooded homes in the Long Island-Whites Bayou Watershed following the hurricane, she said.

Who is responsible for seeing that tributaries such as Long Island-Whites Bayou and Batiste Creek are kept open and properly draining? she asked.

Key said her contacts to John Mueller in Temple with the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service have gone unanswered. She was desperate for help.

One of the congressional aides spoke up to say that theyre working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to look into the issue and Babin responded.

Kitty, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is one of the slowest operations Ive ever seen, he said.

Were working with the Army Corps I promise you. Were trying to expedite permit processes, shorten the wait time and move on with what needs to be done, he said.

Babin also said that the response time to many of these and similar projects was much too long, and he and his colleagues were looking at ways of moving the Corps of Engineers out from under the authority of the Department of Defense.

No one can prepare for 60 inches of rain, he said. The North American rainfall record is now in my district, a distinction he would rather not have.

Key asked that they consider a way that the authority for redirecting the flow of the water regionally.

Im a believer in local control, Babin said.

dtaylor@hcnonline.com
As you might expect, the start of school in Friendswood ISD prompts a flurry of activity from students, parents and teachers.

But also ramping up activity now are participants in an organization that sponsors projects to aid the district and its students, including effort such as an Adopt-A- Grant program, a yearly fundraising gala and a fall clay shooting event.

The FISD Education Foundation recently hosted its annual luncheon for new district employees.

Executive director Paige Ridout said the array of events all focus on helping bond the community with the district to bolster educational opportunities for youths.

Were a family, and the more programs we can support the better, she said.

Founded in in 1999, the group has raised more than $1.68 million, according to its website.

One goal is to sell out for attendance all events this year, Ridout said.

That would be amazing, she said, adding it may be possible. People here know how important this district is for our kids, and they just want to support it any way they can.

First up is the clay shooting fundraiser set for Oct. 22 at the Greater Houston Gun Club. Similar to skeet shooting, the tournament each year boasts anywhere from 26 to 34 four-member teams. Sponsorship opportunities are available.

The foundation also hosts its annual gala on Feb. 16. This event, which will sport a New York City theme of Small City, Bright Lights, will be held at the Marriott Marquis in Houston.

Ridout said the gala is always a hit.

This is very well-attended and very well-anticipated, she said. We start selling tables on Sept. , and usually by Christmas its sold out. We usually have 450 guests who attend.

But Ridout said her organizations biggest effort is the Adopt-A Grant program.

Every year, teachers throughout Friendswood ISD submit grant applications for classroom needs. The applications go through a campus-based vetting process.

All of the grants approved by the school district go on our website for (potential donors) to see and read about. This allows anyone who wants to support those grants to do so, Ridout said.

Last year, we had over $300,00 in asks (through grants), and we were able to support more than $186,000 worth of those, Ridout said.

Last year two schools  Cline Elementary and Windsong Intermediate  received all funding needed for their requested grants.

Cline Elementary Principal Barry Clifford said the fundraising helped provide approximately $20,000 worth of teacher training and supplemental materials for small-group instruction in reading and math.

This allows teachers to differentiate instruction for kids and adjust to their individual levels, he said. Its so important for them to have these resources so they can really dive in to the instruction.

Clifford encourages his teachers to ask for what they need even if theyre hesitant.

I tell them that if they have a need, our community will support them, he said. And the support isnt limited to one or a few schools, its across the board.

Teaching in such an environment, Clifford said, inspires teachers to push the envelope.

It spurs on a lot of thinking from our teachers about ways to get better. They really look for cutting-edge things. We have our kids working in robotics and coding, things you wouldnt think of elementary kids doing, but here they do it.

Past efforts by the foundation include a $15,000 gift for literacy education last year and a $25,000 donation for the Friendswood High School biomedical program three years ago.

Ridout hopes to accomplishments more this year through the Adopt-A-Grant program.

I would love to have three schools fully supported this year, she said.

Shes optimistic.

Friendswood is an amazing little community of big-hearted people, and were not short of volunteers or donors here at all, she said. Its wonderful how the parents help out.

For more information about any of the Foundations programs or how to donate visit www.fisdfoundation.com or call 281-996-6655.
Friendswood police recently investigated cases of theft and fraud.

Burglary

Cash and a small cooler containing medication were stolen Aug. 2 from a vehicle in the Kroger parking lot, 3135 FM 528, police said. The victim reportedly left Bank of America in Pearland at 12:01 p.m. before driving to Kroger.

Two vehicle burglaries were reported Aug. 3 in the 16500 block of Barcelona Drive, police said. A firearm was stolen from one unlocked vehicle, and a wallet and GPS were stolen from the other, also unlocked, according to the report.

Theft

A middle-aged, short woman walked out on a $115 bill Aug. 2 at Angels Nail Salon, 104 S. Friendswood Drive, police said. She reportedly received a mani-pedi, wax and massage before claiming she left her purse in her vehicle and leaving. Her vehicle was described as a blue, two-door passenger car, possibly a Saturn.

A 79-year-old Friendswood man stole an iPad Aug. 4 from Cash America, 3735 FM 528, police said. The store manager reportedly noticed the iPad missing and identified the suspect with surveillance video and a credit card receipt. An officer retrieved the iPad from the mans home and, at the managers request, warned him to stay away from the store, according to the report.

Fraud

A Friendswood woman was bilked out of $4,500 after receiving a call from someone she believed was an Apple employee, police said. The employee claimed $6,500 had been diverted from the victims account, according to the report. The employee allegedly instructed the victim to purchase Google Play cards and provide the numbers so her account could be credited. The victim became suspicious after the third transaction, police said.

A Friendswood mans ex-wife logged into his credit card account and used his airline miles to book flights for herself and their son, according to an Aug. 1 police report.

Several energy accounts were opened fraudulently using a Friendswood womans identity, according to an Aug. 1 police report. The victim told police she has no idea how her identity was compromised.

Police are looking for a man who allegedly passed a counterfeit $100 bill Aug. 2 at H-E-B, 701 W. Parkwood Ave. The suspect was described as a black male wearing jeans, a dark, short-sleeved V-neck shirt and white shoes. He reportedly purchased $11.05 worth of merchandise with the counterfeit bill. He left in a navy blue 1997-2002 Ford Expedition with tan trim and no front license plate, police said.

A Friendswood mans ex-girlfriend admitted to making an unauthorized credit card charge with a light company in Illinois, according to an Aug. 2 police report. The victim later discovered she also had set up an auto-pay for insurance without his permission, police said.

A Friendswood woman found two unauthorized charges on her bank statementone for OReilly Auto Parts and the other for Kroger, according to an Aug. 3 police report. Both stores are in Katy. She believes her information was compromised after she gave a voided checked to her new employer, police said.

Criminal mischief

A 21-year-old Friendswood mans ex-girlfriend dented his vehicles drivers-side door and rear panel after an argument at a party Aug. 4 in the 500 block of Eagle Lakes Drive, police said. The victim reportedly was able to provide audio evidence of the suspect admitting to the vandalism.

Narcotics

A 22-year-old Kingwood man was taken into custody for possession of a controlled substance after an officer observed him wrapping a cell phone charging cord around his bicep and injecting a needle into his arm Aug. 2 while parked at a gas station on West Bay Area Boulevard, police said. Officers approached, and the man reportedly admitted to having methamphetamine and heroin in his wallet. A vehicle search yielded a burned spoon, cotton swabs and a lighter, as well as used and unused needles, according to the report.

A San Leon woman, 33, was charged with possession of a controlled substance after a traffic stop Aug. 2 in the 2800 block of West Bay Area Boulevard, police said. The officer obtained consent to search the vehicle, and the woman, a passenger, reportedly admitted to concealing a pill bottle. The bottle contained methamphetamine, police said. Another passenger said she had marijuana in her clothing, according to the report.

Police charged a Houston woman, 24, with possession of a controlled substance after a traffic stop for expired registration Aug. 3 in the 3200 block of West Bay Area Boulevard. During a vehicle search, the officer reportedly found two used syringes and heroin belonging to the woman. The driver, a Webster man, 33, was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia after the officer found a pipe and marijuana belonging to him, police said.

A 22-year-old Alvin woman was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia after a traffic stop for expired registration Aug. 3 in the 3100 block of FM 528, police said. She reportedly had a one-hitter pipe, a vape pen with THC oil and marijuana.

Police charged a Dickinson woman, 47, with possession of a controlled substance after an officer observed a suspicious vehicle Aug. 4 at Kelly Kar Wash, 5211 FM 2351. The occupants reportedly were carrying several plastic bags. The officer conducted a vehicle search and found methamphetamine and Ecstasy in one of the bags, police said.

A Pearland man, 20, was charged with possession of a controlled substance after a traffic stop for running a red light Aug. 4 at the intersection of South Friendswood Drive and East Edgewood Drive, police said. He reportedly was in possession of a vape pen and THC oil. Bond was set at $2,000.

Police charged a Texas City man, 32, with possession of a controlled substance after a traffic stop Aug. 4 in the 3700 block of FM 528. He reportedly was driving with an invalid drivers license and had an outstanding warrant in La Marque. A vehicle search yielded two containers of marijuana, alprazolam and promethazine, police said. Bond was set at $1,500.

Driving while intoxicated

Police charged Friendswood man, 28, with DWI after a traffic stop for speeding Aug. 6 in the 1100 block of South Friendswood Drive. He failed a field sobriety test and refused a blood and breath test, according to the report.

Traffic

Police charged a 17-year-old Friendswood man with failure to control speed to avoid an accident after a one-car crash July 30 in the 2100 block of Falcon Ridge Boulevard. He reportedly ran the stop sign at Manison Parkway and Falcon Ridge Boulevard before losing control and hitting a curb.

A Fresno man, 21, was charged with expired license plates and possession of drug paraphernalia after a traffic stop Aug. 2 in the 900 block of West Parkwood Avenue, police said. He reportedly had an outstanding warrant and was detained. During a vehicle inventory, the officer found a mason jar containing marijuana residue in the back seat and a bag of marijuana in the console, according to the report.

Police charged a Houston man, 29, with no insurance and possession of drug paraphernalia after a traffic stop for expired registration Aug. 3 in the 1700 block of FM 528. The officer reportedly found a small cigarillo containing marijuana and a partially used synthetic urine bottle during a search.
In my many years of covering fashion, I've never seen this: 11 mainstream magazines all feature black women, including Rihanna, Zendaya and Yara Shahidi, on the cover of their September issues this year.

It's a powerful statement. One that's long overdue.
The Bunker Hill Village city council took measures Monday, Aug. 6, in preparation to possibly leave the Village Fire Department in order to provide its residents with faster fire and emergency medical services.

The Village Fire Department was established in 1947 and provides fire suppression and EMS services to the six Memorial Villages, which include Bunker Hill, Hilshire, Hunters Creek, Piney Point and Spring Valley villages as well as Hedwig Village, where it is located on Corbindale Road.

At the special meeting, the Bunker Hill council voted to enter into two contracts for up to $10,000 each for legal services in case the city exits the department and for consulting services for potential fire and EMS planning.

Bunker Hill Village Mayor Jay Williams said a study by McGrath Consulting Group showed the department is not meeting the national standard that 95 percent of responses should take six minutes or less. He said a lot of that has to do with increased traffic in the area over the years.

During non-rush hour, travel time alone from the VFD to the west part of Bunker Hill is eight to 10 minutes, Williams said. During rush hour, it can take 10 to 20 minutes of just travel time to get from the VFD to west part of our city.

The study found part of the response time problem to be that the Villages have multiple dispatches for multiple departments, unlike most communities nationally, and recommended that the dispatches be combined.

Hunters Creek Village Mayor Jim Pappas agreed with that portion of the report.

Usually, its done through emergency services combined with police to where the 911 call comes in to a dispatcher who says, Hello, whats your emergency? Police or fire? Boom, Pappas said. In 2018, weve got four different people answering the phones in a five-mile radius for the Memorial Villages jurisdiction. I mean thats crazy.

He added that fewer dispatches would mean savings with fewer dispatchers salaries and benefits. But he said officials in Hedwig and Spring Valley Villages are hesitant to combine dispatches because they each have their own independent police departments.

Hedwig Village Mayor Brian Muecke said he does not see how trying to merge four separate dispatches would be possible.

The governance and operational differences at the four Village agencies make physical combination of dispatch impossible, Muecke said.

Spring Valley Village Mayor Tom Ramsey said he supports Bunker Hill in trying to provide better services to its residents.

I agree with Bunker Hill that in terms of  and this is how the commission works  that each city gets to provide input on what its citys needs are, and the city of Bunker Hill has expressed the fact that they are not pleased with the response time to Bunker Hill, Ramsey said. Some parts of that may be related to the time of day, traffic-impacted response times. But in any case, its an issue that needs to be dealt with.

To further improve response times, the McGrath study also suggested adding an additional station both north of the Katy Freeway and in the western part of the Villages.

Derry Essary, Bunker Hill Village fire commissioner and the current chairman of the Village Fire Commission that oversees the VFD, said Bunker Hill would like to turn one of its public works buildings into a second station.

We will renovate that building to basically have one or two ambulance bays, one for an ambulance and one for something we call an attack truck that we could use for being a first responder, to do gas leaks, automobile accidents, tree limbs falling, transformer fires, things like that  not a full pumper  but it would be used as another emergency vehicle, Essary said.

Essary said Bunker Hill is willing to match the Village Fire Departments contributions toward the project and that the second station would service calls across the Villages when doing so would be quicker than using the main firehouse.

According to Pappas, 5 percent of homes in the Villages are being torn down and rebuilt each year with sprinkler systems, so fires are becoming less common. He said he believes ambulatory care is the future of the department.

Were moving more and more toward ambulatory care, Pappas said. When your policemen have the defibrillators and know how to use them and are trained in it and have cut kits, I mean at the end of the day, thats the biggest deal.

Essary said faster response times will save lives and that he hopes the fire commission will come together to address the issue so that Bunker Hill can remain in the department.

The difference between six minutes and 12 to 15 minutes is a life, so thats why thats important to us, Essary said. We much prefer to do this under the auspices of the Village Fire Department. But if we cant get it done that way, were going to go out independently with an ambulance service for our citizens.

Muecke said in its last meeting, the Village Fire Commission worked together to improve outcomes. Another ongoing issue, he said, is that the roof of the firehouse is in grave need of repair, and that Bunker Hill has yet to approve funds for the work.

So far, the city has also voted down the 2019 VFD operating budget of approximately $6.191 million. Essary said the city effectively has until Sept. 30 to approve it or be removed from the department and pursue its own services.

According to Williams, the VFD interlocal agreement would allow Bunker Hill to remain a part of the department through the end of 2019, giving the city time to prepare for the transition.

tracy.maness@hcnonline.com
Memorial High School journalism instructor Holly Hartman was named Secondary Teacher of the Year last evening during the Region 4 Education Service Center Teacher of the Year Dinner and Awards Ceremony.

Joining her as Region 4 Elementary Teacher of the Year is Jeanna Pena of Cypress-Fairbanks ISD.

Earlier, Hartman and Frostwood Elementary School librarian Heather Bothe were named as Region 4 Teacher of the Year finalists, placing among the areas top 10 teachers. Region 4 serves a seven-county area that includes 50 public school districts.

Hartman oversees both the student newspaper and yearbook at Memorial High, where she has taught many years. The newspaper and yearbook have won numerous local, state and national awards during her tenure, and she also teaches regular journalism classes.

Although not present for the Aug. 1 awards ceremony due to a planned vacation, Hartman congratulated Region 4 teachers chosen as their districts best. In all, 90 Region 4 teachers competed in this years competition.

I was somewhat shocked but very appreciative. I received an excited phone call from my mom immediately, and then from family and friends, so that was fun, Hartman said. The other regional finalists are exceptional teachers, and Im honored to be selected among them. I am committed to proudly representing all the outstanding teachers in Region 4 over the next year.

District Superintendent Scott R. Muri, Ed.D., praised the Memorial High educator for her dedication to students and instructional excellence.

Holly has inspired the minds and shaped the lives of thousands of students, and we are so proud of her myriad accomplishments both in and out of the classroom. We congratulate and applaud her for being named the Region 4 Secondary Teacher of the Year, Dr. Muri said.

Region 4s annual recognition of educators is sponsored through the Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA).

A 23-year Texas educator, Hartman has also been a journalism instructor at Spring Branch Middle School, and she taught early in her career in Hayes and Burnet Consolidated ISDs. She also served as the Holocaust Museum Houston director for one year.

She earned her bachelors degree from the University of Texas at Austin, holds certification in elementary education and language arts, English as a Second Language (ESL), and in her teaching field of journalism.

As a teacher and chaperone, she has traveled in the summer with the National Geographic Student Photography program to destinations worldwide, from snowy Iceland to the warm beaches of Fiji, and many passport destinations in between.

Bothe and Hartman were named as district Teachers of the Year this past April during the annual SBISD Service Awards recognition event held at Minute Made Park.

Hartman and CyFairs Pena will now represent secondary and elementary teachers from the Region 4 area at the upcoming Texas Teacher of the Year Awards Ceremony, which will be held in Austin. If successful there, they will then compete at the national level.

SBISD has eight previous Region 4 Teacher of the Year winners. They include Lorraine Maneen, Secondary (2001); Catherine Robinson, Elementary (2000); Patty Oliver, Elementary (1995); Debra Sue Sonner, Elementary (1992); Joyce Roberta Miller-Alper, Secondary (1989); James Eugene Stones Jr., Secondary (1987); Melanie Wells Christie, Secondary (1985); and Patricia C. Taylor, Secondary (1983).

Five of our Region 4 Teachers of the Year were later named Texas Teacher of the Year. They include Lorraine Maneen, Joyce Roberta Miller-Alper, James Eugene Stones Jr., Melanie Wells Christie and Patricia C. Taylor.
As the fall semester approaches, Sam Houston State University continues to prepare for more than 20,000 students to return to campus. On Monday, Aug. 6, a group of SHSU faculty and staff experts met with SHSU alumnus and Texas State Rep. Will Metcalf to discuss how to make all campuses safer.

In light of recent school shootings in Parkland, Fla., and Santa Fe, Texas, a growing question has become what can schools do to prepare for and respond to safety issues? A group of SHSU authors, led by Matthew Fuller, associate professor and director of the Higher Education Leadership doctoral program, are aiming to educate others on their integrated team approach to this problem.

In the wake of recent tragedies, Metcalf reached out to schools in his district as well as SHSU. Metcalf tasked SHSU experts with answering key questions on his mind, in order to be more informed when speaking about the subject of campus safety at the upcoming legislative session.

Texas Legislative District 16, which includes Conroe and the surrounding areas, is one of the fastest growing communities in the state. Metcalf is passionate about protecting schools, and contacted all six school districts he represents about their safety protocols and how to better implement them.

The reason we are here today is this issue has been on my heart for quite some time, said Metcalf. I want to see my twin daughters protected, who are both headed in to first grade this year. I want to see all of your children protected. I am wanting all school districts to understand that school safety needs to become a priority.

During Mondays meeting, Fuller emphasized that preventative action and plans are just as important as having locks on doors and other security measures in place.

Providing prevention education and training is key, said Fuller. Those other security systems are tools, and they are important tools, but tools are only as good as the people using them. You may have a security system, you may have a metal detector, but if you dont help people get familiar with how to use those tools, then the tools might as well be paper weights.

John Yarabeck, SHSU dean of students, is confident in the team in place at the university. Yarabeck stressed that setting baseline standards for actions that could take place at K-12 schools is key to preventing potential safety issues.

We are empowered at this university to take action if needed, said Yarabeck. We have weekly meetings between the Students of Concern Team staff members, University Police, Residence Life, the Counseling Center, the Health Center, the Dean of Students Office and the Advising and Mentoring Center. Those groups work together to proactively intervene with students the campus community has expressed concerns about and that has proven to be very effective. I believe we need to explore ways for ISD administrators to create a similar type of team and empower them to make the decisions necessary, with respect to proactive intervention, with students of concern on their campus like we can at SHSU.

SHSU is continuously putting these action plans into practice with events such as a full-scale exercise, taking place before the fall semester begins. Director of Emergency Management Services, David Yebra, emphasized the significance of having drills in order to create stability if something were to take place on campus.

It is important to rehearse these practices and not just talk about them, said Yebra. If a plan is practiced and rehearsed, it becomes part of your memory bank. You can have a perfect plan in place, but if everyone does not know about it, or cannot execute it, then it is not nearly as effective. Communicating and rehearsing is just as important as having the plan in the first place.

Fuller was encouraged when Metcalf first contacted SHSU several months ago, and also expressed his admiration during the Monday meeting.

I think it shows a willingness to listen to experts in the field and be informed about different issues from different perspectives, said Fuller. That is what American democracy is supposed to be, our representatives listening to folks who deal with issues on a daily basis. It shows he wants to make a thoughtful and measured approach. I applaud him for that.

Metcalf plans to turn this information into action in the upcoming legislative session which begins Jan. 8, 2019.

We wanted to reach out to SHSU because of the phenomenal Criminal Justice department and Education department and Dr. Fuller has been wonderful to work with, said Metcalf. They were the obvious go-to school in the area on this issue and our goal is to continue to work with resources like SHSU and the Texas School Safety Center in San Marcos and develop legislation for next session.

For more information on the publication visit: https://tinyurl.com/ydy4b8rb.
Parents and students are busy with to-do lists and area schools and colleges are planning projects as fall classes begin. Deer Park ISDs first day of school is Aug. 20.

Interested in volunteering with Deer Park ISD?

All residents seeking to be volunteers, chaperones and field trip attendees for Deer Park ISD must submit information for a criminal history record search. All information is submitted electronically at the www.dpisd.org/Page/12515.

Following the Texas Education Code, the Deer Park ISD obtains criminal history record information annuallyfrom all applicants who wish to volunteer in public schools, according to the districts website. An approved volunteer background check is only good for the school year in which it was received. For the purposes of these rules, a school year begins on July 1.

District policy prohibits someone from doing volunteer activities until the individual has provided a drivers license or another form of identification containing the persons photograph issued by an entity of the United States government. Identification must be provided upon arrival at the campus office each day on which the person volunteers.

The district has obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety and may obtain from any other law enforcement agency or private consumer reporting agency all criminal history record information that relates to a volunteer.

In cases where a volunteer has a criminal record, the applicant will receive an e-mail from the consumer reporting agency advising the applicant of the findings. The district looks at a number of criteria when determining whether an applicant can volunteer. These include the nature and number of crimes committed and where they occurred.

The following individuals cannot volunteer in the district:

A person convicted of a crime involving children (such as possession of child pornography)

A person convicted of a serious crime such as murder, aggravated assault and armed robbery

A person who has committed three or more crimes within five years, excluding routine traffic-related violations.

A person serving probation for any crime

Other individuals who have a criminal record will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and, although a person who has committed a misdemeanor could volunteer in a school, the nature of the crime could limit that persons volunteer role.

School supply lists available on TeacherLists

Parents from local schools have a new tool in their back-to-school bag of tricks this year as all of their schools supply lists are now posted on TeacherLists.com.

With one or two clicks, parents can find their childs exact supply list and then click to pre-filled shopping carts on Target, Walmart, Office Depot and Amazon to purchase their list and have it shipped to their home. Target, Walmart and Office Depot also offer in store pick-up.

The site includes lists for numerous schools in the region, such as St. Helen Catholic School in Pearland, Barbara Cockrell Elementary in Pearland, White Elementary School in El Lago, Clear Brook High School and Bales Intermediate School in Friendswood, Deer Park Elementary School in Deer Park, Jennie Reid Elementary in La Porte and Burnett Elementary School and Rick Schneider Middle School in Pasadena.

All the lists are available at www.teacherlists.com/parents.

Deer Park ISD seeks college students to tutor kids

Deer Park ISD is searching for local college students to tutor in the AVID Program for the 2018-2019 school year. Tutor applicants must be strong in math, science, social studies, and English.

AP, Pre-AP, honors and/or dual credit experience is preferred. Pay starts at $12 an hour. Pay increases are available for tutors who continue more than one semester.

The district touts this as an excellent opportunity for education majors and those pursuing service majors at nearby colleges and universities. If you are interested in becoming an AVID tutor, visit https://bit.ly/2vNVRVW.

Positions are available to work between 7:45 a.m. and 4 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Hours vary by location and assignment.

Locations available include:

Bonnette Junior High

Deepwater Junior High

Deer Park High School-North Campus

Deer Park High School-South Campus

For more information, contact Lisa Meyer at lmeyer@dpisd.org or 832-668-7112.

UHCL offers awards to qualifying transfer students

University of Houston-Clear Lake offers financial support for students transferring from other institutions. UH-Clear Lakes Automatic Transfer Scholarship does not require a separate application. Qualifying students need only to meet the Aug. 27 admissions deadline to be eligible.

New, first-time degree-seeking undergraduate students transferring from another college or university with at least 30 transferable credit hours and a transfer GPA of 2.75 or higher can receive a $750 award for each long semester (fall and spring, excluding summer semesters) if they enroll in more than nine credit hours of classes at UHCL. The funds are automatically deducted from the students tuition fee and no application is needed.

Students are eligible to renew the scholarship if they maintained consecutive enrollment in their first two long semesters at UHCL, earned a minimum of 18 hours of academic credit before the start of the third long semester, and maintained a cumulative G.P.A. of 2.75 or higher. They must also be enrolled in nine or more credit hours at UHCL in their third consecutive long semester.

Nearly two-thirds of students at UHCL receive financial aid. For more information about the Automatic Transfer Scholarship and other financial aid options offered at UHCL, visit uhcl.edu/costs-aid/apply-for-aid.

Fall construction to start on San Jac facilities

Funded through voter approval of a $425 million San Jacinto College bond package in November 2015, progress on infrastructure updates and new facilities on each of the San Jac campuses has begun, with four buildings set for groundbreaking this fall.

On the Central Campus, the 145,000-square-foot Center for Petrochemical, Energy, and Technology is taking shape on the edge of the campus along Fairmont Parkway. When it opens in 2019, it will be a petrochemical training facility for industry and will house programs in process technology, instrumentation, electrical technology, non-destructive testing and craft trades.

Set to break ground this fall on the Central Campus is a $16.6 million, 43,000-square-foot welcome center offering enrollment services, advising, financial aid, tutoring and other related services.A groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for 8 a.m. Oct. 19, and the building is expected to open summer 2019.

The San Jacinto College North Campus is set to break ground on a cosmetology/culinary arts center at 8 a.m. Sept. 21. The 57,000-square-foot facility at a cost of $22.3 million will house the colleges culinary arts and North Campus cosmetology programs. The center is scheduled to open fall 2019.

At the South Campus, groundbreaking for a $27.7 million, 74,000-square-foot Center for Engineering and Technology is set for 8 a.m. Oct. 5. The center will house programs in engineering, engineering technology, biomedical equipment repair technology, engineering design graphics, electronics, and computer information technology. The San Jacinto College engineering program has seen a 108 percent enrollment increase since the 2015 semester.

Also set for construction this fall at the South Campus is a $15.8 million, 39,300-square-foot cosmetology center. The groundbreaking is scheduled for 8 a.m. Sept. 7, and the building is anticipated to be completed late summer 2019.

St. Thomas School gets a new look

St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal School in Nassau Bay is in the process or renovating and upgrading its classroom hallway, the library and establishing a unique learning space to be called the Studio.

With a view of Clear Lake and ample natural light, the Studio is a creative environment for students to explore the world. It is part art studio, part maker space, and part science lab.

For more information about the school, contact Moisina Sanxhaku, director of admissions at 281-333-1340 or msanxhaku@stesnb.org.
As Vanessa left the Merrell Center before noon on Saturday, she carried a box of school supplies with her.

One of more than 3,000 invited by Compassion Katy to participate in the nonprofits Operation Back 2 School 2018, she said that the last school year after Hurricane Harvey had been difficult. With five school-age children in elementary and middle school, she appreciated the support from the community and Compassion Katy.

Im hoping this year will be a better one.

To help families, 600 volunteers, including 100 vendors, filled tables with backpacks, school supplies and information about vision and dental screening, churches and available help from groups ranging from Christ Clinic to Katy Christian Ministries and Clothed by Faith. They all worked toward the end goal: To make sure students have everything they need for a successful start, said Sue Hetrick, Compassion Katys executive director.

On Tuesday, Rhonda Player, Compassion Katy marketing director, said, Everything went so wonderfully. Im joyfully surprised at how smooth it was. Planning started last November for the event, said Hetrick.

After entering the Merrell Center, families checked in at front tables and received a wrist band. Each family was assigned a buddy to help them through the process that ended in the arena where volunteers manned tables offering school supplies and services and sponsors offered giveaways and support.

School supplies for parents and students who did not respond to the invitation will be dropped off at their school. This years program served eight Title 1 schools in the Katy Independent School District. Last year, Compassion Katy served one school and next year its planning to serve 17 Title 1 elementary schools in Katy ISD.

Some people walked into the center and were put on a waiting list for school supplies. Player said, It looks like well be able to help everyone we know about. Compassion Katys program complemented the Red Apple Campaign of Katy Christian Ministries so there was no duplication, added Player.

Standing to the side of the arena Saturday morning and looking at all the families and volunteers, Hetrick called it a room of organized chaos full of love.

It really does take a village to raise a child, she continued. The churches, businesses, nonprofits, teachers and schools came together: Were the village.

Among the volunteers were Katy Fire Department firefighters and EMTs Enrique Escobedo and Julio Garcia who manned a table of backpacks from which youngsters could make a choice. Youngsters also could take home a fire helmet to go with their backpack. The event offered them a chance to help their community while giving people a chance to get to know their first responders.

Helping out, too, was Mary Evans, who joined her husband Fred Evans, a corporal with the Katy Independent School District Police Department, in assisting families.

Its been very busy, she said. A steady stream of people. She learned that backpacks that came in prints seemed to be more popular with students than solid colors. Its great that they have a choice.

She enjoyed seeing the faces of the students light up as they collected their supplies. Theyll start school off on a good foot and have a good year.

Compassion Katy also had a good year despite post-Harvey fundraising. Hetrick said the nonprofit met its goal of $250,000 to fund Operation Back 2 School 2018. Planning for next year is expected to start this month. In 2019, the group will help twice as many schools and will need to double its fundraising goal, too.

Visit https://compassionkaty.org for more information.

karen.zurawski@chron.com
It was the day after Christmas in 2016 when a Magnolia-area father decided to run an errand with a friend.

A short while later, he received the call that his son, 20-year-old Oscar Salazar, had been shot and killed in their residence in the 29000 block of Aberdeen Drive in Inverness Crossing outside of Magnolia, Montgomery County Prosecutor Lisa Stewart said during court proceedings on Monday.

Almost two hours after the shooting, a Texas Department of Public Safety Cpl. Troy Phipps was responding to a call to find the possible murder suspect who had fled the scene and was believed to be driving along FM 1488 near Interstate 45.

GRADUATE KILLED: Crosby man gets 10 years for role in deadly accident

Phipps stopped the truck and the suspect, driving the vehicle, matched the description of the suspect the Montgomery County Sheriffs Office was looking for in regards to the fatal shooting, as he stated in his own words as a witness during the trial on Monday.

Nelson Segovia-Amaya, 30, was arrested on the charge of felony murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon on Dec. 26, 2016. He has remained in the Montgomery County Jail awaiting trial, which started on Monday.

Segovia-Amaya pleaded not guilty and elected for the jury to asses the punishment should he be found guilty.

Imagine; it was the day after Christmas, Stewart said during opening statements. This is a time the whole family comes together; they had planned a beach trip and Oscars father wanted to make a trip to AutoZone.

According to Stewart, he received a phone call from Oscars younger brother, who stated that Oscar had been shot and asked him to call for help.

Because of where Oscars father was located, he was within in Harris County, so the call was picked up at that call center and eventually transferred to Montgomery County, Stewart explained. There was confusion because of a language barrier and the dispatchers trying to understand where the shooting had occurred.

Montgomery County 911 dispatch relayed the message about a shooting to MCSO deputies who responded to the scene to find the 20-year-old shot and bleeding while his brother attempted to comfort him, MCSO Sgt. Jake Paul Gonzales said while on the witness stand. He was one of the first units to arrive on the scene.

Oscars brother stated that the defendant walked past him in the hallway toward his room, he got out of the way as fast as he could and allegedly shot Oscar, Stewart said. Before this, they were all happy. There was no fighting, no arguments or words exchanged. We encourage the jury to listen to the evidence; we believe justice demands a guilty verdict.

In response, Segovia-Amayas defense attorney Jeremy Finch stated this case is not about a whodunnit, but a case for self-defense.

We intend to show this is an issue of self-defense, Finch said. We anticipate the evidence will show that Oscar and Segovia-Amaya had a tumultuous relationship. Oscar had made threats toward Segovia-Amaya and on Dec. 26, 2017, he threatened to shoot Segovia-Amaya.

NEAR KINGWOOD: Man allegedly exposes himself at Porter gas station

During the first day of trial on Monday, jurors viewed dash cam footage from MCSO and DPS from the scene of the crime and when Segovia-Amaya was stopped and arrested.

Several witnesses were questioned by both Finch and Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Donna Berkey, who presented several brown evidence bags containing the fathers cell phone, a blanket where one of the bullets was lodged and the four additional bullets collected from the scene.

Jurors also looked at numerous crime scene photos showing where the crime occurred and other factors from the scene.

Montgomery County Crime Scene Investigator Kyle Koonce arrived at the scene at approximately 6:20 p.m. where he first took photos of the scene, placed evidence markers and then collected evidence.

I was called back to the scene on Dec. 27, 2016, after investigators informed me there was possibly more firearm evidence at the scene, Koonce said. I found several more bullets, damage from bullets and a machete-type instrument.

Koonce will return to the stand on Tuesday where he will discuss if all of the bullets were from the same gun as well as several others witnesses who are expected to take the stand.

Segovia-Amaya did a brief stint in the Harris County Jail in 2011 for two non-violent charges, court records show.

In March 2010, Segovia-Amaya gave a Harris County Sheriff's Office deputy a fake name and was charged with Class B misdemeanor failure to identify. After bonding out of jail while that charge was pending, he again gave a Tomball Police Department officer a fake name in November 2011 but was this time charged with Class A misdemeanor failure to identify as a fugitive since he had an open warrant for his arrest stemming from the March 2010 incident.

The trial resumes Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. in Judge Phil Grants 9th District Court.
Several rail crossings along U.S. 90A in Sugar Land will likely remain closed through rush hour as Union Pacific crews work to repair damage from a Monday afternoon train derailment.

A train was traveling west on the rail line when the wheels of one car jumped off the track just west of Main Street, Sugar Land city spokesman Doug Adolph said.
LAS VEGAS - For the second year in a row, hackers at the Def Con computer security conference in Las Vegas set out to show just how vulnerable U.S. elections are to digital attacks.

At one gathering geared for kids age 17 and younger, elementary school-aged hackers cracked into replicas of state election websites with apparent ease. At the Def Con Voting Village, a section of the conference that showcased hands-on hacks, security researchers picked apart voting machines and exposed new flaws that could potentially upend a race. And hackers got close to being able to manipulate a heavily-guarded mock voter registration database.

But during the weekend-long hack-a-thon, these faux election hackers had a hard time winning over some of the people they wanted to reach most.

Election officials from the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) bristled at the demonstrations, saying they didn't reflect what could actually happen on Election Day. So did voting machine vendors, which argued it would be difficult for adversaries to gain the level of access necessary to tamper with equipment.

The tension doesn't bode well for the debate over how to boost election security as the threat of Russian election interference looms large ahead of the November midterms and 2020. Officials are wary about security researchers highlighting the vulnerabilities in their systems, fearing that they could discourage voters from showing up at the polls. But if they're too dismissive about the threats, they risk alienating important allies as they push for more resources to upgrade voting equipment, patch vulnerabilities and hire more cybersecurity staff.

"We're trying to help," said Jake Braun, an organizer of the Voting Village and a former Obama White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security. "We're identifying for them things that they can do to demonstrate to the public that they're making elections more secure."

But not everyone saw it that way. Micah Evans, an IT worker with the Nevada secretary of state's office, attended a demonstration as an observer. During a heated exchange with Braun, he said the actual websites were far more secure than the replicas created by the organizers. "If you're going to say, 'We're going to hack this site with kids,' you have to put the full disclosure that this is not what our website is," Evans said. "I'm asking for fairness, and what you've mocked up is not fair."

Braun said he was missing the point. "You're on the front lines of a war," he said. "If you guys aren't out there screaming from the mountaintop every day to Congress asking for more money, then you're not doing your job."

Evans's objections echoed those expressed by NASS, which released its statement criticizing Def Con almost as soon as the demonstrations began. The organization said the Voting Village was using a "pseudo-environment which in no way replicates state election systems, networks or physical security." Voting vendors issued similar criticisms. "Physical security measures make it extremely unlikely that an unauthorized person, or a person with malicious intent, could ever access a voting machine," ES&S said in a letter to customers.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat, was the only secretary of state who attended the conference. He said he shared some of his counterparts' reservations but assured attendees he was there to "listen and to learn."

"We're still a little traumatized by the headlines from last year's conference - 'Voting systems hacked, voting systems hacked, voting systems hacked,'" Padilla told reporters in a news conference on Friday. "If there's distinctions between what's happening downstairs and real world conditions, that doesn't mean there's nothing to learn from a meeting like this, but it does mean let's be informed about what the takeaways are."

It's true that Russian interference in the 2016 election turned election cybersecurity from a relatively niche technical issue to a top feature at Def Con, which is now in its 26th year. At last year's conference, hackers revealed an array of flaws in voting machines, prompting pushback from election officials and voting vendors who said the hacks were unrealistic but also helping pave the way for lawmakers to introduce election security legislation.

But as security researchers and officials both note, the threats are no different this year, as Moscow continues to target the U.S. election system.

Against that backdrop, organizers of this year's Voting Village took things to another level. In a room at the Caesars Palace hotel, hackers found a litany of new vulnerabilities in voting machines used by states, including one that allowed them to manipulate vote totals wirelessly. Organizers also set up a "Cyber Range" where a replica of Ohio's voter registration database was secured behind firewalls. Hackers penetrated the database but weren't able to manipulate it or download it.

A floor above, kids ages 6 to 17 sat at rows of laptops and tried to hack into replicas of state election websites that displayed election results. I watched Yonatan Lensky, 11, sneak into a mock website for the state of Pennsylvania, change President Donald Trump's name to "Mark Albert" and change his vote tally to 999,999,999. Other kids his age found similar exploits, including an 11-year-old girl who changed election results on the mock Florida website within 15 minutes.

Nico Sell, founder of the R00tz Asylum, the nonprofit that hosted the young hackers, said the demonstration underscored the need for officials to address basic flaws in their networks.

"They're not taking responsibility for being vulnerable. That's what we can change," Sell told me at the conference. "This should be a top priority, and this is the lowest hanging, easiest thing to fix in our elections."

After the conference ended, Padilla told me he still thought it was important to stress the difference between "what may have happened in Def Con and real world conditions."

"Let's be constructive on identifying different vulnerabilities," he said, "but let's be partners on advocating for more resources."
Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., on Sunday denied allegations that he abused a woman with whom he had a romantic relationship.

Ellison, who is deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee and running for Minnesota attorney general in Tuesday's primary, issued a statement denying claims that he dragged the woman, Karen Monahan, off a bed by her feet and berated her with profane language. The claims, which the woman's son made and she confirmed, have not been corroborated.

The woman and her son allege that there is video of the incident. They did not respond to multiple requests Sunday from The Washington Post to provide the video.

"Karen and I were in a long-term relationship which ended in 2016, and I still care deeply for her well-being," Ellison said in the statement issued through his campaign. He was apparently referencing Monahan.

He added, "This video does not exist because I never behaved in this way, and any characterization otherwise is false."

On Saturday, a person identifying himself as Austin Monahan wrote in a post on Facebook that he came across an almost two-minute video of the incident while using his mother's computer.

On Sunday, a woman identifying herself as Karen Monahan wrote on Twitter: "What my son said is true."

The allegations surfaced days before the primary in Minnesota, a contest Ellison entered earlier this summer. He faces four opponents in the Democratic race.

One of his opponents, state Rep. Debra Hilstrom, took to Twitter to call on Ellison to answer the allegations. She was tagged in Austin Monahan's Facebook post.

Ellison is one of the most liberal members of the House. After the 2016 election, he sought the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. He lost to Tom Perez but was later appointed his deputy, as Democrats sought to unify their fractured party.

- - -

The Washington Post's Elise Viebeck and David Weigel contributed to this report.
NEW CANAAN  Sisters and former school cafeteria workers could be serving lunch in prison after being charged with stealing nearly a half-million dollars in the past five years.

Joanne Pascarelli, 61, of Stratford, and her sister Marie Wilson, 67, of Wilton, turned themselves in to New Canaan police over the weekend after warrants were issued for their arrest. Both have been charged with larceny and defrauding a public community for purportedly stealing $478,588 from 2012 to 2017.

Police say the scam could have been ongoing for 15 years or more, but were advised to limit an investigation to five years due to statutes of limitations.

Pascarelli and Wilson were placed on administrative in late 2017 and resigned in December around the time when the Board of Education began looking into possible theft of money.

One of the cases brought against Pascarelli is the discrepancy in average daily deposits made at Saxe Middle School in the time before and after her resignation.

At Saxe Middle School, the average daily deposit from the 2013 to 2016 fiscal year (from July 1 to June 30) ranged from $18 to $33 a day.

After a new software installation in summer of 2016 that registered and documented cash intake, daily deposits went up to an average of $93 a day for the 2017 school year. In 2018, the fiscal year in which Pascarelli had left for the second half, the daily deposit average was at $183 a day.

According to an affidavit, Pascarelli told police in an interview in March that she didnt know how such a discrepancy could be explained and that she would never take money.

Separately, Wilson, in interviews with police, informed them that she provided money to her boss in the New Canaan High School cafeteria  around $100 a day  but that she personally never took a dollar.

Pascarelli and Wilson could not be reached for comment.

Mark Sherman, attorney for Wilson, said his client would be pleading not guilty at her arraignment and said that the accusations were false and misleading.

There is much more to this story. Marie is innocent and did not personally divert a single nickel of town money for personal gain, Sherman said. She is not going to be scapegoated for the missing money.

Mark Carta, the attorney defending Pascarelli, said he was not at liberty to comment on the charges.

Several witnesses who worked with Pascarelli and Wilson were voluntarily interviewed by police. Witnesses say they saw Pascarelli and Wilson come to the cash registers and remove the large bills in between each lunch period at their respective schools.

The investigation dates back to December of last year when the Board of Education filed a complaint with police regarding financial discrepancies in the handling of cash at Saxe Middle School and New Canaan High School cafeterias.

Superintendent of Schools Bryan Luizzi issued a statement via the New Canaan Public Schools website.

We are deeply upset by this alleged violation of our trust of the entire community and are committed to continuing our full cooperation with the New Canaan Police Department regarding these allegations, Luizzi wrote.

Luizzi added that the alleged crimes involve the cafeteria fund which is separate and apart from the districts operating budget.

Each individual was released after posting a $50,000 bond. Wilson was issued a Aug. 21 court date and Pascarelli Aug. 24.

According to police documents, the Board of Education received a $500,000 reimbursement from their insurance company but wished to continue forward with the criminal case.

The charges surprised some former high school students who recalled Wilson from the cafeteria.

I do remember seeing (Wilson) in the cafeteria but I never had a conversation with her nor was the lady who students would talk to, Jake Neuberger, class of 2018, said.

The school has had problems with staff before but there wasnt really a reason to expect that the cafeteria was having issues like that.

Allie Neugeboren, who also graduated this summer, shared similar thoughts.

I am very surprised but I remember (Wilson) very well, Neugeboren said. I remember her as always being rude or in bad moods but I always felt like that was understandable because I know some kids in the cafeteria are just plain rude so it always made me want to be even more nice to them.

humberto.juarez@hearst

mediact.com
Grace United Methodist Church is expanding its children and youth programs, starting with the hiring of a full-time youth and children director.

Squire Prince will be working with the church to expand its programming for younger people after being hired as the children and youth director in July.

My number one goal is to lead children and youth to God however I can, Prince said. Im blessed here at Grace to have the resources to do that.

Prince said he is excited to take on the role and see what the church can offer the children.

Prince said he has always wanted to work with children and continue his work within his faith and was happy that the director spot allows him to do both.

I was a church boy. I loved going to church as a child, Prince said. I knew at an early age that I wanted to preach.

And, he said he was happy that it allowed him to continue his love of teaching.

My grandma was a teacher and that filtered through to me, Prince said. Her passion to teach inspired me and her stories made me want to teach.

Prince graduated from Illinois College last year with a degree in music, which he said he hopes to bring into his work at Grace including the creation of a children and youth choir.

Prince said he is working with the staff to find ways to encourage more young people to participate in the church.

Right now, Prince said the staff is planning weekly worship meetings where those that participate will take pare in a potluck dinner before branching off into different groups for Bible study or age groups and choir practice.

There are all types of ministries that people can be a part of, Prince said.

In addition, Prince said he hopes to have weekly youth meetings and different events throughout the year, including things such as movie nights.

We want to get children into the church, Prince said. We want them to know that they have a family here that can support them.

Samantha McDaniel-Ogletree can be reached at 217-245-6121, ext. 1233, or on Twitter @JCNews_samantha.
East Coast cannabis markets are getting ready to expand in a major way. In recent weeks, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Florida and even New York have shown signs of progress. This has been a long time coming for East Coast cannabis entrepreneurs.

As founder of New Yorks largest cannabis meetup group, High NY, Ive been working to educate New Yorkers about cannabis since 2014. Ive done this by soliciting experts from all over the world to come to New York to share their knowledge.

The Cannabis World Congress & Business Exposition (CWCBE) took place in New York City recently. While there, I met with nine-year industry veteran and author Christian Hageseth. He is the founder and CEO of Denvers Green Man Cannabis, a retail and grow operation well-known for its connoisseur grade craft cannabis, and ONE Cannabis, a cannabis business franchise.

At the CWCBE, I also spoke with Chloe Villano, founder of Denver based Clover Leaf University. Clover Leaf, licensed by the Colorado Department of Higher Education, has conducted vocational training for thousands of people all over the world. Chloe and her team ran a cannabis business crash course for a few hundred attendees at the CWCBE in New York.

Related: Italy Accidentally Legalized Pot and Now the Mafia Is Losing Big Money

Below is some advice Christian and Chloe shared for East Coast cannabis entrepreneurs:

Have significant capital and be patient.

Temper your enthusiasm, Hageseth said. Ive been part of legal cannabis businesses in nine states, shortly after each legalized marijuana. For seven out of nine states, the roll out was significantly delayed and enrollment of medicinal patients was much lower than expected. Massachusetts is a perfect example. They took a while to get to where they are and are gaining speed, but the industry there is still so far from its true potential.

He cautions to remain optimistic but be realistic and pragmatic in your approach, as it may take a few years before new markets get their feet on the ground. A lot of people think theyre going to get rich quick [in cannabis]. But, in reality, you are not going to be an immediate cash flow business, Hageseth added.

Villano echoed these sentiments, always raise more money than you think you need and dont expect business to come easily. In fact, expect everything to go wrong, because the regulations will change often and your plan will become obsolete.

Hageseth also advises letting others take the lead.

There is a difference between pioneers and settlers. Pioneers got arrows and settlers got land, he said. Im much more interested in being a settler in the cannabis industry. You dont know how regulators or banks are going to react as legalization changes, so its beneficial to not be the first to market.

Related: New Study Confirms What Many Already Know: Cannabis Helps Treat Insomnia

Seek experienced partners

Partner with people who have industry experience to guide you and provide valuable advice along the way. The cannabis industry is unlike any other, so finding someone who has a deep amount of vetted contacts, as well as experience owning or operating a successful dispensary or grow is a great competitive advantage.

Having someone who understands your business and is available to help resolve specific challenges is invaluable, Hageseth said. I wish I could have paid someone $100,000 and five percent of my revenue to not make all the mistakes Ive made. I would have saved myself so much trouble and would be millions of dollars ahead.

He advises to be willing to pay for the right partner or the right advice. For example, there are ways to structure your entity and design your corporate governance that can significantly reduce frictions when it comes to scaling your business, remaining compliant and paying your taxes. An experienced partner can clue you into this as well as other important variables that can greatly impact the bottom line. Villano vehemently cautioned, avoid bad partnerships! The fastest way for your cannabis business to fail is by taking on the wrong partner.

Related: Cannabis Companies Likely to Raise More in 2018 Than the Last 3 Years Combined

Find a lawyer and accountant with cannabis experience.

Marijuana is a tough business to navigate. Its in your best interest to find an accountant who has been through an IRS audit or two with a marijuana company. If you dont file your taxes the right way from the start, your business can get very far behind, Hageseth said.

Your business will greatly depend on the legislation in your market, so work with a lawyer who is well versed in several cannabis markets and regulatory frameworks in order to best protect your business, Villano added.

Related: She Wants to Change the Face of the Industry

Learn about cannabis

Since the cannabis industry is nascent, many people are coming in from all different industries with several ideas of ways to incorporate something they know really well into an industry they know nothing about. Just because something worked in another industry, doesnt guarantee it will translate in cannabis. Although it seems straightforward, take time to learn about the cannabis plant, culture and community before entering this industry.

Those who dont know history are destined to repeat it, Villano told me with a smile. And those who dont know about cannabis are going to struggle as cannabis entrepreneurs.

Related:

6 Essential Items to Include on Your Cannabis Label

You Won't Survive as an Entrepreneur Treating Your Business Like a Hobby

Some Tips for East Coast Cannabis Entrepreneurs From Colorado's Industry Leaders



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
The Anak Krakatau volcano in the Philippines is shooting boulders out of its crater like fireworks. The "lava bombs" (yep, that's a real thing) hurled into the sky on Saturday were as big as trucks, according to James Reynolds, the natural disaster chaser who shot the video you're watching above.

Anak is only a century old - not even a blip on Earth's geological timeline - but it's already become one of the most-watched volcanoes in the world. That probably has to do with its lineage; Anak Krakatau is, geophysically speaking, Krakatoa's volcanic child.
As public pressure mounts on Israeli leaders to crush rocket barrages from the Gaza Strip, they're opting to try the diplomatic route while a greater threat looms: Iran's presence in postwar Syria.

To keep his military focused on the northern front, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pursuing a long-term truce with Hamas, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip. Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the negotiations, carried out through intermediaries, serve both Israel and Hamas.

"If you ask what's the ideal situation for Iran, it's for Israel to be bogged down in Gaza fighting," said Amidror, a retired general. "We need to focus on the real issue: Iran and Syria. For Hamas, they're desperate and need to find a way to save their project," a reference to the group's rule of Gaza.

As President Bashar Assad's war against opposition forces winds down, Iran is working to strike lasting roots in Syria, increasing its sphere of influence and giving it an arms-transport corridor stretching from Tehran to Beirut. Israeli officials fear Iran could use Syria as a forward base to threaten the Jewish state, similar to the challenge from Lebanon with Iran's proxy militia, Hezbollah.

A Netanyahu spokesman would not comment on any potential linkage in Israeli strategy toward Iran and Hamas.

"Our objective is to restore quiet to residents of the south and the area adjacent to the Gaza Strip," Netanyahu told the Cabinet on Sunday. "This goal will be achieved in full."

Iran's nuclear program, ballistic missiles, support for anti-Israel groups and calls for the Jewish state's destruction lead some Israeli officials to view it as a near-existential threat. In recent months Israel frequently has attacked Iranian bases and other military targets in Syria to pressure Tehran to retreat.

To keep Gaza from becoming a distraction, Israeli officials are backing Egyptian and United Nations efforts to broker a truce with Hamas. The idea would be to trade military quiet for the easing of an Israeli and Egyptian blockade imposed more than a decade ago, according to a person familiar with the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity. If all goes well, later stages could involve international investment in Gaza and the release of Israelis held hostage there.

In a July 19 Washington Post opinion piece, Trump advisers Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt and U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman signaled that if Hamas stops seeking confrontation with Israel, Gaza could receive massive international aid.

"If Hamas demonstrates clear, peaceful intentions - not just by word but, more importantly, by deed - then all manner of new opportunities becomes possible," the U.S. officials wrote.

More isolated than ever, Hamas in recent months has sponsored weekly protests at the Gaza border fence that have focused popular anger toward Israel and away from the group's governance of Gaza. Shunned by the West as a terrorist group, Hamas is distrusted by Saudi Arabia and Egypt because of its Muslim Brotherhood origins, and broke with the Palestinian Authority in armed clashes in 2007. Over the past year Qatar, its main patron, distanced itself after neighbors accused it of supporting terrorism, a charge Qatari leaders deny. Hamas leaders say Iran has offered more support since then.

Israeli security officials believe another war with Gaza is likely unless economic conditions in the strip improve, said one official familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential talks. Israel and the Palestinian Authority have disrupted power supplies and withheld funds from Gaza, trying to pressure Hamas to moderate. President Donald Trump's budget cuts to the U.N. refugee agency serving Palestinians threaten to shutter Gaza schools and limit food supplies. Hamas, for its part, has devoted millions of dollars to its military projects while Gaza's civilian infrastructure crumbles.

Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. envoy to the region, has been shuttling among Gaza, Egypt and Israel trying to jump-start humanitarian projects in the strip.

"If we leave things unchanged we're heading into another war, which will be nasty," Mladenov said in an interview.

Not everyone is on board with the cease-fire talks. Mahmoud Abbas's West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, which boycotted a White House summit in January seeking aid for Gaza, has raised a number of objections to the current effort. It sees international plans to rebuild Gaza as a plot to circumvent the Palestinian Authority, divide the two Palestinian territories and let the P.A.'s two main adversaries off the hook.

"The Israelis will achieve a defusing of the tension so they can focus on Syria, and consolidate the separation between Gaza and the West Bank," said Ghassan Khatib, a lecturer at Bir Zeit University and former Palestinian Authority cabinet member. "Hamas will get out of the impasse and deep crisis they're in."

- - -

Bloomberg's Jonathan Ferziger contributed.
One man died and another is in critical condition after they were shot in a Texas Medical Center-area parking garage Sunday night, police said.

Houston police officers responded around 10 p.m. to reports of multiple gunshots heard in the 2900 block of Old Spanish Trail, near Almeda.
One week before hundreds of elementary students will flood the hallways for the first day of school, 20 Texas school employees ran screaming out of classrooms Friday as the sound of gunshots echoed through the hallways of the empty building.

They were practicing an active shooter drill as part of their school marshal training, an intensive six-day course that culminates in their certification to carry a firearm on school campuses. The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement is holding six courses this summer, which are partially funded by a $114,000 grant from the governors office.

Since the mass shooting at Santa Fe High School in May, the number of school employees certified as school marshals in Texas has doubled from 33 in late June to 71, with the potential for 94 additional marshals by the time the summer courses end.

While some teachers and experts have questioned whether arming school staff is an effective way to stop a shooting on campus, top Texas officials called for more of them after a single gunman killed 10 people in Santa Fe.

PREPARED: Texas schools armed 33 staff members through School Marshal program

Prospective school marshals undergo 80 hours of training during the course, which includes classroom lessons as well as simulations. During these drills, trainees use a Glock 17, a semiautomatic pistol that is modified to shoot rubber bullets.

Its intense, but its intended to be, said Kim Vickers, executive director of the law enforcement commission. Its one thing to say, Give me a gun and I can use it if I have to. Its a whole different matter to ask, What is my natural human response, fly or fight? Youll come closer to resolving that in your mind when youre put in a position when youre very keyed up, when you have to learn.

Employees who receive the training are selected by the districts where they work, but all public school employees, from administration to custodial staff, can sign up for the course after meeting eligibility requirements. School employees must have a handgun license, and pass a psychological evaluation before participating.

AT THE CAPITOL: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says school security will be top priority in Texas Senate

Texas schools dont provide firearms to school marshals. When they return to their districts, school employees will be certified to carry their own handguns on campus. Teachers are required to store their firearm in a lock box while in the classroom, but they are free to carry their handgun on their person at any other time as long as it is concealed, said Michael Antu, deputy chief and director of enforcement and special services at the law enforcement commission.

Were showing them how to properly use it and how to safely use it when those situations arrive, said Antu, who instructed this weeks course. Some of the tougher decisions are when to shoot and not shoot. We train them that the firearm is only a tool for the school marshal, not the end all, be all.

One of the prospective marshals, a 46-year-old educator from a district in Southeast Texas who chose to remain anonymous, said his district decided to participate in the training after considering various school safety options in the last year.

The hardest part of this is having to process having something of such incredible consequence happen in an educational setting, he said. Its sad that were having to have this conversation about the level of security in our schools, but we know from past events that it can occur...and we need to be prepared if it happens.
Dow Chemical/Chief Photographer

After the Freeport-based Dow Chemical Plant estimated in June the release of a record-setting amount of cancer-causing benzene, company officials have since informed the state that the quantity emitted was well below what is allowed by law.

The warning came from the plant in June, when it informed Texas State Environmental Quality officials that it would be restarting the facility after scheduled maintenance. Over several weeks, company officials would be conducting flaring, a method of safely burning off excess hydrocarbon gases.
The question of Confederate monuments  around which neo-Nazis gathered one year ago Sunday in Charlottesville, Virginia  remains unresolved. Should Americans eliminate the memorials to Confederate generals and soldiers the way Germany eliminated monuments to Nazis? The answer isnt a simple yes or no. In fact, Germanys battle over the commemorative landscape provides a stark lesson in this regard.

The presence of Nazi leaders and ideology remains embedded in monuments, street names and church bells of Germany. And Nazi monuments have emboldened modern-day neo-Nazis and the troubling Reichsburger, a political movement whose goal is to overthrow the modern German state, providing a rallying place for people eager to reclaim Nazi history and assert its contemporary relevance.

The tale of the Kriegerdenkmal, a military memorial in Hamburg, reveals that reconciliation with the darkest chapters of our past is a constant battle that requires an honest and open dialogue that produces accurate monuments, not simply a proliferation of dueling monuments.

In March 1936, Nazi leaders, along with military and veterans organizations, unveiled Richard Kuohls Kriegerdenkmal in a high-profile dedication ceremony. The monuments location was purposefully selected for the high volume of traffic passing by the nearby Dammtor Station.

Roughly 29 feet long, 13 feet wide and 23 feet high, made from shell-bearing limestone, the monument features marching soldiers on three sides to remember Hamburgs soldiers from the Franco-Prussian War and World War I. Above the soldiers is a poem about the farewell of soldiers, instilling the idea that soldiers have to perish for the country to survive.

With war on the horizon for Nazi Germany, the message of the monument was clear: Sacrifice was noble and expected.

The monument reflected the celebration of militarism in Nazi Germany. After World War I, monuments to fallen soldiers had appeared across Germany. After the Nazi takeover in 1933, these monuments grew in symbolism. Monuments called for courage, willingness to fight and confidence in victory, marked by symbols such as eagles and swords.

After World War II, the Allied powers attempted to eradicate all monuments to Nazism in Germany. The Allied Control Council mandated the removal of all monuments, museums, statues, structures or plaques that celebrated German militarism or Nazism. They saw these as nurturing German militarism, which many allied leaders thought had helped spur two devastating wars in a 30-year period.

And yet the Kriegerdenkmal war block remained because its meaning and symbolism were more ambiguous. For some Germans, it assumed a new meaning of sacrifice related to the Cold War. But it also offered a rallying point for neo-Nazis and veterans groups, many of them with right-wing political identities. Some organizations praised the monument as a symbol of German soldiery. Vandals repeatedly sprayed graffiti on the monument, forcing the police to protect and the city to clean it.

When the local governing council decided to remove the militaristic poem, the Springer Verlag newspaper chain started a campaign against the removal of Germany from the monument. A right-wing initiative formed. Eventually, the citys senate decided to leave the monument unaltered.

By the 1980s, the debate over removal had subsided. Instead, civic leaders pushed to change the landscape around the memorial. Austrian sculptor Alfred Hrdlicka won a competition to determine what to do with the space by proposing several monuments to address the impact of war on the civilian population and the suffering of war refugees. Planned third and fourth parts of the monument on Nazi justice and women remain undelivered.

The result is that the Kriegerdenkmal is now a site with a monument and counter-monuments, creating a public commemorative landscape that offers something for all sides, while also serving as a provocation for all sides as well. Neo-Nazi rallies continue to occur at the Kriegerdenkmal to celebrate Germanys military past and calls for a revival of Nazism. On the other side, peace activists have gathered at the monument to protest war.

The already busy monument landscape at Hamburgs Dammtor got even more complicated when the city decided in 2012 to add a monument to deserters who were shot by the Nazi regime. The triangular monument is right behind the Kriegerdenkmal, consisting of two bronze grates in the form of writing. This monument honors the brave men who refused military service or deserted the Nazi-led armies and paid the ultimate price.

The contested memorial landscape around the Kriegerdenkmal should serve as a cautionary tale. Hamburg has done much to memorialize soldiers, the cruelty and suffering of war and those who refused to fight. By leaving the original monument in place, however, as historical facts (that) can not be removed, the city also left alive a place for neo-Nazi groups to rally.

This does not mean that all Confederate monuments should be removed from public places. But U.S. leaders should proceed with caution when determining their fate. Building counter-monuments cannot scrub the meaning of the original from a site. As long as the original statues remain in place and serve as a rallying point, alternatives will not serve their intended purpose of making people think about the flaws of the original.

Only after societies honestly face and address the dark eras of their past do monuments and counter-monuments serve their purpose of giving voice to the many voices involved.

Eichhorn is a Civil War historian and assistant professor at Middle Georgia State University.
The New York Times wrote recently about the urgency effect  the way that our minds prioritize items that immediately satisfy our desire to get things done, leaving our larger but seemingly less urgent needs waiting.

We have a tendency to become comfortable with our surroundings and use quick fixes to mask larger tasks that require more time, energy and often funding to complete.

Translate that to a government agencys approach to technology and you might have a looming problem. These legacy system habits and routines have limited operational efficiency and likely put applications and the network at risk.

The federal government spends roughly 80 percent of its IT budget on operating and maintaining legacy systems, instead of modernizing to enable new types of solutions and programs. In fact, GAO reports show O&M spending on federal IT increased and investment in modernization decreased by $7.3 billion from 2010 to 2017.

Turning this around requires investing in long-term technology strategies that mirror an agencys comfort with habit and routine.

To break down the idea of long-term technology investment for agencies, compare this change in IT to a home investment  when to update it, when it needs remodeling and when to completely modernize your space.

Approaching a re-design

The passage of the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act in late 2017 kick started new thoughts on IT spending for some government agencies. But there is no simple purchasing decision that an IT leader can make to reform a technology system, and there is no rip and replace option in home owning that comes without creating a new place to live.

The first step for government agencies to consider is to map out priority investments that are vital to mission success, and then develop a strategy for modernization. This approach is similar to a re-design that occurs while a family still occupies a home.

Three initial investments Ive found to be critical for agencies are: centralizing the network, up-front planning and critical for success  security.

Centralizing the network

When agencies look at the way their network is configured, they usually find that its either centralized or arranged in silos. Think about central air or an HVAC in a house as opposed to individual air conditioning units on the floor or in windows. Central air is more efficient and is easier to manage.

Apply this central air concept to an agencys network and you get enterprise-level interoperability; the IT team can execute with an enterprise-view, diagnosing issues at-large and making a simple fix that affects the entire network at once, as opposed to disparate systems.

The choice between centralized or siloed services is for an agency to make on its own, but transitioning programs from more rigid applications to those that are distributed and scalable will help to support a much healthier network.

Upfront planning

Its no secret that budget constraints are one of the biggest challenges for IT teams. One question CIOs ask potential MGT fund investments is will the investment contribute to short- or long-term savings?

Many homeowners today are looking at more long-term investments like solar panels. While there may be an increase in short-term spending, home owners reap larger, long-term rewards by investing in a future-ready, energy-saving strategy. The same idea applies to government agencies when you look at their potential transition from data storage to the cloud.

Cloud-ready infrastructures allow agencies to be adaptive  providing long-term benefits. Its not a one-time deployment, its investing in a long-term solution that will provide a scalable platform for future advances.

The more agencies can invest in up-front planning for things like cloud-ready infrastructures, the more they will prevent quick fixes and allocation of additional funding on older tech.

Securing the core

The most pressing concern for government agencies today is how to protect their systems against incursions; most importantly, cybersecurity breaches. In 2017, the Ponemon Institute revealed that the average cost of a data breach worldwide comes in at $3.6 million, but the risk to agencies is more than financial loss, its an erosion of the publics trust and confidence in government.

If you are remodeling your home and installing a security system, you wouldnt focus just on the room where the most valuables were kept. Youd protect the front door, back door, windows, etc., so any invasion is detected and neutralized before ever reaching your most valuable assets. The same metaphor applies to government agencies. Agencies need to secure all corners of the infrastructure  pushing risk-management out to the edge with multiple alerts and preventative measures being engaged before reaching the core network.

Using a network-as-sensor approach, agencies can track all activity happening throughout environments and identify anomalies, including unusual user behaviors, to protect against threats. This approach can block malware before it enters the network, uncover suspicious code hiding in encrypted data and even analyze that data to better understand threats and improve future defenses.

What lies ahead?

Approaching network modernization using a strategy similar to a home remodel is one way to future-proof for the long-term. With a thoughtful plan and a strong and secure foundation, agency leaders can build the capabilities they need to meet current needs and future expectations from employees and citizens.
The charity Muscular Dystrophy UK has cut all ties with Christine Hamilton after a tweet she sent comparing the burka with the hoods worn by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Hamilton, a right wing media personality, previously had references on her site to MDUK and Balls to Cancer, has now removed any mention of both of them from her profile.

Hamiltons comments follow on from controversy over former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, who is under investigation by the Conservative party and has been asked to apologise, after negative comments about the burka last week.

Hamiltons tweet, accompanied by pictures of a woman in a Klansman outfit, had said: If the #burka is acceptable then presumably this is too?

If the #burka is acceptable then presumably this is too? pic.twitter.com/C2jyVTIOZk  Christine Hamilton (@brit_battleaxe) August 10, 2018

She wrote later that: I am not comparing Muslim women to KKK members and yes, thank you, I do know the difference. I was graphically illustrating how full facial cover can be sinister, which is how many people view the burka.

In response MDUK tweeted: Christine Hamilton is no longer an ambassador of MDUK and all links between her and the charity have been severed.

Christine Hamilton is no longer an ambassador of MDUK and all links between her and the charity have been severed.  MuscularDystrophyUK (@MDUK_News) August 11, 2018
A media riddle: if white nationalists hold a rally in Washington and no one shows up, is it still news?

It was on Sunday, as hundreds of reporters from around the world converged in front of the White House to chronicle the second Unite the Right protest, comprising about two dozen people led by a 34-year-old named Jason Kessler. The event, promoted in media interviews by Kessler to mark the one-year anniversary of protests he had helped arrange in Charlottesville, wound up being primarily a photo-op for him and his posse. The rally, such as it was, ended soon after it began. Counter-demonstrators amassed a much larger group.

News outlets, most notably NPR, justified giving Kessler airtime in advance of the rally in part because he was the person making a march on Washington happen. On Friday night, ABC featured a segment on Kessler, too. I hope they play more on Good Morning America, he told CJR over the weekend, in Washington. Even if Kessler couldnt muster more people to stand by his side, many news outlets still turned out to watch him try. At the metro station in Foggy Bottom, reporters had questions: Whats your message to the counter-demonstrators who say you represent a dark side to American life? What do you say to people who are in fear for their safety and well being? Would you say youre just an opportunistthat this is an opportunity to get some media attention? Kessler, talking with every member of the press in sight, accused reporters of sensationalism.

From archives: The outrageous editorial by a Charlottesville daily that preceded violence

Accompanying him was a security guard, George Mesones, a 48-year-old Latino man in a light gray suit. You command the narrative, he told Kessler. You give them what they want, and you give them the unexpected. Also with them was Brandon Watson, 28, an African-American man from Bristol, Virginia. Hed only known Kessler for a few weeks, but said that he was joining up because he believes in civil rights and freedom of speech. Kessler encouraged him to give interviews. (He had like 10 other black guys ready to march, Mesones told Kessler. But they all bailed last minute.)

As they emerged above ground, members of the pressby now realizing that the event was a flopswarmed. Photographers and video crews negotiated with police for space.

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Go slow, an officer told Kessler. I need a controlled exit. Kessler unfolded an American flag and followed the officers with Mesones and Watson, who was wearing a flag like a cape.

A CBS reporter approached. Jason, is this a racist rally?

No.

An officer pushed the reporter to the side as Kesslers group continued on.

Its a free-speech rally.

Police lined the avenue in double rows of motorcycles and bicycles, bumper to bumper, sirens wailing. Mesones and Watson stayed close to Kessler. Reporters walked backwards, dripping with sweat, and several fumbled with lens caps as their hands turned slick. A boy in the march, wearing a mask, raised his hand in a Nazi salute and shouted an anti-Semitic slur.

At a press conference, in Lafayette Square, Kessler gave a speech, leaning into boom mics. Off to the side, Watson talked to reporters, holding an American flag behind his head. Mesones livestreamed. The cameras kept rolling.

ICYMI: New Yorker writer makes important observation about Omarosas recent Trump bombshells

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Amanda Darrach is a contributor to CJR and a visiting scholar at the University of St Andrews School of International Relations. Follow her on Twitter @thedarrach.
Imagine that the media ecosystem as we know it has ceased to exist. There are still journalists and readers, but all the traditional distribution methods and revenue streams are gone. Publishers have gone bankrupt or been absorbed by giant platforms who now control all the attention and advertising. How would you design a new ecosystem from scratch? Is it even possible to build a publishing platform that is owned by its users and can make money while still supporting journalistic values?

That is what Civil founder Matthew Iles is trying to do: invent a global platform for independent journalism, powered by blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, governed by an open-source constitutionincluding an advisory council that will act as a kind of Supreme Court to adjudicate ethical disputesand run as a non-profit foundation.

I felt we were witnessing the persistent decline of journalism as a sustainable industry, Iles says. To me, the only way we could rectify this, since it started with a massive internet paradigm shift, was to come up with something radical and fundamental. The question was, how do we design something where mission and business model are in alignment and in service of the mission of journalism?

ICYMI: Civil says the future of media is blockchains and cryptocurrencies

Civil hasnt launched its cryptocurrency yet, but the platform already hosts a portfolio of newsrooms like Popula, which is run by writer Maria Bustillos, and Block Club Chicago (a reboot of the Chicago version of the former DNA Info network) as well as a New York-based project called Documented that is tracking immigration issues. Theres also the Colorado Sun, which was founded by several writers and editors who left the Denver Post, and Civil has partnered with the European Journalism Center to fund a project aimed at reader engagement.

Each newsroom has received a grant from a $1 million pool provided by Civil, chosen because they were independent and engaged in writing about topics (hyperlocal, social policy, etc.) that Civils founders believe are undercovered by mainstream outlets. But once the platform is up and running, Civil says any newsroom that wants to publish and be supported by its members is free to do so regardless of what they write about, provided they abide by the principles set out in the constitution.

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Civil itself is funded by a $5 million investment from ConsenSys, a group of developers working with the Ethereum blockchain. In addition, theres a related for-profit company called Civil Media, which will sell a variety of services to platform users and publishers, as well as a Netflix-style studio to fund journalistic and media productions.

The challenge is not a small one: Civil has to create not only a new blockchain-powered platform, but also a crowdsourced constitution, a non-profit journalism foundation and a council of expert advisers, all at the same time. Its a little like creating a virtual country, complete with citizens who vote, an economy, a court system and a government, but the structure of this country is unlike anything that has come before it. And its doing all of this in a media climate that is as unforgiving as its been in a generation.

Vivian Schiller, the former NPR and Twitter executive who recently joined Civil to run its non-profit foundation and advisory council, described the philosophy behind the project in a recent piece on Medium:

What if we had a time machine that could take us back 25 years, when news organizations were just starting to experiment with the World Wide Web? Knowing what we know now, what might we do differently? Knowing what could go wrong, how might we have thought about governance, integrity of information, identity and legitimacy? How might we have thought about business models to support quality, and safeguards to protect us from bad actors?

How it started

The idea for Civil dates to the spring of 2016, when Ilesthen just 29was a marketing executive for a startup incubator called Launch. After getting a sociology degree from Duke University, where he was the editor of the student paper, Iles worked at ESPNs digital arm and got interested in analytics and digital strategy, and eventually set up a business with his wife selling web design and strategic marketing services to startups.

Although he worked mostly on the marketing side of the industry, Iles says he grew increasingly concerned about the future of the business, in part because the advertising revenue that had always supported journalism was being siphoned off by large platforms like Facebook, and users seemed to be losing trust in their journalistic institutions.

In looking at the journalism business, the Civil founder says he became convinced the poor health of the industry was a business model problemnot only was ad revenue being captured by Facebook and other platforms, but scrambling to gather as much revenue as possible seemed to have distorted the industrys incentives.

Instead of trying to survive by handing over the business to the giant social networks, he dreamed of a crowd-powered platform specifically for journalism, run by and for journalists. Iles described his initial vision in a blog post as a social platform that would champion honest reporting, inclusive perspectives and civil discourse [and] change how we stay informed, shape public opinion and take civic action as a society.

Being open and crowdsourced and owned by its members was a crucial step, says Iles, who has always been a fan of crowdsourced services such as Wikipedia. Who am I to set the rules? he says. We need it to be owned by the people, in order for people to see that were serious about this commitment to creating a platform for journalism, to inspire trust, so that people would flock to our platform and help us build it.

The blockchain

After months of brainstorming, including with former New York Observer editor Tom McGeveran, the idea behind Civil started to take shape, though Iles says he still didnt have a mechanism for making crowdsourcing part of the platform. Decentralization was a key tenet from inception, he says, but I didnt know a way to literally allow people to own and operate Civil while also relinquishing the controls ourselves. That changed when he started consulting for ConsenSys, a group of developers working with the cryptocurrency Ethereum.

Tokens are the first time something like this has been made possible, Iles says. As soon as I first encountered the technology, I knew it would be the key to everything. I thought heres a totally new way of organizing people in service of a mission, where the value can be captured by the people instead of by some third-party corporation.

Iles and McGeveran started talking about building the journalism platform on the blockchain. Civil announced on July 18 that it would issue its own cryptocurrency tokens (which are based on the Ethereum blockchain) on August 13, in what is sometimes called an ICO or initial coin offering. Later, the deadline for the issue was extended to September 18, to give potential members more time to understand what they are buying into.

Since Civil wants to encourage membership rather than just cryptocurrency speculators, would-be buyers of Civil tokens have to answer a questionnaire before they can be approved to buy any. Everyone who owns tokens will become a member of the Civil community, and will get the right to vote on the principles enshrined in the constitution and the adjudication of disputes. The offering hopes to raise a total of $24 million.

There are a number of benefits to creating a new form of money, but the one Civil is most focused on is that it has the potential to help realign the incentives that underlie the journalism business. Instead of having to cater to billionaire owners or a hedge fund, newsrooms like Popula can be supported directly by members paying with Civil tokens. Those tokens can also be used by newsrooms to pay writers (although thats not a requirement).

The idea behind these incentives is that good and honest journalism will be rewarded, and fake or malicious journalism will be penalized. In addition to those benefits, the distributed ledger that is the core of a cryptocurrency is open and transparent, so that every transaction can be seen by all, and everyone who uses it has their own copy. That makes it difficult to tamper with, or at least makes it obvious when it has been.

ICYMI: The Colorado Sun pits Civil-backed startup against The Denver Post

Popula founder Bustillos, one of the first to create an independent newsroom on Civil, says this feature of the blockchain is one of the main things that attracted her to the platformthe idea that the archives of stories could be protected from deletion or tampering if they were incorporated into a distributed ledger that is shared by everyone on the blockchain.

Mike Masnick, the founder of tech commentary site Techdirt and someone who has studied blockchain technology for some time, says he is fascinated by the possibility of cryptocurrency tokens as a business model for journalism. But no one has shown a clear path for how it works in any meaningful way for journalism, he says. And whenever I ask, I get jargon and buzzwords.

Civil co-founder McGeveran is sympathetic. That was my attitude when I first met Matthew, he admits, but then I started to think that blockchain is definitely coming for the journalism industry. So if youre in media, you could decide to not build something to take advantage of all thisas some did in the 1990s when the web first came alongor you could go out there and try to build something.

The constitution

Finding a balance between upholding the vision behind Civil while still allowing for community rule is where the constitution comes in. It is being built in real time via a Google Doc that anyone can contribute to. Co-founder Matt Coolidge says the company came up with a first draft, and asked journalism scholars and experts for advice, as well as about 50 people in the news industry who had already expressed interest in the concept.

The document, currently fewer than 3,000 words including an appendix (less than the length of this article), outlines everything from defining terms to mapping out how governance works. Its more vision than explicit rules about what is acceptablemore Declaration of Independence than Bill of Rights. That said, the constitution does include some examples of what is and is not tolerated. For example, it says newsrooms must not knowingly publish non-factual content, should not engage in plagiarism and cant re-publish a work without the authors approval.

Other specifics have been the subject of debate, such as the use of anonymous sources. Identifying sources is something that lots of US outlets are committed to, but pseudonymous writing is a big part of what happens journalistically in other countries, so we dont want to say that identifying sources is something newsrooms have to do, Coolidge says. So the constitution says transparency is important but there are reasons why it might not be done, such as government harassment etc. Its up to each newsroom to determine that.

Reading through the comments and editing history on the Google Doc is a little like reading the transcript of a debate in a political theory course, where the topic is governance and incentives for social behavior. But there are also technical aspects, such as a discussion over whether to mention that the Civil community/marketplace is built on Ethereum. One participant asks: Should we name a specific technology in the constitution? That means that in order to switch to a better technology later, we will need to change the constitution.

Schiller says she sees the Civil constitution as being partly about journalism standards and practices, something that in many organizations is not spelled out for everyone to see. It also describes the process by which newsrooms on Civil remain accountable to the standards they signed up forwhat are the mechanics by which they are challenged if they dont stick to those standards, and how can they appeal? But it also tries to leave enough openings for future issues that may not even be obvious yet.

We dont want to have these things come up down the road and not be preparedwe dont want to be blindsided like a certain platform [i.e. Facebook], to assume that everyone will be nice and then find out later that they arent, Schiller says. As more newsrooms come on, we can harness the power of this large community. The first version of the constitution will be published as part of the launch of Civils tokens, with a second version to be published by December. After that, the constitution will be ratified by members.

Tokens and voting

Everything not laid out in the constitution is essentially open to debate, and amendments can be added if enough members vote for them. There is also a process built in to the Civil platform whereby tokenholders can challenge the existence of a specific newsroom. This isnt designed as a way to challenge any editorial decision a newsroom could make, but to allow members to vote on whether a publication has broken Civils rules in such an egregious way that it should lose its right to publish on the platform altogether.

How this process works is spelled out in the Civil registry, a kind of terms of use. If you want to publish, you have to stake a certain number of tokens, which are deposited or held in escrow (existing newsrooms will have to do this after the token launch). If you choose to leave the platform you can get your tokens back, but while you are publishing via Civil those tokens are at risk. If someone wants to challenge your presence, they have to stake their own tokens, and then the community votes by using their own individual tokens.

If the vote goes against the newsroom, it loses its tokens and could be removed from the platform. Most of the tokens that are forfeited go to the challenger (who is effectively compensated for enforcing the platforms rules), while some of the tokens get disbursed to everyone who voted, as a way of rewarding them for taking part in upholding the principles of the platform. One potential risk of this approach, of course, is that it could encourage witch hunts, something the presence of the Council is intended to mitigate.

Iles says that one of the problems Civil is trying to correct is that theres currently zero cost to distributing misinformationits cheap to do, even after you distribute it and its been debunked, theres zero cost to you, even reputational cost. So we thought, Why not build it into the system?

If you want to publish on Civil and/or challenge someone elses right to publish, you have to state who is involved and what their credentials are, and you have to stake tokens on the outcome. So if you do publish misinformation, theres a disincentive, Iles says. We want to make it increasingly expensive to be a jerk.

This view of how Civil will work implies that current journalistic incentives are oriented towards bad behavior that needs correcting, says Masnick, but hes not sure Civil will help, because the ones most likely to do this are the very publications that are least likely to use something like Civil. Masnick argues a strong editor or publisher with good values seems more likely to be effective than having a mob of token holders who may not understand the news biz at all.

The Council

The vision behind Civil was always that the platform would be owned not by the company, but by members who invested in tokens, says McGeveran. But we also felt we had some rights to determine what the platform was going to become. If all of a sudden 10,000 people were to come on and decide to sell Beanie Babies, thats not really the problem were trying to solve. So how do you have the decision-making rest as much as possible with the community, but still maintain some control? Thats where the council comes in.

Civils council of advisers, which Schiller is in the process of assembling, will function as a kind of Supreme Court when it comes to resolving disputes, assessing penalties and upholding the principles of the platform. It will include between 15 and 20 journalists, academics and other experts; those already named to the council include Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, former Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner, and Rutgers law professor Ellen Goodman.

As for what kinds of disputes they might be called to rule on, Iles says if a newsroom that was abiding by the constitutions principles was challenged just for being conservative (something that conservatives argue is currently happening on both Facebook and Twitter), that would be a very bad outcome. So a newsroom can appeal to the council, which would determine whether the complainant has a case or not.

Iles said he fully expects there will be battles over concepts or execution and it will be messy. But its at those tension points that were going to see the character of Civil emerge. In theory, it will build trust because my vote was counted, even if I didnt win, and that will give Civil its credibility and its loyalty. It will be the seat at the table many consumers are asking for when it comes to these global tech platforms.

And what if someone acquires enough tokens to try and influence the voting? Theoretically this could happen, since under the Civil constitution, more tokens means your vote counts for more (a concern that a number of commenters have raised on the open Google Doc), and even the decisions of the Council could theoretically be overturned by a supermajority or two thirds of the total membership. But Iles says trying to rig votes in this way would be self-defeating.

Economically you wouldnt want to own 51 percent of Civil, he says, because at the moment you found out that I owned that much, you would throw up your hands and say this isnt what I thought this was supposed to be, and then the overall value of the tokens would crash. So the attacker would have to spend a lot of money to acquire that many tokens because the price would go up, but then no one would want those tokens any more; it would be like buying enough matches to burn down the match factory.

ICYMI: Former DNAinfo staffers link up with Civil for Block Club Chicago

Correction: An earlier version of this story said the first group of newsrooms on the Civil platform were given seed funding. In fact, they got a grant (meaning no return on investment is expected). The story also said Civil itself got a grant from ConsenSys, but that was actually a venture capital investment. Also, founder Matthew Iles has a degree in sociology from Duke, not a journalism degree.

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Mathew Ingram is CJRs chief digital writer. Previously, he was a senior writer with Fortune magazine. He has written about the intersection between media and technology since the earliest days of the commercial internet. His writing has been published in the Washington Post and the Financial Times as well as by Reuters and Bloomberg.
How much should readers trust a juicy look at the inner workings of the Trump White House by an author with unprecedented access but a history of stretching the truth? Omarosa Manigault Newman is offering journalists and members of the public who dealt with this question around Michael Wolffs Fire and Fury another chance to wrestle with the thorny issue.

Wolff, of course, brought several more helpings of credibility to the table than the former Apprentice contestant turned presidential aide who defended Donald Trump for years, right up until she signed her book deal. That bookUnhinged: An Insiders Account of the Trump White Houseis out Tuesday from Gallery Books. CNNs Kevin Liptak snagged an early copy, and writes that Manigault Newman portrays Trump as a mentally waning, racist and lewd, charismatic but emotionally abusive, man overseeing a conniving cast of aides and family members whose varied goals rarely include the betterment of the nation.

Though Manigault Newman is an unreliable narrator (George Conway and Frank Luntz have already denied statements she attributes to them), she does have evidence to back up at least some of her claims, having secretly recorded conversations in the White House with Trump and others. On Sundays Meet the Press, she shared one of those tapes with Chuck Todd, playing a recording of chief of staff John Kelly dismissing her from the White House. She also made several unverified claims during the interview, including that she has heard a tape of Trump using the n-word during filming of The Apprentice.

ICYMI: 11 images that show how the Trump administration is failing at photography

Noting that Manigault Newman has known Trump for years, The New Yorkers Jelani Cobb writes, that her realization about Trumps [racial] outlook appears to have emerged at some point during her book deal. Thats not a gradual awakening, its a glacial, self-interested one. Cobbs observation gets to the heart of the trouble with reporting on Manigault Newmans words: she has long been nakedly self-interested and willing to lie for personal gain. After years of covering for Trump, she now wants the public to believe that she has seen the light and is ready to tell the truth.

The questions for journalists covering the claims in Unhinged center around credibility. Its difficult to ignore the accounts of a woman who has spent so much time close to President Trump, but its also tough to trust someone with Manigault Newmans history who, in her own words, admits, I was complicit with this White House deceiving this nation. So as Manigault Newmans publicity tour rolls on, the question she will, and should, continuously face when making a claim is simple: Does she have tape to back it up?

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Below, more on the Omarosa show.

A lack of representation: Interviewing Kellyanne Conway on ABCs This Week, Jon Karl noted that Omarosa was the most prominent high-level African-American in the West Wing. He asked Conway who that person is now. She did not have an answer.

Interviewing Kellyanne Conway on ABCs This Week, Jon Karl noted that Omarosa was the most prominent high-level African-American in the West Wing. He asked Conway who that person is now. She did not have an answer. Burning bridges: Politicos Annie Karni and Eliana Johnson write that hell hath no fury like Omarosa scorned.

Politicos Annie Karni and Eliana Johnson write that hell hath no fury like Omarosa scorned. Trumps view: Asked Saturday if he felt betrayed by Manigault Newmans turn, the president responded,  Shes a lowlife.

Asked Saturday if he felt betrayed by Manigault Newmans turn, the president responded,  Shes a lowlife. White House contradictions: WaPos Josh Dawsey neatly sums up the challenge for Trump staff trying to discredit Manigault Newman. How could you trust a word she says? one White House official asked me today. Why did she make $180,000 a year, have among the highest titles in the government and attend senior staff meetings and visit the Oval? I replied.

WaPos Josh Dawsey neatly sums up the challenge for Trump staff trying to discredit Manigault Newman. How could you trust a word she says? one White House official asked me today. Why did she make $180,000 a year, have among the highest titles in the government and attend senior staff meetings and visit the Oval? I replied. Buying silence: Dawsey reported Friday on Maingault Newmans claim that she was offered $15,000 per month by the Trump campaign to refrain from any disparaging remarks about her time in the White House. The Post has a copy of the document she said she was offered.

Dawsey reported Friday on Maingault Newmans claim that she was offered $15,000 per month by the Trump campaign to refrain from any disparaging remarks about her time in the White House. The Post has a copy of the document she said she was offered. No blockbuster: Despite an onslaught of media attention in the midst of a slow week, Unhinged has yet to crack Amazons top 10. As of this morning, it sits at #27 among books on the site.

Other notable stories

ICYMI: Sinclair flies too close to the sun

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Pete Vernon is a former CJR staff writer. Follow him on Twitter @ByPeteVernon.
Aug 13, 2018 | By Thomas

3D printing has the ability to create complex geometrical shapes with the help of 3D software. However, quality monitoring is still a big challenge in additive manufacturing, as many 3D printers do not have a designated system to track and monitor the progress of printing process. 3D printers may continue to print the part until all the layers have been completed even if the filament ran out or there are any potential defects in the print.

To help solve the problem, two researchers from the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering (IMSE) at Kansas State University have developed a new quality monitoring system for the 3D printing process.

Ugandhar Delli and Dr. Shing Chang from IMSE have proposed a method to automatically assess the quality of 3D printed parts in real-time with the integration of a camera, image processing, and supervised machine learning. The researchers used a LulzBot Mini 3D printer for their research, which involved pausing the system at different checkpoints to detect any possible defects and take proper corrective actions such as stopping the print if a potential defect is detected.

Delli and Dr. Chang published a paper on their research, titled Automated Process Monitoring in 3D Printing Using Supervised Machine Learning, that demonstrates their new process monitoring method.

The researchers proposed a three-step quality monitoring system to implement the proposed quality monitoring of a 3D printed part during production.

Step 1. Identify proper check points for 3D printing part according to its geometry.

Step 2. Take images of the semi-finished part at each check point with the help of a mounted camera.

Step 3. Perform image processing and analysis. A machine learning method, support vector machine (SVM), is proposed to classify the parts into either good or defective category.

Image taken at a checkpoint. Credit: Kansas State University/Delli and Dr. Chang.

Parts using ABS and PLA materials were printed to demonstrate the proposed framework. The researchers concluded that the method is capable of detecting both completion failure defects such as filament running out or printing stopped in the mid-progress and structural or geometrical defects. However, this quality monitoring system had its drawbacks.

"The main drawback of the proposed method is that the printing process needs to be paused while the images of a semi-finished part are taken, Delli and Dr. Chang wrote. Another drawback is that since only top view images are taken, the proposed method might not be able to detect the defects on the vertical plane which cannot be seen in the top view image. This gives us a direction for future research to incorporate cameras on the sides of the printer as well to detect defects on both the horizontal and vertical planes."

A possible improvement can be made by in situ camera mounting on print head, according to the researchers. Their future work will also focus on the study of impacting factors for choosing proper check points.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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If youre a journalist, chances are youve either read or been forwarded links to a story in The Australian, a newspaper based in Sydney that contains some explosive commentary from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg behind its paywall (the Daily Beast has a summary of it). According to the story, Campbell BrownFacebooks head of news partnershipssaid in a meeting with the papers senior executives that Mark doesnt care about publishers, and also warned that if media companies didnt work with the giant social network on business model solutions, in a few years, Ill be holding your hand with your dying business, like in a hospice.

These comments were held up by some as conclusive proof that Facebook hates journalists and cant wait for the industry to die. After all, the sentiment seemed to fit right in with some of the social networks recent moves, which have reduced traffic to media outlets by significant amounts. Some even believe the company is trying to deliberately distance itself from media because it is such a political and social minefield, and that all of this represents a retreat from having to deal with journalism altogether. But would Facebook really come out and say it doesnt care if the media dies?

How is this in any way surprising to anyone? @facebook has systematically attacked publishers who helped build it, enabled and encouraged the rise of disinformation and has never shown remorse or even the inclination to do any true reflection. https://t.co/vj7ib4bODA  Audrey Cooper (@audreycoopersf) August 13, 2018

ICYMI: New Yorker writer makes important observation about Omarosas recent Trump bombshells

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Sources at Facebook, not surprisingly perhaps, say Browns comments were taken out of context and in some cases appear to have been manufactured wholesale. These quotes are simply not accurate and dont reflect the discussion we had in the meeting, Brown said in a prepared statement. The company says they dont reflect its actual thinking either about journalists or the media industry as a whole (no one has used the term fake news, but its obvious people within Facebook are thinking it). The social network says it has a recording of the meeting that proves its case, but so far the company hasnt released it.

As usual when the Facebook is involved, there are a number of layers to this latest dust up. One is that Facebook probably is trying to distance itself from the mediawhenever it gets involved, it raises issues like the companys role in misinformation, censorship, and other unpleasantness. Also, as Josh Benton has pointed out at Nieman Lab, it appears that Facebook really is a lot less interested in driving traffic to publishers, based on the available evidence from publishers like Quartz.

On top of that, Campbell Browns bald statement that we are not interested in talking about your referrals any more has the ring of truth, given some of what she said at a Recode conference earlier this year, when she told publishers they could basically take it or leave it. If anyone feels this isnt the right platform for them, they should not be on Facebook, she said at the time. Some journalists even appear to support her latest comments as a no-holds-barred assessment of where things stand.

Whether Facebook is making the changes it has (de-emphasizing traffic to media outlets, etc.) because it literally hates the media and wants it to die is anybodys guess, of course, but the fact remains they are happening. So the comments from Brown might have seemed like a veiled threat, but they could also have been just a statement of fact: If Facebook wont provide the revenue or the traffic necessary for some outlets to survive, publishers might start going on life support. Journalists wish this wasnt true, but are afraid that it might be.

RELATED: Mark Zuckerberg seems to become genuinely peeved during interview

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Mathew Ingram is CJRs chief digital writer. Previously, he was a senior writer with Fortune magazine. He has written about the intersection between media and technology since the earliest days of the commercial internet. His writing has been published in the Washington Post and the Financial Times as well as by Reuters and Bloomberg.
Zurich Insurance Group AG got a boost from its property & casualty business, putting the company on track to meet Chief Executive Officer Mario Grecos three-year restructuring goals.

The Swiss insurers biggest unit saw higher profit and posted a lower combined ratio, a key metric for insurers. Reserve releases helped lift group profit even as competition in the commercial business weighs on the bottom line. Net income jumped 19 percent to $1.8 billion, beating analyst estimates.

Greco initiated a portfolio review when he took over as CEO in 2016 after the company posted losses related to auto claims in the U.S. The former Assicurazioni Generali SpA chief exited units across the globe and business lines while also increasing the use of reinsurance to reduce earnings volatility.

As part of its restructuring, Zurich has also made a flurry of acquisitions in recent years diversifying its business and re-balancing the weighting of corporate and retail clients.

Dividend Watch

The dividend payout is a key focus for Zurich investors. Greco boosted the payout for last year and said that the 18 francs would be the new floor for future increases. On a conference call, the CEO said he didnt want to talk about specifics ahead of the hurricane season though he suggested that its part of Zurichs strategy to increase the dividend.

Zurich shares were little changed at 299.40 francs as of 9:37 a.m. The stock is little changed this year, giving the company a market value of 45.2 billion francs ($45.5 billion).

Greco said that future cost cuts will be focused on IT spending and that the company isnt currently considering further disposals. The commercial business remains a headache for the CEO. The unit posted a combined ratio above 100 percent in the first half, according Chief Financial Officer George Quinn.

The commercial business is operating in a very competitive market, however its a bit disappointing that the combined ratio is still so high, said Baader Helvea analyst Daniel Bischof. He said that higher-than-expected reserve releases in the property & casualty business explain the results. Headline figures are good but the higher reserve releases relativize the results a bit.

The company has also struggled to boost investment income, with Chief Financial Officer George Quinn saying on a call that he hopes the result will at least be flat this year after declining previously.

Zurich has been looking outside Europe for growth, acquiring the life-insurance business of Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in December. Other purchases included the life unit of Macquarie Group and Australian travel insurer Cover-More.

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.
A March 2017 LexisNexis whitepaper on the future of claims technology defined touchless claims as a process or workflow that is similar to Virtual Handling except no claims adjuster or insurance carrier employee is involved in the claims process at all. Technology is used to report the claim, capture damage or invoices, run a system audit and communicate with the customer electronically. If the claim meets approved criteria, the claim is automatically paid without human intervention.

The benefits of touchless claims are usually tied to first party auto claims, where self-reporting can be easily undertaken.

But with disaster claims handling in full swing, Jeffrey Saye, service line leader of Insurance Claims at Genpact, said the idea of touchless claims can complement standard claims processes, including those involving catastrophe losses.

He explained that customers have been the driving factor in changing the way insurers interact with them.

Its really a shift from measuring customer satisfaction to measuring customer experience because the what I want, when I want, how I want it, and what I, where I want it really doesnt line up with old service models, said Saye.

The touchless process is one way that insurers have been able to reimagine claims handling to meet the expectations of the customer, he added.

Its really looking at okay, what sort of digital tools are available where we can actively engage the customer and give them the experience that theyre looking for,' he said.

From a claims reporting standpoint, customer engagement can occur via self-reporting portals, apps and even through chat options, like Alexa.

It means theres nobody there that actually has to determine whether theres coverage or not because theres a link between the claim system and the policy management system allowing automated policy coverage confirmation, said Saye.

Using an auto claim as an example, he said claimants can take and upload photos to an insurer app. Currently, an inside appraiser or adjuster will write an estimate based on the loss and issue payment.

All that happens with the customer not necessarily having to be engaged with anybody, but theres a little engagement on the back end behind the scenes from an appraiser, he explained. Once that happens, theres an entirely different way that the claim goes where we can automatically engage supply chain partners, whether its for a repair or for a rental car.

At that point, control reverts to the customer, Saye said.

Though the process can be used for some aspects of the losses associated with the California wildfires, theres still a need for direct engagement, he said. Thats because after a disaster, victims need a more direct line of communication to deal with the traumatic event.

Youre almost shifting away from a touchless experience and let me give you the reason why. There, were keeping the customer central in all our decision-making. We want to put a process around them to ensure that theyre taken care of and they get the engagement that they want and that they need, said Saye. When people go through that and lose those things it is very hard for you to put in a process that says Look, were going to put in a process here that has no interaction.'

Some carriers did that, sending a request to policyholders asking them to complete a contents list on their own. That, said Saye, created great anxiety among customers.

Sayes team chose to supplement their touchless claims process by aligning resources that either met directly with policyholders or spoke with them over the phone and guided them as they created an inventory. If they started with the living room, the policyholder would be given cues to assist in recalling lost contents.

It really helped them feel like they had an advocate and a partner walking them through this process because the expectation from the customer in that event, was not lets get this thing done quickly. It was, I just had an event and I really need you to show up and help me out Mr. Insurance Company, Saye said. At the end of the day we had reduced cycle time and we really became an advocate with the customer, and our clients actually had a higher satisfaction even through those wildfire claims because their customers felt like they had somebody that showed up.

He explained there are two different paths a claim could go  the touchless experience for smaller claims where digital tools can be leveraged by insurers and the personalized way that requires staff to engage and continue to play an active role in the claims process and claim settlement.

Even in both of those scenarios, the most important thing is the customer and how theyre being treated and what their expectations are, said Saye.

Another aspect of processing claims in the aftermath of disasters is being able to adapt to the situation at hand.

When loss information was returned to the claims department, he said they had dedicated teams just for the event that reached out and worked directly with policyholders.

It really solidifies that bond between the carrier and the customer, Saye said.

He offered another example of how the touchless process aided Hurricane Irma claims. They had one inspection platform that allowed customers the self-service option of taking their own photos. In addition, drones and a crowd-sourced network were also used to take and upload digital photos of losses. Inside adjusters would then write estimates and issue payments.

Thats how we were able to leverage some of the touchless aspects even in those storms, said Saye. Because what we found out last yearwas that because there were those two massive storms right at the same time a month or so apart, it really sucked up the resources that were available to go in and actually do the inspections on the damaged property.

While current digital technology is exciting, Saye said the future looks even more promising.

Theres a lot that people continue to talk about thats actually coming. The emerging technologies are out there. The self-driving cars thatll self-report claims, that may even be able to self-report the damage and tell you This is how much damage is caused by the accident. Computer vision  where youre writing estimates based on the photos that come in and artificial intelligence and how is that driving the claims process forward, said Saye. Those are all great things that are really on the forefront and theyre going to change the way that claims are going to be handled.

Its important that insurers arent blinded by technology, he added.

The insurers that embrace technology are going to prosper because the tech really just enables us to meet the customer expectations better than we can if we didnt have it, Saye said. I think the important thing that the insurance companies realize is that the customer is still at the center and they arent mesmerized by all of the technologies that are surrounding it.
Big Island Mayor Harry Kim is planning to ask the state Legislature for $550 million for disaster recovery following the effects of the Kilauea volcano eruption.

Kim said he discussed a conceptual plan with Gov. David Ige last week, and Hawaii County officials are preparing a package for the special legislative session, which has not yet been scheduled, West Hawaii Today reported Wednesday.

Kims administration has asked the county council to provide feedback on the legislative package by next week and consider a joint resolution on it. The administration declined to release the plan until its sent to legislative leaders this week.

The three months of lava flows and earthquakes following the May eruption contributed to the delay of the formation of a detailed plan. The plan is needed before the state Legislature will meet to consider funding.

We continue to work with Mayor Kim to ensure that we have the necessary resources to keep the community safe and develop the long-term recovery plan for Hawaii County, Ige said in a statement through a spokeswoman. We need to identify what the specific needs are, the costs attached and the timeline before we consider a special session.

The island has received assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and about $12 million in emergency funding from the state, but that money can only be used for immediate emergency response needs.

The island needs new roads, housing and parks lost from the lava flows, as well as work in rebuilding the agriculture and tourism industries, State Sen. Russell Ruderman said, whose district covers an affected area. The county government should not downplay what the island needs, he said.

Its my strong recommendation that we ask for plenty of money and not be shy about it, Ruderman said. Its not the time to be small; its not the time to be cautious about it.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
BEREA -- Renee Betterson, 18, wants to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice. She just may do that.

She intensely studied the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights to prepare for the American Legion's Constitutional Speech Contest earlier this year. Renee, who is home-schooled, captured first place in the state of Ohio and went on to the national contest in Indianapolis where she was one of nine speakers to advance to the semi-finals.

Renee said speakers were required to deliver a prepared speech and then were given a randomly assigned topic for a shorter talk. Renee's prepared speech was "The Pursuit of Happiness."

"The main idea is how to pursue that," Renee said. "You pursue it collectively." Citizens do that via education and civic involvement, she said. It also involves compromise, she said, "to find an outcome that would benefit everyone."

"The Constitution is a road map," Renee said. "It shows us the landscape and guides us."

Random topics required a 3 to 5-minute extemporaneous speech. At nationals, her assigned topic was the 2nd amendment.

This is the second year Renee has competed in the Constitutional Speech Contest. Last year, she made it to the quarter-finals. Waiting in the wings for next year's contest is Renee's sister, Mary, 14. Older sister, Erikah, 21, now a senior at Cleveland State paved the way. In fact, several years ago, Erikah and Renee were given an assignment by their mother to rewrite the Constitution in their own words.

Father John Betterson, an Air Force veteran and member of American Legion Post 91, said the family has other children in the speech pipeline. The Bettersons have seven children - all home-schooled. The others are Sarah, 10, Hezekiah, 8, Solomon, 6, and Faith, 4.

Renee has been competing in speech contests for six years, including with the National Christian Forensic & Community Association. She is enrolled in Cleveland State this fall as an English literature major.
What makes a great grocery shopping experience? Certainly the lures are everywhere, from wines on tap at Heinen's, to food demos at Giant Eagle's Market District stores, to the nearly all-local inventory at smaller shops such as Ohio City Provisions in Cleveland.

I ask how you love to buy your food because our venerated West Side Market, striding into its second century of existence at Lorain Avenue and West 25th Street, seems to be at a crossroads of what it offers.

Granted, that's true of most markets trying to answer their customers' pressures of time and money, food allergies and an increasingly sophisticated desire to taste something new, local and organic. But the market is not just any grocery store. It's our temple of Cleveland food, past and present.

What about the future? On a recent Saturday, about a third of the 83 available spaces in the city-owned public market's produce arcade were empty. Vendors there say the arcade has been hard hit by a spate of retirements and deaths, by an overall dramatic increase in competition for our food dollars, and by last winter's parking lot re-do. The lot is finished, and some vendors say they're seeing an uptick in business. I went during peak times on a Saturday and Wednesday. It was tight in the parking lot, but I found a spot fairly quickly.

Instead of seeing the arcade as one-third empty, maybe the time is ripe to see it as one-third available. Dig deep into your food passions. What should we put in those stands? For that matter, what should we put in any of the indoor stands to make the market an even more superior food shopping experience and one that continues to say Cleveland behind the glass of every refrigerated case?

Is the market just a grocery store? Or, could it be a place for regular events that would make it much more than that? What should be done to the place to increase visitor space and make more gatherings possible?

How should the market get the word out to let us know what they're doing? Who should do that work, given that the city is in this rare partnership with the retail food industry? And, at a time when the city is facing financial cuts from state and federal sources, how do we get money to make the market stronger?

I'd love to hear what you have to say about all this as I begin a series of stories on the future of West Side Market. No other city has a food market this beautiful and so authentically Cleveland. Let's share some ideas on not just protecting it, but also pumping it full of life for new generations. Leave a comment on this post or email me at dsnook@plaind.com.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Lake County Commissioners are considering three resolutions on immigration and the role of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that have sharply divided residents.

The first resolution, written by Commissioner Jerry Cirino, calls ICE "the premier law enforcement agency, targeting individuals and criminal organizations who seek to evade border security, threaten national security and public safety and exploit America's legitimate trade, travel and financial systems." He says that while some want to eliminate ICE, Lake County "supports the continuation and strengthening of ICE as necessary to support the goals of the Homeland Security Department."

When Commissioner Daniel Troy read Cirino's resolution, he drafted his one of his own, urging Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform "to address national concerns, including the role of" ICE.

Then Commissioner John Hamercheck wrote a third resolution, stating that ICE "plays a critical role in the defense and stability of the nation by investigating cross-border criminal activity, including human trafficking, narcotics, weapons and cash smuggling," including rescuing 904 sexually exploited children and 518 victims of human trafficking, and seizing more than 980,000 pounds of narcotics in 2017. It is similar to a resolution proposed last month in Congress by U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, Republican of Louisiana.

When the resolutions appeared on the Aug. 2 commissioners' agenda, about 30 residents packed the room, debating for hours on ICE, President Trump's zero tolerance immigration enforcement policy and undocumented immigrants. Lake County has a sizable Latino community.

At 7 p.m. Monday, the discussion will continue at a public forum at Lake Erie College's Morley Music Hall, 391 W. Washington St., Painesville, ahead of the Aug. 16 commissioners meeting.

Cirino, who was elected commissioner in 2016, said he wrote his resolution to express the community's appreciation for "very dangerous work that they do" because "I get really tired of people on national TV calling for abolishing ICE. They should not be vilified for protecting the community."

He said the issue is personal for him, because three years ago, "my wife's cousin's wife is the lady who was brutally killed" in a high-profile crime by an undocumented immigrant in Painesville.

But at the Aug. 2 commissioners' meeting, public comment on the resolutions turned into a heated immigration debate. "We endured two hours of repetitive input, with people getting up five, six, as many as 12 times. It got really out of hand," Cirino said.

Troy, who has been a commissioner since 1998 and is the only Democrat on the board, called Cirino's proposal an effort to stir up voters ahead of the November election, when he will face Republican State Rep. Ron Young. "There is no issue that whips up the voters one way or another like immigration," he said.

Troy said the U.S. needs meaningful and comprehensive reform of its current immigration laws, not congratulatory proclamations about government agencies that are not going anywhere. Troy has received emails saying that if he won't support Cirino's resolution "then you don't support the laws of our country and you should resign."

His resolution said the Lake County commissioners recognize ICE's role in protecting the nation, and proposes "a review and clarification of the mission of ICE in conjunction with the passage of comprehensive immigration reform that protects our borders and national security." He said: "I will leave it up to the wisdom of Congress on what that looks like."

"Let's try and reach some common ground instead of taking sides," he said.

Cirino said his resolution has nothing to do with Troy's re-election campaign. "Support for law enforcement should not be political issue," he said. "I am for comprehensive immigration reform that includes securing the southern border. I don't care if it's a wall or a fence, that has to be a part of it. We can't keep the back door open, or more people - including undesirables - are going to find a way in."

Hamercheck said that "in the interest of civility, I thought it was appropriate to put together a resolution that was based off the Ohio House and Congressional resolutions and be sensitive to people's opinions."

Lois Osborn, a 43-year Painesville resident who is helping to organize Monday's forum, said "it's an opportunity to let the community voice their sentiments for or against the resolutions.

"I have Hispanic neighbors, and I think that most people in our town do not agree that separating parents and children at the border is very heroic," she added.
People in Cleveland and area suburbs report a large pack of riders on dirt bikes and ATVs were causing problems Sunday night. (Mark Naymik, cleveland.com file photo)
BEACHWOOD, Ohio -- The shooting death of a doctor last week in Beachwood was the city's first homicide in more than two decades, police said.

Richard Warn, 59, was found shot and killed Thursday at a home on Brentwood Road near Timberlane Drive. Investigators have provided few details about the killing or a subsequent standoff late Friday in South Euclid, which ended with authorities finding two men dead in a home that Warn owned.

Warn's death was Beachwood's first homicide since Theresa Maier was found strangled June 22, 1994, in a fourth-floor suite at the Enterprise Place office building on Enterprise Parkway, according to cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer archives.

Beachwood police Chief Gary Haba confirmed Monday that Maier's death was the last homicide reported in the city.

A security guard found Maier, 28, dead with an electrical cord wrapped around her neck, The Plain Dealer reported at the time.

Bobby L. Hampton, who was 31 years old at the time, later pleaded guilty to killing Maier and was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.

Hampton, a Cleveland resident who worked as a janitor at Maier's building, gave a taped confession after he surrendered to authorities, The Plain Dealer reported.

Hampton admitted he killed Maier as she was leaving the office building, where she worked for Porter Properties as manager of the building. Hampton stole $18 from Maier's purse after killing her, The Plain Dealer reported.

Hampton apologized to Maier's family at his sentencing hearing. He also told her family that he would give up his own life if it would bring Maier back, The Plain Dealer reported.

"As humbly as I can, I would like to apologize to the family, to her father, to her brother, to her husband," The Plain Dealer quoted Hampton saying during the sentencing hearing.

To comment on this story, visit Monday's crime and courts comments page.
SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio - The sons of a slain Beachwood doctor were found dead after a 10-hour SWAT standoff and shootout with police.

Police found Mark and Michael Warn, ages 29 and 31, respectively, dead in a South Euclid home owned by their father, Dr. Richard Warn, who was found dead from gunshot wounds in his Beachwood.

The sons were considered "persons of interest" in the fatal shooting of their father, police said.

Their bodies were discovered by police after a SWAT team burst through the front of the home about 6 a.m. Saturday, ending the standoff.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner released the names of Dr. Warn's sons and Cuyahoga County divorce records show that both were his sons from a previous marriage.

Both Michael and Mark fatally shot themselves and their deaths were ruled suicides, the medical examiner said.

Police said someone inside of the South Euclid home fired gunshots at a SWAT team after the officers surrounded the Elmwood Avenue home. Bullets hit the windshield of a SWAT tank but no officers were injured, officials said.

The SWAT team stayed outside the home for about 10 hours and made several unsuccessful attempts at negotiating with the two. The officers barged through the front of the home with a SWAT tank, leaving a hole in the front of the house.

Police said they found the two men dead inside the home.

Neither Mark nor Michael Warn have any local criminal history.

Mark Warn attended some classes at Cuyahoga Community College years ago but did not finish with a degree, Tri-C spokesman John Horton said.

South Euclid neighbors said the men who lived in the house were a little out of the ordinary, often throwing loud parties and calling police for small matters, like how closely a neighbor parked to the curb.

Security cameras were set up around the house and pointed toward the street, which were still visible after the damage from the standoff.

The SWAT team went to the home in order to execute a search warrant as part of the investigation into Dr. Warn's death.

Dr. Warn, a podiatrist in Northeast Ohio for some 35 years, was found dead Thursday in his Beachwood home on Brentwood Avenue.

Beachwood police said there was no forced entry to the home. The 59 year old was shot multiple times, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner said.

Dr. Warn leaves behind a wife and an adult daughter, according to his obituary.
WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS, Ohio -- The band director at Warrensville Heights High School is accused of paying money to a student so he could perform a sex act on the teen, according to court records.

Duane Keeton, 32, is charged with sexual battery and attempted sexual battery in the case, according to court records.

The Warrensville Heights City School District placed Keeton on paid leave Friday amid an investigation into his conduct.

Keeton waived his right to a preliminary hearing during his first appearance Monday in Bedford Municipal Court. The case was bound over to a Cuyahoga County grand jury.

He remains in custody on $500,000 bond, court records say.

Keeton is accused of paying an undisclosed amount of money to a 17-year-old student on two separate occasions so he could perform a sex act on the teen, court records say.

The accusations are related to incidents that occurred during the summer of 2016, when the student was a member of the school's band, court records say.

Keeton is also accused of offering money to another student for sexual favors, while they were on school grounds, court records say. The student had asked Keeton if he knew of any job opportunities over the summer, court records say.

The WHHS band program, which Keeton has directed since 2011, will continue under an interim director, the school district said Friday in a statement.

To comment on this story, visit Monday's crime and courts comments page.
ROCKY RIVER, Ohio -- The grand-opening look for the public at Lakeside Assisted Living in Rocky River on Aug. 5 didn't disappoint. The facility, located at 22701 Lake Road behind The Normandy senior living apartments, is elegant and spacious and provides 40 assisted living accommodations, as well as 40 memory care units.

Lakeside is the third and final part of the now fully developed Normandy campus, which includes senior living, assisted living and skilled/rehabilitation care.

Approximately 250 people came through to evaluate the $25 million project. Friendly staff were available at each step of the way to show off and explain the many amenities, such as the spa rooms and comfortable, decorated gathering areas with big screen televisions and fireplaces, family lounges, an enclosed courtyard and bright, open dining areas.

The apartments available are studios, as well as one or two bedrooms. They include full kitchens and a patio or porch.

Some of the services included in the monthly rent (private pay) are daily continental breakfast, weekly housekeeping, daily wellness checks, utilities except phone and Internet, a fully equipped salon with rates similar to any local salon, nurse and caregiver support, transportation, nutrition support, laundry, and social outings and activities.

There are also onsite X-ray, oxygen, medical laboratory and therapy services.

Barbara Ebright has lived in The Normandy for four years. She volunteered to help at the open house, directing visitors and guests around the hallways. Ebright said she is not sure if she will take advantage of the assisted living facility as she gets older, but she agrees that it has all been planned and designed to make the transition as easy and as safe as possible.

The memory care units have added services if needed, such as 24-hour personal care and specialized activities from certified dementia care practitioners.

There are also exercise rooms and a library lounge. A specialized room known as a "Snoezelen" room is "a therapeutic environment created for the express purpose of delivering high levels of stimuli in patients with dementia. Sensory therapy has helped to reduce the fears of participants and enhances their trust in the people closest to them," according to company information.

The room is very low light and contains multi-colored, lighted displays such as a huge, projected aquarium on one wall, and thin plastic tubing with lights in a sort-of beaded curtain from another time that residents can reach out and handle. A "disco ball" hangs from ceiling and a tunnel-like exhibit of white lights appears to allow an infinite look into the tunnel.

There are also specialized fitness classes with a fitness professional, such as cardio and strength exercises done while singing nostalgic songs and a class that teaches a drugless approach to nutrition from The Drugless Doctors, a chiropractic, family health and wellness practice located in both Westlake and Naples, Fla.

Monthly rates range from $3,900 to $4,050 for studio apartments to $5,100 to $5,550 for a two-bedroom unit. A "second person" fee is $900 per month.

An almost dizzying array of optional activities, such as prayer or reading groups, board games, flower arranging and much more, including trips to local attractions and stores, make it certain that boredom is not a word anyone at Lakeside would ever use.

For more information, call 440-333-5401 for independent living, 440-333-5401 for assisted living and 440-333-5400 for skilled care. Or visit the website at www.normandy.com or email at info@thenormandy.com.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Frontier Airlines this morning announced new nonstop service from Cleveland Hopkins to three new warm-weather destinations: Sarasota and West Palm Beach, Florida, and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.

Tickets went on sale this morning with introductory fares as low as $49 one way to Sarasota and $59 to West Palm Beach.

No airline currently flies from Cleveland to either Florida destination, though both have been served in the past. Cleveland currently offers charter flights to Punta Cana, but this will be the first scheduled service to the Dominican Republic.

Service to West Palm Beach begins Nov. 15; to Sarasota, on Dec. 10; and to Punta Cana on Jan. 6. Frontier will fly three times per week to West Palm Beach and Punta Cana, and twice a week to Sarasota.

It appears that the West Palm Beach route will take the place of Frontier service to Miami, which has been dropped from the airline's schedule. Miami and West Palm Beach are about 70 miles apart, on the east coast of Florida.

Flight times:

* Departing CLE for West Palm Beach at 7:15 a.m., arriving at 9:52 a.m.; leaving West Palm Beach at 10:54 a.m., arriving in Cleveland at 1:34 p.m., with flights on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.

* Departing Cleveland for Sarasota at 12:59 p.m., arriving at 3:24 p.m.; departing Sarasota at 4:35 p.m., arriving in Cleveland at 7:06 p.m., with flights on Mondays and Fridays.

* Departing Cleveland for Punta Cana at 11:51 a.m., arriving at 5 p.m.; departing Punta Cana at 2:08 p.m., arriving in Cleveland at 5:41 p.m., with flights on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.

Officials from Frontier and Cleveland Hopkins gathered at the airport this morning to announce the new routes.

The group was also inaugurating new service from Cleveland to San Antonio, Texas, which starts today.

Frontier, based in Denver, has been extremely busy in Cleveland in the four years since United Airlines pulled its hub at Hopkins, adding and subtracting numerous routes in an effort to figure out what works.

Noted for its low fares, Frontier needs full planes to make its business model work. Its low fares are accompanied by extra charges for many extras, including advanced-seat assignments, checked and carry-on bags and food and beverages.

Said Daniel Shurz, senior vice president/commercial for Frontier: "The response from Cleveland and the northern Ohio community to our Low Fares Done Right mission has been tremendous. With this winter's schedule, we will offer a great range of warm-weather destinations to customers from Cleveland."

With the addition of Sarasota, Frontier will fly to three cities on Florida's west coast, including Fort Myers and Tampa. According to the airport, Sarasota was last served from Cleveland in 2008.

West Palm Beach last had service from Cleveland in 2011. West Palm Beach was among the destinations most sought by Cleveland travelers in an informal Plain Dealer survey late last year.

A note about the introductory fares: Tickets must be purchased by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, for travel Nov. 27 through Feb. 13. Fares are valid Monday through Wednesday, with blackout dates Dec. 20-Jan. 8 and Jan. 18-21.
Shortly after he stole an airplane from his employer, Horizon Air ground service agent Richard Russell barreled down a runway, took off and flew the two-engine turboprop above the Puget Sound, flying in dramatic loops before crashing in a wooded area of a nearby island.

Russell died in Friday night's crash.

Airline executives said they aren't sure whether the 29-year-old, who was hired by the Alaska Air Group's regional arm Horizon Air in February 2015, had formal flight training.

Russell didn't appear to have a pilot's license, Horizon Air CEO Gary Beck said in news conference over the weekend. The grounds crew worker told air traffic control agents that he played some video games.

"There were some maneuvers that were done that were incredible maneuvers," Beck said. "I don't know how he achieved the experience that he did."

Beck said "commercial aircraft are complex machines" and not as easy to fly as a small plane such as a Cessna 150. Alaska Air CEO Brad Tilden said the airline did not know if Russell had any training.

The incident at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has exposed blind spots in aviation security and safety, and challenges in screening employees and addressing potential mental health problems. The National Transportation Safety Board is reviewing the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the wreckage, which will provide more insight into what happened.

Russell was part of a team of ground service workers whose duties included loading and unloading baggage, tidying planes and towing. He used a tractor to move the 76-seat Q400 turboprop plane 180 degrees before taxiing to the runway, when an air traffic controller repeatedly asked him to identify himself.
Commerce Department Secretary Wilbur Ross may have violated a criminal conflict of interest law by holding stock in companies that could have been affected by Trump administration actions in which he was involved, a campaign finance watchdog said in a complaint filed Monday.

The nonprofit Campaign Legal Center's complaint said public records suggest that the billionaire Ross also may have violated three laws "that prohibit certain false statements or omissions" in congressional testimony and financial disclosure filings he made regarding his holdings.

The center asked the Commerce Department's internal ethics watchdog, the Office of the Inspector General, to "conduct a thorough investigation of the matter addressed in this complaint" and to make public its findings.

A lawyer for Ross, who since November has faced scrutiny for his financial holdings, after CNBC published this story issued a statement, saying, "Secretary Ross has not violated any conflict of interest law or regulation. He has not participated personally and substantially in, nor taken any action in regard to a particular matter that would have had a direct and predictable effect on his financial investments."

CLC's 115-page complaint flags Ross' involvement in a Trump administration investigation into whether the United States should impose a tariff on steel imports at the same time he was holding stock in his former investment management firm, Invesco, which "had acquired a major interest in Chinese steel that the steel investigation directly and predictably affected."

The center also raised concerns about Ross' initial failure to disclose stock ownership in Greenbrier, "a steel-dependent rail car manufacturer," as well as his holdings in shipping giant Navigator while he was participating in the steel investigation and in the Trump administration's effort "to promote the natural gas trade." The steel probe and the natural-gas push affected Navigator's interests, the watchdog argued.

The group said Ross also may have retained other assets that represent a conflict of interest.

The center noted that Ross' public disclosure filings do not account for his divesting 46 assets that he had been required to shed, including interests in the Bank of Cyprus.

The group says there is doubt that Ross properly addressed conflicts stemming from 25 carried interests in private equity funds.

Finally, the complaint said Ross also may have made false statements or omissions in his recent congressional hearing, and in his Nov. 1 compliance certification, in which he said he had sold all interests in the companies in which he was required to divest: Air Lease, Invesco and Sun Bancorp.

The complaint said that a day before filing that certification, Ross obtained a new interest in Sun Bancorp, and later missed the deadline for disclosing this additional interest.

The center's ethics counsel, Delaney Marsco, scoffed at Ross's prior explanations for some of the situations highlighted by the complaint. Ross had claimed to have been unaware that he owned stock in the companies potentially affected by administration policies or inquiries after he said he was divested of such shares.

"Our analysis shows Ross participated in matters affecting his personal interests," Marsco said. "He has lots of excuses, but they don't add up."

"He can't be both the legendary investor who managed complex private equity funds and hapless official who doesn't even know what he owns," Marsco said.

The complaint comes a month after the U.S. Office of Government Ethics warned Ross that his action, which "included your continued ownership of assets required to be divested in your Ethics Agreement," and his opening of short sale positions "could have placed you to run afoul of the primary criminal conflict of interest law."

David Apol, the ethics office's acting director and general counsel, said in a letter to Ross in July that financial disclosure forms and compliance documents submitted by Ross "contained various omissions and inaccurate statements."

One the heels of that warning, Ross announced he would sell off all of his equity holdings and buy Treasury securities with the proceeds.

Full statement from a lawyer for Wilbur Ross:
Carnival Cruise Lines: "I think it's good but I think Norwegian has better growth. I think that the proof is in the pudding, and the numbers that we saw from Norwegian were excellent."

The Manitowoc Company: "It is unfathomable that that stock could be as low as it is. I'm not buying it, $800 million if you can put it away, I suggest you do so."

Tootsie Roll Companies: "Everybody keeps thinking that they're going to get a bid, they've never gotten a bid and they don't really have a lot of growth without a bid. The stock is just going to stay right here and flatline. What can I say, I can't recommend stocks on a takeover basis if I don't think the earnings are exploding, and I don't see them exploding."

Greensky: "Do you know what? It makes no sense that this thing keeps getting killed. I have to do work on it. I mean, I don't know, it seems like an ideal fintech name. When it became public, it seems like it's not working. Let me do work."

Universal Display: "It falls and rallies with Apple and what Apple's doing. It's too hard for me these days."

Disclosure: Cramer's charitable trust owns shares in Apple.
Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, speaks during a health care bill news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017.

Democrats view socialism more positively than capitalism, according to a new Gallup poll, and it's mostly because voters on that side of the aisle view capitalism less favorably than they did a couple years ago.

Forty-seven percent of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic now view capitalism positively, down from 56 percent in 2016. Those with a positive view of socialism remained somewhat steady at 57 percent, down a point from 58 percent two years ago.

The organization started asking the question in 2010, two years after the global financial crisis.

Meanwhile, Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters are slightly more favorable toward capitalism than they were two years ago  71 percent say they feel positive about capitalism, up from 68 percent in 2016.

Democrats' transforming attitudes towards capitalism come in the midst of an election cycle where candidates identifying as Democratic socialists have made progress in mainstream politics. The Democratic Party, also fueled by moderates making headway in GOP-held districts, is favored to win back the majority in the House this fall.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, and Democratic-Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in June won a New York Democratic primary against longtime Rep. Joseph Crowley, are both throwing support and money behind progressive candidates on the campaign trail this year.

Yet, despite the rising prominence of socialism in public discourse in recent years, several socialist candidates have failed to capture their party's nomination in recent primary elections. While a majority of Democrats nationwide react positively to the word "socialism," strong antipathy toward socialism among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents suggests that a socialist political agenda might not bode well in swing districts this fall.

The Gallup survey did not name specific socialist political figures nor did it define "socialism" or "capitalism" but rather asked respondents whether their opinion of each is positive or negative.

There has been little change in Americans' attitudes toward socialism at the national level. Americans' positive views of socialism have shifted only between 35 percent and 39 percent, with this year's result of 37 percent marking the average trend.

The results do, however, reveal a remarkable age gap in perception of the two systems. Just 45 percent of young Americans ages 18 to 29 view capitalism positively. In 2010, 68 percent of the voters in that group viewed it positively. Americans who are 30 and older, though, have been consistently more positive about capitalism than socialism.

Americans continue to give high marks to small business, entrepreneurs and free enterprise, although positive attitudes toward these have declined since 2016, according to Gallup. Big business, with 50 percent favorability, garnered a lower rating than small business, free enterprise, entrepreneurs and capitalism.

But big business still outperformed the federal government. Thirty-nine percent of voters said they had a positive view of the federal government  just two points higher than socialism.

The Gallup poll conducted telephone interviews from July 30, 2018, to Aug. 5, 2018, with a random sample of 1,505 adults, age 18 and older, across the United States.
Activist investor Elliott Management has taken a large stake in Nielsen Holdings as it plans to push the TV-ratings company to sell itself, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing sources.

Elliott has accumulated an 8 percent stake, which could be worth at least $640 million, in Nielsen, sources told the Journal.

Multiple private-equity firms have shown interest in Nielsen, the Journal said, citing the sources.

Nielsen is known for its television ratings that are used to determine ad rates for traditional TV commercials.

Elliott believes that Nielsen's "buy" segment, which measures retail and consumer behavior, has failed to keep up with competitors like market research company IRI, the Journal reported.

A spokeswoman from Nielsen told the Journal that the board welcomes the views of its owners, including Elliott, as it continues to evaluate how to best position the business.

Nielsen and Elliott did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment outside regular business hours.
Morgan Stanley is telling its clients Elon Musk's stake in SpaceX may be leveraged as a source of funding for his plan to take Tesla private.

Musk is founder and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla.

"Elon Musk's desire to potentially take Tesla private may require large amounts of new equity capital. We see scope for SpaceX to play a potentially crucial role in facilitating the required financing as well as the strategic narrative going forward," analyst Adam Jonas said in a note entitled "How SpaceX Can Potentially Help Tesla Go Private" to clients Monday. "We believe investors should consider the potential role of SpaceX in the near-term financial options confronting Tesla and its shareholders."

On Monday, Musk explained that his conversations with the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund were a driver behind his "funding secured" tweet on Tesla's corporate blog.

Tesla shares surged 11 percent last Tuesday after he tweeted that he is considering taking the company private at a $420 per share price. In a blog post later that day, Musk said "the intention is not to merge SpaceX and Tesla."

Despite the comment, Jonas said SpaceX could invest directly in Tesla as part of a strategic partnership.

"While we are in no position to dispute this statement on a merging of the two entities, we do not expect Elon Musk to rule out the potential for the involvement of SpaceX as a capital-providing strategic partner or the potential for the value of SpaceX equity held within Mr. Musk's trust to be considered in the financing of a potential Tesla buyout," Jonas said. "We see increasingly compelling areas of industrial and strategic cooperation between SpaceX and Tesla in telecommunications / satellite broadband which we see as potentially advantageous for shared and automated transport networks."

Jonas said Musk's 54 percent stake in SpaceX could be worth more than $15 billion, using the company's latest funding round valuation. The analyst speculates Musk could use his SpaceX stake as collateral in a Tesla buyout.

"We do not have knowledge of how much of Elon Musk's SpaceX shares (if any) are currently pledged as collateral for any existing loans," he said. "Nevertheless, we believe this potentially substantial store of value for one of the largest and well known private companies in the world is highly relevant to this discussion."

The analyst reiterated his equal-weight rating and $291 price target for Tesla shares. It was trading above $352 a share on Monday.

Jonas was known for having some of the most aggressively bullish predictions for Tesla's ambitions, including a 2016 note highlighting an Uber-like transport service with autonomous electric vehicles. But the widely followed auto analyst became less optimistic over the carmaker's shares, starting in May 2017.

Tesla declined to comment on the Morgan Stanley report beyond referring to Musk's two recent corporate blog posts on the "Taking Tesla Private" topic.
CNBC reported last week that the Tesla board planned to meet with financial advisers this week to formalize a process to explore Musk's proposal. The board is also likely to ask Musk to recuse himself from the decision, people familiar with the discussions said.

The Tesla board had already met "several times" to discuss the possibility of going private, members of the board said last week, but Musk said Monday he felt it was necessary to inform all of Tesla's shareholders.

"It wouldn't be right to share information about going private with just our largest investors without sharing the same information with all investors at the same time," Musk wrote. "As a result, it was clear to me that the right thing to do was announce my intentions publicly."

Here's the full blog post from Musk:

As I announced last Tuesday, I'm considering taking Tesla private because I believe it could be good for our shareholders, enable Tesla to operate at its best, and advance our mission of accelerating the transition to sustainable energy. As I continue to consider this, I want to answer some of the questions that have been asked since last Tuesday.

What has happened so far?

On August 2nd, I notified the Tesla board that, in my personal capacity, I wanted to take Tesla private at $420 per share. This was a 20% premium over the ~$350 then current share price (which already reflected a ~16% increase in the price since just prior to announcing Q2 earnings on August 1st). My proposal was based on using a structure where any existing shareholder who wished to remain as a shareholder in a private Tesla could do so, with the $420 per share buyout used only for shareholders that preferred that option.

After an initial meeting of the board's outside directors to discuss my proposal (I did not participate, nor did Kimbal), a full board meeting was held. During that meeting, I told the board about the funding discussions that had taken place (more on that below) and I explained why this could be in Tesla's long-term interest.

At the end of that meeting, it was agreed that as a next step, I would reach out to some of Tesla's largest shareholders. Our largest investors have been extremely supportive of Tesla over the years, and understanding whether they had the ability and desire to remain as shareholders in a private Tesla is of critical importance to me. They are the ones who believed in Tesla when no one else did and they are the ones who most believe in our future. I told the board that I would report back after I had these discussions.

Why did I make a public announcement?

The only way I could have meaningful discussions with our largest shareholders was to be completely forthcoming with them about my desire to take the company private. However, it wouldn't be right to share information about going private with just our largest investors without sharing the same information with all investors at the same time. As a result, it was clear to me that the right thing to do was announce my intentions publicly. To be clear, when I made the public announcement, just as with this blog post and all other discussions I have had on this topic, I am speaking for myself as a potential bidder for Tesla.

Why did I say "funding secured"?

Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private. They first met with me at the beginning of 2017 to express this interest because of the important need to diversify away from oil. They then held several additional meetings with me over the next year to reiterate this interest and to try to move forward with a going private transaction. Obviously, the Saudi sovereign fund has more than enough capital needed to execute on such a transaction.

Recently, after the Saudi fund bought almost 5% of Tesla stock through the public markets, they reached out to ask for another meeting. That meeting took place on July 31st. During the meeting, the Managing Director of the fund expressed regret that I had not moved forward previously on a going private transaction with them, and he strongly expressed his support for funding a going private transaction for Tesla at this time. I understood from him that no other decision makers were needed and that they were eager to proceed.

I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a deal with the Saudi sovereign fund could be closed, and that it was just a matter of getting the process moving. This is why I referred to "funding secured" in the August 7th announcement.

Following the August 7th announcement, I have continued to communicate with the Managing Director of the Saudi fund. He has expressed support for proceeding subject to financial and other due diligence and their internal review process for obtaining approvals. He has also asked for additional details on how the company would be taken private, including any required percentages and any regulatory requirements.

Another critical point to emphasize is that before anyone is asked to decide on going private, full details of the plan will be provided, including the proposed nature and source of the funding to be used. However, it would be premature to do so now. I continue to have discussions with the Saudi fund, and I also am having discussions with a number of other investors, which is something that I always planned to do since I would like for Tesla to continue to have a broad investor base. It is appropriate to complete those discussions before presenting a detailed proposal to an independent board committee.

It is also worth clarifying that most of the capital required for going private would be funded by equity rather than debt, meaning that this would not be like a standard leveraged buyout structure commonly used when companies are taken private. I do not think it would be wise to burden Tesla with significantly increased debt.

Therefore, reports that more than $70B would be needed to take Tesla private dramatically overstate the actual capital raise needed. The $420 buyout price would only be used for Tesla shareholders who do not remain with our company if it is private. My best estimate right now is that approximately two-thirds of shares owned by all current investors would roll over into a private Tesla.

What are the next steps?

As mentioned earlier, I made the announcement last Tuesday because I felt it was the right and fair thing to do so that all investors had the same information at the same time. I will now continue to talk with investors, and I have engaged advisors to investigate a range of potential structures and options. Among other things, this will allow me to obtain a more precise understanding of how many of Tesla's existing public shareholders would remain shareholders if we became private.

If and when a final proposal is presented, an appropriate evaluation process will be undertaken by a special committee of Tesla's board, which I understand is already in the process of being set up, together with the legal counsel it has selected. If the board process results in an approved plan, any required regulatory approvals will need to be obtained and the plan will be presented to Tesla shareholders for a vote.


Youanmi Vanadium Metallurgical Testwork Update

Perth, Aug 13, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Venus Metals Corporation Limited ( ASX:VMC ) ("Venus" or the "Company") is pleased to announce an update on the preliminary metallurgical testwork on historical diamond drill core samples from the Youanmi Vanadium JORC 2012 Resource located at Youanmi, Western Australia.Highlights:- LIMS results correlated extremely well with the DTR results- Recovery of vanadium up to 92.8% in the fresh composite- Recovery of vanadium of 83.1% into a concentrate with a combined silica and alumina grade of less than 4.5%- These preliminary results are broadly comparable with those of other vanadium deposits in AustraliaExploration Upside:- A strong aeromagnetic feature with a strike length of c. 14km south of the vanadium resource may host significant vanadium mineralization as demonstrated by historical RC drilling along a single traverse with reported high-grade vanadium (refer WAMEX reports A58498 and A59196). The aeromagnetic feature is a potentially large target* (refer ASX release dated 6 Feb 2015) and exploration drilling is planned to commence soon.Venus Metals Managing Director Matthew Hogan commented: "We are very pleased with the progress of the metallurgical testwork and its outcomes which are excellent. While this work continues, we plan to commence exploration drilling at the large aeromagnetic feature which has an estimated exploration target potential* of more than 1 billion tonnes of vanadium ore."*An estimate of the exploration target potential of a mineral deposit in a defined geological setting where the statement or estimate, quoted as a range of tonnes and a range of grade, which are conceptual in nature, relates to mineralisation for which there has been insufficient exploration to estimate a Mineral Resource, and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the estimation of a Mineral Resource.Metallurgical TestworkThe Company appointed METS Engineering Group (METS) to develop a series of metallurgical tests suitable for the historic diamond core to assess the response of this ore to the conventional magnetic concentration methods used for similar vanadium deposits. The aim of this testwork was to:a) assess the ores physical properties to determine the ease of crushing and grinding and;b) assess the upgrade of vanadium into a magnetic concentrate and to assess the quality of this magnetic concentrate producedThe testwork showed magnetic separation was able to produce a vanadium enriched magnetic concentrate whilst rejecting significant amounts of gangue constituents that were present in the ore. This testwork was carried out on two composites; oxide and fresh. These composites were made up from historical half core sections, selected to include a spread through the orebody and to target the average grade of high grade domains present within the orebody. The testwork was carried out at the Iron Ore Technical Centre, part of ALS Metallurgy, Wangarra, Western Australia. This stage of the testwork was focussed on improving vanadium recovery into the magnetic concentrate; it was undertaken on the triple pass Wet Low Intensity Magnetic Separation (LIMS) non-magnetic fraction (LIMS carried out at P80 106 micronsm and 1200 Gauss), the results of which reconcile very well with the Davis Tube Recovery (DTR) results that were reported previously (refer ASX release 19 July 2018).Two different methods were assessed for their capacity to improve the recovery of vanadium:1. Rare Earth Drum (RED) at 3500 Gauss2. SLon(R) Wet High Intensity Magnetic Separation (WHIMS) at two magnetic field intensities:a. 2000 Gauss and b. 4000 GaussThe magnetic concentrates produced (Plate 1) from these would then be combined with the LIMS magnetic concentrate to produce overall combined magnetic concentrates (see Tables 1 and 2 in link below). Metallurgical testing is on-going in order to assess methods of further improving the vanadium recovery from both composite and improving the vanadium grade of the concentrate produced, the results of which will be released when they become available.Youanmi Vanadium Project Overview:Venus's Youanmi Vanadium deposit is located on tenement E57/986 (198.5 km2) which is about 42km southeast of the world-class vanadium mine at Windimurra, owned by Atlantic, a subsidiary of Droxford International Limited (see Figure 1 in link below). Youanmi Vanadium has good access to major infrastructure such as gas pipeline, roads and port facilities. Venus holds a 90% interest and the prospector holds a 10% interest in this tenement.JORC 2012 Vanadium Resource:Widenbar and Associates ("WAA") has reviewed the historical drilling, sampling and assaying data and produced a high-grade Inferred Resource of 167.7 Million tonnes @ 0.41% V2O5, 7.52% TiO2 and 24.6% Fe (0.25% V2O5 cut-off) for a Vanadium Pentoxide resource of 683,000 tonnes (ASX release dated 6 Feb 2015).The diamond drill core samples used for the metallurgical test work are located within this high-grade inferred resource (see Figure 2 in link below).Vanadium Exploration Target Potential at E57/986:WAA has estimated vanadium exploration target potential forE57/986 (ASX release dated 6 Feb 2015) based on existing drillhole data and aeromagnetic signatures. Areas to the south of the current model with identical aeromagnetic signatures have been delineated and have a strike length of 14 to 15 km (see Figure 3 in link below). Assuming this aeromagnetic feature hosts similar mineralisation to the Inferred Resource in the drilled area, the target potential (see Table-2 in link below) with upper and lower limits has been postulated (refer ASX release dated 6 Feb 2015).To view tables and figures, please visit:About Venus Metals Corporation Limited

Venus Metals Corporation Limited (ASX:VMC) is a West Australian based Company with a focus on gold and base metals exploration. The Company aims to increase shareholder value through targeted exploration success on its projects.

The Company's major gold project is the Youanmi Gold Mine, located 500km north east of Perth. The Youanmi Gold Mine is now jointly owned by Venus Metals (30%) and Rox Resources Limited (70%) (OYG JV); Indicated and Inferred Resources of the mine is 1.7 million ounces of gold.

Exciting new discoveries at the Youanmi Gold Mine have been made at the Grace prospect in footwall granites where very high grades of free milling gold have been intersected, including 25m @34.7g/t Au from 143m (RXRC 287) and 13m @60.49 g/t from 181m (RXRC 239). The Grace Prospect may substantially add to the Youanmi Gold Mine resources.
Tesla's chief executive, Elon Musk, told investors Monday in a blog post that he was confident the funding required to take the electric auto maker private was secured by Saudi Arabia, but support required by federal regulators of that foreign funding could be another hurdle.

Any move by Tesla to take the company private using overseas funds would likely have to get the nod from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, the interagency committee tasked with reviewing the national security implications of foreign investments in U.S. companies.

Tesla, which designs, develops, manufactures and sells electric vehicles and energy generation and storage systems in a number of developed countries, also provides electric vehicle powertrain components and systems to other manufacturers.

"Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private," Musk said in a blog post published Monday. "Recently, after the Saudi fund bought almost 5 percent of Tesla stock through the public markets, they reached out to ask for another meeting. That meeting took place on July 31st. ... I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a deal with the Saudi sovereign fund could be closed."

However, the cutting-edge technology behind Musk's business  and its value to some of the U.S.' economic rivals  could prove problematic to the chief executive's plans to go private.

On Aug. 1 the Senate joined the House of Representatives in passing the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, or FIRRMA, new legislation designed to broaden CFIUS' authority. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill into law Monday.

Among other changes, FIRRMA would extend CFIUS' jurisdiction to any nonpassive foreign investment in a U.S. "critical technology company" or "critical infrastructure company." Prior to FIRRMA, CFIUS' jurisdiction was limited to transactions that could result in "foreign control" of a U.S. business.

"I think that in terms of FIRRMA's intent to capture transactions in areas deemed 'critical technology,' electric vehicles may fall into that," said David Ribner, an attorney with O'Melveny & Myers whose practice focuses on advising clients seeking CFIUS approvals of foreign investments. "It's an open question about how investments by the Saudis would be treated. Every national security review looks at both the threat posed by the foreign person and the U.S. business's vulnerability."

Ribner explained that acquisitions by U.S. allies could be viewed as a threat by CFIUS depending on the parties in question; foreign acquisition of nuclear power plant operators or defense contractors, for example, could be seen as a vulnerability even in friendly hands.

Trump has already made headlines with CFIUS, when the White House took the unusual step of blocking Singapore-based Broadcom from purchasing Qualcomm in a hostile takeover in March, citing national security concerns raised by CFIUS as evidence for the intervention.

"There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that Broadcom Limited, a limited company organized under the laws of Singapore (Broadcom) ... through exercising control of Qualcomm Incorporated (Qualcomm), a Delaware corporation, might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States," the White House statement said.

Regulators worried that Broadcom would suffocate research and development at Qualcomm given its history of cutting costs. CFIUS argued such a move could hamstring Qualcomm, and by extension the United States, in the race to develop state-of-the-art wireless devices, an argument that could translate to electric automobile development.

For Saudi Arabia and China, which are both seeking to curb their dependency on oil, incorporating modern electric automobile technology could not only be a huge step forward economically but also prove problematic should either seek to buy out Tesla's intellectual property.

Should CFIUS elect to review a Saudi-backed Tesla privatization, any recommendation from the committee would be passed on to Trump for a final decision.
In this photo provided by Nate McMurray for Congress, Democratic congressional candidate Nate McMurray speaks to supporters in Rochester, N.Y., Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018, the day after his opponent, U.S. Rep. Christopher Collins, R-N.Y., was arrested on insider trading charges.

A powerful group dedicated to electing Democrats to the House is getting involved for the first time in a safe GOP district in New York after the Republican congressman there was charged with insider trading.

Nate McMurray, the Democratic candidate in the 27th District, told CNBC that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, is offering him a helping hand. McMurray said operatives for the DCCC contacted him Wednesday morning, after GOP Rep. Chris Collins was arrested. They offered him digital marketing assistance for the first time, as well as help in finding a new campaign manager, he said.

McMurray said he and his previous campaign manager agreed to part ways in the early stages of the election cycle.

"They [DCCC] said they want to help. They said, 'We always thought you were a good candidate but we thought this was the wrong race for you. We thought this was the wrong race for anybody, but now this opens an opportunity for us,'" McMurray said.

Even with DCCC support, McMurray faces a tough road ahead because the district has historically backed Republican candidates. President Donald Trump carried the district by an almost 2-to-1 margin in 2016, as he captured 60 percent of the vote. Collins won his re-election battle by claiming 67 percent of the electorate compared with his opponent who only cobbled together just more than 32 percent. After Collins' arrest last week, Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball changed NY-27 from safe Republican to likely Republican.

There is no official agreement between McMurray's campaign and the DCCC, he said. But, even though the group showed no interest in helping him before, the Democrat said he's going to hear them out.

"They were not supportive at all up until this point. They thought it was in the bag. I kept telling them, 'Are you nuts? Do you see who I am running against?,'" the Grand Island town supervisor said, referring to the two other insider trading investigations into Collins by the House Ethics Committee and the Office of Congressional Ethics.

A spokesman for the DCCC referred CNBC to its original statement when Collins was accused of insider trading by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"With Collins' arrest for corruption, unprecedented grassroots energy, and the strong candidacy of Nate McMurray, this seat is firmly in play for Democrats," Meredith Kelly, communications director at the DCCC, said at the time.

The district has also been on the DCCC's target list since the start of the 2018 election cycle.
Luigi Di Maio, Leader of 5-Star Movement (M5S) leaves the parliament after a new day of meetings for the formation of the new government on April 26, 2018 in Rome, Italy.

Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Monday there was no risk of speculators attacking the country's financial markets and that the government was working to stabilise the economic and financial situation.

"I do not see the concrete risk of this government being attacked. It is more a hope of the opposition," Di Maio said in an interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

He added that if "someone wants to use the markets against the government, it must be known that we cannot be threatened".

A senior government official said on Sunday that he expected speculators to attack Italian financial markets this month but that the country had the resources to defend itself.

Italian stocks have come under strain in recent weeks, with investors concerned that the governing coalition, made up of the League and Di Maio's 5-Star Movement, might ignore European Union fiscal rules and push up the country's debt, the highest in the euro zone after Greece.

Di Maio said his government would carry out all reforms with maximum respect for the "equilibrium of the state accounts" and that there was no need to exceed the EU's 3 percent deficit-to-GDP limit.

"We will convince the EU to allow us to carry out reforms that will cut debt and boost internal demand," said Di Maio, who is also industry and labour minister.

Italy's finance minister said last week the government planned to target a budget deficit next year of 1.7 percent of gross domestic product, comfortably inside the EU's 3 percent ceiling but double the current 0.8 percent goal.

The government is due to update its economic targets in September before drawing up the 2019 budget and submitting it to the European Commission for approval the following month.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (L) and South Korean President Moon Jae-in (R) embrace after signing the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula during the Inter-Korean Summit at the Peace House on April 27, 2018 in Panmunjom, South Korea.

North and South Korean officials are scheduled to hold high-level negotiations on Monday, with one South Korean newspaper report suggesting the two sides could be planning for a summit in Pyongyang later this month.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met in April at a truce village along their mutual border and agreed to have another summit in autumn, this time in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang.

A South Korean delegation led by Minister of Unification Cho Myoung-gyon began the latest round of talks with counterparts led by Ri Son Gwon, chairman of the North's reunification committee, at the truce village of Panmunjom.

"As the Pyongyang summit of the leaders of North and South Korea is being pursued, I believe that we can give concrete answers to the problems that the people hope and wish for," Ri said during the talks, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry.

Citing an unidentified South Korean official, the Kookmin Ilbo newspaper reported earlier on Monday that the next summit could be held as soon as late August.

The schedule had mostly been coordinated with North Korea and the summit would likely be held in Pyongyang, it said.

A spokesman for South Korea's presidential Blue House said on Sunday officials hoped such details would be decided at Monday's talks.

"We hope that the timing, venue and the size of the delegation that will visit North Korea will be decided," Blue House spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said, declining to comment on specifics.

North Korea's Kim has a held a flurry of diplomatic summits with the leaders of South Korea, China, and the United States this year.

Moon and Kim also had a surprise meeting at the border in May, making Moon the only South Korean leader to have met a North Korean leader twice. A visit by Moon to Pyongyang would be the first to be held this year in North Korea's capital.

The North has been heavily sanctioned over its pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles but Kim and Trump agreed at their landmark summit in Singapore in June to work towards the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea has denounced U.S.-led efforts to maintain sanctions despite what Pyongyang says are goodwill gestures, including halting its weapons testing and returning the remains of U.S. troops killed in the 1950-1953 Korean War.

U.S. officials familiar with the talks, however, told Reuters that North Korea had yet to agree to a timeline for eliminating its nuclear arsenal or to disclose its size, which U.S. estimates have put at between 30 and 60 warheads.
The Chinese government is stepping up scrutiny of and instituting new measures for a once-burgeoning online lending sector, where fund closures have prompted protests and even caused a convenience store chain in Beijing to shut down.

The targeted sector is peer-to-peer lending platforms, which claim to connect investors with borrowers over the internet, giving money lenders an opportunity to generate some income, while offering credit to many Chinese people who cannot get bank loans.

The companies, also known as P2P, tapped into a unique opportunity in the Chinese market since banks historically do not lend to most consumers and small businesses due to the lack of an established credit score system. A lack of regulation in the sector resulted in a surge of platforms, which peaked at about 3,500 in number in 2015, but roughly half have closed since.

Now, authorities covering internet financial and loan risks have laid out 10 policy measures, such as bans on new online lending platforms, state-run news agency Xinhua reported Sunday. Other steps include removing obstructions for customer complaints, increasing legal punishment on operators of fraudulent schemes and establishing payout plans for shareholders in bankrupt firms, the report said.

Seventy-three percent of P2P platform failures since June were due to liquidity issues, Citi analysts Daphne Poon and Judy Zhang said in a July 18 report. They predicted that fewer than 200 would survive in the end.

The analysts said the the latest slew of failures was likely driven by three factors: a tightening macro credit environment triggering defaults, rising compliance costs leading some platforms to voluntarily fold, and a rash of panicked withdrawals from retail investors crushing the platforms that weren't well prepared.

The closures have had some effects in the real economy. In one case, convenience store chain Linjia had to close earlier this month after police began investigating its sole investor for organizing a Ponzi scheme disguised as a P2P lending platform, Chinese financial news site Yicai Global reported.
DJ Koh, president of mobile communications at Samsung Electronics Co., speaks during the Samsung Unpacked product launch event in New York, U.S., on Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018. Samsung Electronics unveiled the Galaxy Note 9 in New York Thursday, banking on the larger-screen device to rejuvenate sales of a struggling flagship line and fend off Apple Inc.'s upcoming iPhones over the holidays. Jeenah Moon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Samsung Electronics is one of the world's worst-performing technology stocks this year with billions wiped of its value as factors from increased smartphone competition to worries about the health of the semiconductor market have weighed on the company's performance. Shares of the South Korean giant are down over 11 percent this year, more than major U.S. and other Asian technology stocks. Over $39.4 billion has been erased from Samsung's market capitalization year-to-date. It's a far cry from the 41 percent rally Samsung shares saw in 2017. So what has changed?

Semiconductor slowdown fears

In recent times, the semiconductor division has been Samsung's biggest business, accounting for 37 percent of sales but 78 percent of profits in the second quarter of this year. It's a high-margin business that has been aided by high demand and supply constraints that have helped boost prices of chips that Samsung sells. Samsung's success in semiconductors has helped it offset a slower smartphone market, but some analysts fear that the market dynamics that helped it charge high prices could become undone this year. In a recent note, Morgan Stanley warned of rising inventory in the semiconductor industry, which could make it harder to charge higher prices. But the company doesn't appear to be worried yet. In its second quarter earnings report, Samsung said it expects market conditions for its memory chips to remain "solid" in the second half of the year.

Rising smartphone competition

Samsung's second quarter earnings showed the slowest quarterly profit growth in more than a year, partly because of sluggish smartphone sales. Revenue from the mobile division was down 22 percent year-on-year in the three months to June, which Samsung attributed to "lower-than-expected sales of the Galaxy S9," the company's flagship smartphone. The firm is hoping the recently-released $1,000 Note 9 smartphone could help revive sales, but its facing the reality of a slowing market for handsets and increased competition. Global smartphone shipments declined 1.8 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, according to data from IDC. And for the first time, Huawei became the second-largest smartphone player by shipments, surpassing Apple and closing in on Samsung's crown. And Samsung is facing stiff competition in the crucial, large markets of India and China. Huawei is the biggest player in China, followed by Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi, all of which are domestic companies. Samsung, which several years ago featured in the top five handset makers in the country, has lost much of its share. In India, Samsung, which was again very dominant in the past, is facing increased competition from Xiaomi, which is now equal to its South Korean rival in terms of shipments, according to research firm Canalys. Neil Shah, research director at Counterpoint Research, said Samsung has lost share in the major markets of China, Europe and the U.S., where it can command higher-than-average selling prices of phones. This has had a knock-on effect to its lower-priced models that it sells in countries like India and China. "The premium S9 did not work well in those markets. So now the only market they can sell premium S9 in quantity is Korea, which is a very small market. The bulk of the issue is compounded because of softer premiums. If your halo device isn't doing well it boils down to cheaper devices as well, because you lose the halo effect from the flagship," Shah told CNBC by phone Monday.

Weak display demand

Samsung supplies so-called organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels for Apple's iPhone X. This helped boost the company's earnings last year when Apple was buying stock from Samsung for the device's release. But in the second quarter of 2018, Samsung's display panel division saw revenues fall 27 percent year-on-year because "iPhone X demand in the first half this year has not been the same," according to Shah. Given these issues, Samsung announced a recent $22 billion investment into new growth areas like artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G mobile internet technology.

How do Samsung shares compare?
OPEC's oil production ticked higher in July, but cuts by top exporter Saudi Arabia weighed on the 15-member group's output just one month after it agreed to start pumping more crude. The Saudis throttled back drilling last month after agreeing with OPEC, Russia and several other producers to put more barrels on the market in June. The kingdom is facing pressure from big oil consuming nations like China and India, as well as the Trump administration, to tamp down fuel costs ahead of the renewal of U.S. sanctions on Iran, OPEC's third biggest producer. President Donald Trump is aiming to cut Iran's oil exports to zero by November, a policy that threatens to leave the world short of oil and boost prices at the pump if OPEC and Russia cannot fill the gap. A group of two dozen oil-producing nations has been limiting its production since January 2017 in order to drain oversupply, but has scaled back that policy in light of the Iranian sanctions and output declines in places like Venezuela and Angola. "Compared to a year earlier, there has been an overall improvement in crude oil prices in 2018," OPEC said in its monthly report. "At the same time, product prices have generally followed the upward trajectory of crude oil prices."

In another twist for the market, OPEC's latest report shows a significant discrepancy between July production figures provided by Saudi Arabia and data compiled by independent sources. While the kingdom says it cut output by about 200,000 barrels per day, an average of estimates from several outside sources puts the drop at nearly 53,000 bpd. Saudi Arabia had telegraphed the drop prior to the release of the report. However, S&P Global Platts and the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated the Saudis actually hiked output to 10.6 million bpd in July, The Wall Street Journal reported last week. According to the Journal, the Saudis asked several sources whose estimates underpin the independent figure to make an adjustment for July, but Platts stuck by its analysis. The Saudis face the challenge of managing the oil market so that prices do not rise high enough to hurt demand or upset allies like Trump, but do not fall so low that they put stress on the kingdom's finances. Saudi Arabia is trying to keep oil prices around $80 a barrel, analysts say, and a drop in Saudi production tends to boost prices. U.S. crude ended last week below $68, while international benchmark Brent crude settled under $73. The drop in production from Saudi Arabia comes after the kingdom hiked output by more than 400,000 bpd in June. The entire OPEC group saw its output jump by nearly 41,000 bpd in July to 32.3 million bpd, according to independent figures cited by the group in its monthly report. Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, two of the only OPEC nations with spare capacity, contributed the biggest and third-largest increases, respectively. Africa's top producer, Nigeria, rounded out the top three largest increases for the month, while Iraq also pumped more. In addition to Saudi Arabia, independent sources also reported declines of about 50,000 bpd from Iran, Libya and Venezuela.
Check out the companies making headlines after the bell:

Shares of Vipshop plunged nearly 10 percent after Monday's close on the back of weaker-than-expected earnings and revenue for the second quarter. The Chinese e-commerce company reported a profit per share of 0.84 renminbi and sales of 20.74 billion renminbi. Analysts polled by Reuters expected Vipshop to post earnings of 0.95 renminbi per share on revenue of 21.08 billion renminbi.

Switch's stock dropped nearly 18 percent in after-hours trading as its quarterly results also disappointed investors. The telecommunications company, which went public last October, reported earnings of 2 cents a share on revenue of $102.2 million. Analysts were expecting a profit of 4 cents a share on sales of $102.8 million. The company also cut its guidance.

Shares of Williams Companies rose more than 3 percent after the energy infrastructure company received regulatory approval to move forward with an expansion of its Transco natural gas pipeline in the U.S. northeast.

The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets exchange-traded fund rose 0.2 percent after the bell, following steep losses in the cash session amid a sell-off in Turkish assets. Turkey's lira fell to a record low, pushing its stocks down by about 11 percent. But the iShares MSCI Turkey ETF climbed 1.4 percent in after-hours trading.


President Donald Trump holds an African American History Month listening session attended by Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison Omarosa Manigault (L) and other officials in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on February 1, 2017 in Washington, DC.

President Donald Trump on Monday attacked his former senior White House advisor Omarosa Manigault Newman on Twitter shortly after she revealed a tape that she had surreptitiously recorded of the president in 2017.

"Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will," the president wrote in a post on the social media platform. "She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart."

Trump tweet

In a follow-up post, the president wrote that Manigault Newman "would constantly miss meetings & work." He said chief of staff John Kelly complained about Manigault Newman, but that he "told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired!"

Manigault Newman was one of the White House's highest paid staffers, receiving an annual salary of $179,700, as much as former chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Earlier Monday, NBC's "Today" played a recording that appeared to show Trump getting caught off guard by the news of her December 2017 firing.

"Omarosa? Omarosa what's going on? I just saw on the news that you're thinking about leaving? What happened?" Trump says in the recording provided by Manigault Newman. She said it was made one day after Kelly fired her in the Situation Room.

After Manigault Newman tells the president that Kelly had fired her, Trump responds: "Nobody even told me about it."

Manigault Newman has since accused the president of having "no clue" about what is going on in the White House, saying that decisions are being made by Kelly without the president's knowledge.

"He's being puppeted and that's very dangerous for this nation," she said Monday.

Manigault Newman, whose book about her time in the White House is scheduled for release on Tuesday, has levied a barrage of attacks against the president in recent days. On Sunday, Newman said on NBC's "Meet The Press" that she had personally heard a recording of the president using the N-word.

The White House has characterized Manigault Newman as a "disgruntled" former employee. On Saturday, the president told reporters that Newman was a "lowlife."

The president repeated his "lowlife" claim Monday in a tweet defending his use of Twitter to criticize his former employee.

"While I know it's 'not presidential' to take on a lowlife like Omarosa, and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication," the president wrote. "I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!"






Raises A$2.4 Million in Placement for Caula Vanadium-Graphite Project

Sydney, Aug 13, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Mustang Resources Limited ( ASX:MUS ) ( FRA:GGY ) ( OTCMKTS:MTTGF ) ("Mustang" or "the Company") is pleased to announce that it has received formal commitments to raise approximately AU$2.4 million (before costs) via private placement ("Placement") to professional and sophisticated investors and some of the Company's directors. Of this amount AU$2.18m will be completed through the issue of 158,660,844 million new shares at $0.01374 per share. Of these new shares 138,636,844 will be issued under the Company's 7.1 placement capacity and 20,024,000 under the Company's 7.1A placement capacity.HIGHIGHTS- Mustang has received firm commitments for a total of AU$2.4 million through a private share placement led by DJ Carmichael and Jett Capital- Includes AU$258,000 from Mustang management and Directors- The funds raised will be used to advance the Company's Caula Vanadium-Graphite Project in Mozambique and for general working capitalThe total amount raised includes AU$258,000 from Mustang's management and directors with Regius Resources Group Ltd (majority owned by Mustang Chief Operating Officer Cobus van Wyk and Director Christiaan Jordaan) contributing AU$200,000 for 14,556,040 new shares and Mustang Managing Director Dr. Bernard Olivier AU$20,000 for 1,455,604 new shares. Participation by directors is subject to prior shareholder approval.Funds raised pursuant to the Placement will be used principally to further develop the Company's Caula Vanadium-Graphite Project in Mozambique and for general working capital.The Placement has been made to professional and sophisticated investors in Australia, Hong Kong and the United States, with DJ Carmichael and Jett Capital acted as the lead brokers in respect of the Placement.The Company will also issue attaching options ("Attaching Options") on a 1:2 basis, exercisable at $0.02, expiring 24 months from issue, which accords with the major Caula 24-month development milestones. The Company will seek quotation of the Attaching Options once issued. It should be noted that the issue of the Attaching Options is conditional on shareholder approval at a General Meeting expected to be held in late September 2018.Settlement of the placement is expected to occur on or around 20 August 2018.Mustang Resources Managing Director Bernard Olivier commented "This capital raise is important in the fast-tracked development of the Caula Vanandium-Graphite project in Mozambique where we have recently established a JORC Measured Resource of 22Mt @ 0.37% V2O5 and 13.4% TGC for 180Mlb of vanadium and 2.93Mt of graphite respectively. With the feasibility study drilling now well underway it is likely that the resource will be enlarged in the near future, and this placement plays an important role. We will update the market as soon as the drilling and scoping study results are available".MUSTANG INVESTMENT HIGHLIGHTSCaula Vanadium-Graphite Project demonstrates attractive fundamentals:- Caula hosts a JORC (Measured) mica-hosted vanadium Resource of 22Mt @ 0.37% V2O5 (0.2% cut-off) for 81,600 tonnes of vanadium pentoxide (180 million pounds) with high grade intersections up to 1.9% V2O5(see Note 1 below)- Caula also hosts, within the same deposit, a JORC (Measured) graphite deposit of 21.9 Mt @ 13.4% TGC (8% cut-off) for 2,933,100 tonnes of contained graphite with high grade intersections up to 29% TGC(see Note 2 below)- Metallurgical testwork confirms exceptional quality graphite with more than 63% of cumulative proportion in large to super jumbo flakes sizes (>180micronsm) and excellent concentrate grades of 97% to 98% TGC(see Note 3 below)Caula resource likely to be significantly enlarged in the near term:- The feasibility study drilling program on the Caula Vanadium-Graphite Project in Northern Mozambique is well advanced- 3,025m of diamond drilling and 1,050m of reverse-circulation drilling planned for completion in Q3 2018(see Note 4 below)Vanadium to deliver enhanced project economics:- Caula's flowsheet design allows for integrated vanadium and graphite concentrate production mainly through simple flotation- Caula vanadium hosted in roscoelite (a mica mineral), potentially simpler and cheaper to extract vanadium from than typical titano-magnetite ("VTM") vanadium deposits- In the USA vanadium products were extracted from roscoelite in Colorado and Utah as early as 1910 making the USA the largest vanadium producer in the world by 1941(see Note 5 below)MUS intending to fast-track Caula development:- Mustang's strategy is to produce a Scoping Study in September 2018 with a view to further development work for a Pre Feasibility Study ("PFS") by end of Q4 2018 and upgrading to a Definitive Feasibility Study in Q1 2019- Mustang is targeting phase 1 trial mining to produce vanadium and graphite concentrates in H2 2019(see Note 6 below)Montepuez Ruby Project merged with Fura Gems Inc. ( CVE:FURA ):- Strategic transaction with Fura announced in July 2018 for A$10 million of Fura shares plus A$25 million spending commitment by Fura on the ruby assets over 3 years(see Note 7 below)- Allows Mustang to focus all capital and management time on the Caula Vanadium-Graphite project while retaining upside potential (fully funded) for the Montepuez Ruby ProjectMozambique an attractive investment destination:- A relatively low sovereign risk profile in Mozambique with established legal and business framework has attracted significant investment into minerals projects in recent yearsStrong board and management team:- Mustang's board and operational management team have a strong 15 year+ track record of experience in developing mining projects in Africa (including graphite and vanadium experience) that the Company believes will prove valuable in the successful development of its Caula Vanadium-Graphite project- Importantly, a number of key personnel are embedded in the country and in the southern African regionInformation relevant to Listing Rule 7.1AIn accordance with Listing Rule 3.10.5A, the Company makes the following disclosures:(a) the interests of existing shareholders will be diluted by approximately 3% by the issue of shares under Listing Rule 7.1A;(b) the placement was determined by the Directors to be the most efficient manner in which the Company could raise the funds needed to meet the needs of the Company and to bring in new sophisticated and professional investors into the Company. A pro rata issue was not considered appropriate at the time given the time required to complete the pro rata issue;(c) no underwriting agreement was entered into in relation to the Placement; and(d) the Company will pay DJ Carmichael and Jett Capital a fee of 6% of the funds raised under the Placement, together with 87.3 million options in the Company (subject to the receipt of shareholder approval for the issue of those options).Notes:1 Refer to ASX Announcements dated 20 July 2018 and 27 June 20182 Refer to ASX Announcement dated 24 July 2018 and 27 June 20183 Refer to ASX Announcement dated 25 June 20184 Refer to ASX Announcement dated 8 August 20185 Vanadium the new green metal. Mineral deposits in the Colorado Plateau. Hammond, AD. December, 2013. Mining Engineering Magazine6 Refer to ASX Announcement dated 21 March 20187 Refer to ASX Announcement dated 17 July 2018To view figures, please visit:About New Energy Minerals Ltd

New Energy Minerals Ltd (ASX:NXE) (FRA:GGY) is an ASX listed junior mining company, that recently announced the divestment of the Company's Caula vanadium - graphite project and the Montepuez Ruby project in Mozambique.
U.S. Navy Aviation Electronics Technician signals to the crew of an EA-18G Growler on the flight deck of aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.

President Donald Trump approved a colossal defense policy bill Monday that authorizes a top-line budget of $717 billion to cover a litany of defense spending.

Trump traveled to Fort Drum, home of the Army's 10th Mountain Division, in upstate New York to sign the bill, which was named in honor of former Vietnam prisoner of war Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is battling brain cancer.

The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, includes $616.9 billion for the Pentagon's base budget, $69 billion for overseas contingency operations funding and $21.9 billion for nuclear weapons programs under the Energy Department. The NDAA is only half the process, since Congress must still pass a spending bill to fund specific priorities with the Defense Department.

"The National Defense Authorization Act is the most significant investment in our military and our war fighters in modern history," Trump said Monday in front of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter. "We are going to strengthen our military like never ever before and that's what we did."

Trump lauded the bill, saying it will give service members the "finest planes, and ships and tanks and missiles."

The measure authorizes a 2.6 percent pay raise for troops  the largest in nearly a decade. It also delays the delivery of stealth fighter aircraft to Turkey and blunts Chinese investments by strengthening the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

Here's a breakdown of some of the big-ticket items the Pentagon is authorized to buy.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was higher at around 2.875 percent at 2:48 p.m. ET, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was in the black at 3.044 percent. Bond yields move inversely to prices.

U.S. government debt yields rose on the first trading day of the week as financial concerns surrounding the stability of Turkey's currency worsened.

Global markets continue to see red, after Turkey's financial troubles sparked fear of contagion and the country's lira currency took a deep slide. On Friday, the lira temporarily tumbled 20 percent against the U.S. dollar, after President Donald Trump said he supported doubling metal tariffs on Ankara.

While the lira pared some losses over the weekend  after the Turkish central bank moved to improve liquidity and while Turkey's finance minister said the government had outlined an action plan to alleviate concerns  it still lost more than 45 percent of its value during this year alone, according to Reuters.

Elsewhere, concerns over the U.S.' future relations with major economies including China will remain in focus, as trade war tensions continue to escalate.

Little economic data is due Monday. The U.S. Treasury is scheduled to auction $51 billion in 13-week bills and $45 billion in 26-week bills. The size of a four-week bill, due to be auctioned Tuesday, will also be announced.
China's power may have been overrated and the U.S. economy is staying strong, meaning that U.S. President Donald Trump has an advantage in the trade war, according to one expert.

"We have to realize that perhaps China isn't as strong as when we at first think. China is still figuring out also how to deal with this trade situation, how to ensure the stability of its domestic economy," said Curtis Chin, an Asia fellow at economic think tank the Milken Institute.

"And that works to the advantage of President Trump, and I think what's really working to the advantage of President Trump is the state of the U.S. economy right now. Really, the U.S. economy is firing on all cylinders," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday.

That economic strength would give Trump a "backstop" if the trade situation deteriorates in the long run, Chin said.

Chin told CNBC he "totally" disagreed with the view that the White House's policies are backfiring. The Milken expert, who was also U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, said Trump has made it clear he's been elected as "president of Americans, not of the world."

"Right now we're seeing record employment in the U.S., not just unemployment down, but people getting back into the economy, that people think they can find a job if they start looking again. I think that's a positive message," he said.

Chin also suggested that, going by the rhetoric in Chinese state media, Beijing has not been as aggressive toward Trump as expected. The second-largest economy is still figuring out its game plan, he said.

The decision from China's leadership will ultimately impact more than just the U.S.

"How will China's future actions play out with regards not just military like the South China Sea, but will these trade tensions lead to China beginning to dump products, products they can no longer sell in the U.S., into the rest of the region," he said. "I think that's a significant concern for Asian companies, for Southeast Asian companies that I deal with."
Stocks slipped on Monday as a financial crisis in Turkey that sent its currency tumbling last week worsened, dampening investor sentiment around the world.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 125.44 points to close at 25,187.70, with Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase both falling more than 1 percent. The 30-stock index also posted its fourth straight day of losses, its longest losing streak since June.

The declined 0.4 percent to 2,821.93 as materials and energy lagged, posting its first four-day losing streak since March. The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.25 percent to 7,819.71, but gains in Amazon and Apple rose 1 percent kept losses in check.

Materials dropped 1 percent, led lower by shares of Mosaic, which fell 3.6 percent. Energy shares also fell 1.2 percent as U.S. crude hit a seven-week low.

"Investors are generally going to be more cautious with a story like Turkey out there," said Jennifer Ellison, principal at BOS. "It's going to hold people off from taking significant risk for a short period of time ... but if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, things are good."

The Turkish lira, which briefly tumbled more than 20 percent on Friday, reached a fresh record low on Monday before regaining some footing.

Tensions between the U.S. and Turkey increased last week after a Turkish delegation returned from Washington with no apparent progress on , who is charged with supporting a group blamed for an attempted coup in 2016.

Larry Benedict, CEO of The Opportunistic Trader, said the move is being felt across the globe. "Markets across the board going from China all through Europe were lower," he said. Benedict added the market thinks this will work itself out, but added that investors may not be thinking about the potential negatives of the situation.
A customer walks down an aisle displaying bottles of laundry detergent for sale at a Walmart Inc. store in Secaucus, New Jersey. Timothy Fadek | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Glaciers, landfills and shopping bags

During our extensive research into the implementation of Walmart's sustainability program, we found many executives from the CEO on down who were passionate about making the company more environmentally friendly. Before the retailer even began its program, corporate executives traversed the globe to better understand what was at stake. We were told stories of Scott's summer 2005 trip to the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, where scientists take measurements of the ice and the wind to measure the effects of climate change and air pollution. There he met with Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp and some of the scientists to discuss the company's environmental impact and what it could be doing differently. On that same trip, he also met with maple syrup farmers who explained how climate change was affecting their harvests. Other company leaders made trips to parched cotton fields, landfills covered with Walmart shopping bags and melting Arctic glaciers, all with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of sustainability and engaging with environmental groups, journalists and critics. But it still wasn't clear where all this was going until August of that year, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, causing extensive human suffering and property damage along the coast. Walmart, in an unusual move, gave local managers wide discretion in helping communities respond and, along with a few other large retailers, worked hard to get needed supplies to the area. In the context of widely reported government failures during the crisis, Walmart received praise for its actions  a far cry from the usual criticism Scott received from social and political activists. After Katrina, Scott had an epiphany, which culminated in that speech he made in October 2005 near Walmart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, during which he announced the project: "What if we used our size and resources to make this country and this earth an even better place for all of us: customers, associates, our children and generations unborn?"

Seeking sustainability

In the speech, Scott laid out Walmart's sustainability vision to Walmart employees and suppliers. He called for reducing waste, using more renewable energy and selling products that "sustained people and the environment." In a way, these goals sounded easy. Simply cut down on waste, become more efficient, convince its legions of suppliers to make more sustainable products and sell them at its "low, low prices." Sustainability goes up, costs go down, everybody wins. But as Scott and his successors learned, this was easier said than done. Some aspects were relatively straightforward. The company's efforts to operate more efficiently produced significant environmental value  and helped its bottom line. The efficiency of its fleet of trucks doubled within a decade. Walmart has now converted 28 percent of the energy sources powering its stores and operations globally to renewables. And last year, the company diverted 78 percent of its global waste from landfills, instead finding ways to recycle, reuse or even sell the garbage. Its goal is to eventually get to 50 percent renewables and zero waste in Canada, Japan, the U.K. and U.S. by 2025. Selling products that "sustained people and the environment" was harder. By 2008, its was clear that progress was not being made as fast as the company had expected. Walmart had a challenging job. While the market for sustainable products is large and growing, it has primarily catered to people with a lot of disposable income who can afford to pay the "goodness" premium for things like Toyota Priuses and organic foods. What about the majority of consumers who usually see the high price of sustainability as a barrier? Are sustainable products a luxury good only attainable by the well off? The questions and challenges of selling sustainable products escalated over time. What is a sustainable product? How could it be measured effectively and efficiently? And how could this information create value for the company and customers? Would people be willing to pay for it if it was impossible to keep the costs down? Two interconnected challenges it faced are particularly illuminating: the lack of a sustainability standard and how to convince suppliers and customers to go along.

Walmart leaders quickly learned that the absence of a credible sustainability standard hampered their ability to market new products. Back then, marketing products as "sustainable" was anything goes. While a few marketing attributes, like "organic," are verified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for the most part companies were free to call their products "sustainable," "natural" or "good for you," regardless of whether it was true or not. The need for a standard crystallized when Walmart asked suppliers for proposals for a 2008 Earth Day promotion. It wanted to specifically promote products that were sustainable. Suppliers responded with such a vast range of claims that Walmart managers could not figure out which products to include. Examples of traits that made a product "sustainable" ranged from having "reduced" packaging material  though there was no gauge as to what it was reduced from  to the use of non-toxic ingredients or the product's overall recyclability. A subsequent promotion of Campbell's soup with a green "Earth Day" label (instead of its customary red one) generated external criticism and accusations of "greenwashing." That is, some bloggers claimed sustainability at Walmart simply meant taking existing products and putting green labels on them. Lessons like these led Walmart to seek a way of defining what sustainable means for all its products  a mammoth scale given that the company had over 60,000 direct suppliers and a single store could sell about 142,000 products. So, in 2009, the company helped establish the Sustainability Consortium, a collaboration of retailers, suppliers, universities, environmental groups and others to create a data-driven index of sustainability. The consortium would eventually produce a sustainability "toolkit" with key performance indicators and guidance for achieving sustainability at the product category level whether these be laundry care products, computers or beer. Such indicators could then be used by consortium members in communications with their suppliers, typically in a sustainability scorecard that the supplier would complete. For instance, a manufacturer might be asked if it had plans for reducing harmful emissions  and if it didn't, the thinking initially went, this type of information could eventually be passed on to consumers who could then make their own judgments. The problem was, relying on customers didn't work.

Focusing on suppliers  not consumers

Most corporate efforts to become more sustainable are based on the premise that consumers are willing to pay more for eggs that are organic or coffee that is sustainably sourced. This posed a dilemma for Walmart since its margins are so thin and most of its customers shop there for the ultra-low prices. How could they be convinced, en masse, to pay a bit more because something is tagged as sustainable? And what would be the best way to let them know a particular product was more sustainable than another? Company leaders believed, based on internal surveys, that although its customers desired (or would in the future desire) more sustainable products, many did not have the means or desire to pay extra. And while Walmart's implementation of sustainability metrics into its supplier scorecards gave it insight into supplier practices, they did not provide detailed, verifiable information required for a customer-facing label. This led Walmart to focus less on consumers and more on suppliers. If it could just make sure its products were more sustainable or at least that it was able to offer more options  without a meaningful increase in price  it could go a long way toward achieving its goals. And consumers wouldn't even realize they're helping make the world a better place. Walmart's merchants were ready to listen. The supplier scorecards that started rolling in 2012 helped Walmart identify inefficiencies in its supplies' own supply chains, just as the retailer had found in its own operations years earlier. Walmart used them to push suppliers to seek out similar low-cost innovations in their operations  so they could become more sustainable without altering product price tags  and aligned 5 percent of its employees' performance goals on sustainability improvements, thus incentivizing buyers to ask about, and suppliers to report on, sustainability metrics. Early indications are that Walmart's supplier-focused product sustainability strategy has been influential. A 2014 study by sustainability consultancy Pure Strategies surveyed a broad range of 100 companies such as Timberland, General Mills and Coca-Cola to better understand what it takes to operate sustainably. It found that Walmart was the top-cited retailer driving suppliers' investments in product sustainability, with 79 percent identifying the retailer as influential.

Many of the primary lessons that Walmart has learned so far relate to an emergent understanding of the complexity of selling low-cost sustainable products. Commenting about the difficulty developing its sustainability index quickly, Rob Walton, Walmart chairman and son of the founder, told a panel in 2012: "But good gosh, this is really complicated stuff, and it's giving our buyers information to inform decisions and compare products. It will be a great day when we can give consumers that information." Walmart's efforts showed that balancing cost and sustainability is possible but difficult to implement. For companies, labeling a low-cost product as "sustainable" makes it harder to justify charging a higher price for a similar good that bears that label. And retailers would prefer not to waste limited shelf space providing those options. Customers may prefer sustainable practices yet be unable to pay the premium, even when it's very little. So, while Walmart can push in this direction, it probably cannot create a mass market for low-cost sustainable products on its own. The retailer and others who wish to develop such a market will likely continue to struggle with what counts as "sustainable enough" for price-conscious customers. Until that question is answered, sustainable products are likely to remain "luxury" goods that fail to penetrate into the mainstream. But if we care for the next generation, as Lee Scott did when he decided Walmart was going green, Walmart's goal of bringing greater scale and scope to the typically niche market of sustainability is a vital one. "As you become a grandparent," Scott told a journalist in 2006, "you just become more thoughtful about what will the world look like that she inherits."
Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is making plans to limit the equity exposure of investors based on their net worth, reported The Economic Times quoting people aware of the development.

The move is aimed at preventing individuals from going overboard on considerably riskier equity investments, the report said, adding that Sebi has already informed stockbrokers about the proposal.

Sebi wants investors assets certified by chartered accountants and brokers, who in turn will make the decision regarding their exposure limit, the daily said. The policy is new to India but it is already in place in many markets across the globe.

If implemented, the policy can seriously affect a large share of equity investors, the report added.
Private equity major Blackstone is in final talks with another PE fund Xander to sell its infotech parks in Pune for around Rs 2,000 crore, Business Standard reported.

Blackstone is looking to sell its BlueRidge special economic zone (SEZ) and another SEZ at Hinjewadi in Pune, which are not part of its joint ventures, according to the report.

A Xander spokesperson declined to comment on the subject while Blackstone also did not offer any comments, said the report.

Blackstone has reportedly hired Morgan Stanley to sell the properties.
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
Tens of thousands of Romanians flooded the capital Bucharest on Saturday for a second night of anti-government protests, a day after violent clashes injured more than 400 people.

About 40,000 demonstrators gathered in the city's Victoriei Square, blowing horns and shouting "Resignation!, Resignation!" to protest what they say is a corrupt government, according to Reuters.

Continents and regions Eastern Europe Europe Protests and demonstrations Romania

However there was not the kind of violence seen on Friday night, when the crowds were larger and police, or gendarmes, fired tear gas as they clashed with protesters, state-run news agency Agerpres reported.

Over 400 people received medical care at the square that night and two gendarmes were attacked, it said.

In a statement issued Friday night, Romania's President Klaus Iohannis condemned the "brutal intervention of the Gendarmerie," saying their actions were "strongly disproportionate with the demonstrations of the majority of people in Victoria Square."

He called on the country's Interior Ministry to "urgently explain" the way in which the event was managed, saying: "The attempt to defeat the will of the people through a violent reaction of the law enforcement forces is a condemnable solution."

During Friday's rally, protesters also held a moment of silence in memory of those who died in the 1989 Revolution and several speakers accused the political system of lacking alternatives, state media reports.

Protesters are angry over what they say is entrenched corruption, low wages and attempts by the governing Social Democrats (PSD) to weaken the judiciary, Reuters reported.

The Council of Europe's anti-corruption group, GRECO, published a report earlier this year, which pointed to Romania as being among a handful of countries in which legislative initiatives either reversed anti-corruption measures or risked breaching international anti-corruption standards.

Romania was ranked 49th out of 180 on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for last year, below most other European nations.
John Penrose is MP for Weston-super-Mare and a former Cabinet Office Minister.

Economists never agree on anything, right? Sometimes not even with themselves: President Truman famously asked for a one-armed economist because he got so fed up with them saying on one hand this, but on the other hand that.

But hang on. Pretty much all of them agree that Britains economy is structurally, permanently lopsided. We depend too much on consumer spending, and we dont save or invest enough for the future. Were like the grasshopper in Aesops fable, living for today rather than putting something by for tomorrow.

And the moment to fix the problem, changing ingrained habits and rebalancing our economy, is now. Because, after eight years of belt-tightening and sacrifice, Government spending is nearly under control. Were living within our means. Taxes and spending are balanced, for day-to-day essentials like police, health, schools and defence at least.

So which way will we go? Will we go back to that structurally lopsided, grasshopper economy? Or take this rare, once-in-a-generation moment to look ourselves in the mirror and sober up?

The answer is pretty obvious. Wed be mad to throw away the hard-won gains of the last eight years. But how do we deliver it in practice? How do we make sure we cant slip back into bad habits?

The answer is a fiscal rule: an Act of Parliament to make sure that the Governments day-to-day budget is always balanced. Governments would still be able to borrow for long-term investments in economic infrastructure such as fibre-optics, roads or rail. But everything else; the day-to-day spending on things like health, schools, police or defence, has to be paid through your and my taxes.

The power of a fiscal rule is that it forces Governments to make sure we only live within our means. If they dont, then citizens can take Ministers to court, and the figures are independently audited to make sure they cant be fiddled. The good news is that the Government gets it: Liz Truss backed the idea of a fiscal rule in her recent speech at the LSE.

This matters, because it would mean an end to boom and bust, for the Governments finances at least. We would have a stronger, more predictable, stable foundations for wealth-creating investments in new jobs and technologies. Public spending on things like health, schools, police or defence could increase steadily, rather than in stop-go cycles. And wed pack a stronger punch internationally too.

And, because governments would have to put something aside when the economy was growing, we wouldnt have to borrow our way through the next recession. Wed create an enormous national rainy day fund which we could use to start a British sovereign wealth fund, like the Norways extremely successful version. It would transform Britains economy, and society, at a stroke.

The effects wouldnt only be economic either. Wed make Britain a generationally fairer society, because borrowing to pay for the day-to-day spending which improves our lives today just pushes the bills forward in time, so our children and grandchildren have to pay them instead of us. Thats morally wrong, and a fiscal rule would force us to stop it immediately. We cant expect future generations to pay our IOUs.

And on that, at least, even the economists might agree. Its great idea and the Government should do it now.
Five years ago, the TaxPayers Alliance reported that in the last year, five times more Labour people were appointed to public bodies than Tories.

Since then, the figures have varied, and some Conservative members or supporters have been selected to fill important posts.

Nonetheless, it remains the case that, since it took office in 2010, our Party has punched beneath its weight when it comes to public appointments. One of the reasons seems to be that Tories simply dont apply in the same number as Labour supporters.

To help remedy this, every week we put up links to some of the main public appointments vacancies, so that qualified Conservatives might be aware of the opportunities presented.

         

East West Rail Company  Non-Executive Directors

East West Railway Company is a new and exciting opportunity to be at the forefront of the changing landscape of the rail industry, delivering substantial fast-paced improvement to modernise the railway. East West Rail is a proposed new rail link between Oxford, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Cambridge and potentially beyond. As part of the wider plans for this strategically important corridor, it is one of the most high profile infrastructure projects in the UK today. The new railway will improve local connectivity and serve as a catalyst for economic development and the creation of new housing, as well as significantly reducing existing journey times. In the 2017 Budget, it was announced that the East West Railway Company would be established to bring new drive and focus to the project.

Time: 15-20 days per annum.

Remuneration: 15,000 per annum.

Closes: 16 August

         

Health Education England  Chair

East West Railway Company is a new and exciting opportunity to be at the forefront of the changing landscape of the rail industry, delivering substantial fast-paced improvement to modernise the railway. East West Rail is a proposed new rail link between Oxford, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Cambridge and potentially beyond. As part of the wider plans for this strategically important corridor, it is one of the most high profile infrastructure projects in the UK today. The new railway will improve local connectivity and serve as a catalyst for economic development and the creation of new housing, as well as significantly reducing existing journey times. In the 2017 Budget, it was announced that the East West Railway Company would be established to bring new drive and focus to the project.

Time: 2-3 days per week.

Remuneration: 63,000 per annum.

Closes: 28 August

         

British Hallmarking Council  Council Members

The British Hallmarking Council (BHC) is a regulator responsible for supervising hallmarking in the United Kingdom. It is an executive non-departmental public body of BEIS. The BHC was established under the Hallmarking Act 1973 to protect consumers, including businesses acting as consumers. It ensures that there are adequate facilities for hallmarking in the UK and advises the Secretary of State for BEIS on hallmarking matters and hallmarking legislation. The BHC supervises the hallmarking activities of the four UK assay offices (London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Edinburgh) and the UKs hallmarking system, guaranteeing the purity of precious metals to protect the consumer and the trade.

Time: Up to three meetings per annum.

Remuneration: Travel, subsistence, and other reasonable expenses.

Closes: 02 September

         

Civil Aviation Authority  Non-Executive Members

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is the UKs specialist independent aviation regulator and is a public corporation. It is our responsibility to safeguard aviation safety and security, manage UK airspace, oversee economic regulation of some airports and air traffic control, enforce consumer protection rules, and, to manage the ATOL financial protection scheme for holidaymakers. Do you have board experience and seek a Non-Executive role in a public corporation? The Secretary of State for Transport is seeking two Non-Executive Members, on a four-year term, to join the Board of the CAA. Your role would be to provide independent and constructive challenge to the CAAs executive team and help ensure the CAA delivers its strategic objectives.

Time: 2-3 days per week.

Remuneration: 22,000 per annum.

Closes: 05 September

         

UK Space Agency  Chair of the Steering Board

The UK Space Agency is an Executive Agency of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). The Agencys responsibilities include policy and delivery of UK Governments civil space requirements; working with the European Space Agency and other international organisations; agreeing with UK industry how to maximise the benefits of space technologies; working with the scientific community to provide a clear voice on decisions that affect the sector and encouraging young people to study STEM subjects. The Steering Board provides support and challenge to the Executive team. The role of the Steering Board is to advise the CEO and Ministers on the Agencys strategies, operation and performance. The Steering Board currently consists of four independent members, including the Chair, UKSAs CEO and Senior Information Risk Owner and a Deputy Director representing BEIS.

Time: 24 days per annum.

Remuneration: Up to 10,000.

Closes: 10 September

         

NHS Counter-Fraud Authority  Non-Executive Director

As a Non-Executive Director of the NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA), you will be responsible for ensuring the sound governance of the NHSCFA, including ensuring robust and effective systems of financial control and risk management are in place. Along with the Non-Executive team, you will contribute to the development of the strategy and annual objectives to be approved by the Secretary of State. You will also ensure that the NHSCFA promotes the values of the NHS by setting a high standard for ethics and responsible business, and by building, maintaining and enhancing NHSCFAs reputation as an open and independent body that places a high priority upon the safety of patients and staff.

Time: 2-3 days per month.

Remuneration: 7,883/13,127 per annum.

Closes: 10 September

         

Oil & Gas Authority  Chair

You will lead the OGA Board as it regulates and promotes the UK oil and gas industry and your responsibilities will include: effective, cooperative and inclusive leadership of the Board that will provide sound strategic direction. This includes enabling a high standard of discussion, helping to steer the OGA by collaborative working across Government and industry, ensuring that systems are in place to provide Board members and the Executive team with the support they need to carry out their roles; working with the Board and Nominations Committee to ensure that the Board and Executive team have an appropriate and diverse range of skills, experience, and outlook; offer support and counsel to the Executive team while providing constructive challenge on the delivery of the OGA Plan

Time: Two days per week.

Remuneration: 200,000 per annum pro rata plus expenses.

Closes: 12 September

         

Royal Armouries  Chair

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is seeking to appoint an outstanding individual as the next chair of the Royal Armouries, to take the Museum forward as this new critical period in its history. The ideal candidate will have a passion for cultural heritage, a commitment to public service, strong commercial acumen and a successful track record in public service, heritage management, or business. This is a very exciting time for the Royal Armouries, having substantially increased its commercial operations, and now in the process of devising a masterplan to transform the museum brand and its offer at the main museum site in Leeds. The successful candidate will be central to taking the Royal Armouries forward and putting it on a long-term sustainable footing, including through playing a key part in raising funds for the museums ambitious plans and programme.

Time: Four days per month approx.

Remuneration: None.

Closes: 17 September
CCHQ and Downing Street have handled the Boris Johnson face veil affair so maladroitly that it is rash to make predictions about what they will do next. Theresa May backed Brandon Lewiss call for an apology last week. It seems almost inconceivable that he didnt first run that view past Downing Street. But the steer from Number Ten, while not quite dumping on the Party Chairman, is that Lewis acted off his own bat, and that the Prime Minister duly backed him up.

So the signs are that Downing Street wants to close the controversy down, which a referral to a panel by the investigating officer would scarcely do. The Partys Code of Conduct is silent about the relationship between this person and the Party hierarchy. On the one hand, he presumably cannot take instruction: that would compromise his independence. On the other, there are always ways and means of letting the Party Chairmans view be known  this is politics, after all  and the Chairman is the appointee of the Prime Minister.

In short, no-one in this wretched affair will want to climb down  or, more precisely, be seen to climb down. Johnson isnt in the business of apologising for his column. And Lewis wont be in the business of apologising for his call for an apology. Meanwhile, the article in question was published a week ago today. The investigating officer will surely want to get a move on. And the Cabinet, Conservative MPs and party activists will want to end the distraction from Jeremy Corbyn and Labours enmeshment in anti-semitism  to burqa up the whole business, so to speak.

Any clever-clever scheme to ask Johnson to meet formally with outside groups of Muslims, veiled or otherwise, would risk raking up the controversy all over again. He could, though, find a way of sitting down with the Conservative Muslim Forum, whose Chairman, Mohammed Amin, wrote critically about his Telegraph piece on this site yesterday. Perhaps the best face-saving device to hand is for Downing Street to brief that Johnson has been summoned for a chat with the Chief Whip. Pointless? Of course. Unjust? Probably.

But, in the immortal words of Beyond the Fringe, a futile gesture is needed at this stage. Meanwhile, Johnson has sensibly used his Telegraph column today to move the conversation on, and open a second front on stamp duty. We are confident that he would enjoy discussing free speech, religion, jokes, political responsibility, Islamist extremism, journalistic endeavour and letterbox insults against Muslim women with the Chief Whip just as much as the Chief Whip would enjoy discussing them with him.
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CORNWALL, Ontario  Shannon Champagne, owner of A Lil Pole Fitness in Cornwall, has been asked to be a Master Trainer by the Canadian Pole Fitness Association.

Champagne will officially become one of four Master Trainers in Canada, and the only bilingual Master Trainer, after receiving official certification in Toronto this month.

It is such an honour to be asked, said Champagne, who has been involved in pole fitness for over 11 years. It is a lot of responsibility, but responsibility that I take very seriously. It is an honour because there are so many talented individuals out there and I was hand picked by the association itself, so that makes it extra special to me.

With the prestigious title of Master Trainer, Champagne will be required to travel throughout Ontario and Quebec to coach individuals.

Champagne, who coaches multiple classes a week at her studio on Second St. West, is also a mother of two to 4-year-old Titan and 7-month-old Atlas. She feels it is important to show her children that pole fitness is a demanding and character building sport, and that it should not be associated with negative stereotypes.

I know that I am being a positive and healthy role model to them, said Champagne. As well as surrounding them with positive people and increasing their own self esteem.

After years of hard work and dedication, Champagne said the driving factor to her success is loving what she does.

I have the best members and best coworkers/coaches that anyone could ask for, she said. I love walking into the studio and knowing I get to see all of our amazing members and coaches, and that we are going to have fun while working hard.!

A Lil Pole Fitness offers various types of classes, including aerial hoop lessons. Some pole classes focus on ab strength while others focus on glutes. Curvy pole classes are offered bi weekly, and every pole class welcomes participants of ranging skill levels.

Champagne enjoys seeing her work build the self-esteem, acceptance and encouragement of her clientele and staff.

Not only are we increasing strength and flexibility but I also get to see members feeling confident and increase their self esteem, said Champagne.

To find out more about A Lil Pole Fitness, visit www.alilpolefitness.com or A Lil Pole Fitness on Facebook.
CORNWALL, Ontario  On Sunday, Aug. 12, Lamoureux Park showcased languages, traditional dances, foods and flags of various places during the citys first ever Culture Festival.

Its a culture program with a lot of dancingsinging of different regions; everything, said Shoaib Sadiq, an event organizer. The basic message is together is better. This society mixed together is a good thing for each of us.

The event ran from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mayor OShaughnessy and local M.P.P. Jim McDonell spoke during the opening ceremonies at noon.

Its important, said McDonell. The region is changing. Communities are all about other communities getting together.

McDonell said the event reflects what local officials are encouraging for the area, and he commended the event organizers for making the festival possible.

The event was organized by Sadiq, Monika Spolia and Mohammed Naeem Talat. This year, it celebrated people from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Sadiq had been hoping to host a cultural festival for some time, and finally decided to make his hopes reality. He was expecting friends and family members from Ottawa and Montreal to attend the event.

Its a sunny day, you sit at home, said Sadiq. Why not sit in a park?


Prosecutors have added another murder charge against the suspected "Golden State Killer" ... bringing the total number of alleged victims to 13.

Investigators believe the shooting death of Claude Snelling in Visalia was his very first murder.

Elizabeth Hupp is the victim's daughter, "In my heart, I believe he's the one, and that my father was his first victim."

According to a CBS News report by DeMarco Morgan, Hupp's Father, Claude Snelling, gave up his life to save her from being abducted by the so-called "Visalia Ransacker."

In September 1975, she says a masked gunman broke into her bedroom in the middle of the night... threatened her... and then dragged her out to their car port. "That's when I heard my dad yell and the man with a ski mask pushed me to the ground, turned, and shot my dad twice as he was coming through the back door," said Hupp.

The killer fled, and Snelling died on the way to the hospital. Hupp was 17 years old at the time, "he's always been my hero. i would not be here today, i'm sure of it, if it hadn't been for him."

Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward believes Snelling was the first victim murdered by suspected serial killer Joseph DeAngelo.

"We're filing first degree murder charges against Mr. DeAngelo, along with an allegation that he used a firearm in the commission of that murder," said Ward.

During the 1970s and 80s, DeAngelo allegedly committed at least 12 other murders and more than 50 rapes in 10 california counties. DNA evidence lead to his arrest in April.

While he is not directly linked to Snelling's murder by DNA, Police Chief Jason Salazar says he can prove DeAngelo is also the "Visalia Ransacker," "We have been able to locate victims and witnesses that were able to identify Mr. DeAngelo as the suspect back in that time. Those crimes were ultimately tied to the murder of Claude Snelling by a firearm that was taken from one of the Ransacker burglaries."

At the time of Snelling's murder, DeAngelo worked as a police officer about 12 miles away in the town of Exeter. He is also suspected in about 100 burglaries and attempted sex assaults in Visalia.

Ward says, "The only crime that we can attribute to Mr. DeAngelo that has not passed the statute of limitations is the murder of Mr. Snelling."

De Angelo has not yet entered a plea in his criminal cases.

Hupp said, "I'm just very happy that he's caught. He's a very evil person."
In Norway, the Port of Ulvik is looking at the potential of putting in a floating, temporary pier, but no decision has been made, according to Georg Angell-Hansen of the port.

Most ships in the area berth at Eidfjord, where there is a dedicated cruise pier, making Ulvik a secondary location as a tender point, he said.

The port is part of Cruise Destination Hardangerfjord, offering a nature experience with its fjord landscape and a wide range of shore excursions, said Angell-Hansen. These include folklore performances, farm visits and more.

The Taste of Hardangerfjord is a half-day excursion visiting Hardanger Juice & Cider Factory, offering guests the opportunity to taste cider and juice while sampling local food and learning about how the products are made.

Ulvik is expecting five calls this year, and three in 2019, compared 12 in 2017.
Lindblad Expeditions has joined forces with One Day University to add a lecture program to a number of expedition sailings in 2019.

We basically wanted to create an experience that people wouldnt expect, and go beyond what was usually done, said Steven Schragis, founder and director of One Day University.

We did some test trips, and it went very well, so we are rolling it out some more, he continued.

Lindblads One Day U brochure includes four key expeditions in 2019, each with two professors aboard.

There is a March 6 sailing to South Georgia and the Falklands; a May 6 expedition to the Inside Passage; a Patagonia expedition on Oct. 7; and an Easter Island to Tahiti voyage on Oct. 9.

The programs are included with the cruise price.

The test expedition happened on a cruise to Iceland, where guests got the opportunity to hear a lecture on Abraham Lincoln.

It turned out the guests were very interested in Abraham Lincoln, and we have a lecturer that is about as good as anyone in the world on the subject, Schragis said. We are matching the most popular professors and the most popular subjects.

Those subjects arent matched to geography or the expedition, but are instead concentrated on professors who can deliver thrilling lectures to an interested and highly educated passenger base, Schragis explained.

Lectures generally last about 70 minutes.

We didnt just confine it to one subject, Schragis continued. History may be the most popular, but music, film and science are not too far behind.

One Day University describes itself as a highly entertaining, engaging and educational live lecture event, delivered by popular professors from among the finest universities in the country.

The group recently registered its 100,000th student and since 2007 has grown from a single half-day event in New York City to a series of nearly 200 full- and half-day programs in over 60 cities around the country.
First comes the embarrassing breach announcement. Then, a few days or weeks later, another one -- a few million stolen records were missed the first time around. Then another announcement, with another upward correction. With each new revelation, the hacked organization loses credibility and faces greater liability.

"They make a statement too soon after the breach," says Jon Connet, senior director for corporate strategy at ForeScout. "It's the drip-drip-drip that killed a lot of these companies. They're making initial statements based on the first initial forensic findings, weighing the pros and cons of getting ahead of the story and trying to minimize the impact, before they have a firm handle on what happened."

Public humiliation isn't the only cost of not knowing the scope of a breach. Even if the breach is not publicized because, say, the only data lost was intellectual property, then not knowing what the attackers got their hands on could be extremely damaging to a company financially.

If a company can't tell which systems were penetrated, then the attackers might still be in the environment, continuing to siphon out data, or getting ready to launch more attacks.

Given how long breaches have been hitting the news headlines, it's surprising that companies are still having trouble with the issue. So how can companies get on top of the problem? "If you only ever focus on after the breach then the answer is you cant," says Adrian Asher, CISO at the London Stock Exchange Group.

The time to start is long before the breach ever happens. "If you havent invested in the controls and people before a breach occurs, then when you are in the critical state of a breach youll be ill prepared," he says.
That the explosion of microbreweries in the area has required changes in some towns' zoning ordinances has been well documented. But plans by some businesses to offer their patrons something to eat have also faced municipal hurdles.

Call it food-truck phobia.

"Food trucks are part of the culture of going to breweries now," said David Kaye, co-owner with his father Robert of Ridgefield's Nod Hill Brewery at 137 Ethan Allen Highway. "A lot of them around the state host food trucks. They offer a variety of casual, good quality food, which enhances the experience of coming here."

That may be so, but Nod Hill needed to work to win Ridgefield's approval last month of an amendment to its 2016 rule forbidding breweries and wineries from featuring food trucks in one spot for more than 15 minutes. The Kayes needed to get a petition signed by more than 2 percent of registered voters to prove that it was an idea whose time had come.

At the subsequent public hearing, "A lot of residents spoke in favor of it, while some were still concerned about it," David Kaye said. Kaye termed the approval "a pretty gratifying success."

It wasn't the first time that the Kayes needed a change in Ridgefield's zoning laws. In February 2017, they were granted a zoning amendment to allow a brewery in their B-2 commercial zone, which previously allowed manufacturing but not brewing. Their food-truck request was made at nearly the same time that Nod Hill opened last October.

Kaye declined to describe either struggle as a "fight," however. "There were concerns about traffic and competition with area restaurants, which we understood," he said. "The town has been supportive of us. We just had to go through the processes in the correct way." Food trucks could start operating on Saturdays by the end of August, he added.

Nod Hill's efforts sounded familiar to Tess Szamatulski, co-owner with husband Mark of Veracious Brewing Co. at 246 Main St. in Monroe, which endured its own two-year struggle to get food trucks onto its site, culminating in approval last summer.

Food trucks were a relative rarity in Monroe and had to operate under the town's peddlers' license, which only allows for a mobile seller to be in one place for 10 minutes, after which it must relocate or, in Szamatulski's words, "drive around the block and set up again for another 10 minutes."

That it took Veracious two years to finally get that ordinance changed was something that did not work in its favor with food truck operators, Szamatulski said.

"When we opened three-plus years ago, we told them that we could have food trucks, and had several of them lined up," she recounted. "Then we became kind of persona non grata when we told them that wasn't the case."

Food-truck operators in Monroe must pay an annual $150 fee to receive health inspector approval. With those trucks pretty much booked for the hot months, Veracious instead has been relying on local eateries like Monroe Social and Country Pizza to deliver, though Szamatulski noted that patrons are welcome to bring in their own food. She said she hoped to meet with food-truck owners in January to provide a steady schedule of choices beginning that month; Veracious is allowed to have two on-site at a time.

Veracious and Nod Hill got off relatively easy. Broken Bow Brewery in Tuckahoe, New York, which is celebrating its five-year anniversary Aug. 17-19, took about five years to get food-truck clearance from the town; this is its first year to offer the trucks.

"Tuckahoe is a very small village that had never allowed food trucks," said Kristen Stone, founding partner and head of marketing. "They wanted to keep the focus on local restaurants, a lot of which have been here for a very long time. They were concerned about food trucks competing with them."

After a lot of back-and-forth, including demonstrating the caliber of trucks Broken Bow was interested in working with, not like the broken-down dives-on-wheels that may find service elsewhere, approval was finally awarded. Because it's limited to one truck at a time, Stone said that Broken Bow plans to have the two scheduled to be at its August anniversary event show up at different times.

Broken Bow originally invited local eateries to set up inside its space at 173 Marbledale Road to offer their wares to patrons but, Stone noted, weekend traffic at the restaurants themselves tended to work against those arrangements.

All of this begs the question: Why don't such breweries simply do their own cooking?

"Generally, most brewery start-ups come from the beer side first," said Paul Gatza, director of The Brewers Association, a nonprofit trade association dedicated to small and independent brewers in the U.S., headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. "It is that passion that drives them to go pro. To offer your own food involves developing some expertise in that area.

"About 80 percent of the openings we see are in the taproom model," Gatza added, "so not doing significant food service in-house is emerging as the dominant business model."

The food-truck option gives the entrepreneur brewer a chance to stay focused on the beer and manage a leaner business through its start-up phase, he said, "but then they are leaving potential revenue to others who handle the food."

"Oh God, no," Szamatulski laughed when asked about Veracious cooking its own food. "Between running the brewery and Maltose Express (the Szamatulskis' beer- and wine-making supply store next door), we're really busy.

"We could probably fit a kitchen in here somewhere," the former caterer allowed. "It would be nice to have pub food here, but it's not worth the hassle with the health department right now."

"For us and other microbreweries, it's important that the focus remains on the beer itself," Stone said. "Even on our koozies it says, 'It's all about the beer.'

"We know how to brew beer and we know how to eat food," she quipped. "But in no way are any of us cooks."

"I have limited interest in flipping burgers," declared P. Scott Vallely, owner and brewmaster at Danbury's Charter Oak Brewing, which officially opened last month at 39B Shelter Rock Road. "I'd rather focus on making the very best beer."

While Vallely also had to navigate his city's regulations to open Charter Oak, ultimately winning an amendment to a decades-old zoning rule, he didn't face Danbury opposition to food trucks. Unfortunately, he said, he's occasionally had other problems.

"Food trucks are so in vogue now that they can be hard to come by," he said. "I had two Saturdays in a row where the truck didn't show up because they got a better gig. If they can sell a few items here or have a guaranteed 40 or more meals at something like a wedding reception or a reunion, they're going to go there. It's understandable, but it can be a little frustrating."

Gatza expressed surprise when told of Charter Oak's troubles. "It seems like a strategy that burns bridges," he remarked. "If a food truck doesn't show for a commitment, they won't be asked back. I would think word gets around and the reputation of that truck could take a hit."

Bad Sons Beer Co. in Derby, while occasionally offering a food truck, prefers to work with local restaurants who deliver, according to Bill da Silva, who with his brother Mark opened at 251 Roosevelt Drive a little more than a year ago.

"We want to be adding to the neighborhood we're in, which is very important to us," da Silva said. "We're not interested in competing with the restaurants, a lot of whom sell our beer. We also close early"  at 8 or 9 p.m. during the week and 10 p.m. on weekends  "with the idea that someone can come here and enjoy a beer before they head out to dinner. Maybe they see our beer at that restaurant and order another one. It works."

Vallely takes the same approach. "We sell a lot of our beer to restaurants and bars," he said, "so we don't want those people to say that we look and smell like a restaurant." Charter Oak tries to avoid direct competition by opening on Thursdays and Fridays  the only weekdays it's open  after the lunch hour and closing by 8 p.m. on those days and Saturdays.

All of the operators noted that they're licensed as "breweries," not as "brewpubs," the distinction being the operation of a kitchen and adhering to additional zoning and health department regulations. One of the newest brewpubs, M&D Brewery, is preparing to begin construction at Fairfield Hills in Newtown. Partner Mark Tambascio, one of the principals at nearby My Place Restaurant, plans to have both a pizza oven and food trucks on-site, alongside beer and other beverages.

Kevin Zimmerman is a reporter for the Fairfield County Business Journal. For more of his work and that of the journal, please visit westfaironline.com.
MILFORD  The citys gearing up for the 44th annual Milford Oyster Festival on Saturday, and the Police Department is recommending that motorists avoid the center of town that day because just about all downtown streets will be closed to traffic.

With 44,000 oysters on the way, headliner Eddie Money and scores of other activities planned for both sides of Milford Harbor, the center of town will be best avoided unless youre on foot or arriving by train or shuttle bus. Only authorized vehicles will be allowed, police and city officials say.

Festival officials say that taking Metro North to Milford will be the best way to visit the event. The Milford Metro-North station is a short walk from the activities and attractions.

I hope that everyone has a good time, said Mayor Ben Blake. Were expecting 50,000 visitors and its become Connecticut largest event.

The restrictions on traffic will begin Saturday at 9:30 a.m. and be kept in place until 6 p.m. Visitors can take advantage of the free shuttle buses leaving frequently all day from Jonathan Law High School and the rear parking lot of the Westfield Connecticut Post Shopping Mall. The shuttles will operate from 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The streets that will be closed and/or have limited access include: North Broad Street; South Broad Street; Depot Street; New Haven Avenue from Gulf Street to Daniel Street; Prospect Street from Cherry Street to 1 New Haven Ave.; River Street from Darina Place to New Haven Avenue; Armory Lane; Factory Lane; Shipyard Lane; Center Street; and High Street from Jepson Drive to Helwig Street.

Police are also asking that cars not be left parked on these streets during festival hours. Access to the Railroad Station parking areas for railroad patrons will only be allowed from High Street.

Aside from the music acts, there will be activities of kids, arts and crafts, plenty of food, and antique car show and more. Blake said that hell be participating in the outrigger canoe race, as he has done since he was a lad.

Handicapped parking will be provided at the Milford Senior Center, Harborside Middle School and the Wasson Field parking lot adjacent to West Main Street. There will be senior and handicap-accessible shuttle transportation to and from those locations which will pick up and drop off at Milford Fire Headquarters across New Haven Avenue from the public library.

Access to the city boat launch on Shipyard Lane will be restricted from 6 a.m to 7:30 p.m. because there will be a number of harbor activities, including kayak and canoe races and cruises on a schooner.

Pets and coolers will not be allowed within the festival boundaries.

Those in Milford who usually use the Milford Metro-North station are urged to use Metro-North stations in West Haven, Stratford or Bridgeport.

There will be free Police K9 demonstrations being held across from the Milford Public Library at 12:30 p.m. and again at 2:30 p.m. Milford K9 teams will be joined by K9 officers from Orange, West Haven, Stratford and Shelton.

For further information, visit the MOF website at www.milfordoysterfestival.com.
A new political group focused on boosting the economic fortunes of black Americans announced itself on Monday by endorsing four Democrats in closely watched races, including Maryland gubernatorial nominee Ben Jealous.

The Black Economic Alliance, which was formed by African-American business leaders, promised to invest what was necessary to help Jealous, a former NAACP president, beat popular Republican Gov. Larry Hogan.

The group also endorsed two other Democratic candidates for governor - Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Richard Cordray in Ohio - as well as Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who is seeking another term and running well ahead of his Republican opponent, Prince William Board of County Supervisors Chair Corey Stewart.

All four Democrats have high profiles nationally and are in heated races in states where the black population is near or above the U.S. national average.

The alliance said it raised $3.5 million from 55 donors over the past two months and plans to invest in "competitive contests" that emphasize improved economic conditions for black voters and where African-American turnout is crucial to victory.

"We're supporting candidates where the black vote can be decisive and where every dollar counts," said Akunna Cook, executive director of the Black Economic Alliance. Cook declined to specify how much the group would spend on Jealous, who has vastly less to spend than Hogan. But she said the alliance is "evaluating on a case-by-case basis what it takes for our candidates to win."

In an interview, Tony Coles, the organization's co-chairman, described the group's formation as the first time the black business community has come together in a concerted political effort focused on economic progress for black Americans. Previously, the executives' fundraising efforts tended to be more ad hoc, with leaders writing individual checks. That began to change after a meeting last summer, Coles said.

"As we moved into 2017, we recognized that the stakes were very high in terms of the economic opportunities for all Americans," Coles said. "We began asking, 'What can we do?' And we realized in that discussion that there was great power in the collective."

The group's board includes alumni of the Obama and Clinton campaigns as well as executives from the tech, finance, media and pharmaceutical industries. Coles is chairman and chief executive of the biotech firm Yumanity Therapeutics.

Even though the four candidates endorsed Monday are all Democrats, the group says it is not aligned with either political party and instead is focused on policies aimed at raising black employment levels, homeownership and income.

"I think there's broad recognition that the work that we're focused on is very much different than the traditional party organizations," Cook said. "I think it's a feeling that neither party is particularly focused on the needs of the black community where economic progress is concerned."

The group plans to make 10 to 12 endorsements in congressional races after Labor Day.

Abrams, if elected, would become the nation's first black female governor, while Jealous is vying to become Maryland's first black governor. The two have known each other for years and have endorsed each other's candidacies.

Jealous has built his progressive campaign on a platform of social justice and improving the lives of working families, advocating a $15 minimum wage, reducing the state's prison population, legalizing marijuana and creating debt-free college. He won a six-way primary to challenge Hogan, whose approval ratings hover near 70 percent in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1.

As of the last campaign filing deadline, a week before the June primary, Hogan had $8.2 million on hand, while Jealous had $260,190. Since then, the Republican Governors Association has spent more than $1 million in unanswered attack ads.

Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee, is popular in Virginia and is considered the heavy favorite to beat Stewart, who has embraced Trump-style politics in a state where the president has low approval ratings.

- - -

The Washington Post's Michael Scherer contributed to this report.
This publication explains the structure of the ageing population and provides evidence on what this demographic shift means for the economy, services and society.



Steven Cameron, Pensions Director at Aegon comments on the findings of the report: ONS latest report shows that as the population profile of the UK continues to age, its increasingly important for Government to deliver intergenerational fairness across a wide range of policies from employment, health and housing to pensions and social care. This should be a specific test in all new Government policymaking.



We know that on average, people are living longer, although the pace of increases in longevity may be slowing down. But we need to look beyond the averages. For example, life expectancies vary significantly between geographical regions and individuals risk running out of money part way through retirement if they fail to accurately calculate their income needs.



Living longer is great news if you have the resources, and good health, to enjoy it. And that applies both as individuals and as a society, with the Government already facing difficult decisions around how to fund the NHS and with further challenges to be addressed with social care funding. Equally, individuals need to have a clear understanding of what the Government will provide and what theyll be expected to pay if they need social care in the future. This must include an overall cap on personal contributions so people can plan ahead while protecting inheritance aspirations.



As an economy, the key is to offer people the opportunity to remain economically active for as long as they want, and remain fit and healthy. This requires a concerted effort to ensure employers embrace the contribution older workers can bring. Its positive that Aegon research shows the UK is ahead of other EU countries with individuals in the UK more likely to want to transition gradually from work to retirement rather than a sudden stop at state pension age.



But we also need to make sure we protect those who through health or work pressure find it unfeasible to work to an ever increasing ages. With the state pension age due to keep rising with life expectancy, theres an increasing need to allow those who cant work to advanced ages to opt to take their state pension from a younger age, suitably reduced to make it cost neutral.



Aegon research



 Aegon has carried out research showing what life is expected to look like for many at age 70, revealing that one in four expect to still be working at 70 and 14% of people think they will still be paying their mortgage at age 70. Working into later life is only possible for those who remain in good health, and 45.8% of people believe they will still be fit and healthy enough to work if they choose to at the age of 70. Our research is broadly in line with ONS data which shows that employment rates doubled for those aged 65 years and over between 1993 and 2018, and increased by almost one-third for those aged 50 to 64 years.



 Social care provision remains high up on the agenda of topics requiring urgent Government action and our research shows that many remain unsure about who should foot the bill for care in later life. 64% of people agree there should be a cap on the total amount individuals should pay towards care. Across all age groups around two thirds of people agree state and individuals should share care costs. More than half (57%) want to exclude their property from the assets used to pay for care costs.



 While centenarians make up a very small proportion of the UK population, their numbers have grown rapidly and increased at a faster rate than any other age group between 2002 and 2016. This demonstrates that people are living to higher ages than ever before. The ONS figures published today show that half of baby girls born in 2066 are expected to live to age 100. With people living longer many people taking advantage of pension freedom through income drawdown are at risk of running out of money part way through retirement. Aegon analysis calculates how much an individual could take out each year to run out of money to coincide with average life expectancy, assuming investments grow by 3.25% each year after charges. This shows that while a 65 year old male in Scotland might be able to take up to 7,445 a year without running out of money before average lifespan, a female of the same age in England (where life expectancy is highest) will run out if taking any more than 6,490 a year, which is 955 a year less.



 Aegon research shows that the concept of retirement is changing with more people choosing to work past traditional retirement ages, or reduce their hours gradually. Workers in the UK were previously more likely to move straight into full retirement after giving up work with half of current retirees taking this option. Retirement has become an active stage of life with people remaining economically active. In fact, the majority of UK workers, 61%, see some form of transition to retirement where they continue working as they currently are or work part time for a while during their retirement.


The following editorial appears in The Washington Post:

When election officials in North Carolina audited the 2016 vote, they found 441 ballots had been cast by felons on probation or parole who voted despite a state law barring them from the polls until their sentences are complete. Those votes were illegal, but most state prosecutors sensibly declined to bring charges on the grounds that the offenders didn't know the law, weren't alerted to their ineligibility and didn't realize they had done anything wrong.

Not so in Alamance County, a small locality in the Piedmont where a dozen individuals convicted of felonies, nine of them African Americans, cast votes. There, the Republican district attorney, Pat Nadolski, has gone forward with prosecutions that reflect his own lack of judgment while reminding the nation of North Carolina's recent poisonous racial history.

In North Carolina, where 70 percent of the population is white, blacks represent a hugely disproportionate share of convicted felons and incarcerated people. African Americans make up more than two-thirds of the 441 citizens statewide identified as having voted illegally.

In 2016, a federal court struck down the state's restrictive voting law, enacted by the Republican-dominated legislature, saying the measure targeted blacks "with almost surgical precision." This year, GOP lawmakers took a new tack, trying to place a proposal on the November ballot that would in the future scratch the final Saturday of early voting, a day that in recent years has attracted large numbers of blacks to the polls.

Voting laws, including for felons, vary enormously across the country. In some states the right to vote is restored automatically when people leave prison; in others, including North Carolina, felons are required to complete their sentences, including serving probation or paying fines, before their rights are restored. Elsewhere, ex-felons face waits of several years before they can regain voting rights. In two states, felons may vote even while incarcerated.

In the case of the Alamance 12, as they are now known, most seem to have had no intent to break the law; they were simply unaware of it. As it happens, a bill to require intent as a precondition for prosecuting illegal voters died this year in the state legislature.

Nadolski says race has nothing to do with his decision to seek sentences of up to two years for the crime of illegal voting. But context matters. This is North Carolina, where African Americans' voting rights have been under siege. It is preposterous to impose prison sentences on people who cast an illegal vote without intending to break any law. And, even short of prison time, prosecution itself can leave an indelible stain on an individual's record.

The prosecution of the Alamance 12 plays into the canard, peddled by President Trump and some other Republicans, that fraudulent voting poses a threat to the republic. In fact, there is no evidence that intentional voting fraud takes place in any significant numbers in North Carolina, where nearly 4.8 million ballots were cast in 2016, or anywhere else. The true offense is this kind of disproportionate prosecution. Republicans should ask themselves whether, in a democracy, it is admirable to find themselves continually on the side of those who are trying to discourage and narrow the vote.
Mobile wallets are getting a lot of buzz. Well-known solutions like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay have captured the attention of the media, and the image of smartphone-waving hipsters at the local Starbucks is undoubtedly the embodiment of cool.

But is mobile wallet really where the action is?

For years, issuers have fought a high-stakes war of attrition with cardholders pocketbooks as the battlefield. Issuers have tried numerous approaches to getting top of wallet, or the cardholders first choice of payment at the point of sale, including offering color-coded card edges, custom designs and photos, and loyalty programs to boost point of sale activity.

But as cardholder behavior steadily shifts to the digital realm, the theater of engagement is changing. And as trendy and exciting as mobile payments are, for now its just a skirmish in the larger war. Digital wallets represent the future, and that is where your credit union should focus its efforts.
More than 300 credit union representatives are in Denver this week for two NAFCU seminars focused on Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and risk management. As credit union compliance officers and risk experts learn how to keep their institutions compliant, NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger will discuss other top credit union issues tomorrow during a Washington and industry update to defense credit unions.

Berger will give his update at the Defense Credit Union Council (DCUC) Conference happening in Williamsburg, Va. NAFCU is also currently working with the DCUC to obtain guidance from the Department on Defense on issues related to its Military Lending Act.

NAFCUs BSA Seminar officially kicks off today with sessions designed to give attendees a solid understanding of the law, its regulators and how to ensure a credit union is compliant. Sessions will also cover elder abuse and reporting requirements for suspicious activity reports (SARs) and currency transaction reports (CTRs). A pre-conference session Sunday detailed historical influences of the BSA. The full agenda is available here; receive the most up-to-date conference information via Twitter with #BSASeminar.
Toronto --- Two British Columbia men were sentenced to house arrest on Tuesday for having multiple wives, a lawyer for one of the men said, in what CBC News reported was Canadas first convictions for polygamy in more than a century.

Winston Blackmore and James Oler were sentenced to six and three months of house arrest, respectively, the lawyer said. They were convicted on one count of polygamy each last July.



Both men are former bishops of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect within Bountiful, a religious community in southeastern British Columbia.



Blackmores defense lawyer, Blair Suffredine, said he thought the sentence was a little higher than he had hoped it would be but not dramatically unreasonable.



Suffredine said that Justice Sherry Anne Donegan found it aggravating that Blackmore continued practicing polygamy after 2011, when the British Columbia Supreme Court decided to uphold Canadas laws prohibiting polygamy.



Suffredine said his client found himself in a dilemma between abandoning his large family and continuing to break the law.



Oler was not represented by a lawyer.

Blackmore married 24 women between 1990 and 2014, according to court documents. Canadian media reported that he has fathered at least 146 children.



Oler wed five women between 1993 and 2009, according to court documents.



Blackmore will serve his time in his Bountiful home, while Oler will likely be under house arrest in Alberta, where he lives, Suffredine said.



Their sentences will be followed by 12 months probation, with 150 hours of community service for Blackmore and 75 hours for Oler, Suffredine added.



Under Canadian law, the maximum penalty for polygamy is five years in jail.



The men previously entered not guilty pleas, with Blackmores defense counsel arguing that the polygamy law violated Bountiful community members religious rights.



Under Canadas century-old polygamy law, the British Columbia government has been weighing prosecution since the early 1990s against members of the Bountiful community of 1,500 residents.



Despite multiple police investigations into claims of abuse in the community, it had declined to pursue polygamy charges because of concerns that doing so would violate constitutional freedom of religion.



In 2011, the British Columbia Supreme Court affirmed that laws banning polygamy were constitutional and did not violate religious freedom.



The mainstream Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abandoned polygamy in 1890. The church sued Blackmore in 2014 for using its trademarked name, citing damaged reputation.
Update: Thomas prohibited from legal actions

Thomas is not allowed to execute any legal document on behalf of the Commonwealth or appear on behalf of the Commonwealth in a court proceeding.
Bill joins as a Partner having spent four years at Nutmeg as Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Head of Risk. During his time at Nutmeg Bill spearheaded the firms operational transformation including insourcing of the middle and back office functions to help grow the firm tenfold. Formerly, Bill was Director of Strategic Reform at Australian bank Westpac, and additionally has held a number of senior roles at Barclays. Bills appointment follows that of Abhijit Rawal who joined the team as Strategy Partner earlier this year and will further strengthen KPMGs growing wealth and asset management team. He will work closely with Richard Clarke, Head of Wealth Management and Tim West, Head of Wealth and Asset Management Consulting to help firms with the transformational change that social, digital and regulatory changes demand. Richard Clarke, Head of Wealth Management at KPMG comments on the appointment: I am thrilled to welcome Bill to KPMG. Bills time at the forefront of the fintech revolution at Nutmeg, preceded by his time spent at established wealth managers and banks, means he has a comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced right across the investment ecosystem. His appointment will bolster our team and clients will benefit enormously from his insights and advice. Bill Packman, Partner, Wealth Management, KPMG UK, adds: Ive joined KPMG as I see a huge opportunity for consulting to shape the evolution of the wealth management industry over the next five years. Having previously worked with KPMG, I have seen at first-hand the depth and quality of its expertise. Combined with its extensive network this provides a powerful capability to help investment businesses develop competitive advantage through increased agility. I look forward to integrating my experience and knowledge with KPMGs well established consultancy team.


The ISIS may have been defeated in Syria and in retreat elsewhere, but there is serious danger that it could expand its activities in South East Asia. The region is home to 40 per cent of the Muslims in the world, with majorities in Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, and significant pockets in Thailand, Myanmar and the Philippines and there are hundreds of erstwhile IS fighters who have returned to the region after the outfits defeat in Syria.

A part of a bullet-riddled mosque is seen in the Islamic city of Marawi, southern Philippines on April 19, 2018 (Reuters)

Past record

South East Asia was once known for its moderate brand of Islam and its secularist politics. But this is now under severe stress.

Most western analysts think that the IS is essentially finished.

But security forces in South East Asia feel that they may have entered into a new phase of expansion in their region which has had pockets of Islamic extremism going back decades.

There have been a slew of terrorist incidents across the region for the past two decades, but the most serious incident since the Bali bombing of 2002 was the occupation of Marawi city in Mindanao island of the Philippines in May 2017 by three jihadist groups that included the IS.

The ensuing battle lasting five months led to the town being razed and the deaths of a thousand people.

People attend a candlelight ceremony in the memories of the victims in the recent attacks at police stations and churches in Jakarta and Surabaya (Reuters)

More recently, in May 2018, three churches were bombed in Surabaya, Indonesias second largest city.

The fourth bombing happened when the terrorists accidentally detonated bombs in their own apartment killing three of them and the fifth happened outside the police headquarters when the bombers were being searched at its entrance.

These attacks have been attributed to the Jamaah Andharut Daulah (JAD), a local affiliate of the IS, and has featured the use of difficult-to-detect family cells.

In June this year, a five-judge bench sentenced radical cleric Aman Abdurraham to death for his role in inciting terrorist attacks in Indonesia. He is considered to be the leader of the JAD and has been operating from jail since 2010 when he was imprisoned for running a paramilitary training camp in Aceh for the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist network. The JI was the one behind the Bali bombing that killed 202 people.

Since then, he had inspired several attacks especially those targeting Christians.

On Friday, Philippine defense secretary Delfin Lorenzana said that a Moroccon terrorist allied to the Abu Sayyaf group, linked to the IS, was most likely behind a suicide bomb attack that killed 11 persons, including five militiamen at a military checkpoint.

Pandering to Islamists

Governments of the region, especially in Malaysia and Indonesia, have been trying to ride the Islamist tiger by pandering to the orthodox Islamic parties. In Malaysia, the Parti Islam Se Malaysia is the main Islamist party and the Barisan Nasional coalition, that ruled Malaysia for over six decades till its shock defeat in May, believes they would have fared much better, had they collaborated with the PIS. In Indonesia, the main Islamist political formation is the Prosperous Justice Party, though it is the Front Pembela Islam, a vigilante group that is responsible for the violent promotion of Islamic causes.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo (L) and his running mate for the 2019 presidential elections, Islamic cleric Ma'ruf Amin (Reuters)

Last week, as a matter of abundant caution, Indonesias president, Joko Widodo, who again confronts the establishment candidate Subianto Prabowo, has decided to draft Maruf Amin, the 75-year-old head of the Majlis Ulema Indonesia (MUI or Indonesian Ulema Council) as his running mate.

In 2016, the orthodoxy demonstrated its strength in Indonesia when it targeted Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, the then governor of Jakarta who went by the nickname Ahok. A Christian of Chinese origin, he was accused of blasphemy and is currently serving a two-year sentence in jail after being convicted on that charge.

Need of the hour

In Indonesia, Islamist parties like PJP and the FPI target Christians, Chinese and other minorities and the attack on Ahok who was an ally of Joko Widodo was a manifestation of a trend.

The success of this attack was a signal to the Opposition to hop on to the Islamic bandwagon, and to prevent being outflanked, Widodo has taken the step of allying himself with the custodian of the orthodoxy  the MUI.

India is more familiar with the Rohingya issue, which arises out of the crisis created in Myanmar when Muslim militants attacked Buddhist communities and triggered a backlash that has seen hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas expelled from the Rakhine province on Myanmar to Bangladesh.

The plight of the Rohingyas has led to groups like the al Qaeda and the IS and other jihadist groups to call for attacks on Myanmar and its leaders.

Preventing further spread of violent religious extremism is the most important task before the governments of the region.

But as the siege of Marawi indicated, the challenge is not merely one of prevention, but of an active counter-terrorism policy to eradicate the threat of jihadism to the region.

(Courtesy of Mail Today)

Also Read: Why I believe Imran Khan can and will change Pakistan
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Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA engages in the traditional banking businesses of retail banking, asset management, private banking, and wholesale banking. It operates through the following segments: Spain, the United States, Mexico, Turkey, South America, and Rest of Eurasia. The Spain segment includes mainly the banking and insurance business that the group carries out in Spain. The United States segment consists of the financial business activity of BBVA USA in the country and the activity of the branch of BBVA SA in New York. The Mexico segment refers to banking and insurance businesses in this country as well as the activity of its branch in Houston. The Turkey segment reports the activity of Garanti BBVA group that is mainly carried out in this country and, to a lesser extent, in Romania and the Netherlands. The South America segment comprises of operations in n Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The Rest of Eurasia segment includes the banking business activity carried out by the group in Europe and Asia, excluding Spain. The company was founded in 1857 and is headquartered in Madrid, Spain.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Ingersoll Rand: 211 E. Russell Road LLC, Air-Relief, Belliss & Morcom Brasil, Belliss and Morcom, Boardwalk Enterprises, Charm Merger Sub Inc., CompAir, CompAir (Hankook) Korea Co. Ltd., CompAir Acquisition (No. 2) Ltd., CompAir Acquisition Ltd., CompAir BroomWade Ltd., CompAir Canada, CompAir Finance Ltd., CompAir GmbH, CompAir Holdings Limited, CompAir Holman Ltd, CompAir International Trading (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CompAir Korea Ltd, CompAir South Africa (SA) (Pty) Ltd., CompAir UK Ltd, CompAir USA, Consolidated Distribution Holdings Ltd., DV Systems Inc., Emco Wheaton, Emco Wheaton GmbH Branch, Emco Wheaton Gmbh, Emco Wheaton UK, Emco Wheaton USA Inc, Enza Air Propriety Limited (South Africa), GD Aria Holdings #2 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, GD Global Holdings II, 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., 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, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Ltd., Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Ltd. - US Branch, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Ltd., Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Ltd. - US Branch, 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 SA, Gardner Denver France SAS, Gardner Denver Group Services Ltd, Gardner Denver Group Svcs Ltd, Gardner Denver Hoffman, Gardner Denver Holdings, Gardner Denver Holdings Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Ltd, Gardner Denver Iberica, Gardner Denver Industries Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd. Branch, Gardner Denver International, Gardner Denver International Ltd., Gardner Denver Intl Ltd Middle East Regional Rep Office, Gardner Denver Investments, Gardner Denver Italy Holdings S.r.L., Gardner Denver Japan, Gardner Denver Kirchhain Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Korea, Gardner Denver Korea Ltd, Gardner Denver Ltd, Gardner Denver Ltd South Africa, Gardner Denver Ltd., Gardner Denver Ltd. Branch (Ireland), Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co, Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co., Gardner Denver Nash Brasil Industria E Comercio De Bombas Ltda, Gardner Denver Nash Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd., Gardner Denver Nederland BV, Gardner Denver Nederland Investments B.V., Gardner Denver Oberdorfer Pumps, Gardner Denver Oy, Gardner Denver Petroleum Pumps, 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, Gardner Denver SudAmerica S.r.l., Gardner Denver Sweden AB, Gardner Denver Taiwan Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas, Gardner Denver Thomas GmbH, Gardner Denver Thomas Pneumatic Systems (Wuxi) Co., Gardner Denver Thomas Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver UK, Gardner Denver Water Jetting Systems, Garo Dott. Ing. Roberto Gabbioneta S.r.l., Hamworthy Belliss & Morcom, ILMVAC (UK) Ltd., ILS Innovative Labor Systeme, ILS Inovative Laborsysteme GmbH, Indonesia Foreign Trade Representative Office, LeROI, LeRoi International Inc, MP Pumps Inc., Mako Compressors, Nash, Nash Elmo, Oina VV, Oina VV Aktiebolag, Robuschi, Rotary Compression Technologies, Runtech Systems, Runtech Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Runtech Systems Inc., Runtech Systems OY, Shanghai CompAir Compressors Co Ltd, Shanghai Compressors & Blowers Ltd., Syltone, TCM Investments, TIWR Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG, TODO AB, Tamrotor Marine Compressors AS, Thomas Industries, Thomas Industries Inc., Tri-Continent Scientific, Welch Vacuum Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zinsser Analytic, Zinsser Analytik GmbH, and Zinsser NA.
Sophos Group plc, through its subsidiaries, provides cloud-enabled end-user and network security solutions. The company offers Intercept X, which delivers endpoint protection against unknown malware, exploits, and ransomware; XG Firewall, a next generation firewall that provides unprecedented visibility for networks, users, and applications directly from the control center; Sophos Central, a unified cloud administration console for managing various Sophos products; and Cloud Optix that offers artificial intelligence-based cloud security analytics, compliance, and DevSecOps platform to provide end-to-end protection in public cloud services. It also provides Sophos Wireless, a wireless access point; Sophos Email, an email security solution; Sophos Mobile, a unified endpoint management and mobile threat defense solution; UTM, a unified threat management solution; Phish Threat, a phishing simulation and engaging training solution; and Intercept X for Server, a next-generation server protection solution that provides security against cyber threats. In addition, the company offers SafeGuard Encryption solution; Secure Web Gateway for Web security; and Sophos Home for Mac and PC protection. It serves education, healthcare, retail, finance, and banking industries, as well as governments and public sectors in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and Japan. Sophos Group plc was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Abingdon, the United Kingdom.

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Daimler AG, together its subsidiaries, develops and manufactures passenger cars, trucks, vans, and buses in Germany and internationally. It operates through Mercedes-Benz Cars & Vans, Daimler Trucks and Buses, and Daimler Mobility segments. The Mercedes-Benz Cars segment offers premium and luxury vehicles of the Mercedes-Benz brand, including the Mercedes-AMG, Mercedes-Maybach, and Mercedes-EQ brands; small cars under the smart brand name; and ecosystem of Mercedes-Benz under the Mercedes me brand, as well as vans and related services under the Mercedes-Benz and Freightliner brands. Daimler Trucks and Buses segment offers its trucks and special vehicles under the Mercedes-Benz, Freightliner, Western Star, FUSO, and BharatBenz brands; and buses under the Mercedes-Benz, Setra, Thomas Built Buses, and FU brands, as well as bus chassis. The Daimler Mobility segment provides financing and leasing packages for end-customers and dealers; and automotive insurance brokerage, banking, investment, and fleet management services under the Athlon brand. It also sells vehicle related spare parts and accessories. Daimler AG was founded in 1886 and is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany

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Street Capital Group Inc., through its subsidiary, Street Capital Bank of Canada, provides a range of deposit and residential mortgage solutions in Canada. The company originates and sells high ratio and conventional prime insurable single-family residential mortgages; and accepts cashable guaranteed investment certificates (GICs) or term deposits and non-redeemable GICs. It offers residential mortgage loans primarily through its network of independent mortgage brokers. The company was formerly known as Counsel Corporation and changed its name to Street Capital Group Inc. in June 2015. Street Capital Group Inc. was founded in 1979 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

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Ryanair Holdings plc, together with its subsidiaries, provides scheduled-passenger airline services in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Other European countries. It is also involved in the provision of various ancillary services, such as non-flight scheduled services and internet-related services; in-flight sale of beverages, food, and merchandise; and marketing accommodation and hotel services, car hire, and travel insurance through its Website and mobile app. In addition, the company offers aircraft and passenger handling, ticketing, marketing and advertising, and maintenance and repair services; and markets car parking, attractions, and activities on its website and mobile app, as well as sells gift vouchers. As of June 30, 2020, it had a principal fleet of approximately 440 Boeing 737 aircraft and 26 Airbus A320 aircraft; and offered approximately 2,500 scheduled short-haul flights per day serving approximately 242 airports, including 79 bases. Ryanair Holdings plc was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Swords, Ireland.

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DowDuPont Inc., through its subsidiaries, engages in agriculture, materials science, and specialty products businesses in the United States, Canada, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The company's Agriculture segment produces, and sells hybrid corn seed and soybean seed varieties; sunflowers, wheat, alfalfa, canola, cotton, rice, and sorghum; silage inoculants; and crop protection products that include weed control, disease control, and insect control. Its Performance Materials & Coatings segment manufactures and sells architectural paints and coatings, and industrial coatings; performance monomers and silicones; standalone silicones; and home and personal care solutions. The company's Industrial Intermediates & Infrastructure segment offers ethylene oxides, propylene oxide derivatives, cellulose ethers, redispersible latex powders, and acrylic emulsions; sustainable solutions; and chlorine and caustic soda. Its Packaging & Specialty Plastics segment provides ethylene, and propylene and aromatic products; and polyolefin elastomers and ethylene propylene diene monomer rubbers. The company's Electronics & Imaging segment offers materials and systems for mobile devices, television monitors, personal computers, and electronics. Its Nutrition & Biosciences segment provides specialty ingredients, as well as cellulosic- and alginates-based pharma excipients; and enzymes, biomaterials, biocides, and antimicrobial solutions and process technologies. The company's Transportation & Advanced Polymers segment offers engineering resins, adhesives, lubricants, and parts for transportation, electronics, healthcare, industrial, and consumer end-markets. Its Safety & Construction segment provides engineered products and integrated systems for construction, worker safety, energy, oil and gas, transportation, medical device, and water purification and separation industries. The company was founded in 1897 and is headquartered in Midland, Michigan.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Centene: APS Parent Inc., AWC of Syracuse Inc., Absolute Total Care Inc., AcariaHealth Inc., AcariaHealth Pharmacy #11 Inc., AcariaHealth Pharmacy #12 Inc., AcariaHealth Pharmacy #13 Inc., AcariaHealth Pharmacy #14 Inc., AcariaHealth Pharmacy Inc., AcariaHealth Solutions Inc., Access Medical Acquisition LLC, Access Medical Group of Florida City LLC, Access Medical Group of Hialeah LLC, Access Medical Group of Lakeland LLC, Access Medical Group of Miami LLC, Access Medical Group of North Miami Beach LLC, Access Medical Group of Opa-Locka LLC, Access Medical Group of Perrine LLC, Access Medical Group of Tampa II LLC, Access Medical Group of Tampa III LLC, Access Medical Group of Tampa LLC, Access Medical Group of Westchester LLC, Accountable Care Coalition Direct Contracting LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Chesapeake LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Community Health Centers II LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Community Health Centers LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers II LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers III LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers IV LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers V LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers VI LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Elite Providers VII LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Florida Partners LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Georgia LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Maryland LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Maryland Primary Care LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Mississippi LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of New Jersey Inc., Accountable Care Coalition of North Texas LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Northeast Georgia LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Northeast Partners LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Northwest Florida LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Prime Health LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Quality Health II LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Quality Health III LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Quality Health LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Southeast Partners LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Southeast Physician Partners LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Southeast Texas Inc., Accountable Care Coalition of Southeast Wisconsin LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Tennessee LLC, Accountable Care Coalition of Texas Inc., Agate Resources Inc., AirLogix, Ambetter of Magnolia Inc., Ambetter of North Carolina Inc., Ambetter of Peach State Inc., America's 1st Choice California Holdings LLC, American Progressive Life and Health Insurance Company of New York, Apixio, Apixio Inc, Arch Personalized Medicine Initiative LLC, Arkansas Health & Wellness Health Plan Inc., Arkansas Total Care Holding Company LLC, Arkansas Total Care Inc., B2B Gestion Integra S.L.U., B2B Salud S.L.U., Bankers Reserve Life Insurance Company of Wisconsin, Blackcrow Asistencia Medica S.L, Bridgeway Health Solutions LLC, Bridgeway Health Solutions of Arizona Inc., Buckeye Community Health Plan Inc., Buckeye Health Plan Community Solutions Inc., CCTX Holdings LLC, CMC Real Estate Company LLC, CT Poprad s.r.o., CT Presov s.r.o., Calibrate Acquisition Company, California Health and Wellness Plan, Cantina Laredo Clayton LP, Cardium Health Services, Care 1st Health Plan of Arizona Inc., Care1st Health Plan Administrative Services Inc., Carolina Complete Health Holding Company Partnership, Carolina Complete Health Inc., Casenet LLC, Casenet S.R.O., CeltiCare Health Plan Holdings LLC, CeltiCare Health Plan of Massachusetts Inc., Celtic Group Inc., Celtic Insurance Company, Cenpatico Behavioral Health LLC, Cenpatico Behavioral Health of Arizona LLC, Cenpatico of Arizona Inc., Centene Center I LLC, Centene Center II LLC, Centene Center LLC, Centene Company of Texas LP, Centene Europe Finance Company Limited, Centene Health Plan Holdings Inc., Centene Institute for Advanced Health Education LLC, Centene International Ventures LLC, Centene Investments LLC, Centene Management Company LLC, Centene Venture Company Alabama Health Plan Inc., Centene Venture Company Florida Inc., Centene Venture Company Illinois Inc., Centene Venture Company Indiana Inc., Centene Venture Company Kansas Inc., Centene Venture Company Michigan Inc., Centene Venture Company Tennessee Inc., Centro Inmunologocia De La Comunidad Valenciana S.L., Centurion Correctional Healthcare of New Mexico LLC, Centurion Detention Health Services LLC, Centurion LLC, Centurion of Arizona LLC, Centurion of Delaware LLC, Centurion of Florida LLC, Centurion of Kansas LLC, Centurion of Minnesota LLC, Centurion of Mississippi LLC, Centurion of New Hampshire LLC, Centurion of Pennsylvania LLC, Centurion of Tennessee LLC, Centurion of Vermont LLC, Centurion of West Virginia LLC, Centurion of Wyoming LLC, Chrysalis Medical Services LLC, Clinica Santo Domingo De Lugo S.L., Collaborative Health Systems IPA LLC, Collaborative Health Systems LLC, Collaborative Health Systems of Maryland LLC, Collaborative Health Systems of Virginia LLC, Comfort Hospice of Missouri LLC, Comfort Hospice of Texas LLC, ComfortBrook Hospice LLC, Community Medical Group, Community Medical Holdings Corporation, Comprehensive Health Management Inc., Comprehensive Reinsurance Ltd., Coordinated Care Corporation, Coordinated Care of Washington Inc., Country Style Health Care LLC, Discare CZ a.s., District Community Care Inc., Dr Magnet s.r.o., Elche-Crevillente Salud, Envolve Benefits Options Inc., Envolve Captive Insurance Company Inc., Envolve Dental IPA of New York Inc., Envolve Dental Inc., Envolve Dental of Florida Inc., Envolve Dental of Texas Inc., Envolve Health, Envolve Holdings Inc., Envolve Inc., Envolve Optical Inc., Envolve PeopleCare Inc., Envolve Pharmacy IPA LLC, Envolve Pharmacy Solutions Inc., Envolve Total Vision Inc., Envolve Vision Benefits Inc., Envolve Vision IPA of New York Inc., Envolve Vision Inc., Envolve Vision of Florida Inc., Envolve Vision of Texas Inc., Essential Care Partners LLC, Exactus Pharmacy Solutions Inc., Family Nurse Care II LLC, Family Nurse Care LLC, Family Nurse Care of Ohio LLC, Fidelis Care, Forensic Health Services LLC, Foundation Care LLC, Godgrace Asistencia Medica S.L., Golden Triangle Physician Alliance, Grace Hospice of Austin LLC, Grace Hospice of Grand Rapids LLC, Grace Hospice of Illinois LLC, Grace Hospice of Indiana LLC, Grace Hospice of San Antonio LLC, Grace Hospice of Virginia LLC, Grace Hospice of Wisconsin LLC, Granite State Health Plan Inc., Growly Asistencia Sanitaria S.L., HHS Texas Management Inc., HHS Texas Management LP, Hallmark Life Insurance Company, Harmony Behavioral Health IPA Inc., Harmony Behavioral Health Inc., Harmony Health Management Inc., Harmony Health Plan Inc., Harmony Health Systems Inc., Health Care Enterprises LLC, Health Net Access Inc., Health Net Community Solutions Inc., Health Net Community Solutions of Arizona Inc., Health Net Federal Services LLC, Health Net Health Plan of Oregon Inc., Health Net LLC, Health Net Life Insurance Company, Health Net Life Reinsurance Company, Health Net Pharmaceutical Services, Health Net of Arizona Inc., Health Net of California Inc., Health Plan Real Estate Holdings Inc., HealthSmart Benefit Solutions Inc., HealthSmart Benefits Management LLC, HealthSmart Care Management Solutions LP, HealthSmart Information Systems Inc., HealthSmart Preferred Care II LP, HealthSmart Preferred Network II Inc., HealthSmart Primary Care Clinics LP, HealthSmart Rx Solutions Inc., Healthy Louisiana Holdings LLC, Healthy Missouri Holdings Inc., Healthy Washington Holdings Inc., Heritage Health Systems Inc., Heritage Health Systems of Texas Inc., Heritage Home Hospice LLC, Heritage Physician Networks, Home State Health Plan Inc., HomeScripts.com LLC, Hospice DME Company LLC, Hospinet S.L., Hospital Polusa S.A., Hospital Povisa S.A., Hudson Accountable Care LLC, IAH of Florida LLC, Illinois Health Practice Alliance LLC, Infraestructuras y Servicios de Alzira S. L., Integrated Care Network of Florida LLC, Integrated Mental Health Management LLC, Integrated Mental Health Services, Interpreta Holdings Inc., Interpreta Inc., Iowa Total Care Inc., Kentucky Spirit Health Plan Inc., LBB Industries Inc., LifeShare Management Group LLC, LiveHealthier Inc., Louisiana Healthcare Connections Inc., MH Services International Holdings (UK) Limited, MHM, MHM Correctional Services LLC, MHM Health Professionals LLC, MHM Services Inc., MHM Services of California LLC, MHM Solutions LLC, MHN Government Services LLC, MHN Services LLC, MHS Consulting International Inc., MHS Travel & Charter Inc., MR Centrum Melnick s.r.o., MR Poprad s.r.o., MR Zilina s.r.o., Magnolia Health Plan Inc., Managed Health Network, Managed Health Network LLC, Managed Health Services Insurance Corporation, Maryland Collaborative Care LLC, Maryland Collaborative Care Transformation Organization Inc., Mauli Ola Health and Wellness Inc., Medicina NZ spol s.r.o., Meridian Health Plan of Illinois Inc., Meridian Health Plan of Michigan Inc., Meridian Management Company LLC, Meridian Network Services LLC, MeridianRx IPA LLC, MeridianRx LLC, MeridianRx of Indiana LLC, Michigan Complete Health, Mid-Atlantic Collaborative Care LLC, Nebraska Total Care Inc., Network Providers LLC, New York Quality Healthcare Corporation, Next Door Neighbors Inc., Next Door Neighbors LLC., North Florida Health Services Inc., Northern Maryland Collaborative Care LLC, Novasys Health Inc., OB Care, OB Klinika, Ohana Health Plan Inc., Oklahoma Complete Health Inc., One Care by Care 1st Health Plans of Arizona Inc, Operose Health (Group) Ltd., Operose Health (Group) UK Ltd., Operose Health Ltd., OptiCare Health Systems - Managed Vision Business, PANTHERx Rare Pharmacy, Panther Pass Co LLC, Panther Specialty Holding Co LLC, Pantherx Access Services LLC, Pantherx Specialty LLC, Parker LP LLC, Peach State Health Plan Inc., Penn Marketing America LLC, Pennsylvania Health and Wellness Inc., Phoenix Home Health Care LLC, Pinnacle Home Care LLC, Pinnacle Senior Care of Illinois LLC, Pinnacle Senior Care of Indiana LLC, Pinnacle Senior Care of Kalamazoo LLC, Pinnacle Senior Care of Missouri LLC, Pinnacle Senior Care of Wisconsin LLC, Premier Marketing Group LLC, PrimeroSalud S.L., Pro Diagnostic Group A.S., Pro Magnet CZ s.r.o., Pro Magnet s.r.o, Pro RTG s.r.o, Progress Medical A.S., Prowl Holdings LLC, QCA Healthplan Inc., Qualchoice Life and Health Insurance Company, Quincy Coverage Corporation, R&C Healthcare LLC, RMED LLC, RX Direct Inc., Rapid Respiratory Services LLC, Ribera Lab S.L.U., Ribera Salud II, Ribera Salud Proyectos S.L., Ribera Salud S.A., Ribera Salud Tecnologias S.L.U., Ribera Slaud Infraestructuras S.L.U., Ribera-Quilpro UTE, Salus Administrative Services Inc., Salus IPA LLC, Secure Capital Solutions 2000 S.L.U., SelectCare Health Plans Inc., SelectCare of Texas Inc., Seniorcorps Peninsula LLC, Servicios De Mantenimiento Prevencor S.L.U., SilverSummit Healthplan Inc., Social Health Bridge LLC, Social Health Bridge Trust, Specialty Therapeutic Care GP LLC, Specialty Therapeutic Care Holdings, Specialty Therapeutic Care Holdings LLC, Specialty Therapeutic Care LP, Sunflower State Health Plan Inc., Sunshine Health Community Solutions Inc., Sunshine Health Holding LLC, Sunshine State Health Plan Inc., Superior HealthPlan Community Solutions Inc., Superior HealthPlan Inc., The Practice Properties Limited, The WellCare Management Group Inc., Torrejon Salud S.A., Torrevieja Salud S.L.U., Torrevieja Salud UTE, Traditional Home Health Services LLC, Trillium Community Health Plan Inc., U.S. Medical Management Holdings Inc., U.S. Medical Management LLC, UAM Agent Services Corp., US Script, USMM Accountable Care Partners LLC, Universal American Corp., Universal American Financial Services Inc., Universal American Holdings LLC, WCG Health Management Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of America, WellCare Health Insurance Company of Kentucky Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of Louisiana Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of Nevada Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of New Hampshire Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of New Jersey Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of Oklahoma Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of Washington Inc., WellCare Health Insurance Company of Wisconsin Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of Arizona Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of Connecticut Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of Hawaii Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of New York Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of North Carolina Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of Southwest Inc., WellCare Health Insurance of Tennessee Inc., WellCare Health Plans, WellCare Health Plans of Arizona Inc., WellCare Health Plans of California Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Kentucky Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Massachusetts Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Missouri Inc., WellCare Health Plans of New Jersey Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Rhode Island Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Tennessee Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Vermont Inc., WellCare Health Plans of Wisconsin Inc., WellCare National Health Insurance Company, WellCare Pharmacy Benefits Management Inc., WellCare Prescription Insurance Inc., WellCare of Alabama Inc., WellCare of Arkansas Inc., WellCare of California Inc., WellCare of Connecticut Inc., WellCare of Florida Inc., WellCare of Georgia Inc., WellCare of Illinois Inc., WellCare of Indiana Inc., WellCare of Kansas Inc., WellCare of Maine Inc., WellCare of Michigan Holding Company, WellCare of Mississippi Inc., WellCare of Missouri Health Insurance Company Inc., WellCare of New Hampshire Inc., WellCare of New York Inc., WellCare of North Carolina Inc., WellCare of Ohio Inc., WellCare of Oklahoma Inc., WellCare of Pennsylvania Inc., WellCare of Puerto Rico Inc., WellCare of South Carolina Inc., WellCare of Texas Inc., WellCare of Virginia Inc., WellCare of Washington Inc., Wellcare Health Plans Inc., Western Sky Community Care Inc., Windsor Health Group Inc., Winning Security S.L., Worlco Management Services, and nirvanaHealth LLC.
Medtronic Plc is a medical technology company, which engages in the development, manufacture, distribution, and sale of device-based medical therapies and services. It operates through the following segments: Cardiac and Vascular Group; Minimally Invasive Technologies Group; Restorative Therapies Group; and Diabetes Group. The Cardiac and Vascular Group segment consists of products for the diagnosis, treatment, and management of cardiac rhythm disorders and cardiovascular disease. The Minimally Invasive Technologies Group segment focuses on respiratory system, gastrointestinal tract, renal system, lungs, pelvic region, kidneys, and obesity diseases. The Restorative Therapies Group segment comprises of neurostimulation therapies and drug delivery systems for the treatment of chronic pain, as well as areas of the spine and brain, along with pelvic health and conditions of the ear, nose, and throat. The Diabetes Group segment offers insulin pumps, coninuous glucose monitoring systems, and insulin pump consumables. The company was founded in 1949 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.: 2235158 Alberta Limited, A.J. Amer Agency, AHC Digital LLC, AIX Limited, AJG Coal LLC, AJG Financial Services LLC, AJG Meadows LLC, AJG North America ULC, AJG RCF LLC, AJGRMS of Louisiana LLC, ARM RE Ltda., AVIATION INSURANCE SERVICES, AVRECO, Ace IRM Insurance Broking Group, Acumus Holdings Limited, Acumus Interco Limited, Acumus Ltd, Adams & Associates International, Adaptive Marketing LLC, Adco General Corporation, Advanced Benefit Advisors, Aequus Trade Credit, Affinity Marketing Group, Ahrold Fay Rosenberg, Aires Consulting Group, Alesco Risk Management Services Limited, Alize Limited, Allied Claims Administration Inc., Alternative Market Specialists, Altman & Cronin Benefit Consultants, American Freedom Carriers Inc., American Security Services Corp., American Wholesalers Underwriting Ltd, Andrew-Anthony Insurance Agency, Anthony Hodges Consulting Limited, Antrobus Investments Limited, AquaSurance, Argentis, Argentis Financial Group Limited, Argentis Financial Management Limited, Argus Benefits, Armstrong/Robitaille/Riegle, Artex (SAC) Limited, Artex Cedar Hill, Artex Corporate Services (Malta) Limited, Artex Corporate Services Limited, Artex Holdings (Gibraltar) Limited, Artex Holdings (Malta) Limited, Artex Insurance (Guernsey) PCC Limited, Artex Insurance (Tennessee) PCCIC Inc., Artex Insurance Brokers (Malta) PCC Limited, Artex Insurance ICC Limited, Artex Intermediaries Ltd, Artex Risk Solutions (Bermuda) Ltd, Artex Risk Solutions (Cayman) Limited, Artex Risk Solutions (Gibraltar) Limited, Artex Risk Solutions (Guernsey) Limited, Artex Risk Solutions (International) Ltd, Artex Risk Solutions (Malta) Limited, Artex Risk Solutions (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Artex Risk Solutions (UK) Limited, Artex Risk Solutions Inc., Arthur J Gallagher (Norway) Holdings AS, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (AUS) Ltd, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (Bermuda) Limited, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (Illinois), Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Insurance Brokers of California Inc., Arthur J. Gallagher (Aus) Pty Ltd, Arthur J. Gallagher (Bermuda) Holding Partnership, Arthur J. Gallagher (Life Solutions) Ltd, Arthur J. Gallagher (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Arthur J. Gallagher (U.S.) LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher (UK) Limited, Arthur J. Gallagher Asesoria S.A.C., Arthur J. Gallagher Australasia Holdings Pty Ltd., Arthur J. Gallagher Brokerage & Risk Management Services LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher Broking (NZ) Limited, Arthur J. Gallagher Financial Services Professionals Risk Purchasing Group LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher Group Quebec ULC, Arthur J. Gallagher Holdings (UK) Limited, Arthur J. Gallagher Insurance Brokers Limited, Arthur J. Gallagher Latin America LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher Management (Bermuda) Limited, Arthur J. Gallagher Real Estate Risk Purchasing Group LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services (Hawaii) Inc., Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services Inc., Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services of Utah Inc., Arthur J. Gallagher School Risk Purchasing Group LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher Service Company LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher Services (UK) Ltd, Ashmore & Associates Insurance Agency, Atlantic Risk Management Corp., Atrex Insurance (Cayman) SPC Limited, Avantek Pty Ltd, Axe Insurance PCC Limited, BIS Insurance Services, Baker - Tillys employment benefits solutions, Ballard Benefit Works, Bankers Financial Benefits, Barmore Insurance Agency, Behnke & Co. Inc., Bellisle Pty Ltd, Belmont Associates Consultants, Belmont Insurance Holdings Limited, Belmont International, Belmont International Limited, Benefit Development Group, Benefit Management Group, BenefitLink Resource Group, Benefits Planning & Insurance Agency, Benefits Unlimited, Bennett & Shade Co., Bergvall Marine, Bergvall Marine A.S., Besselman & Little Agency, Big Savings Insurance Agency Inc., Blenheim Park Ltd, Blenheim Park Services Limited, Blue Holdings Pty Ltd, Blue Horizon Insurance Services, Blue Water Benefits, BluePeak Advisors, Blueleaf Consulting Pty Ltd., Bluewater Incorporated Cell Insurance Company, Bollinger Inc., Bollinger Insurance Services Inc., Bowen Miclette Britt & Merry of Arkansas Inc., Brendis & Brendis, Brim AB, Broker Benefit Services, Brokerage Professionals, Brown Hobbs & McMurray Insurance, Bultman/Bell Associates Inc., Burkwald & Associates, Burns-Fazzi Brock & Associates, Bushong Insurance Associates, C&B Consulting Group, CGM Gallagher Insruance Brokers (Trinidad & Tobago) Limited, CJM Solutions Inc., CMA Solutions LLC, Cairnstone Financial, California Insurance Center, Capital Bauer Insurance Agency, Capitol Benefits Group, Capsicum CRLA LLP, Capsicum Re Brasil Participacoes Ltda, Capsicum Re Latin America Corretora De Resseguros Ltda, Capsicum Reinsurance Brokers Bermuda Limited, Capsicum Reinsurance Brokers Miami Inc., Carefree Marketing Inc., Carpenter Cammack & Associates, Cashan & Co., Castle Insurance Associates, Centennial Insurance Agency, Charity First Insurance Services Inc., Charles Allen Agency, Charter Lakes Insurance Agency, Chris Schroeder Insurance, Christie-Phoenix, Cintran Claims Canada Limited, Classic Insurance Services, Cleaveland Insurance Group, Cohen & Lord Insurance Brokers, Cohn Financial Group, Coleman Group Holdings Limited, Coleman Holdings Limited, College and University Scholastic Excess Risk Purchasing Group LLC, Commercial Insurance Brokers, Complete Benefit Alliance, Complete Financial Balance, Complete Financial Balance Pty Ltd, Consolidated Casualty Specialties LLC, Construction Risk Solutions, Contego Underwriting Limited, Contego Underwriting Ltd, Continental Excess & Surplus, Convergence Risk Services Ltd, Copper Mountain Assurance Inc., Cornwall & Stevens Co., Corporate Benefit Advisors, Corporate Life Consultants, Countrywide Accident Assistance Limited, Coverdell & Company Inc., Coverdell Canada Corporation, Cowles and Connell, Craig M. Ferguson & Co., Crist Elliott Machette Insurance Services, Crombie Lockwood (NZ) Limited, Davis-Poston & Associates, Denman Consulting Services, Detlefs Johnson & Partners, DiBrina Group, Dickinson & Associates, Discount Development Services L.L.C., Discovery Benefit Solutions, Dodson-Bateman & Co., Donald P. Pipino Co. Ltd., E. S. Susanin Inc., EHE Holdings LLC, EHS Holdings Limited, Elantis Premium Funding (NZ) Limited, Elantis Premium Funding Limited, Elite Benefits Insurance Marketing Services, Employee Benefits Analysis Corp., Employee Benefits of The Carolinas, Encore Insurance & Bonding, Everett James, Evolution Risk Services Limited, Evolution Technology Services Limited, Evolution Underwriting Group, Evolution Underwriting Group Limited, Evolution Underwriting Limited, Excel Insurance Services, FYI Direct Canada Corporation, FYI Direct LLC, Farallone Pacific Insurance Services, Fenchurch Faris Limited, Fidelity Benefits & Insurance Services, Financial Profiles Inc., Finergy Solutions Pty Ltd, First Agency, First Iowa Insurance Agency, First Premium Inc., First Premium Insurance Group, Fish & Schulkamp, Fishermans Insurance Services, Foley Healthcare Limited, Fortress Financial Solutions Pty Ltd, Fortress Insurance LLC, Foundation Strategies, Fox Lawson & Associates, Franklin-Case Agency LLC, Fraser MacAndrew Ryan Limited, Friary Intermediate Limited, Fuller & O'Brien, G.S. Chapman & Associates Insurance Brokers, G.S. Levine Insurance Services, GBS (Australia) Holdings Pty Ltd, GBS Administrators Inc., GBS Insurance and Financial Services Inc., GBS Retirement Services Inc., GBS Specialty Markets LLC, GGB Finance 1 Limited, GGB Finance 2 Limited, GGB Finance 3 Limited, GGB Finance 4 Limited, GPL Assurance, GPL Assurance Inc., Gabor Insurance Services, Gale Smith & Co. Inc., Gallagher (Bermuda) Insurance Solutions Ltd., Gallagher - Grace/Mayer Insurance Agency, Gallagher Bassett Aires Inc., Gallagher Bassett Canada Inc., Gallagher Bassett Insurance Services Ltd., Gallagher Bassett International Ltd., Gallagher Bassett NZ Pty Ltd., Gallagher Bassett Services Inc. , Gallagher Bassett Services Pty Ltd., Gallagher Bassett Services Workers Compensation Victoria Pty Ltd., Gallagher Benefit Services (Canada) Group Inc., Gallagher Benefit Services (Holdings) Limited, Gallagher Benefit Services Inc., Gallagher Benefit Services Management Company Limited, Gallagher Benefit Services Pty Ltd, Gallagher Benefits Consulting Limited, Gallagher Bomford Couch Wilson, Gallagher Burgess, Gallagher Canada Acquisition Corporation, Gallagher Caribbean Group Limited, Gallagher Clean Energy LLC, Gallagher Communications Limited, Gallagher Community Clinic RPG LLC, Gallagher Consulting Ltda, Gallagher Corporate Services LLC, Gallagher Coyle, Gallagher CyberRisk, Gallagher Energy Risk Services Inc., Gallagher Fiduciary Advisors LLC, Gallagher Holdings (UK) Limited, Gallagher Holdings Bermuda Company Limited, Gallagher Holdings Four (UK) Limited, Gallagher Holdings Three (UK) Limited, Gallagher Insurance Brokers (Barbados) Limited, Gallagher Insurance Brokers (St. Kitts & Nevis) Limited, Gallagher Insurance Brokers (St. Lucia) Limited, Gallagher Insurance Brokers (St. Vincent) Limited, Gallagher Insurance Brokers Jamaica Limited, Gallagher International Cash Management s.r.l., Gallagher International Holdings (US) Inc., Gallagher Investment Advisors LLC, Gallagher Inwest Group, Gallagher Koster, Gallagher Lambert Group, Gallagher Madison Risk & Insurance Services, Gallagher Mauritius Holdings, Gallagher Mississippi Brokerage LLC, Gallagher RE Colombia Ltda Corredores de Reaseguros SA, Gallagher Risk & Reward Limited, Gallagher Risk Group LLC, Gallagher Risk Placements Pty Ltd, Gallagher SKS, Gallagher Service Center LLP, Gallagher-Tarantino, Galtney Group, Game Day Insurance Inc., Gardner & White Corp., Gardner Marine Agency, Garza Long Group, Gatehouse Consulting Limited, Gault Armstrong Kemble Pty Ltd, Gault Armstrong SARL, Giles Group, Giles Holdings Limited, Giles Insurance Brokers, Gillis Ellis & Baker Inc., Goodman Insurance Agency, Grandy Pratt Co., Greenseed Alternative Mangaers Platform Ltd, Grossman & Associates, Group Benefits of Arkansas, Group Insurance Associates, Gruppo Marcucci, HLG Holdings Limited, HMG-PCMS Limited, HPF Investments LLC, HR Owen Insurance Services Limited, Hagan Newkirk Financial Services, Hagedorn & Company, Hardman & Howell Benefits, Harlequin Insurance PCC Limited, Hartstein Associates Inc., Healthcare Professionals Purchasing Group LLC, Healthcare Risk Solutions, Heath Lambert Group Ltd., Heath Lambert Limited, Heath Lambert Overseas Limited, Heiser Insurance Agency, Henderson Phillips Fine Arts Insurance, Herbruck Alder & Co., Heritage Insurance Brokers (CI) Limited, Hesse & Partner AG, Hesse Consulting, Hexagon ICC Limited, Hexagon Insurance PCC Limited, Hill Chesson & Woody, Hogan Insurance Services, Home & Travel Limited, Honour Point Limited, Horseshoe Corporate Services Ltd, Horseshoe Fund Services (Cayman) Ltd, Horseshoe Fund Services Ltd, Horseshoe Fund Services USA Inc., Horseshoe ILS Services UK Ltd, Horseshoe Insurance Advisors US LLC, Horseshoe Insurance Advisory Ltd., Horseshoe Insurance Services Holdings Ltd, Horseshoe Insurance Services Holdings US Inc., Horseshoe Management (Gibraltar) Limited, Horseshoe Management (Ireland) Ltd, Horseshoe Management Ltd., Horseshoe PCC Limited, Horseshoe Re Limited, Horseshoe Services (Cayman) Ltd, Horseshoe Services (Pty) Ltd, Horton Insurance Agency, Housing Authorities Services Risk Purchasing Group LLC, Human Resource Management Systems, I-Protect Underwriting Pty Ltd, IBIS Advisors, IBS Reinsurance Singapore Pte Ltd, ILS Fund Services Ltd., ISG International, ITI Solutions, Igloo Insurance PCC Limited, Independent Benefit Services, Independent Fiduciary Services, Ink Underwriting Agencies Limited, InsSync Group Pty Ltd, Inspire Underwriting Limited, Instrat Insurance Brokers, Instrat Insurance Brokers Pty Ltd, Instrat Integration Holdco Pty Ltd, Insurance Acquisitions Holdings Limited, Insurance Associates Inc., Insurance Dialogue Limited, Insurance Dialogue Ltd., Insurance Plans Agency, Insurance Plus Risk Purchasing Group LLC, Insurance Point, Insurance Risk Managers of Missouri Inc., Insure My Villa Limited, Insure Pty Ltd, Integrated Healthcare Strategies, InterNational Insurance Group, InterPacific Underwriting Agencies, Intermountain Financial Benefits, Interstate Insurance Underwriters, JPGAC LLC, James F. Reda & Associates, James R. Weir Insurance Agency, Jenkins and Associates, Joe E. Martin Inc., John P. Woods Co. Inc., Jones Brown, Jones Brown Group Inc., Jones Brown Insurance Solutions Inc., Joseph Distel, Joseph James & Associates Insurance Agency, Just Landlords Insurance Services Ltd, KDC Associates, KRW Insurance Agency, Kahl Insurance Services, Kaler Carney Liffler & Co. Inc., Kane Group - Insurance Management Operations, Kelly Financial, Kent Kent & Tingle and RBS, Keyser Benefits Corp., Kingspark Enterprises Pty Ltd, L&R Benefits, LSG Insurance Partners, Learn About Money Limited, Lewis & Associates Insurance Brokers, Leystone Insurance & Financial, Life Plans Unlimited, Lincoln Financial Management, Longfellow Financial, Lucas Fettes Limited, Lucas Fettes and Partners Limited, Lutgert Insurance, MA Underwriting Pty Ltd, MDM Insurance Associates, MG Advanced Coal Technologies-1 LLC, MGA Insurance Services, MRS Holdings Ltd., Madison Scott & Associates, Managed Healthcare Solutions, Mannequin Insurance PCC Limited, Marchetti Robertson & Brickell Insurance, Marine Insurance Service, Martin Gordon & Jones Inc., McDowall Associates Human Resource Consultants, McIntyre Risk Management, McLean Insurance Agency, McNeary, McPherson Benefits Group, McRory & Co., Mecacem Insurance SPC Ltd, MedInsights Inc., Melton Insurance Associates, Memberworks Canada LLC, Merit Insurance, Metcom Excess, Metzler Bros. Insurance, Meyers-Reynolds & Associates, Mid America Group, Midwest Surety Services, Mike Henry Insurance Brokers, Mike Henry Insurance Brokers Limited, Mike Henry Insurance Funding Limited, Miller Buettner & Parrott, Miller-Harrison Insurance Services, Milne Alexander Pty Ltd, Minvielle & Chastanet Insurance Brokers, Monument Insurance (NZ) Limited, Monument Llc, Monument Premium Funding Limited, Mortgage Insurance Agency, Murphy Consultants, Mutual Insurance Services, NationAir Aviation Insurance, National Administration Co., National Ethics Association, National Transportation Adjusters, Nelson/Monarch Insurance Services, Nicoud Insurance Services, NiiS/Apex Group Holdings, Nonprofit Insurance Risk Purchasing Group LLC, Noraxis Capital Corp, Nordic Forsakring & Riskhantering AB, North Alabama Insurance, Nourse Insurance Brokers, O'Gorman & Young, OAMPS (UK) Limited, OAMPS Gault Armstrong Pty Ltd, OAMPS Limited, OAMPS Special Risks Ltd, Offshore Market Placements Limited, Optimum Talent, Orb Financial Services, Orb Financial Services Limited, Osprey Insurance Brokers Limited, Oval Group, Oval Healthcare Limited, Oval Insurance Broking Limited, Oval Limited, Oval Management Services Limited, Oxygen Insurance Managers, P2 Group, PEN Insurance Management Advisors Ltd, PT IBS Insurance Broking Service, Pacific Insurance Agency, Palmer Atlantic Insurance, Palmer Atlantic Insurance Ltd, Palmer Atlantic Risk Services Ltd., Park Row Associates, Parkstar Enterprises Pty Ltd, Parmia Pty Ltd, PartnerSource, Pastel Holding (NZ) Company, Pastel Holdings Pty Limited, Pastel Purchaser (NZ) Limited, Pastel Purchaser Pty Limited, Pavey Group Holdings (UK) Limited, Pavey Group Holdings Limited, Pavey Group Limited, Pearson Dunn Insurance Inc., Pen Underwriting Canada Limited, Pen Underwriting Group Pty. Ltd., Pen Underwriting Limited, Pen Underwriting Pty Ltd, Persing Dyckman & Toynbee Inc., Personal Advice Services Pty Ltd, Petty Burton Associates, Pointer Insurance Agency, Portmore Insurance Brokers (Wilshire) Limited, Portmore Insurance Brokers Limited, Potter-Holden & Co., Powell Insurance Agency, Premier Insurance Services Inc., Premier Risk Services, Premium Finance Corporation, Preston-Patterson, ProSource Financial, Professional Agents Risk Purchasing Group LLC, Professional Claims Managers, Proinova AB, Proinova Agency AB, Pronto California Agency LLC, Pronto California General Agency LLC, Pronto Florida Claims LLC, Pronto Florida General Agency LLC, Pronto Franchise LLC, Pronto General Agency Ltd, Pronto General Agency Management LLC, Pronto Holdco Inc., Pronto Holding California LLC, Pronto Holding Florida LLC, Pronto Insurance Agency of Laredo Inc., Pronto Premium Finance LLC, Property & Commercial Ltd., Property Insurance Initatives Limited, Property and Commercial Limited, Protected Insurance Company, Protection Plan Association Inc., Protek Group Limited, Providium Consulting Group, Ptarmigan Underwriting Agency Limited, Ptarmigan Underwriting UK Limited, Purple Bridge Claims Management Limited, Purple Bridge Finance Limited, Purple Bridge Group Limited, Purple Bridge Investments Limited, Purple Bridge Online Services Limited, Purple Bridge Publishing Limited, Quantum Underwriting Solutions Limited, Quillco 226 Limited, Quillco 227 Limited, R. L. Youngdahl & Associates, R.G. Speno Inc., R.W. Scobie, RA Rossborough (Guernsey) Ltd., RA Rossborough (Insurance Brokers) Ltd, REGENCY Group inc., RGA Referencing Limited, RGA Underwriting Limited, RIL Administrators (Guernsey) Ltd., RJ Dutton Inc., RSM Insurance Services Limited, Reassurance Holdings Inc., Rebholz Insurance Agency, Reid Manson Ltd., Reimbursement Services, Rentguard Limited, Reward Management Limited, Reynolds & Rodar Insurance Group, Riley & Associates, Rio 587 Limited, Rio 588 Limited, Risk & Reward Group, Risk Management Partners Limited, Risk Placement Services Inc., Risk Planners, Risk Services (NW) Limited, Risk Services (NW) Ltd., Risk Solutions Group Limited, Robert A. Schneider Agency, Robert Keith & Associates, Roberts & Roberts Insurance Service, Robinson-Adams Insurance, Rossborough Healthcare International Ltd, Rossborough Insurance (IOM) Ltd., Rossborough Insurance Services Ltd. (Jersey), S. A. Freerks & Associates, SEG Insurance Ltd, SGB-NIA Insurance Brokers, SHILLING Ltd, SKANCO International, SMERI AB, SRS Underwriting Pty Ltd, Secure Enterprises Pty Ltd, Securitas Re, Sellers Group, Sentinel Indemnity LLC, Septagon Insurance PCC Limited, Shuford Insurance Agency, Sigma II Insurance Agency, Sinclair Billard and Weld Limited, Sobieski & Bradley, Solid Benefit Guidance, Spanjers Insurance Agency, Spataro Insurance Agency, Specialised Broking Associates, Specialty Risk, Stackhouse Poland, Stackhouse Poland Bidco Limited, Stackhouse Poland Group Limited, Stackhouse Poland Holdings Limited, Stackhouse Poland Midco Limited, Stackouse Poland Limited, Stanton Group, Stark Johnson & Stinson Inc., Steel Agency, Strata Solicitors Ltd, Strategic Health Plans Corp., Strathearn Insurance Brokers, Strathearn Insurance Brokers (Qld) Trading Trust, Strathern Insurance Group Pty Ltd, Strathern Integration Holdco Pty Ltd, Strathern Unit Trust, Strong Financial Resources, Summit Insurance Group, Sunday and Associates, Sunderland Insurance Services, Super Advice Corporate Services Pty Ltd, Taylor Benefits, Texas Insurance Agency, Texas Insurance Managers, The BeneTex Group, The Buchholz Planning, The Chapman Group, The Commonwealth Consulting Group, The Daniels Group Inc., The EHE Group LLC, The EHE Insurance Agency LLC, The Eagle Insurance Agency LLC, The Eriksen Group, The Forker Company, The Gleason Agency, The Great Lakes Agency, The HR Group, The Hawk Agency, The Human Capital Group, The Lance Group, The Levitt/Kristan Co., The MW Bagnall Company, The Old Greenwich Consulting Group, The Parks Johnson Agency, The Plus Companies Inc., The Presidio Group, The Producers Choice, The Rains Group, The Splinter Group, The Titan Group, The Treiber Group, The Woodsmall Companies Inc., Title & Covenant Brokers Ltd., Title Investments Limited, Tom Sherwin Insurance Agency, Total Reward Group, Total Rewards Group (Holdings) Limited, Towle Agency, Transwestern, Tri-State General Insurance Agency, Triad Insurance Agency, Triad USA, Tribeca Strategic Advisors, Trinder & Norwood, Trip Mate, Trissel Graham & Toole, Tropp & Co., Tudor Risk Services, Tyloma Holdings Limited, Uni-Care Inc., Unison Inc., Universico Group, Unoccupied Direct Limited, V2V Holdings LLC, VEBA Service Group, Vasek Insurance Services Limited, Velo ACU LLC, Velo Holdings Inc., Verbag AG., Vertrue LLC, Victory Insurance Agency, Vincent L. Braband Insurance, Vital Benefits, Voluntary Benefits Solutions, W. E. Kingsley Co. Inc., WM. W. George & Associates, Walker Taylor Agency, Welling Associates, Wesfarmers Insurance - Insurance Brokerage Operations, Western Benefit Solutions, White & Company Insurance, Whitehaven Insurance Group, William Gallagher Associates Insurance Brokers, William H. Connolly & Co., Williams Insurance Agency Inc., Williams-Manny Insurance Group, Winn & Company Insurance Brokers, Wischmeyer Benefit Partners, Woodbrook Underwriting Agencies, Woods & Grooms, WorkCare Northwest, Worksite Communications, Y. S. Liedman & Associates, YOA Capsicum Reinsurance Broker Limited, Zenor Limited, Zuber Insurance Agency, and e3 Financial.
The following companies are subsidiares of Lithia Motors: 797 Valley Street LLC, Albany CJD Fiat, Baierl Auto Group, Baierl Auto Parts LLC, Baierl Automotive Corporation, Baierl Chevrolet Inc., Baierl Holding LLC, Broadway Ford, Buhler Ford Inc, Cadillac of Portland Lloyd Center LLC, Camp Automotive Inc., Carbone Auto Body LLC, Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram Fiat of Morgantown, Cranberry Automotive Inc., Crater Lake Ford Lincoln, Crater Lake Mazda, DCH (Oxnard) Inc., DCH Auto Group, DCH Bloomfield LLC, DCH CA LLC, DCH Calabasas-A LLC, DCH California Investments LLC, DCH California Motors Inc., DCH DMS NJ LLC, DCH Del Norte Inc., DCH Essex Inc., DCH Financial NJ LLC, DCH Freehold - V LLC, DCH Freehold LLC, DCH Holdings LLC, DCH Investments Inc. (New Jersey), DCH Investments Inc. (New York), DCH Korean Imports LLC, DCH Mamaroneck LLC, DCH Mission Valley LLC, DCH Monmouth LLC, DCH Montclair LLC, DCH Motors LLC, DCH NY Motors LLC, DCH Nanuet LLC, DCH North America Inc., DCH Oxnard 1521 Imports Inc., DCH Riverside-S Inc., DCH Simi Valley Inc., DCH Support Services LLC, DCH TL Holdings LLC, DCH TL NY Holdings LLC, DCH Temecula Imports LLC, DCH Temecula Motors LLC, DCH Thousand Oaks-F Inc., DCH Torrance Imports Inc., Dah Chong Hong CA Trading LLC, Dah Chong Hong Trading Corporation, Daron Motors LLC, Day Auto Group, Downtown LA, Driveway Motors LLC, Elizabeth Collision LLC, Florida SS LLC, Ford Lincoln of Morgantown, Freehold Nissan LLC, Fuse Auto Sales LLC, Hamilton Honda, Hazleton Honda, Hutchins Eugene Nissan Inc., Hutchins Imported Motors Inc., Jaguar Landrover Mission Viejo, LA Motors Holding LLC, LAD Advertising Inc., LAD Carson-N LLC, LAD Mission Viejo-JLR Inc., LAD Mobu Inc., LAD-AU LLC, LAD-MB LLC, LAD-N LLC, LAD-P LLC, LAD-T LLC, LAD-V LLC, LBMP LLC, LFKF LLC, LGPAC Inc., LLL Sales Co LLC, LMBB LLC, LMBP LLC, LMOP LLC, LSTAR LLC, Lithia AcDM Inc., Lithia Aircraft Inc., Lithia Anchorage-C LLC, Lithia Anchorage-H LLC, Lithia Armory Garage LLC, Lithia Auction & Recon LLC, Lithia Auto Services Inc., Lithia Automotive Inc., Lithia BA Holding Inc., Lithia BNM Inc. (nonoperating), Lithia Baierl-S LLC, Lithia Bryan Texas Inc., Lithia Buffalo-A LLC, Lithia CCTF Inc., Lithia CDH Inc., Lithia CIMR Inc., Lithia CJDO Inc., Lithia CJDSA Inc., Lithia CJDSF Inc., Lithia CM Inc., Lithia CO Inc., Lithia CSA Inc., Lithia Community Development Company Inc., Lithia Crater Lake-F Inc., Lithia Crater Lake-M Inc., Lithia DE Inc., Lithia DM Inc., Lithia DMID Inc., Lithia Des Moines-VW LLC, Lithia Dodge of Tri-Cities Inc., Lithia Eatontown-F LLC, Lithia FLCC LLC, Lithia FMF Inc., Lithia Financial Corporation (previously Lithia Leasing Inc. and Lithia Credit Inc.), Lithia Florida Holding Inc., Lithia Ford of Boise Inc., Lithia Fresno Inc., Lithia HDM Inc., Lithia HGF Inc., Lithia HMID Inc., Lithia HPI Inc. (nonoperating), Lithia Hamilton-H LLC, Lithia Hazleton-H LLC, Lithia Idaho Falls-F Inc., Lithia Imports of Anchorage Inc., Lithia JEF Inc., Lithia Klamath Inc., Lithia Klamath-T Inc., Lithia LBGGF Inc., Lithia LHGF Inc., Lithia LSGF Inc., Lithia MBDM Inc., Lithia MMF Inc., Lithia MTLM Inc., Lithia McMurray-C LLC, Lithia Medford HON Inc., Lithia Middletown-L LLC, Lithia Monroeville-A LLC, Lithia Monroeville-C LLC, Lithia Monroeville-F LLC, Lithia Monroeville-V LLC, Lithia Moon-S LLC, Lithia Moon-V LLC, Lithia Morgantown-CJD LLC, Lithia Morgantown-F LLC, Lithia Morgantown-S LLC, Lithia Motors Support Services Inc., Lithia NA Inc., Lithia NC Inc., Lithia ND Acquisition Corp. #1, Lithia ND Acquisition Corp. #3, Lithia ND Acquisition Corp. #4, Lithia NDM Inc., Lithia NF Inc., Lithia NSA Inc., Lithia Northeast Real Estate LLC, Lithia Orchard Park-H LLC, Lithia Paramus-M LLC, Lithia Pittsburgh-S LLC, Lithia Ramsey-B LLC, Lithia Ramsey-L LLC, Lithia Ramsey-M LLC, Lithia Ramsey-T LLC, Lithia Real Estate Inc., Lithia Reno Sub-HYUN Inc., Lithia Reno-CJ LLC, Lithia Reno-VW LLC, Lithia Rose-FT Inc., Lithia SOC Inc., Lithia SSP LLC, Lithia Salmir Inc., Lithia Sea P Inc., Lithia Seaside Inc., Lithia Spokane-B LLC, Lithia Spokane-S LLC, Lithia TA Inc., Lithia TO Inc., Lithia TR Inc., Lithia Uniontown-C LLC, Lithia VAuDM Inc., Lithia VF Inc., Lithia Wexford-H LLC, Lithia of Abilene Inc., Lithia of Anchorage Inc., Lithia of Bend #1 LLC, Lithia of Bend #2 LLC, Lithia of Bennington - 1 LLC, Lithia of Bennington - 2 LLC, Lithia of Bennington - 3 LLC, Lithia of Bennington - 4 LLC, Lithia of Billings II LLC, Lithia of Billings Inc., Lithia of Casper LLC, Lithia of Clear Lake LLC, Lithia of Concord I Inc., Lithia of Concord II Inc., Lithia of Corpus Christi Inc., Lithia of Des Moines Inc., Lithia of Eureka Inc., Lithia of Fairbanks Inc., Lithia of Great Falls Inc., Lithia of Helena Inc., Lithia of Honolulu-A Inc., Lithia of Honolulu-BGMCC LLC, Lithia of Honolulu-F LLC, Lithia of Honolulu-V LLC, Lithia of Killeen LLC, Lithia of Lodi Inc., Lithia of Maui-H LLC, Lithia of Missoula II LLC, Lithia of Missoula III Inc., Lithia of Missoula Inc., Lithia of Pocatello Inc., Lithia of Portland I LLC, Lithia of Portland LLC, Lithia of Robstown LLC, Lithia of Roseburg Inc., Lithia of Santa Rosa Inc., Lithia of Seattle Inc., Lithia of South Central AK Inc., Lithia of Spokane II Inc., Lithia of Spokane Inc., Lithia of Stockton Inc., Lithia of Stockton-V Inc., Lithia of TF Inc., Lithia of Troy LLC, Lithia of Utica - 1 LLC, Lithia of Utica - 2 LLC, Lithia of Utica - 3 LLC, Lithia of Utica - 4 LLC, Lithia of Walnut Creek Inc., Lithia of Wasilla LLC, Lithia of Yorkville - 1 LLC, Lithia of Yorkville - 2 LLC, Lithia of Yorkville - 3 LLC, Lithia of Yorkville - 4 LLC, Lithia of Yorkville - 5 LLC, Medford Insurance LLC, Milford DCH Inc., Northland Ford Inc., PA Real Estate LLC, PA Support Services LLC, Paramus Collision LLC, Paramus World Motors LLC, Personalized Marketing LLC, Prestige Auto Group, RFA Holdings LLC, Ray Laks Acura, Ray Laks Honda, Sacramento-L Inc., Salem-B LLC, Salem-H LLC, Salem-V LLC, Sharlene Realty LLC, Shift Portland LLC, Southern Cascades Finance Corporation, Subaru of Morgantown, Tampa-H LLC, Tustin Motors Inc., Wesley Chapel-H LLC, Wesley Chapel-T LLC, Zelienople Real Estate I L.P., and Zelienople Real Estate L.L.C..
The following companies are subsidiares of Archer-Daniels-Midland: ADM (Shanghai) Management Co. LTD, ADM (Thailand) Ltd, ADM Ag Holdings Ltd, ADM Agri-Industries Company, ADM Agriculture Limited, ADM Agro Iberica S. L. U., ADM Agro Indust Latur and Vizag Pvt Ltd, ADM Agro Industries India Private Limited, ADM Agro Industries KOTA and AKOLA Pvt. Ltd., ADM Agro SRL, ADM Agroinvestimentos LTDA, ADM Alliance Nutrition of Puerto Rico LLC, ADM Americas S de RL, ADM Andina Peru SRL, ADM Antwerp NV, ADM Arkady Ireland Limited, ADM Asia-Pacific Trading Pte. Ltd., ADM Australia Holdings I PTY Limited, ADM Bio Science And Technology (Tianjin) Co Ltd, ADM Bioproductos SA DE CV, ADM CZERNIN SA, ADM Caribbean Inc, ADM Chile Comercial LTDA, ADM Clinton Bioprocessing Inc, ADM DO Brasil LTDA, ADM Direct Polska SP. ZO.O, ADM Dominican Holdings Inc., ADM Dominicana SA, ADM Edible Bean Specialties Inc, ADM Europe HoldCo SL, ADM European Holdings LLC, ADM European Management Holding GMBH, ADM Export Co, ADM Food Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., ADM France, ADM Germany GmbH, ADM Grain River System Inc., ADM Hamburg Aktiengesesllschaft, ADM Holding (Thailand) LTD, ADM Holdings LLC, ADM Hungary Agro Trading LLC, ADM Industries Centers Ltd, ADM International Holdings Inc, ADM International SARL, ADM Interoceanic LTD, ADM Investments LTD, ADM Investor Services Inc, ADM Investor Services International LTD, ADM Ireland Receivables Company Limited, ADM Israel, ADM Japan Ltd, ADM MALBORK SA, ADM Mainz GMBH, ADM Medsofts Sarl, ADM Mexico Inc, ADM Mexico SA DE CV, ADM Milling Co, ADM Milling LTD, ADM New Zealand Limited, ADM Olomouc S.R.O., ADM Paraguay SRL, ADM Protexin Limited, ADM Pura Limited, ADM Receivables LLC, ADM Rice Inc, ADM Ringaskiddy Unlimited Company, ADM Romania Logistics SRL, ADM Romania Trading SRL, ADM Specialty Ingredients - Europe BV, ADM Spyck GMBH, ADM Szamotuly SP Z O.O, ADM Trading Australia Pty. Ltd., ADM Trading Co, ADM Transportation Company, ADM Trucking Inc, ADM Vietnam CO. LTD, ADM WILD Europe GmbH and Co. KG, ADM WILD Ingredients GmbH, ADM WILD Nauen GmbH, ADM WILD Valencia S.A., ADM Wild Netherlands BV, ADM Worldwide Holdings LP, ADMIS Holding Co Inc., ADMIS Hong Kong LTD, ADMIS Singapore Pte Limited, AOR, AT Holdings II Company, Agri Port Services Investments Ltd., Agri Port Services LLC, Agricolas Madagascar SARLU, Agrinational Insurance Co, Agriserve, Agrograin LTD, Alfrebro LLC, Alfred C Toepfer International Netherlands BV, Alimenta USA, American River Transportation Company LLC, Ameriseed, Amylum Bulgaria EAD, Amylum Nisasta Sanayi Ve Ticarek Anonim Sirketi, Archer Daniels Midland (UK) Limited, Archer Daniels Midland Asia Pacific Ltd., Archer Daniels Midland Erith LTD, Archer Daniels Midland Europe BV, Archer Daniels Midland Europoort BV, Archer Daniels Midland Nederland BV, Archer Daniels Midland Singapore PTE LTD, Arinos Unlimited, Aston Foods & Food Ingredients, Balanceados Nova SA Balnova, Barbados Mills Limited, Bela Vista Bio Etanol Participacoes LTDA, Bern Aqua, BioPolis SL, Biopolis, Campa Sued GmbH & Co KG, Cattleman's Choice Loomix LLC, Chamtor, Ci ADM Colombia Ltda., Controladora ADM Sa De Cv, Crosswind Petfoods Inc., Daavision BV, Eaststarch, Eatem Corporation, Eatem Foods, Elstar Oils, English River Pellets Inc., Epicore Bionetworks INC, Epicore Networks (USA) INC, Erich Ziegler GmbH, Evialis France, Fasco Mills Co., Filozoo SRL, Florida Chemical, Florida Chemical Company LLC, GP Blanching Inc., Global Cocoa Holdings LTD, Golden Peanut Company LLC, Golden Peanut and Tree Nut Seed SA (PTY) LTD, Golden Peanut and Tree Nuts SA, Group Lysac, Guyomarc'h - VCN Company Limited, Guyomarc'h Vietnam CO LTD, HFR Shipping Company Ltd, HRA Shipping Company Ltd, HTI Shipping Company Ltd, Harvest Innovations, Hilltop Grain and Feed, Holding P and A Asia Company Limited, Hubei Meiweiyuan Biotechnology, Ilitchevskiy Maslo Extractionniy Zavod (IMEZ), Invivo NSA Asia PTE LTD, Invivo NSA Philippines Inc, Jamaica Flour Mills Limited, Julius Meijer-Alpharma BV, LLC ADM Ukraine, Liquid Feed Commodities, Malta Industries SA de CV, Malta-Texo De Mexico SA de CV, Master Mix of Trinidad LTD, Medsofts Investment Co, Medsofts L.L.C., Medsofts Trading Co, Mepla Comercio e Navegacao Ltda, NRG Inc, Naviera Chaco SRL, Neovia, Neovia Latina SL, Neovia Nutricao E Saude Animal LTDA, North Star Shipping S.R.L., P and A Marketing SA, PJSC ADM Illichivsk, PT Wirifa Sakti, Pancosma (Shanghai) Feed Additives CO LTD, Pancosma France SAS, Pancosma SA, Premiere Agri Technologies of Mexico Inc, Pura Foods LTD, Rodelle Inc., Schokinag-Schokolade-Industrie Herrmann, Sermix, Setna Nutricion SA, Societe Industrielle Des Oleagineux, Southern Cellulose Products Inc, Soy Investors LLC, Specialty Commodities, Specialty Commodities LLC, Sul Mineira Alimentos LTDA, SzSzV Kft, Toepfer International, Toepfer International Trading (Shanghai) Co. LTD., Vantage Corn Processors LLC, WILD Amazon Flavors Ltda, WILD Flavors, Wild Flavors Inc., Wild Flavors International GmbH, Wild Flavors Singapore Pte. Ltd., Wild Intermare GmbH, Wild Russia LLC, and Wisium SA (PTY) LTD.
Canadian Western Bank provides personal and business banking products and services primarily in Western Canada. The company offers current, savings, cash management, US dollar, and chequing accounts, as well as organization, strata solution/condo, general trust, and trust fund investment accounts. It also offers commercial lending and real estate, and equipment financing and leasing products; loans and mortgages; secured and unsecured lines of credit; registered retirement savings plan; consolidation, vehicle, and recreation vehicle loans; and credit cards. In addition, the company offers cash management services; life and disability insurance products; and ATM, mobile, and online banking services, as well cheque order services. Further, it provides investment products comprising guaranteed investment certificates, registered retirement income funds, tax-free savings accounts, registered education savings plans, and mutual funds, as well as personal and business planning services. Canadian Western Bank has a strategic partnership with Temenos AG to support small and medium sized enterprises with financial decision-making and enhancing their businesses. The company was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in Edmonton, Canada.

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Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. is an early-stage contract research company, which provides essential products and services to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, government agencies and academic institutions. It operates through the following segments: Research Models & Services, Discovery & Safety Assessment and Manufacturing Support. The Research Models & Services segment comprises of the production and sale of research models, and also offers services designed to support its client's use of research models in screening non-clinical drug candidates. The Discovery & Safety Assessment segment offers discovery and safety assessment services, both regulated and non-regulated, in which it include both in vivo and in vitro studies, supporting laboratory services, and strategic preclinical consulting and program management to support product development. The Manufacturing Support segment provides endotoxin and microbial detection, avian vaccine and biologics testing solutions. The company was founded by Henry L. Foster in 1947 and is headquartered in Wilmington, MA.

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Responsive web development has quickly become one of the most important concepts in web development today. With the various concepts of web designing changing almost everyday, newer technologies, ideas, developer platforms and SDKs are springing forth to aid the growth of designers and developers around the globe.

However, with an increasing number of users on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, more an more users are now accessing the internet via smartphones and tablets, rather than on a desktop computerovertaking the desktop as the primary channel for accessing the web. Therefore,signalling the importance of having a website that is equally mobile-friendly.

Typically, a mobile friendly website will look good when viewed on mobile devices, however, it may contain some glitches and tougher to navigate when viewed on devices with a higher resolution. But for a responsive web design, the website automatically adapts to the size of any screen it is being viewed onensuring that it maintains a great look across whatever device it is being viewed on.

Ensuring that a website is consistent across all the platforms that people use to surf the internet is one way to keep customers engaged and coming back.

Right now, most sites are phasing to responsive design, said Karly Baker, an experienced website coordinator for Insurance Technologies Corporation (ITC) in a report.

What a lot of agencies are doing right now are creating designs that function well on all different platforms, so theyre covered on desktops, iPads, tablets, large mobile and small mobile. Here are top reasons why having a responsive website is important:

1. Increase in mobile users

Recent studies have shown that the number of mobile usage and adoption on the internet has surpassed the desktop usage.

In the past, businesses had to create two versions of their website. One for desktop users, and another strictly for mobile users. However, having two separate versions of one website is not only time consuming but makes maintenance very difficult to achieve.

Today, with the advent of responsive web design, having just one website ensures that you retain your mobile viewers and desktop viewers alike.

2. Better User Experience (UX)

One of the greatest benefits of having a responsive website is a seamless user experience across multiple devicesas with unresponsive websites, websites are usually distorted when viewed on devices like a smartphone and tablet.

3. Low cost of maintenance

Having a responsive website lowers maintenance cost in comparison to having two separate versions of one website.

While it might be relatively expensive to setup a responsive website, the cost of maintenance over time is quite low unlike having to maintain two versions of the same website. A responsive website takes less time to setup and frees up time for you to focus on other important areas of your business.

4. Adapts to any screen size

A great benefit of using a responsive web design for your website is its easy adaptability to any screen size across all devices.

Having such design keeps your business way ahead of your competition and ensure your websites adapts seamlessly to newer devices with which users now alsobrowse the internet with, like smartwatches and IoT devices.

5. Responsive websites improves SEO

Having a responsive website greatly increases your websites chance of ranking high in SERPs, as Google and other top search engines prefer responsive websitessince its easier to crawl, index and organize content from just a single URL.

Google recommends and promotes responsive web design as it makes for a great user experience and improves your SEO strategy across multiple platforms.

6. Faster loading time

Research has shown that responsive websites usually perform much better than unresponsive websites, loading in about one second or less.

Since page load time is one of the major factors when considering search engine rankings, Google always awards fast-loading web pages with higher rankings. Responsive websites result in faster loading times and search engines can discover contents more efficiently and easily index them all.

7. CMS platforms support responsive designs

For web marketers, utilizing a content management system (CMS) is usually the most preferred option. Today, millions of websites are being hosted using CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc. These platforms make it much easier to maintain the website and updating its content is quicker and more seamless than before.

However, CMSs have equally adopted the responsive design pattern to ensure that the user experience across multiple platforms remains satisfactory. Therefore, for businesses who require a CMS for building their website, theres the added advantage of having a responsive web design embedded in it.
The following companies are subsidiares of PPG Industries: AIPCF V Texstars Blocker Inc., AkzoNobel, Alermac Inversiones S.A. de C.V., Alpha Coating Technologies LLC, Alpha Coatings Inc., Broad Range Development Limited, Brown Brothers Distribution Limited, CG Holdings Manufacturing Co., Centro de Investigacion en Polimeros S.A. de C.V., Chemfil Canada Limited, Chorlton Trade Paints Limited, Comercial Mexicana de Pinturas S.A. de C.V., Comex, Comex Industrial Coatings S.A. de C.V., Consorcio Comex S.A. de C.V., Cristacol S.A., Cuming Microwave Corporation, Deutek SA, Dexmet Corporation, Dexmet Holding Corporation, Distribuidora Kroma S.A. de C.V., EPIC Insurance Co. Ltd., Eberle Design Inc., Empresa Aga S.A. de C.V., Ennis Canadian Holding Company, Ennis Flint Soluciones Seguras Para Trafico, Ennis Highway Traffic Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Ennis Manufacturing Sdn Bhd, Ennis Paint Australia Holding Pty Ltd, Ennis Paint Boya Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., Ennis Paint Canada ULC, Ennis Paint Germany GmbH, Ennis Paint Netherlands Holdings LLC, Ennis Paint U.K. Holding Company Limited, Ennis Prismo Italio S.r.l., Ennis Traffic Safety Solutions Pty Ltd, Ennis  Flint Mexico, Ennis  Flint New Zealand, Ennis  Flint New Zealand Holding Pty Ltd, Ennis-Flint, Ennis-Flint Africa (Pty) Ltd, Ennis-Flint Inc., Foshan Bairun Chemicals Co. Ltd., Fpu Industrial S.A. de C.V., Grupo Comex S.A. de C.V., Hemmelrath Automotive Coatings (Jilin) Co. Ltd., Hodij Coatings B.V., Homax Products, Industria Chimica Reggiana I.C.R. SPA, Johnstones Paints Limited, Kalon Investment Company Limited, Kalon South Africa Proprietary Limited, Manchester Thermoplastics LLC, Masterwork Paint, MetoKote Canada Limited, MetoKote Corporation, MetoKote Mexico Holding Inc., MetoKote UK Limited, MetoKote de Mexico S. de RL de CV, PPG AC - France SA, PPG ALESCO Automotive Finishes Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., PPG AP Resinas S.A. de C.V., PPG Aerospace Materials (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., PPG Architectural Coatings (Puerto Rico) Inc., PPG Architectural Coatings Canada Inc., PPG Architectural Coatings Ireland Limited, PPG Architectural Coatings Italy S.r.l., PPG Architectural Coatings UK Limited, PPG Architectural Finishes Inc., PPG Asian Paints Private Ltd., PPG COATINGS SINGAPORE PTE. LTD., PPG Canada Inc., PPG Cieszyn S.A., PPG Coatings (Hong Kong) Co. Limited, PPG Coatings (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., PPG Coatings (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Thailand) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Wuhu) Company Ltd., PPG Coatings (Zhangjiagang) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings B.V., PPG Coatings Belgium BV, PPG Coatings Danmark A/S, PPG Coatings Deutschland GmbH, PPG Coatings Europe B.V., PPG Coatings Manufacturing SARL, PPG Coatings Nederland BV, PPG Coatings S.A., PPG Coatings South Africa (Pty) Ltd., PPG DYRUP S.A., PPG Deco Czech a.s., PPG Deco Polska sp. z.o.o., PPG Deco Slovakia s.r.o., PPG Deutschland Business Support GmbH, PPG Deutschland Sales & Services GmbH, PPG Distribution S.A.S., PPG Europe B.V., PPG Finance B.V., PPG France Business Support S.A.S., PPG France Manufacturing S.A.S., PPG Guadeloupe SAS, PPG Hellas S.A., PPG Hemmelrath Coatings Inc., PPG Hemmelrath Lackfabrik GmbH, PPG Holdco SAS, PPG Holdings (U.K.) Limited, PPG Holdings Argentina USA LLC, PPG Holdings Latin America USA LLC, PPG Iberica S.A., PPG Iberica Sales & Services S.L., PPG Industrial Coatings B.V., PPG Industrial do Brasil - Tintas E. Vernizes - Ltda., PPG Industries (Korea) Ltd., PPG Industries (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., PPG Industries (UK) Ltd, PPG Industries Argentina S.R.L., PPG Industries Australia PTY Limited A.C.N. 055 500 939, PPG Industries Colombia Ltda., PPG Industries Czech Republic s.r.o., PPG Industries Delfzijl B.V., PPG Industries Europe Sarl, PPG Industries France S.A.S., PPG Industries International Inc., PPG Industries Italia S.r.l., PPG Industries Kimya a Sanayi VE Ticaret AS, PPG Industries LLC, PPG Industries Lipetsk LLC, PPG Industries Middle East FZE, PPG Industries Netherlands B.V., PPG Industries New Zealand Limited, PPG Industries Ohio Inc., PPG Industries Poland Sp. Z.o.o., PPG Industries Securities LLC, PPG Industries de Mexico S.A. de C.V., PPG Italia Business Support S.r.l., PPG Italia Sales & Services S.r.l., PPG Japan Ltd., PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes Canada LP, PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes U.K. LLP, PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes U.S. LLC, PPG Luxembourg Finance S.aR.L., PPG Luxembourg Holdings S.aR.L., PPG Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Mexico S.A. de C.V., PPG Packaging Coatings (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., PPG Paints Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Performance Coatings (Hong Kong) Limited, PPG Powder Coatings (Shanghai) Limited, PPG Romania S.A., PPG SSC Co. Ltd., PPG Switzerland GmbH, PPG Trilak Kft., PPG Vietnam Co. Ltd., PRC-DeSoto Australia Pty Ltd., PRC-DeSoto International Inc., PT. PPG Coatings Indonesia, Painter's Supply, Paintzen, Peintures de Paris SAS, Plasticos Envolventes S.A. de C.V., Polymeric Systems Inc., Prismo Road Markings Limited, ProCoatings B.V., ProCoatings BV, Protec Pty Ltd. A.C.N. 007 857 392, Reno A&E LLC, Revocoat France SAS, Revocoat Holding SAS, Revocoat Iberica SLU, Revocoat S.A.S, Road Infrastructure Investment Holdings Inc., SEM Products Inc., Sealants Europe SAS, Sierracin Corporation, Sierracin/Sylmar Corporation, Sigma Marine & Protective Coatings Holding B.V., SigmaKalon (BC) UK Limited, SigmaKalon Group, SigmaKalon Middle East B.V., Sikar (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Spraylat International Ltd, Texstars LLC, The Crown Group Co., The Crown Group Inc, The Homax Group, Tikkurila Group, Traffic Safety Intermediate LLC, Traffic Safety Parent LLC, United International Business NV, Vanex Inc., Vernisol S.p.A., Versaflex, Viasa S.A. de C.V., Whitford, Whitford B.V., Whitford Corporation, Whitford Jiangmen Ltd., Whitford Ltd. (HK), Whitford Ltd. (UK), Whitford Pte. Ltd., Whitford S.r.l., Whitford Worldwide Company LLC, Worwag Coatings, and Zaganite Industries Pty Ltd.
















Watching advocates demand "Disclosure" is for me a bit like watching a truck drive down the wrong way of a one-way street at full speed. It is apparent that these same advocates who often demand "Disclosure" don't seem to ever discuss how much their "movement" may have been subjected to manipulation by the very regressive aliens which these advocates allege work "behind the scene".





It is apparent that much of the UFO movement for disclosure is a product of what John Lash on metahistory.org refers to as alien-induced misdirection.





Manipulative aliens are apparently influencing the UFO movement for "Disclosure" through apparent agent provocateurs and "New Age" religion which are guided by demonic 'fallen angels'. Between these two dominant forces we as humans ought to expect little if any constructive results from the "Disclosure Movement".







The first problem that is apparent with the "Disclosure Movement" is that it champions a focus on a collective demand that "elites" are the problem and that they are hiding information.





If we as humans elevate our consciousness as the ancient Pagan Gnostics sought to as described by John Lash, there would be no need for "disclosure". That's because we as humans would generally know everything there is to know regarding aliens based upon insights discussed on metahistory.org.







"Elites" are not "the problem". Indeed, by the time someone becomes an "elite" member of society they know that at any time there are thousands upon thousands of other people "waiting in the wings" should the aliens need to "replace" the human who "goes astray" from the alien agenda.





So, for an elite, why should they surrender that "power" when if they rebel in any way, someone else will end up enjoying the "finer things in life" that they want for themselves?







The problem for us, as humans, are not the "elites" but the throngs of "youth" and other people so driven to "economic success" that they are willing to sell their souls and humanity's vital interest to aliens. Our youth and an "industrial army" props-up the system. "Elites" are just its figure heads that appear to be rich as a result of alien patronage. But, they lack any substantive power. The "Disclosure Movement" is thus essentially focusing on figure heads.







The second problem is that the UFO Disclosure Movement fails to acknowledge the extent to which our economic lives and whole societies have been dependent on an alien-controlled system.





According to the "Disclosure Movement" as humans we're "mature" and telling us about "the aliens" who immediately take us to the "Promised Land".







Let's deal more with the first problem.







Let's face it. The UFO Disclosure Movement's focus on elites is often well over 40 and 50 years too late!







That is to say, those people who become elites were apparently recruited to serve manipulative aliens from they were teenagers. Some researchers suggest that the manipulative aliens are abducting babies and children that they control as their new "parents" or through mind control reinforced through the global economy's greed-centred and ego-driven value systems.







You might wonder how does this recruitment system work.





Let me ask you a few questions.







Do you want to make lots of money?







Do you want to be economically successful with a great job; a nice home; and an expensive car?







Do you want to be promoted in your job and be a respected senior manager of your company?







Do you want to be able to go on nice vacations when you want and not worry about financial issues?





Well, if you answered "Yes" to most if not all of these questions, like most people, in our industrialized West and elsewhere, you have become a prime candidate to be recruited by manipulative alien operatives who appear as humans but they aren't.





The only way that we, as humans are going to be able to be free from alien misdirection on our planet Earth is if we as a human race collective reject saying "Yes" to any of these questions and focus on not what we want for ourselves but how we can be better custodians of each other and our planet Earth.







One of these apparent "recruitment officers" had apparently approached me in university and started to promise things if I worked for "them". I told them, "My soul is not for sale, I know what you're thinking, and the answer is No!"





They respected my answer and went about their business. But for every one person at an early age who rejects the fast track to "fame and fortune", tens if not hundreds of thousands of people would be more than willing to say "Yes" to such alien offers. And that is because of the nature of our "survival of the fittest" economic system which which encourages people from a very early age to accept a fast track to an "easy life" even if that means selling one's soul to demonic aliens.





The UFO "Disclosure Movement" fails at supporting constructive dialogue on the same capitalist economic system they have alleged to be controlled by manipulative aliens.





How can the Disclosure movement therefore think as far as the second problem that "elites" disclosing about aliens controlling the system is going to do anything but create some kind of immediate negative chaos?







Could you imagine what would happen if any President of the United States or any other "leader" said something like "By the way, we have had an Agreement with aliens that they could abduct some humans in exchange for technology," as Dr Michael Salla suggests?





Alex Collier has sought to present a critical message to humanity based upon his alleged contacts with Ethical Extraterrestrials.





Alex Collier asserts that it is vital that we as humans move away from a service to self prism which is the basis of human alien control over human societies. Instead, if we, as humans want to be liberated from manipulative aliens, we must support a "service to others" focus which would free humanity from the prevailing system of global capitalism which is a product of a manipulative alien effort to divide, conquer and assimilate humans into an Artificial Intelligence agenda





In the above video, Alex Collier discusses the selling out of humanity through the economic system which produces elites that seek to rule over humanity alongside demonic aliens







If the UFO movement seeks to become a constructive force for the liberation of humanity into a planetary milieu of peace, love and empathy then that movement ought to start focusing on replacing the current exploitative economic system which results in demonic alien control with an economic system which inspires humans to stop exploiting each other and our planet. That's the kind of discussion that we as human needs to have to save ourselves and our planet from demonic alien misdirection, and not this navel gazing and dysfunctional demands for a pie-in-the-sky "disclosure" that is being apparently managed to support the reported agenda of the alleged alien-political-military industrial complex of interests which Dr Micheal Salla reveals in his " Typology of Extraterrestrials ".
Domtar Corporation designs, manufactures, markets, and distributes communication papers, specialty and packaging papers, and absorbent hygiene products in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and internationally. It operates through two segments, Pulp and Paper, and Personal Care. The company provides business papers, including copy and electronic imaging papers used in inkjet and laser printers, photocopiers, and plain-paper fax machines, as well as computer papers, preprinted forms, and digital papers for office and home use. It also offers commercial printing and publishing papers, such as offset papers and opaques used in sheet and roll fed offset presses; publishing papers, which include tradebook and lightweight uncoated papers for publishing textbooks, dictionaries, catalogs, magazines, hard cover novels, and financial documents; and converting papers for envelopes, tablets, business forms, and data processing/computer forms. In addition, the company provides papers for thermal printing, flexible packaging, food packaging, medical packaging, medical gowns and drapes, sandpaper backing, carbonless printing, labels and other coating, and laminating applications; and papers for industrial and specialty applications, such as carrier papers, treated papers, security papers, and specialized printing and converting applications. Further, it offers absorbent hygiene products, including absorbent briefs, protective underwear, underpads, pads, washcloths, and body patches under the Attends, Indasec, IndasSlip, and Reassure brands; and baby diapers, training and youth pants, and bed mats under the Comfees, Chelino, Nene, and Bambino brand names. The company serves merchants, retail outlets, stationers, printers, publishers, converters, and end-users. Domtar Corporation was founded in 1848 and is based in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

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The following companies are subsidiares of TransUnion: Accupost Corporation, AppLock Limited, Auditz, Autolocator (Pty) Ltd., Beheer en Beleggingsmaatchapij Stivaco B.V., CIFIN S.A.S, [email protected] plc, Callcredit Data Solutions Limited, Callcredit Information, Callcredit Lead Generation Limited, Callcredit Marketing Ltd., Callcredit Public Sector Limited, Callcredit Spain S.L.U, Centro de Informacion y Estudios Estrategicos Empresariales S.A., Centro de Operaciones Servicios de Informacion Estrategica S.A., CheckMend Ltd., Coactiva Limited, Collection Africa Ltd., Confirma Sistemas de Informacion S.L., Credit Bureau of Carmel & Pebble Beach Inc., Credit Information Services Limited, Credit Information Systems Company Limited, Credit Reference Bureau (Holdings) Limited, Credit Reference Bureau Africa (Pty) Ltd., Credit Reference Bureau Africa Ltd., Credit Reporting Services Limited, Credit Retriever LLC, Crivo, Crown Acquisition BidCo Ltd., Crown Acquisition Consumer Ltd., Crown Acquisition MidCo Ltd., Crown Acquisition MidCo. 2 Ltd., Crown Acquisition TopCo. Ltd., DMWSL 617 Ltd., DMWSL 618 Ltd., DMWSL 619 Ltd., DMWSL 620 Ltd., DataLink Services, Datalink Services Inc., Decision Systems Inc., DecisionMetrics Limited, Diversified Data Development Corporation, Drivers History Inc., Drivers History Information Sales LLC, FT Holdings Inc., FactorTrust, FactorTrust Inc., GMAP Japan KK, GMAP Marketing Consulting Shangahi Co. Ltd, Healthcare Payment Specialists, INSDEC LLC, IS Resources Inc., Immobilise.com Limited, L2C Inc., L2C Inc., Link Marketing Inc., Link2credit Inc., Moussoro Participacoes Ltda., RTech, RTech Healthcare Revenue Technologies Inc., Recipero, Recipero Inc., Recipero Limited, Regional Data Systems Limited, RentPort, Rubixis, Rubixis Inc., Rubixis Technologies Private Limited, STS Vail Beheeren Administracion S. DE. R.L. DE C.V., Servicios y Asesoria S CO BC SA de CV, Signal, Soluciones de Informatica de Centroamerica (SICE) S.A., Source USA Insurance Agency Inc., Tenant ID Limited, Title Insurance Services Corporation, Trans Union Central America S.A., Trans Union Chile S.A., Trans Union Content Solutions LLC, Trans Union Costa Rica S.A., Trans Union Guatemala S.A., Trans Union Honduras-Buro de Credito S.A., Trans Union International Inc., Trans Union LLC, Trans Union Nicaragua S.A., Trans Union Real Estate Services Inc., Trans Union Software Services Private Limited, Trans Union de Puerto Rico Inc., Trans Union of Canada Inc., TransUnion (Mauritius) Limited, TransUnion (Proprietary) Ltd., TransUnion Africa (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Africa Holdings (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Analytic and Decision Services (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Asia Ltd., TransUnion Auto Information Solutions (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Baltics UAB, TransUnion Brasil Sistemas em Informatica Ltda., TransUnion CIBIL Limited, TransUnion Colombia Ltda., TransUnion Consumer Solutions LLC, TransUnion Credit Bureau (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Credit Bureau Namibia (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Data Solutions LLC, TransUnion Digital LLC, TransUnion El Salvador S.A. de C.V., TransUnion Exchange LLC, TransUnion Financing Corporation, TransUnion Global Holdings LLC, TransUnion Global Holdings LP, TransUnion Global Technology Center LLP, TransUnion Healthcare Inc., TransUnion Holding Cyprus Ltd., TransUnion ITC (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Information Group Limited, TransUnion Information Services Limited, TransUnion Information Solutions Inc., TransUnion Information Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., TransUnion Intelligence LLC, TransUnion Interactive Inc., TransUnion Intermediate Holdings Inc., TransUnion International Holdings LLC, TransUnion International UK Limited, TransUnion Kenya Limited, TransUnion Limited, TransUnion Ltd., TransUnion Marketing Solutions Inc., TransUnion Netherlands I B.V., TransUnion Netherlands II B.V., TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions Inc., TransUnion Reverse Exchange S de R.L. de C.V., TransUnion Risk Advisory Inc., TransUnion Risk and Alternative Data Solutions Inc., TransUnion Rwanda Limited, TransUnion S.A., TransUnion Soluciones de Informacion Chile SA, TransUnion Soluciones de Informacion S de R.L de C.V., TransUnion Teledata LLC, TransUnion UK Holdings Ltd., Tru Optik, TruSignal, TruSignal Inc., TrueLink, Trustev, Trustev Limited, Vail Holdings UK Ltd., Vail Systemen Groep B.V., Verifacts LLC, Visionary Systems Inc., Worthknowing Inc., eBureau, eBureau LLC, iovation Inc., iovation Ltd., and process benchmarking limited.
The following companies are subsidiares of Exxon Mobil: AKG Marketing Company Limited, Aera Energy LLC, Al-Jubail Petrochemical Company, Ampolex (Cepu) Pte Ltd, Ancon Insurance Company Inc., Barnett Gathering LLC, Barzan Gas Company Limited, Caspian Pipeline Consortium, Celtic Exploration Ltd., Coral FLNG S.A., Cross Timbers Energy LLC, Ellora Energy Inc., Esmeroon Oil Transporta Imperial Oil Limited, Esso (Thailand) Public Company Limited, Esso Australia Resources Pty Ltd, Esso Deutschland GmbH, Esso Erdgas Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Esso Exploration Angola (Block 15) Limited, Esso Exploration Angola (Block 17) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Angola (Overseas) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Chad Inc., Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria (Deepwater) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria (Offshore East) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria Limited, Esso Exploration and Production UK Limited, Esso Global Investments Ltd., Esso Italiana S.r.l., Esso Nederland B.V., Esso Norge AS, Esso Petroleum Company Limited, Esso Raffinage, Esso Societe Anonyme Francaise, Exxo Holdings Inc., Exxon Azerbaijan Limited, Exxon Chemical Arabia Inc., Exxon International Finance Company, Exxon Luxembourg Holdings LLC, Exxon Mobile Bay Limited Partnership, Exxon Neftegas Limited, Exxon Overseas Corporation, Exxon Overseas Investment Corporation, ExxonMobil (China) Investment Co. Ltd., ExxonMobil (Taicang) Petroleum Co. Ltd., ExxonMobil Abu Dhabi Offshore Petroleum Company Limited, ExxonMobil Alaska Production Inc., ExxonMobil Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., ExxonMobil Australia Pty Ltd, ExxonMobil B Resources Company, ExxonMobil Capital Finance Company, ExxonMobil Capital Netherlands B.V., ExxonMobil Central Europe Holding GmbH, ExxonMobil Cepu Limited, ExxonMobil Chemical France, ExxonMobil Chemical Gulf Coast Investments LLC, ExxonMobil Chemical Holland B.V., ExxonMobil Chemical Services (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ExxonMobil China Petroleum & Petrochemical Company Limited, ExxonMobil Development Africa B.V., ExxonMobil Development Company, ExxonMobil Egypt (S.A.E.), ExxonMobil Exploracao Brasil Ltda., ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Malaysia Inc., ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Norway AS, ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Romania Limited, ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Tanzania Limited, ExxonMobil Finance Company Limited, ExxonMobil Financial Investment Company Limited, ExxonMobil France Holding SAS, ExxonMobil Gas Marketing Europe Limited, ExxonMobil General Finance Company, ExxonMobil Global Services Company, ExxonMobil Golden Pass Surety LLC, ExxonMobil Holding Company Holland LLC, ExxonMobil Holding Norway AS, ExxonMobil Hong Kong Limited, ExxonMobil International Services SARL, ExxonMobil Iraq Limited, ExxonMobil Italiana Gas S.r.l., ExxonMobil Kazakhstan Inc., ExxonMobil Kazakhstan Ventures Inc., ExxonMobil LNG Services B.V., ExxonMobil Lubricants Trading Company, ExxonMobil Oil Corporation, ExxonMobil PNG Limited, ExxonMobil Petroleum & Chemical BVBA, ExxonMobil Petroleum & Chemical Holdings Inc., ExxonMobil Pipeline Company, ExxonMobil Production Deutschland GmbH, ExxonMobil Production Norway Inc., ExxonMobil Qatargas (II) Limited, ExxonMobil Qatargas Inc., ExxonMobil Ras Laffan (III) Limited, ExxonMobil Rasgas Inc., ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, ExxonMobil Russia Kara Sea Holdings B.V., ExxonMobil Sales and Supply LLC, ExxonMobil Technology Finance Company, ExxonMobil Ventures Finance Company, ExxonMobil Ventures Funding Ltd., Fujian Refining & Petrochemical Co. Ltd., Golden Pass LNG Terminal Investments LLC, Golden Pass LNG Terminal LLC, Gulf Coast Growth Ventures LLC, Imperial Oil Limited, Imperial Oil Resources Limited, Imperial Oil Resources N.W.T. Limited, Imperial Oil/Petroliere Imperiale, Infineum Italia s.r.I., Infineum Singapore Pte. Ltd., InterOil Corporation, Jurong Aromatics Corporation Pte Ltd, MPM Lubricants, Marine Well Containment Company LLC, Mobil Australia Resources Company Pty Limited, Mobil California Exploration & Producing Asset Company, Mobil Caspian Pipeline Company, Mobil Chemical Products International Inc., Mobil Corporation, Mobil Equatorial Guinea Inc., Mobil Erdgas Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Mobil Exploration & Producing Australia Pty Ltd, Mobil International Petroleum Corporation, Mobil Oil Australia Pty Ltd, Mobil Oil Exploration & Producing Southeast Inc., Mobil Oil New Zealand Limited, Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, Mobil Producing Texas & New Mexico Inc., Mobil SerLimited, Mobil Venezolana De Petroleos Inc., Mobil Yanbu Petrochemical Company Inc., Mobil Yanbu Refining Company Inc., Mountain Gathering LLC, Mozambique Rovuma Venture S.p.A., Palmetto Transoceanic LLC, Papua New Guinea Liquefied Natural Gas Global Company LDC, Permian Express Partners LLC, Phillips Exploration LLC, Qatar Liquefied Gas Company Limited, Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Company Limited, Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Company Limited (II), SPI Limited, Saudi Aramco Mobil Refinery Company Ltd., Saudi Yanbu Petrochemical Co., SeaRiver Maritime Inc., South Hook LNG Terminal Company Limited, Tengizchevroil LLP, Terminale GNL Adriatico S.r.l, Trend Gathering & Treating LLC, Wolverine Pipe Line Company, XH LLC, XTO Delaware Basin LLC, XTO Energy Canada, XTO Energy Inc., and XTO Holdings LLC.
Fraport AG operates airports in Germany, rest of Europe, Asia, and the United States. The company primarily focuses on the operation of Frankfurt Main airport. It operates through four segments: Aviation, Retail & Real Estate, Ground Handling, and International Activities & Services. The Aviation segment operates landside and airside infrastructure, which covers the area of airport charges. The Retail & Real Estate segment engages in retail activities, including marketing of real estate properties and land. This segment also manages buildings and facilities, and parking and retail areas; and rents advertising space. The Ground Handling segment provides loading, baggage, and passenger services through airmail and luggage transport to freight handling. The International Activities & Services segment acquires, operates, maintains, develops, and expands airports and infrastructure facilities. This segment also offers integrated facility and corporate infrastructure management, airport expansion south, and information and telecommunication services. Fraport AG was founded in 1924 and is headquartered in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Dominion Energy: 96WI 8me LLC, Alamo Solar LLC, Align RNG Arizona LLC, Align RNG Arizona-Snowflake LLC, Align RNG California LLC, Align RNG California-Corcoran LLC, Align RNG Grady Road LLC, Align RNG LLC, Align RNG Magnolia LLC, Align RNG North Carolina LLC, Align RNG North Carolina-Bowdens LLC, Align RNG Utah LLC, Align RNG Utah-Milford LLC, Align RNG Virginia LLC, Align RNG Virginia-Waverly LLC, Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC, Azalea Solar LLC, BOE Holdings Inc., Blackville Solar Farm LLC, Blue Ocean Energy Marine LLC, BrightSuite Home LLC, BrightSuite Inc., BrightSuite Solar CT Inc., BrightSuite Solar SC Inc., BrightSuite Solar VA Inc., Buckingham Solar I LLC, CEA Americus LLC, CEA CO-Fort Morgan LLC, CEA Clovis LLC, CEA Dairy RNG Colorado LLC, CEA Dairy RNG Georgia LLC, CEA Dairy RNG Idaho LLC, CEA Dairy RNG Nevada LLC, CEA Dairy RNG New Mexico LLC, CEA Dairy RNG Texas LLC, CEA Greely LLC, CEA Mason LLC, CEA TX-Dimmitt LLC, CID Solar LLC, CNG Coal Company, CNG Power Services Corporation, Carolina Gas Transmission Corporation, Catalina Solar 2 LLC, Clean Energy Asset USA LLC, Clean Energy Enterprises Inc., Clipperton Holdings LLC, Consolidated Natural Gas Company, Correctional Solar LLC, Cottonwood Solar LLC, Cove Point LNG LP, Cove Point LNG Limited, DE Arlington Solar LLC, DE Fluvanna Solar LLC, DE Hanover Solar LLC, DE Henrico Solar LLC, DE King William Solar LLC, DE Louisa Solar LLC, DE Newport News Solar LLC, DE Powhatan Solar LLC, DE Virginia Beach Solar LLC, DECP Holdings Inc., Dairy RNG Holdings LLC, Dairy RNG NY LLC, Dairy RNG NY-Curtin LLC, Dairy RNG OH LLC, Denmark Solar LLC, Dominion ACP Holding Inc., Dominion Alternative Energy Holdings Inc., Dominion Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC, Dominion Capital Inc., Dominion Cogen WV Inc., Dominion Energy Fuel Services Inc., Dominion Energy Gas Distribution LLC, Dominion Energy Generation Marketing Inc., Dominion Energy Inc., Dominion Energy Kewaunee Inc., Dominion Energy Marketplace LLC, Dominion Energy Nuclear Connecticut Inc., Dominion Energy Overthrust Pipeline LLC, Dominion Energy Payroll Company Inc., Dominion Energy Questar Corporation, Dominion Energy Questar Pipeline LLC, Dominion Energy Questar Pipeline Services Inc., Dominion Energy RNG Holdings II Inc., Dominion Energy RNG Holdings Inc., Dominion Energy Services Inc., Dominion Energy Solar CA LLC, Dominion Energy Solutions Inc., Dominion Energy South Carolina Inc., Dominion Energy Southeast Services Inc., Dominion Energy Technical Solutions Inc., Dominion Energy Technologies II Inc., Dominion Energy Technologies Inc., Dominion Energy Terminal Company Inc., Dominion Energy Wexpro Services Company, Dominion Equipment III Inc., Dominion Equipment Inc., Dominion Fairless Hills Inc., Dominion Fowler Ridge Wind LLC, Dominion Gas Projects Company LLC, Dominion Generation Inc., Dominion Greenbrier Inc., Dominion High Voltage Holdings Inc., Dominion High Voltage MidAtlantic Inc., Dominion Investments Inc., Dominion Keystone Pipeline Holdings Inc., Dominion Keystone Pipeline LLC, Dominion MLP Holding Company III Inc., Dominion Mt. Storm Wind LLC, Dominion Nuclear Projects Inc., Dominion Oklahoma Texas Exploration & Production Inc., Dominion Person Inc., Dominion Privatization Florida LLC, Dominion Privatization Georgia LLC, Dominion Privatization Holdings Inc., Dominion Privatization Kentucky LLC, Dominion Privatization Maryland LLC, Dominion Privatization Pennsylvania LLC, Dominion Privatization South Carolina LLC, Dominion Privatization Texas LLC, Dominion Privatization Virginia LLC, Dominion Products and Services Inc., Dominion Projects Services Inc., Dominion Resources Capital Trust III, Dominion Retail Gas Holdings Inc., Dominion Solar Construction and Maintenance LLC, Dominion Solar Gen-Tie LLC, Dominion Solar Holdings I LLC, Dominion Solar Holdings II LLC, Dominion Solar Holdings III LLC, Dominion Solar Holdings IV LLC, Dominion Solar Projects A Inc., Dominion Solar Projects B Inc., Dominion Solar Projects C Inc., Dominion Solar Projects D Inc., Dominion Solar Projects I Inc., Dominion Solar Projects II Inc., Dominion Solar Projects III Inc., Dominion Solar Projects IV Inc., Dominion Solar Projects V Inc., Dominion Solar Projects VI Inc., Dominion Solar Projects VII Inc., Dominion Solar Services Inc., Dominion State Line LLC, Dominion Voltage Inc., Dominion Wholesale Inc., Dominion Wind Development LLC, Dominion Wind Projects Inc., ESCT-SA-Suffield LLC, Eagle Holdco Solar LLC, Eagle Solar LLC, Eastern Shore Solar LLC, Enterprise Solar LLC, Escalante Solar I LLC, Escalante Solar II LLC, Escalante Solar III LLC, Four Brothers Solar LLC, Fremont Farm LLC, Granite Mountain Holdings LLC, Granite Mountain Solar East LLC, Granite Mountain Solar West LLC, Greenbrier Marketing Company LLC, Greenbrier Pipeline Company LLC, Greensville County Solar Project LLC, Hardin Solar Energy LLC, Hecate Energy Cherrydale LLC, Hecate Energy Clarke County LLC, Hope Gas Inc., Imperial Valley Solar Company (IVSC) 2 LLC, Indy Solar Development LLC, Indy Solar I LLC, Indy Solar II LLC, Indy Solar III LLC, Innovative Solar 37 LLC, Iron Springs Holdings LLC, Iron Springs Solar LLC, Louis Dreyfus Natural Gas, Maricopa West Solar PV LLC, Moffett Solar 1 LLC, Moorings Farm 2 LLC, Mulberry Farm LLC, Mustang Solar LLC, PSNC Blue Ridge Corporation, PSNC Cardinal Pipeline Company, Pavant Solar LLC, Phone House, Pikeville Farm LLC, Prairie Fork Wind Farm LLC, Public Service Company of North Carolina Incorporated, QPC Holding Company LLC, Questar Corporation, Questar Energy Services Inc., Questar Field Services LLC, Questar Gas Company, Questar InfoComm Inc., Questar Southern Trails Pipeline Company, Questar White River Hub LLC, RE Adams East LLC, RE Camelot LLC, RE Columbia Two LLC, RE Kansas LLC, RE Kent South LLC, RE Old River One LLC, Richland Solar Center LLC, Ridgeland Solar Farm I LLC, SBL Holdco LLC, SCANA, SCANA Communications Holdings Inc., SCANA Corporate Security Services Inc., SCANA Energy Marketing LLC, SCANA Pharmacy LLC, SRFI LLC, Scana Corporation, Scott-II Solar LLC, Seabrook Solar LLC, Selmer Farm LLC, Siler Solar LLC, Sol Madison Solar LLC, Somers Solar Center LLC, South Carolina Fuel Company Inc., South Carolina Generating Company Inc., Southampton Solar LLC, Summit Farms Solar LLC, Sussex Drive Solar Project LLC, TA - Acacia LLC, TWE Myrtle Solar Project LLC, The East Ohio Gas Company, Trask East Solar LLC, Tredegar Solar Fund I LLC, VP Property Inc., Virginia Electric And Power Company, Virginia Power Fuel Corporation, Virginia Power Nuclear Services Company, Virginia Power Services Energy Corp. Inc., Virginia Power Services LLC, Virginia Solar 201 Projects LLC, Wakefield Solar LLC, Wexpro Company, Wexpro Development Company, Wexpro II Company, Wilkinson Solar LLC, Wrangler Retail Gas Holdings LLC, and Yemassee Solar LLC.
The following companies are subsidiares of Accenture: 2nd Road, 2nd Road Pty Ltd., ?What If!, ?What If! China Holdings Ltd, ?What If! Holdings Limited, ?What If! Innovation Singapore Holdings Pte, ?What If! Limited, ?What If! Shanghai Co. Ltd, ?What If! USA LLC, ACN Consulting Co Ltd, AD Dialeto Agencia de Publicidade SA, AD.Dialeto (Digital Agency acquired by Accenture), AGS Business and Technology Services Limited, ASM Research Inc., ASM Research LLC, ATAN, Accenture (Beijing) Mobile Technology Co Ltd, Accenture (Botswana) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (China) Co Ltd, Accenture (Shenzhen) Technology Co. Ltd., Accenture (South Africa) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (South Africa) Pty Limited, Accenture (UK) Ltd, Accenture 2 Business Process Services S.A., Accenture 2 LLC, Accenture A/S, Accenture AB, Accenture AG, Accenture AS, Accenture Africa Pty Ltd, Accenture Australia Holding B.V., Accenture Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, Accenture Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture Azerbaijan Ltd, Accenture BPM Operations Support Services S.A., Accenture BPM S.C.R.L., Accenture BV, 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 CAS GmbH, Accenture Canada Holdings Inc., Accenture Capital DAC, Accenture Capital Inc, Accenture Central Europe B.V., Accenture Chile Asesorias y Servicios Ltda, Accenture Cloud Services GmbH, Accenture Cloud Software Solutions Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions LLC, Accenture Cloud Solutions Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Co Ltd, Accenture Co Ltd., Accenture Communications Infrastructure Solutions Ltd, Accenture Company 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 SAS, Accenture Customer Services Limited, Accenture Danismanlik Limited Sirketi, Accenture Defined Benefit Pension Plan Trustees Ltd, Accenture Defined Contribution Pension Plan Trustees Ltd, Accenture Delivery Poland sp. z o.o., Accenture Dienstleistungen GmbH, Accenture Digital France Holdings SA, 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 (Gibraltar) III Ltd, Accenture Finance GmbH, Accenture Finance GmbH in liquidation, Accenture Finance II GmbH, Accenture Finance II GmbH in liquidation, Accenture Finance II Ltd, Accenture Finance Limited, Accenture Finance and Accounting BPO Services S.p.A., Accenture Finance and Accounting Services Srl, Accenture Flex LLC, Accenture GP LLC, Accenture Ghana Limited, Accenture Global Holdings Ltd., Accenture Global Services Ltd, Accenture Global Solutions Ltd, Accenture GmbH, Accenture HR Services Ltd, Accenture HR Services S.p.A., Accenture Healthcare Processing Inc., Accenture Holding GmbH, Accenture Holding GmbH & Co. KG, Accenture Holding GmbH in liquidation, Accenture Holdings (Iberia) S.L., Accenture Holdings B.V., Accenture Holdings France SAS, Accenture Holdings plc, Accenture Hungary Holdings Kft, Accenture Inc, Accenture Industrial Software Limited Liability Company (Accenture Endustriyel Yazylym Cozumleri Limited irketi), Accenture Industrial Software Limited Liability Company (Accenture Endustriyel Yazlm Cozumleri Limited Sirketi), Accenture Industrial Software Solutions Kft, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions SA, Accenture Insurance Services LLC, Accenture Insurance Services SAS, Accenture Insurance Services SpA, Accenture International BV, Accenture International Capital SCA, Accenture International LLC, Accenture International Limited, Accenture International Sarl, Accenture Japan Ltd, Accenture Korea BV, Accenture LLC, Accenture LLP, Accenture Lanka (Private) Ltd, Accenture Limited, Accenture Ltd, Accenture Ltda, Accenture Maghreb S.a.r.l., Accenture Managed Services SRL, Accenture Managed Services SpA, Accenture Management GmbH, Accenture Middle East B.V, Accenture Middle East BV, Accenture Minority I BV, Accenture Minority III Ltd, Accenture Mozambique Limitada, Accenture Mzansi (Pty) Ltd, Accenture NV/SA, Accenture NZ Limited, Accenture Newco LLC, Accenture Nova Scotia Unlimited Liability Co., Accenture OOO, Accenture Operations Sp. z o.o., Accenture Outsourcing SRL, Accenture Outsourcing Services, Accenture Outsourcing Services S.A., Accenture Oy, Accenture Panama Inc, Accenture Participations BV, Accenture Participations II Limited, Accenture Peru S.R.L, Accenture Peru S.R.L., Accenture Post Trade Processing SAS, Accenture Post-Trade Processing Limited, Accenture Process Ltd, Accenture Product Lifecycle Services, Accenture Properties, Accenture Pte Ltd, Accenture Puerto Rico LLC, Accenture S.A., Accenture S.C., Accenture S.L., Accenture S.R.L., Accenture SAS, Accenture SG Services Pte Ltd, Accenture SRL, Accenture Saudi Arabia Limited, Accenture Sendirian Berhad, Accenture Service Center SRL, Accenture Services (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Services AB, Accenture Services AG, Accenture Services AS, Accenture Services GmbH, Accenture Services Ltd, Accenture Services Morocco SA, Accenture Services Oy, Accenture Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Services S.r.l., Accenture Services SRL, Accenture Services Sp. z o.o., Accenture Services Sp. z.o.o., Accenture Services and Technology Srl, Accenture Services fur Kreditinstitute GmbH, Accenture Services s.r.o., Accenture Servicos Administrativos Ltda, Accenture Servicos de Suporte de Negocios Ltda, Accenture Solutions Co Ltd, Accenture Solutions Private Limited, Accenture Solutions Pte Ltd, Accenture Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture Sp. z o.o., Accenture Sp. z.o.o., Accenture SpA, Accenture State Healthcare Services LLC, Accenture Sub II Inc., Accenture Sub Inc, Accenture Sub LLC, Accenture Systems Integration Limited, Accenture Sarl, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag KFT, Accenture Technologia, Accenture Technologia Consultoria e Outsourcing S.A., Accenture Technology Infrastructure Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions (Dalian) Co Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions (HK) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (Thailand) Co. Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas, 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 SAS, Accenture Technology Solutions SRL, Accenture Technology Solutions Sdn. Bhd., Accenture Technology Solutions Slovakia s.r.o., Accenture Technology Ventures BV, Accenture Technology Ventures S.P.R.L., Accenture Uruguay SRL, Accenture Vietnam Co., Accenture Vietnam Co. LTD, Accenture Zambia Limited, Accenture do Brasil Limitada, Accenture plc, Accenture s.r.o., Acceria, Acquity Customer Insight Limited, Acquity Group, Adaptly LLC, Adaptly UK Limited, AddVal Technology, Adqptly, Advantium Inc., Agave Consultants Limited, Agilex Technologies Inc., Allen International, Allen International Consulting Group Ltd, Alnova Technologies Corporation S.L., AlphaBeta Advisors, Altima, Altima Asia Ltd., Altima SAS, Altitude, Altitude LLC, Analytics 8 LP, Analytics 8 Pty Ltd, Analytics8, Aorui Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Apis, Appaloosa Technology SAS, Arca, Ariba - BPO, Arismore, Aspiro Solutions (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Avanade, Avanade (Guangzhou) Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd., Avanade (Thailand) Co Ltd, Avanade Asia Pte Ltd, Avanade Australia Pty Ltd, Avanade Belgium SPRL, Avanade Canada Inc., Avanade Denmark A/S, Avanade Denmark ApS, Avanade Deutschland GmbH, Avanade Europe Holdings Ltd, Avanade Europe Services Ltd, Avanade Federal Services LLC, Avanade Finland Oy, Avanade France SAS, Avanade GZ Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd. (SH), Avanade Guangzhou, Avanade Holdings LLC, Avanade Hong Kong Ltd, Avanade International Corporation, Avanade Ireland Limited, Avanade Italy SRL, Avanade KK, Avanade Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avanade Netherlands BV, Avanade Norway AS, Avanade Poland Sp. z o.o., Avanade Poland Sp. z.o.o., Avanade Schweiz GmbH, Avanade South Africa, Avanade South Africa Pty Ltd, Avanade Spain SL, Avanade Sweden AB, Avanade UK Ltd, Avanade do Brasil Limitada, Avanade Osterreich GmbH, AvantBiz Consulting Limited, Avenai, Axia Ltd., BABCN LLC, BCT Solutions, BCT Solutions Pty Ltd, BPO Servicos Administrativos Ltda, BRIDGE Energy Group, Beacon Consulting Group Inc., Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd., Benext, Bionic, Blue Horseshoe, Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, Boomerang Pharmaceuticals Communications Ireland Limited, Bow & Arrow, Brand Learning, Brand Learning Group Limited, Brand Learning LLC, Brand Learning Ltd, Brand Learning Partners Limited, Brand Learning Pte Limited, Bridge Energy Group LLC, Brightstep AB, Byte Prophecy, CAS, CRMWaypoint, CadenceQuest Inc., Capable Marketer Limited, Capgemini - North American health practice, Capital Consultancy Services Inc., Certus Solutions Consulting Services Ltd, Certus Solutions Ltd, ChangeTrack Research Pty Ltd., Chaotic Moon Studios, Chengdu Mensa Advertising Co. Ltd., Cimation, Cimation UK Limited, Cirruseo, Cirruseo SAS, Clarity Insights, Clearhead, Clearhead Group, Clearhead Group LLC, ClientHouse GmbH, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Sherpas (GA) LLC, Cloud Sherpas (SN) (PTE.) Limited, Cloud Sherpas New Zealand Ltd., Cloud Talent Limited, Cloudsherpas, Cloudsherpas Inc., Cloudworks, Codagenic Pty. Ltd., Computer Research and Telecommunications LLC, Concrete Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Ltda., Concrete Solutions, Concrete Solutions Ltda., Context Information Security, Coritel S.A., Corliant Inc., CreativeDrive, CustomerWorks Europe SL, Cutting Edge Solutions Ltd, D5 Global Holdings LLC, DAZ Systems Inc, DAZ Systems LLC, DAZSI Systems (India) Pvt. Ltd., DMA Solutions Limited, Davies Consulting, DayNine Consulting, DayNine Consulting (Australia) PTY LTD, DayNine Consulting (Deutschland) GmbH, DayNine Consulting (New Zealand) Limited, DayNine Consulting France SAS, DayNine Consulting Japan K.K., DayNine Consulting LLC, Declarative Holdings, Declarative Holdings LLC, Defense Point Security, Deja vu Security, Design Strategy and Research de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Designaffairs LLC, Digiplug S.A.S., Digiplug SAS, Digital Consulting & Software Services LLC, Droga5, Droga5 LLC, Droga5 Studios LLC, Droga5 UK Ltd., Duck Creek Technologies, Duck Creek Technologies LLC, Deja Vu Security LLC, ESR Labs, Elcurator SAS, Enaxis Consulting, Enaxis Consulting L.P., End-to-End Analytics, Energuia Web, Energuia Web S.A., Energy Management Brokers Ltd., Energy Quote Private Ltd., EnergyQuote JHA, EnergyQuote JHA Ltd., EnergyQuote Trading Ltd., Enimbos, Enkitec, 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, Enterprise System Partners PR LLC, Enterprise System Partners S.A.S., Entropia, Epylon, Ethica Consulting Group, Evopro Group, Exactside Limited, Exton Consulting, Fairway Technologies Inc, Fairway Technologies LLC, Filmproduction ApS, First Annapolis Consulting, First Annapolis Consulting Inc., First Annapolis Consulting LLC, First Annapolis International, Fjord, Focus Group Europe, Focus Group Europe Limited, Formicary, Formicary Holdings Limited, Formicary Limited, FusionX, FutureMove Automotive, Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda., Genfour, Genfour Limited, George Group Consulting L.P., Gestalt LLC, Gestion Altima Canada Inc., Gevity, Global Public Firm S.L., GlobalView SAS, GoodFilm GmbH Filmproduktion Stuttgart, H.B. Maynard and Co. Inc., HRC Retail Advisory, Hagberg Consulting Group, Hangzhou Aiyunzhe Technology Co. Ltd., Happen, Hjaltelin Stahl, Hjaltelin Stahl K/S, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Hytracc Consulting UK Limited, Hytracc Holding AS, I-Faber S.p.A., IBB Consulting, IMJ Corp, IMJ Corporation, INCAD, INSITUM, IT One Company Limited, ITBS Servicios Bancarios de Tecnologia de la Informacion SL, Icon Integration, Imagine Broadband (USA) Ltd, Imagine Broadband USA LLC, Imaginea Inc, Industrie&Co, Infoman AG, Infoman Schweiz AG, Informatica de Euskadi S.L., Infusion Development Inc., Infusion Development UK Limited, InfusionDev LLC, Innoveer Solutions India Pvt Ltd, Insitum Consultoria Argentina SRL, Insitum Consultoria Brasil LTDA, Insitum Consultoria Colombia SAS, Insitum Consultoria Europa SL, Insitum Consultoria Peru SAC, Insitum Consultoria S.A. de C.V., Intrepid, Intrigo Systems Inc, Intrigo Systems India Pvt. Limited, Intrigo Systems LLC, Inventor Advertisement (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Inventor Technology Limited, InvestTech, Investtech Systems Consulting LLC, Javelin Group, Javelin Group (Bulgaria) EOOD, Javelin Group Limited (UK), Javelin Group SASU, K Comms Group Limited, KCS.net AG, KCS.net AG West, KCS.net Deutschland GmbH, KCS.net Holding AG, KCS.net Osterreich GmbH, Kaper Communications Limited, Karma Communications Debtco Limited, Karma Communications Group Limited, Karma Communications Holdings Limited, Karmarama, Karmarama Comms Limited, Karmarama Limited, Knowledge Rules Inc., Knowledgent, Knowledgent Group LLC, Kogentix, Kogentix LLC, Kogentix Ltd, Kogentix Singapore Pte. Ltd, Kogentix Technologies Private Limited, Kolle Rebbe, Kolle Rebbe GmbH, Kream Comms Limited, Kunstmaan, Kunstmaan NV, Kurt Salmon, Kurt Salmon Canada LTD, Kurt Salmon UKI, Kurt Salmon UKI Ltd., Kurt Salmon US LLC, LEXTA, LINKBYNET, LabAnswer, LabAnswer Government, LemonXL Limited, Logistics Market Place Limited (UK), Loud & Clear Creative Pty Ltd, MAXIM Systems Inc., MCG US Holdings LLC, Mackevision CG Technology and Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Mackevision Corporation, Mackevision Japan Co. Ltd., Mackevision Korea Ltd, Mackevision Medien Design, Mackevision Medien Design GmbH, Mackevision Singapore Pte. Ltd., Mackevision UK Ltd, Maglan, Maglan Information Defense Technologies Research Ltd., Maihiro, Matter, Matter Llc, Maud Corp Pty Limited, Maxamine International, Media Audits Ltd., Media Hive, Mediasenz Pty Ltd., Meredith Specialty LLC, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing Corporation, Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd., Mindtribe, Mindtribe Product Engineering LLC, MobGen, MobGen Technology S.L, Moonrise NV, Mortgage Cadence, Mortgage Cadence an Accenture Company, Most Champion Ltd, Mudano, N3 LLC, NBS Marketing Inc., NYTEC, Nanjing Demeng Advertising Co. Ltd., Nashco Consulting, NaviSys Inc., NellArmonia, Neo Metrics Analytics S.L., Neo Metrics Chile, Neo Metrics Chile S.A., New Content, New Content Chile SpA, New Content Editora e Produtora Ltda., New Energy Aborda, New Energy Associates Ltd, New Energy Group, New Energy S.r.l., NewsPage, NewsPage (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, NewsPage China Ltd., NewsPage Pte Ltd, Nice Agency Limited, Northstream, Northstream AB, Northstream Holding AB, OCTO Technology, OPS Rules Management Consultants, Octagon Research Solutions Inc., Octo Technology LTDA, Octo Technology Pty Ltd, Octo Technology SA, Octo Technology SPRL, Octoman SAS, Odgaard ApS, Olikka, Openmind, Openminded, Operaciones Accenture S.A. de C.V., OpusLine, Orbium, Orbium Consulting Ltd, Orbium GmbH, Orbium Holding AG, Orbium Inc., Orbium International AG, Orbium International sp. z o.o., Orbium Licences AG, Orbium Limited, Orbium Pte. Ltd., Orbium Pty Ltd, Orbium Services sp. z o.o., Orbium Sarl, Origin Digital, PCO Innovation, PCO Innovation Canada Inc., PCO Innovation EURL, PIXO PUNCH Limited, PLM Systems S.r.l, POC Holdings, PRION GmbH, PT Accenture, PT Asta Catur Indra, PT Kogentix Teknologi Indonesia, Pach Invest SARL, Pach Invest SAS, PacificLink Group, PacificLink iMedia Ltd., Paja Finanssipalvelut Oy, Parker Fitzgerald Inc, Parker Fitzgerald Inc., Parker Fitzgerald International Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Limited, Parker Fitzgerald PTY Ltd, Parker Fitzgerald Services Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Solutions Limited, Partners Technology Mexico Holdings BV, Pecaso Ltd., Pegasus Production K/S, Perseroan Terbatas. Accenture, Phase One Consulting Group, Pillar Technology, Pollux, Pragsis Bidoop, Pragsis Bidoop UK Ltd, Pragsis Technologies S.L, PrimeQ, PrimeQ Australia Pty Ltd, PrimeQ Ltd, PrimeQ NZ Pty Ltd, Procurian Germany GmbH, Procurian Inc., Procurian International I LLC, Procurian International II LLC, Procurian LLC, Procurian Singapore Pte. Ltd., Procurian Switzerland GmbH, Procurian USA LLC, Proquire LLC, PureApps Ltd., Qi Jie Beijing Information Technologies Co Ltd, Radiant Services, Radiant Services LLC, Random Walk Computing Inc., Reactive Media Limited, Reactive Media Pty Ltd., Real Protect, Realworld OO Systems Ltd., Redcore, Redcore (Asia) Pte Ltd, Redcore (India) Private Limited (India), Redcore (New Zealand) Limited, Redcore Group Holdings Pty Ltd, Redcore Pty Ltd, Renacentis IT Services, Revolutionary Security, RiskControl, Rothco, Rothco Holdings Designated Activity Company, Rothco Unlimited Company, S.C. EnergyQuote S.r.l., S3 TV Technology Limited, S3 TV Technology Ltd., SEC Servizi, SEC Servizi S.p.A., SOPIA Corp., Sagacious Consultants, Sagacious Consultants LLC, Salt Solutions, Sanchez Capital Services Pvt Ltd, Schlumberger Business Consulting, Seabury Airline Planning Group, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace (UK) Limited, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace Asia (Hong Kong) Limited, Seabury Aviation Consulting LLC, Seabury Cargo Advisory B.V., Seabury Consulting, Seabury Corporate Advisors LLC, Seabury Human Capital LLC, Seabury Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Seabury Structured Finance LLC, Search Technologies BPO, Search Technologies BPO Inc., Search Technologies GmbH, Search Technologies International LLC, Search Technologies LATAM, Search Technologies LATAM S.A., Search Technologies LLC, Search Technologies Limited, Sente Partners LLC, Sentelis, Servicios Tecnicos de Programacion Accenture S.C., Shackleton, Shackleton Barcelona S.L., Shackleton Chile S.A., Shackleton Madrid S.L., Shackleton S.A., Shanghai Baiyue Advertising Co. Ltd., Shun Zhe Technology Development Co. Ltd., Silveo, Simian Pty Limited, SinnerSchrader AG, SinnerSchrader Commerce GmbH, SinnerSchrader Content GmbH, SinnerSchrader Deutschland GmbH, SinnerSchrader Praha s.r.o., SinnerSchrader Swipe GmbH, Sinnerschrader, Sistemes Consulting S.L., Solutions IQ, Solutions IQ LLC, SolutionsIQ, SolutionsIQ India Consulting Services Private Limited, Storm Digital, Storm Digital B.V., Structure Consulting Group, Structure Consulting Group LLC, Sutter Mills, Systor AG, TQuila Limited (UK), Tadata Creative Unlimited Company, Tara Insurance DAC, Tara Risk DAC, TargetST8, TargetST8 Consulting LLC, Tech - Avanade Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Tecnilogica Ecosistemas S.A., Tecnilogica Ltd., Tecnilogica, The Brand Learning Partners Limited, The Callisto Integration Corporation, The Monkeys, The Monkeys Pty Limited, The Myrtle Group, Total Logistics, Total Logistics Supply Chain Consultants Limited, Tquila, Trivadis AG, Troop Studios Pty Ltd, VanBerlo, Verax Solutions, Verax Solutions Corporation, Vertical Retail Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd., Vertical Retail Consulting Hong Kong, Vertical Retail Consulting Hong Kong Ltd., Vertical Retail Consulting Ltd., Vivere Brasil Servicos e Solucoes SA, Vivere Brasil Solucoes De Credito Ltda., Wabion GmbH, Weblinc Pty Ltd, Wire Stone, Wire Stone LLC, Wire Stone Sarl, Wolox, Workforce Insight Inc, Yesler, Zag, Zenta, Zenta Global Philippines, Zenta Global Philippines Inc., Zenta Mortgage Services LLC, Zenta Recoveries Inc, Zenta US Holdings Inc., 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, and solid-serVision.com GmbH.
Wall Street analysts have given iShares Global Industrials ETF a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but iShares Global Industrials ETF wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

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Magna International Inc. designs, engineers, and manufactures components, assemblies, systems, subsystems, and modules for original equipment manufacturers of vehicles and light trucks worldwide. The company operates through four segments: Body Exteriors & Structures, Power & Vision, Seating Systems, and Complete Vehicles. Its Body Exteriors & Structures segment provides body and chassis systems, as well as engineering and testing services; exterior systems, including fascia and trims, front end modules, front integration panels, liftgate modules, active aerodynamics, engineered glass, running boards, truck bed access products, and side doors; and roof systems, such as modular and textile folding roofs, and hard and soft tops. The company's Power & Vision segment offers dedicated hybrid, dual and e-clutch, and manual transmissions; engine drive plates and accessories; AWD/4WD products, rear drive modules, and hybrid and battery electric drive systems; transmission, engine, and driveline components; advanced driver assistance systems, camera systems, ultrasonic sensors, and electronic controllers; interior and exterior mirrors, actuators, door handles, overhead consoles, and camera monitoring systems; head, tail, and fog lamps; signal and other lighting products; and latching systems, door modules, window systems, power closure systems, hinges and wire forming, and handle assemblies. Its Seating Systems segment provides seat structures, mechanism and hardware solutions, and foam and trim products. The company's Complete Vehicles segment offers vehicle manufacturing and engineering services. It also designs, engineers, and manufactures tooling products. Magna International Inc. was founded in 1957 and is headquartered in Aurora, Canada.

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Manulife Financial Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides financial products and services in Asia, Canada, the United States, and internationally. The company operates through Wealth and Asset Management Businesses; Insurance and Annuity Products; And Corporate and Other segments. The Wealth and Asset Management Businesses segment provides mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, group retirement and savings products, and institutional asset management services through agents and brokers affiliated with the company, securities brokerage firms, and financial advisors pension plan consultants and banks. The Insurance and Annuity Products segment offers deposit and credit products; individual life, and individual and group long-term care insurance; and guaranteed and partially guaranteed annuity products through insurance agents, brokers, banks, financial planners, and direct marketing. The Corporate and Other segment is involved in property and casualty insurance and reinsurance businesses; and run-off reinsurance operations, including variable annuities, and accident and health. It also manages timberland and agricultural portfolios; and engages in insurance agency, portfolio and mutual fund management, mutual fund dealer, life and financial reinsurance, and fund management businesses. Additionally, the company holds and manages oil and gas properties; holds oil and gas royalties, and foreign bonds and equities; and provides investment management, counseling, advisory, and dealer services. Manulife Financial Corporation was incorporated in 1887 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

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CoreLogic, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides property information, insight, analytics, and data-enabled solutions in North America, Western Europe, and the Asia Pacific. The company operates in two segments, Property Intelligence & Risk Management Solutions (PIRM) and Underwriting & Workflow Solutions (UWS). The PIRM segment combines property information, mortgage information, and consumer information to deliver housing market and property-level insights, predictive analytics, and risk management capabilities. It also offers proprietary technology and software platforms to access, automate, or track the information and assist its clients with decision-making and compliance tools in the real estate and insurance industries. This segment primarily serves commercial banks, mortgage lenders and brokers, investment banks, fixed-income investors, real estate agents, MLS companies, property and casualty insurance companies, title insurance companies, government agencies, and government-sponsored enterprises. The UWS segment combines property, mortgage, and consumer information to provide comprehensive mortgage origination and monitoring solutions, including underwriting-related solutions, and data-enabled valuations and appraisals. This segment also provides proprietary technology and software platforms to access, automate, or track the information and assist its clients with vetting and onboarding prospects, and meeting compliance regulations, as well as understanding, evaluating, monitoring property values. It primarily serves mortgage lenders and servicers, mortgage brokers, credit unions, commercial banks, fixed-income investors, government agencies, and property and casualty insurance companies. The company was formerly known as The First American Corporation and changed its name to CoreLogic, Inc. in June 2010. CoreLogic, Inc. was incorporated in 1894 and is headquartered in Irvine, California.

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Hannover RAck SE, together with its subsidiaries, provides reinsurance products and services worldwide. It operates through Property & Casualty Reinsurance, and Life & Health Reinsurance segments. The Property & Casualty Reinsurance segment offers specialty lines comprising marine, aviation, facultative and direct business, credit, surety, and political risks reinsurance products; and treaty, catastrophe XL, and structured reinsurance, as well as insurance-linked securities. This segment also provides risk solutions for agricultural, livestock, and bloodstock businesses; aviation and space business; and marine and offshore energy business. The Life & Health Reinsurance segment offers group and individual credit life, enhanced annuities, group life and health, and Sharia-compliant Takaful reinsurance products. This segment also provides risk solutions in the areas of critical illness, disability, health, longevity, long term care, and mortality and morbidity, as well as underwriting services. In addition, it offers various financial solutions, including new-business financing; monetization of embedded value; reserve and solvency relief; and divestiture of non-core businesses. The company was formerly known as Hannover RAckversicherung AG and changed its name to Hannover RAck SE in March 2013. The company was founded in 1966 and is headquartered in Hanover, Germany. Hannover RAck SE is a subsidiary of Talanx AG.

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The Hershey Co. engages in the manufacture and market of chocolate and sugar confectionery products. The firm operates through the following geographical segments: North America; and International and Other. The North America segment is responsible for the traditional chocolate and non-chocolate confectionery market position of the company, as well as its grocery and snacks market positions, in the United States and Canada. The International and Other segment is the combination of all other operating segments which are not individually material, including those geographic regions where the company operates outside of North America. Its brands include Hershey's, Reese's, and Kisses. The company was founded by Milton S. Hershey in 1894 and is headquartered in Hershey, PA.

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Wall Street analysts have given HighPoint Resources a "Sell" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but HighPoint Resources wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Quaker Chemical: AC Products Inc., Applied Surface Concepts Holdings Ltd. , Binol AB, Binol Biosafe OY, Commonwealth Oil Corporation, DA Stuart India Private Limited, DA Stuart Shanghai Co, ECLI Products LLC, EFHCO LLC, Engineered Custom Lubricants, Engineered Custom Lubricants GmbH, Epmar Corporation, G.W. Smith and Sons, GH Holdings Inc., GHG Lubricants Holdings Limited, GHGL London Ltd., GHI Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Global Houghton Ltd., Houghton (Shanghai) Specialty Industrial Fluids Co. Ltd, Houghton Argentina S.A., Houghton Asia Pacific Co. Limited, Houghton Australia Pty. Ltd., Houghton Benelux BV, Houghton CZ s.r.o, Houghton Canada Inc., Houghton Denmark AS, Houghton Deutschland GmbH, Houghton Europe BV, Houghton Holdings Limited, Houghton Iberica S.A. , Houghton International, Houghton International Inc., Houghton Italia S.p.A., Houghton Japan Co. Ltd., Houghton Kimya Sanayi AS, Houghton Magyarorszag Kft, Houghton Mexico S.A. de C.V., Houghton Oil (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd., Houghton Polska Sp. Zo.o., Houghton Romania S.R.L., Houghton S.A.S., Houghton Sverige AB, Houghton Taiwan Co. Limited, Houghton Technical Corp., Houghton Ukraine ToV, Houghton do Brazil Ltda., Houghton plc, Internationale Metall Impragnier GmbH, Lubricor Inc, Lubricor Inc., Lubricor Mexicana S.A. de C.V., Lubricor USA Inc., MIH Acquisition Company LLC, MX Systems International Ltd, Maldaner GmbH, NP Coil Dexter Industries, New Houghton Brazil Inc., Norman Hay Engineering Ltd., QH Chemical Limited, QH Europe BV, QH Holdings Limited, QH International Limited, Quaker (Thailand) Ltd., Quaker Australia Holdings Pty. Limited, Quaker Chemical (Australasia) Pty. Limited, Quaker Chemical (China) Co. Ltd., Quaker Chemical B.V., Quaker Chemical CV, Quaker Chemical Canada Holdings Inc., Quaker Chemical Canada Limited, Quaker Chemical Europe B.V., Quaker Chemical Holdings South Africa (Pty) Limited, Quaker Chemical India Private Limited, Quaker Chemical Industria e Comercio Ltda., Quaker Chemical Investment Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Quaker Chemical Limited, Quaker Chemical MEA FZE, Quaker Chemical Operacoes Ltda., Quaker Chemical Participacoes Ltda., Quaker Chemical S.A., Quaker Chemical S.r.l., Quaker Chemical Services EURL, Quaker Chemical South Africa (Pty.) Limited, Quaker China Holdings B.V., Quaker Denmark ApS, Quaker Houghton (Finco) Ltd., Quaker Houghton Holdings Limited, Quaker Houghton Holdings Ltd., Quaker Houghton International LP, Quaker Houghton Ltd., Quaker International Holdings LLC, Quaker Italia S.r.l., Quaker Russia B.V., Quaker Sales Europe BV, Quaker Shanghai Trading Company Limited, Quaker Spain Holding SLU, Quaker Specialty Chemicals (UK) Limited, SB Decking Inc., SIFCO Applied Surface Concepts (UK) Ltd, SIFCO Applied Surface Concepts LLC, SIFCO Concepts Sarl, SIFCO Concepts Sweden, Sterr & Eder Industrieservice GmbH, Summit Lubricants Inc, Summit Lubricants Inc., Surface Technology (Coventry) Ltd, Surface Technology (Dalian) Co Ltd, Surface Technology (East Kilbride) Ltd., Surface Technology (Leeds) Ltd, Surface Technology Aberdeen Ltd, Surface Technology Australia, Surface Technology Holdings Ltd., TecniQuimia Mexicana, Tecniquimia Mexicana S.A. de C.V., Thai Houghton 1993 Co. Ltd., Ultraseal Asia Limited, Ultraseal Chongqing Limited, Ultraseal Germany GmbH, Ultraseal International Group Ltd, Ultraseal Machinery Dongguan Ltd, Ultraseal Shanghai Limited, Ultraseal USA Inc., Unitek Servicios De Asesoria Especializad S.A de C.V., Verkol S.A.U., Verkol SAU, Wallover Enterprises Inc., Wallover Oil Company Incorporated, Wallover Oil Hamilton Inc., and Wuhan Quaker Technology Co. Ltd.
Slovak aviation repair plant LOTN (Trencin) has overhauled the first Mil Mi-17V-5 (NATO reporting name: Hip-H) utility rotary-wing aircraft of the Afghan Air Force (AAF), according to the Slovak Ministry of Defense (MoD).

A first Mi-17V-5 helicopter has been overhauled by LOTN

(Credit: Slovakia Ministry of Defense)

"LOTN completed the general overhaul of the first AAF Mi-17V-5 helicopter. On July 28, the rotary-wing aircraft was sent back to Afghanistan," the MoD said in a statement. The LOTN company was awarded with the contract for the overhaul of the AAF Mi-17V-5 helicopters two years ago, in 2016.



The aforementioned Mi-17V-5 helicopter made its first test flight in Slovakia. This flight will be followed by several test flights in Afghanistan.



This helicopter became the first Mi-17V-5 platform, which was overhauled by a member state of the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Director General of LOTN Martin Dusanic said. "I would praise the expert work done by the LOTN staff. The outcome speaks for our capability to win international bids, despite harsh competition on the market," he added.



LOTN did not disclose the schedule of the overhaul process. "Further deliveries of the [Mi-17V-5] overhauled helicopters to Afghanistan are scheduled for next year [2019]," the company said.



The AAF is an operator of the Mil utility helicopters. According to the Military Balance 2018 analytical book published by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), the service had the following Mil utility rotary-wing platforms in its inventory as of early 2018: 44 Mi-17Mi-17V-5 helicopters. The Afghan military`s Special Mission Wing (SMW) operated 28 more Mi-17/Mi-17V-5 helicopters.



The Mi-17V-5 is an export-oriented variant of the Mi-8MTV-5 utility rotary-wing platform that has been delivered to the Russian Armed Forces. According to the helicopter`s manufacturer, the Russian Helicopters holding (a subsidiary of the Rostec state corporation), the Mi-17V-5 has a maximum take-off weight of 13,000 kg, a useful payload of up to 4,000 kg, a flight range of 580 km with internal fuel tanks and 1,065 km with two external fuel tanks, and a service ceiling of 6,000 m. The Mi-17V-5 can transport up to 36 fully equipped servicemen or 12 wounded soldiers on stretchers. The helicopter is also capable of carrying of a 4,000 kg sling-loaded cargo.



Due to the sanctions imposed by the United States and Western Europe against Russia, the Pentagon has decided to switch the AAF from its Mi-17-family helicopters to the refurbished UH-60A Black Hawks utility rotary-wing platforms. The U.S. military is planning to reduce the size of the AAF Mi-17 fleet from 47 aircraft to 20 aircraft. The fleet will be decreased to 18 by end-2021 then to 12 by end-2022. Afghanistan is slate for receiving of 159 Black Hawks, of which eight were delivered to the country as of March; 45 more UH-60s were procured.



However, the Black Hawk falls short of the Mi-17V-5 in terms of reliability and useful payload. "They [the UH-60As] are unable to accommodate some of the larger cargo items the Mi-17s can carry, and in general, it takes almost two Black Hawks to carry the load of a single Mi-17," the Lead Inspector General (LIG) at the Pentagon for the Freedoms Sentinel operation in Afghanistan said in the Operation Freedom`s Sentinel report to the US Congress. "Furthermore, unlike Mi-17s, Black Hawks cannot fly at high elevations and, as such, cannot operate in remote regions of Afghanistan where Mi-17s operate," the official added.



The Mi-17/Mi-17V-5 helicopters feature outstanding serviceability, the aforementioned document states. "Afghans are performing roughly 80 percent of the maintenance tasks on their Mi-17s and rely on contractor logistics support for the remaining 20 percent," the LIG said. Therefore, the AAF transition from the Mi-17/Mi-17V-5, which is famous for its robustness and high reliability, to the UH-60A seems to be senseless. "As Mi-17s phase out of service, these challenges will become more pronounced," the LIG concluded.

 Copyright 2018 TASS. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Salzgitter AG, together with its subsidiaries, engages in steel and technology businesses worldwide. It operates through five segments: Strip Steel, Plate/Section Steel, Mannesmann, Trading, and Technology. The Strip Steel segment manufactures branded and special steels, such as hot-rolled strip steel and steel sheets, sections, tailored blanks, and components for the construction industry. The Plate/Section Steel segment produces various high-grade heavy plates for engineering, shipbuilding, and mechanical engineering, as well as trades in scrap. The Mannesmann segment is involved in the manufacture of line pipes, HFI-welded tubes, precision and stainless-steel tubes, and spiral-welded and longitudinal-welded large-diameter pipes; and seamless and welded tubes for the energy, automotive, and mechanical engineering sectors. The Trading segment operates a European sales network, as well as trading companies and agencies worldwide. The Technology segment engages in the provision of machinery and plants for the filling and packaging of beverages, as well as special machinery engineering for shoe manufacturing and elastomer production. The company also provides IT, facility management, logistics, automotive engineering, and research and development services, as well as supplies raw materials. Salzgitter AG was founded in 1858 and is headquartered in Salzgitter, Germany.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Occidental Petroleum: 1PointFive Inc., 1PointFive P1 LLC, APC Aviation Inc., APC International Holdings LLC, APC Midstream Holdings LLC, APC Venezuela Srl, ARCO Long Beach, Altura Energy, Amarok Gathering LLC, Anadarko 20-25 Company, Anadarko 20-36 Company, Anadarko 20-47 Company, Anadarko 20-48 Company, Anadarko 20-49 Company, Anadarko Algeria Block 403 c/e Company, Anadarko Algeria Block 406B Company, Anadarko Algeria Company LLC, Anadarko Algeria Oil & Gas Company, Anadarko Brazil Investment I LLC, Anadarko Brazil Investment II LLC, Anadarko Canada E&P Limited, Anadarko China Holdings 2 Company, Anadarko Colombia Company, Anadarko Consolidated Holdings LLC, Anadarko Cote d'Ivoire Block 103 Company, Anadarko Cote d'Ivoire Company, Anadarko DBMOS Operator LLC, Anadarko Development Company, Anadarko Development Holding Limited, Anadarko E&P Onshore LLC, Anadarko Egypt Holdings Company, Anadarko Energy Holding Limited, Anadarko Energy Services Company, Anadarko Exploracao e Producao de Petroleo e Gas Natural Ltda., Anadarko Finance Company, Anadarko Gabon Company, Anadarko Ghana Mahogany-1 Company, Anadarko Global Energy S.a.r.l, Anadarko Global Funding 1 Company, Anadarko Global Funding II Ltd., Anadarko Guyana Company, Anadarko Holding Company, Anadarko International Development S.a.r.l, Anadarko International Energy Company, Anadarko International O&G Company, Anadarko International Trading Corporation, Anadarko Jordan Company, Anadarko Kenya Company, Anadarko LMM S.a.r.l, Anadarko Land Corp., Anadarko Mexico B.V., Anadarko Mexico S.a.r.l, Anadarko Midkiff/Chaney Dell BR Corp., Anadarko Midkiff/Chaney Dell LLC, Anadarko Natural Gas Company LLC, Anadarko New Zealand Company, Anadarko OGC Company, Anadarko Offshore Holding Company LLC, Anadarko Offshore Well Containment Company LLC, Anadarko Oil & Gas 5 LLC, Anadarko Peru B.V., Anadarko Petroleum, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Anadarko Realty LLC, Anadarko Rockies LLC, Anadarko Royalty Holdings Company, Anadarko UK Corporate Limited, Anadarko US Offshore LLC, Anadarko USH1 Corporation, Anadarko Venezuela Company, Anadarko Venezuela LLC, Anadarko Venezuela Srl, Anadarko WCTP Company, Anadarko West Texas BR Corp., Anadarko West Texas LLC, Anadarko Worldwide Holdings C.V., Atlantic Rim Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Aventine LLC, Baseball Merger Sub 2 Inc., Bear Branch Exploration LLC, Big Island Trona Company, Bitter Creek Coal Company, Bravo Pipeline Company, Cain Chemical, Cain Chemical Inc., Carbon Finance Labs LLC, Concord Petroleum Corporation, Conn Creek Shale Company, D.S. Ventures LLC, DMM Financial LLC, Deerwood Exploration LLC, Downtown Plaza II, Elk Hills Field, FLAG Development LLC, FP Westport Commodities Limited, FP Westport GmbH, FP Westport LLC, FP Westport Limited, FP Westport Services LLC, FP Westport Trading LLC, Fosters Mill Exploration LLC, Glenn Springs Holdings Inc., Globrep Representaciones S.A., Grand Bassa Tankers Inc., Grupo OxyChem de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Headwater II LLC, Houndstooth Resources LLC, INDSPEC Chemical B.V., INDSPEC Chemical Corporation, INDSPEC Chemical Corporation, INDSPEC Chemical Export Sales LLC, INDSPEC Holding Corporation, Ingleside Cogeneration GP LLC, Ingleside Cogeneration Limited Partnership, Interore Trading Ltd., Joslyn Partnership, KERR-McGEE TT E&P LTD., KM BM-C-Seven Ltd., KM International Insurance Ltd., Kerr-McGee Corporation, Kerr-McGee Natural Gas Company Inc., Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Onshore LP, Kerr-McGee Shared Services Company LLC, Kerr-McGee Stored Power Corporation, Kerr-McGee U.K. Energy Corporation, Kerr-McGee Worldwide Corporation, Kerr-McGee do Brasil Ltda., Kerr-McGee of Canada Northwest Ltd., Laguna Petroleum Corp., Laguna Petroleum LLC, Liwa Oil & Gas Ltd., MC2 Technologies LLC, Mariana Properties Inc., Marico Exploration Inc., Miller Springs Remediation Management Inc., Moncrief Minerals Partnership L.P., NGL Ventures LLC, Natural Gas Odorizing Inc., New OPL LLC, OEVC Energy LLC, OEVC Midstream Projects LLC, OIH LLC, OLCV CE Holdings ULC, OLCV CE US Holdings Inc., OLCV Net Power LLC, OLCV Services LLC, OOG Partner LLC, OOOI Chem Holdings LLC, OOOI Chem Sub LLC, OOOI Chemical International LLC, OOOI Chile Holder LLC, OOOI Ecuador Management LLC, OOOI Oil and Gas Sub LLC, OOOI South America Management LLC, OPM GP Inc., OPM Holdco LLC, OTCF LLC, OTH LLC, OXY CV Pipeline LLC, OXY Campus LLC, OXY Inc., OXY LPG LLC, OXY Libya E&P Area 103 BR4 B.V., OXY Libya E&P Area 35 Ltd., OXY Libya E&P Concession 103 Ltd., OXY Libya E&P EPSA 102 B.V., OXY Libya E&P EPSA 1981 Ltd., OXY Libya E&P EPSA 1985 Ltd., OXY Libya E&P NC 143 144 145 150 B.V., OXY Libya Exploration SPC, OXY Libya LLC, OXY Little Knife LLC, OXY Mexico Holdings I LLC, OXY Mexico Holdings II LLC, OXY Middle East Holdings Ltd., OXY Oil Partners Inc., OXY PBLP Manager LLC, OXY Support Services LLC, OXY Tulsa Inc., OXY USA Inc., OXY USA WTP LP, OXY VPP Investments LLC, OXY West LLC, OXY of Saudi Arabia Ltd., OXYCHEM (CANADA) INC., OXYMAR, Oakwood Exploration LLC, Occidental (Bermuda) Ltd., Occidental (East Shabwa) LLC, Occidental Advance Sale Finance Inc., Occidental Al Hosn LLC, Occidental Angola Holdings Ltd., Occidental CIS Services Inc., Occidental Canada Holdings Ltd., Occidental Chemical Asia Limited, Occidental Chemical Belgium B.V.B.A., Occidental Chemical Chile Limitada, Occidental Chemical Corporation, Occidental Chemical Export Sales LLC, Occidental Chemical Far East Limited, Occidental Chemical Holding Corporation, Occidental Chemical International LLC, Occidental Chemical Investment (Canada) 1 Inc., Occidental Chemical Receivables LLC, Occidental Chemical de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Occidental Chile Investments LLC, Occidental Chile Minority Holder LLC, Occidental Colombia (Series G) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series J) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series K) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series L) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series M) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series N) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series O) Ltd., Occidental Crude Sales Inc. (Canada), Occidental Crude Sales Inc. (International), Occidental Dolphin Holdings Ltd., Occidental Energy Marketing Inc., Occidental Energy Ventures LLC, Occidental Exploradora del Peru Ltd., Occidental Exploration and Production Company, Occidental Hafar LLC, Occidental International (Libya) Inc., Occidental International Corporation, Occidental International Exploration and Production Company, Occidental International Holdings Ltd., Occidental International Oil and Gas Ltd., Occidental International Services Inc., Occidental Joslyn GP 2 Co., Occidental LNG (Malaysia) Ltd., Occidental Latin America Holdings LLC, Occidental Libya Oil & Gas B.V., Occidental MENA Manager Ltd., Occidental Middle East Development Company, Occidental Midland Basin LLC, Occidental Mukhaizna LLC, Occidental Oil Asia Pte. Ltd., Occidental Oil Shale Inc., Occidental Oil and Gas (Oman) Ltd., Occidental Oil and Gas Corporation, Occidental Oil and Gas International Inc., Occidental Oil and Gas International LLC, Occidental Oil and Gas Pakistan LLC, Occidental Oil and Gas of Peru LLC, Occidental Oman (Block 27) Holdings Ltd., Occidental Oman Block 51 Holding Ltd., Occidental Oman Block 51 LLC, Occidental Oman Block 65 Holding Ltd., Occidental Oman Block 65 LLC, Occidental Oman Block 72 Holding Ltd., Occidental Oman Block 72 LLC, Occidental Oman Gas Company LLC, Occidental Oman Gas Holdings Ltd., Occidental Oman North Holdings Ltd., Occidental Oriente Exploration and Production Ltd., Occidental Overseas Holdings B.V., Occidental PVC LLC, Occidental Peninsula II Inc., Occidental Peninsula LLC, Occidental Permian Ltd., Occidental Permian Manager LLC, Occidental Permian Services Inc., Occidental Peruana Inc., Occidental Petrolera del Peru (Block 101) Inc., Occidental Petrolera del Peru (Block 103) Inc., Occidental Petroleum (Pakistan) Inc., Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Occidental Petroleum Corporation Political Action Committee, Occidental Petroleum de Venezuela S.A., Occidental Petroleum of Nigeria, Occidental Petroleum of Oman Ltd., Occidental Petroleum of Qatar Ltd., Occidental Power Marketing L.P., Occidental Power Services Inc., Occidental Qatar Energy Company LLC, Occidental Red Sea Development LLC, Occidental Research Corporation, Occidental Resource Recovery Systems Inc., Occidental Resources Company, Occidental Shah Gas Holdings Ltd., Occidental South America Finance LLC, Occidental Specialty Marketing Inc., Occidental Tower Corporation, Occidental Transportation Holding Corporation, Occidental West Texas Overthrust Inc., Occidental Yemen Ltd., Occidental Yemen Sabatain Inc., Occidental del Ecuador Inc., Occidental of Abu Dhabi (Bab) Ltd., Occidental of Abu Dhabi (Shah) Ltd., Occidental of Abu Dhabi Holdings Ltd., Occidental of Abu Dhabi LLC, Occidental of Abu Dhabi Ltd., Occidental of Bahrain Ltd., Occidental of Bangladesh Inc., Occidental of Colombia (Chipiron) Inc., Occidental of Colombia (Cosecha) Inc., Occidental of Colombia (Medina) Inc., Occidental of Colombia (Putumayo) Ltd., Occidental of Colombia (Teca) Ltd., Occidental of Colombia PUT-36 LLC, Occidental of Dubai Inc., Occidental of Iraq Holdings Ltd., Occidental of Iraq LLC, Occidental of Oman Inc., Occidental of Russia Ltd., Occidental of South Africa (Offshore) Inc., Occidental of Yemen (Block 75) LLC, Oceanic Marine Transport Ltd., Opcal Insurance Inc., Oryx Crude Trading & Transportation Inc., Oxy BridgeTex Limited Partnership, Oxy C & I Bulk Sales LLC, Oxy Canada Sales Inc., Oxy Carbon Solutions LLC, Oxy Carbon Storage LLC, Oxy Climate Ventures Inc., Oxy Cogeneration Holding Company LLC, Oxy Colombia Holdings LLC, Oxy Colombia TopCo Ltd., Oxy Delaware Basin LLC, Oxy Delaware Basin Plant LLC, Oxy Dolphin E&P LLC, Oxy Dolphin Pipeline LLC, Oxy Energy Canada Inc., Oxy Energy Services LLC, Oxy Expatriate Services Inc., Oxy FFT Holdings Inc., Oxy Holding Company (Pipeline) Inc., Oxy International Ventures Ltd., Oxy LPG Terminal LLC, Oxy Levelland Pipeline Company LLC, Oxy Levelland Terminal Company LLC, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures LLC, Oxy Midstream Strategic Development LLC, Oxy Oleoducto SOP LLC, Oxy Overseas Services Ltd., Oxy Permian Gathering LLC, Oxy Permian Plaza LLC, Oxy Petroleum de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Oxy Renewable Energy LLC, Oxy Salt Creek Pipeline LLC, Oxy TL LLC, Oxy Taft Hub LLC, Oxy Technology Ventures Inc., Oxy Transport I Company LLC, Oxy Vinyls Canada Co., Oxy Vinyls Export Sales LLC, Oxy Vinyls LP, Oxy Westwood Corporation, Oxy Y-1 Company, OxyChem Ingleside Ethylene Holdings Inc., OxyChem do Brasil Ltda., OxyChile Investments LLC, Oxychem Shipping Ltd., Permian Basin JV Tax Matters Member LLC, Permian Basin Limited Partnership, Permian VPP Holder LP, Permian VPP Manager LLC, Phibro, Placid Oil LLC, Ramlat Oxy Ltd., Rio de Viento Inc., Rodeo Midland Basin LLC, San Patricio Pipeline LLC, Scanports Shipping LLC, SequestCo LLC, Stetson Exploration LLC, Sun Offshore Gathering Company, Swiflite Aircraft Corporation, Transok Properties LLC, Troy Potter Inc., Turavent Oil GmbH [in liquidation], Tuscaloosa Holdings Inc., UP Petroleo III Ltd., Upland Industries Corporation, Venezuela US SRL, Vintage Gas Inc., Vintage Petroleum, Vintage Petroleum Argentina Ltd., Vintage Petroleum Boliviana Ltd., Vintage Petroleum International Finance B.V., Vintage Petroleum International Holdings LLC, Vintage Petroleum International LLC, Vintage Petroleum International Ventures Inc., Vintage Petroleum Italy Inc., Vintage Petroleum South America Holdings Inc., Vintage Petroleum South America LLC, Vintage Petroleum Turkey Inc., WGR Asset Holding Company LLC, WGR Canada Inc., Wardner Ranch Inc., Western Gas Resources Inc., Western Gas Resources-Westana Inc., Western Midstream Holdings LLC, Woodlands International Insurance Ltd., and YT Ranch LLC.
The following companies are subsidiares of Sealed Air: A.P.S. (Holdings) Limited, AFP Trading (China) Co. Ltd., AFPTOH LTD, APS Automated Packaging Systems GmbH & Co. KG, APS Verwaltungs-GmbH, Air Ride Pallets Hong Kong Limited, Austin Foam Plastics Inc. (dba AFP Inc.), Automated Packaging Systems, Automated Packaging Systems Asia Holding Company Limited, Automated Packaging Systems Comerciale Importacao do Brasil Ltda., Automated Packaging Systems Europe, Automated Packaging Systems LLC, Automated Packaging Systems Limited, Automated Packaging Systems Southeast Asia Co. Ltd., B+ Equipment, B+ Equipment SAS, Beacon Holdings LLC, Biosphere Industries, BluPack (New Zealand), Blue Dot Packaging Pty Ltd., Cactus (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Cryovac (Malaysia) SDN. BHD, Cryovac Brasil Ltda., Cryovac Holdings II LLC, Cryovac International Holdings Inc., Cryovac LLC*, Cryovac Leasing Corporation, Cryovac Londrina Ltda., Cryovac Packaging Portugal  Embalagens Ltda., Cryovac-Sealed Air de Costa Rica S.R.L., DELTAPLAM Embalagens Industria e Comercio, Diversey, Diversey J Trustee Limited, Diversey Trustee Limited, Entapack Pty. Ltd., Fagerdala (Chengdu) Packaging Co. Ltd, Fagerdala (Shanghai) Foams Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Shanghai) Polymer Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Suzhou) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Thailand) Limited, Fagerdala (Xiamen) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala Leamchabung Limited, Fagerdala Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Fagerdala Mexico S.A. de C.V., Fagerdala Mexico Supply Chain S.A. de C.V., Fagerdala Packaging Inc. (Indiana), Fagerdala Singapore Pte Ltd, Fagerdala Singapore Pte. Ltd., Getpacking.com GmbH, Invertol S. de R.L. de C.V., JSC Sealed Air Kaustik, KRIS Automated Packaging Systems Holding Company, Kevothermal LLC, Kevothermal Limited, Nelipak Holdings, Pack-Tiger GmbH, Polyrol Limited, Polyrol Packaging Systems LLC, ProAseptic Technologies S.L., Producembal- Producao de Embalagens LTDA, Reflectix Inc., SLD Air Packaging Paketleme Malzemeleri Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Saddle Brook Insurance Company, Sealed Air (Asia) Holdings BV, Sealed Air (Barbados) S.R.L., Sealed Air (Canada) Co./CIE, Sealed Air (Canada) Holdings B.V., Sealed Air (China) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air (China) Limited, Sealed Air (Israel) Ltd., Sealed Air (Korea) Limited, Sealed Air (Latin America) Holdings II LLC, Sealed Air (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Sealed Air (New Zealand), Sealed Air (Philippines) Inc., Sealed Air (Singapore) Pte. Limited, Sealed Air (Ukraine) Limited, Sealed Air Africa (Pty.) Limited, Sealed Air Americas Manufacturing S. de R.L. de C.V., Sealed Air Argentina S.A., Sealed Air Australia (Holdings) Pty. Limited, Sealed Air Australia Pty. Limited, Sealed Air Australia Real Estate Pty Ltd, Sealed Air B.V., Sealed Air Belgium N.V., Sealed Air Central America S.A., Sealed Air Chile SpA, Sealed Air Colombia Ltda., Sealed Air Corporation (US), Sealed Air Cyprus Ltd., Sealed Air Denmark A/S, Sealed Air Finance B.V., Sealed Air Finance II LLC, Sealed Air Finance Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Funding LLC, Sealed Air General Trading LLC, Sealed Air GmbH (Germany), Sealed Air GmbH (Switzerland), Sealed Air Hellas SA, Sealed Air Holding France SAS, Sealed Air Holdings (New Zealand) Pty. Ltd., Sealed Air Holdings South Africa Proprietary Limited, Sealed Air Holdings UK I Limited, Sealed Air Holdings UK Limited, Sealed Air Hong Kong Limited, Sealed Air Hungary Ltd., Sealed Air Investment and Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air Japan G.K., Sealed Air LLC, Sealed Air Limited (Ireland), Sealed Air Limited (UK), Sealed Air Luxembourg (I) S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Luxembourg (II) S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Management Holding Verwaltungs GmbH, Sealed Air Multiflex GmbH, Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) I B.V., Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) II B.V., Sealed Air Netherlands Holdings V B.V., Sealed Air Norge AS, Sealed Air OY, Sealed Air Packaging (India) Private Limited, Sealed Air Packaging (Shanghai) Co. Limited, Sealed Air Packaging (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air Packaging LLC, Sealed Air Packaging Materials (India) LLP, Sealed Air Packaging S.L.U., Sealed Air Peru S.A.C., Sealed Air Polska Sp. Zoo, Sealed Air Pty Limited, Sealed Air S.A S., Sealed Air S.r.l., Sealed Air South Africa (Pty.) Ltd., Sealed Air Svenska AB, Sealed Air Taiwan Limited, Sealed Air UK Limited Partnership, Sealed Air US Holdings (Thailand) LLC, Sealed Air Uruguay S.A., Sealed Air Verpackungen GmbH, Sealed Air de Mexico Operations S. de RL. de C.V., Sealed Air de Venezuela S.A., Sealed Air s.r.o., Shanklin Corp, Shanklin Corporation, TTS-Ciptec, TXAFP Asia Pacific Ltd., TXAFP GP LLC, and Trigon Industries.
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/After-Buchenwald-Sparks-from-an-Ancient-Scroll.html

Rabbi Hershel Schacter, the first rabbi to enter Buchenwald, and the survivor who renounced his faith in God.

During World War II, Rabbi Hershel Schacter was a chaplain in the Third Armys VIII Corps and was the first US Army Chaplain to enter and participate in the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after it had been liberated by Gen. George Pattons troops on April 11, 1945.

While other American personnel begged to leave Buchenwald due to the unbearable stench, Rabbi Schacter, shocked by what he saw, decided to stay until he could make a more substantial contribution to the survivors. He stayed for months, tending to survivors and leading religious services; everything else was trivial.

Rabbi Herschel Schacter conducting services at the liberated Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945.

Yechezkel* was a young man from a Polish Chasidic family. Rabbi Schacter took a special liking to the boy. Yechezkel had lost his entire family during the war and had renounced his faith in God. Yechezkel defiantly told the rabbi about his plans to assimilate and live the rest of his life in post-war Germany without a trace of Judaism. Rabbi Schacter listened sympathetically and tried to offer his moral support. They talked often.

In Buchenwald, Rabbi Schacter organized a train transport for 200 boys to Switzerland. Rabbi Schacter was responsible for distributing these special tickets from the Swiss government to the boys and to accompany them to Switzerland. It was a desperate time for survivors and Rabbi Schacter wanted to get more than 200 boys into Switzerland. He asked a survivor who was an expert artist to create additional tickets. One could not tell the difference between the original and the copy. In the end Rabbi Schacter distributed tickets to 400 boys. He also offered Yechezkel a ticket, but the boy refused. He wanted no part of restarting a Jewish life again and reminded the rabbi that he planned to resettle in Germany.

The day came when the train for Switzerland arrived at Buchenwald. Rabbi Schacter told Yechezkel, Look, even if you dont come with us to Switzerland, at least come to see us off when we board the trains. Yechezkel reluctantly agreed.

A young mother and her small son were desperate to get out of Buchenwald but babies were not allowed on this transport. She approached the rabbi in tears.

Dont worry, well get you out, Rabbi Schacter said. Get on the train, and hide in one of the lavatories. Under no circumstances should you get out of the door unless I call you personally.

He locked them in after giving them some food to tide them over.

The 400 boys made their way onto the train. Rabbi Schacter was rushing to and fro, making sure each boy was accounted for, all the while scanning the crowd and wondering if Yechezkel would show up.

As the train was about to depart, Yechezkel appeared. He approached the door of the train where the rabbi was standing to shake his hand. Yechezkel, its so nice of you to come and say goodbye! And with that, Rabbi Schacter grabbed the boys hand and with a burst of strength that surprised both of them, he hauled Yechezkel onto the train in one smooth motion, just as it was starting to pull out of the station.

The train picked up speed and Yechezkel was shocked and furious. Rabbi Schacter told him he did it on impulse and asked him not to be so angry. It didnt help. Yechezkel was steaming.

The train finally made its way to Switzerland. The Swiss protested that there was double the number of boys they expected.

Rabbi Schacter calmly threatened to call a press conference to tell the world that Switzerland is refusing entry to destitute war orphans. The Swiss quickly backed down. The mother and child also made it safely without incident.

In Switzerland Rabbi Schacter attempted to put together a minyan on Shabbat. There was no problem for Shacharit but for Mincha he could only find nine men.

He remembered Yechezkel. Rabbi Schacter quickly found the young man who was still cursing his lot at having been kidnapped.

Yechezkel, I need you for a minyan.

Are you crazy? Absolutely not!

But we only have nine. We need a minyan in order to daven [pray] and lein [read from the Torah].

Oh really? Well, you need a minyan. I do not! And with that, he lit up a cigarette.

Rabbi Schacter would not give up. Yechezkel, Im begging you. Just come in to the tent  well daven quickly.

In a huff, Yechezkel replied, Fine! Just this once! He entered the makeshift shul with a scowl.

Rabbi Schacter, 1999

They started the Afternoon service and Yechezkel made sure everyone knew how unhappy he was. Rabbi Schacter then took out the precious Sefer Torah, rolled it to the correct portion, and asked if any of the men knew how to read from the Torah. They all shook their heads, and Yechezkel was looking longingly outside the tent, apparently distracted. What now? thought Rabbi Schacter.

Suddenly, he remembered something.

Yechezkel!

What do you want, the boy replied, icily.

Didnt you tell me you used to read the portion from the Torah scroll in shul before the war?

Maybe. So what?

So youre the only one of us who knows how to lein. We need to hear the reading of the Torah.

There you go again with your We need to. You might need to. I certainly dont!

Yechezkel, please! This is the first chance in years for people to hear the Torah portion being read after being denied the chance. Im begging you. I know you can do this!

With extreme reluctance, Yechezkel threw his cigarette outside and approached the table. He cast an expert glance at the unrolled Sefer Torah and immediately found the starting point. Okay, he sighed. Lets get on with it.

Another man was called to the Torah and made the blessing. who has chosen us from all other nations and given us the Torah.

Amen, Yechezkel found himself saying automatically. It came back so easily. Yechezkel began to read the sacred text.

Then something unexpected happened. The holy letters of the scroll seemed to jump off the page and hit him in the face with full force. He felt as if he was literally being struck with the powerful black letters. They seared his soul.

Yechezkels angry veneer had been shattered. He broke down crying like a baby and barely got through the Torah reading.

When he had begun, it had been someone elses Torah. Now he had reclaimed it. And it had reclaimed him.

Yechezkel was forever changed by that Torah reading. He remained Torah-observant for the rest of his life and built a beautiful Jewish family in Australia. Yechezkel championed Torah causes in his city and stayed a devoted friend to the Schacter family for many decades.

*Yechezkel is a pseudonym to protect his familys privacy.

This article originally appeared on Ou.org
L3 Technologies, Inc. provides aircraft sustainment, simulation and training, night vision and image intensification equipment, and security and detection systems used on military, homeland security, and commercial platforms in the United States and internationally. It operates in three segments: Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Systems; Communications and Networked Systems (C&NS); and Electronic Systems. The company offers engineering, modernization and sustainment, space avionics and imaging payload, counter unmanned aircraft systems (CUAS) mission, cyber and electronic warfare, special mission command and control, modeling and simulation, and life cycle support services for ISR, airborne sensor, warrior sensor, space and sensor, aircraft, and intelligence and mission systems, as well as for military aviation services and advanced programs. It also provides network and communication systems, secure communications products, radio frequency components, satellite communication terminals and space, microwave and telemetry products, and secure data links in various business areas, such as broadband communication, naval power, space and power, and maritime sensor systems, as well as in advanced communications. In addition, the company offers components, products, subsystems, and systems, as well as related services to military and commercial customers in various business areas, including commercial aviation solutions, precision engagement systems, link training and simulation, and security and detection systems. It serves the United States (U.S.) Department of Defense and its prime contractors, the U.S. Government intelligence agencies, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, foreign governments, and commercial customers. The company was formerly known as L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to L3 Technologies, Inc. in December 2016. L3 Technologies, Inc. was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in New York, New York.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Quest Diagnostics: AmeriPath, AmeriPath Cincinnati Inc. (OH), AmeriPath Cleveland Inc. (OH), AmeriPath Consolidated Labs Inc. (FL), AmeriPath Florida LLC (DE), AmeriPath Hospital Services Florida LLC (DE), AmeriPath Inc. (DE), AmeriPath Indianapolis PC (IN), AmeriPath Kentucky Inc. (KY), AmeriPath Lubbock 5.01(A) Corporation (TX), AmeriPath New York LLC (DE), AmeriPath Texas Inc. (DE), AmeriPath Tucson Inc. (AZ), American Medical Laboratories, American Medical Laboratories Incorporated (DE), Associated Clinical Laboratories L.P. (PA), Associated Clinical Laboratories of Pennsylvania L.L.C. (PA), Athena Diagnostics, Athena Diagnostics Inc. (DE), Blueprint Genetics, Blueprint Genetics FZ-LLC (UAE), Blueprint Genetics Inc. (DE), Blueprint Genetics Oy (Finland), California Laboratory Associates, Cape Cod Healthcare - Business, Celera, ClearPoint Diagnostic, Clearpoint Diagnostic Laboratories LLC (TX), Cleveland HeartLab, Cleveland HeartLab Inc. (DE), Clinical Laboratory Partners, Colorado Pathology Consultants P.C. (CO), ConVerge Diagnostic Services, Consolidated DermPath Inc. (DE), DFW 5.01(a) Corporation (TX), DGXWMT JV LLC (DE), Dermatopathology of Wisconsin S.C. (WI), Diagnostic Laboratory of Oklahoma LLC (OK), Diagnostic Pathology Services Inc. (OK), Diagnostic Reference Services Inc. (MD), ExamOne Canada Inc. (New Brunswick), ExamOne LLC (DE), ExamOne World Wide Inc. (PA), ExamOne World Wide of NJ Inc. (NJ), Focus Diagnostics, HemoCue, Hoffman M.D. Associated Pathologists Chartered (NV), Institute for Dermatopathology Inc. (PA), Isabella Street Urban Renewal LLC (NJ), Kailash B. Sharma M.D. Inc. (GA), Kilpatrick Pathology P.A. (NC), LabOne, LabOne LLC (MO), LabOne of Ohio Inc. (DE), Laboratorio de Analisis Biomedicos S.A. (Mexico), Lancet Labs, MACL, Med Fusion LLC (TX), Med fusion, MedPlus, Mid America Clinical Laboratories LLC (IN), Nomad Massachusetts Inc. (MA), Nuclear Medicine and Pathology Associates (GA), Ocmulgee Medical Pathology Association Inc. (GA), Pathology Building Partnership (MD) (gen. ptnrshp.), PeaceHealth Laboratories, PhenoPath Laboratories, PhenoPath Laboratories PLLC (WA), Q Squared Solutions Holdings LLC (DE), Q Squared Solutions Holdings Limited (UK), Quest Diagnostics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. (China), Quest Diagnostics Brasil Holdings Ltd. (UK), Quest Diagnostics Clinical Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics Clinical Laboratories Inc. (DE), Quest Diagnostics Domestic Holder LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics HTAS India Private Limited (India), Quest Diagnostics Health & Wellness LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Holdings Incorporated (DE), Quest Diagnostics Holdings Ltd. (UK), Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (MD), Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (NV), Quest Diagnostics India Private Limited (India), Quest Diagnostics Infectious Disease Inc. (DE), Quest Diagnostics International Holdings Limited (UK), Quest Diagnostics International LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Investments LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Ireland Limited (Ireland), Quest Diagnostics LLC (CT), Quest Diagnostics LLC (IL), Quest Diagnostics LLC (MA), Quest Diagnostics Massachusetts LLC (MA), Quest Diagnostics Mexico Holding Company Trust (Mexico), Quest Diagnostics Mexico S de RL de CV (Mexico), Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute (CA), Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute Inc. (VA), Quest Diagnostics Receivables Inc. (DE), Quest Diagnostics Subsidiary Holdings Ltd. (UK), Quest Diagnostics TB LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Terracotta LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Venture LLC (PA), Quest Diagnostics Ventures LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics do Brasil Ltda. (Brazil), Quest Diagnostics of Pennsylvania Inc. (DE), Quest Diagnostics of Puerto Rico Inc. (PR), Quest HealthConnect LLC (CA), ReproSource, Reprosource Fertility Diagnostics Inc. (MA), Solstas Lab Partners, Sonora Quest Laboratories LLC (AZ), Specialty Laboratories Inc. (CA), Summit Health, UMass Memorial Medical Center - Anatomic Pathology Outreach Laboratory Business, Unilab Corporation, and Unilab Corporation (DE).
Rayonier, Inc. is a real estate investment trust, which engages in investment in timberlands. It operates through the following business segments: Southern Timber, Pacific Northwest Timber, New Zealand Timber, Real Estate, Timber Funds and Trading. The Southern Timber, Pacific Northwest Timber and New Zealand Timber segments reflect all activities related to the harvesting of timber and other value-added activities, such as recreational licenses, within each respective geography. The Real Estate segment reflects all U.S. land sales, which are reported in the following sales categories: Improved Development, Unimproved Development, Rural, Non-Strategic and Timberlands, and Large Dispositions. The Timber Funds segment represents operations of the three private equity timber funds included in the Pope Resources transaction. The Trading segment reflects the log trading activities that support New Zealand operations. The company was founded in 1926 and is headquartered in Wild light, FL.

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Wall Street analysts have given iShares MSCI Canada ETF a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but iShares MSCI Canada ETF wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

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China Mobile Limited provides mobile telecommunications and related services in Mainland China and Hong Kong. The company offers local calls; domestic and international long distance calls and roaming services; and value-added services, such as caller identity display, call waiting, conference calls, and others. It also provides wireless Internet service, as well as digital applications comprising music, video, reading, gaming, and animation; wireline broadband services; and wireline voice services. In addition, it offers dedicated line and IDC services to corporate customers in a range of industry sectors; and basic corporate communication products comprising corporate VPMN and SMS, and tailor made solutions. Further, the company provides international telecommunications services, which includes IDD, roaming, Internet, MNC, and value added business services. Additionally, it offers telecommunications network planning, design, and consulting services; roaming clearance, IT system operation, and technology support services; value-added platform development and maintenance services; mobile data, and system integration and development services; network construction and maintenance, network planning and optimizing, and training services; electronic communication products design and sale of related products; and non-banking financial services. It also provides mobile cloud research and development services; call center services; e-payment, e-commerce, and Internet finance services; and mobile Internet digital content services, as well as operates a network and business coordination center. The company serves 950 million mobile customers and 187 million wireline broadband customers. The company was formerly known as China Mobile (Hong Kong) Limited and changed its name to China Mobile Limited in May 2006. The company was incorporated in 1997 and is based in Central, Hong Kong. China Mobile Limited is a subsidiary of China Mobile Hong Kong (BVI) Limited.

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Here we reproduce news and opinion articles in the print and electronic media since October 8, 2008, about each of our 58 county grand juries. Most are about grand jury reports. Our posting of these articles does not purport to reflect the opinions of CGJA or our members. We hope that this feature is a resource to grand juries, grand jury advisors, CGJA chapters, the media, and the public. Sponsored by the California Grand Jurors' Association, www.cgja.org/




What should Christians do in response to the global criminal industry of human trafficking? The Revd Laura Marie Piotrowicz, Rector of St Johns, Port Dalhousie, in Canada, explores the issue.

In March, I was honoured to be part of the Anglican Communion delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, a tremendous opportunity to represent our church at this global forum promoting gender equality. I participated in many sessions addressing human trafficking and its intersectionality with other areas of justice and equality.

In one session, five women who were trafficked for sexual exploitation bravely shared their horrific experiences. One of these women detailed a history spanning three continents over three decades, held by an immense network of criminals. While a survivor, she shared that every day as she looks in the mirror, she sees a victim. She challenged the room to take action today, knowing that every day more people become victims.

Her challenge has stayed with me; as overwhelming as the issue is, as people of faith we are called to take action. Now. Today. Because today, more children of God will be commodified: stolen, abused, sold (the average price for a human life in 2017 was a mere $90 USD [approximately 71 GBP]).

This threatens us all, as human trafficking involves more than 25 million victims annually (71 per cent are women and girls). No country is exempt, the "not in my backyard" mentality a dangerous fallacy in the continuum of violence.

And so, we as the faithful, are called to action. Scriptures repeatedly show that God reacts to oppression in two ways: by siding with the oppressed, especially the most vulnerable; the widows and orphans, refugees and the poor (see Psalm. 9.9), and by providing opportunity for God's people to counter the oppression (see Isaiah 1.17).

The reality of our world today demonstrates Gods invitation for us to take action, to be leaders in raising awareness and preventing human trafficking, and in providing a holy response and support to its survivors.

This cannot wait; we cannot sit idly by for someone else to do something. We need to be educated about the scourge of human trafficking, in local, regional, and global contexts. We need to foster relationships with agencies and governments that combat this evil. We need to work against systematic injustices that lead to increased vulnerabilities. We need to re-read the scriptures seeing biblical slavery as modern human trafficking. And we need to pray, every day.

Because every day, a survivor is looking in the mirror. Every day, too many beautiful souls become new victims.

Every day, O God, may we work to protect your children. Every day.

NB: I refer to human trafficking as distinct from migrant smuggling and kidnap for ransom. More information can be found on the UN Office on Drugs and Crime website.
Posted on: August 13, 2018 6:45 PM

Britains ecumenical inter-faith body the Council of Christians and Jews is promoting an anti-slavery app that was devised as part of a Church of England initiative. The Safe Car Wash App was devised by the Clewer Initiative, the C of Es campaign against modern slavery, and the Santa Marta Group, the Roman Catholic Churchs anti-slavery project. It is now being promoted as part of CCJs response to Mitzvah Day  an annual focus on charitable activity.

Mitzvah Day is guided by the Jewish values of tikkun olam, gemilut chasadim and tzedek. Organisers of the day say that on Mitzvah Day we give our time, not our money, to make a difference to the community around us. We introduce people to social action, to their neighbours and to local charities setting up projects which address real needs. Jewish led, we bring people of other faiths, and none to volunteer side by side, with fun and laughter, with our community, to get to know each other.

Our vision is of Jews and non-Jews coming together to build more cohesive neighbourhoods and to strengthen civil society.

In a message to its supporters, CCJ said: This Mitzvah Day, learn what modern slavery looks like and how you can stop it. The Council of Christians and Jews are helping synagogues and churches to come together by holding interfaith training events on how to tackle modern slavery. They are invited representatives of local synagogues and churches to attend a training day in London in October, ahead of running local joint initiatives on Mitzvah Day  18 November.

CCJ is also promoting the Safe Car Wash app. Backed by anti-slavery campaigners and agencies including the police and local authorities, the Safe Car Wash App is available for free download for Apple and Android mobile phones and tablets.

Users can open the app when they are at the car wash and pinpoint their exact location using GPS, the Church of England said. They will be then taken through a series of indicators of modern slavery. They range from practical details  such as whether workers have suitable protective clothing  to behavioural clues, such as whether they appear withdrawn. If the answers indicate a high likelihood, users will be directed to the Modern Slavery Helpline.

The app sends anonymised data to Britains National Crime Agency and the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority  a new statutory body established to fight trafficking in the UK.

Over the last few years we have learnt more about the evil of modern slavery and we have begun to understand how it is perpetrated in our communities in plain sight, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said ahead of the apps launch in June. Through the Safe Car Wash App we now have a chance to help tackle this scourge which is damaging so many peoples lives.

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, added: I welcome this very helpful and timely initiative in an area of real exploitation. As we learn to see this example of forced labour and modern slavery in our midst, we will also become more aware of the presence of this evil scourge in other sectors in our neighbourhood.

The CCJ described modern slavery as a growing issue in the UK, with thousands of victims hidden in plain sight. Some of these people are working in hand car washes, where police raids have uncovered victims living in appalling conditions.

CCJ, in partnership with the Clewer Initiative, are working to end modern slavery at hand car washes. We believe that as communities, we have a responsibility to combat modern slavery.

As part of its campaign, the CCJ has produced a range of resource for Christian and Jewish communities to raise awareness of modern slavery. They include sermon ideas, religious sources on slavery, activities for children and young people, and ways to involve Jewish and Christian communities in ending modern slavery.

Car washes are being targeted by the initiative because over the past decade the number in the UK has risen from just a few to more than 18,000. The C of E says that while many of the car washes in Britains high streets, at the sides of motorways, and on abandoned garage forecourts, are run as legitimate businesses, but some exploit, force and threaten their workers, trapping them in modern slavery.

The Council of Christians and Jews was established by the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, and Britains Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz, in 1942, at the height of World War II, to fight anti-Semitism.
Posted on: August 13, 2018 4:46 PM

Este articulo tambien esta disponible en espanol

This article is also available in Spanish

Archbishop Julio Murray urged his province to embrace the project of the Kingdom of God as he was installed at the sixth primate of the Anglican Church of Central America (IARCA) on Saturday. He was elected by the provincial synod in April. Hundreds of people included guests from around the world packed into St Lukes Cathedral in Panama City for a vibrant, colourful service which reflected elements from the five nations which make up the province  Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua . One moment which drew gasps from the congregation was the gospel reading: it was preceded by the appearance of a group of dancers each wearing a hat topped with a flaming candle.

In a stirring, passionate address, Archbishop Julio touched on the themes of justice, hope, intentional discipleship, empowering women and young people and celebrating cultural diversity. On mission, he said it was time for the Church to stop navel-gazing.

It is time to take the mission of the Church outward, he said. Embrace the project of the Kingdom because it is bigger than the Church . . . it is greater than the Anglican Communion. And he insisted everyone had to be involved  the task could not be left to the primate, or bishops or clergy.

I believe in team work . . . we need lay people too to accomplish this. We are in this together. And dont say Oh, I am retired . . . there are no retirees in the mission of God.

Archbishop Julio also called for the Church to take more of a stand on issues of corruption and violence against women.

In the past as a province we held back . . . but the time of accommodating is over. We have to change our attitude  to change our chip.

He said that bishops had been taking action on issues such as people trafficking but there was more to be done across many areas.

The investiture and installation service was presided over by the outgoing primate, the Bishop of Nicaragua, Sturdie Downs. The liturgy included the renewal of vows of consecration and the delivery of symbols which reflected the diversity of the Province. Archbishop Julio was presented with a Bible in the different languages of the region; hymnals in Spanish and English; water; bread and wine; and a plumb line as a symbol of prophecy.

The final gift was a plate embossed with the Compass Rose symbol of the worldwide Anglican Communion. This was presented by the Church of Englands Bishop of Coventry, Christopher Cocksworth, who was representing the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.

In his message, read by Bishop Christopher, Archbishop Justin congratulated the new primate on his installation and promised to pray for him as he began a new phase in his ministry.

I am confident that you will guide IARCA in its ministry . . . in building discipleship, transforming communities and tackling poverty, he wrote. I pray that IARCA will go from strength to strength under your leadership and the challenges that the province faces will be overcome.

There were also messages of support delivered on behalf of the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Dr Josiah Idowu-Fearon, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry of the US-based Episcopal Church and from the Primate of Canada, Archbishop Fred Hiltz. In his letter, Dr Idowu-Fearon described the installation as a wonderful moment in the history of the province and in the life of the Anglican Communion.

The renewal of vows was another theme of Archbishop Julios address. He said his installation was a moment for the province to reflect on its identity  and that this identity should be one of a church which was committed to social justice.

To be IARCA is to enjoy the diversity and cultural integration of the five countries that make up IARCA, he said. It means that we have a faith that doesnt quarrel with culture but we are able to evangelise in the midst of our diversity.

After the service, in an interview with ACNS, Archbishop Julio spoke of his excitement.

Today is a wonderful day, he said. It is a day of tremendous celebration and thanksgiving, not only for the province but also for the Anglican Communion. There is a great sense of excitement.

It is a little scary because the expectations are so high . . . but I know the work is not going to be done only by the primate . . . its going to be a team effort.

I am so happy, he added. I am grateful to God. I am looking forward to working together as we collaborate in the construction of the Kingdom. This is Kingdom business  and we are in it for the long haul.

Watch our video news report in English:





Nuevo primado de America Central establece un manifiesto de mision y justicia en la ceremonia de instalacion

This article is also available in English

Este articulo tambien esta disponible en ingles

El Arzobispo Julio Murray insto a su provincia a "abrazar el proyecto" del Reino de Dios cuando fue instalado como el sexto Primado de la Iglesia Anglicana de la Region Central de America (IARCA) el sabado. Fue elegido por el sinodo provincial en abril. Cientos de personas, incluyendo invitados de todo el mundo, llenaron la Catedral de San Lucas en la Ciudad de Panama para un servicio vibrante y colorido que reflejo elementos de las cinco naciones que conforman la provincia -- Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala y Nicaragua. Un momento que asombro a la congregacion fue la lectura del evangelio que fue precedida por la aparicion de un grupo de bailarines tipicos, cada uno con un sombrero coronado de una vela encendida.

En un discurso conmovedor y apasionado, el Arzobispo Julio hablo sobre los temas de la justicia, la esperanza, el discipulado intencional, el empoderamiento de las mujeres y los jovenes, y la celebracion de la diversidad cultural. Hablando de mision, dijo que era hora de que la Iglesia dejara de mirar al ombligo.

"Es hora de llevar la mision de la Iglesia hacia afuera," dijo. "Abrace al proyecto del Reino porque es mas grande que la Iglesia ... es mas grande que la Comunion Anglicana. El insistio en la participacion de todos -- la tarea no podia dejarse solo en las manos del Primado, obispos o clerigos.

"Creo en trabajar en equipo ... para lograr esto, necesitamos laicos. Estamos en esto juntos. Y no digas Ah, estoy jubilado ... no hay jubilados en la mision de Dios .

El Arzobispo Julio tambien hizo un llamado a la Iglesia para que adopte una posicion mas firme en temas de corrupcion y violencia contra las mujeres.

"En el pasado, nos conteniamos como provincia ... pero ya toca dejar de acomodarse. Hay que cambiar nuestra actitud, cambiar nuestro chip.

Dijo que los obispos habian estado tomando medidas en temas como el trafico de personas, pero que habia mucho mas que hacer en muchas areas.

El servicio de investidura e instalacion fue presidido por el Primado saliente, el Obispo de Nicaragua, Sturdie Downs. La liturgia incluyo la renovacion de los votos de consagracion y la entrega de simbolos que reflejaban la diversidad de la Provincia. El Arzobispo Julio recibio una Biblia en los diferentes idiomas de la region; himnarios en espanol e ingles; agua; pan y vino; y una plomada como simbolo de profecia.

El obsequio final fue un plato en relieve con la Rosa de los Vientos, un simbolo de la Comunion Anglicana mundial. Fue presentado por el Obispo de Coventry, Christopher Cocksworth, quien represento al Arzobispo de Canterbury, Justin Welby.

En su mensaje, leido por el Obispo Christopher, el Arzobispo Justin felicito al nuevo Primado por su instalacion y prometio rezar por el mientras empiece la nueva etapa de su ministerio.

"Confio en que guiara a IARCA en su ministerio ... en la construccion del discipulado, la transformacion de las comunidades y la lucha contra la pobreza, escribio. "Rezo para que IARCA vaya viento en popa bajo su liderazgo y se superen los desafios que enfrenta la provincia.

Tambien hubo mensajes de apoyo en nombre del Secretario General de la Comunion Anglicana, el Dr. Josiah Idowu-Fearon, el Obispo Presidente Michael Curry de la Iglesia Episcopal con sede en los Estados Unidos y el Primado de Canada, el Arzobispo Fred Hiltz. En su carta, el Dr. Idowu-Fearon describio la instalacion como un "momento maravilloso en la historia de la provincia y en la vida de la Comunion Anglicana.

La renovacion de los votos fue otro tema del discurso del Arzobispo Julio. Dijo que su instalacion fue un momento para que la provincia reflexionara sobre su identidad, y que esta identidad deberia ser una de una iglesia comprometida con la justicia social.

"Ser IARCA es gozar de la diversidad y la integracion cultural de sus cinco paises, dijo. "Significa que tenemos una fe que no rine con la cultura, y que podemos evangelizar en medio de nuestra diversidad.

Despues del servicio, en una entrevista con ACNS, el Arzobispo Julio hablo de su emocion.

"Hoy es un dia maravilloso, dijo. "Es un dia de gran celebracion y accion de gracias, no solo para la provincia, sino tambien para la Comunion Anglicana. Hay una gran sensacion de emocion.

"Da un poco de miedo porque las expectativas son muy altas ... pero se que el trabajo no lo hara solo el Primado ... sera un esfuerzo de equipo.

"Estoy tan feliz," agrego. "Estoy agradecido a Dios. Tengo muchas ganas de trabajar juntos mientras colaboramos en la construccion del Reino. Este es el negocio del Reino, y estamos comprometidos a largo plazo.

Mire nuestro informe de noticias en video en espanol


When Wura Eyitayo-Oyesode decided to pursue her interest in international tax law, her search led her across the Atlantic Ocean to Dalhousie Law Professor Kim Brooks.

Her interest is in tax justice in the context of tax treaties between developed and developing countries, and I read some of her articles and I just saw the passion in her work, Wura recalls. So I emailed her and told her I have interest in international taxation and I want to come for graduate work. And she said, Write your research proposal, let me see and then apply to Dal. I did, and I got admitted.

For Wura, coming to Dal meant a new city, a new country and a new continent.

Going the distance



Wura completed her Law degree at the University of Lagos in Nigeria, a few hours drive from her hometown of Lanlate. Though she got a job at a law firm when she graduated, she really wanted to do more research. It surprised everyone that the opportunity she was looking for was in Halifax.

My parents were shocked because they thought I would go to the UK because most people go to the UK or go to the US. Not too many people go to Canada. But I told them, I found someone who is interested in this and I would love to work with her.

Getting all the paperwork in order was a bit of a challenge because Nigeria doesnt have a visa office and the applications have to go through Ghana  but Wura persisted. After a rescheduling flights a couple times, she finally landed in Nova Scotia and was amazed by what she found.

The people surprised me the most, she admits. I'd never travelled outside of Nigeria, it's the first time I'd actually left the country so I was shocked. I was shocked by the people how they behaved and how kind and good they were.

Warm welcome



While starting over in a new country has its challenges  for Wura, winter is one of them  she has received lots of support. From donated clothing to friendship, Wura was welcomed and encouraged by the Black Student Advising Centre, the International Centre, her church community and her friend, Wendy McGregor.

I am very grateful. When you come from your country to somewhere you have never been, somewhere your parents have never been, you're scared, you don't know what to expect, you don't know how it's going to be. But I'm very confident here. I'm very happy here. I love it here.

She was also fortunate to get funding for her studies including the George Caines Scholarship, the FGS scholarship and Laws James Dunn scholarship.

Meaningful research



Though she was on her own in new surroundings, Wura didnt waste any time digging into her studies. She completed her Master of Laws within the year and followed it up immediately with admission to the PhD program. She says the timeline was challenging but she just kept her eyes on the goal.

Her masters thesis focused on profit shifting by multinational corporations. That led to an article in which she reviewed Canada's Country by Country Reporting Rules, which are aimed at eliminating base erosion and profit shifting in Canada to look for loopholes that might defeat the intention of the lawmaker.

I found some gaps in the laws and made some recommendations on how to improve on the law so the multinational corporations would effectively pay their fair share of taxes in Canada.

Now that shes working on her PhD, Wura is exploring how developing countries can use international tax coordination to ensure the sustainable revenue required to improve the lives of their citizens.

Eventually, I see myself as a policy person, like a reform consultant. I would like to work with different countries in the future  I'd like to work with the United Nations. I can tell them, I've done the research and here's what to do to help these people.

Good advice



Though its hard to believe she has time for it, Wura is also quite involved in her community beyond the classroom. She is currently working at the Black Student Advising Centre as a project coordinator and will be volunteering as a peer tutor for the upcoming academic year. In addition to that, Wura volunteers at her church and at the Halifax Infirmary.

I've received so much help so it brings me joy to also give help to other people. It's something we all have to do. That's what gives meaning to our life. I'm happy to volunteer and help in any way I can.
Edelweiss is also absorbing the high quality investment team of these funds who bring over a decade of rich experience in Commercial Real Estate (CRE).

New Delhi: Edelweiss Alternative Asset Advisors Ltd (EAAA), a subsidiary of Edelweiss Financial Services Ltd, on Monday said it will acquire two funds of Milestone Capital Advisors Ltd.

Financial details of the transaction could not be ascertained. The two funds to be acquired by Edelweiss Alternative Asset Advisors Ltd are Milestone Opportunities Fund 10 and Milestone Commercial Advantage Fund and have a combined asset under management of over Rs 150 crore.

"Edelweiss is also absorbing the high quality investment team of these funds who bring over a decade of rich experience in Commercial Real Estate (CRE). The transaction is subject to requisite regulatory approvals," the company said in a regulatory filing.

EAAA's acquisition of Milestone's Commercial Real Estate (CRE) Fund is part of the group's strategy to further strengthen its yielding asset platform while widening the range of investment opportunities to its clients, the company said.

Edelweiss Group currently manages customer assets of over USD 26 billion, of which EAAA, has over USD 2 billion of assets under management.
An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you've used privacy settings that say they will prevent it from doing so.

San Francisco: Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.

An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you've used privacy settings that say they will prevent it from doing so.

Computer-science researchers at Princeton confirmed these findings at the AP's request.

For the most part, Google is upfront about asking permission to use your location information. An app like Google Maps will remind you to allow access to location if you use it for navigating.

If you agree to let it record your location over time, Google Maps will display that history for you in a "timeline" that maps out your daily movements.

Storing your minute-by-minute travels carries privacy risks and has been used by police to determine the location of suspects  such as a warrant that police in Raleigh, North Carolina, served on Google last year to find devices near a murder scene. So the company will let you "pause" a setting called Location History.

Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where you've been. Google's support page on the subject states: "You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored."

That isn't true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.

For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are.

And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like "chocolate chip cookies," or "kids science kits," pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude  accurate to the square foot  and save it to your Google account.

The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Google's Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search.

Storing location data in violation of a user's preferences is wrong, said Jonathan Mayer, a Princeton computer scientist and former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission's enforcement bureau.

A researcher from Mayer's lab confirmed the AP's findings on multiple Android devices; the AP conducted its own tests on several iPhones that found the same behaviour.

"If you're going to allow users to turn off something called 'Location History,' then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off," Mayer said.

"That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have." Google says it is being perfectly clear.

"There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people's experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services," a Google spokesperson said in a statement to the AP.

"We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time."

To stop Google from saving these location markers, the company says, users can turn off another setting, one that does not specifically reference location information.

Called "Web and App Activity" and enabled by default, that setting stores a variety of information from Google apps and websites to your Google account.

When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account. But leaving "Web & App Activity" on and turning "Location History" off only prevents Google from adding your movements to the "timeline," its visualization of your daily travels. It does not stop Google's collection of other location markers.

You can delete these location markers by hand, but it's a painstaking process since you have to select them individually, unless you want to delete all of your stored activity.

You can see the stored location markers on a page in your Google account at myactivity.google.com, although they're typically scattered under several different headers, many of which are unrelated to location.

To demonstrate how powerful these other markers can be, the AP created a visual map of the movements of Princeton postdoctoral researcher Gunes Acar, who carried an Android phone with Location history off, and shared a record of his Google account.

The map includes Acar's train commute on two trips to New York and visits to The High Line park, Chelsea Market, Hell's Kitchen, Central Park and Harlem. To protect his privacy, The AP didn't plot the most telling and frequent marker - his home address.

Huge tech companies are under increasing scrutiny over their data practices, following a series of privacy scandals at Facebook and new data-privacy rules recently adopted by the European Union.

Last year, the business news site Quartz found that Google was tracking Android users by collecting the addresses of nearby cellphone towers even if all location services were off.

Google changed the practice and insisted it never recorded the data anyway.

Critics say Google's insistence on tracking its users' locations stems from its drive to boost advertising revenue.

"They build advertising information out of data," said Peter Lenz, the senior geospatial analyst at Dstillery, a rival advertising technology company. "More data for them presumably means more profit."
However, to retain and expand market share, telecom companies will need to improve their services.

New Delhi: Telecom sectors adjusted gross revenues (AGR) could decline another 6-8 per cent this fiscal owing to continued deterioration in realisation from data sales, according to Crisil on Monday.

The intense price war in telecom, which started in September 2016 with the entry of Jio, is showing no signs of abating. If anything, it has become even more brutal, and the pain is expected to continue this fiscal, said the rating agency.

It said that the corrosive effect of competition will see gross revenue of the top three incumbents  Airtel, Idea and Vodafone  plunge 14-16 per cent as they focus on retaining subscriber market share.

Crisil said that even after Jio began charging for its services, the industrys realisation has been declining owing to continued downward revision in tariffs more for the high end data users. Average realisation per MB (ARMB) plummeted from around 23 paise in fiscal 2016 to a mere 1.6 paise in fiscal 2018.

We see ARMB falling further to 1.15-1.20 paise by end-fiscal 2019 because of the data pricing war led by Jio, which has been a net gainer following a cut in interconnect usage charges (IUC), said Crisil.

The situation is expected to improve only after fiscal 2020, following completion of consolidation for the industry, it said.

Crisil said that industrys EBITDA margin is expected to contract a further150-200 bps owing to the full-year impact of the IUC cut. The top three incumbents will see a sharper deterioration. Consolidated margin of the top three incumbents is expected to shrink 250-300 bps on-year because of increase in network operation cost and deterioration in ARPU as competition is no longer limited to prepaid, but has entered the postpaid space as well, said Crisil.

Between fiscals 2016 and 2019, the operating profit of the top three incumbents is likely to halve following a drop of around 1,000 bps in operating margins, it added.

However, to retain and expand market share, telecom companies will need to improve their services.

Crisil hence projects the network capital expenditure in fiscal 2019 at around Rs 75,000 crore. Bulk of the capital expenditure would be in the mobile services segment, including the roll-out and strengthening of 4G services. Regulatory capital expenditure, however, will get some relief as the deferred payment period has been extended to 16 years and will be at Rs 16,500 crore in fiscal 2019, said Crisil.
The government on Monday dismissed Usha Ananthasubramanian, former managing director of scam hit Punjab National Bank and Allahabad Bank, from service, according to an official notification. (Photo: YouTube)

New Delhi: The government on Monday dismissed Usha Ananthasubramanian, former managing director of scam hit Punjab National Bank and Allahabad Bank, from service, according to an official notification.

Ananthasubramanian was, three months back, divested of all her powers as MD of Allahabad Bank, after being named in a CBI charge-sheet in the Rs 14,000 crore PNB fraud case but had continued to be an employee of the bank.

She was to superannuate on Monday but has been dismissed from the service.

Ananthasubramanian had enjoyed leadership roles in PNB in two stints. She headed the bank between August 2015 and May 2017, before moving to Allahabad Bank. She was executive director at PNB from July 2011 to November 2013.
New Delhi: The department of telecom (DoT) is examining industry inputs as well as global 5G spectrum prices, wherever it has been auctioned, vis-a-vis the telecom and regulatory authority of India (Trai) proposals to see if the recommended price points are higher by any measure and if the telcos would bid for them as and when auction takes place or these prices would need revision.

Though it is too early to take a call but whenever the auction takes place, spectrum should be sold, a senior DoT official said and added, we have to see what the global pric-ing model of such (5G) bands are.

An operator would need to pay Rs 9,840 crore for 5G spectrum on the pan-India basis as the telecom regulator has suggested that the auction should be in the block size of 20 mega hertz (MHz). The recommended base price is 30 per cent of the price of 1,800 MHz band and the regulator has proposed a limit of 100 units of spectrum per bidder to avoid monopoly.

According to industry experts, Trais suggested base price of Rs 492 crore per unit of 3,500 MHz 5G spectrum is much higher than Rs 65 crore per unit achieved at a recent 5G auction in South Korea. Trais 5G spectrum base price is 7.5 times the market-discovered price in South Korea, says a telecom operator.

The UKs biggest mobile operators spent about 1.4 billion to acquire 5G spectrum earlier this year, with Vodafone winning 50 MHz in the 3.4 GHz frequency band by paying 378 million and BT-owned EE getting 40 MHz paying 303 million. BT-owned EE acquires 40 MHz by paying 303 million (Rs 2,673 crore) giving a per mhz price of Rs 67 crore.

The government raised only Rs 65,789 crore in 2016 of the estimated Rs 5 lakh crore as 700 Mhz remained unsold on which the auction value was riding and also there was lukewarm response to the auction . This time the government has 8,500 Mhz of spectrum to sell.

A senior executive of a telecom operator said 5G is not for consumers. It is for businesses and allied applications like healthcare, smart cities, education and agriculture. So making money from 5G spectrum is not easy and quick.

The financial position due to high competition is at peak , how can we block money in 5G when we know 4G capex also needs to be taken up and also the payment of spectrum dues payment, the official said. No fresh investment is being seen by any telco at this stage for any new area, the official added.

DoT is also concerned about the Rs 5 lakh crore debt of telcos, 85 per cent of which is due to loans taken by them for paying spectrum dues to the government in 2016. Indian radio waves are considered most expensive in the world.

Sources said DoT is aware of the poor financial situation of telecom operators. Telcos have told the department that they could be ready for spectrum auction only by the second half of 2019  September onwards.

DoT has a fair idea of that timeline, also even if the auction takes place around November 2019, the country would not miss the 2020 5G rollout deadline, set by itself. In certain countries, 5G bands are priced around 43 per cent less compared with the 700 Mhz band, which can also be used for 5G services.

Another official said DoT has started looking at proposals internally and also the telcos analysis of prices. Its too early to say if 5G spectrum pricing at all needs revision and be referred back to Trai for a relook, the official added.

All across the world, telecom service providers and countries are gearing up for 5G rollout. Italy is targeting a September auction of spectrum that could be used for 5G. The UK sold bandwidth in April that included some earmarked for these services. The Hong Kong government is even considering giving away airwaves free, said one operator.
Govt last week constituted a high-level empowered panel under the cabinet secretary to resolve and revive 34 stressed power projects.

New Delhi: The Reserve Bank has backed the idea of state-owned Rural Electrification Corporation's proposal to form an asset reconstruction company (ARC) dedicated to take over stressed assets in the power sector.

Sources said the RBI in its representations to a panel headed by Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar had said that it is open to proposal of REC setting up an ARC. The power sector is grappling with non-performing assets of about Rs 1.74 lakh crore.

The apex bank in its written submission said "it is open to considering the suggestion by REC that there could be an ARC specifically to take over the banks' stressed power assets".

The proposal should be premised on a level-playing field and based on transparent price discovery, it said. The panel was formed in compliance of the order of the Allahabad High Court.

The High Court on May 31 stayed the February 12 RBI circular on companies other than willful defaulters and directed the finance ministry to hold a meeting of all stakeholders on resolutions.

Acting on the direction, a meeting chaired by the financial services secretary with all stakeholders was convened on June 22.

On the basis of meeting, a report was prepared and sent to the power ministry for further action as per the court order. Besides, the report suggested setting up of a high level empowered committee (HLEC).

In line with the report, the government last week constituted a high-level empowered panel under the cabinet secretary to resolve and revive 34 stressed power projects.

The HLEC will have representatives from the ministries of railways, finance, power, coal and the lenders having major exposure to the power sector.
Tobacco acreage and production in the country have started declining as the government is encouraging farmers in ten states like Andhra Pradesh to shift to alternative crops in a big way, a senior government official said on Monday.

New Delhi: Tobacco acreage and production in the country have started declining as the government is encouraging farmers in ten states like Andhra Pradesh to shift to alternative crops in a big way, a senior government official said on Monday.

Alternative crops like foodgrains, cereals, pulses, oilseeds, vegetables, sugarcane, oil palm, and even dairy and poultry activities have been identified for tobacco growing areas in different states, he said.

"Both area and production of tabacco are declining every year because the government is supporting with funds to encourage the tobacco growers to shift to alternative crops," the official said. About Rs 9.5 crore was released to the tobacco growing states in the 2017-18 fiscal to shift to alternative farming.

Funds are being provided under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), he said. As per the latest data, the tobacco area has declined by 14.56 per cent to 3.99 lakh hectares in 2016-17 from 4.67 lakh hectares in 2014-15. Even tobacco output has come down to 8.05 lakh tonnes in 2016-17 from Rs 8.55 lakh tonnes in 2014-15.

"India's tobacco production is higher than Brazil but much lower than China. Efforts are being made to reduce both area and production in our country," the official said.

More awareness is being created in the growing states and even the Tobacco Board is distributing pamphlets on package of practices for alternative crops to Flue Cured Virginia (FCV) tabacco, he said and added this will yield positive results.

The Telangana government has informed that tobacco farmers in the state have shifted to alternative crops like bengal gram and chillies, while in Odisha farmers have diversified to vegetables like tomato, cauliflower, cabbage, chillly and hybrid maize, sunflower and others.

In Karnataka, farmers have shifted to crops like soyabean followed by sugarcane during 2017, he added. Besides, the central government is supplementing the states efforts through implementation of various crop development programme like National Food Security Mission (NFSM).
New Delhi: The Centre on Monday dismissed former managing director of scam-hit PNB and Allahabad Bank, Usha Anantha Subramanian from service, according to a notification. She was to superannuate on Monday but has been dismissed from the service.

Ms. Ananthasubramanian was, three months back, divested of all her powers as MD of Allahabad Bank, after being named in a CBI charge-sheet in the Rs 14,000 crore PNB fraud case but had continued to be an employee of the bank.
Keerthi Suresh in Mahanati, Ranbir Kapoor in Sanju and Rani Mukerji in Hichki.

Melbourne: Sanju, Hichki, Love Sonia, Mahanati and Gali Guleiyan were the films which bagged the major honours at the star-studded Indian Film Festival of Melbourne finale, held at Palais Theatre, one of the oldest and most iconic landmarks of Melbourne.

Ranbir Kapoor won the IFFM Vanguard Award for his outstanding portrayal as Sanjay Dutt in Sanju, while Rani Mukerjis performance as teacher with Tourette syndrome won her the Best Actress honour for Hichki.

In the male category, it was Manoj Bajpayee who won Best Actor award for Gali Guleiyan (In The Shadows), which also won a Best Indie film special mention.

The Bong beauty was also felicitated with the Excellence in Cinema award, and was handed over the trophy by Simi Garewal, who had amazing words to say about Rani.

Wins for Sanju team didnt stop at just Ranbir, with biopic being declared Best Film, Rajkumar Hirani winning Best Director and Vicky Kaushal taking home the Best Supporting Actor (Male) for his act as Sanjay Dutts friend in the drama.

The other big winner of the night was Love Sonia, which was honoured with the Best Indie Film award, and fetched Richa Chadha Best Supporting Actress and her co-star Freida Pinto won the Diversity Award.

Telugu hit Mahanati, based on yesteryear actress Savitri, starring Keerthy Suresh was honoured with the Equality In Cinema award.

The event had earlier kicked off by celebrating the diverse cultures of India with special welcome to the guests on the red carpet. Ministers from Victorian government, and Australian film industry members like Dev Patel starrer Lion director Garth Davis, were in attendance.

Apart from amazing dance performances, popular music composers Sachin-Jigar were among the star attractions with their lively and melodious performance, while host and comedian Saadiya Ali kept the audiences in splits throughout.

The International Film Festival of Melbourne had kicked off on Friday, with various events and activities around the theme of inclusion.

Here are the complete list of winners:

Best Indie Film: Love Sonia

Best Indie Film Special Mention Gali Guleiyan (In The Shadows)

Equality In Cinema: Mahanati

Diversity Award : Freida Pinto

Best Actor: Manoj Bajpayee For Gali Guleiyan (in The Shadows )

IFFM Vanguard Award : Ranbir Kapoor for Sanju

Best Actress : Rani Mukerji For Hichki

Best Film : Sanju

Best Director : Rajkumar Hirani

Best Supporting Performance : Vicky Kaushal for 'Sanju' And Richa Chadha for 'Love Sonia'

Excellence In Cinema : Rani Mukerji

IFFM: Rani best actor, top award for Ranbir; Sanju, Love Sonia, Mahanati bag honours
The monsoon has unleashed its fury on Kerala, many areas of which are experiencing floods. The unprecedented disaster had Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan appealing to people to assist in the rescue and rehabilitation of those affected. His call hasnt gone unheard with many celebrities responding positively.

Actor Vijay Deverakonda has donated Rs 5 lakh to the Kerala Chief Ministers Disaster Relief Fund. He went one step further in asking his fans to lend a helping hand too. And now I hear Kerala is reeling under floods and situation is quite bad! Kerala was my first holiday destination and has given me a lot of love for my work, I've met a lot of people from there who are some of the nicest people I know, I dont know how to reach out personally. Rowdies, lets all pitch in small amounts and we may make a huge change to someone like us in Kerala. Here, I'll start us off with Rs 5,00,000 #KeralaFloodRelief. (sic), he tweeted.

Actor Kamal Haasan too rose to the occasion by contributing Rs 25 lakh. Even though he hasnt made any announcement in this regard, the Chief Ministers official Facebook page confirmed the news.

Kollywood actors Suriya and Karthi followed suit and announced they would donate Rs 25 lakh, while The Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA) has donated Rs 10 lakh.

Several other Malayalam actors, including Mohanlal, Mammootty, etc., have appealed to their fans to pitch in.
Actor Ram Charan cant get enough of director Vamsi Paidipally, it seems. After working together for Yevadu, the actor-director duo is keen to join forces again. Though the actor hasnt started shooting for his next film with director Rajamouli, the two are hoping to work together as soon as they have fulfilled their respective commitments.

Why the sudden desire to work with Vamsi again? Well, Charan is smitten by Vamshis style of writing and the way he conceives the scenes. The actor believes the directors intention of showing his protagonist in a different light always makes for an exciting collaboration.

A source informs, Ram Charan loves the way he was portrayed in Yevadu. So, he believes Vamsi can give a new dimension to him again. Also, the actor and director know each other well and have been planning to collaborate. Things should fall in place soon.
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo: Four new cases of Ebola virus have been confirmed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the health ministry said, as authorities prepare to deploy an experimental treatment.

The latest confirmed cases near the town of Mangina in Congos North Kivu province bring the total for the current outbreak to 21, the ministry said in a statement late on Friday.

Two more people - one near Mangina and another in the city of Beni - died of Ebola, the ministry said. In all, the haemorrhagic fever is believed to have killed 38 people, although several of these cases have not been confirmed.

Authorities this week began vaccinating health workers and people who had contact with confirmed cases. The experimental vaccine, manufactured by Merck, proved effective against an outbreak in western Congo that ended late last month.

Officials are also ready to use an experimental treatment called mAB114 on Ebola patients for the first time, Steve Ahuka, a virologist at the National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB) in the capital Kinshasa, told Reuters.

The treatment was developed in the United States using the antibodies of the survivor of an Ebola outbreak in the western Congolese city of Kikwit in 1995 and was 100 percent effective when tested on monkeys.

Its experimental. So we are following the protocol. It has been submitted to the ethical committee and the ethical committee gave its okay, Ahuka said, adding it could be used within days.

He said other experimental treatments, including ZMapp, a similar antibody drug made by Mapp Biopharmaceuticals in San Diego, could also be used.

Ebola, which causes fever, vomiting and diarrhoea, is spread through direct contact with body fluids.

It killed more than 11,000 people during the largest-ever outbreak in West Africa from 2013-16. Authorities in Congo, which has experienced 10 outbreaks since 1976, have been more successful in containing it.

But the current flare-up poses fresh challenges as it is in a part of Congo stalked by myriad militia groups that regularly battle one another and kill and kidnap civilians.

So far, however, the disease has not touched so-called red zones where security risks would severely limit access for health workers.
Dr. K.P. Balakrishnan, president, Interventional Cardiology Council of Kerala, says the high mortality and disability rate from heart attack and stroke is a clear pointer that in India, heart ailments have assumed the form of a silent epidemic.

Kochi: The high mortality and disability rate from heart attack and stroke is a clear pointer that in India the heart ailments have assumed the form of a silent epidemic.

The country reportedly has 30 million heart patients accounting for 60% of cardiovascular diseases worldwide, says Dr K.P. Balakrishnan, president, Interventional Cardiology Council of Kerala.

Hypertension has enslaved nearly 40% of the Kerala population. About 30% of urban and 20% rural population have high cholesterol levels. Roughly 20% of the state population has cardiovascular disease risks. Coronary interventions done on patients report an average 30% rise every year.

Amid concerns that Kerala stands ahead in cardiovascular disease mortality and disability, interventional cardiologists across the state held their annual scientific conference here to devise strategies for disease surveillance, prevention and management.

The conference was organised by Interventional Cardiology Council of Kerala (ICCK), the body of cardiologists who do catheter-based therapy for all complex diseases of the heart. The incidence of the disease can be gradually brought down with studies on genetic predispositions, spreading awareness on risk factors like unhealthy lifestyle and food habits and sustained monitoring for prevention," said Dr Balakrishnan.

"Equally significant is the awareness to identify symptoms of heart attack and emergency procedures and ensuring to people in all geographical area timely access to interventional treatments.

ICCK has developed specific action plans in all these crucial areas and is in the process of executing them. The movement needs collective action by the whole state health sector and health insurance sector with public participation, he added.

Heart attack is always a run against time to reach a hospital equipped with advanced catheter labs to perform angioplasty (PCI) for earliest restoration of blood flow to heart muscles (reperfusion), said Dr Jabir A., the senior cardiologist at Lisie Hospital, Kochi.

Kerala has the maximum number of cardiac catheterisation labs offering 24x7 services. There are 113 functional cath labs in Kerala for its 3.4 crore people, which far exceeds the national average. According to the study conducted by Cardiological Society of India, Kerala chapter, the mortality in cases of primary angioplasty in Kerala is minute. The efficacy of treatment is at par with the European and American standards.

The recent studies also suggest that in Kerala, nearly 70% of the population can access nearest reperfusion-capable hospital within 30 minutes and another 22 per cent within 30 minutes to one hour. However, an eight per cent population in remote areas is outside timely access zones.

Regionalised treatment for timely reperfusion is the only practical approach. So, more remote hospitals need to be equipped with catheterisation labs. This is an area where we require allocation of more health resources, Dr Jabir said.

Patient survival rate from a heart attack would tremendously improve if we make the best use of information technology for early access to reperfusion-capable hospitals.

A cardiac emergency mobile app is also being developed by Cardiological Society of India, Kerala chapter, to help the patients. It would connect the patient location to the nearest speciality hospitals and ambulance system.

Basic knowledge of bystanders to do the cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for life support while awaiting definitive treatment is very crucial. Training on first aid including life-saving CPR can be imparted through educational institutions, residents associations and voluntary organisations, he said.

Poor penetration of health insurance is another key area that needs urgent attention to ensure equitable healthcare to all. The state health and insurance sector need to evolve affordable insurance schemes covering primary PCI.

Dr Jabir added that the conference specifically dealt with the issue of giving the entire population of the state timely and equitable access to primary angioplasty, which is the most effective treatment for heart attack.

The annual meet held eighteen scientific sessions in two days covering topics including primary angioplasty, pediatric intervention, bifurcations, peripheral interventions, transcatheter aortic valve replacement procedure (Tavr), antiplatelets, coronary imaging and physiology, newer therapeutic options, left main interventions, calcified lesions, rotablation, complex PCI, aortic intervention , chronic total occlusion, graft interventions and structural heart disease.

The meet was attended by more than 300 interventional cardiologists, eminent speakers, faculty, scientists and researchers from across the state.
The accused reportedly confessed that the sack contained the mortal remains of a Frenchman, Pyare Bernard Robert Rane, 69, whom he had known while studying in a private Engineering college at Mamallapuram.(Representational Image)

Thanjavur: A 69-year-old person from France was allegedly murdered by a youth of Avikottai village near Pattukottai. Madukkur police said, on the confessions of Thirumurugan of Avikottai who was arrested in the case on Sunday, a gunny bag packed with bones and ashes was recovered by the cops and Pattukottai tashildar, and sent to the Government hospital at Pattukottai for examination.

The accused reportedly confessed that the sack contained the mortal remains of a Frenchman, Pyare Bernard Robert Rane, 69, whom he had known while studying in a private Engineering college at Mamallapuram.

Rane had purportedly come to Tiruchy few days back, called Thirumurugan and asked if he could visit the latter's village.

The friend obliged, taking a car to pick up Rane. On way, the accused told the police both had some liquor, but Rane developed fits and died.

Thereupon, Thirumurugan reportedly confessed that he burnt Ranes body at his house, packed the bones and ashes in a gunny bag and threw it under a tamarind tree near his village.

Police secured Thirumurugan based on a note found in a bag containing the passport of Rane at a paddy field at Olayakunnam village near Madukkur. Further probe is on.
According to the womans statement to the state crime branch, she was in a relationship with Father Varghese in 1999. At that time, she was 16 years old. (Photo: YouTube | Screengrab)

Thiruvananthapuram: Two of the four Kerala priests of Malankara Orthodox Church, accused of raping and blackmailing a married woman in Kerala for several years, surrendered before a local court on Monday.

The Supreme Court on August 6, rejected the anticipatory bail plea of the two priests - Father Sony Varghese (the main accused in the case) and Father Jaise K George - and asked them to surrender before the trial court by August 13 and then seek regular bail.

The priests surrendered before a court in Thirvalla district on Monday.

The four priests Abraham Varghese (A1), Job Mathew (A2), Dr Johnson Mathew (A3) and Jaise K George (A4) belonging to the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church were booked by the state crime branch for allegedly raping and molesting the woman devotee.

The 34-year-old married woman has alleged that the priests uploaded videos on the internet and they used them to blackmail her. The woman also accused Father Abraham Varghese of sexually abusing her since she was 16.

According to the womans statement to the state crime branch, she was in a relationship with Father Varghese in 1999. At that time, she was 16 years old. He went on to become a priest but forced her to continue the relationship, even though they were married to separate individuals.

Father Johnson Mathew and Father Job Mathew are already on bail.

The National Commission of Women (NCW) had, last month, recommended abolishing practice of confessions in churches as they felt it can lead to blackmailing of women.

The suggestion came at the wake of a number of women alleging rape and sexual abuse by priests and church officials. However, the women's commission recommendation drew sharp criticism from the Catholic church and churchgoers.
In the letter, written in Hindi, the BJP chief cited the examples of Indonesia, Sweden, South Africa, Belgium and Italy where simultaneous elections have proved to be successful. (Photo: File | ANI)

New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah on Monday wrote a letter to Law Commission Chairman B S Chauhan batting for One Nation One Election system.

Shah, in his letter, emphasised that with multiple elections happening throughout the year, the Model Code of Conduct impedes the government's developmental work.

In the letter, written in Hindi, the BJP chief cited the examples of Indonesia, Sweden, South Africa, Belgium and Italy where simultaneous elections have proved to be successful. Shah further elucidated how One Nation One Election is not akin to the Indian electoral system.

BJP President Amit Shahs letter to the Law Commission for One Nation One Election. #Delhi (2/2) pic.twitter.com/3NWZogpmzy  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

Shah said that in India elections keep taking place throughout the year in one state or the other, usually in one five-term of Lok Sabha, on an average 5 to 7 states go for assembly elections each year along with polls for local bodies.

"Due to the present process of elections, a situation is created where the entire country is always in the election mode whether at national, state or local administration level due to which the national treasury has to take a huge load for the smooth conduct of these periodic polls. This expenditure can be cut down by holding all such elections simultaneously in five years," Shah said.

BJP president further said that the Model Code of Conduct announced with these polls impact effective governance at two level - the decision-making process of the government is effected as the moment election dates are announced political parties take decisions that are short-termed and public appeasing.

As a result, the decision-making process has become more of appeasement instead of being tactical. In this context, Shah mentioned Maharashtra where some or the other part of the state remained under Model Code of Conduct for 307 days during 2016-17.
'Shia Waqf Board has issued an order that on August 15, it is necessary to raise slogans of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' after the national anthem in the all programmes to be held on the properties of Waqf Board', Shia Waqf Board chairman, Waseem Rizvi said. (Photo: File)

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh Shia Waqf Board has made it mandatory to recite 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' slogan during the Independence Day programmes to be held on Waqf properties on August 15.

In an order issued on Saturday, Waqf board has also warned of "strict action" in case the directive is not complied with.

The Shia Waqf Board chairman, Waseem Rizvi told ANI, "Shia Waqf Board has issued an order that on August 15, it is necessary to raise slogans of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' after the national anthem in the all programmes to be held on the properties of Waqf Board."

"Whoever does not follow this order, strict action will be taken against him," he added.

The country will celebrate India's 72nd Independence Day on August 15 with patriotic fervour, during which several programmes will be held across the nation.
Hyderabad: No takers for model markets constructed by Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation even after inviting tenders six times to lease them out.

Constructing them either in isolated locations or far away from residential areas have been cited as some of the reason for non occupancy.

Besides this, the rent of each shop in the model market is relatively higher than the current market price. Even though the state government has issued a GO, pertaining to decrease of lease rates, rent of the shops are still quite high. However, the corporation, not considering these factors, have finished the construction of 34 new model markets and are ready for inaugurations.

According to highly placed sources, each market was constructed at a cost of Rs 20.33 crore. There are seven shops on the ground floor, each of 70 to 140 sq ft, while the first floor has eight shops with parking, toilets and other facilities.

The markets were valued much higher than the current rate. While the average rent for a shop in the open market is Rs 10,000, renting a shop at one of the model markets would range between Rs 25,000-Rs 30,000.

Not addressing the issues, the corporation has gone ahead and have finished the construction of 34 model markets.

Sources said that the civic body are wasting public money with the unrealistic projects. The civic body had during its 100-day action plan in 2015 decided to construct 50 model markets against the target of 200. The corporation completed the construction of just 34.

A senior GHMC official said the government issued GO No. 82 on March 28, 2016, which stated that the rent should be 15 per cent more than the market value.

The rates were fixed under the AP revision of market value guidelines rules 1998. The corporation had brought the issue to the notice of the government.

We have asked the Government to amend GO 82 and fix the rent only on the structures but not the vacant land on the model market premises. We asked the Government to decrease the rent to 10 per cent from the present 15 on the basis of current market value and carpet areas, the official said.

The GHMC official further said that responding to the request by the civic body the government had decreased the price and issued orders in this regard.

However, the official said, constructing them in isolated places along with the high rent have resulted in the non occupancy of several model markets.

GHMC constructed model markets at Beerappagadda, Gandhinagar, Premvathipet, Chandanagar, Moosapet. The corporation is yet to finalise tenders for several model markets. They would be allocated for SC/ST and BC beneficiaries, where the minimal rent was 10 per cent of current market value, he added.
Sanjay Basu sought Shah desist from making or circulating any defamatory comments, statement, causing publication of the same in any media against his client. (Photo: File | ANI)

Kolkata: Trinamool Youth Congress president Abhishek Banerjee, nephew of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, on Monday sent a legal notice to BJP president Amit Shah alleging defamatory statements against him at a public rally on August 11 in Kolkata.

The legal notice demanding an apology from Shah for allegedly making defamatory statements against Abhishek Banerjee, a Lok Sabha MP, was sent to the state BJP headquarter his lawyer Sanjay Basu said.

Basu asked Shah to "issue an unconditional apology in an appropriate press conference within 72 hours from receipt of the instant notice retracting the virulent and mala-fide statements made against my client."

The notice to Shah said, "In the course of your speech you had made various allegations against my client by making a flimsy and thinly veiled reference and/or insinuation to the "bhatija" (nephew) of the Hon'ble Chief Minister of the State of West Bengal.

"Since, it is well known that my client is the nephew of Smt. Mamata Bannerjee and is actively involved in politics, the contents of your speech left little to the imagination of my client's well-wishers that you were referring to my client."

The lawyer claimed that the "false statements" against his client has caused grave loss and prejudice to his client's reputation amongst his well-wishers and the citizens of India.

Basu said his client Abhishek Banerjee "denies the allegation that he is involved in any purported diversion of public and/or government funds to the tune of Rs 3,59,000 crore or any other sum purportedly allotted from the Centre to the State of West Bengal."

He sought Shah desist from making or circulating any defamatory comments, statement, causing publication of the same in any media against his client.
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Umar Khalid was at the Constitution Club of India to attend an event titled 'Khauff Se Azaadi', organised by an organisation named 'United Against Hate'. (Photo: Twitter | ANI)

New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Umar Khalid was shot by an unidentified man outside Constitution Club of India in New Delhi on Monday afternoon.

However, Umar Khalid managed to escape unhurt.

Khalid was at the venue to attend an event titled 'Khauff Se Azaadi', organised by an organisation named 'United Against Hate'.

Talking to reporters after being attacked, Khalid said, "There is an atmosphere of fear in the country, and anybody who speaks against the government is threatened."

An eyewitness, who was accompanying Umar Khalid, said, "We were at a tea stall when a man in a white shirt came form behind, pushed and opened fire at him. Khalid lost his balance, fell down and bullet missed him. We tried to catch the man. He fired aerial shots. The pistol slipped off his hand and he fled."

Joint Commissioner of Police, Delhi, Ajay Chaudhary said a man attacked Umar Khalid from behind while he was having tea with friends. Khalid fell, but is safe. We are investigating what happened, he said.

DCP Madhur Verma said they are verifying the attack. Somebody pounced on Khalid and pushed him then tried to fire at Khalid. But he couldnt shoot immediately. People started chasing him. Khalid has said the man then fired in the air, Verma said.

Umar Khalid first shot to fame (or infamy) on February 9, 2016 when he organised a protest against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

The protest was organised inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

According to media footage, anti-India slogans were raised at the event and sedition charges were slapped on Khalid and JNU students leader Kanhaiya Kumar.

Pursuing his doctorate in the JNUs Centre for Historical Studies, Khalid recently claimed the university was not allowing him to submit his theses.

The university said he had not completed formalities that resulted from the sedition charge.
Since I write my blog posts about two weeks in advance, this one is a bit anticipatory. Last week I was scheduled to undergo a second heart procedure, and my prayer is that as you read this, Im already well along in my recovery process.

If youve been reading my blog over the years, at least once a year Ive reflected on my open-heart surgery in December 2006, when I underwent an ARR (aortic root replacement)  having my entire ascending aorta replaced, including the aortic valve, along with four arterial bypass grafts. (Dont I sound medical?) Anyway, my surgeon was up front from the start, pointing out that perhaps 10-12 years down the road, Id need to have the aortic valve replaced. Apparently, replacement valves dont come with lifetime guarantees.



The procedure I was to have is called a TAVR (Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement). This was determined after I had a TEE (Transesophageal Echocardiogram) administered several weeks earlier. (Now your medical alphabet is as good as mine!) This test showed my 11-year old valve wasnt working properly and had to be replaced. Actually, a bovine valve (consisting of cow tissue) was to be inserted into the old one. So if I seem more mooooo-dy these days, or start grazing, thats why.



So Im calling this post, Matter of the Heart, Part II. Interestingly, my hospital wasnt even doing the TAVR procedure until 2011, five years after my original surgery. Praise the Lord for advances in medical science and cardiac care!



Going in, the cardiologists and surgeons told me that given my overall physical shape, and relatively young age (this procedure is most commonly performed on people in their late 70s and 80s), I had a very good chance of coming through it with the proverbial flying colors. Thats my hope, even if I still cant leap tall buildings in a single bound. But whether youre having heart surgery or getting your tonsils out, theres always some risk factor.



Prior to my first surgery, while pondering my then-uncertain future and reading my Bible, God directed me to Psalm 41:3, which read, I will raise him from his sickbed and heal him of his disease. I remember at the time it seemed as if this verse were printed in neon lights. From that moment, I felt the peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7), even though I knew the Lord had every right to choose to take me from this earthly life if He so willed.



This time I saw no message in neon, but over the course of my reading came across Psalm 27, which included the following passages that seemed encouraging:



The Lord is my light and my salvation  whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life  of whom shall I be afraid?.... Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident. [Gods] heart says of you, Seek my face! Your face, Lord, I will seek. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

As Ive mentioned before, the Scriptures say a lot about the heart, even though most of the time its in reference to emotions and motivations. But in my experience, and in the years I served as a volunteer visiting patients who had just undergone open-heart surgery, I cant help but believe God imbued a spiritual component into the organ whose primary role is to keep blood consistently coursing through the body. Its a daunting, humbling feeling to know youve approached deaths door, yet havent passed through it.



Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and in Psalm 51:10, King David prayed, Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Repeatedly, the foremost challenge for all who follow Jesus Christ is to keep their heart right.



As I write this, trusting Ive come through my surgery well, I have two desires of the heart: To do all I can to keep my physical heart strong to serve my God, family, friends and everyone I encounter, and to keep my heart (my thoughts and motives) right with the Lord that I might live faithfully for Him and speak His truth for anyone who wishes to know more about Him. And may I close by saying, as we hear so often here in the South, Bless your heart!



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Robert J. Tamasy is a veteran journalist, former newspaper editor and magazine editor. Bob has written hundreds of magazine articles, and authored, co-authored and edited more than 15 books. These include the newly re-published, Business At Its Best, Tufting Legacies, The Heart of Mentoring, and Pursuing Life With a Shepherds Heart. He edits a weekly business meditation, Monday Manna, which is translated into more than 20 languages and distributed via email around the world by CBMC International. To read more of Bob Tamasys writings, you can visit his blog, www.bobtamasy.blogspot.com, or his website (now being completed), www.bobtamasy-readywriterink.com. He can be emailed at btamasy@comcast.net.






Bengaluru: To generate revenues from its real estate assets, the transport department is planning to turn part of their bus terminuses at taluks into commercial complexes, which will also house government offices. The department, however, claimed that the plan is to help people in rural areas to access government services easily.

Transport Minister D.C. Thammanna told Deccan Chronicle, We have been receiving many complaints from commuters at the taluk level that most of our bus routes are not connected to government offices and they have to depend on private operators. We cannot run bus services to all the points as government offices are situated at different places. The new project will house all government offices at the same place.

He said that the infrastructure will be developed through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) and investments will be attracted from different parts of the state. The new complexes will have modern facilities, ample parking space and also space for commercial activities.

Mr Thammanna said, This will generate revenues for our department and also save money for the other departments, which are functioning out of different rented buildings now.

A similar concept has already been tried in Bengaluru, and Traffic and Transit Management Centres (TTMCs) have been set up at different locations in the city. But commercial spaces at many of these TTMCs have remained empty.

We have some empty TTMCs in Bengaluru which will soon be occupied by government offices. Commercial spaces have been planned at taluk bus terminuses to allow private investors to get their returns. We will do the analysis and based on that, the procurement plan for further development of the project will be finalised. There will be a change across the state soon, a senior KSRTC official said.
Bidar: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday continued his scathing attack at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and alleged that Modi is not Prime Minister of the country but of 15 "super-rich businessmen".

On one hand, PM Modi waives off debts worth Rs 2.5 lakh crore for 10-15 large businesses, and on the other hand, he makes the people of India stand in lines in the name of demonetisation, Rahul said.

Addressing a public meeting in Bidar in Karnataka, the Congress chief also took on PM Modi over Rafale deal and reiterated his earlier challenge for a debate on the issue accusing the Prime Minister of lying to the nation.

I challenge PM Modi for a debate on the Rafale Deal. He will never accept this challenge, as he has been lying to the nation on the deal. Why is he running away from questions? Rahul said.

Rahul Gandhi added, Nirmala Sitaraman lied that the government cannot reveal the price of Rafale jets as there is a secrecy clause between India and France. But the French President told me in person said that price can be revealed if the Indian government wants to.

Rahul Gandhi has claimed that there is no secrecy pact with France that stops the Centre from revealing the details about the Rafale jet deal, even though France gas contradicted the statement and said that there is an agreement that binds the two countries to protect the classified information provided by the partner.

Reaching out to the people of Karnataka, Rahul asserted, Anil Ambani was there with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in France when the Rafale deal was signed. Money and jobs have been snatched from the youth of Karnataka and given to Ambani.

Rahul Gandhi further lashed out at PM Modi-led NDA government over the issue of women security. PM Modi did not say even one word on the rapes in Uttar Pradesh or the rapes in the Bihar shelter home. He is busy protecting his leaders accused of rapes, he alleged.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought in the slogan of Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao. What he didnt tell is from whom to save our daughters, he said.

Taking a jibe at the Centre over job creation, the Congress president said, PM Modi promised two crore jobs every year and now asks the youth to make 'pakodas'. He also promised to provide gas connections, and now talks about using gas from the gutter.

Ahead of the 2019 Lok Saha polls, the Congress has decided to take on the NDA government over the issue of corruption by launching a public campaign that aims to highlight the recent bank scams, Rafale deal and the state of the Indian economy.
'...I and my team of 'gau rakshaks' will hit the streets and stop slaughter of cows in the state,' T Raja Singh Lodh said. (Photo: Screengrab | Facebook | @RajaSinghOffical)

Hyderabad: Telangana BJP lawmaker T Raja Singh Lodh tendered his resignation on Sunday night so that he can "act" against cow slaughter during Eid al-Adha without embarrassing the party.

T Raja Singh Lodh, who represents Goshamahal constituency in the assembly, alleged that his party was not providing any support for 'gau raksha' (cow protection).

In a video message posted on a social networking site he said that he has forwarded his resignation letter to Telangana BJP president K Laxman.

"For me Hindu dharma and cow protection are priorities, and politics comes later. For 'gau raksha', I have resigned from the BJP. I brought up the issue in the Assembly many times, but the party did not provide any support," he said.

"...I and my team of 'gau rakshaks' will hit the streets and stop slaughter of cows in the state," he added.

In the video message T Raja Singh Lodh said he and his team is ready to kill or die to stop cow slaughter during Eid al-Adha in Telangana.

He claimed that about 3,000 cows are going to be slaughtered for Bakr Id or Eid al-Adha next week.

He also attacked Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and said he is aware of cow slaughter but is not acting upon it.

T Raja Singh Lodh, who has been booked several times by police for his controversial statements and speeches, said, "For cow protection...we will kill or we will die. Our aim is to see that cows are not slaughtered."

T Raja Singh Lodh said he did not want to put the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in any trouble, so decided to resign from it.

(With inputs from agencies)
Kolkata: An outstanding parliamentarian, Somnath Chatterjee was the first communist in the country to don the role of a Speaker.

Chatterjee, who had been associated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for most part of his life, leaves behind an imprint as one of the most illustrious Speakers of the Lok Sabha.

His father N C Chatterjee was once president of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha.

Chatterjee was unanimously elected as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha in 2004 during the UPA-I government. A job he executed with his customary flair, but then came a moment during which he proved that as Speaker he was far above party politics.

Under the general secretaryship of Prakash Karat, the CPI(M) withdrew support to the UPA-I government in July 2008 over the Indo-US nuclear deal. Karat staunchly opposed the deal brokered by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

A two-day special session of the Parliament was held to see through a trust vote against the ruling government.

Karat wanted Chatterjee to step down and vote against the government. But Chatterjee defied the partys diktat, refused to step down and oversaw the trust vote on July 23, 2008. He had said the position of Speaker was independent and unbiased, and that the Speaker was above party politics.

A close associate of Marxist leader Jyoti Basu, Chatterjee was expelled a month later by the CPI(M) for "seriously compromising the position of the party". He described the day as "one of the saddest days of my life". He, however, continued as Speaker with the help of ruling allies.

It was on his initiative that proceedings of the Zero Hour were telecast live from July 5, 2004. A full-fledged 24hour Lok Sabha television channel also came into being in July, 2006 during his tenure as Speaker.

Chatterjee was elected to the Lok Sabha 10 times on party ticket beginning in 1971 when he was elected as a CPI(M)-backed independent candidate to a seat in an interim election necessitated due to the death of his father. He was defeated only once in 1984 by Mamata Banerjee, who incidentally came to limelight with this win. Chatterjee was the leader of the CPI(M) in Lok Sabha from 1989 to 2004.

He was born in Tezpur, Assam on July 25, 1929, to N C Chatterjee, who was once president of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, and Binapani Debi and was educated in Kolkata and the United Kingdom.

A Barrister-at-Law from Middle Temple in UK, Chatterjee was a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for four decades from 1968 to 2008, till he was expelled in 2008. Conferred the "Outstanding Parliamentarian Award" in 1996, Chatterjee was known for his debating skills with extensive knowledge of national and international issues, delivered in his deep baritone voice, interspersed with wit and humour. He adorned several parliamentary committees as chairman or as a member and was respected by leaders across the political arena. Chatterjee retired from active politics following the end of his tenure in 2009.

He shared a close relation with CPI(M) stalwart Jyoti Basu who had also made him the chairman of West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC), trusting him with the responsibility to turn the state around in bringing in investments and starting new ventures. The lawyer-turned politician had acknowledged Basu's role in guiding him, saying, "He has always given me unstinted support and encouragement." He is survived by wife Renu, a son and two daughters.
Hyderabad: The Telangana government approved 700 investment proposals in the Life Sciences sector of which 80 per cent have already started operations since January 2015. In the past four years, the state has been able to get an investment of Rs 10,222 crore in Life sciences. Minister K.T. Rama Rao, in a statement released on Sunday, said that the government is working towards doubling the valuation of the Pharma sector by taking it to 100 billion dollars.

Mr Rama Rao is certain that Telangana is well positioned as a leader in life sciences in the global map. Over the last four years, since the formation of the new state, the sector has been buzzing with activity with the entry of new players like Ferring Pharma, Chemo, GSK, Syngene, Slayback Pharma, Johnson & Johnson etc., and the expansion of companies like Novartis, Biological E, Laurus Labs, Pulse Pharma among others. The government is focussed on the development of Hyderabad Pharma City, Genome Valley 2.0 and the Medical Devices Park as a cluster. To foster the development of the Life Sciences sector, the government came up with Life Sciences Vision 2030, B-Hub, BioAsia, Life Sciences Infrastructure Fund, Innovation Fund, Ease of Doing Business and Skilling Initiatives.

To create skilled labour, the government has partnered with US Pharmacopeia for setting up a training institute for university graduates and pharma professionals, addressing the skill gap on regulatory and data requirements.

A number of other skilling programmes focussed on vaccines, biopharma, pharmaceutical manufacturing and artificial intelligence in healthcare are under finalisation.
'I want to be an officer like my father; I want to take revenge for his death. His sacrifice will bear fruit for Jammu and Kashmir,' Ahmed's son Sahil said. (Photo: ANI)

Rajouri (Jammu and Kashmir): The Special Operations Group personnel, Parvaiz Ahmed, died in a fierce encounter in Srinagar, but that couldn't kill the determination of his two minor sons - in fact, the incident has steeled up their grit. The brothers want to grow up as officers in security forces and smoke out terrorists.

Ahmed's mortal remains had not even reached his place but his 12-year-old son knew what the future course of his life is.

"I want to be an officer like my father; I want to take revenge for his death. His sacrifice will bear fruit for Jammu and Kashmir," said Sahil on Sunday.

Ahmeds younger son is eight years old. Ahmed laid down his life while countering a terrorist attack in Batmaloo area in Srinagar.

Ahmed, who was part of the Jammu and Kashmir Police's counter terrorism squad, was the only earning member of his family with 11 mouths to feed. With his death, the family is now clueless about their future. They have appealed to the Jammu and Kashmir government for support.

Speaking to news agency ANI, Ahmed's father said, "I appeal to the state government to do justice to us. My son sacrificed his life for the country. There are children in the family and nobody is there to take care of them. I am old, I cannot look after them and there is no support for us without my son."

Ahmed's brother and uncle also made similar appeals, saying that all 11 members in their family were dependent on him, and appealed to the government to ensure that they were looked after well.

While condoling Ahmed's death, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Kotranka sub-division Mohammad Shafiq Choudhary confirmed that his body was yet to reach his village in Rajouri district. The delay was due to the rough weather conditions in the state preventing helicopters from ferrying his remains to his people.

On Sunday, the security forces launched a cordon and search operation following a tip-off about the presence of terrorists in Batmaloo area. The search operation soon turned into an encounter after the terrorist fired upon the forces, which retaliated strongly, resulting in two accomplices of the terrorists being detained by the Jammu and Kashmir Police.
The start-up will be initiating operations in Hyderabad and as a pilot project will be in Hyderabad for three months. (Representational Image)

Hyderabad: In a first, We-Hub start-up Journee has won the Station Access and Mobility Program (STAMP) Challenge for addressing last-mile connectivity issues. Co-founded by Vandhana Parkavi and Sankaran Kaliappan, Journee is an integrated ticketing and analytics solution that allows RTC conductors to issue tickets using the Android app. It also helps to facilitate cashless mode of transport.

It is not only a ticketing tool but also an analytics solution. Journee helps public transport authorities maximise revenue and optimise operations by harnessing real-time occupancy data around public transport usage. This helps to understand the people in those routes and allows governments take decisions to run buses on important routes during peak hours, Parkavi said.

Instead of looking at the commuter angle, the start-up looked at the RTC perspective on what they want to do and how to do it when it comes to technology as they are not very tech-savvy even though they are good at operations. Commuters get reliable transport and a good experience. In the pilot stage, Journee gave a demonstration to RTC of five states including TSRTC, KSRTC, Goa Smart City MD, BEST Mumbai and MTC Chennai.

Most of our progress is in Telangana. We are currently based in Bengaluru and working with TSRTC and KSRTC. Since we are working with TSRTC, we were looking for opportunities in Telangana and We-Hub happened, Parkavi said. The start-up will be initiating operations in Hyderabad and as a pilot project will be in Hyderabad for three months.
Hyderabad: Chief Justice Thottathil B. Radhakrishnan of the Hyderabad High Court on Monday made it clear that he will not take a decision in a hurry with regard to the filling up vacancies of judges of the High Court. While dealing with a PIL seeking a direction to the authorities to fill up the vacancies of judges, the Chief Justice, along with Justice S.V. Bhatt, said that decisions taken in a hurry always have have an adverse impact.

City advocate S. Rajkumar had moved the PIL seeking to direct the Centre and governments of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana state to take steps to fill up the vacancies. The CJ asked the petitioner whether he desires to select advocates from the bar in the appointment as judges without assessing their competence. Maintaining that there are several contagious issues have to be looked into before selecting the advocates to appoint them as judges, the CJ reminded that he assumed the charge just a month ago and also the efforts are on to fill up the vacancies.

While agreeing with the argument of the petitioner that the existing judges are overloaded due to non-filling of vacancies, the Chief Justice said that they have to wait for some more time to complete the appointment process.

Mr Raj Kumar submitted to the court that the sanctioned strength of the judges of the High Court is 61 while there are only 29 judges with the remaining 32 posts lying vacant for the past several months. This has led to an increase in the number of pending cases. While asking the petitioner whether had has any formula for the appointment of judges , the CJ said that seeking frequent adjournment of cases by the advocates is also one of the reasons for the pendency of the cases.The bench adjourned the case for a month.
Army personnel, School students and others participated in the full dress rehearsal for Independence Day celebrations at Field Marshall Manekshaw Parade grounds (Photo: DC)

BENGALURU: As many as 1,500 police personnel have been deployed at the Manekshaw Parade Ground ahead of the 72nd Independence Day celebrations on Wednesday. City Police Commissioner T. Suneel Kumar said that the security will include nine deputy commissioners, 16 assistant commissioners, 46 police inspectors, 102 sub-inspectors, 77 assistant sub-inspectors, 540 police constables, 75 women constables and 114 policemen.

He said that apart from 1,500 policemen, nine KSRP platoons, five CAR platoons and two Quick Reaction Teams also been deployed. 56 CCTV cameras, four baggage scanners and weapons detectors have also been put up at the entry points of Parade Ground.

The police have banned people from carrying cigarette, lighters, still cameras, water bottles, eatables, firearms and explosives, helmets, radios and umbrellas to the parade ground. Due to Shortage of Parking place in and around parade ground and to avoid congestion, the people should avail of public transport like BMTC and Metro, the Bengaluru traffic police requested.
Hyderabad: There are three molecules of immunotherapy drugs that are available for cancer treatment in India. The costs, however, are a major constraint since it can range from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh per dose making it extremely expensive.

There are more than 20 drugs which are at different stages of clinical trials and the results of these will determine whether the costs of immunotherapy drugs will come down.

Immunotherapy or targeted therapy is a personalized treatment where the immune cells in the body are enhanced to fight and destroy the cancer cells. Senior Surgical Oncologist at Omega Hospitals Dr Mohana Vamsy explained, Immunotherapy has shown good results in treating cancer patients. This mechanism of boosting the immune system to fight cancer cells has worked in lung, kidney and blood cancer. The cancer cells are found to bind themselves together and the immune system was not able to fight it but these drugs ensure that they do not bind and that is proving to be effective.

But the costs are a major constrain. It is still not clear how many therapies a patient will require as the treatment can last from six months to one year. That would be very expensive for most of the patients, the doctor added.

The minimum cost of one cycle is Rs 1 lakh and can go up to the maximum cost of Rs 4 lakh as they are patent drugs. Each cycle has to be repeated in 21 days depending on the recovery that has been seen. On an average three to four cycles will be required and could extend further if there are still cancer cells in the body.

Due to the increasing cancer cases in India, some companies are offering the tests at a subsidized price. But it is only applicable to a few patients whose cancer markers are in stage 2 or stage 3 where the chances of recovery are assessed by the oncologists. Patents for these immunotherapy drugs will take another 10 years to expire and for them to be affordable to Indians will take quite some time said oncologists.

Senior oncologist Dr Srinivas C explained, Immunotherapy has come across as an effective treatment and proved to be much better than chemotherapy and radiation. But the costs make it extremely difficult to make it affordable.

In the various cancer conferences, there have been appeals to the government to work out a system wherein these medicines can be made affordable to patients. The incidence of cancer in India is 107 per 1, 00,000 cases and the rising incidence makes it extremely important for patients to get effective treatment.
Hyderabad: Former Union minister and senior leader of Congress in Telangana S. Jaipal Reddy challenged Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to visit Osmania University. Mr Reddy said the students would assault the Chief Minister if he set his foot on the campus.

Speaking at a public meeting organised in Serilingampally on the occasion of AICC president Rahul Gandhi's visit to the city on Monday, Mr Reddy said that the students did not oppose Mr Gandhi's visit to Osmania but only the CM opposed it. Mr Reddy said if Mr Gandhi decided to visit Osmania University nobody could stop him, but the leader desisted from doing so because he believed in democracy.

He said the Chief Minister was not welcome in any university in Telangana state. Mr Reddy also said the Congress was ready to face it if the government decided to hold early elections. He said that in Telangana, the elections were like the war between Rama and Ravana. The CM has hijacked the state which was given to the people of Telangana by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and criticised that Mr Rao has hugged the BJP.
BIDAR: Signalling that the controversial Rafale aircraft deal will be one of the major poll planks of the Congress party in the next Lok Sabha polls, party president Rahul Gandhi on Monday ratcheted up his criticism of the Prime Minister over alleged corruption in the Rafale deal, and dared him to a debate.

He claimed Narendra Modi will not be able to answer his questions on the issue "even for a second".

"If you have the guts, bring your 56 inch Prime Minister to a forum anywhere. I promise you that I will defeat him in a fraction of a second because he (PM Modi) is not the 'chowkidar' of the country as he claims, but the 'bhagidaar'(partner) in the Rafale deal signed with the French government," he thundered. Launching the 'Jana Dhwani Yatre' to kickstart the campaign for the Lok Sabha election, Mr Gandhi accused the PM of depriving unemployed engineers of job opportunities by signing a deal with the French to manufacture the aircraft in France instead of India.

"If the contract was awarded to HAL, many unemployed youth would have got jobs. On the contrary the contract has been awarded to industrialist Mr Anil Ambani, who has virtually no experience in the field." Mr Gandhi explained. "Narendra Modi favoured his friend Anil Ambani, whose company was born 10 days before the contract was signed," Gandhi said, addressing a public rally in Bidar.

The Ambani group, which has been in the eye of a raging political storm over the fighter jet deal, had yesterday denied receiving any contract from the Defence Ministry and said "unfounded and incorrect" allegations were being made to "mislead people and cloud the issue". Answering questions ranging from lack of experience to state-owned HAL being overlooked for the deal, the group said Dassault, the French firm that is to supply 36 Rafale fighter jets, chose Reliance Defence Ltd to meet its 'offset' or export obligation in the contract and that the defence ministry had no role in the selection of Indian partners by foreign vendors.

Gandhi said the previous UPA government had signed the contract so the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Limited could make the aircraft through technology transfer and create employment for the youth of Karnataka. "One day Narendra Modi goes to France and changes the terms of the contract. My dear young people, Modiji has taken away your jobs from you. If he has the guts, a 56-inch chest, bring your (the BJP's) prime Minister in front of me, in front of the country...Why is he silent? Why is he scared? Why is he running away? Why is he not answering my questions looking into my eyes?.....Because chowkidar (the watchman) has become bhagidar (collaborator)," he said.

India had inked an inter-governmental agreement with France in September last year for procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of around Rs 58,000 crore. Gandhi has been repeatedly alleging that the cost of Rafale jets was inflated under the new terms of the contract. He also accused Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman of "lying" when she said the new price of the fighter aircraft could not be disclosed due to a secrecy clause in the contract. "I met the French prime minister and he said there was no secrecy clause in the contract. Manmohan Singh (former prime minister) and Anand Sharma (Congress leader) were present," he said.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi holds the hand of a Lambada woman, as (from left) former minister Sabita Indra Reddy, former Union minister Balram Naik, TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy and TPCC Mahila Congress president Nerella Sharada look on, during an interaction with women SHGs at Shamshabad on Monday. (Photo: P. Anil Kumar)

Hyderabad: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday termed Telangana state as the graft capital of India. He equated Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao in giving false promises to win the 2014 elections and cheating the people later. He also drew parallels between Mr Modi and Mr Rao saying that both worked for the benefit of a few rich people but had no concern for farmers or common people.

Addressing an impressive public meeting in Sherilingampally organised by TPCC, Mr Gandhi said, The functioning of the Modi government at the Centre and KCR government in Telangana are the same. Modi promised to deposit Rs 15 lakh in the bank accounts of every person. KCR promised 2BHK houses for 24 lakh people, free 3-acre agriculture land for Dalits, a job for each family. Both Modi and KCR did not fulfill these promises and cheated people.

He also came down heavily on the TRS government accusing it of bringing family rule in Telangana. He exuded confidence that Congress would wrest power at the Centre and in Telugu States in 2019.

Over 4,000 farmers committed suicide in Telangana during the last four years. But the Telangana government has no concern. Only one family benefitted in Telangana state, Mr Gandhi remarked. He also asked the Chief Minsiter to explain why he was supporting the NDA government on all issues though it neglected Telangana by not fulfilling any promises made in the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014.

He supported the Modi government on the issue of GST, demonetisation and others. Why did he support when the NDA government did not bother to fulfill any promises made to TS in the bifurcation Act?" he asked. Mr Modi reiterated that the Congress would accord special status to AP if it was voted to power and would also fulfill all the promises made to TS in the bifurcation Act. Terming GST as Gabbar Singh Tax, Mr Gandhi said, The aim of Modis GST is to loot the poor, common people and farmers. The Congress will reform GST if it returns to power.
New Delhi: With the general elections fast approaching, the BJP has reignited the debate on one nation, one poll. On Monday, BJP president Amit Shah, in a letter to the Law Commission, batted for simultaneous elections in the country, saying it would check expenditure and ensure that the nation is not in election mode throughout the year and the developmental works does not get affected. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has on various occasions supported the concept of simultaneous polls.

The issue was also addressed by President Ram Nath Kovind and his predecessor Pranab Mukherjee in their speeches. A BJP delegation led by Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and comprising of senior leader Bhupendra Yadav and Vinay Shastrabuddhi met the Law Commission officials to discuss the one nation, one poll issue. The delegation also submitted Mr Shahs letter to the Commission and urged that the legal provisions should be amended so that a single election can be held across the country.

The law panel, which is examining the feasibility of holding simultaneous polls, had sought the views of the political parties before finalising its report. Both the BJP and Congress had stayed away from consultation organised by the commission in this regard last month. The Congress had met the Commission top brass recently where it had opposed the concept of simultaneous polls. In his letter, Mr Shah stated that holding simultaneous polls is not only a concept, but a principle which can be implemented.

He claimed that holding two sets of polls was against the federal structure of the country is a baseless argument. On the contrary, he said, it would strengthen the federal structure of the country. Citing example of Maharashtra, Mr Shah said the state was under the model code of conduct for nearly 307 days in 2016 due to bypolls and local bodies polls, which halted the development work. He said elections keep taking place throughout the year in one state or the other, usually in one five-term of Lok Sabha, on an average 5 to 7 states go for assembly elections each year along with polls for local bodies.

He also said that India has a tradition of healthy electoral process and there have been examples where one state voted for two different parties for Lok Sabha and assembly polls and cited the example of Karnataka where in 1980, the state chose Congress for the Centre and JD(S) to run the state government, to assert that simultaneous polls will strengthen federalism.

Mr Shah said the opposition to simultaneous polls seems to be politically motivated. The BJP chief said that people should not be burdened with the expenditure incurred due to frequent poll process and a developing country like India should focus more on the development process and not by the impact of imposition of the Model Code of Conduct.
New Delhi: A gunshot rang out at Constitution Club in the high security area near Parliament on Monday when an unidentified man targeted JNU student leader Umar Khalid, who escaped unhurt, eyewitnesses said. The attacker dropped the weapon and fled the spot, police and eyewitnesses said. Police sources said they had seized the weapon. As confusion persisted over what had actually happened and how many people were involved, Ajay Chaudhury, joint commissioner of police, New Delhi range, said police was investigating whether shots were fired or not.

Giving his version of what had happened, Khalid said he was going back inside the complex, which also houses the Mavlankar Auditorium and MP quarters on Rafi Marg, after having tea when somebody tried to fire at him. I was returning after having tea. One person came from behind, pushed me down and tried to fire at me. I ran for my life. He fled from there, Khalid told reporters. There is an atmosphere of fear. If you speak against the government you will be branded and then anything could happen to you, he said.

Some witnesses claimed two shots were fired when Khalid was at the entrance of the club, where he was going to attend a conference, Khauff Se Azaadi (Freedom from Fear). Khalid said he was attacked. Somebody pounced on him and tried to fire at him but the person could immediately not fire. People started chasing him. According to Khalid, he tried to fire in the air. CCTV is being examined to verify the incident, said Madhur Verma, deputy commissioner of police (New Delhi).

Narrating what had happened, Saifi, who was with Khalid, said they had gone to have tea and three people approached them. One of them got hold of Khalid which he resisted. There was a melee as a gunshot was heard. But Khalid was not injured. While the accused were fleeing, they fired one more shot, he told reporters at the spot. Ban Jyotsana Lahiri, who was also there at the time, added that a man carrying a gun came from behind them and grappled with Khalid. There was a scuffle. He shot from the gun after which he fled.
Alagiri, who visited his fathers memorial at Marina Beach in Chennai on Monday, asserted that 'true relatives' and supporters of his father in Tamil Nadu are on his side. (Photo: ANI)

Chennai: Days after the death of former Tamil Nadu chief minister and DMK patriarch, M Karunanidhi, his eldest son M K Alagiri has hinted a power-related brawl with his brother and DMK working president M K Stalin.

Alagiri, who visited his fathers memorial at Marina Beach in Chennai on Monday, asserted that true relatives and supporters of his father in Tamil Nadu are on his side.

My father's true relatives are all are on my side. All the supporters in Tamil Nadu are on my side and are only encouraging me. Only time will give the answers...that is all I am willing to say now, Alagiri said.

The statement assumes significance as it comes a day ahead when the DMK's executive committee meets for the first time since Karunanidhi's death last Tuesday.

The party leadership will most likely be decided during the meet on August 14, news agency ANI reported.

However, the DMK had said that the meeting's agenda was to condole the death of Karunanidhi. All members of the committee have been asked to participate in the meeting without fail, which will begin at 10 am at the party headquarters, Anna Arivalayam, in Chennai.

A party leader said the executive meeting might consider a date for holding the general council meet, which is likely to elevate Stalin as the DMK President.

Alagiri was expelled from the DMK in January 2014 for indulging in anti-party activities for a continued derogatory attack on party leaders.

Stalin was appointed the party's Working President in January 2017 after Karunanidhi reportedly took ill and found it difficult to run the party full-time.

(With PTI inputs)
Ideologically the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has difficulty with caste-based reservations, but electoral considerations force it to take cognition of the issue. The BJPs parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), believes in a unified Hindu identity achieved through reform rather than fragmented by reservation. It talks of samajik samrasta or social harmony and has launched movements like one temple, one well, one funeral ground to overcome caste discrimination.

The RSS is opposed to caste-based reservations in educational institutions and government jobs. Prime Minister Narendra Modis accusations that the Opposition is dividing society on caste lines therefore echo the RSS concerns for a homogenous Hindu community.

Yet the BJP is aware that it cannot afford to ignore the issue of caste-differentiated reservations. Its caste calculations in Bihar were undone by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat who made a public statement against caste-based reservations just before the Bihar legislative elections.

More recently, senior Union minister Nitin Gadkari instead of arguing for creating more jobs, chose to attack the social justice measure of caste-based reservations instead. He declared that caste-based reservations for jobs were useless as there were no jobs to be had.

This contradiction surfaces every time that it tries to use caste strategically. Perhaps its upper caste prejudices come in the way. Though Prime Minister Modi swears by Dr Ambedkar at every opportunity, his supporters do not desist from damaging Ambedkar statues or painting them saffron. To show his pro-Dalit credentials, Amit Shah goes to the Simhasta Kumbh, takes at dip with Dalit Sadhus at the Valmiki Ghat on the Shipra River, and even eats with them in a Samrasta Bhoj (Social harmony feast). But a year later on the occasion of publicly breaking bread with a dalit family in Uttar Pradesh, the food, utensils and servers were ordered in commercially, completely voiding the symbolic purpose of eating with a dalit household.

However, the party is desperate to woo the OBCs and the dalits in the run-up to the 2019 general election as it fears heavy erosion in its parliamentary strength in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

In response to rising dalit anger against the party, it has reversed the dilution by the Supreme Court of the provisions and the ame-ndments to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

Whether this single legislative measure, which does nothing more than establish status quo ante, will assuage the feelings of the dalits remains to be seen, especially when cow and cow-products related violence against them continues

However, the BJP has a better chance of success with the OBCs (Other Backward Classes) in the run-up to the general election. The Justice G. Rohini Commission report on re-categorisation of OBCs in the Central List might come in handy in fragmenting the OBCs and weaning some groups away from the established OBC parties that pose a challenge to the BJP in many states of North India.

Although the report is likely to be submitted by the end of September, early leaks from the Commissions findings in the media suggest that it might conclude that of the 27 per cent reservation in the central OBC list, nearly 20 per cent have been cornered by just four castes  reportedly Yadav, Kurmi, Sahu and Nai (barber). If this is true, it would mean that then only 7 per cent reservation is left for the other OBCs.

The benefits analysed by the Commission cover admission to educational institutions, jobs in the government, public sector banks and financial institutions; and representation at the panchayat level. The government could use the report to re-categorise the OBCs by providing quotas within the 27 per cent reservations as some states have already done. These include, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Bihar, Haryana, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Puduc-herry and Jammu and Kashmir.

Such a move would directly feed into the BJPs electoral calculation. Once the benefits of reservations are shown as being skewed in favour of the dominant OBC castes, the parties dominated by these castes could see their electoral base fragment. It could well push the non-dominant OBC castes into the BJPs fold. It is not for nothing that the Justice Rohini Commission has been referred to by some as Mandal 2.0, which could change the landscape of caste politics.

Reports also suggest that the Justice Rohini Commission may recommend the inclusion of Marathas, Jats and Patidars into the OBC list. This is beyond the brief of the Commission itself, but by emphasising the importance of economic and additional social criteria for equitable distribution of reservations, the Commission may open up the debate for making reservations more wide-spectrum. This will be handy for the BJP governments in the states facing reservation stirs from Marathas in Maharashtra, Jats in Haryana, Gujjars in Rajasthan and Patidars in Gujarat.

In the past, attempts by the BJP to isolate the traditional ruling castes to consolidate others behind it have not been successful. In Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis, a Brahmin, defies logic. Although Brahmins form only 4 per cent of the total population in the state, they are the most prominent faces from the state in the government and the BJP. The Marathas, who feel isolated, are targeting Fadnavis, demanding reservation and are ranged against the 19 per cent Dalits of the state, who in turn are directing their anger at the BJP.

In the Jat-dominated Haryana, the BJP appointed a Punjabi Khatri, Manohar Lal Khattar as chief minister and witnessed a massive Jat agitation for reservations. In Jharkhand, the party curiously chose a Baniya, Raghubar Das, to lead the government isolating the tribals. In the north Indian belt ranging from Himachal, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the party has appointed Rajputs, traditionally identified with caste oppression, as chief ministers.

It may well be that these appointments were not made with caste in mind. The BJP, essentially an upper-caste Hindu party, now seems to be raring to go down the road of OBC politics. The Justice Rohini Commission may just provide the right push.
On the way home we discussed the fact that there was a Parsi graveyard at all. Brits would not have looked kindly on Parsis setting up a Tower of Silence where vultures could eat the corpses of their dead.

A cat they say has nine lives

And were confined to one

But climbing trees and catching rats

Cant be that much fun.

Some there are believe that we

Return in new avatars

But lives are what they always were

Eternal human scars.

From The Case of the Ashamed Vahu by Bachchoo

My sister was in London recently and after the shopping centers of Oxford Street, Bromley and Bluewater  and trips to museums and a Shakespeare play, there was very little left to do. I had, in my long and happy existence in the sceptered isle, often heard about the Parsi cemetery in a vernal wood down the A3 motorway from London.

I hadnt given it much thought, but on an idle afternoon, with a thousand pressing commitments I thought I could keep my sister amused on her last few days in London by taking a trip to this cemetery. I wouldnt tell her where we were going. Id say we are going for a country ride to a secret destination to keep the tension of expectancy going. When we got there, I would say we have come in quest of the grave of our illustrious ancestor.

I havent actually traced the precise connection of this illustrious ancestor to ourselves. For years I have believed, and this is probably a fact, that he was my great grandfathers cousin.

He was called Shapurji Saklatvala and in 1920 was in Britain and a member of the Independent Labour Party which was a communist formation. He was selected as the parliamentary candidate of the ILP from North Battersea in London, stood for election and became the MP for that constituency for several years  Wikipedia has the details. He was known in the communist and Labour circles as Comrade Saks.

I knew that we were related when I first came to London to go to university in the mid sixties and met his son Behram Saklatvala who was then the head of Tata enterprises in London. I was on a Tata scholarship to Cambridge paid for by their foundation for the higher education of Indians and was told by my parents to pay a courtesy call to him. I did  and he hugged me and greeted me as his kinsman.

I subsequently made two enquiries. What was my relationship to this kinsman? Perhaps it was my father who told me that his maternal grandfather Jamsetji Saklatvala was Saks brother or cousin. The family was closely related to the Tatas who were on the way to being one of the first big capitalist family of India.

I enquired about the name, thinking that Saklat was a village in Gujarat from which my grandmothers ancestors came. It wasnt! No village of that name exists. I found out years later that my grandmothers family imported jute from Bengal to Bombay and had a factory which turned it into sack cloth. Geddit? Sack-clothwala perverted into its Parsi equivalent.

Now apart from comrade Saks, the only not-so-publicly acclaimed ancestor in my family, on my fathers side was my great grandfather  this Jamsetji, as far as I can trace on both sides of my ancestry, was the only individual who had written a book.

His book was a translation of Omar Khayyams Rubaiyat and he claimed in the introduction that it was perhaps not as beautiful a translation as Edward Fitzgeralds universally renowned one, but that it was closer to the Persian original in intent, meaning and metaphor. I read the copy of the book that the family had preserved and found Jamsetjis modesty to be accurate. It wasnt in any sense as engaging as Fitzgeralds Rubaiyat and its greater accuracy or closer to the Persian didnt recommend itself or redeem its flatness.

My father told me that this grandfather of his spent his time translating Persian and other languages because he felt oppressed by the hubbub of their Parsi joint family at home in their Bombay house. He would peruse the daily papers deaths and funeral columns each morning to ascertain which Parsis had died and, regardless of whether he knew them or not he would make the excuse of attending their funerals and sit through them with his notebooks, doing his translations to get away from what he characterised as the domineering demands of his wife.

When I say that this personage was my only illustrious ancestor I may offend my cousins as my maternal grandfather was afforded the accolade of Khan Bahadur. He wasnt a literary man and Lord Linlithgow, not the most popular of the Rajs Viceroys, presented him the honour for services to the land records office. Deserved no doubt, but deservedly obscure.

So we drive to the Parsi cemetery, set in very salubrious woodlands with cemeteries of Muslims, of the British war dead and others around acres and acres of land.

Of course, the surnames on the Parsi graves are familiar. We search for the grave of Comrade Saks but find that of his father and his mother buried with her husband. Wikipedia tells us that his mothers tomb has an inscription saying Comrade Saks remains are interred there. We found no such inscription even though it is photographed on the Wiki entry.

It wasnt a wasted visit. We took no selfies  I regard them as the cheapest form of the vanity of human wishes and being surrounded by the dead I am willing to admit imine may be a prejudice against the obsession and merriment of our times.

On the way home we discussed the fact that there was a Parsi graveyard at all. Brits would not have looked kindly on Parsis setting up a Tower of Silence where vultures could eat the corpses of their dead. Those were pre-environmental-absorption-in-the-natural-cycle-of-life days. So, the Parsi dead were buried.

Then it occurred to me that the Kings of the Zoroastrian Achaemenid dynasty  Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes all had tombs. Parsis  go figure!
California college student Anjali Banerjee was watching fireworks during a 2016 celebration on a seafront promenade in the French city of Nice when a man ploughed a huge truck through the crowd, killing 86 people and wounding 200.

The University of California, Berkeley incoming senior ran through mobs of people to escape the chaos and later joined classmates to search hospitals and plaster the city with flyers of fellow students reported missing in the July 2016 terrorist attack. She later learned three students were injured, and UC Berkeley junior Nicolas Leslie, 20, was among the dead.

Banerjee and several classmates have since turned their grief into a startup called Archer that builds digital tools to help journalists, investigators and human rights workers tackle terrorism, sanctions evasion, corruption and other global violence.

At that moment, it was hard finding the correct information. It was hard even going to different police stations. It was chaos, said Banerjee, who is from London.

The lack of official information following the terrorist attack by a Tunisian man led the students to self-organize and rely on locals to navigate the city as they looked for their missing friends. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Bastille Day attack.

Collaborating with each other and with the people of Nice made the students realize they could create a space in the digital world to help others do the same in the fight against terrorism, Banerjee said.

The students built a free online platform that makes big data analysis and visualization easy to access and that helps track people and companies that have been sanctioned by the United States for crimes that include money laundering, corruption and terrorism.

Theyre still working to turn their data analysis tool into a for-profit company, but the startup has achieved some success. Amnesty International is using one of its tools, Archer Meta, to verify photographs of the crackdown by security forces against minority Rohingya Muslims in Myanmars Rakhine state.

The tool identifies when and where the photographs were taken and can process 50 at once, unlike other readily available internet tools that upload one photo at a time and can pose a security risk, said Sam Dubberley, a researcher with Amnesty International.

We get photographs in bulk from activists groups in Myanmar, and we have to verify they are true. But uploading one at a time can be mind-numbing, tedious work, he said.

Archer Meta also offers an added layer of security by allowing users to analyze a photos metadata without relying on an internet connection, Dubberley said.

These tools are needed in human rights work, but they are prohibitively expensive to develop, and there is no money in it for tech companies to build them, he said.

The groups data analysis tool helps those investigating terrorist financing cases, but there is a broader community of people who can rely on our tools, including those looking into war crimes, sanction violations or environmental crimes, said Alice Ma, a former UC Berkeley student who founded the startup with Banerjee and classmate Tyler Heintz.

Heintz was also in Nice at the time of the attack. They have since been joined by nearly two dozen other students, including several others who were with them in France as part of a monthlong class and competition hosted by the European Innovation Academy, which focuses on tech entrepreneurship education.

Banerjee, a history major, had considered a career in foreign affairs but after what happened in France, she wanted to take immediate action. Weeks before the attack, her friend Tarishi Jain, a UC Berkeley sophomore, was among 20 hostages killed at a restaurant by militants in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

A lot of people all over the world exist in this kind of situation on the daily, and we thought it was time somebody suggested another way we could combat it, Banerjee said.

Experiencing the France attack also pushed Heintz, a 20-year-old computer science major, to change his professional goals.

Before Nice, I was very much on the traditional path of wanting to build the next app that a bunch of people would use for some reason but that doesnt actually change anyones lives. But building an app that can help you transport your cat or dog just seemed so trivial, he said.

What motivates Heintz and a lot of us, is the idea that we can build products to help magnify the work of people trying to bring terrorists to justice, he added.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Islamabad: Pakistans Prime Minister-in-waiting Imran Khan on Monday took oath as member of National Assembly, a step forward to take over power.

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chief Bilawal Bhutto also made his parliamentary debut by signing the rolls.

The first session of the 15th National Assembly was held as 325 members of the lower house of the parliament took oath after the July 25 general elections.

Outgoing NA speaker Ayaz Sadiq presided over the historic session and administered oath to the MNAs-elect in the 342-member house.

The session began with the MNAs-elect standing up for the national anthem and was followed by the recitation of the Quran. The speaker then read out the procedure for the election of the new speaker and deputy speaker.

He then administered oath to the MNAs-elect following which they signed the roll of members in alphabetical order. PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari was the first one to sign the roll register.

Mr Imran Khan, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) president Shahbaz Sharif, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto, co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari, Khurshid Shah, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Marriyum Aurangzeb, and Munazza Hassan were among others who attended the first session of the revamped House.

Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan warmly met various political members including Bilawal Bhutto and posed for a photograph with him.

Strict security arrangements were in place for the occasion as at least a thousand security men were deployed in and outside the parliament building.

The constitution makes it mandatory to convene NA session within 21 days of general elections.
Infosys, India's second largest IT services company, will be investing Rs 100 crore on a new software development centre in Kolkata, West Bengal.

Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee laid the foundation stone for the Bengal Silicon Valley Hub in Kolkata, where the project is located.

As part of this project spread over 50 acres, Infosys will invest approximately Rs 100 crore in the first phase of construction to build a 5,25,000 sq feet facility, in which the company is expecting to create employment for 1,000 engineers initially.

The company expects to complete the first phase of the project within 15 months from the date of obtaining all statutory clearances.

On this special occasion, I would like to thank the Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee, for giving Infosys a unique opportunity to be a part of this prestigious project, and further strengthen our presence across the country, said, Salil Parekh, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Infosys.

This is the second major announcement by the the IT major regarding its plans in India, within a month's time.

Earlier in July, the company had said that it will be investing Rs 750 crore to set up a facility in Noida.

As part of this project, in the Phase 1, the company is expecting to build a 2.7 million sq feet facility that accommodates 5,000 people.
In a major crackdown on motorcyclists doing wheelies on NICE Road in southern Bengaluru, the police broke up a group of riders and arrested 12 of them, including three minors, and seized 20 two-wheelers on Sunday. The police are also taking action against the owners of the two-wheelers.

The Mico Layout police arrested 19-year-old Wasim Khan for doing wheelies. They also found out that he doesn't have a driving licence and arrested his mother, Mumtaz, who owns the motorcycle. Both were released on bail later.

In a joint operation, the Kumaraswamy Layout traffic and the Thalaghattapura police arrested 11 people, including three minors, doing wheelies on NICE Road and seized 19 two-wheelers from them. The police are looking out for the others, who abandoned the two-wheelers during the raid and fled the spot.

The police gave the names of the arrested suspects as Dinesh, Roshan, Jaavin, Santhosh, Syed Saheb, Lokesh, Jishan, Sharif, Siddiq, Vinay Kumar and Ravi Kiran. The police and the NICE Road toll booth staff filmed the suspects doing wheelies before making the arrests.
After languishing in a Pakistan jail for 36 years, Jaipur resident Gajanand Sharma will walk free this afternoon from across Attari-Wagha border in Punjab.

Sharma was 32-years-old when he "strayed" into Pakistan and was arrested by the Pakistan Rangers deployed at the border. The exact nature of his crime is still unclear. His family and the Indian government were unaware of his existence until this year.

Now 68, Sharma will be received by his wife Makhni, son Mukesh and others at the border on Monday afternoon.

He is scheduled to be released from the Lahore Central jail shortly. Sharma would be part of the over 20 other Indians who are likely to be released today ahead of Independence Day on Wednesday.

Sharma was sentenced to a shorter period but due to lack of consular access, he continued to remain in jail.

The family is unaware of the crime for which Sharma had to spend several decades behind bars. It was in May 2018 that the External Affairs Ministry, the Jaipur Police and Sharma's family came to know after a thorough inquiry that Sharma was alive and lodged in a Pakistan jail.
To further strengthen bilateral relations with Fiji, an Indian Naval Ship (INS) Sahyadri entered the Port of Suva on Monday morning for a goodwill visit.

According to a press release by the Eastern Naval Command, INS Sahyadri enroute to India is visiting the Republic of Fiji after participating in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC), the biggest international maritime warfare exercise at Hawaii.

During the visit, the ship's personnel will interact with their Fiji counterparts and the ship will have an open day for general public on August 14.

A medical camp will be organized in collaboration with the Fijian government.

Doctors from India and Fiji will together conduct free health-screening on August 15, from 10 am to 14.30 pm (Fiji time) at Ratu Sukuna Park, Suva, where the bands of the Indian Navy and the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) will perform jointly.

Officers from INS Sahyadri, RFMF and Indian High Commission will also be participating in mangrove and sandalwood planting on August 14.

The ship will celebrate the 72nd Independence Day of India in the Port of Suva August 15.

INS Sahyadri (F49) is the third and latest ship among the Shivalik class of indigenously built Stealth Frigates and forms a part of the Eastern Fleet of the Indian Navy.

INS Sahyadri draws its name from the beautiful, age-defying Western Ghats (also known as Sahyadri ranges) stretching across 1,600 km along India's western coast.
India is set to help build a dam in the Kabul river basin in Afghanistan, a project which may raise hackles in Pakistan.

New Delhi has agreed to support the Afghan government build the Shahtoot Dam near Kabul, more than two years after completing the Salma Dam at Herat province of western Afghanistan, the last in a series of major infrastructure projects New Delhi embarked upon since 2001 to help in the reconstruction of the war-ravaged country.

Indias decision to support the construction of the Shahtoot Dam was formally conveyed to Afghanistan when the senior officials of the two governments met in Kabul recently for the second meeting of Joint Working Group on Development Cooperation (JWG-DC), sources in New Delhi told DH.

T S Tirumurti, secretary (economic relations), at the Ministry of External Affairs, and Ismail Rahimi, Deputy Minister of Policy and Technical Affairs at the Ministry of Economy of Government of Afghanistan, co-chaired the meeting of India-Afghanistan JWG-DC.

The Shahtoot Dam is proposed to be built in Chahar Asiab district near Kabul. The dam will be built on a tributary of Kabul river, which originates from Sanglakh Range of Hindu Kush Mountain and flows through Kabul, Surobi and Jalalabad in Afghanistan before flowing into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan.

Jittery Islamabad

New Delhis plan to support Kabul build the Shahtoot Dam is likely to evoke protest from Pakistan, which has since long been jittery about Indias role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Islamabad is of the view that the proposed dam, as well as similar projects on the Kabul river and its tributaries in Afghanistan, will reduce the flow of water into Pakistan.

Islamabad has over the past few years been nudging Afghanistan to sign a treaty on sharing of water of Kabul river and its tributaries. The proposal, however, has not yet received a positive response from the Afghan government, which fears that such a treaty might make it difficult for it to go ahead with its plan to build irrigation and hydro-electric projects in the Kabul river basin.

Pakistan has a water-sharing treaty with India. The World Bank brokered the negotiation between India and Pakistan on the Indus Water Treaty (IWT), which was finally signed by the two nations in 1960. The IWT provided a legal framework to India and Pakistan for managing the water resources of the cross-border rivers.

Islamabad, however, has been blaming New Delhi for constructing hydro-electric projects on cross-border rivers, resulting in lesser water flowing into Pakistan.

Pakistan has been using the IWT's provisions to raise objections to the hydro-electric projects conceived by India as well as to slow down construction of some of them.

Construction of the Shahtoot Dam may cost $ 300 million. It will help provide potable water to over two million residents of Kabul city, apart from irrigating 4000 hectares land in Chahar Asiab and Khairabad in the vicinity of the capital city of Afghanistan. It will also help provide drinking water for the first phase of the new city at Dehsabz in the outskirts of Kabul.

India in Afghanistan

India has since 2001 pledged about $ 2 billion for a series of development projects in Afghanistan.

The projects supported by New Delhi include construction of a 218 km road from Zaranj to Delaram for facilitating movement of goods and services to and from Afghanistans border with Iran; construction of 220 KV DC transmission line from Pul-e-Khumri to Kabul and a 220/110/20 KV sub-station in Chimtala; construction of new Afghan Parliament building and renovation of Stor Palace in Kabul; upgrading telephone exchanges in 11 provinces; expansion of national TV network by providing an uplink from Kabul and downlinks in all 34 provincial capitals of the country.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghan President M Ashraf Ghani on June 4, 2016, inaugurated the Salma Dam (rechristened as Afghan-India Friendship Dam) on Hari river in Herat Province in eastern Afghanistan. New Delhi spent over Rs 1,775 crore to build the Salma Dam, which has an installed capacity of generating 42 MW of power apart from providing irrigation for 75,000 hectares of farmland.

India, however, refrained from committing itself to any new major infrastructure project in Afghanistan over the past few years, ostensibly in view of the worsening security scenario in the country with the resurgence of Taliban.

The Taliban as well as Lashkar-e-Toiba, Haqqani Network and other terrorist organisations based in Pakistan carried out several attacks in the past, targeting not only on Indias diplomatic and consular missions in Afghanistan but also on its citizens engaged in development projects in the war-torn country. New Delhi has been blaming Pakistans military spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence for using the terror outfits for the attacks on Indias missions and its citizens in Afghanistan.

India rather focused on building small development projects in Afghanistan over the past couple of years, with 115 such projects being completed last year and 108 more agreed upon this year. In September 2016, India pledged an addition $ 1 billion for capacity building programmes in education, health and agriculture as well as for empowerment of women and strengthening of democratic institutions.

After Salma Dam, the Shahtoot Dam is going to be the first major infrastructure project for New Delhi to support in Afghanistan.

The meeting of the JWG-DC in Kabul last Thursday also saw India agreeing to support several other small, medium and large-scale projects for implementation in the near future in Afghanistan, including low cost housing for the returning refugees in Nangarhar Province, polyclinic in Mazar-e-Sharif and construction of road connecting Band-e-Amir in Bamyan Province to the Bamyan-Yakawlang Highway, according to a press release issued by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi.

Both sides underscored the importance of safety and security of Indian personnel involved in development projects in Afghanistan. The Afghan side assured their cooperation in ensuring the security of the Indian personnel, the MEA stated in the press release issued after the JWG-DC meeting.
The Uttar Pradesh government's attempts to withdraw cases against the BJP leaders, who were accused in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots hit a roadblock when the district magistrate declined to withdraw the cases citing legal and administrative reasons.

According to sources here, district magistrate Rajiv Sharma in his report to the state government said that a majority of the cases in which senior BJP leaders, including former Union minister Sanjiv Baliyan, party MLA Sangeet Som, were accused, are currently pending in the court.

The state government had a few months ago sought a report from the district magistrate on withdrawal of what it termed "political cases" against the senior BJP leaders.

The government's decision was prompted by demands from powerful khap (community panchayat) leaders, especially those from the Jat community, to withdraw what they termed fake cases against the community members.

The khap leaders had a few months ago organised a mahapanchyat and threatened to launch an agitation if their demand was not met.

"While in some cases closure reports have been filed, some others are in the court," said a senior district official in Muzaffarnagar on Sunday.

BJP leaders here refused to comment on the report saying that they had no idea on what grounds the district magistrate had rejected the withdrawal.

Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Sunil Singh, however, welcomed the rejection saying that the BJP government tried to shield the riot accused and stood exposed today.
Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy has accused the Defence ministry of planning to shift the Aero India show from Bengaluru to Lucknow this year, with an eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Speaking to media persons at the Hubballi airport on Sunday, the chief minister said that the Bengaluru had all the infrastructure to host the show and the city had become synonymous with the event. The venue has been planned to be shifted to Lucknow since BJP has a huge voter base in Uttar Pradesh, he said. However, the chief minister said that he had not received any official communication from the Defence minister in this regard.

Kumaraswamy was in the city to take part in a programme for the inauguration of new taluk court complex.

The chief minister said that he would earmark Rs 2,000 crore for development of each district, beginning next year. Bad weather in Hubballi prevented the chief minister and Water Resources Minister D K Shivakumar from visiting Almatti reservoir in Bagalkot district on Sunday. The two were scheduled to officer Bagina to River Krishna.

A press release from Chief Ministers office said Kumaraswamy along with Shivakumar waited at the Hubballi airport for more than two hours.

However the continuous drizzle did not allow the helicopter to take off. On the advice of pilot the Almatti trip was canceled, said the release.
SALT LAKE CITY  Landlords evicting elderly tenants for hoarding, trash removal companies charging fees to retrieve their own bins when customers cancel service and title pawns similar to title loans are among the questionable practices found in the Consumer Federation of America's 2017 compilation of top consumer complaints.

Not much in the report is totally new when it comes to displeasing or bilking consumers, according to Susan Grant, the federation's director of consumer protection and privacy.

"It's rare that we see something that's completely new and different, and it's more common to have variations of something old," she told the Deseret News. "It makes sense, because it's probably more work to come up with new things."

The same old complaints continue to flourish in part because "we have new crops of consumers coming up all the time," she said, who haven't heard of different questionable practices.

The annual reckoning, released Monday, is a "what's what" of unhappy consumer interactions from data gathered in 23 states by 38 local and state consumer protection agencies. In total, regulators collected 908,595 complaints. The report says those same agencies also recovered or saved more than $2 billion by initiating mediation, winning lawsuits, levying fines and other action on behalf of consumers and in response to their complaints.

During a conference call for the media Monday, representatives of consumer agencies nationwide shared stories of consumer vexation. Shawn Conroy, from the Georgia Attorney General's Office, for instance, noted that 60 percent of the 5,000-plus consumers identified through discovery in a case involving an alarm system were elderly or disabled.

That's doesn't mean the elderly are the most-often targeted or even the most vulnerable, Grant said. "There's a scam for everyone, and no one is immune." Instead, she noted, certain demographics may be drawn to particular business dealings.

People who are older may be hit hard, though, because they may have accumulated more wealth that can be taken from them, compared to younger consumers. And they have less time to recover economically because of age, Grant said. "I know of situations where they have lost their life savings and are going to be financially distressed for the rest of their lives."

Not all the complaints related to fraud or illegal activity, Grant said. Some of what annoys consumers is legal, though it may be troubling.

Nor do all complaints involve bad actors. Sometimes it's a lack of understanding. Consumers may complain about a television that didn't work when the consumer brought it home, only to find that the TV was fine, but not compatible with the equipment to which it was connected, Grant said.

Consumer protection agencies were powerless to help with some complaints outlined in the report. For example, when people use an app that connects buyers and sellers and something goes wrong, Grant said, it's not a consumer protection problem, though it might be a police matter if there's out-and-out theft.

Officials try to protect consumers, and police sometimes set up safe places for buyers and sellers to meet. Consumer protection agencies try to warn residents when questionable or outright fraudulent activities come knocking  or ringing, or emailing.

Motor vehicles figure prominently in the most common consumer complaints nationally, the report says. So do housing and construction. According to the federation, "These transactions often involve significant amounts of money, but the financial loss is not the only issue. Many consumers rely on their cars for transportation and are greatly inconvenienced when they break down, cant be driven because of difficulty obtaining the titles or have other issues. Home improvement and construction problems can also cause tremendous hardships for consumers, even homelessness."

The report warns consumers to be aware of their legal rights before purchasing home alarm systems or solar panels  emerging challenges that some states are creating regulations to help ease. The Utah Legislature, for example, passed a written-disclosure law related to selling or leasing solar power that specifies what consumers must be told in a transaction.

According to the report, the most common complaint categories in 2017 were:

1. Auto. The complaints ranged from false advertising, bad sales practices, lemons, lousy repairs, auto leasing and towing disputes. The report included a complaint about a Louisiana repair shop owner who kept coming up with excuses about backlogged parts. Meanwhile, he was selling off parts of a customer's car. Most issues were not that blatant.

2. Home improvement and construction. Poor quality work, not showing up or not finishing the job were common complaints. In Massachusetts, a couple paid $68,000 for renovation and the contractor split with the cash, leaving a giant hole in the yard to remember him by.

3. Retail. Bad merchandise, false advertising, problems with coupons, gift cards and gift certificates, among others.

4. Credit/debt. Disputed bills and fees, mortgage issues including fraud, predatory lending and debt relief or debt collection issues.

5. Landlord/tenant. Broken promises, poor living conditions, deposit and rent disputes and illegal evictions, among others.

6. Services. Misrepresentation and not getting the job done  or at least done well.

7. Communications. Phone and internet service complaints, from installation to service and billing problems and misleading offers.

8. Health. Unlicensed providers, misleading claims, billing issues and more.

9. Household goods. Defective appliances and furniture, bad repairs, no delivery, among others.

10. (Tie) Home solicitation, internet sales and travel. Misrepresentation, failure to deliver, billing issues and more across categories.

Be wary

Alarm system sales are an area of "particular concern," according to the report. "In one case, a company sent a letter that looked like it came from the county government to new homeowners warning neighborhoods were unsafe because of 'the opioid crisis,' and offering 'free' alarm systems as part of a countywide program."

Some alarm sellers claimed local police use their systems, while others failed to let consumers review contracts and didn't provide copies.

Increasingly, consumers are asked to sign agreements on electronic handheld devices. Often it's fine, but Grant warned consumers may not see all of the contract or get a copy. That came up in the alarm system complaints, too.

"I think we may see more and more of that," she said, noting consumers need to be able to review and retain copies of contracts they sign.

CFA warns consumers to be leery of statistics offered without substantiation and high-pressure sales tactics. Be skeptical, too, of a good deal that's so time-limited one must rush to decide.

One way consumers can protect themselves is to look up their rights before they enter into an agreement. Take questions to a consumer protection agency before signing if you're unsure. Consumer protection websites often frequently have information and relevant warnings for consumers, Grant said.

Utah complaints

The report noted that Utah has been proactive in protecting consumers. For instance, the state's Division of Consumer Protection has a dedicated team to handle simple cases quickly so resources can be focused on more complicated cases.

The division also participated in a stop-fraud effort with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Attorney General's Office, the FBI, the IRS and other agencies, holding events for consumers in several counties over the year.

Online offers and sales comprised the top complaint received by Consumer Protection in Utah, according to division director Daniel O'Bannon. He noted in an email that "much of this is likely driven by complaints about the online sales of nutraceuticals. We advise consumers to be sure to read the terms and conditions of sales on the internet. For example, consumers often sign up for products to be sent every month without realizing it."

He noted that such "terms and conditions" have to be "clearly and conspicuously disclosed." If they're not, consumers should file a complaint with the division, O'Bannon said.

The Federal Trade Commission releases its "Sentinel Consumer Network Data Book" each year. In 2017, Utah ranked 44th among states for fraud and other losses. It was 27th in identity theft reports, with 2,452 saying they'd had identity stolen. Imposter scams edged out identity theft in the state's Top 5, followed by debt collection, telephone and mobile services and prizes, sweepstakes and lotteries.
SALT LAKE CITY  Charlie Camosy struggles to keep his 2-month-old son calm as he talks on the phone. His responses are interrupted by short asides to the baby, who isn't happy about his dad's divided attention.

"It's OK. You're OK," Camosy says, then continues to share how paid family leave changed his life.

Two years ago, he and his wife adopted three children from the Philippines. Camosy, an ethics professor at Fordham University in New York, was able to take a semester of paid leave to help get them settled. This fall, he'll take another semester off to spend time with the new baby.

"It's hard to imagine what it would have been like to help three immigrant children adjust to a new life here if my wife and I were both at work full time," he says.

Camosy's support for paid family leave doesn't stem only from his positive personal experience. He feels called to advocate for it because of his Catholic faith, which teaches that both work and parenthood are important pursuits.

Congress is currently considering paid leave bills from Republicans and Democrats, as lawmakers respond to growing interest in the issue from the White House and across the country. Camosy and others involved in a new report from The Center for Public Justice, a nonpartisan Christian organization, want people of faith to play a bigger role in this policy debate.

"The conversation about federal policy is oriented around money. Where is the money going to come from? How much will this policy cost? We'd love Christians to bring the moral and ethical and humanizing part of the conversation into focus and ask what a flourishing society looks like," said Katelyn Beaty, one of the report's co-authors.

Policy roadblocks

The Center for Public Justice's report, titled "Time to Flourish: Protecting Families' Time for Work and Care," depicts an American workplace where working parents are overwhelmed by conflicts between job and family responsibilities, and yet few have the resources to negotiate a healthier balance.

Around 15 percent of Americans have access to paid family leave through their employers, and others can use saved vacation or sick days or take unpaid leave through the Family Medical Leave Act, according to Time to Flourish. But financial pressures often bring people back to work before they're ready to leave their baby or have completely healed from giving birth.

"A worker earning a median income in America would forgo more than $13,000 in wages in order to take 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for an infant or sick family member," the report noted.

Out of all industrialized nations, only the United States and Papua New Guinea lack a national paid family leave policy, as the Deseret News reported earlier this year.

America's lack of a policy does not stem from lack of interest, experts said. Majorities of Republicans and Democrats support paid family leave after the birth or adoption of a child, according to Pew Research Center.

Three-quarters of Republicans (75 percent) and 90 percent of Democrats support paid family leave for mothers and 57 percent of Republicans and 79 percent of Democrats support it for fathers, the survey reported.

But policymakers don't agree on who should pay for family leave and who should have access to it, said Rachel Greszler, a research fellow with The Heritage Foundation.

Since President Donald Trump took office, there's been "more discussion of paid leave, but not a lot of agreement," she said.

The current Democratic proposal, called the FAMILY act, seeks to provide workers with 66 percent of their monthly wages by paying out funds collected through an increase in payroll taxes. The Republican proposal, introduced this month, would allow new parents to draw on their Social Security benefits early if they agreed to delay retirement by three to six months.

Most Americans want employers to pay for extra leave time, according to Pew's study. But many small businesses, including faith-based organizations, don't have room for this benefit in their budgets.

Faith and finances

Even as they work to shift the focus of the paid family leave debate away from money, Beaty and her co-author, Rachel Anderson, worry about financial pressures affecting religious organizations. These companies often don't have flexibility in their budget to fund robust worker benefits, they said.

"I think a lot of nonprofit leaders look at something like paid family leave and think, 'There's no way we can afford that,'" Beaty said.

The same is true for many congregation leaders, especially those that are independent and can't rely on denominational organizations for support, said Joanna Blotner, who leads paid leave activism in Washington, D.C., for Jews United for Justice.

"A lot of congregations don't have the money to pay for a paid leave for their minister or rabbi. They would need the money for an interim minister to come in," she said.

I think a lot of nonprofit leaders look at something like paid family leave and think, 'There's no way we can afford that.'  Katelyn Beaty

For these reasons, Time to Flourish includes a discussion of more affordable policies that are still family-centric. It celebrates HOPE International, a Christian company that provides small loans to families in need, for allowing employees to work remotely and banning reading or sending emails outside of work hours.

"Having a workplace culture that honors family commitments in the evenings and weekends is a way to honor the family without paying anything upfront," Beaty said.

The goal of the report isn't to help a specific piece of legislation to pass or get people of faith to vote a certain way, said Anderson, who directs the Center for Public Justice's Families Valued initiative. It's to encourage more conversations from a religious viewpoint about how our jobs affect our family life.

"I'd love to hear that message more publicly: that the Christian faith believes work and family should complement each other," she said.

Families first

Over the last few years, a few religious institutions have launched more generous family leave policies.

In 2016, the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago announced that employees who worked at least 26 hours each week could access three months of paid leave after welcoming a new child. Last summer, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints changed its employment policy to offer six weeks of paid maternity leave and a week of paid parental leave available to moms and dads.

"Paid family leave is one way the church attracts a talented and diverse workforce. The church continually looks for ways to build an appealing work environment that aligns with gospel principles including the need for mothers and fathers to fulfill their responsibilities at home," said Daniel Woodruff, a spokesperson for the LDS Church, in a statement provided to the Deseret News.

In spite of these well-covered announcements, many people of faith still aren't sure or aren't interested in what their religion has to say about work-life balance.

Religious Americans are actually less likely than the average American to support paid family leave, according to Pew Research Center data provided to the Deseret News.

Compared to 82 percent of U.S. adults, 76 percent of white evangelical Protestants and 78 percent of white mainline Protestants say mothers should be able to take paid leave following the birth or adoption of a child. There's a similar gap between support for paid family leave for dads among the general public (69 percent) and among white evangelical Protestants (62 percent) or white mainline Protestants (64 percent.)

Catholics (82 percent) and black Protestants (90 percent) show strong support for paid family leave for moms, Pew reported.

Beaty hopes the new Center for Justice report will inspire deeper engagement with the paid family leave debate in religious circles.

"Christians of different theological convictions have a role to play in advancing the common good," said Beaty, author of "A Woman's Place: A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home and the World."

The center plans to build on the momentum created by the report with a new newsletter on family-supportive policies and a "Families Valued" Twitter account.

Camosy wants people of faith to lead the way toward paid family leave for all.

"It's been huge for me," he said over his son's persistent jabbering. "It's hard to think about what it would have been like to deal with the challenges associated with adoption and now a newborn while working full time."
DOG DAYS  2 stars Nina Dobrev, Vanessa Hudgens, Finn Wolfhard, Adam Pally, Ron Cephas Jones; PG (mild profanity, mild drug-related humor and suggested sexual content); in general release

If you throw enough ideas around, something is bound to stick. That seems to be the philosophy behind Ken Marinos Dog Days, an ensemble film that wants to celebrate all the different ways our dogs enrich our lives.

The first line of the film feels like a mission statement: What is it about dogs that brings us so much joy? The line comes from Elizabeth (Nina Dobrev), a Los Angeles-area morning TV host who is just the first of many Dog Days protagonists.

We meet Elizabeth and her loyal dog Sam just before shes about to find out her long-term boyfriend (Ryan Hansen) isnt nearly as loyal. So they break up and the challenges keep coming when her producer (Toks Olagundoye) matches her up with an abrasive ex-NFL star (Tone Bell) as a permanent co-host.

Elsewhere, Dax (Adam Pally) is a burned out musician (with an inexplicably gorgeous apartment) who gets stuck dog-sitting Charlie when his sister (Jessica St. Clair) and brother-in-law (Thomas Lennon) get overwhelmed taking care of their newborn twins.

Daxs neighbor Tara (Vanessa Hudgens) is an underachieving barista in love with the veterinarian in the office across the street (Michael Cassidy). Tara finally finds a sense of purpose when she discovers Gertrude by the back dumpster and gets involved with a local dog rescue run by Garrett (Jon Bass), one of Taras regular customers, who has a big crush on his barista.

(deep breath)

Grace (Eva Longoria) and Kurt (Rob Corddry) are just about to adopt an adorable young girl named Amelia (Elizabeth Phoenix Caro), but in spite of a bedroom full of plush toys, she just wont open up  no matter how many spontaneous dance parties Grace stages to the Spice Girls. Then the family takes in a stray dog named Mabel, who helps Amelia come out of her shell, and everything seems wonderful. ...

But! Of course Mabel just happens to belong to a lonely widower named Walter (Ron Cephas Jones) who is still mourning the absence of his wife. Tyler (Finn Wolfard) is the 16-year-old pizza delivery boy who strikes up a friendship with Walter as they canvas the neighborhood in search of Mabel.

All of this is the setup. Theres a lot of setup.

Each of the different vignettes is interconnected, and they all have their moments. Again, you throw enough stuff at the wall, right? At the same time, theres so much going on that you tend to forget about one story thread and say, Oh yeah, these guys! by the time it reappears.

This is pretty typical of ensemble movies  not everyone can be American Graffiti  but the humor content follows a similar trajectory, hitting occasionally and missing too often.

Even so, Dog Days has enough moments of sincerity to get you on its side, but its interesting to note that often the different stories only tangentially involve the dogs themselves. More often than not, Mans Best Friend is a catalyst to a story that has more to do with the character arcs of the human beings around them. Maybe its by design  or maybe its because these dogs dont have character arcs.

For dog lovers, Dog Days should have plenty to get you nodding, though a more focused and better-written film would be more likely to climb the ranks of your all-time favorites. Marinos film sacrifices depth for breadth, but for the target audience, that may still be enough.

Dog Days is rated PG for some mild profanity, mild drug-related humor and suggested sexual content; running time: 112 minutes.
PROVO  The new photography exhibition at Brigham Young University Museum of Art is unique in a lot of ways. It offers a survey of American and world history from 1942 to the present day. Its the first time these photos have been seen together outside of the Newseum in Washington, D.C. And it may be one of the most important exhibitions the museum has hosted.

It really is a kind of holistic or a complete view of where we have been as Americans, where we have been as members of a global community for the last 80 years, and reminding us of the positive things but also the negative things that weve been through together, MOA curator Kenneth Hartvigsen said. I think its a very valuable show.

The "Pulitzer Prize Photographs" exhibition displays, as the name suggests, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs from every year since the committee began awarding the prize to photojournalists in 1942. Eighty photos hang in the exhibition, with still more photos available for museumgoers to view on interactive kiosks. Patrons will recognize iconic photos such as the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, and more recently, the picture of a Ferguson, Missouri, protester throwing a can of tear gas back at the police.

A lot of the material is challenging, Hartvigsen said. It is a show that doesnt hold back on the difficult things that weve experienced.

Difficult things like the terrorist attacks on 9/11 or the shooting of James Meredith, a young black man who in the 1960s began a solitary peace march through Mississippi (he survived the shooting and 15,000 people, including Martin Luther King Jr., joined him to complete the march).

Preparation for the exhibition required sifting through the images. With so much heavy material, MOA educator Philipp Malzl had to often take breaks.

I would read through a few labels at a time and I would have to take a break, because it was just too hard to deal with at times, Malzl said. There were certainly days where I could get through more material than (on) other days.

This may sound like a deterrent, but Malzl wants people to know that not all of the images show terror and violence. There are also photos of victories  in sports, politics and personal lives that serve as a reminder that positive change can come from negative events.

Shining a light

Photographer Jack Dykinga won the 1971 feature photography category for his photos depicting conditions inside special education facilities in Illinois. According to the MOA's label, the conditions were deplorable, with hundreds of patients crammed into small buildings without proper clothing or sanitation. Single aides had to care for more than 100 patients.

The story came about when concerned parents tipped off the newspaper where Dykinga worked.

The governor at the time was cutting funding for that sort of care. So the idea was to report on what was there, and that flew in the face of what the governor was trying to do in terms of funding the institutions, Dykinga told the Deseret News.

Another story Hartvigsen related is that of Fire Rescue Attempt by Ron Olshwanger. The photo shows a firefighter attempting to revive a 2-year-old girl after rescuing her from a fire in 1988. The young girl didnt survive  but the photo did inspire people to buy smoke detectors.

Without that photograph, being as dramatic as it is and being as powerful as it is, perhaps other lives would have been lost because people wouldnt have realized the significance of  having a (smoke detector) in their homes, Hartvigsen said. Thats a reality that (some of) these photographs  saved lives.

Hartvigsen added that photographs also have the power to sway peoples opinions on topics such as war. A haunting example is Paul Watsons 1993 photograph Dead U.S. Soldier in Mogadishu.

In 1992, then-President George H.W. Bush authorized Operation Restore Hope, which sent U.S. troops into Somalia to intervene in the chaos caused by civil war and famine. They were not welcomed. A day after Somali militants shot down two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters, Watson witnessed a mob dragging the mutilated corpse of an American soldier, who had been stripped to his underwear.

After the photo was published in 1993, an outraged President Bill Clinton announced that U.S. troops would leave Somalia  which they did, a few short months later.

For parents

Graphic depictions of violence such as Watsons photo are why the exhibition comes with a warning. Painted on the wall at the entrance of the exhibition, it reads, Caution: Some material in this exhibition, including photographic depictions of actual violence, may be too intense for some visitors. Parents are encouraged to preview the exhibition before attending with children.

Hartvigsen and Malzl both emphasized the idea of parents previewing the exhibition before bringing their children because there isnt necessarily a certain age these types of images become appropriate or digestible.

It depends entirely on the parent and the child, Malzl said. Even adults, I think, need to be cautioned. Because  its not just children who might struggle with some of these issues.  As I prepared for the exhibition, I experienced a lot of grief myself.

To provide even more assistance to parents, Malzl created a short gallery guide that includes 10 images from the exhibition and prompts to foster discussion between families.

Meaningful discussions, in Hartvigsens view, are an important part of the exhibition, especially when it comes to images with heavier content.

Think about this as an exhibition (where) you want to be with (your children). Stay by their side. Talk to them about what you see on the wall, Hartvigsen advised. I want (parents) to be present with their children as they experience (the exhibition) and have those meaningful conversations together.

'A real privilege'

"Pulitzer Prize Photographs" isn't just photos of doom and gloom, though. One photo of hope shows the Nigerian womens track team at the 1992 Olympics. Photographer Ken Geiger captured the moment the team learned they had taken third, winning the bronze medal.

Geiger became aware of what was happening moments before the bronze medalists were announced.

You could just tell by looking at them that they were super nervous and excited at the fact that they could even place  (and) they were right in front of me, he said.

Quickly, Geiger switched from his enormous 600-millimeter lens  a camera lens that can weigh anywhere between 10 or 15 pounds  to a more manageable 300-millimeter lens. Right as he picked up his smaller lens, the winners were announced and he said the Nigerian team went ballistic in celebration.

Although the photo is part of a portfolio of Pulitzer-winning images, Geiger said its always the one picked out for being a happy moment.

I knew that it was going to be a good image. The thing is, the Americans won the gold, and that was the image of the day Geiger said. Even though the Nigerians (were) the better photograph.

Over his long career as a photographer, covering the 1992 Olympics and subsequent Olympics have been career highlights.

Covering track and field at the Olympics is one of the most amazing things Ive ever done as a photographer, Geiger said. Its an incredible thing to do. Its a real privilege.

A case for journalists

Hartvigsen feels this is an especially important time for an exhibition that showcases, above all else, journalism

Were  living at a time when the legitimacy of the press is being constantly attacked, Hartvigsen said. And this exhibition I think very forcefully says, the news media is an integral part of what it is meant to be American, that we wouldnt be who we are or where we are without the freedom of the press and without understanding the world the way we do through the work of journalists and photojournalists.

Hartvigsen said he feels this exhibition makes the case for journalists very strongly  or I hope it does."

As part of the exhibit, the Newseum compiled 15 hours worth of interviews with the featured journalists. A video of these interviews plays on a continuous loop in the MOA exhibition, although patrons likely would have to visit several times to hear every interview.

Labels accompanying each photo also often contain quotes from the photographers themselves. Reading them not only gives context to the photographs, but can illustrate the great personal sacrifices required by journalists in pursuit of a story.

A week or so before Watson took his Pulitzer-winning photograph, a few journalists had been killed.

"There were many moments when it could have been me, Watson said. I feel a responsibility to those good colleagues who didnt make it. And they died trying to tell the truth.

In addition to physical danger, the kinds of stories journalists cover can cause emotional trauma. Watson said hes been haunted by his photograph ever since he took it.

Sometimes the trauma proved to be too much to live with, as was the case with photographer Kevin Carter. Sent to cover the famine and civil war in 1993 in Sudan, Carter came across a vulture stalking a tiny, starving girl, too weak to walk.

Journalists had been warned not to touch famine victims in case of disease. After Carter took his photo, he chased away the vulture, then crawled under a tree and cried. He later is quotedas having said, Im really, really sorry I didnt pick the child up.

Three months after winning the Pulitzer Prize for his photo in 1994, Carter took his own life. He wrote in his suicide note that he was haunted by memories of violence and starving or wounded children.

For Malzl, this makes the video interviews with journalists all the more important.

These journalists  Im not going to say all of them, but most of them are not just out to win a prize. Theyre not out for glory. They are out to shed light on important issues, often, truly putting their own lives at risk, their own safety, Malzl said.

He cited coverage of the Ebola virus outbreak as an example; he said the featured journalists who covered the outbreak were eager to bring attention to this important story.

Im inspired by the photographers who truly are selfless and self-sacrificing in bringing us these stories at the expense of their  own lives, but also their own emotions, Malzl said.

Take time to pause

An important part of the exhibition thats unique to the MOA is a comment wall. Malzl came up with six different prompts that get patrons thinking about their responses to the exhibition.

We like to  allow people a chance to process and express what they take away, Malzl said.

The hope is that an opportunity to think about and respond to the exhibition will help people walk away with a positive experience, rather than feeling depressed from numerous heavy images. So far, Malzl feels like its been successful.

(People) are getting it right. They are spending time, they are lingering a bit to express their thoughts with specific prompts that we came up with, Malzl said. Were really happy with the public response so far.

A general share your insights about this exhibition prompt appears to be the most popular, but many patrons have also chosen to answer the question, How can you contribute to a safe and peaceful world? The answers have so far been along the lines of, I can be a better person, I can help people, and so on.

These responses encourage Malzl, Hartvigsen and the rest of the MOA staff. Hartvigsen in particular hopes families will take the time to discuss the issues illustrated by the photographs and create a learning experience for the children who will grow up to be leaders.

The kinds of troubles that we see in the past in some of these photographs will not go away, because humans are imperfect  , he said. But I think we need to learn from the past if we want to be serious about making a better future tomorrow."

If you go ...

What: Brigham Young University Museum of Art's exhibition "Pulitzer Prize Photographs"

Where: BYU Museum of Art, North Campus Drive, Provo

When: On display through March 3, 2019. Open Monday and Thursday-Friday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m., Tuesday-Wednesday and Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

How much: Free

Web: moa.byu.edu
SALT LAKE CITY  The Salt Lake Community College Promise initiative is inching closer to the dream of a free community college experience for Utah students who agree to take a full academic load and meet income guidelines.

Now in its third year, the program helps make college more affordable and accessible by waiving tuition and fees of qualifying resident students. The program fills in where federal financial aid falls short.

To qualify, applicants need to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, and be awarded a Pell Grant.

Students are required to take a full class load of 12 to 18 credit hours and maintain at least a 2.0 GPA. Qualifying students must also meet with an adviser to develop a two-year degree plan.

SLCC Promise encourages students to take full class loads so they are more likely to complete their degrees, complete them sooner and at less expense.

It's a significant challenge for many SLCC students, President Deneece Huftalin told to a legislative commission earlier this week.

"Most of our students take six credit hours per a semester because many of them are working full time and have a mortgage and have kids and are doing the school at the same time they are doing life," Huftalin told the Utah Legislature's Higher Education Strategic Planning Commission.

"So our part-time population becomes really important and resourcing them and supporting them and not letting them get lost along the way becomes very important to us," she said.

Two years in, the college's reviews show SLCC Promise is meeting its objectives, said Charles Lepper, vice president for student affairs.

SLCC Promise participants take more credit hours and are on track to graduate ahead of peers not in the program, he said.

"It's showing that students who take the additional classes needed to be (enrolled) full time to participate in the (program), there is no negative impact on their GPA and they're on track to graduate a full semester ahead of their peers who do not participate in SLCC Promise," Lepper said.

Participating students take, on average, three more credit hours than students not in the program, which helps them move to degree completion quicker, he said.

That's significant because national studies show part-time participation in college significantly reduces the likelihood of degree completion.

According to a 2011 report by the nonprofit organization Complete College America, "part-time students rarely graduate. Even when given twice as long to complete certificates and degrees, no more than a quarter ever make it to graduation day."

Poor students and students of color encounter some of the greatest challenges earning their degrees, the report "Time is the Enemy" states.

"Even though more of these students than ever before are enrolling in college, too few end up with certificates or degrees," the report states.

SLCC research also found that taking larger class loads did not result in lower GPAs for participating students.

"That's counter to the argument of the more classes that you take, the more you may be taking on, so the lower you may be performing academically. Our data's not showing that," Lepper said.

The program also encourages higher participation in the federal aid process. In recent years, Utah has had the highest percentage of high school graduates  55 percent  who did not complete the federal financial aid application. That resulted in graduating seniors missing out on an estimated $36 million in Pell Grant aid, according to a NerdWallet analysis.

More than 800 students were assisted by the SLCC Promise last year, up from 721 in 2016-17 academic year, the program's inaugural year. Some $1.6 million in tuition has been waived since the program was launched.

While the program drastically cuts the cost of attending Salt Lake Community College for student who qualify, Lepper said he "wouldn't call it free money because the student is committing to do certain things as well."

Students do not have to apply for SLCC Promise. The college notifies them if they are eligible and they have the option of accepting the tuition and fee waivers.

"We spend a lot of time talking to our students why this is there, how to accept it and how to maximize it and leverage it as a resource for their college education," Lepper said.

Academic advisers, financial aid officers, the admission office and staff that conduct orientations sessions help spread the word about the program, he said.

"It really is an institutional commitment. All hands are on deck in helping to make this that every student knows about and understands and can take advantage of. Its really becoming part of our DNA as an institution," Lepper said.

Students who have been helped by the program say SLCC Promise has been "life altering," he said.

"It may mean they have to work less and focus more time on being a student and completing," he said.
SALT LAKE CITY  Dr. David Levine will tell you he was as excited as any first-time, soon-to-be dad when he and his wife Stacie were expecting back in 2013. And as a practicing pediatrician in Westfield, New Jersey, he figured he'd be more than capable of parenting.

What he didn't expect was the onslaught of negative emotions he felt once Zachary was born. The baby was cranky and he had trouble soothing him. Levine knew it wasn't rational, but he felt hostile toward the newborn. "I was getting a lot of anger  rage even," says Levine, now 41. "I was very unhappy. I was mad at the baby."

Levine knew his feelings weren't right, but that was all. Googling symptoms he got an inkling he might be experiencing a male version of postpartum depression, but there wasn't a lot of information back then. He knew maybe one-fourth of moms had pregnancy-related depression, perhaps due to the hormonal tsunami involved in building in one's body a small person and then delivering it into the world. But men?

His online research found treatment options, support groups and research were becoming increasingly robust  for women. The emotional toll experienced by some fathers, including those who adopt, was mostly a mystery. And the concept was butting up against notions of masculinity that emphasized being strong, providing and taking charge.

Levine wishes he could say he immediately sought professional help. But he didn't. "It took me probably a month to decide I needed to find somebody to talk to about what was going on." He found a therapist and within a few months, he got back on track emotionally and became the father he'd expected he would be.

Then depression slammed him again last year when baby Alexandra, now 10 months old, was born. But it wasn't as intense and it didn't blindside him.

Postnatal depression does often have that effect on men  if they even recognize what's happening. When the Deseret News looked for men who had experienced it, several said they hadn't, though they described initial feelings of disinterest, irritation or disconnection with their child that experts call a hallmark of postnatal depression.

At last week's annual convention of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco, researchers announced new fathers are as apt to get postpartum depression as new mothers. They said it's about 10 percent, with even more showing postpartum anxiety.

"The saving grace for me was starting to talk to someone, starting to do the homework, to do what I had to do to come out of the haze I was in," says Levine, who practices at Summit Medical Group. "I tell every parent upfront I went through this."

He wants parents in his pediatric practice to know depression might hit them and hurt how they relate to their baby. He wants them to ask him for help, to be a bridge between men and women who suffer postnatal depression and treatments that help overcome it.

That closes the circle with another recently published study on male postpartum depression: A small study in Indianapolis suggests men and women may actually suffer this depression at more similar rates than previously thought. The study, just published in JAMA Pediatrics, recommends pediatricians as a logical group to screen for it.

Anatomy of disconnect

"I think postnatal depression in men is happening much more than we even realize," says Channing Marinari, clinical outreach specialist at Behavioral Health of the Palm Beaches substance abuse treatment program. "Because we miss these signs and symptoms, it is my belief many men suffer in isolation."

Men don't typically know signs, which include not just frustration and anger, but also isolation, substance abuse, discouragement, concentration trouble and impulsive behavior, she says. "I think a father is also more likely to experience postnatal depression if he has a difficult or strained relationship with his partner or if his partner is experiencing postpartum depression."

Primarily in the last decade has the idea new fathers have their own version of postpartum depression taken hold; even the language is evolving. Male postpartum depression and male postnatal depression are used interchangeably. Partly in deference to the number of men believed to have it, it is also being called perinatal mental health disorder, said Dayna Kurtz of New York City, author of "Mother Matters."

"It's not just postpartum, but during pregnancy and as far after birth as 18 months," she says, adding signs include depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

I think postnatal depression in men is happening much more than we even realize  Channing Marinari, clinical outreach specialist at Behavioral Health of the Palm Beaches

Even among researchers and practitioners, estimates vary on how many men are affected. Kurtz says as many as one-fifth of men with a new child meet clinical criteria. "It's fairly pervasive."

Erika R. Cheng, assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine and lead author on that new study, says they found similar rates of depression among the women and men they surveyed at pediatric clinics in Indianapolis. In waiting rooms, they asked one of the parents there with a child to take a mental health assessment. They found the rate of what was probably depression was 4.4 percent among the men and 5 percent among the women.

Several findings were especially relevant, including that fathers show up in pediatric clinics, opening the door to screening there. It's possible, Cheng notes, men were undercounted because depressed dads might be less likely to go to the appointment with their partner or infant.

A review of studies that was published by JAMA estimated 10 percent of men worldwide had some symptoms of postpartum depression from the first trimester of the pregnancy to about six months after the baby's born. It was as high as 26 percent among dads when the baby was 3 to 6 months old.

A 2014 study published in Pediatrics put the estimate around one-fourth of new fathers and said levels increase in the baby's first five years by nearly 70 percent for fathers who live with the baby and have depression. For fathers who don't live with the baby, depression levels climb leading up to the birth instead of after. That study links male depression primarily to maternal postpartum depression, hormone fluctuations and lack of sleep.

Male depression doesn't always look like depression. Instead, "If he's especially angry or jealous or resentful of the baby or his partner, if he's not sleeping well  and I don't know any new parent who is  if activities no longer give pleasure, if he's eating more, if he's eating less, those are clues that something might be going on for him," says Kurtz. "If that's the case, it's important he get help."

Chicago-based therapist Sarah Silva, CEO and founder of Accepting Therapy, says dads with any history of depression are at greater risk. So are those who have a poor relationship with the spouse or partner.

And the pressure can pile on, Silva adds: lack of support from others, economic stresses, juggling jobs. Sometimes new dads feel left out of the connection between moms and babies.

Silva says a popular screening tool that's available online, the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, works equally well to assess men.

What's clear is that postnatal depression creates ripples.

It's such a shock to the system having a new child and I think a lot are not prepared for how different things will be.  Jamie Hales, licensed clinical social worker and program manager of the University Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of Utah

A 2015 study from Northwestern University published in Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice linked maternal and paternal depression with toddlers' problem behaviors. The parents had been part of a depression study at baby's birth. Three years later, a child whose dad had signs of depression earlier was more likely than others to exhibit negative behaviors like "hitting, lying and acting out." Maternal distress showed up in kids' emotional problems like anxiety and sadness.

"Fighting between parents did not contribute to childrens bad behaviors as much as having a depressed parent did," the authors wrote, adding that maybe depressed parents "were less likely to make eye contact, smile, bond or engage with kids."

BYU researchers have also noted father's parenting quality is associated with a child's lower depression, fewer behavior problems and better social skills.

What's going on?

Men's mental health may be overlooked when their partner is expecting, says Jamie Hales, licensed clinical social worker and program manager of the University Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of Utah. Effort focuses on finding women who struggle with postpartum depression.

Nor are men clamoring for help.

"I can tell you that I've seen plenty of men in practice who may not realize that they're suffering from postnatal depression," says Hales. "It's such a shock to the system having a new child and I think a lot are not prepared for how different things will be."

Sadness, fatigue and irritability don't necessarily get chalked up to the baby. And everyone experiences some of them. "If it continues past two weeks, that's when you start looking at it being PPD. And it takes quite a bit longer for us to identify it in men because they're not coming in for well baby checks as often," Hales says.

In women, postpartum depression has long been linked partly to hormonal fluctuations. Hormones aren't off the hook in men entirely, either.

The Deseret News has reported when couples are close, "some chemical changes associated with bonding and affiliation increase." It has to do with "pheromones and other chemicals."

Research shows becoming a dad changes a man's chemistry. Testosterone levels help men attract mates, but testosterone drops off once a baby is born. That helps a dad become a nurturer.

Oxytocin increases, Levine says, making men more sensitive to their own child's cries. That can actually contribute to postpartum despair if a child is loud and fussy.

But hormones alone don't account for all of male postpartum depression. It's a malady found among birth parents, but also adoptive parents. Researchers have yet to understand the malady's intricacies.

Finding help

Levine says he's well past the sad, mad period of depression that accompanied the birth of his kids. He loves them. And he's determined to keep talking about the depression, knowing if can affect lots of people who might not recognize what's wrong.

The "why" may not matter as much as what one does about it, he says.

Having pediatricians screen for male postpartum depression makes sense to Levine. "I think as pediatricians we have the most face time."

The OB-GYN sees the woman in the hospital and six weeks later. At that point, dad has usually disappeared. But the baby is seen by the pediatrician multiple times in the first eight weeks  and dad often comes along. "It is the best shot at screening and convincing him to get help if he needs it," Levine says.

If a dad struggles, Kurtz recommends seeing a mental health expert. Pregnancy-related disorders for men or women are "entirely treatable" often with talk therapy or medication.

If both parents have postpartum depression, outside supports are crucial, Levine says. "Grandparents and friends who see it need to step in.  A lot of us before we have kids feel we will still be able to cook and clean and bathe myself and take care of the kids. Then you realize you can't do it all."

When Alexandra was born, he'd wised up. The Levines hired help so they could get adequate sleep. Others dropped off some meals.

If not for themselves, Kurtz tells men, they should get help for the baby. Postpartum depression hits when the baby needs healthy caregivers. Birth to age 3 "is profoundly important in the development of a human being and the environment at home informs that baby's development. It's critically important the baby is exposed to caregivers who are well and healthy.

Hales notes men may be more comfortable online beginning the search for what's going on, like Levine did. But if they feel they could hurt themselves or the baby, they need immediate help.

Hales offers online resources she finds particularly helpful: Postpartummen.com, Postpartum Support International and www.postpartum.net. In Utah, men in crisis can also call the UNI Crisis Line at 801-587-3000, she says.
SALT LAKE CITY  A federal judge Monday dismissed all but one of a Colorado woman's legal claims in a lawsuit against the LDS Church and a former president of the church's Missionary Training Center who she says raped her while she was a missionary 34 years ago.

U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball found that McKenna Denson's claims against Joseph Bishop for sexual assault, fraud and emotional distress expired under Utah's statute of limitations.

The judge also tossed Denson's claims against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for sexual assault and emotional distress on the same grounds, as well as her request for an injunction requiring the church to change its policies on reporting suspected sexual assault or abuse.

Kimball, however, ruled that the statute of limitations on Denson's contention that the church hid Bishop's predatory sexual behavior did not begin until she confronted him in December 2017 and learned of the alleged concealment.

Denson reported the alleged abuse to her local bishop, stake president and Elder Carlos E. Asay, according to the lawsuit. Elder Asay served as a general authority of the church from 1976 until his death in 1999.

"Carlos Asay allegedly told Denson that he would inform her of the outcome of the investigation, but never did," the judge wrote. "Despite her efforts, she was not able to uncover that the (church) allegedly had knowledge that Bishop was a sexual predator prior to calling him as the MTC president."

Denson's attorney Craig Vernon said he respects the judge's decision and looks forward to the next phase in the case.

While we are disappointed that the claims against Mr. Bishop were dismissed because of the statute of limitations, we are pleased that the fraud claims against the church continue," he said.

LDS Church spokesman Eric Hawkins noted that the judge dismissed three of the four claims against the church.

"He allowed one claim to remain so the parties can investigate its merits. We remain confident in the legal system to evaluate these claims and determine the truth. As the church has repeatedly stated, there can be no tolerance for abuse," he said.

Denson alleges Bishop, of Chandler, Arizona, raped her while she was a missionary at the Provo-based MTC in 1984. Bishop has denied the accusation.

Denson, 55, sued Bishop and the LDS Church for sexual assault and battery, negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud, fraudulent nondisclosure and fraudulent concealment.

The lawsuit claims Denson made 10 reports about the sexual assault to various LDS leaders over the years without learning if any investigation had taken place.

Denson posed as a reporter to confront Bishop last December when she said the former MTC president told her about his sexual history and addiction. Her interview became public when a website released their taped conversation and its 76-page transcript.

The church and Bishop asked Kimball to dismiss Denson's lawsuit because the statute of limitations on her sexual assault claim expired in 1985, one year after the alleged rape, and her emotional distress and fraud claims expired in early 1988.

LDS Church attorney David Jordan argued that Denson knew after the alleged rape that Bishop wasn't "safe, honorable and trustworthy" as she said in her lawsuit she believed by virtue of his position as MTC president.

Bishop's attorney, Andrew Deiss, said at a hearing last month that Denson knew Bishop wasn't a "godly man" after he told her in the MTC about past sexual encounters.

Deiss told the judge that the statute of limitations can feel harsh but the rights of the accused must be taken seriously. Bishop, he said, is 85 years old, a key witness is dead, documents are gone and memories fade or change over time.

Vernon argued that Denson and Bishop are alive as is Elder Robert E. Wells, a now 90-year-old emeritus general authority of the church to whom Vernon said Bishop confessed his sexual sins in 1977.

Bishop served as MTC president from 1983 to 1986 and as president of Weber State College in the 1970s.
SOUTH JORDAN  Flanked by medical technology professionals, Rep. Mia Love called on the U.S. Senate to move quickly to repeal the Affordable Care Act's medical device tax, saying it unduly interferes with innovation in the state.

The Protect Medical Innovation Act of 2018, which would permanently repeal a 2.3 percent tax on certain types of medical equipment that went into effect in 2013, easily passed late last month in the U.S. House of Representatives with the support of all of Utah's representatives. The House passed the bill 283-182, with just one dissenting Republican vote and the support of 57 Democrats.

The medical device tax was designed to apply to everything from MRI machines to pacemakers to surgical equipment, with carved out exceptions for common retail medical items like eyeglasses, hearing aids and band-aids. Two prior bills passed by Congress have placed a moratorium on the tax, rendering it inactive since the beginning of 2016.

The latest bill, sponsored by Rep. Erik Paulsen, R-Minnesota, would do away with the tax forever. Love and 222 other members of the House of Representatives joined as sponsors of the measure on the day it was first introduced in early 2017. She was also part of a push earlier this year to get House leadership to include an extended moratorium on the tax inside a spending bill.

Love, R-Utah, said Monday at Merit Medical Systems headquarters that medical technology manufacturing companies, which feel the full brunt of the tax, contribute $5 billion per year to the state's economy and provide Utahns with more than 10,000 good jobs.

"This is not just about trying to preserve the industry. It really is about looking no further than our neighbors, and the people that work here, and those that are doing everything they possibly can to make sure that they're able to feed their families and grow and thrive," Love said. "And remember, this is not just about the companies that we're trying to save  this is about medical technology that is saving lives."

The latest moratorium on the medical device tax lasts until the end of 2019. But medical technology companies such as Merit Medical  a South Jordan-based company that calls itself "a leading manufacturer and marketer of disposable medical devices"  are anxious to see a permanent repeal of the tax while political support is strong.

In a response to Love's public urging of the Senate on Monday, her Democratic opponent, Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, issued a statement saying he also supports a permanent repeal of the medical device tax.

"Its repeal has bipartisan support, including from me. Innovative Utah companies such as (Becton, Dickinson and Co.), Edwards Lifesciences and Merit Medical employ over 10,000 Utahns and are leaders in medical technologies that help improve health outcomes for people worldwide," McAdams said.

"The products these companies manufacture play an important role in addressing some of our countrys most critical health care challenges. As mayor, I have been a supporter of these companies, including backing their call for repeal of this tax."

Though it is currently inactive, the medical device tax "continues to loom  over our companies," which significantly complicates long-term planning, said Greg Fredde, executive vice president of business development for Merit Medical.

"It makes it very difficult for our companies to plan research and development projects. Many of these projects take five, seven, 10 years," Fredde said.

He also called the tax "punitive" and said it was a "tax on innovation."

Love said she doesn't want the Senate to be complacent about voting for a permanent repeal. She said she sees "an urgency" to get it done while Sen. Orrin Hatch, a strong opponent of the tax and the chairman of the influential Senate Finance Committee where the House bill will be heard next, is still in office.

"If there's anybody that can do it (by that time), it's certainly Sen. Hatch," Love said. "He has not slowed down since he announced his retirement."

If Congress acts slowly and the medical device tax eventually reactivates, "it's really hard to come back from the cost" that it will incur on manufacturers, she said.

Standing alongside Love on Monday, South Jordan Mayor Dawn Ramsey told reporters that medical technology development and manufacturing is an important part of the makeup of the city.

"It has an impact close to home for us. It affects our micro-economy here in South Jordan," Ramsey said.

American medical technology companies Becton, Dickinson and Co., Edwards Lifesciences, and Stryker Corp., each of which have a presence on the Wasatch Front, also accompanied Love Monday to show support for a permanent repeal of the medical device tax.
SALT LAKE CITY  With bright yellow paint, high ceilings and robots zipping across sprawling floors, Amazon's newest distribution center in Salt Lake City evokes a tech Wonka factory.

Just a few weeks away from bringing the facility on line, Amazon officials showed off their near-finished warehouse Monday, with hard-hatted, orange-vested city officials in tow.

"We obviously get a tremendous amount of inventory," said Michael Taylor, the general manager of Salt Lake's distribution center. "This facility deals primarily with smaller items that we pick, pack and ship to our customers."

Taylor demonstrated some of the distribution center's processes on a short tour of the still-active construction site. Beginning with inbound delivery, he said products will be brought inside the warehouse and dropped in yellow pods  either for storage or immediate delivery.

Taylor said Amazon has 50,000 of these small yellow bins in the new distribution center.

When in operation, 6,000 "drive units," robots that look like oversized orange Roombas, will carry the stacks of yellow pods to Amazon's workers.

"We'll have associates working at stations like this," Taylor said, motioning to fenced off workstations with computer screens, "to either store that inventory, or to pick it for a customer order."

From there, Taylor led Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski and other city officials along the elaborate distribution maze, ending with spiral slides that drop packages into the hands of workers to place on trucks, bound nationwide.

Amazon will hire some 1,500 people to staff the new distribution center in Salt Lake City's northwest quadrant, and about 1,100 applicants have received job offers, according to Michael Taylor, the general manager of Salt Lake's fulfillment center.

City and state officials have been courting Amazon since 2017, offering the company an eight-year, $5.7 million tax incentive.

Gov. Gary Herbert said at the time that snagging one of the world's most valuable retailers was a feat.

"To have a company like Amazon, as big as they are, choose Utah for a fulfillment center is a great win for us," Herbert said. "It's a big shot in the arm for Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County and the state."

Before touring the new warehouse Monday, Biskupski also lauded Amazon and its decision to become a tenant of Salt Lake City.

"Salt Lake City is proud to welcome Amazon to Utah," Biskupski said. "And we are grateful this incredible new space is nearing completion."

"I think its fair to say that Salt Lake City definitely provided 'Prime' service to Amazon to ensure you can be shipping on time," Biskupski said.

The incoming associates will receive "great wages" and "fantastic benefits," according to Taylor, despite starting wages that suggest otherwise.

Amazon's online job posting for new associates  the positions that represent the majority of the new hiring in Salt Lake City, according to an Amazon spokeswoman  advertises a starting wage of $12.50 per hour. That's an earning rate that falls far short of the state's median wage of just over $17 per hour.

A worker who puts in a year's labor will earn them a flat $26,000  over $20,000 shy of Utah's $46,460 median annual wage.

While the overwhelming majority of the new Amazon jobs will hover near the low level, a portion of them will exceed the average Salt Lake County annual earnings of $50,537, or about $24.30 per hour.

Utahns not applying but still hoping that Amazon's presence in the Beehive State would mean they could get their packages faster will have to wait and see.

"I don't really know the impact," Taylor said of faster ship times in the state. "Obviously, we see enough continuing, growing demand from our customer base here in Utah, that in order to satisfy it, we need to have a fulfillment center here."

Amazon officials were also hard-pressed to say what the expected economic impact of the new warehouse could be, besides their incoming large swaths of hires.

"The reason we don't have numbers on Utah is because we're brand-new here," said Amazon spokeswoman Lauren Lynch. "The longer we're in Utah, the longer we'll be able to see the impact of Amazon's presence."

Biskupski, already optimistic about Amazon's arrival, hopes the tech-giant will improve the state economy in other ways than employment.

"I'm kind of hoping, at some point, Amazon teams up with Packsize to decrease the size of their boxing," Biskupski said. "Packsize is right here in this neighborhood  so maybe there's an opportunity there for them to partner."

The mayor also said she thinks Amazon's presence will drive up the minimum wage in the state, "even though this state has refused to shift the minimum wage in the state for over a decade."

"Partners like this will drive opportunities to get a living wage across the state," Biskupski said.

Biskupski also mentioned the tuition program available to Amazon's incoming Salt Lake employees as an example of the company's ability to help its workers.

Upon reaching the one-year mark, employees become eligible for the company's Career Choice program, which provides up to 95 percent, prepaid tuition compensation for vocational or technical training or pursuit of associate-level degrees for "in-demand" jobs.

Those include aerospace, information technology, computer science, health care and others, and the program does not require a commitment to stay with Amazon on completion.

The $250-million regional fulfillment center will join over 100 warehouses across the country once it begins operation in the coming weeks.
SALT LAKE CITY  Traditionally, 25th anniversaries are celebrated with gifts of silver.

This year, however, Fidelity Investments employees celebrated the 25th anniversary of the company's efforts to combat hunger with a more than $171,000 donation to the Utah Food Bank as part of the Summer Business Food & Fund Drive.

According to the food bank, the donation  which equates to more than 631,000 meals  comes at a critical time of year when children are out of school without access to school meal programs. At the same time, donations slow as families focus on summer activities.

Reed Wellman, Fidelity's regional co-leader, said the bond between the investment firm and Utah Food Bank is as important to Fidelity employees as it is to the charity organization.

"Our employees genuinely look forward to the Summer Business Food & Fund Drive, not only to help our fellow Utahns, but also to lead by example and show other Utah companies that fundraising can be fun and a great team-building activity," Wellman said in a statement. "At Fidelity, we're passionate about making a difference in the communities where we live and work and helping organizations like the Utah Food Bank that do the same."

In addition to Fidelity's long-term financial support, which has amounted to more than $1.5 million since 2006, it has donated over 1.8 million pounds of food and approximately 1,300 volunteer hours since 1994.

The food bank is encouraging local businesses and citizens to follow Fidelity's lead by participating in the Summer Business Food & Fund Drive before the end of August by donating food, time and money.
SALT LAKE CITY  A man with Utah ties who is behind bars for supporting an Islamic terrorist group was sentenced Monday to another 20 years for trying to kill a federal prison warden in California.

Fazliddin Kurbanov, 36, pleaded guilty in March to making and using a prison-made knife to attack the warden in Victorville two years ago and attempting to slit his throat. The warden suffered serious injuries but recovered and now works at another federal facility.

At a hearing Monday, Kurbanov, speaking through an interpreter, told the court he was not sorry for his actions and that the victim was supposed to die. Kurbanov also expressed extreme animosity toward the United States, according to the Justice Department.

Kurbanov, an Uzbek national who lived in Boise, is serving a 25-year sentence for conspiring and attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and possessing an unregistered destructive device. The judge ordered the 20-year term to run consecutively with his current sentence and placed him on lifetime probation after his release.

Federal authorities said in 2013 that Kurbanov supplied money, software and training to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which the U.S. government identifies as a foreign terrorist group that aimed to overthrow the Uzbek regime and establish an Islamic state.

In Utah, he showed internet videos, led shopping trips, provided written recipes and gave instructions on where to obtain components to build and use improvised explosive devices, according to federal officials.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah in 2013 charged Kurbanov with distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices and weapons of mass destruction. Prosecutors agreed to dismiss the case after he dropped the appeal of his conviction in Idaho.
Prashant Rai To Play Yogi Now

Prashant Rai, the Indian American actor, has featured in several Hollywood films with the likes of George Clooney, Jamie Foxx and Megan Fox. The star will now be seen playing the character of a yogi, in an American film titled, 'Rockstar Yogi'. The film is produced by New York Pictures, USA and it will be shot in Rishikesh and New York.





The film will release in both English and Hindi. This flick will revolve around an American Rockstar who is involved with drugs, sex and guns. Eventually, the character gives up all addiction because of Yoga and meditation. Prashant is looking forward to portraying a character of contrasts as the actor has to essay both a rock star and a yogi.





Prashant opened up about his role and says, I am excited to work in this film as we are trying to showcase a real big problem in America, drug and opioid addiction, which takes so many lives. Were trying to put across the message that these problems can be resolved through the power of Yoga and meditation. The film is expected to go on floors in December this year and it will hit the theatres sometime in 2019.





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Source: m.media-amazon.com
Find Out Who Is Playing Which Historical Character In Karan Johar's Mughal Drama Takht

Recently Karan Johars announcement about his upcoming film Takht has taken the world by storm. This new film has created a lot of buzz as this movie would be his first attempt in the historical drama genre and knowing his flair for extravaganze we can only imagine the stellar visual treat this film is going to be.

If that was not enough to drive us crazy, Karan has also announced the star cast of the film and it does not get any bigger than this. He has managed to assemble a dream cast which includes Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Vicky Kaushal, Bhumi Pednekar, Kareena Kapoor, Anil Kapoor and Janhvi Kapoor. In terms of multi-starrer, this film is going to be the baap of all multi-starrers for sure. The story of Takht will set in the 16th Century and will tell the story of the historical struggle between Shah Jahan's sons Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh for the throne of Delhi. Find out which of these actors are playing which historical role in this epic historical drama.

Ranveer Singh

After playing historical characters in Bajirao Mastani and Padmaavat, Ranveer would again be seen playing the role of a king. He will be playing the role of Dara Shikoh, the elder son of Shah Jahan whom Shah Jahan wanted to pass the throne to.

Alia Bhatt

For Alia, this will be her first historical drama and she will be seen playing the role Dara Shikoh's wife Nadira Banu Begum. It is said that Dara loved his wife Nadira very much and thus never married another woman which was a rare case in those days.

Vicky Kaushal

Riding high on the success of Raazi and Sanju, Vicky is in the best phase of her character right now. In his first Bollywood collaboration with K Jo, Vicky will be seen essaying the character of the sixth Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb who murdered his own elder brother Dara Shikoh and imprisoned father Shah Jahan to claim the throne of Delhi.

Bhumi Pednekar

Yet another new entrant in the Karan Johar camp, Bhumi will seen playing the role of Aurangzeb's first wife and chief consort Dilras Banu Begum. Aurangabad's Bibi Ka Maqbara which bears a striking resemblance to Taj Mahal was built in her memory by Aurangzeb who otherwise did not share the Mughlai enthusiasm for building with his ancestors.

Janhvi Kapoor

Although her debut film Dhadak worked magic at the box-office, being a part of a magnum opus like Takht is surely going to be a surreal experience for the young actress. Janhvi will be seen playing the character of Hirabai, also known as Zainabadi Mahal who was a slave girl that Aurangzeb fell in love with and brought to the court as his favorite concubine. It is said her early death severely affected the usually emotionless king Aurangzeb.

Kareena Kapoor Khan

Married to a royal in real life, Begum Bebo is all set to play the character of Jahanara Begum in Takht. Jahanara Begum was the daughter of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal and the elder sister of Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb. She became the First Lady of the court after the untimely death of her mother and was trusted by Shah Jahan with important imperial responsibilities.

Anil Kapoor

Funnily enough, Anil Kapoor has not really played a royal historic character in the massive career that he has had in Bollywood. But all of that is going to change with Takht where he will be seen playing the role of Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal Emperor. According to history, Aurangzeb locked him up in a cell in Agra Fort as he wanted to pass off the throne to his elder brother Dara Shikoh.
Korean smartphone giant Samsung may shutter operations at one of two device factories in China as a result of escalating labour overheads and waning sales in the market.

The Electronic Times reported that the Tianjin Samsung Telecommunication plant to the southeast of Beijing is the most likely sacrifice. Samsung also has a plant in Huizhou that it could wind up instead.

Either way, the factory could be shut down by next year to allow the manufacturer to realign its focus towards growth markets such as India. Samsung has reportedly notified some of its main suppliers that it intends to cease operations in one of the plants.

While Samsung is the top vendor in a number of global markets, in China it does not make the top five. With IDC data showing that smartphone shipments in China dropped by 5.9% year-on-year in the second quarter and further declines expected, it could be prudent for Samsung to shut down a factory, with one representative from the firm stating: The production volume of the Tianjin [plant] has been steadily decreasing and it is expected to decrease in the future.

Last month, Samsung stepped up its efforts to double its handset production in India, commencing manufacture at an overhauled factory in the north of the country. India is the second largest smartphone market in the world after China, and Samsung is keen to secure a high position in the market, as well as export Indian-made devices overseas.
Google has launched the 'Doodle 4 Google' contest in which it invites students to create a doodle of the Google logo. The contest is open to students from class 1-10 and the winning doodle will feature on google.co.in for a day on Childrens Day (November 14).

Read the complete press release below

Google today announced the launch of the 2018 Doodle 4 Google contest, inviting creative, art-loving students from across India to bring their imagination to life in a doodle of the Google logo. This year, Google will be asking young kids to answer the question What inspires you? as the theme for the contest. The contest is open to students from class 1-10, who will get an opportunity to share their inspiration with millions of people through their artwork. Besides, the winning doodle will get to feature on google.co.in for a day on Childrens Day, i.e., November 14, 2018.

Think about: Does art inspire you? Clouds that look like faces? Trees that look like humans? Paper Planes? Discovering new galaxies? Artists have sought to the world around them for centuries to gain inspiration.

Google believes these inspirations power the creativity and imagination in shaping the world and inspiring todays generation the most.

From crayons to clay to water colors, or graphic design, young artists can utilize any materials to bring their creation to life, but like all Google Doodles, each doodle must incorporate the letters G-o-o-g-l-e.

Every year, Google get thousands of brilliant entries from across the country, which makes picking a winner the hardest part of the contest. Googles esteemed jury members will select twelve finalists to identify the final winning Doodle. A panel of guest judges including actor Arun Iyer (chief creative officer of Indias leading advertising agency Lowe Lintas), Rob (YouTube creator & national icon of creative excellence famous for Mad with Rob), Sejal Kumar (one of Indias leading female YouTube creators) and the original doodle team lead, Ryan Germick will review the entries this year.

Submissions close on 6th October 2018 at 10:00PM IST. Internal judging and jury votes will be used to identify the top 20 doodles, which will be put up for public voting from October 23rd to November 5th, 2018, where the entire country will be able to vote for their favourite doodle. Winning doodle will be awarded a five lakh rupee college scholarship, along with many other prizes.

So, heres to all the parents, guardians and teachers: Encourage your kids and students to participate and let them unleash their creative side. For more details, registration, and submission of your Doodle artwork, please follow this link. Please visit How it works page on the website for detailed instructions about participation.
Xiaomi has retained its dominance when it comes to the shipment of smartphones to India in the second quarter of 2018, even as the smartphone market in the country saw a healthy growth of 20 percent in the time frame, a report by market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) has said. Xiaomi shipped 29.7 percent of the total 33.5 million devices, followed by Samsung at 23.9 percent, Vivo at 12.6 percent and Oppo at 7.6 percent in the quarter. IDC believes that this is the result of a string of online exclusive launches and strong shipments by offline vendors on the back of promotional activities and channel schemes.

The market is seeing rapid consolidation at the top end, as the top five vendors made up 79 percent of the smartphone market in 2Q18, marginalizing smaller brands, Upasana Joshi, Associate Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India, said. Xiaomi contributed more than 56 percent of the shipments in online space, while 33 percent of its shipments went through offline channels. In the online segment, Huawei (and Honor) climbed to the second position with an all-time high of 8 percent share.

Huawei has had a stellar quarter worldwide moving into the second position, toppling Apple. In India, with a refreshed focus it has been able to grow its share in the online space in the last two quarters, on the back of several new launches across price segments. IDC believes Huawei should be seen as a serious long-term player in India market with all the ingredients to challenge Xiaomi and Samsung, Joshi added.

Other online-focused vendors with online-exclusive launches were OnePlus (OnePlus 6), Realme (Realme1) and Asus (Zenfone Max Pro series), all of which led to an annual growth of 44 percent -- taking the online share to 36 percent of the smartphone market. The offline segment growth was driven by Vivo which had strong shipments during the quarter. The premium-end of the market grew almost two times year-over-year (YoY) mainly due to the strong shipments of Samsung Galaxy S9 series and OnePlus 6, with OnePlus surpassing Apple to be the second biggest player in the segment with a share of 21 percent in the second quarter.

The feature phone market shipped 44 million units registering a YoY growth of 29 percent. Reliance Jio remained the top vendor in the overall feature phone market.

Top five smartphone vendor highlights

Xiaomi registered its highest-ever shipments in a single quarter. The vendors shipments grew 10 percent sequentially and grew more than two-fold annually. Its four smartphone models that captured the top four slots in top models ranking are: Redmi 5A, Redmi Note 5 Pro, Redmi Note 5 and Redmi 5, together accounting for 26 percent of overall smartphone shipments. Samsung remained at the second position in the smartphone market with a 21 percent YoY growth, thanks to its Galaxy J6 smartphone. The brand continues to see strong shipments of Galaxy J7 Nxt, Galaxy J2 (2017) and J2 (2018).

Vivo reclaimed the third spot as it registered 18 percent YoY growth in the quarter. OPPO slipped to the fourth spot, but registered a 15 percent YoY growth in shipments. Transsion continued to be at the fifth position. Its offline-focused Tecno brand grew by 26 percent followed by itel with 14 percent QoQ growth. The online-exclusive brand Infinix grew by 45 percent, registering an overall 53 percent YoY growth.

Intext graphics: IDC
Have you ever checked-in to your flight early, carefully studied the seat-map and chosen the best seat in the house? Have you also sat down smugly in your pew of choice; only to realise you misread the map, booked the wrong side of the exit row, and are now stuck next to the toilets in a seat that wont recline?

No? Thats coolI was just asking for a friend.

Anyway, if you are keen to avoid that 100% hypothetical situation, check out this guide to the best and worst places to sit in economy on a domestic Australian flight.

Qantas Airbus 330-200

Sure, the Qantas Airbus 330-200 economy seats come with 31 inches of recline and a width of 17.5 inches (and the food is complementary), but lets be real: economy is economy. A few inches here and there wont make or break a trip. Getting sat next to the constantly-in-demand toilet will. That and a good glass of Chardonnay. Also: legroom. Need we say more? Picking a good seat is arguably more important than picking a good airline. And unlike some other airlines, on Qantas domestic flights, its free!

Considering the Airbus 330-200 is one of Qantas domestic staples (i.e. if you book a few flights in Australia youll end up on it at some point), its handy to know the best places to sit. Normally this takes a few bouts of trial and error. Luckily for you, weve tuned in to SeatGuru to share the secrets only frequent flyers know. Heres a breakdown of the seats of interest.

The Seats To Get

Row 44: Extra legroom; it is the highly coveted exit row.

Row 57: Yes, its near the toilets, but if you are a serial food muncher this row gives you easy access to the snack-laden galley.

The Seats To Avoid

Row 23: Avoid booking in row 23 if possible; it may have restricted legroom due to the bulkhead. The only upside here is you have nobody in front of you.

Row 39: This row of seats is near the toilets so unless youre a fan of air freshener and other smells give this one a miss.

53D & 53G: Unless you enjoy being elbowed awake every time someone misjudges the gap between you and row 54, dont book seats 53D or 53G.

54D, 54E and 54F: Due to the misalignment with the seats in front, if you end up in these seats, you will have slightly restricted leg and storage space.

Qantas Boeing 737-800

The Qantas 737-800 is a smaller aircraft than the Airbus 330-200. But the potential to score a great seat (or languish miserably in a poorly chosen one) is even greater. The 33 seat layout is not for everyone however there are a few gems on this little city flier. Its often traversing the skies between Sydney and Melbourne, so if you live in either of the nations unofficial capitals, knowing this planes seat-map by heart is just as important as knowing Sydneys coolest bars or Melbournes best barbers.

The Seats To Get

Row 4 is the pick of the bunch; its the only seat on the plane that provides extra legroom with no drawbacks. You do however need to be Qantas Platinum or Chairmans Lounge to pre book these. The best you can hope for is asking the desk nicely before departure (alternatively you can pay $20 to secure an additional legroom seat).

Row 13  Limited recline; but extra legroom, which somewhat makes up for it.

Row 14  Extra legroom, but less cushioning, and can get cold as they are near the planes exit.

The Seats To Avoid

9A and 9F are seats to avoid if you are a fan of the view (they are windowless).

10A and 10F  A tight squeeze for the bodybuilders among us, featuring a misaligned window and reduced shoulder room.

Row 12  This one will keep the chiropractors busy; it doesnt recline.

Back Row: limited recline and near the toilets. Boooo!

Qantas Boeing 717-200

The Qantas 717-200 is another smaller jet, which is part of the QantasLink service and is often used between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. Bonus: being part of the QantasLink gives you access to Qantas points and status credits, seamless connections, 24/7 online booking and the option to check in via mobile phone.

The Seats To Get

Row 4: This is a coveted extra legroom zone, but if you want to reserve it youll have to pay $20 upfront, and it normally sells out quick. Get in early and your legs will thank you.

Row 13: Limited recline; but extra legroom, which somewhat makes up for it.

Row 14: Extra legroom, but as per row 4 you may have to pay extra for it.

The Seats To Avoid

Row 12: Limited recline.

22A &22C: Last row of the plane, limited recline, near toilet.

23D, 23E & 23F: Last row of the plane on the other side of the aisle, limited recline, near toilets.

Jetstar Airbus A320

The Airbus A320 boasts the widest cabin of any single-aisle aircraft in the sky, and can hold up to 180 passengers. But how many of them will travel with leg cramps? Read on to find out. In all seriousness, if you book a Jetstar flight, chances are you will be on this Airbus, so brush up on your aisle-atomy Yes: choosing your own seat costs about $8 (assuming youve booked a starter fare) but its definitely worth it. And to secure an exit row seat youre looking at an extra $25.

The Seats To Get

Seats 1B and 1C: The pick of the lot, these seats have extra legroom and no drawbacks (1A almost makes the cut, but the exit door protrudes into some of its space).

Row 13: Book here if you canexit row with extra legroom and no drawbacks. Like the front, it comes at an extra fee.

The Seats To Avoid

1D, 1E and 1F: Fools gold: From a regular seat map they appear to be an exit row with extra legroom. They are not. They actually have limited legroom due to the position of the bulkhead.

Row 11: These seats may have limited recline (row 12 has extra legroom but similarly limited recline).

Virgin Boeing 737-800

The Virgin Boeing 737-800 fits 176 passengers: but only those with the inside info will be on the best seats. To make sure you are one of them, so that you can arrive in Perth you can windsurf with the great whites (or swill wine with the in-lawswhichever you find less intimidating), 100% refreshed. Or if your travels bring you to Brisbane you can stroll the South Bank without lower back pain and a stiff set of knees.

The Seats To Get

Row 13: This is one of the most sought after exit rows with extra legroom and super comfy seats. However you will have to pay extra to sit here as it is classified as Economy X.

Row 14: Same as above  part of Economy X  but well worth the splurge.

The Seats To Avoid

Seat 9A: Unless youre a troglodyte you wont like this seat (no window).

Virgin Boeing 737-700

Unless youre willing to pay for an upgrade to Economy X, youre going to struggle to find any sneaky extra legroom in the Virgin Boeing 737-700. That said, its still worth knowing where to avoid. After all: you dont want to rock up to the Australian Open (or Darwins national parks) after a stressful flight. If youre not going to treat yourself to Economy X, at least dont book a seat next to the toilets.

The Seats To Get

Economy X: they have turned the exit rows into their version of premium economy.

The Seats To Avoid

Back Row: Near the toilets and galley.

TigerAir Airbus A320

Although this is a single aisle plane there are a fair few seat options! Unlike some of the other planes on this list, the TigerAir Airbus A320 is more than a pocket-rocket. Despite its size it still zips around everywhere like one though! Whether you are on a business trip to Melbourne or a Barossa Valley wine tour in South Australia you could end up on one of theseso make it worth your while.

The Seats To Get

Row 1: Extra legroom due to the position of the bulkhead.

Row 13: Extra legroom due to it being an exit row.

The Seats To Avoid

Row 11: Located in front of an exit row so it may not recline.

Row 30: Limited recline, close to the toilets.

TigerAir Boeing 737-800

TigerAir Australias Boeing 737-800 has a 180 seat capacity with 42 Extra Leg Room seats, 30 Up Front seats and 108 regular Economy seats. Smaller than the Airbus but with newer upholstery, the TigerAir 737-800 is a nifty jet. To get the optimal experience make the most of selecting your own seat online. Choose wisely.

The Seats To Get

Seats 15A  15F: They come with more legroom, but youll probably have to pay extra to book these seats.

The Seats To Avoid

13A  13F: Limited recline due to the exit row behind it. 30A  30F: Limited recline and next to the toilets.

RELATED: How To Travel Calmly & Comfortably In Economy
UK Indians protest pro-Khalistan rally in London

While pro-Khalistan groups gathered at Londons Trafalgar Square on Sunday demanding independence for Punjab, there was a counter-rally by other Indians who condemned the demand or a separate country.

Sikhs for Justice, a US-based outfit, demanded a referendum on the setting up of Khalistan, a move that has been condemned in India by many who see it as being instigated by Pakistan.

Kuldeep Shekhawat, president, Overseas Friends of BJP, said the decision of authorities in London was a betrayal by the UK, which had a hidden agenda to support Khalistan and Pakistan.

India had earlier demanded that the authorities should not grant permission for such a rally that was tantamount to a separatist activity, which impinged on Indias territorial integrity. The rally also sought to propagate violence, secessionism and hatred, Indian officials had argued. But Britain allowed the rally on grounds of freedom of expression.

According to Shekhawat, giving permission for such a rally by the British government encouraged separatist activity.

The pro-Khalistan rally was addressed by speakers including Pakistan-origin member of the House of Lords, Nazir Ahmed, who backed the support for a separate country for Sikhs. He also said there would be a demonstration outside the Indian High Commission in London 15 August.
Former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee passes away

Veteran parliamentarian and former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee passed away on in the morning today (13 August) at a Kolkata hospital.The 89-year-old Chatterjee passed away at 8:15 am after he suffered a cardiac attack at a private hospital in the city.

Chatterjee was put on life support after he suffered a heart attack, but was "stable", reports quoting an official of the private hospital said, adding, that he was revived and was in the ICCU. His condition was reported as stable and responding to treatment but still on ventilation.

He was undergoing dialysis when his heart stopped giving support.

He made our Parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tweet offering condolences to Chatterjees family.

Former MP and Speaker Somnath Chatterjee was a stalwart of Indian politics. He made our Parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise. My thoughts are with his family and supporters.

 Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 13, 2018 -- President Ram Nath Kovind also expressed grief over Somnath Chatterjees death.

Sorry to hear of the passing of Shri Somnath Chatterjee, former Speaker of the Lok Sabha and a veteran parliamentarian who had a forceful presence in the House. A loss for public life in Bengal and India. My condolences to his family and innumerable well-wishers #PresidentKovind

 President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) August 13, 2018

Calling Chatterjee an outstanding parliamentarian, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu condoled Chatterjees death.

Saddened by the demise of former Lok Sabha Speaker, Shri Somnath Chatterjee. He was an outstanding Parliamentarian, who was elected to Lok Sabha 10 times. He was always affable and highlighted people's problems. He firmly stood by the principles he believed in.

 VicePresidentOfIndia (@VPSecretariat) August 13, 2018.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in his tweet expressed grief over the demise of the former Lok Sabha speaker.

Extremely sad news about Somnath Chatterjee ji. One of the greatest parliamentarians of contemporary times he will always be missed by this country. He will be remembered among the greatest Lok Sabha Speakers India ever had.

 Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) August 13, 2018.

The former Lok Sabha speaker was admitted to the critical care wing of the hospital, following a hemorrhagic stroke in June, but he had recovered from it. His health deteriorated again on 10 August and had to be readmitted in the hospital.

A ten-time member of the Lok Sabha,Chatterjee was the Speaker of the Lower House from 2004-09 when Manmohan Singh-led UPA- 1 (United Progressive Alliance) was in power.

A member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for some four decades, Chatterjee was expelled from the party in 2008 after refusing to step down as Lok Sabha speaker following his partys decision to pull out support from the then Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government over the Indo-US nuclear deal.

The sole exception to his electoral winning spree was when he lost Kolkatas prestigious Jadavpur constituency in 1984 to the present Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, then only 29 years old.

A powerful and persuasive speaker for his party in the Lok Sabha, Chatterjee owed his oratorical skills to his training at Cambridge University, where he studied law in the 1950s, and his work as a lawyer.

Born in Tezpur, Assam, on 25 July 1929, Chatterjees association with the CPI(M) began through an unconventional journey. His father, Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee, a former judge at the Calcutta high court, was closely associated with the All India Hindu Mahasabha. Though the senior Chatterjee eventually snapped his links with the organisation and turned to taking up civil liberties issues, Somnath took an ideologically different route.
Nobel Prize-winning novelist VS Naipaul dead

Nobel Prize-winning British novelist V S Naipaul, known for works like A Bend in the River, A House for Mr Biswas,In a Free State and The Enigma of Arrival, died at his home in London aged 85, the BBC reported on Saturday.

Trinidad-born Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, famously known as V S Naipaul, won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2001. Naipaul, who began writing in the 1950s, won numerous coveted literary awards during his career during which he wrote critically acclaimed novels.

In a statement, his wife Nadira Naipaul called him a giant in all that he achieved and said he had died surrounded by those he loved having lived a life which was full of wonderful creativity and endeavour, the BBC said.

Born in 1932 to a family that had arrived in Trinidad from India in the 1880s, Naipaul was raised in relative poverty. He moved to England at 18 after receiving a scholarship to University College, Oxford.

Naipaul was known for his writings on colonialism and decolonisation, exile and the struggles in the developing world. Naipaul published more than 30 works spanning both fiction and nonfiction.

He wrote his first novel while at Oxford, but it was not published. He left university in 1954 and found a job as a cataloguer in Londons National Portrait Gallery.

His first published novel, The Mystic Masseur, written in 1955, was poorly received at first but the following year won the first of his literary awards, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize for young authors.

Some of his famous books are A House for Mr Biswas, India: A Million Mutinies Now, The Middle Passage and The Overcrowded Barracoon. His book An Area of Darkness is a semi-autobiographical account of a trip to India in the 1960s.

He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1989.

Naipaul travelled to the Muslim-majority countries of Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia for his books Among the Believers (1981) and Beyond Belief (1998). His work on Islam, earned him the rage of left-wing intellectuals.

He published India: A Wounded Civilization in 1976, in which he wrote: "India has been a wounded civilization because of Islamic violence: Pakistanis know this; indeed they revel in it. It is only Indian Nehruvians like Romila Thapar who pretend that Islamic rule was benevolent. We should face facts: Islamic rule in India was at least as catastrophic as the later Christian rule. The Christians created massive poverty in what was a most prosperous country; the Muslims created a terrorised civilization out of what was the most creative culture that ever existed. India was wrecked and looted, not once but repeatedly by invaders with strong religious ideas, with a hatred of the religion of the people they were conquering. People read these accounts but they do not imaginatively understand the effects of conquest by an iconoclastic religion."

On Ayodhya, Patrick French quoted Naipaul as saying: "For the poor of India to identify something like this, pulling down the first Mughal emperors tomb, is a marvellous idea. I think in years to come it will be seen as a great moment.... It would be a historical statement of India striving to regain her soul. What puzzled me and outraged me was the attitude that it was wrong, that one must not undo the (Muslim) conquest. I think it is the attitude of a slave population."
Staff, students and graduates of Dundalk IT will feature prominently during Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann in Drogheda this week.

DkIT presents a spectacular performance of the highly acclaimed Requiem - Marbhna which was first performed during the 1916-2016 commemorations and broadcast on TG4, Good Friday 2016. This will take place on Saturday 18th August 2018 in The Augustinian Church, Drogheda at 5pm featuring performers and soloists drawn from orchestras, choirs and bands from the Oriel region.

'Requiem -Marbhna' which is composed by Odhran O Casaide in the Irish language, sets out to explore the beauty of sean nos voice, together with chamber choir, orchestra and solo voices, In this work, the musical motifs are carried seamlessly from genre to genre.

The concert will be conducted by renowned US composer and producer, Craig Stuart Garfinkle and will feature Sibeal N Chasaide, whose voice has been described by critics as the voice who stirred a nation. Her live performance of Mise Eire as part of RTE's 1916 Centenary concert captured the hearts of audiences in Ireland and globally.

A selection of musicians from DkIT will also participate in the concert, together with performers and soloists from local orchestras, choirs and bands. The performance represents a celebration of the diversity of musical traditions in Louth in a wonderful collaborative community effort.

Tickets for Requiem  Marbhna cost 15.00 and concessions are available for children and families. Tickets can be bought via the Fleadh website or at the door before the performance.

Celebrating Legacy and Transmission in Irish Traditional Music, takes place on Friday 17 August 2018 in association with the Creative Arts Research Centre at Dundalk Institute of Technology. A range of papers will celebrate and evaluate the legacy of notable musicians who have made a significant contribution to the development of Irish traditional music, very often through their teaching or mentoring of young musicians.

The speakers, including Dr Adele Commins, Head of Department of Creative Arts, Media and Music at DkIT and recent recipient of a DkIT President's Prize for Research. The presenters will provide their personal insights, share recordings and perform to illustrate their subjects contribution to the tradition and celebrate their legacy. There will be a particular focus on acknowledging and recognising the contribution made by musicians associated with Co Louth but figures from throughout the Irish traditional music world will be celebrated. The event will be chaired by Dr Daithi Kearney, Co-Director of the Creative Arts Research Centre at DkIT and also features DkIT PhD graduate Dr Sean McElwain and current MA student Barra McAllister.

Fleadh 2018 reflects the close connection of DkIT with the traditional music community in the region and performers from the Institute feature prominently across the week including The Gig Rig programme and Seachtain na Gaeilge for Bliain na Gaeilge.


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If you're a technologist, you've probably noticed (or have been asked about) a few new things associated with Chrome 68's release last month. One of the more notable changes is that it now uses a "not secure" indicator for any site not using HTTPS. So instead of providing a notification when a site is HTTPS, it now provides the user with a warning when it isn't.

This change has been quite a long time in the making. Google spelled out the details earlier this year. Following quite a bit of feedback, discussion and gnashing of teeth, the change finally arrived. Predictably, not everyone was prepared -- and a subset of website users now get the "not secure" warning for sites that, prior to the change, seemed hunky-dory.

One of those groups is users of U.S. state and local government websites. For example, the front pages of 14 states (including, for example, California, Florida and Ohio) do not have encryption enabled and are therefore have been generating a "not secure" warning for site visitors, according to the Center for Digital Government.

Likewise, four of the 10 biggest U.S. cities do not have it enabled as yet. The warning itself represents an arguably somewhat minor user interface issue, though it's one that nevertheless is important to address. Users receiving those warnings, particularly those who are less technology-savvy, may have legitimate concerns about a site now can be classified as "not secure."

The UI impact is important to note and subsequently address. The shift itself is a good one, as it incentivizes enhanced security of websites. Neither of those things is why I'm calling it to your attention, though. Instead, I'm mentioning it because it puts into sharp relief another issue that may seem unrelated at first blush. However, it is important to address it generally and to view it as a useful earning moment for enterprise security practitioners. Specifically, the issue is election security -- that is, ensuring secure, reliable, free and fair elections.

A Learning Moment?

This may strike some as a contentious thing to say at first. After all, the front page of a municipality, state, or even a civilian federal agency almost certainly is not a participant in the election process in any real or direct way.

For example, the server that runs California's homepage (www.ca.gov) is almost certainly not used to directly support any election in California. It is unlikely to be part of the same infrastructure, and it's a good bet it's not even in the same datacenter.

Still, looking at the Chrome 68 HTTPS notification change could be a useful learning moment. Why? Because, despite a significant amount of time to prepare -- and vocal warnings from the technology community at large -- not every state was able to prepare equally.

This is in part because there's a sizable surface area involved: Each state and municipality is responsible for ensuring that its own resources are taken care of and moved to HTTPS within the time window. Because that responsibility is distributed, each set of personnel is responsible for getting learning about the change, understanding its significance, and taking the right action to address it.

This is, in fact, similar to where the U.S. is with election security. I've made the point in the past that election security is a fairly asymmetric contest from a security perspective. Meaning, on offense you have one or more nation states that are well funded, that operate around the clock, that are sitting on a stockpile of zero-day vulnerabilities, and that have dedicated engineering staff that are among the best in the world at breaking into stuff.

On defense you have a state or municipality -- say for example Manchester, New Hampshire. Is it reasonable to expect an individual state or city to defend against a dedicated target attack under the circumstances outlined? It's difficult, because responsibility and resources for defense are spread thin and are distributed, while the offense is centralized and coordinated.

What I think really drives the point home is that replacing a certificate on a website is a relatively trivial affair, while securing the technology side of a major election is anything but. The fact that the U.S. demonstrably has been having challenges doing the easy part doesn't inspire confidence about the ability to do the hard part down the road. When the stakes involve a minor website UI issue, maybe that's OK. When it's instead the fundamental principle on which your system of government rests, maybe it's less so.

Adapting for Businesses

Of course, while election security is interesting from a theoretical point of view, the more salient point for security practitioners is how we can adapt these implications and lessons into securing our businesses.

There are, after all, situations that occur in business that have similar dynamics to both election security and the HTTPS issue. For example, you may have multiple business units that are distributed. You may work for a holding company or other organizational structure where distributed security-relevant tasks need to be performed by multiple different people throughout the organization. If so, there are a few things you can do to help ensure a positive and consistent outcome.

First is to improve communication. Having a reliable mechanism for sharing information about security-relevant tasks -- both what needs to be done and how to do them -- is a useful starting point.

Second, establishing clear accountability and ownership for security tasks ensures that as staff members become alerted to what they need to do and how to do it, they can be chartered with executing to make sure it happens.

Third, where there's asymmetry -- for example situations in which individual business units or departments are likely to be attacked by adversaries that disproportionately are better equipped than they are -- introducing an element of standardization or centralization can help offset an attacker's advantages.

At the end of the day, we can take away quite a few lessons. Paying attention to how these two issues interrelate both informs us about the seriousness of election security and gives us information that we can adapt for defending the organizations we're chartered to protect.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.

Ed Moyle is general manager and chief content officer at Prelude Institute. He has been an ECT News Network columnist since 2007. His extensive background in computer security includes experience in forensics, application penetration testing, information security audit and secure solutions development. Ed is co-author of Cryptographic Libraries for Developers and a frequent contributor to the information security industry as author, public speaker and analyst.


After students in one Oklahoma high school finish a lockdown drill, they immediately hear a plea from administrators over the intercom: Report your safety concerns.

Students can reduce the already slim chances of an attack on their school if they anonymously share tips about violence, threats, and bullying through a smart phone app or a quick phone call.

That message, blanketed across their school on posters, stickers, and classroom signs, seeks to create a culture where students feel comfortable sharing their fears and seeking help from adults, said Tim Makris, the executive director of Sandy Hook Promise, a gun-violence-prevention organization.

When an incident does happen, they can look on the wall, look on the floor, look on the mirror in the bathroom, and theres something there that can remind them to say something, Makris said, describing the Oklahoma school and others that have partnered with the organization since it launched its Say Something anonymous reporting system in March.

Theres been a surge of interest in anonymous school violence reporting systems since the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. After that tragedy, families of slain students have lamented the missed warning signs of the shooters violent intentions, including comments to coworkers and troubling posts on social media. And anger spread through the community at the revelation that the FBI and local law enforcement had received previous tips about the gunman, who is now on trial for killing 17 people.

Students are often the best source of information about such threats.

Any time theres a tragic situation like what happened at Sandy Hook or Parkland, I think we all examine what we are doing and try to get better, said Matthew Miller, superintendent of the Lakota, Ohio, district, which recently partnered with a state-run tip line.

That tip line replaced an outdated phone system that directed calls straight to 911 and got few reports because it intimidated students, he said. Its part of a broader set of safety upgrades the district made this spring, including additional school resource officers and a new system for tracking visitors.

The STOP School Violence Act , signed into law in March by President Donald Trump as part of a larger spending bill, includes grant funding to help state and local governments create anonymous reporting apps and tip lines.

Florida authorized the creation of a mobile reporting app named FortifyFL by Stoneman Douglas studentsas part of a broad school safety law passed less than a month after the attack. Pennsylvania and Nevada approved funding for anonymous reporting systems, and at least three other legislaturesin Kentucky, New Jersey, and North Carolinaconsidered bills related to reporting systems in their 2018 sessions, but did not pass them. New systems will join others created by states like Michigan, Utah, and Ohio in the wake of the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

Most School Shooters Tell Someone of Their Plans

Many of tip lines are modeled after Colorados Safe2Tell reporting system , created in 2004 and credited with thwarting planned attacks. Susan Payne, the founder and director of Safe2Tell, said she recently shared strategies with 21 states interested in launching or improving anonymous reporting systems.

We know, not only from a homeland security perspective, but from a community and school perspective, that young people know long before adults what is happening, Payne said.

In response to the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center analyzed 37 targeted school attacks that occurred between 1974 and 2000. It concluded that attackers in 31 of those events had told at least one person about their plans beforehand.

In 22 cases, two or more people knew about the planned attack in advance, the agency found. In most cases, those peers were classmates, siblings, and friends of the attackers. Those findings are still frequently cited by youth-violence-prevention experts.

Students, teachers, staff, school resource officers, and parents should be provided training and guidance on recognizing behaviors of concern, their roles and responsibilities in reporting the behavior, and how to report the information, the Threat Assessment Center said in a July report about threat assessment, a process schools use to identify students who may pose a threat to themselves or others .

School attackers dont fit a specific profile, the report says, adding that shooters have been both socially isolated and popular, and have had a variety of levels of academic success. Schools should ensure students have a method for anonymously reporting concerns they may be reluctant to share with adults, the report says.

Thats a lesson Colorado learned from experience. The state quickly launched a telephone tip line after the Columbine shooting, but it received very few tips until, acting on feedback from students, it created Safe2Tell in 2004, allowing callers and app users to remain anonymous.

Concerns About School Violence

Safe2Tell received 16,000 reports through its website, mobile phone app, and telephone number in the 2017-18 school year, and operators, who are part of the Colorado State Patrol, saw a spike after the school shootings in Parkland and Santa Fe, Texas.

Operators triage those tips, forwarding them to local law enforcement agencies and schools as they respond. Students can submit screen captures from social media posts and other supporting information to explain their concerns.

In Douglas County, Colo., school employees field Safe2Tell reports out of the districts call center, where they also monitor security cameras and dispatch school police. In emergency situations, the district shares information with law enforcement, like confirmations that a student is enrolled in their school.

When these tips come in, sometimes they come in as a concern about a student, like, Im concerned about a friend because they are depressed, said Belinda Monaghan, the districts dispatch manager. And then sometimes it will evolve into something different, and we will find out about a hit list or a planned attack.

The Safe2Tell system is credited with thwarting many credible attack plans, once even partnering with Royal Canadian Mounted Police who arrested a Canadian teenager after operators fielded a rare report from an out-of-country tipster, a student who heard the suspect discussing plans to carry out a shooting while riding the bus.

In April, deputies in Summit County, Colo., arrested a 15-year-old boy, acting on a tip that hed passed out sticky notes to classmates he planned to spare when he carried out a school shooting.

Tips on Possible Suicide and Bullying Are Common

Though most reporting systems are created out of concern about school shootings, operators say they are far more likely to receive tips about suicide, drugs, and bullying than school violence.

In 2017-18, Safe2Tell fielded 2,786 tips about suicide, 1,831 tips about possible drug use, and 1,641 tips about bullyingcompared to 692 tips about possible school attacks.

Sandy Hook Promises Say Something, which is operated from a private, 24-hour call center in Miami, has seen similar trends since its launch, Makris said, noting that concerns about suicide generate the most reports. Operators are trained to respond to and identify mental health issues, and urgent reports may be forwarded to relevant psychiatric hotlines for counseling or to police for a welfare check.

Tips about drug and alcohol use may be referred to law enforcement, while reports of bullying will go straight to school administrators, who can assess them for validity and plan a response.

The organization expects around 300 school districts to be using its tip line by next spring, Makris said.

The program includes training for students about identifying signs of violence and addressing social isolation among their peers. Sandy Hook Promise installs a full-time staff person in districts with more than 150,000 students to help coordinate programs. For smaller districts, it uses a coordinator who works across multiple school systems.

Say Something is offered free to all schools using funding provided by donors and corporate groups, but Sandy Hook Promise has also worked with some schools to secure grant funding to cover operational expenses through the STOP School Violence Act, which the organization helped push through Congress.

Say Something materials address the reasons students might not share concerns with adults, like if this person said it out loud then they dont mean it, or theyre going to see me as a snitch, by providing examples of tips and ways schools have intervened. That helps students overcome their fears about reporting, Makris said.

We try to make it very real so that its relatable and believable and we can meet them where theyre at, he said.

Partnering With Law Enforcement

As momentum builds behind violence-prevention efforts, some civil rights and student-data-privacy groups are raising concerns.

In Florida, for example, data-privacy groups are cautioning against plans to create a law enforcement database that includes information from students social media accounts.

As Congress considered the STOP School Violence Act, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund urged leaders of both parties to include language that requires reporting systems to protect students due process rights .

Without such requirements, reporting systems will be an easy vehicle for students or staff who hold implicit or explicit biases against students of color to report those students as being a danger to themselves or others based on discriminatory reasons, the organization said in a letter to leaders of both political parties.

After some Colorado students used Safe2Tell to harass peers by calling in false reports, lawmakers passed a bill that requires the system to annually report how often it is used for abusive purposes.

Its just so easy to abuse the system, Arvada student Lucy Geisleman, 15, told CBS 4 Denver in May.

Pranksters called in three false drug and suicide reports about her , Geisleman said, and police twice pulled her out of class to discuss the tips.

Monaghan said Douglas County has fielded some false tips, including one from a student who submitted a report about herself, apparently seeking attention.

But the program has also helped intervene in many concerning situations, she said, adding that the good outweighs the bad.

Best Practices Should Not Be a Secret

As states, districts, and even private companies take an interest in tip lines and reporting systems, Payne, in Colorado, stresses they wont be as effective as Safe2Tell if they dont share some of its practices.

Safe2Tell is operated by law enforcement, which eliminates many legal and logistical barriers to accessing students educational information in crisis situations, she said. Systems run by private companies and nonprofit organizations may not be able to respond as quickly, she said. Operators partner with the states fusion center, a state entity recognized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice where local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies can quickly share information and respond to threats.

Payne also cautions against systems that dont have personnel and processes in place to respond to tips around the clock.

Safe2Tell sees a spike in tips on Friday evenings, often about suicide threats.

It does no good if the school doesnt pick up that report until Monday morning, only to contact the parents and find their child committed suicide Sunday night, she said.

States should look to proven models, rather than starting from scratch, Payne said.

I invite anyone to come see it, she said. This should not be a secret.
Honors Glassman for his education of today's aerospace engineers and scientists and for his influential contributions to the fields of combustion and propulsion

Princeton University Professor Emeritus Irvin Glassman will be awarded the 2018 Daniel Guggenheim Medal on August 18 for his education and inspiration of today's aerospace engineers and scientists and for his influential contributions to the fields of combustion and propulsion.

"Professor Glassman is a legendary combustion expert whose writings and contributions to the understanding of fundamental combustion processes has enabled engineers and scientists to improve the performance of propulsion and power generation systems, while minimizing their adverse environmental effects," noted Georgia Institute of Technology Aerospace Professor Ben T. Zinn in his nomination letter.

The Daniel Guggenheim Medal was established in 1929 to honor innovators who make notable achievements in the advancement of aeronautics. Its first recipient was Orville Wright. The medal is jointly sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), SAE International (originally the Society of Automotive Engineers) and the Vertical Flight Society (originally the American Helicopter Society).

"If future historians were to write the impact of chemical propulsion and fundamental combustion on humanity in the second half of the 20th century, Professor Glassman would be the singular person who represents the coming of age of the discipline, particularly the robustness of combustion chemistry," wrote Chung K. Law, Robert H. Goddard Professor, Princeton University.

While Glassman's contributions to the aerospace industry are clear, his ability to teach, advise and mentor students is truly outstanding, noted Robert Santoro, George L. Guillet Professor of Mechanical Engineering Emeritus at Pennsylvania State University, in his letter supporting Glassman's nomination.

Glassman allows students to learn from their mistakes and doesn't dictate what should be done and when it should be done, Santoro added. Instead, he gives students the chance to use their own creativity, knowing that a bad idea can often lead to the correct solution.

"He is widely recognized as an inspirational faculty member devoted to the teaching of fundamentals--and doing so in a manner that instills fascination in his students and the application of basic knowledge," added Norman R. Augustine, retired chairman and chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Santoro also added, "A measure of his impact is that 21 of the 35 of his graduate students awarded Ph.D.s were or are faculty members at major universities. At least two in that group, like Prof. Glassman, have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In addition, 5 of his former research staff also now hold faculty positions and I am proud to be one of them."

Known affectionately by his colleagues as the "Grand Old Man of Combustion," Glassman is an Emeritus Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He retired from the Department in 1999 after 49 years. He received his B.E. (1943) and Dr.Eng. (1950) in Chemical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

He joined Princeton University in 1950 as an assistant professor and was awarded tenure in 1958. Promoted to full professor in 1964, Glassman was appointed as the Robert H. Goddard Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in 1988. He was elected a Member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1996.

He is an AIAA Fellow and member of the New York Academy of Sciences and was elected Outstanding Educators in America. He was the advisor to numerous universities, NASA, the Army, NATO, ONR, NIST, the State of New Jersey, and many industries, most notably United Technologies Corporation where he chaired two of their Scientific Advisory Committees.

Past recipients of the Guggenheim Medal are some of the greatest names in aerospace, including Walter Vincenti, Holt Ashley, Lawrence Bell, William Boeing, James Doolittle, Donald Douglas, Charles Stark Draper, Hugh Dryden, Robert Goddard, Jerome Hunsaker, Theodore von Karman, Charles Lindbergh, Glenn Martin, Frank Robinson, Burt Rutan and Igor Sikorsky, among many others.

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About AIAA

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world's largest aerospace technical society. With nearly 30,000 individual members from 85 countries, and 95 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. For more information, visit http://www.aiaa.org, or follow us on Twitter @AIAA.

About ASME

ASME helps the global engineering community develop solutions to real world challenges. Founded in 1880 as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME is a not-for-profit professional organization that enables collaboration, knowledge sharing and skill development across all engineering disciplines, while promoting the vital role of the engineer in society. ASME codes and standards, publications, conferences, continuing education and professional development programs provide a foundation for advancing technical knowledge and a safer world. For more information visit http://www.asme.org.

About the Vertical Flight Society

Founded as the American Helicopter Society in 1943, the Vertical Flight Society today advocates, promotes and supports global vertical flight technology and professional development. For 75 years, the Society has provided leadership for the advancement of vertical flight. For more information, visit http://www.vtol.org or follow us on Twitter at @VTOLsociety.

About SAE International

SAE International is a global association committed to being the ultimate knowledge source for the engineering profession. By uniting over 127,000 engineers and technical experts, we drive knowledge and expertise across a broad spectrum of industries. We act on two priorities: encouraging a lifetime of learning for mobility engineering professionals and setting the standards for industry engineering. We strive for a better world through the work of our philanthropic SAE Foundation, including programs like A World in Motion and the Collegiate Design Series. For more information visit http://www.sae.org
More than two-thirds of women with ovarian cancer have high-grade serous carcinoma (HGSC). Up to 90 percent of HGSCs are not detected until they are beyond the ovaries or fallopian tubes, at which point it may not be possible to fully remove the tumor. Many of these cancers are now known to originate in the fallopian tube, which is the site where almost all early HGSCs are discovered in healthy women undergoing resection of fallopian tubes. In contrast, among women who first come into the clinic with symptoms of advanced HGSC that has already spread beyond the gynecological region, clinicians can often find little or no evidence of malignancy in the fallopian tubes. Christopher Crum, MD, in the BWH Division of Women's and Perinatal Pathology, describes this as the great mystery of HGSC.

"I've always been perplexed by the cases where women present with advanced HGSC out of the blue, and we don't detect anything in the fallopian tube," said Crum. "This is a fundamental mystery: Why do we catch the cancer so late even when we thought we were catching it early?"

In a new study published recently in the Journal of Pathology, Crum and colleagues conducted an exhaustive analysis of "normal" fallopian tubes from patients with HGSC. Their analysis indicates that normal appearing tubes can contain pre-cancerous cells may escape the tubes, later progressing to cancer in the pelvic or abdominal cavity. This concept - novel in HGSC - may help explain the origins of the disease and supports a potentially important ovarian cancer prevention surgery known as opportunistic salpingectomy (removal of the fallopian tubes).

Fifteen years ago, when clinicians began screening women who were at high-risk for ovarian cancer, such as those with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations, Crum and others began seeing evidence of early tubal cancers in addition to cancer in the ovaries. In 2005, Crum began the Sectioning and Extensively Examining the Fimbriated End Protocol (SEE-FIM) at the Brigham in which pathologists thoroughly sectioned the distal fallopian tubes of patients, looking for microscopic lesions. They discovered that a very high percentage of early cancers could be found in the fallopian tubes, changing the thinking around HGSC's origins. SEE-FIM is now used in clinical laboratories at hospitals across the U.S.

"There was a sudden paradigm shift in the field," said Crum. "There's now a push in the field to do prophylactic salpingectomy - removal of the fallopian tubes - for women who are coming in for routine surgery. The hope is that this will reduce risk of HGSC."

Salpingectomy removes the fallopian tubes while allowing women to keep the ovaries and, therefore, maintain estrogen production and not face early menopause. Data on the protective effects of the surgery are forthcoming.

But there is a paradox: Among women who enter the clinic with symptomatic cancer, only about 30 to 40 percent show evidence of early cancer in the fallopian tubes. This inconsistency troubled Crum, who was concerned that he could not rule out that the cancer might be beginning somewhere else.

To investigate, Crum and colleagues analyzed the fallopian tubes of women with widespread cancer but without obvious abnormalities in the tubes. This analysis, led by first author Thing Rinda Soong, MD, PhD, MPH, formerly of the BWH Department of Pathology, revealed that 13 of the 32 women who had at first appeared to have normal tubes had very early signs of precancerous cells - which the researchers termed early serous proliferations (ESPs). ESPs are relatively common in the general population, but most women with these proliferations never develop ovarian cancer. On a hunch that some of these proliferations could still be important contributors to the development of HGSC, the investigators sequenced TP53 - a gene that is mutated in all HGSCs. In 12 of the 13 women with ESPs, the team detected a mutation in these precancerous cells that matched the mutation in the cancer found in the pelvis.

"This opens up the prospect that these little cells can escape off the fallopian tube, into the pelvis and, at some point in time, become malignant," said Crum. "This could tie a very high percentage of HGSCs to the fallopian tube - the tumor could begin either as a malignancy in the tube or in the peritoneal cavity from precursor cells that had previously escaped from the tube. If validated, this will be an important advance in our understanding of the pathogenesis of HGSC, with obvious implications for prevention of this disease."

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This study was supported by the Department of Defense (Pilot award OC130500; Ovarian Cancer Academy Grant OC160444).

Paper cited: Soong, TR et al. "Evidence for lineage continuity between early serous proliferations (ESPs) in the fallopian tube and disseminated high-grade serous carcinomas" Journal of Pathology DOI: 10.1002/path.5145
(Boston)-- A new study has shown that use of peripheral nerve blocks in the treatment of Trigeminal Neuralgia (TGN) may produce long-term pain relief.

TGN is a condition involving sudden episodes of severe facial pain that significantly reduces quality of life in those affected. When medication fails to control the pain, some patients turn to invasive procedures that require a high level of expertise and can result in long-standing numbness. Peripheral Trigeminal Nerve Blocks (PTNB), a procedure in which a numbing medication is injected at the sites where the problem nerve reaches the face, is a promising alternative to the riskier, ganglion-level procedures, although its efficacy in both short-term and long-term management of TGN has not been well studied.

In a case series in this week's American Journal of Emergency Medicine, Michael Perloff, MD, assistant professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine, examines nine patients with TGN treated with PTNB. He finds that all nine had immediate relief of their pain after the procedure, with most reporting that they were pain-free. In addition, six of the nine patients noted continued pain relief from a range of one to eight months following the procedure, with two of them having complete resolution of their pain months after the injections.

Perloff, also a neurologist at Boston Medical Center, sees these results as a promising step for treating patients with TGN. "PTNB can be a simple, safe alternative compared to opioids, invasive ganglion level procedures or surgery."

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These findings appear in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.
A new study developed by Cornell University researchers will use three waves of surveys to show how voters' views on issues that include race, immigration and gender will influence the 2018 midterm elections in November and whether those attitudes shift leading up to the elections.

The researchers are surveying a nationally representative sample of nearly 1,400 likely voters of all political persuasions. The first survey was conducted in early July; subsequent surveys will take place in late August or early September, and again in October. The results are just in from the first survey and are available at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

"We're especially interested in race, immigration and gender attitudes and the midterm elections, but we're also interested in the broader political environment, including the relationship between these issues and voters' support for President Donald Trump," said Peter K. Enns, associate professor of government and executive director of the Roper Center at Cornell. Enns is working with Jonathon P. Schuldt, associate professor of communications and a faculty affiliate at the Roper Center, on the project.

The study is unusual because its three-wave structure means the same individuals are interviewed at three points prior to the midterm election. Some questions will be repeated every survey, some will appear in the first and last, and others will be unique to each survey. The questions asked in the first and last survey are especially important, the researchers say.

"Repeating questions in July and October means that instead of simply observing whether or not racial bias or immigration attitudes are correlated with vote choice, we can observe if a change in bias corresponds with a change in vote intention," said Enns. Schuldt added, "As the congressional campaigns unfold, we will actually be able to observe what factors correspond with shifts in vote choice."

The study also is attempting to untangle racial bias against African-Americans and anti-immigrant bias, which the media and academics have routinely lumped together in the past few decades, Enns said. "Measuring those two biases through separate questions and allowing them to be separate concepts is a really important part of the survey research design."

Some questions are designed to help reveal racial attitudes, such as "Do you support or oppose the movement called Black Lives Matter?" and "[To what degree do you agree or disagree that] many groups in the U.S., like Irish, Italian and Jewish people, have overcome prejudice and worked their way up, and blacks should do the same without any special favors?"

The researchers used a standard survey question to separate Democrats and Republicans into different groups: those who say they are independent but "lean" toward their respective parties, those who identify with their parties, and those who strongly identify with their parties. They then combined this question with a unique approach that allowed them to determine how likely voters rank Donald Trump relative to other Republican politicians.

The survey found that strong Republicans rank Trump over other Republican leaders including former Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. However, the survey showed that Trump's political base might be weaker than it seems. That's because many media reports don't factor in the differing levels of party affiliation, Enns said. The team will continue to analyze implications of the results of the surveys over the next two years, they said.

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Cornell University has television, ISDN and dedicated Skype/Google+ Hangout studios available for media interviews. For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.
Groundwater contamination is increasingly recognized as a widespread environmental problem. The most important course of action often involves long-term monitoring. But what is the most cost-effective way to monitor when the contaminant plumes are large, complex, and long-term, or an unexpected event such as a storm could cause sudden changes in contaminant levels that may be missed by periodic sampling?

Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Savannah River National Laboratory have developed a low-cost method for real-time monitoring of pollutants using commonly available sensors. Their study, "In Situ Monitoring of Groundwater Contamination Using the Kalman Filter," was published recently in the journal, Environmental Science & Technology.

"Conventional methods of monitoring involve taking water samples every year or every quarter and analyzing them in the lab," said Haruko Wainwright, a Berkeley Lab researcher who led the study. "If there are anomalies or an extreme event, you could miss the changes that might increase contaminant concentrations or potential health risk. Our methodology allows continuous monitoring in situ using proxy measurements, so we can track plume movement in real time."

"Analysis of the autonomous in situ data can be rapidly analyzed remotely using machine learning methods," she added. "It can act as an early warning system - we can detect sudden changes in contaminant levels. These changes may indicate a need for more or less intervention in terms of the remediation strategy, ideally leading to improved as well as more cost-effective cleanup."

Environmental monitoring has become more important in recent years as remediation methods have been shifting away from intensive groundwater treatment and soil removal. "Intensive cleanup has a lot of negative environmental impacts, including air pollution, large energy-water use, and waste production," Wainwright said. "So experts have started thinking about a paradigm shift from this very intensive remediation to a more sustainable remediation, or 'green remediation,' so we don't just think at the contaminant level but we think about the net environmental impact."

However, long-term monitoring could be costly over time for large contaminations. What's more, current long-term monitoring strategies do not consider how abrupt or gradual changes in weather, such as heavy rain events, might influence plume behaviors. This aspect is particularly important when considering persistent plumes, such as those associated with metal or radionuclide contamination.

The new approach starts with sensors to track water quality variables that have been determined to be reliable indicators of contaminant levels. For the purposes of this study, the researchers tracked levels of tritium and uranium-238 in the groundwater at the Savannah River Site, a former nuclear weapons production site in South Carolina managed by the DOE.

For this site, they measured the acidity (or pH) levels and specific conductance (a measure of electrical conductance); these variables were determined to be reliable indicators for tritium and uranium-238 concentrations. The data from the multiple sensors were then fed into a Kalman filter to estimate contaminant concentrations. A Kalman filter is not a physical filter but rather a mathematical algorithm that can integrate mixed time-series data to make estimates. It is commonly used in various fields, such as traffic prediction and remote sensing.

Using historical data from the Savannah River Site, the researchers found that their technique provided reliable information about plume behavior over the last 20 years, indicating that the new approach holds significant promise as a long-term monitoring strategy for rapidly assessing a contaminant's plume stability. Another advantage over conventional approaches is that it can reduce the frequency of manual groundwater sampling and lab analysis, and thus reduce the monitoring cost.

Wainwright, who is an expert in groundwater contamination and environmental data analytics, said this methodology can be used for both surface and underground water. It can also potentially be used to track other metals, radionuclides, and organic compounds commonly found in groundwater, such as arsenic, chromium, and fuels.

"There are so many different types of sensors available now, and sensor networking and rapid statistical analysis is straightforward," she said. "We can put together all types of in situ sensors and estimate the target contaminant concentration using this framework for data integration in real-time."

She added: "Improved monitoring techniques are essential to protect public health and the ecology. People feel safe if it's properly monitored. Our technique is a way to monitor such sustainable remediation - effectively and cheaply."

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The study was funded by DOE's Office of Environmental Management and Office of Science. The other co-authors of the study are Franziska Schmidt of UC Berkeley, Boris Faybishenko of Berkeley Lab, Miles Denham of Panoramic Environmental Consulting, and Carol Eddy-Dilek of Savannah River National Laboratory. The advances build upon concepts developed through the Office of Science's Watershed Scientific Focus Area project.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel Prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov.

DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
Philadelphia, August 13, 2018 - The incidence of coronary artery compression in children fitted with epicardial pacemakers may be slightly more common than previously believed, say noted cardiologists. After reviewing patient records at Boston Children's Hospital, they advocate for stricter monitoring to identify patients at risk and prevent complications. Their recommendations are published as a featured article in the journal HeartRhythm, the official journal of the Heart Rhythm Society and the Cardiac Electrophysiology Society.

Children who require pacemakers or defibrillators often need to have wires placed on the outside of their heart due to their size or unique anatomy. In rare instances, these wires can place the child at risk for "cardiac strangulation," which can lead to compression of the heart muscle and coronary arteries (the blood vessels that feed the heart) over time.

"Coronary artery compression is thought to be rare," explained lead investigator Douglas Y. Mah, MD, director of the Pacemaker and ICD Program in the Department of Cardiology, Boston Children's Hospital, and assistant professor of pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. "Its true incidence, however, may be higher than we believed due either to a lack of awareness or lack of reporting in the literature."

The sudden death of a child with an epicardial pacemaker following coronary artery compression prompted investigators to enhance surveillance of all patients with epicardial pacing or defibrillation systems. They reviewed the records of all patients followed at Boston Children's Hospital from 2000-2017 who had either active or abandoned epicardial wires that included coronary imaging, either by computed topography (CT) scan or catheter angiography through the vessels in the leg. Of 145 patients, eight (5.5 percent) exhibited some degree of coronary compression from their epicardial leads. Six of these patients displayed symptoms; in addition to the case of sudden death, there were three cases of chest pain and two cases of unexplained fatigue. As a result of the review, seven patients underwent surgical removal or repositioning of their epicardial leads.

This study helps provide a framework for monitoring patients with epicardial pacemakers or defibrillators and identifying those who may need revision or removal of their epicardial wires. Dr. Mah and colleagues compared three screening techniques. They recommend that pediatric patients with epicardial devices should get screening chest x-rays every few years to assess how their wires look in relation to their heart, as the positioning may change as the child grows. They found that chest x-ray had a high specificity and was a good screening tool, easy to perform, inexpensive, and non-invasive. However, it can produce some false-negatives even when patients were symptomatic.

The authors propose that patients with concerning chest x-rays, symptoms such as unexplained chest pain or tiredness, or evidence of heart muscle damage or dysfunction should ideally have a cine CT scan that can image the heart moving in relation to the epicardial wires. Although this can also result in a false-positive, CT is less risky for pediatric patients because radiation doses are now much lower for this non-invasive imaging method.

If cine CT is not available, they advocate that patients undergo catheter angiography to confirm the diagnosis before taking a patient to surgery.

"The use of pacemakers and defibrillators in children is growing," noted Dr. Mah. "As more epicardial devices are implanted, more children may be at risk for developing coronary compression from their leads. We hope to increase awareness among healthcare providers and patients of this important, possibly preventable, and potentially fatal complication and provide a useful screening algorithm to detect at-risk patients and ultimately prevent complications."

"This article clearly emphasizes the need to not only carefully evaluate the potential site of electrode head fixation to avoid coronary injury, but also the need to evaluate closely where to route the electrode body to the device pocket," commented Gerald A. Serwer, MD, FHRS, pediatric cardiologist at the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, in an accompanying editorial.

Dr. Serwer emphasizes that all cardiologists who have patients with epicardial electrodes should always be aware of this potential complication and periodically assess patients for coronary issues with at least a periodic chest x-ray. When evidence strongly suggests ischemia secondary to coronary compression due to electrode position, electrode replacement must be considered in view of the potential morbidity and mortality. "I strongly concur with the authors that any additional information one can obtain to aid in risk assessment would be of benefit and agree with them that additional studies to establish the efficacy of nuclear cardiology techniques are indicated," concluded Dr. Serwer.

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Australian researchers identify a promising potential treatment for breast cancer -- which targets non-cancerous cells within breast tumors, instead of the cancer itself

Working primarily in mouse models of disease, and also in people (through a Phase I clinical trial), the researchers have shown that triple negative breast tumours - which are the most aggressive and have the fewest treatment options - might one day be treated with a drug that cuts the 'phone lines' between normal cells and tumour cells.

The findings, which have just been published in the leading journal Nature Communications, stem from a collaboration between researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research (Sydney), the Centre for Cancer Biology (Adelaide), and GEICAM, Spain's leading breast cancer research group.

Dr Aurelie Cazet and Dr Mun Hui worked with A/Prof Alex Swarbrick (all Garvan) to investigate the role of non-cancerous cells - which, along with cancer cells, are a part of every breast tumour. The researchers analysed the genetic output of thousands of individual cells within the tumour.

Importantly, they found that cancer cells send signals to neighbouring non-cancerous cells (known as cancer-associated fibroblasts or CAFs). And CAFs talk back: they send back their own signals that help the cancer cells become drug-resistant and enter a dangerous state the researchers call 'stem-like'.

The researchers disrupted the hotline between CAFs and cancer cells by using a drug called SMOi, which targets CAFs and stops them from pushing tumour cells towards a 'stem-like' state (see below). In mouse models of triple negative breast cancer, treatment with SMOi reduced the spread of cancer, slowed tumour growth, increased sensitivity to chemotherapy and improved survival.

Following the success in mice, A/Prof Swarbrick worked with GEICAM to carry out a Phase I clinical trial in 12 advanced triple negative breast cancer patients who had relapsed after previously being treated with chemotherapy. Patients were given SMOi together with a standard chemotherapy drug (docetaxel) to determine whether the combination was tolerated by patients.

While the combination treatment did not halt cancer progression in nine patients, disease was stabilised in two patients and tumours fully disappeared in one patient.

"The combination of SMOi plus docetaxel produced a tumour shrinkage in some individuals with triple negative breast cancer, who were not expected to have such responses with docetaxel alone," says Professor Miguel Martin, Chairman of GEICAM and principal investigator of the trial. "The challenge now is the identification of the molecular characteristics of the patients most likely to respond to the combination."

"We observed that the trial participants who responded best to the treatment were the ones with evidence of the highest levels of chatter between CAFs and tumour cells," remarks Dr Hui. "This is a preliminary finding, but is exciting, because it suggests that it might be possible in the future to identify patients who would respond best to this approach."

A/Prof Swarbrick, who led the research, says it has led to a major step forward in our understanding of how CAFs can drive aggressive cancer.

"It's the stem-like cells in breast tumours that are particularly bad players, as they can travel to distant parts of the body to create new tumours and are resistant to treatment," says A/Prof Swarbrick. "We knew that CAFs played a role in turning cancer cells into a stem-like state, but now we know one way in which they communicate with tumours - and how to stop them talking to one another."

A/Prof Michael Samuel (Centre for Cancer Biology) worked with A/Prof Swarbrick and Drs Cazet and Hui on the new research.

"We found that when they received signals from cancer cells, CAFs produced large amounts of collagen, a protein that forms a dense scaffold in the tumour, which increased its stiffness and helped to maintain the stem-like state of the cancer cells. When we disrupted the hotline in our models, collagen density was reduced and the cancer cells weren't as stem-like anymore," A/Prof Samuel says.

The breadth of this study, from cutting-edge single cell genomics (which explores which genes are turned on and off in thousands of individual cells) through to human clinical trials, has painted a comprehensive picture of how CAFs and tumour cells communicate to drive breast cancer progression and how this knowledge may be used to design more effective treatment.

"Single cell genomics was crucial for this research," adds Dr Cazet. "We were able to take a tumour, separate out the cancer cells from the CAFs, and look in detail at the genes that were switched on and off in each cell type. In this way, we were able to uncover their communication strategy, and found the first ever evidence that we may be able to target this communication channel to improve outcomes in triple negative breast cancer."

Phase I clinical trials in a small number of patients are now complete, and A/Prof Swarbrick and his medical collaborators are currently working on designing and funding Phase II trials to test the effectiveness of this treatment in a larger group of patients. In parallel, A/Prof Swarbrick has plans to investigate prostate cancer, where the same communication may be happening.

"We have preliminary clinical evidence that targeting the hotline between cancer cells and CAFs may be effective in breast cancer," says A/Prof Swarbrick, "but we certainly hope that this strategy will have applications in other cancer types. We also hope this story will encourage others to look for answers outside the box or rather, outside the tumour cell."

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This work was supported by funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Love Your Sister, John and Deborah McMurtrie, the National Breast Cancer Foundation, RT Hall Trust and Novartis.

The Centre for Cancer Biology is an alliance between the University of South Australia and SA Pathology.
A new study led by Ana Sebastiao, group leader at Instituto de Medicina Molecular Joao Lobo Antunes and Professor of Faculdade de Medicina of Universidade de Lisboa (iMM, FMUL; Portugal) and her team in collaboration with researchers from the University of Lancaster (UK), shows that the long-term use of either cannabis or cannabis-based drugs impairs memory. The study now published in the Journal of Neurochemistry* reveals the implications for both recreational users and people who use the drug to combat epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and chronic pain.

Through the legalisation in several countries of cannabis or cannabis-based drugs, there is an increased number of long-term users and more potent varieties are available for recreational users. It is already known that heavy, regular cannabis use increases the risk of developing mental health problems including psychosis and schizophrenia. However, there is still little understanding of the potential negative side effects of long-term cannabinoid exposure.

Now, the research group led by Ana Sebastiao in collaboration with Neil Dawson and his team at Lancaster University studied the effects of a specific cannabinoid drug (named WIN 55,212-2) and found that mice exposed for long-term to the drug had "significant memory impairments" and could not even discriminate between a familiar and novel object. Also, brain imaging studies showed that the drug impairs function in key brain regions involved in learning and memory. Moreover, the long-term exposure to the drug impairs the ability of brain regions involved in learning and memory to communicate with each other, suggesting that this underlies the negative effects of the drug on memory.

"Importantly, our work clearly shows that prolonged cannabinoid intake, when not used for medical reasons, does have a negative impact in brain function and memory. It is important to understand that the same medicine may re-establish an equilibrium under certain diseased conditions, such as in epilepsy or multiple sclerosis, but could cause marked imbalances in healthy individuals. As for all medicines, cannabinoid-based therapies have not only beneficial disease-related actions, but also negative side effects", says Ana Sebastiao. A previous study from the same team has showed that acute exposure to cannabinoids results in recognition memory deficits, an effect that can be prevented by the use of a drug of the family of caffeine. "These results are very important for the development of pharmacological strategies aiming to decrease cognitive side effects of currently used cannabinoid-based therapies, which proved effective against several nervous system disorders", explains Ana Sebastiao.

"This work offers valuable new insight into the way in which long-term cannabinoid exposure negatively impacts on the brain. Understanding these mechanisms is central to understanding how long-term cannabinoid exposure increases the risk of developing mental health issues and memory problems; only its understanding will allow to mitigate them", says Neil Dawson.

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The research was conducted at iMM, Faculdade de Medicina of the Universidade de Lisboa and University of Lancaster as part of the SynaNET project funded by the Horizon 2020, European Commission .

*Mouro, F.M., Ribeiro, J.A., Sebastiao, A.M., Dawson, N. (2018) Chronic, intermittent treatment with a cannabinoid receptor agonist impairs recognition memory and brain network functional connectivity. J Neurochem. [Epub ahead of print] doi: 10.1111/jnc.14549.
Childhood leukemia is a diagnosis that no family ever wants to endure. While the treatment of most types of leukemia has improved steadily over the years, a few specific types remain very difficult to treat. One of these is called "mixed lineage leukemia," and for children affected by this cancer, their chance of survival is only around 50 %.

A team of researchers led by Vaclav Veverka (IOCB Prague, Czech Republic), Zeger Debyser (KU Leuven, Belgium), and H. Courtney Hodges (Baylor College of Medicine, TX, USA) has recently uncovered a major new vulnerability of mixed lineage leukemia. Their findings, published in a recent issue of the journal PNAS, reports that a protein called LEDGF/p75 is regulated by phosphorylation, a molecular modification that changes the electrical charge of the LEDGF/p75 protein.

LEDGF/p75, or "lens epithelium-derived growth factor," is a protein that contributes to the regulation of gene expression. It does so by tethering other proteins to a specific epigenetic mark on chromatin. This chromatin tethering activity is hijacked in two important disease settings: HIV and mixed lineage leukemia. Unfortunately, until now little was known about the biological regulation of LEDGF/p75's interaction to binding partners, which limited the development of therapeutic targeting of LEDGF/p75 in human disease.

After an extensive structural analysis, the scientists uncovered molecular features crucial for interaction LEDGF/p75 with its binding partners. To their surprise, they found out that this interaction is achieved through a structurally conserved binding mode common to all of the LEDGF/p75 binding partners. This allowed them to identify previously unknown direct interactions between LEDGF/p75 and other major transcriptional regulatory factors. These factors are well known in the world of gene regulation and include major regulators such as the Mediator complex. Their findings demonstrate that LEDGF/p75 participates in a much larger network of factors involved in transcription elongation than what was previously recognized. Importantly, they also revealed for the first time that binding between LEDGF/p75 and its interaction partners are strongly modulated by phosphorylation from an enzyme called casein kinase 2.

This major breakthrough allows researchers to target LEDGF/p75 interactions, which can be used to develop entirely new therapeutic strategies against mixed lineage leukemia. In an initial proof-of-concept demonstration, the team showed that elimination of phosphorylation sites in MLL1, one of the LEDGF/p75 interaction partners, reduces the ability of leukemic cells to remain in a cancer-like state. Interestingly, this interaction is only necessary for cancer and does not appear to be needed for normal function of blood cells.

In their studies, the researchers found that inhibiting the phosphorylation that permits LEDGF/p75 and MLL1 to bind provides a promising new therapeutic route against mixed lineage leukemia. Because this interaction is specific to cancer and is not necessary for normal function, additional studies in this area may help to provide more potent and less toxic cancer therapies. "The power of structural biology is the ability to visualize the molecular interactions that contribute to human disease," Veverka says. Based on their recent discovery, the researchers hope their findings will open new possibilities to improve the odds for the young patients affected by this aggressive leukemia.

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Original paper: Sharma, S., Cermakova, K., Rijck, J.D., Demeulemeester, J., Fabry, M., Ashkar, S.E., Belle, S.V., Lepsik, M., Tesina, P., Duchoslav, V., Novak, P., Hubalek, M., Srb, P., Christ, F., Rezacova, P., Hodges, H.C., Debyser, Z., & Veverka, V. (2018). Affinity switching of the LEDGF/p75 IBD interactome is governed by kinase-dependent phosphorylation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115 (30), E7053-E706. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1803909115

The Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences / IOCB Prague is a leading internationally recognized scientific institution whose primary mission is the pursuit of basic research in chemical biology and medicinal chemistry, organic and materials chemistry, chemistry of natural substances, biochemistry and molecular biology, physical chemistry, theoretical chemistry, and analytical chemistry. An integral part of the IOCB Prague's mission is the implementation of the results of basic research in practice. Emphasis on interdisciplinary research gives rise to a wide range of applications in medicine, pharmacy, and other fields.

KU Leuven is Europe's most innovative university in the latest Reuters ranking. Located in Belgium, it is dedicated to research, education, and service to society. KU Leuven is a founding member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) and has a strong European and international orientation. Its scientists conduct basic and applied research in a comprehensive range of disciplines. The university welcomes more than 50,000 students from over 140 countries. The KU Leuven Doctoral Schools train approximately 4,500 PhD students.
CHI Memorial Medical Group announces Mark Currin, M.D. has joined CHI Memorial Chattanooga Urology Associates. Dr. Currin received his medical degree from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. He completed an internship in general surgery and a residency in urology at Medical University of South Carolina. His career interests are in the medical and surgical management of stone disease, endourology, urological oncology, minimally invasive and robotic urology and female incontinence and voiding symptoms. His robotic experience is primarily in kidney, ureteral and prostate surgery.



Dr. Currin is returning to his hometown, and joining the same practice where his father, Samuel Currin, M.D., practiced for 26 years. Dr. Mark Currin was a whitewater kayak instructor while in college and served as a medical student volunteer in Uganda during medical school. He enjoys outdoor recreation activities, woodworking and printmaking.



Dr. Currin joins Patrick Dilworth, M.D., Edward Henson, M.D., Jeffrey Mullins, M.D. and William Young, M.D. at CHI Memorial Chattanooga Urology Associates. The physicians specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of all areas related to the urinary tract and the reproductive area. This includes all age groups with disease or infection involving the reproductive tracts, kidneys, urethra, bladder, prostate and the male genitalia. The urologists also treat kidney stones, infertility, impotence, cancer of the urinary tract and prostate cancer.



"CHI Memorial Chattanooga Urology Associates is fully equipped with the diagnostic tools to detect urological disease in its early stages. It is our goal to use these tools and our training in a preventative manner and to restore normal function and health to our patients," officials said.



The practice is in the Memorial Missionary Ridge Medical Tower, 725 Glenwood Dr., Suite 780, in Chattanooga. All providers are welcoming new patients. To schedule an appointment or for more information, call 423-697-0072.
(ANSA) - Rome, August 13 - Interior Minister and Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini said Monday that the NGO-run migrant search-and-rescue ship Aquarius will not be allowed access to Italy's ports. "Aquarius NGO ship with another 141 immigrants on board: German owned, rented by French NGO, foreign crew, in Maltese waters, flying the flag of Gibraltar," Salvini said via Twitter.

"It can go where it wants, (but) not to Italy! Stop human being traffickers and accomplices, #portsclosed and #openhearts". Salvini, the leader of the rightwing League party, has spearheaded the new Italian government's tough stance on migration which was seen NGO search-and-reascue vessels denied access to Italy's ports. The Aquarius, rented by the SOS Mediterranee NGO and managed in partnership with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), was at the centre of international spat in June when Italy and Malta both refused to lot it dock.

It ended up having to go to Spain with over 600 migrants it rescued transported with the help of an Italian escort.


Switching to renewable fuels could significantly lower exhaust emissions of toxic nitrogen oxides (NOx) as well as curbing global greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers at KAUST have combined computer analysis with laser-based NOx concentration measurements to understand NOx production pathways in different fuel types. The results may inspire new ways to mitigate NOx emissions, the researchers say.

Long before climate change focused global attention on vehicle carbon emissions, regulators were clamping down on NOx because of its detrimental effect on air quality. "Controlling nitrogen-oxide emissions continues to be a real challenge, with ever tightening restrictions on automobiles, trucks, and aviation," says William Roberts, who directs the KAUST Clean Combustion Research Center. "We are continually looking at emerging fuels and trying to develop chemical kinetic mechanisms to predict NOx formation."

In the latest study, Roberts and his colleagues examined NOx emissions from alcohol fuels, such as ethanol. These renewable fuels have gained attention because they are potentially carbon-neutral, but they also produce lower NOx emissions than conventional fossil fuels. Nitrogen oxides can be produced by various pathways, each of which dominates a different stage of combustion, says Myles Bohon, who contributed to the study during his Ph.D. before joining Technische Universitat Berlin. "By understanding these pathways and their relative importance, it becomes easier to develop NOx mitigation techniques," Bohon says.

The researchers used planar-laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) to measure NOx production throughout the flame, comparing alcohol fuels with an alkane fossil fuel surrogate. The technique helped the team differentiate nonthermal NOx production pathways, which dominate early in the flame, from thermal NOx production pathways, which mainly occur in the high-temperature post-flame region.

"These types of direct measurements are pretty difficult to pull off," says Bohon. "But they are important because they directly show the differences in the nonthermal NO formation between the two fuel classes." As much as 50 percent less nonthermal NO was produced in the alcohol flames, the researchers observed. They also developed an algorithm to further pinpoint the specific NOx pathway contribution differences between alcohol and alkane fuels.

"Alcohol fuels definitely have applications in internal combustion engines, where alcohols -- ethanol in particular -- are added to gasoline," says Bohon. "There is a lot of potential to use fuel blends to mitigate NOx," he adds.

KAUST researchers are continuing to refine their mechanistic understanding of NOx production, validating their models using laser-based diagnostics, to "predict, understand and eventually mitigate NOx emissions," Roberts says.

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Fornax UCD3 is a part of a Fornax galaxy cluster and belongs to a very rare and unusual class of galaxies - ultracompact dwarfs. The mass of such dwarf galaxies reaches several dozen millions of solar masses and the radius, typically, does not exceed three hundred light years. This ratio between mass and size makes UCDs the densest stellar systems in the Universe.

"We have discovered a supermassive black hole in the center of Fornax UCD3. The black hole mass is 3.5 million that of the Sun, similar to the central black hole in our own Milky Way" explained Anton Afanasiev, the first author of the article, a student of the department of the Faculty of Physics, MSU.

In the course of the study the scientists used the data collected with SINFONI, an infrared integral field spectrograph installed at one of the 8-m VLT telescopes in Chile operated by the European Southern Observatory. Having analyzed the observed spectra, the authors derived the dependence between stellar velocity dispersion and radius in Fornax UCD3. Velocity dispersion quantifies the average variation between the individual stellar line-of-sight velocity and the mean velocity of the entire stellar population. In the presence of a massive body such as a black hole the stars are influenced by its gravity and accelerate in various directions. Due to that their average speed does not grow but the dispersion increases considerably. This is the very effect that was observed in this galaxy: the velocity dispersion in its center is so high that it can only be explained by the presence of a massive central black hole.

After that the scientists compared the dependence of velocity and dispersion with dynamic models based on different assumptions of the black hole mass. They found that the model suggesting the mass of the black hole being equal to 3.5 million solar masses agreed with the observations best. They also considered the possibility that no black hole was present there at all, but that hypothesis was excluded with the statistical significance of (99.7%).

The black hole discovered by the authors is the fourth ever to be found in UCDs and corresponds to 4% of the total galaxy mass. In "normal" galaxies this ratio is considerably lower (about 0.3%). Despite there are few known examples, the existence of massive black holes in UCDs is a strong argument for the tidal origin of such galaxies. According to this hypothesis, an average-sized galaxy passed a bigger and more massive one on a certain stage of its evolution and as a result of influence of tidal forces lost the majority of its stars. The remaining compact nucleus has become what we know as an ultracompact dwarf.

"To be able to say with complete assurance that this hypothesis is correct, we need to discover more supermassive black holes in UCDs. This is one of the prospects of this work.

Moreover, a similar methodology may be applied to more massive and less dense compact elliptical galaxies. In one of our next works we will study the population of central black holes in objects of this kind," concluded the scientist.

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The work was carried out in collaboration with the scientists from the European Southern Observatory (Germany and Chile), Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (Germany), University of Michigan, San Jose State University, Texas A&M University, University of Utah, University of California (USA), Australian Astronomical Observatory, Macquarie University, University of Queensland (Australia), as well as from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.
The positively charged particles may have an outsize influence on the properties of neutron stars and other neutron-rich objects

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Neutron stars are the smallest, densest stars in the universe, born out of the gravitational collapse of extremely massive stars. True to their name, neutron stars are composed almost entirely of neutrons -- neutral subatomic particles that have been compressed into a small, incredibly dense celestial package.

A new study in Nature, co-led by MIT researchers, suggests that some properties of neutron stars may be influenced not only by their multitude of densely packed neutrons, but also by a substantially smaller fraction of protons -- positively charged particles that make up just 5 percent of a neutron star.

Instead of gazing at the stars, the researchers came to their conclusion by analyzing the microscopic nuclei of atoms on Earth.

The nucleus of an atom is packed with protons and neutrons, though not quite as densely as in neutron stars. Occasionally, if they are close enough in distance, a proton and a neutron will pair up and streak through an atom's nucleus with unusually high energy. Such "short-range correlations," as they are known, can contribute significantly to the energy balance and overall properties of a given atomic nucleus.

The researchers looked for signs of proton and neutron pairs in atoms of carbon, aluminum, iron, and lead, each with a progressively higher ratio of neutrons to protons. They found that, as the relative number of neutrons in an atom increased, so did the probability that a proton would form an energetic pair. The likelihood that a neutron would pair up, however, stayed about the same. This trend suggests that, in objects with high densities of neutrons, the minority protons carry a disproportionally large part of the average energy.

"We think that when you have a neutron-rich nucleus, on average, the protons move faster than the neutrons, so in some sense, protons carry the action," says study co-author Or Hen, assistant professor of physics at MIT. "We can only imagine what might happen in even more neutron-dense objects like neutron stars. Even though protons are the minority in the star, we think the minority rules. Protons seem to be very active, and we think they might determine several properties of the star."

Digging through data

Hen and his colleagues based their study on data collected by CLAS -- the CEBAF (Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility) Large Acceptance Spectrometer, a particle accelerator and detector based at Jefferson Laboratory in Virginia. CLAS, which operated from 1998 to 2012, was designed to detect and record the multiple particles that are emitted when beams of electrons impinge on atomic targets.

"Having this property of a detector that sees everything and also keeps everything for offline analysis is extremely rare," Hen says. "It even has kept what people considered 'noise,' and we're now learning that one person's noise is another person's signal."

The team chose to mine CLAF's archived data for signs of short-range correlations -- interactions that the detector was not necessarily meant to produce, but that it captured nonetheless.

"People were using the detector to look at specific interactions, but meanwhile, it also measured in parallel a bunch of other reactions that took place," says collaborator Larry Weinstein, a professor of physics at Old Dominion University. "So we thought, 'Let's dig into this data and see if there's anything interesting there.' We want to squeeze as much science as we can out of experiments that have already run."

A full dance card

The team chose to mine CLAS data collected in 2004, during an experiment in which the detector aimed beams of electrons at carbon, aluminum, iron, and lead atoms, with the goal of observing how particles produced in nuclear interactions travel through each atom's respectively larger volume. Along with their varying sizes, each of the four types of atoms have different ratios of neutrons to protons in their nuclei, with carbon having the fewest neutrons and lead having the most.

The reanalysis of the data was done by graduate student Meytal Duer from Tel Aviv University in a collaboration with MIT and Old Dominion University, and was led by Hen. The overall study was conducted by an international consortium called the CLAS Collaboration, made up of 182 members from 42 institutions in 9 countries.

The group studied the data for signs of high-energy protons and neutrons -- indications that the particles had paired up -- and whether the probability of this pairing changed as the ratio of neutrons to protons increased.

"We wanted to start from a symmetric nucleus and see, as we add more neutrons, how things evolve," Hen says. "We would never get to the symmetries of neutron stars here on Earth, but we could at least see some trend and understand from that, what could be going on in the star."

In the end, the team observed that as the number of neutrons in an atom's nucleus increased, the probability of protons having high energies (and having paired up with a neutron) also increased significantly, while the same probability for neutrons remained the same.

"The analogy we like to give is that it's like going to a dance party," Hen says, invoking a scenario in which boys who might pair up with girls on the dance floor are vastly outnumbered. "What would happen is, the average boy would ... dance a lot more, so even though they were a minority in the party, the boys, like the protons, would be extremely active."

Hen says this trend of energetic protons in neutron-rich atoms may extend to even more neutron-dense objects, such as neutron stars. The role of protons in these extreme objects may then be more significant than people previously suspected. This revelation, Hen says, may shake up scientists' understanding of how neutron stars behave. For instance, as protons may carry substantially more energy than previously thought, they may contribute to properties of a neutron star such as its stiffness, its ratio of mass to size, and its process of cooling.

"All these properties then affect how two neutron stars merge together, which we think is one of the main processes in the universe that create nuclei heavier than iron, such as gold," Hen says. "Now that we know the small fraction of protons in the star are very highly correlated, we will have to rethink how [neutron stars] behave."

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This research was supported, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Israel Science Foundation, the Chilean Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica, the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique, the French-American Cultural Exchange, the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, the National Research Foundation of Korea, and the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council.
New technology developed by a team of McGill University scientists shows potential to streamline the analysis of proteins, offering a quick, high volume and cost-effective tool to hospitals and research labs alike.

Proteins found in blood provide scientists and clinicians with key information on our health. These biological markers can determine if a chest pain is caused by a cardiac event or if a patient has cancer.

Unfortunately, the tools used to detect such proteins haven't evolved much over the past 50 years - despite there being over 20,000 proteins in our body, the vast majority of protein tests run today target only a single protein at-a-time.

Now, PhD candidate Milad Dagher, Professor David Juncker and colleagues in McGill's Department of Biomedical Engineering have devised a technique that can detect hundreds of proteins with a single blood sample.

Part of their work, just published in Nature Nanotechnology, describes a new and improved way to barcode micro-beads using multicolour fluorescent dyes. By generating upwards of 500 differently coloured micro-beads, their new barcoding platform enables detection of markers in parallel from the same solution--for example, a blue barcode can be used to detect marker 1, while a red barcode can detect marker 2, and so on. A laser-based instrument called a cytometer then counts the proteins that stick to the different coloured beads.

Though this kind of analysis method has been available for some time, interference among multicolour dyes has limited the ability to generate the right colours. Now, a new algorithm developed by the team enables different colours of micro-beads to be generated with high accuracy--much like a colour wheel can be used to predict the outcome of colour mixing.

Professor Juncker's team is hoping to leverage its platform for improved analysis of proteins.

"Current technologies hold a major trade-off between the number of proteins that can be measured at once, and the cost and accuracy of a test", Dagher explains. "This means that large-scale studies, such as clinical trials, are underpowered because they tend to fall back on tried-and-true platforms with limited capabilities."

Their upcoming work focuses on maintaining accurate detection of proteins with increased scale.

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Dagher and Jeffrey Munzar, a postdoctoral fellow in the Juncker lab, have teamed up with Professor Juncker and spun-off a company, nplex biosciences, to commercialize their new approach.

The McGill group was also recently awarded an NSERC Idea to Innovation grant to support the development of the next version of their technology platform.
Study tracked youth via smartphones to see where they felt safe

Embargoed until 12:01 a.m. ET, Monday Aug. 13, 2018

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Young black males feel less safe when they go to neighborhoods with a larger white population than occurs in areas they normally visit, a new study suggests.

Researchers gave 506 black youths in Columbus smartphones that tracked their locations for a week and asked the participants to rate how safe they felt (among other questions) five times per day.

Results showed that African American boys felt less safe even in areas that were only modestly more white than where they usually spent time, said Christopher Browning, lead author of the study and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University.

"It doesn't have to be a majority white neighborhood for African American boys to feel more threatened," Browning said. "It just has to be more white than what they typically encounter."

When outside their own neighborhoods, black teens in the study visited areas that were, on average, 13 percent more white.

Unlike boys, black girls did not report feeling significantly less safe in whiter areas.

Browning presented the research Aug. 13 in Philadelphia at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

The results are consistent with the hypothesis that young black males expect increased scrutiny, surveillance and even direct targeting when they are in white areas, according to Browning.

"We've seen a lot of stories in the media lately about the police being called on black people going about their business in white areas," he said.

"This may help explain why black youth felt more threatened in parts of town where they were exposed to more white people."

Data for the study came from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study, which Browning leads. The AHDC is examining the lives of 1,405 representative youths living in 184 neighborhoods in Franklin County, Ohio. This includes Columbus and its suburbs.

This particular study involved 506 black youths aged 11 to 17 when the study was done from 2014 to 2016. They carried a smartphone with a GPS function that reported their location every 30 seconds. Five times a day they were sent a mini-survey to answer on their phones. By the end of the study, the researchers had collected 7,398 of these surveys.

In one question, participants were asked to rate on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) if the place they were currently at was a safe place to be.

Participants reported either strongly agreeing or agreeing that they were in a safe place about 91 percent of the time. That makes sense, Browning said, because the teens reported being at home about 71 percent of the time when they received the survey.

Much of the research that examines safety among black youth focuses on the neighborhood they live in. But this research suggests that the immediate neighborhood may not be the most important area to focus on, he said.

What seemed to matter was how the places they visited differed from the areas where they spent most of their time.

Black boys felt less safe when they were in neighborhoods that were significantly poorer than ones they generally frequented, as well as in neighborhoods that were whiter.

"Part of the experience for black kids is having to leave their home neighborhoods to go to places that might not be as welcoming," Browning said.

"They are typically going to places with amenities like restaurants and movie theaters that may not be available in their neighborhoods. And these places are probably going to be whiter than the places they live."

The findings were similar for African American boys no matter where they lived in the Columbus area.

"Even black boys who were regularly exposed to integrated neighborhoods felt less safe when they went to white-dominated areas," he said.

Although African American girls in this study didn't report feeling less safe in whiter areas, Browning said that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't experiencing negative effects.

It may be that there are different features of neighborhoods not picked up in this study, such as the number of men in the immediate vicinity, that may affect whether black girls felt safe in a particular location, he said.

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Browning, who is a member of Ohio State's Translational Data Analytics Institute and Institute for Population Research, co-authored the study with Ohio State colleagues Catherine Calder, professor of statistics; Bethany Boettner, senior research associate at the IPR; Jodi Ford, associate professor of nursing; and Lesley Schneider and Jake Tarrence, graduate students in sociology.

This research was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Development, and the William T. Grant Foundation.

Contact: Christopher Browning, Browning.90@osu.edu

Written by Jeff Grabmeier, 614-292-8457; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Long before humans started injecting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal, the level of atmospheric CO2 rose significantly as the Earth came out of its last ice age. Many scientists have long suspected that the source of that carbon was from the deep sea.

But researchers haven't been able to document just how the carbon made it out of the ocean and into the atmosphere. It has remained one of the most important mysteries of science.

A new study, published today in the journal Nature Geoscience, provides some of the most compelling evidence for how it happened - a "flushing" of the deep Pacific Ocean caused by the acceleration of water circulation patterns that begin around Antarctica.

The concern, researchers say, is that it could happen again, potentially magnifying and accelerating human-caused climate change.

"The Pacific Ocean is big and you can store a lot of stuff down there - it's kind of like Grandma's root cellar - stuff accumulates there and sometimes doesn't get cleaned out," said Alan Mix, an Oregon State University oceanographer and co-author on the study. "We've known that CO2 in the atmosphere went up and down in the past, we know that it was part of big climate changes, and we thought it came out of the deep ocean.

"But it has not been clear how the carbon actually got out of the ocean to cause the CO2 rise."

Lead author Jianghui Du, a doctoral student in oceanography at Oregon State, said there is a circulation pattern in the Pacific that begins with water around Antarctica sinking and moving northward at great depth a few miles below the surface. It continues all the way to Alaska, where it rises, turns back southward, and flows back to Antarctica where it mixes back up to the sea surface.

It takes a long time for the water's round trip journey in the abyss - almost 1,000 years, Du said. Along with the rest of the OSU team, Du found that flow slowed down during glacial maximums but sped up during deglaciation, as the Earth warmed. This faster flow flushed the carbon from the deep Pacific Ocean - "cleaning out Grandma's root cellar" - and brought the CO2 to the surface near Antarctica. There it was released into the atmosphere.

"It happened roughly in two steps during the last deglaciation - an initial phase from 18,000 to 15,000 years ago, when CO2 rose by about 50 parts per million, and a second pulse later added another 30 parts per million," Du said. That total is just a bit less than the amount CO2 has risen since the industrial revolution. So the ocean can be a powerful source of carbon.

Brian Haley, also an Oregon State University oceanographer and co-author on the study, noted that carbon is always falling down into the deep ocean. Up near the surface, plankton grow, but when they die they sink and decompose. That is a biological pump that is always sending carbon to the bottom. "The slower the circulation," Haley said, "the more time the water spends down there, and carbon can build up."

Du said that during a glacial maximum, the water slows down and accumulates lots of carbon. "When the Earth began warming, the water movement sped up by about a factor of three," he noted, "and that carbon came back to the surface."

The key to the researchers' discovery is the analysis of neodymium isotopes in North Pacific sediment cores. Haley noted that the isotopes are "like a return address label on a letter from the deep ocean." When the ratio of isotope 143 to 144 is higher in the sediments, the water movement during that period was slower. When water movement speeds up during warming events, the ratio of neodymium isotopes reflects that too.

"This finding that the deep circulation sped up is the smoking gun in this mystery story about how CO2 got out to the deep sea," Mix said. "We now know how it happened, and the deep Pacific is the culprit - a partner in crime with Antarctica."

What concerns the researchers is that it could happen again as the climate continues to warm.

"We don't know that the circulation will speed up and bring that carbon to the surface, but it seems like a reasonable thing to think about," Du said. "Our evidence that this actually happened in the past will help the people who run climate models figure out whether it is a real risk for the future."

The researchers say their findings should be considered from a policy perspective.

"So far the ocean has absorbed about a third of the total carbon emitted from fossil fuels," Mix said. "That has helped slow down warming. The Paris Climate Agreement has set goals of containing warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees (Celsius) and we know pretty well how much carbon can be released to the atmosphere while keeping to that level.

"But if the ocean stops absorbing the excess CO2, and instead releases more from the deep sea, that spells trouble. Ocean release would subtract from our remaining emissions budget and that means we're going to have to get our emissions down a heck of a lot faster. We need to figure out how much."

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The authors are from College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State, and from United States Geological Survey. The study was supported by the National Science Foundation.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Fruit flies don't appear to use their tiny, translucent wings for optimal flight, as one might expect. The speedy appendages seem to be doing double duty, helping the insect sniff out food, mates and other important scents, according to new research from The Ohio State University.

A researcher with a background in mechanical engineering and an expert in olfaction - that's smelling to most of us - collaborated on the study, which appears in the journal Nature Communications.

Scientists have long wondered about the balance between an insect's dual needs for flight and odor-based navigation. Inevitably, the wings disrupt odor plumes and that led many researchers to speculate that nature might not have designed the wings just for flight, but to draw aromas to the scent-detecting antennae as well.

Each of the Ohio State researchers was skeptical about this dual-purposes hypothesis for his own reasons. Kai Zhao, the olfaction and bioengineering expert, thought the idea didn't make a whole lot of sense based on the design of the fruit fly.

"People have thought the wings might contribute to scent detection, but the antennae, the bug's primary scent trackers, are perched atop its head, well in front of the wings," he said.

"Imagine a speed boat skimming across a calm lake; its bow is always hitting the calm water, ahead of the wake and the turbulence generated by the propeller - why wouldn't the antennae be on the tail, catching all the scents downwind from the wings?" said Zhao, an associate professor of otolaryngology at Ohio State.

Study co-author Chengyu Li's mechanical engineering background led him to figure that the bug's wings were made for speed and agility and likely nothing more.

"I previously worked on projects looking at aerodynamics that could be applied to drones. For researchers doing this kind of work, we all assume that nature is the best designer and that the wing is primarily designed for flight," said Li, a postdoctoral researcher currently studying the mechanics of nasal airflow.

"These tiny insects have limited energy and they must use it well or they'll die, so the wing has to be very efficient," he said.

The duo satisfied their curiosity with a computer simulation of a fruit fly in flight, encountering a plume of scent. Haibo Dong, an expert in insect aerodynamics at the University of Virginia, also worked on the study.

The team, the first to create a simulation such as this, was able to replicate the wing movements of the insect based on previous observations of actual fruit flies by other researchers.

"We thought, 'Why not simulate an odor plume and see what the wing is doing to it?'" Zhao said.

What they saw was fascinating. The bug's wings don't just flap up and down - there's a dip forward and up as the wings approach the fruit fly's head, a motion that appears to "scoop" streams of odor right to the insect's antennae.

"We can see that the insect's wings could help it detect food, survive, and find mates," Li said.

They didn't stop there. The researchers wondered: "Does that mean the wing wasn't designed by nature strictly for aerodynamic performance?"

The bottom section of wing, they saw, seemed to be important for the odor "scoop," so Zhao and Li wondered if they could alter this structure and find out more about whether it would hinder speedy flight for the fruit fly.

On the computer simulation, they removed this part of the wing, which represents about 20 percent of its structure but is responsible for only about 5 percent of its lift, according to their calculations. Then they ran the scent/flight simulations again.

The new model didn't hinder flight. In fact, it improved the efficiency of the already-racing wings of the fruit fly, which usually beat at about 200 hertz, the equivalent of about 12,000 revolutions per minute.

But the wing alterations rendered the computer-simulated insect's wings much less successful at redirecting scents to the antennae. Plumes that were drawn in and up before sailed right past the virtual bug.

That led the researchers to speculate that the fruit fly's wings evolved to support two of its life needs: fast transport and detection of the faint odors in its atmosphere.

"The structure of the wing does not appear to be optimal for aerodynamics, even though they are amazing fliers," Zhao said. "Odor is very important for insects, and this study seems to suggest that the wings balance the need for that as well."

The research could inform future engineering studies modeled on nature's fliers, particularly work to refine drones, Zhao said. In fact, there could be applications related to military drones designed to "smell" threats, such as bombs or chemical weapons, he said.

The researchers are interested in applying this type of computer simulation to other insects.

###

The National Institutes of Health supported this research.

CONTACT: Kai Zhao, Zhao.1949@osu.edu

Written by Misti Crane, 614-292-5220; Crane.11@osu.edu
Putting land management in the hands of local communities helps the wildlife within, according to new research by a Penn State scientist. A new study demonstrates the positive ecological impacts of a community-based wildlife conservation area in Tanzania. The research is summarized in a paper that appears online [date] in the Journal of Wildlife Management.

"Community-based natural resource management has become one of the dominant paradigms of natural resource conservation worldwide," said Derek E. Lee, the author of the paper, associate research professor at Penn State, and principal scientist at the Wild Nature Institute.

"This type of strategy transfers the resource management and user rights from central government agencies to local communities. The impact of these projects on wildlife is rarely rigorously assessed, so we compared wildlife densities inside and outside the community conservation area. My data demonstrate that one of the first areas of this type in Tanzania has had positive ecological outcomes in the form of higher wildlife densities and higher giraffe population growth," said Lee.

In Tanzania, efforts to decentralize wildlife management to local communities occur through the creation of Wildlife Management Areas, whereby several villages set aside land for wildlife conservation in return for a share of tourism revenues from these areas. Nineteen Wildlife Management Areas are currently operating, encompassing 7% (6.2 million hectares) of Tanzania's land area, with 19 more planned. Tourism in Tanzania generates around $6 billion US dollars annually, which represents about 13% of their total gross domestic product, so there is good incentive for villages to participate in these management areas.

"For six years, I studied the Burunge Wildlife Management Area in Tanzania, which was formally established in 2006 and added increased wildlife protections in 2015," said Lee. He observed higher numbers of wildlife inside the protected area compared to the village lands just outside the area as well as lower densities of livestock, including cattle, sheep, and goats. He also observed higher numbers of wild ungulates--hooved mammals--and lower numbers of livestock in the management area after the increased wildlife protections began.

"This suggests that the specific management activities implemented in 2015 have a positive effect on wildlife within the Burunge Wildlife Management Area," said Lee. "These include performing anti-poaching activities to protect wildlife, reducing wood cutting, preventing livestock encroachment, and providing training and equipment to village rangers so that they can perform these activities."

The change to management activities also improved survival and population growth of giraffes within the management area. Lee did not observe any change in giraffe demographics outside of the management area in the adjacent Tarangire National Park over the same time period.

"It is very gratifying to see the positive role of community conservation areas in saving Africa's endangered and declining species," said Philp Muruthi, Senior Director of Conservation Science for the African Wildlife Foundation who was not involved in the study. "Clearly to save the giraffe will take more than the formal national parks. And the benefits to the species and landowners are immense into the future."

This study highlights the usefulness of monitoring wildlife to evaluate specific management strategies as well as the general concept of community-based natural resource management. In particular, locally based monitoring schemes could lead to more sustainable community-based conservation.

"We know from this and previous studies that these management areas can have positive effects on wildlife," said Lee. "But there have been some social and economic critiques of wildlife management areas. For example, there is higher incidences of poverty around protected areas compared to other rural areas. Although it can be challenging for community-based natural resource management to achieve both conservation and human development goals, the concept appears to be the best opportunity for Tanzania to retain its place as one of the most famous and profitable wildlife tourism destinations while also sustainably developing local communities."

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This work was funded by the PAMS Foundation, African Wildlife Foundation, Rufford Foundation, Columbus Zoo, Sacramento Zoo, Tierpark Berlin, Living Desert Zoo, Cincinnati Zoo, Tulsa Zoo, Greater Sacramento Chapter of American Association of Zoo Keepers, World Giraffe Foundation, and Save the Giraffes.
Somewhere in the American Southwest or northern Mexico, there are probably the ruins of a scarlet macaw breeding operation dating to between 900 and 1200 C.E., according to a team of archaeologists who sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of bird remains found in the Chaco Canyon and Mimbres areas of New Mexico.

Remains of a thriving prehistoric avian culture and breeding colony of scarlet macaws exist at the northern Mexican site of Paquime, or Casas Grande. However, this community existed from 1250 to 1450, well after the abandonment of Chaco Canyon, and could not have supplied these birds to Southwest communities prior to the 13th century, said Richard George, graduate student in anthropology, Penn State.

Historically, scarlet macaws lived from South America to eastern coastal Mexico and Guatemala, thousands of miles from the American Southwest. Previously, researchers thought that ancestral Puebloan people might have traveled to these natural breeding areas and brought birds back, but the logistics of transporting adolescent birds are difficult. None of the sites where these early macaw remains were found contained evidence of breeding -- eggshells, pens or perches.

"We were interested in the prehistoric scarlet macaw population history and the impacts of human direct management," said George. "Especially any evidence for directed breeding or changes in the genetic diversity that could co-occur with different trade networks."

The researchers sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of 20 scarlet macaw specimens, but were only able to obtain full sequences from 14. They then directly radiocarbon-dated all 14 birds with complete or near complete genomes and found they fell between 900 and 1200 CE.

"We looked at the full mitochondrial genome of over 16,000 base pairs to understand the maternal relationships represented in the Chaco Canyon and Mimbres regions," said George.

Mitochondrial DNA exists separate from the cell nucleus and is inherited directly from the mother. While nuclear DNA combines the DNA inherited from both parents, mitochondrial DNA can show direct lineage because all siblings have the same mtDNA as their mother, and she has the same mtDNA as her own siblings and mother, all the way back through their ancestry.

Scarlet macaws in Mexico and Central America have five haplogroups -- genetically similar, but not identical mitochondrial DNA lines -- and each haplogroup has a number of haplotypes containing identical DNA lines. The researchers found that their scarlet macaws were all from haplogroup 6 and that 71 percent of the birds shared one of four unique haplotypes. They report the results of this analysis today (Aug 13) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers found that the probability of obtaining 14 birds from the wild and having them all come from the same haplogroup, one that is small and isolated, was extremely small. A better explanation, especially because these specimens ranged over a 300-year period, is that all the birds came from the same breeding population and that this population existed somewhere in the American Southwest or northern Mexico.

"These birds all likely came from the same source, but we don't have any way to support that assumption without examining the full genome," said George. "However, the genetic results likely indicate some type of narrow breeding from a small founder population with little or no introgression or resupply."

However, no one has found macaw breeding evidence dating to the 900 to 1200 period in the American Southwest or northern Mexico.

"The next step will be to analyze macaws from other archaeological sites in Arizona and northern Mexico to narrow down the location of this early breeding colony," said Douglas Kennett, professor and head of anthropology, Penn State, and co-director or the project.

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Also at Penn State working on the project are Brendan Culleton, research associate in anthropology; and Thomas Harper, postdoctoral scholar in anthropology.

Other researchers were co-director Stephan Plog, David A. Harrison Professor of Archaeology, University of Virginia; Adam Watson, anthropology; George Amato, director, Conservation Genomics, Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics; Peter Whitley, curator,

Division of Anthropology; Kari Schmidt, graduate student, Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, all at the American Museum of Natural History. Steven LeBlanc, former Director of Collections at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University; Logan Kistler, curator, archaeology, Smithsonian Institute; and Patricia Gilman, professor emerita of anthropology, University of Oklahoma were also on the project..
A popular technique for studying genes from different organisms plus a new carrier to transfer them to plants have yielded a powerful tool for understanding crops better

A plant virus with a simple genome promises to help crop scientists understand traits and diseases in wheat and maize more quickly and easily than existing techniques and, as its full potential is tapped, to work across a range of different plant species.

The Foxtail mosaic virus (FoMV) has now overcome the limitations of existing carriers, or vectors, to enable a much greater range of proteins to be expressed in host plants. It uses an established and popular technique known as virus-mediated overexpression (VOX), reports a team of investigators led by Rothamsted Research.

The team, which also includes Syngenta Technology in the US and Syngenta Crop Protection in Switzerland, selects genes from different organsims, including fungal pathogens, and transfers them into cereal crops. It then investigates the genes' functions by studying the effects of the proteins that they express. The team's findings are published in full in the August edition of Plant Physiology.

"The development has stirred much interest among cereal pathologists around the world since preliminary findings began to emerge in early June," says Kostya Kanyuka, a molecular plant pathologist at Rothamsted, who led the study and whose group specialises in state-of-the-art functional genomics.

"You don't need the whole (stable crop transformation) kitchen," says Kanyuka, emphasising the simplicity and cost effectiveness of his team's latest development. "And we've demonstrated successful expression of proteins up to 600 amino acids long, at least three times larger than was possible in the past."

Kanyuka notes: "The new FoMV-derived vector PV101 enables rapid and cost-effective expression of proteins in cereal plants as a route to understanding the function of their genes. And the range of proteins that can be expressed using this vector is wide, plus the new vector overcomes limitations of previously available VOX vectors."

According to Kim Hammond-Kosack, who leads molecular wheat disease research at Rothamsted and is a member of the team that developed the new vector: "The level and duration of expression of proteins of interest, both locally and systemically from the new FoMV-VOX vector, is impressive. It's enabled us to ramp up our de novo protein screening rate in wheat plants, and this is already benefiting several research projects."

The new FoMV-VOX vector is covered by a Material Transfer Agreement, which enables Rothamsted to make its technology developments available as open access and free of charge.

###

NOTES TO EDITORS

Publication:

Foxtail mosaic virus: A viral vector for protein expression in cereals

Clement et al, August 2018, Plant Physiology, 177 (4) 1352-1367; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1104/pp.17.01679

Rothamsted Research contacts:

Kostya Kanyuka, Functional Genomics Scientist

Tel: +44 (0) 1582 938 232

E-mail: kostya.kanyuka@rothamsted.ac.uk

Kim Hammond-Kosack, Molecular Plant Pathologist

Tel: +44 (0) 1582 938 240

Email: kim.hammond-kosack@rothamsted.ac.uk

Susan Watts, Head of Communications

Tel: +44 (0) 1582 938 109

E-mail: susan.watts@rothamsted.ac.uk

About Rothamsted Research

Rothamsted Research is the oldest agricultural research institute in the world. We work from gene to field with a proud history of ground-breaking discoveries. Our founders, in 1843, were the pioneers of modern agriculture, and we are known for our imaginative science and our collaborative influence on fresh thinking and farming practices. Through independent science and innovation, we make significant contributions to improving agri-food systems in the UK and internationally. In terms of its economic contribution, the cumulative impact of our work in the UK exceeds 3000 million a year (Rothamsted Research and the Value of Excellence, by Sean Rickard, 2015). Our strength lies in our systems approach, which combines science and strategic research, interdisciplinary teams and partnerships. Rothamsted is also home to three unique resources. These National Capabilities are open to researchers from all over the world: The Long-Term Experiments, Rothamsted Insect Survey and the North Wyke Farm Platform. We are strategically funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), with additional support from other national and international funding streams, and from industry.

For more information, visit https://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/; Twitter @Rothamsted

About BBSRC

BBSRC invests in world-class bioscience research and training on behalf of the UK public. Our aim is to further scientific knowledge, to promote economic growth, wealth and job creation and to improve quality of life in the UK and beyond. Funded by Government, BBSRC invested over 469M in world-class bioscience in 2016-17. We support research and training in universities and strategically funded institutes. BBSRC research and the people we fund are helping society to meet major challenges, including food security, green energy and healthier, longer lives. Our investments underpin important UK economic sectors, such as farming, food, industrial biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

More information about BBSRC, our science and our impact.

More information about BBSRC strategically funded institutes

About LAT

The Lawes Agricultural Trust, established in 1889 by Sir John Bennet Lawes, supports Rothamsted Research's national and international agricultural science through the provision of land, facilities and funding. LAT, a charitable trust, owns the estates at Harpenden and Broom's Barn, including many of the buildings used by Rothamsted Research. LAT provides an annual research grant to the Director, accommodation for nearly 200 people, and support for fellowships for young scientists from developing countries. LAT also makes capital grants to help modernise facilities at Rothamsted, or invests in new buildings.

Syngenta contacts:

Monika Spiller, Collaboration Manager

Tel: +49 (0) 5222 530 8221

E-mail: monika.spiller@syngenta.com

Amy Stapleton, Global Communications Manager - Crop Protection

Tel: +41 (0) 61 323 1051

E-mail: monika.spiller@syngenta.com

About Syngenta

Syngenta helps humanity face its toughest challenge: how to feed a rising population, sustainably. Farmers are at the heart of everything we do. We apply world-class science and the most productive research and development in the industry to achieve a step change in agricultural productivity. In more than 90 countries around the world, our employees enable millions of farmers to improve global food security by making better, more sustainable use of available resources.
(ANSA) - Rome, August 13 - The SOS MEDITERRANEE and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) NGOs on Monday appealed to European governments to assign the migrant-rescue ship Aquarius a port of safety "without delay" after it saved 141 people in the Mediterranean.

"Maritime authorities from #Malta and #Italy inform #Aquarius that they will not grant 141 people onboard a place of safety to disembark," MSF said via Twitter.

"#Aquarius has now reached a standby position exactly between Malta and Italy and is awaiting further guidance".

The NGOs said more than 70% of those rescued originate from Somalia and Eritrea. "While the medical condition of those rescued is stable for now, many are extremely weak and malnourished," they said. "Many report that they were held in inhumane conditions in Libya".


A study of young children with autism spectrum disorder published in JNeurosci reveals altered brain waves compared to typically developing children during a motor control task. The non-invasive neuroimaging technique used in this study could be employed to detect autism symptoms as early as infancy.

People with autism show reduced inhibitory neural activity, reflected in gamma brain waves, and movement abnormalities. Mitsuru Kikuchi and colleagues investigated these two aspects of the disorder by recording the brain activity of five- to seven-year-old children diagnosed with autism as they played a video game that required them to press a button to feed a puppy. Compared to a matched group of typically developing children, the children with autism exhibited longer reaction times and reduced gamma oscillations that were associated with the severity of their symptoms. The researchers demonstrate that these features alone can distinguish the two groups, which may represent an objective approach toward diagnosing autism in young children.

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Article: Altered Gamma Oscillations during Motor Control in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1229-18.2018

Corresponding author: Mitsuru Kikuchi (Kanazawa University, Japan), mitsuruk@med.kanazawa-u.ac.jp

About JNeurosci

JNeurosci, the Society for Neuroscience's first journal, was launched in 1981 as a means to communicate the findings of the highest quality neuroscience research to the growing field. Today, the journal remains committed to publishing cutting-edge neuroscience that will have an immediate and lasting scientific impact, while responding to authors' changing publishing needs, representing breadth of the field and diversity in authorship.

About The Society for Neuroscience

The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 37,000 members in more than 90 countries and over 130 chapters worldwide.
RESTON, VA (August 13, 2018) -- The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI), an international scientific and medical organization, recognized contributions to the field of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging during its 2018 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. Several awards ceremonies were held to recognize the valuable role SNMMI members play in advancing the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease, cancer and neurological conditions.

SNMMI Presidential Distinguished Service Award

This year, three SNMMI Presidential Distinguished Service Awards were given in recognition of continual dedication to the society. They were presented to

Arnold M. Strashun, MD - At Kings County Hospital and University Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, Strashun is director of nuclear medicine, director of the Radiology Residency Program, and directs Radiology Research for the department, as well as the Radiology Quality Assurance program. His contributions include numerous scientific papers in nuclear cardiology and the neurosciences. At SNMMI, he has served on the Board of Directors, chaired the Continuing Education Committee, and been a member of other committees, including Ethics and Publications. Strashun has also served on the SNMMI Commission on Education and is a consulting editor for The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. He has served as president of the New York Academy of Medicine's Nuclear Medicine Section and was chairman of SUNY Downstate Centerwide Committee of the Faculty.

Bertrand Brill, MD, PhD - A research professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, Brill has focused his research on radiation leukemogenesis, the effects of radiation on thyroid function, and the effects of diagnostic radioisotopes, particularly exposure to 131I. A member of the American Thyroid Association, he has served as a member of the National Cancer Institute task group studying effects of the Chernobyl accident on thyroid-cancer induction in children. He was previously medical director in the Division of Radiological Health, U.S. Public Health Service and professor of radiology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Brill also served in the U.S. Public Health Service in Japan at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. Long a member of SNMMI, he is now an emeritus member of the society, as well as a member of its PET Center of Excellence and Center for Molecular Imaging Innovation and Translation. Brill has served on numerous SNMMI councils over the years, including Clinical Trials, Computer and Instrumentation, Nuclear Cardiology, Radiopharmaceutical Sciences, and Therapy. He was also a member of the Committee on Medical Internal Radiation Dose and chaired the society's Radiation Effects Committee for 10 years.

Leonie L. Gordon, MD, FACNM, FSNMMI - At the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, Gordon is professor of radiology and radiological sciences, vice chair of education, program director, and associate dean of faculty affairs. Her academic focus is on nuclear medicine therapy and nuclear endocrinology. She is also associate executive director of the American Board of Nuclear Medicine. At SNMMI, Gordon has led the Women in Nuclear Medicine Committee, spearheading efforts including various working groups. She has also served as a member of the Board of Directors, House of Delegates, Academic Council, Cardiovascular Council, Commission on Education, Quality Assurance Taskforce, and Pathways to the Future of Nuclear Medicine, plus numerous committees, including Bylaws, Coding and Reimbursement, Continuing Education, Finance, Practice Standards, Quality and Evidence, and Scientific Program.

Henry J. Wagner, Jr., Lectureship

Richard E. Carson, PhD, delivered the Henry N. Wagner, Jr., Lecture. He is professor of biomedical imaging and biomedical engineering and radiology at Yale University, as well as director of the Yale PET Center and director of graduate studies for the biomedical engineering program. His presentation--titled "Quantitative Nuclear Imaging: Is SUV the Best We Can Do?"--covered tracer kinetic analysis methods used for quantitative brain imaging applications, with a focus on synaptic density imaging, why SUV works as well as it does for FDG oncology studies, and imaging challenges faced in non-brain dynamic studies. Carson claimed that we can do better, and more research is needed to determine the best timing and to optimize methods.

Carson's research includes the development of mathematical models for novel radiopharmaceuticals and applications of PET tracers in preclinical models of disease and clinical populations, with special focus on neuropsychiatric disorders. At SNMMI, he has served on the Brain Imaging Council, the Computer and Instrumentation Council, and the editorial board of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Carson has published more than 275 papers and given more than 125 invited lectures.

Saul Hertz, MD, Award

Richard L. Wahl, MD, FACNM, FACR, received the Saul Hertz, MD, Award, which recognizes the lifetime achievement of individuals who have made outstanding contributions to radionuclide therapy. The award is named in honor of Saul Hertz, MD, who administered a cyclotron-produced I-130 - I-131 mixture as a therapeutic dose to the first human patient with Graves' hyperthyroidism (Graves' Disease) at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1941.

Wahl is the Elizabeth E. Mallinckrodt Professor and head of radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, director of the university's Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology and a professor of radiation oncology. His research played an important role in the development of radioimmunotherapy for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He has also been a pioneer in the use of PET scans to diagnose and assess treatment of a broad array of human cancers and other diseases. Wahl and colleagues developed the PERCIST 1.0 criteria for assessing treatment response in cancer. Wahl is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and has received honors from multiple organizations. He holds 18 patents and has published more than 400 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts. He is the primary author of several textbooks, including Principles and Practice of PET and PET/CT. He has a strong interest in quantitative imaging, is on the coordinating committee of the Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers Alliance (QIBA) efforts of the Radiological Society of North America and has been a lead investigator in the Quantitative Imaging Network (QIN) of the National Institutes of Health. Wahl also received the Georg Charles de Hevesy Nuclear Pioneer Award at SNMMI's 2018 Annual Meeting.

Michael J. Welch Award

Robert H. Mach, PhD, Britton Chance professor of radiology and director of the PET Radiochemistry Program at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, received the Michael J. Welch Award, which is presented annually by SNMMI's Radiopharmaceutical Sciences Council to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to radiopharmaceutical sciences.

Mach has over 225 peer-reviewed publications and 12 book chapters, and he holds 20 patents on the development of PET-based radiopharmaceuticals. His research interests include the development of radiotracers for imaging CNS receptors, oxidative stress, aggregated alpha synuclein, and mechanisms of cellular death. Before becoming the Britton Chance professor at the University of Pennsylvania, he was at Washington University in St. Louis, where he served as director of the Cyclotron Facility and chief of the Radiological Chemistry Lab of the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology. At SNMMI, Mach is a member of the Center for Molecular Imaging Innovation and Translation and a past president of the Radiopharmaceutical Sciences Council, He has also served on the Brain Imaging Council and the Awards, Radiopharmaceuticals, and Scientific Program committees. In addition, Mach has served on the Board of Directors of the Society of Radiopharmaceutical Sciences.

Berson-Yalow Award

Zhengxin (Jason) Cai, assistant professor at Yale University, received the Berson-Yalow Award. The award commemorates Rosalyn S. Yalow, PhD, and Solomon A. Berson, MD, who together developed the radioimmunoassay (RIA) technique in the 1950s. SNMMI established the award in 1977, the year that Yalow received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Judges for the award choose the investigator who submits the most original abstract presentation at SNMMI's Annual Meeting and who has made significant contributions to basic or clinical RIA research, or any area of research using the indicator-dilution method.

Cai's winning abstract was titled "In vivo imaging evaluation of a novel F-labeled SV2A PET tracer in nonhuman primates." He and his colleagues at the Yale PET Center were able to successfully synthesize and evaluate a number of novel SV2A tracers with attractive imaging properties: high brain uptake, fast tissue kinetics, high specific binding signals in the brain, and a longer half-life.

Loevinger-Berman Award

Barry W. Wessels, PhD, received the Loevinger-Berman Award, which was established in 1999 by the Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD) Committee in honor of Robert Loevinger, PhD, and Mones Berman, PhD, who formulated the MIRD schema for internal dose calculations. The award is given in recognition of excellence pertaining to the field of internal dosimetry as it relates to nuclear medicine through research and/or development, significant publication contributions or advancement of the understanding of internal dosimetry in relationship to risk and therapeutic efficacy.

Wessels is professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University, and he is in the Department of Radiation Oncology at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio. His presentation at the annual meeting was titled "Historical Overview: RPT and XRT Dose-Effect Relationship Comparisons." Now an emeritus member of SNMMI, he has served on the society's Nuclear Oncology Council, Radiopharmaceutical Sciences Council, and Clinical Trials Council, as well as the Committee on Medical Internal Radiation Dose.

Edward J. Hoffman Memorial Award

Eric C. Frey, PhD, is this year's recipient of the Edward J. Hoffman Memorial Award, which is presented annually by SNMMI's Computer and Instrumentation Council. The award was established to honor the memory of Professor Edward J. Hoffman and recognizes scientists in the field of nuclear medicine for their service and devotion to research and development of nuclear medicine instrumentation and to educating and training the next generation of scientists. Frey's lecture at the SNMMI Annual Meeting was on "Quantitative SPECT: From Impossibility to Practice."

Frey is professor of radiology and radiological science and professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. He specializes in medical imaging physics and is a member of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. His research focuses on techniques and uses for SPECT and PET imaging and reconstruction to solve medical problems in cardiology, oncology and neurology. Frey has published more than 100 peer-reviewed research articles and several book chapters on various aspects of medical imaging and tomography. At SNMMI, he has served on the Computer and Instrumentation Council and the Brain Imaging Council.

Peter E. Valk, MD, Memorial Award

Peter S. Conti, MD, PhD, FSNMMI, received the Peter E. Valk, MD, Memorial Award, which was created to honor the memory of Peter E. Valk, MD, a pioneer in the establishment of PET as an important clinical study. At the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, Conti is professor of radiology and director of the Molecular Imaging Center. His lecture at the meeting was on "PET - The Final Frontier or a Stepping Stone?"

Conti's research focuses on development of novel diagnostic imaging agents for oncology applications. He pioneered the use of PET imaging in the understanding and characterization of cancer metabolism and gene expression, and he has focused on the discovery and clinical translation of novel PET imaging agents for in vivo cancer diagnosis, evaluation of metastatic disease potential and assessment of response to therapy. Conti has published more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific articles and abstracts in the field of molecular imaging and has given hundreds of scientific presentations. He is a past president of SNMMI and has held many leadership positions within the society.

Kuhl-Lassen Lecture Award

Victor Villemagne, MD, associate professor, Department of Molecular Imaging and Therapy at Austin Health in Heidelberg, Australia, received the Kuhl-Lassen Lecture Award, presented by the SNMMI Brain Imaging Council. The award recognizes a scientist who has made outstanding contributions and whose research in and service to the discipline of functional brain imaging is of the highest caliber. His lecture was titled, "The ART of Loss."

Villemagne's research has focused on using PET to evaluate neurochemical and disease-specific biomarkers to improve diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic monitoring in neurodegenerative and psychiatric conditions. He has authored or co-authored ten book chapters, several requested reviews on dementia imaging, and more than 250 original research publications in the field of molecular imaging. His work assessing the pathological protein A-amyloid (A) in Alzheimer's disease and neurodegeneration has been published in leading journals, including Lancet Neurology, Brain, and Annals of Neurology. Villemagne has documented that A accumulation in the brain is a protracted process, preceding the onset of clinical dementia by 15-20 years. This discovery has helped usher in a change in the diagnostic paradigm for neurodegenerative diseases. He is also a pioneer in the field of selective tau imaging.

Villemagne is president of SNMMI's Brain Imaging Council and chair of the Alzheimer's Association's Neuroimaging Professional Interest Area. He is also on the editorial boards of Alzheimer's Research and Therapy and Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring.

Walter Wolf Young Investigator Award

Sungwook Jung, PhD, a researcher at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, received this year's Walter Wolf Young Investigator Award for her abstract titled "Natural killer cell labeled by gold-coated iron oxide nanoparticles: PET/MRI/PA monitoring and immuno-photothermal cancer therapy."

Majd-Gilday Young Investigator Award

Jeffrey P. Schmall, PhD, a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, received the PIC Majd-Gilday Young Investigator Award, which honors pioneers in the pediatric imaging field: Massoud Majd, MD, and David Gilday, MD. The award is given to young scientists for outstanding research contributions to the field of pediatric nuclear medicine. Schmall's winning abstract is titled "Investigating low-dose image quality in pediatric TOF-PET/MRI."

Hermann Blumgart Award

Thomas Schindler, MD, associate professor of radiology and medicine at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, was selected by SNMMI's Cardiovascular Council to receive the Hermann Blumgart Award. The award annually recognizes a key contributor to the science of nuclear cardiology who is also an advocate for the field through involvement with the society's research and educational activities.

Schindler's lecture at the SNMMI Annual Meeting was on "FDG PET Assessment of Viability and Inflammation." Highly respected in the field of cardiovascular imaging, he focuses on nuclear cardiology and cardiac PET/CT imaging. Schindler is board certified for internal medicine, cardiology and nuclear cardiology. Previously, he was director of cardiovascular nuclear medicine and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School and earlier was deputy head physician of cardiology at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. Schindler has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, as well as the textbook Molecular and Multimodality Imaging in Cardiovascular Disease. He has served on SNMMI's Cardiovascular Council, Academic Council, House of Delegates, and Membership and Outreach committees. In addition, he has served on the Education and Research Foundation for Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, the Cardiovascular Section of the European Society of Nuclear Medicine, and he is a member of the European Society of Cardiology.

Tracy Lynn Faber Memorial Award

Greta Mok, PhD, associate professor, Faculty of Health Science and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Macau, received the Tracy Lynn Faber Memorial Award, given each year to support advancement of women in medical imaging sciences. Her research interests are in molecular imaging, multimodal imaging and internal dosimetry. She is an author of more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has presented papers at more than 50 conferences. Mok also coauthored chapters for two books: Textbook for Molecular Imaging in Oncology and Reducing Respiratory Artifacts in Thoracic PET/CT (both CRC Press).

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About the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging

The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) is an international scientific and medical organization dedicated to advancing nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, vital elements of precision medicine that allow diagnosis and treatment to be tailored to individual patients in order to achieve the best possible outcomes.

SNMMI's more than 17,000 members set the standard for molecular imaging and nuclear medicine practice by creating guidelines, sharing information through journals and meetings and leading advocacy on key issues that affect molecular imaging and therapy research and practice. For more information, visit http://www.snmmi.org.
Half as many women in labour who were given a drug called remifentanil to help manage their pain needed a subsequent epidural, compared to the women given pethidine - the current standard of care, according to an open-label randomised controlled trial of 400 women from 14 maternity units in the UK published in The Lancet.

Epidurals - injections of pain relief drugs around the spinal cord - provide effective pain relief but increase the risk of needing instrumental delivery (forceps or vacuum) during birth, which in turn can increase the risk of trauma and long-lasting problems for the mother, such as incontinence and sexual dysfunction.

Pethidine is given to more than a quarter of a million women in labour each year in the UK, and many more worldwide. In the UK and Europe, remifentanil is rarely offered routinely in labour and its use restricted to women who cannot receive an epidural for medical reasons (such as blood clotting disorders). The authors suggest that using remifentanil instead of pethidine could reduce the need for epidurals, instrumental deliveries, and consequent morbidity for large numbers of women worldwide, but recommend more research to understand the effects of low maternal oxygen levels it can cause.

"Previous studies have shown that at least one in three women given pethidine to manage pain during labour require a subsequent epidural as the drug is not always effective. It also has unwanted side effects such as sedation and nausea for the mother, and it may pass into the baby's bloodstream through the placenta," says lead author Dr Matthew Wilson, University of Sheffield, UK. "Our findings challenge the routine use of pethidine for pain relief during labour. Remifentanil reduced the need for an epidural by half and there were no lasting problems for the mothers and babies in our trial, although the effect of remifentanil on maternal oxygen levels needs to be clarified in further studies." [1]

The study included 400 women aged over 16 years old who were giving birth after 37 weeks and had requested opioid pain relief. The participants were told about the trial in antenatal visits or when admitted to hospital to have labour induced, and could sign up to take part when they were in active labour.

Half of the women were allocated to receive remifentanil and half were allocated to pethidine. Remifentanil was given as a patient-controlled drip and women could receive 40g of the drug every two minutes by pressing a hand held device, whereas pethidine was given as an injection of 100mg of the drug into a muscle up to every four hours with a maximum of 400mg in 24 hours. Because of the difference in how the drugs were given, participants and healthcare professionals knew which drug was being used.

All women in the trial received one-to-one care from a midwife, with checks on the mother's breathing rate, sedation, pain ratings and oxygen levels every 30 minutes. The women could request an epidural at any time, and other pain relief was stopped if an epidural was given.

In the remifentanil group 93% (186/201) of women received the drug, and in the pethidine group 77% (154/200) of women received the drug. The main reasons for not receiving the allocated drug were women giving birth before it could be administered (12 women in the remifentanil group and 17 women in the pethidine group) or the mother deciding to immediately request an epidural after randomisation, without receiving the allocated opioid, which only occurred in the pethidine group (in 22 women).

Half as many women in the remifentanil group went on to have an epidural (19% [39/201]) than in the pethidine group (41% [81/199]) and this remained the same even when the women who did not receive the drug they were meant to were excluded.

On average, women in the remifentanil group rated their pain as less severe than women in the pethidine group.

Women given remifentanil were also less likely to need forceps and vacuum during labour than women given pethidine (15% [31/201] vs 26% [52/199]).

However, remifentanil was associated with twice as many mothers having low oxygen levels than pethidine (14% [26/189] vs 5% [8/154]), and more women in the remifentanil group were given supplementary oxygen. Despite this increase it did not cause any negative effects for the mother or baby, but more research in larger groups will be needed to confirm this.

Breathing problems and sedation in the mother were rare in both groups.

The authors note some limitations, including that the higher number of women in the pethidine group opting for an epidural immediately could be because they had preconceptions about pethidine's effectiveness. Once a women requested an epidural, it would have been unethical to withhold it. However, excluding these episodes from analysis made little difference to the findings so they had no effect on the result.

Women whose labour was induced were more common in the study than in the general population as this provides extra time before labour and meant they were more easily recruited into the study. However, being induced is very common so the authors believe their findings are still relevant.

Writing in a linked Comment, Professor Peter Kranke, University Hospitals of Wuerzburg, Germany, says: "In returning to the initial question of whether remifentanil is better than pethidine, we can carefully say yes in view of the efficacy data by reducing the epidural progression rate by 50%, with the proviso that the reported effect for this conversion to epidural might have been overestimated by an unknown magnitude, and providing that safety issues are thoroughly addressed. For all those who would want a more precise answer, this finding gives impetus to further studies, particularly with regards to the selection of women with contraindications or those who express the explicit desire not to have an epidural analgesia. In this scenario, at least the prospect of the gold standard cannot bias the treatment effect."

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Peer-reviewed / Randomised Controlled Trial / People NOTES TO EDITORS

The study was funded by the National Institute for Health Research Clinician Scientist Award. It was conducted by researchers from University of Sheffield, University of Birmingham, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and the University of Nottingham.

The labels have been added to this press release as part of a project run by the Academy of Medical Sciences seeking to improve the communication of evidence. For more information, please see: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/AMS-press-release-labelling-system-GUIDANCE.pdf if you have any questions or feedback, please contact The Lancet press office pressoffice@lancet.com

[1] Quote direct from author and cannot be found in the text of the Article.

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(New York - August 13, 2018) An artificial intelligence platform designed to identify a broad range of acute neurological illnesses, such as stroke, hemorrhage, and hydrocephalus, was shown to identify disease in CT scans in 1.2 seconds, faster than human diagnosis, according to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published today in the journal Nature Medicine.

"With a total processing and interpretation time of 1.2 seconds, such a triage system can alert physicians to a critical finding that may otherwise remain in a queue for minutes to hours," says senior author Eric Oermann, MD, Instructor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "We're executing on the vision to develop artificial intelligence in medicine that will solve clinical problems and improve patient care."

This is the first study to utilize artificial intelligence for detecting a wide range of acute neurologic events and to demonstrate a direct clinical application. Researchers used 37,236 head CT scans to train a deep neural network to identify whether an image contained critical or non-critical findings. The platform was then tested in a blinded, randomized controlled trial in a simulated clinical environment where it triaged head CT scans based on severity. The computer software was tested for how quickly it could recognize and provide notification versus the time it took a radiologist to notice a disease. The average time for the computer algorithm to preprocess an image, run its inference method, and, if necessary, raise an alarm was 150 times shorter than for physicians to read the image.

This study used "weakly supervised learning approaches," which built on the research team's expertise in natural language processing and the Mount Sinai Health System's large clinical datasets. Dr. Oermann says the next phase of this research will entail enhanced computer labeling of CT scans and a shift to "strongly supervised learning approaches" and novel techniques for increasing data efficiency. Researchers estimate the goal of re-engineering the system with these changes will be accomplished within the next two years.

"The expression 'time is brain' signifies that rapid response is critical in the treatment of acute neurological illnesses, so any tools that decrease time to diagnosis may lead to improved patient outcomes," says study co-author Joshua Bederson, MD, Professor and System Chair for the Department of Neurosurgery at Mount Sinai Health System and Clinical Director of the Neurosurgery Simulation Core.

"The application of deep learning and computer vision techniques to radiological imaging is a clear imperative for 21st century medical care," says study author Burton Drayer, MD, the Charles M. and Marilyn Newman Professor and System Chair of the Department of Radiology for the Mount Sinai Health System, CEO of the Mount Sinai Doctors Faculty Practice, and Dean for Clinical Affairs of the Icahn School of Medicine.

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This study was performed by the Mount Sinai AI Consortium, known as "AISINAI"--a group of scientists, physicians, and researchers dedicated to developing artificial intelligence in medicine that will improve patient care and help doctors accurately diagnose disease.

AISINAI's current research builds on their paper published earlier this year in the journal Radiology, where they presented their work on natural language processing algorithms for identifying clinical concepts in radiology reports for CT scans.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

The Mount Sinai Health System is New York City's largest integrated delivery system encompassing seven hospital campuses, a leading medical school, and a vast network of ambulatory practices throughout the greater New York region. Mount Sinai's vision is to produce the safest care, the highest quality, the highest satisfaction, the best access and the best value of any health system in the nation. The System includes approximately 6,600 primary and specialty care physicians; 10 joint-venture ambulatory surgery centers; more than 140 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and 31 affiliated community health centers. The Icahn School of Medicine is one of three medical schools that have earned distinction by multiple indicators: ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report's "Best Medical Schools", aligned with a U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" Hospital, No. 13 in the nation for National Institutes of Health funding, and among the top 10 most innovative research institutions as ranked by the journal Nature in its Nature Innovation Index. This reflects a special level of excellence in education, clinical practice, and research. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 18 on U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" of top U.S. hospitals; it is one of the nation's top 20 hospitals in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Geriatrics, Nephrology, and Neurology/Neurosurgery, and in the top 50 in four other specialties in the 2017-2018 "Best Hospitals" issue. Mount Sinai's Kravis Children's Hospital also is ranked nationally in five out of ten pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report. The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked 12th nationally for Ophthalmology and 50th for Ear, Nose, and Throat, while Mount Sinai Beth Israel, Mount Sinai St. Luke's and Mount Sinai West are ranked regionally.

For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org/, or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
(New York - August 13, 2018) The Departments of Emergency Medicine and Hematology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have been awarded a $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health toward further study of inhaled corticosteroids to treat sickle cell disease (SCD) in individuals who do not have asthma. The IMPROVE 2 study is a one-year randomized, placebo-controlled trial involving 80 SCD patients.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, SCD affects 100,000 Americans and is more prevalent in certain ethnic groups, such as African Americans and Hispanic Americans. The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, a database consortium sponsored by the federal government, reports that per-patient health care costs in the U.S. are higher for SCD than any other disease, with total expenditures exceeding $2.4 billion. The disease causes the production of abnormal hemoglobin, a protein inside red blood cells that attaches to oxygen in the lungs and carries it to the rest of the body. Healthy red blood cells are flexible, but in SCD, abnormal hemoglobin forms long rods and distorts the red cells into a sickle shape. The repeated damage to red cells causes the blood to become inflamed and sticky and to break down faster, causing pain attacks, infections, stroke, and early death. The only organ in the body that can reverse sickling is the lung, but it is highly inflamed in SCD, which is why researchers thought to use inhaled steroids as a treatment.

Over the last decade, researchers at Mount Sinai have demonstrated that pulmonary inflammation is present in mice and humans with SCD. Furthermore, those with symptoms of more inflammation in the lungs are four times more likely to die prematurely. In Mount Sinai's first study of inhaled steroids for SCD, a triple-blind randomized trial of 52 patients called IMPROVE 1, inhaled steroids that are FDA-approved for other conditions were shown to reduce systemic inflammation, hemolysis, and daily pain.

The research team will include experts in hematology, pulmonology, and immunology and will be led by Jeffrey Glassberg, MD, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and of Medicine (Hematology, and Medical Oncology) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

"In sickle cell disease, the interaction between the lung and red blood cells represents a potentially high-value therapeutic target," said Dr. Glassberg. "Hydroxyurea is the primary FDA-approved drug for treatment, but it is underutilized due to side effects, stigma, and fertility concerns. Other promising drugs are coming, but their costs, efficacy, and scalability are hard to predict at this point. Inhaled corticosteroids offer a creative new approach with the potential to dramatically improve patient outcomes."

Dr. Glassberg says patients with SCD will often end up in the emergency department because they experience excruciating pain. He says alternative treatments will improve patient care, reduce ED visits, and lower healthcare expenditures.

Dr. Glassberg is director of the Mount Sinai Comprehensive Program for Sickle Cell Disease, a specialized clinic that offers clinical and psychosocial services to patients in New York City, which has the largest population of SCD patients in the country. The team includes physicians, nurses, and social workers who specialize in the treatment of sickle cell disease.

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About the Mount Sinai Health System

The Mount Sinai Health System is New York City's largest integrated delivery system encompassing seven hospital campuses, a leading medical school, and a vast network of ambulatory practices throughout the greater New York region. Mount Sinai's vision is to produce the safest care, the highest quality, the highest satisfaction, the best access and the best value of any health system in the nation. The System includes approximately 6,600 primary and specialty care physicians; 10 joint-venture ambulatory surgery centers; more than 140 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and 31 affiliated community health centers. The Icahn School of Medicine is one of three medical schools that have earned distinction by multiple indicators: ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report's "Best Medical Schools", aligned with a U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" Hospital, No. 13 in the nation for National Institutes of Health funding, and among the top 10 most innovative research institutions as ranked by the journal Nature in its Nature Innovation Index. This reflects a special level of excellence in education, clinical practice, and research. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 18 on U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" of top U.S. hospitals; it is one of the nation's top 20 hospitals in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Geriatrics, Nephrology, and Neurology/Neurosurgery, and in the top 50 in four other specialties in the 2017-2018 "Best Hospitals" issue. Mount Sinai's Kravis Children's Hospital also is ranked nationally in five out of ten pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report. The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked 12th nationally for Ophthalmology and 50th for Ear, Nose, and Throat, while Mount Sinai Beth Israel, Mount Sinai St. Luke's and Mount Sinai West are ranked regionally.

For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org/, or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
CHAPEL HILL - Although national guidelines advise doctors to discuss the benefits and harms of lung cancer screening with high-risk patients because of a high rate of false positives and other factors, those conversations aren't happening the way they should be, according to a study by researchers from the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Lung cancer screening is recommended for high-risk current and former smokers, but because of the potential harms of screening, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and other organizations advise physicians and patients to discuss the potential risks and benefits of screening. UNC Lineberger researchers report in JAMA Internal Medicine that their analysis of 14 audio-recorded office visit discussions between doctors and patients found the quality of the conversation about lung cancer screening was "poor" and discussion of the potential harms of screening was "virtually nonexistent." In addition, the doctors spent less than a minute, on average, discussing the issue.

"We're not taking a side as to whether lung cancer screening is good or bad, but there seems to be a consensus that we should be sharing these complex decisions with patients," said UNC Lineberger's Daniel Reuland, MD, MPH, director of UNC Lineberger's Carolina Cancer Screening Initiative and the study's senior author. "Our fly-on-the-wall sample from real-world practice shows us that's not happening."

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States. The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 234,000 people will be diagnosed with lung cancer in the country this year and the disease will cause more than 154,000 deaths. The National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) found that detecting lung cancer in its earliest stages can reduce a person's risk of dying from the disease.

Since 2013, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force has recommended annual lung cancer screening using low-dose computed tomography (CT) in adults aged 55 to 80 years who have smoked a minimum of 30 pack-years, which amounts to 20 cigarettes per day each year for 30 years, and who are still smoking or have only quit in the last 15 years.

The NLST showed that with lung cancer screening using low-dose spiral CT scan, there were about 20 percent fewer lung cancer deaths among people at very high risk from the disease compared with screening with chest X-ray. However, the trial also identified potential harms of screening, including false positive findings. More than 95 percent of lung nodules found on screening CT scans are not cancer. Because of this, many patients with abnormal results will need follow-up procedures that can be invasive, and ultimately do not find cancer. The trial also showed that screening leads to the diagnosis of cancers that, left untreated, would not have affected the patient during his or her lifetime - a phenomenon known as over diagnosis, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, led by Edward F. Patz Jr, MD.

"A lot of people undergo surveillance, additional scanning, and some people undergo invasive procedures who don't have lung cancer," said Reuland, who is also a professor at the UNC School of Medicine in the Division of General Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology. "The problem is weighing a small chance of benefit in the form of prolonged life versus a larger chance that a given patient will incur some kind of physical or psychological harm, plus out-of-pocket costs. It's important to talk about those potential harms and benefits with patients when deciding about screening."

These discussions are recommended and, in some case, required by national guidelines. Before it will pay for a screening procedure, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requires a doctor-patient discussion about the benefits and harms, issues of over-diagnosis, the false-positive rate, and risk of total radiation exposure from the test. The USPSTF advises the decision to screen should be made after a "thorough discussion of the possible benefits, limitations and the known and uncertain harms."

To see if discussions were happening, Reuland and his colleagues analyzed transcripts of 14 screening discussions they identified in a large database of conversations between doctors and patients provided by the private company Verilogue. The conversations were found by electronically searching 5,300 recorded interactions between physicians and age-eligible patients. Of 137 conversations that met keyword criteria, only 14 specifically addressed lung cancer screening. The researchers found that the conversations were brief and one-sided, and none of the doctors mentioned the potential harms of screening. No doctor explained false positive test results or the possible need for additional imaging or invasive diagnostic procedures.

"Although the sample was small, the results were stark and confirmed what we thought we would find," Reuland said. "Shared decision making isn't happening in practice as well as it should or as well as we'd like to think it is. There's a big gap between what guidelines say and what actually happens."

Reuland said better systems and infrastructure are needed to ensure these conversations happen the way they should.

"We need to design systems that make patient care and medical decisions more informed and shared, and we need to take that responsibility seriously," he said. "Issuing guidelines and payer-based regulations saying we should be doing shared decision-making is fine, but it isn't enough. Among other things, we need more efficient and reliable ways of getting patients involved in these decisions.

Finding better ways of having clinical support staff help with the delivery of patient education, particularly using educational tools known as decision aids, will be important," Reuland added. "Patient support for making complex decisions probably shouldn't rely only on doctors with limited time for each patient visit and a lengthy visit agenda."

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The study's first author was Alison Brenner, PhD, MPH, UNC Lineberger member and assistant professor at the UNC School of Medicine. In addition to Reuland and Brenner, the other authors are Teri Malo, PhD, UNC Lineberger; Marjorie Margolis and Shynah James, UNC Gillings; Jennifer Elston Lafata, PhD, UNC Lineberger and UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy; and Maihan B. Vu, DrPH, MPH, UNC Gillings and UNC-Chapel Hill. The study was funded in part by a grant from the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute.
New research illuminates how some men and boys who are contemplating suicide are finding emotional support in an unexpected place: Reddit.

Sometimes referred to as the "front page of the Internet," Reddit is a social news aggregation and discussion website that's especially popular among young adult males.

The website includes several topic-specific subreddit discussion forums, one of which is SuicideWatch. The regulated space allows people who are experiencing suicidal thoughts to post anonymously about what they are going through and receive emotional support from other users.

As of this month, SuicideWatch has more than 96,000 subscribers.

University of Arizona sociology doctoral student Darla Still has been analyzing the content of anonymous posts made to SuicideWatch to learn more about what individuals go through when contemplating suicide and how they express those thoughts and feelings to others.

Among her early findings, which she presented today at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, is that the SuicideWatch subreddit may provide a unique source of gender-specific support for men and boys.

Although Reddit does not identify users by gender, Still focused on a subset of posts in which gender was implied by the posts' content. For example, users wrote things like "I am a joke of man," or referred to instances in which they've been told to "be a man" or "man up."

Responses to those posts often contained gendered language of their own, like, "Hey, bro, I've been through that before," or, "What's bothering you, man?"

Still suggests that the use of that type of gendered language is meaningful.

"It's about knowing that you're not the only one who's going through what you're going through, and being able to identify that you're not alone," she said. "We see this as a space where men may be a little more at ease to be vulnerable and express those emotions because of the screen and the anonymity."

Still decided to focus on posts by males because while females are twice as likely as males to attempt suicide, males are three times more likely to die by suicide.

Men also underreport mental health symptoms, and many scholars have theorized that men have more difficulty openly expressing emotions than women due to the ways in which they are socialized with masculine norms.

"If you think about stereotypical masculinity theories, men are socialized to believe that expressing emotions is weak," said Still, who presented her work with her collaborators Amelia Blume, a UA sociology doctoral student, and Charlene Hack, who earned her bachelor's degree in sociology from the UA in 2017.

"Our main goal was to bring attention to this issue and try to move away from the stigma that men, in particular, face," Still said.

Males who feel uncomfortable talking about their emotions with loved ones or mental health professionals - or those who are unable to do so - might find an alternative or supplemental option in posting anonymously online, Still said.

Still's initial findings were based on an analysis of 3,125 posts collected between mid-October 2017 and early January of this year.

Going forward, she will continue to analyze 165,000 posts and more than 1 million comments submitted to the SuicideWatch subreddit between 2009 and 2017. She hopes to gain a better understanding of what both men and women go through when contemplating suicide and how an online forum might offer support.

"We know that men underreport mental health symptoms, so this is giving us a better understanding of the suicidality experience of what men go through, and what's specific to men in comparison to women," Still said. "The fact that this space on Reddit is there - we don't know, but maybe it's helped somebody."

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A pioneering study into myeloma, a rare cancer, could lead to GPs using simple blood tests to improve early diagnosis.

The study investigated the best combination of blood tests that could be used to diagnose myeloma in GP practices.

The research was a collaboration between the University of Oxford, the University of Exeter and Chiddenbrook Surgery, Crediton, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and is published in the British Journal of General Practice.

Researchers investigated how useful a number of different measures were for indicating the presence of the disease, and suggested what combinations of these tests were sufficient to rule out the disease, and to diagnose it, saving the patient from the worry of specialist referral.

Blood tests of 2703 cases taken up to five years prior to diagnosis were analysed and compared with those of 12,157 patients without the cancer, matching cases with control patients of similar age amongst other relevant parameters.

They demonstrated that a simple combination of two blood parameters could be enough to diagnose patients. Such blood tests are routinely conducted in GP surgeries.

Constantinos Koshiaris, lead author of the study, from Oxford University, said: "The combination of levels of haemoglobin, the oxygen carrier in the blood, and one of two inflammatory markers (erythrocyte sedimentation rate or plasma viscosity) are a sufficient test rule out myeloma. If abnormalities are detected in this test, it should lead to urgent urine protein tests which can help speed up diagnosis".

Each year approximately 5,700 people are diagnosed with myeloma in the UK alone. It can lead to symptoms such as bone pain, fatigue and kidney failure. It has the longest diagnosis process of all common cancers, and a large number of patients are diagnosed after emergency care, over a third of which having had at least three primary care consultations.

Professor Willie Hamilton, of the University of Exeter Medical School, is principal investigator on the study. He said "Ordinarily a GP will see a patient with myeloma every five years - and early diagnosis matters. More timely treatment could significantly improve survival rates for this disease. We report a simple way a GP can check patients presenting symptoms such as back, rib and chest pain, or recurrent chest infections, and determine whether they have myeloma or not".

The authors also suggest the possibility of integrating a system in the electronic health record to alert clinicians to relevant symptoms or changes in blood parameters related to myeloma.

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LAWRENCE -- With a growing diversity in the population of Latino immigrants to the United States, learning Spanish instead of just English is becoming an important factor for some in assimilation and upward social mobility, according to a study by a University of Kansas researcher.

"Latinos come from all different backgrounds, not just one large group," said Andrea Gomez Cervantes, a KU doctoral candidate in sociology. "Those with indigenous origins may speak a lot of different languages, such as Mixteco, Chuj or Tlapaneco, and not necessarily Spanish."

As more indigenous Latino immigrants from communities that have been historically marginalized from social services and institutions -- including education -- in Mexico and Guatemala, arrive to long-term established Latino communities in the United States, many learn Spanish.

Indigenous-origin Latinos learn Spanish through interacting with Spanish-speaking Latinos in their neighborhoods and at work, Gomez Cervantes said. Learning Spanish aids indigenous Latinos as they integrate into their communities, learn about work opportunities and gain important information on how to navigate U.S. social institutions. In contrast, non-indigenous Latinos are likely to learn English after arriving in the United States, she said.

Gomez Cervantes will present her findings Aug. 13 at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in Philadelphia.

She conducted interviews with more than 60 indigenous and non-indigenous Latino immigrant members of mixed-status families, and she engaged in 18 months of ethnographic participant observations with Latino immigrants in Kansas.

"With indigenous groups that have migrated to Kansas, many of them actually learn Spanish in their communities here and not necessarily in their country of origin," Gomez Cervantes said. "Being able to speak Spanish becomes very important because now we have come to a time where there has been a growth in the Hispanic population over time."

Many bilingual people in Latino communities tend to serve as gatekeepers for resources and information about jobs and social services, she said. For indigenous groups, if they can gain Spanish skills, they are able to gain access as well, though it's likely more difficult than those who learn English.

"Their experiences are very different from the non-indigenous Latinos, so we need to understand why that is," Gomez Cervantes said. "Because of the social context that makes it harder for indigenous-origin Latinos to access these resources and also incorporate into the way that non-indigenous Latinos are able to."

The barrier can become apparent in more serious environments like court cases or legal matters in which immigrants seek asylum, because these processes can be much more difficult for someone who does not speak English or Spanish, languages where there are readily available interpreters.

Another dividing point among indigenous and non-indigenous Latino immigrants is that those able to learn English language have likely worked at places where most of their co-workers also spoke English. And they also had access to formal English-language classes. While those first learning Spanish worked with co-workers who spoke Spanish and had limited access and little opportunities to engage in English-language classes. Thus, the working environments and resources available also open different language learning opportunities for indigenous and non-indigenous Latinos.

The findings show the growing diversity within the Latino population and address implications for communities that aim to provide language learning classes for immigrant groups. The research also can help those seeking to help indigenous groups preserve their native languages or those developing policies that could potentially help immigrants integrate into their communities in the United States, she said.

"It does show that for states that have English-only laws," Gomez Cervantes said, "that it's not necessarily as useful as giving immigrants opportunities to use their own languages to embrace different languages and different cultures."

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Pioneering engineers working with terahertz frequency technology have been researching how individual frequencies are selected when a laser is turned on, and how quickly the selection is made.

The development of specific terahertz equipment has allowed them to investigate this process for the first time. Their results, published in Nature Communications, will underpin the future development of semiconductor lasers, including those used in public and private sector-owned telecommunications systems.

For many years, it has been predicted that operating frequencies within semiconductor lasers stabilise on a timescale of a few nanoseconds (ie a few billionths of a second) and can be changed within a few hundreds of picoseconds (ie thousandths of a nanosecond).

Until now, though, no detector has been capable of measuring and proving this precisely, and the best results have only been achieved on nanosecond timescales, which are too slow to allow really efficient analysis or to be used to develop the most effective new systems.

The University of Leeds researchers, working with international colleagues at Ecole Normal Superieure in Paris, France and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia have now used terahertz frequency quantum cascade lasers and a technique called terahertz time-domain spectroscopy to understand this laser stabilisation process.

The terahertz-powered technology can measure the wavelength of light in periods of femtoseconds (ie millionths of a nanosecond) giving unprecedented levels of detail. By knowing the speed at which wavelengths change within lasers, and what happens during that process within miniscule time frames, more efficient devices and systems can be built.

The Leeds elements of the study were carried out in the University's Terahertz Photonics Laboratory, part of the University's Bragg Centre for Materials Research.

Dr Iman Kundu, principal author of the research paper explaining the group's findings, said: "We've exploited the ultrafast detection capabilities of terahertz technology to watch laser emissions evolve from multiple colours to a single wavelength over less than a billionth of a second.

"Now that we can see the detailed emission of the lasers over such incredibly small time frames, we can see how the wavelength of light changes as one moves from one steady state to a new steady state.

"The benefits for commercial systems designers are potentially significant. Terahertz technology isn't available to many sectors, but we believe its value lies in being able to highlight trends and explain the detailed operation of integrated photonic devices, which are used in complex imaging systems which might be found in the pharmaceutical or electronics sectors.

"Designers can then apply these findings to lasers operating at different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, as the underlying physics will be very similar."

Professor Edmund Linfield, Chair of Terahertz Electronics at the University of Leeds, who was also involved in the study said: "We're using the highly advanced capabilities of terahertz technology to shine a light on the operation of lasers.

"Our research is aimed at showing engineers and developers where to look to drive increased performance in their own systems. By doing this, we will increase the global competitiveness of the UK's science and engineering base."

###

The research was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (HyperTerahertz programme grant), which is part of UKRI; the Royal Society, the Wolfson Foundation; the European Union's ULTRAQCL grant and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France.

Notes for editors:

The full research paper Ultrafast switch-on dynamics of frequency-tuneable semiconductor lasers by Iman Kundu etc all is available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05601-x/

Iman Kundo and Edmund Linfield are available for interview.

Media contact: Peter Le Riche, University of Leeds press office: +44 (0) 113 343 2049 / p.leriche@leeds.ac.uk
(ANSA) - Rome, August 13 - Italian defence ministry sources have said that a return of obligatory military service for young people is not on the cards after Interior Minister Matteo Salvini proposed it. "(Defence) Minister (Elisabetta) Trenta expressed her opinion on this subject days ago," the sources said.

"It's a romantic idea but our military personnel are, and must remain, professional and there is agreement with Salvini on this".


Historic space weather may help us understand what's coming next, according to new research by the University of Warwick

Data from historic space weather may help us understand what's coming next - new research from the University of Warwick

Scientists have discovered an underlying repeatable pattern in how space weather activity changes with the solar cycle - having analysed solar activity for the last half century

Breakthrough will allow better understanding and planning for space weather, and for any future threats it may pose to Earth

Space weather can disrupt electronics, aviation and satellite systems and communications - and is difficult to forecast

Historic space weather may help us understand what's coming next, according to new research by the University of Warwick.

Professor Sandra Chapman, from Warwick's Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics, led a project which charted the space weather in previous solar cycles across the last half century, and discovered an underlying repeatable pattern in how space weather activity changes with the solar cycle.

The sun goes through solar cycles around every eleven years, during which time the number of sunspots increases to the maximum point (the 'solar maximum'). More solar activity means more solar flares, which in turn can mean more extreme space weather at earth.

This breakthrough will allow better understanding and planning for space weather, and for any future threats it may pose to the Earth.

Space weather can disrupt electronics, aviation and satellite systems and communications - this depends on solar activity, but as this is different for each solar cycle, the overall likelihood of space weather events can be difficult to forecast.

This exciting research shows that space weather and the activity of the sun are not entirely random - and may constrain how likely large weather events are in future cycles.

Sandra Chapman, Professor from the University of Warwick's Department of Physics and the lead author, commented:

"We analysed the last five solar maxima and found that although the overall likelihood of more extreme events varied from one solar maximum to another, there is an underlying pattern to their likelihood, which does not change.

"If this pattern persists into the next solar maximum, our research, which constrains how likely large events are, will allow better preparation for potential space weather threats to Earth."

The drivers of space weather, the sun and solar wind, and the response seen at Earth, have now been almost continually monitored by ground and space based observations over the last five solar cycles (more than fifty years).

Each solar cycle has a different duration and peak activity level, and, as a consequence the climate of Earth's space weather has also been different at each solar maximum.

The more extreme events are less frequent so that it is harder to build up a statistical picture of how likely they are to occur.

###

Notes to editors:

Image: Professor Sandra Chapman, credit University of Warwick - click for high res.?

'Reproducible aspects of the climate of space weather over the last five solar cycles' is published in Space Weather. It is authored by S. C. Chapman, N. W. Watkins and E. Tindale.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1029/2018SW001884

Sandra Chapman is Professor at the University of Warwick and is currently a UK-US Fulbright-Lloyd's of London Scholar hosted at Boston University, USA. Nick Watkins is a visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Open University, and a visitor to the University of Warwick. Liz Tindale is a PhD student at Warwick and is funded by a UK STFC Studentship.
Aug. 13, 2018 - Medicare patients nationwide have low rates of preventive care visits - https://journals.lww.com/lww-medicalcare/Fulltext/2018/09000/Ethnoracial_Disparities_in_Medicare_Annual.5.aspx?PRID=MC_PR_081318" with the lowest rates found in older adults of minority race/ethnicity, reports a study in the September issue of Medical Care. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

Lower use of the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) by non-white patients is partially explained by income and education - suggesting that the difference is related to factors associated with racial and ethnic inequality, according to the research by Kimberly E. Lind, PhD, MPH, and colleagues of the Colorado School of Public Health and the University of Colorado School of Medicine at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo.

Dr. Lind comments, "While the Medicare AWV may help to reduce racial/ethnic health disparities, efforts will be needed to increase its use - not only by minority patients, but for the entire Medicare population. Education and income inequality by race and ethnicity have been a historical constant and remain a problem." Dr. Lind is now a research fellow at the Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research in the Australian Institute of Health Innovation at Macquarie University.

Factors Besides Race/Ethnicity Explain Variations in Medicare AWV Rates The study included data on nearly 15,000 Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries, aged 66 or older, participating in the nationally representative Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey from 2011 to 2013. Trends in use of the AWV were analyzed, including factors associated with higher or lower use of this preventive care visit. The study was the first to evaluate AWV utilization using self-reported race, ethnicity, income and education as opposed to Medicare administrative and claims data.

Introduced in 2011 as part of the Affordable Care Act, the AWV seeks to prevent disease and disability by increasing preventive services such as screening and vaccinations, based on the patient's current health and risk factors. The AWV is available once yearly, with no out-of-pocket costs to patients. (It is different from the "Welcome to Medicare" visit, which is only available in the first year of enrollment.)

"The absence of out-of-pocket payments makes the AWV a promising approach to increase utilization of preventive care," Dr. Lind and colleagues write. Because minority patients are more likely to have lower income and less likely to have supplemental insurance, the AWV might help to reduce racial/ethnic health disparities.

Throughout the study period, use of the AWV was low. In 2011, only 8.1 percent of Medicare beneficiaries used the AWV. In 2011 the rate was highest for white patients, 8.5 percent; and lowest in black patients, 4.5 percent. By 2013, the overall rate of AWV use increased to 13.4 percent. The greatest increase was seen in black patients, for who the rate of AWV use nearly tripled to 15.4 percent.

Overall, AWV use was lower in racial/ethnic minority groups (black, Hispanic, and "other race"), compared to white beneficiaries. After adjustment for income and education, racial/ethnic group was no longer a statistically significant factor. Dr. Lind comments, "This suggests that possible explanations of these differences are factors that are strongly associated with racial and ethnic differences, such as access to care, preferences for care, and knowledge of this relatively new benefit."

Use of the AWV was lower for beneficiaries living in rural area and higher for those who had a usual place for healthcare, other than the emergency room.

"Utilization of the AWV has increased modestly since its introduction, but remains low," Dr. Lind and colleagues conclude. "Our findings suggest the need to further promote the AWV among beneficiaries and providers...assuming that future research supports the effectiveness of the AWV in increasing preventive services and improving beneficiary health."

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Click here to read "Ethnoracial Disparities in Medicare Annual Wellness Visit Utilization: Evidence From a Nationally Representative Database."

DOI: 10.1097/MLR.0000000000000962

About Medical Care

Rated as one of the top ten journals in health care administration, Medical Care is devoted to all aspects of the administration and delivery of health care. This scholarly journal publishes original, peer-reviewed papers documenting the most current developments in the rapidly changing field of health care. Medical Care provides timely reports on the findings of original investigations into issues related to the research, planning, organization, financing, provision, and evaluation of health services. In addition, numerous special supplementary issues that focus on specialized topics are produced with each volume. Medical Care is the official journal of the Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association.

About Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the health, tax & accounting, finance, risk & compliance, and legal sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with specialized technology and services.

Wolters Kluwer, headquartered in the Netherlands, reported 2017 annual revenues of 4.4 billion. The company serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,000 people worldwide.

Wolters Kluwer Health is a leading global provider of trusted clinical technology and evidence-based solutions that engage clinicians, patients, researchers and students with advanced clinical decision support, learning and research and clinical intelligence. For more information about our solutions, visit http://healthclarity.wolterskluwer.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @WKHealth.
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Pound-to-Dollar exchange rate below 1.28

The British Pound has been suffering (like most of major FX) against the US Dollar, and while the Euro to Dollar (EUR/USD) exchange rate has been falling, so too has the Pound to Dollar (GBP/USD) rate. Before Friday it was the Pound which has largely been underperforming the marketplace, however, the collapse in the Lira and subsequent concerns about Eurozone exposure to Turkey saw the Pound a little more stable than the Euro which collapsed through the 1.15 level. Analysts at ING noted in a weekly preview that the Pounds recent performance has not exactly been data or rate related, but rather the re-pricing of Brexit no deal risks,

The independent GBP weakness since last weeks BoE rate hike in part reflects the switch of focus by investors towards heightened no-deal Brexit risks. Indeed, when a UK cabinet minister puts the odds of a breakdown in Brexit talks at 60%  that is difficult for any investor to ignore

Despite this, they are not able to put only the blame on Brexit, with some subtler reasons suggested as mixing in with the main market jitters, as holiday trade and thin markets are highlighted by ING,

However, we wouldnt be too hasty in apportioning all of GBPs weakness towards increased Brexit uncertainties. Not only are we in a thin summer market, we also note that seasonality trends over August do not favour the pound.

Risk-reward now favours Pound upside

ING was bullish the Pound for a long time but switched in recent weeks. It does appear that there is a chance that things are starting to change, as their weekly forecast now suggests that the upside is once again the more compelling risk-reward development,

We would view any undershoot of these levels as inconsistent with the Brexit status quo  and would no longer deem risk-reward to favour positioning for further GBP weakness.

Risks are not totally absent on the data front as ING noted that the in a similar situation to the Norwegian Krone in 2017, where a rising Oil price did not help the NOK but a falling price hurt it, that the Pound may not benefit from good data but will be hurt by bad,

We would need to see some significantly positive economic numbers to do so  and given how the economy is intrinsically linked to the Brexit outcome, this seems unlikely. The week ahead sees the July jobs report (Tue), CPI report (Wed) and retail sales (Thu); the risks are asymmetric in the sense that bad data will likely weigh on GBP, while good data is unlikely to elicit much GBP upside.

With some important data this week, there might be some volatility, but the developing situation of risk-off in markets and Turkey are a potential powder keg waiting to go-off which might overshadow domestic developments.
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Should you be paid the UK minimum wage, living wage or London living wage? Learn about the UKs salary rules and how to ensure youre being paid enough as an expat worker.

The national UK minimum wage is based on a wage per hour, applicable to all jobs in the UK. The government reviews the wage in the UK annually in April, after taking advice from an independent body called the Low Pay Commission.

All UK employers must pay at least the national minimum wage (NMW) to workers up to the age of 25. For workers older than 25 years, the national UK living wage (NLW) instead applies; this is around 50 pence higher than the NMW.

The amount of minimum wage that workers receive depends on which age bracket they fall into. To be entitled to the wage they must be of at least school leaving age, which is generally 16 years old in England.

This guide explains everything an expat needs to know about the differences between the minimum wage and the living wage, the rate of the wage in 2018, plus steps to take if you are being underpaid.

UK minimum wage and living wage 201819

The UK national minimum wage is reviewed annually and varies depending on the employees age. Currently, the wage for workers 25 or over is 7.83 per hour. This will increase to 8.21 in April 2019.

Age UK minimum wage per hour Minimum wage from April 2019 25 years and older 7.83 8.21 2124 years 7.38 7.70 1820 years 5.90 6.15 Under 18 years 4.20 4.35 Apprentice 3.70 3.90

UK national living wage

The UK national living wage (NLW) was introduced in April 2016, requiring employers to pay any staff 25 or older a higher wage (around 50 pence higher) than the minimum (NMW). As of April 2018, the UK living wage is 7.83, as shown above.

The UK statistics office (ONS) reported that the main age groups positively affected by the creation of the national living wage were 2529 year olds and those older than 60, from which some 9% of workers were previously paid below the NLW.

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How the minimum wage works

The minimum wage in the UK has steadily increased in recent years, at an annual rate of between 2030 pence per hour since 2009. The wage is calculated at an hourly rate but applies to all types of work in the UK, even if the employee is not paid per hour (including payments per project).

According to data from Eurostat in 2019, the minimum hourly wage compared favorably to almost all of its European neighbors by ranking seventh out of the 22 countries included in the study. However, this still places the UK lower than Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, and Ireland.

In addition to full-time employees, any workers in the following categories earn at least the minimum wage:

Part-time

Casual

Agency

Apprenticeship (different wage applies)

Trainee

Agricultural

Seafarer

Offshore

Disabled

Apprentices are entitled to an apprentice rate if theyre aged under 19 or are in the first year of their apprenticeship. If youre over 19 or beyond your first year, you should be paid the full UK minimum wage for your age group.

The minimum wage for apprenticeships is 3.70 per hour in 2018, rising to 3.90 from April 2019.

Self-employed workers in the UK, company directors, and volunteers are not required to receive the minimum wage.

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London living wage versus minimum wage

Londons minimum wage is the same as the national average, despite the cost of living in London being significantly higher than in many other parts of the UK. This has led to criticism that the UK living wage (NLW) still isnt high enough, especially for workers in London, as well as in southeast England.

The Living Wage Foundation calculates what it considers the real cost of living each year; it also partners with a group of businesses who pay what they consider the UKs and Londons Real Living Wage. This is paid on a voluntary basis, however.

The organizations claims that the compulsory living wage should be set at 9 per hour across the UK, and at 10.55 per hour in London.

This movement has been popular in the UK, with almost 4,900 employers paying the voluntary Real Living Wage. You can ask your employer which minimum wage standard applies to your workplace.

Minimum wage calculator

If youre paid on a weekly or monthly salary, you should work out your equivalent hourly rate to check youre being paid at least the minimum wage. To help you do this, the UK government provides a minimum wage calculator.

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Minimum wage for expats

If youre an expat in the UK, you are also entitled to be paid the UK national minimum wage or living wage, plus enjoy the same rights as UK citizens in terms of paid annual leave and sick pay too.

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What to do if you earn less than the minimum wage

While most companies abide by the UKs minimum wage legislation, some still attempt to pay less than the amount required, violating UK labor laws. The government reported in July 2018 that 239 employers failed to pay the UK minimum wage.

If you earn below the correct rate, first check your work contract and speak to your employer. If this doesnt work, you should request payment records in writing from your company. You can also contact the ACAS helpline for confidential advice if required.

The governments employment and tax department (HMRC) can fine your employer if it finds they havent been following UK minimum wage regulations, and if necessary can take them to court on your behalf.

The Citizens Advice website provides further guidance for workers who believe they earn less than the minimum wage or living wage.

Useful resources
NAPLES - Malta will host discussion meetings from November 12-14 on the topic of "Knowledge Transference in the Blue Economy: Technological Innovations, Clusters, Financing Opportunities and Environmental Challenges".

The event is part of the Blue Energy Lab, open discussion meetings that involve institutions, universities, civil society and businesses in orienting themselves based on specific local contexts in the sector of blue energy, which requires a high level of innovation, scientific support and public participation.

The Blue Energy Lab meetings are an essential part of the European "Maestrale" project, which is co-financed by the European Fund for Regional Development, as part of the Interreg MED Programme.

It involves 11 partners from eight EU member states: Greece, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Cyprus, Malta, Portugal, and Slovenia.

Its goal is to develop a common vision and strategy to take advantage of and enhance the Mediterranean as a source of sustainable energy.

The Maestrale project's goal is to develop an information and knowledge network to provide answers to key questions on blue energy.

These questions include areas such as regulations regarding blue energy renewables, the use of the sea for energy, best practices, existing structures, prototypes for creation, and the Mediterranean's geographical adaptation to available and future technologies.

Italy has two regional Blue Energy Laboratories (BEL), one in Friuli Venezia Giulia and the other in Tuscany.

The first is organised by the Informest Agency together with the Maritime Technological District MARE FVG as technical partner, and the second by the University of Siena's Department of Physical, Earth and Environmental Sciences (Ecodynamics Group), leader of Maestrale.

The EU considers the blue economy one of its most strategic and growing sectors, with a business volume of 566 billion euros, revenue of 174 billion euros and jobs for nearly 3.5 million people.

In defining the blue economy, all the activities relative to oceans, seas, or other coastal areas are included, with traditional sectors such as fishing, shipbuilding and tourism, as well as emerging sectors such as marine energy and blue biotechnologies.

The blue economy makes up 1.3% of the EU's GDP.
Gail Rubin, CT, is author and host of the award-winning book and television series, A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Dont Plan to Die, Hail and Farewell: Cremation Ceremonies, Templates and Tips, and KICKING THE BUCKET LIST: 100 Downsizing and Organizing Things to Do Before You Die.

Rubin is a Certified Thanatologist (that's a death educator) and a popular speaker who uses humor and films to get the end-of-life and funeral planning conversation started. She "knocked 'em dead" with her TEDx talk, A Good Goodbye. She provides continuing education credit classes for attorneys, doctors, nurses, social workers, hospice workers, financial planners, funeral directors and other professionals. She's a Certified Funeral Celebrant and funeral planning consultant who has been interviewed in national and local print, broadcast and online media.

Known as The Doyenne of Death, she is the event coordinator of the Before I Die ABQ Festival. She also hosts A Good Goodbye Internet radio show and produces Mortality Minute radio and online video spots. Her YouTube Channel features more than 400 videos!

Rubin is a member of the Association for Death Education and Counseling, the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association, Toastmasters International and the National Speakers Association New Mexico Chapter. Her speaking profile is available at eSpeakers.com.

Gail Rubin has been interviewed about funeral planning issues in national and local broadcast, print and online media. Outlets include The Huffington Post, Money Magazine, Kiplinger, CBS Radio News, WGN-TV, and local affiliates for NPR, PBS, FOX, ABC-TV, CBS-TV and NBC-TV.

Sign up for a free planning form and occasional informative newsletter at her website, AGoodGoodbye.com.
Monday, August 13, 2018

Cars were in Brian Burnetts blood before he was born. His father, Rex Burnett, worked for Trend, Inc. and drew cars for Hot Rod, Motor Trend, Auto, and Cycle magazines in the 1940s and 1950s.

Brians dad would drive slowly by parked cars, pointing out roof slopes, shapes of fenders and grilles and teaching him how to recognize a car. Family and friends would try to test young Brian by giving him a clue about a car and then asking him to identify it. At four years old, he could usually tell them the year, make and model. It excited his dad to tell Brian about cars and then watch him amaze the rest of the family with what he knew. It was a long time ago, but to this day Brian is still pretty good  just show him a little piece of a car and he can usually tell you what it is.

In 1960, his parents accepted an opportunity to work for Lockheed Aircraft Company in California and the family moved out west. The Burnetts decided to live in the sunny town of Saratoga, up the hill from Los Gatos. Since Saratoga High School was new and only went to the 11th grade, Brian finished his senior year at Los Gatos High. He graduated from a high school located one block from the corner that would become home to Ferrari of Los Gatos some fifteen years later.

A New Way of Selling Cars to High School Students

Not to anyones surprise, Brian was more interested in cars than in school. On weekends hed drive around neighborhoods in nearby Santa Cruz and look for older model cars. When he spotted one in an open garage or driveway, hed walk up to the house, ring the doorbell and ask the owners if they wanted to sell it. Most people were surprised when they found a door-to-door buyer on their front porch and sent him on his way. Occasionally, someone said yes, providing the inventory he needed each month to have extra spending money.

Once back in Los Gatos, hed get busy selling cars from the library parking lot across near the high school. If a buyer, usually a schoolmate, had a small amount of cash along with a car to trade, the deal was done. After that, Brian would find someone else to sell the trade in to. And the cycle would repeat itself as many times as possible. While he only made a small profit on each car, by taking a trade in, he doubled the number of transactions and his income.

Between the experiences with his dad and the car deals in the Los Gatos Library parking lot, Brian learned how to buy and sell cars on the street.

Eventually, a time would come when hed have a business behind him to do the same thing.

If you have any high school hot rod stories, please share them in the comment section below.

In the next post, read the first story of a series on Ed Hugus and the Ferraris he drove in the 1950s and 1960s.
Monday, August 13, 2018

A number of times in my life I have taken a few days, or even a week, to pray and reflect on my life. Before the birth of one of my children, I spent a weekend in a Catholic monastery. This revitalizing experience prepared me for tending to a new baby. After my divorce many years later, I heard of a sanctuary in another state, where Catholic nuns lived on the land. In the quiet and beauty of nature, people gathered to pray and meditate. I spent a week there in the solitude of a small cabin  taking walks to a nearby creek and enjoying Mother Nature surrounding me. It was an important time, and I returned to New Mexico energized with a number of ideas of how to make my life more internal and prayerful.

Subsequent to that retreat I traveled to South America, where I visited several places, including Machu Picchu. Even though the Shining Patha group of Maoist guerrillaswas active in the area and had perpetrated assassinations, bombings, and beheadings, I still went. In fact, prior to going, travelers were told this would be the last trip the organization would schedule due to acceleration of Shining Path activity. To my surprise, I did not feel fear when I arrived in Machu Picchu; I was so taken by the beauty and spiritual nature of this remote sanctuary. Every day I walked on the trails.

Upon my return to the United Sates, I was contacted by a woman I had met in South America who lived in the Midwest. She informed me that a Medicine Woman would be coming to Santa Fe to hold a retreat. I met with the Medicine Woman in private, and she blew my first power animal into mean initiation into my shamanic training and heritage, as she explained the animal was a teacher and would activate my teaching abilities. Even though I did not encounter the Medicine Woman again, I embarked on the shamanic path and attended trainings from the Foundation for Shamanic Studies.

Obviously, these travels and retreats eventually brought me to a deeper realization and experience of what I was meant to do with the rest of my lifeincluding authoring books about spirituality and shamanism. It can be so important and transformative to carve out purposeful time away from our busy lives, for quiet space and reflection. Many others have gone on retreats and/or traveled to spiritual places and benefited greatly. If you are one of those individuals, it would be of help to others for you to share what occurred.

Can you also think of ways to bring the idea of retreat." into your daily/weekly lives, when it may not be possible to get away? What are some of the signs in your life that it might be time to prioritize either an inner retreat space or attendance of an actual event?
An ambitious plan to boost Mexicos oil and gas production could potentially slow the countrys energy sector reforms and hinder trade opportunities for U.S. refiners and pipeline companies, which have ramped up exports to meet growing demand there, according to research firm Morningstar.

Mexican president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced late last month a plan to invest billions of dollars in Pemex, the countrys state-owned energy company, in an effort to reverse years of declining production. He also reaffirmed his intent to review more than 100 exploration and production contracts awarded to private oil and gas companies since Mexico enacted market reforms in 2013 to end Pemexs monopoly and open the countrys energy sector to foreign investment for the first time in decades.

Mexicos energy reforms are enshrined in its constitution, and Lopez Obrador has said that he will he will honor existing contracts so long as they dont reveal corruption. But Morningstar noted that any effort to scale back the reforms or increase Mexican energy production could jeopardize some $200 billion in outside investments planned for the countrys oil and gas, power, refining and distribution sectors.

Consequences in store

Part of Lopez Obradors plan involves investing $2.6 billion to upgrade the nations six existing refineries as well as building an $8.6 billion refinery at the oil port of Dos Bocas in Tabasco. The countrys existing refineries have been operating at less than 70 percent capacity since 2012, according to Mexicos energy department, requiring the country to import more gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined products.

American companies have covered much of the shortfall. U.S. exports of finished gasoline products and diesel have more than tripled since 2010 amid a boom in oil and gas production from shale fields in West Texas and elsewhere.

Morningstar oil and products research director Sandy Fielden wrote that Mexicos attempt to overhaul its energy sector could have particular ramifications for U.S. refiners and pipeline companies. Both sectors have expanded operations in recent years to support growing demand from Mexico.

There is no denying that consequences for U.S. refiners could be considerable, Fielden wrote. The expansion of Gulf Coast refining during the shale era is closely bound to growing export demand, with Mexico being the largest customer.

Pivotal time

Mexicos election early last month came during a pivotal time for both North American trade negotiations and the U.S. oil and gas industry. Texas in particular has benefited from the countrys energy reforms, last year shipping nearly $100 billion in goods, including petroleum products, south of the border under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

More than 25 cross-border pipeline projects, headed by major companies including Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners and Houston-based Kinder Morgan, are also underway as Mexico has emerged as one of Texas largest natural gas customers.

Lopez Obrador will take office in December. President Donald Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto are trying to conclude a NAFTA deal before Lopez Obrador assumes Mexicos presidency.
WASHINGTON - The FBI has fired agent Peter Strzok, who helped lead the bureau's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election until officials discovered he had been sending anti-Trump texts.

Aitan Goelman, Strzok's attorney, said FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich ordered the firing Friday, even though the director of the FBI office that normally handles employee discipline had decided Strzok should face only a demotion and 60-day suspension. Goelman said the move undercuts the FBI's repeated assurances that Strzok would be afforded the normal disciplinary process.

"This isn't the normal process in any way more than name," Goelman said, adding in a statement, "This decision should be deeply troubling to all Americans."

The FBI declined to comment.

The termination marks a remarkable downfall for Strzok, a 22-year veteran of the bureau who investigated Russian spies, defense officials accused of selling secrets to China and myriad other important cases. In the twilight of his career, Strzok was integral to two of the bureau's most high-profile investigations - the Russia case and the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

But when a Justice Department inspector-general investigation uncovered politically charged messages that Strzok had exchanged with another FBI official, he was relegated to a position in human resources. Conservatives soon made Strzok the face of their attacks against the special-counsel investigation into the president's campaign, and the FBI took steps to remove Strzok from its ranks.

Now Playing: President Trump has slammed FBI agent Peter Strzok, calling his recent testimony before Congress a "disgrace to our country." Video: GeoBeats

Conservatives on Monday hailed the move. President Donald Trump used it to suggest the Russia investigation should be dropped and the Clinton case redone.

"Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!" he wrote.

Minutes later, he added, "Just fired Agent Strzok, formerly of the FBI, was in charge of the Crooked Hillary Clinton sham investigation. It was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone!"

The reaction among Democrats was more understated. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., said Strzok's firing did not undercut Mueller's probe, which had produced dozens of indictments.

"Sorry, @realDonaldTrump, the #RussiaInvestigation is bigger than one agent (who was at least willing to go under oath)." Swalwell tweeted, citing the president's Twitter handle.

Bobby Goodlatte, the son of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., wrote on Twitter that he was "deeply embarrassed that Peter Strzok's career was ruined by my father's political grandstanding" and pointed to a recent congressional hearing at which Strzok testified.

"Thank you for your service sir," Bobby Goodlatte wrote. "You are a patriot."

Bobby Goodlatte recently endorsed the underdog Democrat running for his father's seat.

Strzok's team launched a GoFundMe page with a lengthy statement to raise money for his "legal costs and lost income" and said on the site that his firing was "apparently driven by political pressure." The site had raised more than $23,000 in the first four hours.

Because Strzok was a senior-level FBI employee, and because the FBI's No. 2 official directed his firing, he has few realistic avenues left to get back his job. It was unclear whether he planned to pursue legal action against the bureau.

Strzok's position in the bureau had been precarious since last summer, when the Justice Department's inspector general, Michael Horowitz, told special counsel Robert Mueller that the lead agent on his team had been exchanging anti-Trump messages with an FBI lawyer. The next day, Mueller expelled Strzok from the group.

The lawyer, Lisa Page, had also been a part of Mueller's team, though she left a few weeks earlier and no longer works for the FBI. She and Strzok were having an affair.

Trump has previously derided the pair as "FBI lovers," and he and his conservative allies have pointed to their conduct in an attempt to discredit the Mueller probe. On Saturday, before the firing was known publicly, Trump tweeted an attack on Strzok, Page, former FBI director James Comey and former deputy director Andrew McCabe.

"Will the FBI ever recover it's once stellar reputation, so badly damaged by Comey, McCabe, Peter S and his lover, the lovely Lisa Page, and other top officials now dismissed or fired?" Trump wrote on Twitter. "So many of the great men and women of the FBI have been hurt by these clowns and losers!"

Horowitz concluded that Strzok showed a "willingness to take official action" to hurt Trump's electoral prospects, particularly in a text he sent telling Page "we'll stop" Trump from being president.

Strzok, who was a deputy assistant director for counterintelligence at the bureau, has apologized for sending the messages and said they reflected personal views that did not affect his work. His attorney has said that had Strzok wanted to prevent Trump's election, he could have leaked that Trump's campaign was under investigation for possibly coordinating with Russia - a revelation that might have upended his bid to become president.

At a congressional hearing last month, Strzok sparred with Republican lawmakers who raised questions about his character and even his marriage. He asserted that there was "no evidence of bias in my professional actions" and that his having to testify was "just another victory notch in [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's belt and another milestone in our enemies' campaign to tear America apart."

Strzok was escorted out of the FBI building in June and effectively relieved of work responsibilities, though he technically remained an FBI employee as he and his attorney challenged the effort to dismiss him. On July 24, they made a final pitch to Candice Will, who leads the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility.

Goelman said Will ultimately decided that Strzok should face a demotion and 60-day suspension and be subjected to a "last chance" agreement. That would have put him on thin ice if he were to commit another offense. But Goelman said Bowdich overruled that decision and ordered Strzok's termination.

During a June congressional hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that Strzok had been referred to the Office of Professional Responsibility - which he referred to as the bureau's "independent disciplinary arm" - and that officials would "not hesitate to hold people strictly accountable." Wray promised that process would be "done by the book."

Strzok is the third high-ranking FBI official involved in the Clinton and Russia investigations to be fired amid an intensely political backdrop. Trump removed Comey as the bureau's director and said he did so thinking of the Russia case. Attorney General Jeff Sessions later removed Comey's deputy, McCabe, after the inspector general alleged he lied about a media disclosure related to Clinton.

McCabe - who, unlike Comey, could not be removed at the will of the president - has said his termination was a politically motivated attempt to undermine the Mueller probe. He is facing a criminal investigation by prosecutors in the District of Columbia's U.S. attorney's office. McCabe's attorney wrote Monday of Strzok's firing: "Another patriot, public servant, and defender of the FBI fired to appease the WH," using an abbreviation for White House.

It is possible that others could yet face discipline. The inspector general identified five FBI employees, including Strzok and Page, with some connection to the Clinton email case who had exchanged messages expressing hostility toward Trump, support for Clinton or other political views. Each was referred to the FBI for possible violations of the bureau's code of conduct.

The inspector general's office said it found no evidence "to connect the political views expressed in these messages to the specific investigative decisions" in the Clinton case. Its report singled out Strzok, though, for prioritizing the Russia investigation in October 2016 instead of following up on a Clinton-related lead. Strzok's attorney has disputed that Strzok failed to pursue the Clinton lead aggressively.

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Video: Longtime FBI agent Peter Strzok was fired on Aug. 10, over furor surrounding his politically charged text messages. He is the third high-ranking FBI official involved in the Hillary Clinton and Russia investigations to be fired.(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

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NEWS FLASH

Low cost carrier easyJet has upgraded its recently launched seasonal summer service between Berlin and Ljubljana to year-round operations. The airline will maintain its existing flights from Tegel Airport to the Slovenian capital until November 10, after which it will shift its operations to Schoenefeld. Flights will continue to be maintained three times per week during the winter season, which begins on October 28. Tickets for the Berlin Schoenefeld - Ljubljana service are already on sale through the airline's website.
ANSAmed - Today's events in the Mediterranean

(ANSAmed) - ROME, AUGUST 13 - These are the main events of interest for the Euro-Mediterranean scheduled for today: ANKARA - Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visits Turkey and will discuss the situation in Syria with his Turkish counterpart (also 14/8).



TUNIS - Women's Day, celebrating the promulgation in 1956 of the Code of Personal Status, which abolished polygamy and introduced divorce.(ANSAmed).




Michael Cummo / Hearst Connecticut Media

STAMFORD  A city man wanted in Louisiana is being held on a $1.1 million bond after he allegedly boasted to police that he was involved in the Gambino crime family and had access to lots of cash.

Sgt. Brian Butler said police were sent to Dice Road in North Stamford at 4 p.m. Sunday on the report of a domestic incident.
When a client sells a home or purchases a new one, they work with a real estate agent. Sometimes sales agents are also brokers. So whats the difference?

Brokers and agents both have extensive knowledge of the market and can make pricing recommendations. Both can market a home on the Multiple Listing Service and advertise it on the internet. Both can show homes to buyers, present offers and negotiate on their clients behalf.
Wall Street analysts have given iShares MSCI Netherlands ETF a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but iShares MSCI Netherlands ETF wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

View MarketBeat's top stock picks here.
Vermilion Energy Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the acquisition, exploration, development, and production of petroleum and natural gas in North America, Europe, and Australia. It owns 81% working interest in 642,300 net acres of developed land and 87% working interest in 376,700 net acres of undeveloped land, and 613 net producing natural gas wells and 3,034 net producing oil wells in Canada; and 96% working interest in 248,900 net acres of developed land and 91% working interest in 222,100 net acres of undeveloped land in the Aquitaine and Paris Basins, and 325 net producing oil wells and 3.0 net producing gas wells in France. The company also owns 49% working interest in 930,000 net acres of land and 51 net producing natural gas wells in the Netherlands; and 36,900 net developed acres and 965,900 net undeveloped acres of land, and 61 net producing oil wells and 8 net producing natural gas wells in Germany. In addition, it owns offshore Corrib natural gas field located to the northwest coast of Ireland; and 100% working interest in the Wandoo offshore oil field and related production assets that covers 59,600 acres located on Western Australia's northwest shelf. Further, the company holds 138,000 net acres of land in the Powder River basin, and 136.6 net producing oil wells in the United States; and 951,200 net acres of land in Hungary, 244,900 net acres of land in Slovakia, and 2.4 million net acres of land in Croatia. Vermilion Energy Inc. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada.

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Erdogan says economy strong, problems will be solved Says 'there will be other plans' to support Turkish currency

(ANSAmed) - ROME, AUGUST 13 - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday said the "foundations" of the Turkish economy are "very strong" and the government will "do everything possible to resolve the situation" of the Turkish lira crisis.



Erdogan's comments came during a statement in which he also announced "there will be other plans" to support the currency.(ANSAmed).




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Worth Physician LLC, Davie Medical Center LLC, Daytona Medical Center Inc., Dean 4641 LLC, Deep Purple Investments LLC, Del Sol Bariatric Clinic PLLC, Delray EFL Imaging Center LLC, Denton Cancer Center PLLC, Denton County Hospitalist Program PLLC, Denton Pediatric Physicians PLLC, Denton Regional Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Denver Clinic Surgicenter LLC, Denver Mid-Town Surgery Center Ltd., Denver Surgicenter LLC, Derry ASC Inc., Diagnostic Breast Center Inc., Diagnostic Mammography Services G.P., Diagnostic Services G.P., Dickson Surgery Center L.P., Doctors Bay Area Physician Hospital Organization, Doctors Hospital (Conroe) Inc., Doctors Hospital Columbus GA-Joint Venture, Doctors Hospital Surgery Center L.P., Doctors Hospital of Augusta LLC, Doctors Hospital of Augusta Neurology LLC, Doctors Osteopathic Medical Center Inc., Doctors Same Day Surgery Center Inc., Doctors Same Day Surgery Center Ltd., Doctors-I Inc., Doctors-II Inc., Doctors-III Inc., Doctors-IV Inc., Doctors-IX Inc., Doctors-V Inc., Doctors-VI Inc., Doctors-VII Inc., Doctors-VIII Inc., Doctors-X Inc., Doctors Memorial Hospital of Spartanburg Limited Partnership, Dominion Hospital Physicians Group LLC, Dublin Community Hospital LLC, Dublin Heart Specialists LLC, Dublin Multispecialty LLC, Dura Medical Inc., E.P. Physical Therapy Centers Inc., EASTSIDE URGENT CARE LLC, EHCA Diagnostics LLC, EHCA Eastside Occupational Medicine Center LLC, EHCA LLC, EHCA Metropolitan LLC, EHCA Parkway LLC, EHCA Peachtree LLC, EHCA West Paces LLC, EIRMC Hospitalist Services LLC, EMMC LLC, EP Health LLC, EP Holdco LLC, EPIC Development Inc., EPIC Diagnostic Centers Inc., EPIC Healthcare Management Company, EPIC Properties Inc., EPIC Surgery Centers Inc., EPSC L.P., East Falls Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery LLC, East Falls Family Medicine LLC, East Falls Plastic Surgery LLC, East Florida - DMC Inc., East Florida Behavioral Health Network LLC, East Florida Cardiology Network LLC, East Florida CareNow Urgent Care LLC, East Florida Division Inc., East Florida Emergency Physician Group LLC, East Florida Healthcare LLC, East Florida Hospitalists LLC, East Florida Imaging Holdings LLC, East Florida Primary Care LLC, East Houston Primary Care PLLC, East Houston Specialists PLLC, East Layton Internal Medicine LLC, East Orthopedics PLLC, East Pointe Hospital Inc., Eastern Idaho Brachytherapy Equipment LLC, Eastern Idaho Brachytherapy Equipment Manager LLC, Eastern Idaho Care Partners ACO LLC, Eastern Idaho Care Partners Holdings LLC, Eastern Idaho Care Partners LLC, Eastern Idaho Health Services Inc., Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center Inpatient Services LLC, Eastside Behavioral Health Associates LLC, Eastside General Surgery LLC, Eastside Heart and Vascular LLC, Eastside Medical Center LLC, Eastside Surgery Center LLC, Edmond General Surgery LLC, Edmond Hospitalists LLC, Edmond Physician Hospital Organization Inc., Edward White Hospital Inc., El Paso CareNow Urgent Care PLLC, El Paso Healthcare Provider Network, El Paso Healthcare System Ltd., El Paso Healthcare System Physician Services LLC, El Paso Nurses Unlimited Inc., El Paso Primary Care PLLC, El Paso Surgery Centers L.P., El Paso Surgicenter Inc., Eldridge Family Practitioners PLLC, Elite Family Health of Plano PLLC, Elite OB-GYN Services of El Paso PLLC, Elite Orthopaedics of El Paso PLLC, Elite Orthopaedics of Irving PLLC, Elite Orthopaedics of Plano PLLC, Elstree Outpatient Centre LLP, Emergency Physicians at Wesley Medical Center LLC, Emergency Providers Group LLC, Emergency Psychiatric Medicine PLLC, Encino Hospital Corporation Inc., Endocrinology Associates of Lees Summit LLC, Endoscopy Surgicare of Plano LLC, Endoscopy of Plano L.P., Englewood Community Hospital Auxiliary Inc., Englewood Community Hospital Inc., Envision Stakes LLC, Eye Care Surgicare Ltd. a Missouri limited partnership, FHAL LLC, FMH Health Services LLC, Fairfax Surgical Center L.P., Fairview Medical Services LLC, Fairview Park GP LLC, Fairview Park Limited Partnership, Fairview Partner LLC, Family Care Partners LLC, Family Care of E. Jackson County LLC, Family First Medicine in Brownsville PLLC, Family Health Medical Group of Overland Park LLC, Family Health Specialists of Lees Summit LLC, Family Medicine of Blacksburg LLC, Family Practice at Forest Hill LLC, Family Practice at Retreat LLC, Family Practitioners of Montgomery PLLC, Family Practitioners of Pearland PLLC, Fannin MOB LLC, Fannin MOB Property Management LLC, Far West Division Inc., Fawcett Memorial Hospital Inc., Florida Care Partners LLC, Florida Care Partners Orlando LLC, Florida Home Health Services-Private Care Inc., Florida Outpatient Surgery Center Ltd., Flower Mound Surgery Center Ltd., Focus Hand Surgicenter LLC, Foot & Ankle Specialty Services LLC, Forest Park Surgery Pavilion Inc., Forest Park Surgery Pavilion L.P., Fort Bend Hospital Inc., Fort Chiswell Family Practice LLC, Fort Myers Market Inc., Fort Pierce Immediate Care Center Inc., Fort Pierce Orthopaedics LLC, Fort Pierce Surgery Center Ltd., Fort Walton Beach Medical Center Inc., Fort Worth Investments Inc., Forward Pathology Solutions LLC, Four Rivers Medical Center PHO Inc., Frankfort Hospital Inc., Frankfort Wound Care LLC, Freeport Family Medicine LLC, Fremont Womens Health LLC, Frisco Surgicare LLC, Frisco Warren Parkway 91 Inc., Frist Clinic Express LLC, Ft. Pierce Surgicare LLC, Ft. Walton Beach Anesthesia Services LLC, G. Rowe M.D. PLLC, G. Schnider M.D. PLLC, G. Voorhees M.D. PLLC, G.P. Martin Fletcher & Associates LLC, GA PHYSICIAN SERVICES LLC, GA Urgentcare Holding LLC, GHC-Galen Health Care LLC, GI Associates of Denton PLLC, GI Associates of Lewisville PLLC, GME Services of Osceola LLC, GPCH-GP Inc., GYN-Oncology of Southwest Virginia LLC, Gainesville GYN Oncology of North Florida Regional Medical Center LLC, Gainesville Physicians LLC, GalTex LLC, Galen (Kansas) Merger LLC, Galen BH Inc., Galen Center for Professional Development Inc., Galen College of Nursing, Galen Diagnostic Multicenter Ltd., Galen GOK LLC, Galen Global Finance Inc., Galen Health Institutes Inc., Galen Health Partners Limited, Galen Holdco LLC, Galen Hospital Alaska Inc., Galen Hospital of Baytown Inc., Galen Hospital-Pembroke Pines Inc., Galen International Holdings Inc., Galen KY LLC, Galen MCS LLC, Galen MRMC LLC, Galen Medical Corporation, Galen NMC LLC, Galen NSH LLC, Galen Property LLC, Galen SOM LLC, Galen SSH LLC, Galen Virginia Hospital Corporation, Galen of Aurora Inc., Galen of Florida Inc., Galen of Illinois Inc., Galen of Kentucky Inc., Galen of Mississippi Inc., Galen of Virginia Inc., Galen of West Virginia Inc., Galen-Soch Inc., Galencare Inc., Galendeco Inc., Galichia Anesthesia Services LLC, Galichia Emergency Physicians LLC, Garden Park Community Hospital Limited Partnership, Garden Park Hospitalist Program LLC, Garden Park Investments L.P., Garden Park Physician Group - Specialty Care LLC, Garden Park Physician Group Inc., Gardens EFL Imaging Center LLC, Gastroenterology Specialists of Middle Tennessee LLC, General Hospitals of Galen Inc., General Medical Clinics Limited, General Surgeons of Houston PLLC, General Surgeons of North Richland Hills PLLC, General Surgeons of Pasadena PLLC, General and Cardiovascular Surgeons of Conroe PLLC, Generations Family Practice Inc., GenoSpace LLC, Georgia Health Holdings Inc., Georgia L.P., Georgia Psychiatric Company Inc., Glemm SA, Good Samaritan Hospital L.P., Good Samaritan Hospital LLC, Good Samaritan Surgery Center L.P., Goppert-Trinity Family Care LLC, Grace Family Practice LLC, Gramercy Eye Surgicenter LLC, Gramercy Surgery Center Ltd., Grand Strand Regional Medical Center LLC, Grand Strand Senior Health Center LLC, Grand Strand Specialty Associates LLC, Grand Strand Surgical Specialists LLC, Grandview Health Care Clinic LLC, Grant Center Hospital of Ocala Inc., Grayson Primary Care LLC, Greater Gwinnett Internal Medicine Associates LLC, Greater Gwinnett Physician Corporation, Greater Houston Preferred Provider Option Inc., Greater Tampa Bay Physician Network LLC, Greater Tampa Bay Physician Specialists LLC, Greater Tampa Bay Physicians - Pinellas LLC, Green Oaks Hospital Subsidiary L.P., Greenview Hospital Inc., Greenview PrimeCare LLC, Greenview Specialty Associates LLC, Gulf Coast Division Inc., Gulf Coast Electrophysiology Associates PLLC, Gulf Coast Inpatient Specialists LLC, Gulf Coast Medical Center Primary Care LLC, Gulf Coast Medical Ventures Inc., Gulf Coast Multispecialty Services LLC, Gulf Coast Physician Administrators Inc., Gulf Coast Provider Network Inc., Gwinnett Community Hospital Inc., Gynecology Specialists of Utah LLC, H2U Wellness Centers - Del Sol Medical Center PLLC, H2U Wellness Centers - Las Palmas Medical Center PLLC, H2U Wellness Centers - Medical City Dallas PLLC, H2U Wellness Centers - St. Davids Medical Center PLLC, H2U Wellness Centers LLC, H2U Wellness Centers  Clear Lake Regional Medical Center PLLC, H2U Wellness Centers  Conroe ISD PLLC, H2U Wellness Centers  Conroe Regional Medical Center PLLC, H2U Wellness Centers  Corpus Christi PLLC, H2U Wellness Centers  El Paso PLLC, H2U Wellness Centers  PISD PLLC, H2U Wellness Centers  San Benito CISD PLLC, HBP Lone Star Inc., HCA - IT&S Field Operations Inc., HCA - IT&S Inventory Management Inc., HCA - IT&S PBS Field Operations Inc., HCA - IT&S TN Field Operations Inc., HCA - Information Technology & Services Inc., HCA - Raleigh Community Hospital Inc., HCA - Viera ALF LLC, HCA - WHS Progressive LLC, HCA - WHS Services LLC, HCA ASD Financial Operations LLC, HCA ASD Sales Services LLC, HCA American Finance LLC, HCA Carenow Limited, HCA Central Group Inc., HCA Central/West Texas Physicians Management LLC, HCA Chattanooga Market Inc., HCA Development Company Inc., HCA Eastern Group Inc., HCA Global Capital LLP, HCA Gulf Coast GME PLLC, HCA Health Services of California Inc., HCA Health Services of Florida Inc., HCA Health Services of Georgia Inc., HCA Health Services of Louisiana Inc., HCA Health Services of Miami Inc., HCA Health Services of Midwest Inc., HCA Health Services of New Hampshire Inc., HCA Health Services of Tennessee Inc., HCA Health Services of Texas Inc., HCA Health Services of Virginia Inc., HCA Health Services of West Virginia Inc., HCA Healthcare Mission Fund LLC, HCA Healthcare UK Limited, HCA Holdco LLC, HCA Human Resources LLC, HCA Imaging Services of North Florida Inc., HCA Inc., HCA International Holdings Limited, HCA International Limited, HCA LewisGale Regional Cancer Centers Clinical Co-Management Company LLC, HCA Long Term Health Services of Miami Inc., HCA Luxembourg 1 Sarl, HCA Luxembourg 2 Sarl, HCA Luxembourg Equities Sarl, HCA Luxembourg Finance Limited, HCA Luxembourg Investments Sarl, HCA Management Services L.P., HCA Medical City Limited, HCA Medical Services Inc., HCA Midwest Comprehensive Care Inc., HCA Outpatient Clinic Services of Miami Inc., HCA Outpatient Imaging Services Group Inc., HCA Patient Safety Organization LLC, HCA Pearland GP Inc., HCA Physician Services Inc., HCA Plano Imaging Inc., HCA Property GP LLC, HCA Psychiatric Company, HCA Purchasing Limited, HCA Realty Inc., HCA Richmond Cardiac Clinical Co-Management Company LLC, HCA SF LLC, HCA SFB 1 LLC, HCA Sarasota Orthopedic and Spine Clinical Co-Management Company LLC, HCA Squared LLC, HCA Staffing Limited, HCA Swiss Capital 1 LLP, HCA Swiss Capital 2 LLP, HCA Switzerland Finance GmbH, HCA Switzerland Holding GmbH, HCA Switzerland Limited, HCA UK Capital Limited, HCA UK Holdings Limited, HCA UK Investments Limited, HCA UK Limited, HCA UK Services Limited, HCA Wesley Rehabilitation Hospital Inc., HCA Western Group Inc., HCA-Access Healthcare Holdings LLC, HCA-Access Healthcare Partner Inc., HCA-California Urgent Care Holdings LLC, HCA-EMS Holdings LLC, HCA-EmCare Holdings LLC, HCA-Georgia Urgent Care Holdings LLC, HCA-HBPS Holdings LLC, HCA-HealthONE LLC, HCA-Solis Holdings Inc., HCA-Solis Mammography Service Holdings of Continental LLC, HCA-Solis Mammography Service Holdings of Gulf Coast LLC, HCA-Solis Mammography Service Holdings of North Texas LLC, HCA-Solis Mammography Service Holdings of TriStar LLC, HCA-Solis Mammography Services LLC, HCA-Solis Master LLC, HCA-Urgent Care Holdings LLC, HCAPS Anesthesia Manager LLC, HCAPS Conroe Affiliation Inc., HCOL Inc., HD&S Corp. Successor Inc., HDH Thoracic Surgeons LLC, HHBY Holdings LLC, HHNC LLC, HICCH-SCL LLC, HM Acquisition LLC, HM OMCOS LLC, HMMG 1226 LLC, HPG Energy L.P., HPG Enterprises LLC, HPG GP LLC, HPG Solutions LLC, HSS Holdco LLC, HSS Systems LLC, HSS Virginia L.P., HTI Gulf Coast Inc., HTI Health Services of North Carolina Inc., HTI Hospital Holdings Inc., HTI MOB LLC, HTI MSO LLC, HTI Memorial Hospital Corporation, HTI Physician Services of Utah Inc., HWCA PLLC, Hamilton Memorial Hospital Inc., Hamsard 3160 Limited, Harley Street Clinic @ The Groves LLP, Hathor Chelsea Ltd., Healdsburg General Hospital Inc., Health Care Indemnity Inc., Health Insight Capital LLC, Health International Billing Partners Limited, Health Midwest Medical Group Inc., Health Midwest Office Facilities Corporation, Health Midwest Ventures Group Inc., Health Partners of Kansas Inc., Health Service Partners Inc., Health Services (Delaware) Inc., Health Services Merger Inc., Health to You LLC, HealthCoast Physician Group LLC, HealthONE Aurora Investment LLC, HealthONE Care Partners LLC, HealthONE CareNow Urgent Care LLC, HealthONE Clear Creek LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Bariatric Medicine LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Behavioral Health LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Cancer Care LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Cancer Specialties LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Cardiovascular LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Medical Specialties LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Neurosciences LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Obstetrics and Gynecology LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Occupational Medicine LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Oncology Hematology LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Orthopedic Specialists LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Otolaryngology Specialists LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Pediatric Cardiovascular Surgery LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Pediatric Specialties LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Primary Care LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Spine Specialists LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Spine Surgeons LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Surgery Neurological LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Surgical Specialties LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Transplant Services LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Womens Services LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services - Youth Rehabilitation LLC, HealthONE Clinic Services LLC, HealthONE High Street Primary Care Center LLC, HealthONE IRL Pathology Services LLC, HealthONE Institutes for Clinical Research LLC, HealthONE Lowry LLC, HealthONE Radiation Therapy at Red Rocks LLC, HealthONE Radiation Therapy at Thornton LLC, HealthONE Ridge View Endoscopy Center LLC, HealthONE Surgicare of Ridge View LLC, HealthONE Urologic LLC, HealthONE at Breckenridge LLC, HealthONE of Denver Inc., HealthOne Heart Care LLC, HealthOne Lincoln Investment LLC, HealthOne Westside Investment LLC, HealthTrust Europe Company Limited, HealthTrust Europe LLP, HealthTrust Locums Inc., HealthTrust Workforce Solutions LLC, Healthcare Oklahoma Inc., Healthcare Purchasing Alliance LLC, Healthcare Sales National Management Services Group LLC, Healthcare Technology Assessment Corporation, Healthco LLC, Healthnet of Kentucky LLC, Healthserv Acquisition LLC, Healthtrust Inc. - The Hospital Company, Healthtrust MOB Tennessee LLC, Healthtrust Purchasing Group L.P., Healthtrust Utah Management Services Inc., Healthy State Inc., Heart Specialist of North Texas PLLC, Heart of America ASC LLC, Heart of America Surgicenter LLC, Heartcare of Texas Ltd., Hearthstone Home Health Inc., Heartland Womens Group at Wesley LLC, Heathrow Imaging LLC, Heathrow Internal Medicine LLC, Hendersonville Hospital Corporation, Hendersonville Hospitalist Services Inc., Hendersonville OB/GYN LLC, Hendersonville ODC LLC, Hendersonville Primary Care LLC, Henrico Doctors Hospital - Forest Campus Property LLC, Henrico Doctors Neurology Associates LLC, Henrico Doctors OB GYN Specialists LLC, Henrico Surgical Specialists LLC, Heritage Family Care LLC, Heritage Hospital Inc., Heritage Medical Care LLC, Hermitage Primary Care LLC, Hidalgo County Family Practitioners PLLC, Hidden Lakes Health Center PLLC, Highlands Regional Medical Center, Hip & Joint Specialists of North Texas PLLC, Homecare North Inc., Hometrust Management Services Inc., Horizon Orthopedics LLC, Horizon Surgical LLC, Hospital Corp. LLC, Hospital Corporation of America, Hospital Corporation of Lake Worth, Hospital Corporation of Tennessee, Hospital Corporation of Utah, Hospital Development Properties Inc., Hospital Partners Merger LLC, Hospital Realty Corporation, Hospital-Based CRNA Services Inc., Hospitalists at Centennial Medical Center LLC, Hospitalists at Fairview Park LLC, Hospitalists at Greenview Regional Hospital LLC, Hospitalists at Horizon Medical Center LLC, Hospitalists at Parkridge LLC, Hospitalists at StoneCrest LLC, Hospitalists at Wesley Medical Center LLC, Hospitalists of the Wabash Valley LLC, Houston - PPH LLC, Houston CareNow Urgent Care PLLC, Houston Healthcare Holdings Inc., Houston NW Manager LLC, Houston Northwest Concessions L.L.C., Houston Northwest Operating Company L.L.C., Houston Northwest Surgical Partners Inc., Houston Obstetrics and Gynecology for Women PLLC, Houston Pediatric Specialty Group PLLC, Houston Urologic Surgicenter LLC, Houston Womans Hospital Partner LLC, ICU Associates of West Houston PLLC, IMX Holdings LLC, IRL Pathology Services MidAmerica LLC, Idaho Behavioral Health Services LLC, Idaho Physician Services Inc., Illinois Psychiatric Hospital Company Inc., Imaging Realty LLC, Imaging Services of Appomattox LLC, Imaging Services of Jacksonville LLC, Imaging Services of Louisiana LLC, Imaging Services of Louisiana Manager LLC, Imaging Services of Orlando LLC, Imaging Services of Richmond LLC, Imaging Services of Roanoke LLC, Imaging Services of West Boynton LLC, InVivoLink Inc., Independence Neurosurgery Services LLC, Independence Regional Medical Group LLC, Independence Surgicare Inc., Indian Path Hospital Inc., Indianapolis Hospital Partner LLC, Institute for Womens Health and Body LLC, Institute of Advanced ENT Surgery LLC, Integrated Regional Lab LLC, Integrated Regional Laboratories LLP, Integrated Regional Laboratories Pathology Services LLC, Intensive Care Consortium Inc., Internal Medicine Associates of Huntsville PLLC, Internal Medicine Associates of Southern Hills LLC, Internal Medicine of Blacksburg LLC, Internal Medicine of Pasadena PLLC, Internist Associates of Houston PLLC, Isleworth Partners Inc., J. M. Garcia M.D. PLLC, JCSH LLC, JDGC Management LLC, JFK Internal Medicine Faculty Practice LLC, JFK Medical Center Limited Partnership, JPM AA Housing LLC, Jackson County Medical Group LLC, Jackson County Pulmonary Medical Group LLC, Jacksonville CareNow Urgent Care LLC, Jacksonville Multispecialty Services LLC, Jacksonville Surgery Center Ltd., James River Internists LLC, John Randolph Family Practice LLC, John Randolph OB/GYN LLC, John Randolph Surgeons LLC, Johnson County Neurology LLC, Johnson County Surgery Center L.P., Johnson County Surgicenter L.L.C., Jordan Family Health L.L.C., Jupiter EFL Imaging Center LLC, KC Pain ASC LLC, KC Surgicare LLC, KPH-Consolidation Inc., Kansas CareNow Urgent Care LLC, Kansas City Cardiac Arrhythmia Research LLC, Kansas City Gastroenterology & Hepatology Physicians Group LLC, Kansas City Neurology Associates LLC, Kansas City Pulmonology Practice LLC, Kansas City Surgery Center Properties LLC, Kansas City Vascular & General Surgery Group LLC, Kansas City Womens Clinic Group LLC, Kansas Healthserv LLC, Kansas Pulmonary and Sleep Specialists LLC, Kansas Trauma and Critical Care Specialists LLC, Kathy L. Summers M.D. PLLC, Kendall Healthcare Group Ltd., Kendall Regional Medical Center LLC, Kendall Regional Urgent Care LLC, Kennedale Primary Care PLLC, Kingwood Multi-Specialty Group PLLC, Kingwood Surgery Center LLC, Kingwood Surgicenter LLC, Kissimmee Surgicare Ltd., Kyle Primary Care PLLC, L E Corporation, LAD Imaging LLC, LGMC Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, LOC @ The Christie LLP, LOC @ The London Bridge Hospital LLP, LOC Partnership LLP, LPN TeleBehavioral Health PLLC, Lafayette OB Hospitalists LLC, Lafayette Urogynecology & Urology Center LLC, Lake City Imaging LLC, Lake City Regional Medical Group LLC, Lake Forest Family Health PLLC, Lakeside Radiology LLC, Lakeside Womens Services LLC, Lakeview Cardiology Specialists LLC, Lakeview Hospital Physician Services LLC, Lakeview Internal Medicine LLC, Lakeview Medical Center LLC, Lakeview Regional Medical Center Inpatient Services LLC, Lakeview Regional Physician Group LLC, Lakeview Urology & General Surgery LLC, Lakewood Surgicare Inc., Laredo Medco LLC, Largo Medical Center Inc., Largo Physician Group LLC, Las Colinas Primary Care PLLC, Las Colinas Surgery Center Ltd., Las Encinas Hospital, Las Palmas Del Sol Cardiology PLLC, Las Palmas Del Sol Internal Medicine PLLC, Las Palmas Del Sol Urgent Care PLLC, Las Vegas ASC LLC, Las Vegas Surgicare Inc., Las Vegas Surgicare Ltd. a Nevada Limited Partnership, Lawnwood Cardiovascular Surgery LLC, Lawnwood Healthcare Specialists LLC, Lawnwood Medical Center Inc., Layton Family Practice LLC, Leaders in Oncology Care Limited, Leadership Healthcare Holdings II L.P. L.L.P., Leadership Healthcare Holdings L.P. L.L.P., Lees Summit Family Care LLC, Leslie Cohan M.D. PLLC, Lewis-Gale Hospital Incorporated, Lewis-Gale Medical Center LLC, Lewis-Gale Physicians LLC, Lewisville Primary Care PLLC, Lewisville Surgicare LLC, Lincoln Surgery Center LLC, Live Oak Immediate Care Center LLC, London Oncology Clinic LLP, London Pathology Limited, London Radiography & Radiotherapy Services Limited, Lone Peak Hospital Inc., Lone Star Intensivists at Gulf Coast PLLC, Lonestar Provider Network, Longview Regional Physician Hospital Organization Inc., Lorain County Surgery Center Ltd., Los Gatos Surgical Center a California Limited Partnership, Los Robles Regional Medical Center, Los Robles Regional Medical Center MOB LLC, Los Robles SurgiCenter LLC, Loudoun Surgery Center LLC, Louisiana Psychiatric Company Inc., Loveland Surgicenter LLC, Low Country Health Services Inc. of the Southeast, Lowry Surgicenter LLC, M. Jamshidi D.O. PLLC, MCA Investment Company, MCA-CTMC Holdings LLC, MEC Endoscopy LLC, MFA G.P. LLC, MFM Fact PLLC, MGH Medical Inc., MH Anesthesiology Physicians LLC, MH Angel Medical Center LLLP, MH Asheville Specialty Hospital LLC, MH Blue Ridge Medical Center LLLP, MH Eckerd Living Center LLLP, MH Highlands-Cashiers Medical Center LLLP, MH Hospital Holdings Inc., MH Hospital Manager LLC, MH Master Holdings LLLP, MH Master LLC, MH McDowell Imaging LLLP, MH Mission Hospital LLLP, MH Mission Hospital McDowell LLLP, MH Mission Imaging LLLP, MH Physician Services LLC, MH Transylvania Imaging LLLP, MH Transylvania Regional Hospital LLLP, MHS Partnership Holdings JSC Inc., MHS Partnership Holdings SDS Inc., MHS SC Partner L.L.C., MHS Surgery Centers L.P., MMC Sleep Lab Management LLC, MOSC Sports Medicine Inc., MOVCO Inc., MP Management LLC, MRT&C Inc., MSL Acquisition LLC, MVH Professional Services LLC, Macon Healthcare LLC, Macon Northside Health Group LLC, Macon Northside Hospital LLC, Macon Psychiatric Hospitalists LLC, Madison Behavioral Health LLC, Mainland Family Medicine PLLC, Mainland Multi-Specialty Group PLLC, Mainland Primary Care Physicians PLLC, Management Services Holdings Inc., Manatee Surgicare Ltd., Marietta Outpatient Medical Building Inc., Marietta Outpatient Surgery Ltd., Marietta Surgical Center Inc., Marion Community Hospital Inc., Mark Gottesman M.D. PLLC, Martin Fletcher & Associates L.P., Martin Fletcher Associates Holdings Inc., Mary Alice Cowan M.D. PLLC, Maternal Fetal Medicine Specialists of Corpus Christi PLLC, Maternal Fetal Services of Utah LLC, Maury County Behavioral Health LLC, Mayhill Cancer Center LLC, McAllen Comprehensive Upper Extremity Center PLLC, McKinney Surgeons PLLC, Mechanicsville Imaging LLC, Mecklenburg Surgical Land Development Ltd., Med City Dallas Outpatient Surgery Center L.P., Med Corp. Inc., Med Group - Southern Hills Hospitalists LLC, Med-Center Hosp./Houston Inc., Med-Point of New Hampshire Inc., Medi Flight of Oklahoma LLC, MediCredit Inc., MediPurchase Inc., MediStone Healthcare Ventures Inc., MediVision Inc., MediVision of Mecklenburg County Inc., MediVision of Tampa Inc., Medical Arts Hospital of Texarkana Inc., Medical Associates of Ocala LLC, Medical Care America Colorado LLC, Medical Care America LLC, Medical Care Financial Services Corp., Medical Care Real Estate Finance Inc., Medical Care Surgery Center Inc., Medical Center - West Inc., Medical Center Imaging Inc., Medical Center Surgery Associates L.P., Medical Center of Baton Rouge Inc., Medical Center of Plano Partner LLC, Medical Center of Port St. Lucie Inc., Medical Center of Santa Rosa Inc., Medical Center of Southwest Florida LLC, Medical Centers of Oklahoma LLC, Medical City Dallas Hospital Inc., Medical City Dallas Partner LLC, Medical City Dallas Primary Care PLLC, Medical City Frisco, Medical City OB-GYN PLLC, Medical City Pediatrics PLLC, Medical City Specialty Surgicenter of Dallas LLC, Medical City Surgery Center of Alliance LLC, Medical City Surgery Center of Frisco LLC, Medical City Surgery Center of Lewisville LLC, Medical City Transplant PLLC, Medical Corporation of America, Medical Group - Dickson Inc., Medical Group - Southern Hills of Brentwood LLC, Medical Group - Southern Hills of Nolensville LLC, Medical Group - StoneCrest FP Inc., Medical Group - StoneCrest Inc., Medical Group - Stonecrest Pulmonology LLC, Medical Group - Summit Inc., Medical Imaging Inc., Medical Imaging of Colorado LLC, Medical Office Buildings of Kansas LLC, Medical Oncology Associates LLC, Medical Partners of North Florida LLC, Medical Plaza Ambulatory Surgery Center Associates L.P., Medical Specialties Inc., Memorial Family Practice Associates LLC, Memorial Health Primary Care at St. Johns Bluff LLC, Memorial Healthcare Group Inc., Memorial Neurosurgery Group LLC, Memorial Satilla Specialists LLC, Memorial University Medical Center, Menorah Medical Group LLC, Menorah Urgent Care LLC, Mercy ASC LLC, Metairie Primary Care Associates LLC, Methodist Ambulatory Surgery Center of Boerne LLC, Methodist Ambulatory Surgery Center of Landmark LLC, Methodist Cardiology Physicians, Methodist CareNow Physician Associates, Methodist CareNow Urgent Care PLLC, Methodist Healthcare System of San Antonio Ltd. L.L.P., Methodist Inpatient Management Group, Methodist Medical Center ASC L.P., Methodist Physician Alliance, Methodist Physician Practice Services LLC, Methodist Physician Practices PLLC, Metroplex Surgicenters Inc., Metropolitan Multispecialty Physicians Group Inc., Miami Beach EFL Imaging Center LLC, Miami Beach Healthcare Group Ltd., Miami Dade Surgical Specialists LLC, Miami Lakes Surgery Center Ltd., Miami-Dade Cardiology Consultants LLC, Michael Mann M.D. PLLC, Mid-America Surgery Center LLC, Mid-America Surgery Institute LLC, Mid-Cities Surgi-Center Inc., Mid-Continent Health Services Inc., MidAmerica Division Inc., MidAmerica Oncology LLC, Middle Georgia Hospital LLC, Middle Georgia Urgent Care Services LLC, Middle Tennessee Neurology LLC, Midtown Diagnostics LLC, Midwest Cardiology Specialists LLC, Midwest Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery LLC, Midwest Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeons of Kansas LLC, Midwest Division - ACH LLC, Midwest Division - CMC LLC, Midwest Division - LRHC LLC, Midwest Division - LSH LLC, Midwest Division - MCI LLC, Midwest Division - MMC LLC, Midwest Division - OPRMC LLC, Midwest Division - RBH LLC, Midwest Division - RMC LLC, Midwest Division Spine Care LLC, Midwest Doctors Group LLC, Midwest Heart & Vascular Specialists LLC, Midwest Holdings Inc., Midwest Infectious Disease Specialists LLC, Midwest Medicine Associates LLC, Midwest Metropolitan Physicians Group LLC, Midwest Oncology Associates LLC, Midwest Trauma Services LLC, Midwest Womens Healthcare Specialists LLC, Mikrod Services Inc., Mill Creek Outpatient Services LLC, Millenium Health Care of Oklahoma Inc., Mission Bay Memorial Hospital Inc., Mission Community Anesthesiology Specialists LLC, Mission Employer Solutions LLC, Mission Health, Mission Health Partners Inc., Missouri Healthcare System L.P., Mobile Corps. Inc., Mobile Heartbeat, Mobile Heartbeat LLC, Montgomery Cancer Center LLC, Montgomery Hospitalists LLC, Montgomery Regional Hospital Inc., Montgomery Surgery Associates LLC, Mountain Division - CVH LLC, Mountain Division Inc., Mountain View Hospital Inc., Mountain View MRI Associates Ltd., Mountain West Surgery Center LLC, MountainStar Behavioral Health LLC, MountainStar Brigham General Surgery LLC, MountainStar Canyon Surgical Clinic LLC, MountainStar Cardiology Ogden Regional LLC, MountainStar Cardiology St. Marks LLC, MountainStar Intensivist Services LLC, MountainStar Medical Group - Cache Valley LLC, MountainStar Medical Group - Ogden Regional Medical Center LLC, MountainStar Medical Group - St. Marks Hospital LLC, MountainStar Medical Group Neurosurgery-St. Marks LLC, MountainStar Medical Group Timpanogos Primary Care LLC, MountainStar Medical Group Timpanogos Specialty Care LLC, MountainStar Specialty Services LLC, MountainStar Urgent Care LLC, MountainView GME Primary Care LLC, Mountainstar Brigham OBGYN LLC, Mountainstar Cardiovascular Services LLC, Mountainstar Ogden Pediatrics LLC, Movement Disorders of North Texas PLLC, Mt. Ogden Utah Surgical Center LLC, NPAS Inc., NPAS Solutions LLC, NT Urgent Care PLLC, NTGP LLC, NTMC Management Company, NTMC Venture Inc., NTX Pathology Program PLLC, Nashville Psychiatric Company Inc., Nashville Shared Services General Partnership, Nashville Surgicenter LLC, Natchez Medical Associates LLC, Natchez Surgery Center LLC, National Association of Senior Friends, National Contact Center Management Group LLC, National Patient Account Services Inc., National Transfer Center Management Services LLC, Navarro Memorial Hospital Inc., NeighborMD Management LLC, Network MS of Florida Inc., Network Management Services Inc., Neuro Affiliates Company, Neuro-Hospitalist of Clear Lake PLLC, NeuroHospitalist of McAllen PLLC, Neurological Eye Specialists of North Texas PLLC, Neurological Specialists PLLC, Neurological Specialists of McKinney PLLC, Neurology Associates of Hendersonville LLC, Neurology Associates of Kansas LLC, Neurosurgery Atlanta LLC, Neurosurgery of Kingwood PLLC, Neurosurgical Associates of North Texas PLLC, Neurosurgical Specialists of El Paso PLLC, Neurosurgical Specialists of North Texas PLLC, Nevada Surgery Center of Southern Hills L.P., Nevada Surgicare of Southern Hills LLC, Nevada Urgent Care Holdings Inc., New Iberia Healthcare LLC, New Iberia Holdings Inc., New Port Richey Hospital Inc., New Port Richey Surgery Center Ltd., New Rose Holding Company Inc., Niceville Family Practice LLC, North Augusta Imaging Management LLC, North Augusta Imaging Services LLC, North Augusta Rehab Health Center LLC, North Austin Plastic Surgery Associates PLLC, North Austin Surgery Center L.P., North Brandon Imaging LLC, North Central Florida Health System Inc., North Central Methodist ASC L.P., North Charleston Diagnostic Imaging Center LLC, North Florida Cancer Center Lake City LLC, North Florida Cancer Center Live Oak LLC, North Florida Cancer Center Tallahassee LLC, North Florida Division I Inc., North Florida Division Practice Inc., North Florida GI Center GP Inc., North Florida GI Center Ltd., North Florida Immediate Care Center Inc., North Florida Neurosurgery LLC, North Florida Outpatient Imaging Center Ltd., North Florida Physician Services Inc., North Florida Physicians LLC, North Florida Radiation Oncology LLC, North Florida Regional Company Care LLC, North Florida Regional Freestanding Surgery Center L.P., North Florida Regional Investments Inc., North Florida Regional Medical Center Inc., North Florida Regional Psychiatry LLC, North Florida Regional Trauma LLC, North Florida Rehab Investments LLC, North Florida Surgical Associates LLC, North Georgia Primary Care Group LLC, North Hills Cardiac Catheterization Center L.P., North Hills Catheterization Lab LLC, North Hills Orthopaedic Surgeons PLLC, North Hills Surgicare L.P., North Houston - TRMC LLC, North Miami Beach Surgery Center Limited Partnership, North Miami Beach Surgical Center LLC, North Palm Beach County Surgery Center LLC, North River Physician Network LLC, North Shore Specialists of Texas PLLC, North Suburban Spine Center L.P., North Tampa Imaging LLC, North Texas - MCA LLC, North Texas Cardiology PLLC, North Texas Craniofacial Fellowship Program PLLC, North Texas Division Inc., North Texas General L.P., North Texas Geriatrics PLLC, North Texas Heart Surgery Center PLLC, North Texas Internal Medicine Specialists PLLC, North Texas Medical Center Inc., North Texas Neuro Stroke OP PLLC, North Texas Pulmonary Critical Care PLLC, North Texas Sports and Orthopedics Center PLLC, North Texas Stroke Center PLLC, North Texas of Hope PLLC, North Transfer Center LLC, Northeast Florida Cancer Services LLC, Northeast Methodist Surgicare Ltd., Northeast PHO Inc., Northern Utah Healthcare Corporation, Northern Utah Healthcare Imaging Holdco LLC, Northern Utah Imaging LLC, Northern Virginia CareNow Urgent Care LLC, Northern Virginia Community Hospital LLC, Northern Virginia Hospital Corporation, Northern Virginia Surgicenter LLC, Northlake Medical Center LLC, Northlake Physician Practice Network Inc., Northlake Surgical Center L.P., Northlake Surgicare Inc., Northside MRI Inc., Northwest Fla. Home Health Agency Inc., Northwest Florida Healthcare Systems Inc., Northwest Florida Multispecialty Physicians LLC, Northwest Florida Primary Care LLC, Northwest Medical Center Inc., Notami (Opelousas) Inc., Notami Hospitals LLC, Notami Hospitals of Florida Inc., Notami Hospitals of Louisiana Inc., Notami Hospitals of Missouri Inc., Notami LLC, Notco LLC, Nuclear Diagnosis Inc., OB Hospitalists of Womans Hospital PLLC, OB/GYN of Brownsville PLLC, OB/Gyn Associates of Denton PLLC, OBS Diagnostic and Treatment Centre LLP, ODP Holdings LLC, ODP Manager LLC, ODP Properties LLC, OHH Imaging Services LLC, OPRMC-HBP LLC, Oak Hill Acquisition Inc., Oak Hill Family Care LLC, Oak Hill Hospitalists LLC, Oakwood Surgery Center Ltd. LLP, Ocala Health Company Care LLC, Ocala Health Imaging Services LLC, Ocala Health Primary Care LLC, Ocala Health Surgical Group LLC, Ocala Health Trauma LLC, Ocala Regional Outpatient Services Inc., Ocala Stereotactic Radiosurgery LLC, Ocala Stereotactic Radiosurgery Partner LLC, Occupational Health Services of PRH LLC, Occupational and Family Medicine of South Texas, Ogden Imaging LLC, Ogden Internal Medicine & Urology LLC, Ogden Regional Health Plan Inc., Ogden Regional Medical Center Professional Billing LLC, Ogden Senior Center LLC, Ogden Tomotherapy LLC, Ogden Tomotherapy Manager LLC, Okaloosa Hospital Inc., Okeechobee Hospital Inc., Oklahoma Holding Company LLC, Oklahoma Outpatient Surgery Limited Partnership, Oklahoma Physicians - Medical Specialties LLC, Oklahoma Physicians - Obstetrics and Gynecology LLC, Oklahoma Physicians - Primary Care LLC, Oklahoma Physicians - Surgical Specialties LLC, Oklahoma Surgicare Inc., Old Fort Village LLC, On-Site Primary Care PLLC, Oncology Services of Corpus Christi LLC, Oncology Services of Corpus Christi Manager LLC, OneSourceMed Inc., Online Pathology Services Limited, Orange County Healthcare LLC, Orange Park Hospitalists LLC, Orange Park Medical Center Inc., Orlando CareNow Urgent Care LLC, Orlando Outpatient Surgical Center Inc., Orlando Outpatient Surgical Center Ltd., Orlando Surgicare Ltd., Orthopaedic Specialty Associates L.P., Orthopaedic Sports Specialty Associates Inc., Orthopedic Hospital Ltd., Orthopedics Specialists LLC, Osceola Neurological Associates LLC, Osceola Physician Network LLC, Osceola Regional Hospital Inc., Osceola Regional Hospitalists LLC, Osceola Surgical Associates LLC, Outpatient Cardiovascular Center of Central Florida LLC, Outpatient GP LLC, Outpatient Services - LAD LLC, Outpatient Services Holdings Inc., Outpatient Surgical Services Ltd., Outpatient Womens and Childrens Surgery Center Ltd., Overland Park Cardiovascular Inc., Overland Park Medical Specialists LLC, Overland Park Orthopedics LLC, Overland Park Surgical Specialties LLC, Oviedo Medical Center LLC, Ozarks Medical Services Inc., P&L Associates, P/SL Hyperbaric Partnership, PET CT LLP, PMM Inc., POH Holdings LLC, PSG Delegated Services LLC, PTS Solutions LLC, Pacific Partners Management Services Inc., Palm Beach EFL Imaging Center LLC, Palm Beach General Surgery LLC, Palm Beach Healthcare System Inc., Palm Beach Hospitalists Program LLC, Palmer Medical Center LLC, Palms West Gastroenterology LLC, Palms West Hospital Limited Partnership, Palms West Surgery Center Ltd., Paragon Physicians Hospital Organization of South Texas Inc., Paragon SDS Inc., Paragon Surgery Centers of Texas Inc., Paragon WSC Inc., Paragon of Texas Health Properties Inc., Parallon Business Solutions LLC, Parallon Enterprises LLC, Parallon Health Information Solutions LLC, Parallon Holdings LLC, Parallon Payroll Solutions LLC, Parallon Physician Services LLC, Parallon Revenue Cycle Services Inc., Park Central Surgical Center Ltd., Park Ridge Surgery Center LLC, Park South Imaging Center Ltd., Park View Insurance Company, Parkersburg SJ Holdings Inc., Parkland Hospitalists Program LLC, Parkland Oncology LLC, Parkland Physician Services Inc., Parkridge East Specialty Associates LLC, Parkridge Hospitalists Inc., Parkridge Medical Associates LLC, Parkridge Medical Center Inc., Parkridge Professionals Inc., Parkside Surgery Center Inc., Parkway Cardiac Center Ltd., Parkway Hospital Inc., Parkway Surgery Services Ltd., Parthenon Insurance Company Limited, Pasadena Bayshore Hospital Inc., PatientKeeper, PatientKeeper Inc., Patients First Neurology LLC, Pavilion 2 Condominium Property LLC, Pavilion 2 Medical Office Building Condominium Association Inc., Pavilion Surgicenter LLC, Peach State Anesthesia Partners LLC, Pearland Institute for Womens Health PLLC, Pearland Partner LLC, Pediatric Anesthesia Consultants of San Antonio PLLC, Pediatric Cardiac Intensivists of North Texas PLLC, Pediatric Critical Care of Clear Lake PLLC, Pediatric Hospitalists of Conroe PLLC, Pediatric Intensivist Group LLC, Pediatric Intensivists of El Paso PLLC, Pediatric Intensivists of North Texas PLLC, Pediatric Specialists of Clear Lake PLLC, Pediatric Specialty Clinic LLC, Pediatric Surgicare Inc., Pediatrics of Greater Houston PLLC, Pensacola Primary Care Inc., Physician Associates of Corporate Woods LLC, Physicians Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Physicians West Surgicenter LLC, Pinellas Medical LLC, Pinnacle Physician Network LLC, Pioneer Medical LLC, Plains Healthcare System Inc., Plano Ambulatory Surgery Associates L.P., Plano Heart Institute L.P., Plano Heart Management LLC, Plano Surgery Center - GP LLC, Plano Surgery Center Real Estate LLC, Plano Surgicenter Real Estate Manager LLC, Plano Urology PLLC, Plantation General Hospital L.P., Plaza Medical Specialists PLLC, Plaza Primary Care PLLC, Plaza Transplant Center PLLC, Podiatry of Clear Lake PLLC, Poinciana Medical Center Inc., Port St. Lucie Surgery Center Ltd., Portland Primary Care LLC, Portsmouth Regional Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Portsmouth Surgicenter LLC, Preferred Hospitals Inc., Preferred Works WC LLC, Premier ASC LLC, Premier Medical Management Ltd., Primary Care Medical Associates Inc., Primary Care Plano PLLC, Primary Care Services of Orlando LLC, Primary Care South PLLC, Primary Care West PLLC, Primary Care of West End LLC, Primary Health Asset Holdings Ltd., Primary Health Group Inc., Primary Health Inc., Primary Health Network of South Texas, Primary Health Physicians PLLC, Primary Medical Management Inc., Proaxis Therapy HealthOne LLC, Provident Professional Building Condominium Association Inc., Psychiatry Services of Osceola LLC, Pulaski Community Hospital Inc., Pulaski Urology LLC, Pulmonary Renal Intensivist Group LLC, Putnam Community Medical Center of North Florida LLC, Putnam Hospital Inc., Putnam Radiation Oncology LLC, Putnam Radiation Oncology Manager LLC, Putnam Surgical Group LLC, Quantum/Bellaire Imaging Ltd., Quick Care Centers LLC, Quivira Internal Medicine Inc., RCH LLC, RMC - Pulmonary LLC, RMC Transplant Physicians LLC, RMCA Professionals Mgmt LLC, ROi CPS LLC, Radford Family Medicine LLC, Radiation Oncology Center of Thornton LLC, Radiation Oncology Manager LLC, Raleigh Community Medical Office Building Ltd., Rapides After Hours Clinic L.L.C., Rapides Healthcare System L.L.C., Rapides Regional Physician Group LLC, Rapides Regional Physician Group Primary Care LLC, Rapides Regional Physician Group Specialty Care LLC, Rapides Surgery Center LLC, Raulerson GYN LLC, Raulerson Gastroenterology LLC, Raulerson Primary Care LLC, Raymore Medical Group LLC, Red Rock Holdco LLC, Red Rock at Smoke Ranch LLC, Red Rocks Surgery Center LLC, Redmond Anesthesia Services LLC, Redmond Hospital Services LLC, Redmond Neurosurgery LLC, Redmond Park Health Services Inc., Redmond Park Hospital LLC, Redmond Physician Practice Company, Redmond Specialty Services LLC, Regional Hospital Healthcare Partners LLC, Research Cardiology Associates LLC, Research Family Physicians LLC, Research Internal Medicine LLC, Research Neurology Associates LLC, Research Neuroscience Institute LLC, Resource Optimization & Innovation L.L.C., Reston Hospital Center LLC, Reston Hospitalists LLC, Reston Surgery Center L.P., Retreat Cardiology LLC, Retreat Hospital LLC, Retreat Internal Medicine LLC, Retreat Surgical Associates LLC, Rhodes Limited-Liability Company, Richmond Imaging Employer Corp., Richmond Multi-Specialty LLC, Richmond Pediatric Surgeons LLC, Ridgeline Surgicenter LLC, Rim Building Partners L.P., Rio Grande Healthcare MSO Inc., Rio Grande NP Inc., Rio Grande Regional Hospital Inc., Rio Grande Valley Cardiology PLLC, Rio Grande Valley CareNow Urgent Care PLLC, Rio Grande Valley Urology PLLC, Riverside CyberKnife Manager LLC, Riverside Healthcare System L.P., Riverside Holdings Inc., Riverside Hospital Inc., Riverside Imaging LLC, Riverwalk ASC LLC, Roanoke Imaging LLC, Roanoke Neurosurgery LLC, Roanoke Surgery Center L.P., Roanoke Valley Gynecology LLC, Robotic Radiosurgery LLP, Rocky Mountain Pediatric Hematology Oncology LLC, Rocky Mountain Surgery Center LLC, Rome Imaging Center Limited Partnership, Roodlane Medical Limited, Rose Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Rose Health Partners LLC, Rose Medical Plaza Ltd., Rose POB Inc., Rosewood Medical Center Inc., Rosewood Professional Building Ltd., Round Rock Hospital Inc., Round Rock Trauma Surgeons PLLC, Royal Oaks Surgery Center L.P., S.A. Medical Center Inc., SAPN LLC, SCRI Global Services Limited, SCRI Holdings LLC, SCRI Scientifics LLC, SJMC LLC, SSHR Holdco LLC, SSJ St. Petersburg Holdings Inc., STPN Manager LLC, SWMC Inc., Sahara Outpatient Surgery Center Ltd., Salem Hospitalists LLC, Salem Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Salt Lake City Surgicare Inc., Samaritan LLC, San Antonio Division Inc., San Antonio Regional Hospital Inc., San Antonio Surgicenter LLC, San Bernardino Imaging LLC, San Joaquin Surgical Center Inc., San Jose Healthcare System LP, San Jose Hospital L.P., San Jose LLC, San Jose Medical Center LLC, San Jose Pathology Outreach LLC, San Marcos ASC LLC, San Marcos Surgicenter LLC, Sante Fe Family Practitioners PLLC, Sarah Cannon Development Innovations LLC, Sarah Cannon Research Institute LLC, Sarah Cannon Research Institute UK Limited, Sarasota Doctors Hospital Inc., Savannah Behavioral Health Associates LLC, Savannah Health Network LLC, Savannah Health Services LLC, Savannah Inpatient Services LLC, Savannah Multispecialty Associates LLC, Savannah Pediatric Care LLC, Savannah Primary Care Associates LLC, Sebring Health Services LLC, Selma Medical Center Hospital Inc., Senior Health Associates LLC, Short Pump Imaging LLC, Silicon Valley Health Holdings LLC, Silicon Valley Surgery Center L.P., Silicon Valley Surgicenter LLC, Sky Ridge Spine Manager LLC, Sky Ridge Surgery Center L.P., Skyline Medical Group LLC, Skyline Neuroscience Associates LLC, Skyline Rehab Associates LLC, Skyline Specialty Associates LLC, Smith Laboratories Inc., Solis Mammography at Bayshore Medical Center LLC, Solis Mammography at Clear Lake Regional Medical Center LLC, Solis Mammography at Conroe Regional Medical Center LLC, Solis Mammography at Denton Regional Medical Center LLC, Solis Mammography at HCA Houston Tomball LLC, Solis Mammography at Kingwood Medical Center LLC, Solis Mammography at Las Colinas Medical Center LLC, Solis Mammography at Medical Center Alliance LLC, Solis Mammography at Medical Center Arlington LLC, Solis Mammography at Medical Center of Lewisville LLC, Solis Mammography at Medical Center of McKinney LLC, Solis Mammography at Medical Center of Plano LLC, Solis Mammography at Medical City Dallas LLC, Solis Mammography at Pearland Medical Center LLC, Solis Mammography at Rose Medical Center LLC, Solis Mammography at Skyline Medical Center LLC, Solis Mammography at StoneCrest Medical Center LLC, Solis Mammography at West Houston Medical Center LLC, Solis Mammography at Womans Hospital of Texas LLC, Solis Mammography of Cedar Hill LLC, Solis Mammography of CyFair LLC, Solis Mammography of Dallas LLC, Solis Mammography of Flower Mound LLC, Solis Mammography of Frisco LLC, Solis Mammography of Garland LLC, Solis Mammography of Grand Prairie LLC, Solis Mammography of Houston NW LLC, Solis Mammography of Katy LLC, Solis Mammography of Louetta/249 LLC, Solis Mammography of Mainland LLC, Solis Mammography of Mansfield LLC, Solis Mammography of Mesquite LLC, Solis Mammography of Montgomery LLC, Solis Mammography of North Cypress LLC, Solis Mammography of North Loop LLC, Solis Mammography of Sugar Land LLC, Solis Mammography of West Plano LLC, Solis Mammography of Womans Place LLC, South Atlantic Division Inc., South Austin Surgery Center Ltd., South Austin Surgical Management LLC, South Austin Surgicenter LLC, South Brandon Imaging LLC, South Florida Division Practice Inc., South Texas Surgicare Inc., South Transfer Center LLC, South Valley Hospital L.P., Southeast Georgia Health Services LLC, Southern Hills Medical Center LLC, Southern Hills Neurology Consultants LLC, Southern Kentucky Medicine Associates LLC, Southern Kentucky Surgicenter LLC, Southern Texas Physicians Network, Southpoint LLC, Southtown Womens Clinic LLC, Southwest Florida Health System Inc., Southwest Florida Regional Medical Center Inc., Southwest Medical Center Family Practice LLC, Southwest Medical Center Multi-Specialty Group LLC, Southwest Medical Center Surgical Group LLC, Southwest Medpro Ltd., Southwest Surgical Clinic Inc., Southwest Virginia Orthopedics and Spine LLC, Spalding Rehabilitation L.L.C., Specialists in Obstetrics and Gynecology PLLC, Specialty Associates of West Houston PLLC, Specialty Physicians of Northern Virginia LLC, Specialty Surgicare of Las Vegas LP, Spotsylvania Condominium Property LLC, Spotsylvania Medical Center Inc., Spotsylvania Multi-Specialty Group LLC, Spotsylvania Regional Surgery Center LLC, Spring Branch Family Practitioners PLLC, Spring Branch Medical Center Inc., Spring Hill Hospital Inc., Spring Hill Imaging LLC, Spring Hill Physicians LLC, Springview KY LLC, Spruce Pine Healthcare LLC, St. Davids Austin Area ASC LLC, St. Davids Cardiology PLLC, St. Davids CareNow Urgent Care PLLC, St. Davids Healthcare Partnership L.P. LLP, St. Davids Heart & Vascular PLLC, St. Davids Neurology PLLC, St. Davids OB Hospitalist PLLC, St. Davids Ortho Neuro and Rehab PLLC, St. Davids Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation PLLC, St. Davids Quality Alliance LLC, St. Davids Specialized Womens Services PLLC, St. Davids Trauma Surgeons PLLC, St. Lucie Hospitalists LLC, St. Lucie Medical Center Hyperbarics LLC, St. Lucie Medical Center Walk-In Clinic LLC, St. Lucie Medical Specialists LLC, St. Lucie West Primary Care LLC, St. Marks Ambulatory Surgery Associates L.P., St. Marks Gynecology Oncology Care LLC, St. Marks Investments Inc., St. Marks Physician Billing LLC, St. Marks Professional Services LLC, St. Marks South Jordan Family Practice LLC, St. Martins Healthcare Limited, St. Martins Ltd., St. Martins Medical Services Limited, St. Petersburg General Surgery LLC, Stafford Imaging LLC, Statland Medical Group LLC, Steamboat Springs Surgicenter LLC, Sterling Primary Care Associates LLC, Stiles Road Imaging LLC, StoneCrest Surgery Center LLC, StoneSprings Medical Office Building Property LLC, StoneSprings Surgicenter LLC, Stonecrest Medical Group - Family Practice of Murfreesboro LLC, Stonecrest Medical Group - SC Murfreesboro Family Practice LLC, Stones River Hospital LLC, Suburban Medical Center at Hoffman Estates Inc., Sugar Land Surgery Center Anesthesia LLC, Sugar Land Surgery Center Ltd., Sullins Surgical Center Inc., Summit Convenient Care at Lebanon LLC, Summit General Partner Inc., Summit Heart LLC, Summit Outpatient Diagnostic Center LLC, Summit Research Solutions LLC, Summit Surgery Center L.P., Summit Surgical Associates LLC, Summit Walk-in Clinic LLC, Sun Bay Medical Office Building Inc., Sun City Hospital Inc., Sun City Imaging LLC, Sun Towers/Vista Hills Holding Co., Sun-Med LLC, Sunrise Flamingo Holdings LLC, Sunrise Flamingo Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center LLC, Sunrise Mountainview Hospital Inc., Sunrise Mountainview Multi-Specialty Clinics LLC, Sunrise Outpatient Services Inc., Sunrise Physician Services LLC, Sunrise Trauma Services LLC, Surgery Associates of NTX PLLC, Surgery Center of Atlantis LLC, Surgery Center of Aventura Ltd., Surgery Center of Bay Area Houston LLC, Surgery Center of Greenview L.P., Surgery Center of Independence L.P., Surgery Center of Overland Park L.P., Surgery Center of Port Charlotte Ltd., Surgery Center of Rome L.P., Surgery Center of the Rockies LLC, Surgical Associates of Southwest Virginia LLC, Surgical Care Medical Group LLC, Surgical Center of Irving Inc., Surgical Facility of West Houston L.P., Surgical Park Center Ltd., Surgical Specialists of Clear Lake PLLC, Surgical Specialists of Conroe PLLC, Surgical Specialists of Corpus Christi PLLC, Surgicare America - Winter Park Inc., Surgicare Merger Company of Louisiana, Surgicare Outpatient Center of Baton Rouge Inc., Surgicare Outpatient Center of Jackson Inc., Surgicare of ADC LLC, Surgicare of AGI LLC, Surgicare of Alpine LLC, Surgicare of Altamonte Springs Inc., Surgicare of Anchorage LLC, Surgicare of Arapahoe LLC, Surgicare of Arlington LLC, Surgicare of Ashburn LLC, Surgicare of Augusta Inc., Surgicare of Aurora Endoscopy LLC, Surgicare of Aventura LLC, Surgicare of Bay Area Endoscopy LLC, Surgicare of Bay Area LLC, Surgicare of Bayonet Point Inc., Surgicare of Bayside LLC, Surgicare of Bountiful LLC, Surgicare of Brandon Inc., Surgicare of Brentwood LLC, Surgicare of Brighton LLC, Surgicare of Brooksville LLC, Surgicare of Brownsville LLC, Surgicare of Buckhead LLC, Surgicare of CAREOS LLC, Surgicare of Central Florida Inc., Surgicare of Central Park Surgery Center LLC, Surgicare of Central San Antonio Inc., Surgicare of Chattanooga LLC, Surgicare of Chippenham LLC, Surgicare of Citrus LLC, Surgicare of Clarksville LLC, Surgicare of Corpus Christi LLC, Surgicare of Countryside Inc., Surgicare of Dallas Specialty LLC, Surgicare of Denton Inc., Surgicare of Denver Clinic LLC, Surgicare of Denver LLC, Surgicare of Denver Mid-Town Inc., Surgicare of Dickson LLC, Surgicare of Eastside LLC, Surgicare of Evans Inc., Surgicare of Fairfax Inc., Surgicare of Florida Inc., Surgicare of Flower Mound Inc., Surgicare of Focus Hand LLC, Surgicare of Fort Worth Co-GP LLC, Surgicare of Fort Worth Inc., Surgicare of Ft. Pierce Inc., Surgicare of Good Samaritan LLC, Surgicare of Gramercy Inc., Surgicare of Greenview Inc., Surgicare of Hanover Inc., Surgicare of Houston Kingwood LLC, Surgicare of Houston LLC, Surgicare of Houston Womens Inc., Surgicare of Indianapolis Inc., Surgicare of Kansas City LLC, Surgicare of Kingwood LLC, Surgicare of Kissimmee Inc., Surgicare of Lakeview Inc., Surgicare of Las Vegas Inc., Surgicare of Laurel Grove LLC, Surgicare of Lorain County Inc., Surgicare of Los Gatos Inc., Surgicare of Los Robles LLC, Surgicare of Loveland LLC, Surgicare of Madison Inc., Surgicare of Manatee Inc., Surgicare of McKinney Inc., Surgicare of Medical City Dallas LLC, Surgicare of Memorial Endoscopy LLC, Surgicare of Merritt Island Inc., Surgicare of Miami Lakes LLC, Surgicare of Mountain West LLC, Surgicare of Mt. Ogden LLC, Surgicare of Nashville LLC, Surgicare of Natchez LLC, Surgicare of Newport Richey Inc., Surgicare of North Austin LLC, Surgicare of North San Antonio Inc., Surgicare of Northeast San Antonio Inc., Surgicare of Orange Park II LLC, Surgicare of Orange Park Inc., Surgicare of Orange Park Ltd., Surgicare of Orlando Inc., Surgicare of Overland Park LLC, Surgicare of Palms West LLC, Surgicare of Park Ridge LLC, Surgicare of Pasadena Inc., Surgicare of Pavilion LLC, Surgicare of Physicians West El Paso LLC, Surgicare of Pinellas Inc., Surgicare of Plano Inc., Surgicare of Plantation Inc., Surgicare of Port Charlotte LLC, Surgicare of Port St. Lucie Inc., Surgicare of Portsmouth LLC, Surgicare of Premier Orthopaedic LLC, Surgicare of Reston Inc., Surgicare of Ridgeline LLC, Surgicare of Riverside LLC, Surgicare of Riverwalk LLC, Surgicare of Roanoke LLC, Surgicare of Rome Inc., Surgicare of Rose LLC, Surgicare of Round Rock Inc., Surgicare of Royal Oaks LLC, Surgicare of Silicon Valley LLC, Surgicare of Sky Ridge LLC, Surgicare of Sky Ridge Womens Center LLC, Surgicare of South Austin Inc., Surgicare of Southeast Denver Inc., Surgicare of Southern Hills Inc., Surgicare of Southern Kentucky LLC, Surgicare of Southwest Houston LLC, Surgicare of Spotsylvania LLC, Surgicare of St. Andrews Inc., Surgicare of St. Andrews Ltd., Surgicare of St. Davids Austin LLC, Surgicare of Steamboat Springs LLC, Surgicare of StoneCrest LLC, Surgicare of StoneSprings LLC, Surgicare of Stuart Inc., Surgicare of Sugar Land Inc., Surgicare of Swedish LLC, Surgicare of Tallahassee Inc., Surgicare of Terre Haute LLC, Surgicare of Thornton LLC, Surgicare of Travis Center Inc., Surgicare of Tulsa Inc., Surgicare of Utah LLC, Surgicare of Wasatch Front LLC, Surgicare of West Hills Inc., Surgicare of Westlake Inc., Surgicare of Wichita Inc., Surgicare of Wichita LLC, Surgicare of Willis LLC, Surgicare of Wilson County LLC, Surgicare of Winchester LLC, Surgicenter of East Jefferson Inc., Surgicenter of Johnson County Ltd. a Kansas limited partnership, Surgicenter of Kansas City L.L.C., Surgico LLC, Swedish MOB Acquisition Inc., Swedish MOB I Ltd., Swedish MOB II Inc., Swedish MOB III Inc., Swedish MOB IV Inc., Swedish MOB LLC, Swedish Medpro Inc., TBHI Outpatient Services LLC, TCMC Madison-Portland Inc., THN Physicians Association Inc., TUHC Anesthesiology Group LLC, TUHC Hospitalist Group LLC, TUHC Physician Group LLC, TUHC Primary Care and Pediatrics Group LLC, TUHC Radiology Group LLC, Tallahassee Community Network Inc., Tallahassee Medical Center Inc., Tallahassee Orthopaedic Surgery Partners Ltd., Tampa Bay Health System Inc., Tampa Surgi-Centre Inc., Tarrant County Surgery Center L.P., Tchefuncte Cardiology Associates - Lakeview LLC, Teays Valley Health Services LLC, Telehealth Physician Services LLC, Tennessee Healthcare Management Inc., Tennessee Valley Outpatient Diagnostic Center LLC, Terre Haute Hospital GP Inc., Terre Haute Hospital Holdings Inc., Terre Haute MOB L.P., Terre Haute Obstetrics and Gynecology LLC, Terre Haute Regional Hospital L.P., Texas CareNow Physician Associates, Texas HSS LLC, Texas Institute of Medicine and Surgery, Texas Psychiatric Company Inc., The Austin Diagnostic Clinic PLLC, The Cancer Care Center of North Florida LLC, The Cardiovascular Partnership for Quality LLC, The Charter Cypress Behavioral Health System L.L.C., The Christie Clinic LLP, The Glynne Medical Practice Limited, The Harley Street Cancer Clinic Limited, The London Breast Institute UK Ltd, The Medical Group of Kansas City LLC, The Neurohealth Sciences Center LLC, The Physicians Clinic Limited, The Prostate Centre Limited, The Rankin Foundation, The Regional Health System of Acadiana LLC, The Wasatch Endoscopy Center Ltd., The West Texas Division of Columbia Inc., Timpanogos Pain Specialists LLC, Timpanogos Regional Medical Services Inc., Total Imaging - Hudson LLC, Total Imaging - North St. Petersburg LLC, Total Imaging - Parsons LLC, Town Plaza Family Practice LLC, Travel Medicine and Infections LLC, Travis Surgery Center L.P., Tri Cities Health Services Corp., Tri-City Multi-Specialty LLC, Tri-County Community Hospital Inc., Tri-County Surgical Specialists LLC, TriStar Bone Marrow Transplant LLC, TriStar Cardiovascular Surgery LLC, TriStar Family Care LLC, TriStar Gynecology Oncology LLC, TriStar Health System Inc., TriStar Joint Replacement Institute LLC, TriStar Maury Behavioral Healthcare LLC, TriStar Medical Group - Centennial Primary Care LLC, TriStar Medical Group - Legacy Health LLC, TriStar Medical Network LLC, TriStar OB/GYN LLC, TriStar Orthopedics LLC, TriStar Physicians LLC, TriStar Radiation Oncology LLC, Trident Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Trident Behavioral Health Services LLC, Trident Eye Surgery Center L.P., Trident Medical Center LLC, Trident Medical Services Inc., Trident Neonatology Services LLC, Tulane Clinic LLC, Tulane Professionals Management L.L.C., Tuscan Imaging Center at Las Colinas LLC, U.S. Collections Inc., Ultra Imaging Management Services LLC, Ultra Imaging of Tampa LLC, University Healthcare Specialists LLC, University Healthcare System L.C., University Hospital Ltd., Uptown Primary Care Associates LLC, Urgent Care Enterprise LLC, Urgent Care Extra - Ann & Simmons LLC, Urgent Care Extra - Cactus & Southern Highlands LLC, Urgent Care Extra - Charleston & Decatur LLC, Urgent Care Extra - Charleston/Sloan LLC, Urgent Care Extra - Craig & Clayton LLC, Urgent Care Extra - Craig & Decatur LLC, Urgent Care Extra - Durango & Cheyenne LLC, Urgent Care Extra - Durango & Flamingo LLC, Urgent Care Extra - Eastern & Horizon Ridge LLC, Urgent Care Extra - Rainbow/Mardon LLC, Urgent Care Extra - Warm Springs & Green Valley LLC, Urgent Care Extra Silverado & Maryland LLC, Urgent Care Extra-Tropicana & Jones LLC, Urgent Care Nevada LLC, Urological Specialists of Arlington PLLC, Urology Associates (London) Limited, Urology Center of North Georgia LLC, Urology Services of El Paso PLLC, Urology Specialists Devonshire LLP, Urology Specialists London LLP, Urology Specialists of Kingwood PLLC, Urology Specialists of Richmond LLC, Urology Surgery Center of Colorado LLC, Utah CareNow Urgent Care LLC, Utah Imaging GP LLC, Utah Medco LLC, Utah Surgery Center L.P., VH Holdco Inc., VH Holdings Inc., VHSC Plantation LLC, VIP Inc., Valify, Valify Inc., Value Health Holdings Inc., Value Health Management Inc., Vascular and Endovascular Specialists LLC, Venture Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Venture Medical Management LLC, Village Oaks Medical Center Inc., Virginia Care Partners ACO LLC, Virginia Gynecologic Oncology LLC, Virginia Hematology & Oncology Associates Inc., Virginia Hospitalists Inc., Virginia Psychiatric Company Inc., Virginia Quality Care Partners LLC, Vision Consulting Group LLC, Vision Holdings LLC, W & C Hospital Inc., WCP Properties LLC, WHG Medical LLC, WHMC Inc., WJHC LLC, Walterboro Community Hospital Inc., Warren County Ambulance Service LLC, Wasatch Front Surgery Center LLC, Washington Holdco LLC, Waterway Primary Care LLC, Weatherford Health Services LLC, Weatherford Mammography JV LLC, Weatherford Regional Medical Center, Welbeck Street Diagnostic Centre LLP, Wellington Diagnostic Services LLP, Wesley Cath Lab LLC, Wesley Manager LLC, Wesley Medical Center LLC, Wesley Physician Services LLC, Wesley Physicians - Anesthesiologist LLC, Wesley Physicians - Cardiovascular LLC, Wesley Physicians - Medical Specialties LLC, Wesley Physicians - Obstetrics and Gynecology LLC, Wesley Physicians - Primary Care LLC, Wesley Select Network LLC, Wesley Urgent Care LLC, West Boynton Beach Open Imaging Center LLC, West Creek Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, West Creek Medical Center Inc., West Florida - MHT LLC, West Florida - PPH LLC, West Florida Behavioral Health Inc., West Florida Cardiology Network LLC, West Florida Cardiology Physicians LLC, West Florida CareNow Urgent Care LLC, West Florida Division Inc., West Florida Gulf Coast Primary Care LLC, West Florida HealthWorks LLC, West Florida Imaging Services LLC, West Florida Internal Medicine LLC, West Florida PET Services LLC, West Florida Physician Network LLC, West Florida Professional Billing LLC, West Florida Regional Medical Center Inc., West Florida Specialty Physicians LLC, West Florida Trauma Network LLC, West Florida Urgent Care Network LLC, West Hills Hospital, West Hills Surgical Center Ltd., West Houston ASC Inc., West Houston Healthcare Group Ltd., West Houston Internal Specialists PLLC, West Houston LLC, West Houston Medical PLLC, West Houston Outpatient Medical Facility Inc., West Houston Surgicare Inc., West Jacksonville Medical Center Inc., West Jordan Hospital Corporation, West LPN Fort Worth Oncology PLLC, West LPN Inc., West Los Angeles Physicians Hospital Inc., West McKinney Imaging Services LLC, West Paces Services Inc., West Park Surgery Center L.P., West Valley Imaging LLC, West Valley Medical Center Inc., West Valley Medical Group LLC, West Valley Medical Group Specialty Services LLC, West Valley Therapy Services LLC, Westbury Hospital Inc., Western Plains Capital Inc., Westlake Surgicare L.P., Westminster Community Hospital, Westside Surgery Center Ltd., Wichita CareNow Urgent Care LLC, Wildwood Medical Center Inc., Willis Surgicenter LLC, Wilson County Outpatient Surgery Center L.P., Womans Health Group PLLC, Womans Hospital Merger LLC, Womans Hospital of Texas Incorporated, Women Practitioners of Houston PLLC, Women Specialists of Bayshore PLLC, Women Specialists of Clear Lake PLLC, Women Specialists of Mainland PLLC, Womens & Childrens Center LLC, Womens & Childrens Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Center LLC, Womens & Childrens Pulmonology Clinic LLC, Womens Center at Brookside LLC, Womens Health Center of Central Florida LLC, Womens Health Center of SWVA LLC, Womens Hospital Indianapolis GP Inc., Womens Hospital Indianapolis L.P., Womens Link Specialty Obstetrical Referral Clinic PLLC, Womens Multi-Specialty Group LLC, Womens Surgical Specialists of Texas PLLC, Womens and Childrens Professional Management L.L.C., Womens and Childrens Specialists LLC, hInsight-Airstrip Holdings LLC, hInsight-BMA Holdings LLC, hInsight-Customer Care Holdings LLC, hInsight-Digital Reasoning Holdings LLC, hInsight-Healthbox Holdings LLC, hInsight-I2 Holdings LLC, hInsight-InVivoLink Holdings LLC, hInsight-LS Holdings LLC, hInsight-Loyale Healthcare Holdings LLC, hInsight-Mobile Heartbeat Holdings LLC, hInsight-NX LLC, hInsight-PWS I Holdings LLC, hInsight-Procured Holdings LLC, and hInsight-VAI Holdings LLC.
Genesee & Wyoming Inc. owns and leases freight railroads. It operates through three segments: North American Operations, Australian Operations, and U.K./European Operations. The company transports various commodities, including agricultural products, autos and auto parts, chemicals and plastics, coal and coke, food and kindred products, lumber and forest products, metallic ores, metals, minerals and stone, petroleum products, pulp and paper, waste, and other commodities. It owns or leases 122 freight railroads, including 105 short line railroads and 2 regional freight railroads located in the United States, 8 short line railroads located in Canada, 3 railroads located in Australia, 1 railroad located in the United Kingdom, 1 railroad in Poland and Germany, and 2 railroads in the Netherlands with a total of approximately 16,200 miles of track. The company also operates 6,200 additional miles of track that is owned or leased by others. In addition, it operates deep sea maritime containers and provides bulk haulage, including coal, aggregates, cement, and infrastructure services. Further, the company provides rail service at approximately 40 ports; rail-ferry service in North America, Australia, and Europe; and contract coal loading and railcar switching for industrial customers. Genesee & Wyoming Inc. was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in Darien, Connecticut.

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Wall Street analysts have given iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

View MarketBeat's top stock picks here.
Madrid defends Rajoy expulsions in Strasbourg court Sanchez government moves ahead on previous appeal

(ANSAmed) - MADRID, AUGUST 13 - The socialist government of Pedro Sanchez has decided to move forward on the appeal made by the Popular government of former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy against the conviction for immediate expulsion at the Melilla border, which was decided by the European Court of Human Rights in 2014.



The news was reported by El Pais, citing the appeal by the Spanish Attorney General's Office.



The Spanish daily said the Justice Ministry has continued to insist this week that the government intends to end this type of repatriation, although it won't be by simply doing away with them but rather awaiting the judicial picture that emerges after the Strasbourg court's ruling, which is expected September 5.



The case convicted Spain in a lawsuit brought to the Court of Human Rights by various NGOs over the expulsion of two migrants - N.D., of Morocco; and N.T., of Mali - who entered the Spanish enclave of Melilla after having climbed the border wall there. They were arrested by Spanish Civil Guard agents and then immediately brought back to Moroccan territory. In October 2017, the Strasbourg court said that Spanish authorities violated the European Convention on Human Rights. It ruled that Spain must compensate the migrants with 5,000 euros each.(ANSAmed).




Wall Street analysts have given iShares Latin America 40 ETF a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but iShares Latin America 40 ETF wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

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Wall Street analysts have given iShares MSCI Thailand ETF a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but iShares MSCI Thailand ETF wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

View MarketBeat's top stock picks here.
Plans have been announced to invest up to 60,000 to improve understanding of a major crop disease in cereals.

The announcement follows the decision by the European Commission to ban outdoor use of neonicotinoid seed treatments, which include those used to protect cereal crops from barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV) infection by aphid vectors.

The latest research investment will deliver results during autumn 2019, as winter cereals without the option of a neonicotinoid seed treatment are being drilled.

In untreated crops, BYDV causes estimated average yield losses of 8 per cent in wheat and 2 per cent in barley. In most of the key cereal producing regions in the UK, the grain aphid is the main virus vector.

The exception is in the South West, where the bird cherryoat aphid is the main vector.

Charlotte Rowley, who manages pest research at AHDB said: Seed treatments affected by the ban will need to be used up by 19 December 2018. Alternative control measures will be needed next year.

Although full-rate pyrethroid sprays can provide effective control of aphids, they are becoming resistant.

At present, this is limited to moderate levels of resistance in grain aphids. But knowledge about BYDV risk needs to be improved, to make sure sprays are only ever used as a last resort, Ms Rowley said.

Essential research

Researchers are being asked to apply for the funding (by 17 September 2018) to review BYDV literature and collect new field data.

The request for new data is seen as essential, as very little research has been conducted in the UK this century.

The research will take account of recent changes to pest populations, resistance status, farming practices and cereal varieties.

The research will look at the potential to generate field-specific risk forecasts for BYDV in wheat, barley and oats. It will also update guidance to inform BYDV management strategies.

AHDB is also asking people to guide investment in pest monitoring services over the next five years by completing a short survey.
A farmer who died while feeding his livestock was likely trampled to death, police have said.

Sussex police were called to Pinstraw Farm in Groombridge, East Sussex, after the body of a man was found by his partner in field containing Aberdeen Angus cows, calves and a bull.

The farmer, named locally as 64-year-old Stephen Sandys, was announced dead on the scene at 22:30pm on Friday (10 August).

The alarm was raised when Mr Sandys failed to pick his wife Christine up from a railway station as planned.

A Sussex Police spokesman said: "After an initial search he was located and sadly pronounced dead at the scene.

"At this time we are not treating this as suspicious. It is believed he has been trampled by his own livestock."

Mrs Sandys said the bull was destroyed by the police.

Neighbour Brett Walker told the BBC that Mr Sandys had taken over the farm following the death of his father.

"He was a super guy, and never had a bad word to say about anybody," Mr Walker said.

The tragedy follows news of the Wales Farm Safety Partnership urging farmers to adopt safe cattle handling techniques in a bid to reduce the risks to life and limb.
The application of new technology has transformed dairy farms into smart farms, giving the dairy sector a much needed boost.

Smart farming technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), the use of data and robotics is enhancing productivity in farm management.

Such technologies can give dairy farms a comparative advantage by maximising output.

Global experts in smart farm technologies will share the usefulness of these techniques at the IDF World Dairy Summit in South Korea in October.

Dr Hen Honig of the Agricultural Research Organization, Volcani Centre, Israel, will examine the usefulness of bio-sensors in dairy farms.

Biosensors are useful in all aspects of dairy activities, including the monitoring of the physiological conditions of cows and their overall health, said Dr Honig.

There are many types of bio-sensors available in the market today, with exciting prospects for growth in the future.

The use of robotics in dairy farms for automatic milking and feeding systems will be discussed by Mr Timo Joosten of Leyly International, France.

Smart farming

Japanese dairy farmers are already benefiting from the IoT and cloud computing, which have been integrated into smart farming.

Mr Soichio Honda of Farm Note, Japan, will focus on ICT integration to advance automation and control processes.

And the use of big data for animal health and welfare will be addressed by Ms Marion Carrier of CybeleTech, France, with Dr Luis Tedeschi of Texas A & M University, USA, talking about modelling and precision farming.

As the integration between precision farming and computer modelling becomes a reality, the maximum profitability of a dairy farm is achieved by optimizing individual dairy cow performance to the point that animal welfare and productivity are embedded into decision-making support systems, said Dr Tedeschi.

Underscoring the importance of data integration in precision technologies in farming to increase efficiency, product quality and reduced environmental impact is Dr Laurence Shalloo of Teagasc, Ireland.

Solution-driven precision technologies can provide real benefits in profitability, sustainability and resilience through the provision of informed, real-time management solutions to the farmer, said Dr Shalloo.
This season has seen tonnes of soft fruit rotting on farms because of problems sourcing pickers, a farming union has warned.

According to NFU Scotland, the lack of workers has caused a "considerable loss" to individual businesses and the wider rural economy.

In response to this, farmers in Scotland are pressing Westminster on the need for a new Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS) for workers outside the European Economic Area to be introduced as soon as possible.

NFU Scotland has called for a SAWS pilot to be set up this year, with a full SAWS scheme available in Spring 2019.

A Brexit priority for the farming union is securing the significant numbers of permanent and seasonal non-UK staff needed to underpin Scotlands food and farming sectors.

'60 tonnes of strawberries'

Looking to break the deadlock on seasonal workers, Horticultural Chairman, James Porter, hosted a visit by the Minister of State for Immigration, Caroline Nokes MP at East Scryne near Carnoustie.

Local MP Kirstene Hair also attended along with Fife-based soft fruit and veg grower Tom Stockwell, Barnsmuir Farm, Crail.

And last month, NFU Scotland took a cross-party group of MPs from Westminsters influential Scottish Affairs Committee to visit West Jordanstone Farm at Alyth.

There, the Marshall family had already had to leave 60 tonnes of strawberries and raspberries to rot due to a lack of available staff to pick them.

Mr Porter said: We have repeatedly raised our concerns regarding the availability of seasonal and permanent labour in the agriculture and food processing industries with the Home Office.

There has been recognition by many politicians and several committees at Westminster of the issue but little action to date. I urge Government to trial a new SAWS scheme for workers from outside the EU now, and not wait for the Migration Advisory Committee to report in the autumn, as by that time it will be too late to have something in place for spring 2019. "

'Hundreds of thousands of pounds'

The Irish Government has already heeded its industrys concerns about labour shortages and implemented a trial scheme of this sort.

Mr Porter said that such a scheme seen in Ireland is needed "urgently" in the UK.

"Throughout this current season, we have had evidence from several growers that large amounts of crop have been lost due to a lack of labour available to pick," he said.

He said losses for farm businesses that have been impacted are running in to the hundreds of thousands of pounds.

While the soft fruit season is now well through, it is anticipated that the problem will continue if not worsen as the year continues," Mr Porter added.

"We have warned the Government that vegetable and blueberry growers will be short of workers again in the autumn, which will again lead to avoidable crop loss of much needed home-grown fruit and veg."

Despite being a relatively small part of Scottish agriculture, the soft fruit and field vegetable industries are extremely productive  generating more than 10 per cent of Scotlands annual agricultural output.

NFU Scotland said it is "simply unacceptable" that labour shortages are now "threatening the existence" of Scotlands horticultural industry.
The UK government has been urged to adopt a key change in Irish tax law to encourage the letting of land and boost agricultural productivity.

According to a review of the Irish land market by the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers (CAAV), a recent change to tax law has significantly boosted both the amount of land in the let sector and the average length of tenancy.

The Irish government introduced substantial increases in Income Tax relief from 2015 on the arms length letting of farmland for more than five years.

In the first year of the increased relief, the let land area rose by 50%, and the second-year figures from 2016 tax returns, published by the Irish Revenue just this month, show a continued impressive response.

Tax returns point to around 300,000 acres having been newly let in 2015 and 2016 on such terms, with the area let on five years and more increasing from 2% of Irish farmland in 2001 to 6% (c.660,000 acres) in 2016, explained Jeremy Moody, secretary and adviser to the CAAV.

As land management decisions frequently take time to implement, that is a striking initial response.

With the Irish let sector wound down a century ago, Irish landowners have since only used conacre seasonal agreements, which cover around 30% of the farmed area.

While some let land is coming from that conacre, some is also moving directly from in-hand farming, he added.

The area of conacre fell by 3% in 2015, 15% in 2016 and 28% in 2017, suggesting a progressive shift to longer term lettings as desired by the Irish government, as well as drawing more land into the let market, Mr Moody said.

Agricultural productivity

Tax figures show that the level of relief claimed increased from 9.2m (8.3m) in 2014 to 13.9m (12.5m) in 2015 and 19.4m (17.4m) in 2016.

He continued: With a 33% increase in the number of taxpayers claiming the relief in 2015, and another 24% increase in 2016, these measures have encouraged more landowners to become landlords.

One of the driving reasons behind the tax change was to improve agricultural productivity by moving farmed land into the hands of trained people, giving security for investment and improvement.

Based on a large econometric study, that was found to be two or three times as effective as moving land out the hands of the over-65s, resulting in a 12% gain in overall production, said Mr Moody.

Such a gain would be a major and necessary boost for farmings profitability and resilience.

With the British Government looking to boost agricultural productivity, the hard evidence from the Irish Revenue shows this tax relief is having rapid and long-term effects.

According to the CAAV, it demonstrates how tax relief can open up land occupation in the UK, providing important flexibility to handle the changes and challenges post-Brexit. The organisation has urged the government to follow in Ireland's footsteps.
Victims of a salmonella outbreak in the UK linked to German eggs will be awarded 275,000.

A total of 28 people fell ill with sickness and diarrhoea after eating at The Real China restaurant in Eastleigh, Hampshire, in July 2014.

The outbreak originated from an egg producer in Germany.

The compensation claim was handled by specialist health lawyers at Irwin Mitchell. The firm said its clients fell ill after dining at the restaurant between July 11 and July 24 in 2014.

As a result of their symptoms, many of those affected were forced to take time off work and seek medical treatment after developing symptoms including diarrhoea and vomiting, said the lawyers.

Irwin Mitchell said it transpired that the problems were linked to a wider national outbreak of salmonella. This led to Public Health England investigating after experts tested samples and understood that it could have been linked to a single source of eggs. The source was traced to Germany.

Irwin Mitchells legal experts secured a 275,000 settlement from the restaurants insurers for the 28 people affected.

Amandeep Dhillon, partner and head of Irwin Mitchells public health team, said: This case is just one of many we have seen where people have eaten out and fallen ill through no fault of their own.

"Food poisoning can have a huge impact on the lives of victims, and severe foodborne infections such as salmonella can leave them needing specialist treatment and requiring time off work.

Sadly, many of those we represent have also been left with lasting health problems from which they may never fully recover.

Whilst we are delighted to have secured our clients justice, our primary hope is that lessons have now been learned from this and other outbreaks so that the problems are avoided in the future. Food businesses, from takeaways to restaurants must always ensure that food hygiene and the safety of consumers is their key concern.

'Absolutely horrendous'

Among the victims represented by the firm was school teacher Sarah Wilkins, 47, from Hampshire, who developed food poisoning symptoms after eating at the restaurant.

She said: The illness was absolutely horrendous and it had a huge impact on my life. The symptoms were so severe that I had no choice but to go to the GP. I was asked to provide a stool sample, which proved positive for salmonella.

I needed a full week off work as a result of my symptoms and now, four years on, I still suffer from symptoms including occasional bloating, discomfort and other issues, which have been linked to my initial salmonella infection.

It is hard to believe just how much this illness has affected me, but following news of the settlement I am hoping to try and put all of this behind me. I only hope that steps have been taken to ensure that an outbreak like this never affects anyone else going forward.

The British Egg Industry Council (BEIC) says its Lion code of practice is the UKs most successful food safety scheme. More than 90 per cent of UK eggs are produced to British Lion standards and more than 150 billion British Lion eggs have been produced since its launch in 1998.

It says the Lion scheme has effectively eliminated salmonella from British Lion eggs. All eggs that carry the British Lion mark meet the stringent requirements of the British Lion code of practice, which ensures the highest standards of food safety, it says.

BEIC says the independently audited code contains strict food safety controls above and beyond EU and UK legislation, and covers more than 700 auditable points from salmonella vaccination to complete traceability of hens, eggs and feed.

In June this year eggs contaminated with salmonella were recalled by the authorities in a number of German states. According to information on a German Government-run site, a batch of organic eggs was found to have been infected with salmonella enteritidis. The recall affects 11 German states.

According to the German Government site, the salmonella contamination affected the states of Baden-Wurttemburg, Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. The infections were reportedly discovered during a routine testing procedure.

The infected organic eggs were stocked by several major German retailers, including Penny, Kaufland, Aldi Nord, Aldi Sued, Real, Lidl and Netto.

Salmonella contamination has been a recurring problem in egg imports to the United Kingdom.

'Recurring'

The British Egg Industry Council has welcomed the news, saying such safety scares are a recurring.

Andrew Joret, British Egg Industry Council Chairman said: While its good news that the victims of this outbreak have been awarded compensation, we hope it will encourage more caterers and consumers to look for the additional safety values of the Lion so it doesnt happen again.

The independently audited British Lion scheme ensures the highest standards of food safety and has effectively eliminated Salmonella from British Lion eggs.

Mr Joret added: In 2017 the Food Standards Agency confirmed that Lion eggs are the only ones that are safe to be consumed runny, or even raw, by everyone including vulnerable groups.

Food safety issues such as the fipronil scandal and fears about the effects of Brexit on cross-Channel trade are boosting demand for home-produced eggs for processing.
BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday that talks with Italy on managing migrants are not likely to be wrapped up quickly.

"The negotiations with Greece have gone very far forward, those with Italy will take a while," Merkel told a news conference in Berlin when asked about talks on push-backs at the border with Italy and Greece. "Obviously, if it were necessary, I would call the Premier (Giuseppe Conte)". Regarding a possible meeting with Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte, Merkel, however, said, "We're not yet at this point". In recent days, a similar accord with Spain was signed by the Spanish and German interior ministers, and went into effect on Saturday the 11th. Since the beginning of the negotiations on migrants, who already requested asylum in other countries and who Germany wants to send back to the border, it was clear that these are entrusted to the interior ministers, and in the event of difficulties, to the leaders of the executive branches.
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2020 was a year marked by hardships and challenges, but the Fauquier community has proven resilient. The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you for your continued support, wed like to offer all our subscribers -- new or returning --

4 WEEKS FREE DIGITAL AND PRINT ACCESS.

We understand the importance of working to keep our community strong and connected. As we move forward together into 2021, it will take commitment, communication, creativity, and a strong connection with those who are most affected by the stories we cover.

We are dedicated to providing the reliable, local journalism you have come to expect. We are committed to serving you with renewed energy and growing resources. Let the Fauquier Times be your community companion throughout 2021, and for many years to come.
I have done few films with @iamsonalibendre. Weve met socially many times in Mumbai. She always has been bright & a very warm person. But it is only in the last 15days that I got the opportunity to spend some quality time with her in NY. And I can easily say,She is my HERO. pic.twitter.com/z6iBe2s7fy  Anupam Kher (@AnupamPKher) August 12, 2018

Veteran actor Anupam Kher got the chance to spend some quality time with Sonali Bendre, who is currently undergoing metastatic cancer treatment in New York. The actor described Sonali as his hero after they met up on Saturday. He tweeted, I have done few films with Sonali Bendre. Weve met socially many times in Mumbai. She always has been bright and a very warm person. But it is only in the last 15 days that I got the opportunity to spend some quality time with her in New York. And I can easily say, She is my hero.The two have previously worked together in films like Dhai Akshar Prem Ke, Hamara Dil Aapke Paas Hai and Dil Hi Dil Mein. Anupam Kher is currently in New York shooting for an upcoming American television show titled New Amsterdam.Recently, Sonali Bendres sister-in-law Srishti Arya spoke about how confident she was about Sonalis recovery in an interview with a leading portal. She said, She is staying strong. Sonali will definitely prevail. She will be back. We are all very grateful for the outpouring of love. Well, all we can say is that we couldnt agree more. We are sure that Sonali is a fighter who will see this through and come back even stronger. Heres wishing her a quick and speedy recovery!
Boney Kapoor On His Love Story With Sridevi

Reminiscing his love story with Sridevi, Boney said it took him 10-12 years to win her heart. "I fell in love with her when I saw her for the first time on the screen. It was one sided love since the beginning.

I chased her in the sense that I went to Chennai to sign her but unfortunately she was not available at that time. I was in awe of her, her work."

Boney Admits He Fell Head Over Heels For Her

"The aura that she had created around as an actor was something that I admired. Maybe, all these reasons contributed to me falling in head over heels for her," he said.

Touching. Isnt it?

"My love story with Sridevi is an open book. Whatever matters of the heart that can be shared is all in the public domain. What is most close (about her) will remain in the heart. That's my support system for life," he added.

Boney Was All Praises For Arjun & Anshula

Boney said his children, Arjun and Anshula from first wife Mona, too have been his strength through these tough times. "The way they have accepted Janhvi and Khushi... That has made me feel very relieved. My all four children are my strength," he said.

Janhvi Gets Teary-eyed

Janhvi Kapoor, who found it difficult to keep herself together through the reminiscences session, broke down in her father's arms while leaving the premises.

Boney Kapoor Got Emotional

Boney Kapoor also said that the void left by his wife could never be replaced, but her memories is something the family can live by.

"Today this vacuum, this void cannot be replaced but the good wishes and the goodwill that she has left behind is something that we can live with... She is with me, in my memories...with my children," a teary-eyed Boney told media.

He Further Added..

"I feel the loss of her every second of my life, not just me even my children do. This is something that we have to live with. Unfortunately, she was snatched away from us sooner than anybody expected," he added.
Activity Area

Later, Bigg Boss asked the contestants to assemble in the activity area, where a cake was kept to celebrate the 50 days at Bigg Boss House. The short recap of the previous episodes was also played for the contestants.

Bigg Boss Elimination List

After this, all eyes shifted to the elimination round. Pearle Maaney, Sabu, Aristo Suresh, Anoop Chandran and Aditi Rai were the contestants in the elimination list. Mohanlal revealed that two contestants among them were safe and they turned out to be Aristo Suresh & Pearle Maaney.

Who Was Eliminated?

Three contestants were left in the elimination list and Mohanlal asked each one of them on their opinion on who among them will be eliminated this week. Later on, Mohanlal informed Aditi Rai to pack the bags and come out.

Another Surprise

Aditi Rai was gearing up to bid a goodbye to the house and at the same moment, Anjali Ameer who opted out of the show due to health reason came LIVE on audio and spoke to the contestants. She also requested Mohanlal and Bigg Boss to avoid elimination this week. Much to the happiness of all, Mohanlal revealed that nobody will be eliminated this week.

The Re-entry

Meanwhile, another special surprise came in by the end of the episode with a contestant making a re-entry to the house. Hima Sankar, who was earlier evicted in the fourth week, has come back to the house owing to public demand.
Kapil Sharma Has Put On A Lot Of Weight!

During a Twitter chat with his fans, the actor had revealed that he had put on a lot of weight and is trying to change his lifestyle. He had also ensured fans that he would make a comeback soon!

Kapil To Return This October!

According to DNA report, Kapil is all set to return by this October (2018)! Firstly, the actor wants to shed all the excess weight. It is being said that he will be hiring a personal trainer and start training to get back into shape.

The Comedian Has Decided To Take Charge Of His Life

A source was quoted by DNA as saying, "Kapil has decided to take charge of his life. He not only wants to change his lifestyle (he had tweeted about it) but also wants to become fit."

He Will Be Hiring A Personal Trainer To Get Back In Shape!

The source further added, "He will be hiring a personal trainer. The comedian also wants to ideate for his new show and is planning to make a comeback to TV in the next two months."
Kasauti Zindagi Kay: Hina Khan, Erica Fernandes & Parth Samthaan will shoot in Kolkata  FilmiBeat

Kasautii Zindagi Kay 2 has been creating a lot of buzz lately. The first promo of the show featuring Erica Fernandes as Prerna was unveiled by Ekta Kapoor, a few weeks ago, and the viewers couldn't keep calm. The recent report also suggested that Parth Samthaan has been finalised for the role of Anurag Basu and Hina Khan will be seen playing the role of Komolika. Recently, Erica shared a story on her social media account saying that she had to travel a long way for an early morning shoot, which indicates that the actress has started shooting for the show! The actress captioned the picture as, "Early morning travel to a far off location. #NOTANEARLYMORNINGPERSON."

Also, recently, the pictures of Erica and Parth from the sets of the show went viral on social media, which confirmed Parth shooting for the show!



According to Mumbai Mirror report, Parth and Erica were spotted at Palghar railway station shooting for the promo on Saturday. The team will head to Kolkata later this month to begin the shoot.

A source was quoted by the leading daily as saying, "Parth, with his onscreen parents Uday Tikekar and Shubhaavi Choksey, female leads Erica and Hina Khan who plays Komolika, will head to Kolkata for a week. The team has already started shooting the Mumbai portions last week at Killick Nixon studio."

Recently, Ekta shared a picture with original Komolika (Urvashi Dholakia) and other television actresses (Ankita Bhargava, Krystle Dsouza and Charu Mehra), and the producer wrote, "Taking tips from the gang on creating the new age mean girl! #komolika #fromtheformertothelatter." - (sic)

Stay locked to this space for the latest updates of the show.

Good News For Kapilians! Kapil Sharma Decides To Take Charge Of His Life; Soon To Make A Comeback!
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / August 12, 2018 / On Aug. 10, 2018, GFP Block Chain Investment Strategy Framework Summit, which jointly sponsored by LONAN and Cloud Valley Foundation Ltd., was conducted at the Golden Hall, Jinan Shandong. Over 1500 attendees, including more than hundred blockchain experts, over thirty well-known financial investment institutions and more than fifty media opinion leaders co-negotiated the innovation and development of blockchain core techniques that are pushing forward the new development of information technology industry. Dennis Na, the founder of WNC or Wellness Chain, was among the thought leaders of the global blockchain industry who attended the summit.

The summit was also attended by a number of famous and eminent people and institutions which are playing important role in the broad-spectrum growth of the blockchain industry, including the likes of Shandong TV, Sequoia Capital, HUOBI, Softbank China Venture Capital, Wechat Pay, GIANT International, IDG and WNC founders etc. At the roundtable forum, all these attendees convened to achieve a deep communication among the fund administrators, overseas and domestic investors and blockchain projects.

As a representative of the medical blockchain industry, Dennis Na, the founder of WNC (Wellness Chain) was invited to deliver a keynote speech on the theme of "Block Chain Innovates Production Relationship and Reshapes a Healthy Medical Ecosphere."

Mr. Dennis Na underlined that since the medical industry joined hands with the blockchain technology, "a healthy medical intelligent blockchain collaborative platform", which is also dubbed as the medical health ecosystem, will be set up to integrate IOT or Internet of Things and AI or Artificial Intelligence with a super medical account. This collaborative platform will benefit healthcare practitioners, workers and patients by setting up a medical environment which is much healthier and more transparent. He Bo, the founder of LONAN, said the great potential of WNC will definitely shock the whole world in the future.

"Human being is the core of everything. WNC's medical ecological construction will get users to take part in each step. By now, urban communities have been set up in Shenzhen, Changsha, and Ji'nan, where what users are thinking about can be read and assessed with the help of face-to-face conversations. Actually, the ideology held by the activity "100-City Plan" sponsored by LONAN and CVF is the same as ours. Later, we will work together to bring medical benefits to all the Chinese citizens", said Dennis Na.

On the sidelines of the summit, Dennis was also interviewed by Yun Cai Jing. He introduced the scenarios healthcare industry consumers are going to go through in the future during the interview. "In the future, if somebody wants to see a doctor, AI will do an intelligent analysis for their health. After the analysis, it will give out the most scientific and the most rational medical solutions and select the most suitable hospitals for the patient. Registration will be done online. By the time a patient would reach the doctor's office, the physician has already become aware of their health status. During the diagnosis, the patient's medical information will be uploaded according to the doctor's instructions. If they need to buy some medicines, the medicines can be searched via IOT so that patients do not end up buying fake or expired medicines", he said.

"When the doctor starts medical treatment, he or she will get the POV awarded by WNC platforms. On the other hand, patients can pay by legal tender, medical insurance or token. WNC will store patient data in patients' respective super accounts by a Hash algorithm, and the data will finally be stored in a databank confirmed by the government. We are still working on exploring the market for medical blockchain technology. We will stick to the mission "Wellness For All." WNC sincerely hopes that it can serve all people in the world and in the future, we can set up digital health assets which are transparent and healthy." Mr. Dennis Na.

Contact: Info@wellnesschain.io

SOURCE: Wellness Chain
Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE: JHG, ASX: JHG) wishes to confirm that shareholders on the register at 5.00pm on 13 August 2018, the Record Date, will be entitled to a second quarter dividend in respect of the three months ended 30 June 2018 of 36.0 US cents per ordinary share.

For holders of CHESS Depositary Interests (CDIs), the Australian Dollar equivalent will be 49.2192 Australian cents* per CDI. For holders via the Corporate Sponsored Nominee of UK Depositary Interests (DIs), the Sterling equivalent will be 27.9612 pence* per DI.

The dividend will be paid on 24 August 2018.

The timetable is as follows:

Record Date for dividend Monday 13 August Processing recommences for requests by CDI holders to Tuesday 14 August convert CDIs into ordinary shares and UK DIs or by ordinary (New York time) shareholders to convert ordinary shares into CDIs and UK DIs Dividend payment date Friday 24 August

*The exchange rates that have been applied in translating the dividend amount are as follows: US$1 A$1.3672 and US$1 0.7767.

About Janus Henderson

Janus Henderson is a leading global active asset manager dedicated to helping investors achieve long-term financial goals through a broad range of investment solutions, including equities, fixed income, quantitative equities, multi-asset and alternative asset class strategies.

Janus Henderson has approximately US$370 billion in assets under management (as at 30 June 2018), more than 2,000 employees and offices in 28 cities worldwide. Headquartered in London, the company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180812005011/en/

Contacts:

Janus Henderson

Investor enquiries

John Groneman, +44 (0) 20 7818 2106

Global Head of Investor Relations

john.groneman@janushenderson.com

or

Louise Curran, +44 (0) 20 7818 5927

Non-US Investor Relations Manager

louise.curran@janushenderson.com

or

Jim Kurtz, +1 (303) 336 4529

US Investor Relations Manager

jim.kurtz@janushenderson.com

or

Investor Relations

investor.relations@janushenderson.com
- Investment to fund new services and solutions across a range of areas including managed services, cloud-based technology as well as audit and tax

- Appoints new EY Global Chief Client Technology and EY Global Chief Information Officers

LONDON, Aug. 12, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- EY today announces plans to invest US$1 billion in new technology solutions, client services, innovation and the EY ecosystem over the next two financial years, commencing from July. This move is part of an ongoing strategy to provide clients and people with innovative offerings using the latest disruptive technologies.

The new US$1b funding is in addition to the existing, significant annual technology investment. The investment will be used to create new technology-based services and solutions in areas such as financial services, cyber, risk management, managed services, software services as well as digital tax and audit services.

Additionally, Nicola Morini Bianzino has joined as EY Global Chief Client Technology Officer (CCTO) and Steve George as EY Global Chief Information Officer (CIO). Rounding out this leadership team is Barbara O'Neill, EY Global Chief Information & Security Officer (CISO). As the global CISO, Barbara provides strategic direction for all matters relating to Information Security. These leaders bring significant industry and technology skills and will help drive the EY digital transformation and innovation agenda. These appointments complement our existing investments in innovation including our global artificial intelligence (AI) and Blockchain labs.

Mark Weinberger, EY Global Chairman and CEO, says:

"In this transformative age, businesses and governments are under significant pressure to not only keep pace, but get ahead of the vast disruption and technological change. We see enormous opportunities in helping clients address these challenges and stay ahead of the technology curve. With this investment and expanded technology leadership team, EY will help businesses navigate industry disruption to realize their growth potential."

Technology leaders join EY

Nicola joined EY from Accenture, where he led AI and AI strategy. He also led Growth and Strategy for Accenture's technology, innovation and ecosystems, which included new ventures, acquisitions and investments. Based in Silicon Valley, Nicola will focus on bringing digital capabilities to clients so that technology is at the heart of the EY services.

Steve brings significant experience to the role as former CIO for Citigroup's North American retail banking, mortgage and global commercial banking teams. Steve also previously worked at Accenture, where he served on its Financial Services and Technology teams. Steve has also held both CIO and CTO positions at Chase and Huntington Bank. He is based in New York and will focus on defining innovative solutions and embedding digital technologies across EY teams globally.

Mark adds, "Over the past year we have initiated, pioneered and launched a number of innovative services such as the use of blockchain in marine insurance and in the automation and payment of royalties and the piloting of the use of drones in inventory observations. We have also made big technological improvements to existing offerings such as those in audit and tax. These new investments allow us to build on our strong IT capabilities and invest even more in client and market solutions."

Notes to Editors

About EY

EY is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. The insights and quality services we deliver help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies the world over. We develop outstanding leaders who team to deliver on our promises to all of our stakeholders. In so doing, we play a critical role in building a better working world for our people, for our clients and for our communities.

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. For more information about our organization, please visit ey.com.

This news release has been issued by EYGM Limited, a member of the global EY organization that also does not provide any services to clients.

Jessica Thomas

EY Global Media Relations

+44 207 951 4653

Jessica.Thomas@uk.ey.com

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Passenger traffic rises at Frankfurt Airport and across Fraport's Group airports worldwide - New daily record of 237,966 passengers achieved at FRA

FRANKFURT, Germany, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- FRA/dsn-gk - In July 2018, Frankfurt Airport (FRA) welcomed some 6.9 million passengers - an increase of 7.5 percent. During the January-to-July-period, FRA achieved accumulated passenger growth of 8.8 percent, with European traffic remaining the main growth driver. FRA posted a new daily record on July 29, when 237,966 passengers traveled through Germany's largest aviation hub.

The number of aircraft movements rose by 7.3 percent to 46.648 takeoffs and landings. Accumulated maximum takeoff weights (MTOWs) expanded by 3.2 percent to about 2.8 million metric tons. Cargo traffic (airfreight + airmail) was the only category to post a decline, with 175,960 metric tons being handled at FRA (down 6.4 percent). This was attributable, among other things, to a reduced number of freighter aircraft operating from FRA and a decreased amount of belly freight being shipped on passenger aircraft (due to higher passenger numbers).

Airports in Fraport's international portfolio all showed positive development. Ljubljana Airport (LJU) in Slovenia remained almost level year-on-year, with 198,911 passengers being served (up 0.4 percent). Combined traffic at Fraport's two Brazilian airports in Fortaleza (FOR) and Porto Alegre (POA) rose by 6.8 percent to some 1.4 million passengers. The 14 Greek regional airports achieved a 7.2 percent increase in combined traffic to about 5.4 million passengers. The three busiest gateways in Fraport's Greek portfolio were Rhodes Airport (RHO) with some 1.1 million passengers (up 4.0 percent), Thessaloniki Airport (SKG) with 812,540 passengers (up 7.2 percent) and Corfu Airport (CFU) with 686,894 passengers (up 10.9 percent).

Lima Airport (LIM) in Peru reported an increase of 5.9 percent to about 2.0 million passengers. The Fraport Twin Star airports of Varna (VAR) and Burgas (BOJ) in Bulgaria, combined, served 1.4 million passengers, representing a rise of 7.3 percent. Antalya Airport (AYT) in Turkey registered almost 4.8 million passengers (up 15.6 percent), while Hanover Airport (HAJ) in northern Germany welcomed 725,392 passenger (up 9.9 percent). Traffic at Pulkovo Airport (LED) in St. Petersburg, Russia, rose by 9.7 percent to about 2.1 million passengers. Xi'an Airport (XIY) in China gained an increase of 9.1 percent to around 4.0 million passengers.

Print-quality photos of Fraport AG and Frankfurt Airport are available for free downloading via the photo library on the Fraport Web site. For TV news and information broadcasting purposes only, we also offer free footage material for downloading. If you wish to meet a member of our Media Relations team when at Frankfurt Airport, please do not hesitate to contact us. Our contact details are available here.

For further information about Fraport AG please click here.

Fraport Traffic Figures July 2018 Fraport Group Airports1

July 2018 Year to Date (YTD) 2018





Fraport Passengers Cargo* Movements Passengers Cargo Movements Fully-consolidated airports share (%) Month ? % Month ? % Month ? % YTD ? % YTD ? % YTD ? % FRA Frankfurt Germany 100.00 6,868,718 7.5 173,009 -6.6 46,648 7.3 39,545,890 8.8 1,248,256 -1.3 293,709 8.4 LJU Ljubljana Slovenia 100.00 198,911 0.4 1,052 11.1 3,571 9.1 1,030,106 11.8 7,103 7.6 20,519 4.8 Fraport Brasil 100.00 1,423,911 6.8 7,270 47.5 12,758 7.1 8,299,976 4.8 47,102 46.5 79,053 4.3 FOR Fortaleza Brazil 100.00 631,038 1.5 3,642 16.3 5,565 6.3 3,603,255 4.5 24,689 21.9 31,929 5.2 POA Porto Alegre Brazil 100.00 792,873 11.5 3,628 > 100.0 7,193 7.8 4,696,721 4.9 22,413 88.4 47,124 3.7 Fraport Regional Airports of Greece A+B 73.40 5,350,820 7.2 733 48.2 41,944 7.3 15,980,566 9.8 4,623 8.6 131,682 7.8 Fraport Regional Airports of Greece A 73.40 2,807,078 6.5 564 43.3 20,786 6.0 9,017,195 8.0 3,457 5.6 71,847 6.4 CFU Kerkyra (Corfu) Greece 73.40 686,894 10.9 31 n.a. 4,926 11.7 1,787,072 17.9 103 > 100.0 14,191 22.5 CHQ Chania (Crete) Greece 73.40 526,454 -2.4 36 -13.7 3,198 -1.3 1,693,701 -0.7 260 -9.3 10,822 -2.7 EFL Kefalonia Greece 73.40 165,876 17.5 0 n.a. 1,422 17.2 406,499 25.4 1 -63.4 3,726 22.1 KVA Kavala Greece 73.40 66,950 10.7 9 -27.4 593 1.2 244,668 47.3 48 -23.0 2,575 29.3 PVK Aktion/Preveza Greece 73.40 142,121 2.6 0 n.a. 1,172 4.4 303,765 3.5 0 n.a. 2,842 1.5 SKG Thessaloniki Greece 73.40 812,540 7.2 488 43.7 6,769 5.1 3,634,488 4.2 3,041 4.1 30,733 0.7 ZTH Zakynthos Greece 73.40 406,243 7.3 0 -100.0 2,706 4.0 947,002 11.1 4 > 100.0 6,958 8.2 Fraport Regional Airports of Greece B 73.40 2,543,742 7.9 169 67.2 21,158 8.7 6,963,371 12.2 1,167 18.4 59,835 9.5 JMK Mykonos Greece 73.40 316,126 13.0 18 n.a. 4,507 8.2 736,001 14.7 53 > 100.0 9,552 11.0 JSI Skiathos Greece 73.40 108,668 3.6 0 n.a. 954 -3.2 231,004 4.6 0 n.a. 2,182 -1.2 JTR Santorini (Thira) Greece 73.40 385,650 11.0 18 n.a. 3,492 14.3 1,212,195 18.0 101 91.7 10,871 19.0 KGS Kos Greece 73.40 523,024 11.1 25 > 100.0 3,652 14.7 1,358,454 18.0 149 19.4 10,481 18.1 MJT Mytilene (Lesvos) Greece 73.40 67,950 8.1 28 -3.2 749 12.5 253,499 3.9 224 -1.0 3,038 -7.2 RHO Rhodes Greece 73.40 1,052,860 4.0 55 22.2 6,843 4.1 2,927,131 7.9 479 24.9 20,528 5.9 SMI Samos Greece 73.40 89,464 13.5 25 -0.6 961 14.5 245,087 15.6 160 -6.9 3,183 0.0 LIM Lima Peru2 70.01 2,007,078 5.9 24,566 3.9 17,098 4.1 12,645,630 9.2 155,963 6.6 111,864 5.9 Fraport Twin Star 60.00 1,436,715 7.3 539 -76.1 9,401 5.8 3,088,595 17.3 5,034 -44.8 22,891 13.4 BOJ Burgas Bulgaria 60.00 945,837 5.7 525 -76.6 6,053 4.4 1,809,348 12.1 4,972 -44.5 12,868 8.4 VAR Varna Bulgaria 60.00 490,878 10.7 14 3.1 3,348 8.5 1,279,247 25.6 62 -61.5 10,023 20.6





























At equity consolidated airports2

























AYT Antalya Turkey 51.00 4,841,514 15.6 n.a. n.a. 27,122 19.4 17,093,016 25.0 n.a. n.a. 101,091 22.5 HAJ Hannover Germany 30.00 725,392 9.9 992 8.4 7,836 5.6 3,486,101 8.2 9,807 0.3 44,711 2.7 LED St. Petersburg Russia 25.00 2,103,426 9.7 n.a. n.a. 17,428 11.1 10,054,894 11.0 n.a. n.a. 94,162 9.0 XIY Xi'an China 24.50 4,000,522 9.1 24,652 18.2 28,885 2.6 25,576,355 7.8 159,517 11.3 189,161 3.8

Frankfurt Airport3





July 2018 Month ? % YTD 2018 ? % Passengers 6,869,038 7.5 39,548,112 8.8 Cargo (freight & mail) 175,960 -6.4 1,272,670 -0.9 Aircraft movements 46,648 7.3 293,709 8.4 MTOW (in metric tons)4 2,846,380 3.2 18,125,057 5.5 PAX/PAX-flight5 156.0 -0.2 143.9 0.2 Seat load factor (%) 85.0

78.9

Punctuality rate (%) 60.8

67.8











Frankfurt Airport PAX share ? %6 PAX share ? %6 Regional Split Month YTD Continental 65.2 11.8 64.4 12.7 Germany 9.8 5.8 10.9 4.5 Europe (excl. GER) 55.4 12.9 53.5 14.6 Western Europe 45.7 12.3 44.5 14.3 Eastern Europe 9.7 15.9 9.0 15.7 Intercontinental 34.8 0.3 35.6 2.4 Africa 4.0 5.7 4.2 10.4 Middle East 4.8 1.4 5.3 2.5 North America 14.0 2.6 12.5 2.8 Central & South Amer. 2.7 1.6 3.4 0.4 Far East 9.3 -5.9 10.3 -0.5 Australia 0.0 n.a. 0.0 n.a.

Definitions:1 According to ACI definition: Passengers: commercial traffic only (arr+dep+transit counted once), Cargo: commercial and non-commercial traffic (arr+dep excluding transit, in metric tons), Movements: commercial and non-commercial traffic (arr+dep); 2Preliminary figures; 3Commercial and non-commercial traffic: Passengers (arr+dep+transit counted once, incl. general aviation), Cargo (arr+dep+transit counted once, in metric tons), Movements (arr+dep); 4Inbound traffic only; 5 Scheduled and charter traffic; 6absolute change vs. previous year in %; *Cargo =Freight + mail
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.
COEUR D'ALENE, ID / ACCESSWIRE / August 13, 2018 / Timberline Resources Corporation (OTCQB: TLRS; TSX-V: TBR) ("Timberline" or the "Company") today announced consolidated financial results for its second fiscal year 2018 quarter which ended June 30, 2018. A summary of selected financial results is presented in the following table:

($US 000's, except earnings per share) Quarter Ended June 30, 2018 2017 Consolidated net loss $(329) $(301) Consolidated net loss per share, basic and diluted (0.01) (0.01) Mineral exploration expenses 23 35 Working capital 283 164

Timberline reported a consolidated net loss of $0.3 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2018, including exploration expenditures of $23 thousand. The Company has refocused its exploration efforts on advancing its other Nevada projects, and has signed a definitive agreement to acquire two joint venture interests in Nevada.

The Company also announced that Mr. Randal Hardy will resign as Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary of the Company effective August 27, 2018 to pursue other business opportunities. Mr. Hardy will remain engaged with the Company on an ongoing basis as an advisor and consultant. The Company's Board of Directors and management express their appreciation for Mr. Hardy's service and valuable contributions while serving the Company in various capacities during his eleven-year tenure and wish him well in his future endeavors.

Timberline's President and CEO, Steve Osterberg, said, "We have strengthened and solidified our Board of Directors and are advancing the acquisition of the Elder Creek and Paiute projects in the Battle Mountain District, while continuing our focus on the Windfall, Lookout Mountain and Oswego projects at Eureka. With excellent results from recent geological work and sample assays, we plan follow-up on each of these projects with further field testing including strategic drilling."

About Timberline Resources

Timberline Resources Corporation is focused on advancing district-scale gold exploration projects in Nevada, including its 23 square-mile Eureka property and other property interests in the Battle Mountain-Eureka gold trend. At Eureka, the Company continues to advance its Lookout Mountain and Windfall project areas. Exploration potential occurs within three separate structural-stratigraphic trends defined by distinct geochemical gold anomalies. Upon completion of the property acquisition from AGEI, Timberline's owned and controlled mineral rights in Nevada will increase to over 43 square miles (24,500 acres), including the Seven Troughs property in northern Nevada, known to be one of the state's highest grade, former gold producing properties. Detailed maps and estimated NI 43-101 compliant resource information for the Eureka property may be viewed at http://timberline-resources.com/.

Timberline is listed on the OTCQB where it trades under the symbol "TLRS" and on the TSX Venture Exchange where it trades under the symbol "TBR".

Steven Osterberg, Ph.D., P.G., Timberline's President and Chief Executive Officer, is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical contents of this release.

Forward-looking Statements

Statements contained herein that are not based upon current or historical fact are forward-looking in nature and constitute 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 forward-looking statements reflect the Company's expectations about its future operating results, performance and opportunities that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. These statements include but are not limited to statements regarding advancing its other Nevada projects, a resignation and continued engagement as a consultant, advancing the acquisition of the Elder Creek and Paiute projects in the Battle Mountain District, continuing our focus on the Windfall, Lookout Mountain and Oswego projects at Eureka, follow-up on each of these projects with further field testing including strategic drilling, advancement of projects, exploration potential, completing property acquisition from AGEI, and the size of owned and controlled mineral rights in Nevada. When used herein, the words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "upcoming," "plan," "target", "intend" and "expect" and similar expressions, as they relate to Timberline Resources Corporation, its subsidiaries, or its management, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on information currently available to the Company and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause the Company's actual results, performance, prospects, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, risks related to changes in the Company's business resulting in changes in the use of proceeds, and other such factors, including risk factors discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2017. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to release publicly any revisions to any 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.

For Further Information Please Contact:



Steven A. Osterberg

President and CEO

Tel: 208-664-4859

E-mail: info@timberline-resources.com

Website: www.timberline-resources.com

SOURCE: Timberline Resources Corporation
Dow Jones received a payment from EQS/DGAP to publish this press release.

DGAP-Media / 2018-08-13 / 14:16 Roggwil, 13th August 2018 With publication in the specialist magazine for complementary medicine CO.med 06/2018 informed Johannes Ebbers from Duren (Germany) on the results of his clinical user observation with the tinnitus therapy device tinniwell. Since 2016 Resaphene Suisse AG (Vienna Stock Exchange: CH0367465439) sells the tinniwell. The device can be used by the patient in the home environment or even mobile. It combines the approach of heat and music therapy in a device, which was registered for a patent. In addition, it can determine the exact frequency of tinnitus in the patient. Competitors who work with apps are usually only able to do this on an indicative basis, which is why the therapy does not succeed there. Between October 2016 and July 2017, 30 patients with chronic decompensated tinnitus were recruited. The subjects in the study were between 17 and 72 years old and had previously undergone various examinations (e.g., otoneurological evaluation); Exclusion criterion was for example an organic cause of tinnitus. At the start of the therapy, the participants determined the severity of tinnitus using the Gobel and Hiller mini-questionaire. During the four-week therapy period, the tinniwell should be used for at least 30 minutes daily, and light activities such as reading and so on were permitted. After 6 weeks at the latest, the tinnitus severity was again determined in the patients. 1 participant broke off without giving reasons, which allowed to collect the data from 29 participants. On average, tinnitus decreased by 54.1%. The range of results was between 100% (complete relief) and 20% improvement. The study is available here: http://resaphene.ch/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Tinniwell-Study-DrEbbers-long-v ersion-2017-29.7.17_EN.pdf [1] "The results of user observation encourage us to conduct a double-blind study in the next step," says Anke Rauterkus, CEO of Resaphene Suisse AG. "The key to the success of the therapy is the combination of warmth and frequency-filtered music. Meanwhile, the prototype for the third series of tinniwell has been developed. The new generation of devices is considerably smaller and will have interfaces to smartphones and other devices in the future." About Resaphene Suisse AG: Resaphene Suisse AG was founded in 2015 with the aim of developing a tinnitus therapy device with funds from the incubator of BS Health Group AG. After the prototype was available at the beginning of 2016, series production was started. In the meantime, 2 series have been successfully placed on the market. In June 2018, the company was listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange in the Third Market segment. Further information about the company can be found at www.resaphene.ch Contact: Resaphene Suisse AG Thomas Rauterkus Rutistrasse 8b 9325 Roggwil Switzerland Tel. +41 71 45 00 668 info@resaphene.ch End of Media Release Additional features: Picture: http://newsfeed2.eqs.com/resaphene/713537.html [2] Subtitle: Tinniwell Issuer: Resaphene Suisse AG Key word(s): Research/Technology 2018-08-13 Dissemination of a Press Release, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Archive at www.dgap.de 713537 2018-08-13 1: https://link.cockpit.eqs.com/cgi-bin/fncls.ssp?fn=redirect&url=aac412cf733dc7f7f63310287c998002&application_id=713537&site_id=vwd&application_name=news 2: https://link.cockpit.eqs.com/cgi-bin/fncls.ssp?fn=redirect&url=9ddeb89875cf8878d395aa5177080a65&application_id=713537&site_id=vwd&application_name=news

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 13, 2018 08:16 ET (12:16 GMT)
BOSTON, LONDON and PARIS, August 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

NelsonHall continues to expand its global team, adds key expertise to focus on next generation industry-specific services

NelsonHall, the leading global analyst firm dedicated to helping organizations understand the 'art of the possible' in next generation IT and business services, is delighted to welcome Sven Lohse, who joins as senior analyst responsible for NelsonHall's Insurance BPS research program. Sven will drive NelsonHall's leading-edge research in key insurance BPS domains, serving NelsonHall clients around the world.

(Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/729733/Sven_NelsonHall.jpg )

(Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/643421/NelsonHall_Logo.jpg )



Sven is a recognized industry thought leader with 20 years' experience and a global perspective in industry analyst, management consulting, and corporate strategy roles. During his career he has addressed strategic and operational challenges in several industry sectors including the Healthcare Payer, Healthcare Provider and Property & Casualty Insurance verticals. For the last 8 years, he advised clients at the intersection of healthcare and BPO and IT services, where he served many of the world's largest healthcare organizations and their IT consulting/outsourcing service providers to plan, fund, and improve business strategies, operations, competitive positioning, and marketing.

Prior to NelsonHall, Sven was IDC's Research Manager for Healthcare IT Services Strategies. Previous positions include Associate Director, Healthcare and Strategy, for Kennedy Information (now ALM); Senior Marketing Manager with the Hanover Insurance Group; and Strategy Analyst with Diamond Management & Technology Consultants (now PwC).

Based in the U.S., Sven has a BA in Interdisciplinary Humanities and an MBA, both from the University of Chicago.

Sven's appointment is the latest key addition to NelsonHall's team, which is expanding in response to market demand for its unique brand of rigorous and insightful research and advice. John Willmott, NelsonHall's CEO, said "I'm delighted to welcome Sven to our global analyst team, which is continuing to grow as we focus on helping organizations understand, adopt, and optimize the next generation of technology and business process models. Sven's distinctive experience will help drive our industry-specific research and deepen the insights we deliver to our clients."

About NelsonHall:

NelsonHall is the leading global analyst firm dedicated to helping organizations understand the 'art of the possible' in next generation IT and business services. With analysts in the U.S., U.K., and Continental Europe, NelsonHall provides buy-side organizations with detailed, critical information on markets and vendors (including NEAT assessments) that helps them make fast and highly informed sourcing decisions. And for vendors, NelsonHall provides deep knowledge of market dynamics and user requirements to help them hone their go-to-market strategies. NelsonHall's research is based on rigorous, all-original research, and is widely respected for the quality, depth and insight of its analysis.

Media Contact Information:

Paul Connolly

paul.connolly@nelson-hall.com


Hamilton, Bermuda, August 13, 2018

Dear Shareholders,

Among other measures, we have under active consideration a possible reversed stock split in NAO as we believe it would be advantageous for our shareholders.

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," "intend," "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 management's 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. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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 in the PSV market, as a result of changes in the general market conditions of the oil and natural gas industry which influence charter hire rates and vessel values, demand in platform supply vessels, our operating expenses, including bunker prices, dry docking and insurance costs, governmental rules and regulations or actions taken by regulatory authorities as well as potential liability from pending or future litigation, general domestic and international political conditions, potential disruption of shipping routes due to accidents or political events, the availability of financing and refinancing, vessel breakdowns and instances of off-hire and other important factors described from time to time in the reports filed by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission.



Contacts:

Gary J. Wolfe

Seward & Kissel LLP

New York, USA

Tel: +1 212 574 1223

Bjrn Giver, CFO

Nordic American Offshore Ltd.

Tel: +1 888 755 8391 or +47 91 35 00 91

Herbjrn Hansson, Executive Chairman

Nordic American Offshore Ltd

Tel: +1 866 805 9504 or +47 90 14 62 91

Web-site: www.nao.bm (http://www.nao.bm)

Press release (PDF) (http://hugin.info/159489/R/2210515/860526.pdf)



This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: Nordic American Offshore Ltd via Globenewswire


This Press Release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that are based upon current expectations or beliefs, as well as a number of assumptions about future events, including matters related to the Company's operations, pending contracts and future revenues, ability to execute on its increased production and installation schedules for planned capital expenditures and the size of forecasted deposits. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements and the assumptions upon which they are based are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations and assumptions will prove to have been correct. The reader is cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, as these statements are subject to numerous factors and uncertainties. In addition, other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are discussed in the Company's most recent filings, including Form 10-KSB with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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.
PUNE, India, August 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

ReportsnReports added ophthalmology market has following top players like IBM Corporation (Merge Healthcare) (US), Carl Zeiss Meditec AG (Germany), Topcon Corporation (Japan), Heidelberg Engineering (Germany), Sonomed Escalon (US), Visbion (UK), EyePACS (US), VersaSuite (US), Medical Standard (South Korea), ScImage (US), Agfa-Gevaert Group (Belgium), and Canon USA Inc. (US) are some of the prominent players offering ophthalmology products.

Browse 86 Market Data Tables and 33 Figures spread through 134 Pages and In-depth TOC on "Ophthalmology PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) Market by Type (Standalone, Integrated), Delivery (On-premise, Cloud), End User (Hospitals, Specialty Clinic, ASC), Region (North America (US, Canada) Europe, Asia) - Global Forecast to 2023" athttps://www.reportsnreports.com/reports/1601585-ophthalmology-pacs-picture-archiving-and-communication-system-market-by-type-standalone-integrated-delivery-on-premise-cloud-end-user-hospitals-specialty-clinic-asc-region-north-america-us-canada-st-to-2023.html .

Global ophthalmology PACS market projected to reach USD 160.2 million by 2023 from an estimated USD 106.6 million in 2018, at a CAGR of 8.5% during forecast period. Growth in this market is mainly driven by rapid growth in geriatric population, rising prevalence of eye diseases, limited number of ophthalmologists, government initiatives to encourage adoption of EHR/EMR, & increasing adoption of tele ophthalmology.

Ophthalmology PACS Market, By Delivery Model

1 Introduction

2 On-Premise Model

3 Web/Cloud-Based Models

Ophthalmology PACS Market, By Type

1 Introduction

2 Integrated PACS

3 Standalone PACS

Ophthalmology PACS Market, By End User

1 Introduction

2 Specialty Clinics & Ambulatory Surgical Centers (ASCS)

3 Hospitals

Report provides an overview of ophthalmology PACS market. It aims at estimating the market size & growth potential of this market across different segments such as type, delivery model, end user, & region. Report also includes an in-depth competitive analysis of key players in market along with their company profiles, recent developments, and key market strategies.

Order the "Ophthalmology PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) Market by Type (Standalone, Integrated), Delivery (On-premise, Cloud), End User (Hospitals, Specialty Clinic, ASC), Region (North America (US, Canada) Europe, Asia) - Global Forecast to 2023" Report Now athttps://www.reportsnreports.com/purchase.aspx?name=1601585 .

The ophthalmology PACS market is segmented into on premise and web/cloud-based models. In 2018, the on premise models segment is expected to account for the largest share of the ophthalmology PACS market. This can be attributed to the fact that on premise models are more customizable than web/cloud-based models.

Key Target Audience

Providers of Military Communications Systems

System Integrators

Value-added Resellers

Vendors of Software Applications

Vendors of Hardware Applications

Investors and Venture Capitalists

Consultants/Advisory Firms

North America is expected to account for the largest share of ophthalmology PACS market followed by Europe. However, Asia is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The high growth of this regional segment is attributed to the increasing demand for diagnostic imaging procedures, growing medical tourism.

Download the Sample Brochure of Global Ophthalmology PACS Market Research Now athttps://www.reportsnreports.com/contacts/requestsample.aspx?name=1601585 .

Ophthalmology PACS market is segmented into hospitals, specialty clinics & ambulatory surgery centers, and other end users. In 2018, the specialty clinics & ambulatory surgical centers segment is expected to command the largest share of the ophthalmology PACS market.

The primary interviews conducted for this report can be categorized as follows:

By Company Type: Tier 1 - 30%; Tier 2 -42%; Tier 3 - 28%.

By Designation: C-level- 25%; D-level- 45%; others--30%.

By Region: North America -34%; Europe -28%; Asia -32%; RoW-6%.

Another research titled report studies ophthalmic equipment market is expected to reach USD 58.44 billion by 2023 from USD 49.30 billion in 2018, at a CAGR of 3.5%. The growth of this market is primarily due to the rapid growth in the geriatric population, rising prevalence of eye diseases, technological advancements in ophthalmic devices. The prominent players in the ophthalmic equipment market are Essilor (France), Alcon (Switzerland), Johnson & Johnson Vision Care (US), Bausch + Lomb (US), Haag-Streit (Switzerland), TOPCON (Japan), Carl Zeiss Meditec (Germany), NIDEK (Japan), STAAR Surgical (US), HOYA (Japan), and Ziemer Ophthalmic Systems (Switzerland) available now with discount at https://www.reportsnreports.com/contacts/discount.aspx?name=278752 .

Explore More Reports on IT & Telecommunication Market Research at https://www.reportsnreports.com/market-research/information-technology/ .

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The European Investment Trust Plc - Transaction in Own Shares

The European Investment Trust plc ("the Company")

The Company announces that on 13 August 2018 it purchased the following number of its ordinary shares of 25 pence each on the main market of the London Stock Exchange.

Ordinary Shares:

Date of purchase: 13 August 2018 Number of ordinary shares purchased: 10,000 Lowest price per share 914p Highest price per share 914p

The Company intends to cancel the purchased shares.

Following the above transaction, the Company has 41,547,269 ordinary shares in issue. Each of the Company's shares carries one vote. Accordingly, the total number of voting rights of the Company is 41,547,269.

13 August 2018

LEI: 213800QNN9EHZ4SC1R12

Enquiries:

Kenneth J Greig

Edinburgh Partners AIFM Limited

Tel: 0131 270 3800

The Company's registered office address is:

Beaufort House

51 New North Road

Exeter

EX4 4EP
HeartCheck ECG PEN and ECG Handheld Monitor used for routine in-home arrhythmia monitoring

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - August 13, 2018) - CardioComm Solutions, Inc. (TSXV: EKG) ("CardioComm" or the "Company"), a leading global provider of consumer heart monitoring and electrocardiogram ("ECG") acquisition and management software solutions, confirms its HeartCheck device and GEMS software technologies have moved into routine clinical use following completion of a long-term, remote arrhythmia monitoring pilot in high risk patients.

Partners in Advanced Cardiac Evaluation ("PACE") is a physician directed medical practice specializing in cardiology services and patient care within the Province of Ontario (Canada). PACE cardiologists have been prescribing use of the HeartCheck ECG PEN and ECG Handheld Monitor to their patients to provide up to one year of enhanced remote patient monitoring ("RPM") for arrhythmias in addition to use of conventional but term-limited Holter and event monitoring.

Atrial Fibrillation ("AF") is a life threatening arrhythmia that is difficult to detect and to treat. Cardiac ablation is a procedure commonly used to correct heart rhythm problems like AF; however, it is possible for AF to recur as early as two months after ablation in 30% to 50% of treated patients (Calkins et al 1547-5271/2017 HRS). Serious and life threatening post-ablation recurrent arrhythmias such as AF can be "silent", and occur without any symptoms, discomfort or warning. Having access to patient's ECGs on a daily basis allows physician to better monitor the re-occurrence of AF as objectively as possible. This speaks to the need for a reliable method for post-ablation arrhythmia monitoring that can provide a reliable patient-management solution without an added work burden to clinics. This monitoring also qualifies for health care reimbursement thus generating additional revenues for clinics and doctors.

Under the CardioComm RPM solution, PACE patients use a HeartCheck ECG monitor to record a scheduled ECG as well as to record an ECG any time they may be experiencing a heart related symptom. Patients transmit their recorded ECGs for a PACE cardiologist review using CardioComm's GEMS Home software and cloud-based SMART Monitoring ECG service, which are integrated with the PACE's Electronic Medical Record ("EMR") software allowing direct transfer of ECGs to the PACE EMR. Patients are contacted for a follow-up visit should the submitted ECG recordings show anything of interest with respect to their heart health.

As part of the solution, CardioComm offers PACE patients ongoing support from use of the HeartCheck devices and the free GEMS Home software to transmission of ECGs to PACE. The GEMS software allows patients to add activity, symptom and general health notes to each ECG which assists reviewing physicians with the ECG diagnosis.

Yaariv Khaykin, Physician Lead at PACE and Chief Medical Information Officer at Southlake Regional Health Centre, stated, "We are very excited at the opportunity to introduce the use of this home-based ECG/arrhythmia monitoring technology to our PACE patients and to be able to extend our circle of medical care in helping to manage their health."

Under PACE's continued use of the HeartCheck RPM solution, CardioComm will benefit from hardware sales revenue and per-ECG upload fees. CardioComm will now move to bring the HeartCheck RPM solution to additional clinics in Canada and the USA with the completion of this two year pilot.

To learn more about CardioComm's products and for further updates regarding HeartCheck ECG device integrations please visit the Company's websites at www.cardiocommsolutions.com and www.theheartcheck.com.

About CardioComm Solutions

CardioComm Solutions' patented and proprietary technology is used in products for recording, viewing, analyzing and storing electrocardiograms for diagnosis and management of cardiac patients. Products are sold worldwide through a combination of an external distribution network and a North American-based sales team. CardioComm Solutions has earned the ISO 13485 certification, is HIPAA compliant and holds clearances from the European Union (CE Mark), the USA (FDA) and Canada (Health Canada).

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Etienne Grima, Chief Executive Officer

1-877-977-9425 x227

egrima@cardiocommsolutions.com

investor.relations@cardiocommsolutions.com

Forward-looking statements

This release may contain certain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information with respect to the financial condition, results of operations and business of CardioComm Solutions and certain of the plans and objectives of CardioComm Solutions with respect to these items. Such statements and information reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management. By their nature, forward-looking statements and forward-looking information involve risk and uncertainty because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future and there are many factors that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements and forward-looking information.

In evaluating these statements, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. The Company does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements and forward-looking information contained in this release other than as required by applicable laws, including without limitation, Section 5.8(2) of National Instrument 51-102 (Continuous Disclosure Obligations).

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com

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, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of AbbVie Inc. ("AbbVie" or the "Company") (NYSE: ABBV). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980.

The investigation concerns whether AbbVie and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices.

[Click here to join a class action]

On May 30, 2018, at approximately 8:00 am Eastern Standard Time, AbbVie announced preliminary results of a previously announced modified Dutch auction to repurchase the Company's securities (the "Dutch Tender Offer"), stating that a total of 75.7 million shares were tendered at or below the purchase price of $105 per share. Then, at approximately 4:45 pm on May 30, 2018, AbbVie announced "updated preliminary results" of the Dutch Tender Offer, stating that a total of 74.0M shares of AbbVie's common stock had been tendered and not properly withdrawn at or below the lower purchase price of $103 per share. On this news, AbbVie's share price fell $4.07, or 3.95%, to close at $98.94 on May 31, 2018.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com.

CONTACT:

Robert S. Willoughby

Pomerantz LLP

rswilloughby@pomlaw.com

888-476-6529 ext. 9980








Edmonton, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - August 13, 2018) - Grizzly Discoveries Inc. (TSXV: GZD) (FSE: G6H) ("Grizzly" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has mobilized a field crew to the Robocop Cobalt-Copper-Silver (Co-Cu-Ag) project near Roosville in southeast British Columbia (B.C.). The field crew, provided by APEX Geoscience Ltd., will conduct a two week surface exploration program in advance of a follow-up airborne geophysical survey.

The Robocop claims comprise 9,891 acres and are located in southeast B.C., approximately 45 kilometres (km) south of Fernie and 70 km southeast of Cranbrook, immediately north of the Canada-USA border. The property is located east of Grizzly's Greenwood Property in southeastern British Columbia.

The Board of Directors of Grizzly have also authorized the issuance of an aggregate 1,050,000 stock options to Officer, Directors, and Consultants of Grizzly with an exercise price of $0.10 and expiring on August 13, 2023 or earlier in accordance with the Company's stock option plan.

HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE ROBOCOP PROPERTY

The Project is comprised of 9,891 acres in 5 mineral claims that are all road accessible just off Provincial Highway 93 in southeast B.C.

Initial surface trenching in the late 1980's to early 1990's yielded up to 0.06% Co and 1.93% Cu over 6 m in one trench and in a separate trench up to 0.182% Co, 2.44% Cu and 9.6 grams per tonne (g/t) Ag in sediment hosted mineralization within middle Proterozoic Purcell Group rocks.

A total of 15 drillholes in the area between 1990 and 2008 have yielded several intersections of near surface Co-Cu-Ag mineralization with grades of up to 0.134% Co, 1.19% Cu and 33.8 g/t Ag over 1.23 m core length in hole R-1990-5 and 0.14% Co, 0.9% Cu and 2.7 g/t Ag over 3.1 m core length in hole R-1990-6 (Thomson, 1990),

Along with an intersection of 0.18% Co, 0.28% Cu, 4.1 g/t Ag over 1 m core length in hole R-2008-02 (Pighin, 2009), and

Sediment hosted Co-Cu-Ag mineralization is similar in style, age and host rocks to eCobalts Idaho Cobalt project and Hecla's Revett Formation hosted mineralization near Troy Montana.

Prior work has identified areas within the Robocop property with significant historic Co-Cu-Ag in soil anomalies. Combined with historic drilling during the 1990's (Teck Explorations Ltd.) and early 2000's (Ruby Red Resources) that yielded significantly anomalous near surface Co-Cu-Ag mineralization, the project warrants follow up exploration including additional drilling. The Co-Cu-Ag mineralization is hosted in Sheppard Formation and is classified as mid-Proterozoic sediment hosted mineralization. Based upon recent work by the USGS (Bookstrom et al., 2016), Robocop Co-Cu-Ag mineralization is similar in style and age of host rocks to mineralization in the Blackbird Co-Cu-Au-Ag district in Idaho including eCobalt's Idaho Cobalt Project. Grizzly believes that significant potential exists to expand the known extent of the Co-Cu-Ag mineralization on the Property and further exploration is warranted. In order to advance the project, Grizzly is planning to conduct a helicopter airborne magnetic and conductivity survey, a first for the Robocop Property, to assist in identifying future drill targets.

Grizzly has commenced land use permitting for drilling at the Robocop Property that is anticipated to be ready for a fall drilling campaign if required.

GRANT OF STOCK OPTIONS

The Board of Directors of Grizzly have also authorized the issuance of an aggregate 1,050,000 stock options to Officers, Directors, and Consultants of Grizzly with an exercise price of $0.10 and expiring on August 13, 2023 or earlier in accordance with the Company's stock option plan. 250,000 of the options authorized for issuance will be issued to insiders of Grizzly. All of the options will vest immediately upon issuance. The options, exercise price, and the Company's stock option plan are subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

ABOUT GRIZZLY DISCOVERIES INC.

Grizzly is a diversified Canadian mineral exploration company with its primary listing on the TSX Venture Exchange with 62 million shares issued, focused and its precious metals properties in southeastern British Columbia and on developing significant Potash assets in Alberta. The Company holds, or has an interest in: over 180,000 acres of precious-base metal properties in British Columbia along with metallic and industrial mineral permits for potash totaling more than 60,000 acres along the Alberta-Saskatchewan border; and more than 161,000 acres of properties which host diamondiferous kimberlites in the Buffalo Head Hills region of Alberta.

The technical content of this news release and the Company's technical disclosure has been reviewed and approved by Michael B. Dufresne, M. Sc., P. Geol., P.Geo., who is the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

On behalf of the Board,

Grizzly Discoveries Inc.

Brian Testo

President

(780) 693-2242

For further information, please visit our website at www.grizzlydiscoveries.com or contact Investor Relations:

Nancy Massicotte

IR PRO COMMUNICATIONS INC.

Tel: 604-507-3377

Toll Free: 1-866-503-3377

Email: ir@grizzlydiscoveries.com

www.irprocommunications.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.



Caution concerning forward-looking information

This press release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. This information and statements address future activities, events, plans, developments and projections. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, constitute forward-looking statements or forward-looking information. Such forward-looking information and statements are frequently identified by words such as "may," "will," "should," "anticipate," "plan," "expect," "believe," "estimate," "intend" and similar terminology, and reflect assumptions, estimates, opinions and analysis made by management of Grizzly in light of its experience, current conditions, expectations of future developments and other factors which it believes to be reasonable and relevant. Forward-looking information and statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause Grizzly's actual results, performance and achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information and statements and accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed thereon.

Risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to vary include but are not limited to the availability of financing; fluctuations in commodity prices; changes to and compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including environmental laws and obtaining requisite permits; political, economic and other risks; as well as other risks and uncertainties which are more fully described in our annual and quarterly Management's Discussion and Analysis and in other filings made by us with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and available at www.sedar.com. Grizzly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information or statements except as may be required by law.
New Project Activity Commences During the First Quarter

WESTMINSTER, MA / ACCESSWIRE / August 13, 2018 / TechPrecision Corporation (OTCQB: TPCS) ('TechPrecision' or 'the Company'), an industry leading manufacturer of precision, large-scale fabricated and machined metal components and tested systems with customers in the defense, energy and precision industrial sectors, today reported financial results for the first quarter ended June 30, 2018. Net sales for the first quarter ended June 30, 2018 were $4.1 million, a 30% decrease when compared to net sales of $5.8 million in the same quarter a year ago. The first quarter June 30, 2017 net sales were higher because of favorable timing with delivery schedules in that prior year period.

'Our results for the first quarter were impacted by lower gross margins, which were primarily the result of higher amounts of unabsorbed overhead related to a lower number of projects in production,' stated Alexander Shen, TechPrecision's Chief Executive Officer. 'By the end of the first quarter, however, we have started to return to target levels of project activity, primarily with certain projects that have longer build cycles.'

'Since my arrival at Ranor in June 2014, our core customers have emphasized the need for Ranor to be a stable and viable player within their supply chain in order to support our U.S. Navy submarine programs over the next 20 to 30 years. Our teams of craftsmen have worked effectively to maintain a sharp focus on meeting our customers' expectations, which has resulted in sustained core customer confidence.'

Mr. Shen continued, 'Therefore, the path forward with our core customers remains clear in our drive towards top line growth and bottom line profitability. This path is validated with the recent sourcing activity in both Virginia class and Columbia class programs. In the first quarter of FY19, Ranor successfully secured initial contracts for select Virginia class Block 5 components, as well as select Columbia class components.'

The financial statements for periods beginning after April 1, 2018 in this report and all subsequent reports reflect the adoption of the Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2014-09, Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606), or ASC 606, while prior period amounts have not been restated and continue to be reported in accordance with accounting standards in effect for those periods.

First Quarter of Fiscal 2019 Financial Results

Net sales were $4.1 million, a $1.7 million decrease when compared to the same quarter a year ago. The first quarter of fiscal year 2019 included $2.5 million of revenue related to the adoption of ASC 606.

Gross profit, which includes $0.9 million of gross profit due to the adoption of ASC 606, was $1.1 million compared to $1.7 million in the same quarter last year, a 40% decrease, primarily on a higher volume of low margin sales mix and under absorbed overhead from a slowdown in project activity.

Operating income was $322,000 compared to operating income of $821,000 in the same period a year ago.

Net income was $164,000, or $0.01 per share basic and diluted, compared to net income of $425,000 in the year-ago quarter, or $0.01 per share basic and diluted, and includes $671,000 of net income associated with the adoption of ASC 606.

EBITDA was $510,000 for the quarter ended June 30, 2018, compared to $993,000 for the quarter ended June 30, 2017. Please refer to the reconciliation of EBITDA (a non-GAAP measure) to net income (a GAAP measure) in this release.

Financial Position

At June 30, 2018, TechPrecision had $2.1 million in cash, and working capital of $5.1 million compared to $2.7 million in cash and working capital of $4.9 million at March 31, 2018.

Teleconference Information

The Company will hold a conference call at 4:30 p.m. Eastern (U.S.) time on August 13, 2018. To participate in the live conference call, please dial 1-877-407-8133 five to 10 minutes prior to the scheduled conference call time. International callers should dial 1-201-689-8040. When prompted, reference TechPrecision.

A replay will be available until September 13, 2018. To access the replay, dial 1-877-481-4010 or 1-919-882-2331. When prompted, enter Conference Passcode 36393. The call will also be available live by webcast at TechPrecision Corporation's website, www.techprecision.com, and will also be available over the Internet and accessible at http://www.investorcalendar.com/event/36393.

About TechPrecision Corporation

TechPrecision Corporation, through its wholly owned subsidiary, Ranor, Inc., manufactures large-scale, metal fabricated and machined precision components and equipment. These products are used in a variety of markets including: defense, aerospace, nuclear, industrial, and medical. TechPrecision's goal is to be an end-to-end service provider to its customers by furnishing customized solutions for completed products requiring custom fabrication and machining, assembly, inspection and testing. To learn more about the Company, please visit the corporate website at http://www.techprecision.com. Information on the Company's website or any other website does not constitute a part of this press release.

Safe Harbor Statement

This release contains certain 'forward-looking statements' relating to the business of the Company and its subsidiary companies. All statements other than statements of current or historical fact contained in this press release, including statements that express our intentions, plans, objectives, beliefs, expectations, strategies, predictions or any other statements relating to our future activities or other future events or conditions are forward-looking statements. The words 'anticipate,' 'believe,' 'continue,' 'could,' 'estimate,' 'expect,' 'intend,' 'may,' 'plan,' 'predict,' 'project,' 'will,' 'should,' 'would' and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections made by management about our business, our industry and other conditions affecting our financial condition, results of operations or business prospects. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to numerous risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause such outcomes and results to differ include, but are not limited to: our reliance on individual purchase orders, rather than long-term contracts, to generate revenue, our ability to change the composition of our revenues and effectively reduce operating expenses, the availability of appropriate financing facilities impacting our operations, financial condition and/or liquidity, our ability to receive contract awards through competitive bidding processes, our ability to maintain standards to enable us to manufacture products to exacting specifications, our ability to enter new markets for our services, our reliance on a small number of customers for a significant percentage of our business, competitive pressures in the markets we serve, changes in the availability or cost of raw materials and energy for our production facilities, operating in a single geographic location, restrictions in our ability to operate our business due to our outstanding indebtedness, government regulations and requirements, pricing and business development difficulties, changes in government spending on national defense, our ability to make acquisitions and successfully integrate those acquisitions with our business, general economic conditions, industry and market conditions and growth rates and other risks discussed in the Company's periodic reports that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on its website (www.sec.gov). Any forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this press release, except as required by applicable law. Investors should evaluate any statements made by us in light of these important factors.

Company Contact:

Mr. Thomas Sammons

Chief Financial Officer

TechPrecision Corporation

Phone: 978-883-5109

Email: sammonst@ranor.com

Website: www.techprecision.com

Investor Relations Contact:

Hayden IR

Brett Maas

Phone: 646-536-7331

Email: brett@haydenir.com

Website: www.haydenir.com

TECHPRECISION CORPORATION

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (unaudited)

June 30, 2018 March 31, 2018 ASSETS Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 2,111,253 $ 2,689,110 Accounts receivable, net 716,408 1,446,982 Contract assets 4,175,499 347,896 Inventories 1,025,211 2,088,485 Other current assets 415,672 450,540 Total current assets 8,444,043 7,023,013 Property, plant and equipment, net 5,078,912 5,202,448 Deferred income taxes 2,423,515 2,046,298 Other noncurrent assets, net 44,144 6,860 Total assets $ 15,990,614 $ 14,278,619 LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY Current liabilities: Accounts payable $ 332,798 $ 345,705 Accrued expenses 752,717 788,084 Contract liabilities 1,458,319 180,706 Current portion of long-term debt 778,991 766,354 Total current liabilities 3,322,825 2,080,849 Long-term debt, including capital leases 3,998,609 4,185,274 Stockholders' Equity: Common stock - par value $.0001 per share, 90,000,000 shares authorized, 28,824,593 shares issued and outstanding at June 30 and March 31, 2018 2,882 2,882 Additional paid in capital 8,586,925 8,561,995 Accumulated other comprehensive income 22,325 24,236 Retained earnings (accumulated deficit) 57,048 (576,617 ) Total stockholders' equity 8,669,180 8,012,496 Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $ 15,990,614 $ 14,278,619

TECHPRECISION CORPORATION

CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS AND COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (unaudited)

Three months ended June 30, 2018 2017 Net sales $ 4,098,823 $ 5,830,386 Cost of sales 3,046,299 4,089,799 Gross profit 1,052,524 1,740,587 Selling, general and administrative 730,465 919,759 Income from operations 322,059 820,828 Other income 2,740 91 Interest expense (95,385 ) (108,782 ) Total other expense, net (92,645 ) (108,691 ) Income before income taxes 229,414 712,137 Income tax expense 65,029 287,635 Net income $ 164,385 $ 424,502 Other comprehensive (loss) income: Foreign currency translation adjustments $ (1,911 ) $ 732 Other comprehensive (loss) income, before tax (1,911 ) 732 Income tax expense on other comprehensive income -- 296 Other comprehensive (loss) income, net of tax $ (1,911 ) $ 436 Comprehensive income $ 162,474 $ 424,938 Net income per share (basic) $ 0.01 $ 0.01 Net income per share (diluted) $ 0.01 $ 0.01 Weighted average number of shares outstanding (basic) 28,824,593 28,824,593 Weighted average number of shares outstanding (diluted) 29,096,727 29,766,666

TECHPRECISION CORPORATION

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (unaudited)

Three Months Ended June 30, 2018 2017 CASH FLOWS FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES Net income $ 164,385 $ 424,502 Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash (used in) provided by operating activities: Depreciation 185,585 171,613 Amortization of debt issue costs 15,231 19,544 Stock based compensation expense 24,930 99,388 Change in contract loss provision (15,875 ) 130,662 Deferred income taxes 65,029 273,528 Changes in operating assets and liabilities: Accounts receivable 730,574 641,353 Inventories (48,518 ) (1,294,314 ) Contract assets (2,119,085 ) -- Other current assets 34,868 (38,214 ) Other noncurrent assets and liabilities -- (4,839 ) Accounts payable (12,907 ) 199,423 Accrued expenses 118,339 15,254 Accrued taxes payable -- 4,403 Contract liabilities 567,517 (68,522 ) Net cash (used in) provided by operating activities (289,927 ) 573,781 CASH FLOWS FROM INVESTING ACTIVITIES Purchases of property, plant and equipment (101,695 ) (212,946 ) Proceeds from sale of equipment -- 80,000 Net cash used in investing activities (101,695 ) (132,946 ) CASH FLOWS FROM FINANCING ACTIVITIES Repayment of long-term debt (186,896 ) (174,591 ) Net cash used in financing activities (186,896 ) (174,591 ) Effect of exchange rate on cash and cash equivalents 661 (186 ) Net (decrease) increase in cash and cash equivalents (577,857 ) 266,058 Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of period 2,689,110 3,066,156 Cash and cash equivalents, end of period $ 2,111,253 $ 3,332,214

TECHPRECISION CORPORATION

SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION

Reconciliation of EBITDA to Net Income

The following table provides a reconciliation of EBITDA to net income, the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP measure reported in our condensed consolidated financial statements:

(dollars in thousands) Three months ended June 30, 2018 Three months ended June 30, 2017 Change Amount Net income $ 164 $ 424 $ (260 ) Income tax expense 65 288 (223 ) Interest expense (1) 95 109 (14 ) Depreciation 186 172 14 EBITDA $ 510 $ 993 $ (483 )

(1) Includes amortization of debt issue costs.

SOURCE: TechPrecision Corporation
The automobile industry is concerned over a proposal by the government to allow imports of up to 2,500 units without the need for adapting to Indian regulations

New Delhi: The automobile industry is concerned over a proposal by the government to allow imports of up to 2,500 units without the need for adapting to Indian regulations, according to sources in the sector.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways in June had sought feedback from stakeholders to amend the Central Motor Vehicles Rules for allowing import of right-hand drive vehicles with compliance certificate from the country of origin.

The move would allow import of maximum of 2,500 completely-built units or semi-knocked down kits each year.

The vehicles could be shipped in by the manufacturers or their authorised representatives.

Currently, the government allows such imports only of cars which are priced over $40,000 and bikes which are above 800 cc engine capacity. In normal practice, imported vehicles for sale in India have to undergo homologation process to conform with the Indian regulations, including safety and emission norms.

"The problem with this move is that any kind of vehicle -- a bus, truck, car -- can be brought into the country. With this, units could be brought from anywhere including China and it could impact various segments which are already reeling under low offtake," an industry player, who did not wish to be identified, said.

The move is against the spirit of 'Make in India' as it would encourage foreign manufacturers to import products into the country, he added.

When contacted, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) Deputy Director General Sugato Sen said while relaxing import conditions for a limited number of vehicles for R&D and scientific purposes is understandable, 2,500 could be a large number for certain segments of vehicles which is not very desirable to come under relaxed norms.

Analysts, however, had a different opinion.

Grant Thornton India LLP Partner Saket Mehra said the government move would help global OEMs to have hassle-free certification of vehicles in India.

"This is a step to simplify business, save time and effort spent on homologation, help foreign auto manufacturers evaluate India's auto market and firmly decide in local manufacturing," he added.

It may also boost the launch of new models and alternative powertrains in the country, Mehra said.
DCM Shriram's expansion projects would be completed in the next 12-18 months.

New Delhi: Diversified group DCM Shriram will invest about Rs 1,300 crore on expansion of its sugar and chemical businesses for future growth, a top company official said today.

DCM Shriram is into sugar, fertilisers, seeds, chemicals, cement and UPVC windows businesses.

"We have initiated many expansion projects in the company, mainly in sugar and chloro-vinyl chemical businesses with an estimated investment of almost Rs 1,300 crore," DCM Shriram Chairman and Senior MD Ajay Shriram told PTI in an interview.

These expansion projects would be completed in the next 12-18 months.

Giving details, Shriram said the company would be adding cane crushing capacity by 5,000 tonnes per day while a distillery would be set up with a capacity of 200 kilo litres per day. That apart, 30 MW co-generation power capacity would be added.

"The expansion in sugar business will cost us Rs 660 crore," Shriram said.

In the chemical business, he said the company is expanding capacity by 560 tonnes per day at its Bharuch and Kota plants with project cost of Rs 350 crore.

Shriram said another Rs 240 crore would be spent on 66 MW captive power plant at its Kota plant in Rajasthan.

In plastic business, Rs 32 crore has been earmarked for adding capacity of 40 tonnes per day.

"The expansion will help in future growth of the company," he said.

The investment will be met through internal accruals and debt.

DCM Shriram posted a 6 percent decline in consolidated net profit at Rs 218.34 crore for the first quarter of this fiscal due to losses in the sugar business.

Total income from operations, however, rose marginally to Rs 2,077.66 crore during April-June period of 2018-19 fiscal from Rs 2,065.03 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year.

"All our businesses have done well except sugar segment," Shriram said.

The company sold sugar at loss because of record output in the country that led to a crash in prices, he said, adding that ex-mill rates have recovered on various government initiatives.

"We have been consistently pursuing initiatives to strengthen all our businesses. The company has been continuously investing to increase volumes, enhance competitiveness and strengthen the integration," said Shriram.

These steps would improve the company's returns profile and provide continuous growth, he added.

"The plans to further expand capacity are progressing well and will become operational in phases," said Vikram Shriram, Vice Chairman and MD, DCM Shriram.

The new power plant would be commissioned in October 2019 and this will reduce power costs, he added.

"In sugar business, we are further enhancing integration with additional power and distillery capacity to be commissioned in phases over next 18 months. This will provide stability to sugar business," Vikram said.

DCM Shriram is also strengthening its product portfolio in bio seed, farm solutions and Fenesta window businesses to achieve sustained growth.
Jet Airways confirmed that the regulator will be evaluating its performance and said the airline is prepared for it.

Mumbai: Aviation regulator DGCA is set to conduct a financial audit of the Naresh Goyal-promoted Jet Airways, amid its fiscal conditions under pressure due to the surging jet fuel prices and low fares, a source said.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has already evaluated the financial health of the national carrier Air India recently, besides conducting a special audit of Air Deccan, the source close to the development said.

The financial audit of airlines, which has been conducted in the past too, is done to assess their fiscal health and also ensure that they are not compromising on safety due to financial stress.

"We will conduct the financial audit of Jet Airways from 27 August. A similar audit of Air India has been completed," the source said.

Jet Airways confirmed that the regulator will be evaluating its performance and said the airline is prepared for it.

"The airline is aware of the proposed inspection and is prepared for it. At Jet Airways, safety is of paramount importance," said a Jet Airways spokesperson in a statement to PTI.

The financial audit of Air India was necessitated as the airline has been defaulting on salary payments to its employees, besides grounding a number of aircraft due to payment issues with vendors.

The DGCA has also carried out a special audit of Air Deccan and will soon be conducting a similar exercise on Air Odisha, following orders from the aviation ministry, the

source said.

The two carriers, which together have been mandated to fly on 84 routes under the government's regional connectivity scheme, had recently cancelled a number of flights, citing a shortage of pilots and a technical glitch in their aircraft, the source said.

Air Deccan had started operations in December last year while Air Odisha took to the skies in February this year.

The Ahmedabad-based GSEC Aviation and Monarch Networth Capital had last year acquired 100 percent stake in Air Deccan and 60 percent in Air Odisha.

The Naresh Goyal-promoted Jet Airways, in which Gulf carrier Etihad holds 24 percent stake, is grappling with financial woes and its share price has also taken a beating in recent weeks.

On 9 August, the board of directors of Jet Airways deferred the matter of consideration of the unaudited financial results for the June quarter.

Regulator Sebi is looking into Jet Airways' deferring the announcement of the June quarter results following reservations expressed by the airline's audit committee.

The loss-making Air India, which failed to attract any buyer earlier this year, is also facing a cash crunch and is awaiting Rs 980 crore additional funding from the government. It delayed the payment of salaries to its employees for the fifth consecutive month in July.

Airline reassures investors

Jet Airways Ltd sought to reassure investors on Saturday, saying it is meeting its payment obligations to lenders and other dues, such as staff commitments.

The country's biggest-full service airline issued the statement a day after its shares fell to a three-year low following an announcement that it had deferred its quarterly earnings report.

Jet, which is part-owned by Abu Dhabis Etihad Airways, was due to report quarterly earnings on Thursday but said in stock exchange filings that its audit committee had not signed off on them pending closure of certain matters.

Our account with all the banks as on date is Standard, Jet Airways said in a statement on Saturday. It said it had not been placed in any special mention accounts by the banks, referring to the name given to accounts for borrowers that are behind in their loan servicing payments.

The chairman of State Bank of India, the countrys top bank and a key lender to Jet, said on Friday that the airlines loan is on the banks watch list and special mention accounts. He didnt give details.

Jet needs to repay about Rs 30 billion ($436 million) in loans and bonds over the next three years, with a third falling due by the end of 2019, Reuters data shows.

The company has denied suggestions it told staff earlier this month it was running out of money.

On Saturday, Jet said it was working on cost and revenue initiatives to cushion the sharp rise in fuel costs and the depreciation in the Indian rupee.

We have had scheduled amortizations in the past so many years and the company has met its repayment obligations all the time, it said.

Airlines in India, the worlds fastest-growing major aviation market, operate on thin margins. Carriers have struggled to stay profitable despite filling nearly 90 percent of seats as they compete fiercely to keep ticket prices low to woo passengers.

--With inputs from agencies
Bredesen for Senate Monday announced that candidate Phil Bredesen has agreed to participate in four U.S. Senate debates covering East, Middle, and West Tennessee. The first debate -- hosted by Rhodes College in Memphis -- is one month away. Additional debates are set for Lebanon, Chattanooga, and Knoxville.

I want this campaign to be about ideas because thats what Tennesseans expect from their leaders, Governor Bredesen said. Im applying for the job as U.S. senator. These debates will give me the opportunity to show how we can take on the tough problems in Washington and work together to get things done.

Bredesen for Senate campaign officials are connecting with debate sponsors to work out details and formats for the following debates:

Date: Thursday, Sept. 13, at 7 p.m. CT

Location: Rhodes College, Memphis

Sponsors: USA Today Network  Tennessee (Commercial Appeal), WMC-TV (NBC affiliate), and Rhodes College

Date: Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 7 p.m. CT

Location: Cumberland University, Lebanon

Sponsors: USA Today Network  Tennessee (Tennessean), League of Women Voters of Tennessee, WNPT-TV (Nashville Public Television), WTVF-TV (CBS affiliate), and Cumberland University

Date: Monday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m.

Location: Tivoli Theatre, Chattanooga

Sponsor: Chattanooga Times Free Press

Date: Wednesday, Oct. 10, at 8 p.m.

Location: UTs Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, Knoxville

Sponsors: Nexstar Media Group, including WKRN-TV (Nashville), WATE-TV (Knoxville), WATN-TV (Memphis), WJHL-TV (Tri Cities), and WJKT-TV (Jackson)
While technologies will eliminate some jobs, it will also create some jobs that will support the 'automation economy'.

New Delhi: The workspace is changing drastically and very soon there will be just two types of people employable in the augmented workplace and unemployable, a senior official at tech giant Oracle said.

Besides, he said, there is a dichotomy emerging in today's workplace -- automation is taking up the repetitive jobs, which in turn means fewer jobs, while companies are struggling to get key talent for specialised jobs.

On the other hand, tech experts maintain that though this trend is yet to take off in India, artificial intelligence has started featuring dominantly in HR conversations and while terms like AI, chatbots, and machine learning may sound intimidating, these technologies will not remove humans from the workplace.

While automation will eliminate some jobs, it will also create some jobs that will support the "automation economy".

"Employees need to be more intuitive, irrespective of organisation function, more creative in the work they are doing," Shaakun Khanna, Head of HCM Applications, Asia Pacific, at Oracle told PTI

"The world will just have two types of people -- employable in the augmented workplace and unemployable," he added.

Khanna further said that the workforce needs to be equipped with multiple skill sets and even multiple career transitions if need be. Employees who are not upskilling themselves are facing the brunt of the situation.

According to FICCI-Nasscom & EY report by 2022, 9 percent of the country's 600 million estimated workforce would be deployed in new jobs that do not even exist today, while 37 percent will be in jobs which have radically changed skill sets.

It highlighted the impact of globalisation, demographics, and exponential technologies on job landscape by 2022.

According to PeopleStrong CEO and founder Pankaj Bansal, there will be a visible change in the next three-four years and the first major effects will be seen in the sectors like manufacturing, IT and ITeS and security services and agriculture.

"We predict that by 2021, four out of every 10 jobs globally would be lost because of automation. And of these, one in every four will be from India. That sums up to 23 percent of job loss in India," Bansal said.

About 7 lakh low-skilled workers in IT and BPO industry in India are likely to lose their jobs to automation and artificial intelligence by 2022, a report by US-based research firm HfS Research said last year.

Asked as to what employees should do to make themselves relevant, Oracle's Khanna said: "The workforce needs to be equipped with multiple skill sets and even multiple career transitions if need be. Employees who are not upskilling themselves are facing the brunt of the situation".

To keep its staff relevant in this transitioning world Oracle has moved all its enterprise applications to the cloud to provide unparalleled employee experience, he said.

"This allows our people to learn new skills, collaborate in newer ways and most importantly stay relevant in the ever-changing world of work", he said.

He further said that Oracle has an annual R&D spend of $6 billion and integrates modern technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT) and so on in all its enterprise applications.
One billion tonne annual coal production target will be achieved but it is not possible by 2020 as thought initially, Coal India said

Kolkata: Coal India Ltd, the world's biggest miner, has pushed back its ambitious 1 billion tonne production target by at least two years owing to the existing ground realities, a top official of the company has said.

"One billion tonne annual coal production target will be achieved but it is not possible by 2020 as thought initially, due to various ground realities. We are now hoping to achieve it in the next 3-4 years from now," the official told PTI.

The government had earlier set a target of 1 billion tonnes coal output by FY'2019-20.

Although Coal India has been investing towards establishing railway connectivity with its mines and procuring rakes in order to evacuate more coal, a sharp rise in renewable energy sources is compelling the miner of the dry fuel to review its earlier production goals, the company has said in its latest annual report.

Coal India subsidiary Northern Coalfields and the Railways are jointly investing around Rs 6,000 crore in Madhya Pradesh to lay new tracks and converting the existing ones into double gauge enabling it an additional 15 million tonnes of the fuel capacity.

In its annual report, Coal India has also said that there was an urgent need to revisit its one billion tonne output programme following changes in the environmental paradigm and coal demand.

The company had produced 567 million tonnes (MT) coal in FY'18 and targets to produce 630 MT in the current fiscal. However, these developments have not discouraged the miner in investing in mine expansion and procuring mining equipments.

Coal India has said it will spend Rs 12,000-13,000 crore over the next three years for procuring mining equipment.

In the current fiscal, out of Rs 9,500 crore total capex, orders worth Rs 5,000 crore would be placed for equipment.
At present website name with extension .bharat can be booked only in Devanagari script which has limited letters that are identified by internet servers.

New Delhi: Global internet body ICANN is working on a proposal to enable booking of website names in Indian scripts starting with Devanagari, Gurmukhi and Gujarati.

A Neo-Brahmi Generation Panel (NBGP), set up under ICANN, has started consultation to enable registeration of website name extension, technically called top-level domain (TLD), like .com, .net, .in, in the three Indian scripts.

"The Neo-Brahmi script Generation Panel (NBGP) was formed by nine communities that use scripts derived from the Brahmi script. NBGP is developing Root Zone Label Generation Rules (LGR) for Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil and Telugu scripts," The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers website said.

At present website name with extension .bharat can be booked only in Devanagari script which has limited letters that are identified by internet servers.

The technical standards once freezed through the process, called Label Generation Rules for the Root Zone (RZ-LGR), will allow people to use any word of their choice as TLD in the Indian scripts.

"After integration in root zone of these LGR's people from all over world will be able to apply for top level domains in these scripts. This means that internet domains will be possible for public at large in names of there choice and make internet access in there own language," NGBP Chairperson co-chair and Data XGen Plus founder and CEO, Ajay Data told PTI.

The root zone are the main servers that convert name of website in digital form and identify address of server where the website is hosted to connect visitors of online portals. These servers are managed by the not-for-profit organisation ICANN.

While there are nine scripts in works at ICANN, NBGP intends to publish the proposals for the developing technical standards for all nine in three sets starting with Devanagari, Gurmukhi, and Gujarati.

The last date for public comments for freezing technical details is 10 September, 2018.
The Naresh Goyal-promoted Jet Airways, amid fiscal conditions under pressure due to the surging jet fuel prices and low fares, has reportedly initiated a stake-sale process to raise around $350-400 million from global private equity firms, a media report said.

The airline, which deferred its June quarter results last week without specifying any reasons, has approached bulge-bracket funds including Blackstone, TPG and Indigo Capital Partners, The Economic Times reported, citing people aware of the development.

The news report said that a global investment bank has been roped in to help Jet Airways raise funds. Global carriers Lufthansa and KLM-Air France have reportedly joined the race along with US airlines Delta to invest around $200-250 million in Jet Airways, another Economic Times report said.

On Sunday, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said it would conduct a financial audit of Jet Airways, amid its fiscal conditions under pressure due to the surging jet fuel prices and low fares, a source said.

"We will conduct the financial audit of Jet Airways from 27 August. A similar audit of Air India has been completed," the source said.

Jet Airways confirmed that the regulator will be evaluating its performance and said the airline is prepared for it.

Earlier, newspaper Mint had reported that Jet Airways approached investment bankers again to help sell a stake in the carrier, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Jet Airways is looking to raise immediate cash and the transaction may include Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal offloading a part of the promoters stake in the company, one of the sources told Mint on condition of anonymity.

However, the airline had denied reports of a stake sale in first week of August. Jet Airways had also dismissed questions raised on its ability to keep the airline operational.

Jet Airways (India) would like to clarify that recent media reports about the sustainability of the airline are not only factually incorrect but also malicious. The airline would also like to deny any conjecture of a stake sale, the airlines CEO Vinay Dube was quoted as saying by The Hindu Business Line.

Gulf carrier Etihad holds 24 percent stake in the Naresh Goyal-led airline.
Narendra Modi says govt has taken a 'major decision' to change its approach towards central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) for 'efficient management of public assets

New Delhi: Reiterating that his government is fully committed to promoting 'ease of doing business and ensuring robust economic growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said it has taken several "affirmative actions" in the last four years in this direction.

"Over the last four years, my government has consciously and diligently worked on several fronts to resolve issues being faced by the economy. It is because of these efforts that our economy is today growing at a rate of over 7.5 percent, the highest among major economies," Modi said in an interview to the Times of India published on Sunday.

He said that while the government encourages ease of doing business', it is unsparing in bringing "unscrupulous elements" to book. The prime minister also listed the "unprecedented" reforms his government initiated in terms of disinvestment and taxation.

"The emphasis is on simplifying processes, be it incorporation of a company, induction of a director, or payment of income tax or GST. In the World Bank ranking on Ease of Doing Business, India has moved up from 142 to 100, proving we are an enabling environment for companies," Modi said.

He said his government has taken a "major decision" to change its approach towards central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) for "efficient management of public assets, unlocking wealth to the shareholders and creating wealth for the public".

"New instruments for disinvestment include the listing of CPSEs through IPOs (initial public offering), mergers and acquisitions of CPSEs, and the listing of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Since 2014, the government has realised over Rs 2 lakh crore from disinvestment of PSEs. In 2017-18, the government realised a record Rs 1 lakh crore.

"This can be compared to the performance of the preceding 10 years (2004-05 to 2013-14) during which the cumulative collection was Rs 1.08 lakh crore. We have realised double the amount in less than half the period," Modi said.

The prime minister pointed out that on the direct tax front, income tax return forms have been rationalized to make them taxpayer-friendly and the income tax department has eased norms for scrutiny of assessments. The first slab of income tax up to Rs 5 lakh has been reduced from 10 per cent to 5 per cent for non-corporate taxpayers.

"For the law-abiding, the procedures and processes are being simplified; for the unscrupulous, there is no escape. As part of our mission against black money and corruption, my government has struck off the names of around 2.6 lakh shell companies and 3.09 lakh directors. Names of 55,000 companies more will be struck off this month," the prime minister said.

On the measures to revive the banking sector that is reeling under massive non-performing assets (NPAs), Modi said in order to create a "clean and effective" recovery system, his government enacted the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) besides amending the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, to authorize RBI to direct banks to take recourse to IBC route.

He said that to strengthen the PSBs, the government has, after the initial infusion of Rs 70,000 crore under Indradhanush plan, again announced recapitalization of Rs 2.11 lakh crore in October 2017.
Narendra Modi said that informal sector accounts for around 80 percent of all jobs and creation of jobs in the formal sector has a spin-off effect on job creation in the informal sector

New Delhi: Calling the opposition claims on rising unemployment a "political gimmick", Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that over 70 lakh jobs were created in the formal sector alone in the last one year.

Based on Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) data, more than 45 lakh formal jobs were created between September 2017 to April 2018, Modi said in an email interview with Times of India published on Sunday.

"According to our study based on the EPFO data, more than 70 lakh jobs were created in the formal sector alone last year."

Attacking the opposition, he said that rather than the so-called failure of this government to create jobs, "I believe the shortcoming lies in the absence or lack of a streamlined database of jobs.

"Naturally, in the absence of information, our opponents will exploit this situation and blame us for not creating jobs".

Modi also called the opposition's claim of rising unemployment a "propaganda".

"If you look at claims made by the state governments -- Bengal says it created 68 lakh jobs and the previous Karnataka government claimed it created 53 lakh jobs -- are we saying that all the country's jobs are being created in some states and that other states and the country as a whole are not creating jobs? This propaganda on jobs by the opposition is nothing but a political gimmick," he said.

Modi said that informal sector accounts for around 80 percent of all jobs and creation of jobs in the formal sector has a spin-off effect on job creation in the informal sector.

"There are close to three lakh village-level entrepreneurs who run common service centres across the country and create employment. More than 12 crore loans have been given under MUDRA Scheme," he said.

Modi said that in the last four years there have been massive construction activities like roads, railways or housing -- all these generate jobs.

"All reports, whether national or international, show that poverty in India is on the decline. Can we think of such a possibility without people having jobs?" he asked.

Asserting that tourism provides maximum employment, Modi said that the country's tourism sector has been growing rapidly with foreign tourist arrivals in India in 2017 registering a growth of 14 percent over 2016.

Airlines are adding new aircraft on a monthly basis and the number of mobile manufacturing units in this country increased to close to 120, he claimed.

"These alone have generated 4.5 lakh direct and indirect jobs," he said.
Former Allahabad Bank boss Usha Ananthasubramanian has been named in the Central Bureau of Investigation chargesheet in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case.

Former Allahabad Bank MD and Chief Executive Usha Ananthasubramanian could be asked to go, according to a report.

Ananthasubramanian could be removed from service effective 13 August, CNBC-TV18 reported.

Former Allahabad Bank CMD, Usha Ananthasubramanian likely to be removed from service effective today: Sources to @Sapna_CNBC pic.twitter.com/tvdkAANfzx  CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) August 13, 2018

The move, if executed this week, comes some three months after the board of state-owned Allahabad Bank divested Ananthasubramanian of all powers, following a directive from the finance ministry, issued after she was named in the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) chargesheet in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case.

In May 2018, the finance ministry asked the boards of Allahabad Bank and PNB to take action against Ananthasubramanian and two executive directors of PNB respectively.

Ananthasubramanian was the CMD of the Punjab National Bank till May 2017.

With inputs from PTI
In May 2018, Usha Ananthasubramanian was divested of all her powers as MD of Allahabad Bank, after being named in a CBI chargesheet in the PNB fraud case.

The government on Monday dismissed Usha Ananthasubramanian, the former managing director of Allahabad Bank, and scam hit Punjab National Bank (PNB), from service, according to an official notification.

Ananthasubramanian was, three months back, divested of all her powers as MD of Allahabad Bank, after being named in a CBI charge-sheet in the roughly Rs 14,000 crore PNB fraud case but had continued to be an employee of the bank.

She was to superannuate on Monday but has been dismissed from service.

Ananthasubramanian had enjoyed leadership roles in PNB in two stints. She headed the bank between August 2015 and May 2017, before moving to Allahabad Bank. She was executive director at PNB from July 2011 to November 2013.
In its detailed order clearing the deal, the CCI has said the deal is 'not likely' to have an appreciable adverse effect on competition in India.

New Delhi: Having cleared global retail giant Walmart's $16 billion acquisition of home-grown Flipkart, fair trade watchdog CCI has opined that complaints about the deal violating FDI rules "may merit policy intervention" but do not fall under its ambit.

The Competition Commission also observed that the complaint about Flipkart's discounting practice or preference to select e-tailers is not specific to this merger deal and is "already prevalent" in the market.

It also made it clear that there is no bar on the regulator to examine these issues under relevant provisions of the Competition Act about anti-competitive agreements and abuse of dominance.

The deal has triggered opposition from several quarters including traders lobby groups and the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch and several of them had submitted their complaints to the CCI, which was approached in May for approval of the acquisition.

In its detailed order clearing the deal, the CCI has said it is "not likely" to have an appreciable adverse effect on competition in India.

It also said that a majority of the concerns expressed by various trade organisations on the impact of the deal in the country are beyond the scope of the Competition Act.

Walmart announced in May the acquisition of 77 percent stake of Flipkart in its biggest takeover till date. However, in the following month, more than 100 trader organisations opposed the deal stating it will cause "irreversible damage" to small traders and endanger jobs for thousands.

The regulator said it received representations against the proposed combination from various entities which had expressed concerns on the compliance of FDI norms by Flipkart and pricing practices and preferential treatment to specified sellers in Flipkart's online marketplaces, among others.

"The Commission notes that majority of the concerns expressed in the representations...have no nexus to the competition dimension of the proposed combination," the CCI said in its 12-page order.

"Issues falling beyond the scope of the (Competition) Act cannot be a subject matter of examination by the Commission, though they may merit policy intervention," it said.

Noting that as per the foreign direct investment (FDI) policy an e-commerce platform cannot influence market prices directly or indirectly, the regulator said this is a matter of consideration for the "appropriate regulatory/enforcement authority".

It also observed that the discounting practice of Flipkart and its preference, if any, to select e-tailers in its online marketplaces are not specific to the proposed combination, as these are "already prevalent" in the market even without the proposed acquisition by Walmart.

Section 6(1) of the Competition Act regulates combinations that are likely to cause an appreciable adverse effect on competition.

"The Commission deliberated extensively on the concerns raised in the representations but concluded that the instrument of regulation of combinations cannot address these and different policy and legal instruments may be taken recourse to.

"Thus, this review process cannot be a window to resolve concerns that are not incidental or arise from the proposed combination," the CCI said.

However, the regulator noted that there is no bar on it at any point of time to examine the issues regarding the deal under the relevant provisions of Section 3 and 4 the Competition Act and regulations made thereunder.

Section 3 and 4 of the Competition Act deal with anti-competitive agreements and abuse of dominant market position, respectively.

"... the Commission is of the opinion that the proposed combination is not likely to have an appreciable adverse effect on competition in India and therefore, the same is hereby approved in terms of... of the (Competition) Act," the CCI said.

Mergers and acquisitions beyond a certain threshold require the approval of the CCI.

Traders' body CAIT, which has been opposed to the deal, had described the CCI approval as "most unfortunate" and said it would approach the court against the decision.

However, while noting that the information provided by Walmart is "confidential at this stage", the regulator said that this order will be revoked if, at any time, the information provided by the US retail giant "is found to be incorrect or misleading".

According to the order, Walmart and Flipkart have not made a distinction between organised and unorganised cash and carry of goods (B2B sales) and considered both these as part of one relevant market.

"However, even if both the segments are defined as separate markets and the parties (Walmart and Flipkart) are considered to be present in organised B2B sales, such market still looks competitive due to the presence of larger players such as Reliance Retail, Metro Cash and Carry, Amazon wholesale etc," the order said.

The unorganised sector also poses a significant constraint on organised wholesalers, it added.

The regulator noted that the proposed combination "is not likely to have any adverse implication on competition" irrespective of the whether the market is taken as all B2B sales or narrower B2B markets.

The proposed combination is not resulting in the elimination of any major player in the relevant market, as per the order.

"The Flipkart marketplace platform will remain under the operation of Walmart, thus not only preserving a successful e-commerce platform but also enhancing the financial strength of the platform," the CCI said.

"This would enable the combined entity to compete effectively with competitors in a dynamic e-commerce market ...," it added.

As per the notice submitted to the CCI, the acquisition of a majority stake in Flipkart will be done through Walmart International Holdings.

The proposed transaction would be effected pursuant to the share purchase agreement and the share issuance and acquisition agreement entered into on May 9 by and among Walmart's subsidiary and Flipkart, the notice said.
Modi has a clear upper hand over the Opposition on economic issues in Asias third-largest economy, seen to be a contender to China in the race to become the worlds manufacturing hub in the next three decades.

A few days ago ace stock market investor Rakesh Jhunjunwala said he expects Prime Minister Narendra Modi to return to power in 2019. Explaining the rationale of his hope, Jhunjhunwala raised a very valid question in the minds of many investors including those who dislike Modi for political reasons: 'What agenda the opposition has? Remove Modi?

Jhunjhunwalas question, as mentioned above, resonates well with a lot of moneybags looking at investing in Indias largely untapped market, though many dont say it openly for no one wants to be on the wrong side in the event of a major political upset in 2019.

But there is conviction in the investor community that Modi has plans for the economy to work through whereas the Rahul Gandhi-led Opposition is armed with only anti-Modi rhetoric. The fear is that even if Gandhi manages to upset Modi in 2019 with the help of a grand alliance, he will have the coalition interests to deal with that will cause a further drag on the economy yet again. The policy continuity will suffer. In other words, despite the many levels of criticism against Modi, the politician, and the administration (for instance quality of data, government narratives on various campaigns vs ground reality and controversial economic moves such as demonetisation) investors think Modi will be a better bet in 2019 than the Gandhi-led Opposition.

Even if 2019 turns out to be a fight of personalities rather than a clash of different agendas, as Jhunjhunwala seems to suggest, Modi has a clear upper hand over the Opposition on economic issues in Asias third-largest economy, seen to be a contender to China in the race to become the worlds manufacturing hub in the next three decades.

Even when confronted with allegations on economic mismanagement, Modi comes well prepared to defend the charges with figures and logic that are still easy to contest but certainly not something to write-off outright even by experienced economists. In a recent interview given to ANI, Modi presented a strong defence on economic growth and jobs. The campaign of jobless economy must come to a halt now Modi said, citing progress on various fronts in the economy such as construction, e-commerce, start-ups, tourism and topped up his case with the new EPFO-based payroll numbers. In the last one year alone, one crore jobs have been created from across the board, Modi said.

Now, lets not forget that not everyone believes this argument blindly. There are strong counter-arguments against Modis claim on jobs. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) has been at the forefront of challenging the Modi-governments job numbers with strong economic rationale. In a series of articles (read here), CMIE has accused the government of cherry-picking numbers and dubious statistical analysis on job data, particularly using EPFO-model. Interestingly, Modis own cabinet colleagues seem to have a different view on jobs.

Recently, Union minister Nitin Gadkari stirred up a debate asking where are the jobs that was quickly picked up by the Opposition parties.

Even when one can accuse the government for cherry-picking data and presenting a misleading picture, even Modis political rivals cannot deny that Modis term at the centre has offered a fresh direction to the economy through a mix of incremental and new reform steps. Most importantly, the creation of Insolvency and Bankruptcy code, reforms at monetary policy panel structure, and GST (goods and services tax) were important reform steps the Indian economy saw after a long period of policy stagnation. These have shown results already at various levels. Of course, some of the much-hyped campaigns like Make in India have not taken off yet, so is the promise of increasing share of manufacturing to the national income, privatisation of ailing public sector units (PSU) especially banks and resolving the agriculture crisis. Land and labour reforms, too, are still pending.

On hindsight, demonetisation contributed to the major drag in the economic growth. Most economists agree that the gains of the exercise (formalisation in the economy, digital push, more number of taxpayers) were less compared to the pain points (no big success on black money, curtailing fake notes and cash-based corruption). Minus the demonetisation move, the GDP would have grown at least one percentage point higher. But despite all the minuses, Modi has still scored well on the reform-front and continues to have a conviction on the future course, which is lacking in the Opposition.

Modis return in 2019 will also offer policy continuity. This is critical for the economy to continue on the path of structural reforms. India has suffered a long period of policy stagnation at the centre during the UPA-II marred by scams and corruption charges. What Modi did was to initiate a fresh course to get the economic momentum back through various measures (bank NPA clean-up, GST, subsidy rationalisation and start-up push). Most of these policies, with the exception of demonetisation, have worked well. Continuation of these policies is critical for India to keep going in the global race for growth-leadership. And India doesnt have an eternity to achieve that.

The International Monetary Fund recently gave three decades for India to catch up before its working population begins to decline. India has the advantage of a younger working population at this point but that benefit will start fading in the approaching decades.

Investors, looking at India, will be looking for a political leader who can take up this challenge. The memories of prolonged policy paralysis during UPA era are still fresh. In this backdrop, the question is whether Gandhi and the grand alliance have a solid economic plan that can better Modis reform campaign and inspire confidence in the investor community? So far, the Opposition's approach suggests otherwise. That leaves Modi as a better bet in 2019 for the economy.
Known as the 'messiah of women', Mehbooba Mufti was the beacon of hope for the women of Jammu and Kashmir when she took oath as the first woman chief minister of the violence-ridden state. But after the end of her two-year-long spell, the women in the state are among the most disappointed lot.

Editor's Note: The latest National Crime Records Bureau statistics show an 83 percent increase in crimes against women, with as many as 39 cases reported every hour across the country. There are several thousand more instances that go unreported. And yet, such felonious acts represent only a limited view of the manner in which women in this country must face brutality. In this series of reported pieces, Firstpost examines those societal forces that, while beyond the ambit of law, have the same deleterious effect on women as criminal acts.

Srinagar: Known as the "messiah of women", Mehbooba Mufti was the beacon of hope for the women of Jammu and Kashmir when she took oath as the first woman chief minister of the violence-ridden state. But after the end of her two-year-long spell, the women in the state are among the most disappointed lot.

Political and women rights activist Hameeda Nayeem points out how "state violence" against women in Kashmir increased manifold after Mehbooba took oath of office.

"Since her takeover, dozens of women were killed and blinded within their homes. Her crocodile tears (when she was out of power) were meant to fool the people to get a foothold in the society for electoral power, Nayeem, who also heads Kashmir Centre for Social and Developmental Studies, said.

Violence against women increased after Mehbooba took over

Statistics are enough to prove this. The lone womens police station in the summer capital received around 188 complaints in 2016 from women victims of domestic and other forms of violence in Kashmir. The number jumped by over 300 percent to 650 in 2017.

The number of abduction cases of women and girls also increased from 775 in 2016 to 877 in 2017. On the domestic violence front, the number increased from 348 in 2016 to 399 in 2017.

Cases of harassment and other violence against women double in 2017 as compared to the number of cases received by the State Womens Commission (SWC) in 2016. The numbers jumped from 2,000 to 4,000.

Safina Beigh, state president of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) womens wing, rues that she was expecting Mufti to take bold initiatives like political reservation for women in the state, but the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister didn't speak even once about it.

"Even if the bill would have been introduced for the sake of argument, she could have weighed the reaction and response from her partymen and opponents. Its approval would have had been historic for women empowerment, says Safina, wife of PDP MP Muzaffar Hussain Beigh.

The image of 'saviour of women'

Expectations were high from Mehbooba not just because she is a woman but because she had led several campaigns against violence on women in Kashmir. Images of Mufti sympathising with family members and relatives of state-sponsored violence had helped her craft a public image of the "saviour of women".

Sticking to it after her swearing-in as chief minister, she had declared that the special focus of her government will be on women. She even went on to propose the government's first "women-specific" annual budget in 2016 with measures like waiving off fees for girl school students, a womens reservation of 10 percent in industrial estates, two entrepreneur development centres in Srinagar and Jammu and commitment of Rs 5 crore for "women only" city bus services.

Such initiatives, however, drew flak as nothing much changed at the grassroots level. The dropout rate in primary and upper primary classes saw a considerable increase from 6.93 percent and 5.36 percent, respectively, in 2015-16 to 10.30 percent and 10.20 percent in 2016-17.

Her governments fee-waiver order for girl students hardly saw any implementation on the ground. A senior official of Directorate of School Education, Kashmir, says the department lacks funds to implement the order entirely.

The then finance minister, Haseeb Drabu, also announced that the government will set up four new womens police stations in Pulwama, Kupwara, Kathua and Udhampur districts of J ammu and Kashmir. Besides, a proposal of constructing exclusive toilets for women in all state-run hospitals and health centres of the state was also listed in the budget.

The police stations are however yet to be established.

Later on, Mehbooba launched other schemes like subsidised two-wheelers to promote girl education and then went on to abolish stamp duties levied on property purchased and registered in the name of women.

Life for women beyond tall promises

Beyond tall promises, the situation of women started deteriorating barely three months after Mehbooba became the chief minister.

The summer agitation of 2016 witnessed intense violence against women when dozens of young girls were blinded by pellets. Students who protested against security forces faced the wrath of the government and many girl students were injured in clashes. Till the Mufti government collapsed, more than nine women had fallen prey to bullets of security forces.

It is being alleged that not a single government agency or department approached the families of these victims, mostly underprivileged, with relief.

Mehbooba preferred silence. Or, whenever she spoke, she defended the brutality of security forces and their oppressive policies. And then there was the security nightmare of braid-cutting incidents which had a life altering effect on thousands of women.

Probably, the only positive development during Mehboobas rule was that in infant mortality rate. IMR dropped from 34 to 26 per 1,000 live births in a single year. Health experts attribute it to strengthening of child care facilities and control of diseases in different hospitals over the years across Jammu and Kashmir.

Nayeema Mehjoor, who resigned few weeks ago as chairperson of State Womens Commission (SWC), told this reporter that women in Kashmir have reached a breaking point as being the soft target after suffering heavily during the past seven decades.

The year 2016 proved worst (for women) due to use of pellets which was very unfortunate, she said adding that the women in Kashmir were expecting Mehbooba to take bold initiatives for women and their empowerment but unfavourable circumstances hampered any such initiative of the government.

PDPs chief spokesperson Rafi Ahmad Mir says that whatever happened during the last two years should not have happened at all.

It were the circumstances that led to all this, Mir says, referring to the use of excessive violence by his government and the worsened condition of women in the Valley.

The author is a Srinagar-based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters
The Home Ministry said on Sunday that around 774 people were dead and 27 were missing across seven states because of the floods and rains during this monsoon season

New Delhi: As many as 774 people have died in incidents related to floods and rains in seven states during the monsoon season so far, the Home Ministry said on Sunday.

According to the Home Ministry's National Emergency Response Centre (NERC), 187 people have lost their lives in Kerala, 171 in Uttar Pradesh, 170 people in West Bengal and 139 in Maharashtra due to the floods and rains.

As many as 52 people lost their lives in Gujarat, 45 in Assam and eight in Nagaland.

A total of 27 people were also missing in Kerala (22) and West Bengal (5), while 245 others received injuries in rain-related incidents in the states.

The deluge and rains have hit 26 districts in Maharashtra, 23 in Assam, 22 in West Bengal, 14 in Kerala, 12 in Uttar Pradesh, 11 Nagaland and 10 in Gujarat.

In Assam, 11.45 lakh people have borne the brunt of the rains and floods, which also hit crops in 27,552 hectres of land.

Altogether 15 teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) are engaged in rescue and relief operations in Assam, the NERC said.

A team of the NDRF comprises 45 personnel.

Eight NDRF teams were deployed in Uttar Pradesh, eight in West Bengal, seven in Gujarat, four each in Kerala and Maharashtra and one in Nagaland.
The AAP has demanded answers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the CBPMC president's claim, stating that if true, this decision could be a threat to national security.

A day after a report stated that India is among the countries which get their currencies printed in China, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) lashed out at the Narendra Modi government over the claims. The party also questioned the Centre's move to not reveal details about its "decision" to the public.

Speaking at a press conference in Delhi, AAP spokesperson Raghav Chadha posed five key questions to Prime Minister Narendra Modi: Why the government did not publicly disclose that a Chinese government-led company has been printing the Indian currency? Why was the decision taken when it could leave the country vulnerable to counterfeiting? How much and for how long has the Indian currency been printed in China? What security measures will the Centre take if there is a "leak" in the technology used for printing the currency? Was the decision taken by the government to save money?

South China Morning Post, in a report, had quoted Liu Guisheng, President of the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation (CBPMC) as saying that a host of countries  including India  have contracts with the Chinese government for printing currency notes. However, the RBI authorities have denied the claim.

On the allegation that the Centre allowed CBPMC to print Indian currency to cut costs, Chadha questioned the necessity of the decision. He said that the Centre could have easily cut costs from other government endeavours, including Modi's recent spate in international travels. He added that the Modi government should not be putting India's financial sovereignty and national security on the line, simply to save money. "How can you put the country's national security and financial sovereignty at stake just to save Rs 100 crore? If you really wanted to save Rs100 crore, you could cut that from the Rs 8,000 crore spent (by the government) on advertising and announcements," he said. "You could have cut or reduced your international travel, for which you used Rs 5,000 crore from taxpayers."

Quoting the report, Chadha said that some governments have asked Beijing to keep this information under wraps because it can pose a threat to the national security of many companies, or trigger unnecessary debates at home. He further said that the AAP was compelled to question the prime minister's plans for the country, given the tumultuous relationship that India has with China.

Guisheng told the South China Morning Post that China only began printing foreign currency after Beijing launched the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013 to establish an economic corridor across 60 countries. He said that after, that the company won contracts for currency production projects for countries such as Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, India, Brazil and Poland.

The Congress has also sought an explanation from the Centre, with key leaders such as Shashi Tharoor taking to Twitter to raise their concerns.

If true, this has disturbing national security implications. Not to mention making it easier for Pak to counterfeit. @PiyushGoyal @arunjaitley please clarify! https://t.co/POD2CcNNuL  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) August 12, 2018

Congress communications in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala also underscored Tharoor's sentiment and asked if this was part of China's plan to engulf South East Asia.
Amarinder Singh said the 'no-show' London rally by the Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) for a separate state has exposed the 'total lack of ground support' for the 'Referendum 2020'

Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh Monday said the "no-show" London rally by the Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) for a separate state has exposed the "total lack of ground support" for the 'Referendum 2020' even outside India.

Singh also dismissed the entire affair as a "futile exercise" by a "sham" organisation to create trouble in India, particularly Punjab.

"The SFJ is just a group of fringe elements that is playing into the hands of Pakistan's ISI to divide India, but they have failed, and will continue to fail in their nefarious designs," the chief minister said in a statement here.

"The presence of Pakistani politicians at the rally confirms that it was out and out an ISI plot, which fell through, just as their attempts to create trouble in India have been failing all these years", he said.

Reacting to the London rally, the chief minister said it turned out to be a "damp squib" participated by a handful of elements.

He, however, felt the United Kingdom government should have put its foot down and not allowed its soil to be used to propagate anti-India campaign.

Further castigating the United Kingdom government, Singh said that by allowing the protestors to use Trafalgar Square, instead of the usual Hyde Park generally used for such purposes, it had shown its total complacency in the issue.

The entire referendum business is nothing but a "money making racket" of the SFJ, with no takers for the so-called campaign either in India, or even outside, as is evident from the poor show at the rally," Singh added.

He said that there was virtually "nil local support" for the rally and whatever little support they had managed to garner was of "similar fringe elements" from other countries.

"The presence of Pakistani leaders, including Nazir Ahmed who openly spoke of dividing India and splitting Kashmir, Punjab and Nagaland from it, made it clear that the rally was a game plan of the ISI - a fact further endorsed by the presence of separatist Kashmiris living in United Kingdom," Singh added.

Citing ground reports, the chief minister claimed that some of those Kashmiris were forced to wear turbans to make them look like Sikhs.

"And a handful of Sikhs around had evidently been forced to come," Singh said.

Describing the SFJ fringe elements as mere "social media tigers", who are trying to create hype even when they have no support, both in India and abroad, Singh said the Sikhs were a patriotic community who have always stood for the unity and integrity of the country.

As many as 90,000 Sikhs are serving in the Indian Army, defending the country's borders, he pointed out, adding that the SFJ could "never succeed in misleading the community" into falling for their "selfish" designs.

Singh warned the SFJ and all such "anti-India" forces to stay out of the country and refrain from any attempt to foment trouble in Punjab, or any other part of India.

"Their efforts will backfire on them," he said, adding that his government would deal with such elements with an "iron hand".

"Nobody would be allowed to disturb the peace and the communal harmony in the state," he said.

Pro-Khalistani supporters Sunday assembled at Trafalgar Square in London in a rally organized by the SFJ, intended to raise awareness for a non-binding referendum in 2020, calling for the Sikh-majority state of Punjab to be granted "independence"
BJP chief Amit Shah wrote to the Law Commission on Monday, advocating for a 'One Nation, One Poll' and suggested that in a progressive democracy such as India, having separate elections strained the resources of the state.

Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah wrote to the Law Commission of India on Monday, advocating for a 'One Nation, One Poll' and suggested that in a progressive democracy such as India, having separate elections strained the resources of the state.

BJP President Amit Shahs letter to the Law Commission for One Nation One Election. #Delhi (1/2) pic.twitter.com/03uSQ5kAzw  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

BJP President Amit Shahs letter to the Law Commission for One Nation One Election. #Delhi (2/2) pic.twitter.com/3NWZogpmzy  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

He wrote that during elections, when the Model Code of Conduct is enforced, development works and policy decisions have to be stopped till the poll is over. Drumming support for the 'One Nation, One Poll' proposal, Shah wrote, "There is no relation between Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. Voters vote on different issues in both polls. Therefore, we must have faith and trust the voters."

On Monday, a BJP delegation led by party leader Bhupendra Yadav met with the Law Commission and handed over Shah's letter. "We have notified Law Commission about our partys support for simultaneous elections in country. It would reduce expenses significantly and the repetitive use of election machinery. Necessary amendments to Constitution should take place," Yadav told ANI.

He also claimed that there are over 9,30,000 poll booths and over one crore workers posted during polls. "Rs 1,600 to Rs 1,700 crore were spent in 2011 polls and Rs 4,000 crore in 2014 polls. One Nation, One Election would reduce the cost. This exercise has been successful in several countries," said Yadav, while speaking to reporters.

Shah's letter comes two days after Chief Election Commissioner Om Prakash Rawat proposed holding one election a year as an alternative to Centre's push for simultaneous elections. Rawat said that the move would prevent violations of Model Code of Conduct on social media, as the social media platforms can be ordered to not run any poll-related news 48 hours before the elections.

Rawat had highlighted that conducting simultaneous elections will require a huge manpower, especially security forces.

For some months, the issue of holding simultaneous elections across the country has been a raging debate with a stakeholder discussion called for the One Nation, One Poll proposal by the Law Commission of India. The Law Commission and NITI Aayog have often repeated that simultaneous elections are somehow acceptable because "elections to Lok Sabha and all state Legislative Assemblies were held simultaneously between 1951 and 1967".

While the BJP mooted the simultaneous elections proposal, Opposition has repeatedly denounced the Law Commission's agenda. Most Opposition parties flayed the concept of simultaneous elections, terming it as "anti-democratic" and "unconstitutional".
While Governor NN Vohras tenure expired in June this year, he was asked to continue in office till the time Amarnath Yatra had concluded in Kashmir. The Yatra is coming to end on 26 August.

Increasing differences between BJP leaders in Jammu and Kashmir and Governor NN Vohra over the continuation of Article 35A which bars outsiders from owning property in Jammu and Kashmir or getting government jobs in the state may result in the appointment of a new governor before the end of this month.

The Central government had to seek an adjournment of the case in the Supreme Court earlier after the state circulated a letter before the apex court seeking that the hearing be deferred on Article 35A in view of the preparations for the urban local bodies polls and panchayat elections. BJP sources said that the Centre was also forced to seek the deferment to avoid a showdown with Vohra and not to betray any differences publicly over the issue when the Amarnath Yatra was still going on. Vohras tenure was extended and he was told to continue till the time Amarnath Yatra was over in Kashmir.

Sources said that the BJP state leaders were in favour of former Punjab DGP, PS Gill, taking over as a head of the state even as the name of former Union home secretary and current Comptroller and Auditor General, Rajiv Mehrishi was also being considered for the position of the governor.

Former deputy chief minister and senior BJP leader, Kavinder Gupta, said, The governor should change. Change is needed as he has been in the office for a long time. His third tenure has started and his tenure was extended till the conclusion of Amarnath Yatra.

However, he said that the priority of the BJP is to ensure peace in Jammu and Kashmir, while adding that, Article 35A is sub judice and it is to be decided by the Supreme Court".

The BJP leaders in Kashmir said that Vohras tenure could end any time after 15 August. In June 2008, Vohra had replaced Lt Gen (Retd) SK Sinha as the states governor. Before his appointment as the Jammu and Kashmir governor, he was Government of India's special representative for carrying out dialogue in Jammu and Kashmir from 2003 to 2008. His tenure was later extended in 2013.

While Vohras tenure expired in June this year, he was asked to continue in office till the time Amarnath Yatra had concluded in Kashmir. The Yatra is coming to end on 26 August.

Sources in BJP said that the state leadership was in favour of Gill to take over as the new governor. He was the election co-in charge of the BJP during the Assembly polls in Kashmir in 2014. However, BJP had failed to win any seat in Kashmir and the contest had remained restricted to National Conference (NC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Gill had spearheaded a number of anti-militancy operations in Kashmir and many surrendered militants were fielded by the BJP in the elections in Kashmir in 2014. However, none of them could give a close contest to the candidates of Congress, NC or PDP.

Gill who is a retired Jammu and Kashmir IPS officer was the Vigilance Commissioner before he took over as the DGP in Punjab in 2009. He was the Deputy Inspector General of Police of Central Kashmir range in 1994 when the militancy was at its peak and later supervised many anti-militancy operations as the IGP Kashmir.

But his tenure had remained marred with controversies over the incidents of custodial torture and killings. Gill was earlier associated with Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab before he joined the BJP.

He is considered to be close to BJP national general secretary, Ram Madhav, as well as the Minister of state in Prime Ministers Office (PMO), Jitendra Singh. Many people had joined the BJP in Kashmir when Gill was the Kashmir in charge, said a BJP leader.

Earlier the name of Jammu and Kashmir interlocutor, Dineshwar Sharma, was also being considered for the office of the governor, but sources said that New Delhi was in favour of starting a fresh dialogue with separatist leaders.

Some of the Indian civil society leaders are likely to meet the separatist leaders in Kashmir after 15 August to look for any, chances of roping in the Hurriyat leaders for a peace process in Kashmir".

BJP chief spokesman, Sunil Sethi, said that Gill was earlier present in a rally of the party at Kathua on the occasion of joining of former Congress MP, Lal Singh, into the party. He, however, said that he doesnt hold any office in the party as of now".
Anshu Prakash was allegedly attacked during a late-night meeting with Arvind Kejriwal and AAP lawmakers at the chief minister's residence in Civil Lines.

The Delhi Police on Monday filed a chargesheet in the case of the alleged assault on Delhi Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash, naming chief minister Arvind Kejriwal as one of the accused. The deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and 11 other AAP MLAs have also been named.

The final report was filed before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal who put up the matter for consideration on August 25.

Kejriwal and Sisodia have been booked for criminal conspiracy, according to News18.

According to Times Now, two MLAs  Prakash Jarwar and Amantullah Khan  have been booked under sections pertaining to assaulting a public servant, obstructing a public servant from performing his or her duty, criminal intimidation, and conspiracy.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on 26 June had said that the case against elected representatives was 'fake' and said that it was 'humiliating' to the people. The Delhi Police had on 18 May questioned Kejriwal for over three hours in connection with the alleged assault on Prakash

Prakash was allegedly attacked during a late-night meeting with Kejriwal and AAP lawmakers at the chief minister's residence in Civil Lines area on the night of 19 February.

The police registered a case in connection with the incident and questioned Kejriwal, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and 11 AAP lawmakers present at the meeting.

The police had seized the hard disk connected to the CCTV camera system at Kejriwal's residence as part of its probe into the case. It has received the forensic test report of the CCTV camera system, which said the cameras did not show the actual time that night.

AAP chief spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj had also asserted that the chief secretary was not assaulted on 19 February. He alleged that the case is a conspiracy to frame Kejriwal, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and AAP lawmakers by prime minister Narendra Modi. "Modi fears Kejriwal, not Rahul Gandhi. His priority is to topple the AAP government," Bhardwaj alleged.

With inputs from PTI
Yoga guru and entrepreneur Baba Ramdev said on Sunday that 'gau rakshaks' (cow protectors) are forced to come out on streets as police and civil administrations fail to deal strictly with the menace of cow smuggling.

Jaipur: Yoga guru and entrepreneur Baba Ramdev said on Sunday that 'gau rakshaks' (cow protectors) are forced to come out on streets as police and civil administrations fail to deal strictly with the menace of cow smuggling. He said that strict action should be taken against those involved in illegal cow slaughter and added that a few "gau rakshaks" go overboard, which malign the image of "90 percent genuine" people who work for cow protection.

"No one speaks about cow smugglers. Why are cow slaughterers given encouragement. It should never happen. We are not in favour of those having licence for cow slaughter house and those transporting animals," he told reporters on the sidelines of an event in jaipur.

Advocating a complete ban on cow slaughter in the country, he said that Centre should enact a law on the matter. "Who else can be a bigger 'rashtra bhakt' and 'gau bhakt' than Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He should enact a law to ban cow slaughter in the country," Ramdev said.

Replying to a question on the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, Ramdev said that nearly 3-4 crore people live illegally in the country which poses a huge threat to the country's integrity, unity and sovereignty. Be it a Bangladeshi, Pakistani or American, no one should be allowed to live illegally in the country, he added.
The Bhim Army is planning to stage a protest on the Parliament Street on 19 August demanding release of its founder Chandrashekhar Azad.

New Delhi: The Bhim Army is planning to stage a protest on the Parliament Street on 19 August demanding release of its founder Chandrashekhar Azad who is in jail on charges of engineering caste riots in Saharanpur last year.

The Dalit organisation is also demanding withdrawal of cases against those who have been jailed in connection with the 2 April Bharat Bandh violence.

"We will stage a protest on the Parliament Street and march to the Parliament demanding release of Chandrashekhar Azad and dropping of charges under the National Security Act (NSA) against him," Bhim Army national president Vinay Ratan Singh told reporters. "The rally is necessary as there is a civil war-like situation emerging from the government's failure to check issues relating to Dalits and caste discrimination," he alleged.
BJP suspended Babita and Narendra Chauhan from the party after they were arrested on the charges of accepting bribes

Jaipur: Rajasthan's Beawar municipality chairperson Babita Chauhan and her husband Narendra Chauhan, arrested in a bribery case, have been suspended from the primary membership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

They were arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) for taking bribe of Rs 2.25 lakh on 8 August.

A middleman was also arrested in the case.

The decision to suspend the couple from the Bharatiya Janata Party's primary membership was taken on the directions of party state president Madan Lal Saini, BJP's Ajmer Dehat district president BP Saraswat said in a statement.
Two different organisations had held a joint protest at Delhi's Parliament Street on Saturday, at which a copy of the Constitution was burnt.

Mumbai: The Mumbai Congress on Monday staged a protest against the alleged burning of a copy of the Constitution in New Delhi and demanded that those responsible for the act be booked for sedition. The Delhi Police arrested a 40-year-old man on Saturday for allegedly burning a copy of the Constitution in protest against the amendments to the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

Leaders and workers of the Mumbai Congress held a protest outside Dadar railway station in Mumbai and strongly condemned the incident, which they said disrespected the Constitution and its chief architect BR Ambedkar.

Former Congress MP from South Central Mumbai Eknath Gaikwad, who led the protest, said, "Just arrest is not enough. We demand that the accused be slapped with sedition charges so that nobody dares to do such a thing again." He accused the BJP-led government at the Centre of "instigating" such elements.

The protesters shouted slogans against the Narendra Modi government, accusing it of trying to "dilute" the basic characters of the Constitution.

Anil Tanwar, the national in-charge of the Akhil Bhartiya Bheem Sena, had filed a complaint at the Parliament Street Police Station on Saturday, alleging that members of the Youth for Equality had burnt a copy of the Constitution and shouted slogans against Ambedkar.

The complainant also submitted a CD containing a video of the incident, the police had said.

Investigations revealed that on 9 August, two different organisations  the Youth Equality Foundation (Azad Sena) and the Arakshan Virodhi Party  had held a joint protest at Parliament Street, the police said. The Arakshan Virodhi Party participated in the protest under the leadership of Deepak Gaur, and Youth Equality Foundation was headed by one Abhishekh Shukla.

Three police teams were formed to nab the accused. The teams raided the houses of suspects in different parts of Delhi, Haryana and Utar Pradesh, but they were found absconding. Subsequently, the police nabbed Gaur from Faridabad. During interrogation, he revealed that he and Shukla had conspired to burn the copy of the Constitution with an intention to bring the attention of government against the amendments in the SC/ST Act, the police said.

The amendments restored key provisions of the Act that were "diluted" by the Supreme Court in March.
After the Maratha agitation in Maharashtra for 16% quota in government jobs, the Dhangar community in the state is set to launch a stir seeking reservation in jobs and educational institutions under the Schedule Tribe (ST) category.

After the Maratha agitation in Maharashtra for 16 percent quota in government jobs, the Dhangars  the shepherd community  in the state are set to launch a stir seeking reservation in jobs and educational institutions under the Schedule Tribe (ST) category.

The Dhangar community leaders will hold a statewide agitation under the Dhangar Sangharsh Samiti Maharashtra Rajya (DSSMR) from 10 am to 6 pm on Monday, reported The Indian Express.

Monday also marks the death anniversary of Ahilyabai Holkar, a Dhangar queen of Indore who ruled the Malwa kingdom (parts of central and western Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra) for almost three decades.

At a meeting of the Dhangar community leaders in Mumbai on Saturday, local leaders across Marathawada, Vidarbha and northern Maharashtra were asked to gather the community and mark strategic locations for the protests. It was made clear that violence was not to be used during the agitation, but at the same time the leaders were asked to go "all out" to display their presence.

DSSMR leader, Rajya Sabha MP and Padma Shri awardee Dr Vikas Mahatme told the Indian Express that the stir was to highlight the pending demand of the community to be included under the ST category to avail its benefits. "The agitation was necessary following unrest among the community members, especially the poor, who believe their voice is not being heard by the government, he said. During the recently concluded Monsoon Session of Parliament, Mahatme brought up the issue in the Upper House in July and warned that the community was losing patience and may go the of Maratha unrest.

Who are the Dhangars?

Accounting for about a crore in population (9 percent), the shepherd community or Dhangars are a nomadic tribe that live mostly in western Maharashtra and Marathwada regions. They play a crucial role in four Lok Sabha seats (Baramati, Madha, Solapur, Satara) and nearly 35 Assembly seats.

The community is currently listed under the Vimukti Jati and Nomadic Tribes (VJNT) in Maharashtra. While they have been recognised as a Schedule Tribe by the Centre, it has been misspelt as 'Dhangads', depriving the community of benefits under the ST status, according to another Indian Express report. At present, Dhangars have 3.5 percent reservation in Maharashtra.

Road blockade in Mumbai; bandh called for in Pandharpur and Solapur

Calls for bandhs have been given in Pandharpur and Solapur while a road blockade has been planned for in Mumbai's suburbs of Virar and Ghatkopar, reported The Times of India. In Nagpur, the meeting will take place in the middle of the road on the Nagpur-Hyderabad Highway, where around 400-500 people are expected to gather for the protests.

A Dhangar leader Raju Barge said that over 10,000 people are expected to gather at Ghatkopar and Virar in Mumbai for the road bloackade. The Times of India report also added that the leader expect nearly 1,500 people to turn up for the agitation in Gondia in Vidarbha.

Student commits suicide in Mumbai over quota demand

In a first, a 20-year-old student from Marathwada's Parbhani district committed suicide allegedly in solidarity for the demand for a rise in reservation for the Dhangar community, reported Hindustan Times.

Yogesh Radhakishan Karke, a resident pf Gomewakdi village, was preparing for his HSC examination when he hanged himself from the ceiling in Mumbai.

Politics behind reservation for Dhangar community

Over the last two decades, the Congress, NCP and BJP have supported the inclusion of Dhangars in the ST category. STs have seven percent quota in the state. However, existing communities under the ST category are unwilling to dilute their share of the quota to accommodate Dhangars and have said that they will include it only if the overall reservation quota in increased.

While electing DSSMR leader Dr Vikas Mahatme to Rajya Sabha was a political move to pacify the shepherd community, the government is unwilling to face the backlash from other ST communities if Dhangars are given a higher quota.

On Friday, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis attempted to assure the community that the state government is "committed and taking every effort" to provide reservations to Dhangars in Maharashtra. "The government is committed and taking every effort to complete all procedures (for reservations for the community) at the earliest. We are completing constitutional formalities with a detailed report by the TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) which is expected to get done by the end of this month," Fadnavis said.

The chief minister, last Sunday, had said, during a televised address, that the TISS was preparing a survey report in connection with reservations for the Dhangar community in the state. He informed, at the time, that the TISS report would be submitted to the government by the end of August.

With inputs from PTI
An editorial decision of carrying a photo, instead of a cartoon has gone viral on social media which also raises a debate on the concept of independent or free media in India. Cartoonist Satish Acharya has alleged that his editor at Mail Today Dwaipayan Bose rejected a cartoon which was about how China is surrounding India by spreading influence in countries like Maldives and others.

An editorial decision to carry a photo, instead of a cartoon has gone viral on social media, also triggering a debate on the concept of an independent or free media in India. On Sunday, cartoonist Satish Acharya has alleged that the editor of Mail Today, Dwaipayan Bose, had rejected a cartoon on how China was surrounding India by spreading its influence in countries such as Maldives. According to Acharya, the editor said the illustration is "very defeatist and the China problem is being overplayed".

"I thought it was how a cartoonist looked at the growing influence of China around Indian interests. So I said it was debatable and the cartoonist's opinion should be valued. In response, he asked the news desk to drop the cartoon and carry a photo."

In his personal blog, Acharya wrote:

DROP THE CARTOON AND CARRY A PHOTO!

Thats how my cartoon column with Mail Today ended yesterday.

Thats how the editor looked at a cartoon and cartoonists opinion.

Thats how the editor chose to shut a voice!

In his blog, Acharya goes on to illustrate examples from the past when Bose rejected his ideas. "First, they rejected a cartoon showing a cow, saying, 'The editor is not too happy with the cartoon with cow.' For a cartoon on lynching, I received this message: 'There's a bit of an issue. The India Today Group has decided not to come out with any community-based cartoons.' For one cartoon on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, they asked if I could "replace Modi's character with any general BJP character". And then, 'The editor is not comfortable with the Muslim angle in the cartoon,' and 'The editor didn't like the demonetisation link with 100% electrification'. And more of "this doesn't make sense', 'this is unacceptable', et cetera."

"It was very difficult to draw a cartoon as too many barriers were installed around me. Out of desperation, I approached many senior journalist friends for feedback. They sympathised with me, some asked me to wait, some asked me to stay strong. Giving up is easy in such a situation as I'm a freelance cartoonist contributing to other clients, too. I thought I needed to fight for my right. I thought I needed to do justice to the cartoon space that goes with my name."

Acharya tweeted other cartoons and claimed that they were the "cartoons rejected by the same editor". "They somehow reached readers through social media. (For bhakts who are spreading lies about plagiarism)."

Some more cartoons rejected by the same editor. They somehow reached readers through social media. (For bhakts who are spreading lies about plagiarism angle) pic.twitter.com/06ruIl7dbp  Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) August 12, 2018

Besides being widely shared on social media, Acharya's blog post has also brought the focus on the more crucial issues of editorial judgement and editorial freedom at a time when the concept of independent media is a much-debated subject.

In his defence, the editor of Mail Today said that though Acharya "has a right to creative differences", it was "unethical" to make "baseless accusations and try to assign motives where none exist". "We do not act on the dictates of any entity. Our editorial integrity is inviolable  and stays unaffected by Acharya's false allegations," Bose said in a statement.

"This is the first instance in the recent past that his contribution has been dropped," the Mail Today editor added. "As a newspaper, we are under no obligation to carry content that fails to pass our editorial standards; the cartoon in question did not. On some other occasions, when his cartoons have been on sensitive issues  including on particular communities or courts  we've discussed it with him and carried a mutually agreed revised version."

In his blog, Acharya said he felt a strange relief now as he did not have to worry about "what my editor thinks/says about the cow in the cartoon, lynching in the cartoon, Modi in the cartoon or a Muslim/Hindu guy in the cartoon". "The humiliating experience was hurting," he wrote.

The cartoonist also pointed out: "Ironically, the personal website of BJP chief Amit Shah carries most of my cartoons featuring him, many of them are very critical of him!"
The killing came to light after the half-burnt body of M Pierre Boutier wrapped in a gunny bag was found in Tamil Nadu's Ullikotai irrigation channel.

Thanjavur: A 50-year old French tourist was found murdered in a village in Tamil Nadu's Thanjavur district and a local acquaintance arrested for allegedly killing him, police said on Monday.

The killing came to light on Sunday after the half-burnt body of M Pierre Boutier wrapped in a gunny bag was found in an irrigation channel.

Police arrested 29-year-old Thirumurugan, a resident of Avikkottai village in the district, on the charge of killing the French national whom he had befriended during a visit to Mahabalipuram recently. According to police, Thirumurugan, who surrendered on his own on Sunday, "confessed" to the crime.

The two were allegedly in a homosexual relationship and Boutier had come to Avikottai on 5 August on an invitation by Thirumurugan. Some days ago, when both were consuming liquor an argument broke out and Thirumurugan allegedly attacked the Frenchman, killing him on the spot. He subsequently attempted to burn the body and wrapped it in a gunny bag and dumped it into the Ullikottai irrigation channel, police said.

On being informed by the locals, police recovered the body and also found Boutier's passport.
The Supreme Court issued a notice to the Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government in the Hapur lynching case and asked the Meerut Inspector-General to conduct an inquiry and submit a report on Monday.

The Supreme Court issued a notice to the Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government in the Hapur lynching case and asked the Meerut inspector-general to conduct an inquiry and submit a report on Monday.

Representing the survivor, Senior Counsel KV Vishwanathan told the three-judge bench, comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud, that the incident was being portrayed as "road rage", reported Bar and Bench.

The apex court conducted an urgent hearing of the petition after NDTV aired a sting operation which showed the accused Rakesh Sisodia, who is currently out on bail, bragging about the crime and confessing that he even told the jail authorities about it. Earlier this month, the four accused in connection with the controversial case were granted bail after they told the court that they had no role in the attack.

"Haan maine bola ki wo gaaye kaat rahe they, maine usko kaat diya... jailer ke saamne (I told the jailer that they [the victims] were slaughtering cows so I slaughtered them)," NDTV quoted Sisodia as saying.

During the hearing, the apex court asked the Meerut IG to ensure protection to witnesses in the case and fixed the matter for further hearing on 28 August.

The court was hearing the plea of a survivor of the Hapur lynching case, who is sought a court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the matter.

Besides seeking SIT probe, the petitioner also sought transfer of case and subsequent trial outside Uttar Pradesh amid allegations that the police have not recorded his statement. He has also demanded cancellation of the bail of the accused.

On 18 June, 45-year-old cattle trader Qasim Qureshi was lynched, and 65-year-old farmer Samayuddin was brutally beaten over rumours of cow slaughter in Hapur district's Bajhera Khurd village in Uttar Pradesh.

Several videos and photographs of the mob thrashing the two men had emerged on social media after the incident. Among them was a video that purportedly shows a mob beating up a man and forcing him to confess to having slaughtered a cow. The clip went viral on social media.

With inputs from ANI
Samiuddin, 65, of Madapur was brutally assaulted, while Qasim of nearby Pilakhua was killed by a mob in Hapur district on 18 June.

Hapur: Fear is palpable in Madapur village, nearly two months after a man was allegedly lynched and another brutally assaulted by a mob over allegations of cow slaughter.

The incident occurred on 18 June in the fields near a stream, equidistant from the Muslim-majority Madapur and the Hindu-dominated Bhajeda Khurd.

Samiuddin, 65, of Madapur was brutally assaulted, while Qasim of nearby Pilakhua was killed by the mob from Bajheda alleging that the two were involved in cow slaughter.

Villagers in Madapur, under Mustafabad assembly constituency in Hapur district, claim they have become cautious of their movement outside the village since the incident.

The fear was amplified as a video appeared on social media in the past two days in which the accused persons are purportedly seen bragging about how they assaulted the duo.

Hearing a plea in the case by Samiuddin's brother, the Supreme Court on Monday directed the Meerut inspector general of police (IGP) to investigate the case.

"Clearly there is an atmosphere of fear. When they are saying this clearly in the video, it's possible that anyone could be harmed," a man, in his early thirties, said.

He added that people are now scared of venturing out of the village, even to the forests nearby.

"It's not that we don't know them or they don't know us. They know many of us by name, and where we live. Now if the administration takes any action which leads to worsening of the situation, anybody could be in danger. While we are going out of the village or returning from outside anything might happen during that time. That is dangerous," said the man, who did not wish to be named.

Asked about the Supreme Court's order on Monday for providing the victims' families with security if they so desired, the villagers said no one from the administration or police came to talk about it.

The villagers said that they were not aware of the Supreme Court order on security.

Another man, in his fifties, said that the locals were no doubt 'hesitant' to venture out. "With the kind of statements they have been made in the new video, anybody would become cautious," he said.

Asked if there is any message by the elderly in the village for the youth, he said that peace and harmony should not be breached and patience lost.

"The almighty is above and down here we have the judiciary and we are hoping for justice," he said.

"It's not that all Indians are like this. It's only a handful of people, which could be in the majority or the minority. But whoever they are, what is wrong is wrong," he said.

Another villager, alluding to the video clip, said when the accused are blatantly saying this, fear is obvious.

"When the administration is with them, we will automatically be scared," the man, in his late 60s, said, adding that Qasim kept begging the mob for water even as a policeman stood there.

"Now either the government will do us justice or the God. We are not for any confrontation," he added.

A young man from Havaal village, which falls in between Madapur and Bakheda Khurd, expressed worry about the possibility of tension during the upcoming festival of Bakri-Eid.

"We have already seen violence. Everyone is exercising caution. The festival is on 22 August. I hope nothing untoward happens," the man from Havaal, another Muslim-majority village, said.
This silver bullet in the form of pink cars and CCTV cameras and adoption of cool names isnt the solution that we expect the police to come up with.

By Chandni Shah

In an unpredictable world, one thing is guaranteed  right now, some police department somewhere in India is thinking of a genius move to help women. Painting their cars pink. Creating Pink Patrols or SHE squads or other insufferably named groups of cops has been the go-to move of police forces all over the country.

Recently in Karnataka, the Chitradurga police launched the Onake Obbava Force. The group consists of women who have been trained in self-defence. Their primary job? Teaching self-defence to little girls and patrolling crowded areas like the Majestic Bus Stop for potential molesters. Onake Obbava is an 18th century woman who is said to have single-handedly fought off Hyder Alis forces with a pestle. While the origin of the name is superb, we were left to wonder if every town really needs another special, so special, squad to protect women.

Here are 10 things that the police should be doing instead to make the world better for women.

-Listen to women when we tell you that we have faced sexual assault. Police, all over the country have a sterling record in not believing women when they say that they are being molested. Please believe us when we say we are being molested. We dont have a vendetta against men. We are not imagining things. We dont deserve to have it happen to us because of what we were wearing, eating or drinking. We dont even have that new disease you accuse of  doing it for publicity.

-File the damn complaint. Right now, not very far away from you a woman is at a police station trying to get an FIR filed and facing the familiar practice of police refusing. Now, we know you dislike filing FIRs in all crimes (except in the case of well-connected right-wing folks feeling offended by the air) because somehow not filing FIRs means no crime in your jurisdiction. Refusing to file a FIR is against the law. Filing the FIR is also, we hate to remind you, your job. Let women lodge their complaints with ease.

-Maintain confidentiality of sexual assault survivors. There have been cases, such as this, when a sexual assault survivor wrote a complaint letter to file an FIR against sexual assault and all relevant details, including the survivors phone number, seem to have been shared with the perpetrator, his family and with the media. What gives? These details are supposed to remain private. Nobody wants to see their complaint letter in the news like that. Its terrifying. There are laws to protect the privacy of the victim for a reason. Maybe you, being upholders of the law, should not break these laws. Just a thought.

-Stop enabling moral policing. Because they are not moral or the police. They are criminals. If youve seen the videos of the Anti-Romeo squads moral policing couples, you know that its been an issue. Stop moral policing consenting couples, even if they are of different castes or (gasp!) different religions. This 15 August, tell yourself that unity in diversity happens when couples hold hands. Dont be like the cops who help goons in Mangaluru, who beat up couples from different communities for talking to each other, or the cops who stood by as girls were beaten up for celebrating Valentines Day. Or in Kolkata's Dum Dum Metro station, where two people hugging were beaten up by the moral police.

-Remember that women are very rarely assaulted by strangers. Research shows that in India, only in 9 percent of cases were the accused strangers. In the remaining 91 percent, the accused were persons known to the victim. This factor needs to change the way the police approach the filing of complaints, the protection of survivors and investigation of cases.

-Remember that rape is about power, not sex. Familiar places, like schools or work are where most of the violence occurs. Again, women are more likely to be assaulted in familiar places by familiar people. The recent case in Muzaffarpur, where 29 girls were raped, is proof of this. This was done in a shelter which was supposedly a safe place. Patrolling in pink cars by female police personnel would not have solved the issue. This would not have fixed the fact that the girls were drugged and raped in the shelter, by people they were familiar with. Make it easier to report such cases. That would be helpful.

-Be kinder to victims and their loved ones. If youve ever gone to a police station to report a case, you know that the experience is a trauma in itself. Maybe, instead of spending crores on painting cars pink, have a course where the police are taught to be sensitive to victims. This would make the victim feel more at ease after the trauma she has gone through.

-If you cant be kind, at least stop the victim shaming. No, its not because of her shorts that she got molested. Its also not because she was having a meal with the person. Whether shes in a sari, a burqa or shorts, an assault is an assault. You would think that having female cops would stop the victim shaming, but its not true. Even female cops victim-shame and were getting tired of listening to the excuses that they give.

-Please fix your damn helplines. Having apps that let you report crimes of sexual harassment and abuse isn't a great idea, because they dont work. A helpline number is useless if there is no one picking up the damn phone, as in the much publicised helpline in Uttar Pradesh. Keep in mind the fact that not everyone has an expensive phone to install apps into, and that in India, phone signals are sometimes hard to come by. And by the way, apparently its kind of horrible to be a woman working at the Bengaluru police helplines too. Maybe you could look into that.

-Dont make up data to justify the expense of the pink paint. Dont tell people crime rates dropping because of the pink patrol. It doesnt seem to make sense. A couple years ago in Hyderabad, the SHE Teams held a press conference to tell the media about how crime rates were dropping because of SHE Teams. Colour us skeptical. The Bengaluru City Police recently tweeted that the sheer sight of the Obbava Pade would be enough to frighten anti-social elements. The mere sight of a female police cop, even if shes carrying a lathi, wont lead to safety for women and stop molesters. A little research never goes wrong, and maybe you should look into why the data correlation isnt making much sense to us.

-Change the way you treat female police personnel. Why would we trust an institution that systematically oppresses women? There are a lot of cases where policewomen are mentally and sexually harassed. This is true for women constables, who are harassed by their peers and by their bosses. There have been cases where female police officers have had to resign from their office to pursue cases against those who were harassing them.

So instead of photo-ops with policewomen in camouflage pants, black t-shirts and caps carrying lathis, or women in pink police cars, look at the way that women are having troubles reporting cases of crime against them. Look at where violence most likely happens to women and find a solution for that instead. This silver bullet in the form of pink cars and CCTV cameras and adoption of cool names isnt the solution were looking for. This pinkification has to stop, because in many cases, theyre just doing nothing apart from throwing crores of tax money into a very pink drain.
A Special Operation Group of the Rajkot Police raided the factory, located in Kothariya Road area. The factory owner and three of his accomplices were held.

Rajkot: Four people were arrested for allegedly manufacturing firearms illegally at a factory in Gujarat's Rajkot district, a police official said on Monday.

Acting on a tip-off, a Special Operation Group (SOG) of the Rajkot Police raided the factory, located in Kothariya Road area, on Sunday night and seized some pistols and raw material used for making the firearms, he said.

The factory owner and three other persons were nabbed following the raid. "We raided the factory and seized 17 country-made pistols and some raw material which the accused were using to make the weapons," SOG police inspector SN Gadu said. The factory owner, Hiren Sardhara (32), and his three accomplices  Harshad Hothi (28), Alpesh Vasani (35) and Balu Sisodiya (38)  were arrested, he said.

The police were trying to ascertain where and to whom the accused were selling these weapons, he added.
Militants shot dead a civilian after abducting him from his house in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir, police said on Monday.

Srinagar: Militants shot dead a civilian after abducting him from his house in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir, police said on Monday. "Terrorists in Murran area of Pulwama on Sunday night barged inside the house of Gulzar Ahmad Bhat and abducted him," a police official said.

The official said police recovered Bhat's bullet-riddled body from a nearby field.

"Police have registered a case and initiated investigation, which suggest the involvement of local militants Zahoor Thokar and Showkat Dar of the Hizbul Mujahideen outfit," he added.
JNU student Umar Khalid escaped unhurt after an unidentified man allegedly shot at him on Monday outside the Constitution Club of India in New Delhi, police said.

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Umar Khalid escaped unhurt after an unidentified man allegedly shot at him on Monday outside the Constitution Club of India in New Delhi, the police said.

According to an eyewitness, who identified himself as Khalid Shafi, Umar Khalid was attending an event at the Constitution Club when the incident occurred. "We were at a tea stall when a man in a white shirt came, pushed and opened fire at him. Umar lost his balance and fell down, and the bullet missed him. We tried to catch the man. He fired aerial shots and the pistol slipped off his hands before he fled," ANI quoted him as saying.

There was an event, Umar Khalid accompanied us. We were at a tea stall when a man in white shirt came,pushed&opened fire at him. Khalid lost his balance,fell down&bullet missed him. We tried to catch the man. He fired aerial shots,pistol slipped off his hands,he fled: Eyewitness pic.twitter.com/oqRcfgRPcY  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

Umar was at the venue to attend an event titled Khauff Se Azaadi, organised by the United Against Hate group. After the shooting, Umar said, "There is an atmosphere of fear in the country, and anybody who speaks against the government is threatened." Speaking to The Quint, he said, "A person came with a gun, tried to overpower me, (and) tried to shoot me down. Thankfully, my friends were there, who tried to overpower him in return and he ran away and fired from across the road."

Umar blamed the "hateful propaganda" by trolls and the media for the attack. "I was very scared at that moment when he pointed that gun at me. At that moment, I was reminded of what happened to Gauri Lankesh, and I thought that moment has arrived," he added.

'Air of frenzy at the event'

A source in the organising committee of the event told Firstpost that this was United Against Hate's anniversary event. This year, those known to Najeeb Ahmed, the JNU student who has been missing since October 2016, and Alwar lynching victim Rakbar were attending the event. The families of victims of the lynchings in Dadri, Una and Koregaon and the communal clashes in Kasganj were also associated with the event.

"Half an hour before it was scheduled to start... we saw Nadeem Khan (one of the organisers) along with some others rush Umar into the hall. His legs were stained with mud, and it looked like he had had a bad fall," the source said. "An air of frenzy took over the hall... Nadeem narrated the story... There were two male attackers, one of them in a white shirt with brown hair. His friends tried to push the two attackers away. The armed attacker attempted to fire a shot and in the process, dropped the gun on the road... Nearly 30 minutes later, the police reached the spot and took charge of the situation."

Nadeem told Firstpost: "Despite what happened, we decided to go ahead with the event, which is ironically titled 'Khauf se Azadi.'"

An eyewitness said Umar and his friends were having tea at a stall on Rafi Marg and were about to enter Constitution Club when two men, "who looked like they 28 to 35 years of age" attacked Umar. "They pushed him to the floor and one of them pulled out a gun. When his friends and the rest of us retaliated, the two started to run away. The one in the white shirt, who had the gun, fired a shot in the air and dropped the gun there," the eyewitness said.

Online support for Umar

Shortly after news of the incident spread, people took to Twitter to express their shock and anguish. Former JNU Students' Union vice-president Shehla Rashid called it "shocking and highly condemnable".

Shocking and highly condemnable: a guy attacked Umar Khalid from behind and tried to shoot him in Delhi. This is the direct result of hatred whipped up by Republic TV & other hate media. I spoke to Umar. He's okay, but we should be very very worried about his safety.  Shehla Rashid (@Shehla_Rashid) August 13, 2018

Comedian Kunal Kamra, known for his show Shut Up Ya Kunal!, called it spine-chilling.

If this doesn't chill your spine what will? If you choose silence now when will you speak?

If this is not wrong, what is wrong? In Solidarity.

https://t.co/mu6LG55RNW  Kunal Kamra (@kunalkamra88) August 13, 2018

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah said the attack was a direct result of the "relentless hate campaign using both social and mainstream media".

Wage a motivated hate campaign against individuals & sooner or later someone will feel emboldened enough to take the law in to their own hands. The attack on @UmarKhalidJNU is the direct result of the relentless hate campaign using both social & mainstream media. Glad hes well.  Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) August 13, 2018

Communist Party of India member Kavita Krishnan said it was the "hate speech and fake news" peddled by news channels that led to the attack.

Shocking attempt to kill #UmarKhalid - ironically outside Construction Club in Delhi. The hate speech and fake news by news channels targeting him and others as 'anti national' directly results in such murderous violence. Those burning Constitution are, of c not 'anti national'!  Kavita Krishnan (@kavita_krishnan) August 13, 2018

Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani reacted to the incident and said he suspected that the people who killed journalist Gauri Lankesh and rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare were behind the attack on Umar.

My reaction on Umar Khalid pic.twitter.com/wkjOLFyip3  Jignesh Mevani (@jigneshmevani80) August 13, 2018

Umar was in the news two weeks ago when he accused the JNU administration of a vendetta and said that they have not allowed him to submit his PhD thesis despite the Delhi High Court ordering the institute to not take any coercive action against him till 16 August.

"...The proctor refused to accept my submission, arguing that it was not coercion. This is another level of vendetta. I will definitely not pay the fine... I will contest this further, he was quoted as saying.

JNU students Umar, Kanhaiya Kumar and Anirban Bhattacharya were arrested in February 2016 on charges of sedition in connection with a controversial event at the university campus. They are all out on bail. Umar was earlier rusticated from JNU and slapped with a fine of Rs 20,000 in connection with the 2016 incident.

On 20 July, the Delhi High Court listed for 16 August a plea by Umar. The JNU counsel had said no coercive steps would be taken against him and a few other students, who also moved the court against the penalty the varsity imposed on them.

With inputs from agencies

With inputs from Pallavi Rebbapragada
The overall damage caused due to the Kerala rains stands to the tune of Rs 8,316 crore, as per initial reports, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan informed on Sunday.

The overall damage caused due to heavy rains in Kerala was worth Rs 8,316 crore, as per initial reports, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Sunday. Taking to Twitter, the chief minister said he has requested for an additional Rs 400 crore-assistance from the home ministry to carry out immediate relief and rehabilitation work in the state.

"The impact of the disaster is likely to be felt for a long time. The preliminary assessment indicates that nearly 20,000 houses have been fully damaged and nearly 10,000 kilometre of state PWD roads are damaged. The preliminary loss is around Rs 8,316 crore," he tweeted. "The chief minister has requested an amount of Rs 400 crore in addition to the Rs 800 crore already sought for carrying out the immediate relief and rehabilitation. CM also requested that a Central team may be sent again to assess the damages that have occurred during the last week," a second tweet read.

#IdukkiDam update: Water level in the dam, recorded at 5 am today is 2397.94 feet. The Full Reservoir Level of the dam is 2403 feet. (file pic) pic.twitter.com/Mmotg0qJxd  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

The state government has also requested the Centre to declare the calamity a 'rare severity' and provide the required funds and assistance within four weeks. Earlier on Sunday, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, after meeting flood victims in Kerala and taking an aerial overview of the situation in the state, announced an additional Rs 100 crore flood relief.

The home minister also approved the release of the second installment in advance for the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) to supplement the efforts of the state government. Terming the situation in the state as something never witnessed by the state since Independence said the rains and floods had caused "massive damage" to the farm sector and infrastructure like roads and power.

"Kerala is facing an unprecedented flood situation. It is unprecedented because never before in the history of independent India has Kerala witnessed such massive floods," he told reporters. "I understand the suffering of the people of Kerala from the present crisis. Since assessment of the damage will take time, I hereby announce immediate relief as advance of Rs 100 crore," the minister said.

Singh recalled the flood situation in Kerala last month and said that just before he came to the state today, he sanctioned release of the second installment of Rs 80.25 crore in advance for the State Disaster Relief Fund. The first installment of a similar amount of the Central share of SDRF for 2018-19 was released last month, he said.

"The Centre is extremely sensitive to the needs of the Kerala at this critical juncture," he said. The minister said three teams of NDRF had been pre-positioned in Kerala during the current monsoon season. "Eleven more NDRF teams have been deployed in the state, taking the total number of NDRF teams to 14. If needed we will press in additional teams," Singh said in a tweet. Earlier, Singh visited a relief camp at Elanthikkara in Paravur Taluk in Ernakulam district.

No fresh casualties were reported since Friday and the toll in the rain-related incidents since the current monsoon fury from 8 August stood at 37, officials said. Thousands of people have been accommodated in relief camps set up in different areas, including in Wayand, where over 14,000 people had been sheltered.

Flash floods due to incessant rains have wreaked havoc in several districts of the state. From past few days, normal life in many parts has been disrupted. The areas which were worst hit are Kannur, Wayanad, Kozhikode, Idukki, and Mallapuram districts.

The National Disaster Management Authority had on Friday warned that heavy to very heavy rains were expected in 16 states, including Kerala, till Sunday. The weather department has issued a 'Red alert', asking people to be cautious as there was a possibility of heavy to very heavy rainfall in most places in Idukki, Wayanad, Kannur, Ernakulam, Palakkad and Malappuram districts. However, water level in Idukki and Idamalayar dams reduced, bringing some relief, with authorities saying there was no need for people living downstream to panic. However, the Meteorological Department has predicted heavy to very heavy rains in eight of 14 districts of Kerala for the next four days.

With inputs from agencies
The Union Home Ministry's National Emergency Response Centre (NERC) said in New Delhi 187 people have lost their lives in Kerala to the monsoon fury, with 2,406 villages in 14 districts badly hit by rains and floods

Thiruvananthapuram: Rains pounded several parts of Kerala Monday, triggering landslips and compounding the woes of people already reeling under unprecedented floods and downpour which have claimed 39 lives in the last six days, officials said.

The Union Home Ministry's National Emergency Response Centre (NERC) said in New Delhi 187 people have lost their lives in Kerala to the monsoon fury, with 2,406 villages in 14 districts badly hit by rains and floods, and standing crop in over 26,400 hectres damaged.

Landslides were reported from various places in Malappuram, Kozhikode, Idukki and Wayanad districts, as nearly one lakh people rendered homeless due to the deluge took refuge in hundreds of relief camps.

"In the picturesque Wayanad district alone, over 14,000 people have taken shelter in 124 relief camps," the state's disaster control room said.

Some respite appeared on the the horizon for the Idduki hill district, ravaged by floods, with the water in the Idukki dam receding to 2,397.58 ft, alleviating concerns about floods in fresh downstream areas, particularly in Ernakulam district. "The current level does not warrant issuing any warning," they said.

The weatherman has issued a fresh warning asking fishermen not to venture into the sea, saying the coasts of Kerala and Lakshadweep may experience winds packing speeds of 35 to 45 kmph,

sometimes going up to 60 kmph.

Large parts of the state known for its verdant valleys and plantations looked like a massive swamp, with houses flattened and marooned, and crops destroyed.

Rolling down menacingly from upper reaches, flood water wrecked a large number of homes in these districts.

Distraught victims could be seen gathering utensils, cots and other belongings from the debris before shifting to safer places.

The massive deluge has also wrecked the state's travel and tourism industry and seriously impacted its plantation sector.

"Just as the tourism industry was recovering from the cancellation of bookings at hotels and resorts following the Nipah outbreak, heavy rains and floods came as a huge blow," say industry sources.

The state's tourism department was all set to organise the famed snake boat races, which have mesmerised visitors for decades, by giving it an new format - Champion's Boat League (CBL)- on the lines of the Indian Premier League (IPL) from 11 August, 2017. The event has now been postponed.

"We will find a new date. The government is currently busy with relief and rescue operations due to the floods and landslides in various parts of the state," Director of Kerala Tourism P Bala Kiran told PTI.

"The Responsible Tourism Mission under the tourism department had drawn up a programme for organising feasts at countryside homes for tourists during the onam festival next week. The flood-hit areas are now certain to be excluded," sources said.

According to EM Najeeb, senior vice president of the Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO), 70-80 percent of hotel bookings in scenic Idukki, Munnar and Kumarakkom, the most preferred tourist destinations have been cancelled.

The blooming of 'Neelakurinji' flowers in the hills of Munnar, an event that occurs once in 12 years and is eagerly awaited, has also been affected by the rains.

Idukki produces over a dozen varieties of spices, including pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and turmeric, besides many others, and the destruction has been widespread. Spices board sources 35-40 percent cardamom and pepper crops have been destroyed.

According to Ajit BK, the secretary of the Association of Planters of Kerala, the tea, coffee, cardamom and rubber planters have suffered losses of about Rs 600 crore so far.

Tourist town of Munnar in Idukki received the highest rainfall of 11 cm, followed by Vadakara in Kozhikode 9 cm and Mananthavady in Wayanad 8 cm. Kannur and Palakkad also received heavy rainfall, weather office said.

With heavy rains forecast over the next few days, fears mounted over rise in the water level of Periyar, Bharathapuzha and Kabini rivers.

As the rain-fed Pampa rose menacingly, the authorities asked Ayyappa devotees not to travel to the hillock shrine in Sabarimala in Pathanamthitta district.

Besides Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the shrine, the district authorities and police have issued alerts to devotees and decided to stop them at various points till the water receded.

A large number of pilgrims are flocking to the famed Lord Ayyappa temple as it will be opened for the 'niraputhari' ritual and festivities of 'Chingam' this week.

The Pampa river flowing on the foothills of Sabarimala breached its banks at several places, damaging buildings and shops, flooding pathways and uprooting electric poles.

"Heavy rains in the catchment areas close to the Sabarigiri hydroelectric project and the opening of the shutters of the Pampa and Anathode dams caused the flooding," authorities said.

The sluice gates of Moozhiyar and Kakki, the other two dams in Pathanamthitta district, were also opened after the water level rose sharply.
Terming the flood situation in Kerala following heavy rains as something never witnessed by the state since Independence, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday announced Rs 100 crore as immediate central relief.

Kochi: Terming the flood situation in Kerala following heavy rains as something never witnessed by the state since Independence, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday announced Rs 100 crore as immediate central relief.

The minister, who made an aerial survey of badly affected areas in Idukki and Ernakulam districts, said the rains and floods had caused "massive damage" to the farm sector and infrastructure like roads and power.

"Kerala is facing an unprecedented flood situation. It is unprecedented because never before in the history of independent India has Kerala witnessed such massive floods," he told reporters in Kochi.

He was speaking after reviewing the situation with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Minister of State for Tourism Alphons Kannanthanam, state ministers and senior officials.

Singh assured all help from the Centre to meet the "very serious situation".

"I understand the suffering of the people of Kerala from the present crisis. Since assessment of the damage will take time, I hereby announce immediate relief as advance of Rs 100 crore," the Minister said.

The state government submitted a memorandum to Singh, seeking urgent sanction of Rs 1,220 crore from the National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF) to meet the situation.

In the memorandum, the chief minister said preliminary estimates suggested that Kerala suffered a loss of Rs 8,316 crore in the rains, floods and landslides.

Singh recalled the flood situation in Kerala last month and said that just before he came to the state on Sunday, he sanctioned release of the second instalment of Rs 80.25 crore in advance for the State Disaster Relief Fund.

The first instalment of a similar amount of the Central share of SDRF for 2018-19 was released last month, he said.

"The Centre is extremely sensitive to the needs of the Kerala at this critical juncture," he said.

The minister said three teams of NDRF had been pre-positioned in Kerala during the current monsoon season.

"Eleven more NDRF teams have been deployed in the state, taking the total number of NDRF teams to 14. If needed we will press in additional teams," Singh said in a tweet.

The floods in Kerala have caused severe damage to crops & infrastructue. It has also caused loss of precious lives and forced thousands to take shelter in relief camp. We are providing all possible assistance to the state. Centre to provide additional 100 crores to Kerala. pic.twitter.com/Ufq58HCEq0  Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) August 12, 2018

Earlier, Singh visited a relief camp at Elanthikkara in Paravur Taluk in Ernakulam district.

"Today we conducted an aerial survey of flood affected areas with the chief minister and I reached the conclusion that the situation is very serious in Kerala due to floods," he said on Sunday.

"And I would like to assure the state government that all sorts of support will be provided by the central government to meet the challenges of the flood situation," he said.

Singh also heard the grievances of people who lost their homes and land in the floods.

The minister made an aerial survey of areas affected by landslides and rains in Idukki and Ernakulam districts.

He was accompanied by Vijayan, Alphons, Chandrasekharan and Additional Chief Secretary PH Kurian.

After a brief lull, rains started lashing several parts of Kerala since on Sunday morning, posing problems to relief work by multiple agencies in flood and landslide hit regions.

However, water level in Idukki and Idamalayar dams reduced, bringing some relief, with authorities saying there was no need for people living downstream to panic.

No fresh casualties were reported since Saturday and the toll in the rain-related incidents since the current monsoon fury from 8 August stood at 37, officials said.

Thousands of people have been accommodated in relief camps set up in different areas, including in Wayand, where over 14,000 people had been sheltered.

Ten columns of the army, a unit of Madras Regiment along with personnel of the Navy, Air Force and NDRF are engaged in relief and rescue work in badly-hit districts, including Kozhikode, Idukki, Malappuram, Kannur and Wayanad, defence sources said.

The National Disaster Management Authority had on Saturday warned that heavy to very heavy rains were expected in 16 states, including Kerala, till Monday.

The weather department has issued a 'red alert', asking people to be cautious as there was a possibility of heavy to very heavy rainfall in most places in Idukki, Wayanad, Kannur, Ernakulam, Palakkad and Malappuram districts.
On 6 August, the Supreme Court had dismissed the anticipatory bail plea of two priests  Jaise K George and Father Sony Varghese  in connection with the Kerala sex scandal case.. The Apex Court division bench, headed by Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri, asked both the accused priests to surrender before the police by 13 August.

Two priests from the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church accused of raping and blackmailing a woman in Kerala have surrendered before a local court, after a Supreme Court order.

Father Abraham Varghese alias Sony surrendered before a court at Thiruvalla while Father Jaise K George at the crime branch office in Kollam on Monday morning, the police said.

On 6 August, the Supreme Court had dismissed the anticipatory bail plea of the two priests. The apex court division bench, headed by Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri, asked both the accused priests to surrender before the police by 13 August. A bench of Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan had said the two priests were at liberty to seek regular bail once they surrendered.

On 26 July, the Supreme Court had asked for a status report from the Kerala government up to 27 August, regarding the case of rape and molestation against four Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church priests.

The Kerala High Court had on 25 July granted conditional bail to Job Mathew, the second accused. Granting the bail, Justice V Rajavijaya Raghavan directed the priest to appear before the investigating officer twice a week and not to influence the witnesses or tamper with the evidence. Job, a vicar of a local church, was also directed not to leave the country.

Job was arrested after he surrendered before the police in Thiruvalla on 12 June. He has been accused of sexually assaulting the woman since 2009 by misusing her confession.

It was on the basis of the statement given by a woman belonging to the same church, accusing them of sexually assaulting her on many occasions. The high court had earlier granted bail to another priest and third accused Johnson V Mathew, a counsellor of the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church, who was arrested on 13 July.

Seven people have also been questioned by the police in Punjab's Jalandhar city in connection with the case. Kottayam's deputy superintendent of police, K Subhash said, "More people will be questioned regarding the case. We will also go to Amritsar for investigation purposes while Bishop Franco Mulakkal will not be questioned on Monday."

The incident came to light after an audio clip of the purported conversation of the husband of the victim with a church official about the alleged sexual abuse of his wife by the priests was circulated on social media. The woman's husband had last month accused the priests of using his wife's secret confession to "blackmail and sexually abuse".

With inputs from agencies
A man from Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar was booked for raping a 24-year -old woman repeatedly for 6 months

Muzaffarnagar: A 24-year-old woman was allegedly raped repeatedly over six months by a man following which she became pregnant in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, police said on Monday.

The woman was raped over six months by Shoib, who also made a video of the act. When she became pregnant, the accused's family tried to force her to abort the child, Circle Officer Harish Bhadoria said.

Later, she revealed about the incident to her family members.

On Sunday, a case was registered against Shoib, his father Badru Hasan, his mother Nagma and his brother Arif, the CO said.

The police were searching for the accused, he said.
By controlling the 'Time' in Parliament, any government can easily control the discourse and curb dissent. To limit the possibilities of this, there is a provision of a Business Advisory Committee (BAC) in either House of Parliament, comprising of leaders of all major political parties.

If there is one stark feature for which the action packed 18-day long Monsoon Session of Parliament will be remembered, other than the No-Confidence Motion, then that has to be the frequent expressions of anguish of the Opposition at the diminishing space for debate. On the last day of the Session in Rajya Sabha, Trinamool Congress leader Derek O'Brien almost wore himself out trying to highlight how the government was disrespecting conventions of according due space to Private Member's Business. A few moments ago, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad also made an emphatic appeal demanding more time to seek accountability from the government. Though Azad's appeal was in support of Anand Sharma not being allowed to speak on his demand to set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee to look into the Rafale Deal, it was also in extension to earlier complaints made by Opposition of being overlooked by the Chairman while running the House.

Time in Parliament  a contested resource

As argued in an earlier article, by controlling the 'Time' in Parliament, any government can easily control the discourse and curb dissent. To limit the possibilities of this, there is a provision of a Business Advisory Committee (BAC) in either House of Parliament, comprising of leaders of all major political parties. As per Rule 33 of Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Rajya Sabha, the BAC is responsible for recommending the allocation of time for conduct of Government Bills, Private Member Bills and Resolutions and other Business.

The role of the BAC assumes even more importance if we consider Parliament, not as a bastion of the elected government, but a podium for each elected representative irrespective of the party they are affiliated with. Each Member of Parliament, except the nominated ones, represent the will of the constituency that sent them to Parliament and needs to be accorded due space to exercise that will. It is a moot point that the ruling party, having the mandate of the people will bring Bills to Parliament to seek approval for its policy proposals, but this approval has to be meaningful, and not a mere formality. Each MP, theoretically as well as practically, should be in a position to exercise her right as a lawmaker to demand changes and improvements in government's policy proposals and to submit their own policy proposals as well.

But as per Rule 24, Private Member Business, during which MPs can advance their own policy proposals is confined only to a duration of 2.5 hours on each Friday during the session. As per the convention, no Government business is conducted during this time but the reality is that Friday proceedings are marred by low attendance and low interest and that too only when it happens at all. In the Monsoon Session, the first Friday was consumed entirely by the No-Confidence Motion and the second Friday was declared an off on account of Guru Purnima. On the Friday after that, on 3rd August, 2018, more than 150 Private Member Bills were listed for introduction in Lok Sabha, many which were pending introduction for more than a year!

What to discuss in Parliament, How to decide that, and what happened on Friday

The last day of the Monsoon Session was also a Friday and Private Member Resolutions were listed for discussion. But three things happened in the period leading up to Friday:

- DMK patriarch Karunanidhi expired and as a mark of respect both Houses were adjourned on Wednesday

- On Thursday, as many as six Bills were listed for discussion and passing in Rajya Sabha, out of which five needed to be urgently passed - the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Bill, because it was the demand of the entire House and four other Bills which were earlier promulgated as ordinances by the government and would have lapsed if not passed in this session. But House could only pass three Bills, that too among repeated adjournments and disruptions

- On Thursday, the cabinet approved amendments to the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights) on Marriage Bill or the Triple Talaq Bill and it was overnight listed for discussion and passing on Friday, along with two government Bills which were then to be followed by Private Member Resolutions.

Now, one point must be noted here. With respect to the Triple Talaq Bill, the BAC in its meeting and as reported to Rajya Sabha, had not allocated any time for the Triple Talaq Bill in the last week of the session, because it continues to remain a contested issue between the government and Opposition. Despite that, on Friday, it was listed for discussion and passing.

Derek O'Brien raised a point of order and after having repeatedly denied to speak on it, on his tenth attempt, he finally managed to raise his point. He complained that government had listed three government Bills before the Private Member Resolutions whereas per the convention, no government business can be conducted at 2.30pm. More importantly he mentioned a precedent wherein government had managed to pass the Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill, 2016 on a Friday, in Rajya Sabha, taking advantage of low attendance.

As explained in another article, the way the Enemy Property Bill was passed in Rajya Sabha, will forever remain a blot on Parliamentary democracy. The Enemy Property Bill was first brought as an ordinance in 2016, passed by Lok Sabha in 2016, but got stuck in Rajya Sabha because of its draconian provisions. Failing to make any headway with the Opposition, the government re-promulgated this ordinance a record five times in 2016 itself, before being curtailed by a Supreme Court judgment in early 2017 which held re-promulgation of ordinance as a 'fraud of Constitution'. But what is noteworthy is that, as claimed by Ghulam Nabi Azad, BAC had earlier decided that this Bill will not be brought to House till a consensus is reached among all political parties and despite that, in absence of any Opposition in the House, the government brought the Bill and passed it without any discussion.

This shows the cavalier fashion in which government treats the BAC proceedings or the decisions taken therein and the response given to Derek O'Brien's point of order by the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, on Friday, only reinforces this belief. He claimed that BAC had 'decided' that since House was adjourned for one day as a mark of respect to Karunanidhi, on Friday, instead of Private Member Resolutions, pending Government Bills will be taken up.

He was immediately contradicted by Ram Gopal Yadav, a member of BAC, who claimed that no such decision was taken. Anand Sharma, another member of BAC also supported the claim that no such decision was taken and further demanded that minutes of meeting of BAC be placed before the House. BAC minutes are never placed before House and consequently, never come out in public domain. Only the final recommendations of BAC are read out and public can never come to know the deliberations, the gives and takes, the deals which get struck between the government and opposition in BAC meetings.

The Minister continued to insist that such a decision was indeed taken. As Opposition continued to protest, House had to be adjourned till 2.30pm. When House reconvened, Chairperson M. Venkaiah Naidu, informed the House that in BAC, it was merely 'suggested' [as opposed to claim made by Minster that it was 'decided'] that Private Member Bill be suspended to take up Government Bills. He further announced that, since House was not agreeing to it, Private Member Business will be taken up first, till 5pm and then two Government Bills - Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Bill and Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts (Amendment) Bill, 2018 - both brought as Ordinance - will be taken up. Triple Talaq Bill was not taken up as no consensus could be reached.

Way forward  more space for Opposition in Parliament

The proceedings on Friday bear witness to falling standards of deliberative law making in Parliament and the growing mistrust between government and opposition which doesn't bode well for our democracy. During his point of order, Derek O'Brien reminded the Government that the 'House belongs to all of us', but increasingly, Parliamentary Democracy is being subjugated to government's will. The Opposition's role in running the House, in which each MP is an equal party, is being reduced to negligible. The deliberations of BAC are losing their sanctity and there is no predictability in what business may get listed when.

The way forward can only involve more role for Opposition in setting the agenda of the House, more transparency in proceedings of BAC and according more time for debate initiated by Opposition.

The author is a lawyer, public policy commentator, and founder of Maadhyam- a digital platform enabling stakeholder participation in policy-making. Citizens can engage with Maadhyam on Twitter and Facebook.
The Muslim Students Organisation of India (MSOI), a conglomerate of Muslim students and youths in India, appealed to the government to involve the community's youth in national security policy and cautioned about certain extremist ideologies which led to terrorism.

New Delhi: The Muslim Students Organisation of India (MSOI), a conglomerate of Muslim students and youths in India, appealed to the government to involve the community's youth in national security policy and cautioned about certain extremist ideologies which led to terrorism.

At a day-long conference held in New Delhi on Sunday, Muslim scholars and youths deliberated about the issues faced by the community, stressing that efforts should be made to maintain social harmony. They also favoured the implementation of the Sufi spiritual experiments in this context, a release issued by the MSOI said.

Mufti Ashfaq Hussain, the president of Tanzeem Ulama-E-Islam and the president of the assembly, said the country and the world were under serious threat from certain extremist ideologies which led to terrorism. "If the Indian government wants to understand, we can help them. The love of Muslims increases with the country while it gets a share in the policy. Participation in the policy should be considered than participation in power because the policy is regulated frequently," he said.

Convener of the conference and editor of Kanzul Iman, Maulana Zafruddin Barkati, said the nature of India was rooted in unity in diversity. Therefore, the challenge of communal elements in front of the country could not be underestimated. "Every community should deal with it, in which the best is the Sufi ideology among Muslims," he said.

Syed Muhammad Qadri, chief speaker and former president of the organisation, said India was a pluralistic country and the youths could play the most important role in maintaining its unity.

"An environment is being created in the country most of the time that Indian Muslims are not responsible citizens, whereas our claim is that the inclusion of Muslims in the national security policy will be an accurate assessment of the role of Muslim youths towards national unity," he said.

Shahnawaz Ahmad Malik Warsi of the Aligarh Muslim University, Kerala Center, said the challenges facing human rights and social justice in the country were being taken seriously in the society.

In the conference, the MSOI presented a six-point report on the issues related to the security of the country, social justice, terrorism and fundamentalism, employment and skill management, social programs and environment.

Those present in the conference included Qari Sageer Rizvi, Maulana Abdul Wahid, Imran Qureshi, MSOI Delhi State Secretary Saqib Barkati, Mumtaz Attari, as well as students from Delhi University, Jamia Milia Islamia, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Six months after the Uttar Pradesh government sought its opinion on withdrawal of 133 cases relating to the 2013 riots in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli, the Muzzafarnagar district administration is learnt to have opposed the government's move.

Six months after the Uttar Pradesh government sought its opinion on withdrawal of 133 cases relating to the 2013 riots in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli, the Muzzafarnagar district administration is learnt to have opposed the government's move. According to CNN-News18, the Muzzafarnagar district magistrate has refused to withdraw the riot cases on administrative grounds.

According to The Indian Express's report, a total of 503 cases were lodged after the riots in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli in September 2013, which claimed 62 lives and a Special Investigative Team (SIT) was formed to probe them. As around 85 cases are already at the trial stage in the sessions court, the district magistrate has denied the possibility of their withdrawal.

These cases relate to hate speech, murder, attempt to murder, inciting violence and among the accused are many BJP MPs and MLAs such as Sanjeev Balyan, Suresh Rana and Sangeet Singh Som along with VHP leader Sadhvi Prachi, the report states.

A letter in this regard was sent 10 days ago. I have advised the government that withdrawal of the riot cases can't be recommended," the district magistrate Rajeev Sharma told The Times of India.

However, CNN-News18 reported that the district magistrate has also said that the state government's order will be final and binding on this issue. The district administration has no right to take any decision in the matter of withdrawal of the Muzaffarnagar riot cases. The decision of the UP government will be final, accused local BJP MP and former Union minister Sanjeev Balyan said on Sunday.

On 17 January, the states law department had sent a letter to the Muzaffarnagar district magistrate, seeking details of cases of hate speech against the BJP leaders. However, in a second letter on 23 February, the law department sought details of 131 cases related to the riots. The district magistrate, SSP and prosecuting officer were then asked to give their separate opinions on withdrawal of these cases.
Countering the picture projected by Opposition of a gloomy economic situation and claims of rising unemployment, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that more than one crore jobs have been created in the last one year, hence, the campaign of lack of jobs needs to stop now.

New Delhi: Countering the picture projected by Opposition of a gloomy economic situation and claims of rising unemployment, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that more than one crore jobs have been created in the last one year, hence, the campaign of lack of jobs needs to stop now. In an exclusive interview to ANI, Modi also touched upon various other important issues including the National Register of Citizens (NRC), Goods and Services Tax (GST), women empowerment and India-Pakistan relations.

He allayed concerns that the NRC will exclude Indian citizens and assured all opportunities will be given to people to get their concerns addressed. The prime minister also talked about Mahagathbandhan. On India-Pakistan relations, the prime minister hoped that under the new government, Pakistan would work for a safe, secure, stable and prosperous region, free from terror and violence.

Here is the full transcript of Prime Minister Narendra Modis interview with ANI:

You have mentioned in previous interviews that the methodology of computing job numbers is outdated and the true reflection is contrary to the present data available. What in your opinion is the present employment scenario in India and how will you increase employment opportunities?

I have already given a detailed reply in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the no-confidence motion. In short, the point which needs to be understood is that when an economy is growing at a faster pace, in fact fastest among the major economies, how will the jobs market not expand? When investment into and the pace of execution of infrastructure projects like making roads, laying down rail lines, setting up power generation including solar parks and transmission lines is at all-time high, how come jobs will not be created? Similarly, if there is significant growth in sales of commercial vehicles and passenger vehicles, does it not mean that jobs are being created? When FDI inflows are at an all-time high, will it not translate into manufacturing and job creation?

From just two mobile manufacturing units in 2014 we have grown to 120. When such development in electronic manufacturing is taking place, will it not create jobs? Today, India has emerged as one of the top hubs of start-ups. Are they not creating jobs? App-based aggregators are flourishing in India across food, logistics, e-commerce, mobility solutions and many more such sectors. Are they not creating jobs? We all know the potential tourism has in creating jobs. Foreign tourist arrivals in India grew by 14 percent last year. Domestic tourism has also grown. Will this not result in job creation?

Today, India is seeing a historic boom in the aviation sector. Last year, over 10 crore people took a flight. Through the UDAN scheme, we have put many places, particularly Tier-II and III cities on the aviation map. Will this not create jobs and opportunities across the board? More than 13 crore MUDRA loans have been given to our hardworking entrepreneurs. I have been told that over 3.5 crore of these loans have been given to first time entrepreneurs. Does every loan not create additional employment opportunities?

These are only a few examples. Employment generation is also evident from 45 lakh new subscribers in the Employee Provident Fund and 5.68 lakh people joining the New Pension Scheme in the last nine months. All this has led to creation of more than one crore jobs only in the last year. Thus, the campaign that jobs have not been created must come to a halt now. People are not going to buy it any more.

Your critics claim that you made a U-turn on GST from your opposition as the chief minister. The Opposition calls GST a Gabbar Singh Tax while you call it the Good Simple Tax. One year down the line, can you please explain what benefits have GST brought?

I would urge you to do some research on the U-turn claims. Why was there opposition to GST under the UPA government? The Know It All finance minister refused to listen to the concerns of the various state governments and adopted a my way or the highway approach. Not only Gujarat, but most states did not trust the UPA government to be fair with them. They had not paid the GST compensation to the states which were promised. They were also unwilling to provide GST compensation to the states if they suffered losses in the first five years. It is only when the NDA government discharged the liability of the past GST compensation and agreed to pay compensation in the event of loss for the first five years that the GST was possible.

Our GST model was acceptable to the states, because we were sensitive to their concerns. But why let facts come in the way of a good U-turn narrative? Opposition to GST is not from all the Opposition parties. Only a few who have been continuously rejected by the masses are making baseless points. They not only want to misguide but also indulge in opposing for the sake of opposing. Whether it is Yoga, Ayushman Bharat, Swachh Bharat, NRC, surgical strikes, their conduct is for everyone to see. As for Gabbar Singh Tax, people who have seen only dacoits around them will naturally think of dacoits only!

Have they ever thought why people accepted GST wholeheartedly? The Congress president spoke about Surat in Parliament. He tried his best to provoke people against GST during Gujarat elections, why did the people reject him? It must not be forgotten that people of this country particularly, the business community have supported GST and adopted it whole-heartedly. They deserve all compliments. Being a sensitive government, we are also taking into account the feedback which comes from people and we are doing corrections wherever required. That is why GST has acquired full faith of people and has made life easier for many of us. People have responded positively as it brings lot of benefits to them and to the economy.

The number of enterprises registered from Independence until now was 66 lakh. In just one year after the introduction of GST, the number of new enterprises registered is 48 lakh. Around 350 crore invoices were processed and 11 crore returns filed in one year. Doesnt this show wide-spread public acceptance?

The recent implementation of the Supreme Court mandated NRC has created controversy, with Mamata Banerjee saying it could lead to civil war; what are your thoughts on this?

Only those who have lost faith in themselves, fear loss of popular support and lack faith in our institutions can use words like civil war, blood bath and desh ke tukde tukde. Evidently, they are disconnected from the pulse of the nation. As far as Mamata jis stand is concerned, she should remember what she said on the floor of the Parliament in 2005. Was that Mamata ji correct or is this Mamata ji correct?

The Congress is also playing politics over the NRC. The roots of the NRC go back three decades, when Mr Rajiv Gandhi had to bow to public pressure and sign the Assam Accord. Since then Assam voted Congress several times but the party did nothing about it and kept misleading the people. Congress knew a problem exists but allowed it to fester for decades because they were guided by vote bank politics. I want to assure the people that no citizen of India will have to leave the country. As per the due process, all possible opportunities will be given to get their concerns addressed. The NRC was a promise of ours, which we are fulfilling under the guidance of the Honourable Supreme Court. It is not about politics but about people. If someone is making it about rajneeti, it is extremely unfortunate. Our job in the political class is to work according to the will of the people and do what they have given us the mandate for.

The Opposition has raked up the issue of crime against women and incidents of lynching. Your critics say you have not spoken about them. Your comments?

It would be a great travesty to reduce these incidents to mere statistics and then indulge in politics over them. That shows a kind of perverse mindset that looks at violence and criminality as something to be milked, instead of unitedly opposing. Even a single incident is one too many and deeply unfortunate. Everyone should rise above politics to ensure peace and unity in our society. My party and I have spoken in clear words, on multiple occasions against such actions and such a mindset. It is all on record. Also, we are people who go beyond just words. Look at the actions of our home ministry to see how we have acted against violence.

Soon after I assumed office, I had said from the ramparts of the Red Fort that it is everyones responsibility to ensure the dignity of women, whether (it is) government, society, family or individual. At the level of government, we have gone to the extent of making provisions of capital punishment in certain category of crimes against women. You might have noted that results in terms of quick disposal of such cases leading to even capital punishment have started coming in. Let there be no doubts about the will of my government to implement the 'Rule of Law' in its true letter and spirit.

Is women empowerment only a slogan or has there been any real progress?

No country can progress if its women are not equal partners in the development process. Going a step ahead of women development, we are working towards women-led development. Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, was among the first programmes that this government launched aimed at addressing the issue of declining Child Sex Ratio and educating the girl child. Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao has led to significant improvement in the Child Sex Ratio in various parts of India. It has taken the shape of a vibrant mass movement that is changing mindsets all over. This is the first time in the history of independent India that we have two women in the Cabinet Committee on Security - the minister of external affairs and the minister for defence. Women have, for the first time, been inducted as fighter pilots in combat roles in the Indian Air Force.

Construction of toilets in millions under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan both in rural and semi-urban areas augments women safety and security. Separate toilets for girls constructed in all government schools in mission mode will help reduce dropout of girl students. The newly amended Maternity Benefit Act statutorily increases maternity leave to 26 weeks and makes it mandatory for every establishment that has more than 50 employees (whether male or female) to offer creche facilities. This will ensure that working women are not compelled to drop out of the workforce. Mission Indradhanush and Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana is ensuring the good health of the mother and the child.

Under the Ujjwala Scheme, free LPG connections have revolutionised the lives of poor women. It heralds freedom from smoky chulhas and persistent coughs. More than five crore LPG connections have been released to poor women so far. There is a sizeable and rapid growth in financial inclusion of women, which paves the way for irreversible and institutional progress.

Through the Jan Dhan Yojana, more than 16 crore accounts of women have been opened. We have not only focussed on financial inclusion but also financial empowerment of women. Thanks to the Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY) over 13 crore loans have been given of which more than 70 percent have been given to women. Under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, there is a massive increase in access to credit by women SHGs. You would be glad to know that the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana gives preference to allotment in the name of the women in the family. This is a major step in furthering the dignity and empowerment of women.

This government has never shied away from tough measures to ensure gender justice. The triple talaq bill is in response to a long standing injustice done to Muslim women in India. The anti-trafficking bill, that has just been passed by the Lok Sabha, attempts to address one of the most pervasive crimes affecting women and children, especially the most vulnerable.

According to the new Haj policy, for the first time, women above the age of 45 years can go for the pilgrimage without a `mehram, or a male escort. This also is a harbinger of substantial change. I think all the points mentioned give a glimpse of this governments consistent commitment to women empowerment. You can judge whether this is just a slogan or there is concrete action.

What is your stand on caste-based reservations? Is it true that your government is waiting for the right time to abolish reservations?

The objectives of our Constitution and dreams of Dr Babasaheb are still incomplete. It is the responsibility every one of us to fulfill his dream and reservations are an important tool to achieve this. Reservation is here to stay. Let there be no doubts about this. The dreams of Babasaheb are the strength of this nation and we are committed to fulfilling them. Our mantra is Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas and to achieve this, it is most important to protect the rights of the poor, marginalised, downtrodden, Dalits, tribals and OBCs.

Before any crucial election, there are vested interest groups who will raise a bogey that BJP will abolish reservations and sections of the media will amplify this. Those who are constantly spreading canards on the issue and politicising it are the same people who have always crushed Babasahebs dreams. They are trying to sow seeds of doubt and mistrust among the weaker sections of society. But, the people of India are wise and they will not believe this propaganda.

Look across the length and breadth of India, maximum MPs from SC, ST and OBC communities are from BJP. Maximum MLAs from SC, ST and OBC communities are from BJP. I would request you all to see the kind of things our former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi said about the Mandal Commission. On the floor of the Parliament he opposed it tooth and nail. The situation in his party is no different today.

Why are the smaller allies of the BJP losing faith in the coalition? Some have quit, some say they will not fight alongside your party in 2019, instead of adding to your kitty due to the stunning victory of 2014, you are seen as a party that is a difficult magnet to attract allies.

Two events of the recent past will answer your question - the no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha and the election for the Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha. The outcome of both these events should indicate which coalition is intact and which is falling apart. In fact, we got support even from those parties which are not our allies. BJP has consistently expanded its base over the recent years among the people and welcomed more allies to the NDA family.

The political impasse in Jammu and Kashmir continues to be unresolved with the coalition collapsing and Governors Rule seemingly being continuous. Do you think your party made a mistake in forming govt with the PDP? Would you do it again if there is a hung verdict again?

The peoples mandate during the state Assembly elections was towards formation of government jointly by BJP and PDP. Also, in that situation, there was no other alternative. That is why, to fulfil the peoples expectations, we formed the coalition government. However, after the sad demise of Mufti sahab, there were hurdles in fulfilling those expectations. For BJP, peoples interest is above political interests and that is why without casting any aspersions, we opted out of power. BJP is always with the people of Jammu and Kashmir and is ready to fulfil their dreams. This importantly includes deepening the roots of democracy in the state right down to the panchayat and village level. We made efforts to strengthen local self-government at the village level but in that coalition government it was becoming increasingly tough to do so. The Central government is committed to holistic development of Jammu and Kashmir across the regions of Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir Valley.

During the no-confidence motion in this session, we saw some unusual scenes. Rahul Gandhi walks up to you and hugs you...What went through mind when this played out? Congress claimed victory while others say it was a childish act by Rahul Gandhi? What is your conclusion?

It is for you to judge whether it was a childish act or not. And if you are unable to decide, watch the wink and you will get the answer. I am a humble kaamdaar. I am nothing compared to the naamdaars of this country, who have their own unique style of conducting themselves. They decide whom to hate, when to hate and whom to love and how to make a show of it. In all this, what can a kamdaar like me say

Are you and your party concerned with Modi vs All syndrome? How are you planning to combat this `Mahagathbandhan in 2019?

The Opposition parties are so convinced about our governments popularity that they have no faith in their ability to fight us individually. These parties had lots of time to prove their worth to the people. But they indulged in corruption, nepotism and misgovernance. Now they know that their electoral arithmetic based on caste, class, community and religion cannot withstand the chemistry of development. This happened because of peoples unflinching trust in BJPs politics of development and their validation of the work the government is doing. Election after election and in state after state, people are repeatedly choosing the BJP to fulfill their aspirations. People have witnessed firsthand the change in their lives through the efforts of the Central government. They have also seen that our government is incorruptible and hard-working.

People have clearly recognised the difference between these parties and the BJP and hence the Opposition has no option but to make it an All versus One fight to even think about winning. Today, those who resisted the Emergency are standing with those who imposed it. Those who went about trying to fight corruption are with the party that has institutionalised corruption at all levels. Parties with a visceral hatred towards the Left ideology and parties espousing Left ideology are sharing stage. Parties whose very existence depended on fighting each other are now friends.

Let us understand the true character of the Mahagathbandhan. The Mahagathbandhan is for personal survival, not for ideological support. The Mahagathbandhan is for personal ambitions, not for peoples aspirations. The Mahagathbandhan is purely about power politics, not about peoples mandate. The Mahagathbandhan is about dynasties, not about development. The Mahagathbandhan is not about any union of minds or ideas, but about rank opportunism. The only question is whether they will break up before the election or after!

Imran Khans Tehreek-e-Insaaf party will be assuming office in Pakistan soon, you spoke to Imran Khan and congratulated him. In his first speech he offered to hold talks with India...are you open for dialogue with the new dispensation of Pakistan? Is there any hope for India participating in SAARC?

I have always said that we wish to have good neighbourly relations. We have also taken various initiatives in this regard. I recently congratulated Mr Imran Khan on his victory in the elections. We hope that Pakistan would work for a safe, secure, stable and prosperous region, free from terror and violence.
The prime minister was supposed to visit his home state on 20 July, but his trip was put off due to heavy rains in several parts of the state, especially in south Gujarat.

Ahmedabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit Gujarat on 23 August, where he will take part in a slew of programmes, officials said on Monday.

He will attend various programmes in Valsad, Junagadh and Gandhinagar during his day-long visit, they said.

The prime minister was supposed to visit his home state on 20 July, but his trip was put off due to heavy rains in several parts of the state, especially in south Gujarat.

As per the new schedule announced by authorities, Modi would start his visit by dedicating two lakh houses built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) to beneficiaries at a function in Valsad town in south Gujarat on 23 August.

From the same venue, he would perform a ground-breaking ceremony for a water supply project meant for the tribal population of Dharampur and Kaprada talukas, said Valsad collector CR Kharsan.

Modi would also address a gathering during his visit to Valsad, he said.

He would then visit Junagadh town in the Saurashtra region to inaugurate some projects, including a newly-built hospital of the Gujarat Medical and Education Research Society (GMERS).

Modi will also inaugurate two fisheries science colleges at Veraval town in adjoining Gir Somnath district, an official said.

The prime minister would also address people at a function at the Police Training College ground near Junagadh, he said.

In the evening, Modi is scheduled to be in Gandhinagar to attend the convocation ceremony of the Gujarat Forensic Science University. He is expected to leave for New Delhi after the ceremony, the official said.
Masuma Begum, a 25-year-old social worker, has lost count of the number of camps she and her friends have held in remote areas of western Assam in the past three years, telling people that they should welcome the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and helping them gather documents to establish their identity as Indians.

Editor's Note: Of the 4 million who didn't make it to NRC, 2.48 lakh have been marked as 'D' voters. The Supreme Court has asked Assam government not to take any coercive action on those who are found to be without proper documents as required under recent National Register of Citizens. NRC, a product of Assam Accord, is expected to solve the fear of Bangladeshi immigrants that has been prevalent in the state for quite some time now. The Centre proposed in 1999 an updated NRC in Assam to solve the problem of "illegal immigration" and two pilot projects were conducted in Dhubri and Barpeta districts. But breaking out of a riot in Barpeta grounded the project. In 2005, when All Assam Student Union opposed the prime minister's visit to the state, tripartite talk between AASU, State government, and the Centre resulted in a decision to prepare a model for the NRC process, which was delayed yet again by over 5 years by the state government. It was only when Abhijeet Sharma of Assam Public Works (APW), an NGO, filed a writ petition in 2009 that the SC's direct intervention led to the start of NRC process in 2014. Firstpost will run a series which will feature 30 profiles in 30 days of those residents of Assam who have not been covered under the final draft of NRC which will decide if they continue to live in the state that they call 'home'.

Guwahati: Masuma Begum, a 25-year-old social worker, has lost count of the number of camps she and her friends have held in remote areas of western Assam in the past three years, telling people that they should welcome the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and helping them gather documents to establish their identity as Indians.

Masuma says it must be a cruel joke that she, who went from door to door, extolling the benefits of the NRC was left out of the list released on 30 July.

After the NRC process began three years ago, my friends and I organised many awareness meetings telling people why the NRC would benefit them and which documents they should submit. My entire family has made it to the list, including my siblings, but I have been excluded, says the postgraduate in Assamese from Cotton University.

I love my land and its people so much. I belong here as much as anybody else and I will resubmit my application, says Masuma.

Since 1942, three generations of Masumas family have lived in Lakhimpur district. The young woman was born in North Lakhimpur, a small town along the border of Arunachal Pradesh. Today, she works towards creating awareness on social and health issues among char (riverside) dwellers of Assam who are often labelled as Bangladeshi because of their social and cultural similarities with those from the neighbouring country. She often travels to riverine areas from Guwahati, where she lives, to create awareness on the evils of child marriage, need for menstrual hygiene among women and the importance of girl education.

Masumas forefathers had migrated to Assam from East Pakistan. They came towards the end of the 19th Century. We have documents to show ownership of land in Assam dating back to 1902, she says. Her family had applied for the NRC on 14 July, 2015 and Masuma, who has been a voter since 2014, had submitted her voter identity card, her birth certificate and other relevant documents.

I was happy when the government had announced that the NRC would be updated. I thought that it would bring relief to those people in my state who are often accused of being illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and treated as second-class citizens, she says.

It is frustrating that I cant pin down why my name was not included in the NRC. My younger brother and sister are on the list. Some people consoled me saying that it must have been a technical glitch as many genuine citizens have found their names missing from the NRC. But what use is this sympathy? I cant have peace of mind until my name is on the list, she says.

"We have been creating awareness among people about the process of NRC since 2015 and Masuma has very actively participated in this over the past few years. She is well-educated and informed, and it is sad that her name didn't appear in the final list. Imagine if her name is not in the list, what would happen to those who are not educated," says Shakil Ahmed, an activist and freelance journalist from Barpeta.

Masumas 50-year-old father Abdul Matin says that the family is hopeful that her name would be on the final list. Mistakes have been made and genuine citizens have been left out but one should not question the entire process of the NRC. The anomalies will be resolved soon, he says.

Masuma admits that the wait to become an Indian citizen would be agonising, but in the meantime she is determined to hold more NRC awareness camps to ensure those people whose names are not in the final draft can submit their forms to file claims and objections, submission of which would be started from 30 August.

Many people are not educated enough and a mistake in their forms this time could be a major setback. I will submit my form to file a claim in September and I will help as many others as I can, she says.

(The author is a Guwahati-based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters)
Pakistan released 26 Indian fishermen from jail as a gesture of goodwill a day before the newly-elected government met for the first time

Karachi: Pakistan on Sunday released 26 Indian fishermen from jail as a goodwill gesture, a day before newly-elected Parliament's maiden meeting to start the process of handing over powers to the new government, media reports said.

The fishermen had been arrested by the authorities for allegedly trespassing into Pakistan's territorial waters.

They were shifted to Cantt Railway Station from Karachi's Malir jail and will be taken to Lahore, The News International reported. The fishermen will be handed over to Indian border officials at Wagah border tomorrow, the report said.

According to Saad Edhi, an official of the Edhi foundation, the charity has paid the travel expenses for the released Indian fishermen.

Speaking to reporters at the railway station, Edhi called on the governments of Pakistan and India to relax the rules for the poor fishermen.

"They represent the poorest section of two countries. They should be freed as early as possible and there should be less restrictions on fishing," he said.

Pakistan's newly-elected Parliament is meeting tomorrow for the first time to start the process of transition and handing over powers to the new government.

President Mamnoon Hussain has already summoned the maiden session of National Assembly, the lower house, at 10 am in parliament house in Karachi.

Pakistan and India frequently arrest fishermen as there is no clear demarcation of the maritime border in the Arabian Sea and these fishermen do not have boats equipped with the technology to know their precise location.

Owing to lengthy and slow bureaucratic and legal procedures, the fishermen usually remain in jail for several months.

A number of non-governmental organisations in both India and Pakistan have raised the issue, pressing their governments to release the arrested fishermen without delay.
Prakash Javadekar, who arrived in Bhubaneswar on a three-day visit to the state, is scheduled to attend a party meeting in Berhampur on Monday.

Bhubaneswar: Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar on Sunday made it clear that although the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) supported the NDA candidate in the election for the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman's post earlier this week, there is no alliance between the BJP and the regional party.

"BJD and many other political parties supported BJP during Rajya Sabha deputy chairman election, but there is no alliance and they are not part of the NDA," Javadekar told reporters. Ruling NDA candidate and JD(U) member Harivansh Narayan Singh was elected the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha on 9 August, securing 125 votes as against 105 polled by opposition candidate BK Hariprasad.

The senior BJP leader was responding to questions on the issue of the BJD supporting the NDA candidate in the recent election which has triggered a row with the Congress and others attacking the regional party. The critics have flayed the BJD's action as it was against its claim about maintaining equal distance from both the BJP and the Congress.

Javadekar, who arrived in Bhubaneswar on a three-day visit to the state, is scheduled to attend a party meeting in Berhampur on Monday. Taking a swipe at the Congress for attacking the BJD for its role in the election, Javadekar said if one fails to get something, it is like sour grapes.

Meanwhile, BJP leader and Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Sunday sought to play "Odia card" to counter the allegations of the Congress on Rajya Sabha deputy chairman polls and tried to push the ball to the BJD's court. In an oblique reference to the BJD, Pradhan said someone from Odisha could have been elected for the post and sought to know why none from the state was projected for the post. He said those who are making noises now over the issue, should have taken the initiative in this regard.

The Union minister said that for the last 40 years, the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman post had been with the Congress and NDA was keen to get it. Reacting sharply to Pradhan's remark, BJD spokesperson Sasmit Patra said the the BJP leader's comments are misleading as there was never any discussion on fielding a candidate from Odisha for the post. He said such remarks from Pradhan is nothing but a sign of his disappointment and frustration.

On his part, Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) president Niranjan Patnaik took a dig at Pradhan and said while the petroleum minister attacks the BJD government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah speak to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik over phone.
According to the Home Ministry, this monsoon, floods and rains have hit 26 districts in Maharashtra, 23 in Assam, 22 in West Bengal, 14 in Kerala, 12 in Uttar Pradesh, 11 Nagaland and 10 in Gujarat.

New Delhi: Altogether, 776 people have lost their lives, 187 of them in Kerala, in incidents related to rains, floods and landslides in seven states during the monsoon season so far, the Ministry of Home Affairs said on Monday.

According to the ministry's National Emergency Response Centre (NERC), 187 people lost their lives in Kerala, where 2,406 villages in 14 districts were badly hit by the rains and floods and over 26,400 hectres of crops were damaged.

As many as 171 died in Uttar Pradesh, 170 people in West Bengal, 139 in Maharashtra, 52 people lost their lives in Gujarat, 45 in Assam and 10 in Nagaland. A total of 27 people are also missing in Kerala (22) and West Bengal (5), while 245 others received injuries in rain-related incidents in the states.

Deluge and rains have hit 26 districts in Maharashtra, 23 in Assam, 22 in West Bengal, 14 in Kerala, 12 in Uttar Pradesh, 11 Nagaland and 10 in Gujarat. Nearly two lakh people have been living in relief camps in Kerala while 14 teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), comprising 399 rescuers and 34 boats, were deployed in the state.

The Indian Air Force has deployed one Advance Light Helicopter (ALH), two Mi-17V choppers and four AN 32 aircraft, and the Indian Navy has deployed one ALH and 20 divers.

The army has deployed one column of the Military Engineering Group with 37 persons at Calicut, one column with 37 persons at Idukki and one column with 32 persons at Aluva.

One column of army soldiers has been deployed at Chunkathara Nilambur, abd one is also expected to be deployed at Devikulam in Idukki. One army unit with 25 people and one column of Defence Service Corps with 80 people were deployed in Kannur.

The Coast Guard has deployed one ALH, a 14-member team in Kochi and a 12-member team at Aluva. One team has been moved from Beypore to Munambham and one team has been on standby at Cochin. One unit of the Territorial Army has also been deployed in Kerala.

In Assam, 11.45 lakh people have borne the brunt of the rains and floods, which also hit crops in 27,552 hectares of land.

Altogether, 15 NDRF teams are were engaged in rescue and relief operations in Assam, the NERC said.

A team of the NDRF comprises 45 personnel. Nine NDRF teams were deployed in Uttar Pradesh, eight in West Bengal, seven in Gujarat, four in Maharashtra and one in Nagaland.
Punjab is known for its rich cultural heritage and lifestyle, but the condition of Dalit women in several parts of the state is not common knowledge.

Editor's Note: The latest National Crime Records Bureau statistics show an 83% increase in crimes against women, with as many as 39 cases reported every hour across the country. There are several thousand more instances that go unreported. And yet, such felonious acts represent only a limited view of the manner in which women in this country must face brutality. In this series of reported pieces, Firstpost examines those societal forces that, while beyond the ambit of law, have the same deleterious effect on women as criminal acts.

Read the series here.

***

Ludhiana: The stench of cow dung surrounding her for most of the day does not make it easy for Karamjit Kaur to get through her work, but circumstances and social hierarchy led her to work at the home and fields of a local landlord in Punjab's Sangrur town for several years. She cannot defy this social order despite efforts as Dalits here rarely think about moving up the ladder, given the heavily-entrenched caste system still prevalent in the state.

Kaur is not the first generation in her family to work for a local landlord, or "Jat" (an upper-caste Sikh). Her ancestors were forced into this job long before her. Other Dalits have also had to face the double whammy of being a woman as well as from a low caste, especially in the Malwa belt of Punjab. Most Dalits cannot earn a decent living in these parts because of the hegemony of upper-caste members.

'Humiliation, sexual harassment at the hands of upper-caste men'

Jeet Kaur, 40, another Dalit woman from Mansa district, has to clean cowsheds and also do menial tasks such as cleaning utensils and the house of a local landlord. None of these women earn more than Rs 2,500 working in the homes of rich farmers.

According to official figures, of the total Scheduled Caste population in Punjab, only 35.88 percent constitute the workforce.

A survey conducted on the Scheduled Caste population across India brought to light that Andra Pradesh has the highest number of women from this community in the workforce (46.71 percent), while Punjab has the lowest, at 5.40 percent.

While official figures may have overseen the women engaged in menial work, these figures don't prove that it is due to prosperity that only a few Dalit women work. In fact, humiliation and sexual abuse are the reasons for the low number, according to experts.

Dalit thinker and a former Indian Police Service officer based out of Uttar Pradesh, SR Darapuri, said Dalit women have to face double the discrimination. "Generation after generation, Dalit women are forced to work like bonded labourers in fields or homes of landlords," he said. "In many cases, poor Dalits take loans from money lenders and get caught in a vicious circle. In many cases, Dalit women are afraid to even work due to humiliation at the hands of upper-caste people."

Darapuri added that in the Doaba region, where Dalits are comparatively well off, women do not have to work.

There are several villages in Punjab with palatial houses and swanky cars, but the areas where Dalits reside are centuries behind the other neighbourhoods. Punjab is known for its rich cultural heritage and lifestyle, but the condition of these Dalit women is not common knowledge.

"I clean utensils and do other odd jobs at the home of the local landlord from 9 am to 1 pm. And then till 5 pm, I clean cattle sheds at another house. I earn Rs 1,500 from cleaning cattle sheds and Rs 1,000 from cleaning the house," said Jeet Kaur, whose husband is a daily-wager like several other Dalit men.

While Dalits in the Malwa region do not own much land, many of them do have a cow or buffalo for extra income. However, the absence of fields at their disposal makes them depend on landlords for unused fodder. Most Dalits in the region are also in debt, which successive governments have ignored, leaving them no room to escape from the clutches of high-caste moneylenders.

"Violence against women takes a unique form when gender and caste intersect. The experiences of Dalit women present clear evidence of widespread exploitation, violence and indecent, inhumane treatment," states a report of the International Dalit Solidarity Network, which works to end caste-based discrimination. "Their stories speak of physical and verbal abuse, forced labour, slavery, trafficking, abduction and sexual violence (including rape), which gives an insight into how their social position makes them vulnerable to human rights violations. Violence against Dalit women is most often used as a means of punishment and demonstration of power by dominant castes towards both the woman herself, and her community."

Before the wheat and paddy season in Punjab, most Dalit women are employed to clean the fields and remove weeds and other unnecessary plants. While migrant labourers mostly sow the seeds, these women mostly do only the menial jobs. It is here that sometimes, they become victims of abuses and sexual exploitation, which is rarely reported.

The family of a Dalit girl in Patiala was boycotted after she alleged that her schoolteacher and upper-caste classmates discriminated against her and physically assaulted her last year.

'Families targeted if cases reported'

Amandeep Kaur Deol, general secretary of the Istri Jagriti Manch, an organisation working for the welfare of women, said that the patriarchal society doesn't allow Dalit women to express their anguish against the humiliation meted out to them by men from upper castes. "Last year, during the protests for the demand for one-third of the common panchayat land for Dalits, men from upper castes sexually harassed at least 51 women from the Dalit community," she said.

Deol said that these Dalit women had become so immune to harassment that they don't wish to report it. "If they report such incidents to the police, their family members are targeted, and they don't get work opportunities," he added.

Literacy rate among Dalit girls and women dismal

As per the 2011 census, the literacy rate among people from the Scheduled Caste community in Punjab was 64.81 percent, as compared to the total literacy rate of 75.84 percent in the state and 73 percent in India. The female literacy rate in the Scheduled Caste community in Punjab was at 58.39 percent, much below the total 70.73 percent in the state. Of the total 5.23 lakh families living below the poverty line, 3.21 lakh families belong to Scheduled Castes, which constitute 61.38 percent of the total families that live below the poverty line in the state.

Dropout rates among girls from the Scheduled Caste community in Punjab is very high  30.13 percent at the primary level, 46.96 percent at middle level and 63.62 percent at the secondary level. The literacy rate among people from the general category in the state is 69.70 percent, against the 56.22 percent of Scheduled Castes. Female literacy rate among Scheduled Castes is very low  48.25 percent  as compared to the 63.40 percent of the female literacy rate in the general category.

The author is a Ludhiana-based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.com
In its first reaction to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's published interview, BJP ally Shiv Sena on Monday described it as 'akin to sheer propaganda'.

Mumbai: In its first reaction to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's published interview, BJP ally Shiv Sena on Monday described it as "akin to sheer propaganda".

"The reporters sent questions to the PMO, which sent written replies. Many have treated it as an an interview. In other words, it is propaganda," the Sena said in 'Saamana' and 'Dopahar Ka Saamana,' the party's mouthpieces. "It happens in China, Russia and Communist countries, a case of one-sided dialogue," it added.

The Sena pointed out how, in a direct interview, many questions could have been asked and any "fake statement" would have been detected by the interviewer. "That much freedom must be allowed to journalists.

"The incumbent Prime Minister seems to have ended this tradition. He answers what he deems proper and the interviews are published accordingly," the Sena said in a commentary.

It noted that in the interview, the Prime Minister indicated that seven million jobs were created in one year, of which 4.5 million came up between September 2017 and April 2018.

"The implication is that by 2019, double and triple number of jobs will be created, the Prime Minister feels," the Sena pointed out.

"If the interview had been conducted face-to-face, the journalist would have got the opportunity to ask supplementaries such as in which sectors these jobs have been created and how to verify (the claims).

"If so many jobs have indeed been created, then why do unemployed youths rampage on the streets for employment and job reservations?" it asked.

It said barely two years ago after demonetization, there were huge job losses, both in the organized and unorganized sectors.

"Mumbai's core job-creating sectors such as construction, production and service industries now resemble a desert," the Sena said. "In the recent (Maratha) agitation, over 500 factories were attacked in Aurangabad and Pune, thanks to the government's policies," it said.

"In the past four years, the PM did not hold a single press conference, but expressed his mind through (radio program) Mann Ki Baat which the media reported, but it brought no laurels to Modi," Saamna said.

"Before the (2014) elections, Modi was a friend of the media, but after becoming the PM, he has retreated into a cage... If this continues, then many journalists may lose their jobs."
Few politicians could claim to have seen as many twists and turns of human life as former Lok Sabha speaker and expelled Marxist Somnath Chatterjee had.

Few politicians could claim to have seen as many twists and turns of human life as former Lok Sabha speaker and expelled Marxist Somnath Chatterjee had. The son of an All India Hindu Mahasabha leader, jurist and parliamentarian Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee, he essayed easily on both sides of political divide by embracing communism.

In the 1960s, communism was a dominant ideology internationally and NC Chatterjee was also disenchanted by the politics of Hindu Mahasabha. Like a chip of the old block, Somnath Chatterjee became singularly attracted to Marxism and remained wedded to it till he was forcibly evicted by new apparatchiks of the communist ideology in 2008.

He was sad when he was expelled from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) following his refusal to kowtow to the party line as speaker of the Lok Sabha. In the UPA-I government, then prime minister Manmohan Singh ramrodded his pet issue  the India-US nuclear deal  through the Parliament despite warning from the single largest alliance partner, CPM. Party general secretary Prakash Karat, considered a hardliner, withdrew support and asked Chatterjee to resign as Speaker. Chatterjee found the condition unacceptable and faced expulsion even though he continued as Speaker.

One of the most famous quotes after expulsion from the CPM attributed to him reveals his pain. "I will carry the scar of expulsion on my heart when I die," he said. Of course, Chatterjee remained steadfastly wedded to communism till he breathed his last. But his eviction from the party was one episode that got closed with his passing.

The brilliant parliamentarian that he was, Chatterjee made friends irrespective of their ideological persuasions. Perhaps there were few parliamentarians who evoked unmitigated respect from veterans like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, LK Advani, Chandra Shekhar and PV Narasimha Rao. Once he was at the receiving end of Vajpayees temper in Lok Sabha in the 1990s. But the next day Vajpayee offered an unconditional apology and said that he never meant to insult his good friend "Somnath Dada".

There is another instance of his run in with Vajpayee in his role as the speaker of the fourteenth Lok Sabha. The house had been facing a stand-off for days on end without resolution in sight. The Congress leader of the house, Pranab Mukherjee, was insisting that the BJP was not only subverting the parliamentary procedure but was also disrespectful to the speaker as well. Chatterjee took a position that was not acceptable to the BJP. In the din, Vajpayee shot off a stinging rebuke to the speaker in which he said, "Respect is commanded not demanded." The obvious implication of the letter was that Chatterjees role as a Speaker was not above board.

This letter provoked angry exchanges as the Congress cited it as an instance of running down the institution of the speaker. Chatterjee however maintained his sagacity and said, "I am sure Vajpayeeji likes me and he is prompted by people (implying Advani) to write this letter." Chatterjee was right as the draft of the letter was believed to be prepared at Advani's office. However, the row got amicably settled when Chatterjee allowed the issue to die down by claiming that he held Vajpayee in high esteem.

As a successive member of the Lok Sabha since he inherited the Burdwan seat as political legacy of his father, Chatterjee was a permanent feature of the Lower House till 2009. His baritone interventions in the House used to be quite instructive and enriched the debate. Endowed with excellent gift of gab, he could be seen deftly negotiating with legacy of his father (Hindu Mahasabha background) and his own political position in the Lok Sabha. His smiling demeanour was quite encouraging to win friends across the party.

But there is no denying that he died as a disillusioned politician.

For an ideological party to which he proclaimed eternal loyalty, he was seen as highly compromised in his role as the Speaker. Perhaps one of the biggest blots of his career as politician in an otherwise unblemished track record was his presiding over a House in which MPs were bought over by the Manmohan government to seek a confidence vote on the India-US nuclear deal. The fact that Chatterjee was a wilful accomplice in what is known as the cash-for-vote scam is the biggest blot that he carried with him in his passing. In a four-decade long career, his eventful political life had seen twists and turns which were exceptional. But then Somnath Chatterjee was not an ordinary mortal.
Veteran politician and 10-time MP Somnath Chatterjee was known as being a 'tough but fair' Lok Sabha Speaker.

Former Lok Sabha leader and CPM veteran Somnath Chatterjee passed away at a Kolkata hospital on Monday morning. In a 2017 interview with Caravan magazine, Chatterjee had told a journalist, I shall die somewhat disappointed, somewhat disillusioned since as a veteran face of Indian politics, Chatterjee had realised that the lack of able leadership in CPM was one of the reasons of its failure. He was also upset about the growing importance of religion in politics and the country.

Born in 1929 in Assam's Tezpur, Chatterjee grew up to be a prominent lawyer and nationalist during India's independence. A Barrister-at-Law from Middle Temple in UK, Chatterjee was a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for four decades from 1968 to 2008, till his expulsion. A 10-time Lok Sabha MP, Chatterjee was a central committee member of the CPM, which he had joined in 1968. He was the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009 during the UPA government. He was defeated only once in 1984 by Mamata Banerjee, who incidentally came to limelight with this win.

Chatterjee embarked on his journey into politics in 1968. He became a Member of the Lok Sabha in 1971 and the first time, he was elected as an independent candidate supported by the CPM. According to The Indian Express, during his stint as the Speaker, Chatterjee discontinued the practice of paying for toiletries and tea from the national exchequer and insisted on paying the expenses of any family members accompanying a minister on foreign trips.

It was on his initiative that proceedings of the Zero Hour were telecast live from 5 July, 2004. A full-fledged 24hour Lok Sabha television channel also came into being in July 2006 during his tenure as Speaker.

In 2008, Chatterjee was expelled from the CPM for not resigning as the Speaker after continuous requests from members of his party. The same year, Chatterjee refused to vote against the government during the No-Confidence Motion. A close associate of Marxist leader Jyoti Basu, Chatterjee had gone onto say that the expulsion was one of the saddest days of his life and despite several requests from CPM leader Sitaram Yechury to rejoin the party, he did not find any reason to again apply for a membership. A year later, he retired from active politics.

Conferred the "Outstanding Parliamentarian Award" in 1996, Chatterjee was known for his debating skills with extensive knowledge of national and international issues, delivered in his deep baritone voice, interspersed with wit and humour. He adorned several parliamentary committees as chairman or as a member and was respected by leaders across the political arena. He shared a close relationship with CPM stalwart Jyoti Basu who had also made him the chairman of West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC), trusting him with the responsibility to turn the state around in bringing in investments and starting new ventures.

The lawyer-turned-politician had acknowledged Basu's role in guiding him, saying "he has always given me unstinted support and encouragement." He is survived by wife Renu, a son and two daughters.

On Monday morning, condolences began pouring in on Twitter with Prime Minister Narendra Modi conveying his condolences over the veteran politician's death.

Former MP and Speaker Shri Somnath Chatterjee was a stalwart of Indian politics. He made our Parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise. My thoughts are with his family and supporters.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 13, 2018

Congress president Rahul Gandhi also grieved the loss while Congress tweeted from its handle condoling the death of "the tough but fair Lok Sabha speaker".

I mourn the passing away of Shri Somnath Chatterjee, 10 term MP and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha. He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief. #SomnathChatterjee  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 13, 2018

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said Chatterjee and she shared a very cordial relationship despite their ideological differences. He was principled and scholarly, and played a significant role in India's parliament, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman said. Union minister Arun Jaitley said he will be remembered for his contributions which enriched Indian politics and was an outstanding Parliamentarian.

According to former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, Chatterjee had through his life been a democrat, a liberal and a champion of enlarging the constituency for social democracy. NCP supremo Sharad Pawar said Chatterjee was a dignified person who set high standards of conduct during his stint as the Speaker of Lok Sabha. The passing away of "Somnath Da" is great loss for us all, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said in her condolence message.

CPM leader Sitaram Yechury grieved the loss of the former party member and said, "Somnath Chatterjee was a firm defender of the foundations of Indian Constitution. In terms of parliamentary practices, his record is impeccable. We have also lost of champion of democracy."

Union minister Rajyavendra Rathore also expressed his condolences on Twitter. "Saddened by the demise of veteran parliamentarian and former speaker Somnath Chatterjee. He was respected across party lines and his contribution enriched Indian polity. Thoughts and prayers with his family," Rathore said.

Congress leaders Randeep Singh Surjewala and Milind Deora tweeted. While Surjewala wrote, "Deeply saddened by the passing away of Somnath Chatterjee ji. As a Speaker, he stood like a rock to defend our best Parliamentary traditions, elevated its office with utmost dignity, goodwill and bipartisanship. My heartfelt condolences to his family, friends and followers", Deora said,"Deeply saddened to learn that Somnath Chatterjee is no more. He was a dear family friend who I had the privilege to meet whenever he visited Mumbai. Somnath Chatterjee was one of the greats. The quintessential parliamentarian, he always made time to mentor us and will be missed."

JD(U) leader Lalu Prasad Yadav tweeted,"We are deeply saddened by the passing of Somnath Chatterjee Ji, former Lok Sabha Speaker, 10 times MP, widely respected and admired by all cutting across party lines. Have many fond memories of him as we shared a very cordial relationship. Our thoughts and prayers for bereaved family."

Congress leader Kapil Sibal conveyed his condolences over the 'legal stalwart's'death on Twitter. He wrote, "A great parliamentarian, a legal stalwart, a gentleman to the core committed to liberal values, Somnath Chatterjee, has left us. Very few like are born. May his soul rest in peace."

Mourning the loss of a "great Parliamentarian" Aam Admi Party tweeted that Chatterjee "will be remembered among the greatest Lok Sabha Speakers India ever had."

"Extremely sad news about Somnath Chatterjee ji. One of the greatest parliamentarians of contemporary times he will always be missed by this country. He will be remembered among the greatest Lok Sabha Speakers India ever had."- @ArvindKejriwal#RIP #SomnathChatterjee  AAP (@AamAadmiParty) August 13, 2018

BJP chief Amit Shah on Monday condoled the death of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, describing him as an excellent parliamentarian. Chatterjee, 89, passed away at a private hospital in Kolkata this morning following multiple organ failure. "Saddened to learn about the demise of Somnath Chatterjee, former Speaker of Lok Sabha," Shah tweeted. "He (Chatterjee) was an excellent Parliamentarian, whose long years as a member of the House, enriched our Parliamentary traditions. My condolences to his family and supporters in this hour of grief," Shah said.

Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan told ANI, "Somnath Da (Chatterjee) was a big brother to me. Our ideology was different but still, from the time I entered Parliament in '89, I used to see how he used to raise issues while following every rule. His tenure as a speaker was a guidance for me."

Former vice-president M Hamid Ansari on Monday condoled the death of former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee, describing him as a remarkable human being and am eminent Parliamentarian. Chatterjee passed away at a private hospital in Kolkata this morning following multiple organ failure. "I express my deep distress over the passing away of Shri Somnath Chatterjee," Ansari said in a statement.

"He was a remarkable human being, an eminent parliamentarian and a very clear-headed speaker of the Lok Sabha. I convey my heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family," he said.

Meanwhile, reminiscing about how Chatterjee was an inspiration, Rajya Sabha deputy speaker Harivansh Narayan Singh said, "His role as Lok Sabha Speaker & his speeches as a Parliamentarian will be an inspiration for coming generations who wish to join politics. Today, when Parliament needs such man of inspiration, his loss is more disheartening."

With inputs from PTI
Former Lok Sabha Speaker and CPM veteran Somnath Chatterjee breathed his last on Monday morning at a Kolkata hospital after battling kidney ailment, media reports said.

Former Lok Sabha Speaker and CPM veteran Somnath Chatterjee breathed his last on Monday morning at a Kolkata hospital after battling kidney ailment, media reports said. He was 89 years old and had suffered a mild cardiac arrest, reports said. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that Chatterjee would be accorded the highest honour of 21 gun salute by the West Bengal Assembly.

According to ANI, the CPM veteran was suffering from a kidney ailment and was put on ventilator support on Saturday. Soon after, CPM leader Sitaram Yechury said, "Chatterjee along with many other party leaders had donated his body for medical research. Before that, the mortal remains would be kept at party office where last respects will be paid to him. Then the remains will be taken to West Bengal Assembly. From West Bengal Assembly, the body will be handed over to hospital. The final programme will be decided soon after consulting with his family." The CPM politburo released a statement expressing their grief at his death: "The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) expresses its grief and sorrow at the death of former Speaker and ten-time Member of the Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee. Somnath Chatterjee was a veteran parliamentarian who played an important role in defending the foundations of the Indian Constitution particularly its secular democratic foundations and federalism. As an eminent lawyer by profession, he also took up the cause of the working class and the deprived to ensure justice is delivered to them. The Polit Bureau conveys its heartfelt condolences to his wife and children."

Later, at the West Bengal Assembly, the former Speaker was given 21 gun salute.

Former Lok Sabha Speaker #SomnathChatterjee given 21 gun salute at West Bengal assembly. He had passed away this morning in a Kolkata Hospital at 89. pic.twitter.com/Av7Al8fp5r  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

The 89-year-old was re-admitted to hospital on 10 August following the slight decline in his health. Chatterjee, who is one of the longest-serving parliamentarians in India, was not keeping well from the past few months. On Sunday, the health condition of the former Lok Sabha Speaker was said to be critical.

A 12-member team of doctors was keeping a constant watch on the veteran politician, an official had told PTI. Last month, the former speaker had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. "He was under treatment for the past 40 days. Chatterjee was discharged from the hospital just for three days after his health showed signs of improvement. However, his condition deteriorated last Tuesday and he had to be hospitalised again," the official had said.

Chatterjee a 10-time Lok Sabha MP, is currently an independent candidate. He served as the Speaker of Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009. He joined the CPM in 1968 and remained its leader till 2008.

He was expelled from the political outfit after he refused to step down from his position in the Parliament after the Communist party withdrew support from the Congress government over the India-US nuclear deal.

With inputs from agencies
The Supreme Court on Monday sought response from the Centre on a plea seeking court-monitored CBI probe into the alleged suicide of BK Bansal, a Ministry of Corporate Affairs' official, and his family.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday sought response from the Centre on a plea seeking court-monitored CBI probe into the alleged suicide of BK Bansal, a Ministry of Corporate Affairs' official, and his family.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud issued notice to the Centre after the a PIL in this regard was mentioned by senior advocate Colin Gonsalves.

In his petition, EAS Sarma said a court-monitored investigation was required since the allegations were against the CBI.

Bansal, former Director General Corporate Affairs, had allegedly hanged himself along with his son in September 2016 at their residence in East Delhi's Neelkanth Apartments with a purported suicide note claiming "harassment" by the CBI.

In July 2016, Bansal's wife and daughter had committed suicide alleging harassment by the CBI.

Bansal, 60, was arrested on 16 July, 2016 for allegedly accepting bribe from a prominent pharma company. He was out on bail when he committed suicide.
The meeting comes after the UNGA president-elect called Prime Minister Narendra Modi and discussed the need for stronger UN action on major global challenges.

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj held talks with UN General Assembly president-elect Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces on Monday. Garces and Swaraj talked about key issues such as the revitalisation of the world body, including reform of the Security Council and strengthening the global counter-terrorism legal framework.

Swaraj welcomed the president-elect of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly in Delhi and held wide-ranging discussions with her, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

Garces' meeting with Swaraj comes after she called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi on Friday and discussed the need for a stronger UN action on major global challenges, including terrorism.

The minister and the UNGA president-elect held wide-ranging discussions on the revitalisation of the UN, including reform of the UN Security Council, strengthening the global counter-terrorism legal framework, and other global issues, Kumar said.

Garces, an Ecuadorian national, is fourth woman president to assume this position. India's Vijayalakshmi Pandit was the first-ever woman president of the UNGA. The UN General Assembly had elected Garces as its next president in June.
A senior All India Muslim Personal Law Board functionary on Sunday said the triple talaq bill should either be withdrawn or sent to the select committee of Parliament and the opinion of Islamic scholars be sought on it.

Bhopal: A senior All India Muslim Personal Law Board functionary on Sunday said the triple talaq bill should either be withdrawn or sent to the select committee of Parliament and the opinion of Islamic scholars be sought on it.

The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill 2017, which was passed by the Lok Sabha in December 2017, could not be taken up on the last day of the Monsoon Session in the Rajya Sabha on 10 August due to lack of consensus among political parties on the issue.

"Our stand on the triple talaq bill is clear. Either the Centre should withdraw this bill or it should be sent to the Select Committee (of Parliament). The Select Committee should take the opinion of scholars of Islamic law," Mohammed Umrain Mahfooz Rahmani, secretary and social media desk in-charge of the AIMPLB, said in Bhopal on Sunday.

He said "in the entire world" the opinion of a community is taken whenever a law related to them is enacted.

"In our country, the (Muslim) community was not consulted before such a move. They are trying to impose their opinion," Rahmani claimed.

Speaking at a press conference in Bhopal, he also claimed that amendments regarding the provision of bail for men found guilty under the provisions of the triple talaq bill were "inadequate" and would not benefit women.

The Union Cabinet had on 9 August cleared some amendments to the draft Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017, including adding a bail provision to it.

Replying to a query on unfurling the national flag and singing the national anthem at madrassas, Rahmani said "this was out of the AIMPLB's purview".

He said the AIMPLB would extend its social media desk across the country and this would include the use of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, YoutTube and Telegram.

Social media would be used to clear misconceptions that are being created regarding Islam, he said.

Rahmani was in the city to chair a meeting of information technology experts.
Ruling TRS MP D Srinivas' son Sanjay was arrested on charges of sexually harassing 12 students of his college in Nizamabad.

Hyderabad: Ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) MP D Srinivas' son Sanjay was arrested on charges of sexually harassing 12 students of his college in Nizamabad, police said on Monday.

Sanjay was arrested when he appeared before Nizamabad Assistant Commissioner of Police M Sudarshan on Sunday after his anticipatory bail plea was rejected by the high court recently. He presented himself for interrogation in response to a notice and after questioning he was arrested, the police said.

He was produced before a local court which remanded him to judicial custody till 24 August, they said. "Sanjay has been accused by 12 girls of sexual harassment and indecent behaviour on the college premises and other places," Sudarshan told PTI.

Earlier this month, 12 BSc students of the college complained to state home minister Nayini Narsimha Reddy that Sanjay had harassed them and misbehaved with them. A case was registered against him under relevant sections of the IPC following the complaint, the police said.

Sanjay subsequently went absconding even as he had applied for the anticipatory bail which was later dismissed by the high court.
The JNUSU said that mob lynching and attacks on common people have become the norm in 'new India' and cow vigilantes are being given impunity which has further aggregated these incidents.

New Delhi: The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) called the attack on its leader Umar Khalid on Monday as a "culmination of the hate-filled propaganda spewed by the Modi government" against him and against all those who have questioned this regime.

Some unidentified men targeted Khalid at Constitution Club in the high security area near Parliament and gunshots were heard, but he escaped unhurt, according to eyewitnesses, even as the police asserted it will verify the incident.

"It is with grave concern that we wish to stand in complete solidarity with Umar Khalid. Today (Monday), an unidentified man opened fire on him. We see this cowardly act as a culmination of the hate-filled propaganda that this Modi government onwards has spewed against Umar, JNU students and all those voices who have questioned this regime," the JNUSU said in a statement.

In the new India, mob lynching and attacks on common people have become the norm and cow vigilantes are being given impunity which has further aggregated these incidents, they said.

"From the JNUSU, we would like to make it clear that no voice can be curbed and the students movement will continue to produce fearless voices. We also demand that the Delhi Police take appropriate action against those conspirators behind this attack. In this need of hour, we shall unconditionally stand by Umar Khalid and demand speedy justice," they said in the statement.
That Umar Khalid was shot at near Parliament and two days before the nation commemorates its independence is a commentary both on us and the nation.

Earlier on Monday, JNU student activist and infamous anti-national Umar Khalid was shot at outside the Constitution Club in New Delhi. Although Khalid escaped the attempt unscathed, he narrated, in vivid and harrowing detail, how he was confronted by a band of men at a tea kiosk outside the club, one of whom, an unidentified man in a white shirt, was carrying a gun. Khalid tussled with the assailant in his struggle to overpower him; eventually, with the help of Khalids friends at the kiosk, this was accomplished and the man escaped, dropping his gun in the process.

This was, however, not before a shot was said to have been unsuccessfully fired at Khalid. The police are now attempting to verify if this aspect of the incident was true.

Khalid, who looked characteristically undeterred in his expression, spoke of the force of his sentimentality when the gun was first pointed at him  he felt, Khalid said, that his moment, like Gauri Lankeshs, had arrived. Yet, for Khalid, this was but a manifestation of what he has been threatened with ever since the so-called JNU incident in February 2016, in which Khalid was arrested for his participation in a gathering commemorating, in mourning, the death of Afzal Guru. Death threats have come from innumerable quarters, from passersby in the streets to showmen in television newsrooms.

It is noteworthy that Khalid was at the Constitution Club, a mile or so away from Parliament, to attend a public discussion titled Khauf se Azaadi, an event organised under the auspices of the United Against Hate collective. The event bemoaned the loss of freedom from fear under the present political dispensation, featuring panelists such as Prashant Bhushan, Professor Apoorvanand, Najeeb Ahmeds mother Fatima Nafees, Rohit Vemulas mother Radhika Vemula, and Dr Kafeel Khan. In the attack on Umar Khalids life at an event against fear and for freedom, the act is the message.

Political establishments and liberal regimes have historically been suspicious of the figure of the student whose conformity has been seen, in many ways, as constitutive of the society and the nation. The student, at the cusp of working adulthood and only a moment away from childhood, is conceptualised as a resource to be delivered into appropriate lines of labour, gender, class, and citizenship. This is why the public university, or the nation, demands an apolitical studentship which does not disobey, let alone agitate and protest. If the student refuses conformity, every transgression is punishable, usually by hauntingly juridical means. In this history, Indias colonial and postcolonial governments have all been complicit  students have, for the crime of dissenting, been water-cannoned, lathi-charged, jailed, even killed. One needs only to remember Indira Gandhis political emergency, a spectacle as harrowing as our present circumstance.

Yet, rarely in India has fear  and the enormity of threat not only to the dissenting student, but anyone dissenting  been as palpable and potent. Ever since the present government came to realise that it faces a sizeable student representation against its ideological work and apparatus, it has taken peculiar delight in denuding both the student and his/her world. This has been evident in the affront against the public university, whose days in the country seem painfully numbered.

To dissent is now to be anti-national, and to be anti-national is to be criminal beyond recourse or pardon. Persecution is awarded not only on social media where abuse, trolling, and threats of murder and rape are routinely issued by foot-soldiers of what looks like a deeply ideological regime, but also on the streets where, as Umar Khalid found out, life hangs in precarious balance. In the dispensations crudely careful silence on rapidly mushrooming instances of lynching by the power of the mob, there is the template of a politics which thrives in a culture of fear and political alienation. This is what emboldens and empowers unidentified men of disparate calling but singular political motivation to take the law, and the life of another, into their hands.

The unsuccessful attack on Umar Khalid, in consonance with the successful attacks on Gauri Lankesh, MM Kalburgi, Govind Pansare, and many others, is reflective of a tragic poignancy. It unfolds the complicity of the political establishment, but more widely, of those in newsrooms, auditoria, even classrooms who perpetuate fear and acerbic hatred with brazen ignorance and impunity, of those, like so many of us, who will choose to look away. That a student, dissenting or otherwise, is shot at near Parliament and two days before the nation commemorates its independence is a commentary both on us and the nation.
In an order issued on Saturday, Waqf board has also warned of 'strict action' in case the directive is not complied with.

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh Shia Waqf Board has mandated reciting 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' slogan during the Independence Day programmes to be held on Waqf properties on 15 August.

In an order issued on Saturday, Waqf board has also warned of "strict action" in case the directive is not complied with.

The Shia Waqf Board chairman, Waseem Rizvi told ANI, "Shia Waqf Board has issued an order that on 15 August, it is necessary to raise slogans of 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' after the national anthem in all programmes to be held on the properties of Waqf Board."

"Whoever does not follow this order, strict action will be taken against him," he added.

The country will celebrate India's 72nd Independence Day on 15 August with patriotic fervor, during which several programmes will be held across the nation.
The Union minister of state for home and the US ambassador reiterated the strong resolve of India and the US to jointly counter the threats posed by terrorism to two of the world's biggest democracies as well as to world peace, the statement said.

New Delhi: The US Ambassador to India, Kenneth I Juster, on Monday called on Union Minister Kiren Rijiju and discussed with him various security issues, including ways to jointly deal with threats posed by terrorism.

During the 30-minute meeting, Juster and other officials of the US Embassy here expressed the US' keenness to continue the ongoing homeland security dialogue with India for a concrete conclusion, an official statement said.

The Union minister of state for home and the US ambassador reiterated the strong resolve of India and the US to jointly counter the threats posed by terrorism to two of the world's biggest democracies as well as to world peace, the statement said.

"I'm happy to meet US Ambassador to India Mr Kenneth I. Juster. We had a fruitful discussion on wide-ranging security and other issues to strengthen India-US relations," Rijiju said in Twitter.

Juster tweeted: "Productive meeting with @KirenRijiju, Minister of State (Home), on the strategic importance of the #USIndia relationship and the excellent cooperation in the areas of law enforcement and security".

A home ministry spokesperson said various measures for strengthening India-US relations were discussed at the meeting.
VS Naipaul's was an all-encompassing rage: he raged against half-formed societies; he raged against public defecation; he raged against the colonisers and he raged against the colonised.

If Philip Roth was the assiduous bard of Newark, then VS Naipaul was the cranky yet meticulous balladeer of the rootless world.

Both chronicled the postwar 20th century. Roth bouncing around among Jews of various varieties but keeping his narrative imagination mostly limited to America and Naipaul journeying to violent postcolonial places and charting the lives of suppressed, religion-encumbered, faith-burdened peoples.

His was an all-encompassing rage: he raged against half-formed societies; he raged against public defecation; he raged against the colonisers and he raged against the colonised.

Both wrote with vigour and produced acerbic commentaries in the last century. In the aughts Roth continued to work bringing out slim books of great significance; Naipaul, however, created lesser, shallow works and signed off with a travel book on Africa, which caused a furious uproar again echoing what his earlier, stronger works on the dark continent had unleashed.

After The Masque of Africa, which appeared in 2010, Naipauls remarkable life was reduced to making starry yet teary-eyed appearances at literary festivals where he barely could control his bursting emotions. His second wife Nadira, whom he had met in Pakistan while writing the sequel to Among the Believers, chaperoned him everywhere. Naipaul had circumnavigated many geographies and built his Empire of One. Now that empire, falling apart in senescence, was being navigated for him by a wife.

For a man who had spent his entire life squabbling with cultures and feuding with critics and disparaging female writers, it was quite a comedown. A writer whose grip on his narratives was so tight that not a word seemed out of place in his chiselled and spare sentences was now just disintegrating in public. His initial work like Miguel Street and The Suffrage of Elvira was comedic and mostly based on his birthplace in the Caribbeans. It was only when he began to travel that Naipaul developed his famous rage.

His marriage to Patricia, his first wife, had become a prison and he increasingly spent his time travelling on journalistic assignments and conducting a tempestuous, sometimes violent affair with an Argentine mistress. Patricia suffered quietly in England, speaking more to her diary than her husband, and Margaret, his mistress, suffered in hotel rooms as the Great Writer travelled far and wide to understand the world. Margaret was even slapped around as the writers rage turned personal. His moods swung and he, in turn, swung at Margaret. Then, all of a sudden, his wife died of breast cancer (he told his biographer he somehow felt he had killed her) and he met Nadira, and Margaret, evaporating from Naipauls life, became a sad presence in the biographers extraordinary tale, her intensely sexual affair with the great man becoming common knowledge in Patrick Frenchs great biography.

In between his marital disquiet and extramarital turbulence, Naipaul frequented prostitutes like a sex-starved sailor. Conrad, his literary predecessor, had roamed many lands as a shipman but rarely written about his visits to prostitutes as salts of those days certainly did (Maya Jasanoffs brilliant book on Conrad does not mention any such assignation, furtive or overt). Naipaul owed much to Conrad, but later boasted that A Bend in the River, his novelistic take on Africa, was better than Conrads works. His blowhard ways worsened as he aged. The braggart in him brutally put down writers of immense repute and the misogynist in him trashed female writers.

Naipaul was puffed up (was it all show?) largely because of his insecurities and vulnerabilities. A boy of 18 coming from Trinidad to England, he felt fragile. He tussled with his demons and had a breakdown. He even became suicidal. His father Seepersad died young at 46, carving out a writerly future for himself living in his wifes house where he found his independence constantly challenged. Seepersad ultimately managed to break away and the fathers trials to protect his manhood and foster his creativity became the basis of Naipauls breakout book A House for Mr Biswas.

But it is not in these public spectacles of teary-eyed fumblings and acrimonious behaviour, which unfortunately became the defining moments of his old age, that Naipauls legacy is to be found. His work will always be known for its accurate portrayals. Even when he was documenting resentments, Naipaul was unflinchingly honest. Even when he was ripping apart societies, he was commendably brave. Even when he was puncturing peoples pomposities, his sharp eye never wavered. Even when he was railing at religions, his sentences never lost their power.

Then Naipaul changed his course. The humour in his earlier books vanished and the books that came out of his travels were bitter and angry. He produced some of his best work during this period. When his novelistic imagination turned fallow, Naipaul travelled. He went to Americas, India and non-Arab Islamic nations. The Return of Eva Peron, a collection of his astute essays on Latin America and its tinpot dictatorships, is perhaps the best work that came out of his travels. His engagement with Islam and Africa was largely critical and he became a lightning rod for both Africans and Muslims. Edward Said took him apart; Chinua Achebe lambasted him and his fellow West Indian and Nobel winner Derek Walcott called him VS Nightfall, a rather poetic insult by a Caribbean compatriot who was angered by Naipauls rancorous takedown of the people, patois and societies of his birthplace.

In India, as the BJP was furiously marching on from the obscurity of the yatras to the opulence of power in Delhi, Naipaul became a sudden newspaper celebrity because of his tendentious comments on Muslim invasions. But somehow his sudden ascension to the oracular seat in India didnt last as BJP took power and found and built many of its own messiahs. Naipaul, who in his Nobel acceptance speech acknowledged a debt to his ancestral land, became largely a star attraction at literary festivals where he jousted contemptuously with Indian writers and later, growing frail and fragile, wept openly. He could hide his emotions and youthful vulnerabilities in his literary work, but aged and retired from writing he had no place to take his emotions to. So the narcissist lost his braggadocio and wept copiously.

Naipaul would be remembered for his magical sentences and complete mastery of the English language. He was a believer in spareness and simplicity. Rarely did his words send you chasing dictionaries but they captured, in his simple yet intricately built sentences, the essence of life, its small rewards and its big resentments.

Before the celebrated experimenters such as Sebald, Naipaul was innovating by mixing fiction with nonfiction and autobiography. The Enigma of Arrival, his outstanding work where he blended these three forms, is a monument to experimentation. Naipaul was bored with the novel. His editor of many books Diana Athill said he used to go into a pit after writing a book. Sitting down to write a book, he himself said, he felt artificial. But the books had no artifice. He used to berate the novel, too, calling it a dead form. But his fictions and nonfictions have enough oxygen in them to sustain a nations literature.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it, Naipaul wrote. Barack Obama, in an interview to Michiko Kakutani as his presidency was winding down, found Naipauls vision very bleak and pessimistic. But the election of Donald Trump proves Naipaul right. The Democrats allowed themselves to be nothing and found no place in the White House. Naipaul had cannily dissected Republican pieties and foibles in his book on the Deep South. Walking across the Mason-Dixon line in A Turn in the South, Naipaul had written sharply about race and religion and their many conflicts and contradictions. And he had praised, something rare for Naipaul, James Baldwin, the black writer whose work is now being reread widely as America again grapples with its racial gladiators.

Men who allow themselves to be nothing may not have any place in the world, but they will always be found in Naipauls books. He is the documentarian of their hubris and humiliations; he is the observer of their resentments and rejections; he is the chronicler of their victories and vexations. For that alone, Naipaul will be read always.
In recent years, competing accounts of sadir and its practitioners have stirred up intense scholarly debate in India and abroad.

Two Tamil women born in Pudukkottai wont fade away quietly. One stands in the pantheon of Indian social reformers, though she passed away half a century ago. The other woman spent decades in obscurity, but has embarked on a surprising comeback. At age 80, she can still sing and dance simultaneously. Her repertoire even includes a jaunty salute, set to an old Irish marching band tune.

Separated by time, these two women  Muthulakshmi Reddy and R Muthukkannammal  are bound by their focus on sadir, a precursor to the classical dance form now known as Bharatanatyam.

They each carry stories of pride and prejudice. Muthulakshmi wanted to rescue these sadir dancers and their offspring; she was convinced that their pride could be restored through conventional marriages and useful occupations, such as teaching and nursing. She sought to place them far beyond the groping hands of male patrons. Yet Muthukkannammal never felt the need to be rescued; her pride lay in her artistry, and would never be snuffed out by the prejudice that engulfed her vocation.

Two lives, two sets of convictions. They embody the complex, contentious history of sadir. In previous centuries, it was the exclusive province of the devadasis  who started out as young girls pledged to a particular temple and eventually fanned out to perform for indolent royals, prosperous landlords, and the masses thronging various festivals. The dance items ranged from the reverent to the humorous and the erotic. Views of the artists also varied. Admiration, disdain, and pity all mingled in this swirling milieu. Some dancers appeared powerful and enticing, while others seemed hopelessly exploited. Eventually, they were all tarred by the same sanctimonious brush. By the mid-20th-century, legal sanctions put the kibosh on sadir. Followers of Muthulakshmi rejoiced.

Dancing by a woman, in the precincts of any temple or other religious institution or at any festival or ceremony held in respect of such a deity, idol or object of worship, is hereby declared unlawful, stated the Madras Devadasis (Prevention of Dedication) Act of 1947.

But in recent years, competing accounts of sadir and its practitioners have stirred up intense scholarly debate in India and abroad. Were the dancers treated unfairly? Was an art form stripped of its supple vitality? And can it be, in 21st century India, that sadir is still too hot to handle?

Such questions form the backdrop of Muthukkannammals charismatic return to the limelight. In July 2018, a cultural center on the outskirts of Chennai made an unusual gesture. DakshinaChitra offered a welcoming stage to Muthukkannammal, who conducted a weeklong workshop with much younger dancers, capped by a joint performance. Earlier this year, DakshinaChitra also conferred a cash award on Muthukkannammal, mindful of her pinched circumstances. Here is somebody who stood by her art against all odds, and kept that tradition going, irrespective of the fact that she didnt have many people to teach it to, observes Sreelatha Vinod, a prominent Bharatanatyam dancer and teacher in Chennai. In March, Sreelatha attended the award ceremony where Muthukkannammal spoke and performed for forty stamina-testing minutes. How you emote to music: that is what she did so beautifully, Sreelatha adds.

With all the applause, it was tempting to forget the emotions that once surged in the opposite direction. Societys ambivalence toward devadasis had scuttled support for sadir. As an activist, a medical doctor and legislator, born in July 1886, Muthulakshmi had lobbied hard for a law to abolish the practice of dedicating young female dancers to temples. Her determination overrode the objections of many devadasis themselves. Long before that law was passed, she set up Avvai Home in Madras in 1930, named after a Sangam poetess. Today, the institution still offers shelter and education to young girls, with a website that proudly highlights its history in offering a moral life to those liberated from the ancient pernicious shackles of the temple dedication. Just last month, Tamil Nadu governor Banwarilal Purohit attended the Avvai ceremony in honor of the homes bespectacled founder.

Did everyone want to be liberated? Not Muthukkannammal. Born in December 1937, in the Tamil year of Eesvara, she came from a long line of devadasi dancers, stretching over six generations. Some of their repertoires originated from the famed Brihadishvara temple in Tanjore. Her father was one of the most respected music masters in the locality. In their familys case, dedication came with land grants and steady demand for performances in various temples, festivals and private salons. At age seven, Muthukannamal was called for her pottu kattuthal ceremony. She bowed her head for the sacred necklace, which she still wears today.

Each morning, she entered the temple and traced delicate patterns on 32 plates of rice to present before the deity. In the evening, she returned to the sanctuary to sing lullabies. At home, she practiced her dance steps diligently. Her father gently taught her how to braid her hair and dress for the stage. But if she missed a note during vocal practice, he might also rap her with a stick.

Then her life changed dramatically. The Madras Devadasis (Prevention of Dedication) Act was gradually enforced in the mid-1950s in Pudukkottai, several years after its formal passage in 1947. Meanwhile, Pudukkottai ruler Rajagopala Tondaiman fell from power in 1948, squelching opportunities to perform before the faded royals. No longer were the dancers affectionately called the rubies of the palace. To sustain the family, her father sold the land. And Muthukkannammal was left with very little.

She did have her memory. She considered sadir dancing a privilege  not a source of shame. Quietly, she sang at home and moved along with the melodies. She developed a steady relationship with a man who valued her skills and never forced her to discard the ankle bells inherited from her ancestors. They had three children together.

Unlike some of the other devadasis facing unemployment, she did not seek to reinvent herself in Tamil cinema. Neither did she leap to international acclaim like dancer Balasaraswati, whose ancestors were noted musicians and devadasis. Muthukkannammal barely had the chance to appear before devotees, except those who flocked to the annual chariot festival at the Pollachi Mariamman temple. She was deeply grateful to the thavil player who recommended her to temple authorities in the early 1980s as one of the few remaining devadasi artists who might be available to step into a ritual role. She was also permitted to perform periodically at a pavilion three kilometers from her home. There, she was given rice and new saris.

Otherwise, the scorn surrounding the devadasi tradition discouraged Pudukkottai parents from sending their daughters to her for lessons. After the system was banned, I stopped teaching. Children did not come, Muthukkannammal recalls. When I think about my early days, I wonder, why did things deteriorate like this?

Elsewhere, in Chennai, parents from established families were persuaded to enroll their children for dance instruction at Kalakshetra, the prime laboratory for Bharatanatyam. Its founder, Rukmini Devi Arundale, adapted moves from sadir while promoting this dance as more pristine. Expression took different forms. For example, Bharatanatyam placed more emphasis on hand gestures known as mudhras. Love was still enacted, but overtly erotic movements were scrubbed. Gone, too, were the colonial touches that had crept into some of sadirs more popular item numbers, such as the salute punctuating a breezy 18th-century Irish song called The Rakes of Mallow. Footwork reminiscent of European folk dances  along with other routines drawn from Indian folk dances  were also scrapped.

All in all, Rukmini sought appreciation for Bharatanatyam as a refined form worthy of widespread acclaim and participation. Middle and upper-class parents need not fear that their daughters would be sullied by dancing in public.

She put it in a lovely platter, like a thali that is very beautifully showcased, says Revathi Ramachandran, who became director of Kalakshetra in April 2018.

Bharatanatyam went on to become one of Indias most well-known cultural exports, as well as a source of domestic pride. The government has supported numerous performances overseas. Many Indian families in the diaspora happily dispatch their daughters to learn it, and in some circles, such skills are a factor in eliciting marriage proposals.

The story could have ended there. But the boundaries of what might be considered respectable have a way of shifting. And as young artists around the globe mine the past for inspiration  often excavating what has been marginalised, or ignored  the ankle bells of sadir beckoned.

Fetched from her home five hours away in Viralimalai taluk, Muthukkannammal brought an assortment of accessories and instruments to DakshinaChitra. She played the very same cymbals that her father had used when she was a young girl: one iron, one brass, both wrapped in string. The students prostrated themselves before her, touching her feet. She was treated like any other treasured guru in the world of classical arts. With her erect posture and a ready grin, Muthukkannammal showed no trace of bitterness that a society who cast her off as a devadasi had waited so long before escorting her back to a position of respect. She surveyed the small group of students with delight. They are ready to learn. I am surprised and happy, she says.

Her weeklong workshop (16 to 21 July) was organised by the Coimbatore-based Udalveli Arts Foundation, led by theatre artist Dharanidharan. Since I also come from this community, I feel I have a great responsibility to ensure this art form is taught to a new generation, says Dharanidharan, explaining that his great-grandmother was a devadasi who danced at a Shiva temple in Elumathur, Erode. (The story goes that his ancestor was the second wife of a man who managed accounts at the temple, and she considered him her second husband, after Shiva.) Dharanidharan organised another sadir workshop in Coimbatore for dance instructors, and is planning another one especially for children.

Dharanidharan was introduced to Mutthukkannammal by KT Gandhirajan, a heritage conservationist and explorer from Usilampatti with a special interest in ancient cave paintings. Such paintings have shed light on the crucial role that dance has played in the history of civilization. One evening, after a rehearsal, he invited Muthukkannammal to visit the rock temples at Mahabalipuram, a sight she had never seen.

At DakshinaChitra, the students included 13-year Sarah Niveditha, a busy home-schooled teenager who takes lessons in Carnatic vocals, Bharatanatyam, and Veena. The day before Muthukkanammals workshop, Sarah accidentally stepped on a stingray after surfing in Kovalam. That didnt stop her from joining rehearsals, despite a painful bandaged foot. Her mother hovered on the sidelines, keen for Sarah to learn something old, yet new. The thing with Bharatanatyam is that the movements can be very stiff. Here, there is a really graceful flow, says Sarah, during a break from practicing. Most people think that Bharatanatyam is a more polished version, but I think I like this much more.

As for the adults, the workshop attracted mostly part-time dancers who had also pursued other careers in television, architecture, cultural administration and electronic media. One of the main challenges was learning how to sing and dance simultaneously. If they could do it, maybe we can, says 22-year-old Reshma Gunasekaran, trained in both Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi. By the second day, Reshma seemed to sing more confidently, and easily executed gestures such as touching a dainty curled finger to a dimpled cheek. But it was hard work, too, as the students sat on the floor and struggled to transcribe the notes of the songs. Every so often, Muthukannammal walked gingerly outside the rehearsal studio, to spit out a mouthful of paan.

One afternoon, Preeti Vasudevan dropped by to check that the sessions were fully documented on video. As the artistic director of Thresh, a contemporary dance company based in New York, she is working with the New York Public Library to increase accessibility of digital archives of Indian heritage. I think workshops like these are very important, says Preeti, who began studying Bharatanatyam at age five. In terms of transmission of heritage, this could breathe new life into what we consider as classical forms.

The fact that a living practitioner could demonstrate the songs made it easier to understand what has been lost, she explains. The voice is connected to the breath. If those two are not connected, your inner environment is disconnected from the outer environment.

At Kalakshetra, dance students are also trained in vocal music, although they normally do not perform both at the same time. The panting and breathlessness that comes with vigorous dance can prevent a clear voice from emerging. However, Revathi believes that its not impossible for some performers to master both at once, as did Muthukkannammal in her youth. We are looking at having her come to Kalakshetra to give a small lecture to the students, says the new director. The younger generation needs to know what sadir is.

In previous years, some Kalakshetra students have also made field trips to Thiruvidaimarudur to meet with descendants of devadasis and gain a fuller understanding of the history of dance. After all, one of Rukminis most important gurus was legendary devadasi Mylapore Gowri Amma. She was pledged to the Kapaleeshwarar temple in Madras  and was abruptly evicted due to the 1947 Act.

In his compelling 2012 book Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory and Modernity in South India, scholar Davesh Soneji points out that the word devadasi has morphed into an umbrella term for many disparate communities. The current media focus on young girls who continue to be dedicated to temples (as in northern Karnataka) in violation of law, and often trafficked to brothels, has overshadowed the fact that in the 19th and early 20th centuries, many devadasis were commended for their artistry, their freedom, and their intellect. Some were guided in Sanskrit and had educational opportunities that surpassed many other women of their era.

Today, some Indians express anger that sadir dancers were jettisoned by prejudice while abusive men remained unpunished. They do not uphold the crusading Muthulakshmi as a heroine. The women could have been provided safe havens to sing, dance, be artistic and continue with their lives, 31-year-old Chennai dancer Nrithya Pillai wrote in a recent essay. In the name of sanitising society, the art and livelihood of these women were snatched away.

Nrithya, whose ancestors include women dedicated at the Vaitheeswaran Koil and Vazhuvoor temples five generations ago, says she was heartened by the recent award to Muthukkannammal. As for her performance, she saw a lot of rawness and soul in it.

On 21 July, the same day that Muthukkannammals students performed at DakshinaChitras outdoor amphitheater, a very different event unfolded at Kalakshetra. There, scholar VR Devika gave a lecture defending Muthulakshmis legacy. Devika says she wants to push back at the recent tide of scholars who are glorifying the devadasi and disparaging past efforts to help them make a transition to other occupations. She has presented the same 90-minute lecture seven times around the country, in venues ranging from Vadodara to New Delhi and Chennai.

Devika notes that Muthulakshmi had first-hand knowledge of the devadasi system since her mother was a descendant of this community and she was concerned by the fate of her maternal cousins. Given that Muthulakshmis father was a college principal, she was able to rise in society. She felt guilty of having been the privileged one, among the community, explains the 64-year-old founder of the Aseema Trust in Chennai. Devika insists that Muthulakshmi was not opposed to the art of sadir, but abhorred the practice of compulsory dedication to temples. She wanted abusive men to be punished, too, but most politicians and the court system did not support that view.

The Act was not looking at the art, it was looking at the dedication of young girls. If the art suffered, it was collateral damage, Devika concludes. No reform in the world would be 100 percent beneficial to everyone. What Im saying is that it was mostly successful.

In her 20s, while still a schoolteacher, Devika began her own training in Bharatanatyam. She would never go on to perform. For all of her spirited defense of the anti-dedication campaign, she reserves some warmth for people like Muthukkannammal, whose lives were arguably blighted by the collateral damage of Muthulakshmis lobbying efforts. Did she catch the DakshinaChitra award ceremony? Unfortunately, I didnt go. I regret it. I curse myself for not going, she says vehemently. It would have been important for me to show my support for her.

Back at the amphitheater, Muthukkannammal appeared in a purple silk sari and took her place among the younger performers. At times, she pursed her lips in concentration. But mostly, she seemed buoyed by the collective energy. It was much better than dancing alone, at home.

Margot Cohen writes about culture in Asia. She is a former correspondent for The Far Eastern Economic Review.
Madhya Pradesh Congress leader and its presumptive chief ministerial candidate Jyotiraditya Scindia reportedly moves around the state wearing garlands made of lemons and chillies

Madhya Pradesh Congress leader and its presumptive chief ministerial candidate Jyotiraditya Scindia reportedly moves around the state wearing garlands made of lemons and chillies. For those who have had the misfortune of sitting through horror flicks made by the Ramsay Brothers in the 90s and later the Phoonks and Bhoots churned out by Bollywood, lemons and chillies mean just one thing: The desire to ward off evil spirits and spells.

So, what exactly is Scindia trying to protect himself against?

A few days ago, Scindia threw a coconut offered to him at Panna out of his car window. When the BJP termed this sacrilege  yes, thats how silly the campaign is  his team responded by claiming that the coconut carried a spell of black magic and, thus, was a threat to Scindia and the party. Ergo, it had to be thrown out. There you go, then. Scindia is wary of black magic.

The Congress feels the BJP has some tantriks in its fold who, like Saruman the White, are out to destroy their leaders with black magic even before their lords step into the electoral ring. But, as the saying goes, why does the Congress need enemies like black magic when it has friends capable of destroying themselves? For the first time in two decades, the Congress has a fairly good chance of beating the BJP. Three back-to-back tenures have generated apathy towards incumbent chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Firing on farmers in Mandsaur, increasing joblessness, stagnant businesses and the prospects of an alliance with the BSP have combined to build favourable conditions for the Congress. But, the party seems to be following the script of Quentin Tarantinos Reservoir Dogs: There is complete distrust and a latent desire to finish off internal rivals. In July, Congress general secretary in-charge of Madhya Pradesh, Deepak Bawaria, was attacked by Congress workers after he said only Kamal Nath and Scindia were candidates for the chief minister's job. This incensed supporters of party stalwart Ajay Singh  Bawaria had the audacity to say this in Singh's backyard Reewa  and led to the ugly spectacle of the Congress in-charge walking out in a torn kurta.

A few days later, Congress workers clashed again in front of Bawaria, forcing the latter to put his foot in the mouth. Tormented by the melee, Bawaria advised Congress workers to learn from the disciplined cadres of the RSS, causing despair within the Congress and glee in the BJP. On the ground, the Congress is finding it difficult to match the energy in the BJP camp. Since he began his Jan Aashirwad Yatra, Chouhan has been drawing big crowds. He is also exuding confidence and attacking the Congress with relentless ferocity.

The Congress, on the other hand, is biding time, hamstrung by the lack of resources to sustain a long, expensive campaign. Its president Rahul Gandhi is expected to launch the campaign from the famous Hindu shrine of Omkareshwar at the end of August. Till then, the only message the Congress is sending out is that of a divided house and competing ambitions. This has forced people to ask if they are busy beating each other up, how they plan to beat the BJP.

And when they are not fighting, the Congress workers come up with hilarious stunts that draw just jibes and laughters.

On Sunday, its workers decided to hold a protest inspired by the proverbial playing of flute in front of a buffalo (implying utter indifference and apathy of the Chouhan government towards the state). So, a buffalo was summoned, flutes were arranged in Dewas  midway between Indore and Bhopal  to register the angst of the electorate. Unfortunately, the piece de resistance of the show, the buffalo, got upset and attacked some Congress workers, turning them hors de combat before the big battle slated for November-December.

The talk within the Congress is that a grand alliance with the BSP, JD(U) led by Sharad Yadav, SP and NCP will take on the BJP. Its leaders are confident of stitching up the Mahagathbandhan before elections are announced. But, all that seems far away with different factions within the party fighting in public. Scindia might be moving around with lemons and chillies to ward off black magic.

But, what he really needs to win the election is a video of the popular item song from the film Dabangg to remind that the party needs to be glued together  Fevicol se.
With Stalin's control complete over the DMK, it is tough for Alagiri to make his way back into the party unless mother Dayalu Ammal makes an emotional pitch.

For the last three days, sources close to the DMK's first family reveal that MK Alagiri had been mounting pressure through different members of his family on younger brother MK Stalin to take him back into the party. But the plan was a non-starter, with both Stalin and DMK general secretary K Anbazhgan adamant that there was no homecoming possible for Alagiri. Ninety-five-year-old Anbazhgan, a contemporary of Karunanidhi, argued that the late DMK patriarch had himself taken the decision to expel Alagiri in 2014 and there was no reason to overturn his decision.

The outburst at Karunanidhi's samadhi, less than a week after the former Tamil Nadu chief minister passed away, was a result of this frustration. Alagiri had not managed even the optics well. A majority of those who were standing by him at the samadhi when he boasted that his father's 'true and loyal followers' are with him, were reportedly from Madurai and no longer part of the DMK. That in a nutshell, was an indication of Alagiri's status vis-a-vis the DMK. Over the past four years, Stalin has ensured posts in the party only to those who swear personal loyalty to him and Alagiri's supporters have been shown the door.

For years, Alagiri had ensured Karunanidhi did not put a succession plan in place. "The DMK is not a Mutt to anoint a successor,'' Alagiri had even repeated his father's famous words when the patriarch would seek to sidestep questions on the succession battle.

But differences between Alagiri and Stalin reached a point of no return. This despite Karunanidhi trying to introduce a semblance of order into the intra-family and intra-party rivalry by asking his elder son to take care of Madurai and the southern districts. Karunanidhi's decision to show Alagiri the door was a clear indication who his political successor would be.

Despite being the elder of the two brothers, Alagiri saw Stalin get the better of him. That it rankled is obvious with Alagiri taking potshots at Stalin, calling him `workless president' instead of working president of the DMK. After the humiliating loss in the RK Nagar bypoll where the DMK lost its deposit, Alagiri said the party will never win an election so long as Stalin leads it.

But a return to the DMK was only one of the conditions Alagiri placed before the family. With Stalin remaining adamant, he offered that his son Dayanidhi Alagiri be given a position in the party structure. This bid to negotiate too was turned down, with apprehension within the Stalin camp that Alagiri will once again wield clout if Dayanidhi was accommodated. In fact, several party seniors counselled Stalin not to give in to emotional pressure from the family.

Sources within the DMK also point out that Alagiri is equally peeved about he or any of his family members not being on the board of the DMK Trust, a cash-rich outfit. So these moves are more about ensuring space for his gen-next in what Karunanidhi has left behind, in terms of wealth, clout and a political future.

That Alagiri is ambitious is well-known. When he was chemicals minister in the UPA government, his supporters during his birthday bash in Madurai would describe him as 'MK Alagiri, CM'.

Alagiri is well known for being a field person. But his modus operandi also is to cross the line, with liberal use of money and muscle power. He is credited as the brain behind the Thirumangalam formula, when the DMK allegedly distributed Rs 5,000 for a vote in the by-election in Thirumangalam. Though it was widely believed that allegations of involvement in the 2G scam cost Karunanidhi power in the election in 2011, Jayalalithaa herself interpreted the DMK rout in southern Tamil Nadu as 'people's anger' against the 'rowdy raj' of Alagiri and his men.

What Alagiri said at Karunanidhi's samadhi on Monday is old wine in a new bottle. The only element he introduced in media interactions was to bring in Rajinikanth's name, suggesting he could work with him. If his moves to get back to the DMK do not fructify, Alagiri will try to damage Stalin's prospects in Madurai and adjoining areas by floating a rival DMK-like outfit. That would be music to the ears of the AIADMK and the TTV Dhinakaran-led party.

With Stalin's control complete over the DMK, it is tough for Alagiri to make his way back into the party unless mother Dayalu Ammal makes an emotional pitch. But the elder brother will always be someone Stalin needs to watch out for. Though Alagiri is not known to have the mass appeal to woo a pan-Tamil Nadu electorate, Stalin cannot ignore his nuisance value, especially if the DMK does not put up a good performance in 2019. Under Stalin's watch, the DMK came a cropper in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and could not return to power in Tamil Nadu in 2016.

Like the AIADMK, the DMK too has seen a rebellion of sorts, though an extremely mild one. It only confirms that after the demise of the towering giants - Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi - Dravidian politics in Tamil Nadu will not be the same.
The Karnataka Congress has written to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, telling her that as a Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka, she had to protect the interests of the state and ensure that Aero India show was retained in Bengaluru.

Bengaluru: The Karnataka government on Monday stepped up pressure on the Centre to conduct the "Aero-India" 2019 edition in Bengaluru, amid reports that the venue for the prestigious air show hosted by the city for over two decades might be shifted to Lucknow.

As a political slugfest broke out, state chief minister HD Kumaraswamy dashed off a missive to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, insisting that Bengaluru would be the "best choice" for the biennial event.

"Bengaluru being the hub for defence and aviation majors of the country is certainly the most suitable place to conduct the show," he said in the letter.

There are reports that the event, organised by the defence ministry, would be held in Lucknow but the defence minister had made it clear a few days ago that no announcement had been made, but added that "people in many places are asking for that (the show)."

Ever since its inception in 1996, Bengaluru has been playing host to Asia's biggest air show, in which 549 global and Indian companies from 51 countries participated at the 11th edition, held in February 2017.

Reports about shifting the venue have triggered a public spat between the Congress and BJP.

The Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee has written to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, telling her that as a Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka, she had to protect the interests of the state and ensure that Aero India show was retained in Bengaluru.

A miffed Karnataka deputy chief minister G Parameshwara had said last week that under the NDA regime, the state was losing key defence projects to other states.

Speaking to reporters at Gadag in north Karnataka, Opposition BJP leader in the Assembly BS Yeddyurappa on Monday said the party, its MPs and central ministers from the state would make all efforts to retain the show in Bengaluru by bringing pressure on the Centre.

He accused Congress leaders of creating "unnecessary confusion" over the issue.

When the defence minister had made it clear that no formal announcement on the venue had been made yet, it would not be proper to discuss about the change now, the state BJP chief said.

In his letter, Kumaraswamy noted that Bengaluru has become synonymous with Aero India.

In order to aid and assist the defence ministry, the state has also suitably upgraded its infrastructure in terms of roads, public amenities and smooth flow of traffic, he said.

Kumaraswamy said Bengaluru, with its past experience in conducting the show successfully, "beautiful" weather conditions and favourably located defence and aviation industries, would be the best choice to conduct Aero India.

"As chief minister of the state, it will be my bounden duty to ensure best possible assistance by Team Karnataka," he added.

More grist was added to the reports about shifting the venue after Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath urged the defence minister to hold the event in his state as it would benefit the defence production there.
Some states such as Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra  all under the BJP's rule  are scheduled for Assembly polls later in 2019 and the idea being floated is to advance the elections there to hold them along with the parliamentary election.

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday made a strong pitch for simultaneous polls to "curb expenditure", amid indications in some quarters that efforts can be made to hold the Lok Sabha election with that for 10-11 assemblies early in 2019 by delaying elections in three BJP-ruled states and advancing the same for others scheduled for later in 2019.

BJP sources, however, maintained that there is no concrete proposal for deferring and advancing of state polls and the idea has not been discussed formally within the party, as constitutional validity of any such step would need to be taken into account.

With the tenure of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh assemblies expiring in January 2019, a party leader indicated that a brief spell of Governor's Rule may be explored for these BJP-ruled states so that Assembly elections there could be held with the Lok Sabha polls early in 2019. He, however, clarified that no concrete proposal has been formulated so far.

The tenure of the Assembly in the Congress-ruled Mizoram is also ending in December.

Former Lok Sabha secretary-general and constitutional expert PDT Acharya, however, questioned the legal validity of imposing the Governor's Rule in states where Assembly elections are due before the Lok Sabha polls.

The Governor's Rule can be imposed only in case of constitutional breakdown, he said.

The Lok Sabha elections, which were last held in April-May 2014, are as such expected to be held early in 2019 along with Assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and Telangana.

Some states such as Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra  all under the BJP's rule  are scheduled for Assembly polls later in 2019 and the idea being floated is to advance the elections there to hold them along with the parliamentary election.

Another state where talks of advancing Assembly elections are doing the rounds is Bihar, where the election is due in 2020-end. The BJP is a junior partner in the state government led by Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United).

The JD(U) has in public pooh-poohed the suggestion that the state election be held with the Lok Sabha polls, but many political watchers believe that it may suit Kumar as well as he may be given a larger pie in seat-sharing for the Assembly and lesser seats for Lok Sabha.

Earlier in the day, BJP president Amit Shah wrote to the Law Commission supporting holding Lok Sabha and Assembly polls simultaneously. He dubbed the Opposition to simultaneous polls politically motivated, and asserted that it will curb expenditure and ensure the nation is not in "election mode" throughout the year.

Shah said the BJP is committed to this idea and explicitly believes that in a progressive democracy like India elections should be held at a fixed time and for a fixed tenure so that people's representatives can carry out their duties effectively.

Shah's letter to the law panel was handed over by a BJP delegation which met the commission's top brass this afternoon.

Holding simultaneous polls is not merely a principle and it was also successfully practised between 1952 and 1967, he said, adding that several institutions, including the Election Commission, Law Commission and parliamentary committee, have supported it since then.

Several Opposition parties including the Congress has been opposing the idea of holding simultaneous polls, calling such a step against democratic practices. Political observers believe that the BJP is pitching for holding Lok Sabha and state elections together to tackle the anti-incumbency factor and for maximising the appeal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during campaigns.
The Congress alleged that BJP chief Amit Shah had taken a loan of Rs 25 crore while mortgaging a piece of land owned by him but it was not mentioned in the 'liabilities' section in the affidavit.

New Delhi: Alleging non-disclosure of Rs 25 crore-worth liabilities in his election affidavit, the Congress on Monday approached the Election Commission against BJP president Amit Shah with a plea seeking his disqualification as a Rajya Sabha member and registration of a case.

A delegation of senior Congress leaders Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Vivek Tankha met Chief Election Commissioner Om Prakash Rawat in New Delhi and handed over a memorandum to him.

The BJP has rejected the Congress charges as "bogus" and has said there is no violation of rules by Shah, who was elected to Rajya Sabha from Gujarat in 2017.

The Congress leaders alleged Shah has violated rules and was liable for action by not disclosing these liabilities in his affidavit filed before the Election Commission while contesting the Rajya Sabha election.

They alleged that Shah had taken a loan of Rs 25 crore while mortgaging a piece of land owned by him but it was not mentioned in the 'liabilities' section in the affidavit.

"The act of wilful non-disclosure by the Member of Parliament in his affidavit amounts to the offence of 'filing of false affidavit' under Section 125A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. Such an offence is punishable by up to 6 months imprisonment, or with fine, or with both," the memorandum said.

The Congress leaders said it is clear the offence is not a minor one and is "a serious act of corruption through wilful and deliberate suppression".

Sibal said the Election Commission of India must take immediate note of this and initiate appropriate proceedings to suspend the membership of Amit Shah to the Upper House with immediate effect.

He said the Election Commission should also communicate to the Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha to start the procedure laid down under the relevant rules to determine what further penalties may be imposed for breach of privilege.

Asked about the Election Commission asking the petitioner to move court in this case, he said, "We want that the Election Commission should move court since the affidavit has been filed before it."

"The ECI must initiate proceedings against Amit Shah for the filing of a false affidavit, which attracts up to six months' imprisonment, and/or a fine. We hope the commission treats this matter with the attention that it deserves and initiates immediate action to take the issue forward," the memorandum by the Congress leaders said.

Singhvi said it is a "very serious matter" as the Supreme Court has held that the requirement to disclose all assets and liabilities is mandatory and any evasion or suppression is absolutely not permissible.

He said a mortgage is a liability for the person who mortgages it to a bank and therefore it was a liability for Amit Shah, which has not been disclosed.

"This has two serious consequences. One consequence is criminal... Secondly and separately, Rajya Sabha and its Chairman can and should take cognisance of this and it can lead to his suspension and disqualification," Singhvi told reporters.

"It is a clear-cut case which requires no argument that something which he has mortgaged to a bank, but he on his own simply is not disclosing," he said.

Citing Section 75A of the Representation of Peoples Act 1951, he said it mandates all MPs to file an affidavit declaring their criminal records (if any), their assets and liabilities and educational qualifications.

"This mandatory requirement is further elaborated upon in the Members of Rajya Sabha (Declaration Of Assets And Liabilities) Rules, 2004 made under the aforementioned Section 75A of the 1951 Act. Rule 3(1) (ii) of the 2004 Rules expressly includes 'his liabilities to any public financial institution'," he said.
It seems plausible to surmise that other conditions remaining constant, Narendra Modi has fewer reasons to worry about 2019 than his rivals.

Two recent, simultaneous interviews by Narendra Modi could be useful for a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of the BJPs chances of retaining power at the Centre. Both interviews (one by news agency ANI and the other by The Times of India) have elicited detailed responses from the prime minister on several issues such as the state of the economy, banking sector woes, employment, reservations, lynchings, NRC, politics, foreign policy, etc.

Modi appears confident of retaining power with an even 'bigger' mandate in 2019. Time will tell whether his confidence is misplaced. Political leaders tend to use rhetoric as a versatile tool. It is hard to shake off the impression though that Modis conviction is less of a fake swagger and more of a genuine belief that people will appreciate the hard work that he has done and back him despite being force-fed some bitter pills. In other words, Modi is betting on the maturity of Indian voters. The interviews also revealed Modis willingness to give a detailed account of the work that he has done in the last four years.

The more interesting bit that inadvertently emerges from the interviews, however, is Modis understated glee at the way his rivals are trying to frame the 2019 battle. If the Opposition wants to make it a Modi vs Rest affair, he would welcome it. Such a framework suits Modis presidential style of campaigning and makes it easier for him to reinforce the message that the Opposition has nothing to offer except a bilious anti-Modi hatred. Negative campaigns are good for columnists and TV anchors but not so much for elections.

Let us assume that voters are disappointed with Modi (electoral evidence points to the contrary, but still) and evaluate his tenure as high on promise and low on performance. Before making up their mind on whom to vote for and casting the ballot, the electorate would be interested in knowing how Modis rivals would fix the economy, simplify tax collection, ramp up employment generation, increase their well-being, so on and so forth. In short, they would seek a roadmap on all the areas where Modi has come in for criticism from rivals. This is the key, because India has a young demography, an aspirational electorate and a transitional economy.

This is also where the rivals have fallen woefully short. Not a single leader in the amorphous grand alliance front has, so far, come forward with an intelligible policy on any of the issues that concern the electorate. Rahul Gandhis entire campaign rhetoric can be summed up in a single sentence: Modi has been a failure. Fair enough. But what is your recipe for success? On that, the Congress president has precious little to offer, except poverty fetishism and failed socialist rhetoric. His words are woolly, and ideas woollier.

Such policies had once taken India to the brink of bankruptcy, where our gold had to be mortgaged to save the economy.

And on occasions that he has bothered to offer a semblance of a policy, Rahuls solutions are scarier than the problems, raising legitimate questions about his seriousness or his ability to grasp the complexities of the job that he aspires for.

The GST Council, for instance, is the constitutional body chaired by the Union finance minister and has as its members the Union state minister of revenue or finance and ministers in-charge of finance or taxation of all the states. Ergo, all parties in power in different states (including the Congress) have their representatives in the Council that regulates and implements GST in India. It reflects the federal structure of Indias polity.

It is unclear, therefore, what Rahul Gandhi means when he declares that 'Congress will bring one GST slab if voted to power'. He ends up criticising a body which has at least one representative from his own party and promulgates a formula that shows little concern for Indias federal structure.

Not only is Rahuls idea preposterous and illogical (see here and here) but also impossible in the current framework.

Or take the instance of Mamata Banerjee who is competing with Rahul Gandhi for the leadership role of the mahagathbandhan. The West Bengal chief minister threatened a civil war-like situation in country over NRC in Assam. The entire controversy rests on illegal immigration of economic migrants from Bangladesh, an issue on which she took a radically different position in 2005.

What emerges from such exchanges is that Modis opposite numbers are short on ideas, short on alternatives, short on policies and consumed by their hatred of Modi which is also the glue that binds them together. This disparate and desperate group of leaders are joining hands in the hope that their captive vote banks would be enough to stop the Modi juggernaut. What they really wish for is that caste and community equations will be enough to trump aspiration at the booth. It may have arisen out of desperation, but this is a legitimate, if cynical, strategy in a democracy.

The trouble with this approach is that it underestimates aspiration, a strong motivation for a young electorate. Modi tapped into it quite effectively in 2014  and though he faces anti-incumbency headwinds this time  he plans to build his campaign around this theme once again.

My platform will be development, fast development and development for all. People who have nothing to show for their work look for slogans to mislead the people. We have worked very hard in the last four years and we will go to the people with our track record of development, he told The Times of India in an emailed interview.

His comments are not without basis. The IMF has recently said that India will be the engine of global growth for the next 30 years, and described the countrys economy as an elephant that is starting to run. It pegged Indias growth forecast at 7.3 per cent in the fiscal year through March 2019 and 7.5 per cent in the year after that.

In what may be construed as a vote of confidence in the way the current government is functioning, the IMF also said that India is benefiting from good macroeconomic policies; stability-oriented policies as well as some important reforms that have been done in recent years.

Modi understands that part of the reason why he received such a massive mandate in 2014 was the desire of the populace to see a stable government at the Centre that wont shy away from taking unpleasant decisions, if needed. If this was true in 2014, it is truer in 2019.

Nobody can deny Indias status has improved in the eyes of the world since this government came to power. After 30 years, a performing, strong and stable government is in power at the Centre. People have bitter experience of coalition governments burdened by politics of compulsions. A mahagathbandhan or whatever you may call it cannot create a gathbandhan of the electorate, he said in the interview to The Times of India.

Aligned with the politics of desperation is the politics of ambition. For many leaders of the amorphous grand alliance, 2019 presents a good chance (perhaps the last chance) to have a go at the prime ministers chair, given the pitiable state of the Congress. The Mamata Banerjees, Sharad Pawars and the Mayawatis  along their respective vote banks  also bring to the table the baggage of ambition that may make it impossible for a coalition to take off.

A mismatch of clashing egos, clashing ambitions and cross-currents of conflicting interests (consider JD(U) or TRS stance during the Rajya Sabha deputy chairmans election) present a stiff challenge to the concept of grand alliance as a coherent unit.

Modi knows this. In his interview to ANI, he said: Let us understand the true character of the mahagathbandhan. The mahagathbandhan is for personal survival, not for ideological support. The mahagathbandhan is for personal ambitions, not for peoples aspirations. The mahagathbandhan is purely about power politics, not about peoples mandate. The mahagathbandhan is about dynasties, not about development. The mahagathbandhan is not about any union of minds or ideas, but about rank opportunism. The only question is whether they will break up before the election or after!

It seems plausible to surmise that other conditions remaining constant, Modi has fewer reasons to worry about 2019 than his rivals.
The maiden session of Pakistan's newly-elected Parliament began on Monday to start the process of transition and handing over powers to the new government.

Islamabad: The maiden session of Pakistan's newly-elected Parliament began on Monday with the outgoing speaker administering oath to 329 members as part of the process of transition and handing over powers to the new government.

Ayaz Sadiq, speaker of the previous National Assembly, presided over the 15th Parliament's session and administered oath to the new leaders in the 342-member lower house. The new members signed their presence in a register.

President Mamnoon Hussain had summoned the maiden session of the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, at 10 am in Parliament house on Monday, 19 days after Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party emerged as the single largest in the general elections.

Prime minister-in-waiting and PTI chairman Khan and other prominent leaders including Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president Shahbaz Sharif, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and former president Asif Ali Zardari were present in the Assembly for the oath-taking.

The speaker announced that elections of the new speaker and his deputy will be held on 15 August. The PTI has nominated Asad Qaisar for speaker, while Opposition has named Syed Khurshid Shah of the PPP as the joint opposition candidate for the post.

Earlier, the maiden session started with the National Anthem, followed by recitation from the Holy Quran.

Khan looked prominent as he sat in the front row of the Parliament house close to the chair of the leader of the house, which he is eventually expected to take after formal election as prime minister.

The PTI emerged as the single largest party with 116 seats in the 25 July elections. Its number increased to 125 after nine independent members joined it and final tally reached 158 after it was allotted 28 out of 60 seats reserved for women and 10 seats reserved for minorities.

Party sources said that the list of the Cabinet has not been finalised but there is a general consensus that Shah Mahmood Qureshi will be the new foreign minister and Pervez Khattak the new interior minister. Asad Umar is expected to get the key post of finance minister.

Khan is expected to appoint prominent businessman Abdul Razzak Dawood as advisor on finance. Dawood served in the Cabinet of former military dictator Pervez Musharraf.

The election of the prime minister will be held after election of the new Speaker who will supervise the election of the premier.

The PTI has nominated Khan for the top post and he is scheduled to take oath on 18 August at the President House.

The combined opposition has nominated Shehbaz Sharif against Khan.

The new government faces a strong opposition as the PML-N has a final tally of 82 seats, followed by the PPP with 53 and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) 15 seats. The three have joined hands and formed the combined Opposition.

The PTI has the support of smaller parties including Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) with seven seats, Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) five, Balochistan National Party (BNP) four, Pakistan Muslim League (PML) three, Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) three, Awami Muslim League and Jamori Watan Party one seat each.
Attacking the Narendra Modi government over the Rafale deal, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman 'lied to India' and prime minister's job creation promise is a farce while addressing a rally in Bidar.

Attacking the Narendra Modi government over the Rafale deal, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman "lied to India" and prime minister's job creation promise is a farce while addressing a rally in Karnataka's Bidar. Rafale deal aside, the Congress president also slammed the Centre over farmers' issues, unemployment of youths, farmer suicides and Bihar shelter home rape cases as he kicked off the campaign for 2019 Lok Sabha elections in the state.

Launch a scathing attack on the Centre Gandhi said,"Nirmala Sitharaman said India and France have a secret pact and so they can't reveal the price of Rafale aircraft. I asked France president if this is true and he denied." The Congress president added that Modi cannot look into his eyes and talk, CNN-News 18 reported.

On Monday, Rahul launched the 'Jana Dwani Yatra' from Bidar with around two lakh Congress workers from different Assembly segments of Bidar attending the rally, Deccan Chronicle reported. Congress leaders attending the campaign along with Rahul include the leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, KPCC president Dinesh Gundurao, AICC general secretary KC Venugopal, former chief minister Siddaramaiah and deputy chief minister G Parameshwar. Congress' decision to hold one of the first general election rallies in Karnataka is significant in light of the recent state Assembly elections which resulted in a Congress-JD(S) coalition government which has reported simmering issues between both the ruling parties. Senior leaders of both parties expressing doubts about the longevity of the government and a recent emotional outburst of Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy that he was "not happy" and was swallowing the pain like "Vishakantha" (Lord Shiva) had pointed towards strains in the coalition.

On the Rafale deal, Rahul further said that the UPA government had given the Rafale deal to HAL. "We told France that we will use the technology and make the jets in India. It would have created lakhs of jobs for aeronautical engineers. Modi came to power and changed the entire deal," Rahul said.

Reminding Modi that he is "the prime minister of India, not the prime minister of 10-15 Indian industrialists", Rahul said that while on one hand Modi waived off debts worth Rs 2.5 lakh crore for 10-15 large businesses, on the other, he made the people of India stand in queue in the name of demonetisation.

Elaborating on the false job promises of the prime minister, Rahul said,"Prime Minister Modi promised two crore jobs every year and now asks the youth to make pakodas. He also promised to provide gas connections, and now talks about using gas from the gutter."

On the issue of farm loan waiver, Rahul said Congress had promised that they will waive off farm loans if they come to power and they have kept their promise. "I challenge Prime Minister Modi from this stage. Karnataka government waived off loans of farmers. I challenge you (Centre) to provide 50 percent of the farm loan waived in Karnataka. If you have 56-inch chest, I dare you to do this. But you won't do this," the Congress president said.

He further said that the prime minister talks of increasing the MSP (minimum support price) of farmers and says that they have increased to 10,000 crore MSP. The Karnataka government has increased MSP thrice as compared to this, Gandhi said. He also criticised the prime minister for his apathy towards the farmer suicide issue.

Hitting out at the prime minister for his Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao programme, Gandhi said, "Modi brought in the slogan of Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao. What he didnt tell is from whom to save our daughter." Raising the issue of Muzaffarpur shelter home rape cases, Gandhi said that Modi did not say one word on the rapes in Uttar Pradesh or the ones in the Bihar shelter home. He is busy protecting his leaders accused of rapes.

This is not the first time Gandhi is attacking Modi on these issues. Focusing on primarily the Rafale deal, farmers' issues, unemployment of youths, farmer suicides issues, Congress has made its pitch for the 2019 general election campaign quite clear. Earlier, on Saturday, Gandhi addressed a gathering of party workers in Jaipur, during which he hit out at the Narendra Modi government over the Rafale deal, farmer suicides, unemployment and the Goods and Services Tax. Gandhi said that Modi promised two crore jobs, Rs 15 lakh in every bank account and safety of women but, failed on every front.

At the Jaipur rally, the Congress party president had said that the Rafale deal made by the Modi government to be a scam. Referring to China, he said that the country gives jobs to 50,000 youths in 24 hours, whereas only 450 youths in India get employment in the same span.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi is going to embark on a campaign for the forthcoming Lok Sabha election in Karnataka from Bidar on Monday, media reports said.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi arrived at Bidar in Karnataka on Monday to begin campaign for the forthcoming Lok Sabha election, media reports said. Gandhi will be launching the 'Jana Dwani Yatra' from Bidar with around two lakh Congress workers from different Assembly segments of Bidar attending the rally, Deccan Chronicle reported. The Congress president is likely going to address the farmers on the four main issues of farm crisis, corruption, unemployment, and women issues.

Congress President @RahulGandhi will be in Bidar today to meet party workers and for a public meeting. pic.twitter.com/fz0kBztI06  Congress (@INCIndia) August 13, 2018

Congress leaders who will attend the campaign include the leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, KPCC president Dinesh Gundurao, AICC general secretary KC Venugopal, former chief minister Siddaramaiah and deputy chief minister G Parameshwar. Bidar is an important region for the Opposition party with the Congress having won four of the six Assembly seats in the district in the recent Karnataka Assembly election.

On Monday, Gandhi will also embark on his maiden visit to Telangana after becoming the Congress president. During his visit, he will address women self-help groups, students and unemployed youth, entrepreneurs and others in separate events in Hyderabad on Monday and on Tuesday.

"The visit would give a definite boost to the party. This is his first visit to Telangana after becoming party president. He played a key role in the formation of Telangana," Deputy Leader of Congress in State Legislative Council P Sudhakar Reddy told PTI.

On Tuesday, Gandhi would hold a teleconference with 31,600 booth committee presidents, mandal and district Congress presidents and also state unit office bearers.

Earlier, on 10 August, Rahul launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP government in Chattisgarh accusing them of ruining the country's progress and cheating farmers. "The progress that India made was ruined by Modi ji in the last four and a half years. BJP, (Chhattisgarh chief minister) Raman Singh ji cheated the farmers. Now farmers are looking towards Congress," Rahul said at a party meeting in Raipur after inaugurating a new party office.

On Saturday, Gandhi addressed a gathering of party workers in Jaipur, during which he hit out at the Narendra Modi government over the Rafale deal, farmer suicides, unemployment and the Goods and Services Tax. Gandhi said that Modi promised two crore jobs, Rs 15 lakh in every bank account and safety of women but, failed on every front.

In the recently held Congress Working Committee meeting, it was planned that Gandhi along with other senior Congress leaders of the party will hold an "andolan". According to India Today, the pan-India andolan is a massive reach out programme by the party through which CWC members and senior leaders will hold rallies, conduct door-to-door campaigns and interact with people in each district.

With inputs from PTI
Speaking at a memorial event organised by the South Indian Artistes Association for Karunanidhi, the actor said that many leaders, ranging from state Governor Banwarilal Purohit to Congress President Rahul Gandhi, were present during the burial of Karunanidhi at Marina Beach.

Chennai: Top Tamil star Rajinikanth on Monday suggested that Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and his entire cabinet should have attended the burial of late DMK president M Karunanidhi last week at the Marina beach.

The actor said he would have launched a protest if the government had appealed against a Madras High Court verdict, directing it to provide burial space to the Dravidian stalwart on Marina beach.

Speaking at a memorial event organised by the South Indian Artistes Association for Karunanidhi, the actor said that many leaders, ranging from state Governor Banwarilal Purohit to Congress President Rahul Gandhi, were present during the burial of Karunanidhi at the Marina.

"For his burial, the whole of India came. State honors were given by members of the three armed forces. He was given a 21 gun salute. But one thing remains. The governor, many chief ministers and Congress president Rahul Gandhi had come. Shouldn't Tamil Nadu's first citizen, the chief minister, have come? Should not the entire cabinet have come? What will people think? Are you MGR (AIADMK founder MG Ramachandran) or Jayalalithaa," he asked. Both Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa were considered rivals of Karunanidhi.

On the controversy over allocation of burial space for Karunanidhi,which was done by the state government on a court directive, Rajinikanth said he himself would have launched a protest if the government had appealed against the order.

Heaping praise on his 'friend' Karunanidhi, Rajinikanth said while many thousands had entered politics due to him, "many hundreds became leaders" because of him.

DMK working president MK Stalin also attended the memorial event.
Days after former Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi's demise, a succession war has broken out in his family over DMK leadership as Alagiri has claimed that loyal supporters are with him.

Days after former Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi's demise, a succession war has broken out in his family over DMK leadership. Karunanidhi's elder son MK Alagiri who was expelled from the party in 2014, on Thursday claimed that the loyal cadres were with him even as the party looks to officially elevate MK Stalin as the party president from its working president.

The former union minister, who had been lying low for a long time, chose the occasion of a wedding of a DMK functionary to speak on his future plans. He had recently, questioned Stalin's leadership in the wake of DMK's drubbing in RK Nagar Assembly bypoll in 2017 where the party candidate had forfeited his deposit against AMMK's TTV Dhinakaran. Alagiri had claimed the DMK cannot win any election under Stalin and taunted him as a 'non-working president'.

Alagiri went to the Marina Beach to pay tribute to his father at his memorial there and addressed the media laying saying that he had the support of loyal DMK workers. "I do not know about tomorrow's emergency executive meeting because I am not in the DMK but I know my father's supporters are with me," he told reporters. "My father's true relatives are all are on my side. All the supporters in Tamil Nadu are on my side and are encouraging me only. Only time will give the answers; that is all I am willing to say now", Alagiri told ANI.

However, K Anbalagan, general secretary of the DMK, lashed out at Alagiri for his remarks. "Alagiri has no right and no place to comment on Stalin as he is not a part of the DMK. He was the one who was about to attack our 'Thalalpathy'. He is making these statements out of jealousy, he said, according to a News18 report. Meanwhile, the party as such refused to comment on Alagiri's allegations of DMK being run poorly, saying that it "won't give dignity to his remarks by reacting on them".

Alagiri and Stalin have been at loggerheads for years now, even before the former was removed from the party over anti-party activities. But barring former MP KP Ramalingam, hardly any senior party functionary had rallied behind Alagiri. In fact, party general secretary K Anbazhagan, a contemporary of Karunanidhi, had advised against any attempt to re-admit Alagiri in the party.

When Mr. Stalin met the general secretary in connection with convening the urgent high-level executive committee meeting of the DMK (to pay condolences to Karunanidhi), Anbazhagan was said to have asked him not to bow to pressure even if it came from family quarters, according to reports. Any move to bring back Alagiri to the party may happen only after the Lok Sabha polls, according to the reports.

"He (Alagiri) has some unknown hatred against Stalin. Alagiri even said Stalin would die in three months. No father can tolerate such words against a son. As the party chief, I had to tolerate them," late Karunanidhi had said before he expelled Alagiri and his supporters from the party in 2014.

Stalin was a clear favourite of Karunanidhi as he consistently worked his way up the DMK ranks, holding party posts since his youth. He was the party's treasurer and youth wing secretary for three decades. Alagiri, on the other hand, stood in the background and it was only in 2009, after DMK's victory in the Tirumangalam bypoll in Madurai, that Alagiri was named the party's south zone organising secretary.

Meanwhile, according to The Hindu's report, the urgent executive committee meeting on 14 August would be confined to adopting a resolution condoling the death of Karunanidhi and Stalin will be elected as the president of the DMK only at the general council meeting, which is expected to happen next month. "It is still early days. We have the emergency executive committee meeting of the party on Tuesday and the general council has 80 days' time to meet and decide the future course of action and on party postings and positions. Meanwhile, we have been asked not to talk about Alagiri," a party spokesperson told The Times of India.

However, the recent remarks of Alagiri may brew fresh trouble for the party who is reeling under the big loss of its leader. Alagiri was also not seen at the Rajaji Hall where Karunanidhi's body was kept for paying last homage. But some media reports said that he was present there and was sitting behind as he was not well. Reports also claimed that the dispute between the two warring brothers had long been resolved and now everything was fine between them.

Alagiri, has been in political exile since his expulsion and has been living in Madurai. He, along with his with the family, was present in Chennai during Karunanidhi's last days at Kauvery Hospital.

Political observer and veteran journalist Shyam Shanmugaam told The New Indian Express that "Alagiri will now demand his right as he is also Karunanidhi's son and was instrumental in the DMK's victory in southern districts when the party was in power the last time." Shanmugaam said that Alagiri's appointment as organisation secretary for southern districts had enabled him to wield considerable clout in the region. He even advised that to avert a succession battle, Stalin should adopt a statesman-like approach and give Alagiri and stepsister Kanimozhi a bigger say in party functioning.
Congress' West Bengal unit slammed TMC and BJP for 'misguiding' people over NRC issue and for resorting to 'narrow minded' politics

Kolkata: The West Bengal unit of Congress on Sunday accused the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of resorting to "narrow-minded" politics by "misguiding" people over the issue of the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

"The BJP is campaigning in West Bengal by trying to make people understand that the NRC is for protecting the Hindus. And similarly, Mamata Banerjee is trying to misguide the people saying that the NRC is a danger for the Bengalis and she will be their saviour.

"Both have taken to narrow-minded politics prior to the general elections," West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee president Adhir Chowdhury said in Kolkata.

The NRC is meant for the state of Assam and not for any other state, he asserted.

He also referred to an incident of 2005, when TMC chief and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed dissatisfaction in the Lok Sabha, after she was not allowed to speak on illegal migration of Bangladeshis into West Bengal.

"Even, she (Banerjee) is a different person. She is now wanting to give shelter to the 40 lakh people, who are not on the NRC list, in West Bengal. Why this dual character?" Chowdhury said.

He added that the state Congress would hold a rally in the city on 4 October, highlighting issues "through which people were misguided for the sake of vote bank politics".
Indo-Asian News Service

Amid the growing debate over whether electronic voting machines (EVMs) are hackable or not, elections officials in the US are worried over the increasing "information warfare" as mid-term polls loom.

According to a CNN report, at the annual "Def Con hacker convention" here over the weekend, state and local election officials who attended the conference saw what hackers can do to voting machines.

"One hacker was essentially able to turn a voting machine into a jukebox, making it play music and display animations," said the report.

"While such hacks are a cause of concern for election officials, they are increasingly looking beyond the threats against traditional election infrastructure like voting machines and voting databases and more to the threat of disinformation," it added.

At the event, nearly 40 child hackers were able to tamper with vote tallies on the mock versions of election board websites, some even changing candidates names to things like "Bob Da Builder" and "Richard Nixon's Head".

"There's always been a concern about the integrity of our elections and there's always been a concern about misinformation, disinformation being disseminated around campaigns," Alex Padilla, California's Secretary of State, was quoted as saying.

This time, the "voting machine hacking village" at the conference featured a new set of voting machines which will be used in the 2018 mid-term elections.

An intense debate is going on in India over the security of EVMs.

As many as 17 parties, including the Congress and the Trinamool Congress, have approached the Election Commission for restoring the paper ballot system in view of their apprehensions over the integrity of the EVMs and the possibility of their manipulation.
Reuters

Doug Field, who stepped down as the senior vice president of engineering at Tesla Inc last month, is returning to Apple Inc, Apple told Reuters on 9 August.

Field will be working with Apple executive Bob Mansfield, who has been heading up Apples self-driving car programme, Project Titan, according to Daring Fireball, a technology news website that earlier reported Fields move.

Apple did not comment on Fields new position. Field and Mansfield previously worked together on engineering Apples line of Mac computers.

Field has spent the past five years at Tesla. In April, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said in a tweet that he had asked Field to manage the companys engineering and production while Musk focused more time on Model 3 production.

But in May, reports emerged that Field was leaving the carmaker, which has raced to meet production targets for the Model 3. At the time, Tesla said Field was just taking some time off to recharge and spend time with his family. He has not left Tesla.

In July, Tesla announced that Field had left Tesla.

Apple has said little about the scope of its self-driving car project, but court documents filed last month said that as many as 5,000 people were authorized inside the company to access information about the project.
The Associated Press

Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.

An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if youve used privacy settings that say they will prevent it from doing so.

Computer-science researchers at Princeton confirmed these findings at the APs request.

For the most part, Google is upfront about asking permission to use your location information. An app like Google Maps will remind you to allow access to location if you use it for navigating. If you agree to let it record your location over time, Google Maps will display that history for you in a timeline that maps out your daily movements.

Storing your minute-by-minute travels carries privacy risks and has been used by police to determine the location of suspects  such as a warrant that police in Raleigh, North Carolina, served on Google last year to find devices near a murder scene. So the company will let you pause a setting called Location History.

Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where youve been. Googles support page on the subject states: You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.

That isnt true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.

For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like chocolate chip cookies, or kids science kits, pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude  accurate to the square foot  and save it to your Google account.

The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Googles Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search.

Storing location data in violation of a users preferences is wrong, said Jonathan Mayer, a Princeton computer scientist and former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commissions enforcement bureau. A researcher from Mayers lab confirmed the APs findings on multiple Android devices; the AP conducted its own tests on several iPhones that found the same behavior.

If youre going to allow users to turn off something called Location History, then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off, Mayer said. That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.

Google says it is being perfectly clear.

There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve peoples experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services, a Google spokesperson said in a statement to the AP. We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time.

To stop Google from saving these location markers, the company says, users can turn off another setting, one that does not specifically reference location information. Called Web and App Activity and enabled by default, that setting stores a variety of information from Google apps and websites to your Google account.

When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account. But leaving Web & App Activity on and turning Location History off only prevents Google from adding your movements to the timeline, its visualisation of your daily travels. It does not stop Googles collection of other location markers.

You can delete these location markers by hand, but its a painstaking process since you have to select them individually unless you want to delete all of your stored activity.

You can see the stored location markers on a page in your Google account at myactivity.google.com, although theyre typically scattered under several different headers, many of which are unrelated to location.

To demonstrate how powerful these other markers can be, the AP created a visual map of the movements of Princeton postdoctoral researcher Gunes Acar, who carried an Android phone with Location history off, and shared a record of his Google account.

The map includes Acars train commute on two trips to New York and visits to The High Line park, Chelsea Market, Hells Kitchen, Central Park and Harlem. To protect his privacy, the AP didnt plot the most telling and frequent marker  his home address.

Huge tech companies are under increasing scrutiny over their data practices, following a series of privacy scandals at Facebook and new data-privacy rules recently adopted by the European Union. Last year, the business news site Quartz found that Google was tracking Android users by collecting the addresses of nearby cellphone towers even if all location services were off. Google changed the practice and insisted it never recorded the data anyway.

Critics say Googles insistence on tracking its users locations stems from its drive to boost advertising revenue.

They build advertising information out of data, said Peter Lenz, the senior geospatial analyst at Dstillery, a rival advertising technology company. More data for them presumably means more profit.

The AP learned of the issue from K Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who studies the commuting patterns of volunteers in order to help urban planners. She noticed that her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohls, even though she had turned Location History off.

So how did Google Maps know where I was? she asked in a blog post.

The AP wasnt able to recreate Shankaris experience exactly. But its attempts to do so revealed Googles tracking. The findings disturbed her.

I am not opposed to background location tracking in principle, she said. It just really bothers me that it is not explicitly stated.

Google offers a more accurate description of how Location History actually works in a place youd only see if you turn it off  a popup that appears when you pause Location History on your Google account webpage. There the company notes that some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other Google services, like Search and Maps.

Google offers additional information in a popup that appears if you re-activate the Web & App Activity setting  an uncommon action for many users since this setting is on by default. That popup states that, when active, the setting saves the things you do on Google sites, apps, and services ... and associated information, like location.

Warnings, when youre about to turn Location History off via Android and iPhone device settings, are more difficult to interpret. On Android, the popup explains that places you go with your devices will stop being added to your Location History map. On the iPhone, it simply reads, None of your Google apps will be able to store location data in Location History.

The iPhone text is technically true if potentially misleading. With Location History off, Google Maps and other apps store your whereabouts in a section of your account called My Activity, not Location History.

Since 2014, Google has let advertisers track the effectiveness of online ads at driving foot traffic, a feature that Google has said relies on user location histories.

The company is pushing further into such location-aware tracking to drive ad revenue, which rose 20 percent last year to $95.4 billion. At a Google Marketing Live summit in July, Google executives unveiled a new tool called local campaigns that dynamically uses ads to boost in-person store visits. It says it can measure how well a campaign drove foot traffic with data pulled from Google users location histories.

Google also says location records stored in My Activity are used to target ads. Ad buyers can target ads to specific locations  say, a mile radius around a particular landmark  and typically have to pay more to reach this narrower audience.

While disabling Web & App Activity will stop Google from storing location markers, it also prevents Google from storing information generated by searches and other activity. That can limit the effectiveness of the Google Assistant, the companys digital concierge.

Sean OBrien, a Yale Privacy Lab researcher with whom the AP shared its findings, said it is disingenuous for Google to continuously record these locations even when users disable Location History. To me, its something people should know, he said.
Indo-Asian News Service

India will soon launch a dedicated space and science television channel to make their benefits reach people across the country, a top official said on Sunday.

"Within the next three to four months, there will be a television channel launched to reach even the rural parts of India on how space programme can benefit the common man," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K Sivan told reporters in Bengaluru.

The ISRO Chairman was speaking to media at the space agency's headquarters here on the sidelines of an event where the statue (bust) of the father of India's space programme, Vikram Sarabhai, was unveiled on his 99th birth anniversary.

To be named "ISRO TV", the channel will telecast science programmes and highlight the benefits of the space agency's missions in regional languages as well as English, so that it reaches people across the country.

"The information on India's space missions and their applications are not reaching the people fully. Our effort through the channel is to make people aware of the benefits of the space programme," Sivan added.

The space agency also aims to develop scientific rigor among India's children and youth through this channel.

ISRO will also be setting up a module for students from Classes 8-10 to be trained at the space agency for a month, Sivan added.

In order to inculcate scientific temper among students, ISRO officials will mentor them for 25-30 days and allow them to visit ISRO's labs and launch facilities.

"The students will be allowed to make their own small satellites at the end of the programme. This project, which will be launched soon, has received appreciation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi (who oversees the Department of Space)," Sivan said.

As part of its plan to reach out to the people of the country in a large way, ISRO will also be opening up its spaceport at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh to public.

The Indian public will soon be able to pay visits to the launch facility at Sriharikota on the lines of American space agency NASA, the space agency chief said.

However, the chairman did not mention a date when the spaceport will be thrown open to the public.

"We are also in the process of setting up space galleries and museums across the country," Sivan said.
Indo-Asian News Service

Researchers have, for the first time, produced fibres with embedded electronics that are so flexible they can be woven into soft washable fabrics and made into wearable clothing.

Embedding high-speed optoelectronic semiconductor devices, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and diode photo-detectors, into washable fabrics also makes it possible to produce clothing that communicates optically with other devices.

This discovery, described in the journal Nature, could unleash a new 'Moore's Law' for fibres, in other words, a rapid progression in which the capabilities of fibres would grow rapidly and exponentially over time, said researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.

The key breakthrough for producing these new fibres was to add to the preform light-emitting semiconductor diodes the size of a grain of sand, and a pair of copper wires a fraction of a hair's width.

When heated in a furnace during the fibre-drawing process, the polymer preform partially liquefies, forming a long fibre with the diodes lined up along its centre and connected by the copper wires.

"We are anticipating the emergence of a 'Moore's law' analogue in fibres in the years ahead," said Yoel Fink from the university.

"It is already allowing us to expand the fundamental capabilities of fabrics to encompass communications, lighting, physiological monitoring, and more. In the years ahead, fabrics will deliver value-added services and will no longer just be selected for aesthetics and comfort," Fink added.

In this case, the solid components were two types of electrical diodes made using standard microchip technology: LEDs and photosensing diodes.

The resulting fibres were then woven into fabrics, which were laundered 10 times to demonstrate their practicality as possible material for clothing.

One of the advantages of incorporating function into the fibre material itself is that the resulting fibre is inherently waterproof.

To demonstrate this, the team placed some of the photodetecting fibres inside a fish tank.

A lamp outside the aquarium transmitted music through the water to the fibres in the form of rapid optical signals.

The fibres in the tank converted the light pulses  so rapid that the light appears steady to the naked eye  to electrical signals, which were then converted into music. The fibres survived in the water for weeks.
It was a major show of force by the Taliban, who infiltrated deep into this strategic city barely 120 kilometers from the capital, Kabul. The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces.

Kabul: Four days of ferocious fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban over a key provincial capital has claimed the lives of about 100 Afghan policemen and soldiers and at least 20 civilians, the defence minister said on Monday.

The staggering numbers provided by Gen. Tareq Shah Bahrami were the first official casualty toll since the Taliban launched a massive assault on Ghazni, the capital of Ghazni province, last Friday.

The multi-pronged assault overwhelmed the city's defences and allowed insurgents to capture several parts of it. It was a major show of force by the Taliban, who infiltrated deep into this strategic city barely 120 kilometers from the capital, Kabul. The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces. The fall of Ghazni, a city of 270,000 people, would mark an important victory for the Taliban. It would also cut off a key highway linking Kabul to the southern provinces, the Taliban's traditional heartland.

Bahrami, the defence minister, spoke to reporters at a press conference in Kabul on Monday. He said the casualty figures are not yet definite and that the numbers might change. He didn't offer a breakdown of the casualties but Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak said nearly 70 policemen were among those killed.

Bahrami said about 1,000 additional troops have been sent to Ghazni and helped prevent the city from falling into Taliban hands. He also said 194 insurgents, including 12 leaders, were killed  with Pakistani, Chechen and Arabs foreign fighters among the dead. The attack on Ghazni began on Friday, with insurgents infiltrating people's homes and slipping out into the night to attack Afghan forces.

The Taliban also destroyed a telecommunications tower on the city's outskirts, cutting off all landline and cell phone links to the city and making it difficult to confirm details of the fighting. Afghan authorities have insisted that the city would not fall to the Taliban and that Afghan forces remained in control of key government positions and other institutions there.

Najib Danish, the Interior Ministry's spokesman, said earlier on Monday that reinforcements have been sent to Ghazni to clear the remaining Taliban. Col. Fared Mashal, the province's police chief, said the majority of the insurgents fighting in Ghazni are foreigners, including Pakistanis and Chechens. "The Taliban have failed in reaching their goal," Mashal added.

Over the past months, the insurgents have seized several districts across Afghanistan, staging near-daily attacks on Afghan security forces, but have been unable to capture and hold urban areas. The US and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, but have since then repeatedly come to the aid of Afghan forces as they struggle to combat the resurgent Taliban.

The United Nations has expressed its concerns for the civilians caught up in the fighting in Ghazni. Ghazni's residents "have seen their city turn into a battlefield since Friday morning, with fighting and clashes reportedly still ongoing. We have received initial reports of a number of civilian casualties and of people trying to reach safe areas outside of the city," said Rik Peeperkorn, acting UN humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan.

Ghazni's hospitals are running out of medicines and people are unable to safely bring casualties, Peeperkorn's statement added. Electricity, water supply and food are also running low, the statement said. "Parties to the conflict need to ensure that access to medical services is not denied and respect for medical facilities and staff is upheld," Peeperkom said.

Meanwhile, the International Federation of Journalists and the Afghan Independent Journalists Association jointly put out a statement condemning the violence in Ghazni and attacks on journalists there. Media technician Mohammad Dawood was among those killed in Ghazni, the statement said, and also condemned the torching of Ghazni's radio and television station.
Jharkhand Police busted a child trafficking racket in Pakur district. They rescued 7 minors and arrested one man

Pakur: Seven minor children belonging to the primitive Pahariya tribe have been rescued and a human trafficker arrested in Jharkhand's Pakur district, a senior police officer said on Monday.

Acting on a tip-off, a police team conducted a raid at Amrapara bus stand and rescued the children and arrested the human trafficker while they were about to board a bus to Uttar Pradesh on Saturday, Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Ashok Kumar Singh said.

The children were all aged around 12-14 years. Six of the minor children were residents of Amrapahar block of Pakur district while one belonged to Gopikandar block of Dumka district, he said.

The human trafficker was taking them to Uttar Pradesh on the pretext on providing them jobs, the police added.
PNB lead the pack with bad loans rising about 56%.

The Nirav Modi fraud-hit Punjab National Bank (PNB) led the pack with the largest amount of NPAs worth Rs 86,620 crore during 2017-18.

New Delhi: The gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of 19 nationalised banks witnessed a huge increase by Rs 1,54,470 crore during 2017-18 over the previous fiscal of 2016-17, a spurt of 33.4 per cent.

The Nirav Modi fraud-hit Punjab National Bank (PNB) led the pack with the largest amount of NPAs worth Rs 86,620 crore during 2017-18.

According to figures available with this newspaper, NPAs of 19 public sector banks as on March 31, 2018 were Rs 6,16,584 crore. During 2016-17, the bad loans of these banks had stood at Rs 4,62,114 crore. Therefore the NPAs saw a burgeoning rise of Rs 1,54,470 crore or 33.4 per cent.

PNB, which is the countrys second largest lender, witnessed a massive jump of 56 per cent in its bad loans during FY18, as they had stood at Rs 55,370 crore in FY17.

Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Union Bank of India stood at second, third and fourth positions in the list with NPAs worth Rs 62,328 crore, Rs 56,480 crore and Rs 49,370 crore respectively during 207-18.

Last week, PNB had posted a net loss of Rs 940 crore during the Q1FY19. Though it was lower than the humungous loss of Rs 13,417 crore loss which it had incurred in the Q4 of FY18 owing mainly due to the Nirav Modi fraud case, the fact that NPAs have been hurting the financials of public sector banks for the past two fiscals now, has forced the Centre to go back to the drawing board to counter the ever-growing problem.

The RBI however has forecasted that there is going to be a further rise in financial stress of the nationalised banks due to their gross NPAs, which would continue during the current financial year also.

In June this year, the RBI had said in a forecast that 11 nationalised banks could face a worsening scenario in relation to their gross NPAs, which from 21 per cent in March 2018 could go up to 22.3 per cent in March 2019.
China is printing the foreign currencies on a massive scale and the currency printing plants in the country are running at near full capacity.

China is printing foreign currencies on a massive scale to build its influence on other economies and the currency printing plants in the country are running at near full capacity, according to a report. Most of the demand for printing, according to a report in South China Morning Post, comes from members of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Beijing's own currency only forms a small proportion of the orders.

Liu Guisheng, president of the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation, told South China Morning Post that China did not print foreign currency until recently. Two years after China launched the Belt and Road Initiative, it started printing the currency for Nepal, Liu wrote in an article in China Finance.

Since then the company had "seized the opportunities brought by the initiative" and "successfully won contracts for currency production projects in a number of countries including Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, India, Brazil and Poland," he told South China Morning Post.

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor took note of India's mention in the report and said that if true, it would make it easier for Pakistan to counterfeit notes.

If true, this has disturbing national security implications. Not to mention making it easier for Pak to counterfeit. @PiyushGoyal @arunjaitley please clarify! https://t.co/POD2CcNNuL  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) August 12, 2018

Hu Xingdou, a professor of economics at the Beijing Institute of Technology, told South China Morning Post that currency is a symbol of a country's sovereignty and "this business helps build trust and monetary alliances."

In 2016, Nepal granted the contract to to print 200 million 1,000-rupee notes to China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation. The first batch was delivered to Kathmandu last year. Bhuban Kadel, executive director of Nepal Rastra Bank said the printing cost in China was lower.

"The quality is as good as the ones printed earlier in another country but the cost is less than half of the amount we had earlier paid," Kadel told Xinhua. The same Chinese company had earlier printed Nepal's 100 rupee notes as well.

Nepal had earlier been getting its notes printed by Indonesian, French and Australian companies among others.

According to a Slate report from 2011, between 10 and 20 percent of all bank notes around the globe are printed by private companies, which include UK's De La Rue, the Canadian Banknote Company, Giesecke and Devrient in Germany. The report stated that Singapore, Finland, Sweden, Bahrain, and Qatar are known to outsource all of their printing and also mentioned India.

The RBI had in 1997-98 outsourced printing of 2,000 million pieces of Rs 100 notes and 1,600 million pieces of Rs. 500 notes to countries like the UK, US and Germany, The Times of India said in a report. When it became public in 2010, a parliamentary committee had expressed shock at the government's decision and said that it put the "entire economic sovereignty (of the country) at stake" during that particular period, the report added.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - The United States gave Turkey a deadline until last Wednesday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday, to release an American pastor being tried by a Turkish court. The case of Andrew Brunson, an evangelical Christian, is one of a series of disputes that lies at the heart of deteriorating ties between the two NATO allies. Speaking to supporters in the Black Sea coastal city of Trabzon, Erdogan revealed details of negotiations held last week between the two countries, saying Washington had threatened sanctions if Turkey refused to release the pastor.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - The United States gave Turkey a deadline until last Wednesday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday, to release an American pastor being tried by a Turkish court.

The case of Andrew Brunson, an evangelical Christian, is one of a series of disputes that lies at the heart of deteriorating ties between the two NATO allies.

Speaking to supporters in the Black Sea coastal city of Trabzon, Erdogan revealed details of negotiations held last week between the two countries, saying Washington had threatened sanctions if Turkey refused to release the pastor.

A Turkish court has transferred Brunson to house arrest after almost 20 months in jail. Frustrated with his continuing detention, Washington sanctioned two Turkish ministers and then doubled tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium imports.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; editing by David Stamp)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Former presidential adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman has said she secretly recorded conversations she had in the White House, including her firing by Chief of Staff John Kelly in the high-security Situation Room.

Bridgewater: Former presidential advisor Omarosa Manigault Newman has said she secretly recorded conversations she had in the White House, including her firing by Chief of Staff John Kelly in the high-security Situation Room. It was a highly unusual admission, which drew immediate fire from allies of the president and national security experts.

Parts of her conversation with Kelly were played on the air when she appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" to promote her new book, "Unhinged," which will be released this week. The Associated Press independently listened to the recording of the conversation between Manigault Newman and Kelly, which she said was one of many she'd surreptitiously recorded for her own protection.

In her book, Manigault Newman paints a damning picture of President Donald Trump, including claiming without evidence that tapes exist of him using the N-word as he filmed his "The Apprentice" reality series, on which she co-starred. Manigault Newman said in the book she had not personally heard the recording. But she told Chuck Todd on Sunday that, after the book had closed, she was able to hear a recording of Trump during a trip to Los Angeles. "I heard his voice as clear as you and I are sitting here," she said on the show. But the other recording she discussed could prove equally explosive. "Who in their right mind thinks it's appropriate to secretly record the White House chief of staff in the Situation Room?" tweeted Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee.

In the recording, which Manigault Newman quotes extensively in the book, Kelly can be heard saying he wants to talk with Manigault Newman about leaving the White House. "It's come to my attention over the last few months that there's been some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues related to you," Kelly is heard saying, citing her use of government vehicles and "money issues and other things" that he compares to offenses that could lead to a court martial in the military. "If we make this a friendly departure ... you can look at your time here in the White House as a year of service to the nation and then you can go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation," he goes on to tell Manigault Newman, adding that: "There are some serious legal issues that have been violated and you're open to some legal action that we hope, we think we can control."

Manigault Newman said she viewed the conversation as a "threat" and defended her decision to covertly record it and other White House conversations. "If I didn't have these recordings, no one in America would believe me." The response from the White House was stinging. "The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room, shows a blatant disregard for our national security - and then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee," press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.

The Situation Room is a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, where the nation's most consequential foreign policy decisions are made, and staff are not permitted to bring in cell phones or other recording devices. "I've never heard of a more serious breach of protocol," said Ned Price, who served as spokesman of the National Security Council in the Obama administration. "Not only is it not typical, something like this is unprecedented." Price said there is no one checking staffers for devices at the door, but there is a sign outside the room making clear electronic devices are prohibited. "The Situation Room is the inner-most sanctum of a secure campus," he said, describing the breach as part of a culture of disregarding security protocols in the Trump White House. He also questioning why Kelly would ever choose to have such a meeting there.

The White House had previously tried to discredit the book, with Sanders calling it "riddled with lies and false accusations." Trump on Saturday labeled Manigault Newman a "lowlife." Katrina Pierson, an adviser to Trump's re-election campaign who served as a spokeswoman for his 2016 campaign, said she had never heard Trump use the kind of derogatory language Manigault Newman describes. She said in a statement she feels "pity for Omarosa as she embarrasses herself by creating salacious lies and distortions just to try to be relevant and enrich herself by selling books at the expense of the truth. 'Unhinged,' indeed."

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway also questioned Manigault Newman's credibility in an interview Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "The first time I ever heard Omarosa suggest those awful things about this president are in this book," she said, noting Manigault Newman "is somebody who gave a glowing appraisal of Donald Trump the businessman, the star of the 'The Apprentice,' the candidate and, indeed, the president of the United States." Manigault Newman had indeed been a staunch defender of the president for years, including pushing back, as the highest-profile African-American in the White House, on accusations that he was racist.

But Manigault Newman now says she was "used" by Trump for years, calling him a "con" who "has been masquerading as someone who is actually open to engaging with diverse communities" and is "truly a racist." "I was complicit with this White House deceiving this nation," she said. "I had a blind spot where it came to Donald Trump."
All of the 36 people inside, including three staff, were evacuated after the fire started at the hospice on the seventh floor of a nine-storey hospital in New Taipei city. Sixteen had cardiac arrests and seven were revived.

Taipei: Nine people were killed and 15 injured in a blaze that broke out on Monday at a hospice for the terminally ill near Taiwan's capital Taipei, fire officials said.

All of the 36 people inside, including three staff, were evacuated after the fire started at the hospice on the seventh floor of a nine-storey hospital in New Taipei city. Sixteen had cardiac arrests and seven were revived.

The other nine died with the cause of death given as smoke inhalation, according to the local fire department. New Taipei fire department chief Huang Te-ching said the cause of the fire was still being investigated and denied reports that the sprinkler system had malfunctioned.

"The sprinkler device was on but there's some distance between its location and where the fire started so the fire couldn't be immediately put out," he told reporters. CCTV footage on local media showed staff rushing through the hospice corridors, carrying patients out in their arms or in wheelchairs to evacuate them after the fire broke out.

The injured were rushed to several nearby hospitals. The 15 injured remain in hospital, with 11 listed as in serious condition. Local media quoted some patients' relatives saying they heard a blast and suspected that an oxygen tank might have exploded, causing the fire.

Premier William Lai apologised to the public and expressed condolences over the tragedy. "We will review the cause of the incident to prevent a similar situation from happening again," he said.
Pakistan's deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday appeared before an accountability court hearing corruption cases against his family, the first court appearance in the remaining two graft cases following his incarceration.

Islamabad: Pakistan's deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday appeared before an accountability court hearing corruption cases against his family, the first court appearance in the remaining two graft cases following his incarceration.

Sharif, 68, along with his daughter Maryam, 44 and his son-in-law Capt (retd) Muhammad Safdar are already serving jail terms of 10-years, seven years and one year respectively in Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, after an accountability court convicted them on 6 July over the family's ownership of four luxury flats in London.

Sharif was brought from the high-security jail in an armoured vehicle to the accountability court of Judge Arshad Malik, who is hearing the remaining two graft cases - the Al-Azizia Steel Mills and the Hill Metal Establishment case. Strict security measures were taken and authorities banned entry of the irrelevant persons in the court premises. Even media was not allowed in the court.

The pending corruption cases against Sharif and his two sons were transferred by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on 7 August on application of Sharif to another accountability court headed by judge Malik. Three corruption cases were filed against Sharif and family last year following a decision by Supreme Court on 28 July of the same year. The formal trial of the Sharif family started on 14 September and was to be completed in six months but later the deadline was extended at least thrice.

Apart from Sharif, his two sons Hassan and Hussian  are also co-accused on all three corruption cases. The court has already declared the two sons as absconders due to their persistent failure to appear before the court. They have been blacklisted by the authorities, barring them from travelling on their Pakistani passports.
The Aquarius, which was left stranded with 630 migrants aboard in June after being turned away by Rome and Valletta, resumed rescue operations off the Libyan coast

Marseille: The operators of the migrant ship Aquarius on Monday called on Europe to find a safe haven for 141 people rescued in the Mediterranean, saying Italy and Malta had again refused to let it dock.

The Aquarius, which was left stranded with 630 migrants aboard in June after being turned away by Rome and Valletta, resumed rescue operations off the Libyan coast last week. On Friday, it picked up 141 people in two separate operations, half of them children, but it has again struggled to find a port to bring them ashore.

Sophie Beau, president of the vessel's operator SOS Mediterranee, said the ship, which is currently situated between Malta and the Italian island of Lampedusa, had again received "official negative replies" from the two countries. "We're asking all European countries to find a solution. We're asking them to be responsible and find a safe port in the Mediterranean," she said, accusing Italy and Malta of flouting international maritime law.

Tove Ernst, a spokesman for the European Commission, said it was in contact with "a number of member states that have approached us regarding the incident" to try to find a "swift resolution" to the standoff.

Since June, Italy's new far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has regularly turned away rescue ships operated by foreign NGOs such as the Aquarius, accusing them of playing into the hands of people smugglers. On Saturday, he said the Aquarius would "never see an Italian port" again.

His hardline stance has sparked a row among EU members, underscoring their failure to come up with a common approach to the influx of people trying to escape conflict, persecution or poverty in Africa and West Asia.

In June, Spain stepped in and welcomed the Aquarius. France, which was within closer range but did not allow the boat access, took in 78 of the migrants after they landed.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi cancelled his visit to santion-hit Iran due to his 'busy schedule' but will visit Turkey as planned

Baghdad: Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has cancelled a visit to Iran, his press office said on Sunday, days after Baghdad announced it would comply with US sanctions against Tehran.

Abadi will still go ahead with a planned visit to Turkey on Tuesday but has scrapped the Iran leg of the trip "because of his busy schedule", the office told AFP.

The previous day an Iraqi official who did not want to be named had said Abadi would also visit neighbours Turkey and Iran to discuss economic issues.

According to Iraqi political sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iran initially agreed to the visit but changed its mind because it was unhappy about Abadi's remarks.

The premier said last Tuesday that Iraq  which relies on neighbouring Iran as a source of cheap imports  would reluctantly comply with US sanctions against Tehran that took effect the same day.

It came after US President Donald Trump withdrew from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

"We don't support the sanctions because they are a strategic error, but we will comply with them," said Abadi, whose country is an ally of both Tehran and Washington.

An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, asked about a possible visit by Abadi, said that he had "so far not received any official news or information whatsoever about this trip," the semi-official ISNA news agency reported.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a secret summit with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt in May to discuss a long-term ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Israel's Channel Ten News said on Monday.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a secret summit with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt in May to discuss a long-term ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Israel's Channel Ten News said on Monday.

A spokesman for Netanyahu declined to comment on the report and there was no immediate comment from Egyptian officials. Channel Ten, citing unnamed senior U.S. officials, said the meeting was held on May 22.

Egypt and the United Nations have been trying to mediate a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, following a spike in cross-border violence in the past few months.

The two leaders discussed the easing of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza, rehabilitation of its infrastructure and terms for a ceasefire, the report said.

More than 2 million Palestinians are packed into the Gaza Strip, which is experiencing deep economic hardship. The World Bank has described the situation as a humanitarian crisis with shortages of water, electricity and medicine.

Citing security concerns, Israel and Egypt keep tight restrictions on their border crossings with Gaza, which have reduced the enclave's economy to a state of collapse.

Israel says the blockade is intended to prevent weapons reaching Hamas and other Gaza militant groups who have launched hundreds of rockets across the border in the past few months, during which time Israel has also carried out dozens of air strikes, targeting what it said were Hamas sites.

At least 161 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire in weekly protests along the Israel-Gaza border that began on March 30, and one Israeli soldier has been killed by a Palestinian sniper.

(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by David Holmes)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
As PTI ally Pervez Elahi of Pakistan Muslim League will also vacate his two National Assembly seats after deciding to sit in the Punjab Assembly,

Islamabad: Pakistan's newly-elected Parliament is meeting on Monday for the first time to start the process of transition and handing over powers to the new government.

President Mamnoon Hussain has already summoned the maiden session of National Assembly, the lower house, at 10 am in Parliament House. According to law, the speaker of the previous Assembly, Ayaz Sadiq, will administer the oath to the new lawmakers, followed by election of the speaker and the deputy speaker. After the election of the new speaker, the outgoing speaker will give him the oath and hand over charge of the new house.

Prime Minister-in-waiting Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) emerged as the single largest party with 116 seats in the 25 July election. Its tally increased to 125 after nine independent members joined it. The final tally of the PTI has reached 158 after it was allowed 28 out of 60 seats reserved for women.

The party is still 14 short of simple majority of 172 in the house of 342. But it has support of several smaller parties and it is expected to get support of at least 180 lawmakers in the election for speaker, deputy speaker and prime minister.

PTI spokesman Fawad Chaudhry said the party has already nominated Khan as Prime Minister and Asad Qaisar as speaker. It has not announced the candidate for deputy speaker so far.

Party sources said the cabinet list has not been finalised but there is general consensus that Shah Mahmood Qureshi will be the new foreign minister and Pervez Khattak as interior minister. Asad Umar is expected to get the key post of finance minister and Khan is also expected to appoint prominent businessman Abdul Razzak Dawood as advisor on finance. Dawood served in the cabinet of former military dictator Pervez Musharraf.

Chaudhry said that PTI has decided to invite Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Shehbaz Sharif and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari for Khan's oath taking ceremony as Prime Minister. It is not clear if they will attend the ceremony scheduled to take place on 18 August in the President House.

There are reports that President Hussain has cancelled his three-day trip to Ireland to administer the oath to the new prime minister. Meanwhile, leaders of PML-N and PPP have met in Lahore to decide their strategy for the first session. The two parties have decided to field joint candidates for posts of speaker, deputy speaker and prime minister.

The PML-N has a final tally of 82 seats after the addition of 18 reserved seats including 16 for women and two for non-Muslims and PPP has 53 with addition of 11 reserved seats, nine for women and two for non-Muslims.

The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) now has 15 seats after the addition of three reserved seats, two for women and one for non- Muslim. The combined strength of the major Opposition parties will be at least 150.

The actual strength of PTI will be reduced to 152 because Khan won on five seats but will have to vacate four seats before taking the oath. Two other PTI leaders won on two seats each and will vacate the additional seats. This means that the total strength of the house will be reduced from 342 to 336 after the seats are vacated.

As PTI ally Pervez Elahi of Pakistan Muslim League will also vacate his two National Assembly seats after deciding to sit in the Punjab Assembly, while elections were not held on two seats and result of one seat has been delayed due to litigation, the final strength of the house will further come down to 331. Hence, a winning candidate will need support of 166 lawmakers instead of 172. It means PTI still needs support of 14 members of smaller parties and joint Opposition needs 16.

On paper, the PTI is expected to carry the day by a thin margin due to open support of several small parties but still a tough competition is expected for the top posts of speaker and prime minister. These parties include Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) with seven seats, Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) with five, Balochistan National Party (BNP) with four, Pakistan Muslim League (PML) with three, Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) with three, and Awami Muslim League and Jamori Watan Party have one each.

But still the PTI will be heavily dependent on the smaller parties and its government may be virtually at their mercy.

As far as provincial Assemblies are concerned, PTI is leading in Punjab with 179 seats in the house of 371 but it has not so far announced its chief ministerial candidate. Reportedly, several leaders are in the running for the coveted seat, which is second only to the premier in importance.

In Sindh, PPP is leading with 97 seats in the house of 168, in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, PTI is in clear majority with 84 seats in the house of 124, while Balochistan Awami Party has 20 seats in majority in the house of 65 in Balochistan and is expected to form the government with support of PTI and other parties.
A teen who was charged for assaulting a 71-year-old Sikh man in California made obscene gestures at the cameras during his first court appearance

New York: The teenager son of a police chief in California, who brutally assaulted a 71-year-old Sikh man, grinned and made obscene gestures during his first court appearance, according to a media report.

Sahib Singh Natt was attacked last week and spit at by 18-year-old Tyrone McAllister and his 16-year-old juvenile friend in Manteca, California.

McAllister, the son of Union City Police Chief Darryl McAllister, and the juvenile have been charged with attempted robbery, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon.

On Friday, younger McAllister entered the courtroom and flipped his middle fingers to a cameraman. He then dropped his hands before throwing up his middle finger a second time, Sacramento's FOX 40 reported.

He appeared to be grinning, and made suspected gang signs while his hands were cuffed, the report added.

Younger McAllister appeared in the court for his arraignment. No bail was set for the teen.

The attack on Natt during his morning walk was captured by surveillance cameras and showed the two teenagers beating the old man while dressed in hoodies. One, who was wearing a black hoodie, was brandishing a gun.

Investigators were still looking into whether the attack meets the legal criteria for charging a hate crime, the report said.

"As to whether it was just a crime or a hate crime, I'm of the opinion that at this point, looking at the videos, that it's just a crime committed by some young people," Bobby Bivens, president of the Stockton branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, was quoted as saying.
In the auto sector, Tata Motors emerged as the most patriotic brand.

Country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) is considered to be the most patriotic brand, according to a survey, followed by Tata Motors, Patanjali, Reliance Jio and BSNL. (Photo: PTI)

Mumbai: Country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) is considered to be the most patriotic brand, according to a survey, followed by Tata Motors, Patanjali, Reliance Jio and BSNL.

Around 16 per cent respondents ranked SBI to be the most patriotic brand overall, followed by Tata Motors and Patanjali with 8 per cent each, and Reliance Jio and BSNL with 6 per cent each, the survey conducted by UK-based online market research and data analytics firm YouGov said.

In terms of sectors, the financial sector topped the chart of the most patriotic brands with two leading names - SBI and Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) - followed by auto, consumer goods, food and telecom sectors.

The survey, which covered 152 brands across 11 categories, is based on data collected online by YouGov Omnibus among 1,193 respondents in the country between August 2 and August 8 using its panel of an online representation of India. In the financial sector, SBI lead the chart with 47 per cent respondents considering it to be the most patriotic brand, followed by LIC with 16 per cent.

In the auto sector, Tata Motors emerged as the most patriotic brand with about 30 per cent of the respondents voting for the company, followed by Bharat Petroleum with 13 per cent and Maruti Suzuki with 11 per cent. In terms of food brands, Amul grabbed the top slot with one-third Indians considering it, followed by Patanjali.

Patanjali, however, dominated in the personal care space, with one in three respondents recognising it to be the most patriotic brand, ahead of brands like Dabur and Vicco. In the oral care category as well, the firm's toothpaste is ahead of companies like Colgate, Dabur and Vicco, according to the survey. In the telecom sector, BSNL pipped Reliance Jio, with 41 per cent perceiving it to be the most patriotic brand.

"However, Reliance Jio shares the spot with BSNL as the fourth most patriotic brand in India," the survey said. Nirma emerged as the most patriotic brand in the homecare products category. In the beverages category, Tata Tea grabbed the top rank with 35 per cent respondents voting for it, followed by Taj Mahal with 18 per cent.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House national security adviser John Bolton met on Monday with Turkey's ambassador to the United States to discuss Turkey's detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson, the White House said. 'At the Turkish ambassador's request, Ambassador John Bolton met with Ambassador Serdar Kilic of Turkey (on Monday) in the White House

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House national security adviser John Bolton met on Monday with Turkey's ambassador to the United States to discuss Turkey's detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson, the White House said.

"At the Turkish ambassador's request, Ambassador John Bolton met with Ambassador Serdar Kilic of Turkey (on Monday) in the White House. They discussed Turkey's continued detention of Pastor Andrew Brunson and the state of the U.S.-Turkey relationship," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.

Despite news reports that the United States had set a deadline for Turkey to hand over Brunson, U.S. officials said no deadline had been set.

There has been no sign that the United States was prepared to negotiate with Turkey over Brunson, with Trump seemingly content for now to let his economic pressures continue to weigh on Turkey's economy.

The United States earlier this month imposed sanctions on two top officials in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans cabinet in a new attempt to get NATO ally Turkey to turn over Brunson, who is accused of backing a coup attempt against Erdogan two years ago.

Last week, Trump tweeted that "our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!" and said that he had authorized a doubling of tariffs on imports of steel and aluminium from Turkey.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Jeff Mason, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and James Dalgleish)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Two prominent data patterns have emerged in the run up to the November midterms in the United States - men are sticking with the Republican party and women are leaning Democratic at a higher rate than men do. The latter is no surprise, that pattern has held for decades; the first one is more striking and has roots in a perceived or real threat to white/ male dominance, says exciting new research informed by the debris left behind by the 2016 US elections.

What gender gap?

Two prominent data patterns have emerged in the run up to the November midterms in the United States - men are sticking with the Republican party and women are leaning Democratic at a higher rate than men do. The latter is no surprise, that pattern has held for decades; the first one is more striking and has roots in a perceived or real threat to white/ male dominance, says exciting new research informed by the debris left behind by the 2016 US elections.

The 2018 midterm elections, featuring hundreds of congressional, state and local elections, end on 6 November to decide whether Democrats can gain control of Congress or Republicans maintain their power on the legislative branch. These midterm elections will take place in the middle of Republican President Donald Trump's first term. All 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the US Senate will be contested. Depending on how well Democrats do, they could potentially halt or kill off the Republican legislative agenda in Congress and get a little more power to block Trumps nominees from being confirmed.

A YouGov survey has found male voters prefer a Republican candidate by 9 percentage points, while female voters preferred a Democratic candidate by 15 points. This 24-point gap has never been breached; it was the same total gap in the 2016 US elections - with women voting for Hillary Clinton by 13 percentage points, and men for Trump by 11 points. An average of generic-ballot polls also shows a similar trend line - a gender gap of 16 points.

Women voting Democratic at a high rate is not new; men sticking with the Republican Party is more striking in an election year. The gender gap headline in American politics today speaks to both the trends but its not like everyones clear about their choices either.

I really dont knowI wanted Bernie (Sanders) to be the 2016 candidate but we got Hillary. I voted for her but half heartedlyI think a lot of people did that and thats why we lost. Just voting Democratic alone doesnt help, its how enthusiastic we are and how many of us turn up, says Michelle, a New Yorker on her way to a family weekend in Delaware when we meet her on a train.

Michelle votes Democratic; she says shes unlikely to ever flip. But what about Republican women voters - whats going on with them? Theyre moving away while the men are hanging in there and in the bargain preventing the party from tipping over, reports The Economist.

Status threat of losing their white dominance, explains Diana Mutz, of the University of Pennsylvania, is whats keeping the men strongly Republican - not economic insecurity or any of the incremental firestorms that are raging on and on in American politics over the last 18 months.

That status threat has two approaches - one is the threat whites feel from non whites and the other is the percieved or real threat from women leading voluble #MeToo-related movements in society and at work.

Related to that is how established social norms guide voting preferences. A report by American National Election Studies - a joint venture between Stanford and Michigan Universities - found that those who believe life was a lot better when men worked and women stayed home tend to vote Republican.

Theres so much out there about trends but as far as Im concerned, if Democrats are going to keep giving us the same old choices, its not going to work, says Michelle.

How does she feel about Trump? Hes certainly made us more aware of our racial affinity, she says and then goes on to explain why she, a white American woman, has coloured her dark hair blond: It helps me fit in when Im in large white groups, especially where my relatives live in the deep South. Looking at me, they cant tell if Im their camp or the other. Im politically active and its important for me to know whats really going on. The polls are a bunch of _____, says Michelle.

So, whats she hearing there?

The economy is booming, they all have jobs, theyve always resented outsiders in their neighbourhood they feel they have a powerful voice in the White House who feels the same way. Theyre voting Republican both in the mid terms and 2020.

That trend has broadly held since the late 1990s. Today, Trumps party enjoys a 16-percentage-point advantage among rural voters. Trumps often over the top and arguably racist stuff about immigrants has been anything but politically dangerous for him; it won him the White House and Michelles relatives in Alabama are comfortable in that zone. Nothings changed.

Younger voters, though, have generally favoured Democrats in midterms and are staying firm. Compared with previous midterm years, like say, 2014, millennial registered voters support Democrat by a wider margin than in the past.

That sounds good but it wont work for 2020 if they churn out the same old candiates, says Michelle, herself a millennial who went through school in the years after the 2008 financial crash.

What will she do if the Democrats dont come up with anyone other than a Joe Biden or Kamala Harris for the 2020 run?

Kamala Harris - I dont know if that choice will work beyond CaliforniaJoe Bidens great but cant they find anybody else? If this is all theyve got, Ill stay outIm not voting. Theres no point, she says before getting off the train at Delaware.

Michelles is the kind of answer polls dont capture very well - what happens to voter preferences in the absence of rockstar candidates?

On balance, men sticking with the Republican party has less to do with whos on the ticket and more about keeping the white herd together; its less susceptible to personality and more about a deeper gnawing in society itself. With more women running for public office in 2018, its entirely possible that the status threat Mutz talks about may only get stronger.

Voters who identify Republican  and we spoke to several  tend to agree: Women have taken the #MeToo movement too far. Theyve brought it to the workplace and its going to bite back in the political sphere. Its all good for Trump.
VS Naipaul  a writer who spoke of fractured postcolonial worlds with piercing honesty  shall himself be condemned to fractured memory and posterity.

Aged 85, Vidyadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, a Nobel laureate in literature, has died. The elision in such a death, of course, is that it has struck someone who seemed so immortal, as if impassable. Yet, all men must pass, and so has Naipaul, drawing the veritable curtain on an era of literature and politics only whose bodied vestiges may see the new century.

For the romantic who have lost their idealism to age and circumstance, Naipauls era was a time of dazzling invention in literary form, unprecedented in its execution by a non-native other of the language  Naipaul was a denaturalised Indian, but all the more in his Trinidadian descent, a postcolonial subject. Obituaries of such sentiment will remember Naipauls eloquent lettered sway, his configuration of narrative as something you may not unceasingly access but enigmatically unfold, and his sincere, but shrewd, ability to observe the fractures of postcolonial society without pallid apology or even a semblance of nostalgia for the order of colonial rule.

Obituary, however, is a lonely act. Divorced from the aforementioned perception of Naipaul as a true postcolonial flattered neither by colonialism nor decolonisation is the relatively recent, although timely, unfolding of Naipaul as a problematic writer who re-presented non-European societies to Europe as a world embedded with Europes most grotesque images and archetypal representations of it. The outrageous in Naipauls racism, furthermore, was only accentuated by testimonials of sexual abuse from his partner of two decades, Margaret Murray, and his own confessional of being a voracious prostitute man. Some of his statements, floated, even accepted, in the unabashed veneer of being a maverick, did not aid otherwise, such as when he characterised the wearing of bindi as evidential of an empty head. To the economy of liberal language and practice which has permeated much of our discourse in the twenty-first century, Naipaul remains, in Edward Saids words, an intellectual catastrophe who, as a man of his bygone times, should best remain bygone, and already dead. Such an image, once provocative, has ceased to be an alternative perception of the writer; it has, to that end, not been surprising to find obituaries witnessing Naipauls death with unwonted relief. But Naipaul, even if dead, will always loom large and infinitely as a ghost of the literary.

The truth about Naipaul, if there is one to be recovered from the debris of fervent applause and acerbic criticism, must rest somewhere between his two over-bearing images. Although not without unassailable, unmissable fault, VS Naipaul was a significant writer. Literarily, especially as a novelist of considerable repute, Naipaul stood at the threshold of the literary realisation, fostered in no less measure by what has come to be called postcoloniality, that Anglo-Saxon orthodoxies of reading and writing literature need never apply to men and women of every society  that English, or English-writing, is something that every literary world will have to negotiate in its own ignoble way.

One is referring here not only to Naipauls abdication of literary narrative as an architecture that must necessarily make itself entirely accessible from the very beginning, but also his meditations on the future of the novel as a literary fixture in postcolonial societies, attempts to import it notwithstanding. Although appreciative of Japanese attempts to import the novel form () to their own rich literary and historical traditions, Naipaul saw a grim future of the novel in Indias general darkness. (from Reading and Writing: A Personal Account, 2000)

Later in his life, and with good reason, Naipaul was castigated for his portrayal of the colonial/post-colonial subject in trenchant conformity with Western banalities, but in his earlier work, such as Miguel Street (1959), the canonical story of his father, A House for Mr Biswas (1961), and the Booker-winning In A Free State (1971), Naipaul writes, with remarkable empathy, of the postcolonial predicament  that is, how, despite the violent short-changing of the modalities of colonial rule by de-colonisation, the West was and is to be matched in its methods. Naipaul went even further, and although never completely surrendering his faith in the glories of Western civilisation, made a critique of the madness of matching or more popularly, catching up by depicting postcolonial attempts to accomplish the same in the manner of parody. This ethic, however, did not for Naipaul mean a blinkered resuscitation of the classical past  the dharma of which Mrs Gandhi speaks, he writes, is a complex word () dharma, as expressed in the Indian social system, is so shot through with injustice and cruelty, based on such a limited view of man. It can accommodate bonded labour as, once, it accommodated widow-burning. (from India: Synthesis and Mimicry) Naipaul remains, to this day, one of the few writers who were audacious in putting an unmoving finger on caste as the overarching reality and social dynamic of India. It is a courage that eludes India, and its lettered noblemen, to this day.

Somewhere along the way Naipaul, wrote Edward Said, himself suffered a serious intellectual accident. His obsession with Islam caused him somehow to stop thinking, to become instead a kind of mental suicide compelled to repeat the same formula over and over. This is what I would call an intellectual catastrophe of the first order. One is unsure if Naipaul can be called a postcolonial who met an intellectual catastrophe on the way and so lapsed, but Naipaul did, to his error, forget the power of representing a people, particularly if, as he did, to an audience which had been historically complicit in colonising them.

The loss was not of postcolonial society but entirely Naipauls, for his literature, especially if one were to look at his writing around Islam (Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey, Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted Peoples), lost its empathetic value by which it could deliver even the most complicated postcolonial dilemma to transparency. Instead, the postcolonial subject he patronised in his illustrious literary career was emptied of complexity and reduced to the figure of the titular mimic-man who moves through her broken world in eternal imitation of Western modernity and civilisational emblems. In his deliberately provocative comments on issues of gender and sex, Naipaul willingly cultivated the image of a maverick whose genius can bypass any problematic of political and moral correctness.

There is no greater tragedy than for a writer to forget, or worse, ignore, the performative power of the written word. In this error, VS Naipaul  a writer who spoke of fractured postcolonial worlds with piercing honesty  shall himself be condemned to fractured memory and posterity, too fractured to be perfectly hagiographical or tantalisingly critical. Every reader should be so lucky, and every writer so unfortunate.
By Ginger Gibson and Jonathan Landay WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington was bracing for a white nationalist rally on Sunday organized to coincide with the anniversary of last year's racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. The 'Unite the Right 2' event was set to take place at 5:30 p.m. (2130 GMT) in Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House

By Ginger Gibson and Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington was bracing for a white nationalist rally on Sunday organized to coincide with the anniversary of last year's racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The "Unite the Right 2" event was set to take place at 5:30 p.m. (2130 GMT) in Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House. Several demonstrations by counterprotesters, who were expected to outnumber the white nationalists, were due to be held nearby.

Authorities have promised an enormous police presence to keep both sides apart and avoid the street brawls that broke out last year in downtown Charlottesville. A local woman, Heather Heyer, was killed when an Ohio man, James Fields, drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters.

At the time, President Donald Trump said there were "very fine people" on both sides, spurring criticism from across the political divide that he was equating the counterprotesters with the rally attendees, who included neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.

On Saturday, Trump condemned "all types of racism" in a Twitter post marking the anniversary.

In Washington on Sunday, counterprotesters planned an afternoon program of music, speeches and poetry readings at Freedom Plaza, east of the White House.

Sean Kratouil, a 17-year-old who lives in Maryland, was wearing a vest with "Antifa" on the back and said he was there to help start a movement of peaceful anti-fascists. He said he was concerned that when rallies turn violent, it makes his side look bad. "Public perception is key," he said.

Counterprotesters also gathered near the Washington suburban metro station of Vienna, Virginia, where about 20 white nationalists carrying American flags were escorted by police as they prepared to board trains to the city.

The organizer of "Unite the Right 2," Virginia activist and blogger Jason Kessler, led the contingent.

Kessler, who wore a blue suit and carried a megaphone over his shoulder, declined to say how many people came with him.

The counterprotesters outside included Paul Mitchell, a 62-year-old retired U.S. Parks Police sergeant who held a hand-painted sign that read "No Nazis, no KKK, no racists, no way."

Some counterprotesters yelled "Nazi scum!" at the white nationalists as they were shepherded through the station.

In the picturesque college town of Charlottesville, hundreds of police officers had maintained a security perimeter around the normally bustling downtown district throughout the day on Saturday. Vehicular traffic was barred from an area of more than 15 city blocks, while pedestrians were allowed access at two checkpoints where officers examined bags for weapons.

Hundreds of students and activists took to the streets on Saturday evening. Many of the protesters directed their anger at the heavy police presence, with chants like "cops and Klan go hand in hand," a year after police were harshly criticized for their failure to prevent the violence.

Earlier on Saturday, a group of anti-fascist protesters walked through the downtown area, holding signs with messages like "Good Night White Pride." But the day was largely free of confrontation.

On Sunday morning, activist Grace Aheron, 27, donned a Black Lives Matter T-shirt and joined hundreds of fellow Charlottesville residents who gathered at Booker T. Washington Park to mark the anniversary of last year's bloodshed.

"We want to claim our streets back, claim our public space back, claim our city back," Aheron said at the park.

Several events were scheduled in the city including a gathering that will include veteran civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton and Susan Bro, the mother of the woman who was killed a year ago.

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson and Jonathan Landay in Washington; Additional reporting by Joseph Ax in Charlottesville and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Grant McCool and Cynthia Osterman)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Google is said to be secretly working on a project dubbed Campfire which is its mission to get the Windows 10 running on Chromebooks. Since then there have been references about this ability and latest we hear is that Campfire may be the Chromebook equivalent of Apples Boot Camp.

Earlier this year Chrome OS developers had created a new firmware branch of the Google Pixelbooks named eve-campfire and started working on the new Alt OS mode for this branch and it is later confirmed that Alt OS mode is nothing but Windows 10 and is also said to be intended for public release.

Though theres a chance that Alt OS and Campfire wont make it to the hundreds of Chromebooks, then again it would a total waste of resource to bring such ability just for Google Pixebooks. Making that true, there are multiple campfire variants, and changes merging into the master branch instead of device-specific branches indicate that the Google Pixelbook wont be the only Chromebook with Campfire support.

Since the support means putting the devices into testing, it would be fair to assume that it could be limited to select Chromebooks or even only to Google-branded devices. Since this is directly from Google on Chromebooks, enabling Alt OS mode and booting into Microsoft Windows 10 wont require Developer Mode which is inconvenient and less secure.

With Campfire, Google will push signed updates to RW_LEGACY via the regular auto-update process, so firmware flashing wont be a concern for Joe Public. A recent commit for enabling Alt OS through crosh with a simple [alt_os enable] command indicates that it will be a fairly easy setup process from the users end too. Campfire and Alt OS mode are visibly incomplete at this stage with no UI changes. However, developers have been pushing fairly hard to get changes merged very soon, indicating a tight timescale on Chromes roadmap, indicating the launch is right around the corner.

Source
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has partnered with Microsoft India to digitally encrypt question papers for Class X and XII examinations. The main goal to initiate such a move is to enhance security and seamless distribution of the papers.

Microsoft says that this solution was successfully tested as a pilot project in the recently held Class X compartmental examinations, across 487 examination centers with approximately 4,000 students. Through this, the controller of the examination can track the entire process using a software solution built on Windows 10 and Office 365.

Microsoft further added that the overall process is automated to be highly secure with encryption, two-factor authentication, and access to download the exam papers at the examination center only 30 minutes prior to start time. It leverages features in Office 365 to encrypt and watermark the papers. The watermark has the individual centers code imprinted on it which allows for localization and traceability in the eventuality of a paper leak.

A CBSE administrator initiates the distribution of exam papers, which results in the generation of emails to the respective centers with a link to One Drive where an exam paper, specific to the exam center can be downloaded. Microsoft also said that it is working closely with public and private institutions to help modernize education, impart ICT skills training and provide low or no cost technology that helps students.

Commenting on the partnership Anil Bhansali, Corporate Vice President, Cloud & Enterprise, Managing Director, Microsoft India (R&D) Private Limited said:

A strong education ecosystem is key to our nations development and Microsoft and CBSE are deeply committed to digitally transform the sector. Innovative implementation of technology has the potential to solve some of the most pressing issues faced by the sector. The success of this partnership with CBSE is proof of that potential. I am confident we are well on the way towards a digitally empowered education ecosystem.

Source
Following dramatic spending increases in both 2018 and 2019, Pentagon planners say they are not likely to request another big leap for 2020. A slowing defense budget is typically a big worry for defense contractors. But this time around, there are reasons to believe the industry will be fine.

Spending plans for 2020 are not yet finalized, but Robert Hood, the assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, in an interview with The Military Times published Aug. 4, said the Defense Department is not expecting to see its budget top line grow. He said that the Pentagon would instead have to find savings to fund additional programs, which could mean either additional pressure on existing contracts or a slowdown in new contract awards.

"If you look at '18 and '19 -- two nice step-ups, in terms of funding," Hood said in the interview. "And the intent is there's not going to be another big step-up again."

Contractors including Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC), General Dynamics (NYSE:GD), and Raytheon (NYSE:RTN) have been richly rewarded over the last two years. The current-year Pentagon budget, at $700 billion, is the largest in history and represented a 15.5%, or $94 billion, jump from the year prior. That's the largest single-year jump since a 26.6% gain in 2002.

The 2018 budget was part of a two-year agreement reached in Congress, with 2019 funding expected to rise to $717 billion.

Flat is better than down

Part of the reason for the big jump this year was a congressional deal reached in February to circumvent the Budget Control Act of 2011, which put firm limits on both military and domestic spending. Defense advocates had complained that the caps were squeezing Pentagon resources and risked reducing the military's readiness. They also depressed valuations among the largest contractors.

This year's compromise provides only a two-year reprieve from sequestration, and while congressional leaders are insistent that they will not allow the caps to return in 2020, a spending slowdown remains a concern for defense companies, especially if the United States were to return to a divided government following this year's midterm elections. Hood made it clear the Pentagon is well aware of the political sensitivity of further spending increases as it formulates its 2020 request.

"We understand that Congress really took some political risk in some cases to take care of the department," Hood said. "We are going to do everything we can to live up to our side of the obligation to spend it wisely."

If the Pentagon, by maneuvering carefully and not asking for too much, helps ease the political path for lawmakers to do away with sequestration for good, that benefit will far outweigh any potential near-term downside of a flat budget for contractors.

Money will be found

Hood said a key to his plans is finding savings in the existing budget. The data would suggest there are opportunities to do more with the money that has been allocated.

Operations and maintenance funding has grown to 38% of the total budget from 27% in 1986, according to an analysis published in May by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), despite the Pentagon maintaining a much smaller military. In 1986, the U.S. had 583 active battle force ships, 10,559 Air Force aircraft, and 1.49 million Army personnel. By comparison in 2019, there are only 299 ships, 5,426 aircraft, and 1.03 million Army personnel.

Procurement has been "the clear loser" from this trend, according to the AEI, falling from about one-third of 1986 appropriations to one-fifth of the 2019 budget. Admittedly cutting out the waste in those numbers is no easy task, but if Hood is committed to finding ways to trim costs, there should be plenty of opportunities to stretch the budget dollars.

The Pentagon also has a separate, off-budget allocation vehicle at its disposal. While overseas contingency operations (OCO) funds are designed for spending related to ongoing operations, some procurement happens within the account. It can also be used to cover some of the ongoing maintenance costs, potentially opening additional budgeted funds for procurement and R&D.

Finally, it's worth noting that many of the allocations made for weapons purchases as part of the current-year and 2019 budgets will be spread out over a number of years, providing some cushion to contractors even if funding is eventually cut.

Don't panic, but watch carefully

In 2011, when sequestration was enacted, shares of defense primes dropped by as much as 15%. Given how far those stocks have climbed of late, with the outperformers up more than 50% over the last three years, a return to spending caps could cause an even bigger reaction this time around.

There's likely to be some investor disappointment if 2020 really does come in flat, especially since as recently as last December, Pentagon officials were declaring it would be the "masterpiece" of the White House's plan to rebuild the military. But anything short of a return to sequestration is a win for the sector.

Investors do need to remain alert. Defense primes are currently trading at multiples to sales and earnings unseen for more than a decade. The bull case to justify those valuations is that higher spending levels will allow the companies to grow into those multiples. That becomes harder if growth is restrained.

At these valuations, you can't buy indiscriminately, but among the primes, General Dynamics and Raytheon are still worth buying on the potential for company-specific upside.

We knew going in that the Pentagon spending surge would not last forever. If it ends with a gradual tapering and not a sudden crash, there's no reason to worry about the defense industry.
Wayback Burgers Celebrates Fantastic Summer with More New Store Openings, Master Agreements

Wayback Burgers, One of the Nations Fastest Growing Burger Franchises, Launched Several New Restaurants in Q2 2018

(PRWEB) AUGUST 13, 2018 -- Wayback Burgers, Americas favorite hometown burger joint and one of the nations fastest growing burger franchises, proudly announces tremendous franchise development success in Q2 2018. The second quarter was filled with multiple transactions, franchise expansions and significant growth in exciting new places, both domestically and internationally.

This continued success and growth is receiving acclaim from franchisings most respected magazines. In fact, Franchise Times recently highlighted Wayback Burgers growth tear and named the brand one of its Top 200+ franchises Wayback Burgers earned the #373 ranking in the annual list featuring franchisings top brands.

Recently ranked as a top 10 best fast casual restaurant franchise by franchiserankings.com, Wayback Burgers has grown to more than 160 locations worldwide. The rapidly growing franchise chain has active locations in 30 states throughout the United States and four additional continents around the globe. That includes Argentina, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco. In Q2, Wayback Burgers expanded its reach into Canada, Asia and Europe.

Wayback Burgers is becoming a household name in more corners of the world. International developments include:

An additional subfranchise agreement in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with another restaurant under construction.

A restaurant in Lahore, Pakistan opened its doors in Q2, and construction is underway for a second location. Workers are also constructing a restaurant in Hofuf, Saudi Arabia.

In Europe, Wayback Burgers reached a Master Franchise agreement to bring cooked-to-order burgers to Ireland.

And the Canadian expansion took important steps in Q2, with the sale of a franchise in Manitoba and a letter-of-intent agreement for a Master Franchise in British Columbia.

Wayback Burgers introduced itself to more guests in new locations in the United States in Q2. The leading burger brand opened new restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama, and Little Rock, Arkansas. Moreover, Wayback Burgers signed two new leases (Pooler, Georgia, and Pottstown, Pennsylvania), sold two additional franchises and is currently supervising 18 new restaurants under construction.

Wayback Burgers Executive Vice President, Bill Chemero, says Q2s success is indicative of the companys commitment to quality service.

Its an exciting time to be part of the Wayback Burgers family, says Chemero. Weve just launched our mobile ordering & loyalty app, a true game changer for us, and weve forged a partnership with a great charitable organization, The Boys & Girls Clubs of America  a partnership/association that makes us very proud.

In addition to those exciting announcements, through a dedication to hard work, a focus on quality and the desire to provide a unique and traditional experience, the companys footprint is quickly expanding here in the United States as well as key international locations. We have garnered a reputation for delivering the best burgers and the best service. It will continue to take a collaborative effort to not only meet, but exceed, our growth expectationsand I know, with passionate franchisees and dedicated support personnel at the corporate office and out in the field, we have the team to do it!

Q3 already has the makings of another successful quarter for Wayback Burgers. Seven additional restaurants are scheduled to open coast-to-coast, including Irving, Texas; Milford, Delaware; Reno, Nevada; Pottstown, Pennsylvania; Tulare, California; Atlanta, Georgia and Secaucus, New Jersey.

Potential franchise partners can also find Wayback Burgers at upcoming franchise shows including:

August: Consolidated Concepts Conference

September: International Franchise Sales Show (Germany)

October: Market Vision

October: National Association of Convenience Stores

October: Wayback Burgers Franchisee Convention

The trend to deliver a timeless, satisfying meal with a wide variety of menu items the entire family can enjoy will never grow out of fashion, says Chemero. Were proud of what weve accomplished up to this point in 2018, but we will remain steadfast and focused on the opportunities on the benchmarks set before us. We began 2018 on a positive note and with great momentum. Im optimistic everyone associated with Wayback Burgers is eager to finish the year on a similar note.

For more information on Wayback Burgers and the new Wayback App, please visit http://www.WaybackBurgers.com, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

For more information about the Wayback Burgers franchise opportunity visit https://franchise.waybackburgers.com/.

About Wayback Burgers

Founded in 1991 in Newark, DE, Wayback Burgers is a Connecticut-based fast-casual franchise with a reputation for fresh, never frozen, cooked to order burgers and thick, hand-dipped milkshakes, served in an environment that hearkens back to a simpler place and time  when customer service meant something, and everyone felt the warmth of the community.

Wayback Burgers currently operates in 30 states with over 161 restaurants nationally and internationally in Kuwait, Malaysia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Pakistan. Through its executed master franchise agreements, Wayback Burgers plans to open in 37 provinces/countries in the Middle East, South Africa, Argentina, Bangladesh, Ireland, Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada, and the Netherlands.

For more information about Wayback Burgers, please visit https://waybackburgers.com/.

For franchising information about Wayback Burgers, please visit https://franchise.waybackburgers.com/.

For franchising information about Wayback Burgers, please visit https://franchise.waybackburgers.com/.

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A man convicted of a 2010 murder claimed Monday that he made a confession after being beaten by a detective and held for over 13 hours while handcuffed behind his back.

Unjolee Moore also said he had ineffective assistance of counsel.

His current lawyer, Daniel Murphy, said he was able to obtain a jail medical record showing he had lacerations around the hands and swelling at the left eye after the encounter with former Detective Michael Wenger and another officer.

Moore is asking Judge Don Poole to grant him a new trial.

Attorney Murphy said phone records show that Moore could not have been at the murder scene.

Prosecutor Cameron Williams noted that a female that Moore was with said he had a gun when he left driving her Nissan Maxima.

He said a Maxima was seen at the British Woods Apartments where Bernard Hughes was killed and Timothy Westfield was left for dead.

The group Concerned Citizens for Justice has taken up Moore's cause and issued this statement:

The family of Bernard Hughes and Timothy Westfield deserve justice. The prosecution and conviction of Unjolee Moore, resulting in a life sentence, was and is not justice. Convicted on four charges- Felony Murder, Attempted Especially Aggravated Robbery, Attempted Second Degree Murder, and Employing a Firearm During a Dangerous Felony- Moore was prosecuted and convicted without any DNA or other scientific and forensic evidence; without adequate legal defense; with conflicting eyewitness testimony, none of which placed him at the scene of the crime; and with police misconduct during the investigation.

Having already served nearly five years of a sentence where he will not be eligible for parole until 2069, Concerned Citizens for Justice (CCJ) supports his bid for a new trial. Moore appeared before Judge Poole in Hamilton County, TN Criminal Court on Thursday April 23, 2015 where his motion for a new trial was denied. The case now goes to the Tennessee Criminal Court of Appeals where his attorney will file an appeal.
However, Shahid is quick to dismiss the rumour, saying, No, we have not received any such offer. Nor have we signed any films together.

Theres a rumour doing the rounds that actor Shahid Kapoor and his brother Ishaan Khatter will soon be seen sharing screen space in a Dharma Productions film. The film will mark Shahids first project with the esteemed production house, and Ishaans second, after Dhadak.

However, Shahid is quick to dismiss the rumour, saying, No, we have not received any such offer. Nor have we signed any films together.

He (Ishaan) should be ready to work with me, no? the actor adds before he smiles and walks away.

What can we say, were still hoping to see the two brothers together in a film.
This comes day after Rajnath Singh granted Rs 100 Cr to flood-ravaged Kerala where 39 people have lost their lives.

An aerial view of the flooded locality of Aluva after heavy rains, in Kerala on Friday. (Photo: File | PTI)

New Delhi: Union Minister K J Alphons on Monday termed Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Isaac's comment that the Centre's relief of Rs 100 crore for the flood-hit state was inadequate, a "political" one and alleged that he did not visit the worst-affected areas.

This comes a day after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh sanctioned a grant of Rs 100 crore to flood-ravaged Kerala where 39 people have lost their lives in unprecedented rainfall, with the state pegging its damages at Rs 8,316 crore.

The Kerala government had sought an assistance of Rs 1,220 crore from the Centre to tide over the crisis.

On Monday, Isaac took to Twitter to say the "precious" Rs 100 crore was "from the regular disaster management fund due to Kerala".

Read: Rajnath Singh announces Rs 100 Cr immediate central relief to flood-hit Kerala

During a media interaction at the Indian Women's Press Club in the national capital, Union Tourism Minister Alphons said, "Thomas Isaac is complaining all the time. This is a completely political statement. During the UPA rule, the ministers from Kerala never visited the state in the event of a disaster unlike under the current regime.

"We went there; the home minister, I, MoS (home) Kiren Rijiju, we all went. Isaac never visited his constituency Alleppey during these floods. What is he talking about? I have asked for a special package for Kerala," he added.

Alphons further said that there are clear guidelines for providing relief for disaster-hit states and the government has followed prescribed norms to offer assistance to Kerala. He said there was no scope for any "discrimination" against any state.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had earlier said rebuilding affected areas will be arduous task and that he has been personally campaigning to get generous donations to the relief fund.

The state government is providing Rs 4 lakh for those who lost houses and Rs 6 lakh for those who lost land, apart from Rs 3,800 per family in affected parts. The usual range for the first two categories is around Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3 lakh, and the Rs 3,800 aid is unprecedented.

Beyond these, the Kerala government has announced that it would provide compensation for farm-related damages by providing thrice the amount of what central rules mandate.
SC earlier rejected bail plea of Father Sony Varghese, Father Jaise K George and asked them to surrender.

According to the womans statement to the state crime branch, she was in a relationship with Father Varghese in 1999. At that time, she was 16 years old. (Photo: YouTube | Screengrab)

Thiruvananthapuram: Two of the four Kerala priests of Malankara Orthodox Church, accused of raping and blackmailing a married woman in Kerala for several years, surrendered before a local court on Monday.

The Supreme Court on August 6, rejected the anticipatory bail plea of the two priests - Father Sony Varghese (the main accused in the case) and Father Jaise K George - and asked them to surrender before the trial court by August 13 and then seek regular bail.

The priests surrendered before a court in Thirvalla district on Monday.

The four priests Abraham Varghese (A1), Job Mathew (A2), Dr Johnson Mathew (A3) and Jaise K George (A4) belonging to the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church were booked by the state crime branch for allegedly raping and molesting the woman devotee.

The 34-year-old married woman has alleged that the priests uploaded videos on the internet and they used them to blackmail her. The woman also accused Father Abraham Varghese of sexually abusing her since she was 16.

According to the womans statement to the state crime branch, she was in a relationship with Father Varghese in 1999. At that time, she was 16 years old. He went on to become a priest but forced her to continue the relationship, even though they were married to separate individuals.

Father Johnson Mathew and Father Job Mathew are already on bail.

The National Commission of Women (NCW) had, last month, recommended abolishing practice of confessions in churches as they felt it can lead to blackmailing of women.

The suggestion came at the wake of a number of women alleging rape and sexual abuse by priests and church officials. However, the women's commission recommendation drew sharp criticism from the Catholic church and churchgoers.
The Hand of the King is the last boss you will face in Dead Cells. There are total four bosses and you will face the final one in the Throne Room. In this guide, you can find tips on defeating The Hand of The King, the final boss of Dead Cells. Below you can find info the bosses attacks, defense, vulnerabilities, and weapons. This info will help you to tackle the boss easier, you can also learn about the different phases of attacks as it is the final fight it wont end easily.

How To Defeat The Hand of the King Boss

The Hand of the King Boss use series of attacks and there are 3 phases of fight where it changes its attack tactics. The usual attack style it uses is Lance, Charge, Rock Pound, Bomb Flurry, Rally and Summon mobs. There are certain combos also that will increase as the fight progress to next stage. The boss can defend itself through a shield that will reduce the damage of projectiles coming from the front like bows. It can also resist controlling effects like freeze, frost slow and stun.

Using weapons that creates poison clouds is highly effective against the Hand of the King boss. You can also use a meat grinder, oil, and grenades below him to cause damage on a regular basis. You can use the shield to parry majority of this bosses attacks.

Phase 1 Fight:

There are around three phases of fight divided on the basis of how Hand of the King changes it attack pattern. This fight is long so you need to geared up well. If you learn the attack pattern then it will be a lot more easier for you to plan your move. The fight will bring with a Dash type attack that will cause a moderate damage. He will dash around the arena and also summon spikes from the below. This will cause more damage. His projectile shield will remain active in this phase. When he lowers his spear towards you look for the yellow sparks. It is easy to roll through or use a double jump over. If you parry with the a shield then it will nullify the damage, but you will get knocked back. Try to avoid spikes it can cause you a high damage.

The boss can go slowly upgrade in the air and then slash down that can also cause a good amount of damage. If you see him in the sky roll behind him to avoid the damage and you also get a window to attack. The boss can throw up a pack of bombs that will be aim toward you. Try to use the falling platform the side to stay above the damage area. Right timing is necessary or else the boss will throw the bomb towards you. If you go close to him he will attack you, you can instantly move back but watch for the bombs. If you are near to the boss then to dodge his attacks you can roll behind him.

Once you are able to destroy his 20% of health he will fade in the background and a three low-tier enemies will spawn. You can beat them easily, there can be worm or zombies. Two of the enemies will be on the upper platform and one will be lower. One of them is the Elite. Target the enemies on the lower platform first, roll for your defense and kill them. Then go up and take the Elite.

Phase 2 Fight:

Once you are done dealing with the boss in the first phase in the second one is tougher. Here the boss will use 5 attacks in random order. He can use attacks like Bomb barrage, Dash, Three-hit combo, Stab-n-slam and Banners. During the first three attacks, you can use roll then double jump and then roll again. If you are not good at this then you might easily get attacked, so you have the practice to hit this roll thing at the right time. You can parry all three hits, but you have to work on the time part. If you fail to parry then you will get hit by the boss weapon swing.

For attacks like Stab-n-Slam just roll away on the first hit and then double jump away from the boss. There is a shockwave you cannot dodge that. The attacks will predictable as this point, so if you focus you can easily figure out a way out. Once again a roll away can help you and through the double jump, you can maintain a distance. If you get attacked by stab then jump in time to avoid the shockwave. In the final attack, there will be three banners who will fall from above on you. You have to destroy them in 7 seconds or else they will explode and has a high radius. The boss will punch his hand in the ground to begin this attack.

The only way to exit this attack is destroy the banners, a hit for any melee weapon or slam is enough to destroy them. By slamming you can destroy multiples easily, but works only if they are in a close range. Finally, in the last the health will be around some 30%, the boss will fade and summon three enemies. Two will be on the top and one will be below. Similar to the last one you will have a Ugly worm or a zombie with a elite. Follow the same previous strategy to deal with the final attack of this phase.

Phase 3 Fight:

This is one of the last and final phase of the fight, it is very much similar to the previous one. The only difference is that it has around 6 attacks. The attacks are bomb barrage, 3-hit combo, stab-n-slam, banners, a dash and a big slam. The boss will raise his hand up and pound on the ground that will create a shockwave which will cover the while arena floor. And he will do this multiple damage that will cause you high damage. You can spot this attack as the bosss fist will start glowing and he will rise above the center of the arena.

The best way to avoid this attack is to use the platforms on the sides so that you can stay above from the damage area. A regular double jump will not help you. All you have to try is staying away from the platform below.

Tips On Best Loadouts:

Carry a melee weapon in slot one. With 100% on burning target, it will double the damage. The only issue is with the range that restricts your movements, you have to be near to cause more damage. Put a shield in the next slot, get a force shield or punishment shield. The force one will protect you from spikes and combos. While the second ones explosive parry can destroy banners. Put a fire grenade in the third slot with damage reduction. The fourth slot can be used for bleed or poison. Or you can also add a grenade here for more damage. It depends on you what you find the best here. Get a amulet for damage reduction and under mutations to carry Fast Flask, Cooldown Reduction with +30% HP or an extra life.

Following the above tips will help you to deal with Hand of the King boss in Dead Cells.
The ADGP said the arrested militants have revealed many things but which cannot be divulged right now as the operation would continue further.

ADGP said while the house, where the militants were hiding, was zeroed in, the ultras opened firing upon the forces which was retaliated, ensuing an encounter. (Representational image)

Srinagar: A policeman was killed and five other security forces personnel were injured during an encounter with militants in the Batamaloo area here following which two ultras were arrested on Sunday, police said.

Security forces launched a cordon and search operation at Diyarwani in Batamaloo area of the city in the pre-dawn hours this morning following specific information about the presence of militants in the area, Additional Director General of Police (Security and Law and Order) Munir Khan told reporters.

He said while the house, where the militants were hiding, was zeroed in, the ultras opened firing upon the forces which was retaliated, ensuing an encounter.

A group of five militants were there They lobbed a grenade and opened firing and then escaped because of darkness. The area is very congested and forces exercised restraint so that there is no collateral damage as the houses there are roof to roof, the ADGP said. He said a selection grade constable, Parvaiz Ahmad, was killed and two policemen and three CRPF personnel received injuries in the initial indiscriminate firing by the militants. The security forces retaliated and it has been learnt that two militants have been injured, but they managed to flee. Two other militants were arrested and their questioning is on, Khan said.

The ADGP said the arrested militants have revealed many things but which cannot be divulged right now as the operation would continue further. Earlier, a police spokesman had said, two accomplices of the terrorists have been detained, while incriminating material was recovered.
"Father returned for mother ... then the bomb landed  - GeorgianJournal
Khurshid said that it should be kept in mind that the Congress had done well in the state in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid on Sunday cautioned opposition parties such as the SP and BSP against excluding the Congress from the alliance in Uttar Pradesh for the 2019 polls or making the party look like a dwarf in the state, saying such a move will be myopic and benefit the BJP. He also said Congress chief Rahul Gandhi has given the message that lets not get caught up with the issue of oppositions prime ministerial candidate for now, as collectively winning the general election was the main focus.

Khurshid said that this was strategically the best thing the Congress could have done to ensure that the BJP is not successful in creating gaps between the opposition parties as they work towards an alliance.

Khurshid, who has been Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee chief twice, asserted that parties should not write off the Congress in the state and it was important that it is part of an alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to take on the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2019 polls.

Asked about talk of Congress being given very few seats in Uttar Pradesh or excluded from the grand alliance, Khurshid said, I would think it will be very myopic. I am not saying it because we stand to gain from the opposite view, but I think excluding the Congress or making Congress look (like a) dwarf in UP will be myopic.He said the BJP would also benefit if such a scenario pans out.Khurshid said that it should be kept in mind that the Congress had done well in the state in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

And we did that, while we still were considerably behind them (the SP and BSP) in vote share because the big cities voted for us in a major way. Today, at the worst, we are 7 per cent and they (SP and BSP) are three times our vote share. But if we were to go out on our own, we are not going to be 7 per cent.
Some unidentified men targeted the JNU student leader and gunshots were heard but he escaped unhurt.

Umar Khalid was shot by an unidentified man outside Constitution Club of India in New Delhi on Monday. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: Politicians, student leaders and activists condemned the alleged attack on JNU student leader Umar Khalid outside the Constitution Club in New Delhi on Monday saying the incident was the fallout of a "hate campaign" against him on social media and mainstream media.

Some unidentified men targeted the JNU student leader and gunshots were heard but he escaped unhurt, according to witnesses even as the police asserted it will verify the incident.

Read: JNU student Umar Khalid shot at in high security area in Delhi, unhurt

Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah tweeted against the attack blaming the social and mainstream media for the rising hate campaiging.

Wage a motivated hate campaign against individuals & sooner or later someone will feel emboldened enough to take the law in to their own hands. The attack on @UmarKhalidJNU is the direct result of the relentless hate campaign using both social & mainstream media. Glad hes well.  Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) August 13, 2018

Tagging the official Twitter handle of PMO India, Dalit leader and Independent MLA from Gujarat Jignesh Mevani claimed that last month when Umar Khalid, Shehla Rashid and he had received death threats, we had sought police protection and even till today, none of us has been given any kind of security "Even those media groups, who are working to help BJP achieve political gains, and call Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid as members of 'tukde tukde gang' and 'anti-nationals' are also to be blamed for the attack," he posted on Twitter.

JNU student leader Shehla Rashid said the incident was the "direct result of hatred whipped up by .and other hate media" and called it "shocking and condemnable".

Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur opined it was time the online mob took to the streets against such incidents.

I want to say Im shocked and surprised but Im not. It was only time the online mob came out on the streets. And God forbid something happens tomorrow to someone the blood will be on our hands for not condemning the hatred enough.https://t.co/r55rpslDrm  Gurmehar Kaur (@mehartweets) August 13, 2018

Gauri Lankesh, Kalburgi, Shujaat Bhukhari and now an attack on @UmarKhalidJNU. History tells us that these are the warning signs before a perfectly normal, thriving nation turns into a battlefield.

How are we still this ignorant and keep missing them?  Gurmehar Kaur (@mehartweets) August 13, 2018

Social activist Kavita Krishnan also blamed certain news channels for the "murderous violence" against Khalid."Shocking attempt to kill #UmarKhalid - ironically outside Constitution Club in Delhi.

The hate speech and fake news by news channels targeting him and others as 'anti-national' directly result in such murderous violence, she wrote on Twitter.

JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar tweeted in Hindi and said, "What could be a bigger evidence of jungle raj in the country that the copies of the Constitution are burnt and Umar Khalid is fired at, close to the Parliament.

The confidence of criminals has increased under the current government and media.

"Actress and JNU alumnus Swara Bhasker also posted on Twitter, "What are we becoming? A lawless anarchic state of affairs so damaging to our institutions and credibility at a responsible State. Even if you don't like Umar's views! #UmarKhalid."

What are we becoming?!???!? A lawless anarchic state of affairs.. so damaging to our institutions and credibility at a responsible State. Even if you dont like umars views!  in solidarity! #UmarKhalid https://t.co/XY35MWmx9l  Swara Bhasker (@ReallySwara) August 13, 2018

Comedian Kunal Kamra posted on social media, "If this doesn't chill your spine what will? If you choose silence now when will you speak? If this is not wrong, what is wrong? In Solidarity."
The Communist Party of India Marxist veteran was suffering from kidney ailment and was put on ventilator support on Saturday.

Somnath Chatterjee, one of the longest-serving parliamentarians in India, was not keeping well from the last few months. (Photo: File | PTI)

Kolkata: Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee died on Monday morning in Kolkata days after he was admitted to hospital with a kidney ailment.

He was 89 years old.

Somnath Chatterjee, who was admitted to Belle Vue hospital on August 8, was put on ventilator support after he suffered a heart attack. Doctors said he was stable after he was put on ventilator support.

His condition turned critical on Sunday evening.

The 10-time parliamentarian had been frequently hospitalised for the last two months. Doctors said he was undergoing dialysis.

Last month, the former Speaker had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. After his condition improved, he was discharged from the hospital. But three days later, on Tuesday, he had to be hospitalised again.

"In such cases it happens at times that the heart stops giving support. Chatterjee suffered a mild heart attack this morning, but was revived. He is in the ICU and is responding to treatment," news agency Press Trust of India quoted a doctor as saying.

Veteran politician Somnath Chatterjee joined the CPI(M) in 1968 and remained its leader till 2008.

A 10-time member of the Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee became the 14th Speaker of the Lok Sabha in 2004 when the UPA government led by Manmohan Singh came to power. He served as the Speaker of Lower House till 2009.

However, he was expelled from the party in 2008 by general secretary Prakash Karat when he refused to resign as Speaker after CPI(M) and other left parties withdrew support to the government over the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Somnath Chatterjee, who has represented Burdwan, Jadavpur and Bolpur parliamentary constituencies from 1971 to 2009, was only defeated in 1984 by the present chief minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee, who was then in the Congress.

President Ram Nath Kovind in his condolence said, the death of Somnath Chatterjee is "A loss for public life in Bengal and India."

Sorry to hear of the passing of Shri Somnath Chatterjee, former Speaker of the Lok Sabha and a veteran parliamentarian who had a forceful presence in the House. A loss for public life in Bengal and India. My condolences to his family and innumerable well-wishers #PresidentKovind  President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) August 13, 2018

"Anguished by his demise" tweeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi. PM Modi added, "He made our Parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable."

Former MP and Speaker Shri Somnath Chatterjee was a stalwart of Indian politics. He made our Parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise. My thoughts are with his family and supporters.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 13, 2018

Union Minister Sushma Swaraj in her tweet expressed condolences and said, "In spite of our ideological differences, we cherished a very cordial relationship."

I am sorry to know about the sad demise of Shri #SomnathChatterjee. In spite of our ideological differences, we cherished a very cordial relationship. My heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family.  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) August 13, 2018

"He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines," Congress president Rahul Gandhi tweeted in his condolence message.

I mourn the passing away of Shri Somnath Chatterjee, 10 term MP and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha. He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief. #SomnathChatterjee  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 13, 2018

"Lost a father figure" tweeted CPI(M) leader Mohammad Salim.

I lost a father figure. My tribute to #SomnathChatterjee whom I owe a lot. Salute to a great Parliamentarian.  Md Salim (@salimdotcomrade) August 13, 2018

West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee also expressed her condolences.
BJP chief Amit Shah told the Law Commission on Monday that his party backs the concept of holding simultaneous LS and Assembly polls.

New Delhi: The BJP has re-ignited the debate on one nation, one poll with the Lok Sabha elections fast approaching.

On Monday, BJP president Amit Shah, in a letter to the Law Commission, pushed for simultaneous elections in the country, saying it would reduce expenditure, ensure that the nation is not in an election mode throughout the year and save developmental works from getting delayed.

Pitching various benefits of holding simultaneous elections in the country, Mr Shah said that the opposition to simultaneous polls seems to be politically motivated and dismissed as baseless the argument that the concept is against the federal structure of the country.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has on various occasions supported the concept of simultaneous polls. The issue was also addressed by President Ram Nath Kovind and his predecessor Pranab Mukherjee.

A BJP delegation led by Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and comprising of senior leader Bhupendra Yadav and Vinay Shastrabuddhe met Law Commission officials on Monday to discuss the one nation, one poll issue and submitted Mr Shahs letter. The delegation urged that legal provisions should be amended so that a single election can be held across the country.

The law panel, which is examining the feasibility of holding simultaneous polls, had sought views of the political parties before finalising its report. Both the BJP and Congress had stayed away from consultation organised by the commission last month. The Congress had met the commission top brass recently where it had opposed the concept of simultaneous polls.

In his eight-page letter, Mr Shah said some ruling political parties decide on short-sighted and populist policies ahead of scheduled elections and end up adversely impacting governance.

Claiming that joint polls will strengthen the federal structure, he said that holding simultaneous polls is not only a concept but a principle which can be implemented.

He supported his view by citing the example of Karnataka where, in 1980, the voters chose Congress at the Centre and JD(S) to run the state government.

Mr Shah said that in a progressive democracy like India development efforts and policy decisions get interrupted when the model code of conduct for elections is enforced.

Citing the example of Maharashtra, the BJP chief said that the state was under the model code of conduct for nearly 307 days in 2016 due to bypolls to Lok Sabha and Assembly and local body elections, which halted development works.

He said that usually in a five-year term of Lok Sabha, on an average, five to seven states face Assembly elections each year, along with polls for local bodies.

The BJP chief said that people should not be burdened with the expenditure incurred due to frequent poll process.

A paper by the Law Commission had recently recommended holding the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in two phases beginning 2019.

The poll panel earlier told the Law Commission that simultaneous polls are a desirable and achievable goal, provided the law is amended and legal and financial challenges are overcome. As an alternative, it suggested that all elections due in a year may be held together.

Political parties are divided on the issue of simultaneous polls. Besides NDA ally Shiromani Akali Dal, the AIADMK, the Samajwadi Party and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti have supported it.

The Congress, the TMC, the AAP, the DMK, the TDP, the Left parties and the JD(S) have opposed the proposal.

D03
The CM is scheduled to visit this area from September 10 to 13. She will arrive in her constituency Jhalarapatan on September 13.

Jaipur: Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje is currently touring the state with her Rajasthan Gaurav Yatra, but trouble is brewing in her own backyard.

Some BJP workers organised a rally against her in Jhalawar, a parliamentary constituency she represented five terms from 1989 to 2003 on a trot, followed by her son Dushyant Singh since 2004. Ms Rajes Assembly constituency Jhalrapatan also falls in the same district.

The CM is scheduled to visit this area from September 10 to 13. She will arrive in her constituency Jhalarapatan on September 13.

Such is her inluence in the area that the Congress has always struggled to find a formidable candidate to challenge her. Last such attempt was Assembly election 2003, when Rama Pilot, mother of present PCC chef and wife of late Rajesh Pilot, was fielded against Ms Raje. Yet, outcome in both Jhalarapatan Assembly as well as Jhalawar, which is now called Jhalawar-Baran, had been a foregone conclusion.

In such scenario, a bike rally carrying placards and shouting slogans like Vasundhra, go back and Vasundhra quit Jhalaw-ar, that too by people claiming to be BJP workers, has taken everyone by surprise. They were protesting against corruption and lack of development works in Jhala-war, the organisers said.

We have launched the Vasundhra, quit Jhalawar movement on the lines of Quit India Movement, as the public in CM Rajes home constituency are fed up with corruption, non-development in the 30 years of her rule, said Pramod Sharma who claimed to be a BJP worker for two decades. He alleged that Ms Raje has done nothing for the common man of her constituency.
Even after his expulsion from the party, Mr Alagiri continued to target Mr Stalin.

Chennai: In less than a week after DMK leader M. Karunanidhis death, his estranged son M.K. Alagiri on Monday signalled the resumption of the family feud over his fathers legacy.

The expelled DMK leader sounded the war bugle against his younger brother M.K. Stalin, who is the working president of the party, and claimed that party loyalists were firmly behind him but the latter was unwilling to take him back into the party as he was afraid of his emergence as leader.

On Monday, Mr Alagiri offered a huge garland at the Karunanidhis memorial on Marina Beach, along with his family, and told reporters, I have come to submit my anguish before my father. You will know later what that is.

Mr Alagiri said his anguish is related to the party and not the family. All the party loyalists, followers of thalaivar Kalaignar, are supporting me. Time will show this, Mr Alagiri said, warning that the DMK will dig its own grave if it does not take him back.

Karunanidhi had expelled Mr Alagiri and his supporters from the party in 2014 at the height of his tussle with Mr Stalin over establishing supremacy in Tamil Nadus main Opposition party.

While the media got excited over the clouds of succession war gathering over the DMK, the party itself dismissed the Alagiri missile as of no consequence.

Only you, the TV channels and the other media, are giving credence to Mr Alagiri. He is not even a member of the DMK as thalaivar (Karunanidhi) had himself expelled him, said DMK south Chennai district secretary J.

Anbazhagan, an MLA.The Karunanidhi family had presented a united face when the DMK stalwart was fighting for life at a city hospital. Mr Alagiri was present at the hospital and was seen at his fathers funeral.

However, the brothers differences were evident when both of them stood in different corners of a room at their Gopalapuram residence when Karunanidhis body was brought from hospital on August 7.

Party insiders insist that Mr Alagiri resorted to the Marina show as a last resort after failing to get the family prevail upon Mr Stalin to accept truce on his terms and help him return to the party.

Even after his expulsion from the party, Mr Alagiri continued to target Mr Stalin. He had mocked at his younger brothers voter outreach campaign across the state and also condemned the partys loss in the by-election held last year to former chief minister and AIADMK leader Jayalalithaas RK Nagar Assembly seat. The election was won by was won by sidelined AIADMK leader T.T.V. Dhinakaran.
How to upgrade your smartphone to Android 9 Pie without rooting How To oi-Karan Here's how you can upgrade your old Android operating system with the newly launched Android 9 Pie without even rooting the device.

Google officially released its latest version of Android 9.0 Pie last week. The new operating system comes several new features gesture navigation, fresh-new look and more. Google has announced the Android 9 Pie for Pixel smartphones and few other phones. But there is a catch here if you want to update your phone with Android 9 Pie.

We bring you the guide for how to make your Android-powered smartphone to Android 9 Pie without taking the risk of rooting your device.

Here's how to get Android Pie on your smartphone

First, you have to make sure that your home screen looks like the stock Android Pie. For this, you have to download pixel launcher apk file which you can get it on Google Play Store. Once you are done with the installation, you need to allow all the permissions and set it as default launcher.

Now you have to download some default Android P wallpapers or you can also download Android P wallpaper app. Select an image and set it as your home screen and lock screen wallpaper.

The interface is done now you need one button navigation gestures. So for this, you have to head to your Google Play Store and download any gesture app like Navigation gestures or X-Home bar app.

Once you are done with the installation open the app and allow all the necessary permissions. The navigation gesture app will replace the three-button navigation bar with one button pill like Android P.

With Android P the search giant has also introduced the Digital wellbeing feature to combat smartphone addiction. This new feature comes with a Dashboard and App Timer. To get Dashboard features you can download apps like Offtime or Forest. These apps will give you an idea that how much time you spend on a particular app.

For App Timer like feature, you can download apps which are available in the PlayStore like App Block or App off timer which offers somehow similar functionality.

So this is the way you can make your normal Android smartphone look and feel like the Android 9 Pie. But if this is not enough for you then we will make sure that we will get you the permanent Android Pie for your devices.

Best Mobiles in India

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ACT Fibernet rolls out its services in Warangal, launches two new plans News oi-Priyanka The company has also announced the launch of 1Gbps (Giga speeds, 1000 Mbps) wired broadband internet service for the residents in Chennai.

Broadband internet service ACT Fibernet has rolled out its services in Warangal City.

The company has introduced two plans called ACT Swift and ACT Rapid starting at Rs 549 under which users will get 400 GB data, speed up to 50 Mbps every month. After consumption of daily data limit, internet speed gets reduced to 512Kbps.

Another plan starts at Rs 999 and it offers 800GB data with 100 Mbps of download speeds, however, speed will be reduced to 1Mbps After the completion of data limit.

Here are the steps to get an internet connection

1 Select a plan to view subscription offers.

2 Click 'Enquire Now' after selecting the plan and offer of your choice.

3 Fill in the form and the company will get back to you with the feasibility of connecting your address.

For those who are not aware, the company has also announced the launch of 1Gbps (Giga speeds, 1000 Mbps) wired broadband internet service for the residents in Chennai.

The Giga plan will be made available to customers for Rs. 2999.

According to the company on six months Giga plan customers can avail one-month free subscription and similarly, for 12 months plan customers can enjoy two months subscription free of cost.

However, customers will have to pay one-time installation fees of Rs. 2000 to upgrade to GIGA plans.

Meanwhile, the company has also upgraded the existing fixed-term broadband plans for retail, SOHO (Small office, home office) and SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) which will allow users to enjoy higher speeds and FUP limits beginning 8th August 2018 at no additional cost.

Source

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Buying Guide: Best 12 Mid-range Smartphones to buy This week Under Rs 20,000 Features oi-Harish Kumar

A smartphone is one of the most trending topic, which sits on every single user's tongue. It is great to see that smartphone technology is getting better every year. The manufacturers clearly understand the requirement of a user. It is due to this that they keep coming with highly intelligent phones.

Their motive is clear as they are always on the look out to provide the consumers with the best technology designed ever. But, due to the inclusion of highly precised features, the manufacturers are confined to raise the price bars of these mobiles even higher. Thus, pertaining to form a class of "Expensive phones". Then a situation arrives, where a consumer fails to go for the purchasing of such a high end device.

These Xiaomi smartphones are expected to get Android 9 Pie update

Having understood the problems of the users, the makers are now coming with mid budget phones that include some of the best modern features. They now launch devices at an affordable price without cutting the important specs be it design, display or even camera.

Smartphones with premium features you can buy under Rs. 20,000

A variety of handsets made their entry into the Indian market this year, and going with the one that best matches your requirements gets tougher. Just in case you are looking forward to uprate to a new phone under a price category of Rs. 20,000, we have handpicked 15 of the best mid-range mobiles that you can buy at respective price point.

It is also important to see that these devices with their amazing attributes give a strong competition to some high end devices.

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Samsung Galaxy J7 Duo gets another price cut within days News oi-Abhinaya Prabhu This Samsung phone has received Rs. 1,000 price cut.

Lately, Samsung has been making efforts to combat the competition from the Chinese brands in the mid-range market segment. As a result, the company has been slashing the pricing of its devices in the entry-level and mid-range segments. Today, the company is back in the headlines for slashing the pricing of another smartphone.

Well, the talk is about the Samsung Galaxy J7 Duo. The device was launched in April for Rs. 16,990 and got a price cut of Rs. 1,000. Earlier this month, it received a price drop of Rs. 2,000 taking its cost down to Rs. 13,990. Now, it has received yet another price cut of Rs. 1,000 and is available for Rs. 12,990.

According to the Mumbai-based mobile retailer Mahesh Telecom, the official Samsung online store and Amazon India are selling the smartphone at the new price of Rs. 12,990. However, Flipkart is still selling the device at the earlier cost of Rs. 13,990. With this recent price drop, the Galaxy J7 Duo with 4GB RAM will compete with devices such as Oppo Realme 1, Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 and other bestselling smartphones with compelling specifications.

Other offers for buyers

In addition to the price cut, the device comes with attractive offers as well. There is no cost EMI payment options as a part of the sale going on online right now on account of Independence Day. Notably, we are yet to know if this is a limited period or permanent discount.

Samsung Galaxy J7 Duo specifications

When it comes to the technical specification, the Galaxy J7 Duo flaunts a 5.5-inch HD Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels unlike the 18:9 FullView display on its rivals. At its core, the smartphone makes use of a 1.6GHz octa-core Exynos 7870 processor paired with 4GB RAM and 32GB internal storage. It also supports up to 256GB of additional storage with a microSD card.

The Galaxy J7 Duo comes with a dual-camera setup at its rear with a 13MP primary sensor and a 5MP secondary sensor. At the front, the selfie camera is an 8MP sensor. The other goodies include 4G VoLTE, Bluetooth 4.2, Android 8.0 Oreo and a 3000mAh battery.

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Taliban, Afghan govt. claim embattled Ghazni city

Iran Press TV

Sat Aug 11, 2018 09:37AM

The Taliban and Afghan government forces have both claimed to have taken control of the country's eastern city of Ghazni following fierce fighting.

Afghan military officials said late Friday that security forces were conducting a clearance operation targeting the remaining Taliban militants in the strategic city.

"The central government in Kabul said the situation in Ghazni was under their control, but we managed to contact officials in Ghazni who said that fighting was underway in areas surrounding Ghazni," said Ghazni MP Shah Gul Rezaye.

The Afghan lawmaker also noted that additional reinforcements had been rushed to the city to push back Taliban militants.

The Taliban, however, claimed victory over Afghan forces, saying their militants had "conquered a battalion in Ghazni, seizing weapons and ammunition and four pickup trucks."

Rezaye said it was difficult to confirm who controls the city now as communication systems are down after the Taliban destroyed a telecommunications tower.

Citing anonymous sources, Afghanistan's Tolo News channel said some shops were open in the central parts of Ghazni and that the clashes were ongoing in western parts of the city.

Ghazni in central Afghanistan is a strategic city straddling the main route between the capital Kabul and southern Afghanistan. Clashes started late on Thursday, forcing authorities to close the highway linking it to Kabul, 150 kilometers to the northeast.

The Taliban issued a statement at the time claiming to have captured most of government buildings and that "so far 140 enemy forces have been killed or wounded."

Provincial governor spokesman Arif Noori also said the bodies of dozens of Taliban fighters were in the streets.

The attack on Ghazni comes in the face of growing pressure on the Taliban to agree to peace talks with the Afghan government to end the 17-year war.

The group has so far ignored President Ashraf Ghani's offer of unconditional peace negotiations even though its representatives met US officials in Qatar last month.

The New York Times reported in July that President Donald Trump's administration had ordered diplomats to seek direct talks with the Taliban in a bid to jump-start peace negotiations.

The Taliban were ousted from power in 2011 following a US invasion which has led to the occupation of the country to this day. The militant group has, however, been involved in widespread militancy, killing thousands of civilians as well as Afghan and American forces.

Since late last year, Daesh, which has already lost all its urban strongholds in Syria and Iraq, has also taken advantage of the chaos in Afghanistan and established a foothold in the Asian country's eastern and northern regions, launching brutal attacks against civilians and security forces alike.

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Associate Of Trump Campaign Adviser Refuses To Testify In Russia Probe

RFE/RL August 11, 2018

An associate of U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign adviser Roger Stone has been held in contempt of court after he refused to comply with a subpeona to testify before a grand jury investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Stone associate Andrew Miller refused to comply with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's subpoena to testify in Washington on August 10, arguing that the subpoena powers and other extraordinary powers given to Mueller violate the U.S. Constitution -- a move that prompted the court to hold him in contempt.

Although previous challenges to Mueller's legitimacy have failed, Miller's attorney, Paul Kamenar, argued that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein did not have the authority to appoint someone with sweeping powers like those given to Mueller, saying such powers can only be granted to U.S. attorneys approved by the Senate.

Miller's argument mirrored a similar claim made recently by President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly criticized Mueller's investigation into ties between Russia and his campaign as a "witch hunt."

Kamenar said that some powers given to the special counsel, including the ability to indict foreign actors, exceed those given to ordinary attorneys, who must be confirmed by the Senate.

After months of investigation Mueller now appears to be focusing on Stone, a longtime adviser to Trump who was a political consultant during his 2016 election campaign. Miller worked for Stone during that campaign.

Stone may figure prominently in a major case Mueller brought last month against 12 Russian military intelligence officers who he accused of hacking into the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, Trump's Democratic opponent, and releasing tens of thousands of private communications in a sweeping Kremlin-orchestrated conspiracy to interfere in the 2016 election.

According to the charges, the Russian defendants, using a persona known as Guccifer 2.0, in August 2016 contacted a person in touch with the Trump campaign to offer help.

Stone, through his attorney, has acknowledged having a "24-word exchange with someone on Twitter claiming to be Guccifer 2.0."

The statement from lawyer Grant Smith said the exchange "provides no evidence of collaboration or collusion with Guccifer 2.0 or anyone else in the alleged hacking of the [Democratic National Committee] e-mails."

But Mueller's subpoena of Miller and other Stone associates recently suggests he is currently focusing on whether Stone may have had knowledge in advance about the damaging leaks of Democratic documents that Guccifer provided to Wikileaks in the months running up to the November 2016 presidential election.

With reporting by AP and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/associate-trump- campaign-adviser-roger-stone-miller-refuses-testify- russia-investigation-mueller/29427219.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Gaelic Storm will perform at Walker Theatre on Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. Doors will open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $32 for Gold Circle, and $22 for general admission, plus applicable fees. Tickets will be available here on Friday at 10 a.m.

Review for Gaelic Storm:

Its hard to imagine a band just coming into their own after 20 years of success, but thats exactly what makes a true anomaly. This multi-national, Celtic juggernaut grows stronger with each live performance, and as you can imagine, after two decades and over 2,000 shows, it is a true force to be reckoned with. With their latest release, Go Climb a Tree, their music has never sounded more representative of themselves as musicians and as live performers.

The band attributes their continued success to their fanatic audience, and its a well-diversified crowd for sure. The country-music folks adore the storytelling, the bluegrass-heads love the instrumentals, Celtic fans love their devotion to tradition, and the rockers simply relish the passion they play their instruments with. Each band member, in their own way, expresses a deep gratitude for their fans, but its best summed up in the words of Patrick Murphy: The fans are the ones that have given us this life. Were here for them.



In Go Climb a Tree, co-founders of Gaelic Storm, Steve Twigger and Patrick Murphy, along with longtime friend and co-writer Steve Wehmever, are again at the helm of song-writing duties. The album has everythingparty drinking songs (The Beer Song), patriotic anthems (Green, White and Orange), beautiful folk songs (Monday Morning Girl), spritely instrumentals The Night of Tomfoolery), perfectly poppy songs (Shine On), and even a raucous pirate song (Shanghai Kelly). When speaking of the overall concept of the album, Patrick Murphy gives some insight: With all the craziness and division in the world, we wanted to make an album about contemplative escapism. Go Climb a Tree certainly isnt about dropping out of the conversation, its just about taking a short hiatus to recharge the batteries before you take on the world again.

Gaelic Storm takes a true blue-collar, hard-nose approach to touring, consistently traveling the U.S. and internationally over 200 days a year, forging a unique path in the Celtic music world. You have to see us live. We are the true working-mans band, says Ryan Lacey, who joined the lineup in 2003. We still, and most likely always will, tour most of the year, and thats how we constantly hone our craft.

The dedication to live shows date all the way back to the mid-1990s, when Gaelic Storm kicked off its career as a pub band in Santa Monica, California. Due to their discovery at the pub, by the end of the decade, the musicians had appeared in the blockbuster film Titanic (where they performed Irish Party in Third Class). This laid the groundwork for a career that would eventually find them topping the Billboard World Chart six times, making appearances at mainstream music festivals, and regularly headlining the largest Irish Festivals across the country, all the while gaining a reputation as a genre-bending Irish rock band, whose songs mix Celtic traditions with something uniquely creative.

Looking to the future, Gaelic Storm is excited about what lies ahead. Theyve added a new fiddle player, Katie Grennen, and she has affectionately become the purple squirrel of the band, meaning she is the perfect new addition. Pete Purvis who joined the band in 2005 said, With the addition of Katie, the band has never sounded better, were gelling on a whole new level, and the idea of sharing these new songs with our fans is exciting!
Lok Sabha Speaker from 2004 to 2009, Chatterjee represented the CPI(M) 10 times in Parliament.

Kolkata: Veteran parliamentarian and former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee passed away at the age of 89 on Monday morning after prolonged illness. He is survived by his wife Renu Chatterjee and two daughters and a son. But controversy did not leave him even in death.

Waking up to the Marxist mavericks demise, the CPI(M), which had expelled him in July 2008 for refusing to vote against the government in the no-confidence motion in Parliament during the UPA-I rule and not quitting the Speakers post despite a party directive, wanted to drape the body in the party flag in his last journey as a mark of tribute. But his family rejected it, leaving the CPI(M) red-faced.

After his demise around 8 am at a hospital in Kolkata, Chatterjees body was also not taken to the state party headquarters at Alimuddin Street. Left Front chairman Biman Bose went to pay his tribute to the leader who had served the party for 40 years but faced the ire of Chatterjees family.

Chatterjees daughter Anushila Basu said, My father was in pain since his expulsion. Sitting in the ante-chamber he was in tears after it was announced. Many gave him offers. But he told them: No.

She added, My father might have been expelled from the party but he was not at a distance from it mentally. Mourning Chatterjees death Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter, Former MP and Speaker Shri Somnath Chatterjee was a stalwart of Indian politics. He made our Parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable

Lok Sabha Speaker from 2004 to 2009, Chatterjee represented the CPI(M) 10 times in Parliament. He lost only one election in his lifetime  to Mamata Banerjee from the Jadavpur constituency in 1984.

Admitted at Belle Vue Clinic since August 7 for the treatment of his kidney related ailments, Chatterjee had been put on ventilator on Sunday after he suffered a cardiac arrest. He had celebrated his 89th birthday on July 29.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee rushed to hospital after his death and chalked out plans for his final journey. We are pained by his sudden demise, said, Ms Banerjee.

From the hospital, Chatterjees body was taken in a cortege to the Calcutta high court, where he once practised as a lawyer, and then to the legislative Assembly where ministers and MLAs parties paid their last tribute. A gun salute was also given by Kolkata Police.

Later, the body was taken to his residence at Raja Basanta Roy Road in south Kolkata where his family members paid him their last respect. In the evening, the body, which was pledged, was donated to SSKM Hospital fulfilling his wish. Ironically, it was the World Organ Donation Day.

In his condolence message, President Ram Nath Kovind said Chatterjees demise is a loss for public life in Bengal and India.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi said, He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines.

D03
Romanians Stage Anticorruption Protest For Second Straight Day

RFE/RL August 11, 2018

Thousands of Romanians have staged another antigovernment protest in the capital, a day after violence was reported at a previous demonstration.

Demonstrators, including some carrying Romanian flags, gathered on August 11 around a central square in Bucharest.

Romanian authorities say 440 people including two dozen riot police have received medical treatment after an August 10 antigovernment protest turned violent.

The Bucharest-Ilfov Emergency Service said on August 11 that of those, 65 people including nine riot police were taken to the hospital.

The antigovernment protest in Bucharest on August 10 drew tens of thousands Romanians from abroad and local residents who demanded the government resign over moves to change laws that critics say would make it harder to prosecute corruption.

It turned violent after riot police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse protesters. Some demonstrators lobbed rocks, bottles, and smoke bombs at riot police.

President Klaus Iohannis, a critic of the left-wing government, condemned "the brutal intervention of riot police."

"I firmly condemn riot police's brutal intervention, strongly disproportionate to the actions of the majority of people in the square," he said on his Facebook page.

"The Interior Ministry must explain urgently the way it handled tonight's events."

But Iohannis also suggested that protesters who sought to break through police lines guarding Bucharest's government buildings and who threw rocks and stones at the police, injuring some officers, also deserved some blame.

"Any form of violence is unacceptable," he said.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose country currently holds the EU rotating presidency, criticized the clashes, during which a cameraman for Austria's state TV broadcaster was hurt.

"We strongly condemn the violent clashes in Bucharest where numerous demonstrators and journalists were injured. We expect full explanations," Kurz said on Twitter.

"Freedom of expression and, related to that, freedom of the press are basic freedoms of the EU, which we clearly recognize and which must be unconditionally protected."

The demonstrators, many of whom live abroad and returned for the rally, had demanded that the left-wing government resign and that early elections be called.

Protesters around Bucharest's Victoriei Square waved Romanian and European Union flags, shouting "Justice, not corruption!"

Local media estimated the crowd at 30,000-80,000 in Bucharest, with tens of thousands more demonstrating in other cities. No official figures were available.

Other Romanian cities that took part in the protests included Cluj, Brasov, Sibiu, Timisoara, and Galati.

The rallies had featured thousands of Romanian expatriates returning from their homes abroad.Some of the estimated 3 million Romanians living abroad say they left because of corruption, low wages, and lack of opportunities. A campaign calling for the protest was launched on Facebook.

After winning power in 2016, the Social Democrats (PSD) attempted to decriminalize several corruption offenses through an emergency decree, leading to thousands of Romanians taking to the streets in protest and forcing the party to back down.

Iohannis, the European Commission, and the U.S. State Department criticized the proposed changes to judicial legislation, saying they could derail the rule of law.

Iohannis has been at loggerheads with the PSD, accusing it of attempting to weaken the fight against corruption, putting pressure on the judicial system, and of implementing bad fiscal policies.

Iohannis in July signed a decree to remove the popular chief anticorruption prosecutor from her post.

He praised Chief Prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi for her efforts and said he was forced to sign the decree after being ordered to do so by the Constitutional Court.

Under Kovesi's leadership, corruption conviction rates rose sharply in one of the EU's most corruption-plagued members.

The push to oust her was criticized by the European Commission and the Council of Europe.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Moldovan Service, AP, DW, AFP, Reuters, and Romania-Insider

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/romanians-stage-anticorruption -protest-for-second-straight-day/29427871.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Clashes Continue After Taliban Attack On Afghan City Of Ghazni

RFE/RL August 11, 2018

Clashes between Afghan government forces and the Taliban continue around the Afghan city of Ghazni on August 11, a day after Taliban militants stormed its center, officials said.

Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danish said 25 security forces and a local reporter have been killed since the assault began on Ghazni on August 9.

Danish also said that more than 150 Taliban have been killed in the battles.

He said despite the clashes, "the situation is under control and there isn't any serious threat."

Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammad Radmanesh told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that Ghazni, some 150 kilometers southeast of Kabul, was under complete control of the security forces.But he saidclearance operations were continuing.

A spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan also described the fight for the city as a clearance operation, with sporadic clashes between security forces and insurgents.

"The fact remains that the Taliban are unable to seize terrain and unable to match the Afghan security forces or our enablement, retreating once [they were] directly and decisively engaged," Lieutenant Colonel Martin O'Donnell was quoted as saying on August 11.

The attack on Ghazni was the latest in a series of attempts by the Taliban to capture urban centers.

A U.S.-led coalition drove the Taliban from power after Al-Qaeda militants -- whose leaders were being sheltered in Afghanistan -- carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

But the Western-backed government has been struggling to fend off the Taliban and other militants since the withdrawal of most NATO troops in 2014.

In May, the Taliban attacked the western city of Farah. After a day of intense fighting, Afghan commandos and U.S. air strikes drove the group to the outskirts of the city.

Taliban leaders have ignored an offer by the government of direct peace negotiations.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan, AP, AFP, dpa, and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/clashes- continue-after-taliban-attack-on-afghan- city-of-ghazni/29427830.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Malians Will Go to Polls Amid Terror Threats

By Ibrahim Ahmed August 11, 2018

When Malians go to the polls in the country's runoff presidential election on Sunday, threats of terror attacks again will be on their minds, just as they were two weeks ago during the first round of elections when terror attacks disrupted several polling stations across the country.

Malians will be thinking not only about how the threat of terrorism will affect the elections, but also about how the elections will shape the country's fight against militant groups with ties to al-Qaida and the Islamic State groups.

Tiena Coulibaly, Mali's minister of defense, told VOA the government has taken all of the necessary measures to ensure security across the country during the election and that the government is serious about its campaign against militant groups.

"The threat from extremist [groups] was much smaller than we feared it would be [during the first round of elections]," Coulibaly said. "That's because we have sent many [additional] soldiers to the central parts of the country."

Coulibaly added that French troops with Operation Barkhane are also helping with security arrangements during the elections and that the government will be relying on several armed rebel groups as well that have signed a peace agreement with the government in 2015.

"In the north we have agreed with the armed groups that have signed the peace agreement [2015] with government that they would help the army to secure the elections," he said.

The exact number of polling stations disrupted by violence during the first round of elections last month is not known, but media reports suggest that of the 23,000 polling stations that were supposed to be open, more than 4,500 of them were disrupted by armed attacks and over 600 polling stations were closed.

Coulibaly told VOA that nearly 800 polling stations were closed because of insecurity and armed attacks.

Local voices

Despite assurances by the government, ordinary Malians are still concerned about the prospects of terror attacks during the election on Sunday.

Ousmane Christian Diarra, general secretary of the Association of District Administrators of Mali, told VOA that the threat of attacks by militants in parts of the country is very serious and real.

"Boura Sadou Tamboura, general secretary of the Boni subprefecture [district] office located in Mopti [in central Mali], was killed on Wednesday while he was sitting in front of his house with two friends who survived the attack by jihadists," Diarra said.

Diarra said he "instructed all our members not to report to their respective places as long as the insecurity persists, such as in Mopti, where the government is unable to maintain security."

During the first round of elections, in Timbuktu in northern Mali, witnesses told Reuters that armed men had intimidated voters, seized ballot boxes and in some cases set fire to them in the few polling stations outside the town.

"They came, they fired their weapons and then they took the ballot boxes away," Insubdar Inaboud, a witness and Timbuktu resident, told Reuters.

Inaboud was disappointed about not being able to cast his ballot because of insecurity.

Militant groups

Several militant groups with ties to al-Qaida and the Islamic State are operating in Mali, including the Saharan Emirate of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine, al-Mourabitoun and Macina Liberation Front.

In March 2017, these al-Qaida-linked groups came together to form Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and pledged allegiance to al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"We have been tracking a continued rise in activity in Mali's central region related to the coalition of JNIM," Wendy Williams, adjunct research fellow at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, told VOA.

"Their reach has expanded into neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso," she said.

The Islamic State is also making its presence felt in the border region between Mali and Niger.

The Islamic State group "has begun to make inroads into Mali, using it as a launching pad for attacks in neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso," David Ibsen, executive director of the Counter Extremism Project, a global nonprofit research center that follows extremism around the globe, told VOA.

Ibsen said the exact number of militants with allegiance to terror groups like al-Qaida and IS "is difficult to establish," but "their trail of death and destruction in Mali and the region is clear." He said international help is needed to counter the threat.

Alix Boucher, an analyst at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, said outside actors should intervene but with caution.

"The behavior of all contingents needs to be above reproach so that they do not inadvertently feed into extremist narratives," Boucher said.

Faith in democracy

Some analysts like Jonathan Sears of the Centre FrancoPaix at the University of Quebec in Montreal, who has visited Mali several times, are optimistic and charge that Malians are committed to democracy in the face of enormous difficulties and threats.

"What astonishes me is that despite all of the very challenging conditions of chronic poverty, Malians still risk their lives to go and vote," Sears said.

VOA's Modibo Dembele of Bambara service contributed to this report. Some information for this report came from Reuters.

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Ecuador Grapples With Massive Influx of Venezuelans

By Lisa Schlein August 11, 2018

The U.N. refugee agency is scaling up its humanitarian operation in Ecuador to help the government deal with the a huge influx of Venezuelan refugees who are arriving in a state of destitution and despair.

According to UNHCR estimates, more than one-half million Venezuelans have entered Ecuador through the Colombian border this year, averaging up to 3,000 a day.

With the increasing hardships in Venezuela, the UNHCR reports these numbers have jumped to more than 4,000 daily arrivals in the first week of August. To tackle the growing refugee problem, the government of Ecuador declared a state of emergency Wednesday in several provinces.

UNHCR spokesman William Spindler calls this a good and necessary move.

"UNHCR welcomes and supports this decision, which allows Ecuador to assign additional resources and step up its response. The exodus of Venezuelans from their country is one of Latin America's largest mass population movements in history."

Spindler says Venezuelans are walking for days, even weeks, in precarious conditions. He says many are destitute when they arrive and are forced to live rough in public places and to beg or resort to other exploitative means to survive.

He says about 20 percent of those who arrive - including women and children, single parents and people with disabilities - are particularly vulnerable and in need of protection and assistance.

"Women and girls represent 40 percent of the new arrivals and face serious risks of sexual violence, in particular survival sex and trafficking. Xenophobic reactions to the exodus have been noted in some quarters."

Spindler says most Venezuelans entering Ecuador continue on to Peru and Chile. He says the UNHCR is stepping up its emergency operation. It will provide Ecuador with technical assistance, such as screening and registering the refugees. He says staff will identify vulnerable Venezuelans in need of special protection and aid.

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Caspian Summit ends

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Aktau, Aug 12, IRNA -- The 5th Caspian Summit ended in Aktau, Kazakhstan, on Sunday.

Heads of the five Caspian Sea littoral states signed the legal regime convention of the sea on Sunday.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani attended the summit and held separate bilateral meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Leaders of the five littoral states signed a joint statement in which they called the Caspian Sea as the Sea of peace and solidarity.

The Caspian Sea littoral states ministerial meeting was held on August 11 with the participation of foreign ministers of its member-states (Iran, Russia, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan).

The previous meeting of the foreign ministers was held in Moscow on December 4-5, 2017.

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Some 90% of Caspian Sea legal regime convention finalized

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Aug 12, IRNA -- Some 90% of the Caspian Sea legal regime convention has been finalized which will be signed in Aktau, Iranian Foreign Ministry's Center for Public Diplomacy and Media Affairs said in a statement on Sunday.

Only two issues  determining the base lines and delimitation of the remaining seabed and underground resources  need further negotiations, the statement said, expressing hope that these two issues will also become finalized with cooperation of all the member-states.

The statement also said that six other agreements  on transit, trade and economy, fight against terrorism, countering organized crimes, cooperation of border guards, and preventing military conflicts  will also be signed on the sidelines of the summit meeting of the Caspian Sea littoral states in Aktau.

The Caspian Sea littoral states also announced that the Sea will remain the sea of peace and friendship among the member-states, banning the presence of military forces of the third countries in the Sea, the statement said.

Navigation in the Sea will only be possible under the flag of one of the five littoral states and they cannot let any alien country to use their territory for military aggression against another littoral state, according to the statement.

Oil resources of the Sea which are not disputed can be exploited and when there is a dispute over joint resources, the related countries should reach an agreement and if an agreement is not reached, the resources will not be exploited, the agreement said.

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President Rouhani: Caspian Sea is Sea of peace, friendship

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Aug 12, IRNA -- President Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday that all should endeavor to turn Caspian Sea to Sea of peace and friendship to broaden relations and cooperation amongst Caspian Sea littoral states.

President Rouhani made the remarks in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the heads of the five Caspian Sea littoral states in Aktau, Kazakhstan, on Sunday.

During the meeting, President Rouhani called the need to further broaden relations and cooperation between Tehran-Moscow in various fields.

Alls should spare no effort to turn Caspian Sea to the Sea of peace, friendship and means of cooperation among all Caspian Sea littoral states, he said.

Iran and Russia have had a broad-based cooperation in various regional and international issues such as maintaining regional security, fight against terrorism and Daesh in Syria which has left positive impacts on regional cooperation, President Rouhani said.

The Russian president, for his part, highlighted significant relations between the two countries and said Moscow is ready to further broaden allout relations and cooperation with Iran in line with both sides interests.

The JCPOA was an accredited internationally-recognized accord and all sides should help preserve it mainly after the US one-sided withdrawal, he said.

Heads of the five Caspian Sea littoral states, who have gathered in the Kazakh city of Aktau, signed the legal regime convention of the sea on Sunday.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani attended the summit on Sunday.

Signing a joint statement and also some important and strategic documents on the Caspian Sea by leaders of its five littoral states and holding separate bilateral meetings with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and a number of his other counterparts are among President Rouhani's itinerary.

The Caspian Sea littoral states ministerial meeting was held on August 11 with the participation of foreign ministers of its member-states (Iran, Russia, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan).

The previous meeting of the foreign ministers was held in Moscow on December 4-5, 2017.

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Caspian Littoral States agree to continue dialog on delimitation, shares of sea, resources

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Sun / 12 August 2018 / 16:41

Tehran (ISNA)  During his visit to Kazakhstan to attend Caspian Sea Littoral States summit, Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday praised the approval of Caspian Sea Convention on Legal Status in Twitter.

"Day of solidarity of Caspian Littoral States: Codifying cooperation on environment, shipping, fiheries, sustainable development & security w/o foreign military presence. Agreeing to continue friendly dialog on unresolved issues of delimitation & shares of sea & its resources," Mr. Zarif wrote in a tweet on his official account.

End Item

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Caspian Sea Legal Regime Convention inked by 5 states

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Sun / 12 August 2018 / 15:44

Tehran (ISNA) - The Caspian Sea Legal Regime Convention was signed by the five littoral countries in Kazakhstan.

The convention was signed by Presidents of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Russian Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on Sunday in Aktau, Kazakhstan after the Fifth Caspian Sea Littoral States Summit

In the ceremony of signing of the convention that was held after the summit, President Hassan Rouhani of the Islamic Republic of Iran, President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federating, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of the Republic of Kazakhstan, President Ilham Aliyev of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of the Republic of Turkmenistan.

High-ranking officials of the five Caspian Sea littoral states also signed 6 cooperation documents in the presence of the presidents of the five countries.

Protocol of cooperation in the fight against terrorism in the Caspian Sea, protocol on cooperation in the fight against organised crime in the Caspian Sea, agreement between the governments of the Caspian Sea littoral states on economic cooperation, agreement between the governments of Caspian Sea littoral states in the field of transportation, agreement in preventing accidents in the Caspian Sea, and protocol on cooperation and interaction of the border authorities of the Caspian Sea countries were the documents that were signed by the five countries in order to further strengthen their cooperation in the Caspian Sea region.

End Item

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President addressing Caspian Sea Littoral States Summit:

Talks for final agreement, esp. on defining limits must continue

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Sun / 12 August 2018 / 15:44

Tehran (ISNA) - The Caspian Sea Legal Regime Convention was signed by the five littoral countries in Kazakhstan.

The convention was signed by Presidents of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Russian Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on Sunday in Aktau, Kazakhstan after the Fifth Caspian Sea Littoral States Summit

In the ceremony of signing of the convention that was held after the summit, President Hassan Rouhani of the Islamic Republic of Iran, President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federating, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of the Republic of Kazakhstan, President Ilham Aliyev of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of the Republic of Turkmenistan.

High-ranking officials of the five Caspian Sea littoral states also signed 6 cooperation documents in the presence of the presidents of the five countries.

Protocol of cooperation in the fight against terrorism in the Caspian Sea, protocol on cooperation in the fight against organised crime in the Caspian Sea, agreement between the governments of the Caspian Sea littoral states on economic cooperation, agreement between the governments of Caspian Sea littoral states in the field of transportation, agreement in preventing accidents in the Caspian Sea, and protocol on cooperation and interaction of the border authorities of the Caspian Sea countries were the documents that were signed by the five countries in order to further strengthen their cooperation in the Caspian Sea region.

End Item

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Rahul Gandhi hugged the PM Modi after concluding his speech during the debate on the No-Confidence Motion against the NDA government.

Moments later, Rahul Gandhi was seen winking at a fellow Congress Member of Parliament. (Photo: File | ANI)

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that Congress President Rahul Gandhi's wink at his colleague right after hugging him in the Parliament last month proved how childish his stunt was.

"It is for you to judge whether it was a childish act or not. And if you are unable to decide that, watch the wink and you will get the answer," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in an exclusive interview to ANI on Saturday.

Read: Watch: 'You may call me Pappu but I don't hate you,' Rahul hugs PM Modi

Rahul Gandhi hugged the Prime Minister after concluding his speech during the debate on the No-Confidence Motion against the NDA government. However, moments later, Rahul Gandhi was seen winking at a fellow Congress Member of Parliament.

Continuing with his jibe at the Congress President, Prime Minister Modi said, "I am a humble kamdaar. I am nothing compared to the naamdaars of this country. They decide whom to hate when to hate, whom to love and how to make a show out of it. A kamdaar like me cannot have a say in it."

There has been a war of words after Rahul Gandhi's unexpected act of hug in the parliament with BJP and its allies severely criticising the Congress President.

Earlier, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also labelled Gandhi's hug as an "extremely childish act".

On Saturday, Union Minister Rajnath Singh also mocked the act by saying that Rahul Gandhi "began a Chipko movement after hugging PM Modi in the parliament".
Convention on Caspian Sea's Legal Status declares against presence of non-littoral, foreign military forces

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Sun / 12 August 2018 / 15:01

Tehran (ISNA)  Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif stressed that signing of the Convention on Caspian Sea's Legal Status is a significant step to finalize the 21-year talks in this regard.

"In the light of positive determination of the leaders of Caspian Sea littoral states and the friendly and constructive atmosphere in the meetings, we are about to sign the Convention on the Caspian Sea legal status and 6 other agreements and protocols as well as the summit's statement," Mr. Zarif said at the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Caspian Sea Littoral States.

"Signing of the Convention on Caspian Sea's Legal Status is a significant step to finalize the 21-year talks in this regard," he added.

Iranian top diplomat reminded, "Signing of the Convention is not the end of all negotiations over the Caspian Sea and it is actually a milestone in the implementation of the agreements, monitoring the implementation as well as starting the negotiations to sign new and necessary deals".

"Although legal status of seabed and water borders restrictions stays unclear in the Convention, we hope the littoral states will finalize separate agreements in this regard in near future," he said.

Mr. Zarif expressed satisfaction that the involved parties at the Convention on Caspian Sea's Legal Status have agreed upon the monopoly of the presence and sailing of any fleet solely by the flag of one of the littoral states, as well as the prohibition on the presence of foreign military forces.

The ministerial meeting of the Caspian Sea littoral states opened on Saturday at the Kazakh port of Aktau with the participation of the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

The fifth summit of the Caspian Sea Littoral States' heads of governments will be held in Aktau with the presence of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday.

End Item

Tehran (ISNA)  Iranian President described Caspian Sea Legal Regime Convention as a very important step towards enhancing more convergence among the Caspian Sea littoral states and emphasized that the Islamic Republic of Iran, with its maritime access in the north and south, is prepared to play a strategic and regional role for development of trade and transportation.

Speaking on Sunday at Caspian Sea Littoral States Summit in Kazakhstan, President Hassan Rouhani said, "Today, this region has turned into a successful model for guaranteeing peace, stability, friendship, good neighbourliness and progress and this summit is another step in more convergence in the region that needs to be strengthened by taking more steps".

President Hassan Rouhani's address is as follows:

In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful

Your Excellency Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev,

Your Excellency Mr. Ilham Aliyev

Your Excellency Mr. Vladimir Putin,

Your Excellency Mr. Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am truly happy that we are witnessing the Fifth Caspian Sea Littoral States Summit on the International Day of Caspian Sea in the beautiful coastal city of Aktau. I would also like to appreciate the warm and friendly hospitality of my dear friend and brother, Mr Nursultan Nazarbayev, honourable President of Kazakhstan.

After the collapse of former Soviet Union, cooperation between the Caspian Sea littoral states started through the signing of "Tehran Environment Convention" and it included a 25-article statement as the first political document signed between the five countries. In today's historical meeting, we will witness the signing of Caspian Sea Legal Regime Convention that will put emphasis on sovereignty, sovereign rights, eligibility and monopoly of the right to decide on the sea. Legally speaking, this is a major document that monitors all rights and responsibilities of Caspian Sea littoral states. Of course, the formulation of the technical details will be postponed to other separate agreements.

In this convention, important principles such as emphasis on the prohibition of the presence of foreign armed forces and monopoly of any kind of navigation merely with the flags of the five littoral states, the prohibition of allowing foreigners to use the territories of the littoral states for acts of aggression against another littoral state have been mentioned.

Caspian Sea belongs to all its littoral states and any kind of formation and handing over military bases to foreign countries and the passage of warships and even transit of foreign military transit shipments belonging to a country other than Caspian Sea littoral states is forbidden.

Today, although a major step has been taken, we should admit that by the signing of this convention, still important issues remain unresolved in the Caspian Sea, in addition to the fact that the final adoption of the convention is contingent upon following the legal procedures in the five littoral states. I therefore deem it necessary to mention the articles of 1921 and 1940 treaties between Iran and the former Soviet Union and emphasize that in the Legal Regime Convention of the Caspian Sea, the confines of the seabed have not been determined and this will be done in an agreement by the parties later. Furthermore, regarding the status of the coasts of the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is clear that that the aim of the third paragraph of the section regarding the definition of straight baseline asserted in Article 1 of this convention is directed at the special status of Iran's shores. Of course, this convention states that the method of drawing the straight baselines must be determined in a separate agreement by all parties to the convention.

Therefore, negotiations for the final agreement in the field of defining limits and determining the methods of drawing baselines must continue until we reach an agreement and constructive interaction among the five negotiating countries to be able to draft separate agreements in these fields in the future.

Another indication of the agreement is the anticipation of a regular mechanism to ensure the effective implementation of the convention and to review the high-level, regular cooperation and consultation between the five countries. Such an arrangement would be an appropriate opportunity for the development of cooperation in all fields, especially in economic areas, as well as the organisation of regular economic conferences. Therefore, it is imperative that Caspian Sea coastal states commit to continuous monitoring of the good implementation of the Convention of the Caspian Sea Legal Regime as well as other multilateral agreements based on the mechanisms specified in these documents.

Today, six documents for cooperation in the Caspian Sea will be signed, each of which will reinforce cooperation in this critical area. At the same time, protection of the "environment" and "living water resources" are two very important issues that the presidents of the Caspian Sea littoral states are determined to require their national institutions to take serious consideration on these two vital issues in all their actions and projects.

Honourable guests!

The God-given energy resources in the Caspian Sea belongs to its littoral countries' people. The only solution to preventing any kind of disagreement in the areas whose confines have not been determined is either the countries use these resources jointly or refrain from unilaterally exploring and exploiting these areas. I am pleased that friendly and neighbouring countries are committed to their previous agreements on this matter.

In order to achieve the common goals and interaction between the Caspian Sea littoral states and with regard to the historical background as well as the documents that will be signed today by the parties in the field of "transportation" and "business and economic cooperation", it will be appropriate for the member states to take steps to form and establish organisations for cooperation, customs unions, banking cooperation, common free zones, joint transportation companies, joint ventures, tourism, formation of a single customs window, development of multifaceted economic cooperation, facilitation of visa issuance and the move to complete abolition and other facilitating and profitable actions.

End Item

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Egyptian court sentences Muslim Brotherhood leader to life in prison

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 12, 2018 05:26PM

A court in Egypt has sentenced the chairman of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and other senior leaders of the movement to life in prison over charges of alleged incitement to murder and violence during protest rallies five years ago.

The Brotherhood's Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie received life sentence from the Giza Criminal Court on Sunday, along with some other top leaders of the movement, including Mohamed el-Beltagy, Safwat Hegazy, Essam el-Erian and al-Husseini Antar.

The rulings are the latest among several trials and retrials against Badie and other senior leaders of the Brotherhood that ruled the African country before the military, led by incumbent President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, ousted the first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, following mass protests in 2013.

The court on Sunday also sentenced Bassem Ouda, the former supply minister under Morsi's rule, to 15 years in jail. It also sentenced the movement's prominent figures Hisham Kamel, Gamal Fathi, and Ahmed Dahi to 10 years in prison over charges of alleged incitement to commit violent acts in the protests.

All of the convicted leaders have the right to appeal the court ruling one final time.

Badie and the other defendants were convicted on July 15, 2013 of incitement to violence, including the killing of five protesters and injuring of 100 others during rallies in an area in Giza known as al-Bahr al-Azim.

The court had previously sentenced 15 people to life imprisonment in the al-Bahr al-Azim case in September 2014, but an appeals hearing had subsequently overturned the original ruling and ordered a retrial.

Late last month, an Egyptian criminal court referred the files of Badie and other Brotherhood leaders in a separate case to Grand Mufti Shawqi Allamis, Egypt's most senior Muslim religious authority, for his opinion on whether they should be sentenced to death. At the time, the court set September 8 as the date of the final verdict for all the defendants involved.

They were accused of taking part in an illegal protest and being involved in alleged murders during a sit-in held at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square in the capital Cairo in August 2013 in support of Morsi. The peaceful protest ended in the death of some 600 Brotherhood supporters and dozens of police officers when security forces violently dispersed the crowd.

Death penalties have been handed down to hundreds of Brotherhood members on charges such as belonging to an illegal organization or planning to carry out attacks.

Rights groups in Egypt and across the world have recorded cases of irregularities in the trials of political prisoners in the country. They say the army's clampdown on the supporters of Morsi has led to the death of some 1,500 people and the arrest of 22,000 others, including 200 people who have been sentenced to death in mass trials.

The administration of Sisi has outlawed the Brotherhood organization, which is Egypt's oldest opposition movement. The group operated under strict measures during the rule of longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak, who was himself removed from power following an uprising in 2011.

Morsi had been sentenced to death on charges of corruption, escaping from prison and inciting violence before the Court of Cassation overturned that ruling in November last year and ordered a retrial.

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Taliban militants attempt to seize Afghanistan's Ghazni

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 12, 2018 04:51PM

The Taliban militants have attacked the police headquarters and other government buildings in Ghazni amid their threats to seize control of the eastern Afghan city.

Mohammad Sharif Yaftali, the Afghan army's chief of staff, told reporters at a news conference in the capital Kabul on Sunday that heavy fighting was underway to push back the Taliban from city limits. "Strategic locations and centers in the city are under the control of Afghan forces and the Taliban are hiding inside people's homes and shops and resisting."

Lawmakers and local residents, however, said the Taliban were in control of much of the city after an initial attack during the early hours of Friday.

Chaman Shah Ehtemadi, a lawmaker from Ghazni, said, "Only the governor's office, police headquarters and intelligence agency's compound are in the hands of the government and Taliban are pushing to take them."

Mohammad Rahim Hasanyar, a member of the provincial council, said Afghan forces were in defense mode. "No one knows what the exact situation is because there is no communication service."

Ghazni is located on the main highway linking Kabul with Afghanistan's south. The highway has been heavily mined to block the arrival of reinforcements.

Residents were largely blocked inside but some who managed to escape across the fields on the city's periphery said many government buildings were ablaze.

"There was burning and fire and dead bodies everywhere in the city," said Abdul Wakil, a local resident who escaped at a checkpoint into Kabul.

Short videos circulating on social media show a number of heavily armed Taliban militants patrolling the city with a large plume of smoke and flames coming out from the town.

"It is over and the city is taken," says a man standing outside his home, with several Taliban militants nearby.

Lieutenant Colonel Martin O'Donnell, the spokesman for the US forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement that American aircraft had conducted five strikes on Saturday and four more on Sunday. "The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces continue to hold their ground and maintain control of all government centers."

Exact causality figures were not yet clear. Quoting a hospital official, Afghanistan's 1TV television reported over 90 members of security forces and 13 civilians had been killed, with more than 100 wounded. It said there had also been heavy Taliban casualties.

The attack on the strategic city was the most serious blow to the Kabul government since the militants came close to overrunning the western city of Farah in May.

The Taliban were ousted from power in 2001 following a US-led invasion, which has led to the occupation of the country to this day. The group has, however, been involved in widespread militancy, killing thousands of civilians as well as Afghan and US forces.

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Caspian Sea, model for peace, stability, friendship: Iran's Rouhani

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 12, 2018 02:16PM

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says the Caspian Sea is now a model for guaranteeing peace, stability and friendship.

Rouhani made the remarks in an address to the Fifth Caspian Sea Littoral States Summit in the Kazakh port city of Aktau on Sunday, where the presidents of the five states bordering the resource-rich Caspian Sea signed a historic convention on the sea's legal status after more than two decades of discussions.

The Caspian Sea convention has been drawn up in 24 articles with the most important highlights being a ban on military presence of all foreign countries in the sea and transit of military consignments belonging to foreign countries.

Rouhani said, "Today, this region has turned into a successful model for guaranteeing peace, stability, friendship, good neighborliness and progress and this summit is another step toward more convergence in the region that needs to be strengthened by taking more steps."

He described the Caspian Sea convention as a major document that monitors all rights and responsibilities of the sea's littoral states and added, "Of course, the formulation of the technical details will be postponed to other separate agreements."

The Iranian president said the convention bans the presence of foreign armed forces and does not allow foreigners to use the territories of the littoral states for acts of aggression against another littoral state.

He emphasized that the Caspian Sea belongs to all its littoral states and any form of establishment and handing over of military bases to foreign countries and the passage of warships and even transit of foreign military transit shipments belonging to a country other than Caspian Sea littoral states is forbidden.

Rouhani noted that negotiations for the final agreement on defining delimitation borders and determining the methods of drawing baselines must continue until an agreement is reached among the five negotiating countries.

He said the protection of the "environment" and "water living resources" are two very important issues on which the presidents of the Caspian Sea littoral states are determined to require their national institutions to take serious consideration in all their actions and projects.

The Iranian president emphasized that the Caspian Sea's energy resources belong to all its littoral states, saying, "The only solution to preventing any kind of disagreement in the areas whose confines have not been determined is either the countries use these resources jointly or refrain from unilaterally exploring and exploiting these areas."

He said in order to achieve the common goals and interaction among the Caspian Sea littoral states, they should "take steps to form and establish organizations for cooperation, customs unions, banking cooperation, common free zones, joint transportation companies, joint ventures, tourism, formation of a single customs window, development of multifaceted economic cooperation, and facilitation of visa issuance."

He pointed to the benefits of maritime trade and shipping in the Caspian Sea and stated, "The Caspian Sea has the capacity to make transportation of goods and passengers more convenient and cheaper by developing better and more efficient shipping lines between coastal countries."

He proposed that the expansion and modernization of ports in the Caspian Sea can be put on the agenda of the coastal countries.

Rouhani stressed the importance of cooperation in the energy sector, including energy transfer and swaps, in the Caspian Sea and noted that Iran has started working with some coastal countries in this regard and would continue to seriously develop it.

"With its maritime access to the north and south, the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to play its strategic and regional role in development of trade and transportation," he pointed out.

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Egypt's police kill 12 suspected terrorists in northern Sinai: Ministry

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 12, 2018 01:20PM

Egyptian police forces have killed 12 suspected members of a terror outfit affiliated to the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the north of the Sinai Peninsula during an intense gunfight in the region, the interior ministry says.

According to a statement released by the Ministry of Interior of Egypt on Saturday, the heavy shootout occurred near the coastal city of el-Arish after authorities received information that "terrorist elements" were hiding in the area and were planning to carry out hostile operations.

Acting on the tip-off, counterterrorism security forces besieged the designated area and began exchanging fire with the terrorists, who were reportedly members of the Velayat Sinai outfit.

The hideout was located in Malalaha area, which is adjacent to the el-Arish police station, the statement added.

The terror group, previously known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, pledged allegiance to Daesh in 2014, and has mainly attacked security forces in the restive region of Sinai Peninsula since its inception in 2013. The terrorists have so far killed hundreds of members of security forces.

The ministry statement did not report any casualties among security forces. Neither did it specify the exact time and date of the incident. However, it added that four automatic rifles, a sniper rifle, some ammunition and a number of improvised explosive devices had been found at the site.

Operation Sinai 2018, which involves security forces mobilized from the air force, navy, army and police, aims to tighten control on border districts and clean up areas where there are terrorist hotbeds. The Sinai Peninsula has been under a state of emergency since October 2014.

According to figures provided by the military, more than 250 suspected terrorists and at least 35 soldiers have so far been killed in the Sinai 2018 anti-terror operation.

Terrorists have been targeting both government forces and civilians with terror attacks, taking advantage of the turmoil in Egypt that erupted after the country's first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was ousted in a military coup in July 2013.

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Caspian Sea states sign landmark convention on sea's legal status

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 12, 2018 12:56PM

The presidents of the five states bordering the resource-rich Caspian Sea have signed a historic convention on the sea's legal status after more than two decades of discussions.

The deal was signed by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his counterparts from Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, Vladimir Putin, Ilham Aliyev, Nursultan Nazarbayev and Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, respectively, after the 5th Caspian Summit in the Kazakh port city of Aktau on Sunday.

The Caspian Sea convention has been drawn up in 24 articles with the most important highlights being a ban on military presence of all foreign countries in the sea and transit of military consignments belonging to foreign countries.

The convention emphasizes that the Caspian Sea belongs to all littoral states, prohibiting establishment and handing over of any kind of military bases to foreign countries.

The Caspian Sea Legal Regime Convention also puts emphasis on sovereignty and sovereign rights of littoral states while recognizing their right to decide on the sea.

Caspian states sign six documents for strategic, economic cooperation

In a related development also on Sunday, high-ranking officials of the five Caspian Sea littoral states signed six documents for strategic and economic cooperation in the presence of their respective countries' presidents.

The sides agreed to cooperate in transportation, trade and economy, the fight against terrorism, and the battle against organized crime as well as border security.

Caspian Sea states will continue talks on unresolved issues: Zarif

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif earlier commended the solidarity among the Caspian Sea littoral states, saying that the five countries would further continue cooperation on "unresolved issues."

"Day of solidarity of Caspian Littoral States: Codifying cooperation on environment, shipping, fisheries, sustainable development & security w/o foreign military presence," Zarif said in a post on his official Twitter account on Sunday.

He added that the five Caspian Sea states agreed to "continue friendly dialog on unresolved issues of delimitation & shares of sea & its resources."

Addressing a meeting of the Caspian Sea states' foreign ministers on Saturday night, Zarif said the convention on the sea's legal status would be a very important step, which would put an end to 21 years of negotiations.

"The signing of this convention is not an end to all negotiations and measures in the Caspian Sea, but it is in fact a turning and start point to implement the agreements and supervise the implementation as well as open the [future] talks to sign new and necessary agreements," the top Iranian diplomat pointed out.

Before heading to Aktau, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said under the convention, all legal issues of the sea should be implemented through the consensus of the five littoral states, stressing that the agreement did not include dividing the waters.

"The convention stipulates that all legal issues of the Caspian Sea are operational and applicable only through the consensus of the five countries, which is very important and fundamental," he said.

Speaking to IRIB in an interview on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said, "We have to a large extent made good progress and maybe more than 80 percent of the points demanded by the [littoral] states have been considered and included in this convention."

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water by area and is variously classified as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea.

The Caspian Sea littoral states have been discussing a convention on the sea's legal status for years, which will finally turn out to be a comprehensive document outlining the duties and rights of the five littoral states as well as the framework of cooperation among these countries.

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Uzbekistan confirms meetings with Taliban reps

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 12, 2018 08:40AM

Representatives from Afghanistan's Taliban militant group have held talks with senior officials in Uzbekistan, reportedly discussing a range of issues including transport, power lines, and the prospect of peace in war-torn Afghanistan.

Media reports said on Saturday that a delegation representing the Taliban had visited Uzbekistan from August 6 to 10 at the invitation of Uzbek officials.

In a terse announcement, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry's website confirmed the visit, saying, "The sides exchanged views on the prospects of the peace process in Afghanistan."

The Taliban claimed that during the four-day visit in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, Taliban political chief Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai met with Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov as well as the country's presidential envoy for Afghanistan, Ismatilla Irgashev.

In a statement to the Associated Press, Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban's political office, claimed that the bilateral talks had covered everything from international troop withdrawal from Afghanistan to peace prospects and possible Uzbek-funded development projects that could include railway lines and electricity.

The development came months after Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev offered to host peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban militant group.

"We stand ready to create all necessary conditions, at any stage of the peace process, to arrange direct talks between the government of Afghanistan and Taliban movement," Mirziyoyev told an international peace conference in the Uzbek capital in March.

Backed by the international community, the Tashkent conference endorsed Kabul's offer of direct talks without any preconditions and with the ultimate goal of reaching a comprehensive peace agreement with the militants.

But the Taliban have so far ignored Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's offer of unconditional peace negotiations even though their representatives met US officials in Qatar last month and are to hold another meeting next month.

Uzbekistan is seen as a possible peace broker between the Afghan government and the Taliban, favoring good relations with Kabul and contacts with the Taliban political office in Doha.

The Taliban were ousted from power in 2011 following a US invasion and ongoing occupation of the country. The militant group has, however, been involved in widespread militancy, killing thousands of civilians as well as Afghan and American forces.

Since late last year, the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group has also established a foothold in Afghanistan's eastern and northern regions, worsening the security situation there.

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Saudi side agrees to new Yemen talks amid backlashes

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 12, 2018 08:32AM

The UN special envoy to Yemen says warring sides in the most impoverished Arab nation will meet in Geneva next month to discuss a transitional governance deal.

Consultations are due to begin in Geneva on Sept. 6 on a framework for peace talks and confidence-building measures, Martin Griffiths said in remarks published by Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper Saturday.

The UN, he said, is primarily trying to reach an agreement between the Saudi-backed side and Yemen's Houthis "on the issues essential to ending the war and on a national unity government in which everyone participates."

"This will require a signed agreement that includes setting up a transitional political operation under a national unity government ... and putting in place security arrangements for the withdrawal of all armed groups in Yemen and disarming them."

The last round of talks in 2016 ended with the Saudi-backed side walking out after the Houthis insisted on the formation of a government before they quit three main cities, including Sana'a.

Griffiths did not say whether the Saudis and their proxies in Yemen have changed their position which is crucial to ending the three-year conflict.

Saudi Arabia, backed by Western powers including the United States and Britain and the UAE, launched a war on Yemen in 2015 to reinstate former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi who had resigned and fled to Riyadh.

The war has killed more than 14,000 people and pushed Yemen to the verge of starvation after seeing most of its infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and bridges, destroyed in Saudi airstrikes.

On Thursday, Saudi warplanes attacked a school bus in a market in the town of Dahyan in the northwestern province of Sa'ada, killing at least 50 civilians, mainly children.

Col. Turki al-Malki, a spokesman for the Saudi military, insisted that the attack was a "legitimate military action" as he accused the Houthis of recruiting children and using them in the battlefields.

Last week, Saudi attacks on a hospital and a fish market in the strategic port city of Hudaydah killed at least 55 civilians and wounded 170, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Malki said the attack in Sa'ada came after Yemeni fighters fired a missile at the kingdom's south, killing one person and wounding 11 others.

Houthi leaders have warned that the fighters have more game-changing missiles in their arsenal which could hit Saudi Arabia deeper, demanding that the kingdom stop its aerial attacks on Yemen.

With international pressure mounting over the rising number of civilian casualties in Saudi airstrikes, a massive operation jointly with the UAE to seize the Red Sea port of Hudaydah has ground to a halt in the face of stiff resistance.

On Saturday, Yemenis in the southwestern city of Dhamar took to the streets to condemn the Saudi massacre of schoolchildren and vowed resistance against the invaders.

Griffiths hoped that the new consultations between the warring sides in Geneva next month would lead to direct negotiations.

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Caspian Summit Delivers Less Than Expected

Bruce Pannier August 12, 2018

The leaders of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan met in Aqtau, Kazakhstan, on August 12 for what was supposed to be the long-awaited signing of a convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea.

The leaders met, and signed the convention, but after more than 20 years it was clear that some of the same issues that have prevented an agreement that suited all five countries remained.

While the five presidents agreed on most of the issues, Iranian President Hassan Rohani mentioned that the delimitation of the sea remains an issue for Iran. Rohani said further talks would be needed to resolve the division of the Caspian, though it was unclear if he was speaking about the 22-kilometer stretch from each country's shore that is considered the territorial waters of each state, or the lines drawn to the maritime midway point where states meet.

Rohani also indicated further talks would be needed to clarify obligations to the responsibilities of the littoral states for guaranteeing the environmental safety of the Caspian.

In his opening remarks, Rohani praised the part of the agreement that excludes any foreign military presence in the Caspian, but in his closing statement he mentioned that should include shipment of foreign militaries' cargo across the Caspian. Rohani did not name any countries but he almost surely was referring to the agreement the United States has to ship cargo from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan's Aqtau and Quryq ports.

In what was perhaps a telling remark, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov concluded his opening remarks by saying another summit should be held in Turkmenistan.

The leaders used their opening statements to highlight aspects of the Caspian agreement that were most important for their individual countries.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev both stressed the trade links that would surely expand with greater shipping across the Caspian. Both Nazarbaev and Aliev spoke of a new trade bridge between Asia and Europe.

President Rohani echoed this message pointing out trade among Caspian states was still only a small fraction of what it could be.

He touted the potential of railway connections from the eastern and western side of the Caspian to Iran and on to the Persian Gulf, rather than referring to an Asian-European trade route. Aliyev and Berdymukhammedov also mentioned the railways passing through their countries to Iran.

Toward the end of his opening statement, Aliyev also drew attention to the ongoing conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, saying the unresolved issue was an obstacle to fully developing trade potential through the Caucasus.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his opening remarks and closing statement that the parts of the agreement that dealt with fighting terrorism were especially important given the Caspian's proximity to Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Although the five presidents signed documents at the end of the summit, it would be difficult to qualify the event as a clear success. It was evident there are still unresolved matters, particularly from Iran's perspective.

The fact that there was even mention of another summit in the future could indicate that indeed, while the convention on the legal status of the Caspian was signed, key issues still need to be discussed.

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

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/qishloq-ovozi -caspian-summit-delivers-less -than-expected/29428866.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Taliban, Afghan Forces 'Continue To Battle' For Key City

RFE/RL August 12, 2018

The battle for the eastern Afghan city of Ghazni has continued into the evening for a third day as government forces and Taliban fighters engage in intense clashes, reports say.

The Afghan government forces received reinforcement from other provinces, including Khost, Logar, and Paktiya, Defense Ministry spokesman Ghafoor Ahmad Javed told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan.

Ghazni, the capital of the province of the same name, is located on the key highway between Afghanistan's two largest cities, Kabul and Kandahar.

Javed reiterated earlier comments by Afghan military officials that security forces remained in control of key government offices and that a clearance operation against the Taliban was ongoing.

Provincial council member Nasir Ahmad Faqiri said fresh fighting erupted in the morning of August 12 near the police and spy agency headquarters, as well as the governor's palace.

At least 80 members of Afghanistan's security forces have been killed in three days of fighting, according to Faqiri.

"Only the police headquarters, governor's office, and a few departments are under Afghan forces' control," said Amanullah Kamrani, deputy head of the provincial council. "The rest are under the Taliban fighters' control."

An AFP reporter on the ground said Taliban fighters continued to roam the city, torching government offices and in control of a number of police checkpoints.

RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reported that the Kabul-Kandahar highway has been blocked, leaving hundreds of people stranded.

At the Kandahar main bus station, a woman who gave only her first name, Amina, told RFE/RL that she was unable to return home to Kabul.

"We've been stuck here for three days," Amina said. "We can't afford a hotel room, we don't have money to buy food. We are spending nights outside."

"It's our third night here," said Said Mohammad, who was among a large group of people stranded at the bus station.

"We ask the government to reopen the highway as soon as possible because a lot of women and sick people are stuck here in this heat."

Telecommunication services were reportedly shut down in Ghazni due to the clashes, making information difficult to verify.

Amanullah Kamrani, the deputy head of the Ghazni Provincial Council, told RFE/RL that the residents were facing a severe shortage of food and drinking water.

The sick and those wounded in the clashes were not able to get medical assistance, Kamrani said.

The Afghan National Army's chief of staff, General Mohammad Sharif Yaftali, said that he hoped the security forces would "completely change the situation in Ghazni in the next two days and restore peace and stability there."

A spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Lieutenant Colonel Martin O'Donnell, said U.S. aircraft conducted strikes on August 11-12, adding that Afghan government forces "continue to hold their ground and maintain control of all government centers."

According to the Defense Ministry spokesman, Afghan forces are moving "slowly" and carefully, and restrain from using intensive air strikes to prevent civilian casualties.

Javed told RFE/RL that militants were hiding in people's homes and shops, essentially using the civilians as human shields.

The Taliban launched their assault on Ghazni early on August 10 in the latest in a series of attempts by the militants to capture urban centers.

On August 11, Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammad Radmanesh told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that the city was under control of the security forces, but said clearance operations were continuing.

A spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan also described the fight for the city as a clearance operation, with sporadic clashes between security forces and militants.

Meanwhile, Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danish said more than 150 Taliban fighters, 25 security forces, and a local reporter had been killed in the fighting.

The Western-backed government in Kabul has been struggling to fend off the Taliban and other militant groups since the withdrawal of most NATO troops in 2014.

In May, the Taliban attacked the western city of Farah. After a day of intense fighting, Afghan commandos and U.S. air strikes drove the group to the outskirts of the city.

With reporting by AFP, dpa, Tolo News, and RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/taliban-afghan-forces-continue -to-battle-for-key-city/29428548.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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The woman, who sustained injuries to her lower back, told police that her husband was unemployed and was addicted to drugs.

The incident took place when the woman came to her mother's residence. She went to take water from the refrigerator when her husband shot at her and fled. (Representational/ANI)

New Delhi: A 22-year-old woman was injured on Sunday after she was allegedly shot at by her husband in Dwarka's Mahavir Enclave, police said.

The incident took place when the woman came to her mother's residence. She went to take water from the refrigerator when her husband shot at her and fled, a senior officer said. The woman sustained injuries in her lower back.

However, she was declared fit for statement by the doctor, the officer said.

In her statement to the police, the woman alleged that her husband was unemployed. He used to work as an ambulance driver in a hospital and was addicted to drugs.

They shared bitter relationship as he used to demand money from her for drugs, police said.

The couple has been married for five years now, he said.

A case has been registered and the accused is yet to be arrested, the officer added.
Afghan Electoral Body Seeks To Bar 35 Candidates Over Alleged Ties To Armed Groups

RFE/RL August 12, 2018

Afghanistan's top electoral body has recommended barring 35 candidates from running in the upcoming parliamentary polls after it alleged they had links to armed groups.

The Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC) on August 11 listed the names of the candidates, which included 12 currently serving members of parliament. It also warned 45 other candidates.

The IECC announced plans for the move on August 5, but said the list was not complete at that time and that candidates could appeal.

The names of the candidates have been sent to the Independent Election Commission (IEC), which will announce the final electoral rolls. Most of the candidates on the IECC disqualification list have already filed appeals.

The IECC is led by members from the Interior and Defense ministries, the National Directorate of Security, and the Independent Directorate of Local Governance.

The IECC said the disqualification list was finalized after a monthlong investigation after hundreds of complaints were received from voters about candidates in 34 provinces.

Some candidates were allegedly involved in cases of murder, rape, and extortion, the committee said.

"We disqualified the candidates because we want to clean the process and finally hold free and fair elections," IECC spokesman Alirez Rohani said.

Some of those named are influential lawmakers and strongmen, and the decision could raise political tensions in the country.

"The IECC did not even provide the opportunity to the disqualified candidates to defend themselves," said Fawzia Kofi, a lawmaker from Badakhshan Province who was on the list.

Kofi has been accused of funding an armed group to retain control over her constituency. She has rejected the allegations.

"These are politically motivated accusations. My supporters will start a protest march to prove my innocence," Kofi said.

Tolo News reported that officials and residents of Kunduz criticized the decision to disqualify a candidate from the region, closing down the local IECC office and sending a letter to the committee to express their anger.

"We want the commission to respond to our demand and explain that why this young candidate has been dropped from the list? Land grabbers weren't disqualified, but this youth who is a defender of human rights and democracy has been removed from the list," said Turyalai Kakar, a member of the Kunduz Provincial Council.

Some 2,300 candidates across Afghanistan have filed to run in the parliamentary elections, scheduled for October 20.

The vote is seen as a crucial test for democracy in the war-ravaged country and is seen as a key test of the credibility and popularity of President Ashraf Ghani's government.

The presidential election is scheduled for April 20, 2019.

With reporting by Reuters, Tolo News, and Pajhwok Afghan News

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghan-election- committee-bars-candidates-with-alleged- links-armed-groups/29428301.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Five States Sign Convention On Caspian Legal Status

RFE/RL August 12, 2018

Meeting in the Kazakh port city of Aqtau, the leaders of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan have signed a new convention on the legal status of the resource-rich Caspian Sea -- a matter disputed between the five neighbors for more than 20 years.

The leaders provided no details of the agreement in their speeches before the signing of the document.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the settlement of the Caspian Sea's legal status "creates conditions for bringing cooperation between the countries to a qualitatively new level of partnership, for the development of close cooperation on different trajectories."

His Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rohani, said that the delimitation of oil- and gas-rich Caspian seabed will require additional agreements between littoral states.

Rohani also hailed a clause in the convention that prevents non-Caspian countries from deploying military forces on the Caspian Sea, saying, "The Caspian Sea only belongs to the Caspian states."

And Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev said the agreement allows for the construction of underwater oil and gas pipelines, as well as setting national quotas for fishing.

The parties agreed to set up a "special mechanism of regular five-party consultations under the auspices of the Foreign Ministries" to implement the provisions of the convention, Nazarbaev also said.

The summit was also attended by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov of Turkmenistan.

The five countries also signed agreements on trade and economic relations, transportation, and the fight against terrorism.

Debates on whether the Caspian is a sea or a lake have been ongoing since the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, leaving five countries with shorelines on the inland sea instead of two -- the Soviet Union and Iran.

If deemed a sea, the five countries would draw lines extending from their shores to the midway point with littoral neighbors, while classifying it as a lake would mean the resources would be divided equally among those five countries.

The countries have been working on an agreement to resolve the issue since 1996, the Kremlin said.

At stake are resources including trillions of dollars' worth of hydrocarbons in the seabed, which holds about 50 billion barrels of oil and nearly 9 trillion cubic meters of natural gas in proven or probable reserves.

A draft of the agreement, posted briefly on Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's website in June and obtained by RFE/RL, suggested that the countries would agree in Aqtau that the Caspian is a sea.

With reporting by Reuters, TASS, and Interfax

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-iran -azerbaijan-kazakhstan-turkmenistan- caspian-sea-summit/29428300.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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'Milestone event': Five states sign historic deal on status of Caspian Sea

Published time: 12 Aug, 2018 11:01

Vladimir Putin attended the Caspian Sea summit in Kazakhstan which he said has "milestone" significance. There five littoral powers finally made a breakthrough on trade, security and environment following 20 years of talks.

This year's meeting has been "an extraordinary, milestone event," Russian President Vladimir Putin told his counterparts in Kazakhstan's port city of Aktau, where the summit took place. Leaders of the Caspian Five came there to seal a convention on the legal status of the sea washing shores of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan.

"It is crucial that the convention governs  maritime shipping and fishing, sets out military cooperation among [Caspian] nations and enshrines our states' exclusive rights and responsibilities over the sea's future," Putin said. He added the landmark accord also limits military presence in the Caspian Sea to the five littoral countries.

From now on, no country from outside the region will be allowed to deploy troops or establish military bases on the Caspian shores. The five states themselves will also decide on how to deal with issues currently affecting the Caspian Sea region, such drugs and terrorism

"Hotspots, including Middle East and Afghanistan, aren't far away from the Caspian Sea," the President stated. "Therefore, the very interests of our peoples require our close cooperation."

The summit may give boost to digitalization of commerce, mutual trade and logistics, Putin suggested. "Transportation is one of key factors of sustainable growth and cooperation of our countries," he argued. Additionally, the five states will establish the Caspian Economic Forum "to develop ties between our countries' businesses," Putin told.

The Caspian Sea is home to some of the 48 billion barrels of oil and 292 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in proven offshore reserves. A range of important pipelines are going through the Caspian Sea, connecting Central Asia and Caucasus with the Mediterranean.

It took nearly two decades before discussions could open up between the five states. Andrey Grozin of Russia's CIS Institute told RIA Novosti that each Caspian nation was pursuing own economic and geopolitical interests "even at the cost of the neighbors," adding that "such conduct is hard to blame as ethical rules don't work in international politics."

A breakthrough was made after Iran made several concessions during the talks, he explained: "The Iranian position hampered signing the Caspian Sea convention during long time."

Consequently, all sides managed to find compromise. "This agreement can't be called someone's win or someone's lose. Every country has softened its stance, even those who will benefit the most from defining the Caspian Sea status, namely Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan," he said.

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Fighting Still Raging in Afghan City of Ghazni

By Ayaz Gul August 12, 2018

Sporadic clashes raged for a third day Sunday for the control of Afghanistan's southeastern city of Ghanzi amid conflicting claims about whether the government or the Taliban insurgency controlled key installations.

Afghan army chief General Mohammad Sharif Yaftali told a news conference Sunday in Kabul his forces were conducting counter-offensives to evict Taliban fighters from the city.

The general noted that insurgents were entrenched in civilian populations and market places, forcing Afghan forces to move carefully and slowly to prevent civilian casualties.

Afghan security forces remained in control of all strategic positions in Ghazni, including the office of the provincial governor, police headquarters, the main prison and the office of the Afghan spy agency, Yaftali said.

"Afghan security forces in the next two days will be able to restore peace and stability to Ghanzi and reopen the highway to enable our countrymen to travel from south and west to Kabul," vowed the army chief.

Hospital officials and residents fleeing the city have told local reporters the provincial hospital received more than 100 bodes of Afghan soldiers and police personnel, and said the hospital was running out of space.

Taliban insurgents also assaulted and overran the Ajristan district west of Ghazni, killing dozens of Afghan security forces. The Taliban is said to be controlling most of the 18 districts in Ghazni province.

Emergency meeting

President Ashraf Ghani late on Sunday chaired an emergency meeting of top security and intelligence officials to take stock of the situation in the troubled province.

Later he said in a series of tweets that top security officials briefed him on the developing military and humanitarian situation in the city and the province.

Insurgents ambushed a large Afghan military convoy heading for Ghazni late Sunday, sparking heavy clashes about 80 kilometers from the embattled city, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Muajid told VOA.

Afghan television station TOLOnews quoted its sources as confirming the insurgent attack on the convoy while it was traveling through Maidan Wardak province. The television said there were no immediate reports of casualties, while Mujahid claimed the Taliban attack killed dozens of Afghan soldiers.

The Taliban on Friday staged a large-scale attack from multiple directions to try to capture Ghazni, which is located on the main highway linking northern and southern Afghan provinces, including the national capital of Kabul.

The fighting has brought the traffic to a halt, stranding hundreds of passengers for the past three days.

Hostilities in Ghazni have disrupted telecommunication services, making it nearly impossible to verify conflicting claims about whether the Taliban or the Afghan government controlled key buildings in the city.

Afghan reporters tweeted Sunday that insurgents killed dozens of government troops before overrunning and setting on fire the provincial police headquarters in Ghanzi. Hospitals in the city reportedly were running out of space due large number of casualties.

Kabul again accuses Pakistan's ISI

Yaftali directly accused neighboring Pakistan's spy agency, ISI, of supporting the Taliban, though he did not immediately offer any evidence. "All terrorists stop and receive training in Pakistan before entering Afghanistan," he asserted.

Yaftali repeated the allegations, after a gap of several months because recent wide-ranging talks between the two countries have eased mutual tensions and decreased terror allegations against each other.

Pakistani officials were not available to respond immediately to the Afghan army's charges. Islamabad denies it is helping the Taliban.

Taliban delegation travels to Uzbekistan

Meanwhile, Afghan officials insisted Sunday that neighboring Uzbekistan consulted Kabul before hosting a Taliban political delegation last week for talks.

A Taliban spokesman confirmed its officials from the Qatar-based political office concluded a four-day visit to Uzbekistan on Friday, where it held talks with the foreign minister and the Uzbek presidential envoy for Afghanistan.

The insurgent spokesman added that the two sides among other things exchanged views "about the withdrawal of foreign forces and how to achieve peace in Afghanistan."

The Taliban wants U.S. and NATO forces to leave Afghanistan before participating in any intra-Afghan peace talks. The insurgent group last month held a preliminary round of talks with a high-level American delegation in Qatar. But the Taliban simultaneously has not eased battlefield activities, making territorial advances and inflicting heavy casualties on government forces.

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Rumors, Misinformation Swirl After Federal, Regional Forces Clash in Ethiopia

By Salem Solomon August 12, 2018

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said Saturday that Ethiopia would remain a unified country, despite what he characterized as "a lot of people talking" about secession with divisive rhetoric and false accusations.

Abiy said on state television that the suggestions of dissolving the federal state were connected to ongoing conversations with government officials in the Somali region to restore calm after the abrupt ouster of the regional president, Abdi Mohamoud Omar.

"The people have social connections and live among each other," Abiy said. "And to think that the people will separate just like that is a wrong way of thinking," he added, speaking in Amharic about violence in the region.

Rumors spread

On August 4, Ethiopian federal troops confronted regional forces in Jijiga, capital of the Somali region. That led to dozens of deaths, hundreds of displacements and Abdi's resignation.

Residents in the region, more than 95 percent of whom are ethnic Somalis, are now sorting through the aftermath of the violent incident.

In the wake of the fighting, rumors and hearsay have spread quickly on social media.

In his remarks, Abiy acknowledged widespread rumors and misinformation online and within local communities and urged people to think carefully when presented with information that could be ideologically driven.

"It is important that Ethiopians deal with this with a calm spirit, and when some information comes, take their time to analyze it, and think about it and verify it, after asking questions about where the information comes from," Abiy said.

Media access remains curtailed in Ethiopia, particularly in the Somali region, making it difficult to verify local reports and purported government statements.

Earlier this week, Addis Standard, an online, independent news organization focused on developments in Ethiopia, published a report about the federal army disarming the Liyu police, a special force based in the Somali region involved in the recent fighting, but then retracted the post after state TV said the information was based on an unsubstantiated rumor.

In a tweet, the news organization said its story came from a "senior military source."

Internet blackouts

The Reuters news agency reported that to contain the spread of misinformation  and potentially thwart efforts to organize protests  internet access was blocked for days following the clash in Jijiga.

That step hasn't been taken since the federal government lifted a state of emergency earlier this year.

Rights groups criticize internet blackouts, but some defend what they consider to be efforts to contain dangerous misinformation that could incite reprisal attacks.

"The internet (social media) has brought out the beast within our soul," Taye Atske-selassie, Ethiopia's ambassador to Egypt, tweeted. "The burning question is shall we keep on glamorising the internet or check it so that it isn't used to incite the killing a fellow human; i.e human rights violations."

Beyond controlling the flow of information, internet shutdowns also affect local economies. Advocacy groups and think tanks estimate that the blackout in eastern Ethiopia has cost more than $125,000.

Heated rhetoric

Other government officials have used social media in an attempt to sway public opinion.

The interim Somali regional president, Ahmed Abdi Mohamed, recently published a Facebook Live video containing incendiary remarks connected to the federal incursion in the Somali region.

"He called on the locals to resist, to fight back. And he used language that could be considered tribal in nature," Zecharias Zelalem, an Ethiopian journalist who focuses on events in East Africa for the news site OPride.com, told VOA.

That included making thinly veiled references to taking up arms against the Oromos, one of Ethiopia's ethnic groups.

"He is not someone whom I could see playing a part to reconcile the different feuding entities in Jijiga and in the Somali region," Zecharias added.

Buildup to clash

Weeks of failed talks and progressively heightening tension preceded this month's showdown.

Meetings between Abiy and the ousted regional president, known also as Abdi Illey, failed to produce a breakthrough.

"There was no way that an Ethiopia with both Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and (the) Somali regional government('s) Abdi Mohamoud Omar would be compatible," Zecharias said.

The conflict spilled over earlier this month, when forces under Abdi's command stormed Dire Dawa, a city under federal jurisdiction.

That prompted the federal government to send troops to Jijiga, and experts have questioned the legality of both actions.

"By all accounts, it doesn't seem to have been the best-executed plan on the part of the federal government," Safia Aidid, a researcher and expert on the region, told VOA.

"On paper, it may or may not be [constitutional]," Zecharias said. But, he added, the regional government has violated the constitution on multiple occasions, with "a president who has gone rogue in many senses."

'Brotherly people'

For those living in areas affected by violence, whether deliberations in the coming weeks are inclusive and lead to lasting peace is all that matters.

"These are neighborly people. These are brotherly people," Aidid said.

But a cycle of violence has persisted. Armed Oromos massacred Somali villagers in mid-July, Zecharias said, and days later Liyu police forces massacred Oromos in retaliation.

Abiy made his remarks Saturday after visiting the home of Abune Merkorios, a high-ranking leader of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church who, earlier this month, returned to Ethiopia after nearly three decades in exile in the U.S.

Merkorios' return follows the resolution of long-standing divisions within the church after deliberations mediated by Abiy.

It's those kinds of discussions, based on facts and reconciliation, that Abiy hopes will create a path for peace in the Somali region.

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Caspian Sea Countries Sign Landmark Deal

By VOA News August 12, 2018

The leaders of the five countries bordering the Caspian Sea have signed a landmark agreement on its legal status.

The agreement signed Sunday in Aktau, Kazakhstan, by the presidents of Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan comes after more than 20 years of negotiations on how to divide the resources of the world's largest inland body of water.

The pact establishes rules for declaring each country's territorial waters and fishing zones, but it fails to address how to deal with the seabed, which has potentially vast oil and gas reserves.

Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, according to the news agency Interfax, said "this issue will be settled additionally in the course of agreements between the relevant parties.''

Until the fall of the Soviet Union, the sea had been considered equal territory of Moscow and Iran. But as new border states emerged the configuration of territory became an issue.

Tehran has insisted on either splitting the sea into five equal parts or jointly developing all of its resources. None of its neighbors have agreed to those proposals.

Speaking to reporters after the signing the deal Sunday, all five leaders praised it as historic event, but provided little detail about provisions on splitting the seabed.

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Zimbabwe Decries US Renewal of Sanctions

By Columbus Mavhunga August 12, 2018

Zimbabwe's government says the recent renewal of sanctions imposed on the country by the U.S. government is going to further strain the southern African's nation's ailing economy.

President Donald Trump last week signed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Amendment Act of 2018, also known as Zidera.

Zimbabwe's Foreign Minister Sibusiso Moyo lamented the move.

"Commerce between the two states remain hampered by non-existent bank to bank relations," Moyo said. "Even the amended Zidera Act now acknowledges the economic reforms being achieved by this government and as well the bill's noting that the country has paid its arrears to the IMF and calls for further re-engagement in this areas in order to conclude in other areas.

Both companies from Zimbabwe and U.S., as well individuals are subject to penalties. It cannot therefore naively be claimed that Zidera is targeted at a few individuals and does not affect trade between the U.S. and Zimbabwe, as sometimes the international media has sometimes painted it."

The United States and most Western countries introduced sanctions on Zimbabwe's leadership following reports of election rigging and human rights abuses in 2002 when Robert Mugabe was in power.

Zidera set forth steps Zimbabwe needed to take to have sanctions removed, including insuring last month's election was free and fair.

When Mugabe's successor came into power last November, President Emmerson Mnangagwa promised to normalize relations with the West by addressing the issues the West had raised.

Moyo on Sunday said Mnangagwa's government had been shocked by the renewal of the sanctions.

"We do not require any form of restrictive measures around our necks at all as people of Zimbabwe," Moyo said. "We appreciate that there was Zidera and the process of unshackling it is a process and cannot be an event. We have been engaging the U.S. government, the U.S. Senate, in this aspect and we believe that a lot of the issues, which are contained the amended act, have already been implemented."

The former army general gave examples of the restoration of the rule of law, credible elections, military neutrality in civilian matters and inviting international observers to the July 2018 general election.

The opposition, however, has challenged the election results and Zimbabwe's constitutional court is expected to hear the application in two weeks.

The ruling Zanu PF was declared winner, which many said was peaceful compared to previous elections. But the army reportedly used live ammunition and killed at least six people during opposition protests of the vote. Moyo said Sunday the government regretted the incident.

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Malians Vote in Presidential Runoff

By VOA News August 12, 2018

Malians have voted in a presidential runoff election Sunday amid heavy security to thwart violence, deciding whether to hand incumbent Ibrahim Boubacar Keita a second five-year term or replace him with opposition challenger Soumalia Cisse.

Counting was underway in some of the 23,000 polling stations across the country after voting ended at 1800 UTC.

Keita, 73, took 42 percent of the vote in a field of 24 candidates in the first round of voting, compared to 18 percent for the 68-year-old Cisse, who also lost the 2013 election to Keita.

The earlier round of voting was marred by armed attacks blamed on jihadists, including some linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State, and ethnic violence that closed several hundred voting places.

The government stepped up security for Sunday's run-off, deploying 6,000 troops in addition to the 30,000 who already were on duty.

But despite the added security, a polling station president was killed in the northern Timbuktu region and the polling station there was burned, according to the Citizen Observation Pool of Mali which had more than 2,000 observers. The organization reported several incidents Sunday.

In north and central Mali more than 50 polling stations closed before noon because of the threats by extremists, the organization said.

Security services said Saturday they had disrupted a plot to to launch "targeted attacks" in the capital Bamako hours before voting started.

In the northern village of Kiname, one resident told Agence France-Presse that "armed men came and took all the voting material to the river bank and set it on fire."

The election observer West Africa Network for Peacebuilding said there was "no voting in Toguerekotia in the Sossobe district (of the central Mopti region) because of insecurity."

Keita voted in the capital, later telling cheering supporters, "I pledge that all the difficulties we faced are now behind us."

Cisse accused Keita's government of fraud in the first round of voting, but the constitutional court upheld the result.

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UN Stepping Up Ebola Screening of Refugees Fleeing DR Congo

By Lisa Schlein August 12, 2018

The U.N. refugee agency reports it is stepping up efforts to reduce the risk of the spread of the deadly Ebola virus as refugees flee DR Congo. Latest estimates put the number of confirmed and probable cases of Ebola in eastern DRC at 49, including 38 deaths.

The U.N. refugee agency is working closely with DRC authorities and other agencies on actions to contain Ebola on the national and regional level. But, its main focus is to monitor possible Ebola infections among refugees fleeing across the border, mainly to Uganda, from conflict ridden North Kivu and Ituri.

UNHCR spokesman, William Spindler says the number of newly arriving refugees into Uganda from these two Ebola affected provinces increased during July from 170 a day to 250 a day. He says the majority currently is crossing at the Kisoro border point.

"So UNHCR is working with WHO, UNICEF and other partners and with the Ministry of Health of Uganda to intensify screening for Ebola at all border entry points. And, additional health workers have been deployed in the border districts to improve response capacity," he said.

Spindler notes the World Health Organization is not recommending any restriction on the movement of people. Therefore, he says UNHCR is urging countries neighboring DRC to allow refugees in need of protection to enter their territory and to include them into preparedness and response plans and activities.

The UNHCR says refugees are at the same risk of contracting and transmitting the Ebola virus disease as local farmers, merchants, business people and others moving through the area. Therefore, it urges governments and local communities not to adopt measures that single out refugees. Those measures may not be scientifically sound and will only serve to stigmatize and restrict refugees' freedom of movement.

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NRL's Sun Imaging Telescopes Fly on NASA Parker Solar Probe

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS180810-19

Release Date: 8/10/2018 1:01:00 PM

From US Naval Research Laboratory Public Affairs

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's unique expertise in sun-viewing telescopes will be an integral part of the historic NASA Parker Solar Probe mission scheduled to launch Aug. 11 to better understand how the Sun affects our solar system.

The mission to "touch the Sun" is 60 years in the making and will bring a spacecraft carrying a suite of instruments the closest ever before to the Sun with NRL's Space Science Division's coronagraph telescopes called the Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe, or WISPR, being the only imager.

WISPR is built with telescopes that create a solar eclipse type image by blocking the actual sun so its atmosphere, or corona, can be captured. These images show the Sun's emissions, including streamers, plumes and the energetic coronal mass ejections that burst from the star.

According to Dr. Russell Howard, the NRL WISPR principal investigator, and a leading world authority on coronagraph telescopes, it's not just the pictures that are important  it's where that energy goes.

Understanding how the Sun's atmosphere then flows through the solar system, called space weather, is extremely important because it can have dramatic effects on communications, power and other essential technologies that the U.S. Navy fleet relies on, said Howard.

"What this mission is going to be able do is pin down exactly what the structure close to the sun is  the overall structure. We'll be able to image that," said Howard. "But also, there's an experiment that will measure the strength of the magnetic fields, the electric fields  the structure of the plasma we're running through."

This imaging capability is building on 40 years of NASA mission success with NRL's coronagraph telescopes, starting with the seventh of NASA's Orbiting Solar Observatories launched in September 1971.

Since then, NRL telescopes have captured extraordinary images of the Sun's atmosphere, including two of the most recent missions: The European Space Agency/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission in 1995 and the NASA STEREO mission launched in 2006.

For Howard, who has personally worked on nearly all NRL coronagraph telescope launches, the Parker Solar Probe will be a culmination of decades of work. While the previous NRL telescopes are on spacecraft either on lower Earth orbit or just outside of Earth's orbit, they are still getting fuzzy views of the Sun.

With the closeness of the Parker Solar Probe to the Sun, WISPR will be capturing images with clarity like never before, he said, because those images actually pick up nearly at the same point where the other telescopes loose resolution.

"What we're going to achieve is just absolutely amazing. Stay tuned  we're going to see stuff that we just never would have imagined, I'm sure," said Howard.

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory provides the advanced scientific capabilities required to bolster our country's position of global naval leadership. With more than 2,500 personnel scientists, engineers and support staff, it has served the U.S. Navy and the nation for nearly 100 years, advancing research further than you can imagine.

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The Dalit organisation is also demanding withdrawal of cases against those jailed in connection with the April 2 Bharat Bandh violence.

The Bhim Army is planning to stage the protest on Parliament Street on August 19. (Photo: File/PTI)

New Delhi: The Bhim Army is planning to stage a protest on the Parliament Street on August 19 demanding release of its founder Chandrashekhar Azad who is in jail on charges of engineering caste riots in Saharanpur last year.

The Dalit organisation is also demanding withdrawal of cases against those who have been jailed in connection with the April 2 Bharat Bandh violence.

"We will stage a protest on the Parliament Street and march to the Parliament demanding release of Chandrashekhar Azad and dropping of charges under the Nation Security Act (NSA) against him," Bhim Army National President Vinay Ratan Singh told reporters.

"The rally is necessary as there is a civil war-like situation emerging from the government's failure to check issues relating to Dalits and caste discrimination," he alleged.
Beyond Space Force: Staying Ahead of the 'Speed of War'

By Carla Babb August 11, 2018

It might sound like science fiction, but the general in charge of the U.S. military's air transports across the globe says refueling and resupplying the military may soon be a job that's literally out of this world.

"If I can resupply from space I can go across globe in about 30 minutes," Air Force General Carlton Everhart, the head of Air Mobility Command, told VOA. "I do truly believe that is the next step. We can really make inroads."

Everhart says the time gained by using hypersonic craft in space could keep him ahead in "the speed of war," where competitors China and Russia have been trying to make gains.

The idea of using space deliveries isn't as far out as it may seem. In fact, industry leaders, companies Everhart hopes to partner with, are already working on this type of technology.

Launch vehicles from companies like SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, and even foreign ventures could "provide tremendous strategic advantage to the U.S. government," according to Eric Stallmer, the president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.

But it's an advantage that would come with an astronomical price tag of thousands of dollars per kilo.

Experts say the need to transport via space must outweigh these costs, perhaps only being used during the most important of missions.

Todd Harrison, a space and defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, points to the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, as a situation where time necessities could overpower cost concerns.

"Imagine if we had been able to launch a SEAL team and put them right down in that compound within 45 minutes of knowing that it was under attack. It could have made the difference," he said.

The general is not just focused on launching from one point on Earth to another, Everhart also wants to use satellites to preposition cargo in space.

Stallmer said a lot of spaceflight companies are looking at this idea of space refueling depots, including plans to convert those refueling vehicles to habitats within space once they've been used.

The future is full of possibilities, but it is unclear when these technologies will be fully developed. Experts give estimates ranging from a couple of years to more than a decade, but that doesn't stop Everhart from dreaming.

"The train is leaving the station and we're going to be on it. And I'm not going to be on the caboose. I want to be in front of, I'm going to be in the front," he said.

The general says his team is already writing government proposals to make space resupply a certainty for future military mobility.

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Mattis: 'I Was Not Against Setting up a Space Force'

By Carla Babb August 12, 2018

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said he was not against establishing a sixth branch of the military for space when he wrote Congress about it last year.

"I was not against setting up a Space Force. What I was against is rushing to do that before we define those problems," Mattis told reporters while en route to Brazil Sunday.

In a letter to members of Congress last October, Mattis wrote that he "oppose(d) the creation of a new military service and additional organizational layers at a time when we are focused on reducing overhead and integrating joint warfighting functions."

Many in Washington saw those words as a contrast to President Donald Trump's desire to establish a space force "separate but equal" to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. Trump said the new branch was needed to ensure U.S. dominance in space.

Mattis said the Pentagon's space defense has been a "point of discussion" from the earliest days of the Trump administration. During the pat 18 months, the Pentagon worked to identify management problems within its space components, covering angles ranging from the U.S. economic dependence on space, to long-term government goals for space defense.

The Pentagon released its space management report to Congress on Thursday detailing new steps it will take to meet the White House's goal of establishing the Space Force by 2020.

Mattis said the transition will happen in phases, with a new service branch established should Congress approve it. Congress is the only branch of government that has the authority to approve the creation of a new military division.

"We'll get this reorganization as far as we can take it based on solving well-defined problems," he said.

The Pentagon will first establish Space Command to oversee the military's focus on protecting U.S. space assets. The command will oversee a Space Operations Force made up of experts from different military branches.

The last time a new branch of the military was created was in 1947, when the military established a new Air Force following World War II.

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China begins major naval exercise near Taiwan before state visits by Tsai

Iran Press TV

Sat Aug 11, 2018 07:57AM

China has launched a major military drill in the Yellow Sea near Taiwan just ahead of the Taiwanese president's planned visit to Latin America.

The maneuvers kicked off on Friday in waters off Shandong province and would continue through Sunday, according to a statement released late in the day by China's Defense Ministry.

The statement insisted that all boats and ships were banned from entering restricted zones off the northeastern city of Rizhao to the southeastern city of Qingdao -- a major naval and commercial port and home to Chinese navy's North Sea Fleet -- for safety reasons.

The naval drill came two days before Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen's trip on Sunday to Paraguay and Belize to boost ties with the only two Latin American nations that maintain ties with Taipei.

She will lead a delegation of top officials for the nine-day state visit through August 20 to the two of only 18 countries worldwide that still maintain diplomatic ties with Taipei.

According to Taiwan's presidential office, Tsai's delegation will also make transit stops in US cities of Los Angeles and Houston, in a move that will likely enrage Beijing amid its intensifying trade conflicts with Washington.

During a visit to three Pacific allies last year, Tsai transited through Hawaii and the US territory of Guam, provoking angry protests from Beijing.

The military drill comes amid growing tensions between Taiwan and China, which has warned that it will defend  by force if necessary  its "One China" principle under which the self-ruling island is regarded as part of China's own territory, pending reunification.

Taiwan's defense ministry announced that it was closely monitoring the Chinese naval exercise.

China's state-run Global Times daily said the military drill was likely aimed at bolstering combat capabilities "in the event it has to deal with Taiwan separatists."

The daily cited military expert Song Zhongping as saying that the drill would likely see the military practice how to combat "possible interference from Japan and the US, if the Chinese mainland is forced to deal with the Taiwan question."

Beijing has bolstered its military presence near Taiwan, sailing its only operating aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait in January and March and holding extensive "encirclement" exercises nearby in recent months.

The heightened tensions have also led to the deployment of two US Navy warships through the strait earlier this month for the first time in nearly a year. Although Washington does not maintain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, it is the island state's primary arms supplier.

On Friday, Chinese forces deployed to the hotly contested South China Sea ordered a US Navy reconnaissance aircraft to "leave immediately" six times, reports said.

A US Navy P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance plane flew past China's garrisons in the Spratly Islands, giving CNN reporters aboard the aircraft a view of Chinese facilities in the region.

Warning the aircraft that it was in Chinese territory, the Chinese military ordered the US Navy plane to "leave immediately and keep out to avoid any misunderstanding."

Six warnings were issued, according to CNN.

Beijing has said it is necessary for the Asian powerhouse to keep growing its military presence in the South China Sea in order to protect its sovereignty.

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UN Panel Says Millions Of Chinese Uyghurs Living In 'Massive Internment Camp'

August 11, 2018

A United Nations human rights panel says that an estimated 1 million ethnic Uyghurs in China are being held in "counterextremism centers," with millions more forced into reeducation camps, turning China's far-western Uyghur region into "something that resembles a massive internment camp."

Gay McDougall, vice chairwoman of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, on August 10 said that most of the detained Uyghurs and Muslim minorities in the western Xinjiang autonomous region have never been properly charged with a crime or tried in court.

"We are deeply concerned at the many numerous and credible reports that we have received that in the name of combating religious extremism and maintaining social stability [in China] has changed the [Uyghur] autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internship camp that is shrouded in secrecy, a sort of 'no rights zone,'" she said.

The numbers McDougall gave appeared to come from the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders. Other rights groups have given lower figures.

China has said that Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants who plot attacks and stir up tensions between the mostly Muslim Uyghur minority and the ethnic Han Chinese majority.

Chinese delegation leader Yu Jianhua highlighted the economic progress he said Beijing has brought to the region.

Based on reporting by AP, dpa, and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/un-panel- says-millions-chinese-uighers-living -massive-internment-camp-/29427205.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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North Korea has rejected all US proposals on denuclearization: CNN

Iran Press TV

Sat Aug 11, 2018 10:37AM

North Korea has rejected "repeated" US proposals on denuclearization, considering them "gangster-like", CNN has reported, citing senior diplomatic sources.

The US has made, and continues to make, "specific proposals for starting and proceeding to the end point of fully verified denuclearization," including a timeline, the broadcaster reported.

It said the "vague promises" that emerged from the meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in June have resulted in a diplomatic disconnect.

The brief document produced at the summit included no time frame, no specific promises or milestones to meet, allowing both sides to interpret it as they wished, CNN added.

Washington has linked the lifting of sanctions on Pyongyang to full and verifiable denuclearization by North Korea which insists sanctions be removed first before it takes any further steps.

CNN cited an official with close knowledge of North Korea's position on the matter as saying that continued negotiations between the US and North Korea hinge on Washington's willingness to make a bold move and agree to a peace treaty with Pyongyang.

The North says the US is back-pedaling on its promises. North Korea issued a statement at the United Nations on Thursday, insisting that elements of the US government are not adhering to the spirit of the dialogue established during Kim-Trump Singapore summit.

According to the statement, while Pyongyang had taken "such practical denuclearization steps as discontinuing nuclear test and ICBM test fire" and "broadminded measures" such as the repatriation of US Korean War remains, "the US responded to our expectation by inciting international sanctions and pressure against (North Korea)."

The statement did not blame the US president, but singled out some high-level officials within the US administration, who it alleged were going against Trump's will.

North Korea on Thursday denounced US calls for enforcing international sanctions and said progress on denuclearization promises could not be expected if Washington followed an "outdated acting script".

Pyongyang has urged Washington to take reciprocal measures for its goodwill gestures, saying the US had responded to its expectation by inciting international sanctions and pressure.

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Good progress made on Caspian Sea legal status, deal expected Sunday: Iran

Iran Press TV

Sat Aug 11, 2018 03:39PM

Iran says the five Caspian Sea littoral states will adopt a convention on its legal status on Sunday, a deal which has been under discussion for more than two decades.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi told IRIB in an interview on Saturday that the convention would be signed by the presidents of Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkmenistan during the Fifth Caspian Summit in the Kazakh city of Aktau.

"We have to a large extent made good progress and maybe more than 80 percent of the points demanded by the [littoral] states have been considered and included in this convention," Qassemi said.

He noted that the foreign ministers of the Caspian Sea littoral states have gathered in Kazakhstan to review and finalize the draft of the convention.

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water by area and is variously classified as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea.

The Caspian Sea littoral states have been discussing a convention on the sea's legal status that would be a comprehensive document outlining the duties and rights of the five littoral states as well as the framework of cooperation among these countries.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in October 2016 that the Caspian Sea's legal status should be drawn up based on mutual trust, consensus, and understanding and must take into account the common interests of all involved countries.

"Peace and stability, sustainable development and fair demarcation of maritime zones are among the fundamental elements that should guide any attempt to formulate the legal status of the Caspian Sea," the Iranian minister said in an address to the 47th session of the special working group to draft the convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea in Tehran.

Also in a ministerial meeting of the Caspian Sea littoral states in the Kazakh capital Astana in July 2016, the Iranian foreign minister said the Caspian Sea's legal status should guarantee that the interests of the littoral states are met in view of geopolitical developments.

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US ambassador urges UK to ditch support for Iran nuclear deal

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 12, 2018 05:03PM

US Ambassador to Britain Woody Johnson has urged the UK to drop out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and follow the lead of President Donald Trump who left the "flawed" agreement in May.

Trump announced on May 8 that he would abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers  the US, the UK, France, Russia, China and Germany.

The move did not go down well with the other signatories, who have made it clear that they would stay in.

In an article for The Sunday Telegraph, the American envoy called on the government of British Prime Minister Theresa May to reconsider its support for the nuclear deal and side with Washington.

"America is turning up the pressure and we want the UK by our side. It is time to move on from the flawed 2015 deal," he said.

"We are asking global Britain to use its considerable diplomatic power and influence and join us as we lead a concerted global effort towards a genuinely comprehensive agreement."

Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to limit parts of its peaceful nuclear program in exchange for the removal of all nuclear-related sanctions.

On Monday, Trump ordered all nuclear-related sanctions that were removed under the deal to be reinstated immediately.

The first phase of the unilateral sanctions came into effect on Tuesday, targeting Iran's purchase of US dollars, trade in gold and other precious metals as well as its automotive sector.

A second batch of bans will be re-imposed in November with the aim of curtailing Iran's oil exports and shipping sectors.

Johnson wrote in his article that British businesses should cut all trade ties with Iran and help the US form a "united front."

"The President has been explicit: any businesses which put their own commercial interests in Iran ahead of the global good will risk serious consequences for their trade with the United States," he said.

Joining Russia and China, who have thrown their full weight behind the accord, Britain, France and Germany said in a joint statement last week that they "deeply regret" the re-imposition of US sanctions because the Iran deal was "working and delivering on its goal."

The European Union has tried to counteract the effects of the unilateral US sanctions by launching an updated version of its "Blocking Statue," a measure that seeks to protect European companies doing business in Iran from punitive US measures.

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Iran says Total not withdrawn from SP Phase 11 yet

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 12, 2018 12:48PM

Iran says French energy giant Total is still to officially announce its withdrawal from one of the country's biggest gas projects with a top official saying no change has been occurred in the combination of a consortium formed over the project.

Mohammad Mostafavi, head of investment and business affairs of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), was quoted by media as saying that the terms of the contract with Total, China's CNPC and Iran's Petropars over the development of Phase 11 of South Pars had no changed yet.

In July 2017, the NIOC awarded the project to the trio through a contract worth around $4 billion.

Total  with a leading share of 50.1 percent in the development of Phase 11 - had earlier announced it would withdraw from the project once the US restores the sanctions against Iran.

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order which made the sanctions against Iran effective.

The sanctions would in the first wave prevent Iran's access to the US dollar among other restrictions. The second wave that would hit in November would ban investments in Iran's oil and gas projects.

Following Total's announcement, speculations emerged that CNPC would replace the French company in leading the project's development with a revised share of 80 percent.

This is while Mostafavi was quoted by media as saying that the distribution of the shares of the consortium still remained unchanged.

"The roles of each consortium member over the development of Phase 11 are based on the contract and Total has not officially withdrawn from it so as to create any changes," he told Shana news agency of Iran's Ministry of Petroleum.

Total has not said what it would do with its 50.1 percent stake should it pull out, and it has until Nov. 4 to wind down its Iran operations, wrote Reuters in a report over the development.

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Confusion Surfaces Over Total's Investment In Iran Pars Project

RFE/RL August 12, 2018

Confusion has surfaced over French energy giant Total's massive South Pars gas project in Iran after the official IRNA news agency reported that China's state-owned petroleum corporation had been given a majority stake in the field.

Contradicting that report, the Oil Ministry news agency SHANA later on August 11 quoted the same senior Iranian oil official as saying the gas-field developmental contract remained unchanged.

"The role of the members of the consortium developing this project is in accordance with the provisions of the contract, and there is still no formal change in these provisions," Mohammad Mostafavi, director of investment at Iran's state oil firm NIOC, was quoted as saying by SHANA.

The earlier IRNA report said that China's state-owned CNPC had taken a majority share in the project after Total announced it would pull out because renewed U.S. economic sanctions against Tehran.

The IRNA report also quoted Mostafavi as saying CNPC now owned 80.1 percent of the shares in the $5 billion project, having bought them from Total.

CNPC originally owned about 30 percent of the project.

A spokeswoman for Total declined to comment.

South Pars has the world's biggest natural-gas reserves ever found at one site.

Total in 2017 signed a contract to develop Phase 11 of the South Pars field, initially investing $1 billion.

It was the first major Western energy investment in the country after sanctions were lifted in 2016, an outcome of the 2015 nuclear deal Tehran signed with six world powers. The deal gave Tehran relief from some financial sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear program.

However, U.S. President Donald Trump in mid-May pulled out of the nuclear deal, saying the terms were not strict enough and accusing Tehran of violating the spirit of the accord. U.S. sanctions were renewed on August 7.

On May 31, Iran's oil minister gave Total 60 days to get a sanctions waiver from Washington or said its stake in the project would be given to the Chinese firm.

Total and other major corporations, including carmakers PSA and Renault, subsequently announced they were pulling out of Iran.

Total did not say what it would do with its 50.1 percent stake should it pull out, and it has until November 4 to wind down its Iran operations.

With reporting by Reuters and AP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/29428302.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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US Ambassador Warns Britain to Back Trump Over Iranian Sanctions

By Jamie Dettmer August 12, 2018

The U.S. ambassador to London has publicly warned British Prime Minister Theresa May to side with President Donald Trump in the burgeoning transatlantic dispute over the controversial nuclear deal with Iran, which the U.S. leader withdrew from in May.

Ambassador Woody Johnson cautioned there would be trade consequences for Britain, which he described as the closest U.S. ally, unless it breaks with the European Union and follows Trump in re-imposing sanctions on Tehran. The envoy also delivered a clear ultimatum to British businesses, instructing them to stop trading with Iran or face "serious consequences" when it comes to trade with the United States.

The unprecedented warning, which was delivered in an article published by Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper, is being seen in London as the opening shot in what could be the biggest test of the so-called "special relationship" between the United States and Britain since Trump took office.

Trump's decision in May to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal, signed by his predecessor Barack Obama, in which Tehran agreed to nuclear curbs in return for sanctions relief, paved the way for the restoration of unilateral American economic penalties on Iran.

While ratcheting up pressure on Tehran, the sanctions are worsening rifts between the United States and European allies, and other world powers, which say they remain committed to the nuclear deal, and will not comply with the U.S. sanctions.

In the article, Johnson said the Trump administration is "determined to make sure they [the sanctions] are fully enforced." He added, "The President has been explicit: any businesses that put their commercial interests in Iran ahead of the global good will risk serious consequences for their trade with the U.S."

He added, "America is turning up the pressure and we want the UK by our side. We are asking global Britain to use its considerable diplomatic power and influence and join us."

A British Foreign Office official said Sunday, "We remain committed to the nuclear deal. But we have had discussions with Washington about how we can work together in other ways to curb activity by Iran in the Middle East which concern us."

A week ago Britain signed on to a joint statement with other EU countries that pledged to press on with a strategy to lessen the impact of the U.S. sanctions on European businesses. It includes prohibiting them from complying with the unilateral U.S. sanctions.

Asked if British companies could expect Britain to stand its ground over deal, a British minister, Alistair Burt, told reporters last week, "They can expect us to do that, yes. Sometimes you need to take a stand against friends."

The U.S. sanctions that began last week prohibit any transactions with Iran involving dollars, gold, precious metals, aluminum, steel, commercial passenger aircraft, shipping and Iranian seaports.

The U.S. administration blames Iran for fomenting instability in the Middle East and encouraging terrorism. Trump has described the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as a "horrible, one sided" agreement.

In his article Sunday, Johnson said, "Only by presenting a united front can we exert the maximum possible pressure on the Iranian regime and get them to finally change course and put an end to their malign and reckless activities both at home and abroad."

Johnson said Tehran had used money going into the country after the 2015 deal and the easing of sanctions not to improve the lives of ordinary Iranians but to increase spending on the military and proxy forces in the Middle East, including sponsoring Hezbollah in Lebanon, arming militants in Yemen, and launching cyber-attacks against Western democracies.

Britain's May might face a party leadership challenge later in the year, possibly from Boris Johnson, the former foreign minister who says she should be more like Trump. She is struggling to quell rebellions within the ranks of her Conservative party over Brexit negotiations and she can't afford to alienate Brussels further by siding with Washington on the Iran nuclear deal, say analysts.

On several tempestuous issues dividing Trump and Europe in a deepening rift, May has been caught trying to please both sides. In June during the acrimonious G-7 meeting, held in Charlevoix, Quebec, which broke up amid highly personal recriminations between Trump and fellow summiteers over trade tariffs, May appeared especially eager to keep a low profile. Of all the G-7 leaders at the bruising summit, she largely side-stepped the public skirmishing.

She recorded her disappointment, but avoided leveling personal criticism.

May's position is likely to become even more awkward in the coming days as she's forced to choose between European leaders, whose support she needs for a favorable Brexit deal or a U.S. leader determined to secure EU compliance with reimposed sanctions on Iran, fear British officials.

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The attacker reportedly dropped the weapon and fled the spot.

Jawaharlal Nehru University student Umar Khalid speaks to the media moments after he was shot at during an event at the Constitution Club in New Delhi on Monday. (Photo: Bunny Smith)

New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Umar Khalid was shot at by an unidentified person in a broad daylight on Monday outside the Constitution Club in New Delhi. The student leader, however, escaped unhurt.

The attacker reportedly dropped the weapon and fled the spot.

At 2 pm, when Mr Khalid was entering the premises to attend an event, titled Towards A Freedom Without Fear, a man reportedly appeared from the crowd and aimed a pistol at him. The police has seized the weapon and are trying to establish the identity of the attacker.

Eye-witnesses said the man opened fire but the bullet missed Mr Khalid. However, the police said that the man whipped out a pistol but didnt open fire. We are checking CCTVs installed at the gate of the club to identify the attacker, a senior police officer said.

As confusion persisted over what had actually happened and how many people were involved, Ajay Chaudhury, joint commissioner of police, New Delhi range, said police was investigating whether shots were actually fired or not.

Giving his version of what had happened, Mr Khalid said he was going back inside the complex, which also houses the Mavlankar Auditorium and MP quarters on Rafi Marg, after having tea when somebody tried to fire at him. I was returning after having tea. One person came from behind, pushed me down and tried to fire at me. I ran for my life. He fled from there, he told reporters.

Mr Khalid, however, said he could not see the face of the attacker.

I do not know whether it was handiwork of some group and if others accompanied the attacker. Its ironic that it happened as I have come to participate in an even against mob lynching. There is an atmosphere of fear. If you speak against the government you will be branded and then anything could happen to you, he said.

Some witnesses claimed two shots were fired when Mr Khalid was at the entrance of the club, where he was going to attend a conference, Khauff Se Azaadi (Freedom from Fear), organised by United Against Hate and featuring speakers such as senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan, Delhi University professor Apoorvanand and the late Rohith Vemulas mother Radhika Vemula.

Deputy commissioner of police (New Delhi) Madhur Verma said Umar told the police that he was attacked. Somebody pounced on him and tried to fire at him but the person could immediately not fire. People started chasing him. Umar said he again tried to fire in the air. CCTV is being examined to verify the incident.

The student leader recently filed a complaint with the Delhi police that he and Gujarats Independent MLA Jignesh Mevani had received death threats from a man who identified himself as fugitive gangster Ravi Pujari in June.
US suspends military training programs for Pakistani officers

Iran Press TV

Sat Aug 11, 2018 06:47AM

The United States has suspended the military and educational training of scores of Pakistani officers, a move that could negatively affect more than a decade of bilateral military relations between Washington and Islamabad.

A US State Department spokesperson said on Friday the effective suspension of Pakistan from the US government's International Military Education and Training program (IMET) would close off places that had been set aside for 66 Pakistani officers this year.

The spokesman added that the places would either be unfilled or given to officers from other countries.

Pakistani officers have reportedly been excluded from programs at the War College, the US army's premier school for foreign officers, in the upcoming academic year as well as training courses at the US Naval War College and Naval Staff College.

The State Department official said the IMET cancellations were valued at $2.41 million and at least two other programs had also been affected following the US decision.

It remains unclear what level of military cooperation still continues outside the IMET program between top US and Pakistani military chiefs.

The Pentagon and the Pakistani military declined to comment directly on the Trump administration's decision, but officials from both countries privately criticized the move.

US officials expressed concern that the move could undermine a key trust-building measure between the two sides. Pakistani officials, for their part, warned the decision could push their military to further look to China or Russia for training.

Calling the move "very short-sighted and myopic," Dan Feldman, a former US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said, "This will have lasting negative impacts limiting the bilateral relationship well into the future.

Earlier this year, the US president Donald Trump threatened to cut off foreign aid to Pakistan, accusing Islamabad of harboring extremists.

Trump said in his first tweet of 2018 that Washington had "foolishly given Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid over the last 15 years," and the country had rewarded the past US aid with "nothing but lies & deceit."

Pakistan later summoned David Hale  the US ambassador to Pakistan  over Trump's controversial remarks.

Washington has long accused Islamabad of allowing militants and terrorist groups to operate relatively freely in Pakistan's porous border regions to carry out operations in neighboring Afghanistan.

The US claims that Afghan Taliban militants and their allied Haqqani network that target American troops in Afghanistan are allowed to shelter on Pakistani soil.

Islamabad, however, denies the accusations, saying Washington is overlooking Pakistan's sacrifices in its fight against terrorism. It further rejects allegations that it sponsors Taliban militants battling US forces in neighboring Afghanistan, and insists that Islamabad is doing all it can to combat regional militancy.

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Syrian troops take back more ground from Daesh in Sweida

Iran Press TV

Sat Aug 11, 2018 02:19PM

Syrian army forces have liberated more areas in the southwestern province of Sweida from the grips of foreign-backed Takfiri militants, a report says.

Syria's official news agency SANA, citing its correspondent in the province, reported that government troops managed to advance deeper in Sweida's desert, known as Badyiah, against the remnants of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group on Saturday morning, establishing control over new areas and strategic hills in the region.

The reported further said the new offensive resulted in liberating al-Zalf Dam and Ard al-Kira'a villages from the clutches of Takfiris, adding that the army units continued to advance toward al-Safa hills, Alam hill, al-Hibiryia and Bir al-Sheikh Hussein villages as they were shelling positions and fortifications of Daesh terrorists along the way.

Heavy losses were inflicted upon terrorists in the personnel and equipment, the correspondent added.

According to the report, the army's engineering units were busy combing the rural areas to discover and defuse planted landmines and explosive devices by terrorists in order to secure the return of locals.

Sweida, which is largely under the control of the Syrian government troops, is home to the Druze minority, from which Daesh abducted some 30 women and children last month following a brutal attack that killed more than 250 civilians. The province has been relatively insulated from Syria's seven-year bloody war launched by foreign-backed militants and terror group against Damascus.

Last month's attacks were the bloodiest ever seen in the province, as well as some of the deadliest launched by Daesh in the war-torn country.

Syria troops defeated Daesh late last year and took back all the urban bastions once the terror group had under its control, but the group's remnants have been trying to regroup and have mounted a series of hit-and-run attacks.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The Syrian government says the Israeli regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri terrorist groups wreaking havoc in the country.

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Syrian, Russian air defense units confront 'hostile' targets

Iran Press TV

Sat Aug 11, 2018 06:03AM

Syria and Russia say their air defense units have in two separate incidents targeted objects breaching Syrian air space as pro-Damascus forces continue to maintain the upper hand over Takfiri terrorists on the battlefield.

Syria's official SANA news agency reported early on Saturday that air defenses had managed to confront a "hostile target" over Dayr al-Ashayer, west of capital Damascus.

The report, however, did not specify the type of the target and its origin.

There were also no immediate reports of possible casualties or material damage.

The development comes at a time that the Syrian government, backed by its allies, namely Iran, Russia and Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance movement, has made sizeable gains on several fronts against the foreign-backed terror groups, many of which enjoy the support of Israel, the US and their allies.

Israel has recently increased its airstrikes on the Syrian territory in a bid generally considered to have been meant to prop up anti-Damascus militants. This comes as the Syrian army has been liberating most of the southern areas near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and has also been pressing ahead with counter-terrorism operations in the northwestern province of Idlib.

In an interview with Russia's RT television network in May, President Bashar al-Assad hailed the capability of the Syrian air defense systems to foil enemy strikes.

"Our air defense is much stronger than before, thanks to the Russian support, and the recent attacks by the Israelis and by the Americans and British and French proved that we are in a better situation," he said.

Russia downs militant drones

Separately on Friday, the head of the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria said that air defense units had shot down two militant drones, which were approaching Russia's Hmeimim Air Base in Latakia Province.

"Over the past 24 hours, the air defense units at the Hmeimim air base detected two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) launched from the territory controlled by illegal armed groups in the north of Latakia Province," Major General Aleksey Tsygankov said. "Both aerial targets were destroyed at a safe distance from the base."

He further noted that no casualties or material damage had been reported and that the air base was operating normally.

The Hmeimim airbase has been the target of regular militant drone attacks in the past few months.

Russian jets have been conducting air raids against Daesh and other terror outfits inside Syria since September 2015 at the request of Damascus.

The strikes have helped Syrian forces advance against terrorists, who have been wreaking havoc in the Arab country since 2011.

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Syrian Army takes control of Sweida borders

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Aug 12, IRNA -- Army units, in cooperation with the supporting forces, expanded control over new areas in Sweida eastern Badiyah (desert) after engaging in violent clashes with Daesh (ISIS) terrorists, Syrian Arab New Agency (SANA) reported.

SANA reporter said Sunday that army units established full control over the administrative borders of Sweida eastern countryside after eliminating many terrorists, while the remnants fled away.

The reporter added that the army units continued operations against Daesh gatherings in the direction of the administrative borders of Damascus Countryside Province after regaining control over Tal Manat al-Husan, and they advanced in the direction of Ard al-Baida and al Rahbeh.

The Syrian army units encircled terrorists' gatherings in Toloul al-Safa after cutting off all their supply routes, according to the reporter.

The reporter added that the engineering units continued to comb the liberated areas in the depth of Sweida Badiyah, in addition to removing and dismantling the explosive devices, mines and car bombs left behind by Daesh terrorists.

9376**2050

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Syria militants forming 'army' with Turkish support

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 12, 2018 10:40AM

Turkish-backed militants in Syria are reportedly creating a "national army" with Ankara's support in the Arab country's northwest.

The militants are sewing up rifts within their ranks towards building the force, which comprises some 35,000 members from the biggest factions that have been waging militancy against Syria since 2011.

"We are at the beginning. We face many difficulties but we are working to overcome them," the head of the force, Colonel Haitham Afisi, told Reuters on Sunday.

Afisi is trying to unite the militant groups. He has ordered them to stop "randomly opening fire" and wear uniforms. Various militant outfits have also been banned from operating their own jails and courts and from carrying out extrajudicial arrests.

The news agency said the presence of Turkish forces on the ground has helped to shield the militants from Syrian government attacks.

"All the support for the national army is from Turkey, there are no other states partnering in this matter," Afisi said.

Turkey began operating in northern Syria in 2016 under the banner of fighting the Takfiri terror group of Daesh, while pushing against Kurdish militants, whom it associates with anti-Ankara separatists. Earlier this year, Turkish forces invaded Syria again, this time seizing the northern region of Afrin.

The country has refused to heed calls for withdrawal by Damascus, which views the presence as "occupation."

Syria, however, has rid most of the country's expanse of militant and terrorist presence, and President Bashar al-Assad has vowed to recover "every inch" of his country.

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Syrian Rebel Enclave Threatens Turkish Syria Conflict

By Dorian Jones August 12, 2018

Russian and Turkish foreign ministers are set to hold talks Monday in Ankara focusing on the looming crisis over the rebel-controlled Syrian Idlib enclave, which threatens to become a military flashpoint between Turkish and Syrian forces. The crisis threatens to derail deepening Russian-Turkish ties.

Damascus is steadily massing its forces around Idlib in preparation for a widely expected assault. But Ankara has vowed to protect the rebels, declaring it a "red line."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is attending the two-day Turkey's Ambassador Conference. On the sidelines, he is scheduled to hold talks with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusolgu, who is expected to press Lavrov to rein in Damascus.

"What will happen in Idlib will the Russians be willing or able to stop the regime, which is itching to attack Idlib and then finally do away with all the Jihadis," international relation expert Soli Ozel of Istanbul's Kadir Has University said.

"If the regime attacks Idlib then are we going to have a war with the Syrian regime," he continued, "How can we have a war with the Syrian regime, which is being supported by Russia to the bitter end, and the Russians control the Syrian airspace."

Despite backing opposite sides in the Syrian civil war, Ankara and Moscow have been increasingly cooperating over Syria, a cooperation that has been a springboard for closer bilateral ties. An Idlib confrontation threatens Moscow's delicate diplomacy of balancing the conflicting interests of Damascus and Ankara.

"That's why Moscow is working very hard to resolve this diplomatically, that is why Russia is very active," said former senior Turkish ambassador Aydin Selcen.

The threat of military confrontation between Ankara and Damascus over Idlib is real. The Turkish army has 12 observation posts across the enclave, as part of an agreement with Moscow and Tehran under the auspices of the Astana Process.

Social pressures

"Idlib is a national security threat for Turkey," analyst Ozel said, "Idlib has two and a half million people around 130,000 jihadis living there, and if the regime attacks them and the regime has no compunction to use chemical weapons. You have potentially at least a million people who are going to be bursting at your [Turkish] border. The [Turkish] cities of Hatay Gaziantep and Kilis will be vulnerable, despite the fact you have a wall," Ozel added.

Turkey is hosting three and a half million Syrian refugees. There are growing reports of mounting tensions in Turkey over the refugee's presence. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to start returning the Syrians. Analysts warn social pressures are likely to grow with Turkey in the midst of a currency crisis, which is expected to result in a deep recession.

Selcen claims the survival of Idlib as a rebel stronghold is vital to Ankara as a symbol of continued resistance to the Assad regime. That along with the threat of a surge of new refugees means Ankara is ready to face down any threat to Idlib by Damascus, "Turkey can deal with Assad, with the strength of Turkish armed forces in Idlib and it can get stronger, along with the support of the local population in Idlib," Selcen said.

"This means we are in a collision course between Damascus and Ankara," Selcen continued, "and we've been there before in the late 50s even in the 90s. In my mind, this is a ticking bomb that needs to be defused, right now."

Choosing sides

Other experts claim Ankara will need support to challenge Damascus, given the regime is backed by Moscow and Tehran. NATO member Turkey traditionally would look to Washington, which also opposes Assad. That option appears closed given a recent collapse in relations, over Turkey's ongoing detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson.

Until now Ankara has balanced its relations with Moscow and Washington to extract concessions from both. The policy of leveraging one against the other could be over, strengthening Lavrov's hand in his talks with Cavusoglu.

Adding to Ankara's unease is the growing speculation that U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin reached a tentative agreement over Syria at last month's Helsinki summit. "Was a deal made in Helsinki by Trump and Putin over Syria? Ankara is talking a lot about what happened in Helsinki," Ozel said.

"Turkey can resist the Assad regime plausibly, but Turkey cannot resist the United States and Russia's will if they agree Idlib should change hands," former Turkish diplomat Selcen said.

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Security forces neutralize 'most wanted' PKK terrorist in eastern Turkey

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 12, 2018 05:30PM

Turkish security forces have killed a prominent member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militant group during a counter-terrorism operation, supported by fighter jets, in the country's eastern province of Tunceli.

The Turkish Interior Ministry announced in a statement on Sunday that Ibrahim Coban, better known by the nom de guerre Atakan Mahir, was "neutralized" during an offensive in the province earlier this week.

The statement added that Coban was on the red category of the terror blacklist.

The Turkish military generally uses the term "neutralize" to signify that the militants were killed, captured or surrendered.

Meanwhile, four Kurdish PKK terrorists were killed in an anti-terror operation in the southeastern Hakkari province.

The Turkish General Staff, in a post published on its official Twitter page on Friday, announced that high-profile PKK militant Ahmet Dorak, better known by the nom de guerre Sahin, had been "neutralized" during an offensive in the Kocakoy region of the country's Kurdish-populated southeastern province of Diyarbakir on August 2.

On August 4, a Turkish police officer lost his life and eight others sustained injuries when PKK militants detonated a bomb as a military vehicle was travelling along a road in Hakkari province.

PKK militants regularly clash with Turkish forces in the Kurdish-dominated southeast of Turkey attached to northern Iraq.

Turkey, along with the European Union and the United States, has declared the PKK a terrorist group and banned it. The militant group has been seeking an autonomous Kurdish region since 1984.

A shaky ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish government collapsed in July 2015. Attacks on Turkish security forces have soared ever since.

Over the past few months, Turkish ground and air forces have been carrying out operations against PKK positions in the country as well as in northern Iraq and neighboring Syria.

More than 40,000 people have been killed during the three-decade conflict between Turkey and the autonomy-seeking militant group.

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Vancouver, August 13, 2018 - EMX Royalty Corporation (TSXV: EMX) (NYSE American: EMX) (the "Company" or "EMX") is pleased to provide an update on recent advancements on two of the Company's royalty properties in Turkey. Highlights include new drill results from the Balya lead-zinc-silver carbonate replacement deposit in northwestern Turkey, and continued development permitting of the Sisorta high sulfidation gold deposit in northeastern Turkey. EMX congratulates Dedeman Madencilik San ve Tic. A.S. ("Dedeman") and Bahar Madencilik Sinayi ve Ticaret Ltd Sti ("Bahar"), the owners and operators of the Balya and Sisorta royalty properties respectively, on their progress in advancing the projects. Please see www.EMXRoyalty.com for more information.

Balya Royalty Property Update. The Balya royalty property contains extensive zones of carbonate replacement deposit ("CRD") style lead-zinc-silver mineralization, and is located in the historic Balya mining district. EMX holds an uncapped 4% NSR royalty that it retained from the sale of the property in 2006 to Dedeman, a privately owned Turkish company.

Dedeman has continued small scale underground production at Balya, while accelerating its exploration efforts. Earlier in 2018, EMX received royalty revenues of US $121,075 from Balya production completed in 2017. Dedeman has since informed EMX that it commenced a 24,000 meter diamond drill program to expand the current drill-defined body of mineralization in the Hastanetepe zone.

Dedeman has provided EMX with initial results from the 2018 drill program, which include 12.75 meters averaging 11.39% lead, 5.92% zinc and 225.18 g/t silver in hole DB108-B (true width ~95% of intercept length), as well as several other significant intercepts in nearby holes at Hastanetepe (see Table 1 for drill results from the ongoing program). The results are especially encouraging in that they show continuity in previously drilled areas of high grade lead-zinc-silver mineralization along the southern edge of the Hastanetepe zone.

Additional drilling in 2018 will fill in a ~500 meter gap between the southern edge of the Hastanetepe zone and the southwestern property boundary (see Figure 1). Little to no drilling has been previously conducted in that area, even though significant mineralization was intercepted in reconnaissance holes DB-29 and DB29-A near the property boundary in 20081. Directly southwest of the 2008 holes and Dedeman's property boundary lies the mining complex of Esan Eczacbas Endustriyel Hammaddeler Sanyai ve Tic. A.S. ("Esan"), which mines and processes similar styles of mineralization to those found on the Dedeman property.

Sisorta Royalty Property Update. The Sisorta project, located in the Eastern Pontides mineral belt, is a near-surface, volcanic-hosted, high sulfidation epithermal gold deposit. Previous exploration by EMX and its partners outlined a 1,000 by 600 meter zone of shallow oxide gold mineralization with underlying copper and gold porphyry potential at depth. In 2016, EMX sold the Sisorta project to Bahar, a privately owned Turkish company, for staged cash payments and an uncapped 3.5% NSR royalty2.

Bahar informed EMX that it has commenced with Environmental Impact Assessment ("EIA") work in 2018 as required under the mine permitting process in Turkey. Once complete, Bahar intends to continue applying for other necessary permits for project development. Bahar advises that the permitting process is expected to take 1-2 years.

Comments on Sampling, Assaying, QA/QC, and Adjacent Properties. Dedeman's drill samples were collected in accordance with industry standard best practices. The samples were submitted to ALS laboratories in Izmir, Turkey and Vancouver, Canada (ISO 9001:2000 and 17025:2005 accredited) for sample preparation and analysis. Silver and base metal analyses are determined by four acid digestion and ICP MS/AES techniques. Over-limit analyses are performed by atomic absorption, and in some cases (>30% Pb and >30% Zn) by volumetric titration techniques. Dedeman performs routine QA/QC analyses on their assay results, including the utilization of certified reference materials, blanks, and duplicate samples.

EMX conducted a field review of Dedeman's Balya mining operation, exploration drilling program, and sampling, logging, and QA/QC protocols in May 2018.

Esan's project provides context for EMX's Balya royalty property, which occurs in a similar geologic setting. However, this is not necessarily indicative that Balya hosts mineralization with similar tonnages or grades.

Dr. Eric P. Jensen, CPG, a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and employee of the Company, has reviewed, verified and approved the disclosure of the technical information contained in this news release.

About EMX. EMX leverages asset ownership and exploration insight into partnerships that advance our mineral properties, with EMX receiving pre-production payments and retaining royalty interests. EMX complements its royalty generation initiatives with royalty acquisitions and strategic investments.

-30-

For further information contact:

David M. Cole

President and Chief Executive Officer

Phone: (303) 979-6666

Email: Dave@EMXRoyalty.com

Scott Close

Director of Investor Relations

Phone: (303) 973-8585

Email:SClose@EMXRoyalty.com

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain "forward looking statements" that reflect the Company's current expectations and projections about its future results. These forward-looking statements may include statements regarding perceived merit of properties, exploration results and budgets, mineral reserves and resource estimates, work programs, capital expenditures, timelines, strategic plans, market prices for precious and base metal, or other statements that are not statements of fact. When used in this news release, words such as "estimate," "intend," "expect," "anticipate," "will", "believe", "potential" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, which, by their very nature, are not guarantees of the Company's future operational or financial performance, and are subject to risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause the Company's actual results, performance, prospects or opportunities to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and factors may include, but are not limited to: unavailability of financing, failure to identify commercially viable mineral reserves, fluctuations in the market valuation for commodities, difficulties in obtaining required approvals for the development of a mineral project, increased regulatory compliance costs, expectations of project funding by joint venture partners and other factors.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this news release or as of the date otherwise specifically indicated herein. Due to risks and uncertainties, including the risks and uncertainties identified in this news release, and other risk factors and forward-looking statements listed in the Company's MD&A for the quarter ended March 31, 2018 (the "MD&A"), and the most recently filed Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2017, actual events may differ materially from current expectations. More information about the Company, including the MD&A, the 20-F and financial statements of the Company, is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on the SEC's EDGAR website at www.sec.gov.

Table 1. Balya Select Drill Intercepts (August 2018).

Drill

Hole From

(m) To

(m) Length

(m) Pb

% Zn

% Ag

g/t Comments DB108 144.75 146.25 1.5 0.02 2.21 4.00 TD 207m, vertical. True thickness ~65% of intercept. 150.0 152.2 2.2 0.05 4.64 9.73 DB108-A 132.0 134.0 2.0 0.03 3.46 4.00 TD 198m, az=125, incln= -77. True thickness ~80% of intercept. 137.0 140.0 3.0 0.24 13.95 55.67 DB108-B 263.75 276.5 12.75 11.39 5.92 225.18 TD 285m, az=125, incln=-67. True thickness ~95% of intercept. >30% Pb 272.15-272.6m* DB109-A 110.1 115.1 5.0 6.25 0.04 106.84 TD 288m, az=125, incln=-67. True thickness ~95% of intercept. >30% Pb 114.2 to 114.3m* DB109-B 89.00 92.35 3.35 1.86 1.75 30.51 TD 257.5m, az=125, incln=-54. True thickness 186.8 188.5 1.7 2.25 0.27 18.35 ~95% of intercept.

* Over-limit re-analyses for >30% Pb pending from Dedeman. Specific intervals set to over-limit value of 30% Pb as noted.

Figure 1. Balya PbEq% Grade x Thickness Drill Map (August 2018).





To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/1508/38026_a1533922526192_57.jpg



1 See EMX news release dated December 5, 2008.

2 See EMX news release dated August 3, 2016.
The parents of the pupils have been given a period of 10 days to secure admissions.

Not more than 45 per cent students have managed to secure admission for the academic year 2018-19 under the RTE Act.

MUMBAI: Nine hundred and ninety-eight students have been allotted seats in private unaided schools of the Mumbai region in the third lottery round of admissions under the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009. The parents of the pupils have been given a period of 10 days to secure admissions.

Mahesh Palkar, education officer of the BMC education department, told this newspaper, We are waiting for 10 days to get over to decide whether to go for another round. If there are students remaining and vacant seats, we will surely introduce further students but as of now, nothing can be said.

As per data provided by the BMC education department, of the 998 students who have been allotted seats in the third round, 875 are under the 300 Mumbai BMC region schools and 123 are in the 47 schools under the state education department.

Not more than 45 per cent students have managed to secure admission for the academic year 2018-19 under the RTE Act. Mr Palkar had said, We are doing our part and now, it is completely up to the parents whether to secure admission.
Along with the awards, the international festival celebrated in Melbourne was a grand and star-studded affair.

Keerthi Suresh in Mahanati, Ranbir Kapoor in Sanju and Rani Mukerji in Hichki.

Melbourne: Sanju, Hichki, Love Sonia, Mahanati and Gali Guleiyan were the films which bagged the major honours at the star-studded Indian Film Festival of Melbourne finale, held at Palais Theatre, one of the oldest and most iconic landmarks of Melbourne.

Ranbir Kapoor won the IFFM Vanguard Award for his outstanding portrayal as Sanjay Dutt in Sanju, while Rani Mukerjis performance as teacher with Tourette syndrome won her the Best Actress honour for Hichki.

In the male category, it was Manoj Bajpayee who won Best Actor award for Gali Guleiyan (In The Shadows), which also won a Best Indie film special mention.

The Bong beauty was also felicitated with the Excellence in Cinema award, and was handed over the trophy by Simi Garewal, who had amazing words to say about Rani.

Wins for Sanju team didnt stop at just Ranbir, with biopic being declared Best Film, Rajkumar Hirani winning Best Director and Vicky Kaushal taking home the Best Supporting Actor (Male) for his act as Sanjay Dutts friend in the drama.

The other big winner of the night was Love Sonia, which was honoured with the Best Indie Film award, and fetched Richa Chadha Best Supporting Actress and her co-star Freida Pinto won the Diversity Award.

Telugu hit Mahanati, based on yesteryear actress Savitri, starring Keerthi Suresh was honoured with the Equality In Cinema award.

The event had earlier kicked off by celebrating the diverse cultures of India with special welcome to the guests on the red carpet. Ministers from Victorian government, and Australian film industry members like Dev Patel starrer Lion director Garth Davis, were in attendance.

Apart from amazing dance performances, popular music composers Sachin-Jigar were among the star attractions with their lively and melodious performance, while host and comedian Saadiya Ali kept the audiences in splits throughout.

The International Film Festival of Melbourne had kicked off on Friday, with various events and activities around the theme of inclusion.

Here are the complete list of winners:

Best Indie Film: Love Sonia

Best Indie Film Special Mention Gali Guleiyan (In The Shadows)

Equality In Cinema: Mahanati

Diversity Award : Freida Pinto

Best Actor: Manoj Bajpayee For Gali Guleiyan (in The Shadows )

IFFM Vanguard Award : Ranbir Kapoor for Sanju

Best Actress : Rani Mukerji For Hichki

Best Film : Sanju

Best Director : Rajkumar Hirani
The two sides 'agreed at meeting to hold South-North summit in Pyongyang in September as planned', without giving a precise date.

North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un (L) shaking hands with South Korea's President Moon Jae-in (R) at the Military Demarcation Line that divides their countries ahead of their summit at the truce village of Panmunjom. (Photo: AFP)

Seoul: North and South Korea agreed Monday to hold a summit in Pyongyang in September after high-level talks in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula.

The two sides agreed at the meeting to hold a South-North summit in Pyongyang in September as planned, the joint statement said, without giving a precise date.

A trip by the Souths President Moon Jae-in to the Norths capital would be the first such visit for more than a decade, as the diplomatic thaw on and around the peninsula builds.

But despite the rapprochement, international sanctions against the North for its nuclear and missile programmes have kept economic cooperation between the two Koreas from taking off, while little progress has been made on the key issue of Pyongyangs denuclearisation.

The September summit can be viewed as North Koreas strategy to find a breakthrough in its stalled talks with the US, said Asan Institute of Policy Studies analyst Go Myong-hyun.

For South Korea, President Moon wants to improve inter-Korean ties but thats hard without progress in US-North Korea talks, he told AFP.

At the historic first summit between Moon and the Norths leader Kim Jong Un in Panmunjom in April they agreed the Souths president would visit Pyongyang during the autumn.

The first South Korean president to go to the Norths capital was Kim Dae-jung, who met the current leaders father and predecessor Kim Jong Il in 2000 and later won the Nobel Peace Prize, in part for his efforts at inter-Korean reconciliation.

Pyongyang saw a second inter-Korean summit in 2007, when Roh Moo-hyun also met Kim Jong Il.

But relations subsequently soured as the North accelerated its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the South elected conservative governments.

Mondays high-level talks, taking place on the northern side of the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone, were proposed by the North last week as it lashed out at Washington for pushing ahead with sanctions.

Afterwards the Norths chief delegate Ri Son Gwon said the meeting had gone well and the date for the summit was ready, but they had not announced it as reporting would be more fun when reporters are curious.

Earlier he used a proverb describing a very intimate friend to refer to inter-Korean ties, saying: We have opened an era where we are advancing hand in hand rather than standing in each others way.

South Koreas Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, leading the delegation from Seoul, said in his opening statement it was important that the two Koreas keep the same mind, adding: Any problem can be resolved with that mindset.

Rapid rapprochement

The rapid rapprochement between the two neighbours began this year ahead of the Winter Olympics in the South and paved the way for a landmark meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.

Cross-border exchanges between the two Koreas have significantly increased since then, with the neighbours planning to hold reunions for war-separated families next week for the first time in three years.

But although Trump touted his summit with Kim as a historic breakthrough, the nuclear-armed North has since criticised Washington for its gangster-like demands of complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.

Meanwhile the US has urged the international community to maintain tough sanctions on the isolated regime -- Seoul has caught three South Korean firms importing coal and iron from the North last year in violation of the measures.

Experts say Moon could try to act as a mediator between the US and North Korea, having salvaged the Singapore meeting when Trump abruptly cancelled it.

They are trying to send a message externally that the North-South dialogue momentum has been established and that it will be maintained regardless of the outcome of US-North Korea talks, said analyst Go.

Whether that is true is in doubt but they are trying to indirectly pressure the US, especially on sanctions, by showing an improvement in North-South ties and that peace has been established between them.

Moon and Kim agreed at their summit in April to officially declare an end to the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded with an armistice instead of a peace treaty, by the end of the year.

But Harry Harris, the US ambassador to South Korea, said Monday it was too soon for such a declaration, Yonhap reported.

Its too early for that even as we seek improvement in relations between the North and the South and between the North and the United States, Harris said, adding the allies share the same goal of the final, fully verified denuclearisation of the peninsula.
Over 470 Indians, including 418 fishermen, are detained in Pakistani jails, as per govt report submitted in country's Supreme Court in July.

Pakistan and India frequently arrest fishermen as there is no clear demarcation of the maritime border in the Arabian Sea and these fishermen do not have boats equipped with the technology to know their precise location. (Representational image)

Islamabad: Pakistan on Monday released 30 Indian prisoners, including 27 fishermen, from jail as a goodwill gesture ahead of the country's Independence Day on Tuesday.

The release of the prisoners "is in line with Pakistan's consistent policy of not politicising humanitarian issues," Foreign Office Spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said in a statement.

The 30 prisoners being set free also include 27 fishermen, it added.

"This is a humanitarian gesture to mark Pakistan's Independence day on August 14," he said.

"It is our hope that the Indian side will also reciprocate in a similar manner," he said.

Over 470 Indians, including 418 fishermen, are detained in Pakistani jails, according to a government report submitted before the country's Supreme Court in July.

On Sunday, it was reported that the fishermen had been arrested by the authorities for allegedly trespassing into Pakistan's territorial waters. They were shifted to Cantonment Railway Station from Karachi's Malir jail and will be taken to Lahore.

The fishermen will be handed over to Indian border officials at Wagah border.

Pakistan and India frequently arrest fishermen as there is no clear demarcation of the maritime border in the Arabian Sea and these fishermen do not have boats equipped with the technology to know their precise location.

Owing to lengthy and slow bureaucratic and legal procedures, the fishermen usually remain in jail for several months but they also periodically set them free as goodwill gesture.

A number of non-governmental organisations in both India and Pakistan have raised the issue, pressing their governments to release the arrested fishermen without delay.
The Synod 2018, held August 7 to 13 in Baghdad, gathered local prelates and those from the diaspora. The tensions between Washington and Tehran worry: no sanctions but diplomacy. The return of Christians and the reconstruction work that are fundamental for the rebirth of Iraq.

Baghdad (AsiaNews) - A prayer for the end of the war in Syria and in all other areas of the Middle East, such as Yemen, where a conflict is taking place, and the call for a common effort for the region to finally enjoy a "stable and lasting peace".

This is the appeal contained in the final declaration from the 2018 Synod of the Chaldean Church, which took place August 7 to 13 in Baghdad, under the leadership of patriarch Card Louis Raphael Sako.

The leaders of the Iraqi Church discussed Iran and the United States, increasingly at the center of a "psychological war" [the words of President Rouhani] which, should it escalate, risks precipitating the situation in the region.

In a statement shared with AsiaNews the bishops call on Tehran and Washington to adopt the path of dialogue and diplomacy to solve problems, not try to impose restrictive measures and punitive actions that only go to the detriment of the civilian population.

Th price for all violence, they add, is paid by "innocent people" as was the case in Iraq in the 13 years in which the sanctions were in force. "Wars and sanctions - they warn - bring nothing but negative results".

In addition to the violence that is bleeding the region, the Iraqi bishops led by Patriarch Sako analyzed the situation in Iraq and the condition of the local Christian community, which has started a slow process of rebirth after the recent drama of the Islamic State (IS, ex Isis). The Iraqi Church confirms its support to those who work with a view to strengthening national unity.

Urging the political class to a common fight against corruption, the Iraqi and Diaspora bishops - there were prelates from the dioceses of Australia, the United States, Canada, Europe, Iran, Lebanon and Syria - are calling for the economy to be strengthened and the creation of employment. They observe that this is a key objective especially for the new generations, overcoming the sectarian mentality and the quota system.

If this is to be achieved then a strong national government must be created. One that treats all citizens in the name of equality, freedom, democracy and respect for pluralism. The future executive, with the support of the international community, is also responsible for ensuring the return of displaced families, arranging for housing and restoring infrastructure.

The Iraqi Church does not hide its fears for the future of Iraq and the region, in addition to the problems facing the Chaldeans of the Diaspora. For this reason, the first point, they warn, is to ensure the return of the largest number of displaced people to the Nineveh Plains, the area with a Christian majority in the north of the country. This will be the starting point to then strengthen security and strengthen pastoral, social and humanitarian activities, while the faithful are called to show "patience and constancy" keeping faith and hope alive.

The message of the Chaldean bishops ends with the wishes of the "Muslim brothers and sisters" for the feast of Id al-adha (the Feast of the Sacrifice) which is celebrated on August 21st and commemorates total submission to God in Islam.
GREENWICH  The rain might have been pouring down Monday morning, but in the view of John Midy, the day was still perfect for a beautiful event.

That event was the celebration of the two-year anniversary of the Family Centers Health Care clinic in Wilbur Peck Court. The continually growing clinic now provides physical health, dental and mental health care to low income residents in town.

We are one of the solutions to overcoming the challenges of providing affordable care to patients we are serving, Midy, the clinic manager, said on Monday as local, state and federal officials gathered under tents outside the health clinic to cover themselves from the rain. These are patients who are low income or that do not have health insurance or do not have the ability to pay for health care. Weve worked very hard to provide excellent service here.

According to Family Centers Inc., the Greenwich-based non-profit which oversees the clinic, more than 2,000 patients have been served by the clinic in the last two years. Many have come from the town-owned Wilbur Peck housing complex, but the clinic serves patients from all over town.

The services $2 million annual budget is covered by the federal government. Bob Arnold, CEO of Family Centers Inc., applauded its success and growth, saying it was once an unthinkable dream to have the clinic.

While health care is really a big national issue, access is most acutely felt locally and we were feeling it here in Greenwich, Arnold said. Bringing this clinic here has changed so many things for so many people  At Family Centers our whole mission is to help people fulfill their own potential and if you dont have health care its pretty hard to fulfill your potential as a child in school or as an adult working or in any part of life. Its such a critical need.

One of the people the clinic has directly helped was on hand on Monday as patient James Gambino discussed what it has meant to him.

I came here for dental care and the service and the professionalism and everything is top notch, he said. Im a Husky member and Ive gone through a bit of a rough patch in my own life and this place is just amazing.

Dennis Torres, a vice president at Family Centers, helped oversee the clinic from proposal through construction. On Monday he said the clinic has been so successful that expansion is on the table.

Torres said they are looking at smart growth and not growing for the sake of growing, adding that the clinic team would like to add a second dental chair in the community to meet patient demand. The Housing Authority of Greenwich has also discussed expansion, which could become part of improvements at the Armstrong Court complex.

Mondays celebration coincided with National Health Center Week and many of the speakers took time to thank the clinics staff for all of their work.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., was on hand for the event and called federally qualified health centers like the one in Wilbur Peck Court the backbone of the countrys health care system.

When you talk about dental and mental health, those gaps in our health care system have real impacts on real lives, Blumenthal said. People who dont get this kind of health care, not to mention basic primary care, are impacted severely, particularly children. People might think that Greenwich residents have no gaps, no lapses, no needs that are unmet but the fact is exactly the opposite. We are as much at risk in health care as any other part of the state and the country.

Blumenthal was joined at the event by U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, and state Reps. Livvy Floren, R-149, and Michael Bocchino, R-150.

This is a partnership and its a partnership around something that, as tough as the partisan argument is today, we all agree on, which is in this country everybody should have access to health care, Himes said. Yes, it might be Appalachia or it might be the inner city that gets emphasized but right here at Wilbur Peck, there are a couple hundred people who, but for the existence of this center might not have the kind of access to health care we might assume in a community as affluent as Greenwich should be available to everybody.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
WASHINGTON - The FBI has fired agent Peter Strzok, who helped lead the bureau's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election until officials discovered he had been sending anti-Trump texts.

Aitan Goelman, Strzok's attorney, said FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich ordered the firing Friday, even though the director of the FBI office that normally handles employee discipline had decided Strzok should face only a demotion and 60-day suspension. Goelman said the move undercuts the FBI's repeated assurances that Strzok would be afforded the normal disciplinary process.

"This isn't the normal process in any way more than name," Goelman said, adding in a statement, "This decision should be deeply troubling to all Americans."

The FBI declined to comment.

The termination marks a remarkable downfall for Strzok, a 22-year veteran of the bureau who investigated Russian spies, defense officials accused of selling secrets to China and myriad other important cases. In the twilight of his career, Strzok was integral to two of the bureau's most high-profile investigations - the Russia case and the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

But when a Justice Department inspector-general investigation uncovered politically charged messages that Strzok had exchanged with another FBI official, he was relegated to a position in human resources. Conservatives soon made Strzok the face of their attacks against the special-counsel investigation into the president's campaign, and the FBI took steps to remove Strzok from its ranks.

Conservatives on Monday hailed the move. President Donald Trump used it to suggest the Russia investigation should be dropped and the Clinton case redone.

"Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!" he wrote.

Minutes later, he added, "Just fired Agent Strzok, formerly of the FBI, was in charge of the Crooked Hillary Clinton sham investigation. It was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone!"

The reaction among Democrats was more understated. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., said Strzok's firing did not undercut Mueller's probe, which had produced dozens of indictments.

"Sorry, @realDonaldTrump, the #RussiaInvestigation is bigger than one agent (who was at least willing to go under oath)." Swalwell tweeted, citing the president's Twitter handle.

Bobby Goodlatte, the son of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., wrote on Twitter that he was "deeply embarrassed that Peter Strzok's career was ruined by my father's political grandstanding" and pointed to a recent congressional hearing at which Strzok testified.

"Thank you for your service sir," Bobby Goodlatte wrote. "You are a patriot."

Bobby Goodlatte recently endorsed the underdog Democrat running for his father's seat.

Strzok's team launched a GoFundMe page with a lengthy statement to raise money for his "legal costs and lost income" and said on the site that his firing was "apparently driven by political pressure." The site had raised more than $23,000 in the first four hours.

Because Strzok was a senior-level FBI employee, and because the FBI's No. 2 official directed his firing, he has few realistic avenues left to get back his job. It was unclear whether he planned to pursue legal action against the bureau.

Strzok's position in the bureau had been precarious since last summer, when the Justice Department's inspector general, Michael Horowitz, told special counsel Robert Mueller that the lead agent on his team had been exchanging anti-Trump messages with an FBI lawyer. The next day, Mueller expelled Strzok from the group.

The lawyer, Lisa Page, had also been a part of Mueller's team, though she left a few weeks earlier and no longer works for the FBI. She and Strzok were having an affair.

Trump has previously derided the pair as "FBI lovers," and he and his conservative allies have pointed to their conduct in an attempt to discredit the Mueller probe. On Saturday, before the firing was known publicly, Trump tweeted an attack on Strzok, Page, former FBI director James Comey and former deputy director Andrew McCabe.

"Will the FBI ever recover it's once stellar reputation, so badly damaged by Comey, McCabe, Peter S and his lover, the lovely Lisa Page, and other top officials now dismissed or fired?" Trump wrote on Twitter. "So many of the great men and women of the FBI have been hurt by these clowns and losers!"

Horowitz concluded that Strzok showed a "willingness to take official action" to hurt Trump's electoral prospects, particularly in a text he sent telling Page "we'll stop" Trump from being president.

Strzok, who was a deputy assistant director for counterintelligence at the bureau, has apologized for sending the messages and said they reflected personal views that did not affect his work. His attorney has said that had Strzok wanted to prevent Trump's election, he could have leaked that Trump's campaign was under investigation for possibly coordinating with Russia - a revelation that might have upended his bid to become president.

At a congressional hearing last month, Strzok sparred with Republican lawmakers who raised questions about his character and even his marriage. He asserted that there was "no evidence of bias in my professional actions" and that his having to testify was "just another victory notch in [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's belt and another milestone in our enemies' campaign to tear America apart."

Strzok was escorted out of the FBI building in June and effectively relieved of work responsibilities, though he technically remained an FBI employee as he and his attorney challenged the effort to dismiss him. On July 24, they made a final pitch to Candice Will, who leads the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility.

Goelman said Will ultimately decided that Strzok should face a demotion and 60-day suspension and be subjected to a "last chance" agreement. That would have put him on thin ice if he were to commit another offense. But Goelman said Bowdich overruled that decision and ordered Strzok's termination.

During a June congressional hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that Strzok had been referred to the Office of Professional Responsibility - which he referred to as the bureau's "independent disciplinary arm" - and that officials would "not hesitate to hold people strictly accountable." Wray promised that process would be "done by the book."

Strzok is the third high-ranking FBI official involved in the Clinton and Russia investigations to be fired amid an intensely political backdrop. Trump removed Comey as the bureau's director and said he did so thinking of the Russia case. Attorney General Jeff Sessions later removed Comey's deputy, McCabe, after the inspector general alleged he lied about a media disclosure related to Clinton.

McCabe - who, unlike Comey, could not be removed at the will of the president - has said his termination was a politically motivated attempt to undermine the Mueller probe. He is facing a criminal investigation by prosecutors in the District of Columbia's U.S. attorney's office. McCabe's attorney wrote Monday of Strzok's firing: "Another patriot, public servant, and defender of the FBI fired to appease the WH," using an abbreviation for White House.

It is possible that others could yet face discipline. The inspector general identified five FBI employees, including Strzok and Page, with some connection to the Clinton email case who had exchanged messages expressing hostility toward Trump, support for Clinton or other political views. Each was referred to the FBI for possible violations of the bureau's code of conduct.

The inspector general's office said it found no evidence "to connect the political views expressed in these messages to the specific investigative decisions" in the Clinton case. Its report singled out Strzok, though, for prioritizing the Russia investigation in October 2016 instead of following up on a Clinton-related lead. Strzok's attorney has disputed that Strzok failed to pursue the Clinton lead aggressively.

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Video: Longtime FBI agent Peter Strzok was fired on Aug. 10, over furor surrounding his politically charged text messages. He is the third high-ranking FBI official involved in the Hillary Clinton and Russia investigations to be fired.(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

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Lee Ann Womack with Andrew Duhon will be in concert at Walker Theatre on Oct. 6 at 8 p.m. Doors will open at 7 p.m. Tickets will go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. and are $44.50, $29.50 plus $50 VIP Add On (50 tickets total) and will be available here.

Review for Lee Ann Womack:

Artists dont really make albums like Lee Ann Womacks The Lonely, The Lonesome and The Gone anymore. Albums that seem to exist separate and apart from any external pressures. Albums that possess both a profound sense of history and a clear-eyed vision for the future. Albums that transcend genres while embracing their roots. Albums that evoke a sense of place and of personality so vivid they make listeners feel more like participants in the songs than simply admirers of them.

Anybody who has paid attention to Womack for the past decade or so could see she was headed in this direction. The Lonely, The Lonesome and The Gone (ATO Records)  a breathtaking hybrid of country, soul, gospel and blues  comes from Womacks core. I could never shake my center of who I was, says the East Texas native. Im drawn to rootsy music. Its what moves me.



Capturing the reality of East Texas music isn't always easy. Being in Houston and at SugarHill helped make that happen, inspiring an approach to the recording process that everyone embraced from the first note played. 'Music down there  including Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur and all the way through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama  is this huge melting pot, Womack says. I love that, and I wanted that in this record. I wanted to make sure it had a lot of soul in it, because real country music has soul, and I wanted to remind people of that.'

When you make albums, and arent just going for singles, you really have to treat them with respect, Liddell adds. We did that at SugarHill, taking a bunch of like-minded lunatics and seeing what happened.'

In Houston  with all its history, its eccentricity, its diversity and its lack of pretense  those like-minded lunatics found a place where they could flourish.

We all felt we werent going someplace just to make a record, Womack says. We were going someplace to make a great record. Dont just take her word for it, though. Listen. And when Womack and the music take you there, youll find you want to stay.
The investigators ordered the arrest of Wael Saad, expelled from the order in the days following the killing of Bishop Epiphanios. He will remain in pre-trial detention pending the formalization of charges. Motive remains unknown. The man believed to have hit the bishop at the head with an iron pole.

Cairo (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Egyptian public prosecutor has arrested a former monk over the murder of the Coptic Orthodox bishop Anba Epiphanios. The bishop who was prior of the monastery of Saint Macarius in Wadi Natrun waskilled in late July. The suspect Wael Saad, had recently been expelled from the order and will remain in custody for four days, waiting for the indictment to be formalized.

On the evening of 29 July, the 64-year-old Bishop Epiphanios was found lifeless and with a deep gash to his head inside the monastery, which is situated in a desert area to the north-west of Cairo. The motive that has pushed the former religious to kill his superior remains unknown.

According to the investigators, Wael Saad used an iron pole to strike the bishop to death. The assassination has spread panic and fear among the Egyptian Orthodox Coptic community, which represents about 10% of the total population.

Wael Saad, who as a monk called himself Isaiah al-Makari, lost his title and was expelled from the order in the days following the death of Bishop Epiphanios. At first the ecclesiastical authorities had explained that the decision was motivated by investigations into his"continuous violations" of the duties imposed by his religious life and belonging to the religious order.

Following the violent death of Anba Epiphanios, the Coptic Orthodox Church launched a fierce battle against the lewd and improper behavior of some monks. At the same time they have frozen the admission of new candidates to the monastic order for at least a year.

The leaders of the Coptic Church have imposed the closure of social media - Facebook and Twitter - and the same Coptic pope Tawadros II has set the example by eliminating all account, however, little used in the past. According to some well-informed sources, behind the provision there would be the growing dissent among the various souls of the Coptic Church regarding the murder of the bishop.

So far there has been no official comments by the highest ecclesiastical authorities.
Reports from South Korea announced that Samsung is closing one of its two smartphone factories in China. The Korean giant will withdraw from the plant in Tianjin by the end of 2018 due to difficulties and slowing growth.

Reuters said that Samsung market share fell from 20% five years ago to less than 1% today, outgunned by local manufacturers like Huawei and Xiaomi. The giant is also under pressure for failing to deliver quarterly profit growth in times when competitors keep unveiling cheaper, feature-packed models.

The Tianjin factory is one of two in China that work with Samsung, the other being in Huizhou. The smartphone company currently relies mostly on facilities in Vietnam and India. Just over a month ago it expanded the plant in Noida, Uttar Pradesh which should yield 120 million units per year by 2021.

For comparison, the Tianjin factory produced 36 million units, 72 million phones come annually from Huizhou, while Vietnam is responsible for nearly 240 million handsets.

Source
Next year Samsung will celebrate 10 years of Galaxy S flagships and wants to make the anniversary phone outstanding. Previous reports suggested the Galaxy S10+ will have a triple-cam setup, later followed by leak about two selfie cameras.

Today a report from South Korea revealed the full setup of the main S10+ camera - it will have a 16 MP regular snapper, 13 MP sensor with a telephoto lens, while the third cam will have a wide-angle lens and a 12 MP sensor behind it.

Samsung Galaxy S9+

South Korean agency ETNews reported that Samsung initially planned to equip only one version of the Galaxy S10 portfolio with the triple setup, but the plans changed and now two variants will receive three cameras.

Another device that might get a triple setup is the next iteration of the Galaxy A portfolio, presumably called Galaxy A9 (2019). If the company goes through with the plan of introducing the first midranger with such a camera combination, it will unveil the phone with 32 MP + 8 MP + 5 MP. The source does not reveal which sensor will have wide-angle or telephoto lens though.

Huawei P20 Pro with three cameras

Analysts predict more than 10% of manufactured smartphones will have three-cam setup in 2019, since LG and Samsung will join Huawei in the three-cam race. An increase in the amount of cameras will lead to increased production of sensors and improved business results for manufacturers like Samsung, MCNEX, CamSys, and others.

Source (in Korean)
It's been two generations since the exploding incident with the Galaxy Note7 but the disappointment still lingers at the back of our tongue. The rather successful Note8 helped us forget but questions about the recently launched Note9 reliability still arise.

Well, Samsung's mobile CEO is quick to assure its customers that since the Note7, Samsung has taken some extra steps to make sure nothing like this happens ever again. The same quality control team that was assembled two years ago was working hard on the Note9 as well. So, despite the Note9 carrying the biggest battery a Galaxy Note smartphone has ever seen, no issues regarding customer's safety will arise.

The battery in the Galaxy Note 9 is safer than ever. Users do not have to worry about the batteries anymore

In addition, DJ Koh, Samsung's mobile CEO, is confident that the Note9 will outperform its predecessors due to its top-notch hardware, big battery and feature-packed stylus pen, which is the key selling point of the handset.

The Galaxy Note 9 boasts the very best performance with the specialized S-pen, as well as the intelligent camera. We hope the sales (of the new device) will outpace the Galaxy Note 8

But only time will tell if the CEO's expectations are justified or if users are losing interest in the Note-series or in the premium smartphone segment in general.

Source
Yesterday, the member Churches of the Evangelical Fellowship of India held gatherings across the country. They believe that together they can change the situation. The event comes at a crucial time in the countrys history, marked episodes of violence and discrimination against minorities.

New Delhi (AsiaNews)  Member Churches of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI) observed a Day of Prayer for the nation yesterday in several places across the country.

The goal was to come together in prayer because together the current situation can be changed, two clergymen said in a video-message.

Speaking to AsiaNews, EFI General Secretary Rev Vijayesh Lal said that his organisation launched the National Day of Prayer last year and chose the Sunday closest to our Independence Day for the event.

The latter provided an opportunity to pray for the victims of hate crimes in India as well as for the Church to stand strong in the face of opposition.

Hundreds of Christians responded to the EFI appeal and joined the gathering. On the EFIs Facebook page, photos of activities held at a local level were posted.

The Churches that took part include those in Nagpur and Latur (both in Maharashtra), Guwahati (Assam), Damoh (Madhya Pradesh) and Chandigarh.

"Thanking the Lord for the wonderful Christians in India. Praying for their country and freedom to worship without fear will prevail, wrote a Christian in a post.

The appeal of the Protestant group comes at a critical time in Indias history. Next year the country goes to the polls to renew the Union parliament and political parties are already stomping the ground in a hotly-disputed campaign.

In recent weeks, Christians have been targeted by Hindu nationalist groups who would like to impose their religion throughout the country. Their actions include shutting down schools and NGOs.

Hindu extremists have not spared bishops, accusing some of them of plotting with the Vatican to impose Christianity.

Speaking on behalf of his community, Rev Vijayesh Lal called on everyone to share the message of peace in all the churches of India.

"Let us give thanks to God for our beautiful country and our fellow citizens. Let us also intercede for the needs of the nation and the issues it faces. God loves India. Let us stand in prayer and bless our dear nation, Rev Lal said.
Published on 2018/08/12 | Source

On the latest episode of the KBS 2TV drama "Shall We Live Together", Lee Mi-yeon (Jang Mi-hee) met her ex-husband Choi Dong-jin (Kim Yu-seok).

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He asked her to a restaurant and when he said 'hello' she spoke back to him formally.

Choi Dong-jin said, "I guess you're speaking like that to keep your distance from me. You've become more beautiful. I guess you took good care of yourself to pay me back". Lee Mi-yeon said, "That's right. Do you regret it?"

Choi Dong-jin said, "I've always regretted it". Lee Mi-yeon said, "I can't read your expression. I used to be able to, but now I can't. You taught me to be careful of people who can hide their feelings. You also taught me business".

Choi Dong-jin replied, "If I have a successful student like you, then I must be a good teacher. But I am failing myself so I must have no talent".

Lee Mi-yeon asked why he wanted to see her and he asked, "Why did you pay my debt? It wasn't an easy amount even for you. I am grateful, but you didn't need to do that".

Lee Mi-yeon snapped back, "Why? Do you think I still have feelings for you?"
Published on 2018/08/12 | Source

Korean-American forensic anthropologist Jennie Jin is the woman in charge of identifying the remains of U.S. soldiers who died in the Korean War and were recently handed over by North Korea.

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At Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu, Hawaii, Jin has the challenging task of identifying bones that were handed over without any aid to identification except a single dog tag.

Jin (39) graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in Art History, followed by a master's in anthropology from Stanford University and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. In June this year, she got a phone call from her boss at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency asking if she was willing to go to South Korea.

She was already pregnant with her second child but packed up and headed to Seoul believing she could not be left out of such an important event.

"Most of the bones aren't even fully grown, which means the soldiers were just 18 to 23 years old and died fighting in a country they'd never heard of. Could they have imagined they would die so young fighting in a place like that?" she said.

Thirty out of the 55 remains that were returned are supposedly those of soldiers who died during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. "Temperatures dropped below freezing during that battle and American soldiers died without access to painkillers because the drugs were frozen too", Jin said.

Jennie Jin (second from left) looks at documents with officials from the U.S. and North Korea in Wonsan, Kangwon Province on July 27. /Courtesy of the U.S. Forces Korea

She always places the U.S. flag next to the remains when she analyzes them in her lab. Jin explains that she wants them to be greeted by the Stars and Stripes if they somehow rise from their sleep.

Jin has identified 330 fallen U.S. soldiers out of around 600 remains returned from North Korea since the 1990s. Thanks to the help of family members of fallen soldiers, DNA samples of around 90 percent of U.S. soldiers who went missing in action have been secured. The DNA in the bones of many soldiers has been damaged, making identification difficult, but Jin said some remains can be handed over to the families within months.

Jin's maternal grandparents were refugees from North Korea who fled to South Korea during the war. Her grandfather came to the South on a boat along with retreating U.S. soldiers who fought in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir.

"I heard my grandmother was captured and suffered in North Korean captivity as she fled to the South", she says. "I was deeply moved to receive the remains of U.S. soldiers found in Wonsan, where my grandparents must have passed through".

Read this article in Korean
Rocky Boy burns fire restrictions in place

A 200-acre fire lit up Laredo southwest of Havre Saturday night, Bear Paw Volunteer Fire Department Chief Josh Bebee said this morning.

His department received the call around 10:30 p.m. Saturday night about the fire, which was started by a lightning strike.

Bebee said his department sent out five units in response to the fire, and Kremlin and Box Elders volunteer departments assisted with extinguishing it.

Bebee added that the fire was put out within five hours.

Bear Paw Volunteer Fire Department Assistant Chief Jeremy McKellar said no structures were involved in the fire.

Kremlin Volunteer Fire Department Chief Kody Peterson said his department responded about 10:45 p.m. He said the department sent one truck and two firefighters to assist. A lot of support also came from local farmers and ranchers helping to provide water, he said.

Peterson added that they were blessed with the wind, in that there was very little of it, so the fire didnt move very fast.

Box Elder Volunteer Fire Department Chief John Grass said his department had received the call at 11 p.m. Saturday. He said his department sent five trucks and nine firefighters to respond to the call.

Grass said that he was thankful to everyone that showed up, adding that the departments worked well together and the local farmers and ranchers help assure the fire was not going to get worse.

It was a community effort, Grass said.

Hill County Disaster and Emergency Services coordinator Dave Sheppard said with the amount of dry grass in that area keeping the fire contained to 200 acres was incredible. Time was on their side, Sheppard said, given that it was during the night and weather conditions were favorable.

Sheppard said that there have not been many fires this year. Most in Hill County this year have been machine-caused, with sparks coming off of equipment or the equipment running too hot, he added.

Bebee said the area has not seen any other fires recently.

West Liberty County Volunteer Fire Department Chief Jason Wanken said Liberty County had a fire recently caused by a fallen power line. The fire burned five cares off of Montana Secondary Highway 223 near the Marias River two nights ago, he said. He said the department responded to the fire quickly and efficiently, extinguishing the fire after a short period of time, adding that many people in the area showed up to help.

Blaine County Sheriff Glenn Huestis said his county has seen 16 fires since May but nothing major, all fairly small.

Two fires each burned a few acres last week, one caused by a swather and the others cause not known.

We got fairly lucky last week, he said.

Rocky Boys Indian Reservation announced Friday it was implementing fire restrictions, something Hill and Blaine counties and the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation already had done.

On Rocky Boy, fires, campfires and stove fires are prohibited except in permanent fire pits or fire grates within developed recreation sites and when using portable stoves, lanterns using gas, jellied petroleum, pressurized liquid fuel or a fully enclosed sheepherder type stove with a 1/4-inch spark arrestor-type screen.

Smoking is banned except in an enclosed vehicle or building, a developed recreation site or while stopped in an area at least three feet in diameter that is barren or cleared of all flammable material.

Operating a chain saw is banned unless it is with an approved spark arrestor and a shovel and fire extinguisher present.

Welding or operating an acetylene or other torch with open flame is banned except in cleared area of least 10 feet in diameter with a fire extinguisher present. Using explosives also is banned.

Some exemptions exist, the release about the ban said.

Thursday, Hill and Blaine county and Fort Belknap Indian Reservation put Stage 1 fire restrictions in place and Hill County enacted a burn ban on Beaver Creek Park.
Havre Police Department

A First Avenue Northeast caller reported Friday at 12:04 p.m. someone tried to break into her car and they broke her window.

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Eric Lee Ambler of Havre, 42, was arrested on a state District Court warrant and charges of possession of drug paraphernalia, driving with a suspended or revoked driver's license, violations of conditions of release, operating a vehicle without valid registration and no motorcycle endorsement, after an officer initiated investigation of suspicious activity on 17th Street Friday at 1:48 p.m.

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A two-vehicle, noninjury crash was reported on First Street West Friday at 1:54 p.m.

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A caller reported Friday at 5:52 p.m. a stolen bike on First Street.

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Raven Ray Wolfgang Lanier of Havre, 20, was arrested on a Justice or City court warrant and a charge of disorderly conduct with physical contact after he called to report an assault Friday at 7:33 p.m.

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Kyle Glen Delaurier of Havre, 19, was arrested on a Justice or City court warrant served on Second Street Friday at 9:57 p.m.

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Someone stopped at the police station Saturday at 11:31 a.m. with a found cellphone.

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Joshua Kay Blatter of Havre, 28, was arrested on a Justice or City court warrant and a charge of stop sign violation during a vehicle stop on 10th Street Saturday at 8:49 p.m.

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A caller on Boulevard Avenue reported Saturday at 11:40 p.m. someone had been hitting trash cans.

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Linda Corena Gonyea of Havre, 53, was arrested Sunday at 7:37 a.m. at the police station on charges of criminal contempt and revocation of suspended or deferred sentence in relation to a 24/7 Sobriety Program violation.

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Timothy Shawn Anderson of Havre, 28, was arrested at the police station at 7:54 a.m. Sunday on a criminal contempt charge related to a 24/7 Sobriety Program violation.

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A 16th Avenue caller reported Sunday at 5:31 p.m. that keys were left in a 1995 blue Honda Civic and it was stolen sometime around noon.

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A caller reported at 8 p.m. Sunday a bike with a luggage rack was stolen from Curve Drive.

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A 16-year-old was issued a summons on charges of trespass to property and juvenile curfew violations after callers at a First Street organization reported at 12:10 a.m. today juveniles on the roof of the facility.

Hill County Sheriff's Office

A caller on Clear Creek Road asked to speak Saturday at 2:50 p.m. with a deputy for a complaint.

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A knife wound was reported at Northern Montana Hospital Sunday at 2:39 a.m. The victim told deputies investigating the assault that she didn't remember what happened.

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Deputies investigated vandalism at the sheriff's office parking lot Sunday at 5:26 a.m.

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Barbara Dianne Richardson of Big Sandy, 60, and a 16-year-old girl were each issued a summons on a charge of shoplifting after a caller at a U.S. Highway 2 West business reported shoplifters Sunday at 6:20 p.m.

Havre Fire Department

Emergency medical personnel responded to three calls Friday, six Saturday, one Sunday and one this morning.

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Firefighters responded to a 12:07 p.m. Sunday call on the 10 Block of Third Street West, which turned out to be a smoke detector malfunction.

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Firefighters were called to the 1800 Block of Washington Avenue South at 5:16 p.m. Sunday for a grassfire, which burned about one-quarter acre of grass and sagebrush. No definitive cause for the fire was found, though it may have been fireworks, the remains of which were found laying next to the road.

Havre Animal Shelter

This morning the shelter held one medium-hair cat with gender listed as "unknown," one medium-hair male cat, one medium-hair female cat and one female short-hair cat.

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The shelter also held this morning a 1-year-6-month-old male German shepherd, a 2-year-1 month-old female pit bull terrier-German shepherd cross, an 8-year-4-month-old male Labrador retriever, one male and one female 6-month-old Rottweiler-Australian cattle dog-blue healer crosses, a 3-year-1-month-old male Labrador retriever and a 1-year-9-month-old female Australian cattle dog-blue healer-German shepherd cross. The shelter also has five 10-week old Rottweiler-Shepherd cross puppies.

Births

A boy was born Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018, to Dezerae and Cody Nagel of Havre.
Local law enforcement officers participate July 25 in Havre Middle School in training to deal with an active shooter. The three-day training session held by the U.S. Border Patrol Havre Sector included participants from Border Patrol, Havre Police Department, Hill County Sheriff's Office and Montana Highway Patrol.

Representatives of local law enforcement recently held a press conference to talk about what they are doing to prepare if something that is becoming more and more common comes to pass in Hill County - someone with a gun attacking people in a public place.

Hill County Sheriff Jamie Ross said U.S. Border Patrol Havre Sector held a training session on how agencies would react and cooperate together in case an active shooter is reported in the region.

"We just need to let the public know we're prepared, and we're willing to work together to solve whatever issue that comes up in our community, and this is just one of the many things we have done to do that," Ross said. "... We're all community members. We're all invested in our children and our community, and I believe we owe it to our community to be prepared for this threat."

He said the training in July was the most recent of multiple active shooter training sessions local law enforcement has held, and he thanked Border Patrol for putting together the training at no charge for the local agencies.

The training was held in late July in Havre Middle School, and Havre Police Chief Gabe Matosich thanked the school district for allowing its use.

Border Patrol Agent Shane Rice said 17 law enforcement personnel from Border Patrol, Hill County Sheriff's Offfice, Havre Police Department and Montana Highway Patrol participated in the three-day training session, which used four instructors.

The instructors included Havre School Resource Officer Josh Holt, Rice said.

"He gave a class (on) what the schools would do if this ever happened, so that way first responders in the community know exactly what to expect if this happened," Rice said.

Matosich said Holt's duties as school resource officer includes teaching what plans the schools have in place.

"He does a lot of teaching to students, faculty and staff at all the schools as well as like (Montana State University-) Northern and any other business throughout the community that wished to learn a little bit about it," Matosich said. "We will put on the training for the business."

Rice said Holt's presentation was one of several classes on the first day of training.

"We went over the history of the active shooter, how (we) as first responders responded to these situations, with a brief history such as the Texas Bell incident (in 1966), Columbine (in 1999) and how we have evolved from there," Rice said.

The next two days were spent in training sessions in the school, he said, "how to move as an individual; how to move as a team, so we went through formations, how to clear hallways, how to enter a building, evaluate thresholds, enter a room."

The third day went into shoot-no-shoot scenarios with role players playing active shooters and simulated rounds in the weapons, he said.

"Agents and officers involved had to enter in, find the threat and take care it however the situation called for," he said.

Rice said the training sessions are not because of any specific threat that has arisen in the area but are being held just to be prepared. Any first responders have to be prepared for any call, he said.

"We all back each other up in the community here," he said. "We don't always work with the same people from our agency. We're mixing the forms every time we go and do something. So it was a great opportunity for people to work with different agencies and learn how to communicate with each other."

Ross said the training was held in a school but could apply anywhere to any kind of call.

"That training can also be put to use at a community event, at a public place and in other calls for service that we attend and jointly work together to solve problems," he said.

"Active shooter (training) can pertain to just about anything," Matosich added. " ... Training is critical, to train and train and train. That's what we rely on so we're efficient in these situations."

"It's all about working together with the other agencies," he said. " ... It's great to work together and everybody has the same training."

"We have a common goal to protect our communities," Ross added.
Press release

HELENA  The Governors Office of Community Service is asking Montanans to take a Community Needs Assessment survey regarding statewide critical needs and how AmeriCorps can play a role in addressing those needs.

Results from the Community Needs Assessment survey will be used to determine how AmeriCorps members and community volunteers can address some of the most pressing needs in Montana. The survey confidentially captures personal and relevant opinions of what Montanans believe to be the most critical issues facing our state today. Issues are divided into seven areas: Environmental Stewardship; Education; Economic Opportunity; Healthy Futures; Veterans and Military Families; American Indian Affairs; and Montanans Age 55 and Up.

The Community Needs Assessment is at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/OCSCommunityNeeds2018/. Montanans are encouraged to take the Community Needs Assessment by Friday, Aug. 31. The assessment takes approximately 10 minutes to complete and requests basic demographic information in addition to asking questions on critical community needs. Individuals of all ages and backgrounds are welcome to take the assessment including those representing nonprofits, faith-based organizations, local, state or federal government, tribal members, or those identifying as themselves.

National Service members and community volunteers play a very important role in providing critical services to our underserved populations in addition to forming valuable partnerships throughout Montana, said Dan Ritter, executive director of the Governors Office of Community Service. The results will help distinguish how we can continue our current efforts and what we can do better to improve the quality of life for all Montanans.

Since 1994, more than 10,000 AmeriCorps members have served 8.5 million hours in Montana. In 2015, approximately 264,800 Montanans volunteered a total of 29.54 million hours of service to the state.

Along with OCS, the Montana Commission on Community Service is currently drafting the 2019-2021 State Service Plan which serves as the framework for service and volunteerism in the state. This plan is based in state statute and is a requirement of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Input from the Community Needs Assessment will be included in the State Service Plan as a way to determine key goals and develop rural, tribal, and underserved targets.



The Governors Office of Community Service expands and promotes national service and community volunteerism in Montana and engages citizens in service. Visit http://www.serve.mt.gov/.
Speaking to Pickering, she was keen to express how proud she was of O2s company culture  and in particular their commitment to inclusivity and transparency.

O2 has a company culture that promotes flexibility, explained Pickering. Obviously, were a successful commercial business but we understand that our people have responsibilities outside of work and therefore they really appreciate a culture of flexibility.

Similarly, Im also hugely proud that we now have a 50/50-gender split in our boardroom, which is fairly uncommon. This was a deliberate strategy we set out to achieve from the off.

And this commitment to diversity is much-appreciated  especially when it comes to workplace productivity. Gender-diverse companies perform up to 15% better than their less inclusive competitors, with ethnically diverse organizations pushing that figure to 35%. Statistics of which Pickering is well aware.

I firmly believe that inclusion is essential for organizations to grow and be successful, added Pickering. Companies like O2, with a vibrant and diverse customer base, need to reflect this in their culture. We need to be able to understand the needs of all our customers and the way to do this is to foster an inclusive atmosphere, where people can come to work and be themselvesits not only the right thing to do, theres a strong commercial imperative.
By Jennifer Beckett, Lecturer in Media and Communications, University of Melbourne

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash



There are many of us who stand for bringing people together and connecting the world. I hope we have the focus to take the long view and build the new social infrastructure to create the world we want for generations to come.

 Mark Zuckerburg, Facebook Post

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks a good game about wanting to build a better global community, but a community is only as good as the standards that underpin it. Recent events suggest that Facebooks idea of community isnt really the kind we want to build for generations to come. And if we want Facebook to do better, we as users need to push for change.





Read more:

The law that made Facebook what it is today





The problem with InfoWars

Facebook is currently copping criticism from both sides of the US political spectrum for its decision to ban the InfoWars page  a far-right media organisation known for spreading conspiracy theories  from its platform. As of July this year, Facebook was holding the line that InfoWars content did not breach its community standards guidelines despite persistent evidence that the site was peddling fake news and hate speech. Last week, Facebook became the latest in a string of social platforms  starting with YouTube at the end of July  to ban the organisation.

Why does the ban matter?

Facebook is the worlds largest social network, with more than 2.2 billion active users a month, and wields an enormous amount of influence in the way that we view the world. Its attempts to better deal with fake news in the wake of Russian tampering in the US election and the UK Brexit referendum is evidence that it knows were watching and were not happy.

Understanding online community governance

We all have to follow the Facebook policy. No matter what our personal opinions are, we all have to follow this.

 Facebook moderator trainer, Inside Facebook

Its easy to point the finger at a moderator when you disagree with their assessment of a comment or a post, but it is important to understand that moderation is used to enforce the standards of an online community. Moderation decisions are framed by an organisations community standards policy, and individual moderators rarely if ever have any say in formulating the overall policy.





Read more:

Facebook turns to real people to fix its violent video problem





Community standards set the tone for the community that is built on them.

In fact, we all follow a range of community standards every day in our offline lives. Some of these are legal  defamation laws, anti-discrimination laws, and laws around hate speech, for example  and some are social codes, like saying please or thank you, or giving up our seats on public transport to those who need them.

Online communities are no different. Research has shown that the online space, particularly the large social platforms like Facebook, can reinforce problematic social hierarchies and prejudices around gender, sexuality and race.

Its OK  everyone else says it

When they say freedom of speech, what theyre really saying is we really want to permit people to do whatever they want on this platform and we will do the bare minimum to make that socially acceptable.

 Roger McNammee, former Mentor to Mark Zuckerburg, Inside Facebook

In 1974 Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann wrote about a phenomenon she described as the spiral of silence. Essentially, it amounts to the silencing of minority opinion for fear of reprisal.

Social media has turned Noelle-Neumanns theory on its head, becoming a place where the vocal minority push out more restrained voices. They generate what Mark Zuckerbergs former mentor Roger McNamee referred to in the recent documentary Inside Facebook: Secrets of a Social Network as the crack cocaine of [Facebook], attracting the most highly engaged people on the platform. This content is also more likely to be shared, meaning that more people will see it, and more often.

Problematically, the more we are exposed to something, the more we are inclined to believe its true. This is what we refer to as the Illusory Truth Effect.

By allowing groups that are, by any commonsense standard, hate groups  be they racial, sexual or gender-based  or pages such as InfoWars that demonstrably peddle fake news, to proliferate across their site, Facebook is in effect telling its users that those views are not only acceptable but normal. Which leads us to

The standard you walk by, is the standard you accept

In 2013, the then head of the Australian Army, Lieutenant-General David Morrison, sent an impassioned video message about the culture of sexual harassment in the Australian armed forces, and the need to do better. His assessment that the standard you walk by, is the standard you accept applies equally to Facebook.

Facebook and other social platforms can and have changed their policies as a result of public pressure. In particular, where that pressure is highly visible and essentially threatens their bottom line.





Read more:

Why do we stay on Facebook? It's complicated





For example, in 2013 the activist group Women, Action and Media, sent emails to more than 5,000 companies that advertise on Facebook. Their campaign prompted Nissan to withdraw spending on Facebook advertising until the platform could assure the company that its ads would not be placed near offensive content. Given that YouTubes decision to axe InfoWars was largely based on advertiser pressure, one can assume that this was front of mind for the social behemoth as well.

So we need to be, as Roger McNamee suggested in the documentary, more focused, more persistent and [to] stop accepting [Facebooks] excuses, stop accepting their assurances.

Facebook claims to want to help build a better global community. But if it isnt as interested as doing that in practice as it is in theory, then were going to need to apply some pressure.

Jennifer Beckett 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.
I think its important to understand that if we make this a friendly departure ... you can look at your time here at the White House as a year of service to the nation, Kelly could be heard as saying. Then you can go on without any difficulty in the future relative to your reputation.

During the recorded exchange, Kelly cited integrity violations as the reason for Manigault Newmans dismissal.

Manigault Newman, who claimed she had no regrets recording the conversation, said she did it to protect herself: This is a White House where everybody lies.

The revelation has led others to question whether it was appropriate for a member of the White House staff to record such confidential communications.

You have a reasonable expectation of confidentiality and privacy in your conversations at your place of work, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said in an interview with ABC.
And its no wonder the tool was snapped up by PwC. Its essentially like having an HR director-come-psychologist in your pocket. Information is gathered via behavioral science-based questions, two queries per day. The branding algorithm attached to these questions and answers measures the responses and gives management reliable data.

Weve got over 70% engagement on daily questions, explained Anthony. And whilst this is providing top quality data, you have to realize that data is not useful or helpful in itself. Its really down to what you do with it. Our algorithm crunches the data to provide the insights, which are then sent to managers for consideration. Leaders can actually see the individual employees who are stressed, those who are bored and those who have entered flow state. And all in real-time.

The whole point of this, Anthony tells us, is to change management to leadership. They want employers to create an environment where intrinsic motivation can be realized  and the demand for this new approach is out there. 71% of employees claim to have strained relationships with their managers, whilst 65% of people would actually pick a better boss over a salary increase  problems Anthony and his team are determined to fix.

After the data is fed to the managers, we make suggestions via a dash-board. The recommended action alert advises managers to engage with any workers whose goals or motivations have dropped  even if its something as simple as having a talk with them over coffee.

It seems as if the future of change management is here  and it can fit in your shirt pocket.
He said the second scenario would involve a representation that proves to be false and amounts to dishonesty or fraud which then enables the employer to terminate for misconduct.

The third circumstance would involve a warranty breach where the individual has breached a warranty term and said they had skills or qualifications which they have been dishonest about.

Sebbens cited a high-profile case earlier this year which involved an MP resigning from WA Parliament after a Parliamentary Committee found he had made misleading statements about his police service and education history.

However, he said the sorts of cases that become public are relatively infrequent.

There are a few cases that make their way into the common law courts like the Supreme Court where someone is engaged in serious fraud about their qualifications or their previous work experience, said Sebbens.
Jury convicts Fletcher man of statutory rape

A Fletcher man was sentenced to almost 11 years in prison after a Henderson County jury found him guilty of statutory rape of a child under 16, District Attorney Greg Newman announced

Superior Court Judge W. Robert Bell of Charlotte sentenced William Z. Case, of 68 Allard Lyda Way, Fletcher, to 10 years and 10 months in prison after the conviction in

In other cases:
Deputies charge man with attempted murder

MILLS RIVER  Henderson County sheriffs deputies charged a 21-year-old Horse Shoe man with attempted murder after an altercation in which they also shot his dog, which had bitten a deputy, the sheriff's office said.

Related Stories

Deputies were dispatched to the South Mills River Road area at 8:05 Saturday night following a report of someone firing a gun from a truck in the roadway. The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission was also contacted due to concerns and a history of wildlife poaching in that area. Henderson County deputies located the unoccupied vehicle behind the Mills River Community Center building. As deputies tried to locate the occupants of the vehicle, shots were fired from the woods behind the community center in their direction. Following further communication, two male suspects exited the woods.



Hunter Alan Wright, 22, of 626 Old Highway 64 in Etowah, was taken into custody without incident. Wright was charged with misdemeanor resisting, delaying or obstructing a public officer. He was released from the Henderson County Jail on a $500 secured bond.



James Bradley Owen, 21, of 1132 Gash Road in Horse Shoe, refused to comply with deputies commands and an altercation occurred as he was placed into custody.Owen was arrested for felony first degree attempted murder, felony assault on a law enforcement officer and misdemeanor resisting, delaying or obstructing a government official.

"Shots were fired above the deputy's head during the encounter," sheriff's Maj. Frank Stout said. "Suffice it to say it was not a very wise decision to try to fire above the deputies' heads that were responding to the original call. It was a pretty severe encounter with him, not being compliant with the deputies' orders."

Owen received additional misdemeanor charges from the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission for allegedly placing processed food products as bait for black bears and for discharging a firearm from the right-of-way of a state road. He was jailed under a $100,500 bond.



As Owen fought with deputies during the arrest, a dog in his company bit a deputy and was shot. Owens father, James Gary Owen, 49, of 1132 Gash Road in Horse Shoe, came to the scene and was also arrested for misdemeanor resisting a public officer. He was released from the Henderson County Jail on a $400 secured bond.
Sinn Fein supporter Mick McAdam uses bolt cutters to take down the poster.

A key supporter of Sinn Fein TD Dessie Ellis has been photographed using bolt cutters to remove a poster advertising a Fine Gael-organised event on new Dublin Bus routes.

Sinn Fein supporter Mick McAdam attended the event hosted by Fine Gael TD Noel Rock in Finglas, Dublin, before leaving to cut down the poster outside the venue.

After producing the bolt cutters, Mr McAdam removed the poster in full view of those still attending the meeting at the Shamrock Lodge bar last Wednesday.

Disappointed

Onlookers photographed the Sinn Fein supporter as he used the heavy-duty handheld tool to cut the cable ties holding up the Fine Gael poster.

Once the poster was taken down from the lamp post, Mr McAdam put it under his arm and walked off.

Mr McAdam is pictured online canvassing alongside Mr Ellis in Finglas and he is also a regular attendee at Sinn Fein events.

Mr Rock said he was "disappointed but not surprised" by what was caught on camera outside his event, as Sinn Fein has a "history of making things disappear".

"It shows the anti-democratic streak that runs through Sinn Fein, from its membership to its unelected leadership," he told the Herald.

"I'd know Michael McAdam to see, he's one of Sinn Fein's key people in Finglas, and it's clear as day what happened here: they've been caught red-handed trying to suppress my work in Finglas."

Sinn Fein has turned down repeated requests for comment on the photographs.

The party was sent images of the incident and was asked if Mr McAdam was asked by Sinn Fein to remove the poster.

The party was also asked where Mr McAdam got the bolt cutters from.

However, the party's press office ignored emails, phone calls and text messages seeking requests for comment.

Mr Ellis confirmed he was contacted by Sinn Fein about the incident but insisted he didn't know anything about it as he was on holiday at the time.

"I don't want a prolonged conversation because I really don't want to comment [on] anything that I don't know anything about," he said.

When it was put to him that Mr McAdam works with him, Mr Ellis hung up the phone.

"This is stupid stuff from Dessie's team and I'm not sure what they were thinking," Mr Rock said.

"The days when Sinn Fein can get away with stuff in broad daylight are long gone.

"Since 2016, some 168 posters of mine have gone missing, at a cost of 10 per poster, and we now have clear proof of one of them being taken by a key member of Sinn Fein in Finglas, and have reported it to the relevant authorities."

Earlier this year, Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly was forced to give a public explanation when he was videoed using bolt cutters to remove a parking clamp from his car outside a gym.
A young woman who admitted her part in a "vicious" assault on a woman, who was pulled from her doorway and repeatedly hit, has been left without a conviction.

Chantelle Craig (21) was involved in an assault on the victim, who was punched and kicked "on numerous occasions" on the driveway of her home.

Judge David McHugh struck out the charge, leaving Craig without a conviction, after she paid 250 compensation to the injured party and wrote a letter of apology to her.

As part of the restorative justice process, the defendant also completed 10 hours of voluntary work and attended anger management classes.

The defendant, of Shancastle Drive, Clondalkin, had pleaded guilty before Blanchardstown District Court to seriously assaulting another woman.

The attack took place at Old Tower Crescent, Clondalkin, on April 3, 2016.

A number of other individuals were also charged in relation to the assault.

Kicked

The court previously heard that the victim was at her home when a car carrying four women pulled up outside.

A garda gave evidence that the victim was pulled from her doorway on to the driveway of her home, where two of the women "viciously" assaulted her.

It was alleged that they punched and kicked her "on numerous occasions".

There was "clear" CCTV footage of the incident, said the garda.

A medical report on the woman's injuries was previously presented to the court.

At the time, Judge McHugh noted that the woman had attended her GP and the results of a neurological examination that was carried out were normal.

The victim had made a complete recovery, the court was told.

Defence solicitor John Shanley said the case was before the court for finalisation, after Craig completed the restorative justice programme.

Mr Shanley asked the judge to leave Craig without a conviction, saying she had not come to the attention of the courts since the incident.
For Subscribers New restaurant to open in downtown Hagerstown

"It's just time that folks just relax and get back to having a good time and loving on one another," owner says of her planned restaurant.
As patriarch M Karunanidhi lay ill in Chennais Kauvery Hospital on August 7, his family and aides knew it was endgame for the political legend. Karunanidhis younger son MK Stalin, working president of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) , was the one everyone looked up to for the decisions.

Stalin met Edappadi Palaniswamy, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, to seek permission for a burial at Marina beach. The government denied permission stating that Marina was a burial ground only for chief ministers who had passed away while in the seat of power  this list includes CN Annadurai, MG Ramachandran and J Jayalalithaa. Under Stalins watch, a group of lawyers marched to the residence of acting chief justice of the Madras High Court Hulavadi Ramesh at 10.30 pm and a midnight hearing commenced. The judge adjourned hearings for the morning and a tense Stalin and top DMK leadership stood guard near Karunanidhis body which was in state at Rajaji Hall. Eventually, the DMK won the legal battle. As soon as the information reached a tense Stalin, the floodgates opened and the next leader of the DMK broke down, sobbing in relief.

The DMK top leadership has rallied around their new leader in force. Come August 14 and the working committee of the Dravidian party will meet. A date will be set to hold the general body meeting when Stalin will ascend to the post of Thalaivar or President of the DMK.

And what of the thus far feuding family? Karunanidhi was the only shield for elder son MK Azhagiri. The former Union Minister was dispatched to Madurai by his father in the late 1980s to oversee the party in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu. Stalin, Azhagiris younger brother, remained in Chennai, directly under the eye of the DMK supremo, trained by him to take over the mantle eventually.

Azhagiri and Stalin had never seen eye to eye but father Karunanidhi perhaps hoped that the enmity would subside if they were separated geographically. Azhagiri built his base steadily in Madurai and other southern districts. In the 2009 bypolls, he earned notoriety for his Thirumangalam formula  for allegedly bribing voters of the Thirumangalam constituency in Madurai. The crisis became deeper when the office of the Maran-owned Dinakaran newspaper was torched in 2007, killing three employees. The newspapers crime  to publish an opinion poll that established Stalin as the preferred successor to Karunanidhi.

In 2014, as crucial Lok Sabha elections loomed, Azhagiri dug his own grave. An angry altercation with his father resulted in his expulsion. By then Stalin, under the guise of inner party elections had ensured that his loyalists were put firmly in place in Azhagiris strongholds.

With Karunanidhi no longer around to back his elder son, Stalins path is clear. He will not entertain Azhagiri again in politics. Stepsister Kanimozhi understands too well that if she is to have a space for herself within the DMK, she will have to toe Stalins line. She is doing just that.

As for Azhagiri, his comment to the media at Marina Beach on Monday shows that he is gearing up to fight for a slice of the DMK pie. I have no issues within the family but I have issues within the party, said the elder son. I will reveal all details in two to three days, he added. The DMK has gone into silent mode, warned by Stalin not to speak on the subject of Azhagiri.

But Azhagiris backing within the party is small. His most vocal supporters have all been either suspended or thrown out of the party. The powerful Maran brothers too continue to have swords crossed with Azhagiri, preferring to back Stalin instead. The might of their money and media power combined is likely to ensure that Azhagiri does not rise again. And with the top leadership of the DMK rallying around Stalin, the rank and file too will come together. For the DMK, 2019 is crucial if they are to establish themselves as a firm opposition to the BJP. And 2021 is even more crucial since this is Stalins first chance in the sun with a shot at becoming the Chief Minister.

Sandhya Ravishankar is a Chennai-based journalist and the author of Karunanidhi: A Life in Politics, published in May 2018

The views expressed are personal
As a 10-term member of the Lok Sabha, he embellished the majesty of parliament. As its Speaker and a jurist of considerable weight, he safeguarded its space in the constitutional scheme of separation of powers.

Somnath Chatterjee was from a generation of parliamentarians whose pursuit of ideology and partisan politics wasnt at the expense of healthy precedents and democratic regard for rivals. He was very much in the league of his venerated peers: Pranab Mukherjee, PV Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Chandra Shekhar, Madhu Limaye, Indrajit Gupta and Madhu Dandavate.

The value and wisdom they brought to parliamentary debates is a study in how dissent can contribute to governance. Their objectives were similar, only their paths differed. It was in that creative ambience of yore that Chatterjee attained acceptability and stature.

If he fought the judiciarys incursions on the legislative turf, he also endorsed expulsion of ten MPs in the cash for query scam that rocked the Lok Sabha when he was Speaker. It was for him an unpardonable case of elected representatives selling their basic privilege of asking questions to make the executive accountable.

The brickbats he faced came in the twilight of his parliamentary innings. Elected Speaker in 2004, the Marxist veteran was as much in the firing range of the BJP as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The Opposition targeted them in the belief that their self-image of high integrity-- made them vulnerable to the mud-slinging thats synonymous to realpolitik.

The duo was expected to desert posts rather than take stains on their personae. Singh came close to resigning rather early in his first inning as PM. It took his close aides some effort to dissuade him in the face of fierce attacks in the Rajya Sabha over his cabinet colleague Shibu Soren being on the run in a criminal case. What upset Singh was a senior BJP MP calling him a fugitive from the House when his minister was a fugitive from the Law.

Chatterjees disquietude was over Vajpayees response to his appeal to end a protracted parliamentary logjam. The former Premier wrote in a letter that the chair had to command respect.

But on learning of the Speaker planning to demit office in protest, the BJP veteran visited him at his residence to clarify: Maine jo bhi likha, man se nahin likha (my heart wasnt with what I wrote). His gesture put the kibosh on a likely face-off in classic parliamentary tradition and now sounds like a folktale.

Much of the BJPs attacks on Chatterjee had their genesis in the latters ideology that arguably was a formidable bulwark against the saffron thought. From the perspective of the Treasury-Opposition divide, the Marxist -- who did not severe ties with the party before becoming Speaker -- was as much in the news as the PM.

So when the Indo-US nuclear deal saw the Left parties withdraw support from the UPA regime, the CPI(M) asked him to walk out with them. That didnt happen primarily on account of the temperamental hiatus between him and then CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat.

The dogmatic Karat cited Chatterjees primary membership of the party he hadnt renounced, to demand his resignation. What followed was his expulsion from the CPI(M) which did not in a condolence statement, after his death, recall his association with the party.

From the Communist stock to which Chatterjee belonged, he rated Jyoti Basu as his idol, held HS Surjeet in high esteem, was affectionate towards Sitaram Yechury and called Biman Bose his younger brother.

His oft-repeated lament on being booted out of the party was that his remains wouldnt be draped in the red flag on his last journey. For his comrades, he was a renegade.

The CPI(M)s refusal to own him up in death proves right his worst fears: a comrade with a legacy, but without a party!

vinodsharma@hindustantimes.com
During the monsoon festival of Hariyali Teej, the union of Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati is celebrated. It honours the day when Lord Shiva accepted Goddess Parvatis love.

According to Hindu mythology, Goddess Parvati went through the birth and re-birth cycle a total of 108 times until Lord Shiva took notice of her single minded dedication and agreed to marry her. Teej festival celebrates this very dedication which was exhibited by Parvati.

Teej is also significant because of the fact that many hold the belief that it was on this day that Goddess Durga had said that fasting and doing certain rituals shall ensure that women lead a happily married life.

Teej is celebrated by married Hindu women who pray for the good health of their husbands. They dress up in traditional clothes, and the colour green is a popular theme, as suggested by the name, Hariyali Teej. The colour green is representative of the monsoon season which is responsible for increasing the level of greenery.

It is a tradition during this day for women to receive gifts from their mother, in laws, husbands and other members of the family. It is also common for some daughters to visit their parents house and return after Rakhi.

Hariyali Teej is also known as Shravan Teej or Choti Teej. It began at 8:38 am today and shall continue till August 14.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more
Amitabh Bachchan on Monday shared a picture of his daughter Shweta Bachchan Nanda and granddaughter Navya Naveli Nanda posing together. Its Daughter & Daughter UNLIMITED .. the @mxsworld .. a very proud Father and Nana .. my love and blessings ever unlimited, he captioned the picture on Twitter.

MSXWorld is a fashion label created by Monisha Jaising and Shweta Bachchan Nanda. Amitabh had shared another picture of the two of them earlier this month.

T 2899 - its Daughter & Daughter UNLIMITED .. the @mxsworld .. a very proud Father and Nana .. my love and blessings ever unlimited  pic.twitter.com/oIwPEqFMR5  Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) August 13, 2018

Both Shweta and Navya are wearing white outfits in the picture - Shweta in a graffiti skirt and silk camisole and Navya in a flash tee and bedazzled cargo pants. Rohan Shrestha has been credited as the photographer.

Both Shweta and Navya have been making several public appearances lately. Shweta was involved in a bit of a controversy last month when she appeared in an advertisement with her father. The ad was billed as her acting debut and was criticised by members of the All India Bank Officers Confederation, an organisation claiming to have membership of around 3,20,000 officers, for being disrespectful towards the banking community. Kalyan Jewellers, the subject of the ad, later pulled it out of circulation.

In a blog post around that time, Shweta explained why she didnt enter the film industry like the rest of her family. Lets just say I chickened out, learning very early on what being in the business meant for me, I chose to live away from its glitter and glamour. This was MY decision, not one thrust on me from any member of my family because of my gender, she wrote.

Meanwhile, it has long been rumoured that Navya will be joining Bollywood soon. She made her grand debut at Le Bal, an annual showcase for children of celebrities, held in Paris.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Sridevi would have been 55 today. On the birth anniversary of the actor, who passed away in February leaving her family and fans shocked, brother-in-law and actor Anil Kapoor took to Twitter to pay her a tribute. Anil and Sridevi were considered a hit jodi of their time and acted in films such as Lamhe, Roop Ka Raja Choron Ki Rani among many other.

Taking to Twitter, Anil wrote, A true star that shone brightly on-screen & lit up the lives of everyone she touched. Not a day goes by when we dont miss you Sri. We see your reflection in #JanhviKapoor & #KhushiKapoor everyday. You live on in our hearts & minds...

A true star that shone brightly on-screen & lit up the lives of everyone she touched. Not a day goes by when we dont miss you Sri. We see your reflection in #JanhviKapoor & #KhushiKapoor everyday. You live on in our hearts & minds... pic.twitter.com/VD9Bx3jAnw  Anil Kapoor (@AnilKapoor) August 13, 2018

Earlier, Boney Kapoor also remembered Sridevi on her birth anniversary. He told Pinkvilla in a message, There are heroes and then there are legends, heroes get remembered but legends never die Sri lives with us every day.. not a minute goes by when we dont miss her.

Sridevis daughter Janhvi Kapoor has also shared an adorable picture with her parents Sridevi and Boney Kapoor on the occasion. The 21-year-old took to social media to post a childhood picture of her as a child in her moms arms.

Sridevi passed away on February 24 in Dubai, where she went to attend a family wedding. Born as Shree Amma Yanger Ayyapan in 1963, she was known for her iconic roles in Hindi movies like Chandni, Lamhe, Mr India, Chaalbaaz, Nagina, Sadma, and many more. The Padma Shri awardee had also made a mark with her stellar performances in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam and Kannada films.
Williams Street, between 1400 and 1410 Williams Street, will be closed on Wednesday and Thursday, from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. for water meter installations. L ocal traffic still able to access businesses and residences from East Main Street.




Some love stories are just meant to be. The Sridevi and Boney Kapoor romance and subsequent marriage was what destiny chose for them. On Sridevis 55th birth anniversary, we walk you through their story.

Post her marriage to Boney, Sridevi led a low-profile life, rearing her two children and taking care of her family. However, a couple of years back, when she did start making public appearances with Boney and her two daughters, Janhvi and Khushi, it was hard not to see the deep affection and friendship Boney and Sridevi shared. It was evident that even after so many years of marriage, the duo was blissfully in love with each other.

 A post shared by Sridevi Kapoor (@sridevi.kapoor) on Oct 22, 2017 at 12:01am PDT

However, behind all the sweetness, was years of patience, even uncertainly.

Wearing our favourite @manishmalhotra05  A post shared by Sridevi Kapoor (@sridevi.kapoor) on Mar 1, 2017 at 12:01am PST

While Sridevi was always super secretive about her life, Boney has often spoken about how he fell in love with her. At an event held by India Today in 2013, he spoke at length about their romance. The first time he saw her was in a Tamil film, back in the late 1970s. He knew nothing of her back then. However, she did leave a deep impression on her. He recalled telling himself that he would like to have her in his next film. He went to buy the rights of the Tamil film, for which he wanted Rishi Kapoor as its male lead. However, before Rishi could see the film to take a decision, Boney thought of getting his leading lady on board. With that in mind, he travelled to Chennai to meet Sridevi. Unfortunately, that was not to be as she was out of a film shoot in Singapore.

 A post shared by Sridevi Kapoor (@sridevi.kapoor) on Feb 26, 2017 at 10:30am PST

Florence with my best friend  A post shared by Sridevi Kapoor (@sridevi.kapoor) on Jan 13, 2017 at 2:22am PST

 A post shared by Sridevi Kapoor (@sridevi.kapoor) on Nov 10, 2016 at 12:06pm PST

Though he didnt get to meet Sridevi, the thought stayed with him. Later, she saw again in Solva Saawan which was not a glamorous film but at that point in time, she did create an deep impact on him.

He got another chance when he got to sign her on for Mr India. He went up to Sridevis sets and met her. In the video, he went on to say how when he met her, it was a dream come true. She didnt say much as she has always been an introvert. However, in broken Hindi and English, they managed to communicate. She mentioned that all her professional decisions are taken by her mother.

So he travelled to Chennai to meet Sridevis mother. At that point in time, she was the highest paid female actor. While she was being paid Rs 8-8.5 lakh (approx), her mother quoted Rs 10 lakh. That was her way of negotiating, he added. He, however, agreed to pay her Rs 11 lakh. He went to say how during the shoot of Mr India, he did everything to make her comfortable.

Me and my teddybear  A post shared by Sridevi Kapoor (@sridevi.kapoor) on Apr 19, 2015 at 6:20am PDT

In the process of his narration, Boney went on to say how the more he interacted with her, the more involved he got. He had even confessed to his ex-wife that he was in love with Sridevi. Boney followed Sridevi to Switzerland where she was shooting for Chandni. While it was a Yash Chopra production, and Yash had worked with Anil, it became Boneys excuse to be there. However, the actual reason was to be there and to see Sridevi.

She could eventually see that Boney wasnt into this for a fling (he hesitates to use the word in the video). What really worked for him was when he was there as a solid support when her father passed away. Sridevi was abroad then, shooting for Lamhe.

And that is how they began seeing each other and by 1996, they were married.

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Rajkumar Hiranias Sanju on Sunday walked away with the Best Film honour here at the Westpac IFFM Awards night, where Manoj Bajpayee won the Best Actor for his yet-to-release Gali Guleiyan and Rani Mukerji was named Best Actress for her performance in Hichki.

Rani, who impressed with her performance as a woman faced with Tourettes Syndrome in Hichki, walked away with two honours at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) as she was also bestowed an Excellence In Cinema award.

Veteran actress Simi Garewal, looking elegant as ever in her trademark pristine white, gave away the honour to Rani, who has been a part of the film industry for over two decades.

Overwhelmed by the honour, Rani thanked her fans world over for loving her and her work through the years.

Hirani won the Best Director for Sanju, a biopic on the life of Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt, while the IFFM Vanguard Award went to actor Ranbir Kapoor for his breakthrough performance in bringing alive Sanjays tumultuous life journey on-screen.

The director told IANS here that he is happy with the recognition for the movie and is excited about showcasing the movie at La Trobe University here, with Sanju co-writer Abhijat Joshi and actor Vicky Kaushal.

Vicky won the supporting actor honour for his well-deserved performance as Kamli in Sanju, and Richa Chadha won it too as she won the jurys heart with her power-packed role as a brothel owner in Love Sonia.

The jury members for the fest, launched by Mitu Bhowmick Lange, comprised Simi Garewal, Sue Maslin, Jill Bilcock, Nikkhil Advani and Geoffrey Wright.

Wright, known for the Russell Crowe-starrer Romper Stomper, told IANS that he was mighty impressed by the variety that Indian cinema currently has on offer. He said he feels that perhaps it has gone from recreation to being serious cinema.

Indias colourful and diverse culture was very much a part of the awards celebration as there were the beats of the dhol, performers dressed in traditional Indian classical attires, Odissi dance, Bhangra and more.

Composers Sachin-Jigar added the chutzpah with some of their Bollywood tracks.

The inclusion-themed ninth edition of the gala gave a Diversity Award to Freida Pinto, who shot to fame and prominence first with her role in Oscar-winning drama Slumdog Millionairea. In her upcoming film Love Sonia, Freida is seen in a never-seen-before avatar.

Tabrez Noorani-directed Love Sonia, which opened the IFFM gala and left the audience moved with a story around sex trafficking, won the Best Indie film. A special mention in this space went to Gali Guleiyan, which marks Dipesh Jains debut as a director.

The Equality In Cinema Award was given to Mahanati, the widely acclaimed Telugu and Tamil film on the life of south Indian actress Savitri, who made a mark in the 1950s and 1960s.

Actor Ali Fazal, who was the jury of the short film competition, chose To-let as the Indian winner and the Australian winner was Found, which is on Islamophobia.

Richa also gave away the IFFM Heroes Award, which celebrates real life heroes who have done good deeds.

IFFM began on Friday, as part of the celebrations, Rani on Saturday hoisted the Indian flag at the Federation House, which also became a stage for a dance competition, bringing the huge and diverse Indian community of Melbourne together -- denoting the unifying power of cinema.

The fest will end on August 22.

Here is the full list of winners:

Best Indie Film : LOVE SONIA

Best Indie Film Special Mention : GALI GULEIYAN (IN THE SHADOWS )

Equality in Cinema : MAHANATI

Diversity Award : FREIDA PINTO

Best Actor : MANOJ BAJPAYEE FOR GALI GULEIYAN (IN THE SHADOWS )

IFFM VANGUARD AWARD : Ranbir Kapoor for his Breakthrough Performance in Sanju

Best Actress : RANI MUKERJI FOR HICHKI

Best film : SANJU

Best Director : RAJKUMAR HIRANI

Best Supporting Performance : VICKY KAUSHAL FOR SANJU and RICHA CHADHA FOR LOVE SONIA

Excellence in Cinema : RANI MUKERJI

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Lisa Haydon took to Instagram to share photos from her picturesque holiday in Saint-Tropez, France. Lisa is known for her role in films like Queen and Ae Dil Hai Mushkil; but when shes not on the sets filming, the 32-year-old model and actor can be found on exotic trips around the world.

Lisa is currently enjoying fun days at the beach with her friends and family, including 14-month old son Zack Lalvani. Lisa posted a few snaps from her latest family vacation, showing off her incredible figure in a string of cheeky bikinis and sleek one-piece swimsuits, as she splashed around in the ocean.

Happy, not perfect ;-) A post shared by Lisa Haydon (@lisahaydon) on Aug 10, 2018 at 6:03am PDT

Whether shes basking in the sun, watching the sunset, swimming in the water, enjoying a relaxing yacht day or jumping in the waves, Lisa makes sure to capture every breathtaking moment on her ultraglam Instagram account. She also shared a sweet video of her son Zack from the trip  can you blame her? He is super adorable  which she captioned, dribbling at 14months #PROUDmama.

dribbling at 14months  #PROUDmama A post shared by Lisa Haydon (@lisahaydon) on Aug 6, 2018 at 6:21am PDT

Ahead, weve rounded up the best snaps from Lisas action-packed travels, but fair warning: These swoon-worthy shots are sure to give you major vacation envy.

Read more: Lisa Haydon wears the best bikinis. 8 swimsuit trends to try in 2018, as seen on her

 A post shared by Lisa Haydon (@lisahaydon) on Aug 11, 2018 at 2:04am PDT

Roses are red A post shared by Lisa Haydon (@lisahaydon) on Jul 22, 2018 at 11:11am PDT

A post shared by Lisa Haydon (@lisahaydon) on Jul 19, 2018 at 2:15pm PDT

 A post shared by Lisa Haydon (@lisahaydon) on Jul 24, 2018 at 6:29am PDT

feelssss A post shared by Lisa Haydon (@lisahaydon) on Aug 10, 2018 at 10:06am PDT

Lisa Haydon made her Bollywood debut with Aisha and was last seen as a judge and host of the television show Top Model India 2018.

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As I write these lines, the anguished cries of innocent girls in Muzaffarpur and Deoria are weighing heavy on my heart and my mind.

Why dont those eager to celebrate Indias Independence Day pause and think about this: In more than seven decades, what have we contributed to the nations childhood and adolescence? We should also introspect about what becomes of sentimental slogans such as Todays children are the citizens of tomorrow.

As an Indian, when I look back, I discover that in the name of progress, even as roads and infrastructure were being created and enormous modern aircraft began soaring over peoples heads, prosperity was just a mirage for those on the lowest ladder of society. These ignorant people are not aware their nation has become the sixth-largest economy of the world as their lives are spent worrying about three words: roti, kapda aur makan (food, clothing and housing). To make these three words meaningful, what have politicians in our independent nation done? Just raised slogans election after election and then conveniently forgotten their promises.

Our politicians may agree or disagree on trivial matters, but they are one when it comes to policy and honesty of intent.

Indian politicians keep two masks handy. They keep changing them depending on whether are in power or in the Opposition. What doesnt change is the destiny of ordinary people. You may recall the outrage over the brutal gang-rape of Nirbhaya . The entire nation stood up to defend womens rights, it appeared. As a result, the already stringent laws were made even stronger. But criminals dont carry out heinous crimes after reading the legal fine print. The repercussions are before us. The Muzaffarpur and Deoria cases are unravelling and with every layer that is coming off, the ensuing stink has made the nation recoil in horror. The Opposition of that time is now in office. Yesterdays office-bearers are today in the Opposition camp. So they can claim a right over unleashing slogans and outrage. They are exercising this right. Because of this, the nation is seething under a deluge of charges and counter-charges. All this may take a toll on a few officials, but just change of faces isnt enough to fix a flawed system. Also, rapes and poverty dont go away with enactment or amendments of laws.

Here I would humbly like to bring up Delhi and the national capital region. As per government statistics, 54.57% people staying here can be classified as affluent. In the same Delhi, three innocent girls became victims of hunger deaths and within a week, another such incident came to the light in Ghaziabad. We are a land of contradictions! How can the rich be so irresponsible and insensitive? Even if the people were callous, why did the political system created on the edifice of their votes stay oblivious to all this? Instead of helping these innocents get nutrition and dignity, the system merely tried to carry out a whitewash. They have been doing this and theyll continue to do it because our political system is not committed to finding a lasting solution to these problems. Our honourable politicians know that the outrage will last just a few days. The peoples attention can soon be diverted to something else.

This process of distracting and misleading the common man has turned our republic into a system of tumult.

Kautilya wrote in the Arthashastra that the ruler must stay sensitive towards the protection and progress of his subjects. But the exact opposite is happening in our democracy. Some of our politicians display great commitment towards safety and welfare of animals, but how much do they value human beings? I would like to return to the incident in Mandawali. Mangal Singh, whose daughters died of hunger, didnt have a ration card of any other proof of social security. Unaware of the debate being carried out in Parliament on Aadhaar, on which millions were spent, when he headed out in search of employment, he was without any State identity. Hunger took away the young ones in his family because it wasnt part of any religion, community or group perceived as a vote bank.

What will be a greater misfortune for India than the fact that we are more sympathetic towards animals and intruders from other lands than our own children?

Questions are bound to be raised. Is being poor in India a sin? Dont you feel that those dreaming of India becoming the worlds biggest economy should first worry about this? Till the countrys deprived get freedom from poverty, we have no right to celebrate the festival of freedom.

Shashi Shekhar is editor-in-chief Hindustan

letters@hindustantimes.com
Unable to reach hospital due to a blocked highway, a woman gave birth to her child on the way, in Kedarnath town of Rudraprayag district on Sunday. The child died soon after the birth due to lack of medical attention.

The national highway 107, connecting Rishikesh to Kedarnath, was blocked due to a landslide.

According to reports, the pregnant woman, Mohita, 22, resident of Lwara village in the district, complained of pain in her stomach. Since the highway was blocked, Mohita, accompanied by her mother-in-law Asha, attempted a shortcut to reach a hospital at Phata, 32 km from Kedarnath. On the way, Mohita went into labour and delivered the baby, which died soon after the birth.

Rudraprayag chief medical officer (CMO) SK Jha said, She (Mohita) did not say (to her mother-in-law) it was labour pain. Her due date was August 30 and during her ultrasound, she had been informed that the baby is inverted. The ANM workers had told her to get admitted into the hospital a week before her delivery.

The CMO said that investigations found Mohita at fault. Even after the pain started, she didnt inform any Asha worker nearby when she had been told that is baby is breached, Jha added.

We have an ANM worker there who the locals trust a lot. She is the one who facilitates most of the deliveries. Even though the nearest hospital to them was in Guptkashi, they decided to take the opposite route to go to Phata, which is 14 kms away from Guptkashi, Jha further added. He claimed that the hospital at Guptkashi had sufficient staff and facilities.

The CMO said, A local informed the ANM workers at the Phata hospital that a woman was in labour. By the time they reached, the delivery was almost done. The child could not be saved. Mohita was taken to the hospital and admitted there yesterday. She is fine.

He said the Asha and ANM workers have been strictly instructed to admit all pregnant women to the hospital at least a week before their due date to avoid such circumstances. However, in this case, there was still time, he added.
Taxis, including app-based cab services in Delhi such as Ola and Uber, will not be allowed to charge toll from passengers for the next one month while entering or leaving the national capital through any of the 124 border points, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation(SDMC) said in a clarification on Saturday.

The decision to suspend toll collection at the toll plazas on the border was taken on August 9, but there have been reports of commuters being charged the toll due to lack of clarity and communication, requiring the clarification issued on Saturday.

Delhis civic body officials said commuters charged for the toll by cab aggregators can file a complaint with the civic body, the transport department, or the Delhi Police. SDMC  the nodal agency for collecting toll in the city  suspended toll collection from commercial vehicles after starting work on establishing an electronic toll collection system, also know as Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID), at 13 prominent border points. The 13 account for about 85% of the vehicles leaving or entering Delhi.

SDMC officials said that the decision to withdraw the collection of toll will be in place till the completion of the project on September 13.

During this period, if any passenger is charged with the toll tax in billing amount by any private or app-based taxi services, then s/he can immediately register a complaint with the Municipal Corporation, Delhi Governments transport department or local police. We will take action, said Shikha Rai, standing committee chairperson, SDMC.

They can also approach us if a toll operator charges an amount at any of the 124 entry points. We have issued a circular to the company operating these toll tax plazas, Rai said.
JNU student leader Umar Khalid was allegedly attacked by an unidentified gunman in the high-security area near the parliament on Monday afternoon, police said. Khalid, who fell down while grappling with the assailant, escaped unhurt.

The incident took place outside the Constitution Club where he had come for an event titled Khauff Se Azaadi. Organised by an organisation named United Against Hate, it featured speakers like lawyer Prashant Bhushan, late Dalit scholar Rohith Vemulas mother Radhika Vemula, suspended Gorakhpur hospital doctor Kafeel Khan, murdered Delhi youth Ankit Saxenas father Yashpal Saxena and others.

According to eyewitnesses, the assailant also fired a shot while fleeing though Khalids friends tried to apprehend him but left his country-made pistol behind.

Speaking to reporters after the incident, Khalid said he was going back inside the Constitution Club complex after having tea when somebody tried to fire at him, terming it was ironic that it happened as I have come to participate in an event against mob lynching.

One person came from behind, pushed me down and tried to fire at me. I ran for my life. He fled from there, he said, adding that he could not see the face of the attacker.

There is an atmosphere of fear. If you speak against the government you will be branded and then anything could happen to you, said Khalid, who was one of the three Jawaharlal Nehru University students arrested in connection with an event held on February 9, 2016, on campus in which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised.

He also admitted that he was very scared at the moment when the assailant pointed the gun at him. At that moment, I was reminded of what happened to Gauri Lankesh and I thought that (last) moment has arrived, he said before he was whisked away by the police.

Madhur Verma, deputy commissioner of police (New Delhi), said it was still unclear if any shot was fired, but said that a bullet was found stuck in the pistols chamber. Though the assailant was seen by multiple people, he has remained unidentified.

According to an eyewitness, Khalid and some others were standing at a nearby tea stall when the man approached him, pushed him and opened fire with a pistol. However, the bullet missed as Khalid slipped.

Ashish Pandey, who works at an office nearby, said he saw the suspect approach Khalid while he and others were near the clubs gate. The man had a pistol in his hand. The moment Khalid spotted him, he grabbed him, possibly to disarm him, said Pandey.

As they grappled, Khalid fell and lost his spectacles. But his two male friends tried to overpower the suspect while a woman accompanying him raised an alarm. The man then began running away. He managed to cross the road, but slipped and fell, said Pandey, adding that the shot was fired at that moment.

Another eyewitness who identified himself as Santosh, said the suspect had fired in the air.

Two stall owners near the club also remembered hearing a sound that resembled a tyre burst.

Ajay Choudhary, joint commissioner of police (New Delhi Range), said some of the best officers have been tasked with identifying and nabbing the suspect and multiple police teams have been constituted.

We are speaking to Khalid, his friends and eyewitnesses. We are also checking the CCTV footage, said Chaudhary, adding that the organisers of the programme had not informed the local police about the function.

The attack drew condemnation from various quarters.

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) called the attack culmination of the hate-filled propaganda spewed by the Modi government against all those who have questioned this regime.

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah tweeted: Wage a motivated hate campaign against individuals & sooner or later someone will feel emboldened enough to take the law in to their own hands. The attack on @UmarKhalidJNU is the direct result of the relentless hate campaign using both social & mainstream media. Glad hes well.

Delhi University student and author Gurmehar Kaur, who had been trolled online for raising her voice against campus violence and calling for peace with Pakistan, said: I want to say Im shocked and surprised but Im not. It was only time the online mob came out on the streets. And God forbid something happens tomorrow to someone the blood will be on our hands for not condemning the hatred enough.

Social activist Kavita Krishnan blamed certain news channels for the murderous violence against Khalid, while former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, tweeting in Hindi, said: What could be a bigger evidence of jungle raj in the country that the copies of the Constitution are burnt and Umar Khalid is fired at, close to the Parliament. The confidence of criminals has increased under the current government and media.

Actress and JNU alumnus Swara Bhasker also posted on Twitter, What are we becoming?!???!? A lawless anarchic state of affairs.. so damaging to our institutions and credibility at a responsible State. Even if you dont like umars views! #UmarKhalid.

(With PTI inputs)
A 22-year-old woman was killed by a man, who had been pestering her to leave her husband and marry him, in northwest Delhis Bhalswa Dairy. Police said that the woman was strangled on Saturday afternoon when her husband, a vegetable vendor, had gone out for work. Ravi Kumar,28, a contractual labourer at a godown, was arrested when he was planning to flee to his native village in Aligarh, UP. The womans one-year-old son was in the house when she was killed, police said.

According to police, it was around 2.30 pm on Saturday when the womans landlord informed the police control room reporting that she has committed suicide. The call was received at Bhalswa Dairy police station.

When a police team reached the spot they found that the woman had been strangled to death. Since there was a dupatta wrapped around the womans neck her landlord thought she had committed suicide. Locals and neighbours told police that her husband Rajesh Singh (27) is a vegetable vendor and was at a nearby market. He was called on the spot and during questioning he raised suspicion over Kumar. Singh told police that Kumar had been pestering his wife and she had told him about the advances he had made, said a senior police officer, not authorised to speak to the media.

On this, Kumar was identified and raids were conducted at his house. He was arrested from near his house late on Saturday night. He was trying to flee to his village in Aligarh, the officer said.

Deputy commissioner of police (northwest), Aslam Khan said, during interrogation, Kumar revealed that he was in love with the woman but she never reciprocated his love. He said that despite his advances the woman turned down his every proposal and asked her not to meet her. She had also threatened to call the police, the next time he approached her and had told her husband about Kumar, the DCP said.

Khan said that Kumar knew that womans husband usually left home in the afternoon and returned at night. He had gone to her house to persuade her. A heated argument took place between them and Kumar, in a fit of rage strangled her to death using her dupatta, the DCP said.
Its tempting to dismiss the Sikh radicals-led Punjab Referendum 2020 rally at London as a stunt without status, a term former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatchers used to trash Amnesty Internationals reports on troubled Northern Ireland. But Sundays spectacle at Trafalgar Square, aimed at rallying support for a separate Sikh homeland, was more than a mere publicity stunt. It was attended by 2,500 expatriate Sikh hardliners, mostly from Britain, still wedded to the long lost cause of Khalistan.

This event not only signifies the propaganda-potential of ragtag radical groups operating from foreign soils, but Indian security agencies also see in it an insidious play by Pakistans Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) through a project, codenamed Op Express, to play the Sikh card and revive turmoil in peaceful Punjab. Such sinister portents are not unfounded. The posters calling for Sikh referendum, a cause celebre of a US-based advocacy group Sikhs for Justice, sprung up in major gurdwaras in Pakistan during the annual Sikh pilgrimages in recent months . Some of the brains behind the London event had a criminal-militant past in the dossiers of Indian security agencies, before they fled India. This explains Indias alarm and alacrity behind its frantic ---- and eventually in vain ---- diplomatic moves to block the pro-referendum show. The Westminster, however, played hardball, refusing to disallow the radicals gathering on grounds of freedom of expression. The only comfort New Delhi got was from a parallel pro-India show of Britain-based NRIs.

Back home in Punjab, the latest pro-Khalistan antic found no favour from any quarters, not even with pro-Khalistan splinter groups such as Dal Khalsa and Akali Dal (Amritsar). Rather, political parties closed ranks in condemning the bogey of Khalistan. Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh called the London event as an attempt by a handful of frustrated ISI-backed foreign-based Sikhs to foment trouble in India.

The fallout of the event will largely be on India-UK relations. New Delhi made no effort to hide its irritation over allowing a separatist activity which impinged on Indias territorial integrity and seeks to propagate violence, secessionism and hatred. The episode has further strained the already not-so-cordial India-UK ties in the uncertain times of Brexit and its impact on bilateral trade.

But, what is certain is that India will keep up its tough stance on Sikh radicals active in some foreign countries. Earlier, New Delhi had driven home its no-nonsense approach to Canada, forcing it to course correct its approach towards the anti-India fringe in the Sikh diaspora. In that sense, the London event is a wake-up for India to not lower its guard on security and diplomatic fronts.
The Delhi government has directed all schools in the national capital to discourage students from flying kites and sensitise them about the danger it can pose for humans and birds.

Flying of kites is a common feature in Delhi as a hobby of youth and generally increases before festivals and national holidays. Flying of kites sometimes leads to accidents causing harm and injury to humans, animals and birds, the Directorate of Education (DoE) said in a communication to schools.

It becomes lethal and hazardous because of metal coated string used in flying kites. Often accidents involving kite flying have been reported causing injuries - small, grievous and sometimes fatal.

It is a matter of grave concern and therefore, the passion for it among the students should be discouraged by creating awareness about the danger it can pose for people, animals and birds around, it added.

The government has directed that school principals should direct staff members during the school assembly about problems caused by flying of kites.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)
Tamil Nadus directorate of government examinations announced the supplementary exam result of Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC +1) or Class 11 board examinations on Monday. The compartment exam for Plus One was held in June 2018. Students who had appeared in the exam can check it on the official website.

Heres the direct link to check the TN Plus 1 supplementary result.

TN HSC Plus 1 supplementary result 2018: Steps to check

1) Visit the official result website for Tamil Nadus directorate of government examinations

2) Click on the link for HSE Special Supplementary June 2018 first Year - Statement of Mark for Individuals

2) Key in your registration number and date of birth

3) Click on View Result

4) Check your result and take a print out

Students who had applied for the revaluation can also check their results by clicking on the link for HSe Special Supplementary June 2018 First Year - Statement of Marks for Verification.

The directorate had announced the state board Class 11 (HSC+1) annual exam result on May 30. The pass percentage this year was 91.3%. Of the 8,63, 668 candidates who appeared for the exam, 7,73,844 passed. Girls performed better than boys. The pass percentage of girls was 94.6% and among boys was 87.4%.

Tamil Nadus directorate of government examinations had declared the result of Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC +2) or Class 12 board examinations on May 16. Of the 860,434 students who appeared for the exams, 7,84,081 cleared it.

The result of the Senior School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) or Class 10 examination result was announced on May 23. According to the directorate, 94.5% students, including 96.4% girls and 92.5% boys, cleared the exam.
The result of UP primary school assistant teacher recruitment examination 2018 was released on Monday on the UP Basic Education Board website at upbasiceduboard.gov.in. The examination to fill 68500 teachers was held on May 27.

Here is the direct link to check the result.

Steps to check UP primary school assistant teacher recruitment examination 2018 result:

1) Visit the official website of UP basic education board

2) Click on the link for Assistant teacher recruitment examination 2018

3) Key in your roll number

4) Enter the captcha code

5) Click on proceed

6) Result will be displayed on the screen

7) Take a printout and save it on your computer.

You may have to wait and try to check result after sometime due to the heavy traffic. The board has also released a press release along with the result which can be checked by clicking here.

Note: Visit the official website of UP Basic Education Board for latest news and updates.
The bond between parent and child extends far beyond sharing similar looks or behaviours as a new study suggests that treating depression in teenagers may benefit their parents mental health too. The findings suggest that when a teenagers depression improved through treatment, so did the depression experienced by his or her parents.

Depression is a massive public health concern that will take a variety of approaches to better manage. We believe our study is among the first to evaluate how the emotional health of a child can impact that of the parents, said co-author Mark A. Reinecke from the Northwestern University in the US.

For the study, presented at American Psychological Associations 126th Annual Convention, the research team involved 325 teenagers who had been diagnosed with depression and 325 of their parents or caregivers. The teenagers were randomly assigned to one of three groups -- those who received cognitive behavioural therapy, those who took antidepressants or those who used a combination of both.

The first treatment period ran for nearly one year, with an additional year of follow-up visits, the researchers said. One-quarter of the parents who participated also reported moderate to severe levels of depression before the treatment period, the researcher added.

The treatment process was not family-based, though some portions included the parent. The researchers found a positive ripple effect because when the severity of a teenagers depression lessened, so did similar symptoms in the parent, regardless of what treatment was used. More young people today are reporting persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness and suicidal thoughts, said Kelsey R. Howard from the varsity. This research may help health care providers as we grapple as a nation with how to address these alarming trends, Howard noted.
At least 26 pilgrims were injured in a stampede near the famous Garib Nath Temple in Muzaffarpur, 80 km north of Patna on Monday morning.

The injured included women and children.

The administration rushed the injured to a nearby hospital where they were administered first aid and discharged.

People standing in queue wanted to move ahead breaking the line, which resulted in a stampede like situation. However, the forces and magistrate on duty controlled the situation in no time. Nearly 26 pilgrims received minor injuries... Muzaffarpur SSP Harpreet Kaur said.

Nearly four lakh devotees had assembled at the Garibnath temple to offer their obeisance by Sunday late night, said the SSP while speaking to the media.

Eye-witnesses said the stampede broke out after a crowd-control barricade broke down. She added that the situation was soon brought under control.
Days after questioning the safety of flights they are operating, the pilots association of Air India has claimed that almost 23% of the airlines fleet is grounded for lack of spares.

On August 10, of the total 72 aircraft in the fleet, 12 were grounded. This doesnt include ATR plane operated by Air India Express, an affiliate. The 23% is the average of the percentage of aircraft Air India grounded over the past few days

The Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) said aircraft worth about $3.6 billion USD or Rs.25,000 crore (at todays list price) are lying idle in airport hangars.

Additionally, a significant number of flights are getting cancelled/rescheduled on a daily basis. There are also aircraft fleet swaps which result in last minute change of inventory resulting in non-optimal revenue management and utilisation, ICPA said in a letter to Air Indias chairman and managing director Pradeep Singh Kharola .

 Since we are an airline and our primary business is to fly planes and since we have incurred huge debt to procure aircraft, with impossible-to-pay interest, is there any reason why these aircraft continue to remain grounded? All of this is having a significant impact on the bottom-line of Air India, the pilots body wrote in the letter, a copy of which has been reviewed by Hindustan Times.

ICPA said that of the 20 Airbus A321 aircraft operated by Air India, only 12 are available for operation on a daily basis currently.

40% of the Airbus A321 fleet is grounded at various stations for lack of spares. This aircraft is the workhorse of the domestic network operating on high-density routes and has the maximum seating capacity. Considering the high seating capacity, there is a significant loss of revenue happening on a daily basis. The Airbus A319 fleet situation is only slightly better. Of the 22 Airbus A319 aircraft in the fleet, 4 aircraft or 18% of the fleet is not available for operation, ICPA has said.

The airline said aircraft grounding was part of a routine exercise.

Air India accords top-most priority to safety of the aircraft in its fleet. It is a common practice for every airline to ground some of its aircraft for routine maintenance and checks periodically by its engineering department so that the aircraft are fit to fly in conformity to laid down standards. Our aircraft also go for these checks without affecting our flight schedule and causing inconvenience to our esteemed passengers, said a spokesperson for Air India.

Of the 15 Boeing 777-300 aircraft, 5 aircraft are idling in the hangars. Of the 26 Boeing 787 aircrafts, 2 are grounded, according to the ICPA.

Air India has been reporting net losses since fiscal year 2007-08, the year in which it was merged with Indian Airlines. Chairman and MD Kharola said in Air Indias annual report for 2016-17 that for the second consecutive year, the airline had posted an operating profitRs 298 crore in 2016-17 and Rs 105 crore in the year before. This year, an attempt to privatize the airline was called off by the government.

The government has brought Air India to its knees;, what is happening is unfortunate, situation is worsening every day, said Mark D Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Consulting, an aviation consulting firm.
The attack on JNU student leader Umar Khalid on Monday evoked widespread condemnation from various politicians, student leaders and activists, who termed it the fallout of a hate campaign against him by the Modi government and media.

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) called the attack on its leader Umar Khalid on Monday as a culmination of the hate-filled propaganda spewed by the Modi government against all those who have questioned this regime.

It is with grave concern that we wish to stand in complete solidarity with Umar Khalid. Today, an unidentified man opened fire on him. We see this cowardly act as a culmination of the hate-filled propaganda that this Modi government has spewed against Umar, JNU students and all those voices who have questioned this regime, it said in a statement.

In the new India, mob lynching and attacks on common people have become the norm and cow vigilantes are being given impunity which has further aggravated these incidents, it said, demanding the Delhi police take appropriate action against those involved.

An unidentified man targeted Khalid outside the Constitution Club in the high security area near parliament and gunshots were heard, but he escaped unhurt, even as the police asserted it will verify the incident.

Many attributed the attack to the hate campaign against him on social media and mainstream media.

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah, in a tweet, said: Wage a motivated hate campaign against individuals & sooner or later someone will feel emboldened enough to take the law into their own hands. The attack on @UmarKhalidJNU is the direct result of the relentless hate campaign using both social & mainstream media. Glad hes well.

Tagging the official Twitter handle of PMO India, Dalit leader and Independent MLA from Gujarat Jignesh Mevani claimed that last month when Khalid, JNU student leader Shehla Rashid and he had received death threats from a gangster, they had sought police protection but even till today, none of us have been given any kind of security.

He also blamed the media groups, who are working to help BJP achieve political gains and term Kanhaiya Kumar, Khalid and Rashid as members of tukde tukde gang for the attack.

Delhi University student and author Gurmehar Kaur, who had been trolled online for raising her voice against campus violence and calling for peace with Pakistan, said she was not surprised at the incident.

I want to say Im shocked and surprised but Im not. It was only time the online mob came out on the streets. And God forbid something happens tomorrow to someone the blood will be on our hands for not condemning the hatred enough.

Gauri Lankesh, Kalburgi, Shujaat Bhukhari and now an attack on @UmarKhalidJNU. History tells us that these are the warning signs before a perfectly normal, thriving nation turns into a battlefield. How are we still this ignorant and keep missing them? she posted on Twitter.

Social activist Kavita Krishnan also blamed certain news channels for the murderous violence against Khalid, while former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, tweeting in Hindi, said: What could be a bigger evidence of jungle raj in the country that the copies of the Constitution are burnt and Umar Khalid is fired at, close to the Parliament. The confidence of criminals has increased under the current government and media.

Actress and JNU alumnus Swara Bhasker also posted on Twitter, What are we becoming?!???!? A lawless anarchic state of affairs.. so damaging to our institutions and credibility at a responsible State. Even if you dont like umars views! #UmarKhalid.
Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday asking him to ensure that the Aero India show be held in the state capital, as it has been since its inception in 1996.

Kumaraswamys letter comes in the wake of a furore following reports that the biennial air show was being shifted to Lucknow for its 12th edition. Many leaders of the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition government criticised the alleged move to shift Aero India, although there has been no formal announcement from the Centre in this regard.

In his letter, Kumaraswamy has said Bengaluru is the hub for defence and aviation majors in the country and the most suitable place to hold the show.

Bengaluru, with its past experience in conducting the show successfully, with its beautiful weather conditions and favourably located defence and aviation industries would be the best choice to conduct Aero India show, he said.

Hence, I would seek your indulgence in the matter to convey approval of Government of India for conducting Aero India Show-2019 at Bengaluru, he added.

State Bharatiya Janata Party leaders slammed the ruling coalition for creating a controversy where there is none.

Addressing the press in Gadag, BJP state president BS Yeddyurappa said: Where has it been shifted? (Defence minister) Nirmala Sitharaman has clarified that Uttar Pradesh has requested it to be shifted but that no decision has been taken. Besides, all MPs from the state will ensure that it is not shifted.

Criticising Congress and JD(S) leaders for jumping to conclusions, Yeddyurappa said state ministers should instead have tried to convince Sitharaman against the move. It is true that Uttar Pradesh has requested for the change, but we will not allow that to happen, he said.

Union minister DV Sadananda Gowda, too, said he was not aware of any such proposal. I have only heard about these charges in the media. I will meet the defence minister on Tuesday and convince her against such a move, if at all it is being planned, he said.

Over the past week, leaders of the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) alliance have criticised the Centre for allegedly proposing to move the show out of Bengaluru to Lucknow. Kumaraswamy and deputy chief minister G Parameshwara called the alleged move an electoral strategy.
The Congress on Monday urged the Election Commission of India (ECI) to suspend the Rajya Sabha membership of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah and initiate proceedings against him for allegedly not disclosing liabilities in the affidavit he submitted while filing his nomination papers for the election to the Upper House in 2017.

In a memorandum to the ECI, a Congress delegation, including senior leaders Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Jairam Ramesh and Vivek Tankha, claimed that Shah had wilfully and deliberately concealed significant liabilities from his declaration.

The memorandum contended that Shah had in 2016 mortgaged two of his properties to Kalupur Commercial Cooperative Bank, one of Gujarats largest cooperative banks, for his son Jay Shahs business venture Kusum Finserve LLP in lieu of the loan of ~25 crore but did not disclose this in his affidavit.

The BJP dismissed the charges and said it had already explained its position on the issue. Anyone is free to approach the election commission, or any other commission they wish to, said Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

As per the Section 75A of the Representation of Peoples Act, 1951, all members of Parliament are required to file an affidavit declaring their criminal records (if any), assets and liabilities apart from educational qualifications.

The Congress delegation said the mortgaged properties constitute a liability since commercial banks are public financial institutions and the outstanding liabilities should have been declared.

Terming it a very serious matter, Singhvi told reporters after meeting the election commission that the Supreme Court has held that the requirement to disclose assets and liabilities was mandatory, and any evasion or suppression is absolutely not permissible.

The Congress demanded immediate suspension of Shahs Rajya Sabha membership and commencing of proceedings against him for filing a false affidavit, which attracts imprisonment up to six months or a fine.

Sibal suggested that the party might approach the court in this regard. But we dont want to make it a political controversy. We want the election commission to act on it since the rules have been laid down, he said.
India is preparing to tighten regulations to deal with an expected escalation in social media-driven hate speech in the lead up to next years Lok Sabha elections.

The Election Commission of India has established a panel to examine the growing use of platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube and recommend ways to deal with violations, Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa said in an interview. The nation has seen a rise in religious and ethnic tensions in recent months, with at least 24 people killed this year due in part to fake rumors spread on social media about child kidnappings and cow smuggling.

Fake news and paid news--all these are matters of concern when social media is being misused, Lavasa said at his office in New Delhi. We are looking at enforcing existing instructions and tightening regulations so that loopholes can be plugged.

India joins a growing list of countries attempting to curb the misuse of social media in election campaigns. In the run up to a closely-fought election in Malaysia, former prime minister Najib Razak--dogged by corruption allegations--introduced a fake news law that his successor, Mahathir Mohamad, has since vowed to repeal. Singapore and Philippines are also considering introducing legislation on fake news, while Germany introduced a new law that compels social media networks to remove hate speech.

Opposition parties say intolerance in India is rising since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. Lawmakers from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party say they are not to blame and insist state governments must deal with anti-social elements.

Holding elections in worlds second most populous country is a complex and daunting task. The Election Commission has already begun preparations on logistic and security arrangements in the country of 1.3 billion, scheduled to elect a new government in April and May 2019.

About 875 million voters are eligible to cast their votes, or more than the combined population of Europe. As many as 11 million poll workers and security forces will facilitate the election process and ensure voting in a million polling stations, said Lavasa, one of the countrys three election commissioners.

Politicians, including BJP lawmakers and opposition leaders, have received warnings from the poll body in the past. In 2017, it censured the remarks of the BJPs Sakshi Maharaj that linked Muslims with population increases, and said it was displeased with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwals comments in 2015 accusing BJP of inciting riots.

Pink booths

For the first time, the commission is targeting people with disabilities, with ramps at all polling stations and voter cards in braille to enhance their electoral participation.

It also plans to set up more pink polling booths managed by women officials to motivate female voters, said Lavasa. The 2014 election created history with the highest ever female voter turnout of 65.63 percent.

The commission is also concerned about the rise in incidents of bribery after it seized cash, liquor and gold in recent state assembly elections. It will launch a mobile app to help citizens file complaints easily by uploading photos of illegal activities, he said, adding more GPS-enabled surveillance teams will be deployed.

India is currently passing through a challenging phase because of the massive rise of intolerance, religious hatred and abuse of social media, said Niranjan Sahoo, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation think-tank in New Delhi. While the Election Commissions intention is bold, it is not easy for it to enforce laws and tackle this menace.
Former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee died in a Kolkata hospital on Monday morning, days after he was admitted with a kidney ailment. He was 89.

Chatterjee was admitted to Belle Vue Clinic on June 28. He was discharged on August 5 but taken to the hospital again on August 9, when a dialysis was performed on him. He was put on ventilation on Friday.

A 10-time member of the Lok Sabha, Chatterjee was one of the most respected parliamentarians of the country.

President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the nation in mourning the death of Somnath Chatterjee.

Sorry to hear of the passing of Somnath Chatterjee, former Speaker of the Lok Sabha and a veteran parliamentarian who had a forceful presence in the House. A loss for public life in Bengal and India. My condolences to his family and innumerable well-wishers, the President said in a tweet.

Prime Minister Modi described Chatterjee as a stalwart of Indian politics who he said made the parliamentary democracy richer.

Modi tweeted that Chatterjee was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise. My thoughts are with his family and supporters.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee called the death of Chatterjee a great loss.

Saddened at the passing away of Somnath-Da. My condolences to his family and admirers. This is a great loss for us, the Trinamool Congress chief tweeted.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi also mourned Somnath Chatterjees death in his tweet.

He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief, Gandhi said.

Read | Somnath Chatterjee, the emotional Communist who went by his heart

The son of barrister Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee, a prominent parliamentarian of the Hindu Mahasabha  the ideological forerunner of Bharatiya Janata Party, Chatterjee joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 1968 and remained a member till 2008.

Chatterjee first contested for and won the Lok Sabha election in 1971 from Burdwan constituency, a seat that fell vacant after the incumbent, his father, died that year. He went on to win nine more elections to the Lower House, the last in 2004.

He was first elected as the member of Parliament in 1977 in the Lok Sabha from Jadavpur constituency and reelected in 1980. In 1984, he was defeated by Mamata Banerjee, then a 29-year-old Congress worker.

From a byelection in 1985 to 2005, he won seven consecutive polls from Bolpur constituency in Birbhum district. He won the Outstanding Parliamentarian award in 1994.

Somnath Chatterjees ties with the CPI(M) were severed dramatically on July 23, 2008, when the party issued a statement expelling him on grounds of seriously compromising the position of the party. Chatterjee was a central committee member then.

In a politburo meeting where the expulsion decision was ratified, everybody except Sitaram Yechuri supported his exit. However, none of the politburo members from West Bengal such as Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Biman Bose were present in the meeting.

The decision came after he refused to toe the diktat of the party and resign as the speaker of the Lok Sabha when the Left party decided to withdraw its support to the United Progressive Alliance I government led by Manmohan Singh over the signing of the India-US nuclear agreement.

It was during his term as the speaker of the 14th Lok Sabha (2004-2009) that DD Lok Sabha was replaced by Lok Sabha TV, a step that was recognised as a step in increasing transparency of Parliament.

A section of the CPI(M) also felt that Chatterjee was one of the serious alternatives to take over as the chief minister of West Bengal after Jyoti Basu stepped down in November 2000 after a 23-year term.

Chatterjee also had made a contribution to West Bengals transition from a state in the grip of obstructionist policies to one earnestly seeking private investment to increase employment opportunities and overall development.

As the chairman, he piloted the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation for about 10 years from 1994, when former chief minister Jyoti Basu began inviting private investments.

Somnath Chatterjee was close to Basu and led the thrust of the veteran communist leader to transform the state that suffered a strong anti-investor image due to years of naysayer politics.

In June 2011, just about a month after assuming charge in West Bengal, chief minister Mamata Banerjee sent Partha Chatterjee, then the industry minister, to take Chatterjees advice on how to take the state forward in the path of development.

An archetypal bhadralok, Chatterjee obtained a degree in law from Middle Temple in London. He was born in Assams Tezpur and educated at Kolkatas Presidency College before moving to Cambridge.

Chatterjee is survived by wife Renu, son Pratap,who is a lawyer, and daughter Anushila.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday said that Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Raos style of functioning is no different than that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Like Modi, KCR (as the Telangana chief minister is informally called) is also an expert at making tall promises such as distribution of three acres of land to SCs and STs, construction of 22 lakh double-bedroom houses and filling up of one lakh vacant government jobs. But none of them were fulfilled. More than 400 farmers committed suicide during his four-year rule in Telangana, but there was no help forthcoming from the government, Gandhi said at a public meeting in Sherilingampalli on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

Today, Telangana has become the capital of corruption... wherever you see, somebodys land is snatched. This state is ruled by a one-family government. All the benefits are only for one family, he added.

The Congress president went on to question Modis silence on issues such as corruption, atrocities against women, and attacks on minorities, Dalits and tribals. He alleged that Modi was unable to provide any answer to why the Centre has a secret agreement with France over the purchase of Rafale aircraft at exorbitant rates, despite the fact that the aircraft can be manufactured indigenously by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).

The Prime Minister, who claims to be the chowkidar of the nation, had no moral courage to look into my eyes when I raised this question in Lok Sabha. He gave a lengthy speech looking in different directions and conveniently skirted the points raised by me, Gandhi said.

He claimed that the Modi government had signed the aircraft deal only to benefit his dear friend Anil Ambani despite the latters lack of experience in manufacturing aircraft. The reason is simple. His friend was in deep debt and Modi wanted to help him. When I questioned Modi, there was no answer, he said.

Gandhi asserted that while the Prime Minister was quick to parrot slogans such as Beti Padhao, Beti Bachao, he did not utter a single word when a BJP MLA allegedly sexually assaulted a woman in Uttar Pradesh and female children were gang-raped in Bihar.

Minorities are being brutally murdered in different parts of the country, and Dalits are being lynched by saffron gangs. Yet, he doesnt speak out. Even the media, which enjoyed freedom of expression during the UPA regime, is now gagged and intimidated, he said.

Turning his attention to Rao, the Congress president accused him of surrendering to the Modi government although the latter had failed to fulfil the promises made in the Andhra Pradesh bifurcation act. He supported the NDA government in every aspect  GST, demonetisation, presidential and vice-presidential elections. How can the people believe him? he asked.

Gandhi said that the Congress would fulfil all the promises made by the Centre to both the Telugu states, including according special category status to Andhra Pradesh. He asked party workers to launch a door-to-door campaign aimed at exposing the misrule of the NDA and the TRS governments.

The Congress presidents charges drew a sharp response from Rao, who advised the Congress president to be more mature while making remarks against the government. Rahul Gandhi should improve his maturity. He should not read a script written by someone else. He should know the facts about the states finances, the Telangana chief minister told reporters in Hyderabad.

Rao said nearly one lakh jobs have been announced by the State Public Service Commission, a fact that Gandhi could verify. He said the Congress leader could also check on the status of the two-bedroom house scheme being implemented across Telangana.

(With PTI inputs)
Fifty years after the Beatles came to India, the bungalows where the Fab Four lived, the post office where John Lennon sent Yoko Ono postcards and the giggling gurus house are all ruins.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogis ashram, where the worlds most famous group sought refuge and spirituality in 1968 and wrote much of their seminal White Album, fell into disuse in the early 2000s.

But thanks to the efforts of a group of people, the site has been reclaimed from the jungle and tourists now roam where tigers and snakes were until recently the most common day trippers.

Before, people used to sneak in, which could be dangerous, said local journalist Raju Gusain, instrumental in rescuing the area overlooking Rishikesh in northern India.

There used to be leopard paw marks and elephant dung, he told AFP on a tour of the site. Now we have erected a fence to stop animals getting in from the tiger reserve next door.

The now-derelict house of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the ashram visited by the Beatles 50 years ago, in Rishikesh in northern India. (AFP)

By 1968, following the death of Beatles manager Brian Epstein the year before, fissures were beginning to show between John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

But the group found a new mentor: the magnetic Maharishi who promised them happiness and enlightenment without drugs, through transcendental meditation.

The bushy-bearded sage persuaded them to travel to his spiritual retreat in Rishikesh, and so in February 1968 they fetched up with their partners, not knowing quite what to expect.

Come out to play

A world away from Swinging London, the band appeared to reconnect, penning almost 50 new songs.

Others there included fellow musicians Donovan and Beach Boy Mike Love, actress Mia Farrow and her reclusive sister Prudence, inspiration for Lennons song Dear Prudence.

The local wildlife--although the song is also supposedly about heroin or Yoko Ono-- inspired Everybodys Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey as well as Blackbird.

McCartney wrote Why Dont We Do It in the Road after seeing monkeys openly copulating, while Loves presence helped spark Back in the USSR, a pastiche of the Beach Boys California Girls.

Tourists visit the site of the now-derelict ashram visited by the Beatles 50 years ago, in Rishikesh in northern India. - (AFP)

The band--with the exception of Starr, who brought a supply of baked beans due to his sensitive stomach and left after 10 days--enjoyed the break and the meditation too.

I felt like I actually was a feather floating over a hot-air pipe, McCartney recalled later of one session. And I reported that to Maharishi, and he giggled: Yes, this is good!

One local old enough to remember is Ajit Singh, the owner of a music shop--still open--in the nearby town of Dehradun, who fixed Lennons guitar and performed at Harrisons 25th birthday.

Turbaned, thin and with a croaky voice, the 86-year-old Singh recalls with twinkling eyes the band wandering into the store one day, pursued by a crowd outside, and him inviting them home for tea.

They were very polite with me, they were not haughty or something, he told AFP in his shop. I always said to people that they were good people.

After a while though, relations worsened between the Beatles and the Maharishi, the atmosphere soured by the yogis rumoured sexual advances and his evident desire to make money from his famous new pupils.

McCartney left after five weeks and Harrison and Lennon after two months. Asked the reason by the yogi, Lennon is reputed to have told the guru, If youre so cosmic youll know why.

A worker clears vegetation outside the former post office in the now-derelict ashram visited by the Beatles 50 years ago, in Rishikesh. (AFP)

Get baksheesh

But still, the Beatles helped put Rishikesh on the map for Westerners, and popularised meditation and Eastern spirituality. The Maharishi even made the cover of Time magazine in 1975.

His ashram initially thrived but then went into decline and was abandoned in 2001. Nature slowly reclaimed the site, while parts of the buildings were removed and people sneaked in and left graffiti.

But in 2016, paths were cleared, a fence was put up and some of the structures were repaired. Ruins they remain, however, although a few new murals have been added.

The site now charges an entry fee -- 600 rupees ($8.75) for foreigners, 150 rupees for Indians -- and boasts a cafe and a small photo exhibition and some information signs.

One recent visitor was none other than Prudence herself, said Raju Nautiyal, a ranger with the Rajasthan Tiger Reserve who has helped in the clean-up.

I used to sing Dear Prudence and one day Prudence came to play, he said.

American visitor Atta Curzmann, 68, a great Beatles fan inspired to take a lasting interest in Indian spirituality, said she hoped the site would not be restored too much.

The first time we came four or five years ago it was really run-down and we had to pay baksheesh (a bribe) to get in, she told AFP.

But I hope they dont make it too lovely and perfect because you want to see that antiquity, that part of it that shows the history.
As the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gears up for next years general election, its political dominance would seem to grant it a great many advantages over the opposition. Most obviously, the party commands a majority of seats in the Lok Sabhathe first single-party majority obtained in three decades. Its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, enjoys widespread popularity despite setbacks associated with demonetization and the patchy rollout of the Goods and Services Tax. At the state level, the BJP has doggedly worked to expand its footprint to parts of the country where it has not traditionally held sway. Today, the BJP and its allies govern 20 of twenty-nine statesa far cry from four years ago, when they called only eight states their own.

While the BJP is undoubtedly the front-runner in 2019, a closer look at the partys political standing suggests its current dominance could, counter-intuitively, be a liability rather than an asset. For starters, the conditions that paved the way for the historic mandate in 2014 are unlikely to materialise in 2019. That year presented something akin to a perfect electoral storma historically unpopular Congress Party, a lagging economy, and a charismatic prime ministerial candidate in Modi. The end result was a once-in-a-generation electoral rout of Congress. The BJPs triumph, in turn, rested on running the table in a relatively small number of statesa feat many party sympathizers doubt can be replicated.

Furthermore, incumbency is something of a double-edged sword in India. In many democracies, incumbency provides politicians numerous tools with which they can perpetuate their political power. In India, research suggests that incumbent politicians are not just vulnerablein many instances they are affirmatively disadvantaged. The BJPs growing presence in Indias states helps offset the geographic concentration of its 2014 performance, but it does not fully inoculate the party from voter hostility; history suggests that state incumbency can also adversely impact a partys chances in national elections. These indirect costs of ruling complicate the partys electoral math; for a ruling party linking its stature to its consistent numerical strength in parliament, the negative spillovers linked to state incumbency is a source of concern.

Can Lightning Strike Twice?

The first challenge the BJP faces is to repeat its dominance in its traditional strongholds. In the 2014 election, the BJP captured 282 seats out of the 428 seats it contested nationally (or 66%). While the BJP made inroads in new territory, most of its victories were concentrated in north and west India. In 2014, just eight statesBihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradeshaccounted for 76% of the BJPs parliamentary tally. All together, these states account for 273 seats, of which the BJP won 216 (nearly 80%). The efficiency with which the BJP translated votes into seats evinced the concentrated character of the partys victory: with just 31%, it earned 52% of parliamentary seats.

In addition, the BJPs sweep in these core states rested in large measure on the Modi wavea factor that is expected to be less potent in 2019. While Modi remains popular, the recent Lokniti-CSDS-ABP News Mood of the Nation survey found that support for the prime minister is tapering somewhat. As many as 44% in May 2017 named Modi their preferred prime ministerial choice. One year later, that percentage had declined to 34 %marginally lower than where it stood in 2014, at 36%. A further deepening of these trends would suggest that some of Modis shine has worn off with the electorate.

The Congress Partys Historic Unpopularity in 2014

Consider constituencies where the BJP and the Congress were the top two finishers; these head-to-head contests are good indicators of the parties relative popularity. In 2014, there were 189 such contests; of these, the BJP won 166, or 87%. The country had not witnessed such a lopsided battle since 1984 when the Congress swept to power in the wake of Indira Gandhis assassination, winning 98% of direct BJP-Congress. The BJPs decisive advantage over the Congress in 2014 can also be seen in the average margin of victory of their head-to-head contests, which touched 18%.

Today, the BJP and its allies maintain a sizable popularity advantage over their Congress counterparts, according to the Lokniti survey, but the gap is closing. In May 2017, 45% of respondents intended to vote for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) while just 26% sided with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA); 29% favoured other, unaffiliated parties. One year later, the NDAs share dropped to 37% while the UPAs share grew to 31% (and the share belonging to other parties crept up to 32%).

Incumbency Disadvantage

The first two factorsthe concentrated nature of the BJPs victory and the historic unpopularity of the Congressare specific to the 2014 election contest. But there are also broader structural dynamics of anti-incumbency that shape the playing field. Anti-incumbency is a favoured bugbear of election analysts, who regularly toss it out as an explanation for nearly every underwhelming performance by a ruling party. But that loose talk conflates its multiple dimensions. Voters may punish individual incumbent candidates or ruling parties, and partisan incumbency in one tier of government may affect elections in another.

One approach by Nirmala Ravishankar disaggregates the negative effects of incumbency in national elections into direct and indirect costs, with a focus on how ruling parties fare. The direct cost of ruling is simply the impact of belonging to the national ruling party on an individual incumbents performance in parliamentary elections. According to Ravishankars calculations ,based on data from 1977 to 2004, an affiliation with the national ruling party reduces a member of parliaments (MPs) chances of reelection by 9 percentage points.

While the precise drivers of anti-incumbent sentiment are not well specified, there are many possibilities. The declining fortune of incumbents appears to be a post-1991 phenomenon, prior to which a Congress affiliation was the most reliable method of ensuring reelection. As the Congresss dominance eroded and uncertainty soared, no single party label had a decisive advantage. In addition, given the centralized nature of Indian political parties, individual MPs have relatively little room to manoeuvre. Their ability to develop an individual brand might matter less than their partys overall reputation, which can ebb and flow with time. Another possibility is voter frustration at incumbents for consistently failing to live up to their pre-electoral promises. Whatever the precise mechanism, the data suggest that an affiliation with the ruling party has become a net negative for incumbent parliamentarians.

Indirect Costs of Ruling

But incumbency may also have indirect effects, in which party control at the state level affects how the state votes in national elections. This is relevant for evaluating how the BJPs expanded presence could impact the national vote.

On first glance, a partys performance in national elections is unaffected by its affiliation with a state-ruling party. Specifically, state-ruling parties appear to do just as well as opposition parties in the state when those same parties contest national parliamentary polls. But, as Ravishankar notes, this naive analysis ignores the role of timing. In many democracies around the world, governments enjoy a honeymoon period during their first two years in office when their popularity is at its apex. After this initial honeymoon period subsides, the partys standing declines.

This is exactly what occurs in the Indian context. If a national election is held in the first year of a state governments tenure, the state-ruling party does very well in national polls: state-ruling parties are 18% more likely to win election at the national level than their colleagues out of government. Those effects remain positive through the state governments second year in office, after which incumbency becomes a liability. After year three of a governments tenure, the state-ruling party begins to suffer in national elections, and that penalty increases as the gap grows between the state and national election. For the BJP, this means that in states like Haryana, Jharkhand, and Maharashtra (where it is currently in power until late 2019/early 2020), the party will potentially face an uphill battle in the twilight of its tenure.

This interaction between state and national political performance will be a dynamic worth watching in the months ahead. Indeed, the honeymoon effect means that assembly elections later this year in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan will be highly informative with respect to how those states will vote in 2019. Parties that take power in each of those states in 2018 would be in the early stages of their honeymoon periods, allowing them to capitalize when those states vote in the Lok Sabha elections. Indeed, election data from these three states over the last three election cycles indicate, in every case,that the party that performed better in the state assembly polls had the upper hand in national electionswhether measured by vote share, seat share, or successfully forming the government. While the 2018 state assembly polls in these three states might not predict the overall verdict, they are a good barometer of how those states will vote in the general election.

Conclusion

Arguments relying on anti-incumbency are not ironclad but probabilistic statements: they suggest what is likely to happen, on average, within some margin of error. But there are certainly individual outliers. Furthermore, speculation about voters preferences at this stage is fully abstracted from campaign effects. As demonstrated in recent elections in both Gujarat and Karnataka, Modis intensive campaigning moved the needle in the BJPs favour. In addition, the identity of the candidate on the ballot, their partys alliance, and the choice set of prime ministerial candidates meaningfully shapes voting decisions. Party leaders can try to minimize anti-incumbency by denying many of their elected members an opportunity to stand for reelection, a common strategy in Indian politics. However, related research suggests that ushering in fresh faces to contest elections only diminishes, but does not eliminate, the penalty of an affiliation with the national ruling party.

History suggests that incumbency tends to hurt ruling party politicians in India more than it helps. To the extent that this trend holds in 2019, the BJPs recent political dominance would appear to harm its prospects of retaining its parliamentary majority. Winning power in India is one thing, but staying in power is an entirely different matter.

* Milan Vaishnav (@MilanV) is senior fellow and director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Matthew Lillehaugen was until recently a junior fellow at Carnegie. This article is part of the India Elects 2019 series, a collaboration between Carnegie and the Hindustan Times.
A 69-year-old Jaipur man, who had gone missing 36 years ago, was repatriated by Pakistan Rangers through Attari-Wagah border on Monday.

Gajanand was among 30 other Indians, 27 fishermen from Gujarat, who were received by officials of Border Security Force (BSF). Pakistans foreign ministry released the Indian prisoners as a humanitarian gesture to mark the countrys Independence Day. In 1982, Gajanand, a labourer by profession then, had gone missing from his native village, Samod, falling under Mahar Kalan police station, in Jaipur. His family moved from pillar to post to find Gajanand but to no avail.

As soon as Gajanand reached the Indian territory, he fell on the ground, owing to weakness and was assisted by two BSF personnels.He was taken to the Integrated Check Post (ICP) to complete the pending formalities.

Sri Amarnath Langar Sewa Committee president Sehdev Sharma, who had come to receive Gajanand said, Gajanand is not in a condition to talk. He will be taken to his home in Jaipur.His wife Makhni Devi, two sonsRakesh and Mukesh and their wives, and grandchildren have been waiting for him eagerly.

Intelligence officials said, as Gajanand is not mentally sound, he is unable to recall how he reached Pakistan. Gajanands younger son Mukesh Sharma said, We had lost all hope of meeting him and feared that he was no more. Recently, police spoke to us to confirm his nationality and informed that he was lodged in Lahore Central Jail.
The Samajwadi Partys national president Akhilesh Yadav said on Monday that a mahagathbandhan of opposition parties will be formed for the Lok Sabha elections scheduled to be held next year, a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticised their attempt at a grand alliance as political adventurism that was bound to fail.

We are pasting their (Bharatiya Janata Partys) 2014 alliance formula on them for 2019, Akhilesh said when asked about the formula for the grand alliance.

Congress also wants to defeat the BJP. While they will defeat the BJP in Delhi, we will do so in Uttar Pradesh, he replied to a question whether Congress would find a place in the alliance in the northern state.

The opposition parties are trying to pull together a grand alliance of regional parties and even Left groups to mount a joint campaign against Modi. They have in recent months tried to pin down the government on a range of issues but their effort to form an alliance for the elections has been hampered because of ideological differences and leadership.

Referring to the two-day state executive of the BJP in Meerut where the saffron partys top leaders set a target of 73-plus seats from UP in Lok Sabha polls, Akhilesh said, They should say 70-plus because they have already lost three seats at our hands. They are already distressed over the alliance (SP, BSP, RLD and others) in the state.

The BJP had won 71 seats in UP and its ally Apna Dal won two seats in the Lok Sabha elections held in 2014. However, it lost three seats  Gorakhpur, Phulpur and Kairana  in the by-elections held earlier this year.

The saffron party won 282 seats in the last general election, giving it a simple majority in the lower house of Parliament. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won 336 seats out of 543.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi aggressively critiqued the proposed unified front of opposition parties in an interview to the Hindustan Times. He said it will not succeed in creating a gathbandhan of the electorate as it will not compromise its vote for such incongruent groups.

A non-ideological alliance of desperate and disparate groups is not a mahagathbandhan but political adventurism. It is a failed idea which never succeeded in past. History tells us that such adventurism failed in the past and will never succeed in the future. The people want a strong and a decisive government that is sensitive to their interests and gives them results, the Prime Minister said in the email interview.

His comments came after the opposition parties failed to get their act together in the election for the Rajya Sabha deputy chairmans post and the candidate of the ruling National Democratic Alliance won easily on Thursday. Similarly, a no-trust motion they moved against the government on July 20 was soundly defeated in the Lok Sabha.

Akhilesh made these statements on the sidelines of the sixth edition of his partys scheme to distribute laptops to meritorious students. The party has been carrying out a district-wise distribution of laptops and on Monday, 19 toppers from Class 10 and Class 12 board examinations were given laptops.

Akhilesh also gave a second laptop to Anurag Bhaskar, a student of Ram Manohar Lohia Law University, who has made it to Harvard University. He was one of the 18 lakh beneficiaries of the SP governments free laptop distribution scheme.
Less than a week after the death of Tamil icon and Dravida Munnetra Kazhgam (DMK) patriarch, M Karunanidhi, a battle appears to have broken out between his sons over which of them has a claim over his legacy and his party.

On Monday, the eve of MK Stalins likely elevation as president at a DMK executive committee meeting on Tuesday, Karunanidhis elder son MK Azhagiri, an exile from the party, said that all true and loyal followers of his father were with him.

His cryptic comments about differences with the party and not the family created a buzz. By evening, posters with his image had been splashed all over Madurai, the TN city considered his bastion, referring to a new party the Kalaignar DMK.

Azhagiri, a former Union minister in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime, was expelled from the party just ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections after differences with his father in an apparent turf war with Stalin. He is now based in Madurai.

On Monday, after offering prayers at his fathers memorial at Marina beach, Azhagiri told reporters: I came to pour out my anguish to Kalaignar (Karunanidis nickname, meaning artistin Tamil). All true and loyal followers of Kalaignar are with me.

Azhagiri added that his anguish was about the party and not about the family. The public will soon come to know more about it, he added, while declining to comment about the executive committee meeting saying he was not associated with party activities any longer.

Later in the day, Azhagiri said: Many in the party are also in touch with actor Rajnikanth and there is a threat to the party as posts are being sold. Stalin does not want me in DMK.

It wasnt clear in which context he was referring to Rajnikanth. Popular actor turned politician Rajinikanth recently launched a party and said he would contest the next state elections in Tamil Nadu.

Later in the day, Rajinikanth said chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and his state cabinet colleagues should have lined up for Karunanidhis funeral as a token of respect and political gesture. I was deeply hurt to know about the states denial to offer a place in Marina and if the state had gone on an appeal against the Madras high court order, I would have led a protest seeking a berth for Karunanidhi at Marina.

Azhagiri added that the DMK under Stalin has weakened and is losing election after election. Kalaignars departed soul will certainly punish them, he said.

Stalins likely elevation on Tuesday was not being seen as a big surprise for party workers since Karunanidhi had spoken about Stalin as his successor on a few occasions in the past, including during Stalins birthday celebrations in 2015 and in an interview to Tamil weekly Ananda Vikatan in October 2016. He is currently the partys working president and treasurer.

Officials in the DMK familiar with the developments told HT last week that, apart from Stalin, Karunanidhis daughter and Rajya Sabha MP MK Kanimozhi may also be elevated  as either the partys deputy general secretary or treasurer.

On Monday, both Stalin and Azhagiri were at Karunanidhis Gopalapuram home on Monday to observe the leaders seventh-day mourning rituals with other family members. Selvi, Karnanidhis daughter is believed to have brokered peace between the brothers for the duration of the mourning.

On Monday, a senior DMK functionary said on condition of anonymity that the a resolution paying tribute to Karunanidhi would be passed at the executive committee meeting. Stalin has already been anointed as the political heir of Kalaignar. The meeting will not discuss anything about those who were expelled from the party. The executive committee will also elevate Stalin as the new party president, the functionary added.

The DMKs arch rival and the ruling party in Tamil Nadu, All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Khahzgram (AIADMK), desribed Azagharis comments as a sign of the DMKs weakness. Azhagiri has exposed that there is weakness in the party. Azhagiri cannot be dismissed as yet another expelled party worker. Remember, Azhagiri is the elder son of Kalaignar and he has been a union minister, AIADMK spokesperson Vaigai Chelvan said.

State BJP president, Tamilisai Soundarajan, cryptically said: After the demise of the sun (Karunanidhi), stars are trying to shine. Experts say not much will come out of Azhagiris attempt to claim his fathers legacy as it may have come too late. He was politically dormant for the past four years and his chances of succeeding are slim. Unlike AIADMK leader, J Jayalalithaa, Kalaignar was clear about his succession and the DMKs future. Further, Stalin has consolidated his position in the party, said political commentator A Marx.
Senior BJP leader and former minister Lal Singh, who has often courted controversy with his remarks, on Monday asked people of Jammu region to hoist the tricolour at their houses on Independence Day as they are nationalists to the core unlike the people of Kashmir.

Singh accused Kashmir-based rulers of discriminating with Jammu region over the past seven decades and said his recently launched outfit called Dogra Svabhiman Sangathan would fight to restore the pride of the Dogra community.

We appeal to the people of the region to hoist the tricolour at their houses on Independence Day and celebrate the day with great enthusiasm. Jammu is about absolute nationalism. We are 100% nationalists unlike those of Kashmir, the former minister said.

He said Kashmir-based leaders have ruled the state for the last 70 years and now its time for the people of Jammu to come to power. No government has not done justice with Jammu which has faced the worst kind of discrimination over the past 70 years, and used it as a ladder (to grab power), the BJP leader told reporters in Jammu.

Singh has made several controversial remarks in the recent past, including on the Kathua rape case and after the killing of senior journalist Shujaat Bukhari in Srinagar. He had said the Kathua rape case was a conspiracy against the people of Jammu.

Singh had to quit soon after his remarks on the Kathua case involving the alleged gang rape of a minor girl from a nomadic community.
The phenomenon of several panchayat seats being won unopposed was not confined to West Bengal alone, but was prevalent in other states too, the state election commission and the Mamata Banerjee government informed the Supreme Court on Monday.

The state and the poll panel made their submission before a bench led by chief justice Dipak Misra, which is hearing a batch of petitions filed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Bharatiya Janata Party and some individuals alleging their candidates were intimidated to prevent them from filing their nomination papers in the recently concluded Panchayat elections.

Over 19,000 seats were won unopposed by the Trinamool Congress candidates, the court has been told. Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud are also members of the bench.

Senior advocate Amarendra Sharan, appearing for the state election body, said the panel had received only 1,600 complaints of alleged intimidation. He was responding to q question by justice Chandrachud as to whether the commission had conducted any exercise to verify whether any person had been prevented from filing nomination papers.

The phenomenon of candidates getting elected unopposed is there even in states likes Sikkim, Jharkhand other states also, Sharan said.

But the bench felt that complaints may not have been lodged out of fear. Senior advocate Vikas Singh quoted figures to point out how in the Uttar Pradesh panchayat polls, 67% of candidates won without a contest. He urged the court to modify its interim order that has restrained the state commission from issuing a notification of those constituencies that were won unopposed. Singh said the order has deprived the panchayats of their various grants and funds.

Senior advocate PS Patwalia , appearing for the BJP, told the court that it must take note of the fact that all the 19,287 candidates declared unopposed belonged to the ruling Trinamool Congress. If the situation is happening in five other states, solution is not to allow it here (Bengal), but put an end to it in all other states, Patwalia argued.

The arguments would continue on Tuesday.
Pune, Navi Mumbai and Greater Mumbai in Maharashtra are the three most liveable cities in India, and Rampur in Uttar Pradesh, the Nagland capital Kohima and Bihar capital Patna bring up the rear among 111 cities, measured on four broad parameters  governance, and social, physical and economic infrastructure.

According to the Ease of Living Index report released on Monday by Union housing and urban affairs minister, Hardeep Singh Puri,others in the 10 most liveable cities in the country are Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh), the union territory of Chandigarh, Thane (Maharashtra), Raipur (Chhattisgarh), Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Vijayawada (Andhra Pradesh) and Bhopal (MP).

The ease of living assessment covers several metrics critical to track progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals in an urban environment. The analysis of data will also in turn encourage authorities concerned to know where to focus in the coming months, Puri said

Some experts questioned the study, in part because large cities that are magnets for migrants of all economic strata, and which can also support significant population, fare poorly.

For instance, New Delhi, home to the countrys political elite and which includes areas under all three municipal corporations and the New Delhi Municipal Council was ranked 65 in the index. Chennai was ranked 14. Kolkata and three other cities in West Bengal did not participate in the survey.

Seven of the top 10 most liveable cities are in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states. Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modis constituency, was ranked 33.

The liveability index, the first compiled by the government, ranked the cities with a total population of 134 million. Each city was given a score between 0 and 100. The highest score that a city got  in this case Pune  was 58.11.

Liveability rankings are common globally. Indian cities, however, fare poorly in global liveability indexes. For instance, none of the Indian cities made it to the 2017 Global Liveability report of the Economist Intelligence Unit. In the 2017 Mercers Quality of Living Survey, Mumbai got the highest ranking in India 141 among 231 cities that were surveyed. Pune was ranked 151.

Urban experts said the findings of the liveability index must be viewed with caution.

These kind of indices are dependent on quality of data, the methodology used and how and who verified the data. Unless the process to measure a citys performance is robust, the result will not have credibility. Globally, liveability rankings are done by independent authorities, said Saswat Bandopadhyay, an urban sector expert.

Bandopadhyay said that Indian urban database, urban data availability and the reliability is generally low. The urban data hardships increase as you go down to smaller local bodies. Thus, while measuring ease of urban liveability, efforts should be made towards building urban data culture. Without a robust data culture, measuring ease of liveability will have limited meaning, he said.

The four broad aspects on which the cities were ranked was further broken down into 78 indicators such as quality of governance, education, health services, safety and security, economy, transportation and mobility, pollution level, solid waste management, assured water supply, power supply, public open spaces, housing and inclusiveness.

Originally, however, the ministry had put 79 indicators while ranking cities. But one of the indicators  related to employment data  was taken out from the final survey. We took it out as the cities did not have data related to unemployment rate, said a senior ministry official who did not want to be named.

The liveability ranking survey was conducted over four months and feedback from over 60,000 citizens was collected. The Ease of Living Index, 2018, was implemented by a consortium consisting of market researcher Ipsos, policy research and development analytics firm, Athena Infonomics, and the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi kicked off the partys Lok Sabha election campaign in Karnataka on Monday by challenging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a debate on the Rafale aircraft deal, accusing the government of compromising national interest. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party responded swiftly,terming the allegation reckless and baseless.

Speaking at a Janadhwani (peoples voice) rally in Bidar, in northern Karnataka, to mark the start of the campaign for the 2019 polls, Gandhi said he would like a debate [to] happen between me and Narendra Modi on Rafael deal... I will speak at length for hours.

Gandhi has on several occasions alleged wrongdoing -- which the government has denied -- in the deal to purchase 36 Rafale military aircraft made by the French company Dassault. The deal followed an earlier proposal -- now scrapped -- by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government for the purchase of 136 Rafale planes.

I spoke about the Rafale deal in Parliament The United Progressive Alliance wanted lakhs of Indian youth to get jobs through the deal and so it was given to the public sector, with clauses for technology transfer as well, Gandhi said. Under the UPA deal, 136 aircraft were to be purchased, each one costing Rs 526 crore. But the Modi government changed this and now only 36 planes will be bought at Rs 1,600 crore per aircraft and without technology transfer, Gandhi said.

In New Delhi, the BJP dismissed Gandhis criticism of the Rafale deal as desperation because of an income tax investigation against a company in which he and his mother Sonia Gandhi are majority stakeholders. The ruling party reiterated that the deal was transparent and honestly executed between two heads of government.

Rahul Gandhi is not worth to have a debate with the prime minister, senior BJP leader and Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said. He had said there will be earthquake if he speaks for 15 minutes in Parliament. He spoke (in the monsoon session) and nothing happened.

The BJP leader said Gandhi was making reckless and baseless allegations against the government in desperation because he is in trouble in a tax matter connected with a company, Young Indian, in which he and his mother hold a 76% stake.

Prasad said tax authorities had opened records related to the assessment year 2011-12, during which the company had taken over properties of Associated Journal Limited (AJL) worth over Rs 5,000 crore for a mere Rs 50 lakh. AJL is owner of the National Herald newspaper.

Let the country know as to how upon a meagre transfer of Rs. 50 lakh, the AICC (All India Congress Committee) transferred the liability of Rs 90 crore to Young Indian...How is it that the entire property of AJL came to be owned by Young Indian? How can you take a party loan into your own company,

Tax authorities, in a revised claim for the assessment year 2011-12, will make Young Indian liable to pay Rs 154 crore and not just Rs 68 lakh as tax, Prasad said.

He reiterated that the Rafale deal signed under the National Democratic Alliance government was 9% cheaper than the price that the UPA regime had agreed to pay.

The BJP also released a brief video featuring actor Pallavi Joshi to defend the deal. Joshi is seen in the video drawing an analogy between the purchase of security apparatus in her apartment and the Rafale deal negotiated under the Modi government to draw the conclusion that the latter was cheaper than the price the previous government had agreed to pay; the planes would also come with additional features, she said.

Gandhi used the rally to ridicule Modis recent comment that he had heard of a tea seller using biofuel collected from a drain to fire his stove. The anecdote narrated by Modi, Gandhi said, is an indication that the PMs new employment strategy is to advise the young to make pakoras for a living and not even provide them with gas to fuel their stoves. He was referring to remarks made by Modi on Friday at the World Biofuels Day in New Delhi.

At an innovation conference, the prime minister (spoke about) a dhabawala whose shop was located near a drain. Modi said this man invented a new technology, wherein he put a pipe to the drain and collected biogas and fired his stove using that, Gandhi said. This is Narendra Modis new employment strategy for the country. He promised 20 million jobs a year, but now he says make pakoras, and wont even give you gas, so you have to take it from the drain.

The reference is to the Prime Minister saying in a televised interview that even making and selling pakoras to earn Rs 200 a day was a form of employment.

Responding to Gandhis comments, state BJP spokesperson S Prakash said the Congress president had proved he had little understanding of biofuels. He clearly does not understand the potential savings biofuels can help bring about by cutting down on consumption of petroleum products. These are highly irresponsible statements that are worrying because Gandhi aspires to become the prime minister, Prakash added.

(PTI contributed to this story)
The principal of a private school at Kharuni near Nalagarh in Solan district was stabbed to death at his residence by unidentified assailants in the wee hours of Monday.

Owner and principal of Shivalik Science School Bhagat Ram Saini, in his late 50s, died on the spot. His wife, who suffered serious injuries in the attack, was rushed to a nearby hospital from where doctors referred her to Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh.

Baddi superintendent of police (SP) Rani Bindu Sachdeva said the assailants entered Sainis house after breaking open the locks and attacked him and his wife with sharp-edged weapons and rods. While their daughter was not present at home at the time of the incident, the assailants tied up and locked their son in a room.

A case of murder has been registered against unidentified people at the Nalagarh police station. A forensic team visited the crime spot to collect evidences, said the SP.

Police have also obtained footage of a CCTV camera installed near the crime scene and it is being analysed, she said, adding that investigations were on and the attackers will be arrested soon.

Saini was accused of sexual harassment by a group of girls during a study tour in Odisha. The matter came to light after a Child Helpline received a call informing them that Saini had tried to force himself on some girls during the week-long tour.

He was later given a clean chit by the police as charges against him could not be proved.
One soldier was killed as militants tried to sneak into India at Tangdhar sector of Kupwara district in Jammu and Kashmir.

On Monday evening, Indian soldiers detected a group of infiltrators trying to cross the border into the Indian side and challenged them.

The jawan, Pushpendra Singh, lost his life in the ensuing gunfight between soldiers and the militants.

Army sources say the infiltration bid was foiled, reports news agency ANI.

The Armys Northern Command said they salute the supreme sacrifice of sepoy Pushpendra Singh and offered deepest condolences to the family.
The death of ten-time Lok Sabha member and former speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Monday brought to forefront the differences between the West Bengal unit and central leadership of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), from which he was expelled a decade ago.

In 2008, the CPI(M) brass had asked Chatterjee to resign from the Lok Sabha Speakers post and vote against the UPA government in the trust vote. When he refused to comply, the party, then under the leadership of Prakash Karat, expelled him for life.

On the CPI(M)s website, the partys politburo posted a press release after Chatterjees death in which he was referred to as a veteran parliamentarian, eminent lawyer, former Speaker and ten-time member of the Lok Sabha. It did not say which party he belonged to.

The press release was placed next to the link related article: Somnath Chatterjees false assertions that was posted in 2010, accusing Chatterjee of making false statements regarding his expulsion.

In contrast, the Bengal unit postponed the scheduled meeting of its state committee after paying homage to Chatterjee and issued a statement that referred to him as a comrade and former central committee member and Lok Sabha MP of the CPI(M).

On its part, Chatterjees family refused to let Bengal CPI(M) wrap his body in the party flag.

I dont know what the politburo has said in its statement. The Bengal state committee has paid its tributes. Somnath Chatterjee was much above the internal matters of the CPI(M), CPI(M) Bengal secretary Suryakanta Mishra said.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, CPI(M) leaders said the party brass failure to bring Chatterjee back into the Left fold played a key role in alienating many of their voters.

Our vote share in the assembly polls slipped from 30.08% in 2011 to 19.75% in 2016... Today our image took a serious blow, a senior Bengal state committee leader said on condition of anonymity.

In a way it was good that my father was expelled. Had he been in the party today, the state of the CPI(M) would have only given him immense pain, Anushila Basu, Chatterjees daughter said.
Young Somnath Chatterjee studied law at Jesus College in Cambridge when many aspiring communists would be busy shouting slogans at factories or reading Karl Marx.

Yet, he assumed a constitutional post that no other comrade has ever risen to: Lok Sabha Speaker, in 2004.

Chatterjee died in a hospital in Kolkata on Monday. He was 89.

Chatterjee followed his fathers footsteps to become a leading lawyer in the Calcutta High Court. His father was a staunch Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha member, but Chatterjee, inspired by late Jyoti Basu, joined its arch rival, Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI-M.

As a lawyer, Chatterjee helped many party comrades to fight and win legal cases--without a fee. His oratory, benevolence and sensibilities topped with popularity among the Bengal leadership quickly earned him a Lok Sabha ticket and a membership in the partys coveted clubthe Central Committee.

Chatterjee was a voice to reckon with in the Lok Sabha. His legal education had taught him the art of sharp speeches. His political practice helped him bulldoze the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) propaganda.

The ten-term parliamentarian spent decades in the power corridors of Delhi, but somehow he didnt manage to speak fluently in Hindi. Once, a TV crew came to his party office on the top floor of the Parliament building after failing to attend his press conference. Abhi abhi jab neechu me bola tha, toh kothay tha? Somnath chided them before repeating his speech.

Read | Stalwart of Indian politics: President Kovind, PM Modi pay tributes to Somnath Chatterjee

It was the summer of 2003. The Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led BJP looked invincible and no Opposition party seemed to be in a position to stop the gallant saffron march. Chatterjee decided to meet then Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. He neither bothered to consult many senior comrades, nor he took an appointment with Gandhi.

Those days many Opposition leaders were possibly unsure of approaching Gandhi for political talks. I told her that people are afraid to meet you. She laughed and said that she doesnt remember anyone ever seeking an appointment in her office, Chatterjee once told this correspondent.

What followed the freewheeling conversation was a historic Opposition meeting on August 14, 2003. Gandhi, Left stalwarts like Jyoti Basu and Harkishen Singh Surjeet, Samajwadi Partys Mulayam Singh Yadav, and socialist leaders like HD Devegowda all came together at Chatterjees modest bungalow at Ashoka Road.

The seeds of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was born on that day over Hilsa curry, rice and other sumptuous dishes.

Five years later, he faced the biggest political crisis. CPI-M bosses said Chatterjee must resign from the Lok Sabha Speakers post and vote against the UPA government in the 2008 trust vote. His favourite CPI-M leaders, such as Sitaram Yechury and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, tried to convince him to follow the party diktat. Some others like Mohammed Salim and Nilotpal Basu tried to pursue party brass to spare Somnath from punishment.

An emotional Chatterjee refused to step down from the Speakers post. The next day--on July 24, 2008the Prakash Karat-led CPI-M politburo summarily expelled him for life. Overnight, he had to address brothers and comrades as Mister and Members of Parliament in every programme and even in closed-door meetings.

But as they say, you can take away Somnath Chatterjee from communism but you cant take communism away from him.

He joined no other political party, stuck to long-nourished ideals and never criticised the CPI-M in any forum. Some party leaders reciprocated. Invitations of Left government programmes started arriving. When Sitaram Yechury became the CPI-M general secretary, he first visited Chatterjees home.

But in the last 10 years, Chatterjee did one thing. He never told the party to take him back.

So many times, I told him to come back. He maintained he did no wrong (in retaining Speakers chair) and so, he wont appeal for a return, said Salim, a politburo member whom Chatterjee treated as his son.

Yechury too, wanted him back. But Somnath da told me that let it remain this way. He would never write an appeal, said Yechury.

Its a dream to live and die as a communist. Somnath Chatterjee was no exception. He lived like a communist. He died like one too. So what, if the CPI-M didnt take him back!
President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday led the nation in mourning the death of Somnath Chatterjee, the former Lok Sabha speaker and one of Indias most respected parliamentarians.

Sorry to hear of the passing of Somnath Chatterjee, former Speaker of the Lok Sabha and a veteran parliamentarian who had a forceful presence in the House. A loss for public life in Bengal and India. My condolences to his family and innumerable well-wishers, the President said in a tweet.

Prime Minister Modi described Chatterjee as a stalwart of Indian politics who he said made the parliamentary democracy richer.

Modi tweeted that Chatterjee was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise. My thoughts are with his family and supporters.

Somnath Chatterjee died at 8:15am at the Belle Vue Clinic in Kolkata following a cardiac arrest and prolonged age-related ailments. The 10-time parliamentarian was admitted to the clinic on June 28.

He was discharged on August 5 but taken to the hospital again on August 9, when a dialysis was performed on him. He was put on ventilation last Friday.

Read | Somnath Chatterjee, the emotional Communist who went by his heart

Condolences started pouring in after the nursing home announced Somnath Chatterjees death.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee called the death of Chatterjee a great loss.

Saddened at the passing away of Somnath-Da. My condolences to his family and admirers. This is a great loss for us, the Trinamool Congress chief tweeted.

Banerjee sent Partha Chatterjee, then the industry minister, to take Somnath Chatterjees advice on how to take the state forward in the path of development in June 2011, just about a month after assuming charge in West Bengal.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal also mourned the death of the former Left leader in their tweets.

He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief, Gandhi tweeted.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah described Chatterjee as an excellent parliamentarian.

Saddened to learn about the demise of Somnath Chatterjee, former Speaker of Lok Sabha, Shah tweeted.

He (Chatterjee) was an excellent Parliamentarian, whose long years as a member of the House, enriched our Parliamentary traditions. My condolences to his family and supporters in this hour of grief, he added.

Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao also expressed his deep condolences and described Chatterjee as a great parliamentarian and a person who conducted the proceedings of the Lok Sabha with the highest standards.

He recalled his association with Somnath Chatterjee when he was a member of Parliament and a Union minister.

Rao said Chatterjee, as the speaker, gave them enough time to put forward their argument in the House while they were agitating for a separate Telangana and when Telangana Rashtra Samithis MPs resigned for the cause
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Monday held talks with UN General Assembly president-elect Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces on key issues such as revitalisation of the world body, including reform of the security council and strengthening global counter terrorism legal framework.

Swaraj welcomed the president-elect of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly and held wide-ranging discussions with her, ministry of external affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

Garces meeting with Swaraj comes after she called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday and discussed the need for a stronger UN action on major global challenges, including terrorism.

The minister and the UNGA president-elect held wide-ranging discussions on the revitalisation of the UN, including reform of the UN Security Council, strengthening global counter terrorism legal framework, and other global issues, Kumar said.

EAM @SushmaSwaraj and UNGA President-elect @mfespinosaEC held wide ranging discussions on revitalization of the @UN, including reform of the UN Security Council, strengthening global counter terrorism legal framework and other global issues. pic.twitter.com/d68XtHYiaG  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) August 13, 2018

Garces, an Ecuadorian national, is the fourth woman president to assume this position. Indias Vijayalakshmi Pandit was first-ever woman president of the UNGA.

The UN General Assembly in June had overwhelmingly elected Garces as its next president.
Two church priests accused of sexually exploiting a 34-year-old housewife in Keralas Kottayam for years surrendered before the police in Kollam on Monday, a week after the Supreme Court rejected their pleas for bail.

The top court had directed them to surrender by August 13 while rejecting their petitions.

Sony Varghese and Jasie K George surrendered before the police commissioner of Kollam in south Kerala and were later handed over to the team investigating the case.

They are among the four priests of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, who were allegedly involved in sexually exploiting the woman. Two of them were arrested earlier.

The crime branch of the state police had booked them last month following the allegation by the homemaker that they had raped her by exploiting a confessional statement she had made to one of them.

The mother of two has said in her statement to the police that Father Varghese, one of her distant relatives, first assaulted her during a prayer meeting when she was 16. She related the incident to the second priest, Father Job Mathew, during a confession after she got married in 2009.

Father Mathew allegedly used her confession to sexually exploit her too. Later, he shared the information with two of his colleagues  Jasie K George and Jonson V Mathew  who also joined him in blackmailing her, she said in her complaint.

However, the accused priests have denied her charges vehemently saying they were trapped.

The National Commission for Women Rekha Sharma, who met the victim, had kicked off a big controversy after she sought a ban on confessions.

This is the first time the police have registered a case on the basis of a confession, which is considered as one of the seven sacraments of the church.

Religious reformers cite police records to state that these are not isolated incidents. As many as 12 priests have been arrested from various parts of the state for allegedly abusing minors and raping women over the last few months, they point out.

The victims, for their part, allege that church authorities often try to hush up complaints instead of exposing the guilty.
Police on Monday arrested the director and secretary of a non-government organisation (NGO), Anumaya Human Resource Foundation that ran a shelter home for mentally challenged women in Patna in which two inmates --Naushma alias Babli (40) and Poonam Bharti (18)  died following illness on Friday.

The police came to know about the deaths only on Sunday morning, Patna zone IG NH Khan. Patna SSP Manu Maharaj said the accused director Manisha Dayal and secretary Chirantan Kumar  were arrested on the charges of negligence and the apparent attempt to keep the police in dark about the deaths in Aasra Home.

Both Dayal and Kumar were produced in a local court, which allowed three-day police remand for them.

A senior police officer said the arrested officials of the shelter home neither informed the police nor social welfare department officials about the incident. We are looking for the doctor and the nurse who treated the two inmates at the shelter home.

The NGO reportedly persuaded the doctor on duty at Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) as well as town police outpost (TOP) on the hospital premises to keep the matter under wraps. The NGO also provided incomplete information about its address, he said.

IG Khan said that on getting information about the death of the two inmates, he directed the SSP and city SP to visit the spot and enquire about it.

The Aasra Home, where the two inmates lived, was opened in May this year. At present, 70 inmates are staying there. Dayal is linked to many NGOs functioning in the state, including some dealing with government projects, and is known to have good connections in the corridors of power.

Patna Medical College and Hospital superintendent Dr Rajiv Ranjan Prasad said both the inmates were brought dead at the hospital. Refuting allegations that the PMCH authorities did not inform police about the postmortem, he said police were duly informed about it.
Uttar Pradesh Shia Waqf Board has told all madrassas functioning from its properties to celebrate the Independence Day by chanting Bharat Mata Ki Jai after hoisting the national flag and singing the national anthem.

We have directed all the madrasas running under the Shia Waqf Board to chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai after hoisting the national flag and singing of the national anthem, board chairman Waseem Rizvi told PTI.

The board has warned of strict action against those not complying with the order.

Rizvi said there are over 1,500 madrassas and schools running on Waqf properties in the state and they will have to abide by the directive.

The nation will celebrate its 72nd Independence Day on August 15.
The biggest obstacle to writing anything meaningful about VS Naipaul, who died over the weekend, is that there is nothing left to say that has not already appeared in Patrick Frenchs masterly biography. Naipaul authorised the biography cooperated with French, and then when the book appeared in print (it pretty much destroyed his reputation as a human being while remaining respectful of the writing), said virtually nothing about it though his wife repeatedly trashed the biography.

I was no great friend of Naipaul and was never overly impressed with the fiction. (Yes, I know he won the Nobel Prize for Literature; so this may say more about me than it does about Naipauls work.) And some of the early non-fiction, especially the stuff relating to India, left me annoyed.

The young Naipaul called India An Area of Darkness (the title of the book that made his reputation) and in middle age he decided we were merely A Wounded Civilisation (a second book, much praised by the British press but treated with loathing in India).

In this file photo taken on December 10, 2001, Swedish Princesse Christina (L) and Literature Nobel prize winner VS Naipaul (R) attend the banquet for the Nobel laureates at Stockholm's City Hall. (AFP)

Looking back, I reckon we were too sensitive about some of the things he said. Many of his observations were undoubtedly valid even if they sounded unkind. But I never quite lost the sense that these were books written by a man with a grudge; somebody who had an axe to grind. Many years later when I read one of his essays about an early trip to India, I thought he was almost comically misguided.

In the essay, Naipaul writes about meeting an old friend from Trinidad in Delhi. The two men talk about how much is wrong with India. Then, they discuss how far ahead of India their own Trinidad is.

I have nothing against Trinidad but I doubt if any sensible person believes that it has been far ahead of India at any time in the last several decades.

Things did not begin to fall into place till I finally met Naipaul.

He had come to Calcutta to research the book that would become A Million Mutinies Now and somebody had given him my number. He would get bored in Calcutta, he was told, so here were the numbers of some people he could talk to and meet up with in the evenings. My name and number were on the list.

There were no mobile phones in that era. So Naipaul called my office and left a message. When I saw it, I was a little taken aback. What was Naipaul doing in Calcutta? Why was he calling me?

I called the hotel, the Oberoi Grand, where he was staying and asked to be connected to his room. The operator went off the line for a couple of minutes before returning and saying Connecting you sir.

The phone rang and rang till a voice finally answered. Main kitchen, can I help you?

Obviously there had been some mistake. So I called the hotel again. After several tries they finally located Naipaul who was writing quietly in his room. (He wrote every single day, he later told me.)

He was pleased to hear from me but said he was fed up of the hotel. I promised to take him out for lunch the next day. Would he like to try a Chinese restaurant that had just opened? There was a silence on the line.

No, he finally said. Anywhere else?

So we agreed on a non-Chinese venue and noting his irritation I called the General Manager of the Oberoi Grand. Did he realise that VS Naipaul was staying with him and that nobody could get through to his room?

The General Manager said he would check and call me back.

When he did, he was apologetic. They had a pastry chef called Nagpal, he said. So naturally all calls for any name that sounded like Nagpal were being directed to the kitchen.

This was not a terribly satisfactory explanation and I said so. Oh well, he said, who was this Naipaul fellow anyway?

(This May 03, 1973 file photo shows Nobel prize-winning British author VS Naipaul. (AFP)

The next day when we met for lunch Naipaul complained again about how badly he was being treated by the Oberoi. I told him that I had spoken to the General Manager. His mood brightened, we had a good meal and he apologised for turning down my offer of a Chinese meal. Very dirty, he said. You know Shanghai used to be the dirtiest city in the world.

I thought that this generalisation was a little strange (and inaccurate --- and probably racist) but we agreed to meet again, a few days later.

When we did, Naipaul was annoyed about The Oberoi again You know, some fool, who said he was the General Manager, came to see me to apologise, he said.

And this was a bad thing?

Yes. He disturbed me. I was writing and he made me sign copies of my books.

Ah okay, I said to myself, this is one complicated man.

I kept that in mind as we met several times again including a memorable dinner at my home where Naipaul drank too much and let his hair down.

It turned out that he had strong views on nearly everything. He hated Salman Rushdie, joked about the Satanic Verses fatwa (an extreme form of literary criticism) and said he was delighted that Rushdie now had to seek the help of a woman he had called Mrs. Torture. (Margaret Thatcher.)

He did not like black people. He did not even like the term black, he said. Much better to call them negroes ---which, to be fair, was not always regarded as an offensive term in the late 1980s. And on and on he went.

All of it made me uncomfortable and though we kept in touch intermittently for a few years, we never became friends. There were, however, the odd meetings where he would talk about his life in a surprisingly frank fashion.

He liked India, he said. He thought I was lucky to live here. I reminded him of An Area of Darkness and A Wounded Civilisation. He responded that a) India had changed since he wrote those books and b) he had never felt he belonged here till recently when India had opened up.

So where did he belong? His native Trinidad?

Oh, absolutely not, he answered vehemently. I could never live there.

This was followed by a diatribe about Trinidads black population. So much for Trinidad being far ahead of India!

What about England?

Whenever I think of England, I feel a deep melancholy, he said. A deep melancholy. (He had a way of repeating phrases.)

And then came what I thought was the most important admission: People of your generation can go to places like Oxford, come back to India, made a good living, drink good wine and be happy. We never had that opportunity.

Perhaps I am oversimplifying but after that conversation, I thought I had cracked it. Naipaul did not hate India, he resented it. What he did really hate was his native Trinidad (no matter what he wrote in his earlier pieces). And he never felt quite at home in England either.

He was, essentially, a stateless person who envied Indians for creating a modern country of our own. Only in the late 1980s and early 1990s, did he finally make his peace with the Indian part of his identity. And from that point on, he kept coming back to India.

In the aftermath of his death, there has been a stream of social media abuse. Some of it relates to his views on Muslims. I can understand why his influential 1980s book, Among the Believers, can be considered borderline prejudiced by some but --- lets be honest --- many of his concerns in that book have been validated by later events.

Naipaul said that Islam was increasingly becoming an Arab religion (even though the majority of the worlds Muslims were non-Arab) and that Muslims were being asked to abandon their own cultures and to accept a severe, repressive, fundamentalist kind of Arab Islam.

Three decades later, can anyone seriously argue that Naipaul was wrong?

In this file photo taken on February 18, 2002, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee (L) poses with Nobel Laureate, British author VS Naipaul in New Delhi during the inauguration of the International Festival for Indian Literature. (AFP)

There is anger, also, over what people saw as his pro-Hindutva learnings. This stems from an ill-advised visit to a Sangh Parivar operation (which he is supposed to have later regretted) and a few loose remarks.

But in all his body of work, there is not one pro-Sangh Parivar article and as for the charge that he was anti-Muslim (one reason why bakhts love him), he married a Pakistani Muslim and never once showed signs of prejudice against individual Muslims.

So yes, he was a racist when it came to black people. Yes, he often wrote about other peoples countries without fully understanding them in a dangerously naive and arrogant manner. I once had lunch with him and his British-Argentinean girlfriend of the time and she spent much of our lunch telling me (and him) how Naipaul got everything about Argentina wrong when he wrote about the country.

This 2001 file photo shows British author VS Naipaul in Salisbury, England. (AP)

And he got lots wrong about India too. At the beginning of An Area of Darkness, he writes about touts approaching passengers on the ship he had arrived on and asking if they had any cheese. This provokes a bout of contempt for India. The country still hadnt learnt how to make cheese, he scoffs! It had to be procured on the black market and bought off visiting passengers.

In fact, as Patrick French points out, what the touts were probably asking was whether passengers had any cheez. In the early 1960s there were strict import controls and liquor, cigarettes, electronics etc. were much in demand.

But Naipaul did not know what cheez meant. And he offered up a diatribe about primitive Indians who did not even know how to make cheese, purely out of ignorance.

As most of the obituaries have noted, Naipaul may been a great writer but he was also a deeply flawed human being. Nobody can dispute how brilliantly he wrote. But lets not forget that though he called himself a novelist, he was far better known for his non-fiction than for his novels.

Will his novels stand the test of time? Does anybody still read say, A House for Mr. Biswas? Will they read it ten years from now?

I wonder.
After the Marathas, the Dhangar (shepherd) community on Monday hit the streets over reservation and held morchas and raas rokos (road blockades) in many parts of Maharashtra. The community has been long demanding a rise in the existing reservation quota of 3.5% and an inclusion in the Scheduled Tribes (ST) category.

They have now threatened to intensify their agitation for which they are going to hold a meeting on August 15 in Pandharpur of Solapur district.

Mondays agitation was part of the 15-day ultimatum given by the community to the state government to take a decision over their demands. The community will submit memorandums to all tehsildars across the state on Tuesday.

On Sunday, a 20-year-old student from Parbhani district had committed suicide in solidarity with the communitys demand. Before hanging himself, Yogesk Karke had sent a message to his friend informing that he is committing suicide over reservation.

Navnath Padalkar, the state coordinator of the Maharashtra Dhangar Aarakshan Kruti Samiti (MDAKS), a state-level action committee, said the state governments attitude seems to not favour their demand, following which they have decided to take on the Devendra Fadnavis-led government.

In the run-up to the general and state Assembly polls in 2014, both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the then state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Fadnavis had assured that they will accept our demands within 15 days of taking up the states reign. They have to face the consequences if they fail to do fulfil them, Padalkar said.

The agitations were held at Vasai, Alibaug, Ahmednagar, Sangli, Kolhapur, Jalgaon, Nashik, Nagpur, Amravati, Dhule, Aurangabad, Jalna, Parbhani and in Latur. At most places, agitators blocked the roads and held sit-in protests. Protestors at Vasai also threatened to forcibly enter the chief ministers (CM) official residence  Varsha  at Malabar Hill, if the state governments didnt decide on the demand by August 25.

The community has a population of 1.5 crore in the state. The Dhangar community currently comes under the Nomadic Tribes (NT) category and is entitled to get 3.5% reservation being provided by the state government. It has been demanding to be included in the ST category that gets 7% reservation.

On Friday, CM Fadnavis had assured to make recommendations to the Centre for the same to a delegation led by community leader and Member of Parliament Vikas Mahatme. He also informed the delegation that the government is expecting a study report from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) on the issue by the end of this month.

The Maratha community has also been demanding 16% reservation in government jobs and education and has now resorted to violent protest supporting the demand. Padalkar said, Unlike Marathas, if Dhangars decided to come on roads with full force then it will be almost impossible to control them.
Facing difficulty in interrogating the two Romania nationals held for ATM rigging in Chandigarh, police have called a translator from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

A cop privy to investigations said earlier they approached the department concerned in Panjab University to help them translate the language, but it didnt bear fruit as the accused are speaking a dialect that is a mix of Hungarian and Romanian.

The translator from Delhi is expected to arrive on Monday, said the police official.

The two Romanian nationals  Miclea Lecian Lonut and Paraschiv George Aletandru, both 37  were arrested from Delhi by the Chandigarh crime branch on Friday night.

Hunt on for aide

Meanwhile, despite the language barrier, stringent questioning of the accused has revealed that they were being aided by another person who speaks fluent English. This accomplice made their travel arrangements and procured skimming machines (for collecting credit and debit card data).

The Chandigarh police crime branch has initiated a search operation to nab the accomplice. He is suspected to be present in Delhi and its neighbouring areas.

Police suspect a bigger gang is operating in India to collect credit and debit card data, not just for stealing cash but also for selling the information in international market for online fraud.
A 69-year-old Jaipur man, who had gone missing 36 years ago, was repatriated by Pakistan Rangers through Attari-Wagah border on Monday.

Gajanand was among 30 other Indians, 27 fishermen from Gujarat, who were received by officials of Border Security Force (BSF). Pakistans foreign ministry released the Indian prisoners as a humanitarian gesture to mark the countrys Independence Day.

In 1982, Gajanand, a labourer by profession then, had gone missing from his native village, Samod, falling under Mahar Kalan police station, in Jaipur. His family moved from pillar to post to find Gajanand but to no avail.

The 30 prisoners who reached the zero line of Attari border at 3pm were brought from Lahore to Wagah border in a special bus.

As soon as Gajanand reached the Indian territory, he fell on the ground, owing to weakness and was assisted by two BSF personnels.

He was taken to the Integrated Check Post (ICP) to complete the pending formalities.

President, Sri Amarnath Langar Sewa Committee, Abohar, Sehdev Sharma, who had come to receive Gajanand said, Gajanand is not in a condition to talk. He will be taken to his home in Jaipur.His wife Makhni Devi, two sonsRakesh and Mukeshand their wives, and grandchildren have been waiting for him eagerly.

Intelligence officials said, as Gajanand is not mentally sound, he is unable to recall how he reached Pakistan.

Was only 12-year-old when he went missing

Gajanands younger son Mukesh Sharma said, We had lost all hope of meeting him and feared that he was no more.Recently, police contacted us to confirm his nationality and informed that he was lodged in Lahore Central Jail.

I was only 12-year-old when my father went missing, he said.

Meanwhile, the 27 fishermen reached Red Cross rest house in Amritsar and will leave for Gujarat on Tuesday.

A fisherman from Gujarat, Ramesh, said, It is difficult to identify the territorial water during fishing in the Arabian sea.

Though the fishermen were repatriated but their boats, nets and other things are still in the possession of Pakistan government.

India repatriates 7 Pak prisoners

The BSF also repatriated seven Pakistani prisoners on Sunday afternoon in a goodwill gesture ahead of the Independence Day. Amritsar jail superintendent, Arashdeep Singh Gill, said three of the seven Pakistani prisoners were lodged in Amritsar Central Jail. They were arrested under the Passport Act, 1967, he said.
Its tempting to dismiss the Sikh radicals-led Punjab Referendum 2020 rally at London as a stunt without status, a term former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used to trash Amnesty Internationals reports on troubled Northern Ireland.

But Sundays spectacle at Trafalgar Square, aimed at rallying support for a separate Sikh homeland, was more than a mere publicity stunt. It was attended by 2,500 expatriate Sikh hardliners, mostly from Britain, still wedded to the long lost cause of Khalistan.

This event not only signifies the propaganda-potential of ragtag radical groups operating from foreign soils, but Indian security agencies also see in it an insidious play by Pakistans Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) through a project, codenamed Op Express, to play the Sikh card and revive turmoil in peaceful Punjab.

Such sinister portents are not unfounded. The posters calling for Sikh referendum, a cause celebre of a US-based advocacy group Sikhs for Justice, sprung up in major gurdwaras in Pakistan during the annual Sikh pilgrimages in recent months. Some of the brains behind the London event had a criminal-militant past in the dossiers of Indian security agencies, before they fled India. This explains Indias alarm and alacrity behind its frantic -- and eventually in vain -- diplomatic moves to block the pro-referendum show. The Westminster, however played hardball, refusing to disallow the radicals gathering on grounds of freedom of expression. The only comfort New Delhi got was from a parallel pro-India show of Britain-based NRIs.

Back home in Punjab, the latest pro-Khalistan antic found no favour from any quarters, not even with pro-Khalistan splinter groups such as Dal Khalsa and Akali Dal (Amritsar). Rather, political parties closed ranks in condemning the bogey of Khalistan. Chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh called the London event an attempt by a handful of frustrated ISI-backed foreign-based Sikhs to foment trouble in India. Equally emphatic was the moderate Shironmani Akali Dals denunciation of the bogey of Khalistan, saying those behind Referendum 2020 were people living abroad who will never come back to Punjab. Its a futile exercise and has no takers in Punjab, said SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal

Ties under strain

The fallout of the event will largely be on India-UK relations. New Delhi made no effort to hide its irritation over allowing a separatist activity which impinged on Indias territorial integrity and seeks to propagate violence, secessionism and hatred. Indian intelligence agencies have a reason to be wary of radicals choosing London for their secessionist propaganda. In the 1980s, Britain had emerged as an epicentre of pro-Khalistan movement spearheaded by Jagjit Singh Chauhan, a leading light of Sikh separatism. The latest episode has further strained the already not-so-cordial India-UK ties in the uncertain times of Brexit and its impact on bilateral trade.

But, what is certain is that India will keep up its tough stance on Sikh radicals active in some foreign countries. Earlier, New Delhi had driven home its no-nonsense approach to Canada, forcing it to course correct its mollycoddling towards the anti-India fringe in the Sikh diaspora. Security agencies see a renewed radical agenda as germs that need to nipped in the bud. Already, there is a growing unease over radicals-sponsored copycat rallies planned in Canada and Australia, the two countries with sizeable Sikh population. In that sense, the London event is a wake-up call for India to not lower its guard on security and diplomatic fronts.
Leaders cutting across party lines on Sunday said the London convention of Referendum 2020, organised by Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) to garner support for a separate nation, was a futile exercise.

The attempt to divide India will never be successful. Its a futile exercise as the people living in foreign countries will never come back to Punjab. The low turnout at Londons Trafalgar Square speaks volumes about the failure of the rally, said Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal.

Those behind the referendum are citizens of other countries and their children dont acknowledge that they belong to Punjab. They have no right to speak about Punjab, he added.

Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh has already rejected the event, dubbing the Trafalgar Square rally as an attempt by a handful of frustrated ISI-backed foreign-based Sikhs to foment trouble in Punjab and India.

They have been playing in the hands of the ISI. I will not allow anyone to disturb peace in the state, he had said. He had also castigated SFJ, as a sham organisation, which according to him does not deal in any human rights activities.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) co-president Balbir Singh said, Referendum is a non-issue in Punjab. Here issues are unemployment, drugs and farm suicides. Which Punjab they are taking about sitting abroad? Our state has already suffered a lot.

BJP national secretary Tarun Chugh said, The idea is anti-national with an intention to disrupt communal harmony among Punjabis in and outside Punjab.

Communist Party of India (CPI) leader Joginder Dyal said, Low turnout at the rally speaks volumes about how a large section of the population is opposed to it.

Punjab-based pro-Khalistan outfits  Dal Khalsa and Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) had also raised questions on the practicality of the referendum.
The teenager son of a police chief in California, who brutally assaulted a 71-year-old Sikh man, grinned and made obscene gestures during his first court appearance, according to a media report.

Sahib Singh Natt was attacked last week and spit at by 18-year-old Tyrone McAllister and his 16-year-old juvenile friend in Manteca, California.

McAllister, the son of Union City Police Chief Darryl McAllister, and the juvenile have been charged with attempted robbery, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon.

On Friday, younger McAllister entered the courtroom and flipped his middle fingers to a cameraman. He then dropped his hands before throwing up his middle finger a second time, Sacramentos FOX 40 reported.

He appeared to be grinning, and made suspected gang signs while his hands were cuffed, the report added.

Younger McAllister appeared in the court for his arraignment. No bail was set for the teen.

The attack on Natt during his morning walk was captured by surveillance cameras and showed the two teenagers beating the old man while dressed in hoodies. One, who was wearing a black hoodie, was brandishing a gun.

Investigators were still looking into whether the attack meets the legal criteria for charging a hate crime, the report said.

As to whether it was just a crime or a hate crime, Im of the opinion that at this point, looking at the videos, that its just a crime committed by some young people, Bobby Bivens, president of the Stockton branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, was quoted as saying.
On Sunday afternoon (India time), the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administrations most ambitious mission, the Parker Solar Probe, launched off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida for its date with the sun.

The probe launched aboard the Delta IV-Heavy rocket will, over the next seven years, come within 6.16 million kms (3.83 mn miles) of the sun, the closest a spacecraft has ever gotten to the star.

Parker Solar Probe is a mission of extremes, Kelly Korreck, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said. It will be the closest human made object to the Sun, going 96% of the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Parker will also be hot - parts of the spacecraft will reach around 3000 degrees Fahrenheit (1649 degrees Celsius)!

It will also be the fastest human made object traveling at 430,000 miles (6,92,000 kms) per hour, according to Korreck, who is part of the mission. At that speed, you can fly from Delhi to Mumbai in about 6 seconds.

The mission, over five decades in the making, will last 6 years and 11 months, and in this time, the Parker probe will orbit the sun 24 times. With each orbit, it will be propelled closer and closer to the sun, ultimately circling the star at at a distance that is less than 10 radii of the sun.

Here, it will cross paths with Venus, and be flying within the orbit of Mercury, seven times closer to the sun than any other probe.

This means the probe will be in the suns atmosphere, a place where conditions can get pretty hot and harsh. However, a 4.5 inch carbon composite shield will face the sun, keeping the instruments cool at around 30 degrees C.

One of the reasons that scientists are sending the probe is to study the Suns atmosphere and the weird property it exhibits of being hotter than the surface of the sun itself. It is a puzzle since the further one moves from the source of heat, the temperatures should fall.

The other great mystery is the behaviour of solar wind, a stream of charged particles emitted by the sun to release energy. A key question that the probe seeks to answer is how solar wind is accelerated, and for the first time it will be able to look for answers at the very place where this wind originates.

The name solar wind was given by Eugene Parker, a professor emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, after whom the probe is named. This is the first time NASA has named a mission after a living individual. Parker also described the problem of the heating of the corona, or the suns atmosphere.

We need more understanding to predict these flares and coronal mass ejections as they produce space weather which could affect our technology-based society by damaging satellites and power grids, Korreck said, adding that We also get the beautiful northern and southern lights because of these effects.

The launch of the Parker probe marks the launch of a hectic era in solar physics. The European Space Agency (ESA) is set to launch its own Solar Orbiter early next year.

We are very excited about the Parker probe, the data from the mission will be public and we will be working with the data, Dipankar Banerjee, an astrophysicist at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, said. The first batch of data from the probe is expected to come in December, according to NASA.

Indias own sun mission, Aditya L1 is in its initial stages, according to an Indian Space Research Organisation spokesperson. It is scheduled for launch in 2020. All the configurations are already over, we are now in the process of assembling the engineering model prototype and then the testing stage will begin, Banerjee, who is part of the Aditya L1 mission, said.

The Aditya L1 satellite craft will not be getting close and personal with the sun but it will be inhabiting a halo orbit called the L1 point - where a satellite can get unobstructed views of the sun. The coronagraph on Aditya will attempt to mimic the total solar eclipse that perfectly blocks the solar disk, Banerjee said. This will enable the craft to collect data about the corona, which is usually not visible because of the bright light of the suns disk.

Data from all these missions is expected to shed light on the suns fiery character.
Irrfan Khan, who is currently undergoing treatment in London for a rare form of cancer, on Monday announced that he would be pulling out of Amazons The Ministry, now titled Gormint. The show, created by AIBs Gursimran Khamba, had been in production for several months, with Irrfan having already shot many scenes.

With a heavy heart I would like to say that due to this ongoing situation, I will not be able to fulfil my acting commitment to the show, Irrfan said in a statement. I am gutted by this development because the character and the show thrilled me and I even lived with the character for several months before having to cut the journey short. But after extensive discussions, workarounds and sincere efforts by everyone involved, the situation prevents me from being able to do the show entirely. And thus, I must, at this time, exit stage left.

Irrfan continued that he remains excited to see the final product and have complete faith in the creative team to deliver something that is unique and unseen in the Indian satire space so far and I wish them the same good luck and love that they have always wished for me.

Khamba shared a picture of Irrfan on the sets of the show, and also provided a statement on Instagram. Id like to inform everyone that due to Irrfan sirs unfortunate health situation weve jointly decided that he no longer be cast in the show. Over the last year as we worked on the show hes been everything from a friend, teacher to a mentor and I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to collaborate with him. Life mein aise mauke kam hi milte hain - but abhi jo bhi likhoonga cliche lagega - toh woh saari stories baad mein, he wrote. For now from me and all of us at AIB, all we want is for him to get healthy and healed so we can plan more shenanigans together in the future. I still look forward to excitable 3 am calls from him with terrific random ideas for the show. And with a heavy heart, as we all begin to imagine and work on the show without him, I can only hope that we will still make something worthy of the vision and passion sir showed for it. Get well and be better soon! Abhi bahut designs ke kurte try karne hain! :)

Amazon Prime Video, along with the shows creators and cast, are deeply saddened by this news, said Amazon Prime Video India director and content head Vijay Subramaniam, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Irrfan has been  and will continue to remain a part of the Amazon family. We wish him a speedy and successful recovery and look forward to watching the show with him sitting right next to us.

The actor most recently appeared in Karwaan, which also stars Dulquer Salmaan and Mithila Palkar. Gormint is a satire about a washed-up actor who tries to revive his career by taking on the title of Cultural Minister.

The actor was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumour earlier this year.

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It seems that even leaked audio recordings and abusive tweets arent enought to repel Kapil Sharmas devoted fanbase from clamouring for his return. According to a new report, the comedian is expected to make a return to TV in October.

A DNA report says that the comedian, whose last show was cancelled after allegations of unprofessionalism on Kapils part, will return with a new show in the next two months. Kapil recently returned from a vacation in Greece, where hed gone with girlfriend Ginni Chatrath. He is focussed on getting back in shape.

Kapil has decided to take charge of his life, DNA quoted a source as saying. He not only wants to change his lifestyle (he had tweeted about it) but also wants to become fit. He will be hiring a personal trainer. The comedian also wants to ideate for his new show and is planning to make a comeback to TV in the next two month.

With Bulging Belly, Sunken Eyes, #KapilSharma Looks Unrecognizable As He Walks Into A Supermarket In Amsterdam - https://t.co/3lwXh7dhS1 pic.twitter.com/OOSjhGWaGI  MovieTalkies.com (@MovieTalkies) July 5, 2018

The last few pictures of his that were released online showed a Kapil who appeared to have put on a significant amount of weight. His fans came to his defence even then. Leave him alone... and stop pestering people... he needs peace and let him be alive... one person had tweeted. The comedian was rumoured to have spent a few days in rehab - which he has denied - after his alleged battles with the bottle and depression.

The difference in actors appearance was once again noticed when he had landed in Mumbai after the Amsterdam photo. The actor also returned to Twitter days before he returned to Mumbai. Kapil had accepted that his weight has increased, but he is looking forward to making some positive changes to his lifestyle. Kapil had quit Twitter after his very public meltdown, and had filed lawsuits against a journalist - verbally attacking him and his daughter in a leaked phone call - and his ex-girlfriend Preeti Simoes, for allegedly mismanaging his professional life.

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Security forces in Burkina Fasos capital have killed two gunmen involved in a deadly attack on a restaurant, a security source said n Monday.

The toll is 18 dead, 14 of whom are still lying at the site of the attack. Among those 14 dead are two assailants, an army officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Police are seen on a street following an attack by gunmen on a restaurant in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, n this still frame taken from video August 13, 2017. (REUTERS)

Communications minister Remis Dandjinou later announced that the operation against the suspected jihadist gunmen was over.

The operation has ended but searches of the Ouagadougou neighbourhood around the restaurant are continuing, the minister, told a press briefing carried on social media.

Suspected Islamic extremists opened fire at a Turkish restaurant in the capital of Burkina Faso late Sunday, killing at least 18 people in the second such attack on a restaurant popular with foreigners in the last two years.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the violence, which continued into the early hours Monday. Gunfire could be heard almost seven hours after the attack began.

In addition to those killed, eight others were wounded, Communications Minister Remi Dandjinou told journalists. Two of the attackers were also killed, he said.

The victims came from several different nationalities, he said. At least one of the dead was French and another was Turkish.

Security forces arrived at the scene with armoured vehicles after reports of shots fired near Aziz Istanbul, an upscale restaurant in Ouagadougou. The attack brought back painful memories of the January 2016 attack at another cafe that left 30 people dead.

Three or four assailants arrived at the restaurant on motorcycles and then began shooting randomly at the crowds dining Sunday evening, said police Capt. Guy Ye.

Burkina Faso, a landlocked nation in West Africa, is one of the poorest countries in the world. It shares a northern border with Mali, which has long battled Islamic extremists.

In the 2016 attack the attackers were of foreign origin, according to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which claimed responsibility for those killings along with the jihadist group known as Al Mourabitoun. But the terror threat in Burkina Faso is increasingly homegrown, experts say.

The northern border region is now the home of a local preacher, Ibrahim Malam Dicko, who radicalised and has claimed responsibility for recent deadly attacks against troops and civilians. His association, Ansarul Islam, is now considered a terrorist group by Burkina Fasos government.
Thousands of mourners on Monday buried dozens of children killed in a Saudi-led coalition air strike on a bus in northern Yemen, one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in the three-year-old war.

At least 40 children were killed in Thursdays raid which hit the bus as it drove through a market of Dahyan, a town in Saada, the armed Houthi group which controls the province said.

Wooden coffins, most with a picture of a child, were taken by cars and carried by pall bearers to a graveyard from a square where prayers were held earlier. Death to America, death to Israel, the crowd chanted, echoing the Houthis slogan.

The shrouded bodies were removed from the coffins and placed in a row of unmarked graves that had been dug on Friday.

My son went to the market to run house errands and then the enemy air strike happened and he was hit by shrapnel and died, said Fares al-Razhi, mourning his 14-year-old son.

For my son, I will take revenge on Salman and Mohammed Bin Zayed, he said, referring to leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Gulf Arab states are leading the alliance of Sunni Muslim countries that intervened in Yemens war in 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognised government that was expelled from the capital Sanaa by the Houthis in 2014.

The coalition said on Friday it would investigate the strike after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the attack and called for an independent probe.

But on Saturday, state news agency SPA said Saudi Arabias mission to the world body delivered a message to Guterres reiterating that the raid was legitimate and targeted Houthi leaders responsible for recruiting and training young children.

War cant be a clean operation unfortunately, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash told reporters in Dubai when asked about the Saada attack. But I will say all parties need to accept their part in what they are doing today.

TALKS PLANNED

The coalition initially said after the attack that the strike had targeted missile launchers that were used by the Houthis to attack the southern Saudi province of Jizan.

The Houthis health minister Taha Mutawakil said last week that the estimated number of casualties stood at 51 killed including 40 children, and at least 79 people wounded, of which 56 were children. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported the same toll on Friday, citing authorities in Saada.

The Houthi-run al-Masirah TV on Monday quoted a health official as saying another child had died from his wounds, raising the toll to 52.

The head of the Houthis supreme revolutionary committee, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, attended the funeral and blamed the United States for this ugly massacre of Yemeni children.

The United States and other Western powers provide arms and intelligence to the alliance, and human rights groups have criticised them over coalition air strikes that have killed hundreds of civilians at hospitals, schools and markets.

A U.S. military spokeswoman said U.S. forces were not involved in Thursdays air strike. The U.S. State Department urged the Saudi-led coalition to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation.

The coalition says it does not intentionally target civilians and has set up a committee to probe alleged mass casualty air strikes, which has mostly cleared it of any blame.

The Houthis have also been criticised by rights groups.

The U.N. special envoy to Yemen has been shuttling between the warring parties ahead of holding consultations in Geneva on Sept. 6 to try to end the conflict that has killed more than 10,000 people and pushed the impoverished Arab country to the verge of starvation, according to the United Nations.
A Chinese tourist was attacked and killed by a hippo while taking pictures on the edge of Lake Naivasha in Kenyas Rift Valley, just hours after a local fisherman was mauled to death in the same area, authorities said Sunday.

A second Chinese tourist was injured in the incident Saturday night and received treatment in the local hospital in Naivasha, 91 kilometers (56 miles) miles southeast of Nairobi, the Kenya Wildlife Service said in a statement.

In the same area, a Kenyan fisherman was attacked by another hippo a few kilometers (miles) from where the incident with the Chinese occurred, a police official said.

The man was bitten on the chest and his injuries were serious and he died minutes after he was retrieved from the lake, said Rift Valley Head of Criminal investigations Gideon Kibunja.

The deaths brought to six the number people who have been killed by hippos around Lake Naivasha so far this year.

Wildlife service spokesman Paul Udoto said the circumstances are not clear in which the two Chinese were attacked. He said attacks on tourists are rare because they are usually protected by guides.

He said hippos and lone buffalos pose the greatest danger to humans and there have been many attacks in which civilians and even rangers have lost their lives.
Irans supreme leader said Monday there would be neither war nor negotiations with the United States, and that the countrys problems were the result of government mismanagement more than renewed sanctions.

Ayatollah Ali Khameneis comments add to the pressure on President Hassan Rouhani following a collapse in the currency and widespread protests over high prices and corruption.

They also appeared to rule out any hope of fresh talks with Washington, which US President Donald Trump had proposed after walking out of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal and reimposing sanctions.

Beside sanctions, they are talking about war and negotiations... let me say a few words to the people: THERE WILL BE NO WAR, NOR WILL WE NEGOTIATE WITH THE U.S., Khamenei said via his official Twitter account in English.

There was also a show of military resolve as Defence Minister Amir Hatami unveiled a next generation short-range ballistic missile and vowed to further boost the countrys missile capabilities.

State broadcaster IRIB said the new Fateh Mobin missile had successfully passed its tests and could strike targets on land and sea.

Problems are internal

Despite renewed sanctions, many Iranians -- including many at the highest levels of the establishment -- see US hostility as only a contributing factor to long-standing problems inside the country.

Todays livelihood problems do not emerge from outside, they are internal, Khamenei said in another tweet.

Not that sanctions dont have an impact, but the main factor is how we handle them, he added.

Khamenei mirrored recent criticism of Rouhanis economic management from senior members of the clergy and the Revolutionary Guards -- particularly over the collapse of the rial, which has lost around half its value since April.

A fortnight ago, Guards commander Mohammad Ali Jafari told Rouhani to take revolutionary actions to control prices and prevent the enormous increase in the price of foreign currency and gold, in an open letter published by the conservative Tasnim news agency.

But Khamenei criticised conservatives who called for Rouhanis resignation, saying they were inadvertently playing into the hands of the enemy.

The government must stay in office and powerfully carry out its duties to resolve the problems, he said.

Crackdown

Part of the strategy has been an effort to show action against Irans deeply entrenched corruption, which Khamenei once described as a seven-headed dragon.

The judiciary said Sunday it had arrested 67 people under a sweeping corruption crackdown and prevented 100 government employees from leaving the country.

Khamenei approved a written request from the head of the judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, to set up special revolutionary courts to try people quickly for economic crimes.

Some lawmakers have criticised the move, with high-profile MP Ali Motahari saying on Monday that parliament must not be by-passed when writing new rules.

With the nuclear deal crumbling, Rouhani finds himself with little to show for his five years in power and increasingly under fire from all sides.

Although the other parties to the agreement -- Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia -- have vowed to resist US sanctions, many foreign companies have already abandoned projects in Iran for fear of US penalties.

A significant cut in oil sales is also expected when the US reimposes a second phase of sanctions in November -- with some analysts estimating a drop of 700,000 barrels per day from its current level of 2.3 million.

State news agency IRNA reported on Monday that Iran is offering oil and gas at a discount to Asian customers in a bid to retain sales.

Khameneis tweets followed a speech in Tehran, in which he described Trumps offer of talks as a dangerous game and his administration as a bullying, fraudulent regime.

Even if we ever -- impossible as it is --negotiated with the US, it would never ever be with the current US administration, he added.
North and South Korea agreed Monday to hold a summit in Pyongyang in September after high-level talks in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula.

The two sides agreed at the meeting to hold a South-North summit in Pyongyang in September as planned, the joint statement said, without giving a precise date.

A trip by the Souths President Moon Jae-in to the Norths capital would be the first such visit for more than a decade, as the diplomatic thaw on and around the peninsula builds.

But despite the rapprochement, international sanctions against the North for its nuclear and missile programmes have kept economic cooperation between the two Koreas from taking off, while little progress has been made on the key issue of Pyongyangs denuclearisation.

The September summit can be viewed as North Koreas strategy to find a breakthrough in its stalled talks with the US, said Asan Institute of Policy Studies analyst Go Myong-hyun.

For South Korea, President Moon wants to improve inter-Korean ties but thats hard without progress in US-North Korea talks, he told AFP.

At the historic first summit between Moon and the Norths leader Kim Jong Un in Panmunjom in April they agreed the Souths president would visit Pyongyang during the autumn.

The first South Korean president to go to the Norths capital was Kim Dae-jung, who met the current leaders father and predecessor Kim Jong Il in 2000 and later won the Nobel Peace Prize, in part for his efforts at inter-Korean reconciliation.

Pyongyang saw a second inter-Korean summit in 2007, when Roh Moo-hyun also met Kim Jong Il.

But relations subsequently soured as the North accelerated its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the South elected conservative governments.

Mondays high-level talks, taking place on the northern side of the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone, were proposed by the North last week as it lashed out at Washington for pushing ahead with sanctions.

Afterwards the Norths chief delegate Ri Son Gwon said the meeting had gone well and the date for the summit was ready, but they had not announced it as reporting would be more fun when reporters are curious.

Earlier he used a proverb describing a very intimate friend to refer to inter-Korean ties, saying: We have opened an era where we are advancing hand in hand rather than standing in each others way.

South Koreas Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, leading the delegation from Seoul, said in his opening statement it was important that the two Koreas keep the same mind, adding: Any problem can be resolved with that mindset.

Rapid rapprochement

The rapid rapprochement between the two neighbours began this year ahead of the Winter Olympics in the South and paved the way for a landmark meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.

Cross-border exchanges between the two Koreas have significantly increased since then, with the neighbours planning to hold reunions for war-separated families next week for the first time in three years.

But although Trump touted his summit with Kim as a historic breakthrough, the nuclear-armed North has since criticised Washington for its gangster-like demands of complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.

Meanwhile the US has urged the international community to maintain tough sanctions on the isolated regime -- Seoul has caught three South Korean firms importing coal and iron from the North last year in violation of the measures.

Experts say Moon could try to act as a mediator between the US and North Korea, having salvaged the Singapore meeting when Trump abruptly cancelled it.

They are trying to send a message externally that the North-South dialogue momentum has been established and that it will be maintained regardless of the outcome of US-North Korea talks, said analyst Go.

Whether that is true is in doubt but they are trying to indirectly pressure the US, especially on sanctions, by showing an improvement in North-South ties and that peace has been established between them.

Moon and Kim agreed at their summit in April to officially declare an end to the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded with an armistice instead of a peace treaty, by the end of the year.

But Harry Harris, the US ambassador to South Korea, said Monday it was too soon for such a declaration, Yonhap reported.

Its too early for that even as we seek improvement in relations between the North and the South and between the North and the United States, Harris said, adding the allies share the same goal of the final, fully verified denuclearisation of the peninsula.
Manny Dortu, a 24-year-old African American from New Jersey, stood outside the White House on a rainy Sunday to see what white supremacists look like. He wanted to see their faces, who these people were and who can hate so much.

He will have to wait another day to find out.

The Unite the Right 2 march by white supremacists fizzled out in comparison to the preceding hype that had attracted attention around the country and beyond.

It was over by the time Dortu made it to the park minutes before it commenced the final stage of the rally.

Only about two dozens of white supremacists showed up at the White House with the chief organiser Jason Kessler, who had earlier told a reporter his intention was to assert his right to speech and expression.

Kessler and his supporters entered the city through a metro station, under the watchful and forbidding eyes of rival protesters, who were prepared to ham and heckle them. They proceeded through the city under police escort, a significantly smaller body than they had anticipated and advertised.

They were badly outnumbered by thousands of protesters who had waited there for them, some of them in masks and body armour, held back behind steel-gate cordons and a line of police officers, standing shoulder to shoulder. And they were badly out-shouted, their speeches drowned by a steady chant of slogans, catcalls and F-words and their variations.

They were led into special vehicles arranged by authorities shortly after, for a drive back to a metro station to take them out of the city and deposit in the adjoining Virginia state for the remaining part of the journey home. They were not wanted and the city wanted them out as soon as possible.

Demonstrators opposed to a far-right rally block a street as police try to dislodge them near the White House August 12, 2018 in Washington, DC, one year after the deadly violence at a similar protest in Charlottesville, Virginia. (AFP)

We won, said Larry Frank, an engineer from neighbouring state of Maryland, who said the last time he took part in protests was during the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

No one was killed or injured, and no had been arrested.

It was indeed a victory for a people determined to face down what turned out to be a handful of far-right supporters and for their city that was far better prepared than the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, a Virginia state college town overrun by white supremacists, jointly organised by Kessler and AltRight creator Richard Spencer, both alumni of the local university.

Heather Heyer, one of those opposing their rally, was killed by a self-proclaimed Nazi sympathizer, who had driven his car barreling through counter-protestors. Two police officers died when their helicopter, from which they were monitoring the rally, crashed on the way home.

The white nationalists purported celebration of the anniversary of the 2017 rally on Sunday never stood a chance in Washington DC, a city which has an African-American majority and generally liberal, voting Democratic mostly.
Appointment

13 August 2018

On August 8, 2018 Petr Jurecka officially took hold of his new position as Hotel Manager of WestHouse, a luxury boutique hotel in Midtown, New York, managed by HIGHGATE.

With more than 17 years of experience in the hospitality industry, Jurecka has worked with some of the world's most reputable hotel corporations. Most recently he was resident manager at INNSIDE New York Nomad, a Melia Hotels International property, where he oversaw and managed all aspects of the 313- room lifestyle hotel assuming the responsibilities of the general manager in his absence.

Originally from Czech Republic he attended the College of Hotel Industry and Gastronomy as well as The Institute of Hospitality Management, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Hospitality Management. Petr arrived in NYC in the early 2000s to continue his promising career with the luxury boutique hotel company, HK Hotels (currently known as the Library Hotel Collection). Having started as a breakfast attendant Mr. Jurecka moved through the ranks, which has allowed him to have a deeper understanding of the industry and guests' needs in the pursuit of outstanding guest services. Assuming numerous management positions that included Front Office Manager, Housekeeping Manager, and Director of Operations, at the age of 26, Petr reached a personal milestone when he became General Manager of the Casablanca Hotel in New York City, which at the time had been chosen number one on T ripAdvisor.

In 2010, after 11 years with HK Hotels, Jurecka transitioned to new challenges outside of the HK Hotels family as General Manager of Z NYC Hotel and the Sanctuary Hotel Times Square, where he oversaw a new hotel opening and a full renovation, respectively. After opening citizenM Hotel NY Times Square, in 2016 Petr joined the Denihan Hospitality Group and became Hotel Manager of the Benjamin hotel.
Appointment

13 August 2018

BENCHMARK, a global hospitality company, has appointed Diane Heppel director of human resources for Delta Hotels - Marriott Dallas Allen & Watters Creek Convention Center, a Benchmark Resorts & Hotels property currently under construction in Allen, Texas, north of Dallas. The full-service hotel and convention center is scheduled to open in January of 2019. Stacy T. Martin, general manager, announced the appointment.

Diane Heppel was previously director of recruiting for Pillar Hotels & Resorts. Prior to this she served as director of survey solutions - associate opinion, guest satisfaction and meeting planner surveys for Unifocus. She has also held human resource positions with La Quinta Inn, Inc., and Bristol Hotels and Resorts.

Ms. Heppel attended Baylor University and has her Professional Human Resources Certification. She resides in Plano, Texas.
8 percent revenue growth - 26 percent EBITDA growth - 15 crore profit after tax

The Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL), Indias largest hospitality company reported its consolidated and standalone financials for the first quarter ending June 30, 2018.

Key - Q1 '18

8 percent revenue growth

26 percent EBITDA growth

15 crore profit after tax

Consolidated financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2018

Commenting on Q1 performance, Puneet Chhatwal, managing director and chief executive officer, IHCL, said It has been a great start to a historically slow quarter. Demand continues to outpace supply and IHCL witnessed an increase in RevPAR by about 6 percent globally driven by growth in the industry in general and our brands gaining market share in particular. I am delighted with the 8 percent growth in revenues and improvement in EBITDA margins of 183bps. Furthermore, in our endeavour to build a robust pipeline, we signed 6 new hotels with an inventory of approximately 800 rooms across all our brands in key locations in India and overseas.

Giridhar Sanjeevi, executive vice president and chief financial officer, IHCL, said We are very pleased with the progress we are making in the execution of our strategic plan in driving profitable growth for our company. We delivered a PAT of Rs15 crore and this marks the third consecutive quarter of achieving positive results for IHCL.

Key highlights

IHCL announces the signing of a new hotel at London Heathrow Airport. This will be a 108 room hotel, conveniently located across from Terminals 1, 2 and 3.

IHCL signed 6 new hotels in the quarter across all its brands in India and key international destinations. IHCL won the bid for The Connaught, an 85-room hotel in Lutyens New Delhi. IHCL signed its first hotel in Makkah, Saudi Arabia . The hotel will be a Taj branded hotel and is scheduled to open in January 2023, with approximately 340 rooms. The other signings included a Taj hotel in Lonavala , a Vivanta hotel in Katra, Jammu & Kashmir and two Ginger hotels in Jhansi and Visakhapatnam respectively.



The company announced a major expansion of Taj Bangalore located across the international airport with an addition of 220 guest rooms; bringing it to a total of 374 rooms with state-of-the-art conferencing and banqueting facilities.

St. James' Court, A Taj Hotel, London , launched its newly renovated premium rooms at the Almoners Townhouse.

Awards and recognition

CFI.co Corporate Governance Award : IHCLs iconic brand Taj was awarded the Best Hospitality Corporate Governance Award in India.

: IHCLs iconic brand Taj was awarded the Best Hospitality Corporate Governance Award in India. Earthcheck Gold Certifications : IHCL has set a global benchmark in hospitality for environmental sustainability with 67 of its hotels being awarded Gold Certification by EarthCheck.

: IHCL has set a global benchmark in hospitality for environmental sustainability with 67 of its hotels being awarded Gold Certification by EarthCheck. Freddie Awards : Taj InnerCircle has been bestowed with the special 210 Award in the hotel category for the Middle East/Asia/Oceania region for Strongest Performing Program off the Radar of Voters.

: Taj InnerCircle has been bestowed with the special 210 Award in the hotel category for the Middle East/Asia/Oceania region for Strongest Performing Program off the Radar of Voters. Conde Nast Traveller UK  Hot List : Taj Exotica Resort & Spa, Andamans featured in the highly coveted Conde Nast Traveller UK Hot List

: Taj Exotica Resort & Spa, Andamans featured in the highly coveted Conde Nast Traveller UK Hot List Town & Country USA: Taj Exotica Resort & Spa, Andamans featured in Town & Countrys annual Travel Awards list

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The Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) announced the signing of a Vivanta hotel at Heathrow Airport in London in partnership with Hayre Group.

The Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) announced the signing of a Vivanta hotel at Heathrow Airport in London in partnership with Hayre Group. This signing will mark a significant milestone for IHCL and the Vivanta brand which caters to the Upscale segment of business and leisure travellers.

Commenting on the signing of this agreement, Puneet Chhatwal, managing director and chief executive officer, IHCL, said, IHCL was the first Indian hospitality company to foray into the United Kingdom with the iconic St. James' Court hotel in 1982. Today, we are proud to partner with Hayre Group Limited in bringing the first Vivanta branded hotel to London. This signing is in line with our growth strategy of adding hotels in key locations globally.

The new Vivanta hotel is a Greenfield project slated to open in 2021, conveniently located across from Terminals 1, 2 and 3 at Heathrow Airport. The hotel will have approximately 108 spacious rooms, an all-day-diner, a bar and lounge, gym as well as banqueting and meeting space facilities. Additionally, the hotel will house the fourth outpost of the legendary restaurant, Bombay Brasserie, famed for its authentic, eclectic Bombay and Indian cuisine.

Commenting on the partnership, Talwinder Hayre, director, Hayre Group, said, We are delighted to partner with The Indian Hotels Company Limited in introducing the Vivanta brand to the UK market. We look forward to bringing the legendary Indian hospitality to London Heathrow, one of the busiest airports in the world.

IHCL also operates the renowned St. James' Court hotel, A Taj Hotel and the luxurious Taj 51 Buckingham Gate Suites and Residences, in London, located footsteps from Buckingham Palace.

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 2021 Hotel News Resource
Azealia Banks' upcoming album Fantasea II: The Second Wave has been delayed after she decided to "cancel it" following the Wildn' Out debacle. The "cancellation" wasn't an effective shelving of the record since Banks is apparently in the process of completing it. Still, the "212" artist is having trouble polishing off her unfinished tracks, one of which is a Grimes feature.

Grimes either has a bad sense of time-management or isn't really feeling her collaboration with banks. The punkish-pop producer had Azealia waiting for her at her boyfriend's house for a ridiculous amount of time. Banks explained why she was staying at Elon Musk's place via Instagram:

"Literally been sitting at Elon Musk's house alone for days waiting for Grimes to show up and start these sessions [...] I have no idea when she is coming back. I'm going to wait one more day then I'm going to go home."

Later, she compares her stint to Jordan Peele's famed thriller, Get Out.

This is putting a bit of a damper on the excitement Azealia Banks expressed on Twitter last month.

"Omg I'm listening to f2!!! All the songs are finished except lorelei and grimes song. I have a session next week with Alex Carapetis to lock lorelei down. Then I go to LA to finish grimes and oh yes!! Finish Paradiso two! But daaaaaaaamn there's some heat! "

[via]
Idris Elba would be the perfect James Bond. He has the British accent, the physical form, and the ladies' hearts. Plus, the man can dress. Speculation that Elba would play Bond has been running wild for years on the web, but it all hit a boiling point last week when it was seemingly confirmed that he would take up the role of 007. The original story came from U.K. tabloid The Daily Star, but their report has since been proven false. The Star claimed that Antoine Fuqua spoke with James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli about a Black James Bond. Apparently, that meeting never took place.

Tricked yet again by Black Bond rumors, the internet went into a frenzy. Those who believe Bond should remain Caucasian cheered, while those who sought to see diversity shook their heads. Among all the internet squabbling, Elba took to Twitter to give his own two cents. In two cryptic tweets, Elba addressed the situation. One tweet features a picture of the actor with a cartoon filter. As a caption, Elba wrote, "my names Elba, Idris Elba." His nod to the signature James Bond line led to further speculation. He followed that with a message that everyone should heed in any situation. "Dont believe the HYPE." True.
James Gunn may have lost his job at Marvel, but it looks like he'll recover just fine. Gunn was famously booted by Disney after tweets he posted a decade ago resurfaced. Gunn outlandishly made fun of rape, pedophilia, and a number of other topics that Disney felt did not fit in with their ideals. After Gunn was fired, the Guardians of the Galaxy cast banned together to stick up for the director with a joint statement, and Dave Bautista (who plays Drax) has been notably vocal about the firing. Still, it doesn't seem like Disney is going to rescind on their decision.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gunn is being eyed by several other big studios in the wake of his dismissal from Disney. Warner Bros., which owns the DC Comics movie universe, is reportedly one of those studios interesting in Gunn's talents. If DC were able to steal away one of Marvel's top directors, it would be a major win in their books. DC was able to use Joss Whedon, who directed the first two Avengers films, to fill in for Zack Snyder after he had to step away due to a family tragedy. Whedon's reshoots made Justice League feel convoluted to some, but Gunn helming an entire project by himself would fare much better.
Is it even possible to think about the Kevin Hart and Eniko Parrish relationship without also thinking about the ingenious "Kevin's Heart" music video? The couple is currently celebrating their 2-year anniversary after riding a bumpy road to the milestone. Their love for each other is as strong as ever though, and both Hart and Parrish took to Instagram to praise each other.

"Whats understood doesnt need to be said," wrote Hart on his post, which features him and his wife on their wedding day. "You get me & I get you....Im glad we GOT each other!!!! Love u to the moon & back. Happy anniversary." Parrish returned the love in the "No, I love you more" moment. "Happy Anniversary my love! Its only been 2 yrs so far and it already feels like a lifetime with you," she gushed on a post that featured a wedding day video. "Cheers to another year of love, light, & laughter as the HARTS!" The video features Alicia Keys singing "If I Ain't Got You" on their wedding day.

The Harts are in the Bahamas celebrating their anniversary with the family. While admitting that he is the "corny dad that makes us match on vacation," Hart posted a family picture from the islands.
It's hard enough for rappers to get into Canada. Between strict border policies and troublesome legal hangups, artists haven't always been received with open arms. In fact, it isn't uncommon for rappers to show up late, if at all, over border problems. If that wasn't difficult enough, now you've got rappers like KILLY doling out bans on behalf of the North. As it happens, the latest recipient of KILLY's ban-hammer is none other than Lil Xan, known in some circles as Diego.

For those neglecting to keep score, KILLY originally exchanged words with Xan back at the onset of 2018, culminating in KILLY to enforce hip-hop's favourite threat. Both parties seemed content to keep the insults flying, with Xan saying "fuck KILLY" on No Jumper, while keeping a border and vast stretches of wilderness between them. Unfortunately for Xan, however, KILLY is not one to take a ban lightly.

Over the weekend, Lil Xan found himself in Montreal, enjoying one of the city's local watering holes with entourage in tow. After a while, Xan stepped outside, only to be confronted by none other than KILLY. The video below showcases some of their tete-a-tete, which seemed poised to come to blows...if not for the leviathan standing between the pair. It's unclear whether KILLY made the trip specifically to press Xan, but one must admire his dedication to repping for Canada, even if you don't agree with his methods. As for Xan, we hope he can continue to persevere, as people seem to keep coming for the young man's dome.
Kith and Coca-Cola have teamed up once again for their third collaborative collection, which will include a special edition run of Converse Chuck Taylor 1970s as well as a range of apparel. The two brands partnered up twice before, including a line of apparel and accessories in December 2016, and multiple versions of the Converse Chuck 70 last August.

This time around, Kith and Coca-Cola have plans to release four different versions of the Converse Chuck Taylor 1970 with colorways and designs inspired by the United States, France, Russia, and China. Each colorway includes embroidered Coca-Cola branding in a different language on the denim upper, accompanied by subtle KITH branding on the vulcanized sole.

The full KITH x Coca-Cola Chapter 3 collection has not yet been unveiled, but it is believed the special edition Chuck Taylors will release in-store and at KITH locations this Friday, August 17.

Check out the kicks, as well as select pieces from the upcoming collection, in the IG posts embedded below.
Lena Waithe has shed her long hair for a buzz cut, and the talented writer and actor is loving her new style. Waithe, whose skill earned her an Emmy for her work on Master of None, spoke with Variety about her new haircut at the Hollywood Foreign Press Associations annual grants banquet on Thursday. She revealed that at first, she was hesitant because she didn't want to be labeled as a "butch," due to her sexuality. Waithe was able to shake her fear though, and she's much happier because of it.

I felt like I was holding onto a piece of femininity that would make the world feel comfortable with who I am, Waithe stated. I think I thought for a long time, Oh, if I cut my hair, Ill be a stud, Ill be  in the gay world, theres a lot of categories  Ill be a stud or Ill be a butch, and Ive always thought, Well, no, Im not that, Im still soft, and I said, Oh, I gotta put that down cause thats something thats outside of me.' Waithe went on to state that she feels "so free and so happy and so joyful," now that she has, "really stepped into myself.

If people call me a butch or say shes stud or call me sir out in the world  so what? So be it. Im here with a suit on, not a stitch of makeup, and a haircut  I feel like, Why cant I exist in the world in that way?'
Paul Rudd must be taking advice from Chadwick Boseman. The two Marvel actors are coming off a crazy year, with both men starring in their own franchises while also playing a bigger role in the overall Marvel machine. While sitting down on The Breakfast Club, Boseman revealed that the best place to go from here (having a billion dollar hit movie) is to do something smaller. He explained that you really can't go bigger than Infinity War or Black Panther, and that doing something smaller would connect him back to the roots of acting. Rudd seems to be following that strategy, because according to Variety, the Ant-Man and The Wasp actor is heading to Netlifx.

Rudd is set to star in a comedy series called Living With Yourself. He will play dual roles in the show, which will focus on a struggling man who signs up for a new treatment to become a better person. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris are set to direct the show, which will feature 8 episodes. Other than that, details for the show are rather scarce. Netflix continues to bolster their catalog as their competitors attempt to catch up. It may be a while before Hulu, Amazon Prime, or the upcoming Apple and Disney streaming services accomplish that goal.
Travis Scott knows how to treat his woman. Fresh off the success of his latest album Astroworld, Scott is living his best life. The rapper and his girlfriend Kylie Jenner have been going strong as a couple, and their love for each other has only increased since Jenner gave birth to their daughter Stormi. Trav has shown nothing but the utmost love and amazement with Jenner, and he continued to shower her in affection with an expensive birthday present.

Jenner turned 21 this past week, and she celebrated the milestone age with her family and a long list of celebrity friends. Dave Chappelle, Kanye West, Meek Mill, Chris Brown, Kevin Durant, The Weeknd, Bella Hadid, Winnie Harlow, and Chandler Parsons are a few of the famous guests that joined Jenner and her Kardashian Clan at Delilah for the party. The party was so wild, that one guest was carted out on a stretcher. Although I'm sure shopping for a billionaire 21-year-old is hard work, Trav found the perfect present his lover. La Flame surprised Jenner with a vintage 1950's Rolls Royce, a rare and gorgeous car that looks to be in pristine condition. The all white whip will be a nice addition to the couple's growing car collection.
The U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from interfering with your freedom of speech, but that does not mean anyone is obligated to listen to you.

Newspapers are not required to publish your carefully-crafted letter to the editor. Social media sites can politely reject your brilliant insights. And your family is not obligated to bathe in your wisdom during Thanksgiving dinner.

Your employer can even fire you for saying anything he or she finds objectionable.

Censorship? Yes. Illegal? No.

RELATED: The Bill of Rights probably isn't going to save your job

The First Amendment only guarantees that the government will not stop you from expressing yourself. No Pentagon censor reviewed my reports from Iraq before they were published. The FBI is prohibited from censoring conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claims about the Sept. 11 terror attacks or whether the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting took place.

Once you have your say, though, nothing protects you from the potential consequences of your speech, except maybe a good lawyer. Others may denounce you. Groups may ban you. And if your speech is libelous, defamatory or could immediately instigate violence, some publications face legal consequences if they give you a platform.

Courts have long held newspaper publishers responsible for what appears in their pages, whether it is journalism, commentary or advertising. Thats why you wont find clear cases of libel, Russian disinformation or Ku Klux Klan announcements in the newspaper. We are responsible for what we print.

Social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, though, have claimed exemptions to libel and defamation laws under the Communications Decency Act of 1992. Some members of Congress are rightly considering lifting those privileges.

Early Internet pioneers convinced Congress that to encourage the sharing of information, service providers should be free from liability for the content their customers posted. Even before the world-wide-web, no one thought providers like AOL could keep track of every post.

What seemed like a good idea then, though, now appears naive.

Internet trolls use social media sites to ruin peoples lives, as Jones has done to Sandy Hook parents by accusing them of fabricating their childrens deaths. Foreign intelligence services routinely use social media sites to destabilize nations around the world and promote bigotry and division.

Facebook, Apple, Twitter and other sites that facilitate such behavior are feeling the blowback, even if there are no legal repercussions. Some CEOs are trying to clean up their content before the government requires it.

The reason for last months drop in Facebook stock price was CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledging that the company will spend a lot of money hiring people to keep nefarious actors from leveraging his website to make the world a more hateful place.

Yet he is struggling to find the right balance when it comes to censorship. Zuckerberg said he would not ban Holocaust deniers, but he did follow Apple CEO Tim Cooks lead in removing Jones hate speech.

Many lawmakers doubt social media sites will effectively police themselves and want to hold website owners to the same standards as newspaper and magazine publishers for the content they carry.

RELATED: Battle against fake news begins right here

Senator Mark Warner made the case in a recent white paper. He would also like the U.S. to follow the European Unions lead and require sites to gain express permission from users before using their data for commercial purposes.

Other nations have proposed stricter limits on free speech itself. Germany passed a law in 2017 banning hate speech, terror-related items and false information from the Internet. Israel wants to remove social media profiles and posts from people they deem criminals. Russia may punish sites that dont delete posts that the government declares inaccurate.

Those measures have no place in the U.S., but they reveal the growing frustration with corporations that generate more revenue than most nations.

Jones, who broadcasts from Austin, decries the loss of his YouTube channel and the most important distribution channels for his podcasts. He is calling on supporters to buy more of his merchandise and visit his website to fight censorship. But whats happening to him is not a violation of the First Amendment.

How long his business will survive depends on the outcome of the defamation lawsuit brought by aggrieved Sandy Hook parents. If they can convince a court that Jones deliberately spread lies that hurt them, Jones will be out of business.

The ultimate solution for hate speech, though, is for the public and businesses to shun Jones and his ilk for the damage their lies - their free speech -- does to our society. The terms of service for Jones InfoWars website elegantly explains why.

"You are a guest here. It is not censorship if you violate the rules and your post is deleted, Jones warns visitors. All civilizations have rules and if you violate them you can expect to be ostracized from the tribe."

Chris Tomlinson writes commentary about business and economics.

chris.tomlinson@chron.com | twitter.com/cltomlinson
King's BierHaus plans to open its first franchise location.

The German-American restaurant owned by father-son duo Hans Sitter, 65, and Philipp Sitter, 26, is working with franchise partners to open three units in the southeast Houston suburb of League City.

The first location will be at 828 W. FM 646, according to the restaurant's website.

The franchise restaurant is expected to open in time for King's Oktoberfest in October, Philipp Sitter recently told the Chronicle. All three League City locations are expected to pen in the next three to four year, he said.

RELATED: King's BierHaus to start franchising and head into the national market

King's BierHaus is the franchise concept born from the Sitter's iconic Kings Biergarten & Restaurant in Pearland. The restaurant chain is working with Alexandria, Va.-based Fransmart -- a national group behind Five Guys Burger & Fries, Qdoba Mexican Grill and Halal Guys -- to expand nationwide through franchising.

King's Bierhaus hopes to have 30 to 50 King's BierHaus locations nationally in the next five years. So far, the restaurant group has received interest from potential partners in Arizona, California and Washington, Philipp Sitter said.

RELATED: EggHaus Gourmet brings gourmet kolaches, breakfast sandwiches and tacos to the Heights

The restaurateurs are also working on EggHaus Gourmet, a new breakfast restaurant in the Heights specializing in gourmet kolaches and sandwichses, which could be franchised in the future, Philipp Sitter said.
In the moments before showtime at Hobby Center for Performing Arts, the 55 young boys who are part of the Chauncy Glover Project arrive backstage looking like kings.

They stand tall in their sharp tuxedos. Not a wrinkle or a worry, even.

The boys have been preparing for this moment all year as part of the mentoring and college-preparatory program founded by KTRK (Channel 13) anchor Chauncy Glover. During the yearlong program, the students participate in tutoring, team-building activities and leadership training that culminates with a black-tie gala in which they perform an original play written by Glover and based on the boys lives.

One of the best moments for me is when they finally get dressed, and they are peeking out from behind the curtain to see all of the people in the audience who have come to see them, Glover said. A lot people dont understand what that does for them. If they stand up there on stage and kill it in front of a crowd like that, they leave the stage and go to college believing they can do anything.

This year, the production of There Is a King in Me! captivated a packed audience filled with educators, such as Grenita Lathan, interim superintendent of Houston Independent School District; politicians, including Mayor Sylvester Turner and Councilman Dwight Boykins; and community leaders, including the Rev. William A. Lawson  as well as the parents each boy brought to the stage during a monologue ending with I promise to make you proud.

The Chauncy Glover Project is the 33-year-olds spiritual calling, and a way to empower black and Hispanic boys who often get lost in the world. Some need a father figure who wont let them down. Others need someone to give them hope.

All of them need to know they are kings, he said.

They need reinforcement as to how great they are because a lot of them have been through tough times, Glover said. When youre homeless and dont have what other kids have, you dont think you are great. Or when you are trying to find out who you are, people can isolate you and think you are less than. This entire group needed to be reminded that they are kings.

Glover, an Emmy Award-winning reporter, started the program while working in Detroit in 2014. After witnessing a teen robbery suspect die on the scene, he arranged to meet with 15 of the teens male high school friends. Glover began to mentor the boys each week, bringing them food and offering direction.

I had never seen anyone die, but I cried for this boy, he said.  He was a good kid who just got caught up. I wanted to make sure his friends didnt go down the same path.

Glovers mentoring centered on the motto, I am confident. I am respectful. Im faithful and powerful. I am a leader, which he had the boys repeat out loud over and over. Glover funded the effort for the first year and a half out of his own money. Then in 2016, he founded a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and was able to raise funds to grow the effort.

He continued running the program in Detroit even after he moved to Houston in 2015.

Glovers passion for helping boys become men comes from his strong relationship with his parents, Robert and Sherry Glover, who live in Madison, Ala. He grew up in a close-knit family with a younger brother, Marchas, who died in a car accident in 2012.

A lot of people think I started this because I was one of those families who grew up without a father or in a bad home, he said. It was the exact opposite. I had a great family and have an exceptional dad. But what makes me go hard with this program is that I cant imagine my life without my dad in figuring out life. Hes taught me so much, from how to change a tire to balancing my budget to dealing with people, and being a good Christian and a good man.

As a boy, Glover was drawn to TV news. His dad built him a pretend anchor desk so that every Sunday after church Glover could report the family news and gossip right from his living room. He went on to graduate with a degree in journalism from Troy University in Troy, Ala., getting his first TV job as a reporter in Columbus, Ga. He took at TV job Jacksonville, Fla., for two years, then worked in Detroit for three years before moving to Houston.

Here, the Chauncy Glover Project started with 40 boys from Wheatley High School, Navarro Middle School and Foster Elementary. It has since grown to include 10 area schools. Glover recruited Christina Porter, a school counselor at Hamilton Middle School in Cypress Fairbanks ISD, to work with the program.

Chauncy has an amazing vision, Porter said. Hes very passionate about helping these boys, and we share that passion. We want to see them succeed, and to see them be successful is the ultimate satisfaction.

Bimonthly meetings focus on academic and writing skills, grooming and etiquette, public speaking, financial responsibility and helping students identify and apply for scholarships. The project has received support from the community, including Marcus Davis Breakfast Klub restaurant, which has provided food for the boys at every meeting over the past year, and the Houston Parks and Recreation Department, which provides meeting space.

We dont force this upon these kids, Glover said. We guide them and encourage them. They ultimately decide to become brothers. Theres a lot of power in that.

Glover demands the boys commit to meetings; two unexcused absenses will get them dropped from the program. This school year, the program recieved 280 applications and selected 55 boys with 15 volunteer mentors, black men working in various professions.

Curtis Bell, a culinary arts instructor at Westside High School with his own meal-prep business, has been a mentor in the program since 2016.

At the beginning of the year, the boys are pretty reserved, and some are really closed off, Bell said. But when the boys see you care, they start to really express themselves.

At Hobby Center, Glover watches the boys onstage performance like a proud parent. He has become a father figure, a mentor and friend.

Many of the high school seniors onstage announce where they will be attending college this fall. Since the program started five years ago, Glover has sent more than 100 black young men to college. The first one is set to graduate this fall from Eastern Michigan University.

A lot of our kids were not even thinking of college when they got accepted into the program. Now, they are headed to college, Glover said. Ive won awards for my work, but the work Ive done with these boys is the proudest thing Ive ever done.

joy.sewing@chron.com
Dressed head to toe in black, the greaser struts in with a cardboard boombox, pausing to run his hand across his slicked-back hair. As a song crackles to life from the rooms actual speakers, Dillon Elrod looks to rev up a captive audience for a fuel-injected performance.

In front of a red hot-rod prop emblazoned with white lightning bolts, he is joined by fellow greasers and pink ladies. The Down Syndrome Association of Houston Pantomime Troupe is debuting Greased Lightning from the film version of Grease. The unveiling takes place at the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center for The River, a special-needs theater camp that Theatre Under The Stars hosts each summer.

After the wrenches and oil rags are put away, the checkered flag is waved and Danny and Sandy hop in the car, applause erupts, affirming for troupe members that three months of hard work has paid off. And their leader sees another measure of success  a River attendee says hed like to join the troupe.

People want to take pictures with them, they want to shake their hands, which is in their life something very new, artistic director Julithe Garrett says. Most of the time  people keep a distance from them when they are in their regular lives.  Society doesnt know how to be social with them. So for me to see them, that they become the stars, as I call them, thats a wonderful feeling.

Down Syndrome Association of Houston Pantomime Troupe Information about classes and a schedule of performances: dsah.org or 713-682-7237 See More Collapse

The DSAH Pantomime Troupe, composed of all adults, has entertained Houston audiences since 2010. The group has performed at Jones Hall, Texas Medical Center, Goodwills corporate offices and the associations main fundraiser, Buddy Walk. Members share a love of music, creative movement and performing.

Like mime, pantomime uses gestures in a theatrical way, but it incorporates well-known music. Garrett says learning pantomime techniques to express emotions and actions benefits those with Down syndrome, who often have impaired speech. He touts the connections between formal versions of both disciplines and psychology.

Mime represents human nature, happy and sad, says Garrett, 50, who has performed since he was a teenager.

The visual and musical stimulation of pantomime fills a need, says Mary Monrreal, DSAH executive director who is also a behavior analyst. Not only does it provide an outlet for emotional expression, they need social skills, they need to get out in the community, she says.

And performing boosts confidence. Hes not afraid to be out in front of people, Cynthia Malbrough says of her once shy 27-year-old son, Robert, a troupe member for five years.

With Greased Lightning  whose addition during the 40th anniversary of the film is just a happy coincidence  the group has 11 stories in its repertory. One of the most popular with audiences and the troupe is its tribute to Michael Jackson. After Greased Lightning, the troupe performed the Jackson medley earlier this month at Abilities Expo Houston, featuring robotic movements, a full split by Zach Hatcher, 30, and a close approximation of the King of Pops moonwalk by 30-year-old Kristan Bearden (Sandy in the Grease number).

Its hard for many in the troupe to pick a favorite. Bobby Verdiguel, 31, an original member, prefers the Jackson routine; William Mason, 37, likes Greased Lightning, in which he plays Danny. But Kerry Wylie, 47, says, I like all the songs, whats upbeat.

Those who do well in DSAHs pantomime classes may join the troupe. It has grown so popular that plans are in the works to expand it, along with vocational and other offerings, to teens and children next year, according to Garrett and Nathalie Velky, programs coordinator. If Garrett gets his way, the troupe will tour and perform at the White House because members are ambassadors of this beautiful program.

Im very blessed to be their artistic director and friend. Then he corrects himself: Well, they are my family. I think they are like my brothers and sisters.

The feeling is mutual for Dale DJ Carlson, 26, who relishes learning from Garrett. Hes the best friend I have.

Before the Greased Lightning premiere, Garrett has applied gel to make greaser hair and helped with costumes. He is struck by how much the performers  who have an extra copy of chromosome 21 but also the ability to memorize nearly a dozen acts, make quick wardrobe changes and sometimes pantomime under a spotlight  are just like any theater troupe.

They are not like professional performers, they are professional.

A Special World relates programs and experiences by and for the disabled community in Greater Houston.

suzanne.garofalo@chron.com
Houston has been touted as one of the country's best buys for millennials: Star restaurateur David Chang recently christened Houston the most exciting food city in America; Houston's Museum District is one of the top in the country, with 11 museums open free to the public on a regular basis; best of all, housing is frequently cited as some of the most affordable in the country.

The real question is: affordable for whom?

With the advent of interactive data visualizations that map income distribution, Houston's income segregation is all too visible. The city can be divided in two parts. Houston's wealthiest populations form an arrow that starts just south of Addicks dam and runs through Piney Point, River Oaks, ends at the intersection of I-10 and U.S. 59 and juts just north and south.

The rest of the city that forms a rough horseshoe shape remains poor relative to the rest of Texas.

When the affordability of cities are compared, however, the cost of properties are averaged across the entire incorporated area. In a recent study, PropertyShark, a company that gathers and analyzes information for real estate professionals, shows Houston to be among the most affordable major cities in the United States.

But the reality is that how far your dollar gets you depends heavily on where in Houston you buy: inside the arrow or inside the horseshoe.

The sheer geographic size of Houston tends to obscure what happens on the ground, especially in comparisons with other cities. These maps get across the problem of comparing compact incorporated cities with cities that have effectively incorporated a whole region. Chicago, Manhattan, Santa Barbara, Washington, D.C., Boston and San Francisco all could fit within the boundaries of the incorporated area of Houston. The area that Houston encompasses is so large  an area that includes many so-called "rurban" areas that were founded by black communities but have been left out of many of the amenities that annexation promised  that extremes in housing costs wash out, leaving a false overall impression of affordability.

PropertyShark used 2016 U.S. Census data to determine the median home price and their proprietary data to determine median home size. At the request of Cite, a publication of the Rice Design Alliance, the company analyzed affordability in two different areas. Arrow Houston is approximately 107 square miles and Horseshoe Houston is around 220 square miles. The calculations leave out vast areas beyond the horseshoe, including Kingwood and Clear Lake, so Houston's total footprint is larger than this total. In the horseshoe area, Houston does seem rather affordable, with $200,000 buying you 3,125 square feet, on par with cities like El Paso or Cleveland. Inside the arrow? That $200,000 buys you just over 1,000 square feet, a price point more along the lines of Chicago or Miami.

This data set underscores what many already know about the reality of living in Houston. While Arrow Houston has high housing costs but quality amenities, the myriad (often minority) communities that make up Horseshoe Houston often face food deserts, air pollution, lack of government services, a history of redlining or displacement.

PropertyShark

The arrow and horseshoe are recurring figures in most maps of Houston's social, economic and environmental challenges. Among the most striking examples is the map of cancer risk that draws on EPA data. Though the wealthy communities along highways show elevated risk, the bulk of high-risk areas are in Houston's horseshoe.

A study by the Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services and the Union of Concerned Scientists found community members in Manchester (which is in the horseshoe) are more likely to get cancer than more affluent neighborhoods in Houston. Just this summer, community members and activists have mobilized to prevent Valero's request to amend a permit that would allow small amounts of hydrogen cyanide, a poisonous chemical compound, to be released at the Valero refinery adjacent to their neighborhood.

Current initiatives like Mayor Sylvester Turner's Complete Communities Initiative or the GO Neighborhood programs led by the Local Initiatives Support Coalitions seek to remedy some of these inequities. In addition, Harvey has accelerated the stresses and efforts to improve on access to affordable housing. Ongoing rebuilding efforts force answers to existential questions that Alexandra Miller and Andreanecia Morris asked in September 2017 about lessons from post-Katrina New Orleans on how, where and what to rebuild.

Irene Vazquez is a sophomore at Yale University. She is pursuing an Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and English double major and serves as creative director of WORD: Performance Poetry at Yale as well as a staff writer for Broad Recognition, Yale's premier feminist publication. This article originally appeared on OffCite, a publication of the Rice Design Alliance, the community engagement program of Rice Architecture.

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How do you use Head On? Apply directly to the forehead. How do you know? Because you've heard it a million times.

A decade ago, before viral videos were even a thing, Head On was making a mint using a marketing technique as old as advertising: repetition. More than six million tubes of the headache balm sold in less than a year (despite reports that it might not actually work), thanks to a 2006 ad campaign that simply repeated the phrase "Head On. Apply directly to the forehead," over and over.

The marketing term "effective frequency" refers to the idea that a consumer has to see or hear an ad a number of times before its message hits home. Essentially, the more you say something, the more it sticks in  and possibly on  people's heads. It doesn't even have to be true  and that's the problem. What advertisers call "effective frequency," psychologists call the "illusory truth effect"  the more you hear something, the easier it is for your brain to process, which makes it feel true, regardless of its basis in fact.

"Each time, it takes fewer resources to understand," says Lisa Fazio, a psychology professor at Vanderbilt University. "That ease of processing gives it the weight of a gut feeling."

That feeling of truth allows misconceptions to sneak into our knowledge base, where they masquerade as facts, Fazio and her colleagues write in a 2015 journal article. (One example they give is the belief that vitamin C can prevent colds, blowing the minds of those of us who've taken this as fact our entire lives, which is about how long we've heard it repeated.)

Even in the absence of endless repetition, we're more likely to believe what we hear than to question it objectively, thanks to yet another psychological principle: confirmation bias.

"In general, human beings, after hearing any claim, behave like naive scientists and tend to look for information that confirms the initial conjecture," says Ajay Kalra, a marketing professor at Rice's Jones Graduate School of Business. "In an interesting experiment, a group of consumers were told a leather jacket (Brand A) was very good. When they later examined several brands, they tended to spend more time looking at Brand A and evaluating it more highly than other brands."

The same principle applies to a coffee company's claim that its coffee is the "richest" in the world, Kalra says: It's hard to find contradictory evidence for a statement so vague. "Confirmation bias typically applies to situations where information is ambiguous and hard to refute," he explains. "The more often you hear a message, the more the confirmatory bias likely comes into play."

So it's no wonder that many of us fall for false claims on social media, especially when we see them tweeted and retweeted again and again. And if it feels like we're seeing more falsehoods repeated more frequently these days, we are  especially from America's top elected official, according to the Washington Post's Fact Checker team.

The social implications are huge. For example: the fear that immigration drives crime, which Trump recently stoked on Twitter.

Fact checkers quickly noted that German crime rates are at their lowest level since 1992, but Trump repeated the claim the following day.

What happens when a powerful person makes  and repeats  a false claim? In this case, the danger is a backlash against immigrants. But the cumulative effect of constantly repeated falsehoods is even more insidious: it undermines truth altogether, leaving public discourse unmoored from fact.

"The constant repetition of the lie is the way to make truth meaningless," Timothy Egan writes in a New York Times op-ed. "After a while, people come to 'believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true,' wrote Hannah Arendt, the German-born philosopher, in describing how truth lost its way in her native land."

So how can we fight back? Inoculating ourselves against the power of repetition is harder than you'd think. Common sense tells us that knowing the truth should be the antidote  but that's not enough, as Fazio and her colleagues demonstrate.

"The prevailing assumption in the literature has been that knowledge constrains this effect (i.e., repeating the statement 'The Atlantic Ocean is the largest ocean on Earth' will not make you believe it)," Fazio and her team wrote. "[However,] illusory truth effects occurred even when participants knew better."

Janet Moore, director of MBA communications program at Rice Business, agrees that inoculation might be impossible  but there are ways to lessen the influence of repeated claims, she says. One of the best: Don't rely on a single source for information. Read stories from multiple news outlets and listen to a variety of opinions. Commit to staying open-minded, and consult with friends and colleagues whose perspectives differ.

"Especially if you have trusted friends with different viewpoints, openly discuss the repeated story," she says. "Explore whether it's really worth repeating."

And Moore, who began her career as a lawyer, says it couldn't hurt to think like one. "Try to examine every assertion 'on the merits,' as is done in the legal profession," she suggests.

Fazio's research backs this up. Just taking a second to consider how you know something is true can stymie the effects of repetition, she's found. "It's a matter of getting people to consult something other than that gut feeling," she says. "It's a great thing to do on social media: Before you share something, take that second and pause." Otherwise, you risk becoming part of the echo chamber that keeps falsehoods circulating.

Of course, our tendency to assume that people are telling the truth is not a bad thing in and of itself, Fazio points out. "If you had to constantly verify and second-guess others, you wouldn't get very far in terms of relationships and social order," she says.

Until recently, American society ranked relatively high in measures of trust, Fazio says: We've tended to believe what we hear from institutions and the media. That trust seems to be eroding. But even a newfound skepticism of the government and the press won't change our basic cognitive processes.

"It's still going to be harder to notice errors in things we hear over and over," she says. That's a universal human trait. Which also means it's bipartisan  and that might at least level the playing field when it comes to fake news.

A recent study by Yale researchers finds that "[the] 'illusory truth effect' for fake news headlines occurs despite a low level of overall believability, and even when the stories are labeled as contested by fact checkers or are inconsistent with the reader's political ideology."

According to the study, even if a headline goes against your political leanings, you're more likely to find it believable after seeing it multiple times. If nothing else, this finding might offer some consolation when we fall for falsehoods: It happens to the best of us, against both our better judgment and our own interests.

"What the research shows is that this isn't something that just happens to stupid people," Fazio says. "It's part of how our brain functions. And it happens to everyone."

Jennifer Latson is a writer and editor at Rice Business and the author of "The Boy Who Loved Too Much," a nonfiction book about a rare disorder sometimes called the opposite of autism. This article originally appeared on Rice Business Wisdom.

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The release of Texas academic accountability ratings this week will mark a new chapter in the states constant tweaking of school performance evaluation  and a watershed moment in Houston ISD as it faces the possibility of major state intervention, depending on the results.

Texas Education Agency officials on Wednesday will roll out results from the states newest accountability system, which the agency redesigned to comply with legislation passed in 2017. Under the new system, districts for the first time will receive A-through-F letter grades that denote overall performance, while campuses will continue to be rated met standard or improvement required this year before moving to letter grades next year.

In the Houston area, the results will be most closely watched at HISD, where four chronically low-performing schools must meet standard to stave off forced campus closures or a state takeover of the districts locally elected school board. A top-ranking HISD official said in mid-July that the district is hopeful all four schools will meet standard, but her comments came before a late change to the accountability system that could drop more campuses into improvement required territory.

Compared to previous years, the redesigned accountability system now rewards districts and schools more if they show strong student progress and higher scores relative to other campuses with similar percentages of economically disadvantaged students. TEA Commissioner Mike Morath heralded the changes last week in a meeting with journalists.

Houston Chronicle

Its really fairer than any system that has ever happened in Texas in terms of its appraisal of campus performance, Morath said. We will recognize high student achievement, but we will also recognize the impact of highly-effective educators while maintaining a focus on students most at need.

The new system, however, has received widespread criticism from many educators, who call it unnecessarily complicated and over-reliant on standardized test scores.

To think that one letter grade somehow accurately reflects the complex work of hundreds of teachers and thousands of students on one campus, let alone an entire district, is really an insult to their hard work, Texas Association of School Administrators Executive Director Kevin Brown said in a statement. We expect more for our children and our schools.

Thirteen states use an A-through-F letter grade system, with nearly all others producing some form of ratings, according to the Education Commission of the States, a nonprofit that tracks education policy across the country.

Under Texas previous accountability system, districts and schools were rated meets standard or improvement required, with roughly 3 to 5 percent receiving the latter mark every year. To meet standard, a district or school had to hit preset targets tied to raw student achievement or student progress, and it had to hit targets for closing performance gaps and post-secondary readiness.

Under the new system, 70 percent of each district or school rating will be determined by the highest scaled score earned among three categories: raw student achievement, student progress and performance relative to percentages of economically disadvantaged students. The remaining 30 percent will be tied to success at closing achievement gaps among various demographic groups.

Morath said the new rating method produces results that are not strongly correlated with poverty, a common criticism of A-through-F systems. Schools labeled improvement required in 2017-18 served about 80 percent economically disadvantaged students, compared to 58 percent at campuses that met standard.

Most Houston-area districts will receive an A grade or a not rated label this year after getting waivers tied to the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey. In addition, a small percentage of local campuses that would have received an improvement required rating will receive a not rated label due to Harvey.

In HISD, 10 schools were in danger this year of triggering a new state law that sanctions districts for allowing any campuses to receive five consecutive improvement required ratings. Six of those 10 campuses received Harvey waivers, leaving four that must meet standard: Mading and Wesley elementary schools, Woodson PK-8 and Worthing High School.

In a meeting with the Houston Chronicles editorial board last week, HISD Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan demurred when asked about the prognosis of the four schools, replying, I have confidence in all 284 of my campuses. All four campuses showed growth on standardized tests in 2018, but state and local education leaders have not said whether it will be enough to earn meets standard ratings.

HISD leaders will be closely watching to see if a late addition to the accountability system will impact any of the four schools.

Under a rule added by the TEA in recent weeks, any school with a scaled score of 59 or lower, which correlates with an F rating, on three of the four measurements  raw student achievement, student progress, relative performance and closing gaps  automatically receives an improvement required rating. Prior to the new rule, a tiny fraction of schools were in line to meet standard despite scoring 59 or lower on three measures. Morath described the change as a check at the end of the system consistent with improving the accuracy of the rating system.

State Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, took issue with the new rule at a House of Representatives public education committee hearing last week.

It seems to me that in the rule, weve created another scenario that isnt in the bill, Bernal said.

One district, San Antonio ISD, already has announced the Texas Education Agency will close one of its elementary schools because the campus will be rated improvement required this year, its fifth consecutive mark.

jacob.carpenter@chron.com

twitter.com/chronjacob
Ronald Cortes

In a campaign stop in Temple this weekend, Sen. Ted Cruz joked about his family's past with a woman who described herself as a "refugee from" Chicago.

"My family came from Cuba, so we both have experience fleeing communist regimes," Cruz told the ex-Chicagoan, according to Texas Tribune reporter Patrick Svitek.
The continuing humanitarian crisis at the Southern border has Democrats in a frenzy, with some even accosting members of the Trump administration at their homes and in public. Most recently, celebrities who Ivanka Trump follows on social media have been flooding her Instagram feed with calls for her to act on family separation and demand the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Viewed in a historical vacuum, this brand of outrage is understandable. Trumps inhumane border enforcement policy  a travesty that separated thousands of children from their families, with no clear strategy for returning them in sight  strikes at the core of what the United States stands for.

EDITORIAL: Forget law and order at the border. Trump wants pain.

But viewing these episodes with a bit more perspective recently left me scratching my head. By the standards of Democrats, President Barack Obama had a pretty dismal record on immigration enforcement. He deported more people than every 20th century president combined, including non-felons and immigrants seeking refugee status. He detained families and unaccompanied children in dismal conditions for as long as it took to process their immigration cases.

Where was the indignation from Democrats over the treatment of immigrants during the Obama presidency?

FROM 2016: Obama's anti-immigrant legacy is growing and shameful

I ask this question not to draw a (false) moral equivalence. Trump has willfully taken a bad situation and made it worse. It is inexcusable. But the relative silence on this issue from the left during Obamas presidency highlights a broader pattern in American politics: Voters often fail to criticize their partys leaders when they forsake them, even on issues they claim to care about the most.

FROM 2015: I know an American internment camp when I see one

This failure of accountability is bipartisan. Soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan who President George W. Bush guaranteed the best care were met with 224-day VA claims-processing delays and abhorrent conditions at military medical facilities like Walter Reed. After promising fiscal responsibility and deficit reduction, Bush lowered taxes and expanded Medicare entitlements.

Similarly, the tax cut bill President Trump passed in 2017 added more than $1 trillion to the national debt, a proposal that should have incensed Republican deficit hawks. Instead, those hawks looked the other way and voted for the bill with few exceptions.

EDITORIAL: Hot-check GOP

When Obama controlled both houses of Congress, he loosened restrictions on gun-owners, including signing bills that allowed people to carry guns in their luggage on Amtrak and loaded firearms in national parks. Obama also drastically increased the prevalence of drone strikes abroad, including one in 2014 that killed 12 people in a wedding convoy in Yemen. Even worse, the administration denied the civilian casualties, despite the publication of Yemeni records that indicated the U.S. helped pay $1 million in compensation to the affected families. Democrats looked the other way.

The recent resurfacing of the 2014 photos of unaccompanied migrant children in caged enclosures, sleeping under Mylar blankets on mats crammed together on the floor, are a near-perfect demonstration of this sort of partisan motivated reasoning. When the pictures initially recirculated, the left, believing the images were taken during the Trump era, lit the internet on fire with justifiable anger. But these images were first published by the Arizona Republic during the Obama presidency, when they barely perturbed the national conversation.

The tendency of partisans to cut their leaders a break, even on the issues about which they say they care the most deeply, is arguably a greater barrier to progress than obstructionism from the opposition.

Politicians are especially attentive to the concerns of their core supporters. When a leaders base falls silent on an issue, it grants the leader permission to wither on that issue, and parties miss a crucial window in time  when they actually possess the reins of power  to make things better, from their point of view.

When the issue in question does not concern the opposition party  or, worse, if the opposition favors the other partys handling of the issue  the situation is even more grim. Unlike scenarios in which a president angers the opposition, many of the examples above (e.g., a severe increase in deportations and drone strikes), were actually in line with the oppositions preferences. In such situations, leaders enjoy a virtually frictionless political environment to make bad policy, devoid of accountability from the public.

Turning a blind eye to Obamas shortcomings has left Democrats who care about immigration reform out of luck, out of time and out of allies. Republican voters would be wise not to give Trump the leeway Democrats gave Obama if they intend to make progress on any of the issues they care about.

Wright, Ph.D., is a Lecturer in Politics and Public affairs at Princeton University and the author of  On Behalf of the President: Presidential Spouses and White House Communications Strategy Today . You can follow her on Twitter @DrLaurenAWright .
I am disgusted that they are allowed to get away with this type of discrimination, Baker said.

Air New Zealand has long stood by its prohibition of visible tattoos among customer service staff and cabin crew. In 2013, another job applicant was dismissed from an interview because she had a Maori body art on her arm.

The airline management insisted at the time customers would feel uncomfortable interacting with crew who had visible tattoos in the close confines of the aircraft cabin environment  regardless of whether the tattoos are considered to be cultural or otherwise.

In a 2016 interview with HRD Australia, employment lawyer Francessca Lee cautioned companies that would discriminate against people with tattoos to understand the tattoos cultural significance.

It is common practice for an employer to have a policy that regulates an employees dress code and appearance, but it is important that an employer does not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, or age, said Lee.
International evidence shows that refugees are generally very hardworking, loyal and can help create linkages to new domestic and international markets said Legrain.

In fact, one of the major risks businesses have to manage is retaining good staff and according to Legrain refugees generally stay for an extended period once theyre given a chance at employment.

Moreover, refugees also help create a diverse workforce which is shown to be beneficial to business productivity.

For example, research by McKinsey and Company shows that companies with a high ethnically diverse workforce are 35% more likely to have larger than average financial returns.

Pancha Narayanan, national president of Multicultural New Zealand who helped MC the breakfast added that New Zealand employers must put aside any preconceived misconceptions about refugees and migrants and look at the facts.
As Canada commemorated the 200th birthday of Sir John A. Macdonald on Jan. 11, CBC personality Shelagh Rogers shared her thoughts online:

Love the grand notion that Canada is, but the more I learn, the more I know I cant unreservedly celebrate #sirJAMs 200th. #reflect  Shelagh Rogers (@RogersShelagh) January 11, 2015

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In the spirit of educational awareness in ways not taught in school, here are some buried frightening facts about the first PM, #SirJAM.

From historian Stanley Ryerson we learn of the political sympathies towards the southern Confederacy of John A. Macdonald. Macdonald was the hired advocate for an organization of vigilantes committed to peace through support for the South. One of these Copperhead conspirators, a man named Headley [...], set fire to a dozen large hotels in November of 1864, hoping to create panic in the North and divert military efforts. In his memoirs, Headley writes:

At the suggestion of Col. Thompson (the chief Confederate Commissioner) it was deemed advisable that we retain Hon. John Macdonald as counsel in the event of a requisition, as he is friendly to our cause and was regarded as a very eminent lawyer. One evening...we rode in a sleigh to the residence of Mr. Macdonald in the suburbs of Toronto. He greeted us cordially and we discussed our case fully until a late hour. The arrangement was made and a retainer fee was paid the following day. But it happened that the time never arrived when his services were required.

(cited in Ryerson, 1983: 334-35).

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Macdonald was not shy about his wish for the pro-slavery side to win the Civil War. When speaking at a banquet, Macdonald made a point of lauding the gallant defence that is being made by the Southern Republic (Ryerson, 1983: 335).

2. John A. Macdonald may have named Canada a confederation in deference to the Southern Confederates with whom he sympathized.

Stanley Ryerson notes that even the unusual designation of the new Canadian state as a Confederation may be suggestive of sympathy with the southern states in the US Civil War. The term itself, he maintains, is a misnomer. The confederacy refers a union of states which delegate authority to a central government of limited sovereignty; while a federal government indicates a state that is fully sovereign, and the constituent bodies have limited authority. Ryerson cites W.P.M. Kennedys The Constitution of Canada, where it is suggested that in the debates in 1865 leading to Canadas confederation, the terms federation and confederation were deliberately used without clear definition. The aim of the advocates was to confuse and camouflage the contentious issue, and in so doing, ensure consent (Ryerson, 1983: 443).

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Regarding the invention of Confederation as a term applied to the Canadian federal dominion state, Ryerson muses: [W]as it derived from a politicians instinct to steal something from the Opposition or from the well-known Tory sympathy with the Southern Confederacy? (1983: 371).

The founding party of the Canadian state was a strong ally of the most racist section of the global elite of the day. (Mayers, 2003).

3. John A. Macdonald was a sinophobe, according to Timothy J. Stanleys research.

In 1885, PM Macdonald told the House of Commons that, if the Chinese were not excluded from Canada, the Aryan character of the future of British America should be destroyed. This was the precise moment in the histories of Canada and the British dominions when Macdonald personally introduced race as a defining legal principle of the state.

Macdonald justified taking the vote away from anyone of Mongolian or Chinese race in the Electoral Franchise Act  he called it my greatest achievement.

4. John A. Macdonald was way more racist than his contemporaries. For John A. Macdonald, Canada was to be the country that restored a pure Aryan race to its past glory. Lest it be thought that Macdonald was merely expressing the prejudices of the age, it should be noted that his were among the most extreme views of his era. According to Timothy J. Stanleys research, he was the only politician in the parliamentary debates to refer to Canada as Aryan and to justify legalized racism on the basis not of alleged cultural practices but on the grounds that Chinese and Aryans were separate species.

5. John A. Macdonalds policies of forced starvation helped clear First Nations from the prairies in order to build the railway, according to James Daschuk of University of Regina. An excerpt from his book, Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation and the Loss of Aboriginal Life:

For years, government officials withheld food from aboriginal people until they moved to their appointed reserves, forcing them to trade freedom for rations. Once on reserves, food placed in ration houses was withheld for so long that much of it rotted while the people it was intended to feed fell into a decades-long cycle of malnutrition, suppressed immunity and sickness from tuberculosis and other diseases. Thousands died.
A hearing has been delayed on a lawsuit brought by the Tennessee Democratic Party seeking to keep Republican Robin Smith off the ballot in House District 26.

Ms. Smith was the only candidate after longtime Rep. Gerald McCormick abruptly announced he was leaving his post to move to Nashville.

Chancellor Jeff Atherton on Monday afternoon said he could not take the case until a prior filing in Nashville is "resolved" by the Tennessee Court of Appeals. The case was first filed in Davidson County, but the judge ruled she did not have jurisdiction.

Chancellor Atherton said he can hear the matter on Thursday at 1 p.m. if an order is received by then from the Court of Appeals closing out the first case.
As the Arctic melts, maritime security gets real

by Tamara Dietrich

August 13,2018 | Source: Daily Press

Hampton Roads residents know full well that the Atlantic is gnawing ever more ferociously at the shore, surging into the streets whenever it gets riled up, and a looming threat, experts say, throughout this century and for more centuries to come.



What residents may not know is that, while half of the rise in global sea level is attributed to the simple physics that warming waters expand, the other half is caused by melting polar ice sheets, especially in the Arctic.



The Arctic is heating up much faster than the rest of the planet, its vast expanse of sea and land ice shrinking. In fact, its September sea ice has shrunk by half in just 40 years of record-keeping, said Donglai Gong, a physical oceanographer at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point.



Whats striking is that, regardless of which month youre looking at, the ice cover is spiraling in towards zero, Gong said. And were not too far from zero, actually.



When he did the math, extending the last 20-year trend of ice melt into the future, he deduced that the Arctic Ocean could lose its summer sea ice as early as 2040.



Thats just about 20 years, Gong said. So, sometime in our lifetime, the Arctic will be summertime ice-free. How are we going to operate in this new ocean? Humans have never experienced an Arctic Ocean like that.



While many onlookers are salivating at the notion of a new, navigable ocean and the potential for shipping lane shortcuts, oil and gas extraction, fishing, tourism and scientific research, others worry about Arctic nations and others jockeying for territory, maritime conflicts and despoiling one of the last pristine environments on the planet.



Gong worries about those issues and more, including how a shift in Arctic weather patterns could be linked to more ferocious hurricanes in middle latitudes, including the mid-Atlantic.



Such concerns are shared by others in the sciences, the military and political arenas.



As climate change policy expert Sherri Goodman, a senior adviser at the Center for Climate & Security and the first Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security, said: What happens in the Arctic doesnt stay in the Arctic.



Gong and Goodman were among a slate of panelists at a forum last month on Preparing for a Climate Changed Future at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.



The forum was hosted by the climate and security center and by the colleges Virginia Coastal Policy Center and its Whole of Government Center of Excellence.



One particular focus: How a melting Arctic affects other parts of the world, from shifting weather patterns to maritime security.



With so little known about that remote and rugged region, scientists say its hard to predict much, weather-wise, with any accuracy  not just over decades, but on much shorter time-scales.



We have all experienced winters that seem to be much colder than normal, or warmer than normal, said Gong. We have storms moving through our area that seem to be more intense than before. So, what is the connection to that in relation to the Arctic?



Gong believes he may have found one unsettling short-term relationship between the weather in the Arctic and in lower latitudes: hurricanes.



At the forum, he pulled up radar images of weather patterns in the Arctic and the U.S. during three severe storms that affected Hampton Roads  hurricanes Isabel and Maria and Superstorm Sandy.



The images showed that, as the three hurricanes raged in the mid-Atlantic, there was a strikingly similar general anomalous warming in the central and western Arctic.



Whats remarkable to me as I plot this up is the general pattern holds, said Gong. I dont know if its a coincidence or whether theres a dynamical connection, and thats something to look further into.



Climates scientists have long warned that warming global temperatures can cause hurricanes to grow more severe.



As environmental impacts on the Arctic region become starker, so do the security implications.



The potential for an open Arctic Ocean already has spurred Russia and China to beef up their polar fleets.



According to the Navy Times, Russia, which has the worlds longest Arctic coastline, already has 46 icebreakers, with 15 more in the pipeline. China, which doesnt have a territorial claim in the Arctic but does have serious ambitions there, has three breakers and a fourth on the way.



Compared to those countries, the U.S. is a laggard.



The U.S. Coast Guard fleet includes just one heavy icebreaker. A second heavy was disabled by a fire in 2010 and now is being harvested for parts to keep the first one afloat. Both vessels are more than 40 years old  well past their 30-year service life. The Coast Guard also has a medium icebreaker and a light ice-breaking research vessel.



In 2013, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security recommended adding six new icebreakers to the fleet to meet mission demands, and earlier this year Congress earmarked $750 million for a new heavy breaker that would be ready for service in 2023.



But that vessel is currently on hold: Homeland Security is reallocating the money to put toward the proposed southern border wall.



Its a decision that troubles Heather Conley, senior vice president for Europe, Eurasia and the Arctic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a D.C.-based think-tank. She spoke in June at a congressional subcommittee hearing on maritime transportation.



What concerns me the most, Conley said then, is that the United States is placing one very big bet that the Arctic will remain of limited strategic value, and that our current, mostly seasonal approach will be sufficient.



Russia and China view the Arctic over the next half-century; we view it in the next budget cycle.



At the Williamsburg forum, John Conger, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment and now director of The Center for Climate & Security, did offer one sign of progress.



The U.S. 2nd Fleet, which was merged with U.S. Fleet Forces in 2011, is now being reestablished at Norfolk Naval Base to counter a more active Russian presence in the Atlantic.



And a huge new mission has been given to Norfolk to deal with the Arctic, Conger said. So its not just about flooding. The Navy and, in particular, Norfolk has this mission now assigned to them for the 2nd Fleet to have jurisdiction and to have oversight over the Navys operations in the Arctic. And thats a big deal.



And its about time, said Goodman.



The U.S. really needs to step up its game in the Arctic, Goodman said. Secretary of Defense (James) Mattis said that not too long ago, so its not a new refrain.



In 1996, an intergovernmental council of Arctic nations was established consisting of the eight Arctic nations  the U.S., Russia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Denmark and Iceland  to promote cooperation in the region. Permanent members and observer states, such as China, have been added since.



Last year, said Goodman, the Arctic Council agreed on a 16-year moratorium on fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean to enable research and observation.



Cooperation continues to be the norm, Goodman said, and we should work as hard as we can to preserve it. But we must prepare for a changing future, because, with the sea ice changing so rapidly and opportunities emerging, there will be competition both for resources and potentially for presence in the region in the future. So we need to increase our presence. We need a clear-eyed view with Russia.



Russia has long had industrial-size cities across the Arctic, where energy and mineral resources provide about 20 percent of its gross domestic product, she said.



The country has also changed its command and control and their ability to do very large-scale snap exercises, including in the Arctic, said panelist and retired Rear Adm. David Titley.



Moving tens of thousands of uniformed Russian military personnel on very, very short notice, Titley said. This makes our friends in Scandinavian and Nordic countries really quite nervous.



So, of course, if we get nervous, we increase our readiness and Russians increase their readiness and you dont have to go back through history too far to understand this is not a long-term recipe for success.



In January, China unveiled its very first Arctic strategy, in which it describes itself as a near-Arctic nation with plans to establish a sort of Polar Silk Road, called the Belt and Road Initiative, to link China and Europe through the Arctic Ocean.



So China is a nation to watch and observe, said Goodman.



As for the U.S., she said, the Coast Guard has long had a robust Arctic strategy, while the Navy  which has been criticized for showing little interest in the region aside from deploying submarines  is revisiting its Arctic strategy. The Air Force is finally developing one.



Titley urged action, but with a firm grip on reality.



The operating conditions in the Arctic are still very, very hard and, frankly, unlike any other maritime operating environment that our service forces deal with, Titley said. Theres virtually no infrastructure up in the Arctic. Theres a whole lot of nothing up there still.



You have more open water. Open water plus high winds means big waves. Big waves and temperatures below freezing means a lot of ice buildup. So you get also a lot more erosion on the shore. Tremendous amount of fog and restricted visibility in the summertime. So this is still a very, very, very hard place to work.



U.S. Navy surface ships are not ice-strengthened. I talked to some of the commanding officers weve sent up there in joint exercises with the Canadians and the Danes and, frankly, its a white-knuckle exercise. They cant bash up their billion-dollar ship, but they still need to do their mission.



And, he said, while China, Russia and other Arctic nations are working in a very deliberate fashion to realize their overall Arctic strategies, the U.S. Department of Defense is still bogged down in exquisite bureaucracy, studies and road maps.



But what are we doing? Titley said. And I would argue were not doing very much.  I think we are at increasing strategic risk of getting caught flat-footed.

Theme(s): Others.
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Former Convergex Global Markets CEO Pleads Guilty in New Jersey for Role in Securities and Wire Fraud Scheme

Washington, DC - The former Chief Executive Officer of ConvergEx Global Markets Limited (CGM Limited) pleaded guilty Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Newark, New Jersey for his role in a scheme to commit securities and wire fraud from 2006 through 2011.

Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski for the Justice Departments Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito of the District of New Jersey, Assistant Director in Charge Nancy McNamara of the FBIs Washington Field Office, and Inspector in Charge Peter R. Rendina of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) made the announcement.

Anthony Blumberg, 53, of Short Hills, New Jersey, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Jose L. Linares of the District of New Jersey, in Newark, to one count of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. Sentencing has been scheduled for Dec. 5 before Chief Judge Linares.

According to court documents, CGM Limited was a wholly owned subsidiary of ConvergEx Group LLC (ConvergEx Group). As part of his plea today, Blumberg admitted that clients placed orders to buy or sell securities with G-Trade Services LLC and ConvergEx Limited, subsidiaries of ConvergEx Group that offered global trading services to clients, which in turn routed orders to CGM Limited. Blumberg also admitted that traders at CGM Limited executed the orders and sometimes added a spread, (a mark-down on the sale of a security or a mark-up on the purchase of a security) to the prices they had obtained for non-fiduciary clients. To hide the fact that spread had been taken, on several occasions from 2007 to 2011, Blumberg and traders acting under his direction, acting in response to requests by clients for information that could reveal the existence of spread, sent false reports (known as time and sales reports) to these clients. The false time and sales reports contained fabricated details regarding the individual transactions, or fills, executed during the course of a day to complete a clients orders, including false information concerning the number of shares involved in a fill, the time at which the fill was executed, and the price at which shares were either purchased or sold.

Blumberg also admitted that he and his co-conspirators agreed to violate a clients instructions to provide real-time transactional data through an immediate data feed with details of trades that CGM Limited executed for the client by providing batch fills that hid the actual information the client sought.

Blumberg is the fourth individual to plead guilty as a result of the investigation into ConvergEx Group and CGM Limiteds practices. On Dec. 18, 2013, CGM Limited pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud before Judge Linares. On the same day, ConvergEx Group entered into a deferred prosecution agreement. Collectively, the two ConvergEx entities paid $43.8 million in criminal penalties and restitution.

The case is being investigated by the FBIs Washington Field Office and the Washington, D.C. and New York offices of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Gary A. Winters and Assistant Chief Justin D. Weitz of the Criminal Divisions Fraud Section and by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Murphy, Chief of the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of New Jersey Economic Crimes Unit in Newark. The Department appreciates the substantial assistance of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Imperial Valley News Center

Justice Department Announces $3.4 Billion in Grants to Aid Crime Victims Nationwide

Washington, DC - The Department of Justice today announced awards totaling more than $3.4 billion to fund thousands of local victim assistance programs across the country and to help compensate victims in every state for crime-related losses. Distributed through two grant programs administered by the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC), a component of the Departments Office of Justice Programs, the awards surpass every other single-year grant amount in the programs 34-year history.

The grants are supported by the Crime Victims Fund, a repository of federal criminal fines, fees, and special assessments. The fund includes zero tax dollars.

"Ive been in or around law enforcement for nearly 40 years and some of the strongest and most inspiring people I have met have been survivors of crime," said Attorney General Sessions. "We must ensure that this Department is always responsive to their needs and working for them. Today the Department continues its support by offering billions of dollars in services for crime victims. Through this grant funding from the Crime Victims Fund, we are helping victims walk the long and difficult road to recovery."

Most of the funds  more than $3.3 billion  are being awarded to states under the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) Victim Assistance Formula Grant Program and will support local government and community-based victim services. In 2017, VOCA grants funded more than 6,700 local organizations across the country. Over the last two years, VOCA-funded programs have reached more than 5.2 million victims, providing services ranging from emergency shelter and transportation to crisis counseling, long-term therapy, and civil legal assistance.

Victim compensation programs, operating in all 50 states, two territories, and the District of Columbia, are receiving almost $129 million to reimburse victims and survivors for medical fees, lost income, dependent care, funeral expenses, and other costs. This compensation is often a lifeline to victims who face enormous financial setbacks on top of the emotional strife they experience.

Americans suffer from millions of violent acts every year, and only a fraction of victims get the help they so desperately need and deserve, said OVC Director Darlene Hutchinson. This historically large funding will vastly expand the network of services available, allowing state and local officials to determine where resources are needed so that survivors in every corner of our country have a place they can turn to for support.

The Office of Justice Programs provides federal leadership in developing the nations capacity to prevent and control crime, administer justice and assist victims. OJP has six bureaus and offices: the Bureau of Justice Assistance; the Bureau of Justice Statistics; the National Institute of Justice; the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; the Office for Victims of Crime; and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART).
Imperial Valley News Center

Oregon Domestic Terrorism Suspect in Custody After 12 Years on the Run

Portland, Oregon - Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, 50, of Seattle, Washington, an accused domestic terrorist and 12-year fugitive, has been apprehended and returned to the United States to face federal criminal charges in Oregon, California and Washington State.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, Assistant Director Michael McGarrity of the FBIs Counterterrorism Division, U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams for the District of Oregon, and Special Agent in Charge Renn Cannon of the FBI in Oregon made the announcement.



Whatever the motivation, terrorism is simply unacceptable, said Assistant Attorney General Demers. Domestic terrorism is no exception. Because of the close cooperation between our international and intergovernmental partners, Dibee will now face the consequences for his crimes. This should send a clear message to all other criminals on the run: no matter how long it takes, we will find you and we will bring you to justice.



We will always continue in our mission to locate and bring to justice those who threaten our national security or seek to harm the American people, said FBI Assistant Director McGarrity. We thank all of the agents, analysts, and the U.S. Attorneys Office, who have worked tirelessly on this case over the years.



More than two decades ago, a loosely affiliated group of environmental extremists set out to express their views using force, violence, sabotage, mass destruction, intimidation, and coercion, said U.S. Attorney Williams. Thankfully no innocent lives were taken by these senseless acts. Today we recognize the FBIs unwavering pursuit of justice in returning longstanding fugitive Joseph Dibee. Dibee will now, as many of his co-conspirators have before, face the consequences of his actions. Using violent means to express ones views will never be tolerated nor forgotten. We will bring every last person responsible for these crimes to justice.



Every act of violence comes with a choicea choice to do harm, said FBI Special Agent in Charge Cannon. A choice to do what may be irreparable damage to a family, a business, or a researchers life work. A choice to risk the lives of the firefighters who will respond to an incident. Most of the defendants in the FBI's long-running Operation BACKFIRE investigation have answered for those decisions they made with significant prison sentences and millions of dollars in fines. Mr. Dibee, who traveled the world to avoid capture, will now, finally, have to answer to the allegations of violence he faces.



Dibee, an American citizen, is charged in the District of Oregon with one count of conspiracy to commit arson, one count of conspiracy to commit arson and destruction of an energy facility, and one count of arson. He also faces one count each of conspiracy to commit arson, possession of an unregistered firearm, and possession of a destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence in the Western District of Washington and one count each of conspiracy to commit arson, arson of a government building, and possession of a destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence in the Eastern District of California.



Dibee will make an initial appearance in federal court today at 1:30 p.m. before a federal magistrate judge in the District of Oregon. The government will seek his continued detention.



According to court documents, federal authorities learned Dibee was traveling through Central America on his way to Russia with a planned stop in Cuba. With the assistance of the Cuban authorities, particularly the Ministries of the Interior and Exterior, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security including the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations and the U.S. Embassy in Havana, the FBI arranged for Cuban authorities to detain Dibee before he boarded a plane bound for Russia, and return him to the United States. Dibee fled the United States in December 2005.



In 2006, a federal grand jury in Oregon indicted Dibee and 12 coconspirators as part of Operation BACKFIRE, a long-running FBI domestic terrorism investigation. The conspirators, known as The Family, have been linked to more than 40 criminal acts ranging from vandalism to arson between 1995 and 2001, causing more than $45 million in damages.



One fugitive remains at large from Operation BACKFIRE. Josephine Sunshine Overaker, an American citizen believed to be either 43 or 46 years old, fled to Europe in late 2001. Overaker faces 19 felony charges including conspiracy to commit arson, conspiracy to commit arson and destruction of an energy facility, attempted arson, and arson in the District of Oregon, the Western District of Washington, and the District of Colorado. Overaker speaks fluent Spanish and may seek employment as a firefighter, midwife, sheep tender, or masseuse. The FBI continues to offer a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to her arrest.



An indictment is only an accusation of a crime and defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.



This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Geoffrey Barrow of the District of Oregon, Andrew Friedman and Thomas Woods of the Western District of Washington and Heiko Coppola of the Eastern District of California, along with Trial Attorney David Cora of the National Security Divisions Counterterrorism Section.
Imperial Valley News Center

Los Angeles Strike Force Targets Drug Trafficking Organizations that Allegedly Smuggled Sinaloa Cartel Narcotics

Los Angeles, California - Capping a three-year investigation by the Los Angeles Strike Force, authorities arrested 20 defendants named in a series of indictments that allege the smuggling of large quantities of narcotics from Mexico on behalf of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Those arrested this morning are among 57 defendants named in three indictments that were unsealed.. Two of the defendants were already in state custody and are being turned over to federal authorities. The remaining 35 defendants are currently fugitives, with most of those believed to be in Mexico at this time.

The investigation  dubbed Operation Narconetas  targeted three drug trafficking organizations that allegedly transported bulk quantities of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin from Mexico to the Los Angeles metropolitan area and other locations across the United States. The investigation revealed that Sinaloa Cartel operatives moved narcotics to the northern reaches of Mexico, and the defendants charged in the indictments transported the drugs into the United States, often using vehicles with hidden compartments. One of the indictments alleges that money generated from illegal drug sales in the United States transported in bulk quantities from the United States into Mexico.

As a result of Operation Narconetas, authorities seized approximately 850 pounds of methamphetamine, nearly one ton of cocaine, 93 pounds of heroin, almost 50 pounds of marijuana, and $1.42 million in United States currency.

The Los Angeles Strike Force investigation was led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in partnership with the Drug Enforcement Administration. Agencies participating in Operation Narconetas include the Los Angeles Police Department; IRS Criminal Investigation; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations; the United States Marshals Service; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the California Highway Patrol; the Torrance Police Department; the Glendale Police Department; the Pomona Police Department; the Fullerton Police Department; and the Azusa Police Department.

These Strike Force members uncovered several sophisticated international drug trafficking organizations that regularly transported narcotics across the U.S.-Mexico border and at times stored drugs in stash houses in cities across the Southland. The narcotics then were distributed throughout the United States.

The Los Angeles Strike Force was formed in 2014 to target Mexican drug cartels that utilize the Los Angeles metropolitan region as a primary hub for the distribution of narcotics across the United States. The goals of the Strike Force are to target high-level narcotics traffickers, disrupt and dismantle the cartels narcotics trafficking and related money laundering activities, and arrest and prosecute the cartels leaders and operatives.

More than simply seizing large quantities of drugs and money, this investigation was able to identify the top-level, Mexican-based traffickers who directed the transactions, and who thought they were using secure communication devices to commit their crimes, said First Assistant United States Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison. Our ability to obtain those communications continues to be an important part of our ability to solve these crimes. The Los Angeles Strike Force has become a leader in using innovative investigative techniques to target Mexico-based drug trafficking organizations.

This investigation was responsible for removing over 1,300 kilograms of narcotics from the streets of Los Angeles and other cities, and no doubt prevented violence in our communities, said Paul Delacourt, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI in Los Angeles. We expect this case will have a significant impact on the transportation abilities of these organizations.

The Greater Los Angeles Area is utilized by criminal organizations as a hub for the transportation and distribution of illicit drugs throughout the United States, said DEA Associate Special Agent in Charge Bill Bodner. Todays joint operation sends a clear message that law enforcement is committed to stemming the flow of narcotics into our country and protecting Americans from the violence that accompanies drug trafficking.

The three drug trafficking indictments each allege conspiracies to distribute controlled substances. The indictments also contain asset forfeiture allegations in which the government is seeking to forfeit any property used to commit or facilitate the drug trafficking offenses. One of the indictments alleges a conspiracy to launder money and bulk cash smuggling.

Todays arrest of multiple defendants for their alleged role in smuggling funds from illegal drug transactions in and out of the United States is a victory for the American public and a defeat to drug traffickers everywhere. The special agents of IRS Criminal Investigation continue in their mission to disrupt the flow of ill-gotten gains that is the life-blood for these criminals, said Special Agent in Charge R. Damon Rowe, Los Angeles Field Office, IRS Criminal Investigation. We will continue to be relentless in our mission to dismantle these drug trafficking organizations and bring the criminals who run them to justice.

The defendants arrested in the Central District of California are being arraigned, in United States District Court in Los Angeles.

An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.

If they are convicted in this case, most of the defendants would be subject to mandatory minimum sentences of 10 years in federal prison and potential sentences of life without parole.
California Man Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISIS

Sacramento, California - Everitt Aaron Jameson, 27, of Modesto, California, was sentenced Monday to 15 years in prison, and a life term of supervised release, for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott for the Eastern District of California, and Special Agent in Charge Sean Ragan of the FBIs Sacramento Field Office made the announcement. The sentence was issued by U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. ONeill.

There is no place in the United States for terrorists and terrorist sympathizers who threaten innocent people, and the National Security Division will relentlessly seek to identify them and bring them to justice, said Assistant Attorney General Demers. Jameson put his fellow Americans at risk by supporting ISIS and planning an attack on behalf of the terrorist organization. This is unacceptable, and I am grateful for the hardworking agents and prosecutors who are responsible for this successful result.

Protecting our communities from terrorist threats is the Department of Justices highest priority, said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert. With the assistance of our investigative partners, we will continue to work to prevent such attacks and to vigorously prosecute those who seek to provide material support to terrorist organizations. We are grateful for the hard work of the FBI and the DOJs National Security Counterterrorism Division for their teamwork in bringing this case to a just conclusion.

This case demonstrates the FBIs commitment to identifying and disrupting plots to harm the American public. With assistance from our state and local partners, we completed a thorough investigation while ensuring that Jameson would not be able to carry out his plans, said Special Agent in Charge Ragan. The public also plays an active role in ensuring the safety of our communities. We encourage members of the public to always say something if they see or hear anything that raises concerns about a possible attack.

Jameson pleaded guilty on June 4. According to the plea agreement, between September 2017 and Dec. 20, 2017, Jameson voiced support for ISIS knowing that the organization was engaging in terrorist activity and terrorism. Among other things, he had several online interactions with a confidential source, and during those interactions, he stated that he was committed wholeheartedly to the cause. Jameson also expressed support online for the Oct. 31, 2017, terrorist attack in New York City, as well as other terrorist attacks.

In subsequent communications with an undercover agent, Jameson stated that he was ready to do whatever they needed done here and noted that his time in the military had trained him for combat and war. According to court documents, Jameson joined the Marine Corps and received basic training, including earning a sharpshooter rifle qualification, but was ultimately discharged for failing to disclose his asthma history.

Later, Jameson met with another undercover agent whom he believed to be associated with, and working for, the senior leadership of ISIS, and offered to carry out violent acts and provide financial support for the terrorist organization.

According to court documents, on Dec. 16, 2017, Jameson discussed what he could offer to the cause. Among other things, Jameson stated that he was well versed in the Anarchist Cookbook, and explained his desire to use explosives in an attack. He also noted that he could get PVC pipe, nails and powder for explosive devices, and asked for remote timing devices from that person. Jameson identified Pier 39 as a target location of an attack, noting that it was crowded and explosives could be used to funnel people into an area so that he could inflict casualties by shooting people trying to escape. Jameson also offered to provide money to the cause.

This case was the product of an investigation by the FBI. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Dawrence W. Rice Jr. and Christopher D. Baker of the Eastern District of California prosecuted the case with Trial Attorney Brenda Sue Thornton of the National Security Divisions Counterterrorism Section.
Modesto Man Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISIS

Fresno, California - U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. ONeill sentenced Everitt Aaron Jameson, 27, of Modesto, today to 15 years in prison for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers and U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott made the announcement.

There is no place in the United States for terrorists and terrorist sympathizers who threaten innocent people, and the National Security Division will relentlessly seek to identify them and bring them to justice, said Assistant Attorney General Demers. Jameson put his fellow Americans at risk by supporting ISIS and planning an attack on behalf of the terrorist organization. This is unacceptable, and I am grateful for the hardworking agents and prosecutors who are responsible for this successful result.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert stated: Protecting our communities from terrorist threats is the Department of Justices highest priority. With the assistance of our investigative partners, we will continue to work to prevent such attacks and to vigorously prosecute those who seek to provide material support to terrorist organizations. We are grateful for the hard work of the FBI and the DOJs National Security Counterterrorism Division for their teamwork in bringing this case to a just conclusion.

This case demonstrates the FBIs commitment to identifying and disrupting plots to harm the American public. With assistance from our state and local partners, we completed a thorough investigation while ensuring that Jameson would not be able to carry out his plans, said Special Agent in Charge Ragan, The public also plays an active role in ensuring the safety of our communities. We encourage members of the public to always say something if they see or hear anything that raises concerns about a possible attack.

Jameson pleaded guilty on June 4, 2018. According to the plea agreement, between September 2017 and December 20, 2017, Jameson voiced support for ISIS knowing that the organization was engaging in terrorist activity and terrorism. Among other things, he had several online interactions with a confidential source, and during those interactions, he stated that he was committed wholeheartedly to the cause. Jameson also expressed support online for the October 31, 2017, terrorist attack in New York City, as well as other terrorist attacks. In subsequent communications with an undercover agent, Jameson stated that he was ready to do whatever they needed done here and noted that his time in the military had trained him for combat and war. According to court documents, Jameson joined the Marine Corps and received basic training, including earning a sharpshooter rifle qualification, but was ultimately discharged for failing to disclose his asthma history.

Later, Jameson met with another undercover agent whom he believed to be associated with, and working for, the senior leadership of ISIS and offered to carry out violent acts and provide financial support for the terrorist organization.

According to court documents, on December 16, 2017, Jameson discussed what he could offer to the cause. Among other things, Jameson stated that he was well versed in the Anarchist Cookbook, and explained his desire to use explosives in an attack. He also noted that he could get PVC pipe, nails, and powder for explosive devices, and he asked for remote timing devices from that person. Jameson identified Pier 39 as a target location of an attack, noting that it was crowded and that explosives could be used to funnel people into an area so that he could inflict casualties by shooting people trying to escape. Jameson also offered to provide money to the cause.

This case was the product of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Dawrence W. Rice Jr. and Christopher D. Baker prosecuted the case with Trial Attorney Brenda Sue Thornton of the National Security Divisions Counterterrorism Section.
Pacifica Resident Sentenced To Two Years In Prison For Wire Fraud Scheme

San Francisco, California - Bitty Yu was sentenced to 24 months in prison for wire fraud, announced United States Attorney Alex G. Tse and Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge John F. Bennett. The sentence was handed down today by the Honorable Richard Seeborg, United States District Judge.

Yu, 69, of Pacifica, California, pleaded guilty to the wire fraud charge on March 20, 2018. According to her plea agreement, from about January 2013 through April 2017, Yu, along with others, engaged in a scheme to defraud an elderly married couple living in San Mateo of millions of dollars. Specifically, in 2013, Yu convinced the couple that she and others were involved in a real estate project and that the couples funds would be used to purchase10 acres of land in London, England, for the project. Yu and others claimed a deal was being brokered that would result in a $195 million return in commissions when the project was completed. Yu acknowledged that she and others made false statements to the couple on various occasions, ultimately lulling the couple into wiring funds on multiple occasions.

In total, the couple invested more than $4,000,000 in the bogus real estate project. Yu received over $1,000,000 for her role in the scheme. Yu admitted that she used the money she received from the couple for personal expenses including mortgage payments, personal credit account payments, automobile purchases, and federal and state income tax payments.

Yu was charged by information on January 31, 2018, with a single count of wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C.  1343. Pursuant to her plea agreement, she pleaded guilty to the charge.

In addition to the prison term, Judge Seeborg also sentenced the defendant to a three-year period of supervised release and ordered her to pay $1,000,000 in restitution. Yu will begin serving her sentence on October 9, 2018.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Chinhayi Cadet is prosecuting the case with the assistance of Bridget Kilkenny. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the FBI.
Salinas Resident Sentenced To Seven Years In Prison For Robbing And Conspiring To Rob Bank

San Francisco, California - Nathan James Garcia, aka Bones, was sentenced to 84 months in prison Wednesday for robbing and conspiring to rob a bank in Salinas, California, announced United States Attorney Alex G. Tse and Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge John F. Bennett. The sentence was handed down by the Honorable Lucy H. Koh, United States District Judge.

Garcia pleaded guilty to the charges on January 24, 2018. According to the plea agreement, Garcia, 27, of Salinas, admitted that in May of 2012, he conspired with others to rob a bank in Salinas. In the days leading up to the robbery, Garcia and his coconspirators prepared by casing the bank and rehearsing the robbery. On May 19, 2012, the robbers entered the bank wearing masks and at least one of the co-conspirators carried and brandished a firearm. Garcia admitted that he knew at least one of the robbers would be carrying the firearm to threaten, frighten, and intimidate the bank employees. The robbers absconded with over $13,000.

A federal grand jury indicted Garcia on May 11, 2017, and charged him with one count each of robbery affecting interstate commerce, in violation of 18 U.S.C.  1951(a); armed bank robbery, in violation of 18 U.S.C.  2113(a) and (d), and 2; conspiracy to commit armed bank robbery, in violation of 18 U.S.C.  2113(a) and (d), and 371; and robbery affecting interstate commerce, in violation of 18 U.S.C.  1951(a) and (2). Garcia pleaded guilty to armed bank robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery affecting interstate commerce, and the other two charges were dismissed.

In addition to the prison term, Judge Koh ordered Garcia to pay restitution in the amount of $13,256 and to serve five years of supervised release to begin after his prison term. Garcia has been in federal custody since his arrest in May of 2017 and will begin serving his sentence immediately.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Claudia A. Quiroz with the assistance of Jessica Meegan. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the FBI.
Convicted Felon Sentenced To Forty-Six Months Of Imprisonment For Possessing A Firearm And Ammunition

San Francisco, California - Kevin Mitchell was sentenced to 46 months in prison for possessing a firearm and ammunition after being previously convicted of a felony, announced United States Attorney Alex G. Tse and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent in Charge John F. Bennett. The sentence was handed down by the Honorable Edward M. Chen, United States District Judge.

Mitchell pleaded guilty to the charge on May 16, 2018. According to his plea agreement, Mitchell admitted that he was carrying a loaded firearm inside his vehicle in San Francisco on December 15, 2017. At the time, he was a convicted felon and was not eligible to possess a firearm. The firearm was a .45 caliber handgun with a large capacity magazine attached to it. In additions, the magazine contained twenty-six rounds of ammunition. On March 1, 2018, a federal grand jury indicted Mitchell charging him with one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C.  922(g)(1).

In addition to the prison term, Judge Chen also ordered Mitchell to serve a three-year term of supervised release to begin at the conclusion of his prison term.

Assistant United States Attorney Neal C. Hong is prosecuting the case with the assistance of Kimberly Richardson. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the San Francisco Police Department.
Fresno Man Sentenced to 70 Months for Arizona Robbery Spree

Tucson, Arizona - Mitchell Ray Finley, 50, of Fresno, California, was sentenced by U.S. Chief District Judge Raner C. Collins to 70 months imprisonment, to be followed by five years of supervised release. Finley had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of Hobbs Act Robbery.

On May 28, 2016, Finley and three other persons entered a Tiffany & Co. jewelry store in Tucson, and stole a diamond solitaire ring and assaulted a security guard before getting away. Later that day, Finley and the three men entered the Nordstrom department store in Scottsdale, Arizona, and stole several designer handbags after verbally threatening a store manager. On the same day, Finley and the three men entered a Helzberg Diamond Outlet store in Glendale, and stole several high-end watches after pepper-spraying the store employees. The watches were pawned by Finleys co-defendant, Dwight Bivens, who previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 63 months imprisonment. The victims financial losses totaled more than $130,000.

The investigation in this case was conducted by Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Pima County Sheriffs Office, the Scottsdale Police Department, the Glendale Police Department, and the Fresno Police Department. The prosecution was handled by Lauren G. LaBuff, Fred A. Cocio, and Rui Wang, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, District of Arizona, Tucson.
Justice Department Settles Immigration-Related Discrimination Claim Against Nations Second Largest Egg Producer

Washington, DC - The Justice Department today announced that it has reached a settlement with Rose Acre Farms Inc. (Rose Acre), which is based in Indiana and is one of the largest egg producers in the United States. The settlement resolves a long-standing lawsuit filed by the Justice Department alleging that Rose Acre violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) by discriminating against work-authorized non-U.S. citizens when verifying their work authorization.

The Departments amended complaint, filed on November 7, 2012, alleged that from at least June 2009 to December 22, 2011, Rose Acre routinely required work-authorized non-U.S. citizens to present a Permanent Resident Card or Employment Authorization Document to prove their work authorization, but did not require specific documents from U.S. citizens. All work-authorized individuals, whether U.S. citizens or non-U.S. citizens, have the right to choose which valid documentation to present to prove they are authorized to work. The antidiscrimination provision of the INA prohibits employers from subjecting employees to unnecessary documentary demands based on employees citizenship or national origin.

The INA makes clear that when employers verify the identity and work authorization of employees, they must not treat employees differently based on their citizenship or national origin, said Acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore of the Civil Rights Division. This case demonstrates the Departments commitment to ensuring that employers implement the employment eligibility verification process in a manner that is non-discriminatory.

Under the settlement, Rose Acre will pay a civil penalty of $70,000; train its employees on the INAs anti-discrimination provision; and be subject to departmental monitoring for two years.

The Divisions Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER), formerly known as the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices, is responsible for enforcing the antidiscrimination provision of the INA. The statute prohibits, among other things, citizenship, immigration status, and national origin discrimination in hiring, firing, or recruitment or referral for a fee; unfair documentary practices; retaliation and intimidation.
Real Estate Investor Pleads Guilty to Bid Rigging at Online Auctions

Miami, Florida - Real estate investor Christopher Graeve pleaded guilty Thursday in West Palm Beach, in connection with an ongoing investigation into bid rigging at online public foreclosure auctions in Florida, the Department of Justice announced. Graeve is the second real estate investor to plead guilty in this investigation.

Felony charges of bid rigging were filed against Graeve on November 2, 2017, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. According to court documents, from around January 2012 through around June 2015, Graeve conspired with others to rig bids during online foreclosure auctions in Palm Beach County, Florida.

Real estate investors who deal in foreclosed properties should be on notice that the Division will not tolerate the subversion of competition in foreclosure auctions, said Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim of the Department of Justices Antitrust Division. The Division will continue to prosecute antitrust violations that occur at these auctions, and will hold individuals who engage in this conduct accountable.

Real estate investors who think they can swindle the system to line their pockets with ill-gotten gains beware, said Special Agent in Charge Robert F. Lasky of the FBI Miamis Field Office. The FBI and our law enforcement partners will vigorously investigate such schemes.

The Department said that the primary purpose of the conspiracy was to suppress and restrain competition in order to obtain selected real estate offered at online foreclosure auctions at non-competitive prices. When real estate properties are sold at these auctions, the proceeds are used to pay off the mortgage and other debt attached to the property, with any remaining proceeds available to the homeowner. According to court documents, the conspiracy artificially lowered the price paid at auction for such homes. In the past several years, the Division and its law enforcement partners have secured convictions of more than 100 individuals for rigging public mortgage foreclosure auctions in six different states, including Florida.

The investigation is being conducted by the Antitrust Divisions Washington Criminal I Section and the FBIs Miami Division  West Palm Beach Resident Agency. Anyone with information concerning bid rigging or fraud related to public real estate foreclosure auctions should contact the Washington Criminal I Section of the Antitrust Division at 202-307-6694, call the Antitrust Divisions Citizen Complaint Center at 888-647-3258.
Do You Know Why Toilet Doors are Cut From Bottom in Malls and Offices? Read On to Find Out
Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.

It was a carry-on about a carry-on.

That, at least, is the story told by Debbie Cardarelli.

Last year, she and her husband Robert were boarding an American Airlines flight at Philadelphia Airport back to their home in Rochester, New York.

As often happens, the overhead bins were full, so Robert Cardarelli was asked to hand over his carry-on for checking.

This, he did. But then, as Philly.com reported, he remembered he needed his eye drops. He'd once had a corneal transplant and, well, the bag was sitting there just a few feet away.

So he asked the baggage handler if he could take them out.

And then, Debbie Cardarelli accuses, the baggage handler said that the bag couldn't be touched again.

Sadly, as these things sometimes do, what ensued was an argument. Oh, and Robert Cardarelli's arrest.

At first, Cardarelli got his eye drops, after Robert Cardarelli got a ticketing agent to intervene.

Soon afterwards, however, police officers came down the aisle of the plane -- with the ticketing agent -- and arrested him.

It seems that the baggage handler, Tawanda Ward, had accused Robert Cardarelli of making a bomb threat.

Robert Cardarelli was charged with three offenses, including threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction.

A judge found him not guilty, deeming Ward not believable. She had allegedly not told anyone about the purported bomb threat for 15 minutes.

Worse, Debbie Cardarelli says that when they flew to Philadelphia for the trial, they were booked on American, called ahead to check whether that was OK, were told it was and then were denied boarding.

Even worse, the Washington Post reports that the airline refused to respond to subpoenas, hence delaying the trial.

Robert Cardarelli has since died, but his widow wants American to admit it was responsible for the arrest and everything that came after it.

I asked American whether it had a reaction to this lawsuit and whether it had, perhaps, tried to settle the case.

"Given this involves active litigation, we are going to decline comment," an airline spokesman told me.

Debbie Cardarelli says that her husband wasn't even interviewed before being charged. The airline personnel were, it seems, simply believed.

Which leads me painfully to a theme that has echoed through airline-passenger relations, and this column, for some time.

Airline bosses have pushes their employees into a security role. Those employees know the power they wield, which engenders the fear that they can cause you a lot of trouble if you ask too many questions.

Or, indeed, if they just don't like you.

Too often, there's even video evidence of airline employees talking down to customers and asking them something along the lines of "are you going to be a problem?"

This is exactly the sort of line of which some police officers are fond.

A couple of weeks ago, an Air Canada flyer claimed that when he told a Flight Attendant that at least part of her job was customer service, he said her reply was that, no it wasn't. It was safety.

And, yes, he says he and his family were thrown off the plane.

At what point does the understandable -- if sometimes misplaced -- neurosis associated with security become a cudgel for airline personnel to wield when something displeases them?

Yes, passengers can sometimes be unpleasant, rude or even intolerable.

But if the facts as presented in this lawsuit are true, how could something so apparently straightforward have led to so much grief?

There may be more to the story that American Airlines isn't telling.

What has emerged so far is yet another example of why many airlines inspire suspicion and not a little distaste, given the way they can treat customers.

Recently, the airline has been teaching and re-teaching its employees about the very basics of customer service.

Two of those basics are Show You Care and Give Options.
Anyone dreaming of Idris Elba sipping martinis - shaken, not stirred - on the silver screen had their hopes raised, then dashed by the actor as he responded to rumours he's being considered for the role.

"My name's Elba, Idris Elba," the star tweeted alongside a front-camera selfie. A simple move, that sent fans into a frenzy, with Elba's Twitter mentions already dreaming up the perfect 007 outing for him - Gillian Anderson, of course, has already been suggested as a future Bond girl.

However, hours later, Elba followed his tweet up with: "Don't believe the HYPE". And fans didn't take the news too well, tweeting the likes of "Are HYPE the criminal organisation you have to take down, 007?" and "This is a clear allusion to Public Enemy, and one line of the song goes, 'Dont believe the hype, its a sequel.'"

"The next Bond movie is, of course, a sequel. Therefore we can conclude Elba is the next Bond." Who's going to break it to them?

The rumours rose out reports that Bond franchise producer Barbara Broccoli had announced that the door is open for a black 007 in the future, once Daniel Craig completes his final outing as the spy, with Idris Elba marked out as a potential favourite to fill those iconic shoes.

Danny Boyle will direct the next, Daniel Craig-starring Bond installment, with work having already begun on the script with Trainspotting scribe John Hodge.

Eon productions heads Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli called the director exceptionally talented in a statement, while the head of US distributor MGM said: We couldnt be more thrilled than to bring the next 007 adventure to the big screen, uniting the incomparable Daniel Craig with the extraordinary vision of Danny Boyle.

Craig revealed he would return to the iconic role last August, having previously played Bond four times: Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, and Spectre.

The film is scheduled to reach UK cinemas on the 25 October 2019.

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Its a habit that many of us struggle to leave at work but, according to a new study, checking your emails after hours could have a seriously negative impact on not only your health but also your relationship with loved ones.

The study, conducted by Virginia Tech, surveyed the health of 297 university employees and found that all of them had varying levels of anxiety that could be damaging to their health.

However, very few of them failed to realise that their anxiety increased when the line between work and home life became blurred.

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Investigating the impact of so-called flexible work boundaries the study suggests that something as small as checking your emails could turn into work without boundaries and bosses expecting staff to never really switch off.

Something which could not only cause stress and anxiety for the individual, but also for their partner and children who witness the person being unable to psychologically detach from work-related issues

The competing demands of work and non-work lives present a dilemma for employees, which triggers feelings of anxiety and endangers work and personal lives," said co-author William Becker.

Our research exposes the reality, [that] flexible work boundaries often turn into work without boundaries, compromising an employee's and their family's health and well-being.

The first paper to identify the phenomenon, it suggests that employees dont even have to engage in actual work for them to feel the effects of stress and anxiety, and that measures should be put in place to prevent people from feeling overwhelmed.

The worst jobs for your health Show all 10 1 /10 The worst jobs for your health The worst jobs for your health 10. Surgical and medical assistants, technologists, and technicians Overall unhealthiness score: 57.3 What they do: Assist in operations, under the supervision of surgeons, registered nurses, or other surgical personnel and perform medical laboratory tests. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 88 2. Exposure to contaminants: 80 3. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 69 The worst jobs for your health 9. Stationary engineers and boiler operators Overall unhealthiness score: 57.7 What they do: Operate or maintain stationary engines, boilers, or other mechanical equipment to provide utilities for buildings or industrial processes. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 99 2. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 89 3. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 84 The worst jobs for your health 8. Water and wastewater treatment plant and system operators Overall unhealthiness score: 58.2 What they do: Operate or control an entire process or system of machines, often through the use of control boards, to transfer or treat water or wastewater. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 97 2. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 80 3. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 74 The worst jobs for your health 7. Histotechnologists and histologic technicians Overall unhealthiness score: 59.0 What they do: Prepare histologic slides from tissue sections for microscopic examination and diagnosis by pathologists. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 88 2. Exposure to contaminants: 76 3. Exposure to disease and infections: 75 The worst jobs for your health 6. Immigration and customs inspectors Overall unhealthiness score: 59.3 What they do: Investigate and inspect people, common carriers, goods, and merchandise, arriving in or departing from the US or between states to detect violations of immigration and customs laws and regulations. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 78 2. Exposure to disease and infections: 63 3. Exposure to radiation: 62 The worst jobs for your health 5. Podiatrists Overall unhealthiness score: 60.2 What they do: Diagnose and treat diseases and deformities of the human foot. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 87 2. Exposure to radiation: 69 3. Exposure to contaminants: 67 The worst jobs for your health 4. Veterinarians, veterinary assistants, and laboratory animal caretakers and veterinary technologists and technicians What they do: Diagnose, treat, or research diseases and injuries of animals and perform medical tests in a laboratory environment for use in the treatment and diagnosis of diseases in animals. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 81 2. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 75 3. Exposure to contaminants: 74 The worst jobs for your health 3. Anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, and anesthesiologist assistants Overall unhealthiness score: 62.3 What they do: Administer anesthetics or sedatives during medical procedures, and help patients in recovering from anesthesia. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 94 2. Exposure to contaminants: 80 3. Exposure to radiation: 74 The worst jobs for your health 2. Flight attendants What they do: Provide personal services to ensure the safety, security, and comfort of airline passengers during flight. Greet passengers, verify tickets, explain use of safety equipment, and serve food or beverages. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 88 2. Exposure to disease and infections: 77 3. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 69 The worst jobs for your health 1. Dentists, dental surgeons, and dental assistants Overall unhealthiness score: 65.4 What they do: Examine, diagnose, and treat diseases, injuries, and malformations of teeth and gums. May treat diseases of nerve, pulp, and other dental tissues affecting oral hygiene and retention of teeth. May fit dental appliances or provide preventive care. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 84 2. Exposure to disease and infections: 75 3. Time spent sitting: 67

To tackle this, Becker says that employers should state if email availability is a requirement in job descriptions and, that if it is a requirement, out-of-hours windows should be introduced so people know they have periods of time when they dont have to check their inbox.

Alternatively, he adds that mindfulness may help employees disengage from work and be present in family interactions, which could help reduce conflict and improve relationship satisfaction.

If youre concerned that youre checking your emails too much after work and its not part of your job description there are a few things you can do to help.

Firstly, you might want to consider removing the temptation to check by deleting access to work emails from your phone entirely.

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Or, if thats not an option, you could remove the push notifications from your phone so that youre not notified every time you receive an email.

These findings come just weeks after a report by the Mental Health Foundation (MHF) called for societal change in the way mental health is treated, alongside new rules for employers to treat stress and mental health risks as seriously as physical health and safety.

The report, which coincided with Mental Health Awareness Week, found that a third of people in Britain have experienced suicidal feelings and that three out of four have felt overwhelmed or unable to cope in the past year because of stress  a figure which rose to 81 per cent among women.

For confidential support with mental health or suicidal feelings, call Samaritans on 116 123.
A woman whose mugshot went viral after her makeup skills were praised on social media has revealed that her very own makeup range could soon be in the works.

19-year-old Marshala Perkins was arrested on February 6 this year after being caught with two grams of marijuana in her car by the police.

Prior to the arrest, the teen had been in her dorm room at Texas A&M University-Commerce conducting a live makeup tutorial on her Facebook page.

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The makeup artist then went to wait for a group of friends in her car when she was approached by the police.

I sat in my car for like two minutes waiting on my friends and while I was waiting, a police car pulled up right behind me, Perkins told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

After the marijuana was discovered in her car, Perkins was then taken to Hunt County Jail where her famous mugshot was taken.

In April the Twitter account Mugshot Baes, a Twitter account that shares mugshots of women who've been arrested, posted the photo of Perkins, which received more than 11,000 likes.

A number of people expressed their admiration for Perkins makeup, namely her pink, glittery eyeshadow, while also comparing her to hot felon Jeremy Meeks.

Waiting for her to drop the tutorial on this look tho [sic], one person wrote.

I just want to know what eyeshadow palette she used because it is poppin! a makeup aficionado remarked.

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"Why does this mugshot look so fierce?! another person tweeted.

After spending the night in Hunt County Jail following her arrest, Perkins was released the next day and ordered to pay $2,000 (1,568) in court fees during a six-month probation period, according to BuzzFeed.

Since her mugshot began circulating the internet, Perkins has been building up her online following.

The self-taught makeup artist currently has more than 5,000 followers on Instagram and has revealed that her very own makeup range could soon be in the pipeline.

Celebrity mugshots Show all 12 1 /12 Celebrity mugshots Celebrity mugshots Bieber-mugshot-Twitter.JPG Celebrity mugshots mugshot-russell-brand.jpg Getty Images Celebrity mugshots lindsay-mugshot2.jpg Getty Images Celebrity mugshots lohan-mugshot.jpg Getty Images Celebrity mugshots paris-hilton.jpg Getty Images Celebrity mugshots michelle-rodriguez-mugshot.jpg Getty Images Celebrity mugshots lindsay-mugshot1_1.jpg Getty Images Celebrity mugshots mel-gibson-mugshot.jpg Getty Images Celebrity mugshots mugshotrobert-downey.jpg Getty Images Celebrity mugshots jay-z-mugshot.jpg Celebrity mugshots hugh-grant-mugshot.jpg Celebrity mugshots mugshot-larry-king.jpg Getty Images

Someone has reached out to me about starting my own makeup line. Its crazy. My mind is blown, Perkins said.

Now its turned into something so positive so Im just going to embrace it and see where it takes me.

In a caption posted on her Instagram account yesterday, the makeup artist hinted that shell soon have even more news to share.

 Jeremy Meeks barred from entering the UK

Y'all just dont know when I first started doing makeup on people I felt like I was in LAST PLACE! she wrote.

Yall was counting me out but God wasnt and thats all that matters.

I have so many big things coming up and I just hope he guides me and builds me up while Im on this journey.

The Independent has contacted Marshala Perkins for comment.
Nasa launched the Parker Solar Probe over the weekend, setting the spacecraft on a journey that will take it closer to the Sun than any human-made object before it.

The US space agency was forced to delay its launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Saturday following last minute investigations. It eventually lifted off at 3.31am eastern time (8.31am BST) on Sunday morning.

"Parker Solar Probe has been one of our most challenging missions to date," said Omar Baez, Nasa'a launch director. "I'm very proud of the team that worked to make this happen. We at Nasa and the Launch Services Program are thrilled to be part of this mission."

Nasa unveils space tourism posters Show all 6 1 /6 Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa space tourism posters Nasa's canny decision to commission sumptuous vintage-inspired posters by Seattle design firm Invisible Creature has firmly placed space travel back where it belongs: in the imagination of travellers Nasa Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa space tourism posters It is particularly fitting that the Nasa commission went to Don and Ryan Clark, who have been running Invisible Creature since 2006, undertaking projects for the likes of Nike and Target Nasa Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa space tourism posters "We were ecstatic, just because our grandfather was an illustrator at Nasa for 30 years," says Clark Nasa Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa space tourism posters The artwork harks back to the Jet Age-era posters commissioned by Howard Hughes' Trans World Airlines and its rival United in the 1950s and 1960s, when the work of David Klein (for TWA) and Stan Galli (for United) glamorised and essentially branded this new age of air travel Nasa Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa space tourism posters It doesn't matter that Nasa has no plans for a "Grand Tour" of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus Nasa Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa space tourism posters If global travel is for daydreamers, going beyond the atmosphere is for true space cadets Nasa

The probe will pass Venus in six weeks, before making its approach to the Sun after another six weeks. It will become the fastest ever human-made object, set to travel around the sun at 430,000 mph  15-times faster than a speeding bullet.

The Parker probe will also reach as close as 3.8 million miles from the Sun's surface, taking it directly through the Sun's atmosphere. According to Nasa, this will take it so close that it will actually "touch" the Sun.

This proximity won't happen for nearly seven years, however, as getting this close will require several gravity assists from nearby Venus.

"Parker Solar Probe will revolutionise our understanding of the Sun's corona," Nasa said in a blogpost announcing the launch.

"Facing brutal heat and radiation, the spacecraft will fly close enough to watch the solar wind speed up from subsonic to supersonic, and fly through the birthplace of the highest-energy solar particles."

(EPA)

It remains a mystery how energy and heat move thought the Sun's corona but by using the probe to study magnetic fields, plasma and energetic particles, and solar wind, scientists hope to explain the phenomena.

Better understanding of these effects could help scientists forecast solar storms and flares that burst from the Sun, periodically disrupting the Earth's magnetic field and terrestrial communications.

Exploring the Suns corona with a spacecraft has been one of the hardest challenges for space exploration, said Nicola Fox, project scientist at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Were finally going to be able to answer questions about the corona and solar wind... and IO can't wait to find out what discoveries we make. The science will be remarkable."

Parker will will be heated to 1,400C when it dips into the Suns corona (EPA)

A 4.5-inch-thick heat shield will protect the probe's instruments from the outside temperatures, which will reach above 1,300 degrees Celsius. Due to the remarkable properties of the Sun's outer atmosphere, the temperature of the corona is actually hotter than the Sun's actual surface.

The probe will harvest power from the sun, using water cooled technology to keep the solar cells at an operational temperature.

The mission is named after Eugene Parker, an astronomy professor at the University of Chicago, who first described the concept of solar wind in the 1950s.

"Wow, here we go. We're in for some learning over the next several years," Mr Parker said from the scene of the probe's launch on Sunday.
Cyber criminals are planning a highly-coordinated attack on cash machines around the world that could see millions of dollars withdrawn from customer bank accounts, the FBI has warned.

A confidential alert sent to banks stated that the scheme, known as an "ATM cashout", could take place in the space of just a few hours, most likely on a weekend after banks have closed. The scheme involves cloned cards, together with a hack on a bank or payment processor in order to facilitate the fraudulent withdrawal of funds by gangs of cyber criminals.

"The FBI has obtained unspecified reporting indicating cyber criminals are planning to conduct a global Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cash-out scheme in the coming days, likely associated with an unknown card issuer breach and commonly referred to as an 'unlimited operation'," states an FBI alert to banks that was obtained by cyber security expert Brian Krebs.

The seal of the Federal Bureau of Investigation hangs on the outside of the bureau's Washington, DC headquarters (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

"Historic compromises have included small-to-medium size financial institutions, likely due to less robust implementation of cyber security controls, budgets, or third-party vendor vulnerabilities. The FBI expects the ubiquity of this activity to continue or possibly increase in the near future."

A similar attack reported last month resulted in losses of $2.4 million for the National Bank of Blacksburg, Mr Krebs noted, which involved hundreds of ATMs across the United States over the course of several months.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. 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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

Another incident in Thailand in 2016 saw the state-owned Government Savings Bank lose $360,000 from cash machines in the country.

"Virtually all ATM cashout operations are launched on weekends, often just after financial institutions begin closing for business on Saturday," Mr Krebs explained in a blog post.

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"The 2016 unlimited operation against National Bank began Saturday, May 28, 2016 and continued through the following Monday. That particular Monday was Memorial Day, a federal holiday in the United States, meaning bank branches were closed for more than two days after the heist began."

In order to maximise the payout in such attacks, hackers often remove fraud controls like withdrawal limits. This allows perpetrators to empty cash machines of all the money stored in them.

The FBI advised banks to review their security measures, keep their software up to date, and implement stronger protections when possible.
Ticketmaster UK is shutting down its resale websites Get Me In and Seatwave and instead launching a new fan-to-fan ticket exchange to let customers sell tickets that can no longer be used.

The resale sites, controversial due to secondary sellers ramping up prices to make huge profits on tickets, will close from today onwards.

The ticket selling firm said: Weve listened and we hear you: secondary sites just dont cut it anymore and youre tired of seeing others snap up tickets just to resell for a profit.

The firm said its new website, with the exchange service included, will be rolled out in October in the UK and Ireland, and across the rest of Europe early next year.

Ticketmaster recently admitted that a number of customers who had bought or tried to buy tickets through its services, may have been affected by a cyber attack.

Tens of thousands of UK consumers are believed to have been affected after malware was found inside third-party software running on Ticketmaster International, Ticketmaster, TicketWeb and Get Me In.

Digital and creative industries minister Margot James welcomed the decision to shut down the sites, and said: We want real fans to be able to see their favourite artists and events at a fair price.

This is a welcome move from Ticketmaster and shows that theyre following our lead and taking a tough stance on cracking down on unacceptable behaviour in the secondary ticket market.

Get Me In and Seatwave were two of four major players in the tickets secondary market, with StubHub and Viagogo remaining.

The competition watchdog has previously vowed to crack down on secondary ticketing websites due to concerns that some of them may be breaking the law by failing to give customers full information about events or venues.

Meanwhile, earlier this year, Ms James warned concertgoers not to use ticket reseller Viagogo, after Trading Standards launched an investigation into the company.

The website had previously been censured by the Advertising Standards Authority for failing to make clear upfront all fees that can be calculated in advance when making price claims, putting it in breach of the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing, known as the CAP Code.

The ASA said it had received complaints about how prices were presented on the Viagogo website, with quoted costs not making clear to consumers that they would be expected to pay additional fees and charges when ordering tickets.
Cancers which have been written off as undruggable by scientists because they appear impervious to conventional treatments have had their growth slowed or even reversed by an experimental new drug.

Lab experiments with lung, skin, colon and pancreatic cancer cells found the recently discovered drug could drastically slow their growth, with similar effects seen in test in animals.

It works by targeting a major pathway in cancer growth where DNA mutations have broken the system for telling cells when to start and stop dividing, jamming it on and sending growth into overdrive.

This can happen in a variety of ways and these defects  in the RAS/MAPK cell division pathway  are found in around half of all human cancer cases, but no drug has yet been able to target them.

RAS/MAPK is one of the most important cancer signalling pathways, but so far most attempts to develop targeted drugs against this pathway have ended in failure, which has led some people to start calling it a holy grail of cancer therapy, said Dr Trever Bivona, senior author of the study in Nature Cell Biology and an oncologist at the University of California in San Francisco.

Instead of targeting the cells to prevent this rampant growth, Dr Bivona and his team identified that in some of these cancers, cells are simply hypersensitive to growth signals.

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This is driven by a molecule called SHP2, which switches on the growth pathway and a drug which can block this step could prevent the whole chain of unchecked cell division from launching.

In a partnership with the drug discovery group Revolution Medicines, they trialled new chemicals on various cell types and found one, called RMC-4550 could drastically slow growth, or even kill cancer cells.

We were able to demonstrate that this compound successfully suppressed the RAS pathway in the rodent tumour models and that this not only slowed tumour growth but even led to tumour regression in some cases, with minimal side effects in the animals, Dr Bivona said.

Science news in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Science news in pictures Science news in pictures Pluto has 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found. The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission. "Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study. "But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there." Getty Science news in pictures Over 400 species discovered this year by Natural History Museum The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year PA Science news in pictures Jackdaws can identify 'dangerous' humans Jackdaws can identify dangerous humans from listening to each others warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or contact calls (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average. Getty Science news in pictures Turtle embryos influence sex by shaking The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females. But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the Goldilocks Zone which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal Ye et al/Current Biology Science news in pictures Elephant poaching rates drop in Africa African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017. Reuters Science news in pictures Ancient four-legged whale discovered in Peru Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planets oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago A. Gennari Science news in pictures Animal with transient anus discovered A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a transient anus that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste Steven G Johnson Science news in pictures Giant bee spotted Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands Clay Bolt Science news in pictures New mammal species found inside crocodile Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science news in pictures Fabric that changes according to temperature created Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold Faye Levine, University of Maryland Science news in pictures Baby mice tears could be used in pest control A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males Getty Science news in pictures Final warning to limit "climate catastrophe" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase Getty Science news in pictures Nobel prize for evolution chemists The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies Getty/AFP Science news in pictures Nobel prize for laser physicists The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers Reuters/AP Science news in pictures Discovery of a new species of dinosaur The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn" Viktor Radermacher / SWNS Science news in pictures Birth of a planet Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. ESO/A. Muller et al Science news in pictures New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the interstitium. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty Science news in pictures Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs Jose Iriarte Science news in pictures One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty Science news in pictures Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary

This was very exciting to me because it meant that the compound was not just arresting cell growth but actually killing cancer cells.

Revolution Medicines is now hoping to launch human trials next year, first to test if the drug is safe and whether its effects are replicated.

The implications of being able to block SHP2 are broad and may extend to more types of cancer than seen in the present study, Dr Bivona added. Almost every major oncogene I can think of coopts this pathway in one way or another, and many of these cancers currently have no effective targeted therapies or eventually develop resistance to available targeted therapies.
John Worboys, the black-cab rapist convicted of 19 attacks on 12 women, has been questioned about new allegations of sexual assault.

Detectives from the Metropolitan Police are examining a number of claims of sexual assault and administering a substance with intent to commit a sexual offence.

They interviewed Worboys - who was jailed in 2009 for drugging and raping women in his cab - under caution last month.

The 61-year-old was convicted of 19 offences against 12 women, but is believed to have attacked more than 100.

He was jailed indefinitely in 2009 with a minimum term of eight years after being found guilty of the offences including rape, sexual assault and drugging late-night passengers.

The offences now under investigation are alleged to have taken place between 1997 and 2007.

The taxi driver, who has changed his name to John Radford since being in jail in Wakefield, was told this year the parole board had agreed his release, prompting uproar and legal challenges by some of his victims.

News of his imminent release was reported to have prompted five more women to come forward to police with allegations about him.

High court judges ruled in March that the decision to release Worboys should be quashed, which led to the departure of parole board chairman Nick Hardwick.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: "An investigation was launched in January 2018 after a number of women contacted police with information.

"Since then, officers have assessed all the information provided and established there are a number of allegations that required investigation.

"Police also sought early investigative advice from the Crown Prosecution Service.

"The man was interviewed at a venue in Yorkshire on Wednesday 4 July. The investigation continues."
Jeremy Corbyn has admitted attending a ceremony for the terrorists behind the Munich massacre, but denied laying a wreath himself.

The Labour leader said he was present at a memorial event commemorating those responsible for the 1972 attack, despite his office previously insisting he was only at the event in question honouring Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike.

Mr Corbyn was forced to explain himself after pictures showed him holding a wreath next to a memorial plaque for the perpetrators of the Munich attack.

The latest row has fuelled the Labour partys antisemitism crisis, with a senior Labour MP saying there can never be a fitting memorial to terrorists.

Speaking for the first time since the images emerged, Mr Corbyn told Sky News: A wreath was indeed laid by some of those who attended the conference for those who were killed in Paris in 1992.

The reference to Paris is understood to relate to Atef Bseiso, widely considered to have been involved in masterminding the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

Bseiso was killed in the French capital in 1992 in what was believed to be an Israeli assassination, although the country denied involvement and said he had been murdered by a rival PLO faction.

Asked whether he was involved in the wreath laying in relation to the Munich terrorists, Mr Corbyn said: I was present when it was laid. I dont think I was actually involved in it.

He added: I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere, because we have to end it. You cannot pursue peace by a cycle of violence. They only way you pursue peace is by a cycle of dialogue.

Protests against Labour antisemitism Show all 14 1 /14 Protests against Labour antisemitism Protests against Labour antisemitism Protesters clashed during the demonstration Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism Members of the Jewish community hold a protest against Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism in the Labour Party AFP/Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism Protesters hold placards and flags during a demonstration, organised by the British Board of Jewish Deputies for those who oppose antisemitism, in Parliament Square Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism Hundreds of people gathered in Parliament Square to protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party EPA Protests against Labour antisemitism Labour MP Luciana Berger speaks during the protest PA Protests against Labour antisemitism A protester blows through a shofar during the demonstration Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism Members of London's Jewish community protest in support of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn outside parliament EPA Protests against Labour antisemitism Labour MP John Mann speaks during a protest against antisemitism PA Protests against Labour antisemitism People protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party as Jewish community leaders have launched a scathing attack on Jeremy Corbyn, claiming he has sided with antisemites again and again PA Protests against Labour antisemitism Labour politicians Stella Creasy and Chuka Umunna leave after attending the demonstration Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism A pro-Jeremy Corbyn protester holds a placard during a counter-protest Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism A support of the Labour Party hold up a placard during the demonstration Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism Jeremy Corbyn supporters during the demo Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism A protester holds up a sign reading For the many, not the Jew AFP

Mr Corbyns team had previously insisted he had only laid a wreath at another memorial  to pay tribute to the 47 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike on a PLO base in Tunisia in 1985.

But images published by the Daily Mail show him holding a wreath in 2014 next to the memorial to the Munich bombers, with the paper claiming the memorial for the victims of the 1985 attack is 15 feet away, in a different part of the Palestinian Martyrs Cemetery in Tunisia.

Mr Corbyn also made reference a wreath being laid for Bseiso in an article for the Morning Star in 2014.

He wrote: After wreaths were laid at the graves of those who died on that day and on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991, we moved to the poignant statue in the main avenue of the coastal town of Ben Arous, which was festooned with Palestinian and Tunisian flags.

The mention of the 1991 killing is believed to be a mistake and instead refer to the death of Bseiso in 1992.

Bseiso was the Palestinian Liberation Organisations (PLO) head of intelligence and is widely believed to have played a key role in planning the attack.

Labour MP Luciana Berger, the parliamentary chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, criticised Mr Corbyns latest comments.

She said: Being present is the same as being involved. When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association and support.

There can never be a fitting memorial for terrorists. Where is the apology?

 Jeremy Corbyn releases video apologising for antisemitism in the Labour party

The Munich massacre saw 11 members of the terrorist group Black September torture 11 Israeli athletes in their Olympic Village apartment before murdering them.

The widows of two of the athletes murdered in the attack expressed outrage at the photos of Mr Corbyn standing next to Bseisos grave.

Ankie Spitzer and Ilana Romano, whose husbands Andre and Yossef were among 11 athletes murdered, told Jewish News: We do not recall a visit of Mr Corbyn to the graves of our murdered fathers, sons and husbands.

They only went to the Olympic Games in order to participate in this festival of love, peace and brotherhood; but they all returned home in coffins.

For Mr Corbyn to honour these terrorists is the ultimate act of maliciousness, cruelty and stupidity.

And they added: Do not forget, Mr Corbyn, that you will be judged by the company you keep.

Sajid Javid, the home secretary, suggested Mr Corbyn should quit over the issue.

He wrote on Twitter: If this was the leader of any other major political party, he or she would be gone by now.
Holidaymakers are being warned against scam orphan lion cub attractions that are a front for the lucrative trade in shooting the animals dead.

Parks in South Africa where tourists can take selfies with big cats or bottle-feed, pet or walk with them are nothing but breeding centres that profit from trophy-hunting or Asias trade in bones, say campaigners.

Far from helping the threatened species to thrive, farms where lions are kept in cages are accelerating its decline, experts say.

Last year an estimated 48,000 British holidaymakers visited South Africa, many fooled into thinking they were helping orphaned young lions before they were released back into the wild.

In reality, most of South Africas lions are bred in captivity to be used for photo shoots with holidaymakers before being sold to trophy-hunters or slaughtered so that their skeletons can be ground down and turned into fake medicines sold across south-east Asia.

Investigators who have been inside lion-breeding farms say cubs are not orphans, but are taken from their mothers at just a few hours or days old to be used as photo props, earning big money for the owners.

Cubs are taken from their mothers while young before being killed (Audrey Delsink/HSI)

Mother lions are forced into continuous breeding, inseminated to become pregnant time and again.

The caged animals are often deprived of sufficient food, hygiene or the ability to behave as in nature, say campaigners from Humane Society International (HSI).

The cubs are never released into the wild, and could not survive if they were.

But unsuspecting tourists and volunteers often pay thousands of dollars to help hand-raise them, thinking they are helping conservation, unaware that they are supporting the cruel industry and further driving lions towards extinction.

Once cubs are no longer cute and cuddly, they are used for lion-walking experiences. Once they are too dangerous for that, some are sold for canned hunts, in which they are shot by trophy-hunters in fenced areas from which they cannot escape, said a spokeswoman for the charity.

Others are killed for the bone trade, either for display or for use in bogus medicinal tonics in Asia.

It is impossible to differentiate between body parts from wild and captive animals so the legal export of bones from farm-bred caged lions allows the illegal export of wild lion bones to continue, and allows the market to thrive.

A star of hit film The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency is backing HSIs campaign urging visitors to shun lion attractions, branded snuggle scams.

Actress Pearl Thusi condemned the cruel and sad exploitation of lions, listed as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Thusi, who played Patricia Kopong in the Botswana-based films, said: Now that I know the truth behind the captive lion-breeding industry and the exploitation of these lions from birth to death, I am horrified that this is how we treat the king of the jungle.

We should promote Africa as an authentic, wild and rewarding tourism destination and not support this industry.

I am horrified that this is how we treat the king of the jungle Pearl Thusi

South Africa has fewer than 3,000 lions in the wild - but up to 8,000 in captivity in 260 breeding farms.

Last year 16 million tourists visited South Africa, according to Statista.com, and numbers are forecast to grow, potentially fuelling a rise in popularity of lion farms and canned trophy-hunts.

Where not to visit if you love animals Show all 9 1 /9 Where not to visit if you love animals Where not to visit if you love animals Monkey shows Chimpanzees are forced to perform demeaning tricks on leashes and are often subject to cruel training techniques. Animals who are confined to small, barren enclosures and forced to perform unsurprisingly show symptoms of stress and depression. Chimpanzees have been documented rocking back and forth, sucking their lips, salivating and swaying against enclosure perimeters in distress. Getty Where not to visit if you love animals Marine parks Some parks confine orcas to concrete tanks and force them to perform meaningless tricks for food - many die in captivity. Orcas are highly intelligent and social mammals who may suffer immensely, both physically and mentally, when they're held in captivity. Getty Where not to visit if you love animals Tiger shows Tigers are forced to live in an unnatural and barren environment and have to endure interactions with a constant stream of tourists. Since tigers never lose their wild instincts, across the world they are reportedly drugged, mutilated and restrained in order to make them safe for the public. However, every year, incidents of tiger maulings are reported at this type of tourist attraction. Getty Where not to visit if you love animals Donkey rides Sunning on the beach is great for humans  we can take a quick dip or catch a bite to eat when we get too hot or hungry. But it's pure hell for donkeys who are confined to the beach and forced to cart children around on the hot sand. Some donkey-ride operators at beach resorts in the UK even keep the animals chained together at all times. Getty Where not to visit if you love animals Swimming with dolphins Some marine parks use bottlenose dolphins in performances and offer visitors the opportunity to swim with dolphins. Unfortunately, people are often unaware that these animals are captured in the wild and torn from their families or traded between different parks around the world. Getty Where not to visit if you love animals Canned hunting Lions are confined to fenced areas so that they can easily be cornered, with no chance of escape. Most of them will have been bred in captivity and then taken from their mothers to be hand-reared by the cub-petting industry. When they get too big, they may be drugged before they are released into a "hunting" enclosure. Because these animals are usually kept in fenced enclosures (ranging in size from just a few square yards to thousands of acres), they never stand a chance of surviving. Getty Where not to visit if you love animals Running of the Bulls Every year, tourists travel to Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls. The bulls who are forced to slip and slide down the town's narrow cobblestone streets are chased straight into the bullring. They are then taunted, stabbed repeatedly and finally killed by the matador in front of a jeering crowd. The majority of Spaniards reject bullfighting, but tourists are keeping the cruel industry on its last legs. Getty Where not to visit if you love animals Horse-drawn carriages City streets are no place for horses. The animals toil in all weather extremes, suffering from respiratory distress from breathing in exhaust fumes as well as numerous hoof, leg and back problems from walking on pavement all day long. As easily spooked prey animals, horses subjected to the loud noises and unexpected sounds of city streets are likely to be involved in accidents, even deadly ones. Getty Where not to visit if you love animals Zoos The zoo community regards the animals it keeps as commodities, and animals are regularly bought, sold, borrowed and traded without any regard for established relationships. Zoos breed animals because the presence of babies draws visitors and boosts revenue, yet often, there's nowhere to put the offspring as they grow, and they are killed, as we saw with Marius the giraffe in Denmark. Some zoos have introduced evening events with loud music and alcohol which disrupt the incarcerated animals even further. EPA

Last month South Africa said it would nearly double its lion bone export quota from 800 to 1,500 skeletons.

HSI also says the trade in captive lion bones also endangers tigers because skeleton parts cannot be distinguished.
Cooler temperatures have aided firefighters as they begin to turn the tables on a large wildfire that has torn across Southern California.

The Holy Fire was 41 per cent contained by Sunday afternoon after burning over 35.5 square miles of dry timber and brush at Cleveland National Forest, around 100 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

The progress made by crews has been partly attributed to cooler conditions in the area in recent days.

However, firefighters are braces for temperatures to climb towards the 40C mark once again by the end of next week.

California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Show all 45 1 /45 California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Firefighters try to limit the spread of the Carr Fire by backburning, a process by which areas in the path of a fire are burned up in advance to rob the fire of its fuel Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A street is devastated by the Carr Fire in the town of Redding AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A truck burned by the Delta Fire is abandoned along interstate 5 AFP/Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 This image from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration highlights the major fire AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 The Ranch Fire spots out ahead of the main fire in Spring Valley, burning two homes AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A picture taken by German astronaut and geophysicist Alexander Gerst, showing wildfires in the state of California as seen from the International Space Station AFP/Getty/ESA/Alexander Gerst California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Evacuees from Lucerne, from left, Ken Bennett with Ember Reynolds, 8, and Lisa Reynolds watch the sunset as smoke from the Ranch Fire rises into the sky at Austin Park Beach in California's Clearlake with Mount Konocti in the background The Press Democrat via AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 The memorial for Redding firefighter Jeremy Stoke AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 REUTERS California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Holy Jim volunteer firefighter Luke Senger stands next to a home destroyed the Holy Fire in Trabuco Canyon AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Firefighters try to stop the spread of a massive fire in Lake County AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A woman walks out of the water after taking a dip as smoke rises in the distance from the Holy Fire in Cleveland National Forest Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A pyrocumulus cloud (or cloud of fire) explodes in the Carr fire near the town of Redding Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 The Delta Fire burns in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Trees set alight near Whiskeytown Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 An firefighting aircraft drops fire retardant to slow the spread of the River Fire near Lakeport Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A firefighter lights backfires in an attempt to limit the spread of the Ranch Fire Reuters California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Firefighters light backfires to defend houses in the town Upper Lake from the Ranch Fire Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Flames consume a home in Lakeport AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 The Ranch Fire spread towards the town of Upper Lake AFP/Getty Images California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A firefighter lights a backfire in the city of Redding Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 The Carr Fire burns near Whiskeytown AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Firefighters try to limit the spread of the Carr Fire by backburning Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Flames flare in the Cajon Pass near San Bernardino AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 An firefighting aircraft drops fire retardant to slow the spread of the River Fire near Lakeport Reuters California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A schoolhouse burns in the Carr Fire in Shasta County AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 The Carr Fire burns along Highway 299 by the city of Redding AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A car is seen amongst the devastation left by the Cranston Fire EPA California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A firefighter waters down a backfire on Cloverdale Road in Igo AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Firefighters convene while battling the Carr Fire in Shasta County AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Firefighters assess the damage in San Bernardino County AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 The Carr Fire burns along Highway 299 by the city of Redding AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 The Carr Fire burns along Highway 299 in Shasta County AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 The land around Mountain Centre has been left devastated by the Cranston Fire EPA California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Firefighters battle the Carr Fire in the town of Redding AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A home burns in Redding Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 The Cranston Fire burns south of Idyllwild AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 The Carr Fire burns through the town of Shasta AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A home burns in Redding Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A collection of antique cars has been destroyed by the fire in the town of Redding Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A home on Sunflower Road in Redding burns in the Carr Fire Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A helicopter aids utility workers as they work to repair burned power lines EPA California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 A home burns in Redding Getty California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 The Carr Fire burns along Highway 299 by the city of Redding AP California in flames: wildfires rage across the US state in 2018 Sunflower Road in Redding burns in the Carr Fire Getty

The weather out here in California seems to be cooling down today and over the next couple days, and that should hopefully help firefighters get even more containment, said Lynne Tolmachoff, of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

They should make better progress over the next couple of days.

The Holy Fire, named after Holy Jim Canyon where it began last Monday, is one of nearly 20 blazes currently burning across California.

The state is beginning to see earlier, longer and more destructive wildfire seasons due to its ongoing drought problems, warmer weather attributed to climate change and construction deeper in forests.

With firefighters beginning to get a better handle on the blaze, a number of evacuation orders were lifted over the weekend for areas previously in the fires path, Ms Tolmachoff said.

More than 20,000 people were reportedly told to evacuate at one point in order to avoid the wildfire, which has so far destroyed 16 structures.

Aircraft have made flight after flight, dumping water and bright pink retardant on the blaze to protect Lake Elsinore and other foothill communities near the flames.

The man accused of deliberately starting the fire appeared in court on Friday, but his arraignment was postponed.

Forrest Clark, 51, made several outbursts, claiming his life was being threatened and saying the arson charge against him was a lie.

California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze Show all 15 1 /15 California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze Rex California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze AP California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze Rex Features California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze AP California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze AP California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze Rex Features California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze AP California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze AP California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze AP California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze AP California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze AP California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze AP California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze AP California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze AP California wildfires: thousands flee homes after devastating blaze AP

A court commissioner ordered his bail to remain at $1m (780,000).

Elsewhere, the largest fire ever recorded in California, the Mendocino Complex, burning north of Sacramento, destroyed more than 100 homes.

It was nearly 70 per cent contained Saturday, but has already covered some 508 square miles.

The two-week-old Carr Fire that killed eight people and tore through more than 1,000 homes was more than 50 per cent contained on Saturday.

Additional reporting by AP
A man died after flying a plane into his house following a domestic dispute he had with his wife over the weekend, authorities said.

Duane Youd was arrested on Sunday night after witnesses said they saw him allegedly assaulting his wife outside near Payson Canyon, Utah, where he had been drinking. Thats when he posted bail and later crashed the small aircraft into his home at about 2:30 a.m. on Monday, according Sergeant Noemi Sandoval.

Mr Youds wife and a child were inside the house at the time of the crash, investigators said. Both survived the incident, which caused the front of the house to become fully engulfed in flames.

Photos from the scene showed firefighters shooting water into the second floor of the house, located near the mouth of the Payson Canyon. In one picture, a section of the wings of the aircraft remained just in front of the home, appearing charred yet mostly intact.

Authorities described the fire as "huge" when speaking to local news outlets, saying the crash caused the front of the home to be "fully engulfed" in flames.

Police did not immediately state how Mr Youd had managed to obtain access to the plane, or from what airport he departed to fly towards his house.
Donald Trump needs to be reminded on "a constant basis" about time zones when demanding his aides set up phone calls between him and world leaders, according to a new report.

The National Security Council (NSC) is forced to tell the president he cannot immediately speak to international powers at times due to the fact that they might be asleep, several current and former aides told Politico. Staffers reportedly often promise to schedule calls at more appropriate times, with NSC adviser HR McMaster reassuring Mr Trump, "We can try to set it up."

"He wasn't great with recognising that the leader of a country might be 80 or 85 years old and isnt going to be awake or in the right place at 10:30 or 11 p.m. their time," a former NSC official under Mr Trump told the publication. When he wants to call someone, he wants to call someone. Hes more impulsive that way. He doesn't think about what time it is or who it is."

The report refutes the idea that the president is unaware of how time zones work  rather, the notion implied by the White House is that Mr Trump doesn't like to wait to share his thoughts on international developments with the involved parties.

"The president has developed strong relationships and good rapports that are not only friendly, but also allow for candid conversations with many of Americas closest allies," Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. "He has even worked the phone with our competitors, injecting stability into bilateral relationships that are undergoing contentious, but necessary readjustments to place American interests first. Foreign leaders appreciate that the President is willing to take their calls day and night."

According to Ms Sanders, the president isn't worried about taking calls after hours.

 Donald Trump and Theresa May holding hands before press conference at Chequers

"The President has made clear that when leaders reach out for calls, [aides should] set them up right away," she continued. "He has had foreign leaders calls very late at night and never wants another leader to wait before their call is returned."

The Independent has reached out to the White House for further comment.

The new Politico report goes on to detail Mr Trumps alleged aloofness to international relations, geography and diplomatic customs. In it, an incident is described in which Mr Trump appeared to be unaware of how close Nepal and Bhutan  two countries he allegedly called "nipple" and "button"  are in relation to India.

"He didnt know what those were. He thought it was all part of India," one source said. "He was like, What is this stuff in between and these other countries?'"

Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Show all 14 1 /14 Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Riot police block protesters during a rally near the US embassy AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters shout slogans while displaying portraits of U.S. President Donald Trump and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte AP Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Activists clash with riot police EPA Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters burn a banner of Donald Trump AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters against Donald Trump's visit AP Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters deface portraits of Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte AP Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters clash with anti-riot police officers as they try to march towards the U.S. embassy REUTERS Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines A mural bearing the image of Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte is burnt REUTERS Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Activists march on a road leading to the US embassy during a protest in Manila EPA Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters scuffle with riot police AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters shout anti-US slogans as they burn a banner featuring the image of US President Donald Trump AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Activists clash with riot police EPA Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Protesters display placards as they shout anti-US slogans AFP/Getty Images Protest in Manila against Donald Trump's visit to the Philippines Anti-riot police officers block protesters REUTERS

The presidents approach to diplomatic relations can be described as "impulsive," according to former aides.

Mr Trump has at times appeared unaware of underlying facts in major developments; for example, he congratulated Italian Prime Minister on his "tremendous victory," although Giuseppe Conte was actually appointed to his position and never campaigned in the national election.

The report also alleges Mr Trump has made false claims about trade deficits between the US and its allies when speaking with other world leaders.

(REUTERS) (Reuters)

To be sure, Mr Trump has admit to challenging Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with false information about trade relations during a private fundraising event.

"Trudeau came to see me. Hes a good guy, Justin. He said, No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please,'" Mr Trump said during the event in an audio recording obtained by Washington Post. I said, Wrong, Justin, you do. I didnt even know. ... I had no idea. I just said, Youre wrong. You know why? Because were so stupid.  And I thought they were smart. I said, Youre wrong, Justin. He said, Nope, we have no trade deficit. I said, Well, in that case, I feel differently, I said, but I dont believe it. I sent one of our guys out, his guy, my guy, they went out, I said, Check, because I cant believe it.
 Close US Primaries: What are the key races as four US sates vote in primary elections?

Minnesota state Representative Ilhan Omar, the nation's first Somali-American legislator, has won a crowded Democratic primary to replace Representative Keith Ellison in Congress.

Ms Omar's victory Tuesday all but ensures she'll set another historic mark as the first Somali-American in Congress. Minnesota's 5th Congressional District includes Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs that tilt heavily Democratic.

Meanwhile, Senator Tina Smith will face off against Minnesota state Senator Karin Housely after both won their primaries in the race to fill Al Franken's seat in the Senate.

Mr Franken resigned earlier in the year amid allegations stemming from the #MeToo movement, leading to the all-women face-off in November.

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On Monday, Mr Trump endorsed the Republican frontrunner for the House seat in the 8th district, Pete Stauber. Democrat Rick Nolan retired from the position, leaving a tough five-way primary for the party. Mr Stauber has leaned heavily on a pro-Trump message and will hope it helps him breakthrough in November. Mr Stauber will face former state Representative Joe Radinovich

Elsewhere, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty's comeback bid fizzled in the Republican primary for his old job, as voters chose County Commissioner Jeff Johnson to face Democratic Representative Tim Walz in the governor's race.

Mr Walz had been considered a top contender in the three-way primary to replace outgoing Democratic Governor Mark Dayton, despite losing his party's nod in early June. And Mr Johnson was a longshot, given Mr Pawlenty's unparalleled name recognition and fundraising from two terms as governor and a brief presidential campaign in 2012.

The stakes are high for both parties. For Democrats, the governor's office could be their only lever of power if they don't take the state House later this year. Republicans see a chance at seizing complete control of state government in the traditionally blue state.

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Leah Vukmir, a Wisconsin state senator and close ally to Governor Scott Walker, defeated a former Marine who cast himself as a political outsider to win the Republican primary for US Senate in the state's primaries

Ms Vukmir, who beat political newcomer Kevin Nicholson, advances to face Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin. Republicans have targeted Ms Baldwin - given Ms Baldwin is one of 10 Democrats defending their seats in states won by Donald Trump in 2016 - and outside groups have already spent millions in television ads attacking her.

Ms Vukmir won the endorsement of the Wisconsin Republican Party and the backing of most prominent GOP officeholders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, on her way to victory. She ran as the proven conservative in the race, pointing to her long voting record in support of Republican priorities.

Both she and Nicholson ran as strong supporters of President Trump. Ms Vukmir overcame the release just two weeks before election of a 2016 tape of her making negative comments about Trump and saying voters would have to hold their noses before casting a ballot for him.

Mr Trump, who narrowly won Wisconsin in 2016 by less than one percentage point, did not endorse in the primary.

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Democrats appeared particularly motivated in Wisconsin, where eight candidates lined up for the chance to take on Scott Walker, a two-term incumbent who has warned his party about the prospect of Democratic gains.

Walker's strong anti-union policies made him a villain to Democrats long before Trump's rise. State schools chief Tony Evers, who has clashed with Mr Walker at times, won the Democratic nomination.

Once a target of Trump criticism, Mr Walker gained the president's endorsement in a tweet Monday night calling him a tremendous Governor who has done incredible things for that Great State. But Mr Trump's persistent attacks on Wisconsin-based motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson put Republican candidates on their heels in recent days, Walker among them.

 Paul Ryan announces he will not seek re-election in 2018 midterms

Randy Bryce, a union ironworker known by the nickname Iron Stache, won Tuesday's Democratic primary in the race to replace Mr Ryan in Wisconsin for a seat he held 20 years before announcing his retirement earlier this year.

Republicans, for their part, pinned their hopes on a former Ryan aide, picking Bryan Steil, an attorney who is from a prominent family in the same hometown as Mr Ryan, in a five-way primary. Mr Steil will face Mr Bryce in November

Bryce called Steil a Ryan clone and branded him Lyin' Bryan in a statement his campaign texted to The Associated Press on Tuesday evening.

He has no idea what people in this district need, said Bryce, who defeated Janesville teacher and school board member Cathy Myers in the Democratic primary.

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 Close US Primaries: What are the key races as four US sates vote in primary elections?

Christine Hallquist has become the first transgender candidate to win a major political party's nomination for governor.

As part of the primaries in Vermont, Ms Hallquist beat three other Democrats to secure the victory.

The 62-year-old Ms Hallquist is part of a wave of LGBTQ candidates seeking higher office across the US. Ms Hallquist is being supported by The Victory Fund, a political action committee that backs LGBTQ candidates across the country. The committed labelled her a game changer.

Before Vermont's election, only four transgender candidates had won primaries in 2018, all for house and senate seats in state legislatures, and have a general election ahead. Seventeen have lost primary or general elections and 21 have yet to face voters

Elsewhere, Bernie Sanders has won the Democratic Senate beating Folasade Adeluola as he seeks a third term in office.

With 98 per cent of precincts reporting, Mr Sanders had 94 per cent of the vote. It was not immediately clear which Republican he will face in the general election in November, given a close race between Brooke Paige and Lawrence Zupan that had just hundreds of votes in it.

Mr Sanders' win does not come as a surprise. The self-described Democratic Socialist won re-election in 2012 with about 71 per cent of the vote. Before that, in 2006, he carried about 65 per cent of the vote.

While Mr Sanders won the Democratic nomination, he is widely expected to reject it. Doing so has become a regular move for the notably independent senator over the years.

 Bernie Sanders: Trump has been tougher on immigrant children than on Putin

Phil Scott, the Republican governor in the reliably Democratic state, has won the GOP primary as he seeks re-election and will face Ms Hallquist.

Ethan Sonneborn is another candidate worth mentioning. Hes a 14-year-old progressive who decided to launch his campaign after violence erupted last year during a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina. State law allows anyone who has lived in Vermont for four years to run for governor after securing enough signatures to get on the ballot, making Mr Sonneborn legally qualified despite his age. He secured more than 4,000 votes for an eight per cent share of the ballots.

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Vermont isnt the only state that held a primary on Tuesday  Minnesota, Wisconsin and Connecticut also had elections to determine which candidates will face off come November.
Italy has demanded that the UK takes in 141 refugees rescued by a humanitarian ship in the Mediterranean Sea.

Officials in Italy and Malta have refused to let the Aquarius dock after it picked up the people from overcrowded wooden boats adrift off the coast of Libya on Friday.

The charities SOS Mediterranee and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which operate the rescue ship, have appealed for European governments to offer refuge to those on board.

Sixty-seven unaccompanied children are among the migrants, who are mostly from Somalia and Eritrea. Some are extremely weak and malnourished, MSF warned.

Italys new populist government has shut the countrys ports to all humanitarian boats, calling them a taxi service for illegal immigrants.

The Aquarius is now in international waters between Italy and Malta.

It can go where it wants, not in Italy, tweeted Romes far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini.

He suggested France, Germany, Britain or Malta as alternative destinations for the boat.

Maltas rescue coordination centre told the Aquarius on Saturday that it would not welcome the ship, according to the boats online log.

Italian transport minister Danilo Toninelli, who oversees ports and the coast guard, said Britain should take in the refugees as the boat is registered in Gibraltar.

At this point, the United Kingdom should assume its responsibility to safeguard the castaways, he wrote on Twitter.

The Independent has contacted the UK Foreign Office for comment.

The European Commission has been speaking to several EU states as it looks to help resolve the deadlock, a spokesman in Brussels said.

What is of utmost importance is that the survivors are brought to a place of safety without delay, where their basic needs can be met and where they can be protected from abuse, said Nick Romaniuk, search and rescue coordinator at SOS Mediterranee.

A rescue is not complete until there is disembarkation in a place of safety.

Twenty-five of the migrants on board are believed to have been at sea for 35 hours when they were rescued from a small wooden boat with no engine.

Hours later, Aquarius spotted a second overcrowded wooden boat with 116 people onboard.

Many told charity workers they had been held in inhumane conditions in Libya.

Refugees and migrants arriving in Catania, Sicily Show all 7 1 /7 Refugees and migrants arriving in Catania, Sicily Refugees and migrants arriving in Catania, Sicily Refugees and migrants arriving in Italy on MSF rescue ship the Bourbon Argos in Catania, Sicily Lizzie DeardenI Refugees and migrants arriving in Catania, Sicily Refugees and migrants disembarking from MSF rescue ship the Bourbon Argos in Catania, Sicily Lizzie Dearden Refugees and migrants arriving in Catania, Sicily Refugees and migrants undergoing health checks after disembarking from MSF rescue ship the Bourbon Argos in Catania, Sicily Lizzie Dearden Refugees and migrants arriving in Catania, Sicily Refugees and migrants undergoing security checks after disembarking from MSF rescue ship the Bourbon Argos in Catania, Sicily Lizzie Dearden Refugees and migrants arriving in Catania, Sicily Refugees and migrants being fingerprinted after disembarking from MSF rescue ship the Bourbon Argos in Catania, Sicily Lizzie Dearden Refugees and migrants arriving in Catania, Sicily Refugees and migrants being fingerprinted after disembarking from MSF rescue ship the Bourbon Argos in Catania, Sicily Lizzie Dearden Refugees and migrants arriving in Catania, Sicily A man being taken to hospital from MSF rescue ship the Bourbon Argos in Catania, Sicily Lizzie Dearden

The Aquarius spent nine days at sea with 630 migrants on board in June after it was turned away by Italy. It was later allowed to dock in Spain.

Most charity rescue vessels have stopped patrolling off the coast of Libya amid pressure from Italy and Malta.

It seems the very principle of rendering assistance to persons in distress at sea is now at stake. Ships might be unwilling to respond to those in distress due to the high risk of being stranded and denied a place of safety, said Aloys Vimard, MSFs project coordinator onboard Aquarius.

Although the number of migrant boats setting off from the north African county has fallen dramatically this year, people smugglers are still pushing some boats out to sea.

According to Amnesty International, an estimated 720 people died in June and July when charity ships were mainly absent.

Italy has accused its partners of not sharing the burden of migrants who arrive on EUs southern border, stoking tensions particularly with France, Malta and Germany.
Two Israeli teenagers have reportedly been caught on video dancing naked at a former Nazi death camp during a school trip to Poland.

Security cameras filmed the pupils stripping off at Majdanek, a concentration camp which now houses a museum and memorial to victims of the Holocaust.

They were expelled from the trip and forced to fly home after security staff saw the footage and notified authorities, Haaretz reported.

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Israels Education Ministry said it views with great severity any behaviour that could harm the status and values represented by the trips to Poland.

In the case in question, due to the students improper and inappropriate behaviour, disciplinary actions have been taken against them to the fullest, it added. They were returned to Israel, and the educational institution intends to use appropriate discipline methods.

The teenagers were reportedly in the 11th grade  the penultimate year  at a high school in Beit Shean, a city in northern Israel.

The Emek Hamayanot Regional Council, which oversees schools in the region, described the pupils behaviour as a severe disciplinary violation and promised an investigation.

The pupils are believed to have been filmed stripping off over the weekend at the camp, on the outskirts of the city of Lublin in central Poland.

An estimated 80,000 people, including 60,000 Jews, were murdered by the Nazis at Majdanek between October 1941 and 1944.

Remembering the Holocaust Show all 16 1 /16 Remembering the Holocaust Remembering the Holocaust 119165.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119169.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119229.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119167.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119162.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119166.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119163.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119224.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119168.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119228.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119152.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119226.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119150.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119151.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119147.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119231.bin Hannah Bills

Under Polish law, those who desecrate a monument or public place devoted to a historical event or person can be punished with a fine or prison.

One of the students, who reportedly exposed his backside at Majdanek, was fined. The other teenager was given a warning.

In March, a 19-year-old Israeli man was fined $1,500 (1,060) after he was caught urinating on a memorial for victims at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz.

Last year Holocaust survivors voiced anger over a video, filmed by a Polish artist, depicting naked people playing tag in a gas chamber at a former Nazi concentration camp near Gdansk.

In 2014, eight shoes belonging to Holocaust victims were stolen from an exhibition in Majdaneks museum.
Iran's supreme leader has banned holding "any talks" with the US following Donald Trump's offer of unconditional dialogue in a bid to improve bilateral ties.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on policy in the Islamic Republic, said Mr Trump's reneging of the Obama-era nuclear deal was evidence America cannot be trusted.

He also accused the Iranian government of economic mismanagement in the face to new US sanctions.

Washington reimposed sanctions last week after pulling out of the 2015 international deal aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear programme in return for an easing of economic sanctions.

Mr Trump has also threatened to penalise companies, including ones from the EU, that continue to operate in Iran.

Woody Johnson, the American ambassador to the UK, urged the British government to rethink its support for the "flawed 2015 deal in a recent article in the Sunday Telegraph.

"I ban holding any talks with America... America never remains loyal to its promises in talks," state TV quoted Mr Khamenei as telling a gathering attended by thousands of Iranians. "America's withdrawal from the nuclear deal is a clear proof that America cannot be trusted."

 Trump says he would meet with Iran's leaders without preconditions

The sanctions target Iran's trade in gold and other precious metals, its purchases of US dollars and its car industry.

Washington had said Iran's only chance of avoiding the sanctions would be to accept Mr Trump's offer to negotiate for a tougher nuclear deal. Iranian officials already rejected the offer but it is the first time Mr Khamenei has publicly commented.

However, Mr Khamenei ruled out the possibility of war with the US.

"They (the Americans) are exaggerating the possibility of a war with Iran. There will be no war... We have never started a war and they will not confront Iran militarily," he said.

Mr Khamenei, whose remarks on Monday come amid a sharp fall in the rial currency that has prompted angry protests, criticised the government of president Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist cleric who championed the 2015 deal aimed at ending Iran's political and economic isolation.

"More than the sanctions, economic mismanagement (by the government) is putting pressure on ordinary Iranians... I do not call it betrayal but a huge mistake in management," state TV quoted Mr Khamenei as saying.

"With better management and more efficient planning we can resist the sanctions and overcome them," Mr Khamenei said, in an apparent effort to deflect public anger over the deteriorating economy towards Mr Rouhani's government.

European countries, which still back the 2015 deal, fear Mr Trump's moves will undermine Mr Rouhani and strengthen the hand of his hardline rivals in the clerical establishment.

Iran parliament reacts after Trump's withdrawal from nuclear deal Show all 10 1 /10 Iran parliament reacts after Trump's withdrawal from nuclear deal Iran parliament reacts after Trump's withdrawal from nuclear deal Iranian MPs burnt a US flag in parliament after Donald Trump announced America's withdrawal from the nuclear deal. AFP/Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency Iran parliament reacts after Trump's withdrawal from nuclear deal US President Donald Trump displays a presidential memorandum after announcing his intent to withdraw from the JCPOA Iran nuclear agreement in the Diplomatic Room at the White House. Reuters Iran parliament reacts after Trump's withdrawal from nuclear deal Some Iranian MPs reacted after Trumps decision by shouting 'death to America'. AFP/Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency Iran parliament reacts after Trump's withdrawal from nuclear deal Iranian lawmakers prepare to burn two pieces of papers representing the US flag and the nuclear deal. AP Iran parliament reacts after Trump's withdrawal from nuclear deal Iran said it will hold talks with signatories to the nuclear deal after Trump's decision to withdraw from the accord, which it branded "psychological warfare". AFP/Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency Iran parliament reacts after Trump's withdrawal from nuclear deal Several Iranian MPs stood chanting in the Tehran parliament. AFP/Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency Iran parliament reacts after Trump's withdrawal from nuclear deal Iranian MPs burning a US flag AFP/Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency Iran parliament reacts after Trump's withdrawal from nuclear deal President Hassan Rouhani addressed the nation in a televised speech in Tehran. He said he'd send his foreign minister to negotiate with countries remaining in the nuclear deal after Trump's decision to pull America from the deal, warning he otherwise would restart enriching uranium "in the next weeks." Iranian Presidency Office via AP Iran parliament reacts after Trump's withdrawal from nuclear deal Iran's press condemned Trump's withdrawal from a multi-party nuclear deal but was divided over whether Tehran should react with patience or withdraw itself. AFP Iran parliament reacts after Trump's withdrawal from nuclear deal Trump announced the US withdrawal from what he called the "defective" multinational nuclear deal with Iran, and said Washington would reinstate sanctions against the Islamic republic. AFP/Getty

The rial has lost about half of its value since April in anticipation of the renewed US sanctions, driven mainly by heavy demand for dollars among ordinary Iranians trying to protect their savings.

Iranian officials have blamed "enemies" for the fall of the currency and a rapid rise in the price of gold coins, and more than 60 people, including several officials, have been arrested on charges that carry the death penalty.

"The corrupt people (officials) should be punished firmly," Mr Khamenei said on Monday.

Thousands of Iranians have protested in recent weeks against sharp rises in the prices of some food items, a lack of jobs and state corruption. The protests over the cost of living have often turned into anti-government rallies.

Defying US demands to curb its missile programme, Iran unveiled a new generation of its "Fateh Mobin" short-range ballistic missile on Monday, state TV reported.

"Our will to enhance our defence power in all fields will increase if the pressure mounts on Iran," defence minister brigadier general Amir Hatami said after unveiling the "fully home-made precision-guided" missile.

Mr Trump has said Iran must also stop meddling in conflicts in Syria and Yemen, but foreign minister Javad Zarif struck a defiant tone on Monday, telling Qatar's al Jazeera TV: "Iran will not change its policies in the region because of US sanctions and threats."

Additional reporting by Reuters
More than 30,000 people took to the streets of Tel Aviv over the weekend to voice their opposition to Israels controversial new nation state law.

The Arab, Druze and Jewish crowds waved Palestinian flags and shouted and sang in both Arabic and Hebrew in Rabin Square on Saturday night against what has been dubbed an apartheid law by Arab Israeli politicians.

The law legitimises racism, Laila al Sana, a 19-year-old from from a Bedouin village in Israels southern Negev desert, told Reuters.

 Ahed Tamimi: Teenage Palestinian protester released from Israeli prison

Its very important to show we are here, to resist, she said.

I feel ashamed that after 70 years [since the founding of Israel] I have to accentuate my nationalism instead of being generous toward all those who live here, said Gila Zamir, 58, a Jewish Israeli from the Arab-Jewish city Haifa.

The legislation passed last month by the Knesset is designed to strengthen Israels identity as the national home of the Jewish people.

It has been widely condemned as discriminatory towards the countrys 20 per cent Arab population by critics at home and abroad, however, sparking several protests.

Critics say civil equality as currently enshrined in Israeli law is undermined by the new legislation because it differentiates between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens.

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

Among other measures, the law downgrades Arabic from being an official language and encourages settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the weekends protest proved the necessity of passing the law.

Yesterday we received unequivocal evidence of defiance to the existence of the State of Israel and the necessity of the nation state law, Mr Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting on Sunday.

We saw flags of the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organisation] in the heart of Tel Aviv. In the heart of Tel Aviv! Mr Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting on Sunday.

We heard slogans in Arabic including By blood and fire we will clear Palestine. Many of the demonstrators want to repeal the law of return [that gives Jews the right to emigrate to Israel]; they want to abolish the anthem and the flag, and turn Israel into a Palestinian state.

Its clearer now more than ever that the nation state law is needed to ensure the future of Israel as a Jewish state, he added.

 Jordanians refuse to work on job after finding out it is for gas pipeline with Israel

Saturdays mainly Arab-led protest follows another huge demonstration organised by Israels minority Druze community the previous week.

The small section of Israel society  around 120,000 people  is Muslim and Arabic speaking, but has earned a reputation as the countrys model minority because of their support for the state and willingness to serve in the military.

Prominent Druze politicians have vowed to mount a legal opposition to the law, a move that has resonated among Israels establishment.
The UK Border Force achieved its queuing time target at Heathrow airport on just one day in July, according to data sourced by Virgin Atlantic.

The airline has called on the government to improve wait times at immigration after it revealed that some passengers from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) had to queue for more than two and a half hours last month.

The Border Force has a target of processing 95 per cent of passengers from non-EEA countries within 45 minutes.

This summer significant queues at Border Control mean that thousands of visitors have regularly faced the longest queues in London to get their passports checked, often over two hours, leaving them frustrated before theyve even started their trip, Virgin Atlantics chief executive, Craig Kreeger, told the Press Association.

At a time when the UK needs to show the world it is open for business, the government and Border Force need to provide a great first impression for every visitor every time.

The busiest day was on 6 July, when some passengers spent up to two hours and 36 minutes waiting in line.

It follows British Airways CEO Alex Cruz highlighting the same issue in a letter to The Times last month; he called the situation at border control unacceptable and a farce, and asked Sajid Javid, the home secretary, to take immediate action.

Queues are significantly worse than at many other major world airports, said Cruz.

What kind of message does this send, as we try to build links outside the EU?

Heathrow airport has also joined airlines in calling for change. A Heathrow spokeswoman told the BBC: Heathrow is Britains front door and it should be welcoming, as well as secure. It takes far too long for low-risk passengers who have a right to be here to get through the border, which is unacceptable.

We are calling on the home secretary to allow low-risk passengers from non-EU countries such as the US and Canada to use e-gates, in the same way as our EU friends can.

The Home Office provided an extra 200 people to staff the Border Force at Heathrow this summer, but bigger questions over resourcing have been raised by the Airport Operators Association (AOA), which criticised recent cuts. The force had its budget cut by 2.3 per in 2017, while the number of passengers passing through UK airports increased by 6 per cent to a record 285 million.
Communities across Britain have endured a decade of almost unrelenting austerity. They have grown used to poorer public services, though not complacent or satisfied about the result. They have, for example, seen cuts in community policing that have compromised efforts to combat burglary and other significant crimes. Even allowing for the usual considerations of special pleading, the latest warnings from the Police Federation about offences going not only unpunished, but uninvestigated, ring true  because we gave seen such a dereliction of public safety in recent years.

The statistics substantiate the claims: murder and violent crime rates are up; there is more drink driving; the wave of cyber attacks on bank accounts threatens ruin for many families. Scandals over the disclosure of material in criminal cases such as rape highlight how the digital age and a vast volume of text and email messages consume detectives finite time. The scourge of gangs, moped muggings, the drug dealers county lines and, as in Moss Side overnight, shootings, are all challenges that are stretching constabularies nationally.

They are hardly alone. The financial collapse of Northamptonshire County Council is likely to be merely the first of many. The NHS, supposedly protected from austerity, has found its annual winter crisis becoming normalised. The armed forces and security services too are being asked to do more with less, as are schools and social services. Universal credit, meanwhile, looks capable of devastating both public spending targets and the welfare of the poorest in society, so botched has it been. Certainly there will be little money available to rescue rail commuters from their misery.

The tragedy is that relief was in sight, as the economy picked up, employment reached record highs and tax rises yielded results for the Exchequer. The public finances recently moved towards a position where the nation was borrowing to invest rather than spend on current activities. Britains credit rating was no longer in imminent jeopardy. The sacrifices looked to be perhaps worth it.

Yet, just as the public finances started to look sustainable, Brexit threatens more disruption and, in due course, further cuts in spending and services; and, nonetheless, increased taxation and borrowing. It is a chilling prospect, about which only the very wealthy can feel comfortable.

The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has done what he can to prepare for the worst but, as with so many others, has underestimated how chaotic a hard Brexit next spring will be  and it is a 60 per cent probability according to his colleague Liam Fox.

The UK economy has already lost nearly 30bn of investment because of Brexit uncertainties. That is doubly damaging because it reduces the future productive capacity of the economy, depressing productivity and in due course wages and output.

The truth is that Mr Hammond faces the worst outlook for the public finances in decades. Indeed so bad is it in some respects that even throwing money at the problem will not work. If and when EU nationals leave after Brexit, public services will simply be unable to recruit the skilled, or for that matter unskilled, staff necessary, at whatever wage rates are offered.

The outlook, then, is grim and far away from the breezy optimism of the Brexiteers in the 2016 referendum. Even if the UK refused to pay the divorce bill to the EU as well as ceasing all subventions to EU budgets and agencies, the economic shock to the UK will be of historic  and self inflicted  proportions. The NHS would be lucky to see the 350m a week promised, given the hammering tax renewals will soon suffer.

Individual households, as a recent ONS study detailed with terrifying accuracy, have no room for manoeuvre in their budgets either. Companies for their part feel they cannot risk investing. The governments own finances will thus come under even greater pressure. And the nation still runs a trade deficit, one that will widen when we lose key EU markets. The abandonment of key public service provision is already a reality in local authorities. What will follow? A means tested NHS? Fees for sixth formers? Lower caps on housing benefit?

Some dismiss such notions as project fear. But tough choices will come in the 2020s. If we are to face this situation and the potential for civil disorder, does it not make sense to give the people most affected a final say on averting it? Some will feel the cost is still worth it for regaining sovereignty, and would give up their own job to leave the EU; others will not. Either way they deserve a chance to have their say about the future.
DAMAGES: Monsanto has lost a court case in the US based on whether or not Roundup caused a groundskeepers cancer. Photo: AP

Shares in Bayer plunged more than 10 percent to their lowest in almost two years after a California jury ordered the German company's subsidiary Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages last week.

A jury found Monsanto liable in a lawsuit alleging that the company's glyphosate-based weedkillers, including its Roundup brand, caused cancer. The case against Monsanto, which Bayer acquired this year for $63 billion, is the first of more than 5,000 similar lawsuits across the United States.

Monsanto said on Friday that it would appeal against the verdict.

"Todays decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews ... support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer," it said in a statement.

Bayer shares were down 10.6pc at 83.48 euros at 0728 GMT, against a 0.6 decline for the DAX index.

In Europe the EU Commission in December renewed the licence for glyphosate despite intense debate over its safety, though Germany and France have taken steps to phase out use of the weedkiller.

Originally an exclusive Monsanto brand, patent-free glyphosate herbicides are now sold by the global crop-protection industry.
Barclays has begun shifting direct ownership of its French, German and Spanish branches from a British-based entity to its Irish bank, according to sources with direct knowledge of the plans, ahead of Britains exit from the European Union.

The move shows Barclays putting its Brexit contingency plans into action, in common with other banks which are not waiting for the outcome of negotiations over how financial services will operate after Britain leaves the EU in March.

The British bank outlined plans to expand its EU-based Irish entity in a slide presentation to investors earlier this month, saying the unit would primarily consist of Barclays corporate, investment and private banking activities and its Barclaycard credit card business in Germany.

In addition to the French, German, and Spanish branches, Barclays will ultimately move all of its European branches under control of Barclays Bank Ireland, one of the sources said.

Its other main corporate and investment banking businesses in Europe include Luxembourg, Switzerland, Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands, according to a Reuters review of company filings.

Barclays Bank Ireland will have total assets of around 224bn after absorbing all the European business, Barclays said in its presentation to investors, out of 1.1 trillion for the entire bank as of the end of 2017.

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This will mean that it will be Irelands biggest bank by assets, in comparison with Bank of Ireland (123bn) or AIB (90.1bn) by assets.

Barclays no longer operates a consumer banking business in Europe, having sold the last of its retail operation in 2016 as the bank shifted its global strategy to focus on the United States and Britain.

While Barclays European branches will still ultimately be owned by its London-listed holding company, the change in organizational structure shows how lenders are shifting business to try to avoid any disruption that Brexit might cause.

Banks are trying to ensure that even under a no-deal scenario, where Britain would crash out of the EU without any agreements in place, they would still be able to serve EU customers as before.

British banks have largely chosen to base their main European hubs wherever they already have a suitably licensed existing subsidiary, as they seek to minimize costs and inconvenience in the event a last-minute deal renders the reorganizations unnecessary.

Barclays rival HSBC has begun shifting direct ownership of its European branches from its British entity to its French subsidiary, while Lloyds is planning three EU subsidiaries, Reuters reported in July.
Brexit negotiations between the UK and the EU are due to reconvene on Thursday in Brussels. Stock photo: PA Wire/PA Images

Brexit negotiations between the UK and the EU are due to reconvene on Thursday in Brussels.

The European Union is signalling that it wants to make September a decisive month in the divorce negotiations, while British Prime Minister Theresa May is more in favour of a late-autumn deadline. The talks are expected to continue on Friday.

Tomorrow, China will release its industrial production and retail sales data for July.

Of interest to investors will be the impact, if any, of US sanctions on the figures.

Meanwhile back home, KBC Bank Ireland, along with the ESRI, will release the Consumer Sentiment Index for July today.

Glenveagh Properties is due to hold an extraordinary general meeting today, where the company will ask shareholders to formally approve its recent funding round of 213m.

Tomorrow, the Central Statistics Office will release the residential property price index for June. This will be followed on Wednesday by the release of the imports and exports data from the CSO.

Looking ahead, the outcome of an internal investigation into FBD boss Fiona Muldoon could become known shortly.
Efforts to resolve the ongoing Ryanair dispute began this morning, but indications suggest that a resolution won't be made today.

Industrial action by pilots has caused widespread disruption throughout Europe over the past month, with five one day strikes forcing the cancellation of more than 100 flights.

This morning's talks started at 9.30am this morning in Dublin Airport, with four Ryanair pilots and a number of trade union negotiators discussing ways to reach a settlement.

Kieran Mulvey, the former head of the Workplace Relations Commission, was called in as an independent mediator who will try and break the deadlock between the two sides.

Speaking to Independent.ie, Bernard Harbour from the FORSA - the union which represents the pilots - said he's optimistic that an agreement will eventually be made.

"I'd be surprised if an resolution was made today, but there could well be one within the next two or three days," he said.

"Today is significant because it's 24 days since the two parties sat down together to have any type of conversation, despite the fact that there have been five one day strikes.

"It's also significant because the company has accepted a suggestion that we get a third party facilitator to help the process along.

"Kieran Mulvey is a very experienced and accomplished man, which means our objective to negotiate a settlement has become more likely.

"But there's still a big gap between the two dies but it's a bridgeable gap."

Expand Close Protesting Ryanair pilots at Dublin Airport. Photo: Aoife Moore/PA / Facebook

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Mr Harbour believes that Ryanair are inexperienced in negotiating with unions.

"It's been only seven or eight months since they decided to deal with unions, which is why I think they're struggling with the process, but they're coming here to talk to us and that can only be a good thing."

He added that no further strikes have been planned to date, but warns if Ryanair does not address the pilots' work condition concerns that more days of industrial action will be likely.

"We think it's very possible to achieve a settlement, but if this process isn't successful then there is obviously the danger of further industrial action."

Kenny Jacobs, Ryanairs chief marketing officer, told Morning Ireland that the dispute had gone to a third party because the series of "unjustified" strikes has not achieved anything.

We hope that, with third party mediation, Forsa will now take control of their side of the process, he said. We hope that any unwanted interference by non-Ryanair pilots is removed. We hope that Forsa take it more seriously and we ultimately hope that this process is successful.

It is now understood that Mr Mulvey has asked both sides to refrain from talking to the media while the process is underway.
Nicholas Dunne, CEO of Killowen Farm, with some of his herd of cows on the farm near Courtnacuddy, Enniscorthy. Picture: Frank McGrath

Farms are valuable assets and, as with any business, maximising the value from that asset makes good commercial sense.

Dairy farmers, in particular, make their money from the milk produced. But the holy grail for some farmers is to make the transition from traditional farming to further up the value chain. If they can produce saleable products that utilise the asset and the manpower of the people, that has to be a good thing.

Of course, that's easier said than done. However, there are countless success stories of iconic Irish agri-businesses that are now significant brands on the world stage. Kerry Group, Glanbia, Dawn Foods and Queally meats all started on an Irish farm.

From Caterpillar to Butterfly

Wexford man Nicholas Dunne considers himself to be very fortunate. This humility is genuine. But in my view, it masks the real drive, passion and entrepreneurship that has turned his family farm into a powerhouse for making yogurt. After spending a year in Australia, Nicholas returned in 1991 to take over the family farm of 80 Friesian cows from his dad, Tom Dunne. Within five years, he built the stock to 200 cows. He immersed himself in learning by being on the board of Wexford Creamery, doing a one-year part-time diploma in corporate direction in UCC and visiting Kerry Foods' plants in the US.

This opened his eyes and made him realise the 'art of the possible' and that there were other ways to get a return on his investment, time and effort. Nicholas the entrepreneur started to explore other options.

The Killowen Purchase Milestone

When your lifetime is spent around dairy cows, the business ideas obviously centre on milk. Nicholas investigated and just as quickly turned away from cheese, frozen yogurt, ice-cream and more.

In 2003, his sister Pauline (who now works with him in a sales and marketing role) told him about a local yogurt-maker called Killowen that was closing down. That evening Nicholas made contact with the owners and within days he was in the yogurt business. It seemed that all the time spent exploring his options was paying off.

Paul and Laura Kinsella, the previous owners, were passionate about quality and Killowen had been a premium product since the 1980s. After renting their premises for a year, Nicholas moved the plant to its current site, the Dunne family farm. This was essential for control and to reduce the transporting of milk. It also removed the split focus on two locations. The next couple of years were a huge learning curve for production, quality control, dealing with state agencies and banks, sales, marketing and so on.

Strategy and Scones at the Kitchen Table

By now the business was expanding at pace. Pallas Foods became an important customer for their food service division, which put the Killowen brand into hotels across Ireland. The large multiple retailers also became very interested and the brand is now listed in many of the leading chains around Ireland.

All major meetings and decisions are made at the kitchen table of the original family home. Nicholas' mother and father greet every visitor with a cup of tea and a scone. I myself was charmed on my visit with their warmth and hospitality. Inside, the kitchen is like a time warp, yet across the yard is a sophisticated and modern facility making the creamiest and best-tasting yogurt I've ever come across. A retail buyer was so intrigued that he took photos to share with his colleagues back home.

Scaling Up

Two significant milestones are worth mentioning. One is the debate around private label. Many retailers like to have a product with their own label which they promote heavily. Nicholas's view is that it brings volume and cash to the business. That then gives him the resources to invest in his own brand. For me, any company in this situation ought to consider this seriously. I guess the percentage split between private and own label is the watch-out for the long term.

Secondly, Fine Foods Eire is a Dubai-based agency specialising in introducing Irish produce to the Middle East and Far East markets. Nicholas gives full credit to it for Killowen Yogurt now being available in the Burj Al Arab in Dubai and in the first-class cabin of Emirates airline. That company is marching east and has secured listings for Killowen in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Japan.

The Last word to Nicholas

Nicholas acknowledges that there were many times during the years that were particularly tough. Cash has been tight, but the farm as an asset was a great cushion for bank borrowing. He has no problem giving personal guarantees to whoever he owes money to, as he sees it almost as a moral duty to honour debts.

His one piece of advice is to ensure you partner up only with people that have a mutual ambition for success. For him that includes Enterprise Ireland, Teagasc, Bord Bia, bankers and accountants. He lives and breathes win-win thinking. That, of course, requires trust and reciprocal thinking.
The latest Rollant 540 fixed-chamber round baler features new rollers and a stronger chassis, with the choice of net or film wrapping.

The machiene makes bales with a diameter of 1.25 m and width of 1.22 m. The baling chamber is formed by 16 rollers, made from 4-mm-thick steel plate.

Claas says the serrated profile of the rollers maintains optimum bale rotation even under moist conditions.

Bearing and power transmission functions are performed via specially hardened 50-mm diameter lateral axle stubs on the input drive side.

They are flange-mounted on the roller body, and can be individually replaced if necessary.

The tailgate closing rams are arranged horizontally at the sides, resulting in high baling pressures.

The new design also reduces the pressure exerted on the tailgate and ram bearing structures. For maximum bale density, forces of up to 180 bar can be applied to the rams.

To further increase density, the Rollant 540 can also be supplied with the MPS II system as an option.

With MPS, a segment bearing three of the baling rollers pivots into the chamber for additional bale compression, early bale rotation, and a perfectly uniform bale shape.

Optimum chain lubrication, even during long working days

The baling rollers are driven solely from the left hand side of the machine. Each roller has direct drive, Claas says this results in uniform force distribution to the rollers with a lower power requirement.

The chains are lubricated via an eccentric pump, with oil supply from a 6.3-l storage tank. Lubrication is applied precisely when and where required, at the rotation points of the chain links.

High-performance pick-up ensures optimum crop flow

A 2.10-m-wide controlled pick-up retrieves the crop reliably and efficiently, and a double flattening roller is available as optional equipment. This improves crop flow, especially for particularly large and small swaths, and promotes uniform bale formation. Two lateral feed augers provide a reliable supply to the rotor.

The optional chopping mechanism has 15 knives, with a theoretical cut length of 70 mm. The knives can be swung in from the cab, and have individual protection against damage from foreign objects. When blockages occur, the cutting chamber can be lowered with a command from the control terminal. This provides an extremely user-friendly system for the driver, and minimises downtime. There is also a lower power requirement for restarting the mechanism afterwards.

Choice of net or film wrapping

In the Rollant 540, the user has a choice between net and film wrapping. Changing the wrapping mode is a tool-free operation, performed simply by adjusting the side screws of the guide roller. A ramp on the right side of the machine simplifies the task of loading the wrapping system. A replacement roll  either film or net  can also be carried.
The deadline for the application of organic manures will be extended from mid-October to the end of October. Stock Image

Farmers have welcomed an extension of the fertiliser-spreading deadline but warn more needs to be done to address fodder shortages.

Agriculture Minister Michael Creed announced the measure as he opened the Tullamore Show in Co Offaly.

Mr Creed said the deadline for the application of chemical fertiliser would be extended from mid-September to the end of the month.

The deadline for the application of organic manures will be extended from mid-October to the end of October.

"That gives us an opportunity to maximise the growing season and also the fodder," he told the crowd.

Mr Creed encouraged farmers to take up the tillage initiative.

In April this year, he announced the allocation of 1.5m for the introduction of a fodder import support measure in response to the bad winter.

However he added: "It would be wrong to believe that the importation of fodder will resolve this issue on its own. It will play a part but the biggest and the most effective will be maximising the opportunities that are there between now and the end of the growing season for fodder conservation. Details of that will be announced in due course."

Mr Creed acknowledged the "very difficult challenge" faced by farming families as a result of this year's weather conditions.

An IFA spokesperson welcomed the move to extend the fertiliser-spreading deadline. However, he said, it was only one of the measures sought by farmers.

"We want to see an import fodder scheme," the spokesman commented. "If we don't move on this we won't have plans in place for next winter."

He pointed out that a similar situation was developing across Europe and acting now may help with affordability and availability.

Aside from an import scheme, the IFA spokesman said the department also needed to move now to resolve issues with GLAS in order to enable farmers to plant catch crops.

Mr Creed said: "I am convinced that though it is extremely challenging, financially challenging, physically challenging and emotionally challenging, that we will come through this challenge together ."

The fodder production incentive measure for tillage farmers and GLAS flexibilities would contribute positively in this regard, he said.
Drought and a heatwave that scorched fields in northern Europe may cut the European Unions wheat export surplus and the bloc will need to consume more of its own grains, experts said on Friday.

French analysts Strategie Grains forecast a 10pc smaller EU soft wheat harvest this year, with northern areas particularly hard hit. EU wheat prices have hit over five-year highs on crop concerns.

Wheat exporters like Germany and Scandinavia may need imports from the rest of the EU this year, especially for animal feed wheat, one German trader said. The terrible harvest in north Europe is good news for rival wheat exporters like Russia, Ukraine and the United States.

Some wheat from EU Black Sea exporters such as Romania is likely to stay in Europe rather than being shipped to the Middle East, the trader said.

In Germany, the EUs second-largest producer, the winter wheat crop is expected to fall 19.9pc on the year to 19.2 million tonnes after the highest July temperatures since records began in 1881. Harvesting is finishing.

Germany is usually one of the EUs biggest wheat exporters but will swing to an importer this season especially for animal feed, another German trader said. About 800,000 tonnes of feed wheat have already been bought, mostly from Romania and Bulgaria, and I think more could be bought.

In France, the EUs largest producer, harvesting is over. Torrential rain and heatwaves are expected to have cut the crop, although damage was seen as less severe than in northern Europe.

Crop estimates are generally between 33 and 35 million tonnes, down from 36.6 million last year, while milling quality was generally good.

Quality results showed decent protein content, averaging above 11.5pc, and test weights generally above milling requirements despite some mixed readings linked to heavy rain, agency FranceAgriMer said.

Polands crop will fall about 12pc to roughly 9.9 million tonnes, Wojtek Sabaranski of analysts Sparks Polska said. Harvesting is well advanced but crop quality varies greatly, Sabaranski said.

Britains winter wheat harvest was nearly 60pc complete on Aug. 7, well ahead of normal, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board said.

Trade estimates for the UK wheat harvest range between 13.5 million and 14.0 million tonnes, down from 14.8 million last season.

There have been no real issues with grain quality and the clear dry conditions during harvest mean that crops have been harvested when ripe, with no weather delays, the board said.
Enda Corneille, Ireland country manager with Emirates, Nisha Leelakrishnan, Emirates cabin crew, and Ahmad Younis, Arab-Irish Chamber of Commerce at the launch of the Arab-Irish Forum

This column is a big advocate of travel without the red tape - and a few smart moves on Ireland's part are already opening more doors in newer markets.

With the push to diversify Ireland Inc's business in a post-Brexit world, Ireland removed visa requirements for United Arab Emirates nationals, beginning last January.

And last month, Ireland opened an external visa application - the first in the UAE - where foreigners living in the region can apply for Irish travel visas.

The logic is that because the area is home to large numbers of high-net-worth individuals and foreign residents heading up multinational companies, Ireland can steal a march by simplifying their travel process here.

Instead of having to visit Ireland's embassy in Abu Dhabi, the process is simplified, including a 'Premium Lounge' service where staff will help applicants fill in their visa forms.

It's early days for the new service - operated by VFS Global, billing itself as the world's largest outsourcing and technology services specialist for diplomatic missions - but the visa exemption decision is already paying dividends.

Enda Corneille, country manager for Emirates airline in Ireland, told the Sunday Independent: "Since January, we've seen a 17pc increase in total business coming from the UAE into Ireland on the Dubai route."

Corneille added that the jump was noticeable from the first quarter of this year, so it can't be put down to inbound tourism, when UAE nationals head away from the hellish summer heat there. "Nothing else has changed, so I can only put it down to the visa exemption," he says.

And the surge has been unexpected, given that only one-in-five passengers on his flights actually stay in the hub city of Dubai: "Business class alone has increased by 28pc. I was quite surprised by that."

Not that he's complaining. "My job is slightly different from most country managers in that I'm measured on route profitability," with an equal focus on inbound, not just outbound, bums on seats.

Given the economics of aviation, where a full business class means bigger profits, "where you see a big increase at the front of the bus, that's valuable", he said. Corneille believes such a figure "points to a potential real economic benefit to Ireland having those exemptions in place" and said the new office for non-UAE nationals "is going to drive the traffic even higher".

While much attention is placed on Asia-Pacific, especially China, trade with the UAE is substantial - and rising. In 2016, Irish exports to Arab markets in the UAE and beyond were valued at 4.3bn, and growing, due to regular direct links between the two countries from the likes of Emirates and rival Etihad Airways.

As it stands, 250 Irish companies - across fintech, ICT, engineering, life sciences, aerospace, education and premium foods - export goods to the UAE alone.

And with an economic report commissioned by the Arab-Irish Chamber of Commerce forecasting that Irish exports to the Arab markets will reach 9bn over the next two decades, Dublin will be playing host to a conference aimed at opening up new markets for exporters.

The Arab-Irish Business Forum, taking place in Dublin's Mansion House on October 3, will feature discussion on countries that offer the best bets for Irish businesses; first-hand advice on how to break into these new markets; a look at emerging markets such as Morocco, Egypt and Jordan; and presentations from Irish companies already doing business in the Arab world, including from tech entrepreneur Paul Kenny.

Other speakers include experts from the likes of Nexus Group, Neom, Monojo Biotech, the Transguard Group, Dataflow and Nestbox Egg Company.

Ahmad Younis, chief executive of the Arab-Irish Chamber of Commerce, reckons attendees can "gain real insight from speakers who have expanded their operations and who have first-hand experience of eastern markets, including how they may have overcome failures or challenges when starting off". The event is being organised by the Arab-Irish Chamber of Commerce, Bord Bia, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Emirates Airline and Enterprise Ireland at arabirishbusinessforum.ie
Consumer sentiment is set to go off the boil after a summer heatwave that saw splurges on booze, ice-cream and barbecues.

Two separate reports published this morning show the prolonged warm weather that continued into July boosted consumer sentiment and overall retail sales.

The KBC Bank Ireland/ESRI consumer sentiment index hit 107.6 in July, compared to 102.1 in June. That was the strongest monthly increase since January, and raised the index to its best level since March.

But the spike in sentiment masked significant uncertainties as a result of Brexit - just seven months away - and global trade tensions that are leaving consumers cautious about their future spending.

The latest Ibec Retail Ireland monitor report published this morning shows retail sales in the second quarter of the year jumped 3.4pc.

"From the prolonged cold snap and heavy snow of March, to the drought conditions of June, weather has had a huge impact on Irish retailers in the first half of this year," said Retail Ireland director Thomas Burke.

He added: "With the recent fine spell of weather, our members have reported strong demand for seasonal products such a fans, ice cream, barbecues and patio furniture, amongst other things. This spike in demand pushed retailers' supply chains to the limit, during June particularly."

But while this morning's KBC/ESRI report acknowledges the boost given to retail sales because of the fine weather, it's not optimistic that the feel-good factor can be sustained through autumn.

"While the July reading is reflective of a generally positive outlook on the part of Irish consumers, we would emphasise that this is coloured by a significant element of caution and a particular sensitivity to bad news in what is still an uncertain economic environment," noted the report.

It said the sharp increase in purchasing plans by Irish consumers in July suggested by its report reflected increased buying compared to June, associated with summer sales, the new '182' car registration plates coming on stream, and summer holiday requirements.

"The jump in Irish consumer confidence in July was at odds with weaker readings in similar indicators for the US and UK," said KBC Ireland chief economist Austin Hughes.

"While the sentiment survey is driven by the economic temperature, our sense is that exceptionally warm weather may have caused more Irish consumers to see the glass half full rather than half empty in July," he added.

"Unfortunately, this suggests the prospect of cooler sentiment and spending in coming months."

He added: "Our sense is that many consumers may be struggling to reconcile reports of buoyant job market conditions with the reality of modest pay gains and ongoing threats to job security."

The KBC/ESRI report found that 29pc of consumers felt during July that their situation had improved, while 18pc thought it had worsened. That was still the most positive reading since February. But the report said the latest figures still suggest a "modest and uneven improvement" in household finances across the Irish economy as a whole.

The Retail Ireland report also found that the boost to retail sales during the second quarter of the year wasn't broad-based.

"While many retail categories have been boosted by the long dry spell, other sectors such as department stores, fashion and footwear and hairdressing have reported lower than normal footfall and declining sales in the period," said Mr Burke.

"Consistently cold weather during April and May weighed on women's summer clothing sales, whilst record high temperatures at the end of the quarter adversely impacted footfall," he noted.
A major shift in the Government's jobs policy will see it target more employment in research, development and the green economy in the years ahead.

With the economy now edging back towards full employment, Business Minister Heather Humphreys is to host a jobs summit in November, which will form the basis of a new strategy.

The emphasis is to move from simply creating jobs to improving quality and productivity.

Early proposals seen by the Irish Independent show that the 'Future Jobs Programme' will promote a more mobile workforce.

It also seeks to increase the number of enterprises and level of investment in innovation and intellectual property.

The Government plans to leverage State investments in R&D infrastructures and bring about greater levels of collaboration between enterprises and technology institutes.

Ministers also want public sector investment to help provide opportunities for small businesses in the technology field.

Another point states that they want to stimulate "greater levels of start-ups with better survival rates, ensuring regulation and competition policies remain fit for purpose".

Ms Humphreys said the Action Plan for Jobs had "served us very well" but that the "hard-won gains of recent years and the progress we have made is sustained for the long term".

She continued: "It's about anticipating changes that we know are coming in terms of technology and automation and how these will impact on existing jobs.

"It's also about improving productivity and innovation, particularly amongst our SMEs, and preparing for the challenges facing us, such as Brexit and international tax changes.

"In the context of near-full employment, Future Jobs 2019 will focus on the quality, sustainability and productivity of jobs, as distinct from job numbers."

Over the past six years unemployment has fallen from a high of 16pc to 5.1pc, with almost 360,000 new jobs created since 2012.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said there were now more people at work that ever.

He said: "When we had high unemployment, the focus simply had to be on job creation of all forms.

"Now that we're approaching full employment, we need to be a bit smarter and a bit more strategic. We want to create the jobs of the future, jobs that will be around in 20 years' time, jobs which pay well and offer employment security.

"That's where the Future Jobs Programme comes in. We're working on this right across Government and will be consulting directly with stakeholders at a special summit in November. The final policy will be launched in January."
Glanbia has no plans to start reporting its financial results in dollars, despite foreign exchange swings during the first half of the year that meant the group's reported revenue and earnings showed much bigger declines than it experienced on a constant currency basis.

Last week, the company reported that its first-half revenue from wholly-owned operations declined 6.2pc to 1.1bn on a reported basis, but was 3.6pc higher on a constant currency basis.

Its earnings before interest, tax and amortisation from wholly-owned units fell 7.3pc to 123.7m on a constant currency basis, but 16.6pc on a reported basis.

The company derives about 80pc of its revenue in dollars, and its reported figures are primarily impacted by just that euro-dollar translation effect.

Chief executive Siobhan Talbot said the company had considered in the past reporting in dollars.

"We don't have any decision made about dollar reporting, but I think our shareholders have become very clear that when we think of the business, we think in the constant currency metric," she said.

"Quite honestly, rather than incurring all the necessary costs that you'd have to do to report in dollars, I'm not sure that it would be any particular benefit," said the chief executive.
Kildare-based Terra Liquid Minerals scooped the top prize in the 2018 Spring edition of the programme

Ambitious Irish start-ups are now eligible to enter a programme run by Google which offers mentorship and the chance to compete against European counterparts for a lucrative prize.

The tech giant's Autumn Adopt A Startup scheme will handpick 30 of the most promising up-and-coming firms, who will gain insights from some of the country's most experienced industry experts.

Five category winners of the European Digital Top 50 competition will join 25 Irish startups in the programme, which also runs a series of tailored lectures designed to help the companies tackle the market at a global level.

Paddy Flynn, Director at Google said that the initiative brings together "some of Irelands best and brightest entrepreneurs who are making a real difference to Irelands start-up community through their innovative and vibrant ideas".

"This next cycle, they will be joined by five European startups and it will be really interesting to see what learnings and experiences they will share with each other," he said.

A pitching competition will run at the end of the 12 weeks, during which eight companies will showcase their business model and plan to a panel of senior Google executives and industry experts.

Up for grabs for the winning company is 10,000 in AdWords credit and eligibility for the Google Cloud Platform for startups which comes with $100,000 in Google Cloud credit.

Seven other startups will also be eligible for the Google Cloud programme, receiving $20,000 in Google Cloud credit.

Kildare-based Terra Liquid Minerals scooped the top prize in the 2018 Spring edition of the programme at the final which was held in Googles EMEA Headquarters in Dublin.

Managing Director Padraig Hennessy said the insights his team gained while attending the programme "far exceeded our expectations".

"From design thinking to optimising websites and using tools which are freely available has helped us achieve our organisational goals. The help, support and encouragement we received from Google, the program leaders and our team, has helped us grow the businesses," he said.

Applications for the 25 places on the programme are now open and will close on August 24. The chosen few will be announced on September 13.
Danny John-Jules will take part in Strictly Come Dancing (Victoria Jones/PA)

Red Dwarf star Danny John-Jules has been unveiled as one of this years Strictly Come Dancing contestants.

Here are 10 things you need to know about the 57-year-old actor.

 John-Jules is a keen motorcyclist and takes part in many charity rides. In 2014 he travelled 1,250 miles from the UK to Valencia in Spain to raise awareness of an organisation that uses bikes to deliver healthcare supplies to people in Africa.

 Before finding fame with shows such as Red Dwarf and Death In Paradise, he appeared on the West End stage in productions including Starlight Express.



 The actor is to said to have landed the part of Cat in Red Dwarf because he was late to his audition. He was not ruffled as he was not aware he was late, which made the producers think he was cool enough to play the character.

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 He appeared as a dancer in 1981 film The Great Muppet Caper.

 John-Jules is married and has two children named Dante and Danae, who have both acted alongside him.

 He can also turn his hand to singing and had a number 17 hit with Tongue Tied in 1993.

 The star voiced the character Gex in the UK version of the computer game Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko.

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 John-Jules appeared as a dancer in the Wham! video for The Edge Of Heaven, released in 1986.

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 In 2008 he was ordered to carry out 120 hours of community service for assaulting two refuse collectors in London.

 Possibly inspired by his most famous character, the actor loves cats and has volunteered at an animal home.
'Blessed are the bullies, for one day they will have to stand up to themselves/Blessed are the liars, for the truth can be awkward." Thus began Kendrick Lamar's Bono-beautiful benediction on American Soul from U2's album Songs of Experience.

The Compton-born rapper also contributed this powerful spoken-word verse to Get Out of Your Own Way from the same U2 record, (echoing The Beatitudes, a series of eight blessings that Bono's VBF, Jesus, preached in Matthew 5:3-11): "Blessed are the superstars/For the magnificence in their light/We understand better our own insignificance/Blessed are the filthy rich/For you can only truly own what you give away/Like your pain."

The 55,000 people expected at the Electric Picnic between August 31 and September 2 can also hope to give away their pain when Kendrick headlines the festival in Stradbally Hall, Co Laois.

We can see the groundbreaking hip-hop artist (who made history as the first rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize for his 2017 album Damn) show why he is still Compton's crown prince, one who retains the raw magic that first announced him to the world with his 2012 major label debut, Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. It was on this masterpiece that he wrote about seeing the South Central riots at four years of age, and his first murder a year later - among other moments from his youth reworked as wisdoms to use in your life. ("All my life I want money and power/Respect my mind or die from lead shower." And: "Any nigga can kill a man. That don't make you a real nigga. Real is responsibility. Real is taking care of your motherf***ing family.")

Other great acts playing the Picnic this year include Dermot Kennedy, Wolf Alice, N*E*R*D, Ben Howard, The Kooks and Bristol trip-hop godheads Massive Attack; 1991's Blue Lines - the single Unfinished Sympathy from this album was voted the 63rd greatest song of all time by New Musical Express - and 1998's Mezzanine are two of the best albums of that era.

As well as Mr Lamar, one act I am counting the days to see in Stradbally is the shape-shifting superwoman from Tulsa, Oklahoma - St Vincent. Born Anne Clark, as a kid in junior high school she would carry around a copy of Bertrand Russell's not-uncontroversial pamphlet Why I Am Not a Christian. Ms Clarke - who got the name St Vincent from a Nick Cave reference to the Greenwich Village hospital where Dylan Thomas died of pneumonia on November 9, 1953 - has been described as the female David Bowie. Make of that what you will.

On Pills, which features her ex, Cara Delevingne, St Vincent name-checks the wonders of pharmaceuticals: 'Pills to f***, pills to think, pills pills pills for the family.' Other tracks from her relatively new but relatively wonderful album Masseducation worth listening to include the title track, I Can't Turn Off What Turns Me On, and Savior ('You dress me in a nun's black habit/Hail Mary pass, cuz you know I'll grab it'). St Vincent joked that she "did toy with calling the record Ass Education. That's better suited to be the title of the sequel".

Of the aforesaid song Pills, which some have taken to be, in some diary-type way, about English supermodel Delevingne, Clark told New Yorker magazine: "It's a composite. That's just a sexist thing [the assumption that it is about Delevingne]. 'Women do emotions, but are incapable of rational thought'. Every record I make has an archetype," she said of the album. "Strange Mercy was housewives on pills. St Vincent was near-future cult leader. Masseduction is different, it's pretty first-person. You can't fact-check it, but if you want to know about my life, listen to this record." Or you can simply go and see her for yourself.

Electric Picnic, August 31 to September 2. www.electricpicnic.ie. Sold out.
The tenth annual Ukulele Hooley will welcome performers and fans from all over the world to Dun Laoighaire this month.

Ireland's international ukulele festival, running across the weekend of August 25 and 26, is a free, not-for-profit family-friendly event, and sees a few interesting new additions to the schedule this year.

The Uke Factor Competition is underway looking for some new stars to demonstrate their ukulele skills on the stage of the Big Concert in the Peoples Park, Dun Laoghaire, on Sunday, August 26th. Last year it was attended by 20,000 visitors.

Two video competitions are underway as part of the Uke Factor, the first one directed at teenagers (10-19 years), and the second one to everyone else. As well as a spot on the main stage, the winners will also receive a Ukulele Hooley goody Bag.

The competition ends at midnight on August 18. To be in with a chance just upload your music video to YouTube and send us a link to ukefactor@gmail.com. Solo acts, duets, trios and groups of no more than five people are welcome and at least one ukulele must be featured. Winners will be announced the following day, August 19.

Also this year is the Big Jungle Jam - last years' Big Ukulele Jam saw 2,000 players take part. This year's event has a jungle theme with songs including The Bare Necessities, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Eye of the Tiger, and I Wanna Be Like You.

Making a welcome return is the Ukulele Bus Busk which will see over 70 ukulele players hop on to an open-topped double decker bus and tour the Dun Laoghaire to Killiney coast, stopping off on the way to play and sing.

And if you fancy learning how to play a ukulele or want to fine-tune your skills there will be workshops and an open mic event taking place on the seafront on the Saturday night.

The big event is the Big Concert in the People's Park on Sunday and talent from around the world will perform including Rita Braga from Portugal; The Jive Aces from the UK; Les Poupees Gonflees from France; Casey McGill from the US; the Winin Boys from Belgium and homegrown acts such as the Dublin Ukulele Collective, the Arklow Ukulele Players and Ukulele Tuesday from the Stags Head pub in Dublin.

Organiser Tony Boland said, Its 10 years since I first started a ukulele group in Glasthule, the Hooley came a year later and now the Ukulele Hooley is the biggest such event in Europe. We have players and fans coming to us in Dun Laoghaire from all over the world as well, of course, as Ireland itself. It is a unique music festival in that it is free, community-based and family-friendly."

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Along with the music, there will also be trade stands in the Peoples Park where you can buy ukuleles and accessories.

For more info check out www.ukulelehooley.com
As sure as night follows day, a raft of disappointing tweets and posts follow any announcement of a decent gig selling out. It doesnt matter if you have fingers quick as lightning bolts when trying to buy a ticket online: with websites like Seatwave and Get Me In snaffling a great many gig tickets for resale purposes, there have long been a lot of fed up music fans around. Or, if they really were desperate to see U2/Britney Spears/Ed Sheeran, they would need deep pockets. Very deep.

Well this week, Ticketmaster appear to have listened to their customers, eh, robust feedback (or, just maybe, are pre-emptively striking ahead of new anti-touting legislation coming in the next few months). The ticketing behemoth announced that, with immediate effect, it will shut its ticket resale operation Seatwave across Europe. Instead, Ticketmaster will roll out a new fan-to-fan ticket exchange in Ireland in October, with Europe set to follow suit in early 2019.

Keith English, Managing Director of Ticketmaster Ireland, said in a statement: Our number one priority is to get tickets into the hands of fans so that they can go to the events they love. We are aware that fans are tired of seeing others snap up tickets just to resell for a profit on secondary websites, so we have decided to take action.

He also said the new Ticketmaster ticket exchange would let fans sell tickets they cant use directly through their Ticketmaster account, for the price originally paid or less.

Whether Ticketmasters foray into the fan to fan realm will yield success is anyones guess. Already, Toutless.ie and the #ticketfairy hashtag on social media have been a great help to music fans trying to snap up tickets without losing their shirts.

Yet this weeks news is welcome, for fans and artists like, for a several reasons. Transparency regarding prices is always a good thing, for a start. The rise and rise of touting has resulted in an acrimonious relationship between both fan and musician, with many a gig atmosphere being soured. True-blue fans, having already paid well over the odds to touts just to be there, expect way more bang for their (not-insignificant) buck. Theyre a tough crowd.

With people effectively feeling duped by the system, any sense of goodwill often flies out the window of the venue before Ed Sheeran or whoever can even strap on his guitar.

And, in the event that a surplus of tickets are floating about, its not unusual for non-fans to show up at a gig on a whim. Id lost count of the number of self-professed real fans who couldnt get within spitting distance of U2s Joshua Tree anniversary show at Croke Park last year. Likewise, I saw a hell of a lot of selfies from lucky gig-goers inside the stadium who probably think the bands guitarist is called The Hedge.

With casual fans keen on an Insta opportunity, Irish gigs have become a beery hotbed of mortgage and the-girl-at-work chat (theres a moment of respite from this once the artist plays the one songs that everyone knows from Today FM  after that, its back to the bants). For genuine fans, theres nothing more maddening; not least after paying several hundred euro for the privilege. For artists, theres a grim wave of inane chatter to surf over during a gig.

Will all of this change because of this weeks Ticketmaster development? Its hard to say. We probably cant lay the blame entirely at the door of the touts for the sodden vibe at most Irish gigs. Yet more fans, there for the right reasons, inside a gig venue is as good a start as any.

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As to what Ticketmaster will do next to keep their profit margins healthy remains anyones guess. Will ticket prices become even more extortionate than usual? Will the gulf between standard and VIP seats widen? Perhaps. What we can count on for now is that Ticketmasters new platform may profess to connect fans with other fans. A nice idea, yet Ticketmaster are not industry giants for nothing. They will always somehow get their share.
Martin Hayes - "I told my brother that he should take the farm. There was always a risk that Id feed the same calf a second time." Photo: David Conachy

When Martin Hayes was a little boy, he had to be bribed to go to bed. And no wonder. In the evenings, his home in Killanena became a hive of musical activity.

"My earliest memory is of going to bed, leaving the door cracked open, while the music from the kitchen came into my bedroom," says the Clare-born fiddler. "There were lots of musical gatherings in our house, and when they were happening, I always wanted to stay up all night."

His father P Joe Hayes, a farmer and fiddler, was one of the founding members of Tulla Ceili Band. Fleadh Cheoil winners, they went on to tour in the UK and the US.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

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These days, Martin is one of the world's leading artists in traditional Irish music. He travels all over with his own bands. On August 16, The Martin Hayes Quartet will perform in St Canice's Cathedral as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival. You can catch him on tour with his various different groups - The Gloaming, Brooklyn Rider and also with his long-time musical partner, Irish-American guitarist Dennis Cahill.

"A big point for me is being able to collaborate with music all over the world and not having to compromise what you do," he says. "We used to think that you had to water it down a bit, to make it more accessible but that diminishes it. I've found that the deeper and truer you go into it, the easier it is to communicate."

Anyone who has ever seen Martin Hayes perform live will testify that his talent is a privilege to behold. With a bow in motion, his curls cascading and his leg jigging to the rhythm, it's as if he is in a trance. He looks like he is at one with the fiddle. As he says himself, "it's like an extension of my arm".

As a boy, Martin watched his father playing the fiddle and it seemed like the natural fit. When he was seven, a little fiddle turned up on Christmas morning.

"There it was, destiny handed down by Santa Claus. Here was this very subtle way of convincing a kid that they must have some musical ability, because the greater wisdom of Santa seemed to know this," he says. "But the shock that I wasn't making music immediately was disappointing."

And so, the informal lessons began. "My father sat in front of me and he'd play a bar or two of a tune. He'd play it slowly and then he'd say, 'Go on, imitate that'. He was pretty patient. I think it was excruciating for him, listening to this and watching this.

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"After a certain amount of tunes were learnt, I'd lock myself in a room learning and playing. Often it was a very solitary world, with a record player and eventually an old tape recorder. I was in there trying to figure it out. Then I'd come out and present to my father what I had figured out.

"Of course, if he didn't like it, I would be furious, to which he always responded with - 'Why did you ask?'

"But I wanted him to love what I was doing, irrespective of whether it was good or not.

In hindsight, Martin realises that his father's honesty did him no harm at all.

"I think it's very important to be straight and to actually call it as it is, as well as encourage. The encouragement doesn't mean much if they don't get critical analysis as well. What does 'you're great' mean if you've never heard, 'that wasn't so good'? The kid really wants to know."

His mother Peggy was similarly straight-talking.

"My mother took me to my first Fleadh Cheoil. So when I won the first time - it was like winning the All-Ireland on the fiddle - it was me and my mom. At the time, I was listening to lots of records. But I remember one day I was imitating Brendan McGlinchey, a great Northern Irish fiddle player. I thought, this is the way I want to go and my mother said, 'I don't think so'."

"She said, 'You have your own sound and you should go after that - your own style. Don't be imitating somebody else's style'. She was absolutely right. It cured me of searching for somebody else's style."

By the time Martin was 13, he started tagging along with the band, going to ceilis at the weekend.

"I'd be in the back of the car, driving to Sligo and Kerry and playing with all these old guys. It was very exciting. I was going somewhere and there was music."

Martin grew up on a farm. It was a mixed farm with a few cattle, sheep and vegetables. It had horse-drawn mowing machines and the cattle were milked by hand. Then in the 1970s, it turned into a dairy farm, complete with a milking machine.

"The farm was a combination of freedom and hard work. Children were expected to work on the farm and chores were significant. It was all hands on deck; hay had to be saved and you would go to the bog to cut turf. We worked hard but then we had incredible freedom. We played in rivers and we were like monkeys, climbing trees," he said.

For all his love of the farm, Martin had the foresight to see that he didn't want to work on the land forever.

"There are four of us in the family and I'm the eldest," he says. "My brother is a year younger and he ended up having the farm. I forfeited the eldest son entitlement to the farm when I was 10.

"I sat down with Pat and I said, 'I think you should have the farm and I should just head off'. He loved the farm and I wasn't particularly tuned into it. There was always a risk that I'd feed the same calf a second time. I wasn't that committed to it but I was obsessed by music.

"I never imagined the possibility of a career in music because it didn't exist. Nobody seemed to have a career in music - only a handful of people like Paddy Moloney. How would you even begin to do it? But I knew that I wasn't going to do the farm. The reason I went on to do business studies was simply that I needed to do something.

"It didn't matter what else I would go ahead and do. I was always going to see myself as a musician, irrespective of whether I had a career or not. I always figured that I'd make money and survive some other way, but that most of my passion and energy would get devoted to music."

Martin went to the US and tried many lives for size. He worked on building sites.

"You can kinda see that I'm not cut out for that. However, I'd be tougher than you'd expect, in the sense that I grew up on the farm."

He ended up in Irish cabarets in Chicago, playing Irish-American songs.

"It got me out of the weather and it gave me a little time to think."

In the end, he couldn't handle that any more and so he put a band together with Dennis Cahill. They were experimenting with fusion jazz.

"When I was playing in rock clubs in Chicago with an electric fiddle and amps, I looked like a bit of a farmer. So I decided to grow my hair, in order to fit in. At first, I wanted to know how to play everything and then I realised that I had already had a complete language."

He went on to record an album with just guitar accompaniment, where he gathered all the musical impulses he had since he was 12. It became the first step on that journey where he began to evolve. During those years in the US, Martin had to lose himself musically before he found himself.

"America is a land of fresh starts. It's a land of redemption. Despite all of its political mishaps, and the darkness that somehow descends on it, it still has an underlying freedom. In the US, you are free to decide who you are going to be, whereas in Ireland, even though legally speaking, it's just as free, you are not as free to re-invent yourself.

"If you live in a village in the west of Ireland, the personality and character that forms you in your teenage years goes into your young adult life and actually defines you for the remainder of your time."

Martin started to enjoy success and his father was around to see it. There had been a big gap when he hadn't come home and, then finally, he started to reconnect with Ireland and the musicians here.

"I felt very embraced by this country," he says. "It was like I had cut the ties for a while and I came back and reconnected and reaffirmed what the whole thing was about. I'd come back and play with my dad's ceili band. That was just a lovely experience and it kept me very grounded.

"I was very close to my father and years later, I would invite him up on stage to play with me.

"I remember one night we were standing backstage and my fiddle was on the table. He was just standing there and he said, 'I would love to have done this'. It was lovely playing with him."

When Martin's dad died, he tells me that it was a big loss, adding: "It took a lot of energy for a while but you pick up. Life has to go on."

His mother is still alive, hale and hearty and she often goes to his concerts. Every summer for 25 years, Martin came to play at a festival in Feakle, Clare. For many years, he noticed a woman in the audience.

"Yes, I am at one with the fiddle but I still see people," he says. "She had a very charismatic face, just a beautiful face, you'd remember her. Sparkling eyes."

That woman is now his wife, Madrid-born Lina Pelaez.

She had been living in Clare for many years. At the end of one concert, Lina went up to him and asked if he would play at the opening of her Steiner-based pre-school, Brigit's Hearth, near Scariff. It was a very special school where kids would play outdoors for three hours a day.

"It sounded kind of interesting so I gave her my email address and asked her to contact me about it. The following night, she was down at the ceili, dancing sets all night long. I was impressed - this Spanish lady dancing sets. She learnt Irish-set dancing so she could just get out into the community. She liked to dance, of course, but she also wanted to connect with life there.

"We emailed back and forth and one day I said that I'd be driving from Limerick to Feakle and, on the way, I could call in to see the place.

"She was just there and we sat and talked and, pretty soon, I began thinking, 'who is this woman?' And it wasn't long before I thought, 'why am I not married to somebody like this?' She said that she had been enquiring about me and somebody said, 'oh, he's not the marrying type'. And she asked me - 'are you the marrying type?' And I had been avoiding marriage and kids for 40-something years now but I answered, 'yes, I am.' Yes, I am in the context of having met her.

"We were married one year later, in September 2011, on the anniversary of the day that we met.

"I'm a romantic. I asked her to marry me under the Brian Boru oak tree in Tuamgraney, where she takes the children. I knew that it was one of her favourite spots. You may as well do it right and I'm never going to do it again.

"Neither of us had been married before and we just felt this kind of soulful connection, this shared understanding of the world together. We are both a bit out there, both dreamers. She is very energetic and grounded. I can move a bit slowly and sheepishly - I'm moving but it doesn't look like it.

"It felt like a really deep, immediate connection. And it was from people who didn't need to be married and people who weren't doing it out of desperation. We had figured out not being married. She had raised three sons and she didn't need to be married and neither did I."

I ask if you'd have to like music to be with him?

"She likes music and she understands that most of what I'm doing is an expression of feeling. Her father's side of the family is from Asturias, northern Spain and she is connected to the piping music there. Every little social gathering there involves pipes."

They are kindred spirits.

"The way Lina makes this perfect situation for children involves doing many of the same things I'd do to make a good performance of music, which is being completely present as a human being and completely engaged in the thing you are doing, fully committed."

Now she manages the school and comes back to refine programmes but they live in Madrid. Martin enjoys Spanish life. He notices that the people there are more affectionate than the Irish. There is an outdoor life there. He loves the light of the city, the architecture and the croissants.

When he mentions the pastries, I tell him that I wonder why they are not all fat. He explains how small pleasures are interwoven into the day.

"The Spanish are not indulgent in the way that we might be. We legitimise indulgence - fellas at the bar drinking seven pints. That would be very frowned upon in Spain. They drink, but not to excess. Yesterday we headed straight over to the Shelbourne for our Campari spritz. That's a very Spanish thing to do at a certain time in the day. Then there is dinner with a glass of wine and that's that. It's pleasure but not overindulgent."

Martin tells me that Lina often comes on tour with him.

"When she is with me, I don't count that as time away from home. When I'm with Lina, I'm home."

The Martin Hayes Quartet will perform in St Canice's Cathedral, Thursday, August 16 at 7.30pm in Kilkenny Arts Festival, as part of Marble City Sessions. Tickets 30/27 www.kilkennyarts.ie
Katie Piper  10 things you need to know. (Isabel Infantes/PA)

Katie Piper has said she is proud to be on Strictly Come Dancing after an acid attack 10 years ago (Ian West/PA)

Presenter and campaigner Katie Piper has been revealed as the first star to be taking part in this years Strictly Come Dancing.

Ahead of her dancing debut here are 10 things you need to know about her.

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 Piper, 34, is a former model who has done photoshoots that have appeared in national newspapers and mens magazine Maxim.

 Born in Andover in Hampshire, Piper came second in the Miss Winchester beauty pageant in 2006.

 Piper previously worked as a ring girl, appearing at the start of rounds in Mixed martial arts fights.

 Piper began her broadcasting career on digital programmes and small TV shopping channels.

 Piper has two daughters with her husband carpenter Richard Sutton. Their eldest child Belle is four-and-a-half and Penelope is seven months old.

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 In March 2008, Piper was the victim of an acid attack in Golders Green in north west London. The assault was arranged by her former partner.

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 After the attack, surgeons at a London hospital removed all the skin from Pipers face before rebuilding it with a skin substitute and a skin graft. The procedure was the first of its kind to be completed in a single operation.

 In 2009, Piper made a documentary that was shown on Channel 4 called Katie: My Beautiful Face, in order to raise awareness about the victims of acid attacks. The programme has been repeated several times and shown internationally. In 2010, it was nominated for a Bafta TV award.

Thank you for all your lovely messages. Im super excited but very nervous about being a contestant on this years @bbcstrictly its going to be a challenge but everyone who knows me knows I love a challenge so here goes... a new chapter in my life! #strictly2018 #bbcbreakfast pic.twitter.com/hVBQnloqce  Katie Piper (@KatiePiper_) August 13, 2018

 In 2009, Piper read Channel 4s alternative Christmas message. Her speech touched on her own experiences and encouraged people not to judge others by their appearance.

 Piper has presented three series of the TV show Bodyshockers, in which she visits people who are looking to reverse regrettable cosmetic surgery procedures and tattoos.
Tributes have been paid to Irish-American businessman Tom Moran, who passed away after a short illness on Sunday aged 65.

Mr Moran, who had a successful career in business with Mutual of America, was Chancellor of Queens University and is noted for his charity work with Concern Worldwide as well as playing a critical role in the Northern Ireland peace process.

Tanaiste Simon Coveney wrote that he was saddened by the news of Mr Morans death and offered his condolences to his family.

I learned with sadness today of the death of Tom Moran in New York. Tom made a very significant positive impact on Irish American relations, in particular supporting peace in Northern Ireland.

"My sincere condolences to his wife, Joan, and to his wider family and friends, Mr Coveney wrote on twitter.

I learned with sadness today of the death of Tom Moran in New York. Tom made a very significant positive impact on Irish American relations, in particular supporting peace in Northern Ireland.

My sincere condolences to his wife, Joan, and to his wider family and friends.  Simon Coveney (@simoncoveney) August 12, 2018

Former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams also offered condolences, as he spoke about Mr Moran's role in the peace process.

He said: "Tom understood the critical importance of involving representatives of all political views in the evolving process of peace and in support of the Good Friday Agreement.

"He was particularly determined to ensure that the voice of loyalism was heard. Tom knew and was a friend to David Ervine.

Toms loss will be deeply felt by all of us working for peace and justice and for a new dispensation based on inclusivity and equality.

To his wife Joan and all his family and friends, we send our deepest sympathy.

PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton said that Mr Moran was full of honesty, candour and wisdom. Authentic advocate for policing and the peace process, and that many of those in leadership will miss his support, counsel and humour."

While Queens University Vice-Chancellor Prof Ian Greer said: "We are grateful for Toms unwavering support and commitment to the university since he was appointed Chancellor in May 2015. Tom considered it a privilege and honour to be our Chancellor and embraced the role with passion and excitement, often commenting how special it was for him to be part of the Queens family."

Mr Morans funeral Mass will be held in St Patricks Cathedral, New York, on Friday.
The Leaving Certificate is not adequately challenging pupils in the sort of thinking skills and levels of knowledge that 16-19-year-olds can soak up, according to alarming new research.

A Dublin City University (DCU) forensic examination of Leaving Cert papers has laid bare the extent to which the traditional exams are largely memory tests that encourage "learning off by heart".

There has been much anecdotal evidence about how students rely on rote learning for the State exams, but this study provides evidence that the exam papers themselves "dictate a heavy focus on memory recall."

As about 57,000 Leaving Cert 2018 candidates await their results, the findings present a case for radical change in the assessment process in order to ensure that school-leavers are equipped for challenges ahead.

The research team, led by Dr Denise Burns of the DCU Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection, investigated written exam papers in 23 subjects over the six years from 2010 to 2015.

They also interviewed 30 recent Leaving Certificate students for their 'Is It All Memory Recall?' investigation, which was conducted in collaboration with Trinity College Dublin.

Their findings reveal that a requirement on students to display higher-order skills, such as problem solving, critical thinking and creativity, was largely absent from exam papers. According to the report, between the ages of 16 and 19, young people's minds are ripe for the development of higher order thinking, but they need to be supported in this.

Dr Burns said: "We owe it to our young people to provide an assessment system that promotes quality of learning and that stimulates and challenges our young people to develop their intellectual skills at this crucial time of their growth."

Researchers used software to search for occurrences of command verbs, such as "explain", "examine" and "differentiate" in questions - and explored how they were used to test six recognised categories of intellectual skills. They found 14,910 occurrences of the 50 most commonly used verbs.

Questions requiring three lower order thinking skills - where students had to show they remembered, understood or could apply knowledge - were four to 14 times more frequent than those demanding the higher order skills of "analyse", "evaluate" and "create".

In 15 subjects, between 70pc and 97pc of all questions fell into the "remember" and "understand" categories, most notably agricultural science, biology and religious education.

Only English, art, music, history and classical studies showed evidence of some balance of questions requiring higher and lower order skills.

In 17 subjects, less than 10pc of command verbs required higher order processing, including all the science, technology engineering and maths (STEM) subjects, except technology.

As well as thinking skills, the researchers also explored four different levels of knowledge that students could be asked to deploy - the lowest being factual and the highest, meta-cognitive. In only 10 of the 14,910 occurrences did metacognitive feature, and only in English and art.

Researchers said the heavy focus on the recall of "factual" knowledge in biology (73pc) raised questions about the appropriateness of the subject as a basis for pursuing third level programmes in life sciences, which focus on the scientific methods.

Students told researchers their predominant methods of preparing for exams were to predict questions and learn answers, because that delivered results. But, when the opportunity arose in an exam to deploy problem solving and creative skills, they said they found it an enjoyable and challenging experience.
Zoe Holohan and Brian OCallaghan-Westropp were married just days before tragedy struck in Mati, close to Athens, in Greece

THE funeral of Brian OCallaghan-Westropp will take place when his wife Zoe Holohan is well enough to attend.

Its understood no arrangements will be made until Zoe is in a condition where she is able to attend.

Mr OCallaghan-Westropp and Ms Holohan were on honeymoon in Mati, close to Athens in Greece, when a wildfire broke out close to where they were staying on Monday, July 23.

The couple had married the previous Thursday, July 19, in front of their family and close friends before f lying out to Greece two days later.

It is understood the couple fled from their rented home on foot as their hire car wouldnt start.

A passing motorist urged them to get into the boot of his car, which was already full to capacity with people, in a desperate bid to get away from the fire.

Somewhere along the way, they lost Mr OCallaghanWestropp.

He was confirmed dead several days later.

The official death toll from the wildfires now stands at 93.

Another 34 people remain in hospital, six of whom are in intensive care.

Ms Holohan  who works in advertising with the Sunday World newspaper  is continuing her recovery at a hospital in Athens.

Friends say she is very thankful to staff who have been treating her, and for the support they have given to the families of herself and her late husband.

It is understood she had further surgery last week and her recovery is going as well as can be expected.
A north Dublin gangster who is wanted in relation to the gruesome gun murder of Gareth Hutch is hiding out in Turkey, gardai believe.

A European Arrest Warrant is in place for the 33-year-old Ballymun thug, who was referred to in the Gareth Hutch murder trial as Mr AB and described in court as one of the shooters in the feud-related case.

The on-the-run thug was previously arrested and detained for almost a week by officers from Mountjoy Garda Station, where he was questioned about the murder before being released without charge.

By the time the DPP came back with a decision to charge Mr AB in relation to Hutchs murder he had already fled the country and he is now in Turkey  a non-EU state with which Ireland has no extradition treaty.

Despite fleeing his home, Independent.ie can reveal that Mr AB still has a considerable influence on events in the troubled north Dublin suburb he hails from.

These incidents are completely separate to the Gareth Hutch murder trial.

There have been numerous incidents of discharging of firearms in Ballymun in recent weeks. There is no doubt that this individual has direct knowledge of what is going on, a source said last night.

Whether he is pulling the strings or not is unclear, but the fact is that individual is a very paranoid person and if he returns he will be lifted sooner rather than later because, in essence, he is a gobs***e, the source added.

The conclusion of the Gareth Hutch murder trial last month continues to stoke bitter tensions in the capitals north inner city.

A verdict in the Special Criminal Court trial of three Dubliners accused of the murder of Gareth Hutch will not be ready before early October.

The brutal slaying  one of 18 in the deadly feud  was caught on CCTV, but it is understood the Ballymun thugs gun jammed as his accomplice pumped four bullets into Mr Hutch from a handgun.

He suffered four gunshot injuries, two to the back of the neck, one to the lower back and one to the right of the upper chest.

Siblings Jonathan (33) and Regina Keogh (41), together with Thomas Fox (31), have pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Hutch.

A nephew of Gerry The Monk Hutch, the 36-year-old was shot dead in the car park outside Avondale House on North Cumberland Street on May 24, 2016. It is the States case that Mr Keogh was one of the gunmen, together with Mr AB  who is not before the courts.

Separately, the Herald revealed earlier this month that a sinister arson attack on a car owned by an innocent female member of the Hutch family was organised by an on-therun thug based in England. This criminal is not wanted by gardai in relation to the Gareth Hutch murder.

The 31-year-old womans car was torched in the early hours of Saturday, July 28, at almost the exact location where her relative Gareth Hutch was shot dead in May 2016.

Gardai said they were investigating an incident of criminal damage at the Avondale House flats complex. There have been no arrests.

The arson attack on the innocent female supermarket workers car escalated tensions in the north inner city, with senior sources saying that the Kinahan cartels drive against the Hutch family is still continuing.

It seems the motivation was to let Gareth Hutchs family know that the Kinahan cartel is still intent on terrorising them, a source said.

A foul-mouthed attack, which occurred just days later, by a suspected hitman for the Kinahan cartel against innocent Hutch family members cannot be revealed here for legal reasons.

A north inner city criminal aligned to the Kinahan cartel is suspected of organising the arson attack, despite having fled the country several months ago. The 28-year-old is one of the crime gangs main facilitators in the north inner city and has previously been involved in arson attacks on the Hutch family in the past.

At the trial, the prosecution contended that Jonathan Keogh (33) threatened to kill Mr Hutch the evening before the shooting; that Thomas Fox (31) and Regina Keogh (41) were instrumental in planning the murder, and Mr Keogh and Mr AB were the shooters.

Mr Fox, of Rutland Court, Dublin 1; Ms Keogh, from Avondale House, Cumberland Street North, Dublin 1, and Mr Keogh, of Gloucester Place, Dublin 1, have pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Hutch.

Mr Fox has also denied unlawfully possessing a Makarov 9mm handgun on May 23, 2016, at the same place.

Prosecution counsel Paul Burns SC said in his closing speech that the three co-accused had put considerable thought and preparation into Mr Hutchs truly shocking killing, which was not a spur-of-the-moment attack. Earlier, the court heard a mobile phone was seized when gardai arrested Mr AB.

When specialists analysed this number they found it was in extensive contact with two numbers based in Thailand, as well as Ms Keoghs number, Mr Foxs number and 181 and 842 numbers found in a car linked to Mr Keogh.

The court previously heard that gardai made 38 requests for mobile phone records as part of their investigation.
While the State has a very good MMR vaccination rate of 95pc, the disease is still entering the country. Stock Image

Measles cases have almost trebled from just 25 cases in 2017 to 66 this year, as the disease enters the country via EU holidaymakers and immigrants.

Statistics obtained by the Irish Independent reveal the rise, with the spread of the disease across Europe being partly being blamed on "fake news" stories about the vaccine.

EU countries affected by outbreaks include France, Greece, Romania and Italy - countries where the measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccine has historically seen a low uptake.

An anti-vaccine movement is gaining traction in some areas, including Rimini, Italy, a resort many Irish holidaymakers visit each year.

Measles became headline news here earlier this year when it emerged two cases had attended several hospitals in Dublin.

The HSE confirmed it had been notified of four further cases in Dublin, affecting two adults and two children.

"These four individuals are likely to have developed measles from contact with one of the two earlier cases at hospitals in Dublin," it warned.

"The HSE requests people to continue to be vigilant about measles."

The Public Health Department has sent an alert to all emergency departments and GPs in Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow, informing them to be vigilant about measles.

New statistics compiled by Dr Helena Murray and Dr Suzanne Cotter, both specialists in public health medicine at the HSE, show the mid-west of Ireland has been worst affected this year with 33 cases. The east, including Dublin and surrounding areas, has witnessed about half as many cases, while the south-east has seen 10.

Returning

Dr Murray said measles often affected people who had moved to Ireland, or those who had been on holiday and were returning.

While the State has a very good MMR vaccination rate of 95pc, the disease is still entering the country.

There have been no recorded deaths from measles in Ireland since 2000, when there were more than 1,600 cases overall.

Three children died from the illness that year in Dublin.

Around that time the vaccination rate had dropped after false claims in the UK that the MMR could lead to autism.

GP Angela Parvu, of Alfa Medics surgery in the Northside Shopping Centre in Dublin, said this type of "fake news" was still being spread - with many fearful of MMR and other vaccines.

"I always check with people who've moved to Ireland to see if their children are vaccinated," Dr Parvu said.

"And many patients don't want the MMR and other vaccines. They tell me about stories that they've heard on social networks, that are fake news.

"I explain I have my own children and it's my duty of care to vaccinate them for their safety. It is every parent's duty."

Medical experts from the HSE said a vaccination programme may need to be considered to encourage those born in the late 1990s to 2000s to have the MMR vaccine.

Dr Brenda Corcoran, consultant in public health medicine, said once one person had measles, they could infect up to 20 people.

"One in 10 who get measles will get pneumonia, one in 1,000 will die. We don't want anyone or any child to be put at risk," she said.

How to spot the first symptoms of an infection

Measles starts with cold-like symptoms, including a runny nose, sneezing, watery eyes, swollen eyelids and a high temperature.

These begin to develop within 10 days after the infection.

A day or two before the measles rash appears, many people develop small greyish-white spots in their mouth.

The rash is made up of small red-brown, flat or slightly raised spots and may join together into larger blotchy patches.

It appears around two to four days after the first symptoms and normally fades after about a week.

For most, the illness lasts from seven to 10 days.

If you think you may have measles, health officials recommend avoiding work, school or creche.

Individuals should stop visitors coming to the house to prevent the illness spreading.
Suzanne Dunne is warning others about the dangers of getting contact lenses wet

An Irish mother who was blinded by an "eye eating parasite", after wearing contact lenses in the shower is warning others after her "nightmare".

Suzanne Dunne, who is from Donabate in Dublin, said that she was in perfect health before July 19 last, when she decided to take a shower without taking her contact lenses out.

It was then that the micro-organism Acanthamoeba, that was present in the shower water, latched onto her eye and burrowed its way into her cornea. The contact lense can create a vacuam in the eye, so if anything goes in behind it, it makes it cling onto it.

Ive worn contact lenses for years. That day I had a shower with my lenses in, which I have done so many times, because Ive never been told not to," Ms Dunne, who is aged in her 30s, told Independent.ie.

My eye got a little bit itchy and as the day went on it got worse but I just thought there was something is in my eye.

Ms Dunne was shocked when what she thought was an eye irritation turned out to be a serious parasite.

I went to bed at 7pm that day because the pain was so bad and I thought that it would be okay in the morning.

I woke up at 1.30am with a pain and I couldnt see anything because the other eye had shut down in kind of a defence and everything had gone black.

It was like there were bubbles on the actual surface of my eye and it was completely swollen, she explained.

Ms Dunne was found by her husband and taken to hospital immediately.

She was initially taken to Beaumont Hospital, which she said didn't have the team to deal with her situation. She was transferred to the Mater Hospital.

When I got to Mater they looked at my eye and said: "Okay, this isnt a straight-forward eye infection. This is something way worse. This is like a parasite.

Acanthamoeba keratitis is an infection of the cornea caused by Acanthamoeba, which is common in nature and is usually found in bodies of water, including in domestic tap water.

Ms Dunne, who has two kids, Mia (5) and Max (8), described the pain she experienced upon contracting the parasite as worse than labour pain, saying it was so severe that she was unable to even talk to anyone.

The ambulance people were trying to get my details and I could not even answer them - even talking was hurting my eye and my head. It was just so frightening.

The pain was so severe. I have two kids and I have gone through horrendous labour with both of them but this was just so much worse.

It felt like my eye was on fire and inside my head was on fire. I felt searing hot pain in my head, behind my eye, like somebody was pulling my eye back.

I thought this eye is going to have to be taken out, my headaches were so severe. I had big nose bleeds from the parasite as well. It was just one thing after the other.

Ms Dunne said that upon reaching the Mater Hospital, her eye was immediately cleaned and she was given emergency care. She said the doctors were worried that the infection would spread somewhere else.

Ms Dunne's eyesight in her left eye has now returned but she still has no vision in her right eye.

Ms Dunne spent two weeks at the Mater Hospital and is still undergoing treatment.

It (the parasite) clings to the cornea. It clings to the back of the eye. It can burrow in and create trails around the eyes. It causes severe infection that leaves the eye scourged and open. My condition has created an open wound, a hole in the cornea. The hole is basically filled by a large ulcer now.

She has to take drops and steroids six times a day.

One of the drops makes my mouth so dry that its very hard to talk. One of the medications dilates the pupil and paralyses the muscles behind my eye, so that my eye is not overworked while its healing. Im in and out of bed, I get exhausted.

When Ms Dunne left the hospital, her ulcer was 8mm in size. Under treatment, it has now reduced to 4mm but she still does not know whether she will get the vision back in her right eye.

Even when I went to the Mater and I asked the doctors if I would get my vision back, they said they didn't know.

Only when the ulcer goes away will the doctors be able to evaluate the damage done to the eye.

Ms Dunne said that shes been told she is very lucky to have had this outcome but the only thing she can do now is wait.

Its just waiting, waiting, waiting, they have to give time for the ulcer to go away.

Right now, the ulcer is over the sight window, while it's there, I wont be able to see anything.

They cant say if I will get my vision back in the right eye until the ulcer is gone. They just said to try and carry on as best as I can.

Ms Dunne is scheduled to go back in for a follow up on August 20.

She said there should be an explicit warning about this condition, as she claims there isnt enough awareness about it.

Ive only heard of these parasites in Asia, two years ago. Ive never heard of these parasites here in Ireland. I thought this only happened in warmer countries. There should be more awareness about this.

Ms Dunne has warned contact lens users to exercise caution, stating that "even a drop of water" can cause serious damage.

If you are using any type of tap water or shower water, remove your lenses. You dont have to have your head immersed in water to get this, you just have to get one drop of water behind your lenses.
A GAA player who passed away at the weekend after more than a week in a coma has been remembered fondly as "one of the good guys."

Co Down native Conal McKee died in Miami shortly after 6am local time on Saturday, it's believed he had been living in Florida, where he had begun a new life with his girlfriend Kata and infant son Danny.

An online fundraising page to support his family stated that he had been in a coma in West Boca Medical Centre since Friday, August 3.

Mr McKee had been a prominent player with Dundrum GAC in Co Down and they have said they are "devastated" by the news of his death.

Dundrum GAC chairman Mark Fitzsimons said: "It is with the deepest sadness that we learned this morning of the death of one of our own, Conal McKee (RIP).

"We as a club are devastated. We send our heartfelt condolences to his family at this most difficult time."

South Down Sinn Fein MP Chris Hazzard extended his condolences to Mr McKee's family.

He commented: "This is a heartbreaking time for Conal's family and the Dundrum community.

"Conal was a very likeable and popular young man who represented Dundrum GAC.

"My thoughts and the thoughts of everyone in South Down are with all the family and friends at this tough time."

Dundrum United FC posted a photo on Twitter of the team that played its first official match almost three years ago, which included Mr McKee.

"We are saddened to learn of the loss of one of the team from that day, Conal McKee RIP," the tweet added.

Friend David Campbell wrote on Facebook: "Too soon Conal, way too soon. You were one of the genuine good guys that everyone loved to be around."
It is less than two weeks to go until the visit of Pope Francis. Photo: Massimo Valicchia/NurPhoto via Getty Images

With less than two weeks to go before the visit of Pope Francis, this Sunday Independent/Kantar Millward Brown poll sought to better understand the opinions of the Irish public toward some of the issues that the Catholic Church is facing today.

Mary McAleese has become increasingly vociferous in her criticism of the Catholic Church, and in particular its attitudes toward women, and the role that they play within the broader congregation. So has she stepped over the mark and gone too far? The public think not.

There is firm agreement that the former president was right to call out the issue of equality - over half (55pc) agree with her viewpoint, versus just 15pc who have reservations. The change in tone of Mrs McAleese over the past few years is remarkable. She has, wittingly or not, taken hold of the conch and is now the conduit for the thoughts and beliefs of many in the nation.

Females are driving this view, with three in five (60pc) agreeing with Mrs McAleese's sentiments. Across the generational divide there is little dissension, although those over the age of 65 are still slightly less sure-footed - 45pc of them agree with her sentiments. That said, this is still significantly ahead of those within this cohort who actively disagree with her (30pc).

Mrs McAleese's interventions come at a time of continuing flux within the Catholic Church. Aside from the more serious issues of clerical abuse, the Church is grappling with issues of dogma, and how it tries to marry up long-held theological teachings with the reality of the present.

Regardless of its more international congregation, where there are still some ripe pickings to be had, the Western world has changed, and the Church is struggling to either play catch-up or to justify its relevance in an increasingly secular society. One suspects that it is not so much that people are turning away from faith per se, but rather the governance that supports it. This malaise (from the Church's point of view) has seeped through Irish society in the past couple of generations - once considered one of the last bastions of Catholic resistance to change. The juxtaposition of this papal visit to John-Paul II's has been well noted.

Turning back to Mrs McAleese's theory, and in light of the spat between Diarmuid Martin and Josepha Madigan, we asked the question "are people in favour of the ordination of female priests?" The answer is again an emphatic yes. Nearly two in three of the population (62pc) believe that that time has come. Less than one in five (18pc) want to see the current status remain. Again it is females, arguably the most alienated, who are driving the cause for change - 65pc of them support such a move, compared with (a still significant) 59pc of males.

As you would expect, younger people are more likely to support such a proposition, although it is interesting to note that the notion gains traction across all age cohorts, including the most faithful of the flock, those over the age of 65 (55pc). Similarly, across most regions, the support remains solid. Interestingly, Dublin, the cockpit of liberalism, is less sure. However, this is due to a more indifferent approach in the capital - three in 10 are apathetic. It would seem that liberalism for many within the capital is based on a more ideological premise, rather than a theological one.

We see a similar picture being painted when asked if priests should be allowed to marry. Two in three (67pc) believe that they should be, again driven by females (73pc) and the young (76pc of under-35s feeling the time is right).

It would seem that females are feeling in particular that the Church, as it stands, is a cold place - reflecting Ms McAleese's musings.

Bearing in mind the lack of vocations, and an ageing clergy, it would suggest that the solutions are hiding in plain sight. Dogma, however, is a difficult totem to pull down.

So it is against this backdrop that Pope Francis will arrive in Ireland on August 25. He is the most charismatic and pragmatic Pope we have seen. What kind of interest will he attract? Regardless of the apparent disaffection with many of the Church's teachings, there is still a huge interest in the upcoming visit. Nearly one in five (19pc) express an interest in attending any of the ceremonies (rising to 23pc among those aged 35-49, the inaugural 'Pope's Children').

Among those who do not intend to travel/attend, it is interesting to note that half will watch or listen to the event. In effect, over two-thirds (69pc) of the population will pay heed in one way or another to this visit.

For some, it will be for religious considerations, whilst for others it will be for the curiosity factor. Either way, while we are now a much more secular society, for many this is an umbilical cord to our past, despite the misgivings that we have.

Paul Moran is an associate director with Kantar Millward Brown
The saying goes that it takes a village to raise a child but it takes a village to take care of anyone.

Newstalks Ciara Kelly, who worked as a GP in Wicklow up until last year, is a firm believer in facilitating vulnerable older people to live in their communities for as long as possible.

Her own mother Julie had dementia, and died last year at the age of 91. Julie eventually went into a nursing home, but she also lived independently at home for a time.

When she was still at home before the nursing home stage, we worried about her every day: Would she be OK? Would she fall?

My mum had a personal alarm. Having a mobile device if they want to go to the shops, a personal alarm they can press if they need help. Thats key.

Lots of people, before they have dementia, they might have reduced mobility or be frail. Falls then cause disability and injury. People then after theyve had a fall are much more nervous about going out, and it reduces their independence."

People with dementia are vulnerable to getting lost and theyre also vulnerable to people taking advantage of them.

I believe in encouraging, supporting and facilitating people to live in their own homes. People always want to live in their own homes. People will always say to you in their later years that they want to stay in their own homes and die in their own beds.

Kelly says her mother Julie was able to live in her own home for a time because she had her own personal alarm, which she could press if she needed help from the family or carers.

Kelly is now an advocate of Motechs Careclip, a mobile emergency alarm which can be used outside the home and monitors the users activity, alerts for falls, disorientation or a panic situation, regardless of where the user is.

Kelly explained: One of the biggest things that contribute to falls in older people is our muscles growing weaker and our balance becoming poorer as we age. The best way to combat this and decrease your risk of falls and improve your quality of life is by exercising regularly, at your own pace.

We would have had the call from the middle of the night to go, and I remember it happened as well that her carer went to get her up in the morning and shed fallen during the night but the alarm wasnt near her When mum had an alarm it was a more basic alarm system, it was eight or nine years ago."

That story is very familiar to a lot of people in Ireland. That fear of what will happen if Im not there.

She added: We have in Ireland an ageing population, and increasingly were seeing people with things like mobility issues and dementia. Its a really current issue for people and also for their families, so theyre concerned about elderly parents.

Lots of people fracture a hip, and then theres significant fallout from that in terms of disability and mortality.

Communities in Ireland, she says, are key to helping the fallout be a little bit easier for the individuals themselves, their carers and their families.

The Careclip is a feature of the Boots Home Assist range which is available in selected Boots pharmacies.
She was the life and soul of her party She was great. Sinead was great

Barbara Brown (40) lost her older sister Sinead to malignant melanoma, and memories of her sister - her soulmate and best friend, as she calls her - are both precious and painful.

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Sinead died just one week after her 31st birthday, a precious occasion that the family celebrated with gusto, ordering their glamorous daughter and sister a much longed-for creme brulee in one of her favourite restaurants.

Skin cancer unfortunately took my sister very early, Barbara tells Independent.ie.

Her classic Irish beauty, with red hair and freckles, meant that she would burn easily in the sun. But she loved the sun, loved to work on her tan, and loved to look well.

She did the odd sun bed she never reacted well to the sun. She would come out in a heat rash or she would go to Boston to see my brothers and [she would try to get] that last colour you wanted before you came home, shed come back with a bit of burn on her back.

Out of the blue an open wound appeared on Sineads foot. It wasnt healing. Sinead was diagnosed with polyarthritis, an autoimmune condition. But soon, the wound on her foot healed and she began to experience bad headaches.

She would have been just 29. The headaches began around the September, and they progressively got worse and worse.

We had to rush her into hospital and the scans were done, and it came back as a large brain tumour on the right side of the brain that had travelled from what we now know as the primary source of the cancer, the foot.

On the second of December, two days before Sineads birthday, they removed the tumour on the left side of the brain.

By the time surgeons attempted to remove two small tumours on the right side of her brain, two weeks later, another two tumours had appeared.

It was quite aggressive, the cancer. When she was fit and ready enough, they were able to start an aggressive form of chemotherapy, along with radiation treatment, which was very rigorous, very tiring. But Sinead didnt moan once, she never complained.

It was gruesome, it really was. The burns on her head were bad. At one point, she just had to put her head out the window to cool down her head that was hard to watch, Barbara recalls.

Sadly, the treatment couldnt beat the tumour which grew all the while.

Over the next year, Sinead eventually moved back to the family home with Barbara and their mother, and the family had precious times together.

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We never discussed the diagnosis. We never discussed what might be, what might not be.

We had some amazing times. We went to Cork with my Dad and my Dads partner, and my little sister. We had some beautiful memories, my Dad turned 60 that year so my brothers came home with their wives and kids. We have some lovely cherished memories from that year.

She was my best friend. Sinead taught me to live right now, to live in this moment, to not be afraid. Sinead was all about presenting yourself well, your make-up, your hair. You dont let yourself down by swearing. She really was a lady.

In the time Sinead was sick, she always still held herself with such dignity and such grace. But she let go of the small stuff that didnt matter. It just didnt. She was able to throw caution to the wind and say, flip it mum, lets just go to Belfast, for the day.

She wasnt actually physically able to do those things but she didnt think twice about just getting out there and not caring what people thought. She wore her wig some days, and some days she didnt.

Eventually, Sineads health deteriorated such that she was sleeping 18 hours a day. Doctors induced a coma, in the hope that they could reduce the swelling on her brain.

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Unfortunately the tumours at this point, which they described as global, were all over the brain.

We were told at the time that Sinead maybe only had three to four weeks to live. Between my mom and my dad and myself, we slept on the floor in her room. We alternated between us. I happened to be with her when she woke up from the coma and all I remember her saying was Babs, I can smell toast, can I have some toast please. So I jumped up and made her toast.

The hospital sat us down to say its not going to be long. What would you like to do? We as a family, we knew Sinead and we knew she would not want to be in a hospital, she would not want to be in a hospice. That was just personally for Sinead.

We never discussed the end. We knew that for Sinead, that would just be too far. She needed to focus on the here and now. So we decided to take Sinead home.

We had nine weeks with Sinead and we had some beautiful times. Sinead wasnt confined to the bed. Myself and my mom would bring her to Liffey Valley, we were in Nutgrove. Sinead loved to shop, putting it mildly. Loved her shoes. Loved anything to do with shopping.

But she added: We had our bad days where we would just stay in the bed and Sinead would have ice cream or wed sit and watch old movies.

After missing her 30th birthday celebration the previous year because of her surgeries, Sinead decided that she would make her 31st birthday special.

She said I dont care what happens. Im going to One Pico for my dinner, and Im going to have creme brulee. That is what Im doing.

One week later, Barbara painfully recalls, her best friend died in her sleep.

We didnt really know wed only have a week to the day with Sinead.

Sinead used to knock on my wall saying love you babs. She just fell asleep. Sinead went into a deep sleep and there was no pain. The palliative care nurses came out from Our Ladys Hospice.

For the end, I was home and I was there and I got to have some beautiful times with Sinead.

She just slipped into a deep coma. After about three days of that, Sinead passed away on the 11th of December, exactly a week to the day from her birthday.

Now, 14 years later, Barbara is telling Sineads story in the hope of spreading awareness that overexposure to UV light, primarily from the sun and sunbeds, causes over 90 per cent of melanoma.

Every year, over 900 new cases of melanoma are diagnosed and 163 people die from the disease

Barbara, her husband, and her three children, Sophie (7) Scott (4) Laura (6 months) wear sun screen every day in Ireland.

Every year, she goes for a skin check. One year, she had a mark on her nose, which thankfully was shown by a biopsy to be benign.

Barbara explains: I miss her every single day. Theres not a day that goes by that I dont think Sinead would love that, she would have found that really funny, or anything to do with family occasions.

I dont have my best friend. Thats the hardest part. She was my soulmate. Dont get me wrong, we were sisters, we were four and a half years apart. She wanted to kill me. I was that sister, she laughs.

She became my best friend. That last year with her, she was my everything. We did everything together. Our love of photography. We both had our Canon cameras, we were taking photos of each other.

I went to grief counselling with Our Ladys Hospice after Sinead passed, and that really got me through my darkest days. And there were some very dark days. I didnt know if Id keep going without her.

But she added: I do believe that Sinead brought my husband to me. If she had met him, they have so much in common its frightening. Their love of history, their love of business, economics, sport, rugby, formula 1 racing.

I have no doubt Sinead sent him to me I now have three amazing kids of my own, and for her not to be here for that, to see that.

But life, now, without Sinead, its taught me so much. Its taught me to grab on, to really appreciate family, my friends. Nothing, I mean it, nothing else matters. I dont care what you have in the bank, I dont care where you live, what your post code is, I dont care what you drive. What matters is your friends and family first and foremost.

Barbara Brown is an ambassador for The Marie Keating Foundation. She regularly helps promote their Skintervention campaigns, the most recent of which is the Skin C(h)ancer campaign - primarily targeting Irish men.

For more information, please visit: The Marie Keating Foundation
There was no big proposal when Mark Golden and Mark Johnston decided to get married, because they always knew they were heading in that direction. They were married in Castletownbere in November 2016, and naturally held the reception at their own hotel, The Beara Coast Hotel, surrounded by 180 guests. When they arrived back after the ceremony, they were really touched that their staff had lined up outside to greet them, dressed all in black with white bow-ties, which was a complete surprise.

The guys first met online in June 2010, and liked each other when they met in person. Happily Mark Golden passed the test he was unaware he was taking - of eating with his mouth closed; open-mouth eaters are his husband's pet hate. At the time, Mark Golden (Mark G) was living and working in Youghal and Mark Johnston (Mark J) was head chef of Francis and John Brennan's Park Hotel in Kenmare, so they were living two hours' apart.

Mark G fell for Mark J's "puppy-dog eyes", and Mark J was attracted to his new companion's tattoos and "great personality". "We just gelled," says Mark G. "I wasn't one for committing at the time, but Mark broke that rule. He's probably the kindest and most caring person you could ever come across, and he's very honourable about everything. He's too nice for his own good sometimes."

Lest we think they're getting too soppy, the guys assure us that they also have their fair share of arguments, although Mark J thinks that his ability to hold on longer to a tiff might be due to "the chef in me". "Mark is kind and caring, and he's a really hard worker who is even more precise than I am," he says. "He motivates me to do better and he spots every little detail, which is great for me because it means I have a second set of eyes on things. We've only had one row in eight years outside of work, and that was about changing a lightbulb."

"Or to be precise, he forgot to turn off the power and I got shocked across the bathroom," Mark G interjects with a laugh.

Mark Golden (41) grew up in north Cork as the eldest of Patrick and Mary's two sons. He studied business information systems at UCC for two years, but his heart lay in the area of hospitality. After two years, he sat his parents down to tell them that he was leaving college. "That was the summer I told them I was gay as well, so they got the whole nine yards," he laughs, adding that his parents were very supportive. "Being gay wasn't easy as Ireland was a different place then, but I had a lot of good friends at school."

Mark was attracted to the area of hospitality because he loved the buzz and being around people, and enjoyed working front-of-house. He worked his way up through various hotel groups and positions.

Mark Johnston, (42) grew up in Donegal town and is the second-eldest of Jimmy and Joan's five children. He grew up on a farm, and used to help his mum cater for the farmers, which is where his love of cooking began. He went to Killybegs Catering College for two years, worked in Germany and Colorado, had a partnership in a restaurant in Houston, and worked at the Park Hotel in Kenmare for two stints of five years and four years, the latter as head chef.

One of the reasons Mark J went to the States was that being gay was not as acceptable in Ireland back then, and he felt that kitchens at that time were very masculine environments. He told his sisters while he was away and his parents when he returned, and they were also very supportive.

The Marks were dating for a year and a half, when they were invited to take over the running of the old Imperial Hotel in Youghal. They leased the hotel from 2012 to 2015, and then felt it was the right time to buy their own hotel. They fell in love with the old Cametringane Hotel in Castletownbere, which had a stunning location but was run-down and had been closed for six years.

"The place was falling to pieces but it was the perfect setting," says Mark Golden, adding that they own the hotel in conjunction with their business partners. Work started in July 2015 and after a hectic and stressful few months, the hotel opened as The Beara Coast Hotel in December 2015. "It was a tough time and we went way over budget because previously hidden problems presented themselves when we peeled back the layers, but we were left with a beautiful building in a stunning part of the world."

The gorgeous hotel has 16 bedrooms with a function room for 350 people and is situated at the water's edge on the Ring of Beara. It won an AA Rosette and Mark Johnston came second in the world in a chowder-making competition in Rhode Island. The two Marks are thrilled to be part of the The Original Irish Hotels group, a group of 60 independent hotels that collaborate to market their properties.

They have been very much welcomed by the local community and are very happy living and working in Castletownbere. They're still mad about one another and love being at home with their cat Felicity, and welcoming guests at the hotel. "We do hospitality the old-fashioned way and love our guests to feel looked after," says Mark Golden. "We like it to be a real home-away-from-home for them."

www.bearacoast.com www.originalirishhotels.com
The best recommendation for a holiday destination is the reaction you get when you say you're heading there. Whenever I said I was off to Collioure, the faces of those who'd already been went soft and dreamy.

They looked under a spell, as if this small fishing village in the south of France, on the shore of the Mediterranean, and which famously inspired Fauvist painters like Henri Matisse and Andre Derain in the early 20th century, had worked some powerful magic on them.

I did wonder if, maybe, they were overdoing it a bit, because sometimes people can be a bit fanciful when talking about France. There are some dull spots over there; I've managed to find a couple. But, mostly, I was thinking; go on Collioure, bewitch me.

I'm up for being charmed when I arrive in Collioure on a Wednesday morning, and find pretty buildings painted in soft pastel colours, plus the mid-week food market in full swing in the town's square, and all softly lit by sunshine.

Collioure's charm offensive continues when I drop my bag off at Hotel Casa Pairal, a very inviting place altogether; my room looks down onto a courtyard with a fountain and a magnolia tree, the common areas are delightful and filled with knick-knacks and books, and the staff are warm and friendly.

I'd be very happy to stay in and play hotel, but instead a lunch date has been organised in one of the town's popular eateries. La Fregate restaurant is a short walk from the hotel, and is in the centre of Collioure, and its tables on the terrace, with parasols if desired, are filled with people enjoying a leisurely lunch in the late May sunshine.

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We dine on a delicious lunch of shrimp, sea bass, and a medley of sweet desserts, and watch people saunter by, as they do in Collioure, because many of the town's medieval streets are car-free, and this has the effect of slowing down the pace of life.

Of course the awful thing about getting settled in a lovely French restaurant is that you have to get back up again. Not least because we'd like some photos of this trip besides those of the food on our plates. And Collioure is located in the south-eastern corner of France, 26km from the Spanish border, and is known for having a beautiful bay. Apparently if we take a ride on a dinky train up a hill to Fort Saint-Elme, we will get a chance to enjoy a stunning view of the coast below.

It's a steep enough ride through vineyards to reach the medieval Fort Saint-Elme, which is an impressive military fort once used to protect Majorca's kings, whose summer residence was the castle of Collioure during the 13th Century. It's now a museum for medieval weapons, and inside we find a collection of swords, spears, maces, suits of armour and battle axes, all of which are eerily magnificent - though you can't help but feel sorry for anyone who found themselves on the receiving end of any of them.

This trip is well worth it, because Fort Saint-Elme offers a stunning panoramic view of the Bay of Collioure, and way down below us the shimmering blue sea laps onto what are pebbled beaches. Beyond the sea are the terracotta-tiled roofs of the town, including the landmark buildings; the Chateau Royal, once home to the Kings of Majorca, the old light tower, and the Eglise Notre-Dame des Anges, a beautiful church with a round bell tower which was used in the Middle Ages as a warning tower when enemies tried to invade.

We don't get the train back down to Collioure town, but instead we take a hike down a vertiginous dirt track through the vineyards, a wonderfully scenic trek, which leaves us feeling suspended between the sea and the sky. This feeling of being lost in nature is enhanced by the myriad of butterflies which flutter past us all the while, keeping us company.

France being famous for its wines, and seeing as we have just traversed bountiful vineyards, we decide to head to La Cave Fefe on rue de la Democratie, to enjoy some wines made from local grapes. Later on that evening we taste even more local wines at dinner in La Balette restaurant, a Michelin-star fine dining spot at the water's edge at Collioure's harbour. We enjoy octopus carpaccio, seared tuna steaks and red mullet.

We also have a Balette Cocktail to start, which is made from both almond and apricot liqueurs, and white wine, and is delicious. I'm tempted to make one for myself, but something tells me it won't taste quite the same in Dublin.

On day three of this short trip (I spent the first day in Perpignan), we go on a guided art tour of Collioure, through streets filled with the scent of jasmine and genet flowers. It was here, in 1905, that Matisse started the Fauvism movement, a time in his career when he relaxed his painting style, and began using dabs of bold colour to evoke stronger emotional responses to his work. Art critics of the time apparently thought he had lost his mind, but perhaps he was just under the spell of Collioure? We see reproductions of famous Fauvist works of art which have been hung on public walls in Collioure, often very close to the actual beauty spots which inspired them.

And, if Collioure inspired Matisse to revolutionise his painting, the painter also inspired the village to change its image. The one-time fishermen and soldiers' houses, which were all painted the same shade of lobster pink when Matisse arrived, are today painted in bold colours; yellows, oranges, blues, lavenders and hues of raspberry.

We lunch in Tapas La Treille, a tapas restaurant located in one of the tranquil and pretty back streets of Collioure, where we sit outdoors on high stools and have our food served on upstanding wine caskets. We enjoy a spread of charcuterie and cured meat, Spanish omelette, anchovies, tomato bread and chickpeas.

I travelled to Collioure by flying into Perpignan. It gave me a great opportunity to do a two-town visit in a matter of three days. I spent my first night in Perpignan, staying in the Campanile Hotel, which is very conveniently located within walking distance of the city centre. That night I ate in La Maison Rouge restaurant on rue Francois Rabelais, which I recommend for its chocolate souffle, which had a surprisingly intense pear syrup at its centre.

Perpignan's medieval city centre is a must for history buffs, and among its architectural highlights is Le Castillet, a 14th Century defensive structure built to repel invaders and which served as a city gate. There's also Perpignan's cathedral, also built in the 14th century, a relic of the Majorcan kings' occupancy.

Am I bewitched following this trip to France? Totally. Am I utterly charmed by Collioure? Beyond a doubt. Am I wondering when I can go back? Yes. Am I overdoing it a bit? Possibly, but I'm just back from the south of France, so cut me some slack.

Plus Collioure is the kind of place you feel happy talking about.

Getting there

Flights from Dublin to Perpignan with Aer Lingus: four flights a week in September; Tuesday/Thursday/ Saturday/ Sunday, and five flights a week in August; Tuesday/ Wednesday/ Thursday/ Saturday/ Sunday. Return fares start from 78.99. aerlingus.com

3-star hotel La Casa Pairal hotel, a boutique hotel that was formerly the home of a 19th Century Catalan family, is situated in the heart of Collioure. en.hotel-casa-pairal.com La Balette is located at Hotel Relais des 3 Mas & Restaurant La Balette, Route de Port-Vendres, and the one-Michelin star restaurant offers a tasting menu for dinner, over six courses. relaisdestroismas.com/articles-2/2-8-la-carte
Prosecutors have added another murder charge against a California serial killing suspect, boosting the number of victims to 13 in the Golden State Killer case.

Former police officer Joseph DeAngelo, 72, was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Claude Snelling, who was shot while stopping the kidnapping of his 16-year-old daughter in Visalia, Tulare County district attorney Tim Ward said.

The community college teacher was killed in 1975.

We have taken that first step in providing justice not only for the victims family but for this community as a whole, Mr Ward said.

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Mr Snellings daughter, Elizabeth Hupp, said on Monday she was in her bedroom when she woke to see a masked gunman in 1975. The man threatened her before dragging her out of the house.

Thats when I heard my dad yell and the man with a ski mask pushed me to the ground, turned and shot my dad twice as he was coming through the back door, she told CBS News.

Even though she did not see his face, she said she believes DeAngelo killed her father.

In my heart, I believe hes the one, and that my father was his first victim, she said.

DeAngelo had already been charged in 12 killings throughout the state in the 1970s and 1980s that authorities say were committed by one of the states most elusive serial killers.

Detectives are also confident that DeAngelo is a burglar known as the Visalia Ransacker, who struck more than 100 homes in the 1970s, terrorising the farming community about 40 miles south of Fresno, Visalia Police Chief Jason Salazar said.

DeAngelo worked as a police officer in the nearby town of Exeter from 1973 to 1976.

Investigators linked him to some of the killings by plugging DNA collected from a semen sample at one of the crime scenes into a genealogical website they say showed a match to a distant relative of DeAngelo.

Authorities say they then collected DNA from a tissue left in rubbish outside DeAngelos house to make the final match.

Mr Salazar said Visalia investigators linked DeAngelo to the killing in that city through a description from a witness and physical evidence.

Authorities in northern California arrested DeAngelo in April at his Citrus Heights home and said they believed he was the killer who had long eluded authorities.

DeAngelo is also suspected of committing roughly 50 rapes but he cannot be tried for the rapes or burglaries because the statute of limitations has expired.
South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, right, and his North Korean counterpart Ri Son Gwon arrive for their meeting at the northern side of Panmunjom in the Demilitarised Zone, North Korea (South Korea Unification Ministry/AP)

The rival Koreas have agreed to hold a third summit between their leaders in Pyongyang sometime before the end of September.

The agreement between the two countries unification ministers comes amid an ongoing nuclear stand-off between Washington and Pyongyang.

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The two sides did not announce an exact date for the summit.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un first met in April in a highly publicised summit and then again in May for more informal talks.

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The Koreas said in a statement that they had reviewed ways to set up agreements made at the past summits, during nearly two hours of talks at a North Korea-controlled building in the border village of Panmunjom on Monday.

The meeting between delegations of senior officials from Seoul and Pyongyang comes as experts see slow progress on efforts to disarm North Korea since a June summit between Mr Kim and US President Donald Trump.

Ri Son Gwon, the head of the North Korean delegation, told pool reporters at the end of the talks that officials agreed on a specific date for the summit in Pyongyang sometime within September, but he refused to share the date, saying he wanted to keep reporters wondering.

The South Korean unification minister, Cho Myoung-gyon, told reporters after the meeting that officials still had some work to do before agreeing on when exactly the summit would happen.

He said the two sides will again discuss when the leaders would meet but did not say when.

It was not clear why Mr Ri and Mr Cho differed on the issue of the date, and Mr Cho would not answer a specific question about the discrepancy.

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Mr Cho, the chief of the South Korean delegation, said the two sides also talked a lot about international sanctions meant to punish the North for its development of nuclear weapons, but he did not elaborate.

Seoul has been preparing for possible economic collaboration with Pyongyang that could go ahead when sanctions are lifted.

Pyongyang has urged Washington to ease the economic punishments, but the United States says that cannot happen until the North completely denuclearises.

The South Korean envoy said he urged Pyongyang to accelerate its current nuclear negotiations with the United States. The North said it was making efforts to disarm, but Mr Cho said there were no new details on those efforts.

Experts say there has been slow progress on those efforts since the Singapore summit.
Migrants on a wooden boat react as they wait to be rescued during a search and rescue operation with the MV Aquarius rescue ship in the Mediterranean Sea, off the Libyan coast. Photo: Reuters

The NGO rescue ship the Aquarius has called on European governments to offer it safe harbour after rescuing 141 migrants from the Mediterranean, saying it has been stranded at sea for more than two days.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and SOS Mediterranee, which jointly operate the Aquarius, said they had contacted authorities in Italy, Malta, Tunisia and Libya following Friday's rescues but have been denied a place to disembark.

They called for urgent humanitarian assistance for those on board, most of whom were said to be from Somalia and Eritrea, were weak and malnourished, and included 67 unaccompanied minors.

"What is of utmost importance is that the survivors are brought to a place of safety without delay, where their basic needs can be met and where they can be protected from abuse," said Nick Romaniuk, search and rescue co-ordinator for SOS Mediterranee.

The NGOs said that those on board reported encountering five boats which did not offer assistance a "disturbing development" that suggested Italy's ban on rescue ships was deterring crews from helping migrants in distress.

The Aquarius found itself at the centre of a major diplomatic standoff in June when both Italy and Malta turned it away, leaving it at sea with 630 migrants on board for more than a week before it was able to dock in the Spanish port city of Valencia.

It is unclear whether Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, of the centre-left PSOE, will repeat that offer. He has since allowed a Spanish NGO boat, the Open Arms, to dock on three occasions. But he has been accused of failing to ensure local authorities have the resources to cope with the arrivals.

Spain last month overtook Italy as the biggest European landing point for migrants, a development blamed largely on the clampdown in the central Mediterranean.

SOS Mediterranee and MSF said that Europe was increasingly putting the co-ordination of rescues in the hands of Libyan authorities. But the latter did not have the "capacity" and had simply told it to contact others.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]
Italy is considering reinstating compulsory national service for its restless young citizens, according to its hard-line interior minister Matteo Salvini.

Mr Salvini, who is also deputy prime minister, called for a return to military service, saying: "Above and beyond 'rights' I would like to see a return to there being 'duties'."

Speaking at a rally in Lesina, Puglia, he added: "We are doing well to study the costs, ways and timings for evaluating if, how and when to reintroduce - for a few months - obligatory military and civil service to our boys and girls, so at least they learn a bit of 'education' that mum and dad are not capable of teaching them."

Mr Salvini has repeatedly expressed his support for compulsory military service, both as a tool for social cohesion and integration, as well as for training young people to use arms responsibly.

He did military service at the Montello barracks in Milan, which in 2016 were repurposed as a holding centre for 300 asylum seekers, prompting the far-right leader to personally attend neighbourhood protests calling for their relocation.

His party drafted legislation last year proposing conscription but failed to gain parliamentary support.

The League's coalition partner, the populist Five Star Movement, is unlikely to back the proposal, given that it is not part of the government "contract" the alliance agreed to as budget priorities

But Mr Salvini has emerged as the most prominent voice of Italy's government, despite accusations of reviving Fascist era sensibilities.

France, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands all suspended or abolished the draft in the 1990s. Sweden and Germany followed suit in 2010 and 2011.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]
Former Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez has denied wrongdoing after recent accusations that she was responsible for a corruption scheme involving public works contracts.

Fernandez said in a written statement presented to a federal court that the accusations are false and politically motivated.

More than a dozen people have been arrested in the case. They include business leaders and former officials who served in Fernandezs 2007-15 administration.

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The case is based on an investigation by La Nacion newspaper into alleged corruption over more than a decade during the governments of Fernandez and her late husband, Nestor Kirchner.

The newspaper says the driver of one of the accused kept notebooks with detailed information on bribes.

Fernandez is currently a senator, a post that grants her immunity from prosecution.
Italys transport minister has said the UK should take in 141 migrants picked up by a rescue ship that sails under the flag of the British territory of Gibraltar.

As his country continues to refuse port to ships run by humanitarian groups, Danilo Toninelli said the UK should take responsibility for the migrants aboard the Aquarius, which is operated by French humanitarian groups.

UPDATE: Maritime authorities from #Malta and #Italy inform #Aquarius that they will not grant 141 people onboard a place of safety to disembark. #Aquarius has now reached a standby position exactly between Malta and Italy and is awaiting further guidance. pic.twitter.com/Dc1gjK4dvj  MSF Sea (@MSF_Sea) August 13, 2018

Mr Toninelli said the rescue was co-ordinated by the Libyan coast guard and that the ship is now in Maltese waters.

The French aid groups SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders have called on European nations to identify a close port of safety so the 141 migrants picked up in two rescues on Friday could disembark.

Most of the migrants are from Somalia and Eritrea and include 67 unaccompanied minors.

Doctors Without Borders said many of the people who were rescued are weak and malnourished.

The European Commission said it is in contact with a number of member states to identify a country willing to take those picked up by the ship.

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Spokeswoman Tove Ernst said: It could of course be the case that in theory a flag state of a rescue ship could be considered a potential location for disembarkation, but this might not be possible in practice.

She added: As we have done in a number of previous cases, we stand ready to lend full diplomatic support and weight to a swift solution of the incident.

Doctors Without Borders said European governments tend to focus their efforts on propping up the Libyan JRCC (joint rescue co-operation centre), but that the two rescues on Friday underlined the unreliability of the system.

Aloys Vimard, Doctors Without Borders co-ordinator on board the Aquarius, said the ship happened on the two boats by chance, even though the Libyans were aware of their distress.

In addition, those rescued reported that five ships had come into their vicinity before the Aquarius and did not offer to help.

Mr Vimard added: It seems the very principle of rendering assistance to persons in distress at sea is now at stake. Ships might be unwilling to respond to those in distress due to the high risk of being stranded and denied a place of safety.
Boys demonstrate outside the offices of the United Nations in Sanaa, Yemen to denounce last weeks air strike that killed dozens including children in the northwestern province of Saada, August 13, 2018. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

ATTENTION EDITORS - VISUAL COVERAGE OF SCENES OF INJURY OR DEATH Girls demonstrate outside the offices of the United Nations in Sanaa, Yemen to denounce last weeks air strike that killed dozens including children in the northwestern province of Saada, August 13, 2018. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

Boys demonstrate outside the offices of the United Nations in Sanaa, Yemen to denounce last weeks air strike that killed dozens including children in the northwestern province of Saada, August 13, 2018. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

Boys demonstrate outside the offices of the United Nations in Sanaa, Yemen to denounce last week's air strike that killed dozens including children in the northwestern province of Saada, August 13, 2018. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

A boy holds a placard as he demonstrates outside the offices of the United Nations in Sanaa, Yemen to denounce last week's air strike that killed dozens including children in the northwestern province of Saada, August 13, 2018. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

A boy holds a placard as he demonstrates outside the offices of the United Nations in Sanaa, Yemen to denounce last week's air strike that killed dozens including children in the northwestern province of Saada, August 13, 2018. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

A girl holds a placard as she demonstrates outside the offices of the United Nations in Sanaa, Yemen to denounce last week's air strike that killed dozens including children in the northwestern province of Saada, August 13, 2018. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

Boys demonstrate outside the offices of the United Nations in Sanaa, Yemen to denounce last weeks air strike that killed dozens including children in the northwestern province of Saada, August 13, 2018. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

ATTENTION EDITORS - VISUAL COVERAGE OF SCENES OF INJURY OR DEATH Boys and girls demonstrate outside the offices of the United Nations in Sanaa, Yemen to denounce last weeks air strike that killed dozens including children in the northwestern province of Saada, August 13, 2018. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

Thousands of mourners gathered on Monday to bury dozens of children killed in a Saudi-led coalition air strike on a bus in northern Yemen.

At least 40 children were killed in Thursday's raid which hit the bus as it drove through a market of Dahyan, a town in Saada, the armed Houthi group which controls the province said.

Cars bearing the logo of the Iranian-aligned Houthi movement transported the bodies, wrapped in white shrouds, from the hospital to a large square for prayers before heading to the graveyard, where rows of graves were dug on Friday.

People carried pictures of those killed as armed Houthi fighters managed the crowd attending the funeral.

"My son went to the market to run house errands and then the enemy air strike happened and he was hit by shrapnel and died," said Fares al-Razhi, mourning his 14-year-old son.

"For my son, I will take revenge on Salman and Mohammed Bin Zayed," he said, referring to leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The Gulf Arab states are leading the alliance of Sunni Muslim countries that intervened in Yemen's war in 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognised government that was expelled from the capital Sanaa by the Houthis in 2014.

The coalition said on Friday it would investigate the strike after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the attack and called for an independent probe.

But on Saturday, the Saudi state news agency SPA said Saudi Arabia's mission to the world body had delivered a message to Guterres reiterating that the military action was "legitimate" and had targeted Houthi leaders responsible for "recruiting and training young children".

TALKS PLANNED

The coalition initially said after the attack that the strike had targeted missile launchers that were used by the Houthis to attack the southern Saudi province of Jizan.

The Houthis' health minister Taha Mutawakil said last week that the estimated number of casualties stood at 51 killed including 40 children, and at least 79 people wounded, of which 56 were children. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported the same toll on Friday, citing authorities in Saada.

The head of the Houthis' supreme revolutionary committee, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, attended the funeral and blamed the United States "for this crime and all the crimes that have been committed against Yemen", the Houthi-held al-Masirah TV said.

The United States and other Western powers provide arms and intelligence to the alliance, and human rights groups have criticised them over coalition air strikes that have killed hundreds of civilians at hospitals, schools and markets.

A US military spokeswoman said US forces were not involved in Thursday's air strike. The US State Department urged the Saudi-led coalition to "conduct a thorough and transparent investigation".

The coalition says it does not intentionally target civilians and has set up a committee to probe alleged mass casualty air strikes, which has mostly cleared it of any blame.

The Houthis have also been criticised by rights groups.

The UN special envoy to Yemen has been shuffling between the warring parties ahead of holding consultations in Geneva on Sept. 6 in an effort to end the conflict that has killed more than 10,000 people and pushed the impoverished Arab country to the verge of starvation, according to the United Nations.
A counter-protester stands in front of state police at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Photo: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Around 20 demonstrators who were going to join a white nationalist rally walked through the heart of Washington yesterday, cordoned by rows of police officers and outnumbered by hundreds of taunting counter protesters.

The 'Unite the Right 2' event in the US capital - organised to coincide with the anniversary of last year's racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Virginia - was set to take place last night in Lafayette Square, across from the White House.

At the head of the white nationalist group was Virginia activist Jason Kessler, who helped organise last year's event in Charlottesville. He emerged with a handful of fellow demonstrators from a subway station holding an American flag and walked toward the White House.

Counter protesters who held signs declaring 'No Hate' awaited their arrival, chanting "Nazis go home" and "Shut it down."

There was an enormous police presence to keep both sides apart and avoid the street brawls that broke out last year in Charlottesville. A local woman, Heather Heyer, was killed when an Ohio man, James Fields, drove his car into a crowd of counter protesters.

At the time, President Donald Trump said there were "very fine people" on both sides, spurring criticism from across the political divide that he was equating the counter protesters with the rally attendees, who included neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.

On Saturday, Mr Trump condemned "all types of racism" in a tweet marking the anniversary.

In Washington yesterday, counter-protesters organised an afternoon programme of music, speeches and poetry readings at Freedom Plaza, east of the White House.

Sean Kratouil, a 17-year-old who lives in Maryland, was wearing a vest with 'Antifa' on the back and said he was there to help start a movement of peaceful anti-fascists. He said he was concerned that when rallies turn violent, it makes his side look bad. "Public perception is key," he said.

Mr Kessler said the rally was aimed at advocating "free speech for everybody", and he blamed last year's violence in Charlottesville on other groups and the media.

"I'm not a white supremacist. I'm not a neo-Nazi," Mr Kessler said as a train his group boarded in suburban Virginia rolled towards Washington.

In the picturesque college town of Charlottesville, hundreds of police officers had maintained a security perimeter around the normally bustling downtown district throughout the day on Saturday. Traffic was barred from an area of more than 15 city blocks, while pedestrians were allowed access at two checkpoints where officers examined bags for weapons.

Hundreds of students and activists took to the streets. Many directed their anger at the heavy police presence, with chants of "cops and Klan go hand in hand," a year after police were heavily criticised for their failure to prevent the violence.

Earlier on Saturday, a group of anti-fascist protesters walked through the downtown area, holding signs with messages like "Good Night White Pride."

On Sunday morning, activist Grace Aheron (27) donned a 'Black Lives Matter' T-shirt and joined hundreds of fellow residents who gathered at Booker T Washington Park to mark the anniversary of last year's bloodshed.

"We want to claim our streets back, claim our public space back, claim our city back," Ms Aheron said at the park.
American authorities are seeking to learn what drove an airline worker to steal an empty plane from Seattle's airport in a security scare that caused fighter jets to be scrambled and ended only when it crashed.

A Horizon Air ground service agent got into a Bombardier Q400 turboprop aircraft on Friday in a maintenance area at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and took off.

He flew for about one hour, often erratically with attempts at aerial stunts, before crashing on to sparsely populated Ketron Island in Puget Sound, 40km to the south west.

The 29-year-old man, who has not been officially identified, was suicidal and appeared to have acted alone, according to authorities. He was killed in the crash.

Expand Close Airline worker Richard Russell had clearance to tow planes. Photo: AP / Facebook

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Whatsapp Airline worker Richard Russell had clearance to tow planes. Photo: AP

Relatives and co-workers identified him as Richard Russell of Sumner, Washington, who was also known as Beebo.

"He was a faithful husband, a loving son, and a good friend," the Russell family said in a statement.

"This is a complete shock to us. We are devastated by these events and Jesus is truly the only one holding this family together right now."

Russell was not known to have had a pilot's licence, Horizon Air CEO Gary Beck said. It was not clear how he had been able to take off and fly as he did.

"There were some manoeuvres that were done that were incredible with the aircraft," Mr Beck said.

"Commercial aircraft are complex machines. They're not as easy to fly as, say, a Cessna 150, so I don't know how he achieved [what] he did."

The local sheriff's department said on Twitter that either doing stunts "or lack of flying skills" caused the crash.

In partial recordings of Russell's conversations with air traffic controllers, he said he was sorry to disappoint people who cared about him and described himself as a "broken guy."

"Got a few screws loose, I guess," Russell is heard saying in the recording. "Never really knew it until now." He also admired the sunset, complained of light-headedness, and asked whether he would go to prison if he landed safely.

He had worked for Horizon Air for three years and had clearance to tow planes, Alaska Airlines CEO Brad Tilden said.

Mr Tilden said that type do plane did not have doors that lock or ignition keys like cars.

"The set-up in aviation in America is we secure the airfield and we have the mindset that we have employees [with credentials] authorised to be there," Mr Tilden said, adding the airline was working with authorities.

Two F-15 fighter jets took to the air from a base in Portland, Oregon, and were on the scene within minutes. The jets were armed but did not open fire, said a US Aerospace Defence Command spokesman.

The pilots and air traffic controllers tried to guide the plane away from populated areas.

The Bombardier Q400 turboprop is designed for short-distance flights and can seat 76 passengers.
A former aide to US President Donald Trump has revealed that she secretly recorded her sacking by John Kelly, the chief of staff, in the high-security White House situation room.

Omarosa Manigault Newman also claimed that Americans were being kept in the dark about their president's mental decline, saying: "I was complicit with the White House deceiving this nation."

Ms Newman, whose tell-all book about her White House tenure is to be released tomorrow, left the administration in December.

She alleges that she was threatened by Mr Kelly and that he told her things could get "ugly" if she did not go on friendly terms.

Ms Newman also described Mr Trump as a racist - an accusation which he has repeatedly denied.

She made her allegations on US television hours after the president had responded to a question about her book - 'Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House' - by saying: "Low life. She's a low life."

Ms Newman, a former star of 'The Apprentice' in the US, said that she now regretted her White House role.

She explained: "It is hindsight. But I will say this to you; I was complicit with the White House deceiving this nation.

"They continue to deceive this nation by how mentally declined he [Mr Trump] is; how difficult it is for him to process complex information; how he is not engaged in some of the most important decisions that impact our country. I was complicit - and for that I regret."

She then raised security concerns by revealing that she had been able to smuggle her mobile phone into the top-secret situation room.

Ms Newman justified her action by saying that she had felt the need to protect herself.

"I protected myself because this is a White House where everybody lies; the president lies to the American people, [the press secretary] Sarah Huckabee stands in front of the country and lies every day."

There was swift reaction from the Trump camp to her remarks. Kellyanne Conway, counsellor to the president, said: "[This is] the first time I ever heard Omarosa suggest those awful things about the president [and they are] in this book. And I think that Omarosa, unfortunately, has undercut her own credibility."

Ms Newman effectively threw a hand grenade by claiming - without evidence - that she had heard a tape of Mr Trump using racist language against African-Americans.

She said: "It confirmed what I feared the most: that Donald Trump is a con and has been masquerading as someone who is actually open to engaging with diverse communities; but when he talks that way, the way he did on his tape, it confirmed that he is truly a racist."

A year ago, Mr Trump refused to condemn outright white supremacists, following the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, at which a female counter-protester was killed by a neo-Nazi sympathiser.

On Saturday, on the eve of a second Unite the Right rally, Mr Trump released an unequivocal statement, saying: "The riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division. We must come together as a nation.

"I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!"
Senior officials from the rival Koreas met on Monday to set a date and venue for a third summit between South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The two leaders, who first met in April in a highly publicised summit and then again in May for more informal talks, previously agreed to meet again sometime in the fall in Pyongyang but released no concrete details.

The meeting on Monday at a North Korea-controlled building in the border village of Panmunjom comes amid growing worries about whether North Korea will begin abandoning its nuclear weapons, something officials suggested would happen after Mr Kims summit with US president Donald Trump in June in Singapore.

North Korea is thought to have a growing arsenal of nuclear bombs and long-range missiles and to be closing in on the ability to reliably target anywhere on the US mainland.

Expand Close South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, left, shakes hands with his North Korean counterpart Ri Son Gwon (Korea Pool/Yonhap via AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, left, shakes hands with his North Korean counterpart Ri Son Gwon (Korea Pool/Yonhap via AP)

A string of weapons tests last year, during which Pyongyang claimed to have completed its nuclear arsenal, had many in Asia worried that Washington and Pyongyang were on the brink of war.

After a peace offering by Mr Kim in January, Mr Moon was able to orchestrate his own summits with Mr Kim, which were followed by Mr Kim and Mr Trumps meeting in June.

The South Korean delegation for Mondays talks is led by Cho Myoung-gyon, who oversees Seouls Unification Ministry that handles inter-Korean issues, and includes Nam Gwan-pyo, a Moon aide responsible for North Korean nuclear matters.

The North Korean delegation is led by Ri Son Gwon, chairman of the Norths agency that deals with inter-Korean affairs. North Korea, which proposed Mondays talks last week, also sent officials overseeing past inter-Korean economic collaborations.

In opening remarks, the head of the North Korean delegation set a positive tone for the days meeting, comparing the current state of inter-Korean relations to very close friends where nothing can stand between the two.

Expand Close Cho Myoung-gyon, right, and Ri Son Gwon arrive to hold their meeting (Korea Pool/Yonhap via AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Cho Myoung-gyon, right, and Ri Son Gwon arrive to hold their meeting (Korea Pool/Yonhap via AP)

We are attending this talk with an intention to get some good outcomes, Mr Ri told the South Korean delegation, according to pool reports. He added that continuing the discussions on the two leaders summit in Pyongyang would help improve the inter-Korean ties.

We will listen to the Norths stance on the inter-Korean summit for this fall, which is agreed upon in the Panmunjom declaration, and share our views, Mr Cho told reporters before heading to the border, referring to the agreement at the April summit.

The meeting between Seoul and Pyongyang comes as experts see slow progress on efforts to disarm North Korea since the Singapore summit.

Pyongyang urged Washington to reciprocate its goodwill gestures, which include suspending missile and nuclear tests and returning the remains of Americans who fought in the Korean War.

Washington, which cancelled an annual joint military exercise with South Korea that had taken place in August in previous years, has refused to ease sanctions until North Korea finally and fully denuclearises.
Pakistans newly elected parliament has convened for the first time since last months general elections that saw the party of former cricket star turned politician Imran Khan win most seats.

The politicians were sworn in at a brief ceremony in the 342-seat National Assembly, the decision-making lower house of parliament.

Later on Monday, fireworks are to mark the eve of Pakistans Independence Day.

The parliament is to elect a speaker and his deputy on Wednesday and vote on the prime minister the following day. The swearing-in ceremony for the prime minister is due on Saturday.

I want all Pakistanis to celebrate 14th August, our Independence Day, with full fervour - especially as we are now moving towards Naya Pakistan & reclaiming Jinnah's vision InshaAllah.  Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) August 10, 2018

Mr Khans populist Tahreek-e-Insaf party won 115 seats in the July 25 vote, requiring it to form a coalition.

In the days after the elections, party spokesman Fawad Chaudhry said more politicians joined the partys ranks and that it now enjoys the backing of 180 parliament members after several women politicians, minority and independents sided with Mr Khan.

He needs 172 votes to be become prime minister.

Mr Khan has campaigned on the promise of a New Pakistan with justice for all, pledging to wipe out corruption and help the poor.

He has said he would run the country like it has never been run before, though some of his popular and influential backers, who joined his party weeks before the elections, have questionable pasts and some of them even face charges.

The 65-year-old has also promised to create 10 million jobs in Pakistan, where employment rate is high and more than 65% of the countrys 200 million people are under the age of 35.

Since the elections, Mr Khan has adopted a conciliatory approach to Pakistans neighbours and allies, saying he wants peace with hostile neighbour India, praising Chinas economic strategy for reducing widespread poverty and sending a message to Washington that he wants good relations, based on mutual respect.

He also reached out to Afghanistan, suggesting the two nations adopt a policy of open borders, a relationship similar to the European Union.

Mr Khan has also disparaged liberals, attacked feminism, embraced radical religious parties and vowed to uphold Pakistans blasphemy law.

He enjoys the support of the countrys powerful military establishment, although he has been known to go his own way.
On May 4, China announced that it had exempted import tariffs for 28 drugs, including all cancer drugs from May 1. Further, Chinese authorities will also accept data collected from clinical trials conducted outside the mainland  these can be used for applications to register innovations in drugs and medical equipment.

The new norms could assuage Indian concerns overs its highly imbalanced trade relationship with China. With the new tariff exemptions in place, Indian pharmaceutical companies and medicine exports could enjoy greater market access in China, and potentially reduce the ballooning bilateral trade deficit.

Initial optimism over the impact of the tariff cuts has since faded.

While local media coverage continues to pursue the benefits of the opening, Indian pharmaceutical majors maintain that its much ado about nothing.

The reason is simple.

Any industry doing business in China, as Indian drug makers can attest to, must navigate the countrys labyrinthine regulatory system, particularly if there is local resistance.

In case of the pharmaceutical sector, Indian firms are subjected to lengthy inspection processes, requiring multiple official clearances for both oral and injectable drugs. Altogether, this takes up between three to five years.

Indian pharmaceutical exporters, commerce ministry lobby Beijing

Despite the bleak prospects, Indian exporters and government officials are actively lobbying Chinese authorities.

In June, Indian pharmaceutical exporters met with representatives from Chinas Food and Drugs Administration (CFDA) to discuss persistent challenges faced by them when entering the Chinese market.

This will be followed by another interaction between Indian pharmaceutical delegates and Chinese authorities in Shanghai, in August, to discuss expediting the ease of regulations.

Meanwhile, Indias commerce ministry is keenly following up on the matter with Beijing.

At a joint economic group meeting chaired by the trade ministers of both countries, India highlighted the potential for increased pharmaceutical imports by China, alongside rice and IT.

In the past, Indian generic drugs exporters have found it near impossible to do business with China as the clearance process takes up to five years. Drug makers also face problems when they attempt to commercialize a new drug.

Thus far, the CFDA appears willing to speed up regulatory clearances, and is presently considering the option of faster regulatory approvals to EU-approved Indian pharmacy suppliers. However, businesses remain skeptical, preferring to wait for greater details on just how this regulatory easing will be implemented.

Indias pharmaceutical exports to China

Currently, China accepts only a few Indian drug exports that have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.

In 2017-18, India exported pharmaceuticals worth US$27 million  less than two percent of Indias total drug exports, worth US$17 billion  due to non-tariff barriers.

India, on the other hand, imports raw materials worth US$6 to US$7 billion from China for making active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for its pharmaceutical industry, according to data available with the Pharmaceutical Export Promotion Council (Pharmexcil). In fact, about 90 percent of the intermediates used by API makers are imported from China.

Further, the prices of these raw materials have recently spiked due to the shutting down of Chinese production firms as the country strengthens its environmental standards to tackle pollution.

Chinas tariff reductions to benefit all countries

In May, China announced that import tariffs will be slashed for all common drugs  cancer drugs, cancer alkaloid-based drugs, and traditional Chinese medicine imports. Value-added tax (VAT) will reduce by a considerable margin on the manufacture and import of drugs.

Cancer drug prices will be reduced through centralized government procurement; cross-border e-commerce will facilitate the reduction of premium prices. Innovative drug imports will be published in the catalog of medical insurance reimbursement.

Yet, these relaxations benefit all drug and medical device makers and exporting countries  and are not India specific.

Further, Indian pharma industry insiders state that the overall tariff reduction is meager  at about three to four percent.

The push for reimbursement of cancer drugs also mean to reduce the prevailing exorbitant drug prices in China; it could, however, stop the smuggling of affordable Indian drugs into China.

Real prospects can emerge only when there is a clear bilateral arrangement between India and China  until then businesses will stay on a watchful waiting mode.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is promising to do something about an eagle feather he said his family took from a lake in upstate New York.

Cuomo either plans to return the feather to Lake Saranac or donate it to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a spokesperson told The Associated Press. If he chooses the latter, the feather might one day end up in the hands of a Native American.

That's because Cuomo, as a non-Native, is not legally allowed to possess an eagle feather without federal approval. The AP asked questions after the governor, during a speech last week , admitted that he kept one "on my fireplace" after finding it during a family outing on Lake Saranac some years back.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service established the National Eagle Repository in the 1970s to distribute eagle feathers and parts to tribal citizens. Due to the large number of requests, it typically takes about two years to fulfill a request, according to The New York Times and other news reports

"Requests are filled on a first come first serve basis by date of application," the agency's website states. "Numbers of requests, by far, exceeds the number of eagles available which imposes various waiting times for orders to be filled."

Read More on the Story: Gov. Cuomo says he once found an eagle feather and kept it -- which is illegal (The Associated Press August 13, 2018) Cuomos cherished eagle feather is likely illegal (The New York Post August 12, 2018)

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Tanu Weds Manu is a film that struck a chord with almost everyone who watched it. Thats one of the reasons why one can watch the film over and over again without getting bored. The Kangana Ranaut and R Madhavan starrer was the debut film of ace director Anand L Rai, who became a rage in the industry soon after the movie was released. So much so, that he made a sequel to the movie, which against the expectations was bigger and better than the original.

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It wouldnt be wrong to say that Tanu Weds Manu was a benchmark for Indian film industry. Anand L Rai has now made a film with Shah Rukh Khan, which also stars Salman Khan in a cameo role, and he gearing up for the release of Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi and Manmarziyaan. He is on a roll for sure.

india.com

What is the success formula for his films? He says its the simplicity of his films that works in his favour.

The key to my films is simplicity. I havent changed fundamentally post Tanu Weds Manu, because I dont want to. I fear, the day I change as a person I wont be able to make the kind of films that I do, he was quoted as saying by Indian Express during a group interview.

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Talking about Shah Rukh Khan starrer Zero, he said, Ill always keep my inner self like this, the way it is now, because my stories come from there. If I changed my inner core, if I get corrupted, itll reflect on the stories. I have kept my simplicity intact, whether I direct or produce a film. I dont ever want to change that. I have carried that simplicity even in Zero.

Anand L Rai says he gives utmost importance to the story of a film. He is always on a look-out for good stories. A good story never dies. And if its with me, itll never get lost. You just cannot deprive the audience of a good subject, he added.
Sister Cities Celebrate Another Successful Art Exchange

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - This past July, Highland Park, Illinois hosted a delegation from its sister city Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Among those in the delegation were two artists, Abdallahy and Santiago Polvos.

The pieces created by Abdallahy require 4D glasses to be worn when viewing in order to be fully appreciated and they are deeply rooted in ancient Mexican culture. Polvos is a well-known artist in Puerto Vallarta and his work is known for his unique use of light and images depicting Mexican subjects and themes.





The artists exhibited at The Art Center (TAC) in Highland Park and at the Mexican Consulate in Chicago. Architect and artist, Citlalli Perez, led workshops in Highland Park/Highwood, teaching students to make thea cultural and spiritual Mexican symbol, with yarn and sticks. The exchange also included a picnic and a concert at Ravinia, a music venue in Highland Park and the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Highland Park and Puerto Vallarta officially became sister cities in 2002. Their relationship began due to Highland Park's large Mexican population and the sizable amount of Highland Park residents who travelled to Puerto Vallarta in the winter months.

This visit is one of many art-focused exchanges between the two cities. Two years ago, a delegation visited Highland Park as a part of the Cultures United by Music program. The young music students participated in workshops and attended Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts at Millennium Park in Chicago and the Ravinia Music Festival in Highland Park. In the past, the Highland Park Sister Cities Foundation has organized artist, architect, student, yoga, and culinary exchanges.

The Highland Park Sister Cities Foundation is currently celebrating being awarded Sister Cities International's Award for Innovation: Youth and Education at the 2018 Annual Conference August 2-4. They received this award because of the success of their Virtual Classroom project, which allowed students from both cities to study American and Mexican poetry together.

In regards Highland Park and Puerto Vallarta's relationship, Carol Wolfe, President of the Highland Park Sister Cities Foundations had this to say:

"We always say that what we do, our programs and exchanges, create ripples; and where those ripples will go and who they will touch, we will never know. We do know that our programs make a difference. Our relationship with Puerto Vallarta started as a program between cities, but it has grown to so much more than that. We have become more than friends... family. We have shared happy times like weddings and sad times like funerals. Our lives are richer on so many levels because we are a part of each other's lives."
Books have a way of building a whole new world for the readers. You suddenly become connected to all the characters and once the book is over, you genuinely miss them for a while.

You hope things turn out well for your favorite character, you pray for a happy ending and while reading the novel, you go through a roller coaster of emotions along with the characters. There are some books that are so well-written that they often make you shed tears.

If youre a bibliophile who is super senti, we say you give these books a read:

1. The Fault In Our Stars

The story of Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters has been quite widely read for the kind of young love it portrays. The two are cancer patients and meet at a support group. What happens after they meet is a refreshing story of first love that will move you to your very core.

Spoiler alert: Keep your tissues ready for the emotional ending.

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2. The Kite Runner

The story of two boys, Hassan and Amir, is one of friendship, loyalty and reparation for your past mistakes. How Hassan remains loyal to Amir even after he stays silent about the atrocities faced by the former is a story of how deep friendship is. But years later, Amirs silence comes to haunt him. Can he make it up to Hassan?

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3. The Namesake

If you live away from home and miss your family, this novel will move you to tears. The story revolves around the Ganguli family and their struggle of being immigrants in America. Ashoke and Ashima move to America after their marriage and have two kids. Their son, Gogol, becomes a lazy teenager who moves away from his parents and their culture to fit into the crowd with the cool kids. No matter how much they try, all their effort for a connection goes unappreciated by Gogol. Will the son learn to appreciate his parents before losing them? The harsh realities of life portrayed in this book is a lesson that we don't have as much time as we think we do. You'll probably call your parents crying after reading this one.

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4. I Too Had A Love Story

Ravin and Khushi have a simple love story. They meet online on a site for marriage alliances, feel immensely attracted to each other and decide to take the next step in their relationship. The two make their families meet and a date for the engagement is decided. However, Khushi meets with a road accident soon after. The heartbreaking story and the wonderfully weaved words to express emotions will make you cry.

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5. My Sister's Keeper

Kate has suffered from cancer since she was a child. Her parents conceive a saviour sibling, Anna, with the help of doctors so that she can save Kate's life because she is a perfect match. However, at the age of thirteen, Anna is asked to donate a kidney to her sister and that's when she files for medical emancipation. A story of family bond, sisterhood and sacrifice, this will leave you with some heartbreaking emotions.

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6. Me Before You

This will probably leave you in a pool of tears if you're a die-hard romantic. Louisa Clark has just lost a job and is searching for one. She comes across a special opportunity where she'll be required to care for Will Traynor, a wealthy businessman who was paralyzed from the neck down after a freak accident. She eventually gets to know that Will wants to end his life through assisted suicide. She then decides to make him realize that he can still have a good life and should drop the plan to end his life. Will she be able to save him? You should probably keep a box of tissues ready while reading this.

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7. The God of Small Things

Estha and Rahel are fraternal twins being raised by their single mother. As the story shifts from their childhood to adulthood, you see their naive worldview changing because of the harsh circumstances they go through. One can't help but feel helpless about how unfair the world is. This will make you think about how your own vision of life has changed as you've grown up.

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Two priests of the Malankara Orthodox church, first and fourth accused in the rape and sexual abuse of a married woman belonging to the fold, surrendered on Monday.

It was Fr Abraham Varghese (Sony) who surrendered before Thiruvalla magistrate court and Fr Jaise K George, who surrendered at Kollam Crime Branch office.

Earlier, Fr Johnson V Mathew, Kozhencherry native, the third accused in the case was arrested from his residence and Fr Job Mathew, second accused in the case, had turned himself in to the police in Kollam.

The Malankara Orthodox Church was mired in controversy following a serious allegation that a married woman was sexually exploited by some priests who used her confessions as a blackmail tool. The woman's husband had filed a complaint with the church after he claimed that he had sufficient evidence.

BCCL/ Representational Image

The accused priests have been relieved from their church duties temporarily till the panel completes its probe.
A Haryana policeman turned life saviour for a man who was drowning in a canal in Faridabad, Haryana.

The policeman, posted with the Gurugram Crime Branch, saved a man from drowning from Sunday. A senior police officer told that the Crime Branch team of sector 39 were on their way to conduct a raid in Faridabad.

The team saw a man drowning in the Yamuna canal in Faridabad and people gathered there shouting for help.

Thats when Constable Lukman Khan, who was part of the Crime Branch team, took off his uniform and jumped into the canal and saved the man.

"Constable Khan will be soon awarded with a cash prize and an appreciation letter," the officer told IANS, quoting Gurugram's Commissioner of Police KK Rao.

The rescued man was identified as Mangal Singh, a resident of Sihi village in Faridabad.

Police were investigating how Mangal Singh fell into the canal.
Natural calamities may leave people vulnerable but that is the time when real heroes emerge as saviours for the sufferers. The current flood in Kerala also saw some selfless people, who, without caring for their money and life, chose to serve the humanity first. Such people deserve outright respect and admiration for remaining hope for the society. Kerala is battling an unprecedented flood situation with red alert declared across 11 out of 14 districts for heavy to very heavy rainfalls in the next couple of days. Across central and northern districts there have been widespread floods, landslides and loss of human lives and property.

Idukki, the worst affected district saw the widespread damage for life and property, due to the landslide and floods. Amid all the sufferings, the actions of some real heroes on the ground have helped to bring some positivity to an otherwise grim situation.

NDRF Personnel Kanhaiya Kumar

It was an unbelievable sight. A man running across the Cheruthoni river with a child in his hand as the bridge was about to be submerged by flood water which was released from the Cheruthoni Dam. Kanhaiya Kumar, an NDRF personnel from Bihar who was deployed in Idukki for the rescue mission was the man running across the bridge. He was carrying a child who had to be shifted to hospital with high fever.

With the flood waters cutting off the road, and the bridge with was about to be over-run, as he got the message on his wireless, Kumar did not hesitate for a moment, grabbed the child in his hands and made, what could be the run of his life. Within moments of them crossing the bridge it was submerged by the rising water levels. The almost heartstopping visuals were captured by News 18 Malayalam.

An Unidentified Fire Force personnel

It was probably the most disturbing and at the same time the most captivating image of the ongoing flood in Kerala. A Kerala fire force personnel carrying the body of a young boy who was rescued from the rubble of a house which was destroyed in a landslide.

Bibin Xavier, a local press photographer who clicked the photo described it as heart touching moment. "I still can't understand the emotions on his face. Could be it is the fear that the body he is holding so close to his heart may not have a spark of life. Braving knee-deep mud he ran with the body to a nearby ambulance," Xavier wrote on his Facebook page.

Vishnu, a Blanket Seller from MP

During the monsoon, it is a common sight across Kerala - blanket traders from across the country travelling from village to village and household to household selling blankets. Vishnu from Madhya Pradesh was one of the thousands of such blanket sellers in Kerala. But on Friday when he heard about the plight of those who lost their valuables and living in relief camps in Kannur, Vishnu did something that not many in his position would have thought of. He donated 50 of his blankets to those living in a relief camp in Iritty, Kannur.
Ten Beagles (a breed of dogs) were rescued after being confined to a research laboratory for eight long years. A charitable trust based out of Pune put these dogs under rehabilitation and care, as these dogs were subjected to innumerable research experiments since birth.

Speaking to ANI, the operation head of RESQ Charitable trust Jessica Roberts said that these dogs are neither familiar with different types of food nor do they have an idea of what a sunshine really is.

Charitable trust in Pune has 10 rescued beagles who had been caged for 8 years for research purposes. Operation Head of trust says 'they've come out after fighting a war. They'll be here till the time they're rehabilitated. Adoption forms will be out soon' #Maharashtra (11.08.18) pic.twitter.com/ja1QUm2Nnr  ANI (@ANI) August 12, 2018

"We are introducing them to different kind of environments, foods which they were not aware of. They only have four to five years in their lives and it's going to be a good one" she said.

Roberts further said that the dogs have been named after Marvel superheroes such as Black Panther and Peter Parker. One of them is even named after Princess Diana.

The organisation is now doing their bit to give them a life of freedom by putting them up for adoption. Many animals every year find themselves in a coup, where they are forcefully taken for research purpose. Organizations and people around the globe have been fighting against this process, especially PETA, to free these innocent animals from atrocities.
One of the most significant situations was in Northern Europe, where a long-term rainfall deficit left one of the deepest droughts on record, comparable to the 2003 event, said Impact Forecasting in its July recap. According to various industry estimates, German farmers alone could face economic losses of 2.5 billion (US$2.9 billion).

When combining estimates from other affected European countries, the ongoing drought could result in losses beyond US$4 billion. Other financially costly drought events affected agriculture in Australia and Central America. An extensive heatwave also left more than 150 people dead in Japan and South Korea.

Meanwhile the report cited the Carr Fire  which saw the destruction of over 1,600 structures  as one of the top 10 most destructive wildfires on record in California, with total economic cost anticipated to go beyond US$1 billion.

Insurers were also expected to pay claims nearing the billion-dollar threshold as well, said the Aon unit. Another Northern California wildfire, the Mendocino Complex Fire, destroyed 143 structures and became one of the top five largest fires on record in California.

It added: The deadliest wildfire event on record in Europe since 1900 left devastating impacts in the Mati, Eastern Attica region of Greece. At least 92 fatalities were confirmed by the authorities. This fire and others in Attica destroyed at least 905 structures and damaged 740.

Elsewhere in Europe, Sweden battled the most significant wildfire outbreak in modern history with damage exceeding US$100 million.

The report also noted significant flash flooding and mudslides in Japan following historic rainfall, with at least 230 people dead or missing and nearly 50,000 homes damaged or destroyed. According to the General Insurance Association of Japan, 48,000 claims had already been paid and the preliminary payout was valued at US$711 million.

Impact Forecasting said notable flooding events also occurred in Arizona and US Northeast, Nigeria, Russias Far East, India, and multiple countries in Southeast Asia. Seasonal flooding in China, meanwhile, prompted aggregated economic losses approaching the US$1 billion mark. The country was also hit by Typhoon Maria, which caused nearly US$500 million in economic damage.

Also impacted by typhoons were Vietnam and Japan, while major earthquakes devastated Iran and Indonesia. Widespread damage across parts of the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and China was also seen following several outbreaks of severe weather.

Aon Benfield is part of Aon UK Limited. Its catastrophe model development centre of excellence enables organisations to analyse the financial implications of catastrophic events and achieve a greater understanding of their risks.
Berries Generate Investment & Employment in Jalisco

Jalisco, Mexico - The Secretary of Rural Development, Hector Padilla Gutierrez, said the berry sector triggered investment and employment in the fields of Jalisco. The state leads the blueberry market with 13,354 tons and the raspberry market with 85,960 tons.

"The cultivation of berries has represented an important change, it has helped generate wealth and mass employment." Thanks to crop conversion, he said, the berry sector surpassed tequila exports.

Last year, national exports of Mexican berries amounted to 1.940 billion dollars. The fruit was destined to the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Japan, China, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Hong Kong, Russia, and Saudi Arabia among other places.

The president of Aneberries, Diego Martinez said that they wanted small producers to join the association, which is currently integrated by 28 companies.

"We account for nearly 85 percent of the total production and exports of berries, but we still have to work so that small producers join our association and participate in our initiatives," he explained.

"We don't only focus on safety issues, which is how the association started. We also focus on other issues, such as financing, technical training, and better use of pesticides. There's an infinity of issues that we address in the association."

He also said that Jalisco's planted area and production continued to grow at double digits.

"Jalisco is currently the main producer of blueberry; it is growing more than other states and we are proud to say that it meets all the conditions for this crop. Many foreign investors are looking to Jalisco to continue growing. There are also communication channels to Asia, as well as opportunities and advantages for the State to continue positioning itself in this category," Martinez said.

"Currently the berries are sent to 35 countries and we are working to promote exports to the Asian, Russian and Middle Eastern markets," he added.
Known as PPL, the system, which was introduced in 2016, was initially subject to slow adoption among underwriters and brokers who seemingly preferred to stick with paper-based trading  but a gentle push from outgoing Lloyds of London CEO Inga Beale back in February  in which she outlined that the market would be gradually forced to use it  seems to have prompted an uptick with figures for the second quarter of the year showing the system is now used on 16% of the policies for which it is available.

The London market has clearly made a concerted effort to increase their usage of PPL in the last three months, and it is a positive sign that overall the minimum threshold has been exceeded, said Bronek Masojada, chair of the PPL board. Inevitably, activity fluctuates with renewals but a nearly 50% uplift between May and June is very encouraging.

It is vital that we make London an easier place to do business with wide spread market usage of an e-placement platform. By highlighting success among those businesses that have well-exceeded the targets, we hope to encourage a race to the top. In the second quarter report, we will increase the transparency with league tables of all participants.

However, focusing on the placement is not enough. We want to get it right, right from the start of the value chain  at submission, and there is still a long way to go on those metrics. If we dont capture accurate data at the front end of the placement process and then the critical structured data at the end, we will only be doing part of the job we need to do.

LIIBA CEO Christopher Croft believes that making the change is vital because even if brokers want to wait, it doesnt mean their clients are willing to.

The global insurance market is challenging for everyone with brokers facing a range of regulatory and business issues. But our clients will not wait for the perfect solution; they want improvements now and PPL is a crucial stepping stone towards that, he said.

We now have over 40 brokers signed up to PPL. The number using the platform continues to grow each month, with nearly half of them now using the quote function right at the start of the process. By using the platform all through the value chain, clients and brokers will reap the maximum benefit possible from the market-wide adoption of this innovative technology.
You would see the end of July, August, and beginning of September start to have less red color  if thats the color thats indicating the significant threat. Were going well into September, October, and they havent yet put November out there, but I would imagine in the next few weeks, well have a November forecast as well. Historically, you wouldnt have even considered November as a month where things like this could occur. Its certainly expanding and I think a lot of that is due to home construction going into areas where we typically havent gone before and the natural occurrence of wildfire.

Through their experiences helping insureds prepare for and mitigate against the spread of wildfires on their properties, PUREs risk managers have lessons to pass on to the insurance industry to reduce losses.

When our risk managers engage with our members after binding the location, our job is to help them be really smart about the things that could happen and help them feel safer about living on that property where this peril may exist, explained Metzger. You need high temperatures, you need fuel and you need oxygen [for fires], and fuel is the area where we can help. When you talk about preventative measures, I think understanding what is around a property is the most important thing for one of our members.

Since defensible space is the number one priority for the PURE team, they give members advice on clearing easily ignitable brush and wood piles, for instance, as well as noting the type of vegetation located around a property and the height of canopies or tree lines. During the High Park fire in Colorado in 2012, these mitigation methods were put to the test and came out on top.

Because of defensible space and because of our risk managers advice upfront and because of the member advocates stepping in and helping one of our members actually fulfil this advice through a vendor, this particular fire destroyed 294 homes in a community and our home was one that was left standing at the end of this, said Metzger, noting that proper sprinkler systems and other products were used in conjunction to help protect the home in the midst of the fire.

Certain neighborhoods are also looking to get an official Firewise designation, like Martis Camp in Northern California, where PURE is interested in writing business. The gated community has direct access to the Northstar ski resort and is in the middle of a high-density forest area. Each home is constructed with defensible space metrics in mind, according to Metzger, and certain building standards, like avoiding using shingles made from wood.

While wildfires have made headlines in 2017 and are on track to keep peoples attention through 2018, its still important to help clients on an individual basis understand what they can implement at home to protect themselves from the natural catastrophe.

We cant expect them to be fully up-to-speed on what they should be doing and thats why, especially in high wildfire alert zones, were going to send a risk manager to the property to walk through a wildfire consultation, Metzger told Insurance Business.

Related stories:

Time to review policy limits ahead of disaster season

Liberty Mutual, other insurers start dropping risky clients
The most recent high-profile business leader to make headway into the industry is Amazons Jeff Bezos, and I am genuinely excited to see what this icon can achieve and what innovation his enterprise will bring to our market.

A more established super-entrepreneur is Jack Ma of Ali Baba. In 2017, Ma, via his investment arm Ant Financial, along with Tencent Holdings and the Ping An Insurance Group, went public with Zhong An, the first wholly online P&C insurer in Hong Kong. The business was primarily focused on insurance solutions for shipping, freight and returned goods (something Im sure Amazon is watching closely), but Zhong Ans long-term aim is to reshape the insurance industry via the use of technology across every element of the value chain.

Shia Wininger, well known in tech circles as co-founder and chief technology officer of freelancer site Fiverr, has also turned his attention to the insurance industry by co-founding the paradigm-shifting Lemonade. The market entry of Lemonade, a customer-centred technology solution that uses artificial intelligence and behavioural economics to improve the experience of those buying homeowners and renters insurance, is so far the most overt confluence of emerging technology and the risk-transfer business.

The insurance super-entrepreneur is by no means an entirely new phenomenon. Business icon Warren Buffett has successfully positioned himself as a prominent provider of consumer and business P&C insurance for some time via Geico/Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance Group, demonstrating the application of that wonderful Wayne Gretzky quote about moving to where the puck is going, not where it has been.

Warren Buffett has an innate understanding of where to be positioned in any industry sector, so its no surprise to me that he was the real first mover into insurance after success elsewhere. Buffetts love of the insurance float for investment purposes is well documented, and he has demonstrated time and time again that his value-investing principles have been fundamental to his and Berkshire Hathaways success.

I have no doubt that we are only seeing the beginning of this continued movement of entrepreneurs into the insurance industry. As members of the industry, we are participating in a sacred historical transaction that has been quietly supporting modern progress, commerce and economy for centuries. When tradespeople needed support as they left farms behind, the insurance guild of the Middle Ages was founded. When new worlds were discovered, insurance protected ships. When Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat pioneered a theory of probability, insurance gave that theory meaning with a social purpose. In our own time, when fire has ravaged or storms have hit, our industry has come to the fore. Wherever there is risk and fear, insurance will always strive to mitigate it.

I want the great entrepreneurs outside the industry to know just how important and meaningful insurance is to society and modern progress. Perhaps one day those entrepreneurs who continue to provide me inspiration  Julia Hartz, Robin Li, Ev Williams, Jack Dorsey, Sara Blakey, Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Sean Parker, Brian Chesky, Travis Kalanick, Daniel Ek, Ryan Hoover, Mark Zuckerberg and even Elon Musk  might consider positioning themselves within insurance to support current or future ventures.

Geoff Stooke has more than 10 years of experience in the insurance industry and currently serves as managing director of Modern Risk Solutions.
Officials say a school bus taking families home from a picnic crashed on the New Jersey Turnpike, sending dozens of people to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka says the bus was returning to Newark from his annual Mayors Family Reunion/Picnic at Black Bear Lake Country Club in Millstone when the accident happened around 5:25 p.m. Saturday in East Brunswick.

Baraka said at a Saturday night news conference that early reports that the accident was caused by a hit and run involving a car were incorrect. He says the accident is under investigation.

The mayor said 36 people were injured in the crash, including 17 people under 18 years old. The injured were sent to three hospitals; none sustained life-threatening injuries.

The crash, which caused the bus to overturn, happened in the turnpikes northbound lanes.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Education New Jersey
ESure Group Plc has received an unsolicited offer of about 1.17 billion pounds ($1.5 billion) from Bain Capital Private Equity LP as private equity firms seek to consolidate the insurance industry.

The offer of about 280 pence a share in cash is a 37 percent premium to the closing price on Friday, the U.K. insurer said in a statement on Monday. ESures board of directors expects to recommend the bid. The shares rose as much as 33 percent, the most ever, on Monday.

Private equity firms are increasingly getting involved in insurance takeover deals in the region, wagering their investing expertise can help lift returns from managing premium income. Firms including Apollo Global Management LLC have already been buying up similar insurers in the U.S., while Cinven is in exclusive talks to acquire a retirement products unit of AXA SA, having already acquired Guardian Financial Services in the U.K., Eurovita in Italy, and Viridium in Germany.

ESure provides insurance services for cars, vans, travel, motorbikes and pets. [Editors note: ESure is headquartered in Reigate, England].

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.

Topics Carriers
Three teenagers from Kansas were killed and 10 other people were injured Friday after a church van heading for an outing crashed in southwestern Missouri.

The wreck happened around 10:40 a.m. on Missouri Route 13, five miles north of Bolivar. Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. John Lueckenhoff said those killed were a 16-year-old boy from Olathe, a 14-year-old girl from Louisburg and a 17-year-old girl from Stillwell. Their names were not released.

The van was from Faith Chapel Assembly of God in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. Lueckenhoff didnt know specifically where the group was going but was told it was a youth outing.

The van had 13 passengers, mostly teenagers but a few adults, Leuckenhoff said. Everyone on board was injured or killed when the van ran off the roadway, struck a tree and overturned. No other vehicles were involved in the accident.

Absolutely horrible, Lueckenhoff said.

The 10 injured victims were taken to hospitals in Bolivar and Springfield, about 30 miles south. Three were in serious condition. Lueckenhoff said he didnt know if any of the injuries were life-threatening.

The cause of the accident was under investigation by a crash team from the highway patrol.

The Kansas City Star reported that in addition to its Overland Park location, Faith Chapel Assembly of God has churches in Louisburg and Gardner.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Auto Missouri Kansas
BNSF Railway has acknowledged that flooding played a role in a derailment that loosed thousands of gallons of oil into northwest Iowa floodwaters.

Railroad spokesman Andy Williams wouldnt say whether the train engineer knew or should have known about washed-out tracks mentioned in a preliminary federal report released Thursday.

The train was operating within its authority, Williams told The Associated Press.

The cause of the derailment is flood related, he said, declining to comment further.

The National Transportation Safety Board report cited heavy rainfall in the area 48 hours before the June 22 derailment just south of Doon, Iowa. The report said the water washed out track and flooded a tributary of the nearby Little Rock River. The report stopped short of saying the flooding caused the 32-car derailment.

Ten of the oil tank cars were breached, the report said, releasing about 230,000 gallons (871,000 liters) of tar sands oil from Canada that was headed to a Texas refinery. Last month BNSF updated its similar spill estimate, saying that 160,000 gallons (606,000 liters) had leaked.

Regarding the differing figures, safety board spokesman Keith Holloway said preliminary data is subject to change as more information is known. He also said that it could be 12 to 18 months before his agency issues a final report that reviews the cause of the derailment.

Much of the spilled oil was contained to an area east of the tracks then recovered. Floating barriers were installed downstream to keep oil from reaching the riverfronts and polluting the water supplies of larger communities, including Sioux City and Omaha in Nebraska.

The derailment site cleanup is expected to take several months.

The federal report also said the train was moving at 48 mph (77 kph)  just below the authorized speed for that stretch.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Flood Energy Oil Gas Iowa Berkshire Hathaway
The sale of a life insurance unit and an easing of catastrophe costs boosted Liberty Mutual Holding Co.s net income for the second quarter to $981 million, well above the $126 million it saw in the same quarter last year.

Net income for first six months of 2018 reached $1.6 billion, versus $477 million for the first half of 2017.

Liberty Mutual Chairman and CEO David Long cited improvements in core underwriting results, investments and an after-tax gain of $464 million connected to the sale of Liberty Life Assurance of Boston as factors contributing to the gain.

The combined ratio was 97.9 for the quarter, a nearly 5-point improvement from the same period in 2017 as global catastrophes returned to more normal historical levels.

Net written premium in Q2 was $10 billion, 7.3 percent, or $685 million higher than the same period in 2017.

Some noteworthy changes for the quarter were:

Private passenger automobile net written premium increased $131 million. The company said this increase reflects increased rate to keep pace with U.S. industry loss cost trends, organic growth and higher retention in Global Retail Markets East and West market segments, and favorable foreign exchange due to the U.S. dollar fluctuating versus multiple currencies as compared to average rates in 2017.

Homeowners net written premium increased $96 million. The increase reflects rate increases within Global Retail Markets U.S. market segment.

Global Risk Solutions specialty insurance increased $235 million. The increase reflects the Ironshore acquisition (completed in May 2017), new business growth and favorable rate increases, and favorable foreign exchange due to the U.S. dollar weakening versus the euro and British pound as compared to the average rates in 2017. These increases were partially offset by additional reinsurance purchased.

Global Risk Solutions reinsurance NWP increased $168 million. The increase reflects new business growth, favorable rate increases and favorable foreign exchange due to the U.S. dollar weakening versus the euro and British pound as compared to the average rates in 2017.

Ironshore acquisition costs for the second quarter were $10 million, $16 million less than in the 2017 second quarter.

Source: Liberty Mutual

Topics Catastrophe USA Profit Loss
Broker JLT Specialty USA has named John Bogan as a vice president, serving U.S. life science companies and their complex products liability, clinical trial and related risks.

Bogan comes to JLT from Marsh, where since 2016 he has served as vice president, and casualty broker and placement specialist also with a focus on life sciences companies. His other prior roles included serving as assistant vice president, Life Sciences and Healthcare, at R.T. Specialty / A.J. Renner & Associates.

Based in Chicago, Bogan will be working with Andrew Tait, senior vice president and U.S. Life Sciences leader at JLT Specialty USA.
The U.S. is bracing for cyberattacks Iran could launch in retaliation for the re-imposition of sanctions this week by President Donald Trump, cybersecurity and intelligence experts say.

Concern over that cyber threat has been rising since May, when Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal, under which the U.S. and other world powers eased economic sanctions in exchange for curbs on Irans nuclear program. The experts say the threat would intensify following Washingtons move Tuesday to re-impose economic restrictions on Tehran.

While we have no specific threats, we have seen an increase in chatter related to Iranian threat activity over the past several weeks, said Priscilla Moriuchi, director of strategic threat development at Recorded Future, a global real-time cyber threat intelligence company. The Massachusetts-based company predicted back in May that the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear agreement would provoke a cyber response from the Iranian government within two to four months.

U.S. intelligence agencies have singled out Iran as one of the main foreign cyber threats facing America, along with Russia, China and North Korea. A wave of attacks that U.S. authorities blamed on Iran between 2012 and 2014 targeted banks and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. They also targeted but failed to penetrate critical infrastructure.

Iran denies using its cyber capabilities for offensive purposes, and accuses the U.S. of targeting Iran. Several years ago, the top-secret Stuxnet computer virus destroyed centrifuges involved in Irans contested nuclear program. Stuxnet, which is widely believed to be an American and Israeli creation, caused thousands of centrifuges at Irans Natanz nuclear facility to spin themselves to destruction at the height of the Wests fears over Irans program.

The United States has been the most aggressive country in the world in offensive cyber activity and publicly boasted about attacking targets across the world, said Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for Irans diplomatic mission at the United Nations, contending that Irans cyber capabilities are exclusively for defensive purposes.

Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who heads the elite Quds Force of Irans hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, has sounded more ominous, warning late last month about Irans capabilities in asymmetric war, a veiled reference to nontraditional warfare that could include cyber attacks.

The Trump administration says it re-imposed sanctions on Iran to prevent its aggression  denying it the funds it needs to finance terrorism, its missile program and forces in conflicts in Yemen and Syria.

The sanctions restarted last Tuesday target U.S. dollar financial transactions, Irans automotive sector and the purchase of commercial planes and metals, including gold. Even stronger sanctions targeting Irans oil sector and central bank are to be re-imposed in early November. European leaders have expressed deep regret about the U.S. actions. They hit Iran at a time when its unemployment is rising, the countrys currency has collapsed and demonstrators are taking to the streets to protest social issues and labor unrest.

Norm Roule, former Iran manager for the office of the Director of National Intelligence, said he thinks Tehran will muster its cyber forces in response.

I think there is a good chance Iran will use cyber, probably not an attack that is so destructive that it would fragment its remaining relationship with Europe, but I just dont think the Iranians will think there is much cost to doing this, Roule said. And its a good way to show their capacity to inflict economic cost against the United States.

Irans cyber activities against the world have been the most consequential, costly and aggressive in the history of the internet, more so than Russia.  The Iranians are destructive cyber operators, Roule said, adding that Iranian hackers have, at times, impersonated Israeli and Western cyber security firm websites to harvest log-in information.

The office of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats declined to comment Tuesday on the likelihood that Iran will answer the sanctions with cyber operations against the U.S. When the U.S. pulled out of the nuclear deal, the FBI issued a warning saying that hackers in Iran could potentially use a range of computer network operations _ from scanning networks for potential vulnerabilities to data-deletion attacks _ against U.S.-based networks in response to the U.S. governments withdrawal from the nuclear pact.

Accenture Security, a global consulting, managing and technology company, also warned Tuesday that the new sanctions would likely to push that country to intensify state-sponsored cyber threat activities, particularly if Iran fails to keep its European counterparts committed to the nuclear pact.

Josh Ray, the firms managing director for cyber defense, said it hasnt seen any evidence that Iran has launched any new cyber operations, but he said Iran has the capability to do it and has historically operated in a retaliatory manner.

This still remains a highly capable, espionage-related type threat, Ray said. Organizations need to take this threat seriously. They need to understand how their business could potentially be impacted.

Recorded Futures Moriuchi anticipated that businesses most at risk were those victimized in Iranian cyberattacks between 2012 and 2014 _ they include banks and financial services, government departments, critical infrastructure providers, and oil and energy.

Those cyberattacks cost nearly 50 financial institutions tens of millions of dollars. The repeated attacks disabled bank websites and kept hundreds of thousands of customers from accessing their online accounts. U.S. prosecutors indicted several Iranians, alleging they worked at the behest of the Iranian government.

One defendant allegedly targeted the computer systems of the Bowman Dam in Rye, New York. No access was gained, but prosecutors said the breach underscored the potential vulnerabilities of the nations critical infrastructure.

In March, the Justice Department also announced charges against nine Iranians accused of working at the behest of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to steal large quantities of academic data from hundreds of universities in the United States and abroad as well as email accounts belonging to employees of government agencies and private companies.

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Cyber USA Europe
When police investigators tried to figure out what caused a multi-vehicle crash that killed an elderly woman in Morton, Illinois, last month, they looked to the sky for help.

Like a growing number of police agencies throughout the country, the sheriffs office in Tazewell County relied on a drone to quickly take photographs of the scene from on high to help investigators reconstruct the crash.

Its about a hundred times more detailed than what we could do with people taking the measurements, Chief Deputy Jeff Lower said. And it means that theres much less time for the road to be closed and traffic to be backed up.

For decades, police investigators at crash scenes used chalk marks, tape measures and roller-wheels to record measurements and skid marks to help them assess what happened. More recently, many have used a laser scanning tool to map the scene. But often, those measurements can take hours, during which lanes may need to be shut down or the road closed entirely, putting emergency responders and crash investigators in harms way near traffic whizzing past.

Now, more police agencies are turning to drones, unmanned aerial vehicles, to do that work. Remote pilots send up the drones, which take high-resolution photos that are fed into a computer and run through software. That creates 3D models that piece everything together for investigators.

And while privacy and civil rights advocates strongly oppose law enforcement using drones for mass surveillance, such as at a protest rally, or for gathering criminal evidence without a warrant, they generally are not as concerned when it comes to car crashes.

Filming a traffic accident overhead to get a better view, if its strictly limited to that purpose, is not the sort of thing that we would necessarily object to, said Chad Marlow, a senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York.

Jeramie D. Scott, national security counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit research group, agreed that it is less likely his group would be concerned about using drones for crash reconstruction, as long as there wasnt some type of surveillance involved in collecting information about individuals.

The risk, Scott said, is that without rules protecting privacy, law enforcement will use drones to conduct surveillance, including general surveillance of groups.

Police Drone Use Grows

State and local emergency response agencies use drones in a variety of ways, from tracking wildfires to search and rescue missions.

At least 910 state and local police, fire and emergency services agencies have drones, according to an estimate by the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York. And those numbers have skyrocketed  up 82 percent from 2016 to 2017. About two-thirds of the agencies with drones are in law enforcement.

While the study doesnt break out how many police agencies use drones specifically for crash reconstruction, Dan Gettinger, co-director at the center, said the idea is spreading.

Lower, of the Tazewell sheriffs office, said his department started using drones about a year ago for accident reconstruction, and has deployed them in six crashes. It has spent about $15,000 for the program, including training.

In the recent crash that killed the elderly woman, Lower said it took only 45 minutes to gather information using a drone, rather than the three hours it would have taken on the ground. The womans car hit the rear of a semi tractor-trailer stopped at a light and the side of another vehicle nearby. She died at the scene.

Last year, North Carolinas transportation department and highway patrol conducted a real-life drone study using a simulated two-car crash. It took the reconstruction team an hour and 51 minutes to collect the data using a laser scanner. It took 25 minutes using drones.

Using drones for crash reconstruction also can reduce staff time, some officials say.

Maine state police bought three drones for reconstruction last year and have used them more than 30 times to investigate crashes. They paid about $40,000 for the drones, software and training. Weve probably saved twice that in overtime alone, said Lt. Bruce Scott, the traffic safety units commander.

Drone Controversy

Drones can be controversial, and many states have passed legislation to regulate or restrict their use.

At least 18 states require law enforcement agencies to get search warrants to use drones for surveillance or conducting a search, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

But some of those states have specifically exempted crash reconstruction. In Maine, for example, state police worked with legislators to make sure the exemption was included in drone legislation enacted in 2015, according to Maine State Police Sgt. Darren Foster, who oversees his agencys drone program.

In Virginia, the Stafford County Sheriffs Office wanted to start a drone crash reconstruction program but was hampered by a state law requiring police to get a warrant to use a drone except in certain circumstances, such as Amber Alerts for missing children.

Earlier this year, the sheriffs office contacted Republican state Del. Bob Thomas, who introduced a bill allowing drones for crash reconstruction without a warrant.

The Legislature unanimously passed the measure, which was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam in March. It went into effect in July.

While the program has just started, Stafford County Capt. Ben Worcester said he expects it to revolutionize the way investigators capture crash scene evidence and help protect emergency workers and the public.

The benefits are undeniable, he said.

Source: Stateline, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Topics Agencies Auto Law Enforcement Maine
A company is paying less than half the fine workplace safety officials assessed for a North Carolina construction accident that killed three workers and badly injured a fourth.

News organizations reported the deadly 2015 scaffolding accident at a downtown Raleigh building led to Associated Scaffolding paying $70,000 and promising new safety precautions. Investigators initially assessed almost $152,000 for serious violations.

Associated Scaffolding challenged the penalty and the state Labor Department reduced it. Two other companies were fined $4,200 each for shortcomings that led to the workers falling several stories after a scaffold collapsed.

Department spokeswoman Mary Katherine Revels says the fines have been paid.

The families of the four victims filed a lawsuit against several companies that were part of the construction project.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics North Carolina Construction
Norman-Spencer Agency Inc. (NSA) has acquired American Insurance Professionals (AIP), a nationwide insurance broker based in Phoenix, Arizona, specializing in title agents errors and omissions.

AIP has more than 30 years of experience in providing errors and omissions insurance, crime insurance, cyber insurance and statutory surety bonds to title professionals. The company is an exclusive program manager of General Star, a Berkshire Hathaway Co.

Norman-Spencer provides insurance services to clients and insurance buyers nationwide with over 10 proprietary in-house property and casualty insurance programs covering real estate, transportation, construction, professional lines

Source: Norman-Spencer Agency Inc.

Topics Mergers Arizona Professional Liability
By Eamon Quinn

The Government signalled it is weighing new approaches to promote quality jobs as opposed to focusing on the number of posts, as it reacts to evidence of huge regional wealth imbalances and productivity gaps facing Irish SMEs.

Taoiseach Leo Varadar, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe, and Business Minister Heather Humphreys said they are working on a new strategy, called the Future Jobs Programme, which they plan to promote at a conference in November and fully unveil in January.

Now that were approaching full employment we need to be a bit smarter and a bit more strategic.

We want to create the jobs of the future, jobs that will be around in 20 years time, jobs which pay well and offer employment security, Mr Varadkar said.

The Future Jobs Programme will provide a cross-governmental framework in which to consider these challenges and to set out necessary reforms in areas such as skills, innovation, participation, and productivity, said Mr Donohoe.

It comes as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development earlier this year highlighted the huge productivity between Irish SMEs and the many multinationals based here, while many leading economists have drawn attention to the skewed nature of economic activity between regions that favours Dublin.

Despite Brexit concerns, the IDA in June said Ireland won 139 investment projects in the first six months of the year, up from 114 a year earlier, that would in time create 11,300 jobs.

Experts have warned about the potential risks of overheating, while the construction industry has warned about the lack of skilled staff that could stop the Government from meeting even basic targets of building new homes.

Further evidence of a substantial increase in building output was provided by the Ulster Bank survey of construction industry purchasing managers.

Its index in July showed all three parts of the industry  commercial, housing and even civil engineering had boosted output.

Commercial building rose sharply and housing recorded the fastest rise of those monitored by the survey as the rate of expansion accelerated.
More than 1.4bn worth of Ulster Bank loans are to be sold to a US vulture fund.

The bank confirmed it had agreed the sale of 5,200 non-performing mortgage loans to Cerberus Capital Management.

The portfolio includes about 2,300 residential loans and around 2,900 buy-to-let mortgages.

A bank spokeswoman said: Ulster Bank can now confirm that it has agreed terms for the sale of a portfolio of non-performing mortgages of c 1.4 billion euro, as announced for sale in May to a purchaser managed by affiliates of Cerberus Capital Management LP.

This portfolio does not contain any performing home loans or any home loans in an arrangement.

This difficult decision comes a decade after the financial crisis began and the continued extension of forbearance cannot be maintained.

Not all mortgages are sustainable and we are obliged to reduce the level of non-performing loans on our balance sheet.

For mortgages that are not sustainable, additional forbearance will not bring them back to a performing position.

Ulster Bank said it would be contacting affected customers and giving 90 days notice of the sale instead of the 60 days it was required to provide.

Fianna Fail finance spokesman Michael McGrath criticised the sale.

The net effect of the transaction remains that another bank is outsourcing its dirty work to a US vulture fund, Mr McGrath said.

What tools does Cerberus have at its disposal for dealing with these loans that Ulster Bank doesnt have?

The bottom line here is the banks and the Government are simply washing their hands of the problem.

The opposition TD said it was hard to see many of these mortgage holders managing to negotiate a restructuring solution with the bank and that Ulster Bank needed to clarify whether the mortgages were being purchased by a regulated or unregulated entity.

Sinn Fein TD David Cullinane said the raft of loan sales by banks during the Dail recess showed they have the implicit acceptance of Government.

Mr Cullinane claimed a banks-first policy had been adopted by Finance Minister Paschal Donohue in line with his predecessor Michael Noonan.

While Ulster Bank say no performing loans are included, this does not exclude the possibility that mortgages meeting their restructuring arrangement are included  this must be clarified immediately, he said.

Without political direction this summer will be remembered as the Summer of the Vultures.

- Press Association
Gordon Deegan

A Co Clare hotelier has offered to fund the return home of an 80-year-old Lahinch man who has wondered if there is anyone left in the seaside resort who remembers him.

Lahinch hotelier Michael Vaughan confirmed today that he has written to the sheltered accommodation in London where Jim Logan lives to offer to pay for a return visit by Mr Logan to see his home-place.

Mr Logan emigrated to England as a 16-year-old in 1954 and Mr Vaughan made the offer after reading a heartfelt plea penned by Mr Logan and published in the letters page of the current edition of The Clare Champion.

In his letter, Mr Logan wrote: I am an 80 year old man from Lahinch, lying on my bed here in London on a very hot day.

He said: I was wondering how everyone is doing back in Lahinch and is there anyone left who remembers me?

He went on: I was born in June 1938 in Lahinch and lived in Crag from age nine to 16, when I emigrated to England. I attended national school in Lahinch and CBS in Ennistymon. It would be great to hear from anyone from that era. I wonder how many of us are left?

Jim Logan's appeal letter appeared in the current edition of The Clare Champion.

The letter has gone viral and after being posted on the Clare Clare Clare Facebook page, the letter, according to the page, is easily the most popular post ever on the page - over 300,000 hits and nearly 4,000 shares.

Operations Director with Lonely Planet Ireland and former Sunday Tribune editor, Noirin Hegarty replied to Ennistymon CBS tweeting the letter to say: My Dad, Sean Hegarty was in school with Jimmy Logan and remembers him well. He is going to write to him, reminding him of their antics. He has some great stories.

Mr Vaughan said today that Mr Logans letter conjured up a sad image for me - that one of our own would be so long without any contact with his home-place.

Mr Vaughan said that he has written to the sheltered accommodation address provided in Mr Logans letter to offer to fund a return visit to Lahinch for Mr Logan to meet some of those from that time.

He said: I dont even know at this stage if Jim would like to travel back so if not, we can organise a small delegation to go over from here to London to cheer him up.

Mr Vaughan said that he knows of three people who have already written to Mr Logan to fill him in on whos alive in Lahinch and news about new developments in the seaside resort.

Lahinch

One of those who knew Jim growing up in Lahinch in the 1940s is Lahinch native, Tomsie OSullivan.

Mr OSullivan confirmed that today that he would be writing to Jim Logan to fill him on the goings on in the village.

Mr OSullivan said that Mr Logans family were very hard workers and very well respected.

Mr OSullivan added that the family lived down in a house on the prom that today houses a surf shop before they moved to a Council house on School Rd.

Mr OSullivan said that Jims father was a baker and also very active in drama and fundraising for the local Church in Lahinch.
By Sean ORiordan

One of the countrys leading battlefield archaeologists says 200,000 Irish-born soldiers fought in the American Civil War, with the largest contingent from Cork.

Damian Shiels is currently researching pension files and letters written by those who both fought and died in the 1861-1865 conflict.

Around 180,000 of the Irish fought for the Union (North) with the remainder on the Confederate side (South).

I am working on drawing together hundreds of letters written by Irish-born Union soldiers and sailors to their loved ones during the war, Mr Shiels said.

These men were often illiterate and had their letters dictated for them. They are preserved because these men died as a result of their service and their widows, mothers and other dependents submitted the letters to the American government in order to secure a pension.

Because of the level of social details the pension files provide, they represent the greatest source of social information on ordinary 19th-century Irish emigrant families available anywhere. Having identified the letters, I am using them to examine questions like why so many Irish fought for the Union? what their experience was like? and what impact did the war have on them and their families both in America and Ireland?

Mr Shiels, who is undertaking his research at Northumbria University in England, said 1.6m Irish-born people were living in America when the war broke out.

Though only 49 years separate it from the First World War, there is a huge gulf in how we remember both in Ireland, he said.

In terms of the counties that saw the largest emigration in this period, there was no doubt the American Civil War was far and away the largest both in terms of the numbers who served and died.

Yet we tend not to have any memorials for them, or conferences about them, largely because they had emigrated. It is very much Irelands forgotten Great War, Mr Shiels noted.

Hes estimated tens of thousands of Corkmen fought in the US war, more than any other Irish county.

One such emigrant was Thomas Bowler from Youghal.

His decision to enlist in the Irish Brigade was almost certainly borne from a desire to help his wife and child, more than 3,000 miles away across the Atlantic by sending money home.

The second soldier to die in the civil war was Edward Gallway from Skibbereen. He died at Fort Sumter. His brother was later killed in Louisiana.

Thomas Alfred Smyth from Ballyhooly was regarded as probably the finest Irish-born Union general of the war.

He was the last Union General to die of wounds received in combat, passing away on the morning (Confederate) General Robert E Lee surrendered. Patrick Cleburne from Killumney was the highest ranking Irishman during the war. He was a Confederate Major General, and was killed at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee on 30 November 1864, Mr Shiels said.

There were a number of other generals, and a large number of Cork-born men also earned the Medal of Honor (the American equivalent of the VC).

A number of leading Cork Fenians also served and some died in the war, a good example being Billy OShea, one of the Phoenix prisoners with ODonovan Rossa, who was killed in action in 1864.
A man has been injured following an assault and the ramming of a car in Dublin's north inner city.

The early morning attack has led to major delays for rush-hour commuters.
By Anne Lucey

Plans to develop a landmark building overlooking Ballinskelligs Bay, in the south Kerry Gaeltacht, have been appealed to An Bord Pleanala.

The application for the three-storey building to replace former 12-bedroom hotel Cable OLearys  linked to the transatlantic cable station era  attracted over a dozen submissions, many of them from holiday home owners.

Objections centred on the design and fears of mass tourism. And the original application revealed divisions between second homeowners and locals. However, the matter has been appealed to An Bord Pleanala by two third-party appellants with addresses in Cork and Kenmare.

The existing hotel dates from 1894, the height of the transatlantic cable connection between south Kerry and North America, and was called after a local character involved in the laying of the cable and in fighting evictions.

The proposal by OS Properties is to demolish the building, currently operating as a bar and restaurant, and replace it with a three-storey 48-bedroom complex with a function room and gym, restaurant and bar, car and bus park. Permission had been granted by Kerry County Council.

The area has a large holiday home community, mainly from Munster and the eastern seaboard.

A local development body, set up to help develop the economy and social fabric of the depopulated Gaeltacht area, is hugely in favour of the project.

The group, Coiste Forbartha na Sceilge, had made two submissions supporting the developers, described as a local family.

We desperately need this project, the group said.

There are about 300 holiday homes in the area, many let on a short-term basis, but there was no accommodation for last-minute visitors who wanted to stay overnight and avoid driving to Cahersiveen or Waterville, the letter signed by eight directors said.

The group said 95% of observations during the planning process involved holiday homeowners or people retired to the area.

It said the vast majority of the local population are fully behind the development and wish to see it proceed in its current format.

During the winter, hill walkers and eco-tourists, as well as dark sky reserve enthusiasts, are regular visitors and the group said the new project would offer year-round employment.

Objections, mainly to the council application, had centred on overshadowing and claimed the design for the new building was not in keeping with the cable station era and late 19th- century design of other buildings still in the area.

There were also concerns about light pollution as the south Kerry area is one of only a handful of gold standard dark sky reserves in the world.

Noise, the overlooking of a public beach, traffic on narrow roads which are a haven for cyclists and walkers were also among the original concerns.

Modifications, however, had been made in the original proposals, and Kerry County County Council granted permission for the project to proceed.
Incoming commissioner Drew Harris has been stepping up meetings with senior gardai as he prepares to take over in three weeks time.

The former PSNI deputy chief constable has held a series of meetings, including one with the Garda Senior Management Team in Navan last week.

Each time he travels south, he is met at the border by his close protection team from the elite Emergency Response Unit and transported in a bullet-proof 4x4.

He formally starts on September 3 when he takes the Garda Oath and swears allegiance to the Irish State and signs the Official Secrets Act. That will follow the retirement of acting commissioner Donal O Cualain on September 2.

It is unclear where the commissioner will live when he moves down. There were reports last month that a disused house in Phoenix Park, where Garda HQ is located, was been earmarked and redeveloped for Mr Harris.

The property, thought to be the Park Superintendents house, is owned by the Office of Public works and has been modernised. But sources said it is not now clear if Mr Harris will move into that property or if he will live somewhere else.

His first public engagement will be on September 7, when he attends a passing out ceremony at Templemore Training College. He has will have two other scheduled public engagements in September, one before an Oireachtas committee and later with the Policing Authority.

His takeover will come at a time of transformation in the organisation as the report of the Policing Commission is due around mid-September.

That report will provide a blueprint for the future of policing and is likely to result in an implementation body.

The commission is modelled on the Patten Commission in the North which directed the replacement of the old RUC with the PSNI.

Mr Harris is a highly experienced officer and played a role in tackling both organised crime and paramilitary activity in the North. His father, Alwyn Harris, an RUC superintendent, was murdered by the IRA in 1989.

In his position as assistant commissioner of the Crime Operations Department, he was in charge of organised crime, intelligence (criminal and paramilitary) and special operations (criminal and national security).

When he appeared before the Smithwick Tribunal, which investigated garda collusion in the murder of two RUC officers, he was described as having overall responsibility for intelligence within the PSNI and as liaison officer with MI5, the British security service.

He is the first officer of a foreign police force to take over the top job in the Gardai, which is both the policing and security agency.

Garda sources have claimed this is unprecedented in western Europe. A number of sources have expressed concern at Mr Harriss previous position, and relationship with MI5, and the fact that he will have full access to all sensitive security information here.

But he will make a solemn declaration under the Garda Siochana Act 2005 to uphold the Constitution and the laws here and will sign the Official Secrets Act 1963.

During his public engagements, he is likely to be questioned on the security issue and ongoing matters in the North, including criticism from campaigners seeking access to all PSNI documentation in relation to historic outrages, such as the Miami Showband massacre in 1975.
The daughter of an American tourist who was killed at a dangerous junction on the Cork-Limerick road has described plans to close it permanently as heavy-handed.

Diana Baker said full closure of the N20s Waterloo junction, just north of Cork city, would put an unnecessary burden on residents.

While the junction is dangerous, only one turn seems to be inflating the risk and thats the right-hand turn from the N20 to Waterloo road that many tourists are directed to take via their sat-nav systems when travelling to Blarney, she told the Irish Examiner last night.

Ms Baker was reacting to news that Cork County Council is considering full closure of the junction following the completion of road works in the area.

Her father Jim, 62, and Peggy Adams, 59, both from Indiana, USA, were killed in a crash at the junction in September 2017.

They were among four American tourists in a car travelling southbound which followed sat-nav directions to turn right at the junction for Blarney. They were killed when their car was struck side-on by a northbound truck.

Last April, a US tourist was seriously injured and his partner escaped with minor injuries following a crash in almost identical circumstances at the same junction.

A safer left turn off the N20 to Blarney is just two miles further south.

Ms Baker led calls earlier this year for the southbound right turn off the N20 to be closed off.

But the council confirmed last week that it is now considering full, permanent closure of the entire junction.

Residents say it will split the community and leave some children facing a 60km daily commute to school.

Ms Baker said the accident involving her family on September 11 last year, the couple from Minnesota on April 23, and another involving a local woman just two days later, all occurred when attempting to make a right-hand turn onto the Waterloo road from the N20.

While Im certain in the short-run its cheaper and more convenient for the council to close the entire junction, its pertinent that the council listen to everyone impacted by this decision, she said.

In the long-run the complete closure of the junction will cause residents of the community undue hardship in both commute times and fuel costs, not to mention the effect the added travel will have on the environment.

All the while the closure of the junction will not provide much added benefit to drivers and their passengers over just closing the problematic right-turn from the N20 to Waterloo road.

A single change is all that needs to be eliminated and it alone will significantly reduce accidents without impeding most local residents daily travel schedules.

The county council says it has reviewed the junction and submitted a report on it to Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII). The full closure option is the preferred solution from a road safety viewpoint, it said.

Closure of the junction is a statutory process, involving public consultation. Residents plan to hold a public meeting this week on the issue.
A powerful Dail committee is considering examining the cost of Michael D Higgins term in office before Octobers election, amid fears ongoing questions over the amount of money being spent could overshadow the presidential race.

The Irish Examiner has learned that the cross-party Public Accounts Committee will discuss plans to investigate the scale of presidential spending in the past seven years, when it returns from its summer break in September.

In recent weeks, a number of potential presidential candidates  including businessman Gavin Duffy and senator Ger Craughwell, who has since dropped out of the race  have said there is a need for more transparency in Aras an Uachtarain spending.

The calls were further heightened last week after it was claimed President Higgins stayed at a five-star, 3,000-a-night hotel last year in Geneva, Switzerland.

As Mr Duffy yesterday reiterated his call for presidential spending transparency, PAC chair and Fianna Fail TD Sean Fleming confirmed to this newspaper that the issue is to be examined by the PAC when it returns next month.

The Public Accounts Committee will consider that issue in September as to whether to include the presidency costs in our work programme or not.

We havent discussed it yet, but I want to be clear it is 100% within our remit to do so and I will be asking the committee to allow it to be included in the work programme in our next meeting in September.

It is certainly on our radar, said Mr Fleming, adding that any examination will have to take place before Octobers presidential election in order to be relevant. Should the PAC agree to examine the presidential costs when it returns from the summer break, its questions will not be raised with Mr Higgins directly.

Instead, they will be focussed on the Department of the Taoiseachs secretary general Martin Fraser, who is responsible for overseeing public spending on the presidency.

In addition, the questions are likely to be limited to the amount of money being spent on Aras an Uachtarain by government departments.

This is due in part to the fact that the day-to-day spending levels of the president are outside the scope of the latest Freedom of Information Act law from 2014, as the presidential position is deemed to be above politics.

Since being elected in 2011, Mr Higgins has slashed his own salary and pension entitlements in solidarity with the rest of the country, voluntarily waiving 76,493 of his salary every year in addition to his entire 53,558 TD pension and 39,901 ministerial pension.

However, while there has been no suggestion of over-spending in the presidential office or calls for PR- focussed cutbacks on a role that is central to the national image, questions have been raised in weeks over a number of known expenses, including:

An estimated 1.5m on Government jet and official visit flights since 2011.

An increase in Aras an Uachtarain running costs from 2.96m in 2012 to more than 3.5m in recent years.

Staff salary costs of up to 15m since 2011.

Claims last week that President Higgins stayed at the 3,000-a -night, five-star Beau-Rivage Hotel in Geneva, Switzerland, on an official visit last year.

While President Higgins yesterday opened Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann in Drogheda, Co Louth, Mr Duffy attended Tullamore agricultural show in Co Offaly, after claims he placed welcome signs in Drogheda yesterday as part of his election campaign.
Prison and Garda authorities are investigating a security incident at the weekend when a replica firearm was discovered in the grounds of a Dublin jail.

The imitation handgun, which, on examination turned out to be a pellet gun, was recovered inside the perimeter of Wheatfield Prison at around 2pm on Saturday.

Prison authorities and gardai are investigating if it was an attempt to supply the replica gun to the Hutch organised crime group.

Incarcerated members of the Hutch gang and their associates are housed together in a secure section of the west Dublin jail.

They are under serious threat from the Kinahan cartel, jailed members of which are mainly housed in Mountjoy Prison.

Prison sources believe the weapon was catapulted over the prison wall towards the Number 1 yard, which is used by the Hutch group.

The gun is thought to have hit against the fencing surrounding the yard and landed back in the vacant strip that runs around the prison, between the buildings and the perimeter wall.

Members of the prisons Operational Support Unit discovered the weapon, which was broken into pieces from the fall.

A replica gun was found in the grounds of Wheatfield at around 2pm on Saturday, said one prison source. They are not real guns, but can look real enough.

It was found near where the Hutches are kept.

Another source confirmed this, pointing out that the exercise area used by the Hutch group, Number 1 yard, is beside where the weapon was recovered.

The yard is protected by fencing and a net that runs over it.

Prison sources are not sure how the weapon would have been recovered if it had landed on the net.

It is also possible that the plan was to recover the weapon from the grounds. Prisoners are often sent out to clean up the grounds, particularly where there are lawns or green areas.

A governor from the operations section of Prison Service HQ travelled to Wheatfield on Saturday in response to the incident.

In a statement, the Prison Service said: We can confirm that a broken imitation firearm was found in the grounds of Wheatfield Prison over the weekend. Gardai were notified immediately.

Gardai confirmed a pellet gun was recovered and an investigation was under way.

While the power of the pellet gun seized is not known, high-powered variations could potentially cause significant injury if the pellet strikes an eye or soft part of the head.

The incident follows separate security incidents involving prisoners over a four-day period.

Last Wednesday, two prison officers were slashed by an inmate wielding a makeshift blade at Mountjoy Jail. Later, a prisoner assaulted at least one officer during a court sitting at Cloverhill courthouse.
When paramedics thought her orange-hued skin was jaundice, Aileen OReilly finally had to accept she had a problem...

I have a lot to thank Downton Abbey for  so much so in fact that each year when shedding the winter layers becomes an unavoidable probability I quickly watch it again and tell myself I will be strong... I WILL NOT succumb.

For the best part of two decades I was a fake tan addict. It was my love of the pre WW1 era that drew me to watch Downton and it was the swish of jet beads over silk and pale powdered skin that finally convinced me to hang up my tanning mit, put the tube of golden glory in the bin and embrace the elitist pale skin associated with the stranded gentry and their obscene wealth - my natural metier obviously.

Up to that point I must admit Id been several shades more Benidorm than Belle Epoque.

I am by nature the kind of pale that makes x-rays a very speedy undertaking (me and a strong torch basically).

The kind that impels complete strangers to offer you their seat on the Luas with a concerned look and the beseeching prayer that youre not going to either throw up or faint.

Also, unfortunately, the kind of pale that makes a white broderie Anglaise summer dress look like youve lost your mind and wandered in to town in your grannys nightie.

At least Id always had the sense to eschew sunbeds in favour of self tanning lotion  but there any sense of restraint ceased.

For some people its the crack of the seal on a new whiskey bottle or that first heady draw on a freshly lit cigarette that does it.

For me it was the gentle squeeze of a golden brown glob of tan on to the mit before the pale, washed out visage greeting me in the early morning mirror was transformed into the happy, sparkling, sunkissed girl who could wear that white gypsy dress with sandals and a bright eyed, super white toothed smile.

Spontaneous downpours notwithstanding.

The wash off version was soon dropped in favour of moisturising gradual tan and I was hooked. Good Lord!!!! The Holy Grail had been achieved  go to bed pale, wake up like youd just returned from the Seychelles overnight.

It was at this point, however, that I came asunder.

I quickly adjusted to my new bronzed look and became rather overzealous with daily applications. Not quite Hughie Maughan on Dancing With The Stars but not far off.

Nightmare maintenance ensued. I could no longer towel dry normally  I had to pat, pat, pat or Id instantly turn piebald.

The arsenal of whitening products I needed to keep my underwear and those lovely gypsy dresses stain free was getting ridiculous.

All my bed clothes became orange streaked versions of the Turin shroud (cue exasperated eye rolling from blatantly disgusted boyfriend).

He threatened to ban me from staying over after hed had to throw several bed sets out as the neighbours kids kept asking him if he was faking them for some online shroud scam when they saw them flapping on the clothesline.

I mastered the art of brushing my teeth with my mouth firmly closed as toothpaste, I quickly discovered, takes tan right off..

I brought a brolly EVERYWHERE.

Spontaneous well intended calls from himself to go to dinner (what? tonight?) led to panic as I saw several hours of scrubbing, moisturising and rushed tanning application result in me leaving the house looking, well, scrubbed and pale, as my colour hadnt developed yet.

Instant tan wasnt an option without studying the weather forecast and even then any hot food could cause some very unexplainable sweat marks in even more unexplainable places.  a cream summer dress had been ruined before thanks to the volcanic heat of an unanticipated curry... And who knew you could sweat fake tan off in large rings?

Dont even get me started on the weird mouldy biscuit smell that let everyone know youd been nowhere near the Seychelles.

My true downfall, however, came to pass one warm evening as I was applying yet another layer of gradual tan (just in case) prior to going out in a vivid green wrap dress.

I had been coughing a lot lately and waking up breathless during the night for a week or more but suddenly I started to shiver.

By the time my folks found me I was huddled under the duvet with my teeth chattering. Vomiting ensued and before I knew what was happening I was being bundled into the back of an ambulance by two paramedics who looked like they should have auditioned for Top Gun.

The darker haired one was studying me intently and I silently congratulated myself on my timely fake tan application which I was confident was paying dividends as I lay there swathed in white sheets and blue blankets.

Has your daughter been drinking a lot lately? the Tom Cruise lookalike asked my mum in a worried voice.

This could be quite serious  we may be looking at liver damage. Has she been this colour for long?

My mum, who had been looking haggard with worry suddenly took over eye rolling duties, grabbed a surgical wipe and ran it over my now aghast (and instantly piebald) face.

Its fake tan  shes addicted to the damn stuff!

Tom Cruise gave me the kind of pitying look one generally reserves for an incontinent puppy as he climbed into the front seat... and rather pointedly did NOT put on the siren.

I didnt speak to my mum for a week after that... as it turned out I had pneumonia. But I was resolute.

And getting paler by the day.

Then, realising I was being ridiculous I rang her and we chatted.

She brought the gear in that night.

Well in fairness... hospital gowns and pale pink pyjamas just washed my complexion right out.

Im ashamed to say my Downton Abbey conversion didnt arise for a further eight years after that.
By Dan MacCarthy

One of the most notorious murder trials to occur in Ireland transfixed Dublin society in 1852. The murder took place on Irelands Eye in Co Dublin  in many ways the Toscan du Plantier death of its day which riveted public attention.

The pretty island, just about 1km in length, has an an attractive Martello Tower and steep cliffs frequented by gannets and shags principally. It is an ideal spot for a day out with boats departing from Howth pier during the summer.

It was here that the artist William Burke Kirwan and his wife Maria Kirwan took a boat one fateful day in September 1852. He later told his trial for her murder that he intended to make some sketches  his paintings still hang in the National Gallery  while she would go for a swim.

The couple left Howth at 10am on September 6 to the island. They were due to return at 8pm. Though another couple landed after them, they left before the Kirwans were due to return meaning the Kirwans were alone on the island.

Shortly before the boat returned with several boatmen, cries were heard by several witnesses on the shore. Kirwan was found sitting on a high rock and claimed he hadnt seen his wife for a period.

A search ensued and she was found floating at the water at a place called the Long Hole. She was covered in blood.

Her death was reported as a drowning to the coroner but the state ordered the body exhumed after a month and a trial ensued. The MP Isaac Butt was among Kirwans defence.

What provide the trial with a fair degree of scandal was that Kirwan had a mistress, so a clear motive in killing Maria was established.

As reported in the Cork Examiner of December 10, 1852, Mr Smyly QC was emphatic on this point:

The murder in this case was committed on the person of one whom, above all others, the prisoner was bound to cherish and respect, but he [the learned counsel] believed that affection had not existed on the part of the husband, for during the whole period he was married, he lived with a person named Maria Teresa Kenny, neither Mrs Kirwan nor Maria Teresa Kenny, having known till six months before the occurrence, the subject of the recent investigation, that the prisoner shared his affection with another  each female believing that she possessed all his affection.

The case proceeded with both sides calling many witnesses. Ultimately, a guilty verdict was handed down. The Kerry Evening Post reported:

The sentence of death was pronounced upon the prisoner by Judge Crampton in a most solemn and impressive manner. No hope of reprieve was given.

However, the case became a cause celebre and ten eminent doctors appealed on the grounds that Mrs Kirwans death was consistent with natural causes  that she drowned. Evidence was also submitted by a Reverend Malet who produced a document from Mrs Kirwans mother stating he was always a most kind, affectionate husband.

Momentum gathered and the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Kirwan served 24 years on Spike Island, Co Cork, and was freed in 1879. The sordid tale was the subject of a book by Michael Sheridan entitled Murder at Irelands Eye.

The Vikings also made their mark on Irelands Eye in possibly the strongest way: by name. Irelands Eye has nothing to do with the ocular organ, though it does appear to peer across at our neighbours across the Irish Sea. Instead the name derives from the Norse word ey or ay which means island.

In between it was known as Inish Ereann, Erias Island, and Erins Ey. Lambay, Dursey and Saltee are other examples of the Norse.

The island is popular with birdwatchers following gannets, fulmars, kittiwakes, razorbills and many others which throng the quartzite cliffs at the eastern end of the island. In recent years it has also become popular with climbers.

There are the ruins of an early Christian church, St McNessans, probably from the seventh century.

How to get there irelandseyeferries.com islandferries.net; aqua.ie/boat-trips-howth

Other: Murder at Irelands Eye, by Michael Sheridan, Poolbeg Press; Famous Irish Trials, Matthias McDonnell Bodkin, Wentworth Press.
By Richard Collins

William of Auvergne, a 13th-century French bishop, claimed that bears make love face-to-face, as human beings do. Whales, dolphins, and sea-otters copulate front-to-front, but almost all other mammals, including bears, do so front-to-back.

His lordships mistake was understandable; bears resemble us in so many ways that we humanise them.

Most small children have a teddy. In the Goldilocks story, however, the bears are both friendly and ominous.

The power of the tale lies in its uncertainty; we arent told whether Daddy or Mammy Bear would have harmed Goldilocks; she ran away before we could find out. We both love and fear these cuddly creatures.

Cautious and shy, bears give us a wide berth. They may attack people, if threatened, but incidents are few. Bees cause many more deaths than bears.

Sheep and cattle are sometimes harmed by bears, but raids on crops and beehives are more frequent. A few rogue individuals are responsible for most incidents; once the culprits are identified, and taken out, peace descends.

The misdeeds of a few led to a jihad against bears throughout Europe. This, and habitat destruction, resulted in their demise. The species was rendered extinct in Germany two hundred years ago.

Small populations remain in Italy, Spain, and the Pyrenees. Most of Europes surviving bears are in the Carpathians.

Two of seven Neolithic sites excavated at Lough Gur, County Limerick, yielded bear bones. Remains less than four thousand years old have not been found. Absence of evidence, however, isnt evidence of absence.

Irish has eight names for bear. Yet, the language didnt reach our shores until the Iron Age, by which time bears, presumably, were long gone. If so, why were there so many names for an animal not present? It would have been impossible to eradicate bears back then, in a country with extensive forests.

Europes largest carnivore has a certain mystique. Its presence enhances the atmosphere of a pristine wilderness. There is increasing goodwill towards the great beast in Europe and a new willingness to tolerate the damage it does.

Anne Scharf and Nestor Fernandez, of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, have studied brown bear populations.

Using all available data, they have produced computer simulations of bear distributions, past and present. There are currently 17,000 animals, spread over ten populations, in 22 countries. Numbers are increasing in 70% of these. Groups, confined to isolated pockets, are threatened by inbreeding.

However, bears occupy only 37% of a million square kilometres of available habitat. Scharf and Fenandezs distribution maps show locations to which bears might return. However, apart from areas in the Alps, its unlikely that many will re-colonise naturally. Bears may need our assistance.

Whether they return of their own accord, or are helped, the traditional objections to their presence remain. Not everybody would welcome their arrival; come back brown bear, all is forgiven is a sentiment expressed mainly by urban, rather than rural, dwellers.

Preparations should be made in advance, the researchers suggest, or the recovery of bears will end in tears. Damage-prevention measures, and compensation payment schemes, must be planned.

Beehives may need protective barriers, while guard dogs and electric fences would help secure livestock in potentially sensitive areas.

Anne Scharf et al. Up-scaling local-habitat models for large-scale conservation: Assessing suitable areas for the brown bear comeback in Europe. Diversity and Distributions. July, 2018.
By Suzanne Harrigton

Two friends of mine do something theyve long dreamed of. They buy some land in rural south west Portugal, pack up their urban lives, and drive to their remote hillside in a big truck carrying some pared down possessions, a digger, and their cat, who is from Portobello Road and not that keen.

Their only neighbours on the new hillside are eucalyptus, geckos, woodpeckers and owls.

They plan to create an off grid rural escape for themselves, and once theyve set themselves up, for others.

This is exactly what they do. Living in their truck on the hillside, they dig a well, and pipe water uphill with a pump.

They cover the trucks roof in solar panels, get satellite wifi, and build compost loos with a panoramic view.

They build a little house, with the help of workaways, and plant vegetables, fruit trees, flowers. They get a dog, and then another.

They erect a series of bell tents overlooking the valley, and build a yoga platform. Hammocks. A pool. All of this takes two years.

Friends begin to visit. Then friends of friends who want to escape city life, do yoga at dawn, star gaze at night, swim off the vast Atlantic beaches that nobody ever visits because everyone is down on the Algarve tourist resorts. Up here, it is close to heaven.

Their nearest town, Monchique, is 40 minutes down the mountain through empty winding roads. It is pretty as a picture, Monchique, with its population of 6,045, its clean high altitude air, its cafes with their delicious custard tarts, its local health spa flowing with alkaline spring water. It is the very defintion of sleepy.

You may have heard about Monchique this week, because it has been violently shaken awake. Wildfires have been spreading so close that the whole town had to be bussed out, evacuated. Like a war zone, my friends message.

They have to leave their hillside homestead, packing their dogs into the car with some basic belongings, and driving to the coast to escape the blazing, out of control walls of fire. (The cat has run away.)

So far, the fires have bypassed their land. They are praying for rain, praying the wind will not change direction, praying the cat is safe.

They drive back to their hillside once the roads have been temporarily unblocked, to make cups of tea and cheese sandwiches for the exhausted firefighters, who are overwhelmed in their heavy uniforms, their breathing apparatus.

Neighbours a few kilometers up and down the road have lost everything, their homes destroyed by the fire. My friends are shattered, but also aware that so far they have been lucky.

Everyone back here awaits their Facebook updates with trepidation.

Its like breaking news, except from real people in the thick of it, their only agenda to stay alive and let their friends know they are safe. So this is climate change. This is the new normal.
Amy Lewis gets close to nature at Wexford Wildfowl Reserve.

Just a stones throw away from the world-acclaimed Wexford Opera House, its easy to get a front-row seat at arguably the best and most diverse show in town. This is a show where nature takes to the stage.

On this summer afternoon, now unfamiliar clouds serve as a slow-moving backdrop while swallows dip and dive over the gently lapping water.

Ducks of various varieties bob along before a heron swoops in from the wings, causing an eruption of squabbles and commotion. Unaware of the fuss, a pair of goldfinches dance and whistle around one another before settling on a nearby swaying branch.

The smell of salty sea air wafts in through the open door. Wind whispers through the reeds. As far as shows go, its certainly a feast for the senses.

All of this unravels before the Pump House Hide overlooking Wexford Wildfowl Reserves main water channel. It is one of the reserves three bird hides  a simple shelter used to observe wildlife at close range without disturbance.

Birdwatching from the hides or the reserves elevated observation tower gives people the chance to remain sheltered from the elements while still getting to witness natures spectacles. In fact, nature often brings itself even closer.

Next to the wooden bench Im perched upon is a sign requesting that hide windows are left open, to allow for the resident swallows to return to their nests. Sure enough, a mud-bound dwelling is nestled into the wooden ceiling above my head. In the upper floor of the hide, which overlooks Wexford Harbour, there are several more.

Despite the myriad of activities, Education Officer at the reserve John Kinsella tells me that summer is quiet season. A ballpark figure of 260 species have been recorded on the 200-hectare reserve, which is managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and jointly owned with BirdWatch Ireland. Many birds will arrive later this year.

Perhaps the most famous winter residents are the Greenland White-fronted geese, whose expected time of arrival is October.

The reserve welcomes up to 8,000 of the visitors  approximately 45 per cent of the world population  each winter and many birders swoop in to greet them after their long journey.

The geese have a 15 to 18-hour flight to from Greenland to Iceland, their halfway point, explains John, adding that they stop for four weeks in Iceland before taking the second 18-hour flight to our shores.

By the time they reach Ireland, they have lost above half a kilo in bodyweight, which is the equivalent of about two stone for us humans.

This is no issue for Europes rarest geese, who replenish their energy stores by feeding up on rye grasses and sugar beet in the following months. The geese remain in Ireland, as well as their other wintering spot in Scotland, before making the journey back to Western Greenland in April.

However, John points out that one individual has decided to stick around a bit longer. From the reserves eight-metre high observation tower, a lone goose with a distinctive orange bill can be spied sitting comfortably in a field.

While unsure as to why he remains, John says that the goose is healthy and will likely return to Greenland next year. The influx of Greenland White-fronted geese is an indication that winter is coming, says John. Cue Game of Thrones music, he laughs. Until then, theres still always something to be seen.

From the tower, a group of godwits can be seen prodding in the grass for food with their strikingly-long beaks. Several curlews walk among them, likely migrant birds rather than members of our breeding population, which has declined by 96 per cent since the 1980s.

Little terns, sedge warblers and great-crested grebes are just some of the other birds that can be spotted in summer, while pale-bellied brent geese, Slavonian grebes and great northern divers may be ticked off the list in winter.

The North Slob is also an Irish Hare sanctuary and we spot two on the grass as evening sets in, while at least five species of bat have been recorded here.

In the summertime, the reserve plays host to several events, including the popular weekly pond-dipping and bug discovery activities. This year, a special photography exhibition telling the reserves story will be held in the Visitor Centre during Heritage Week in advance of the 50th anniversary in 2019.

While the reserve was officially established in 1969, its history began long before that. The North Slob, where the reserve is located, is a 1,000-hectare mudflat that was reclaimed from the sea for farmland in the 1840s.

Nowadays, along with being a Nature Reserve, Wexford Wildfowl Reserve forms part of the larger Wexford Slobs and Harbour Special Protected Area (SPA)  a habitat designated under the EU Birds Directive for the protection of endangered species of birds.

The remainder of the North Slob still consists of farmland and the reserve team liaise with local farmers to ensure birds are not disturbed. When the geese arrive, local landowners are subsidised for halting any potentially disruptive agricultural activity on nearby land.

Goodwill is very high, says John when asked about cooperation.

Bar the occasional incident with poachers and this years heavy snow  more problematic for reserve staff and visitors than birds  John says the reserve has been confronted with few challenges since its foundation. However, they are faced with an issue universal to most environmental efforts: climate change.

Last year, the reserve welcomed less Greenland White-fronted geese than usual. Although ongoing long-term research must be completed to be certain, its believed this is a result of climate change.

However, scientists are not yet sure exactly how this affects them or whether the decline will change.

Butterfly walks on the reserve have also yielded less sightings than usual.

Only time will tell what the consequences of our rapidly changing planet will be for birdlife worldwide. In the meantime, staff here will continue to do what they can to protect the many species that call Wexford Wildfowl Reserve home.
The international communitys ambition for aid must go beyond keeping people alive, to offering migrants a future, says Jorge Moreira da Silva.

With newspapers full of stories about the challenges migrant families face, it might be tempting to assume that the causes of displacement are being addressed.

In most cases, however, such an assumption would be wrong.

Today, solutions to forced migration focus almost exclusively on aiding refugees after they flee, rather than targeting the reasons for their flight.

To resolve the worlds refugee crises, the causes require as much attention as the effects.

Why would parents risk their lives, or the lives of their children, to leave home and journey into the unknown?

And what can be done to keep families from being forced to migrate in the first place?

These are among the key questions that colleagues and I have attempted to answer in a new OECD study, States of Fragility 2018.

The findings are as illuminating as they are troubling.

By 2030, more than 80% of the worlds poor will live in an area defined as fragile  a status that may reflect any number of political, social, security, economic, or environmental causes.

Unfortunately, if current trends hold, far too little development aid will be allocated to address the factors contributing to fragility.

In 2016, for example, just 2% of the $68.2 billion (59.7) in official development assistance (ODA) that went to places affected by fragility was used for conflict-prevention activities, and only 10% went to peace-building initiatives.

There is no other conclusion to draw: We must change how ODA is allocated.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, a record 68.5 million people were forcibly displaced in 2017.

Many of these people hailed from just five countries  Afghanistan, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, and Syria.

But, while countries hosting refugees have an urgent need for money to support long-term relocation efforts, most ODA is still channelled to short-term solutions.

Humanitarian initiatives such as food and shelter accounted for roughly a third of all ODA last year, and that share has been climbing for nearly a decade.

By contrast, funding for construction of schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure continues to lag.

While its understandable that donors would gravitate toward solutions that offer immediate assistance to the displaced, neglecting refugees long-term needs is short-sighted.

Simply put, the international communitys ambition for aid must evolve beyond keeping people alive; it must also offer migrants a future.

If allocated properly, ODA can be a powerful tool in preventing conflict and reversing the trends that contribute to fragility.

Moreover, this type of spending is often a source of hope for migrants, given that in many crisis-affected areas, ODA is among the most reliable funding sources.

That is particularly true as emergencies age, because funding levels typically drop as donations from other sources dry up.

To be sure, reversing current ODA spending trends will not be an easy task.

Fragility manifests in myriad ways, and addressing challenges as diverse as violent extremism, climate change, organised crime, and gender discrimination will require a new playbook for development spending.

Still, the need for actions has become urgent. If unaddressed, conflict, violence, and other forms of fragility will set development gains back decades, further fuelling the very dynamics that lead to instability in the first place.

Unless the international community changes its approach to investing in fragile regions, the world will fail to achieve a key objective of the UN Sustainable Development Goals: To leave no one behind.

Spending on long-term solutions also makes financial sense. According to the UN and World Bank, if more money were allocated to conflict-prevention programmes, up to $70bn could be saved annually in refugee-relocation costs.

While the world has accepted the premise of cost-effective prevention in health care (by promoting regular screenings and checkups, for example), this philosophy has yet to be applied to policymaking on migration. This can and should change.

The global migration crisis  the worst since the end of the Second World War  has consumed huge sums of

financial and political capital.

To address it effectively, the focus must shift to improving stability and security, and hope for better futures, in the places where migrants originate.

And that means the development community, and especially official donors, must rethink their priorities and policies. Jorge Moreira da Silva is development co-operation director at the OECD and a former minister of environment and energy of Portugal.
Bill Laurance

The plan to build a massive hydropower dam in Sumatra as part of Chinas immense Belt and Road Initiative threatens the habitat of the rarest ape in the world, which has only 800 remaining members.

This is merely the beginning of an avalanche of environmental crises and broader social and economic risks that will be provoked by the BRI scheme.

The orangutans story began in November 2017, when scientists made a stunning announcement: they had discovered a seventh species of Great Ape, called the Tapanuli Orangutan, in a remote corner of Sumatra, Indonesia.

In an article published in Current Biology, my colleagues and I show that this ape is perilously close to extinction and that a Chinese-sponsored megaproject could be the final nail in its coffin.

Ambitious but nightmarishly complicated

The BRI is an ambitious but nightmarishly complicated venture, and far less organised than many believe. The hundreds of road, port, rail, and energy projects will ultimately span some 70 nations across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Pacific region. It will link those nations economically and often geopolitically to China, while catalysing sweeping expansion of land-use and extractive industries, and will have myriad knock-on effects.

Up to 2015, the hundreds of BRI projects were reviewed by the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, which is directly under Chinas State Council. Many observers have assumed that the NDRC will help coordinate the projects, but the only real leverage they have is over projects funded by the big Chinese policy banks  the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China  which they directly control.

Most big projects  many of which are cross-national  will have a mix of funding from various sources and nations, meaning that no single entity will be in charge or ultimately responsible. An informed colleague in China describes this model as anarchy.

Tapanuli Orangutan

The dangerous potential of the BRI becomes apparent when one examines the Tapanuli Orangutan. With fewer than 800 individuals, it is one of the rarest animals on Earth. It survives in just a speck of rainforest, less than a tenth the size of Sydney, that is being eroded by illegal deforestation, logging, and poaching.

All of these threats propagate around roads. When a new road appears, the ape usually disappears, along with many other rare species sharing its habitat, such as Hornbills and the endangered Sumatran Tiger.

The most imminent threat to the ape is a US$1.6 billion hydropower project that Sinohydro (Chinas state-owned hydroelectric corporation) intends to build with funding from the Bank of China and other Chinese financiers. If the project proceeds as planned, it will flood the heart of the apes habitat and crisscross the remainder with many new roads and powerline clearings.

Its a recipe for ecological Armageddon for one of our closest living relatives. Other major lenders such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank arent touching the project, but that isnt slowing down Chinas developers.

A Tapanuli Orangutan. Pic: Google Images.

What environmental safeguards?

China has produced a small flood of documents describing sustainable lending principles for its banks and broad environmental and social safeguards for the BRI, but I believe many of these documents are mere paper tigers or greenwashing designed to quell anxieties.

According to insiders, a heated debate in Beijing right now revolves around eco-safeguards for the BRI. Big corporations (with international ambitions and assets that overseas courts can confiscate) want clear guidelines to minimise their liability. Smaller companies, of which there are many, want the weakest standards possible.

The argument isnt settled yet, but its clear that the Chinese government doesnt want to exclude its thousands of smaller companies from the potential BRI riches. Most likely, it will do what it has in the past: issue lofty guidelines that a few Chinese companies will attempt to abide by, but that most will ignore.

Stacked deck

There are three alarming realities about China, of special relevance to the BRI.

First, Chinas explosive economic growth has arisen from giving its overseas corporations and financiers enormous freedom. Opportunism, graft and corruption are embedded, and they are unlikely to yield economically, socially or environmentally equitable development for their host nations. I detailed many of these specifics in an article published by Yale University last year.

Second, China is experiencing a perfect storm of trends that ensures the harsher realities of the BRI are not publicly aired or even understood in China. China has a notoriously closed domestic media  ranked near the bottom in press freedom globally  that is intolerant of government criticism.

Beyond this, the BRI is the signature enterprise of President Xi Jinping, who has become the de-facto ruler of China for life. Thanks to President Xi, the BRI is now formally enshrined in the constitution of Chinas Communist Party, making it a crime for any Chinese national to criticise the program. This has had an obvious chilling effect on public discourse. Indeed, I have had Chinese colleagues withdraw as coauthors of scientific papers that were even mildly critical of the BRI.

President Xi Jinpeng.

Third, China is becoming increasingly heavy-handed internationally, willing to overtly bully or covertly pull strings to achieve its objectives. Professor Clive Hamilton of Charles Sturt University has warned that Australia has become a target for Chinese attempts to stifle criticism.

Remember the ape

It is time for a clarion call for greater caution. While led by China, the BRI will also involve large financial commitments from more than 60 nations that are parties to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, including Australia and many other Western nations.

We all have a giant stake in the Belt and Road Initiative. It will bring sizeable economic gains for some, but in nearly 40 years of working internationally, I have never seen a program that raises more red flags.

This article was written by Bill Laurance of James Cook University and was originally published on The Conversation

Read the original article here.
In the second part of his series on Irish neutrality, Ryle Dwyer recounts how messages received in a seance helped convince a US minister that de Valera wanted Germany to win the war, despite Irelands extraordinary co-operation with the Allies.

While I studying for a doctorate in history in Texas in the early 1970s, it became obvious that Irish neutrality had been greatly distorted by David Gray, during his tenure as the US Minister to Ireland from 1940 to 1947. I got access to Grays personal papers, which included a manuscript for a book that he began writing after the war.

I was approached to edit this manuscript for publication but felt it was so distorted that it would virtually require another book to rectify his distortions. At the outset of my research I wrote to the eminent diplomat David K Bruce for help.

David Gray: The US Minister to Ireland from 1940 to 1947 was deeply suspicious of Eamon de Valeras intentions during the war.

During the war, Bruce was head of the European operations of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the wartime precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency. In that capacity he had actually visited Ireland in 1943. He later served terms as US ambassador to France (1949-52), to West Germany (1957-59), and to Britain (1961-69). In 1970 he was appointed to head the American delegation at the Vietnam Peace Talks in Paris.

Writing from Paris in response to my letter, Bruce provided poignant clues between the lines. He damned Gray with irrelevant praise, and cited Ervin Spike Marlin as an authority on the information I was seeking..

Mr Gray  a fine man, and a great authority on foxhunting and sport, about which he had written delightfully and authoritatively  had no previous familiarity with secret intelligence activities, and was somewhat suspicious of them, Bruce wrote. If you can locate Spike Marlin, you would find him especially knowledgeable about the affairs in which you are interested.

Marlin, who was working at the State Department at the time, was initially reluctant to co-operate, but after he retired, he contacted me and was very helpful. He had been sent to Ireland as an OSS agent in 1942. His cover was as an economic adviser to Gray.

Marlins first OSS assignment was to evaluate the sympathies of members of the Irish government. He concluded that all were pro-Allied with the exception of PJ Little, the Minister for Posts & Telegraphs, who was pro-German.

As Marlin was sending his report to OSS headquarters in Washington in the diplomatic bag, Gray insisted on reading it. He then demanded to know Marlins source for his assessment of Little. Marlin  who was born and reared in New York  had attended Trinity College, Dublin, from 1929 to 1932. While there he became friendly with the future Irish president Erskine Childers, who was a junior minister in the de Valera government in 1942.

Eamon de Valera

Under pressure from Gray, Marlin reluctantly divulged that Childers was his informant. Gray protested to the Irish government about the inclusion of this pro-German sympathiser in the cabinet, and he went on to commit the appalling indiscretion of citing Childers as the source of this information.

Realising that Marlin was an intelligence agent, the Irish secretly offered to co-operate with him, but Gray objected. David Bruce therefore visited Dublin to resolve the matter.

Bruce recognised fully our frankness and real desire to be helpful, Joe Walshe, the Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, noted. Hence Grays objections were overruled, and Marlin was authorised to co-operate with the Irish. His cover as an economic adviser to Gray was no longer needed.

I was relieved of my assignment under Gray, Marlin told me. He wanted me out also so we were at last in perfect agreement on one point.

J Russell Forgan, Bruces deputy, assured me: The Irish worked with us on intelligence matters almost as if they were our allies. They have never received the credit due them.

Marlin was supplied with voluminous reports on Irish radio interceptions, aircraft and submarine sightings, files on German spies captured in Ireland, as well as the names and addresses of people in the United States to whom pro-German Irish people, or German nationals living in Ireland, were writing.

From May 1943, Marlin worked from London and returned to Dublin about every six weeks. He maintained regular communication with Irish security officials.

The Irish were so helpful that Marlin suggested to OSS headquarters that they would likely provide the OSS with information from their diplomats in Germany, Italy and France. As the Allies had no diplomats in those countries, the OSS decided to look into the matter.

While Gray was in the United States for consultations, Carter Nicholas, the head of the Eire Desk at OSS headquarters in Washington, visited Dublin with Marlin in September 1943 and asked Joe Walshe, if the Irish would provide the OSS with information from Irish diplomats.

After clearing the matter with de Valera, Walshe agreed. In the following weeks Marlin supplied Walshe with questions for Irish representatives in Berlin, Rome, and Vichy. Walshe then forwarded their replies to Marlin. In effect, Irish diplomats were being used as American spies.

David Gray (r) talking with de Valera.

Following the Allied invasion of Europe in June 1944, Marlin returned to the United States, and the OSS sent Edward Lawler to Dublin as its liaison officer with the Irish. We received 100% co-operation from the Irish authorities, Lawler assured me. The co-operation and information we received from the Irish was every bit as extensive and helpful as it would have been if Ireland had been a full partner with us in the war effort.

All of the four of the OSS agents, who were stationed in Ireland at different times during the war, were adamant that the Irish were fully co-operative with the Americans. Martin S Quigley, who later wrote about his experiences in his 2008 book  A US Spy in Ireland  quickly realised that Irish authorities could hardly be more favourably disposed towards the Allies. As a result he was baffled by Grays attitude. He never knew what was really going on, or if he did, he refused to accept the truth, Quigley concluded.

Quigley provided me with a copy of an extensive history of OSS operations in Ireland, written by Carter Nicholas. It detailed the extensive co-operation, and did not mention any item on which the Irish declined co-operation.

Yet Gray persistently refused to believe that de Valera was helpful. Gray actually contended that he had better sources of information than the OSS. Those sources were telling him that de Valera and Walshe were secretly scheming for a German victory in the hope that Hitler would end partition in Ireland.

The American minister did, indeed, have different sources, which he literally believed were from out of this world. A strong believer in spiritualism, he thought he was getting advice from ghosts, and he even passed on some of this information to President Roosevelt in the White House.

Shortly after arriving in Dublin in 1940, for instance, he wrote to Roosevelt about the ghosts that are here in his official residence in the Phoenix Park, where the late British Prime Minister Arthur J Balfour had lived as chief secretary of Ireland in the 1880s.

Balfour had later engaged in seances with a famous Cork medium Geraldine Cummins, who would go into a kind of trance and write out messages from supposed ghosts.

Cummins held seances for Gray at his Phoenix Park residence. On November 8, 1941 Balfours ghost supposedly warned Gray, through Cummins, about Joe Walshe. He, from what I can see, is hand and glove with the German minister, the message read. It went on to describe Walshe as the leading Quisling.

At a further seance on December 2, 1941, Cummins wrote a purported message from the late President Theodore Roosevelt. I want to tell you, the late president supposedly indicated, that I think Franklin will hold the Japs for a while; at any rate from our countrys point of view. I see no immediate Armageddon for young America, possibly not at all.

Four days after this communication, Gray wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt, the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor. Gray did not doubt he was in touch with Teddy Roosevelt, he just concluded that the Japanese had deceived the late American president.

US president Roosevelt

They had T.R. fooled, Gray added. I suspect that if these communications come through pretty much as given our friends on the other side dont know very much more than they did on this side.

Yet such messages were the foundation for Grays belief that de Valera wanted Germany to win the war, despite the extraordinary Irish co- operation with the Allies.

While Gray was arguing that Roosevelt should discredit de Valera, the OSS got hold of alarming information, suggesting that the German legation in Dublin had been furnishing Berlin with extraordinary intelligence information. Fritz Kolbe, an official at the German Foreign Ministry, turned over a cache of sensitive documents, demonstrating that the Germans had been getting information from inside Roosevelts cabinet.

Vice president Henry Wallace had been talking indiscreetly to his brother-in-law, a Swiss diplomat, who had been passing on the information to his own foreign ministry, where it was falling into German hands. These documents were to have enormous historical significance.

Roosevelt dropped Wallace and replaced him with Harry Truman as his vice-presidential candidate in 1944, and Truman succeeded to the White House barely six months later. Kolbes document also showed that the German had been getting extensive information on Allied activities in Britain and Northern Ireland from the German legation in Dublin. But MI5, the British intelligence agency, explained that this information was really part of a MI5 misinformation campaign.

The pertinent misinformation was buried in a wealth of accurate information that the Germans already knew. As MI5 had broken the Germans code, it was monitoring the messages from the German legation in Dublin, and was therefore confident that the ploy was working.

For more than a quarter of a century after the end of the Second World War, Irish intelligence co-operation with the Americans was ignored. In 1971, however, R Harris Smith asserted in his book, The O.S.S., that the Irish diplomatic corps smuggled espionage material out of Italy for the Americans in the Irish diplomatic pouch.

According to Smith, the Vessel Project originated when the Vaticans acting secretary of state, Monsignor Giovanni Montini (later Pope Paul VI), offered the Americans strategic information from a Vatican source in Japan. But there was no corroboration of this, or of the Irish co-operation.

Pope Paul VI: In the late 1960s the intelligence people pretended that the details of the Vessel Project had to be kept secret in order to protect the reputation of the Pope.

After serving in Ireland in 1943, the OSS moved Martin Quigley to Italy where he was involved in the Vessel Project. He told me the OSS had its own means of delivery and there was no reason why they would have involved the Irish in the project. Hence he had serious doubts about Smiths account. I am convinced some and perhaps all of what he wrote is false, Quigley warned.

In the early months of the war, Irish diplomats on the continent had been warned by the Department of External Affairs in Dublin not to transmit confidential material in diplomatic bags, because the Germans were opening them. Thus, they would not have transmitted material for the OSS from the Vatican.

Harris was obviously used to distort the whole Vessel Project. It had actually been a scam initiated by an Italian journalist, named Virgilio Scattolini, who had sold bogus Vatican information to various wire services before the war.

Following the liberation of Rome in 1944, he sought to re-establish his trade in forged documents. The OSS paid for the Vessel material, which it considered so good that some of the raw material was actually shown to US president Roosevelt.

But in February 1945 the OSS learned that the messages were actually embellished reports from the Vaticans representative in Tokyo. The Americans had broken his code and were already reading the original messages, so Scattolinis handiwork was detected, but by then he had ripped off the OSS.

Scattolini had used Montinis name to lure the OSS into his scam. The OSS later used Montinis name  after he became Pope  to cover up its own messing. In the late 1960s the intelligence people pretended that the details of the Vessel Project had to be kept secret in order to protect the reputations of the Pope, and the Irish president de Valera had, indeed, secretly authorised the use of Irish diplomats as American spies, but neither he nor Montini were ever involved in the Vessel Project.

T Ryle Dwyer is author of Behind the Green Curtain: Irelands Phony Neutrality During World War II, published by Gill Books
Hillwalkers and the tourism industry in Ireland are most fortunate that unpaid volunteers are happy to provide a rescue service without even receiving travel expenses when responding to a call-out, writes John G ODwyer.

In early summer, a man climbed Ben Nevis, which is Scotlands highest mountain, without raingear and then got soaked on the summit.

He contacted the local Lochaber Mountain Rescue for assistance saying he was too wet to go on.

They refused assistance, with team leader John Stevenson explaining: We are not here to go up and walk down somebody who is ok but just wet. If hes wet, hes wet. He can come off himself. We are volunteers, not full-time professionals.

While there are no reports of Irish mountain rescue teams refusing to respond to a callout, the pressure is undoubtedly growing on volunteers, sometimes from individuals who see mountain rescue not as a last, but as a first, resort when a problem arises.

Certainly, there has never been more recourse to the Irish uplands. In 2003, the number of visitors to Ireland participating in hillwalking or hiking was 168,000; in 2016, the figure was almost 2.1m.

Applying average spending by overseas tourists to the latter figure suggests the market segment is worth at least 1.25bn to the Irish economy, without taking account of revenues from domestic hikers.

The continuation of this revenue source is, however, heavily dependent on future goodwill from frontline Irish Mountain Rescue teams who give up work, family and leisure time to respond on a 24-hour, 365-day basis.

In 2017, there were 272 callouts involving 12 fatalities and 154 injuries, with 77 of these taking place during darkness.

Mountain rescue is clearly a disciplined, demanding and sometimes harrowing endeavour. Hillwalkers and the tourism industry in Ireland are most fortunate that unpaid volunteers are happy to provide a rescue service without even receiving travel expenses when responding to a call-out.

In recent months, however, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of requests for assistance and this has put added pressure on the volunteer teams.

Kerry Mountain Rescue Team (KMRT) responded to 10 call-outs just for the month of June, while the Glen of Imaal Rescue Team in Wicklow was called out six times on a particularly sunny Saturday.

According to KMRT spokesman Colm Burke, team members have observed that a high proportion of the recent callouts have involved parties who were ill-prepared and or ill-equipped for their ventures into the mountains.

The excellent weather conditions this summer have no doubt attracted higher numbers of visitors to the mountains at this time, but not all are sufficiently experienced for the challenges they undertake.

The team would advise those venturing out to ensure that they are sufficiently experienced, prepared and equipped for any hike or climb they are planning.

An interesting fact from 2017 is that, while the majority of call-outs to the 11 teams were to upland injuries, 31% were to walkers who had simply become lost. While some injuries arise to walkers not prepared for the mountain environment  for example, not wearing the correct footwear  most injuries occur by mischance in what is a challenging and unpredictable environment. This is not, however, the case for those who become lost; this outcome often suggests a lack of preparation.

The newly introduced Sarloc smartphone application now enables rescuers to pinpoint the location of individuals who are seeking assistance, but since it requires an internet signal it does not always work. The alternative of a manual sweep is then one of the most labour intensive and demanding tasks that can face a mountain rescue team.

Alan Wallace is an experienced rescuer with KMRT. He believes those heading out onto the Irish mountains should plan their route in advance and have the skills to navigate competently even in the poorest of conditions. Many accidents occur when walkers stray off the trail and onto the steep ground and then become crag fast (unable to move up or down), but competent navigation skills should keep walkers on the route.

KMRT training in winter.

He also believes the nature of mountain rescue is changing: In the past mountain rescue teams were called out when someone failed to return from the hills. This very often involved a night search. Now with mobile phones, we can become aware of an incident soon after it happens, but we are often hampered when the phone battery quickly dies. It is important that hillwalkers keep their phone charged at all times and if they are taking photographs and scrolling maps that they have a portable phone charger with them in case of emergency.

But what happens when internet and mobile technology doesnt work. In such circumstances, Mr Wallace believes walkers must be self-reliant.

They should have sufficient spare food, protective clothing and torches to stay out safely after dark and at least one person in a party should carry a map and compass they know how to use.

Further information on all aspects of upland safety: kerrymountainrescue.ie/ mountainsafety

John G ODwyers new guidebook to the Comeragh, Galtee, Knockmealdown and Slieve Bloom Mountains is available from collinspress.ie
A British man has died in Ibiza, the latest in a string of holidaymakers' deaths this summer in the popular destination.

According to media reports, the victim died after a fight in the early hours of this morning following an altercation with a group of males in the resort of San Antonio.
Asia Arrested and Killed: Inside the Bangladesh Prime Minister's War on Drugs

Rina Begum holds a photograph on July 21 of her son Riazul Islam, an alleged drug dealer who was killed by police in Tongi, Gazipur, Bangladesh. / Reuters

DHAKA  Bangladesh police arrested Riazul Islam as he was walking home from his in-laws house. At 3:15 a.m., he was shot dead in a sandy field beside a set of railroad tracks north of Dhaka.

Police say he was killed in a gunfight with other drug dealers, and they recovered 20 kilograms of marijuana from the site. His parents say the officers extorted money from them and then killed him.

I knew my son was in police custody. All of a sudden my son was dead. I couldnt believe it. The police took money and they still killed him, said his mother, Rina Begum.

Bangladesh is the newest frontline in state-backed drug crackdowns in Asia, and Islam is one of more than 200 people shot dead by police in Bangladesh since May, when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced the campaign.

Critics say the crackdown reflects Hasinas increasingly authoritarian rule ahead of a general election, due by December. That was also shown in its response to recent student demonstrations over road traffic deaths, including the use of rubber bullets and the arrest of a prominent photographer.

Hasina emphasized that the police and intelligence agencies would now tackle the drug problem in the same tough way they had countered violent extremism in recent years.

Such campaigns can be popular with voters, as has been shown by President Rodrigo Dutertes bloody drug war in the Philippines.

Hasinas office did not respond to questions about whether the drugs campaign was a populist ploy.

Bangladeshs drug war

Mounting death toll

The bodies appeared rapidly after Hasinas pronouncement. And, just like the Philippines, the killings appeared to follow a script: Suspects died in gunfights, typically at night, and weapons and drugs were found nearby.

In more than a third of the 211 killings recorded by Dhaka-based human rights group Odhikar since mid-May, the suspects were arrested before they were killed.

The police are overseen by Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, who denied the police were executing suspects.

Our law enforcement people dont kill, they dont execute anyone. It is impossible. If they do so they will be fired at that moment, he told Reuters. It is not a lawless country.

After Islam was arrested, according to the police report, officers took the top terror of the neighborhood to the field beside the railroad tracks to draw in and arrest other drug dealers. The other dealers sensed the officers presence and began firing randomly, and to save life and government property, the officers fired back.

Roni was shot and fell down. He died on the spot, according to the report, which said two officers were wounded.

Islams autopsy report, read to Reuters by a hospital official, noted that a single bullet entered his head near his left ear and exited near his right. Each of the two officers was treated for small areas of tenderness and swelling on one hand, according to records at another hospital.

None of the six witnesses in the police report saw Islam die, they told Reuters.

One of the six, handyman Mohammad Bappy, who lives at the edge of the field where Islam was shot, snapped photos of Islams dead body. One of the pictures shows blood on the ground beneath Islams head.

There was no gun, he said. If there had been a gunfight we would have heard lots of firing from two sides. That didnt happen.

Kamal Hossain, the officer in charge of the operation, said drug use leads to crime and arrests dont work.

They come out on bail and they do the same thing, selling and using drugs, he said. Every drug dealer should be killed. Then drugs can be controlled.

Little data

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, US ambassador to Bangladesh and the European Union have all expressed concern about the killings of drug suspects in Bangladesh.

After a government official in the southern city of Teknaf was gunned down by Rapid Action Battalion police in May, the state-funded National Human Rights Commission sent a letter to the ministry in charge of the police to remind it of human rights.

But Hasina pressed on.

Drugs destroy a country, a nation and a family, she told Parliament in June. We will continue the drive, no matter who says what.

Most of the killings took place in May, when there were 129 as the campaign began, but then dropped to 38 in June before picking up to 44 in July.

Drugs have long been a concern for the Bangladesh government, which bans consumption of alcohol by Muslims, who make up the vast majority of the population.

But its not clear how much drug use has grown or even how many people use drugs. Asked for figures, Bangladeshs narcotics deputy intelligence chief said there were none.

We have no government statistics or non-government statistics about users, Nazrul Islam Sikder said, adding, But we guess 7 to 8 million.

Drug seizures data from the Department of Narcotics Control suggests the drug trade has grown, but much of the increase happened three years ago, long before Hasina launched the crackdown. The data shows a dramatic increase in methamphetamine or yaba pill seizures beginning in 2015.

No one believes the official accounts of the killings, said Rashid Alam, a 50-year-old manager of a garment factory near the field where Islam was shot, but he is more concerned about the scourge of drugs use for communities.

We understand he is a drug dealer and the police shot him, he said. That kind of death is okay. Good job, really.

Critics of Hasina say the crackdown is meant to show voters she is responding to popular concerns and to strike fear in political opponents ahead of the election. According to media reports, some of those killed were activists of the opposition Bangladesh National Party.

For Ashrafuzzaman Zaman, liaison officer of the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission, the politics of the drug crackdown are clear.

You kill 200 people and you make 150 million afraid, today or tomorrow you can also be one of them. That is the message the government is giving to the people, he said.

Hasinas office did not respond to the allegations from her critics.

But Home Minister Khan denied the campaign was a cover to target opposition politicians, and said no drug offender is treated differently from another.

His identity is only as a criminal, he said. Even if he has a link with the ruling party, he will not be spared.
Asia Japan's Akihito Pushed Imperial Boundaries to Reach Out to Asia

Japan's Emperor Akihito (R) and Empress Michiko arrive at the Imperial Palace before welcoming Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang and his wife Nguyen Thi Hien in Tokyo, Japan, May 30, 2018. Franck Robichon / Pool via Reuters

TOKYO  When Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko stood, heads bowed, at a seaside cliff on Saipan 60 years after a bloody World War II battle, their silent prayers conveyed a message many felt resonated louder than words.

On that June 2005 visit  one of many war-related trips during Akihitos three-decade reign  the royal couple paid their respects at memorials not only for Japanese but also American and Korean war dead.

I think the emperor felt heartfelt pain and mourning for those who died, and that we must not forget the tragedy of the war and should convey that to the generations who have not experienced it, Shingo Haketa, former grand steward of the Imperial Household Agency, which manages the monarchs affairs, told Reuters in an exclusive interview.

Haketa and a half-dozen other associates of the emperor recounted to Reuters how after the death of his father on Jan. 7, 1989, Akihito carved out an active role as symbol of peace, democracy and reconciliation.

Although he cannot directly influence government policy, Akihito has created a broader consciousness of Japans wartime past, experts say.

That is a sharp departure from the legacy of his father, Hirohito  once revered as a living god in whose name Japan fought World War II. Hirohitos comments about the conflict were vague after Japans defeat, and he remained a divisive figure because of his role.

Akihito, 84, will abdicate next year. On Aug. 15, he will for the last time as reigning emperor take part in an annual memorial ceremony honoring war dead held on the anniversary of Japans surrender.

His retirement comes amid tensions with China and the Koreas, and his legacy appears threatened by a Japanese drift to the right mirrored in Prime Minister Shinzo Abes conservative agenda.

Japanese political leaders have expressed regret, remorse and apology for their countrys wartime actions. But remarks by the emperor have a different weight, experts say.

Emperors are like popes  their gestures carry a symbolic message, said Andrew Horvat, a visiting professor at Japans Josai International University.

Pushing the Envelope

Politicians have sometimes undercut official apologies, but Akihitos message has remained consistent.

People see (Akihito and Michiko) as sincerely and respectfully trying to reach out to wartime victims in a deeply symbolic and very reconciliatory way, said Jennifer Lind, a Dartmouth College professor who has written about apologies.

Friends and scholars credit Akihitos post-war education with laying the foundations for how he forged his role. Influences included Quaker tutor Elizabeth Vining and former Keio University head Shinzo Koizumi, who saw many of his students die in the conflict.

Currently, most Japanese people think that the emperor is gentle and kind, Mototsugu Akashi, a former classmate, told Reuters. But that is clearly a post-war phenomenon.

The makeover of the monarchy began after Japans surrender in 1945, when Akihito was 11.

In theory, the emperor can say what he likes as long as his remarks dont violate the post-war constitution, which defines the emperor as the symbol of the State and the unity of the People, devoid of governmental power and unable to interfere in politics.

In practice, Akihitos public remarks are carefully vetted to ensure they dont violate those rules, with delicate discussions determining how forthright he can be.

Akihito strained against those limits, say those who know him.

I know that for one or two speeches, he was angry with the Imperial Household Agency and foreign ministry about the words to be used, said Michael Barrett, who knew Akihito while head of the British Council in Japan during the 1990s.

It was said that they (the imperial couple) were birds in a gilded cage, but he opened the door of that cage, he added.

Conservative Backlash

In one early example, Seoul in May 1990 wanted the new emperor to apologize for Japans often-brutal 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean peninsula.

Ruling party lawmakers objected, and Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu offered to apologize instead to South Korean president Roh Tae Woo.

Akihito, however, had his own ideas.

The current emperor wanted to make clear that it was Japan that caused the suffering of the Korean people, Makoto Watanabe, a former imperial grand chamberlain, an aide to the emperor, told Reuters in an interview.

Ultimately, Akihito had his way after private negotiations with government officials.

I think of the sufferings your people underwent during this unfortunate period, which was brought about by my country, and cannot but feel the deepest regret, he said at a banquet for Roh.

The early years of Akihitos reign saw a flourishing of debate over Japans responsibility for World War II and a series of government apologies.

The statements, and efforts to teach children about Japans wartime actions, sparked a conservative backlash against a view of history seen as undermining national pride and identity.

In 1992, Akihito became the first modern Japanese monarch to visit China. Domestic right-wing groups opposed the trip, while Chinese activists demanded an apology.

While in China, the emperor said he felt deep sorrow for the suffering Japan inflicted on the Chinese people.

The next year, he began visits to wartime sites, beginning in Okinawa, where resentment lingered against mainland Japan over the islanders wartime sacrifices.

Overseas Battlefield

Six decades after the wars end, he visited Saipan, a US territory, on his first trip to a foreign battleground.

He had felt strongly that he wanted to pray for all the souls who died in the war, not just domestically but overseas, not just Japanese but all the people of the world, Haketa said.

Usually, the emperors overseas trips are in response to requests by the government, but this trip was based on his strong personal desire, he added.

Despite Akihitos age and health problems  he has had heart surgery and been treated for prostate cancer  he has continued his travels.

In 2015 he and Michiko went to Palaus tiny Peleliu Island, site of a fierce battle in 1944. In 2016 they visited the Philippines and this year returned to Okinawa.

On the 70th anniversary of Japans defeat, Akihito expressed deep remorse over the war, a nuanced departure from his annual script.

Many liberals and moderate conservatives saw it as a subtle rebuke to Abe, who a day earlier had expressed utmost grief for the suffering Japan inflicted but said future generations should not have to keep apologizing.

Months later, Akihito told a news conference to mark his 82nd birthday: I believe having thorough knowledge about the last war and deepening our thoughts about the war is most important for the future of Japan.

Akihitos heir, Oxford-educated Crown Prince Naruhito, 58, holds similar views on teaching about the tragedy of the war.

It is important to look back in a humble way on the past and pass on correctly the tragic experiences of war  from the generation that experienced the war to those who have grown up without first-hand knowledge of it, Naruhito told a news conference ahead of his 55th birthday.

But it is unclear how much impact Naruhito will have, partly because like most Japanese, he did not experience the war.

If he speaks of remorse, many people will ask, Remorse for what?' said Keio University imperial law professor Hidehiko Kasahara.
Burma 88 Generation Student Ma Mee Mee Dies

Ma Mee Mee, center, leads a demonstration against fuel price hikes in Yangon in August 2007. / Khin Maung Win

YANGON  Ma Mee Mee, a prominent member of the 88 Generation Students group, died in a car accident on Monday while on her way back to Yangon from Irrawaddy Region. She was 47 years old.

Born Thin Thin Aye, her political activism started as a high school student when she joined the 1988 uprising to topple the military regime of General Ne Win. She was arrested three times between 1988 and 2012.

In 2007, when the 88 Generation Students group led protests against the military regime over rising fuel and commodity prices, Ma Mee Mee was actively involved. Pictures of her with her fist raised appeared in international media including The New York Times and drew the attention of the regime, driving her into hiding. She was arrested later that year and sentenced to 65 years in jail.

The protests the group started in 2007 evolved into the Saffron Revolution, during which Buddhist monks took the place of leading members as they were arrested. The protests turned bloody when the military started firing at participants.

After her release in 2012, Ma Mee Mee became a deputy of the womens department of the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society group, which made womens empowerment one of its priorities along with human rights, peace in ethnic minority areas and workers and farmers rights.

As a former political prisoner, she knew something about fear  that you should never let it stand in your way. That is why the veteran activist made it her mission to persuade other Myanmar women to set aside their fears and take a more active role in politics.

Her own role was to draw women into the discussion. She said that despite meeting many engaged women, they did not know how to get more politically involved.

The main obstacle for women, she said, was fear, something most people in Myanmar understand only too well after decades of oppression. But gender stereotypes were also a problem, she said, because women tend to exclude themselves from political roles.

As much as she wanted to change that mindset, however, Ma Mee Mee did not merely urge women to ignore social attitudes or their own reluctance to get involved in activities that many still see as potentially dangerous. Rather, she appealed to their own innate capacity to understand issues that deeply mattered to them.

She once told The Irrawaddy that she would not force them to accept any ideology without knowing the meaning of it themselves.

I want women who join politics to be able to think for themselves about what is right or wrong, using their own critical thinking, said she.

In a condolence letter, the ruling National League for Democracy party described Ma Mee Mee as a comrade at the forefront of the countrys democracy movement and said it was very saddened by her death.
Burma Lawmakers, Civil Society Oppose Shan Hydropower Project

Yeywa hydropower project in Mandalay Region. / zayatkyimedia.blogspot.com

YANGON  Shan State lawmakers and civil society organizations have called for a halt to a hydropower project being built on the Namtu River in Kyaukme Township, northern Shan State.

The project is being built in Upper Yeywa village in Kyaukme Township and so far is about 40 percent complete.

Nan San San Aye, a lawmaker of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) in the Shan State Parliament, said the water level in the river might rise up to 40 feet upon completion of the dam, which could submerge the village of Ta Long in Hsipaw Township.

The whole village will have to be relocated when the project comes into operation. All of the farms will be destroyed. Villagers dont want to move. We will stand by the people as we are elected by them, said the lawmaker on Friday.

The village has over 200 households with more than 500 people. It has 174 acres of paddy fields and 184 acres of cropland.

The project was initiated by the Ministry of Electricity and Energy under President U Thein Seins government in the 2010-11 fiscal year. Infrastructure includes a diversion tunnel, main dam, and hydropower plant, according to the ministry.

The 280-megawatt hydropower plant will generate an annual supply of 1409 kWh, which will be distributed to the national grid, said deputy permanent secretary of the ministry U Htay Aung.

Though the project started in the 2010-11 fiscal year, local residents reportedly did not know about it until 2014, said Nan Khin Mar Aye from the Hsipaw Womens Entrepreneurs Network.

According to a joint statement released by civil society organizations in Hsipaw Township on Aug. 8, the government is planning to build four hydropower projects along the Namtu Riverthree in Kyaukme District in northern Shan State and one in Mandalay Region.

Authorities said the village is in a low-lying area and asked the villagers to relocate. I totally oppose this dam project. We cant exchange the livelihoods of locals for a project that will only benefit companies and the government, said Daw Nan San San Aye.

The company building the dam said it would help Ta Long villagers relocate to another village in Nan Ma Khaw village tract, and provide land in recompense. However, Nan San San Aye said the proposed land is owned by other villagers and other land is not suitable for cultivation.

The company has set a timetable for relocation, compensation and reclamation of land in its [corporate social responsibility] publication. But, it has not implemented it. They might not have completed field surveys of the village where it said it would give land in recompense. Those lands have owners, said Nan San San Aye.

SNLD lawmakers in northern Shan State went to Ta Long village on Saturday and listened to the wishes of the people.

In 2016, a SNLD lawmaker asked a question about the dam at the Shan State Parliament. But, the Shan State government said it was unable to answer because the project was directly handled by the Union government.

The SNLD lawmaker from Hsipaw Township in the Lower House of the Union Parliament is planning to urge Parliament to halt the project, said Nan San San Aye.

Moreover, Shan civil society organizations are also planning to garner signatures of locals in 37 villages along the Namtu River against the project.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.
Burma MoU for Dala Industrial Development Project Signed

The Yangon regional government and South Korea-based Myanmar Company Wooree sign a memorandum of understanding for the Dala Industrial Development Project on August 11, 2018 at offices of the Yangon regional government. / Yangon Regional Government Offices Facebook

YANGON  The Yangon regional government and South Korea-based Myanmar Company Wooree signed a memorandum of understanding for the Dala Industrial Development Project on Saturday, a project to be implemented on the west bank of Yangon River near the ongoing Yangon-Dala bridge project in one of Yangons undeveloped townships according to the Yangon regional government.

The Yangon government has not announced details of the Dala Industrial Development Project or estimations of cost. Yangons Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein said the bridge will benefit the industrial development project and will also support Yangon Regions economic development.

The industrial development project will be a part of the Yangon-Dala bridge project which is a friendship bridge between Myanmar and South Korea. The bridge project will begin in September this year and is expect to be completed during the 2020-2021 fiscal year.

The Yangon-Dala bridge project agreement was reached under then-president Thein Seins government and is expected to cost $137.8 million in loans from South Koreas Economic Development Cooperation Fund with the Myanmar government promising to provide an additional $30.3 million. The bridge will connect Phone Gyi Street in downtown Yangon with Bo Min Yaung Street in Dala Township.

During a recent Yangon regional parliament session, the regional government proposed a project called Yangon Regional Economic Development to be implemented in 11 townships across Yangon Region, however the proposal was not approved due to a lack of details. According to a Dala lawmaker, Dala Township is included in the townships proposed in the project.

I guess that the Yangon government will present the MoU and more details about the project in the coming parliament [session], U Tun Yin, a lawmaker in Dala Township told the Irrawaddy.

They need parliament approval. They cant implement the project if we dont agree, he said.

The parliament will need to determine how the company will pay compensation to the land owners in the project area where there are many different forms of land ownership including paddy fields and residential quarters. The parliament can approve the project after lawmakers testify the potential benefits and challenges of the project, U Tun Yin added.

Lawmakers expect that the industrial development project will begin before the bridge project is complete and that an estimated 1,500 acres will be needed.

We wont reject the project, if [it] will give job opportunities to the local people, U Tun Yin said.

According to a post on the official Yangon Regional Governments Facebook page, Union Minister for Commerce U Than Myint, Yangon Region Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein and regional government officials attended the MoU signing ceremony as government representatives.

Dala Township is one of the citys most underdeveloped townships and is currently accessed from downtown Yangon only via a public ferry. In contrast to the nearby downtown Yangon area, it is populated with old wooden fishing boats, small houses and squatter huts. During summer, water can be scarce and many people lack access to clean water. It is difficult to cross the river during the monsoon season when local residents use small ferries to access downtown Yangon with a number of deaths due to ferry accidents every year. In June, more than 1,000 residents from Dala, Kawhmu and Kungyangon townships in Yangon were joined by residents of Ayeyarwady Region in a protest calling for the rapid implementation of the Yangon-Dala bridge in order to avoid more ferry accidents.
Burma Nationalists Rally in Yangon to Denounce New Ban on Ma Ba Tha

A member of Dhamma Wunthanu Rakhita, a chapter of the Ma Ba Tha, speaks to the audience during a rally in support of the Buddha Dhamma Parahita Foundation in Yangon on Saturday. / Myo Min Soe / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  Hundreds of Buddhist nationalists gathered in Yangon on Saturday to protest against an edict from the state Buddhist clerics authority banning Myanmars leading nationalist organization and ordering it to take down its signs by next month.

The clerics authority, the State Sangha Maha Nayaka, or Ma Ha Na, decided last month to ban the countrys largest nationalist group, the Buddha Dhamma Parahita Foundation, formerly called the Association to Protect Race and Religion but better known by its Myanmar acronym Ma Ba Tha.

The Ma Ha Nas five-point proclamation against the group also included a ban on all activities under the foundations name, an order to take down its signposts across the country within 45 days and a threat to take legal action against those who failed to comply.

In response to the proclamation, the foundation warned the government and the countrys senior monks that the ban could cause disunity among the Sangha and spark a public outcry. It also sent forms to its chapters across the country asking them if the foundation should continue with its campaign to protect race and religion or comply with the proclamation, noting that the organization was founded on the principle of consensus rule.

During Saturdays rally in Yangon, organized by Dhamma Wunthanu Rakhita, an affiliate of the Ma Ba Tha, several hundred supporters of the Buddha Dhamma Parahita Foundation expressed their wish that the organization continue to exist.

Do you agree that the foundation should exist to protect race and religion? an organizer asked the audience of Buddhist monks and laymen three times in succession.

Yes we do! they replied in unison.

U Thein Aung, the chairman of Dhamma Wunthanu Rakhita, told the media that his group wanted the foundation to persist so that it could continue to protect race and religion. Formed in April 2017, the group is made up largely of laymen and led by senior Ma Ba Tha monks dedicated to protecting race and religion when it comes to cases in which Buddhist monks cant be involved.

If we are under pressure [from the government], we will consult with our senior leaders for negotiations. The last thing we want is to not take the signposts down, U Thein Aung said.

Ashin Sopaka, a leading monks of the Buddha Dhamma Parahita Foundation, told The Irrawaddy on Monday that several groups including Dhamma Wunthanu Rakhita were gathering input from members on whether the foundation should disband. He said the foundation would announce the results before the 45-day deadline expires.

We will move forward depending on the public consensus, he said.

Founded in 2014  two years after religiously motivated riots largely targeting Myanmars Muslim minority  and now with chapters across the country, Ma Ba Tha has become virtually synonymous with Buddhist-led nationalism.

Some of its leading members, including U Wirathu, have preached anti-Muslim sermons, claiming that the countrys Buddhist foundations are under assault, that Muslims are threatening to outnumber Buddhists, and that Myanmar needs to be vigilant against fundamentalist influences. The nationalist monk was banned from Facebook early this year due to his fiery posts against Muslims.

Ma Ba Tha was mostly tolerated under the previous administration of President U Thein Sein despite its inflammatory practices. The association approached the then-president to approve a controversial set of four laws on race and religion that imposed restrictions on interfaith marriage, birth spacing, polygamy and conversion. When the laws were passed in 2015, Ma Ba Tha celebrated with a large public rally and praised U Thein Sein.

But the association has faced restrictions since the National League for Democracy came to power in 2016. The new government declared Ma Ba Tha an unlawful monk association after only three months in office. Though the announcement drew criticism from nationalists, the association and its laymen supporters have since kept a low profile. Their warnings of public upheaval never eventuated, apart from a few small sit-ins in Yangon and Mandalay that were largely denounced by the public.

In 2017 Ma Ba Tha changed its name to the Buddha Dhamma Parahita Foundation after the Ma Ha Nas decision to ban the association. Following that decision, its headquarters in Yangon and some of its chapters elsewhere replaced their signs to reflect the change. But some of the chapters in Karen State and Mandalay Region have kept the old name and signs, claiming that they do not violate Sangha laws or procedures and that they conform with the Constitution and the Association Registration Law.
Burma Police Investigate Shooting in Mandalay

Locals attend to a man shot in the chest in Mandalay on Monday. / Myo Thein Naing / Facebook

Gunmen shot a couple traveling by motorbike in Mandalays Chanmyathazi Township on Monday, killing a woman and critically injuring a man, according to witnesses and local police.

Li Zhu Kuan, and her husband, Huo Lao Peng, left home just before the incident to go grocery shopping, according to the womans nephew.

The woman was shot in her head and died on the way to the hospital. The man was shot in the chest and is in critical condition, said the duty official of the Chanmya Thida social welfare group, which sent the pair to Mandalay General Hospital in its ambulance.

According to witnesses, two gunmen fired three shots and then fled. Locals ran after the gunmen and seized one man, who they handed over to the police.

I was sitting in front of my home and saw two men shoot at a couple that was riding a motorbike. The couple suddenly collapsed and the two men ran away. People gathered and chased after them. One man was arrested about two blocks from the scene of the crime, said U Than Win.

A pistol and 12 bullets were seized from the gunman, who is currently detained at Aung Pin Lae police station, according to the duty officer.

The duty officer confirmed the incident but refused to provide details, stating that the suspect had been questioned but that the case was still under investigation.

The nephew of the deceased woman told The Irrawaddy that his aunt Li Xiu Chuan and uncle Haw Lao Phein left the house just a few minutes before the incident to go grocery shopping. The police visited the familys home, located a few kilometers from the shooting, on Monday.

The police visited the familys home, located a few kilometers from the shooting, on Monday.
Burma State Counselor's Choice of Helicopter Causes Stir

A helicopter carrying State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi land in Singu Township, Mandalay Region, on Friday. / State Counselors Office

NAYPYITAW  A government spokesman said State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi did not use a military helicopter during a recent trip to central Myanmar because the visit related to personal matters involving the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation, a charity established in 2012 in memory of her late mother.

After a public talk on the national peace process in Pakokku Township, Magwe Region, on Thursday, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi visited the foundations branch office on Popa Mountain and attended the opening of a library in Nyaungbin village, in Mandalay Regions Singu Township, the childhood home of International Theravada Buddhist Missionary University Rector Ashin Nandamabhivamsa.

During the trip she also visited a police training school in Sagaing Region, met with officials and attended the Mandalay Youth Development Festival.

To get around she took a helicopter provided by the Htoo Group of Companies, a conglomerate owned by tycoon Tay Za.

Her trips were related to the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation and not related to the government. So we didnt request a [military] helicopter, said government spokesperson U Zaw Htay.

He said recent bad weather had also made the ground too wet for a military MI-17 helicopter to land safely.

There was widespread speculation that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi did not use a military helicopter because of strained relations with the military, or Tatmadaw.

It is not because we have a poor relationship with the Tatmadaw. We the government didnt ask for it. We also told the Tatmadaw in advance that we would not use their helicopters because of conditions on the ground, said U Zaw Htay.

U Ye Tun, a former lawmaker who represented Shan States Hsipaw Township during ex-President U Thein Seins administration, said government officials should avoid taking military helicopters for safety reasons.

I accompanied President U Thein Sein on his trip to Chin State. The [Tatmadaw] helicopter was not very safe,  he said. The government should have strong and safe helicopters and should not rely on the Tatmadaw for every trip.

Some also raised safety concerns over Daw Aung San Suu Kyis decision to take a motorboat across a swollen river from Nyaungbin village to visit Ashin Nandamabhivamsa on Yakkansin Mountain.

It started raining heavily while she was opening the library in Nyaungbin village. It was not possible to fly to Mt. Yakkansin because heavy rains reduced visibility. But she had to offer lunch to the rector sayadaw by 11 a.m. So we went there by motorboat. It was plan B, arranged by the regional government, U Zaw Htay said.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.
Burma Tatmadaw Report Concludes 2 Kachin Men It Killed in January Were KIA Troops

Hpaugan Yaw (left) and Nhkum Naw San. / Supplied

MON STATE  The Myanmar Army (or Tatmadaw) said two Kachin men shot dead by government soldiers in January were Kachin Independence Army personnel killed in battle, contradicting claims by local civilians that they were IDPs who were arrested, tortured and executed.

The two men, Hpaugan Yaw, 65, and Nhkum Naw San, 35, were residents of Maing Hkawng IDP camp in Mansi Township. They were killed on Jan. 31 while attempting to return to their village to check on their animals, according to other IDPs.

Their bodies were found in March when local residents defied a Tatmadaw order and went to search for the missing pair.

The Ministry of Defense said yesterday that based on evidence obtained from local authorities in Maing Hkawng who examined the bodies, and testimony from locals, the Army had concluded in a report that the two IDPs were killed in battle and were members of the KIA.

That report states that according to local authorities, U Nhkum Naw Sans skull was shattered by a powerful gunshot to the head, and U Hpaugan Yaw was also shot in the head. His skull contained an exit wound, it said.

Therefore, the Army concluded in its report that the two were killed in battle. The implication of the Armys report appears to be that, as there were reportedly no other wounds other than the fatal gunshots on their bodies, the two were not tortured.

The Tatmadaw also said it had asked a laboratory in Yangon and police in Napyitaw to test the dead mens clothing for traces of blood and gunpowder. The lab found blood but no powder residue, according to the Army.

The fact that the lab did not find gunpowder residue on their clothing shows that the two men were not shot at close range, the Army said in its report.

According to the Tatmadaw, experts concluded that the two were clearly shot and killed during combat against the Army.

It added that an Army investigation team from Naypyitaw traveled to Maing Hkawng in the second week of July to gather testimony. They spent six days collecting testimony from 39 people including relatives of the victims, township authorities and Myanmar Army personnel.

The team allowed witnesses to record their statements in their own handwriting, and had them sign it. Those who could not write were able to submit recorded voice statements, according to the report.

The Tatmadaw added that some people had spread lies that the Army coerced the testimony.

The Myanmar Army also released photos of bullets, a phone and two KIA uniforms, which it said belonged to the two deceased men.

However, a member of the Kachin Baptist Convention who participated in the retrieval of the bodies said the Tatmadaws report contradicts what he saw on the ground.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on condition of anonymity for reasons of personal security, he recalled seeing many dark colored wounds on the bodies.

Some IDP camp leaders believed that the two IDPs were tortured before they were murdered, he said.

In its report, the Tatmadaw rejected the accusation that its troops murdered the men. It added that police were in the process of withdrawing a murder case against it begun by the victims family.

Kaw Awng, a member of the family, filed a lawsuit after the two men disappeared. After the bodies were found, she accused the Army of murder.

The Myanmar Army countersued the woman under the Unlawful Association Act on grounds that her relatives were alleged KIA members, reportedly prompting the woman to go into hiding.

It has been six months since the murder case was first opened. The KBC asked the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission (MNHRC) to investigate possible rights abuses, but the agency limited its investigation to talking with the Myanmar Army, according to some KBC members at Maing Hkwang IDP camp. The commissions report, issued in June, concluded that the two were members of the KIA and were combat casualties.

Since the bodies were found in March, rights groups have repeatedly asked the Myanmar government to take action against any Army personnel found to have murdered the two IDPs. But their appeals have been met by repeated denials from the Myanmar Army.

David Baulk, a Myanmar specialist with the group Fortify Rights, said the Myanmar militarys continued denial of any wrongdoing in this case is a depressingly familiar story. The military has once again shown it is more concerned with absolving itself than holding those responsible to account. It is cruelly ironic that the military insists it is the protector of Myanmars people while attacking them throughout Kachin State, and denying aid to those whose lives depend on it.

While the military continues with these brazen denials, ethnic minority communities throughout the country are demanding justice. Its clear that Myanmars authorities have no intention of holding themselves to account for mass human rights violations. The U.N. Security Council needs to step up and refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court.
Burma Youth Should Be Encouraged to Take Part in Peace Process, Camp Participants Say

Ethnic youth celebrate International Youth Day on Aug. 12 in Ywa Ngan Township, southern Shan State. / Nyein Nyein / The Irrawaddy

YWA NGAN, southern Shan State  Steps need to be taken to engage young people in Myanmars peace process and actively involve them in it, instead of simply regarding them as passive beneficiaries, according to both young people themselves and agencies working to empower them.

A lot of people just look at young people as the [potential] beneficiaries, but here it is really about young people getting involved, young people engaging in some of these processes, said Janet Jackson, the country representative for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Myanmar.

Pointing to more than seven decades of armed conflict and inter-communal violence, especially in western Myanmars Rakhine state, she said the challenges facing youth in Myanmar today are more pronounced in Myanmars conflict-torn states, adding that young people are forced to bear the brunt of these conflicts.

However, the views of young people are not widely heard in peace-building processes led by political leaders and policy-makers.

As part of the effort to empower youth and to ensure that more voices from within the diverse youth community are heard, youth camps have been organized by local youth empowerment groups and financed by UNFPA Myanmar. The project aims to promote tolerance among young people and to amplify the voices of youth in Myanmars peace process.

In Ywa Ngan township, one of two ethnic Danu self-administrative townships, some 300 young participants from 12 indigenous groups gathered for a week to take training sessions on personal development, leadership and building inner peace.

The Irrawaddy observed the youth camp activities and the young peoples participation in them over the weekend and found that many young ethnic residents are eager to contribute their skills and knowledge to their communities.

As we have seen over the last four days, a lot of young people here have got a lot of views that we, the adults and the people [involved] in the process, can learn from, by understanding what the youths experiences have been like, and how they feel In some ways [they have been] cheated from the opportunities they could have had. But it is not too late, Jackson told The Irrawaddy.

It is now about looking at some of the social aspects, and how that needs to be improved. It is also about looking at the dialogue and peace process; how they can have a seat, how they can have a voice and how they can participate in some of the dialogue to give their perspectives, added Jackson. So this then [makes the] peace process much more holistic and it really looks at not just one or two facets of partners and agents in peace, but it looks at wider communities that need to be involved in peace.

Peace must be there for everyone, regardless of age, and youth participation should not be overlooked, said Nay Phone Latt, a Yangon Region lawmaker and author.

Nay Phone Latt, who participated as a speaker during the International Youth Day celebration on Aug. 12 in Ywa Ngan, said Safe Spaces for Youth  the theme of this years International Youth Day  are indeed necessary, as young people need security in their lives.

Young people actively participated in discussions on issues related to safety and security in their communities.

We dont fee safe physically, mentally or [online] in our environment, said Ma Pan Ei Thazin, a 24-year-old trainer at the youth camp.

She added that wherever they are, whether in rural ethnic areas or urban communities, there is a threat to youths physical safety due to war and crime. On the Web, they face the problem of limited access to accurate information, as well as the danger of cyber-bullying. The youth camps allow young people to be aware of those challenges and show them ways to overcome them.

We want everyone to be free from conflict and live peacefully, said Ko Aung San Tun, an ethnic Taungyoe participant in his 20s from Aung Pan Township.

As a young man from a remote area, he said that thanks to the camp he now has greater awareness of peace and peace building, as well as of digital literacy and how to use the Internet wisely.

Policymakers should consider taking up the recommendations that have come out of the youth camps, Nay Phone Latt, the regional lawmaker, told The Irrawaddy.

He added that they need to allow the youth to participate in Myanmars future country-building activities, as there are many young people who are capable of doing so. He also urged young people to try different ways to engage, rather than waiting to be invited.

Dr. Tun Hlaing, the Shan State governments Innthar ethnic affairs minister, said more such events are needed, as they are a positive occasion for young people.

The government cannot do it alone, and neither can the civil society groups. We all must work together, he told The Irrawaddy, adding that his participation in the International Youth Day commemoration in Yaw Ngan was intended to show that the older generations support youth not only in Myanmar but all over the world.
News Govt Gives Gold Mine Operator Final Warning to Hand Back License

People pan for gold in a river in Myitkyina Township, Kachin State, in January 2011. / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  The government has given one of the largest gold mine operators in Mandalay Region a final warning to hand back its license for failing to make its payments or be blacklisted and prosecuted.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation terminated the license of the National Prosperity gold mining company on May 17 after the firm, which operates in the Moehti Moemi region of Mandalays Yamethin Township, failed to hand over the remaining gold payments it owes the state.

The ministrys No. 2 Mining Enterprise published a notice in state-run newspapers on Monday stating that the firm had not handed back the license even after being asked in writing six times.

If the company fails to return the license in two weeks, it wont be allowed to do any business by the ministry and legal actions will also be taken. the notice said.

National Prosperity, headed by local businessman U Soe Tun Shein, was granted permission to mine for gold in the area in 2011 under then-President U Thein Seins administration, agreeing to pay about 5.57 tons of gold to the state over an initial five-year term. In 2013 the company requested and received a three-year extension to the payment period, said the Natural Resources Ministrys director general, U Than Daing.

He said the company was also allowed to continue operating the mine for another 17 years under a production-sharing contract once it paid the full 5.57 tons.

He said the company has failed to pay the monthly installments it agreed to in 2013 since April 2016, now totaling 1,270 viss (2,032 kg) of gold.

The ministry first ordered the company to suspend operations on Nov. 8, 2017. As National Prosperity Gold continued to operate and miss its payments, the ministry revoked its license on Feb. 17 and terminated its agreement with the company on May 17.

U Than Daing said the company had no choice but to return the license now that the agreement was terminated.

It is not because they couldnt afford to pay. They had the production, but they didnt pay, he said.

In March the ministry filed a case against the companys chairman, U Soe Tun Shein, at the Yamethin Township police station under the Mines Law for continuing to operate after being ordered to stop.

U Than Daing said the ministry would also prosecute the company to recover the owed payments.
News Organizers of Karen Martyrs Day Event in Ayeyarwady Division Face Lawsuit

Pado Mahn Nyein Maung, a senior member of Karen National Union, is among those being sued for holding the 68th Karen Martyrs Day in Hinthada Township, Ayeyarwaddy Region. / Myo Min Soe / The Irrawaddy

MANDALAY  A senior member of the Karen National Union ethnic armed group and four other organizers are being sued for holding the 68th Karen Martyrs Day in Hinthada Township, Ayeyarwady Division, on Sunday.

The organizers held the ceremony, ignoring instructions from the local authorities to remove a backdrop with Karen text displayed and proceeding to make a speech on the history of the martyrs which authorities had also forbidden. Authorities are suing the organizers saying that permission for the event was not sought.

Pado Mahn Nyein Maung, senior member of the KNU said he and the four other local organizers received a notice, signed by the Hinthada Township administration officer, to present to themselves to their office, and face a law suit for organizing the ceremony without permission.

Me, Saw Kyaw Oo and the others visited their office this morning and we were told that we have to face a law suit for holding the ceremony without permission, Pado Mahn Nyein Maung told The Irrawaddy.

Pado Mahn Nyein Maung said the authorities told them they could not to hold the ceremony unless the backdrop was removed and the speech about the history of the Karen martyrs as not given.

I am very disappointed with this. The authorities want us to go behind bars for being a part of this ceremony, and they do not want the Karen people to know more about their history. This is really bad and if they continue oppressing the ethnic people, there will be no peace in the country for sure, he said.

Organizers claim there were security personnel and police waiting at the venue threatening to stop the ceremony forcibly from Saturday evening. After Pado Mahn Nyein Maung and other leaders talked with the administration officer, they withdraw. However, while the ceremony was taking place as scheduled on Sunday, the organizers received notification of the lawsuit.

The actions of the local authorities as well as the chief minister of Ayeyarwady Division is insulting the Karen people, said Pado Mahn Nyein Maung.

This incident shows that the ongoing peace process is just a show, which will never reach its goal since theres no respect for the ethnic people and their history, culture and dignity, he added.

Pado Mahn Nyein Maung said the central government also needs to review their actions in which they restricted the Karen Martyrs Day ceremonies in other cities such as Yangon and Be Ga Yet Village in Kangyidaunt Township, which is the birthplace of one of the Karen martyrs Saw Ba U Gyi as well as Myaungmya, Einmae and Pantanaw Townships in Ayeyarwaddy Division.

In Yangon, the ceremony was given permission to be held in St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Insein Township following negotiations between the authorities and Karen Affair Minister Naw Pan Thinzar Myo. Using the word martyr, however was forbidden.

As in other cities, the speech about the history of the Karen martyrs was forbidden at the Yangon ceremony. Photos of Saw Ba U Gyi and other Karen leaders also had to be removed from the venue.

In KNU-controlled areas in Karen State, the commemoration ceremonies were only given permission following negotiations between KNU leaders and Karen States Security and Border Affairs Minister.

The State Counselor will participate in the wrist-tying ceremony in Yangon soon as an act of unity, but such actions will be go in vain if theres no respect for the ethnic peoples dignity, their martyrs and their historical events, said Pado Mahn Nyein Maung.

And though there are many ethnic cultural celebrations which the government are participating in, these actions on our Karen Martyrs day clearly highlight that those are the just a show of the government which is taking opportunities to show they are working on reconciliation, he added.
Monday, August 13th, 2018 (11:09 am) - Score 2,292

Some 400 homes residing within 6 kilometres of Llantilio Crossenny in Monmouthshire (Wales, UK) will be the next to benefit from fixed wireless superfast broadband via Broadway Partners, which will use the new long range TV White Space (TVWS) technology to deliver their internet connectivity.

As a quick recap, TVWS technology is designed to harness the gaps that exist between radio spectrum in the Digital Terrestrial TV (DTTV) bands, which operate between about 470-790MHz (note: this will change a bit once the 700MHz band is freed up for use by future 5G mobile services).

Normally those spectrum gaps would be intended to help minimise the risk of interference between channels but TVWS makes use of a new dynamic spectrum management system (database), which means that the gaps can also now be used to deliver data (i.e. this has to account for any changes in the TV channel / spectrum assignments).

So far the company has already connected around 280 rural households and businesses to broadband services using TVWS on the Isle of Arran and in the Loch Ness and Loch Leven areas of Scotland (here). Last year they also built a very small pilot network around the parish of Llanarth in Monmouthshire (here) and it now looks like this work is about to get a big coverage extension.

Broadway Partners is delivering the project after being awarded a contract by Monmouthshire County Council, which is being supported by public funding from the Rural Community Development Fund. The RCDF is part of the Welsh Government Rural Communities Rural Development Programme 2014-2020. Sadly they dont say how much invested has been committed.

Michael Armitage, Chairman and CEO of Broadway Partners, said: The technology we have developed is now proven through successful projects in Scotland and it could be applied to a huge number of remote Welsh communities where people are denied access to fast broadband. We are delighted to be rolling it out in Monmouthshire where some 400 households will have the option for the first time to be able to enjoy the same kind of access that most of us take for granted. Our technology could be transformational for tens of thousands of remote households and businesses in rural Wales. We are pleased to have been awarded this contract from Monmouthshire County Council to deliver superfast broadband to their residents. Our existing customers tell us that our broadband has transformed their lives and their businesses, allowing them to enjoy services such as iPlayer, Netflix and Skype, to post videos to YouTube, to keep up with social media, to do homework, to keep in constant contact with customers and suppliers  in short, to do all those things that most people take for granted.

Apparently the new TVWS network will get its capacity from Openreachs (BT) fibre optic network, which is then distributed out using a mix of TVWS and 5GHz radio technology. Residential packages offer average download speeds of 30Mbps (5Mbps upload) and unlimited usage from 32.50 a month on a 24 month contract to 35 on a 12 month contract.

The cost of installation is subject to survey, although generally you can either pay 240 (one-off) upfront or pay 120 upfront and then pay off the rest at 12 per month for 10 months. However many of the premises covered will be in broadband slow spots, which means that they should be able to get this for free by harnessing the Welsh Governments Access Broadband Cymru subsidy scheme.

Its worth noting that the average speed of this new network may be 30Mbps, although the underlying technology is able to aggregate three radio channels (24MHz of spectrum) in order to potentially reach a peak of 50Mbps. Weve also heard talk of this being pushed up to 100Mbps (ultrafast broadband territory) in the future but weve yet to see that tested in the UK.

The central ISP for all this is now Broadway Broadband.

NOTE: The provider pledges to maintain a Minimum download speed of 15Mbps 95% of the time and a minimum upload speed of 2.5Mbps 95% of time.

UPDATE 12:10pm

As far as the Rural Development Programme (RDP) grant is concerned, we understand that the total project value is 90,000, with the RDP granting 72,000 and Broadway matching this grant with 18,000 (20%). Broadway has also contributed an additional 10,000 to the project outside of the grant from the RDP.
Cloud communication and collaboration provider 8x8 has made multiple appointments to its sales, technical support and marketing teams in Australia.

"These talented leaders will help us drive our next phase of growth by providing further support to our customers and partners in achieving their goals and accelerating their pace of business," said Asia Pacific vice-president Brendan Maree.

"We also look forward to reinforcing our positive momentum in the market for our range of cloud communications and customer engagement solutions among both public and private sector organisations."

Adam Kratiuk has joined 8x8 as an account executive. His 13 years' experience in customer experience solutions includes working as mid-market sales manager at Genesys, mid-market territory manager at Interactive Intelligence (where Maree was formerly vice-president for Japan, Australia and New Zealand), and in channel management roles at Distribution Central and IPL Communications.

has also joined the company as an account executive. Anderson too has 13 years' experience, gained as an enterprise account executive at NewVoiceMedia, commercial account executive at Salesforce, and in sales executive roles at PeopleCube, Manhattan Software and Asure Software.

Timothy Knox is 8x8's new APAC enterprise sales engineer. He has 12 years' experience in cloud contact centre and analytics, most recently as lead solutions engineer at NewVoiceMedia. Knox has also held consulting engineering roles with Walkerscott, Arrow Voice & Data, and Citidel Telephone Systems, and he started his career as a systems engineer at VoIP.

Chris Pikios has been appointed as a deployment engineer.His 10 years' experience in the IT industry includes working as a technical support specialist at QPC, a telecommunications technician at TKO Solutions, and in engineering support roles with Reliance Communications, Infiniti Telecommunications and Allstar Solutions.

Pablo Munoz has joined 8x8 as ANZ field communications executive. He most recently worked as a digital producer at Ondicom, and has also served as marketing manager at IPL Group and as a marketing executive with Ingram Micro.
Fax machines, which are part of many all-in-one printers, can be compromised over the telephone line and used to attack Windows PCs on the networks to which they are attached, researchers from from security firm Check Point say.

The exploit was demonstrated on Sunday in a talk titled "what the Fax?" at the DEFCON security summit held in Las Vegas. A detailed technical explanation of the methods used is available here.

Researchers Eyal Itkin and Yaniv Balmas said though there was an impression that fax was an ancient technology, it was widely used today with more than 300 million fax numbers in use.

"By our estimates, there are currently hundreds of millions of fax machines still in use around the world. Financial reports from Wall Street indicate that tens of millions of all-in-one printers are sold worldwide each year," they said.

HP Officejet all-in-one printers were used for the research, but Check Point said similar vulnerabilities were likely to be found in such printers manufactured by other vendors.

The duo said they had found critical vulnerabilities in widely used implementations of the fax protocol.

"These vulnerabilities allow an attacker with mere access to a phone line, and a fax number to attack its victims all-in-one printer  allowing him full control over the all-in-one printer and possibly the entire network it's connected to," the researchers said.

The leaked NSA exploits Eternal Blue and Double Pulsar were used by Itkin and Balmas to gain access to other Windows computers on the network to which the printer was attached.

They were then able to do whatever they wanted on the PC, and demonstrated how they sent back a file from the victim's PC to the fax machine that they were using.

"Once an all-in-one printer has been compromised, anything is possible. It could be used to infiltrate the internal network, steal printed documents, mine bitcoin, or practically anything," Itkin and Balmas said.

They said they had worked closely with HP to patch the vulnerabilities and patched firmware had been published by the company on 1 August.

Commenting on the research, Ray Rothrock, chairman and chief executive of security firm RedSeal, said: By 2025, 75 billion devices will be linked to the Internet. While this connectedness exponentially improves productivity, as Check Points news confirms, vulnerabilities with staggering implications already exist within every network.

"Activated by phone lines versus the Internet, at least one billion new threat sources are inside our defences and its only a matter of time before theyre called to action. Yes, threat prevention and ensuring all devices software are up-to-date help. However that is not enough. To mitigate this very real risk, every company must accept that its only a matter of time before these lurking threats are activated. They must focus on resilience.

"In response to this news, we recommend companies validate their segmentation policies and make sure theres very limited access to their most valuable assets. This isnt a one-and-done exercise. Companies must remain vigilant, constantly monitoring all possible pathways within and between their network environments so they can quickly isolate a compromised device. As Check Points news shows, we cant predict new, exploitable vulnerabilities. However, we can  and we must  be resilient.

Graphic: courtesy Check Point
With corporate reputations trashed by the mishandling of cyber breach communications, what is the best practice in communicating about a cyber breach that respects privacy and honours trust and ethics?

Leading cyber security and corporate communications experts Peter Coroneos and Michael Parker are about to take you on a journey from being flat-footed to fully prepared in their new book, the "Cyber Breach Communications Playbook".

At the book's site, you're asked: "Youve been hacked and its going public. How prepared are you to face the media storm thats about to erupt?".

Given the prevalence of hacking today, it comes as no surprise that Coroneos and Parker advise that "this just might be the most important guide you read this year.

The authors, whose impressive brief bios are listed below, state that they've "seen corporate reputations trashed by the mishandling of cyber breach communications, not to mention the distress of customers as they see their personal information plundered and offered for sale on the dark web".

They say they "think there's a better way that respects privacy and honours trust and ethics. So we stepped in and wrote a book".

Noting their excitement at launching their new book, they state their belief that this is "the first of its kind specifically addressing best practice in communicating a cyber breach".

"Preserving brand & executive reputation and customer trust are its core goals."

The book offers "14 case studies (rated according to a new metric we devised), an overview of current and emerging threats, compliance considerations under new disclosure laws, five flowcharts detailing critical processes, and practical guidance on how, when and to whom to communicate a major cyber breach.

The book's site "also contains free downloads and background on the authors, as well as endorsements from other senior industry figures".

David Spence, chairman, PayPal Australia, said: "In todays highly and widely connected world no one is fully prepared. We need more books like this to lift our cyber resilience.

Justin Milne, chairman MYOB Holdings, Netcomm Wireless, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and dubbed "the father of broadband" in Australia, said: "Cyber crime is a genuine existential threat to all of the organisations upon which our economy depends.

"This extremely useful playbook is a weapon for the good guys and should be compulsory reading for all executive and non-executive leaders."

Kaaren Koomen, director, IBM Australia and deputy chair, NSW Telecommunications Authority, said: "Developing, in advance, a comprehensive strategy to respond to the ever present cyber threat should be part of every organisations risk management process.

"This Playbook is an excellent tool to help organisations consider the key steps they need to do this."

David Jones, co-founder and chief executive, Pointzi & StreetHawk and a founder of ThreatMetrix, said: "My 10 years building a global antifraud solution proved to me that breaches are the engine that drives cybercrime  this book is an essential tool for CSOs and company boards to acknowledge the deep potential risks of breach and take leadership in protection and incident response."

Half-day Cyber Breach Workshop

Coroneos and Parker also offer a half-day workshop for Boards and senior executives to tackle the cyber breach communication challenge, and state: "This is an investment in preparedness.

"The aim is to equip an empowered cyber coordination team with a strong and appropriate triage approach  with expert guidance on defining and developing communications processes and materials.

"Quick and skillful action can dramatically limit reputational damage and maintain the trust of your stakeholders and the public should a serious cyber breach occur."

We're told the half-day workshop will help ensure that:

All parts of your organisation align with and are committed to your cyber breach communication objectives.

Your organisation is oriented in a way that can create the optimal culture, toolkit and systems you will need to prepare for and respond to a cyber breach.

The workshop is "designed to make sure that there is a shared understanding of the importance of cybersecurity and an active communication and cultural posture right from the very beginning".

"Facilitation by independent experts has the advantage of amplifying concepts, imperatives and risk that may not be getting the internal traction or attention they need."

Free downloads

The Playbook contains a number of important flowcharts to guide preparation as you move to best practice. These are available here free, and also give you a sense of the approach taken in our powerful workshops.

You can also download the Table of Contents and Excerpts from the book to get a sense of the material it covers. Complete the required fields and click ACCESS FREE DOWNLOADS to gain immediate access to this material.

Here's more on the book's authors:

Peter Coroneos

Twice invited to the White House to brief the Obama Administration's national cyber security leadership on an industry wide scheme he pioneered in Australia  the icode together with its US derivative, now protects millions of broadband users from malicious activity.

Coroneos is an internationally recognised authority on cyber policy and a highly influential and innovative thought leader. He believes passionately in the power of the internet to transform humanity for the good and has strived for over 20 years to define, promote and extend the level of trust necessary for this to occur.

As chief executive of Australia's Internet Industry Association for nearly 15 years from 1997, Peter orchestrated national campaigns against malware, spam and spyware, led the creation of unique online child protection measures and was instrumental in the design of cyber legislation including the Cybercrime Act, the Spam Act and the private sector amendments to the Privacy Act. In addition, Peter contributed to the development of national and international standards for information security.

An expert adviser to Australian and US Legislative Committees on cyber security issues, Peter has addressed audiences on five continents and is a widely reported media commentator.

He currently serves as Regional Head, Asia Pacific for the Paris-based global Cybersecurity Advisors Network. He is qualified in science, education and law.



Michael Parker

Parker's career in public communication has traversed crisis and issues management, policy agenda setting, government relations and marketplace positioning strategies as well as large-scale cultural change projects.

He has been at ground zero in corporate collapses, a frontline advisor in intense, take no prisoners battles over national resources and infrastructure and the architect of highly successful brand and policy positioning campaigns, often driven by advanced audience perception modelling.

Parker has a strong track record of providing accurate and reliable advice to CEOs and executives, and possesses the know-how required to liaise with the media in a mature and responsible way. This applies equally to positive and negative stories.

He believes that spin has no place in a good business and short cuts to gaining public trust invariably backfire. The only true way to building effective relationships is through honest, open communication  the truth, well told.

Parker is Principal Consultant and managing director of Praxis Communication

You can learn more about the Cyber Breach Communication Playbook here.
Google's plan to launch a censored version of its Web search engine as an Android app in China has been criticised by the company's former head of free expression issues in Asia and the Pacific, who said the "stupid move" that would go against human rights principles.

Lokman Tsui, who held the post from 2011 to 2014, told The Intercept: "This is just a really bad idea, a stupid, stupid move. I feel compelled to speak out and say that this is not right.

Tsui, who is now an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Hong, was reacting after having seen confidential plans developed by Google to launch the censored search engine in China and reported by The Intercept on 1 August.

Google had a search presence in China between 2006 and 2010, but the censored search engine was subject to intense criticism in the US over its falling in line with Chinese Government policies.

This search service was stopped in March 2010, with Google saying that the reasons for its pulling out were China's bid to limit free speech, block websites, and break into Google's computer systems.

The website said work on the project, given the codename Dragonfly, had been underway at Googles headquarters in Mountain View, California, and its offices in New York, San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Santa Barbara, Boston, Washington DC, Shanghai, Beijing, and Tokyo.

The Intercept said its report was based on internal Google documents and "people familiar with the plans". The project was apparently kicked off after a meeting between Google chief executive Sundar Pichai and Wang Huning, a senior figure in the Chinese Communist Party, last December. Work on the search app was begun during the Western spring of 2017 and had been fast-tracked after the Pichai-Huning meeting.

Following the meeting with Huning, Google decided to open an artificial intelligence research centre in Beijing. In May 2018, a Google file management app was released for Chinese Internet users. And in July, Google released a Guess The Sketch game on WeChat, the main Chinese messaging and social media platform.

Tsui said: In these past few years things have been deteriorating so badly in China  you cannot be there without compromising yourself, adding that if Google launched a censored search engine it would be a moral victory for Beijing".

Beijing has nothing to lose. So if Google wants to go back, it would be under the terms and conditions that Beijing would lay out for them. I cant see how Google would be able to negotiate any kind of a deal that would be positive. I cant see a way to operate Google search in China without violating widely held international human rights standards.

Google staffers have been reported to be upset about the project, known as Dragonfly. The customised app, with different versions known as Maotai and Longfei, has been demonstrated to Chinese Government authorities.

Six US politicians from both sides of the aisle have sent a letter to Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, seeking an explanation for the company's move to create and deploy the app.
This Week in Review

A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more.
Tesla has started looking for 14 future employees for its Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai, China. Job openings included architectural designer, engineers (civil, industrial, mechanical), and senior finance manager.

Most of the positions to be filled are senior level, requiring at least six years experience. The hiring came just a month after Elon Musk signed agreements with China for the $2 billion project.

The most common job description implied that Tesla is hiring ahead of actual project development. Most of the positions involve the development of "conceptual designs" for the Tesla gigafactory.

"Participate in all project phases, including conceptual designs, presentations, schematic design, design development, construction documents and production," Tesla wrote in its Careers page on its official website.

A WeChat recruitment ad for Tesla, first seen by Bloomberg, said the company is looking for more than a dozen engineers and machinists for its gigafactory.

"The 'Dreadnought' is about to sail. We are recruiting the first batch of sailors and looking forward to having you on board soon," Tesla said in the recruitment ad on WeChat. "Dreadnought" refers to the early 20th-century legendary British battleship.

China still holds Tesla's second-largest market by revenue. In 2017, the company recorded $2 billion in sales in China alone. The company sold $11.7 billion worth of cars worldwide.

The Business Times previously reported that Musk surprised investors when he said that building the Gigafactory 3 in China will only cost approximately $2 billion. This is way lower than what he spent in Gigafactory 1 in Nevada and Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo respectively. Musk said he would not be selling shares to fund construction of the Shanghai-based factory. Instead, he will be securing funds through local bank loans and investors.

Some analysts, however, doubted Musk could build the Tesla China gigafactory at less than half the cost of his previous spending. There may also be some challenges along the way, like getting approvals from the Chinese government. Furthermore, Musk has yet to consider the impact of the ongoing US-China trade war with his plans for Tesla's factory in China.

Tesla Gigafactory 3 is expected to produce 250,000 cars and battery packs in its first few years. Over time, Musk wants as much as 500,000 vehicles manufactured at the Shanghai facility.

Meanwhile, some Tesla vehicles underwent new highway safety tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. It found that Tesla Model S and Model 3 can hit a stationary object when the vehicles' cruise control was turned off, but with auto brake turned on. The Tesla vehicles stopped before hitting the stationary object when cruise control was turned on.

The Tesla Model 3 passed an active lane-keeping test while The Model S went over the lane once on curves and 12 times on hills.
To continue using Jomashop.com (The online store to shop and buy watches, handbags, and fashion)
Wake Up President Trump -- Prison Reform is Needed Now "President Trump... Please don't make the same mistake two California governors made back in the early 2000s." Contact: Marty Angelo , 805-405-8174



Angelo has made numerous attempts to reach both President Trump and his son-in -law Jared Krusher who the president put in charge of his 2nd Chance prison reform project.



So far, Angelo claims his attempts to offer the president a program he helped design in 1991 for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office have fallen on "deaf ears" as it did back in 2006 when he reached out to then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and again in 2013 to Governor Jerry Brown.



Angelo remarked in a recent radio interview that "It is just as discouraging now as it was back in California when both governors did not respond to at least testing my drug treatment program."



The Substance Abuse Awareness Program that Angelo wants President Trump to try has a long track record of evidence-based success. Thousands of inmates graduated from the SAAP program from 1991-2010 never to return to a life of crime."



Angelo stated in his letter to President Trump that, "There seems to be a lot of talk in Washington these days as to wanting to help inmates with you holding meetings with various politicians, corporate leaders, and church pastors. However, nothing substantial seems to have come out of the meetings other than a lot of words and back slapping and repeating the need for reform based on statistics that most Americans already know. Yes... we all know three-out-of-four inmates, on a national level, wind up back in prison within three years. However, I haven't heard of one idea or program come out of your meetings that actually can work at keeping prisoners from going back to jail.



"The national media seems to have bought into your idea and the nation stands behind you hoping you can come up with a positive plan of action.



"In fact," Angelo continues, "One of the reasons why I approached the California governors and you, President Trump... is a LA Times news article written by Jennifer Warren I read back in 2007 on how much of a failure California's in-prison treatment was a waste of over $1 Billion dollars since their program first started in 1989. I thought then Governor Schwarzenegger would jump at the chance at wanting to try something different after learning what a failure his state's attempt was to rehabilitate prisoners. I still have the same enthusiasm today in my approach to you.



"After Governor Schwarzenegger received my letters he seemed to have dropped the ball and we never could come together for a meeting to discuss my proposal.



"In fact, instead of trying my proposed program Governor Schwarzenegger lobbied his state's legislature for 10.9 Billion more dollars to reform the state's prison system."



The terrible recidivism rate continued with 75% of inmates released from California's prisons wind up getting rearrested, not in three years, but within only one month!



"When Governor Schwarzenegger left office I again made numerous attempts to help reform California's prisons by approaching newly elected governor, Jerry Brown. He was left with a mess but it seems he wasn't desperate enough to respond to my many offers and try my proven evidence-based highly successful treatment program.



"Governor Brown held similar meetings with government officials, corporate officers, and religious leaders but never came up with a proven plan that would change inmate's lives so they never return to a life of crime and a return to prison as a result of their actions. This revolving door has made the state's prison system one of the major line items on an already depressed California budget.



"It's been over 12 years since my first attempt to help reform prisons and my prayer today is that we now have a president who isn't afraid to take a chance to try something different to change prisoner's lives for the better.



"I remember reading somewhere online when you were first elected president back 2016 that we didn't elect Trump president to change Donald Trump but instead we elected Trump to change Washington DC. So far... so good. Please don't disappoint our nation's prisoners. I remain at your beckon call."



Marty Angelo's Once Life Matters Ministries, Inc. was founded in 1981 and reaches out to prisons/jails, rehabs, college campuses, troubled celebrities, politicians and to members of the military.



To read background information and various letters, etc. please see:

https://plus.google.com/106161926674248095957/posts/S3tW8MVoWxP LOS ANGELES, Aug. 13, 2018 / Christian Newswire / -- That's the advice prison minister and author Marty Angelo made in his most recent letter to President Donald J. Trump.Angelo has made numerous attempts to reach both President Trump and his son-in -law Jared Krusher who the president put in charge of his 2nd Chance prison reform project.So far, Angelo claims his attempts to offer the president a program he helped design in 1991 for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office have fallen on "deaf ears" as it did back in 2006 when he reached out to then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and again in 2013 to Governor Jerry Brown.Angelo remarked in a recent radio interview that "It is just as discouraging now as it was back in California when both governors did not respond to at least testing my drug treatment program."The Substance Abuse Awareness Program that Angelo wants President Trump to try has a long track record of evidence-based success. Thousands of inmates graduated from the SAAP program from 1991-2010 never to return to a life of crime."Angelo stated in his letter to President Trump that, "There seems to be a lot of talk in Washington these days as to wanting to help inmates with you holding meetings with various politicians, corporate leaders, and church pastors. However, nothing substantial seems to have come out of the meetings other than a lot of words and back slapping and repeating the need for reform based on statistics that most Americans already know. Yes... we all know three-out-of-four inmates, on a national level, wind up back in prison within three years. However, I haven't heard of one idea or program come out of your meetings that actually can work at keeping prisoners from going back to jail."The national media seems to have bought into your idea and the nation stands behind you hoping you can come up with a positive plan of action."In fact," Angelo continues, "One of the reasons why I approached the California governors and you, President Trump... is a LA Times news article written by Jennifer Warren I read back in 2007 on how much of a failure California's in-prison treatment was a waste of over $1 Billion dollars since their program first started in 1989. I thought then Governor Schwarzenegger would jump at the chance at wanting to try something different after learning what a failure his state's attempt was to rehabilitate prisoners. I still have the same enthusiasm today in my approach to you."After Governor Schwarzenegger received my letters he seemed to have dropped the ball and we never could come together for a meeting to discuss my proposal."In fact, instead of trying my proposed program Governor Schwarzenegger lobbied his state's legislature for 10.9 Billion more dollars to reform the state's prison system."The terrible recidivism rate continued with 75% of inmates released from California's prisons wind up getting rearrested, not in three years, but within only one month!"When Governor Schwarzenegger left office I again made numerous attempts to help reform California's prisons by approaching newly elected governor, Jerry Brown. He was left with a mess but it seems he wasn't desperate enough to respond to my many offers and try my proven evidence-based highly successful treatment program."Governor Brown held similar meetings with government officials, corporate officers, and religious leaders but never came up with a proven plan that would change inmate's lives so they never return to a life of crime and a return to prison as a result of their actions. This revolving door has made the state's prison system one of the major line items on an already depressed California budget."It's been over 12 years since my first attempt to help reform prisons and my prayer today is that we now have a president who isn't afraid to take a chance to try something different to change prisoner's lives for the better."I remember reading somewhere online when you were first elected president back 2016 that we didn't elect Trump president to change Donald Trump but instead we elected Trump to change Washington DC. So far... so good. Please don't disappoint our nation's prisoners. I remain at your beckon call."Marty Angelo's Once Life Matters Ministries, Inc. was founded in 1981 and reaches out to prisons/jails, rehabs, college campuses, troubled celebrities, politicians and to members of the military.To read background information and various letters, etc. please see:

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The Maan News Agency reported that 30,000 people, mainly Palestinian-Israelis but also Jewish supporters, rallied in downtown Tel Aviv on Saturday against the so-called Jewish nationality law passed by the far right wing Likud Party and its allies, which places sovereignty in the Jewish community of Israel and formally reduces Palestinian-Israelis to second-class citizens, making the colonization of the Palestinian West Bank by Jewish squatters state policy. It is widely viewed by centrist and leftist Israelis and Palestinian-Israelis as an open declaration of Apartheid.

Amos Schocken, publisher of the liberal Haaretz newspaper, addressed the rally. His newspaper called it a badge of honour for Israeli civil society. A Haaretz editorial observed of the Palestinian-Israelis, The most excluded and oppressed group in Israel, and the one most seriously harmed by the nation-state law, proudly made its voice heard in the city square, receiving an impressive show of solidarity from Israels Jewish citizens. according to BBC monitoring.

Although the organizers of the rally had banned flags, some demonstrators brought them and waved them, both Palestine and Israel flags.

Far right Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu mischaracterized the flag of Palestine as the flag of the PLO and quipped that There is no better evidence of the Nationality Laws necessity.

Allegedly corrupt casino billionaire Sheldon Adelsons free, pro-Netanyahu propaganda organ, Israel Today, ran a headline saying Wrong Flag, according to BBC Monitoring.

The center-right Yediot Aharanot, which is being blackmailed by Netanyahu and Adelson with a threat to increase the circulation of the free Israel Today, and put it out of business, ran a front-page column saying, Not one demonstration was held last night, but two. One, by Palestinian flag wavers. They dont seek equality, but the denial of Israels right to exist. The second demonstration was by those demanding equality. The former are enemies from within, the latter are partners.

It is baffling that right wing Israelis interpret any symbol of Palestinian identity as a threat to the existence of Israel. Isnt it all right for Palestinian-Israelis to be proud of the flag of their ethnic heritage?

Let me let you in on a little secret. Jewish synagogues throughout the United States fly the Israeli flag. It isnt a sign that they are hostile to the United States or that they want to undermine it or that they have dual loyalties. It is a sign that they are proud to be Jewish, and who would deny that they have a lot to be proud of? Of course, the US and Israel sometimes do come into conflict, as when the Israeli government vehemently opposed President Obamas adoption of the Iran deal. The majority of Jewish Americans, firm Democrats, supported Obama even while they attended Friday services festooned with the Israeli flag. If it is going to be the official position of Jewish nationalism that only one flag per country is allowed, then the synagogues are in big trouble.

Former member of the Israeli parliament or knesset, Palestinian-Israeli Muhammad Barakeh, speaking at the demonstration, gave his support to flying the Palestinian flag: It is the flag that the Nationality Law tries to erase from history, but it is the flag of a proud nation. All the Jews and all the Arabs are rushing to the square in their thousands in order to repeal this abomination of a law and remove the stain left by the Netanyahu government. Israel and Zionism have two options to choose from  genocide or apartheid. We are here together  Arabs and Jews  to say that we will not allow it . . . Prime Minister Netanyahu, we will not go away, you will.

Shuaa Mansour Masaru, the Palestinian-Israeli mayor of Taybeh, called the Nationality Law very dangerous and added We gathered here to protest against this racist law which states that there are two types of human beings in this country.

Israel claims on the order of 8 million as its population, though demographic statistics are political and that sounds to me inflated. It was 6 million not long ago and I dont understand where the increase comes from. Some social scientists also think that about a million Israeli Jews live abroad but are still being counted as residents. Anyway, 25.2 percent of the population is non-Jewish, according to the CIA Factbook. Israel also rules over nearly 3 million stateless Palestinians in its West Bank colony and controls the air, land and water of Gaza, with nearly 2 million more stateless Palestinians.

Just as white nationalists in the US do not consider Mexican-Americans to be real Americans, racial-supremacist Likudniks do not consider Palestinian-Israelis to be real Israelis. Proponents of ethno-nationalism reject civic nationalism of the sort enshrined in the American and French constitutions. They make the nation coterminous with a particular ethnic group to the exclusion of all others. This approach was typical of Central European nationalism in the late nineteenth century through 1945 (and is resurgent again today in Hungary), and it is the context for the rise of the Likud Party. In contrast, US and French legal practice is to accept as citizens those who pledge allegiance to the constitution and the nation over-all. In Israel today, that pledge is not enough. Belonging is not an act of will or acceptance of principle. It is a matter of being born into the right ethnic group, as defined by the High Rabbi. (That is, even some 300,000 self-identified Russian and Ukrainian Jews in Israel are not recognized as part of the Jewish nation because their mothers were Gentiles).

In civic nationalisms, multi-culturalism is possible. Eva Longoria can be proud of being of Mexican heritage as well as a patriotic American.

So what has happened in Israel would look like this in the US. Congress would have declared that sovereignty is invested only in the community of white Protestants. Non-white non-Protestants could not bring cases before the US Supreme Court. Congress would pass a law making English the official language of the United States (no, it presently is not, and millions of Americans through history have functioned primarily in other languagesGerman, French, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Italian, Yiddish, Japanese, etc., etc.) The languages of non-white non-Protestant communities, especially Spanish, could not be used in court or government offices. Their property could be confiscated by the government at will and without compensation, and they could not sue over it.

If such a law were passed by the US Congress, and even if Mexican-Americans were its primary target, Jewish Americans would inevitably also be reduced to second-class citizens, what with being non-Protestant (and what with only comparatively recently having been accepted as white). Jewish Americans would rightly be protesting at the barricades alongside the Latinx community against such a law.

But the racialist and proto-fascist Likud propaganda machine would like to configure anyone protesting the Israeli Apartheid law as an anti-Semite. But anti-Semitism is a form of racism and ipso facto protesting a racist law cannot be anti-Semitism. For Netanyahu and his corrupt, rich, coddled cronies, anti-Semitism is anything that gets in the way of Likud plans.

I think you might have to go back to 1982 to find as big a progressive Israeli rally by both Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis. At that time, some 100,000 came out against the Likud attack on little Lebanon, which Osama Bin Laden said was one of the things he was avenging on 9/11.

It is a remarkable turn of events that 30,000 of various ethnicities came out in Tel Aviv this weekend. But the question is whether it will be any more consequential than the anti-war demonstration in 1982, which turned out to be a fluke rather than a pointer toward the direction Israeli policy would take. In the aftermath it would become more war-like and expansionist.

Featured Photo and other photos courtesy Maan News Agency.
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With Emal Haidary | 

Mazar-i-Sharif (Afghanistan) (AFP)  After his wheat crop failed and wells dried up, Ghulam Abbas sold his animals and joined thousands of other farmers migrating to cities as Afghanistans worst drought in living memory ravages the war-torn country.

A huge shortfall in snow and rain across much of the country over the normally wet colder months decimated the winter harvest, threatening the already precarious livelihoods of millions of farmers and sparking warnings of severe food shortages.

Like hundreds of farming families in Charkint village in the normally fertile northern province of Balkh, Abbas, 45, has moved with 11 family members to the provincial capital Mazar-i-Sharif to find work.

I dont remember a drought as severe as this years, Abbas, who has been a farmer for more than three decades, told AFP.

We never had to leave our village or sell our animals because of a drought in the past.

As dry conditions and high temperatures persist, there are growing concerns about the spring and summer crops that will be harvested later this year.

Afghanistans 2018 wheat harvest is already expected to be the lowest since at least 2011, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, set up by USAID in 1985.

Faced with an estimated shortfall of 2.5 million tonnes of wheat this year, more than two million people could become severely food insecure and would be in desperate need of humanitarian assistance in the next six months, the United Nations has warned.



AFP/File / FARSHAD USYAN. Afghanistans 2018 wheat harvest is already expected to be the lowest since at least 2011, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, set up by USAID.

Tens of thousands of sheep and goats have died and many farmers have eaten the seeds for the next planting season, as rivers and wells dry up and pastures turn to dust.

If the authorities and the international community dont step up to this challenge now, Afghanistan could face a calamity as we head into the next winter, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Afghanistan Toby Lanzer told AFP recently.

But thousands of farmers like Abbas have already given up hope, abandoning their land and moving their families to towns and cities to survive.

The UN estimates more than 70,000 people have been displaced to urban areas due to the drought.

Three years ago it rained and snowed well in our village, Abbas said.

The crops yielded well and I made more than 300,000 afs (afghanis, or nearly $4,300). But this year, even though I sold my sheep and goats, I made less than 100,000 afs (about $1,400).

 Not enough help 

The lack of precipitation in Balkh has left most of its farming and grazing land parched, Zabiullah Zoobin, provincial director of crops and cultivation management, told AFP recently.

More than 450,000 farmers and nomadic herders in the province have slaughtered their cattle, goats and sheep, or sold them for a pittance, he added.

All villagers are wondering what to do with their livestock and how to keep them alive because that is all they have in life, Haji Sorab, a sheep and goat herder in Dawlat Abad district, told AFP.



AFP / FARSHAD USYAN. Agriculture is the backbone of the Afghan economy. Nearly 15 million people are employed in the sector in the 20 provinces worst affected by the drought, according to the UN.

The drought adds to Afghanistans woes as its security forces struggle to beat back Taliban and Islamic State militants, and civilian casualties remain at record levels.

Agriculture is the backbone of the Afghan economy. Nearly 15 million people are employed in the sector in the 20 provinces worst affected by the drought, according to the UN.

With already high unemployment made worse by record numbers of Afghans returning from Iran and many more internally displaced by the conflict, their chances of finding other work are grim.

Prices of sheep and goats have plunged as farmers rush to sell their animals before they become even weaker, agriculture and livestock ministry spokesman Akbar Rustami told AFP.

At the same time, the cost of fodder has soared. Rustami said most of the countrys livestock are in urgent need of food.

Afghan authorities have so far provided limited assistance to farmers and international aid agencies are struggling to meet the growing demand.

UN food and other assistance has reached more than 460,000 people in drought-affected provinces in recent months, Lanzer said  less than a quarter of those who need it.

An agreement between international agencies and the Afghan government to release 60,000 tonnes of wheat currently held in the countrys strategic grain reserve and turn it into mineral-fortified flour will help.

It wont be enough for what is needed, but its a very good start, Lanzer said.

If much-needed aid does not reach farmers soon, more might turn to more drought-resistant crops such as opium poppies, Abbas warned.

Afghanistan is the worlds largest producer of opium, despite billions of dollars being spent on counternarcotics efforts since the US-led invasion in 2001.

A government which is hardly able to pay its soldiers to fight cannot reach out to help people in these remote areas, Abbas said.

The conditions will eventually force people to turn to illegal crops.

AFP/File / FARSHAD USYAN. A girl carries containers to collect water on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, where a lack of snow and rain in recent months has badly hit the harvest, sparking warnings of severe food shortages.
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Co-author: Kamala Chandrakirana | 

London (OpenDemocracy)  From Indonesia to Saudi Arabia, Muslim womens movements for equality are increasingly interconnected  and unstoppable.

A Saudi woman poses with her new driving license after the countrys ban on women driving was lifted in June, 2018. Photo: Gehad Hamdy/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.Saudi Arabias ongoing crackdown on womens rights activists undermines Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans own reform agenda. It reveals a disconnect between this young leader who styles himself as a reformist and a womens rights advocate and the new reality in the Muslim world today.

Increasingly, Muslim women are reclaiming an Islam that has long espoused equality, justice and freedom for all. These women are leading change from within their communities. Through their collective actions, they have overcome long-standing barriers by reforming laws, introducing new narratives on religious thought and histories, and creating new spaces (online and offline) for movement building across the Muslim world.

In the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, women ulama are working with womens rights activists to assert themselves. Theyve issued authoritative fatwas against domestic violence, child marriage and environmental destruction. As they change the landscape of social and religious discourse, Muslim women everywhere are seeing not only that change is possible  but that it is coming from their own work on the ground.

Muslim women are reclaiming an Islam that has long espoused equality, justice and freedom for all.

In India, women qadis have set up independent dispute resolution centres to resolve marital disputes, provide counselling and even conduct marriages. They offer an alternative to the traditional, informal qadi system that is often biased against women. Building on the Quran, Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), the national constitution and womens rights, their approach is spreading across continents through a borderless, informal network of Muslim women activists.

This same approach, for example, was adopted by womens rights activists in The Gambia in their Drop the Knife campaign against female genital mutilation, which eventually led to the harmful practice being outlawed.

Closer to Saudi Arabia, in Morocco, a national alliance of womens rights activists, academics and theologians successfully pushed the government to end legal discrimination against women in the family by reforming the countrys family status code, in 2004. Now, its arguably the most progressive family law in the Muslim world; marriage is defined in this law as a partnership of equals, with this equality justified in the name of Islam.

Moroccos reform emboldened womens rights activists in diverse Muslim contexts to escalate advocacy for equality and justice. Yes, opposition to these movements for change is rampant and fierce. But this has only strengthened their resolve to march forward.

Yes, opposition to these movements is rampant and fierce. But this has only strengthened their resolve.

In Malaysia, Muslim womens rights activists have for decades challenged the states use of Islam to justify discrimination against women. In 2009, amid rising conservatism and extremism, we and other women launched a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family, called Musawah (meaning equality in Arabic).

This movements arguments for reform are grounded in Islamic principles, human rights standards, constitutional guarantees of equality and womens lived realities. It is bringing together Muslim women from diverse national contexts and creating new connections beyond borders.

These movements are unstoppable. Muslim womens rights activists have created new international networks of solidarity and collaboration over language barriers and across continents. Struggles are being waged across all aspects of life. There is energy for genuine dialogue and partnerships with all who seek reform  as long as womens autonomy is respected.

Victories, however small, build confidence, while losses or setbacks enhance rigour. As the Indonesian grassroots women ulama declared earlier in 2018, womens leadership in the Muslim world is a historical inevitability.

More and more women are claiming their rights grounded in the belief in an Islam that upholds equality and justice for all. They actively engage in the rich Muslim legal tradition with sophisticated tools and concepts that open the possibility of reform. They are shaping and influencing how Islam is understood and used in ways that make sense to todays realities.

Womens leadership in the Muslim world is a historical inevitability.

Over the past three months, the Saudi government has arrested at least 14 (and continues to detain at least six) womens rights activists  including long-term advocates for ending the ban on women driving and the countrys male guardianship system, which requires women to get permission from male relatives for activities including travelling abroad or getting a job.

These Saudi women who were arrested are part of the growing international community of Muslim women advocating for equality and justice. Their gains are the collective gain of this broader community of activists, and likewise are their losses. Their silencing is felt as an attack on us collectively.

Individual women may be silenced, but rest assured that our collective voice continues to speak truth to power.

The arrests of our Saudi sisters have come despite promises of reform from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He would do better to engage in an open dialogue and exchange of ideas with them. These women understand change and what it takes to transform attitudes, behaviours, relations, institutions and worldviews. They could be his allies for genuine reform.

Pathways for social, economic and political reform are diverse and contextual. But, as activists ourselves, we know that genuine reform cannot be achieved nor sustained without womens full and meaningful participation as equals. Until our Saudi sisters are sitting at the table as equals, Saudi Arabia is on the wrong side of history.

Kamala Chandrakirana is a co-founder of Musawah, former Chairperson of Indonesias National Commission on Violence against Women, and member of the United Nations Working Group on discrimination against women in law and practice for 2011-2017.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Via OpenDemocracy



Bonus videa added by Informed Comment:

National Post: What women can and cant do under the Saudi male guardianship system
Vancouver, British Columbia / TheNewswire / August 13, 2018 - A.I.S. Resources Limited (TSX-V: AIS, OTCQB: AISSF) (the "Company" or "AIS") is pleased to announce completion of the previously announced Time Domain Electromagnetic (TDEM) survey at the Salinitas lithium brine project (the "Project") located in the Salinas Grande Salar in northwest Argentina. The TDEM geophysical survey was conducted across 52 stations at 500 meter spacings totaling approximately 26 kilometers. Data compilation is underway and interpretation is expected to begin shortly. Based on interpretation of the TDEM data, the Company is now preparing to carry out trenching as well as an auger drilling program to test for shallow, near surface brines that contain anomalous concentrations of lithium and other elements correlated with geophysics in preparation for definition of drill targets. The work is being supervised by Phillip Thomas Director of Exploration.

About the Salinitas Lithium Brine Project

The Salinitas tenements are located in the lithium triangle at the Salar de Salinas Grandes, in the Province of Salta. The 4,308 hectare land package resides in the Puna region of northwest Argentina near the border of Chile, an area renowned for its lithium- and potassium-rich brine resources. AIS has partnered with MGX Minerals (CSE: XMG) on the Project who is currently earning an undivided 80% interest by incurring total exploration expenditures of at least US$1.2 million by May 31, 2020 and by making payments totaling US$3.2 million which are primarily due at that time.

Figure 1. TDEM Stations at Salinitas Brine Project



Qualified person

Phillip Thomas, BSc, Geol, MBusM, MAIG, MAIMVA, (CMV), a qualified person as defined under National Instrument 43-101 regulations, has reviewed the technical information that forms the basis of this news release, and has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Thomas is not independent of the company as he is an officer and shareholder.

About A.I.S. Resources

A.I.S. Resources Ltd. is a TSX-V listed investment issuer, was established in 1967 and is managed by experienced, highly qualified professionals, who have a long track record of success in lithium exploration, production and capital markets. Through their extensive business and scientific networks, they identify and develop early-stage projects worldwide, that have strong potential for growth with the objective of providing significant returns for shareholders. The Company's current activities are focused exclusively on the exploration and development of lithium brine projects in northern Argentina.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors,

A.I.S. Resources Limited

Marc Enright-Morin

Contact

A.I.S. Resources Limited

Marc Enright-Morin

President and CEO

T: 778-892-5455

E: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Website: www.aisresources.com

ADVISORY: This press release contains forward-looking statements. More particularly, this press release contains statements concerning the anticipated use of the proceeds of the Private Placement. Although the Corporation believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on them because the Corporation 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. The intended use of the proceeds of the Private Placement by the Corporation might change if the board of directors of the Corporation determines that it would be in the best interests of the Corporation to deploy the proceeds for some other purpose. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof and the Corporation undertakes no obligations to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws. Neither 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.
OTTAWA, Ontario, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cornerstone Capital Resources Inc. (Cornerstone or the Company) (TSXV:CGP) (Frankfurt:GWN) (Berlin:GWN) (OTC:CTNXF) is pleased to announce the following update on the exploration program at its Cascabel copper-gold porphyry joint venture exploration project in northern Ecuador, in which the Company has a 15% interest financed through to completion of a feasibility study, plus 10% of the shares of joint venture partner and project operator SolGold Plc, for a total direct and indirect interest in Cascabel of approximately 23%.

Figures referred to in this news release can be seen in PDF format by accessing the version of this release on the Companys website (www.cornerstoneresources.com) or by clicking on the link below: Click Here.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Exceptional assay results from recent infill and extension drilling at Alpala Central reveal a far more robust high-grade core than previously modeled.

Hole 57 (Alpala Central Infill): 832m (true width 333m) @ 1.41% copper equivalent ( CuEq 1 ) (0.72% Cu, 1.10g/t Au) (from 556m depth), incl. 562m (true width 225m) @ 1.72% CuEq (0.85% Cu, 1.37g/t Au) (from 814m depth), incl. 304m (true width 122m) @ 2.52% CuEq (1.15% Cu, 2.18g/t Au) (from 892m depth), incl. 182m (true width 73m) @ 3.46 CuEq (1.49% Cu, 3.14g/t Au) (from 1004m depth)



Hole 55R (Alpala Central NW Extension): 1062m (true width 425m) @ 1.02% CuEq (0.69% Cu, 0.52g/t Au) (from 542m depth), incl. 548m (true width 219m) @ 1.36% CuEq (0.86% Cu, 0.80g/t Au) (from 1042m), incl. 220m (true width 88m) @ 2.07% CuEq (1.22%Cu, 1.34g/t Au) (from 1306m depth)



Hole 41-D1-D2 (Alpala Central Infill): Partial assay results to 1458m: 512m (true width 205m) @ 1.09% CuEq (0.59% Cu, 0.80g/t Au) (from 926m depth), open at depth, incl. 326m (true width 130m) @ 1.51% CuEq (0.77% Cu, 1.18g/t Au) (from 1112m depth), open at depth, incl. 128m (true width 51m) @ 2.51% CuEq (1.11% Cu, 2.23g/t Au) (from 1310m depth), open at depth.



FURTHER INFORMATION:

Cascabel is located in northwestern Ecuador in an under-explored northern section of the Andean Copper Belt, 60 km northeast of the undeveloped inferred resource of 982 million tons at 0.89% Cu Llurimaga (formerly Junin) copper project2 (Figure 1).

A maiden Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for the Alpala deposit, estimated from the initial 53,616m of drilling, was announced on January 3, 2018 (see Cornerstone news release 18-01 on that date) and the corresponding Technical Report prepared by SRK Exploration Services Ltd. and qualified persons James Gilbertson, Martin Pittuck, and John Willis in compliance with National Instrument 43-101 was filed at www.sedar.com on February 16, 2018 (Click Here), and indicates resources of: 430Mt @ 0.8% CuEq Indicated and 650Mt @ 0.6% CuEq Inferred (3.4 Mt CuEq Indicated 4.0 Mt CuEq Inferred) at 0.3% CuEq cut off, for a metal inventory of 2.3 Mt Cu and 6.0 Moz Au Indicated and 2.9 Mt Cu and 6.3 Moz Au Inferred, including a high-grade core of 70Mt @ 1.8% CuEq Indicated (1.2Mt CuEq) and 50Mt @ 1.8% CuEq Inferred (0.8 Mt CuEq) at a 1.1% CuEq cut off. A further 50 Mt @ 1.0% CuEq Indicated (1.0 Mt CuEq) and 50 Mt @ 1.0% CuEq Inferred (1.0 Mt CuEq) is added to the high grade core if a 0.9% CuEq cut off is used, giving a high grade core of 220 Mt at a weighted average grade of 1.44% CuEq.

A further 80,538m of drilling has been completed since development of the maiden MRE (Figure 2), and major resource growth is expected in a revised MRE. JV partner and project operator SolGold is now aiming to expand and upgrade the resource, with infill and extension drilling at Alpala Central expected to expand the high-grade core as well as increase the overall resource tonnage.

Exceptional assay results from recent infill and extension drilling at Alpala Central are revealing a more robust high-grade core than estimated in the December 2017 MRE. This recent drilling shows that early stage diorite and quartz diorite intrusions, rich in copper and gold, are far more continuous than previously modeled.

Drill hole assays have been received for 111,010m of a total 134,155m on the project. Approximately 11,300m of drilling has assays pending, with 11800m accounted for as non-assayed top holes.

Highlights of assay results expected to add to the existing MRE at Alpala are tabulated in the below table.

Hole ID DepthFrom



m DepthTo



m Interval



m True



width m Cu



% Au



g/t CuEq



% Cut-off



(CuEq%) Comment CSD-18-041-D1-D2 926 1438 512 204.8 0.59 0.80 1.09 0.20 open at depth, results below 1438m pending CSD-18-041-D1-D2 1048 1438 390 156.0 0.70 1.01 1.33 0.30 open at depth, results below 1438m pending CSD-18-041-D1-D2 1112 1438 326 130.4 0.77 1.18 1.51 0.40 open at depth, results below 1438m pending CSD-18-041-D1-D2 1310 1438 128 51.2 1.11 2.23 2.51 1.00 open at depth, results below 1438m pending CSD-18-055R 542 1790 1248 499.2 0.61 0.45 0.90 0.10 CSD-18-055R 542 1604 1062 424.8 0.69 0.52 1.02 0.20 CSD-18-055R 542 1000 458 183.2 0.56 0.24 0.71 0.30 CSD-18-055R 542 594 52 20.8 0.82 0.33 1.03 0.30 CSD-18-055R 1042 1590 548 219.2 0.86 0.80 1.36 0.30 CSD-18-055R 628 1000 372 148.8 0.54 0.25 0.70 0.40 CSD-18-055R 1070 1288 218 87.2 0.75 0.58 1.12 0.40 CSD-18-055R 1306 1542 236 94.4 1.17 1.27 1.96 0.50 CSD-18-055R 1306 1526 220 88.0 1.22 1.34 2.07 0.60 CSD-18-055R 1318 1402 84 33.6 2.15 2.91 3.98 1.50 CSD-18-057 500 1478 978 391.2 0.64 0.95 1.24 0.20 CSD-18-057 556 1388 832 332.8 0.72 1.10 1.41 0.30 CSD-18-057 588 722 134 53.6 0.53 0.71 0.98 0.40 CSD-18-057 814 1376 562 224.8 0.85 1.37 1.72 0.40 CSD-18-057 854 1222 368 147.2 1.03 1.87 2.21 0.70 CSD-18-057 892 1196 304 121.6 1.15 2.18 2.52 1.00 CSD-18-057 1004 1186 182 72.8 1.49 3.14 3.46 1.50 Data Aggregation Method: Intercepts reported using copper equivalent cutoff grades with up to 10m internal dilution, excluding bridging to a single sample. Minimum intersection length 50m. Gold Conversion Factor of 0.63 calculated from a copper price of US$3.00/lb and a gold price US$1300/oz. True widths of downhole interval lengths are estimated to be approximately 25% to 50%.

About the Cascabel Joint Venture with SolGold:

Exploraciones Novomining S.A. (ENSA), an Ecuadorean company owned by SolGold Plc and Cornerstone, holds 100% of the Cascabel concession. Subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions, including SolGolds fully funding the project through to feasibility, SolGold Plc will own 85% of the equity of ENSA and Cornerstone will own the remaining 15% of ENSA. SolGold is funding 100% of the exploration at Cascabel and is the operator of the project. SolGold shall receive 90% of Cornerstones distribution of earnings or dividends from ENSA to which Cornerstone would otherwise be entitled until such time as the amounts so received equal the aggregate amount of expenditures incurred by SolGold that would have otherwise been payable by Cornerstone, plus interest thereon from the dates such expenditures were incurred at a rate per annum equal to LIBOR plus 2 per cent until such time as SolGold is fully reimbursed.

Logging, sampling, assaying and reporting

Holes referred to in this release were or are being drilled using HTW, NTW, NQ and BQ core sizes (respectively 7.1, 5.6, 4.8 and 3.7 cm diameter). Geotechnical measurements such as core recovery, fracturing, rock quality designations (RQDs), specific gravity and photographic logging are performed systematically prior to assaying. The core is logged, magnetic susceptibility measured and key alteration minerals identified by experienced loggers and sometimes using an on-site portable spectrometer. Core is then sawed in half at the ENSA core logging facility, and half of the core is delivered by ENSA employees for preparation at ALS Minerals Laboratories (ALS) sample preparation facility in Quito. Core samples are prepared crushing to 70% passing 2 mm (10 mesh), splitting 250 g and pulverizing to 85% passing 75 microns (200 mesh) (ALS code CRU-31, SPL21 and PUL-32). Prepared samples are then shipped to ALS in Lima, Peru where samples are assayed for a multi-element suite (ALS code ME-MSP61, 1g split, 4-acid digestion, ICP-MS finish). Over limit results for Ag (> 100 g/t) and Cu, (> 1%) are systematically re-assayed (ALS code Ag-AA62, 4-acid digestion, AAS finish). Gold is assayed using a 30 g split, Fire Assay (FA) and AA finish (ALS code Au-AA23).

Quality assurance / Quality control (QA/QC)

The ALS Laboratory is a qualified assayer that performs and makes available internal assaying controls. Duplicates, certified blanks and standards are systematically used (1 control sample every 15-20 samples). Rejects, a 100 g pulp for each core sample and the remaining half-core are stored for future use and controls.

Qualified Person:

Yvan Crepeau, MBA, P.Geo., Cornerstones Vice President, Exploration and a qualified person in accordance with National Instrument 43-101, is responsible for supervising the exploration program at the Cascabel project for Cornerstone and has reviewed and approved the information contained in this news release.

About Cornerstone:

Cornerstone Capital Resources Inc. is a mineral exploration company with a diversified portfolio of projects in Ecuador and Chile, including in the Cascabel gold-enriched copper porphyry joint venture in north west Ecuador.

Pending Plan of Arrangement:

TSXV approval is still pending in respect of the plan of arrangement to spinoff Cornerstone Exploration Inc., first announced on July 13, 2017. The plan of arrangement received shareholder approval in December 2017 and court approval in January 2018. The Company will put out an update promptly following TSXV approval.

Pursuant to the plan of arrangement, Cornerstone will spin off into a new company called Cornerstone Exploration Inc., all of Cornerstones assets except for its interest in the Cascabel concession in Ecuador, shares of SolGold plc and the joint venture with Ecuadorian state mining company ENAMI EP. Cornerstone Exploration will own the drill ready Bella Maria, Shyri NW (Vetas Grandes) and Bramaderos properties in Ecuador, an option to own 100% of the drill ready Cana Brava property in Ecuador, the applications for new properties in Ecuador made by Cornerstone subsidiary La Plata Minerales S.A., the Miocene property in Chile, and Cornerstone's generative exploration databases for Ecuador and Chile. Cornerstone will be re-named Cascabel Gold & Copper Inc.

Further information is available on Cornerstones website: www.cornerstoneresources.com and on Twitter. For investor, corporate or media inquiries, please contact:

Investor Relations:

Mario Drolet (Montreal); Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ;

Tel. (514) 346-3813

Corporate Matters: Sabino Di Paola, CFO (Ottawa); Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ;

Tel. (343) 689-0714

Due to anti-spam laws, many shareholders and others who were previously signed up to receive email updates and who are no longer receiving them may need to re-subscribe at Click Here

Cautionary Notice:

This news release may contain Forward-Looking Statements that involve risks and uncertainties, such as statements of Cornerstones plans, objectives, strategies, intentions and expectations. The words potential, anticipate, forecast, believe, estimate, expect, may, project, plan, and similar expressions are intended to be among the statements that identify Forward-Looking Statements. Although Cornerstone believes that its expectations reflected in these Forward-Looking Statements are reasonable, such statements may involve unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors disclosed in our regulatory filings, viewed on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. For us, uncertainties arise from the behaviour of financial and metals markets, predicting natural geological phenomena and from numerous other matters of national, regional, and global scale, including those of an environmental, climatic, natural, political, economic, business, competitive, or regulatory nature. These uncertainties may cause our actual future results to be materially different than those expressed in our Forward-Looking Statements. Although Cornerstone believes the facts and information contained in this news release to be as correct and current as possible, Cornerstone does not warrant or make any representation as to the accuracy, validity or completeness of any facts or information contained herein and these statements should not be relied upon as representing its views after the date of this news release. While Cornerstone anticipates that subsequent events may cause its views to change, it expressly disclaims any obligation to update the Forward-Looking Statements contained herein except where outcomes have varied materially from the original statements.

On Behalf of the Board,

Brooke Macdonald

President and CEO

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.

1 All references in this news release to copper equivalent (CuEq) grades are composed of copper and gold values, calculated using a gold conversion factor of 0.63, determined using an updated copper price of USD3.00/pound and an updated gold price of USD1300/ounce. True widths of down hole intersections are estimated to be approximately 25-50%.

2 0.4% Cu cut-off grade; Micon International Co. Ltd. Technical Report for Ascendant Exploration SA, August 20, 2004, pages 28 & 29. Mineralization identified at the Llurimaga copper project is not necessarily indicative of the mineralization on the Cascabel Property.
MONTREAL, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SEMAFO Inc. (TSX, OMX: SMF) regrets to report that an armed incident occurred between the town of Fada and the Boungou Mine site in the Est region of Burkina Faso. As a result, five gendarmes and one sub-contractor employee lost their lives.

Operations at the Boungou Mine were not affected. As a precautionary measure, we will be increasing our security measures and continue to closely monitor the situation with our partners to protect the safety of SEMAFO employees and our operations.

The Corporation would like to express its deepest sympathy to families of the victims.

About SEMAFO

SEMAFO is a Canadian-based mining company with gold production and exploration activities in West Africa. The Corporation operates the Mana Mine in Burkina Faso, which includes the high-grade satellite deposit of Siou, and is targeting commercial production at the Boungou Mine in the third quarter of 2018. SEMAFO is committed to evolve in a conscientious manner to become a major player in its geographical area of interest. SEMAFOs strategic focus is to maximize shareholder value by effectively managing its existing assets as well as pursuing organic and strategic growth opportunities.

For more information, contact

John Jentz

Vice-President, Corporate Development & Investor Relations

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Ruth Hanna

Analyst, Investor Relations

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Tel. local & overseas: +1 (514) 744 4408

North America Toll-Free: 1 (888) 744 4408

Website: www.semafo.com
TORONTO, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Eloro Resources Ltd. (TSX-V: ELO; FSE: P2Q) (Eloro or the Corporation) is pleased to provide an update on the La Victoria Gold Project in the north-central mineral belt of Peru which it is exploring with its joint venture partner EHR Resources (EHR). EHR currently holds a 10% interest through its Peruvian subsidiary and is earning up to a 25% interest in La Victoria. Eloros Peruvian subsidiary currently owns a 90% interest in La Victoria. Eloro completed three diamond drill holes totalling 1,242m to test the Rufina East target area. It was decided that the three holes, ERU-10, ERU-11 and ERU-12 provided a sufficient test of the target area where significant gold values had been intersected in surface sampling (see press release June 6, 2018). Table 1 gives significant results from each hole. Figure 1 shows the locations of the drill holes and Figure 2 is a geological cross-section of Holes ERU-11 and ERU-12. Highlights are as follows:

3.71 g Au/t over 1.40m from 367.0m to 368.3m in ERU-10

3.00 g Au/t over 0.60m from 105.7m to 106.3m in ERU-10

1.80 g Au/t over 0.6m from 319.8m to 320.4m in ERU-11

1.33 g Au/t over 1.3m from 88.3m to 89.6m in ERU-11

0.83 g Au/t over 1.5m from 161.7m to 163.2m in ERU-12

0.86 g Au/t over 0.5m from 126.6m to 127.1m in ERU-12

Rufina is one of the six target zones that form part of the La Victoria Gold Project. The drilling by Eloro at Rufina is the first diamond drilling ever carried out on the property. The first and second phases which comprised twelve drill holes totalling 4,281m (see press releases January 16, 2018 and June 6, 2018), were designed to provide complete sections across up to 500m strike length of the target zone to test the major NW and NE-SW striking mineralized structures identified in the surface geological mapping. All the reconnaissance drill holes intersected extensive zones of mineralization and alteration, including more than sixty anomalous gold intervals distributed in about 40 mineralized structures. Many of these structures correlated with zones mapped on surface. Gold mineralization and alteration at Rufina occurs over 600 m in width, over 700 m in vertical extent and about 600 m along strike.

Dr. Bill Pearson, P.Geo., President of Eloro commented: Results so far at Rufina are considered positive and provide indications of a large-scale epithermal gold mineralized system at La Victoria, however further drilling needs to focus on the likely overall major core area which is believed to be San Markito (Figure 3). San Markito is the best target zone identified thus far on the property, where gold and silver mineralization are found in an extensive symmetric alteration zone within both the favourable Chimu Formation sediments and dioritic intrusives. This target will be the focus of further drilling at La Victoria going forward. Work is continuing to obtain final drill permits for San Markito.

Tom Larsen, Chairman & CEO said: The Eloro geological team has continued to make good progress in understanding the extensive and complex epithermal gold system at La Victoria. We will shortly commence a geological mapping and sampling program at San Markito to be followed by a diamond drill program as soon as the final drill permit is issued.

Qualified Person

Dr. Bill Pearson, P.Geo., a Qualified Person in the context of National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical content of this news release. Assays were done at the SGS del Peru S.A.C. laboratory in Lima, Peru. Eloro employs an industry standard QA/QC process including blanks, duplicates, standards and checks at an external laboratory in addition to the rigorous internal QA/QC process employed by SGS del Peru S.A.C.

About Eloro Resources Ltd.

Eloro is an exploration and mine development company with a portfolio of gold and base-metal properties in Peru and Quebec. Eloro owns a 90% interest in the La Victoria Gold/Silver Project, located in the North-Central Mineral Belt of Peru some 50 km south of Barrick's Lagunas Norte Gold Mine and Tahoe's La Arena Gold Mine. La Victoria consists of eight mining concessions and eight mining claims encompassing approximately 89 square kilometres. The property has good infrastructure with access to road, water and electricity and is located at an altitude that ranges from 3,100 m to 4,200 m above sea level.

For further information please contact Thomas G. Larsen, Chairman and C.E.O. of Eloro Resources Ltd., or Jorge Estepa, Vice-President of Eloro Resources Ltd. at (416) 868-9168.

Information in this news release may contain forward-looking information. Statements containing forward-looking information express, as at the date of this news release, the Corporation's plans, estimates, forecasts, projections, expectations, or beliefs as to future events or results and are believed to be reasonable based on information currently available to the Corporation. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.



Neither the TSXV, nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Table 1: Significant Assay Results, Diamond Drill Holes ERU-10, -11 & -12, Rufina East Target Zone. A. Main mineralized intervals in drill hole ERU-10 (Complete). From

m To

m Length

m Au

g/t Description 63.00 63.50 0.50 0.40 Moderately sericitized diorite hosting a 1m massive sulfide & quartz vein with crustiform texture and 3/m millimetric FeOx veinlets. 105.70 106.30 0.60 3.00 55cm crustiform texture massive sulfide + quartz vein, FeOx stockwork in moderate to strong sericitized diorite & weak chlorite. 124.00 125.00 1.00 0.50 Moderately sericitized & weak chlorite diorite, quartz irreg. veinlets, FeOx stockworks, including a 4cm massive sulfide & quartz vein 234.00 235.00 1.00 0.60 Moderately sericitized, chloritized carbonaceous diorite, sulfides veinlets 4/m and 30 cm massive sulfides & quartz crustiform vein. 253.00 253.50 0.50 0.70 Hydrothermal breccia with shale and moderately silicified diorite and gouge close to a shear zone. 338.00 339.00 1.00 0.90 Moderately to strongly sericitized diorite with quartz, ad, py, aspy, cpy veinlets and py-aspy pervasive dissemination (3-5%). 367.00 367.80 0.80 4.90 0.7 m crustiform/coliform textures quartz-massive sulfides vein 367.80 368.30 0.50 1.80 Moderately to strongly sericitized diorite, 5/6 quartz-sulfide veinlets. Overall section 3.71 gAu/t over 1.40m. B. Main mineralized intervals in drill hole ERU-11 (Complete). From

m To

m Length

m Au

g/t Description 17.80 18.30 0.50 0.40 Moderately to strong FeOx stockwork, fine veinlets, 2cm massive sulfides/quartz veinlets in moderate to strong sericitized diorite 73.30 74.30 1.00 0.90 Quartz & sulfides crustiform vein and rare veinlets in moderately sericitized diorite 88.30 89.30 1.00 1.33 Quartz & sulfides (massive Aspy-Py) crustiform vein and veinlets in moderate to strong sericitized diorite, includes 1.0m @1.69g/t Au 89.30 89.60 0.30 146.30 146.70 0.40 0.91 Quartz & sulfides (Aspy-Py) crustiform vein and veinlets in moderately sericitized diorite 248.60 249.30 0.70 0.34 Vein zone, Quartz & sulfides (Py-Po-Aspy) vein (20cm) and veinlets in moderately sericitized diorite 316.30 317.10 0.80 0.65 Vein zone, Quartz & sulfides (Qz-Aspy and Aspy-Py) vein (5cm) and veinlets in moderately sericitized diorite 319.80 320.40 0.60 1.80 Quartz & sulfides crustiform vein in moderately sericitized diorite 348.80 349.30 0.50 0.37 Veinlets Quartz-Py (1-2mm), in moderately sericitized diorite C. Main mineralized intervals in drill hole ERU-12 (Complete). From

m To

m Length

m Au

g/t Description 125.60 126.60 1.00 0.31 Veinlets Quartz-Py-Chlorite, Py diss, in moderately sericitized diorite 126.60 127.10 0.50 0.86 Vein zone, Quartz & sulfides (Py-Aspy) vein (10cm) and veinlets in moderately sericitized diorite 161.70 163.20 1.50 0.83 Brecciated vein with abundant py-aspy, quartz and sulfides intergrowths 251.50 252.00 0.50 0.34 Vein Quartz - Aspy - Py in moderately sericitized diorite 269.40 270.80 1.40 0.40 Vein zone, Quartz & sulfides (Py-Aspy) vein (5cm) & rare veinlets in moderately sericitized diorite 295.70 296.20 0.50 0.31 Vein zone, 2 & 4cm Quartz-Aspy-Py<Cpy, horse, in moderately sericitized metadiorite 306.60 307.80 1.20 0.45 Laminated quartz veinlets w/sulfides intergrowths 334.05 334.65 0.60 0.20 Vein zone, 15cm Qz-Aspy-Py<Cpy, in moderately sericitized diorite 355.60 356.30 0.70 0.56 Quartz  sulfide vein with meta-diorite horse tails 357.30 358.15 0.85 0.49 Veinlets to 3cm Quartz-Py-Aspy, <Cpy, in moderately sericitized diorite 389.25 390.00 0.75 0.28 Laminated quartz veinlets with sulfide intergrowths 400.00 401.10 1.10 0.28 Vein zone, Quartz-sulfide 40 cm vein in wk phyllic, moderate carbonate, moderate chlorite-altered diorite, includes This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Au/t

(I) Diamond drill core for all holes is NTW size = 56.23mm

(II) True width is equal to approximately 70%-75% of core length

(III) Abbreviations: py=pyrite, aspy=arsenopyrite, ad = adularia, cp=chalcopyrite, po=pyrrhotite, gn=galena, ca=calcite, dissem = disseminated

Table 2: Collar coordinates and Dip/Azimuth of the drill holes reported Hole Id Easting Northing Elevation Az Dip Length RUFINA EAST Completed ERU-10 172617 9080167 3272 90 -50 456.35 Completed ERU-11 172640 9080093 3213 90 -45 355.30 Completed ERU-12 172640 9080093 3213 90 -60 430.50 Total 1,242.15

(i) All measurements are in metres except Azimuth (Az) and Dip, which are measured in degrees.

Figure 1: Plan map showing locations of drill holes reported and significant surface samples.



Figure 2: Geological cross-section holes ERU-11 and ERU-12, Rufina East Target



Figure 3: Epithermal Mineralization and Hydrothermal Alteration, Rufina-San Markito.


In the past week, two African heads of State have granted amnesties to their opponents.

In Cote dIvoire, the decision was announced on August 6 by President Alassane Ouattara during a speech to mark the 58th independence anniversary of this former French colony.

Among the 800 people granted amnesty is former First Lady Simone Gbagbo, whose husband Laurent is currently on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands. Simone Gbagbo was jailed after the bloody post-election crisis that left some 3,000 people dead in 2010-2011 and the military defeat of her side by the current president. She was sentenced in 2015 to 20 years in prison for endangering State security. Two days after the amnesty was announced, she left prison all smiles, although visibly marked by the years of detention. This reputedly devout evangelical Christian was greeted at her home in a wealthy part of Abidjan by a crowd of joyous supporters.

Ouattaras move was hailed by a broad spectrum of the political class as a gesture for reconciliation, but victims of the 2010-2011 crisis see it as endorsing impunity. Simone Gbagbo is nevertheless still under an ICC arrest warrant, which the Ivorian government refuses to implement.

Amnesty too in South Sudan, which has for five years been plunged into a civil war triggered by political and ethnic rivalry between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar. In a decree dated August 8, Salva Kiir granted amnesty to his main rival and other rebels, a decision that comes less than a week after the signature in Sudan of a power-sharing accord between the government and the rebels. This agreement should notably allow Riek Machar to return to the post of vice-president. The war in South Sudan broke out at the end of 2013, when Salva Kiir accused Riek Machar of fomenting a coup detat. The conflict has already left tens of thousands of people dead and millions displaced.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country that has never since its independence from Belgium in 1960 had a peaceful handover of power, 23 candidates have filed their candidacies to succeed President Joseph Kabila. They include Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, chosen on August 8 as the candidate of the presidential majority. Kabila has thus designated his heir after being long suspected nationally and internationally of wanting to run for a third term in violation of the constitution. Among the main opponents of the presidential camp is former vice-president and ex-warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba, who was acquitted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on June 8. Bemba is still awaiting the ICCs verdict in a related case.

The Central African Republic is another African country in search of peace, justice and reconciliation. In connection with this, French jurist and former diplomat Didier Niewiadowski analysed for JusticeInfo the possible implications of Russian soldiers and Russian companies presence in this country as well as the military mission of the European Union and the United Nations force. Whilst the official Russian line is that they want to re-establish the authority of the State and strengthen the capacities of FACA (Central African armed forces), on the ground the employees of private Russian companies often make deals with the rebel leaders, says this former diplomat to Bangui (2008-2012). Russias eruption onto the Central African scene complicates the task of the African Union and the UN and hampers coordination of the different efforts, notably within the G5 (UN, African Union, European Union, United States, France), he adds.
Cross-legged in a windowless, almost pitch-black bamboo shack, the investigator pressed record on a video camera and asked the young Rohingya woman to describe the night the Myanmar soldiers came.

They broke down our door. They took my husband outside and shot him, recalled the 20-year-old, one of around 700,000 Rohingyas driven from Myanmar into Bangladesh a year ago.

Then they killed my son. Four of them raped me, said the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, only her eyes visible beneath a veil covering her face, as the monsoon rain fell outside.

Different teams of investigators in the worlds biggest refugee camp in Bangladesh, home to a million people, have been quietly documenting what the Myanmar Muslim minority suffered in 2017.

From seasoned professionals working for governments, the UN and international rights groups, to grassroots volunteers armed with pen and paper, a trove of evidence is being amassed which it is hoped will help bring the Rohingya some justice.

Another of those giving testimony is Nurjahan, whose husband and son were also murdered.

She has taken it upon herself to secure justice for them and for all the girls in her village raped at gunpoint.

She was among the first of 400 Rohingya women to put their inked thumbs to a legal document formally requesting a probe by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The group of largely illiterate women she is part of, Shanti Mohila (Peace Women), has also collected victim testimonies and signatures to lobby the ICC thousands of miles away.

Weve lost our sons. Our daughters have been violated. We want justice for them, the 45-year-old told AFP.

 Unique approach 

The only other Rohingya submission before the worlds only permanent war crimes court is for the victims of Tula Toli, a Myanmar village whose Muslim inhabitants were rounded up and methodically slaughtered on August 30, 2017.

Some testimony for a broader enquiry has already reached The Hague, where the ICC is being urged to investigate crimes against humanity, something that Myanmar denies.

There is a new Myanmar-led commission to examine abuses, but this has been denounced by many observers as an empty stunt that will fail to establish accountability.

A handful of soldiers have been charged by Myanmar for involvement in a single massacre but UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee has tempered expectations that Myanmars generals would stand trial anytime soon.

Myanmar is not a signatory to the court but ICC prosecutors and human rights lawyers have taken a unique approach by arguing that the crime of deportation was not complete until the Rohingya crossed into Bangladesh.

And as Bangladesh is an ICC signatory, they say the court has jurisdiction.

A pre-trial chamber of ICC judges is reviewing the unprecedented request, alarming Myanmar which voiced serious concern.

They do feel some threat from this. I think thats important, said international lawyer Megan Hirst from Doughty Street Chambers in London, who is representing the Tula Toli villagers at the ICC.

 How many babies? 

Back at the camps in Bangladesh, another of those painstakingly pulling together evidence is Osman Jahangir, a field investigator from Bangladeshi rights watchdog Odhikar.

His grim questions hint at the savagery of the violence.

Where did the gasoline come from? How many soldiers raped you? Did you see how many babies were thrown in the river? he asked refugees.

In a dark tent, Jahangir jotted down the coordinates of a Rohingya village on Google Earth. Where possible, he also gathers medical records and smartphone footage.

In partnership with Hong Kongs Asian Legal Resource Centre, some of the findings were sent to the ICC. There are plans for a formal submission once rigorous field work is complete.

I have studied the Bosnian war. There was a trial. They were held responsible, Jahangir told AFP. I really hope we can bring justice to the Rohingya.

The NGOs and volunteer groups lack the resources and expertise of UN fact-finders or the US State Department, which sent veteran investigators to interview more than 1,000 refugees this year.

Justice experts also worry that amateur efforts to gather testimony risk contaminating evidence and undermining prosecutors in the event of a trial.

But that does not dampen zeal in the camps.

Nobody can deny this, said community leader Mohibullah as he scrolled through a database of abuses uploaded by Rohingya volunteers onto an ancient laptop, detailing gang rapes, torched mosques and murders.

Lawyers representing the Rohingya are quietly optimistic the ICC will decide it can investigate.

But whether that means anybody will anytime soon end up in the dock, is a less optimistic prospect, said lawyer Wayne Jordash from Global Rights Compliance, who is representing the Shanti Mohila group.

On the other side of the world, in the squalid refugee camp, his clients say they are prepared for a long wait.

We know this could take a very long time, years even. We dont care. We just want justice, said 25-year-old Sukutara, another Shanti Mohila member.

Even if I die, and my children one day get justice, I will be happy.
Stuff reports:

A new members bill would allow employees to take up to three days bereavement leave after losing a pregnancy in a miscarriage. The bill, in the name of Labour MP Ginny Andersen, would make miscarriage an explicit grounds for three days of bereavement leave. Currently the law is somewhat ambiguous on the issue, with employers being able to decide whether or not a miscarriage constitutes bereavement.

The law gives a right for bereavment leave if the deceased is a partner, parent, child, sibling, grandparent, grandchild or parent in law. For other bereavements it is up to the employer but a key factor is the closeness of association.

So adding on a miscarriage suffered by you or your partner seems very sensible. And before this becomes an abortion debate, can I point out the huge difference between choosing to end a pregnancy and wanting it to continue but having a miscarriage.

The law was drafted after a group of women who felt they had had quite poor treatment from their workplaces after having miscarriages visited Labours Clare Curran. I worked with the group of women to understand what their experiences were and drafted the bill.

This is my only reservation. Is a law change needed. Id hope any employer would give bereavement leave to who has suffered a miscarriage (or their partner). But if some people have had difficulty, this this is a worthwhile law change.

At a minimum Id hope all parties would at least support it to select committee stage, so MPs can hear evidence about how widespread any refusals have been. Certainly based on media stories to date, there have been quite a few refusals, so again the bill seems very worthwhile.

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Graeme Edgeler writes:

The Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill is going through its final stages, and will likely pass this week. The point of this blog post is pretty simple: it is to ask Labour MPs, New Zealand First MPs and Green MPs to consider supporting three particular amendments proposed by National.

These are not amendments that radically change the bill. They just give a bit of extra safeguards against the power being handed to party leaders and their caucuses.

First up is Chris Penks proposed amendment in supplementary order paper 69. It would require registered parties to have rules around the process they would use to seek to expel an MP from Parliament.

How can you vote against that? Surely the Greens will not vote against a requirement for the rules around a party expelling an MP to be known in advance.

NZ First will of course be against it, because Peters flouts his own partys rules. He unilaterally announced the suspension of Brendan Horan, without a single clause of the NZF rules being followed.

So Peters will not want anything as pesky as rules to stop him expelling his own MPs. But have the Greens sold all of their souls to Winston, or just some of them?

In a similar line is Tim Macindoes proposed amendment in supplementary order paper 71. This would require that those rules would have to be provided to the Electoral Commission and available for public inspection.

Again how can anyone object to that? Transparency over what rules a party has in place if they decide to try and expel an MP from Parliament.

I also ask Government MPs to consider supporting Simeon Browns amendment in supplementary order paper 64. This proposes that the caucus vote to declare than an MP has distorted Parliament should occur by secret ballot.

This is quite vital to prevent a leader threatening MPs who dont vote his or her way with also being expelled. Again are the Greens going to vote against secret ballots for expelling an MP?

Justice Minister Andrew Little has accused bill opponents of failing to engage with various safeguards he says are in the bill that would prevent it being abused  in particular the requirement that two-thirds of the caucus must support the leader. I think this is an unfair criticism  I engaged with them in both my written submission and oral submission, and the Academic experts Little criticised as having failed to do so engaged with them in their presentation to the Justice Committee  but now is his chance to meet his own challenge: making the caucus vote a secret ballot would add substantial weight to his argument that the were safeguards in the bill that would prevent a leader being able to silence opposition within their caucus.

Is Andrew Little the Minister of Justice for New Zealand or the Minister for Winston?

Edgeler also proposes increasing the super-majority needed in a caucus from two-thirds. He points out that 18 National MPs could oppose a colleague being expelled, and that MP would still be expelled. Surely an 80% super-majority would be a better safe-guard (rounded down for caucuses of less than five). So the requirement for different size caucuses would be:

2  not possible

3  two MPs

4  three MPs

5  four MPs

6  five MPs

7  six MPs

8  seven MPs

9  eight MPs

10  eight MPs

11  nine MPs

12  ten MPs

13  eleven MPs

14  twelve MPs

15  twelve MPs

So lets see how Labour and Green MPs vote on these amendments. If they vote against, it shows they are so scared of Winston they will do anything he demands. If they vote for them, then at least they can say they have put some minor safeguards in place.

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Simon Jeans is an Australian lawyer specialising in immigration. He was appointed as a member of the Australian Migration Review Tribunal & Refugee Review Tribunal so could be considered an expert. As a member he made decisions on migration and refugee visa applications so this is an area he has specialist knowledge of.

Last week he tweeted Green MP Golriz Ghahraman to disagree with her statement that no human right is absolute (she was supporting the deplatforming of Southern) and said what Ghahraman wasnt true as some human rights are absolute such as the right not to be tortured.

In return Ghahraman blocked him on Twitter. He had never been blocked before, let alone by an MP. And merely for saying the right not to be tortured is an absolute right. So he started to scrutinise Ghahraman, and has now done this blog post.

In it has casts serious doubts on her claims about her life in Iran. Some of these issues have been canvassed previously, and as I recall Ghahraman has conceded where she lived was never bombed, but she visited relatives in Tehran that was bombed. Jeans points out that even Tehran only had bombing for a relatively brief 52 day period. So hard to match that up with the statement Most of Golriz Ghahramans childhood memories are of war.

Others previously have scrutinised these claims, but what is somewhat different here is Jeans is a expert lawyer on Iranian refugees as he has represented Iranian refugees since 1994, and has sat on a tribunal deciding on applications.

He also disagrees with her portrayal of her family as refugees and asylum seekers saying if they were allowed to leave on holiday, they were not regarded by the Iranian Government as hostile to the regime. But against that is the fact they were given asylum by the NZ Government, indicating they must have had a credible case.

Im not sure the blog posts tell us anything we didnt already know, which is at best a well documented tendency to exaggerate. But there is perhaps a lesson in this, about not blocking fellow human rights advocates on Twitter, just because they disagree with you.

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The rival Koreas plan to hold high-level talks on Monday to prepare for a third summit between their leaders, as Pyongyang called on the United States to reciprocate its ''goodwill measures'' by easing sanctions and stopping demands that the North denuclearize first.

The plans by the Korean leaders to meet come as Washington and Pyongyang try to follow through on nuclear disarmament vows made at a U.S.-North Korea summit in June between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

In the most recent sign of growing frustration between Washington and Pyongyang, North Korea criticized senior American officials for insisting that North Korea give up its nuclear weapons first before easing sanctions. Notably, the statement didn't directly criticize Trump.

North Korea said in a statement Thursday that ''some high-level officials within the U.S. administration'' were making ''desperate attempts at intensifying the international sanctions and pressure.''

''We hoped that these goodwill measures would contribute to breaking down the high barrier of mistrust'' between Pyongyang and Washington, the North's Foreign Ministry spokesperson said. ''However, the U.S. responded to our expectation by inciting international sanctions and pressure.''

Those American officials are ''going against the intention of President Trump to advance the DPRK-U.S. relations, who is expressing gratitude to our goodwill measures for implementing the DPRK-U.S. joint statement,'' it said referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Washington has said that sanctions will not be lifted until Pyongyang fully and finally dismantles its nuclear weapons. Some experts say that North Korea does not want to denuclearize first or maybe denuclearize at all because it wants a long, drawn-out process that sees external aid shipped in in return for abandoning nuclear weapons.












Were you lied to growing up in the church? Its actually a possibility. While this seems like a scary thought, it turns out there are many misconceptions about Jesus and His teachings in todays Christian sphere. There are certain beliefs that have been deemed as being Christian values; however they have no Biblical foundation. In reality, some of these beliefs actually go against what Jesus really wants for us. Many of the beliefs are intended to guide Christians to do good, but when taken the wrong way can lead down a slippery slope. They twist the Word of God into thinking we can earn Gods love, or that God favors some Christians over others, for example. Walking with Jesus isnt always easy, and doing so believing these false stigmas only makes it more difficult. Here are some values Jesus wouldnt support, and the Biblical ideals that we should be focusing on instead.

Christian Value #1: Never Doubt or Question God Shutterstock.com The idea that a true Christian would never doubt God is a pretty scary thought. Life naturally will have ups and downs, and in the down times people might question their faith. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. God wants us to be able to come to Him with our questions, concerns and fears. If we think we arent allowed to do so, our image of God gets twisted. Instead of thinking of Him as our loving Father with open arms, we become fearful He will abandon the doubters, wont be patient with us, or doesnt care to hear our problems. We become afraid to talk to the Lord because we think He is angry at us, and we are afraid to talk to other Christians because we think they will judge us. This pushes us further away from the Lord, and gives Satan the opportunity to whisper lies into our ear. The belief that God hates those who doubt Him simply isn't true, because Jesus walks with the broken, hurt and confused. He is ready to answer all of the questions we have with patience and understanding. The Bible tells us of Christians that questioned God and His motivations, and were met with love from God rather than anger. When we speak with God about our doubts and fears, we actually develop a better relationship with Him.

Christian Value #2: Always Have Perfect Church Attendance Shutterstock.com You have probably experienced this persistent ideal in Christian culture. A true, faithful Christian doesnt miss worship services, ever. They dont miss their small group, church functions or volunteer opportunities. They are present for every event and are active members of the church. They are prompt, ready to listen and contribute. While attending church is an important aspect of the Christian life, we shouldnt put it above every other priority in life. Its possible to have a poor relationship with the Lord and still go to church every Sunday; much like perfect attendance in class doesnt mean you will get good grades on your test. What should be priority for you is building a meaningful, strong relationship with Jesus Christ. God is more concerned about where your heart is focused and less where your physical body is going. For example, you may have just moved and haven't found a church you feel fits you and your family yet. That's OK, and you shouldn't force yourself to go somewhere you aren't happy. Furthermore, Dont put your familys needs off to the side because you feel God will punish you for not attending your Wednesday night church meeting. He knows the true intentions in your heart, and thats all that matters.

Christian Value #3: Christians Always Follow the Rules Shutterstock.com Some Christians believe that following the rules all the time is what God considers good and righteous. They will never go against the law because they believe the rules have some level of authority. While many rules are in line with true Christian values, there are some issues with thinking rules can never be wrong. Firstly, righteousness doesnt equate to law. Righteousness should always equate to Jesus. Some rules, simply, are unfair and unjust. The authoritative bodies that put rules into place, whether they are for a country or a school classroom, arent always Christian or follow the Bibles teachings. Following the rules because you think God would want you to is a misconception. There are many rules that Jesus wouldn't support, and He would rather you support true Christian beliefs and Him. Furthermore, this thought can lead down a slippery slope where some Christians will believe they are better than others. Being perfect at following all the rules doesnt make someone more Christian or in better favor with God. God loves all His children just the same, no matter what sins they have committed. Even the person who is in jail because they committed theft isn't looked down on by God, and they shouldn't be looked down on by you. If God is willing to look past the rule-breakers and forgive them for their transgressions, you should be willing to do the same.

Christian Value #4: Always Say Yes Shutterstock.com Christians are always ready to help others in any way possible, right? Wrong. While Christians have a calling to be servants of Jesus, that does not mean they have to take on every task asked of them. God knows and understands that you have limits, and taking on too many tasks will lead to burnout, take time from your family, and can even put a wedge between your relationship with Christ. Saying yes to a toxic friendship, 3rd volunteer position at your church, or the like will eventually break you down. He understands that your mental health is important! Saying no is not immediately considered bad in Gods eyes, because He believes certain things have to take priority over saying yes to someone requesting help. Dont push your prayer time aside because your church needs a new adult volunteer to help out with watching the teens during youth group, for example. God knows in your heart if how you feel about the situation. While saying no can be difficult, sometimes its an important word to utter. Do so when you know you're at your limits, and other Christians will respect your decision.

Christian Value #5: Real Christians Know the Bible Inside and Out Shutterstock.com This is another value that can lead down a slippery slope, where one Christian thinks they are better than another. Knowledge of the Bible does not equal righteousness. The teen that is just beginning to develop their relationship with Jesus still gets the same love as someone who has spent years becoming a preacher. Its important to learn Gods Word and spend time with the Bible, because it is a great tool to help your spiritual journey flourish. However there is so much more to being a Christian than reading text. Being a Christian is about a relationship with Jesus, and knowledge of His teachings is just one part of the bigger whole. God knows what your heart is focused on. If your heart is trying to build a relationship with God, and strives to know Him more, God will see that. However God also sees when your heart only cares about your ego. Other Christians can be see this fakeness, too. Knowledge of the Bible without any real love for Jesus is easier to spot than you might think. Are you someone who goes around flaunting random facts you know about the Bible, or always correcting others who are wrong? If so, you might be spending time with the Bible for the wrong reason.

Are you basing your faith off of these misconceptions? While these values are rooted in good intentions, they dont actually come from the Bible. They are not teachings from Jesus Christ, and He wouldnt support you basing your faith off of these values. Jesus should be our main focus, and His life is the perfect example we can try and model our lives off of. Try to follow His example, and take the time to understand the true Christian values the faith is based on.
Bamako, Aug 13 (AFP) Malian opposition candidate Soumaila Cisse said today he would reject the results of a presidential runoff marred by accusations of fraud, calling on the population "to rise up."

"The fraud is proven, this is why there are results we will not accept," Cisse told reporters at his party's headquarters in Bamako. "I call on all Malians to rise up... We will not accept the dictatorship of fraud," he added.

Vote counting was underway across the vast West African country.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, 73, is the clear frontrunner in a reprise of his 2013 faceoff against former finance minister Cisse, 68.

The opposition leader, in a meeting where hundreds of supporters had gathered on Monday afternoon, also said the programme his party uses to count votes -- which had put him in the lead until then -- was hacked overnight.

Six members of Soumaila Cisse's campaign team, including four who are French, were arrested on Sunday, the team and Salif Traore, the minister of security, said. AFP

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, Aug 13: Over Rs 320 crore has been released by the Centre to the Kerala government as calamity relief fund during 2018-19, the Home Ministry said tonight. The allocation of the State Disaster Relief Fund (SDRF) for 2018-19 was Rs 214 crore, of which the central government's share was Rs 160.50 crore and the state government's share was Rs 53.50 crore. The balance available in the SDRF account as on April 1 this year as reported by the state accountant general Rs 348.45 crore, a home ministry statement said. The first instalment of the central share of the SDRF for 2018-19, released on July 20 this year was Rs 80.25 crore, while the corresponding state share was Rs 26.75 crore. The second instalment of the central share of SDRF for 2018-19, released on August 10, 2018 was Rs 80.25 crore and the corresponding state share was Rs 26.75 crore.

The central government supplements the effort of the Kerala government by providing assistance for relief of immediate nature through the SDRF and the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) as per the established procedure, the statement said. A State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) has been constituted for each state. The central government contributes 75 per cent for general category states and 90 per cent for special category states of the assessed SDRF each year.

The first charge of relief expenditure is on the SDRF and in the cases of calamities of severe nature, it is supplemented from the NDRF as per the established procedure. Financial assistance under the SDRF/NDRF in the wake of natural calamities is by way of relief and not for compensation of loss as suffered/claimed, the ministry said. Additional expenditure, if any, incurred over and above or on other than approved items/norms, is required to be met by the states from their own resources.

In the case of notified natural calamities, as per the established procedure, the state government is required to submit a detailed memorandum indicating the sector-wise details of damage and requirement of funds for relief operations of immediate nature.

On receipt of a memorandum, an Inter-Ministerial Central Team (IMCT) is deputed for an on-the-spot assessment of damages and additional requirement of funds. The report of the IMCT is considered by the Sub-Committee of National Executive Committee (SC-NEC) headed by the Union Home Secretary and then by a High Level Committee (HLC), chaired by the Union Home minister for approving the quantum of additional assistance, from the NDRF.

In the instant case, based on a preliminary memorandum submitted by the Kerala government for additional assistance of Rs 831.10 crore the IMCT was constituted immediately on July 25 this year. The IMCT have visited flood/landslides affected areas in the state from August 7-12 this year. Upon receipt of report from the IMCT, it will be processed for placing before the SC-NEC and HLC for consideration, as per the established procedure.

Though enough funds are available in the SDRF, however the Union Home minister has announced release of Rs 100 crore in advance from the NDRF to help the state in providing relief measures to the affected people. In the instant case, the central government has been providing full support to the Kerala government by mobilising/providing timely logistics and financial resources to supplement the efforts of the state government to deal with the situation effectively in the wake of floods/landslides.

The logistics support provided includes 14 teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Indian Air Force and the Coast Guard helicopters, Army columns, Navy and Coast Guard personnel along with necessary rescue equipments, the statement said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Shimla, August 13: Most places in Himachal Pradesh have witnessed heavy rainfall in the last few days, and according to a forecast there will be heavy to very heavy rainfall at isolated places in mid and low hills of the state for the next two days. Therefore, according to a recent ANI update, due to heavy rains, and landslides all schools in Shimla district, both government, and private schools will remain closed today.

Himachal Pradesh: In the wake of heavy rainfall and landslides in the region, all schools in Shimla district to remain closed today.  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

A cloudburst occurred in Kullu district's Katagala village, and two houses have also been damaged in the flash-floods. No injuries were reported. The rescue team has been rushed to the spot.

Heavy to very heavy rains lashed Hamirpur, Bilaspur, Kangra and Una districts since yesterday with Naina Devi being the wettest in the state with 130.8 mm rains, followed by Mehre 128.2 mm, Nadaun 96 mm, Geler 78.5 mm, Kangra 72 mm, Una 64.6 mm, Nagrota Suriyan 62.4 mm, Shimla Airport 48 mm and Sujanpur Tira 40 mm of rainfall.

Earlier, due to rains causing heavy damage in parts of Himachal Pradesh, the education department has ordered the closure of all private, and government schools till August 10. Life has been paralysed in the area, with several roads, and bridges being washed away. Due to the bad weather, there has been cancellation of flights as well.

(With additional inputs from PTI)

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 13, 2018 08:46 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
South African land reform debates reflect a tricky balance of power post Jacob Zumas rule. GCIS

The instrumental approach

The functionalist approach

The symbolic approach

Meeting of minds

Speculation is widespread that Ramaphosa gave in to the land expropriation without compensation proposition to appease a faction of former president Jacob Zuma which has positioned itself as a champion of radical economic transformation There is also the view that Ramaphosa is out to promote party unity and to outflank the Economic Freedom Fighters , to the partys left, in the buildup to the 2019 general election.All this appears fair comment, and is no way unduly cynical. Politicians say things, whether or not it is entirely wise to say them, to get votes.Yet the land debate is about much more than party politicking. In many ways, it goes to the heart of South Africas post-colonial politics. It speaks to fundamental racial chasms. This points to the very real danger that the different terms on which the land issue is debated simply dont address each other.It would seem to me that there are three broad approaches to which the land issue is debated  the instrumental, the functionalist and the symbolic.All three approaches have a number of things in common. They all recognise the dangers inherent in the grossly disproportionate amount of land owned by whites, they accept that this has arisen out of the injustices of the colonial past, and agree that it needs to be addressed for reasons of both social justice and political stability.Beyond that there tends to be disagreement about ways, means and the urgency of land reform.Its important to understand these different approaches and how they relate to the ANCs proposed implementation of land expropriation without compensation. Its particularly important for people who hold these different viewpoints to understand and find one another. South Africans cant afford to let the land debate be reduced to a shouting match.This argues its case upon both ideological and constitutional grounds.There is the argument that the ANCs move represents a fundamental undermining of property rights, to the extent that it might even threaten the ownership rights of ordinary house-owners in urban areas. As such, it constitutes a major disincentive to investment and totally contradicts Ramaphosas highly-touted goal of attracting $100bn in investment over the next five years.Furthermore, because of the threat to security it involves, the move will serve as major discouragement to commercial farmers, who are unlikely to pour money into infrastructural improvements if they fear being expropriated. As such expropriation without compensation is a major threat to both jobs and economic growth.The property rights argument is backed up by those who posit that the considered constitutional amendment is unnecessary because the constitution already allows for the expropriation of property by the state for public interest purposes.This, the constitutionalists argue, gives the state all the armoury it needs to pursue land reform with urgent speed without threatening property rights.This says that there is a desperate hunger for land among impoverished black poor. This needs to be addressed on grounds of need and political stability.Economically, the argument is that, while the role of commercial agriculture as the principal producer of the nations food supply and of significant exports need to be recognised, there are many areas where farming could be successfully undertaken by black farmers, given the right support. This perspective is steeped in history. It points out how white commercial agriculture was systematically advantaged by the state under white rule, and how prosperous black peasant communities, whose competitiveness constituted a threat to white farmers, were dispossessed.Its argued that there is much land available in South Africa which could valuably be transferred into private or communal black hands. Such land includes property owned by the state, land held by speculators, and farms which over the last two decades have shed most of their workers as they have turned over from direct food production to become game farms.This angle to the debate appeals to the heart as much to the head. It harps on the point that land belongs to Africans. It was stolen by the colonialists and should be given back.The symbolic approach is overwhelmingly about African dignity. As such, it often involves notions of reparations. It tends to brush aside all the difficult policy issues about how land transfer should be managed, let alone the injustices which may be heaped upon white landowners who had nothing to do with the original theft of African land.Ramaphosa is well known for playing the long game, a pragmatist who is ready to bend to political pressures to achieve his long-term objectives.It may well be that he will bow to the ANC imperative to pass a law allowing for expropriation without compensation. But he will want to make sure that it will pass constitutional muster. He will ensure that this amendment meets the requirements of the property clause in the constitution.From this perspective, its tempting to conclude that the huffing and puffing about the ANCs pursuit of expropriation without compensation is really about nothing. But thats not the case. The Zimbabwean experience confirms this.It was the Zimbabwean governments lack of urgency about land reform in the first decades of independence which provided the backdrop to the war veterans seizure of white farms in the late 1990s. It was then that the Robert Mugabe government stepped in to give the land seizures legitimacy and to claim the credit.Much controversy attends the land question in Zimbabwe to this day. Certainly, the post-2000 land reforms have not been a total failure. Nonetheless, what is beyond dispute is that the way they have been carried out has come at enormous cost to overall agricultural production. As such, the Zimbabwe mode of land reform is one South Africa cannot afford to adopt  or to be bundled into by a panic-stricken government scrambling to keep up with events on the ground.The address of the land issue requires a meeting of minds. The instrumental, functionalist and symbolic approaches all have their important role to play, and humility and willingness to listen to competing perspectives should be at a premium.This article was originally published on The Conversation . Read the original article
New Delhi, August 13: India should encourage Bhutan to ensure an increase in the deployment of soldiers around Northern Doklam in the Sikkim sector to check activities of the Chinese military in the sensitive region, a parliamentary panel has suggested in its draft report.

The Parliamentary Panel on External Affairs, headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, felt that increasing the number of soldiers in North Doklam was important for safeguarding India's strategic interests in the region.

The draft report, circulated among the panel's members on August 6, did not clarify whether the committee was favouring increasing the deployment of Indian troops in the region.

Troops of India and China were locked in a 73-day standoff in Doklam in the Sikkim sector from June 16 last year after the Indian side stopped construction of a road in the disputed tri-junction by the Chinese army.

Bhutan and China have a dispute over Doklam and both the countries have been holding talks to resolve the issue.

The parliamentary panel also suggested that India should remain alert and watchful in the Doklam area even though last year's face-off between Indian and Chinese armies was resolved peacefully.

It is clear that China's Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) took advantage of absence of Bhutanese soldiers in Batangla-Merugla-Sinchela ridgeline, which is in Bhutan, the panel noted.

Therefore, the committee recommends deployment of higher number of soldiers in Northern Doklam. India should encourage Bhutan for it so that the Chinese army could be stopped from pushing the limit of the tri-junction point, it said.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi is a member of the 31-member panel, where a majority of the members are from the BJP. Some members of the committee travelled to Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh to take stock of ground situations and meet senior officials there.

The panel has been briefed several times on the situation in Doklam by S Jaishankar, former foreign secretary, and his successor Vijay Gokhale.

The foreign ministry officials had informed the panel that Bhutan was firmly with India on the issue, sources in the panel said.

They said during discussions, Gandhi had questioned foreign ministry officials on China's objective and why Beijing chose Doklam to trigger a confrontation.
Kupwara, August 13: An army jawan has lost his life as terrorists tried to infiltrate into the India side of Line of Control (LoC) in Tanghdar sector of Jammu and Kashmirs Kupwara district on Monday. The gunfight broke after Indian security forces detected a suspicious movement along the LoC. The jawan has been identified as Pushpendra Singh. According to reports, the Indian Army has foiled the infiltration bid.

Singh was injured during the gunbattle early in the morning on Monday. He was airlifted to 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar where he succumbed to his injuries. The Armys northern command through a tweet expressed condolences to the family of the martyr.

#ChinarCorpsCdr & All ranks salute the supreme sacrifice of Sep Pushpendra Singh, who laid down his life in foiling infiltration bid in #Tangdhar Sector on 13 Aug 18 and offer condolences to the family. #IndianArmy @adgpi @NorthernComd_IA pic.twitter.com/jLyfLzDDor  Chinar Corps - Indian Army (@Chinarcorps_IA) August 13, 2018

On August 7, four Indian Army soldiers including a major-rank officer were also martyred in an encounter in Jammu and Kashmirs Gurez sector. Four terrorists were also killed in the encounter. The gunbattle started after the army noticed a suspicious movement in Gurez area of North Kashmir close to Line of Control (LoC) during the night.

On August 4, five terrorists were killed in a joint operation carried out by the Special Operation Group (SOG) of Jammu and Kashmir Police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Shopian district. The forces acted after they received information about the presence of the terrorists in the area.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 13, 2018 10:41 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Weve all heard stories from people experiencing ghostly spirits around them and the thought of it is spooky enough to scare you. But a woman in New Zealand claims to have sex with the ghost of her boyfriend as told to the hosts of a radio show. Woman identified as Simone said that she was definitely sure the ghost was her former partner. Recently, a woman in UK claimed that she had moved from men to have sex with ghosts from 11 years.

Simones boyfriend died tragically while they were in a long-term relationship and has been visiting her at night ever since. Speaking to New Zealand radio show The Edge, the woman said: I get some good sensations. She told the hosts Jono Pryor and Sharyn Casey, I was in a long-term relationship and unfortunately he passed away. But yeah, he still visits me every now and then and lets me finish, I suppose.

The radio presenters had asked listeners to call in if they had ever had any experiences with ghosts. Explaining her own encounter, Simone said, Well I just sort of know hes there. I get some things, you know some little notes to know hes in the room. And then you know, I get a bit excited and he comes closer and closer. After being asked if she was sure it was not a dream, Simone responded: No, Im definitely sure its him. She clarified that the intimacy involved no kissing but some sensations. The host said he honestly had no words.

The call came after a UK woman claimed this week shes also in a serious and sexual relationship with a ghost she met in Australia. Amethyst Realm, 30, a spiritual guidance counsellor, says shes had over 20 sexual relationships over the past 11 years and recently met her true ghostly love in Australia.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 13, 2018 04:50 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Kabul, Aug 13: Over 300 people, including 100 government troops and 30 civilians, have been killed in the intense fighting between Taliban militants and the security forces in Afghanistan's Ghazni city, the country's Defence Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami said on Monday. The militant group started its offensive in the city last Friday. "As of midday today, the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces recaptured control of nearly all parts of Ghazni city and the Taliban militants would be expelled from the city soon," Bahrami said at a joint press briefing with Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak. He said that up to 100 government security force members, 30 civilians and over 194 Taliban militants were killed during the four-day clashes between security forces and Taliban militants in the city, Xinhua news agency reported.

At least 147 militants were injured. The US was supporting the Afghan government forces in conducting airstrikes tageting the Taliban. Within the past 24 hours, the Defence Ministry deployed reinforcement in Ghazni city and its adjacent areas. Fresh troops will bring considerable changes in the security situation of the city in the next 24 hours, Bahrami added.

Last week, Taliban militants launched a massive attack on Ghazni, 125 km south of Kabul, in a coordinated effort to take back the city. Hundreds of Taliban insurgents stormed important government entities including the National Directorate for Security (Afghanistan's Intelligence Agency) and the provincial governor's office.

"The Afghan police and Army will soon clear Ghazni city from the Taliban and normalcy and peace will return into the city as soon as possible," the Interior Minister said. The clashes also blocked a main road connecting Kabul to southern and western provinces and scores of travellers were stranded. According to authorities, about 100 soldiers of the Afghan special force were missing in the Ghazni province. President Ashraf Ghani ordered more troops to be sent to the city.

Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that residents of Ghazni were struggling to access basic services and medical care. "Medication at the main hospital is reportedly becoming scarce... Main access roads both north and south of the city to larger cities where medical facilities are available are contested and unsafe for people to travel," the OCHA said in a statement.

"We call on all parties to the conflict to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect the lives and rights of civilians and to protect civilian infrastructure," it said.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 13, 2018 08:39 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Pyongyang, Aug 13: North and South Korea on Monday announced to hold their third summit in Pyongyang sometime before the end of September, reported Associated Press. The time and venue of the summit were finalised after high-level talks between North Korea and South Korea. South Korean President Moon Jae-in is expected to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un again at the summit.

The high-level talks to decide time and venue of the third summit was held in Tongilgak in the border village of Panmunjom 'to bolster the implementation of the Panmunjom Declaration', according to the joint press corps report. Moon and Kim met in Panmunjom on April 27 for the first time, agreeing to hold another summit in Pyongyang in the fall. They met again on May 26.

In April, Moon and Kim signed the Panmunjom Declaration under which the two Koreas promised to work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, halt hostile acts against each other and bolster cross-border exchanges. They also pledged to meet in Pyongyang later this year.

The Moon-Kim summit in April was historical as it broke a long spell of hostility between the two sides after the last summit in 2007 in Pyongyang.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 13, 2018 11:40 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
First drive: 2019 Chevrolet Silverado

Aug 13, 2018, 8:00am ET

Chevy looks to leapfrog the field with its latest half-ton overhaul.

More and more, we talk about pickups the way we used to talk about sedans. The emphasis seems to have shifted from capability and ruggedness to comfort and convenience. That's no accident, of course. As mainstream buyers started to eyeball trucks, it was inevitable that manufacturers would build to the trend.

Love it or hate it, the pickup truck has become the commuter car of choice for a massive chunk of the American driving public. But while a large number of buyers may want a truck, they don't all want the same truck.

If you think the luxury car market is over-saturated with options, do yourself a favor and just go to your happy place for the next paragraph or two, because the 2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 is offered in eight different trims with six different engines and three different transmissions.

Not every trim can be had with every engine, and each engine is mated to a specific transmission, but the long and short of it is that you can get the Silverado in 19 different configurations of just those three variables, and we haven't even touched on things like cab size or bed length yet.

And keep in mind that we're only talking about the Silverado 1500. There's also Silverado HD and a forthcoming, medium-duty variant (which Chevy insists is different enough to be a unique model).

The spread

To make it a little easier to understand the 2019 Silverado's trim walk, we're going to break it down into three categories: base, mid-grade and premium.

More basic models come in three flavors: Work Truck (WT), Custom and Custom Trail Boss. All three come standard with the 4.3L V6 (305 horsepower, 283 lb-ft of torque) and max out at 8,000 pounds of towing and 2,500 pounds of payload. Those bump up to 11,000 pounds and 2,430 pounds, respectively, if you go for the optional 5.3L V8, which makes 355 horsepower and 383 lb-ft of torque. In these trucks, the 5.3L is a carry-over and paired to the older 6-speed automatic.

What differentiates these three? Well, Work Truck is the absolute base of base models. Custom is effectively an appearance package, adding nothing in terms of feature content but dressing the truck up to look more like an LT. Custom Trail Boss adds the Z71 off-road package (which we'll break down later), a two-inch suspension lift, Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac all-terrain tires and monotube shocks.

In the middle of the pack, we find the LT and the RST. Both come with the new 2.7L turbocharged four-cylinder as a standard engine, with the 5.3L V8 and 3.0L I6 Diesel available as upgrades. The four-banger makes 310 horsepower and 348 lb-ft of torque (max 7,200 pounds towing/2,280 payload). The 5.3L V8 makes the same power as the variant found in the more basic models, but comes with a newer eight-speed automatic transmission and features an updated cylinder deactivation system. It also gets a bump in max towing (up to 11,600 pounds) but a dip in payload capacity (2,190).

The diesel is not yet available, and Chevy has not finalized its power output or EPA figures, though the company insists it compares favorably to the competition. It's paired to GM's new ten-speed automatic.

LT makes all of the exterior upgrades of the Custom trim standard and gets you interior upgrades like the 8-inch infotainment screen. This is also the first trim where leather seating is available. LT is Silverado's bread-and-butter trim, with popular equipment options available for those who want more content. RST features what Chevy calls a "street performance" look, with LED lighting, body-colored trim and available 22-inch wheels.

The premium end of the spectrum is occupied by the LT Trail Boss, the LTZ and the High Country. All of these come with the 5.3L V8 and eight-speed automatic as standard equipment. LTZ and High Country models are also available with GM's ubiquitous 6.2L V8 (making 420 horsepower and 460 lb-ft of torque here) or the aforementioned diesel, both of which are mated to the ten-speed automatic. The 6.2L offers 12,200 pounds of towing capacity and 2,100 pounds of payload. For the time being, these are the best numbers for the 2019 Silverado.

While we're calling the LT Trail Boss a premium offering here due to the standard V8, its equipment set is based on that of the mid-grade LT. Like the Custom Trail Boss, it's differentiated by the Z71 package and other off-road features. LTZ takes the RST's premium looks and adds interior content to match, like standard leather seating.

High Country is where the price tag really starts shooting up. It goes up against its competitors' Limited trims, both of which have been making noise for punching ever deeper into the luxury space and boasting price tags to match. You'll find standard leather, stitched dash accents, wood grain trim and a power tailgate, along with a plethora of other convenience features.

Z71 is now available on every Silverado model, and it bundles Rancho twin-tube shocks, hill descent control, a two-speed transfer case and locking rear differential (non-Z71 4x4 models get a single-speed transfer case), skid plates, a beefed-up air filter, Bridgestone Dueler all-terrain tires and dual exhaust outlets on V8 models.

The updates

Silverado's engineers will proudly boast that the new truck is larger and lighter. You'd probably expect the biggest weight savings to be in models equipped with the 2.7L four-cylinder. Not so. The most significant gap to the outgoing truck is actually the 5.3L V8 short cab/short box configuration, and it's down 450 pounds from the variant it replaces.

Close to 200 pounds of that weight reduction comes from the body and frame, each roughly 90 pounds lighter than before. Unlike Ford, GM elected to stick with old-fashioned steel for its fixed panels and frame. "Swing" panels (anything on a hinge) are all aluminum, including the tailgate.

Chevy offers four different tailgate packages, ranging from a simple manual piece to a power up/down unit on higher trims--a feature currently exclusive to Silverado in this segment. Other small updates, like the use of composite second-stage springs on some variants, shaved even more weight.

The new Silverado also boasts a longer wheelbase and slightly increased overall length. They didn't increase in proportion, which means the new truck has more space between the wheels (and, consequently, shorter overhangs, particularly in the front).

To make better use of that extra room, Chevy took the opportunity to re-think its bed construction. A new five-piece configuration opens up more than six inches of lateral bed space (wall-to-wall), giving the Silverado's short box more raw volume (up to 20%) than even its competitors' standard-length beds.

The new bed also offers 21 total tie-downs (12 fixed, nine moveable). The 12 fixed tie-downs can individually handle a 500-pound load before deforming. Using multiple tie-downs obviously distributes those forces over them; in other words, 500 pounds is not the max you can secure. 120-volt power and bed lighting are also available.

Inside, the Silverado gets lots of behind-the-scenes upgrades, but not so many visual ones. This was intentional, or so Chevy's program managers say, anyway, claiming that customer feedback overwhelmingly indicated that the interior didn't need to change.

That said, some of the updates are pretty cool, including the new built-in trailering app which allows owners to manage and control features such as available integrated hitch and mirror cameras along with dealer-installed trailer cameras and trailer tire pressure monitoring sensors.

Owners can create profiles for their trailers which will allow them to track mileage/hours and maintenance schedules and store dialed-in trailer brake settings, diagnose electrical issues (such as dead trailer lamps) and remotely run a light test from a companion application available for smartphones.

The experience

We had just one day to spend with the 2019 Silverado, so we had to triage our time behind the wheel (not to mention jockey with two-dozen other journalists). Chevy says that more than half of its trucks leave dealer lots with one of the two available gasoline V8s, so that's where we chose to focus.

Chevy's route took us on a circuitous route from Jackson, Wyoming, west to Victor, Idaho, and then south and east (and back over the border) to Alpine on our way back to home base.

Jackson itself sits at roughly 6,200 feet, and we saw elevations as high as 8,400 feet over Teton Pass. The 2.7L turbo-four was probably downright lively in this environment, but the 5.3L V8 in our LT Trail Boss felt the effects of altitude. It was more than capable of maintaining speed through the Pass, but it worked its eight-speed automatic pretty hard to do it.

What impressed us the most about the Trail Boss was just how quiet and composed it was. Sure, sharper impacts would get the Z71's off-road suspension a bit jiggly, but that's to be expected from a stiffly-sprung, solid-axle half-ton truck. We spent the entire drive cruising with the radio off and never noticed any objectionable levels of road or wind noise. Color us impressed.

In Alpine (about 600 feet lower than Jackson), we grabbed a 5.3L LTZ model with a 6,000-pound load behind it and took it out on US-26 for a taste of towing. Between the elevation and the load, the "little" V8 was working hard, but managed to negotiate curvy roads with 55- and 65-mile-per-hour speed limits with very little drama. Acceleration was a bit leisurely, but, all things considered, it was more than adequate.

Alpine also gave us the chance to take some Z71 models on a purpose-built off-road course set up just for the occasion. It was a short course designed to briefly highlight each of the package's prominent features--logs for the locking rear differential; a pit for hill descent control; rocks for articulation and the all-terrain tires; and mud puddles because, hell, they're just plain fun.

Did we learn much from it? Honestly, no. It was far too small and controlled for any meaningful evaluation. Just know that, given a wide enough trail, a Z71-equipped Silverado can hang just fine. That shouldn't come as a huge shock.

From Alpine, we headed back east in a 6.2L High Country. Where the 5.3L V8 got the job done just fine, the 6.2L is an absolute gem. It pulled much harder than its 10-percent power advantage would suggest, and it felt and sounded much better doing it. Even with the Dynamic Fuel Management system working in the background, it never put a foot wrong, and it delivered better than 20 MPG during the course of our drive. It's a shame only 10 percent of all Silverados are sold with this wonderful engine.

The catch

By choosing to focus our seat time on V8 models, we effectively pigeon-holed ourselves into the premium end of the Silverado spectrum, but we managed to set aside some time to sit in the lower trims for comparison's sake.

If we're being honest, crawling around inside the various trims just gave us a sense of deja vu. A redesign this significant seems like the perfect opportunity to make a splash in the one place customers see most. If GM's customers don't care, then maybe we're off-base, but having spent time in the new Ram 1500, we're willing to bet at least some buyers who have no particular brand loyalty might find their eyes wandering.

Chevy's response may be to argue that the Silverado can do "truck stuff" better than the Ram (or the F-150, for that matter), but that presupposes that all half-ton buyers are actually interested in doing "truck stuff." One look around a Trader Joe's parking lot will demonstrate otherwise. More to the point, you don't offer 19 variations of a truck if all of your buyers are after the same thing.

Focusing for a moment on the premium end of the segment, we're of the belief that Chevrolet is becoming increasingly hamstrung by the existence of its GMC sister brand when it comes to really exploring the luxury truck space. Sure, it's all the family, but the very existence of Denali puts an effective ceiling on Chevrolet's efforts to explore that profitable niche.

Leftlane's bottom line

The 2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 is, as expected, one heck of a truck. We're a little let down by what feels like a carry-over interior design, but it doesn't detract significantly from a comfortable, capable package that is sure to remain a powerhouse seller in a market hungry for half-tons.

2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 High Country Crew Cab base price, $56,300; as-tested, $65,655

6.2L engine, $2,495; 22" polished wheels, $2,000; Technology package, $1,625; Iridescent Pearl finish, $995; Safety package II, $745; destination, $1,495

2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LTZ Crew Cab base price, $48,700; as-tested, $54,730

LTZ Convenience package, $1,550; 20" polished wheels, $1,100; Iridescent Pearl finish, $995; Safety package I, $890; destination, $1,495.

2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LT Trail Boss Crew Cab base price, $48,300; as-tested, $54,095

Convenience package, $1,805; Convenience package II, $1,420; 20" painted wheels, $800; trailer brake controller, $275; destination, $1,495

Exterior photos by Byron Hurd. Interior photos courtesy of Chevrolet.
Aug 13, 2018, 11:02am ET

Musk says Saudi Arabia behind funding to take Tesla private

Musk wrote a blog post clarifying his remarks about taking Tesla private.

Elon Musk says the funding that he expects to take Tesla private is coming from the Saudi Arabian sovereign fund, according to a blog post Monday.

In a post titled "Update on Taking Tesla Private," Musk outlined his reasoning for making public comments via twitter last week, saying that a meeting on July 31st left him "with no question" that a deal to take Tesla private would be done, Reuters reports.

"I have continued to communicate with the Managing Director of the Saudi fund. He has expressed support for proceeding subject to financial and other due diligence and their internal review process for obtaining approvals," Musk wrote.

"He has also asked for additional details on how the company would be taken private, including any required percentages and any regulatory requirements," he continued.

When and how quickly the requisite next steps will take place remains unclear, however, regulatory requirements will force Tesla to begin providing details within days of anything that meets the threshold of market-moving actions, which Musk's blog post may constitute.
A Bethlehem Township woman alleges her boyfriend assaulted her in front of their 3-year-old son, and then kept her from leaving their home.

Jeremy Strausser, 38, was arrested Saturday and charged with false imprisonment, simple assault, making terroristic threats, harassment and criminal mischief.

He was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $25,000 bail.

The victim reported she was holding the couple's three-year-old son on Friday, when Strausser arrived at their home in the 1800 block of Willow Park Road, walked up to her and hit her across the face.

The hit knocked the woman's glasses off, police said. Strausser allegedly picked up the glasses, put them on the ground in front of the woman, and then stomped them into pieces.

Strausser took the woman's phone, hurting her hand in the process, and did not give it back to her, police said.

Stausser told the woman to pack her things and leave, and pushed her while she was on the stairs, according to police. He allegedly grabbed her face and spit on her.

Officers said they saw bruises on the woman's face, arm and back.

The woman alleged Strausser repeatedly called her names while their son was watching and crying, and told her to commit suicide.

Strausser told the victim to clean up and leave, but then told her she could not have her phone back, could not use the car or take their son, police said.

Strausser kept the woman in a bedroom, and he stayed awake on the couch to ensure she could not get her phone or keys, according to police.

The next morning Strausser continued calling the woman names, but allowed her to use her cellphone so she could get a ride to work; Strausser was standing next to the victim while she used the phone, according to police.

When the woman's ride arrived, Strausser reportedly told her to "get the (expletive) out."

Records show Strausser was arrested in 2000 and charged with kidnapping, false imprisonment and simple assault.

The kidnapping charge was withdrawn at the district court level, and Strausser later pleaded guilty to false imprisonment and simple assault. He was sentenced to probation, records show.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.


UPDATE: Bethlehem police ID armed suicidal man involved in overnight standoff

A suicidal man was being treated early Monday at St. Luke's University Hospital in Fountain Hill after a nearly six-hour standoff with Bethlehem police that included the man firing shots, Chief Mark DiLuzio reports.

The incident began after a woman was FaceTiming with the man and he picked up a handgun, held it to his head and threatened to kill himself inside a Wyandotte Street apartment, DiLuzio said. The man fired several times and hung up, the chief added.

The woman about 9:45 p.m. Sunday called the city's 911 center, DiLuzio said.

The 400 block of Wyandotte was shut down and police tried to talk to the man, DiLuzio said. Phone contact was made as the suicide threats continued, DiLuzio said. The first and second floors of the apartment building were evacuated and Bethlehem Emergency Management found the residents a safe place to shelter into the morning, DiLuzio said.

Several members of the city police Crisis Negotiation Team arrived and set up communication by phone, text and Facebook, DiLuzio said. Emergency Response Team members responded due to the gunfire and the "immediate threat to public safety," DiLuzio said.

After five hours and 45 minutes of talking, the man surrendered without incident to ERT officers, DilUzio said.

The man was taken to the hospital for treatment, DiLuzio said.

More information about the incident and criminal charges will be released later in the day, DiLuzio said.

Bethlehem fire and EMS personnel assisted at the scene, DiLuzio said.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
After 29 years with the Easton Fire Department -- the last 12 as chief -- John Bast is retiring, he said Monday.

The official date is Sept. 27, but he has worked his last day, using accumulated vacation time between now and then.

Bast, 52, who is also the city's emergency management coordinator, expects to take a bit of time off before deciding what he wants to do next. He will stay involved with the Burn Foundation, where he's on the board, and the Pennsylvania Career Fire Chiefs Association, where he has served for the past year as vice president, he said.

He wants to spend more time with his family, including Kathleen, his wife of 16 years, and daughters Amanda, 26, of Phoenix; Rachel, 24, of Bethlehem; and Samantha, 9, a fourth-grader at Palmer Elementary.

He's been a firefighter since he was 18 when he joined the Hecktown volunteer department, he said.

Easton fire Chief John Bast has spent more than 30 years in the fire service. (lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

"Obviously, it is part of my life," he said.

And while he won't "completely turn off" his involvement in what became his career, he's looking for "something a lot less hazardous."

It's not just the risk to personal safety at a fire scene.

"You're on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he said. "It starts to get to you. I've seen some friends work a real long time and it just ate them up."

Bast has recommended Deputy Chief Kevin Arnold to "move up to" acting chief, something that "by policy" should begin Monday, he said.

The decision on a permanent chief will be up to Mayor Sal Panto Jr. and city Administrator Luis Campos, Bast said. Panto couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Bast, an Allentown College graduate who lives in Palmer, explained his achievements -- and one thing he hoped to but didn't get done.

He became an accredited chief in 2012, something that involved five years worth of effort, including creating a training portfolio, writing papers and being reviewed by his peers, he said. He's disappointed that he couldn't lead the entire department through the accreditation process, similar to what was achieved by the police department, he said.

Easton fire Chief John Bast sometimes had unorthodox duties. (lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

"I tried to get it started years ago," he said. "I just didn't have the support of the city."

But he was able to get all city firefighters certified to national standards, he said.

He also got the department certified for Quick Response Service, a first-responder program. And he was able to lower the commercial insurance rating in the city, saving money for Easton businesses, he said. Achieving a drop from a rating of four to a rating of three "is kind of tough," he said. The effort involved documentation, training requirements, working with code enforcement and having a fire-prevention program, he said.

Bast helped the city of Lancaster choose a new chief and served on a state Senate committee on deployment of fire and emergency services in the state, he said. He was a member of then-Gov. Ed Rendell's 911 committee and currently serves as the board chairman of the Easton Salvation Army, he said.

He's managed many grant applications for the city and was involved with the purchase of two fire engines, a ladder truck, a rescue truck and a four-wheeler rescue vehicle, he said.

He sums up his service the way other city chiefs have, he said.

"I'm happy to say that I left the fire department better than I found it," he said.

And his involvement with the Burn Foundation and ensuring Easton has a "robust" fire prevention program prove true something everyone might not know about fire departments, he said.

"The main job of the fire department is to prevent fires, not put them out," he said. "If we can prevent a fire, we've done our jobs."

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Lack of sanitation is one of the world's leading development challenges. Globally, around two billion people do not have access to appropriate sanitation and nearly a billion of them do not have any toilet. Provision of a hygienic sanitation solution coupled with regular handwashing and access to clean, drinkable water is known to have marked improvements on community health.

Complex challenge

Lungi Zuma

Jeanette Neethling

Dr "Tina" Velkushanova

Unathi Jack

Lerato Magalo

Readers of theranked clean water and safe sewage disposal as the most important medical milestone in the last 150 years. A WHO report released in 2007 indicated that it would be possible to receive an estimated $9 return on investment for every $1 by halving the population without access to appropriate sanitation. By achieving the target, the report suggested that around 190 million annual diarrheal diseases could be averted globally.Although South Africa has made significant strides in safe water and sanitation provision, there are still people that do not have an appropriate sanitation system. The sanitation challenge is complex and is related to user preferences and technical constraints, and these are often hard to match. A large part of the population would prefer a flush toilet but this is a major challenge in a water scarce country such as South Africa. For this reason, we often find dry toilets outside major urban areas as it is technically challenging to provide flush toilet systems in areas where water is restricted and where there are no existing sewers. The laying of sewer pipes is expensive and for it to function effectively, it requires both reliable energy and sufficient water supply.Recent climatic change events have also started to make us realise the value of using clean water to flush down human excreta, even for areas with sewer systems in place. During the Cape Town drought, citizens of the city realised it was not sensible to flush nine to 12 litres of drinking water each time the toilet was used. Many started instead to recycle their showering and laundry water to flush toilets.On a national level, brilliant engineers are looking to re-engineer toilet systems that meet user expectations and use less resources, and developing innovative ways in which we can provide sustainable sanitation solutions to South Africa. In my field of work I have met with many brilliant engineers who have and continue to make admirable strides, particularly, in the field of sanitation, and they happen to be women!Lungi Zuma is a chemical engineer who holds an undergraduate degree from University of Cape Town (UCT) and a masters degree from UKZN. After working in the petrochemical industry, Zuma decided she would use her skills to assist with the sanitation challenge. For her masters degree, she evaluated how pit latrines and other dry toilets function which involved her conducting chemical and physical analysis on the faecal waste she collected. This information is critical for design engineers to develop treatment systems that can safely treat the faecal waste. Zuma now works at eThekwini Municipality and has been a key figure in the development and evaluation of novel sanitation systems at the municipality. In 2015, she was invited by the then minister of water and sanitation to take part in Youth Day celebrations in Pretoria after showing the minister the innovative treatment systems installed in eThekwini during the Sanitation Indaba held in Durban 14-15 May 2015.Jeanette Neethling is an engineer working for Partners in Development, an engineering firm based in Pietermaritzburg. Neethling obtained her masters degree in environmental engineering at University of Colorado Boulder in the USA. She has contributed to the development of many innovative sanitation solutions for South Africa. She has led three WRC studies. The first focused on developing and testing better management techniques for rural schools. The second evaluated the appropriateness and applicability of female urinals to shorten the length of queues at public ablution facilities.Her latest research involves the monitoring of an innovative toilet system called the Low Pour Flush toilet. The Low Pour Flush toilet was developed by the company that she works for and has been designed to use low volumes of flush water and can operate without the need for conventional sewers. The innovative school sanitation management project that she led has been successful; Unilever through their Domestos brand recognised the value of her work and upscaled the product to assist with sanitation provision in 150 schools.Known to her peers as Tina, Dr Velkushanova is an environmental engineer and an expert in WASH and sanitary engineering. She holds a PhD degree in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Southampton, UK. Velkushanova is a senior research associate at the University of KwaZulu-Natals Pollution Research Group, where she mentored postgraduate students and provided information for the improved design of future on-site sanitation facilities and technologies, and mechanical pit-emptying devices (devices that can empty poop from dry toilets).Some of these projects are funded under the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations programmes Reinvent the Toilet Challenge and the Transformative Technologies and include collaboration with local and international partnering organisations. Two years ago, she was awarded a prestigious grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for developing standardised methods for characterising faecal waste from non-sewered sanitation systems and leads a team of researchers based in Switzerland, The Netherlands and Thailand.Unathi Jack works for Emanti Management based in Stellenbosch. She holds an M.Tech in chemical engineering from Peninsula Technikon. Jack has been leading a programme aimed at developing planning tools to manage non-sewered systems. Using a tool developed by GiZ and the World Bank  known as the Excreta Flow Diagram  she has been facilitating the training of sanitation stakeholders in developing the sanitation planning for their area with funding support from the WRC.Jack has contributed to the development of risk assessment tools and water services-related guidelines; assessment of drinking water and wastewater systems; and analysis and interpretation of water quality data and wastewater effluent quality. She also assists in conducting environment impact assessments and assisting clients to understand and implement the relevant policies, regulations and strategies.Lerato Magalo has a B-Tech degree in civil engineering from the Tshwane University of Technology, a postgraduate diploma in business administration (PDBA) from the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) and has completed a Harvard Leadership Programme. At the Standards Division of the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS), she is the programme manager for engineering and built environment standards, which includes the development of standards in the built environment, as well as transportation, automotive, mechanical and mining standards.Despite her wide portfolio, Magalo still finds the time to serve as the head of delegation for SABS for ISO standards development for innovative sanitation solutions that do not require sewers. Magalo provides her extensive engineering experience to ensure that new sanitation systems meet local safety requirements.
More than 100 people waved American flags, carried red, white and blue balloons and carried signs, stating, "Back the Blue," "Let Police Do Their Job" and "We Can't Afford Indecisive Cops" in a rally Sunday supporting a South Whitehall Township police officer charged with manslaughter in a fatal shooting last month.

The rally took place at 2 p.m. Sunday near the Comfort Suites Hotel across from Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom on Hamilton Boulevard, where investigators said Officer Jonathan Roselle shot and killed a 44-year-old Hasbrouck Heights, N.J., resident on July 28.

Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin last week charged Roselle, 33, of Parryville, Carbon County, with voluntary manslaughter in the death of Joseph Santos.

Authorities said Santos, who had been seen jumping on moving cars along Hamilton Boulevard, refused to comply with Roselle's orders to lie down on the ground. The officer fired the fatal shots after Santos continued walking toward him, according to investigators.

In the aftermath of the shooting, authorities said, Roselle told fellow officers he "f----d up," and Martin told reporters had determined Roselle's use of deadly force was objectively unreasonable "in light of the facts as they existed at the time."

Roselle is an Army veteran, a current major in the National Guard and rookie cop who graduated from the Allentown Police Academy in December. Roselle was released on $75,000 unsecured bail.

Sunday's event was mostly peaceful, with the exception of an appearance by one woman who told Roselle's supporters they were "promoting murder," according to the Morning Call newspaper. Upper Macungie Township police then arrived to watch the exchange, according to the report.

The rally in support of Roselle was at the same time an interfaith service was being held Sunday in Santos' memory at Resurrected Life Church, 144 N. 9th St. in Allentown. There were no protestors outside the church when the service began.

Sunday's demonstration also was held just a short distance away from the site of one 12 days earlier for Santos. Roselle's supporters said they couldn't get past Santos not following repeated commands to get on the ground, in which they believe led to his death.

"When it comes to law enforcement, this is kind of the unsung heroes of our society that have been getting a bad rap consistently over the last decade or so," said Chris Ford of New Tripoli. "We're seeing less and less ability for civilians to stand up (and support police) and we're talking about people who go out every day, risking their lives for people -- no matter who they are."

Roxane Stout of Salisbury Township said her son Sgt. James Stout worked with Roselle in providing security to Dorney Park. Her son explained to her how difficult it is sometimes in police work to make split second decisions -- something that changed Roxane Stout's mind about the case, she said.

"People don't realize officers have a split second -- I tell them to blink their eyes. And can you make a decision that quick? Can you decide are you in danger or not?," she asked. "I don't think people understand what a split second means. And then have to come to your own conclusion."

Corey Fatzinger was one of the organizers of Sunday's rally. He said he merged his Facebook page with another Facebook page titled "Support Officer Johnathan Roselle and Our Men and Women in Blue." The woman who started that page declined to give her name, telling an NJ Advance Media photographer she feared a backlash of threats.

Fatzinger said he has two family members in law enforcement and that the incident hit home.

"I think what happened to the officer was wrong, he did his job," Fatzinger said. "That could have been my family member. If the guy (Santos) just got down on the ground and listened to the officer's commands, there would be no protest."

While there were no speakers at the rally, several carried signs and many shouted, applauded and gave the thumbs up to passers-by motorists honking horns. At least one patrol vehicle honked their horn at the group as it drove along Hamilton Boulevard.

Lisa Mearkle of Hummelstown, Dauphin County, echoed the difficulty in doing the job of a police officer, saying it's hard for someone to risk their life every day protecting the public.

Mearkle is a former Hummelstown police Officer acquitted in November 2015 herself of third-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter charges in a fatal shooting. Mearkle shot to death 59-year-old David Kassick after he fled an attempted traffic stop, according to our sister website, PennLive.

Mearkle later resigned from the force under an agreement that left her with $120,000 in severance pay, the report stated.

"I believe the majority of police officers do their jobs the right way and have good intentions," she said during Sunday's rally for Roselle. "I don't believe Officer Roselle went to work saying, 'I'm going to kill somebody.' His intentions were to go to work to do a good job for the community, be a good police officer and go home to his family at the end of the day."

The interfaith service for Santos was organized by Make the Road PA and other activist groups that have protested the shooting and called for an end to police brutality. Barbara Redmond, secretary of the NAACP Allentown Branch, said there was a good turnout in support of Santos' family Sunday.

Redmond, who was present at the rally in support of Roselle, called the event insensitive at the scene where Santos died. She said it should have been moved to another location in the township.

"It's very insensitive and disrespectful to the family. How would you feel if this was your family at this time?," she asked. "We have nothing against the police, but we're against police brutality."

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A Dodge Ram pickup truck burned late Saturday night at a Washington Township, Warren County, car lot, according to an on-scene report.

A Nissan pickup parked next to the Dodge at Rossi Buick-GMC at 360 Route 31 South was damaged as well in the 10:30 p.m. blaze.

The engine compartment and the cab of the Ram pickup sustained heavy fire damage.

The shoulder of Route 31 South was shut during the incident.

The dealership was closed when the fire started and there were no reports of injuries.

Washington Township police are investigating and there wasn't more information to immediately release, Lt. John Kaufmann said Monday morning.

The township and borough fire departments and the Washington Rescue Squad assisted at the scene.

Rich Maxwell provided information for this post.



Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A video of a man reportedly from Offaly being confronted as part of a sting operation into the alleged online grooming of minors has been viewed almost 115,000 times.

Gardai have confirmed that they were called to the scene of an incident at Hueston Station on Sunday, August 12 at approximately 2pm.

A male in his 40s was arrested and taken to Kilmainham Garda station where he was later released without charge.

It's understood this incident related to the live video, posted by Child Protection Awareness group on Facebook, in which a man was confronted for allegedly grooming and attempting to meet an individual he believed to be a 14-year-old girl.

In the video, a female member of the Child Protection Awareness group accuse the man of exchanging explicit texts and images with a one of their members who pretended to be a 14-year-old girl online.

A source said that gardai in Tullamore are continuing to investigate all circumstances relating to this incident having been made aware of it on Sunday afternoon.

It's understood phone records and content are being analysed in this instance.

A garda spokesperson also made a statement in relation to so-called 'vigilante groups' who partake in these operations to reveal potential child predators.

"An Garda Siochana does not comment on or discuss speculation about the specific activities of such groups operating in this jurisdiction," they said.

"The actions by such groups are a cause of concern for An Garda Siochana and for other police services. The activity engaged in and the manner of confrontation between such groups and their targets has the potential for violence and could result in harm to persons present," the spokesperson continuned.

"In addition, there are also concerns over the legality of the actions of such groups operating in Ireland. Finally, the manner in which such groups operate and how they interact with their chosen targets prior to and during the arranged meeting has the potential to affect future criminal proceedings."

The statement concluded, "It is An Garda Siochana's primary role to investigate crime and enforce enacted legislation. An Garda Siochana would urge anyone with information relating to the potential sexual exploitation of children to report it immediately to An Garda Siochana where it will be investigated by professional investigators."

"Our priority at all times is the safety of children, and to use all lawful means to fully investigate and prosecute crimes which jeopardise the safety of a child."

This specific incident remains under investigation.
National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI) is calling for an investment of 22 million in education, training and access to apprenticeships to tackle long term youth unemployment in Ireland.

The number of young people under 26 years of age that are in receipt of jobseekers allowance, jobseekers benefit or signing for credits for 12 months or more in Laois is 237, according to new figures from Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection.

National Youth Council of Ireland has said that in response to this development of, and investment in, an access apprenticeships programme is needed to support young people with fewer opportunities and qualifications.

That was the message from James Doorley, NYCI Deputy Director, speaking at the publication of the organisations pre-budget submission recently.

In its Pre Budget 2019 submission Future Proof with Investment in Youth the NYCI, which represents youth organisations working with over 380,000 young people nationwide, is calling for an investment of 22 million in the education, training and access to apprenticeships to halve long-term youth unemployment by the end of 2019.

Census 2016 indicates that our population aged 10-24 years will increase to over one million by 2025, so we need to invest in policies, services and supports to meet the needs of young people today, while preparing for demographic pressures in the coming years.

While we welcome job growth in the Irish economy and the consistent trend of reduced youth unemployment we are concerned about the 8,915 young people who are now long-term unemployed (for 12 months or more). We have costed a number of measures to help reduce this figure by half in 2019," Mr Doorley said.

Among these measures, we are proposing that 2m is invested in an access to apprenticeship programme. We welcome the growth in apprenticeships in the last number of years.

"The number of apprentices in training in 2017 was 12,849, up from 10,445 in 2016 driven by a 53% increase in the number of new entrants between 2015 and 2017.

"We support the overall Government commitment to double the number of new entrants by 2020 to 9,000 per annum with the introduction of a range of new apprenticeships including in areas such as animation, horticulture and healthcare.

As we expand the number and range of apprenticeships, however, it is vital that these opportunities remain open to all young people, in particular young people who are economically and socially disadvantaged and those who have limited formal qualifications.

We propose the expansion of the existing pilot programmes such as the DIT Access to Apprenticeship programme and the development of other schemes around the country to provide supports and address barriers, which may prevent disadvantaged young people from opting for and being able to sustain an apprenticeship, with a particular focus on the long term unemployed.

For example, the entrance criteria for some apprenticeships now require qualifications to a certain level in some subjects. Where a young person has the motivation and aptitude for a trade but cannot meet these entrance criteria, an access programme can assist the young applicant to meet the entry requirements.

"Likewise, such access programmes could promote the greater participation of young women in apprenticeships, which is very low at present at just over 1% Mr Doorley added.

The Government rightly spends over 31m supporting access to Higher Education, therefore we believe our proposal is a modest yet necessary measure to assist young people with fewer opportunities to avail of the growing number of apprenticeships available at present.

"This 2m investment would be part of the overall 22m additional investment in Budget 2019 which NYCI recommends in order to halve the number of young people long-term unemployed by the end of 2019. We propose the provision of an additional 2,650 education and training places which will cost 20m based on the average cost of a SOLAS training placeof 7,578," he said.
Last year David Attenborough and the BBC series Blue Planet II highlighted the huge damage plastic pollution is doing on a worldwide scale.

A new group in Baltinglass has decided to take on the challenge of reducing the use of plastic in the local community.

"We in Baltinglass Fair Trade+ have started our war on plastic at a local level. Our first step has been to support the work of Refill Ireland and we have received great co-operation from cafes and pubs in the West Wicklow area," said a spokesperson.

"Refill Ireland is an environmental waste prevention project that identifies locations promising to provide no quibble tap water refills for people with their own reusable bottles. The aim is to reduce the amount of single-use plastic bottles in circulation."

The projects website has a Tap Map showing refill locations throughout the country.

"Before we got involved there was only one location is the western half of Wicklow (at the entrance to Tinahely Railway Walk). Now there are 11 more, stretching from Blessington to Rathdangan. They all show their involvement by displaying the Refill.ie sticker," said the group.

"As well as being good for the environment, Baltinglass Fair Trade+ feels that this initiative enhances West Wicklows reputation as a visitor-friendly area, welcoming hikers, climbers, cyclists and anyone else who cares to explore its attractions. So far, the following locations have joined the initiative: Baltinglass: Bia Blasta, Germaines, Horans, The Perch and Timminss;

Blessington: Blessington Book Store; Dunlavin: Sweet Taste; Grangecon: Moores; Hollywood: The Hollywood Cafe; Kiltegan: The Hub and Rathdangan: The Village Pantry

"We have yet to introduce the idea to other cafes and pubs in West Wicklow and beyond the border. If any businesses wish to get involved they can message our Facebook page or talk to one of our members. They can also contact Refill Ireland directly at info@refill.ie. For further information on the Refill Ireland project visit www.refill.ie . It is very straightforward  just obtain a Refill.ie sticker, display it on the premises and your location will be added to the Tap Map."
Roses competing for the international Rose of Tralee title later this year will meet the public in Athy today, August 13 at the start of a two-day tour of Kildare.

The Roses will be in the south Kildare town from 4.45pm taking part in Ernest Shackleton-themed activities and enjoying some dragon boat racing.

SEE ALSO: Local artists launch exhibition at Castletown House in Celbridge

The 56 Roses who will compete for the international Rose of Tralee title later this year will be treated to the best of Kildare when they tour the county today and tomorrow (Monday and Tuesday August 13-14), courtesy of Kildare Failte, the countys tourism board.

Among them will be Victoria Sexton, the Florida Rose and niece of David and Susan Sexton, Kildare Farm Foods, Rathmuck and Kildare Rose, Grainne Carr from Ardclough.

The county will host the Roses before they take part in the Rose of Tralee International Festival, August 17-21.

Glenroyal Hotel, Maynooth will be the home to the Roses for two nights while Kildare Failte and Kildare County Council will facilitate an action-packed tour.

The Kildare Rose of Tralee Tour will commence with a welcome reception in Burtown House, Athy on Monday before their Ernest Shackleton-themed outdoor adventure around the town, celebrating the countys great explorer.

Tuesday will see the Roses stopping off at Celbridge, the Kildare Round Tower, Solas Bhride, the K Club and Kildare Village.

In an action-packed day, turf cutting, brown bread making and Sean Nos dancing is on the agenda at Lullymore Heritage Park, one of the top family attractions in Ireland, as well as a trip to sample the delights of the legendary K Club.

Roses will celebrate the life of Arthur Guinness in Celbridge, learn to make St Brigids crosses at Solas Bhride and experience a Mondello racing car on their journey to Kildare Village.

We hope the Roses experiences in Kildare will serve as a calling card for the county and that they will gather wonderful memories to share with friends and relations, said Aine Mangan, CEO Kildare Failte.

This is a wonderful opportunity to promote Kildare as a county in which spend time exploring and enjoying a wealth of experiences.
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Leitrims drinks and hospitality businesses are highly vulnerable to a hard or no deal Brexit following a new report published today by the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (DIGI), the umbrella group for drinks and hospitality businesses in Ireland.

The report, National and Regional Employment in the Drinks and Hospitality Sectors, authored by DCU economist Anthony Foley, shows that drinks and hospitality businesses account for significant proportions of rural employment:

 In Leitrim, hospitality employment accounted for 825 jobs  6.5% of all employment in the county. Kerry saw the highest portion of hospitality employment, with accommodation and food service sector employment as high as10.5%.

 Hospitality employmentwhich includes pubs, hotels, B&Bs and restaurantsaccounts for 9.5% of all employment in the West of Ireland. The figure is 8% in the capital. Both are above the national average of 7.6%.

 In terms of employment in the accommodation and food service sector, which includes many drinks and tourism businesses, nine counties report a total employment share above the county average of 5.8%. This is based on the Census of Population "main activity" measure.

 Of these nine counties, six are part of Irelands Wild Atlantic Way and the other three are in the Ancient Eastregion.

 The drinks industry directly and indirectly employs a total 90,000 people. When the tourism sector is included, much of which is dependent on or associated with the drinks industry, total employment is 254,400, or 11.5% of all Irish jobs.

Rosemary Garth, Irish Distillers' Communications and Corporate Affairs Director and Chair of DIGI, said that the new report clearly demonstrates the vital importance of the drinks and hospitality sector to rural Ireland, local employment and the economy in general.

In many parts of Leitrim, drinks, hospitality and tourism businesses are the primary and sometimes only employers. This makes these areas highly vulnerable to economic shocks, like Brexit, said Garth.

If a hard or no deal Brexit occurs and sterling devalues further, British tourists will look to save their money rather than spend it. That means fewer holidays and a smaller budget when they travel. Considering the British are our single biggest tourism market, this is a significant problem for rural areas that completely rely on foreign spend to power their local economy. Without a way to offset this decreased trade, some towns and villages could face business closures and job losses not unlike those of the recession.

A downturn in the drinks and hospitality trade could also harm our economy. Irelands drinks industry alone generates Exchequer revenue worth 2.3 billion and exports 1.25 billion in goods every year.

Defensive measures

Faced with an uncertain economic environment, DIGI has called upon the Government to safeguard the growth of the drinks and hospitality industry by implementing a defensive alcohol excise tax reduction.

Ireland has the second-highest overall alcohol excise tax in Europe behind only Finland. Broken down by drink type, we have the highest tax on wine, the second highest on beer, and the third highest on spirits.

Irelands drinks sector is our fastest-growing manufacturing industry, said Garth. In 2013, there were just four working distilleries. Now there are 18 with 16 more on the way. Since 2012, the number of indigenous microbreweries producing their own product has quadrupled.

With lower excise tax in a stable trading environment, our industry could do even more. With our current rate in addition to a hard Brexit, however, we risk damaging this hard-earned growth.

By reducing excise, not only would the Government be rewarding consumers by putting more money back in their pockets, it would be helping to defend producers, retailers and other businesses across Ireland from the worst impacts of economic uncertainty. With less spent on excise tax, employers will be able to invest in business development and job creation, giving Irelands regions the necessary supports to grow in line with the rest of the country.
STUDENTS from all over the world recently joined a Limerick Born Again Christian church for a three week bible school in the city.

Twenty students from England, Germany, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Haiti, Ghana, as well as several places in the US, including California, Alabama, Nebras- ka, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee, visited the Limerick City Church for the course, which is called School of Christ.

Limerick City Church has run schools in Limerick since 2005, with hundreds of students coming from at least 25 different countries for training over the years.

While a number of the students this year were already actively involved in Christian ministry before their trip to Limerick, others are new to the Born Again Christian faith, according to volunteer Sofian Tlili.

Among the students attending the school this year was ex-gang leader from Haiti, a reformed criminal drug addict from the US, an ex-witch from the Czech Republic, and a former gambler.

The students begin each day with an hour of prayer, followed by nine teachings from the Bible.
A LOCAL councillor has called for more workers to be installed at Askeatons historic Desmond Castle to speed up restoration works by the Office of Public Works.

Works on the castle in the medieval town started a decade ago, said Fianna Fails Kevin Sheahan.

The castle dates back to 1199, and is believed to have been built by William de Burgo. The castle became the seat of the Earls of Desmond, who built a banqueting hall alongside it.

There is also a Hellfire Club from the 1700s beside the castle.

It is one of the most attractive tourist items of interest in west Limerick, said Cllr Sheahan.

We were all overjoyed when the OPW began a programme of refurbishment over 10 years ago. At that time, the expectation was that the entire programme would take 12-13 years.

The standard of works done to date deserves a very positive comment. The stonework that has been completed looks magnificent, added Cllr Sheahan.

The problem is that when the crew of workers first moved in to the site, there were 14 to 15 people working there. Now we are down to three or four. This will result in the work not being completed for another 15 years, he said.

Since the refurbishment programme began, there have been restrictions on the site to facilitate the works.

The necessary restrictions to access this site will continue to remain in force. This is a significant impediment to local tourism, said Cllr Sheahan.

Tourists to the town visit the castle on a regular basis, often with local tour guide Anthony Sheehy.

I am calling on the chief executive of Limerick City and County Council, Conn Murray, to make representations to the OPW and to the relevant minister to recruit the necessary workforce to have this programme of works completed within the agreed timeframe, said Cllr Sheahan.

Sinn Feins Cllr Ciara McMahon suggested that when the OPW are recruiting stonemasons, that they should employ three to four apprentice stonemasons, as it is a skill that is sadly in decline.
Eskom is investigating a fire that broke out at its Kusile Power Station.

Fridays fire at the Mpumalanga-based power station started at the Unit 3 fabric filter plant.[The fire started] between 5:30pm and 6:30pm, said Eskom, adding that the fire was extinguished immediately.The power utility said no injuries were reported as a result of the fire, adding that the incident is under investigation.In December last year, fire was detected in an area around the two conveyer belts that supply coal to the Kendal power station, which is also located in Mpumalanga.
IRISH Business Against Litter (Ibal) has branded the River Shannon at the University of Limerick and in Foynes as being moderately littered.

In a major nationwide survey carried out by the business group, Ibal suggests almost 40% of Irelands rivers, beaches and harbours are experiencing litter problems.

A study of beaches, harbours, rivers and their immediate environs, carried out by An Taisce, showed only four of 50 areas surveyed were deemed Clean to European Norms.

Almost 40% were littered or heavily littered, with some areas in Cork Harbour and Doolin Pier in Clare classified as litter blackspots.

The group studied the Shannon as it flowed through the University of Limerick (UL) and Foynes.

The An Taisce report for UL stated: The poor litter ranking was due to two separate areas of litter accumulations - at the bathing area and on the opposite side of the river next to the bridge. The most prevalent land-based litter types were food wrappers, sweet papers, plastic bottles and cigarette butts. Apart from these areas there were traces of litter in most areas.

The report for the River Shannon at Foynes added: Litter in the car park area next to the port brought down what was otherwise a good site. There was some food and beverage related litter and occasional items of marine litter. The water area was good with regard to litter.

Conor Horgan, of Ibal, which has been publishing litter surveys since 2002, said: The objective of this new campaign is to rid our coasts and waterways of litter, as they are central to the countrys appeal to visitors and an integral part of the clean image we project. Aside from this commercial motivation, our research brings into focus the broader issue of marine litter and the need to stem the vast amounts of plastic and other litter which is entering and killing our oceans.

The most common forms of litter found by the assessors were cigarette butts, sweet wrappers, plastic bottles and cans.

The River Shannon on its stretch through Carrick-on-Shannon and Lanesboro in Co Longford were Clean to European Norms, as were Kinsale Harbour and Salthill.
TWO LIMERICK city men who were arrested during a garda operation targeting organised crime have been remanded in custody for another four weeks.

The two men, who were arrested two weeks ago and detained under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act appeared before Judge Marian OLeary via video-link at a vacation sitting of Limerick District Court last week.

John ODonoghue, 29, who has an address of Cliona Park, Moyross and Paul Whelan, aged 24, of Dalgaish Park, Moyross are each charged with possession of a 9mm Colt pistol at Park Road, Corbally under Section 27a of the Firearms Act.

At a previous vacation sitting at Tralee District Court, Gda Rob Sheehy gave evidence that at 11.47pm on Monday, July 30, he arrested the accused John ODonoghue and conveyed him to Henry Street garda station.

On August 1, he charged ODonoghue and cautioned him but ODonoghue made no reply to the charge.

Garda Dermot Cummins told the court that he arrested Paul Whelan at the same time on Monday, cautioned him and brought him to Henry Street garda station where on August 1, he charged and cautioned him.

Paul Whelan, he said, made no reply to the charge.

At a vacation hearing in Tralee, Solicitor Ted McCarthy appearing for both men said he had no questions arising from the arrest of his clients. He said neither was seeking bail.

He asked to be assigned legal aid as both men are unemployed.

At last Wednesdays hearing, Sgt Donal Cronin, of Henry Street garda station, said that they were awaiting directions from the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Sgt Cronin requested that another sitting take place in two weeks. Defence solicitor, Ted McCarthy sought an additional four weeks for the matter to appear before Limerick District Court again.

Judge Marian OLeary remanded the two men in custody until September 4, when they will appear via video-link at Limerick District Court.

Investigations are ongoing and a file is to be prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.
THE Queensland Rose whose mother hails from a County Limerick village has been installed as second favourite for the Rose of Tralee.

Sarah Griffin-Breen, whose mother Kate is from Athea, is the "latest big mover in the market" for the festival, according to bookmaker BoyleSports.

The 57 Roses of the Rose of Tralee festival began their Rose Tour this Monday in Kildare and will make their way to Tralee for the festival, which gets underway on Friday, August 17.

London Rose Grainne Hawkes has further strengthened her position as the firm favourite to take over from current Rose of Tralee Jennifer Byrne, following more support from punters, BoyleSports said.

But 27-year-old lawyer from Brisbane, Queensland, Sarah Griffin-Breen, who also holds a Bachelor of Biomedical Science, was backed into the new 8/1 second favourite from her large 33/1 odds on Monday.

Limerick is being represented by 23-year-old physio Hazel Ni Chathasaigh from the Roxboro Road, taking over from Kilcornans Kayleigh Maher, the first Limerick Rose for a decade to feature on RTEs live shows last year.

Aoife Heffron, spokesperson for BoyleSports, said: Its unusual to see such a clear and short favourite such as London Rose Grainne Hawkes at 5/2 in the Rose of Tralee betting. We normally have a few roses battling it out in the betting and various favourites, but this year it seems it could be a clear cut win for London, who already have three wins on record include back to back wins in 2009 and 2010.

She added: Queensland Rose Sarah Griffin-Breen was the subject of strong support on Monday which forced traders to slash her odds from 33/1 to the now 8/1 second favourite. With roots in Limerick we can reveal that a lot of support has come from the Treaty County for Queensland.

Sarahs mother, Kate, from Knocknaboul and her Australian dad Neil Breen met and fell in love in London before settling in Queensland and rearing their family of three.

Sarahs two uncles, Donie and Paddy Michael and their families are still living in Athea. A big Griffin reunion is planned as Sarahs parents and sister Chelsea will be in Ireland to share in the excitement of the Rose of Tralee Festival. Cousins, aunts and uncles from all over will be heading to Tralee to support Sarah, according to Josephine Griffin, Sarahs aunt by marriage.

Athea is no stranger to welcoming back Roses. In 2007, Athea cheered the loudest when New York Rose, Lisa Murtagh was crowned Rose of Tralee. Lisas mother, Breda Geoghegan is an Athea woman and two years later Lisa married her Askeaton boyfriend, Brian Fitzgerald.

In 2016, another New York Rose was also the toast of Athea. Kirstin Stack is the daughter of Mike Stack from Athea who emigrated to the US in the 1980s.
A BIG screen will be put up in the Square in Newcastle West for Sundays All-Ireland against Galway.

The initiative has come from the towns Business Association, but it was confirmed this Monday that Limerick City and County Council will be supporting it with funding.

Its all about cheering the boys on, association chairwoman Flo Flannigan said this Monday.

The dearth of (match) tickets has been one of the main drivers behind the initiative, she admitted.

Businesses were being asked to put out the Limerick colours and do up their windows, Ms Flannigan explained.

But then I thought I would prefer a party in the Square with a big screeen. We had a meeting and decided that with the lack of tickets we should do something. We have a fantastic GAA club in town.

The association approached Cllr Michael Collins to get support from the council and this has now been confirmed, allowing the event to go ahead.

The response has been massive. People are very very pleased and there has been a very very positive response," Ms Flannigan said. " It is great that people wont have to travel to come together and be able to share the excitement and the atmosphere.

The 20-foot screen will be put up in front of the castle.

I am delighted, Cllr Collins said. People are still looking for tickets and they still want to get involved, to get behind the team and get involved in the atmosphere. This is probably second best.

It makes sense to have it in the county town, he added.. People in West Limerick can come to Newcastle West instead of travelling in to the Gaelic Grounds.

Separately, an additional 5,000 tickets have been made available for the big screen which will in place at the Gaelic Grounds from midday on Sunday.
Editor's Note: Live Science initially covered this newfound pterosaur at the 75th annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Dallas, Texas, in 2015. Now that the peer-reviewed study is published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, we're happy to share the scientific name of this magnificent beast: Caelestiventus hanseni.

The genus name of this Triassic-age pterosaur comes from the Latin words "caelestis" and "ventus," which together mean "heavenly wind." The species name honors Robin Hansen, a geologist with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, who facilitated the exaction at the Saints and Sinners Quarry in Utah. Read our full coverage below.

A little more than 200 million years ago, a four-fanged pterosaur flew over the vast desert of Triassic Utah snagging other reptiles with its toothy mouth, until it met its untimely end on the banks of a dried-up oasis, new research finds. [Photos of Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs]

The pterosaur had a massive wingspan of about 4.9 feet (1.5 meters)  about as wide as a 10-year-old child is tall  and sported a total of 110 teeth, four of them inch-long (2.5 centimeters) fangs, said study researcher Brooks Britt, an associate professor of geology at Brigham Young University in Utah.

Brigham Young University student Scott Meek found the specimen, including its skull and bones from its body, in 2014 when he was excavating bones from a 300-lb. (136 kilograms) chunk of sandstone. The chunk came from the Saints and Sinners quarry in Utah near the Colorado border, Britt said.

"The [quarry] site dates to the Late Triassic, about 210 million years [ago], when Pangaea was still together, and vast desert stretched from what is now southern California to Wyoming," Britt told Live Science. (The supercontinent Pangaea didn't begin to break up until about 200 million years ago.)

The pterosaur fossil is remarkably well preserved, not crushed like other pterosaur remains. "Outside of a find in Greenland, this is the first good Triassic pterosaur from North America," he said.

Saints and Sinners quarry, in Utah along the Colorado boarder, where the paleontologists found the pterosaur fossils. (Image credit: Brooks B. Britt Brigham Young University)

A geologic analysis of the quarry suggests that, during the Late Triassic, many animals congregated around a lush oasis  decked out with plants  surrounded by a vast desert. But then the oasis dried up, leaving the fauna and flora without a drop of water.

"The animals likely died during a severe drought, and the sediments indicate their carcasses were buried when the rains returned to normal and the lake filled, with the lapping waves burying the bones with sand," Britt said.

The ancient sand and water did such a good job of preserving the pterosaur's fossils, that researchers can create a detailed picture of the animal. For instance, the pterosaur has spaces in its braincase and lower jaw that suggest the bones were air-filled in life, just like the bones of later pterosaurs and birds (to which pterosaurs are not related), Britt said.

Furthermore, the pterosaur has surprisingly small eyes, and its dentition is "quite a mix, with a combination of fangs and miniscule teeth in each side of the lower jaws," Britt said. In all, it has 80 teeth on its lower jaws (including the four fangs), and 30 on its upper jaws, including eight little ones in the front and 22 medium teeth in the back.

Its odd smile isn't all that different from other early pterosaurs, which tend to sport a mix of dramatically differently shaped teeth; that's unlike pterodactyloids (another type of flying reptile), which often lacked teeth, Britt said.

Also, like the Dimorphodon, a medium-size pterosaur that lived during the Jurassic, the newfound species has a relatively large head and comparatively short wings, indicating it didn't soar over vast areas, but likely flew in places filled with trees and other obstacles. They probably fed on insects or small land-dwelling animals, including a small crocodylomorph known as a sphenosuchian, which Britt described as a fast creature resembling a crocodile, but with the legs of a Chihuahua. [Image Gallery: 25 Amazing Ancient Beasts]

The researchers found a treasure trove of sphenosuchian fossils at the ancient oasis. They also found at least 20 individual coelophysoid theropods (bipedal, mostly meat-eating dinosaurs), the teeth of a much larger theropod, a drepanosaurid (a creature with a head like a bird, arms like a mole and a claw at the end of its tail) and two types of sphenodontids (which looks like the modern tuatara of New Zealand).

"Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates capable of active flight," Britt said. "This finding is further evidence that flight opens up a wide array of niches for occupation, in this case feeding on insects and small vertebrates that thrived along the shores of an oasis in the middle of a giant desert."

Editors Note: Live Science published the original version of this article on Oct. 26, 2015.
Fighting fire

(Image credit: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)

Wildfires are raging through California, destroying everything in their wake. As of Aug. 9, 2018, the Mendocino Complex Fire, which includes the River Fire and the Ranch Fire, is considered the state's largest wildfire on record, burning through 305,152 acres of land, with just 52 percent of it contained. The state seems to be hemorrhaging smoke and flames, with 15 active fires burning as of Aug. 9, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire). Here's a look at some of the dramatic scenes unfolding across the state.

Here, a firefighter walks through smoke during the Mendocino Complex Fire in Lakeport, California, on July 30, 2018. The blaze has taken the lives of fire personnel and civilians, devouring homes and forest habitat.

Controlled burn

(Image credit: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Firefighters monitor a controlled burn on State Highway 20 on July 31, 2018, in Upper Lake, California (part of the Mendocino Complex Fire). Controlled burning can help to contain even ongoing fires by getting rid of fuel (in this case the trees and other flammable forest growth).

Water drop

(Image credit: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

A helicopter makes a water drop near the raging River Fire west of Lakeport, California, on July 31, 2018. As of Aug. 12, 2018, the River Fire had burned 48,920 acres and was 93 percent contained.

Frantic deer

(Image credit: Noah Berger/AFP/Getty Images)

A deer runs from flames as the Ranch Fire tears down New Long Valley Road near Clearlake Oaks, California, on Aug. 4, 2018. As of Aug. 11, 2018, the Ranch Fire had burned 279,306 acres and was 58 percent contained.

Protecting homes

(Image credit: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

On Aug. 2, 2018, as the Ranch Fire moved toward Upper Lake, California, firefighters started a controlled burn to defend houses there against the flames.

Fighting the flames

(Image credit: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

Another view of firefighters carrying out a controlled burn on Aug. 2, 2018. Thousands of firefighters have been working to put out the flames across the state.

Pool water

(Image credit: Noah Berger/AFP/Getty Images)

A firefighter gathers water from a pool while battling the Ranch Fire near Clearlake Oaks, California, on Aug. 4, 2018.

Wildfire wake

(Image credit: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)

The damage from the Ranch Fire is stark in Spring Valley, California, on Aug. 07, 2018. As of this date, the fires have taken the lives of 11 people and the state's largest fire, the Mendocino Complex Fire, has burned more than 290,000 acres (117,359 hectares), an area about the size of Los Angeles.

Carr Fire aftermath

(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A motorcycle sits next to a home that was destroyed by the Carr Fire on July 27, 2018, in Redding, California. A Redding firefighter and bulldozer operator were killed battling the fast-moving Carr Fire.

Whiskeytown Lake

(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Smoke from the Carr Fire hangs over Whiskeytown Lake on July 27, 2018, in Whiskeytown, California. As of Aug. 12, 2018, the Carr Fire had burned 191,211 acres, destroying 1,077 residences, 22 commercial structures and 500 outbuildings, according to CalFire.
The orca Tahlequah appears to be in good physical shape, according to telephoto images taken from the shore.

Seventeen days ago, a grieving orca mother known as Tahlequah began pushing her dead calf around the waters near Puget Sound. And now, after doing so for 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers), she has let go.

Tahlequah was spotted without her baby's body on Saturday (Aug. 11), when she was seen chasing a school of salmon with her pod in the Haro Strait, a waterway between the San Juan Islands north of Seattle and Canada's Vancouver Island.

"Her tour of grief is now over, and her behavior is remarkably frisky," according to a blog post from the Friday Harbor, Washington-based Center for Whale Research. [Photos: Drone Reveals Killer Whales]

Tahlequah (who is also known as J35) appears to be in good physical shape and doesn't have any evidence of "peanut head," a condition that indicates that the whale is malnourished as its head bones begin to show, the Center for Whale Research reported.

But the 20-year-old whale's emotional state is unknown. Losing her calf "may have been emotionally hard on her," Ken Balcomb, founding director of the Center for Whale Research, told The Seattle Times. "She is alive and well and at least over that part of her grief. Today was the first day that I for sure saw her. It is no longer there," he added, referring to the dead calf.

It's unclear whether Tahlequah voluntarily stopped carrying the baby's remains or whether they deteriorated and fell away, The Seattle Times reported. The carcass is likely now at the bottom of the Salish Sea, meaning researchers probably won't be able to find it for a necropsy (an animal autopsy), the Center for Whale Research said.

Tahlequah swims with a member of her pod. (Image credit: Ken Balcomb/Center for Whale Research)

Tahlequah's moving story made headlines around the world when researchers spotted her with her dead calf, which died shortly after it was born on July 24. A few hours after the baby died, a resident of San Juan Island reported seeing Tahlequah with about six other female orcas (Orcinus orca) gathered at the mouth of a cove in a tight-knit circle.

"As the light dimmed, I was able to watch them continue what seemed to be a ritual or ceremony," the resident said, according to the Center for Whale Research's blog. "They stayed directly centered in the moonbeam, even as it moved. The lighting was too dim to see if the baby was still being kept afloat. It was both sad and special to witness this behavior."

The loss of the newborn is tragic, and sadly, it's not out of the blue. None of the calves born to moms in the Southern Resident killer whale group  which consists of the J, K and L pods  have survived over the past three years, the blog reported. As a result, the population is a "species in the spotlight" because of its imminent threat of extinction, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The three pods also face other challenges. The orcas have to deal with vessel noise that interrupts them while they're foraging; toxins from the environment that get into their blubber and are released when they, in turn, burn their blubber for energy; and, for many, malnutrition due to a lack of Chinook salmon, The Seattle Times reported. [Photos: The Freakiest-Looking Fish]

In 1995, the Southern Resident killer whale group had a population of 98 whales, but today it is just 75, with 23 in the J pod, 18 in the K pod and 34 in the L pod, the Center for Whale Research said. The whales were listed as endangered in 2006, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Live Science previously reported.

Another member of the J pod, a 4-year-old named Scarlet (or J50), is so malnourished that the Lummi Nation is planning to approach and feed her live salmon to help her survive, The Seattle Times reported.

As for Tahlequah's behavior, researchers say it's common for marine mammals to show signs of grief. For instance, after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010, bottlenose dolphins were seen pushing around the bodies of their dead calves, Live Science previously reported.

Original article on Live Science.
A tiny nip from a puppy may have led to a fatal infection for a Wisconsin woman, according to news reports.

The woman, 58-year-old Sharon Larson of South Milwaukee, had just adopted a puppy when it nipped her and caused a small cut, according to local news outlet WTMJ. Larson soon began experiencing flu-like symptoms, and her husband took her to the hospital.

Within just two days, Larson had died, WTMJ reported.

Larson tested positive for Capnocytophaga, a bacterium commonly found in the mouths of dogs and cats, which can spread through bites, scratches and even licks from pets. Although most people who have contact with dogs and cats won't get sick with Capnocytophaga, in rare cases, the bacteria can cause illness, and even death, in people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). [11 Ways Your Beloved Pet May Make You Sick]

"I was told she could get struck by lightning four times and live, win the lottery twice  that's how rare this is supposed to be," Sharon Larson's husband, Dan Larson, told WTMJ.

People are at greater risk of Capnocytophaga infection if they have weakened immune systems  for example, if they have cancer, diabetes or HIV  or if they've had their spleen removed, the CDC says. (It's unclear if Larson had a condition that weakened her immune system.) Most infections with the bacteria occur in people older than 40, the CDC says.

Although infections with Capnocytophaga are rare, they can be deadly: About 30 percent of people who get infected with Capnocytophaga die, and some infections can lead to death within 24 to 72 hours after symptoms appear, according to the CDC.

In an unrelated case, a 48-year-old man in Wisconsin recently developed a blood infection with Capnocytophaga that required doctors to amputate his legs and parts of his arms. In that man's case, doctors think a dog was also the likely source of the infection.

Original article on Live Science.
In popular science literature, much ink has been spilled on the supposed collapse of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, as it's known in the local language.

Jared Diamond's 2005 book "Collapse," for example, presents a chilling version of what happened in the centuries after Polynesian seafarers colonized the remote Pacific island around A.D. 1200: Rivalry between clans drove the islanders to build hundreds of increasingly big "moai," the larger-than-life statues carved from stone. This fierce competition and population growth caused a hubristic over-exploitation of resources, driving the Rapanui people to desperation, and even cannibalism, and Europeans arriving in the 18th century encountered a society well on its way to decline, according to Diamond's account.

But archaeologists who have been studying the ancient quarries, stone tools and other resources on the island have recently been building a different picture of what happened before European contact. A study published today (Aug. 13) in the Journal of Pacific Archaeology adds a new piece of evidence to the case against Rapa Nui's collapse. [Image Gallery: Walking Easter Island Statues]

Rapa Nui is probably most famous today for its 1,000 moai, the towering statues that were placed on platforms ("ahu") and sometimes adorned with colossal hats or topknots called "pukao." The monuments which weigh as much as 82 tons (74 metric tons) and are found all over the island's coastal areas were amazingly built without the help of wheels or large animals.

Previous archaeological research has shown that no one clan had all the stone resources within its territory to make these massive monuments, and that there were preferred quarries for each type of stone. For example, the majority of moai came from a singletuff source, and most of the pukao came from a single red scoria quarry complex. In the new study, Dale Simpson, Jr., an adjunct professor of anthropology at the College of DuPage in Illinois, set out to investigate the origin of basalt stone tools that were used in the moai carving.

"Each quarry is like a finger and each stone you pull from it is going to have a fingerprint," Simpson told Live Science. Simpson and his colleagues sought to match the geochemical signatures in a set of 21 basalt picks and adzes (or "toki") with basalt quarries on the island. He said that he and his colleagues were "pretty amazed" to find out that the stones were mainly coming from one quarry complex, even though there are other sites to get basalt on the island.

"This continued pattern of minimum sources-maximum use suggests a form of collaboration," Simpson told Live Science. In other words, he thinks the clans had a system of exchange that allowed them to trespass on each other's territory to share resources. "I think that that goes against the collapse model that says all they were doing was competing to build bigger statues," he added. [7 Bizarre Ancient Cultures That History Forgot]

Study co-author Jo Anne Van Tilburg, a UCLA archaeologist who is also director of the Easter Island Statue Project, said the results support "a view of craft specialization based on information exchange, but we can't know at this stage if the interaction was collaborative." In a statement, Van Tilburg suggested that it's possible that the quarrying of the stone tools "may also have been coercive in some way," and that the study "encourages further mapping and stone sourcing."

Carl Lipo, a professor of anthropology at Binghamton University in New York, who was not involved in the study, said the results aren't really surprising. "The fact that there isn't 'control' of resources is pretty clear when one looks at other aspects of the record," Lipo said in an email to Live Science. "Yet, such findings are important because of the degree of misunderstandings and assumptions people have about the island."

"What archaeologists who conduct fieldwork on the island have learned in the past 20 years is that the evidence dramatically contradicts the tales that most people have heard," he said. Lipo explained that there is no archaeological evidence for the control of resources or any hierarchical distribution of resources, which is leading to a new narrative about the pre-contact Rapa Nui society: that the island was not dominated by massive chiefdoms, and rather, communities shared resources without any prehistoric warfare.

Simpson noted that there are still thousands of Rapanui people alive today. Other archaeological research has suggested that population levels on the island peaked around the time of first European contact, in 1722, and then went into sharp decline in the century that followed. In another study that he published earlier this year in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Simpson argued that the impacts of colonization, which included disease, violence and forced labor, "arguably played the largest catalysts for Rapanui cultural change."

Original article on Live Science.
Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Co. will close its Uvalde plant in October, lay off more than 150 employees and move the plants operations south of the U.S. border.

The workforce clothing manufacturer told the plants 156 workers that the facility will be relocated to Mexico and Honduras effective Oct. 9, according to a letter sent Thursday to the Texas Workforce Commission. The Uvalde location provides cutting operations for Dickies Workwear businesses, said Vanessa McCutchen, a spokeswoman for VF Corp. The North Carolina-based apparel company, which owns The North Face and Wrangler, bought Williamson-Dickie last year for $820 million.

VF Corp. decided to close the Uvalde facility after evaluating how and where our resources are deployed to ensure they are allocated to the areas that best enable us to meet the demands of our customers and consumers, McCutchen said in an email.

RELATED: Rodriguez Elementary to close at end of year after failing to meet accountability standards

We are grateful for their service and understand that this decision will affect them and their families, McCutchen said of the facilitys workers. We are working to ensure a smooth transition by providing severance and job assistance.

Nearly 100 workers in San Antonio have recently been told they will lose their jobs, according to WARN notices provided to the Texas Workforce Commission.

Argyle Security Group laid off 32 employees in July while Inserso Corp., which provides IT services to federal agencies, will lay off 67 on Sept. 30.

VF Corp. also announced Monday that its breaking off its denim division to focus on its fast-growing outdoor and activewear business as Americans swap out jeans for yoga pants. The non-denim division will include its other well-known brands, The North Face and Timberland, Altra, Icebreaker and Williamson-Dickie.

The preference toward activewear has fueled growth at companies like Lululemon, Under Armour and Nike. Retailers like The Gap and Target have hopped aboard. Even traditional jeans makers have added stretch to their denim to catch up.

RELATED: Venerable S.A. restaurant Crumpets to close after 38 years

The yet-to-be-named outdoor and activewear division is expected to generate annual revenue of around $11 billion. It will move from North Carolina to the Denver area in the next year.

VF said it expects the tax-free spin-off of its denim business to generate annual revenue of $2.5 billion. The company that operates the denim and also its outlet businesses, called NewCo, will remain in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The separation, which needs final approval from board members, is expected to be completed in the first half of next year.

Joshua Fechter is a staff writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | jfechter@express-news.net | Twitter: @JFreports
The body count in the Golden State Killers alleged reign of terror increased to 13 on Monday when prosecutors in Tulare County filed charges linking the suspect to another spree of crimes previously attributed to a person dubbed the Visalia Ransacker.

A new murder charge was filed as investigators continue to unspool Joseph James DeAngelos expansive wave of alleged violence, tracing it back to 1974 when he worked as a police officer in the small town of Exeter.

DeAngelo, 72, is also accused of being the East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker. He was charged Monday with one count of murder with a special allegation of personal use of a firearm in the killing of 45-year-old community college teacher Claude Snelling.

To think that the crimes  that now we see from the charges filed around the state  may have originated in our quaint, quiet, wonderful little town is quite startling, Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward said at a press conference announcing the murder charge.

Snelling, a journalism professor at College of the Sequoias, was shot dead while trying to save his teenage daughter from the clutches of a masked intruder on Sept. 11, 1975. He awoke in the early-morning hours after hearing a disturbance, looked out his window and spotted a man in his carport trying to kidnap 16-year-old Elizabeth Hupp.

Snelling ran to his daughters rescue and the kidnapper pulled out a gun and shot him dead, Visalia police Chief Jason Salazar said. Hupp escaped as the assailant fled.

The murder shocked the small Central Valley town of Visalia and came amid more than 100 bizarre burglaries, attempted burglaries and an attempted murder between 1974 and 1975 that were believed to be the work of the Ransacker.

This community was terrorized by these rampant crimes in their tenacity, their intimacy and the frequency in which they were occurring, Ward said.

The crime wave, though, abruptly stopped in December 1975, right before DeAngelo started working at the Auburn Police Department and the East Area Rapist cases began around the Sacramento area.

In the Visalia crimes, DeAngelo broke into homes by prying open windows and doors, Salazar said. But rather than loot the home of expensive items, the burglar took keepsakes, family photos and other personal belongings.

Investigators said the gun used in Snellings murder was stolen from a home two days earlier, leading them to believe the Ransacker was also the killer.

Authorities nearly captured him Dec. 12, 1975, when police spotted a masked man entering the backyard of a Visalia home. The intruder opened fire on a police detective, hopped a fence and disappeared.

The detective was unharmed, but the bullet shattered his flashlight. It was the last time authorities heard from the Ransacker until DeAngelo was arrested at his Citrus Heights home in April.

DeAngelo is accused of crimes that terrorized Californians throughout the 1970s and 80s before abruptly stopping nearly 30 years ago, police said.

Investigators previously linked him to 12 killings and at least 50 rapes before Mondays announcement. He also faces murder charges in Sacramento, Ventura, Orange and Santa Barbara counties. Its unclear if prosecutors can file rape charges since the cases have passed the statute of limitations.

Detectives caught DeAngelo using an unprecedented approach. They uploaded his DNA profile into an open-source genealogy website called GEDmatch, which revealed several potential relatives of the then-unknown suspect.

Investigators soon closed in on DeAngelo, now a grandfather living in the same home he bought in 1979, by gathering DNA samples from his car and trash that matched with several cases.

DeAngelos attorney did not return messages. He has not entered a plea and is due back in court Sept. 5.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.comn Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
A Tarkington-area Dollar General store was destroyed in a fire Sunday night, according to the Montgomery County Police Reporter.

The fire broke out about 9:45 p.m. at the store on State Highway 321 just east of Cleveland.

A dozen fire departments, including Tarkington firefighters, fought the blaze, Tarkington Fire Chief Paul Gregory said.

Water supply was low, and tankers shuttled water to portable dump tanks at the store, according to the Police Reporter.

The fire took two hours to be extinguished, Gregory said. There were no injuries.

Employees were in the store at the time the fire started, but the cause of the flames is unknown.

The Texas State Fire Marshals Office will take part in the investigation, Gregory said.
Ashley and Michael Cordray have made a name for themselves on Galveston Island, remodeling historic, dilapidated homes, many of them predating the devastating 1900 hurricane. But it's their purchase of one newer and much weirder home, the 1960s Kettle House, that has helped propel the house-flipping couple to an HGTV deal.

In 2019, the owners of the remodeling company Save 1900 will star in "Saving Galveston," an eight-episode series highlighting eight home remodels that the Cordrays recently completed over a period of about five months.

The Kettle House, a familiar sight for anyone traveling to the beach on the west end of the island, is one of the eight.

"Michael likes to think it was the house that pushed us over the edge" for HGTV, Ashley said.

MORE ON THE KETTLE HOUSE: Mysterious property's origins revealed by prior owner

The general public took notice of the home's new exterior look recently, as social media posters marveled at the cleaned up property.

A look at the inside will have to wait until next year. The first episode of "Saving Galveston" is set to air April 2019. An exact air date has not been released.

Contrary to popular belief, and Google search results, the Kettle House is not a museum and not open to the public. The Cordray's have taken steps to keep people from walking inside, and plan to keep the house and use it as a vacation rental after the show.

The couple has redesigned the home to have two bedroom and one bathroom, with a master bedroom upstairs and a bunk room downstairs. The 900-square-foot home feels surprisingly spacious on the inside, the Cordrays said.

"It's the biggest shower we did," Michael said.

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY: Chadillac's Backyard Waterpark is for sale in Conroe

The interior design is inspired by the mid-century modern designs of the 1960s, Ashley said, with a focus on fun.

"The inside had to be just as cool as the outside," she said.

The other seven homes to be featured on the show are older and more traditional, the couple said. Many of the Save 1900 properties were in danger of being torn down before the Cordrays purchased them.

"Most of our houses haven't been livable for a decade," Ashley said.

Michael was born and raised on the island. The couple, both Texas A&M University-Galveston graduates, had only been dating for two months when they purchased their first Galveston property for $55,000.

HARVEY RECOVERY PHOTOS: Meyerland house feels like a home again

They started picking up more and more old properties, remodeling them one at a time after their day jobs ended until television producers noticed Save 1900 on social media.

HGTV was looking for a show about an island community, and Michael and Ashley's experience and personalities fit the bill.

A "Saving Galveston" pilot aired several times in 2017, to rave reviews. Now, it's only a matter of months before the Cordrays get their chance to become the next HGTV sweethearts.

Until then, follow Save 1900 on Facebook and Instagram.

Dana Burke covers community news. Read her on the breaking news site chron.com and the subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com. | Follow her on Twitter: @danapburke.
ESTACADA, Ore. - Justice is an 8-year-old American quarter horse who used to be named Shadow. And when he was named Shadow, he suffered. At a veterinarian's exam last year, he was 300 pounds underweight, his black coat lice-ridden, his skin scabbed and his genitals so frostbitten that they might still require amputation.

The horse had been left outside and underfed by his previous owner, who last summer pleaded guilty to criminal neglect. And now Justice, who today resides with other rescued equines on a quiet wooded farm within view of Oregon's Cascade mountains, is suing his former owner for negligence. In a lawsuit filed in his new name in a county court, the horse seeks at least $100,000 for veterinary care, as well as damages "for pain and suffering," to fund a trust that would stay with him no matter who is his caretaker.

The complaint is the latest bid in a quixotic quest to get courts to recognize animals as plaintiffs, something supporters and critics alike say would be revolutionary. The few previous attempts - including a recent high-profile case over whether a monkey can own a copyright - have failed, with judges ruling in various ways that the nonhumans lacked legal standing to sue. But Justice's case, the animal rights lawyers behind it contend, is built on court decisions and statutes that give it a stronger chance, particularly in a state with some of the nation's most progressive animal protection laws.

VIDEO: Scientists in Siberia recently found the remains of a horse dating back 30,000 to 40,000 years.

"There have been a lot of efforts to try to get animals not only to be protected but to have the right to go to court when their rights are violated," said Matthew Liebman, director of litigation at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, which filed the suit in Justice's name. Those "haven't found the right key to the courthouse door. And we're hopeful that this is the key."

These efforts have been made amid broad growth in legal protections and advocacy for animals. Three decades ago, few law schools offered courses in animal law; now, more than 150 do, and some states have created animal law prosecutorial units. All 50 states have enacted felony penalties for animal abuse. Connecticut last year became the first state to allow courts to appoint lawyers or law students as advocates in animal cruelty cases, in part because overburdened prosecutors were dismissing a majority of such cases.

These developments count as progress, animal rights lawyers say, in persuading lawmakers and courts to expand the traditional legal view of animals - as property - to reflect their role in a society in which dog-sitting is big business and divorces can involve cat custody battles.

"Our legislature acknowledged that people care a lot about animals, and that's something that's evolving and increasing," said Jessica Rubin, a University of Connecticut law professor who serves as an advocate in that state's cruelty cases. "The law, hopefully, is catching up to where our morals are."

But expanding the protections for animals is quite different from granting them legal standing, which courts have not been willing to do. In 2004, a federal appeals court shot down a suit in the name of the world's cetaceans, in which President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were sued over the U.S. Navy's use of sonar. In 2012, a U.S. District Court dismissed a suit filed on behalf of five SeaWorld orcas, which argued that their captivity was a violation of the 13th Amendment's prohibition on slavery. This spring, a federal appeals court ruled that a crested macaque that took its own photo could not sue for copyright protection, saying "this monkey - and all animals, since they are not human - lacks statutory standing under the Copyright Act."

In New York courts, a group called the Nonhuman Rights Project has for several years sought writs of habeas corpus for captive chimpanzees, arguing that they are "legal persons" - a term that can apply to corporations and ships - and have a right to freedom. While judges have occasionally praised the effort, they have ultimately rejected it, saying chimpanzees cannot bear the duties and responsibilities required of legal persons.

Against that backdrop, Liebman says Justice's case is "more reasonable" than the others. It does not involve the Constitution or historically weighted concepts such as slavery or a writ of habeas corpus. It's not so, well, silly-sounding as copyright for a monkey.

Instead, he and colleagues say, it is a logical next step. Their argument goes like this: While some state cruelty laws were written to protect animal owners or public morals, Oregon's anti-cruelty law makes plain it is intended to protect animals, which it calls "sentient beings." What's more, state courts have ruled that animals can be considered individual victims. And because victims have the right to sue their abusers, the lawsuit says, Justice should be able to sue his former owner.

Justice, of course, has no idea he is suing. Sarah Hanneken, an Animal Legal Defense Fund attorney in Portland, says that Justice's ignorance of the lawsuit is irrelevant.

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"This whole idea of somebody who has been injured by the acts of another and not being able to speak for themselves in court, so having an adult human do it for them, this is not new," Hanneken said. "Children are allowed to bring lawsuits, because we recognize that children have interests that laws protect."

According to court filings, Justice's former owner, Gwendolyn Vercher, surrendered the horse to a rescue organization in March 2017 at the urging of a neighbor in Cornelius, west of Portland. In a letter to law enforcement, an equine veterinarian who examined the horse at the time said he was "severely emaciated," lethargic and weak. That poor condition probably contributed to a lasting problem - the animal's penis had prolapsed, and his inability to retract it led to frostbite, trauma and infection.

"When I got him, he was a lot worse than I anticipated," said Kim Mosiman, executive director of Sound Equine Options, which takes in and finds homes for about 100 horses each year.

Justice, whom Mosiman fondly describes as "like a grumpy old man," has gained weight and become more social. On a sun-soaked afternoon at the dusty farm in Estacada, he nibbled grass alongside a retired racehorse named Flick and used his nose to nudge the notebook of a visiting reporter. But the lawsuit says his penis may require partial amputation and that his medical conditions will demand long-term care.

"I'm trying to find someone who wants to adopt him," Mosiman said. "But if they find out they're going to have to be financially responsible for him, he's never going anywhere."

Some animal law experts warn that Justice's lawsuit is extreme, even dangerous. Richard Cupp, a Pepperdine University law professor who has been critical of the chimpanzee personhood cases, said he thinks the horse case has even more radical implications.

Allowing Justice to sue could mean any animal protected under Oregon's anti-cruelty statute - a class that includes thousands of pets, zoo animals and even wildlife - could do the same, he said. (Livestock, lab animals, hunting targets, rodeo animals and invertebrates are exempted.) If this approach were adopted elsewhere, Cupp said, a stampede of animal litigation could overrun courts.

"Any case that could lead to billions of animals having the potential to file lawsuits is a shocker in the biggest way," Cupp said. "Once you say a horse or dog or cat can personally sue over being abused, it's not too big a jump to say, 'Well, we're kind of establishing that they're legal persons with that. And legal persons can't be eaten.' "

Cupp emphasized that he supports Oregon's progressive animal cruelty laws and rulings. But legislation is a more reasonable way of expanding animal protections, he said. Justice's case, for example, could be addressed through a law requiring an abuser to cover an animal's future care. "This would not be bad for society," Cupp said. "We do need to evolve. We're not doing enough to protect animals."

Cupp points to a Connecticut law as one that maintains an important distinction between animals and people. It focuses on "the interests of justice," not the animals' interests.

Geordie Duckler, a Portland animal law attorney who represents Vercher, said he views the horse lawsuit as a publicity stunt, one he does not expect Oregon courts to take very seriously.

"There's a massive chasm between saying a thing is a victim and saying now it must have rights, and the rights are apparently the full panoply of rights, and must include a right to sue," Duckler said. "There's no such thing as a right in a vacuum. . . . As soon as you have animal rights, then you'd better have animal jails and prosecutions against animals."

The slippery-slope arguments are familiar to Mosiman, who calls her group an animal welfare, not animal rights, organization. When she considered Justice's long-term needs, though, she had no qualms about signing him up as a plaintiff, she said.

"It was pretty clear-cut: If he wasn't starved, this wouldn't have happened," Mosiman said as Justice languidly scratched his neck and head against a towering pine tree. "It's about him."

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Video: Justice, an 8-year-old American quarterhorse who now resides on a rescue farm in Gresham, Ore., is the plaintiff in a negligence case against his former owner.(Joyce Koh/The Washington Post)

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JERSEYVILLE  This summer, University of Illinois Extension Unit 18 in cooperation with INEP Illinois Nutrition Education Program SNAP-ED hosted Illinois Jr. Chef cooking camp in Jerseyville.

The camp was held Aug. 6-10 at Jerseyville Farm Credit. The free camp was open to children between the ages of 8-13 years.

The camp offered kids the opportunity to make their own nutritious meals and get excited about healthy foods, such as whole grains and low fat dairy. The program also showed participants how to add more fruits and vegetables to their daily meals.

Students not only learned how to prepare delicious and nutritious meals, but they also became aware of the importance of hand washing and good sanitation practices. Food and kitchen safety are good habits that will stick with them for years to come.

Illinois Jr. Chefs is a hands-on, interactive program that youth love. Participants received a certificate and cookbook with recipes they had prepared and important educational handouts to take home and share with their families.

I learned about MyPlate and how much of the five food groups  fruits, vegetables, grains, protein and dairy  we should be eating, participant Hallie Morgan said.

The camp was coordinated by Lizzy Conrady, Macoupin County Community Worker, SNAP-ED, with assistance from Erika Conrady, SNAP-ED Extra-Help. Jerseyville Farm Credit generously donated use of its facilities for the camp. The program was made possible through a partnership with University of Illinois Extension and INEP Illinois Nutrition Education Program.

University of Illinois Extension provides practical education that help people, businesses and communities solve problems, develop skills and build a better future. For more information visit the Unit 18 website at https://go.illinois.edu/cjmm or contact your local Extension office.
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has a new goal aimed at protecting its $100 billion supply chain from foreign theft and sabotage: To base its weapons contract awards on security assessments - not just cost and performance - a move that would mark a fundamental shift in department culture.

The goal, based on a strategy called Deliver Uncompromised, comes as American defense firms are increasingly vulnerable to data breaches, a risk highlighted earlier this year by China's alleged theft of sensitive information related to undersea warfare, and the Pentagon's decision last year to ban software made by the Russian firm Kaspersky Lab.

"The department is examining ways to designate security as a metric within the acquisition process," Maj. Audricia Harris, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement. "Determinations [currently] are based on cost, schedule, and performance. The department's goal is to elevate security to be on par with cost, schedule, and performance."

The strategy was written by the Mitre Corp., a not-for-profit company that runs federally funded research centers, and the firm released a copy of its report Monday.

"The major goal is to move our suppliers, the defense industrial base and the rest of the private sector who contribute to the supply chain, beyond a posture of compliance - to owning the problem with us," said Chris Nissen, director of asymmetric threat response at Mitre.

Harris said the Pentagon will review Mitre's recommendations before proceeding. She added that the Department of Defense, working with Congress and industry, "is already advancing to elevate security within the supply chain."

Testifying to Congress in June, Kari Bingen, the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary for intelligence, said: "We must have confidence that industry is delivering capabilities, technologies and weapon systems that are uncompromised by our adversaries, secure from cradle to grave."

Security should be seen not as a "cost burden," she told the House Armed Services Committee, "but as a major factor in their competitiveness for U.S. government business."

The new strategy is necessary, officials say, because U.S. adversaries can degrade the military's battlefield and technological advantage by using "blended operations" - hacking and stealing valuable data, manipulating software to sabotage command and control systems or cause weapons to fail, and potentially inducing a defense firm employee to insert a faulty component or chip into a system.

"A modern aircraft may have more than 10 million lines of code," Mitre's report said. "Combat systems of all types increasingly employ sensors, actuators and software-activated control devices."

The term "Deliver Uncompromised" grew out of a 2010 meeting of senior counterintelligence policy officials, some of whom lamented that the Defense Department was tolerating contractors repeatedly delivering compromised capabilities to the Pentagon and the intelligence community.

Addressing the security issue requires greater participation by counterintelligence agencies, which can detect threats against defense firms, the report said, and ideally, the government should establish a National Supply Chain Intelligence Center to monitor threats and issue warnings to all government agencies.

Ultimately, the military's senior leaders bear responsibility for securing the supply chain and must be held accountable for it, the report said.

The Defense Department, though one of the world's largest equipment purchasers, cannot control all parts of the supplier base. Nonetheless, it has influence over the companies it contracts with as it is the principal source of business for thousands of companies. It can shape behavior through its contracts to enhance supply chain security, the report said.

Legislation will be needed to provide incentives to defense and other private sector companies to boost security, Mitre said. Congress should pass laws that shield firms from being sued if they share information about their vulnerabilities that could help protect other firms against cyberattacks; or if they are hacked by a foreign adversary despite using advanced cybersecurity technologies.

Contractors should be given incentives such as tax breaks to embrace supply chain security, the report suggested.

The Department of Homeland Security is addressing the security of the information technology supply chain through its newly established National Risk Management Center. "What we're saying is you should be looking at what vendors are doing to shore up their cybersecurity practices to protect the supply chain," said Christopher Krebs, DHS undersecretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate.

The National Counterintelligence and Security Center, an agency of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that coordinates the government's counterintelligence strategy, said in a report last month that software supply chain infiltration has already threatened U.S. critical infrastructure and is poised to endanger other sectors. According to the NCSC, last year "represented a watershed in the reporting of software supply chain" attacks. There were "numerous events involving hackers targeting software supply chains with backdoors for cyber espionage, organizational disruption or demonstrable financial impact," the agency found.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump taunted Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Monday, asserting that his increasingly vocal Republican rival is "very unpopular" and a "failed presidential candidate," and to blame for the narrow margin in last week's special congressional election in the state.

Kasich responded with an impish tweet: an image of Russian President Vladimir Putin breaking into a grin and laughing.

The salvos were the latest in the feud between Trump and Kasich, who is considering challenging Trump in the 2020 presidential race and has become one of the president's sharpest GOP critics.

Trump's attack, while demeaning, gave Kasich something his allies say he needs: a burst of national attention as he mulls whether to take on Trump and seek the party's presidential nomination.

"It elevates Kasich," Bill Kristol, a conservative commentator and anti-Trump organizer, said. "What helps Trump the most is the idea that 85 percent of Republicans support him, so how could anyone run against him? The exchange with Kasich gets at Trump's problems with general election voters."

Kristol added, "After the midterm elections in November, the whole party is going to ask whether it makes sense, politically, to stick with Trump. Trump knows that moment is coming and so does Kasich."

Kasich has been busy making the case that Republicans should be wary of following Trump's lead. He told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that the Aug. 7 election in Ohio's heavily Republican 12th Congressional District was a reaction to the "chaos" he says voters see in Trump's Washington, from the president's conduct to Trump's hard-line stances on trade and immigration.

"What you had is, I think, a message from the voters to the Republicans that you've got to stop the chaos and you've got to get more in tune and stop alienating people," Kasich said. "It wasn't a good night."

Troy Balderson, the Republican nominee in the central Ohio district, remains neck-and-neck with Democrat Danny O'Connor in the race, which has not yet been called nearly a week after voters went to the polls. Regardless who wins the election, the two candidates will square off again in November.

Trump swept into Ohio the weekend before the special election for a rally, and in a tweet last week, he moved to take credit for Balderson's tally at the time, which showed him slightly ahead of O'Connor.

Still, many GOP strategists viewed the results in Ohio and in several primaries nationally last week as a dark omen three months before Election Day, saying they illustrate the limits of Trump's ability to lift his party, particularly in suburban areas where the president's popularity has suffered.

Trump, however, singled out Kasich on Monday as the reason for Balderson's underwhelming showing, arguing without evidence that Kasich voicing concerns about Balderson's embrace of Trump - Balderson spoke alongside Trump at the closing rally - affected Republican turnout.

"The very unpopular Governor of Ohio (and failed presidential candidate) @JohnKasich hurt Troy Balderson's recent win by tamping down enthusiasm for an otherwise great candidate," Trump tweeted. "Even Kasich's Lt. Governor lost Gov. race because of his unpopularity. Credit to Troy on the BIG WIN!"

Ohio's lieutenant governor, Mary Taylor, lost her race for Ohio's Republican gubernatorial nomination in May.

A Quinnipiac poll in June showed Kasich far outpacing Trump in terms of approval among Ohio voters. Fifty-two percent of registered Ohio voters approve of the job Kasich is doing as governor, while 43 percent approve of Trump's performance as president.

Kasich's top advisers welcomed the president's scorn as a sign that Trump is keeping close watch on the threats he may eventually confront in his own party.

"They had been pretty disciplined about not attacking Kasich for the last two years or so," Kasich strategist John Weaver said in an interview, referring to the Trump White House. "But the president is watching TV, and he's not just watching Fox, and he's hearing the footsteps behind him."

Trump's tweet Monday also reflects his eagerness to deflect blame for Republicans' lackluster showing in the special election regardless of whether he perceives Kasich as a legitimate threat or just another critic to be rebuked for speaking out against him.

Kasich, 66, sought the 2016 Republican presidential nomination yet struggled to loosen Trump's grip on the party's base voters and never mounted a serious challenge. At political stops since then, Kasich has regularly cast himself as a pragmatic and compassionate politician who holds hawkish views on foreign policy. Kasich has plans to return to New Hampshire, which holds the first presidential primary, in November.

During his years in the U.S. House, Kasich was known as a budget-cutting conservative, but he has since developed a more moderate persona due to his criticism of Trump and his decision to accept the expansion of Medicaid in Ohio as part of President Obama's health-care law.

Unlike a crowd of prominent Republicans who were critical of Trump in the final weeks of the 2016 race, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Ohio, and former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, Kasich has remained critical and frequently called out Trump and the president's agenda.

"It's been pretty lonely out here," Kasich told The Guardian in July. "Most of the people have been upset with [Trump], and then endorse him and then they get upset with him. I just have not operated that way."

Several modern Republican presidents have faced primary battles of varying degrees of seriousness. Incumbent Gerald Ford was challenged by Ronald Reagan in 1976 and George H.W. Bush was challenged by conservative leader Patrick Buchanan in 1992. Both Ford and Bush went on to fend off those challenges but were defeated in the general election after being hobbled.

Some historians are skeptical of a potential Kasich campaign, framing a challenge from the center as far more difficult than running against a president from the right.

"Reagan had deep roots in the conservative movement long before 1976," said conservative author Craig Shirley, who has written extensively about Reagan's run against Ford. Citing Reagan's national radio commentaries in the 1970s and his relationships throughout the GOP's activist wing, Shirley said "Kasich is not Reagan and has no such national following and no signature issue."

Kasich was coy on Sunday when asked about a 2020 run.

"Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. I don't know," he said.

Weaver, who served as Kasich's strategist during the 2016 race, said the governor's retort on Monday - a smiling, seemingly dismissive image of Putin on Twitter - was a message meant for the president.

"We're not going to be trifled with," Weaver said. "We're going to bring a machete to a knife fight."

White House officials dismissed Weaver's remark.

"He's cursing the darkness," said one senior administration official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. "Who's showing up to that fight? No one."

- - -

Felicia Sonmez and Emily Guskin contributed to this report.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  Homicides in Mexico rose by 16 percent in the first half of 2018, as the country again broke its own records for violence.

The Interior Department said over the weekend there were 15,973 homicides in the first six months of the year, compared to 13,751 killings in the same period of 2017.

The number is the highest since comparable records began being kept in 1997, including the peak year of Mexico's drug war in 2011.

At current levels, the department's measure would put national homicides at 22 per 100,000 population by the end of the year  near the levels of Brazil and Colombia at 27 per 100,000.

READ ALSO: The entire police force of a Mexican town has been arrested after a candidate for mayor was murdered

Security analyst Alejandro Hope noted "the figures are horrible, but there are some signs that are halfway encouraging."

For example, the growth in homicides seems to be flattening out; murders were up only about 4 percent compared to the second half of 2017. "The curve may be flattening out," Hope noted, though he cautioned it is too early to tell.

Some areas, like the northern border state of Baja California, showed big jumps in murder rates, which others saw sharp drops.

Baja California, home to the border city of Tijuana, saw 1,463 homicides in the first half of the year, a 44 percent increase over the same period of 2017.

Authorities have attributed the spate of killings to battles between the Jalisco and Sinaloa drug cartels for control of trafficking routes in Baja California. The state is now Mexico's second most violent, with a homicide rate for the first six months of the year equivalent to 71 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

By comparison, Honduras and El Salvador  some of the deadliest countries in the world  have homicide rates of around 60 per 100,000.

Mexico's most dangerous state is Colima, on the Pacific coast, which saw a 27-percent rise in killings and now has a homicide rate of about 80 per 100,000. The Jalisco cartel is also active there.

The central state of Guanajuato, home to the colonial city of San Miguel Allende, saw a 122-percent increase in homicides, which were running at a rate of about 40 per 100,000. Authorities say much of the killing is related to gangs of fuel thieves who drill taps into government pipelines.

But in Baja California Sur, home to the resorts like La Paz and Los Cabos, a stepped-up police presence apparently helped reduce killings. The 125 homicides in the state were less than half the number registered in the first six months of 2017 and a quarter the number in the last half of 2017. Extra police and troops were sent in after warring drug gangs increased killings in the state in 2017.

Hope noted that in about half of Mexico's 32 states and the capital, murder rates didn't rise much or at all. "Now the growth is becoming concentrated" in some areas.

READ ALSO: Rising suicides in Mexico expose the mental health toll of living with extreme, chronic violence

It is hard to tell why growth in homicide rates seem to have tapered off in historically violent states like Guerrero, which is home to more than a dozen gangs and is a main growing area for opium poppies.

"The growth in the use of fentanyl could be reducing the harvest of opium poppies, and that could be having an effect" on murder rates, Hope said.

Farmers in Guerrero say prices for opium paste have dropped to unprofitable levels because drug cartels are substituting it for cheaper, easier to obtain synthetic opioids like fentanyl.

Still, not all of Mexico's resort areas fared as well as Baja California Sur.

The Caribbean coast state of Quintana Roo, home to resorts like Cancun, Tulum and Cozumel, saw homicides rise by 132 percent, to the equivalent of about 35 killings per 100,000.

The state accounts for almost half of Mexico's national tourism income. And Mexico has seen international resorts like Acapulco and Zihuatanejo dragged down by a reputation for violence in the past.

"The can stop it (violence in Quintana Roo), but they have to take care of it very quickly," Hope said.
On Monday the debate remained: had El Tiempo erred in serving Attorney General Jeff Sessions and then posting to Facebook about it?

The decision over the weekend had drawn ire from both sides. Some called for a boycott of the restaurant, a favorite Tex-Mex spot of many. Others said El Tiempo should not apologize but stand strong.

And then, amid the noise, a rival Tex-Mex restaurant threw itself into the fray, perhaps seizing an opportunity to poke fun at -- and perhaps drum up some business from -- the establishment down the road.

GOOD ONE: Houston restaurant gets Texas-wide attention for hilarious sign

Along busy Westheimer Road in Montrose on Monday evening, the marquee on El Real Tex Mex Cafe blazed in bright red letters: "BRUNCH SESSIONS AT EL REAL ARE ALWAYS CAGE FREE AND FULL OF RAINBOWS."

El Tiempo wasn't the only place visited by Sessions, who was in Houston Friday to speak about ways to reduce gang violence. "This should be obvious: if we want to reduce violent crime we should reduce illegal immigrant crime," Sessions said.

He spoke the words after visiting La Mexicana for breakfast..

But it was the El Tiempo debate that drew attention from near and far, as the controversy spread on the radio, in offices and on personal social media accounts. (The restaurant's social media platforms are now dark .) People also took to Yelp, which Monday had an alert saying it was in the process of clearing out posts related to the news event.

A protest was planned at another of the El Tiempo locations for Monday night.
Portions of Bexar County were under a flash flood warning for several hours Sunday night, after a large storm system swept through the area.

A rain gauge on the Southwest Side recorded 4.41 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service.

Weve had 2 to 3 inches of rain pretty quickly," said Nick Hampshire, a meteorologist with the NWS. "Its probably going to lead to some flash flooding.

A second flash flood warning was also issued for several hours for southwestern Bexar County and east central Medina County.

Flash floods are especially dangerous at night when it becomes difficult to tell the depth of flooding on roadways, Hampshire said.

READ ALSO: 27 rescued from Nueces River in Uvalde County after flash flooding in Chalk Bluff Park

(We) just would stress to people: Turn around, dont drown, he said, adding, Dont approach any flooded roadways.

The San Antonio metro area also saw extensive power outages, with CPS reporting outages for thousands of customers at different points of the night.

Uvalde  which saw up to 11 inches of rain Saturday night and into this morning, leading to the rescue of 27 people from high water around Chalk Bluff River Resort and Park  has not had that much more rain, Hampshire said.

(It) doesnt look like theres anything imminent, he said.

Brian Contreras is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. | brian.contreras@express-news.net | Twitter: @_B_Contreras_
The murder trial of a 49-year-old San Antonio man accused of killing his business partner three years ago, allegedly after the two men argued, enters its second week when testimony resumes Monday.

Prosecutors, who are expected to rest their case Monday, began presenting witnesses and evidence last week in the trial of David James Gomez. He called police twice the night of April 7, 2015. The first call was to warn that Isaias Isaac Flores was angry, threatening and on the way to Gomezs Mercedes Service shop in the 900 block of Bitters Road. Shortly after that first call, Gomez dialed 911 again to report that he had shot Flores, 42, a business partner.

Prosecutors Stephanie Franco and Oscar Pena argued at the trials opening last week that the men ran a trucking business together hauling sand to the Eagle Ford Shale until shortly before the shooting, which allegedly was over Flores wanting out of the business.

RELATED: Arrest made in connection to San Antonio strip club shooting

Gomezs defense attorneys George Shaffer and Jacqueline Kriebel argued that Flores threatened Gomez for some time through phone calls and text messages, and that it all came to a head when Gomez, in fear for his life, shot Flores in self-defense. Gomez pleaded not guilty to murder.

Last week, jurors watched two interviews Gomez had with detectives  one the night of the shooting, and another more than two years later when Gomez was arrested.

Gomez told police in one interview with San Antonio police detectives that he and Flores argued and struggled around the office, then Flores cleared the desk, got on top of it. At which point, Gomez, while pushed up against a glass-door closet, fired three shots, killing Flores, he told police. Flores body was shown slumped face down on the floor.

Prosecutors Friday were quick to point out to the jury that Gomezs interviews did not quite match up, something corroborated by a second SAPD homicide detective, who walked the jury through a second video taken two years later at the time of his arrest with another homicide detective.

RELATED: Affidavit: Juvenile driver led police to 3 murder suspects

In that video, Gomez said Flores, who was very upset, came into his office, picked him up and threw him into the glass-door closet. Gomez said the men struggled, and Flores cleared the desk, coming over it, and Gomez shot him.

Crime scene photographs presented in court last week showed an office in disarray, equipment on the floor, shattered and broken glass on the double doors on the closet, and items strewn across the desk, which did not appear to have been cleared. A camera lens in a corner on the ceiling appeared to have a rag covering the lens.

Murder is a first-degree felony punishable by five to 99 years or life in prison. If convicted, Gomez would be sentenced at a later date by Visiting Judge Dick Alcala, who is presiding over the case in Felony Impact Court.

Elizabeth Zavala is a courts and crime reporter in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863
A 25-year-old Austin man was jailed Monday after he allegedly destroyed up to $300,000 worth of property at an elementary school in Buda.

James Kerr faces two felony charges of criminal mischief, two felony charges of arson and a state jail felony of burglary of a building. He remains in the Hays County Jail and bonds for the charges have not been set.

RELATED: S.A. man accused of beating woman to death as she held child

According to the Hays County Sheriff's Office, Kerr went on a rampage in the Carpenter Hill Elementary School on Aug. 10. He is accused of starting at least one fire in the school, and security camera footage showed him walking through the school's hallways smashing whatever he came across with an instrument, possibly a hammer.

"He was tearing up whatever he could," said Dep. Stephen Traeger. "Computers. A trophy case. Just walking and destroying things as he went."

All told, Kerr is accused of causing between $150,000 and $300,000 in damage to the school, Traeger said.

RELATED: SAPD looks for man suspected of hitting H-E-B grocer with his car

Deputies were able to identify Kerr though security camera footage, but they've been unable to pin down a motive or his connection to the school.

Traeger said the damage Kerr caused will not delay the first day of school at Carpenter Hill, which is Aug. 27.

Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

Caleb Downs is a crime reporter for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here.| cdowns@mysa.com | Twitter: @calebjdowns
Last time I updated Mahurangi Matters readers, Councils 10-year budget  the blueprint for how our city will grow and develop over the next 10 years  was out for public consultation. Thank you to everyone who contributed their views and ideas and helped to shape the final plan. The budget was struck in June and represents Aucklands largest ever investment in infrastructure, pumping $26.2 billion into the city over the next decade.

The largest part of that  $12 billion  is going towards transport, of which $4.3 billion will be leveraged from the regional fuel tax, taking the overall transport investment between Council and the Government to $28 billion over 10 years.

That enables Council to quadruple investment in road sealing in rural areas to $121 million over the coming decade. Rodney locals and residents in Aucklands far north will also benefit from the Ara Tuhono  Puhoi to Warkworth motorway extension, construction of the Matakana Link Road, funding to progress a rapid transit corridor from the north west to the CBD, and construction of the State Highway 16 Brigham Creek to Waimauku project.

An important feature of the budget is its emphasis on road safety  particularly for our rural communities. Tragically, in the last year, 20 people were killed and 101 people seriously injured on rural roads across the region. Thats an appalling and unacceptable human cost.

In the coming year, $5 million, including funding from the regional fuel tax, will be spent on improved road markings and better signage. Improvements to our rural road network in Rodney will include making high-risk intersections safer and providing signage and road markings to help people make better decisions when they are driving, such as slowing down for a bend in the road.

In 2017, four roads, Hunua Road, Paparimu Road, Ararimu Road and Kariotahi Road, were improved as part of the Signage and Delineation Plan. An evaluation showed a 40 per cent reduction in injury crashes along these corridors, with zero deaths or serious injuries reported since the work was completed. Extending those safety gains to all our rural communities is crucial.

The budget will also see Rodney benefit from more than $22 million of funding for parks, sport and recreation, community services, community facilities, governance and environmental management in 2018/2019.

The 10-year budget is the most important plan that will be developed in this term of Council. Its a plan Im proud of, and I look forward to seeing it come to fruition, delivering the infrastructure our city needs as we continue to grow.

Phil Goff, Mayor of Auckland

phil.goff@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz
The kokako, sometimes called the blue-wattled crow, is one of New Zealands many unique species. It is about the size of a magpie, with strong legs for hopping and climbing trees. Its beautiful blue-grey wings are rounded and only good for gliding, not sustained flight. Both male and female adults have blue wattles around their throats. They are vegetarians, eating foliage, flowers and fruit of many species.

Kokako once graced the forests of Coromandel and Great Barrier Island with their haunting bell-like song, but were not known to have ever been present on Hauturu.

In the early 1980s, 33 kokako were transferred to Hauturu after the Wildlife Service had eradicated feral cats and the island was able to offer them a safe haven. They came from the Waikato-Bay of Plenty region, where native forest was being felled. In 1994, the last two remaining kokako from Great Barrier Island were captured and taken to Hauturu.

Many visitors to the island report seeing them strolling on the rangers lawn or hearing their haunting song at dawn.

By the 1990s, the population was estimated to be around 130 birds. In 2013, the Department of Conservation (DOC) conducted a survey of the kokako on Hauturu. The survey indicated that there were around 450 pairs of kokako on the island. Blood samples were taken from some of the birds to gauge their health, as well as conduct DNA work to study their genetic diversity, as the founding population had been relatively small. The DNA sampling indicated that there were probably few females in the founding population.

This is not surprising considering the birds came from an area where nesting female birds would have been vulnerable to attack by mammalian pests. It is thought the Hauturu population may have reached carrying capacity.

During June and July of this year, a DOC biodiversity team has been on Hauturu to capture juvenile kokako. They have managed to transfer 20 young birds to

Purangi/Pouiatoa  a forest area of 1000ha in east Taranaki, where kokako have not been heard for many years. Pests have been removed from the area and trapping continues. It is hoped that one day, should Great Barrier become pest free, that similar transfers will take place to the island. If this happens, descendants of the last two kokako who lived there, will be heard singing in the islands forest.

Lyn Wade, Little Barrier Island Supporters Trust

www.littlebarrierisland.org.nz
Terence Kennedy left Ireland, aged 24, in 1844. He came to New Zealand via America and Australia and purchased 300 acres of bush where Schollums Access Road, off SH 1, now is. He arrived five years before the Bohemian settlers of Puhoi.

As soon as Terence heard that he had neighbours, he rode into the small township and was the first stranger they had seen. He spoke to the settlers, but they couldnt understand him, nor he they, so he remounted and soon disappeared over the hills. The settlers named him the man from nowhere. His next visit coincided with that of Father dAckermann who could translate.

Terence was a Catholic, like the Bohemian settlers, and asked to be informed each time Father dAckermann was visiting the settlement. From then on, Martin Schedewy ran up the hill to Terence Kennedys two-roomed shanty to let him know when Mass was being celebrated in Puhoi. He received a sixpence in return, so was well paid. The country that lay between where Terrence lived and Puhoi was so densely covered with bush that the whereabouts of Terrences dwelling remained a mystery to most Puhoi people. They renamed him Mountain Chief.

Terence was a big man, industrious, hardworking, broad-minded and honest. He became well known, loved and trusted by the Bohemian people. One day, a little girl aged seven, was sent by her mother to Terrences house for some flour. When she had not returned by evening, neighbours were called and several search parties scoured the bush. For three days and nights they, along with the police, searched, but the child was not found.

On the day of the disappearance, Mr Kennedy had killed a cow and there was blood on his clothes. Could Terence have killed the child? An inquest was held. The board was made up of his Bohemian neighbours who pronounced him above suspicion. Although all proclaimed him guiltless, he became sad and was never seen to smile after that day.

Five years before he died, Terrence visited the church in Puhoi and vowed to bequeath all his estate to the church if the mystery of the disappearance of the little girl was solved before his death. Four years later, a hunter found the skull of a child and some buttons, which the mother identified as being on the little girls coat. The discovery was made about three miles from Terrences home. Grateful to have his name cleared, Terrence left his estate to the Sisters of St Mary to be used forever for educational purposes.

He is buried in Puhoi Cemetery with a two-sided headstone. The reverse reads: Remember man when you pass by, what you are now, so once was I; And as I am now so you will be. Remember death and pray for me.

Jenny Schollum, Puhoi Historical Society

www.puhoihistoricalsociety.org.nz
4 lanes good, 2 lanes bad

The story in the latest Mahurangi Matters about the Matakana Link Road (MM August 1) is concerning. The suggestion that a two-lane road will later be extended to a four lane rightly has alarm bells ringing. Why do we continue to under-spec and build for today, or actually in this case yesterday, rather than the future? We know the area is growing, we know the traffic is bad now and will get worse. Look at Penlink, which was needed back in 1990s and still hasnt been built. The battle I had with some councillors about building a roundabout at Matakana is another example. At least that was an argument I won, thanks to the generous gift of land from the developer and staff at Rodney who had some vision. Its not ideal, but the alternative would have been dire. Just get on with it.

Penny Webster, Chair Matakana Coast Tourism

Delight in differences

In reply to John & Barbara Starrenburg, Kevin and Cheryl Bartlett and Margaret Barnyard (MM August 1). Im not sure whether to laugh, cry, shake my head or scream. From the gay bashing to your lifestyle to Christian freedom (twice), Christian point of view, I thought the letter was a reprint from many, many, many years ago. We all have freedom. From the Hindu serving you sliced beef in the deli, or the Jewish person serving you roast pork, or the person filling your medical prescription for something they dont believe in. What if it was reversed? What if an LGBTQ+ shop owner refused service to Christians because they didnt agree with their faith? Or heterosexuals for their lifestyle? Or a male editor not printing letters from females? Whats next? A sign in the window saying who you dont serve? Like apartheid in South Africa and America? Its called not discriminating, not participating in bigotry or segregation, practicing tolerance and acceptance for people different to ourselves. We are all people. Does that sound familiar? As for talking about lifestyle, do you choose to be heterosexual? There are sufficient facts available to you to not be so willingly ignorant about the subject. To be so disproves your assertion that you are Christians.

Jill Mortlock, proud mother of one LGBTQ+ daughter and one non-LGBTQ+ daughter.

Selective morality

Folks last week used a highly contentious passage from Paul  a man who may have never met Christ during his ministry  to justify their point of view with regard to making a wedding cake for a gay couple (MM August 1). How much more forceful, then, should they be against the practice of making wedding cakes for divorced people, when the actual words of Christ are given in Matthew 5:32 and repeated in other verses. But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Any accusation of bigotry and hypocrisy would surely be dispelled by applying such biblical principles to all.

Phil Heffernan, Te Arai
The Warkworth Quilters recently welcomed Roseanna Ball, from the Mahurangi Presbyterian Church, who gave an enthusiastic talk about her work with Pasifika families.

She explained that most of the families she helps come from Kiribati, Tuvalu and Tonga. They generally have few possessions, work for minimal wages and are completely unprepared for the comparatively cold weather we have here in New Zealand during winter.

They are also often unprepared for the completely different way of life. Roseanna explained how she works with these families, acting as an advocate to assist them with doctors, lawyers, schools and WINZ.

At the conclusion of her talk, quilters president Glenys Wild presented Roseanna with a bag of 12 quilts to be shared with Pasifika families in the district.

Roseanna thanked the quilters for their generosity and said she knew that the quilts would be greatly appreciated. (supplied)
Warkworth Theatre Group will present Cornucopia  six short New Zealand plays in a single show  to celebrate New Zealand Play Month.

Three of the plays, The Letter, Lost Soul and Frozen, are written by local writers.

The Letter, a comedy by Susan Howard of Matakana, will be familiar to all in the Rodney area. Life is not all beer and skittles on a lifestyle block in the country. The neighbours are gathering for a fight against the council when some startling news is received.

In Lost Soul, by Dennis Lewis of Snells Beach, a money-grubbing, cheating psychiatrist finally gets his comeuppance while treating a Warkworth patient.

In Frozen, by Pam Ellender of Warkworth, a group of seniors hit on a novel approach to supplementing their pensions.

The other plays are Crosswords by award-winning playwright Tim Hambleton, Speed Dating by Richard Prevett and The Willing Horse by Isobel Andrews.

The Willing Horse is a World War II era comedy set in the kitchen of Waituna Hall, the centre of all social activity in a New Zealand farming district. New love and love unrequited are discovered over the teacups and sandwiches.

In Crosswords, a domestic tiff threatens to turn ugly.

In Speed Dating the audience witnesses one couples first rushed meeting.

Three members of the Warkworth Theatre Group will make their directorial debut for Cornucopia. They are Robin Brown (Crosswords), Rosie Hutchinson (Speed Dating) and Susan Howard (The Letter). The other directors are Joanna Pearce (Lost Soul), Sally Knight (Frozen) and Robyn Kellian (The Willing Horse).

Performances take place at the Warkworth Town Hall on Wednesday, August 29, 7pm; Thursday, August 30, 7pm, Friday August 31, 7pm; Saturday, September 1, 2pm and 7pm.

Tickets are $20 each or $150 for a table of eight. Students, gold coin donation. Tickets available at the door or from Harts Pharmacy, Mahurangi Matters or Gull Matakana.
The backlash against Kaths Devine Cakes for refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding has prompted a Warkworth man to seek to establish a new political party.

As Mahurangi Matters went to press, John Starrenburg, 83, was preparing to launch The Christian Alliance Party of New Zealand at a public meeting at the Warkworth Community Rooms in Alnwick Street, in Warkworth, on August 11. Mr Starrenburg hopes the party will attract 50,000 members within its first year.

Its a dream and a vision, but Im pretty sure it is of the Lord, he said.

He says the following issues are likely to form a key part of the new partys platform:

 Curtailing policies that advance the cause of gays

 Teaching creationism alongside evolution in schools

 Introducing a voucher system, whereby Christian parents can use the money that would be spent educating their children in state schools to fund their education in a Christian school instead

Mr Starrenburg said Christian political parties in New Zealand had failed in the past because they concentrated on Christian ethics rather than Christ himself. He said, in contrast, Christ would be central to the new party.

Kaths Devine Cakes, a Warkworth cake maker, made international news when the business owner declined to bake a cake for an Australian lesbian couple.
As the spectre of a national teachers strike loomed last week, 14 primary schools across the wider Mahurangi region were preparing to close on August 15 affecting hundreds of families across the region.

Affected schools were expected to be Warkworth, Leigh, Tauhoa, Wellsford, Horizon, Pakiri, Kaiwaka, Tapora, Matakana, Snells Beach, Kaipara Flats, Mangawhai Beach, Waipu and Tomarata.

The strike decision comes after the Government announced a 2.5 per cent pay increase for teachers, well short of teacher demands. it will be the first strike in 24 years.

Wellsford School principal Dave Bradley says the action is an attempt to avert disaster.

The union feels the pay offer from the Government hasnt addressed the teacher shortage crisis that will only get worse, he says.

We are seeing fewer people entering the profession, teachers leaving it earlier and student numbers rising. Its crucial we make the job more attractive.

The average annual salary for a primary school teacher is around $55,000 per annum.

The NZEI teachers union believes an eight per cent increase each year for two years is required.

Mr Bradley says teachers working conditions are also unacceptable.

Teachers are not just at school to teach. They also have to deal with mental health, behaviour and an increased amount of administration.

By attracting more people into education, the load on teachers will decrease. There will be smaller class sizes and schools will be able to employ more specialist staff to take care of student wellbeing, Mr Bradley says.

However, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said the strike would achieve nothing and described it as a serious disappointment.

The reality is were doing the best we possibly can for them, he said.

If they give us a chance we can help them into the future, but we cant do it all in the first year, they know that and so its a serious disappointment.

Mr Bradley argued that the government knew the teachers were in need of a bigger pay increase and didnt distribute funds accordingly.

Weve seen them give free tertiary education to students, while teachers receive a mediocre pay cheque and its time for that to change.

Schools closed on August 15 will not be providing alternative options for students, but some after-school care organisations are looking to fill the gap.

Working parents will either need to take a day off or find family to look after their children, just as they would if their child was sick, Mr Bradley says.

Maungaturoto School, Ahuroa School and Living Way School will not take part in the strike and will remain open.

Striking teachers from the area will head to Auckland or Whangarei to take part in marches.
Rodney-based Labour MP Marja Lubeck received a petition on the steps of Parliament last week seeking the banning of conversion therapies that aim to make gay people straight.

The petition, containing 5157 signatures, was organised by the Rodney Area Rainbow LGBTQ+ group.

It was presented by InsideOUT national coordinator Tabby Besley on August 8, along with a second petition seeking the same ban organised by InsideOUT, Young Labour and the Young Greens.

Rodney Area Rainbow Group spokesperson Amanda Ashley says conversion therapies were an abhorrent practice that had no basis in modern science or psychology.

Its trying to change people from who they are and what they are, to be someone elses idea of what they should be, she said.

In addition to gay conversion therapies, the Rodney petition also seeks to ban other conversion therapies such as trans-conversion therapy, which aims to dissuade an individual from trying to change their gender should they wish to do so.

Amanda said there were various types of conversion therapies. Some involved a counselling session where an effort was made to programme an individual to change their minds. Others were more extreme and involved electric shock therapy.

She said the therapy was often forced upon people, typically in a religious community where parents might force a child to attend a church-led conversion therapy.

Ms Ashley said conversion therapy was wrong even if a person was unhappy about their sexual orientation and wanted to give the therapy a try.

I dont think they should be able to go through conversion therapy because it is not usually done by people who are registered counsellors or psychologists. If someone felt that way, they should be going to a registered counsellor and psychologist to get help, she said.

Marja Lubeck decided to receive the petition after contacting the Rodney Area Rainbow group and asking how best she could support them.

Once an MP receives a petition, it is presented to the House, then allocated to a select committee for consideration. Although the receiving MP does not have to support the petition, Ms Lubeck said she supported this one.

Its proven from several studies that have been published that conversion therapy does more harm than good, she said.

She hoped conversion therapy would be added to the Crimes Act so that it would become a criminal offence to practice them.

But the principal of Nelson-based Living Wisdom School of Counselling, David Riddell, said banning conversion therapy would be a disaster.

Mr Riddell said same-sex attraction was usually the result of social, emotional or sexual damage in the formative years.

The vast majority of people who discover within themselves a same-sex orientation can, with a competent therapist, also be empowered to discover the malnurture that set that preference up in their psychosexual nature, he said.

He added that if conversion therapy had been banned previously, many of his clients who had found their way out of an emotional condition that was bringing them acute shame, deepening anxiety and profound guilt would never have escaped from it.

Any number of my clients have experienced a re-awakening of heterosexual orientation during the course of therapy, he said.
Award-winning environmentalist, filmmaker, speaker and solutionist Nicola Peel will be giving a very interesting presentation in Edgeworthstown on Tuesday, August 14, next.

Nicola has been working for most of her adult life on finding solutions to numerous environmental and social problems.

Since 2000, she has been working in the Ecuadorean Amazon.

She traveled from the headwaters in Ecuador down the Amazon River to Brazil researching the effects of the oil industry on the environment and indigenous people who live there.

Her discoveries led her to share her insights in a number of short films as well as the feature documentary Blood of the Amazon.

But producing a film was not enough; driven to find ways to help deal with the contamination left from the oil industry, she co-founded The Amazon Mycorenewal Project, bringing together a group of scientists to research mycoremediation (the use of fungi to clean up contaminated sites).

Looking for an immediate solution to help the people, she started to build rainwater systems for families drinking contaminated water.

She has also initiated the clean up of villages using eco-bricks (empty plastic bottles filled with rubbish).

Nicola built the first ecological restaurant in the Amazon (built from 3,200 eco-bricks) and the first place to serve local coffee.

Working with the local councils, she has provided environmental consultancy and worked to change the entire way of looking at waste.

After visiting the Pacific coast of Colombia and seeing the vast amount of beach rubbish it was apparent another bigger solution was required.

Nicolas focus has now moved on from eco-bricks to promoting the use of the open sourced machinery which can chip plastic and melt it down into a new saleable products.

This then turns rubbish into a resource, trash into treasure and brings an environmental, social and economical solution.

With the charity Rainforest Saver, she has also been coordinating an agroforestry project to help prevent the slash and burn of tropical rain forests.

Nicola's presentation will take place on Tuesday, August 14 at 8pm in the Green, Edgeworthstown, hosted by the Stop CETA Alliance.

For more info see www.nicolapeel.com or www.eyesofgaia.com
School & Education, Local News, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: August 13 2018

New Law Prompted by Death of 19-Year-Old Baruch College Student.

Albany, NY - August 13, 2018 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today signed anti-hazing legislation to help keep students safe as they go back to school. The law (S.2755/A.5200) prohibits certain physical contact or requiring physical activity in any organization's initiating ceremony to prevent the deaths or serious injuries of students during fraternity pledging ceremonies.

"These hazing rituals are dangerous and reckless with potentially fatal consequences, and I'm proud to sign this legislation to protect college students across this great state," Governor Cuomo said. "As we prepare for the beginning of another school year, parents and students alike deserve to have peace of mind that we take hazing seriously and will have zero tolerance for these abuses in New York."

"The safety of our students is a top priority and these hazing rituals put them at risk of physical and emotional harm," said Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul. "This legislation will help to combat these dangerous rituals and prevent injury and potential fatality of our students. We will not tolerate these actions that threaten the lives of students in New York State."

Senator Ken LaValle said, "I am pleased that the measure is being signed into law before the start of the next college semester. Too many families have had to grieve the loss of a relative due to hazing. Whether it be from dangerous hazing incidents, alcohol poisoning or drug overdoses, we need to continue to combat the problems causing tragic deaths and injuries on campuses. This new law will bring the changes necessary to deter such harmful behavior in the future."

Assemblyman David Weprin said, "Hazing is reckless and dangerous behavior, and we must do everything in our power to protect students from danger. Michael Deng's death was a horrific and preventable tragedy, and I was proud to sponsor this legislation to honor his memory and prevent future families' heartbreak. I thank Governor Cuomo for signing this legislation to save lives and bring comfort to Michael's family."
Local News, Business & Finance, Health & Wellness

By Chris Boyle Published: August 13 2018

One of the things that can affect one's self confidence the most is hair loss. Thankfully, there are many different treatment options available to someone who is dealing with this issue.

Great Neck, NY - August 13, 2018 - Nowadays, people feel more scrutinized about their appearance than ever before. While ideally, we should all be judged on our character and not solely on how we look, people are nonetheless growing increasingly self-conscious and doing whatever they can to look their very best in an effort to impress their peers, superiors, friends and acquaintances.

Alas, one of the things that can affect one's self confidence the most  in both men and women  is hair loss. Thankfully, there are many different treatment options available to someone who is dealing with this issue, and when it comes to once again reclaiming the hair that was once yours, there are few places more qualified to help you to do so than MAXIM Hair Restoration in Hauppauge , Long Island. Great Neck and

Mac Fadra, Managing Director at MAXIM Hair Restoration, has been in the cosmetic and elective health care field for almost 20 years. He holds two Master's degrees from Columbia University and has worked as an executive, entrepreneur, consultant, and manager in various capacities in the industry for both large organizations and individual cosmetic surgery, hair restoration and medical aesthetic practices. So given his very impressive pedigree, it's safe to say that when you go in to see MAXIM Hair Restoration for a consultation, you're going to receive the best possible advice for your particular problem.



MAXIM Hair Restoration has offices in Great Neck , Hauppauge and New York City. Photo Credit: Chris Boyle



Why would someone choose MAXIM Hair Restoration? In most cases in the industry, the doctors are not surgeons, but at MAXIM our doctors are general or plastic surgeons who have surgical experience so they're able to do larger cases, also known as MEGA Sessions, Fadra said. Secondly, our prices are affordable; we offer zero percent financing, and hair restoration is all we do, and we do it very well. We also offer surgical and non-surgical solutions, including stem cell therapy for hair loss.

MAXIM also offers a personal touch, Fadra said, and generally focuses on one client at a time so that their entire team is dedicated to both the procedure and the client. In addition, MAXIM's Chief surgeon, Dr. David Mayer, is a Columbia, Cornell and Memorial-Sloan-trained doctor with years of cosmetic and surgical experience, ensuring that each and every client is in the best possible hands while under his care.

MAXIM Hair Restoration offers a variety of options for people suffering from hair loss; some of those options involve surgical hair transplants as well as non-surgical hair restoration solutions, Fadra said.

Our bread and butter at Maxim is hair transplantation, which is a procedure that takes hair from the back and sides of the head and transplants it to the thinning and balding areas. The procedure is performed under local anesthesia by a doctor while the patient takes a nap, watches TV, or chats with our staff, he said. It's a proven procedure, and there are two types...one is called Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT), which involves removing a section of tissue from the back of the head, dissecting it, and grafting it in the thinning and balding areasThe survival rate of the grafts is very high. This procedure, however, can leave a linear scar in the back of your head, which is concealed by your hair. The other procedure, Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE), does not create a linear scar, and involves taking one graft at a time and transplanting it, which doesn't cover as large an area as an FUT hair transplant procedure. Each procedure has their advantages and disadvantages, as well as price differences.



MAXIM Hair Restoration offers state-of-the-art treatment options for combating hair loss. Photo Credit: Chris Boyle



Essentially, Fadra noted that the FUT was more effective for people who have more ground to cover, so to speak.

"FUE is suitable for people who do not need extensive coverage and do not want a linear scar on the back of their head," he added

However, MAXIM also offers a plethora of non-surgical treatment options as well, many of which are at the absolute cutting edge of hair restoration technology and can produce some very impressive results. The first one Fadra discussed is known as PRP  which stands for Platelet Rich Plasma  a procedure that involves using the patient's very own blood to stimulate hair growth.

We take about 10 to 15 cc's of a patient's blood and we extract plasma, and we inject that into the scalp...it basically helps hair transplant patients with better healing, re-growth, and the quality of the graft, Dr. Mayer stated. PRP is a good adjunct to a hair transplant. You can also do PRP independently of doing a hair transplant, which sometimes can be effective as well. It can strengthen hair follicles and sometimes re-grow hair, and sometimes it can also hopefully improve the texture and the quality of your hair and strengthen the scalp.

The next non-surgical procedure that Fadra went over was scalp micropigmentation, which uses an advanced medical grade pigment to provide the appearance of hair.

This takes three or four sessions, and is ideal for patients who like to have a shaved head look, and fill their thinning or balding areas with the appearance of hair, he said. We also use it for scar revision, whether the scars are from a transplant, an accident, or something else. That procedure is performed by a technician under clinical supervision, and it works very well.



MAXIM Hair Restoration offers complimentary consultations...schedule one today! Photo Credit: Chris Boyle



Scalp microneedling is another highly effective non-surgical procedure that MAXIM Hair Restoration now offers, Fadra said.

Scalp microneedling involves making small incisions on the scalp, after which we then perform a treatment...we typically combine scalp microneedling with PRP, and that gives the patient a fairly good result, he said. This procedure does grow hair, and it's also a good in conjunction with a hair transplant, either before or after. It's a fairly new procedure, and we are seeing good results with it.

In the final procedure MAXIM offers  and the most cutting-edge, as well  involves stem cell therapy, which involves using the patient's own cells or cord blood cells to stimulate hair growth on the scalp, Dr. Mayer said.

We use the patient's own body fat and harvest stem cells from it. We get very good results from this, especially when used in tandem with other procedures like PRP or hair transplants, he said. Stem cells can either be harvested from the patient's own body fat, or cord blood cells can be purchased from a pharmaceutical company. But either way, it's a fairly effective treatment.

No two individuals are the same, and that's especially true when it comes to hair loss. There are a vast number of ways that people experience this issue, so MAXIM Hair Restoration approaches each and every case that they treat as a completely unique challenge to overcome. This ensures the best possible outcome, Fadra said, which ultimately results in a patient who is far more confident and satisfied in their appearance.

If someone needs extensive coverage, and they have male pattern baldness, and there's enough donor area, we recommend a hair transplant...that's roughly 70 to 80 percent of our clientele. 20 to 30 percent of our clientele have other challenges, such as some other type of hair disorder, he said. So it really depends on the person's hair loss condition, and it also greatly depends upon their goals and needs and what's available in their body to use for the treatment. And budget figures into it as well, and we will always try to see what we can do for a patient within the confines of their budget.

The first step in all of this is typically a complimentary consultation at MAXIM Hair Restoration offices in Great Neck, Hauppauge or New York City.
Local News, Community, Charity & Cause

By Long Island News & PR Published: August 13 2018

Klein will lead FASNYs efforts to support the 105,000 members of New Yorks Volunteer Fire Service.

Long Island, NY - August 13, 2018 - Lifelong Lifelong Oceanside resident and veteran Oceanside Fire Department volunteer Steven E. Klein was sworn in yesterday as President of the Firemens Association of the State of New York (FASNY) at the associations 146th annual convention in Syracuse, NY. In his new role, Klein will lead the statewide organization, responsible for supporting and advocating for the 105,000 men and women who make up New York States volunteer fire service.

After more than 50 years in the fire service, it is an incredible honor to be elected President of FASNY, said Klein. In my new role, I will continue to stand with and lead the States volunteer fire service, and one of my primary objectives will be to increase the number of volunteer firefighters across New York. One way to do this is through the training and recruitment of our young citizens and promotion of youth fire programs across the State. I would like to see additional attention and funding spent on recruitment, youth groups and junior firefighter training programs to secure the safety and wellness of the residents of New York for generations to come.

Kleins focus on youth training and programs hits close to home. His joining the volunteer fire service started a family legacy that now runs three generations deep. Kleins son Kevin is currently serving his second stint as Chief of the Oceanside Fire Department, and his grandson Christopher is a new, probationary member of the Department.

Klein first joined the Oceanside Fire Department in 1965, quickly becoming deeply involved in all aspects of the organization. He has since served in a wide variety of administrative and line officer positions, including a term as Chief of Department in 1984.

Shortly after joining Oceanside Fire Department, Klein began dedicating much of his time to advocating for and supporting volunteer firefighters, both at the regional and the State level. He is a past president of the Fire Chiefs Council of Nassau County and the Nassau County Firemens Association. He has served on the Nassau County Fire Commission and is a past chairman of the 2nd Battalion Fire District.

Klein joined FASNY in the late 1960s and was appointed to the Fire Prevention (now the Fire Prevention and Life Safety) Committee. In 2002, Steve was elected Trustee of the Firemens Home, and was reelected in 2007, serving until 2012. His time on the Board of Trustees included seven years as Secretary. Klein has also been a director of the FASNY Foundation since 2003 and has served as president of the Foundation board.

In 2014, Klein was elected to the FASNY leadership, assuming the role of 2nd Vice President. Two years later, in 2016, he was elected 1st Vice President.

Klein is retired from the United States Postal Service. He is a graduate of Oceanside Senior High School and SUNY Farmingdale and still resides on Long Island with his family. He has two children and three grandchildren.

About FASNY
Local News, Crime

By Long Island News & PR Published: August 13 2018

Benji Diskin of Wantagh, 61, is charged with multiple counts of Possession of a Controlled Substance, cops say.

Wantagh, NY - August 13, 2018 - The Major Case Bureau reports the arrest of a Wantagh man on Saturday, August 11, 2018 at 7:40 p.m. in Wantagh.

According to Narcotics/Vice Squad detectives, as part of Operation Natalie, Nassau Countys War Against Opioids, detectives from the Long Island Heroin Task Force conducted a lengthy investigation involving several fatal overdoses and numerous community complaints. The investigation led to the arrest of defendant Benji Diskin, 61. Defendant Diskin was arrested without incident at residence on Wantagh Ave in Wantagh. Search warrants for the Wantagh residence and storage facility in Amityville were secured with the assistance of the Nassau County District Attorneys Office.

Recovered were numerous pieces of evidence linking overdoses to the defendant. The defendant did knowingly and unlawfully possess and sell several controlled substances to Nassau and Suffolk Residents. Evidence seized during this investigation believed to be heroin, cocaine, crack, Suboxone, Clonazepam, and packaging items commonly used to sell control substances. Also seized was an undisclosed amount of US currency believed to be proceeds of the defendants drug sales.

Defendant Benji Diskin is charged with Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substances 2nd Degree, five (5) counts of Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance 3rd Degree, Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance 4th Degree and two (2) counts of Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance. He will be arraigned on August 12, 2018 at First District Court, Hempstead

The Nassau County Police Department reminds the public that as part of Operation Natalie and our Five Prong Approach of Education, Awareness, Enforcement, Diversion and Treatment, we will be continuing with our zero tolerance response to any and all illegal drug activity within the County.
Local News, Business & Finance, Press Releases, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: August 13 2018

Suffolk Job Fair to Be Held on September 14 in Smithtown.

Suffolk County, NY - August 13, 2018 - Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone today announced that the Suffolk County One-Stop Employment Center will host a range of employment events in mid-to-late August to assist residents in their job searches. Beginning on August 13 through August 17, the Employment Center will provide career counseling, resume preparation, and job search assistance outreach services at multiple locations throughout Suffolk County. A number of hiring events will also be held throughout August, and on September 14 at the Smithtown Library a Job Fair will be held to allow job seekers to meet with prospective employers.

We have an obligation to ensure our unemployment continues to remain low by connecting our residents with employment opportunities, said Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone. I urge all residents to take advantage of these resources and encourage them to bring their resumes to our upcoming Job Fair in September.

CAREER COUNSELING/JOB SEARCH SERVICES

Monday, August 13

Adelante/FREE, 10 AM  3 PM

83 Carleton Avenue, Central Islip , 11722

(631) 434-3481

Tuesday, August 14

Huntington Opportunity Resource Center, 10 AM  3 PM

1264 New York Avenue, Huntington Station , 11746

(631) 385-2163

Bellport Hageman East Patchogue (BHEP), By Appointment

1492 Montauk Highway, Bellport , 11713

(631) 286- 9264

Wednesday, August 15

Wyandanch Community Resource Center, 10 AM  3 PM

1585 Straight Path Wyandanch , 11798

(631) 643-1971

Thursday, August 16

Huntington Opportunity Resource Center, 10 AM  3 PM

1264 New York Avenue, Huntington Station, 11746

(631) 385-2163

Friday, August 17

Wyandanch Community Resource Center, 10 AM  3 PM

1585 Straight Path Wyandanch, 11798

(631) 643-1971

HIRING EVENTS

Tuesday, August 14, 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM

Riverhead Employment Center

Suffolk County Department of Social Services -- HEAP Program is recruiting for Temporary Clerk Typists at $13.14/hour, Community Service Workers at $11.00/hour, and Fuel Assistance Workers at $11.00/hour.

Clerk Typists

Perform clerical functions, including input and retrieval of documents in computer programs; Perform reception functions including in person and on the telephone. Completes forms, organizes and maintains files, and completes data entry. Assist Suffolk residents with emergency requests for fuel during evening weekend and holiday hours, and perform related duties as required.

Community Service Workers

Assist Suffolk residents in applying for Energy related Social Service programs. Conduct in person and telephone interviews, Conduct home visits as needed for homebound individuals with emergency needs, to determine eligibility for Energy related benefits (applicant must use their own vehicle with mileage reimbursement available).

Fuel Assistance Workers

Assist Suffolk residents in applying for Energy related Social Service programs. Conduct in person and telephone interviews; determine eligibility for Energy related benefits; Complete forms, organize files, input and retrieve data from computer programs; perform related duties as required. Applicant must have six (6) months of experience in a position that involves substantial public contact. Applicant must have graduated from a standard senior high school or possess a high school equivalency.

Thursday, August 16, 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM

One-Stop Employment Center

725 Veterans Memorial Highway, Hauppauge , NY 11788

SAS Retail Services is recruiting for Retail Merchandisers to work on a team maintaining planograms (product shelf assignment) point-of-purchase materials, merchandising, stocking and building displays, and participating in store events according to the service plan for each store visit. Responsible for maintaining client and retailer standards to increase sales volume of the products represented. $12.00/ hour

CAREER EXPLORATION

Wednesday, August 15, 9:30 AM

Suffolk County One-Stop Employment Center

725 Veterans Memorial Highway, Hauppauge, NY 11788

Staring Your Own Business: A representative from the New York State Small Business Development Center will discuss how to start your own business and become a small business owner. See a counselor or phone (631) 853-6600 to reserve a spot. Space is limited and must be pre-registered.

Wednesday, August 22, 9:30 AM

One-Stop Employment Center

725 Veterans Memorial Highway, Hauppauge, NY 11788

US Customs & Border Protection Opportunities: A Representative from US Customs and Border Protection will present an informational session to discuss how to apply for a position and navigate through their website, the diversity of positions and occupation career advancement, financial & job security, and health, retirement & insurance benefits. Must be a United States Citizen with residency in the US for the past three years, referred for selection prior to 40th birthday (waiver for US Veterans), meet job-related medical, fitness and drug testing standards, possess valid drivers license, successfully participate in a Structured Interview, pass a polygraph examination and background investigation. Space is limited and must be pre-registered. (631) 853-6600

JOB FAIR

Friday, September 14, 10:00 AM  1:00 PM

Presented by the One-Stop Employment Center at Smithtown Library

1 North Country Rd Smithtown , NY 11787, (631) 360-2480

Scheduled to Attend: Amneal Pharmaceuticals, Attentive Care, Bachrach Group, Combined Insurance, DDI, DiCarlo Distributors, East/West Industries, Express Employment Pros, Family First Home Companions, First in Service Staffing, Hellen Keller Services For the Blind, Home Care Solutions, Home Depot, Home Instead Senior Care, Lloyd Staffing, Natures Bounty, Northwell Health, Options for Community Living, Prudential, Right At Home, SCOPE, Shoprite, Spellman High Voltage, Suffolk Transportation Services, TRI/American Maintenance, UCP of Suffolk, US Nonwovens, US Postal Service, and Well Life Network. All are welcome and no registration is required.
Attention Chardonnay haters and anyone else who lives by the absurd ABC (Anything But Chardonnay) philosophy.



Don't turn the page or click on another story.



Not all Chardonnay wines are the same.

Yes, some taste super oaky and completely out of control. But when made right, the best Chardonnay wines in the world blow away many other white wines when it comes to silkiness and smoothness with just a slight hint of butter that dances on your tongue.



That's how the best Chardonnays taste from France's Burgundy region, which is also famous for making out of this world Pinot Noirs.



So when winemakers there decide to make Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines somewhere else, wine lovers take notice.



Decades ago, several winemakers from Burgundy started growing Pinot Noir grapes in Oregon. As Frederic Drouhin of Domaine Drouhin in Burgundy explained to me when I interviewed him at his winery in France last year, his father realized that the climate and growing conditions in Oregon were surprisingly similar to those in Burgundy.

"Thirty years ago, we started our venture in Oregon," Drouhin said, referring to Rose Rock Winery in Oregon. "The question we are often asked, 'Why did you go to Oregon? Well, it's a combination of several factors. A vision, clearly my father had. He had traveled and visited Oregon in the past."

"The wine world is a small village so we met with some people in 1987. A hill was put for sale. My father said, let's go on holiday there, visit and we had to stop the car at the bottom of the hill because there was no road, no nothing. So he climbed with a wine maker through a wheat field and when they reached the top of the hill, they saw the scenery. They felt it. Clearly, it's as simple as that."

So if the same soil is good enough in Oregon to make great Pinot Noirs, the same soil should be ideal for Chardonnays. Sure enough, Oregon makes some outstanding Chardonnay wines.



Oregon has a lot in common with its neighbor to the north, Washington, as well when it comes to cool, wet weather, mountainous terrain and similar soil composition.



So this week, I decided to focus on Chardonnay wines mostly from Washington and one from Oregon. And best of all, many of these gems amazingly cost less than $10 a bottle. The rest of the wines reviewed this week are in the $15 to $30 range, which is still very affordable in my opinion for wines this great.



So what are we waiting for? Let's get to the wines!

WINES REVIEWED THIS WEEK

2015 Chateau St. Michelle Chardonnay ($9.99 at Table & Vine in West Springfield)

2016 Chateau St. Michelle Indian Wells Chardonnay ($16.99 at Table & Vine)

2015 Charles & Charles Chardonnay ($9.99 at Table & Vine)

2014 Columbia Crest Columbia Valley Chardonnay ($9.99 at Table & Vine)

2015 A to Z Wineworks Oregon Chardonnay ($14.99 at Table & Vine)

2017 Revelry Vintners Chardonnay ($14.99 at Provisions in Northampton)

2014 Savage Grace Celilo Vinyards Columbia Gorge Chardonnay ($29.99 at Provisions)

TASTING NOTES

2015 Chateau St. Michelle Chardonnay

This understated, Washington state Chardonnay is the lightest of the wines reviewed and recommended this week. Everything about this wine is soft and understated and it has a clean, fresh finish. This isn't a very complex wine. The flavors (hint of butter and dried buttercup flowers) are mild and only last a short time. But it's well worth the price and tastes great chilled on a hot, summer day.

2016 Chateau St. Michelle Indian Wells Chardonnay

One of my favorite wines in the tasting, I love this Washington wine's round, buttery finish. There's just a hint of oak, but it's nothing overpowering. This slightly more expensive Chateau St. Michelle wine really ramps up the flavors compared to the first wine. Here, the butter's creamier and there's also a delicious hint of sea salt and crispness to its aftertaste. Highly recommend.

2015 Charles & Charles Chardonnay

Four of us tried this Washington Chardonnay. Two didn't like it all, including my wife. The other two of us, including me, thought it was another great wine. Made Charles Smith (K Vintners, Charles Smith Wines) and Charles Bieler (Three Thieves, Bieler Pere et Fils & Gotham Project), this winery made another wine I recommended earlier this year - Charles & Charles Rose. This crisp, citrus-like wine delivers a wide range of flavors, including fresh-picked apples and a hint of sea salt. There's also mistiness to this muted, understated wine that makes me think of cold, damp early mornings in late fall. And at $9.99, it's a steal for this complexity and character.

2014 Columbia Crest Columbia Valley Chardonnay

Of the seven wines reviewed this week, this is the one wine that verges on having too much oakiness. This Washington state wine's also the one you want if you're a butter fanatic. My wife said drinking this wine tasted like eating a stick of butter. I'm not sure I'd go that far. But theres's definitely a lot of butter flavors in this wine, along with a dash of sea salt. This is a wine that pairs well with food (especially fish) better than drinking on its own.

2015 A to Z Wineworks Oregon Chardonnay

The lone Oregon Chardonnay in this tasting, this understated, robust wine brings to mind a grassy, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc paired with a Burgundy Chardonnay with a dash of orange bitters. And since it's a Chardonnay, there's also a hint of butter and salt on the finish. One of the more unusual Chardonnays I've tasted, which in my mind is a great thing. Because who wants to taste wines that all taste the same?

2017 Revelry Vintners Chardonnay

One of the standouts of the tasting, this Washington Chardonnay bursts with flavors in each sip, including a hint of butter, lemon, salt and a slight oyster-like brininess. Almost Chablis-like in its steel-like flavors, I love this wine's long, complex aftertaste. This wine and the next one reviewed on the list were two of the ones I found myself going back to again and again throughout the tasting. Highly recommend.

2014 Savage Grace Celilo Vinyards Columbia Gorge Chardonnay

This Washington Chardonnay cost more than the other wines on the list and its worth every single penny. Smooth and subtle with a hint of smokiness, this understated wine's flavors last nearly a minute after each taste. The butteriness of this wine tastes bright and creamy without being overwhelming. Let me add that this was the first wine out of the seven bottles to go first - always a good sign of a great wine.

Cheers!

Wine Press by Ken Ross appears on Masslive.com every Monday and in The Republican's weekend section every Thursday.

Follow Ken Ross on Twitter or Instagram.


Wow.

For Belchertown photographer James J. Gambaro, the "wow factor" of a photograph is that quality in an image that quickly catches, holds and rewards the attention of a viewer. "And then, with any luck, it delivers some of the delight I felt in producing that image," he says.

Gambaro got his first camera at about age 7 and immediately fell in love with the magic of photography. He bought his first "real" camera - a 35mm one - in Germany during a post-high school Army tour, mostly for use in capturing images while traveling. Later, in college, his art studies informed both his skills and attitude: "Art is What Artists Do" was the mantra.

He worked as a newspaper writer and later photographer when they used black-and-white film regularly. Color slides filled his travel needs until 2001 and the advent of viable digital cameras.

"My retirement from my day job with the (state) Department of Mental Retardation coincided with my beginnings as a computer artist," Gambaro says. "For about 10 years now, I actually know enough about what I'm doing with Photoshop et al. to get results I'm happy with."

"The Eclectic Eye of Jim Gambaro," his featured exhibit this summer at Salmon Falls Gallery in Shelburne Falls, can be viewed through Aug. 26.

Probably the most accurate term for his work is "digital art" or maybe, especially for his more realistic images, "digital photography," he says. "Does the work on the wall please your eye? (good), does it excite your interest? (better) or does it make you want to bring it home to live with you? (best). Then call it whatever you want."

He prefers to call his photography deeply personal rather than unique because among the vast cadre of photographers, he is sure his images have many echoes.

"What characterizes much of my work - especially more recent images - is, perhaps, a sense of fun, of adventure, a willingness to play with color and content, to create a vivid, often abstract environment no matter what the subject matter," he explains. "The camera is an extension of my eye out in the field. The computer is my playpen, my paint box and my co-conspirator in exploring captured images."

Much of Gambaro's work is rooted in his love of finding and really trying to see interesting things in his environment, whether on extensive travels - most recently to the Galapagos and Peru - or in his back yard.

"The trick is simply to be alert, to notice stuff in the moment, to really see how things fit together or contrast with each other," he says. "It helps to know from experience what aspects of a subject can be brought out more sharply in the camera and computer. It also helps to be born with a brain that is stimulated by small things."

The advent of digital photography, affordable computers with immense processing power and high quality printers gave him total control over his work. "No labs or technicians are involved. If what you see you like, I can take full credit. If you don't like, I take full blame," he says.

Gambaro was born and raised in Paterson, New Jersey, and earned a bachelor's degree in art education from Montclair University in 1966. He lives in Belchertown with his poet wife, Marianne, and three cats.

Gambaro says he gets immense pleasure from the creation of a successful image: "Everything I am is involved: My history, my vision, my curiosity, my love of life, my delight in artistic creation all come together in every image. Sharing that delight is pure pleasure for me."
Domestic violence will reportedly become a separate crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice when President Donald Trump signs the annual defense authorization act Monday at Fort Drum in New York.

One of the implications of this classification will mean that military convictions for domestic violence will be reported to civilian authorities so that applicable restrictions against future firearms purchases can be enforced, according to Military Times.

Last year, Air Force veteran Devin Patrick Kelley, who had been convicted of domestic abuse and discharged for bad conduct, killed 26 parishioners at a Texas church before killing himself.

His conviction was said to have never been reported by the Air Force to the

FBI'

s background check system and Kelley was thus able to purchase the firearms he used in his shootings.

A number of victims' families are said to be suing the federal government for the oversight.

The move addresses both gun control issues as well as domestic abuse.

More legislation both here and abroad has been passed in recent years around the issue of domestic violence though impact varies. All states have domestic violence arrest policies.

New Zealand last month passed legislation by a vote of 63 to 57 granting victims of domestic violence 10 days of paid family leave.

The country is said to have one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the developed world, with police responding to a family violence incident every four minutes.

Such legislation allows victims of domestic violence to take steps to be both safe and continue their employment.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women has also backed calls for an upgraded commission to investigate how cases of domestic violence are being treated in New Zealand's Family Court.

The Philippines is the only other country to have passed similar legislation at the national level, although there is a provision in the Family and Medical Leave Act passed by the U.S. Congress for it to apply to medical conditions resulting from domestic violence.

In Australia, victims of domestic abuse are allowed five days' unpaid leave, its Fair Work Commission ruled last year.

In 2014, then Governor Deval Patrick signed into law legislation that requires employers with 50 or more employees to allow up to 15 days of paid or unpaid leave to a paid employee who is a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or kidnapping, or who has a family member who is a victim.

A number of other states have similar legislation, but not all including Alaska where it is estimated 59 percent of adult women experience intimate partner or sexual violence in their lifetimes.

According to a 2005 national telephone survey by the Corporate Alliance to End Partner Violence, 21 percent of full-time employed adults were victims of domestic violence and 64 percent of them indicated their work performance was significantly impacted.

Analysis of data from the National Violence Against Women Survey is said to have found that victims of intimate partner violence who were stalked lost an average of 10.1 days of paid work per year, those who were raped lost an average of 8.1 days per year, and those who experienced physical violence lost 7.2 days per year.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said victims of what it calls severe intimate partner violence lose nearly 8 million days of paid work-the equivalent of more than 32,000 full-time jobs-and almost 5.6 million days of household productivity each year.

In the

U.S.,

it

that about 1 in 3 women and nearly 1 in 6 men experience some form of contact sexual violence during their lifetime.

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence estimates that nearly 50 percent of women and 25 percent of men in Massachusetts have been subject to non-rape sexual assaults.

There have been growing global efforts to document domestic violence and its consequences as well monitor legislation and access to related health care.

According to the World Health Organization, 42 percent of women who experience domestic violence report an injury as a consequence of this violence.

Globally, it is estimated as many as 38 percent of murders of women are committed by an intimate partner.

Children who grow up in families where there is violence may suffer a range of behavioral and emotional disturbances.

According to the United Nations, at least 140 countries have passed laws on domestic violence, and 144 have laws on sexual harassment. Still, it notes laws are not always implemented or meet international standards. It says some 37 countries exempt rape perpetrators from prosecution when they are married to or subsequently marry the victim.

According to the United Nations:
Fifty years ago, this week, the intersection of Main and State streets in downtown was shut down after a water main break early Sunday morning. The Water Department expected repairs to be completed by Monday afternoon. Businesses in the area were still getting water through a 16-inch main running down the other side of State Street. That 16-inch main had burst 12 years earlier.

From the August 12, 1968 edition of The Springfield Union

In Vietnam, U.S. B52 bombers dropped over a million pounds of bombs on North Vietnam after a three week break in bombing runs. At least fifteen aircraft staged five raids starting on Sunday.

In the south, Marines faced heavy combat in the An Hoa Vally near Da Nang. U.S. forces also battled enemy troops and torrential rains in the A Shau Valley near Hue.

From the August 12, 1968 edition of The Springfield Union

Later in the week, Aaron Kashmanian, a.k.a. 'Johnny Cash' was arrested on a default warrant by West Springfield police. Kashmanian had been charged with gambling offenses and for setting up a lottery..

From the August 14, 1968 edition of The Springfield Union

These are some of the headlines you'll see from Page 1 of The Republican and its predecessors over the past fifty years for the week of August 12 - August 18. Each week I'll put together a slideshow of Page 1 images from selected years over the course of that week. We're starting with a look back at one, five, thirty, forty and fifty years ago, with Page 1s from each day of the week for those years.

The slideshow for August 12 - August 18 is embedded at the top of this article.

We'll also find some humor printed out on page one over the years. In 1968 'Dennis The Menace' could be found on the bottom of page one six days a week.

From the August 16, 1968 edition of The Springfield Union

Back in 1978, the Holyoke Fire Commission planned to remove 13 fire alarm boxes in an effort to reduce the number of false alarm calls in the city. In 1977 593 false alarm calls were made in the city with one third of them committed by using a fire alarm box. Holyoke had 321 alarm boxes around the city at that time.

From the August 16, 1978 edition of The Morning Union

And in 1988, Vice President and presidential nominee George Bush selected Indiana senator Dan Quayle as his running mate.

From the August 17, 1988 edition of the Union-News

As you'll find with looking through the slideshow, that while many stories come and go, many of the issues and topics that affected lives in the past, continue to have an impact on our lives today.

Copies of these and other stories can be found in the online archives. The Historic Archive includes stories from 1824 to 1989, and the Newsbank Archive covers 1988 through the present day.
A mock-up of the MBTA's new Red Line car will be available to the public on Boston City Hall plaza this week.

The car is a life-size model of what will be assembled at the CRRC MA facility in Springfield.

The mock-up will be on display Tuesday through Thursday, until 7 p.m. every day.

The Chinese-owned company is also assembling the new Orange Line cars at the facility. The company's contract with the MBTA includes the building and assembly of 252 Red Line vehicles and 152 Orange Line vehicles.

The availability of the Red Line replica follows the public getting a chance to check out a model of the new Orange Line cars in April 2017.

The new train cars are expected to increase the capacity and reliability of the Red and Orange Lines, which both struggle to reliably carry commuters.

The new trains have seats that fold up, security cameras inside, digital displays and wider doors.

MBTA officials have been using the mock-ups as a way to discover any changes that need to be implemented by CRRC before the full order is delivered.
The 80-year-old man who was killed after crashing his motorcycle on the Massachusetts Turnpike has been identified as Robert Murphy, 80, of Red Bank, New Jersey, State police said Monday.

Murphy was killed Friday morning when he crashed his 2014 Harley-Davidson Tri-Glide on the ramp from Interstate 90 Exit 14 to Interstate 95 at the Newton-Weston town line, State police said.

For reasons under investigation, Murphy lost control and left the roadway, rolling the tricycle.

He was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead.
A survivor of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting and the father of one of the victims plan to join Massachusetts students later this month for a 50-mile march calling for gun law reform.

The march is scheduled to begin in Worcester on Aug. 22 and end on Aug. 26 with a rally at the Springfield headquarters of gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson.

The event is organized by Stop Handgun Violence, March for Our Lives: Boston and the youth-led gun reform organization 50 Miles More. The organizers announced Monday that David Hogg, who co-founded the national March for Our Lives group after the February shooting at his high school, and Manuel Oliver, whose son Joaquin was killed in the shooting, would join the march.

"We will walk with these kids as far as they need to in order to reach our common goals," Oliver said in a statement. "My role as father is not over, and I plan to keep playing that role till the last day of my life."

Participants in the 50 Miles More: Massachusetts March are calling on Smith & Wesson to stop making and distributing guns that are illegal in Massachusetts under the state's assault weapon ban, and to donate $5 million to "research violence caused by Smith & Wesson weapons to offset the lack of federal research funding for the gun violence epidemic."
Four more Massachusetts State Police troopers have been relieved of duty amid an ongoing investigation into overtime abuse that has implicated 46 members of the department.

Internal affairs cases were opened on each of the four troopers after the agency's ongoing audit of overtime earnings identified discrepancies between their overtime pay and their actual hours worked, State Police said in a statement.

"Today's actions are the result of our continued review of records and data indicative of whether Department members were present and working overtime shifts for which they were paid," Colonel Kerry Gilpin, superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, said in a statement. "Our commitment to the public, and to the vast majority of Troopers who conduct themselves with integrity and dedication to duty every day, is to identify anyone who has violated their oath, and we continue to do just that."

State Police are not currently identifying the four troopers now under investigation, spokesman David Procopio wrote in an email.

Information from the audit has been forwarded to state and federal prosecutors, who are conducting ongoing criminal inquiries into the alleged fraud. The probe is centered on overtime patrols by the now-defunct State Police Troop E, which was known as a lucrative posting due to its frequent access to extra traffic enforcement shifts on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Five State Troopers are have been charged with federal crimes in the ever-widening overtime probe.

Gary Herman, 45, of Chester; Paul Cesan, 50, of Southwick; Daren DeJong, 56, of Uxbridge and Lt. David Wilson, 57, are all facing counts of embezzling money from an agency receiving federal funds. Trooper Gregory Raftery,47 of Westwood, has pleaded guilty to stealing over $54,000 in a plea deal that could net him 12 to 18 months in prison.

The troopers facing charges are accused of allegedly cutting hours or outright skipping overtime traffic enforcement shifts on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

The programs at the center of the fraud scheme were Accident Injury Reduction Effort (AIRE) patrols, which were four-hour overtime shifts designed to reduce crashes on the Pike, and X-Team patrols targeted aggressive driving.

Troop E was dissolved in April when Gov. Charlie Baker and Col. Kerry Gilpin announced a suite of reforms in reaction to the fraud allegations.

According to affidavits filed in federal court, investigators used data from cruiser radios to find when troopers were working no-show shifts. The accused troopers allegedly wrote fake or back-dated citations, known within the troop as "ghost tickets," to substantiate their overtime hours.

The AIRE patrol program was suspended after a state police internal audit identified suspicious overtime claims by Troop E trooper Eric Chin, prompting a wholesale review of Troop E's overtime practices.

The alleged fraud was first publicly identified by WCVB, which reported last year on discrepancies between Troop E overtime shifts and RMV citation records.
Hampden County Sheriff Nick Cocchi is warning residents and businesses that a fake fund-raising scheme using his name has resurfaced.

The solicitations are being done over the phone and the caller, who pretends to be a staff member at the Hampden County Sheriff's Office, asks for money. A nearly identical scam was conducted this winter, he said.

The caller says: "Thank you for your past donation of $250. Can we count on your donation again this year?" he said.

"Sheriff Cocchi stated his office does not request donations," he said in a written announcement about the scam.

The Sheriff's Department is asking anyone who receives the call to pass on any identifying information about the caller or his location to their local police.
A 22-year-old Georgia man is being held in Vermont on charges that he kidnapped a homeless Springfield, Massachusetts man, brought him to Brattelboro, and then forced him to go to a bank and attempt to cash a check for $2,700, according to reports.

Brashad De'Anthony Termaine Jeanes is charged with kidnapping, unlawful restraint in the third degree, two counts of extortion, and uttering, or attemping to cash a fraudlent check.

Jeanes denied the charges at his arraignment Friday in Windham Superior Court. He was ordered held without the right to bail

According to Brattelboro police, the plan to cash the fake check imploded pretty much from the start as tellers at the bank had immediate doubts about the check. The homeless man then told tellers that he had been abducted, brought across state lines and forced to go to the bank.

The bank called police.

When police arrived at the bank, Jeanes and another man who had been waiting in a car drove off. This touched off a brief pursuit involving Brattelboro, Vermont and Massachusetts State Police that ended with the get-away car crossing back into Massachusetts and then crashing.

The occupants fled on foot from the scene before police arrived, but Jeanes and another man were found later on Guilford, Vermont.

The other man was released after it was determined he was not involved in any offenses in Vermont, police said.

According to the Brattelboro Reformer, the homeless man, whose name was not released to the press, told police that he had been picked up on the streets of Springfield, and brought to a hotel in Chicopee, where he was cleaned up and given new clothes and drugs.

On Thursday, they brought him to Vermont to cash a counterfeit check. The man told police that he was in fear for his safety from the men.
CHELSEA - A man wanted in a domestic assault was arrested after he allegedly sideswiped a car on Route 1, sped away from the accident scene and was later found hiding in a marsh.

The name of the 38-year-old South Boston man was not released because the law bans police from revealing the identity of people involved in domestic assaults. He was charged with drunken driving, operating under the influence of drugs, driving on a suspended license, leaving the scene of an accident, possession of an open container of alcohol and possession of a Class B drug, second offense, Massachusetts State Police said.

Andover Police, who were searching for the suspect in a domestic assault case, also charged him with being a fugitive from justice, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and trespassing, police said.

The crash happened at about 4:05 p.m., Sunday, when the man driving an Infiniti SUV sideswiped a Honda Fit. The occupants of the Honda were not injured but the crash caused both air bags to deploy and disabled the vehicle, police said.

The driver sped away from the crash scene and was found by Chelsea Police a short distance away on Jefferson Avenue. The driver fled from police by jumping over a fence into a flooded marsh off Webster Avenue, police said.

Chelsea Police with Troopers Christopher Kane, Chad Doucette and Jennifer Penton searched the area and eventually found the man hiding in the water in the marsh. Kane used bolt cutters to cut through the fence and troopers then arrested the man.

After his arrest, troopers learned he was also wanted in Andover, police said.

He was held overnight in the State Police Barracks in Medford and arraigned Monday in Chelsea District Court.
When Boston news station WCVB began asking Massachusetts State Police for answers regarding questionable overtime shifts last fall, it would trigger an avalanche.

State Police launched an internal investigation following the inquiry. The attorney general's office would launch its own investigation. Other media outlets, including MassLive, began assailing the agency with records requests probing the police agency's finances and troopers' shifts.

Less than a year later, four Massachusetts State Troopers have been arrested, a fifth has pleaded guilty and MassLive has learned at least 10 more troopers are expected to face indictments.

But a review of dozens of internal state police files by the Boston Globe has revealed state police had clear red flags of payroll fraud at least as early as 2014 and that the agency did little about it.

The Globe report shows that state police internal affairs investigated two troopers in 2014 who were believed to be secretly working escorting funeral processions and taking cash under the table. What they also found in the process of the investigation was that the two troopers had filed for more than 30 hours a week in overtime and paid details they did not actually work.

That fact never made it into the investigators' final report, the Globe reports.

The Globe report also shows at least 67 troopers were suspected of abusing sick leave since 2011 but at most received a written warning.

Investigations by the State Police, the attorney general's office and federal prosecutors continue.

More than 40 state troopers are now under investigation in connection to the overtime scandal. MassLive has identified 28 of the troopers involved in the investigation.

Of the five troopers who have been charged or pleaded guilty, MassLive has identified $122,000 in money taken for shifts that were not worked.

In early July, federal prosecutor Andrew Lelling was asked how much total money was taken as a result of the scandals.

"At the end of the day, that's the same question as whether it's a systemic problem or not a systemic problem [within the State Police]," Lelling said. "We can't know at this stage how much money we're really talking about."

Gov. Charlie Baker, who installed Col. Kerry Gilpin as superintendent and tasked her with cleaning up the State Police, has called the scandal an "alleged scam" and a "conspiracy" that goes back "many years."

"Let me be clear that today's charges are the beginning and not the end of this federal investigation," Lelling said last month.
ORANGE - The Police Department is notifying residents that a new Level 3 sex offender has moved into the community.

Albert Kurtigian, 66, is living at 136 Brookside Road, Apartment 2, police said.

Kurtigian is described as white, 5 feet, 7 inches tall, weighing about 132 pounds. His hair is blond or strawberry blond and his eyes are blue.

He was convicted in 2003 of rape and abuse of a child and indecent assault on a child under 14.

There are 15 Level 3 sex offenders living in Orange currently. The Level 3 offenders are those most likely to re-offend and are required to register with local police every year.

Level 3 sex offenders are not wanted by police and it is illegal to harass them, police said.
Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett joined state law enforcement officials in decrying Sen. Elizabeth Warren's description of the US criminal justice system as "racist" from "front to back."

Blodgett, the prosecutor for northeastern part of Massachusetts and the president of the National District Attorneys Association, said in a Facebook post that he has reached out to Warren, a fellow Democrat.

"Unfortunately, her comments not only over-simplified and misrepresented the challenges associated with criminal justice but also hinder any meaningful discussion on how to ensure that the system continues to reflect the values of our communities," Blodgett wrote.

States and the federal government operate separate criminal justice systems, according to Blodgett. "By their nature, the systems are adversarial; however, the vast majority of prosecutors, public defenders, judges, clerks, probation, police, and corrections officers work hard every day toward the common goals of justice, the protection of victims' and defendants' rights and public safety," he added.

Blodgett continued: "No one is suggesting that we can't do better, and in fact, we are open to new ideas and programs. Constructive dialogue about the administration of justice is always welcome, and indeed, necessary."

Blodgett said Warren should reach out and talk to prosecutors.

"The uninformed rhetoric she espouses is not helpful to those of us working tirelessly to build trust and improve relationships with our communities," he wrote.

Warren has defended her remarks, saying that she was referring to an "entire system - not individuals - and will continue to work on reforms to make the criminal justice system fairer."
SOUTH HADLEY -- South Hadley High School's culinary arts program has received state Chapter 70 vocational certification, according to Superintendent Nicholas Young.

The district continues to introduce vocational offerings and improve the educational experience for all grades, Young said. The high school also added a carpentry component in recent years, which is awaiting state certification.

Young described the culinary arts certification as the state's "gold seal" for curriculum, letting students pursue a career or academic tracks in the discipline. "It allows our graduates to be more employable and be more prepared for post-secondary education," he said.

The state education board sets forth curriculum guidelines, which include students earning college credits. Young said the district is working out final details for the college credits aspect.

He said the culinary program will begin to "build bridges" with Holyoke Community College or similar programs.

Earlier this year, HCC opened the Culinary and Hospitality Arts Program. HCC formed a partnership with MGM Springfield to train sous chefs and line cooks for the $960 million casino opening later this month.

South Hadley High opened a student-run restaurant and kitchen facility, the Tiger's Den, in March. The budding chefs prepare creative fare for fellow students and faculty.

The move to vocational training stems from surveying middle school students and finding where their interests lie. Young said the students also preferred internal programming and not venturing outside the district.

"We took that feedback seriously and that's been the driver for the development of additional program options for our students," Young said.

He added the school district does not have a student body large enough to support multiple vocational programs. For example, a student or two might show interests in automotive or graphic design, but that is not enough to sustain a program in those areas.

Young said there are about 21 students enrolled in the culinary program.

The district conducts a "serious" review annually of potential avenues for vocational training, Young said.

It recently began a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) track. The curriculum better guides students to pursue those subjects.

The high school will award specialized STEM diplomas. Students who opt for the STEM diploma will be required to take extra or more rigorous courses. Young said many students show interest in the sciences and medicine. "We need to be responsive to their needs as well," Young said.

The district does have an early college program with American International College in Springfield, whereby students earn college credits while still in high school.

Young said the district has trended toward an individualized approach to education, giving students at all grades a chance to explore opportunities along the way. Classroom materials reflect the individualized approach, whether the reading is geared for advanced or remedial students, he said.

"We really work to make sure there's something for everyone. That is what modern education is all about," he said.

Young added that the district performed a comprehensive curriculum study for all the grades, from prekindergarten through high school. The district adopted contemporary textbooks, which have built-in levels for all abilities.
A 30-year-old Dedham man will spend tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow in state prison after receiving a life sentence for a 2016 Mattapan slaying.

William Shakespeare was convicted last week of fatally shooting 31-year-old Marcus Hall at a Mattapan barber shop.

Shakespeare and Hall "had a tense verbal exchange followed by an argument in the parking lot," Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley's office said in a news release.

Shakespeare at first ran from the barbershop, but returned and shot Hall five times, prosecutors said.

He then traveled to New York, where he was arrested in January 2017 and extradited back to Massachusetts.

A jury convicted Shakespeare of first degree murder and unlawful possession of a firearm on Friday.

"The verdict speaks for itself - this was a cold-blooded and vicious shooting in broad daylight, and the jury clearly saw it as such," Conley said in a statement after the trial was completed.
The woman whose body was found in the trunk of a car driven by Gyrth Rutan, who killed himself during a traffic stop, has been identified as 28-year-old Maddilyn Burgess, officials said.

Rutan, 34, was pulled over in Gardiner, Maine, on Thursday afternoon and shot himself in front of a trooper. Police discovered a body in the trunk of the car who appeared to be the victim of a murder.

The office of Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. started to investigate after learning that Rutan was a resident of Sturbridge.

Detectives searched Rutan's residence at 5 Fairview Park Road, Apt. 12, in Sturbridge on Friday and discovered evidence of a crime scene, Early's office said in a statement.

The Medical Examiner in Maine has determined that Burgess died of blunt force injuries, the statement said.

Early's office said Burgess was a resident of Massachusetts but did not say what town or city she resided in. The nature of Burgess' relationship with Rutan was not disclosed by authorities.

The investigation is ongoing.

Rutan grew up in Maine before moving to Massachusetts, according to information posted on his Facebook profile. He appeared to be a father of a young daughter and worked as a groundman.

Maine State Police received a report of an erratic driver on Interstate 295 Thursday afternoon, officials said. A trooper located the car and followed it off the highway onto a side street in Gardiner, Maine.

When the trooper pulled the car over, Rutan exited the vehicle with a shotgun and shot himself in the head, police said.
It's been just two months since President Donald Trump and North Korea's totalitarian leader, Kim Jong Un, got together in Singapore to discuss Kim's nuclear arsenal and ambitions. It ended with signatures on a nebulous declaration -- and Trump's surprise, and unwise, decision to end our nation's joint military exercises with South Korea.

Oh, and Trump's hyperbolic posts to Twitter about how dramatically things had changed since the pair's get-together.

And what's been happening since? North Korea has continued to make nuclear fuel, and is now making demands, too.

So much for the much-hyped end of Kim's nuclear threat.

Here was our president, on Twitter on June 13, after the Singapore confab:

"Just landed -- a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!"

A short time later, Trump posted the following:

"Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea. President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer -- sleep well tonight!"

No longer a problem? In Trump's mind, maybe. Reality, however, presents a very different picture.

Not only is North Korea proceeding with its nuclear ambitions, it is now making demands of the United States. It wants an official end to the Korean War, which began in June 1950. The fighting stopped in July 1953 with the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement. Technically speaking, though, the war didn't ever officially end.

Trump, whose grasp of world history is often tenuous at best -- back in April, he falsely said "Korea actually used to be a part of China" -- cannot be allowed to accede to Kim's demands. No matter what the dictator promises in return.

If Trump is somehow led to believe that issuing some statement saying that the war has been officially ended will be no big deal, he'll quickly learn otherwise once Kim begins to trumpet his successes. He'd have achieved what neither his father, Kim Jong Il, the nation's leader from 1997 to 2011, nor his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, who founded North Korea in 1948, could manage. Trump must not hand him such a win.

There's growing evidence, obtained from satellite images, that the despot has been continuing to build up his missile program apace. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been anything but sanguine about his recent dealings with North Korea. Things may well be as they'd been, if not even worse.

There's no way to know, of course, whether Trump, who seems somehow to believe that he's a truly gifted negotiator, has actually convinced himself that the North Korean nuclear threat is over, or if he perhaps said that merely for effect. Or to save face. Or if maybe he doesn't have a clue.

If he believes it, though, he's pretty much alone. Because nothing has changed -- except that an emboldened North Korea is now issuing new demands.
The deadline to register to vote in the Sept. 4 Massachusetts primary is this Wednesday.

That is also the last day for a voter to change their party registration. Someone registered as a Democrat can only vote in the Democratic primary, while a registered Republican can only vote in the Republican primary. Someone who is unenrolled in either party can choose which primary to vote in.

Voters can check their voter registration information on the secretary of the commonwealth's website at www.sec.state.ma.us/ele or by calling their local election official.

Voter registration forms can be submitted online at www.RegisterToVoteMA.com or by mail, with forms postmarked by Aug. 15. All city and town election offices will be open until 8 p.m. on Wednesday for voters who want to register in person.
BOSTON -- U.S. Senate candidate Beth Lindstrom is calling on her Republican primary opponent state Rep. Geoff Diehl to return the money he received from a legislative pay raise last year.

Diehl was one of the main opponents of the legislative pay raises, voting against them and speaking out against them in a public letter and on the House floor.

"My opponent was grandstanding against this pay raise, and then when it went through, he took it when no one was looking," Lindstrom said in an interview at the Statehouse. "That is the definition of a career politician."

Diehl said he donated the money to charities like the Jimmy Fund, American Red Cross, Salvation Army and Mass Fallen Heroes.

Lindstrom, Diehl and John Kingston are competing for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in the Sept. 4 primary. The winner will face Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

The Legislature in January 2017 voted to raise the stipends paid to House and Senate leaders and committee chairmen. Diehl, a Whitman Republican who is not in leadership, did not get any money from this.

Lawmakers at the same time eliminated a per diem payment, in which lawmakers applied to be reimbursed for travel to the Statehouse, and replaced it with a higher stipend for office and travel expenses. Under this shift, Diehl's stipend was increased from $277 to $577 every two weeks, according to an analysis by the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance.

Lindstrom wrote in a letter to Diehl, which she sent to the press, that Diehl should not have accepted the stipend, which added 11 percent to his annual pay and also boosts his pension. She called on him to return the money.

"How can voters trust anything you say when in this case you loudly opposed the pay raise, then pocketed it when no one was looking?" Lindstrom wrote.

Gov. Charlie Baker vetoed the pay raise bill, which also hiked the pay for constitutional officers like himself, but his veto was overridden. Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito declined to accept the increased pay.

Lindstrom said Diehl should have done the same thing.

Holly Robichaud, a spokeswoman for Diehl, said Diehl never took the per diem payments, and he has donated the stipend to charities.

"It is disappointing that Ms. Lindstrom, who lost the convention by 30 points and who taken multiple taxpayer funded pay raises, seems more interested in making false attacks against fellow Republicans than focusing on anything positive on her campaign or against Elizabeth Warren," Robichaud said.

Robichaud said she was referring to pay raises Lindstrom received when working for former Gov. Mitt Romney and former Treasurer Joe Malone.
WASHINGTON - Protected by a large phalanx of police officers, about two dozen participants in a white supremacist rally walked from the Foggy Bottom Metro station to Lafayette Park across the street from the White House on Sunday afternoon ahead of their rally for "white civil rights."

It was an angry and tense scene as anti-hate protesters lined the route, shouting at the marchers and chanting anti-racist messages. The turnout for Unite the Right 2 was far fewer than 400 people that its organizer, Jason Kessler, said would take part. Kessler was also one of the lead organizers of last year's deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

The white supremacist gathering falls on the anniversary of the Charlottesville, Virginia, violence, which killed an anti-racist protester, Heather Heyer, and took the lives of two Virginia State troopers whose helicopter crashed as they returned from monitoring the day's events.

Tons of protesters in north portion of Lafayette Park. Fairly dismal group of white supremacists on other side pic.twitter.com/NAGG0bGcKi  Tess Owen (@misstessowen) August 12, 2018

Along the route and at the park, the rally goers were met by thousands of anti-racist protesters and activists who turned out to counter the message of Kessler and his group.

Both Kessler and opposition groups have permits from the National Park Service to demonstrate at the park, a leafy seven-acre enclave just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the president's residence. The groups were put on opposite sides of the park and separated by a barrier.

Escorted by police in riot gear, Kessler and his 20 to 30 supporters arrived in the city after boarding a train at the Vienna Metro station in Northern Virginia.

Before boarding the train, Kessler spoke to several reporters. He said he and his group were there to promote free speech and to protest "white civil rights abuses."

When asked if he had anything to say to the mother of Heather Heyer, Kessler offered his "condolences" but said that police in Charlottesville should have blocked off the street where she was killed.

The train carrying Kessler (and with several police officers standing on each car) made stops along the way from Vienna toward Foggy Bottom. At Clarendon station, officers on the platform warned waiting passengers that the coming train was carrying Unite the Right participants, and directed people to board at the front of the train, away from Kessler's car at the back.

Protesters awaited the train when it arrived at Foggy Bottom station, but they were separated from Kessler by about 60 feet, with police officers instructing the protesters that they weren't allowed to get any closer. None of the protesters physically tried to get past the police.

When Kessler emerged from the car, surrounded by a swarm of photographers and TV cameras, the protesters started booing, yelling "F - you," and chanting "Black Lives Matter." Once the white supremacist group went up the escalator and past the fare gates, the people standing on the platform could hear a slow rumble of screams and yells erupt from the people waiting at the surface.

Members of Kessler's group said they weren't sure how many people would show up to demonstrate with them but that it "doesn't matter."

As the group was escorted into the station, a crowd of counterprotesters shouted "go home Nazis" and told the members of the group whose faces were covered to "take off your masks."

The train departed soon after and headed into the city.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the number of protesters continued to grow.

By 2:30 p.m., close to a thousand protesters were at Freedom Plaza, a few blocks away from Lafayette Park, for an afternoon rally of speeches and music.

The Rev. Graylan Hagler was the rally's first speaker. "This place, this city, this country is a country of inclusivity and not white supremacy," he told the crowd in a booming voice. "We are people that stand up for racial justice and racial inclusivity," he added. "We will not be silenced."

Elsewhere, about 200 people from various groups marched down Vermont Avenue and are just outside Lafayette Park shouting "we are not afraid" and "our streets."

Police reported no arrests or skirmishes in the District of Columbia.

Around the same time Kessler and his supporters boarded a train in Vienna, a large contingent of Black Lives Matter D.C. arrived at Lafayette Square to await him there.

Several hundred people marched down H Street toward the plaza shouting chants, many of them dressed in black and holding signs. The front phalanx walked in a row behind a hand-painted banner reading, "Rise Up" and "Power to the People."

Protesters and tourists left the grassy plaza to watch and applaud the group chanting and clapping in the street.

Earlier at Lafayette Park the atmosphere was quieter.

Protesters milled about, talking and photographing each other's signs. Childish Gambino's "This Is America" pumped through speakers set up on the stage on the northeast side of the park. Some enterprising vendors hawked cold water and Gatorade.

Stacks of signs line patches of grass on the northeast side of Lafayette Park. Organizers said theyll be here as long as #UniteTheRight2 remains in #DC. Their permit goes through midnight. #ShutItDownDC pic.twitter.com/Wbd2keWMbd  Marissa J. Lang (@Marissa_Jae) August 12, 2018

For some of the protesters, the focus was less on the white supremacist rally than on President Donald Trump.

Holding a "Dump Trump" sign, Mike Holey, 67, of Baltimore, said he's been particularly frustrated by what he called the president's hesitation to denounce white supremacy and neo-Nazism. He pointed to Trump's statement that there was "blame on both sides" after violence broke out at the Unite the Right rally last year.

Benjamin Garrett, a Vietnam War veteran who lives in Maryland, raised a sign saying "Trump is a traitor" in block capital letters.

"He gives these people permission," Garrett said. "Trump is a blatant racist."

Trump, who was heavily criticized last year for not unequivocally condemning the white nationalists who had organized the rally and a torch light march through the University of Virginia campus the night before, addressed the Charlottesville anniversary on Saturday, tweeting, "The riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division. We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!"

At the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, about 20 protesters marched to the Lincoln Memorial while singing "We Shall Overcome."

The group's leader, Hawk Newsome, said that Kessler had invited him and his group, Black Lives Matter of Greater NY, to attend Unite the Right 2.

"He thought that I was a friend, but I am not his Negro," Newsome said. "I am not some token Black you can use to validate yourself."

BLM-GNY - which has been disavowed by the broader Black Lives Matter network - went viral when Newsome and a few others went onstage at a Trump rally last September while staging a counterprotest.

Instead of joining Kessler, he and a handful of other activists marched over the past 10 days from the Bronx to D.C. to protest a range of issues, from food insecurity to police brutality.

"I represent a contingent of marginalized people and they (white nationalists) stand in direct opposition to everything we fight for," Newsome said.

D.C. leaders and federal and local law enforcement officials say their focus Sunday is to keep the two groups apart and prevent any violence or property damage. Police in Charlottesville last year stood back as white supremacists and neo-Nazis engaged in brutal clashes and street brawls with protesters, including members of anti-fascist groups.

D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said Thursday that the goal "will be to keep the two groups separate ... When they are in the same area at the same time, it leads to violent confrontations. Our goal is to prevent that from happening."

Police closed streets to vehicle traffic in a large swath of blocks near the White House beginning at 8 a.m. Sunday, and they were expected to remain closed through 8 p.m. Questions remain, however, about how law enforcement will ensure that Kessler and his supporters will make their way to the park.

Unite the Right has arrived in Lafayette Park. Check out their minuscule numbers compared to the anti-racist protestors. pic.twitter.com/emhNnsgzv3  Sara Sidner (@sarasidnerCNN) August 12, 2018

Earlier in the week, there were discussions about having Kessler's group take Metro from the Vienna station in Northern Virginia to Foggy Bottom. And one plan would have Metro arrange for separate subway cars for those attending the rally. But that plan was abandoned when the union representing Metro's workers, predominantly people of color, made clear that they did not want to provide special arrangements for racists.

Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld said Sunday his transit agency doesn't want a repeat of last year's violence in Charlottesville.

Standing in front of Vienna Metro station, Wiedefeld said the agency stepped up security for the weekend.

"We have history here," he said. "It's all hands on deck for us."

He said that Metro is a public service and as long as no one is violent they will be allowed to ride the trains.

At 9:30 Sunday morning, the Vienna Metro station was quiet. The white supremacist groups expected to congregate there ahead of the rally had not yet arrived. But Metro Transit Police and Fairfax County (Virginia) Police were there, setting up a staging area and preparing for any clashes that could ensue when rally attendees and those opposing them begin to arrive.

Around 8 a.m. Fairfax County police tweeted a warning to Metro riders: "High ridership expected at Vienna Metro today. In an effort to promote safety, Chief Roessler is asking commuters to avoid the area all day today based on our knowledge the ridership will consist of opposing groups known to cause civil unrest."

In the two hours after police sent that tweet, there were few demonstrators present, but fliers were plastered around the station in anticipation: "Hate Free Zone" and "Hate Has No Home Here," they read.

D.C. police could be seen early Sunday walking the streets near the park as officials began shutting down several downtown streets where protesters are expected to gather.

A new group of protesters just arrived from north of Lafayette Park. Theyre marching, dancing in the street. #ShutItDownDC #UnitetheRight2 #DC pic.twitter.com/GtLnKDNN0s  Marissa J. Lang (@Marissa_Jae) August 12, 2018

Even as police continued to erect an intricate maze of barricades around Lafayette Park, it seemed like a typical Sunday morning outside the White House - with Segway tours and selfie sticks in abundance.

Tourists making their way through Lafayette Square paused to take in the growing group of protesters gathering on the northeast side of the park.

Brightly colored signs declaring, "From Charlottesville to the White House: Shut down white supremacy" and "No Nazis, no KKK, no fascist USA" lined patches of grass.

Rossana Castillo, 50, a tourist from Grenoble, France, paused as she passed to take photos.

"It's astonishing to me," she said of the planned Unite the Right rally that was expected to bring white supremacists and a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan within shouting distance of the White House. "And it is just so sad. I know I am a foreigner, but I love your country. I really do. And I am so grateful these people can be here and have the right to stand up to people like this."

Just after 10 a.m. officers cleared the park for a security sweep. Police dogs patrolled the area, sniffing at the signs.

Brian Becker, the executive director of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, urged activists to "be strong, be steadfast, be calm, be dignified" as the sweep continued.

He and his organization decided to host a counterprotest Sunday, he said, because "the president said there were some 'very fine people' on both sides after Charlottesville - we think the American people disagree."

"We represent the majority sentiment in this country," he said. "Nazis and the KKK do not represent America."

At the Vienna Metro station, VJ Hyde, a 38-year-old music teacher from Fairfax County, pulled a new stack of posters and a roll of tape from his Whole Foods shopping bag and doled them out to his wife and two daughters.

The family of four and three of their friends came to the Metro station to post the fliers.

"We're here because this is a very messed up time in our country and our community is front and center," Hyde said.

He and his family are Jewish and their friends are Asian-American. Hyde said he overheard one of his daughters talking to a friend about the white supremacists. She told the friend the rally attendees "hate us."

"That's pretty f----- up," Hyde said.

Big counterprotest contingent marching along Lafayette Park: Whose streets? Our streets! pic.twitter.com/WmafSaWFBJ  Blake Montgomery  (@blakersdozen) August 12, 2018

Issues like racism and xenophobia have been "front and center" in his house since the election of Donald Trump and the first "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville last year.

"It's almost impossible to hide it from them," he said, referring to his young children. "They realize there's a greater thing at stake right now."

It was their duty to show up this morning, Hyde said.

"It's a matter of being a true American and standing up for what's right in this country," he said.

Those planning to attend Kessler's rally, according to documents obtained by Washington City Paper from the National Park Service, include David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard who also attended the event in Charlottesville last year, as well as neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers.

Kessler has denied responsibility for the violence in Charlottesville last year and has said that he had not invited the KKK and other white supremacist groups to the rally there. But several days after the deadly violence in the city, he tweeted, ""Heather Heyer was a fat, disgusting Communist. Looks like it was payback time."

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser said Thursday that the city would ensure that the rallygoers can exercise their right to free speech.

"While we are opposed adamantly to what we are going to hear, we know what our responsibility is - to protect First Amendment events, to protect Washingtonians and to protect our city," she said.

Bowser planned to return to the city from a trip to El Salvador to supervise the city's response. She is scheduled to reach Washington around 2:30 p.m. and return to El Salvador on Monday morning to finish the sister city trip.

A spokeswoman said Bowser is canceling part of her trip to "monitor planned First Amendment events" and her decision wasn't based on any intelligence, nor was there reason to believe violence would be worse than expected.

The tubas are here at Lafayette Park. pic.twitter.com/8uUIUCfm2f  DJ Judd (@DJJudd) August 12, 2018

Makia Green of Black Lives Matter D.C. told The Washington Post that she wants white nationalists to know that the movement against them is only getting stronger.

"Our resistance is ever-growing," she said. "This progress that they are so afraid of - the rise of black leaders and Black Lives Matter getting bigger and people feeling safe to speak their mind - that is still happening."

Michael Shallal, a member of the D.C. chapter of the International Socialists Organization, one of the groups organizing the Freedom Plaza rally, said it was crucial for protesters to outnumber Kessler and his supporters.

"Our main message is that we want people to see Kessler and his allies for what they really are," Shallal said. "They are not free-speech advocates for white rights but racist Nazis who want to have a nation for white people only."

(c) 2018, The Washington Post. Story by Joe Heim, Reis Thebault, and Marissa Lang. The Washington Post's Hannah Natanson, Teo Armus, Martine Powers, Michael Brice-Sadler, Peter Jamison, Perry Stein, Fenit Nirappil and Antonio Olivo contributed to this report.
As those in southern Essex County recover from devastating flash floods on Sunday, it looks as though there are more periods of heavy rain to come across Massachusetts.

The National Weather Service reports scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms are expected on Monday. A dense fog advisory was issued across eastern Massachusetts and the Worcester Hills early Monday morning, as visibility was greatly reduced in these areas.

"The threat for a very localized flash flood event exists," the weather service announced, but noted that the threat of flash floods is more likely on Tuesday in western and central Massachusetts.

Forecasts predict stints of "localized heavy rainfall" in parts of the state on Monday, particularly in western Massachusetts as opposed to the northeast, which was pummeled hard Saturday and Sunday.

Roadways and homes flooded in parts of Essex County and western Massachusetts on Sunday.

In Lynn, for example, the National Weather Service reported 7-8 inches of rain fell within a few hours. Cars were trapped on main streets in Lynn and Peabody before noon as emergency crews responded to streets and highways to shut down major thoroughfares.

[Radar Estimation from Lynn] This image indicates the very localized but heavy rain/significant flash flood event that occurred in the Lynn to Peabody, MA areas this morning. A spotter reported over 8 inches of rain in Lynn from this event. pic.twitter.com/F5YFhtVCnP  NWS Boston (@NWSBoston) August 13, 2018

In addition to the chance for flash floods in the western half of the state over the next few days, other forms of extreme weather could occur between periods of sunshine.

"If there are breaks of sunshine and local areas of better heating, a few storms could become strong to severe, with the potential for strong wind gusts or hail," the weather service said on Monday.
by Alex Weprin , August 13, 2018

Netflix CFO David Wells will step down from his role at the company, the streaming giant says.

Wells, who joined Netflix in 2004 when it was still exclusively in the mailed-DVD business, was promoted to CFO in 2010. He will remain with the company until a successor has been selected.

The company says it is considering both internal and external candidates to succeed Wells.

Wells is one of the longest-serving members of the company's senior executive team, and managed the company's financials at it pivoted away from the DVD business to online streaming of video content. When he joined the company, shares could be purchased for under $3 each. The company's stock price is now close to $350 per share.
Google reportedly plans to expand an outdoor advertising business in Germany using a programmatic ad-buying process and lots of data. The digital screens are in public spaces such as train stations, shopping malls and retail stores. In Germany there are more than 110,000 of these screens.

The search giant initially experimented with billboard advertising in the U.S. back in 2015 using DoubleClick. The idea centered on targeting the most relevant ads to consumers passing by the screen based on the time of day and location. The Google Brand Studio & Media Lab conducted the outdoor advertising experiment where they promoted the Google brand in a number of outdoor billboards throughout London.

The ads in the experiment were served through DoubleClick but not through a programmatic auction. The programmatic part of the campaign helped in that Google was able to switch the ad creative based on things like time of day or weather in a general location. There was no targeting or measurement using Google audience data as part of that experiment and it's not something Google pursued further.

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The latest twist is "all rumor and speculation," per a Google spokesperson, adding that "this isn't a product offering."

Maybe, but the German weekly business news publication WirtschaftsWoche reports talking with Google Manager Mark Grady, who told the publisher that these ads, if implemented, would give the German outdoor advertising landscape more "control" with a push of a button. Graddy, per WirtschaftsWoche, used the analogy while at a model show at the Hamburg Airport, where visitors experience the airport in a miniature format including planes that take off and buses that stop in front of the terminals. It can all happens with a "push of a button similar to the small-scale airport at the show.

The WirtschaftsWoche reports that Google continues to look for companies with ties to outdoor platform in which it can integrate its technology and data to target ads.

The media site also reported that in April 2018, a Google manager presented the idea to agencies and media companies to determine whether the idea seemed feasible and possible to leverage Google's enterprise software, Chrome Enterprise, which would provide a way to market out-of-home advertising.

Without explicit permission by the phone owner, using location data could land Google in trouble across Europe by not adhering to GDPR standards. Citing the Associate Press, Bloomberg reports that while Google asks permission for users to share location information on its applications, it doesnt halt tracking services when users pause Location History.

Google Maps appears to grab information when a user opens the app. For instance, automatic daily weather updates on Android phones provides an approximate location. Computer-science researchers at Princeton University confirmed the Associated Presss findings, reports Bloomberg.
by Karlene Lukovitz @KLmarketdaily, August 13, 2018

Betty Crocker, Goya and Hersheys are currently the leading social influencers among top U.S. food brands, according to rankings based on performance during the six months ending in June.

The TotalSocial rankings, from data and analytics firm Engagement Labs, are based on continuous measurement of key drivers of brands social media and face-to-face word-of-mouth.

Top-ranked Betty Crocker built on its momentum from last year, when it gained four positions to reach #2.

Last years #1, Quaker Oats, slipped to seventh position this year.

Goya jumped by five positions to #2  a gain driven in large part by positive online and face-to-face buzz about its cause-marketing initiatives, according to Engagement Labs.

Last July, the company launched Goya Gives, a year-long series of consumer product promotions and food donations to benefit Feeding America and local food banks. Recent efforts have also included donating large amounts of food to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in May, and to Guatemala after a volcano eruption in June.

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Hersheys gained six positions to nab #3, reversing its slide last year to #9, from #2 in 2016. Perdue remained in fourth place.

Pillsbury, not in last years top 10, gained a notable eight positions to reach #5. The report attributes much of this rise sto the brands boosting its face-to-face and online engagement with consumers by partnering with Food Networks Ree Drummond to revive its Pillsbury Bake-Off after a four-year hiatus.

Oreo slipped by three places, to #6, followed by Quaker Oats.

Doritos gained seven places and parent company Frito-Lay gained eight, to secure the #8 and #10 places, respectively.

Cheerios, ranked #11 last year, gained two places to make #9 this year.

In contrast to its Betty Crocker brand, General Mills saw this years largest decline in the food rankings, dropping off the list after ranking #6 last year.

Also dropping out of the top 10 were Dole, Kelloggs and Kraft previously #5, #8 and #10, respectively.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, August 13, 2018

California should reject requests by industry groups to water down the state's new privacy law, a coalition of 20 advocacy groups says in a new letter to lawmakers.

"The sky is not falling, as industry suggests," the ACLU of California, Berkeley Media Studies Group, Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Action, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and other advocacy groups say in a letter sent to California lawmakers Monday.

"The law and its particulars do not pose a threat to the California economy," they write. "California has a long tradition of leading the nation on privacy laws as well as having a thriving economy."

The California measure, passed in late June and slated to take effect in January of 2020, allows consumers to learn what personal information about them is held by businesses, and to opt out of the sale of that information. Even though the new law has already been signed, it's still subject to revision through a "technical corrections" process. In theory, that process is supposed to correct non-substantive mistakes.

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Last week, the Association of National Advertisers, Chamber of Commerce, Internet Association and other business groups asked California lawmakers to use the "technical corrections" procedure to revise the new privacy law, arguing that parts of the bill are "unworkable."

But the ACLU and other groups say that many of the proposals put forward by the ANA and others go well beyond fixing non-substantive mistakes.

"The majority of the Chambers proposals ... are substantive requests made in bad faith, which do not clarify language but instead substantially reduce privacy protections for consumers," the groups write. "Even for the minority of cases where industry has identified legitimate technical concerns, the proposed fixes are overbroad and ultimately narrow protections for consumers."

One example given by the advocacy groups centers on a request by the business groups to narrow the bill's definition of "personal information."

The law's current definition of that phrase includes cookies, IP addresses and web browsing history -- which appears to cover data used for ad targeting. The ad industry has long opposed that definition, arguing that data like cookies, or IP addresses, isn't "personally identifiable" because it's not necessarily attached to consumers' names.

The measure has an exception for "de-identified" data -- defined as information that can't reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, to a particular consumer. But the ANA and other organizations are also pressing lawmakers to exempt "pseudonymized" data -- which more clearly covers cookies, web browsing history, and other material relied on by ad-tech companies.

The business groups also seek an exemption for "probabilistic identifiers," or identifiers based on characteristics of devices. The business groups say in their letter that those types of identifiers are only "guesses."

The ACLU and other advocates argue that those requested changes would undermine the bill's protections. "The industry seeks removal of 'probabilistic identifiers,' while every day it uses such information to create dossiers on individuals based on data gathered from mobile devices, PCs, gaming platforms and even digital TV," the letter states.

The advocacy groups add that they, too, favor some substantive changes to the new privacy law. One example they give involves the measure's definition of "sale."

While the law allows consumers to opt out of the sale of their personal information, it defines sale as a disclosure "for monetary or other valuable consideration." That definition may not cover some types of data transfers, including Facebook's transfer to Cambridge Analytica of data for up to 87 million users -- even though revelations about Cambridge Analytica helped drive support for the California law.

"To be sure, AB 375 is not as strong as it could be," the groups write. But, they add, the technical corrections process isn't the time to make significant changes.

"Let these substantive issues go through the democratic process in the next session prior to the laws implementation," the groups say.
Psychologists say that coping strategies developed in childhood are the reason why people become vulnerable to fake news as adults.

Share on Pinterest What makes fake news so appealing?

Given the latest developments in politics in the Western world, the phenomenon of fake news has garnered more and more interest.

A major study by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge analyzed the information on Twitter to see what gains more traction: truth or falsehood?

The researchers examined 126,000 contested news stories that 3 million users tweeted over the course of a decade, and they found that fake news reaches a lot more people and spreads a lot faster than accurate information.

Importantly, the predominance of fake news makes people distrust news outlets, and many report that they dont know how to distinguish truth from falsehood.

An international survey published earlier this year found that 7 in 10 people fear that fake news is being used as a weapon, and over 60 percent of the respondents dont feel confident that they can tell the difference between fake news and facts.

What makes people vulnerable to fake news in the first place? Are there any strategies we can develop to protect ourselves from falsehood?

New research presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association (APA), held San Francisco, CA, explains the mechanisms behind the appeal of fake news.

The findings have also been published in the journal Science.
In this article, we look at the possible causes of cramps after menopause , as well as their diagnosis and treatment.

Many people experience pelvic cramps as part of their menstrual period. But cramping may still occur after menopause and can sometimes be a sign of an underlying condition, such as uterine fibroids, endometriosis, constipation, or ovarian or uterine cancers.

The months leading up to menopause is known as perimenopause. A person may notice their periods begin to get lighter and less frequent during this time. While this happens, it is perfectly normal to experience period-like cramping before bleeding occurs.

A person has reached menopause when their monthly periods have stopped for 12 months in a row. Other symptoms vary from person-to-person and can include:

Menopause refers to the time in a persons life when their monthly periods stop. In the United States, most people go through the menopause between the ages of 45 and 55 years old , with the average being 51 years of age.

Many different conditions can cause pelvic cramps postmenopause.

If a person has been through menopause and has pelvic cramps, they may also experience the following symptoms:

light or heavy vaginal bleeding

abdominal swelling or bloating

swelling or pain in the legs

lower back pain

pain during sex

pain when urinating or during bowel movements

extreme tiredness, or fatigue

constipation

unexplained weight loss or gain

nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea

A person should see a doctor if they have any vaginal bleeding after the menopause or have gone 12 months without a period. They should get diagnosed right away.

While pelvic cramping that occurs after menopause may not be of concern, it can sometimes be a symptom of a more severe condition that may need medical treatment, such as:

Uterine fibroids

Uterine fibroids are small growths that can occur in the wall of the womb, or uterus.

These growths are usually benign, which means they are not cancerous. Although uterine fibroids are more likely to develop before a person goes through menopause, it is still possible for older people to have them.

Fibroids usually stop growing or shrink after a person goes through menopause. However, someone may still experience symptoms of uterine fibroids, such as pelvic pressure or cramps, after their periods have ceased.

Endometriosis

Endometriosis is a condition where the tissue that lines the womb starts to grow in other parts of the body, such as around the ovaries, fallopian tubes, or bowel.

Endometriosis is most common in those aged between 30 and 40 years old , but rarely , symptoms can still occur postmenopause.

Symptoms of endometriosis may include:

pelvic pain and cramping

pain in the lower back

pain during or after sex

pain when urinating or during bowel movements

For some people, endometriosis can have a significant impact on their lives and can lead to feelings of depression.

Also, undergoing hormone therapy for menopausal symptoms may make the pain of endometriosis worse.

Chronic constipation

Share on Pinterest Certain medications may cause chronic constipation.

Chronic constipation is also a common cause of lower pelvic pressure and pain and gastrointestinal upset.

Doctors define constipation as having fewer than three bowel movements per week. A persons stools may also be hard, dry, or lumpy and painful or difficult to pass.

Causes of constipation include:

low fiber diet

certain medications

lack of exercise

some medical conditions

Anyone who has severe or persistent constipation should see a doctor.

Gastroenteritis

Gastroenteritis is an infection of the digestive tract that can cause abdominal and pelvic cramps alongside nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.

Causes of gastroenteritis include:

a viral infection, also known as viral gastroenteritis or stomach flu

a bacterial infection, also known as food poisoning

While many cases of gastroenteritis resolve alone, severe cases may need medication and even hospitalization.

People who experience persistent vomiting and diarrhea can quickly become very dehydrated, which can lead to severe complications, including death.

Ovarian and uterine cancers

Ovarian and uterine cancers can cause abdominal or pelvic cramping. Older people are at higher risk of developing these cancers than younger people.

Other symptoms of these cancers can include:
Many cancers are hard to treat because they share a faulty cell-signaling pathway that is very difficult to target. Could one new experimental drug on the brink of human trials be the much-needed breakthrough? Share on Pinterest A new experimental drug could be a significant breakthrough in cancer treatment. The cell-signaling pathway is called RAS/MAPK and it influences many cell functions including growth, division, and death. Around half of all cancer cases  in a range of different tissues  have defects in this pathway. Now, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Revolution Medicines in Redwood City, CA, have identified a new approach for targeting the RAS/MAPK pathway, which is also called the MAPK/ERK pathway. In a study paper that is now published in the journal Nature Cell Biology, they describe how an experimental drug effectively decoupled the pathway from growth signals arriving at the cell. The compound, which they call RMC-4550, significantly slows cancer progression in laboratory cell lines of pancreatic, lung, skin, and colon cancer, as well as in human lung tumors that had been grown in mice. RAS/MAPK, says senior study author Dr. Trever G. Bivona, a clinical oncologist with UCSF Health, is one of the most important cancer signaling pathways, but so far most attempts to develop targeted drugs against this pathway have ended in failure. In fact, the search for drugs that target the pathway has proved so challenging that some scientists have likened it to a quest for the Holy Grail of cancer treatment, he notes.

Cancer and cell signaling Cancer arises when cells grow abnormally and form a mass known as a tumor. The tumor may stay where it started  that is, remain in situ  or it can become invasive and grow into neighboring organs and tissue. Cells can also break away from the primary tumor, migrate through blood and lymph vessels, and establish secondary tumors in other parts of the body. This process is called metastasis. Cells of metastatic tumors bear the hallmarks of the primary tumor. As the tumors grow, they disrupt healthy tissue and organs and eventually threaten their ability to sustain life. Alterations in genes and the factors that influence their behavior drive the complex process of cancer. Some alterations map to signaling pathways that influence the growth, division, mobility, and fate of cells. RAS/MAPK is such a pathway, and it starts with an upstream signal that arrives from outside the cell. When the associated cell surface protein, or receptor, detects the signal, it will trigger an internal cell protein called RAS. RAS then activates a series of molecular reactions that triggers other proteins, including RAF, MEK, and MAPK. The pathway is a cascade of molecular events that control several downstream genetic processes that promote growth by switching genes on and off. While this is going on, another group of proteins called tumor suppressors are keeping the pathway in check so that growth does not get out of control. NF1 is such a protein.

Targeting the RAS/MAPK pathway Cancers involving the RAS/MAPK pathway arise when variants in one or more of the proteins that are involved destabilize the cascade of molecular events and cause cells to grow out of control. These variants, or oncogenic alterations, note the authors, drive the growth of a wide spectrum of cancers. There has not been much success in developing drugs that target either specific defects in the RAS/MAPK pathway itself or in its downstream results. Some reasons for this include the fact that the defects are difficult to target with drugs, and that cancers rapidly become resistant to the drugs that do work and soon find an alternative route through the pathway. For some time, it was thought that cancer-prone defects in RAS/MAPK concerned one or more of the proteins promoting too much growth. However, Dr. Bivona explains that more recently, researchers have discovered that the cause may be that cancer-prone mutations make some of the proteins in the cascade become over-sensitive to growth signals. He likens it to turning up the volume on the whole pathway. So, he and his colleagues wondered whether blocking the pathway at its source might be a better strategy for stopping cancer growth. This is what their study essentially proved.

Targeting SHP2 uncouples the pathway Working with Revolution Medicines  who part-funded the study and developed the experimental drug  the UCSF team showed that they could halt growth of several cancers by targeting an enzyme called SHP2. SHP2 is a scaffolding molecule that plays a key role at the start of the RAS/MAK pathway. It allows the receptor protein to trigger RAS. Blocking SHP2 effectively uncouples the pathway from external growth signals. The researchers tested the effect of RMC-4550 on dozens of cancer cell lines with various mutated proteins thought to be sensitive to external growth signals. These include class 3 BRAF mutations, certain KRAS mutations, and mutations that deplete the tumor suppressor NF1. They found that lung, colon, pancreatic, and melanoma skin cancer cells that carry these mutations responded to the compound. It slowed cancer growth in these cells, and, in some cases, it even killed the cells.
Most of the buying markets in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe showed a lack of demand during the summer holiday season and weak trading in finished long steel segments.Meanwhile, Turkey was struggling with the slump of lira value amid aggravated political relationships with the United States. The lira was trading at TRY100 to $18.39 on August 10, compared with TRY100 to $19.82 a week earlier on August 3, according to exchange rate website Oanda.com.Also on Friday, US President Donald Trump authorized higher Section 232 tariffs on US imports from Turkey , imposing a 20% duty on aluminium and 50% duty on steel.Such news appalled the Turkish market.Nobody can sell anything to Turkey with [a] 50% tariff, one Turkish long steel producer told Metal Bulletin.Turkey now should focus on other export destinations immediately. The domestic rebar market was helping the mills, but with the devaluation in [the] lira, we should shift more material to exports. We can sell more billet to North Africa and maybe [the] Middle East and rebar to Southeast Asia, another Turkish long steel mill source said.In such conditions, buying activity in the Turkish import billet market was limited.CIS-origin material from traders and mills was available to Turkish customers mainly at $510-520 per tonne cfr with bids heard at $505-507 per tonne cfr early in the week.However, no bookings were done at these levels, with mills preferring to purchase scrap, the prices for which have been on a downtrend recently.Metal Bulletins daily index for Northern Europe-origin HMS 1&2 (80:20) closed on August 10 at $319.46 per tonne cfr Turkey, down from $324.91 per tonne cfr on August 3.In the second half of the week, a cargo of CIS-origin billet had been sold to Turkey at $490 per tonne cfr , equivalent to $475 per tonne fob Black Sea. But this material was reported to have been produced by a mill in the Donetsk region, part of Ukraine that is currently under the control of pro-Russia separatists and not the Ukrainian government.Other CIS mils were offering material within the range of $500-505 per tonne fob Black Sea, but these prices were considered too high by customers. Market participants said workable prices for the Middle East-North African markets was within the range of $490-495 per tonne fob Black Sea.In particular, a cargo of CIS-origin billet was reported sold to Egypt at $515 per tonne cfr at the end of the week, equivalent to $495 per tonne fob Black Sea.But buying activity was generally muted in the country due to summer holidays as well as expectations of lower finished long steel prices in the near term.On August 9, Metal Bulletins weekly price assessment for domestic rebar in Egypt remained unchanged, with offers coming in at E12,525-12,528 per tonne ex-works, including 14% VAT.After the assessment was filed, local rebar producer El Marakby reported a new rebar price of E12,200 In such conditions, CIS suppliers were seeking support in Asia, almost the only region where prices remained stable despite the lack of supportive factors.At the end of the week, several cargoes of Russian billet were heard booked by traders at around $495 per tonne fob Black Sea, with one of the lots destined for Sri Lanka.In Southeast Asia, CIS-origin billet was available to customers within the range of $540-550 per tonne cfr. Higher-priced offers were heard for customers in the Philippines, while lower prices were heard for buyers in Indonesia, Thailand and others.At the end of the week, several bookings of CIS billet were heard made within $545-550 per tonne cfr levels in the Philippines. This was despite the severe congestion at local ports as well as the rainy season in the country depressing demand for billet and for finished long steel since early June.Meanwhile, customers in other markets of the region predominantly refrained from bookings, receiving lower-priced offers of induction-furnace (IF) billet from India and Vietnam at $535-540 per tonne cfr.During the week, several cargoes of induction-furnace billet were booked in the region at as low as $530-535 per tonne cfr.But prices for Indian IF billet are expected to edge up soon amid Indias improving domestic market. So we might possibly see import prices in Southeast Asia being pushed up, a Singapore-based trader said.Recent alternative offers of materials made in blast furnaces (BF) or electric-arc furnaces (EAF) from the Middle East, India, Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam ranged from $545-560 per tonne cfr in the region.No offers of Chinese billet were heard in the region, with Chinese suppliers enjoying high profit in the domestic market and exporters concerned about customs inspections.Chinas domestic billet prices were 3,910 yuan ($572) per tonne on Friday, up by 60 yuan per tonne from a week earlier due to tight supply caused by steel production cuts in the country, enforced to satisfy environmental protection regulations.The inventory for the semi-finished product in Tangshan was 315,000 tonnes on Friday, down by 15,000 tonnes from the previous week, a billet trader in Tangshan said, quoting a local industry information provider.Based on domestic prices, Chinese export offers for billet would be around $535 per tonne fob, an export trader in eastern China said. No export deals were heard during the week.Iranian billet also was not heard traded in the global market this week due to the re-imposition of US sanctions on August 7 Recent offers were heard at $500-505 per tonne fob, which would be equivalent to $525-530 per tonne cfr in Southeast Asia.Buying interest for Iranian semi-finished steel is still there due to the price being very competitive, but I do not think that many will dare to buy because the sanctions will make the procurement process much longer and will probably increase the cost eventually, an Indonesian source told Metal Bulletin.Some trading companies in Asia, however, were ready to continue to trade with Iran, considering that they do not have connections with US-related banks and that they trade with Iran in currencies other than US dollars.The sanctions are intended to prohibit states and companies which deal with the US from trading with Iran in any steel products, including semi-finished and finished steel.Southeast Asia (Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines) and the Middle East-North Africa region (the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Egypt), were the major outlets for Iranian steel.Market participants varied in their forecasts for the future of Irans steel exports after the reintroduction of the sanctions. Some believed that the overall volume may be reduced by more than half, while others believed that there would be no significant drop. What has become clear so far is that Iranian exports will not be entirely eliminated.Iran was purchasing steel through the UAE when it was under sanctions in 2015, and I believe it will find a way to re-establish trade when the new sanctions are imposed, a Middle East-based buyer of Iranian billet told Metal Bulletin.All in all, the UAE needs Iranian billet as much as Iran needs the UAE market to sell it, he added.No offers of Iranian billet were heard this week in the UAE. Oman offered billet at $535 per tonne cfr to the country, but no major deals were heard.Demand for finished long steel was weak in the UAE in the past week and is unlikely to improve before the end of August, because of the summer holiday season and the Hajj and Eid al Adha religious celebrations late in the month.Jessica Zong in Shanghai, Fiona Lam in Singapore, Cem Turken in Mugla, Felipe Peroni in Sao Paolo and Suresh Nair in Mumbai contributed to this report.
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As U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal pressed Connecticut regulators last week to be wary of short-term insurance plans authorized by the Trump administration  junk plans in his words  a new study shows people continue to sign up for plans that require them to pay higher deductibles before triggering claims payments in exchange for lower monthly premiums.

Enrollment in high-deductible health plans climbed again last year, now accounting for 43 percent of all policies in the United States from 15 percent of insurance policies a decade ago, according to a Thursday study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nearly 44 percent of high-deductible plans last year included health savings accounts through which policyholders socked away extra money to help pay for deductibles or other fees and costs, CDC determined.

The U.S. House of Representatives is currently considering several bills introduced last month that would buttress the rollout of health savings accounts, including increasing limits on contributions.

Webster Financial is among the banks that has been aggressively offering employers nationally health savings accounts through its HSA Bank subsidiary, with the Waterbury-based bank among the seven largest depositors in Fairfield County. In a July conference call, CEO John Ciulla said employers using HSA Bank are picking up the tab on about $4 of every $10 deposited in health savings accounts, with the remaining 60 percent footed by workers.

If theres a battle, its probably on that 40 percent that the company is paying, Ciulla said.

No better than a security blanket

Heading into the fall elections, ample uncertainty is seen over the future of the Affordable Care Act, with the President Donald Trump jettisoning penalties going forward for individuals who choose not to purchase insurance. Obamacare backers warn that will lead some young, healthy people to skip coverage, raising costs for others as a result of the loss of those premiums.

Two weeks ago, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a study of the individual health insurance market that showed enrollment dropped 11 percent nationally to 15.2 million people. The foundation tracked declines both through state exchanges like Access Health CT that steer people to limited sets of plans, as well as in the private-sector market.

The same study found that enrollment in state exchanges increased in the first quarter of 2018 compared to a year earlier, however, with the Kaiser Family Foundation describing exchange enrollments nationally as largely stable.

Trump is now exploiting an ACA loophole to encourage insurers to create one-year health plans with limited coverage and an allowance for up to two renewals, with the Federal Register publishing its final rule on the plans entering August after U.S. agencies received about 12,000 comments.

Designed initially as gap insurance coverage for individuals between jobs, short-term plans are allowed to dispense with some of the main tenets of Obamacare such as guaranteed availability, coverage of essential health benefits and prohibiting exclusions for preexisting conditions.

The measure prompted Blumenthal, D-Conn., this past week to urge the Connecticut Insurance Department to follow the lead of New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts in restricting or banning outright such health plans, with he and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., having introduced legislation in March to force carriers to include people with preexisting conditions under short-term coverage.

They are no better than a security blanket  providing a false sense of safety while offering little real protection, Blumenthal wrote in a letter to the insurance department. One (Kaiser Family Foundation) study found in Connecticut that no short-term plan covered maternity care and nearly half did not cover prescription drugs.

Premium hikes trend down

As of this week, the Connecticut Insurance Department had received rate filings for 2019 covering nearly 300,000 people enrolled in individual and small-group plans. On average, carriers requested a 12.3 percent increase for next years individual plans, slightly less than half the average increase they had sought for 2018. Small group plans would increase 10.2 percent on average, a substantial decline from the 18.1 percent average increase a year ago.

Anthem and ConnectiCare are returning to offer coverage through Access Health CT, which added more than 13,400 new members this year to give it above 114,000 in total. ConnectiCare is seeking a 13 percent increase on average for some 63,000 residents who it covers through Access Health CT; Anthem wants a 9.1 percent hike for about 45,500 people enrolled in its Access Health CT plan.

The Insurance Department is collecting public comment on the rate filings through the third week of August, with a public hearing scheduled Sept. 5. Open enrollment begins in Nov. 1, with ConnectiCare and Anthem having yet to indicate whether they will stick with Access Health CT in 2020 and beyond. In a July conference call, Anthem CEO Gail Boudreaux told investment analysts the company is pleased with the participation and results it is seeing to date in state exchanges nationally.

Our team has done an excellent job of identifying the markets where it makes sense, where we think that weve got a stable presence and offering, Boudreaux said. It is all about stability and more certainty around that marketplace  but again, this year was solid.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
University at Albany

ALBANY, New York  The University at Albany held commencement May 18-20. Locals who earned degrees were: Alexandra Clymas of Chester, Magna Cum Laude, Bachelor of Arts in English; Kelly Carufe of Ivoryton, Summa Cum Laude, Bachelor of Science in Nanoscale Science.

LIM College

NEW YORK, New York  Michaela Seidl of East Haddam received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Visual Merchandising from LIM College in May.

Lasell College

NEWTON, Massachusetts  Lasell College announced the students named to the spring Deans List. Students with this accomplishment are full-time degree candidates who completed 12 or more credits in the spring semester, with a grade point average of 3.5 or higher.

They are: Kaitlyn Conway of Clinton, Kara Mather of Durham, Lily Anderson of Essex, Alex Balletto of East Hampton, Marianna Bean of Westbrook, Sophia Carasone of Clinton, Emma Velez of Killingworth, Connor Wall of East Hampton, Kelly Cappitella of East Haddam, Madison Kasperski of East Hampton, Jacqueline Zambrano of Westbrook, Natalia Martins of Westbrook and Isabella Raffone of Westbrook.

Eastern Connecticut State University

WILLIMANTIC  A group of Eastern Connecticut State University students were honored at the annual Environmental Earth Science Departments awards ceremony May 3. Awards were bestowed upon students who excelled in research or academic excellence.

Noah Hallisey 18 of Westbrook, who majors in Environmental Earth Science, was presented with the Sustainable Energy Science Recognition Award.

Western New England University

SPRINGFIELD, Massachusetts  The Western New England University chapter of Mortar Board National Honor Society welcomed students at its annual induction ceremony this spring, including Alexander Fletcher of Cromwell and Alison Spadorcia of East Hampton.

Assumption College

WORCESTER, Massachusetts  The Assumption College Department of Psychology has announced that Kyle Bermani, of Portland, has become a member of the Psychology National Honor Society, Psi Chi. Bermani, Class of 2020, was inducted into the honor society this spring.

Psi Chi was founded in 1929 for the purposes of encouraging, stimulating, and maintaining excellence in scholarship, and advancing the science of psychology. Membership is open to graduate and undergraduates, of junior or senior academic standing, who have chosen psychology as their major or minor.

Inductees must also have completed nine semester hours of psychology courses, rank in the top 35 percent of their class, and have a minimum grade point average of 3.25, in both psychology classes and in overall cumulative grades.

The Department of Sociology, Criminology and Anthropology has announced that Daniella Pitruzzello, of Cromwell, has become a member of Alpha Kappa Delta, the international honor society in sociology. Pitruzzello, Class of 2019, was inducted into the honor society this spring.

Alpha Kappa Delta was founded in 1920 at the University of Southern California, home of one of the first departments of sociology in the United States.

To be inducted, students must be in their junior year, hold an minimum grade-point average of 3.0, and rank in the top 35 percent of their class. Eligible students must also complete at least four sociology courses, earning an average GPA of 3.0 or higher in those four courses.

Hudson Valley Community College

TROY, New York  Arielle Dufour of East Hampton was named to the spring Presidents List at Hudson Valley Community College. Dufour is studying in the non-matriculated academic program.

Each fall and spring term, the colleges Presidents List names those full-time students and part-time students registered for at least six college credits who have a term average of between 3.5 and 4.0 and who received no grade of D, F, I, Z, or W on their record for that term. Students must have completed at least 12 college credits successfully.
The first woman to graduate from the Marine Corps' notoriously grueling Infantry Officer Course is now leading a platoon of male grunts in Australia.

First Lt. Marina Hierl is the only female Marine to lead an infantry platoon in her service's history. About a year after she reported to Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, the novelty of it all has worn off a bit -- and she's even left some male grunts rethinking their opinions about women in the infantry.

That's according to a new report from The New York Times, which recently observed Hierl training her platoon in Australia's Northern Territory. The grunts are deployed there as part of Marine Rotational Force -- Darwin, which spends half of every year Down Under.

The 24-year-old lieutenant from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, told the Times she didn't know much about the military before joining the Marine Corps. What she did know is that she wanted to do something important with her life.

"I wanted to be part of a group of people that would be willing to die for each other," Hierl said.

When former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced during her sophomore year of college that the policy barring women from serving in the infantry would be lifted, Hierl said she knew what she wanted to do.

"I wanted to lead a platoon," she told the Times. "I didn't think there was anything better in the Marine Corps I could do."

But not everyone was convinced she had what it takes to lead 38 infantry Marines. Others in Echo Company have made sexist cracks about her platoon, The New York Times reported. But those reporting directly to her, even if skeptical at first, quickly recognized her capabilities.

Twenty-year-old Lance Cpl. Kai Segura is one of those Marines. In an interview with the Times, he recalled Hierl's speed when leading her Marines back from an exercise in California's Mojave Desert.

Infantry Marines are often leery of any new lieutenant who comes in to lead their platoons, but Hierl quickly showed they were going to have to keep up with her -- not the other way around.

"She's one of us," Segura told the Times.

Hierl is one of just two women who've completed the Infantry Officer Course; 37 have attempted it.

She'll continue operating with 2/4, which includes two enlisted female infantry Marines, in Darwin until the fall. Read more about Hierl's platoon and what they've been up to on their Australian rotation here.

-- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @ginaaharkins.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis acted over the weekend to return to the Philippines church bells that allegedly signaled an attack on U.S. troops in 1901.

Following Mattis' notification to Congress of intent to return the bells, the U.S. Embassy in Manila said in a statement Saturday, "No specific date has been identified for the return of the bells. We've received assurances that the bells will be returned to the Catholic Church and treated with the respect and honor they deserve."

Since taking office, Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte has demanded the return of the "Balangiga Bells," which were taken as trophies by U.S. troops, but are seen by many in the Philippines as symbols of American war crimes in the Philippine-American War.

Last year, U.S. Ambassador Sung Kim said returning the three bells, taken from the tower of the Roman Catholic church in Balangiga, in eastern Samar, was "the right thing to do."

However, also last year, Reps. James McGovern, D-Massachusetts, and Randy Hultgren, R-Illinois, said the bells should not be returned until Duterte takes "clear, measurable efforts to stop extrajudicial killings" in the war on drugs in the islands.

In a report last month, Amnesty International charged that Duterte's efforts to enhance his "strongman image" have "made the country a more dangerous place, particularly for the poorest Filipinos."

"Instead of combating a difficult social problem, his 'war on drugs' has caused untold damage and misery," the Amnesty report said.

At the Malacanang Palace, the presidential residence in Manila, spokesman Henry Rocque said Sunday, "We welcome this development as we look forward to continue working with the United States government in paving the way for the return of the bells to the Philippines."

Two of the bells are on display at F.E. Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne, Wyoming. The third is with the U.S. Army's 9th Infantry Regiment in South Korea.

On Sept. 28, 1901, Company C of the 9th Infantry in Balangiga was attacked by Filipino guerrillas, with the signal to move against the Americans allegedly being given by the ringing of the bells. More than 40 U.S. troops were killed.

In response, U.S. Brig. Gen. Jacob H. Smith ordered that Balangiga and Samar be turned into a "howling wilderness" and allegedly said that any Filipino male above 10 years of age capable of bearing arms should be shot.

Smith later faced a court-martial. He was found guilty, admonished and forced to retire. One of his subordinates, Maj. Littleton Waller, also faced a court-martial on charges of ordering the execution of 12 Filipino guides. He was found not guilty.

According to the Defense Department, nearly 4,200 U.S. troops died, mostly from disease, in the 1899-1902 Philippine-American War and the guerrilla resistance to U.S. colonial rule that continued into 1913. The Philippines achieved independence in 1946.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
Drones aid search-and-rescue efforts and capture that perfect aerial view of your beach vacation. They are simple to make, cheap to buy and available to almost anyone in the world. But drones can also present a serious risk to military forces. Because they're readily available, adversaries can easily weaponize store-bought drones.

There is no one, perfect solution for countering drones. However, there are proven, advanced technologies to address the threat  from weapons that can blast drones out of the sky to RF technology that can take control of a drone and put it on the ground safely, to other futuristic tools.

Laser Strike

You don't want to use a large, expensive missile to knock out a small drone. Better to use a mobile system with near-infinite firing capacity to take out a drone, or a swarm of drones. A high-energy laser fits the bill.

Small and cheap threats need adequately priced and available responses, said Dr. Ben Allison, product line director for Raytheon's high-energy laser weapons systems.

The modular system offered by Raytheon works like this: A radar detects an object overhead. The radar then sends a list of contacts of interest to an advanced variant of the fielded Multi-spectral Targeting System, a suite of optical sensors, to figure out whether the unmanned aircraft system is a threat or a friend. If it's a threat, the system's beam director tells the laser where to zap the target.

The laser is fired with an X-Box controller. The cost per shot is basically the cost of electricity.

The system can be tailored to fit a vehicle or other platform, according to Allison. The only thing that changes is how we package the power, which determines how long you want it to last in the field, and the size of the thermal system, he said.

Both the power and thermal systems are based on the same technology featured in the Patriot air and missile defense system.

The drones are here to stay.

This scalable system was recently demonstrated at the U.S. Armys Maneuver Fires Integrated Experiment, where the laser weapon system mounted on a small, all-terrain Polaris MRZR vehicle downed 12 airborne Class I and Class II UASs. The system also engaged targets from an Apache AH-64 helicopterThe next phase includes a preliminary design of a powerful, 100-kilowatt laser for the Armys Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles.

So what does the future hold for lasers battling drones? Were definitely going higher power, said Allison. You could see naval surface ships equipped with hundreds of kilowatts of lasers. On the airborne side, we will see lasers on rotary platforms, fighters and large airborne transport platforms.

Microwaves Vs. Drones

A laser can pick off a drone from afar. But if there are hundreds of drones closing in to attack, you may want a high-powered microwave.

Currently mounted on a shipping container-like box, PHASER high-powered microwaves emit radio frequencies in a conical beam from a dish.

"The beam is like a searchlight from a lighthouse, said Don Sullivan, chief technologist of directed energy at Raytheon's Missile Systems business. The fact that you can simultaneously track and immediately move to the next target to address not just a swarm, but multiple swarms, is a big advantage.

The system downed 33 drones  two and three at a time  at the December U.S. Armys MFIX exercise and future versions will be significantly smaller.

The Kamikaze Drone

Under an urgent operational need, the U.S. Army is now procuring the small, tube-launched Coyote drone as a near-term solution to eliminate enemy unmanned aircraft.

For its counter-UAS mission, Coyote often needs an extra set of eyes on the battlefield. Enter the small, precision radar, called KRFS, for Ku-band Radio Frequency System.

First, youve got to see it, but then you need to track the target(s) with high accuracy, said Don Williams, who manages Raytheons Multi-Function Radio Frequency System, or MRFS, product line. Its a true multi-mission radar.

The KRFS radar can track small or large drones, and cue different effectors in response.

The Right Missile

Shoulder-launched or fired from a helicopter or ground-launcher, the Stinger missile doesn't need to hit a drone to knock it out because it's equipped with a proximity fuze. The missile can just explode nearby to do the job.

The AMRAAM air-to-air missile can also be fired from a ground launcher.

Hypnotizing Drones

In January, Raytheon signed a teaming agreement with Department 13 International, a small, Maryland-based company, to develop and market counter-drone technologies for defense customers.

Instead of simply jamming radio signals, MESMER manipulates them to stop, redirect, land or take control of drones across a wide range of scenarios.

Instead of simply jamming radio signals, MESMER manipulates drone radio protocols to stop, redirect, land or take control of them, so they can be steered safely away from crowds.

MESMER is ideal when you cant use a kinetic effect like a laser, microwave or projectile, said Erik Grant, Raytheon technical director for mission support and modernization. Using a kinetic effect against a drone near a crowded venue could result in injuries or death if the drone is forcibly brought down near people. MESMER, since it employs non-kinetic effects, can be used domestically by law enforcement or government agencies.

MESMER can automatically detect approaching drones and be controlled by a tablet. It can be operated automatically, without operator intervention, to initiate a drone mitigation. It also has the ability to white-list friendly drones to avoid interfering with their operation.

The Cyber Frontier

The future of combatting drones lives in counter-drone cyber technology, which could be used independently or fused with other counter-drone methods.

We wanted to find a more sophisticated way to defeat drones, Grant said. With cyber effects, we can detect a drone, and then decide whether to land it safely someplace away from people or just gain access to the drone undetected to identify and locate the drone controller.

Grants group is also looking at command-and-control systems that employ various counter-drone technologies.

Effectively determining if and when a drone is a threat and how to deal with that threat is going to be important, he said.
Select Mineral List Type Standard Detailed Strunz Dana Chemical Elements

Mineral List  Gold

1 valid mineral. 1 valid mineral.

Detailed Mineral List:  Gold Formula: Au Reference: Centenary Gold Monument plaque, Sturt and Albert streets, Ballarat.

List of minerals arranged by Strunz 10th Edition classification Group 1 - Elements  'Gold' 1.AA.05 Au

List of minerals arranged by Dana 8th Edition classification Group 1 - NATIVE ELEMENTS AND ALLOYS Metals, other than the Platinum Group  Gold 1.1.1.1 Au

List of minerals for each chemical element Au Gold Au  Gold Au

Regional Geology

The St. George company achieved the eighth highest yield of alluvial gold for the Ballarat goldfield at 86 702 ounces.The St. George United Gold Mining Company lasted from 1863 -1868, while the St. George and Band of Hope Company from 1868-1873. Little information could be found about the original St. George Company before 1863, but it is thought not to have lasted long. They sank a shaft on the Woolshed Lead, which was quickly overwhelmed with water. Needing money to sink a new shaft, and purchase larger pumping equipment, the old company was disbanded in favour of the St. George United.At times the company became a soap opera, always likely with the loose cannon of Thomas Gray at the helm. The opening of the new company, and second shaft was met with a brass band, banquet, wine, the St. George flag fluttering overhead, and many promises the company would avoid litigation. The manager of the neighbouring Albion mine stated in a speech at the ceremony, that his company was the only one on the Ballarat goldfield not presently in court. These comments almost guaranteed both companies would sue each other.In 1864, a new engine was purchased from Melbourne, with some gear and connections manufactured at the Phoenix foundry in Ballarat. The same year the company purchases a neighbouring block of abandoned land once held by the Leviathan Company. George Douglas is mine manager.By 1866, the company is in dispute with the Albion Company, always probable considering the second shaft was near the border with the Albion. The St. George Company was charged with encroachment and stealing gold from Albion's ground. Criticism appears in local papers of Gray, who had used colourful language to verbally attack the Albion Company. He is also criticised for 'disgraceful' behaviour at insulting directors and shareholders. The dispute with the Albion would last two years, resulting in an eventual truce, where new agreed boundaries were declared, and the payment of damages to the Albion Company.The year 1868, was eventful for the mine. In January, a 10 ounce gold/quartz specimen from the mine was handed to the Duke of Edinburgh, who was visiting Ballarat. A miner called John Johns, and another Connolly (surname) were killed from an unspecified accident in the mine. The fact this was discussed at length at the shareholder meeting, and money raised for destitute relatives, casts a positive light on shareholders and management, in a time when miners were viewed as expendable.Thomas Gray took out public notices in local newspapers, discouraging talk of miners invading the lease, and forcibly taking control of the mine, during a pay dispute. The company amalgamated with the United Extended Band of Hope Company to form the St. George and Band of Hope Company, it is said to end litigation between the two. Nicholas Kent is mine manager. Despite being a payable mine, the company was seriously in debt, solicitor fees a large proportion. Protest meetings were called by shareholders, stating no expenditure statements were being issued, however the calls continued. The meetings sometimes descended into slanging matches between Thomas Gray, and certain shareholders.In 1870, the company came into possession of the Guiding Star shaft after winning a court case of encroachment. Upon taking possession it found one shaft missing any machinery, and the other full of water. In 1872, the company is in litigation with the Sebastopol Borough Council.The company continued, wracking up a debt with the London Chartered Bank, who held a mortgage over the mine, and making many calls on shareholders. Dividends dried up. By 1873, shareholders were on the war-path. The bank had taken possession of the mine, and then it was sold by the bailiff to pay debts. Two directors purchased the mine, formed a new company, then transferred the old shares for new. Meanwhile Gray purchased any forfeited shares into his own name, he says to ward off opposition who might take control of the mine.This was all done suddenly, and without shareholder approval. Gray stated it was necessary to protect the interests of the shareholders, who were convinced Gray and the directors had undertaken the exercise for their own gain. Grays explanation un-ravelled at a shareholder meeting, when the bank stated it had no intention of taking possession of the mine, but had been asked to do so by the board of directors and its chairman Gray. A motion was carried to sack Gray. No information was found beyond this date.Articles mention the company controlled four shafts. It also mentions they are in possession at times of the Guiding Star and Red Jacket shafts, but it is unclear if these were included within the four or additional. Of the four, only No. 2 shaft was located, being the first shaft sunk by the St. George United Company. This is located in the north-west corner of St Georges Reserve.

This geological map and associated information on rock units at or nearby to the coordinates given for this locality is based on relatively small scale geological maps provided by various national Geological Surveys. This does not necessarily represent the complete geology at this locality but it gives a background for the region in which it is found.

Click on geological units on the map for more information. Click here to view full-screen map on Macrostrat.org

Newer Volcanic Group Age: Cenozoic (0 - 23.03 Ma) Stratigraphic Name: Newer Volcanic Group Description: Cinder cones - scoria, minor ash and agglutinates; Lava flows - tholeiitic to minor alkaline and basanitic lavas. Comments: igneous mafic volcanic; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Igneous mafic volcanic Reference: Raymond, O.L., Liu, S., Gallagher, R., Zhang, W., Highet, L.M. Surface Geology of Australia 1:1 million scale dataset 2012 edition. Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia). [5] Paleozoic sedimentary rocks Age: Paleozoic (427.4 - 541 Ma) Comments: Lachlan Fold Belt Lithology: Sedimentary rocks Reference: Chorlton, L.B. Generalized geology of the world: bedrock domains and major faults in GIS format: a small-scale world geology map with an extended geological attribute database. doi: 10.4095/223767. Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 5529. [154]

Data and map coding provided by Macrostrat.org, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License

References

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Geelong Advertiser newspaper (1863) St Georges United Gold Mining Company, 14 November 1863. The Star newspaper (Ballarat) (1863) St George United Company Opening Celebration, 14 November 1863. Geelong Advertiser newspaper (1864) St George United Gold Mining Company, 13 April 1864. Geelong Advertiser newspaper (1864) St George United Gold Mining Company Ballarat, 28 April 1864. The Ballarat Star newspaper (1866) The St George Company (to the Ed.), 17 December 1866. The Ballarat Star newspaper (1868) St George United Company, 28 January 1868. The Australasian newspaper (Melbourne) (1868) Ballarat, 20 June 1868. The Ballarat Star newspaper (1868) St George United Company, 22 September 1868. The Ballarat Star newspaper (1868) St George United Company, 17 October 1868. The Ballarat Star newspaper (1869) St George and Band of Hope United Company, 08 July 1869. The Age newspaper (Melbourne) (1870) The St George and Band of Hope Company, 27 July 1870. The Herald newspaper (Melbourne) (1870) St George and Band of Hope, 02 August 1870. Weekly Times newspaper (Melbourne) (1870) The St George and Band of Hope Mining Company, 06 August 1870. The Ballarat Star newspaper (1872) St George and Band of Hope United Company, 29 March 1872. The Ballarat Courier newspaper (1872) St George and Band of Hope United Company, 19 July 1872. The Argus newspaper (Melbourne) (1873) St George and Band of Hope United Company, 02 September 1873. Centenary Gold Monument plaque, Sturt and Albert streets, Ballarat .
 Actinolite Formula: Ca 2 (Mg 4.5-2.5 Fe 0.5-2.5 )Si 8 O 22 OH 2 Reference: Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Albite Formula: Na(AlSi 3 O 8 ) Reference: Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Andradite Formula: Ca 3 Fe3+ 2 (SiO 4 ) 3 Description: Occurs in weathered ore between the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Dunn(1995):Pt2:310.

 Anglesite Formula: PbSO 4 Description: Occurs as an alteration product of galena in weathered zones within the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Palache(1935):129; Dunn(1995):Pt5:627.

 Anorthite Formula: Ca(Al 2 Si 2 O 8 ) Reference: Dunn (1995)

 'Apatite' Formula: Ca 5 (PO 4 ) 3 (Cl/F/OH) Reference: Verbeek, E. et al (2006) Mineral News: 22(9): 8-9.; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Augite Formula: (Ca x Mg y Fe z )(Mg y1 Fe z1 )Si 2 O 6 Habit: prismatic with dome terminations Colour: brown-black to green-black Description: Now recognized as augite, this material was formerly called "jeffersonite." It occurs as dark colored, rough crystals to over 20 cm in weathered ore zones between the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Good crystals also occur at the contact of very tough, massive, dark augite/hendricksite/augite rock with marble. Crystal terminations typically slightly rounded. Reference: Dunn(1995):Pt3:432.; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Aurichalcite Formula: (Zn,Cu) 5 (CO 3 ) 2 (OH) 6 Reference: Personally collected by Modris Baum & visually ID'd by him.

 Aurorite Formula: Mn2+Mn4+ 3 O 7  3H 2 O Description: Occurs in weathered ore between the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Dunn(1995):Pt4:584.

 Azurite Formula: Cu 3 (CO 3 ) 2 (OH) 2 Habit: tabular Colour: blue Description: formed from small grains of bornite and chalcopyrite in the Franklin Marble found just outside the "mud zone" in the walls of the Passaic Pit, associated with malachite. Reference: Earl Verbeek; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Baryte Formula: BaSO 4 Fluorescence: White (SW UV) Description: As scarce blebs in the genthelvite assemblage in amphibole-rich rock. Reference: Mr. Mark Boyer; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Baumhauerite Formula: Pb 12 As 16 S 36 Colour: Black, blue-tarnished Fluorescence: None. Description: Occurs as other than microscopic (visible blebs and crystals) for the first time in this area in Precambrian Franklin marble associated with pararealgar, pyrite and phlogopite. Collected by Mr. Zumrill. Reference: J. Cianciulli, Curator, Franklin Mineral Museum

 Betekhtinite Formula: Pb 2 (Cu,Fe) 22-24 S 15 Description: XRD verified Reference: Van King

 'Biotite' Formula: K(Fe2+/Mg) 2 (Al/Fe3+/Mg/Ti)([Si/Al/Fe] 2 Si 2 O 10 )(OH/F) 2 or Simplified: K(Mg,Fe) 3 AlSi 3 O 10 (OH) 2 Reference: Verbeek, E. et al (2006) Mineral News: 22(9): 8-9.; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Bornite Formula: Cu 5 FeS 4 Habit: anhedral grains Colour: purple-black tarnish Description: small grains in the Franklin Marble found just outside the "mud zone" in the walls of the Passaic Pit, associated with malachite and azurite. Reference: Harold Moritz collection

 Bustamite Formula: CaMn2+(Si 2 O 6 ) Reference: Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Calcite Formula: CaCO 3 Reference: Verbeek, E. et al (2006) Mineral News: 22(9): 8-9.; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Cerussite Formula: PbCO 3 Description: A huge boulder of galena altering to cerussite was found during recent excavations in the pit. The cerussite is nicely crystallized. Reference: Dunn(1995):Pt4:620; Palalche(1935):57; Common knowledge of local collectors and museum officials.

 Chalcoalumite Formula: CuAl 4 (SO 4 )(OH) 12  3H 2 O Description: EDS, SRXD, and Raman verified. Reference: Peter Chin

 Chalcocite Formula: Cu 2 S Reference: Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Chalcophanite (TL) Formula: ZnMn4+ 3 O 7  3H 2 O Type Locality: Habit: Rhombohedral crystals on stalactites. Colour: bluish black Description: Occurs in weathered ore zones within the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Moore G E (1875) On chalcophanite, a new mineral species. The American Chemist 6, 1-2; Palache(1935):52; Baum( J.L.: The Sterling Hill mud zone: The Picking Table:3(2):8-10 (1962); Dunn(1995):Pt4:587.

 Chalcopyrite Formula: CuFeS 2 Habit: anhedral grains Colour: brassy with purple tarnish Description: small grains in the Franklin Marble found just outside the "mud zone" in the walls of the Passaic Pit, associated with malachite and azurite. Reference: Harold Moritz collection

 Chrysotile Formula: Mg 3 (Si 2 O 5 )(OH) 4 Reference: Van Fleet, James A. and Verbeek, Earl R.(2013) "Fluorescent Chrysotile From Sterling Hill, New Jersey." The Picking Table: Journal of the Franklin-Ogdensburg Mineralogical Society 54, no. 1 : 17-21

 Corundum Formula: Al 2 O 3 Description: Occurs in altered ore as relic material from disintegrated marble. Reference: Palache(1935):41.

 Cryptomelane Formula: K(Mn4+ 7 Mn3+)O 16 Description: Occurs in weathered ore between the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Frondel, C.: Am.Min.:38:761-769; Dunn(1995):Pt4:591.

 Descloizite Formula: PbZn(VO 4 )(OH) Description: Occurs in weathered ore on altered augite between the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Palache(1935):122; Dunn(1995):Pt5:666.

 Diopside Formula: CaMgSi 2 O 6 Reference: Verbeek, E. et al (2006) Mineral News: 22(9): 8-9.

 Dundasite Formula: PbAl 2 (CO 3 ) 2 (OH) 4  H 2 O Habit: Hemispherical aggregates. Colour: White Description: A huge boulder of galena altering to cerussite was found during recent excavations in the pit. The cerussite is nicely crystallized. The white mineral found in this assemblage was analyzed and proved to be dundasite, a mineral new to the locality and the Reference: John Cianciulli, Curator, Franklin Mineral Museum, analysis by Malcolm Back, Royal Ontario Museum.

 Enstatite Formula: Mg 2 Si 2 O 6 Reference: Bronzite, a variety of Enstatite (1969) The Picking Table, v. 10 (1), p. 5-6.

 Enstatite var. Bronzite Formula: (Mg,Fe2+) 2 [SiO 3 ] 2 Reference: Bronzite, a variety of Enstatite (1969) The Picking Table, v. 10 (1), p. 5-6.

 Fluoborite Formula: Mg 3 (BO 3 )(F,OH) 3 Reference: Modris Baum

 Fluorapatite Formula: Ca 5 (PO 4 ) 3 F Habit: prismatic with shallow pyramidal terminations Colour: blue-green, brownish green, white, gray Fluorescence: none Description: Crystals up to 15 cm mostly in marble in contact with augite-rich rock at the saddle between the Passaic and Noble pits. Not fluorescent. Typically have bumpy resorbed surfaces. Some crystals naturally weathered out of calcite in the "mud zone" on the saddle have dull color and chalky appearance. Reference: Dunn (1995); Harold Moritz collection

 Fluorite Formula: CaF 2 Reference: Personally collected by Modris Baum & visually ID'd by him.

 Fluor-uvite Formula: CaMg 3 (Al 5 Mg)(Si 6 O 18 )(BO 3 ) 3 (OH) 3 F Reference: Dunn, P. J., Appleman, D., Nelen, J., and Norberg, J. 1977, Uvite, a New (Old) Common Member of the Tourmaline Group and Its Implications for Collections, Mineralogical Record, v. 8, p. 100-108.

 ' Fluor-uvite-Uvite Series' Description: The tourmaline in the Franklin Marble is fluorine-dominant Reference: Palache(1935):112; Dunn, P. J., Appleman, D., Nelen, J., and Norberg, J. 1977, Uvite, a New (Old) Common Member of the Tourmaline Group and Its Implications for Collections, Mineralogical Record, v. 8, p. 100-108.; Dunn(1995):Pt3:425-427.

 Foitite Formula: (,Na)(Fe2+ 2 Al)Al 6 (Si 6 O 18 )(BO 3 ) 3 (OH) 3 OH Reference: Van King

 Franklinite Formula: Zn2+Fe3+ 2 O 4 Habit: Large octahedrons Colour: Black Fluorescence: None. Description: Occurs as massive material, blebs and granules to large octahedral crystals weathered from primary ore. Reference: Common knowledge of occurrence.; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Gahnite Formula: ZnAl 2 O 4 Habit: octahedral Colour: very dark green Fluorescence: none Description: Euhedral crystals typically occur in calcite pods within, or in calcite adjacent to, tough, massive, dark augite/hendricksite/gahnite rock in the East Ore Vein. Crystals can be over 5 cm on an edge, faces usually lustrous with some resorption/rounding. Internally fractured and very brittle, they crumble readily. Also occurs in weathered zones between the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Palache(1935):44; Dunn (1995); Harold Moritz collection.; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Galena Formula: PbS Description: Galena was found several years ago in a huge boulder in the Passaic pit, associated with cerussite and dundasite. Recently (August, 2002) galena is being retrieved from another section of the Passaic pit associated with gahnite, fluorapatite, sphalerite a Reference: J. Cianciulli, Curator, Franklin Min. Museum; C. Lemanski, Jr.; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 'Garnet Group' Formula: X 3 Z 2 (SiO 4 ) 3 Reference: Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Genthelvite Formula: Be 3 Zn 4 (SiO 4 ) 3 S Habit: 7.5 to 8 cm on edge Colour: Colorless, whitish, pale greenish. Fluorescence: Gray-green (LW UV). Description: Found in an assemblage of gahnite, apatite, rhodonite, galena, quartz, titanite, zircon, barite and ore minerals in the footwall of the East vein, Sterling orebody, in the Passaic Pit at the entrance to the fill quarry. Most specimen were represented by s Reference: Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.; John Cianciulli, Curator, Franklin Mineral Museum; Mr. Mark Boyer

 Goethite Formula: -Fe3+O(OH) Fluorescence: None. Description: Occurs in weathered zones within the folds of teh Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Baum, J.L.: The Sterling Hill mud zone: The Picking Table:3(2):8-10; Dunn(1995):Pt4:592.; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Gold Formula: Au Reference: Peter Chin

 Graeserite Formula: Fe3+ 4 Ti 3 As3+O 13 (OH) Habit: Tabular, exhibiting apparent oscillatory growth pattern. Colour: Black Fluorescence: None. Description: One extraordinaryily large crystal (3.8 x 3.7 x 0.3 cm) in matrix. Reference: Verbeek, E., Orosz, J. & Nikischer, T. (2006) Graeserite: A Second World Occurence from Sterling Hill, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Mineral News: 22(9): 8-9.

 Hastingsite Formula: NaCa 2 (Fe2+ 4 Fe3+)(Si 6 Al 2 )O 22 OH 2 Description: The magnesian variety of hastingsite occurring in weathered ore between the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Dunn(1995):Pt3:432,454.

 Hedenbergite Formula: CaFe2+Si 2 O 6 Reference: Van King

 Hemimorphite Formula: Zn 4 Si 2 O 7 (OH) 2  H 2 O Colour: Colorless to white, brown-stained. Fluorescence: Blue-white to greenish-white (SW) + white phosphorescence Description: Occurs abundantly as crusts and masses of aggregated crystals forming structures termed "maggot ore." Reference: Dunn(1995):Pt3:414.

 Hendricksite Formula: KZn 3 (Si 3 Al)O 10 (OH) 2 Habit: prismatic with tapering or pinacoidal terminations Colour: dark brownish black Fluorescence: none Description: Large crystals to over 9 cm across and more than 15 cm long in marble associated with tough, massive, dark augite/hendricksite/gahnite rock in the East Ore Vein. Good crystals at the contacts of these rocks. Reference: Dunn (1995); Harold Moritz collection; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Hetaerolite (TL) Formula: ZnMn 2 O 4 Type Locality: Reference: Frondel, C. & Heinrich, E.W.: Am.Min.:27:48-56 (1942); Frondel, C. & Klein, C., Jr.: Am.Min.:50:1670-1680 (1965); Dunn(1995):Pt4:598-599.

 Hetaerolite var. Hydrohetaerolite (FRL) Formula: ZnMn 2 O 4  H 2 O Type Locality: Description: Occurs as crusts and masses in weathered zones within the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Palache(1935):53; Baum, J.L.: The Sterling Hill mud zone: The Picking Table:3(2):8-10; Dunn(1995):Pt4:599.

 Hydrozincite Formula: Zn 5 (CO 3 ) 2 (OH) 6 Colour: White Fluorescence: Bright blue (SW). Description: Occurs as films and coatings in weathered ore zones within the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. A notable occurrence in the early 1990's was as veinlets of hydrozincite with copper minerals coursing through red-fluorescent calcite boulders. Reference: Common knowledge of local collectors and museum officials.

 'Jeffersonite' Formula: Ca(Mn,Zn,Fe)Si 2 O 6 Habit: Blocky, rough to relatively sharp Colour: Black, brown-black Fluorescence: None Reference: Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Magnetite Formula: Fe2+Fe3+ 2 O 4 Reference: Verbeek, E. et al (2006) Mineral News: 22(9): 8-9.; Dunn, Pete J. (1995), chapter 22: magnetite.

 Malachite Formula: Cu 2 (CO 3 )(OH) 2 Habit: acicular, radiating, massive Colour: green Description: formed from small grains of bornite and chalcopyrite in the Franklin Marble found just outside the "mud zone" in the walls of the Passaic Pit, associated with azurite. Reference: Harold Moritz collection; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Meionite Formula: Ca 4 Al 6 Si 6 O 24 CO 3 Habit: massive with fibrous cleavage, granular, stout prismatic crystals Colour: white to pale green Fluorescence: pink to magenta Description: ID based on Dunn's report of the prevalence of meionite in the district. Large cleavable masses to 15 cm, granular, and as stout crystals with calcite, augite, black mica, magnetite, fluorapatite in the saddle between the Passaic and Noble pits. Weathers to a frosty, crumbly, semi-fibrous white material. Reference: Dunn, P.J. (1995): Franklin and Sterling Hill New Jersey: the world's most magnificent mineral deposits; 512.

 Orthoclase Formula: K(AlSi 3 O 8 ) Reference: Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Pararealgar Formula: As 4 S 4 Colour: Golden-yellow. Fluorescence: None. Description: Occurs in Precambrian Franklin marble associated with baumhauerite, pyrite and phlogopite. Collected by Mr. Zumrill. Reference: J. Cianciulli, Curator, Franklin Mineral Museum

 Phlogopite Formula: KMg 3 (AlSi 3 O 10 )(OH) 2 Habit: stubby to elongated, tapered prismatic with pseudohexagonal outline rarely terminated by pinacoids Colour: black Description: Large essentially black crystals to over 9 cm across and more than 15 cm long in marble associated with tough, massive, dark augite/gahnite rock in the East Ore Vein. Good crystals at the contacts of these rocks. 2008 EDS analysis shows abundant Mg plus much Fe, Zn and Mn; XRD with 10.3 A spacing indicates a phlogopite-3T polytype, probably mixed with some phlogopite-1M, seeing that the (001) reflection is broad ranging down to 9.2 A and the other peaks are sharp (Van King communication 2016). Reference: Harold Moritz collection

 'Plagioclase' Formula: (Na,Ca)[(Si,Al)AlSi 2 ]O 8 Reference: Verbeek, E. et al (2006) Mineral News: 22(9): 8-9.

 Quartz Formula: SiO 2 Description: Occurs in weathered ore between the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Recently observed as massive, glassy material in the amphibole-rich genthelvite assemblage. Reference: Palache(1935):36; Mr. Mark Boyer, C. Lemanski, Jr..; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Rhodonite Formula: CaMn 3 Mn[Si 5 O 15 ] Reference: Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Rutile Formula: TiO 2 Description: Occurs in weathered ore between the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Palache(1935):49.

 Scheelite Formula: Ca(WO 4 ) Reference: Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Segnitite Formula: PbFe3+ 3 AsO 4 (AsO 3 OH)(OH) 6 Reference: Anthony Kampf

 Smithsonite Formula: ZnCO 3 Description: Occurs as a secondary mineral in weathered ore between the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Palache(1935):56.

 Spessartine Formula: Mn2+ 3 Al 2 (SiO 4 ) 3 Reference: Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Sphalerite Formula: ZnS Habit: massive, granular Colour: colorless to pale brown Fluorescence: bright orange long-wave fluorescence for late stage sphalerite Description: Granular masses, sparkling with cleavage and commonly colorless to pale brown and translucent, associated with massive augite, galena, meionite, gahnite, and calcite in the East ore vein or on the saddle between the Passaic and Noble pits. Reference: Harold Moritz collection; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Talc Formula: Mg 3 Si 4 O 10 (OH) 2 Description: Occurs in weathered zones between the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Palache(1935):119.

 Tephroite Formula: Mn2+ 2 SiO 4 Habit: anhedral Colour: reddish-brown Fluorescence: none Description: massive material with gahnite, franklinite, minor willemite (along tephroite grain boundaries and as exsolution in tephroite) in calcite. From the northernmost part of the East Ore Vein within the Passaic Pit, just south of the Edison Tunnel entrance. Reference: Harold Moritz collection

 Thomsonite-Ca Formula: NaCa 2 [Al 5 Si 5 O 20 ]  6H 2 O Description: Non-fluorescent glassy white to cloudy slender laths to 1 cm on coarse franklinite-rich ore. X-ray by PJD. Reference: Harvard University #114036

 Titanite Formula: CaTi(SiO 4 )O Description: Occurs as small, dark brown crystals in the genthelvite assemblage in amphibole-rich rock. Reference: Mark Boyer; C. Lemanski, Jr.; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Todorokite Formula: (Na,Ca,K,Ba,Sr) 1-x (Mn,Mg,Al) 6 O 12  3-4H 2 O Description: Occurs in weathered ore between the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Baum, J.L.: The Sterling Hill mud zone: The Picking Table:3(2):8-10.

 'Tourmaline' Formula: A(D 3 )G 6 (Si 6 O 18 )(BO 3 ) 3 X 3 Z Reference: Sterling Hill Mining Museum

 'Wad' Reference: Palche et al. (1944) Dans's System of Mineralogy, v. 1.

 Willemite Formula: Zn 2 SiO 4 Reference: Steve Sanford; Leavens, P. B., Zullo, J., & Verbeek, E. (2009). A complex, genthelvite-bearing skarn from the Passaic pit, Sterling Hill mine, Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Axis, 5, 26.

 Wollastonite Formula: CaSiO 3 Fluorescence: Golden yellow (SW UV) Description: The outcrop of the wollastonite zone within the fold of the Sterling orebody, near the keel (South end), was recently discovered in the Passaic Pit. The material occurs with calcite. Reference: Mr. Mark Boyer

 Woodruffite (TL) Formula: Zn2+ x/2 (Mn4+ 1-x Mn3+ x )O 2  yH2O Type Locality: Description: Occurs in weathered ore zones within the folds of the Sterling Hill orebody. Reference: Frondel, C.: Am. Min.:38:761-769 (1953); Baum, J.L.: The Sterling Hill mud zone: The Picking Table:3(2):8-10; Dunn(1995):Pt4:606.

 Woodwardite Formula: Cu 1-x Al x (OH) 2 (SO 4 ) x/2  nH 2 O Description: Raman and EDS verified Reference: Peter Chin

 Wulfenite Formula: Pb(MoO 4 ) Habit: Simple tabular crystals Colour: Butterscotch yellow Description: Tiny crystals in vugs of matrix. Reference: Personally collected by Modris Baum & visually ID'd by him & Chester Lemanski.
YPSILANTI, MI - Prospective students willing to commit to paying for their first two years of tuition at Eastern Michigan University can get their final two years paid for by the university.

Under the new 4WARD Graduation Scholarship concept, set to begin for students entering college in fall 2019, students pay for the their first two consecutive years of tuition at a locked-in rate expected to be a little more than $13,000 a year for 30 credits.

In addition, students are required to live in an on-campus community for each of their four years of attendance, at a locked-in room-and-board rate of approximately $10,500 a year, which includes a standard double room and a standard meal plan, EMU Vice President for Enrollment Management Kevin Kucera said.

Under those conditions, the student would receive his or her next two consecutive years of education, at 30 credits per year, paid for by EMU.

To be eligible for the 4WARD scholarship, admitted students must have a 3.0 or better cumulative GPA, an ACT score of 20 or greater or an SAT score of 1020 or better.

"One thing I've heard over the years that's been kind of a reoccurring theme is the fact that many parents would love to take the mystery out of the process of 'What is this going to cost me?'" Kucera said. "Not just the first year but for the whole duration of the degree."

The scholarship program incentivizes students to live on campus, complete their degree in four years and attracts out-of-state students who might not have otherwise considered attending Eastern Michigan, Kucera said, allowing the university to concentrate its efforts in new territory.

"It's a unique message that will allow us to go out to states we normally haven't gone to and I think it will resonate in states like Indiana where we haven't really targeted our efforts, or Pennsylvania," Kucera said. "So, I'm excited about the possibility that this scholarship could be a scholarship program that could be of interest to families who wouldn't normally have Eastern Michigan on their radar screen."

EMU is hoping to improve its success rate for students who enroll as freshmen, which is 42.6 percent at the four-year rate and 61.4 percent at a six-year rate, based on the latest numbers provided by the state's Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI).

Unlike a graduate rate, success rate calculation defines student success as earning a certificate, associate or bachelor's degree at a public university or community college; or transferring to a public university as a degree-seeking student from a community college.

Eastern Michigan's four-year success rate has increased from 34.1 percent for students enrolling in 2009-10 to 42.6 percent in 2013-14, but still lags behind the state average for public universities, which was 49.6 percent in 2013-14.

Getting students through the degree completion process more efficiently and with more incentive to do so financially is one of the missions of the scholarship program, Kucera said.

"The whole idea of trying to financially incentivize a person as they move from freshman through senior years is a concept that we don't always take advantage of," Kucera said. "That was one of the factors associated with this. The other concept is we'd love for you to be able to get done within a four-year time frame. This is a motivator, we think, to keep a student consistent with taking 30 credits a year."
(UPDATE: Burnett turned himself in at about 11:30 p.m., Aug. 13, to a Michigan State Police post in Detroit. He has been handed over to Novi Police for questioning.)

NOVI - Police are searching for a man suspected of involvement in the death of his girlfriend Monday morning.

Jay Allen Burnett, 34, is wanted for questioning in the death of his 37-year-old girlfriend, who was found dead on the floor of her home in the 26000 block of Indiana Avenue, according to a statement for the Novi Police Department.

Police were called to check on the woman, whose name was not released, about 10:16 a.m. Aug. 13, when she was found by police dead inside the home.

There was no apparent danger to the public as the incident appeared to be domestic in nature, police said. The woman's cause of death wasn't immediately determined, with an autopsy pending by the Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office, police said.

Burnett was last seen driving a 2005 silver Cadillac DeVille with Michigan license plate number BZZ 7808.

Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Burnett is asked to contact Novi Police at 248-348-7100.
A 65-year-old alleged serial killer managed to evade prosecution twice after being suspected in a 2000 sexual assault and a 2003 strangling in Detroit.

James Matthews left the state but is now under arrest and has been extradited back to Michigan where he'll be arraigned Tuesday, Aug. 14 on murder and criminal sexual conduct charges.

Matthews was named a suspect but never charged in the 2000 case because "the victim was unable to appear for the required interview," nor in the 2003 case because prosecutors said Detroit police failed to present the full investigation and evidence requested by the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office

Both cases lingered in limbo and were eventually forgotten.

Matthews has since been identified as a suspect in at least one other Michigan killing, as well as three homicides in Texas and another in New York, George Hunter of the Detroit News reported, based on statements made by Detroit police.

"I'm not going to say it's the prosecutor when our investigators know you've got to follow up," Detroit Police Chief James Craig told WDIV-TV, Chanel 4 News. "We've got a murder suspect, or at least who we believe is a murder suspect, and we don't follow up on the case status.

"It's good that we have a (suspected) serial killer off the streets, but should we have done more in 2003 ... I believe there are additional cases here, and God knows what additional states."

Matthews was arrested in New York in April when he became the prime suspect in a 2007 killing there. The case was dismissed when a grand jury declined to file criminal charges; however, DNA collected during the investigation linked Matthews to the 2000 sexual assault of a 50-year-old woman in Detroit.

According to the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office, Matthews, who lived in Detroit at the time, invited the woman to his home to "talk" on the morning of July 12, 2000.

"Once inside, it is alleged that Matthews became violent and sexually assaulted the woman while armed with a knife," the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office said. "After the assault he restrained the victim and left the room. While he was in another part of the house the victim was able to escape and call 911."

The woman has since been interviewed and two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct were issued on April 19.

Prosecutors say forensic evidence collected at the sexual assault crime scene was reexamined and it linked Matthews to the 2003 strangling of 40-year-old Marchella Robinson, who was found dead on the lawn of a home next door to where Matthews was living on St. Mary's in Detroit at the time.

Matthews was charged with first-degree murder on July 31.

The nature of the forensic evidence that linked the two crimes hasn't been revealed.

After charges against Matthews were dismissed in New York, he was held for extradition to Michigan. He arrived in Michigan on Sunday, Aug. 12 and is scheduled for arraignment on Tuesday, Aug. 14.

No information has been released regarding possible charges in the other killings.
FLINT, MI - The man charged in the stabbing of a Flint Bishop Airport police officer wants his trial moved to Detroit.

Amor M. Ftouhi's attorney filed the motion on Monday, Aug. 13 in Flint U.S. District Court to change the venue to Detroit. The motion argues publicity in the case and the smaller size of the jury pool in Flint won't allow for an impartial trial.

Ftouhi's attorney argues that the Nov. 5 trial set for Flint will draw jurors from Genesee, Lapeer, Livingston and Shiawassee counties and approximately 750,000 people, while a Detroit juror pool would pull from a nine-county area with 5.3 million people, according to the motion.

The dual citizen of Canada and Tunisia is charged with committing an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries, violence at an international airport and interference with airport security.

Ftouhi is accused in the June 21, 2017, stabbing of Bishop Airport Police Lt. Jeff Neville inside the terminal.

Ftouhi faces the potential of a life sentence in prison.

Prior to the attack, police claim Ftouhi had attempted to purchase a gun after researching gun laws and searching for gun shows in the state. However, prosecutors say he was denied the ability to purchase a gun at a Mount Clemens gun show.

Ftouhi stabbed Neville with a large knife while shouting "Allahu Akbar" and referenced killings in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq just four days after entering the United States from Canada, federal prosecutors claim. Neville survived the attack.

Investigators said Ftouhi said he was a "soldier of Allah" and subscribed to the ideology of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, according to the indictment.

The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, with assistance from the National Security Division's Counterterrorism Section.

If a judge does not grant his motion, Ftouhi asks the motion be reconsidered at the time of jury selection.
FLINT, MI -- Paper shoes, mile-long hair, upside-down sunglasses. These items are just small parts in a busy day at Cummings Great Expectations, an early childhood center.



In October 2016, Cummings opened its doors to preschoolers from 6 weeks to 5 years old. With the help of blended funding, the former Flint Community School building was repurposed into a safe haven that specializes in wraparound care, an intensive care process for children with complex needs, such as lead exposure.

Lyndsay Carey, Cummings site director since August of 2017, said she has already seen growth in the students.



During at the start of the school year in 2016, none of the preschoolers at Cummings or Holmes STEM Academy -- where a similar classroom operates -- were kindergarten ready, according to data provided by Amy Hesse, of University of Michigan-Flint's Early Childhood Development Center.



But test results have shown that the 4-year-old students have grown in all tested areas. At Cummings, there were gains up to 30 percent, with the most dramatic growth in mathematics and approaches to learning.

After less than a year, all of the lead-effected preschoolers were kindergarten ready.

Despite the success, uncertainty has been high at Cummings in recent months. In June, questions arose about whether the center would be able to survive another school year without the same level of funding.

However, Carey said that everyone involved did the work to make sure that the school could continue to secure positive outcomes for the students.

Cummings' blend of funding comes from state, federal and private donors and is a rarity for programs like this, said Carey. Losing any of it puts the school's future in jeopardy.

"We wrote for different grants to help cover our classrooms that are falling under Child Care and Development Funding," Carey said in June.

Then, they waited.

In July, Cummings received word that they received the same level of funding for 2019 that it had the year prior.

These funds, a combination of a Child Care and Development grant, Early Head Start funding, and support from the Genesee Intermediate School District Great Start Readiness program, will allow the school to continue serving their students at a high level.

Dee Glynn currently teaches in a Toddler One classroom at the center. Through an education concept called looping, she has been able to work with the same group of students since they began at Cummings as infants.



"It's really positive and great for the kids, and the staff too because you build that relationship," Glynn said.

Recently, Glynn has been working to make her students more independent, including making time for the outdoors.



"We want them outside as much as possible. Not a lot of the children can play outside -- it's either not safe or their parents aren't around to do that with them. So, it's really important that we're outside for at least an hour in the morning and at least an hour in the afternoon to get them fresh air," Carey said.



But one of the more rewarding things for Glynn has been to watch her students' language expand.



"It's nice to hear their articulation of words and things," Glynn said.



Both Cummings and the classroom at Holmes were specifically created in response to the Flint water crisis, and they are well prepared to deal with the issues lead-affected children may face.



Lead can have a negative effect on childhood speech development. Many adults with moderate lead poisoning can recover without complications. But for children, recovery is not often reached quickly, and exposure could lead to permanent intellectual disability.



"Sometimes it's hard to pinpoint what is directly lead, because trauma plays into it, what they've been directly exposed to. Poverty plays into it. It's really hard to distinguish what is lead specifically, but we are seeing developmental delays, cognitive delays, social and emotional delays," Carey said. "We really focus on the social and emotional piece first for the children. Helping them be independent, using their words, navigating conflict."



These are life skills that elementary school teachers won't have time to teach students once they reach that level, said Carey.



Physical development can also be hindered by lead exposure.



"We're very much a school of healing, and I think healing is the curriculum. We are seeing changes. Parents come in here, they hear the way that I talk to the kids, they see the activities that I do, and then they want to try it at home," Hensley said.



Hensley hopes that Cummings is a good feeder for Flint Community Schools and that all of her students are adequately prepared for kindergarten.



"We've got adorable, fun-loving, comfortable kids here because we make this a home for them. They're more awake here with us than they are at home. The reality is if they're not picked up until 5:30, they're in bed a few hours after that," Carey said. "They spend their most waking hours here with us, and we're grateful for that. They learn from us, we learn from them."



Often, the job can tug at Carey's heartstrings.



"I never want to see this end. This is doing the right things for the kids, which is huge because not a lot of schools can say that they do everything that they do for the children and the families and we do," Carey said.
MT. MORRIS, MI -- The source of an underground natural gas leak in Mt. Morrish has been tracked to a service line to a business in the city.

Mt. Morris fire Chief Michael Vogt, the city's public information officer, confirmed an underground service line leading to Old Time Billiards, 11745 N. Saginaw St., sprung a leak.

Consumers Energy located the source of the leak Sunday, Aug. 12 and the line "has been made safe and will be repaired in the coming days," said Vogt Sunday evening.

The incident began around 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 11 when Mt. Morris firefighters were called out to investigate a possible leak in the area of North Saginaw and Mt. Morris streets.

"During our investigation dangerously high levels of natural gas were detected in and around several businesses located in the southwestern corner of the intersection," said Mt. Morris fire Chief Michael Vogt. "Temporary evacuation and closure orders were issued to the businesses and a small apartment building located in the area."

The evacuations were completed and a safe area established so no one entered the area.

A natural gas leak was confirmed, but Vogt added "ambient air readings determined the public was no longer at risk and that the gas had dissipated to below dangerous limits."

Closure and evacuation orders were lifted at approximately 12:30 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 12, with Consumers Energy taking over control of the incident to try and locate the leak.

"There continues to be no danger to the public and the City of Mt. Morris Fire Department will continue to work closely with Consumers Energy during this incident," said Vogt.

The southbound curb lane on Saginaw Street, between Dover and Walker streets, remains closed. The line is expected to be repaired in the coming days.

Residents are still urged to avoid the area to allow for Consumers Energy to repair the issue as soon as possible.

The City of Mt. Morris Fire Department was assisted by the City of Mt. Morris Police Department and Department of Public Works during the incident.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Minnesota manufacturing giant 3M tested water samples and sent specialists to analyze fluorochemical exposure at the former Wolverine World Wide tannery in Rockford, according to new filings by Michigan residents suing over drinking water polluted by chemical dumping in Kent County.

In August 1999, an "industrial hygienist" visited the former leather tannery amid growing concerns related to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in 3M Scotchgard that Wolverine workers used in mass quantity at the shoe leather complex.

The visit -- part of substantial PFAS-related discussion between 3M and Wolverine -- is outlined in amended lawsuits filed Monday, Aug. 13, in Kent County 17th Circuit Court by attorneys for Varnum Law, which represent more than 400 people suing Wolverine over contamination caused by tannery waste dumping.

The filings formally name 3M as a defendant after Judge George J. Quist ruled that Wolverine could drag its former chemical supplier into the case as a liable party.

The cases before Quist are not class-action, although Wolverine and 3M are co-defendants in a separate but similar PFAS class-action case in federal court. Wolverine is also facing two other PFAS class-action cases filed by local residents in state court.

Varnum's cases have advanced the farthest to date. The firm expects to file about 150 amended complaints by the end of August. The lawsuits cover a range of allegations, from wrongful death and health claims to property value loss and statutory violations.

The new filings illuminate the relationship between Wolverine and 3M while expanding on the manufacturer's role in concealing alleged harm its lucrative chemical production was causing to people and the environment. It paints a picture of two companies bonded by lucrative but toxic chemistry that neither wanted to jettison.

Much of the documentation was subpoenaed from 3M.

"It's bizarre how much communication there was," said Varnum attorney Paul Albarran. "I'm sure there's more we haven't seen yet."

Scotchgard was one of multiple PFAS products made by 3M, which the filing notes was taking in $1 billion in revenue every 2-3 years from sale of such fluorochemicals in the United States.

Wolverine was a major customer.

Starting in 1958, Wolverine bought "more than half the Scotchgard 3M sold to tanneries around the world," the filings claim. In 1990, the company bought more than 94,500 pounds of it. The pure Scotchgard was dark green and it stained tannery waste that color.

Wolverine's status as a dominant Scotchgard buyer afforded it "unprecedented" access to internal knowledge about health and environmental problems 3M had been accruing but concealing from the public for decades, the filings say.

In Miami, Fla., on Jan. 10, 1999, Wolverine and 3M executives met at the Pan American Leather trade show to talk about environmental concerns with PFOS, the key ingredient in Scotchgard. Wolverine was allegedly concerned about "fluorine levels in tannery workers" and the "potential business impact of publicity," according to the filings.

A week later, 3M sent Wolverine a letter summarizing the meeting in which 3M wrote that chemical exposures could occur from Scotchgard use and disposal, that PFOS accumulated in the body and did not breakdown in the environment, and that it was being found in the blood serum of people who were not chemical factory workers.

On Nov. 3, 2017, 3M attorneys made that letter public in an apparent bid to deflect blame for contamination from Wolverine's dumping.

A couple months after the 1999 letter was written, 3M scientist Richard Purdy resigned in protest over secrecy around PFAS, which he called "the most insidious pollutant since PCBs." Not long after, 3M began developing a new Scotchgard formula that relies on PFBS as its key ingredient after the Environmental Protection Agency began to pressure the company to stop making PFOS.

On June 24, 1999, 3M met with a group of Wolverine executives that included now-CEO Blake Krueger to address concerns that tannery workers might have high exposure levels because they've "been using the product as long as 3M's and probably take fewer precautions."

The next day, Wolverine sent 3M water samples for testing.

Less than a month later, on July 16, handwritten 3M notes from a call with Wolverine indicate Scotchgard "got into drinking water" at the tannery during product spraying. In August, a 3M specialist visited the tannery to take PFAS air samples, also noting "multiple observations of workers not wearing gloves when handling the chemical."

Scotchgard often spilled into the tannery floor, the filings note.

"Wolverine needs to consider necessary engineering controls in that drying process to prevent volatile material from escaping into the work area," the filings quote.

Wolverine was "interested in pursuing blood testing within their employees" and worried about residual exposure from people wearing its shoes, the filings claim. The company kept in touch with 3M after the site visit by requesting internal 3M communications, assurances about product safety and insurance policy coverage.

3M continued to sell Wolverine the old Scotchgard formulation after the product phaseout announcement in 2000, the filings allege, citing internal emails.

Wolverine declined to comment on the filings, writing in a statement that it would "respond to these issues in court, which is the appropriate venue for these issues."

In a statement, 3M said it "cares deeply about the safety and health of Michigan's communities."

"3M acted responsibly in connection with products containing PFAS, and will vigorously defend its environmental stewardship," said Robert DeJong, a Miller Canfield attorney in Grand Rapids representing 3M. "In these cases, plaintiffs have already acknowledged that 3M did not dispose of any of the waste at issue."

The Kent County case filings correspond with greater scrutiny on 3M's role in the expanding PFAS crisis in Michigan and beyond. In June, the state of New York filed a lawsuit against 3M and five other companies that manufactured products containing PFAS.

In July, Gov. Rick Snyder asked Attorney General Bill Schuette to draft a lawsuit against 3M, saying products like Scotchgard and firefighting foams made with PFAS have caused significant contamination in more than 20 communities around Michigan.

In human studies, public health experts have linked exposure to PFAS chemicals with increased risk for cancer, thyroid and liver damage, and other serious ailments.

Varnum benefitted from documents disclosed by the Minnesota Attorney General's office after the state settled its lawsuit with 3M in February for $850 million. The disclosures have shed light on 3M's internal knowledge about the toxicity of PFAS from exposure studies conducted decades ago but never revealed.

"They hid this information from the public, the government and their employees," said Albarran, noting that Michigan has outsized number of PFAS contamination sites tied to 3M products.

"They should step up and be accountable for their actions here."
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Former state Rep. Todd Courser has filed a federal lawsuit against the House of Representatives, former colleagues and aides alleging he was "stalked" by workers to get him to resign.

The court action comes after he earlier dropped a similar lawsuit.

He contends he rankled Republicans in the House by refusing to sign a confidential "Caucus Pledge" to vote with the caucus on important issues.

"Courser was repeatedly stalked by House employees on state time coordinating with others to force Courser to resign," Portage attorney Matthew DePerno wrote in the lawsuits.

He said state workers "repeatedly followed and took pictures of Courser during the day during office hours while they were supposed to be maintaining state offices and serving the constituents of the state. These pictures were then used in a plot to remove Courser from office."

Courser resigned in disgrace.

He had asked an aide to share an email containing outlandish allegations against him so that rumors of his affair with then-state Rep. Cindy Gamrat would pale in comparison and not be believed.

Courser said staff had gained access to his cell phone, voicemails, text messages and private email.

Courser earlier filed a lawsuit against the House of Representatives, ex-colleagues and staffers but withdrew the complaint citing stress-related poor health.

A House Business Office report found that Courser, R-Lapeer, and Gamrat, R-Plainwell, misused state resources to cover up their affair. Courser resigned while Gamrat was expelled.

Included as defendants are former aides Keith Allard and Benjamin Graham, who were fired after reporting unethical behavior by Courser and Gamrat. They settled a lawsuit against the House for $170,000 each as well as legal representation in other cases such as Courser's lawsuit.

The defendants have contended the lawsuits are frivolous.

"This has been a shameful chapter in the history of the Michigan House of Representatives, which put two young staffers in an impossible position," Grand Rapids attorney Sarah Riley Howard, representing Allard and Graham, said earlier.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Grand Rapids Symphony President and CEO Peter Perez plans to retire by Dec. 31, officials announced Monday, Aug. 13.

Perez, owner and chairman of Carter Products Company, took the reins in March 2017 following the departure of Peter Kjome. He served a brief stint as interim.

"After a short time on the job, we recognized that Peter was the right person to lead the organization into the future," said Charles Frayer, who co-chaired the Presidential Search Committee.

"Peter loves the musicians, the staff and the community. It's been a great fit."

A national search for Perez's successor is now underway.

Peter Perez (Courtesy |Terry Johnston)

"While I have enjoyed the unique opportunity to lead this fine organization, I know that it is time for younger leadership to take the Grand Rapids Symphony on a journey to even greater accomplishments, said Perez, 78.

In June, the symphony received a four-year, $1.1 million grant from the Wege Foundation that is enabling it to weave diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives into all of the orchestra's activities.

The goal is to engage a broader audience and share live orchestral music with everyone in the community. A new neighborhood concert series began in July on the West Side.

Charles Frayer, chair of the Board of Directors, said Perez supplied stability and skillful management inside the organization and provided experienced leadership in the wider arts community.

A long-time volunteer and symphony supporter, Perez served as board chair from 2013 to 2015.

During his board service, Perez was co-chair of the Legacy of Excellence Campaign, which reached a $40 million goal in 2016 in cash gifts, pledges, and estate plans to build a permanent endowment for the orchestra.

"Peter is extremely passionate about every aspect of the Grand Rapids Symphony," said Mary Tuuk, chairperson elect of the Board of Directors.

Perez said his life has been filled with extraordinary opportunities, including leading two world-renowned companies that manufacture musical instruments.

"For the past two years, I have come full circle, leading this incredible symphony that is filled with musicians of the highest caliber that live and work in our community, performing not only in concert halls, but also in schools throughout West Michigan,'' he said.

"Grand Rapids is so fortunate to have this Grammy-nominated orchestra."
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Nancy Orozco is being remembered by her friends and family as a "loving mother, wife and sister who always put her family first."

Orozco, 28, was pregnant when she died Saturday, Aug. 11, following a two-vehicle crash in Northwest Grand Rapids. Doctors delivered her fifth child via cesarean section, but the infant died Sunday.

"She always wanted what was best for her kids," said her sister, Ana Orozco. "Her focus was her family, always."

The crash occurred around 10:50 a.m. Saturday at the intersection of Lane Avenue NW and Third Street. Police said Orozco's van was struck broadside by an eastbound Cadillac Escalade that failed to stop at a stop sign.

Orozco was ejected from the vehicle, which struck her as it rolled over her, according to police. She was not wearing a seat belt.

Two of her four children -- ages 2 and 3 years old -- were buckled into car seats in the van. They suffered minor injuries in the crash and were released the same day from Helen DeVos Children's Hospital.

Orozco was on the phone with her mother when the crash occurred, according to her sister. They were planning to attend a birthday party that day for a friend's child.

Ana Orozco said a woman who lived near the crash scene rushed to help the two children. The mother was transported to Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital, where she died around 2 p.m.

"I think they're taking it the hardest," Ana Orozco said of her sister's two youngest boys. "They've been staying with us and yesterday they kept asking to go home to mom. The don't know what's going on."

The crash remains under investigation by the Grand Rapids Police Department. Police said the Grand Rapids woman, also 28, who was driving the Escalade is cooperating with investigators.

Nancy Orozco spent most of her life in Grand Rapids, where she lived with her husband, Oscar Reyes, and four children. She graduated from Union High School in 2008 and later attended Grand Rapids Community College.

"We appreciate everybody's support and everyone who has shown up to support us," said Ana Orozco. "The last two days we've had a tremendous amount of people show up to our parents' house and share stories and let us know they're here for us."

A three-hour visitation is scheduled for 5 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 15, at Matthysse Kuiper DeGraaf Funeral Home, 4031 Clyde Park Ave. in Wyoming. Orozco's funeral will be held Thursday at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church, 101 Hall St. in Grand Rapids.

The family set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for Orozco's funeral.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - On Wednesday, Aug. 15, Grand Rapids schools is inviting the community to attend a street party and tour its new Public Museum High School.

The event kicks off at 11 a.m. with a ribbon cutting ceremony at the historic museum, located at 54 Jefferson Ave., that has been renovated to house high schoolers in the program.

Two years ago, XQ: The Super School program made a fall stop in Grand Rapids to celebrate the school being one of 10 nationwide to win $10 million, as part of a contest to rethink and reimagine high school.

Middle schoolers in the museum program are housed in the Grand Rapids Public Museum, located at 272 Pearl St. The program launched in 2015 and has added a grade of 60-students each year.

Alexandra Berry, director of Learning Research and Practice for XQ: The Super School Project, will speak at the event. XQ CEO Russlyn Ali attended the October 2016 celebration in Grand Rapids.

There will also be incoming museum high students, city officials, business leaders and university presidents making remarks along with Superintendent Teresa Weatheall Neal about the unique school.

The museum school engages in progressive teaching which utilizes design thinking techniques, an immersive environment, and real-life experiences. The idea is to inspire passionate curiosity, nurture creative problem solving, cultivate critical thinking, and instigate innovation, according to the district.

Contest funds were used for building renovations and technology. The Public Museum High School and all GRPS schools begin the 2018-19 school year on Monday, Aug. 20.

Besides the Public Museum, GRPS had multiple partners in the initiative, including the City of Grand Rapids, Grand Valley State University, Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (KCAD), and Downtown Grand Rapids Inc.

Following the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony, attendees will tour the school and celebrate the Super School's grand opening at a street party with a local DJ and local food trucks, including Tamales Mary, What the Truck, and Daddy Pete's BBQ.

Washington Street SE will be closed between Lafayette Avenue and State Street between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Wednesday.

The other $10 million winners are: New Harmony High School in New Harmony, LA; Furr High School in Houston, TX; Rise High School in Los Angeles, CA; Powerhouse Studios in Somerville, MA; Brooklyn Lab High School in NY; Design Lab High School in Wilmington, DE; Vista Challenge High School in Vista, CA; Washington Leadership Academy in Washington, D.C., and Summit Elevate in Oakland, CA;
TRAVERSE CITY, MI -- Top-level federal officials will gather in northern Michigan next week to testify how prepared they are for a Line 5 oil spill in the Straits of Mackinac.

The panel of federal emergency-responders and regulators will join area stakeholders for a hearing before the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on Aug. 20, U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Michigan, announced Monday.

The venue for the talks, which are scheduled for 10 a.m., is the Milliken Auditorium on Northwestern Michigan Community College's campus, 1410 College Drive, in Traverse City.

"The Great Lakes are not only important to Michigan -- they are an economic driver for our entire country, and this hearing will examine how we can ensure they are protected from an oil spill or pipeline leak," Peters said.

"An oil spill in the Straits of Mackinac would be an economic and environmental catastrophe that could disrupt the flow of commerce on the Great Lakes, damage our significant fishing and tourism industries, and threaten the drinking water supply for millions."

The discussion concerning the threat of a spill increased earlier this year, after a tug and barge on April 1 dragged its anchor across the Straits floor, denting the Line 5 oil and gas pipeline and rupturing transmission cables.

The anchor strike dented the twin lines in three places but, according to Enbridge Energy officials, line integrity wasn't compromised.

The anchor strike renewed calls to shut down the controversial Line 5. Enbridge Energy, the Canadian company which owns Line 5, floated the idea of piling rocks onto the 65-year-old pipeline to protect it from another anchor blow.

The focus of the Aug. 20 hearing is enhancing "oil spill prevention efforts, preparedness and response capability in the event of an oil pipeline break in the Straits of Mackinac," according to Peters' staff.

"Line 5, the 65-year-old pipeline crossing the Straits of Mackinac, has been the subject of multiple safety concerns, including damage from anchor strikes," a press release from Peters' office stated.

The first hearing panel is tentatively comprised of:

Howard Elliott, administrator of the Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the federal agency which oversees pipeline safety;

Rear Adm. Joanna Nunan, commander of the U.S. Coast Guard's Ninth District, which oversees oil spill responses in the Great Lakes area.

Scott Lundgren, emergency response division chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Response and Restoration.

The second panel will have Enbridge representatives, environmental advocates, petroleum pipeline experts, business leaders and Larry Bell, owner and founder of Bell's Brewery.

In a worst-case scenario Straits rupture, Line 5 would gush 2,436,000 gallons of oil, slick 437 miles of Great Lakes shoreline and cost $1.86 billion in damages, according to a study spearheaded by Michigan Technological University.

The study, released in July, is the last of five analyses requested by Gov. Rick Snyder as he deliberates decommissioning and possible alternatives for the twin oil and gas pipelines under the Straits of Mackinac.

Snyder has set a deadline of Sept. 30 to formalize an agreement with Enbridge on the future of Line 5.
GARFIELD TOWNSHIP, MI - A Michigan man faces animal cruelty charges after he was witnessed punching a dog several times near Paul Place in Grand Traverse County's Garfield Township.

Deputies with the Grand Traverse Sheriff's Office arrested the 19-year-old subject from Buelah on Saturday, Aug. 11 on charges of animal cruelty and possession of marijuana.

The arrest occurred after an investigation that took place after a witness reported observing the subject punch a Husky dog approximately 6 times.

The Husky and a pit bull were surrendered to Grand Traverse County Animal Control who assisted in the investigation.
A group of Michigan lawmakers -- nine Democrats and one Republican -- are asking Gov. Rick Snyder to prevent a state-imposed shutdown of unlicensed medical marijuana facilities in September.

State regulators have given temporarily operating businesses until Sept. 15 to obtain a state license. On Sept. 16, state officials plan to send out cease and desist letters to those who aren't in compliance, said Bureau of Medical Marihuana Regulation Director Andrew Brisbo.

After Sept. 15, any medical marijuana product sold in the state must be grown, processed, transported, tested and sold by a business that has a new license.

More than 637 businesses have applied for licenses, and 16 have been granted so far. There is one more licensing board meeting before the state deadline.

Brisbo said the new system would be operational by the licensing deadline. But people in the industry aren't confident that will be the case -- potentially leaving medical marijuana patients with few sources to turn to.

A group of Michigan legislators sent a letter to Snyder and Shelly Edgerton, the director of Licensing and Regulator Affairs, asking them to extend the Sept. 15 deadline. The letter was signed by State Sen. David Knezek, D-Dearborn Heights, and state representatives Jewell Jones, D-Inkster; Frank Liberati, D-Allen Park; Robert Wittenberg, D-Oak Park; Patrick Green, D-Warren; Yousef Rabhi, D-Ann Arbor; Adam Zemke, D-Pittsfield Township; Tom Cochran, D-Mason; David LaGrand, D-Grand Rapids; and Martin Howrylak, R-Troy.

"It is not acceptable to allow a bureaucratic delay to bankrupt law-abiding small businesses, to destroy jobs, and to deny epileptic children and disabled veterans access to the medicines they need," the letter from the state legislators said.

The state previously was going to require businesses to obtain a license by June 15, but a new set of emergency rules issued in May changed the deadline to Sept. 15. Brisbo said the state has no intention of issuing new emergency rules to change the deadline again.

"The intention of the temporary operation rule was to provide temporary patient access. Now that we have licenses in the system, albeit a small number of licenses -- I'll grant you that -- there is still access," Brisbo said. "At this point, based on our calculations, two-thirds of the patients in Michigan live in a county that's within 30 miles of a licensed provisioning center."

Brisbo said allowing businesses to temporarily operate under emergency rules with no oversight while the state launches a new regulated, licensed program would complicate matters for the police.

The Medical Marihuana Licensing Board cancelled one of its meetings this summer, and issued its first set of licenses in mid-July. Applications are lengthy and background checks are detailed, which has lead to many back-and-forth conversations between state regulators and applicants.

"We are very concerned that the current pace of application processing will not be fast enough to meet the September 15th deadline for all applicants who applied prior to February 15th," the letter reads.

-- Amy Biolchini is the marijuana beat reporter for MLive. Contact her with questions, tips or comments at abiolch1@mlive.com.

Read more from MLive about medical marijuana.
Michigan public school enrollment is continuing to inch down, the result of a declining birth rate.

The Michigan Department of Education counted 1,436,447 full-time-equivalent public school students in fall 2017, according to its final, audited numbers.

That's a drop of 6 percent since fall 2009. The fall 2017 count was down about 6,500 compared to the previous year.

Full-time-equivalent enrollment-- which adjusts the numbers to account for part-time students -- is a critical number for Michigan school districts and charter schools, which are funded based on its FTE count.

The numbers show about 10 percent of Michigan public-school students attended a charter school in fall 2017.

Below is a database that shows the audited fall 2017 FTE enrollment for every Michigan school district and charter school, and compares that fall 2009. If you click on "details," you can also see FTE enrollment for every year in between.

Fall 2017 FTE enrollment by Michigan school district

You can search by the name of the school district or charter school. Or you could click on an intermediate school district and see a ranking of all its districts and chanters by 2017 enrollment.

You can also rank by another category by clicking on the category label.
BROOKLYN, MI - Through 99 NASCAR Cup Series races at Michigan International Speedway, the state of Michigan is still without a winner to claim.

Once again, Rochester Hills driver Brad Keselowski came one spot short of being the first Michigan-born driver to win a Cup race at MIS. He finished second, 3.2 seconds behind winner Kevin Harvick.

Byron native Erik Jones finished 13th after having an eventful day of his own.

Keselowski fought back to the front after going off strategy from the leaders due to a loose wheel. It looked as if he'd finish third, until Austin Dillon slowed for a tire losing air in the last couple laps.

"It's just going to make me appreciate when we do win here," Keselowski said. "I know it's coming. I've got to believe, if we keep knocking on the door, eventually it's going to fall in. I don't know any better way to knock on the door than finishing second."

The driver of the No. 2 Team Penske Ford wasn't in the top five most of the day, and admitted after the race Harvick was in a league of his own.

"Based on what I saw at the end, the No. 4 car was legitimately faster," Keselowski said. "We would have needed a mistake from him, either way."

In 19 MIS starts, Keselowski has two second-place finishes, three third-place finishes and a pole. He does have two MIS wins in seven Xfinity Series starts.

Every time he returns to his home state, the 2012 Cup Series champion tells media winning at MIS would be as big to him as winning the Daytona 500. He's without a win so far in 2018, but is a near lock to make the playoffs on points.

"I know in my heart that if we keep running like this, it will happen," Keselowski said. "We have done everything we can do here, but win."

Jones causes pair of cautions

It started out as a promising weekend for Jones.

He was quickest in the weekend's second practice session and qualified fourth. But after that, not much went right for the 22 year old.

Jones spun off Turn 4 on Lap 10 and off Turn 2 on Lap 85, complaining about the handling of the car. He didn't hit anything in either spin and recovered to finish 13th.

"Wasn't our day from the start, but we kept after it and made gains throughout the race," Jones said on Twitter. "We'll learn from it and move on to next week."

Jones won his first career Cup Series race at Daytona International Speedway in July, locking him into the playoffs.
LIBERTY TWP., MI - A crash involving four vehicles Friday afternoon on U.S. 127, north of Jefferson Road, did not result in serious injury.

One person went by Jackson Community Ambulance to Henry Ford Allegiance Health with injuries that were considered minor, Jackson County Undersheriff Chris Kuhl said.

Emergency personnel were called about 5:23 p.m. Aug. 10 to U.S. 127, which divides Liberty and Columbia townships, and a sheriff's deputy or deputies remained on scene until about 7:30 p.m.

Three vehicles and a semitrailer or commercial vehicle were affected. A report was not complete Monday morning and it was not clear how the vehicles came to be involved in the crash.

While police were investigating, southbound U.S. 127 was closed, according to the Michigan Department of Transportation.

Michigan State Police, Columbia Township police and Liberty Township firefighters assisted the sheriff's office.
Daniel Lee

KALAMAZOO, MI -- Police are looking for information on a convicted bank robber, and want to question him about two recent bank robberies.

Daniel Richard Lee, 42, has a warrant for his arrest for being a parole absconder., according to the Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Office. He's on parole for a 2009 bank robbery in Kalamazoo.

Lee is a white male who stands 6 feet tall and weighs 190 pounds. He has reddish blond hair and blue eyes.

Lee is a person of interest in two recent bank robberies -- one on July 27 at Comerica Bank on East Columbia Avenue in Battle Creek, and one on July 31 at the Chemical Bank on West Main Street in Oshtemo Township.

A reward of $5,000 is being offered for information that leads to Lee's arrest on the parole absconding warrant, according to the sheriff's office.

Anyone who may have information about Lee may call the Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Office or Silent Observer.
MUSKEGON, MI - Miss Michigan 2018 Emily Sioma has changed her mindset since her days as Miss Stateline 2016.

The difference is reflected in her 2016 and 2018 headshots.

When she competed as Miss Stateline, it was her second time on the Miss Michigan pageant stage. She had competed in 2015 as Miss Jackson Crossroads. In 2017, she took the year off.

Miss Michigan Emily Sioma poses for pageant headshots in 2016 (left) and 2018 (right). (Courtesy of Miss Michigan Organization)

Her approach to the contest changed during the gap year. The difference can be seen by comparing her 2016 headshot - which she also used for this year's Miss Michigan competition - to the recently minted headshot that will be the first thing Miss America judges see of her.

The new photo depicts a woman who's confident and comfortable in her own skin, unapologetic for who she is.

The old one shows a younger Sioma who may have been trying to fit what she saw as the Miss America mold, without even realizing it. It was taken by Matt Boyd, the official photographer for Miss America.

"I don't think I was trying to fit into a mold, or I don't think I was conscious of the fact that I was trying to do that," Sioma said during a recent visit to the MLive/Muskegon Chronicle office. "That was the year that I thought, 'I'm going to be Miss Michigan, I'm going to win because I can do this, this and this, and that's what you have to do to be Miss Michigan.'"

She wanted a photo that would make her look like Miss America. She continues to believe that Boyd takes beautiful photos.

"So many women who are in the program flock to him because he has a really great sense of style and he knows how to take a really good photo," Sioma said.

Sioma, now 24, made the top 10 in 2016 when she debuted her Matt Boyd headshot. The year before, she was second runner-up.

Headshots are not factored into the pageant scoring system.

After a year off, she came back in 2018 with a completely different approach.

"It's not about the dress, it's not about the crown, it's not about all of the fancy things," Sioma said. "It's about who I am and what I have to offer the communities and what kind of resource I can be for people and I don't think that has to be shown in a way that's heavily made up."

The new headshot by Lindsay King Portraits of Monroe is natural, played down and aimed at showing who Sioma is, "which is a lot of my intention going into this year," she said.

"That's the first thing the judges are going to see of me, it's the thing that's going to be in the program book that everyone is going to associate with who I am," Sioma said. "That made me feel really confident that this is the direction I need to go for my headshot."

In the photo, Sioma decided to wear minimal makeup, a beige spaghetti strap top and several of her every-day silver and turquoise rings. Her hair style looks natural, her expression is neutral. The most made-up part of the photo is her long, flesh-colored nails.

For the 2016 headshot Sioma chose to wear heavy makeup, including contouring, eye makeup and pink lips. Her perfectly curled auburn hair matches a red sweater.

"But instead with these headshots, I didn't think to myself, 'I need to make my headshot look like Miss America,'" Sioma said. "My goal is to make Miss America look like my headshot, to make people understand that we're more accessible. We're your next-door neighbor. We're the girl you went to high school with. We are you and you don't have make yourself look like Miss America. You have to make Miss America look like you."

Sioma will compete for the Miss America crown during September in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

"It's not about going in and saying, 'Because I do this, I'm going to be Miss America,'" she said. "It's hopefully, 'I'm going to do this and because of that, I'm going to be Miss America.'"
MUSKEGON COUNTY, MI - On the same day voters were headed to the polls, a state House candidate and township supervisor was in jail on an asbestos pollution charge.

Alan Jager, supervisor of Holton Township in rural Muskegon County, is being criminally charged for failing to contain asbestos when his company was demolishing a former manufacturing facility in Muskegon.

Jager was booked into and bonded out of jail on Aug. 7, primary election day. Jager lost his bid for the Republican nomination for the 91st state House seat.

Jager is the owner of Press's LLC, which was contracted to demolish the former Anaconda Wire and Cable building at the end of West Western Avenue near Muskegon Lake.

In 2016, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality accused him of failing to take necessary precautions - in fact even failing to inspect - for the handling of asbestos in the old factory.

He ended up agreeing to a $10,000 fine in a March 2017 consent agreement with the DEQ, documents show.

But that wasn't the end of Jager's troubles.

On July 10, a complaint charging Jager with felony air pollution was issued by the Muskegon County Prosecutor's Office. Jager was booked into the Muskegon County Jail on primary election day, Aug. 7, and shortly after posted a $10,000 cash or surety bond.

It's alleged that Jager "negligently disbursed asbestos," said Matt Roberts, chief trial attorney for the Muskegon County Prosecutor's Office. The felony charge under Michigan's Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act is punishable by up to 2 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine.

The primary concern of both the prosecutor's office and the DEQ was the safety of workers on site, Roberts said.

Jager did not return a call seeking comment.

The felony initially was charged in November 2016, but the prosecutor's office decided to wait until the administrative complaint was resolved at the state level before launching the criminal case, Roberts said.

Jager, a former Muskegon County commissioner, was elected Holton Township's supervisor in Nov. 8, 2016. A day after the election, the DEQ issued a violation notice against Jager for his work at the Anaconda property owned by Kirksey Investment Corp.

The notice listed nine asbestos-related air quality violations. They involved the failure to:

Remove asbestos materials prior to demolition.

Thoroughly inspect the project for asbestos-containing materials.

Notify proper authorities of the presence of asbestos.

Wet the asbestos material during and after demolition.

Contain the asbestos in a leak tight container.

Have a contractor supervisor on site.

Deposit the asbestos material as soon as practical.

"The subject property had been partially demolished without a scheduled demolition notification submitted, an asbestos survey was not conducted, and there was no abatement of regulated asbestos-containing material (RACM) that was found in the facility," the violation notices state. "The demolition contractor removed pipes that had asbestos on them, and was not qualified to do so."

Jager founded Press's LLC in 1995.

Asbestos was commonly used in construction because of its insulating and fire protection properties. Ceiling and floor tiles, pipe wraps and spray insulation were common products that used asbestos, which was banned in Michigan in 1974.

Once disturbed, needle-like asbestos fibers can be easily inhaled, penetrating lung and surrounding tissue, according to the Michigan Licensing and Regulation Affairs division. This can lead to fatal conditions including asbestosis, a scarring and hardening of lung tissue; lung cancer; and mesothelioma, a scarring and malignant tumor of the lung lining, according to LARA. Asbestos exposure also has been blamed for an increase in gastrointestinal cancer.

The Anaconda building, which was heavily damaged by fire in 1999, had been on the city of Muskegon's blighted buildings list for years. The city commission ordered its demolition in August 2016.

The Anaconda Wire and Cable Co. was formed in 1919 to produce copper wire. It moved to the site on West Western in the early 1920s and employment peaked at around 400 through the 1960s. But demand for copper declined and the factory closed in 1981.
MUSKEGON HEIGHTS, MI - Unruly Brewing Co. plans to move production out of a downtown Muskegon basement and into a facility in Muskegon Heights.

The brewery purchased a 17,000-square-foot building at 2221 Lemuel St. in Muskegon Heights a few months ago, said Unruly co-owner and brewmaster Eric Hoffman on Monday, Aug. 13.

The Muskegon Heights City Council will consider the company's request for a microbrewer's license tonight, Aug. 13. If approved by the city, the license application will go to the Michigan Liquor Control Commission for approval.

Unruly has been brewing in the basement below its taproom at 360 W. Western Ave. since 2013.

The change will increase production efficiency and volume, Hoffman said.

Right now, the brewery is too busy supplying its taproom to do much outside sales, he said. This change will allow statewide distributing, starting with kegs and eventually moving into cans.

The only cans currently offered by Unruly are canned-to-order at the bar.

Unruly was the first brewery in downtown Muskegon since 1957. It was quickly followed by Pigeon Hill Brewing Co., which is also working on a production expansion.

Unruly's choice to expand in Muskegon Heights fits into the city's economic development stategy, said Jake Eckholm, city manager. The city is working to diversify the types of businesses in town and fill its small- and medium-sized industrial buildings.

This one has been empty for about three years, he said.

The project "checks all the boxes," Eckholm said.
There is an excellent chance that western Washington is going to be hit by a major lowland snow event. And yes, the mountains will be b...
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US-based private equity firm Blackstone is in final talks with PE fund Xander for sale of its infotech parks in Pune for around Rs 2,000 crore, Business Standard reports.

Blackstones BlueRidge special economic zone (SEZ) and another SEZ at Hinjewadi in Pune are up for sale. Both these projects are not part of its joint venture (JV) projects. In India, it has JVs with Bengaluru-based Embassy Group, Pune-based Panchshil Group, and Mumbais K Raheja Corporation.

Singapore-based CapitaLand was frontrunner to buy the parks but exited the proposed deal, the report said.

Blackstone has hired Morgan Stanley to sell the properties, the report added. Moneycontrol could not independently verify this news.

Media reports suggest Blackstone is placing all its assets under a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), which is a JV between Blackstone and Embassy Group. The IT parks in Pune are unlikely to become part of the REIT, sources told the newspaper.

Singapore-based Xander owns 6 million sq ft of office assets in India. It also owns malls in India through a company called Virtuous Retail South Asia.

The proposed deal between Blackstone and Xander will not be the first major real estate pact in India this year. In March, Indiabulls Real Estate sold 50 percent stake in two commercial properties in Mumbai to Blackstone for Rs 4,750 crore. The two properties are Indiabulls Finance Centre and One Indiabulls Centre. It recently sold its office project in Chennai to Blackstone for Rs 850 crore.

A JV between Shapoorji Pallonji and Allianz Group is reportedly set to acquire the Waverock property owned by Singaporean fund GIC and Tishman Speyer in Hyderabad.
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At the age of 19 when his friends were busy with college, Anant Bajaj had already started working unofficially at his family-owned Bajaj Electricals. In 1999, he passed out of HR College of Commerce & Economics where he completed his B.Com degree and was closely involved in setting up a green field project.

Nineteen years later, he was appointed as the companys managing director in June. He would have steered the company to be the first IoT-led Indian electrical goods firm, if fate did not have other plans.

Bajaj died of a cardiac arrest at the age of 41 on August 10, merely two months after he was promoted to the top spot at Bajaj Electricals. Bajaj, who was the joint managing director of the company since February 2012, was a big believer in technology. Be it Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence or big data, he wanted his company to be a pioneer in consumer innovation.

This wasnt a planned career journey for Bajaj, who was merely trying his hand at a few projects at the company. Like a typical teenager, Bajaj was inclined to try his hand at multiple sectors including advertising, consumer durables and as a radio jockey.

At an earlier interview with a television channel, Bajaj had said that he was in fact selected for a radio jockey's job, but decided not to join because of the time constraints.

"This (the job at Bajaj Electricals) just worked out and I hadnt really planned it out. The fact is that in family businesses, from the day you are born, you have joined the business," he had said.

Early career

Bajaj officially joined the company in 1999 as a project co-ordinator and was responsible for setting up a large manufacturing plant for Bajaj Electricals near Pune.

Simultaneously, he completed his post graduate diploma in family business from the SP Jain Institute of Management Studies. In 2005, he was given additional responsibilities as general manager for special assignments. A year later, he found a place on the board of Bajaj Electricals.

During this period, his was focused on engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) business as well as exports.

Promotion to senior management

In February 2012, Bajaj was elevated as joint managing director. This was around the same time when he began pursuing an executive programme on Owners and Presidents Management Programme at the Harvard Business School.

A firm believer of the "India-first" idea, colleagues at Bajaj Electricals said that he would insist that all new innovations would first be sold in the domestic market and then exported.

At a time when competitors were building brick-and-mortar offices, Bajaj was among the first to explore the e-commerce route for consumer appliances. Similarly, his idea was to incentivise distributors who were the brand ambassadors for the company. RREP is a programme wherein sales staff is evaluated on the number of outlets and the number of stock units covered. RREP led to an increase in growth in both topline and bottom-line for consumer products segment.

Project evolve

Being one of the oldest companies in the electrical goods space, Bajaj Electricals was often perceived as a traditional and conservative company. Anant Bajaj wanted to change that perception.

With this idea in mind, Project Evolve was launched as early as 2014 and refined in June 2017. The idea here was simple. Play on IoT to bring necessary solutions for both customers and businesses.

The plan, according to Bajaj was to have digital solutions and move closer to what customers actually wanted. To have a dedicated vertical for this, an IoT centre has been set up.

The company is looking to have an array of IoT-led appliances for customers in the near future. While it was Anant Bajaj's brainchild, the next level of leadership will have the responsibility of making customer-friendly products at an affordable price.

Just two months ago, Bajaj was promoted as managing director, 19 years after he took over. While it was widely believed that he would take over the reins from Shekhar Bajaj (the chairman) and build a youthful brand, a cardiac arrest led to his death at 41 years of age.

Who takes over?

For Bajaj Electricals, the transition to a new leadership would be a challenge. Company insiders said that Bajaj had set up a strong base for the company and a new leader will have large shoes to fill to keep the growth momentum going.

The company has not yet appointed any interim MD and will begin the search for the top post in the next few weeks. Considering the company's history, sources said that an insider would be best fit for the job.
Jet Airways| RS 4,244 crore loss (Image: Reuters)

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In its attempt to clean up its books, Jet Airways has initiated a formal stake-sale process to raise nearly $400 million from private equity (PE) firms. The airline has fallen on bad times, with mounting bad debt forcing the company to defer its quarterly earnings announcement. According to a report in The Economic Times, TPG, Blackstone, and Indigo Capital Partners have been sounded out over a potential stake sale.

Jet's founding chairman Naresh Goyal has reportedly roped in a global investment bank to oversee the fundraising. Besides raising capital from investors, the cash-strapped airline is also trying to leverage its frequent-flyer programme, co-owned by partner Etihad Airways. The joint-venture is valued at $1.1 billion (Rs 7,601 crore).

The aviation industry has seen a steep increase in input costs, with global crude prices shooting up. This has been compounded by a weaker rupee, pushing up dollar-denominated expenses on distribution, maintenance, salary, and parking fees.

Jet Airways has also approached counterparts like Delta Airlines for funds. Etihad, which acquired a 24 percent stake in 2012, is allegedly disinclined to pump in more money into the airline. The UAE-based airline took on a part of the companys debt burden at the time of investment, and is now cautious about further funding.

Jets management is also mulling the issue of new shares to inject capital. The proposal involves raising primary equity capital, which may not spell good news for existing shareholders as their stakes will see a significant dilution. The market capitalization of Jet Airways was Rs 3,139.83 crore ($450 million) at close of trade on Friday.

The $1.1 billion valuation of Jets frequent flier programme ranked its Jet Privilege operation at 31, ahead of Etihad in 38th position. The rankings were published by management consultancy firm On Point. In 2014, Etihad bought 50.1 percent stake in Jet Privilege, then valued at $300 million.

Revenue grew 25 percent in the past financial year. Memberships have risen from 2.8 million to 8.5 million. Jets frequent flier programme remains profitable.

US-based distressed investing firm Cerberus Capital Management has also been approached. The American firm vied with Tata Group for buying out Jaguar Land Rover almost a decade ago. Cerberus recently entered the Indian market after acquiring majority stake in Abraajs PE business.

Among the institutional investors touted to hold an interest in Jet, TPG and Blackstone are no strangers to the aviation industry, having global investments in the sector. Indigo Partners is a PE firm specializing in budget airlines, having a controlling stake in American Frontier Airlines, Mexican budget airline Volaris, European budget carrier Wizz Air, and Chilean aviation start-up JetSmart.

However, a deal needs to be ironed out quickly as Jets funding requirement of $500 million (Rs 3,400) is immediate. Profitability remains a concern in attracting interest. Analysts estimate that on an average, Jet sells passengers tickets and cargo space worth Rs 66 crore every day, but loses Rs 10 crore. Its aggregate debt at the end March 2018 stood at Rs 8,150 crore.

The airlines total debt amounts to Rs 6,000 crore, including lease rentals, principal, interest, and taxes. It also has the unflattering distinction of being the airline with the highest negative net worth among listed carriers.

Jets high cost of operation continues to impair progress at paring debt. The airlines employee costs remain the highest in the industry. The recent downgrade by ratings agency ICRA could impede the airlines attempt at arranging liquidity. Jet Airways celebrated its silver jubilee last year.

The companys shares tanked earlier this month as news broke out that the management had given employees an ultimatum to take pay cuts if the airline were to remain operational after 60 days. Shares plunged to a year-long low. Jet denied setting such a deadline.

After the airline came out with a late-night statement that it would defer announcing its quarterly results, shares fell to a three-year low, closing 8.39 percent down at Rs 276.4 on the BSE on Friday. The audit committee was yet to submit the companys financials to the board.

The airline also played down State Bank of India (SBI) chairman Rajnish Kumars statement that Jet was on its watch list for a potential default. Adverse market circumstances mean that further equity infusion will be important for Jet to secure funding in the short-term, and also bolster its balance sheet to placate shareholders.

Decision-making at the countrys second-largest airline has also come under the scanner. The airline expanded capacity without witnessing a corresponding increase in profitability or cash flows. It has also started taking deliveries of Boeings 737 Max aircraft, adding to the pressure on liquidity. Jet has placed an order for 225 aircraft of Boeings fuel efficient 737 Max aircraft.
HOW MANY ARE THERE? | Bitcoins supply is limited to 21 million - a number that is expected to be reached around the year 2140. So far, around 16.7 million bitcoins have been released into the system, with 12.5 new ones released roughly every 10 minutes via a process called mining, in which a global network of computers competes to solve complex algorithms in reward for the new bitcoins.

Owing to the governments efforts to pass a law banning the import of bitcoin mining rigs into Vietnam, since early July, Vietnamese businesses and individuals have stopped importing bitcoin mining equipment into the country. The Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) confirmed the same with Bitcoin.com.

Earlier businesses and individuals imported a large number of crypto mining rigs into the country. The customs department of HCMC cleared more than 7,000 bitcoin and litecoin miners last year.

Around 190 bitcoin miners and 350 litecoin miners were imported by the Customs Department of Hanoi. As reported by the HCMC Customs Department 3,664 crypto miners were imported by the businesses and individuals from the beginning of this year to August 6, most of which were Antminers from China.

The few other government agencies and the countrys central bank, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) extended support towards the move.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, in April this year, had signed a directive for stronger measures for cryptocurrencies. "Under the directive, credit institutions in Vietnam are not allowed to carry out cryptocurrency-related transactions and must swiftly report any suspicious activities," authorities said while imposing the ban on import of bitcoin mining rigs.
The finance ministry today said that safeguard duty will not be insisted upon on import of solar cells for the "time being" in deference to interim directions passed by the High Court of Orissa.

Last month, India had imposed safeguard duty on solar cells imports from China and Malaysia for two years to protect domestic players from steep rise in inbound shipments. The duty was imposed following recommendations by the Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) under the commerce ministry.

"...in compliance to the interim directions issued by Hon'ble High Court of Orissa..., it has been decided not to insist on payment of safeguard duty, for the time being," the finance ministry said in a circular.

It further said that till further direction from the revenue department, solar cells whether or not assembled in modules or panels "would, in respect of safeguard duty, be assessed provisionally" on furnishing of simple letter of undertaking/bond by the concerned person.

Abhishek Jain, Tax Partner with EY India said that while the circular would provide interim relief from payment of safeguard duty to the solar cell importers.

Further, given that it is only an interim relief, whether the solar players should factor the safeguard duty as a cost or not would still be an important decision point, he added.

India is targeting to 100 gigawatt (GW) solar capacity by 2022.

Solar cells, electrical devices that convert sunlight directly into electricity, are imported primarily from China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan.

Imports of the cells from these countries account for more than 90 per cent of the total inbound shipments in the country.
Q. Which billionaire has pledged to donate two million protective masks for distribution across Europe, with a first consignment arriving in Belgium? He has also said he will donate 500,000 coronavirus testing kits and one million masks to the United States, while urging international cooperation to fight the health crisis.

Godrej Group's Smita Crishna, HCL's Roshni Nadar and Bennett Coleman's Indu Jain are among the top 10 wealthiest women in India, a report says.

According to the Kotak Wealth and Hurun report, the threshold of networth for the top 10 was Rs 8,000 crore.

Crishna, a third generation heir of Godrej empire, leads the list with an estimated wealth of Rs 37,570 crore.

On the board of Godrej Industries, she owns 1/5th of the Godrej Group alongside her brothers and in 2014, she purchased the bungalow belonging to the late atomic physicist, Dr Homi Bhabha, for Rs 371 crore.

She is followed by HCL chief executive officer and executive director Nadar, also the daughter of the company's founder Shiv Nadar, with the report estimating her wealth to be Rs 30,200 crore.

Times Group chairperson Jain is the third woman on the list with her wealth estimated to be Rs 26,240 crore.

She is the chairperson of Bennett Coleman & Co, one of the largest media groups in the country which owns brands including The Times of India, The Economic Times and Femina, among others. Besides, she also heads its charitable arm, the Times Foundation, as well as the literary not-for-profit institution, Bharatiya Jnanpith.

Biocon founder and managing director Kiran Mazumdar shaw with an estimated wealth of Rs 24,790 crore is fourth on the list. She is also on the board of Infosys.

Kiran Nadar, wife of Shiv Nadar, is a trustee of the Shiv Nadar Foundation and an art collector and she is ranked fifth, with an estimated wealth of Rs 20,120 crore.

She is followed by Leena Gandhi Tewari with Rs 10,730 crore, Sangita Jindal with Rs 10,450 crore and Jayshree Ullal with Rs 9,490 crore.

Anu Aga and Shradha Agarwal were ranked ninth and tenth with estimated wealth of Rs 8,550 crore and Rs 8,200 crore, respectively.

The report that lists the 100 richest women in India, estimated their average wealth to be about Rs 4,000 crore and the threshold for the ranking above Rs 1,000 crore.

"The women in the list have increased from 4 per cent in 2012 to 9 per cent in 2017. With India's thriving consumer spending and a maturing tech ecosystem, we expect more women to lead the entrepreneurship story in India," said Anas Rahman Junaid, MD and chief researcher, Hurun Report India.

Sectorwise, pharmaceuticals leads with 22 women, followed by software and services with 12 and food and beverages with eight women.

Infosys and Avenue Supermarts produced the highest number of women on the list with five each.

"Although the pharmaceutical sector has cumulatively contributed the most number of entrants in the list, at a company level, Infosys and the listing of Avenue Supermarts (Retail) has contributed to the most number of entrants in Kotak Wealth Hurun - Leading Wealthy Women 2018," it said.

With 25 women each, Mumbai and New Delhi are the leading cities for India's super-rich women, followed by Bengaluru with 14.

With 27 and 25 entrants respectively, Maharashtra and Delhi are the top two states where the wealthy women reside, while seven live overseas, it noted.
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The government is considering the listing of state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) on an overseas exchange, sources told CNBC-TV18.

The company could be listed in Singapore or the London Stock Exchange. This move will grant ONGC a better access to funds and provide it with a global platform.

The government will position ONGC as Indias largest oil and gas exploration and production company. It may also look at foreign listing as an option for more such big public sector units (PSUs), sources added.

ONGC already holds a stake in 41 oil and gas projects across the world via ONGCs overseas investment arm ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL). The government was keen on listing OVL as well in 2015, to raise funds for foreign acquisitions, but the move was put on hold then, as the company was looking to increase its assets. There was also a slump in global crude prices.

ONGC did not respond to queries by CNBC-TV18.
Aditya Puri, Managing Director of India's HDFC Bank, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Mumbai, India, December 4, 2015. To match interview HDFC BANK-OUTLOOK/ REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade - RTX1X5DW

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HDFC Bank will no longer have a deputy managing director (MD) position after the exit announcement of Paresh Sukthankar last week.

Deputy MD role was created for Paresh Sukthankar valuing his contribution made to the bankFrom the Board, there will no more be a deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar was a contender (for the CEO position), unfortunately he has resigned, HDFC Banks CEO and MD Aditya Puri told investors in an early morning conference call on Monday.

A natural successor to Puri, his deputy Sukthankar surprised the market on Friday by announcing his resignation after 24 years of service with HDFC Bank. Notably, he was elevated to the deputy MD position in March 2017.

In a bid to assuage the investors, Puri said: This (resignation) has nothing to do with who will be the successor, these are his personal reasons, he has given his life for the bank, please do not demean it, he said after questions arose if Sukthankars exit was related to him not being considered for the CEO position after Puri retires in 2020.

Sukthankar had direct or supervisory responsibilities for the bank's Credit and Risk Management, Finance and Human Resources functions and for various strategic initiatives of HDFC Bank, which is country's second largest and most-valued bank.

According to Puri, There are young competent managers, who are here to stay for the next 5 years. The vision and strategy is clear for that period. We have the depth of management, and this will not affect the regular course of business. Of course, it is a loss of a great resource. The board and I will take an appropriate decision in 10-15 days.

Under its number-two man Sukthankar, with Puri at the helm, HDFC Bank went on to become the most valued lender not just domestically but also globally.

Paresh Sukthankar: The conservative and risk-averse HDFC Bank veteran

We are well capitalised. We have got processes in place. We have people in place. We have individual business managers running the business. No one individual can take decisions. The bank is not dependent on any individual including myself, Aditya Puri said in the concall where he took questions from five analysts.

One of the analysts on the call said, Puri was pretty straightforward. It is the Board and senior management who takes a call, the banks franchise is institutionalised so there wont be a big loss (with Sukthankars exit). So, Puri did give a sense of continuity.

However, the analyst added that we do not know who is number three at the bank?

Another analyst said that now banking is going to be very different with the new Basel III regulations and fintech coming into fray, so could be that they (board) might look for a younger candidate.

An institution with the size and depth of HDFC Bank is not subject to any one individual and there are enough senior people including executive director Kaizad Bharucha and chief financial officer Sashidhar Jagdishan to take over Sukthankars portfolio. It will be the same even when I leave the board, Puri said.

He also affirmed that he will be choosing the successor along with four other directors who are in the committee. Will I have an input? Yes(but) we have not even started looking (for the successor).

He further defended, People underestimate the involvement of our board If you look at our credit committee minutes, very rarely will you see a statement by me, Ill be there but whatever I want to say will be there There is very active discussion, so please do not underestimate the professionalism, the decision.

Moment of truth is when you have touched the customer, vision is long term, strategy is short term, Puri signed off in reply to one of the queries.
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Indian Oil Corporation's plans to expand its Chennai refinery are not likely to be threatened by the impending US sanctions against Iran, Chairman Sanjiv Singh said on Monday.

IOC wants to continue buying oil from Iran due to better terms and is also interested in getting into a long term deal to buy US oil, Singh said.

He said the current sharp fall in the rupee poses challenges and could push up retail fuel prices.

The rupee hit a record low of 69.86 per dollar earlier in the session.
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The Bombay High Court on August 13 adjourned the hearing on T Rowe Price's petition seeking an extension for the term of Leo Puri, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (MD & CEO) of UTI Asset Management Company (UTI AMC) until August 28.

This was after the petitioner and UTI's single largest shareholder T Rowe Price sought time from the court saying it is in talks with the government for an out-of-court settlement on the matter.

Apart from the extension of Puri's term, T Rowe had sought that the court direct the Finance Ministry and market regulator SEBI to prevent other big shareholders from creating hurdles in the planned initial public offer (IPO) of UTI AMC.

In its petition, T Rowe Price, which owns 26 percent of the UTI AMC, claimed that four public sector undertakings namely State Bank of India, Life Insurance Corporation, Punjab National Bank and Bank of Baroda were trying to stall the company's proposed IPO.

The petition, filed in the high court on August 8, sought implementation of SEBI rules to extend Puri's term for another year to see the IPO through.

According to T Rowe Price, the four PSUs, which together owns 74 percent in the UTI AMC, are not in favour of granting Puri a second term.

Senior Counsel, Fredun De Vitre, who appeared for T Rowe Price told the court that talks were on and hence T Rowe Price was seeking more time.

Puri, however, has said he does not wish to continue working with UTI AMC beyond his term.

Executives at the fund house and investors, including domestic PSUs, had said Puri has conveyed to all the stakeholders that he does not want an extension beyond his current tenure that ended on August 13, even as T Rowe Price wants him to stay on till the IPO of UTI Mutual Fund is complete.

He is also said to have defended the performance of the fund house during his five-year tenure, amid allegations among some quarters that the growth has been muted during his leadership.

"In the absence of confirming Leo Puri's appointment for a further period of 12 months, the performance of UTI shall be adversely affected and consequently, the interest of unitholders shall further deteriorate," the petition said.
London, where British Indians make up for 6 percent of the population, is the most popular entry point to the country.

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The Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL), India's largest hospitality company behind the Taj brand of hotels, today announced plans to open a new Taj Vivanta in London by 2021.

The IHCL signed a partnership agreement with the Hayre Group Limited last week for the new 108 room hotel at Heathrow Airport in London.

The new hotel will be the Tata Group's second Taj hotel in the British capital, besides the iconic St James' Court Hotel and Suites near Buckingham Palace in central London.

IHCL was the first Indian hospitality company to foray into the United Kingdom with the iconic St James' Court hotel in 1982. We are proud to partner with Hayre Group Limited in bringing the first Vivanta branded hotel to London, said Puneet Chhatwal, IHCL Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer.

He said the partnership agreement with Hayre was in line with the company's growth strategy of adding hotels in key locations globally.

The new Taj Vivanta hotel is a Greenfield project, slated to open in 2021, and will be located across from Terminals 1, 2 and 3 at Heathrow Airport.

The company said the new hotel will have around 108 spacious rooms, an all day diner, a bar and lounge, gym as well as banqueting and meeting space facilities.

Additionally, it will house the fourth outpost of the popular Indian restaurant, Bombay Brasserie, famed for its eclectic Indian cuisine.

Talwinder Hayre, Director, Hayre Group Limited, said: We look forward to bringing the legendary Indian hospitality to London Heathrow, one of the busiest airports in the world.

Hayre Group, established in 2004 in the UK, claim to be among the leading emerging real estate developers in the world. Currently, the Group has in excess of 300,000 square feet of pipeline in the UK across hospitality, residential and commercial sectors.

IHCL, South Asia's largest Indian hospitality company in terms of market capitalisation, brings together a group of Taj brands since founder Jamsetji Tata opened the Taj Mahal Palace in Bombay in 1903.
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Shares of HDFC Bank were down around 2 percent on Monday morning, following an abrupt resignation by Deputy MD Paresh Sukthankar last week.

It has touched an intraday high of Rs 2,101.85 and an intraday low of Rs 2,075.00.

Global research firm Nomura believes that the exit is a small, near-term negative and that the potential MD&CEO candidate could be an outsider now.

It also highlighted that timing of this & notice period of 3 months matches with change in guard at Axis Bank. It reiterated that the speculation in market is also pointing towards that. Should this event take place, there could a rerating on Axis Bank.

Meanwhile, Citi said that some investors could show concern as the development has come around the QIP issue. Puri had indicated in analyst meet in 2018 that external & internal candidates will be considered, the report highlighted.

Macquarie, on the other hand, said that the early resignation has come in as a surprise. At the margin this development is negative, it said, adding that the bank will manage the challenge well. It also believes that Sukthankar will be a good fit for Axis Bank.

HDFC Bank, on Friday, announced the resignation of Sukthankar in its exchange filings. The resignation will be effective after three months.

Sukthankar has been with HDFC Bank since its inception in 1994. He was promoted to Deputy MD from executive director in March 2017.

Prior to joining the bank, Sukthankar worked in Citibank for around 9 years, in various departments including corporate banking, risk management, financial control and credit administration. He has been a member of various Committees formed by Reserve Bank of India and Indian Banks' Association.

Sources told CNBC-TV18 Sukthankar resigned for personal reasons and reportedly told the senior management he wanted a change from current responsibilities. He is unlikely to join a rival like Axis Bank, they said.

The bank reportedly wanted Sukhthankar to stay on and tried to persuade him to rethink his decision. However, Sukhthankar chose to step down.

At 10:16 hrs HDFC Bank was quoting at Rs 2,086.50, down Rs 28.50, or 1.35 percent, on the BSE.
On May 24, the National Stock Exchanges (NSE) online equity tool NOW (Neat on Web) suffered a technical glitch due to which the traded quantity overshot by nearly 100 times in some cases due to a bug in the software and exceeded the risk and exposure limits of clients, reports BusinessLine.

NOW allows traders to use their own software and hardware for trading on the bourse. It is a shared computer to computer link and risk management tool for trading members, provided by NSE's subsidiary Dotex. This licensed trading software offers direct connectivity to the NSE for trade execution and data feeds through trading terminals, web-based browsers and mobile devices.

NSEs web-based tool had instead of replicating the trade orders, multiplied them, following a system re-boot.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had sought a report from the exchange and also reprimanding the providers of the software. The market regulators Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) had observed NOW and its main finding was that a software glitch had hit NOW.

The application software and operations support for NOW are provided by Thomson Reuters and the data centres are maintained by NSE Data.

Orders placed in the NOW system by our dealers were displayed as rejected, but to our shock and surprise, the end-of-the-day file received from the exchange showed 4,200 Nifty call options were executed by the NOW software against our input order of 525, said a letter from an NSE broker, who largely caters to retail clients.

Another letter said: At 11:29 am on May 24, a single order placed via NOW was executed multiple times and there was no option to stop it. After a halt, when NOW was re-started at around 2:45 pm, we tried squaring up some of our positions but the software automatically executed more trades. At 3:30 pm (end of trading day) there were still more orders pending.

Despite the tech glitch that NOW suffered, an NSE spokesperson claimed that there was no impact on NSEs trading system and that the members could connect to the exchange through the other front-end applications from the broking entities.
air-conditioners-ac-cooler

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Share price of Voltas rose 1.7 percent intraday Monday as Deutsche Bank has maintained hold on Voltas and raised target to Rs 500 from Rs 490 per share.

This is a strong outcome in a tough environment. Its projects business is strong, said Deutsche Bank.

Worst is not over for cooling business and expect margin to be decline, while cooling business valuations look high, but at discount to peers, research house further added.

CLSA has maintained sell rating on Voltas, while raised target to Rs 480 from Rs 460 per share.

This is a weak quarter as AC market has disappoint and hoping shifts to festive season. With AC business trading at high valuation, stock not ready for any negative surprises, it added.

At 14:20 hrs Voltas was quoting at Rs 627.40, up Rs 7.25, or 1.17 percent on the BSE.

Posted by Rakesh Patil
A Jet Airways passenger plane takes off from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad

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The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has sought clarification from Jet Airways asking whether the airlines management had sought extension from its audit committee or the committee did not recommend the financial result to the board.

The exchange has asked the Naresh Goyal-led airline to provide the date when the meeting, to consider the financial result, will be held.

The stock exchange further sought clarification from Jet Airways after media reports suggested on August 13 that the airline was planning to raise $400 million from stake sale to private equities (PEs).

Reports suggested that audit firm BSR & Co, an affiliate of KPMG India, was considering to resign from the account if the issue is not resolved soon.

Responding to NSEs queries, Jet said that the reports on stake sale are "purely speculative in nature" and that BSR & Co may quit as an auditor is "factually incorrect".

Financially-troubled Jet is part of the stressed account in the books of State Bank of India (SBI) and is under watch. A day after the airline deferred its June quarter results, the countrys biggest lender said that the loan account of Jet Airways is part of its total watch list and special mentioned category (1 and 2) loans of Rs 24,633 crore as of June end 2018.

The second largest domestic airline by market share also said it has not at any time defaulted on payment obligations with lenders who have issued certificates to this extent on a regular basis.

Jet Airways, which is grappling with financial woes, had last week deferred announcement of its financial results for the June quarter and is yet to announce a date.

The carrier seems to be in trouble five years after co-boarding Etihad Airways with a 24 percent stake amidst a raging financial crisis then.

The airline and some credit rating agencies have come under regulatory scanner for alleged lapses in timely disclosure of default risk of loans worth Rs 11,000 crore taken from state-owned as well as private sector banks.

(With PTI inputs)
PVR | GEM Equity has acquired 3.5 lakh equity shares in company at Rs 1,315.11 per share on the NSE.

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Nineteen years after it redefined the concept of cinema-viewing in the city, SPI Cinemas, whose 71.69 percent stake was acquired by PVR LTD, today said the deal would enable the brands' combined strength to transform movie-going experience. PVR, the country's largest multiplex chain, had yesterday acquired the stake for about Rs 633 crore in an all cash deal.

SPI cinemas are owners of Sathyam Cinemas, one of the largest screen exhibitors in South India. "While it (deal) is only natural for you to wonder what this means for brand SPI, we want to let you know that this decision is not solely a business decision but one that is based on the larger picture," SPI Cinemas Chief Executive Officer Kiran Reddy said.

"Our intent is to combine best practices and learnings from two successful brands and use our combined strength to really, truly transform your movie going experience, at scale," he said in a tweet. The acquisition involves buying of SPI's 61.65 per cent from SS Theatres LLP and 10.04 per cent equity from S V Swaroop Reddy.

"The SPI Culture will continue to be what it has always been -- passionate, pioneering and inclusive," he said. "The core SPI team led by Swaroop (Founder) and I, will continue to nurture and shape your experiences by preserving everything you love about us -- from the people, to the food, to our commitment to excellence, all of it will remain intact," he said, tracing the history of the multiplex.

Reddy said, despite many ups and down, the one thing that remained constant was the "unwavering support and love" received from the movie-goers. SPI, which has a presence states like Tamil Andhra Pradesh, Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka and Kerala, has total assets of Rs 319.63 crore and turnover of Rs 308.60 crore as on March 31, 2018.

SPI Cinemas operates 76 screens across 17 properties in 10 cities under several brands Sathyam, Escape, Palazzo, The Cinema, S2 Cinema. Post the transaction, PVR will have 706 screens operational across the country and the company said the acquisition would make it the number 1 operator in top three cities of South India -- Chennai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad.

PVR CMD Ajay Bijli has said the transaction is a significant step in helping PVR achieve its vision of having 1000 screens by 2020. PTI VIJ BN BN BN .
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Sanghi Industries had a very challenging Q1 FY19 as it faced multiple disruptions. The company reported flat cement volumes along with a significant jump in input costs, which resulted in a sharp decline in profitability. Quarterly performance was a major disappointment on all fronts. However, the management is optimistic on the demand outlook and expects issues to get resolved over the next couple of quarters.

The company recorded Rs 275 crore in revenue for Q1. The revenue decline was mainly on account of lower cement volumes, partially offset by a jump in ready-mix concrete (RMC) and clinker volumes on a low base. The company had a subdued Q4 as its result was impacted by a 15-day plant maintenance shutdown.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the quarter gone by stood at Rs 43 crore compared to Rs 65 crore over the same period last year. EBITDA margin contracted around 680 bps on a

Cement realisations on a blended basis dropped 7 percent year-on-year for the quarter gone by due to higher contribution of clinker and RMC. Cement prices remained stable in April and May but faced some downward pressure during of June. EBITDA per tonne dipped to Rs 638 as operating cost inched up along with a drop in realisations.

Cement despatches suffered as the implementation of e-way bill (teething troubles and increased surveillance) along with low availability of ships (due to onset of monsoon), resulted in logistical challenges for the company.

Gross margin dipped due to a jump in fly ash prices. The company sources lignite from Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation (GMDC) and availability of the same was constrained (23 percent fuel mix in Q1 versus 75-80 percent in previous quarters) due to water logging in Kutch region. The shortage of lignite was compensated by expensive coal imports, which resulted in increased input prices.

The higher fuel costs (increased by 20 percent) were slightly offset by gains from waste heat recovery plant (power costs declined 10 percent). Freight costs were higher on a per tonne basis as the diesel prices inched up. Besides, the company had a mark-to-market forex loss of Rs 3.2 crore on account of coal imports.

The company is expanding its cement capacity by 4million tonne, for which it raised Rs 800 crore in debt through term loans and Rs 400 crore through a qualified institutional placement (QIP). The first set of equipment for the expansion have been ordered and the company remains on track to double its cement capacity by 2020.

Industry majors have indicated an 8-10 percent volume growth for the cement industry. A number of large scale projects such as Mumbai airport, Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train, Bharatmala, Mumbai metro and low income housing should propel demand for cement across geographies.

Gujarat, Sanghis core operating market, is witnessing strong demand from infrastructure and housing projects. It is expected to grow at a healthy 14-15 percent rate in the current fiscal. Rajasthan and Maharashtra (mainly Mumbai) are also expected to grow by close to double-digits. Overall, demand is being driven by infrastructure projects as well as rural housing. Urban housing is still lagging and will take some more time to recover.

Despite a subdued quarterly performance, the management expects to attain volume of 3.0-3.2 million tonne (versus 2.4 MT in FY18) on the back of strong demand in its operating markets. It also expects issues with respect to raw materials and other key inputs to be resolved in the near term.

The earnings visibility looks weak for the short term as raw material availability, fuel prices and other cost pressures (due to external factors) will continue to weigh in on margin and earnings for at least 2 quarters.

We feel any weakness in the stock price from current levels (due to earnings weakness or index movements) should be capitalised for long term investments as the company is the lowest cost producer. We expect it to regain industry leading 21-22 percent EBITDA margin (versus 15-16 percent witnessed over the last two quarters).
The sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia is exploring a way to be a part of taking Tesla private, a Bloomberg report states.

Recently, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted he was considering taking the company private and had secured funding for the same. Saudis sovereign fund - Public Investment Fund - had built nearly five percent stake before Musks tweet.

Musk said the company will be taken private at $420 per share. While the entrepreneur owns 20 percent of Tesla, more than $60 billion would be needed to buy the business from public shareholders. The potential transactions staggering $82 billion price tag (including debt) means the Saudi fund wouldnt be able to help take the company private on its own.

However, Reuters reports that PIF has shown no interest so far in financing Musks proposed $72 billion deal to take the US electric car maker private.

Teslas board revealed they will be discussing the proposal to take the company private with investors this week. Directors will probably tell Musk to recuse himself, according to CNBC, and theyve told him to hire his own separate advisers

Musk is interested in having a wide pool of investors rather than few stakeholders. Sources said he is canvassing other potential investors including asset managers.

Musks tweet announcing the deal shocked investors. He is yet to back up his claim that he has financing for the transaction. The US Securities Exchange Board has questioned the authenticity of Musks tweets. At least two investors have sued Musk and Tesla alleging share-price manipulation.

Tesla had burned through $ 739.5 million in cash in the second quarter and Musk had assured that the company will post a profit in the next quarter.

Musk had discussed going private with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son last year but the duo failed to come to an agreement regarding ownership of the company. SoftBank said it wont be a part of the current group of investors that will try and take Tesla private as it has already invested in General Motors, increased competition facing the company, and due to Tesla not being able to deliver on its mass market ambition, Bloomberg reported.

Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia was founded to invest on behalf of the government. The Saudi government is trying to diversify the countrys economy which is dependent on oil. The Saudi fund hasnt made any firm decisions on whether to increase its stake, or by how much, but talks are ongoing, sources told Bloomberg.
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ICICI Direct's research report on Varun Beverage

Revenues witnessed growth of 26.1% to Rs 2059.1 crore (I-direct estimate: Rs 2052.8 crore) led by 21.3% volume growth mainly on the back of some of the territory acquisition in Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Bihar and Jharkhand last year. The company reported organic volume growth of 12.6% in the India business whereas it reported 9.8% on a consolidated basis during the quarter EBITDA grew 19.6% YoY to Rs 574.9 crore. Operating margins declined 150 bps to 27.9%. Q2 (summer season) is seasonally the best quarter for the company, contributing 45% to revenue. Net profit during the quarter increased 24.9% to Rs 306.8 crore (I-direct estimate: Rs 281.2 crore).

Outlook

We remain positive on VBL as it is continuously looking for newer territories to expand its base in untapped geographies. It remains a proxy play on the soft drink industry in India. We expect revenue and PAT to grow at a CAGR of 19.8% and 38.4%, respectively, in CY17-19E with an operating margin of 22% in CY19E. With the comfort of earnings visibility and expected improvement in return ratios, we revise our target price to Rs 860/share.

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Ahead of the 2018 Independence Day celebrations, security measures in Delhi have been stepped up to prevent any untoward incidents.

The central government has beefed up security across Delhi, including the area near the Red Fort, metro stations and the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport.

Let's take a look at the heightened security measures in Delhi:

> Delhi Metro and IGI airport

Over 600 additional Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel are deployed at the Delhi Metro and the IGI airport to keep a better eye on people and their luggage. The commuters, at both these locations, are being checked twice  first manually and later with a hand-held metal detector  in view of the heightened vigil in the run-up to the Independence Day on August 15.

Also read  PM Modi may push financial inclusion drive in I-Day speech

Additional CISF quick reaction teams (QRTs) and flying squads have been deployed at select metro stations that witness a heavy footfall or are important from the security point of view.

CISF metro security chief Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Raghubir Lal told PTI that they have already held meetings with various stakeholders like the Delhi Police, Metro authorities, and others as a part of the drills undertaken to fortify security before August 15.

"A new control room, armed with over 5,000 CCTVs and other smart tools, has recently been commissioned for the CISF and it will help us in better monitoring operations at stations under its surveillance cover," the DIG said.

Also read  Parking restrictions at metro stations for I-Day security: DMRC

Special teams of mufti-wearing intelligence and passenger profiling sleuths have been deployed at various stations and at the airport.

> Red Fort

Considering all the main events including the unfurling of the national flag by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be held at Red Fort, security in the Fort and nearby places has been ramped up.

The prime minister is scheduled to address the nation from the rampage of the Red Fort at 7:30 am to commence the Independence Day celebrations on August 15, 2018.

Red Fort and its nearby areas are under complete CCTV surveillance.

Also read  I-Day: Traffic restrictions in Delhi from August 13

"Coordinated security measures are in place for the Independence day celebrations. Census and verification drives of the residents in the nearby areas have been completed. The whole area is under CCTV coverage," Jatin Narwal, Deputy Commissioner, Delhi Police told The Times of India.

The Delhi government and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has already laid down traffic restrictions near the Red Fort and metros across the city as a part of the security measures undertaken on the occasion of Independence Day.
For the better part of two years, the Maratha community has been quietly taking to the streets in large numbers, raising the demand for reservation in education and government jobs. Silent marches in the cities and towns of Maharashtra drove home the point that the community was too large to be ignored, both in terms of its standing in society as well as an electoral force.

On August 9, 2017, the 58th silent rally undertaken by the Marathas culminated in Mumbai, the financial capital of the country. Legislators occupying the corridors of power, an echo chamber for political correctness and electoral considerations, moved to assuage the concerns of the community, but all was forgotten as the marchers retreated from the streets of Mumbai. Silence did not work.

After a period of dormancy, the movement awoke with renewed vigour in August 2018, reneging its earlier vow of silence. The protests turned violent. Buses were torched, public property was damaged and life came to a standstill in many parts of Maharashtra. As many as 18 Maratha youths have taken their own lives in the past few months to further the cause of reservation for the community.

The call for greater representation in education and government jobs could be as much a product of the stress on the agrarian economy, as the role of age-old caste equations. Heres a look at some of the factors that are key to understanding the Maratha agitation:

Legal hurdle

The Maratha community accounts for about a third of the states population and are mainly engaged in agriculture. The youth are demanding up to 72,000 government jobs. In the pre-Mandal days, it was the governor, in his position as titular head of the state, who had the jurisdiction to amend the list of backward classes. However, any such change would be vetted by the cabinet, giving the government de facto control over classification of communities, with regards to their eligibility for reservation.

Expert panels at the level of states and the Centre were empowered to make such decisions in the aftermath of the Indra Sawhney judgment in 1992. However, legislative status was granted to such bodies by Maharashtra only in 2005. Latency in forming monitoring panels and unreliable historical data have held back progress in undertaking a comprehensive demographic audit in the state.

Under Narayan Rane, a Maratha leader and former chief minister, the government set up a committee to study the issue of reservation for the Maratha community. The Bombay High Court rejected the committees recommendations over concerns that its report was prepared hastily and not an actual reflection of ground reality. It completed research spanning 1.8 million people in less than two weeks, casting doubts on the veracity of the report and the political compulsions of the government.

Political force

The Maratha community used to once enjoy political supremacy in Maharashtra, but its influence has waned over the years. In 1978, Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar took over the reins of power in the state at the age of 38. His party still holds substantial clout within the community, but political equations have changed in the interim.

Two decades after Pawars emergence in Maharasthra politics, the states first Brahmin chief minister was forced to cede power ahead of Assembly elections in favour of Narayan Rane, a Maratha leader from the states Konkan belt. Devendra Fadnavis, only the second Brahmin chief minister in the states history, is now faced with the choice of taking the politically expedient decision of ceding to the demands of protestors, or risking his prospects of re-election in 2019.

The Maratha community yields significant influence electorally, and the outcome of the upcoming Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in the state could well hinge on how the call for reservation is handled.

The share of Maratha leaders in the cabinet of ministers has fallen to 44 percent from a high of 62 percent between 1999 and 2004, according to a study by researchers from Savitribai Phule Pune University. Data indicates that the cabinet of ministers under non-Congress governments in the state were more representative of the prevailing social fabric, with a greater share of upper castes and upwardly mobile communities in government.

The Congress-NCP coalition, which ruled Maharashtra for three consecutive terms between 1999 and 2014, had a higher share of Maratha legislators in ministerial posts. Over 60 percent of the cabinet was occupied by Maratha leaders, while the communitys population amounts to roughly 30 percent of the total.

Source: Economic and Political Weekly

However, data from a 2014 study undertaken by the Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDC) throws up contradictory results. It says a majority of Maratha votes went to the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in the 2014 polls. The recent agitation could spell an opportunity for the Congress and the NCP to claw back on ground ceded in the previous elections.

According to data compiled by Suhas Palshikar in a research paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly, the BJP received the majority of the Maratha votes in North Maharashtra and Vidarbha, while alliance partner Shiv Sena was the beneficiary of anti-incumbency sentiment among the Maratha community in West Maharashtra and the Mumbai-Thane region.

Farm sector woes

Source: Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics

The government commissioned a team from Punes Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics to assess the backwardness of the Maratha community. Its report concluded that 26 percent of all farmer suicides were by members of the Maratha community  the highest among all caste groups in the state. It was noted that a lack of proper irrigation is the prime driver nudging Maratha farmers to take their own lives.

Almost 90 percent of farmers in Vidarbha and 84 percent in the Marathwada region who took their own lives were tilling unirrigated land. However, it was also found that in comparison to other groups which come under the umbrella of reserved castes, Marathas are relatively better educated and have greater access to financial services such as loans from scheduled commercial banks.

Low returns from agriculture have added to the woes of farmers in large parts of Maharashtra. Between FY2007 and FY2015, net returns from farm produce have declined. Net returns are calculated by deducting the cost of production from wholesale prices.

[Click on subhead to view crop-wise data]

Net returns from cotton cultivation has gone down from 10.1 percent in 2008-09 to -11.8 percent (loss) in 2014-15, according to data compiled by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. The trend is similar for other crops cultivated in the state such as paddy, soybean and wheat. Net returns from soybean have gone down from -0.1 percent in 2008-09 to -30.1 percent in 2014-15.

This is because wholesale prices have not kept pace with the increase in production costs. The cost of production is taken as the C2 metric defined by the Swaminathan Committees report on the minimum support price of crops. The Comprehensive Cost (C2) takes into account rent and interest foregone on owned land and machinery, over and above the out-of-pocket expenses borne by farmers, such as term loans for machinery, fertilisers, fuel, irrigation, cost of hired labour and leasing land.

Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Agmarknet.gov.in

For the six leading crops in the state by area under cultivation, input costs have leapfrogged the selling price of all but one. The price of paddy has remained at the same level as input costs, meaning that farmers cultivating the crop will just about manage to break even. The cost of producing jowar has risen by 37.2 percent between 2006-07 and 2014-15 while prices have increased by only 15.8 percent.

Moreover, Maratha farmers have small and marginal land holdings, according to a paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly. This means that they are more vulnerable to adverse natural outcomes such as a bad monsoon, or pestilence that can result in the ruin a seasons yield. It was found that 30 percent of the Maratha population owns 1-2 hectares, while 23 percent have less than 1 hectare, and 13.4 percent are landless.

A drop in profitability, compounded by small land holdings, is pushing more Maratha farmers into debt. The failure of the agrarian economy has left a large section of the population looking at alternative careers outside of farms. In addition to the caste calculus, the Marathas call for reservation stems from a deep-rooted neglect of the farm sector that has led to great distress in the states hinterland.

The Maharashtra State Backward Classes Commission, which has been tasked with studying the socio-economic status of the Maratha community, will deliver its verdict on November 15. The commissions recommendations regarding the question of reservation could cast a shadow on the states polity as Maharashtra heads to the polls in 2019.
Rajasthan's Jodhpur and Marwar railway stations have emerged the cleanliest among the major stations in the country in the latest round of cleanliness assessment study.

While Jodhpur secured first position in A1 category stations for this year, Marwar took the pole position in A category, according to the study report released by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal today.

Both the stations fall under North Western Railway zone.

A1 and A category stations contribute 80 per cent of the passenger revenue. The stations are categorised as A1 and A based on revenue generated and footfalls.

Releasing the report, Goyal suggested making the annual study a half-yearly exercise for bringing about greater competitiveness among the stations and ensuring a "test check" in maintaining cleanliness standards.

None of the major stations in the metros found a place in the top 10 list save for Anand Vihar in New Delhi which came in at fifth position.

New Delhi station was ranked 39th, a position it had held last year too.

In the A1 category, Jaipur has been ranked second and Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh ranked third. Vishakapatnam had emerged at the top in last year's ranking of the A1 category station. It has slid to 10th position this year.

Phulera in Rajasthan took the second place among A category stations, while Warangal in Telengana was ranked third.

When asked about the worst performing station in the cleanliness chart, Goyal did not name the station but said the north central railway has come at the 16th place, indicating it was worst performing among all the zones in terms of cleanliness.

The railways is divided into 16 zones.

"Last year, it was at the 15th place. We will take it up," the minister said, highlighting the unique challenges confronting the zone.

"The zone is saturated, has overutilized infrastructure and passing through difficult times," he said.

The zone is headquartered in Allahabad and the routes passing through it have over 110 per cent capacity utilisation.

The North Western Railway topped in cleanliness zone-wise, followed by South Central Railway while East Coast Railway was ranked third.

According to the survey report, compared to 2017, there is nine per cent improvement in top 100 stations, 14 per cent in the next 100.

The cleanliness ranking, conducted by the Quality Council of India, was started in 2016. Since then, according to the study, there has been a significant improvement in the cleanliness aspect.

In 2017-18, average cleanliness of stations went up by 18 per cent, and 61 per cent of all citizens covered in the latest round of the study said the cleanliness was "above average", QCI chairman Adil Zainulbhai said.

Significantly, 47 per of the citizens felt train toilets are "cleaner now", he said.

According to the study, 39 stations scored over 90 per cent, a major jump given that last year none of them were in this bracket. Besides, 161 stations scored over 80 per cent in the latest survey.

The parameters adopted for conducting the survey were 'evaluation of process of cleanliness in parking, main entry area, main platform, waiting room, direct observation by QCI assessors of cleanliness and passenger feedback, with each of the parameters carrying 33.33 per cent.
In light of an increase in cases of domestic violence and abandonment against women married to non-resident Indians (NRIs), the government is working on a bill that will allow it to attach properties of NRI husbands who don't respond to court summons, Indian Express reported.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Women and Child Development, Home Affairs, and Law and Justice, have all reportedly collaborated on this bill.

Under the provisions of the proposed bill, court summons to such NRI husbands will be served on the MEA's portal, officials told the news daily.

The decision came around seven months after a woman from Nashik filed for divorce and a domestic violence case against her NRI husband from Sydney. The husband failed to show up even after multiple court summons, which forced the woman to seek the MEA's help.

The woman alleged that she was forced to perform all domestic chores by her husband. She also said that her husband got her spouse visa cancelled when she returned to India for her sister's wedding a year after her own.

"I was in shock for months. My belongings, weighing about 200 kg, are still in Australia," she was quoted as saying.

In January 2018, she filed for divorce and a case of domestic violence against her husband, who did not appear in the court despite being issued multiple summons.

She then went to the state women's commission, which held four hearings. The woman's in-laws reportedly attended one of the hearings, an official told the paper.

The Maharashtra State Commission for Women has sought the help of the MEA on multiple occasions to issue lookout notices for NRI husbands.

"We receive a lot of complaints of abandonment. Often NRIs marry girls from here, assure they will send them visas and stop returning calls once they fly back," Vijaya Rahatkar, Chairperson of the Maharashtra State Commission for Women, was quoted as saying.

However, she said that the commission's decision is not binding on anyone and it can't summon anyone.

MEA joint secretary Manoj Mahaptra told the paper that 4,300 such complaints against NRIs have been received in the past. Keeping this in mind, the government now wants to make it mandatory for NRIs to register their marriages with the ministry.

"Court keeps issuing summons and there is no response. There is also no awareness about who to approach," Victoria Gauri Chand, a lawyer who handles such cases, said. She said that the support system, for women seeking legal action against NRI husbands, is poor.

Around a third of all Indian married women have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional violence by their spouses, according to the findings of the National Family Health Survey-4.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi, India on the 71st Independence Day on August 15, 2017 (Image: Reuters)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all set to deliver the final Independence Day speech of his current tenure, with Lok Sabha elections scheduled to take place in the first half of 2019.

Modis speeches have generally included social messages, announcements of major schemes and an annual review of his government's performance.

Observers suggest that the speech, which will be delivered from the ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi on Wednesday, could act as his vision document as well as a report card on the Modi sarkars performance so far.

The prime minister may also want to use this platform to spread awareness about his government's work ahead of assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram, slated to happen later this year.

Here is an analysis of key promises PM Modi made in his independence Day speeches over the last four years and how many of them have been fulfilled:

2014

The 2014 speech, delivered from the ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi, was the first for Modi. The 65-minute speech revolved around various social issues such as female foeticide, dignity of women, sanitation and policy issues such as Digital India and the need to Make in India.

It was in this speech that Modi said he was "present amidst people not as pradhan mantri (prime minister), but as pradhan sevak (prime servant)".

Separate toilets for girls in all government schools in one year

PM Modi promised to build separate toilets in all government schools across the country within one year, with the help of state governments.

Further, PM Modi said his government should be in a firm position to announce that there is no school in India without separate toilets for boys and girls by the next Independence Day in 2015.

Cant we just make arrangements for toilets for the dignity of our mothers and sisters? PM Modi had asked. The government should utilise its budget on providing toilets. I call upon the corporate sector also to give priority to the provision of toilets in schools with your expenditure under corporate social responsibility (CSR), he added.

According to government data, cited in a report by The Hindustan Times, around 2 percent of government schools did not have separate toilets for girls in 2015-16.

Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana

The prime minister announced a new financial scheme aimed at helping the poor open zero balance bank accounts which will be bundled with a debit card and life insurance cover.

I have come here with a pledge to launch a scheme on this festival of freedom. It will be called Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana, the prime minister had said. An account holder under Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana will be given a debit card."

An insurance of Rs 1 lakh will be guaranteed with that debit card for each poor family, so that such families are covered in case of any crisis in their lives, he added.

The Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana was officially launched on August 28, 2014. According to government data, 32.25 crore bank accounts have been opened under the scheme till August 1 this year, with Rs 80,674.82 crore in total account balance.

2015

Electrification of 18,500 villages in 1,000 days

The prime minister promised electrification of 18,500 villages within 1,000 days. It is now the solemn pledge of Team India of 1.25 billion countrymen, that the target of providing electric polls, electric wires and electricity to these 18,500 villages would be achieved within next 1,000 days," he had said.

According to governments criteria, a village can be considered electrified if electricity is provided in public places such as schools, panchayat offices, health centres and community centres, along with at least 10 percent of households.

According to reports, government data suggests that out of the 18,452 un-electrified villages, 76.58 percent (14,132 villages) were electrified in approximately 750 days from July 2015 when the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) was launched.

On April 28, 2018, the government completed electrification of all villages as electricity reached Manipurs Leisang village.

The government has claimed that the task was completed in 987 days (as on April 28, 2018), attributing it to an effective implementation of DDUGJY.

2016

Post offices to be converted to payment banks

In 2016, the prime minister said post offices in the country would be converted to payments banks.

Due to information technology, WhatsApp, messages, online, e-mail, our post offices were becoming irrelevant slowly. Post Office is an example of our identity. We have revived and rejuvenated our post offices. It is now linked with poor and small persons, the prime minister said.

We have taken a step to convert our post offices into payment banks. Starting this will spread the chain of banks in the villages across the country in one go, he added.

While the postal department had set up two pilot branches on January 30 2017 in Raipur, Chhattisgarh and Ranchi, Jharkhand, the long-awaited India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) project will only be launched with 650 branches across the country by PM Modi on August 21 this year. The payments bank will ultimately have at least one branch in every district and focus on financial services in rural areas.

20 percent hike in pension for freedom fighters, their families

During the speech, PM Modi announced a hike in pension given to freedom fighters and their families, calling it a small offering from him.

Today, when we are celebrating 70 years of Independence, we remember the contribution of our freedom fighters. Today, for the respected family members of these freedom fighters, the government has decided to increase the pension by 20 percent, the prime minister said.

So, the freedom fighter who used to get Rs 25,000 earlier, will get Rs 30,000 now. This is a small offering from my side to the sacrifices made by these freedom fighters, he added.

In a reply to the Rajya Sabha on March 15, 2017, the government confirmed that the pension for ex-Andaman political prisoners/spouses increased around 21 percent from Rs 24,775 to Rs 30,000 in August 2016. For freedom fighters who suffered outside British India/spouses category, the pension amount increased from Rs 23,085 to Rs 28,000.

The family pension is being given to eligible dependents of freedom fighters under the Swatantrata Sainik Samman Pension Scheme, 1980.

2017

The I-Day speech in 2017 revolved around key issues such as triple talaq, security situation in Jammu and Kashmir and fight against terrorism. He also spoke about the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Triple Talaq

Speaking about womens empowerment, PM Modi said he would like to honour those sisters who have been forced to lead a very difficult life due to triple talaq (talaq-e-biddat).

There is no recourse for them, and such victims of triple talaq have launched a massive movement in the country. They shook the conscience of the intellectual class of the country, the media of the country also helped them and a movement was started in the country, he said.

I heartily commend those sisters who have launched this movement, who have been fighting against triple talaq and Im confident that the country will help them in this struggle, he added.

The prime minister said the country will help these mothers and sisters in securing this right.

The Lok Sabha passed The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017 in December last year. The bill makes instant triple talaq in any form  spoken, writing or by electronic means  illegal and void, with up to three years in jail for the husband.

However, the bill has seen severe opposition in the Upper House. The bill is now likely to be taken up in Rajya Sabha in the winter session.

The PM kept another promise when he delivered his shortest Independence Day speech in 2017. A year earlier, he was criticised for giving a 96-minute speech  the longest ever by any prime minister.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah

BJP national president Amit Shah sent a letter on behalf of his party to the Law Commission of India, propelling the idea of simultaneous elections in the upcoming years.

In his letter, Amit Shah pointed out that India conducts at least five to seven state assembly elections every year in addition to local body elections; add to that Lok Sabha elections once every five years, the country is always in election mode.

He said when the country is perpetually in election mode, it is detrimental to progress  it exerts pressure on the public exchequer and imposition of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) ceases passage of many new policies. He added that the moment dates of elections are announced, the government focuses on implementing populist policies.

Citing the example of Maharashtra in 2016-17, when some or the other constituency was facing elections on 307 out of 365 days in a year, he invited stakeholders for an elaborate debate on the issue. He also gave the example of Indonesia, which recently implemented simultaneous elections. Other countries where simultaneous elections are conducted include Sweden, Belgium, Italy and South Africa.

In his letter, Shah noted, "In 1951-52, Lok Sabha elections were held in sync with state assembly elections. It was repeated in 1957, 1962 and 1967. In 1968 and 1969, the government was dissolved before time and since then, India has been trapped in a vicious circle of never-ending elections." He asserted that since simultaneous elections were held successfully before, they can be conducted even now.

The BJP president pointed out that expenditure for free and fair conduct of elections has only increased over the years. For instance, the central government's expenditure on general elections increased three-fold from Rs 1,115 crore in 2009 to Rs 3,870 crore in 2014. Besides, additional expenditure on election officers posted at over 9,30,000 voting centres across the country.

He said if simultaneous elections were to take place, the expenditure will be Rs 4500 crore in total, much less than individual expenditure on elections.

Allaying fears that simultaneous elections will lead to one party coming to power at the Centre, state and local level, he cited instances in the past where the electorate has chosen different parties at the Centre and State level when simultaneous elections were held.

Shah also cites broad recommendations by the BJP on the execution of the principle of simultaneous elections. The party suggests that there should be one list of voters and a common set of guidelines and that all bodies be chosen for a duration of at least five years. In case the government is dissolved earlier than that, then that particular constituency should be governed either by the Governor or the President in order to avoid fresh elections.

The letter also notes that current governments wont be dissolved after the announcement of simultaneous elections and that all the stakeholders will unanimously decide a year in which this principle will be rolled out.

Shah asked the Law Commission to consider their request, saying even though the rollout will face short-term problems, it will be advantageous for the nation in the long run. The logistics, including EVMs, will be taken care of eventually, he adds.



We have notified Law Commission about our partys support for simultaneous elections in country. It would reduce expenses significantly & the repetitive use of election machinery. Necessary amendments to Constitution should take place: Bhupender Yadav,BJP on #OneNationOneElection pic.twitter.com/yaFw49vBvU

 ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

BJP MP from Rajasthan, Bhupender Yadav, has seconded the party's stance. Here's what he said on simultaneous elections.
It has been close to four years since the rupee last fell to record lows, and while the Finance Minister said that India has enough foreign reserves to stem the tide, many stakeholders find it hard to not twiddle their thumbs in anxiety. How often does the worst happen, when the people of the nation have lost faith in the value of their currency? More often than one can imagine. Below are a list of currencies whose value depreciated to such an extent that in some cases, citizens were forced to face the absurdity of paying a wheelbarrow full of notes for a loaf of bread. (Image: Reuters)

A host of countries, including India, have contracts with the Chinese government for printing of currency notes, Liu Guisheng, President of the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation (CBPMC), was quoted as telling the South China Morning Post.

A Reserve Bank of India official told Moneycontrol that the report was incorrect and that all Indian currency notes are printed in India.

China only recently started printing foreign currency, primarily after the launch of its Belt and Road Initiative in 2013.

The country has now increased production of currency notes in plants across the country to meet an unusually high quota set by the government this year, the Hong Kong-based paper reported.

Chinese Yuan bills accounted for only a small portion of these orders, an official told the news daily, adding that most of the orders were from countries that have partnered China in its 'Belt and Road Initiative'.

Various employees at currency note manufacturing units across the country claimed that last year was slow in terms of production and output, with many of the plants resorting to printing driving licenses and marriage certificates to prevent the machinery from rusting away.

This can be attributed to Chinese people's shift to online payment mechanisms, with many using their smartphones as wallets nowadays.

Guisheng confirmed that in 2015, Nepal became the first country to outsource currency printing to China, after which contracts were won from countries including India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Brazil, and Poland.

Sources reportedly confirmed that this list could, in fact, be longer.

CBPMC has about 18,000 employees across China and runs more than 10 heavily-guarded facilities. In contrast, the world's second-largest currency producer, British company De La Rue, had just over 3,000 employees at the end of 2017.

Getting notes printed from China has become popular among developing countries since the sophisticated and costly technology needed for the metallic ribbon, embedded thread, and colour-shifting ink is beyond their reach. China can provide these services at relatively-lower costs.

China is currently the only country that can perform the Intaglio style of printing, which involves raising the print simultaneously on both sides of a banknote. In 2015, Chinese researchers also came up with a holographic feature called ColorDance that could improve a note's security at a low cost.

All this could be a sign that countries have a considerable amount of trust in the Chinese government as there is always a fear of replication and/or forgery.

India recently pulled out of the Belt and Road Initiative with Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserting that any mega connectivity project must respect sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries.
Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee passed away at a Kolkata hospital on Monday morning after he was put on ventilator support on Sunday. He was 89.

Somnaths condition had deteriorated on Sunday after he suffered a mild heart attack while undergoing treatment, said a hospital official.

Chatterjee was suffering from a kidney-related ailment and was admitted to the hospital in a critical condition on Tuesday. He was undergoing dialysis. In such cases, it happens at times that the heart stops giving support, a senior hospital official had told PTI.

Last month, the former speaker had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. He had been undergoing treatment for over 40 days. Chatterjee was discharged from the hospital just for three days after his health showed signs of improvement. However, his condition deteriorated last Tuesday and he had to be hospitalised again, PTI has reported.

A 10-time Lok Sabha MP, Chatterjee was a central committee member of the CPI(M), which he had joined in 1968. He was the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.

The veteran leader was, however, expelled from the CPI(M) in 2008 for refusing to resign as the Speaker after his party withdrew support to the UPA-I government.



Former MP and Speaker Shri Somnath Chatterjee was a stalwart of Indian politics. He made our Parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise. My thoughts are with his family and supporters.

 Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 13, 2018

Prime Minister Narendra Modi condoled Chatterjee's demise, saying that the latter was a "strong voice for the well being of the poor and vulnerable".

Congress President Rahul Gandhi also expressed his condolences on Twitter:



I mourn the passing away of Shri Somnath Chatterjee, 10 term MP and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha. He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief. #SomnathChatterjee  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 13, 2018

(With inputs from PTI)
Seeking to evolve a consensus on holding simultaneous election to Lok Sabha and state assemblies, the government is mulling convening an all-party meeting on the issue after the Law Commission recommends a legal framework on the matter.

Sources in the government said an all-party meeting could be convened in the coming days to widen the ambit of discussion among politicians on the issue of simultaneous polls.

But no final decision has been taken as yet on convening the meet.

The government, they said, is awaiting the report of the law panel which would lay down the legal framework of holding the two elections together.

They said once the report is with the government, it will have broad talking points.

The law panel, which is examining the feasibility of holding simultaneous polls, had earlier sought the views of political parties before finalising its report. Both the BJP and the Congress had stayed away from the consultation organised by the commission.

The Congress had met the commission top brass recently where it had opposed the concept of simultaneous polls.

A paper by the Law Commission had recently recommended holding the Lok Sabha and assembly polls in two phases beginning 2019.

Political parties are divided on the issue. Besides NDA constituent Shiromani Akali Dal, the AIADMK, the Samajwadi Party and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti have supported it.

The Congress, Trinamool Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, DMK, Telugu Desam Party, Left parties and the JD(S) have opposed the proposal.
West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee addresses during Youth Trinamool Congress rally at Damurjala Stadium in Howrah district of West Bengal on Friday. PTI

Attacking the BJP-led central government over exclusion of 40 lakh people in the final draft of Assam-NRC, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today accused the saffron party of being "anti-Bengalis".

Taking a swipe at the BJP, the Trinamool Congress chief asked if hilsa fish, Jamdani saree, sandesh and mishti doi, which are originally from Bangladesh, would also be branded as "infiltrators or refugees".

Asserting that these 40 lakh people are "very much Indians", she questioned the criteria on which they have been excluded.

Banerjee said that even she would not be able to produce the birth certificate of her parents if the government asks for it.

"Do not know my parents' birth dates. I only know the dates of their death. I would not be able to provide any documents for their date of birth but there should be a clear system about such cases...you cannot blame the layman," she told reporters at her chamber in the state assembly.

Banerjee has been attacking the BJP government at the Centre over National Register for Citizens (NRC) which has excluded names of over 40 lakh citizens in the final draft for want of necessary documents in Assam.

"What is going on in the country is injustice. The BJP with their extremist ideology is trying to create division among the people. I think they are playing the politics of revenge among the countrymen. We are not for this kind of politics," she said.

She accused the BJP of being "anti-Bengalis" and "anti-West Bengal".

"They (the BJP) must not forget that speaking Bengali is not a crime. It is the fifth most spoken language in the world. What is BJP's problem with (West) Bengal. Are they scared of the intellect of the Bengalis, their culture. They must not forget that (West) Bengal is the cultural mecca of the country," she said.

The TMC chief said "the culture practised by them does not have any respect for people speaking Hindi, Bengali, Maratha and the South Indian (languages)".
Lawyer Prashant Bhushan

Activist-lawyer Prashant Bushan today accused the BJP government of creating an atmosphere of fear in the country and targeting those who speaks against the dispensation.

Speaking at an event titled 'Khauff se Azaadi' (Freedom from Fear) here, minutes after Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Umar Khalid was allegedly attacked by unidentified men, Bhushan said, "This was done to create fear. So, that no one speaks or fights against the government."

"Individuals like Umar Khalid and Kanhaiya Kumar are being targeted and termed anti-nationals and Naxalite for speaking against the government. We are abused on social media, while women receive rape threats," he added.

Khalid was supposed to address the gathering at the Constitution Club near Parliament, but could not after the attack on him.

Terming the Bharatiya Janata Party government "fascist", Bhushan urged the people to fight against such tendencies.

"We can see symptoms of fascism in this government. People in power are addressing provocative speeches, trying to hamper communal harmony. Muslims are being termed terrorists. People in opposition are termed anti-nationals," the senior Supreme Court lawyer said.

He alleged that fake news were being spread and big media houses were brought under the government's control. "The government is even trying to change the electoral system," he added.

Raising concerns over the safety, former Rajya Sabha MP Anwar Ali said even Lutyens' Delhi was not safe anymore.

"Today, Umar Khalid was attacked right here at the Constitution Club. This could have happened with anyone of us anywhere," he said, adding that the word mob-lynching had become a small issue now.

"The issue of mob lynching should not be made an issue of Muslim. Those currently in power term every Muslim a terrorist and Dalits as Naxalite. There's an political and ideological battle," he said.

Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha, who was also at the event, added that living in fear was also a form of mob-lynching and urged people to fight against the government.
Congress President Rahul Gandhi today slammed the Goods and Services Tax as "Gabbar Singh Tax" and said that one slab GST would be implemented when the "Congress party-Government" comes to power at the Centre.

Speaking at an interactive meeting with women Self-Help Groups, organised by the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee, he also attacked the NDA government, saying it waived loans of Rs 2.5 lakh crore of the 15 richest businessmen in the country during the past two years.

"No, (it is) Gabbar Singh Tax. This GST is a way of removing money from the pockets of the poor. This is not GST, this is Gabbar Singh Tax. When the Congress Party government comes (to power), we will give you GST - Goods and Services Tax.

In that, there will be only one tax level. There will not be five different taxes. In that, you will not have to fill different (compliance) forms every month", he responded to a woman who complained about being levied GST. Gandhi arrived here to a rousing reception on a two-day visit, his first to Telangana after becoming the party President.

The Congress leader also said he would not make false promises and pointed out that the Karnataka government, in which Congress was also part of, was implementing the farm loan waiver scheme.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about the implementation of MSP to the tune of Rs 10,000 crore for the entire country, the Congress Government in Karnataka had implemented loan waiver of Rs 30,000 crore, he said.

Even as the poor stood in queues at banks for their money after demonetisation was announced in November 2016, the cash deposited by them was used to cater to loan waiver of the rich, he alleged. He also attacked the TRS government in Telangana.

"Today, one-family government is running in Telangana.All benefits are being given to one family. Lands of farmers are being snatched, women SHGs are not helped, support required to be given to farmers is not given and only corruption is seen," Gandhi said, targeting the family of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

Tomorrow, Gandhi would hold a teleconference with 31,600 booth0 committee presidents, mandal and district Congress presidents and also state unit office bearers. Later, he would address about 150 young industrialists and CEOs from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

In the evening,Rahul Gandhi would attend a public meeting of students and unemployed youth at Saroornagar stadium. He would leave for Delhi by 8.30 PM that night.
Viju Cherian

On August 9, Rajya Sabha elected its deputy chairman. Many who believe in revival of the opposition parties in India thought it would be a closely-fought contest. The reality, however, was far from that.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government won the election without breaking a sweat. This was the most recent sign that the Congress must abandon its attempts to forge a united opposition against the NDA. Talks about a united opposition is a mirage that periodically appears over Indias shifting political sands. It is a political chimera that the Congress must stop chasing.

Instead of wasting its efforts and precious resources trying to gather anti-BJP parties at a national level, the Congress must focus on states in which it already has a strong presence. The national party must transform itself into a cluster of regional parties  and it is the momentum it generates at the state-level that will give it importance at the national level.

There are many reasons why the Mahagathbandhan must be abandoned. Some of them are as follows.

The Mahagathbandhan has an image problem. It is not that India is alien to coalitions. Since 1998, India has successively seen NDA and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition governments at the Centre. However, the NDA and the UPA have been anchored by the BJP and Congress respectively. Today, while the BJP-led NDA is strong, the Congress does not enjoy the command over its UPA allies the way it used to. In the past, coalition governments at the Centre, without a national party or with a weak national party, have never lasted their full term.

Such a potpourri of political parties which are forced to join hands because of electoral compulsions has a negative association with the electorate  and this works to the BJPs advantage. In a recent interview to a newspaper, Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to the efforts of the opposition to form a coalition to fight the BJP as a non-ideological alliance of desperate and disparate groups; it is not a mahagathbandhan but political adventurism. It is a failed idea which never succeeded in past.

Thus, the more there is a talk about the Mahagathbandhan, the more it will help Modi and the BJP.

If opposition parties were to unite and fight the elections, it will force the coalitions hand to announce its PM candidate. With the names of different regional leaders being suggested, the ensuing confusion will further discredit the Mahagathbandhan. Moreover, any PM candidate proposed by the united opposition will have to square up with Modi at the national level. At the moment, there is no leader who can challenge Modis pan-India appeal.

To take on the popularity of Modi and the Amit Shah-run BJP election machinery, the Congress should have built an anti-government, anti-BJP momentum by now. While it has been able to highlight issues and initiate debates, it has been inconsistent.

Focusing on states, rather than the Centre, will strengthen the Congress. Recent history has shown that the grand old party has done well whenever strong regional leaders have delivered for it at the state level. Rather than stretching its resources thin across India, the Congress must focus on states where it is confident. For example, theres no point in the Congress fielding candidates from Tamil Nadu. Instead, it should focus that energy in neighbouring Karnataka and Kerala. Similarly, rather than West Bengal or Uttar Pradesh, it should focus on Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra.

A state-by-state focus on the national election will in turn weaken the BJPs projection of Modi as the party's only face. This will also help strengthen the character of the general election and will pull it away from the presidential style it is increasingly turning out to be.

Also, if the Mahagathbandhan was to fail, the biggest loser will be the Congress. It will not necessarily affect the regional parties. Take the case of the KC Rao-led Telangana Rashtra Samiti which briefly flirted with the idea of a non-Congress, non-BJP front but now is increasingly moving into NDAs orbit. This shift has not affected TRS electoral fortunes.

Trying to form a united opposition at the national level this close to the election, based primarily on an anti-Modi plank, is likely to fail. The Mahagathbandhan is the quicksand the Congress is standing on, and the more it exerts the need for such a group the more it is pulled into it with little political benefits.
Shiv Visvanathan

This essay is about the politics of the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The census and the political register are usually treated as neutral exercises.

The census collects, classifies and connects people like a Linnaean species. Classification and civics have always gone together to create the idea of citizen. A citizen becomes someone who is officially defined as belonging legitimately to a particular space. However, what is seen as an act of governance and legitimation from one end becomes a macabre act of politics from the other.

Politics caricatures the neutrality of the exercise by creating a second distortion. What we are then confronting is a politics of technocracy manipulating numbers in the pursuit of governance and control and the politics of an electoral democracy which manipulates anxieties to increase vote counts and retain power.

As a wag put it, the first is the politics of statistics, and statistics, as Camus warned, dont bleed. It requires the statistics of electoralism to make statistics bleed and add to the violence of the situation. Assam is a classic case of such politics.

The politics of the controversy is mirrored in the nature of language. Oddly, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was among the first to point it out. She claimed that the word infiltrator warps the nature of dialogue. The infiltrator is seen as an intruder, an alien, an illegal, an invasive entity and the transition from outsider to infiltrator reveals the politics of bias. The very idea of infiltration combined with the idea of security creates a paranoid world of Malthusian demography, the prospect of the sheer number of outsiders destroying indigenous culture and language. Electoralism, combined with bureaucratic muddles, create a quagmire whose politics is difficult to escape.

The politics of the NRC operates at several levels. There is also the politics of memory, of the bitter battles between the migrant Bengali and the indigenous Assamese. The history of this politics has been the stuff of groups like the All Assam Students Union (AASU).

The BJP has taken over this structural animosity and heightened it. The outsider as infiltrator becomes an enveloping term to include Nepalis and Muslims. Outsider politics virtually launches new careers in politics. The politics of language and the politics of memory provide the first layers of conflict and suspicion.

However, what is a local politics also requires a nationalist idiom transformed through the language of security and sovereignty. The infiltrator is read as a threat to both. He graduates from a vulnerable position to being a threat to culture, land, language and security, permitting a great amount of violence on him.

In fact, the history of Assam is wrought with pogroms where the battle with the outsider virtually inaugurates every step of politics. The politics of suspicion graduates into the politics of electoralism, where the BJP replays the old anxieties to consolidate vote banks. The butt of it becomes the Bengali minority and reactions to them recall the East European pogroms.

Yet all these fragmented and fragmentary politics combine to alter that nature of politics itself to a different level.

The logic of the exercise and the politics of scale creates a prospect of a politics of exclusion which is unprecedented in history. The very challenge of four million unaccommodated or illegal people strikes at the core of the democratic imagination. It is clear that legality and bureaucracy cannot find the right correctives. It is like using the thermometer as a technical measure to describe an emerging hell.

Between electoralism and security, the concerns of the NRC turned gargantuan. What one was confronting is not the legitimacy of citizenship, but the huge prospect of the temporariness of a people excluded from the NRC.

What India now faces is the prelude to a politics of genocide as we confront the prospect of four million excluded people. The question is do we disenfranchise them, deport or, detain them? Each is a frightening prospect and raises not just legal questions but becomes a challenge to the ethical. There are silences in the discourse that could cut both ways.

India has not yet stated that it will deport them. In fact, the BJP might cut down the numbers to obtain the electoral gratitude of those included in the last minute. But even a temporary enclave of inclusion does not solve the problem. Is India going to be a country with two million people in its detention camps? The scale is unprecedented globally. But the politics of anxiety and electoralism is making us blind to these futuristic challenges which need a Gandhian or a civilisational answer.

The question is whether the politics of democracy can go beyond electoralism and create a new imagination for democracy and citizenship.

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.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit Gujarat on August 23, where he will take part in a slew of programmes, officials said today. He will attend various programmes in Valsad, Junagadh and Gandhinagar during his day-long visit, they said.

The prime minister was supposed to visit his home state on July 20, but his trip was put off due to heavy rains in several parts of the state, especially in south Gujarat.

As per the new schedule announced by authorities, Modi would start his visit by dedicating two lakh houses built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana to beneficiaries at a function in Valsad town in south Gujarat on August 23.

From the same venue, he would perform a ground-breaking ceremony for a water supply project meant for the tribal population of Dharampur and Kaprada talukas, said Valsad Collector C R Kharsan.

Modi would also address a gathering during his visit to Valsad, he said.

He would then visit Junagadh town in the Saurashtra region to inaugurate some projects, including a newly-built hospital of the Gujarat Medical and Education Research Society (GMERS).

Modi will also inaugurate two fisheries science colleges at Veraval town in adjoining Gir Somnath district, an official said.

The prime minister would also address people at a function at the Police Training College ground near Junagadh, he said.

In the evening, Modi is scheduled to be in Gandhinagar to attend the convocation ceremony of the Gujarat Forensic Science University. He is expected to leave for New Delhi after the ceremony, the official said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Union Minister and LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan has described Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the "biggest Ambedkarite" in the country in the backdrop of Parliament restoring the stringent provisions in the SC & ST Act.

He was addressing "Dalit, Adivasi, Pichhra, Atipichhra Adhikar Sammelan" organised by his party LJP and Dalit Sena, an organisation run by him, here yesterday. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the biggest Ambekarite (Ambedkarwadi) in the country.

By maintaining the stringent provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act...PM Modi has proved himself as the biggest follower of Dr B R Ambedkar," Paswan said.

Parliament had last week passed a Bill to overturn the Supreme Court order relating to certain safeguards against arrest under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

The conference was attended by party's parliamentary board chairman Chirag Paswan, Member of Parliament Ram Chandra Paswan, LJP Bihar unit chief and minister in Bihar government Pashupati Kumar Paras, Member of Parliament Veena Devi and other senior leaders of the party.

Paswan- who is a union Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution minister in Narendra Modi-led NDA government- said his party would organise similar conferences in various parts of the country to express gratitude towards the Prime Minister besides making people aware about the NDA government's work and achievements. He charged Congress with being an"anti-backward" party.

On reservation in promotion for SC & ST being implemented in Bihar, the union minister said Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has expressed his priorities towards the community by implementing reservation in promotion.

On Muzaffarpur shelter home scandal, Paswan slammed the opposition for attacking Bihar government over the issue, saying "since they want to do politics on the matter, they have taken it to Delhi from Bihar". He said whatever has to be done has been done by the state government on the matter.
Congress President Rahul Gandhi today challenged Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a debate on the Rafale aircraft deal issue.

The Congress has raised several questions on the Rafale deal, accusing the government of compromising with national interests.

"...let a debate happen between me and Narendra Modi on Rafael deal... I will speak at length for hours," Gandhi said at "Jana Dwani" (people's voice) rally organised by the state Congress here in north Karnataka. In a scathing attack on the Modi government, Gandhi said, "Chowkidar Hi Bhaagidar Hai.

(This watchman is a collaborator)," and accused the prime minister of "stealing" taxpayers' money and giving it to his "friend" whose firm he alleged had bagged a contract in the Rafale deal. Focussing most part of his speech on attacking Modi, the Congress chief charged, he was "not the prime minister of the country but he is the prime minister of 15 super rich businessmen."

India had inked an inter-governmental agreement with France in September last year for procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of around Rs 58,000 crore. Gandhi also hit out Modi on incidents of rapes and said, the prime minister gave the slogan of 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' but he did not say from whom the girl child be saved.

"Rape happens in Uttar Pradesh and BJP leader is caught. When small girls in Bihar are raped, we see BJP leaders hanging around there. However, the prime minister does not speak a word on it," he said.
Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad

The Congress today hit back at Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, dubbing him as a "habitual offender in weaving lies", and asked why he or Prime Minister Narendra Modi have not answered questions raised by Rahul Gandhi on Rafale deal and other issues of alleged corruption.

The opposition party's reaction came after Prasad ridiculed Rahul Gandhi for challenging Modi for a debate, saying he is not worthy to have a debate with the PM.

"Modi Government's Law Minister is a habitual offender in weaving lies based on figments of his imagination. Today again he brazenly misled the people by sewing together a web of lies' to save his master Narendra Modi. Instead of answering the Congress President Shri Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party," Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said.

The Congress again raised the allegation that BJP chief Amit Shah had deliberately hid his son's contingent liabilities and credit facilities worth Rs 97.35 crore. "How did 'Shah-Zaada' multiply his earnings by 16000 times?" Surjewala said.

The charges were earlier dismissed by the BJP as "bogus and fake".

Stepping up attack on the Rafale issue, Surjewala said the government should answer questions on the "unilateral deal which snatched the Rs 30,000 crore offset contract from HAL, thereby benefitting a private entity which has zero experience in manufacturing fighter aircraft".

Earlier, Prasad claimed that the Congress president is jittery after the Income Tax department opened assessment of a firm in which he and his mother Sonia Gandhi have majority share, and alleged that the company -- Young India -- acquired over Rs 5,000 crore worth of assets with an investment of merely Rs 50 lakh.

The BJP leader accused Gandhi of repeatedly lying in his allegations of corruptions against the Modi government. "If he thinks that his allegations of corruption against the Modi government or Modi will mitigate the action against him, then let me tell him that it is not going to happen," Prasad said.

Surjewala said Rahul Gandhi asked the same questions that he has been asking from the Prime Minister as to the reason of secrecy behind the Rafale Scam.

"Why did PM Modi bypass the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS)? Why was Rs 41,000 crore loss cause to public exchequer by 300 pc rise in the purchase price of Rafale planes from Rs 526 crore per aircraft to Rs 1670 crore per aircraft?

"Why was India denied the Transfer of Technology' to manufacture Rafale aircrafts? Why was Defence Procurement Procedure violated with impunity?," he asked.

The Congress leader said "the country feels sorry for the Law Minister, because instead of talking on the issue at hand, he was busy deflecting public attention by joining imaginary issues".

"If the Modi government really wishes to adhere to established standards of transparency and propriety, we demand that it immediately set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the Rafale scam," he said.

Surjewala underlined that commercial price of defence deals including the French MIRAGE aircraft and Sukhoi aircraft were revealed on the floor of Parliament by Congress-led governments and said, "the people of India are looking for answers".
Supporters hold up cut-outs of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party symbol with images of M.K. Stalin, son and heir-apparent of M. Karunanidhi, chief of DMK during a rally ahead of a general election in the southern Indian city of Chennai April 6, 2014. India, the world's largest democracy, will hold its general election in nine stages staggered between April 7 and May 12. REUTERS/Babu (INDIA - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS) - RTR3K57Q

M Karunanidhi's elder son MK Alagiri has told CNN News18 that "all is not well within" the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), hours after he openly revolted against party working president and younger brother MK Stalin.

Speaking to the television channel, Alagiri said that he is the "correct person" to lead the party.

When asked if his rebellion will cause a split in the DMK, Alagiri said, "How can I split DMK when I am not part of the party?"

Taking a jibe at Stalin, Alagiri said "Stalin may be the working president, but he is not working." He also expressed his unhappiness over the current functioning of the DMK.

Supposedly referring to the RK Nagar bypoll loss, Alagiri said, "It has come to a condition that DMK is losing its Chennai seat, not happy with the way party is being run."

DMK sources had earlier told the news channel that Alagiri was "acting out of frustration" and that he was desperately trying to get back into the party.

The sources said that Alagiri is not a threat to the party and that the open revolt will not have any effect on Tuesday's party reshuffle meeting. They claimed that he tried contacting Stalin through some family members.

Stalin has reportedly declared that the question of inducting Alagiri back into the party does not arise.

On Monday, Alagiri challenged younger brother Stalin to stake claim for the party's leadership, less than a week after the demise of their father and DMK patriarch Karunanidhi.

Speaking to the media at his father's burial site on Marina Beach in Chennai, Alagiri had said that he was "pained" by what has been transpiring after his fathers death.

"All the real supporters are with me. Only time will give a befitting reply," he said.

Alagiri's comments come a day ahead of the party's urgent Executive Committee meeting.

Reports suggest that the meeting will stick to condoling Karunanidhi's death, and that the coronation of Stalin as party president will happen only at the general council meeting, which will probably be held in September.

Alagiri, was once considered a party strongman, especially in the Madurai region.

In 2009, he won the Lok Sabha elections from Madurai and was given the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers in the Manmohan Singh government.

Eventually, he was side-lined from the party and Stalin was announced as Karunanidhi's political heir. Alagiri was expelled from the party in 2014.
Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today said the "no-show" London rally by Sikhs for Justice (SJF) for a separate state has exposed the "total lack of ground support" for the 'Referendum 2020' even outside India.

Singh also dismissed the entire affair as a "futile exercise" by a "sham" organisation to create trouble in India, particularly Punjab.

"The SJF is just a group of fringe elements that is playing into the hands of Pakistan's ISI to divide India, but they have failed, and will continue to fail in their nefarious designs," the chief minister said in a statement here.

"The presence of Pakistani politicians at the rally confirms that it was out and out an ISI plot, which fell through, just as their attempts to create trouble in India have been failing all these years", he said.

Reacting to the UK rally, the chief minister said it turned out to be a "damp squib" participated by a handful of elements. He, however, felt the UK government should have put its foot down and not allowed its soil to be used to propagate anti-India campaign.

Further castigating the UK government, Singh said that by allowing the protestors to use Trafalgar Square, instead of the usual Hyde Park generally used for such purposes, it had shown its total complacency in the issue.

The entire referendum business is nothing but a "money making racket" of the SFJ, with no takers for the so called campaign either in India, or even outside, as is evident from the poor show at the rally," Singh added.

He said that there was virtually "nil local support" for the rally and whatever little support they had managed to garner was of "similar fringe elements" from other countries.

"The presence of Pakistani leaders, including Nazir Ahmed who openly spoke of dividing India and splitting Kashmir, Punjab and Nagaland from it, made it clear that the rally was a game plan of the ISI - a fact further endorsed by the presence of separatist Kashmiris living in UK," Singh added.

Citing ground reports, the chief minister claimed that some of those Kashmiris were forced to wear turbans to make them look like Sikhs. And a handful of Sikhs around had evidently been forced to come, Sing said.

Describing the SFJ fringe elements as mere "social media tigers", who are trying to create hype even when they have no support, both in India and abroad, Singh said the Sikhs were a patriotic community who have always stood for the unity and integrity of the country.

As many as 90,000 Sikhs are serving in the Indian Army, defending the country's borders, he pointed out, adding that the SFJ could "never succeed in misleading the community" into falling for their "selfish" designs.

Singh warned the SFJ and all such "anti-India" forces to stay out of the country and refrain from any attempt to foment trouble in Punjab, or any other part of India.

Their efforts will backfire on them, he said, adding that his government would deal with such elements with an "iron hand". Nobody would be allowed to disturb the peace and the communal harmony in the state, he said.

Pro-Khalistani supporters yesterday assembled at Trafalgar Square in London in a rally organized by the SFJ, intended to raise awareness for a non-binding referendum in 2020, calling for the Sikh majority state of Punjab to be granted "independence".
Bollywood actor Aamir Khan on August 12 dismissed the possibility of joining politics.

He said people like him who are working in the creative fields have a major responsibility towards nation building and making the "social fabric" strong.

Khan was addressing a press conference after attending an event organised by his 'Paani Foundation' to declare the 'Watercup' awards.

Political leaders cutting across the party lines attended the award distribution ceremony held in Pune in Maharashtra.

Paani Foundation is a not-for-profit company set up in 2016 by the team of the TV series Satyamev Jayate to fight drought in rural Maharashtra.

It was founded by Aamir Khan and his wife Kiran Rao.

Paani Foundation conducts a competition called the 'Satyamev Jayate Water Cup', in which villages compete to win prizes for the best watershed management work.

Responding to a query on whether he would enter politics if he is offered a Rajya Sabha berth for his social work, the "Dangal" star replied, "We are currently doing a lot of work and I think to do that work, there is no need to enter into politics.

"I am working in the creative field and people in this field have a major responsibility towards nation building and making the social fabric of the society strong," he said.

About expanding the scope of the watershed movement, Khan said instead of going larger, the foundation will try go deeper.

"Currently, 75 tehsils have been covered under the watershed movement. We would like to go deeper rather going larger," he said.

The actor said they would now focus on areas like the soil health, grass land, crop planning and tree plantation.

"We would conduct parallel competition for the villages where the watershed movement has already been done and we will give them training on the soil health, crop planning, tree plantation and grass land," he said.

Khan said Paani Foundation has plans to go to urban areas to work on water harvesting projects.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadanvis, state unit Congress chief Ashok Chavan, Opposition leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, NCP leader Ajit Pawar, state ministers Ram Shinde and Vijay Shivtare attended the award distribution programme.

The first prize of Rs 75 lakh and a trophy for the Water Cup 2018 competition was won by Takewadi (Andhali) village in Satara district.

Bhandwali and Sindkhed villages in Satara and Buldhana districts jointly won the second prize of Rs 50 lakh and a trophy.

The third prize went to Anandwadi and Umtha villages in Beed and Nagpur districts. It carried a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh each and a trophy.
Bangladesh police arrested Riazul Islam as he was walking home from his in-laws' house. At 3:15 am, he was shot dead in a sandy field beside a set of railroad tracks north of Dhaka.

Police say he was killed in a gunfight with other drug dealers, and they recovered 20 kg of marijuana from the site. His parents say the officers extorted money from them and then killed him.

"I knew my son was in police custody. All of a sudden my son was dead. I couldn't believe it. The police took money and they still killed him," said his mother, Rina Begum.

Bangladesh is the newest frontline in state-backed drug crackdowns in Asia, and Islam is one of more than 200 people shot dead by police in Bangladesh since May, when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced the campaign.

Critics say the crackdown reflects Hasina's increasingly authoritarian rule ahead of a general election, due by December. That was also shown in its response to recent student demonstrations over road traffic deaths, including the use of rubber bullets and the arrest of a prominent photographer.

Hasina emphasised that the police and intelligence agencies would now tackle the drug problem in the same tough way they had countered violent extremism in recent years.

Such campaigns can be popular with voters as has been shown by President Rodrigo Duterte's bloody drug war in the Philippines.Hasina's office did not respond to questions about whether the drugs campaign was a populist ploy.

The bodies appeared rapidly after Hasina's pronouncement. And, just like the Philippines, the killings appeared to follow a script: suspectsA died in "gunfights", typically at night, and weapons and drugs were found nearby.

In more than a third of the 211 killings recorded by Dhaka-based human rights group Odhikar since mid-May, the suspects were arrested before they were killed.The police are overseen by Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, who denied the police were executing suspects.

"Our law enforcement people don't kill, they don't execute anyone. It is impossible. If they do so they will be fired at that moment," hesaid

"It is not a lawless country."

After Islam was arrested, according to the police report, officers took the "top terror" of the neighbourhood to the field beside the railroad tracks to draw in and arrest other drug dealers. The other dealers "sensed" the officers' presence and began firing randomly, and "to save life and government property", the officers fired back.

"Roni [Islam] was shot and fell down. He died on the spot," according to the report, which said two officers were wounded.

Islam's autopsy report, by a hospital official, noted that a single bullet entered his head near his left ear and exited near his right. Each of the two officers were treated for small areas of tenderness and swelling on one of their hands, according to records at another hospital.

None of the six witnesses in the police report saw Islam die, they told Reuters.

One of the six, handyman Mohammad Bappy, who lives at the edge of the field where Islam was shot, snapped photos of Islam's dead body. One of the pictures shows blood on the ground beneath Islam's head.

"There was no gun," he said. "If there had been a gunfight we would have heard lots of firing from two sides. That didn't happen."

Kamal Hossain, the officer in charge of the operation, said drug use leads to crime and arrests don't work.

"They come out on bail and they do the same thing, selling and using drugs," he said. "Every drug dealer should be killed. Then drugs can be controlled."

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, US ambassador to Bangladesh and the European Union have all expressed concern about the killings of drug suspects in Bangladesh.

After a government official in the southern city of Teknaf was gunned down by Rapid Action Battalion police in May, the state-funded National Human Rights Commission sent a letter to the ministry in charge of the police to remind it of human rights.

But Hasina pressed on."Drugs destroy a country, a nation and a family," she told parliament in June. "We will continue the drive, no matter who says what."

Most of the killings took place in May, when there were 129 as the campaign began, but then dropped to 38 in June before picking up to 44 in July.

Drugs have long been a concern for the Bangladesh government, which bans consumption of alcohol by Muslims, who make up the vastA majority of the population.

But it's not clear how much drug use has grown or even how many people use drugs. Asked for figures, Bangladesh's narcotics deputy intelligence chief said there were none.

"We have no government statistics or non-government statistics about users," Nazrul Islam Sikder said, adding: "But we guess 7 to 8 million."

Drug seizures data from the Department of Narcotics Control suggests the drug trade has grown, but much of the increase happened three years ago, long before Hasina launched the crackdown. The data shows a dramatic increase in methamphetamine or "yaba" pill seizures beginning in 2015.

No one believes the official accounts of the killings, said Rashid Alam, a 50-year-old manager of a garment factory near the field where Islam was shot, but he is more concerned about the scourge of drugs use for communities.

"We understand he is a drug dealer and the police shot him," he said. "That kind of death is okay. Good job, really."

Critics of Hasina say the crackdown is meant to show voters she is responding to popular concerns and to strike fear in political opponents ahead of the election. According to media reports, some of those killed were activists of the opposition Bangladesh National Party.

For Ashrafuzzaman Zaman, liaison officer of the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission, the politics of the drug crackdown are clear.

"You kill 200 people and you make 150 million afraid: today or tomorrow you can also be one of them. That is the message the government is giving to the people," he said.

Hasina's office did not respond to the allegations from her critics.

But Home Minister Khan denied the campaign was a cover to target opposition politicians, and said no drug offender is treated differently from another.

"His identity is only as a criminal," he said. "Even if he has a link with the ruling party, he will not be spared."
The two Koreas opened high-level talks today to prepare for a third summit between the South's President Moon Jae-in and the North's leader Kim Jong Un, amid the diplomatic thaw on the peninsula.

The exact date and location of their next meeting have yet to be decided, but at their historic April summit in Panmunjom they agreed Moon would visit Kim in Pyongyang during the autumn.

Today's high-level talks, taking place on the northern side of the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone, were proposed by the North last week as it lashed out at Washington for pushing ahead with sanctions.

"We will review overall progress on carrying out the Panmunjom Declaration and discuss next steps," Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, who is leading the South's delegation, told reporters ahead of the meeting.

"Views will be exchanged as well with regard to the autumn summit meeting agreed upon in the declaration," he added.

The two Koreas have informally agreed the summit will take place in Pyongyang late this month or at the beginning of September, Yonhap News Agency reported Monday, without citing a source.

Cho addressed the possibility of Pyongyang raising the issue of sanctions to the South, and said: "We will explain our position to the North." The rapid rapprochement between the two neighbours that began this year paved the way for a landmark meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.

Cross-border exchanges between the two Koreas have significantly increased since then, with the neighbours planning to hold reunions for war-separated families next week for the first time in three years.

But even as ties have improved, little progress has been made on the key issue of the North's denuclearisation.

Although Trump touted his summit with Kim as a historic breakthrough, the nuclear-armed North has since criticised Washington for its "gangster-like" demands of complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.

Meanwhile the US has urged the international community to maintain tough sanctions on the isolated regime.

Analysts say Moon could try to act as a mediator between the US and North Korea, having salvaged the Singapore meeting when Trump abruptly cancelled it.

If the third Moon-Kim summit takes place, the two are also expected to focus on hammering out a consensus on officially ending the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded with an armistice instead of a peace treaty.
Piyush Goyal, Minister of Railways

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on August 12 formally handed over 71.25 acres of land of the Digha-Patna rail line to the Bihar government at a function here. The Bihar Cabinet had on June 26 given its nod for transfer of the land to the state's Road Construction Department on payment of Rs 222.19 crore for construction of a four-lane road in Patna.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and a host of Union ministers, including R K Singh, Giriraj Singh, Ashwini Choubey and Ram Kripal Yadav, were present on the occasion.

Goyal also dedicated the Biraul-Harnagar new rail line and gauge conversion of the Raxaul-Narkatiyaganj line to the public, besides laying foundation stone for a rail line between Supaul and Araria and inaugurating expansion of passenger trains on the Sakri-Biraul section.

The minister completed the formalities through video-conferencing.

Meanwhile, Goyal announced that 50 per cent of 10,000 posts to be filled in the Railway Police Force (RPF), will be reserved for women.

CCTVs will be installed at 6,000 railway stations and in major trains, he said, adding that a mega rail bridge over the Kosi river will be completed in the next 10 months.

The foundation stone for the bridge was laid by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2003.
US_China_Trade_Trade war_Tariff

Chinese officials have been mostly measured and moderate in their response to US President Donald Trump's ratcheting up of a trade war with Beijing in recent weeks through his announcement of a series of punitive tariffs.

They have generally avoided adding to tensions, allowing the Communist Party's official media to make the most bellicose comments. But the mood on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai is a little less accepting.

50 people spoke, mainly from the two cities, about how concerned they are about the trade war, what they think Beijing's response would be, and whether they think Chinese people should boycott American products in retaliation.

The interviews showed there is no palpable sense of crisis or panic yet. There is division and confusion over how China should respond to Trump, with some arguing that Beijing should strike back at American interests but others saying they didn't know what could be done.

But perhaps most worrying for American businesses selling in China, a significant minority of the people interviewed 14 or 28 percent want to stop buying American products now, and some say they are already boycotting anything made in the US. Others said they would continue to buy American but that could change in the future.

If that was representative of the whole of China and words were turned into action it might start to put a dent in sales of Apple's iPhones, Disney's movies, Starbucks' drinks and General Motors' cars, among other American products and that's without any boycott being organised by the government or activists.

A decade after China basked in the patriotic glory of an inspirational opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics, nationalist sentiment is rarely far below the surface.

The straw poll's sample is very small and clearly not scientific. The interviews were also conducted in a country where people are often guarded and may well not let foreign media know their real views. Any individual's comments deemed inappropriate criticism of Xi would fall into this category could lead to trouble with the authorities. But the views expressed in the 50 interviews are more than the basis for idle curiosity.

Here are the results of the straw poll:

-Asked whether they were worried about the trade war, only 11 of the 50 (22 percent) said they were, and 39 (or 78 percent) said they weren't concerned.

-Asked what Beijing should do in response to Trump's punitive tariffs, 19 (or 38 percent) said that it should strike back hard. The rest came up with various responses, including a refocus on development of the domestic economy, building other export markets, while 8 (or 16 percent) said they had no idea what the government should do.

-Asked whether they would stop buying US products, 14 said they would, 31 said they wouldn't (some indicated their views could change if the trade war intensifies), and five didn't have a view.

Here are some of the comments from those interviewed:

"Of course I'm concerned. It's a clash between the largest and second-largest economy," said Shanghai stockbroker Cai Qing, 40. "None of the relevant parties were fully prepared for the trade war. Policies were rushed, including US policies," he added. "To put it bluntly, Americans have always been so arrogant they make everyone their manufacturer so they can reap the economic fruit," said Qu Xinjun, who works in the steel industry in Shanghai.

"Trump is waging a psychological war with China. He was trying to intimidate China. From a psychological standpoint, we should not worry about the trade war, but rather focus on domestic development," he said.

"We should trust our country and the leadership and trust that we can win the war." "China has to hit back, which could show its great power status. China has to win this match," said Beijing interior decorator Zhang Shiyou, 56. China has other markets it can look to, and President Xi Jinping's landmark proposal to build a new Silk Road, called the Belt and Road initiative, he said.

"We Chinese should not buy Apple phones. Like the saying 'Buy the nation's products, love China', buying domestic products will boost our own industries." "A lot of American goods are actually made in China," said Wei Shaochuan, 26, the founder of a tech start-up in China's central Henan province, was interviewed on WeChat.

"But if, after a period of time, the trade war really incites a sense of hatred against the United States, then I will not watch American movies, not listen to American music, not recommend Disney to friends, and start writing social media posts saying that Americans are not good, in order to counter American cultural products," he said.

"I'm a strong supporter of Chinese products. I'm a firm opponent of any American product, especially after reading the news," said Zhao Guoxin, 61, a store owner in Beijing.

"The other day I went to this American shop and I told them I won't buy one single thing, and I made them very awkward. To be honest I do think America is pretty obnoxious," he said.

"To be honest, importing from the US isn't our sole route," said Wang Yangqing, a Beijing nurse who said she was in her 20s.

"We could also import from European countries. For girls, we use some American skin care products. If tariffs keep rising, I may shift to products from other places such as Japan or Korea." "China should strike back properly," said Xu Dong, 25, a student in Beijing.

"But I won't stop buying their products. Some enterprises like Apple in fact bring in tax revenues and employment. It's a brand that is doing good to China," he said,

"For me it [the trade war] is great!" said Zhu Tao, 34, a ship catering manager in Beijing. "That's because I receive my salary in US dollars and since the US China trade war started the US dollar has kept increasing in value compared to the yuan. So I think it has really helped me. It's great!"
(Representat

Chinese telecom service provider, China Unicom today launched a "5G NEXT" plan as part of its effort to set up a faster wireless 5G networks in the Chinese capital in the near future.

China Unicom's Beijing subsidiary will pilot the commercialisation of 5G technology and test the 5G networks in the capital in 2018, according to China Unicom's vice general manager Wang Chuanbao.

With an aim to build an "open, sharing, prosperous, and win-win" 5G ecological system, the subsidiary will build 300 5G base stations this year in Beijing, one of the 16 pilot cities previously announced, he was quoted as saying by the state run Xinhua news agency.

Other cities to pilot 5G technology include Tianjin, Qingdao, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, Guiyang, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Fuzhou, Zhengzhou, and Shenyang.

Beijing will apply the 5G technology in major projects and events in the next five years, such as those in Tongzhou District, Beijing's subsidiary administrative centre, the capital's new international airport, the International Horticultural Exhibition 2019, and Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, Jiang Guangzhi, an inspector from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology was quoted as saying in the report.

The Beijing branch also said that they will work with companies to deploy 5G technology in the fields of self-driving, logistics, and unmanned aerial vehicles, it said.
Russia typically brushes off new US sanctions. Not this time. The Trump administration announcement of export restrictions in response to accusations Moscow used a nerve agent to poison a former Russian spy in Britain sent the ruble tumbling to a two-year low and drew a stern warning from its prime minister.

While the initial sanctions may have a limited impact, a second batch expected within months could hit the Russian economy much harder and send already tense relations into a tailspin.

If sanctions are expanded even further to target Russia's top state-controlled banks, freezing their dollar transactions as proposed under legislation introduced in the Senate this month it would amount to a "declaration of economic war," Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Friday. So much for President Donald Trump's hopes for better relations with Moscow.

On his watch, the US has imposed a slew of sanctions on Russia for human rights abuses, meddling in the US election and Russian military aggression in Ukraine and Syria. For the most part, they have punished Russian officials and associates of President Vladimir Putin rather than targeting broad economic sectors. In 2014, both the US and European Union introduced sanctions that restricted Russia's access to global financial markets and to equipment for new energy projects.

Those measures were punishing, but the sanctions announced by the Trump administration this past week could be even worse. The restrictions were triggered under US law on chemical weapons following a formal US determination that Russia used the Novichok nerve agent to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury in March.

The first tranche, due to take effect Aug. 22, will deny export licenses to Russia for the purchase of many items with national security implications. Existing sanctions already prohibit the export of most military and security-related items, but now the ban will be extended to goods such as gas turbine engines, electronics and calibration equipment that were previously allowed on a case-by-case basis.

The State Department said it could potentially affect hundreds of millions of dollars in trade. "It's a significant step, but not an overwhelming one," said Daniel Fried, a veteran State Department official who served as chief US coordinator for sanctions policy until he retired last year. The penny could drop, though, in three months' time. Russia has 90 days to "provide assurances" that it will not use chemical weapons in the future and allow inspections.

If Russia does not comply, Trump will be obligated to impose a second set of sanctions, applying restrictions on at least three from a menu of options: opposing multilateral bank assistance to Russia, broad restrictions on exports and imports, downgrading diplomatic relations, prohibiting air carrier landing rights and barring US banks from making loans to the Russian government.

That could do significantly more economic harm and have a lasting, destabilizing effect on the currency and stock markets. Senior Russian lawmaker Vyacheslav Nikonov said a second set of sanctions may be inevitable and predicted it would pitch relations to new low.

The relationship is already routinely described as at its worst since the Cold War. "They are demanding that Russia (accepts) an obligation to refrain from any further use of chemical and bacteriological weapons, which amounts to our acknowledgement that we have used it. But we haven't," he said.

Things could get even worse if the Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act, which a bipartisan group of senators introduced Aug. 2, makes its way through Congress. It would target Russia's state-controlled banks and freeze their operations in dollars, which would deal a heavy blow to the Russian economy. The prospects for the legislation becoming law remain uncertain.

Medvedev warned the US that such a move would cross a red line and would warrant a Russian response by economic, political or "other means" he did not specify. His tough tone was a departure from past nonchalance from Putin and his lieutenants over the impact of Western sanctions on the Russian economy.

Vladimir Vasilyev, a researcher with the Institute of the US and Canada, a government-funded Moscow think tank, said US-Russian ties were now approaching "the point of no return with no prospect for improvement" in sight. Fried said that in addition to uncertainty over sanctions, Moscow's strong response this time is likely also being fueled by larger inconsistencies in US policy toward Russia.

While Trump has hankered for closer ties with Putin, the government he leads has been far less accommodating. "Whatever deal the Russians had or thought they had or thought they could get from President Donald Trump, they're not able to get it from Trump's administration," Fried said.

The State Department denied inconsistency in US policy and maintained that sanctions were aimed at encouraging improved behavior from Russia. "We'd like to have a better relationship with the Russian government, recognizing that we have a lot of areas of mutual concern," spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

Congress has a less diplomatic view. Trump has repeatedly come under fire from lawmakers, including from his own Republican Party, for his conciliatory statements on Russia, particularly at his joint press conference with Putin at their summit in Helsinki last month where he appeared to doubt US intelligence conclusions that Russia intervened in the 2016 election.

Rep. Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was among lawmakers who welcomed the US sanctions announced this week. "It's critical that we use every tool at our disposal to confront Putin's use of chemical weapons, as well as his efforts to undermine our democracy," the Republican from California said.
A view of the Red Fort during the full dress rehearsal of the 72nd Independence Day function in New Delhi. (Image: PTI)

Russian President Vladimir Putin (2nd right), Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, (center), Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, right, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, left, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani pose for a picture during the 5th Caspian summit at the Friendship Palace in Aktau. (Image: PTI)

An anti-fascist counter-protester gestures toward police officers guarding the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. (Image: Reuters)

A motorcyclist rides across a waterlogged road during rainfall, in Bhubaneswar. (Image: PTI)

A meteor streaks past stars and clouds in the night sky during the Perseids meteor shower in Berducedo, Spain. (Image: Reuters)

Migrants are seen on board a fiberglass boat in the Mediterranean Sea, off the Libyan Coast. (Image: Reuters)

A worker scoops red chilli peppers at a chilli processing plant in Zunyi, Guizhou province, China. (Image: Reuters)

A boy holds a placard as he demonstrates outside the offices of the United Nations in Sanaa, Yemen to denounce last week's air strike that killed dozens including children in the northwestern province of Saada. (Image: Reuters)

Jordanian soldiers and relatives of Sergeant Hisham al-Agarbeh, who was killed during an attack in the predominantly Christian town of Fuheis on August 12, lower his body into the ground during his funeral in Zarqa. The clash was among the deadliest between suspected militants and Jordanian security forces in recent years. (Image: PTI)
Source: pixabay

Days before India celebrates its Independence Day, a small Sikh organisation called Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) held a Referendum 2020 rally at Londons Trafalgar Square. However, it failed to achieve the desired outcome.

The event saw minimal participation from people, with only a handful curious citizens coming out to hear the pro-Khalistani elements, reports suggested.

The organisations motive behind this rally was to ultimately make way for an actual referendum in India, to push for an independent Punjab state.

The event was organised by a New York-based lawyer, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who is known to be a close associate of many Sikh extremists like Jagtar Singh Tara of the Khalistan Tiger Force.

There have been speculations over Pakistans involvement in the rally, which became "official" when British-Pakistani Lord Nazir Ahmed spoke at the event. Ahmed was a member of the Labour Party, but was thrown out for indiscipline. He has been outspoken about his stand on "getting Punjab independence from India", and calls himself a sympathiser of Kashmiris and Sikhs.

The rally didnt even find support from Sikh separatists residing in London, like Dal Khalsa. Jaswant Singh Thekedar, chief of Dal Khalsa, condemned Ahmeds support to the issue.

People like Lord Nazir say they support the cause of Khalistan and Kashmir. Who has given him the right to talk about Khalistan? They have misled people about the entire issue, he added.

Meanwhile, many Indians gathered in Trafalgar Square and sang patriotic songs in retaliation to what was widely seen as a Pakistan-backed event.

Pannun got political asylum in the UK and is wanted on terror charges in India. Many organisers of the rally have been linked to Pakistani intelligence agencies.

Thekedar called Pannun a Pakistani stooge. No religious Sikh leader has participated in the event. Pannun has used this issue for publicity and has also spent a lot of money on it. They hired TV and radio stations. We believe Pakistan has spent all its money on this. These Sikhs are enjoying Pakistans patronage and we do not support this cause.

A community leader of a Southall gurudwara was quoted as saying in a report, It is very clear that the funding of this event is coming from Pakistan. These agencies are stoking anger among Sikhs against the Indian government over the events in 1984 in the hope that it will break India one day.

SFJs vision for Referendum 2020

According to SFJ, India is currently occupying Punjab and Referendum 2020 will help liberate the state. Their website admits that this is not an official referendum, and the outcome is not legally binding on India.

To boost participation at their event, SFJ had promised assistance in visa processing to those willing to travel to London from Pakistan and Afghanistan, for the rally. They were also promised accommodation at a hotel in Southall for three days.

The rally found some supporters on social media, banking on similar separatist emotions from different parts of Europe. Catalonias demand for secession from Spain was taken as an example to draw parallels to the demand for Khalistan.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attend a welcome ceremony in Panmunjom, South Korea. (Reuters)

North and South Korea agreed on Monday to hold a summit in the North in September, another step towards boosting cooperation between the old rivals, even as doubts grow over efforts to end the North's nuclear weapons programme.

Officials from both sides meeting in the truce village of Panmunjom, in the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas, reached an agreement on a September summit between the countries leaders in the North's capital of Pyongyang.

No date was announced for what will be the third meeting this year between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

They first met in April in Panmunjom, a remarkable thaw in ties after more than a year of rising tension and fears of war over the North's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

There they agreed that Moon would visit the North's capital in the autumn, though the pair met again in May in an unannounced meeting at Panmunjom.

No details on an agenda for next month's talks was announced, but the two Koreas have been discussing a range of issues, from a possible peace declaration to joint economic and infrastructure projects.

The progress between the two Koreas comes as North Korea and the United States are struggling to agree on how to bring about the North's denuclearisation, after Kim vowed to work toward that goal at a landmark summit in June in Singapore with US President Donald Trump.

US officials have said that North Korea had yet to agree to a timeline for eliminating its nuclear arsenal or to disclose its size, which U.S. estimates have put at between 30 and 60 warheads.

After Monday's talks, Ri Son Gwon, the chairman of a North Korean committee aiming for the "peaceful reunification" of the peninsula, told reporters it was important to clear "obstacles" preventing inter-Korean relations from moving forwards.

"If the issues that were raised at the talks aren't resolved, unexpected problems could emerge and the issues that are already on the schedule may face difficulties," Ri said, without giving details.

PROBLEMS

One issue that has angered North Korea recently has been the case of a dozen North Korean restaurant workers who came to the South in 2016 via China.

The North says they were abducted by the South and should be returned, and has raised the possibility of the issue creating an obstacle to the reunion of some families divided by the 1950-53 Korean War, planned for next week.

South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, who represented his country at the talks, declined to say if North Korea had raised the restaurant workers on Monday, merely saying it had not raised new issues.

"There were mentions that if there are problems to be resolved by both sides, on humanitarian issues or for the development of inter-Korean relations, we should do it," the minister told reporters.

Cho also said the two sides had exchanged views on the North's denuclearisation and on a peace mechanism to replace the armistice that ended fighting during the Korean War.

Moon and Kim agreed during their first summit to push for a declaration of an end to the Korean War together with the United States this year, but Washington has said it would only be possible after the North abandons its nuclear programme.

Last month, the North's state media criticised the South accusing it of only caring only about the views of the United States and failing to take practical steps to advance inter Korean relations.

South Korea hopes to restart efforts on a cross peninsula railway but has been cautious about major projects due to international sanctions chiefly engineered by Washington over the North's nuclear and missile programmes.

The North has urged the United States to end the sanctions, saying it had made goodwill gestures, including a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests, the dismantling of a nuclear site, and the return of the remains of some US soldiers killed in the Korean War.

Ri said the two sides had agreed on a date for the summit, but he declined to elaborate

Kim Eui-kyeom, a spokesman of South Korea's presidential office, said it would be difficult for the summit to happen before the September 9 anniversary of North Korea's founding, a major holiday there.
Incet, dar sigur, preferintele romanilor se orienteaza spre produse naturale, incercand astfel sa evite conservele de fabrica pline de chimicale. In ultimii ani, gospodinele au inceput sa-si pregateasca singure, in casa, dulceturi, muraturi, zacusca si alte bunatati. Ba mai mult de atat, nici legumele si fructele din supermarket nu mai au aceeasi trecere la cumparaturi. Dar un alt criteriu pentru cumparatori este si pretul. Si de unde sa cumperi legume si fructe ieftine si bune, daca nu de la piata?

Una dintre pietele din Galati in care cumparatorii gasesc tot ce doresc la un pret foarte bun este Piata din Micro 39. Cu cativa ani in urma, halele care adaposesc micii comercianti au fost modernizate, fiind dotate cu camere de refrigerare, dar au fost create si spatii speciale de desfacere a branzeturilor si carnii. Producatorii se intrec in a-si etala produsele crescute cu truda, insa gustul si aroma legumelor si fructelor crescute in gradina, nu se compara cu nimic altceva.

Oferta Pietei din Micro 39 este variata, caci se intinde pe 136 de tarabe, la care se mai adauga inca 46 de standuri pentru vanzarea produselor agroalimentare. Producatorii agricoli ocupa 58 de tarabe, fara a mai pune la socoteala si spatiile special amenajate pe perioada verii pentru vanzarea pepenilor. Si pentru ca sunt multi comercianti, concurenta se reflecta in preturi, Piata din Micro 39 fiind fruntasa in topul preturilor mici.

Galatenilor nu le ramane decat sa vina aici, amintindu-si ca produsele autohtone sunt cele mai gustoase si mai sanatoase.
OMV Petrom estimeaza investitii de 3,7 miliarde de lei pentru intregul an 2018, 75% urmand sa mearga catre segmentul de exploatare si productie Upstream, in conditiile in care, dupa primele sase luni compania a raportat investitii de 2,1 miliarde de lei, in crestere cu 130% comparativ cu perioada similara a anului trecut, potrivit rezultatelor consolidate ale grupului, neauditate, publicate recent, informeaza Agerpres.

Avansul investitiilor este explicat in special prin cresterea nivelului de foraj sonde de dezvoltare si explorare si lucrari intensificate in proiecte de infrastructura in segmentul Upstream.

Investitiile din Upstream in perioada ianuarie - iunie 2018 au fost de 1,44 miliarde de lei, comparativ cu 797 milioane de lei in perioada similara a anului trecut. Pentru intregul an, compania estimeaza investitii de aproximativ 2,8 miliarde de lei pe acest segment, care includ mai mult de 100 de sonde noi si sidetrack-uri, aproximativ 1.000 de reparatii capitale si proiectul Neptun Deep.

"Ne propunem sa luam o decizie finala (cu privire la Neptun Deep, n.r.) de investitie in 2018, aceasta depinzand de regimul fiscal, liberalizarea pietei gazelor si dezvoltarea infrastructurii de gaze naturale", se precizeaza in documentul companiei.

De asemenea, compania urmeaza sa vanda 50 - 60 de zacaminte pentru a se concentra pe barilii cei mai profitabili.

In segmentul Downstream Oil cresterea investitiilor a fost legata de revizia generala a rafinariei Petrobrazi si de proiectul de crestere Policombustibili. Investitiile din Downstream s-au cifrat la 661 milioane de lei, fata de 115 milioane de lei in perioada similara a anului trecut, din care 635 milioane de lei in Downstream Oil (105 milioane de lei in S1 din 2017).

Investitiile din segmentul Corporativ si Altele au fost zero, fata de un milion de lei anul trecut in primele sase luni.

Productia de hidrocarburi la nivel de Grup realizata in prima jumatate a acestui an a fost de 29,18 milioane bep (barili echivalent petrol, n.r.). In Romania, productia totala de titei si gaze a fost de 27,90 milioane bep, cu 5% mai mica comparativ cu 29,39 milioane bep in S2 2017. Productia de titei si condensat a fost de 12,20 milioane bep, cu 3% mai mica decat primele sase luni din 2017, in principal din cauza declinului natural. Productia de gaze naturale in Romania a scazut cu 7%, la 15,70 milioane bep, din cauza declinului natural in principalele zacaminte (Totea Deep si Lebada Est), a impactului nerecurent din lucrari si inlocuirea echipamentelor din zona Totea - Hurezani, precum si a lucrarilor de mentenanta.

Productia de titei si gaze in Kazahstan a scazut cu 4%, la 1,28 milioane bep.

Conform ultimului exercitiu de evaluare a riscurilor desfasurat de catre Grupul OMV Petrom in februarie 2018, principalele incertitudini care pot influenta rezultatele societatii ramin cele legate de riscul de pret al marfurilor tranzactionabile, riscurile operationale, precum si riscul politic si de reglementare.

"In privinta riscului de reglementare, Societatea se afla in dialog cu autoritatile romane pe subiecte relevante pentru industrie. In ultimele luni am observat o serie de initiative fiscale si de reglementare discutate si/sau implementate. Acest lucru sporeste volatilitatea legislativa si influenteaza intreg mediul de afaceri", precizeaza compania.
I would say that theres definitely a direct correlation with the default rates in larger metropolitan areas and fraud. If were seeing lower default rates in Toronto and Vancouver, its pretty safe to assume the majority of people who are attaining mortgage insurance are able to meet those obligations.

However, in a report, CMHC determined prospective homebuyers inflate their reported incomes far more often than they do with the CRA. But the report could not deduce how much fraudulent statements affect mortgage default rates.

Moreover, CMHC believes notice of assessments copieswhich can be printed from the CRAs websitecan be easily falsified. While calling employers is perhaps the most accurate way of determining an applicants true income, NOAs are more popular and an accepted federal underwriting guideline.

Martin notes that discontinuing its use isnt so simple.

The fact that the NOA can be falsified is true, and securely sharing the income between the CRA and lenders would be a clear benefit in that its in line with global standards and best practices, she said. However, this will not solve the overstating of income issue, in terms of stated income programs existing. Theyre using NOAs and T1s plus accounting statements and business contracts, and then the declaration. These stated income programs need to exist because over one in six people are self-employed.
mortgage-related affidavits were executed by CitiFinancial employees making assertions regarding the ownership of the mortgage note (Lost Note Affidavits) in which the affiant represented that the assertions in the affidavit were based on personal knowledge or based on a review by the affiant of the relevant books and records, when, in certain cases, the signer was not in a position to have personal knowledge or review the relevant books and records; and (b) Lost Note Affidavits were not properly notarized as they were not signed or affirmed in the presence of a notary.

The improper execution of certain documents was corrected. CitiFinancial exited the mortgage servicing business in 2017.

The Board has also announced the termination of an enforcement action from 2011 against Citigroup and CitiFinancial related to residential mortgage loan servicing. The termination of this action was based on evidence of sustainable improvements.

At time of writing, Citigroup has not made any comment relating to the Federal Reserve Boards action.
A Massachusetts real estate broker has been sentenced to three years in prison for her role in a fraudulent short-sale conspiracy that defrauded banks and mortgage companies, the US Attorneys Office for the District of Massachusetts announced.

In addition to the prison term, Greisy Jimenez was also sentenced by US Senior District Court Judge Mark Wolf to four years of supervised release and ordered to pay a fine of $12,500. The sentence follows Jimenez plea of guilty in January to two counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

The court will determine issues of restitution and forfeiture later in August.
Redfin has announced that it is expanding its investment in its Redfin Now service to transform the experiment into a long-term business.

Through Redfin Now, the company buys homes directly, allowing sellers to get an offer for their home in 48 Hours and cash in as soon as seven days. Since its launch, the service has been operating in the Inland Empire region of Southern California and San Diego.

Redfin has also launched the service in its third market of Orange County. Additionally, Redfin Now is set to launch in two additional markets by the end of the year and a few more in 2019.
Late Friday a video from the Houston Humane Society went viral, showing an Australian shepherd and border collie mix male named Hunter in the hours after his previous owners surrendered him.

In the video Hunter can be seen nuzzling one of the volunteers at the shelter and within hours the video was viewed more than 40,000 times and shared thousands of times across various social media platforms.

HOUSTON PUPS: Houstonians have a preferred dog breed, according to the American Kennel Club

The 6-year-old dog apparently hadn't been adapting well with his owners' new canine additions to the home and they gave him to the Houston Humane Society.

"His original family said he's not good with young children or small dogs, although he seems more scared of them than mean," Monica Schmidt with the Houston Humane Society said Sunday. "He seems to enjoy going for walks once he really gets to know and trust a volunteer, and he's pretty good on a leash."

INSTADOGS: Wanna turn your dog into an Instagram star? Read this story...

Over the course of the weekend the shelter received numerous inquiries about Hunter and many prospective owners have filled out applications to give him a new home. He spent most of the past weekend being checked out by staff and getting the occasional visitor interested in bringing him home.

Hunter is also heart worm positive but with proper treatment and care that can be fixed.

On Sunday afternoon Chron.com went to the shelter to visit Hunter and get a look at him as he was meeting with one of those prospective masters.

"He's definitely people-oriented, as you saw yesterday and he loves hugs and attention," Schmidt added.

Craig Hlavaty covers Houston history and pop-culture. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com. | craig.hlavaty@chron.com
During a Saturday afternoon cookout at Mount Moriah Disciples of Christ Church, Seth Herman, interim police chief, told the Reporter-Telegram that he submitted his application Thursday night for the job of Midlands chief of police.

It was fitting that Herman, who seeks to improve community-police relations, made his announcement sitting in a plastic folding chair under a tent with the sounds of children playing and the smell of barbecue in the air, rather than from an office or while reading a prepared statement at a press conference.

Herman said jokingly that one of the hardest parts of applying for the job was remembering the exact dates he started working in different areas of the department.

There are many dates to remember after more than 20 years of service with the Midland Police Department. His areas of experience include patrol, canine unit, narcotics, gang unit, SWAT, and most recently, tackling the administrative side of the department as interim chief of police.

Even with all of his experience, Herman is not the type to brag about his own accomplishments.

When asked directly about his qualifications for the job of leading Midlands 170-plus-member police force, he said, I believe that my capabilities have been established throughout my career.

Herman then spoke about his allegiance to the community and the importance of choosing a chief with interest in the citys residents.

I didnt start my career wanting to be chief of police; I just wanted to be a good cop, he said. I believe citizens want someone who believes in this community and who has spent his entire career protecting it.

Herman said his goals are to improve the capability of the department to protect residents and to promote the police department to the community.

Youre not going to find another candidate as devoted to this community and department. Herman said. My kids go to school here, our friends and loved ones are here. I have a vested interest in this community.

The event, dubbed Cops, Kids and Barbecue, included a school-supply giveaway and activities for children. But it also offered the opportunity for members of the Midland Police Department to interact with residents. About 10 officers were in attendance.

Dennis Hodge, pastor of Mount Moriah, presented Herman with an award for his service to the community.

We dont need a search committee, said Hodge, recalling the method used to locate the previous chief of police. The best is right here.
FORT DRUM  President Donald J. Trump is scheduled to make his first visit to upstate New York since taking office, with a ceremonial bill signing scheduled Monday afternoon at the military reservation that's home to the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division.

The president was invited to the base in March by U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Willsboro Republican, who has represented the district since 2015. Following the bill signing, the president is scheduled to attend a fundraiser in Utica for U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-New Hartford.
The long-awaited news reached Jacksonville around 6 p.m. on Aug. 14, 1945. Japan had surrendered, and the bloodiest and costliest event in history was finally over.

The happy news touched off spontaneous celebrations in Times Square in New York City, Union Square in San Francisco and on many small-town squares in between. And Jacksonvilles square was the setting for a huge victory party.

Victory over Japan was not unexpected. The United States and its allies had delivered Japan an ultimatum to surrender in late July 1945. When this was ignored, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and on Nagasaki on Aug. 9.

The Allies celebrated victory over Japan on Aug. 15, although the Japanese did not officially surrender with a signed document until Sept. 2. Both dates are known as V-J Day.

Spreading the news in Jacksonville that the fighting was over were several boys selling special editions of the Jacksonville Courier, which were sold as fast as the boys could grab a bundle and wade into the crowd that swarmed the downtown business district.

Everybody that sold Couriers on the street had a good chance to sell some papers that night, said Leroy Barton in a 2005 interview. Barton sold Couriers from about 1943 to 1946.

The downtown area was thick with people, he recalled. Some men had rifles and shotguns and were shooting them into the air. Taverns were thick with people. The street sellers didnt stay long in the taverns. We made our way through the crowd in the taverns, sold a lot of papers and got out.

That year, 1945, was a big paper-selling year for us, with [President Franklin D.] Roosevelts death, V-E Day and V-J Day, Barton said. But V-J Day was the biggest event that any of us will ever see in our lifetime.

The celebrants were young and old, and most of them knew someone in the military.

Children and young people, spurred by enthusiasm, formed impromptu parades in their neighborhoods. They marched to the accompaniment of bell-ringing and pan-beating, wrote a Jacksonville Daily Journal reporter for the Aug. 15, 1945, edition.

One of the teenagers who got caught up in the excitement was Keota Stevens Shouse of Jacksonville, who joined her friends in forming one of those impromptu parades.

We were in a snake dance and came down North Main and went to the Illinois Theater and danced across the stage and up and down the aisles while the movie was going, said Shouse, who was 14 years old at the time.

Because we were young, we werent exactly sure what was going on, but we knew it was a happy time, Shouse recalled. I had a stepfather, Bud Burns, who was an Army corpsman, and we knew he would be coming home.

The Jacksonville Daily Journal reported that within half an hour after victory over Japan was announced, cars and pedestrians began a mass movement toward the business district.

In the sea of joyous local residents was Dorothy Cobb Keller of Jacksonville. I remember everyone making lots of noise, flailing their arms, hugging and cheering, Keller said.

There was a large crowd that filled Central Park and all around the square, she said. As I recall, people were standing shoulder to shoulder. I was thrilled to death the war was finally over and the guys in our class [the Routt High School Class of 1947] and other guys I knew wouldnt have to go to war.

Two hours after the celebration began on the Jacksonville square, the American Legion organized a parade, which started on West College Avenue and moved to the square.

Showers of paper filled the air as joyous young people threw it on sidewalks and from moving cars and trucks, the Journal reported. Large American flags made their appearance on the fronts and in the windows of business buildings within a few minutes after news of the enemys surrender was received.

A few blocks west of downtown Jacksonville, 12-year-old Bruce Samoore was at home with his family on Westminster Street when he heard the news.

We were finishing up eating, and there was a special bulletin over the radio, and President [Harry S.] Truman announced that the Japanese had surrendered, Samoore recalled in 2005.

We immediately poured outside. Everyone was cheering. Horace Bancroft came out of his house across the street and got us all together and suggested that we do something to commemorate the event, Samoore said.

One of my friends, I think it was either John Brasel or Phil Reynolds, suggested that we burn effigies of Hitler and Tojo, he recalled. And Mr. Bancroft said we could have the bonfire in the driveway between Westminster [now First] Presbyterian Church and his house.

Everyone scattered to gather old clothes for the effigies and wood for the bonfire, Samoore said. Within half an hour, we had everything piled up and the effigies made so we could prop them up on the fire. Another friend and neighbor, Frank Phillips, had a drum and was beating on it. A lot of adults in the neighborhood were out. After it burned down, Mr. Bancroft suggested we march downtown in a group, which we did.

This Way We Were story was first published Aug. 15, 2005.
A state district judge in Travis County on Monday denied the Texas Republican Partys request for a temporary restraining order that would have blocked the secretary of state from certifying candidates in the Senate District 19 special election runoff.

Judge Tim Sulak made the ruling Monday afternoon, his court operations officer confirmed.

The hearing for the request, aimed at keeping Democrat Pete Gallego off the ballot, came three days after the party sued Gallego over claims that he lives outside District 19. The district covers 17 counties, including parts of Bexar, and extends for about 400 miles along the border.

Gallego, a former U.S. and state representative, finished second in a July 31 special election for the seat, behind Republican Pete Flores, a retired state game warden. Gilbert Garcia reported in a San Antonio Express-News column that Gallegos wife, Maria Elena Ramon, claims a homestead exemption in Austin, which is outside the Senate district.

Soon after the hearing, Gov. Greg Abbott set the runoff election date for Sept. 18, with early voting from Sept. 10 to 14. The race is headed to a runoff because neither candidate received enough votes to win outright.

State law requires that candidates live continuously in the district in which theyre running for at least six months before the filing deadline.

Christian Archer, Gallegos campaign manager, said the lawsuit had no merit from the very beginning.

We knew it. They knew it, Archer said. As soon as there was an action taken by the judge, who immediately threw out the lawsuit, the governor called the election date.

Joe Nixon, the attorney representing the Republican Party, said in a statement the party was glad that this issue can have a full hearing soon.

Today Pete Gallegos attorney told a court that Gallego is living in and has lived in Alpine, Nixon said. But over the past few years, Gallego has signed mortgage documents representing to banks that he lives in and intends to continue to live in a home in Travis County.

Photos obtained by the Express-News show Gallego leaving the Austin home and his truck parked in the driveway. His campaign maintains that he resides in Alpine.

His wife has a homestead exemption, but Pete has no ownership in that house at all, Archer said. He added that Gallego pays utility bills in Alpine and registered his car there. But Gallego is co-listed as a borrower on a 2009 deed of trust.

During the hearing, Gallego tweeted, The @GOP & @TexasGOP dont understand that Principles of convenience arent really principles at all. From local control to smaller government to deficit spending & lower taxes, the @GOP & @TexasGOP say one thing & do another whenever it suits them.

Gallegos tweet quoted a separate tweet from the Quorum Report referencing the role of the partys attorney, Joe Nixon, in a separate residency case involving Michael Quinn Sullivan, the president of tea party advocacy group Empower Texans.

Nixon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jasper Scherer is a staff writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | jscherer@express-news.net | Twitter: @jaspscherer
Unions across the country declared victory late Tuesday as numbers rolled in from Missouri showing voters struck down the states pending right-to-work law.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called it a tremendous achievement.

Is this a sea change for unions in the Midwest? A signal that worker freedom will forever be squashed in non-right-to-work Illinois?

No.

In fact, the union strategy in Illinois southwestern neighbor should leave some rank-and-file members scratching their heads. The victory was expensive, potentially short-lived and may even cut against some of the unions other political priorities.

Its yet another reason workers might want to keep more of their paychecks in their own pockets, rather than seeing those dollars thrown away on political crapshoots.

Some background: In February 2017, now-disgraced former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens signed a right-to-work bill into law.

A right-to-work law doesnt change collective bargaining. It doesnt change union representation. It doesnt even necessarily weaken unions, especially if they treat members well. It only does one thing: right to work allows workers to withhold their money from a union if they dont feel like it is representing his or her interests effectively.

Without right-to-work protections offered in 27 states, you pay the union or lose your job. Its simple.

Unlike Illinois, Missouri gives motivated citizens a fighting chance to serve as a check on the state legislature. So following Greitens signature, unions rounded up 300,000 signatures to block the laws implementation until voters had a choice at the ballot box.

To say unions outspent right-to-work proponents would be an understatement. It was an avalanche.

The union-backed We Are Missouri Coalition raised more than $16 million from labor organizations and spent nearly $7 million on ads in July alone. They outspent two opposing groups combined by a nearly 5 to 1 margin, according to the Wall Street Journals analysis of state filings.

With that money, unions secured a landslide victory.

Or did they?

An important thing to note about the Missouri case is that Greitens could not have played more into unions hands.

Too eager to pass a landmark reform, he gave organizers most of the spring and all of the summer to gather signatures. Any first-year lobbyist would have taken a different tack. State lawmakers could have waited to vote on a right-to-work bill until the last day of session in mid-May, waited to send the bill to the governor until the end of May and then Greitens could have sat on it well into July before signing, thus giving motivated interests just a few weeks to gather signatures  rather than six months.

Unfortunately for union members who saw millions of dollars in dues money flow to this fight, that gamesmanship is still very much on the table. If Missouri Republicans hold on to their supermajorities in November, which is not unlikely, a right-to-work bill will certainly bubble up yet again in 2019.

And that brings us to the electoral angle.

Missouri U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill is perhaps the most vulnerable Democratic senator in the country. Millions of union dollars that flowed to the right-to-work battle will no longer go to support her. And millions of dollars that werent spent trying to outmaneuver unions in that fight will flow to her opponent, Republican Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley.

Despite the right-to-work proposition being the star of the primary election, Missouri Republicans cast about 60,000 more votes than Missouri Democrats statewide. Thats not a good sign for McCaskill.

So at the end of the day, what did union members get in exchange for millions of dollars?

An opportunity for union officials to pat themselves on the back, a weaker position in a key congressional race and a few more months, though possibly years, of compulsory dues.

Was it worth it?

Private sector union members in right-to-work states have reason to ask themselves that question, because they have a choice in whether to fund those fights.

Missouris private sector union members have little reason to, because they still dont.

Austin Berg is a writer for the Illinois Policy Institute. He wrote this column for the Illinois News Network. He can be reached at aberg@illinoispolicy.org.
Allow females to help shape technology  ...
Manila (CNN Philippines Life)  Im hard-pressed to remember when my love affair with Mindanao began. In the beginning, I was certain that I fell for its remoteness, the allure of the foreign thats also nearby. I was a doe-eyed romantic then, naive in most ways and hooked on the possibility of encountering Filipinos outside my comfort zone.

After nearly two decades of moving in and out of Mindanaos many corridors, weaving my way through dirt roads and learning about the waters that embrace these wonderful islands, I can say that I may have found a love that lasts. Where many men have fallen by the wayside, Mindanaos many cultures, people, and temperaments have kept me loyal, committed even (how un-millennial) despite an uncertain future. This isnt the easiest place to love and the kind of turbulence one experiences here is not for the faint-hearted. Ive come to think of it as dancing: Sometimes we move two steps forward, other times two or three steps back  but we move and thats what matters.

In the course of falling in love, Ive found these books to be most soothing and puzzling, reminders that Mindanao is complex but not unlike Manila or the Visayas, or the Cordilleras. Despite being an enigma to many, its a great disservice to assume that these places in the Philippine south are merely characterized by the violence often attributed to its islands. I feel its timely, after the historic signing of the Bangsamoro Organic Law, to examine our biases and look at history. Many Mindanaos exist and thats a good thing.

Si Amina y El Cuidad De Maga Flores by Christina Newhard (Sari-Sari Storybooks, 2017)

Our image of Mindanao is shaped by what we are taught and told as children so its important that we create and read diverse childrens stories. Christina Newhard and her Sari-Sari Storybooks fill that need. Amina and the City of Flowers tells the story of a young Yakan weaver searching for what to render on her loom. She wanders around Zamboanga yearning for Basilan but is also taken by the flowers that bloom in her city. Im endeared to this book because its bilingual. The story is told in Chavacano and English. Aminas own presence in Zamboanga despite having roots in Basilan tell us about movement, migration, and continuities. Here is a Yakan weaver adapting to change and yet celebrating her culture on the loom.

Available in bookstores nationwide.

Children of the Ever-Changing Moon: Essays by Young Moro Writers (Anvil Publishing, 2007) & Rays of the Invisible Light: Collected Works by Young Moro Writers both edited by Gutierrez Mangansakan II (Bidadali Press, 2015)

Racism is alive and well in the Philippines. Narratives of othering are no stranger to the Moros who have had to endure our ignorance and the violence it engenders. I grew up in a time when the phrase A good Muslim is a dead Muslim could be said without anyone batting an eyelash. Lets face it. We were taught to believe that they were monsters and there was hardly any mention of being good attributed to being Muslim.

Reading these two volumes edited by Teng Mangansakan shook me to the core because I realized, outside the need to see them as good and bad, Muslims could be just like me. There are essays here about losing parents, shifting identities, growing up, falling in love, losing faith, and I love that majority of the voices are of women. Its hard to stereotype when stories represented here dont fit our narrow boxes and when the second installment was released in 2015, I heaved a euphoric sigh and thought, Finally, someones making a fuss and the great writing in this collection is a finger raised at every warmongering politician and their ignorant ilk. Read it. Love the mess of it and forget coming back the way you were before you started reading.

Children of the Ever-Changing Moon is available at National Book Store and Powerbooks. Rays of Invisible Light is available at Solidaridad Bookshop, Uno Morato, Coffee For Peace, Inc., Mindanews in Davao City; and the ARMM Regional Library in Cotabato.

The Songs of Salanda and Other Stories of Sulu by H. Arlo Nimmo (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994)

H. Arlo Nimmo is an anthropologist who did fieldwork in the Sulu archipelago in the mid-1960s. He was able to capture the way of life of the Bajao/Sama people prior to the turbulent 1970s when their lives were transformed by the war that the Marcos regime waged against Muslims in the archipelago.

I read Nimmo prior to visiting Tawi-Tawi, now a standalone province but in his book still a part of Sulu. The stories he tells are so captivating. Nimmo built me a world I grew a deep longing for and when I attended the first Badjao conference hosted by MSU Tawi-Tawi, I was floored by the deep admiration and respect people had for his scholarship.

The final chapter tells of the last trip Nimmo makes back to his field site. He has been tagged as a CIA operative and the journey to Sulu has been fraught with difficulty. He had left and returned to see a place he loved completely changed. Bongao, the sleepy outpost, became a city while environmental destruction and military excesses characterized this new landscape. Its heartbreaking to read his account but also one that affirms the wonder and excitement found in places unfamiliar to us.

The title comes from his meeting with the woman, Salanda, who would sing sad songs on the sorrow-filled lives of people with no control over their fates. Salanda, the woman with the beautiful voice is no more but Nimmo suggests that perhaps we must go to Sulu or Tawi-Tawi and listen anyway.

Available at the Ateneo de Manila University Press

Out of the Shadows: Violent Conflict and the Real Economy of Mindanao edited by Francisco J. Lara, Jr. and Steven Schoofs (Bughaw, Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2016)

There are some things I learned about while travelling in Sulu that I could never explain to friends in Manila. How, for instance, it was sometimes okay to have rice smuggled into some ports with law enforcers forced to turn a blind eye on these deliveries. Other times, it was the other way around. I would make a table of uniformed and civilian friends laugh when I told them about PDEAs drug raid in our middle-class, gated village, where a neighbor set up a drug lab. I could never have understood how these two realities converged were it not for this book.

In seven chapters, the editors Lara and Schoofs, pool together researchers to discuss everything we wanted to know about Mindanao but were too scared (or perhaps lazy, because dominant narratives have a way of dulling our senses) to ask. Guns, drugs, debt, kidnapping for ransom, and every conceivable image of scary Mindanao is put under the microscope through a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis.

One emerges from the reading shadows and discovers that many of the imagined dangers arent really to be found in Mindanao. Eddie Quitorianos study on the illicit gun trade in conflict-affected Mindanao for example discusses the issue of gun proliferation in the Philippines. It surprised me to see how the number of loose firearms (in contrast to licensed ones) in Luzon accounted for more than half of the total firearms distributed in the Philippines. Imagine that? No wonder mayors are dropping like flies and guns for hire are easy to come by these days.

As for Mindanao and its real economy that consists of both the formal and informal, its good to see how the informal economy provides employment and livelihood opportunities for those at the margins, often poor and vulnerable. Until the central state manages to embrace Mindanaos real economy and stop pretending it has everything in control, Im pretty sure these informal economies will persist and time and again we will be reminded by studies, such as the ones in this volume, that conflict in Mindanao is a development issue concerning the basic rights people ought to be afforded but arent.

Available at the Ateneo de Manila University Press

Colon by Rogelio Braga (Balangiga Press, 2016)

If there is one novel I read in 2016 that continues to haunt me in the present, it would have to be this one. Colon is partly set in the eponymous street in Cebu that serves as the novels center, an entry-point for Filipino readers to recognize that this is about us, about our nation and its violent history. It questions the very essence of our nationalist aspirations and bravely asks us to reconsider where we draw nationalist lines: Who is included, who is excluded, and who is eliminated  in both the real world and on the pages of history? The story is told in conversational Filipino and Bragas way with the language allows for ease in the reading. But dont be misled into thinking that this is an easy book to read. Everything withheld from the conventional Philippine history courses, especially those that gloss over Muslim Mindanaos history, is exposed here. Manili, Tacub, Palimbang, Jabidah  these names should not be mysteries to us and yet they are. In following the story of Blesilda, a young call center agent whose life is transformed by the knowledge of her past, we come to accept that she is us. She is Filipino, except she is not or perhaps it is us? Perhaps we are the strangers to our own history and its brutality.

Available at Balanginga Press and Central Books
President Trump was Mondays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. This week, he discussed the economy and new job opportunities for Americans.

Here is the statement from the White House:

The economy has come roaring back to life under President Trump. In May, unemployment fell to 3.8 percentits lowest level in nearly 50 years. Optimism among employers, particularly manufacturers and small businesses, has reached historic highs in the 6 months since tax reform became law.

Many economists expect the winning streak to continue, predicting second quarter GDP growth to exceed 4 percent.

This high-energy growth environment presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that companies must find more workers with specific skill sets to fill an increasing number of open jobs. The opportunity is that with more affordable, relevant training, many American workers will now have the chance to move into better jobs that deliver bigger paychecks.

President Trump promised to make Government work for ordinary Americans, and support for workforce training is key to that vision. For decades the government has had more than 40 workforce-training programs in more than a dozen agencies, and too many have produced meager results, Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump wrote this week.

Its time to fix that. In its first 500 days, the Trump Administration has already taken action to expand apprenticeships; increase access to high-quality Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education for K12 students; and encourage companies to invest more of what they earn in American workers and American production.

Now, President Trump has signed an Executive Order to establish the National Council for the American Worker. Comprised of senior Administration officials, the Council is charged with developing a National strategy for training and retraining the workers needed across high-demand industries. The group will convene voices from the public, private, education, labor, and not-for-profit sectors to enhance employment opportunities for Americans of all ages.

Most important, they will focus on getting results. That task begins by asking companies and trade groups to sign a new Pledge to Americas Workers.

Today, more than 20 companies and associations were the first to sign that pledge at the White House. They committed to creating new opportunities over the next five years for American students and workers, including through apprenticeships and work-based learning, continuing education, on-the-job training, and reskilling.

By signing the Pledge to Americas Workers, these great companies . . . are affirming their commitment to train American workers for American jobs, President Trump said. Because Americas strength, Americas heart, and Americas soul is found in our people.

One of the initial areas of focus for the Council will be finding ways to increase access to available job data, including data on which regions offer the most opportunities. Unlike piling burdensome regulations on employers, this focus on transparency helps the economy, allowing students and workers alike to make informed decisions about education, job selection, and career paths.

Growing Americas workforce is an important goal. To help achieve it, the Council will develop a national campaign to raise awareness of workforce issues, such as the urgency of the skills crisis and the importance of STEM education. It will also create a plan for recognizing companies that demonstrate excellence in workplace education, retraining, and workforce investment.

The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.
Calaveras County Sheriff View Photos

San Andreas, CA  A teen sustained injuries in a alleged assault over the weekend, resulting in a felony battery with serious bodily injury arrest for a male suspect.

According to Calaveras County Sheriffs spokesperson Sgt. Rachelle Whiting, the suspect was taken into custody Saturday after responding deputies arrived around 8:40 on the scene of a reported family altercation in the 1000 block of Avery Sheep Ranch Road in Avery.

Upon arrival, deputies learned that 47-year-old Mark Anthony Scates of Alameda was involved a fight with a 16-year-old alleged victim that had resulted in injuries to the minor. Sgt. Whiting adds that in addition to the felony battery charge, there is also a felony corporal injury to a child charge pending against Scates, who was booked into the Calaveras County Jail.

In other weekend felony arrests by her office, Whiting reports that following a Saturday morning traffic stop for a moving traffic infraction, deputies arrested the driver, Ricky Daniel Cavaco, II of Mokelumne Hill, after it was determined that he had several outstanding Tuolumne County warrants out on him, including for theft and evading arrest.
Rusty and Vickie Gray have devoted much of their personal time to helping local kids and adults cope with one of life's most difficult situations: divorce.

They've organized and hosted classes to help kids and adults cope with the effects of divorce.

On Friday, the husband and wife gave a brief overview of their organization  Parent's Place  to the Hale County Commissioners during their Friday work session.

The organization, Rusty said, helps families in Hale, Castro and Swisher counties.

Classes are often court-ordered but they're open to anyone experiencing a divorce, he said.

During his presentation, he thanked the court for its support.

Hale County Judge Bill Coleman thanked the couple for their presentation before moving on to other agenda items.

Hale County Commissioners spent much of the first half of their meeting paying bills during their Friday work session before approving accounts and moving on to discuss numerous propositions slated for further discussions on Monday.

The commissioners approved $71,820.16 for accounts payable through Aug. 10 and $374,844.28 for payroll through Aug. 9.

A few items discussed included a contract with the Lubbock County Medical Examiner's Office, the cost of expenses for employees on overnight trips and elections.

Hale County Judge Bill Coleman introduced a contract to the court regarding Hale County sending autopsies to be completed at the Lubbock Medical Examiner's Office.

"This is something I think we should have as a backup," Coleman said, adding that he'd present it again during the court's next meeting on Monday.

He also said he'd present a proposal at the next meeting to adjust the rate of daily expenses for employees who go on overnight work trips. Also on Monday's agenda is review and consideration of approval of the second quarter report of ambulance calls around Abernathy from University Medical Center.

The court also read through a Memorandum of Understanding submitted by the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, which is slated for more discussion Monday.

Roland Nash, tax assessor-collector for Hale County, said the air conditioning unit at the tax office has had been on the verge of breaking beyond repair over the past couple of weeks.

Repair companies have repeatedly told his office that the unit has been discontinued. The cost to repair the unit is $2,799,57. The court is slated to discuss it further Monday.

A representative with the Sheriff's Office discussed the hire of a new physician for the jail. The doctor hasn't signed the contract yet but he started seeing patients in early July.

The court will discuss each of these items and others during the meeting Monday at 9 a.m.
Renovations on the 89-year-old historic Plainview Hilton is on the final downhill stretch, with leasing beginning in just months, and a completion goal hoped to be at year's end.

A wave of new residents in downtown could welcome the new year from 27 all-new loft apartments in the newly renovated historic hotel building. And, if that date is not met, the rush will no doubt not be too far down the road from then.

The project launched in 2017 and will be known as Conrad Lofts, in honor of Hilton founder Conrad Hilton.

"I'm guessing completion is five months away," Daniel Sailler, a partner in the firm of MRE Capital, said in an interview in late June. "I'm hoping that we can maintain the current pace."

A site manager has been hired along with the maintenance supervisor, Sailler reported. Many parts of the structure will come together quickly now  the largest being a huge delivery of windows for floors two through eight. Wallboard installation has begun on the fifth floor.

Its completion is expected to spur renewal of the southern edge of downtown  bringing full time tenants in good numbers, creating jobs at the Lofts.

Also exciting to many, the Hilton opening will be a predecessor to a move by neighboring Centennial Bank to West Plainview after deeding the building to the city for a new city hall and launching its new headquarters, now under construction at Fifth St. and Ennis St.

Several factors are owing to a slow, methodical pace. And Sailler and partner Jake Mooney are used to that. They have done a dozen similar loft projects, all historic renovations.

They are known for attentiveness to detail on restoration of old buildings.

Most are historic and qualify for tax credits for historic preservation -- and there are inspection requirements by the funding agency, state and federal historic commissions, to insure quality and historic accuracy. And that takes time.

Challenges  much related to the first ones  over the last year were many: time required for asbestos abatement, challenge of finding specialty labors for outside brick restoration, and in the current stage to restore original luster and beauty to ceilings in the ballroom, decorative moldings in lobby and other areas -- plus meeting requirements of authentic window designs and glass. The no longer standard size windows required custom built wood-framed glass of the original construction materials and period.

"As we uncovered more, we discovered more corrosion in the building than anticipated," Sailler said. "For instance, the roof fell a long time ago and it was a little worse than we thought. But you know it's nothing that we have not seen before. Many of the decorative moldings had deteriorated."

Another illustration of little-noticed and painstaking work is the fact that wooden trim being applied this month around ground floor windows was carefully removed, sanded, repaired and reapplied around reclaimed wood of the window frames and panes were ordered to retain original materials, look and feel.

That all takes time, Sailler explained.

Sailler and Mooney hope to begin leasing no later than the year's end, if not sooner, according to Sailler of Kansas City. Two other similar projects in Texas include an almost finished one in Cisco, and one soon to begin in Harlingen.

Beyond the hopes for entrepreneurial success in leasing out the units to willing clients, the Hilton is serving as a symbol of a current era of progress in town.

The Hilton will be the first major change in the downtown skyline in years.

Another newcomer will be the city, with relocation of the City Hall just catty corner across from the Hilton on the southwest corner of 6th and Austin.

Centennial Bank, which is building its new facility at Olton Rd. and Ennis, is deeding its former building to the city  seen as a major boon to the town. It will enable the city to avoid construction of a new city hall, as they relocate most city offices there, and vacate their former facility to the police department.

"Conrad Hilton Historic Renovation," that bold faced title greets onlookers on each page of a roll of architectural drawings that lays on a plywood and sawhorse 'desk' in a ground floor space under renovation. The plans lay in a spacious room once housed Hilton Cleaners  a space now destined to be one of three ground floor apartments to be available for occupancy soon.

Much progress will be visible in the months ahead.

"I hope it will mean five and hopefully not six (which would put it at year's end)," added Sailler, "You know that's also the reason we never say how long it will be -- out loud. No one can tell you we're wrong if you you're the only one that knows it," he laughed.
Enterprise Products Partners L.P.

New Chinese tariffs are set to affect a wide array of refined products and plastics exports from Houston, but for now crude oil and liquefied natural gas exports are exempted.

Still, crude exports from Texas to China have fallen sharply this summer in part due to fears over President Trump's ongoing trade war and also because of shrinking discounts on U.S. crude oil, said Sandy Fielden, director of oil and products research at Morningstar.
Bob Owen /Staff file photo

A memorial for banker and civic leader Tom Frost will be held at 11 a.m. Friday at Christ Episcopal Church at 510 Belknap Place in San Antonio.

Frost died at the age of 90 on Friday, four weeks after he hospitalized for a stroke.
A firefighter died in the line of duty while battling Californias biggest wildfire, state officials announced Monday, the same day that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke toured another fire site and said the secret to the states horrific fire problem is better forest management.

The firefighters name was not released, but state fire officials said he was from Utah, was injured battling the Mendocino Complex blaze on Monday and was rushed to a hospital, where he died. He became the first person killed in the complex north of Clear Lake, which has burned 349,890 acres in Colusa, Mendocino and Lake counties and is the largest fire in California history.

The death marked the sixth firefighter killed in California wildfires this year.

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and U.S. Forest Service commanders said in a statement Monday that they are deeply saddened to report the death.

Fact finding on the accident is ongoing and notification of the next of kin is in progress, the statement Monday night said. More information will be released as it becomes available.

The Mendocino Complex has destroyed 146 homes and damaged 118 other structures. The complex is composed of the River Fire, which is fully contained at 48,920 acres, and the 300,970-acre Ranch Fire that is 59 percent contained. The firefighter who died was on the lines of the Ranch Fire, officials said.

The massive fire is part of an unprecedented series of large, deadly and destructive fires that have raged through California over the past month, exposing astonished crews to fire behavior they say they have rarely seen, including pyro-cumulus clouds reaching into the stratosphere and powerful fire tornadoes.

Among the other fires burning Monday:

 The Carr Fire, which has burned more than 200,000 acres, became Californias sixth most destructive wildfire. It has killed eight people, including three firefighters and a great grandmother and her two great grandchildren, in addition to destroying 1,599 structures. The inferno is 63 percent contained.

The wildfire thats been burning in Shasta County for 21 days barely grew overnight, yet officials said Monday they are still unable to project when the blaze will be fully contained. The northern part of the fire remains the most volatile, making a full containment date tough to pin down, said Charles Kuniyoshi, a Cal Fire spokesman.

 The Ferguson Fire near Yosemite National Park remained steady at 96,457 acres and was 86 percent contained. Yosemite National Park officials planned to reopen the valley to the public Tuesday, nearly three weeks after the fire forced its shutdown. Rangers said services in the valley would remain limited.

On Monday, the Wawona area and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias reopened to visitors. Air quality in the area was gradually improving, with conditions listed as moderate in the Mariposa, Hodgdon Meadow and Lee Vining areas, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

 The Holy Fire has burned 22,986 acres in Orange and Riverside counties and was 59 percent contained. Nearly 1,400 firefighters are battling it.

Since the wildfire season began this year, 11 people have died due to the wildfires, which have blanketed the skies with smoke.

As thousands of exhausted firefighters battled the flames, which most experts blame, at least partly, on a warming climate, Zinke on Monday called for thinning Californias forests and retrieving whatever lumber could be salvaged from burned areas.

The suggestion was blasted by critics as a shameless invitation for more logging. The remarks came in the wake of concern among state foresters that the states woodlands have become too dense with brush and trees, and are supercharging fires.

Theres so much dead and dying timber, Zinke said in an interview with Sacramento television station KCRA during a visit with Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to survey the damage from the Carr Fire. Its just a time bomb.  We have to go back to actively managing our forests.

In a social media post after visiting the Carr Fire area, Zinke wrote: I have no words that describe the loss and devastation. Ive been to a lot of fires and this is just something else. We are here for you.

While forestry experts agree that Californias overgrown wildlands are intensifying fire activity, many questioned the motives behind his remarks as he downplayed global warming as a factor in recent fires and emphasized the need for commercial timber production.

Make no mistake, hes not proposing to thin small trees and shrubs, said Chad Hanson, research ecologist for the John Muir Project, a group thats been critical of timber production in Californias forests. Hes talking about intensive commercial logging projects.

Republicans in Congress, with the support from the Trump administration, have been pushing for changes in federal environmental policy that would reduce the level of review required for timber operations on public lands. Their latest proposal is being debated for inclusion in the Farm Bill. The goal, they say, is to reduce fire risk.

Last week, President Trump tweeted that environmental laws were exacerbating Californias fires by keeping water from firefighters and leaving too much explosive vegetation in forests. Fire officials have said water shortages are not a problem.

Zinke said Monday that the president is right, at least on the forest issue.

This is the path that the president and I feel strongly about, he said. Were going to actively manage our resources.

Zinke also was critical of environmentalists who have sued to stop logging projects in California.

America is better than letting these radical groups control the dialogue, he said. Extreme environmentalists have shut down public access. They talk about habitat, and yet they are willing to burn it up.

Zinke acknowledged that temperatures were rising and that the fire season is getting longer, but he said that had little to do with the extreme fire behavior.

Critics took issue with the Cabinet members using Californias wildfires to promote their forest agenda.

For the Trump administration to exploit these recent human tragedies to try to roll back environmental laws and enrich their timber allies is incredibly wrong, Hanson said.

Peter Fimrite, Sarah Ravani , Steve Rubenstein and Kurtis Alexander are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com; sravani@sfchronicle.com, srubenstein@sfchronicle.com, kalexander@sfchronicle.com
Houston's annual Day for Night festival has cut ties with its founder Sunday after the allegations surfaced of his sexual misconduct.

Omar Afra has been removed from "any ownership or involvement in Day For Night from this day forward," the festival posted on its Facebook page Sunday.

Afra, meanwhile, pledged to "fight back against allegations that are patently false."

Afra, 40, is also publisher of Free Press Houston and has worked on festivals the publication put on, including the Free Press Summer Fest and the Westheimer Block Party.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Day for Night festival springs from the unconventional mind of Omar Afra

The allegations were initially made public Friday by Amanda Hart, who published a Facebook post about Afra, who she worked with at Free Press Houston, Summer Fest and Day for Night.

"I have personally seen him cultivate a toxic work environment where people are manipulated, mistreated and abused emotionally," Hart wrote.

She attached several screenshots of text messages which were allegedly exchanged between Afra and a woman who says Afra assaulted her. A second woman also came forward with allegations against Afra years earlier.

The festival's creditors "were shocked and saddened" to hear the accusations, Day For Night's Facebook post said Sunday. "We stand with all victims of abuse."

In December, the Day for Night festival featured a long list of performing and visual artists, including Nine Inch Nails, Thom Yorke, Solange and Pussy Riot, at the old Barbara Jordan Post Office on Franklin Street.

On Sunday afternoon, Afra posted a statement on his Facebook page, announcing that he will step down from his positions at Day for Night and the Free Press.

"I can't begin to say how saddened, shocked, and embarrassed I am for the developments over the last several days," he wrote, adding that his wife and children have been traumatized and that he has received death threats.

IN 2015: Chatting with Day for Night organizer Omar Afra

In his Facebook post, Afra called the accusations a "coordinated attempt," but also acknowledged that he had "veered away from what I knew was right and caused pain to those around me including family and friends."

"There's a lot more that's going to come out about this," Afra said on the phone Sunday. He said that the allegations against him do not constitute sexual assault.

"I am focusing on my family; I am trying to keep it together for them," he said.

Afra said in the post that he has been in therapy for a year and is trying to get back on the right path.

There's no word yet on the future of the festival, which was last held in December.

"Out of respect for these alleged victims, any announcement about the future of Day For Night will be made at a later date," the festival's Facebook post said.
Adapted from a recent online discussion.

Hey Carolyn:

Where do you draw the line between controlling behavior and wanting a relationship you are comfortable with? Example -- I don't want to be with someone who hangs out in bars on the regular. Am I being controlling by telling my significant other, "I don't like it when you go out drinking with friends so much"? Aren't I allowed to make that request and act accordingly depending on their response?

-- Preference

You can mention it, sure, and see what comes of it, and act accordingly based on the response. That's the easy answer.

It's not controlling just to ask something once or on occasion; control involves a combination of requests and manipulation, including punishments for "wrong" answers.

I think there's a subtler point to be made here, though.

Before telling your partner something like this, pragmatism demands some thought first to how much you're asking and expecting a person to change.

To use this example: "I don't want to be with someone who hangs out in bars on the regular." That's fine on its face, and it's your prerogative. Your partner might well be happy to know this about you and happy to go out less because s/he could take or leave these nights out anyway.

But if your partner is someone who hangs out in bars "on the regular" and really enjoys it, isn't that who your partner will be, whether s/he is at a bar at the moment or not?

And if you speak up and if your partner agrees not to go out as much, will s/he be happy living that way from now on? Will it be OK in the near term but start to chafe over time? Will your partner revert to type when your relationship moves from new and magnetic to something more comfortable -- where your togetherness takes more effort and commitment?

And what of the personality traits, social nature, values, etc., behind enjoying bars -- those will be in place regardless too, and might be mismatched with your nature no matter what setting they're in.

So, maybe this is all just other dimensions of the control issue, but maybe too it's easier to think of this in terms of realism: Should a person who balks at going to bars even be with someone who likes to hang out in bars?

Either way, it seems fair -- to yourself and to a partner -- only to ask for changes on the margins. Wanting bigger ones suggests any changes should start with you.



Columnist Carolyn Hax dishes out advice daily.

Email Carolyn at

Read the Email Carolyn at tellme@washpost.com , follow her on Facebook or chat with her online at noon Eastern time each Friday at www.washingtonpost.com Read the daily Carolyn Hax columns at https://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/advice/

And of course you need to accept the response, be it words or deeds or inaction, to any such request for what it is -- then respond accordingly from there. Continuing to press for change that keeps not happening is misery for you, misery for the person you're constantly trying to correct, misery for all the people you're complaining to about your misery about this person's refusal to change -- because who in this situation doesn't also complain? -- and misery for anyone within earshot of your correcting, misery and complaining.
5 1 of 5 Orange Volunteer Fire Department Facebook page Show More Show Less 2 of 5 Orange Volunteer Fire Department Facebook page Show More Show Less 3 of 5 4 of 5 Orange Volunteer Fire Department Facebook page Show More Show Less 5 of 5









ORANGE  The Orange Volunteer Fire Department responded to address downed, burning power lines on New Haven Avenue Sunday evening.

The department posted at 7:24 p.m. that firefighters were on scene in front of 23 New Haven Ave. and that the road had been completely shut down.
Business owners are concerned the Texas Department of Transportations expansion of Loop 494 could be damaging to their business.

While some business owners are dreading the loss of parking spaces located in TxDOT-controlled right-of-way, others believe a lengthy construction process could disuade potential customers from stopping by.

Amadeos Italian Restuarant in Kingwood will lose between 16 and 18 parking spots while Loop 494 expands to a four-lane road between Sorters Road and Northpark Plaza Drive, owner Tony Raffa said.

Raffa said he is concerned that the lack of parking spaces right next to the building will have an impact on his bottom line.

We do think its going to have an impact and yes we are concerned, (but) theres not a whole lot we can do about it other than whats been done already, Raffa said. If valet parking becomes necessary we might try that.

Emily Black, TxDOTs Houston Districts public information officer, said construction should begin early in 2019 for the roadway expansion.

The 1.835-mile project is estimated to cost about $15 million.

TxDOT has been preparing the design plans since November 2003. However construction funds were not made available until recently.

Black noted the road improvements were required on Loop 494 due to rapid population growth in the area.

Raffa said he doesnt know exactly when Amadeos will lose the 18 spaces and doesnt expect to receive any notice.

Fortunately for Amadeos, which has been in business in the Kingwood area for the past 33 years, the property owner purchased land that was turned into a parking lot behind the restaurant.

About 10 years ago our landlord purchased property (near) our property, Raffa said. It was a building that used to be Kingwood Fence Company, and our landlord purchased that building and did demolition to that build and made more parking lots for our center here. We do have parking in the rear of our shopping center that probably most people dont know about.

Flower Market owner Connie Coulter is also concerned about the expansion and the impact it could have on her long-standing business.

Coulter has been in business on Loop 494 since April of 1979. The front of her flower shop has less than a dozen parking spaces.

Coulter is also concerned that once the construction for the loop begins early next year shell lose business. Construction could cause delays and gridlock that pushes potential customers to different roads.

Im not getting excited one way or the other, Coulter said.  (The expansion) doesnt seem possible to me, it doesnt seem they have enough space to do everything they want to do but theyre engineers and Im a florist. I dont know what theyre going to do or when theyll do it, but they said itll take 2-3 years.

TxDOT expects the project to have a two-year timetable and be completed by mid 2021.
ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn. - Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tim Walz jumped out of a school bus full of volunteers here Saturday morning, ran through the suburban crowd and tried to convince voters how he could move their state to the left.

"It's time to put a public school teacher, labor leader into the governor's office," Walz said. "It's going to be progressive Minnesota that stands up and says, 'Enough!'"

Walz, a six-term congressman from rural Minnesota, had run in the past with the backing of the National Rifle Association; he once aired TV ads accusing a Republican foe of voting "to give 50,000 illegal aliens amnesty."

Not any more. President Donald Trump only lost the state narrowly in 2016 and has made it a top target for his reelection campaign. Once that might have forced Democrats to the center. Instead, in recognition of the dominant activist energy they have turned a deeper shade of blue and argued in Tuesday's primaries for the party to move left.

Republicans, here as elsewhere, saw the 2016 election as the start of a conservative wave and are hewing closer and closer to the president - making Minnesota an example of the nation's swing away from the middle and toward the political poles.

The changes wrought in 2016 have affected not only the candidate's positioning but where they are delivering their messages. As in most of the Midwest, Democrats had typically competed for Minnesota by winning the cities and competing in rural areas with strong labor traditions; Republicans had won by winning in suburbs and exurbs.

That changed in 2016, as Democrats ran up their vote in the Twin Cities, and in suburbs where they had rarely been competitive, but lost badly in outlying parts of Minnesota.

Few other states have so much up for grabs this year. Both U.S. Senate seats are on the ballot, and all but one statewide constitutional office is open. Three House seats are open, from Walz's 1st district, to Minneapolis's 5th district, to the 8th district that covers Duluth and the state's Iron Range - once a Democratic labor bastion, won by Trump.

"I went to parades in the Iron Range this year, and I'll tell you, it was the best reception I got anywhere in the state," said Doug Wardlow, who is vying to be the state's first Republican attorney general since the 1970s - and may face Rep. Keith Ellison, a Democrat who is one of the most left-wing members of Congress and who spent the final pre-primary hours trying to fend off accusations of misbehavior by a former girlfriend.

In this year's race for governor, Walz's positioning as a proud "progressive" is shared by every Democrat, sparking a debate over who has a right to that mantle. The state's Democratic Farmer Labor Party, or DFL, gave its official endorsement to Erin Murphy, a liberal state legislator from St. Paul, who is running on a promise to bring single-payer health care to the state.

At the party's June 2 convention, Murphy pushed past Walz on the seventh ballot, in part by stoking doubts a congressman who had only recently evolved on gun safety issues could be trusted to lead on them as governor.

"I've always gotten an F from the NRA, and Minnesotans need to know who is going to stand with them on this issue," Murphy said in the final pre-primary debate this week.

Walz has said he has evolved on the gun issue and always been a pro-labor liberal on other issues. "The NRA you see now is not the NRA when they were teaching us gun safety classes when we were growing up," he told the state news website MinnPost last year. On the trail, he says his experience attracting votes in a part of the state that little resembles the urban center of Minneapolis will help him not just win, but build consensus when he does.

The race heated up with the last-minute candidacy of Lori Swanson, the state's longtime attorney general, who herself usually received positive NRA ratings. Dogged by accusations over whether she politicized her office, Swanson does not portray herself as a moderate; her final ad blitz includes an ad accusing Walz of failing to "stand up to Trump" by skipping House votes, and a super PAC supporting her campaign has sent out mail that pairs the years of Walz's NRA endorsements with the years of deadly school shootings.

The Republican primary had been equally unfriendly. Tim Pawlenty, a two-term governor who ran for president in 2012 then led the Financial Services Roundtable, a business lobbying group, returned to state politics on the theory that no strong Republican was running. Jeff Johnson, the party's unsuccessful 2014 candidate, refused to step aside.

While Pawlenty leads in polls and money, the two men have sparred for weeks over who can be trusted to govern as a conservative - and who has been most loyal to President Trump. Pawlenty has been running ads that warn about welfare and benefits being wasted on "people who aren't supposed to be here," as images of immigrants climbing a border wall splash on-screen. In another ad, he reminds voters Johnson, who backed Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in the 2016 primary, once called Trump a "jackass." (The word itself is blurred out.)

Johnson, who won the party's convention vote after Pawlenty declined to compete for it, has argued Pawlenty would throw away a winnable election because he could not credibly run on the policies that pulled Trump to a near-victory in the state in 2016. At every opportunity, he has reminded voters Pawlenty abandoned Trump after the release of an "Access Hollywood" tape where he could be heard boasting about sexual assault.

"I supported him," Johnson snapped at a debate this month. "You told people not to vote for him."

The loyalty to Trump has surprised Democrats, who point out Minnesota was the only Midwestern swing state he did not win. The 2016 exit poll found that just 35 percent of Minnesotans viewed Trump favorably, and polling since then has found his approval rating stuck at or below 40 percent. In a similar environment, 12 years ago, Republicans scrambled away from an unpopular George W. Bush, with the party's U.S. Senate candidate that year even renouncing his vote to invade Iraq.

In one of two Senate races, all the fire has been on the left. While Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar has drawn an underfunded Republican opponent, Sen. Tina Smith, the Democrat appointed in January to replace Al Franken after he resigned under accusations he groped women, has consistently led Republican Karin Housey in money and polls.

Before she faces Housey, Smith has to put away a challenge from Richard Painter, a former ethics lawyer for the Bush White House, who gained cable news fame as a Republican who argued Trump needed to be removed from office.

Democrats expect Smith to easily defeat Painter, who has raised less than $250,000 for his campaign and who soundly lost at the party convention. But on his first run for any office, Painter has tapped into the anger of Democrats who feel their party is not doing enough to oppose the president.

At his town halls, which draw out dozens of voters, Painter generates applause when explaining how both Trump and Vice President Pence could be removed from office and asking why the senator who replaced Al Franken - who, he says, should not have resigned - is not doing the same.

"She's on TV with these nice ads, having doughnuts and coffee with people," Painter said dismissively at a Thursday event in St. Louis Park. "I don't have the money to run those ads. But I'll buy doughnuts and coffee for the Senate Judiciary Committee when I get there."

In interviews at Painter's town halls this week, multiple voters used the same word - "timid" - to describe Smith.

"She just seems weak," said Marilyn Wehler, 68, after listening to Painter at a library in St. Louis Park. "I like Painter because he has a spine."

Smith, like Franken, has spent her first months as a senator avoiding media attention and TV hits where senators can weigh in on the controversy du jour. She also has broken with this year's convention to put herself in the political center.

In an interview, she said Minnesota was a "Democrat-ish" state, not one where politicians could ignore independents and conservatives; rather than attacking Trump, she is focused on her years of lower-profile state government work - she was lieutenant governor when appointed to replace Franken - and the insight it gave her into even the most rural, conservative pockets of the state.

"I felt very strongly that I needed to show Minnesotans that I was up to the job," Smith said after a canvass launch in a northern Minneapolis suburb. "I've been fierce about fighting the president on the issues where I feel he's been flat out wrong."
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe intends to accelerate the improvement of Japan-China relations through the realization of reciprocal visits with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Sunday marked the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China. Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang have exchanged congratulatory messages to celebrate the anniversary.

In his message, Abe stated, "By deepening Japan-China cooperation hand in hand, we hope to contribute by addressing various problems of the international society and live up to the expectations of the world."

Li wrote in his message that leaders and politicians of another generation made the decision to sign a treaty 40 years ago and they established a milestone for the bilateral relations.

Japan-China relations deteriorated to an unprecedented level after Japan's nationalization of the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture in 2012. However, there has been some improvement partly due to Abe's announcement of Japan's cooperation under certain conditions in China's massive "One Belt, One Road" economic zone initiative.

Li visited Japan in May - the first time in seven years for a Chinese premier to do so.

Abe is eyeing a visit to China in October or is likely to visit in line with a trilateral meeting with Chinese and South Korean leaders expected to be held in Beijing by the end of this year.

Xi is expected to visit Japan in June next year when a summit meeting of the Group of 20 major and emerging economies is planned to be held in Osaka.

The idea has been mooted of issuing a political document between Japan and China on the occasion of Xi's visit to Japan.

According to sources familiar with Japan-China relations, it is hoped that the document will include such phrases stating "a mutual trust between Japan and China" and "the role of Japan-China relations in the development of the global economy" amid changes in circumstances surrounding the two countries.

In the past, the two nations issued the "Joint Communique of Japan and China" in 1972; the "Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China" in 1978; the "Japan-China Joint Declaration" in 1998; and the "Joint Statement between Japan and China on Comprehensive Promotion of a 'Mutually Beneficial Relationship Based on Common Strategic Interests" in 2008.

Should a "fifth statement" be realized, it would be a huge diplomatic achievement for Abe, observers have said.

Amid the amicable atmosphere, the Japanese government continues sending cautious signals to China. Japan promotes a "free and open Indo-Pacific strategy" to ensure the rule of law and freedom of navigation in regard to China's assertive maritime advancement.

The United States also has announced the creation of a fund to invest in infrastructure projects in the Indo-Pacific region, which is considered a joint framework with Japan to counter China.

The Japanese government has been concerned that China might again step up anti-Japan movements by playing the card of focusing on historical issues.

"Nobody knows for sure whether the Japan-China relationship will keep on improving," said a senior official of the Foreign Ministry.

China sends signals to U.S.

Xi has clearly expressed his intention to improve the relationship with Japan, believing it is preferable to stabilize the relationship with Tokyo amid worsening U.S.-China relations partly due to trade friction.

Dai Bingguo, a Chinese former state councilor, expressed his appreciation to Japan on Saturday at a symposium to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Japan-China Treaty of Peace and Friendship.

Dai said he would never forget Japan's deep involvement and support for China's reform and open-door policy.

In June, Xi emphasized the need to improve relations with its neighboring countries at an important meeting on foreign policy, with U.S.-China relations in mind.

The move to improve relations with Japan is part of Xi's policy. By showing its cooperation with Japan, China intends to send signals to the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who is inclined toward protectionism.

As Xi has promoted high-quality economic development, he also intends to utilize Japan's environmental technology among others.
TORRINGTON  The Burrville Regional Fire School is no more.

After 50 years of use, the aging and dilapidated buildings at 606 Burr Mountain Road were razed to make way for a modern campus.

The school, which hasnt operated for about three years, will be renamed the Litchfield County Fire Training School. The facility, which is expected to reopen next month, will once again offer training classes for Litchfield County firefighters.

The $13.1 million project was approved in 2016 by the state Bond Commission, but planning for the upgrade began nearly 20 years ago, said Richard Winn, the training school director.

We used to fight for upgraded budgets, he said. That was when the eight regional fire schools operated independently, he said.

There are now nine regional schools, all managed by the Connecticut Fire Academy, a statewide organization that allows the schools to combine their requests for funding. A study conducted by the academy showed that all of the schools needed to be rebuilt.

More for you State provides more than $13 million for Burrville Fire...

The Burrville school was third on the list, Winn said.

We had our own property, so we moved ahead (with the plans), he said.

Construction for the upgrade began in 2017, he added.

The state has budgeted $300,000 a year to operate the the school, but Winn said the annual cost of propane and electricity alone is expected to be $100,000 a year.

We need income, Winn said.

Some of the funds will come from students who register for the state-mandated classes that are required to become a certified firefighter. The cost for a Firefighter I class is $1,050, which includes books and exams. It requires a student to attend 203 hours of training over a five-month period. The subsequent Firefighter II course costs $850 and is held for 95 hours.

Its high-quality training, said Torrington Fire Chief Peter Towey.

Towey said the substantial time commitment to become a certified firefighter will provide added skills for area fire departments.

The campus offers a state-of-the-art conference room, said Robert Norton Jr., the school committee chairman for the Connecticut Fire Academy.

Any fire department or business could hold meetings there, he noted.

The usage cost would be affordable for groups, Norton said.

The upgrade has been a long time in coming, Norton said, noting hes pleased with the results. It looks phenomenal. Its such a big difference from what we used to have. Its something the whole county can be proud of.

A grand opening for the upgraded campus will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Oct. 20. Area firefirghers are invited, Winn said, as well as the public. To learn more about the Connecticut Fire Academy, visit https://www.facebook.com/CTFireAcademy.
NEW BERLIN  A Petersburg man suffered serious injuries when he was struck while walking along Interstate 72 this weekend.

According to an Illinois State Police report, Matthew T. Wallick, 32, of Petersburg was walking east on or near the shoulder of the interstate when he was hit by an eastbound car about 11:30 p.m. Saturday.
The FBI has fired agent Peter Strzok, whose anti-Trump text messages fueled controversy over the investigation into Russia's election interference, a move that President Donald Trump quickly celebrated.

"Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally," Trump said in a tweet. "The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back."

But Strzok's lawyer, Aitan Goelman, who disclosed the agent's dismissal on Monday, said in a statement that "this decision should be deeply troubling to all Americans. A lengthy investigation and multiple rounds of Congressional testimony failed to produce a shred of evidence that Special Agent Strzok's personal views ever affected his work."

Text messages denouncing then-candidate Trump that Strzok exchanged with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page in 2016 have been cited by Trump and Republican allies in an effort to undermine the investigation into Russia meddling and whether anyone close to Trump colluded in it.

Strzok, 48, was a lead investigator at the start of the counterintelligence investigation into Russia's interference, as well as the investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. In a tweet on Monday, Trump wrote that the Clinton probe now "should be properly redone!"

Robert Mueller, who is special counsel in charge of the Russia probe, removed Strzok from his team after learning about the text messages. Page left the FBI earlier this year.

"Long overdue," House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a tweet after Strzok's firing became public.

Goelman said the FBI departed from established precedent by firing Strzok, who had served in the bureau for 21 years. Goelman said FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich "reversed the decision of the career FBI official responsible for employee discipline who concluded, through an independent review process, that a 60-day suspension and demotion from supervisory duties was the appropriate punishment."

When Strzok testified before House lawmakers in July, Republicans maintained that anti-Trump bias "turned our system of justice on its head," as House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte put it. "We don't want to read text message after text message dripping with bias against one of the two presidential candidates," added Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican.

Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York countered that the Strzok-Page inquiry and the hearing amounted to "a monumental distraction" from the legitimate Russia investigation.

Strzok echoed Democrats' response that he's a pawn in an effort to undercut or end the investigation into the meddling that U.S. intelligence agencies found was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I strongly believe today's hearing is just another victory notch in Putin's belt and another milestone in our enemies' campaign to tear America apart," he said.

Strzok said he was "one of a handful of people who knew the details of Russian election interference and its possible connections with members of the Trump campaign. This information had the potential to derail, and quite possibly, defeat Mr. Trump. But the thought of expressing that or exposing that information never crossed my mind."
WASHINGTON - Peter Strzok has been fired by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That makes him the third high-ranking FBI official involved in the Russia investigation to be terminated, along with former FBI director James Comey and the bureau's No. 2, Andrew McCabe.

This has led some to defend Strzok or at least question his firing - suggesting that his downfall is merely the latest result of an effort to obstruct justice and tear down all those who know what really happened in 2016. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., even said Strzok deserved a Purple Heart for absorbing so many GOP attacks.

MEET THE SPECIAL COUNSEL: The man behind the Trump-Russia investigation

They should resist this impulse. Arguably no one apart from President Donald Trump himself has done more damage to the Russia investigation than Strzok. And his apparent decision to fight his termination is only going to prolong this ugly chapter.

The news of Strzok's ouster comes from his lawyer, who said the bureau overruled the recommendation of its employee-discipline office. That office had suggested a 60-day suspension and a demotion as punishment for Strzok's anti-Trump and other text messages. Those texts with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, with whom Strzok was having an affair, were discovered by an inspector general in mid-2017. They were shared with special counsel Robert Mueller, who fired Strzok from the Russia probe immediately.

Among the most infamous texts:

"No. No he won't. We'll stop it." - about Trump becoming president (August 2016)

"For me, and this case, I personally have a sense of unfinished business. I unleashed it with [the Clinton investigation]. Now I need to fix it and finish it." (May 2017)

"I just know it will be tough at times. I can protect our country at many levels, not sure if that helps. . .." - after Lisa Page said Strzok is "meant to protect the country from that menace." (August 2016)

"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." (August 2016)

This last one was the first text message to blow up, and I was among those who suggested that it wasn't as inherently nefarious is its critics made it out to be. I still think it - and the "secret society" text - were oversold.

HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM EDITORIAL: Russia is after our power grid, not just elections

But the full thrust of Strzok's text messages can't be denied. He argued that it never actually impacted his official actions and thus the texts weren't "biased." But that misunderstands the meaning of the word "bias." The damage is done merely by raising suspicions about your motives. Mueller removed Strzok from the investigation for a very good reason; he knew how problematic this was, and he wanted to get as far away from it as possible.

Whether Strzok's termination was warranted is now a question that is apparently going to be the subject of a legal battle. But employment law is one thing; politics is another. As with his combative testimony to Congress, Strzok seems bent upon explaining away his problems and trying to recover his good name rather than sinking into the background and hoping people eventually forget about him. And he's got some defenders. Some suggested that his firing meant that his First Amendment rights to express his political opinions had been violated. Others suggested that this might be the culmination of an underhanded effort to undo anyone who investigated Trump and might know something.

Whatever it is, Strzok gave his critics more than enough ammunition. (And as with McCabe, they started with an IG report rather then political opponents.) Just because there have been so many dubious attacks on the Russia probe - including with regards to Strzok's texts - does not absolve Strzok of culpability. Nor do such attacks mean supporters can dismiss the allegations out of hand. And yet there has been a conspicuous lack of desire by Democrats to criticize Strzok.

They're probably just hoping he goes away. He seems to have other plans.

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Video: Longtime FBI agent Peter Strzok was fired on Aug. 10, over furor surrounding his politically charged text messages. He is the third high-ranking FBI official involved in the Hillary Clinton and Russia investigations to be fired.(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

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FORT DRUM, N.Y. - President Donald Trump on Monday will sign a sprawling $716 billion defense bill named for John McCain, R-Ariz., the ailing senator who has been among the president's harshest Republican critics.

McCain, a former GOP presidential nominee, Vietnam War hero and POW, is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a supporter of most of the priorities contained in the legislation.

The bill setting policy priorities for the Pentagon for the coming year is formally named the "John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2019."

McCain, 81, has been mostly absent from the Senate this year as he is undergoing treatment for brain cancer. He has kept up his criticism of the president from his Arizona home, including calling Trump's performance alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin at last month's summit in Helsinki "one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory."

"The damage inflicted by President Trump's naivete, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake," McCain said in a statement issued by his office. "President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world."

Trump frequently publicly disparages McCain, although usually not by name. Instead, he recounts in detail how McCain voted against the Senate Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act 13 months ago.

McCain helped kill the GOP bill with a thumbs-down vote.

Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to join Trump for the event at this northern New York military base, which is home to the Army's 10th Mountain Division.

The overwhelmingly bipartisan spending plan, which was approved by the Senate in June on a 85-to-10 vote, represents an $82 billion increase over the current year. The 2019 figure is one of the biggest defense budgets in modern American history despite concerns from some economists and lawmakers about the rising federal deficit.

The military has called the additional funding necessary to improve the response to international crises.

About 17 percent of America's $4 trillion federal budget goes to the military, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
UTICA  President Donald J. Trump's two-stop visit to upstate New York offered roughly equal helpings of praise for his administration's accomplishments and political red meat for Republicans heading into this fall's elections.

One of those GOP incumbents, U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, was credited by Trump with pressing him to make his first stop of the day, at Fort Drum outside Watertown. It was his first appearance in upstate New York since taking office.

Stefanik "called me so many times," Trump told members of the historic 10th Mountain Division, their families and local elected officials that had gathered in a hangar on the base after observing an air assault exercise at Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field. " ... I said 'I won't be able to. We'll have to change a lot of (schedules).' But that didn't suit her. She didn't stop, and here I am."

Stefanik, a Willsboro Republican, was invited on stage, and said it was "truly an honor" to welcome Trump to the home of the 10th Mountain Division, which she noted was the most deployed unit in the U.S. Army since the 9/11 terror attacks.

Trump came to the base to sign a $717 billion appropriations measure that funds the military. In addition to Stefanik, he was joined by Vice President Mike Pence, Staten Island Republican Congressman Dan Donovan and Republican state senators Joe Griffo and Patricia Ritchie.

Stefanik, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, outlined the provisions of the appropriations bill, including a pay increase for service members and new levels of investment in military readiness.

Absent from Trump's remarks was any mention of U.S. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who the defense spending bill was named after. McCain, a decorated Vietnam war veteran who is battling terminal cancer, has repeatedly feuded with the president.

Trump said that taxpayer support for the military is made easier by a humming national economy.

"We've created almost 4 million new jobs since the election, a number that the media in the back would never have said would be possible," Trump said.

"I'm so proud of myself, I didn't call them the fake news media," he added, eliciting laughs and applause from the crowd. "I said to myself, 'I will not today in front of our great armed forces, call them fake news.' We know the real truth, but we won't say it today."

Trump also heralded his recent call for the creation of a U.S. Space Force, which he hopes would become a sixth branch of the nation's military. Trump said that the force would handle threats to satellite communications and other defense measures.

"Space has become a war-fighting domain. ... We must have American dominance in space," he said.

A few hours later at the Hotel Utica, Trump appeared at a fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney, who is facing a tight race with state Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi.

As the audience  who had paid between $1,000 and $15,000 to attend  held their cellphones high to capture the moment, Trump repeated his recitation of his administration's accomplishments with a far greater emphasis on politics. The president told them he had flirted with running for governor in 2012, but settled on seeking the White House instead.

He lambasted Gov. Andrew Cuomo for placing a moratorium on the natural gas drilling technique known as hydrofracking, and said the Democrat "wants to end your Second Amendment." He also claimed Cuomo told him in a private conversation that he would never run for president against him.

"Your taxes are high for one reason: Andrew Cuomo," Trump said.

The governor was far from the only Democrat on the president's hit list in Utica: He knocked U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and praised her Republican opponent Chele Farley, who was in the room along with state GOP chair Ed Cox, and called Rep. Maxine Waters "crazy Maxine  low-IQ person."

The event, which was opened to some members of the media at the last minute, was in many ways a throwback to 2016, when Trump dominated the New York presidential primary largely due to his support among upstate Republicans.

Outside the hotel, hundreds of people organized by the liberal grassroots group Indivisible Mohawk Valley protested in proximity to more than 100 Trump supporters across a busy intersection in downtown Utica. Each side came armed with homemade signs and flags, and the street filled with political chants and car honks of support.

Dozens of police officers were present to cordon off each group's designated turf and act as calming presence.

In response to Tenney's fundraiser, Brindisi was hosting his own Utica fundraiser for a far lower price: $10 per person.

David.Lombardo@timesunion.com - 518.454.5427 - @poozer87
WASHINGTON - White supremacists held a rally in Washington on Sunday, and almost no one but their opponents and the police showed up.

Jason Kessler, one of the organizers of last year's violent and deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, wanted to hold an anniversary demonstration there, but the city wouldn't let him. So he brought his show to Washington, where he hoped 400 supporters would join him for a rally at Lafayette Square, across from the White House. Fewer than 40 turned out.

The group was met by thousands of protesters who filled their half of the leafy, seven-acre park chanting "Go home, Nazis!" "No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA!" and "Black lives matter!" They drowned out whatever message Kessler and his small band of followers had hoped to deliver - and that was their goal.

For opponents, the day felt like a victory, albeit an often tense and angry one.

Samaj Calhoun, a Southwest Washington resident, came to protest the rally with friends to show they wouldn't be intimidated by the white supremacists. Calhoun said she hopes the rest of the country watching the District sees "that we're not afraid. And we can defend our city."

City leaders and law enforcement officials were determined that the event not be a repeat of the mayhem in Charlottesville last year, when city police and Virginia state troopers allowed white supremacists and neo-Nazis to clash in the streets with anti-hate protesters. Counterprotester Heather Heyer was killed when a man police say identified himself as a Nazi drove a car into a crowd. Two state troopers died when their helicopter crashed following a day of monitoring the civil disturbance.

A massive police presence Sunday kept the two sides separated, and outside of a confrontation between some antifa, or anti-fascist, protesters and police long after the rally had ended, there were no reports of violence. Police reported that one man was arrested after he punched a man wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat.

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said last week the city would ensure that the rallygoers could exercise their right to free speech - even if what they were saying was distasteful.

"While we are opposed adamantly to what we are going to hear, we know what our responsibility is - to protect First Amendment events, to protect Washingtonians and to protect our city," she said.

Bowser returned to the District Sunday afternoon from a trip to El Salvador to supervise the city's response. She planned to return to El Salvador on Monday morning to finish the sister-city trip.

For law enforcement, getting Kessler and his followers to and from the event without incident proved the biggest - and most controversial - challenge.

Kessler and his supporters arrived a little before 1 p.m. at the Vienna Metro station where they were accompanied by a law enforcement officers onto the rear car of a waiting train. After disembarking at the Foggy Bottom Metro station, a larger police contingent, including officers on bicycles and motorcycles escorted the group on a walk of several blocks past protesters who shouted and chanted at them. Once inside Lafayette Square, protesters were kept far away from Kessler's group.

Critics, including two D.C. Council members and the union representing Metro employees, lambasted the transit agency for providing the group extra protection after having said last week that its members would not be given special treatment.

"Giving white supremacists & hate groups a private Metro rail car is so unbelievably wrong & disgraceful. Beyond the horrible precedent it sets, what does it tell the riding public & operators? Plus, it's the exact opposite of what @WMATA said they'd do," council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) tweeted.

At Lafayette Square, protesters continued to yell and chant, and some, including a small contingent of antifa members dressed in black, hoped for a showdown with the white supremacists when the rally ended a little before 5 p.m. Police acted quickly to spirit Kessler and his followers out of the area in white vans to the Rosslyn Metro station, where they boarded a train to return to Vienna. Fairfax County Executive Bryan Hill said police were stationed along Interstate 66 to make sure no one tried to throw debris onto the train tracks or cause any other trouble.

Antifa members vented their frustration at not being able to confront the rallygoers by lighting smoke bombs and firecrackers and throwing eggs at federal buildings downtown. By then, a steady rain was falling, however, and the protest was fizzling. Most began heading home, but police kept a watchful eye as the black-clad group carrying umbrellas wandered about knocking over trash cans, chanting "Bust a window!" and yelling at police to get out of their cars and "meet us in the streets." A confrontation between the protesters and police erupted briefly near 13th and G Streets NW.

While police were successful at keeping the opposing groups apart, the effort came at what is expected to be a significant expense to the city for overtime and deployment of law enforcement resources. District officials said late Sunday they were still tallying the cost of the rally to the city. At least some of it would be reimbursed by the federal government, they said, because Kessler's event took place on National Park Service land.

At the rally, Kessler spent much of his 15-minute speech defending last year's Unite the Right rally and insisting, despite evidence to the contrary, that most of those who attended had been nonviolent.

Earlier in the day, Kessler spoke to several reporters at the Vienna Metro station. He said he and his group were there to promote free speech and to protest "white civil rights abuses."

When asked whether he had anything to say to the Heyer's mother, Kessler offered his "condolences" but said police in Charlottesville should have blocked off the street where she was killed.

Several days after her death last year, Kessler tweeted, "Heather Heyer was a fat, disgusting Communist. Looks like it was payback time."

Mikisa Thompson, who was on the front lines of the protesters in Lafayette Square, said she traveled to Washington from North Carolina. She said she specifically came out for people who were traumatized and beaten last year in Charlottesville, notably Heyer.

"That's why I'm here, for Heather," she said.

Other protesters voiced different reasons for showing up Sunday.

At the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, about 20 protesters marched to the Lincoln Memorial while singing "We Shall Overcome."

The group's leader, Hawk Newsome, said Kessler had invited him and his group, Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, to attend this year's Unite the Right rally.

"He thought that I was a friend, but I am not his negro," Newsome said. "I am not some token black you can use to validate yourself."

BLM-GNY - which has been disavowed by the broader Black Lives Matter network - went viral when Newsome and a few others came onstage at a Trump rally in September while staging a counterprotest.

Instead of joining Kessler, he and a handful of other activists marched from the Bronx to Washington over the past 10 days to protest a range of issues, including food insecurity and police brutality.

"I represent a contingent of marginalized people, and [white supremacists] stand in direct opposition to everything we fight for," Newsome said.

At the Vienna Metro station, V.J. Hyde, a 38-year-old music teacher from Fairfax County, pulled a new stack of posters and a roll of tape from his Whole Foods shopping bag and doled them out to his wife and two daughters.

The family of four and three of their friends came to the Metro station to post "Hate Free Zone" and "Hate Has No Home Here" fliers.

"We're here because this is a very messed-up time in our country, and our community is front and center," Hyde said.

He and his family are Jewish, and they have friends who are Asian American. Hyde said he overheard one of his daughters talking to a friend about the white supremacists. She told the friend the rally attendees "hate us."

"That's pretty f----- up," Hyde said.

For some of the protesters, the focus was less on the white-supremacist rally than on President Donald Trump.

Holding a "Dump Trump" sign, Mike Holey, 67, of Baltimore said he's been particularly frustrated by what he called the president's hesitation to denounce white supremacy and neo-Nazism. He pointed to Trump's statement that there was "blame on both sides" after violence broke out at the Unite the Right rally last year.

Benjamin Garrett, a Vietnam War veteran who lives in Maryland, raised a sign saying "Trump is a traitor" in block capital letters.

"He gives these people permission," Garrett said. "Trump is a blatant racist."

Trump, who was heavily criticized last year for not unequivocally condemning the white nationalists who had organized the rally and a torch-light march through the University of Virginia campus the night before, addressed the Charlottesville anniversary on Saturday, tweeting, "The riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division. We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!"

On Sunday morning, tourists making their way through Lafayette Square paused to take in the growing group of protesters gathering on the northeast side of the park.

Brightly colored signs declaring, "From Charlottesville to the White House: Shut down white supremacy" and "No Nazis, no KKK, no fascist USA" lined patches of grass.

Rossana Castillo, 50, a tourist from Grenoble, France, paused as she passed to take photos.

"It's astonishing to me," she said of the rally that was expected to bring white supremacists within shouting distance of the White House. "And it is just so sad. I know I am a foreigner, but I love your country. I really do. And I am so grateful these people can be here and have the right to stand up to people like this."

Later that afternoon, when Kessler and his followers had left the park, Khury Petersen-Smith of the International Socialist Organization - which he said brought hundreds of anti-racist protesters to Lafayette Square - called the day a success.

"If they [white nationalists] hope to spread their message of hate, they've been stopped in their tracks," Petersen-Smith said. "People defied their fear and defied the idea that we should just ignore the far right and instead mobilized to shut them down."

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The Washington Post's Hannah Natanson, Teo Armus, Reis Thebault, Peter Jamison, Martine Powers, Michael Brice-Saddler, Fenit Nirappil and Antonio Olivo contributed to this report.

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The Washington Post's Hannah Natanson, Teo Armus, Martine Powers, Michael Brice-Sadler, Peter Hermann, Perry Stein, Fenit Nirappil, and Antonio Olivo contributed to this report.

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Video: About 30 people attended the "Unite the Right 2" rally in D.C. on Aug 12. Hundreds of counterprotesters marched and some fought with police.(Jorge Ribas,Patrick Martin/The Washington Post)

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Video: Police presence could not go unnoticed surrounding the University of Virginia on the anniversary of a white nationalist rally which left one woman dead in 2017. Anti-racist protesters marched in the streets surrounding the university calling for an end to white supremacy.(Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)

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Video: One year after violent protests in Charlottesville, Va., witnesses and victims reflect on the day a Nazi sympathizer allegedly plowed his car into a group of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer.(Joyce Koh/The Washington Post)

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A Harris County jury is expected Tuesday to continue deliberating the fate of a Jordanian immigrant after prosecutors argued he should be put to death for masterminding two honor killings, fatal shootings where his son-in-law and his daughters close friend were ambushed at their homes in 2012.

Jurors spent almost five hours Monday trying to decide whether to give Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan, 60, the death penalty for the two murders or sentence him to life in prison without parole.

His evil is real, and it is scary, special prosecutor Anna Emmons said of Irsan during closing arguments. He will lie, cheat, steal manipulate, abuse, torture, stalk and kill to get what he wants.

The damning words were some of the last statements the jury heard in the lengthy death penalty trial of Irsan. Weeks earlier the same jury quickly found him guilty of the double homicide of his 28-year-old son-in-law, Coty Beavers, in November 2012, and Gelareh Bagherzadeh, an Iranian activist who was a close friend of Irsans daughter, 11 months earlier in January.

Irsans defense team invoked scripture and the story of Cain and Abel to try to convince jurors that God would prefer a condemned man to live with sin and shame rather than be killed.

Attorney Rudy Duarte also argued that jurors should take Irsans Jordanian upbringing and religion into account.

How can you sentence someone to death if you dont understand their culture, he asked the jury, and argued that the death penalty is ethically and morally wrong.

It is an attack on all human dignity, everywhere, Duarte said. In a modern society, the death penalty is not necessary.

The defense, in their closing arguments, also noted that Irsan may not be kept in general population if he is sentenced to life without parole. It was an argument that prompted jurors later to send a note to the judge for clarification. The jury was read portions of the earlier testimony of a prison official who said Irsan would not automatically be jailed in administrative segregation, but could end up there if he causes trouble behind bars.

In an attempt to mitigate Irsans actions, defense attorney Allan Tanner revisited testimony that showed the Jordanian patriarch chickened out at the first murder scene outside a Galleria-area townhome. Tanner pointed the finger at Irsans son, who allegedly went with his father and step mother and was the one who pulled the trigger to kill Bagherzadeh.

Thats mitigation, he said, referring to Irsans apparent hesitation to shoot his daughters friend.

Were not talking about convicting someone now, were talking about putting someone to death, Tanner said.

Duarte and Tanner noted that Irsans second wife, who was at both murder scenes, testified against her husband in exchange for a guilty plea to felony kidnapping and a sentence limited to the time she has been held in jail awaiting trial.

She has all the motivation in the world to lie to you, Tanner said about 40-year-old Shmou Ali Alrawabdeh. We dont know what happened at either crime scene, we really dont.

He also argued that the death penalty is futile, especially for a 60-year-old when the average time of death row is 11 years.

Just killing him, I dont see how that solves anything, Tanner said. I dont see any good in killing the guy when hes going to be 80 or 90.

During closing arguments, special prosecutor Marie Primm weaved together more than 20 years of Irsans bad acts to sway jurors against letting Irsan serve a life sentence in general population in prison.

She reminded the jury that Irsan also killed a different son-in-law in 1999.

Irsan testified that it was in self-defense. Other family members said he blasted Amjad Alidam in the chest with a shotgun because he did not approve of Alidams marriage to his oldest daughter, then planted a pistol on the body.

Ali Irsan gets to be the judge, jury and executioner of anyone who goes outside of Ali Irsans control. she said.

Both sides had about an hour to give closing arguments Monday capping an eight-week capital murder trial in state District Judge Jan Krockers court. After five weeks of testimony, the jury took less than an hour to convict Irsan of capital murder in July.

The same jury then spent two weeks listening to testimony to determine whether Irsan should be sentenced to death or life without parole.

In order to sentence Irsan to death, jurors will have to agree that he would be a future danger to society and there are not enough mitigating circumstances to spare his life. Jurors began deliberating immediately after closings.

brian.rogers@chron.com

twitter.com/brianjrogers
A man arrested in El Paso will be extradited to Bexar County to face charges related to a recent shooting, according to authorities.

Ralph Lugo, 31, was taken into custody Sunday morning by the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force after being found at an El Paso hotel, the Bexar County Sheriffs Office said in a Facebook post.
The Plainview Hilton is deemed especially worth extreme care as its historic value is solid.

Taking Plainview back almost 100 years, the scene at the Hilton was one of original tradesmen laboring in the heart of the city in 1928-29 to build a strong brick hotel tower to house lodgers drawn by an economic boom that blossomed with explosion of farming.

The lodging tower preceded the city's attempt a few years later to slug it out with Lubbock for the right to host the new Texas Tech College  a bout they lost and narrowly missed.

No worry, Plainview dusted itself off knowing it had a formidable institution, Wayland Baptist University, which grew in stature over 90 years to include multiple campuses around the nation and globe serving the city in good stead spiritually, economically and otherwise.

Many other huge business developments followed  irrigation giant Green Machinery and Harvest Queen Mill were pioneers of the ag boom along with the city's airport complex. FAA tower and aircraft maintenance firms. Later the city snagged Missouri Beef (later known as Excel and then Cargill), Wal-Mart Distribution Center, an Ethanol production plant, two state prisons and more.

Cargill closed five years ago, but its campus was purchased by private investors for industrial sites.

At the dawn of 2018, the city learned it will soon see huge shipments of wind generators arriving at a 100-acre railhead east of the city, or passing through the town on flatbeds, as Excel Energy constructs in Hale County one of the largest concentrations of wind powered electrical generation stations worldwide on farms in east and southwest Hale County.

So, in those times, from the 30s through the 60s, the experience of gazing upward toward the city's tallest structure and a newly reinstated flag flying atop, could again foster feelings of great things ahead, or it is hoped. And history repeats itself in a sense as a tall tower may again be symbolic of great expectation s for Plainview.

This time Hilton's successors, MRE Capital partners, work to refit the Hilton's strong exterior. And the refurbished and modernized Hilton, its brick and stone facade clean and sparkling again, may earn the right to be symbolic of expectations again.

Conrad Hilton made history in town on July 4, 1929, at a city gathering in the 2nd Floor Ballroom  a focal space being fully renovated. Hilton personally christened the Plainview hotel. It was his first built-from-ground-up hotel to bear his name after he bought and reflagged existing towers  first the Mobley in Cisco. Then followed the new Dallas Hilton, built in 1925; bought the McClelland House in Waco in 1926, and the Abilene Hotel in Abilene in 1927.

Much is written about 'other' hotels that Hilton is believed to have purchased or acquired about the same time  ones that do not figure into ones like Plainview which he built.

Much of the mentions are not definitive, probably not mentioning accurately, all the hotels Hilton touched. Those include Fort Worth and purchased the Terminal hotel, which was operated until 1921, and the Melba hotel. Later in 1921 he acquired the Waldorf hotel of Dallas.

In 1923, he made the last purchase of his earlier hotel operations when he purchased the Beaton hotel of Corsicana. All of these hotels were successfully operated by the Hilton Hotel company and later sold.

Yet Plainview was the apparently undisputed fifth, fully-owned Hilton Hotel in 1929. About that time, Hilton reportedly only leased a building in San Angelo which became a Hilton in 1929.

How the Hilton came to Plainview, according to an article by former Herald editor Doug McDonough.

The town fathers learned from experience and was following a pattern they had successfully used to woo the railroad, Plainview citizens in early 1928 and made an offer to Conrad Hilton he couldn't refuse.

Presented to Hilton personally in June 1928 by Guy Jacob, Herbert Dysart and A. Underwood, all of Plainview, the offer included free land for a hotel and $20,000 cash. Additionally, residents offered to purchase $20,000 of "7 percent preferred stock" in the hotel. Within days the land was deeded to Hilton and construction began Sept. 1, 1928. It was finished June 4, 1929, and dedicated July 4.

By year's end in 1929, the Lubbock Hilton was under construction and a contract "just signed" for another in Marlin.

After Plainview, El Paso entered the picture in 1930. The entrepreneur broke out of the state in 1939, opening the Albuquerque Hilton, now known as the Andaluz.

Meanwhile, in Plainview, the Hilton and the town's tallest building, had its heyday for a half-century, then closed in the 1980s  and decades later construction tradesmen have a rare opportunity -- to assume jobs here and renew efforts to restore it to like new.

Specially located for their skills in painting, refurbishing and restoring old original windows, patching and preserving period molding and decorations of the 1920s  and meeting the strict standards of state and federal historic commissions  the tradesmen were specially sought for the project, and are being assured jobs as MLR moves soon to Harlingen to start another job, a downtown office building to lofts.

"Every window is made of special special treated lumber," said Daniel Sailler, a partner in the firm of MRE Capital. "Nobody makes Windows that size anymore either. Every window in that building is custom made window," he said. a Lubbock sash and door company in Lubbock is doing the work.

Yeah, we've got they're doing they're doing the sashes and Verbeke they're making the actual frames and this little town in southern Missouri where they make the actual frames and it's all they do are these old historic ones.

Just to visit the site is instructive.

There was a rocky road for Hilton during the Great Depression. Wikipedia traces how he was forced into bankruptcy and lost several of his hotels including Plainview. He did get it back, however. Nevertheless, he was retained as manager of a combined chain, and eventually gained control of his remaining eight hotels.

Young Hilton had been impressed by the potential of owning lodging facilities in boom towns, and he saw a land office business going in Cisco in the 1920s due to the oil boom. Seeing tremendous traffic in and out of a Cisco hotel, he bought it, founding the Hilton chain in 1919 with his first property, the Mobley Hotel, whose name continued as it was. The Hilton foundation later restored the minimal story building that is now the Cisco Chamber of Commerce. A restoration of a multi-story hotel by MRE in Cisco stands just a few blocks down the street from the chamber.

What impressed Hilton's entry into the lodging business was the money the Mobley was making by renting its rooms to oil field workers, literally in eight-hour shifts, a practice hotel, fortunately, did not follow with families on vacation.

The entrepreneurs abandoned thoughts of a career in banking, he later related, and instead began buying hotels. His next acquisitions resulted in the opening of the Dallas Hilton in 1925, then he purchased Abilene's Windsor Hotel, and renamed it the Hilton in 1927, and the Waco Hilton followed in 1928. Then, once impressed with land booms, Hilton's attention became focused on Plainview, which in 1929 was experiencing a sort of land rush all its own due to farmers relocating here from elsewhere to acquire land with shallow irrigation wells, good soil and weather -- all excellent conditions for production agriculture.

So, Plainview's Hilton was born on the coattails of economic hopes for Plainview. Its genuine historic credentials stem from being the apparent fifth in the chain, and seemingly the first Hilton planned and built-from-the-ground-up hotel to become a 'Hilton.'

Sailler said much work required shoring up structurally, but the other time consumption he calls the "more of the artistic you know artistic parts of the first floor and in the ballroom. It was presented as easily repairable, but you know a lot had to be remanufactured and replaced because it wasn't intact.

"It just wasn't in the shape we'd hoped it was, there are hundreds of little things is the best way to explain it. And we found some good guys out there that are from out of state that can fix these little ones, thankfully we found them, they're the only guys in the world that still do it."
UVALDE  Trapped early Sunday by a sudden flood surge on the Nueces River north of Uvalde, 27 people were rescued from around the Chalk Bluff River Resort and Park by first responders who came from as far away as San Antonio.

The river was 200 yards wide and just roaring. Normally, its 40 feet wide and a couple of feet deep, said Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, 56, who rushed to the scene when the emergency call went out.

They rescued some by helicopter and others by boat. The last family they got out was in the back of a pickup truck in the middle of the river, added the mayor, who said numerous area, state and federal agencies responded.

RELATED: Storms sweep through San Antonio, bringing flash flood warnings

Other campers were plucked from trees or car roofs by rescue helicopters, including those manned by the Border Patrol, Texas Department of Public Safety and San Antonio Police Department.

When flash flood alerts sounded early Sunday, Samantha Winn, a Chalk Bluff park manager, woke her children and rallied her staff to warn hundreds of camp visitors about the rising river.

When you have a flash flood, it happens like that, she exclaimed with the snap of her fingers.

Winn, 35, and fellow manager Jennifer Jackson, 38, said the first alerts came about 6 a.m. A massive wall of water soon followed. By 7:30 a.m., the river was peaking, they said.

They saw about five vehicles, including four trucks, floating downstream past their camp.

Winn described seeing one desperate mother who had time only to throw her children into a tree and then save herself.

In the aftermath of the rescues, helicopters did a secondary sweep of the river, looking for anyone who had been swept downstream and needed assistance. None was found.

EXPRESSNEWS.COM: Family describes terror surrounding group of 10 stranded on island

McLaughlin said that despite weather forecasts predicting only an inch or two of rain overnight, an estimated 10 to 11 inches fell in canyons north of Uvalde.

The deluge caused the Nueces River to rise to 14 feet, which is moderate flood stage, according to the National Weather Service, which has a river gauge north of the resort.

Meteorologist Cory Van Pelt said he was unaware of any other serious flooding in the area.

It was unclear where the rescued campers had been staying when the flood hit. Calls to Chalk Bluff River Resort and Country Boys Ranch, which is north of Chalk Bluff, were not returned Sunday. Both sites are about 15 miles north of Uvalde on Texas 55.

On Sunday afternoon, Chalk Bluff posted to Facebook that nobody at the park was in danger or needed rescuing and that the people in trouble had been swept from upriver.

The flooding also caused the closure of Texas 55 for several hours Sunday afternoon.

Staff Writer Ismael Perez contributed to this report. | John MacCormack is a staff writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | JMacCormack@express-news.net | Twitter: @JohnMacCormack
San Antonio police are looking for a man who they say exposed himself to people on three different occasions.

Terrence Palumbo, 27, is being sought on three charges of indecent exposure, according to a tweet from the police department.
Imagine if it emerged that the Republican chairman of the House or Senate intelligence committee had a Russian spy working on his staff. Think it would cause a political firestorm? Well, recently we learned that Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., had a Chinese spy who worked for her for 20 years. Listed as an office director on payroll records, he served as her driver when she was in San Francisco, all while reporting to Chinas Ministry of State Security though Chinas San Francisco Consulate.

The reaction of the mainstream media? Barely a peep.

Feinstein acknowledged the infiltration but downplayed its significance. Five years ago the FBI informed me it had concerns that an administrative member of my California staff was potentially being sought out by the Chinese government to provide information, Feinstein said in statement  which means the breach took place while Feinstein was heading the intelligence committee.

But, Feinstein insisted, he never had access to classified or sensitive information or legislative matters and was immediately fired. In other words: junior staffer, no policy role, no access to secrets, quickly fired  no big deal.

But it is a big deal. I asked several former senior intelligence and law enforcement officials how serious this breach might have been.

Its plenty serious, one former top Justice Department official told me. Focusing on his driver function alone, in Mafia families, the bosss driver was among the most trusted men in the crew, because among other things he heard everything that was discussed in the car.

A former top CIA clandestine officer explained to me what the agency would do if they had recruited the driver of a senior official like Feinstein.

We would have the driver record on his phone all conversations that Feinstein would have with passengers and phone calls in her car. If she left her phone, iPad or laptop in the car while she went to meetings, social events, dinners, etc., we would have the driver download all her devices. If the driver drove for her for 20 years he would probably have had access to her office and homes. We would have had the source put down an audio device in her office or homes if the opportunity presented itself. Depending on the take from all of what the source reported, we would use the info to target others that were close to her and exhibited some type of vulnerability.

In short, this officer says, we would have had a field day.

It seems improbable that Feinstein never once discussed anything sensitive in her car over a period of years. But lets assume that Feinstein was extraordinarily careful and never discussed any classified information in front of her driver or on any devices to which he had access. Even so, one former top intelligence official told me, someone in that position could give an adversary a whole bunch on atmospherics and trends and attitudes, which are from time to time far more important than the things we call secrets.

He added Its like (having access to her) unclassified emails. (And we all know no one ever exposes classified information on unclassified emails).

Washington is understandably focused on the threat from Russia. But according to FBI Director Chris Wray, China from a counterintelligence perspective represents the broadest, most pervasive, most threatening challenge we face as a country.

It was China, after all, that hacked the Office of Personnel Management in 2015, stealing the SF-86 security clearance forms of many thousands of executive branch employees in the most devastating cyberattack in the history of our country.

Beijing has successfully recruited FBI agents and State Department employees as spies and has used information from U.S. informants to kill dozens of CIA sources inside the regime. And now we know they recruited a high value senate staffer who worked in immediate proximity to the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Feinstein owes the country a detailed explanation of how she let a Chinese spy into her inner sanctum. And the media should give this security breach the same attention they would if it involved Russia and the Republicans.
Every news program and late-night comedy show spends time on President Donald Trumps preposterous manner of speech. As George Will wrote recently, He speaks English as though it is a second language that he learned from someone who learned English last week.

The problem is not with Trump, however. He is merely an outcome of what happens when there is a general acceptance and usage of sloppy speech. How many people split infinitives, dangle participles or end a sentence with a preposition in their everyday speech or writing?

The use of emoji and abbreviations across messaging platforms is far more common than a properly constructed sentence.

Our actions have consequences, and our general acceptance of substandard communication softened this nations resistance to a leader that does not understand double negatives. The danger is not the embarrassment brought to the country but the effect it has on our ability to engage and connect meaningfully.

Speech, once it has been denigrated into cliches and thoughtless jibber, is no longer able to pursue the true or beautiful. Sloppy speech precipitates sloppy thinking. Even a sharp, reasoned mind can become softened if one gets into the practice of using and consuming undisciplined speech.

Undisciplined speech also exposes undisciplined thinking. Speech is a reflection of thought, and undisciplined speech reflects undisciplined thought. If one accepts that speech must be nothing more than random words spilling out haphazardly, then one has lowered the bar for speech and thought.

What we think and what we say matters. As Corey Brettschneider writes, Rights to express and to listen to ideas are justified by the more basic right of citizens to make up their own minds about politics. When we have sloppy or deceptive speech  types of speech that each cover up the truth and pull citizens on a path away from it  citizens cannot make up their own minds as the ideas and facts are not being articulated in a clear or accurate way. There is a natural connection between speech and thought. Poor speech undermines these natural associations, as it distorts the connections people make between their thoughts and the world beyond. Speech is devoid of value if it is debased.

Trump did not happen in a vacuum; he happened in a country where people spend more time on social media than with books. This is not about blaming social media, this is about choices and responsibility. This is about choosing how we spend our time, what we read, and how we gather and process our news. It is about turning inward and evaluating our own use of language and the discipline of our own thought. Leaders cannot be held accountable by a population that does not choose to hold itself accountable.

When engaging in social media there is no rule that one must dumb down the conversation to hashtags, cliches, banal phrases, emoji or abbreviations. There is no rule against sending a well-crafted note via text message rather than just a jumble of letters and pictures that should embarrass any thinking person. One does not have to binge-watch a series when great works of literature are just as accessible. Anyone who engages in these activities laid the groundwork for Trump; they made it acceptable to be sloppy in speech, to digest opinion rather than fact, to be fascinated with celebrity rather than value.

Social media is blamed for allowing the promulgation of fake news. But it was our choice to be passive consumers of information rather than critical thinkers. We criticize the president for making a mockery of language, yet we fail to answer Im well rather than Im good when someone asks about our well-being.

We have no one to blame but ourselves.

Kyle Scott has published five books, the most recent The Limits of Politics, and dozens of academic articles. Scott is a trustee for Lone Star College and an affiliated faculty member at Baylor College of Medicine.
The only surprise that Bexar Countys air no longer meets the federal ozone standard is that it took so long to become official.

San Antonios ozone levels have been above the 2015 federal ozone standard of 70 parts per billion, but the Environmental Protection Agency delayed in making that violation official. That changed after Andrew Wheeler took the reins as EPAs acting administrator.

The American Thoracic Society has estimated ozone kills 52 people per year in San Antonio. It almost certainly results in numerous other hospitalizations, experts have said. So from an environmental and public health perspective, any regulatory push that leads to cleaner air in San Antonio is a good thing for residents.

From an economic perspective, this is a hit. One consequence of not meeting federal standards is that all federally funded transportation projects will be delayed for additional reviews. It could also create obstacles for business expansion and delay air permits.

For a fast-growing region, Bexar County and the city of San Antonio have done a very good job of addressing air quality concerns. The regions ozone levels have been decreasing even as the population has grown. San Antonio long had the distinction of being one of the biggest cities in the country to meet federal ozone standards.

The work continues. The regions air will benefit from the shuttering of CPS Energys J.T. Deely units, which rely on coal. A forthcoming transit plan from Mayor Ron Nirenberg could also be an important step in relieving congestion and reducing tailpipe emissions. Its also probably a matter of time until the EPA requires tailpipe emissions tests for vehicles here.

For years, the region has dreaded not meeting the federal ozone standard. Now, the goal should be to meet it as quickly as possible.
Re: Cruz defends payday lenders at S.A. stop, Metro, Aug. 7:

Interesting article on Sen. Ted Cruzs defense of payday lenders while in San Antonio. The Center for Responsive Politics shows that Cruz has accepted $13,860 from payday lenders for his campaigns. In fact, the research shows that over 100 senators between 1989 and July 23, 2018, accepted payday lending money.

However, Beto ORouke is not accepting any lobby money, so he will be capable of challenging the predatory practices of these lenders.

Katherine Hess

Pain as deterrence

Re: Patients who misuse ER should feel the financial pain, Chris Tomlinson, Business, Wednesday:

So sorry to see the San Antonio Express-News run such a column. The folks who cant afford insurance or health care costs already feel financial pain.

Tomlinsons proposal to make low-income citizens feel the financial pain to punish them to cause behavioral change is as reckless, uncaring and insensitive as tearing families apart on the U.S.-Mexico border to frighten families in Mexico and Central America away from seeking refuge in the United States.

These are both horrible suggestions.

Peter Bella

ER help, please

Chris Tomlinson, please publish a list of facilities that are financially safe to use if I am in pain and dont know if it is a heart attack or indigestion, or a bruised elbow or a broken one, or if I have a bad cold or pneumonia.

Please use large print because I am old and dont see so well.

With the advent of freestanding emergency rooms, acute care clinics and physician groups that will not accept walk-ins from their own sick patients, how can insured consumers know what to do when they are suddenly sick and afraid?

It isnt clear by any means, and the Blue Cross ruling makes it harder.

Francille Radmann

Obamas vendetta

Re: Attack on free press, Your Turn, Aug. 5:

The writer complains about a CNN reporter being booted from a White House press event because shed asked questions in a previous event that the Trump administration didnt like. Since then, a second CNN reporter has been booted for the same thing.

In both cases, the issue seemed to be that the reporters were hollering inappropriate questions about domestic political issues in the presence of foreign dignitaries, when it would be more germane to ask questions about the bilateral issues concerning the two countries.

Some may remember Barack Obamas vendetta against Fox News because he didnt like what it said and wrote about him. His Treasury Department tried to exclude Fox News from pool coverage of interviews with a key official but backed down after strong protests from the rest of the networks.

When 92 percent of the stories written about President Donald Trump and his administration are negative despite a roaring economy and record low unemployment, one doesnt have to be a genius to recognize that theres hardly fair and balanced coverage by those news agencies. However, its interesting that none of the other news organizations have been banned, even though the president also considers them fake news organizations.

Its also noteworthy that the other news agencies havent protested very loudly about the CNN expulsions as they did when Fox News was threatened. Perhaps thats because the CNN reporters like to make themselves the center of attention at such events, which makes the story about them rather than about the events theyre covering  and the other news agencies are tired of it, as are the president and his administration.

Al Koppen, Fair Oaks Ranch

Whats not illegal

Murder is illegal.

Attempting murder is illegal.

A felon owning a gun is illegal.

Shooting people indiscriminately is illegal.

Using firearms in a crime is illegal.

Criminals do not go through background checks when they purchase an illegal gun. So how will criminals follow new gun laws? How will new gun laws make us safer? How will restricting law-abiding citizens even more make us safer?

Dan Dreher

Better uses

What could our city do with a gift of $450 million (what the Alamo reimagining is estimated to cost)?

How about new and upgraded roads and expressways?

How about turning the University of Texas at San Antonio into a world-class research university?

Or using the money for economic development? Dangle it in front of companies from around the world to establish facilities here paying high-salary jobs?

No! Wait! I've got it! Let's use it to demolish some historic buildings downtown and replace them with grass!

Yeah. That's the ticket.

Brian Hangen

Friendly airport

Having recently flown into the Charlotte, N.C., airport, I will never criticize our airport as being inadequate.

Here are some questions that people need to ask about our airport:

How long does it take your plane to taxi to the gate after landing?

How long does it take for your luggage to arrive at the baggage area after landing?

How long does it take your plane after leaving the gate to take off?

How simple is it to hail a taxi or other means of transportation after departing the baggage area?

How long does it take you to get through TSA and find your gate?

Other airports are bigger and have more stores and eating establishments, but the San Antonio airport is passenger-friendly, and I will take it any day over the other airports I have flown in and out of.

Tony Magnon, New Braunfels
The "Little Couple" stars have, at long last, reportedly sold their Houston homeafter nearly a year on the market and 10 (yep, 10!) price cutsfor a mere $899,000.

The back story: In September 2017, Bill Klein and Jen Arnold, stars of the long-running TLC reality show, had put their five-bedroom, six-bath Houston mansion on the market, since they'd moved to St. Petersburg, FL, so that Dr. Arnold could start a new gig at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital.

At that point, they had high hopes on the price, set at $1,225,000.

The "Little Couple" house finally sold, only for much less than the owners had hoped for.

But as months passed and no buyer appeared, the house underwent a series of price cuts. According to Radar Online, the house finally landed a buyerfor $326,000 less than the original asking price.

So why did the "Little Couple" home sale fall so short of expectations?

'Little Couple' house: What went wrong

For starters, in case you're wondering if the home sat on the market because it was configured specifically for little people, rest assured, it had been renovated for people of standard height before hitting the market. This probably cost the couple a pretty pennyand may have tempted them to make the cardinal mistake of overpricing their home in an attempt to recoup those costs.

"It was smart to redo the home for 'normal'-size people, but you can't expect a buyer to pay for all of your work," says Kathryn Bishop, a real estate agent at Keller Williams in Studio City, CA. "That's probably what the sellers wanted."

Not only was this home priced too high, but things went from bad to worse once the area was hit by Hurricane Harvey. Even though the house wasn't damaged in the storm, many others nearby were, and this had ripple effects on the whole market.

"This seemed like the bad combination of an overpriced home on the market and a major hurricane converging at the same time," says Florida real estate agent Cara Ameer. "Once a major storm hits an area, it can put the brakes on peoples interest and ability to buy. Some pending home sales likely stalled or fell apart, thus causing a domino effect in the real estate pipeline."

Hurricane and pricing issues aside, the house itself had problems, too. For example, the swimming pool, while gorgeous, is an amenity many home buyers just don't want because of its safety and maintenance issues. Plus the placement may have given buyers pause.

"I had a place where the owners had a pool in the center of the home, like this one," says Bruce Ailion, a real estate agent and attorney in Atlanta. "It took forever to sell and also had multiple price drops. The pool was surrounded by the home walls, so the sun only fell on the pool and patio for a short period of time. So water would stay on the patio longer and algae and mold would grow."

The 'Little Couple' real estate take-home lesson?

If the "Little Couple" stars have learned anything from their home-selling struggles in Houston, it's that you should never assume that star power alone can be enough to ratchet up a home's price.

"For a home like this, with a celebrity factor that was totally move-in ready, pricing on the higher side probably seemed like the right thing to do at the time they put it on the market," concludes Ameer. "However, given the proximity to storms and such, you always have to think about pricing relative to the reality of that situation."

In fact, as it happened, the "Little Couple" stars' new home in St. Petersburg was situated right in the path of Hurricane Irma, which forced them to evacuate their new home shortly after moving in. It prompted Arnold to joke, "Its getting a little weird about hurricanes following me. My family calls me a hurricane magnet.

That may not be great for real estate, but maybe it could set the stage for a nail-biting new season of their TLC show.

The post 'Little Couple' Stars Finally Sell Their Houston Home for a Tiny PriceHere's What Went Wrong appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
A SIXTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD war veteran collapsed and died in a Beitbridge bank queue yesterday while waiting to make a withdrawal.

Major Moyo, of Malibeng in Beitbridge West, was pronounced dead on arrival at the Beitbridge Rural District Hospital, sources at the hospital said.

People who were with him in the queue at a building society bank said Moyo was frothing after collapsing and was rushed to hospital, which is a kilometre away.

He just collapsed and started foaming from the mouth before going numb. We heard he passed on, a woman who stood next to him said.

We had been in the queue for a long time together and were almost reaching the door, she said.

Moyo joined the Zimbabwe Peoples Revolutionary Army in Zambia in the early 70s.

Hospital sources said his relatives had been informed of the incident.

Moyo has become a victim of the cash crisis that has ravaged the country, with some people having to sleep in queues as the cash shortages continue to bite.

Matabeleland South police spokesperson Inspector Philisani Ndebele said he had not yet received information about the sudden death case.

Moyos name had, however, been entered into the hospital mortuarys register.

-NewsDay

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As reports of post-election violence mainly targeted at opposition MDC Alliance supporters mount, the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC) has emerged as one of the most vocal institutions speaking truth to power.

The ZHRC last week issued a strongly-worded statement calling on the army to account for its members and warn them not to attack civilians in order to stop further harm to members of the public.

This followed reports that soldiers and Zanu PF activists were targeting MDC Alliance supporters in a violent retribution campaign that has resulted in the death of seven people and left scores injured.

Our senior reporter Veneranda Langa (VL) last Friday had an exclusive interview with ZHRC chairperson Elasto Mugwadi (EM), who disclosed that the commission was worried about the escalation of violence against opposition supporters. Below are excerpts from the interview.

VL: The ZHCR recently released its preliminary report on the July 30 elections. Please give us an overview of your findings.

EM: What we had in our report on the 2018 harmonised elections and the post-election environment in Zimbabwe were just preliminary findings.

We are still compiling more information so that we come up with a comprehensive final report. We are gathering evidence from all the 10 provinces in the country, which will assist us in coming up with the final report.

Some of the key issues covered by the preliminary report included the post-electoral period, which was more disturbing and where six civilians lost their lives during demonstrations by the MDC Alliance, while several others were injured.

There were also cases of alleged beatings of civilians by the military, as well as cases of harassment and intimidation of people perceived to have voted for the opposition political parties.

VL: On the issue of victimisation of civilians by the military, what did you find out in your investigations?

EM: Our investigation teams visited the affected areas of Kuwadzana and Warren Park in Harare, and Chitungwiza to assess the situation because we had received complaints of members of the military allegedly indiscriminately harassing and beating up civilians in some suburbs in Harare.

The teams were not able to witness the soldiers beating up the people, but most of the people that we ended up talking to were saying that they heard that soldiers were causing havoc, or that it happened next door without really identifying the actual victims.

However, this is an ongoing investigation and our final report to be released will provide concrete findings.

There were allegations that bogus people that are not the military had been going around masquerading as the army, and probably trying to avenge some past feuds, which had nothing to do with the elections, and taking advantage of the elections so that they could find scapegoats.

Of concern to the commission is the fact that there seems to be no office taking responsibility over the deployment of soldiers into communities and streets.

On the contrary, the Zimbabwe Defence Forces and the government have incredibly denied this deployment.

VL: You were very critical of the role played by traditional leaders in Zanu PFs campaigns and the abuse of food aid to influence the elections. Why did you not raise these issues before the elections?

EM: We did raise those issues, and if you look at our pre-election report and even soon after the elections, we did raise those issues.

In our preliminary report, we made recommendations that traditional leaders and chiefs must stick to their roles as defined in the constitution and the Traditional Leaders Act.

If they become fully-fledged political activists, they will be taking sides.

VL: In your preliminary report you concluded that the issues raised above made it difficult for Zimbabweans to exercise their constitutional rights on election day. Do you still consider the elections free and fair?

EM: Our preliminary report says that our monitoring of elections up to voting day was very peaceful and people enjoyed their rights and freedom to assemble and freedom of expression without hindrance.

Rallies were held and people were free to express their views. It was peaceful up until post-election.

We believe the pre-election period was fair, but the monitoring of the post-election phase is still on-going until the end of September.

So, we will look at what happened to try and find out if it was triggered by the electoral outcome or just people trying to take advantage of the elections.

VL: When should Zimbabweans expect your final report on the elections and are any of your recommendations enforceable?

EM: There is no legal time limit as to when the report should be filed, but we are looking at the general practice, which is within three months after elections.

In the 2013 elections, we filed the final report within two weeks after the elections were held. Then, we also did not have any post-election issues to investigate.

VL: You issued a statement condemning the shooting of protesters by the military on August 1, leading to the death of seven people. What additional steps are you taking to ensure that there is justice?

EM: We made recommendations in our preliminary report that the military should remain in the barracks.

We condemned the use of live ammunition on civilians because they could have used rubber bullets. In a normal situation, the army should not be asked to control riots, it is the duty of the police to do so and maintain law and order.

When we engaged the police, they said most of their officers had been deployed out of Harare and during the demonstrations they did not have enough manpower and so they ended up asking for assistance from the soldiers.

Our recommendations are that this should not be allowed to happen again. The commission reiterates that all army deployments must be done in terms of the laws and constitution, and all members of the Zimbabwe National Army must be accounted for and warned not to attack civilians in order to stop further harm to members of the public.

All cases of harassment, intimidation, arson and malicious damage to property based on political affiliation must be thoroughly investigated and be dealt with in a non-partisan manner.

VL: Are you aware of reports of post-election beatings and attacks of suspected opposition supporters by security agencies? If so, what are you doing to stop the abuse?

EM: We are investigating everything and one of the things we are doing is to engage with the police.

You may be aware that there is a Zimbabwe Electoral Commission committee, which was set up and it includes members of the Zimbabwe Republic Police like senior assistant commissioner Erasmus Makodza.

We are engaging with him to look at the reports and find out what they are doing about this because where there is criminal violation of human rights, it is the duty of the police to investigate.

VL: Are there any victims of post-election violence that have approached you, and if so, can you describe the nature of their cases?

EM: Yes, there is a family whose house was gutted down by fire in Mutoko.

They sent a report to us, unfortunately they wanted to remain anonymous for security reasons.

The difficulty now is that they have gone into hiding and now we do not know their whereabouts so that we can interview them to find out who the arsonists are.

There is also another report being investigated of a case in Muzarabani of threats of violence. We are still following up on the issue.

VL: Is your commission empowered to provide redress for human rights violations?

EM: It is only by way of recommendations, but the recommendations have no legal force. They are like advice, and it is up to someone to take the advice or not.

However, most of our recommendations have been implemented. An example is the case of Chingwizi villagers. We recommended that they should be compensated and resettled and that was followed.

We have proposed alignment of laws with the constitution so that our recommendations can be executed as High Court orders. I strongly believe that will go through.

VL: Do you think the commission has made any impact since it was set up and can you describe the nature of your interventions?

EM: We have made impact to the extent that we have sensitised people through outreach programmes to know their political, environmental, socio-economic and other rights, and to educate them that if they have been wronged they can submit their complaints.

During the pre-election period, we had meetings with the major political parties like Zanu PF and MDC Alliance to say that they should not engage in provocative sloganeering during rallies, like citing a single person as an enemy.

We also told them not to engage in hate speech, some of which was responsible for fuelling the August riots.

VL: Who do you consider to be the worst violators of human rights in Zimbabwe?

EM: There is no single group that I can single out as worst violators. The violators are varied because there are people whose rights were violated because they could not get their due pensions, and then there are some people that were forced to attend political rallies, not by their free choice.

We have not had an opportunity of documenting those cases, but in the future we will do so.

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Tendai Biti has accused Zimbabwean soldiers of se_xually abusing MDC Alliance election agents during the July 30 harmonised elections, with some agents in Mutoko telling him such abuse was rampant there.

Biti appeared emotional while announcing the cases during a court hearing on Friday.

Zambian immigration authorities rejected a request for asylum by Biti  whose Peoples Democratic Party had formed an election alliance with opposition leader Nelson Chamisas Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)  after he fled post-election violence and certain arrest in Zimbabwe.

He was deported back to Zimbabwe where he was taken into police custody.

Biti was charged with political violence and falsely and unlawfully announcing results of the election.

State prosecutors did not oppose bail, which was set at $5 000.

If found guilty Biti faces up to 10 years in jail, a cash fine or both.

During a narration of his persecution ordeal which forced him to seek political asylum in neighbouring Zambia, Biti alleged authorities were hell-bent on persecuting him for challenging President Emmerson Mnangagwas flawed election win. He said MDC Alliance agents suffered despicable abuse at the hands of the junta.

He said it was hard to imagine the outrage that election agents working for the MDC Alliance felt after being se_xually abused.

He said the MDC Alliance was doing everything it possibly can to assist the victims, to bring accountability and justice and hopefully to prevent any such cases from recurring in future elections.

He said several election agents from Buhera to Mutoko accused troops of se_xual abuse and called for an investigation into the accusations.

Biti told the court that a female representative in Buhera had reported how she was rap_ed and threatened after refusing to sign another V11 form and how most of their male election agents would be sod0mised, specifically in Mutoko.

I felt that the regime which had had just seven months in office had escalated the abuses. There was massive onslaught on our election agents, Biti said.

In Buhera, a woman was rap_ed after refusing to sign another V11 form. We were also getting reports of onslaughts on our people being sod0mised and rap_ed across the country specifically in Mutoko, but nothing has been done by law enforcement agents in those respects.

Questions sent to army spokesperson Overson Mugwisi were not responded to at the time of going to Press.

But the military spokesperson clarified at a press conference ahead of elections that they will only assist the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) with logistics during elections.

Our role in the elections is mainly to support the ZRP in their role of maintenance of the law and order in the country before, during and after the harmonised elections. We also remain ready to assist Zec with transport where necessary. Beyond that, the ZDF remains ready to defend our countrys territorial integrity and interests, he said.

He had earlier said the ZDF had no direct role in the elections.

We are disturbed by false reports alleging that the ZDF is going to be used by Zanu PF to rig the vote, he said.

I want to raise concern over some individuals who mischievously and deliberately portray the execution of our mandate as participating in political campaigns.

Falsehoods that have been reported include allegations of ZDF deployments in rural areas to intimidate villagers so that they support a certain political partys chances of winning in the 2018 harmonised elections.

We urge people who are not sure or doubt the genuine role being played by the ZDF in this election to feel free to check with us and clear their suspicions. If some serving members are participating in the on-going political campaigns, they will be doing so illegally and not as a result of an instruction from their commanders.

Those with information on such misconduct should provide us with full details of such individuals to enable appropriate disciplinary action to be taken against them. They can also report the suspicious characters to the nearest police station, he said.

Biti said police officers handled complaints coming from the opposition elections agents but did not take any action and the matters were never investigated.

Biti condemned the conduct of the military for opening fire on unarmed civilians in a demonstration that rocked Harare on August 1 and defended his comments on the election results.

Our fears were a repeat of the 2008 experience. I have been a rights lawyer and activist since 1999 and over the years, arrested on countless occasions. My house has been bombed twice but this time the levels of attack were unprecedented.

What shocked me were reports that soldiers had opened fire on unarmed civilians and seven people died and more than 40 injured, he said.

After visiting some of the victims with Advocate Chamisa, we heard horrific stories, stories of men having their privates split by bullets, he said.

Security forces used disproportionate force to clamp down on post-election protests in Harare on August 1, 2018. Soldiers and riot police were implicated in the deaths of at least six people and serious injuries to dozens more.

Hundreds of soldiers and riot police were deployed across the city, as residents awaited the result of the July 30 national elections.

Scores of soldiers patrolled on foot, indiscriminately beating anyone in sight as two helicopters in military camouflage colours flew several times over the MDC headquarters.

The police confirmed the death of at least six people, though there are fears that the death toll could be higher.

The heavy-handed response to Zimbabwes post-election protests, including firing live ammunition, suggests that the security forces are as abusive as ever, said Dewa Mavhinga, Southern Africa director at Human Rights Watch

Prompt, credible investigations are needed so that those responsible can be held to account and future violence is avoided.

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- President Muhammadu Buhari felicitates with Chief John Odigie-Oyegun immediate past national chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), on the occasion of his 79th birthday

- The president described Oyegun stands out as a beacon of progressive values and principles embodied in change

- President Buhari prayed to God almighty to grant the celebrant more years of good health

President Muhammadu Buhari has congratulated the immediate past National Chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, on the occasion of his 79th birthday on August 12.

Malam Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, issued the Presidents congratulatory message in Abuja on Sunday.

Buhari joined Oyeguns family, friends, well-wishers and party members in celebrating another milestone in the lifetime of a patriotic Nigerian who personifies the meaning of a progressive in letter and in spirit.

READ ALSO: INEC declares APC candidate winner of Kogi bye-election

The president acknowledged Oyeguns distinguished career as a civil servant, first civilian Governor of Edo, pro-democracy activist and the first elected National Chairman of APC.

According to him, Odigie-Oyegun stands out as a beacon of progressive values and principles embodied in change, reforms and intense commitment to the good of the nation.

He said that Oyeguns leadership was instrumental to the advent of the CHANGE government in 2015.

Buhari prayed to God almighty to grant the celebrant more years of good health and fulfillment to see a nation where positive change, in all facets of our national lives, is a reality for all.

Odigie-Oyegun relinquished his position as the first APC chairman after the partys convention in Abuja on June 23.

He was replaced by Comrade Adams Oshiohmole who emerged unopposed during the convention.

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In a previous report by Legit.ng, the former national chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, charged chairmen of the party in the states to shun grievances and work towards President Muhammadu Buharis re-election in 2019.

Oyegun gave the charge on Monday, June 4, in Abuja while inaugurating the chairmen, who were recently elected, and said that their responsibility was to nurture the party to victory in their respective states.

You have the onerous task of nurturing APC; you have to work hard to return the party to its lost glory, and also make sure you work hard for the re-election of our president," he said.

Nigeria News: President Buhari's Return Will Teach Nigerians Sense | Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
- Senator Sani says it is not true that clerics do not preach against corruption at religious places

- He notes that while many clerics preach against corruption, Nigerians do not comply with the sermons

- The senator reacted in a tweet to Professor Osinbajo's charge to gospel preachers to join the anti-corruption crusade with their sermons

Senator Shehu Sani, representing Kaduna Central, has faulted Acting President Yemi Osinbajo's claim that clerics are not preaching against corruption enough in religious houses.

The outspoken federal lawmaker tweeted on Sunday, August 12 to counter Professor Osinbajo's accusations against clerics.

READ ALSO: APC defeats PDP again, wins Bauchi bye-election

According to him, clerics do preach against sermons but Nigerians do not follow the teachings.

He tweeted:

Legit.ng recalls that Osinbajo berated gospel preachers for refusing to lend support to the federal governments anti-corruption war by failing to preach against the scourge.

Speaking at the 30th National Biennial Conference of the Students Christian Movement (SCM) of Nigeria holding in Enugu, Osinbajo noted that preachers were preoccupied with preaching prosperity rather than righteousness.

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He said: Very rarely do you hear our preachers talk about corruption from their pulpits. If a nation is not righteous nothing will help it.

Osinbajo said that the problem with Nigeria was neither ethnicity nor religion but systemic corruption.

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Source: Legit.ng
- Senator Dariye said he was not interested in defecting from the All Progressives Congress

- The ex-governor says President Buhari and the APC are not behind his current predicament and he remains with the party

- He urged his supporters to throw their weight behind Buhari and Lalong to ensure their re-election in 2019

An APC senator and former governor of Plateau state Joshua Dariye has denied plans to defect to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Nigerian Tribune reports that Dariye, who spoke from prison through a representative, said he was not going back to the PDP nor withdrawing his supporters.

According to Dariyes associate - his former Director General Campaign and stalwart of the All Progressive Congress in the state - Maichibi Vwarji, reports of defection were mere rumours. He added that Senator Dariye did not hold Buhari or the APC responsible for his current predicament.

READ ALSO: APC defeats PDP again, wins Bauchi bye-election

I am aware that some people are going around the state especially Plateau Central senatorial district that they have the mandate of the former Governor Joshua Dariye that all his followers should defect to the PDP. I want to categorically state that Senator Dariye has not given anyone such mandate.

It is a rumour, I am in constant touch with him, I was with him recently and after I intimated him with the rumour, he mandated me and his other associates to go round the state and debunk the speculations and to tell them that they should all remain in All Progressive Congress and work for the re-election of both the President Buhari and Governor Lalong of Plateau State. .

He added: When I met him recently along with two other people, this issue was tabled before him. He strongly condemned the insinuation that the present administration was behind his predicament and has done nothing to help him out of the situation. He stated that the matter was dated to when he was the governor of the state and directed us as his close associates to enlighten his followers and remained in APC.

You cannot rule out the possibility that some of his followers were annoyed by the judgement but the fact still remains that the APC led government has nothing to do with his travail, he said.

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Nigerian Tribune reports that despite being sentenced for 14 years in jail by a Federal High Court in Abuja, the ex-governor remained a force to be reckoned with in Plateau politics.

The APC has also denied any defection plans. The scribe of the ruling party in Plateau state Alhaji Bashir Sati said the reports were just imaginations.

He said: The party is not aware of such threat. Just last week we rounded up local government tour, we were in Bokkos Local government which is the council area of the former governor. What they told us was that they are missing him and we assured that all hope is not lost.

We are not aware that anyone is making it an issue, we told them to remain calm and keep faith with the judiciary. We have the confidence that justice will be done to the case.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported earlier that no fewer than hundreds of Jigawa state residents on Sunday, August 12 protested in the streets of Hadejia local government area against the recent defection of Senator Ubale Shitu from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The protesters moved in a procession all the way to the emirs palace chanting against the federal lawmaker and accusing him of being a thief for rejecting President Buhari and APC.

At the emirs palace, they demanded Shitus resignation from the National Assembly.

Joshua Dariye Gets 14 Years In Prison  Is He Guilty? - on Legit.ng TV

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Reports from Borno are that soldiers of the Special Force deployed to the northern state for the counterinsurgency operation have grounded the airport in the capital Maiduguri.

Daily Sun reports that the aggrieved soldiers have been shooting at the airport.

According to the reports, the soldiers had barricaded the airport gate since 6:15 p.m and later began firing shots sporadically into the air and forcing many residents around the area to flee.

The newspaper alleged that the shootings were protests against redeployment of the soldiers from Maiduguri to another location at the northern part of the state.

READ ALSO: Jigawa residents protest defection of Senator Shittu from APC

It reported further that the soldiers claimed they were deployed to Borno since February 2015 and ought to have been released to return to their original unit after serving three years at the theatre on counter-Boko Haram operation.

We left our families for almost four years now. Ordinarily, we should have been released to return to our unit having spent three years in this theatre. But we were told this evening by our superior officers to start park our things and prepare for redeployment to Marte (northern Borno).

We feel this is unfair and against what the Chief of Army Staff has always said that any soldier who has spent three years in the theatre will be relieved and allow to return to his unit. This is unfair, one of the protesting soldier claimed.

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On its part, TheCable reports that the aggrieved soldiers reportedly arrived at the airport at 6pm ahead of their posting to Marte local government area but refused to board the airplane because they preferred to return home after fighting Boko Haram insurgents for over three years.

The online news platform quoted an officer who witnessed the incident as saying that superior officers, including Bulami Biu, general officer commander (GOC) of 7 division, were asked to stay off the airport or risk being shot.

The second batch of pilgrims from Borno boarded their flight amid the commotion, the source said. The special forces are ready for trouble. They are really angry. The superiors were asked to stay off or be killed.

This incident comes just days after Legit.ng reported that dozens of Borno state hunters disclosed their willingness to lock down Sambisa forest and capture the leader of the Boko Haram terrorist group Abubakar Shekau.

The development was made public by the organizing secretary of the hunters, Bukar Mustapha, in a chat with an online platform.

Mustapha said that the hunters had 30 years of experience hunting in the forest; and as such, were familiar with its nooks and crannies.

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- A global body has warned against the continued violence across states in Nigeria

- UNSC said it remained concerned at the security and humanitarian situation caused by Boko Haram and other armed groups

- The body said these attacks have caused large-scale and devastating losses across these areas

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has condemned the growing violence across states in Nigeria and it border countries.

The international body in a statemnet released on Sunday, August 12, said it is worried over the continued tensions linked to electoral processes, social and economic difficulties and conflicts between farmers and herdsmen in Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin.

According to the organisation, it remained concerned at the security and humanitarian situation caused by Boko Haram and other armed groups.

READ ALSO: Tension in Borno as soldiers reportedly protest, shoot guns at Maiduguri airport

Vanguard reports that the UNSC said these attacks have caused large-scale and devastating losses across these areas.

The state read: The Security Council strongly condemns all terrorist attacks carried out in the region, including those perpetrated by Boko Haram and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Daesh).

These attacks have caused large-scale and devastating losses, have had a devastating humanitarian impact including through the displacement of a large number of civilians in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad, and represent a threat to the stability and peace of West and Central Africa.

The Council notes with particular concern the continuing use by Boko Haram of women and girls as bombers, which has created an atmosphere of suspicion towards them and made them targets of harassment and stigmatisation in affected communities, and of arbitrary arrests by security forces.

READ ALSO: Jailed Senator Dariye urges support for President Buhari, Governor Lalong

The Council emphasises the need for affected States to counter-terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, including by addressing the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism, in accordance with obligations under international law, in particular international human rights law, international refugee law and international humanitarian law," the statement said.

The UNSC further encouraged partners to increase security assistance to Lake Chad Basin Commission countries, and humanitarian and development support across the region for those affected by Boko Haram activities.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has condemned attacks in Damboa, Borno state by men suspected to be Boko Haram insurgents.

The UN chief expressed his condolences to the affected families and to the government and people of Nigeria and wished those injured a swift recovery.

The attacks which targeted people celebrating the Eid el-Fitr left no fewer than 32 persons killed, while 84 others were injured when six bombers detonated Improvised Explosive Devices in Damboa local government area of Borno in northeastern Nigeria.

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- An anti-graft group has called on EFCC to probe Lawal Daura's link to two foreign accounts

- The group alleged that the foreign accounts with money siphoned from Nigeria is linked to a security chief

An anti-graft group, Coalition Against Corruption and Bad Governance, has called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to probe the recently sacked director general of the Department of State Services (DSS) for allegedly keeping two foreign accounts under a fake name.

Punch reports that the the group claimed that part of the over 3m released by the Federal Government to be paid as ransom to Boko Haram for the release of Dapchi schoolgirls was diverted into two foreign accounts operated by a Nigerian security chief under the pseudonym, Auwalu Kallamu.

READ ALSO: Buhari will secure 75 per cent votes in Abia - Kalu

The group in a statement on Sunday by its chairman, Alhaji Toyin Raheem, said: We have been calling on the EFCC for some weeks now to unravel the mysterious face behind the name, Auwalu Kallamu, which is a pseudonym used to operate two foreign accounts into which some parts of the over 3m allegedly paid by the Nigerian government to secure the release of some of the schoolgirls abducted from Chibok and Dapchi towns in Borno and Yobe states respectively, have been traced to.

We are glad to tell Nigerians that our formal petition with documentary evidence is now ready and will be submitted to the EFCC on Tuesday in Abuja so that the anti-graft agency can have a lead to work on in unraveling the link between Daura and the name, Auwalu Kallamu.

The Israeli Police were the first to launch an investigation and subsequently arrested one of their citizens and others on account of bribery and corrupting foreign government officials, in which the Nigerian security chiefs name featured prominently.

Foreign probe reports have established the true owner of GmbH bank account no. 32570021 with Lamda Privat Bank, Liechtenstein, under the pseudonym Auwalu Kallamu, as the sole signatory.

Auwalu and Kallamu are said to be the Arabic synonyms of Nigerian names.

CACOBAG is determined to see that investigation in this matter is not stalled by any means whatsoever.

We have trust that the EFCC will do the needful and will save us from the ridicule brought upon the country by the unscrupulous security chief, the fake Auwalu Kalamu.

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This is by exposing him and punishing him according to our law. Only this will prove to the world our seriousness in the fight against corruption.

However, let us warn, any attempt to sweep this matter under the carpet will be resisted by the mass of our people and CACOBAG will take all legitimate means to compel EFCC to do its work."

Legit.ng earlier reported that some Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) have commended the acting president, Yemi Osinbajo, for his action against the recent blockade of the National Assembly by operatives of the State Security Services (SSS).

The senior lawyers also saluted Osinbajo for terminating the appointment of the former director general of the SSS, Lawal Daura.

Top 5 the Richest People of Nigeria: The Luxury of Corruption on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit Nigeria
- The federal government will give two million petite traders collateral-free loan

- The loan will be given under an initiative called TraderMoni

- The initiative will grant a minimum of 30,000 loans in each state

The federal government will empower two million petty traders across the country with collateral-free loans this year, Laolu Akande, spokesman for Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, has said.

Akande said that the new initiative, called TraderMoni, would be implemented under the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP).

He said that the gesture was part of federal governments efforts to further enlarge its financial inclusion agenda for all Nigerians regardless of social class and economic status.

The scheme, which was launched last week in Lagos, would grant a minimum of 30,000 loans in each state of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.

Altogether, the two million mark is expected to be attained on or before the end of this year, with petty traders in Lagos, Kano and Abia states set to be the first round of beneficiaries to draw the collateral free loans.

In addition to the 30,000 loans per state, states with larger populations like Lagos and Kano are expected to get more than 30,000 loans. Across the country, especially in the pilot states, about 500,000 potential beneficiaries have so far been enumerated.

READ ALSO: PDP accuses APC, FG of fresh plot to arrest Saraki, Ekweremadu

In order to identify the beneficiaries, no less than 4,000 enumeration agents have been engaged by the Bank of Industry which is deploying the new scheme.

TraderMoni is designed to help petty traders expand their trade through the provision of collateral free loans of N10,000.

The loans are repayable over a period of six months, Akande said in a statement on Sunday.

Akande said that under the scheme, beneficiaries could get access to a higher facility ranging from N15, 000 to N50, 000 when they repaid N10,000 within the stipulated time period.

He said that President Muhammadu Buhari administration would use TraderMoni to take financial inclusion down to the grassroots, considering the contribution of petty traders to economic development.

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He said that the federal government was also aware of the fact that many of the petty traders did not have what the commercial banks required to grant them loans.

The special assistant said that the administration was keen to ensure that traders at that level were able to build their businesses and grow.

TraderMoni was launched last Tuesday in five markets in Lagos state, with tens of thousands beneficiaries already.

The Lagos markets already reached are Mushin, Ikotun, Agege, Ketu, and Abule Egba markets.

"The scheme will soon be taken to other states in the country, with Abia and Kano states next in line."

Beneficiaries are already heaping praises on the Buhari administration for this initiative that will improve their businesses, he said.

Akande said that beneficiaries in Lagos were highly appreciative of what the Buharis administration was doing to assist the masses, especially petty traders.

Legit.ng earlier reported that the N-Power, federal government's employment scheme for youths has finally announced the recruitment of 300,000 Nigerians as they advised all applicants to log on to their profiles on the portal to print deployment letter on Friday, July 20.

N-power also instructed candidates to submit employment letters before August 10th, 2018. This was revealed on the Facebook page on Thursday, July 19.

List President Buhari's achievements in two years - on Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit
Human rights activist and senior lawyer, Femi Falana, has commended the newly appointed acting director general of the State Security Services (SSS) Mathew Seiyefa.

Falana in a letter written to the new secret police boss said his chamber wishes Seiyefa a successful tenure while urging him to restore the lost glory of the SSS.

The senior lawyer said the SSS can be revived by restricting the management and staff of the organisation to the prevention and detection of any crime against the internal security of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in accordance with the National Security Agencies Act.

READ ALSO: Senate may back out of Tuesday, August 14, resumption - National Assembly source

He also called for an end to the infringement of human rights of Nigerian citizens by operatives of the SSS.

Making a list of issues to be addressed by the new acting DG, Falana called for the urgent release a former national security adviser, Sambo Dasuki and hundreds of persons detained illegally by the agency.

Falana said: "In the light of the foregoing and in view of your commitment to review the cases of all detainees in the custody of the SSS we are compelled to request you to use your good offices to implement the following recommendations."

1. Discontinue the frivolous charge pending against Messrs Jones Abiri and Peter Collins Opume at the Wuse Magistrate Court;

2. Release the hundreds of detainees that are languishing without trial in the various detention centres of the SSS;

3. Release Colonel Dasuki and other criminal suspects who have been admitted to bail by municipal and regional courts;

4. Release Sheik Ibraheem Elzakzaky and Hajia Zeinab Elzakzaky from illegal custody in line with the orders of the Federal High Court.

5. Respect the rights of suspects to consult legal practitioners of their choice before making, endorsing or writing any statement or answering any question put to them after arrest.

6. Draw the attention of all SSS investigators to the Anti-Torture Act of 2017 which has criminalized the use of torture in all security agencies.

READ ALSO: Breaking: Fire destroys Maiduguri fish market (photos)

7. Ensure that all detention facilities of the SSS are inspected monthly by the Visiting Judge of the Federal High Court in accordance with the provision of section 34 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act;

8. Stop the SSS from further usurping the powers of the Nigeria Police Force, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Offences Commission and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission with respect to the investigation of allegations of murder, stealing, fraud, money laundering, corruption and other economic and financial crimes which are not connected to national security;

9. Ban the operatives of the SSS from wearing masks as no military or paramilitary official is authorised by law to hide his/her identity in the course of performing official duties;

10. Ensure that the SSS operates within the ambit of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 as amended and the National Security Agencies Act.

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11. Finally, having assured the Nigerian people of your commitment to ensure that the SSS respects the rights of all persons and operates under the rule of law we hope that you will take urgent steps to improve the image of the security outfit from its current infamy and lawlessness to an institution that is completely dedicated to the enforcement of security laws and the protection of citizens against all acts of internal aggression.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that Seiyefa was appointed as a new DG for the SSS by acting president Yemi Osinbajo.

Seiyefa, who hails from Bayelsa state, had earlier served as the director of the Institute of Security Studies (ISS), before he was moved to the DSS headquarters.

He took over from the recently sacked SSS DG, Lawal Daura.

News Nigeria Today: Who is Nigerias Smartest Politician? | Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit Nigeria
- A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja had on Wednesday, August 8, ordered the police to arrest Professor Mahmood Yakubu

- The court had accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman of refusing to obey a valid order court

- The court insists the police must arrest the INEC boss and bring him to court on Tuesday, August 14

A report by the Nigerian Tribune indicates that the police will on Tuesday, August 14, arrest and produce the chairman of INEC, Professor Yakubu Mahmood in court, on the order of Justice Stephen Pam of the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja.

The court had, last week reaffirmed the order on the police to arrest and produce the INEC boss in court following his absence in court to show cause why he should not be committed to prison for alleged contempt of court.

The contempt proceedings against the INEC boss was stalled severally owing to his absence in court, a development, which led to the court ordering the police to arrest and produce him in court.

READ ALSO: 2019: Rivers' people will resist election rigging - Wike

Counsel to the INEC, Chief Adegboyega Awomolo (SAN) had told the court that his client has filed a motion challenging the jurisdiction of the court and the validity of the contempt and added that, until the court determines that motion, there is no valid contempt charge before the court and that, the condition precedent for criminal trial has not been fulfilled.

Awomolo also drew the attention of the court to a letter dated Wednesday, August 1 to the chief judge of the Federal High Court, Justice Abdul Kafarati to disqualify the judge and transfer the case to another judge on the account of alleged bias.

Counsel to the plaintiff, Chief Gordy Uche (SAN), however, opposed the move for the matter to be adjourned on the ground that there was no basis for that.

He said the court cannot act on the letter written to the chief judge for the disqualification of the judge because there was no directive from the chief judge on the letter.

Uche insisted that until there is a directive from the chief judge, the matter must go on and added that it is a special court issued with a fiat to hear the contempt charge within a specific time.

He said since the fiat issued to the judge to sit as a special court has not been withdrawn, the letter of Awomolo cannot take precedence over the fiat and therefore urged the court to continue to sit and determine the contempt charge against the INEC boss.

Justice Pam agreed with Uche and reaffirmed his order to the police to arrest and produce the Professor Yakubu in court.

The matter was brought to the court by a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ejike Oguebego, who had filed a contempt charge against INEC and its chairman for their refusal to recognize him as PDP chairman in Anambra state in compliance with a Supreme Court judgment on December 2014.

Counsel to Oguebego had prayed the court to commit the INEC boss to prison for disregarding the judgment of the apex court, adding that contrary to the letter and spirit of the Supreme Court judgment, both INEC and its chairman have been relating with another faction of the PDP in Anambra state.

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In another development, Justice Muslim Sule Hassan of a Federal High Court, Lagos, on Monday, July 23, ordered temporary forfeiture of N387 million allegedly found in bank accounts of four ex-officials of INEC to the federal government.

The order followed granting of an ex-parte motion filed by the EFCC pursuant to Section 17 of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act, No. 14, 2004.

Legit.ng gathered that the former electoral officers, namely; Gabriel Oke, Victor Chukwuani, Okesiji Adeniran and Torgba Nyitse, were joined as co-respondents in the motion.

INEC officials arraigned in a Federal High Court, Abuja on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit Nigeria
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 13)  A court in Nueva Ecija on Monday revealed it has overturned the arrest warrant against four former partylist representatives.

The Palayan Regional Trial Court (RTC) dismissed the murder charges filed against Anti-Poverty Commissioner and former Gabriela Women's Party Representative Liza Maza, former Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael "Paeng" Mariano, and former Bayan Muna House Representatives Satur Ocampo and Teddy Casino.

Palayan RTC Acting Presiding Judge Trese Wenceslao approved the motion for reconsideration of the solons filed in July. The decision, dated August 8, said the "evidence on hand absolutely fails to support a finding of probable cause" against the four accused.

The murder charges, filed in 2006, were for alleged double murder in an election-related violence. They were accused of murdering three supporters of rival partylist Akbayan in Nueva Ecija, particularly Danny Felipe and Jimmy Peralta in 2001, and Carlito Bayudang in 2004.

The former lawmakers had since maintained they are innocent.

The Palace had urged the four to surrender, but Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque reiterated they had no hand in the resurrection of the case.

Meanwhile, Bayan Muna Representative Carlos Isagani welcomed the dismissal, saying those behind the charges should be held accountable.

"We thank Judge Wenceslao for his impartiality," Isagani said in a statement. "Those behind these harassment charges should be held accountable."
- Governor Ibrahim Dankwambo of Gombe state was reported to have been under pressure to step down for his Sokoto counterpart, Aminu Tambuwal

- The duo are presidential aspirants of PDP for 2019 general elections

- But Dankwambo, through his aide Umaru Nafada, said he would not abandon his presidential ambition by stepping down for any other aspirant

Indications emerged on Sunday, August 12, that pressure was being mounted on Gombe state governor and a presidential aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo, to drop his ambition ahead of the partys presidential primary election.

Leadership reports that Dankwambo who declared his presidential ambition barely two weeks ago is now under pressure from some political leaders and traditional rulers in the northern part of the country to step down for Sokoto state governor, Aminu Tambuwal.

Legit.ng gathered that Tambuwal, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, is one of the political heavyweights who recently defected from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the PDP.

READ ALSO: Falana asks new SSS boss to release Dasuki, other illegally detained persons

The choice of Tambuwal, according to Leadership, is borne out of the belief that he has a larger clout to pull through the race than Dankwambo.

According to the newspaper, sources closed to the governor said that based on the pressure mounted on him and the support now given to Tambuwal, the Talban Gombe is now considering running for the senatorial seat of Gombe north.

This is why there is no serious aspirant in the senatorial race for the zone. The seat is reserved for him, a close associate of the governor who did not want his name in print said.

Besides, Tambuwals visit to Gombe where he commissioned a street named after him last weekend has added fillers that it may also be a sign that Dankwambo would align himself with the Sokoto state governor.

Leadership reported that Yusuf Manu Swa, a close political associate of Dankwambo and a member of his cabinet presently serving as commissioner of cooperative, has been appointed to coordinate Tambuwals presidential campaign in the state.

It was gathered that one of sources said many of those calling on Dankwambo to step down believe that Tambuwals candidacy will be a boost to efforts being made by the PDP to defeat the APC in the forth coming general election.

According to him, the thinking is that a strong candidate from the same northwest zone where President Mohammadu Buhari comes from stands a better chance of defeating APC.

Tambuwal is unarguably the most experienced politician in the zone at the moment whose sagacity in political scheming, intrigues and tactics have garnered for him respect and admiration in the domains of Nigeria politics, he said.

It was also gathered that Dankwambo expressed some doubts a few days ago about the possibility of him emerging victorious should he continue with his presidential aspiration.

According to the newspaper, efforts to speak with some of Dankwambos close political allies, including Manu Swa, since he has no spokesman in his team proved abortive.

But Governor Dankwambo on Sunday evening, August 12, denied that he was under pressure to step down for Governor Tambuwal.

Speaking through the Gombe state commissioner for information, Alhaji Umaru Nafada, the governor said there is no iota of truth in the story, stating that he is not going to abandon his presidential ambition by stepping down for any other aspirant.

Nafada said: Governor Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo has declared to contest the presidential election and as far as he and a lot of Nigerians are concerned, he is the most suitable aspirant for that position from PDP. So, he has no intension of withdrawing or stepping aside for anybody, not even Tambuwal.

The commissioner assured that Dankwambos quest to clinch the presidential ticket of the PDP was on course, stressing that he has no reason to quit at this point.

He said the governor has demonstrated his seriousness about the presidential race by making wide consultations across the country and reaching out to people.

Nafada noted that if Dankwambo were not interested in pursuing his presidential ambition, he wouldnt waste time, energy and money moving around.

He added that Dankwambo has the acceptability and clout to win as well as the knack to organise the party and make it a formidable force against the APC.

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On Tambuwals visit to the state, Nafada said it was like the visit of any other PDP leader to the state to commission a project.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that Ibrahim Dankwambo, the executive governor of Gombe state and presidential aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said the party knows how to lead the country because it has tasted power before.

PDP's magnificent 7 for 2019 - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- A gang of robbers who lure women on Facebook have been arrested

- The robbers were arrested by a team of police officers of the Lagos state command

- The police said the gang members also abuse and gang-rape their female victims

The Nigeria police has smashed an abuse and robbery gang which specialises in luring unsuspecting females through Facebook.

Ayo Salau and his partner Samuel Gbenga were arrested after they allegedly robbed and gang-raped a lady who was supposed to be on a dinner date with the latter, around Moroko area of the state.

Vanguard reports that Lagos state police command said the abused lady met Samuel on Facebook last month.

It was gathered that the suspect invited the lady to a diner date in Makoko area of Lagos after series of interaction on the social media platform.

READ ALSO: 11 issues new SSS boss must tackle - Falana makes fresh list

However, issues began after he picked the lady in a Toyota Camry Saloon car with number plates JJJ 406 DL driven by Salau.

The lady recounting her ordeal said that midway into the drive, Salau pulled the car over and ordered her to take off her clothes.

She said the duo threatened to kill her and dispose her body in the deserted path if she put up any resistance.

The spokesperson for the Lagos police command, Chike Oti, a chief superintendent of police said: Thereafter, she said that they took turns to rape and dispossessed her of cash and other valuables and abandoned her at the path."

The moment the hoodlums left, the victim raised the alarm and gave description of their car .

Police operatives attached to Maroko division who were alerted, immediately laid ambush for the fleeing criminals.

READ ALSO: FG to give 2 million petty traders loans without collateral

As soon as the operatives stopped their vehicle, the criminals took to their heels. They chased them and arrested Ayo Salau while his partner in crime, Richard Samuel Gbenga escaped," Oti continued.

He said the suspect had since been identified by the victim and he confessed to have committed the crime which said was introduced to him by his fleeing partner.

Oti also said: The Commissioner of Police, Lagos State, CP Edgal Imohimi, hereby cautions youths especially young women to beware of people who may use the social media to take advantage of them. He assures that the long arm of the law will surely catch up with the fleeing suspect.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the Lagos police team on Friday, March 30, said they had arrested two suspected cultists, simply identified as Kanmi, (also known as Father) and Alami Samuel.

Oti in a statement, confirmed the arrest to newsmen, stressing that they were nabbed on Thursday, March 29, while trying to attack a rival gang member at Illasamaja area of Lagos.

He said the first suspect was arrested based on credible intelligence report as he had been on a wanted list for long over many violent crimes, including cultism.

Legit.ng visits family attacked by Badoo cult group - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- Emerging reports have it that there is a rancor between Senator Musiliu Obanikoro and Senator Solomon Adeola, over the APC senatorial ticket for the Lagos west senatorial district

- Obanikoro is seeking to displace the incumbent, Adeola, who is the senator currently representing the district in the red chamber

- Adeola's second term bid was said to have been endorsed by leaders of the party including the leader of the district, Rabiu Oluwa, before Obanikoro formally declared his ambition

Former minister of state for defence, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro and Senator Solomon Adeola, have reportedly engaged in a disagreement over the All Progressives Congress senatorial ticket for the Lagos west senatorial district.

Obanikoro joined the APC in 2017 from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and is seeking to displace the incumbent, Adeola, who is the senator currently representing the district in the red chamber.

New Telegraph reports that Obanikoro was supposed to formally declare his ambition in Ikeja two weeks ago but suspended it on the instruction of the state former governor, Senator Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

READ ALSO: Gunmen kill four police officers in Kaduna

A source privy to the development said: Koro was about to declare his senatorial ambition last two Fridays ago at Ikeja but it was abruptly put hold on the directive of Asiwaju. Everything was ready for the declaration but he cant go against Asiwajus instruction, that is the father of all.

It was learnt that Adeola formally declared his bid for a second term few weeks back at an APC Lagos west meeting and his aspiration was endorsed by leaders of the party including the leader of the district, Prince Rabiu Oluwa.

Adeola had initially embarked on a botched attempt to contest the Ogun governorship poll but retreated upon directives from leaders of the party especially Tinubu.

According to some supporters of Obanikoro, the former minister deserves to return to Senate owing to his pedigree and grassroots in the state, and they argued that their principal was promised something before defecting to the ruling party.

It was learnt that Obanikoros aspiration has ruffled the party in the state, especially in Lagos west as the leadership appears divided on the ticket.

An associate of Obanikoro said: Obanikoro is bent on taking the ticket and this is affecting the peace of Lagos west. He was in Osogbo some days back to see governor Rauf Aregbesola. You know Asiwaju is quite busy lately with national politics.

Reacting to insinuations that he was using his senatorial bid as a launch pad for the 2023 governorship bid in the state, Obanikoro said in a recent interview that: Nobody knows what tomorrow will hold. And to now jump to 2023, I think it is taking it too far.

As far as I am concerned, I will enjoy the moment, representing the good people of Lagos state from Lagos west.

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However, a loyalist of Adeola alleged that Obanikoros audacity in moving from Lagos central district to Lagos west has external backings, adding that the leaders of the party have been seeking audience with Asiwaju to resolve the matter once and for all.

According to him, Negotiations are on and we are looking at the possibility of involving Obanikoros son in the House of Representatives ticket, but its still a proposal.

A party official said: The tension is high in Alimosho and Lagos west because its now a two horse race fight between the duo for the ticket. Supporters of both aspirants are on a knife edge because they are all awaiting the final verdict of the national leader. Even other aspirants in the race have tactically chickened out.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported former minister of state for defence and Lagos state governorship aspirant, Musiliu Obanikoro, was warming up for the 2019 senatorial race in Lagos west district.

According to the report, the former Nigerias High Commissioner to Ghana started consultation and mobilisation in the ruling APC, ahead of the senatorial race.

Interestingly, Obanikoro represented Lagos Central in the Senate on the platform of the AD between 2003 and 2007, after resigning as Lagos state commissioner for home affairs.

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu speaks about the local government election in Lagos - on Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit.ng
- The two-week warning strike embarked upon by ASUU at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology could lead to an indefinite strike

- The union made this warning, saying Oyo and Osun state governments have been silent over the strike

- The union embarked on a two-week strike on Wednesday, August 8, after disrupting the second semester examinations for the 2017/2018 academic session

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, has warned that the silence of Oyo and Osun state governments over its warning strike could lead to an indefinite strike.

Premium Times reports that the secretary of ASUU, Toyin Abegunrin, stated this on Sunday, August 12, saying that the warning strike was an opportunity for the governments to do the needful, and if not attended to, it would turn into a full blown strike.

Legit.ng gathers that the union, which embarked on a two-week warning strike, said the governments were doing what they like with the institution, adding that they had not been responsive.

He said: The governments are just doing what they like with LAUTECH. They constituted a visitation panel led by Wole Olanipekun (SAN). The panel came up with some recommendations which would have solved the problem of the university, but the governments failed to implement them.

READ ALSO: Bye-election: Kogi PDP rejects results as APC coasts home to victory

After the first strike during Wale Omole-led governing council, they constituted another governing council led by Professor Dapo Afolabi. In a meeting with us on January 11, the governing council asked that we submit a proposal on how the crisis can be solved, which we did. We had another meeting on February 13 in Lagos, we looked at the proposal and signed memorandum of action with the council.

We believed that when they have done what the governments asked them to do, funds will be released. The council did staff auditing last year December and they even found out that LAUTECH is short-staffed. After that, we expect proper funding but the governments are not doing so. They expect funding from IGR which is only the school fees and that is what led to recent increment in school fees. These are the children of the masses. Majorly, they are the children of civil servants in Osun and Oyo states who are not paid.

The governments have not been responsive and thats the promise the governing council made to us that they will make the government of Oyo and Osun states to be responsive to their legitimate responsibility including funding. But, we cant say the governing council has not fulfilled its promise because they have principals too.

The directive of the national body of ASUU is going on a total strike after two weeks of no response. The decision was made at the NEC meeting that took place in Calabar. It is now even beyond what we can control and it is unfortunate that the two governments have been silent all since. So, it is an admittance of guilt otherwise let them speak out. It is unfortunate.

The university cannot run on IGR only. The major source of IGR is school fees and ordinarily, using students school fees to pay salary is misappropriation of funds because the school fees have headings for healthcare facilities, laboratories equipment and renewal etc. Those are the things school fees are meant for but they are now transferring it to payment of salaries. It is even tantamount to misappropriation.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the second semester examinations for the 2017/2018 academic session at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso, were disrupted by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

The development was confirmed by the secretary of the union, Toyin Abegunrin, saying that lecturers had embarked on a two-week warning strike to express their displeasure over non-payment of salaries and decayed infrastructure of the institution.

Top 3 World Universities And Their African Students | on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, the general overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), has assured Nigerians that the persistent killings of innocent Nigerians across the country will soon come to an end.

Adeboye gave the assurance during the Holy Communion service of the church at its 66th annual convention, which ended on Sunday, August 12, Vanguard reports.

READ ALSO: PDP reacts to Buhari Campaign Organisations plan to invade NASS

Legit.ng gathers that he said: My daddy will silence all violent situations in the country.

The cleric also urged the congregation to use the dominion they received during the programme to work for all-round peace for Nigeria and generations unborn.

1,603 pastors and 50 honourary elders were also ordained during the convention.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that Pastor Enoch Adeboye expressed dismay over the continuous killings in various parts Nigeria. He said the country may cease to exist if nothing is urgently done to end it.

The cleric warned that unless the killings stopped, there may not be elections in 2019 in Nigeria, noting that no nation can survive a religious war and remain the same.

Pastor Adeboye, imams should join politics to move Nigeria forward - Olulade - on Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit
- Two individuals, Yusuf Duguri and Abubakar Adamu, have been arrested for allegedly stealing a Honda Accord car

- During his confession, Duguri said he had stolen the car in order to raise enough money to get married

- The suspects would be charged to court, pending the conclusion of investigations into the matter

A 26-year-old man, Yusuf Duguri, and his 45-year-old partner, Abubakar Adamu, have been arrested by policemen in Niger state, for alleged theft.

According to Punch, quoting Northern City News, both men had approached one Umar Abdulazeez of Bagdad Motors, Bauchi, pretending that they wanted to buy his Honda Accord car with registration number YAB734 AR.

READ ALSO: The killings in Nigeria will soon come to an end - Adeboye

Legit.ng gathers that both men zoomed off with the car, after the dealer gave them the keys to test it.

The suspects who are believed to have hypnotised their victim with charms, were eventually apprehended while negotiating to sell the stolen vehicle in Suleja.

During his confession, Duguri reportedly said he and his partner had acted on a tip-off by informants who benefited from the proceeds of theft.

He said: We operate in all the states in the North, depending on the location of the vehicle. Once our informant calls us and tells us the location of a vehicle, we will rush there immediately to dispossess the owner.

I wanted to stop it (car theft), but when my wife and father died the same day, I had to look for money to remarry because I cant stay alone.

Honestly, my plan was that once I got enough money to marry, I would quit the business.

He said his inability to get a job was what led him into crime; disclosing that he is a professional driver.

He said: I am a qualified driver, but nobody wanted me to drive their vehicle. That was why I joined this gang that has ruined my life.

The Police public relations officer, Muhammad Abubakar, said the suspects would be charged to court, pending the conclusion of investigations into the matter.

He further disclosed that both men had confessed to stealing three vehicles from Bauchi, before they were arrested in Suleja.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that a senior pastor at the Ministry of the Holy Ghost, Joe Akan, and four of his accomplices were arrested by the Police in Lagos, for their involvement in the stealing of a Toyota Highlander SUV in the Agege area of the state.

The alleged mastermind of the car theft, Uche, planned the robbery with one Charles Lekan and Pastor Akan. They subsequently invited two other suspects, Obi Isaac, 33, and Wasiu Jamiu, 26, to perfect their operation.

Lagos Police parades suspects - on Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit.ng News
- The Lagos state government has disclosed that its light rail project will finally commence passenger operations in 2022

- Consultants engaged by the government arrived at the date following a technical review of the project

- The rail project had suffered many delays due to paucity of funds and other challenges

The Lagos state government on Sunday, August 12, announced that its light rail project called the Blue Line, running between Mile 2 and Marina will commence passenger operations in 2022.

The disclosure was made by the assistant director, corporate communications at the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA), Kolawole Ojelabi, Punch reports.

READ ALSO: I stole car to raise cash for marriage - Suspect

Legit.ng gathers that Ojelabi said that following a technical review, consultants engaged by the state government had disclosed that operations of the first phase could only commence in 2022.

He said: Following the report, Alstom SA France, an experienced international railway systems aggregator and rolling stocks manufacturer, with over 100 years of railway experience covering 60 countries, was engaged to review the report of the consultant.

Alstom SA agreed with the submission of the consultant that the first phase of the rail project could only become operational in 2022, based on the proposed funding pattern.

The Blue Line, which was awarded to the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation, had suffered many delays due to paucity of funds and other challenges.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that Rotimi Amaechi, Nigerias transport minister, visited Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos, revealing that work on the Apapa corridor of the Lagos-Ibadan rail project would commence soon.

Amaechi spoke to journalists after a strategic meeting with Ambode and his team at the Lagos House in Alausa, Ikeja, saying it was gratifying to report that contractors would move to site to continue the rail project from Apapa as part of efforts to bring about a permanent solution to the perennial traffic gridlock in the axis.

A ride on the Abuja-Kaduna railway - on Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit Newspaper
- Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta state and a former governor of the state, James Ibori, urge PDP members aspiring for elective offices to work towards convincing party delegates to vote for them

- Sanusi warns politicians on exploitation of religion

Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta state and a former governor of the state, James Ibori, have said they cannot assure anybody automatic ticket to contest on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Both politicians made the statement at the weekend during 70th birthday celebration of Senator Patrick Osakwe and grand reception in honour of Chief James Ibori at Ugiliamai in Ndokwa west local government area of state, the Sun reports.

READ ALSO: Well take over NASS if Saraki refuses to resign - Buhari Campaign Organisation

The political leaders urged aspirants for various elective positions to work towards convincing party delegates to vote for them.

When we continue to partner together, we add value to this family, the PDP family, the family means well for our state," Governor Okowa said.

Ibori on his part advised those who are vying for political offices should go and look for delegates and get their support.

Meanwhile, Emir of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi II on Sunday, August 12, cautioned politicians who hide behind the mask of religion to exploit Nigerians adding that north, in the last two decades, was robbed of focus due to the politicisation of religion and culture.

Guardian reports that Sanusi also noted that politicians turned religion into a vehicle for campaign, thereby exploiting the religious character and ignorance of the people.

Sanusi made this known in Katsina state while delivering a speech marking international youth day and a graduation ceremony at Katsina vocational training centre.

PDP's Magnificent 7 For 2019 Election | Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
- The Sultan of Sokoto declared Sunday, August 12 as the first day of the Islamic month of Dhul-Hijjah

- All Muslims are enjoined to take the advantage of the first 10 days of Dhul-Hijjah for highly rewarding good deeds and supplications

- By the Sultans declaration, this years Dhul-Hijjah 10, which is Eid-el-Kabir celebration day, would be Tuesday August 21, 2018

The Sultan of Sokoto and president general of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), Alhaji Muhammadu Saad Abubakar, has declared Sunday, August 12 as the first day of the Islamic month of Dhul-Hijjah.

This was contained in a statement released on Sunday, August 12, by the deputy secretary general of the NSCIA, Prof Salisu Shehu.

The statement said, after due consultation with scholars, the National Moon Sighting Committee (NMSC) and the Fatwa Committee of the NSCIA, it was decided that the dates of Dhul-Qaadah be adjusted to make Sunday, August 12, 2018, the 1st day of Dhul-Hijjah, 1439AH.

READ ALSO: Adeboye gives crucial message, reveals when killings will end

This is in compliance with the earlier Fatwa that declaration of the month of Dhul-Hijjah would be as determined by the Saudi Arabian authorities. Based on the above, the president general of NSCIA has approved Sunday, August 12, 2018, as the 1st day of Dhul-Hijjah, 1439 AH.

The council urges all Muslims to pray for the country and the pilgrims in the Holy Land. Similarly, all Muslims are enjoined to take the advantage of the first 10 days of Dhul-Hijjah for highly rewarding good deeds and supplications, particularly, to fast on the day of Arafah which is Monday, August 20, 2018, Shehu said.

By the Sultans declaration, this years Dhul-Hijjah 10, which is Eid-el-Kabir celebration day, would be Tuesday August 21, 2018.

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Legit.ng previously reported that the first batch of this years Hajj pilgrims from Nigeria left for Saudi Arabia on Saturday, July 21.

The flag-off, according to the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON), took place on Saturday, July 21, at the Domestic Wing of the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja at 11am.

Eid-el-Kabir: Why the ram killed must not exceed three days in your house - On Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit
The Big Brother Naija Double Wahala show might have come to an end, but the show is far from over, going by what the former housemates have been up to outside the house.

Some of the former housemates have maintained a steady appearance in the public eye perhaps to strengthen their claim to fame after the show while some other housemates seem to be taking it slow. Maybe they dont know how to handle the fame the show brings with it.

As gathered by Legit.ng, former BBNaija housemates Bam-Bam and Lolu were pictured with the daughter of the vice president of Nigeria, Kiki Osinbajo, at a recent event.

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The obviously excited Bam-Bam posted several pictures on her Instagram page with the daughter of the number two citizen of Nigeria.

READ ALSO: Cute family photos of E-Money and his 3 sons

Happy people! Bambam and Lolu meet with Kiki Osinbajo, take cool photos

While in the BBNaija house, Bam-Bam was trailed by tales of being fake, but that has not deterred her from maintaining her relevance outside the house.

In spite of the controversial news trailing other housemates outside the house, she has managed to be in the news for good reasons.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng recently reported the acid threat Cee-C got from a fan of one of the other housemates. The fan threatened to disfigure her face with acid because he or she believes she pays people to attack Alex and Tobi on social media.

Another housemate, Ifu Ennada also called for peace between warring housemates and she also begged them to speak to their fans so there would be no violence.

Top 5 Big Brother Naija Scandals (BBNaija) |Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- A former Nigerian ambassador to Malaysia, James Barka, accuses the APC of neglecting him

- He claims the APC has failed Nigerians in a number of ways

- Edo APC chieftains deny defecting to PDP ahead of 2019 polls

A former Nigerian ambassador to Malaysia, James Barka, has renounced his membership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) after accusing the Adamawa state governor, Umaru Jibrilla, of lacking integrity.

Barka, who is also a member of the Presidential Committee on Northeast Initiative (PCNI), defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and partly blamed his decision to dump the APC on his neglect by the party, The Punch reports.

READ ALSO: The killings in Nigeria will soon come to an end - Adeboye

People should have integrity. When you say A, it should be A, Barka said.

When you say, Chairman lets meet tomorrow by 11am; it should be so.

This is a government I helped to build, spending my resources and time, but today they hardly recognise whether we exist at all."

Barkas formally joined the PDP on Friday, August 10, when the Adamawa state PDP chairman and other party leaders visited him at his residence in Yola.

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APC has failed Nigerians in a number of ways. We left the PDP in 2014 because of impunity but surprisingly, APC has become worse when it comes to impunity, Barka said.

Meanwhile, some chieftains of the ruling APC in Edo have distanced themselves from the gale of defections to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state.

The party chieftains also denied membership of the Kwankwasiyya group, the political association of former Kano state governor, Senator Rabiu Kwakwanso who defected from the APC to the PDP recently.

Speaking to This Day at the weekend, a former APC chairman in Orhionwon local government area of the state, Mathew Ehigie, said there was no time he contemplated leaving the party, saying that those who mentioned his name as one of the defectors did so out of malice.

Nigeria Latest News: Buhari Reacts To APC Senators Betrayal | Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
- The All Progressives Congress in the southeast has been bedeviled with internal crisis for a while

- Associates of President Muhammadu Buhari are worried that the escalating crisis might affect the president's chances in the region in the 2019 elections

- They are worried that the APC may not make any meaningful in-road to the zone in the coming election

A report by THISDAY indicates that associates of President Muhammadu Buhari are worried that the escalating crisis in southeast APC might affect the president's chances in the region in the 2019 presidential election.

According to the report, the group, in a strategic paper recently prepared for the president, said unless some critical and influential aggrieved members of the party in the zone were reconciled with the party, it would be extremely, if not impossible, for APC to make any meaningful in-road to the zone in the coming general election.

The group made reference to Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo state-led group, with its own factions across the zone, especially in Imo state, accusing them of side-lining a group being led by Senator Ifeanyi Godwin Ararume, Okorocha's deputy and Senator Osita Izuanso.

READ ALSO: We will amend constitution, make Buhari life president - APC senatorial candidate

The strategic paper noted that making Governor Okorocha the face of APC in the South-east wouldnt help President Buharis political course in the 2019 general election.

The group also made reference to the recent political rally called by Governor Okorocha in Imo state that was attended by the national chairman of APC, Adams Oshiomhole, and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr. Boss Mustapha, and boycotted by the partys leaders in the zone, as very dangerous signal for the APC.

The paper advised President Buhari to prevail on Oshiomhole-led National Working Committee (NWC) of APC not to do anything that will undermine the prosperity of the party in the zone, especially in Imo in order to please his friend, Governor Okorocha.

In Imo state, everything must be done not to allow Senator Ifeanyi Araraume and his group leave the party; from our findings, the group is clearly the soul of APC in Imo state, the group advised the president in the paper.

The crisis in the zone, especially in the Imo state chapter of APC, has been lingering since the controversial national convention of the party, leading to fictionalisation of the party in the zone, especially in Imo where there are currently two state executives.

Oshiomhole, recently sworn in Daniel Nwafor as the new Imo state chairman of the party, in spite of an order by an Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, which restrained the party from conducting fresh congresses in Imo state.

The state APC had experienced parallel congresses between Governor Rochas Okorochas faction and that loyal to Senator Araraume/Izunaso/deputy governor, Eze Madumere.

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The former national leadership of the APC led by Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, recognized Araraume-led faction led by Hillary Eke despite concerns raised by the governor.

Similarly, Oshiomhole had sworn in a factional chairman of the party in Delta state, Prophet Jones Erue, despite a court order restraining him and the APC from recognizing any other person than the Chief Cyril Ogodo-led State Working Committee sworn-in Oyegun.

Election-2019: (Dont) mark your calendar - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit Nigeria
The act of patriotism is when an individual shows vigorous support for his/her country through a chivalrous act.

A young Nigerian man has shown his patroitism by constructing a helicopter for the Nigerian army. The young man who is from Kaduna state delivered the helicopter to Borno state for display.

Legit.ng gathered that the man is from Rigasa Igabi local government area in Kaduna state. He designed the helicopter using green colour to represent Nigeria.

The story of the unidentified young man's patriotism was shared on Facebook by a user identified as Dud Malumfashi.

Genius young man constructs a helicopter for Nigerian army Photo source: Facebook user Dud Malumfashi

READ ALSO: 14-year-old who works for Google earns over N450m every year (photos)

Malumfashi revealed that the talented genius had taken the helicopter to Borno state for displayed during the army day celebration.

He delivered it in Birno Photo source: Facebook user Dud Malumfashi

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He wrote: "Brilliant young boy from Rigasa Igabi Local Government Area, Kaduna state, designed and built Helicopter for Nigerian Army. The helicopter was displayed during the army day celebration in Maiduguri. The boy is good !! AHUUA !!"

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He did so it help his country Photo source: Facebook user Dud Malumfashi

Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari visited the grand finale of the 2018 Nigerian Army Day Celebration in Monguno Borno state on July 6. Legit.ng had reported that he was received at the Nigeria Air Force Base in Maiduguri by Governor Kashim Shettima.

Thumbs up for the patriotic man!

Nigerian Air Force Day Celebration 2018 (54th Anniversary) | Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
The warrant to arrest chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, by Justice Stephen Pam of the Federal High Court has been halted by Abuja division of the court of appeal.

Independent reports that a 3-man panel led by Justice Abdul Aboki suspended the enforcement of the arrest warrant in a ruling it delivered on Monday, in an appeal filed by Prof Mahmood, challenging the order made by Justice Pam for his arrest.

READ ALSO: Former Nigerian ambassador James Barka renounces membership of APC

It was reported that Justice Aboki submitted that it will be prejudicial for the trial court to proceed with hearing of the matter scheduled for August 14 since the matter has been adjourned to September 17, for hearing of the main appeal.

Consequently, the panel unanimously ordered the stay if proceeding penning the hearing of Prof Mahmoods appeals, the Justice reportedly said.

Legit.ng had reported that the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, on Wednesday, August 8, ordered Nigeria's inspector general of police to arrest and bring the chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, to court for refusing to obey a valid order court.

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Justice Stephen Pam had on July 5 ordered Yakubu to appear before him to prove why he should not be sent to prison for contempt of court but five days later, on July 10 when the court sat again, Mahmood did not show up with his counsel, Mr Adeboyega Awomolo.

How Masked DSS Gunmen Stormed the National Assembly (The True Story) on Legit.ng TV.

Source: Legit
- The Edo state commissioner of police, Johnson Kokumo, invites a building contractor for a discussion over reported extortion by some policemen

- Law scholars in the north and Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria speak on the spate of killings in many parts of Nigeria

The sum of N100,000 bribe allegedly collected from a building contractor, Emmanuel Alabede, by some policemen attached to the anti-kidnapping unit has been returned to him by the Edo state police command.

The state commissioner of police, Johnson Kokumo, invited Alabede for a discussion on the alleged bribe after learning about the issue in The Punch newspaper.

Alabede said when he visited the command on Thursday, August 9, the money was refunded to him.

READ ALSO: Former Nigerian ambassador James Barka renounces membership of APC

He said: I went to the command with my lawyer on Thursday and I narrated what happened to the CP. The man was angry at the cops.

I later wrote a withdrawal letter of the case and my money was refunded to me.

I withdrew the case for the sake of humanity and my own safety because if they should dismiss the policemen, I dont know what will become of them.

They had job when they perpetrated the act; imagine what they will do when they dont have job again."

The Punch had earlier reported that the contractor travelling from Ibadan, Oyo state, to Abuja when the he was stopped by the cops along the Ibilo-Okene Expressway and the bags of the occupants of the car he was travelling was searched.

The officers were said to be searching Alabedes mobile phone when a bank alert of N200,000 popped up on the phone.

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The policemen were reported to have threatened to kill him if he failed to give them part of the N200,000.

Alabede out of fear, said he reluctantly followed them to a Point of Sale (POS) operator nearby and made a withdrawal of N100,000 through the POS machine, which the policemen took from him.

The Edo state command said the policemen involved in the bribe case had been arrested and were being detained pending trial.

To other news, some law scholars in the north and Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria said the spate of killing by suspected herdsmen could only end through political action and not the present fancy of enacting anti-grazing laws.

Daily Sun reports that the scholars made this known at the conference organized by the Faculty of Law, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, with the theme Promoting Peace, Security and Human Rights; Curbing Unsavory relationship between herdsmen and farmers in Nigeria.

One of the speakers and special assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari, A. K. Usman, in his presentation, observed that present conflict would have been averted if there was a law enacted to regulate the operations of nomads without necessarily looking at the socio-cultural and religious identity of the Fulani herdsmen.

Lagos Police Commissioner Parades Suspected Criminals (Nigeria News) | Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- The ruling All Progressives Congress says it is not planning to arrest the Senate president Bukola Saraki and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu

- The APC says claims by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party is untrue

- The party, however, says both men are not above arrest if they are found to have run foul of the law at anytime

The All Progressives Congress has denied claims by the Peoples Democratic Party that it was planning to arrest Senate president, Bukola Saraki, and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, just as it said both principal officers are not above the law.

Vanguard reports that the opposition party said the planned arrest of the Senate principal officers was a ploy to further weaken the opposition.

Legit.ng gathers that the party stated that Saraki and Ekweremadu were not above arrest should they be found to have run foul of the law at any time.

The acting spokesman for APC, Yekini Nabena, said: The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in its latest round of bogus claims has alleged that the federal government plans to arrest the Senate president, Dr Bukola Saraki and his deputy, Senator Ike Ekweremadu

READ ALSO: Makarfi laments bad roads in southeast

Nabena, who said President Muhammadu Buhari administration has repeatedly demonstrated its strict adherence to the rule of law, described the alleged plan to arrest and harass the two senators as pure hogwash

He said: Clear conscience fears no accusation. Why are PDP leaders afraid of arrest if their conscience is clear? All law-abiding citizens or resident of the country have nothing to fear about arrest. However, nobody no matter how highly placed will escape the full wrath of the law if he or she runs fowl of our laws.

If the Senate president and the tree-climbing senator are facing criminal charges in our law courts and his deputy has explanations to make to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for acquisition of numerous properties in Nigeria and abroad through questionable sources, the President Buhari-led APC administration has nothing to do with them. The laws of the country are only being applied and they should answer for their acts of infamy."

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) alleged that the pressure by the presidency for the reconvening of the Senate was out of a sinister motive to arrest and impeach Senate president, Bukola Saraki and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu.

The party insisted that the call to reopen Senate had nothing to do with any emergency in the approval of the budget of the Independent National Electoral Commission for the 2019 elections as claimed.

Nigeria Latest News: Who is responsible for the siege on the National Assembly?| on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
The presidency on Monday, August 13, said Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, would still remain the running mate of President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 presidential election.

The senior special assistant to the president on media and publicity, Garba Shehu, disclosed this in an interview with State House correspondents at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

READ ALSO: Former Nigerian ambassador renounces membership of APC, joins PDP

The presidential spokesman said the victories recorded by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the legislative elections held in three states over the weekend were indications that victory is certain for the Buhari/Osinbajo presidential ticket in 2019.

Legit.ng previously reported that Governor Rochas Okorocha inaugurated the Imo state chapter of President Muhammadu Buhari re-election campaign council in the southeast geopolitical zone.

Okorocha, who was represented by his chief of staff, Uche Nwosu, at the inauguration ceremony held in Owerri on Sunday, August 12, boasted that the APC would win all the elective seats in the state in 2019.

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He said that the campaign council which would be chaired by a former commissioner, Charles Amadi, with Chidi Ibe as the director general.

Meanwhile, an international public affairs analyst, Boladale Adekoya, has advised the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to do everything within their power to ensure the emergence of Atiku Abubakar as the partys presidential candidate in the 2019 election.

Adekoya said this in an interview saying if the PDP is serious about defeating the APC, it should ensure that Atiku emerged its flagbearer.

President Buhari on 2019 Presidential Election: Will You Vote For Him? | Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
Emerging reports have it that the National Assembly will not reconvene on Tuesday, August 14, and which is contrary to the public expectation.

The Punch reports that the House of Representatives spokesman, Abdulrazak Namdas, made this known on Monday, August 13.

Legit.ng gathered that Namdas noted that the House is yet to decide on a reconvening date.

READ ALSO: Buhari will still run with Osinbajo in 2019 - Presidency

The deputy speaker of the House, Yussuff Lasun, recently announced that the National Assembly would reconvene on Tuesday to consider the budget for the 2019 polls and other pending issues forwarded to lawmakers by President Buhari in July.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that some members of the National Assembly said they were not sure whether the two chambers would reconvene tomorrow, Tuesday, August 14, to consider the 2019 budget of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Senate president Bukola Saraki has not made any official announcement as regards reconvening of the National Assembly.

The Nation had reported that many senators and House members, who were set to go on summer holiday and perform the Hajj rites, remain in Abuja because there is no word from the National Assemblys leadership.

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A member of the House from the northwest said: This budget is important but there is anxiety everywhere on the security implications of recalling members.

From the look of things, our leaders are looking at all options on how to make the ratification of the budget easier.

A principal officer of the House, who spoke in confidence, said: We have not been told when the National Assembly will reconvene to consider the poll budget. I know the speaker assured INEC chairman Mahmud Yakubu last week that we will give the budget a speedy consideration. We are awaiting a recall announcement.

So far, Tuesday does not look practicable. The basic challenge is the crisis of confidence among members of the two chambers.

I think the National Assembly leadership is trying to manage the tempers arising from the defections and the siege to the Assembly complex last week. We are also talking to ourselves to allow reason to prevail.

President Buhari on 2019 Presidential Election: Will You Vote For Him? | Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit
Engineer David Umahi reveals that he has appointed over 1,000 aides since 2015 when he became governor of Ebonyi

- Umahi says he made the appointment in an effort to curb poverty among the youths

- The governor commended Linus Okorie for helping the people of the state

The governor of Ebonyi state, Engineer David Umahi, has revealed that he appointed over 1,000 aides when he assumed office in 2015 in order to tackle the menace of poverty among the youths of the state.

The Punch reports that speaking in Egunkwo community, Onicha local government area of the state during a recent special thanksgiving service organised by Caring Heart Vanguards, Umahi said the appointees comprised of commissioners, special advisers, special assistants, technical assistants, and senior special advisers.

READ ALSO: Jigawa residents protest defection of Senator Shittu from APC

Governor Umahi, who was represented by the Secretary to State Government (SSG), Hyginus Nwokwu, said: Since my assumption of office on May 29th 2015, more than 500 technical assistants, 400 senior technical assistants, 100 special advisers, 50 senior special advisers and 21 commissioners have been appointed.

These appointments were designed to make sure we fight poverty in the land, and also to enable the youths to contribute meaningfully to the development of the state.

The thanksgiving was organized by the ogranisation which is an umbrella body of graduates that secured appointments in federal ministries, departments and agencies through the lawmaker representing Ohaozara Onicha and Ivo federal constituency in the National Assembly, Linus Okorie.

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Governor Umahi commended the lawmaker for the initiative.

Legit.ng earlier reported that Governor David Umahi denied decamping from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Umahi added that even if there is a need for him to leave the PDP, he can never leave for the kind of APC in Ebonyi state."

Top Nigeria Corruption Scandals: Joshua Dariye, Olisa Metuh and Sambo Dasuki | Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- Senator Isa Hamma Misau said the allegation that Saraki was controlling security agencies was false

- The lawmaker accused the presidency of spreading rumour

- He said the APC should be ashamed of it self for the rumour

Senator Isa Hamma Misau who is the chairman of the Senate committee on navy has lashed out at the presidency saying it should be ashamed for claiming that the countrys security agencies are working for Bukola Saraki.

Vanguard reports that he was reacting to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) statement that debunked the allegations credited to the Senior Special Assistant to the President (Political Affairs), Babafemi Ojudu that the EFCC was working for Saraki.

READ ALSO: Breaking: No guns, money, PVCs were found in sacked Dauras house - DSS reveals

Misau said both Adams Oshiomhole who is the chairman of the APC and Ojudu were giving out the same conspiracies.

He said: The EFCCs statement confirms our immediate reaction that both Ojudu and Oshiomhole have been reading from the same conspiracy script.

Nigerians find it unthinkable that Magu, that the Senate refused to confirm  whose EFCC has also prosecuted Saraki for over 3 years at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) would now turn around and start working for this same Saraki. How is this possible?

These people think that they can just wake up, think up conspiracy theories and try to sell it to Nigerians, but the public is smarter and more discerning than their shallow fictitious narratives.

In any case, shouldnt they be ashamed to even claim that the entire internal security institutions in the country are working for someone else other than the person that appointed them?

Additionally, at what point did they decipher this? Was it before the siege on the National Assembly or after?

What this goes to show is that in their desperate bid to blame someone else for their crime and incompetence, these people no longer have a sense of shame, the Senator said.

In this regard, we hereby reiterate the call for independent judicial panel of inquiry into the invasion. Any other such investigation into the matter would constitute another attempt by these same people to present a biased perspective to the assault on our nations democracy and its highest lawmaking body.

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Meanwhile, national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, vowed that the party will definitely impeach Senate President Bukola Saraki.

The APC chairman who disclosed this at a press conference in Abuja on Friday, August 10, also claimed that the party will work hard to ensure that Saraki's political dynasty is destroyed it, The Cable reports.

He (Saraki) failed to understand that the Nigeria national project is more complicated and is not that easy. He will not only be impeached, we will work hard to have him defeated as a senator in his own senatorial zone come 2019.

Nigeria Latest News: Who is responsible for the siege on the National Assembly?| Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
- Governor Aminu Tambuwal held consultations with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on Sunday, August 12

- It is reported that Tambuwal's visit is in connection with his aspiration to vie for the presidency in 2019

- Abubakar and Tambuwal are among the eight presidential aspirants of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)

Nigeria's former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto state met behind closed doors in Abuja on Sunday night, August 12, Nigerian Tribune reports.

Legit.ng gathered that both men met at the Asokoro Abuja residence of the former vice president in what sources close to Atiku said was a courtesy visit.

Paul Ibe, the media adviser to the former vice president, confirmed that Tambuwal was at Atikus residence.

READ ALSO: Buhari will still run with Osinbajo in 2019 - Presidency

However, Tambuwal was said to have had a separate meeting with the director-general of Atiku Presidential Campaign Organization, Otunba Gbenga Daniel.

Atiku is in the middle of his consultation towards securing the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in next years election, while Tambuwal, who has just defected to the opposition party, is also thought to be eyeing the ticket.

Legit.ng previously reported that former vice president of Nigeria Atiku Abubakar has vowed to stay for only one term in office if he wins his partys ticket and is elected president in the forthcoming 2019 election.

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Atiku told ThisDay in an interview published on Sunday, August 12 that to ensure he keeps his word, he would enter into and signed an agreement to vacate office after just a singular term of 4 years.

Atiku versus Buhari: Who will win? - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng News
Editor's note: The convener of Akwa Ibom Politburo For Good Governance, Bassey Amba Offong, writes on the much talked about defection of the former governor of Akwa Ibom state, Senator Godswill Akpabio, stating that the kingmaker status bequeathed on Akpabio is a media propaganda, aimed at giving him a larger than life image.

Read below:

The much hyped defection of former Senate minority leader, Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio, from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the ruling All Progressives Party (APC) has come and gone, with a result that laid to rest the much talked about political clout and stranglehold he had on politics of Akwa Ibom state, where he held sway as governor for eight years.

Prior to his defection, Senator Akpabio was thought to hold the political lever and the power of who becomes what in the state. He had built this image of a man who could determine the fate of every politician in Akwa Ibom state, including the fate of the incumbent, Governor Udom Emmanuel, the man he plucked from relative obscurity and foisted on the people of the state as governor in 2015.

Senator Akpabio has built an image in the minds of Nigerians of a man who performed magic as a governor; a reputation made possible by an awesome multi-billion naira uncommon media propaganda campaign, which transformed his below per performance into a gargantuan performance rating among Nigerians. But his performance as governor could be gauged from the assertion by then minister for finance, the revered Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who said then that Governor Akpabio had not used up to two per cent of what the state had collected as revenue on developing the state, an assertion that was never denied or corrected.

As governor, Akpabio had ensured that no other Akwa Ibom person grew politically. He prides himself as the man who retired the generation of politicians he met in the state, including Obong Victor Attah that brought him, made him a commissioner, from where he had the platform to contest and win the 2007 governorship election in the state and a majority of his political contemporaries. In their place, he installed persons with little or no political pedigree, boasting that he was making men out of boys. The boys remained rabidly loyal and came to be referred to as the Akpabio boys.

READ ALSO: Buhari will still run with Osinbajo in 2019 - Presidency

In the build up to the 2015 governorship election, Akpabio made a clean sweep of all the potential candidates, including those he personally encouraged to aspire to take over from him. He was to singlehandedly install a successor, all the federal and state legislators. It was an election characterized by wide spread violence and killings that the Court of Appeal took judicial notice of when the election was challenged by the APC candidate, Mr. Umana Okon Umana, who was Akpabios long standing ally and Secretary to the State Government that was practically driven out of the PDP.

This background narrative became necessary for a better understanding of what actually became the surprise outcome of the August 8, 2018 defection of the former governor to the APC. When the rumour of his defection was first made public, there was high apprehension in the state. Some said it was going to sound the end to the second term ambition of the governor, Mr. Udom Emmanuel. Newspapers were to speculate that the entire political structure in the state would collapse, given the fact that Governor Emmanuel had no structure he could call his own. Governor Emmanuel, prior to his coming to contest the governorship election, was an Executive Director in Zenith Bank and had no political experience of any sort. Said to have been discovered by Akpabios wife, Emmanuel merely rode on the back of Akpabio to the governorship. Akpabios departure was expected, therefore, to bring the governor to his knees, decimate the ranks of his government and substantially diminish the strength of the PDP in the state.

DEFECTION

Given the expectations of a tsunamic effect of an Akpabio defection, it was an anti-climax when the former Senate minority leader eventually left PDP to APC alone. Those who joined him were only two commissioners; one his blood brother, Ibanga Akpabio and the other Hon Victor Antai, whose Senate ambition, was said to have been discouraged by Governor Emmanuel, who preferred the emergence of Akon Eyikanyi, a former minister. Senator Akpabio was also joined by two House of Assembly members, the man representing his constituency, Hon Nse Ntuen, and Hon Gabriel Tobby. From the House of Representatives, were two, the man representing his federal constituency, Hon Emmanuel Akpan, whose ambition to contest for a second term is facing a very stiff resistance from his constituents and Hon Emmanuel Ekon, House committee chairman on local content, who is fighting the fight of his life to make a third attempt at going back to the House of Representatives. His other cousin, Prince Akpabio, is warming up to contest for the House of Assembly slot for Akpabios state constituency under the PDP.

This is a far cry from the expectations in a state that the former governor would make a clean sweep of the who is who in politics in the state. Akpabios defection now looks so inconsequential when compared to the massive effect of Senate President Sarakis defection that saw him move with the governor, the entire state executive committee, the entire members of the House of Assembly, save for one, all the local council chairmen and the entire APC state executive. His defection also pales in the face of similar defection move by former governor of Kano state, Senator Kwankwaso who defected to PDP with the deputy governor, 10 House of Representatives members, 6 House of Assembly members, including the Speaker, 4 commissioners, 10 aides to the governor, among others.

The crowd at the Ikot Ekpene Stadium on the day Senator Akpabio defected was simply intimidating. The crowd, however, was not Akpabios crowd. It was the normal APC crowd; the same crowd that was mobilized two weeks before Akpabios defection, where the people of Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District had converged to pledge their support for the re-election of President Mohammadu Buhari in 2019. While Akpabio was defecting, the real PDP crowds were at Ika, Abak and other major towns in the senatorial district rallying in support of Governor Emmanuel. So it would be wrong to judge Akpabios acceptance by the people by the crowd at his defection rally.

The support base of former Governor Godswill Akpabio is supposed to be in the district he represents at the Nigerian Senate. As governor, Akpabio had his traditional supporters in Ikot Ekpene, among the leaders and elders that, all things being equal, ought to swim or sink with him. Unfortunately, when it was time for them to stand up for Senator Akpabio, they beat a hasty retreat.

A day to Akpabios defection, political and opinion leaders in Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District met and one after the other denounced the former governor, vowing not to follow him to anywhere. They capped it up with a communique where they pledged their support to Governor Udom Emmanuel. It was a major dent on the political image of their senator. If Akpabio was actually in charge of his area, one would be constrained to ask of the whereabouts of some of the key political actors in the area like, Senator Ibok Essien, a former senator, owner of Ritman University, where Senator Akpabio is Chancellor; Mr. Emmanuel Enoidem, PDP national legal adviser, one of the longest serving commissioner under Akpabio. (He served for 8 years under Akpabio and 18 months under Governor Emmanuel); Mr. Aniekan Umanah, Akpabios commissioner for information and arrow head of Akpabios media propaganda machinery; Engineer Etido Inyang, who was a member of Akpabios cabinet for 8 years and now serving as chairman of Ibom Power and many others that one would have thought would go any where Akpabio goes.

The apathy that greeted Akpabios defection was replicated all over the state. In Uyo, no single known leader or member of the PDP left with the former governor. All the boys he claimed to have made men abandoned him to his fate. The likes of Mr. Enonong Uwah, Senator Bassey Albert, Hon Onofiok Luke (Speaker of the State House of Assembly), PDP state chairman, Mr. Paul Ekpo, all the members of the State House of Assembly, former council chairmen like Hon Kenneth Okon, all shunned his defection. Members of his traditional elders and acclaimed loyalists, like former military governor of the state, Otuekong Idongesit Nkanga, Senator Anietie Okon, Senator Effiong Bob, all abandoned him.

In Eket Senatorial District, the same fate awaited Senator Akpabio. Apart from Hon Victor Antai, no politician of any known pedigree followed Akpabio to the APC. Traditional allies like Hon Ndueso Essien, two-term House of Representatives member, former minister (nominated by Akpabio), Akon Eyekanyi, former commissioner, former minister ( nominated by Akpabio) all the House of Assembly members, all gave Akpabio the cold shoulders. The question is who actually followed Akpabio to the APC?

APC LEADERSHIP QUESTION

At the rally where Senator Godswill Akpabio defected to the APC, the party chairman, Adams Oshiomole consistently referred to Akpabio (some said at the prompting of Akpabio himself) as the APC leader in the state. The pronouncement is sure not to go down well enough with other leaders of the party in the state. In a state where the issue of who should be known as the leader of the party has been a very thorny issue, the Oshiomole pronouncement, apparently made out of excitement, is certainly going to exacerbate the already tenuous and tense power play in the party.

It is rather inappropriate to ask Akpabio to automatically lead a party where the likes of Atuekong Don Etiebet, Obong Nsima Ekere, Senator John Akpanudoedehe, Obong Umana Okon Umana, Senator Ita Enang had already established roots and held the party. These men are men Senator Akpabio had in the past hurt so deeply and in most cases, so inhumanly maltreated, without first seeking to mend their broken fences. From Akpabios speech at his defection it was apparent that he had nothing to do with state party leaders, in terms of consultations prior to his defection to the APC. Worse still, no member of the party executive in the state was recognized and none, including the state chairman, was given any opportunity to as much as greet the visitors to the state.

Akpabio should join the APC as any other member, then walk his way, warm his way back into the hearts and arms of these leaders, those he had so badly treated in the past. For instance, Senator John Akpanudoedehe, who flew the flag of Action Congress of Nigeria, one of the political parties that joined to form the APC, was nearly killed in 2011 and framed for all manners of crimes, while many of his supporters were killed, all in a bid to defeat him at the 2011 governorship election. The wound is still fresh and deep. In the 2015 governorship election, Akpabio led the PDP to perpetrate all kinds of violence that led to the death of scores of APC supporters in his desperate bid to install the current governor, Udom Emmanuel as governor. The wound is still fresh and deep. That election saw the ridiculous allocation of 15,000 votes to candidate Muhammadu Buhari, ensuring that no APC member or supporter cast his vote. These are grievous issues that cannot be swept under the carpet. They must be resolved before that party can know any peace and work in cohesion.

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The way Akpabio has been admitted into the APC has only deepened the wounds of the past. There was no prior consultation or engagement with party leaders in the state like Umana, Akpanudoedehe and Etiebet. How can Akpabio who virtually passed a death sentence on Mr. Umana and other APC leaders who supported the APC and President Buhari during the 2015 elections be rewarded with the leadership of the party? At that time Akpabio had branded Umana and Etiebet as traitors who did not support former President Goodluck Jonathan but chose to support President Buhari a northerner. So what has changed? At that time Akpabio professed his undying love for Patience and Goodluck Jonathan. Other leaders in the south-south like Rotimi Amaechi and Timipre Sylva were blackmailed by Akpabio who destroyed their relationship with Jonathan. Akpabio abandoned Jonathan immediately President Buhari won the 2015 election. Today Akpabio has come to join the APC that he despised and dismissed as a Hausa-Fulani party. So what has changed? Akpabio is a coward , a traitor and an opportunist who hopes to reap where he did not sow.

His defection to the APC has exposed the fact that Akpabios strength in the PDP was overrated. It has also confirmed the fact that it is Governor Udom Emmanuel (and not Akpabio) who controls the PDP structure in Akwa Ibom state. In truth, Akpabio is adding no real value to the fortunes of the APC in Akwa Ibom state given the fact that 98 percent of the leaders of PDP abandoned him and pledged their support for Governor Emmanuel.

Does Akpabio in good conscience think he can lead the likes of Mr.Umana Umana, Senator John Akpanudoedehe, Chief Don Etiebet, Mr. Nsima Ekere and others who have sacrificed so much to build the party?

Installing Akpabio as party leader in the state will not help the cause of harmonious coexistence. Akpabio may become an albatross who will destroy the APC the same way he destroyed the PDP. On the day of his defection to the APC, he cleared himself of all his pending cases with the EFCC; he also despised other patriotic and principled leaders of the party like Rotimi Amaechi, Timipre Sylva and even Adam Oshiomole by boasting that he will single-handedly deliver all the south-south states to the APC.

The party is too close to the 2019 election to allow any new disruptions. The party is too fragile for an Akpabio to lead.

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By Justin Mikulka, is a freelance writer, audio and video producer living in Trumansburg, NY. Originally published at DeSmogBlog.

In the climactic final scene in There Will Be Blood  arguably the greatest movie about the oil industry  the main character played by Daniel Day Lewis explains how he sucked the oil from a neighbors land by using horizontal drilling. To help his neighbor understand what has happened, he explains it by saying he took a very long straw and Drank your milkshake!

Well guess what is happening with the fracking revolution that is built on the concept of horizontal drilling? Not only are oil producers drinking each others milkshakes, they are drinking their own, and in the process losing even more money and raising the odds of dangerous environmental risks.

And unlike in the movie where the main character knew what he was doing, the modern fracking industry really has no clue what to do about the problems caused by the combination of horizontal drilling and greed.

Frac Hits, aka Child Wells

The first thing to understand is that this is simply a problem of the industry being greedy. The oil producers are drilling too many wells in close proximity to one another, and when they frack the newer wells  known as child wells  those bash or hit the older wells and cause problems.

In a typical frack site, the production begins with a first test well, which is known as the parent well. The wells drilled in proximity to the parent well are called child wells.

What is happening is that not only are the child wells cannibalizing the production of the existing parent well, but when the child wells are fracked they can create frac hits that damage the parent well. These frac hits can reduce the pressure in the parent well leading to lower production, they can damage the parent well to the point of it being a dead well and, of course, they can lead to spills and environmental contamination.

Claudio Virues, a senior reservoir engineer with the oil and gas company Nexen, explained the basic problem of frac hits in the Journal of Petroleum Technology.

You usually have two scenarios, Virues said. One may be that you have a temporary loss of production, but you will recover to the trend that you had before. The other will be really bad for your production and reserves.

Bob Barree, who runs the Petroleum engineering consulting firm Barree Associates, explains the really bad scenario.

You put the well back on production and youve lost your pressure, the velocity, the inflow capacity, and the well is just dead, Barree said.

And that means the fracking industry loses even more money.

In another article in the Journal of Petroleum Technology, titled Frac Hits Reveal Well Spacing May be Too Tight, Completion Volumes Too Large, the author references a technical paper by engineers at Shell that estimates that if a producer has an inventory of 2,000 640-acre drilling sections, and each new well costs $5 million, then adding just a single unneeded well to each section would cost the operator $10 billion.

The reality is that the potential costs of frac hits and tight well spacing arent currently known by the industry, but there is no doubt that frac hits are costing the industry money and contributing to production declines.

Industry Experts Admit They Dont Know What They Are Doing

The industry has certainly acknowledged frac hits are a major problem  one the industry currently has no idea how to solve.

Energy industry research and consulting group Wood Mackenzie has studied the issue of frac hits and child wells and concluded the following:

Closely spaced child well performance presents not only a risk to the viability of the ongoing drilling recovery but also to the industrys long-term prospects.Virtually every operator believes child well performance is a material issue, but there is no consensus on how to best address it.

A risk to the viability of the industrys long-term prospects  for an industry that has never made money  isnt a very positive outlook.

But that is the situation in 2018 for the oil fracking industry. In early 2018, members of the industry gathered in Texas to talk about the issue. As the Midland Reporter and Telegram reported, Dick Leonard, one of the panelists at the conference explained that when it came to mitigating the impacts of frac hits that no one has the answers yet.

Another panelist, Lance Robertson of Endeavor Energy Resources echoed this sentiment saying, Were in the early phases and still have a long way to go. We and the industry have a lot to learn.

How long can the fracking industry continue to lose money while trying to learn what they are actually doing?

Frac Hits Increase Environmental Damage

The risks of fracking operations contaminating the air, drinking water and land are well known. Even when wells are operating independently without having been hit by another frack job. Now due to the closer well spacing and frac hits, the risk of environmental damage is increasing.

In Oklahoma, horizontal wells are bashing through existing conventional wells and causing spills. Mike Cantrell is a small operator of conventional oil wells in Oklahoma who is speaking out about the large fracking companies that are damaging wells like his. They know theyre going to ruin your well and they dont care, Cantrell told E&E News.

The state of Oklahoma acknowledges that spills have occurred but disputes claims that any groundwater has been contaminated  the standard industry line about fracking.

And yet on the website of Eagleford Training under the topic of What are frac hits? the issue of environmental risks is detailed including a section titled Loss of Well Control. Potential issues listed when well control is lost include a blowout of either frac fluids or charged reservoir fluids.

Additional risks include the release of deadly Hydrogen Sulfide gas and the fact that Offset well releases will release reservoir fluids, which tend to be extremely flammable, according to the site.

So, while the industry likes to claim that fracking poses little risk to the environment, the issue of frac hits appears to raise a whole new set of environmental risks.

Frac Hits May Be Deadly Financial Hit to Money-Losing Industry

It is well established that the fracking industry has been a money losing proposition for the past decade. In a recent Oilprice.com article that detailed the industrys bad luck making financial hedging bets, this is acknowledged with the statement that Shale drilling has historically been a loss-making proposition.

Now this historically money-losing industry is facing a major challenge that could prove to be a fatal flaw in the already failing fracking business model.

If producers try to pack in wells too close to each other, the wells will damage one another and production will decline or even stop for some wells. If producers have to resort to much larger distances for well spacing, the lower number of wells will also likely decrease overall production numbers.

How will this turn out? Dont ask the industry experts because they admit they have no idea  which cant be comforting for investors who continue to lose money while waiting for the fracking revolution to finally pay off.
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(Natural News) Moles are a common sight on a persons body. These dark-colored clusters of pigmented cells usually appear during childhood, but can fade or disappear with age. While most are harmless, some moles may become deadly over time. Moles can be a risk factor for melanoma, a type of skin cancer. Melanoma may sound scary but its actually one of the most treatable cancers and, if caught early, can be taken out in its entirety by simply removing the mole. Dermatologists have listed five warning signs to watch out for; so if you want to know if your mole is cancerous, just remember ABCDE:

Asymmetry  Draw a line through the middle of a benign mole, and the two halves will match. If you do the same to another mole and the two sides arent equal, then its an asymmetrical mole. An irregularly-shaped mole is one that puts you at a higher risk of melanoma.

 Draw a line through the middle of a benign mole, and the two halves will match. If you do the same to another mole and the two sides arent equal, then its an asymmetrical mole. An irregularly-shaped mole is one that puts you at a higher risk of melanoma. Borders  A regular mole has smooth and even borders. On the other hand, an early melanoma tends to have ragged and uneven edges, with some cases displaying notched or scalloped edges.

 A regular mole has smooth and even borders. On the other hand, an early melanoma tends to have ragged and uneven edges, with some cases displaying notched or scalloped edges. Color Change  Exposure to sunlight can make moles darker, but the sun wont make a single mole a multi-colored one. A variety of distinct colors in one mole is a warning signal that your mole could be cancerous. The colors to keep an eye on are different shades of black, tan, or brown. According to SkinCancer.org, a melanoma could even become white, red, or blue.

 Exposure to sunlight can make moles darker, but the sun wont make a single mole a multi-colored one. A variety of distinct colors in one mole is a warning signal that your mole could be cancerous. The colors to keep an eye on are different shades of black, tan, or brown. According to SkinCancer.org, a melanoma could even become white, red, or blue. Diameter  If you notice one mole thats slowly grown larger over time, you need to have it checked. While most moles will be no larger than a pencil eraser (at one-fourth of an inch or six mm), the malignant ones usually become much bigger in diameter.

 If you notice one mole thats slowly grown larger over time, you need to have it checked. While most moles will be no larger than a pencil eraser (at one-fourth of an inch or six mm), the malignant ones usually become much bigger in diameter. Elevation or Evolution  Depending on which dermatologist you speak to, E could be either Elevation or Evolution. Dermatologists that use Elevation will advise you to watch out for moles with a raised surface, while dermatologists that prefer evolution will warn against moles that have displayed any changes in color, shape, or even bleeding.

Despite how easy it is to spot a cancerous mole, some people wouldnt even bother. Dr. David Fischer, Director of the Melanoma Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, told the DailyMail.co.uk that these same people might even be too scared to check. Its one of those fear and denial-type things. People would rather not know than find out something scary or devastating, Fisher said before adding: But the thing is, six out of seven melanoma cases are cured just by catching it early and removing it. In other words, early detection could be life-saving. That statistic should help motivate people to be really proactive, to realize that theres a benefit to this.

Aside from moles, there are other factors that put you at risk of melanoma. If youre predisposed to developing moles or birthmarks, have a family history of melanoma, frequently use tanning beds, or are under direct sunlight a lot, then you might just have a higher chance than most people.

Dont fret, however. As was mentioned earlier, melanoma is treatable if the warning signs are spotted at an early stage. In the words of Fraser: Not every cancer has that type of opportunity to catch it so early. This type of cancer does.

Read more upbeat stories in the same vein by dropping by CancerSolutions.news.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

SkinCancer.org
(Natural News) As far as the government is concerned, Joel Salatin might just as well be Josef Stalin, the soviet revolutionary. The two men have more than just similar names in common; like Stalin, Salatin is looking to turn a system he doesnt believe in, upside down. Labeled the most famous farmer in America, Salatin has become well-known countrywide for his work in advocating sustainable, renewable farming practices and the humane treatment of livestock in ways which are still profitable for local farmers.

Nonetheless, Salatins work has not made him popular with the government or the agricultural mainstream, and even he refers to himself as a lunatic farmer because virtually all the changes he advocates for are either illegal or fly in the face of the farming communitys established  and lucrative  systems of production and distribution.

All such resistance has done nothing to stop him, though. He believes that more and more people will join his rogue food rebellion, eventually forcing system changes from the inside, out. (Related: Food freedom  Learn how to grow half of your own food with sustainable, organic methods that can be practiced anywhere.)

Paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork 

Salatin believes that the amount of paperwork that small farmers now have to submit to remain compliant with Obamas Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is both stifling and overwhelming. In his words, its through the roof.

Salatins solution? He believes that a small town in Maine has the right idea:

A township [Sedgewick, Maine]  passed a half page food sovereignty law that said, in our township if a neighbor wants to do food commerce with another neighbor its none of the governments business and no bureaucrat has to be involved. So if you want to come to my house, look around, smell around, and operate as freedom of choice, as voluntary adults, as consenting adults  and Im using very strong language here  to practice your freedom of choice, then two consenting adults should be able to engage in food commerce without a bureaucrat being involved. Well, very quickly six other townships in Maine took up the mantra and passed the regulation, the law, as well.

From there, Salatin went on to explain, this food sovereignty movement continued to grow in Maine, and many others around the country are watching to see what will happen, with various legal matters that are being settled regarding individual rights versus the rights of the state. (Related: Maine officials violate local food freedom ordinance by suing man for selling raw milk from farm.)

Salatin believes that individual Americans should be entitled to engage in food commerce at their own risk and of their own free will. And attorneys in 40 states are getting behind the movement via a non-profit called the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. This fund gets involved when small farmers and food producers are invaded by SWAT teams who confiscate their produce and in other ways bully those who might otherwise not have any legal recourse.

Salatin explained in a podcast with Adam Taggart of Peak Prosperity how modern technology is giving this movement impetus:

And now the beauty of the internet is that these things can be documented on iPhones. People can see the bureaucrat, the SWAT teams coming in and throwing out the perfectly good food from a freezer. They can see the raid; they can see peoples rights being violated. And so there is definitely a backlash. Its a food freedom backlash in the country, and Ive been an advocate of this all my life.

No doubt, this movement will continue to spread across the country. Viva la revolution!

Learn more about food laws at FoodFreedom.news.

Sources for this article include:

PeakProsperity.com

USFoodSovereigntyAlliance.org
(Natural News) Eating well nourishes not just your body, but also your brain. And when it comes to food, nothing is better for your neurons than organic produce.

The brain is called the control center of the body  and for good reason. All the processes in your body are practically managed by the brain, even those you do not have conscious control over. The brain also stores your memories, gives rise to your moods, and makes your emotions possible.

Eating organic food is one of the best ways to ensure that your brain is adequately fed the nutrients it needs to function optimally. Not only are organics free from chemical pesticides and other harmful toxins, they also contain more of the nutrients that make fruits and vegetables so essential to good health. That they taste better than conventional fare  preserved and shipped for weeks from other countries  is a huge bonus.

The best way to obtain organic food is to visit your local farmers market. Because they are grown in your area, they end up costing cheaper, too. But because the stalls are usually open just one day in a week, its best to plan ahead before you set out to fill your pantry. Its a problem during winter, but the summertime offers a rich variety of flavors and food items you can buy to get a healthy body and mind.

What nutrients does your brain need?

Because of its many crucial functions and its non-stop action, the brain is understandably one of the most nutritionally demanding organs of the body. Here are some of the nutrients most needed by your brain and what they do:

Complex carbohydrates  The kind of sugars you find in vegetables such as yam, potatoes, beets, and carrots are used by your brain for energy. Neurons cannot store energy on their own, so a steady supply of carbs is needed. Refined sugars, however, are not recommended as they raise your blood sugar levels and may even shrink your brain as a result.

 The kind of sugars you find in vegetables such as yam, potatoes, beets, and carrots are used by your brain for energy. Neurons cannot store energy on their own, so a steady supply of carbs is needed. Refined sugars, however, are not recommended as they raise your blood sugar levels and may even shrink your brain as a result. Protein  When you eat proteins, your body breaks this nutrient down into amino acids, which become components for neurotransmitters. These are chemicals needed by your neurons to communicate with each other.

 When you eat proteins, your body breaks this nutrient down into amino acids, which become components for neurotransmitters. These are chemicals needed by your neurons to communicate with each other. Good fats  You can find these in sources like soy and olive oil. Good fats are known to promote healthy brain function and prevent the onset of disorders like depression. You may also consume avocados, nuts, seeds, and fatty fish for their healthy fat content.

 You can find these in sources like soy and olive oil. Good fats are known to promote healthy brain function and prevent the onset of disorders like depression. You may also consume avocados, nuts, seeds, and fatty fish for their healthy fat content. B-vitamins  These belong to a group of nutrients called micronutrients or those that your body needs in small doses. B-vitamins help regulate your mood and prevent a host of brain-related disorders, including memory loss and dementia.

 These belong to a group of nutrients called micronutrients or those that your body needs in small doses. B-vitamins help regulate your mood and prevent a host of brain-related disorders, including memory loss and dementia. Vitamin D  This micronutrient is produced in the body with exposure to sunlight, although you can also find it in certain foods. Adequate levels of vitamin D in the body help regulate mood and lowers your risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders.

 This micronutrient is produced in the body with exposure to sunlight, although you can also find it in certain foods. Adequate levels of vitamin D in the body help regulate mood and lowers your risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders. Magnesium  This mineral has many benefits for the different parts of your body. It helps the brain by improving concentration and mood, as well as serving as protection from the harmful effects of stress. Having enough magnesium also helps you sleep better, which is something the brain needs a lot of.

 This mineral has many benefits for the different parts of your body. It helps the brain by improving concentration and mood, as well as serving as protection from the harmful effects of stress. Having enough magnesium also helps you sleep better, which is something the brain needs a lot of. Omega-3 fatty acids  These good fats are notable for their role in healthy brain function. They prevent memory loss and mood swings and lowers your risk for Alzheimers disease. Omega-3 also improves cardiovascular function which, consequently, helps ensure that your brain receives the nutrients it needs. It is found in fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, herring, and others), nuts, and seeds.

 These good fats are notable for their role in healthy brain function. They prevent memory loss and mood swings and lowers your risk for Alzheimers disease. Omega-3 also improves cardiovascular function which, consequently, helps ensure that your brain receives the nutrients it needs. It is found in fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, herring, and others), nuts, and seeds. Antioxidants  Your brain uses a large percentage of your bodys oxygen supply, making it extra vulnerable to the effects of free radicals. Antioxidants protect your brain cells from damage, as well as neurodegenerative disorders. You will find plenty of them in fruits and vegetables.

Find more brain-friendly foods at Fresh.news.

Sources include:

PsychologyToday.com

BeBrainFit.com
(Natural News) Chef and talk show host Rachael Rays Nutrish dog food brand is being sued on the grounds that the products contain the dangerous herbicide glyphosate and are therefore not natural as the packaging states.

The $5 million dollar class action lawsuit was filed on Wednesday in New York by Markeith Parks and names Nutrish owner Ainsworth Pet Nutrition. According to the documents, Nutrish aggressively advertises the product and promotes it as being natural, an assertion that they say is misleading, deceptive, and false.

The lawsuit is based on the fact that independent tests showed the products contain glyphosate, which in addition to being unnatural has also been linked to a host of health effects including endocrine disruption and cancer.

While theres no question that its a chemical to avoid, it isnt terribly surprising that tests found glyphosate in the dog food. As food lab scientist Mike Adams pointed out on CounterThink, almost all the food you find in the grocery store will test positive for the herbicide when an instrument with the right sensitivity is used for the testing.

These days, glyphosate is making its way into everything  not just food but also water, soil and air. The concentration of the chemical found in the test has not been revealed, but the finding may not be quite as outrageous as it seems. The true outrage here is the fact that glyphosate has become so ubiquitous that it just cant avoided. The other dog foods on the market could very well perform similarly on such a test.

The lawsuit itself acknowledges this, saying, However, crops such as peas, soy, corn, beets and alfalfa are sprayed with the chemical in order to dry them and produce an earlier, more uniform harvest  a practice with no health benefits, meant only to increase yield.

Although the dog food claims to be natural  a term not regulated by the FDA, by the way  it does not claim to be organic. A lot of people dont realize that many non-organic crops are sprayed with glyphosate before harvesting so that the crops will all die at the same time. Its essentially a matter of convenience, allowing them to dry in a uniform way so they can be harvested earlier.

The practice is so common that one Canadian farmer and agricultural consultant, Gerald Wiebe, estimated that 95 percent of the acres of wheat in Manitoba are sprayed with glyphosate pre-harvest. Its used to desiccate crops like peas, soybeans, canola, potatoes, lentils, corn, and rye.

Consumers dont realize when they buy wheat products like flour, cookies and bread they are getting glyphosate residues in those products, he stated. Its barbaric to put glyphosate in food a few days before you harvest it.

Glyphosate is everywhere

Given the prevalence of this practice, its safe to assume that countless other products would also turn up positive for glyphosate, even if they claim to be natural. That doesnt make it right or acceptable, but it hardly seems like a problem that is confined to this particular type of dog food. The lawsuit may not ultimately be successful, but perhaps it will still be valuable if it draws more attention to the disturbing trends seen in agriculture that many people would not have heard about otherwise.

A representative from the Smucker Company, which recently purchased Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, denied adding pesticides to its products and said the lawsuit will be fought aggressively.

Read more news about glyphosate at Glyphosate.news.

Sources for this article include:

FoxNews.com

EcoWatch.com
(Natural News) When President Trump first took office, there was renewed hope among anti-GMO activists that he would take positive action to curtail the $350 billion-a-year biotechnology industry. After all, both on the campaign trail and for the first 353 days of his presidency he never mentioned the words biotechnology, CRISPR, eugenics, gene therapy or embryo editing. It seemed, in fact, like things were about to change.

The bubble burst on that dream back in January, however, when President Trump addressed a crowd in Nashville, Tennessee, and spoke positively about biotechnology and its uses in agriculture.

We are streamlining regulations that have blocked cutting-edge biotechnology, setting free our farmers to innovate, thrive, and to grow, Trump said at the time, according to MIT Technology Review.

The president also went on to abolish USDA rules that would have imposed strict regulations on the use of CRISPR gene editing technology, approving new potatoes, mushrooms and apples created using that technology.

It should perhaps come as no surprise, then, that the Trump administration just announced $12 billion in aid to conventional farmers  particularly soybean, cotton, dairy, corn and hog farmers  to offset the effects of his international trade war.

Almost everyone thinks this is a bad idea

As reported by NBC News, the administration proposes to deliver this massive amount of taxpayer-funded aid to farmers in three ways:

Soybean, dairy, cotton, corn and hog farmers will receive direct funding;

The government will implement a food purchasing program whereby it will buy up surplus beef, legumes and other produce; and

A trade promotion program will be implemented.

Why, exactly, is this relief needed? In the last couple of weeks, members of the Iowa Corn Growers Association met with policymakers in the government to express their concerns about remaining solvent should President Trump continue his trade war with other nations, which has caused the prices of many crops to bottom out. This is a concern that has been expressed by many other parties as well, and one that has been echoed by the manufacturing and energy sectors.

While some farmers have expressed gratitude for the administrations stop-gap funding, policymakers from both political parties have expressed concerns about its sustainability.

You have a terrible policy that sends farmers to the poorhouse, and then you put them on welfare, and we borrow the money from other countries, Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, noted. Its hard to believe there isnt an outright revolt right now in Congress.

Extra funding to boost production of dangerous foods

There are sound reasons to be concerned about extra funding being granted to promote GMOs. Countries across the world are banning biotechnology, recognizing that it creates environmental and human health concerns. Study after study has raised real concerns about the long-term effects of consuming genetically modified foods.

An Italian study published in the Journal of Small Ruminant Research, for example, found that pregnant goats fed with genetically engineered (GE) Roundup-ready soybeans had offspring who grew more slowly and were shorter than other kids. The research team found that milk from the GE-fed mothers was significantly less nutritious and contained fewer of the antibodies essential for early growth. Roundup-ready soybeans are among the most widely grown in the world. (Related: Soylent food bars, proudly made with GMOs, causing stomach problems, vomiting and diarrhea.)

Soybean farmers will benefit handsomely from President Trumps handout, but what will the effects be on the children born to mothers who eat GMO soybeans and other produce while theyre pregnant? Only time will tell.

Discover the truth about biotechnology and its dangerous long-term effects at GMO.news.

Sources for this article include:

NBCNews.com

NYTimes.com

Bloomberg.com

AltHealthWorks.com

TechnologyReview.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Which planet sounds like a better place to live: One that is full of plants and trees and teeming with wildlife and biodiversity with plenty of food to go around, or a cold and barren one with a starving and dying-off population? If youre like most people, you would choose the first option without hesitation. If youre Carl Zimmer of the New York Times, however, its that second scenario that is inexplicably more appealing.

He wrote that rising CO2 levels are making the world greener, but thats nothing to celebrate. Its not? Reforestation, greening and food crop production are nothing to celebrate? Unfortunately, there is a lot of ignorance floating around about the topic of carbon and what it does to and in the environment. Climate change alarmists have been pushing the narrative that carbon is bad for the planet for so long that its frighteningly easy for the mainstream media to get away with expressing such ludicrous views. People read stories like Zimmers and simply nod in agreement because they think its what those who care about the planet should believe  never mind the fact that basic science tells us otherwise.

Respected ecologist Patrick Moore was quick to call out the article, calling the widely-read paper quote a bad joke. He believes the world is currently deficient in carbon dioxide compared to geological epochs in the past. He explained why he considers 800 to 1200 ppm of carbon dioxide to be the optimal level, pointing out that planting crops that are grown in greenhouses that have carbon dioxide pumped into them are ridiculously effective. Why would anyone use a greenhouse in the first place if carbon dioxide was actually bad?

He tweeted: Try to tell a greenhouse grower that the effect of higher CO2 is small. They will laugh you out of the room with their 25-80% gain in yield.

Even environmental journalist Andrew Revkin, who concedes that he has a lot of questions about carbon dioxide, said that Zimmers choice of the word terrible is without merit.

CO2 levels need to be higher, not lower

Plants simply cant survive without carbon dioxide, and its already at dangerously low levels. If todays levels were doubled, our planet would be lusher, with rain forests flourishing and deserts growing forests. This would lead to a more abundant food supply, better self-sufficiency and thriving life, as Mike Adams discusses in the must-see video Carbon Dioxide: The Miracle Molecule of Life.

Carbon dioxide is essential for life, and plants use it not only for breathing but to synthesize medicinal molecules like vitamin C, curcumin, and cannabidiol. It is not the enemy that it has been made out to be by those who dont know any better.

Here is what would really happen if we didnt have carbon dioxide on our planet: Plants would die, our food web would essentially collapse, and humans would become extinct. Those who are fighting the war against carbon are either completely clueless, blinded by greed because they stand to profit on some sort of global warming solution, or they simply want everyone to die.

Sources for this article include:

DailyCaller.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) The political elite in Silicon Valley, the left, and all their European and Chinese allies are attempting to influence the mid-term election and steal future elections by suppressing the independent media. Any content that goes against the lefts agenda, and the politicians they promote, is being purged from social media and search engines, such as Facebook and Google. This is the real reason Alex Jones Infowars has been attacked.

A majority of internet users navigate the internet using Google, Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Amazon, Twitter, etc. These tech monopolies use algorithms and so-called fact-checkers to control what the public can read, hear, and see in search engines, advertisements, and news feeds. In this way, these monopolies resort to manipulation and coercion to influence the masses. These monopolies already track your online activity and analyze your clicks, purchases, interests, and connections, to target marketing to you. These companies are building a psychological profile on all users, so they can best profit off your consumerism and manipulate your political beliefs.

When Apple, Facebook, Spotify & YouTube (Google) coordinated to ban Alex Joness popular InfoWars channel, they did so to suppress his voice. By de-listing, de-monetizing, and banning specific channels, Big Tech can possess a stronger grip over the minds of internet users. The purge of thoughtful, dissenting, conservative and/or libertarian channels is how the left seeks to rise to power. These Silicon Valley mind control tactics must be stopped by a people who believe in the freedom to think for one self. No one should be told to sit in the back of the bus because the color of their beliefs are deemed lesser than.

The informative InfoWars network has been credited for its role in spreading ideas during the last election cycle. In trying to control the narrative, the monopolistic tech giants are now desperately trying to shut down voices that promote the ideas they are opposed to.

In oppressive fashion, the big tech companies gain influence through manipulation, coercion, and force. In a free market, ideas spread freely and influence is gained through honest means. Big Brother Facebook and the Associated Press should not be policing the content of peoples online speech to ban those they dont like and to manipulate how the masses vote and think.

In a market controlled by a handful of big tech companies, hate is sponsored because these monopolies have the power to suppress voices on their platforms that they are opposed to. The internet should be a neutral platform, where all political beliefs, facts, and opinions are presented equally. Force-feeding the public your ideas by suppressing others (like the big tech companies do) is a message that your beliefs and ideas have no merit.

The internet is not a free speech platform if monopolistic tech companies can control the news and information that the masses have access to. Interestingly, the same politicians who vouch for net neutrality are the same people who believe social media giants have the right to censor, shadow ban, or de-monetize platforms they dont like or agree with.

Facebook and Google should be neutral platforms where ideas spread freely. Vague hate speech policies are used as a cover-up to shut down voices that the political elite dont want people to hear. By law, these companies terms and agreements with users should not allow the company to discriminate against users based on the color of their beliefs. An elitist group of leftists in Silicon Valley should not be deciding through discriminatory practices the content that is accessible to millions of people. Big Tech are the ones promoting hate, forcing the inferior people and their ideas to the back of the bus.

Stay up-to-date on Big Tech censorship tactics at Censorship.News.

Sources include:

InfoWars.com

NaturalNews.com

Propaganda.News
(Natural News) While liberals are busy shunning the Trump administration for taking a hard line on illegal immigration, U.S. law enforcement agents say that an illegal immigrant who entered the country under false pretenses has now been arrested for allegedly raping a young girl. Reports indicate that the man in question falsely told authorities the girl was his daughter to gain entry into the United States.

The illegal immigrant, identified as Ramon Pedro, was arrested on July 27 by the Huron police department. The childs mother sent her to the U.S. with Pedro as part of an agreement to secure future employment.

In a statement given to The Daily Wire, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Pedro, entered the U.S. this spring through the Ysleta Port of Entry in Texas where he claimed that a girl who was traveling with him was his daughter.

The DHS wrote:

On July 26, 2018, Ramon Pedro and his alleged daughter were hospitalized at the Fresno Community Regional Hospital for Tuberculosis (TB) screening. At this time, medical staff discovered that Pedros alleged daughter was being sexually assaulted and the local police were notified. Then it was determined that Pedro and the daughter are not related at all. In fact, the victims mother told her daughter to accompany Pedro to the United States and he would secure her employment.

The Huron Police Department has charged Pedro with multiple felony offenses for rape, oral copulation, forcible sexual penetration, along with endangering and causing injury to a child. He is currently being held at the Fresno County jail on a $310,000 bond.

This is unfortunately not the first time an illegal immigrant has been accused of raping a child this year. In April, a 41-year-old man living in Bethesda, MD was accused of raping and impregnating a 13-year-old nonverbal child with special needs. Reynaldo Mora, the accused, was set to be released but was picked up by ICE instead.

Where is the media?

Recall when President Trump said some illegal immigrants are criminals. Two years ago, the then-presidential candidate said:

The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody elses problems. When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre not sending you. Theyre not sending you. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems, and theyre bringing those problems with [them]. Theyre bringing drugs, theyre bringing crime, theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

The Left went nuts over this statement, calling Trump a racist and every other name in the book. Where is the liberal media, supposed champion of childrens and womens rights, now that two young girls have been raped?

The same media denouncing the Trump administration for separating kids from their parents at the border is astonishingly silent when it comes to child sex abuse. There is a long list of Americans whove been victim to crimes of all kinds at the hands of illegal immigrants.

While the Left loves to malign President Trump and his administration, the truth is that there are bad people in the world, in every race and in every country. It is the governments job to keep criminals from harming the public, including criminals who are trying to enter the country. As seen in the case of Ramon Pedro, predators will do anything to get where they want to go.

For more news about immigration issues, checkout InvasionUSA.news.

Sources for this article include:

DailyWire.com

FoxNews.com
(Natural News) Perfume magnate Jo Malone has a sense of smell so acute she can detect cancer like trained sniffing dogs, according to researchers at the Medical Detection Dogs in Milton Keynes, U.K. Malone, 53, discovered that she too can detect illnesses by detecting subtle changes in the bodys scent. The scent industry giant underwent a test at the charity center last year to determine the accuracy of her olfactory sense. The center, which specializes in training dogs to sniff out illnesses, asked Malone to smell five pots and identify one that contains tiny doses of amyl acetate diluted in mineral oil.

Researchers said Ms. Malone was able to detect doses of the chemical when it was present in one part in 100,000. Malone was also able to smell the chemical even when it was diluted in mineral oil at one part in one million, experts added. According to the center, most humans can only detect amyl acetate when it was present in one part in 1,000. However, trained dogs were shown to detect the chemical when it was present in one part per trillion. This equates to smelling a teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Malone has also been previously reported to have allegedly smelled her husbands disease. Malone initially thought it was cancer but was later diagnosed as Addisons disease, an adrenal gland condition.

This can add to early diagnosis that can save lives. Its not dogs or a regular test, lets work together and get this research going so these amazing animals can help with diagnosing cancers early and then more people will survive it, Malone said.

Speaking at the morning show Good Morning Britain, Medical Detection Dogs CEO Dr. Claire Guest said that illnesses trigger a biochemical change, which leads to a change in our odor that can help in diagnosis. The potential is absolutely huge.

Canine and cancer: Studies prove dogs can smell cancer

Not one species in the animal kingdom can hold a candle against dogs when it comes to sniffing. Their acute sense of smell is due to their massive 300 million olfactory receptors, compared with humans who have a measly six million receptors. Various studies have already established dogs ability to sniff out cancer in patients. A 2004 study in the British Medical Journal revealed that trained dogs were able to detect a unique odor signature present in patients with bladder cancer.

Another study found that dogs were able to discriminate urine from prostate cancer patients against urine samples from healthier individuals after two years of training. Data showed that dogs were able to distinguish cancer samples in 30 of 33 cases, at 91 percent sensitivity and specificity.

A Japanese study published in 2011 also found that dogs were highly-effective in detecting colorectal cancer through breath and fecal samples. Researchers found that dogs showed a sensitivity of 0.97 and a specificity of 0.99 in detecting colorectal cancer in fecal samples. Data also revealed that the animals had a 0.91 sensitivity and 0.99 specificity in detecting cancer using breath samples. The dogs sense of smell were equally accurate in spotting the early stages of cancer, researchers added. The findings suggest that canine scent detection was not hampered by factors such as smoking habits, benign colorectal symptoms, or inflammatory disease. Researchers confirmed that a cancer-specific scent does exist and that these chemical compounds might be circulating in the body. Detecting these cancer-specific scents may serve as an effective tool in screening colorectal cancer in patients.

Two more studies have confirmed that canine scent detection was highly-accurate in detecting lung cancer. A 2006 study revealed that dogs showed a sensitivity of 0.99 and overall specificity of 0.99 in detecting lung cancer from breath samples compared with traditional biopsy detection. In another study, the animals showed a sensitivity of 71% and a specificity of 93% in distinguishing lung cancer in breath samples.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

ITV.com

MedicalDetectionDogs.org.uk[PDF]
The Great Sphinx of Giza is one of Egypt's most famous landmarks, but the country actually boasts a number of sphinx statues.

Recently, a great sphinx that bears a resemblance to Giza's famous monument was unearthed accidentally.

Road Workers Stumble Upon Second Sphinx

Officials have confirmed that the massive statue was discovered during the construction project of the Al-Kabbash Road, which is envisioned to connect Luxor Temple to Karnak Temple.

The said sphinx is currently still in place, unable to be excavated due to the nature of the environment. There are plans to extract the valuable discovery as soon as the environment is more suitable.

However, Mohamed Abdel Aziz, general director of Luxor Antiquities encourages tourists to visit the road project for a glimpse of the ancient sphinx. The newly discovered statue dates back more than 4,000 years, Egyptian Streets reports. It features a human head atop a lion's body just like the Great Sphinx of Giza.

Bassam al-Shamma, a researcher in Egyptology, says that the discovery of the sphinx is not too shocking since a number of sphinx statues scattered across Luxor.

In 2010, the sphinx-lined road in Luxor was discovered, a path leading to the temple of Mut, according to Phys Org. A total of 12 sphinxes were found, most of which were missing their heads. They were also inscribed with the name Nectabo I, who is the founder of the last Pharaonic dynasty.

The Significance Of The Sphinx In Egypt

The sphinx is not exclusive to Egypt as it is also an important figure in Asian and Greek mythology, according to History. However, the 4,500-year-old Great Sphinx of Giza in Cairo is certainly the world's most famous monument to this mythological figure.

It was known to be a spiritual guidance and thus often accompanies tombs and temple complexes. The sphinx is usually depicted as a male, but there are also statues made in the image of the female pharaoh, Hatshepsut.

IFLScience adds that the sphinx used to be considered a symbol of royalty. Pharaohs often order their faces to be carved with the body of a lion to represent their closeness to the goddess Sekhmet who had a lioness form.

The new discovery could potentially have been commissioned by an important figure, so it is a great find that could lead to a host of new information on the ancient Egyptian civilization.
Black widow spiders are one of the most notorious creepy crawlies on the planet. Now, research says they are conquering a greater territory.

The black widow's venom is extremely potent, causing muscle pain, nausea, and even paralysis of the diaphragm. While bites from these critters usually do no serious harm, fatalities are possible, especially in small children, elderly, and sick people.

It is not surprising that many are wary of this type of spider. However, Canada should really be more familiar with the species as a comprehensive study that includes contributions from citizen scientists reveal that spiders are creeping farther and farther north.

Spiders Crawl To The North

In a new species distribution map published in the journal PLOS One, scientists from the McGill University found that the Northern black widow and Black purse-web spider have expanded their territories further north.

"Our models show the first reliable distribution maps of these two species," Yifu Wang of McGill University says in a statement.

Gizmodo reports that the northernmost region of the black widow's habitat increased by around 31 miles or 50 kilometers in the past 60 years, reaching eastern Ontario and Quebec. Meanwhile, the black purse-web spider also heads north, decreasing in population in the southwest region of its territory and increasing in the northern edge toward Canada.

According to the researchers, it is entirely possible that the spiders' territories are even larger than their findings indicate, perhaps extending an additional 30 miles north.

The presence of black widow spiders in new regions give health officials a heads up so they could be prepared for potential incidents concerning the species.

The team suggests that climate change may have played a role in the migration, considering that climate is a huge factor in determining the species' habitat.

Citizen Scientists Pitch In

The researchers gathered data and photos with the help of citizen scientists, a release from McGill University explains. With the number of professional field biologists quite limited, the volume of information collected from the public is invaluable.

"People who are excited about discovering where species live can contribute in meaningful ways to scientific progress and this is exciting, important, and is changing how we do research," says Christopher Buddle, a McGill professor.

Wang added that the next step will still involve maximizing the potential of citizen science and that the team is proposing a monitoring project through BugGuide and iNaturalist.
A Santa Rosa family celebrated a first special day of school Monday because, thanks to a judges order, their 5-year-old child will be able to attend kindergarten and bring her medical marijuana products on campus.

When Brooke Adams walked onto campus Monday morning she was setting a legal precedent.

While medical and recreation marijuana became legal in the state of California, it's still illegal to have marijuana products on public school campuses. Brooke will be one of the first children in the state and country to be legally allowed to be given medical marijuana at school.

When she was just an infant, Brook was diagnosed with a rare form of epilepsy called Dravet Syndrome.

It gives her seizures that dont stop very easily, or dont stop at all, her father Jon Adams told NBC Bay Area.

Her seizures would last for half an hour  or longer  and paramedics would often have to be called.

Doctors tried a number of powerful drugs to control and prevent them. But none seemed effective  and they all had powerful side effects.

Behavioral problems, sleep deprived, different things that not good for her, her mother Jana Adams said.

When Brooke was a little more than a year old, she was issued a medical marijuana card. Her parents say the two products she uses  daily CBD oil and emergency THC oil  are very effective.

CBD is a chemical found in marijuana plants that doesn't produce psychoactive activity the same way THC does. THC is the psychoactive constituent of cannabis that produces the "high" effect.

Brooke now has fewer seizures and they only last three to four minutes after the administration of the oil, according to her family.

With the emergency THC medicine, she pretty much just like, takes a nap, and shes back to normal, her father said.

Lawmakers didnt take into account that maybe students would be on cannabis and need it at school, Adams said, so the family went to court.

A judge is still weighing their case but he did issue a temporary stay, allowing brook to attend class at least until his decision.

The school district issued this statement about brooks situation saying: "The Rincon valley unified school district is happy to have the opportunity to serve brook and now has direction from the court to be able to do so.

The Adams have already met with the school nurse to teach her how to administer the emergency THC oil.

The judge is expected to issue his final decision on this case in late September or early October.

CORRECTION (Aug. 16, 2018. 8:39 a.m.): An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the first name of Jana Adams.
Residents of a Suisun City neighborhood were on edge Sunday after the discovery of fliers urging people to join the Ku Klux Klan.

Neighbors on Mayfield Circle said they found the first flier Saturday on the sidewalk in a bag of rice. It contained a message to join the KKK, with contact information in North Carolina.

Two more fliers were found in the street Sunday, and police later gathered more than a dozen of the fliers in two locations. Police said they are taking the discovery seriously and investigating it.

Some residents didnt believe they were real at first and say it's disturbing in such a diverse city. One woman who came to vist her mother opened one of the fliers outside of the house.

"Shock and very disturbing," said Lana Shipton, describing her reaction. "I mean, we need to move forward in our country, not backwards in our country."

Suisun City Mayor Pete Sanchez said he was stunned and disgusted with the flier.

"You would think that this only happens in certain states in the country where there is still this old feeling about the fact people feel they are more superior to anyone else," he said. "This is sad. It's actually sickening."

The mayor said he couldn't recall anything similar happening before and hoped it was a twisted hoax.

Anyone who has information about who distributed the fliers and how should call police.
A man and three children in the Northern California city of Clearlake were found fatally shot Sunday in what investigators believe is a triple murder-suicide, according to the Clearlake Police Department.

At about 12:45 p.m., officers responded to reports of a male firing shots in the 4700 block of Yarrington Court, police said. A 25-year-old woman told arriving officers she had been at a home on Yarrington with her 39-year-old husband, Ricardo Lopez, and their four children, and for unknown reasons Lopez began firing a handgun outside the house, police said. The woman ran to get help.

When officers went to the home, they found Lopez and three of the children, ages 9 months to 4 years, dead of gunshot wounds, police said.

The fourth and eldest child, a 5-year-old, was found alive with a gunshot wound to the chest and taken to a hospital in stable condition, police said.

Clearlake is about 109 miles north of San Francisco.

Anyone with information about the shooting should contact Detective Leonardo Flores at 707-994-8251 or by email at lflores@clearlakepd.org.
What to Know Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund approached Musk about going private multiple times during the past two years, he said in a blog post

Musk says he left a July 31 meeting with no question that the deal would be closed. That's why he tweeted funding had been secured

The deal appeared to be far from finished

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund would be the main source of money for Tesla CEO Elon Musk's grand plan to take the company private, but the deal isn't done yet, Musk disclosed in a blog on Monday.

The fund approached Musk about going private multiple times during the past two years, and Musk says he left a July 31 meeting with no question that the deal would be closed. That's why he tweeted on Aug. 7 that the funding had been secured, Musk wrote. The fund itself has not publicly commented on the possibility of a deal.

Under the proposal, only investors who don't want to remain with a private company would be paid and funding for the deal would come from Tesla stock, not debt. Musk wrote that he expects about one-third of shareholders to take an offer of $420 per share, making the buyouts worth roughly $23.6 billion.

Musk's blog was posted before the markets opened Monday, and there was little reaction from investors. Shares were up 2 cents to $355.51 in morning trading.

Musk wrote that at the July 31 meeting, the fund's managing director "strongly expressed his support'' for taking the electric car and solar panel maker private. "I understood from him that no other decision makers were needed and that they were eager to proceed,'' Musk wrote in the blog.

But the deal appeared to be far from finished. Since the meeting, the men have continued discussions and the managing director has expressed support "subject to financial and other due diligence and their internal review process for obtaining approvals,'' Musk wrote.

The wealth fund recently bought nearly 5 percent of Tesla's shares.

Musk wrote that he made the Aug. 7 announcement because he had talked to large investors about his desire to take the company private. "It wouldn't be right to share information about going private with just our largest investors without sharing the same information with all investors at the same time,'' he wrote.

He wrote that in the blog and the Aug. 7 tweet that he was speaking for himself as a potential bidder for the company.

Musk also wrote that the Saudis are interested in the company because they want to diversify away from oil.

He also is in talks with other investors because he wants Tesla to continue to have a "broad investor base,'' he wrote.
What to Know Joseph DeAngelo, 72, is accused of being the "Golden State Killer."

DeAngelo is charged with 12 killings throughout California in the 1970s and 1980s.

Authorities say they identified him by connecting him through familial DNA.

Prosecutors in Northern California on Monday announced a new murder charge against a man suspected of being the notorious "Golden State Killer," closing a murder case in Tulare County that has gone unsolved for more than four decades.

Joseph DeAngelo, 72, was charged in the fatal shooting of Claude Snelling, a 45-year-old journalism instructor at the College of the Sequoias, in 1975, prosecutors in Tulare County said.

Snelling died while trying to protect his daughter from an apparent rapist, prosecutors said. Snelling was shot when he tried to confront the ski-masked gunman who was dragging his daughter away in their backyard, The Associated Press reported at the time.

The man fired two shots from a pistol at Snelling, then released Snelling's 16-year-old daughter, kicked her in the face and fled, Lt. Dale Treece, of the Visalia Police Department, said, according to the AP.

DeAngelo, a former police officer, was arrested in the Northern California city of Citrus Heights in April after authorities say they linked him to cases in Sacramento through DNA.

Detectives linked DeAngelo to the Snelling slaying and believe he is the "Visalia Ransacker," whose 18-month home burglary spree of 100 homes shocked the Visalia community for over 18 months in 1974 and 1975, Visalia Police Chief Jason Salazar said.

The gun used to kill Snelling had been stolen from a home during a burglary in Visalia a month earlier, Salazar said.

The bicycle the gunman used to get away was recovered a block away from Snelling's the day after the crime. The bike had been stolen from a nearby yard two days before murder, the chief said.

The timing of the ransackings and Snelling's killing match the time that DeAngelo was a cop for the city of Exeter, about 10 miles away from Visalia, from May 1973 to August 1976, Salazar said.

The methods that the "Visalia Ransacker" used matches the "Golden State Killer," Salazar said.

He'd break into homes in the evening by prying open doors or windows. He stole keepsakes and left valuables, he'd leave items on doors or doorknobs to alert him of returning residents, and he'd eat or prepare food during his crimes, the chief said.

Victims told police they received strange phone calls weeks after the crimes, Salazar said. He prowled locations and planned escape routes and often used a bicycle to get away.

On Dec. 10, 1975, months after Snelling was killed, police believe they spotted the man responsible while doing surveillance to try to capture the "Visalia Ransacker."

The man shot at an officer during a confrontation with police in a backyard.

The bullet struck the officer's flashlight and the shooter got away. The officer saw his face and was able to give investigators a detailed composite sketch.

Afterward, the ransacker went underground and no further crimes that fit the pattern were committed in the city of Visalia, Salazar said.

A few months later, the "East Area Rapist" began terrorizing east Sacramento from 1976 to 1979, the time when DeAngelo was a cop for the nearby city of Auburn, Salazar said. He left the Exeter Police Department in 1976.
Peter Strzok, a longtime FBI agent who was removed from the Russia investigation over anti-Trump text messages, has been fired by the agency, his lawyer said Monday.

The FBI had been reviewing Strzok's employment after the politically charged text messages were discovered last year. President Donald Trump's allies have seized on the texts, saying they show the investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia is tainted by political bias.

Strzok was fired late Friday by FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich, said his lawyer, Aitan Goelman. He said the 21-year veteran of the FBI was removed because of political pressure and "to punish Special Agent Strzok for political speech protected by the First Amendment."

Goelman also said the FBI had overruled the agency's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, which he said had determined that a 60-day suspension and demotion from supervisory duties was "the appropriate punishment."

In a statement, the FBI said Strzok was subject to the standard FBI review and disciplinary process and defended the decision to overrule the OPR. "The Deputy Director, as the senior career FBI official, has the delegated authority to review and modify any disciplinary findings and/or penalty as deemed necessary in the best interest of the FBI," the statement said.

Strzok, who exchanged text messages with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, vigorously defended himself at a combative House hearing in July that spanned 10 hours. Strzok repeatedly insisted the texts, including ones in which he called Trump a "disaster," did not reflect political bias and had not infected his work.

Texts between the two included their observations of the 2016 election and criticism of Trump. They used words like "idiot," ''loathsome," ''menace" and "disaster" to describe him. In one text four days before the election, Page told Strzok that the "American presidential election, and thus, the state of the world, actually hangs in the balance."

In another text, Page wrote Strzok in August 2016: "(Trump's) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!"

Strzok responded: "No. No he won't. We'll stop it."

Strzok worked on the early stages of the Russia investigation in 2016 and worked on the special counsel's team for a few months after Robert Mueller was appointed in May 2017.

Strzok was also a lead investigator on the probe into Democrat Hillary Clinton's email sever in 2016. An internal Justice Department report issued in June blamed Strzok and Page for creating an appearance of impropriety through their texts but found the outcome of the Clinton investigation was not marred by bias. Clinton was cleared in the probe.

Republicans were livid during the July hearing, which several times devolved into a partisan shouting match. Democrats accused Republicans of trying to divert attention from Mueller's investigation and Trump's ties to Russia by focusing on Strzok.

Trump, who has repeatedly taken aim at Strzok, said in a tweet Monday that Strzok is one of many "bad players" in the FBI and the Justice Department.

"It is a total Hoax," Trump said of the Russia investigation. "No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!"

There is no indication that the probe will be dropped.

The president also tweeted that the Clinton investigation "was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone!"

House Republicans cheered Strzok's firing, with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy saying on Twitter that it was "long overdue."

North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, one of the leading critics of the FBI investigations, said Strzok was fired "because of what his own written words plainly showed: he was willing to use his official FBI position to try and stop President Trump from getting elected. He tarnished the FBI's sterling reputation and severely damaged public trust in an institution where trust is paramount."

Meanwhile, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee was lambasted by his own son on Twitter Monday for "ruining" Strzok's career. Bobby Goodlatte, the son of Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., wrote, "That committee hearing was a low point for Congress" and called Strzok a "patriot." The younger Goodlatte also began soliciting campaign donations Sunday for the Democrat who is running to replace his father, who is retiring.

Associated Press writer Michael Balsalmo contributed to this report.
What to Know The Pinellas County Sheriffs Office announced Monday that the State Attorney has filed a manslaughter charge against Michael Drejka.

The case gained national attention after Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri announced shortly after the shooting that he would not charge

The Florida man at the center of a controversial "Stand Your Ground" case who fatally shot another man during a dispute at a convenience store parking lot faces manslaughter charges.

Michael Drejka, 47, has been charged with the July 19 death of Markeis McGlockton outside a Clearwater convenience store, Pinellas County State Attorney Bernie McCabe said. Drejka, who is white, was being held at the county jail on $100,000 bail. It is unknown if he has an attorney.

McGlockton's girlfriend, Britany Jacobs, who was seated in the couple's car with two of their children, ages 3 years and 4 months, said Drejka confronted her for being parked in a handicapped-accessible space. McGlockton, a 28-year-old black man, had gone into the store with their 5-year-old son. Jacobs said Drejka cursed at her. Video shows McGlockton exited the store and shoved Drejka to the ground. Seconds later, Drejka pulled a handgun and shot McGlockton as he backed away.

In court documents, McCabe and Pinellas sheriff's Detective George Moffett cited three other drivers who said Drejka threatened them during confrontations that preceded his run-in with McGlockton. Two of them said he displayed a gun.

A black man who drives a septic truck told Moffett he parked in the same handicapped-accessible spot three months before the shooting, the documents show. The man said Drejka began yelling at him and said he would shoot him. The driver said he left, but as he pulled away Drejka shouted racial slurs. The man's boss told Moffett that Drejka later called, telling him "that he was lucky he didn't blow his employee's head off."

In separate 2012 cases, drivers reported that Drejka waved a gun at them during road rage confrontations. In both cases, officers stopped Drejka and found a gun in his car, but he denied showing it to the other drivers. In one case, the teenage driver didn't want to press charges. In the other, the driver left before the officer could get her information.

McGlockton family attorney Benjamin Crump  who gained national prominence representing the family of Trayvon Martin after the black teen's fatal shooting by a Hispanic man in 2012  said in a statement Monday "it's about time" Drejka was arrested.

The family, civil rights groups and others had been holding protests demanding he be charged, saying if Drejka had been black and McGlockton white, deputies would have arrested Drejka immediately or shot him.

"This self-appointed wannabe cop attempted to hide behind 'Stand Your Ground' to defend his indefensible actions, but the truth has finally cut through the noise," Crump said. "I have full faith that this truth will prevail to punish this cold-blooded killer who angrily created the altercation that led to Markeis' needless death."

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri originally declined to charge Drejka, saying one day after the shooting that the man was protected by Florida's stand-your-ground law. The sheriff passed the case to prosecutors for a final decision. The law says people can use deadly force if they believe they are in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and have no obligation to retreat. Under a change made by the Legislature last year, if a suspect raises a stand-your-ground defense, prosecutors must prove the law doesn't apply.

Gualtieri said in a statement Monday that he supported McCabe's decision.

Store security video shows the confrontation began about a minute after Jacobs pulled into the handicapped-accessible spot. Jacobs told Moffett that McGlockton had picked her up from her job as a nursing assistant and that two trucks blocked her from getting to other spaces. McGlockton and his oldest son got out and entered the store.

Drejka pulled up in his SUV seconds later, parking perpendicular to Jacobs. Drejka got out, walked to the back of Jacobs' car, looked at the license plate, and then went to the front, apparently looking for a handicapped sticker there. Jacobs told Moffett that Drejka began yelling at her. The video shows him pointing to two empty spaces nearby.

The video then shows him walking to Jacobs' window. A man entering the store about 15 feet (5 meters) away stops to look. He later told Moffett he thought about intervening on Jacobs' behalf.

McGlockton then exits the store, walks toward Drejka and  just as Jacobs gets out of the car  shoves Drejka with both hands. Drejka lands on his back and McGlockton takes a step toward him. Drejka sits up, pulls his gun and points it at McGlockton, who takes three steps back until he is about 12 feet away (3.6 meters). Drejka fires, hitting McGlockton, who runs back into the store clutching his chest. Witnesses said he collapsed in front of his son, waiting inside.

Crump also represented the family of Martin, a 17-year-old black youth who was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a Hispanic man who was his Orlando-area neighborhood's watch captain. Zimmerman had confronted Martin, who was walking back to the home of his father's fiancee after making a purchase at a convenience store.

Zimmerman said he thought Martin might be a burglar casing homes. They fought and Zimmerman fatally shot him. There were no eyewitnesses or videos. Zimmerman said he feared Martin, who was unarmed, was about to kill him and a jury acquitted him of second-degree murder.
What to Know A school bus drove off Interstate 95 south in Greenland, New Hampshire and crashed into a tree on Friday morning.

New Hampshire State Police said it appears the driver had a medical episode but haven't said what the medical emergency was.

The driver has been placed on leave while the crash is being investigated, according Kittery's town manager.

The children and driver who were injured in a bus crash in Greenland, New Hampshire, on Friday have been released from area hospitals, and the driver has been placed on leave.

Town manager Kendra Amaral says the 21-year-old driver of the Kittery, Maine, recreation department van will be placed on leave as a matter of protocol while the town investigates the circumstances of the crash.

Amaral said Sunday that everyone who was injured has been released from area hospitals, including a child who was transported to a Boston hospital with serious injuries.

Police say the bus was carrying 11 children between the ages of 7 and 9, and two camp counselors to an adventure park when the driver suffered a medical emergency and drove off Interstate 95 and into a tree. Police have not said what the medical emergency was.
A transgender activism group is promoting use of Maine's lobster emoji while it rallies for an emoji to represent the transgender community.

The Portland Press Herald reports the group is urging supporters to use the lobster for now, which can display both male and female anatomy.

The group Lobsters Against Transphobia launched an online petition last month to push the nonprofit Unicode Consortium, which controls the release of emojis, to create an emoji of the pink and blue flag commonly used to represent transgender communities.

British author and activist Charlie Craggs popularized the new lobster campaign. However, a number of groups and individuals have been actively pushing for a transgender flag emoji in recent years.

Equality Maine, Maine's largest LGBTQ organization, says it hadn't previously heard of the campaign.
A 29-year-old woman is dead and at least 30 others have been wounded in weekend gun violence across the city since Friday afternoon.

The citys first fatal shooting occurred just before 5 p.m. Friday afternoon in the 2500 block of East 79th Street, according to police. Authorities say a 29-year-old woman was getting an order of protection against a man, and the man became enraged, drew a weapon, and shot her in the back.

The woman was taken to University of Chicago Hospital, where she later died from her injuries.

Another person, a 15-year-old boy, was also shot in the incident. He was taken to Stroger Hospital in stable condition after being shot in the face.

The gunman has not been apprehended, and police are still investigating the shooting.

In a more recent shooting, a 17-year-old was shot while standing on a sidewalk in the 1200 block of South Avers on Sunday afternoon, police said.

A person in a gray colored sedan fired shots at the boy, striking him in the left arm. He was taken to Mount Sinai in good condition, and police are speaking to a person of interest in the shooting.

Here are the rest of the weekends shootings thus far:

Friday:

A 28-year-old man was sitting on a porch in the 5100 block of South Prairie when a person in a vehicle opened fire, striking him in the left leg and foot. The man was taken to University of Chicago Hospital in stable condition, police said.

In the 2300 block of North Major at 5 p.m., a 17-year-old boy was shot in the stomach, according to police. The boy was listed in stable condition at Illinois Masonic.

A 41-year-old man was shot during an argument in the 11900 block of South Michigan just after 5 p.m., police said. The man was shot in the right leg after he got into an altercation inside an abandoned residence. He was taken to Roseland in stable condition.

In the 6400 block of South Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, a 37-year-old man was shot in the left leg at approximately 6:15 p.m., police said. The man was taken to St. Bernard in stable condition.

A 20-year-old man was riding a bike in the 5200 block of West Washington at approximately 7:08 p.m. when another man on a bike began following him, and then opened fire. The victim was struck, and was taken to Stroger Hospital in serious condition.

A pair of teen boys were standing on a sidewalk in the 1300 block of South Independence just before 9 p.m. when they heard shots and were struck. A 17-year-old was taken to Mount Sinai in good condition after being shot in the abdomen, and a 15-year-old was grazed in the head and was also taken to Mount Sinai in good condition.

In the 100 block of East 123 rd Street, two men were standing on a sidewalk when a person in a black sedan fired shots at them. A 29-year-old was taken to Christ Hospital in stable condition after being shot in the right leg, and another man, a 33-year-old, was shot in the left foot and was taken to Roseland in stable condition, according to police.

Street, two men were standing on a sidewalk when a person in a black sedan fired shots at them. A 29-year-old was taken to Christ Hospital in stable condition after being shot in the right leg, and another man, a 33-year-old, was shot in the left foot and was taken to Roseland in stable condition, according to police. A 21-year-old man was standing on a sidewalk in the 2800 block of South Komensky just after 11 p.m. when a person in a black SUV fired shots at him, striking him in the abdomen. He was taken to Mount Sinai in stable condition, police said.

Many ideas of how to combat violence in Chicago have been brought upthe National Guard and Trump among themafter more than 65 people were shot last weekend. NBC 5s Mary Ann Ahern reports.

Saturday:

A man was standing outside a residence in the 4000 block of West Grenshaw just before 2 a.m. when two men began shooting at him, striking him in the buttocks. He walked into St. Anthonys in fair condition, police said.

A pair of 16-year-old boys were standing on a sidewalk in the 5200 block of West Congress Parkway when they heard shots. Both victims were taken to Loretto Hospital in stable condition, according to police.

In the 5200 block of West Congress Parkway, a 28-year-old man was shot in the chest, right leg, and stomach, police said. The man was taken to Stroger Hospital in stable condition.

Just after 9 a.m., a 26-year-old man was in the 4800 block of West Iowa when he was shot three times in his left leg, according to police. The man was taken to Mount Sinai in stable condition.

In the 3900 block of South Kedzie at approximately 12:33 p.m., a 29-year-old man was shot in the left side of his body and was taken to Mount Sinai in stable condition, police said.

Just after 2 p.m. in the 4400 block of West Van Buren, a 33-year-old man was shot in the left leg. He was taken to Mount Sinai in good condition, according to authorities.

While exiting a vehicle in the 0-100 block of West 125 th Street, a 23-year-old man was shot in the hand and lower backside, police said. The man was taken to Christ Hospital in stable condition.

Street, a 23-year-old man was shot in the hand and lower backside, police said. The man was taken to Christ Hospital in stable condition. A 17-year-old boy was walking in the 11600 block of South Yale when he was shot in the leg. He was taken to Christ Hospital, where his condition stabilized, according to police.

A 26-year-old woman was in the 2300 block of South Marshall when a man fired shots at her, striking her in the left leg. She was taken to Mount Sinai in good condition, police said.

Sunday:




A Missouri mother says her 7-year-old son was hospitalized with severe burns after another child allegedly dumped nail polish remover on him and then set him on fire with a candle.

Police have not yet determined how the boy was burned, but Ashley Lyons told the Kansas City Star her son Julien Sandlin was playing outside last Monday in front of his familys Hawthorne Place apartment in Independence, Missouri, when another kid reportedly doused him with the flammable liquid.

Julien kept telling him to leave him alone and thats when he decided to burn him, Lyons told the Star, noting that she wasnt home at the time of the incident and Julien was in the care of his older brother and another adult.

A neighbor ran outside with a wet towel and rolled Julien on the ground, the newspaper reported. The child was rushed to the hospital where family members say he ultimately needed surgery.

Independence Police said they could not confirm how the child was injured, but did say they responded to the 1700 block of Concord Circle for a burned child.

The case was last listed as a medical-suspicious investigation, which remained ongoing, according to spokesman Officer John Syme.

Due to the suspicious nature of the medical call, the officers took a police report, Syme said in a statement Monday. The investigation is trying to determine how the injuries took place.

According to a GoFundMe set up to help the family, Juliens condition is improving.

Still Lyons told the Star its a very painful process for him.
A 16-year-old is recovering after being shot in Hartford on Sunday night.

Officers said they were called to Whitmore Street around 5:30 p.m. after getting a ShotSpotter activation that reported five rounds. While police were at the scene, another caller reported that her cousin was shot on Bond Street.

When officers arrived on Bond Street, they found a 16-year-old boy suffering from a single gunshot wound to his left shoulder. The boy was transported to Connecticut Children's Medical Center, where he was listed in stable condition.

Police said the boy was uncooperative and gave conflicting stories. Officers canvassed Whitmore Street, Bond Street and the surrounding areas, but could not find any other victims, witnesses or a scene.
A bear wandered into a Bristol, Connecticut liquor store Monday and the entire incident was captured on surveillance camera.

The bear can be seen wandering through the parking lot at Crazy Bruce's Discount Liquor on Farmington Avenue before making its way to the sidewalk. An employee said the automatic door, operated by motion sensors, opened for the bear, which walked into the vestibule.

The animal only made it to the doorway. Two quick-thinking employees hooked the latches at the top of the second set of doors from inside the store to prevent the bear from making it all the way in.

An unsuspecting customer actually walked right through the vestibule without noticing the bear as he was ushered inside by an employee.

One of the employees, Daniel Thibodeau, told NBC Connecticut he acted quickly in a situation where there is no standard procedure.

Instinct I guess, thats what Im thinking, Thibodeau said.

The bear ran off and no one was hurt. The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection was notified.
Two sisters who worked in the cafeterias of two New Canaan schools are accused of stealing nearly half a million dollars from the cafeterias over a five-year span, according to New Canaan police.

Police arrested 67-year-old Marie Wilson, of Wilton, and 61-year-old Joanne Pascarelli, of Stratford, over the weekend.

The investigation started on Dec. 21 when the New Canaan Board of Education filed a complaint with the New Canaan Police Investigative Section about the handling of cash at the Saxe Middle School cafeteria and the New Canaan High School cafeteria, according to police.

Investigators monitored both cafeterias, conducted around 20 interviews, examined financial records and identified the two suspects, police said.

Pascarelli worked in the Saxe Middle School cafeteria while Wilson worked in the New Canaan High School cafeteria. They are accused of stealing $478,588 between 2012 and 2017, according to police. Board of Education officials did not reply to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

The arrest warrant application for Wilson said the thefts could have been going on for up to 15 years, but investigators focused on the five-year span at the direction by the states attorneys office because of the statutes of limitation.

Both sisters were charged with larceny in the first degree-defrauding a public community. An attorney for Wilson says she is innocent and is "not going to be scapegoated." The sisters have been released after each posted a $50,000 bond.

Wilson is due in court on Aug. 21 while Pascarelli is due in court on Aug. 24.
Its one of the most recognizable hotels in the Dallas skyline. People come from all over the world to stay at the Hyatt Regency Dallas and one thing they love to do while there is throw coins into its fountains.

But little do they know, what theyre leaving behind is making a huge difference in the lives of shelter pets.

As travelers venture in and out of the hotel, inside its lobby, Enrique Ortiz is setting aside his normal hotel-mechanic duties to suit up and wade in to the hotels fountains.

Its a seasonal cleaning process that comes with a purpose.

This is a way for our guests, who we want to take care of when they come into our hotel, but in turn theyre leaving a little something behind, said Bryan King, director of sales and marketing at Hyatt Regency Dallas.

Guests like Mary Jones, from South Dakota, toss in their coins with a smile.

Thats all I got, she said.



Shes one of countless people donating their spare change to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of Texas.

Theyre coins that Ortiz is tasked with collecting.

Just beneath the surface, its an underwater treasure hunt made possible by a pool vacuum thats slowly sucking up currency.

Pennies for puppies, yes! said Katie Clements, manager of corporate partnerships for SPCA of Texas, with a laugh.

Clements said all of the donations to the Hyatt Regency Dallas fountains will help local pets.

As an example, the SPCA of Texas team brought two 8-week-old terrier-Chihuahua puppies, Bruce and Trooper, to the pet-friendly hotel.

These animals do need our help and it takes a lot of work and a lot of resources to go out and bring them out of those horrible situations and rehabilitate them, Clements said.

After an hour of cleaning one fountain, Ortiz collected a bounty of pocket change. And when it comes to donations, every penny certainly counts.

Each year, we collect about $2,000-3,000 from our fountain that our guests leave behind, King said.

People from all over the world are using this hotel fountain as a wishing well; this time, its wishing a local pet will see a better tomorrow.

So stop by, even if youre just visiting Reunion Tower, cut through the lobby of the Hyatt on the way and leave some of your change behind, King said.

Bruce and Trooper would certainly appreciate your support.

The SPCA of Texas is getting ready for its big fundraiser, Fur Ball, which will celebrate the organization's 80th anniversary.

The event is at the Hyatt Regency in Dallas on Sept. 22, 2018. The Honorary Chairs are former President George W. Bush, former first lady Laura Bush. NBC 5 anchor, and proud Clear the Shelters host, Brian Curtis, is the events emcee.
Union leaders and state lawmakers say many Texas cities are denying workers' compensation to firefighters with cancer.

The Houston Chronicle reports that state figures show more than 90 percent of the 117 workers compensation claims filed by Texas firefighters with cancer have been denied in the past six years. Union officials say cities have ignored a state law requiring the government to presume that firefighters' cancers are caused by exposure to carcinogens on the job.

Houston's benefits provider didn't respond for comment. But firefighters say cities use a memo by the Texas Intergovernmental Risk Pool to dodge the cancer presumptive law. The memo only presumes three types of cancer are caused by firefighting: testicular, prostate and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

A bill to allow workers to challenge bad faith claim denials died in the Senate this past session.
Texas Sen. Don Huffines, R-Dallas, visited Russia to meet with officials as part of a group led by U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. Paul's father, Ron Paul, was a long-time congressman from Texas and a 2012 candidate for the Republican nomination for president.

Sen. Don Huffines said he went to Russia specifically to "look them in the eye and to tell them not to mess with Texas elections.

In an interview on NBC 5 Today, Huffines said he met with three different Russian governmental committees and departments, with ministers making public and private statements to not meddle in the upcoming Texas elections.

Election security is an issue Huffines said he's focused on as a member of the Senate Committee for Election Security.

I know millions of Texans are concerned about election security, Huffines said. Its important that they [Russians] hear it from me and they hear it from somebody from Texas. Because I also reminded them how important Texas is on the world scene.

Invited by Rand Paul, Huffines spent three nights in Moscow, where he met with Russia's deputy foreign minister and the chairman of the foreign relations committee in the Russian legislature's upper house.

Click here for a Q and A between Huffines and our media partners at The Dallas Morning News.


KNOW THE NORTH SIERRA FOOTHILLS? Then you know that the region is gorgeous, quirky, and full of surprises, like historic villages, notable landmarks, great spots to splash around on hot August afternoons, and funky, walkable lanes. You might also know the wines of the area, in all of their various forms, but, if you don't, and you've been meaning to get up on the topic, an afternoon spent in Nevada City, sipping around, is the remedy. And such an afternoon is coming up, on the final Saturday in August, when Nevada City Uncorked returns to connect oenophiles with some of the top regional labels. The 2018 date is...

SATURDAY, AUG. 25, the hours are 1 to 4 o'clock, and a host of wineries shall show, including Bangor Ranch Winery of Butte County, Fawnridge Winery of Placer County, and Montoliva Vineyard and Winery of Nevada County (as well as several other Nevada County favorites). Bringing up the bites end of the three-hour stretch? Look for "17 restaurants, caterers, and specialty shops" serving up everything from charcuterie-type meats to chocolates (oh, yes, and cheeses, too, of course). Shall there be a wine-oriented raffle? You bet. Will there be a day-before to-do, all about meeting winemakers, at Nevada City Winery? That happens on Aug. 24.

A TICKET TO THIS GOURMET GATHERING... is $35 ahead of time and $45 on the day. Need your Nevada City, in all of its funk-a-tude, deliciousness, and wine-flavorful goodness? Be there at the end of August, one of the sweetest and most mellow times in a sweet and mellow town.
Thousands lined Florida's beaches on Sunday to demand state leaders stop future red tide and blue-green toxic algae outbreaks that are killing wildlife and threatening public health.

The "Hands Along the Water" events happened on the Gulf Coast and Atlantic coasts from the St. Petersburg area to Fort Myers to Fort Lauderdale. The stench on some beaches from animals killed by the current red tide outbreak caused some protestors to wear breathing masks.

The red tide toxic algae bloom has overrun Florida's southern Gulf Coast this summer as thousands of dead fish, hundreds of sea turtles, some dolphins and even a whale shark have washed ashore. There is debate over whether pollution has worsened the red tide outbreak, which occurs naturally.

The state is also dealing with freshwater algae outbreak  known as blue-green algae  that is clogging canals connected to Lake Okeechobee. It's caused by fertilizer runoff.

Blue-green algae are properly called cyanobacteria. Some species of cyanobacteria occur in the ocean, but blooms  extremely high levels that create green surface scums of algae  happen mainly in lakes and rivers, where salinity is low.

Rebekka Mackey helped organize an event in Fort Lauderdale specifically warning of the dangers of blue-green algae on the environment and residents.

One protester expressed fear of the blue-green algae damaging beaches, the environment and spreading sickness to residents.
The March for Our Lives ended its national Road-To-Change bus tour on Sunday in Newtown, Connecticut, six months after the shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school inspired protests calling for what activists say are common-sense gun reforms.

Teenage activists took center stage Sunday as throngs of people gathered to hear them at the Fairfield Hills Campus in Newtown, ten minutes from Sandy Hook Elementary School. Among them was Natalie Barden, with the Junior Newtown Action Alliance, who lost a younger sibling in the shooting there six years ago.

We are all here today because no one should have to feel the life shattering pain of losing a loved one to a gun, she said, addressing the crowds.

Tommy Murray, also with the Junior Newtown Action Alliance, called attention to his fellow teens from Parkland, who began the March for Our Lives movement in the days after the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School there claimed 17 lives.

Five years ago, many of us were too young to fully understand what happened at Sandy Hook, but when you spoke up and demanded that you be heard, you inspired us to do more, he said.

The teens traversing the country with March for Our Lives were on a mission to encourage young people who are turning 18 to register to vote in the November elections. They hope to bring about gun-law reforms and weaken the National Rifle Association by changing the makeup of Congress.

About 30 students with the Hartford non-profit, Hartford Communities That Care, took part in the forum. They met at the Ana Grace Love Wins playground before they headed to Newtown.

This group of students is headed to Newtown this morning as March For Our Lives ends its national tour in Connecticut. They met at the Ana Grace Love Wins playground...a meaningful location as they fight to end gun violence. #nbcct pic.twitter.com/u2IG8B7ub4  Sujata Wycoff (@SujataTV) August 12, 2018

Some of the students said they have been captivated by the movement and wanted to be a part of it. One of the young activists said he was eager to share what he has learned over the past year.

Its not about just school shootings and all that, said Joshua Fee with HCTC. Its about urban gun violence as well because it starts in our own communities and goes further out, so if we control it in our own communities then maybe it can prevent it from going to other communities.

I was confused really by why Newtown when a lot of the gun violence happens in Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven, so when they reached out and said we can send a bus for anyone else who you feel like should be at the table I was just really, really excited to partner with Hartford Communities That Care and make that happen today, said Nelba Marquez-Green, who lost her daughter Ana Grace in the Sandy Hook shooting.

Jackie Corin, a student speaker with March for Our Lives, spoke to the similarities between Parkland and Newtown and the symbolism inherent in ending their 50-city tour there, after the summer tour made stops in other notable sites of gun violence like Chicago, Illinois; Aurora, Colorado; and Charlottesville, Virginia.

We are both suburban areas with similar population demographics, and we are both cities that forced our nation to come together when violence unexpectedly moved in, Corin said.

Connecticut, unlike Florida, has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. The March for Our Lives organizers also encourage people to look beyond the laws and politicians where they live to areas with weaker gun laws, pointing to gun trafficking from those places as another reason to join a political campaign for change.
What to Know A group of girls from a summer camp were allegedly told to leave a gift shop at Jenkinson's Aquarium in Point Pleasant Beach

The employee who asked them to leave claims it was because they weren't with a chaperone

"I had to explain to 40 girls that they are still valuable... even if racist folks try to hurt them!" the woman who runs the camp wrote

UPDATE: Gift Shop Worker Fired After Asking Black Campers to Leave

A group of black girls from a summer camp were told they werent welcome in an aquarium gift shop in an incident one of the women who runs the camp claims was racially motivated.

Attiyya Barrett, who helps runs a program called Princess to Queenz, told News 4 New York seven girls from the program went into the gift shop at Jenkinsons Aquarium, in Point Pleasant Beach, on Friday and were told by an employee that they couldnt be there without a chaperone.

When the girls came back with a 32-year-old chaperone, the employee allegedly asked them to leave because the chaperone looked like one of them, Barrett said.

In a now-viral video taken by Barrett, the employee says she didnt think [the person the kids came back with] was a chaperone.

Theyre not welcome in here, the employee says on camera.

The girls who were asked to leave the shop ranged in age from 7 to 14, Barrett said.

THE CONSTRAINT I had to exhibit in front of them leaves a horrible taste in my mouth, Barrett wrote in a Facebook post. I had to explain to 40 girls that they are still valuable and that [their] green dollars still spends even if racist folks try to hurt them!

She won. TODAY! But FYI our black dollars arent welcome in the Jenkinsons Aquarium Gift Shop! Barrett added in her post.

Barrett said she and her group left contact information with the aquariums manager. Later, the director and marketing director of the aquarium called her and apologized, she said.

Jenkinsons Pavilion has suspended the employee who asked the girls to leave, pending an investigation, a spokesperson told News 4 in a statement.

"We strive to provide all of our customers with an enjoyable experience and we clearly missed the mark this time," the statement said. "We sincerely apologize to the girls from the camp group for the way they felt upon leaving."


Authorities say a 43-year-old man was killed when he fell off the roof of an Ithaca hotel.

WSTM-TV reports police responded to a call about a man falling from the Hillside Inn Sunday. Police were told the man wasn't conscious or breathing.

The identity of the victim is being withheld pending family notification.

Police don't suspect foul play. An investigation continues.
What to Know Rescuers saved a dog after it found itself trapped on a ledge below a waterfall in Paterson on Sunday

The dog was trapped near the base of the Great Falls

A firefighter rappelled down to the dog and rescuers lifted the dog up to a bridge. The dog is expected to make a full recovery

A team of rescuers saved a dog after it found itself trapped on a ledge below a waterfall in Paterson on Sunday.

Denville resident Warren McComas and his wife were visiting Paterson Great Falls Park when he spotted something moving near the base of the Great Falls, he told News 4 New York.

I was looking down and then I said, Oh my gosh, its a dog, McComas said. Realizing the dog was stuck, McComas wife called 911, he said.

When rescuers arrived at the scene, they decided to send Paterson Fire Department Captain Scott Parkin down to the ledge to coax the dog out.

After Parkin rappelled down to the dog  who was about 75 feet from a bridge above the river  he talked to the pooch to calm him down and gave him some treats, he recalled.

I think once he realized what I was there for, he settled down, Parkin said.

After a few minutes, Parkin was able to step around the dog, scoop him up and secure him in a netted bag. Officers on the bridge slowly hoisted the bag up and released the dog safely onto dry land.

The dog may have swum across to the cliff when the water was lower, Parkin said.

John DeCando, Patersons chief animal control officer, called the heroic rescue a combined effort.

This is a great thing, because that dog probably would have drowned, especially with all the water we had in the last couple days, he said.

The dog appeared to have a few bruises, but is expected to make a full recovery, DeCando said. Rescuers planned to take him to the Ramapo Bergen Animal Rescue for treatment.

It wasnt the first time a member of the Parkin family rescued a dog from the falls. In 1976, Parkins father  who was also a firefighter  performed an almost-identical rescue to save a German Shepherd, Parkin said.

Its quite a thrill. [My dad is] 94 now, so I cant wait to get back to the fire house and call him, he said.
Crews resumed their search Monday for a 12-year-old Canadian girl who fell off a boat in San Diego's San Vicente Reservoir Saturday.

The first full-day search was halted at about 6:30 p.m. Sunday without lifeguards finding the girl and crews said it was tough to come back to the docks without answers.

"It's frustrating when you are in conditions that are a little bit hard to control than you are used to," San Diego Fire-Rescue (SDFD) Lt. Rich Stropky said.

The search, which SDFD officials were calling a recovery operation, resumed at 6 a.m. Monday, 36 hours after the girl fell off a ski boat. Four adults and two children were aboard the boat, San Diego police said.

Lt. Stropky said search crews deployed sonar devices, remote-operated vehicles and additional divers Monday.

The girl was visiting from Canada with several family members, SDPD Sgt. Bryan Brecht said. The couple operating the boat were locals.

The girl, who was wearing a life vest, was sitting near the bow of the boat when she fell, Stropky said. As the boat was slowing down, the bow was bouncing and the girl fell off the front, police said.

The family was tubing so the boat was towing a float, according to police.

The child's life preserver was later found and is now part of the investigation, Stropky said.



The reservoir water is clearer than some of the other reservoirs in the area and that is helpful in the search.

"Unlike the ocean, the water is not moving unless they open the dam then we are good, because what is in place on the bottom will likely stay there," Stropky said. "Now we just need to locate that area."

The reservoir is also deep. Past 120 feet, the water becomes murky and there are 15-foot trees and rocks that made it a real challenge, he said.

In addition to divers, crews used am Automated Underwater Vehicle equipped with SONAR and a camera.

"The AUV can cover this entire lake. It can be programmed to do that, it's just processing the data that is the most time-consuming part of that," Stropky said.



On Sunday, crews were able to zone in on an area where they believe the girl fell over. Shortly after the girl fell in, several adults jumped to find her; one of the adults came back on to the boat to make the 911 call, Stropky said.

"That was great because it gave us a point to track where the carrier can actually triangulate where that call was made from," he said. "That's a good thing for us, we're getting all the information to one area, however, it was still very challenging because of the terrain and the depth and the visibility."

While the search operation was handled by SDFD, SDPD is handling the investigation into the accident.

The boat was towed out of the water Sunday as part of the investigation, though no foul play was suspected, police said.

"We're going to document it, draw diagrams and put our whole report together," Brecht said. "It's just like a vehicle accident. You want to see if there are any marks or trace evidence on the item."

Saturday, crews searched for two hours before suspending the search because the conditions became too dangerous for divers and rescuers to operate.

Divers went down about 120 feet, with a water temperature of 62 degrees and a visibility of 25 feet.

SDFD spokeswoman Monica Munoz said the recovery mission can be dangerous.

"There are actual trees that are at the bottom," she told NBC 7. "So that makes it a very treacherous condition to deal with." SDFD estimates the reservoir's depth to be about 130 feet.

The girl was on the boat with several other adults and the boat was not powered on when she fell. But it was moving with the wind and current, Stropky said.

SDFD lifeguards, San Diego City Public Utilities Department ranger divers and the Lakeside Fire Department helped with the search.

"While we wish that it wasnt under this circumstance that were putting this family back together, this is the way were going to do it, and these gentlemen are very driven to make that happen," Munoz said.

The reservoir continues to be closed for recreation activities while the search is ongoing.

 Brie Stimson contributed to this story
What to Know Separate events were held in the Lehigh Valley Sunday for a man killed in a police-involved shooting and the officer charged in his death.

South Whitehall Township Police Officer Jonathan Roselle is charged with voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of Joseph Santos.

Santos was allegedly interfering with traffic along Route 222 near Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom on July 28 when Roselle approached.

Separate events were held in the Lehigh Valley Sunday afternoon for a man who was killed in a police-involved shooting and the officer charged in his death.

Supporters of Joseph Santos, 44, gathered at Resurrected Life Community Church in Allentown, Pennsylvania, for a special service, while supporters of South Whitehall Township Police Officer Jonathan Roselle gathered in South Whitehall Township for a "Back the Blue" rally.

"What we're really doing is not just encouraging the family but encouraging you to find your voice," Reverend Dr. Gregory Edwards said during the service for Santos. "To get involved. To never again let this happen in this community."

The rally for Officer Roselle took place along Route 222 near Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom. It was the same location where Santos, of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, was shot and killed by Officer Roselle more than two weeks ago.

Arlene Figueroa, the mother of Santos' 8-year-old daughter, told NBC10 she still hasn't told their child about what happened.

"I still look at my phone when it rings," she said. "I think it's him calling me to tell me, 'Does the baby want McDonald's? Do you need something from the store?' So it's just still hard."

Sheli Muniz

On July 28, Officer Roselle confronted Santos after he allegedly interfered with traffic. Witnesses said Santos damaged cars and, at one point, ripped the window out of a vehicle.

In a Facebook post Nadia Elizabeth said Santos jumped a fence around Dorney Park and interfered with three cars as they rolled down the busy highway.

"He didnt exit the park like a rational member of society but more of that of a criminal that was up to no good," she wrote. "I witnessed Joseph Santos act like a complete maniac and scare the lives of those behind the wheel."

A set of videos surfaced showing a man later identified by police as Santos, hanging off of moving cars and jumping onto the hood of a police SUV prior to the shooting. Another witness' video showed Santos walking toward a police vehicle. Authorities said Officer Roselle told Santos several times to stand down before he opened fire.

In the video, Santos continued walking toward the vehicle as the sound of gunfire erupted. He then fell to the ground.

Santos was struck at least once. He was taken to Lehigh Valley Cedar Crest Hospital where he died from his injuries.

"I want the world to know that Joey was a beautiful man," Figueroa said. "What you see in that video was not him. That was not his demeanor."

An investigation found that Santos was walking and not rushing toward the officer, Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin said.

Santos wasnt complying with the officers demands and could be heard saying "dont do it" before the officer opened fire, according to Martin.

Martin said evidence shows that Santos, who was unarmed, posed no danger to Officer Roselle. The DA also said prosecutors do not believe race was a factor. Santos is Hispanic and of Puerto Rican descent while Roselle is white.

After the shooting, Roselle told other officers who responded to the scene that he "f---ed up" and thought Santos was coming at him, according to Martin.

During Sunday's "Back the Blue" rally, the crowd showed their support for Roselle as well as law enforcement.

"More and more people seem to be going against the police," Ken Pajak of Milford Township said. "They're not even getting a fair shake. Even when they're right everybody's making them out to be wrong."



Ronald Angstadt, who also attended the rally, held up a sign that read, "I back Officer Roselle."

"He was out here doing his job," Angstadt said. "The man was out here blocking traffic. Running around. And did the officer make a bad choice? Yeah. But until you or me are put in that position, none of us know what we're going to do."

Officer Roselle was charged Tuesday with one count of voluntary manslaughter, unreasonable belief, in Santos' death. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.



"Officer Roselle will have his day in court and I'm sure he's going to be found not guilty," Lisa Mearkle of Hummelstown said. "Because he was in my mind justified for what he did."

NBC 6

Roselle, a new officer who graduated from the police academy in December 2017, was placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation, Martin said. The 33-year-old officer served with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and is a major in the National Guard.

Defense attorneys said in a statement that Roselle, who is being held without bail, believes his actions were justified and appropriate given the circumstances.

Officials continue to investigate the incident and urge witnesses to come forward.
What to Know A 13-year-old boy was rescued from the middle of a raging creek in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

The boy had been playing with friends in the water when he became trapped on an outcropping of branches and rocks.

Crews with the Kimberton Fire Company placed a raft in the water. The boy jumped in and was pulled to safety after a few attempts.

A boy is safely back on dry land Monday evening after being stranded in the middle of a raging Chester County, Pennsylvania, creek.

The 13-year-old boy was playing with two friends in the Pickering Creek near Pickering Dam Road in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, Monday afternoon. Suddenly the boy was swept a few hundred feet by raging high water, officials said.

The boy managed to grab onto a tree root and pulled himself up onto an outcropping of branches and rocks in the middle of the creek. His two other friends got out on their own.



Angry waters tinged with brown sediment raged around the makeshift shelter as responding crews from the Kimberton Fire Company staged a rescue effort. (You can watch video of the harrowing rescue above.)



Using a blue raft, crews tried several times to safely take the boy to shore, but the waters proved to be too treacherous. They instead sent the empty raft over to the boy who, donning a life vest, was forced to take a leap of faith into the bobbing raft.



Luckily, he landed square in the center of the rectangular life boat and was safely pulled ashore.

"We were able to get some ropes to him," Tyler Frees, of the Friendship Diving Rescue Unit, said. "He was very cooperative and helpful and kept catching ropes and tying knots. We were walking him through. Otherwise, not sure what we would've done."



Medics checked on the boy at the scene and he went home with his family.

"He was scared," Doug Gable, of the Kimberton Fire Department, said. "He knows he made a mistake. He was out clowning around on the water and learned a hard lesson."



An official with the Kimberton Fire Company told NBC10 it was the third rescue made in the area Monday. Powerful storms swept through the area, causing flooding throughout the region.


A nearly 30-year Walt Disney Company employee regarded as a "humble genuis" has been identified as the pilot who died after his airplane crashed near the 5 Freeway north of Los Angeles Sunday afternoon.

Scott Watson, 55, was killed in the single-engine aircraft crash in a field next to the San Fernando Valley freeway. The Beechcraft BE33 aircraft crashed under "unknown circumstances" about five miles north of Van Nuys Airport around 1:45 p.m., Federal Aviation Administration Public Affairs Manager Ian Gregor said.

Watson was an executive with Walt Disney Research and Development for the company's famed Imagineering division. October would have marked his 30th year with the company.

"We are in deep grief," said mother Louise Watson. "He touched everybody's lives so greatly. He was so good to people, and loving and generous. Everyone will hold him in their hearts.

"It was an honor to be his mom."

In a statement, Walt Disney Imagineering President Bob Weis called Watson a "humble genius."

"The Walt Disney Company is stunned and saddened by the loss of our long-time friend and colleague, Scott Watson," Weis said. "Those of us who worked with Scott during his nearly 30-year career at Disney knew him as a humble genius who made making magic look easy. Our hearts are with his family during this difficult time."

"He was a wonderful, loving father, grandfather and a brilliant man," Sheree La Puma-Watson, ex-wife, said about her late ex-husband.

La Puma-Watson added, "We were married for 16 years and have three adult children. I don't have anything bad to say about him. He was such a humble, good-hearted soul."

Rescuers managed to pull the pilot from the plane, but he died at the scene, the LAFD said.

The airplane was registered to Watson, of Marina Del Rey, and was manufactured in 1980, according to FAA records. The LA City Coroner confirmed to NBC4 Sunday night that Watson was the person killed in the crash.

The crash did not spark a fire, damage structures or cause any other injuries, the LAFD said.

The National Transportation Safety Board is overseeing the investigation.
A 2-year-old boy has died after falling off a 24th-floor balcony in Fairfax County, Virginia, police say.

The toddler was found before 4 p.m. Monday near the Skyline Towers Apartments, in the 5600 block of Seminary Road. First responders tried to help the child, but he was pronounced dead.

An adult inside the apartment was taking care of another child at the time of the fall, Fairfax County police said in an update Tuesday.

Police did not immediately release the child's name. Initially, police believed he fell out of a window.

An area was cordoned off near one of the towers. Several women with children in their arms stood nearby. Police were on the scene for hours.

A spokesman for Equity Residential, which owns the building, released a statement saying the company was cooperating with the investigation.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the family at this very difficult time," the statement said.

Residents told News4 that the rails on the balconies are wide enough apart that a child can squeeze through them.

"In between them, any 2-year-old can put their head through the gap," one resident said. "My wife wants me to move and buy a house."

At least two other children have fallen from apartments in the towers; one was killed.

In May, a 3-year-old boy died after falling through the screen of an open bedroom window in Skyline Towers, 26 stories up. A woman said she was cooking in her third-floor apartment when she heard screams and ran to her balcony.

In 2015, a toddler fell from the fifth floor of an apartment and survived.

Many residents are concerned about the locks on the window screens, a resident told News4 on Monday.



Linda Watkins, a spokesperson for the organization Safe Kids Worldwide, previously told News4 that window screens are meant to keep bugs out but are not sturdy enough to keep children inside. Watkins said parents should keep furniture away from windows.

"A lot of times, we will have furniture of some sort, or even the crib, pushed up against a window, and toddlers can climb up on that and get to the windows and push those screens out," she said.

Families can install window stops or guards, and if a window opens from the top and bottom, they should only open the top.

An investigation into the child's death Monday is ongoing.
What to Know Metro's union has slammed Metro for what the union said was special treatment for attendees of Sunday's white supremacist rally.

Metro refuted the claim, saying that all stations and trains remained open to the public as Unite the Right 2 attendees traveled on Metro.

Metro's union has lashed out at Metro, slamming the transit agency for what the union said was special treatment for attendees of Sunday's white supremacist rally in D.C., a charge that Metro denies.

In advance of the Unite the Right 2 rally, Metro received major backlash after board chair Jack Evans told News4 the transit system was considering having separate trains for Unite the Right demonstrators to keep them separate from counterprotesters as they traveled to D.C. from the Vienna station in Northern Virginia.

Evans then said there would be no separate trains.

But on Sunday, the ATU Local 689 union blasted Metro and called for the firing of WMATA General Manager Paul Weidefeld.

"DC, now you see who was telling the truth about the racist marchers being escorted onto Metro and who lied," read a tweet from ATU Local early Sunday afternoon. "Wiedefeld lied to riders and public when the truth was more convenient. The fallout of today will be on him."

(1/3) "Today, the public was lied to by WMATA General Manager Paul Weidefeld the same way he has been lying to this union for the last two years. #WMATA  ATU Local 689 (@ATULocal689) August 12, 2018

"Last night, like every other resident that had the expectation that these far-right folks would not be given special accomodations, special cars, I felt misled and very frustrated," D.C. Council member Robert White (D-At-Large) said.

But Metro refuted the criticism, saying late Sunday that all stations and trains remained open to the public as rally organizer Jason Kessler and his followers traveled on Metro.



A statement from Metro said all Orange Line trains were marked "special" Sunday because they terminated at Foggy Bottom due to previously scheduled track work.

"The Kessler group traveled from Vienna to Foggy Bottom on a regularly scheduled train, together with other passengers, media and law enforcement," the Metro statement said in part. "They were escorted by police onto the rear of the train and police rode in that rail car and others to protect the safety of everyone onboard the train."

Metro said the train stopped at every station to allow any customers to enter and exit, and the Vienna station remained open to the public "at all times."

NBC Washington's Julie Carey reported Sunday that Kessler's group was guided by police to the last car on the train, which was reserved for them as part of a plan to separate them from other riders.

Metro Transit Police Deputy Chief Warren Donald said there was not a special train.

"What the officers did they reserved one car to keep the two groups separate," he said. "Once Kessler's group was aboard that car, we reopened the car and let patrons board that train."

Signs at the Unite the Right Rally, Counterprotests in DC

Officers led Kessler and his group into a Metro car and some members of the media were allowed into the car. WTOP's Max Smith reported that police did not allow other passengers to board that car as the train stopped at other stations on the way to Foggy Bottom.

There was a heavy police presence at the Vienna station that included officers in riot gear. The station's north entrance and parking garage were closed, and officers used their bikes to create a corridor for the demonstrators at the beginning of the day.
Police say a Virginia man killed a woman inside a Manassas home and pushed an 84-year-old family member who tried to intervene.

The suspect, 56-year-old Dale Andrew Wolfe, and the victim, 54-year-old Terri Jo Hilbrand, lived a few blocks apart and had known each other for some time, neighbors said.

Hilbrand, a mother of five children, went to visit Wolfe, police say. Police say Wolfe and Hilbrand got into an altercation that escalated.

Police said the 84-year-old homeowner, Wolfe's stepfather, was awakened late Friday by a loud noise in his home in the 8900 block of Rugby Road. He went to investigate and found Wolfe over the woman, assaulting her with a blunt object, police said.

The homeowner tried to stop the attack and received a minor injury when Wolfe pushed him away, police said. The homeowner then went to a neighbor, who called the police.

Officers responded and found Hilbrand near the front door. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Her attacker was still inside. Police say Wolfe had a minor cut to his arm and authorities took him to a hospital. Investigators are still determining whether the cut was self-inflicted or from the altercation. The homeowner also was taken to a hospital for treatment.

News4 reached out to Wolfe's mother, who said she was out of town during the incident and she didn't know what happened.

Wolfe was arrested Saturday and is charged with murder, police said. He is due to appear in court Sept. 25 and is being held without bond.
What to Know Dola Allen says her husband, Alex Allen, 55, was shot and killed inside their Mattapan home while he was laying on the couch and watching TV

Allen was a supervisor for Boston's Public Works Department and had been shot inside his city car in December, Allen says

The couple had surveillance cameras at their home which police now have. The city's 33rd homicide of the year is being actively investigated

A man was shot multiple times and killed at his home in Boston's Mattapan neighborhood Saturday night, according to Boston police.

At 11:15 p.m. police were called to 201 Manchester St. where they found a man suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. The victim, who has been identified by his wife as 55-year-old Alex Allen, was transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy will be conducted Monday.

Allen's wife, Dola Allen, tells NBC10 Boston that her husband was killed on his birthday. She says her husband was laying on their couch, watching television when someone broke down their front door, shot and killed him.

"They should find him and they will find him. Or God will take care of that. I leave it in his hands," Allen's father, Alex Allen Sr., said. "My kids are good kids. They're all good, and I love them."

Allen was a supervisor for Boston's Department of Public Works and had been a city employee for more than 20 years, his wife says.



His family says this is the third time someone tried to kill him. In December, Dola Allen says her husband was shot inside his public works car on his way to the office. He was only a few blocks from away from his home when the bullets were fired into his car, breaking his leg. That shooting was never solved.

A few months before that shooting, Allen's wife tells us the back of their house was shot several times.

"He had called me immediately when that happened that day and told me some things just in case they came back and got him before the police did," Allen's friend, Jovan Laset, said.

Laset and Allen had been friends since they were little. He says Allen knew his attackers and that they had legal issues.

"If a family member did it, whether it be in-laws or whoever it is. They need to speak up," Laset said. "They need to speak up and say, 'you know what? so and so messed up. He shouldn't have done it. We also need to learn how to turn families. If somebody in your family did something wrong, turn him in. turn him in. Because you shouldn't be killing family members."

The Allens purchased surveillance cameras following the time that shots were fired at the back of their house. Those cameras were positioned outside their front door when Allen was killed.

Dola Allen says police now have the surveillance cameras, but it's unclear if they recorded the person or people involved in this shooting.

Police say this is an active investigation and they do not know how many people are involved.

One homicide is too many, Boson Police Commissioner William Gross said. "Last year at this time we were at 32 homicides, this marks the citys 33rd homicide."

Homicide investigators were at Allen's home all day Sunday.

Police are looking for witnesses and information regarding the incident and urged people to call 617-343-4470 or 1-800-494-TIPS (8477).
A man who allegedly threatened another person with a hammer in a road rage incident was arrested Friday in Nashua, New Hampshire.

On June 20, Nashua police responded to a call of a road rage incident at Alecs Shoe Store that resulted in one of the involved parties being struck by the other's car.

Investigators spoke with both parties involved and determined that William Kratman, 50, was the aggressor. Officials issued an arrest warrant for Kratman and charged him with criminal threatening with a deadly weapon.

Kratman was bailed on $2,000 cash and was released. He faces up to seven years in prison for the charge. The suspect will be arraigned on Aug. 23 at the Hillsborough County Superior Court South in New Hampshire. It's unclear if he has an attorney.

Anyone who witnessed the road rage or who has information on the incident is asked to contact the Nashua Police Departments Crime Line at 603-589-1665.
Ahead of the annual Clear the Shelters event this weekend, a participating non-profit in southern Vermont hopes prospective pet adopters will consider a series of questions as they prepare to visit their area shelters.

The Second Chance Animal Center in Shaftsbury encourages people to ask themselves the following questions:

Can we make the time to properly take care of an animal and help enrich its life, with plenty of time for exercise, grooming, training, and other needs?

Is our household high-energy or low-key, and what type of pet best fits that lifestyle?

Do we have disposable income sufficient to cover vet bills, boarding, food, and other costs that may arise down the roadincluding potential emergencies?

Andy and Donna Chambers asked themselves all those questions before adopting a hound mix named Maddie this summer.

Second Chance told the Chambers that Maddies previous owners neglected her by keeping her tied up outside, rarelyif everletting her indoors, and failing to feed her properly.

Its like she knows how she had it and she likes the change, and she appreciates it, Donna Chambers said of Maddie. We appreciate her. And it feels really good to do it.

The Chambers are both retired, so have time to devote to Maddie, who had no real training at alluntil now.

I knew we were going to spend lots and lots of hours, Andy Chambers said.

Thats where Second Chance offers dog parents a special bonus.

The shelter has a trainer who works with adopters on ways to correct certain behaviors. In Maddies case, jumping on the couch appears to be a problem to address.

That trainer even makes home visits, explained Cathi Comar, the executive director of the Second Chance Animal Center.

All at our cost, Comar noted. So that our behaviorist can see if the trainings going well, what maybe needs to be changed, and just to ensure that the dog actually stays in the home. In the end, thats our goal is for all of our animals to stay in their forever homes.

Comar and her team will get a new place to work on that goal this fall.

The Second Chance Animal Center is moving into a more than 10,000 square-foot headquarters in Arlington, Vermont, to better serve its large coverage area: Vermonts Bennington County and parts of nearby New York and western Massachusetts.

Comar said the new facility will allow for expanded surgical operations, create new opportunities for visits and classes for members of the community, and will allow for an even better quality of care for shelter animals.

The focus of the expansion, Comar indicated, is to help even more animals like Maddie to get a Second Chance.

Click here to visit the website of the Second Chance Animal Center.
Like many consumers, I tend to be automatically suspicious of insurance companies plans to track my behavior. And like many tech journalists, Im also skeptical of clever new smart home automation schemes. But painful personal experience has me all excited about a new pilot program involving Travelers insurance and Notion smart home sensors.

According to a post in Coverager:

Travelers has tapped Notion, the home awareness solution and smart home sensor, to offer smart home monitoring systems to Travelers customers in California. Travelers is working with Notion to provide data-driven insights to customers through Notions home monitoring system in order to prevent and mitigate threats such as water leaks, fire damage, and thefts. Select Travelers customers throughout California will now be equipped with Notion sensors to help them better protect and insure properties using Notions technology, which monitors for water leaks, changes in temperature, sounding smoke alarms and the opening/closing of doors, garages and more.

Those two paragraphs constitute the entire article, while Stacy on IoT added that Travelers will offer five Notion sensors for $50, which is a discount from the normal price of $200. Insurers might eventually subsidize the smart home.

[ Read also: Most insurance carriers not ready to use IoT data ]

Beware the psychotic dishwasher

I am 100 percent on board with this idea. As someone who lives in a 120-year-old not-so-smart-home, I can confidently state that this technology could have saved both my family and my home insurance company tens of thousands of dollars.

A couple years ago, you see, my dishwasher went crazy and started pumping gallon after gallon of water out into the kitchen and then through the floor into my downstairs bedroom. Unfortunately, I had started the dishwashers cleaning cycle as I was heading out the door, and no one noticed the problem for hours. By the time someone realized what was happening, the damage was done.

Cleaning up the mess, drying everything out, and dealing with water damage to floors, carpets, walls, furniture, and household items took weeks of heaters and fans followed by demolition of the waterlogged areas. And that doesnt even address the reconstruction. Incredibly, while repairing the actual damage took months of unpleasant work, dealing with my insurance companys hardball negotiating and endless paperwork was almost worse  and took even longer.

A simple moisture sensor in the right place could have stopped all the problems before they got out of hand. At the very least, it could have alerted us to the problem so we would have dealt with it faster. Even better, it could have automatically turned off the water or contacted a remote security agency to address the problem.

That would have saved money and headaches for everyone. Even the dishwasher manufacturer, which was eventually stuck with much of the bill, would have been better off.

Anecdotally, this is a common problem

Sure, a single incident hardly proves that this kind of technology would be commercially viable. But I know at least four other families who have survived similar  or much worse  disasters that could have been prevented with the right IoT technology. Still anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but it's hard to ignore when youre standing on your soaked bedroom carpeting.

If and when this technology becomes generally available, this is one IoT solution that Id be more than willing to buy for my house, especially if the insurance company was smart enough to help cover the cost.

As Ive written before, though, while insurance companies often express interest in gathering and using IoT data, they dont have a great track record of actually using the data.

There is hope that could change. Earlier this summer, for example, Bob Cummings, vice president and global head of insurance at SAP, wrote to me about how MindHome Insurance uses AI-based algorithms that interpret signals from a consumers home and responds in real time with notifications and connected preventative actions.

While as of mid-August MindHomes website was still under construction, its clear that at least some forward-looking insurance companies and technology vendors are paying attention to this opportunity.
More than 120 million Microsoft Office accounts have moved from on-premises to the cloud since the launch of Microsoft Office 365. Many of those accounts belong to users in large enterprises that werent fully prepared for the transition. The fact is as many as 30 to 40 percent of enterprises struggle with some level of application performance as they make the shift to cloud.

Some of the signs of poor performance (and the source of users frustration) include Outlook responding slowly when the user tries to open messages, VoIP calls over Skype for Business having rough spots, and documents being slow to open, close and save in Word. Performance problems in the Office applications manifest in many other ways, as well.

[ Now see the hidden cause of slow internet and how to fix it. ]

While enterprise applications such as Microsoft Office have moved to the cloud, many enterprises still hold onto a WAN strategy built around a centralized data center that serves as the egress point to the public internet. All the enterprise traffic comes back to that central data center before going out to the nearest Microsoft peering center to access O365. No wonder performance of the applications and services is slow.

Apcelas Office 365 Accelerator addresses Office 365 performance

Apcela recently announced a new service, Office 365 Accelerator, to address this problem that so many enterprise organizations experience. Its pretty much a plug-and-play solution that doesnt require changes to the WAN. Apcela claims that its new service enables enterprises to get the fastest possible Office 365 performance, without commissioning a cloud performance or acceleration effort.

Based in Virginia, Apcela has its roots in developing high-performance networks that created the shortest and lowest latency paths between major financial exchanges. Founded as CSX Fiber Networks, the company built an infrastructure that supports more than half of the worlds most sophisticated capital markets participants. The company rebranded as Apcela, a mashup of application acceleration, once it expanded to develop a performance-optimized and highly connected application delivery platform for all types of global enterprise customers.

The architecture of the network Apcela has built follows the model of Network as a Service. It starts with a core network anchored on globally distributed carrier-neutral commercial data centers such as Equinix, which Apcela calls application hubs, or AppHUBs. These data centers are then connected with high capacity, low latency links. That high-performance core then interconnects to the network edge, which can be enterprise locations such as branches, manufacturing facilities, regional headquarters, data centers, and so on. This core network also interconnects with the cloud, connecting to the public internet, or directly peering with cloud data centers, such those operated by Microsoft where the vendor hosts Office 365.

The enterprise locations on this network are connected via Ethernet private lines or broadband IP. On top of this, an SD-WAN overlay enables a secure encrypted tunnel over the public internet back to the commercial data centers. A full security stack is also deployed to these commercial data centers. By distributing security and moving it out of the enterprise data center and into these distributed network nodes, a branch office simply goes to the nearest AppHUB to clear security there, and from there, it can go to the internet or to whatever SaaS applications these branches need to use, rather than having to go all the way back through the enterprise data center before they get out to the cloud.

Direct Office 365 connectivity improves application performance

For an enterprise, this architecture essentially puts the Microsoft Cloud data centers on its network, or at least it enables close peering with them. With Apcelas Office 365 Accelerator, enterprises gain direct Office 365 connectivity, optimized for improved performance, whether users are centrally located or distributed across geographically dispersed regions. In effect, Apcelas Office 365 Accelerator eliminates the internet from the path between an enterprises end users and the Microsoft Office 365 infrastructure resources. This eliminates the source of jitter, high latency and packet loss from the Office 365 data flows. The accelerator service continuously optimizes the path between users and the infrastructure components they utilize.

Apcela claims the following improvements when Office 365 Accelerator is used over its network:

Office 365 Outlook email performs 30 to 50 percent better on the Apcela backbone versus the internet.

Non-email Office 365 applications perform 40 to 60 percent better on the Apcela backbone versus the internet.

Apcela guarantees the service quality, as well as provides root cause identification and rapid remediation when problems occur.

Apcelas Enhanced Analytics Platform (EAP) provides query-able data discovery and analysis pertaining to application performance.

Giving end users a direct connection to the Microsoft peering centers is one aspect of increasing performance by virtually eliminating latency. The other important aspect is what Apcela does on its own network to optimize performance. The company leverages a lot of the acceleration innovations it created for the financial trading exchanges. It also employs analytics to continually assess telemetry data to determine the best path and to identify the best point of egress on its network to get the user as close to the application as possible.

Microsoft Office 365 is an important set of enterprise applications for many organizations. End users spend a lot of their time with the respective applications and services. If an organization wants to maximize productivity, it should also be looking to optimize performance of key applications, and Apcelas Office 365 Accelerator is one means to do that.
The day voters head to the polls to choose which candidates will appear on the November ballot in key races is finally here.

The primary is on Tuesday, and theres some key information voters need to be prepared to cast those votes.

First, Connecticut has closed primaries. That means state residents need to be registered with either of the major parties to vote. The deadline for new or unaffiliated voters to register in person with the local registrar of voters or town clerk of the town of residence is noon on Monday.

Its too late to register by mail or online, and the deadline to change parties to vote in the new party has already passed. There will not be election day registration available for the primary.

After figuring out your registration status, check the Secretary of the State website to find your polling location. The web address is portaldir.ct.gov/sots/LookUp.aspx. Polls open at 6 a.m. Tuesday and close at 8 p.m. Anyone in line by 8 p.m. will be permitted to vote.

Before heading to the polls, make sure you have some form of identification. Valid forms of ID include a Social Security card or any pre-printed form of identification that shows a name and address or includes a name and signature or a name and photograph. That means student and employee identification cards count, but a photo is not required in Connecticut. Voters also can sign a sworn statement attesting to their identity.

If youre a voter who lives in the 5th District, or is voting in the Republican primary there is a different set of identification requirements for voting in a federal primary. Certain first-time voters may be required to provide valid photo identification that shows their name or address or a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck or government document that shows their name and address.

Voters who are 17 years old but turn 18 before the November election and are registered with a political party are allowed to vote in the primary.

kkrasselt@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2563; @kaitlynkrasselt
What is PTSD?

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating mental condition that develops after exposure to extreme stress or a traumatic event. While the majority of people will resolve the short-term distress such an event causes, individuals with PTSD continue to be affected for much longer.

PTSD is characterized by a variety of cognitive, behavioral, and physiological symptoms related to re-experiencing the event, avoiding reminders of it, and physiological hyperarousal, such as insomnia or irritability. It is estimated that PTSD affects up to 10% of people at some stage of their lives; however, prevalence rates in people who have suffered a traumatic event may be close to 100%.

Image Credit: SpeedKingz / Shutterstock

What is cognitive-behavioral therapy?

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has been used for the treatment of PTSD for many years. CBT aims to improve a persons functioning by changing their patterns of behaviors, thoughts, and feelings.

CBT is based on the premise that improvements in one domain can lead to benefits in the others. For example, changing detrimental thoughts to be more helpful can help to improve a persons mood and lead to healthier behaviors. To this end, CBT is usually administered over 12-16 sessions to an individual or a group.

CBT for PTSD

Some techniques employed by therapists when administering CBT include:

Modifying cognitive distortions (e.g., overgeneralizing bad situations or having negative expectations) and supporting the development of more balanced and beneficial ways of thinking.

Exposing patients to reminders of the trauma, in a controlled manner, to enable them to confront, rather than avoid, their distress.

Educating the patient about common reactions to trauma, planning for potential crises, and teaching them to manage stress and promote relaxation

These methods are intended to help the patient with PTSD gain a more objective understanding of their traumatic experience, return their sense of control and self-confidence, and improve their ability to cope and reduce avoidance behaviors.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as Treatment for PTSD Play

Benefits of CBT

The beneficial effects of CBT are generally attributed to modifying the detrimental cognitive distortions experienced by sufferers of PTSD. The response to CBT has also been associated with physiological, functional neuroimaging, and electroencephalographic changes, including:

A greater decrease in heart rate reactivity and an improvement in blood pressure response on standing in PTSD patients after CBT

Non-responders to CBT have shown significantly poorer verbal memory than responders and were also found to have impaired narrative encoding

Motor vehicle accident survivors who received CBT had a greater reduction of right anterior activation of spontaneous electroencephalographic activity compared with controls. Across both groups, a reduction in PTSD symptoms was positively correlated with a decrease in right anterior activation to the trauma stimulus

CBT response has been associated with functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) responses of the brain, with a poor response correlating with the greater bilateral amygdala and ventral anterior cingulate activation in response to masked fearful faces. This enhanced amygdala response may indicate a reduced ability to manage the anxiety reactions that CBT triggers, thus limiting response to therapy.

How does CBT Compare with other therapies?

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is another widely used therapy for PTSD with similar efficacy to CBT. This approach was originally developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro, who noticed that disturbing thoughts were alleviated by certain eye movements.

EMDR is based on the idea that negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are caused by inadequately processed memories. The technique requires the patient to focus on distressing images while engaging in additional bilateral sensory input, typically side-to-side eye movements.

Although generally found to be equally efficacious as CBT, controversy exists over whether the benefits of EMDR are due to voluntary eye movements that are altering the excitatory/inhibitory elements in the brain, or its similar properties to CBT, such as desensitization and exposure.

CBT has been found to be a safe and effective therapy for both acute and chronic PTSD after a variety of traumatic experiences, in adults and children, and across many cultures. CBT is associated with better remission rates as compared to other supportive therapies such as supportive psychotherapy, problem-solving therapy, present-centered therapy, psychodynamic therapy, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, and structured writing therapy.

However, studies have shown that the number of PTSD patients who do not respond to CBT can be as high as 50%. Dropouts are common, and many patients do not manage to attain remission. This may be due to a number of factors, such as other comorbid conditions like depression, and/or the nature of the study population (e.g., less education, lower level of functioning).

Over the long term, CBT improves overall symptom severity in PTSD patients as compared to non-CBT, but does not necessarily alter the overall diagnostic status of patients. Patients who receive CBT report less intense PTSD symptoms than patients who receive supportive counseling.

There is some evidence to suggest that CBT may also have preventative benefits; however, study findings are mixed, and more research is needed in this area. A review and meta-analysis recommended no use of psychological interventions following traumatic events for the prevention of PTSD. This study also indicated that interventions may have an adverse effect on some people.

There does not appear to be a benefit in combining CBT with pharmacotherapy. The Australian Clinical Practice Guidelines for PTSD recommends that trauma-focused psychological therapy in the form of CBT or EMDR should be used over medication.

Conclusion

CBT is an effective therapy for acute and chronic PTSD, in children and adults, across many cultures, following a variety of traumatic events, with both short- and long-term benefits attributed to both psychological and neurophysiological changes.

Reference

http://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/cognitive-behavioral-therapy.aspx

http://www.ptsduk.org/what-is-ptsd/

Shapiro F. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Basic Principles, Protocols and Procedures. Second edition 2001. The Guildford Press, NY, USA.

Kar N. Cognitive behavioral therapy for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder: a review. Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat 2011;7:167181.

Syros I. Cognitive behavioral therapy for the treatment of PTSD. Eur J Psychotraumatol 2017;(sup4):1351219.

Yehuda R. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. N Engl J Med 2002; 346:108-114.

Further Reading
Employer expectations of work email monitoring during nonwork hours are detrimental to the health and well-being of not only employees but their family members as well.

William Becker, a Virginia Tech associate professor of management in the Pamplin College of Business, co-authored a new study, "Killing me softly: electronic communications monitoring and employee and significant-other well-being," showing that such expectations result in anxiety, which adversely affects the health of employees and their families.

"The competing demands of work and nonwork lives present a dilemma for employees," Becker said, "which triggers feelings of anxiety and endangers work and personal lives."

Other studies have shown that the stress of increased job demands leads to strain and conflict in family relationships when the employee is unable to fulfill nonwork roles at home -- "such as when someone brings work home to finish up."

Their new study, he said, demonstrates that employees do not need to spend actual time on work in their off-hours to experience the harmful effects. The mere expectations of availability increase strain for employees and their significant others -- even when employees do not engage in actual work during nonwork time.

Unlike work-related demands that deplete employee resources, physical and psychological, by requiring time away from home, "the insidious impact of 'always on' organizational culture is often unaccounted for or disguised as a benefit -- increased convenience, for example, or higher autonomy and control over work-life boundaries," Becker said.

"Our research exposes the reality: 'flexible work boundaries' often turn into 'work without boundaries,' compromising an employee's and their family's health and well-being."

As negative health outcomes are costly to them, what can employers do to mitigate the adverse effects identified by the study? Becker said policies that reduce expectations to monitor electronic communication outside of work would be ideal.

When that is not an option, the solution may be to establish boundaries on when electronic communication is acceptable during off-hours by setting up off-hour email windows or schedules when employees are available to respond.

Additionally, he said, organizational expectations should be communicated clearly. "If the nature of a job requires email availability, such expectations should be stated formally as a part of job responsibilities." Knowing these expectations upfront may reduce anxiety in employees and increase understanding from their family members, he said.

As for employees, they could consider practicing mindfulness, which has been shown to be effective in reducing anxiety, Becker said. Mindfulness may help employees "be present" in family interactions, which could help reduce conflict and improve relationship satisfaction. And, he added, mindfulness is within the employee's control when email expectations are not.

Becker, whose research interests include work emotion, turnover, organizational neuroscience, and leadership, is based at Virginia Tech's National Capital Region campus in metro Washington, D.C.

His study, co-authored with Liuba Y. Belkin, of Lehigh University; Samantha A. Conroy, of Colorado State University; and Sarah Tuskey, a Virginia Tech Ph.D. student in executive business research, will be presented at the Academy of Management annual meeting in Chicago on August 10-14.

"Employees today must navigate more complex boundaries between work and family than ever before," said Becker. "Employer expectations during nonwork hours appear to increase this burden, as employees feel an obligation to shift roles throughout their nonwork time.

"Efforts to manage these expectations are more important than ever, given our findings that employees' families are also affected by these expectations."
Children fitted with epicardial pacemakers should be regularly screened to detect those at risk for coronary artery compression, recommend scientists in HeartRhythm

The incidence of coronary artery compression in children fitted with epicardial pacemakers may be slightly more common than previously believed, say noted cardiologists. After reviewing patient records at Boston Children's Hospital, they advocate for stricter monitoring to identify patients at risk and prevent complications. Their recommendations are published as a featured article in the journal HeartRhythm, the official journal of the Heart Rhythm Society and the Cardiac Electrophysiology Society.

Children who require pacemakers or defibrillators often need to have wires placed on the outside of their heart due to their size or unique anatomy. In rare instances, these wires can place the child at risk for "cardiac strangulation," which can lead to compression of the heart muscle and coronary arteries (the blood vessels that feed the heart) over time.

"Coronary artery compression is thought to be rare," explained lead investigator Douglas Y. Mah, MD, director of the Pacemaker and ICD Program in the Department of Cardiology, Boston Children's Hospital, and assistant professor of pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. "Its true incidence, however, may be higher than we believed due either to a lack of awareness or lack of reporting in the literature."

The sudden death of a child with an epicardial pacemaker following coronary artery compression prompted investigators to enhance surveillance of all patients with epicardial pacing or defibrillation systems. They reviewed the records of all patients followed at Boston Children's Hospital from 2000-2017 who had either active or abandoned epicardial wires that included coronary imaging, either by computed topography (CT) scan or catheter angiography through the vessels in the leg. Of 145 patients, eight (5.5 percent) exhibited some degree of coronary compression from their epicardial leads. Six of these patients displayed symptoms; in addition to the case of sudden death, there were three cases of chest pain and two cases of unexplained fatigue. As a result of the review, seven patients underwent surgical removal or repositioning of their epicardial leads.

This study helps provide a framework for monitoring patients with epicardial pacemakers or defibrillators and identifying those who may need revision or removal of their epicardial wires. Dr. Mah and colleagues compared three screening techniques. They recommend that pediatric patients with epicardial devices should get screening chest x-rays every few years to assess how their wires look in relation to their heart, as the positioning may change as the child grows. They found that chest x-ray had a high specificity and was a good screening tool, easy to perform, inexpensive, and non-invasive. However, it can produce some false-negatives even when patients were symptomatic.

The authors propose that patients with concerning chest x-rays, symptoms such as unexplained chest pain or tiredness, or evidence of heart muscle damage or dysfunction should ideally have a cine CT scan that can image the heart moving in relation to the epicardial wires. Although this can also result in a false-positive, CT is less risky for pediatric patients because radiation doses are now much lower for this non-invasive imaging method.

If cine CT is not available, they advocate that patients undergo catheter angiography to confirm the diagnosis before taking a patient to surgery.

"The use of pacemakers and defibrillators in children is growing," noted Dr. Mah. "As more epicardial devices are implanted, more children may be at risk for developing coronary compression from their leads. We hope to increase awareness among healthcare providers and patients of this important, possibly preventable, and potentially fatal complication and provide a useful screening algorithm to detect at-risk patients and ultimately prevent complications."

"This article clearly emphasizes the need to not only carefully evaluate the potential site of electrode head fixation to avoid coronary injury, but also the need to evaluate closely where to route the electrode body to the device pocket," commented Gerald A. Serwer, MD, FHRS, pediatric cardiologist at the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, in an accompanying editorial.

Dr. Serwer emphasizes that all cardiologists who have patients with epicardial electrodes should always be aware of this potential complication and periodically assess patients for coronary issues with at least a periodic chest x-ray. When evidence strongly suggests ischemia secondary to coronary compression due to electrode position, electrode replacement must be considered in view of the potential morbidity and mortality. "I strongly concur with the authors that any additional information one can obtain to aid in risk assessment would be of benefit and agree with them that additional studies to establish the efficacy of nuclear cardiology techniques are indicated," concluded Dr. Serwer.
A robotic walking frame that could help older people recover more quickly after a fall or injury, reducing the length of time they need to stay in hospital, is being developed in partnership with researchers at Northumbria University, Newcastle.

The electronic walker acts as a 'virtual physiotherapist', encouraging a patient to be as active as possible and assessing how exercises have been carried out. It is fitted with technology that enables it to issue voice commands to its patient, persuading them to complete regular activities like going for a walk, gripping, standing and balancing, then assessing their performance.

It's also a walking companion; travelling with its patient as they walk prescribed distances, to monitor progress as well as offer physical support if it's needed.

The development of the frame is being supported by a team from Northumbria University's Psychology and Communication Technology (PaCT) Lab, as part of a wider European project to design technology that can support our aging population.

It has been designed to be initially used in hospitals, where it would stay by the patient's bed to encourage them to complete regular mobility and strength exercises - meaning they could potentially leave care earlier.

It can also assess how the patient has performed, and make adjustments. Assessment data gathered by the walker can then be fed back to the care team monitoring the patient's progress. This provides detailed data of walking patterns or gait that would allow the care team to assess if the patient was at risk of future falls.

Professor Lynne Coventry, Director of Northumbria's PaCT lab, explains: "Mobility is a critical factor when it comes to the aging process. Reduced mobility can have a serious impact on health, and once an older person gets to a certain level of immobility, their decline can really accelerate.

"This technology aims to help maintain the mobility of older adults, by understanding what goes wrong if they have a fall, encouraging them to be physically active as much as possible, or helping to prevent falls in the first place. The frame will also help physiotherapists to understand the physical motion of older adults as they're walking and establish if they have any problems. It can also help physiotherapists to administer tests and to set exercises for patients to do on daily basis to keep them on their feet."

The walker is now being tested with a group of volunteers aged 65 or older; in labs and along corridors at Northumbria University, to try and mirror the hospital environment as much as possible.

Professor Coventry added: "In the design, we've added a persuasive element to encourage the patient, so the walker will wake up and send a message that it's time to go for a walk. We're also able to add in goals that the walker can encourage the patient to complete. It's a great companion for the patient to have, and feedback so far from our testers has been really positive and encouraging."

Retired teacher Pauline, aged 68, is one of the volunteer testers. She suffers from a number of chronic health issues which impact her agility and mobility, including fatigue and rheumatoid arthritis.

She said: "This is exactly the kind of thing I need to keep me moving. It means I don't have to rely on a professional; instead it can guide me and cope with me being variable in my condition and mobility - which is a big thing. Keeping active is really important, but as you get older that becomes more difficult. This frame could encourage and enable you to keep on your feet and also hopefully keep your pain levels down as it adjusts with you."

This particular walker developed by Northumbria University is part of a larger European Union-funded research project - called ACANTO - exploring how technology can help to address the challenges of ageing and encouraging older adults to be more active through social and cultural engagement.

The project brings together researchers and partners from across Europe, led by the University of Trento, Italy and with clinical trials being undertaken at University Hospital Getafe, Spain. It also includes Siemens as an industry partner. Northumbria University is the only UK institution to be involved in the project.

Other technology being developed as part of the wider project includes a recommender system that could help older people to stay socially as well as physically active, by encouraging them to take part in activities like visits to museums or galleries where robotic walkers would be available to guide them through the exhibits.

For now, however, the team at Northumbria will concentrate on developing and improving this particular prototype, with the aim that one day it could be used in hospitals across the world to help older people to stay active and agile, for longer.

Souce: https://www.northumbria.ac.uk
The Brain Matrix has been built by Ted Pella to make free-hand brain dissection easier for researchers, and is available for a variety of species including: adult rat, rat pup, adult mouse, adult gerbil, guinea pig, adult ferret, adult rabbit, hamster, adult Rhesus, dog, and cat brains.

The Brain matrices are provided with coronal or sagittal channels, placed exactly 1.0 mm center-to-center, this guide channel makes incisions much more straight forward. There are also various options for chamber size in the tissue matrices, such as rectangular, spherical and V shaped. Each comes in various sizes with channels that are placed exactly 1.0 mm center-to-center.

For ease of cleaning and sterilization, each matrix is made of high-grade zinc. Vibratome Matrices are constructed using PTFE treated anodized aluminum for easy removal. If there is an issue with either of these two materials, plastic and acrylic matrices are also available. The following guidelines are in place to make the Brain Matrix experience as simple as possible.

Instructions for Use

Once the brain is removed from the skull, place it ventral side up in the Brain Matrix. When properly seated in the matrix the brain's ventral surface should be parallel with the top surface of the mold. Empirical use will determine which channel the first razor blade should be placed in. Ted Pella recommends the use of three double-edge blades, which have the top edge covered with tape for safety. These blades are thinner than normal single-edge blades and therefore allow for the placement of two blades in the same channel. The blade can be broken to allow for both sides to be used. Place the first blade in the channel, which lies on the caudal-most boundary of the slice you plan to take; two blades should then be placed in the channel, which corresponds to the rostral boundary. Each channel utilized adds 1 mm to the thickness of the slice. Now that all three blades are in place, the first and second blade can be lifted out while leaving the third (rostral most blade) in place. The slice desired will be lifted out between these two blades. The third blade, which is left in place, serves two purposes: 1) it eliminates any movement of the brain within the matrix, and 2) it now serves as the first blade, which will be utilized for the removal of the next slice. Note: Slot width is approximately 0.012 (0.305 mm).

If the Brain Matrix is used as described here then the investigator will easily be able to slice this, and each subsequent section, as thin as 1 mm along the entire section of brain.

After the target slice has been taken, those regions which are still of interest can be dissected or punched from the slice.

Blades

Product No. 121-6 Double edged breakable style blade, box/250

Double edge, PTFE coated stainless steel blade

Sharp edges; may be broken in half lengthwise (protect fingers and use eye protection).

Edge width 1.5" (38 mm). Blade thickness 0.004" (0.102 mm).

Product No. 121-9 Feather 2-edge blade, pkg/10

Double edge, carbon steel blade

Sharp edges; may be broken in half lengthwise (protect fingers and use eye protection).

Edge width 1.455" (36.95 mm). Blade thickness 0.005" (0.127 mm).

Product No. 121-95 Blades for use with Brain Matrices, pkg/25.

Single edge, carbon steel blade

Edge width 4.65" (118 mm). Blade thickness 0.009" (0.229 mm).

Ted Pella, Inc.

Ted Pella, Inc. manufactures and resells instruments and supplies to laboratories dedicated to a variety of types of microscopy Transmission and Scanning Electron Microscopy, Atomic Force Microscopy, Confocal Laser Microscopy, Light Microscopy and Electron Microprobe Analysis. They serve colleges and universities, private companies, hospitals and various branches of government, domestic and international. For over 44 years they have served a diverse set of fields including Biology, Biotechnology, Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Failure Analysis, Forensics, Genetics, Histology, Materials Science, MEMS, Materialography/Metallography, Microelectronics, Nanotechnology, Neurosciences, Pathology, Pharmaceuticals, Physics, Quality Assurance and Semiconductors. Ted Pella, Inc.s corporate headquarters are located in Redding, California. The company is privately held.

Sponsored Content Policy: News-Medical.net publishes articles and related content that may be derived from sources where we have existing commercial relationships, provided such content adds value to the core editorial ethos of News-Medical.Net which is to educate and inform site visitors interested in medical research, science, medical devices and treatments.
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Marvel's new Iron Fist probably is a Chinese hero that's been waiting in the wings for years

Marvel may have revealed the new Iron Fist the moment it announced Danny Rand's retirement
Kabul : Over 300 people, including 100 government troops and 30 civilians, have been killed in the intense fighting between Taliban militants and the security forces in Afghanistan's Ghazni city, the country's Defence Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami said on Monday.

The militant group started its offensive in the city last Friday. "As of midday today, the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces recaptured control of nearly all parts of Ghazni city and the Taliban militants would be expelled from the city soon," Bahrami said at a joint press briefing with Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak.

He said that up to 100 government security force members, 30 civilians and over 194 Taliban militants were killed during the four-day clashes between security forces and Taliban militants in the city, Xinhua news agency reported.

At least 147 militants were injured. The US was supporting the Afghan government forces in conducting airstrikes tageting the Taliban.

Within the past 24 hours, the Defence Ministry deployed reinforcement in Ghazni city and its adjacent areas. Fresh troops will bring considerable changes in the security situation of the city in the next 24 hours, Bahrami added.

Last week, Taliban militants launched a massive attack on Ghazni, 125 km south of Kabul, in a coordinated effort to take back the city. Hundreds of Taliban insurgents stormed important government entities including the National Directorate for Security (Afghanistan's Intelligence Agency) and the provincial governor's office.

"The Afghan police and Army will soon clear Ghazni city from the Taliban and normalcy and peace will return into the city as soon as possible," the Interior Minister said.

The clashes also blocked a main road connecting Kabul to southern and western provinces and scores of travellers were stranded.

According to authorities, about 100 soldiers of the Afghan special force were missing in the Ghazni province. President Ashraf Ghani ordered more troops to be sent to the city.

Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that residents of Ghazni were struggling to access basic services and medical care.



"Medication at the main hospital is reportedly becoming scarce... Main access roads both north and south of the city to larger cities where medical facilities are available are contested and unsafe for people to travel," the OCHA said in a statement.

"We call on all parties to the conflict to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect the lives and rights of civilians and to protect civilian infrastructure," it said.
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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 13)  The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) will look into the alleged smuggling of 6.8 billion worth of illegal drugs into the country.

"Yes, I have directed the NBI to investigate the latest incidents of drug smuggling," Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said Monday.

"Our investigation will consider all govt agencies, particularly the [Bureau of Customs], private shippers, brokers, cargo handlers, warehousemen, even other law enforcement agents, who may have something to do with these unlawful acts," he added.

He noted the "huge value of illegal drugs involved and the relative ease by which they were asported into [Philippine] territory."

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) said the multibillion-peso drug shipment slipped past the Bureau of Customs (BoC), which said it was not tipped on the possible presence of drugs. The PDEA attributed the shipment to the Golden Triangle syndicate from Taiwan.

The Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission and the House of Representatives have also said they would investigate the issue.

While Malacanang maintains its trust in the BoC and PDEA, the smuggled drugs are not the first. Last year, about 604 kilograms of shabu worth 6.4 billion also slipped past the Customs Bureau.

Former Davao City Vice Mayor and presidential son Paolo Duterte was tagged in the shipment, and then-Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon resigned. An Ombudsman panel recommended charges be dropped against the former vice-mayor. Faeldon has since been assigned to the Office of Civil Defense.

Related: Paolo Duterte under investigation for graft, other charges at Ombudsman

CNN Philippines correspondent Anjo Alimario contributed to this report.
The cannabis sector is one of Americas fastest growing industries. Thirty states have passed medical marijuana laws, and nine of those allow adult use. Nearly two-thirds of Americans support legalization. Despite the influx of consumer interest and cash, people of color are increasingly being left out of the green rush.

American attitudes about cannabis have transformed in a generation, yet echoes of the nations failed War on Drugs, implemented in the 1970s by President Richard Nixon and catapulted into a feverish storm during the Ronald Reagan Era, remain. Thiat federal call to action prompted all law enforcement to target people of color. Millions have been prosecuted and incarcerated, some with dubious connections to illegal drugs, particularly marijuana, which remains federally illegal. Meanwhile, minorities remained locked out of potentially the biggest economic boom of our lifetimes. According to a study done by Marijuana Business Daily, more than 80 percent of cannabis businesses are owned by whites, compared to that of less than 5 percent of African Americans and less than 6 percent Hispanic.

The rising number of individual states mandating their own drug enforcement policies and regulating legal cannabis markets has presented a huge opportunity to right past persecution with inclusive business practices. It is the right thing to do and has the potential to positively impact the industrys bottom line.

Green entrepreneurs take note: here are five reasons why promoting diversity in cannabis makes good business sense.

Related: 5 Building Blocks of a Content Market Strategy Unique to Your Dispensary

1. Exposes cannabis to more consumers.

Having a diverse group of employees and business owners who can speak directly to the consumer who identifies with them increases trust and exchange. New minority consumers coming in to do business may feel more comfortable and more open to try cannabis without fear of judgment.

Many consumers of color have been hesitant to embrace the legal market because of persistent stereotypes and lack of visibility. Theres power in connecting with people of similar backgrounds. Minority employees can speak directly to their communitys ailments, empathize with its issues and relate using a shared cultural context. Minority-owned businesses are open doors to communities that would otherwise be skeptical or opposed based on the painful past.

The conversion of black market cannabis buyers into the legal market will allow the market to tap into the trillion dollar spending power of African American, Asian American, Native American and Latinx customers, which means more dollars for both the industry and communities of color.

Related: Cannabis Companies Likely to Raise More in 2018 Than the Last 3 Years Combined

2. Offers a different perspective for entrepreneurs and investors.

To preserve the existing industry, entrepreneurs must shift consumer focus from cannabis as a commodity to an avenue for multiple brands focused on health, wellness and countless other applications. That means broadening outreach and speaking to all segments of our diverse nation, encouraging more people to purchase cannabis products and reap the benefits. That also means creating products that appeal to consumers at multiple price points.

Entrepreneurs must ensure that some products are affordable to those in impoverished areas, giving them access to the medicine. Some communities of color may be unable to afford the current high-end prices of medicine, tinctures or CBD products. It is imperative that the industry make it within reach. This market is currently underserved, but we can change that by changing who makes the decisions. Adding more Black, Latinx and Asian decision-makers can help innovate how we can get cannabis into minority communities without breaking the bank or adding more resources than necessary.

For entrepreneurs and business owners -- cannabis is a global phenomenon -- the industry is constantly changing. A diverse range of household incomes must be able to purchase and access the plant. Tobacco companies have created strongholds in low-income areas with products proven to be harmful, even deadly. As an industry, we must figure how cannabis, with its health and wellness benefits, can have a similar impact. Enlisting minorities on boards and in upper management is an essential bridge ensuring that authentic connections are created to underserved communities.

Related: Marijuana Is a $794 Million Windfall for the States That Have Legalized Adult Use

3. Creates more marketing opportunity within the industry.

Diversity in an industry makes dollars and cents. It increases exposure to product, adding value to your brand and company, which is good for the bottom line of any business. Minority-owned cannabis businesses can tap into lucrative niches currently untapped by the mainstream enterprises, a potential gold mine for investors in search of the next big idea.

Many cannabusinesses currently market to the 18-25 year-old white male demographic. However, people of color are cutting edge influencers and culture creators. Much of todays interest in cannabis can be traced back to hip-hops embrace of the plant two decades ago. Marketing campaigns aimed at diverse audiences will ultimately attract all consumers, particularly those invested in pop culture. Smart entrepreneurs of all backgrounds will close the gap and use it as a competitive advantage.

Related: Italy Accidentally Legalized Pot and Now the Mafia Is Losing Big Money

4. Increases the industrys sustainable growth.

The bigger the industry grows, the better it will be for everyone. A diverse cannabis industry will benefit local communities, business owners and consumers alike.

Cannabusinesses and the overall industry must look at inclusion as a success measurement because community engagement and relationship building are the ultimate anchors of sustainability. From a business standpoint, true diversity has the power to change communities and create partnerships that survive an onslaught. The business would be able to run itself. For the cannabis industry to support the small businesses that will sustain and strengthen the industry, especially in minority communities, we must ensure that businesses are owned by the very same people who live in those places. They know the lay of the land, the needs of the audience and can grow both at the same time.

Related: 3 Ways to Work in Weed Without Ever Touching The Plant

5. Displays the positive cannabis effect and its outreach.

Diversity in cannabis equals positive growth. Those feelings should resonate within the entire industry -- from the consumers, to the budtender serving customers to the business owners and investors funding innovation. Cannabis creates positivity. Diversity creates inclusion. Inclusion stimulates economic growth. Including people of color on the business side of cannabis helps reduce the painful impact of discrimination from draconian drug policies.

Diversity makes the industry bigger, more profitable and more resilient. This positive cannabis effect will spread far beyond communities of color to Americas main streets, and even rural middle America, creating mutual respect and appreciation amongst everyone connected to cannabis -- entrepreneurs, employees and end users. It may sound naive, but the ability of cannabis to change perceptions can help us all expand our narrow and limiting beliefs about people who are different, transforming attitudes and interactions.

*****

Cannabis consumers are a diverse demographic. Consumption is now mainstream, which means that every consumer should have branded experiences that speak uniquely to them. In order to accomplish this , the industry must welcome distinctive voices from all communities. Inclusion is not just a catch phrase, its a managing philosophy. Shifting this paradigm in the industry begins by ensuring that current and future cannabis businesses feature diverse people and points of view. Start by creating opportunities for others.

Related:

5 Reasons Why Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Are Essential in the Cannabis Industry Business

Why Are Only 4 Percent of Cannabis Businesses Owned By African Americans?

10 Inspiring MLK Quotes on Leadership and Purpose



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
DANBURY  Two lanes on I-84 eastbound were closed for about an hour Sunday evening after a motor vehicle accident.

The one-vehicle accident was reported at 6:47 p.m between exits 3 and 4., according to the Connecticut Department of Transportation.
He Yanfu told the China Times that there was a 90% chance that a fully liberalized birth policy will be implemented in 2019.

The Chinese government has hinted at more children per family with a stamp for the year of the Pig. The stamp has a pig family with three children. In 2016, before the introduction of the two child policy there was a stamp with two children.
Japans Space agency is considering SpaceXs Falcon Heavy as the main launch for its HTV-X. Thie HTV-X would be used to supply a new Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway.

The European Space Agency is looking to launch a six-ton lunar station module around 2024. The European Space Agency is also considering the SpaceX Falcon Heavy.

The SpaceX Heavy would cost between $100 to 150 million to launch instead of the $400 million for the Delta IV Heavy or the potential $1 billion for the Space Launch System.
The US government forecasts new sanctions on Iran will cut Irans oil exports by 700,000 to 1 million barrels a day. Iran exported an average of about 2.1 million barrels of oil per day over the last year.

Iran has begun to feel the squeeze as it looks to retain buyers in Asia. The National Iranian Oil Co. reduced official prices for September sales to Asia. Iranian light crude will be sold at the cheapest price in 14 years against a similar product from Saudi Arabia.

Venezuela had targeted producing 1.65 million barrels per day (mb/d) in July but claims actual production came in at about 1.526 mb/d.

The June OPEC report suggested that Venezuela oil output was just 1.34 mb/d. Venezuela might only have produced 1.25 million barrels per day.

Venezuela oil industry is so weak that the US not adding oil sanctions to them. The US does not want to own the eventual collapse of Venezuela.
NEW HAVEN  Living Colour bass player Doug Wimbishs WimBash Music Festival Series to raise money for music education returns to the area Saturday  this time to New Haven, where the show will take place in Veterans Memorial Park at Long Wharf.

The WimBash New Haven Music Festival, which follows shows over the past three years in West Haven, is the 53rd festival in the WimBash Music Series, Wimbish said Monday by phone.

The free festivals have taken place over the past 14 years. They are supported through sponsorships, volunteers and donations, said Wimbish, who won a Grammy Award with Living Colour.

It kind of came together, said Wimbish, who grew up in Hartford. There was a need for kids in the New Haven school system to get some instruments in their hands ... and we decided to chime in and help out.

So this weekend will be a celebration of not just us being able to raise funds for the New Haven school system but ... to bring family and community together, Wimbish said. Its just a celebration  being able to celebrate with friends and family.

WimBash will take place from noon to 10 p.m.

This years WimBash will feature performances by Wimbish with Living Colours Corey Glover and Will Calhoun; guitarist Brandon Taz Niederauer and drummer Raghav Mehrotra of Broadways School of Rock fame; guitarist Marcus Machado; Hartfords Funky Dawgz Brass Band; Jen Pipes Durkin with Soul Power; and Doobie Powell, among others.

Also performing are Brooklyn, N.Y., youth band Unlocking the Truth; Reece Malone, a young guitarist from Dallas; Dave Koltai, president of Supro amplifiers; Berklee College of Music graduate Kyle Ward; West Havens Tears Fall Down; Mystic Sea Horse; Sound Beacon; and the Pete Lucibelli Band.

More Entertainment Milford: Traffic restrictions for Oyster Festival

Hosting the event is producer and mix engineer Chris Lord-Alge.

Past WimBash festivals have raised thousands of dollars for music programs at West Haven High School.

Wimbish said this years event came about after former West Haven Mayor Ed OBrien approached him and said there was some interest in doing something in New Haven this year.

So we started to just engage in finding a way to make this happen, he said.

Sponsors include Peavey Electronics, Spector basses, Supro amplifiers, Eventide and Kala ukeleles, said Wimbishs wife and manager, Diane Nilsson.

The latest WimBash follows closely a Wimbash in the Dominican Republic, done in conjunction with the Dream Project, she said. That event helped raise tens of thousands of dollars globally, she said.

Anyone who wants to support WimBashs goal to raise money for music education in the New Haven Public Schools can contribute via a GoFundMe page at www.gofundme.com/

wimbash-music-festival-

new-havenct

It only takes a moment to give that spark to a kid, Wimbish said.

Wimbish organized the very first WimBash at Sullys Pub in Hartford in 2004 as a welcome home and birthday party for Wimbishs close friend and fellow Sugar Hill Rhythm Section bandmate Skip McDonald.

mark.zaretsky

@hearstmediact.com
HAMDEN  Town police issued a call for information about a missing Hamden man Sunday evening.

Kenneth Chambers, 52, has been missing since Aug. 4, according to police. A Silver Alert was issued on that date.

Chambers is a black man with black hair and brown eyes, police said in a previous announcement.

He stands approximately 5 feet 8 inches tall and 135 pounds.

Hamden police said Sunday he was last seen wearing a blue shirt and blue jeans.

He may have been seen in the area of the Veterans Affairs hospital in West Haven in the recent past, police said.

Anyone with information regarding Chambers is asked to call Hamden Police at 203-230-4000.
GUILFORD  More than 30 people rallied in front of Guilford Town Hall Sunday to save a dog, Simon, a pit bull mix, that the town has scheduled to be euthanized for biting a now 13-year-old boy in August of 2017. The dog has been held by the towns animal shelter ever since.

Dr. David Young of Oxbow Lane, the dogs owner, has an appeal hearing with the state Department of Agriculture Wednesday at 10 a.m., but has been insisting the first selectman rescind the kill order beforehand. The town disagrees it could do so.

At the rally, Young said that the decision to kill the dog for protecting its own property sets a really dangerous precedent; he said he is in the process of filing a federal lawsuit because the towns decision violates his constitutional rights.

At the rally, the overall message from supporters was that the dog had every right to protect its property and should be returned to its family. Some said that dogs serve as a security measure, safer than guns, and the boy should not have trespassed on the Youngs property. Some said they believe people are prejudiced against pit bulls.

Some passersby at the Town Hall next to the large Guilford Town Green, where people often walk dogs, signed a petition asking for the dogs release. The supporters, many of them owners of dogs that include pit bulls, garnered more than 48 signatures and heard many honks of support.

Young said the teenager who was bit appears fine now.

Youngs wife, Deanna, said their insurance paid the boys medical bills but she doesnt think its fair the dog is being punished. I hope the town will do the right thing, she said.

About Simon, a rescue and their only dog right now, she said: Hes a sweet dog. He just loves to be with people and always snuggled up with you.

Young and those that support Simons release have appeared at several Board of Selectmen meetings and Young has reached out for help to save Simon on social media and various media outlets.

Young claims his yard was fenced and the dog has never harmed anyone, but police report that the yard was not completely fenced and neighbors complained about the dog after it was involved in a dog versus dog event in February 2017, according to local media.

At the rally, he said that there is an invisible fence completely around the yard and a wooden and wire fence on the side where the neighbor entered. He said the dog never goes out of the yard, unless they walk him with a harness and leash.

About the hearing, he said, Im hopeful. Im optimistic. But he said his attorney is not, based on past history in these issues. Young also said he is willing to put up another fence.

I want justice to be served, he said. I want Simon to be back home. Hes part of our family.

Kelley Hinke of West Haven said, I believe that any dog that protects their home to an intruder should be recognized as a hero and not as a criminal.

Cindy Vaporis of East Haven, a member of an organization called Desmonds Army, a law advocacy group for dogs and cats, said, This is legalized animal cruelty here.

Louise Cerrone of Wallingford said: If this dog had been a Jack Russell, we wouldnt be standing here.

Laura Bomgardner said: Simon needs to be released immediately.

Linda Harrington of Monroe, a teacher, said she was inspired to come to the rally after debates in class with her students. She noted her school was not far from Newtown and her students argued that a dog provides protection.

Margit Kaye, a 50-year resident of Guilford, also argued that a dog provides homeowners with security.

According to a press release from Mark Goldman of Goldman McCormick Public Relations of New York, Young said that a neighbors teenager cut a fence and trespassed into the yard where the dog was playing with a dog sitter.

The child had entered the yard to get a ball while Young was on vacation, according to Youngs Change.org petition to the first selectman to save the dog.

The release states: The teenager was brandishing a lacrosse stick in a threatening manner. Simon feeling threatened bit the teenager on the leg.

It continues that an animal control officer told the Young family that the dog would be released after a 14-day evaluation as the dog was up to date on its vaccines and had never harmed anyone.

The release mentions Connecticut General State Statues, 22-357, which states, in part: If any dog does any damage to either the body or property of any person, the owner or keeper. shall be liable for the amount of such damage, except when such damage has been occasioned to the body or property of a person who, at the time such damage was sustained, was committing a trespass or other tort, or was teasing, tormenting or abusing such dog.

Young also has an attorney, Thom Page, who has spoken on Youngs behalf.

As of Sunday, more than 12,500 people had signed an online petition to First Selectman Matthew T. Hoey, III to save Simon. Joe Mazza was first selectman at the time of the decision; Hoey elected in November.

Young has also created a GoFundMe page for Simons legal defense. As of Sunday, $2,550 out of a $5,000 goal has been raised since April 10.

The GoFundMe page states that Simon is a mixed breed dog the family rescued in 2011, abandoned after Hurricane Irene, lives with four children (currently only one is home now) and loves the mailman.

Young met with police on Aug. 18, 2017,when the decision was made to put the dog down and a police officer notified Young about a previous meeting (Aug. 14) between neighbors and town officials, but Young said he was unable to attend due to work, according to media reports.

There is also a Save Simon Facebook page with videos and announcements.
LAKEVILLE  Its been 66 years since Connie Smith disappeared.

Connie was only 10 and was attending summer camp in the Northwest Corner when she went missing.

The case remains unsolved, but a new, recent interpretation of the vexing cases facts by a close family member  combined with the recent rediscovery of human remains thousands of miles away (in the Grand Canyon)  may bring resolution to the 66-year-old cold case.

Its fascinating how interest in this case never seems to die. It was all such a long time ago, said Katherine Chilcoat, a former Salisbury town historian, who moved to the area in 1955.

Connies last day

The details of the childs last known moments are culled from the police report confirmed to a reporter by Detective Michael Downs of the Western District Major Crime Squad at the Western District Headquarters.

According to the report, at about 7:50 a.m. on July 16, 1952, while her fellow campers headed to breakfast, Connie said she was going to return an ice pack she had used for an injury to the dispensary. She ended up leaving the ice pack on her bed in the tent she shared with seven girls and heading in the opposite direction. That morning, she had had horseplay with a group of female campers and her nose was bloodied. Connie, the daughter of wealthy ranchers and the granddaughter of a former Wyoming governor, then trudged a half-mile of winding dirt road to the stone pillars that mark the camp entrance. She left Camp Sloane at 124 Indian Mountain Road and proceeded right onto Indian Mountain Road.

The police report reveals the camps gatekeeper, August Epp, whose house was nearby, later told police that about 8:15 a.m.: I saw this girl come out of the gate and head north towards Lakeville. I think she stopped to pick some flowers, then continued. He added, I didnt think it was one of the camp girls. She was so tall I thought it was a counselor. Thats why I did not pay much attention to her.

On that day, the weather was warm, and the temperature had already risen to 79 degrees  the first day of a heat wave, according to the report. Connies shoulder-length brown hair was cut in bangs and tied with a red ribbon.

According to the archival weather site, Weather Underground, the skies were mostly cloudy and Connie may have felt the strong, 6 mph breeze from the west and southwest upon her face. Despite the heat, she wore a long-sleeved shirt and a bright red zippered windbreaker. Her shorts were blue with plaid cuffs. She was thought to carry a black zippered purse containing photos of her friends (children at the camp were not allowed to have cash). Wearing tan shoes, she may have seen on her left the whitewashed brick structure of Deep Lake Farm, which had cattle, and Aryemont, another farm on the right side of the road, police reported at the time.

Downs confirmed that in walking a quarter of a mile north of the camps entrance, the 5 feet tall , 100-pound girl passed a Lakeville couple, Hubbs E. Horstman, of Millerton Road in Lakeville, and his wife, who were out for an early morning walk. They did not speak to the girl. Farther along Indian Mountain Road approaching a half-mile from Camp Sloane, Connie knocked on the front door of housewife Alice Walsh.

Connie asked the woman: Could you tell me the way to Lakeville?

Continue on up the hill and turn right on Route 44, Walsh responded.

Do you mean straight up the hill?

Walsh looked into the girls blue eyes and noted that the girl looked as if she had been crying, police reports said, but it wasnt her business. She later said girls from the camp were always stopping at the house and asking directions to Lakeville.

Thats right, straight up the hill, Walsh reiterated, going inside. When the woman came out to her front porch a few minutes later, she glanced up the road, noting that the little girl in the red jacket and blue shorts had crossed Route 112 and was walking up the hill.

Perhaps double-checking her own progress in an unfamiliar region may have been understandable. Connie was quite nearsighted, according to her family, and was supposed to be wearing eyeglasses, but hers were broken the night before she disappeared. Family members said Connies uncertainty about her whereabouts was uncharacteristic for someone so at home in the country.

But regardless of the reason, before she reached Route 112, police report that Connie walked up the driveway of a nearby house farther along Indian Mountain Road. She asked two maids at the servants cottage adjoining the Frederick L. Cadman house for directions to Lakeville. They told her to turn right at the top of the hill. They then watched Connie, not knowing they would be amongthe last people to see her .

Where did she go?

Indian Mountain School, a private elementary school, sat around the corner if one turned onto Route 112. Nearby on Route 112, there were also three small houses. On the left side of the corner there was a Dutch brick house, built in the 1740s, which once belonged to Colonel Elisha Sheldon of the U.S. Revolutionary War. Route 112 was once an old Native American Indian trail and had been a route used to haul ore from the local mines to a Lime Rock furnace where it was smelted, according to Salisbury town historian Jean McMillen.

But Connie did not turn either way on Route 112; she followed the directions and proceeded farther up a hill, staying on Indian Mountain Road. A short while later, hitting Route 44 and turning right, five or six large Victorian houses stood on either side of the road, McMillen said. There were no businesses nearby, police reported.

Traffic on that Wednesday morning along Route 44 leading into town was not noted in the police report, according to Detective Downs. But according to a July 11, 1954, Charleston Gazette article, car traffic was heavy. Shopkeepers were hurrying to their businesses. Near Belgo Road, Connie stood on the right side of the road, the south side, with her thumb out, trying to hitch a ride from John Brun, and his wife, who were heading to Lakeville to work. Through their rear view mirror the Bruns could see her walking along toward town.

McMillen noted that two American Revolutionary War-era gravestones for a soldier and his daughter were at the time (and still) located on the hill at Belgo Road and Route 44. At the time there were also chicken coops at the place where Connie was last seen.

At 8:45 Mrs. Frank E. Barnett, a housewife, was drove along Route 44 from Millerton. Just before turning onto Belgo Road, she later said she saw the little girl walking east on the north side of Route 44.

Connies entire walk in the morning heat from the Camp Sloane entrance to this spot, 1.4 miles, would have taken about a half hour on foot. At that point, despite the area being heavily trafficked, Connie vanished.

A national search

Smiths disappearance prompted a national search, and the largest search party in Connecticut history.

The case was 66 years old July 16, and investigators are still no closer to solving the mystery. Even as the case drew its armchair detectives, true detectives, astute blog writers, as well as innumerable inquiring journalists down its rabbit hole, a family member has provided a perspective that could solve the case.

Working in recent years with the Smith family, Sandy Bausch is an independent researcher in Connecticut who has been fascinated with the case since she was a little girl. Her research has often put her in contact with forensic medical examiners and cold case detectives in Connecticut and Arizona. Bauschs father, Charles Hyatt, had been a State Trooper at the Troop B Barracks in North Canaan in the 1960s, and the name Connie Smith spoken about during her childhood sparked interest because it was also the name of Bauschs cousin.

There are so many twists and turns to Connies case, Bausch said.

Bausch added that an ironic part of the disappearance was that at the time, there were significantly less trees locally than today that could have provided hiding spaces.

Charcoal burners deforested the region in the 18th century in the iron ore smelting operations, she said about parts of Lakeville. The area was wide open with fields that State Troopers later walked and drove World War II jeeps through in search of Connie.

My whole interest was why she walked away from the camp, Bausch speculated. I felt it was due to an altercation that continued into the next morning. I think there was a cultural divide between the daughter of a rancher and girls who were from the city.

The Smith family

The events that followed were also noted in the police report. Later that morning on July 16, after the camp discovered Connie was missing and the police were alerted, her parents were contacted. The Smiths, who were divorced and living apart (though amicably), were questioned. Kidnapping was quickly ruled out by inside and outside the family.

Neither of her parents saw or heard from Connie after her disappearance. No ransom note was received. According to Detective Downs, Connies mother, Helen Smith, had visited Connie at Camp Sloane July 13 for Connies birthday before she went missing. The mother reported that Connie had been in good spirits and asked for permission to stay at the camp longer. Her mother refused.

By mid-afternoon on July 16, the police decided this was more than a typical lost child case. Police barracks across the state were alerted; drivers in their jeeps explored forest terrain; bloodhounds bounded up various local trails. Planes from the Connecticut Wing of the Civil Air Patrol and Air Force planes from Westover Field, Massachusetts, flew over the small town. The Connecticut Trail Riders Association took a big weekend ride through the woods. No body or traces of the childs belongings were found.

The family canvassed with missing child posters: $3,000 if found alive ($27,908.38 in 2018 value) and $1,000 for recovery of the body ($9,302.79 in 2018 value), both before January 1, 1954. One such poster hung in the local town hall in Salisbury, until the building burned down in 1985.

Connies father, Peter Smith and his ex-wife, Helen, arrived in Lakeville to help in the search. Mr. Smith wore cowboy boots and a 10-gallon hat, prompting people to recall him as a Marlboro Man. Smith returned to the area several times throughout the years. He appeared on The Art Linkletter Show, soliciting help in the search for his daughter. In a 1984 interview, Smith said he imagined his daughter in the face of every woman he passed who would be about her age, hoping always that something would turn up.

During the searches, Smith noted Connies affection for animals and flowers, and how she enjoyed reading comics.

Helen Smith expressed her despair during the 1954 interview with the Charleston Gazette: Whether she is alive or dead I want her back. Ive got to know what happened to her. Christmas was always such a big event in our house. But this year I feel I cant stand it. Each day is a little harder to face.

Later, Helen Smith would tell her son: Not knowing is worse than a death.
Kimberly Streater was pregnant with her third of six children when she called her friend for a ride to the hospital after sustaining a hit to her stomach by her then-husband.

When she reached the hospital, Streater, not yet 28 weeks pregnant, alerted personnel that her baby was comingnow. They said, No, no, hes not coming, after I told them he was, she recalled. Minutes later, Howie was born at 3 pounds and 1.5 ounces in the admitting area of the hospital, just as Streater had predicted.

Statistically, the preterm birth of Streaters baby does not come as a surprise. In Connecticut and nationwide, black women and their infants suffer disproportionately worse pregnancy-related health outcomes than white women.

The March of Dimes 2017 Premature Birth Report Card for Connecticut revealed that between 2013 and 2015, 8.4 percent of all infants born to white women were premature, compared with 12.4 percent of infants born to black women. Statewide, after a complication-free delivery, black women are twice as likely as white women to be readmitted to a hospital within 30 days, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, which drew from statistics maintained by the Connecticut Department of Public Health.

These racially disparate outcomes mirror persistent racial gaps nationwide. Babies born to black women are more than twice as likely to die in the first year of life than babies born to white women, and black women are 243 percent more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related complications, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

These statistics arent new. Whats new is how some professionals throughout Connecticut  from psychiatric researchers to community activists to medical doctors and progressive health centers  are reframing the way racial disparities are addressed: by re-examining their root causes and coming up with new solutions. This close examination of racial disparities in pregnancy-related outcomes coincides with a recent push to address the nations discouraging overall maternal death rates, which increased by more than 25 percent between 2000 and 2014, while those in other developed countries declined, according to a study published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

New Haven Healthy Start (NHHS), a community-based program, has been working for three decades to identify and eliminate racial disparities in birth outcomes. The organization has examined several factors as possible culprits in the racial divide, including poverty, health insurance, and access to prenatal care. Ultimately, they homed in on one factor.

Racism. Discriminatory practices based on race. Thats what weve been focusing on, said Kenn Harris, president of the board of directors of the National Healthy Start Association and project director at NHHS. In response, they offer a program where women, regardless of their race, feel truly supported throughout their pregnancy.

Meeting moms where they are

At the heart of NHHSs simple yet highly effective strategy is its care coordination service model. They do outreach at strategically located places where pregnant women in the programs target population are likely to visit, including community health centers and homeless agencies. Every participant is assigned a care coordinator, who provides an array of supportfrom helping them sign up for state Medicaid to arranging transportation and childcare to reaching out to them if they miss a doctor appointment.

The key to these care coordinators and other employees at NHHS? They look like the women they serve, and, in many cases, theyve been through similar situations. Natasha Ray, a 49-year-old resident of East Haven, had her first of four children at 16; all her infants were born premature. Now shes the core service manager at NHHS.

My interest in the program was personal. Here was a program whose focus is on prematurity, health disparities and strengthening the fragmented system that families must navigate. I feel that this was an opportunity to be the person for so many mothers-to-be that I did not have. When you know better, chances are you will do better, Ray said.

The approach works. In 1987, one in every 50 infants born in New Haven died in the first year of life. Today, only one out of every 222 infants whose mothers are enrolled in NHHS dies in the first year of life, according to the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, which runs the Healthy Start program in New Haven. In 2017, 1,402 women were enrolled in NHHS. Of these, 43 percent were black, 38.5 percent were mixed race, 16 percent white, and 2.5 percent Asian.

Another program making a difference in the health of black moms is The New Haven MotherS (MOMS) Partnership. This community/academic partnership, founded in 2011 by Yale associate professor of psychiatry Megan Smith, DrPH, MPH, seeks to improve maternal mental health among low-income women through a community-driven approach.

Smith said she started the MOMS partnership because of increasing racial inequities she observed related to mental health care among New Haven residents. Theyre more likely to drop out of mental health care programs, and less likely to receive high quality mental health care, Smith said of the women targeted by the MOMS partnership. Since its inception, the program has reached more than 500 low-income moms and pregnant women from New Haven, about 70 percent of whom are women of color.

The program seeks out mothers and pregnant women in targeted neighborhoods of New Haven, requesting that they complete mental health assessments. Those who demonstrate need receive cognitive behavioral therapy in familiar settings, including the second floor of the citys Stop & Shop grocery store. The treatment setting is non-threatening; so too are the community mental health ambassadors (CMHAs), employees who recruit participants and accompany them to treatment.

CMHAs are mothers from the local community who work alongside traditional mental health clinicians. Most possess customer service experience; they all empathize with the participants struggles.

Smith attributes the programs overwhelming success largely to the ambassadors and the community settings where they serve women. To date, more than 70 percent of participants registered for cognitive behavioral therapy through the partnership have adhered to treatment, and more than 50 percent report decreased depressive symptoms.

Streater, of New Haven, who gave birth prematurely to two of her six children, is a CMHA. She learned about the job when taking a free stress management class about five years ago. Streater says she didnt have much of a support network as a pregnant or new mom. It was pretty much me, she said.

Black women might be more likely to go to the doctors office when the doctor looks like them. Dr. Marcia Tejeda, a black OB/GYN who works in Waterbury, acknowledges that she probably sees 5 to 7 percent more black patients than the other physicians in her group practice  a choice based on her patients preferences.

Although Tejeda says she feels all the physicians with whom she works make a tremendous effort to give all women excellent care, she does suggest that, in general, doctors and other medical professionals could benefit from education and training that focuses on how to improve their interactions with black patients, including learning how to better understand their culture and improve ways of communicating with them. Tejeda also proposes that race-specific research initiatives occur more routinely.

Now that we see the mortality rate is higher for black women, we need to do research thats specially geared toward black women, Tejeda said. That will be the key to decreasing mortality for black women and improving outcomes for their babies.

This story was reported under a partnership with the Connecticut Health I-Team (www.c-hit.org)
NEW HAVEN  In this age of personalized medicine, sequencing the genes in a patients tumor can reveal mutations that may be treatable with targeted medications.

But a new Yale School of Medicine-led study published Aug. 7 in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that testing for many such mutations does not improve the chances of a patients survival.

Data was analyzed from 5,688 patients with non-small cell lung cancer who were treated in a community cancer clinic rather than a large research institution. About 15 percent received broad-based sequencing of the tumors genome; the rest were tested only for two mutations, known as EGFR and ALK, for which medications are available.

Incorporating variables into the analysis, the researchers found that mortality rates after 12 months were 41.1 percent for those who had the broad-based sequencing and 44.4 percent for those who just had the tests for EGFR and ALK.

I think our ability to sequence our genes in lung cancer tumors has really outpaced our ability to get patients the drugs that they need when they find a genetic mutation, said Dr. Carolyn Presley, lead author of the paper and a geriatric oncology specialist at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, who worked at Yale during the research. In this study, we did not see a survival difference between testing two genes vs. testing 30 or more genes.

That is largely because drugs have yet to be developed to switch off those mutations, which drive the growth of the cancer, Presley said.

Other issues raised by the findings include the need for faster approval of new drugs by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for health insurers to pay for experimental drugs and the high cost to patients, Presley said.

It gives us a baseline, said Dr. Roy Herbst, a study co-author and chief of medical oncology at the Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital. It tells us, now we know, despite all the gene testing, the survival benefits are not being seen because we have not matched the patient with the right drug.

Among the lessons, according to Herbst, is the importance of clinical studies to test medications to treat more genetic mutations. He said there are about 50 such trials being conducted at Yale to find drugs that will act on more mutations.

Without large clinical trials and data, youre treating each patient separately, Herbst said.

In order to do that, once every two weeks here at Yale, we have a precision medical tumor board that discusses how best to match patients with the drugs available, he said.

The study also found that few of those whose tumors were tested for a wide range of mutations received treatments targeted to their mutations. A lot of patients who got tested for multiple genes, we would have expected them to get this targeted treatment, Presley said. However, there was not an additional benefit over testing for EGFR or ALK.

Presley said that, in addition to the lack of drugs developed for additional genetic mutations, other medications werent given because health insurers would not approve them, or because they werent approved by the FDA or because the co-payments were too expensive for the patients to afford.

She said there were other mutations that we would have expected patients to get targeted treatments for but they did not: ROS1, MET and BRAF. Medications for those were not FDA-approved at the time of this study, she said.

If we repeated that study basically between 2016 and now, maybe we would see improved outcomes because the field of lung cancer is moving that fast, Presley said.

She said it is expensive to do the test itself but the cost of the test really pales in comparison to the cost of drugs.

Presley, who was recruited to Ohio State to build a comprehensive cancer and aging program, brought up the public policy issues raised by developing new drugs targeted to individual patients cancers. We have the right to try but theres not a right to be able to afford your medications and I really think thats a major issue here, she said. We cant expect our patients with advanced lung cancer to pay thousands of dollars a month for their medications because they dont want to bankrupt their families.

When drugs are not approved for a particular disease, for every patient we have to ask the drug company to reduce cost or we have to ask them to help the patient involved, Presley said. We have whole teams of people to fill out the paperwork, she said. Its incredibly cumbersome. It can delay [treatment] by weeks.

Dr. Cary Gross, director of Yales Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy and Effectiveness Research Center, and senior author of the JAMA paper, said, gene sequencing now can test for dozens or  even 300 mutations of the gene pattern at the same time, Gross said. In fact, according to Herbst, since 2016, treatments have been developed for mutations in genes such as ROS1, BRAF, RET, NTRK, HER2 and PDL1. The mutations are not necessarily found in smokers either. The EGFR mutation is found in more nonsmokers than smokers, according to Presley.

While its important to continue testing for a wide variety of genetic mutations, Gross said, As were rolling out these new genetic tests, we should be looking to see if theyre helping people.  We need to be really carefully assessing whether these tests are helpful.

He said the JAMA study focused on patients at community cancer centers. Were not talking about big research institutions like Yale.  Frankly, at institutions like ours we should be doing these big clinical tests.  The question we wanted to address is, can you get these multiple gene-sequencing tests performed at community practices. We wanted to see how often [do] the results of these tests guide treatment decisions.

In some of these settings, if the oncology practice is not using this data as precision medicine  with very little data out there a patient could be getting a treatment for a gene abnormality when we dont know if it is helpful or not. For patients who are getting these genetic tests, they should make sure theyre going to a center where the doctors and the team are very familiar with how to interpret these genetic tests.

Despite the lack of improvement in survival among those whose tumors were subjected to broader gene-sequencing, Herbst said, Im in favor of profiling. I think its important to know as much as we can about the enemy.

Both Herbst and Gross called the study a call to arms. Gross said thats true on two fronts: One is to find new treatments.  We should also be evaluating new testing approaches.  As were rolling out these new genetic tests we should be looking to see if theyre helping people.

Herbst emphasized that anyone with non-small cell lung cancer should have the tests done for EGFR and ALK. The question is, should you have a lot more than that done. That takes more time and more expense, he said. That will require more research.

I was disappointed by the studys findings about survival, Herbst said. It wasnt what I expected. But it was a time when drugs werent available. He said he expected survival rates to improve as more research is conducted, more clinical trials held and more drugs put on the market.

edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382
Authorities are looking for a man accused in the shooting of a 5-year-old girl last month as she walked on a Newark street with her family.

Jamar Battle (Newark Department of Public Safety)

Jamar Battle, 30, of Newark, is being sought on a charge of unlawful possession of a weapon, city police said in a statement.

The girl was walking with her father and siblings on the 200 block of Avon Street around 11:30 p.m. on July 4 when she was struck by gunfire. She was treated and released from University Hospital.

Newark police didn't immediately offer a response to questions from NJ Advance Media about the charge.

Anyone with information is asked to call the crime stopper tip line at 1-877-695-8477 or 1-877-695-4867.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Authorities have charged a Paulsboro man in the Saturday night shooting death of a Woodbury resident.

Misael Ruiz Garcia, 32, of Woodbury, died of a gunshot wound to the head and was found outside of his home on Centre Street around 11:30 p.m.

Thadius Wyatt Oswald, 19, was arrested without incident on Monday in Gloucester City, according to the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office. U.S. Marshals assisted the GCPO's fugitive unit in the arrest.

Authorities have not described a motive in the killing.

Oswald, described by the prosecutor's office as a factory worker, is charged with first-degree murder, first-degree robbery, third-degree theft, third-degree burglary and weapons offenses.

Investigators believe additional witnesses could provide "crucial information" in the case. Witnesses are asked to contact GCPO Detective John Petroski at 856-498-6238 or Detective Alex Phillips of the Woodbury City Police Department at 609-352-3919.

Information may also be emailed to the prosecutor's office at tips@co.gloucester.nj.us.

Oswald was placed in the Salem County Correctional Facility pending a detention hearing.

Agencies assisting in the investigation were Woodbury, West Deptford, Harrison, Gloucester City police and the Camden and Gloucester sheriff's department and the and the Woodbury Fire Department.

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us: nj.com/tips.
JERSEY CITY -- A Jersey City police officer accused of leaving the scene of a Hoboken crash has filed a counter charge against the driver of the other vehicle, alleging she failed to yield to an emergency vehicle.

"It is a cross complaint situation," said attorney Steven Sciancalepore, who represented Jersey City Police Officer Pedro Clavero at a hearing Monday morning in Union City Municipal Court.

Carmen Compres, 62, of Hoboken, told police that on June 14 at 2:33 p.m. she was driving north in her Subaru Forester on Jackson Street toward the intersection of Paterson Avenue. She said she heard the siren of an emergency vehicle but did not see one, according to the crash report.

She previously told The Jersey Journal that she saw no flashing lights and continued through the intersection. That's when Clavero's Ford Explorer slammed into the front driver side of the Subaru, according to the crash report.

Compres said she made eye contact with the driver in the marked police SUV but he did not get out. She said the Ford backed up and drove away, continuing on Paterson Avenue. Her fender and lights were smashed and the repair estimate was about $1,500, she said.

Hoboken investigators found a license plate at the scene that connected Calvero to the crash, a source said. Compres said she was then called back to the police station to sign a summons citing Clavero with the motor vehicle offense of leaving the scene of an accident.

A Jersey City spokeswoman previously said Clavero was responding to a call at the time of the crash. She also said the crash and its aftermath are under investigation within the department. An update on that internal probe was not immediately available.

After Clavero made his first court appearance on the offense on June 28, his former lawyer said the officer's job status had not changed as a result of the incident. Clavero was in full uniform when he appeared in court today.

The matter was moved to Union City because Compres is employed by Hoboken as a crossing guard.

Clavero, who has since switched attorneys, was previously represented Jeffrey Garrigan. Compres is being represented by Joseph Siclari. The attorneys asked Union City Municipal Court Judge Lilia A. Munoz for additional time for the discovery process. She set Sept. 25 for the next hearing in the matter.

Generally speaking, the matter can now be settled through an agreement by the parties or by a ruling by the judge following a trial. The Union City prosecutor is not involved in the case.

Compres was present for the hearing, but neither she nor Clavero said anything during the proceeding.

After Clavero's first hearing in the matter, his former attorney said the officer was on duty, had his siren on and was responding to an official call at the time. The lawyer chose not to expand on why the Jersey City officer was in Hoboken at the time.
-- Police responded to a call of shots fired Sunday morning, a city spokeswoman said.

Just after midnight on Aug. 12, Jersey City police officers responded to a call of shots fired at the intersection of Bidwell Avenue and Martin Luther King Drive near Audubon Park on a call of shots fired, city spokeswoman Kim Wallace-Scalcione said.

No injuries were reported. The investigation is ongoing.

Corey W. McDonald may be reached at cmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @coreymacc. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
JERSEY CITY -- A 21-year-old Jersey City man will face up to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty on Friday to leaving the scene of a crash that claimed the lives of two teens on the city's Western Slope in October.

Rashaun Bell, of Jersey City, pleaded guilty to two counts of leaving the scene of the Oct. 18, 2017 crash in the area of Terrace Avenue and Leonard Street in which Elionel Jimenez, 15, and Alexander Rosas Flores, 16, died.

The boys were riding a single bicycle down two steep sections of Leonard Street when they crossed Terrace Avenue onto the Secaucus Road ramp of Route 1&9 North and were struck by the car driven by Bell.

Jimenez was pronounced dead at the scene on the Secaucus Road ramp. Rosas Flores was thrown over the 8-foot divider and fell about 30 feet down to Route 1&9. He was pronounced dead the next day at the Jersey City Medical Center.

Bell's heavily damaged vehicle was found empty a short distance from the collision.

At a previous hearing, Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Lynne Seborowski said Bell's girlfriend, Denasia Felder, 20, was a passenger in the car and she worked to hide Bell's identity from investigators. A second woman in the car gave up Bell and he surrendered two days after the crash.

Also on Friday, Felder pleaded guilty to two counts of hindering Bell's apprehension and she faces up to three years in prison, Hudson County Prosecutor's Office spokesman Raymond Worrall said.

Both pleaded guilty before Hudson County Superior Court Judge Patrick Arre in the Hudson County Administration Building in Jersey City.

Felder is to be sentenced by Arre on Sept. 7 and Bell is to be sentenced by the judge on Sept. 14. Bell has remained incarcerated since the crash.
Hamilton police are investigating the death of a man whose body was found inside a burning home in the township on Sunday afternoon.

Police responded along with local fire personnel around 12:18 p.m. to a report of a structure fire at 75 Irving Court, where firefighters found the unresponsive victim in the living room, according to a statement from the Hamilton Police Division.

Hamilton Companies operating on the scene of a house fire. One civilian transported to a local hospital by RWJ EMS Posted by Hamilton Township Professional Firefighters on Sunday, August 12, 2018

The man was removed from the home and taken by ambulance to St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton, where he was later pronounced dead, police said. The Middlesex County Medical Examiner's Office is expected to conduct an autopsy.

Though authorities said the fire does not appear to be suspicious, they have asked anyone with information to call Detective Joseph Ialacci of the Hamilton Police Criminal Investigations Section at 609-689-5822, or the Hamilton Police Crime Tip Hotline at 609-581-4008.

Thomas Moriarty may be reached at tmoriarty@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ThomasDMoriarty. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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We all know John Regina's pain. It's the world we live in today, dealing with corporations that are too big to fail. And too big to succeed - at serving their customers.

Cable. Insurance. Gas and electric. Financial services. Airlines. And on and on.

We live in the Age of the Automated Voice.

Welcome to Verizon Wireless. This call may be recorded.

Welcome to Jersey Central Power & Light. A First Energy Company. Your call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance.

Thank you for calling Optimum! Let's connect more.

Or, most times, not connect at all.

Then come the prompts.

Press 1 for this. Press 2 for that. And on and on until Press 9 to return to the main menu.

Worse is the voice activation.

In a few short words, please tell us how we can help today.

"Speak to a representative."

I'm sorry, I didn't get that.

"Speak to a representative!"

You want to make a payment, right. Say yes if this is correct or no for other options.

NO! SPEAK TO A &%@#$ REPRESENTATIVE!

I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Let me connect you to a representative.

More Muzak, interrupted every minute or so by ... Your call is very important to us but we are experiencing a high volume of calls. Please stay on the line for the next available representative.

And your life ticks by ... the ticking sound of a timebomb ... and you wonder, "How did we get here? When did we, as Americans, grow to accept this robotic "customer service"?

For John Regina, this corporate brick wall was just aggravating. It cost him money. About 25 grand.

A New Jersey Advance Media story Friday by Amanda Hoover told Regina's long and winding road to frustration with Jersey Central Power & Light. A First Energy Company. This last bit is important because good old JCP&L, with the J for Jersey, is now part of a utilities conglomerate headquartered in Akron Ohio.

It started as Ohio Edison (named for the guy who invented the light bulb in New Jersey) and has now grown to be the corporate umbrella of 10 electric companies serving 6 million people in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York and New Jersey.

John Regina is one of them and had a very specific problem. He was overcharged by about $1,000 a year for 24 years. As soon as he moved into his Bedminster townhouse, he thought his electric bill was high for a single guy living alone. It was something like a family would spend. Like the family that lived next door.

He says he called JCP&L from the start to ask why his bill was so high.

"I think the first time was 1994, the second was '96 or '97, a few more times," he said. "They told me they had no records of my calls before 2011. So, when they say, 'this call may be recorded for quality assurance' your wonder if that's just b.s."

On July 9, when a family next door moved out and had their electric disconnected, Regina's townhouse went dark. He called JCP&L to see if there was an outage. He was told no, it was just his house. A technician was sent out and told him his meter was tagged out. Meaning shut off. That's when Regina realized his meter was running up his neighbor's electric use, and vice-a-versa.

"It took this guy all of 10 minutes to figure out what I had been complaining about for 24 years," he said.

And that's when Regina, like many of us in our daily lives, descended into phone prompt hell and trying to get a common-sense response from yet another corporation that, as said above, is too big to fail but also too big to adequately serve its customers.

"This is how it is these days," Regina said. "I call it the tree of calls. You get bounced around and around, and in the end, no one can help you. It happens with insurance companies, medical bills, everything."

What Regina wanted was a full refund of money, which he estimated to be about $25,000.

JCP&L acknowledged he overpaid about $1,000 a year, but under Board of Public Utilities regulations, the company can't repay - or collect - bill errors beyond six years. Again, this is the world we live in, where rules and regulations favor the corporation, not the consumers. We, as consumers, don't hire lobbyists who steer legislation.

But Regina is not the kind to give up easy. He climbed up and down the phone tree, swing from limb to limb, trying to get to a higher authority.

"They wouldn't give me the address of the company president," he said. "Can you imagine that? I remember when the phone company and electric company had offices in town. You walk in and talk to someone."

Those were the days. These days ... "the person at extension 123 is not available. The mailbox is full. Goodbye."

So, after telling his story a dozen times to different representatives, Regina went the old-fashioned route. He wrote letters. He found the address online and wrote letters.

"No one was answering emails, so I wrote letters Charles Jones, the CEO and president of First Energy, and Leila Vespoli, the vice president. They're in Ohio. And I send one to James Fakult (the JCP&L boss)," Regina said. "I didn't hear anything back. Not even a form letter."

He was told by JCP&L he can file an appeal to the BPU for a full refund. More red tape for the little guy.

In the meantime, JCP&L first offered him $6,200 credit on his future electric bills.

"I told them, 'I'm 66 years old, I'll be dead before I spend $6,000 in electricity," he said.

Then they offered a cash settlement of the $6,200 but, he said, "that's not confirmed yet." More calls and more letters, and more frustration are on the horizon.

He wants the full amount. Not only does he deserve it, he's earned that much in aggravation.

Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarkDiIonno. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
By Jay Webber

The summer sun can shine light on a lot of things. This year, it is shining on the great and growing success of the American economy.

Last quarter, our national GDP grew by over 4 percent, faster than it has in years. Unemployment is near 50-year lows, wages are up, consumer confidence is at a 17-year high, and small business confidence is at a 34-year high. The present is bright, and the future is hopeful and promising. Now is the time to embrace that momentum and together pursue new, positive opportunities for our country.

I'm running for Congress because I want to lead the movement to accelerate our progress. I've already led the pro-growth movement in New Jersey, fighting to reduce the sales tax, eliminate the inheritance and estate taxes, and reduce gross income taxes by 10 percent. I'll do the same in Washington.

There's much to build upon. The residents of New Jersey's 11th Congressional District benefit from the recent national tax reductions and reform more than any other people in the state. In fact, according to official numbers, families in the 11th will see an average tax cut of $6,000 when all is said and done. That's a big boost to families struggling to save for college, plan for retirement, or pay medical expenses -- and the GOP deserves credit for that success.

Make no mistake, I will never shy away from standing up to leaders in my own party if I think they are wrong.

I will support President Trump when he's right, oppose him when he's wrong, and always put New Jersey first. That's what I have always done, whether our governor's name was Corzine, Christie or Murphy. Not only have I spoken out against Govs. Jon Corzine's and Phil Murphy's tax increases and spending boondoggles, I also voted to override Gov. Chris Christie's vetoes and spoke out against his tax, spend and borrowing plans when I thought he was wrong. That kind of fair and consistent behavior is what my constituents expect, and it's the way it should be.

But New Jersey's citizens also expect their elected representatives to reach across the aisle to get things done. So, despite some areas of disagreement with my Democrat colleagues, I have worked with members of both parties in the Assembly to stop sexual predators from getting jobs in our schools, to increase funding for victims of domestic violence and to find creative ways to create jobs and grow the economy.

Most recently, I was proud to be a part of a bipartisan coalition that came together to lift the state cap on the deduction of property taxes. Now I'm ready to go to Washington to work on raising or eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes at the federal level, as well.

It's important that voters realize that my opponent, Mikie Sherrill, has shown no indication that she will be anything more than a partisan naysayer. She vocally opposes Congress' recent tax cuts, only looking for the negatives in what was undeniably a huge and successful tax-reduction plan. Just this June, when Murphy --her key political ally -- piled a massive $1.4 billion tax increase on top of the already-worst-in-the-nation tax burden in New Jersey, Sherrill didn't say a word. That selective outrage and hyper-partisan reflex of never admitting that anything a Republican does can be good for America would only contribute to the dysfunction we see in Washington.

To keep America and New Jersey moving forward, we should keep turning to optimistic and positive policies that empower Americans, improve our economy, create more high-wage jobs, and protect Medicare and Social Security. Our present experience tells us that cutting taxes and burdensome regulations will grow the economy and expand opportunities for everyone to live happier, more productive lives. Let's keep going in that positive direction with real results, together.

Jay Webber, a Republican, is a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in New Jersey's 11th Congressional District. He represents Morris County in the New Jersey General Assembly.

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By Brian Regal

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley's famous novel, "Frankenstein" (1818). It's in part the story of how we create monsters out of those things that worry us the most.

We humans have been creating monsters all the way back to the earliest civilizations. Even before that our Neanderthal ancestors likely saw monsters around every corner and in every strange face: the same way we still do. The study of the history of monsters is the study of the history of human fear and hatred. You can tell what scares people the most by the monsters they create.

The English word monster comes from the Latin, monstrum, for something that points prophetically to things to come. The Sumerians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians had hosts of monsters they had to deal with. The Greeks had so many monsters to worry about we still talk about them. The ancient Greeks created the centaurs (half man, half horse), for example, because of their anxieties over neighboring people who might enter their lands. The cyclops helped them explain the terrors of the unknown while the sirens did the same for their fears of what lurked out on the islands of the Mediterranean.

In the Middle Ages, fear of foreigners caused Europeans to conjure up the concept of the Monstrous Races as a way of explaining the new and different people they were encountering in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Stories of dark skinned people or any people a little different from themselves led to belief in the blemmyae (people with no heads, but their faces in their chests), the scipodii (people with one giant foot), the cynocephali (dog headed people), and others.

The "monsters" that people create today might look different from those created throughout history -- such as cyclops and Frankenstein's monster -- but the underlying ideas are the same.

Foreigners weren't just different, they were dangerous. When a child was born with a deformity it was called a monster because their presence meant terrible things would happen. Witches killed babies and drank their blood. Monsters brought plague, famine, pestilence and other horrors.

What about today? What are the monsters which cause us to quake in our boots and grab for our guns?

Today, the monsters might look different, but the underlining ideas are the same. There is little difference between the ancient Greek fear of centaurs, the medieval fear of the scipodii, or the Early Modern fear of werewolves, and the modern bigot's fear of black people, women, transgender and gay people, or immigrants.

Throughout history political and religious leaders have stoked fear and hatred in their followers by pointing out how "they" (and it doesn't matter who "they" are as long as they are not "us") will do terrible things to our nearest and dearest if we don't crush them down before they invade and infest our pristine lands.

All along scholars and the more reasonable in society have tried to tell us that people don't actually turn into werewolves, vampires don't really suck your blood, and that there are not roving gangs of demons in your neighborhood waiting to steal your organs, rape your dog, or run off with your daughter.

For their efforts they get called closed-minded at best, and un-patriotic allies of the evil ones at worst.

Victor Frankenstein's creation was not the monster, he simply is that thing which we project against. The "monster" just wanted to be left alone. No one had anything to fear from him any more than people need to fear werewolves.

There are things to worry about in our society, but immigrants and women and gay people are not them.

Don't let someone convince you witches are working against you (they will not call them witches). Don't let the illusion of monsters blind you. It's not these weird looking creatures who will steal your home or your land or your freedom.

The monsters that actually do that will look just like you.

Brian Regal teaches the history of science at Kean University. His latest book, co-authored with Frank J. Esposito, is The Secret History of the Jersey Devil: How Quakers, Hucksters, and Benjamin Franklin Created a Monster. It is published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

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For someone whose kid is living with a life-threatening illness, it must come as no small relief that an embattled congressman who tried to make health care prohibitively expensive for people with pre-existing conditions, like diabetes, just joined the "Congressional Diabetes Caucus."



Thanks for your leadership, Rep. Tom MacArthur.



This caucus, made up of a few hundred members of Congress, helps to raise awareness about the disease. We applaud that. But MacArthur's "proud" promotion of this on Twitter last week reminds us of his eagerness to flaunt his so-called bipartisanship with the flounder bill, about how many fish you can bring home at the Shore.

Tom MacArthur is trying to fool you. He's a partisan warrior. | Moran



Now, he's tweeting about diabetics, and the need "to keep people healthy and safe until we find a cure." One way to do this, of course, is not to take away their health coverage.



And make no mistake: This is what countless medical professionals and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said MacArthur would have done.



The Republican voted to repeal Obamacare last year, a partisan war on health care that didn't win a single Democratic vote. It would have stripped coverage from 23 million Americans, doubling the number of uninsured in his own district.



When that effort failed, MacArthur revived it, by making it even more brutal. He was the author of an infamous amendment that would have allowed states to opt out of crucial protections for people with pre-existing conditions.



Diabetes, needless to say, fits in that category.



Yet to this day, he is still insisting to everyone's faces that his proposal would have covered these people.



Please. The CBO said that under his amendment, those with pre-existing conditions "would be unable to purchase comprehensive coverage with premiums close to those under current law and might not be able to purchase coverage at all."



The head of the American Medical Association, Dr. James Madara, used the word "illusory" to describe MacArthur's assurances that his plan would protect people with preexisting conditions.

In effect, Madara told Congress, coverage could be "completely unaffordable to people with pre-existing conditions."



Yet MacArthur told the same old lie last week, when we asked his spokesman if he sees any irony here.



The photo MacArthur tweeted was from a grip-and-greet for kids living with Type 1 diabetes, who asked him to continue to support a biannual appropriation for diabetes research that Congress has renewed since 1997. Nice, but not controversial.



By contrast, the national headquarters of their advocacy group, called JDRF, put out statements last year saying it was "deeply upset" about the repeal effort, noting that MacArthur's amendment is "likely to lead to significantly higher, often unaffordable insurance costs for those with complex and chronic conditions."



Some diabetics spend an average of $750 a month on insulin alone. And what happens if your kid passes out and lands in the emergency room, and you can't afford insurance?



As a spokesman for MacArthur's Democratic challenger, Andy Kim, noted last week, "Now MacArthur is trying to use the exact people his legislation would hurt most to cover up his record and manipulate voters." Apparently so.



The advocates MacArthur met with were right to push their cause with him. But they would be better served if we replaced this congressman.

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WASHINGTON -- Legislation sending new refueling tankers to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey's second largest employer, was signed into law Monday by President Donald Trump.

The annual National Defense Authorization Act set Congress' defense priorities for the 12 months beginning Oct. 1 and included $716 billion in military spending.

Trump signed the bill in a hangar at the upstate New York military base Fort Drum as several hundred troops looked on.

"There's no better place than right here at Fort Drum to celebrate its passage," Trump said. "After years of devastating cuts, we're now rebuilding our military like we never have before."

Trump and Congress agreed to increase funding for both defense and domestic programs as they waived spending caps imposed by congressional Republicans and President Barack Obama in a 2011 budget bill.

Lawmakers voting to impose the limits on military spending included then-Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., who as vice president introduced Trump on Monday by proclaiming that "the days of arbitrary budget cuts to our national defense are over."

Fort Drum is the last remaining major military facility in New York state. Two Air Force bases, Griffiss in Rome and Plattsburgh, were closed by the 1993 Base Closure and Realignment Commission, which instead recommended expanding McGuire AFB, now part of the joint base. The head of the commission at the time was former Rep. Jim Courter, R-12th Dist.

The legislation blocked a new round of base closings, which "protects the future of the joint base and our local economy," said Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-3rd Dist., whose district includes the facility.

The base employs 42,000 people and indirectly supports another 100,000 jobs. Only the state government has more employees.

For the joint base, the other big news was the tankers. The legislation authorizes spending for 15 KC-46A planes to replace the KC-10s now housed at the joint base. The Air Force announced last year that the joint base's 305th Air Mobility Wing eventually would get 24 of the new KC-46 tankers by 2021.

"These refueling tankers will bring new jobs and growth to our state and make our base an indispensable starting point for national security missions on the East Coast," said Rep. Donald Norcross, D-1st Dist., a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Obama used the joint base as a backdrop in December 2014 to mark the end of major combat operations in Afghanistan.

The legislation was named for Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., who has brain cancer.

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
Penns Grove police are asking for the public's help in locating the gunman who wounded a man on Sunday night.

Police responded to Barber Avenue shortly after 7 p.m. and found a man suffering a gunshot wound. Details on his injuries were not released.

The victim was taken to Christiana Hospital in Delaware with non-life threatening injuries, police said.

The gunman fled in a vehicle and was last seen on Main Street in the borough.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Sgt. Jason Spera at 856-299-0304.

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us: nj.com/tips.
Four men from St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes face at least several years in federal prison after a jury convicted them on drug distribution or gun charges. Two of the men convicted at trial on both types of charges could be sentenced to life in prison.

The convictions followed a five-day trial in U.S. District Judge Mary Ann Vial Lemmon's courtroom on Poydras Street, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Duane Evans' office. Investigators probing the case seized nearly a kilogram of heroin, along with scales, money counters, firearms and more than $480,000 in cash, the release states.

Andre "Andre "Dre" Staggers, 44, of LaPlace, was found guilty of conspiracy to distribute heroin and cocaine, along with firearms charges. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $10 million fine. Prosecutors said he had illegal possession of a Bushmaster Model AR 15 rifle, court records show.

Corey Session, 44, of St. Rose, was also found guilty of conspiracy to distribute heroin and cocaine, along with firearms charges. He faces the same maximum penalty as Staggers. Prosecutors said he had illegal possession of a Romanian Model "AK-style" rifle; a Smith and Wesson .40 caliber handgun; a Bushmaster Model AR 15 rifle and a Beretta 9mm handgun, records show.

Gregory "Lil Gregg" London Jr., 42, LaPlace, was found guilty of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and faces a maximum sentence of 40 years and $5 million fine.

Leonard "Leonard London" Morrison, 36, of St. Rose, was found guilty of being in possession of a firearm as a convicted a felon. He faces a maximum sentence of up to 10 years and a $250,000 fine. Prosecutors said he illegally possessed a Ruger .375 caliber revolver, records show.

The Drug Enforcement Administration investigated the case along with local and state law enforcement, the release says. Assistant United States Attorneys Matthew R. Payne, Brittany L. Reed and David Howard Sinkman prosecuted the case.
Louisiana State Police troopers have found the 2012 Toyota Camry believed to have been involved in a Metairie hit-and-run Wednesday (Aug. 8) that led to the death of Gordon Poydras.

Investigators located the vehicle Monday through tips from the public, according to Trooper Melissa Matey, spokeswoman for the agency. Troopers also have a person of interest in the fatal crash.

State police did not release the person's name but said criminal charges "may be forthcoming."

Meanwhile, relatives and friends of Poydras, 25, a New Orleans father of 2, were still reeling from what they called the "heartless" manner of his death.

"They hit him and just left. They didn't try to report it, nothing," said Poydras' father, Gordon Borel, 47, of Baton Rouge. "They left him down like an animal. You don't do that to a human being."

State Police said they believe Poydras was walking around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday in or near the right lane of the eastbound Interstate 10 collector road, the road that runs parallel to I-10 between the Causeway Boulevard exits and the Bonnabel Boulevard exit.

Poydras was hit just after he passed the northbound Causeway Boulevard cloverleaf exit, authorities said. The Camry's driver fled the scene.

Poydras was taken to University Medical Center in New Orleans in critical condition. He succumbed to his injuries Friday.

Troopers asked the public for help finding the suspect vehicle, a white Toyota Camry which they said would have significant damage to the right front bumper, headlight, fog light and right wheel well. A photo of the suspect vehicle released Monday shows the car has those exact damages.

As investigators worked to identify the Camry's driver, Poydras' family members, friends, co-workers and customers mourned his loss.

Poydras was from Lafayette and moved to the New Orleans area to be with girlfriend Tameka Lewis, who was attending college in the area. The couple has been together for more than seven years and have two children, ages 5 and 7, according to Lewis.

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Poydras was a fun-loving father who lived to make others smile, according to relatives. He loved to crack jokes, said Lewis, who described Poydras as sweet and funny.

"I think about his laugh and how he would hold me," she said. "He would just hug me at random times."

Poydras was a devoted father who worked two, sometimes three jobs to provide for his family. He was working at FedEx and Mandina's Restaurant in New Orleans at the time of his death, according to relatives.

"We were all devastated to find out that he was killed," said Cindy Mandina, owner of the Canal Street restaurant where Poydras had worked as a busboy for more than five years. "He was very well-liked by his co-workers and the customers."

Poydras was known for the extra care he gave to the customers, bagging up their food or helping others to their vehicles, if needed, according to Mandina. Staffers spent Saturday and Monday breaking the tragic news to several regulars who asked after Poydras when they noticed he wasn't at work.

"It's just such a sense of loss," Mandina said.

Borel described his son as an intelligent young man and a hard worker who loved his family above all. The unidentified driver will not get away with Poydras' death, he warned.

"Justice will be served," Borel said.

. . . . . . . .

Relatives have established a GoFundMe account to help cover the costs of burial. Those who wish to donate may do so at https://www.gofundme.com/ntupyb-funeral-services
New Orleans police arrested 71 drug dealers in five days last week as part of "Operation Summer Heat," announced Mayor LaToya Cantrell and NOPD Superintendent Michael Harrison in a Monday (August 13) press conference.

Harrison called the operation, which is aimed at suppressing crime and responding to citizen complaints, "one of the largest undercover narcotics operations in recent years."

"The summer months are some of the most violent in New Orleans," said Harrison. "We heard your complaints. We did something about it."

Since May, undercover agents zeroed in on tips about drug traffickers selling crack cocaine and heroin, among other contraband, throughout New Orleans. The operation culminated last week with the arrest of 71 drug dealers. 54 warrants remain outstanding for a total of 125 targeted traffickers, police said.

Both Harrison and Cantrell emphasized that drug trafficking can often lead to violent crime.

Despite an uptick in gun violence in recent weeks, including a mass shooting that injured seven and killed three, there have actually been fewer shootings in the last two and half months than the previous two and half month period. Since June 1, there have been roughly 67 shootings in 74 days. In the previous 74 day period, dating back to March 17, there were 78 shootings, according to records kept by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, based on NOPD reports.

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In addition, there have been roughly 35 percent fewer victims of nonfatal shootings in 2018 compared to last year. Roughly 330 people had been non-fatally shot by this time last year. About 215 people have been wounded, but not killed, in shootings in 2018 so far.

The Louisiana State Police partnered with NOPD to execute another summer initiative, entitled "Operation Summer School," which resulted in 110 arrests, 180 citations, 27 illegal firearm recovered, 18 stolen vehicle recovered and roughly $37,000 worth of illegal drugs seized since June 20.

"One murder is too many," said Cantrell. "But we do have to showcase as it relates to progress that we are making on the streets of New Orleans. This is a demonstration of that."

. . . . . .

Hanna Krueger covers crime, NOPD, and breaking news for NOLA.com | Times-Picayune. Reach her at hkrueger@nola.com. Follower her on Twitter (@hannaskrueger).
Addie Vasquez, the co-owner of the new Guatemalan restaurant Catalino's, is asked often to explain the food they serve.

"You know how hard that is to answer," she said. "You just have to try it for yourself."

Vasquez does point out that Guatemalan food relies on fresh vegetables and ingredients for flavor instead of heavy seasonings.

The small, opening menu at Catalino's includes caldo de res, a stew of beef ribs with yuca, mirliton, corn and carrots; the dish of chicken in a bright red stew with toasted pumpkin seeds topped with green beans call pepian; and a big platter of skirt steak with grilled onions, black beans, guacamole and plantains.

"We have a lot of things that we want to add," Vasquez said.

Vasquez, who's from Eunice, learned about Guatemalan food from her husband, Hugo. The pair met when they were both working at El Gato Negro. At the time, she didn't speak Spanish and he didn't speak English. They relied heavily on Google Translate for their first date.

She oversees the front of the bright, art-filled dining room at Catalino's. He's in charge of the kitchen. And they've drafted family to help run the restaurant.

The couple didn't know if New Orleans would take to Guatemalan food. So far, the response has been strong.

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"We thought we would be able to have a soft opening, but we haven't been able to," Vasquez said. "We're always so busy."

Opened: July 25

On the menu: Elote loco, or "crazy corn" ($6); caldo de res ($13); pepian ($15); churrasco plate with skirt steak and sides ($20) (see a PDF of the full menu)

Need to know: Catalino's is BYOB with a $5 corkage fee for each bottle of wine or six pack of beer.

Hours: Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m to 8 p.m.

Catalino's: 7724 Maple St., New Orleans, 504.518.6735

***

Got a tip? Know some restaurant news? Email Todd A. Price at TPrice@NOLA.com or call 504.826.3445. Follow him on Twitter (@TPrice504), Facebook (ToddAPriceEatsDrinks) or Instagram (@tprice504).
While painters put final touches on stairwells, incoming freshmen at the University of Holy Cross on Sunday (Aug. 12) moved into the first-ever residence hall in the school's 100-year-history.

Parents parallel parked in front of the school and younger siblings were recruited to help as wide-eyed freshmen got their first taste of college life.

Joshua Mitchell, 18, sat on the new couch in his dorm room so he and his younger sister, Bailey, could map out where to place a TV -- a decision debated before any other belongings were unpacked. Moments later, after taking photos to memorialize the occasion, the family picked out his room, one of two in a suite on the fourth floor and proceeded to settle in for college life.

The 60,000-square-foot building can house up to 150 students and features common areas such as a large exercise room, public kitchen and private meeting rooms.

The new residence hall, announced last November, was built in less than a year.
Despite its name, the mother-in-law suite can serve purposes other than housing mothers-in-law. They are small additions to an existing home, typically under 1,000 square feet, to accommodate multi-generational living. For one New Orleans homeowner, it meant turning an old shed into an accessible space for her elderly mother. For another local homeowner, it meant turning a detached garage into a guest house that she hopes her grandchild will enjoy in the future. In both cases, the goal was to keep family close.

April Blevins Pejic

Contributing writer

As an occupational therapist, Kerrie Ramsdell has dedicated her career to helping patients recuperating from physical illness to perform the activities of daily life. This work hit closer to home, and inspired a home renovation, when her aging mother became ill.

"I knew I needed a place where mom could live and have some independence," Ramsdell says. "But there is no way she can do stairs."

Ramsdell's raised bungalow in the Marigny presented an accessibility issue, so she got creative and turned the 200-square-foot shed behind her home into a tiny house.

The shed already had plumbing and electrical; it just needed a bit of a remodel. With help from a friend who happens to be a tiny house enthusiast himself, Ramsdell transformed the space and joined what some call the "granny flat" movement.

The shed-turned-accessory-dwelling will allow Ramsdell's mother to be close but still maintain her independence. It also offers an alternative to expensive assisted-living and nursing facilities.

"She's been in and out of nursing facilities, and she hates being there," Ramsdell said. "This way, I can help care for her in a place where she will be happier."

The exterior of the tiny home is covered in the original corrugated aluminum, but the rustic exterior hides a new, well-thought-out interior.

In the main room, a Murphy bed is surrounded by custom-built shelving. French doors and transom windows let lots of natural light into the space, which has a faux-wood tile floor in a herringbone pattern. Between two reclaimed wood beams that span the living space, a crystal chandelier hangs from the ceiling.

Ramsdell reused many items from the main home in the renovation, including cabinets for the kitchenette. She also installed an old medicine cabinet in the living room, creating a unique architectural feature and more storage.

The kitchenette is finished with a glass tile backsplash and granite countertop. Ramsdell used the same granite to create a bench in the tiny home's shower.

"Most tiny houses skimp on the bathroom," Ramsdell said. But she wanted to make sure this was a place her mother would be happy, so she installed a large shower with marble tile and a full-sized vanity in the bath. A reclaimed door found at Strip Ease of New Orleans, an antiques store, makes the entrance to the bath feel special.

Ramsdell has decorated the tiny home with art purchased at various fundraising auctions, including a print by local artist Terrance Osbourne. A shelf in the living area features a grouping of tiles painted by students at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts.

Ramsdell's mother hasn't moved into the tiny home yet, but Ramsdell feels relieved that she has a space ready when the time comes.

A detached garage becomes a space for kids and guests

Staying close to family also motivated Lyle Cadenhead, who purchased a single-family home Uptown with a detached garage that had been converted into an accessory dwelling.

Cadenhead, a psychologist in Houston, makes monthly trips to New Orleans to spend time with her grandson. She first purchased a condo, but found that it just didn't have enough space, so she kept looking and ultimately found a home with the converted garage.

Cadenhead, who is also a painter, initially thought she would use the space as an art studio since a wall of French doors let in a lot of natural light. But she soon found the 600-square-foot former garage had a better purpose -- guest cottage.

"So many family and friends wanted to visit us in New Orleans, it was easier just to leave it set up for everyone to come and go," Cadenhead said.

Furniture placement helps divide the one large room into sections; on one side is a bed, in the middle is a seating area and on the other side is a full kitchen.

A vaulted ceiling and exposed wood beams make the space feel large, and an oversized painting made by Cadenhead's nephews when they were in kindergarten is the focal point at the center of the room.

Cadenhead furnished the space with pieces she already owned, like a wood-frame sofa passed down from her parents. Cadenhead's son, Jay Dufour, a local architect, recovered it in brown leather.

The bathroom features a concrete floor and open shower with galvanized aluminum walls, echoing the aluminum used on the exterior lights and gutters.

"It's just a good place to hang out," Dufour said, "especially for the kids once they get older."

For now, Cadenhead is happy to have a comfortable and convenient space for guests to visit.
For decades two monuments to U.S. military personnel, some who died in foreign wars, have stood sentinel on Bonnabel Boulevard in Metairie. Here in annual ceremonies, graying soldiers in garrison caps paid tribute to their comrades. During the rest of the year, the monuments silently reminded passing motorists and the public at large of service in the armed forces.

Both monuments have suddenly disappeared from the landscape, however, prompting alarm among some veterans, a bit of a buzz on social media and worried inquiries to Jefferson Parish officials. The response was heightened because it comes amid national controversy over removal of Confederate-era memorials from public property in New Orleans and other cities.

"It was kind of a shock to most of us," said Rene Juneau, a member of American Legion Thomas J. Hanly Jr. Post 350, which organized Memorial Day commemorations at one of the Metairie sites.

It turns out that both monuments are being returned to public display, but not at their former locations. Instead, parish officials are moving them to Veterans Memorial Square, the plaza in the Veterans Memorial Boulevard median just west of Causeway Boulevard.

There they will join a growing collection of monuments to military personnel and fallen police and firefighters in front of Lakeside Shopping Center at one of the busiest intersections in the New Orleans area. Unlike the sites on Bonnabel, the plaza has parking for automobiles and is accessible to disabled persons.

"We felt like that was the best place to put them," said Parish President Mike Yenni, a Navy reservist.

A parish contractor removed the two monuments in recent weeks. The reinstallation at Veterans Memorial Square is supposed to be finished by Friday (Aug. 17), Streets Director Neil Schneider said.

The larger of the two memorials was in the Bonnabel median at Metairie Road. It consisted of six granite pieces: for World War II, wars in Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, one for all armed services and a rostrum. The World War II piece is inscribed the names of local residents who were killed in the conflict.

All six were erected and owned by the Lions Club of Metairie beginning in 1947, said Wayne Lee, the club's home chairman. In 2014, however, the club donated them to Jefferson Parish.

"It was getting hard for us to maintain it properly," Lee said last week. Active club membership has dwindled to about 20.

Yenni said Lions Club members first approached him about moving the collection when he was mayor of Kenner, which maintains a Veterans Park next to City Hall. Now with them going to Veterans Memorial Square in Metairie, Yenni said, they will be less likely to be struck by automobiles and visitors won't have to walk through traffic to attend ceremonies.

Three of these pieces have already been installed. One of the others, the World War II memorial, which has a base and three upright slabs, needs refurbishing before it is put in place, Schneider said.

The other disappearing monument was in the Bonnabel median just south of Veterans. A granite slab with a plaque of what appears to be bronze, it recalls World War I.

Although American Legion Post 350 held annual ceremonies there, Juneau said he doesn't know the memorial's origin. The plaque bears the words: "Erected by Veterans of World War I Jefferson Barracks 1881."

Still, Post 350 members took care of it, maintaining the shrubbery, cleaning the site, adding mulch on occasion and providing a U.S. flag. "We've been doing it every year, and keeping it up, us and our neighbor who lives across the street," Juneau said.

Parish officials said they removed the memorial because it is in the way of a planned road project on Bonnabel at Veterans.

"We were proud to do what we were doing," Juneau said. "But I can understand: Everything costs money, and if the monuments are all in one place, it costs less money to maintain."

. . . . . . .

Drew Broach covers Jefferson Parish politics and education, Louisiana interests in Congress and other odds and ends for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Email: dbroach@nola.com. Facebook: Drew Broach TP. Twitter: drewbroach1. Google+: Drew Broach.
The exercise is as old as the Republic, but the first thing you need to understand about redistricting is that hot-water cornbread is as ubiquitous in north Louisiana as etouffee is in the south, says Rick Gallot, the Ruston Democratic representat
The body of a 66-year-old Ponchatoula man was recovered from Lake Pontchartrain on Saturday night (Aug. 11), hours after authorities were alerted that an unoccupied boat had been found in the lake. Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries is leading the investigation into what the agency referred to as a fatal boating accident.

The body of Milton Gomez was recovered about 7:15 p.m., about a mile south of where the Tangipahoa River feeds into Lake Pontchartrain, according to a news release from Wildlife and Fisheries. Gomez was not wearing a personal floatation device when he was found, the agency said. Less than four hours earlier, agents were alerted that an uncrewed 17-foot aluminum boat had been found in the lake.

"It is unknown at this time how Gomez entered the water," the release states.

Wildlife and Fisheries agents searched for the missing boater with the help of the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office and U.S. Coast Guard.

Authorities discovered the fatal boating accident involving Gomez less than a week after the Coast Guard and New Orleans authorities searched for two missing boaters when a 34-foot sailboat was found unoccupied in Lake Pontchartrain, about a mile-and-a-half from Lakeshore Drive. Michael Farley, 43, was rescued from the water Monday morning, and the body of the woman who was with him, Sadie Thibodeaux, 32, was recovered the following day.

Farley was in "good condition" but showed "obvious signs" of hours spent in the water, authorities said. As authorities continued searching Tuesday for Thibodeaux, who had recently moved to New Orleans from Baton Rouge, New Orleans police said the agency was treating it as a missing persons case, though foul play had not been ruled out.
Aiken County investigators in Georgia working on murder case Investigators with the Aiken County Sheriff's Office were in Georgia on Thursday working with the McDuffie County Sheriff's Office pertaining to the murder investigation involving Kellie Lynn Collins, said Capt. Eric Abdullah, with the Aiken County Sheriff's Office.

More information has been released concerning the relationship between a former congressional candidate for Georgia's District 10 and a 41-year-old Aiken man found shot to death in his home on Old Powderhouse Road earlier this week.

Kellie Lynn Collins, 30, turned herself in to the McDuffie County Sheriff's Office in Georgia on Wednesday after the Aiken County Sheriff's Office obtained warrants against her for murder and grand larceny. Those charges are connected to the murder of Curt Jason Cain, whose body was discovered by the residential manager of his apartment on Tuesday, according to the report.

Cain is believed to have died on Aug. 4 from a gunshot wound and blood loss, said Aiken County Coroner Tim Carlton.

Carlton said Friday he has been trying to find Cain's next of kin and whether he was married to Collins. McDuffie County Sheriff's deputies spoke with Collins at the Georgia jail and she confirmed to them she and Cain were married, but she would not specify where they were married.

There is no record of them being married in Aiken County, he said.

However, there are records showing Cain was listed as treasurer for Collins' 2018 official Political Action Committee when she was running as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House to represent the 10th Congressional District in Georgia in the 2018 election, according to the website opensecrets.org.

Investigators with the Aiken County Sheriff's Office have not confirmed whether they found Cain's vehicle, a blue Subaru Legacy, which was missing from his residence when they found his body.

+2 Thomson woman accused of murder extradited to Aiken County, denied bond The former Georgia congressional candidate accused of shooting and killing an Aiken man has been booked into the Aiken County detention center.

It has been confirmed Cain was employed by Swiss Krono in Barnwell for approximately 14 years, and his employers confirmed he was a "jack-of-all-trades" and worked in maintenance, Carlton said.

He was also close to finishing his MBA at USC Aiken, said USC Aiken Chancellor Dr. Sandra Jordan on Thursday.

There are still many mysteries surrounding this case that need to be answered.

Collins continues to be held at the McDuffie County jail until she is extradited to Aiken County, where she will be formally charged with Cain's murder.


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(Sunday, Aug. 12) I thoroughly enjoyed a nice leisurely day at the Indiana State Fair today.

I rode my bike to Mass at St. Joan of Arc this morning, from there it was a straight shot down 42nd Street to the Indiana State Fairgrounds. I hopped on the Monon Trail towards 38th Street to drop my bike at the Pedal & Park. The great volunteers there keep an eye on your bicycle and you get a coupon for $1 off gate admission. The service is free, but I encourage you to toss some cash in the donation jar.

The gate off the Trail sends you right into the Midway. Im still not used to the metal detectors at each gate. All and all it goes smoothly.

It was fun to hear the excited kiddos as I walked through the Midway. I arrived at the sweet spot time for families. No naps had been missed yet and moms and dads are still speaking to each other.

Today was Cancers Survivors Day. There were volunteers taking donations for Little Red Door and displays and games were set up on State Fair Boulevard. I decorated a square of fabric in honor of my survivor friends that was added to hundreds of others on display.

I was excited to see that Kroger was passing out cups of watermelon, my second favorite food next to popcorn, and delighted to learn that there is an Illiana Watermelon Queen AND she served me watermelon. Brilee was lovely and the watermelon delicious.

That reminded that I havent talked about the stand that dares to sell salads and fresh fruit during the Fair. It is in front of the northwest corner of the Cattle Barn and Im a regular customer. I bought a container of watermelon and it was fresh and crispy and made me feel slightly better about myself as I watched folks walk by with corndogs and spiral potatoes. Of course none of them knew about the crazy milkshake and bacon-covered grilled cheese I ate yesterday. Or what Id eat later.

There are two Second Helpings graduates working at the Fair this year and I like to cruise by their stands to say hello. Theyre both doing well and hanging in there with the long days.

Ive been so busy concentrating on plowing through the new foods list I havent been eating my favorite treats. I grabbed a delicious Pork Tent pork chop sandwich and trotted over to see the Last Drop Jug Band. It was fun to see friends there and how engaged the 9-year-olds were in puzzle toys in the Pioneer Village Building.

I stopped in the Glass Barn to soak in some of their air-conditioning and to take a photo in their booth. You can choose from four different Fair scenes and email it to yourself. I chose to cozy up to a lion in the circus themed background today.

I wanted to check another new food off my list so I opted for the Gourmet Tots. Maybe Ive hit the wall with over-the-top Fair foods, but I felt a little dirty and ashamed eating it. Not that I even came close to finishing it. Deep-fried Tater Tots, topped with liquid cheese, bacon, sour cream, and scallions.

The Lemonade Strawberry Boba Twister stand was right next door, so I dove right in to another new food. Its a lemon shakeup with strawberry boba  bubble tea. Maybe it was all of the sugar in the shakeup, but it was crazy-sweet. Says the woman who at the giant milkshake yesterday.

All of the crazy foods Ive been eating mixed with the heat was making me feel a little wonky. I headed back to Pioneer Village. If I keeled over Id been in my happy place and Im sure Dick Reel could whip out a nice coffin if needed. Scott Ballantine and Andra Faye were playing. They sing a beautiful song that Id like played at my funeral (no cause for alarm, just thinking way ahead), Standing in the Need of Prayer.

I felt much better after sitting down and cooling off and listening to Scott and Andra. I had a nice chat with Susie, who I met in Pioneer Village years ago, about Fair goings on.

While I was there I found some electricity to charge my phone. Pretty ironic that Pioneer Village is my go-to place to find an outlet.

Id dropped some not-so gentle hints about hitching a ride in the Parade and there was a chance I had one lined up. After that didnt pan out, I walked though where the tractors and wagons line up to nicely beg for a ride. I seemed to have lost all sense of shame after the Tater Tot dish.

I was foiled by the county queens. They all rode in todays parade and it takes all of the wagons to ferry the 92 around. I consoled myself by waving like I was a queen as I rode the Tractor Tram to the other side of the Fairgrounds.

And I got to watch the parade (yay!) and wave at the tractors and queens from a shady spot on Main Street. I retrieved my bike and rode hometo mow the front yard  stupid grass keeps growing during the Fair.

Be sure and grab an Indianapolis Star on Monday, Aug. 13. It will include a coupon for free admission on Wednesday.

If you go tomorrow (Monday, Aug. 13) here are some highlights:

8:00  Clydesdale & Percheron Show (Indiana Farmers Coliseum).

10:00  Rooster Crowing Contest (Rabbit & Poultry Barn)

5:00  Sheep Shearing Contest (Blue Ribbon Pavilion in the Sheep Barn)

7:30  Happy Together Tour featuring Flo & Eddie, Chick Negron from Three Dog Night, Gary Puckett & The Union Gap, The Association, Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere & The Raiders, and my favorites  The Cowsills.
It also takes pains to keep the information secret. Some of the systems it uses are custom-built and designed by its own employees, the better to keep competitors off the trail. Companies that sell equipment and software to Wal-Mart are bound by nondisclosure agreements. Three years ago, Wal-Mart summarily announced that it would no longer share its sales data with outside companies, like Information Resources Inc. and ACNielsen, which had paid Wal-Mart for the information and then sold it to other retailers.

"When you look at their behavior, you can tell that Wal-Mart considers data to be a top priority," said Christine Overby, a senior analyst for consumer markets at Forrester Research. Over the years, she said, Wal-Mart executives have spent handsomely for their systems, paying $4 billion in 1991 to create Retail Link and signing onto innovations like bar codes and electronic data interchange, a forerunner of the Internet, well ahead of the pack. Wal-Mart is also driving manufacturers to invest in radio frequency identification. By next October, the company will require its biggest suppliers to tag shipments to some of its distribution centers with tiny transmitters that would eventually let Wal-Mart track every item that it sells.

With so much data at Wal-Mart's corporate fingertips, what are the risks to consumers? Most have no clue that their habits are monitored to such an extent. There are no signs -- like the ones for Wal-Mart's anti-shoplifting cameras -- advising customers that information is being collected and stored. And there is no giveback: Wal-Mart doesn't use loyalty cards and rarely offers promotions based on past purchases.

It is aware, however, that shoppers are concerned about privacy. On its Web site, Wal-Mart posts a privacy policy that states, in part: "We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information. We maintain reasonable physical, technical and procedural measures to limit access to personal information to authorized individuals with appropriate purposes."

NOT everyone agrees. "People don't know that Wal-Mart is capturing information about who they are and what they bought, but they are also capable of capturing a huge amount of outside information about them that has nothing to do with their grocery purchases," said Katherine Albright, the founder and director of Caspian, a consumer advocacy group concerned with privacy issues. "They can find out your mortgage amounts, your court dates, your driving record, your creditworthiness."

One source of information can be a credit card or a debit card, Ms. Albright said. Wal-Mart shoppers increasingly use the cards to pay for purchases, particularly in the better-heeled neighborhoods where the company has been building stores recently.

Some companies specialize in what is known as data enhancement, in which a customer's name and address, or a telephone number, can open the door to additional information. "If Wal-Mart had a customer database and wanted to start e-mailing their customers, we could append their e-mail addresses," said Sarah Stansberry, director of marketing for AccuData America, a company based in Fort Myers, Fla., that specializes in such services but does not use credit card records. With e-mail addresses, AccuData can track names and home addresses, she added. Other information follows: "We can access what they paid for their house, and their mortgage," though not driving records. The company has not done any work for Wal-Mart, she said.
On paper, Charles revealed himself in a way he rarely did in person. He thought hard about what to say to a son who would have no memory of him. Even if Jordan will never hear the cadence of his fathers voice, he will know the wisdom of his words.

Image Follow your heart, Charles M. King wrote in a 200-page journal for his son, Jordan, whom he first held this fall just weeks before he died in Iraq. Credit... Dana Canedy

Never be ashamed to cry. No man is too good to get on his knee and humble himself to God. Follow your heart and look for the strength of a woman.

Charles tried to anticipate questions in the years to come. Favorite team? I am a diehard Cleveland Browns fan. Favorite meal? Chicken, fried or baked, candied yams, collard greens and cornbread. Childhood chores? Shoveling snow and cutting grass. First kiss? Eighth grade.

In neat block letters, he wrote about faith and failure, heartache and hope. He offered tips on how to behave on a date and where to hide money on vacation. Rainy days have their pleasures, he noted: Every now and then you get lucky and catch a rainbow.

Charles mailed the book to me in July, after one of his soldiers was killed and he had recovered the body from a tank. The journal was incomplete, but the horror of the young mans death shook Charles so deeply that he wanted to send it even though he had more to say. He finished it when he came home on a two-week leave in August to meet Jordan, then 5 months old. He was so intoxicated by love for his son that he barely slept, instead keeping vigil over the baby.

I can fill in some of the blanks left for Jordan about his father. When we met in my hometown of Radcliff, Ky., near Fort Knox, I did not consider Charles my type at first. He was bashful, a homebody and got his news from television rather than newspapers (heresy, since Im a New York Times editor).

But he won me over. One day a couple of years ago, I pulled out a list of the traits I wanted in a husband and realized that Charles had almost all of them. He rose early to begin each day with prayers and a list of goals that he ticked off as he accomplished them. He was meticulous, even insisting on doing my ironing because he deemed my wrinkle-removing skills deficient. His rock-hard warriors body made him appear tough, but he had a tender heart.
Another problem with this execution is Tennessees new protocol for lethal injection. The first drug administered in an execution is supposed to put the inmate to sleep so he cant feel the effects of the other two drugs: the one that causes paralysis and the one that stops the heart. But midazolam, the sedative in Tennessees execution cocktail, doesnt always render complete unconsciousness. Its possible for the inmate to feel the effects of the next two drugs, and what he feels is akin to being suffocated and burned alive at the same time.

The United States Supreme Court had declined to delay the execution, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor strongly dissented: In refusing to grant Irick a stay, the court today turns a blind eye to a proven likelihood that the state of Tennessee is on the verge of inflicting several minutes of torturous pain on an inmate in its custody, Justice Sotomayor wrote. If the law permits this execution to go forward in spite of the horrific final minutes that Irick may well experience, then we have stopped being a civilized nation and accepted barbarism.

This is the unvarying pattern in death-penalty cases: arguments in favor of lenience, arguments in favor of severity and a perfectly realistic assumption that nothing at all will change. Some victims will be more sympathetic than others. Some death-row prisoners will be harder to hate. Defense attorneys will point out extenuating circumstances. Critics will list the pragmatic arguments against the death penalty  from its failure to deter crime to the racial disparities in its application to its terrifying permanence.

It would be a tiresome litany if not for the fact that a human life hangs in the balance. It would be a tiresome litany if not for the fact that in state executions, the executioner is always you.

Plenty of people are happy to play the role of public executioner. A recent poll from the Pew Research Center found that 73 percent of white evangelical Christians supported the death penalty in cases of murder. Even among Catholics, 53 percent believe capital punishment is an appropriate response to a crime like Mr. Iricks. This is a curious position, coming from people who drive cars bearing Choose Life bumper stickers. It is especially curious considering Pope Franciss recent unequivocal condemnation of the death penalty. The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person, the Catechism of the Catholic Church now reads. That dignity is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes.
Its putting tremendous stress on the system, said Jennifer Hillman, a professor at Georgetown Law Center. There are those who would go so far to say that the U.S. has almost effectively withdrawn from the W.T.O. by engaging in all the unilateral tariffs weve seen.

Any decision could prove to be the undoing of the World Trade Organization, which the United States helped establish in 1995 as a forum to settle trade disputes and to set rules that keep commerce flowing freely around the globe. A ruling against the Trump administration could prompt the United States to leave the W.T.O. entirely. But siding with the United States claim of national security could also significantly diminish the organizations authority and prompt other countries to begin citing their own national security interests to ignore inconvenient rules on topics like intellectual property, environmental standards or farm subsidies.

If the United States has rewritten the rules of the W.T.O. system to say you can do anything you want if its in your national security interests, be prepared for every country in the world to come up with a new definition of what is its critical national security interest, said Rufus Yerxa, the president of the National Foreign Trade Council and a former deputy director general of the World Trade Organization.

On Friday, the administration once again claimed national security when Mr. Trump decided to double the rate of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Turkey. In a statement, Wilbur Ross, the secretary of commerce, said that metal exports to the United States had not declined to levels sufficient to remove the threat to national security and that raising tariffs on Turkey would reduce that threat.
AMMAN, Jordan  Security forces pulled the bodies of three suspected militants from the wreckage of a building in a central Jordanian city on Sunday following a shootout in which four security personnel were also killed, the government said.

In a huge security operation, Jordanian forces laid siege to the building in a residential part of the city of Salt on Saturday night in search of those responsible for a bomb attack on a police van on Friday.

The police vehicle had been maintaining security near a music festival in the majority Christian town of Fuhais, near the capital, Amman, and about 10 miles from Salt.

Four security personnel were killed during the operation after the suspected militants sought sanctuary in the multistory building in Salt, the government said.
 Italys Five Star Movement faces its first national test.

The party campaigned to block a proposed pipeline that would transport gas from the Caspian Sea to southern Italy. That won over southern Italians like Alfredo Fasiello, above, who have long been wary of the pipelines environmental risks.

But now that Five Star is in power, it is wavering on that promise as pressure mounts to wean the country off Russian oil and gas by finding alternative sources.

To complicate matters further, Russia and four other countries that border the Caspian Sea  Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan  have agreed to divide the oil and gas-rich seabed among them. The agreement, which comes after three decades of Russian opposition, could have consequences for the construction of the trans-Caspian pipeline to Europe.
Set the controls for the heart of the sun. In the summer of 2018, the Parker Solar Probe will lift off from Earth. It will spend the next seven years spiraling inward to the center of the solar system. The Parker probe will be the first spacecraft to touch our star. Or any star. It will brush through the halo of hot gases that form the suns outer atmosphere: the corona. The surface of the sun looks placid to our eyes, but it is pierced and roiled by strong magnetic fields. The fields trap gas blowing off the Sun and lift it into glowing arcs and streamers. Scientists dont understand how the corona works, or why its hundreds of times hotter than the surface of the sun. The Parker probe will pass closer to the Sun than any mission before it. To get that close, the spacecraft will make seven flybys of Venus over seven years, gradually tightening its elliptical orbit and shifting it closer and closer to the sun. A high-tech heat shield will protect the probe from the punishing radiation and heat of the corona. Within the shields shadow, the spacecraft instruments will operate at a comfortable room temperature. As the probe passes close to the sun, it will briefly become the fastest machine ever built by humans, zipping along at a brisk 430,000 miles per hour. The Parker probe is the first NASA spacecraft to be named after a living person. Eugene Parker is an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago. In 1958, he suggested that the sun radiates a constant and intense stream of charged particles. He called it the solar wind. This wind pushes out comet tails and makes the long streamers seen in solar eclipses. With the Parker Solar Probe, scientists hope to learn more about the suns turbulent corona. How it accelerates particles, and how it flings huge clouds of fiery gas outward across space. Huge waves of magnetized gas are called coronal mass ejections. If Earth gets in the way of one of these storms, it could be bad news. Our planet is protected by its own magnetic field, but a direct hit from one of these galloping clouds of particles and radiation could disrupt satellites and force astronauts in the space station to take shelter. In 1859, a powerful storm called the Carrington Event produced auroras as far south as Cuba. A solar storm of that size today could cripple satellites and power grids around the world. If successful, the Parker probes mission to touch the sun may explain how solar storms form. Scientists hope it might teach us how to predict coronal outbursts more accurately and learn how to endure them. Weve always depended on the kindness of a star, here on a planet riding the gentle fringe of barely calculable forces. Living with a star is not easy. But were learning.
There is a glimmer of hope that the frustrating, slow airport security experience will get a little smoother over the next few years.

In a partnership with American Airlines, the Transportation Security Administration introduced a new kind of machine last month to screen carry-on bags in Terminal 8 at Kennedy International Airport in New York.

The machines, the agency says, improve on the current system, in which most travelers have their carry-on bags screened by X-ray machines that produce only two-dimensional images of their contents. If agents are unsure of what theyre seeing, they pull the bag aside and inspect its contents manually.

The new machines use computed tomography, a technology that produces three-dimensional images so detailed they can even show the mass and densities of items in the bag, including liquids inside their containers. With the new machines, the T.S.A. says, security agents will be better able to analyze what is inside a bag and will be less likely to have to perform searches by hand.
After more than six years in Brooklyn, Pok Pok Ny will be closing on Sept. 2, according to the chef and restaurateur Andy Ricker, who also has six restaurants in Portland, Ore.

Mr. Ricker cited several reasons for the decision: The restaurants lease came up for renewal. And though the landlord was willing to negotiate, Mr. Ricker said, it didnt make sense in the face of decreasing revenues and rising expenses. His general manager, Valerie Dozier, is switching careers to film and leaving the restaurant. And, the Columbia Street waterfront district, the restaurants neighborhood, has not become a hub of activity despite years of positive predictions, as he put it.

He says he also feels that, compared with when he first opened Pok Pok Ny, the citys Thai food scene has developed nicely, with places like Uncle Boons, Somtum Der and Ugly Baby, making his restaurant one of many. (Pete Wells, reviewing Pok Pok Ny for The New York Times, awarded the restaurant two stars in 2012.)
In Singaporean, Malaysian and Indonesian cooking, sambal ikan bilis is a must-have condiment alongside nasi lemak, a fragrant rice dish cooked in coconut milk and served with spicy curry, crisp fried anchovies, toasted peanuts, a hard-boiled egg and sliced fresh cucumbers. Sambal is as adaptable as the indigenous cooks who created it, and can be used as a marinade for skate, a base for curries, a sauce for stir-fries or a simple dip for fresh vegetables.

In the United States, you can find jars of sambal oelek from Huy Fong Foods, the company that brought us sriracha, in the international or Asian aisle of your grocery store. Thanks to the sriracha and hot-sauce boom, sambal is becoming well-known to many American cooks. Martha Stewart, Emeril Lagasse and others have published recipes calling for a dollop or two of sambal oelek.

Sambals new popularity in the United States has made me both excited and territorial. In 1999, when I was 8, my family moved from Singapore to Alpine, Tex., a rural town of 5,000 where my father grew up. When youre living thousands of miles from your home country, craving your mothers or grandmothers sambal is like getting hit with a wave of nostalgia from a fond childhood memory you cant fully recreate.

Food, especially dishes that were made and shared communally, has a way of linking us back to our families generational hardships and triumphs. Theres a rich and labor-intensive history in the ritual of preparing sambal that should be remembered, and perhaps even revered.

My mother, Rosni Pattillo, grew up in a Malay kampong, or village, in Singapore during the 1950s and 60s. As a girl from a poor family with a strict father, she wasnt allowed to attend school. At age 11, instead of learning math and grammar in primary school like her brothers, she helped women in her kampong make and sell sambal for pocket money.

As a child, she would squat hunched over a long rectangular stone in her neighbors yard to pound the red chiles, garlic and belacan into a paste with a blunt rock that served as a makeshift pestle, a fairly common technique in kampongs.
Happy Monday. Sam is off the grid this week, and Ive got his megaphone.

So even though its a fact that kids in Oakland, Boulder, Milwaukee and Albuquerque head back to school today, I hereby declare that summer isnt over yet. Around here, local corn is just arriving. Theres still time to have the binges that make seasonal eating worth it: the luxury of getting sick of ripe tomatoes and corn, peaches and blackberries.

First, we have to eat our fill of the plain and lovely taste of corn (via corn on the cob, creamed corn, corn fritters for dinner with slab bacon and a heavily herbed tomato salad). Then corns friends can be invited over: ingredients like lime, mint, pancetta, scallions and shrimp that set off its sweet flavor without overwhelming it. Melissa Clark is on the case this week with a dinner-ready soup (above)  not so much a corn chowder as a brightened bowl of pozole verde, loosely based on the Mexican classic. She uses fresh corn instead of dried hominy, and seafood instead of pork, having twisted the arm of the chef Jose Salazar of Mitas in Cincinnati to acquire the secrets of his famous version. He also roasts the tomatillos and green chiles before pureeing them into the broth, which tames their heat and acid and adds a smoky note.

At this point in the summer you may have run through your grills greatest hits and be looking around for other tunes to play. With arugula and tomatoes, David Tanis has built a quick summer dinner around your new favorite steak, a neat thick slice of lamb leg with a bone in the center. Lamb is particularly delicious when grilled  the fat, in particular  and more easily cooked to your preferred doneness. (In some parts of the world, like the borough of Queens and the Pamir Mountains of Central Asia, grilled lamb fat is a delicacy in and of itself.)

With September in sight, now is the time to fulfill those cooking  or non-cooking  fantasies youve harbored all year. Have tomato sandwiches for dinner. Search out the slightly bruised, much cheaper late fruit at a local orchard and make this the year of jam. Try eating vegan for a week  if not now, when? Stock up on homemade granola  exactly the same kind they hand you on your way out of dinner at Eleven Madison Park, one of the best restaurants in the world. (Hey, a girl can dream.)
It was April 2013 when Frank Bordoy first spotted Amanda Flores at Clydes, a bar and restaurant in Alexandria, Va. With her dark hair, runners body and quick laugh, he found her adorable.

Or to be more accurate, he thought, Damn, whos this fine looking woman over there?

But Ms. Flores was chatting with another guy, and Mr. Bordoy wasnt sure if the two of them were together or not. They werent. In fact, Ms. Flores had noticed Mr. Bordoy, too. How could she not? He was dark and so cute  the only Puerto Rican looking guy in the place, said Ms. Flores, now 37. He was super handsome and had that Caribbean look to him, and I just melted. It was totally superficial.

Mr. Bordoy sidled over and began talking. He and Ms. Flores quickly discovered similarities: She grew up in Silver Spring, Md., with a Mexican mother and Ecuadorean father. He was from Danbury, Conn., by way of Puerto Rico. She worked in marketing and advertising at Geico; Mr. Bordoy, a former Marine, had moved to the area to attend the police academy. Both were divorced, with two children younger than seven. Both were stubborn, liked to cook, and had similar senses of humor.
The intensive treatments seem to work best for anxiety-related disorders. They usually consist of C.B.T., in which patients repeatedly expose themselves to the very situations they fear.

Supporters of the approach said that while it may involve a similar number of total hours as weekly therapy, relief is quicker. Thomas H. Ollendick, a psychology professor at Virginia Tech, who helped pioneer a one-day treatment for phobias and has studied a one-week treatment for O.C.D., said this can be crucial for people whose illnesses are preventing them from attending school or work.

And with concentrated treatment, Dr. Ollendick said, you dont have a week in between to unlearn what you learned in the session or have additional experiences that can lead you to think, Oh, I better be afraid.

The concentrated format allows therapists to deliver evidence-based treatment to more people, since its easier for patients who live in places without access to high-quality therapy to travel for a one- or two-week program, said Donna B. Pincus, director of the Child and Adolescent Fear and Anxiety Treatment Program at Boston University, which runs five- to eight-day intensive treatment programs for panic disorder, separation anxiety disorder and phobias.

Even patients who live nearby may find it easier to take off a week of work or plan treatment during a school break, rather than deal with the logistics of weekly therapy.

People are pulled out of their everyday lives for two weeks  they are not dealing with work and spouses and kids, said Barbara O. Rothbaum, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine. It really is a kind of a bubble for them to do this work.
Security guards at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London didnt like the look of James Bridle.

As he walked around the hotels exterior photographing its security cameras, Mr. Bridle  an artist and writer  looked, to them, undoubtedly suspect. Who was he, they wanted to know, and what exactly was he doing? They detained him and called the police, who subsequently demanded to see the artists ID and threatened him with a charge of going equipped.

Its what you threaten a burglar with if theyre carrying a ladder or a crowbar down the street, Mr. Bridle said. Just carrying a camera made me suspicious.

Mr. Bridle, who had been researching surveillance as part of an art residency, had set out to walk the perimeter of the citys congestion charge zone  an area in central London where motorists must pay to drive  with the goal of documenting as many closed-circuit security cameras as he could find.
On the tarmac on Monday, Ms. Tenney and her son, a Marine captain, were the first to greet Mr. Trump and Air Force One as he arrived in nearby Rome, N.Y., as the crowd of roughly 50 people rotated between shouts of Build that wall! USA! USA! and Trump! Trump!

As the president signed hats and shook hands with some in the crowd, Ms. Tenney stood nearby with her outstretched arm, filming it all on her cellphone.

Ms. Tenneys district, which stretches from Binghamton to Lake Ontario in Central New York, is one of the most fought-over seats in America, with more than $1.6 million in super PAC money already pouring into the contest, more than any other New York race.

Ms. Tenney, who is in her first term, narrowly won a three-way contest with 46.5 percent of the vote in 2016, and her re-election is seen as a tossup, as Democrats recruited a more centrist challenger, Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi. Both Mr. Brindisi  whom Mr. Trump characterized as a total puppet of Nancy Pelosi  and Ms. Tenney have raised nearly $2 million.

Outside the hotel, about 100 Trump supporters stood across the street from roughly 400 protesters, several of whom spoke out against the presidents policies on immigrants and refugees because of Uticas large refugee population. The United Nations named Utica the town that loves refugees, as it has resettled more than 16,000 refugees over the past three decades. Utica has a population of just over 60,000.

The protesters also took issue with the cost of attending the fund-raiser. Even some Republicans were perplexed that Mr. Trump  who can draw massive crowds at a rally or massive checks from deep-pocketed donors  would choose to headline a fund-raiser in Utica, a city of 60,000 hardly known for its financial might.

Tickets to get in to Mondays event started at $1,000. For $15,000, hosts received access to an exclusive round table and reception with Mr. Trump, plus a photo.
When Larry R. Meachum was a boy, his family was so poor that they often moved when the rent was due. His home life was unhappy, and he did what many kids do  he ran away. A lot.

In fact, some thought Larry might have been on a path to prison. Instead, he grew up to run them as a respected reformer. Mr. Meachum, who was 79, died on July 13 in Palmetto, Fla.

His son, Darrell, said that the cause was pneumonia and that Mr. Meachum had had bile duct cancer.

Mr. Meachum oversaw the prison systems in three states  Oklahoma, Massachusetts and Connecticut  and directed federal corrections programs in the Office of Justice Programs at the Justice Department in the 1990s.

At the time, the criminal justice system was struggling to cope with record crime, mandatory sentences and so-called broken windows neighborhood policing, all of which led to a rising number of arrests and what critics of the system saw as mass incarceration.
To the Editor:

Re Trust the First Amendment (Op-Ed, Aug. 2):

David Cole, the impressive national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, needed to explain more about the groups aggressive support of corporate free speech.

A case can be made against regulations prohibiting companies from providing critical price information to consumers. But it has been difficult to understand why the A.C.L.U. supported the notorious Citizens United case with an amicus brief. Citizens United allows unlimited political contributions by corporations for or against candidates for elective office.

More inexplicable was the groups support for the carcinogenic tobacco industrys advertisements as protected free speech.

For decades the A.C.L.U. has fought for corporate personhood. Corporations are not people, Mr. Cole.

Ralph Nader

Washington

The writer is the author of Breaking Through Power: Its Easier Than We Think.
To the Editor:

In Stop Throwing the Word Treason Around (Op-Ed, Aug. 9 ), Christopher Buskirk suggests that Democrats, in applying the word treason to Donald Trumps actions, are willing to pull down our institutions and tear apart the social and political fabric that holds us together .

Perhaps he has forgotten that President Trump himself has played fast and loose with the term. In Blue Ash, Ohio, on Feb. 5, for instance, Mr. Trump said Democratic lawmakers who failed to applaud his State of the Union address were like death. And un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, treasonous. I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not! I mean they certainly didnt seem to love our country very much .

The Constitution states, Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort . The framers carefully worded this definition, to prevent accusations of treason as a means of stifling political dissent . It does seem clear that this is the definition that would apply to the president, or any other American. As far as Mr. Trump is concerned, the question then becomes: Are the Russians our enemies, and has the president given them aid and comfort?

I agree that we bandy about the word treason, and a great many other insulting terms, too readily in our current political discourse. It is time for us all to take a step back from heated rhetoric and look at the facts.
Americans who grew up with the fiction that slavery was confined to the South  and that the North had always been free  learned differently in 1991, when construction workers stumbled upon the skeletal remains of more than 400 Africans at a site in New York City that has since been designated the African Burial Ground National Monument. The catalog of injuries etched into the bones of the men and women who labored to build, feed and protect Colonial-era New York includes muscles so violently strained they were ripped away from the skeleton, offering a grisly portrait of what it was like to be worked to death in bondage.

A similar portrait is emerging in Sugar Land, Tex., a suburb southwest of Houston, where researchers are examining the remains of about 95 African-Americans whose unmarked graves were discovered this year. The dead are almost certainly victims of the second system of slavery that arose when Southerners set out to circumvent the 13th Amendment of 1865, which outlawed involuntary servitude except as punishment for criminal conviction.

Those states imposed what the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Douglas Blackmon rightly describes as slavery by another name  sweeping Negroes into custody for petty offenses like vagrancy, then turning them over to plantation owners and others who sometimes notified the local sheriff in advance of how much labor they needed. This practice, which persisted in various forms up to World War II, stripped African-Americans of the ability to accumulate wealth while holding them captive in dangerous, disease-ridden environs that killed many of them outright. The Sugar Land site offers present-day Americans a look at this shameful period from an unusual vantage point.
How Essences Were Conceived

Its hard to pinpoint its first use or its origin, but documentation in Japan can be traced to Miyakofuzoku kewaiden, an 1813 guide to centuries-old geisha beauty rituals. There are references to beauty waters, which were botanicals extracted from an alchemical still or a tea-kettling system, Ms. Tsai said.

In 1897, Shiseido became the first Japanese brand to bring an essence to market with Eudermine, or Shiseidos Red Water, and it led to the ubiquity of branded essences all over Asia.

My mom used it when I was little, and my grandma used it when my mom was little, said Nicole Takahashi, the founder of the Japanese beauty blog Beau Tea Time in Tokyo. Its been a part of our skin-care ritual for a long time. Theres no Japanese skin-care brand that doesnt have an essence.

Essences in Japan, it turns out, are called lotions, while serums are referred to as essences  terminology that has contributed to confusion about what exactly is an essence in the United States.

Why Theyve Taken So Long to Reach America

Though theyre so deeply ingrained in Asian beauty regimens, essences have been slow to be embraced in this country, which mostly has to do with the typical American cleansing routine: to reach for soap and water rather than an oil cleanser to dissolve oil-based makeup.
Labor Day is an opportune time to take a last-minute, fun-filled getaway, says Adam Weissenberg, the head of travel, hospitality and leisure at Deloitte, a hospitality services company . Compared with Memorial Day and Fourth of July, which are incredibly busy travel periods, Labor Day is slower because the school year has already started in many parts of the country, he said. And, you can definitely get good value for your money.

Here are seven possibilities around the country, at a variety of price points.

A Beachside Getaway from the Bustle of Los Angeles

Loews Coronado Bay Resort, in Coronado, Calif ., has an Escape from LA package thats ideal for the long weekend. The package deal includes accommodations, a $50 resort credit and a round-trip transfer in a Tesla vehicle between Los Angeles and Coronado Bay. Guests can spend their weekend cruising the bay in a sailboat, kayaking in the resorts private marina or simply relaxing on the beach. Bookings start at $399 a night.

Wine, Cheese, and Zip Lines on Catalina Island

Another option in California is a trip to Catalina Island, an hours boat ride from Southern California. Travelers stay at the Pavilion Hotel, just across the street from the beach, and the package includes transportation between the island and Long Beach, breakfast, an evening wine and cheese reception in the propertys ocean-view courtyard, the use of beach cruiser bicycles to get around, a zip line eco-tour and access to the new Catalina Aerial Adventure, a series of challenging ropes courses and zip lines. Bookings start from $545 a night for two people.

Rides and Chocolate in Hershey, Pa.

If youre looking for a Labor Day getaway that the whole family  including children who may not be back in school yet  can enjoy, consider a visit to the Mid-Atlantic. In Hershey, Pa., Hershey Lodge and The Hotel Hershey have a package over Labor Day that includes free breakfast for a family of four and free admission to Hersheypark amusement park for those ages 17 and under. Packages start at $458 a night for a family of four.
Good morning.

(Want to get California Today by email? Heres the sign-up.)

Im the food editor of The Times and I took to Twitter on Friday morning to report some very good news for fans of Californias vibrant and exciting restaurant scene: Tejal Rao has been appointed our first-ever California restaurant critic.

It is high time we did so, right? Not only does The Times have more readers in California than in any other state save New York, but California has more restaurants and a wider variety of them than any other state, bar none. That is an irresistible combination platter for a news organization like The Times.

We are devoted, after all, to the business of helping readers understand the world in which they live. Close and critical coverage of restaurants is a great way to do that in California, from south to north, east to west. The consideration of restaurants  there are 72,000 in the state!  will allow Tejal to explore how Californians live and what matters to them, across cultures and cuisines and into their (delicious!) commingling. Shell tell us where to eat and why.

And she is the perfect person for the role. A reporter on our Food Desk and an Eat columnist for The New York Times Magazine for the past two years, Tejal has reported on food trucks in New York and the Lost Kitchen in Maine, on the indigenous cuisine of the upper Midwest and on the return to Thailand of the chef Pim Techamuanvivit. She has written columns about oysters, mango kulfi and the case for canned tuna. Shes gone deep on panettone. Her interests are wide and varied. Moreover, she has been a restaurant critic before, at both Bloomberg News and The Village Voice in New York. In both postings she was awarded a James Beard Award for restaurant criticism.
The sheriff added that the law could be altered so that it is less ambiguous, its clearer, and could be applied a little bit more easily than what were having to go through here.

Surveillance video of the shooting shows Mr. Drejka arguing with Mr. McGlocktons girlfriend, Britany Jacobs, as she sits with two small children in a car parked outside a convenience store near Clearwater, Fla., in a space reserved for handicapped people. Mr. McGlockton, who had been inside the store with the couples 5-year-old son, is seen leaving the store and shoving Mr. Drejka to the ground as Ms. Jacobs gets out of the car.

While still sitting on the pavement, Mr. Drejka pulls out a gun and points it at Mr. McGlockton, who takes four steps backward and away from Mr. Drejka. Mr. Drejka then shoots him in the chest, and Mr. McGlockton, clutching the wound, runs back inside the store, where he collapses next to his son.

He was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

In an interview, the state attorney for Pinellas County, Bernie McCabe, declined to comment on specific evidence in the case. But when asked about the significance of the portion of the video showing Mr. McGlockton backing away from Mr. Drejka, he said: I would think people looking at that tape would consider that important.

Im not going to get into whether I agree with the sheriff or dont agree with the sheriff, Mr. McCabe said. I made the legal decision that this is a charge that we can pursue and that we can prove.

In an affidavit filed with the charges on Monday, a detective in the sheriffs office emphasized that Mr. McGlockton had immediately moved away from Mr. Drejka when the gun was drawn. The detective also said that the authorities had heard from another driver who described being angrily confronted by Mr. Drejka in the same parking lot.

Like many prosecutors and law enforcement officials in the state, Mr. McCabe, a Republican, has concerns about the Stand Your Ground statute. He noted that self-defense has always been an available defense that prosecutors must disprove beyond a reasonable doubt, but he said that Stand Your Ground creates an unnecessary hurdle to get to that point.
LEWISTON, Me.  Maine just ended its fiscal year in the black, with a healthy surplus of $176 million, a far cry from a few short years ago when it was hemorrhaging red ink.

Other governors might spend weeks boasting about such an accomplishment. But Gov. Paul LePage, Maines two-term Republican governor  who is barred by term limits from seeking re-election  is an irascible, combative showman and tends to step on his own good news.

Within days, he called on the states Democratic attorney general to step down from office while she runs for governor. He was ordered by the courts to comply with an election funding law he didnt like and had refused to carry out. And he sent a letter to the governor of Massachusetts complaining that the state was engaged in a shakedown of Maine drivers who did not pay tolls on time.

With all that, there was little time to hail the surplus  even as critics said he had balanced the budget by slashing services for Maines least fortunate.
Its the only aspect of the Russia investigation we can see with our own eyes, he said. Mr. Bennett, 27, left the trial early last Tuesday to handle DNA preparation back in his lab, but he planned to go to Mr. Manaforts second trial in Washington, where other related charges, including money laundering, were filed against the former Trump campaign chairman.

Multiple people likened the experience to church: strangers squashed together in wooden benches, standing and sitting at the behest of a man in robes and listening to hours of monotone call and response.

And if the ninth-floor courtroom is a church of justice, the second day of testimony from Rick Gates, the governments star witness, was Christmas Eve Mass: first-time attendees and casual onlookers joining the devoted, flooding the benches to see him testify for hours on exactly how he said he had helped his former business partner evade taxes and shuffle hidden offshore money.

I felt I really hadnt done my part to be a part of this historical time were in, said Chris Martin, 31, a government contractor who took the day off from work to listen to Mr. Gates, ready to take notes in a leather-bound notebook. I want to take notes, share them with my kids and say, yeah, I was in the courtroom.

Legal enthusiasts like Carl Mcadoo, 60, a retired Army veteran who frequently attends trials of varying public intrigue, relished the opportunity to draw their own conclusions from watching the legal arguments firsthand.

Why go to Cancun, all these major resorts areas, when you can go to all these major cities, sit in these courtrooms and learn more than you ever could in a classroom? he said.
Aitan Goelman, Mr. Strzoks lawyer, denounced his clients dismissal. The decision to fire Special Agent Strzok is not only a departure from typical bureau practice, but also contradicts Director Wrays testimony to Congress and his assurances that the F.B.I. intended to follow its regular process in this and all personnel matters, Mr. Goelman said.

This decision should be deeply troubling to all Americans, Mr. Goelman added. A lengthy investigation and multiple rounds of congressional testimony failed to produce a shred of evidence that Special Agent Strzoks personal views ever affected his work.

Mr. Strzoks text exchanges with Ms. Page demonstrated animosity toward Mr. Trump. In one, Ms. Page asks: Trump is not ever going to become president, right? Right?! Mr. Strzok responds: No. No he wont. Well stop it. The inspector general, who uncovered the messages, found no evidence that the pair imposed their political views on their investigative decisions but cited that exchange as not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidates electoral prospects.

The report by the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, that preceded Mr. Strzoks firing not only criticized his conduct in sending the texts but also his use of personal email accounts to handle sensitive information. In addition, the inspector general criticized Mr. Strzoks decision not to move swiftly to examine new emails related to the Clinton investigation just weeks before the 2016 election.

Mr. Horowitz said in his report that he was deeply troubled by the text messages. Hundreds exchanged over months were found in which the pair disparaged Mr. Trump and, to a lesser extent, Mrs. Clinton, exchanged work gossip and bantered.

On Twitter, Mr. Strzok said he was deeply saddened by this decision, adding, It has been an honor to serve my country and work with the fine men and women of the FBI.

Mr. Strzok became emblematic of Mr. Trumps unfounded assertions that a so-called deep state of bureaucrats opposed to him was undermining his presidency. Mr. Trump contended that Mr. Strzok targeted the president and accused Mr. Strzok of being treasonous and a disgrace. Mr. Strzok told lawmakers that he never leaked information about the Russia inquiry, which could have upended the election and hurt Mr. Trumps chances of becoming president.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 13)  President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the relief of top military officials over alleged anomalous transactions in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) health units, his spokesperson said on Monday.

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said Duterte has ordered the relief and court marshal proceedings against 20 officials, based on the intelligence report submitted to him by the AFP.

Among those involved are the AFP Health Service Command (AFPHSC) Chief Brigadier General Edwin Leo Torrelavega; V. Luna Medical Center Commander Colonel Antonio Punzalan; and AFPHSC chiefs of the Management and Fiscal Office and the Logistics Office, among others.

"Several high-ranking officials and employees of the V. Luna Medical Center and Health Service Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines undertook anomalous purchases of equipment and engaged in fraudulent transactions," Roque said in a media briefing.

Anomalous transactions included ghost purchasing, splitting of contract to circumvent mandatory bidding processes, and conceiving fictitious suppliers, Roque said.

"Apparently it's a conspiracy. It was institutional corruption in V. Luna," he said.

Those involved in the corruption mess will be charged with fraud against the government, the AFP said.

Roque said a whistleblower exposed the corrupt acts, which led Duterte to order the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission and the AFP to conduct an investigation.

'Systemic corruption'

AFP Chief-of-Staff General Carlito Galvez said five anomalous transactions worth P1.4 million was flagged for overpricing. He also alleged the presence of equipment and medicine suppliers cartel in V. Luna Medical Center.

He said the prosthesis for wounded Marawi soldiers were one of the projects victimized by the corruption in the military hospital.

"Nakita namin 'yung price ng (We saw the price of) prosthesis. There is an allegation that getting from Ottobock (prosthesis brand), it only costs P330,000. Ang price ng isang supplier ng (The price with a supplier) V. Luna is P1.4 million," he said in a separate media briefing.

He added some of the institutional suppliers are facing cases before the Ombudsman.

He said the Intelligence Service of AFP found that there was a "systemic corruption" in V. Luna hospital.

"Walang transparency, walang checks and balance (There's no transparency, and checks and balance). The Logistics and the Management and Fiscal Office, silang dalawa (those two) from the start up to the delivery," he said.

AFP is investigating 17 other transactions, possibly amounting to P17 million.

Meanwhile, Galvez said Torrelavega will be held liable because he should have been aware of the corrupt practices in the AFPHSC.

"He failed prevent corruption from being undertaken in the Health Services Command," he said.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana assured officials involved in the "highly-questionable transactions" of AFPHSC will be held accountable.

"We will ensure that those responsible will be held fully accountable for their actions. The investigations of the other individuals who might possibly be involved are still ongoing," he said in a statement.

Duterte irked

Upon finding out the alleged widespread corruption Duterte went "ballistic," Roque recalled. In December 2017, Duterte pledged P50 million a month to V. Luna hospital to help with its medical and management expenses.

"Only to find out that much of the funds may be going to pockets of corrupt officials of the AFP... He was personally aggravated when the information on corruption was confirmed in V. Luna," Roque said.

Just last week, Duterte sacked the entire board of Nayong Pilipino Foundation over a "flawed" lease deal, which was "grossly disadvantageous" to the government.
The snub was not entirely unexpected. The president has repeatedly disparaged Mr. McCain, usually without using his name, even in the months since the senator has largely retreated from the Washington scene to his Arizona home for cancer treatment.

At a June rally, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. McCain for voting against a Republican bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, saying that one senator decided to put the thumb down, late in the morning. That was not a good thing when he put the thumb down.

The president mocked him the same way during a speech to conservatives in February, prompting loud and angry boos from the audience at the reference to Mr. McCain. And just hours after signing the military spending bill on Monday, he did the same thing at a fund-raiser in upstate New York.

The relationship between the two men has never been good. As a candidate, Mr. Trump said he did not like Mr. McCain because the senator, a Navy pilot during the war in Vietnam, was shot down and captured, held for more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison and repeatedly tortured.

Hes not a war hero, Mr. Trump said at the time. Hes a war hero because he was captured. I like people who werent captured.
Much has been written about the fact Crazy Rich Asians is the first big studio movie in 25 years to feature Asian actors in leading roles. While making the film, director Jon M. Chu contended with a producers suggestion that the lead role  the Chinese-American Rachel Chu  be rewritten as a white woman, as well as the often-heard complaint that its difficult to find Asian-American male actors.



The film serves as an obvious rebuke to these assertions: Constance Wus performance as Rachel is central to the success of the movie, and the cast is stacked with a roster of talent that would make any director blush. Some of the actors are relative newcomers: Awkwafina, who plays Rachels best friend, just had her first major role in a blockbuster in Oceans 8; Henry Golding, who plays Rachels boyfriend, was a television host before landing the gig. But many of the other cast members already have impressive resumes. If you dont know them already, you should. Heres where you can find some of their best previous work.

Constance Wu
CAPE TOWN  South Africa on Monday took an important step toward restoring a more independent justice system, removing a chief prosecutor widely seen as an obstacle to reining in the countrys rampant corruption.

The prosecutor, Shaun Abrahams, the director of public prosecutions, was ordered to step down immediately by the countrys highest court, a decision that left room for South Africas president, Cyril Ramaphosa, to take a tougher stance on the endemic graft within his party, the African National Congress.

When he took office in February, Mr. Ramaphosa pledged to usher in a new era of clean government, which he would accomplish in part by clearing out officials tied to the abuses of his predecessor as president, Jacob Zuma.

With the power to name a new chief prosecutor, Mr. Ramaphosa can now put his stamp on the office that effectively determines who or what gets prosecuted in South Africa, said Sithembile Mbete, who teaches politics at the University of Pretoria.
KABUL, Afghanistan  Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan have taken over most of the rural areas in Ghazni Province, even as they continue to battle the government for control of the provincial capital, according to local officials and residents.

While attention in the past four days has focused primarily on the fight for Ghazni city, where the Taliban appear to control most neighborhoods, the insurgents have also taken over at least four more rural districts in the province, mostly without much of a fight. They have also consolidated their authority in other districts, as local government officials fled.

By Monday, only two of the provinces 18 rural districts were confirmed to be completely in government control. That raised the prospect that if the insurgents did fully take the city, they might also be in a position to control an entire province for the first time in the 17-year war in Afghanistan.

In the city, government forces, supported by American military airstrikes and some American ground forces, continued on Monday to hold government buildings, the Police Headquarters and prison, and military bases. Officials and residents disputed Taliban claims that those facilities had fallen on Monday, but residents said the government buildings were under constant attack, and Taliban fighters were in apparent charge of most neighborhoods throughout the city.
GENEVA  China issued a blanket denial on Monday of accusations from United Nations experts that it had detained more than a million ethnic Uighur Muslims in re-education camps in the western region of Xinjiang.

Beijing has progressively tightened security in Xinjiang since an eruption of violence there in 2009, but the crackdown has escalated since 2016, when a new Communist Party secretary for the region began widely expanding security services and surveillance.

Gay McDougall, a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, spoke of the region on Friday as becoming something resembling a massive internment camp, with mass detention, re-education and disappearances.

At a hearing in Geneva on Monday, a 49-strong Chinese delegation met questions from the committee with flat contradiction.
SEOUL, South Korea  President Moon Jae-in of South Korea will visit Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, next month to hold his third summit meeting with that countrys leader, Kim Jong-un, South Korean officials said Monday.

A joint statement, released on Monday after a meeting of senior officials from North and South Korea, did not specify a date for the visit.

It was unclear whether the North Koreans asked Mr. Moon to visit Pyongyang in time for the countrys annual national day celebration on Sept. 9. This year, North Korea is commemorating the 70th anniversary of its founding as a communist state, and it has been trying to invite foreign dignitaries to the country for the occasion.

Last week, the Norths Foreign Ministry accused Washington of telling other countries not to send high-level delegations to the celebrations in Pyongyang, which could include a large-scale military parade.
NEW TAIPEI CITY, Taiwan  An early morning fire raged through a hospital floor filled with elderly patients Monday morning in Taiwans largest city, killing at least nine people and injuring two dozen more.

The fire broke out around 4:30 a.m. in a room for patients with chronic or long-term illnesses at the government-run Taipei Hospital in New Taipei City. Within an hour, firefighters had extinguished the blaze. But nine people died, all of whom were patients.

The cause of the fire is still being investigated, said Kolas Yotaka, a spokeswoman for Taiwans government.

There were 32 patients, 10 nurses and eight other workers on the floor when the fire broke out, according to a fire department statement. The blaze forced officials to transfer 206 patients to other hospitals.
Balangiga, today a town of about 14,000, has never gotten over the loss of the bells. Its modern identity revolves around the massacre and the reprisals that followed.

The town plaza, where the killing occurred, is dominated by a large monument depicting the breakfast scene and the villagers approaching the soldiers with their bolos.

September 28, the anniversary of the massacre, is celebrated as a holiday, now politely known as Balangiga Encounter Day.

It is the occasion for a detailed re-enactment of the killing and the theft of the bells.

Since the mid-1990s, Philippine presidents have appealed to American presidents to give back the bells. Some advocates for their return have likened them to the Liberty Bell.

But some United States veterans groups have long opposed such action, arguing that the bells are part of their heritage too and reflect the sacrifice of American soldiers who died at Balangiga.

The bells return, though, is supported by some descendants of the Americans who survived the massacre and by some United States veterans who served in the Philippines.

Dennis L. Wright, a retired Navy captain who lives in the Philippines and campaigned for their return said he was pleased by the defense secretarys decision.

Church bells belong in churches calling the faithful to worship, not as trophies of war, he said.
KABUL, Afghanistan  The American-led invasion of Afghanistan routed Taliban extremists from power after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly 17 years later, after tens of thousands of deaths, hundreds of billions of dollars spent and two White House administrations come and gone, those extremists are not only undefeated but seem as strong as ever.

Since Friday, Taliban fighters have roamed the streets of Ghazni City, a strategic urban center less than 100 miles from the capital, Kabul, killing dozens of Afghan soldiers and police officers, cutting communications and severing the main highway from Kabul to the south and beyond.

The Ghazni assault has demonstrated a stunning display of Taliban tenacity that belies the official Afghan and American narrative of progress in the war and the possibility for peace talks. It also has revealed remarkable bumbling by the Afghan military, including the wrong kind of ammunition sent to besieged police officers. Moreover, the siege has raised basic questions about what conditions the Taliban might accept for peace talks.
BERLIN  Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany will host President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for talks near Berlin this weekend, in a surprise move that analysts said showed how foes and allies of the United States alike were shifting in response to the Trump administrations sweeping tariffs and unpredictable diplomacy.

The chancellor and the Russian president will meet on Saturday at the German governments version of Camp David, Ms. Merkels spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters on Monday. He said the talks were expected to focus on the situation in Syria, violence in eastern Ukraine and a joint pipeline for natural gas.

But analysts said that beyond the detailed points of the meeting might be an attempt to strengthen alliances and exchange ideas about how best to respond to President Trumps tariffs. Both Russia and Germany have been hit by tariffs on aluminum and steel, and both fear the ripple effects of Mr. Trumps recent measures against Turkey.

The German and Russian leaders last met in May, when Mr. Putin welcomed Ms. Merkel to his residence in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi.
Abode has won a Luxury Travel Guide Lifestyle Award.

The kitchen taps, sinks and bathroom product manufacturer won the Best in Kitchen & Bathroom Accessories category.

The travel and lifestyle magazines awards run every year, with brands and products nominated by its contributors and readers.

Leanne Adamson, Abodes Marketing Manager, said: We are delighted to receive this award.

Our aim is that Abode is known for products that inject a touch of luxury to the kitchen and bathroom, and this award is testament to this.
Irans supreme leader made his sharpest criticism yet of his countrys president on Monday, faulting him for having crossed red lines in nuclear negotiations with the United States and other failures that have created an economic crisis.

The remarks by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, compounded the pressure on Irans president, Hassan Rouhani, who is contending with economic protests, anger over endemic corruption, the threat of possible armed conflict with the United States and calls from Irans hard-line factions for resignations in his government.

Mr. Rouhanis promises that the 2015 nuclear agreement reached with the United States and other world powers would lead to an economic revival in Iran have been thwarted since the Trump administration renounced the agreement in May and moved to restore American sanctions.

Over the past three months, Irans currency has plunged in value and large multinational companies have scrapped plans to do business in Iran, intimidated by the strong threat of financial penalties in the United States.
Kampala is probably the only city in the world where you look on either side several times before crossing a one-way street! You cannot tell where a boda boda will come from and ferry you down.

It is even said that the biggest number of accident victims at Mulago hospitals casualty ward are a result of boda boda-related incidents. Boda bodas follow no rules and dont seem aware of any traffic laws that govern the country. In most cases, traffic police haplessly looks at them as they break the law.

The Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) seemed to have tried and failed to regulate them. Boda boda associations led by criminals with godfathers in security agencies had taken over the business. Influential politicians fearing to lose votes in the city opposed every single effort to regulate the sector. Then something happened, thanks to technology.

Some entrepreneurs saw an opportunity in all this chaos and created a mobile app. As we speak today, boda boda riders using apps to get customers are very professional. They dont ride like they were just ferried from some village and given a motorcycle to ride in a heavy-vehicular traffic city like Kampala.

The boda bodas using Safe Boda, Taxify and Uber apps dont ride with reckless abandon like their colleagues who arent. They dont jump traffic lights. They dont ride at unacceptable speeds like a teenager trying to impress the most beautiful belle in the neighbourhood and usually dont go on telling you one unsolicited story after another.

They dont go around telling rumours about who owns what in the city or whose husband is dating whose wife. They concentrate on their job and they are very affordable. Where an ordinary boda charges Shs 5,000, those with apps charge a quarter of that.

And, most importantly, they have two helmets. One for themselves; and another for the passenger. Before you use the passenger helmet, they give you a clean new cap similar to a shower cap to cover your head for hygiene purposes.

Both helmets have the same number that matches the one on the reflector jacket of the rider. The name of the rider is also written on the reflector jacket.

Due to the nature of my work and given the parking limitations in Kampala, I use boda bodas sometimes and nowadays I only use those that are available on the app. Sometimes I even give them money to take it to some people I am paying.

They are cheaper than mobile money and I also know that if I send one of them, there is a way to track him. I also know a lot of people who are using these boda boda apps.

The boda boda riders with apps tell me that they make more money using apps because instead of fighting for customers at stages, people simply request them and go pick them. For example, when they drop a passenger in Munyonyo from Kampala, they just hang around and a passenger will make a request. So, the return trip is most likely to have a customer.

Because they earn more money than other riders who arent on these apps, they ensure that they ride professionally because that way, they will get a good rating when they are terminating the trip.

A five-star rating increases their standing with the app owners and I guess more business. I think if the ratings are always low, then you can be removed from the app.

Of course, those who arent on the apps complain that these tech-empowered riders are undercutting them. We heard this before when Uber for cars launched in many cities across the world. Technology will disrupt every single business.

Anyway, boda boda mobile apps must be reducing the number of accidents given that Ugandans have embraced the use of helmets without anybody forcing them to and riders being forced by technology to obey traffic laws.

Today, there is an increasing number of passengers on boda bodas using helmets than a year ago. Just observe while in traffic how many boda boda passengers today have helmets.

However, the biggest contribution of these boda boda mobile apps is the professionalization of the sector and KCCA must jump on this opportunity right now.

There are more people embracing these boda boda mobile apps both as passengers and riders. And there wont be any noise including from politicians if KCCA asked every boda boda rider in Kampala to have a passenger helmet, a reflector jacket with a name of the rider and the stage on which they operate. Entrepreneurship has solved this problem for them.

Some of the boda boda association criminal bosses with godfathers in security agencies are now in prison and have no influence whatsoever to oppose this anymore.

KCCA must pounce now as they have a golden opportunity than ever to reorgainise the two-wheeler transport sector. And, of course there is no election soon; so, the politicians will keep away.

djjuuko@gmail.com

The writer is a communication and visibility consultant.
A third-year student of Bishop Barham University College Kabale, a constituent college of Uganda Christian University (UCU) has died after being stabbed in a bar brawl.



27-year-old Cleophas Rukundo, a student of Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration was stabbed in the wee hours of Sunday morning at New California T&J Transit bar and hotel, a popular night spot and a hub for sex workers in Kabale town.



According to police, Rukundo was drinking while dancing with a woman when he was surrounded by a group of revellers led by a one, Tom, a resident of Kigongi A cell in Kigongi ward, Central Division Kabale municipality leading to a clash.

T&J Transit bar and hotel Tom reportedly drew a knife from his pocket and stabbed Rukundo under his left armpit. Elly Maate, the Kigezi region police spokesperson, says Rukundo was rushed to Kabale regional referral hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival. Tom reportedly drew a knife from his pocket and stabbed Rukundo under his left armpit. Elly Maate, the Kigezi region police spokesperson, says Rukundo was rushed to Kabale regional referral hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.

According to Maate, after the incident, Tom and his group fled into hiding. Police sealed off the hangout until further notice as investigations into the matter continue.



Rukundo's friends said he'd gone to the bar to mark and celebrate the completion of end of semester exams on Saturday. Ronald Katungi Beinomugisha, the public relations officer of Bishop Barham University declined to comment on the matter, saying the university will issue a statement about the incident later.



This is the second such incident at New California T&J Transit bar and hotel in less than four months. Earlier in May this year, Stephen Kankiriho, a Uganda People's Defense Forces soldier attached to the Special Forces Command (SFC) was stabbed at the same pub by Joshua Tusingwire, a driver from Ntungamo district.



Kankiriho who was part of First Lady Janet Museveni's advance security team got into a fight with Tusingwire when he tried to forcefully grab a sex worker from him.
Eva N., from the Slovakian town of Sturovo, was recently arrested after defying the Supreme Courts decision to stop playing a four-minute aria from Giuseppe Verdis La Traviata on loop every day from early in the morning until late at night.

Its safe to say that Eva N.s neighbors on Kossuth Street, in Sturovo, know Verids La Traviata by heart. After all theyve been forced to listen to it for 16 years, ever since the woman started playing it from loudspeakers on her balconies almost non-stop during the day. Theyve been trying to get her to stop for years, appealing to both local police and the justice system, but Eva just defied everyone and kept turning on Placido Domingos interpretation of La Traviata every morning at around 6 am, and only turned it off at around 10 at night. Luckily, after over a decade and a half of audio torture, Slovakias Supreme Court recently upheld the decision of a lower court that required Eva N. to stop playing her music at loud volume. She ignored the ruling as she did the previous ones, only this time, she got arrested.

Photo: InspiredImages/Pixabay

Eva N.s home on Kossuth Street got the nickname Singing House in 1999, soon after she moved there. In an interview with a Slovakian radio station, she said that the four minute aria from La Traviata was originally a defence mechanism against the barking of a neighbors dog. She claims to have asked the neighbors to do something about the dog as it kept barking and causing her headaches, but they refused, so she had no choice but to fight back. So she got a sound system and started blasting Placido Domingos interpretation of Verdis aria to cover the dogs barking.

Heres the strange thing about her explanation, though. The dog that kept giving Eva N. headaches has been gone for many years, yet she continued playing La Traviata long after that. Last year, Slovakian news site Parameter published an article in which the woman expressed her contempt toward her neighbors. She claimed that she was the true victim, and that she sometimes could get out of the house because of her neighbors. She went on to say that they should all be imprisoned or locked in a mental institution.



For their part, Eva N.s neighbors have had just about enough of her as well, and some declared themselves shocked that it took so many years for the woman to finally be arrested. A court of law forbade her from harassing people with her music in 2015, and she actually stopped doing it for about two years, but in 2017 she started blasting La Traviata again and people were devastated.

I love Placido Domingo, but not like this one neighbor told reporters.

The whole street is suffering, another resident of Kossuth Street said,



Police arrested Eva N. last Monday, after she repeatedly defied the decision of the Supreme Court. She has been accused of harassment and malicious persecution, and if found guilty, she faces between six months and three years in prison.

This story reminds me of a similar story we covered earlier this year concerning a UK woman who was legally banned from loudly singing in her apartment after neighbors complained that she sounded like a drowning cat.


Heidi Anne-Noel

Pandora music streaming service has hired Heidi Anne-Noel as senior manager of communications, based in the companys New York office. Anne-Noel joins Pandora from Press Here Publicity, where she served as senior publicist. Before coming to Press Here, she was vice president, publicity at EMI Music, where she oversaw campaigns for such recording artists as Katy Perry, Anita Baker and Emeli Sande. She has also worked at music publicity firm Glrlie Action, shepherding publicity projects for Bjork, Marianne Faithfull and Kelly Osbourne, among other artists. In her new post, Anne-Noel will be responsible for Pandoras music communications strategy as well as its outreach to the music press and music business community.



Matt Robson

Lumentus, a digital communications shop, has hired Matt Robson as manager of search marketing strategy. Robson comes to Lumentus from marketing and advertising agency Bausbrand, where he served as SEO manager. He was previously paid search manager at McCann RCW and served as an SEO brand manager for Hearst Magazines, directing strategy for ELLE, Woman's Day, and Car & Driver. At Lumentus, Robson will play an integral role in creating overall digital marketing strategies, SEO analysis, and SEM engagement. Matt's digital marketing expertise meets what our clients are increasingly seeking," said Laurence Moskowitz, Lumentus managing partner and chief executive.



Nonye Mpho Omotola

Africa Communications Media Group of Johannesburg has named Nonye Mpho Omotola as its managing director. Omotola, who was previously director at the agency, takes over from co-founder Mimi Kalinda, who will become CEO. Before coming to ACMG, she was business director, Africa, at Vuma Reputation Management. Omotola started her career in London at Maynard Leigh Associates, and has worked in several leading firms in Europe and in other parts of Africa including Jupiter Drawing Room, FCB Durban and Insight Grey, Lagos, where she was director of strategic planning and new business. Founded five years ago as the first African-owned pan-African and fully integrated communications and public relations firm, ACG began by offering services to clients in the social impact space anad has expanded to servicing multi-nationals across the continent in addition to clients outside Africa with an interest in reaching stakeholders on the continent.
RENUA Ireland leader and Offaly County Councillor, John Leahy, has expressed 'grave concerns' over what he describes as 'the state's secret plan to excise the church from primary schools'.

Cllrr Leahy commented, "it is time to sound the alert to protect Faith based primary schools in Ireland."

He explains that he is pluralist but adds that pluralism 'cuts both ways'. He claims that he has uncovered a plan to rid faith from schools.

"I am gravely concerned that a secret plan now exists in the higher echelons of the Department of Education to excise Faith Schools from the educational landscape."

Cllr Leahy goes on to explain that his party will try to retain Catholic Schools. "RENUA Ireland wishes to make it clear that we will fight within our communities to fight for the retention of Catholic Schools against any attack by a Dublin 4 set of sectarian secularists."

He went on to explain how believes primary school is not just about exams.

"School, particularly primary school is about more than exam results. It is about developing character and moral formation. It is also about protecting children from the dangers and threats posed by an uncontrolled digital landscape."

He concluded by stating, "parents across rural Ireland want to protect their Catholic Schools. We value their role within the community both educationally and in preparing children for key steps in our childrens lives such as confirmation and communion. In an increasingly uncertain world the faith school provides our children with an architecture of values. RENUA Ireland will lead the way in fighting such a process"
A video of a man reportedly from Offaly being confronted as part of a sting operation into the alleged online grooming of minors has been viewed almost 115,000 times.

Gardai have confirmed to the Offaly Express that they were called to the scene of an incident at Hueston Station on Sunday, August 12 at approximately 2pm.

A male in his 40s was arrested and taken to Kilmainham Garda station where he was later released without charge.

It's understood this incident related to the live video, posted by Child Protection Awareness group on Facebook, in which a man was confronted for allegedly grooming and attempting to meet an individual he believed to be a 14-year-old girl.

In the video, a female member of the Child Protection Awareness group accuse the man of exchanging explicit texts and images with a one of their members who pretended to be a 14-year-old girl online.

A source has told the Offaly Express that gardai in Tullamore are continuing to investigate all circumstances relating to this incident having been made aware of it on Sunday afternoon.

It's understood phone records and content are being analysed in this instance.

A garda spokesperson also made a statement in relation to so-called 'vigilante groups' who partake in these operations to reveal potential child predators.

"An Garda Siochana does not comment on or discuss speculation about the specific activities of such groups operating in this jurisdiction," they said.

"The actions by such groups are a cause of concern for An Garda Siochana and for other police services. The activity engaged in and the manner of confrontation between such groups and their targets has the potential for violence and could result in harm to persons present," the spokesperson continuned.

"In addition, there are also concerns over the legality of the actions of such groups operating in Ireland. Finally, the manner in which such groups operate and how they interact with their chosen targets prior to and during the arranged meeting has the potential to affect future criminal proceedings."

The statement concluded, "It is An Garda Siochana's primary role to investigate crime and enforce enacted legislation. An Garda Siochana would urge anyone with information relating to the potential sexual exploitation of children to report it immediately to An Garda Siochana where it will be investigated by professional investigators."

"Our priority at all times is the safety of children, and to use all lawful means to fully investigate and prosecute crimes which jeopardise the safety of a child."

This specific incident remains under investigation.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

If you have a story for us, sports news, an event happening in your area, or if you want to submit pictures or videos, contact the Offaly Express team via email to justin.kelly@iconicnews.ie, or through our Facebook.
The annual Tullamore Charity Bikers Motorcycle Rideout takes place on Saturday, August 18 and they are inviting everyone to come along to the event

Now in it's fifth year, it has been a huge success in raising much needed funds for sick children and premature babies in hospitals around Ireland.

The fee is 20 and includes brunch at the Tullamore DEW Visitors Centre. Registration takes place at 10.30am with the ride out leaving at 11.30am sharp. All support is very welcome on the day.

The Tullamore Bikers are a non profit charity that raise money to purchase lifesaving and life maintaining equipment for Irish Neonatal Units and hospitals for sick children. They are made up of members of a motorcycle club called the Blue Daos Ireland, plus many local volunteers.

Some of their members have been affected by a premature birth, or know someone who has. They work tirelessly all year round to raise much needed funds to purchase equipment for our neonatal units and hospitals in Ireland.

You can also find the Tullamore Charity bikers on Facebook, click Here.
Are you an amazon affiliate in Nigeria wondering how to complete the tax information required by amazon? Youre not alone.

There are many Nigerian amazon affiliates struggling with this very important step. I cant count how many times that Ive received emails as regards to this tax issue. And you know what, its either you complete the tax information or Amazon will withhold your amazon affiliate earnings.

Guess what?

If youre a Nigerian, you dont even need to provide formal tax information since you are not a US citizen or resident. In fact, amazon successfully validated my tax information without providing my Nigerian TIN (Tax Identification Number).

Below is a summary of the steps taken to complete my amazon associates tax information in Nigeria :

Tax Information Interview

In the tax information interview section; I completed the interview as stated below:

Who will receive income from Amazon or its subsidiary?  individual

For U.S. tax purposes, are you a U.S. person?  no

Are you acting as an intermediary agent, or other person receiving payment on behalf of another person or as a flow-through entity?  no

Tax Identity Information

In the tax identity information section, I completed the interview as stated below:

Entered my full name

Selected Nigeria as country of residence

De-Selected I have a Non-US TIN

Selected I could not/have not obtained TIN from my local authorities because of other reasons.

Clicked Continue

Set location of services perfumed to : All services will be performed outside the U.S.

Accepted agreement/consent..

Entered my full name as signature

Clicked Save > Preview > Submit

Here is what was displayed after successful validation :

Exit interview to continue to amazon associates dashboard.

Happy Selling!

NB : If you a non-US citizen wondering what you should enter as amazon associates tax information, you can follow through the steps above.
Madhya Pradesh

The Congress is projected to get 117 seats, just above the majority mark, while the BJP is projected to bag 106 seats.

In terms of vote share, the Congress is projected to be slightly ahead with a 41.7 percent vote share in the upcoming 2018 elections, followed by 40.1 percent share for the BJP.

In Lok Sabha election, the survey gave BJP 46 per cent votes and Congress 39 per cent votes.

In terms of PM faces, 54 per cent of people polled in the state backed PM Modi for a second term while 25 per cent would like to see Rahul Gandhi in the top post.

Chhattisgarh

In the 90-member Chhattisgarh Assembly, the Congress is projected to bag 54 seats in the upcoming elections, followed by 33 going to the BJP.

In terms of vote share, the Congress is projected to get 40 percent vote share in the upcoming elections, with the BJP falling 1.2 percentage points behind at 38.8 percent.

Rajasthan

In Rajasthan, the Congress has been projected to get a whopping 130 seats, while the BJP is getting 57 seats. This is a complete reversal from 2013 when BJP had got 163 seats.

In terms of the vote share, the Congress is projected to get 50.8 percent, followed by the BJP with 36.8 percent in the upcoming elections.

In the Lok Sabha election, it is the BJP that is projected to bag 47 per cent votes while Congress is second with 43 per cent votes.

PM Modi is far ahead in popularity as 55 per cent people would like to see him get a second term as against 22 per cent who said they would back Rahul Gandhi.
| BY Ricki Green |

KPMG Australia has hired Sudeep Gohil. He will play two key roles: working as part of Customer, Brand and Marketing Advisory (CBMA) business helping clients with brand strategy; and working with the firm, providing strategic guidance to KPMGs own brand and market positioning.

Sudeep has established himself as a strategic leader within the global brand and advertising industry, with two decades in leadership roles at some of the worlds top agencies including BBH, Wieden + Kennedy, Droga5, 72andSunny LA and Publicis Worldwide India. He has blended agency management with client work, supporting business transformation and shaping brand strategy for many of the worlds most recognised organisations including Netflix, Nike, Coca-Cola, and UNICEF.

In Australia he was co-founder of health-tech startup Tyde, which he founded following eight years at Droga5, where he was also CEO and founder of its Sydney office. Australian born, Gohils career has taken him to Mumbai, Los Angeles, London, New York, Singapore, Tokyo and Portland.

Says Paul Howes, partner-in-charge, KPMG CBMA: We are delighted to be bringing Sudeep into the KPMG team. His global viewpoint, in-depth experience working on marketing strategy for leading brands, and his entrepreneurial approach fit perfectly what our clients are looking for.

Gohil is the latest industry leader to join KPMGs CBMA business since it was established in July 2017 as it has grown to more than 100 specialists including the recent acquisition of UDKU. He joins other arrivals including Andrew Baxter (former chairman of Publicis Communications), partners Carmen Bekker (ex-JWT) Amanda Hicks (Acuity), Lisa Bora (ex-Google), Mark Hassell (ex-Virgin Australia); directors Karen Halligan (ex-Zenith), Louise Pogmore (ex-One Green Bean), Melanie Evans (formerly GM of Business to Business IT at Telstra) and Ross McLelland (formally head of customer research at Telstra).

Says Margaret Cowle, national managing partner brand and engagement for KPMG Australia: Besides capturing his skills for the benefits of our clients, Sudeep will also play an important role in shaping KPMGs own brand in Australia, working with our internal brand, marketing and communications team to help further differentiate what KPMG means in an ever-evolving market. We are incredibly excited to have him join the firm.

Says Gohil: Im immensely pleased to be joining the team at KPMG. Moving back to Australia, I wanted to be 100% sure I joined a genuinely forward-thinking company with significant opportunity for growth. KPMG is all that and much more. The opportunity to be part of such a dynamic business in a rapidly evolving environment is energising and I cant wait to start making an impact.
Independence Day: Bal Gangadhar Tilak's sedition trial and how British strangled freedom of speech

India

oi-Vikas SV

By Vikas

Bal Gangadhar Tilak was at the forefront of the Indian Independence Movement and considered most important independence activist before Mahatma Gandhi entered the scene in the early 1900s. He was considered the first leader of the Indian Independence Movement and even the British called him "The father of the Indian unrest."

Tilak was a strong advocate of Indian autonomy from the British rule. Tilak was one of the first and strongest advocates of Swaraj ("self-rule") and was seen as a radical leader. At that time, the independence activists were divided along the lines the moderates and the extremists, Tilak backed the extremists' faction.

Also Read | Looking back at India's freedom struggle with centenarian H S Doreswamy

His speeches strongly opposed the British rule and radical articles urged the Indians to rise and stand up against the British rule. Because of these activities, he had become a thorn in the flesh of the colonial rulers.

In a series of articles in his Marathi newspaper Kesari, Tilak condemned the use of violence, but wrote, "The rulers who always exercise unrestrained power must remember that there is always a limit to the patience of humanity". And so, "violence, however deplorable, became inevitable".

During his lifetime, Bal Gangadhar Tilak had been tried for Sedition Charges three times by the British rulers -in 1897, 1909 and 1916.

In 1897, Tilak was sentenced to 18 months in prison for inciting the people against the British.

It was the 1909 sedition case, which is worth recalling even though over a century has passed after it.

Events leading to 1909 trial of Tilak:

On 30 April 1908, two youths, Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose, threw a bomb on a carriage at Muzzafarpur, to kill the Chief Presidency Magistrate Douglas Kingsford of Calcutta, but erroneously killed two women traveling in it. While Chaki committed suicide when caught, Bose was hanged. Tilak, in his paper Kesari, defended the revolutionaries and called for immediate Swaraj or self-rule. The Government swiftly charged him with sedition.

Tilak's sedition trial

On 24 June 1908, Tilak was arrested from Bombay on a charge of sedition and 153A IPC in respect of two articles carried in Kesari on 12 May and 9 June 1908. The article dated 12 May was titled 'The Country's Misfortune' and that of 9 June has titled 'These Remedies Are Not Lasting'. His house in Poona was searched by the police that found a postcard with the names of two books on explosives written on it. The Chief Presidency Magistrate of Bombay declined an application for bail. Sanction for the prosecution was swiftly granted and Tilak was committed to stand trial at the sessions of the Bombay High Court.

Tilak was defended by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, later by Joseph Baptista and later by himself assisted by a battery of counsel. The sessions judge was none other than Tilak's counsel in the 1897 trial, DD Davar. He also declined bail to Tilak. The acting Advocate General, who led the prosecution, had also been Tilak's counsel earlier in a different matter. Tilak argued that the articles were written in the course of controversy between the European press and Indian vernacular press.

He also argued that those articles critique a tyrannous bureaucracy rather than the tyrannous British rule. The special jury comprised of seven Europeans and two Indians. Indian jurors returned a verdict of not guilty while the European jurors adjudged Tilak guilty. Again, the jurors and the judge both had no knowledge of Marathi. Judge Davar asked Tilak if he had anything to say. His reply [Now inscribed on a marble outside Court Room No. 46 in the Bombay High Court unveiled by Justice MC Chagla] deserves to be quoted:

"All I wish to say is that, in spite of the verdict of the jury, I maintain that I am innocent. Here are higher powers that rule the destiny of things and it may be the will of Providence that the cause which I represent may prosper more by my suffering than by my remaining free."

Tilak was sentenced to six years of transportation to Burma; three under each section. Leave to appeal to privy Council made by Baptista on behalf of Tilak was declined. Tilak served out his sentence which was commuted to simple imprisonment in Mandalay and later returned to India with even more influence on the politics in the country. (Sedition trial source - www.livelaw.in)
Prashant Kishor in viral video: With or without Modi, BJP will be centre of Indian polity for decades

BJP mulls assembly polls with Lok Sabha elections in party-ruled states

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Aug 13: In a bid to underline its commitment to simultaneous polls, the BJP is mulling holding assembly elections in 10-11 states along with the Lok Sabha polls, which are scheduled in the first half of next year.

A top party leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they are exploring the possibility of deferring assembly elections of some states by a few months and advancing some others to ensure they are held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha polls.

The tenure of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh assemblies will expire in January next year and the governments of these BJP-ruled states may recommend a brief spell of governor's rule so that assembly elections there could be held with the Lok Sabha polls, he said.

The tenure of the assembly in the Congress-ruled Mizoram is ending in December this year. Former Lok Sabha secretary general and constitutional expert P D T Acharya questioned the legal validity of imposing the governor's rule in states where assembly elections are due before the Lok Sabha polls.

Amit Shah writes to Law Commission for One Nation One Election

The governor's rule can be imposed only in case of constitutional breakdown, he said. The source said other states where assembly polls can be advanced to enable it to be held with the Lok Sabha polls are Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra- all under the BJP's rule.

Assembly elections in these three states are also scheduled next year following the Lok Sabha polls.

The Lok Sabha elections in 2014 were held in April-May. The source said assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Telangana are anyway scheduled to be held with the Parliamentary polls.

Another state where talks of advancing assembly elections are doing the rounds is Bihar, where they are due in 2020 end. The BJP is a junior partner in the state government led by JD(U)'s Nitish Kumar.

The JD(U) has in public pooh-poohed the suggestion that the state elections be held with the Lok Sabha polls but many political watchers believe that it may suit Kumar as well.

This is because he may like to ensure his party gets to contest lion's share of assembly seats while the BJP fights more Lok Sabha seats.

There is a view within the BJP that holding assembly elections of as many states as possible with the Lok Sabha polls will be a positive plank in its favour as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly emphasised his support to the idea.

With the opposition parties like the Congress being against the idea, the government is not in a position to effect the constitutional amendment that the exercise of holding assembly and Lok Sabha polls simultaneously would require.

By clubbing assembly elections in states ruled mostly by the BJP, the party would send a message that it means business, its leaders said. This would also help the party counter the anti-incumbency factor in states ruled by it.

BJP president Amit Shah had today written to the Law Commission stating his party was in favour of simultaneous elections, saying it would curb expenditure and ensure the nation is not in "election mode" throughout the year.

PTI
CM Kumaraswamy asks PM Modi not to shift Aero India out of Bengaluru

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

Bengaluru, Aug 13: Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday asking him to ensure that the Aero India show be held in Bengaluru- the city that has hosted the event for the past 22 years.

In his letter, Kumaraswamy has said Bengaluru is the hub for defence and aviation majors in the country and the "most suitable place" to hold the show.

"Bengaluru, with its past experience in conducting the show successfully, with its beautiful weather conditions and favourably located defence and aviation industries would be the best choice to conduct Aero India show," he said.

"Hence, I would seek your indulgence in the matter to convey approval of Government of India for conducting Aero India Show-2019 at Bengaluru," he added.

Will AeroIndia be shifted out of Bengaluru?

Hitting out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led NDA government, Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy asserted that Bengaluru was the proper place for Aero India show, pointing that the Karnataka capital had all infrastructure needed.

Speaking to mediapersons on Sunday, the Janata Dal Secular (JDS) leader said, "Our BJP friends in Karnataka must answer. We also requested the defence minister and told her that Bengaluru is the proper place for the Aero show event and we have all infrastructure in place as well. I don't know why the Centre took such a decision."

However, state Bharatiya Janata Party leaders slammed the ruling coalition for creating a controversy.

"It is not yet decided whether the air show will be shifted to Uttar Pradesh or not. Defence Minister said people of Uttar Pradesh are asking for the air show but this is not yet decided. We will try our best to make sure that it is not shifted anywhere else," Yeddyurappa said.

Speculation is rife that the Aero India Expo, which is held in Bengaluru since 1996, will be shifted to Uttar Pradesh.

For the past 22 years, Aero India biennial air show and aviation exhibition has been held at the Yelahanka Air Force Station in Bengaluru.
Condolences pour in for former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee

India

oi-Madhuri

New Delhi, August 13: Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee passed away on Monday. He was 89. Chatterjee, who breathed his last at 8:15 AM today was undergoing dialysis in a Kolkata hospital.

Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee passes away at 89]

Eighty-nine-year-old Chatterjee, who was suffering from a kidney-related ailment, was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday. 12-member team of doctors was constantly keeping an eye on the veteran politician.

[Somnath Chatterjee: The statesman who remained independent in twilight years]

CPI (M) leader Sujan Chakraborty said, "It's a big setback for us. Today, we lost Somnath da around 8.15 am at a private hospital in Kolkata."

Somnath Chatterjee made Indian democracy richer, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today condoling the demise of the former Lok Sabha Speaker. Describing him as a stalwart of Indian politics, the prime minister said, Chatterjee made Parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable.

Former MP and Speaker Shri Somnath Chatterjee was a stalwart of Indian politics. He made our Parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise. My thoughts are with his family and supporters.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 13, 2018

Congress chief Rahul Gandhi condoled the death of former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee and said he was respected by parliamentarians across party lines.

I mourn the passing away of Shri Somnath Chatterjee, 10 term MP and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha. He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief. #SomnathChatterjee  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 13, 2018

BJP chief Amit Shah condoled the death of former Somnath Chatterjee, describing him as an excellent parliamentarian. "Saddened to learn about the demise of Somnath Chatterjee, former Speaker of Lok Sabha," Shah tweeted. "He (Chatterjee) was an excellent Parliamentarian, whose long years as a member of the House, enriched our Parliamentary traditions. My condolences to his family and supporters in this hour of grief," Shah said.

Former vice president M Hamid Ansari condoled the death of Chatterjee, describing him as a remarkable human being and am eminent Parliamentarian. Chatterjee passed away at a private hospital in Kolkata this morning following multiple organ failure. "I express my deep distress over the passing away of Shri Somnath Chatterjee," Ansari said in a statement. "He was a remarkable human being, an eminent parliamentarian and a very clear headed speaker of the Lok Sabha. I convey my heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family," he said.

Mamata Banerjee, WB CM said,''His mortal remains will be taken from Belle Vue Clinic to High Court as he was associated with it for quite a long time. From the Court he will be taken to the State Assembly where he will be given the highest state honour. His mortal remains will be kept in the Assembly for a few hours. Then his family will take the mortal remains to their residence from where they will be taken to SSKM Hospital where he had donated his body for medical research.''

Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) said,''SomnathChatterjee along with many other party leaders had donated his body for medical research. Before that, the mortal remains will be kept at party office where last respects will be paid to him. Then the remains will be taken to West Bengal assembly.''

''From West Bengal assembly, the body will be handed over to hospital. The final programme will be decided soon after consulting with his family,'' he also said.

Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan tears up while talking about #SomnathChatterjee who passed away this morning; says, 'he was like an elder brother to me.'

#WATCH: Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan tears up while talking about #SomnathChatterjee who passed away this morning; says, 'he was like an elder brother to me' pic.twitter.com/ff1EXtdUXI  ANI (@ANI) August 13, 2018

Meira Kumar, Former Lok Sabha Speaker said,''I can't believe that he is no more. I knew he is ill but didn't know that this will happen. It is an honour for me that I could sit on the chair (of Lok Sabha Speaker) that he occupied once. He was an amazing person.''

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, in a tweet said Chatterjee was "..greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines".

Sorry to hear of the passing away of Shri #SomnathChatterjee, former Lok Sabha Speaker&a veteran parliamentarian who had a forceful presence in the House. A loss for public life in Bengal&India. My condolences to his family and innumerable well-wishers, tweets President Ram Nath Kovind.

Vice President in a tweet said Chatterjee was always affable & highlighted people's problems.''Saddened by the demise of former LS Speaker, Shri #SomnathChatterjee. He was an outstanding Parliamentarian, who was elected to LS 10 times. He was always affable & highlighted people's problems. He firmly stood by the principles he believed in.''
Aero India-2021 to be held in Bengaluru from February 3 to 7

Aero India 2021: Here is how to register and watch the show for free

Defence Ministry yet to decide on venue for next edition of Aero India

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Aug 13: The Defence Ministry has received requests from a number of countries including Gujarat, Rajasthan, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh to host the next Aero India, amid reports that the mega aerospace event is being moved out of its traditional venue of Bengaluru.

Official sources said the Defence Ministry is examining the requests from various states and yet to take a call on the venue for the next edition of the event.

"The ministry has received requests to host the event from Gujarat, Rajasthan, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and several other states," said a source.

There have been reports that the biennial event -- considered the largest aerospace exhibition in Asia -- may be organised at the Bakshi Ka Talab air force base in Lucknow in October.

CM Kumaraswamy asks PM Modi not to shift Aero India out of Bengaluru" title=" CM Kumaraswamy asks PM Modi not to shift Aero India out of Bengaluru" /> CM Kumaraswamy asks PM Modi not to shift Aero India out of Bengaluru

Aero India has traditionally been organised at Indian Air Force's Yelahanka air base on the outskirts of Bengaluru.

At an event on Saturday, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath made a request to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to select Lucknow as the venue for the Aero India.

Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy today sent a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, insisting that Bengaluru would be the "best choice" for the event.

"Bengaluru being the hub for defence and aviation majors of the country, is certainly the most suitable place to conduct the show," he said in the letter.

Since its inception in 1996, Bengaluru has been hosting the air show.

PTI
Delhi: Fire breaks out at Ashoka hotel in Chanakyapuri

India

oi-Madhuri

New Delhi, Aug 13: A fire has broken out in the basement of Ashoka Hotel in Chanakyapuri area on Monday. Seven fire tenders are present at the spot.

A call was received at 12.20 pm about the fire in the hotel's records kept in the basement and eight fire tenders were rushed to the spot, a senior officer from the Delhi Fire Service said.

No one was injured in the fire, says fire service official.

In a similar incident in May, a major fire broke out at the lawns of a five-star hotel in Vasant Kunj. The incident happened ahead of a wedding function. No one was injured in the incident however, the tents set up for the function were gutted. Three fire tenders were pressed into service.
Dont deal with Pakistan, China directly, MHA advises states

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, AUG 13: The Union Home Ministry has advised all states not to deal directly with Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and other nations on issues related to internal security. Such matters should be addressed to the Centre first, the advisory also states.

The advisory states that in such matters the Centre must be consulted first. The communication states that it was noticed that some agencies from countries of concern were forwarding invitations on issues such as mutual cooperation, training, joint exercise and exchange of views directly to states and union territories, without informing the Home Ministry first.

MHA asks states to create awareness programs to curb lynching incidents

While cooperation is desirable, there was a need to be more careful while dealing with countries of concern in view of national security, the ministry also stated. In the case of internal security cooperation, countries such as Pakistan, China, Afghanistan and Iran have been identified as countries of concern. In terms of counter terror programmes, fake currency, drugs and human trafficking, Syria, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have been identified as countries of concern.

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Story first published: Monday, August 13, 2018, 7:07 [IST]
Son of a Hindu Mahasabha leader to become CPM MP; faces defeat from Mamata

Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee passes away at 89

India

oi-Madhuri

New Delhi, August 13: Former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee passed away at the age of 89 years in a Kolkata hospital on Monday. Chatterjee, who breathed his last at 8:15 AM today was undergoing dialysis. Doctors said he had a cardiac arrest.

Thee hospital issued a statement,''Today morning he was undergoing dialysis when his heart stopped and he could not be revived.''

[Somnath Chatterjee: The statesman who remained independent in twilight years]

Chatterjee, who was suffering from a kidney-related ailment, was admitted to the hospital last week. He suffered a mild heart attack on Sunday morning, but was revived.He was in ICU and was put on ventilation.

Chatterjee was re admitted to hospital on August 10 following kidney ailments.

[Condolences pour in for Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee]

He was earlier admitted to a Kolkata hospital in June. He was released after his health improved after a few days. "Chatterjee is gradually improving but will take more time (to recover)," the senior hospital executive had said.

A 10-time Lok Sabha MP, Chatterjee was a central committee member of the CPI(M), which he had joined in 1968. He was the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.

Chatterjee won the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award in 1996.
Highly radicalised: How this ISIS recruit from Hyderabad hoodwinked everyone

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Hyderabad, Aug 13: On Sunday, the National Investigation Agency arrested Mohammad Abdullah Basit, 24 after it was found that he was highly radicalised and was planning on carrying out Islamic State related activities in India.

Ironically, this is not for the first time that Basit has had a run-in with the law. He has been counselled several times in the past by elders, his parents and the police. The law enforcement agencies while dealing with such cases, always first look to counsel the person in question so that he is able to be part of the mainstream. This would however depend on the level of radicalisation the person in question has undergone.

Basit's first attempt to join the ISIS was in 2014. That year based on a tip of, the Telangana police managed to bring him back along with several others from Malda in West Bengal. He was attempting to cross over into Bangladesh and join the ISIS in Afghanistan.

After being brought down, he was counselled during which he assured that he would mend his ways. However exactly a year later, he made another attempt to leave the country, this time for Syria. The police however arrested him in Nagpur and brought him back to Hyderabad.

The radicalisation of South India: Why this part of the country is a ticking terror time bomb

Hoodwinking the counsellor:

He underwent several rounds of counselling after his arrest. All through he had assured both the police and his parents that he would change. However investigators now say that he was pretending all the while. In fact what he was doing was hoodwinking the police so that he would not be arrested.

NIA officials say that the fact of the matter is that he never had any intention of reforming. Even when he was out on bail, he kept in touch with several operatives of the ISIS. It was during this period that he decided that it would be better stay within the country and wage jihad within. He realised that he would not be able to go out especially after two failed attempts, considering that the radar on him was very high.

Two from Hyderabad arrested in Islamic State related case

Early beginnings:

For Basit the entire radicalisation process began when he was around 16 years old. He would watch speeches by Osama Bin Laden. He says during his questioning, that he as highly inspired by such persons.

In Hyderabad, he would be part of a very close knit circle which also included some of his relatives. They were even booked in 2015 on charges of attempting to wage a war against the nation among other sections.

Also

Why ISIS terrorists are swarming like bees in Hyderabad

Officials tell OneIndia that his arrest became necessary since he had reached a point of no return. In fact after the counselling, he had become every more determined. He had in fact decided that he would make all attempts to join the ISIS. Sources also add that after the two failed attempts to leave the country, his handlers may have advised him to carry out terrorist activities in India itself.

Also

Chakravyuh: These ISIS recruits didn't know who they were speaking to

The NIA's case:

The case on hand dates back to an NIA probe that was launched in 2016. 3 accused persons and their other unknown associates were members of ISIS and were involved in a conspiracy to identify, motivate, radicalise, recruit and train Indian Muslim youth on behalf of the proscribed outfit ISIS to carry out terror activities. All the three accused were subsequently arrested by NIA.

The NIA filed a chargesheet and subsequently two persons Sheikh Azhar and Mohamamd Farhan were sentenced to 7 years in jail. The trial against the third person, Adnan Hassan is still on.

A Caliphate in Hyderabad: NIA probe on ISIS module reveals

The NIA says, during further investigation, a fresh input was received from reliable sources that one Abdullah Basith resident of Hyderabad, who was connected with accused Adnan Hassan and some of his associates are in regular touch with each other and conspiring to further the activities of ISIS, a proscribed terrorist organisation in India.

The initial questioning/interviewing done so far has brought out the involvement of accused Abdullah Basith, Mohd Abdul Qhadeer and other associates pledging their allegiance to the proscribed terrorist organization ISIS to carry out terror activities in India.

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Story first published: Monday, August 13, 2018, 10:16 [IST]
Despite being under FATF scanner, Pak makes attempts to smuggle arms into Kashmir

Illegal arms factory busted in Gujarat, four held

India

oi-Madhuri

Rajkot, Aug 13: Four people were arrested for allegedly manufacturing firearms illegally at a factory in Gujarat's Rajkot district, a police official said today.

Acting on a tip-off, a Special Operation Group (SOG) of the Rajkot Police raided the factory, located in Kothariya Road area, last night and seized some pistols and raw material used for making the firearms, he said.

The factory owner and three other persons were nabbed following the raid.

Operation 'Jubaida': How India's biggest arms licence scam involving IAS officers was busted

"We raided the factory and seized 17 country-made pistols and some raw material which the accused were using to make the weapons," SOG police inspector S N Gadu said.

The factory owner, Hiren Sardhara (32), and his three accomplices - Harshad Hothi (28), Alpesh Vasani (35) and Balu Sisodiya (38) - were arrested, he said.

Also Read | 4 held for possessing illegal weapons

The police were trying to ascertain where and to whom the accused were selling these weapons, he added.

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Story first published: Monday, August 13, 2018, 15:41 [IST]
| BY Lynchy |

Digitas has appointed Tramaine Teo as Social Media Director for South East Asia. The appointment comes as Digitas looks to strengthen its Social Practice across South East Asia.

Digitas is growing their social capabilities out of Singapore which will provide robust social services spanning across Analytics, Social Business Consulting, Data-powered Content, Social-led innovation and Media Capabilities. The practice will address the increasing need from brands to drive more data-powered social programs, offer models that allow for agile go-to-market solutions and unlock the full potential of social to ensure it drives business impact.

With an impressive list of Social Media clients in Singapore and SEA including Disney, Danone, HPE and Tourism New Zealand, the appointment of Teo and Digitas positioning as the Connected Marketing Agency, sets-up the social practice to grow strategically and sustainibly.

Prior to joining Digitas, Teo (pictured above) was Client Services Director at BatesCHI & Partners in Jakarta where her focus was driving digital integration across their client base. Prior to BatesCHI, Teo was at Vocanic where she managed the Singapore social team and clients including Johnnie Walker, Starwood Hotels, Perfect Italiano, Subway and Caltex.

Teo, said, Creativity in social content is about driving relevance, being contextual and finding meaningful connections with people in ways that are authentic while ensuring everyone is having fun! I look forward to bringing more of this to the Digitas team and our clients across the region.

Teo will report into Josh Lee, Client Partner at Digitas Singapore.
Have never seen such chaos, anarchy as what is playing out in Punjab Cong: Manish Tewari

Independence Day: UK owes an apology to India for Jallianwala Bagh massacre

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar P

By Chennabasaveshwar

New Delhi, Aug 11: 'So many people who knew the condition of Amritsar say I did right...but so many others say I did wrong. I only want to die and know from my Maker whether I did right or wrong': These are the last words of General Reginald Dyer (Collett, Nigel, 2006, The Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer).

General Dyer is known for infamous orders that he gave on 13 April 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. Around 50 troops of the British Indian Army, under the command of General Reginald Dyer, fired rifles into a crowd of around 15,000 civilians who had gathered to celebrate the harvest festival of Baisakhi and condemn the arrest and deportation of two national leaders, Satya Pal and Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew.

According to reports, a total of 1,650 rounds were fired by the soldiers in a span of 10 minutes on the unarmed crowd, which was not given any prior warning to disperse.

Dyer-without warning the crowd to disperse-blocked the main exits. He 'explained' later that this act "was not to disperse the meeting but to punish the Indians for disobedience. Many people died in stampedes at the narrow gates or by jumping into the solitary well on the compound to escape the shooting. A plaque, placed at the site after independence states that 120 bodies were removed from the well. The Indian National Congress estimated that more than 1,500 were injured, with around 1,000 dead.

The Massacre marks one of the darkest moment in Indian history. The United Kingdom parliament still owes an apology to India for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

On 14 October 1997, Queen Elizabeth II visited Jallianwala Bagh and paid her respects with a 30second moment of silence. She removed her shoes while visiting the monument and laid a wreath at the monument.

While some Indians welcomed the expression of regret and sadness in the Queen's statement, others criticised it for being less than an apology. In February 2013 David Cameron became the first serving British Prime Minister to visit the site, laid a wreath at the memorial, and described the Amritsar massacre as "a deeply shameful event in British history, but Cameron did not deliver an official apology.

As per Hindustan Times reports, Indian-origin British parliamentarians - Lord Meghnad Desai and Lord Raj Loomba - are ready to initiate debate in the House of Lords to press the UK parliament to apologise for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Both are part of the Jallianwala Bagh Centenary Commemoration Committee (JBCCC)

99th anniversary of Jallianwala Bagh massacre Police personnel pay tributes to the martyrs during a ceremony at Baiskahi and 99th anniversary of Jallianwala Bagh massacre, at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. PTI Photo Jallianwala Bagh Memorial Visitors walk in front of the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial in Amritsar. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, which took place on April 13, 1919, the Baisakhi day, after Brigadier-General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer ordered 50 British Indian Army soldiers to open fire on a crowd gathered at Jallianwala Bagh. The Massacre marks one of the darkest moment in Indian history. PTI Photo The martyrs' well The martyrs' well at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. PTI photo Bullet marks Visitors look at the bullet marks of the infamous Jallianwala Bagh massacre. PTI photo Museum at the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial People click selfie with a painting, depicting the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, installed in the museum at the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial, in Amritsar. PTI photo Statue of Shaheed Udham Singh Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh unveils a 10-foot marble statue of Shaheed Udham Singh at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. On March 13, 1940, Udham Singh assassinated Michael O' Dwyer the then lieutenant governor of Punjab to avenge the infamous Jallianghwala Bagh massacre at Caxton Hall in London. PTI Photo
New land border law will not affect existing boundary treaties: China to India

Has 3rd wave started in India? Here's how many cases of AY.4.2 reported in country, so far

India should encourage Bhutan to increase deployment of soldiers in Doklam says panel

India

oi-Madhuri

New Delhi, Aug 13: India should encourage Bhutan to ensure increase in the deployment of soldiers around Northern Doklam in the Sikkim sector to check activities of Chinese military in the sensitive region, a parliamentary panel has suggested in its draft report.

The Parliamentary Panel on External Affairs, headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, felt that increasing the number of soldiers in North Doklam was important for safeguarding India's strategic interests in the region.

Army finalises project to produce clothing, equipment for soldiers guarding Siachen glacier, Doklam

The draft report, circulated among the panel's members on August 6, did not clarify whether the committee was favouring increasing the deployment of Indian troops in the region.

Troops of India and China were locked in a 73-day standoff in Doklam in the Sikkim sector from June 16 last year after the Indian side stopped construction of a road in the disputed tri-junction by the Chinese army.

Bhutan and China have a dispute over Doklam and both the countries have been holding talks to resolve the issue.

Rahul attacks govt on Doklam, says Swaraj 'buckled in front of Chinese power'

The parliamentary panel also suggested that India should remain alert and watchful in the Doklam area even though last year's face-off between Indian and Chinese armies was resolved peacefully.

It is clear that China's Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) took advantage of absence of Bhutanese soldiers in Batangla-Merugla-Sinchela ridgeline, which is in Bhutan, the panel noted.

Therefore, the committee recommends deployment of higher number of soldiers in Northern Doklam. India should encourage Bhutan for it so that the Chinese army could be stopped from pushing the limit of the tri-junction point, it said.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi is a member of the 31-member panel, where a majority of the members are from the BJP.

Some members of the committee travelled to Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh to take stock of ground situations and meet senior officials there.

The panel has been briefed several times on the situation in Doklam by S Jaishankar, former foreign secretary, and his successor Vijay Gokhale.

The foreign ministry officials had informed the panel that Bhutan was firmly with India on the issue, sources in the panel said.

They said during discussions, Gandhi had questioned foreign ministry officials on China's objective and why Beijing chose Doklam to trigger a confrontation.

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Story first published: Monday, August 13, 2018, 5:56 [IST]
Protect country without worry, Modi govt will take care of your families: Amit Shah to troops

Amit Shah spends night at CRPF camp in Pulwama; says will see a peaceful J&K 'in our lifetime'

J-K cops detain 6 over derogatory video after Pakistan's victory against India in T20 match

Balkanisation of India: Lt. Gen would look to further bolster Operation Tupac in Kashmir

Terrorist who was going to kill shopkeeper in J&K gunned down

J&K: Terrorists abduct civilian, kill him

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Srinagar, Aug 13: One civilian has died after he was abducted and killed by terrorists at Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir.

The deceased has been identified as Gulzar Ahmad Bhat, son of Ani Bhat, a resident of Murran in Pulwama.

J&K: 1 cop martyred, 3 Jawans injured in encounter with terrorists in Batmaloo

Bhat was first abducted by the terrorists before being killed. Later on, Police recovered the bullet ridden dead body of Gulzar from the nearby fields of Murran Pulwama.

Police have registered a case and initiated investigations. Initial investigation in the matter suggests that Zahoor Thokar and Showkat Dar led group of proscribed terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen are involved in this Killing.

Terrorists killed in Baramulla encounter were affiliated to LeT: Army

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Story first published: Monday, August 13, 2018, 9:01 [IST]
Independence Day: What mattered most to Ashfaqulla Khan was to see Mother India free

Looking back at Indias freedom struggle with centenarian H S Doreswamy

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar P

By Chennabasaveshwar

Bengaluru, Aug 13: A room filled with scattered newspapers on chairs, souvenirs. A telephone next to his bed which doesn't stop ringing throughout the day. Moreover, he is not averse to answering calls on scheduling appointments or giving directions to visitors to reach his home. Most interestingly, a home with doors opened. Visitors don't have to knock on the door to meet this man.

We are talking about freedom fighter HS Doreswamy. His personal anecdotes narrate the history of the nation and his home state. The centenarian says his concern for the society keeps him going. He has seen India through its various ups and downs over the past nine decades and has been actively raising political and social causes.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak's sedition trial: When the British strangled freedom of speech

Doreswamy was born in Harohalli village (near Kanakapur), his grandfather was a nominated member of Praja Pratinidhi Sabha. Doreswamy's elder brother HS Sitaram was also a freedom fighter who later became Mayor of Bangalore.

Initiation into freedom struggle:

"During school days I was inspired by eloquent speakers Pattabhi Sitaramaiah, Acharya Kripalani. Mahatma Gandhi had been to Bangalore many a time," recalled Doreswamy.

'My early life', book by Mahatma Gandhi played a pivotal role in his life. "A social worker should voluntarily embrace poverty," that means to be an activist we should embrace poverty, but I did not understand the significance of his words. After I decided to be active in public life I realised what Gandhi wanted to convey," he said.

Who was Durga Bhabhi? The woman who helped Bhagat Singh escape from Lahore to Calcutta

Also, a public gathering at Banappa Park in 1937 inspired him in which the senior leader of Congress KF Nariman was invited. He was arrested by policemen and the entire crowd went berserk and protested the high-handedness of the British. Police lathi-charged the gathering and injured several people.

Why was I arrested?

All started with labourers movement in the city. Around 14, 000 labourers led by ND Shankar closed Minerva, Raja and Binny mills for 14 days.

In the meantime, I used to supply time-bombs to workers in other districts. These bombs were not harmful to cause loss of human life. Freedom fighters used to throw bombs in postboxes in front of courts and government offices to destroy official correspondences. The flame from the blast used to burn papers.

Doreswamy said, "Then, I was a young man didn't bother violence and non-violence. I just believed in 'Do or die'."

One Buddha Das use to prepare time-bombs at his farm. I supplied a bagful of bombs to my friend Ramachandran in Tumkur. The police followed him and arrested. After his arrest, the police surrounded my house at night. I realized I won't return home soon. They took me to the police station in Halasuru.

I told the arrested man, "Why did he give out my name. Now, they will interrogate me." He was beaten up by the police and to avoid further arrests of workers he misled the police during the investigation. Hence, they took me in preventive detention on suspicion in 1942 December."

Doreswamy was sent to Bengaluru Central Jail for 14 months. There were 500 freedom fighters were the jail.

Spent 14 months in Central jail:

One BT Ramaiah was the caterer in the Central Jail. However, he used to provide food prepared with low-quality ration infested with worms. "We skipped food for days. One day we locked up the kitchen and protested against the caterer.

"My mother was worried. My other two brothers were government servant in the British regime. They didn't come to see me in jail because they were scared of police and losing their job," added Doreswamy. The jail was like a university for me. I played volleyball with inmates, discussed national issues.

Was Doreswamy not a Gandhian?

I was a young man desperate for freedom. Then I wasn't bothered about violence and non-violence. But I did not take extreme steps for the cause. I remember RR Diwakar, the founder of Kannada Daily and Karmaveer magazine, who was underground during the freedom movement. But Gandhiji did not encourage secret movement. He told Diwakar to surrender to the police immediately.

After release being released from the jail, I studied Gandhiji's books and joined the Congress. I' m Gandhian since then.

Earned Rs 30 per month:

In 1947, Doreswamy settled down in Mysore. He opened bookshop Sahitya Mandir to be free and independent in life. I used to earn Rs 30 per month", said Doreswamy with a smile on his face. Also, a weekly Kannada newspaper 'Poura Vaani' in circulation in Bengaluru. "

Unfortunately, the Editor of the paper passed away and he had to take over editorship. The paper was under scrutiny by the Mysore government. As part of the Mysore Chalo Andolan in 1947, the paper published series of articles targeting the then government of the Mysore state. The newspaper was confiscated as we refused to bow to government diktats.

Then, I went to Hindupur to ensure that the newspaper is published from there. "I registered the paper under different names in case the paper was banned. The paper was necessary for the Unification of Karnataka," he said.

Unification of Karnataka:

After Independence Doreswamy was involved himself in 'Mysore Chalo' campaign aimed at Unification of Karnataka. A delegation of youths including Harnalli Ramaswamy, KM Rudrappa Aradhya and myself went to Delhi and stayed in Nijalingappa's residence.

We met then Home Minister Sardar Patel. He asked, " Where are you from? What do you want?."

"We are from Mysore State. We want Unification of Karnataka," we answered.

"You want Unification of Karnataka, then go and remove your Maharaja." Sardar Patel replied.

Doreswamy asked, " Shall we take it as your message?"

"Yes. Do so.'' Patel replied instantly.

As soon as he returned to Bangalore, Doreswamy issued a press statement, saying, "On behalf of citizens, I request Maharaja to step down from the throne for the unification of the state".

Though Kengal Hanumanthaiah was Vokkaliga, he was for unification. The movement in Mysore State got the momentum, after the death of Potte Sriramulu who was demanding the unification of Andhra Pradesh.
Rahul Gandhi meets party leaders from Gujarat, asks them to be prepared for assembly polls

'Nirmala Sitharaman has lied to the country over Rafale deal', says Rahul Gandhi in Bidar

India

oi-Madhuri

Bidar, Aug 13: Congress president Rahul Gandhi arrived at Bidar in Karnataka on Monday to begin campaign for the forthcoming Lok Sabha election, media reports said.

Addressing a gathering, Gandhi said,''I challenge PM Modi from this stage. Karnataka govt waived off loans of farmers. I challenge you (centre) to provide 50% of the farm loan waived in Karnataka. If you have 56-inch chest, I dare you to do this. But you won't do this.''

''I mentioned in Parliament about the corruption in Rafale deal. UPA made a deal to procure jets. But PM Modi traveled to France and changed the contract,'' Congress President further said.

What is the Rafale deal? An explainer and the controversy around it

''Nirmala Sitharaman Ji has lied to the youth of the nation. She said India & France have a secret pact & so they can't reveal the price of Rafale aircraft. I asked France President if this is true & he denied,'' he said.

Gandhi will also embark on his maiden visit to Telangana after becoming the Congress president. During his visit, he will address women self-help groups, students and unemployed youth, entrepreneurs and others in separate events in Hyderabad on Monday and on Tuesday.

Also Read | PM Modi behind Rs 1,600 crore Rafale deal, alleges Rahul in Jaipur

On Tuesday, Gandhi would hold a teleconference with 31,600 booth committee presidents, mandal and district Congress presidents and also state unit office bearers.

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Story first published: Monday, August 13, 2018, 14:10 [IST]
Assam elections 2021: Those excluded from NRC, but on rolls can vote

NRC in all states by 2019, India not a dharamshala says BJP leader

India

oi-Madhuri

New Delhi, Aug 13: BJP national vice-president Om Mathur has said that the country would not be allowed to become a 'dharamshala' and that National Register of Citizens (NRC) would be implemented throughout the country after the 2019 general election.

The entire country is suffering from the problem of Bangladeshi infiltrators. There is not a single city or town which is not suffering from the problem of Bangladeshi infiltrators, Mathur told reporters in Jhunjhunu district today.

Opposition delegation seeks President's intervention in NRC issue

"The country will not be allowed to become a dharamshala and NRC will be implemented across the country after 2019," he said.

The senior BJP leader targeted Congress president Rahul Gandhi, saying that he was not loyal to his family as the UPA government in its 10 years of rule could not muster courage to implement NRC, the initiative taken by former prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.

NRC an issue of 'national interest', there should be no politics: Rajnath Singh

NRC is not an initiative of the BJP and has been implemented in Assam on the directives of the Supreme Court, he added.

He asserted that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would form the government after the 2019 general election and NRC would be implemented across the country.

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Story first published: Monday, August 13, 2018, 6:20 [IST]
Should hilsa fish from Bangladesh be branded as 'infiltrators': Mamata asks BJP

India

pti-PTI

Kolkata, Aug 13: Attacking the BJP-led central government over exclusion of 40 lakh people in the final draft of Assam-NRC, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday accused the saffron party of being "anti-Bengalis".

Taking a swipe at the BJP, the Trinamool Congress chief asked if hilsa fish, Jamdani saree, sandesh and mishti doi, which are originally from Bangladesh, would also be branded as "infiltrators or refugees".

Asserting that these 40 lakh people are "very much Indians", she questioned the criteria on which they have been excluded. Banerjee said that even she would not be able to produce the birth certificate of her parents if the government asks for it.

"Do not know my parents' birth dates. I only know the dates of their death. I would not be able to provide any documents for their date of birth but there should be a clear system about such cases...you cannot blame the layman," she told reporters at her chamber in the state assembly.

Banerjee has been attacking the BJP government at the Centre over National Register for Citizens (NRC) which has excluded names of over 40 lakh citizens in the final draft for want of necessary documents in Assam.

"What is going on in the country is injustice. The BJP with their extremist ideology is trying to create division among the people. I think they are playing the politics of revenge among the countrymen. We are not for this kind of politics," she said.

She accused the BJP of being "anti-Bengalis" and "anti-West Bengal".

"They (the BJP) must not forget that speaking Bengali is not a crime. It is the fifth most spoken language in the world. What is BJP's problem with (West) Bengal. Are they scared of the intellect of the Bengalis, their culture. They must not forget that (West) Bengal is the cultural mecca of the country," she said.

The TMC chief said "the culture practised by them does not have any respect for people speaking Hindi, Bengali, Maratha and the South Indian (languages)".

PTI
Son of a Hindu Mahasabha leader to become CPM MP; faces defeat from Mamata

India

oi-Vinod

By Vinod

New Delhi, Aug 13: Former Lok Sabha Speaker was a staunch Communist Party of India (Marxist) warhorse till the very moment he was expelled from the party for allegedly not toeing the party line on the issue of India's nuclear deal with the United States. But before thrusting anything on him, the CPI (M) leaders should have looked upon his past.

The son of All India Hindu Mahasabha leader chose to decide his own course to become Lok Sabha Speaker in 2004 and 10-time Lok Sabha MP. He was the man of his conviction if he did not follow the line of his father, why would he follow the line suggested by his party colleagues that he found erroneous.

His father was a lawyer at Supreme Court of India and a judge at the Calcutta High Court. His mother was Binapani and elder brother Debnath Chatterjee. But the Marxist Parliamentarian Somnath Chatterjee was fiercely anti-Hindutva leader from the West Bengal who served as Speaker of the 14th Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.

Also Read | Calling spade a spade led Somnath Chatterjee into political oblivion

Somnath's father Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee had become the President of All India Hindu Mahasabha and presided over Gwalior session at the time of partition in 1947.

The emergence of Bharatiya Janata party on the horizon of Indian politics, the debate over nationalist have become very common. On the debate of nationalism and Hindutva, he was always teased. In one such debate the present external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj pointing out towards Somnath Chatterjee said, "Cultural nationalism of the country can very well be understood by the fact that if someone from the eastern part of the country keeps name of his son from the religious deity of the western part of the country, this is what is cultural nationalism." Sonath is a Jyotirlinga placed in Gujarat.

Also Read | Somnath Chatterjee: The statesman who remained independent in twilight years

Somnath Chaterjee was the leader who was defeated only once that to on the hands of political a green horn in 1984 to Mamata Banerjee. However 1984 elections were little different with the assassination of former Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi. Now Mamata Banerjee is the chief minister of the state.

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Story first published: Monday, August 13, 2018, 16:00 [IST]
Two from Hyderabad arrested in Islamic State related case

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Hyderabad, Aug 13: The National Investigation Agency has arrested two persons in connection with an Islamic State related case.

The arrested duo have been identified as Mohammed Abdullah Basith, 24, of Chandrayangutta and Mohammed Abdul Qadeer, 19, of Pahadishareef. The NIA accused them of conspiracy and said that they were planning on carrying out activities related to the ISIS in India. They were in touch with one Adnan Hassan who was earlier arrested in the case.

ISIS: NIA raids at Hyderabad

"The initial questioning has revealed the involvement of accused Abdullah Basith, Mohd Abdul Qadeer and other associates to the ISIS. A lot of incriminating material was recovered and seized. It has been sent to CFSL Hyderabad for analysis and data extraction," NIA officials said.

During further investigation, a fresh input was received from reliable sources that one Abdullah Basith resident of Hyderabad, who was connected with accused Adnan Hassan and some of his associates were in regular touch with each other and conspiring to further the activities of ISIS, a proscribed terrorist organisation in India.

Beware of this job racket in Hyderabad

The NIA in 2016 had arrested Sheikh Azhar ul Islam, Mohammed Farhan Shaikh and Adnan Hassan on allegations that the three persons and their other unknown associates were members of ISIS and were involved in a conspiracy to identify, motivate, radicalise, recruit and train Indian Muslim youth on behalf of the proscribed outfit.

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Story first published: Monday, August 13, 2018, 5:51 [IST]
JNU student Umar Khalid shot at in Delhi, escapes unhurt

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Aug 13: An undentified man opened fire at JNU student Umar Khalid today. Reports suggest that Khalid is safe. The incident took place outside the Constitution Club in Delhi. Khalid had just attended a meet against lynching.

The immediate reason for the provocation is not known as yet. The police have begun investigations.

Khalid was at the venue to attend an event called Khauff se Azaadi, organised by an organisation called United Against Hate. It may be recalled that Khalid had filed a complaint alleging death threats in June.

Meanwhile eye witnesses said that Khaled was at a tea stall when the incident occurred. A man in a white shirt reached the spot, pushed people and opened fire. Khalid lost his balance and fell down and the bullet missed him. The crowd tried to catch the man, but he fired aerial shots and fled, the eye witness also said.

Following the incident, Khalid said that there is an atmosphere of fear in the country and anybody who speaks against the government is threatened.

Also

J&K: Terrorists abduct civilian, kill him

Khalid was among the three Jawaharlal Nehru University students who were arrested in connection with an event held on February 9, 2016, on campus in which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised.
Wearing black, carrying signs and even a coffin, more than 3,000 people turned out Saturday to mourn the death of a river.

Organized by the South Florida Clean Water Movement, the Caloosahatchee Death March stepped off at the pavilion at Centennial Park and proceeded through downtown Fort Myers.

The mission afoot?

To call attention to the plight of Southwest Florida and the death of countless marine life  fish by the millions, sea turtles, porpoises, manatees -as a result of record red tide and blue-green algae blooms fed by nutrient-laden discharges from Lake Okeechobee.

John Heim, co-founder of the Clean Water Movement, said the group gathered to educate people on the ecological disaster that has occurred and to voice anger and frustration in a peaceful manner.

The name behind the march symbolizes the death of the Caloosahatchee River. It is now recognized as the C-43 Canal, which would break down the protections for the river, Heim said. Not to mention the 170 miles of dead sea life and waterways from Marco Island to Sarasota.

Patty Cummings, of Cape Coral, is an activist who was trying to raise awareness with her own Facebook Live. She said there is more than red tide going on and that awareness needs to be made before its too late.

I have sharks in my canal now. But I know two miles away from me its green and blue. Ive walked the beaches and filmed thousands of dead fish. It felt like a movie. It did not feel real, Cummings said. There were no flies or vultures or pelicans. I knew something more is happening.

People from Sarasota to Naples gathered at the park, most wearing black, some in formal funeral attire.

Black surgical masks were the accessory of choice.

Erica Edwards of Cape Coral had her black dress and veil as well as a sign that she brought for the trip.

Were witnessing the death of all of us. The economy, wildlife, everything. Its symbolism. Millions of fish washing up, manatees, sea turtles, everything, Edwards said. I live near a canal and the smell is horrendous. It smells like a pig farm.

David Menist is a master captain who has seen the carnage of miles of dead fish, wrought by two separate algae blooms  toxin-producing Karenia brevis, the organism that makes up red tide, in the gulf and an unrelated bloom of a different algae, cyanobacteria, which is wreaking similar havoc in the Caloosahatchee and canals in Cape Coral, Pine Island and North Fort Myers.

Its causing an explosion were not ready to handle. Nothing can survive it. The food chain is destroyed, Menist said. We have never seen something like this and its spreading. Ive lost $30,000 in cancellations and you have to tell these people the truth. These arent my clients, theyre my friends.

Bob and Diane Buhler of North Fort Myers started a small business where he would take his boat and show tourists the canals and river. He has seen that venture go up in the stench of a dying ecosystem.

My canal is as bad as its ever been. The algae is getting worse and worse. I dont trust the water, I dont want myself or my customers to get sick, so Im out of business, Buhler said.

Just walking out your back door you feel like youre going to choke. You cant even enjoy the pool, never mind going to the beach, Diane said. We started a new business that never got off the ground.

Other marchers came in costume, such as superheroes and the grim reaper, and many carried signs to show support and to demand action.

Cyndy Nayer, a water activist, came to speak at the pre-march press conference that was more like a pep rally. As a retired health policy expert, she knows the health impact of such a catastrophe.

We can expect a lot more respiratory illness, muscle illness. People arent out enjoying our tourism and not contributing to the economy, Nayer said. This is a travesty and what were not seeing is the governor or our congressman. Where are they?

At 7 p.m., the march began, with stops along the way in front of State Sen. Lizbeth Benacquistos office; the South Florida Water Management District office on McGregor Boulevard, where they held a die-in; the Old Courthouse and DeLeon Plaza before heading home in the darkness.

Various chants rang out at each stop along the way.

Richard Smith chanted Waters a right, not a privilege while carrying a cardboard casket.

Ive lived here my entire life and I have a good time doing what I do, and we cant because I cant get to my destination because of the algae blooms and big sugar, Smith said. St. James City is ugly. The shops are closed. Tourists arent coming. I cant go kayaking.
UP Shia Waqf Board asks madrassas to chant Bharat Mata ki Jai on August 15

India

pti-PTI

Lucknow, Aug 13: Uttar Pradesh Shia Waqf Board has told all madrassas functioning from its properties to celebrate the Independence Day by chanting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' after the hoisting of the national flag and the singing of the national anthem.

"We have directed all the madrasas running under the Shia Waqf Board to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' after hoisting the national flag and singing of the national anthem," Board Chairman Waseem Rizvi told PTI.

Shia Waqf Board chairman asks PM Modi to ban madrassa education, says it increases terrorism

The board has warned of "strict action" against those not complying with the order. Rizvi said there are over 1,500 madrassas and schools running on Waqf properties in the state and they will have to abide by the directive. The nation will celebrate its 72nd Independence Day on August 15.

PTI
When will construction of Ram Temple be completed: 2024 says VHP

Which section of JNU students is Deepika Padukone showing her solidarity with, asks VHP

VHP secretary general to meet leaders, workers to discuss road map for organisations programme

India

oi-Vinod

By Vinod

New Delhi, Aug 13: Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), one of the important affiliate organisations of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to organise Akhand Bharat Diwas.

On this occasion the newly appointed secretary general Milind Parande will be in Allahabad to chalk out strategy of organisation including the Ram Temple. Sangh affiliate don't accept partition and always talk of undivided India.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Vinod Bansal told OneIndia that the VHP observes Akhand Bharat Divas as it is continuously trying to make India one and to remember freedom fighters of the country.

The VHP observe December 6 as Shaurya Diwas and Janmashtami and foundation day along with Akhand Bharat Diwas. All the important leaders of the VHP will participate in this programme. However, the international secretary general Milind Parande will be meeting VHP leaders and workers in Allahabad.

Sources in the VHP said that the leadership will not only participate in Akhand Bharat Diwas but also discuss matters related to the VHP activities in the Kumbha Mela in Allahabad to be conducted in January-February 2019.

The VHP has plans to organise Sant Sammelan, Yuva Sant Sammelan, Mahila Sant Sammelan and philosophical discourse at the Kumbh Mela.

The VHP has been saying that this year there will be an ideological Kumbha Mela in which people from across the world would participate including such people who are closely associated with the Sangh Pariwar.

If sources are to be believed then contemporary issues like atrocities against women, rape and Dalit issue too will be broadly discussed.

A VHP office bearer said that all these issues will not be discussed considering politics but as social evils.

Obviously Ram Temple is one of the issue that is most dear and close to the organisation so how the objective of construction of Ram Temple is accomplished will definitely figure in the meeting.

Mela is not very far off so the preparation for them is to be assessed and coordination with the administration is also important issue.

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Story first published: Monday, August 13, 2018, 18:59 [IST]
Who was Durga Bhabhi? The woman who helped Bhagat Singh escape from Lahore to Calcutta

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

As the country celebrates 73 years of independence, it seems that the courage and contributions of many freedom fighters have faded away from public memory. One such unacknowledged heroine is a woman few Indians know about, a woman who lived a life of intrigue and danger to help her nation fight colonial rule. The woman was Durga Devi Vohra alias Durga Bhabhi.

Wife of Bhagwati Charan Vohra and an active member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), Durga Devi Vohra, who was popularly called 'Durga Bhabhi', was one of the most prominent women revolutionaries who actually participated in armed revolution against British government. She is most widely known for helping Bhagat Singh escape through a train journey after he had killed Saunders. Yet this was not Durga Devi Vohra's only contribution to the HSRA. Few are aware that she was involved in a range of activities, and even led an action, shooting at a British policeman and his wife in October 1930.

Durga Devi Vohra was the only child of a Gujarati Brahmin couple settled in Allahabad. Her mother died when she was young and her father took vows of sannyas, leaving her to be brought up by her aunt. She studied up to Class V, and married when she was eleven. She first came into contact with the revolutionaries in Lahore through her husband, Bhagwati Charan Vohra (1903-1930), the son of a wealthy Gujarati, Shiv Charan Das, who worked for the railways and was honoured with the title of Rai Sahib.

Deeply impacted in his childhood by the brutal atrocities that Britain's colonial rule kept inflicting on India, Bhagwati Charan joined the Satyagraha movements sweeping India in the 1920s. As a student at Lahore's National College, he also joined Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Yashpal in starting a study circle that would scrutinize the revolutionary movements happening around the world.

Bhagwati Charan was involved in student politics, becoming an active member of the NJBS, which functioned (among other things) as a recruiting ground for HSRA members. Bhagwati Charan was relatively wealthy and was able to dedicate much time and money to social and political work. Additionally, he had no family opposition to his politics; his father had died in the early 1920s, and his mother when he was a child. On account of his wealth, party members regarded his initial interest in the HSRA with suspicion, and it took some time to refute allegations that he was not a CID informer.

In 1928, three years after she gave birth to her son, Durga Devi was forced to go underground when the colonial authprities launched a brutally repressive drive against HSRA members.As Bhagwati Charan had recently rented a room in Lahore to manufacture bombs.

By late 1928, he and Durga Devi were incorporated into the party and he became one of the primary ideologues of the HSRA, officially serving as the Propaganda Secretary, writing a history of the revolutionary movement, and treatises such as 'The Philosophy of the Bomb', which was drafted as a riposte to Gandhi's 1929 critique of the revolutionaries, 'The Cult of the Bomb'.

Durga Bhabhi's name in the history is etched for being the meticulous planner who helped Bhagat Singh escape from Lahore to Calcutta after killing Saunders. Along with his comrade Sukhdev, Bhagat Singh shot dead JP Saunders on 17 December 1927. Accompanied by Rajguru who was pretending to be a family servant, Durga Bhabhi posed as Bhagat Singh's wife and held her son Sacchidanad in her lap. They then passed the police barricades and boarded a first class train carriage for Lucknow and thereafter switched trains for Calcutta. Chandrashekhar Azad sat in a separate compartment disguised as a sadhu. All of them were carried loaded pistols to deal with any eventuality.

After the bombing of April 8, 1929, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were awarded death sentence. To protest against their hanging, Durga Bhabhi decided to kill Lord Hailey, who was the ex Governor of Punjab. Although the governor escaped unharmed, Durga Bhabhi was arrested and awarded three years of imprisonment.

After India achieved independence in 1947, she started to live as common citizen Ghaziabad. She later started a school as well for poor children in Lucknow. Durga Bhabhi died on October 15, 1999, at the age of 92 in Ghaziabad.
Prisoners to be employed in petrol pumps to be set up by Kerala govt in jails

Pakistan releases 30 Indian prisoners ahead of Independence Day

International

pti-PTI

Islamabad, Aug 13: Pakistan released 30 Indian prisoners, including 27 fishermen, from jail as a goodwill gesture ahead of the country's Independence Day tomorrow.

The release of the prisoners "is in line with Pakistan's consistent policy of not politicising humanitarian issues," Foreign Office Spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said in a statement. The 30 prisoners being set free also include 27 fishermen, it added.

"This is a humanitarian gesture to mark Pakistan's Independence day on August 14," he said. "It is our hope that the Indian side will also reciprocate in a similar manner," he said.

Release prisoners if you cannot keep them properly: Supreme Court

Over 470 Indians, including 418 fishermen, are detained in Pakistani jails, according to a government report submitted before the country's Supreme Court in July. Yesterday, it was reported that the fishermen had been arrested by the authorities for allegedly trespassing into Pakistan's territorial waters. They were shifted to Cantt Railway Station from Karachi's Malir jail and will be taken to Lahore.

The fishermen will be handed over to Indian border officials at Wagah border. Pakistan and India frequently arrest fishermen as there is no clear demarcation of the maritime border in the Arabian Sea and these fishermen do not have boats equipped with the technology to know their precise location.

Diplomatic victory: 149 prisoners from Sharjah set to be released

Owing to lengthy and slow bureaucratic and legal procedures, the fishermen usually remain in jail for several months but they also periodically set them free as goodwill gesture. A number of non-governmental organisations in both India and Pakistan have raised the issue, pressing their governments to release the arrested fishermen without delay.

PTI
How Sikhs for Justice is donning the role of Hurriyat in Punjab

Referendum 2020 turns out to be a big flop, gains no traction anywhere

International

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

London, Aug 13: The much spoken about Referendum 2020 was held in London and it turned out to be a damp squib.

The event took place at the Trafalgar Square in which a handful of people were seen issuing a London Declaration. They sought to seek the independence of Punjab from India. The event was organised by the Sikhs for Justice, which Indian agencies say has the backing of the ISI.

More importantly there was not even a whisper about this event back in Punjab. The event gained no traction whatsoever, officials told OneIndia.

Referendum 2020: Under the guise of social justice, a dreaded plan to revive Khalistan

As the event took place, several Indians took out a counter rally in London. The people part of this rally waved placards in which it was written Sikhs for a United India.

Earlier Punjab Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh said, I am not at all worried about these fringe elements and their proposed rally. They have been at it for long and have been playing in the hands of the ISI, which has an open agenda to foment trouble in Punjab and India."

What is 'Referendum 2020,' the ISI plot, AAP was accused of backing

"Punjab Referendum 2020 is a campaign to liberate Punjab, currently occupied by India. The campaign aims to gauge the will of the Punjabi people with regards to re-establishing Punjab as a nation state."

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Story first published: Monday, August 13, 2018, 8:20 [IST]
US-Pak relations: Here is PM in waiting Imran Khans take

Imran Khan set to become Pak PM as cracks appear in opposition

Can Imran Khan shape Pakistan like he did with the cricket team

This chaiwala from Pakistan turns out to be a millionaire

International

oi-Madhuri

Peshawar, Aug 13: A Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf MNA-elect, who was widely reported to be a 'chaiwala' (tea seller) during the election campaign, has turned out to be a millionaire, according to a media report.

Gul Zafar Khan, who won from NA-41 (Bajaur) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, owns assets worth over Rs 30 million, Geo TV reported, citing the documents submitted by him to the Election Commission of Pakistan.

Imran Khan's PTI allowed 28 reserved seats for women

The documents say that the MNA-elect owns a garment business.

Zafar owns immovable properties worth Rs 10 million as well as two houses and agricultural land worth Rs 12 million, according to documents.

He used to make tea at a hotel in Rawalpindi before he was given ticket by Imran Khan's party.

For Imran Khan's swearing in guest list tweaked, Kapil Dev, Gavaskar, Sidhu included

The pictures of Zafar serving tea to people of his area were snapped ahead of the July 25 polls.

However, a viral video of him serving tea was recorded after the polls.

"This is my job and I have been appointed as the MNA from here," he was quoted as saying by the channel.

Imran Khan to take oath as Pakistan Prime Minister on Aug 18

He said his main focus would be to impart education to all and improve basic institutions.

Khan's party has claimed to have crossed the magical figure of 172 required to secure simple majority in the 342-seat National Assembly.

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Story first published: Monday, August 13, 2018, 7:17 [IST]
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 13)  A new budget system is cutting P20 billion out of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) flood control projects.

From P122.7 billion this year, funding for infrastructure like mitigation structures and drainage systems will go down to P102 billion  a decrease of almost 17 percent.

This is because the Department of Budget and Management's (DBM) new cash-based budgeting system only allows funding for projects that can be initiated and completed within the year.

It replaces the old multi-year obligation-based budgeting system, which allows funding to be valid for up to two years.

House Committee on Appropriations Chair Karlo Nograles said many departments felt the cut.

"Tila naging biktima ang Pilipino ng sinasabi na 'dagdag bawas.' Nagdagdag ng buwis, nagbawas ng benepisyo," he said.

[Translation: A lot of Filipinos are victims to 'dagdag (add) bawas (subtract).' They added taxes, but subtracted benefits.]

The Department of Health was not given funding for the construction of new health facilities.

The Department of Education's budget for the construction of new classrooms was cut by almost P70 billion.

The Commission on Higher Education's scholarship program was also reduced by P3 billion.

Because of these cuts, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Karlo Nograles said his committee suspended all budget deliberations until the Budget Department reverts to an obligation-based budget system  and restores funding for many infrastructure projects.

"The (Development Budget Coordination Committee and) the DBM can come back to Congress and amend what they submitted," said Nograles.

RELATED: New system may delay 2019 budget approval - House appropriations chief

However, Malacanang said it is shocked and alarmed by the House's decision. Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said Budget Secretary Ben Diokno and Finance Secretary Sonny Dominguez are not daunted by the possibility of a re-enacted budget.

A re-enacted budget means the budget for the previous year, in amount and allocations, will be the same as the coming year.

"Congressmen better ask themselves, what will happen to their pet projects because under a re-enacted budget, it is Malacanang that will determine which budgets will be implemented," said Roque. "I don't think they want that."

House Majority Leader Nonoy Andaya assured the public that this is not the case. He said even Cabinet secretaries were at a loss regarding the cuts, and they wanted to give the Budget Department time to explain how it plans to implement the new scheme.

"I think it's about time na tumigil muna kami sa paghear ng [that we stop hearings about the] budget and make sense of it," said Andaya. "When we ask questions, the usual answer is DBM made the cut. They do not know how to answer the question."

The last time a budget was re-enacted was during the term of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo  who is now the House Speaker.
Hundreds of area residents joined hands along the riverfront at the Cape Coral Yacht Club Sunday in solidarity with like-minded peaceful protestors throughout Southwest Florida, decrying the condition of gulf and inland waters.

They were among the thousands of Hands Along the Water participants up and down both coastlines of Florida at at least 30 beaches, many affected by algal blooms and severe fish kills.

Dominique Kuzer, organizer at the Cape Coral event, said the idea was to come together in unity, leaving politics aside.

We want to give our voice to the water that it doesnt have. It started on a Facebook post. Me and another woman jumped on it and I created it in Cape Coral, Kuzer said. It just spread like wildfire.

Kuzer and many others have said they have never see water quality this bad.

In the Calooshatchee and canals in Cape Coral, Pine Island and North Fort Myers, nutrient-heavy, algae-laden discharges from Lake Okeechobee have resulted in shore-to-shore pea-green blooms of toxic fish-killing cyanobacteria. The blue-green algae is also befouling the east coast of Florida along and around the St. Lucie River, which experienced a similar devastating bloom in 2016.

Meanwhile, along Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel and other beach-front communities from Naples to Tampa Bay, there is on-shore outbreak of toxin-producing Karenia brevis, the organism that makes up red tide.

Both algae blooms are killing fish by the hundreds of thousands as well as sea turtles, porpoises and manatees.

At the Yacht Club this weekend, there were continuing remnants of the conditions, with some dead fish lying on the algae-speckled beach that has been closed to swimming.

Kathy Pecora moved here three years ago to live in paradise.

This, she said, is anything but.

Ive seen such a change in the last three years I dont even want to go near the water. Its really sad, Pecora said. I picked this city because it was supposedly one of the best places to move to. I want the water cleaned up for my generation and others to come.

Shan Davis said they live along a canal, and have been a little luckier than others where the algae is packed in. Still, the stink pretty much keeps them indoors.

It smells like cow manure. It doesnt seem to be getting the importance it should have. The problem is that I dont know if the rest of Florida gets it, Davis said. My biggest worry is that people will forget about it.

Susan Brown and Cindy Rooney, members of the Cape Coral New Residents Club, echoed what many have said for the past few months: It has never been this bad, with dead manatees and fish.

You cant even get into the water because youre going to get sick. Susan has given us the contact information on our congressmen, Brown said. Weve e-mailed Marco Rubio and were heard back from some of them.

What we need to do is clean up Lake Okeechobee and change the laws. The governor took away laws designed to protect the environment and the power we had to protect the environment, Rooney said. Its a multi-faceted situation. Lets get the regulations back in place.

Cindys husband, Mike, said he hasnt had his boat in the water all year because of seawall repairs needed in the wake of Hurricane Irma and now the algae.

After the seawall was done, its not worth putting it out in the water. I cant fish or enjoy the water unless I want to drive 20 miles out into the gulf, Rooney said. Even then I have to smell it.

Sundays event took less than a half-hour. Kuzer had everyone line up on the water at 10 a.m. At 10:14, everyone pointed to the water in honor of the marine life before joining hand for about 15 minutes.

During the event people chanted We want change, and Clean it up.

Many wore surgical masks and a handful were in costume.

Linda France, a 25-year resident, was there to lend her support and said the grass roots effort was amazing.

We gathered to speak for the fish and the residents. Were tired of getting kicked in the can so we decided to make a difference, France said. Its never been this bad and thats why I got involved. We need to clean Lake O and send the water south. I think the local and county government is doing good, but the state and federal have dropped the ball.

Hundreds join Hands Along the Water By Staff | Aug 13, 2018



Hundreds of area residents joined hands along the riverfront at the Cape Coral Yacht Club Sunday in solidarity with like-minded peaceful protestors throughout Southwest Florida, decrying the condition of gulf and inland waters. They were among the thousands of Hands Along the Water participants up and down both coastlines of Florida at at least 30 beaches, many affected by algal blooms and severe fish kills. Dominique Kuzer, organizer at the Cape Coral event, said the idea was to come together in unity, leaving politics aside. We want to give our voice to the water that it doesnt have. It started on a Facebook post. Me and another woman jumped on it and I created it in Cape Coral, Kuzer said. It just spread like wildfire. Kuzer and many others have said they have never seen water quality this bad. In the Calooshatchee and canals in Cape Coral, Pine Island and North Fort Myers, nutrient-heavy, algae-laden discharges from Lake Okeechobee have resulted in shore-to-shore pea-green blooms of toxic fish-killing cyanobacteria. The blue-green algae is also befouling the east coast of Florida along and around the St. Lucie River, which experienced a similar devastating bloom in 2016. Meanwhile, along Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel and other beach-front communities from Naples to Tampa Bay, there is on-shore outbreak of toxin-producing Karenia brevis, the organism that makes up red tide. Both algae blooms are killing fish by the hundreds of thousands as well as sea turtles, porpoises and manatees. At the Yacht Club this weekend, there were continuing remnants of the conditions, with some dead fish lying on the algae-speckled beach that has been closed to swimming. Kathy Pecora moved here three years ago to live in paradise. This, she said, is anything but. Ive seen such a change in the last three years I dont even want to go near the water. Its really sad, Pecora said. I picked this city because it was supposedly one of the best places to move to. I want the water cleaned up for my generation and others to come. Shan Davis said they live along a canal, and have been a little luckier than others where the algae is packed in. Still, the stink pretty much keeps them indoors. It smells like cow manure. It doesnt seem to be getting the importance it should have. The problem is that I dont know if the rest of Florida gets it, Davis said. My biggest worry is that people will forget about it. Susan Brown and Cindy Rooney, members of the Cape Coral New Residents Club, echoed what many have said for the past few months: It has never been this bad, with dead manatees and fish. You cant even get into the water because youre going to get sick. Susan has given us the contact information on our congressmen, Brown said. Weve e-mailed Marco Rubio and were heard back from some of them. What we need to do is clean up Lake Okeechobee and change the laws. The governor took away laws designed to protect the environment and the power we had to protect the environment, Rooney said. Its a multi-faceted situation. Lets get the regulations back in place. Cindys husband, Mike, said he hasnt had his boat in the water all year because of seawall repairs needed in the wake of Hurricane Irma and now the algae. After the seawall was done, its not worth putting it out in the water. I cant fish or enjoy the water unless I want to drive 20 miles out into the gulf, Rooney said. Even then I have to smell it. Sundays event took less than a half-hour. Kuzer had everyone line up on the water at 10 a.m. At 10:14, everyone pointed to the water in honor of the marine life before joining hand for about 15 minutes. During the event people chanted We want change, and Clean it up. Many wore surgical masks and a handful were in costume. Linda France, a 25-year resident, was there to lend her support and said the grass roots effort was amazing. We gathered to speak for the fish and the residents. Were tired of getting kicked in the can so we decided to make a difference, France said. Its never been this bad and thats why I got involved. We need to clean Lake O and send the water south. I think the local and county government is doing good, but the state and federal have dropped the ball. Cape News CCPD Deputy Chief Barnes bids farewell Oktoberfest continues Trying to find Lauren






India today handed over the first lot of houses built under a USD 350 million project for Indian-origin people, mostly Tamils, in Sri Lankas tea plantation areas.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined the special ceremony through video conferencing at Dunsinane Estate in Nuwara Eliya city to hand over the houses constructed under the Indian Housing Project, the largest one by India in any country.

He said that we have always dreamt of a peaceful, secure and prosperous future for Sri Lanka where aspirations of all for growth and development are met.

Some 404 houses were handed over to the Indian-origin people, mostly Tamils.

The new houses along with land ownerships were handed over by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, High Commissioner of India Taranjit Singh Sandhu, Ministers Palani Digambaram, Navin Dissanayake and Gayantha Karunathilake, Indias High Commission here said.

More than 1,500 people attended the function despite inclement weather and rain, the Indian mission tweeted.

Modi said that India continues to keep Sri Lanka in a special place in its neighbourhood first policy.

Out of the 60,000 houses, close to 47,000 have been completed so far, Modi said, adding that the USD 350 million grant to build the houses was one of the largest grants by India in any country.

Sri Lanka has been special for us, and it will remain special, he said.

Addressing the beneficiaries, Modi said that your roots are in India, they have grown in Sri Lanka. You have not connected just two countries, but also touched the hearts and strengthened the hands of two great nations.

Today, we are crafting a new future together, a new high in India-Sri Lanka friendship.

Prime Minister Modi said that we are signing the agreement for the construction of the additional 10,000 houses at a cost of 12 billion Sri Lankan Rupees.

The land has already been identified for building the new 10,000 houses, he said.

Continuing people oriented developmental assistance, Letter of Exchange for construction of additional 10,000 houses was signed, increasing Indias grant commitment in the plantation areas to 14000 houses, the Indian mission said in a tweet.

Wickremesinghe appreciated Indias commitment to partner with Sri Lanka in development projects including in building houses for upcountry areas.

I thank the Prime Minister, Modi. He has kept the promise he made last year, Wickremesinghe said.

Wickremesinghe, recalling the historical links between India and Sri Lanka, also welcomed Modis suggestion today to establish direct air links between Colombo and Varanasi to facilitate pilgrims from Sri Lanka.

Air India flights between Colombo and Varanasi started in August 2017.

Indian-origin Tamils, mostly employed in tea and rubber plantations in Sri Lanka, lack proper housing.

The Tamils, mostly residing in the central hill areas of the country, were brought from India by British rulers during the 19th century to work in coffee plantations in Sri Lanka.

More than a million are still associated with tea and rubber plantations. Though they have been given the Sri Lankan citizenship, housing remains a major issue for these workers employed as daily wagers.

Sri Lankas new government led by President Maithripala Sirisena formulated a national plan of action for the plantation workers and planned for construction of 55,000 houses till 2020.

(India times)
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Kris Kobach - Caricature: in trouble again, for nothing else but successfully purging more than 1 million names of likely Democratic. voters from rolls in at least 27 states throughout the country.

(Image by DonkeyHotey) Details DMCA



When Katherine Harris, Florida Secretary of State (SoS) under Gov. Jeb Bush's silent guidance purged 94,000 registered voters from the rolls via an outsourced data cruncher, she successfully planted Jebb's brother "W" into the White House far ahead of the Supreme Court the following month (that hideous date 12/12/2000).

Harris was also co-chair of W's presidential campaign.

Whose interests were really stymied by these conflicted wing nuts?

The people's.

And when R. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio SoS under Gov. Bob Taft in 2004 and, like Harris, also co-chair of W's re-election campaign, used countless manipulative devices to hand the victory in this decider state to W, history was again stabbed in the heart and the death toll soared, of young soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq and of democracy.

In these two cases, state-level SoS's decided which candidate would win the presidency--surprise: G.W. Bush!

This year, 2018, three SoS's will donate conflicts of interest to the election pool. As a matter of fact, the Georgia primaries last week chose SoS Jack Kemp, a notorious vote purger, as Republican candidate for governor of the Peachtree State. Did his office influence his victory? Does the dynamic progressive Stacy Abrams hold a chance up against the Machine?

The second SoS is John Husted of the Decider State Ohio (again). He is running for lieutenant governor, unsurprisingly a Republican. He will also run his own election in November 2018, the running mate of former U.S. Senator and Congressman Mike DeWine, presently second-term state Attorney General (AG). With Husted at the hub, he's a shoe-in. In some states the attorney general has the election-relevant duties of the SoS. Ideal contenders, these gentlemen.

Though he vociferously opposes voter ID, Husted has otherwise helped engineer elections won by the GOP in his home state. In Election 2012, approval for the uncertified patches placed on ES&S voting machinery came from his office--but the patches were disabled through vigorous, last-minute-efforts by attorney/activist/professor Bob Fitrakis, on Election Day itself. Obama won the Decider state while Karl Rove had an exasperated seizure broadcasted countrywide. He had also set up a man-in-the-middle device to work in concert with the patches. HIs eleventh-hour reprise of What Happened in Ohio 2004 tanked.

Fox News had to quiet him down. Fox News conceded graciously.

SCOTUS recently okayed caging practices in Ohio as Constitutional. Husted had no objections to this victory over likely Democratic voters.

The third SoS running his own campaign this year is NOTORIOUS for his role in creating the so-far most formidable registration list purger of them all, Kris "KKK" Kobach, originator of the Interstate Crosscheck program. A scion of the Help America Vote Act's requirement that all states initiate statewide registration databases, he has successfully manipulated voter lists in circa 60 percent of the states, purging millions, mostly minorities. Those whose names resemble each other, from far-flung states, and share birthdates are purged from the list, accused of double voting. So Jon Jones in Washington state and Jonathan Quincy Jones in Rhode Island are both crossed off the rolls. Naturally this disaster hits common hames most frequently, names coincidentally held by likely Democratic voters, read: minorities.

There are lots of minorities in this country and their numbers are growing. Blacks and Hispanics comprise 24.5 percent of the population according to the U.S. Census. Kobach's solution is one of many brutal battles back by white mostly-males who, by the way, are no longer the majority of voters. But they are scared.

I could go on about Kobach, but you can find out all about him in Greg Palast's latest film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: Billionaires and Ballot Bandits and its sequel Billionaires and Ballot Bandits: The Case of the Stolen Election. He is one of Palast's favorite vote vultures.

So this Harvard and Oxford scion, not their favorite alumnus, to be sure, will be in charge of an election that may very well feature him as GOP gubernatorial candidate. The Republican primary in Kansas was held last Tuesday, August 7, and the totals between "KKK" and his opponent, the incumbent governor Jeff Colyer, were nearly tied. Shades of Al Franken's small margin of victory in 2008, and G.W. Bush's in Florida and Ohio and even smaller ones like the 129 votes that handed the gubernatorial election to Christine Gregoire in Washington state in 2008. Kobach a week after the primaries holds a 110-vote lead over Colyer, out of 311,000 votes cast. That's as of yesterday, August 12.

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"Rob Kall's book, Bottom-Up, offers valuable ways of seeing and powerful tools for enabling new power and connectivity to work to change the hope and promise for the future."



Jeremy Heimans, CEO & Co-founder of Purpose and coauthor of New Power
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Tensions are escalating between the U.S. and Iran after the Trump administration re-imposed economic sanctions against Iran last week. This news followed Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Trump has threatened other countries seeking to trade with Iran, tweeting, "Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States." Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned the sanctions as "psychological warfare," saying last week he would not begin negotiations until the sanctions are withdrawn.

We speak with Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He served as spokesperson for Iran in its nuclear negotiations with the European Union from 2003 to 2005.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.

We begin with a look at escalating tensions between the United States and Iran. On Sunday, the U.S. Ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, wrote an op-ed in The Telegraph urging Britain to withdraw its support of the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Ambassador Johnson wrote, "America is turning up the pressure and we want the U.K. by our side."

Johnson's op-ed comes after the Trump administration re-imposed economic sanctions against Iran last week following Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. The sanctions increase tensions between the U.S. and Iran, and the U.S. and its European allies. Trump has threatened other countries seeking to trade with Iran, tweeting "Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States." Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned the sanctions as psychological warfare, saying last week he would not begin negotiations until the sanctions are withdrawn.

PRESIDENT HASSAN ROUHANI: The first step would be for U.S. President Donald Trump to show that he genuinely wants to engage in negotiations to solve a problem. What's the meaning of negotiations when you impose sanctions at the same time? It's like someone pulling a knife to stab a rival or an enemy in the arm while at the same time claiming we should be talking and negotiating. The answer in such a case would be to say, "Remove the knife from the arm and put the knife away."

AMY GOODMAN: Just last month, President Trump said he would meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani whenever Rouhani wants, without preconditions. This is Trump speaking at a White House conference just two weeks ago.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I do believe that they will probably end up wanting to meet, and I'm ready to meet any time they want to. And I don't do that from strength or from weakness; I think it is an appropriate thing to do. If we could work something out that's meaningful, not the waste of paper that the other deal was, I would certainly be willing to meet.

UNKNOWN: Do you have preconditions for that meeting?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No preconditions. No. If they want to meet, I'll meet. Any time they want. Any time they want. It's good for the country, good for them, good for us and good for the world. No preconditions. If they want to meet, I'll meet.

AMY GOODMAN: Only hours later, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a slew of preconditions for a possible meeting, including Iran being willing to enter into a new nuclear deal. Well, for more, we're joined now by Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Middle East Security and Nuclear Policy Specialist at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. From 2003 to 2005, he served as spokesperson for Iran in its nuclear negotiations with the European Union. He is author of The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir and most recently, Iran and the United States: An Insider's View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace.

Ambassador, welcome back to Democracy Now! Thank you for joining us from Princeton University. Why don't we start off with the latest news? You have the U.S. Ambassador to Britain Woody Johnson pressuring Britain to pull out of the U.S. nuclear deal following the United States, which Trump did, and the imposition of sanctions by the United States last week on Iran.

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Henry Ford Would Fire

Ford CEO Jim Hackett

By Joel D. Joseph, Chairman, Made in the USA Foundation

Henry Ford helped build Detroit into a great city and would be heartbroken by its current appalling, rundown, dilapidated condition. Detroit looks like a war zone in many areas, with buildings rusting in place, badly leaking roofs and crumbling walls. And Henry Ford would be astonished that Ford Motor Company is not helping to rebuild Detroit. Jim Hackett, Ford's current and hopefully not future CEO, is spearheading the dismantling of Ford's U.S. auto production.

Hackett is importing into the United States the first vehicle made in India, the Ford Ecosport. The car may be well-suited to India, with its tiny body and a three-cylinder engine, but it is not made in or for the USA . Car and Driver said about the Ecosport, "Truthfully, the tiny ute is neither very economical nor very sporty." Consumer Reports chimed in, "the $28,000 as-tested price for our EcoSport SES has us wondering what else could be bought for that money: a mildly optioned Ford Escape . . . come(s) to mind." The Ford Escape is made in Made in the USA. Ford is cannibalizing its own models, hurting U.S. sales with its lame imports taking sales away from its made in the USA models.

Henry Ford said, "The genius of the American people is Self-Reliance." Ford News,

Februrary, 1925. It is not self-reliant to import a cheap car from India and then slap a Ford badge on it. Henry Ford also said,"A big business never becomes big by being a narrow society looking after only the interests of its organization and stockholders."(Moving Forward by Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther, 1931.) Henry Ford started the venerable Ford Foundation in 1936 to promote public welfare and scientific studies. Ford Motor Company has previously been a good corporate citizen, caring about the overall economy and Detroit in particular. Ford Motor Company provided seed money for the Made in the USA Foundation in 1989 and many other non-profit organizations. I call upon the Ford Motor Company to once again be a good public citizen, help rebuilt Detroit and bring manufacturing back to the United States.

GM and Chrysler are Not Role Models Either

General Motors and Chrysler were both bailed out by U.S. taxpayers in 2008. Neither GM nor Chrysler paid taxpayer back in full and have now shown how ungrateful they are by moving production offshore. As a condition for their bailouts, the U.S. government should have required GM and Chrysler to keep manufacturing in America. Taxpayers did not bailout the auto companies to make cars in China, South Korea and Europe.

GM shocked the auto world last year by importing the first vehicle from China, the Buick Envision. Now, out of eight Buick models, only three are made in the USA, the rest are made in Poland (Cascada), China (Envision), Germany (Regal Tour), Canada (Regal), and South Korea (Encore).

Chrysler decided to start making Jeeps in Italy (Jeep Renegade) and shipping them back to the United States. Previously all Jeeps were made in the USA, mostly in Toledo, Ohio. Chrysler also announced that it will stop making cars in the United States, and will now only manufacture trucks and SUVs in this country.

A New IDEA

Ford is running television ads for the Ecosport touting its fuel-efficiency, but has failed to mention that it is made in Chennai, India. The Made in the USA Foundation is proposing new federal legislation call IDEA, the Import Disclosure and Education Act. This proposed law would require country of origin disclosure in all advertising for all products, on television, radio, cable, on the Internet and in print. American consumers have a right to know where their products are made and this law would only provide people with information. Would consumers rush out to buy the Ecosport if the ad said, "Made in India?" Or a Cascada if it announced that it was made in Poland?

The Made in the USA Foundation was supported by the Ford Motor Company when it proposed the American Automobile Labeling Act (AALA) in 1992 when it was passed into law. The AALA requires that all new car price stickers include country of origin information including where final assembly took place, what the U.S. content is, and where the engine and transmission were made. This law has helped consumers make informed decision about car buying. The IDEA legislation will increase consumer knowledge and exposes car companies who import cars from countries not known for their automotive excellence.
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The Holocaust did not begin with Hitler and Nazi Germany. It can be traced to the beginnings of Christianity, with the fake news reported in the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament. The "news" claimed that the Jewish people condemned Jesus for blasphemy, implying that he had defected from Judaism and started a new religion. This theme was later promoted to authenticate that the new religion, Christianity, was separate and distinct from Judaism.

To support this claim Jews had to be considered the villains in the death of Jesus. So according to the Gospel of Matthew (27:24), the good guy Romans didn't order Jesus' death. Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor, protests: "I am innocent of this man's blood. It is your responsibility [meaning the Jews]!" Unfortunately, at that time in history, there were no reliable news sources to challenge these assertions. The fake news, that Jesus opposed Judaism and preached a new religion, was so powerful that it persists today.

In interviews with Christians and Jews, I heard the popular belief that Jesus was a Christian. Yes, he was born Jewish, they acknowledged, but he soon became a Christian. Cinema and other media have picked up this theme.

In one of the early blockbuster bible films, Salome (1953), featuring superstar Rita Hayworth, the Jewish and Roman authorities repeatedly refer to the dangerous nuisances, John the Baptist and Jesus, who are "preaching a new faith." It's remarkable that although the story of Salome, John the Baptist, and Jesus is all about Jews and Judaism, the word "Jew" is never mentioned. The film assumes that the "new religion"--Christianity--had taken root, even though it didn't yet exist.

Despite the events in Salome predating Christianity a recent reader comment about the film on a blog says it all about the power of fake news: "I love Christian films." This is no surprise since the Sony Classic Movie site's synopsis of the film states, "Horrified, she [Salome] renounces her mother Herodias and also becomes a Christian convert [to the nonexisting religion]." Like a fake news tweet that is retweeted and goes viral, the same conclusion is reported in Wikipedia

In another instance, Bill O'Reilly, author of the 2013 bestseller Killing Jesus, ridiculed my view backed by noted biblical scholars and insisted that Jesus launched Christianity.

Yet the fake news that Jesus rejected Judaism and was responsible for starting a new religion contradicts a broad consensus established by modern biblical scholars with access to more reliable information. They confirm that Jesus lived and died a dedicated practicing Jew, and did not start or even propose a new religion. Jesus's argument was with the Jewish leadership, whom he criticized for ignoring the spiritual core of Judaism. Supporting this conclusion is Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's groundbreaking book, Kosher Jesus, which shows that virtually all of Jesus' teachings are derived from the Torah. Add to that the comment of Episcopal Priest Bruce Chilton in his book Rabbi Jesus, "everything Jesus did was as a Jew, for Jews, and about Jews."

Why did the Gospel writers promulgate this fake news when all of the details of Jesus life reported in the Gospels, from his birth to his death, are steeped in Judaism?

Although the early converts to Christianity were Jews, by the time the Gospels were written forty to sixty-five years after the crucifixion converts were increasingly, and eventually predominantly, Roman pagans. For the Romanized church, there was no currency in blaming Pontius Pilate and the Romans for the suffering and death of Jesus. But there was lots of recruiting value in villainizing the Jews. Accusing Jews collectively for the crucifixion also served the difficult challenge of establishing Christianity as separate from Judaism.

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NATO's misfired weaponry

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The Spanish Eurofighter Typhoon 2000 launched an AMRAAM-type air-to-air missile over Estonian territory Tuesday afternoon. All the Estonians are very shocked.

click here

The incident occurred on August 7, 2018, at around 3:44 PM local time in the Pangodi area of Estonia's Tartu County, which is situated less than 50 miles west of the country's border with Russia.

The rocket is being searched by helicopters.

The Estonian army has started a large-scale search. The flight path, location and status of the missile are currently under investigation. The last assumed location of the missile is roughly 40 km to the north of the city of Tartu.

The AMRAAM-type missile's firing range is 100 km, it is 3.7-m long, 18 cm in diameter, and carries a live warhead. The missile carried explosives of up to 10 kilograms (22 pounds). It has a built-in self-destruct for such incidents, but may have landed on the ground. Spain is forced to explain why one of its jets fired a missile during a drill in the airspace of the Baltic country and NATO ally.

"A Spanish Eurofighter based in Lithuania accidentally fired a missile without causing any harm," Spain's defence ministry said in a statement, adding that the incident happened "in an area of southwest Estonia authorised for this type of exercise". "The air-to-air missile did not hit any aircraft. The defence ministry has opened investigation to clarify the exact cause of the incident," it continued. There are no known human casualties. Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas said on Facebook "thank God no human casualties," calling the incident "extremely regrettable."

After the incident, the Spanish Eurofighter Typhoon 2000, from that country's Ala 11, or 11th Wing, based at Moron Air Base, safely landed at its base in iauliai in Lithuania.

So far there is no word on whether the launch was the result of any fault with the aircraft or pilot error. Whatever the case turns out to be, it's definitely embarrassing for Spain, which is among the NATO members that spends the least on defense. It's also not a great look for the Alliance as a whole, which has been under increasing pressure, especially from the United States, to reinvigorate its military capabilities after years of increasing neglect in many cases since the end of the Cold War.

The Spanish jet is part of NATO's Baltic air-policing mission. Neighbouring to Russia and NATO countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania do not have their own fighter aircraft. Therefore the allies in the margin of the Baltic Air Policing mission since 2004 protect the Baltic airspace for their own account.

Spanish Eurofighters have suffered a number of accidents dating back all the way back to 2002, when the crew of a two-seat variant ejected safely after suffering a dual-engine flameout. Additional crashes occurred in 2010 and 2017, killing the pilots in both cases, but there have been no other reports of misfired weaponry.

It is worth recalling the incidents caused by the errors of NATO, which led to human casualties.

"MISTAKES HAPPEN"

On February 22, 2010

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OMG, the Russians are coming--or are they? How long can the deep state and our government convince us of the need for a trillion-dollar-a-year military (every year) if the Russians are not in fact a threat. Consider two boxers in a ring and one weighs 150 lbs and the other weighs 1500 lbs. If you were the larger of these two would you be concerned? The Russian military is ten percent the size of ours and clearly does not represent a clear and present danger to the American people.

There is a full-court press by our government, the deep state and Mueller to convince the dumbed-down American citizenry that that we need to spend such exaggerated sums on a bloated military when we have no enemy to justify this. The Russians are not coming and it is Mueller's job to convince otherwise. If the Trump election effort employed Russian operatives to assist them in helping rig an election this is about corrupt Americans hiring foreign agents to assist them in their dirty-politics scheme. If you hire a hit man his nationality is irrelevant. The Russians are not coming--Good grief folks! Muller's 'investigation' is about vilifying Russia to keep 'you' on board accepting a trillion-dollar military. Adding insult to injury they are extracting even more tax dollars for yet another military entity in space.

We do need money to protect and serve our interests and lives as the effects of climate change truly threaten Americans with fires, floods, droughts, sea-level rise and more. We do not require a trillion-dollar military to help us with these challenges. We do not need aircraft carriers, cannons, missiles and the rest, which only rains harm. We need to turn away from this dark national focus and bring light and help to assist us with our challenges--it is our money.

First, we need to 'see' the scam that is the Mueller/Trump skit that is the bouncing ball that so easily distracts. We need fear Russia like we needed to fear the Vietnamese, and Iraqi and Libyan and Afghans and ... fill in the blanks. Let us not get jerked around again.

Don Scotten

scotten6@gmail.com
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From Informed Comment

Mohamed Bin Salman is at it again. The yacht-loving Renaissance art collector who tried to pull the wool over the eyes of the American elite this spring is a serial diplomatic disaster.

Bin Salman's plans for a transition of Saudi Arabia from being an oil giant to being a financial hub depend heavily on international confidence and investment. Those plans have crashed and burned, in large part because Bin Salman is like a young bearded Donald Trump, erratic and alternately angry and foolish. Foreign Direct Investment in Saudi Arabia collapsed in the past year, as Bin Salman scared investors off with his various rampages. His hopes for an IPO of the Saudi Aramco petroleum company have receded. Electric cars and renewables are coming on fast (renewables just hit a terawatt globally), and the lion's share of Saudi Arabia's economy depends on an increasingly worthless petroleum.

He launched a catastrophic air war on Yemen in 2015 to defeat the Houthi rebel group that took over north Yemen. Thousands of deaths and injuries later, with hundreds of thousands displaced and millions on the verge of starvation, the war grinds on.

AP has just reported that in this desperate attack on the rival Houthis of Yemen, Saudi Arabia has de facto allied with the al-Qaeda fighters who are also combating the Houthis. Since the US gives Saudi Arabia logistical and strategic support in this war, it means that Riyadh has dragged Washington into another al-Qaeda alliance, as though this were Afghanistan in the 1980s.

He kidnapped and imprisoned a whole bevy of other princes, confining them in the Ritz Carlton Riyadh until they forked over billions to him. He abducted the sitting prime minister of Lebanon and tried to force him to resign (this plot failed). He blockaded Qatar and appears to have plotted a military invasion of Doha, which was thwarted by Turkey and by Rex Tillerson who allegedly lost his job over it when the Saudis and the UAE whispered in Trump's ear. That's right -- Saudi Arabia is a Trump whisperer.

I think there is increasing evidence that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were part of the plot to put Trump into office and then to manipulate him, a story the Washington press often ignores in favor of a sole fixation on Russia.

After the Canadian foreign minister (a woman) called for the release of Saudi prisoners of conscience (an atheist and a women's rights activist), the Saudi monarchy marked Canada for social death. Riyadh expelled the Canadian ambassador, recalled 16,000 Saudi students from Canadian universities, and began dumping Canadian stocks and investments. A Twitter account that has been linked to Bin Salman even briefly seemed to threaten a 9/11 style kamikaze attack on Toronto.

These boycotting steps may mildly inconvenience some specific Canadian institutions. Saudi medical school residents in hospitals had been playing an important role, and Saudi government-paid tuition for foreign students will be missed this year by some colleges and universities -- though Chinese and other students will be lining up to replace the Saudis relatively quickly. All those thousands of Saudi students who suddenly have to switch countries and institutions will lose out in their educations and their future may be affected. Saudi investments in Canadian securities, real estate, etc., had not been made by Saudi Arabia out of the goodness of their hearts. Canada is a lucrative place to invest, and the Saudis were making money there. They will now face the prospect of investing elsewhere and likely not making as much. Canada will handily find other investors.

The Saudis then attempted to smear Canada for having a poor human rights record. Unfortunately for them, they were busy actually crucifying a convicted criminal at the same time, which rather detracted from the credibility of their critique of Ottawa.

A decade ago, I pointed to King Abdullah's internal reforms, his municipal elections, reaching out to the Shiite community (12-15% of the Saudi population), his invitation to Iranian officials to come to Riyadh, and his reluctance about the Iraq War to argue that the then outside image of Saudi Arabia was not balanced.

Despite his trumpeting a further move of Wahhabism away from strict puritanical regulations of public life in Saudi Arabia, Bin Salman has undone virtually all the good work of King Abdullah. He has his own Iraq War in Yemen. He has oppressed the Shiites. King Abdullah's plans for a national legislature, building on the series of municipal elections, seem to have been permanently shelved. Bin Salman plotted to undo the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and crush Iran economically. Salman and his son have taken Saudi Arabia in extremely destructive directions that are far more worrisome than the policies of King Abdullah.

---

Bonus video:

CBC: "Trudeau on Saudi Arabia: We won't withdraw criticism"
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From Paul Craig Roberts Website

The Russian and Chinese governments are puzzling. They hold all the cards in the sanction wars, and sit there with no wits whatsoever as to how to play them.

The Russians won't get any help from the Western media, which obscures the issue by stressing that the Russian government doesn't want to deprive its citizens of consumer goods from the West, which is precisely what Washington's sanctions intend to do.

The Russian and Chinese governments are in Washington's hands because Russia and China, thinking that capitalism had won, quickly adopted American neoliberal economics, which is a propaganda device that serves only American interests.

For years NASA has been unable to function without Russian rocket engines. Despite all the sanctions, insults, and military provocations, the Russian government still sends NASA the engines. Why? Because the Russian economists tell the government that foreign exchange is essential to Russia's development.

Europe is dependent on Russian energy to run its factories and to keep warm in winter. But Russia does not turn off the energy in response to Europe's participation in Washington's sanctions, because the Russian economists tell the government that foreign exchange is essential to Russia's development.

As Michael Hudson and I explained on a number of occasions, this is nonsense. Russia's development is dependent in no way on the acquisition of foreign currencies.

The Russians are also convinced that they need foreign investment, which serves only to drain profits out of their economy.

The Russians are also convinced that they should freely trade their currency, thereby subjecting the ruble to manipulation on foreign exchange markets. If Washington wants to bring a currency crisis to Russia, all the Federal Reserve, its vassal Japanese, EU, and UK central banks have to do is to short the ruble. Hedge funds and speculators join in for the profits.

Neoliberal economics is a hoax, and the Russians have fallen for it.

So have the Chinese.

Suppose that when all these accusations against Russia began -- take the alleged attack on the Skirpals for example -- Putin had stood up and said: "The British government is lying through its teeth and so is every government including that of Washington that echoes this lie. Russia regards this lie as highly provocative and as a part of a propaganda campaign to prepare Western peoples for military attack on Russia. The constant stream of gratuitous lies and military exercises on our border have convinced Russia that the West intends war. The consequence will be the total destruction of the United States and its puppets."

That would have been the end of the gratuitous provocations, military exercises, and sanctions.

Instead, we heard about "misunderstandings" with our "American partners," which encouraged more lies and more provocations.

Or, for a more mild response, Putin could have announced: "As Washington and its servile European puppets have sanctioned us, we are turning off the rocket engines, all energy to Europe, titanium to US aircraft companies, banning overflights of US cargo and passenger aircraft, and putting in place punitive measures against all US firms operating in Russia."

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Payments Landscape in Lebanon-Opportunities and Risks to 2022 | Banque du Liban, Bank Audi, Blom Bank, Credit Libanais, Fransabank, Byblos Bank

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Global Oat-Based Snacks Market Size, Status Growth Opportunity, Up-Coming Trends, Manufactures, Key Regions, Demand, Forecast Until 2025

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Medical Device & Accessories Market Highlights:The Medical Device & Accessories Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.53% during the forecast period, 2017-2023. Medical device & accessories are products, intended to support, supplement or augment the performance of one or more parent devices. These devices are used for diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of different diseases. Now a day, most of the companies are involved in mergers, acquisitions, and collateral activities to introduce better and effective treatment procedures.Request Premium Sample copy atIn this regards, Koninklijke Philips N.V, in June 2017, acquired CardioProlific Inc. which is a U.S.-based, privately-held company that develops catheter-based thrombectomy approaches to treat peripheral vascular disease. Also in October 2015, Medtronic acquired the Coronary & Structural Heart division of Twelve, Inc. These mergers and acquisitions help them to develop pipeline and network of their product around the globe. Whereas few companies are continuously involved in research and development to introduce advanced products, such as in January 2017, Stryker Corporation launched Altrix, a next-generation precision temperature management system. Also in April 2016, Medtronic launched new endoscopic ablation catheter for Barrett's Esophagus.Competitive Dashboard:Boston Scientific CorporationMedtronicJohnson & Johnson ServicesStryker Corporationkoninklijke philips n.vAnd more.Segmentation:The global medical device & accessories market is segmented on the basis of the types of devices. On the basis the types of devices, it is segmented into cardiovascular application, coronary pressure monitors, catheters, therapeutic medical guide, dental implant, cochlear implant, global nerve stimulator market, global diabetes monitors market, and global suture needles market. Furthermore, the cardiovascular application segment is sub-segmented into cardiac monitors, cardiac pacemaker, cardiac defibrillators, and others.Get Prime Discount atThe coronary pressure monitor segment is sub-segmented into sphygmomanometer, automated blood pressure monitor, BP transducers, ambulatory blood pressure monitor, and instruments & accessories. The catheter segment is sub-segmented into cardiovascular catheters, specialty catheters, intravenous catheters, urinary catheters, neurological catheters. The therapeutic medical guidewire segment is sub-segmented into solid guidewire and wrapped guidewire. The nerve stimulator is further sub-segmented into deep brain stimulator, vagus nerve stimulator, and spinal cord stimulator.Regional Analysis:The Americas dominate the global medical device & accessories market owing to well-developed technology, high healthcare expenditure and the presence of the leading players, and focus of research institutions on updating technology for new and advanced medical device & accessories devices.Europe holds the second position in the market owing to the increasing support from the government, increasing the prevalence of chronic diseases, and high healthcare spending. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the healthcare expenditure in Germany was EUR 321 billion in 2014, France recorded the second highest level of current healthcare expenditure of EUR 237 billion.Asia Pacific is the fastest growing market owing to increasing need for better monitoring devices, rapidly improving technology, and presence of huge patient pool. Moreover, government bodies in this region are more focused to get a better treatment option to improve the lifestyle of their citizen.The Middle East & Africa is expected to hold the least market share due to less availability of medical facilities, and poor development in the healthcare domain.Inquire more about this Report atAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.ContactMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune  411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Future Scope of Phosgene Market | Top Worldwide Key Players (BASF, Cangzhou Dahua, Covestro, Dow, Huntsman, Mitsubishi, Sabic) | Forecast Analysis to 2022

Phosgene Market

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Global Phosgene Market Outlook 2017-2022 report provides the newest industry data and industry future trends, allowing you to identify the products and end users driving Revenue growth and profitability. The industry report lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry Analysis of the key factors influencing the market.Global Phosgene Market Overview:The report spread across 117 pages is an overview of the Global Phosgene Market Outlook 2017-2022. The Global Phosgene Market is projected to grow at a healthy growth rate from 2018 to 2022 according to new research. The study focuses on market trends, leading players, supply chain trends, technological innovations, key developments, and future strategies.Available Exclusive Sample Copy of this Report @The global market for Phosgene (COCl2, CAS 75-44-5) will grow at a CAGR of 4.0% by 2022. The report segments the market and forecasts its size, by volume and value, on the basis of Application (isocyanates, polycarbonates, fine chemicals, etc.) and by Geography.The Phosgene has its application in a number of industrial sectors that include insecticides, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and many others. Growing economies and growth in various industrial sectors mainly in the APAC region is expected to be a major driver for the Phosgene Market. The growing demand for chemicals that use phosgene as an intermediate chemical is also expected to trigger the demand for phosgene.Phosgene Market has been showing continuous growth in the past which is expected to continue in the near future. Europe has been the leading consumer of this compound followed by North America and China. China and the Middle East are expected to grow at a better pace due to the increasing demand for phosgene derivatives mainly toluene diisocyanate and methylene diphenyl diisocyanate.The report has been prepared based on the synthesis, analysis, and interpretation of information about the Global Phosgene Market collected from specialized sources. The competitive landscape section of the report provides a clear insight into the market share analysis of key industry players. Company overview, financial overview, product portfolio, new project launched, recent development analysis are the parameters included in the profile.Purchase this report online with 117 Pages, List of Tables & Figures and in-depth Table of Contents on Global Phosgene Market Outlook 2017-2022 @Major Key Players:1 BASF2 Cangzhou Dahua3 Covestro4 Dow5 Huntsman6 Mitsubishi7 Sabic8 Shanghai Lianheng and MoreMarket segment by Regions/Countries, this report covers:1 North America2 Europe3 Asia Pacific4 Middle East and Africa5 South AmericaGrab Your Report at an Impressive Discount @This study answers to the below key questions:1 What will the market size be in 2022 and what will the growth rate be?2 What are the key market trends?3 What is driving this market?4 What are the challenges to market growth?5 Who are the key vendors in this market space?6 What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?7 What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?In the end, this report covers data and information on capacity and production overview, production, market share analysis, sales overview, supply, sales, and shortage, import, export and consumption as well as cost, price, revenue and gross margin of Phosgene Market.Major Points in Table of Contents:Global Phosgene Market Report 20181 Exclusive Summary2 Methodology3 Introduction4 Competitive Landscape5 Market Dynamics6 Segmentation by Application7 Supply by Region8 Consumption Pattern9 Phosgene Market Forecast10 Key Vendors11 Industry Activity12 AppendixAbout usBusinessindustryReports.com is digital database of comprehensive market reports for global industries. As a market research company, we take pride in equipping our clients with insights and data that holds the power to truly make a difference to their business. Our mission is singular and well-defined  we want to help our clients envisage their business environment so that they are able to make informed, strategic and therefore successful decisions for themselves.Media ContactBusiness Industry ReportsPune  Indiasales@businessindustryreports.com+19376349940
Customer Loyalty Software Market Projected to Grow from USD 1.68 Billion in 2016 to USD 4.59 Billion by 2023, at a CAGR of +23% by Size, Share, Growth, Demand Analysis by Types, Applications and Forecast

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The Global Customer Loyalty Software Market is projected to grow from USD 1.68 Billion in 2016 to USD 4.59 Billion by 2023, at a CAGR of +23% during the forecast period. The report on the Global Customer Loyalty Software Market is an accurate piece of work and is accumulated by conducting both primary as well as secondary analysis.The key operational drivers for this market include the frequent shift of end-user demographics, rise in new mobile technologies like connecting to the market with various apps, increased organizational focus on customer segmentation for effective loyalty management programs and an increasing number of card holders.For Sample Report:Based on this report, the global Customer loyalty management market is segmented into type of solution, type of deployment, organization size, various applications, and geography. In the solution segment, customer loyalty has the major share and employee retention has a huge potential for growth. In the organization segment, large enterprises are projected to have higher market share and a large scope for growth for the small & medium enterprises. In the application segment, BFSI is projected to have the maximum share.Top Key Venders of Market:Kangaroo Rewards, Tapmango, Preferred Patron Loyalty, Annex Cloud, Yotpo, Apex Loyalty, Loyverse, Marketing & Loyalty Program, RepeatRewards, iVend Retail, Gold-Vision CRM, Social Spiral, SailPlay LoyaltyFor more Information:The Global Customer loyalty management Market has been segmented on the basis of topography into North America, Latin America, Middle East & Asia, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The share and size of each area explored in the research study have been exposed in order to give a perfect illustration of the market.Likewise, the research study provides the earlier demonstration of the market along with the prediction facts with the help of tables, graphs, charts and infographics. Inputs from the industry experts have been added to the study to help the major and new contenders in the market to articulate effective business decisions in the next few years.Ask For Discount:Table of Content:Global Customer Loyalty Software market Research Report 2018-2023Chapter 1: Global Customer Loyalty Software market OverviewChapter 2: Global Economic ImpactChapter 3: Competition by ManufacturerChapter 4: Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2018-2023)Chapter 5: Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2018-2023)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 (2018-2023)Chapter 13: AppendixOur research will change the way you think about problems. We provide global consulting that can transform businesses and give you an experience of innovative solutions and outcomes.Research N Reports helps clients harness the power of innovation to thrive on change. We have successfully guided businesses throughout the world with our market research reports. We are uniquely positioned to lead digital transformations, thus creating greater value for clients by presenting growth opportunities in the global market.Our profound experience provides a clear and confident vision to help clients navigate the future. Research N Reports techniques encompasses both qualitative and quantitative modes to provide customized and highly flexible tailored research studies so that you get information that is just the best-fit to make informed strategic organizational decisions. Research N Reports helps clients decode the future to be more successful and innovative.Contact us:(Research N Reports)10916, Gold Point Dr, Houston, TX, Pin - 77064,Sunny Denis(Sales Manager),+1-8886316977,sales@researchnreports.com ,
Textile Coatings Market 2024: Key Players Huntsman International (India) Private Limited, OMNOVA Solutions, BASF, Solvay, Covestro AG, Formulated Polymer Products Ltd

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Covestros 2016 launch of INSQIN technology is an instance of the product differentiation strategies underlining textile coatings market. Being a highly innovation-driven business space, textile coatings industry is rather substantially influenced by the introduction of advanced coating technologies. Covestro, a reputed Bayer spinoff, had introduced the INSQIN, a water-based polyurethane textile coating technology, in Q3 2016, which has proved to be a rather sustainable innovation and has apparently reduced the carbon emissions by almost 50%.Today, manufacturers have been focusing on introducing eco-friendly coatings technologies that offer the dual benefits of carbon emission reduction and product cost-effectiveness. In yet another landmark event, Zimmer Austria has recently set new parameters for measuring the growth of textile coatings market through the introduction of new technologies such as Magnoroll coatings and digital printing systems.Sample copy of this report @In May 2017, specialty chemicals giants Huntsman Corporation and Clariant AG signed a deal assessed at over USD 14 billion to expand their product portfolio. Coatings and plastics are expected to be an integral part of the new firm referred as HuntsmanClariant. This is one of those riveting mergers that is expected to prompt other business players to follow suit, subsequently impacting textile coatings market size.Dow Corning has been offering advanced heat-curing silicon elastomer coating technologies as a part of its product portfolio, that find applications across industrial textile processing.Company profiled in this report based on Business overview, Financial data, Product landscape, Strategic outlook & SWOT analysis:Huntsman International (India) Private Limited1. Omnova Solutions2. BASF3. Solvay4. Covestro AG5. Clariant AG6. Formulated Polymer Products7. Sumitomo Chemical Company8. Lubrizol Corporation9. Tanatex Chemicals10. Sioen Coating11. DSM12. Textiles Coated International13. National Coating Corporation14. Conversion Technologies InternationalThe Elkem Company is reputed for manufacturing silicone textile coatings, which find wide applications in marines, sportswear, technical textiles, transport, leathers, and automotives. Their favorable product features such as UV & fire protection, mechanical stress, and thermal resistance have made them highly popular across various end-use sectors. It is undeniable that their high-end sales would have a modest impact on textile coatings industry share.Another product encompassing a widespread application spectrum is Encor  these coatings, manufactured by Arkema S.A., can be used in packaging, automobile, civil engineering, construction, geotextiles, cable wrapping, and filtration. They offer strength, aesthetic value, and protection to a wide range of textile surfaces.Browse Complete Summary of this report @Lubrizol Corporation, a key player across specialty chemicals industry, has declared the upgradation of its textile coatings unit in North Carolina across the U.S. The unit is focusing on extensive R& D of textile coatings technologies to formulate new coating methods for range of textile applications  a move which may have a sizable impact on textile coatings market size.Pivotal measures undertaken by vital companies are certain to generate profitable avenues for textile coatings industry, across myriad geographies. Speaking of which, APAC contributed to more than 50% of the overall textile coatings market share in 2016, and is anticipated to witness a high product penetration over the coming years. This growth can be attributed to the construction developments being witnessed across countries such as India and China, which have been touted to be the key revenue contributors.The prevailing sense of aesthetics in conjunction with the fact that textile coatings find extensive utilization across the fabric and home furnishing sectors is certain to segment the product popularity across the U.S., indirectly providing a boost to North America textile coatings industry size. It is forecast that the U.S. textile coatings market, which has majorly influenced North America industry since the past few years, will record a CAGR of more than 4.5% over 2017-2024.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @A recently compiled research report claims that textile coatings industry is anticipated to generate a revenue of more than USD 7.5 billion by 2024. This comes as no surprise, given that the competitive landscape of this business comprises major players such as Clariant AG, Huntsman Corporation, Covestro AG, Royal DSM, Sumitomo Chemical Company, Solvay S.A., and Lubrizol Corporation. With their praiseworthy contributions in place, it is no doubt that textile coatings market is predicted to carve out a favorable growth curve over the coming years.About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact UsArun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1 888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:
Automotive Track Bars Market Overview By Demand, New technology, Key Region, Top Players, Latest Trends and Cost Structure With Competition Tracking- Global Review 2018 to 2028

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Automotive suspension systems have been of crucial importance in any vehicle as the shock produced through the front and rear wheels when a vehicle travels on rough and uneven surfaces is effectively eliminated. Automotive track bars decrease the stress and strain that would otherwise impact the driver and other vehicle parts by absorbing the shock from uneven and rough terrains. Automotive track bars are called Panhard rods or automotive track rods, and their main function is to provide lateral supporting movement to the axle of the vehicle. Automotive track bars are very useful in eliminating the death wobble between the wheels and axle, thus providing a smooth driving experience.Automotive track bars prevent the lateral movement of the vehicle as well as enable the driver to have better control on the steering even on rough terrains. Automotive track bars are simple rigid bars running sideways in synchronization with the vehicle axle in the same plane as the vehicle axle. Automotive track bars are placed on either ends with the help of pivots, which helps the bars swivel downwards and upwards only such that the vehicle axle moves in the vertical plane. This arrangement between the automotive track bars and the vehicle axle is usually used with the coil springs system as leaf springs suspensions themselves supply enough lateral rigidity. Nevertheless, there are some light truck auto-makers that use automotive track bars with leaf spring suspension systems in the global market.Request TOC of this Report-Automotive Track Bars Market: DynamicsNew-age cars, such as those equipped with features like drive assistants, have made the automotive industry much more competitive. There is plenty of scope for the R&D in the automotive track bars market. Some of the key automotive market players are aspiring to offer increased comfort by developing novel products such as the automotive track bars with enhanced damping properties, especially for vehicles used in professional racing and stunting. In addition, the market for automotive track bars has grown due to development in the overall automotive sector, as consumers are more attracted towards safety and riding comfort. Furthermore, growth in racing and adventure sports, such as dirt car racing and off-road events, is expected to fuel the growth of the overall automotive track bars market in the coming years. The market for automotive track bars is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR during the forecast period. Growth in the applications of track bars in commercial vehicles is expected to propel the overall automotive track bars market in the near future.Automotive Track Bars Market: Regional OutlookA global economic boom in the last decade of the twentieth century has been one of the drivers for efficiency, productivity and open & unregulated markets that swept the world. Never before in world history have businesses been so deeply involved in and affected by international global developments. Powerful economic, technological, industrial, political and demographic forces are converging to build the foundation of a new global economic order on which the structure of a world economic and market system will be built. Owing to the booming industrial & automotive sector in North America, Europe and the Japan, consumers in the aforementioned markets have a higher standard of living with luxurious lifestyles and high disposable incomes, which has boosted the adoption of automotive track bars in all types of vehicles. People have developed a liking for a comfortable and smooth riding experience, thus the automotive track bars market is expected witness rapid growth in all developed and developing countries in the future. Emerging economies in the APEJ region, especially India and China, will play an important role in the growth of the automotive track bars market in the coming years. In countries such as India and China, passenger cars are considered basic modes of transportation and hence, there is a vast growth potential for the global automotive track bars market in the near future.To know more about the Automotive Track Bars Market Trends, Visit the link Automotive Track Bars Market: Market Participants Powers & Sons, LLC CJ Pony Parts TeraFlex Suspensions Guru Nanak Auto Enterprises Ltd. Climax Overseas Pvt. Ltd. ENFORGE LLC Ironman4x4Fab JKS ManufacturingThe 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 market segments such as geographies, application and industry.The report covers exhaust analysis on: Market Segments Market Dynamics Market Size Supply & Demand Current Trends/Issues/Challenges Competition & Companies involved Technology Value ChainReport Highlights: Detailed overview of parent market Changing market dynamics in the industry In-depth market segmentation Historical, current and projected market size in terms of volume and value Recent industry trends and developments Competitive landscape Strategies of key players and products offered Potential and niche segments, geographical regions exhibiting promising growth A neutral perspective on market performance Must-have information for market players to sustain and enhance their market footprintAsk our Industry Expert on this Report-About FactMRFactMR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized market insights reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; that's why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.Contact UsFactMR11140 Rockville PikeSuite 400Rockville, MD 20852United StatesEmail: sales@factmr.comWeb:
Cold Pressed Juice in US 2018 Market Net Worth US$ 8.1 billion Forecast By 2024

Cold Pressed Juice in US 2018

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WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On  Cold Pressed Juice in US 2018 Market Net Worth US$ 8.1 billion Forecast By 2024.Description:-US markets are poised to achieve continuing growth as Cold Pressed Juice Markets support better nutrition.An increasing number of diabetic patients, terrible obesity issues, and increasing nutritional and health concerns among clinicians are having an impact on the Cold Pressed Juice markets as people turn to good nutrition as a supplement to medications. Changing lifestyle impacts the market. The cold pressed juice market can be primarily divided into two broad categories: raw juices and HPP. The HPP is packaged in plastic.Independent brands comprise a higher percentage than is usual for other markets. The cold pressed juice market is comprised in part of smaller stores and from sources that operate as small entities. In other markets it is usually the case that the known brands dominate a market. What is different here with cold pressed juices is that cold pressed juice is better when it is really fresh. This requirement mitigates against large company usual methodical, slow ways of working. It is even more difficult than the milk market when the juice is not pasteurized.A $4.3 billion market in the US in 2017 is expected to reach $8.1 billion by 2024, growing in response to demand for food that has more nutrition in it and is tasty.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comCompanies ProfiledMarket Leaders Pepsico Naked Juice Company Coca Cola / Odwalla Hain BluePrint Inc. Starbucks / Evolution Fresh Suja Life, LLC Pressed Juicery Juice Generation Florida Bottling Drink Daily Greens LiquiteriaKey Topics Cold Pressed Juice Markets Spoilage Sugar HPP Raw Plastic Bottles Glass Bottles Retail Convenience Store On-:Line Business Travelers / Airport / Hotel Trendy Metropolis Foot Traffic Big Box Stores Elite Athletes Whole Foods / Amazon, Nutrition SnacksAsk Query About Report @Table Of Contents  Major Key PointsCold Pressed Juice Executive Summary 10Cold Pressed Juice Market Forecasts 101. Cold Pressed Juice: Market Description and Market Dynamics 111.1 Cold-Pressed: Contents Pulverized And Hydraulically Pressed 111.2 Dealing With Spoilage 111.2.1 Difference Between Cold Pressed & The Juice Made At Home 111.3 HPP 121.4 Cold Pressed Juice May Contain Harmful Bacteria 132. Cold Pressed Juice Market Shares and Forecasts 142.1 Cold Pressed Juice Market Driving Forces 142.1.1 Competitive Factors In The Cold-Pressed Juice Industry 142.2 Cold Pressed Juice Market Shares 162.2.1 Juice Market 202.2.2 Dole Food Company, Inc. 212.3 Cold Pressed Juice Market Forecasts 212.4 Cold Pressed Juice Market Sectors 232.5 Cold Pressed Juice Prices 282.6 Cold Pressed Juice Regional Market Analysis 302.6.1 Definition of MSA 303. Cold Pressed Juice Product Description 333.1 Juice Industry 334. Cold Pressed Juice Company Profiles 354.1 Starbucks / Evolution Fresh 354.1.1 Starbucks Evolution Fresh Net Revenues: 364.1.2 Evolution Fresh 374.2 Pepsico / Naked Juice 404.2.1 Pepsico 404.2.2 Naked Juice Cold Pressed Juice 454.3 Hain BluePrint Inc. 474.3.1 Hain Celestial Group Revenue 484.4 Suja Life, LLC 504.4.1 Suja Life Partnership with Coca Cola 524.4.2 Suja Produced 48 Million Bottles Of Organic, Non-GMO, HPP Juice 544.5 Liquiteria 544.6 Jamaica Producers Group / A. L. Hoogesteger Fresh Specialist 564.7 Parker's Organic Juices Pty. Ltd. 584.8 Florida Bottling Inc. 594.8.1 Coca-Cola Refreshments 604.9 Coca Cola / Odwalla Inc. 604.9.1 Odwalla's Sugar Content 634.10 Juice Generation 674.11 Pressed Juicery 674.12 Rakyan Beverages Private Limited 694.13 Village Juicery Inc. 694.13.1 Village Juicery Locations 704.14 Organic Press Juices Co. LLC 714.15 Kuka Juice LLC. 724.16 The Cold Pressed Juicery 734.17 Greenhouse Juice Co. 764.18 Drink Daily Greens LLC 814.19 Native Cold Pressed Juices 844.20 Plenish Cleanse 854.21 Pure Green 854.22 Daily Juice 854.23 Cold Pressed Juice Companies List 86WinterGreen Research, 88WinterGreen Research Methodology 88WinterGreen Research Process 90Market Research Study 90WinterGreen Research Global Market Intelligence Company 91ContinuedFor 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.
Digital X-ray Market 2018-2025: Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook, and Opportunity Analysis By Hologic Corporation, Philips Healthcare, Shimadzu Corporation, Siemens Healthineers And Others

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Data Bridge Market Research recently introduced Global Digital X-ray Market study with in-depth overview, describing about the Product / Industry Scope and elaborates market outlook and status to 2025. The report also provide detail analysis of the Digital X-ray market structure along with forecast, market size & share, various segments and growing trends of the Digital X-ray industry.Get Free Sample Copy Of Report @Global Digital X-ray Market is expected to reach USD 17.5 Billion by 2025, from USD 7.6 Billion in 2017 growing at a CAGR of 5.0% during the forecast period of 2018 to 2025. The upcoming market report contains data for historic years 2017, the base year of calculation is 2017 and the forecast period is 2018 to 2025.Major Market competitors/players: Canon, Fujifilm Medical Systems, GE Healthcare, Hitachi Medical Corporation, Hologic Corporation, Philips Healthcare, Shimadzu Corporation, Siemens Healthineers, Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation, Danaher, Carestream Health, Sirona Dental Systems, Inc, Planmeca, Varex Imaging Corporation, Agfa Healthcare And others.Competitive Analysis: Global Digital X-ray MarketThe global digital X-ray market is highly fragmented and the major players have used various strategies such as new product launches, expansions, agreements, joint ventures, partnerships, acquisitions and others to increase their footprints in this market. The report includes market shares of digital X-ray market for global, Europe, North America, Asia Pacific and South America.Global Digital X-ray Market, By Product (Digital X-Ray And Analog X-Ray), By Type (Extraoral X-Ray Intraoral X-Ray and Hybrid X-Ray), By Application (Diagnostic, Therapeutic, Cosmetic and others), By End Users (Dental Hospital and Forensic Laboratories), By Geography (North America, South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa)Customization With Discount Available On This Report @Market Segmentation: Global Digital X-ray Market The global digital X-ray market is segmented into product, type, application, end users and geography. Based on product the global digital X-ray market is segmented into digital x-ray and analog x-ray. Based on type the global digital X-ray market is segmented into extraoral x-ray, intraoral x-ray and hybrid x-ray. Extraoral X-Ray is further segmented into panoramic/cephalometric systems and cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) systems. Intraoral x-ray is further sub segmented into digital sensors and photostimulable phosphor (PSP) systems. Based on the application the global digital X-ray market is segmented into diagnostic, therapeutic, cosmetic and forensic. Based on the end-users global digital X-ray market is segmented into dental hospitals & clinics, forensic laboratories and research laboratories. Based on geography the global digital X-ray market report covers data points for 28 countries across multiple geographies namely North America & South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and, Middle East & Africa. Some of the major countries covered in this report are U.S., Canada, Germany, France, U.K., Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey, Russia, China, India, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and, Brazil among othersMajor Market Drivers and Restraints: Reduced diagnosis time and improved cost saving. Increase in geriatric population. Increased in the funds raised by government Dental problem numbers raised Growing medical tourism is one of the opportunity for digital- X rays Advancement in technology of digital x-ray.Note:If You Have Any Special Requirements, Please Let Us Know And We Will Offer You The Report As You Want.Questions? Well Put You on the Right Path Request Analyst Call @About Us:Data Bridge Market Research set forth itself as an unconventional and neoteric Market research and consulting firm with unparalleled level of resilience and integrated approaches. We are determined to unearth the best market opportunities and foster efficient information for your business to thrive in the market. Data Bridge endeavorsto provide appropriate solutions to the complex business challenges and initiates an effortless decision-making process.Contact:Data Bridge Market ResearchTel: +1-888-387-2818Email: Sopan.gedam@databridgemarketresearch.com
Mouth Ulcers Treatment Market Expected to Behold a CAGR of 3.80% through 2014 - 2020

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Global Mouth Ulcers Treatment Market: SnapshotMouth ulcers are non-critical and are formed due to oral injuries or wounds affecting the mucous membrane. Some of the factors resulting in the formation of mouth ulcers are stress, infection, injury, allergy, nutritional deficiencies, or genetic tendency, which further leads to intense pain.View Report-The inclination of consumers towards a healthy lifestyle is estimated to offer promising opportunities for the key players operating in the global mouth ulcer treatment market across the globe. The increasing level of competition and the emergence of innovative products are likely to encourage the growth of the global mouth ulcers market throughout the forecast period.As per the research study, in 2013, the global market for mouth ulcer treatment was worth US$1,242.6 mn. The market is estimated to register a 3.80% CAGR between 2014 and 2020, reaching a value of US$1,596.9 mn by the end of 2020. Furthermore, technological advancements and innovations in the medicine field are expected to bolster global mouth ulcer treatment in the near future.Request A Sample-Growing Geriatric Population to Drive Demand for Mouth Ulcer TreatmentThe increasing awareness about the serious condition of mouth ulcers and the availability of different treatments are estimated to fuel the growth of the global market in the next few years. In addition, the rising number of cases owing to the rising geriatric population and the lack of knowledge of maintaining mouth hygiene are expected to accelerate the growth of the mouth ulcers market across the globe. On the flip side, several side effects of mouth ulcer treatment such as head ache, blurred vision, and stomach pain are anticipated to curb the growth of the global market in the near future.On the basis of formulation, the global mouth ulcers market has been classified into spray, gel, mouthwash, and lozenge. Among these, the gel segment is predicted to witness high growth in the coming few years. Furthermore, in terms of indication, aphthous stomatitis segment is expected to register a progressive growth rate in the near future. The drug classes in this global mouth ulcer treatment market are anesthetic, corticosteroid, analgesic, antimicrobial, and antihistamine.Rising Prevalence Rate of Mouth Ulcers to Encourage Growth in North AmericaFrom a geographical perspective, North America is anticipated to lead the global mouth ulcers market and is expected to remain in the topmost position throughout the forecast period. As per the study, this region is estimated to account for a key share of the market by the end of 2020, thanks to the growing awareness among consumers regarding the availability of effective mouth ulcer treatments. In addition, the increasing demand for mouth ulcer treatments owing to the rising prevalence rate is predicted to fuel the growth of the North America mouth ulcer treatment market in the coming few years.Request for TOC containing Tables and Figures:Furthermore, Europe is anticipated to witness considerable growth in the coming years and remain in the second position in terms of revenue. The rising geriatric population in this region is one of the key factors anticipated to bolster mouth ulcers market in Europe. On the other hand, Asia Pacific is projected to register robust growth in the next few years, due to the favorable government initiatives and the rising number of mouth ulcer cases. The untapped opportunities in this region, especially in developing economies are predicted to supplement the growth of the market in the next few years.Some of the prominent players operating in the global market for mouth ulcers treatment are Church & Dwight Co, Inc., ECR Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline plc, 3M Healthcare, and Bristol Meyer Squibb Company.About us:Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a U.S.-based provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Automotive OEM Coatings Market Strategies and Key Opportunities | 2024

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Coatings used in automobiles to protect the underlying metal or synthetic body panels from harsh environments are referred to as automotive coatings. Initially, chromium, lead, and other heavy metals were employed in these coatings. However, with the introduction of various environmental regulations, the use of toxic chemicals has been prohibited, which has resulted in a switch to water-based coatings. Growing demand from passenger cars and light commercial vehicles is expected to boost the need for automotive OEM coatings in the near future.View Report Preview:Based on application, the automotive OEM coatings market has been divided into the following segments: passenger cars, light commercial vehicles, and heavy commercial vehicles. Passenger cars accounted for a significant share in the global market due to the surge in vehicles in the tourism industry. This segment offers the maximum potential in the automotive OEM coatings market owing to the rising global demand for passenger cars & general utility vehicles, escalating public transportation expenditure, and increasing consumer inclination toward efficient & easy transportation, thereby boosting the overall demand for automotive OEM coatings in the passenger cars segment. On the basis of type, the market has been classified into the solvent-borne, waterborne, and powdered categories. In 2015, solvent-borne coatings constituted a significant share in the global market due to the growing demand for a smooth surface finish.Geographically, the global automotive OEM coatings market has been distributed over Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. Asia Pacific was a major market in 2015 and is estimated to expand due to the burgeoning automotive OEM industry. The water-borne sector is anticipated to register a high growth rate over the forecast period due to stringent regulations on VOC emissions.Developments in the automobile sector are also likely to fuel the need for automotive OEM coatings in Asia Pacific in 2015. Their use in light commercial vehicles has witnessed a major rise on account of the constantly rising per capita disposable incomes and the subsequent demand for commercial utility vehicles. China and the U.S. are predicted to hold major shares in the automotive OEM coatings market in Asia Pacific and North America respectively. The market is predicted to witness a shift from developed countries to the developing economies of Asia due to the fewer stringent environmental regulations in the latter. The automotive OEM coatings market in China and India is projected to register a high growth rate due to advancements in end-use sectors, technological developments, and new innovative products launched in these countries, thereby creating a huge demand for the product in Asia Pacific over the forecast period.The global demand for automotive OEM coatings is poised to rise significantly in the near future, offering immense growth opportunities for the market. The rapid surge in the products end-use applications, competitive manufacturing costs, and high economic growth rates are propelling the automotive OEM coatings market in Asia Pacific. These factors are attracting companies to adopt expansion and R&D strategies in the region to meet the global demand. Market players are focusing on Asia Pacific to gain substantial market shares. Several producers are shifting their plants to China and India due to the high demand and low raw material and labor costs in these countries. Developments in various end-use sectors in the region have fuelled the requirement for the product during the forecast period.Key players operating in the global automotive OEM coatings market include Beckers Group, Cabot Corporation, Berger Paints, Eastman Chemical Company, Valspar Corporation, Clariant AG, Deft, Inc., Jotun A/S, Royal DSM, Lord Corporation, and Solvay S.A.Request to view Sample 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 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 data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Refrigeration Oil Market Competitive Landscape and Industry Expansion Strategies By 2025

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Global Refrigeration Oil Market: SnapshotThe future of the global refrigeration oil market is prosperous, with the demand estimated to increment at a CAGR of 5.8% during the forecast period of 2017 to 2025. Some of the key factors favoring the global refrigeration oil market are: increasing preference of low-GWP refrigerants, rebates offered by government and NGOs to promote energy-efficient product and services, technological advancement such as advent of HVAC&R systems in the healthcare sector, and expanding refrigeration application. The transportation sector and new product development by the leading vendors are also expected to open new opportunities in the global refrigeration oil market, which on the other hand is facing obstruction from compatibility issues and complexity of oil control function. The refrigeration oil market is projected to reach a global valuation of US$1.77 bn by the end of 2025.View Report Preview:Synthetic Oil Most Identified as Profitable Product Segment of Refrigeration Oil MarketOn the basis of product type, the global refrigeration oil market has been bifurcated into mineral oil and synthetic oil. The latter currently serves the maximum demand and is estimated to be worth US$1,314.5 mn by 2025. This potent demand for synthetic oil can be attributed to its compatibility with refrigerant used in the system. On the other hand, the mineral oil offers more benefits over the synthetic oil, which leads to its use as a thermal fluid in mechanical and industrial applications. Polyol ester, ploy alpha olefins, alkyl benzene, ploy alkylene glycols, polyvinyl ether and phenolpropoxylate oil are some of the other types of refrigeration oil. Based on refrigerant type, the global refrigeration oil market has been segmented into hydrocholoroflurocarbon (HCFC), chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), hydro fluorocarbon (HFC), and ammonia. By the end of 2025, hydro fluorocarbon segment is estimated to be worth US$476.1 mn, which is considerably more than any other segments. However, ammonia is anticipated to experience the best CAGR of 6.2% during the forecast period of 2017 to 2025.Application-wise, the global refrigeration oil market has been categorized into air conditioner, coolers, chillers, refrigerators, and condensers, with air conditioners contributing the most prominent chunk of the overall demand. By 2025, the air conditioners category of the global refrigeration oil market is estimated to be worth US$535.3 mn, expanding at a strong CAGR of 7.7% during the said forecast period. Based on end-use, residential and commercial sectors serve the maximum demand, with residential segment projected for an above-average growth rate.Asia Pacific Emerges as Highly Lucrative RegionThe developed country of the U.S. continues to be the main consumer of refrigerant oils, owing to high demand for refrigerant based products such as air conditioners, residential and commercial refrigerators, and medical freezers. The North America refrigeration oil market is also driven by the increased demand for food storage equipment, growing urbanization, and growth in the consumer electronics market. With increasing usage of air conditioners and refrigerators, there will be augmentation in the demand for high performance and longer life of these systems. Since these oils add long life to the refrigerant systems, the market for the same will flourish consistently. On the other hand, the Asia Pacific region is the major shareholder of the global refrigeration oil market, accounting for more than 35% share of the overall market. This is a reflection of the presence of numerous refrigerants and refrigerant oil providers and end user sectors. The APAC refrigeration oil demand continues to be high due to emerging markets such as India and China, which are projected to grow significantly in the cold storage warehousing and frozen food sectors.Request to view Sample Report:Competitive Landscape to Remain Consolidated Among a Few PlayersThe global refrigeration oil market is concentrated among five major players, viz. Idemitsu Kosan Co, Ltd., Royal Dutch Shell plc, BASF, Exxon Mobil Corporation, and MEIWA, who collectively accounted for 94.8% of the market in 2016. These companies have a strong product portfolio as well as presence in a number of countries, and are expected to maintain their dominance in the near future too.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 data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Polyurea Coatings Market Size Projected to Rise Lucratively during 2025

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A polyurea coating is formed by the reaction of a pre-polymer such as methylene diphenyl di-isocyanate (MDI) or hexamethylene di-isocyanate (HDI) with amine-terminated resins. Polyurea was developed in the 1980s for the automotive industry and was originally used as a truck-bed liner to form a lasting watertight layer. Polyurea coatings are now used for a wide variety of applications in building & construction, infrastructure, automotive, marine, and manufacturing industries. Polyurea coatings are elastomeric in nature. It is a more advanced technology than traditional coating technologies such as epoxy, vinyl ester, PU, and polychloroprene. Polyurea coatings are applied on infrastructure and building components such as tunnels, water reservoir containers, pedestrian footpaths, floor coverings, and sewage pits. Polyurea coatings are widely applied also on bridges, tanks, truck linings, and secondary containments. Due to its excellent resistance to hydrocarbons and corrosive gases, polyurea is employed as an industrial coating for highly demanding applications in oil & gas and chemical industries.View Report Preview:Depending upon the method of formulation and application of polyurea coatings, different types of polyurea coatings can be formulated to attain an extensive range of properties. These properties vary from high elongation to high tensile strength and from a very hard material to a soft one. Polyurea coatings have superior water resistance, abrasion resistance, chemical resistance, durability, resistance to weathering, corrosion resistance, and mechanical strength. These coatings can be applied in a variety of designs and colors and they are available as water-based formulations also. One of the key advantages of polyurea coatings over other competing materials is their fast set characteristics. Cure times for polyurea coatings usually range from a few seconds to a few minutes as opposed to much longer cure times required for traditional coatings. Low set time ensures that a facility can be back in use without suffering revenue loss due to downtime. Polyurea coatings also form strong and durable bonds with different substrates such as metals, concrete, ceramics, and wood. Properties of polyurea coatings sustain over a wide temperature range and a variety of climatic conditions. However, polyurea coatings have some drawbacks with the most significant being higher cost of the material as compared to other substitutes. Also, the application of polyurea coatings requires the use of expensive equipment. However, polyurea coatings last substantially longer than their substitutes and hence, they are more cost-effective throughout the life of the coating.The global polyurea coatings market has witnessed rapid growth in the last decade and this trend is likely to continue in the near future. The building & construction industry is the leading consumer of polymer coatings. Rapid industrialization and urbanization in several parts of the world is likely to fuel the demand for polyurea coatings in the next few years. Polyurea coatings are also employed extensively in the industrial sector as protective coatings against corrosion. North America is the leading consumer of polyurea coatings accounting for more than 33% share of the global market. The ongoing recovery of the construction sector in the U.S. as well as the renewed focus on manufacturing in the country are factors likely to boost the demand for polyurea coatings in North America. Europe also accounts for a significant share of the plastic coatings market, owing to the rise in demand from automobile manufacturers concentrated in the region. Germany, the U.K., France, and Italy are the key consumers of polyurea coatings in Europe. Demand for polyurea coatings is expected to surge in Asia Pacific and the market in the region is expected to expand rapidly in the near future. Rapid industrial growth and boom in the construction sector in China are factors expected to provide high opportunity to the polyurea coatings market in Asia Pacific in the next few years. The polyurea coatings market in emerging economies such as India, Thailand, and Malaysia is poised to expand at a significant rate during the forecast period.Despite the slowdown in the oil & gas industry, the outlook of the polyurea market appears positive, due to increasing use of protective coatings in the oil & gas industry; as companies are beginning to prefer condition-based monitoring over the breakdown maintenance approach. Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa are the other major countries for the polyurea market.Key players operating in the global polyurea market are PPG Industries, Nukote Coating Systems, Sherwin-Williams Company, VIP GmbH, Rhino Linings, Kukdo Chemicals, Versaflex Inc., Specialty Products, Inc., and Wasser Corporation.Request to view Sample 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 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 data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reportsContact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
OTC Analgesic Market to Witness Comprehensive Growth by 2025

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Analgesics are counter pain drugs, which assist in regulating pain for a period of time, until and unless it is completely eliminated. OTC analgesic drugs are used by individuals devoid of the need for any prescription. Drugs that do not require prescription are classified as OTC analgesics. OTC analgesics are available in brand and generic formulations as tablets, capsules, creams, sprays, and patches.The international association for the study of pain defines pain as a discomfort experience due to a possible tissue injury. Pain is classified into three categories: mild, moderate, and severe. Typical conditions associated with pain are headache, musculoskeletal injuries, dysmenorrhea, and others such as toothache. Various kinds of OTC pain relief products are available in the market. These constitute three active ingredients: paracetamol, ibuprofen, and aspirin.Paracetamol is the commonly used OTC analgesic. Its analgesic property is analogous to that of aspirin and ibuprofen. It does not carry any anti-inflammatory effects. Paracetamol inhibits prostaglandin synthesis within the central nervous system. It is the first choice of analgesic for pain management. Prolonged use of paracetamol may enhance the anticoagulant effect of coumarins. Common side-effects associated with paracetamol are hypersensitivity, rare cases of blood dyscrasias (including thrombocytopenia and agranulocytosis). Aspirin is another common OTC analgesic. Aspirin is analgesic, antipyretic, antiplatelet, and anti-inflammatory. The inhibition of cyclooxygenase results in analgesic effect of aspirin. Antagonistic effects of aspirin are epigastric pain, gastrointestinal ulceration, nausea and vomiting, hypersensitivity, and gout.Request to View Brochure of Report -The OTC Analgesic Drugs Market can be segmented based on route of administration, distribution channel, and geography. In terms of route of administration, the OTC analgesics drugs market can be classified into oral, topical, intramuscular administration, and intravenous. Based on distribution channel, OTC analgesics drugs market can be divided into hospital pharmacies, drug stores, retail drug stores, and e-commerce.The major drivers for OTC analgesic market are increase in demand for topical analgesics, growth in geriatric population, cost efficiency of OTC drugs has led to the increasing the usage rate, increasing use of off-label drugs has led to easy pain management due to availability of OTC analgesics, and major analgesic manufacturers and distributor are increasing their product portfolio and geographical footprint to increase their stronghold in the global OTC analgesic market in the developed as well as developing markets.Side-effects such as constipation, dizziness, drowsiness, and heart attack associated with OTC analgesic drugs is one of the key restraints of the market. OTC analgesic drugs may also cause serious damage to the brain in rare cases. Long-term usage of painkillers or analgesics can lead to addiction and drug overdose. According to a study, painkillers are the second most abused substances, after marijuana, in the U.S. Therefore, uncertainty regarding increase in stringent regulations on OTC analgesics is expected to significantly hamper the OTC analgesic market.Based on region, the global OTC analgesic market can be segregated into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America is anticipated to be the prominent region of the OTC analgesic market due to the higher demand, presence of major pharmaceutical product manufacturers, better health care reforms in terms of patient care, and increase in mergers and acquisitions in the global market. Europe also held key share of the global OTC analgesic market. Asia Pacific is estimated to provide lucrative opportunities to the global OTC analgesic market largely due to the rise in disease burden, rapid increase in research, and growth in competitive landscape in the pharmaceutical industry, as large number of global players are expanding their business in the region through strategic collaborations with regional manufacturers and research institutes. The global OTC analgesic market in Latin America and Middle East & Africa is projected to be driven by the increase in health care infrastructure and public-private collaborations.Major companies operating in the global OTC analgesic market include Johnson & Johnson Service, Inc., AstraZeneca Plc., Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc., Novartis AG, GlaxoSmithKline Plc., Pfizer Inc., Takeda Pharma, Boehringer Ingelheim, Sanofi, and Bayer.View Report -About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Knockout Mice Model Market to Record Ascending Growth by 2025

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A knockout mouse is a laboratory mouse (a biological model) in which a target gene has been disrupted or inactivated. The loss of gene activity frequently results in changes in the mouse's phenotypic characteristics (behavior, appearance, and other observable biochemical characteristics). This, in turn, allows in vivo studies of gene function, disease research, and drug development. Knockout mice are a powerful tool for analyzing gene function during development and in disease process.Emergence of CRISPR as a powerful tool in the field of biomedical research, rising burden of obesity, increasing prevalence of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, autism, schizophrenia, and rare diseases are some of the pivotal factors that are anticipated to propel the demand of knockout mice models in the near future.Incessant grants/funds supporting cancer research studies, agreements & collaborations strengthening cancer research, increasing biomedical research activities in prominent markets such as the U.S., Australia, rising pharmaceutical & biotechnology R&D activities in Korea, increasing translational and biomedical research in Singapore, international alliances for R&D activities, growing public and private investments in life sciences sector, upsurge in animal research in Malaysia, growing pharmaceutical, biotechnology & research industries in Brazil, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are other driving factors that are expected to provide impetus to the market.Increasing focus of associations such as International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC) & International Knockout Mouse Consortium (IKMC) on the development of knockout mice is likely to unlock new areas of biology and lead to novel drug target discovery.Request to View Brochure of Report -In terms of types, the Knockout Mice Models Market has been divided into conditional knockout, constitutive knockout, inducible knockout, and tissue-specific knockout. Conditional knockout mice models are made by engineering recombinase specific targets. This enables the deletion of a gene in a tissue- and time-specific manner. Constitutive knockout mice models are created to carry an inoperative gene. It permanently inactivates a target gene in every cell of the organism. Inducible knockout mice models are conditional biological models, in which target gene of interest can be inactivated at a given point of time. It inactivates gene expression in a time-controlled manner. Tissue-specific knockout mice models are conditional biological models, in which target gene can be inactivated in a specific tissue or tissues such as the brain, intestine, muscles, skin, and all the other tissues.In terms of type of indications, the knockout mice model market has been further classified into obesity, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, neurological disorders, and others. Knockout mice models for cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes & neurological disorders segments are well-established and hence their availability for these indications is not a concern. However, the supply of knockout mice models for neurological disorders and rare diseases is low; therefore, their availability for these indications is a concern. The knockout mice models for obesity, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes are priced relatively lower than the knockout models for neurological disorders and rare diseases due to the demand-supply gap. Based on geography, the knockout mice model market is segment into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa.Key players operating in the global knockout mice model market are Charles River Laboratories, Inc., The Jackson Laboratory, ENVIGO (Harlan Laboratories, Inc.), Taconic Biosciences, Inc., genOway, Cyagen Biosciences, Inc., Horizon Discovery Group PLC (Sage Labs, Inc.), Deltagen (TRANS GENIC INC.), and Ozgene.View Report -About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Computed Tomography Market Major Competitors, Porter Analysis and Demand Forecast to 2022

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The global computed tomography market was valued at $4,894.3 million in 2015, and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.0% during 2016-2022. Based on slice type, the high slice type segment is expected to witness the faster growth, CAGR of 5.3%, during the forecast period.Explore Report with Detailed TOC at:The global CT market is growing at a significant rate, due to increasing healthcare expenditure, and growing geriatric population. The increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and improving healthcare infrastructure in developing countries are also driving the growth of the global computed tomography market. However, the factors such as stringent regulatory requirements for the approval of CT devices, and side effects of ionization radiation are inhibiting the growth of the global market.Download Report Sample at:The information and data in the publication Global Computed Tomography Market Size, Share, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2022 represent the research and analysis of data from various primary and secondary sources. The bottom-top approach has been used to calculate the global market size by slice type and end user. The market numbers for countries are obtained through top-down approach. P&S Market Research analysts and consultants interacted with authorities from leading companies of the concerned domain, to substantiate every value of data presented in the report. The company bases its primary research on discussions with prominent professionals and analysts in the industry, which is followed by informed and detailed, online, and offline research.Make Enquiry Before Buying the Report:Computed tomography (CT) is an imaging procedure, which uses special x-ray equipment to provide detailed images of internal organs, blood vessels, soft tissues and bones. It is also known as CAT scanning (computerized axial tomography). It provides cross-sectional images in multiple planes. It helps in diagnosis of cancer, circulatory conditions and disorders (coronary artery disease, blood clots, and blood vessel aneurysms), kidney and bladder stone, spinal conditions, inflammatory diseases (ulcerative colitis and sinusitis), and injuries to head, skeletal system and internal organs.Geographically, North America dominated the global market of CT in 2015; whereas the Asia-Pacific market is expected to witness the fastest growth, at a CAGR of 5.8%, during the forecast period.Some of the key companies operating in the global CT market include Hitachi Ltd., Siemens AG, Toshiba Corporation, Samsung, General Electric Company, and Koninklijke Philips N.V.About P&S IntelligenceP&S Intelligence, a brand of P&S Market Research, is a provider of market research and consulting services catering to the market information needs of burgeoning industries across the world. Providing the plinth of market intelligence, P&S as an enterprising research and consulting company, believes in providing thorough landscape analyses on the ever-changing market scenario, to empower companies to make informed decisions and base their business strategies with astuteness.Contact:P&S IntelligenceToll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)International: +1-347-960-6455Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:
Network Function Virtualization Market: Understanding The Key Product Segments And Their Future

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Network function virtualization (NFV) represents the shiftof focus from hardware to software in the telecom industry, with operators making loftier investments in software than in storage, server, and switch hardware. The software segment accounted for a major share in the network function virtualization market in terms of revenue contribution. Geographically, this market is distributed over North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East &Africa (MEA), and Latin America.North Americadominated the global demand for network function virtualization in 2015 and is expected to retain its position over the forecast period, thus creating considerable opportunities for market players.The U.S. is a significant contributor to the growth of network function virtualization due to the superior technological infrastructure in the country and its acceptability of innovative and niche systems such as network function virtualization which are anticipated to experience rapid growth, propelling the market in North America. The market is primarily driven by the commercial deployment of NFV by telecom operators such as Telefonica, AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink. The migration to the 5G network further pushes the need to deploy NFV technologies. Leading vendors intending to improve customer experience of network usage is also projected to play a role. Asia Pacific is a highly attractive market for network function virtualization in terms of growth potential owing to the consumer awareness in this region. Latin America is a potentially attractive market for and its share is likely to rise over the forecast period.Get PDF Sample of This Report @The network function virtualization market is highly competitive with the presence of large-scale as well as small-scale global and regional vendors. All the companies race against each other to increase their respective shares of revenue in the market. This cut-throat environment is projected to further intensify with new entrants in the market, which is primarily motivated by technological upgrades of existing services. To survive and gain success in this market, it is important for leading companies to distinguish their services through a unique and clear value proposition. Establishing communities such as Open NFV and strong partnerships are predicted to strengthen their market positions and generate revenue.Deployment of network function virtualizationis majorly implemented by service provider networks such as Telefonica, Vodafone, AT&T, and Orange.Competition between vendors offering similar solutions is more intense compared to that in the total market. In order to gain a competitive edge and to meet increasing demands, network function virtualization companies focus on providing services that increase efficiency and reliability. Key players include Brocade Communication Systems, Ericsson, Huawei Technologies, Nokia, Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Juniper Networks, and VMware.Other prominent vendors in the market include 6WIND, Affirmed Networks, A10 Networks, Allot Communications, ASTRI, Amdocs, Broadcom, Ciena (Blue Planet), Canonicals Ubuntu, Citrix, F5 Networks, Dell, Fortinet, GENBAND, Fujitsu, Intel, Ixia, IP Infusion, Mirantis, Metaswitch Networks, NFWare, NEC and Netcracker, OneAccess Networks, PacketLogic, Oracle, PLUMgrid, Palo Alto Networks, Quali Systems, Sonus Networks, Radware. Red Hat, Trend Micro,Telco Systems, Wind River, VeloCloud, and ZTE.These emerging market players have been investing huge amounts of capital in research and development activities and innovation centers in order to expand their production capacities and meet the markets growing demands. In addition, major market players are extending their share in the global network function virtualization marketthrough mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and expansions.View Our 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.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.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.Transparency 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:
BY Andrew Spicer, University of South Carolina and David Graham Hyatt, University of Arkansas

(THE CONVERSATION) What a difference the birth of a granddaughter can make.

For Lee Scott, who ran Walmart from 2000 to 2009, the arrival of his granddaughter not only convinced him the threat of global warming was real but set him on a course that altered the very DNA of the world's largest retailer. He decided he wanted to use its size and resources to make the world an "even better place for all of us," changing the way millions shop in the process.

In 2005, midway through his tenure, he challenged his employees: "What would it take for Walmart to be that company, at our best, all the time?"

The answer became Walmart's sustainability program, an ambitious effort to figure out how to get its budget-conscious customers to buy more sustainable products. Of course, it was more than Scott's granddaughter that pushed the retailer in this direction. A dismal perception among the public as well as a stagnant stock price also played roles in prodding Scott and other Walmart officials to take the company in a more environmentally aware direction.

Wespentfive years studying the program - speaking with Walmart's sustainability leaders, its suppliers and others who have a stake in the company's activities such as environmental groups and farmers. Our findings highlight both the promises and perils of what one Walmart executive optimistically termed the "democratization of sustainability."

Glaciers, landfills and shopping bags

During our extensive research into the implementation of Walmart's sustainability program, we found many executives from the CEO on down who were passionate about making the company more environmentally friendly. Before the retailer even began its program, corporate executives traversed the globe to better understand what was at stake.

We were told stories of Scott's summer 2005 trip to the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, where scientists take measurements of the ice and the wind to measure the effects of climate change and air pollution. There he met with Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp and some of the scientists to discuss the company's environmental impact and what it could be doing differently. On that same trip, he also met with maple syrup farmers who explained how climate change was affecting their harvests.

Other company leaders made trips to parched cotton fields, landfills covered with Walmart shopping bags and melting Arctic glaciers, all with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of sustainability and engaging with environmental groups, journalists and critics.

But it still wasn't clear where all this was going until August of that year, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, causing extensive human suffering and property damage along the coast.

Walmart, in an unusual move, gave local managers wide discretion in helping communities respond and, along with a few other large retailers, worked hard to get needed supplies to the area. In the context of widely reported government failures during the crisis, Walmart received praise for its actions - a far cry from the usual criticism Scott received from social and political activists.

After Katrina, Scott had an epiphany, which culminated in that speech he made in October 2005 near Walmart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, during which he announced the project:

"What if we used our size and resources to make this country and this earth an even better place for all of us: customers, associates, our children and generations unborn?"

Seeking sustainability

In the speech, Scott laid out Walmart's sustainability vision to Walmart employees and suppliers. He called for reducing waste, using more renewable energy and selling products that "sustained people and the environment."

In a way, these goals sounded easy. Simply cut down on waste, become more efficient, convince its legions of suppliers to make more sustainable products and sell them at its "low, low prices." Sustainability goes up, costs go down, everybody wins. But as Scott and his successors learned, this was easier said than done.

Some aspects were relatively straightforward. The company's efforts to operate more efficiently produced significant environmental value - and helped its bottom line. The efficiency of its fleet of trucks doubled within a decade. Walmart has now converted 28 percent of the energy sources powering its stores and operations globally to renewables.

And last year, the company diverted 78 percent of its global waste from landfills, instead finding ways to recycle, reuse or even sell the garbage. Its goal is to eventually get to 50 percent renewables and zero waste in Canada, Japan, the U.K. and U.S. by 2025.

Selling products that "sustained people and the environment" was harder. By 2008, its was clear that progress was not being made as fast as the company had expected.

Walmart had a challenging job. While the market for sustainable products is large and growing, it has primarily catered to people with a lot of disposable income who can afford to pay the "goodness" premium for things like Toyota Priuses and organic foods.

What about the majority of consumers who usually see the high price of sustainability as a barrier? Are sustainable products a luxury good only attainable by the well off?

The questions and challenges of selling sustainable products escalated over time. What is a sustainable product? How could it be measured effectively and efficiently? And how could this information create value for the company and customers? Would people be willing to pay for it if it was impossible to keep the costs down?

Two interconnected challenges it faced are particularly illuminating: the lack of a sustainability standard and how to convince suppliers and customers to go along.

What's 'sustainable' anyway?

Walmart leaders quickly learned that the absence of a credible sustainability standard hampered their ability to market new products.

Back then, marketing products as "sustainable" was anything goes. While a few marketing attributes, like "organic," areverified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for the most part companies were free to call their products "sustainable," "natural" or "good for you," regardless of whether it was true or not.

The need for a standard crystallized when Walmart asked suppliers for proposals for a 2008 Earth Day promotion. It wanted to specifically promote products that were sustainable. Suppliers responded with such a vast range of claims that Walmart managers could not figure out which products to include. Examples of traits that made a product "sustainable" ranged from having "reduced" packaging material - though there was no gauge as to what it was reduced from - to the use of non-toxic ingredients or the product's overall recyclability.

A subsequent promotion of Campbell's soup with a green "Earth Day" label (instead of its customary red one) generated external criticism and accusations of "greenwashing." That is, some bloggers claimed sustainability at Walmart simply meant taking existing products and putting green labels on them.

Lessons like these led Walmart to seek a way of defining what sustainable means for all its products - a mammoth scale given that the company had over 60,000 direct suppliers and a single store could sell about 142,000 products. So, in 2009, the company helped establish the Sustainability Consortium, a collaboration of retailers, suppliers, universities, environmental groups and others to create a data-driven index of sustainability.

The consortium would eventually produce a sustainability "toolkit" with key performance indicators and guidance for achieving sustainability at the product category level whether these be laundry care products, computers or beer.

Such indicators could then be used by consortium members in communications with their suppliers, typically in a sustainability scorecard that the supplier would complete. For instance, a manufacturer might be asked if it had plans for reducing harmful emissions - and if it didn't, the thinking initially went, this type of information could eventually be passed on to consumers who could then make their own judgments.

The problem was, relying on customers didn't work.

Focusing on suppliers - not consumers

Most corporate efforts to become more sustainable are based on the premise that consumers are willing to pay more for eggs that are organic or coffee that is sustainably sourced.

This posed a dilemma for Walmart since its margins are so thin and most of its customers shop there for the ultra-low prices. How could they be convinced, en masse, to pay a bit more because something is tagged as sustainable? And what would be the best way to let them know a particular product was more sustainable than another? Company leaders believed, based on internal surveys, that although its customers desired (or would in the future desire) more sustainable products, many did not have the means or desire to pay extra.

And while Walmart's implementation of sustainability metrics into its supplier scorecards gave it insight into supplier practices, they did not provide detailed, verifiable information required for a customer-facing label.

This led Walmart to focus less on consumers and more on suppliers. If it could just make sure its products were more sustainable or at least that it was able to offer more options - without a meaningful increase in price - it could go a long way toward achieving its goals. And consumers wouldn't even realize they're helping make the world a better place.

Walmart's merchants were ready to listen. The supplier scorecards that started rolling in 2012 helped Walmart identify inefficiencies in its supplies' own supply chains, just as the retailer had found in its own operations years earlier. Walmart used them to push suppliers to seek out similar low-cost innovations in their operations - so they could become more sustainable without altering product price tags - and aligned 5 percent of its employees' performance goals on sustainability improvements, thus incentivizing buyers to ask about, and suppliers to report on, sustainability metrics.

Early indications are that Walmart's supplier-focused product sustainability strategy has been influential. A 2014 study by sustainability consultancy Pure Strategies surveyed a broad range of 100 companies such as Timberland, General Mills and Coca-Cola to better understand what it takes to operate sustainably. It found that Walmart was the top-cited retailer driving suppliers' investments in product sustainability, with 79 percent identifying the retailer as influential.

It's 'complicated'

Many of the primary lessons that Walmart has learned so far relate to an emergent understanding of the complexity of selling low-cost sustainable products.

Commenting about the difficulty developing its sustainability index quickly, Rob Walton, Walmart chairman and son of the founder, told a panel in 2012: "But good gosh, this is really complicated stuff, and it's giving our buyers information to inform decisions and compare products. It will be a great day when we can give consumers that information."

Walmart's efforts showed that balancing cost and sustainability is possible but difficult to implement. For companies, labeling a low-cost product as "sustainable" makes it harder to justify charging a higher price for a similar good that bears that label. And retailers would prefer not to waste limited shelf space providing those options.

Customers may prefer sustainable practices yet be unable to pay the premium, even when it's very little. So, while Walmart can push in this direction, it probably cannot create a mass market for low-cost sustainable products on its own. The retailer and others who wish to develop such a market will likely continue to struggle with what counts as "sustainable enough" for price-conscious customers.

Until that question is answered, sustainable products are likely to remain "luxury" goods that fail to penetrate into the mainstream.

But if we care for the next generation, as Lee Scott did when he decided Walmart was going green, Walmart's goal of bringing greater scale and scope to the typically niche market of sustainability is a vital one.

"As you become a grandparent," Scott told a journalist in 2006, "you just become more thoughtful about what will the world look like that she inherits."

-- Andrew Spicer, University of South Carolina and David Graham Hyatt, University of Arkansas

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)
Guest columnist Brad Martin ("Buehler hasn't delivered for Oregonians," August 4) gets an "A" for effort, but he's battling an uphill fight. How do I know? Because my wife -- who could be the poster child for the liberal, President Trump-hating, Oregon female voter -- is voting for Rep. Knute Buehler.

The problem with Martin's analysis is that when one is in the minority party, it is difficult to lead. Gov. Kate Brown, on the other hand, has to explain her inability to even begin to address the Democratic majority's multiple failures -- a $25.3 billion unfunded Public Employees Retirement System liability, millions of dollars wasted in an Energy Department credit debacle, millions of dollars lost in the Columbia River Crossing project, millions of dollars down the drain in Cover Oregon, millions of dollars lost by paying Medicaid benefits to ineligible recipients, a failed Low Carbon Fuel Standard program costing untold millions at the gas pumps, third worst high school graduation rate in the country, a foster care program in shambles, a homeless problem Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler calls intractable, fiscal inability to prepare for an earthquake -- the list is endless. Regardless of party, people -- including my Democratic wife -- are tired of it.

Martin says of Brown, "We know where she stands." He is right about that, which is why she will lose.

-- Lawrence J. Feldman, Lake Oswego

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By Dr. Satya Chandragiri

Checking into a psychiatric facility is the last refuge for those who are in serious mental health crisis. These facilities save lives, yet they nearly always operate at capacity. If a facility is at capacity, patients are "boarded" in hospital emergency rooms, discharged to the streets or they end up in jail.

As a psychiatrist practicing in Oregon for the last 17 years, I know that people in mental health crisis can be a risk to themselves and others, even if they are in treatment. There are risks that they will become violent, hurt themselves or attempt suicide. Psychiatric facilities need to meet various regulatory requirements and ensure staff and patient safety, all while maintaining a healing environment. It's no easy task, and even the best programs struggle to find a balance.

The Unity Center for Behavioral Health opened its doors in January 2017 as a state-of-the-art facility, combining community-based care with a modern approach to behavioral health. Portland's major hospitals pooled their resources to create a single, centralized facility that could replace the decentralized system where each hospital had its own treatment program.

With Unity, the hospital system put all its eggs in one basket. That was inherently risky for the state.

According to a letter issued by the Oregon Health Authority, the Unity Center was placed on an immediate jeopardy situation on May 18 and again on July 27. Now, health authority officials have put Unity on a correctional course of action, which must be met or risk entering a termination track that would end Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement for services.

Our elected leaders remain silent and have made no attempt to address or correct this crisis. The unmet demand for inpatient psychiatric services, paired with Gov. Kate Brown's earlier proposal to close the state psychiatric hospital in Junction City, prove that our elected leaders are not taking this crisis seriously. In addition, the Brown Administration blocked a proposal last year for a new 100-bed inpatient psychiatric facility.

These actions have impacted the state's entire system.

The decisions made by this administration haven't been based on advice from medical professionals, or even ideology or philosophical differences. In fact, evidence suggests that it's actually special interest groups with deep pockets and seeking political favors who are the drivers behind these decisions.

There are a number of steps Brown can take to demonstrate her commitment to tackling the mental health crisis:

Reinstate the Oregon Mental Health Medical Director, ensuring accountability at the state level.

Fast-track approval of new inpatient treatment centers for adults and children that would be evenly spread throughout the state.

Create and maintain a centralized inventory of all available psychiatric beds and resources to help in planning for the needs of our state.

Use the 70 empty beds in the Junction City hospital and lease them to an organization willing to provide services for those in crisis.

Brown's administration needs to make it easier for people to get treatment, not harder. Oregonians deserve better and we can't afford to wait any longer.

Dr. Satya Chandragiri, former president of Oregon Psychiatric Association, has nearly 30 years of experience practicing psychiatry in three countries and in Oregon. He lives in Salem.

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Submit your essay of 800 words or less on a highly topical issue or a theme of particular relevance to the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and the Portland area to commentary@oregonian.com. Please include your email and phone number for verification.
UPDATED Wednesday, Aug. 15: Missing Ohio man found alive after week on Mount St. Helens

***

UPDATED Monday, Aug. 13: Search crews continue to look for Matthew B. Matheny, an Ohio man missing in the Blue Lake area near Mount St. Helens.

The Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office said Monday that searchers hadn't to that point found any signs of Matheny. There's no suggestion of foul play.

The agency said it's interested in talking to anyone who was in the area Thursday or Friday, even if they didn't see Matheny or the car he was driving. The agency can be reached at 360-577-3092.

***

The Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office is searching for a missing Ohio man near Mount St. Helens and is asking anyone who has hiked the Blue Lake trail since Thursday to contact authorities.

Matthew B. Matheny, 40, of Warren, Ohio, was last seen about 7 a.m. Thursday as he left for the mountain, the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office said in a news release. He took his friend's gray Subaru Outback for the trip, and his friends reported him missing when he did not return, the sheriff's office said.

On Saturday, a Skamania County sheriff's deputy found the Subaru unoccupied at the start of the Blue Lake trail, which is in Cowlitz County. The trail is located off Forest Road 81 and near Mount St. Helens.

Matheny is described as 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds with blue eyes and brown hair. The sheriff's office said he may be wearing a gray Cleveland Browns sweatshirt with shorts and sandals.

Anyone who has hiked the Blue Lake trail since Thursday, Aug. 9, is asked to call the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office at 360-577-3092. Anyone who may have seen Matheny is also asked to contact investigators.

-- Rebecca Woolington

503-294-4049; @rwoolington
After a weekend of cooler temperatures, some cloud cover and even a tiny bit of rain, blazing sunshine will return to the Portland area this week.

Monday is expected to kick off a string of 90-plus degree days, and temperatures could even flirt with triple digits.

"We're not done with heat yet," said Colby Neuman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland.

In fact, Portland could come close this week to breaking an all-time record for number of days topping 90 degrees in a year, Neuman said. The record was set in 2015, when Portland had 29 days where the high was 90 degrees or hotter.

"I would tend to guess that in the next week, we're going to end up eclipsing that," Neuman said.

So far this year, Portland has reached 90 degrees 26 times.

In the past 50 years, Portland has only had four summers with more than 20 days reaching or passing the 90-degree mark. All have occurred in the past five years, according to the weather service.

This past weekend, the heat took a momentary hiatus. Clouds rolled in with small amounts of rain, and clean air pushed the wildfire smoke out of the area Saturday.

One-hundredth of an inch of rain was measured Saturday at Portland International Airport, according to the weather service. The precipitation broke a streak of 39 consecutive days without any rain at the airport. (The summer of 1967 set the all-time record of no rain with 71 consecutive days of dry weather, the weather service says.)

"Technically, it did rain but it wasn't enough to help out plants or the vegetation," Neuman said. "The streak is over, but the dry weather continues on."

By Sunday, the sun returned but was muted by haze from wildfires. Temperatures hovered around 80 degrees.

The haze, Neuman said, came down overnight Saturday from wildfires in Canada. It stretches from Lincoln City to Mount Hood and down to the southern Portland suburbs, he said.

Neuman said the haze is expected to stick around until mid-morning Monday. After that, he said, winds should shift and the area should see bluer skies. Monday's high is expected to hit 94 degrees.

Tuesday is supposed to be the week's hottest day with a high of 98 degrees, and Neuman said it's not a stretch to wonder whether Portland could hit 100.

"It's not out of the question on Tuesday," he said.

The rest of the week is predicted to be warm but should cool down -- but maybe not as much as some may like.

"Cool off is relative here," Neuman said. "It's still going to be pretty hot on Wednesday."

Neuman said Wednesday is likely to see a high of around 90 degrees. For the rest of the week, he said, temperatures are expected to peak in the mid-to-upper 80s, before likely warming up to around 90 degrees again by the weekend.

-- Rebecca Woolington

503-294-4049; @rwoolington
The Midland City Council will consider a liquor license request from Molasses, the restaurant and bar opening in downtown Midland.

The next city council meeting is 7 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 13 at City Hall, 333 W. Ellsworth St. Each meeting allows time for public comment.

Molasses will be located at 201 E. Main Street. The owners plan on investing more than $450,000 to redevelop the space, including the addition of a full kitchen, interior and exterior building improvements and signage, according to the request. Seating is planned for 105 patrons.

Council members will also vote on a resolution for a housing construction agreement with Midland Public Schools and Midland County Habitat for Humanity for an annual housing project.

The city has participated in the joint housing program with the Midland Public Schools Building Trades classes since 1981, completing 27 projects..

This year, the house will be constructed in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity at 401 Arbury Place.

Council will also consider a purchase order for $88,800 to replace and upgrade the intercom and pull cord system at Riverside Place.

Failure rate of pull cords has been increasing over the years, according to staff, which are used by tenants in the senior housing facility in case of emergency.

The intercom system at Riverside is 25 years old, unable to have parts replaced, according to staff. Office staff are now using an older system without all of the necessary capabilities to fully service residents.
The Midland Daily News recently sat down with U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Midland, to discuss various domestic and international issues. Today's article features international issues. For a related article on domestic issues, visit: https://bit.ly/2MbkiaI

Russia/North Korea

Calling the North Korean and Russian summits a "relationship building opportunity," Moolenaar believes that the results of the summits will be seen in the months and years to come.

"I've been pleasantly surprised at the results of the North Korean summit where we had the remains of our soldiers coming back. That is a measure of good faith. Not to say that this is a completely new leap, but it's progress. I want to see North Korea completely de-nuclearize," he said.

The two-term representative stated that he still considers Russia a threat, especially with allegations of hacking into the power grid and elections.

"We know they can be a very dangerous adversary. Congress has been devoting resources to protect the grid and elections," Moolenaar said.

"I do think it is important that we strive to have a constructive relationship where we can."

Moolenaar emphasized the need for continuing sanctions on Russia along with arming neighboring countries.

"I've been a strong supporter of Lethal Aid to Ukraine because Russia invaded Crimea and they continue to foment disruptions and instability," Moolenaar said. "In respect to Russia, we would like to see them discontinue their divisive behavior in other parts of the world."

Ukraine trip

Recently, Moolenaar took a three-day trip to the Ukraine.

"I flew there one day, flew back one day and was in the Ukraine less than 24 hours," he said.

The trip was a result of Moolenaar's multiple years of involvement with the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. Begun by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, each year the breakfast has been attended by the president.

"There are guests from all over the world," Moolenaar added. "International leaders, heads of state have attended, including the Baltic countries. Members of the cabinet, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have also attended."

Over the years, Moolenaar said he has formed relationships with leaders from around the world, including the Ukraine.

"Periodically, they will have their National Prayer Breakfast and invite someone from the United States to come and speak. I was invited to speak in Ukraine at their National Prayer Breakfast," Moolenaar said.

The Ukrainian breakfast was attended by the country's speaker of the parliament and different leaders from its court system.

"The focus is on building relationships across the divisions of party lines and on the teachings of Jesus for a model of leadership that brings people together and hopefully provides for a better society. I was honored to be able to speak there as their guest," Moolenaar said.

Tariffs

Moolenaar believes in a targeted approach to tariffs.

"When it comes to the tariffs, I along with about 100 other representatives have written the president encouraging him to pursue targeted tariffs with respect to bad actors so that there is not a huge backlash against agriculture products," he said.

However, tariff negotiations with China may be challenging.

"They've been stealing our technology and forcing our businesses to invest in plants or new business in China," Moolenaar said. "That trading relationship has to change. Their tariffs are higher than ours. It's a negotiation that has been a long time coming and I think the president is right in taking the initiative. No one wants to see a trade war."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 13)  Authorities confirmed Monday that at least two people died and one remains missing following torrential rains and massive flooding triggered by the southwest monsoon (Habagat) that was strengthened by Tropical Storm Karding.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said the two deaths were both from drowning. They include 61-year-old Gloria Mendoza from Quezon City and 36-year-old Dioscoro Camacho from Marikina City.

Edgar Buhay was reported missing after he fell in a creek in the Cordillera region, according to NDRRMC officer Romina Marasigan.

Philippine Red Cross Chairman Senator Richard Gordon said they are also monitoring four people reportedly missing in Olongapo City.

The National Capital Region Police Office, meanwhile, reported that Manila police recovered a body of a man who is believed to have died during the onslaught of the extreme weather in Paranaque City. The victim was identified as RJ Sealonga, 26.

Heavy rains have continuously battered the country since the entry of weather systems 'Henry', 'Inday', and 'Josie' in the past week. This has caused torrential rains and flooding in 124 areas in the Philippines.

Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) PAGASA Weather Specialist Aldzar Aurelio told CNN Philippines said on August 11, the country experienced more than half of August's expected rainfall.

Aurelio said of the 504 millimeter normal rainfall for the month, 270 millimeters or more than 53 percent drenched the country in just one day. This has led to serious flooding in Metro Manila, Rizal, and other parts of Luzon.

Residents have compared the recent floods to the intensity of Typhoon "Ondoy" in 2009, which held record-breaking floods causing the Marikina River to rise until approximately 23 meters. The Marikina River reached a peak water level of 20.6 meters on that day.

In 2009, Typhoon Ondoy which also led to severe flooding brought 455 millimeters of rainfall.

The NDRMMC said it has served 12,647 families or nearly 55,000 in 110 evacuation centers around the the country. Nearly 5,000 people are also being given assistance outside of evacuation centers.

Families in Region I, III, IV-A, IV-B, VI, NCR and the Cordillera Administrative Region have been given 44,491,298 worth of assistance by various government agencies, it added.

The Philippine National Police has deployed 2,323 personnel for search and rescue operations. It also said it will monitor, along with the Department of Trade and Industry, a price freeze on basic commodities where a state of calamity is declared.

Republic Act 7581 or the Price Act of 1992 provides a minimum 60-day price freeze for the areas where a of state of calamity is declared due to "major damages to property, disruption of means of livelihood, roads and normal way of life of people in the affected areas as a result of the occurrence of natural or human-induced hazard in disaster-stricken areas."

As of Sunday, the province of Cavite; the cities of Marikina, Olongapo and Balanga; and some municipalities in Bataan, Pangasinan, Nueva Ecija and Tarlac have declared a state of calamity.

This is a developing story. Please refresh the page for updates.
I have been opposed to Ribfest fundraisers for at least three decades. While my friends in humane societies voiced their opposition, I remained silent, preferring to give my attention to other concerns.

Over the years, awareness of global environmental degradation has grown. Indeed, it is now scientifically accepted as being largely caused by human activity.

I witnessed the fires on Kelowna's south slopes in 2013, something that should give everyone food for thought. Since then, Kelowna has experienced a major flood, and our beautiful blue skies are often obscured in a haze of smoke from wildfires.

It may be too late to cancel the Ribfest event this month, but the 2019 event could be life-affirming for our planet and its inhabitants  human and wildlife  if the festival produced a feast of Okanagan orchards and vegetable fields (instead of pigs).

There are creative chefs in Kelowna who could take on this challenge.



I spent a good part of my morning reading a scientific study called The Environmental Impacts of Intensive Livestock Operations in Canada. I urge the public and the Rotary Club Sunrise administrators to read it.

As a respected organization, the Rotary Club could persuade school boards to add the study's findings to school curricula. It's entirely possible that by adopting a harvest fest fundraiser in 2019, the Rotary Club will raise more money than in 2018 when the choice of food is limited to pigs.

Helen Schiele, Kelowna
Bahrain Airport Companys (BAC) vice president of information and communication technology, Najwa Abdul Rahim, has been elected to the ACI World Airport IT Standing Committee (WAITSC) following a successful nomination by Bahrain International Airport (BIA).

In this role, Abdul Rahim will help to develop recommended practices and standards for airport IT and promote the digitization of airports across the world. This significant appointment is in recognition of Abdul Rahims extensive expertise.

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The WAITSC actively works to develop IT guidelines on all airport IT related practices and communicate them to the airport community.

Abdul Rahim will help to develop IT industry policy guidelines and positions on issues affecting airport automation, telecommunications infrastructure, and related passenger and cargo services.

WAITSC is currently working on a number of initiatives to help streamline airport IT operations and passenger movements, including projects related to digital transformation, cybersecurity, blockchain, the Internet of Things, and chatbot technology.

As BACs vice president of information and communication technology, Abdul Rahim plays a vital role in ensuring a smooth overall experience for passengers at BIA. Her responsibilities include planning and executing strategies to improve performance, cost-effectiveness and service quality, as well as ensuring the availability, integrity and accessibility of information to BAC users, partners and customers.
A woman entering a Turkey Hill mini market in Wilkes-Barre was greeted by a man's lewd comment about performing a sex act on her. She brushed it off, police said, responding that she had a boyfriend.

The man outside the store replied, "I don't care."

That would be the end of the story, but for what happened next, according to the Citizens Voice newspaper, which cites the police report:

Shortly after leaving the store around midnight, the woman heard footsteps.

She turned.

"You scared the crap ..." the woman said before a man cut her off, grabbing her and punching her in the eye as he dragged her between two buildings, according to police.

The man choked the woman and forced her to perform oral sex on him before he raped her, police said.

Afterward, the man demanded the woman's cellphone and then punched her in the mouth and pushed her into a fence when she failed to comply, the charges said.

The woman then turned over the phone and left the area without looking back, police said.

The suspect in the March 18 incident has been identified as Franklyn Nathaniel Drayton, 34, of Tennessee.

Police say Drayton's DNA matches a sample collected during an examination of the woman and he was formally charged on Friday.

He faces charges of forcible rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault, sexual assault, robbery, indecent assault, making terroristic threats and simple assault.

For his part, Drayton denied being at a Turkey Hill the night of the rape and said he had not had sex with a woman between two buildings, the complaint said.

However, Drayton had been stopped and questioned by police in the area that same night.
The long-awaited grand jury report into clergy sex abuse in Pennsylvania is poised to be released on Tuesday. PennLive will provide complete coverage of its release.

By order from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the Commonwealth has until 2 p.m. Tuesday to release the report.

The report is widely expected to be one of the most scathing and comprehensive investigations into the worldwide scandal embroiling the 1.2-billion strong church.

Here is a quick primer on what we know so far about the report:

The office of state Attorney General Josh Shapiro empaneled the grand jury in 2016 to investigate allegations of child sex crimes across six of the state's eight Catholic dioceses: Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Scranton, Erie and Greensburg.

The grand jury, which completed its investigation in April, produced a 900-plus page report that names more than 300 members of the clergy by name in connection to sex crimes against children.

The report remains under a court seal, but portions that have been unsealed by the high court show that state investigators found that church leaders were more interested in

In some cases, the report shows,

Over the past month or so, the report has been tied up in court amid legal efforts on the part of more than two dozen members of the clergy seeking to have their names redacted from the report.

Ahead of the report, the dioceses of Harrisburg and Erie have released lists of names of clergy accused of sexual abuse of children.

Harrisburg Bishop Ronald Gainer released the

Erie Bishop Lawrence Persico

Former Erie Bishop Donald Trautman, who served from 1990 to 2012, has dropped his legal challenge to the report.
A Harrisburg woman accused of pestering a partygoer into taking a fatal dose of heroin has rejected a deal for a 7- to 14-year prison sentence.

Nicole Murray, 35, made that decision Monday afternoon during a brief hearing before Dauphin County Judge Scott A. Evans.

Defense attorney Wendy Grella noted the offer from the prosecution called for Murray to plead guilty to third-degree murder for the July 5, 2016 death of 42-year-old Christine Schechterly.

Murray's rejection of the plea offer means she faces trial this fall on the third-degree murder count, plus charges of drug delivery involving death and drug possession. Conviction on those charges could send her to state prison for decades.

City police said Murray obtained drugs for a party Schechterly attended in the 100 block of Evergreen Street. They said a witness told them Schechterly was using crack cocaine and that Murray coaxed her into trying heroin for the first time as well.

Murray sold Schechterly a $10 bag of heroin and helped prepare it for injection, police said. When Schechterly collapsed after taking the heroin, Murray told others in the apartment to call 911, then fled, investigators said.

Murray was arrested in connection with the death in April 2017.
Ku Klux Klan propoganda was found spread throughout the parking lot of a York County movie theater, according to a report from The York Daily Record.

The fliers were found Saturday night at the Regal Theater in West Manchester Township.

"The flier negatively portrayed Jews, African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, Catholics and the LGBTQ community, according to the report.

The fliers were in response to the movie "BlacKkKlansman," based on the true story of an African-American detective infiltrating the KKK, the report states.

Robert Jones, with a group called the "Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" told the YDR he was offended by the movie and didn't understand why people would be offended by the fliers.

"They explain the truth. The movie is a bunch of fake news. It's just more Jewish propaganda, and in fact was offensive to us," he told the YDR.
Shelters were opened temporarily and are housing more than 35 people while they wait for the water to recede in areas of Schuylkill County.

Flooding hit the county hard as storms brought heavy rain Sunday night into Monday Morning.

John Blickley, Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator, said he expects those in the shelters will be able to return to their homes as soon as the water recedes, with areas evacuated more as a precaution.

The Port Carbon area, where the Mill Creek flooded, had homes and businesses with water coming onto the first floor, Blickley said.

The Tremont area was hit hard, both Monday and during the last round of flooding a couple weeks ago, Blickley said.

Low lying areas of Pottsville, to the west of Pa. 61 on and near Progress Avenue and Peacock Street are flooded, with water on the first floor of Union Station, Blickley said.

The American Red Cross opened two shelters, one at Tremont Fire Company #1 and the other at the Pottsville Area School District Middle School, according to a post to the Eastern PA Region Facebook page.

There are locally run evacuation centers at St. Stephens in Port Carbon, Schuylkill Haven High School and the Frackville Borough Building.

Blickley said the bulk of the people, 35, are at the Schuylkill Haven center. There are also a couple people at the Pottsville Middle School.

Gilbertson Borough still has some areas underwater, where there's basement flooding.

Mill Creek to St. Claire, there is basement flooding, but most of the roads are open. All roads in Frackville are currently open.

Earlier in the day, there were "a lot of homes" that required water rescues in Port Carbon, Blickley said, and he wasn't sure if the water was receding there.

The main focus is to direct resources from areas that weren't hit by the storms to areas that were, Blickley said. The Frackville Salvation Army has already sent out 100 clean up kids to start the process over there.

Laurel Street and Walmick Drive sustained "permanent" damage, Blickely said.

Blickley said he was not in the area when the flooding hit weeks ago, he knows that some of the areas that were missed by storms then were hit by Sunday and Monday's storms.

Schuylkill County was still waiting on some loans to assist in the clean up and rebuild from the storms that hit weeks ago, so now that some of the same areas were hit again, they'll have to take another look at what they need.

Governor Wolf's Office said several state agencies are working with local municipalities dealing with the fooding.

"The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency is in constant contact with local emergency management to coordinate and respond to flash flooding in many areas today," said Governor Wolf. "Safety is always our priority and I commend the emergency responders for doing all that they can to help those affected by flooding and to ensure Pennsylvanians are informed and safe."

The Governor's office shared the following information on road closures:

Bucks County



Route 113 between the intersection with Souderton Square and Mall Road and Bethlehem Pike in Hilltown

Chester County

Route 345 between the Intersection of Ridge Road and Bulltown Road in Warwick and Conestoga Road in East Nantmeal

Yellow Springs Road in Tredyffrin Township

Byers Road between Township Line Road and Senn Drive in Upper Uwchlan.

Delaware County

Eagle Road between the intersection of Warrior Road and Burmount Road.

Darby Paoli Road between the intersection of Byrn Mawr Avenue and Goshen Road.

Montgomery

I-76 (Schuylkill Expressway) is closed in both directions between the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Exit 28 in King of Prussia.

Route 73 from Plank Road in Skippack Township and Lucan Road in Whitemarsh Township

Conshohocken Road in Plymouth Township

Henderson Road at Beidler Road in Upper Merion Township

Trinity Lane between Route 320 and Swedeland Road in Upper Merion Township

Park Avenue/ Pawlings Road from Audubon Road and Appledale Road in Lower Providence Township

Waters Street/ Mill Road from Grange Avenue to Mill Road/ Skippack Creek Road in Skippack Township

Linfield Trappe Road from Lewis Road in Limerick Township to Township Line Road in Upper Providence Township

Sanatoga/ Linfield Road from Limerick Center Road in Limerick to Pleasant View Toad in Llwer Pottsgrove Township Berks County

PA 625 between Philadelphia and Mt. View roads in Cumru Township;

PA 724 between Furnace Street in Birdsboro Borough and Shed Road in Union Township;

(complete)PA 61 North between Lake Shore and Indian Manor drives in Ontelaunee Township;

Belleman's Church Road between Garfield and Indian Trail roads in Centre Township;

Leesport Avenue between Snyder Road and Huller Lane in Ontelaunee Township;

(complete) Main Street between Cross Keys Road in Bern Township and Wall Street in Leesport Borough;

(new) PA 724 between Unionville Road in Union Township and Scholl Road in North Coventry Township, Chester County.

Lehigh County

Haasadahl Road between Becker Street and Hickory Lane in Upper Macungie Township;

Vera Cruz Road between Limeport Pike and Pam Road in Lower Milford Township;

Limeport Pike between Bell Gate Road and Chestnut Hill Church Road in Lower Milford Township;

Schantz Road between Hamilton Boulevard in Lower Macungie Township and Cetronia Road in Upper Macungie Township;

Indian Creek Road between Macungie Road in Lower Macungie Township and Cedar Crest Boulevard in Upper Milford Township;

Spring Creek Road between Trexlertown and Mill Creek roads in Lower Macungie Township;

Cetronia Road between Schantz Road (east) and Schantz Road (west) in Upper Macungie Township;

Trexlertown Road North between Hamilton Boulevard and US 222 in Upper Macungie Township.

Monroe County

Locust Ridge Road between Cherry Blossom Lane and Lackawanna County Line in Coolbaugh Township.

Northampton County

Raubsville Road between Hexenkoph and Morgan Hill roads in Williams Township;

Durham Road between Coffeetown and Raubsville roads in Williams Township.

Schuylkill County

Fountain Road between PA 125 in Frailey Township and PA 25 Hegins Township (closed since previous storm);

Helfenstein Road between Hunter Road in Eldred Township and High Road in Butler Township (closed since previous storm);

PA 125 between Scenic and Creek roads in Eldred Township (closed since previous storm);

Dutchtown Road between Barry and Tiley roads in Eldred Township;

US 209 between Coal and Wood streets in Port Carbon Borough;

Market Street between US 209 in Port Carbon Borough and 7th Street in East Norwegian Township;

Pottsville Street between East Norwegian Street in Mechanicsville Borough and Market Street in Port Carbon Borough;

Darkwater Road between Peach Mountain Road and PA 61 in New Castle Township;

Main Street between PA 924 and Borough Line in Gilberton Borough;

PA 645 between Roberts and Unknown roads in Pine Grove Township;

PA 895 between Veterans Memorial Drive and Marstown Alley in Pine Grove Township;

PA 443 between Laurel Street and Pine Grove MFG Homes in Pine Grove Borough.

Bradford

Route 6 between Route 14 in Troy Township and Saco Road in North Towanda Township.

Columbia

Route 239 between Route 487 in Benton and Route 118 in Jackson Township.

Route 487 between Zaners Bridge Road in Fishing Creek Township and Camp Lavigne Road in Sugarloaf Township.

Route 1007 (Stony Brook Road) between both intersections with Route 487 in Orange Township.

Route 1019 (Cemetery Road) between Freas Avenue in Berwick and Martzville Road in Briar Creek Township.

Route 1022 (Zaners Bridge Road) between Route 254 in Greenwood Township and the Luzerne County line in Fishing Creek Township.

Route 1031 (Asbury Road) between Winding Road and Zaner Bridge Road in Fishing Creek Township.

Route 4004 (Ridge Road/Quarry Road) between Interchange Road in Hemlock Township and Route 11 in Montour Township.

Route 4008 (Back Branch Road) between Millerton Road and Whites Church Road in Mt. Pleasant Township.

Route 4009 (Millville Road) between Route 42 in Hemlock Township and Route 11 in the Town of Bloomsburg.

Route 4020 (Green Creek Road) between Mt. Pleasant Road and Rohrsburg Road in Orange Township.

Route 4041 (Rohrsburg Road) between Route 487 and Neyhart Road in Orange Township.

Route 4049 (Central Road/Elk Grove Road) between Route 118 and the Sullivan County line in Sugarloaf Township.

Lycoming

Route 42 between Route 118 in Jordan Township and Route 220 in Davidson Township, Sullivan County.

Route 220 between Route 405 in Wolf Township and Route 87 in Cherry Township, Sullivan County.

Route 2055 (Chippewa Road) between Route 405 in Muncy Creek Township and Beacon Light Road in Muncy Township.

Sullivan

Route 154 between Route 220 in Laporte Township and Route 87 in Forksville.

Route 220 between Route 87 in Cherry Township and Route 405 in Wolf Township, Lycoming County.

Route 2002 (Main Street) between Route 220 in Davidson Township and Nordmont Road in Laporte Township.

Route 2006 (Hunters Road) between Christian Camp Road and Nordmont Road in Laporte Township.

Route 2008 (Christian Camp Road) between Hunters Road in Laporte Township and Whiskey Road in Davidson Township.

Tioga
Sinkholes are a recurring problem in central Pennsylvania, not just at the Tanger Outlets complex in Lancaster County where an enormous one is steadily swallowing the parking lot.

We are blessed, or cursed, with the kind of bedrock, mostly limestone, which is more or less a perfect nursery for sinkholes both large and small, according to the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

The recent heavy rains haven't helped, either.

DCNR's Bureau of Topographic and Geologic Survey is well versed in explaining, identifying and recommending repairs for sinkholes. A few excerpts from its "Sinkholes in Pennsylvania" publication can help explain what's going on as sinkholes seem to be developing all over the region.

Q: What is a sinkhole?

A: A sinkhole is a "subsidence feature" caused by the physical and chemical weathering of bedrock and flushing out of subsurface material.

Q: What causes a sinkhole?

A: Sinkholes result from the erosion of bedrock and subsurface material at the site of the hole. Heavy rainfall, mining, excessive pumping of groundwater and failure of utility lines, including water and storm sewer lines, can promote sinkhole development.

Q: Is Central Pennsylvania prone to sinkholes?

A: Yes. Much of the bedrock of central and eastern Pennsylvania is carbonate rock, including limestone, which is at risk of erosion and deterioration, especially when rainwater carries acids into it. The main acid that dissolves such rock is carbonic acid, which occurs when carbon dioxide gas reacts with water.

Q: How do sinkholes occur?

A: DCNR experts describe the limestone bedrock as a plumbing system with a network of "pipes" - passages through the bedrock layers that channel water. Heavy rainfall can essentially flush subsurface material away creating voids into which the ground can collapse. DCNR describes the scenario as a "large natural drain that has suddenly opened." Drought also can case sinkholes when the soil dries, shrinks and collapses.

Q: How large can sinkholes grow?

A: The size depends on how much subsurface material is removed. On average, sinkholes in Pennsylvania range from 4 to 20 feet in diameter with the same range of depth, DCNR says. They are commonly circular, but there is no standard shape. They can expand and change shape over time. The Tanger Outlets sinkhole is much larger than the norm.

Q: What are the signs that a sinkhole is developing?

A: Indicators include depressions, especially in water drainage areas. Cracks and unevenness in sidewalks and streets and leaning trees and shrubbery also can be signs.

Q: How can sinkholes be repaired?

A: DCNR notes that "there is no such thing as a typical sinkhole," nor is there one repair method that always works. One private contractor said there might be hundreds of ways to execute a fix. Some repairs can be done with a hand shovel. Others require heavy equipment and a lot of cash. Materials including soil, concrete, grout, crushed stone and synthetic liners are used in repair projects. The water issue that caused the sinkhole must also be addressed to avoid more trouble.

Q: What can a homeowner do?

A: State officials recommend that property owners check their homeowner's insurance to determine if it includes coverage for damage from sinkholes. "Finding out after the fact that your house is not covered by your insurance for damages attributed to subsidence is a hard lesson to learn," DCNR warns.
Photo: Contributed

A trio of Conservative MPs from B.C. are calling out the federal Liberals for the government's action on aquatic invasive species.

Todd Doherty, MP for Cariboo-Prince George, Mel Arnold, MP for North Okanagan-Shuswap and Dan AlbasMP for Central Okanagan-Similkameen-Nicola penned an op-ed piece for media attacking the Liberals recent funding announcement to fight aquatic invasive species.

In early August, Stephen Fuhr, MP for Kelowna-Lake County, announced the federal government will provide $100,000 over four years for research to help assess the risk of spread and predict the ecological impact of the invasive mussels in the Okanagan.

Plus an additional $400,000 of federal funding over three years for education and outreach like new signage at boat launches, television commercials and informative articles, as well as online resources.

"Fuhr seems quite proud of this announcement but he should not be. Considering DFO has nearly $19 million earmarked to fight AIS this year, the $155,000 total increase for BC is nothing short of an insult," was stated in the op-ed letter.

"We have seen the permanent destruction that zebra mussels have inflicted on communities across North America and the Trudeau government owes British Columbians the support and resources in the

fight against invasive species."

The trio is demanding the government do more.

"What is certain is that the risk of an invasion increases with every day that the Trudeau government delays meaningful support for the fight to protect British Columbias waters."

In 2017, more than 35,000 vessels coming into B.C. were inspected for mussels. Of those, 25 were found to be infested with invasive mussels and were given decontamination orders.

A total of 400 samples from 100 lakes in the province came back negative for having invasive mussels.
Jury selection started in a Harrisburg murder trial Monday afternoon after the victim's family refused to sign off on a plea deal.

That aborted deal, which was not outlined during the brief hearing before Dauphin County Judge Scott A. Evans, would have spared Razawn Moore from the risk of spending the rest of his life in prison.

That would be Moore's fate is the jury issues the first-degree murder verdict Chief Deputy District Attorney Johnny Baer is seeking for the November 2015 shooting death of 24-year-old Twame Evans.

Defense attorney Justin McShane stressed that the collapse of the plea negotiation was no fault of the defense.

Twame Evans was gunned down during an argument outside OD's Place, a city bar, police said. They said Moore and Twame Evans were only a few feet apart when Moore drew a pistol and fired.

Moore, now 28, left the scene after the shooting. He was arrested by U.S. marshals in Florida in February 2016.
'Springer Mountain' will have you asking about the food you eat
Photo: The Canadian Press

A Vancouver mother who abducted her son and smuggled him into the United States against court order is being released from prison today, and the boys father is fearful it will happen again.

The 33-year-old woman, who cannot be named due to a publication ban, was sentenced to seven months in prison last month but is being released on probation today due to credit for pretrial custody.

Its the latest chapter in an ugly years-long custody dispute between the parents of a 10-year-old boy that saw false allegations of sexual assault and the fabrication of email evidence prior to the abduction.

In an interview with Castanet News, the boys father voiced frustration with a justice system that he says let his family down and is unfairly slanted in favour of mothers.

I think it would have played out differently, if the gender roles were reversed, he said, she just got away with everything.

The abduction saw the mother sneak the boy across the border in Point Roberts and charter a plane into the mainland United States. They then continued on to Phoenix Arizona, where the mother used a fake Florida drivers licence to rent an apartment.

It took a little under two weeks for the Vancouver Police to track down the mother and son with the help of U.S. Homeland Security. She was arrested, charged and extradited.

In the months leading up to the abduction, the father had been tipped off by his son and went to court twice in an attempt to stop her from taking him away, but was rebuked twice.

The year before the abduction, the mother made false claims that the father was sexually abusing the son, sparking a five-month investigation during which he was barred from seeing him.

The allegations were completely unfounded, but they turned the fathers life upside down.

I go to work, and Im worried about police busting into my work and dragging me away because they think they might have found something, he said, his voice cracking. I know it didnt happen, and (son) knows it didnt happen  but other than that, nobody knows it didnt happen.

At last months sentencing hearing, court heard that the mother also fabricated emails from police officers where they advise her to ask a judge to put a protection order in place to protect the boy from her father.

She also fabricated emails and claimed to receive them from the father.

My son hates me now and its your fault, it always is! The Province reported one of the fake emails read. Im going to slit your throat when you least expect it and theres nothing you or anyone can do to stop me!!! You have messed with my life one too many times, and Ill end your life with a big grin on my face.

The father alleges his son was missing school often, was frequently left unsupervised, and was always sick when he was living with his mother.

In the courtroom, the custody dispute has cost the father tens of thousands of dollars while the other side has managed to get by self-represented.

He has custody of his son for now, will have to fight in court to keep him during a five-day custody trial next month  something that baffles him given past events.

The onus should be on [mother] to apply to try to get some sort of supervised visits in the future when she gets her life together, he said.

The father said hes fearful her time in prison will only make her more bitter, and will try something again despite a litany of probation conditions. He added that the seven month sentence imposed on her was far too lenient given the massive international police response the abduction caused.

He is sharing his story to reach other fathers also that may be grappling with the family legal system, that he reiterated unfairly favours mothers.

There is still a ways to go but for any father that is going through this, stick it out, he said. The truth will prevail. 

He said he will be forever indebted to the Vancouver Police Department for the massive effort that went into finding his son, and the continued contact with him throughout the ordeal.

They were, I cant even put it into words, how amazing. It's flabbergasting, unbelievable how amazing theyve been.
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By Ginger Gibson

WASHINGTON (Reuters)  Democrat Tom Steyer, who has spent millions on national ads calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, will spend $30 million this year trying to get members of his party elected to the U.S. House of Representatives to win control of the chamber from Republicans, he announced on Monday.

Steyer, who also said he will not personally run for office, added that he will also continue his national campaign calling for impeachment.

My fight is in removing Donald Trump from office and removing Donald Trump from power, Steyer said.

The House impeaches, or brings formal charges against an official, in what would be the first step in removing Trump from office. The U.S. Senate tries the case.

Steyer said his organization is working to have constituents deliver to members of Congress copies of the controversial book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff, which challenges Trumps fitness for office.

Steyer will not, however, require House candidates whom he supports to pass a litmus test supporting impeaching Trump, he said.

The $30 million will be used to mobilize young voters in 10 key states: Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, California, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Hampshire and Arizona, Steyer said.

Americans will head to the polls in November when 34 seats in the Senate and all 435 House seats will be up for grabs. Democrats are hoping to ride wins last year in Alabama and Virginia to victory in those elections, potentially taking control of Congress.

The task which I feel called to do is organizing and mobilizing Americas voters  they have got to be the most powerful forces in American politics, Steyer said at a Washington, D.C. press conference.

Steyer said he knows that some Democrats think talking about impeachment is a distraction but that he feels it remains important to focus on ousting Trump.

We know this makes some of our friends and allies in this city uncomfortable, Steyer said. We believe this is a false choice  the fact is the two are fundamentally intertwined.

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
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Proving yet again how nervous the far right is getting about the momentum survivors of the Parkland school shooting have injected into the gun control issue, several alt-right websites and commentators have compared student David Hogg to Hitler.

On Saturday, Hogg delivered a speech to a massive crowd of an estimated 200,000 people at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington D.C., and at one point, he raise a closed fist into the air.

Alex Jones, founder of the conspiracy theory website InfoWars, took video of Hoggs speech and dubbed it with audio of a speech by Hitler.

Alex Jones played a video featuring @davidhogg111's #MarchForOurLives speech dubbed over with a Hitler speech https://t.co/icsyQcxG4I pic.twitter.com/3Dt5mhIL4J  Media Matters (@mmfa) March 27, 2018

Breitbart and The Daily Wire, also far-right websites, have published articles accusing Hogg of ending his speech with the Hitler salute. Numerous tweets accusing the teen of the same thing have been shared thousands of times.

Is that David Hogg or Hitler? Its hard to tell these days. Hitler would be so proud of Hogg for wanting to confiscate everyones guns.#MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/R54Icp5s7G  Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 24, 2018

Check out this little salute/gesture David Hogg does at the end of his speech. #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/Tj4EgHhZV2  Ryan Saavedra ???????? (@RealSaavedra) March 24, 2018

Even more pathetic is the fact that Republican legislators, such as Minnesota Rep. Mary Franson, have used this as a way to attack Hogg on social media. Iowa Rep. Steve King similarly shared an insulting meme about Emma Gonzalez, another Parkland survivor, to mock her after her own speech at Saturdays march.

By lowering themselves to the point where theyre attacking minors who went through a massive tragedy just weeks ago, Republicans and pro-gun advocates are doing the job of discrediting themselves out of their opponents hands.
By Joseph Menn

LAS VEGAS (Reuters)  Three of every 10 candidates running for the U.S. House of Representatives have significant security problems with their websites, according to a new study by independent researchers that underscores the threat hackers pose to the November elections.

The research was due to be unveiled on Sunday at the annual Def Con security conference in Las Vegas, where some attendees have spent three days hacking into voting machines to highlight vulnerabilities in technology running polling operations.

A team of four independent researchers led by former National Institutes for Standards and Technology security expert Joshua Franklin concluded that the websites of nearly one-third of U.S. House candidates, Democrats and Republicans alike, are vulnerable to attacks. NIST is a U.S. Commerce Department laboratory that provides advice on technical issues, including cyber security.

Using automated scans and test programs, the team identified multiple vulnerabilities, including problems with digital certificates used to verify secure connections with users, Franklin told Reuters ahead of the presentation.

The warnings about the midterm elections, which are less than three months away, come after Democrats have spent more than a year working to bolster cyber defenses of the partys national, state and campaign operations.

Democratic National Committee officials told Reuters they have completely rebuilt the partys computer network, including email systems and databases, to avert a repeat of 2016, when Russian intelligence agents hacked into Democratic accounts and then used stolen data to undermine support for Hillary Clintons presidential bid.

No one wants to be the next patient zero,' said DNC Chief Technology Officer Raffi Krikorian, a former executive with Twitter and Uber.

The report follows a string of warnings by Trump administration security officials that Russia is actively interfering in the November elections. FBI Director Christopher Wray recently warned that Russian government agents were working around the clock to sow discord ahead of the election.

Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, who is facing a tough re-election battle in Missouri, last month said that hackers had tried and failed to access her offices computer network. The Def Con study did not address that incident.

The researchers did not identify any cases where it appeared that politically motivated hackers had exploited those vulnerabilities.

Were trying to figure out a way to contact all the candidates so they can fix the problems, said Franklin, who joined the nonprofit Center for Internet Security last month.

Department of Homeland Security officials said at Def Con that they are offering aid to states and counties for securing election equipment.

Still, some states said they are not getting enough help, and new funding efforts failed in Congress. Individual campaigns are not eligible for federal assistance, so they rely on party officials, an increased number of tech-savvy volunteers and nonprofit groups such as Defending Digital Democracy, a bipartisan project at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Franklin also said he found numerous potentially malicious web pages that closely resemble the names of candidates. Hackers use that practice, known as typo-squatting, to develop copycat sites for use in phishing campaigns to steal credentials or to criticize candidates.

The candidates at most risk of hacks are ones with small campaigns that have with little expertise in computer technology or security, Franklin said.

STEPS BY THE DNC

The Democratic National Committee agreed to discuss some steps it has taken to bolster security in the hope it can serve as a model for other election offices.

Since Krikorian joined the DNC a year ago, the party has moved email and data storage to Google cloud and replaced most Windows computers with easier-to-defend Apple hardware and Google Chromebooks, he said.

The party also requires staff to fill out monthly surveys pledging that they are following key security practices, including use of two-factor authentication for personal accounts, long and unique passwords, and encryption on computers. They are also asked if they are running operating systems and application software with up-to-date security patches.

The party uses software from San Francisco-based Okta that grants access to DNC systems only after testing devices to confirm the identity of users and verify they are not running malicious software.

The biggest change has been psychological, as staffers and volunteers are trained to assume that the network has been breached, avoid putting the most sensitive information in emails and use end-to-end encrypted messaging like Signal.

The party is also reaching out to campaigns and stressing basic precautions.

DNC Chief Security Officer Bob Lord, a former security executive with Yahoo and Twitter, sent an email a week ago to state party leaders, urging them not to use phones from Chinese manufacturers Huawei [HWT.UL] and ZTE Corp.

U.S. intelligence officials have warned that Chinese authorities could seek to use those devices to spy on Americans.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn in Las Vegas; Editing by Jim Finkle and Steve Orlofsky)
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The website Vimeo has pulled content from Infowars and its founder Alex Jones from its site for violating the platforms video content standards. A spokesperson for the video hosting service told Business Insider on Sunday that the Infowars videos violated our Terms of Service prohibitions on discriminatory and hateful content. Vimeo is a video-sharing website in which users can upload, share and view videos.

The Infowars videos had been uploaded to Vimeo on Thursday and Friday. The Vimeo spokesperson also said that the company had informed Jones of the videos removal, and had issued a refund, saying we do not want to profit from content of this nature in any way.

The video site reported that Infowars had fewer than a dozen videos on the platform as of Wednesday evening, but then an additional 50 videos were posted to the site during the next two days. In the videos that were removed, Jones denounces Muslim immigrants to Europe and the creators of a transgender cartoon.

Vimeo said that within 48 hours of the videos being posted they reached a decision that their content was in violation of the companys trust and safety standards.

Business Insider reported that Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud will hold a discussion about the removal of the Infowars content during a town hall meeting with company employees in New York City today.

The presence of Infowars content on their platform had become a very controversial topic internally at Vimeo. Many employees were reportedly unhappy that Jones and Infowars were allowed to remain on their website, and had expressed their displeasure with the companys handling of the issue in online discussion groups.

Vimeo is the latest online social media platform to pull content posted by Infowars or Jones. Facebook, YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts have all recently banned and removed content from the controversial conspiracy theorist.

Twitter, however, has not removed content posted by either Jones or InfoWars from its platform. A Twitter spokesperson said that Infowars and Jones will be permitted to stay on the site for now because so far they have not violated any of its policies or guidelines. A CNN report, however, claimed that Jones had repeatedly violated its policies and called upon Twitter to also institute a ban against the inflammatory content for which Jones is known.

Jones has amassed a massive audience for his conspiracy theories since he founded Infowars in 1999. On the other hand he has also faced massive criticism for spreading his conspiracy theories which are never based in fact. Some of his most extreme theories include the suggestion that the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington were staged by the government.

He was sued by the parents of two children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting for making claims that the shooting was a hoax. They accuse him and Infowars of engaging in a campaign of false, cruel, and dangerous assertions. Jones has denied making the statements.
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In late July and August, wildfires destroyed an area much bigger than New York City in northern California, causing over 100 homes to go up in smoke and ashes. And this was just one of many devastating blazes that have killed at least 56 people in the Golden State.

State officials dont know what caused most of the fires, but officers of the regions electric utility, PG&E Corp. say they know what is to blame: climate change.

#ClimateChange adds fuel to wildfires in the US West by making them more likely and more severe https://t.co/GPChxnNUM4  Climate Reality (@ClimateReality) August 13, 2018

The wildfires in recent years, PG&E has said, are just the latest of many instances where global warming has produced weather conditions that lead to the creation of very intense (and frequent) fires.

Climate change is no longer coming, its here, Geisha Williams, chief executive officer of PG&E, said in a published email. And we are living with it every day.

And of course scientists agree with that conclusion. But PG&E has an extremely urgent and compelling reason to blame the wildfires on environmental changes. California state investigators have connected PG&E equipment to some of the blazes, which could lead to unprecedented legal liability. Since the wildfires began the giant utility has lost 40%  $14 billion  of its market value.

Several of the wildfires are said to have been caused by trees hitting electric utility lines, including ones last October that destroyed 9,000 buildings and killed 44 people. So now PG&E is looking at liabilities for damages, and they could amount to as much as $17 billion. This in turn could cause financial ruin unless CEO Williams is able to persuade the California government that the public utilitys legal problem is, in fact, a climate change problem, so it shouldnt be held accountable for the losses.

Williamss legal defense has now become: dont blame us, blame climate change. And it is a legal theory that is gaining popularity with other utilities, such as PG&Es neighbors, Edison International and Sempra Energy.

They are both now claiming the same defense, and they are hoping it will work and even serve as a blueprint for other utilities. It is a worldwide problem as global warming has been blamed for producing extreme weather events everywhere, such as hurricanes that caused unprecedented damages and financial losses in Texas and Puerto Rico last year.

Williams has begun a lobbying campaign to try to protect PG&E from legal and financial liability. It may be an uphill battle since the laws of California say that owners of property damaged in fires are able to collect monetary compensation from utilities linked to fires. Cases have held that this is true even if the companies themselves have been found to be not negligent.

As a utility CEO Williams believes that utilities shouldnt be held liable every time a tree branch falls on a power line during a storm. This is especially true if it can be proven that the utility followed all required safety rules. With the increasing frequency of wildfires such liability could be so onerous that the utilities would all go bankrupt unless they can greatly increase the rates they charge customers.

Instead, Williams argues that the test for her companys liability should be whether they acted reasonably in trying to prevent fires. If they did the prudent things, such as trimming trees and brush around power lines, she believes the utility should be off the hook. In that case, she believes, insurance or government agencies would pick up the cost of damages being suffered by property owners.

No one is suggesting the utilities should get a free pass if they were negligent, Williams said. But the current legal policy of unlimited, strict-liability has the potential to financially cripple companies.

It is refreshing to see major corporations admitting that climate change is real, even if their motivations are not exactly altruistic.
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Whenever Rudy Giuliani goes on TV he opens his mouth and sticks his foot in it. But he is never deterred, and he just keeps on going no matter how ridiculous he appears or how much he is ridiculed. His appearances on TV over the weekend are cases in point, as they were called both disgraceful and stupid.

Not only that, but Giulianis public offensive against special counsel Robert Mueller and his Russia investigation is clearly a bad legal strategy. He and his boss, however, believe that his TV interviews still could influence public opinion, according to the New York Daily News. Despite this, many people think what Giuliani is doing and saying on television could be harmful to himself and the president.

His comments have been disgraceful, said Sol Wisenberg, who was deputy independent counsel under Kenneth Starr during the Monica Lewinsky investigation. Hes a lawyer and an officer of the court.

Giuliani took his offensive to new levels last week when he told Fox News that if the special counsels investigation is not completed by September, there would be a very, very serious violation of Justice Department rules. Of course, hes wrong, because there is no such rule.

There is no rule that says Robert Mueller must end his investigation by September, as President Trumps lawyer Rudy Giuliani claims.

There is no rule that says Robert Mueller must end his investigation by September, as President Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani claims https://t.co/LPInxFDN8T pic.twitter.com/0KFVzxnIjo  CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 13, 2018

When Giuliani joined Jay Sekulow, another of the Presidents lawyers, in guest-hosting conservative commentator Sean Hannitys syndicated radio show over the weekend Giuliani attacked Mueller, saying his investigation is illegitimate, a witch hunt and a hoax. And again, everyone knows these are lies because with dozens of indictments and several guilty pleas, the Mueller probe is anything but a hoax.

Giuliani and Sekulow have been negotiating with Mueller for months about a possible interview with the President to determine whether he attempted to obstruct justice. While Trump publicly claims he wants to clear his name, his attorneys have advised against an interview.

Mueller himself has never made a public comment on any subject since being appointed in May of 2017.

Mueller is a professional and hes not going to be taking to cable news to make his case, Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist who served as a spokesman for Mitt Romney. The Trump team realizes that this is more of a public relations battle for the President than an actual legal defense.

Not only that, but the stories Giuliani tells on TV keep on changing over time, so nobody really knows what the presidents position is, let alone what the actual truth is.

For example, Giuliani said on Sunday that Trump didnt pressure fired FBI Director James Comey to go easy on former national security adviser Michael Flynn during a private meeting in the White House.

The President says that he never told Comey that he should go easy on Flynn, Giuliani told CNNs Jake Tapper. Comey says he did. He put it in his memo.

Last month, Giuliani told ABCs This Week that Trump did ask Comey take mercy on Flynn.

The reality is, as a prosecutor, I was told that many times, can you give the man a break? either by his lawyers, by his relatives, by his friends, Giuliani told George Stephanopoulos. You take that into consideration. But you know that doesnt determine not going forward with it.

Despite the video evidence of what he said, yesterday Giuliani claimed that he didnt contradict himself.

I never told ABC that, thats crazy, Giuliani blustered, obviously upset. What I said was, that is what Comey is saying Trump said. I have always said, the President denies it. Look, it would be easier for me if the President did say that.

That is what he will testify to if they ask that question, he continued. But they already know that. So why are they asking us for him to repeat what they already know under oath?

Rudy Giuliani: I never said that! Jake Tapper: *plays tape of Rudy saying exactly that*https://t.co/r0xa0wdcFy  Shareblue Media (@Shareblue) August 12, 2018

Giulianis changing positions were mocked this morning on MSNBCs Morning Joe.

What are we to make of that? co-host Joe Scarborough laughed. Is Rudy Giuliani making it up as he goes along? Is he purposely lying? Does he have early onset of dementia? How does he go from yesterday saying he never asked that question to us, of course, having a tape where clearly a couple weeks ago he said thats precisely what the president said?

You can say this is the death of truth. I just think this is just the renaissance of just stupid  out-and-out stupid. Seriously, a third-grader  and Ive had four third-graders  a third-grader would be able to keep his or her story more consistent than what Rudy Giuliani is doing on the Sunday shows every morning, he added.
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(Reuters)  A Florida man was charged with manslaughter on Monday for fatally shooting another man during an argument over a parking spot, after police initially declined to arrest him due to the states stand your ground self-defense law, officials said.

Alleged shooter Michael Drejka, 47, was taken into custody on Monday, the Pinellas County Sheriffs Office said in a statement.

Police had initially not charged Drejka over the July 19 shooting due to the 2005 law, which grants residents the right to use deadly force if they reasonably believe they are at risk of great harm or death.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Scott Malone)
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Billionaire Tom Steyer, a major Democratic donor, said he believes that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is incorrect for saying his push to impeach President Trump is hurting Democratic candidates and helping Republicans in this years midterm elections.

Tom Steyer On The Case To Impeach Trump: Its The Corruption, Stupid

Tom Steyer On The Case To Impeach Trump: It's The Corruption, Stupid https://t.co/I2I7FKEv2w pic.twitter.com/fAeOUrn1rQ  BuzzFeed Politics (@BuzzFeedPol) August 13, 2018

Steyers comments came during an interview with BuzzFeed News on Sunday night. He said he believes Trump should be impeached if Democrats take over control of the House of Representatives because the president is reckless and dangerous and lawless.

This is a historic time, Steyer said during the podcast. If you step back for one second and think about this president, the most corrupt president in American history, somebody who is breaking the law on a daily basis.

Steyer said that Trump is committing crimes every day, and that the evidence is in plain sight because the president is being paid by foreign governments.

In the Constitution, it says that the president cannot take any payment whatsoever from a foreign government  for obvious reasons. I mean, you cant have the president taking money from a foreign government, which would mean that he might  do whats right for them instead of whats right for the American people. He does that on a daily basis. We dont need Mr. Mueller to tell us that, Steyer said.

Pelosi warned Democrats earlier this year against pursuing impeachment efforts against Trump, saying it could hurt the partys chances in the midterm elections.

On the political side I think its a gift to the Republicans, she said of impeachment in April. We want to talk about what theyre doing to undermine working families in our country and what we are doing to increase their payrolls and lower their costs.

Steyer has spent many millions of dollars in his efforts to impeach Trump, Earlier this year he also held a series of town halls throughout the country, which led some observers to say that he may run for president in 2020.

He said during the interview Sunday that he will wait to decide on his future until after the midterm elections in November.

I will definitely be working full time the day after this midterm election for social justice, Steyer said. The question is: What can I do that will be the most impactful and positive?I dont know whats going to happen on Election Day in the midterms, and its going to change a lot.

Also on Sunday former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe said a new Democratic Congress should impeach Trump.

I think thats something we ought to look at, McAuliffe said on CNNs State of the Union, when asked by host Jake Tapper whether Trump should be impeached.

If President Clinton or President Obama had gone to Helsinki and done what President Trump had done, you would already have impeachment hearings going on, he added.

Ex-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe Says Democrats Should Consider Impeaching Trumphttps://t.co/jkO3G8mzTU pic.twitter.com/s1vWGcyj6v  Top News Today (@topnewstodayx) August 12, 2018
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At an event for the signing of the NDAA that the taxpayers are paying for, Trump gave an endorsement to Arizona Senate candidate Martha McSally as the president illegally used taxpayer funds for partisan political purposes.

Video:

Trump said, Theres another member of Congress here today who is not only an air force veteran but the first woman ever to fly a fighter jet in combat in U.S. History and Ive gotten to know her very well and she is terrific. Congresswoman Martha McSally. Congresswoman. Thank you, Martha.

The event took place at Fort Drum, NY. Rep. Martha McSally is a member of Congress from Arizona. Why was a member of Congress from Arizona in New York, and getting a shout out from Trump? The answer is that McSally is running for Senate in her home state, and Republicans have been pressuring Trump to help her. McSally is a difficult Senate primary with two unelectable candidates. Both Kelli Ward and Joe Arpaio are running for the Republican Senate nomination. If McSally loses, Republicans can probably kiss the Senate seat in Arizona goodbye.

Trump used a taxpayer-funded event at a military base to illegally give an endorsement to McSally.

As Deputy Washington Editor for The New York Times, Jonathan Wiseman tweeted:

I get why @realDonaldTrump has @EliseStefanik on stage in her district, but that @RepMcSally shoutout seems like pure politics ahead of the Arizona primary. The @GOP should be paying for this event at Fort Drum, not the U.S. taxpayer.  (((JonathanWeisman))) (@jonathanweisman) August 13, 2018

What Trump did is against the law. He did something similar to help the Republican Missouri Senate candidate running against Sen. Claire McCaskill in July. Trump is using taxpayer-funded trips to campaign for Republicans, and it needs to stop.

One of the areas that Democrats have a keen interest in examining is Trumps use of taxpayer funds for travel.

The graft and lawbreaking seem endless, but the way to check Trumps corruption is to elect a Democratic Congress in November.
Photo: Twitter

After a short gondola ride together through thick fog and rain clouds up Mount Mansfield on Sunday, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard and Vermont Gov. Phil Scott spoke warmly about the importance of trade between their two countries.

But despite the beautiful landscape at the Stowe Mountain Resort and the smiles and handshakes, United States President Donald Trump's trade policies and tone toward Canada loomed large over the gathering.

Scott and Couillard signed a joint declaration stating the two jurisdictions would work together to strengthen economic ties, but they couldn't escape questions about the ongoing trade dispute between the two countries.

A day earlier, Trump threatened to impose auto tariffs on Canada, while in June he called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "very dishonest and weak."

Scott, a Republican, said Trump's words were disrespectful.

"I would say that Mr. Trump  our president  has in the past has made many comments that I believe are disrespectful and maybe that's his negotiating tactic, but it isn't one that I would use," he said.

Quebec is Vermont's number one international trading partner and about 17,000 jobs in the state depend on trade with Canada.

Sunday's meeting between Couillard and Scott was held as part of the two-day, annual conference between governors of the New England states and premiers of Quebec and the eastern Canadian provinces.

Scott said it's important for leaders of individual states and provinces to meet and sign deals that go beyond the politics of the day.

"I wouldn't say the tone out of Washington and the president is necessarily all targeted towards Canada  I've seen it in other areas," he said. "Even within his own country he does the same.

"And that's why it's so important for us to have these types of events. We may not be able to control ... what the president says, but we can control what we say and do."

The U.S. and Mexico are conducting bilateral negotiations on NAFTA, and Canada hasn't returned to the table this summer.

Trump slapped Canada and other allies with steel and aluminum duties, which led to retaliatory levies from Ottawa. He has also made repeated threats to apply far more damaging tariffs on the deeply integrated automotive sector.

The U.S. president has repeatedly said Canada's supply management system, which controls the price and volume of products such as dairy and poultry in the country, is an obstacle to signing a new deal.

Couillard said the U.S. helps its farmers with budget allocations and other measures, and Canada has its own ways to support its agricultural sector.

"With NAFTA, the vast majority of trade is tariff-free," Couillard said. "Instead of concentrating on the few areas that still have tariffs, we should appreciate the fact NAFTA makes it possible to be tariff-free with most of our trade, and not damage that and add to the difficulties."

Both leaders will soon be heading to the campaign trail.

Couillard is behind in the polls as the Quebec provincial campaign is set to begin Aug. 23, while Scott is facing a primary challenge ahead of the Nov. 6 election.

The conference continues on Monday with seminars and events that are scheduled to include New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant, Newfoundland and Labrador's Dwight Ball and Prince Edward Island's Wade MacLauchlan.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Charlie Baker, governor of Massachusetts, are also scheduled to attend the conference.
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Trump keeps calling world leaders while they are asleep in the middle of the night because he doesnt understand the concept of time zones.

Politico reported:

Several times in the first year of his administration, President Donald Trump wanted to call Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the middle of the afternoon. But there was a problem. Midafternoon in Washington is the middle of the night in Tokyo  when Abe would be fast asleep.

Trumps aides had to explain the issue, which one diplomatic source said came up on a constant basis, but it wasnt easy.

He wasnt great with recognizing that the leader of a country might be 80 or 85 years old and isnt going to be awake or in the right place at 10:30 or 11 p.m. their time, said a former Trump NSC official. When he wants to call someone, he wants to call someone. Hes more impulsive that way. He doesnt think about what time it is or who it is, added a person close to Trump.

Trump Sold Himself As An International Businessman, But He Doesnt Understand Time Zones

Trump campaigned on being a big international titan of business who could make deals with the rest of the world, but it turns out that he doesnt understand that afternoon in Washington is not afternoon in Tokyo or London. Of all the cons that Trump has pulled on the American people, one of his biggest was the myth that he is competent and fit for the world stage.

The story about Trump not understanding time zones underscores the reality that Donald Trump was a small time real estate con man with multiple bankruptcies to his record who happened to stumble into the big time with a lot of help from Putin and his Russian friends. A person who lacks the impulse control to understand time zones and when is the most suitable time to hold discussions with other world leaders should not be sitting in the Oval Office.

Trumps learning curve isnt presidential. Its human, and these sorts of episodes reveal that he is more unfit for the presidency than even his most hardened critics could imagine.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
Experts on human rights and on the situation in Northwest China alleged Friday, August 10 that China has detained more than one million ethnic Muslims and put as many as two million into re-education and indoctrination training.

This fact check comes amid ongoing developments that a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called "alarming," at the meeting in Geneva. Gay McDougall is quoted by several news agencies as saying Beijing had "turned the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internment camp."

The news reports said Chinese officials did not respond, though China's ambassador to the UN earlier told the panel his countries policies toward minorities promote unity and harmony.

Late Sunday, the Global Times, the Chinese state newspaper, said in an editorial the security situation in Xinjiang had "turned around," following what it said were a series of terrorist attacks in the autonomous region and in China's interior.

The tabloid did indicate "police and security posts can be seen everywhere" in the region but did not mention detention facilities, saying that the West is "smearing" the regional government.

We chose to fact check the statement in the same newspaper earlier in August, similar in tone to the Sunday editorial -- the August 1 article representing Beijing's response to months of reports from human rights groups and in the media.

Since the spring of 2017, human rights watchers have been calling attention to Chinas increasingly repressive measures against its Uighur Muslim population in the autonomous region of Xinjiang in the Western part of the country. Witnesses tell of everything from everyday discrimination, such as being barred from renting hotel rooms, to disappearances and re-education centers that some have likened to concentration camps.

In September 2017, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the government in China should immediately free people held in unlawful political education centers.The global fact-finding and advocacy organization cited its own interview with relatives of detainees held in facilities near Kashgar City and the Bortala Prefecture.

HRW said the Muslim Uighur minority was targeted and it cited media reports saying ethnic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz has been detained for traveling abroad.

On August 10, the Associated Press reported thousands of Muslims from the Hui minority staged a rare public protest of the planned demolition of the Grand Mosque in the town of Weizhou. The Hui minority is the largest Islamic group in China, descendants of the Han Chinese.

While the Chinese state publication, Global Times, blames western media for a new round of attacks, the evidence includes many reports from inside China as well as eyewitness testimony  enough to firmly label the claim false.

And it should be noted Al Jazeera also filed a report on the allegations made in Geneva.

Last year, a state official in Xinjiang denied allegations of Muslim persecution, stating that The happiest Muslims in the world live in Xinjiang. The official blamed claims to the contrary on hostile Western forces who wantonly spread rumors.

The official did not suggest any metric by which one could measure the happiness of Xinjiangs Muslims or compare it to those in other countries. The United Nations World Happiness 2017 report, however, said the happiest Muslims live in the United Arab Emirates and not Xinjiang or anywhere else in China.

Several years in a row, Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have attempted to ban fasting during the Muslim the holy month of Ramadan. In February, the state-run outlet Global Times published an article about Chinese Muslims going on the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, considered a requirement for all faithful Muslims who can afford to make the journey. What it does not mention, however, is that the government, which organizes the groups going on the Hajj, furnished pilgrims with special electronic cards equipped with GPS tracking devices.

Numerous reports of arbitrary arrests and violent interrogations of Uighurs contradict the states claims about happy Muslims. HRW said state media in Xinjiang have reported on the reeducation facilities, calling them counter extremism training centers.

In 2009, ethnic riots in Xinjiangs capital city of Urumqi led to as many as 200 deaths. In 2017, the government sent thousands of troops to Xinjiang, ostensibly to defend against terrorism and separatism. In 2015, after a string of terrorist attacks traced back to Xinjiang, the government declared a Peoples war on terror. However, human rights advocates call Chinas anti-terrorism policy in Xinjiang an attempt to forcibly assimilate and destroy Uighur and Kazakh culture.

In Geneva, the human rights panel expects to continue its meeting Monday and Polygraph.info will update, depending on more developments.

(Editor's Note: This fact check was updated with China's response to developments out of Geneva).
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Michael Majchrowicz is a reporter covering crime and public safety. He previously wrote about courts for the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Massachusetts. A Hoosier native, he graduated from Indiana University with a degree in journalism.
North Charleston's Reynolds Avenue has seen some revitalization, including the new Macon Cafe, but now residents and property owners fear more truck traffic could limit future progress. File/Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations.
Photo: File Photo

A number of flights due to arrive at Kelowna International Airport are delayed this evening, and a Castanet source on board one of the delayed flights says it's due to smoke.

The passenger was en route from Toronto to Kelowna aboard a WestJet flight this evening when her flight was suddenly turned around right before landing.

The pilot allegedly said the smoke was to blame, and so the flight was turned to Vancouver instead, to refuel and try again later.

The flight is currently listed as delayed on YLW's website, and "diverted to YVR (Vancouver)" on WestJet's.

Several other flights, both from Air Canada and WestJet, are also currently listed as delayed on YLW's arrivals page.
Various currencies are displayed without the going rate on a money exchange shop window in downtown Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2018. Money exchange shops across Iran cautiously reopened on Tuesday after being shut for five months amid economic turmoil fanned by America's withdraw from the nuclear deal. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
The Post and Courier provides a forum for our readers to share their opinions, and to hold up a mirror to our community. Publication does not imply endorsement by the newspaper; the editorial staff attempts to select a representative sample of letters because we believe its important to let our readers see the range of opinions their neighbors submit for publication.
The nations largest beer company dabbled at the edges of the burgeoning craft beer movement, but its backbone remained the brands to which craft beer was largely a reaction  Bud and Bud Light, Natural Light and Michelob Ultra, and whatever odd innovations might tempt a new generation of consumers, be it Lime-a-Rita (a hit) or Tequiza (a miss).

But this summer, a torch has quietly been passed: By at least one metric, Anheuser-Busch  the same Anheuser-Busch that made no authentic craft beer a decade ago  is now the nations largest craft beer company.

How did a company that made no craft beer a decade ago become the nations top manufacturer within a mere seven years?

It opened its wallet.

Between 2011 and 2017, Anheuser-Busch bought 10 breweries from coast to coast, beginning with Chicagos Goose Island Beer Co. and ending (for now) with Wicked Weed Brewing of Asheville, N.C. In between, it picked up breweries in Oregon (10 Barrel), Virginia (Devils Backbone), Seattle (Elysian), Los Angeles (Golden Road), Houston (Karbach) and the metro areas of Phoenix (Four Peaks), Denver (Breckenridge) and New York City (Blue Point).

Dilly, dilly

Anheuser-Buschs shopping spree appears to have paid off. Last month, industry newsletter Beer Marketers Insights reported that the beer giant has surged past Boston Beer and Sierra Nevada in 2018 to become the nations top craft beer company in terms of dollar sales. The numbers were crunched from data provided by Chicago-based market research firm IRI Worldwide.

In year-to-date sales through June 3, Beer Marketers Insights reported, Anheuser-Buschs acquired craft brands grew 20 percent to $107.3 million of sales. Sierra Nevada was up 2 percent to $100.7 million, and Boston Beer was down 6.5 percent to $94.4 million.

While Boston Beer clings to a tenuous lead in terms of the amount of craft beer sold, it likely wont for long. Anheuser-Buschs portfolio of acquired breweries is poised for years of growth. Boston Beer, meanwhile, has declined in recent years as the overall beer industry struggles against wine, spirits and legal marijuana.

In other words, the company behind the King of Beers is also on its way to becoming the King of Craft Beers.

"It is a bit of a moment that this is the year its happening," said David Steinman, senior editor of Beer Marketers Insights Craft Brew News, which calculated the data and first reported the findings. "It seems like theyre positioned to hold this spot for the foreseeable future."

An Anheuser-Busch spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

New normal

To be clear, Anheuser-Buschs craft beer supremacy exists in one very specific metric at the moment; IRI tracks sales in grocery, big box, drug and convenience stores. When factoring in draft and liquor store sales, Beer Marketers Insights estimates that Boston Beer remains ahead of Anheuser-Busch in terms of both volume and dollar sales. But the passing of that torch is all but an inevitability during the next year or so.

"Its still a little bit of shock to the system for most craft brewers  everyones getting used to it," Steinman said. "Its definitely a new way to think about the business."

Indeed, 10 years ago, craft brewers could largely sell themselves as the antidote to Big Beer. Now theyre battling Big Beer. MillerCoors, Constellation Brands and Heineken have all bought American craft breweries, too, but no large beer company has made a more forceful entry into the business than Anheuser-Busch. Its 10 acquisitions allow it to compete as a local, regional and national player from coast to coast, sending beer into the market though a loyal and powerful distribution network.

"Its brought a new challenge thats not that different than what even Boston Beer presents because theyre a very sophisticated company with a lot of resources," said Scott Metzger, founder of Freetail Brewing in San Antonio. "But with Anheuser-Busch, its magnified."

It became particularly magnified for Metzger when Anheuser-Busch bought its ninth craft brewery: Houstons Karbach Brewing, in 2016. The strategy had crept into his backyard.

He acknowledges that Anheuser-Busch has undertaken a smart, aggressive strategy. He said he doesnt begrudge the brewery founders who have sold. But Karbachs presence in San Antonio has intensified since its sale  a reflection of what Anheuser-Busch is doing with its craft brands across the country. In a blog post, Metzger called Anheuser-Buschs approach a "scorched earth acquisition strategy."

"If theyre gaining, then somebodys got to be losing," Metzger said.

High end

Before its shopping spree, Anheuser-Busch did attempt various versions of craft beer, most notably under its Michelob banner: Michelob HefeWeizen, Michelob Pale Ale, Michelob Hop Hound, Michelob Ginger Wheat and Michelob Winters Bourbon Cask Ale, among them. It also used craft beer to attempt to confuse the marketplace, such as introducing Pacific Ridge Pale Ale in 1996 as a thinly veiled copy of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Its biggest success was Spring Heat Spiced Wheat, later rebranded Shock Top.

But such brands have never been considered actual craft beer by Beer Marketers Insights (or many beer drinkers) because they largely competed as Big Beer brands  made in larger batches and distributed far more widely and aggressively  than most craft beers.

As classic macro brands lost share and craft beer continued to grow, Anheuser-Busch eschewed its half-baked efforts and started buying the brands it could never create, starting with Goose Island (a story recounted in my book, "Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out," released earlier this summer). It also launched a division to manage its craft portfolio, The High End, and declared a goal of building the nations top-selling craft portfolio.

Beer Marketers Insights has continued to analyze sales from Anheuser-Buschs 10 acquisitions as part of the craft industry, and it is those sales that have collectively claimed the top spot based on the IRI data.

Goose down

However, its not all good news for Anheuser-Buschs craft effort.

Its lead horse, Goose Island, had a rough 2017, and 2018 is proving just as difficult. In early August, the Goose Island portfolio was down double digits across the previous three months, according to Beer Marketers Insights. Sales were down for several of Goose Islands major brands  IPA (down 0.3 percent), 312 Urban Wheat Ale (down 11 percent), Green Line (down 35 percent) and Four Star Pils (down 41 percent). Sales for Blue Point and Devils Backbone have also been down from a year ago, Steinman said.

But heres where the power of Anheuser-Buschs aggressive strategy pays off: When some brands suffer, others soar. Elysians Space Dust IPA continues to be a rocket and even surpassed sales of Goose Islands IPA as Anheuser-Buschs top-selling IPA, according to IRI data. (Goose Island IPA continues to enjoy nationwide dominance on draft, however, due to the powerful Anheuser-Busch distribution network.) Karbach is also growing rapidly.

The Brewers Association, a Colorado-based trade organization, has spent recent years drawing attention to Anheuser-Buschs entry into craft beer, including "Take Craft Back," a mock effort to crowd-source $213 billion to buy Anheuser-Buschs parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Julia Herz, director of the Brewers Associations craft beer program, called the IRI data "a very telling and timely snapshot."

"It definitely gets at the question, Is the marketplace fair?" Herz said. "We think if there was more transparency, it would be easier for beer lovers to discern when theyre purchasing beer from a Big Beer conglomerate or not."

Craft brands owned by Anheuser-Busch feature little-to-no acknowledgement of their corporate roots. Herz said Anheuser-Busch likely wouldnt have had such an easy march to the top of IRI sales data if consumers had more awareness of who owned the brands.

Last summer, the Brewers Association unveiled a seal  an upside-down beer bottle to signify crafts upending of the beer industry  that affirms a brewerys "independence" and whether the brewery meets the Brewers Associations definition of "craft."

The logo has been adopted by more than 3,600 craft beer companies, Herz said, including on packaging and in brewery taprooms. Among the breweries unable to use the logo are the 10 bought by Anheuser-Busch; theyre ineligible due to their ownership.
Three Kansas State University food science graduate students hope so.

The students  Yuda Ou of China, and Priyamvada Thorakkattu and Karthik Sajith Babu, both of India  won first place and $8,000 in a National Dairy Council product competition for a creation using German-style quark cheese.

Called Quick-Quark, the product has been described by one of its creators as "very smooth and creamy  with a rich mouthfeel comparable to a full-fat yogurt."

"Our product has 14 grams of protein in a 150-gram serving, which is almost double the amount of popular Greek yogurt drinks and more than double the number of popular yogurts targeted toward children," Ou told K-State News.

Quark is popular in parts of eastern and northern Europe and, depending on the country, is similar to cottage cheese or cream cheese. The Kansas State team fermented whole milk, cream, milk protein concentrate and sweetened condensed milk at the universitys Food Science Institute.

To create more flavor, they added fruit. Quick-Quark comes in pina colada and acai blueberry, flavors that consumers rated 7.3 and 7.5 on a 9-point scale when surveyed by the K-State team.

They decided to present their product in a resealable pouch and plan to market and sell it in the future.

The countrys rapid embrace of Greek yogurt in recent years could bode well for demand, Jayendra Amamcharla, associate professor of animal sciences and industry and team co-adviser at K-State, said in a university interview.

"The students wanted to develop a product that was not too familiar to consumers but has an appeal that will give it more visibility," she said. "I think Quick-Quark will be the next Greek yogurt."
A new Minnesota Department of Health study found that prices for the same procedures vary wildly between hospitals, and even within the same hospital.

According to the study, a patient undergoing a surgical procedure at one Minnesota hospital could pay about as much as seven times the price of the same procedure at a different hospital.

Stefan Gildemeister, the director of the Health Economics Program at the MDH, said the variation was startling.

"On the one hand, we expected to find variation in health care prices across the state between hospitals," he said. "And also, to some extent, within hospitals.  But the magnitude of variation, particularly within hospitals, was surprising."

Severe differences

Between July 2014 and June 2015, the researchers analyzed the commercial costs to patients and insurers for four common procedures: spinal fusion surgery, major bowel surgery, appendectomy and removal of uterine fibroids.

Commercial cost covers the fees for facility use and physician services.

The MDH limited the data to people with mild to moderately severe need for the services, and did not find variation in price between patients with mild conditions and moderate conditions (i.e. patients with moderate conditions were not always more expensive).

None of the hospitals names are or were available in the study, which was based on stripped pricing data from the Minnesota All-Payer Claims Database.

The prices for the more expensive surgeries, major bowel surgery and spinal fusion, saw huge price variations between the lowest and highest-cost surgeries within that time. At the most expensive hospital for a major bowel procedure, the prices ranged from $14,500 to $68,800, an about five-fold difference. The price at the least expensive hospital for the same procedure ranged from about $14,500 to about $41,000, a 2.8-times difference.

However, the lowest-priced hospitals didnt always have less price variation. When looking into spinal fusion, the researchers found the most expensive hospital had an in-house price variation of about 2.9 times ($27,600-$81,000), while the least expensive had a highest price that was 3.2 times the lowest ($13,000-$42,000).

Market power?

Within hospitals, the MDH researchers adjusted for the sorts of "common-sense" differences that would have caused a variation in price, Gildemeister said.

Difference in age, gender, length of stay and insurance

"Even after that, substantial variation remained," he said. "So something else appears to be driving that difference.  Relative market power drives some of the variation within hospitals and across hospitals."

But the variation between the statewide averages often was even more impressive.

In the case of that spinal fusion surgery, the hospital with the lowest price ($12,300) was about seven times less expensive than the hospital with the highest price across the state ($80,800).

Price is only one component of a service, Gildemeister said, and patient outcomes and quality information generally is available if consumers search for those.

Further work

What is causing the higher prices, though?

This study cant tell us that.

"There is some reasonable variation that is driven by things like  the cost of operating equipment, the cost of paying for a nurse, labor market factors. The fact that one hospitals a teaching hospital and another might not be, the fact that one operates an emergency department and another doesnt. Those sort of factors could explain some of the difference, particularly between facilities."

This study was a first attempt to bring new information to employers, Gildemeister said, and didnt look far into what causes the differences in pricing.

"To really disaggregate what the factors are that are driving these price variations, that requires more work," he said.

The MDH works with employers to determine how their research can be of value, Gildemeister said. Those employers had pushed for a study on hospital prices, as there is little information publicly available on those.

Employers should be able to use the data to determine whether theyre paying an amount for health care that measures up to statewide averages, he said  and to open up discussions with providers if they are not.

Also, most people hold insurance that shields them from the full cost of care, individual consumers can also find the study valuable, Gildemeister thought.

Consumers can help change the culture around "shoppable" health care prices by expecting those prices to be more transparent and questioning differences.

"Consumers also have a chance to use this information as they talk to insurance companies and ask, Why am I paying this price at the high end?" he said. "The variations were measuring here are a symptom of a health care market that is not working well, and to shift the market to producing what we expect from it requires providers and payers and policymakers and consumers to act on it independently."

The MDH plans to continue studying hospital pricing, Gildemeister said, to try to nail down the factors that cause the vast variance.

"This is not unique for Minnesota," he said. "It reflects how the health care market works across the country. Nevertheless, it does give one pause to see those numbers on a sheet of paper."
"Earth Sing," an evening of singing about ecology, peace, justice and the global community will be held Wednesday at Mount Olive Lutheran Church in Rochester.

Bret Hesla, of Minneapolis, and Richard Bruxvoort Colligan, of Strawberry Point, Iowa, will lead the community sing. The evening will focus in particular on issues of climate, Colligan said.

"Weve written a catalog of songs for people to sing together," said Colligan, a Rochester native. "Theyre folkie, melodic. Were from that tradition."

Colligan, a Mayo High School graduate, has been a full-time musician and songwriter for 10 years. He and Hesla formed a partnership and began writing songs about ecology. Then they started hosting community sings like the one scheduled Wednesday at Mount Olive.

"There is something magic and rare about singing in communities," Colligan said. Singing while doing work or around the dinner table was common in the Minnesota of 100 years ago.

"Its a practice that we have largely lost these days," Hesla said. "If we need community solutions to our crises, singing is a simple way to build that sense of togetherness."

Nobody who shows up at Mount Olive will have to worry about taking a solo. This is a group sing.

"Well pass out songbooks," Colligan said. "Just about everything we do will be Please join in."

Previous community sings conducted by Colligan and Hesla have produced a variety of responses.

"A lot of people say, This is awesome, to have different ways to to sing in church about things that matter right now," Colligan said.

For instance, Colligan said, "Refugees and immigrants are really vulnerable right now. Folks in the LGBTQ community are vulnerable right now."

The question, he said, is what to do about those issues outside of church.

"Theres a sense that some of the old hymns dont ring true anymore," he said. "Yes, heritage is important. But sometimes it feels like rehashing a relationship with God and earth that is obsolete."

People are free to join in as they please. "Were going to ask people to bring what theyve got," Colligan said.
Photo: CTV

Charges have been laid almost a full year after a deadly tour bus crash in downtown Vancouver.

The bus slammed into pedestrians outside Canada Place last August, killing one and seriously injuring another.

The driver, Patrick Campbell, 63, has been charged with driving a motor vehicle without due care.

Tourist Michael Plevyak, 49, was killed in the crash.

The related victims were trapped under the bus in the collision.

The Vancouver Trolley Company bus was a free shuttle to the Capilano suspension bridge.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Its been 42 days since an off-duty police officer crashed an official police vehicle into another car causing multiple injuries, and the matter remains under investigation.

Guam Police Department spokesman Sgt. Paul Tapao said Highway Patrol Division officers are investigating the crash while an administrative investigation is simultaneously being conducted.

On July 4, a police officer assigned to the Criminal Investigation Division crashed into a vehicle on Marine Corps Drive in Tamuning just after midnight. The crash resulted in the officer sustaining injuries that required him to be hospitalized. The occupants in the other vehicle also were transported to the hospital for injuries they sustained in the crash.

Anytime an official vehicle is involved in a traffic crash, Highway Patrol Division officers are called to investigate.

Police have not released the results of a blood alcohol content test on the officer who remains on sick leave.

Tapao said Internal Affairs has yet to complete its investigation either. He said because this is an administrative investigation, the department is unable to release any further details.
It's OK. The error is fixable and not intentional

Terrible lack of due diligence

I am not sure

I don't care

Vote

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Earlier this month, Chai Feldblum, whose renomination as EEOC commissioner is stalled due to her positions on what should happen when considerations of gay dignity collide with considerations of religious liberty, tweeted: After months of having my views misrepresented, I am finally speaking for myself. She speaks for herself in this article called What I Really Believe About Religious Liberty and LGBT Rights.

In her article, Feldblum tries to position herself as a moderate on the issue of gay dignity vs. religious liberty. Moderates, she says, are those who look to accommodate both sets of rights, rather than adopting a winner-take-all attitude. She cites Justice Kennedy and his opinion in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado ( a punt, basically) as the model of moderation in this area.

Feldblum sees the winner-take-all mentality  the insistence that one side must always win and the other must always lose  as extremist. Moderates like Justice Kennedy reject it. And Feldblum assures us that shes a moderate, not an extremist.

But this what Feldblum said about the issue to Maggie Gallagher in 2006:

There can be a conflict between religious liberty and sexual liberty, but in almost all cases the sexual liberty should win because thats the only way that the dignity of gay people can be affirmed in any realistic manner. . . . Im having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.

In the past, Feldblum has said Gallagher misquoted her. She does not repeat this claim in her current article. She doesnt repudiate the quote. She just pretends it does not exist.

If we consider Feldblums 2006 quote in conjunction with her 2018 article, we must conclude that Feldblum is no moderate. Rather, like the extremists she now wants to distance herself from, Feldblum adopts a winner-take-all attitude, insisting that one side (gay people) should win almost every time, while the other side must lose because thats the only way, realistically, to affirm the dignity of gay people.

Its not a question of balancing or accommodating, Justice Kennedy style. The imperative is to affirm the dignity of gay people.

In her article, Feldblum finally manages to come up with a case in which religious liberty should win. She says:

A priest, a pastor, an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, an imam or any clergy person can never be forced to perform an inter-faith marriage or a marriage between two same-sex partners  because the First Amendment appropriately protects the right of members of the clergy to make such decisions based on their faith alone.

Im not sure why Feldblum had a hard time coming up with that case when Gallagher interviewed her, but I assume Feldblum means what she says about the clergy not having to perform same sex marriages. What about the religious rights of non-clergy, though?

On this issue, we should consult the positions the EEOC has taken while Feldblum has been commissioner. Consider, for example, EEOC v. Harris Funeral Homes, which I discussed at some length here.

In that case, EEOC insisted that a funeral home engaged in unlawful discrimination when it fired a male funeral director who, in the process of transitioning to female, dressed as a woman at work. The employer argued that the EEOCs discrimination claim must be considered in light of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which prohibits the government from enforcing a law if the law substantially burdens the individuals religious exercise and is not the least restrictive way to further a compelling interest.

Considering the discrimination claim in light of RFRA entails just the kind of balancing and accommodation, Feldblum now says she favors, and Feldblum references RFRA in article, though not by name. However, Feldblums EEOC tried to read RFRA into oblivion. It argued that because Congress intended RFRA to apply only to suits in which the government is a party, and because the transitioning funeral home director (represented by the ACLU) intervened in the case, RFRA cannot apply.

But the EEOC can always ask the ACLU and like-minded groups to intervene in EEOC cases whenever a defendant raises a RFRA defense. Such groups will be willing to comply, especially since little work will be required of them  they can simply piggyback on the governments prosecution. If such intervention eliminates RFRA from the case, as Feldblums EEOC argued it did, RFRAs protections would become a virtual dead letter.

Quite apart from its cynical attempt to render RFRA a dead letter, Feldblums EEOC showed no desire to balance gay rights with religious liberty interests or, indeed, common sense. The funeral home was willing to employ the transitioning director. The owner just didnt think having a male funeral director dress up like a woman during a funeral service is consistent with his desire to honor God by serving mourners in ways that comport with his religious views.

A decent respect for the owners religious views, not to mention the dignity of the funeral service and, undoubtedly, the wishes of mourners in some instances, would have caused the EEOC to refrain from bringing a lawsuit to coerce a funeral home into letting a male funeral director dress like a women during a service. One can transition from male to female and still occasionally wear a suit.

But Feldblums EEOC did not refrain. It coerced.

Now, consider Feldblums deciding vote in the case of Todd Lusardi. The case did not involve the assertion of religious liberty rights, but it well illustrates Feldblums extremism in the pursuit of LBGT rights.

In this case, the EEOC decided that the Department of the Army discriminated against Todd Lusardi when it denied him equal access to female restroom facilities. Though he had changed his name to Tamara, Lusardi was genetically male and had even retained (at least at the time of the events in question) male genitalia.

Feldblums EEOC actually granted Lusardi more relief than he asked for. It went out of its way in a footnote to opine that his employer unlawfully deprived him of the use of common locker and shower facilities that non-transgender employees could use. In other words, according to Feldblum its unlawful sex discrimination to bar a man who thinks of himself as a woman from sharing locker and shower facilities with women.

This is not a moderate position.

In her article, Feldblum emphasizes that her father was an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and that on her mothers side, she comes from a long line of Hasidic Rabbis. I grew up in a home in which religion and God were the defining aspects of our daily lives, she states.

We all know people who were raised in strict religious households who, as adults, detest religion. I dont assume that Feldblum is like that. I take her at her word that she respects religion.

The problem is that Feldblums public record  including her interview with Gallagher and her conduct at the EEOC  shows that her respect for religion doesnt prevent her from wanting to run roughshod over sincerely held religious beliefs when they conflict with her overriding mission of maximizing gay dignity.

Its a respectable mission for an activist, but its not a moderate one.
Not that many readers here need to be persuaded that Democrats are deep down in their hearts socialists, but it is nice to see the folks at Gallup release solid new survey evidence for this fact:

Democrats More Positive About Socialism Than Capitalism WASHINGTON, D.C.  For the first time in Gallups measurement over the past decade, Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism. Attitudes toward socialism among Democrats have not changed materially since 2010, with 57% today having a positive view. The major change among Democrats has been a less upbeat attitude toward capitalism, dropping to 47% positive this year  lower than in any of the three previous measures. Republicans remain much more positive about capitalism than about socialism, with little sustained change in their views of either since 2010.

Needless to say, it is millennials and other young demographic cohorts that fare the worst:

Fewer Than Half of Young Americans View Capitalism Positively Americans aged 18 to 29 are as positive about socialism (51%) as they are about capitalism (45%). This represents a 12-point decline in young adults positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68% viewed it positively. Meanwhile, young peoples views of socialism have fluctuated somewhat from year to year, but the 51% with a positive view today is the same as in 2010. Older Americans have been consistently more positive about capitalism than socialism. For those 50 and older, twice as many currently have a positive view of capitalism as of socialism.

Thats because older Americans are, by definition, old enough to recall socialism and socialist-lite economic policy (like Britain in the 1970s) first hand. Someone needs to invent a time machine so we can send young people back to see it first hand for themselves. (Or maybe just give them one-way visas to Venezuela today).

Speaking of time machines, this tweet from 2015, recently resurfaced on social media, will make heads explode for weeks:

Heh. I checked, and this Pax Dickinson fellow has had his account suspended on Twitter.
The Washington Post reports that the FBI has fired Peter Strzok, the anti-Trump man who assured his FBI girlfriend that well stop Trump from being president. The FBIs inspector general concluded that Strzok showed a willingness to take official action to hurt Trumps electoral prospects. Though the inspector general went no further, there is reason to believe that Strzok acted on this willingness.

Strzok was escorted out of the FBI building in June and effectively relieved of work responsibilities, though he remained an FBI employee. According to Strzoks attorney, the head of the FBIs office of professional responsibility decided that Strzok should be demoted and suspended for 60 days. This decision, he says, was overruled by FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich, who ordered the firing on Friday.

Bowdich has been with the FBI since 1995, when he began his career with the Bureau as a SWAT team member and sniper. Before that, he was a police officer in New Mexico. Before coming to Washington as Deputy Director, Bowdich ran the FBIs Los Angeles office.

Thus, Bowdich is a career FBI man, not a political appointee. He has no connections with President Trump.

Bowdich once said that The Untouchables is his favorite cops and robbers movie, and that Eliot Ness character was unyielding, tenacious, principled. (Emphasis added). No wonder Bowdich was unwilling to retain the unprincipled Strzok.

Strzoks lawyer complains that Bowdichs intervention is contrary to FBI assurances that Strzok would be afforded the normal disciplinary process. He says this isnt the normal process in any way more than name.

If the FBI violated proper procedure in firing Strzok, which I doubt, he can challenge his discharge on that basis. But firing Strzok rids the FBI of a man who was willing to put his finger on the scales of justice for partisan political purposes. It sends a clear message to other employees who might be inclined to do so, and it may help restore faith in the FBI as a straight shooting law enforcement agency.
Keith Ellisons alleged domestic abuse of a former girlfriend is not his leading disqualification to serve as Minnesota Attorney General. I think his leading disqualifications for the office are his past involvement with the hate cult known as the Nation of Islam (and his continued lying about same) along with his support for cop killers. Yet we have heard not a word from the Minnesota media about Ellisons public record in either case as he seeks the position of Minnesotas top law enforcement officer, while the domestic abuse allegations have been accorded a banner headline  Keith Ellison denies abuse allegations, as it reads in the hard copy  at the top of page one of the Star Tribune today.

In the nature of things Ellisons alleged domestic abuse will remain unresolved by the time of the DFL primary tomorrow, yet any reporter can verify Ellisons involvement with the Nation of Islam, his bald lying about it and his past support for cop killers with a quick trip to the clip file. It is certainly old news, but it is old news with new relevance in light of Ellisons aspiration to wield executive law enforcement authority on behalf of the state of Minnesota. Some DFL voters around the state who are unfamiliar with Ellison would care.

Last week PJ Media New York City editor David Steinberg broke a thoroughly researched story on endorsed DFL Fifth District congressional candidate Ilhan Omars apparently fraudulent marriage to husband number 2 based on her recent divorce from him. Steinberg documented the falsity of allegations made under oath by Omar in her default divorce.

Steinbergs August 8 story was posted online with the evidence he assembled to support it over a period of months. Yesterday Steinberg reviewed and explained the evidence one more time while noting the silence of the Minnesota media since he reported it.
These are three news stories that came to my attention over the last 24 hours. I think they tell us a lot about the current, degraded state of public life in America.

First, the Boston Globe organizes a media protest against the Trump administrations assault on the press.

The Boston Globe has been contacting newspaper editorial boards and proposing a coordinated response to President Trumps escalating enemy of the people rhetoric. We propose to publish an editorial on August 16 on the dangers of the administrations assault on the press and ask others to commit to publishing their own editorials on the same date, The Globe said in its pitch to fellow papers.

***

As of Saturday, we have more than 100 publications signed up, and I expect that number to grow in the coming days, Marjorie Pritchard, the Globes deputy editorial page editor, told CNN. The American Society of News Editors, the New England Newspaper and Press Association and other groups have helped her spread the word. The response has been overwhelming, Pritchard said. We have some big newspapers, but the majority are from smaller markets, all enthusiastic about standing up to Trumps assault on journalism.

Personally, I am more unhappy about the presss assault on President Trump than about President Trumps assault on the press. To listen to our heroic journalists, you might think that Trump is sending secret policemen to cart them off to prison.

No such thing, of course. Rather, Trump is saying things about left-wing press outlets that are nowhere near as nasty as what they have been saying about him since before his inauguration. Democratic Party journalists declared war on the president, and they now pretend that his fighting back is somehow an infringement of their rights. Boo freaking hoo.

Next, on a similar theme, we hear from Dani Rodrik, a professor at Harvards Kennedy School. Rodrik is concerned lest educational institutions normalize historically low unemployment, steady wage increases and a pro-America foreign policy:

The Trump administration confronts universities with a serious dilemma. On one hand, universities must be open to diverse viewpoints, including those that conflict with mainstream opinion or may seem threatening to specific groups.  On the other hand, there is the danger of normalizing and legitimizing what can only be described as an odious presidency.

It requires a peculiar sense of self-worth to think that your approval is needed to legitimize a president who was elected by the American people. Left-wing academics may think that ordinary Americans dont notice their arrogance, but they are mistaken.

How, exactly, does Rodrik propose to avoid normalizing and legitimizing a Republican president? Academic institutions should have nothing to do with anyone who serves in the administration, just as restaurants shouldnt serve them:

Those who serve with him are necessarily tainted by the experience. Trumps close associates and political appointees are his enablers. The stain extends beyond political operatives and covers economic policymakers as well. Trumps cabinet members and high-level appointees share collective responsibility for propping up a shameful presidency. They deserve opprobrium not merely because they hold cranky views on, say, the trade deficit or economic relations with China, but also, and more importantly, because their continued service makes them fully complicit in Trumps behavior.

Then again, they have enabled millions of Americans to go back to work at higher wages. And they have helped Trump to stand up to countries like China, which have fleeced U.S. companies of intellectual property for years with no effective response from prior administrations. But how, exactly, are educational institutions to avoid normalizing or legitimizing success?

Trumps immediate circle and senior appointeesshould not be accorded the degree of respect or deference that their seniority and government positions would normally merit. We do not, after all, have a normal administration that can be served honorably. This means no honorific titles (fellow, senior fellow), no named lectures, no keynote speeches headlining conferences or events. While individual faculty members and student groups should be free to invite Trump appointees to speak on campus, as a rule such invitations should not be issued by senior university officers. And lectures and presentations should always provide an opportunity for vigorous questioning and debate.

No honorific titles? No named lectures? No keynote speeches? Invitations to speak delivered by underlings? The horror! My friends will attest that I am not normally a profane person, but I join a large majority of Americans in saying, f*** you, a**hole.

Finally we come towho else?the New York Times. The Times was one of several media outlets that, in their eagerness to find ammunition that Senate Democrats might use to torpedo Judge Brett Kavanaughs Supreme Court nomination, submitted public records requests to get dirt on his wife, because she happens to work for a public entity as the town manager of Chevy Chase, Maryland.

I criticized this tactic in New York Times Targets Kavanaughs Wife. Others did as well. I published this Times email with a list of key words for which the paper wanted the City of Chevy Chase to search Mrs. Kavanaughs emails:

Now the Times has seen fit to respond to me and its other critics while reporting on the failure of its investigation of Mrs. Kavanaugh:

In the case of Mr. Kavanaugh, The Times requested records under Marylands public records law from Chevy Chase Section 5, where the nominees wife, Ashley, serves as town manager. We sought email records involving Judge Kavanaugh and communications that referenced hot-button topics. We believed that the records, if they existed, could provide a unique and personalized view into the nominee.

Fortunately, the Times didnt have standing to get a subpoena covering the Kavanaughs bedroom, or they surely would have used it to acquire a unique and personalized view into the nominee. Just like they did when Sonia Sotamayor and Elena Kagan were nominated to the Court. You remember those Times investigations, dont you?

Sadly, the Times admits that this phase of its anti-Kavanaugh effort came to naught:

Ultimately, our request yielded 85 pages of emails, none of which provided any substantive insights into Mr. Kavanaughs judicial philosophy. Instead, the records were largely what you would expect from a town managers email account  mundane dispatches about town business, from snow removals to local newsletters.

Heh. No surprise there. But, as the Times concludes, we had to try. Sure: when there is a risk that a judge who will actually read the Constitution and federal laws and apply them objectively might be confirmed, the Times has to try. Anything goes.

You could assemble stories like these pretty much any day of the week. But when I read them together, I thought they were a stark example of how malignant Americas self-appointed elites are, even though, as we never tire of pointing out, they are anything but elite. In fact, they are below average. Which is why most Americans rightly dont think much of them.
According to Goldstein Research, global automotive composite market size is expected to reach USD 10.6 billion by 2024, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.7% during the forecast period 2016-2024.

Automotive Composite Market

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According to Goldstein Research, global automotive composite market size is expected to reach USD 10.6 billion by 2024, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.7% during the forecast period 2016-2024. As witnessed the increasing environmental laws & vehicle emission norms, the manufacturers are inclining towards innovative composite parts in order to enhance the automobile efficiency. The manufacturers are even approaching the low cost manufacturing of composite parts of the automobile.Browse Full Report:Further, the composite market generated a revenue of USD 31.2 billion in 2016, which has immense growth impact on the global automotive composite market. Global automotive composite market segmentation has been carried out on the basis of product type, resin type, application type and geography. On the basis of product type, in the fiber composites segment, glass fiber composites accounted for highest market share of 80%, growing at a CAGR of 6.5% during the forecast period.Automotive composite industry is largely driven by Asia Pacific with a market share of 35% in 2016, followed by Europe automotive composite market. Further, Latin America automotive composite market is witnessing high growth opportunities for the manufacturers to establish their units in Brazil & Mexico.Download Exclusive Sample Report:Market SegmentationOn the basis of our in-depth analysis, Global Automotive Composite Market can be segmented as follows:By Product Type Metal Composites Polymer Composites Natural Fiber Composites Glass Fiber Composites Carbon Fiber Composites Ceramic Matrix CompositesBy Resin Type Thermoplastic Composites Thermoset CompositesBy Application Type Interior Exterior Chassis & power train components Others (Electrical and Electronics, etc.)By Region North America (US, Canada) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion, Adoption Rate (%)} Europe (UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, Russia, Poland and Rest of Europe) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Middle East and Africa (GCC Countries, North Africa, South Africa and Rest of Middle East & Africa) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Latin America (Brazil, Mexico and Rest of Latin America) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Asia Pacific (China, Japan, India, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Rest of Asia-Pacific) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Rest of the World {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)}Automotive Composite Market Industry Analysis contains detailed overview of the global automotive composite market. On the basis of our in-depth analysis, market can be segmented in terms of market segmentation by product type, resin type and application type.Further, for the in-depth analysis, Automotive Composite Market Report encompasses the market growth drivers, market challenges, risk analysis, market attractiveness, BPS (Base Point Scale) analysis, Porters five force model and SWOT analysis. This market report also includes competitive outlook of some of the major players profiling of companies such as Mitsubishi, Toray Industries, SGL, Toho Co. Ltd., Teijin, Cytec Solvay, BASF, Delphi, Johns Manville, Nippon Sheet Glass Co. Ltd., General Motor Company, DU Pont, Kineco Group, DOW Chemical Company, Johnson Controls, Inc., etc. The company profiles include business strategy, geographical revenue distribution, major information of the companies which encompasses business outlook, products, services and industries catered, financial analysis of the company and recent developments. Overall, the report represents the global automotive composite market trends along with market forecast that will help market consultants, technology providers, existing players searching for expansion opportunities, new players searching possibilities and other stakeholders to align their market centric strategies according to the ongoing and expected trends in the future.Download Exclusive Sample Report: https://www.goldsteinresearch.com/request-sample/global-automotive-composite-market Key questions answered in this Global Automotive Composite Report What is the Global Automotive Composite Market Size by 2024 and what would be the expected growth rate of the market? What is the total revenue per segment and region in 2015-16 and what would be the expected revenue per segment and region over the forecast period? What are the automotive composite market trends? What are the factors which are driving this market? What are the major barriers to automotive composite market growth? Who are the key vendors in this market space? What are the market opportunities for the existing and entry level players? What are the recent developments and business strategy of the key players?Browse Similar Report:
According to Goldstein Research, automotive sunroof market size is estimated at USD 5.1 billion in 2016, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 10.8% during the forecast period 2016-2024.

Automotive Sunroof Market

PR-Inside.com: 2018-08-13 08:17:25

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According to Goldstein Research, automotive sunroof market size is estimated at USD 5.1 billion in 2016, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 10.8% during the forecast period 2016-2024.Browse Full Report: https://www.goldsteinresearch.com/report/global-automotive-sunroof-market-industry-analysis There is trend being witnessed among the manufacturers to use the carbon fibers & polymers for sunroof to achieve fuel efficiency & light weightiness of the automobile. Further the anticipated high growth of electric vehicles market in near future tends to augment the use of light weighted material automotive sunroof. Global automotive sunroof market segmentation has been carried out on the basis of automotive sunroof type, material type, vehicle type and geography. On the basis of sunroof type, panoramic sunroof segment accounted for 28% market share and over the forecast period it is expected to continue its dominance. Global automotive sunroof industry is largely driven by Europe with a market share of 34% in 2016, followed by Asia Pacific automotive sunroof market. Further, Latin America automotive sunroof market is offering high growth opportunities to the OEMs to establish & expand their manufacturing units in Brazil & Mexico.Get More Information About Automotive Sunroof MarketMarket SegmentationOn the basis of our in-depth analysis, Global Automotive Sunroof Market can be segmented as follows:Based on Automotive Sunroof Type Built-in Sunroof Tilt & Slide Sunroof Panoramic Sunroof Solar Sunroof Pop-Up Sunroof Top Mount SunroofBased on Material Type Glass Automotive Sunroof Fibre Automotive SunroofBased on Vehicle Type Luxury Cars Hatchback Sedan SUVsBy Region North America (US, Canada) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion, Adoption Rate (%)} Europe (UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, Russia, Poland and Rest of Europe) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Middle East and Africa (GCC Countries, North Africa, South Africa and Rest of Middle East & Africa) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Latin America (Brazil, Mexico and Rest of Latin America) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Asia Pacific (China, Japan, India, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Rest of Asia-Pacific) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Rest of the World {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)}Automotive Sunroof Market Outlook 2024 contains detailed overview of the global automotive sunroof market. On the basis of our in-depth analysis, market can be segmented in terms of market segmentation by automotive sunroof type, material type, and vehicle type.Further, for the in-depth analysis, Automotive Sunroof Market Report encompasses the market growth drivers, market challenges, risk analysis, market attractiveness, BPS (Base Point Scale) analysis, Porters five force model and SWOT analysis.This market report also includes competitive outlook of some of the major players profiling of companies such as Aisin Seiki Co., Ltd., Inteva Products, LLC, Inalfa Roof Systems Group B.V, Nippon Sheet Glass Co. Ltd., Yachiyo Industry Co., Ltd., Corning Inc., and other high-flying vendors in the market are Webasto SE, Johnan America, Inc., Automotive Sunroof Company, Valmet Automotive, Mitsuba Corporation, Magna, Sunroof Systems, Evana Automation, Kuber Automotive, Erickson Auto Trim LLC, ACS France SAS, Prestige Sunroofs, Retro Vehicle Enhancement Ltd., Arvin Meritor Commercial Vehicle Systems (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., Shanghai Wanchao Car Sunroof Co., Ltd., etc. The company profiles include business strategy, geographical revenue distribution, major information of the companies which encompasses business outlook, products, services and industries catered, financial analysis of the company and recent developments.Overall, the report represents the global automotive sunroof market demand analysis along with market forecast that will help market consultants, technology providers, existing players searching for expansion opportunities, new players searching possibilities and other stakeholders to align their market centric strategies according to the ongoing and expected trends in the future.Download Exclusive Sample Report: https://www.goldsteinresearch.com/request-sample/global-automotive-sunroof-market-industry-analysis Key questions answered in this Global Automotive Sunroof Report What is the Global Automotive Sunroof Market Size by 2024 and what would be the expected growth rate of the market? What is the total revenue per segment and region in 2015-16 and what would be the expected revenue per segment and region over the forecast period? What are the automotive sunroof market trends? What are the factors which are driving this market? What are the major barriers to automotive sunroof market growth? Who are the key vendors in this market space? What are the market opportunities for the existing and entry level players? What are the recent developments and business strategy of the key players?Browse similar Report: https://www.goldsteinresearch.com/report/automotive-sensors-market-outlook-2024-global-opportunity-and-demand-analysis-market-forecast-2016-2024
Photo: The Canadian Press Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his four-year-old son Hadrien meet with seniors at the Milton Community Hall in P.E.I.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his Liberal government has no plans to resurrect Canada's controversial long-gun registry.

Trudeau is visiting Atlantic Canada just as the city of Fredericton continues to come to grips with Friday's deadly shooting, which claimed the lives of four people, including two local police officers.

He's fielding the usual array of questions that follow such tragedies  including whether Ottawa is prepared to contemplate any new restrictions on firearms.

Trudeau says his government has already moved forward with "common-sense gun legislation" that will deepen background checks and impose "reasonable limits" on the transport of weapons. Bill C-71 will also require retailers to keep inventory and sales records for longer periods of time.

But he's again insisting that he's not bringing back the registry, long a sore spot with farmers and gun enthusiasts after it was introduced in 1993 by Jean Chretien's government and even after it was dissolved in 2012 by the Harper Conservatives.

Over the weekend, Trudeau was in Fredericton where heoffered condolences to the families of the victims of the shooting, which killed police officers Robb Costello and Sara Burns, as well as Bobbie Lee Wright and her boyfriend, Donnie Robichaud.

"We will not be bringing back a long-gun registry  it's not part of our plan and has never been," Trudeau said today after a town hall meeting with seniors in the community of North Milton.

"There are lots of conversations going on about what next steps might be taken. We're listening to people and talking to experts about what we can do to keep our communities safe."

Trudeau was joined by newly appointed Seniors Minister Filomena Tassi, and also had his young son Hadrien in tow.

"I do this job because I have kids," he said on his way into the venue. "One of the things that I learned from my Dad was that if I just do this job and don't bring my kids along with me every now and then, I won't see them enough."
PR-Inside.com: 2018-08-13 12:01:02

AYR, Scotland, United Kingdom, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- For nine years and counting Minuteman Press franchise owners Jeff and Lise Whittle have dedicated themselves to serving their clients in Ayr, Scotland. They are meticulous in their care for every project entrusted to them and they continue to grow and lead the business-to-business services industry with loyal partnerships.



Meet Jeff and Lise Whittle

Jeff and Lise Whittle bring depth of knowledge from diverse careers into their digital print, design and marketing services centre in Ayr. The well-educated couple developed respectable, diverse careers. Jeff says, "I am a graduate mechanical engineer (University of Bristol) and have an MBA from Kingston Business School. My previous career was as a Quality Engineer becoming a Quality Director, before I moved into Programme Management as a Project Director."

Meanwhile, Lise developed her skills both in the creative and educational fields. "My wife, Lise, has an artistic background, having studied Silversmithing and Jewellery to degree level, she became a Designer Jeweller until our family came along. When she returned to work, she became a part-time Teaching Assistant." They gained strong reputations in their industries of choice, but as their lives progressed, the demands of working for someone else became complicated and the desire to simplify and make room for more time together led them to Minuteman Press International.

Jeff reflects on his journey to entrepreneurship, "My United Kingdom Company was acquired by a US company and I was later promoted to General Manager running a 50million sales factory with 500 employees. The US parent company had a strong focus on sales and I moved into the sales team eventually becoming a Global Sales Director looking after major OEM accounts. By 2005, the company had closed the Western European facilities and had moved them to a large site close to Warsaw, Poland, where I had a weekly commute from the UK."

Though he remained steadfast, tough economic times often influence corporate layoffs, and Jeff's company was no exception. "The US parent company eventually closed the Warsaw factory in 2007 and I moved to their larger competitor, the US-based Flextronics, as a Senior Business Development Director for their Polish facility in the north of Poland. I worked there for 2 years, before the recession hit and when the Western European expatriates were eventually let go, as we had trained up our Polish colleagues."

Having had enough of travel in Europe, Jeff started to look for a job closer to home. "One of my electives for my MBA was small business management and I thought it was time to be my own boss. I went along to a franchise fair in Glasgow and met the Minuteman Press International team. I was definitely interested and Vice President George Holzmacher met with me on several occasions to visit some of the Minuteman centres in Scotland." The impression made upon visiting working Scottish Minuteman Press owners was enough to warrant serious consideration, but the choice to buy a printing business was not one he or Lise would take lightly.

Why Minuteman Press?

Coming from a manufacturing engineering background, one of the key factors in the couple's choice of franchises, Minuteman Press International, was the proprietary software that was part of their proven system of operations. The software has been carefully designed to benefit Minuteman Press franchise owners worldwide and has helped franchisees manage their business operations. Jeff explains, "At that time, it was called FOCUS. Since then, Minuteman Press has made a major investment and redesigned the system from scratch to an even better system called FLEX. Another key factor was that the company had family values and really wanted the owners to succeed, offering superb support at all times."

After thorough due diligence, Jeff and Lise decided to go ahead with a new start-up franchise in their home town of Ayr. "After identifying a site for our store, Lise and I went to the two-week training program in the US. Again, I was impressed with Minuteman Press International's facilities and their high standard of training. Personally, it was important to really succeed as we were investing our life savings in this new venture and I made sure I did the homework each night, so we were prepared for the next day's training."

Arriving back from the US, Jeff and Lise were pleased to see that the centre we had chosen was revamped and made ready. "Our new equipment was installed and tested. We interviewed and selected a full-time Graphic Designer who we employed, and we were ready to open on when the country was still in recession. We were very ably supported by our Area Manager Dave Watson, who worked with us for 3 weeks with our store setup and initial marketing to our local business community."

Building something truly great comes with sacrifice and dedication, both of which Jeff and Lise have given in abundance as marketing services providers to the community of Ayr since the beginning. "Lise worked part-time in the store and I worked full time. It was tough at the beginning, however, I received terrific support from Dave Watson, my local BNI group, friends and relatives and I redoubled my marketing efforts to get it on track."

One of the best rewards of entrepreneurship came to fruition for Jeff and Lise through franchise ownership  a life's work that now includes their children in the business.

As they continue to affirm their reputation for delivering excellent results and providing personal customer service, Jeff and Lise have expanded their customer base. They have brought their children on board to help them with the family business. "Our business has steadily grown," Jeff explains. "Our two sons and daughter worked part-time during their university and college holidays. Our youngest son continues to work part-time within the bindery department, and our daughter, Lara (the youngest), has joined us as a full-time graphic designer, since leaving college with her HND. It is marvellous that the next generation has joined us and we enjoy working well together. We also employ two other full-time graphic designers (who are also both excellent), so we have doubled our staff complement since we have opened."

Dave Watson, Area Manager for Minuteman Press International, UK North, is pleased to provide continuing, local support to Minuteman Press in Ayr. Dave says, "Lise and Jeff are absolutely a lovely couple who have been a pleasure to work with over the years. Their determination, work ethic, quality, and great customer service has helped them build a great family business."

When asked for advice he would share with his fellow or prospective franchisees, Jeff answers, "It is important to keep marketing to new and existing customers." He continues, "We aim to serve our customers with care and efficiency. We are also proud when new customers come to us on the basis of referrals."

Minuteman Press in Ayr, Scotland is located at 61 Kyle Street, Ayr, Ayrshire KA7 1RS. For more information, call 01292 269288 or visit their website here.

About Minuteman Press International

Minuteman Press International is the number one rated business marketing and printing franchise that offers world class training and unparalleled ongoing local support. Started in 1973 by Roy Titus and his son Bob, Minuteman Press began franchising in 1975 and has grown to nearly 1,000 business service franchise locations worldwide including the U.S., Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Minuteman Press is ranked #1 in category by Entrepreneur 26 times and 15 years in a row, including 2018. Franchise Business Review has also named Minuteman Press International to its 2018 Top Franchises, 2018 Top Franchise Leaders, and 2018 Top Franchises for Women lists thanks to positive reviews from our owners.

At Minuteman Press, We Are The Modern Printing Industry providing high quality products and services that meet the needs of today's business professionals and go way beyond ink on paper. Today, our centers offer innovative branding solutions and produce custom designs, promotional products, branded apparel, direct mail marketing, large format printing (banners and posters), signs and graphics, and much more. Prior experience is not necessary to own and operate a successful Minuteman Press franchise.

To learn about Minuteman Press UK print franchise opportunities and access UK owner testimonials and Minuteman Press franchise reviews, visit http://bit.ly/minuteman-uk or call 0800 756 6332 for more information.

Contact:

Minuteman Press International

UK Print Franchise Opportunities, 0800 756 6332

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Media:

Chris Biscuiti, 631-249-1370, ext. 249

cbiscuiti@mpihq.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/731b6328-aac6-4668-8bc2-9bfafa8f866b
PR-Inside.com: 2018-08-13 16:35:53

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- Strong Portfolio Occupancy Rate of 100.0%, Healthy Gearing of 31%SINGAPORE, Aug 13, 2018 - (ACN Newswire) - Dasin Retail Trust Management Pte. Ltd., the Trustee-Manager of Dasin Retail Trust ("DRT", SGX:CEDU), is pleased to report that in first half of FY2018, net property income exceeded Forecast by 7% to S$31 million. Comparing to first half of FY2017, net property income increased by 85% attributable to better operational metrics and contribution from the acquisition of Shiqi Metro Mall in June 2017.Mr. Zhang Zhencheng, Chairman of the Trustee-Manager of DRT, said, "With the general planning of the Greater Bay Area, which will encourage the free flow of talent, goods, capital and information within the Bay Area, higher traffic flow and footfall is expected in the region and Zhongshan. This will prove beneficial to the Trust's properties." Mr. Li Wen, CEO of the Trustee-Manager of DRT, said, "We are pleased to report strong operational metrics within the portfolio. Weighted average lease term of 6.38 years by net lettable area and strong full occupancy are a testament to the capabilities of the team. We will continue to enhance our portfolio to provide stable and growing distributions for our unitholders." Proactive Portfolio ManagementThe Trustee-Manager is pleased to announce 100% occupancy in its portfolio, a testament to the robust retail scene in Zhongshan and the commercial manager's leasing capabilities. The Trustee-Manager continues to attract quality tenants into the portfolio. The weighted lease to expiry remains healthy at 4.07 years (by total rental income) and 6.38 years (by net lettable area).Inbuilt Potential for Growth with Strong PipelineDasin Retail Trust has a pipeline of 20 Right-of-First Refusal (ROFR) completed and uncompleted assets from Sponsor, Zhongshan Dasin Real Estate Co. Ltd. This comprises 12 completed properties and eight properties under development as well as the Purchase Option for Doumen Metro Mall. These properties spanning the cities of the Pearl River Delta Region of Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Shunde and Macau.ABOUT DASIN RETAIL TRUSTDasin Retail Trust is the only China retail property trust providing direct exposure to the fastgrowing Pearl River Delta region listed on the Main Board of the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited (the "SGX-ST") on 20 January 2017. Dasin Retail Trust's principal investment mandate is to invest in, own or develop land, uncompleted developments and income-producing real estate in Greater China (comprising People's Republic of China ("PRC"), Hong Kong and Macau), used primarily for retail purposes, as well as real estate related assets, with an initial focus on retail malls. The portfolio of Dasin Retail Trust comprises four retail malls strategically located in Zhongshan City in PRC.Dasin Retail Trust is managed by Dasin Retail Trust Management Pte. Ltd. (the "Trustee-Manager"). The Trustee-Manager's key objectives are to provide unitholders of Dasin Retail Trust with an attractive rate of return on their investment through regular and stable distributions to Unitholders and to achieve long-term sustainable growth in DPU and net asset value per Unit, while maintaining an appropriate capital structure for Dasin Retail Trust.ABOUT THE SPONSOR - ZHONGSHAN DASIN REAL ESTATE CO., LTD.Zhongshan Dasin Real Estate Co. Ltd. (the "Sponsor") was established on 13 July 2001 in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, PRC. The Sponsor Group's principal business is focused on the development and management of real estate, including the development and operation of retail malls, hotels, educational facilities and residential properties.The Sponsor Group has mainly been involved in the construction and development of various real estate projects in the Pearl River Delta region. Over the past 17 years, the Sponsor has established itself as one of the leading developers in Zhongshan, winning a number of national-level industry awards.For further information and enquiries, please contact:Li Wen, Chief Executive Officer, Dasin Retail Trust Management Pte. Ltd., Tel: +65 6509 8626 / (+86) 138 2391 0898, Email: liwen@ dasintrust.com Steven Ng, Chief Financial Officer, Dasin Retail Trust Management Pte. Ltd., Tel: +65 6509 8626, Email: stevenng@ dasintrust.com Full press release (PDF): https://bit.ly/2OyvZoS
According to Goldstein Research, global electric vehicle market size is projected to reach USD 346.3 billion by 2024 from an estimate of USD 118.4 billion in 2016, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 14.3% during the forecast period 2016-2024.

Electric Vehicle Market

PR-Inside.com: 2018-08-13 08:45:16

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According to Goldstein Research, global electric vehicle market size is projected to reach USD 346.3 billion by 2024 from an estimate of USD 118.4 billion in 2016, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 14.3% during the forecast period 2016-2024.Browse Full Report: https://www.goldsteinresearch.com/report/electric-vehicle-market-outlook-2024-global-opportunity-and-demand-analysis-market-forecast-2016-2024 Electric two wheelers and trucks have been deployed in the market and it is certainly gaining traction. Various automotive companies have announced the launch of their electric cars such as Tesla and the government initiative towards the adoption of EVs is accelerating the growth of the global electric vehicle industry.Global electric vehicle market segmentation has been carried out on the basis of technology type, vehicle type and geography. In 2016 the global electric vehicle stock had reached 2 million units. Though the market is in nascent stage but the government efforts are leading to rise in sales, such as in China where conventional scoter are banned by the government in order to promote electric scooter. Global electric vehicle market is largely driven by Asia Pacific with a revenue share of 35% in 2016, closely followed by the Europe region with +28% market share. The FAME scheme of Indian Government has led to spurring India electric vehicles market, by offering subsidies on purchase of electric vehicles ranging from USD 165 to USD 2,010.Get More Information About Electric Vehicle IndustryMarket SegmentationOn the basis of our in-depth analysis, Global Electric Vehicle Market can be segmented as follows:By Technology Type Hybrid cars Plug-in Hybrid Cars Market Battery Electric VehiclesBy Vehicle Type Passenger Cars Commercial Vehicles Two Wheelers Others (ATVs etc.)By Region North America (US, Canada) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion, Adoption Rate (%)} Europe (UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, Russia, Poland and Rest of Europe) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Middle East and Africa (GCC Countries, North Africa, South Africa and Rest of Middle East & Africa) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Latin America (Brazil, Mexico and Rest of Latin America) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Asia Pacific (China, Japan, India, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Rest of Asia-Pacific) {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Rest of the World {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)}Electric Vehicle Industry Analysis contains detailed overview of the global electric vehicle market. On the basis of our in-depth analysis, market can be segmented in terms of market segmentation by technology type and vehicle type.Further, for the in-depth analysis, Global Electric Vehicle Market Report encompasses the market growth drivers, market challenges, risk analysis, market attractiveness, BPS (Base Point Scale) analysis, Porters five force model and SWOT analysis. This market report also includes competitive outlook of some of the major players profiling of companies such as Nissan Motor Corporation Ltd., Pioneer Corporation, Honda Motor Co., Ltd., Toyota Motor Corporation, Tesla Motors, Inc., Ford Motor Company, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, General Motors, Daimler AG, Volkswagen AG, BYD Company Motors, Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, Geely Group, Polaris, Ingersoll Rand, Groupe Psa, etc.The company profiles include business strategy, geographical revenue distribution, major information of the companies which encompasses business outlook, products, services and industries catered, financial analysis of the company and recent developments. Overall, the report represents the global electric vehicle market trends along with market forecast that will help market consultants, technology providers, existing players searching for expansion opportunities, new players searching possibilities and other stakeholders to align their market centric strategies according to the ongoing and expected trends in the future.Download Exclusive Sample Report: https://www.goldsteinresearch.com/request-sample/electric-vehicle-market-outlook-2024-global-opportunity-and-demand-analysis-market-forecast-2016-2024 Key questions answered in this Global Electric Vehicle Report What is the Global Electric Vehicle Market Size by 2024 and what would be the expected growth rate of the market? What is the total revenue per segment and region in 2015-16 and what would be the expected revenue per segment and region over the forecast period? What are the electric vehicle market trends? What are the factors which are driving this market? What are the major barriers to electric vehicle market growth? Who are the key vendors in this market space? What are the market opportunities for the existing and entry level players? What are the recent developments and business strategy of the key players?Browse Similar Report https://www.goldsteinresearch.com/report/global-electric-commercial-vehicles-market
The global 3D bio-printing market accounted for USD 0.460 billion in 2016 and is set to be worth a staggering USD 1.3 billion by the end of forecast period i.e. 2024. Further the market is anticipated to expand at compound annual growth rate of 13.8% over the forecast period i.e. 2016-2024. In the 3D bioprinting sector, San Francisco based Prellis Biologics has raised USD 1.8 mllion for the development of microvasculature 3D printing tech for human organ printing

global 3D bio-printing market

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According to Goldstein Research, the global 3D bio-printing market is segmented based on technology and by applications. Application segment is further bifurcated into pharmaceutical, tissue and organ regeneration, bones and 3D cell culture. North America and Europe dominate the global 3D bio-printing market with approximately 60% market share. However, it is expected that Asia Pacific region is poised to take lead in 3D bio-printing technology in future. Asia Pacific is the key region for the potential adoption of 3D bio-printing technology, dominated by the South Korea, Japan and China, which currently contributes to the 21% of the share in global 3D bio-printing market.Browse Full Report: https://www.goldsteinresearch.com/report/3d-bio-printing-market-outlook-2024-global-opportunity-and-demand-analysis-market-forecast-2016-2024 The world is facing the huge shortage of organs available for lifesaving transplants. For instance, in U.K an individual have to wait an average of 944 days for a kidney transplant. There is similar shortage of liver, lungs and other organs. The shortage of transplant tissues and organs is estimated to be the major cause for the death in America with around 900,000 deaths a years or one third of all deaths in the U.S. These rising number of deaths can be prevented or delayed by the printed or engineered tissue transplants, with the growing demand the growth opportunity for 3D bio-printing technology is endless.Global 3D Bio-Printing Market Outlook, 2016-2024 covers the present ground scenario and future opportunity prospects for the market players to analyze the target markets across the globe. Moreover, the competitive analysis includes the in-depth analysis of the major players and leaders in the healthcare industry. The market study conducted on the basis of primary as well as secondary research where the analysts fragment the data from various databases such as Bloomberg, Factiva, Owler and others. Our primary research team conducted various interviews, surveys and group discussions of industry 3D bio printer manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors, pharmaceutical & biotechnology companies, cosmetic product manufacturers, healthcare institutions, clinical centres, medical research laboratories and academic medical centres and universities to analyze the future prospects of the overall healthcare industry.Get More Information About 3D Bio-Printing MarketGlobal 3D Bio-Printing Market Segmentation can be classified on the basis of:By Technology Inkjet-Based Bio Printing Extrusion Based Bio Printing Laser-Based Bio PrintingBy Applications Pharmaceuticals Tissue and Organ Regeneration Bones 3D Cell Culture otherBy Geography North America (US, Canada) 3D Bio-Printing Market {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Europe (UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, Russia, Poland and Rest of Europe) 3D Bio-Printing Market {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} The Middle East and Africa (GCC Countries, North Africa, South Africa and Rest of the Middle East & Africa) 3D Bio-Printing Market {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Latin America (Brazil, Mexico and Rest of Latin America) 3D Bio-Printing Market {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)} Asia Pacific (China, Japan, India, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Rest of Asia-Pacific) 3D Bio-Printing Market {Market Share (%), Market Size (USD Billion), Adoption Rate (%)}Trend: 3D Bioprinting Attracts InvestorsBIOLIFE4D, a medical technology manufacturer in USA has registered a USD 50 million initial public offering with the SEC under Regulation A+ rules and signed a laboratory service agreement with Northwestern University in order to access world-class academic research facilities and resources, including sophisticated imaging and instrumentation capabilities to make the technology faultless in order to fabricate viable organ replacement a safe, accessible and affordable reality.Download Exclusive Sample Report:Driver: Shortage Of Organs And Rising Need For TransplantsAccording to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 119,873 organs were transplanted which is increasing by 1.81% annually. Shortage of organs and rising need for transplants has significantly bolstered the demand for 3D bio-printed organs to overcome the shortage of organs for transplants.Challenge: Huge Investments at Nascent Stage Of 3D Bio-PrintingHowever, being in its nascent stage huge investments and the high cost of devices hinders the growth of 3d bioprinting market. But, once 3D Bioprinting of human tissues and organs become commercially feasible, patients will have access to these organs, printed using the size and organic structure they need. As healthcare cost drops, this innovation will play an important role in both emerging and developed economies.Global 3D Bio-Printing Market Report has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis from industry experts. The report covers the competitive landscape and current position of major players in the market space. The report also includes Porter's five force model, SWOT analysis, company profiling, business strategies of market players and their business models. 3D bio-printing market report also recognizes value chain analysis to understand the cost differentiation to provide a competitive advantage to the existing and new entry players.Browse Similar Report: https://www.goldsteinresearch.com/report/global-dental-services-market
Singapore Pharmaceutical Market

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Pharmaceutical manufacturing industry provides highest paying jobs which is increasing the employment in the country. In 2012, as per Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), pharmaceutical manufacturing sector provided more than 5,700 jobs with an average wage USD 70,000 in Singapore. Furthermore, Singapore invests huge amount to develop its healthcare system. In 2016, Singapore government invested around USD 13 billion in the development of healthcare facilities in the region. As per Ministry of Singapore Health, there were 12,000 hospital beds in 25 hospitals and specialty centers in Singapore.Browse Full ReportAccording to Goldstein Research, Singapore pharmaceutical market is segmented on the basis of products and by therapeutics. Therapeutics segment is further categorized into cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, oncology diseases, central nervous system disorders (CNS) disorders, gastrointestinal, other diseases (dermatology, rheumatology). Cardiovascular and infectious diseases occupies largest share of Singapore pharmaceutical market followed by oncology and respiratory diseases. Cardiovascular diseases accounted for 25% share of Singapore pharmaceutical market in 2016, and is projected register robust growth during the forecast period. Rising prevalence of gastrointestinal problems and diabetes is expected to increase the demand for therapeutics in Singapore over the forecast period.Get More Information ABout Singapore Pharmaceutical MarketSingapore Pharmaceutical Market Outlook, 2016-2024 covers the present ground scenario and future opportunity prospects for the market players to analyze the target markets across the globe. Moreover, competitive analysis includes the in-depth analysis of the major players and leaders in healthcare industry. Our primary research team conducted various interviews, surveys and group discussions of medical devices manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors, pharmaceutical & biotechnology companies, cosmetic product manufacturers, healthcare institutions, clinical centers, medical research laboratories and academic medical centers and universities to analyze the future prospects of the overall healthcare industry.Singapore Pharmaceutical Market Segmentation can be classified on the basis of:Based on Products Over-the-counter (OTC) drugs Generic Drugs Patented DrugsBased on Therapeutics Cardiovascular Diseases Diabetes Respiratory Diseases Infectious Diseases Oncology Gastrointestinal Problems Central Nervous System (CNS) Disorders Other Diseases (Dermatology, Rheumatology)Market Trends, Drivers and ChallengesIncreasing number of Singapores multinational corporations and local startups to manufacturer and export medical equipments across the world is the ongoing trend. Several medical products are exported from Singapore such as syringes, catheters, research instruments and scientific analytical equipments.Singapores advanced infrastructure, political stability, strong intellectual property law and acceptability towards advance technology offers plentiful advantages to pharmaceutical industry of the country. Singapore pharmaceutical industries are adopting robotic based technology for physical therapy and surgeries which is gaining immense popularity across the world.Despite of being the largest potential market for pharmaceutical industry, foreign drug manufacturers faces problems while exporting in Singapore. Product license from Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or ASEAN Common Technical Dossier (ACTD) to export and import of drugs in Singapore market is mandatory for all foreign drug companies. Foreign drug companies producing innovative drugs are facing challenges in exporting products in Singapore market.Download Exclusive Sample Report @ https://www.goldsteinresearch.com/request-sample/singapore-pharmaceutical-market-outlook-2024-opportunity-assessment-and-demand-analysis-market-forecast-2016-2024 Singapore Pharmaceutical MarketReport has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis from industry experts. The report covers the competitive landscape and current position of major players in the market space. The report also includes porters five force model, SWOT analysis, company profiling, business strategies of market players and their business models. Singapore Pharmaceutical MarketReport also recognizes value chain analysis to understand the cost differentiation to provide competitive advantage to the existing and new entry players.Browse Similar Report: https://www.goldsteinresearch.com/report/india-pharmaceutical-market-industry-overview
An Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) parliamentary group is to be established by the National Assembly as part of efforts to address remedial issues in the Nigerian EITI audit reports.

The Executive Secretary of NEITI, Waziri Adio said the new group is expected to draw membership from relevant oil and gas committees in both the Senate and House of Representatives.

Mr Adio said in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Sunday that the group would be coordinating legislative actions on implementation of remedial issues identified by the NEITI independent audit reports in the extractive industry.

He said the Forum would also promote and strengthen intra-legislative committee relations, engagements and outreach on important issues requiring urgent legislative intervention and advocacy.

The NEITI executive secretary used the occasion to acknowledge the cordial working relationship between NEITI and the National Assembly, especially in areas of monitoring and oversight of the oil and gas industry.

NEITI audit reports

Since its inception in 2004, the NEITI has conducted eight independent audits in the oil and gas sector (19992004, 2005, 2006-2008, 2009-2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015) and one in the solid minerals sector (2015).

All the reports have always been accompanied with recommendations based on findings relating to violations of stipulated laws and regulations on revenue or tax remittances by companies or receipts by government and its agencies.

Regrettably, majority of these recommendations have always been observed in breach by the companies and the various government agencies, as there are no legal authority to NEITI to enforce compliance or issue sanctions for ignoring them.

Concerned about the recurring disregard to the recommendations in the reports, participants in a retreat in Lagos for members of the National Assembly on EITI implementation in Nigeria resolved to set up the parliamentary group to attempt to put a stop to it.

The Chairmen of the relevant committees on extractive industry issues in both the Senate and the House of Representatives explained the NEITI Reports usually contain comprehensive information and data as essential tools for national planning.

At the retreat, which was supported by Trust Africa Project, a non-governmental organisation, lawmakers and their aides were exposed to the principles, processes, methods and benefits of EITI implementation in Nigeria and the role of the legislature in the EITI value chain.

NEITI cover commodity trading

In a related development, NEITI says it has expanded its operations in the oil and gas industry to cover Commodity Trading.

Director, Communications and Advocacy, Ogbonnaya Orji, disclosed this at a workshop for government agencies and oil trading companies.

Mr Orji said NEITIs decision to move into commodity trading was in line with the agencys mandate, in compliance with EITI 2016 global standards.

He told participants that the overall objective of NEITIs interest in commodity trading was to improve transparency in the sale of the States share of production by government and State-owned enterprises among others.

Calling on companies and government agencies involved in commodity trading to carefully study the developed templates by NEITI, he said this would help them internalize the new reporting requirements as part of their respective overall business model.

Representatives of government agencies, oil and gas companies welcomed NEITIs decision to expand its operations to commodity trading, in view of the importance of transparency, fair competition and good business ethics.

The participants also advised NEITI to focus on ensuring accurate data on production, accurate measurement of volumes of government equity crude oil, including crude condensate, crude allocation for export and domestic use, accurate computation of in-kind revenues, taxes and royalty.

The agencies, petroleum products marketers and crude oil trading firms also identified marketing contracts and related agreements, process of transfer of income from sales of equity crude, liftings and other similar transactions as other key areas in commodity trading for NEITI to pay attention.

The workshop reviewed the templates developed to reconcile transactions in this sector and resolved to give the Marketers/Traders time to study and make inputs.
A special tribunal in Bangladesh capital Dhaka sentenced five men to death on Monday for crimes against humanity during the countrys war of independence in 1971.

The International Crimes Tribunal, led by its Chairman, Justice Shahinur Islam, found the suspects Esahaque Shikder, Abdul Gani, Md Awal, Md Pada and Solaiman Mridha guilty of the charges rape, murder, confinement and torture of unarmed civilians.

According to the investigation agency of the war crimes tribunal, the accused were involved with the Muslim League and Al-Badr, an auxiliary force of the then Pakistani occupation army, in the countrys Patuakhali district, some 204 km south of Dhaka.

All the accused, who are in police custody, were taken to the tribunal for verdict delivery at 10:30 a.m. local time Monday.

The verdict stated that the five convicts should be hanged until they were dead.

In line with law, the death row convicts have the opportunity to appeal the decision at the Supreme Court within a month of the verdict.

After returning to power in January 2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Bangladeshs independence hero Mujibur Rahman, established the first tribunal in March 2010, almost 40 years after the 1971 war.

Five opposition Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party leaders, Mir Quasem Ali, Motiur Nizami, Abdul Molla, Muhammad Kamaruzzaman and Ali Mujahid, have already been executed for the 1971 war crimes.

Apart from them, Salaudin Chowdhury, leader of ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zias Bangladesh Nationalist Party, was also executed for war crimes.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh was called East Pakistan until 1971.

The government of Hasina said about three million people were killed in the war.

(Xinhua/NAN)
At least seven miners are dead after an explosion caused a coal mine to collapse in South-western Pakistan, an official said on Monday.

More than a dozen miners were working when an explosion caused the mine to cave in, in the Sanjdi region of Balochistan Province.

We have recovered bodies of seven miners, whereas six are still trapped, said Muhammad Arslan, a spokesperson for the provincial disaster management authority.

Mr Arslan said the mine caved in following an explosion triggered by an accumulation of methane gas.

Rescue operations were still underway, he added.

Most of the miners were from the Shangla area of the north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, local media reported.

Poor working conditions inside coal mines in mineral-rich Balochistan regularly claim the lives of miners, but often go unreported.

Balochistan is Pakistans largest province and hosts a Chinese-built deep-sea port, part of Beijings road and rail corridor, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The corridor is designed to access markets in the Middle East and beyond.

(dpa/NAN)
The third round of peace talks between South Sudans conflicting parties started on Monday in the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

This round of talks discusses some issues that have not been resolved in the document of the peace deal signed on August 5, said Sudans Foreign Minister Al-Dirdiri Ahmed.

All South Sudanese parties are taking part in this round, scheduled to end on August 19, added Ahmed.

He expressed optimism that the parties would settle those issues and reach a comprehensive peace agreement.

Meanwhile, South Sudan Information Minister, Michael Lueth, said the outstanding issues to be discussed during this meeting include powers of the president and vice presidents.

Other issues are representation in the judicial authority, as well as revision of the countrys administrative division and naming of new ministries.

He said these issues were not complicated and could be resolved within hours if necessary seriousness is provided.

Earlier, a South Sudanese opposition alliance demanded reconsideration of the administrative division of 32 states.

In October 2015, South Sudan President, Salva Kiir, issued a decree dissolving the Council of the States, which operated under the administrative division of 10 states, and establishing 28 states.

In January 2017, Mr Kiir issued a separate decree establishing additional four states.

South Sudans conflicting parties signed a final deal on August 5 in Khartoum on power-sharing and security arrangements.

The deal was signed by Mr Kiir, major opposition leader Riek Machar and representatives of other South Sudanese opposition factions.

It stipulates that Mr Kiir will continue his post during the transitional period, while Mr Machar will be the first vice president among the four vice presidents from different political parties.

Under the agreement, the transitional cabinet would be composed of 35 ministers, including 20 ministers from the government, and nine from Machar-led Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO).

The deal stipulates a transitional national legislative body composed of 550 members, with 332 from the government and 128 from the SPLM-IO.

South Sudan has been witnessing a civil war since December 2013, which has killed about 10,000 and displaced millions of others.

In another development, at least 23 people have been killed and 52 others injured during fresh tribal violence in the western South Sudanese town of Tonj over the weekend, a local government official said on Monday.

The violence started on Friday after four local pastoralists from the rival Dinka tribe were killed during a foiled cattle raid, Tonj State Minister of Information James Dak said.

Dak said the community of the slain herders launched a counter attack on a neighbouring community which they suspected to have carried out the failed raid, leading to scores of causalities.

He said calm has since returned to the region after a joint military force made of army soldiers and police was deployed.

After the clashes ended on Aug. 11, we confirmed a total of 23 people dead and 52 wounded from both sides, Dak said. Calm has returned to the area and there is no major security threat.

For decades, livestock-related violence has been a major challenge among pastoralist communities in South Sudan as thousands of people are estimated to have been killed in violent cattle raids.

(Xinhua/NAN)
Voters stayed away in droves from Malis run-off presidential election due to fears over security and simple apathy, but the voting process was generally fair in spite a number of incidents, election monitors said on Monday.

The vote pitted President Ibrahim Keita against opposition leader Soumaila Cisse after an inconclusive first round in July, when Mr Keita won about 41 per cent of the vote.

Official second-round results are not expected for a few days but Mr Keita  known as IBK  is predicted to seal a second term in office.

Mr Cisse, who had accused the government camp of cheating in the first round, on Monday again alleged fraud and said he had won.

We have a large lead. We do not accept that our voice is stolen, he told a news conference in the capital Bamako.

Threats by jihadist militants forced nearly 500 polling stations  about two per cent of the total  to stay closed during Sundays run-off, the government said.

One election official was killed in northern Niafunke, in Timbuktu region.

Security fears severely dampened the turnout, which a civil society group, the Mali Citizen Observation Pool (POCIM) estimated at just over 27 per cent of the eight million registered voters.

Turnout is usually about 40 per cent in Malian elections.

Mali is high on the list of Western powers security concerns due to the presence of militant groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State.

A successful election is seen as vital in the effort to restore stability as the government tackles the resurgent Islamist threat and outbreaks of ethnic strife.

The vast nation is also a main transit route for illegal migrants trying to reach Europe, a concern in EU capitals.

As votes were being counted on Monday, Cisse, who heads the Union for the Republic and Democracy (URD) party, called on his supporters to challenge Mr Keitas expected victory.

We will not accept that a president wins through fraud. And we will show that there is fraud. This fight is in your hands, dear supporters Lets get engaged to save Mali, he said.

But Mohamed Dileita, Head of an Observation Mission from the Paris-based OIF, a federation of French-speaking nations, said: Everyone has more or less accepted the verdict the vote took place.

At the time I speak, at least, it is a calm election, credible. At the moment we do not see any reason why it changes, Mr Dileita told Radio France Internationale.

Malis constitutional court rejected Mr Cisses claims of fraud in the first round, held on July 29.

Most of the shuttered polling stations were in the Timbuktu region and the conflict-hit central region of Mopti, Security Minister, Salif Traore, said.

In 2013, French troops pushed Islamist militants out of areas they had seized in the desert north, but they have since regrouped and routinely attack civilians, Malian soldiers and UN peacekeepers.

Thousands of troops had been deployed across Mali to protect voters on Sunday after widespread violence in the first round.

POCIM said in its report: Voters did not mobilise much to fulfill their civic duty.

The reasons given relate to the security problem and the lack of enthusiasm following the publication of the results of the first round.

POCIM estimated turnout in the capital Bamako at just 26 per cent, while in northern Timbuktu, which was in the hands of jihadists just five years ago, it was 40 per cent. Turnout in Mopti was 24 per cent.

It reported isolated incidents of ballot stealing and attacks on polling stations, including two which were torched.

A report by an EU observer mission will be important for the credibility of the election, though it was not clear on Monday when it would be published.

On Sunday, the EU mission said the voting had passed peacefully for the most part, although it had no monitors in Mopti, Kidal and Timbuktu regions due to the security threat.

(Reuters/NAN)
Photo: The Canadian Press Christopher Garnier is charged with second-degree murder in the death of Truro police officer Const. Catherine Campbell.

The mother of an off-duty police officer who was strangled and her body placed in a green bin has told the Nova Scotia Supreme Court that she'll never forgive Christopher Garnier, as the convicted killer apologized directly to the family of Catherine Campbell.

In a victim impact statement read today at Garnier's parole eligibility hearing, Susan Campbell said the day her daughter died, a part of her died as well.

With Catherine Campbell's father Dwight Campbell at her side, she told Justice Joshua Arnold she has not seen genuine remorse from Garnier or his family, and said "there will be no forgiveness."

At the end of the hearing, Garnier stood and apologized to Campbell's family and friends, saying he knows there's nothing he can do to ease their pain.

Reading from a piece of paper, he said he hoped the Campbell family would one day forgive him.

The Crown argued Garnier should serve 16 years before he's able to apply for parole, while the defence argued Garnier should become eligible for parole after serving 10 years.

Arnold reserved his decision until 2 p.m. Tuesday.

The 30-year-old man was convicted in December of second-degree murder and interfering with a dead body in the death of the 36-year-old woman.
Eight buses carrying 137 Syrian refugees, who had fled across the border to Lebanon, went back to Syria on Monday, the National News Agency reported.

The returnees, who had been living in the Lebanese border villages of Shebaa and al-Arqoub, will mainly go back to areas surrounding the capital Damascus, according to a Lebanese security source.

The Lebanese Security General Department said that they had secured the voluntary return of the Syrians towards the Syrian border in coordination with the UNs refugee agency (UNHCR).

In recent months, hundreds of Syrian refugees have been repatriated from Lebanon as the war winds down in their homeland.

Lebanon is currently hosting some one million Syrians.

Lebanese officials have repeatedly said the influx of refugees from Syria has placed a massive burden on the countrys economy.

Russia, a major military ally of the Syrian Government, announced it is coordinating with Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to facilitate the return of refugees to Syria.

More than five million Syrians have fled the country since the conflict began more than seven years ago, according to estimates by the UN.

(dpa/NAN)
The storm at the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is showing no sign of abating as the reinstated Executive Secretary, Usman Yusuf, and other top officials have accused each other of fraud.

Mr Yusuf returned from a seven-month suspension in February after President Muhammadu Buhari turned aside the recommendations of a ministerial probe panel that indicted him of misconduct.

He stoked the current crisis that has further heated the tension at the agency by asking the Governing Council to punish the man who held the fort while he was on suspension, Attahiru Ibrahim, and three other directors.

Mr Yusuf alleged that the top management officials paid upfront a lawyer they engaged to defend the agency in a case instituted by Mr Yusufs predecessor, Martins Thomas, over his removal as Executive Secretary in April 2015.

In December 2017, the National Industrial Court gave judgment in favour of Mr Thomas and ordered that he be paid N172.1 million as his emoluments for the remaining four years of his tenure and other compensations.

Not satisfied with the judgment, NHIS under Mr Ibrahim as acting ES engaged Yunus Usman to pursue an appeal and paid him N44 million as fee.

But following his return from suspension, Mr Yusuf complained to the governing council of the agency that the four directors acted irregularly in the engagement of the lawyer, in particular by allegedly paying his fee upfront, contrary to procurement laws.

Responding after the Governing Council set up an Establishment Committee to look into the complaint, the senior officials denied the allegations. They claimed Mr Yusuf only wanted them flushed out of the system over their roles in restraining his excesses.

We wish to state emphatically and for the records, that the pressure and harassment of the officers under investigation is being mounted by the Executive Secretary, Prof Usman Yusuf as an extension of the culture of siege he has imposed on the organisation since he arrived on the scene, and the vicious witch-hunt and selective persecution of those he considered as not in his favour, particularly for raising the flag against his high-handedness and wanton abuse of due process for personal advantage, Mr Ibrahim wrote in a memo dated July 9 to the chairman of the governing council, Enyatu Ifenne.

NHIS Office

This effort is to appeal to the council to kindly ensure that natural justice and equity are upheld in the consideration of this matter, considering that a thorough analysis of the infraction alleged against us pales significantly compared with the enormous and grievous infractions that have been committed and are still being committed by Professor Usman Yusuf as Executive Secretary, in terms of volumes of funds involved and his unprecedented impunity and disrespect for constituted authority.

Mr Ibrahim then proceeded to enumerate 10 established cases of infractions with impunity by Mr Yusuf. The cases border on financial mismanagement, financial recklessness, breach of financial regulations, suppression of information in order to mislead approving authorities, and refusal to carry out lawful instruction.

The alleged infractions raised by Mr Ibrahim included some over which the ministerial probe panel had indicted Mr Yusuf, but a serious new one revealed that upon his reinstatement, he took N3.5 million from the agency as fuel money for the period he was on suspension.

Also grave was the allegation that Mr Yusuf awarded contracts to a company owned by his elder brother which also does not have competence in the areas covered by the contracts.

The Executive Secretary awarded contracts to Lubekh Nigeria Limited for Consultancy for Media and Special Public Relations for NHIS at contract sum of N43 million. The company was found and confirmed to be owned majorly by Alhaji Kabir Yusuf YarAdua, the elder brother of the Executive Secretary. The evaluation of the submissions by respondents to this lot was done by Hassan Kabir YarAdua, the son of the owner of the company.

Kabir YarAdua is one of 14 officers whose secondment by Mr Yusuf to the NHIS was faulted by the Ministry of Health, but which the Executive Secretary has allegedly flatly refused to reverse.

This action amounts to fraudulent practice and conflict of interest contrary to Section 57 (12) (b) of the Public Procurement Act, 2007 which states that A conflict of interests exists where a person: possesses a direct or indirect interest in or relationship with a bidder, supplier, contractor or service provider that is inherently unethical or that may be implied or construed to be or make possible person gain due to the persons ability to influence dealing.

Aside these, the said Lubekh Nigeria Limited lacks the competence to execute the contracts awarded to it by NHIS, as the company was registered by the Corporate Affairs Commission to carry on business as food processors, building and construction.

The Governing Council is yet to deliberate on the case against the directors as well as on their counter accusations against the Executive Secretary.

This is perhaps because the council has several other issues on its hands, especially after Mr Yusuf alleged that funds of the agency totaling a whopping N720 billion was missing.

Mr Yusuf made the allegation early last month while responding to a query issued him by the council for engaging an auditing firm without approval of superior authorities. In its query, the council also said the audit firm was engaged despite the fact the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, had engaged another firm for the same purpose.

Responding to the query through a power-point presentation to the governing council, the Executive Secretary alleged that NHIS over the years prior to his appointment in 2016 had invested N720 billion without approval by successive Ministers of Health, Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and Governing Boards of the Scheme.

He said commercial banks, former executive secretaries and select management staff of the NHIS as well as interest groups were involved in the investment that could no longer be traced.

Mr Yusuf said it was upon discovering the scandal that he engaged forensic accountants to trace the huge missing funds.

Complicating the issue was the fact that a team raised by the Federal Government had reported that over N138 billion of NHIS cash was trapped in 17 banks, financial companies and individual pockets between 2011 and July this year, he said.

Following the report, the Chairman of the Governing Council of the agency, Enyatu Ifenne, directed the Executive Secretary to clear the concerns of the trapped funds and forensic audit and guide the council on the way forward.

It was in response to the directive that Mr Yusuf made the submission that the agency could no longer trace the whopping funds it invested over the years, a discovery he said led him in December 2016 to engage the services of Sofura Professional Services to carry out a forensic review of the accounting and banking system of the NHIS.

He said it was when he resumed from suspension in February that he became aware that the office of the AGF had engaged another firm, Aruna Bawa & Co, to carry out an audit and recovery of NHIS funds held by financial institutions, companies and individuals.

While Mr Yusuf did not respond to calls and text messages to his phone, Mrs Enyanatu, the chairperson of the governing council whose desk received all the allegations, however spoke.

Yes your sources are probably right but it is premature for me to say anything at this point, she told PREMIUM TIMES.

These petitions keep bouncing back and forth. All I can say for now is that the council is going to meet and the petitions will be put before them to decide what to do. I cant say more because I dont want to preempt anything.
Health experts have urged the federal government and civil society organisations to always involve local artisans and community members in health campaigns so as to get maximum results.

Speaking at a one-day high-level strategic meeting on Routine Immunisation in Abuja on Thursday, a public health expert, Paul Bassi said it is important for CSOs and governments to recognise the influence of local artisans.

The meeting was organised by the development Research and Projects Center (dRPC) in conjunction with the National Association of Community Health Practitioners of Nigeria (NACHPN), to help strengthen the accountability framework for routine immunisation service delivery at national and state levels.

Mr Bassi, a professor of public health, Bingham University and Director, Child Health and Special Duties JSI said the inclusion of barbers in the immunisation process helped improve immunisation coverage in Bauchi State for instance.

He said his organisation was able to get cooperation from barbers in Bauchi State, which assisted in identifying newborns for vaccine coverage.

He said they had been having problems identifying newborns, but the barbers who were not considered to be CSOs came in to save the day.

He said, most of the children were not born in the health facilities so the barbers helped identify the newborns in their various houses.

He said the barbers were able to achieve this easily because they are the ones that do circumcise the children, cut their hairs and also do tribal markings.

He noted that the outcome was tremendous as it helped to cover a lot of grounds in routine immunisation in the state.

Mr Bassi called on CSOs to factor in local community-based professionals in their advocacy and also listen to them and not always rely on the knowledge of foreign partners or donors to solve immunisation and other health issues.

He also urged them to do more in the implementation stage of routine immunisation as this will help reduce the wastage of vaccines at the community level.

What I am advocating is to allow CSOs to be at every level across the states and levels of implementation, he explained.

In her welcome address, the Executive Director, dRPC. Judith-Ann Walker, called for accountability in routine immunisation.

She said at present, there is a huge gap in routine immunisation in the country.

She stated that the process will be needing $3.6 billion in the next ten years, while the federal government will be contributing $2 billion.
Part of the problems that resulted in the introduction of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) was the protracted nature of many cases in court.

Following the core objective of the ACJA, therefore, section 306 of the Act was introduced to curtail the rate at which interlocutory applications led to the suspension of a substantive matters still pending in court.

Interlocutory application refers to a request for an order of court regarding a matter of immediate importance during the prosecution of another matter, yet to be decided upon by the court.

The section provides that, an application for stay of proceedings in respect of a criminal matter before the court shall not be entertained.

Another section that aided the prevention of unnecessary delay of trials in federal courts is section 396 of the ACJA. According to section 396 (2) of the Act, objections raised regarding the validity of a charge by a defendant shall be considered along with the substantive matter and a ruling delivered on such objection(s) at the time when judgement is delivered in the substantive suit.

These two sections were largely considered a welcome development in the struggle to eliminate undue delay of cases as lawyers could no longer hide behind the questionability of a charge or a pending case at a higher court to suspend their trials.

Cases like that of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of Indigenous People of Biafra and former spokesperson of the Peoples Democratic Party, Olisa Metuh were among many others prevented from becoming unnecessarily delayed, using the Act.

However, when the Supreme Court in November, 2015 ordered the suspension of the Senate President, Bukola Sarakis trial on alleged false asset charge, the decision of the Supreme Court resulted in raging debates about the admissibility of these provisions, as captured in the opinion of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana.

Section 396 (3) of the ACJA also provides for the day-to-day trial of defendants upon their arraignment. Specifically, the section provides that, Upon arraignment, the trial of the defendant shall proceed from day-to-day until the conclusion of the trial.

The section further adds that, Where day-to-day hearing of the matter is not possible after arraignment, parties to the matter shall only be entitled to not more than five adjournments from arraignment to final judgement and the interval between each adjournments shall not exceed 14 days.

While a lot of high courts have complied with the first part of this section, which entails day-to-day trial of suspects, virtually all the courts have adjourned cases for an interval period of more than 14 days, in negation of the requirements of this section.

Also, according to the provision of section 396 (7) of the ACJA, the promotion of a judge shall not be considered a reason for restarting a case.

A judge of the Federal High Court who has been elevated to the Court of Appeal shall have dispensation to continue to sit as a High Court Judge, only for the purpose of concluding any part-head criminal matter, pending before him at the time of his elevation and shall conclude within a reasonable time.*

This section however provides that the duty of the elevated judge at the trial court shall only be considered on the grounds that it does not hinder his or her new responsibilities at the Court of Appeal.

Before the introduction of ACJA, high courts had no jurisdictions to award costs for damages incurred by the victims of crimes. All the victims could get was the conviction of the culprit.

With the introduction of ACJA however, these courts became empowered to not only convict victims, but also to award sums as a recourse for damages incurred from the action of culprits during the same proceedings.

According to section 314 (1), the court may also order the defendant to pay a sum of money to defray expenses incurred in the prosecution, as compensation to any person injured by the offence.

Such a sum could also be offered, as compensation to an innocent purchaser of any property in respect of which the offence has been committed who has been compelled to give it up.

The order for the payment of damages could also be made, to defray expenses incurred in medical treatment of a victim injured by the convict in connection with the offence.

Also, where a property is recovered from the defendant in the course of the proceedings, that property can either be returned to anyone who appears as its owner or given as compensation to the defendant in the trial.

Read the first part of this analysis here.
The Nigerian Army said calm has been restored at Maiduguri Airport seized for two hours on Sunday by riotous troops, that it described as unscrupulous.

In a statement on Monday, Onyema Nwachukwu, Deputy Director Public Relations, Operation Lafiya Dole Theatre Command, said the protest by the soldiers happened while the command was conducting a redeployment of soldiers at the Maiduguri Airport, following a directive to review troops deployment in Maiduguri metropolis, to reinvigorate the security architecture of the city.

The redeployment became expedient after a recent assessment of the security situation by the Theatre Command. Regrettably however, a few of the troops who had misunderstood the development and erroneously assumed it was going to negatively affect their rotation from the theatre of operation became agitated and reacted by firing into the air.

Calm has however been restored, as the Theatre Commander, Major General Abba Dikko has promptly taken charge of the situation after addressing and admonishing the troops, Mr Nwachukwu, a colonel said.

The Theatre Command undoubtedly considers this ugly incident quite regrettable and appropriate measures are being taken to forestall a recurrence, he added.

NAN reports that the aggrieved soldiers claimed they had overstayed and were resisting redeployment to Marte, one of the towns liberated by the military several years ago from the control of Boko Haram terrorists.

The protesters are part of the special force deployed to provide air defence and enhance security at the airport.

The troops barricaded some section of the airport and fired shots in the air, causing pandemonium, as hundreds of pilgrims waiting to be airlifted to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj, scampered for safety..

One of the protesting soldiers who spoke under condition of anonymity, said the planned deployment was against the directives by the Army Headquarters.

The army special forces deployed to the airport were not trained to engage in ground battle rather trained to provide air defence.

Our task is to provide air defence. Alas, special forces trained to fight ground battle are stationed in Maiduguri and we are deployed to go and die in Marte.

Another soldier lamented that the troops have overstayed in the Northeast fighting Boko Haram, despite the rotation order by the military authorities.

He said many of them have spent over three years in the battle field.

Some troops of Operation Lafiya Dole were deployed and worked for over three years in the theatre and not rotated as against the directives by the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai.

The command is directed to redeploy soldiers back to their bases after spending stipulated time in the theatre of operation.

We have spent over three years in the northeast and we should be transferred out of the northeast and not within.

(NAN)
The Nigeria Police Force has intensified raids and assaults on bandits in Rigasa Forrest located in Kaduna State.

The News Agency of Nigeria ( NAN) reports that four policemen were on Saturday killed by bandits in the Rigasa forest in Kaduna State.

The police said the victims are three inspectors and a sergeant: Bernard Odibo, Mamman Abubakar, Haruna Ibrahim and Emmanuel Istifanus.

According to a statement by the police spokesperson, Jimoh Moshood on Monday in Abuja, the officers were ambushed and killed while returning after a successful operation where a kidnap suspect, Ahmed Adam, was arrested.

Massives raids and assaults on the other bandits still at large in the Rigasa Forest are ongoing to bring them to justice, he said.

Mr Moshood said that the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris who condoled with the families of the deceased officers, directed the prompt process and payment of their entitlements.

He said that the I-G described them as heroes who laid down their lives and paid the supreme price in ensuring in the protection of lives and property in the country.

Mr Moshood said that the Intelligence Response Team repelled the attack and killed six of the bandits and recovered caches of firearms and ammunition from the bandits hideouts in Rigasa forest.

The Nigeria Police force despite this unfortunate attack and killing of these policemen will not relent in ensuring that crimes and criminalities are brought to the barest in the country, he said.
Tuesday July 31, on the ninth floor of the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, Uzo Asonye delivered the prosecutions opening statement to a packed room. It was the first day in the trial of Paul Manafort, renowned lobbyist, election consultant and former chairman of President Donald Trumps presidential campaign.

Mr Manaforts trial is the first legal action initiated by Robert Mueller, the United States Special Counsel investigating Russian interference in the United States 2016 elections; but the charges against the presidents one-time henchman has nothing to do with politics or elections. Case 1:18 Cr. 83 (TSE)(S-1) levies 18 counts of tax evasion, bank fraud and conspiracy against Mr Manafort. That is why Mr Asonye, an expert in criminal law, government and administrative law, white collar defence and corporate investigations, was lead prosecutor that morning.

Americans were riveted by the opening day of the Manafort trial. It was the first time the whole country got to see Special Counsel Muellers team in action and it came in the midst of increasing partisan brinkmanship over the Special Counsels office. President Trump has never concealed his disapproval of Mr. Mueller and the Russia investigation. A week before the Manafort trial began, the presidents supporters in Congress filed a resolution to impeach the man who appointed Mr Mueller, United States Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. If Mr Rosenstein is removed from office, the Special Counsel Muellers investigation will be on the chopping block, at least that is what President Trump and his supporters want.

That morning, Mr Asonye was the face of the maligned Mueller team. Every move he made, every word he uttered counted for something for everybody. For Mr Manaforts defence team and the anti-Mueller denizens, anything and everything is fodder for the partisan spin mill and much worse. But, if he was weighed down by the legal burden and political overtone of the trial, Mr Asonye did not show it. His opening statement could not have been more forceful.

A man in this courtroom believed the law did not apply to him, he began, not tax law, not banking law, he added.

He fleshed out the eighteen charges against Mr. Manafort, ranging from preparing false income tax return and declaring same, through concealing foreign bank and financial accounts, to conspiring to commit bank fraud and committing same, all perpetrated before he became chairman of Mr Trumps presidential campaign. Mr Manafort made a hefty $60 million working for the presidential campaign and administration of Ukraines President Viktor Yanukovych. He stashed cash in thirty-plus offshore bank accounts with which he financed a life of luxury  seven homes across the United States, fancy cars and custom-made suits  while cooking false documents to avoid paying taxes.

Mr Asonyes 26 minutes long opening statement painted Mr Manafort as a man with zero scruples when it comes to financial law, it gave a damning overview of the even more damning details that unfolded in next eight days of the trial. Mr Manafort loves the good life, he spends $15,000 on one jacket, $444,000 in one shopping spree at a menswear store, $450,000 on landscaping, $120,000 part-payment on Mercedes-Benz and on and on. He paid $1.9 million for his daughters house and a whole lot more on apartments and houses in Virginia and New York for him and his wife.

U.S. President, Donald Trump

But the presiding judge, United States District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who has a reputation for being a stickler for evidence, did not give Mr Asonye a free ride, he interrupted the prosecutor twice in the first minute of his statement.

It isnt a crime to be profligate in your spending, Judge Ellis said at one point. He went on to say what literarily amounts to a scolding, telling the prosecutor not to make broad statements. The judges reprimands only got worse over the next few days.

Mr Asonye is no push-over. In his relatively short career at the bar, he has developed a no-holds-barred reputation that one reporter described as scorched earth.

Someone wrote about him on Reddit: When you walk into the court room and see him as the prosecutor you know youre fucked.

This trial was billed as a documents-heavy proceeding long before it started. Mr Asonye and his team came into the courtroom with ten boxes of documents which certainly served well as a prop to the prosecutors statement that morning.

His portrait of Mr Manaforts alleged criminal schemes was graphic even in that first day of the trial. To pay for his top-of-the-line suits, vehicles and homes, Mr Manafort adopted a classic tax avoidance move, he had money wired from accounts in Cyprus and other tax havens where the long hands of the American Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cannot reach. Nothing blurs the nosy taxmans path like an overseas account. Mr Asonye said Mr Manafort also instructed his accountants and bookkeepers to embellish the lie, they were told to avoid any mention of cash stashed in overseas bank accounts. The prosecutor described this move in words many Nigerians are familiar with:

Garbage in, garbage out, Mr Asonye said.

Paul Manafort [Photo Credit: The Hill]

But there are other words at the trial that should be familiar to Nigerians, two names in fact and they are not Uzodinma Asonye. They are the names of the star of the trial  Paul Manafort. There is a Nigerian angle to the unfolding trial which Mr Asonye cannot mention even if he knows it.

Long before he met Viktor Yanukovych, Mr Manafort was, so to say, buddies with Nigerias General Ibrahim Babangida during his days as military president. The Torturers Lobby, a report published by the Center for Public Integrity in 1992 gave an account of American lobbyists who worked for unsavoury governments in the immediate post-Cold War era. Countries with struggling democracies or outright authoritarianism for whom there was no longer an alternative in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) power bloc found themselves needing friends in Washington D.C. The likes of Paul Manafort, so to say, stepped in to offer a helping hand.

In 1991, the firm, Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, which self-described as a public affairs company, got one million dollars from the government of Ibrahim Babangida. The long-drawn political transition to civilian rule programme that ended in the June 12 quagmire started back then. The government spent another two and a half million dollars on lobbyists within the next two years. The money bought them over $8 million in military aid and many sympathisers in the Washington political establishment. It, very likely, also paved the way for the Abachas when they went shopping for conduit to hide looted public funds and certainly showcased the Nigerian political formation as a lucrative run for American lobbyists.

Mr Manaforts firm also represented the despotic governments of Kenya, Philippines and Jonas Savimbi of UNITA.

Former Military President, Ibrahim Babangida

At thirty-eight, Mr Asonye was in primary school when Mr Manafort was smooching with Babangida. It was during the Babangida regime that the brain drain from Nigeria began in earnest. Who could have predicted back then that a prosecutor of Nigerian descent would face up with the ruling despots American enabler in a courtroom just outside Washington D.C.?
A group of civil society organisations (CSOs), including budgIT, Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), YIAGA Africa, Enough is Enough among others, have organised a summit to discuss the alternative options Nigeria has to the present governance.

The programme, tagged Summit of the Alternatives (SOTA) aims to start a paradigm shift in the mindset of Nigerias political class and a convergence of credible, competent and capable alternatives to lead.

There are 66 registered political parties but they lack the organisational structure, finance, brand name and fail to challenge the incumbent on a national level.

However, their redemption may be in the fact that the disappointing performance of the current ruling party has increased citizens desire for an alternative political party and political leadership, a statement on the official website of SOTA showed as the reason behind the need for the summit.

The summit which will commence on Monday will address political issues and a way forward for Nigeria as all Nigerias geopolitical zones are expected to be represented in the summit.

A professor and Director at the Kenya School of Law, Patrick Lumumba, has been identified as keynote speaker alongside the guest speaker, Bayo Olukoshi, the director for Africa and West Asia International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA)

The summits chairperson is Oby Ezekwesili, former minister of education and senior economic adviser, Africa Development Economic Policy Initiative.

The representatives of the geopolitical zones include author of Love Does Not Win Elections, Ayisha Osori for North-central; founder of Borno Women Development Initiative, Fatima Askira for the North-east; and Hauwa Yusuf for the North-west.

Emeka Okoye is the representative of the South-east, while Pedro Okojie and Seun Onigbinde are representing the South-south and the South-west respectively.

The two day summit is scheduled for 11 a.m. daily at the Shehu Musa YarAdua Centre, Abuja.
The family of the late former head of state, Murtala Muhammed, on Monday, tasked the National Assembly on need to the enact laws that protect the rights of victims who might have been erroneously killed.

They made the call respectively in Lagos and Abuja at a special prayer organised by the family to mark the 25 years remembrance of the late son of the ex-military ruler, Zackari, who was fatally shot on August 13, 1993, in Abuja.

The family observed that the killing of the finance graduate of the University of Canterbury, Kent, and the manner at which the case ended in confusion was an obvious injustice.

They said in view of this, lawmakers should consider Victims Rights Laws, which would protect Nigerians from such heinous crimes.

The elder sister to the deceased, Aisha Muhammed- Oyebode, who spoke with journalists said: 25 years ago today, our brothers life was fatally cut short.

Despite knowing who the perpetrator was and all efforts to prosecute the matter, the case did not make it past the initial investigation and arraignment.

Therefore, in order to give protection to future victims of such heinous crimes and as a remembrance to our brother, we want to call for the enactment of victims rights legislation. This is crucial at a time like this, because it is one way to ensure that the rights of victims of all crimes are protected in criminal prosecutions.

She added that,all around the world, victims rights have been acknowledged as a basic human right. As far back as 1985, the U.N. adopted the Declaration of the Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power, so it is time for Nigeria to adopt a victim centric approach to criminal justice.

Until such legislation is promulgated, many such crimes will continue to remain unsolved, encouraging unlawful killings and criminal impunity in our nation. Particularly in the crime of murder, where the primary victim has been killed, the secondary victims of the crime must be able to have the legal support to seek justice and push the prosecution to its logical conclusion.

She described her late brother as a kind and very considerate son and brother, whose passion for the family and for his nation was unquantifiable.

We miss his laugher too, she said adding that the remembrance would include supporting his alma mater, Kings College Lagos, with academic resources in his memory.

Murtala Muhammed was the military ruler of Nigeria from 1975 until he was also assassinated in 1976.
The Court of Appeal in Abuja on Monday suspended the bench warrant issued for the arrest of chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu.

A Federal High Court judge in Abuja, Stephen Pam, had given the order on August 8, after Mr Yakubu failed to appear in his court for the third time, over a case involving the Anambra State politics.

The case was brought before the lower court by an Anambra State politician, Ejike Oguebego, challenging the commissions refusal to recognise him as Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Anambra in compliance with a Supreme Court judgment of December 2014.

A report by Channels Television, however, said the appellate court on Wednesday suspended the order for Mr Yakubus arrest and directed a stay of execution of all applications relating to the substantive suit until determination of appeals filed by INEC at the Court of Appeal.

Mr Yakubus lawyer, Adebgboyega Awomolo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, confirmed the report and explained that the current order means that the lower court cannot sit, until all pending appeals at the appellate court are decided.

I confirm that the Court of Appeal has suspended the bench warrant issued against my client. The court has also ordered that all four appeals by INEC should be heard on August 17, said Mr Awomolo who added that the Appeal Court also ordered a stay of execution of matters at the FHC.
Re: Trump haters 'deranged'

Contrary to what the writer states, I think the Donald Trump love syndrome" is at new heights.

To use some of Mr. Novak's words, its breathtaking just how deeply it has taken over the minds of the gullible right. He suggests we should ignore all of Trump's failings (many of which are serious) and focus on the actual outcome.

When you look at the actual economic outcome, you find that unemployment declined (Novak suggests it increased) from 7.8 to 4.8 per cent under Obama and to 3.9 per cent under Trump.

GDP has increased under Trump, as it did under Obama, but what Novak fails to consider in rallying for Trump is that the Federal Reserves easy monetary policy, which has been in place since the fall of 2008, has had a significant positive impact.

One economic number Novak fails to mention is that the deficit will increase from $585 billion during Obamas last year to a projected $987 billion in 2020 as a result of Trumps policies.

And how about the actual outcome of things like children being separated from their parents at the border? But we shouldnt consider those issues, as concentrating solely on those things draws on superficial emotions only.



What Trump supporters turn a blind eye to is that he is a dangerous, narcissistic psychopath and pathological liar who treats non-believers with total disdain. He alienates his countrys most loyal allies, yet cozys up to brutal dictators and sided with Russia's Putin, who is an enemy, during the infamous Helsinki news conference.

I wonder if this is what Novak meant when he mentioned diplomacy.



And I am right of centre on the political spectrum.

Mark S. Bragagnolo
The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, on Monday reminded electricity distribution companies (DISCOs) that despite governments intervention to help bridge the metering gap in the country, the responsibility to supply meters to electricity consumers remained their contractual obligation.

On Saturday, the Executive Director, Research & Advocacy, Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), Sunday Oduntan, said the responsibility to supply meters to electricity consumers was no more the business of the DISCOs.

Mr Oduntan, who featured on Sunrise, a Channels TV Weekend programme, said consumers should henceforth hold NERC and the Ministry of Power responsible.

From now on, metering of consumers is no more our (DISCOs) business, according to the Federal Minister of Power. Metering is now government business. They call it MAP regulation.

When talking about metering, stop asking Mr Oduntan (DISCOs). Direct your questions to NERC and Ministry of Power. They are now in charge of metering. Nigerians should understand that metering is no more our primary business, Mr Oduntan said.

He said the decision by DISCOs to hands off metering followed alleged policy summersaults by government, whom he accused of reneging on all agreement signed with investors on inception in November 2013.

Mr Oduntan said on handing over the power plants in 2013, government asked the DISCOs to provide only 1.7 million meters to customers, only to find out later that the figure was as high as 4.1 million.

Despite the huge 2.4 million gap, he said the DISCOs have managed to supply over 88 per cent of the volume of meters to consumers.

DISCOs Must Fulfill Contract

However, at the monthly power sector meeting with operators in Niger State on Monday, the minister, who reviewed recent policy guidelines and directives he issued to operators, provided updates on their impact in the power sector.

On the Meter Asset Provider (MAP) policy, the minister said the policy introduced last March was introduced to help address the huge meter supply gap.

He said the policy was also to relieve the DISCOs of the financial burden of supplying meters to consumers, by allowing the entrepreneurs to take up meter supplying as a business and diversify the sources of meter supply.

The new MAP regulation provides for third-party financing of meter production and supply, under a permit issued by the NERC, with a 10-year period to pay back the cost.

Apart from raising finance from banks to enlist in the MAP scheme, Mr Fashola said several entrepreneurs and some DISCOs have signed up to the government-supported N37 billion funding for the initiative.

Despite governments intervention as part of its role to ensure effectiveness, the minister said: it (MAP scheme) does not relieve the DISCOs of their contractual obligation to provide meters. On the contrary, it seeks to help them perform their contract.

On Monday when PREMIUM TIMES called NERC to seek its reaction to the controversy, its spokesperson, Usman Arabi, said the commission was not obliged to join issues with non-licensees.

As a policy, NERC does not comment on issues raised by those not our licensees. Neither ANED nor Mr Oduntan is our licensee. NERC is yet to receive any formal complaint by any of the DISCOs about any of the allegations they are talking about, Mr Arabi said.

Other Matters

On other issues, the minister told the meeting the most pressing challenge of the power sector remained at the distribution end, particularly gas supply, electricity generation and transmission. He put unused energy at about 2,000 megawatts (MWs).

On the N701 billion Payment Assurance Guarantee introduced in 2017 to encourage investors in electricity generation to deliver on their mandate, the minister said recovery of payments by GENCOs has increased from 20 to 80 per cent since it began.

He said power supply capacity has improved from 4,000MWs to 7,000MWs.

He stressed the need for GENCOs to ensure transparency in their invoicing for their output, while he noted the price of gas for payment under the scheme must be harmonised where there are differential prices from different gas suppliers.

On the eligible customer policy introduced in May 2017, the minister said it was meant to improve electricity distribution and to facilitate better power supply to consumers who take up to 2MWs and above.

Already, he said, about five industrial customers are taking their power directly from a GENCO, while 26 industrial customers who are equally seeking to benefit from the policy.

On the policy to energise educational institutions and markets, Mr Fashola said there was progress with the proposal to use abandoned six small hydro dams in some federal-owned universities and markets.

Under the proposal, about 15 markets would be covered, with Ariaria, Sabon Gari and Sura markets in Aba, Kano and Lagos as pilots.

The minster said about 37,000 shops in Ariaria; 13,000 in Sabon Gari, and 1,000 in Sura, representing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have already benefited from the policy.
A Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential aspirant, Ahmed Markafi, has promised to restructure Nigeria to the best interest of every citizen if elected next year.

According to a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES, Mr Markafi said this on Monday in Asaba when he met with Delta state governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, and delegates to the forthcoming national convention of the party from the state.

Mr Markarfi was a two-term governor of Kaduna State, senator and former caretaker committee chairman of the PDP.

He is one of about a dozen members seeking the PDP ticket for the presidential election in 2019.

He said if elected in 2019, he will restructure the country in the interest of every Nigerian and this will include institutional restructuring to make our institutions accountable to the people.

He called for the decentralisation of power for equity sake and urged the Federal Government to stop all sorts of killings and clashes going on in the country.

Mr Makarfi listed his achievements and sacrifices for the PDP, describing himself as credible to lead the country.

I am not an opportunist; in 2007, I was basically the presumed candidate to take over from President Olusegun Obasanjo but, for some reasons, person who was behind me in the ballot was selected.

He urged the party to ensure it picks the most credible candidate.

We have never been given a task that we did not perform and we remain focused and never distracted.

PDP must present a credible candidate that all class of people will feel comfortable with, associate with and come out to cast their votes for and protect the vote.

If we act correctly, the people will be with us and the finances will be enough to give the party victory. But if we present a wrong candidate, no amount of money will give us victory, he said.

Speaking with journalists, Mr Okowa said he came out of his conversation with Mr Markafi with the conviction that the aspirant understands the problems of Nigeria.

Going into 2019, it is only God that can decide the best for us as a country, and as a party, the best we can do, is to ensure a free and fair primaries at the national convention, the governor said.

There is no doubt that listening to Senator Ahmed Makarfi, he understands the problems of this country, he has a lot of exposure and he is a very honest man, the governor said.

As you (Ahmed Makarfi) continue to reach out to Nigerians, travelling by road will expose you more to a lot and we hope you continue to do your best as you take your campaign to every part of Nigeria.

As a State Governor, I will continue to stay as neutral as I can, the governor stated.

The chairman of PDP in the state, Kingsley Esiso, described Mr Markafi as a straight forward personality, a gentleman, a consensus builder and a good manager of man and resources.
Thirty-seven members of the National Youth Service Corps, (NYSC,) who completed their service on Monday in Ogun State, were involved in an accident shortly after leaving the orientation camp in Sagamu.

The Sector Commander of the Federal Road Safety Commission, (FRSC), Ogun State Command, Clement Oladele, who confirmed this, said 19 of them comprising nine males and ten males were injured.

He said the corps members were heading to Sango en route Ibadan-Lagos Expressway in a white coloured coaster bus, when the accident occurred around the Danco petrol station axis. He said none of them died, but some sustained serious injuries.

Mr Oladele said the accident was caused by speed violation and loss of control by the driver. He also said the injured victims were evacuated to FRSC Accident Emergency Clinic at Sagamu.

The official disclosed that four of the victims with more serious injuries were referred for further checks at Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH) Sagamu.

He advised corps members, when commuting, to always caution drivers who drive carelessly especially during the raining season.

He added that if such drivers discard such warnings, commuters should call FRSC toll-free number (122) and officers will take necessary disciplinary action against such erring drivers.

The accident came over a week after some corps members drowned in Taraba while swimming in a river.
No fewer than 23,500 persons from 23 local government areas of Delta State have benefited from the medical outreach being carried out by 05 Initiative in the state.

The wife of the governor of Delta State, Edith Okowa, said this on Monday in Asaba, the state capital at the grand finale of the outreach.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the 05 Initiative the pet progrramme of the governors wife is collaborating with Restore Sight Africa.

She said out of the figure, 13, 817 persons were treated and given eyes glasses, while 8,427 others also received free treatments and drugs.

The governors wife recalled that the programme started few months back in Ika North East Local Government Area of the state.

She commended the members of her team for their support in ensuring the success of the programme across the state.

I want to use this opportunity to thank God for His mercies and preserving our lives all through this period.

I want to also thank the members of my team for their selfless service all through this period and those who have also contributed to the success of this programme, she said.

Mrs Okowa, therefore, appealed to corporate organisations and well-meaning Deltans and Nigerians to return home and give helping hands to the less privileged in the society.

Governor Ifeanyi Okowa in his address at the event commended the 05 Initiative and Restore Sight Africa for the collaboration.

He said their commitments in restoring sights and hopes to the people had touched God.

The governor, therefore, advised well-meaning Nigerians to find ways of helping the needy, adding that it would go a long way in transforming the society.

According to him, that which is done for the poor and the needy touches the heart of God.

Mr Okowa assured the people of the state that his administration would continue to remain focus in ensuring that more dividends of democracy get to them.

Also, the Coordinator of Restore Sight Africa, Ernest Ogbedo, said 2,008 eye surgeries had been performed.

Mr Ogbedo, however, called for more support for the team to enable it reach out to more persons in the society.

According to him, 18,000 constant blindness are still in the creek, the upland and these people need to be reached.

(NAN)
The Ebonyi State Governor, David Umahi, on Monday announced the approval of N400 million to the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Ebonyi State for the renovation of the schemes orientation camp in Afikpko North Local Government Area.

This is separate from the N5,000 travel allowance he directed to be immediately given to each of the 2,200 Batch B Stream 1 Corps members who ended their orientation course on Monday.

The governor also approved N2 million for corps members who took part in the parade.

All the monies are expected to come from the state governments coffers.

Mr Umahi also approved various cash sums to the staff of NYSC and military officers who trained the corps members.

Addressing the corps members, Mr Umahi urged them not to allow themselves be used by politicians to thwart the countrys democracy.

According to him, politicians are planning to rig next years election and the corps members owe a duty to the country not to give in to the plots.

I have no doubt that you were adequately motivated and sensitised by officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission on your participation in the forthcoming 2018 General Election.

Let me inform you that your participation in that all important assignment is a rare opportunity for you to contribute your quota towards enthroning a credible leadership, toward governance and above all, engendering a peaceful and prosperous nation.

In the light of the above, I charge you to discharge the INEC assignment with utmost sense of responsibility and good conscience by not allowing yourselves to be manipulated by desperate and unscrupulous politicians who will be willing to buy your conscience at all cost.

Governor Umahi inspecting the guard of honour mounted by the Corps members Governor Umahi being decorated with a galarnd of honour by Miss NYSC Batch B stream 1. Governor Umahi inspecting the guard of honour mounted by the Corps members

He said the N400 million will be used to renovate the road leading to the camp, dilapidated structures in the camp, provision of drainages, regrassing of the camps parade ground, connection of the camp to the national grid, solar street lighting of the camp and other projects.

The coordinator of the scheme in Ebonyi State, Ann Ibe, said that the corps members were posted to all the local government areas in the state except Ishielu Local Government Area.

This decision is an aftermath of the 2008 Ezillk/Ezza-Ezillo communal crisis. We remain open-minded to post corps members to Ishielu LGA as soon as we receive the approval of the state government and clearance from relevant security agencies via the NYSC National Directorate Headquarters, Abuja to do so, she explained.
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso has said the silence of Oyo and Osun State Governments over its strike is disturbing and could lead to an indefinite strike.

The Secretary of ASUU, Toyin Abegunrin, expressed the unions displeasure over the silence of the two state governments to PREMIUM TIMES in a telephone interview on Sunday.

PREMIUM TIMES reported last Wednesday that ASUU disrupted the ongoing second semester examination for 2017/2018 academic session at the institution. The lecturers action was due to non-payment of workers salaries as well as decayed infrastructure of the institution.

The union, which embarked on a two-week warning strike to express its displeasure, however said the strike would become indefinite considering the silence of the governments.

On Sunday, Mr Abegunrin said the warning strike is an opportunity for the governments to do the needful; and if not attended to, it will turn into a full blown strike.

The governments are just doing what they like with LAUTECH. They constituted a visitation panel led by Wole Olanipekun (SAN). The panel came up with some recommendations which would have solved the problem of the university, but the governments failed to implement them.

After the first strike during Wale Omole led Governing Council, they constituted another Governing Council led by Professor Dapo Afolabi. In a meeting with us on January 11, the governing council asked that we submit a proposal on how the crisis can be solved, which we did. We had another meeting on February 13 in Lagos, we looked at the proposal and signed memorandum of action with the council.

We believed that when they have done what the governments asked them to do, funds will be released. The council did staff auditing last year December and they even found out that LAUTECH is short-staffed. After that, we expect proper funding but the governments are not doing so. They expect funding from IGR which is only the school fees and that is what led to recent increment in school fees. These are the children of the masses. Majorly, they are the children of civil servants in Osun and Oyo State who are not paid, he said.

He also flayed the respective governments.

The governments have not been responsive and thats the promise the governing council made to us that they will make the government of Oyo Osun State to be responsive to their legitimate responsibility including funding. But, we cant say the Governing Council has not fulfilled its promise because they have principals too.

The directive of the national body of ASUU is going on a total strike after two weeks of no response. The decision was made at the NEC meeting that took place in Calabar. It is now even beyond what we can control and it is unfortunate that the two governments have been silent all since. So, it is an admittance of guilt otherwise let them speak out. It is unfortunate.

Mr Abegunrin also spoke on how previous payments were made by the university managements.

The management is short of funds. The visitors are not releasing the subventions. So, they are incapacitated. To be fair to the management, as far as the little fund they have can carry them, they have (paid), but it has been exhausted.

The university cannot run on IGR only. The major source of IGR is school fees and ordinarily, using students school fees to pay salary is misappropriation of funds because the school fees have headings for healthcare facilities, laboratories equipment and renewal etc. Those are the things school fees are meant for but they are now transferring it to payment of salaries. It is even tantamount to misappropriation.

Meanwhile, the two state governments have failed to publicly speak on the crisis.

Several calls and text messages sent to Special Adviser to Osun State Governor on Higher Education, Grace Akinola, were not responded to.

Also, Oyo State Commissioner of Education, Adeniyi Olowofela, declined comments when contacted by PREMIUM TIMES.
Some political leaders in Oke-Ogun area of Oyo State have hinged their defection to the African Democratic Congress (ADC) on their desire to liberate the region from neglect by successive administrations.

They made the submissions in separate interviews with journalists on Sunday after a meeting of the party held at Okeho in Oyo State.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Oke-Ogun Zone constitutes 10 local governments out of the 33 in the state.

Alli Oyedeji, a political leader in the zone, told journalists that the area had suffered neglect from successive governments in the state in spite of the massive support they all enjoyed from the zone.

Mr Oyedeji, who defected to the ADC from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said:

The ADC is ours. Our interest in the party is to ensure the progress of this zone which has long been marginalised in terms of development.

The type of change we bargained for is not what we are experiencing today. Only two out of our 10 local governments partially benefited from this government.

Isiaka Salami, a former Caretaker Chairman of Kajola Local Government Area, also said it was a dawn of a new era having suffered neglect under successive administrations.

Abiodun Olasupo (ADC-Iseyin/Itesiwaju/Kajola/Iwajowa) said the zone had contributed a lot to the political development in the state and Nigeria.

Mr Olasupo, who defected from APC to ADC on the floor of the house alongside others, foreclosed any chance of possible reconciliation with his former party.

He said that the movement was aimed at liberating the zone from political slavery, urging the electorate in the area to register with the ADC.

Saheed Alaran, a former Iseyin Local Government chieftain, said purposeful change of platform was the best response to neglect and marginalisation.

He stated that the ADC had come to stay and the zone would benefit from it, urging members across the state to register with the party.

(NAN)
The authorities of the Abraham Adesanya Polytechnic, Ogun State, have suspended the student union public relations officer for a session and sanctioned other executives for alleged misappropriation of union funds.

PREMIUM TIMES learnt that the suspension of the officer, Caleb Ijioma, was pronounced by the rector of the institution, Jumoke Bilesanmi, after he and other executives were ordered to refund the funds.

In a letter dated August 8 and signed by the registrar of the school, Femi Ositale, Mr Ijioma was asked to refund N51,430.

You will recall that you were alleged to be involved in a reported case of forgery and misappropriation of funds by the students union government Executives under the leadership of Ibrahim Lawal.

You should refund the sum of Fifty-One thousand four hundred and thirty naira only out of the mismanaged sum of N785,000.00 to the SUG account on or before July 31, 2018. But the management has given you the ultimatum till Wednesday, 15th August, 2018.

Mr Ijeoma, who denied the allegations, told PREMIUM TIMES in an interview that the suspension was disclosed by the rector on Friday

I and some the students union executives visited the Ogun State Department of State Security office and later went to the Rectors office. I was told to forfeit one academic session. She equally said it categorically that I will forfeit a year and she cant change her decision, he said

Also, this newspaper gathered that Mr Ijioma may have been sanctioned for posting the allegations against the president on social media platforms.

Meanwhile, when PREMIUM TIMES contacted the rector via telephone, she confirmed the suspension. She said the suspension was done after several deliberations, most of what she cant disclose to our reporter.

According to her, there are some documents that necessitated the suspension, which cant be made available to PREMIUM TIMES..

Punished For Sin Of One?

PREMIUM TIMES investigation revealed that the other executives were being punished for the crime allegedly committed by the President, Ibrahim Lawal.

This newspaper gathered that Mr Lawal resigned from office days after he was accused of misappropriating funds by the students.

In an audio conversation made available to this newspaper, the president confessed to a group of friends that he forged the signatures of the signatories to the unions bank account.

The signature of the General Secretary of the union, Erinle Ayomide, was also forged, it was gathered.

However, the school management has ordered all the executives to refund the money mismanaged by the Lawal led administration.

One of the executives, who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES under the condition of anonymity to avoid victimisation, said the management is aware of the mismanagement and that it was masterminded by the president; but he (anonymous executive) was also told to refund the sum N51, 430 to the unions bank account.

Speaking on the suspension, the official said Mr Ijioma was suspended because he broke the news of the mismanagement to the public via social media platforms.

The Rector has threatened that she doesnt want the schools name in the media space for negative news. She said the Nation newspaper called her on the issue and that was why Caleb was asked to forfeit a year.

However, Mr. Lawal, when contacted, said he was told to refund the largest part of the money.

I was asked to refund N425,000. I returned N200,000. Im yet to refund all because the management has added to the figure.

He also opined that the report of the school was erroneous as the amount to be refunded is equivalent to the amount accumulated during his administration.

What the management want is to refund all the money made during my administration, Mr Lawal said

When asked about the forgery of signatures, Mr. Lawal denied the allegations but didnt comment on the recording of the audio conversation provided.

Meanwhile, in a telephone interview with a top official of Ogun State Security Service, Tella Adebowale , he explained that he had visited the Rector on the issue and condemned the suspension of the student.

The rector cannot single-handedly suspend a student. I was aware that some of them were told to refund a sum of money to the union account and we settled it. Only for me to get to the office and see some of the executives, who were exonerated, telling me that theyve been mandated to pay.

The president has confessed and he has exonerated most of the union executives. Ill get back to school on Monday, he explained.
Photo: BC Wildfire Service

UPDATE: 2:20 p.m.

The federal government is offering support with air power and Canadian Armed Forces troops in B.C. as nearly 600 wildfires burn across the province.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan issued a joint statement Monday saying that the federal government has accepted a formal request for help from the B.C. government.

About 200 troops will be sent to help in mop-up operations to contain the spread of fires, while aircraft will be sent to transport firefighting personnel and equipment, support medical evacuations and move people in remote communities out of harm's way, the statement said.

"British Columbians can rest assured that help will be provided as soon as possible," it said.

Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said in a statement that the situation is "urgent" and the safety of B.C. residents is the highest priority.

Almost 200 new fires were sparked over the weekend, although crews were hoping for a calmer week ahead, said BC Wildfire Service spokesman Kevin Skrepnek.

He blamed lightning for the majority of the 590 wildfires currently burning in the province, noting about 90 were believed to have been caused by humans.

"If you were to take the lightning out of the equation, this would have been a pretty quiet year," said Skrepnek in a telephone interview.

Since the start of the fire season on April 1, the wildfire service said it has responded to just under 1,800 fires, charring almost 2,900 square kilometres of timber and bush.

Thick smoke was hampering visibility, affecting when and how aircraft were being deployed over some of the largest fires in northwestern B.C., but Skrepnek said ground crews were continuing to work a building guards and containing the flames.

The weather may be about to give crews a break, he added.

"We aren't expecting lightning to really be much of a concern for the period ahead. We are not expecting a lot of storms."

"On the flip side of that, there's really no significant rain in the forecast," he warned.

ORIGINAL: 1:40 p.m.

B.C. has formally requested wildfire assistance from the federal government.

"This is an urgent situation, and the safety of British Columbians is our highest priority," Mike Farnworth, minister of public safety and solicitor general said Monday. "Due to the increase in the number of wildfires affecting communities and the extreme wildfire behaviour we are seeing, we're asking for federal assistance for additional resources that may be needed to protect the public, property and infrastructure."

As of this morning, 27 evacuation orders were in effect across the province, affecting about 3,100 people, in addition to 43 evacuation alerts affecting almost 18,000 more.

More than 3,400 wildfire personnel are fighting 600 fires currently burning in all areas of the province. This includes BC Wildfire Service crews, contractors, municipal firefighters, industry personnel and out-of-province crews from throughout Canada, as well as Mexico, Australia and New Zealand.

"We're bringing in the additional resources we need to keep people and communities as safe as possible," said Doug Donaldson, minister of forests, lands, natural resource operations and rural development.

"I thank the federal government and the Canadian Armed Forces for their assistance, and also ask British Columbians to do their part by following burning bans to prevent human-caused fires."

The province is requesting:

200 personnel to perform mop-up and patrol of contained fires.

Heavy-lift aircraft to reposition wildfire crews and equipment to new fire starts that threaten communities.

Aircraft for emergency transport of injured personnel and to help evacuate people in remote areas

To report a wildfire or open burning violation, call *5555 on a cellphone, or 1-800-663-5555, toll-free.
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.




Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 13)  Evacuees of flood-prone Marikina City were given a little bit of comfort despite the stormy weather.

As monsoon rains continue to batter parts of Luzon, the Marikina local government unit deployed its new modular tents in five evacuation centers over the weekend.

The tents are covered on all sides, but open on the top to allow air to flow. They offer privacy, shelter, and insulation so the thousands of evacuees do not have to sleep on cold, hard floors.

Marikina Mayor Marcy Teodoro said they acquired the modular tents to offer comfort to those who are affected by the storms or any other natural calamities, especially women and children. Each tent, which costs around P2,000, can comfortably fit up to seven people.

"Kinustomize namin, sinukat namin sa pitong miyembro ng pamilya. Nung inisip namin yung modular tents, hindi namin inisip maging sikat. Ang inisip namin 'yung tao, mabigyan ng dignidad, ng privacy, ng comfort," Mayor Teodoro told CNN Philippines on Monday.

(Translation: We customized it to fit a family of seven members. When we thought about the modular tents, we didn't think about getting famous. We thought about the people, to give them dignity, privacy and comfort.)

He added this is also preventing the spread of communicable diseases, which is common in evacuation centers.

Over 22,000 individuals are staying in the city's evacuation centers, as of Monday morning. Relief goods and sleeping kits continue to pour in.

Netizens praised the Marikina LGU for the innovation and for making the situation better for its evacuees.

An evacuation center in Makati is also using similar modular tents.

Senator and former Valenzuela Representative Sherwin Gatchalian said Valenzuela is in the process of procuring similar tents.
The Chinese company, China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation claims that it has won the contract and has been given the license to print Indian currency notes along with several other nations. The opposition party launched a scathing attack on PM Modi government seeking a clarification from his government. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor shared a post on Twitter and questioned Union Ministers, Arun Jaitley and Piyush Goyal on the matter. "If true, this has disturbing national security implications. Not to mention making it easier for Pak to counterfeit. @PiyushGoyal @arunjaitley please clarify!"



If true, this has disturbing national security implications. Not to mention making it easier for Pak to counterfeit. @PiyushGoyal @arunjaitley please clarify! https://t.co/POD2CcNNuL  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) August 12, 2018

The South China Morning Post report claims that the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation has been running to full capacity, despite registering a fall in the local demand owing to a rise in mobile payments in the recent years, reported TOI.

Congress spokesperson Randeep S Surjewala asked if it is part of China's design to engulf Southeast Asia. He tweeted, Is China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation printing currency for Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka? Is this Dragons new design to engulf South East Asia? Have the Chinese been given a contract to print Indian currency notes? If so, its a grave breach of National Security.

Is China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation printing currency for Nepal,Bangladesh,Sri lanka?



Is this Dragons new design to engulf South East Asia?



Have the Chinese been given a contract to print Indian currency notes?



If so, its a grave breach of National Security. https://t.co/YicRkNtITc  Randeep Singh Surjewala (@rssurjewala) August 13, 2018

The report further claimed that the actual number of countries, who have given a contract to the company to print their currency notes, may be much larger. "But that could be just the tip of the iceberg," it read.
RALEIGH, N.C., Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- ANEXIO, the leading "Desktop to Data Center" infrastructure-as-a-service company, today announced that Tony Pompliano, President and CEO was named one of the "Top 30 Entrepreneurs to Look for in 2018" by the business publication Mirror Review Magazine. Pompliano earned the recognition in large part due to his customer-centric vision, mission-critical infrastructure strategy, and ANEXIO's rapid growth.

Pompliano built ANEXIO to help mid-market customers make a smooth transition from legacy IT environments to a more efficient Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure. Mid-market businesses are essential to America's long-term economic success, but suffer from a lack of IT managed services that can help their companies run more efficiently and securely.

The United States mid-market is comprised of 200,000 companies who account for $10 trillion in annual revenue and 30 million jobs. With a focus on supporting these organizations, ANEXIO has grown more than 1,400 percent since 2013 and continues to expand into new markets as it builds and offers services that support emerging technologies.

"On behalf of ANEXIO employees everywhere, it is an honor to receive this 2018 Entreprenuer award," said Tony Pompliano, ANEXIO President and CEO. "At ANEXIO, we go the extra mile to differentiate our offerings in a way that creates long-term customer value. This recognition is proof positive that we are on the right track."

New customers interested in learning more about ANEXIO and the company's full suite of desktop, data center and network services can call (919) 295-9120 for an appointment or email [email protected].

ABOUT ANEXIO

ANEXIO is transforming the IT industry with Desktop to Data Center solutions designed specifically for customers seeking a smooth transition from legacy IT environments to a more efficient Hybrid Cloud infrastructure. The Inc. 500 company's Mission Critical Infrastructure strategy is anchored by eight Tier III SOC-2 certified data centers, an IT solutions center and a nationwide IP Network. ANEXIO's offerings include colocation, networking, Cloud services, storage, disaster recovery, Managed IT and Managed VoIP. Every ANEXIO product and service is backed up by United States-based customer support. Visit www.anexio.com for more information.

Media Contact:

Alyssa Armstrong

(919) 985-6427

[email protected]

SOURCE ANEXIO
Themed "Elevating Thailand's Readiness in Security, Fire and Safety", the panel discussion's objective was to bring related government bodies, associations and key personnel in the buying chain together and discuss about current challenges, increasing threats and the best solutions to overcome forthcoming issues. Notable speakers for the panel discussion were Dr. Vallop Kingchansilp, International President, Asia-Pacific Security Association; Pol. Col. Akkarin Sukkasem, Deputy Commander, Criminal Records Division, Office of Police Forensic Science, Royal Thai Police; Mr Surachet Sringam, Vice President, The Building Inspector Association; and Gen. Bunjerd Tientondgee, National Space Policy Committee and National Cybersecurity Committee. It was moderated by Maj. Gen. Dr. Prachya Chalermwat, a professional from the Office of the Permanent Secretary for Defence.

Welcoming the speakers and attendees, the Group Managing Director (ASEAN Business) of UBM Asia said, "UBM is proud to bring together the whole buying chain and professionals related to Thailand's security, fire and safety industry today. With such a line-up of impactful speakers, I believe today we could help steer the nation's readiness in facing ever-complicated security, fire and safety challenges. IFSEC Southeast Asia, the leading business-focused event for the industry is dedicated to bringing global brands, offering cutting-edge technology to support Thailand's movement towards Industry 4.0, which saw the increase of investments in infrastructure, development of smart cities and into an innovation-driven economy".

The four speakers focused on different topics, which are "Thailand Security Industry Overview" by Dr Vallop, "The Increasing Trend of Crime: Prevention and Deterrence" by Pol. Col. Akkarin, "Risk and Hazard that May Occur to Buildings: How to Prevent or Mitigate" by Mr. Surachet and "Cyber Security: How to Protect and Prevent" by Gen. Bunjerd.

Resonating the objective of improving Thailand and the region's readiness in facing security, fire and safety issues, UBM is organising IFSEC Southeast Asia -- Bangkok Edition, which will take place on 25-27 October 2018 at the IMPACT Exhibition & Convention Center. IFSEC Southeast Asia, part of UBM's longest portfolio, is an annual event that serves all of Southeast Asia's industry players. With over 350 world leading brands in surveillance (CCTV), access control & biometrics, cyber security, fire safety, home automation, Internet of Things (IoT), occupational health and safety (OSH) and others, the event is a must-attend gathering for regional government bodies, law enforcers, distributors, importers, system integrators and others in the whole buying chain.

Taking place alongside IFSEC Southeast Asia is POLSEC, a three-day event for government security, which will bring in key police officials and government personnel under one roof.

IFSEC Southeast Asia is supported by Royal Thai Police, Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau, Thailand Department of Correction, Thailand Department of Public Works and Town & Country Planning, Asia-Pacific Security Association, CCTV Consortium -- ICA, Thailand Information Security Association, Thailand Security Association, Secure Identity & Biometrics Association (Thailand), Smart Security Association (Thailand) and The Building Inspectors Association.

For more information, visit www.ifsecsea.com.

Notes to Editor:

IFSEC Southeast Asia is organised by UBM, which in June 2018 combined with Informa PLC to become a leading B2B information services group and the largest B2B Events organiser in the world. Please visit www.ubm.com/asia for more information.

SOURCE UBM Asia (Malaysia)

Related Links

http://www.ubm.com/asia


DUBLIN, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Gene Therapy Market (2nd Edition), 2018-2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The year 2017 was particularly eventful; despite the withdrawal of Glybera from the European market in early 2017, the latter half of the year witnessed the approval of two gene therapies, namely Invossa and Luxturna. In fact, Luxturna became the first gene therapy to gain approval in the US. Further, promising clinical results were reported for several gene therapies that are currently in late phases of development.

The growing popularity and potential of gene therapies can be correlated with an exponential increase in the number of patents that have been filed; the cumulative number has increased from 7,300 patents in 2013 to 42,300 patents till the third quarter of 2017. Further, over the past five years, capital worth more than USD 9.8 billion has been invested by venture capital (VC) firms and government bodies to fund research activities in this domain.



The overall market is expected to witness significant growth in opportunities for a variety of stakeholders in the coming decade. It is important to highlight that several technology providers, aiming to develop and / or support the development of gene therapies, with improved efficacy and safety, have designed and already introduced advanced platforms for the engineering of vectors. Innovation in this domain has also led to the discovery of novel molecular targets and strengthened the research pipelines of companies focused in this space. The capability to target diverse therapeutic areas is considered to be amongst the most prominent growth drivers of this market.



The Gene Therapy Market (2nd Edition), 2018-2030' report provides an extensive study on the current market landscape of gene therapies, with a prime focus on gene augmentation based therapies and oncolytic viral therapies, featuring an elaborate discussion on the future potential of this evolving market.

Amongst other elements, the report features:

A detailed assessment of the current market landscape of gene therapies, providing information on various drug / therapy developers, phase of development (clinical, preclinical or discovery stage) of product candidates, key therapeutic areas and indication(s), information on gene type, vector type, type of therapy (ex vivo, in vivo) and type of modification (gene augmentation, oncolytic viral therapy and others).

A discussion on the various types of viral and non-viral vectors, highlighting information on design, manufacturing requirements, advantages, limitations and applications of currently available gene delivery vectors.

A world map representation, depicting the most active geographies in terms of the presence of companies developing gene therapies, and a bull's eye analysis highlighting the distribution of clinical pipeline candidates in terms of phase of development, type of vector and type of therapy (ex vivo / in vivo).

Comprehensive profiles of marketed drugs, highlighting their history of development, current developmental status, mechanism of action, affiliated technology, patent portfolio, dosage and manufacturing, and information on the developer.

Comprehensive profiles of clinical stage (phase II/III and above) drug candidates, highlighting their current status of development, mechanism of action, affiliated technology, patent portfolio, clinical trial information and recent developments.

A section on emerging technologies and platforms that are aiding the development of gene therapies, featuring detailed profiles of technologies that are presently being used in the development of four or more products / product candidates.

An overview of the most commonly targeted therapeutic indications and details on the gene therapies that are being developed against them.

An analysis of the investments made at various stages of development in companies that are focused in this area, including seed financing, venture capital financing, debt financing, grants, capital raised from IPOs and subsequent offerings.

A detailed analysis of the recently filed patents (since 2013); the study highlights the emerging trends in innovation and identifies the key players involved. In addition, it presents a high-level view on the valuation of these patents as well.

A case study on the prevalent and emerging trends in vector manufacturing, with information on companies offering contract services for manufacturing vectors. The study includes a detailed discussion on the manufacturing processes of various types of vectors as well.

An analysis on the various factors that may form the basis for the pricing of gene therapies, featuring different models / approaches that may be adopted in order to decide the price of a product that is likely to be marketed in the coming years.

One of the key objectives of the report was to understand the primary growth drivers and estimate the future size of the market. Based on parameters, such as target consumer segments, likely adoption rates and expected pricing, we have provided an informed estimate of the likely evolution of the market in the short to mid-term and mid to long term, for the period 2018-2030. To account for the uncertainties associated with the development of gene therapies and to add robustness to our model, we have provided three forecast scenarios, portraying the conservative, base and optimistic tracks of the market's evolution.



The opinions and insights presented in the report were also influenced by discussions held with senior stakeholders in the industry. The study includes detailed transcripts of discussions held with Adam Rogers (CEO, Hemera Biosciences), Al Hawkins (CEO, Milo Biotechnology), Cedric Szpirer (Executive & Scientific Director, Delphi Genetics), Christopher Reinhard (CEO and Chairman, Cardium Therapeutics), Jeffrey Hung (CCO, Vigene Biosciences), Marco Schmeer (Project Manager) & Tatjana Buchholz (Marketing Manager, PlasmidFactory) and Michael Triplett (CEO, Myonexus Therapeutics). All actual figures have been sourced and analyzed from publicly available information forums and primary research discussions. Financial figures mentioned in this report are in USD, unless otherwise specified.



Example Highlights

Around 300 product candidates are currently under various stages of development for a diverse range of indications. Eight gene therapies are commercially available; of these, Imlygic (Amgen), Strimvelis (GSK), Invossa (TissueGene / Kolon Life Science / Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma) and Luxturna (Spark Therapeutics) were approved after 2015. Nearly 48% of the pipeline molecules are under clinical development; of these, 21 molecules are being investigated in phase II/III and above, 8 molecules in phase III (planned), 21 molecules in phase II, 48 molecules in phase I/II and 49 molecules in phase I clinical trials. However, majority (49%) of the product candidates in the pipeline are still in the preclinical and discovery stages. A significant proportion (59%) of product candidates in the pipeline follow the gene augmentation modification strategy, by delivering functional copies of missing genes into diseased hosts. Other types of modifications include immunotherapy (20%; delivering genes coding for antigens in order to generate an immune response) and oncolytic therapy (10%; using replication competent viruses to infect and kill cancer cells). Late stage (phase II/III and above) oncolytic therapies that are under development include ProsAtak (prostate cancer), Pexa-Vec (HCC) and Toca-511 (GBM). In addition, a significant share of the pipeline comprises of in vivo gene therapies against various indications. The market landscape is characterized by the presence of large-sized (17), mid-sized (34) and small-sized companies (63). Some of the prominent large-sized companies engaged in this domain include (in alphabetical order) Amgen, Biogen, BioMarin Pharmaceuticals, BMS, GSK, Novartis, Pfizer, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Sanofi. Similarly, mid-sized companies that are actively contributing to the development of gene therapies include (based on year of approval) Spark Therapeutics, Kolon Life Science and Human Stem Cell Institute. In addition, small companies, such as (in alphabetical order) Agilis Biotherapeutics, Angionetics (subsidiary of Taxus Cardium Therapeutics), AVROBIO, Freeline Therapeutics, Horama, MeiraGTx, Myonexus Therapeutics, Nightstar Therapeutics and XyloCor, are also actively involved in this domain. Close to 25% of the products in the development pipeline are designed to treat various oncological indications, including (ordered by decreasing number of gene therapies in the pipeline) prostate cancer, bladder cancer, head and neck cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer. Nearly 15% of therapy candidates are being developed for the treatment of metabolic disorders (ordered by decreasing number of gene therapies under development), including mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS) IIIA, MPS IIIB, ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) deficiency and diabetes. We also observed that close to 14% of the pipeline molecules are being developed for treating ocular disorders, such as (ordered by decreasing number of gene therapies under development) retinitis pigmentosa, wet age associated macular degeneration, achromatopsia and Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy. AAV (38%) is presently the preferred type of vector used by drug developers to design gene therapies. This can be attributed to the advantages offered by these vectors, such as high viral yields, mild immunogenic response, ability to infect a wide spectrum of cells and a better safety profile. Other prominent delivery vehicles include adenovirus (16.5%), lentivirus (14.5%) and non-viral vectors (12%), such as plasmid DNA. Over 34,000 patents, related to gene therapies, have been filed in last five years alone. Research efforts in this domain are led by both the industry and academia. Leading academic players that are actively engaged in developing gene therapies include (in decreasing order of number of patents) University of California , University of Texas , Stanford University , Harvard University , Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University . Around 240 funding instances, amounting to USD 9.5 billion worth of capital, have taken place in order to support R&D in gene therapies in the last five years. California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), OrbiMed Advisors, Deerfield Management, Versant Ventures, Novartis Venture Fund, National Institute of Health (NIH) and 5AM Ventures have emerged as some of the prominent investors (in terms of number of funding instances). With many candidates in late stages of development, the market is likely to witness several approvals and grow steadily over the coming decade. Despite the fact that the first gene therapies were approved in Asian countries, North America and the EU together are likely to capture the over 75% of the market share by 2030. Within Asia Pacific region, South Korea is expected to dominate the market by 2030.

Companies Mentioned



4BIO Capital

5AM Ventures

Ventures Abbott

Abby Grace Foundation

Abeona Therapeutics

Abingworth

ABL Europe

Ablynx

Abraxis BioScience

Acceleron Pharma

Acucela (Subsidiary of Kubota Pharmaceutical)

Adage Capital Management

Aduro Biotech

Advanced BioScience Laboratories (ABL)

Advanced Biotherapeutics Consulting

Advantagene

Advaxis Immunotherapies

Adverum Biotechnologies

Agent Capital

Agilis Biotherapeutics

Ajinomoto Althea

AJU IB Investment

Aldevron

Alexandria Venture Investments

Allele Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals

Ally Bridge Group (ABG)

Alpha-1 Foundation

AlphaVax

Amgen

AMSBIO

Anaeropharma Science

Anemocyte (previously known as Areta International)

AnGes

Angionetics

Apic Bio

Applied Genetic Technologies Corporation (AGTC)

Applied Viromics

ARCH Venture Partners

Arthrogen

AstraZeneca

Athena Vision

Atlas Venture

aTyr Pharma

Audentes Therapeutics

AveXis

AVROBIO

Baillie Gifford

Bamboo Therapeutics (acquired by Pfizer)

Batavia Biosciences

Bayer

Beckman Research Institute

Beijing Capital Grand (previously known as Beijing Capital Juda)

Benitec Biopharma

BioCanCell Therapeutic

Biogen

BioMarin Pharmaceutical

Biomay

Biomiga

BioMotiv

BioNTech Innovative Manufacturing Services (previously known as EUFETS)

BioReliance / SAFC

Bioverativ

Biovian

BioViva

Blue Sky BioServices

bluebird bio

BlueWater Angels

Boehringer Ingelheim BioXcellence

Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund

Bpifrance

Brammer Bio

Bristol- Myers Squibb

Broad Institute

Brookside Capital Partners Fund

California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM)

Cambridge Enterprise

Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT)

(CPRIT) CapDecisif Management

Caribou Biosciences

Casdin Capital

Celgene

Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult

Cellectis

CellGenTech

Celsion

Center for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI)

Centre for Process Innovation

for Process Innovation Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)

national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) CEVEC Pharmaceuticals

CHDI Foundation

Chiesi Farmaceutici

Children's Medical Research Foundation

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Children's Medical Research Foundation

Clarus Ventures

Clough Capital Partners

Cobra Biologics and Pharmaceutical Services

Cold Genesys

Columbus Venture Partners

Commercial & External Partnership, Industrial Affairs (CEPiA)

Copernicus Therapeutics

Cormorant Asset Management

Cowen

Creative Biogene

CRISPR Therapeutics

Cure Sanfilippo Foundation

CureVac

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics (CFFT)

Deerfield Management Company

Dimension Therapeutics (acquired by Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical)

DNAtrix Therapeutics

Easton Capital

EcoR1 Capital

Editas Medicine

Elk OrthoBiologics

Emergent BioSolutions

Eminent Venture Capital

enGenes

Ensysce Biosciences

Epeius Biotechnologies

Errant Gene Therapeutics

Esteve

Etubics

Eurofins Genomics

Eurogentec

European Investment Bank (EIB)

Expression Therapeutics

ExSight Capital

Eyevensys

Federal Holding and Investment Company (SFPI-FPIM)

Fibrocell Science

Fireman Capital Partners

FKD Therapies

Flagship Pioneering (previously known as Flagship Ventures)

Fondacin Genoma Espaa

Fondation Sanfilippo Suisse

Fondazione Telethon and Ospedale San Raffaele

Forbion Capital Partners

Foresite Capital Management

FoxKiser

F-Prime Capital Partners (previously known as Fidelity Biosciences)

Franklin Advisers

Franklin Templeton Investments

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Freeline Therapeutics

Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA)

FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies

Fund+

Fundacin Sanfilippo B

Fundacin Stop Sanfilippo

Further Lane Securities

Gene Medicine Japan (GMJ) / Kobe Biomedical Accelerator

GeneCure Biotechnologies

GeneDetect

GeneImmune Biotechnology

Genelux

Genentech

GeneOne Life Science

Genethon

Genexine

GenIbet Biopharmaceuticals

Genprex

GenScript Biotech

GenSight Biologics

GenVec

GlaxoSmithKline

Global BioTherapeutics

GlobeImmune

GO Capital Amorage

Google Ventures (GV)

Gradalis

Green Cross Holdings

Guangzhou Double Bio-products

Harvard University

HealthCap

Hemera Biosciences

Herantis Pharma

Hercules Capital

Hoffmann- La Roche

HORAMA

Horizon Discovery

Horizon Pharma

Huapont Life Sciences

Human Stem Cells Institute

I2BF Global Ventures

Ichor Therapeutics

Ichor Systems

ID Pharma

Idinvest Partners

Immune Technology

Imperial Innovations

Inception Capital Management

Index Ventures

Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ)

(INCJ) Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI)

Inovio Pharmaceuticals

Inserm

Intellia Therapeutics

Intrexon

Invesco Perpetual

InvivoGen

Ion Channel Innovations

Iowa State University

Israel Innovation Authority

Janssen

Janus Capital Management

Jennison Associates

Johns Hopkins University

Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation

JumpStart Ventures

Juventas Therapeutics

Kaneka Eurogentec

Khosla Ventures

Kiwoom Securities

Knight Therapeutics

KOLON LIFE SCIENCE

Krystal Group

Kubota Pharmaceutical

Kurma Partners

Leerink Transformation Partners

Leland Stanford Junior University

Lentigen Technology (wholly owned subsidiary of Miltenyi Biotec)

Leukon Investments

Lime Asset Management

Lonza

Louisiana State University ( LSU )

( ) Luminous BioSciences

Lundbeckfonden Ventures

Lysogene

Marsala Biotech

Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO)

Massachusetts General Hospital

General Hospital Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MassBiologics

Medarex

Medigen Biotechnology

MedImmune

Medtronic

MeiraGTx

Mercia Technologies

Merck

Mercury Fund

Meridian Life Science

MERITZ Securities

MidCap Financial

Milo Biotechnology

Miltenyi Biotec

Mita Securities

Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma

Mitsubishi UFJ Capital

Moderna Therapeutics

Molecular Diagnostic Services(MDS)

MolMed

MOLOGEN

Momotaro-Gene

Morningside Group

Movember Foundation

Myonexus Therapeutics

NanoCor Therapeutics

NanoDimension Venture Firm

NantCell

Nantes Gene Therapy Institute

National Cancer Institute (NCI)

National Eye Institute (NEI)

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

National MPS Society

National Securities Corporation (NSC)

Nature Technology

Neuralgene

Neurotech Pharmaceuticals

New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO)

New Enterprise Associates (NEA)

New Leaf Venture Partners

New River Management

NewVa Capital Partners

Nightstar Therapeutics

Nohla therapeutics

Novartis

Novartis Venture Fund

Novasep

Novo Seeds

Oberland Capital

Okairos

Omega Fund Management

Omnes Capital

Omnia Biologics

Oncolys BioPharma

OncoSec Medical

OrbiMed Advisors

ORCA Therapeutics

Orchard Therapeutics

ORI Capital

Osage University Partners

Oxford BioMedica

Oxford Finance

Oxford Genetics

PacificGMP (a part of Abzena Group)

Pangu BioPharma

Panmure Gordon

Paragon Bioservices

Partners Innovation Fund

Pavilion Capital Partners

PeriphaGen

Pfizer

PhaseRx

PlasmidFactory

PNP Therapeutics

Polaris Partners

Pontifax

Posco Capital Partners

Poseida Therapeutics

Precision BioSciences

Profectus BioSciences

Promethera Biosciences

PsiOxus Therapeutics

Puresyn

Quethera

RA Capital Management

RBV Capital

Red Sanfilippo Foundation

Redmile Group

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

REGENXBIO

Relieve Genetics

Renova Therapeutics

RetroSense Therapeutics (acquired by Allergan)

Rev1 Ventures (previously known as TechColumbus)

REYON Pharmaceutical

Richter-Helm BioLogics

Ridgeback Capital Management

Roche

Roche Venture Fund

Rock Springs Capital Management

Rocket Pharma

RTW Investments

Rusnano

SAB Technology

Sabby Capital

San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy (SR-TIGET)

SanBio

Sanfilippo Children's Foundation

Sanfilippo Children's Research Foundation (SCRF)

Sanfilippo Research Foundation (SRF)

Sangamo Therapeutics

Sanofi

Sanofi Genzyme

Sanofi-Genzyme BioVentures

Santen Pharmaceutical

Sarepta Therapeutics

Scancell

Sectoral Asset Management

Selecta Biosciences

Seventure Partners' Health for Life Capital fund

Sham Innovation Sant

Shanghai Sunway Biotech

Shenzhen Qianhai Taxus Industry Capital Management

Shenzhen Sibiono GeneTech

Shinhan Capital

Shinsei Corporate Investment

Shire

Sigma-Aldrich (now a part of Merck)

SignaGen Laboratories

Sino Biological

SIRION Biotech

Skolkovo Foundation

SMS Investments

Sofinnova Ventures

Song Hong Fang

Spark Therapeutics

Sphera Global Health Care

SR One (investment arm of GlaxoSmithKline)

Stratophase

StrideBio

SV Life Sciences Investors

Syncona Partners (a subsidiary of the Wellcome Trust)

Synpromics

Synthace

System Biosciences

T. Rowe Price

Takeda Pharmaceutical

Target ALS Foundation

Targeted Technology Fund

Targovax

Team Sanfilippo

Tekes

Temasek Holdings

Tethys Ventures

The Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation

The French Muscular Dystrophy Association (AFM-Tlthon)

The Jagen Group

The Scripps Research Institute

TheraBiologics

TheraVectys

Thermo Fisher Scientific

Third Rock Ventures

Third Security

TissueGene

Tocagen

Transgene

Tufts Financial Group (TFG)

Turenne Sant

TVM Capital

Two Blades Foundation

UB Securities

UCL Technology Fund

UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S, previously known as The Rainbow Seed Fund)

uniQure

University of California

University of Florida

University of Minnesota

University of Pennsylvania

University of Texas

University of Washington

Valneva

Vascular Biologics (also known as VBL Therapeutics)

VCN Biosciences

Vectalys

Vector Biolabs

Vecura (Karolinska University Hospital)

Venrock

Versant Ventures

Vertex Pharmaceuticals

VESSL (previously known as MultiGene Vascular Systems )

Vibalogics

Vical

Vigene Biosciences

Viking Global Investors

Virginia Biosciences Health Research Corporation (VBHRC)

ViroMed

Virovek

Virttu Biologics (acquired by Sorrento Therapeutics)

VIVEbiotech

Vivet Therapeutics

Vivo Capital

Voyager Therapeutics

Waisman Biomanufacturing

Wellcome Trust

Wellington Management Company

Wellstat Ophthalmics

Whitesun Healthcare Ventures

WI Harper Group

Woodford Investment Management

WuXi AppTec

XyloCor Therapeutics

Ysios Capital

Yuhan

ZIOPHARM Oncology

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/95f8nr/gene_therapy?w=5

Media Contact:

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LONDON, August 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Mid-size pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology companies may compete in the global healthcare regulatory affairs outsourcing market



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5392478



The global healthcare regulatory affairs outsourcing market is at a surge with the increase in demand for various services it offers. It includes medical writing and publishing of the regulatory documentation offered by experienced medical writers, quality control (QC) auditors and publishers that plays an important role to develop high-quality documents for clinical research projects. Then there are regulatory submissions which refer to the submission of any documentation or information on a healthcare product to a regulatory agency in order to get it reviewed. There are also outsourcing services like clinical trial applications, and regulatory consulting and legal representations. All these services are in high demand from end users like mid-size pharma companies, large pharma companies, biotechnology companies, medical device manufacturers and food & beverage companies.



The analysis of global healthcare regulatory affairs outsourcing market depicts that, among various end users in the market, the mid-size pharmaceutical companies are expected to dominate with a market value of over US$ 700 Mn by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of 13.8% during the forecast period. Biotechnology companies are expected to be a lucrative end user segment of the market with a significant demand expected during the forecast period of 2017-2025. The biotechnology companies segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.2% during the forecast period, giving tough competition to mid-size pharmaceutical companies.



Increasing R&D activities and development of new products to boost the healthcare regulatory affairs outsourcing market



Various countries are gradually increasing their investments in the R&D departments. This has triggered development of new products in the industry. With the increasing strictness by the respective regulatory authorities worldwide, a growing collaboration between the drug developers and Clinical Research Organizations (CROs) and contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) has been observed in order to mitigate risks. As CROs and CMOs help the companies in such risks, companies are able to focus on their core businesses. Therefore, increasing research and development activities along with patent expirations have been identified as the major factors fueling the growth of the regulatory affairs outsourcing market.



The rise in demand for services offered by healthcare regulatory affairs outsourcing market is also a result of increasing documentation during drug and device manufacturing. The mid or small size pharmaceutical companies, face problems like extensive documentation. The regulatory authorities, owing to their stringent policies, demand the need for trained and skilled regulatory professionals capable of efficiently handling registration, evaluation and compilation of scientific data. Subsequently, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are seeking help of regulatory service providers, thereby driving the market's growth.



Hidden costs and pricing fluctuations may discourage many end users from using services available in the healthcare regulatory affairs outsourcing market



There's an increase in the instances where prices of the services are not stated clearly in the healthcare regulatory affairs outsourcing market. In addition, extra costs are said to be involved in the services with the increasing use of technological platforms such as software for the clinical data management, content management, database and document management. The use of such technologies results in hyped ultimate price for the services offered and this in turn would hamper the market's growth. The technological advances no doubt improves the overall process but adds to the total costs as well. But makes the companies hesitant of spending high extra amounts. Many companies even confine themselves by outsourcing the regulatory activities to one destination country.



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DUBLIN, Aug 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Latin America E-Learning Market - Industry Outlook and Forecast 2018-2023" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Latin America e-learning market is expected to generate revenues of over $3 billion by 2023, growing at a CAGR of more than 4% during 2018-2023.

The increasing adoption of mobile and portable devices is augmenting the growth of the Latin America e-learning market. The increasing use of mobile platforms offers end-users the ease of connectivity and continuous news feeds, peer-to-peer challenges, flashcards and content collaboration. The rising number of smartphones and success of social media channels across Latin America is enabling the success of audio and text-based applications in the market. The content creators are now able to add bite-sized lessons and deploy learning modules to mobile applications to ensure regular participation among students and teachers in the Latin American market.

The emergence of new education paradigms to promote hybrid and online learning through social media platforms will help companies reach a wider group of consumers and gain a larger market share. Furthermore, the adoption of cloud-based applications and services will enable accessibility to information on a real-time basis from remote locations. The use of these technologies will facilitate networking and create collaborative environments and platforms in the Latin America e-learning market.

Latin America E-Learning Market - Segmentation

This market research report includes a detailed segmentation of the market by delivery mode, learning mode, type, end-users, and countries.

Latin America E-Learning Market - By Delivery Mode

LMS and gamified modules promote demand for new modules in the Latin America e-learning market during the forecast period

The Latin America e-learning market by delivery mode is segmented into packaged content, LMS, and others. Packaged content segment dominated over half of the market share in 2017, growing at a CAGR of more than 3% during the forecast period. Factors such as content sourcing, aggregation, and mode of interaction is propelling the growth of this segment in the Latin American market. The process of packaging content includes raw content, assembly, and delivery and presentation information. The ease of delivering packaged content with no time and space constraint is boosting the popularity of this model in the Latin American market.

This module is designed to save time by not traveling and reaching students even in the remote locations. Packaged content is much cheaper, students and professionals can learn from anywhere at 30-70% less cost than on campus. Such effectiveness is fueling the demand for this module in the Latin America market.

Latin America E-Learning Market - By Learning Mode

Vendors are leveraging technology to innovate self-paced modules in the Latin America e-learning market

The learning mode segment in the Latin America e-learning market is classified into self-paced and instructor-led. Self-paced segment occupied more than 3/4th of the market share in 2017, growing at a CAGR of approximately 4% during the forecast period. The growing preference for continuous learning and scaling new career opportunities for employees in the corporate sector is contributing to the adoption of this module in the Latin American market. The use of innovative technology will enable corporates to access the content at any time and from anywhere across the region.

Countries such as the Dominican Republic, Honduras, El Salvador, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, and Chile are the largest users of self-paced learning in the Latin American market. The use of innovative technology to deliver learning modules will augment the growth of this segment in the Latin America e-learning market. Aura Interactiva, Competir, and AXG Tecnonexo are some of the pan-regional level distributors in the Latin American market.

Latin America E-Learning Market - By Type

Digitalization of content to boost the requirement for training in the Latin America e-learning market

The Latin America e-learning market by type is divided into training and testing. The training segment dominated the majority of the market share in 2017, growing at a CAGR of around 4% during the forecast period. The introduction of digitalized courses and content along with LMS systems and MOOCs that enable access to a large pool of learning content is propelling the need for e-training classes in the Latin American market. The Latin American training segment is witnessing an influx of professional, governmental-related, and academic modules which is driving the need for these services. The training modules include providing information regarding certain processes and day-to-day operations in an online environment. The different methods for e-training include speeches, videos, text documents, demonstrations, and other materials. Focus on skill development will lead to the demand for effective training in the Latin America market.

Latin America E-Learning Market - By End-Users

Gamification of modules for K-12 end-users will transform the Latin America e-learning market during the forecast period

The end-user segment in the Latin America e-learning market is categorized into K-12, higher education, corporates, government, and vocational. K-12 was the largest end-users, occupying the majority market share in 2017 and growing at a CAGR of around 3% during the forecast period. The modernization and use of varied applications of new technologies in the K-12 sector is propelling the growth of the Latin American market. The increasing use of products and solutions for digital publishing incorporated by digital technologies is fueling the need for sophisticated learning modules in this segment in the market. The increasing implementation of mobile devices and gamification tools will revolutionize the K-12 segment in the Latin America e-learning market during the forecast period. All online players in this market are rethinking their offerings to be a major player an education technology plays an important and strategic role in changing from textbooks to e-books in the Latin American market.

Latin America E-Learning Market - By Countries

Smartphones to drive the demand in Brazil and boost revenues the Latin America e-learning market during the forecast period

The Latin America e-learning market by geography is segmented into Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Ecuador. Brazil dominated the largest market share in 2017, growing at a CAGR of around 1% during the forecast period. Brazil is the fifth largest higher education market in the world and the largest in Latin America. The growing need for corporate and vocational courses is driving the growth of this region in the Latin American market. The rising number of smartphones and growing internet penetration is driving the growth of the market in Brazil. The launch of the PROINFO program in 2007 promotes installations of computer and related technology labs in public elementary and high schools, laptops for teachers and students, digital boards, projectors, and tablets. Such initiative by the government will augment the development of Brazil in the Latin America e-learning market.

Key Vendor Analysis

The Latin America e-learning market is witnessing the development of new technologies and platforms by several vendors to sustain the competition in the market. The top players are offering highly customizable platforms that can enable instructors to customize content dynamically as per the student's requirements to gain a larger market share. The increasing number of strategic mergers and acquisitions will intensify the competition levels in the Latin America e-learning market over the next few years. The vendors are focusing on providing freemium offerings with attractive short-term subscription pricing to boost these revenues in the market. The increasing investment in the development of gamified and contextualized interfaces will transform the Latin American market during the forecast period.

The major vendors in the Latin America market are:

Kroton

Telefonica

Pearson

BlackBoard

Other prominent vendors include Instructure, D2L, edX, English Attack, Estacio, Coursera, Latitude, Litmos, Open English, Veduca, Skillsoft, Docebo, McGraw-Hill, Aptara, Edmodo, Cengage Learning, Macmillan Education, and Cornerstone OnDemand.



Key Topics Covered:



1 Research Methodology



2 Research Objectives



3 Research Process



4 Report Coverage



5 Report Assumptions & Caveats



6 Market at a Glance



7 Introduction



8 Market Dynamics



9 Global E-Learning Market



10 Latin America E-learning Market



11 E-learning Market in Latin America by Delivery mode



12 E-learning Market in Latin America by Learning Mode



13 E-learning market in Latin America by Type



14 E-learning market in Latin America by End-Users



15 Latin America: E-Learning Market



16 Brazil: E-learning Market



17 Mexico: E-learning Market



18 Argentina: E-learning Market



19 Chile: E-learning Market



20 Colombia: E-learning Market



21 Peru: E-learning Market



22 Bolivia: E-learning Market



23 Uruguay: E-learning Market



24 Ecuador: E-learning Market



25 Competitive Landscape



26 Key Company profiles



27 Other Prominent Vendors



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/pb3746/latin_america?w=5





Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



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

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Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Deputy CM Manish Sisodia have been accused in the alleged assault case of Delhi's Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash. The Delhi police have named Kejriwal and Sisodia along with 11 other AAP MLAs in the charge sheet in the assault case, reported news agency ANI. Delhi's Patiala House Court will take cognizance on August 25.

The final report of the Delhi Chief Secretary assault case was filed before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal, who put up the matter for consideration on August 25.

As per reports, two AAP MLAs Amantullah Khan and Prakash Jarwar have been booked for attacking a public servant and also refraining a public servant from performing his duties. The Chief Minister and the Deputy chief minister of Delhi have reportedly been booked under various sections of IPC, including 120B, 353 and 504.

Speaking on the matter, Delhi Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash said that he was manhandled and misbehaved by several AAP leaders at Kejriwals house. The Chief Secretary later filed a complaint with L-G Anil Baijal who had reportedly ordered a probe in the matter. Later, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh termed the incident an unfortunate one.

On February 19, the chief secretary was allegedly assaulted during a meeting at the chief ministers residence by his MLAs, Kejriwal, Sisodia. Delhi police on May 18 interrogated Delhi CM for over three hours in the connection with the alleged Anshu Prakash assault case.
PARSIPPANY, N.J., Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- PBF Logistics LP (NYSE:PBFX) announced today that the partnership's management will be meeting with investors and analysts on August 15, 2018, at the Citi One-on-One MLP / Midstream Infrastructure Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

About PBF Logistics LP

PBF Logistics LP (NYSE: PBFX), headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey, is a fee-based, growth-oriented master limited partnership formed by PBF Energy Inc. to own or lease, operate, develop and acquire crude oil and refined petroleum products terminals, pipelines, storage facilities and similar logistics assets.

SOURCE PBF Logistics LP

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The Wix Stunning Awards open today, August 13 and runs through August 20, 2018. Users should submit their completed Wix website for a chance to be featured in the Wix Stunning Awards Showcase, a site celebrating some of the most beautiful sites online. Selected from the featured sites will be three winners, each of whom will receive an online, tailor-made marketing campaign created and produced for them by Wix.

Enter the Wix Stunning Awards here: wix.com/stunningawards/home

Tweet: The Wix Stunning Awards are back to celebrate online creativity! Submit your @Wix website now for an opportunity of a lifetime >> www.wix.com/stunningawards

Tweet: Check out the @Wix Stunning Awards Showcase and draw inspiration from talented finalists from all over the world >> https://www.wix.com/stunningawards/home/showcase

"We are excited by the sites our users are creating," said Hagit Kaufman, vice president of brand and design at Wix. "This year, we will showcase our users' stunning websites, as well as help them to elevate their profiles and design capabilities. We are looking for winners who demonstrate the ability to synthesize functionality within a beautiful design, capturing Wix's goal: to give our users the tools they need to realize their visions online."

For the full contest rules click here.

About Wix.com

Wix is leading the way with cloud-based development platform for over 130 million registered users worldwide. Wix was founded on the belief that the Internet should be accessible to everyone to develop, create and contribute. Through free and premium subscriptions, Wix empowers millions of businesses, organizations, artists, and individuals to take their businesses, brands and workflow online. The Wix Editor, Wix ADI, a highly curated App Market, and Wix Code enable users to build and manage a fully integrated and dynamic digital presence. Wix's headquarters are in Tel Aviv with offices in Be'er Sheva, Berlin, Dnipro, Kiev, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, Sao Paulo and Vilnius.

Visit us: on our blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+

Download: Wix App is available for free on Google Play and in the App Store

CONTACT: Vivian Hernandez, 1-415-517-6539, [email protected]

SOURCE Wix.com Ltd.

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The result is a unique photo book Through the Window  A Photographic Tale of Cancer Recovery  an 80-page compelling visual journey through Wilson's triumph over cancer, filled with mini-anecdotes of the challenges he overcame by combining his passion for photography with his survivor mindset. The book is filled with beautiful imagery of Colorado wildlifefrom hummingbirds and bison, to badgers and burrowing owlsall shot in Colorado's parks, including Cherry Creek State Park and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge. A photo of bison in front the Denver skyline with the Rocky Mountains as backdrop is certain to stay affixed in the viewer's mind.

With World Photography Day (August 19) falling on Scott's one-year anniversary of being cancer free, the Colorectal Cancer Alliance launched "Allies in Nature" social media campaign. Colorectal cancer survivors and caregivers can snap a picture of themselves in their favorite wildlife or nature scene and post on their social outlets. Individuals are encouraged to post using hashtag #AlliesInNature and explain why the image they chose brings them happiness while battling colorectal cancer. The campaign celebrates Wilson's milestone by pairing his passion for landscape photography with belief in the healing power of art.

When Scott is not shooting stunning landscapes and wildlife images, he is the Chief Corporate Affairs Officer for Denver-based Molson Coors Brewing Company, where he oversees the firm's public affairs, responsibility and alcohol policy agenda. He has been with Molson Coors for 20 years. Before relocating to Denver from the UK in August 2015, Scott was a four-time finalist in the UK Landscape Photographer of the Year. In 2016, Scott was invited to become a resident artist at the Denver Photo Art Gallery and was the gallery's best-selling artist last year. In 2017, Scott was also voted Denver's Best Instagrammer by Westword magazine.

Scott partnered with the Colorectal Cancer Alliance to help raise awareness about early detection by sharing his cancer journey and to help end colorectal cancer within our lifetime. In honor of World Photography Day and the Allies in Nature social media campaign, 100 percent of the proceeds from book sales on August 19 will benefit the Alliance. Priced at $35, the book is available online that the Colorectal Cancer Alliance's website.

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer related death in the United States. This year, it is estimated that more than 140,000 Americans will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer, and nearly 50,000 will die from the disease. In its early stages, colorectal cancer is highly treatable, with a five-year survival rate of 90 percent, making it a stoppable and preventable disease through early detection.

The Colorectal Cancer Alliance's mission is to end colorectal cancer within our lifetime through providing support services, awareness of preventive measures, and funding critical research.

About the Colorectal Cancer Alliance

The Colorectal Cancer Alliance is a national nonprofit committed to ending colorectal cancer. Working with our nation of passionate allies, we diligently support the needs of patients and families, caregivers, and survivors; eagerly raise awareness of preventive screening; and continually strive to fund critical research. As allies in the struggle, we are fiercely determined to end colorectal cancer within our lifetime. For more information, visit ccalliance.org.

Social Media

Facebook: FB.com/ccalliance

Instagram: @ColorectalCancerAlliance

Twitter: @CCAlliance

Media Contact

Maurisa Turner Potts

Founder/CEO

Spotted MP (Marketing + Public Relations)

703.501.6289 (cell)

[email protected]

www.spottedmp.com

SOURCE Colon Cancer Alliance

Related Links

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AdvanIDe and NedCard launch MicroSON-3 SMD package

SINGAPORE, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- AdvanIDe - Advanced ID Electronics - the leading independent provider of semiconductors for the smart card, IoT, NFC and RFID industry, today announced the product launch of the NXP UCODE8 MicroSON-3 package from NedCard, a leading semiconductor assembly and testing company. NedCard package solutions are used in smart card, RFID, sensor, M2M, IoT and other enabling technologies. NedCard is a global manufacturer with plants in Europe and Asia.

To be able to offer its customers the best solutions and services that are tailored to their requirements, NedCard is taking a further step towards global availability. This is being made possible with AdvanIDe (Advanced ID Electronics) as its distribution partner for MicroSON-3. With 20 years of experience in the provision of semiconductors and added value services, AdvanIDe is one of the leading companies in its sector. With sales locations and logistics centers located in key markets, the company ensures that customers enjoy rapid response times and the global availability of products.

To support customers, the company also offers technical support, a wide range of example products and source code. In addition to this, experienced Field Application Engineers (FAEs) are also available at strategically relevant locations.

"By working together with NedCard, we can offer additional packages & services which are required from customers to build successful and trusted RFID solutions, specifically in industrial and IoT applications."  Kay Plaumann, Segment Manager  Secure Access at AdvanIDe.

NedCard is making use of the potential from its successes and its pioneering role in the areas of Secure Mobile ID and IoT and is also expanding into new applications and new areas of business.

"With AdvanIDe, we are pleased to expand on our existing long-term relationship beyond the packaging of smart card ICs. We have been working together closely for many years and are now tackling new opportunities to provide value-add to UHF ICs, that expand use cases beyond traditional RFID item tagging applications," said Maarten Dolf Desertine, Manager New Business Development at NedCard.

Find out more about MicroSON-3: http://www.advanide.com/ucode-8-microson-3/

About AdvanIDe

AdvanIDe - Advanced ID Electronics - is one of the leading semiconductor providers focused on components and value-added services and products that are typically being used in RFID transponders and readers, chip cards, security access modules, NFC and IoT devices. AdvanIDe works with leading card manufacturers, security and state printers, transponder manufacturers, OEMs and system-developers. The company's clients supply their products and solutions into applications such as access-management, hospitality and loyalty, automated fare collection, smart city applications, object identification, eGovernment, financial services, M2M security, authentication and IoT.

AdvanIDe had revenues of USD 160M in 2017 and operates from 12 offices in international locations and three representative offices in Korea, Japan and Taiwan. AdvanIDe is jointly owned by the Japan South East Asia Growth Fund L.P. and key employees. Additional information can be found by visiting www.advanide.com

AdvanIDe Media Contact:

Ms. Sharon Gng

+65 6738 0030

[email protected]

UCODE is a trademark of NXP BV.

MicroSON-3 is a trademark of NedCard BV.

SOURCE AdvanIDe

Related Links

http://www.advanide.com


AURORA, Ill., Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Family-owned security systems business Alarm Detection Systems, Inc., of Aurora, Illinois is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

Founder and CEO Bob Bonifas says there is no magic to excelling in business. "It just takes hard work, customer dedication, and first-class employees," he said.

Bonifas started Alarm Detection Systems (ADS) after working alongside his father in a family-owned grocery business in Aurora. After his father closed the store, and with five children to support, Bonifas signed up for an alarm system franchise and never looked back.

ADS offers expert electronic security and fire safety services, CCTV cameras, card access and locksmith services to business and residential customers. The company has more than 35,000 locations throughout Northern Illinois, Southern Wisconsin and Colorado. It ranks in the top 25 of 14,000 alarm companies in the country.

CFO Terry Olah has been with ADS for more than 40 years. "Part of the culture at ADS was self-sufficiency. Especially in the early years, we would see what needed to be done and then figure out how to do it. When I started there were no computers. Going from manual systems to computers was scary, but we did it.

"Now, we have the talent to provide world-class service, but we are still small enough to care."

The company's involvement in industry associations like the National Burglar and Fire Alarm Association was one key growth point for the company, Olah said. "We reached out beyond the little sphere of our business to a national association where we could share ideas and learn as much as we could."

Another key growth point was when Bonifas and two security industry colleagues founded the Security Network of America, now NetOne. The consortium, now more than 30 years old, is made up of independently-owned electronic security and communications companies that serve more than 775,000 customers across the United States and Canada. Collectively, the NetOne member company's customer base is comparable to the nation's fourth-largest electronic security company.

A significant part of the company's growth has been acquisitions, Olah said. More than 60 acquisitions have taken place during his tenure with the company. ADS purchased Safe Systems, Inc. of Colorado in 2015, retaining all 80 employees.

Still a family-owned business, four of Bonifas's five children work for ADS. Ed Bonifas, Dale Bonifas, Connie (Bonifas) Busby and Kim Bonifas all hold key executive positions in the company. Several other family members hold positions in Illinois and Colorado.

Bonifas is proud of the company's ongoing relationship with public safety providers. ADS was just named the 2018 recipient of the PDQ (Police Dispatch Quality) Award that recognizes exemplary collaboration in reducing false alarms.

Reflecting on the company's success, Olah said, "Every employee has been committed to doing whatever they can to help push the ball forward. A lot of bright and talented people have built this company. And the future holds some fantastic opportunities. We're sticking our toes in to see what landscape we want to be a real player in.

"But at the end of the day, you go home and feel good about yourself. We're doing good in the world, providing peace of mind and protecting people. It's a good thing to spend your life doing."

Alarm Detection Systems is ranked one of the top alarm companies in the United States. It is committed to same-day service with more than 100 trained and certified technicians. The company installs and services security systems including: Fire Alarms, Burglar Alarms, Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), and Access Control. The security systems are monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week from an award-winning, UL-listed, CSAA-approved, Five Diamond-certified central monitoring station located at its Aurora business campus.

SOURCE Alarm Detection Systems, Inc.
The LINE LA in Koreatown is a prime location for the ever-popular coffee joint, surrounded by forward looking restaurants (Here's Looking At You, Cassell's Hamburgers) and supported by a robust calendar of hip cultural happenings; all in a booming neighborhood of LA. Located on the ground floor of the hotel, the shop is as convenient and welcoming to passersby and office inhabitants as it is inviting to hotel guests. The menu features all of Alfred's signature drinks, including their world-famous iced vanilla latte, 'matcha in a coconut' and its chocolate-dipped waffle cone coffee cups.

"The jazzy interiors and millennial-facing initiatives at the LINE LA make it a natural fit for the Alfred brand - our synergies are undeniable and the potential is staggering," said Joshua Zad, CEO and Founder of Alfred Coffee and Alfred Tea. "We're thrilled to be working with Sydell Group for a second time and look forward to another successful collab."

ABOUT ALFRED:

Born in January 2013 Alfred prides itself on top-notch customer service, a fine cup of coffee, and of course, skillfully crafted experiences. All Alfred locations represent their respective neighborhoods around town while staying true to the Alfred brand. Alfred Coffee was launched in 2013 by commercial real estate developer turned serial entrepreneur, Joshua Zad. Taking a particular interest in a then deemed "unusable" underground office space on charming, tree-lined Melrose Place, Zad transformed the spot into a premier coffee destination to see and be seen for celebrities, influencers, tourists and the Instagram-obsessed. Five years later, with the addition of a new sister concept, Alfred Tea, and strategic shop expansion around LA, Austin and Tokyo, the company has grown to twelve locations globally. Alfred's quest for global hydration domination continues next month with the opening of the newest Alfred Tea in Brentwood, California. Learn more about Alfred by visiting https://alfred.la.

ABOUT THE LINE LA:

LINE LA is a hotel created by the Sydell Group, located in the Koreatown district of Los Angeles. Housed in an iconic building retaining its original 1964 design, the hotel, designed by Venice-based Sean Knibb, is the first to draw inspiration from the distinct Korean culture of its surrounding neighborhood. The property includes two distinct dining experiences with celebrated Michelin chef Josiah Citrin (LA native chef behind Melisse, and Charcoal Venice) at the helm; nightlife venues Break Room 86 and The Speek by the Houston Brothers (the duo responsible for prominent LA lounges such as La Descarga and Harvard & Stone); a shop locally-curated by art and design collective Poketo; and an outpost of the popular LA-Based Alfred Coffee. LINE LA, is a second home for locals and travelers alike offering a rich, layered, urban experience unlike any other in Los Angeles. Tucked between Hollywood and Downtown, it is a haven for creative expression and a starting point for urban exploration. www.thelinehotel.com

SOURCE Alfred Coffee

Related Links

https://alfred.la


LONDON, August 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Increasing demand for smaller pack sizes to push the demand for beverage cans



Developed economies are experiencing an increase in the use of packaged beverages, owing to the availability of extra disposable income with people in developed countries. Market analysis shows that an increase in the demand for small pack sizes has triggered the growth of beverage cans in these regions. Consumers have prioritized their expenditure. Therefore, there has been an increasing demand for smaller packs, which creates opportunities for growth in demand for beverage cans. In addition, the increasing trend of on-the-go food consumption is expected to present potential opportunities for growth of the glass and metal beverage packaging market. Moreover, the choice of beverage packaging products is predominantly driven by aspects such as convenience and sustainability of packaging solutions, prices of raw materials and aesthetic appeal of packaging.



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5392476



According to the market forecasts, the liquid cartons segment is expected to dominate the market with its market size of over US$ 45,000 Mn by the end of 2027, growing at a value CAGR of 4.6% during the forecast period.



PET bottles' demand is at an all-time high, following increased rate of consumption by consumers in many countries. For instance, American consumers have been breaking records in terms of bottled water consumption. Similarly, in Japan, bottled water consumption witness high growth rate during the 2011 natural disaster case, when government channels advised against consuming anything other than bottled water. The bottled water market is also supported by an increase in consumer awareness regarding the health effects associated with the consumption of carbonated drinks. A significant number of U.S. consumers prefer premium bottled water, and are willing to pay more for the same instead of spending on other beverages. Plastic bottles market is expected to reach a market value of over US$ 34,000 Mn by the end of 2027, growing at a CAGR of 4.4% during the forecast period.



Decreasing consumption of alcoholic beverages could affect the glass bottle market



The consumption of alcohol has decreased in various regions. Japan has a shrinking young population and aged consumers that account for more than 1/4th of the Japanese population. This has resulted in declining sales of soft drinks in the country. The amount of beer consumed by Germans has also dropped by more than 30%. Due to the reduced growth rate of consumption of alcoholic drinks as opposed to that of non-alcoholic drinks, the glass bottle segment is poised to witness a decline in market value share, during the next ten years. Moreover, the global beverage packaging market is also expected to witness a negative impact by high raw material prices and increasing government regulations regarding recyclable packaging solutions, reducing carbon footprint, and ensuring proper coding for optimum traceability, among others in the packaging industry. Due to increasing wastes, Chinese government introduced the excessive packaging regulations, in 2010, which covered beverage packaging, cosmetic packaging, and certain food & confectionary packaging. The Indian state of Maharashtra recently banned the use of packaged water bottles in government offices. The same is soon planned to be imposed on restaurants in the state.



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5392476



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: +1 (718) 213 4904

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

http://www.reportbuyer.com


SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Christopherson Business Travel, the leading business travel management company in the western United States, in connection with Domo, the world's leading data visualization platform, is pushing technology to the next level for customers.

"Because data visualization is key to making smart business decisions today, we have developed a new collection of advanced travel analytics that show customers essential travel information in real time," said Mike Cameron, CEO of Christopherson Business Travel.

Christopherson, which has built a robust technology team dedicated to designing tools and software for business travel managers and their travelers, has integrated Domo's powerful data cards into the company's travel manager dashboard AirPortal 360, providing an instant view of travel patterns and essential analytics.

"With Domo cards now embedded in AirPortal 360, our travel managers can bring all their unique travel data together in real-time, which provides powerful insight," said Cameron. "From there, they can align the metrics that are relevant to them and bridge the gap between data and people.

"Being able to visualize the story their data tells allows them to take informed action that ultimately helps them run a more cost-effective travel program."

With customer expectations at an all-time high, Christopherson was the first travel management company to integrate with Domo and leverage their robust data technology for the benefit of enhanced customer insights.

"We see this as an imperative move," Cameron said. "In today's world, you have to bring technology to the front and provide meaningful tools to move business forward. Without it, travel managers will fall behind.

"The versatility of AirPortal 360, combined with Domo's expertise, delivers deeper customer insights."

Currently, Christopherson has 16 unique data cards built and integrated into AirPortal 360, which travel managers can access to make more informed, data-backed decisions for their travel programs.

"For example, by drilling into our 'Hotels by State' and 'Top 10 Hotel Chains' data cards, a travel manager can analyze the patterns that would allow him or her to negotiate better vendor contracts," said Cameron.

"By drilling into the 'Online vs Full-Service' and 'Top 25 Travelers' cards, a travel manager can gain insight into their travelers' habits and align travel policies that help those travelers make decisions that could ultimately save the company money.

"Having this kind of real-time insight is beyond what travel management data provided in the past and will greatly benefit every company."

Christopherson Business Travel, headquartered in Salt Lake City, is the independently owned leader in business travel management, online travel tools, and business travel resources. As the twelfth largest business travel agency in the United States, with more than 400 team members and 5 full-service locations across the country, the company supports more than $600 million in annual travel bookings. Christopherson provides intelligent travel management to more than 1,000 successful companies and organizations, and is an affiliate of BCD Travel. To learn more about Christopherson Business Travel, visit cbtravel.com.

Media Contact:

Krista Ercin-Maurer

303-694-8770

[email protected]

SOURCE Christopherson Business Travel

Related Links

https://www.cbtravel.com


FAR HILLS, N.J., Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Calling the ruling a perfect example of FERC's fundamentally flawed practices, New Jersey Conservation Foundation (NJ Conservation) and The Watershed Institute today said they will appeal the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) recent decision to deny multiple requests for rehearing and motions for stay of the controversial PennEast pipeline project.

The groups, which are represented by Eastern Environmental Law Center (EELC) and Columbia Environmental Law Clinic, will appeal the FERC ruling that came late Friday in a split 3-2 vote before Commissioner Robert Powelson stepped down, which left the commission potentially divided 2-2 on some critical climate change issues.

Numerous conservation groups, affected landowners, counties, towns, the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel, and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) had sought rehearing on multiple grounds, including that the pipeline is not needed to deliver gas to the region and would not reduce gas prices, ensure reliability, or provide "flexibility," nor is the project warranted for any other vague reason claimed by PennEast.

"FERC's action is one more in a string of bad decisions against the public interest," said Tom Gilbert, campaign director, NJ Conservation. "FERC is blatantly ignoring the facts that show no public need for the project and the serious threats it would pose to our environment and communities. We will continue to take all necessary legal action to challenge the serious flaws in FERC's review of this unneeded, damaging pipeline."

PennEast is still awaiting the court's decision as to whether it can use eminent domain to seize nearly 150 properties in Hunterdon and Mercer counties, and an additional 50 in Pennsylvania. The federal district court judge has the power to protect those landowners from PennEast's bid to use its conditional approval to permanently seize lands.

Far from benefiting the public, the Rate Counsel found that PennEast would cause public harm. Expert analysis from independent energy firm Skipping Stone also conclusively demonstrates that PennEast is not needed for reliability during cold weather  not even on the coldest day of the year  and that New Jersey's existing 1,500-mile pipeline network is more than sufficient to meet demand.

"FERC took eight months to regurgitate its original circular logic, once again ignoring data from public agencies showing that this project would harm the public  instead finding that yet another pipeline is needed because the private company profiting from it simply said it's needed," said Jennifer Danis, senior staff attorney, EELC. "That's particularly offensive, considering that the Commission is supposed to protect the public and recently opened a docket on its certificate practices because it recognizes that its current process is flawed."

FERC Commissioner Richard Glick was scathing in his dissent on Friday's decision, saying, "Today's order simply is not the product of reasoned decision-making." Glick reiterated that need for PennEast was not established, noting, "It does not take much imagination to understand why an affiliate shipper might be interested in contracting with a related pipeline developer for capacity that may not be needed, such as the parent company's prospect of earning a 14 percent return on equity." Glick concluded, "I agree with the protesting parties," referencing NJ Conservation and the Watershed's arguments.

"PennEast would irreversibly damage waterways, wetlands and other environmental resources for a pipeline that is not needed and not in the public interest," said Jim Waltman, executive director, The Watershed Institute. "Since FERC isn't going to do its job, we will challenge it in federal court. It is now up to the courts and the State of New Jersey to protect our environmental resources and the public."

FERC's rehearing response reiterated that its certificate for PennEast is conditional, and confirmed the conservation groups' position that no tree clearing can happen unless and until PennEast has obtained all permits. PennEast is still facing review by the NJDEP and the Delaware River Basin Commission.

Click to Tweet : FERC's order on PennEast "is not the product of reasoned decision-making." Groups will appeal the decision. http://ow.ly/VODt30lo8I2 @ConserveNJ @rethinkenergynj @eelc_org @theH2Oshed #StopPennEast

About New Jersey Conservation Foundation

About The Watershed Institute (formerly Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association)

About Eastern Environmental Law Center

About Columbia Environmental Law Clinic

SOURCE New Jersey Conservation Foundation
Dr. Haeberle joins Cumberland from Amgen Inc., the world's largest biopharmaceutical company, where he held a series of director-level clinical development roles, including development clinical director. At Amgen, he led clinical development initiatives and was responsible for innovating and increasing the overall efficiency of Amgen's cardiovascular portfolio. While a member of the cardiovascular therapeutic area, he oversaw multiple large international phase III studies and participated in the submission leading to the FDA approval of Repatha  , an antibody designed to treat hyperlipidemia (very high cholesterol levels).

Before Amgen, Haeberle was senior manager, clinical development at Baxter Healthcare Corporation, where he led post-approval clinical activities for Baxter's Alpha-1 Protease Inhibitor franchise, encompassing the brands Aralast and Glassia, used in the treatment of lung disease. He was a clinical representative for the approval submission of Baxter's immunodeficiency brand HyQVIA (immune globulin with hyaluronidase) and a subject matter expert for the acquisitions business development team.

Haeberle also held several significant positions, such as associate director, clinical operations and regulatory affairs, in biotech startups and government. He has managed clinical development, regulatory activities and the overall program for an NIH government contract totaling greater than $65 million. He served as a captain in the United States Army's Medical Service Corps, where he managed the development of IV Artesunate for the treatment of severe and complicated malaria.

"It's a pleasure to welcome Adam to our product development team," said A.J. Kazimi, CEO of Cumberland. "Adam is uniquely qualified to help deliver on our exciting pipeline, and brings extensive experience in clinical development, which will be key to our company's continued success."

Haeberle earned his bachelor's degree in biology from Johns Hopkins University and a doctorate in neuroscience with a concentration in cell and molecular biology from Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center. He most recently completed a master's degree in business administration from Pepperdine University.

About Cumberland Pharmaceuticals

Cumberland Pharmaceuticals Inc. is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the delivery of high-quality prescription brands to improve patient care. The Company develops, acquires, and commercializes brands for the hospital acute care, gastroenterology, and oncology market segments.

The Company's portfolio of FDA approved brands includes:

Acetadote  ( acetylcysteine ) Injection, for the treatment of acetaminophen poisoning;

( ) Injection, for the treatment of acetaminophen poisoning; Caldolor  ( ibuprofen ) Injection, for the treatment of pain and fever;

( ) Injection, for the treatment of pain and fever; Kristalose  ( lactulose ) for Oral Solution, a prescription laxative, for the treatment of chronic and acute constipation;

( ) for Oral Solution, a prescription laxative, for the treatment of chronic and acute constipation; Omeclamox  -Pak , ( omeprazole, clarithromycin, amoxicillin ) for the treatment of Helicobacter pylori ( H. pylori ) infection and related duodenal ulcer disease;

, ( ) for the treatment of Helicobacter pylori ( ) infection and related duodenal ulcer disease; Vaprisol  ( conivaptan ) Injection, to raise serum sodium levels in hospitalized patients with euvolemic and hypervolemic hyponatremia;

( ) Injection, to raise serum sodium levels in hospitalized patients with euvolemic and hypervolemic hyponatremia; Ethyol  (amifostine) Injection, for the reduction of xerostomia (dry mouth) in patients undergoing post-operative radiation treatment for head and neck cancer and the renal toxicity associated with the administration of cisplatin in patients with advanced ovarian cancer;

Injection, for the reduction of xerostomia (dry mouth) in patients undergoing post-operative radiation treatment for head and neck cancer and the renal toxicity associated with the administration of cisplatin in patients with advanced ovarian cancer; Totect (dexrazoxane hydrochloride) Injection, for emergency oncology intervention, to treat the toxic effects of anthracycline chemotherapy in case of extravasation (drug leakage from the bloodstream into the tissues).

Cumberland's pipeline of product candidates includes:

Hepatoren  ( ifetroban ) Injection, a Phase II candidate for the treatment of critically ill patients suffering from liver and kidney failure associated with hepatorenal syndrome ("HRS");

( ) Injection, a Phase II candidate for the treatment of critically ill patients suffering from liver and kidney failure associated with hepatorenal syndrome ("HRS"); Boxaban  (ifetroban) Oral Capsules, a Phase II candidate for the treatment of asthma patients with aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease ("AERD");

Oral Capsules, a Phase II candidate for the treatment of asthma patients with aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease ("AERD"); Vasculan  (ifetroban) Oral Capsules, a Phase II candidate for the treatment of patients with the systemic sclerosis (SSc) form of autoimmune disease;

Oral Capsules, a Phase II candidate for the treatment of patients with the systemic sclerosis (SSc) form of autoimmune disease; Portaban  (ifetroban) Injection and Oral Capsules, a Phase II candidate for the treatment of patients with portal hypertension associated with liver disease;

Injection and Oral Capsules, a Phase II candidate for the treatment of patients with portal hypertension associated with liver disease; RediTrex (methotrexate) Injection, an approval submission candidate for the treatment of active rheumatoid, juvenile idiopathic and severe psoriatic arthritis.

For more information on Cumberland's approved products, including full prescribing instructions, please visit the individual product websites, links to which can be found on the Company's website www.cumberlandpharma.com.

SOURCE Cumberland Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cumberlandpharma.com


Days back postcards in West Bengal that mentioned a program 'JASHN-E-AZADI to be organised on 14th August were viral on Social media that triggered politics of Mamata Banerjee's TMC in the state. It was believed that TMC is celebrating Pakistan's Independence Day in West Bengal and a program has been staged for the same. Well, we will tell you the fact behind these postcards. Mahesh Vikram Hegde took to Twitter to share the pictures of the postcards and tweeted, Please look into this matter. Shame politics by T.M.C in W.B what is the meaning of JASHN-E-AZADI & also date mentioned 14th Aug. Are they Pakistanis. Need to step regarding this matter.



Hegde is well known for his right-wing ideologue and he has come forward once again with new 'masala' and this time the postcards of the celebration of Independence Day in Titagarh, Kolkata.

Well, the postcards that are being viral on social media and kicking out politics on it. Well it's a day when actually of a Mushairas and Kavi Sammelans organised on 14th August which is the eve of Independence Day. Here is an image of a Kavi Sammelan on 14 August 2017.

Well, people like Hegde seems like is not aware with the Sammelan and launched a scathing attack on the Mamata Banerjee government.

Well, it is noteworthy that the President of India addresses the nation on 14 August every year.

Other than Hegde several rightists tweeted the picture of the postcards and raised questions similar to that of him. Well, Jashn-e-Azadi All India Mushaira in Titagarh features poet Imran Pratapgarhi on the occasion of 72nd Independence Day. So, it is clear that they are not celebrating Pakistan's Independence Day on 14th August.

Also read: Ramdev Baba makes a controversial remark on 'Gau Rakshaks'; says they are forced to come on streets to deal with cow smuggling
YIWU, China, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Rapidly expanding sourcing company Jingsourcing continues their tradition of helping small to medium businesses with their top-rated service. The company has recently received accolades from a client that wanted to develop an auto-stirred baby bottle under the brand name Baby Blendy.

The founder Jing and client Osmay are visiting PCB manufacturer in Kunshan, China The founder Jing and client Osmay are visiting baby bottle manufacturer in Yiwu, China

The owner of Baby Blendy, Osmay informs that Jingsourcing has supported the massive production of this product by helping him find a reliable manufacturing facility in China. The first batch of this product will be up for sale later this year, and is expected to achieve great sales volumes. In addition to finding the manufacturer in China, Jingsourcing has also played the role of a professional partner behind the growth of Baby Blendy.

It has been observed that many of today's upcoming entrepreneurs have their own product ideas, but don't know how to make their ideas come true. Osmay, the owner of the brand Baby Blendy owned a famous tattoo shop and a body shop in Miami. He was inspired to start his new brand by chance, when he saw his sister shaking hard as she brewed the milk powder. This is when the idea of making a bottle with a stirring function came to his mind.

Osmay didn't have any experience in product development and it was extremely difficult for him to find a reliable and professional factory in China. This is the time when he came across Jing's video on YouTube and sought their help in realizing his ideas.

Jingsourcing understood the needs of Osmay after an in-depth communication, and helped him find a factory in Yiwu with thirty years of bottle production experience and a professional circuit board factory in Kunshan. Osmay received lots of valuable product revision advice from these two factories.

The bottle production factory suggested that according to the ages of the babies, the nipples of bottle can be designed with three different hole sizes. They also recommended PP as the material of the bottles because it is safe and the most popular amongst all materials used for baby bottles.

The American electronic components of circuit boards are difficult to find in China, and hence, are very expensive. The circuit board factory in Kunshan recommended replacing them with Chinese components, which greatly reduced the cost. They also helped combine the originally independent on-off button and speed switch button into one button, making the product simple and user-friendly.

"No matter how excellent the product originality is, if there is no professional manufacturer, it's impossible to make product ideas come true and make massive production. Without the help of Jingsourcing, I can't be so smooth to begin my third adventure. I'm so lucky to meet Jingsourcing," Osmay said excitedly.

While waiting for the samples produced by the factory, Osmay participated in CBME in Shanghai some time ago. "I am looking for the Chinese partners to sell my cool baby bottle in China," Osmay added.

Now, Osmay has applied for the invention patent for his baby bottle. It's really been a long journey from drawing the idea on paper to getting the final prototype, and Jingsourcing has been an integral part of this journey.

Want to work with Jingsourcing for importing products from China? Click here.

About Jingsourcing: Jingsourcing is a China sourcing company dedicated to helping small to medium business source reliable product suppliers from China. In three years since the inception of the company in 2015, they have grown from one to fifty people, and have become the most famous sourcing company on the Internet for Chinese products.

They are the first company offering free sourcing service. With no upfront charges, the importers can enjoy complete import services including sourcing, production follow up, quality inspection, and shipping arrangement.

Contact:

Estelle Wang

+86 579 85860268

[email protected]

SOURCE Jingsourcing

Related Links

https://jingsourcing.com


(Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/729685/Kanazawa_University_NanoLSI_Fellowship.jpg )



Details about the NanoLSI Fellowship Program and application form

https://nanolsi.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/en/research/applications/fellowship/

Deadline for applications

31 August 2018 (Japan standard time)

Applicants will receive notification of the results of the selection by the end of October 2018

Overview

The NanoLSI Fellowship Program covers:

1. Travel expenses between applicants' country and Japan

2. Accommodation expenses and daily allowance based on KU regulations

3. NanoLSI Fellows can be accompanied by researchers, postdocs, and so on from their own labs. NanoLSI will also cover the travel expenses for a maximum two such researchers.

4. Faculty members and technicians will fully support the research activities of NanoLSI Fellows at NanoLSI.

5. While staying at NanoLSI, Fellows will be able to use all the equipment in the laboratories, including instruments, disposable supplies (for up to 300K JPY) etc., and the Kanazawa University guest house if there are vacancies available.

6. Applicants will be able to use the following instruments:

High-speed Atomic Force Microscope (HS-AFM) Frequency-modulation AFM (FM-AFM) & Three-dimensional AFM (3D-AFM) Scanning ion conductance microscopy (SICM)

Background of the NanoLSI Program

The Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI), Kanazawa University, Japan was chosen on October 6, 2017 to become another center in MEXT's World Premier International Research Center Initiatives (WPI Centers).

http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-toplevel/

Takeshi Fukuma, the Director of the WPI-NanoLSI, developed the world's first liquid-environment frequency modulation atomic force microscope (FM-AFM) with atomic resolution, enabling observation biomolecules, three-dimensional distributions of hydration, and flexible surface structures with subnanometer resolution at solid-liquid interfaces. Furthermore, Toshio Ando, a principle investigator of the WPI, is internationally renowned for developing the high-speed atomic force microscopy (HS-AFM) and dynamic imaging of proteins the with HS-AFM.

Based on these advanced technologies, NanoLSI plans to develop 'nanoendoscopic techniques' by combining the world's most advanced bio-scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and supramolecular chemistry. This combination will allow for not only the imaging of surfaces and interior of live cells but also the analysis of metabolites and nucleic acids and the manipulation of cell activities. By introducing multi-scale simulations to these studies, NanoLSI aims to construct models for the mechanisms underlying molecular and cellular functions including understanding of cancer-specific abnormalities of cells by comparing normal and cancer cells. Through these studies, NanoLSI aims to achieve nano-level understandings of various life phenomena and thereby establish a new research field termed 'nanoprobe life science'.

Within this framework the NanoLSI established the 'NanoLSI Fellowship Program' to initiate international collaborations and disseminate knowledge of SPM techniques.

About Kanazawa University

As the leading comprehensive university on the Sea of Japan coast, Kanazawa University has contributed greatly to higher education and academic research in Japan since it was founded in 1949. The University has three colleges and 16 schools offering courses in subjects that include medicine, computer engineering, and humanities.

The University is located on the coast of the Sea of Japan in Kanazawa - a city rich in history and culture. The city of Kanazawa has a highly respected intellectual profile since the time of the fiefdom (1598-1867). Kanazawa University is divided into two main campuses: Kakuma and Takaramachi for its approximately 12,200 students including 600 from overseas.

Kanazawa University website: http://www.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/e/

Further information

Professor Seizo Morita

Secretary General, Nano Life Science Institute

Kanazawa University

Kakuma, Kanazawa, Ishikawa 920-1192 JAPAN

Email: [email protected]



SOURCE Kanazawa University
"The song is SO POWERFUL, the lyrics are so powerful JAMES HAD REALLY found a way to FIT ALL THE DRAMA, THE TRAGEDY and the LOVE of the piece INTO A FOUR-MINUTE SONG."

 CELINE DION, on "My Heart Will Go On"

"THERE IS NOTHING THAT SHAPED MY MOVIE-GOING EXPERIENCE MORE THAN THE MUSICAL GENIUS OF JAMES HORNER."

 ROB LOWE, actor

"James was really the composer who helped me to understandWHAT A GREAT STORYTELLER A MOVIE COMPOSER CAN BE."

 RON HOWARD, director of Cocoon

Sony Classical releases a brand-new album paying tribute to iconic composer JAMES HORNER (1953-2015), available everywhere now just days ahead of what would have been the celebrated musician's 65th birthday on August 14.

The Classics is an all-new collection showcasing Horner's greatest works from Titanic, Avatar, Troy and Braveheart, to name a few. The vivid collection of back-to-back blockbuster hits brings together Horner's unmistakeable movie themes, re-imagined in arrangements especially written for some of our top musicians including internet sensations, THE PIANO GUYS; cello wizards, 2CELLOS and TINA GUO; outstanding guitarist, CRAIG OGDEN; Classic BRIT Award-winning saxophonist, AMY DICKSON together with leading harpist, LAVINIA MEIJER; acclaimed violinist, LINDSEY STIRLING and exceptional piano discovery, ALEXIS FFRENCH. This eagerly-anticipated album pays fitting tribute to the much-missed composer by spotlighting Horner's musical versatility and absolute mastery of the genre and presenting an array of key themes from his magnificent scores.

In celebration of the new album, renowned cellist Tina Guo releases the music video to accompany her arrangement of the theme from the 1985 Ron Howard-directed film Cocoon. "It was a huge honor recording the Avatar and Cocoon tracks on this new album," Tina says. "All of James' music is gorgeous and the new arrangements for cello and orchestra created for this CD to commemorate his amazing life and body of work are gorgeous  I'm just humbled to have been a small part of it!" The video itself is a highly conceptual visual that captures both the essence of the film as well as Tina's signature storytelling style  watch here.

TRACKLISTING:

My Heart Will Go On (From 'Titanic'): 2CELLOS Rooftop Kiss (From 'The Amazing Spider-Man'): Lavinia Meijer Willow's Theme (From 'Willow'): Amy Dickson Theme from Cocoon (From 'Cocoon'): Tina Guo Main Title (From 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan') I See You (From 'Avatar'): Tina Guo Field of Dreams (From 'Field of Dreams'): Craig Ogden Somewhere Out There (From 'An American Tail'): Amy Dickson & Lavinia Meijer For the Love of a Princess (From 'Braveheart'): 2CELLOS The Ludlows (From 'Legends Of The Fall'): Lindsey Stirling Jake's First Flight (From 'Avatar'): The Piano Guys Boys Playing Airplanes (From 'The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas'): Alexis Ffrench Main Title (From 'Apollo 13'): David Elton Briseis and Achilles (From 'Troy'): Lindsey Stirling

Find the album here: https://soundtracks.lnk.to/JamesHornerTheClassics

CONTACT:

Larissa Slezak | Colin Yost | Jamie Bertel  Sony Music Masterworks

SOURCE Sony Music Masterworks
"We are so pleased to once again be honored as the top-selling luxury travel agency member of Virtuoso," said Protravel President Becky Powell. "This recognition is a testament to the skill of our luxury travel advisors, their deep knowledge and dedication to providing Protravel clients with seamless and unforgettable travel experiences."

"Our travel advisors are committed to learning all they can about the newest developments with luxury hotels, tour operators, destination marketing companies, cruise lines, airlines and other suppliers," said Powell. "One of the reasons for our continued success is that our advisors strive to stay ahead of the curve, so they can keep their clients up to date on the latest and greatest leisure and business travel opportunities."

Protravel had 150 travel advisors and employees attending the event, the largest contingent in its history.

Protravel was also honored with three other Virtuoso award nominations (whose winners will be announced later in the week):

Stevie Friedman of Protravel Encino is nominated as Top Producer Virtuoso Voyages

of Protravel Encino is nominated as Top Producer Virtuoso Voyages Marni Becker , Protravel's Senior Director of Cruise Sales, is nominated as Virtuoso Cruise Ambassador of the Year, Member

, Protravel's Senior Director of Cruise Sales, is nominated as Virtuoso Cruise Ambassador of the Year, Member Greg Kiep of Protravel Beverly Hills is nominated as Virtuoso Rising Star, U.S.

For more information on Protravel International, and ideas for luxury trips recommended by our agents, visit the Protravel Blog.

About Protravel International, LLC:

Protravel International, LLC is a Travel Leaders Group company. Founded in 1984, Protravel International, LLC is a full-service, dynamic travel company with an award-winning reputation. Protravel is headquartered in New York City and supports 20 locations throughout the United States and the United Kingdom, plus a network of hosted agents in all corners of the U.S. Today, approximately 1,000 people make up the Protravel organization. Our expertise in destination, international faring and competitive products  coupled with our superior network of contacts in the airline, hotel, cruise and hospitality industry  makes Protravel one of the most powerful selling forces in the travel industry.

2018: Year of the Travel Agent

Travel Leaders Group has named 2018 Year of the Travel Agent. Over the last decade, the travel agency industry has flourished through technology, the growth of travel options and personalized service. Travel Leaders Group represents approximately 52,000 travel agents with unmatched expertise in 135,000 destinations and 53,000 areas of interest. Travelers and suppliers have rediscovered the value a professional travel advisor delivers to the travel experience. Travel agents help to move people around the world, and keep our economy growing.

Contact: Carrie Culpepper

212-944-2121 x2809

[email protected]

SOURCE Protravel International
RALEIGH, N.C., Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Shoney's Restaurants is proud to announce that they are currently offering franchise opportunities to qualified candidates throughout the state of North Carolina, effective today. Qualified applicants who are awarded the opportunity to own and operate a franchise will be provided with an exceptional business model, extensive training, and consistent, ongoing support from all departments within the organization.

Shoney's Restaurants

Shoney's Restaurants opened its first location in 1947  and has become a household name for serving All-American food for over 70 years. From starting as a single drive-in in West Virginia to now having a footprint in 17 states, Shoney's continues to be one of the nation's top casual dining destinations. Shoney's Restaurants menu consists of a wide range of selections including: hand-dipped milkshakes, an array of breakfast choices that are available all day, desserts (including: their world-famous hot fudge cake and iron-skillet cookie), starter items (including: wings and sliders), and tasty entrees (including high range ribeye and baked spaghetti).

"Over the past 70 years, many of our franchisees have opened restaurants, created jobs, boosted the local economy, and have done some remarkable things for their state as a whole," says David Davoudpour, Shoney's Chairman and CEO. "We are looking to do the same exact thing in North Carolina."

With successful locations throughout the Carolinas and a new store opening this fall in Waynesville, North Carolina, Shoney's Restaurant is looking for franchisees in strategic areas across the state.

Aside from being open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Shoney's newer and reimaged units feature beer, wine and spirits, which is advantageous for those looking to open franchises.

The Company, which is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, prides itself on serving all American cuisine with a southern twist on the fresh food bar and chef driven menu. Once brought on board, franchisees will obtain access to an American legacy brand, tested and proven processes and support, purchasing power and distribution chains, cooperative marketing, new product research, development and roll-out, experienced training staff, and continuing education opportunity at "Shoney's University."

Shoney's already has an established market presence and substantial market penetration throughout 17 states. From that highly successful platform, the company is looking to expand the brand in select key areas domestically and internationally.

"Restaurant build-out options include end-cap, in-line, free standing, food court, airports, arenas, toll way and universities," says Terri Harof, Shoney's Director of Franchise Development. "We are excited to continue this aggressive growth not just in North Carolina, but in Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, the Middle East and beyond."

Single restaurant locations and territories are available for new build or conversion of existing real estate with footprint of 3,000-6,500 square feet for Shoney's and 1,000-3,000 square feet for Shoney's On the Go.

Operating a Shoney's Restaurant gives you a variety of revenue streams including take-out, delivery and catering for events, such as: client meetings, holiday parties, corporate events, graduation and bridal parties, and more.

To learn more about becoming a Shoney's Restaurants franchisee, please visit the SHONEY's website, FRANCHISING.SHONEYS.COM, or contact Terri Harof (Director of Franchise Development) at [email protected] or 404.786.7410.

For more general information or to set up any interviews or features, please contact Lamont Johnson at [email protected] or via phone at 305.219.2242.

SOURCE Shoney's Restaurants

Related Links

http://www.shoneys.com


LONDON, August 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- INTRODUCTION

Biologics constitute a majority of the top selling drugs of today and also represent one of the fastest growing segments of the overall pharmaceutical industry. In fact, the share of biologics in the overall pharmaceutical market has increased from 16% in 2006 to over 25% in 2017. Having reported over 70% increase in revenues over the past 5-6 years, the market for biologically derived products is currently estimated to be worth more than USD 200 billion. Despite their clinical and commercial success, biopharmaceutical products are associated with high development costs, which are evidently reflected in their prices. Moreover, such therapies are usually designed for intravenous administration, which require a clinical setting (hospitals / infusion centers) for dosing; this further adds to the overall treatment cost. Of late, the subcutaneous route of administration has emerged as a promising and viable approach for the parenteral delivery of biologic drugs. Owing to several compelling advantages, such as patient convenience, potential for self-administration, better therapy adherence and reduced healthcare costs, the concept is steadily gaining traction within the healthcare industry.



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Given the robust pipeline of biologics, which include monoclonal antibodies, vaccines and other protein-based therapeutic products, subcutaneous delivery options are being investigated for various clinical candidates across different phases of development. In fact, several approved therapeutic products that are currently delivered intravenously are also being reformulated and evaluated for subcutaneous administration in order to improve their adoption, and for life cycle management of drugs nearing patent expiry.



In addition, several drug delivery devices that can be used for self-administration have been developed, and many others are under development. Some of the most popular self-administration enabling devices include large volume wearable injectors, autoinjectors, pen injectors, needle free injectors and prefilled syringes. In fact, these innovative drug-device combination products have witnessed high adoption rates over the past few years and have brought about marked improvements in adherence to prescribed therapeutic regimens. Further, to overcome the limitations and challenges associated with the delivery of subcutaneous formulations, several novel technology platforms have been developed to enable the delivery of (highly) viscous formulations. The rising incidence of chronic clinical conditions (which are characterized by the need for frequent medications) and continuous efforts of therapy / device developers in this field are anticipated to drive the overall growth of this market in the coming years.



SCOPE OF THE REPORT

The 'Subcutaneous Biologics, Technologies and Drug Delivery Systems (2nd Edition), 2018-2030' report provides a comprehensive study on the current market landscape and future potential of biologics designed for subcutaneous administration. In addition, the study provides an in-depth analysis of the formulation technologies and drug delivery systems (focusing on large volume wearable injectors, autoinjectors, pen injectors, needle free injectors, prefilled syringes, drug reconstitution systems and implants) that enable subcutaneous delivery of the aforementioned drugs. Amongst other elements, the report features the following:

 A detailed assessment of the current market landscape of commercially available biologics that are designed for delivery via the subcutaneous route, along with information on the developer(s), type of molecule, target indication / therapeutic area, approval year, dose strength, treatment regimen and available dosage forms. The study also includes comprehensive case studies on leading subcutaneous biologics, featuring details on annual sales, mechanisms of action, development histories, technology platforms (if available), and a comparison of their intravenous and subcutaneous formulations (if applicable).

 An in-depth analysis of the various subcutaneous biologics that are currently under clinical development, with information on the developer(s), phase of development, type of molecule, and target therapeutic area.

 A review of various innovative technology platforms that are used for the formulation of drugs for subcutaneous delivery, highlighting their key features and providing information on their developers, mechanisms of action and advantages. The study also includes an insightful three-dimensional analysis of the technology platforms that are presently engaged in developing drug formulations for subcutaneous delivery, comparing them based on pipeline strength (in terms of marketed / under development drugs based on the technology), supplier power (in terms of year of establishment and size of employee base) of the developer and number of collaborations established related to the technology.

 A detailed benchmark analysis of technology providers that are based in North America and Europe, highlighting the advantage(s) of their proprietary technology platforms, applicability to other types of molecules, and other possible modes of drug delivery.

 Elaborate profiles of key technology providers, featuring overview of the companies, a review of their proprietary technologies, mechanisms of action, key advantages, list of product candidates developed using the technology, recent developments related to the technology (funding and collaborations) and a comprehensive future outlook.

 An in-depth review of the most advanced and popular subcutaneous drug delivery systems, focused on large volume wearable injectors, autoinjectors, pen injectors, needle free injectors, prefilled syringes, drug reconstitution systems and implants, providing information on their developer(s) and device specifications / features. Details of specific parameters captured for different device categories are mentioned as follows:

 Large volume wearable injectors: Type of device (infusion pump and patch pump), type of dose delivered (continuous and bolus), volume of drug container / storage capacity (in mL), usability (disposable and reusable) and stage of development (commercialized and under development).

 Autoinjectors: Type of drug container (syringe, cartridge and others), usability (disposable and reusable), mechanism of action (automatic, semi-automatic and manual), volume of the drug container (in mL) and dosage type (fixed dose and variable dose).

 Pen injectors: Usability (disposable and reusable), volume of the drug container (in mL) and dosage type (fixed dose and variable dose).

 Needle free injection systems: Type of technology (jet, spring and gas), usability (disposable and reusable) and drug volume delivered (in mL).

 Prefilled syringes: Type of syringe (glass and plastic).

 Drug reconstitution systems: Type of device (dual chambered systems and other novel systems), type of container (cartridge and others) and usability (disposable and reusable).

 Implants: Type of material (silicone, titanium, polymers and others), target therapeutic indication, type of implant (biodegradable and non-biodegradable), treatment duration, type of drug delivered, dose strength and stage of development.

 A comprehensive product competitiveness analysis of large volume wearable injectors and subcutaneous autoinjectors taking into consideration the supplier power (based on size of employee base) and product specifications.

 A discussion on affiliated trends, key drivers and challenges, under a SWOT framework. The analysis features a Harvey ball analysis, highlighting the relative impact of each SWOT parameter on the overall subcutaneous products market.



One of the key objectives of this study was to understand the primary growth drivers and estimate the future potential of the market. Based on historical trends and sales related information for subcutaneous biologic drugs, we have provided an informed estimate of the likely evolution of the market in the short to mid-term and long term, for the period 2018-2030. In addition, we have segmented the market based on [A] therapeutic areas (autoimmune disorders, metabolic disorders, blood disorders, bone disorders, oncological disorders, genetic disorders, neurological disorders, respiratory disorders and others) and [B] molecule type (proteins, peptides (recombinant), monoclonal antibodies, other antibody based products, cell / gene therapies and vaccines). In addition to the market forecast for subcutaneous biologic drugs, we have also provided an 8-year forecast for subcutaneous delivery systems, covering large volume wearable injectors, autoinjectors, prefilled syringes and drug reconstitution systems. Further, we have also forecasted the revenues that subcutaneous formulation technology developers are likely to generate through licensing agreements; for this, we have provided a view on the likely upfront payments and milestone payments that will be involved in the deals signed or planned with an aim to develop subcutaneous formulation of biologics. To account for the uncertainties associated with the growth of the subcutaneous formulation technologies market, we have provided three forecast scenarios, portraying conservative, base and optimistic tracks of the market's evolution.



The research, analysis and insights presented in this report is backed by a deep understanding of insights gathered both from secondary and primary sources. This enabled us to solicit inputs on upcoming opportunities and challenges that were considered to develop estimates for a more inclusive growth. The opinions and insights presented in this study were influenced by discussions conducted with several key players in this domain. The report features detailed transcripts of interviews held with the following individuals:

 David Daily (Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, DALI Medical Devices)

 Deborah Bitterfield (Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Lindy Biosciences)

 Frederic Ors (Chief Executive Officer, Immunovaccine Technologies)

 Matthew Young (Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Oval Medical Technologies)

 Menachem Zucker (Vice President & Chief Scientist, Elcam Medical)

 Michael Reilly (Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Excelse Bio)

 Michael Hooven (Chief Executive Officer, Enable Injections)

 Poonam R Velagaleti (Co-Founder, i-novion)

 Tiffany H. Burke (Director, Global Communications, West Pharmaceutical Services) and Graham Reynolds (Vice President & General Manager, Global Biologics, West Pharmaceutical Services)

 David Heuze (Communication Leader, MedinCell)



All actual figures have been sourced and analyzed from publicly available information forums and primary research discussions. Financial figures mentioned in this report are in USD, unless otherwise specified.



RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The data presented in this report has been gathered via secondary and primary research. For all our projects, we conduct interviews with experts in the area (academia, industry, medical practice and other associations) to solicit their opinions on emerging trends in the market. This is primarily useful for us to draw out our own opinion on how the market may evolve across different regions and technology segments. Wherever possible, the available data has been checked for accuracy from multiple sources of information.

The secondary sources of information include:

 Annual reports

 Investor presentations

 SEC filings

 Industry databases

 News releases from company websites

 Government policy documents

 Industry analysts' views



While the focus has been on forecasting the market over the period 2018-2030, the report also provides our independent view on various technological and non-commercial trends emerging in the industry. This opinion is solely based on our knowledge, research and understanding of the relevant market gathered from various secondary and primary sources of information.



CHAPTER OUTLINES

Chapter 2 provides an executive summary of the insights captured in our research. The summary offers a high-level view on the likely evolution of subcutaneous products market, in the short-mid-term and long term.



Chapter 3 provides a general introduction to the various types of therapeutic molecules (biologics and small molecules) comparing their characteristics such as size, structure, immunogenicity and stability. The chapter also highlights different types of biologically derived products that are currently being developed. Further, the chapter features a discussion on the different routes of administration, specifically focusing on the subcutaneous route, highlighting its advantages and associated limitations.



Chapter 4 includes information on over 330 subcutaneous biologic drug candidates that are currently approved / under development. It features a comprehensive analysis of marketed molecules based on the type of molecule, target indication, target therapeutic area, approval year, dose strength, treatment regimen and available dosage forms. On the other hand, pipeline molecules have been analyzed based on parameters such as type of molecule, target indication and target therapeutic area.



Chapter 5 is a collection of comprehensive case studies on the leading subcutaneous biologics in terms of annual sales. Each case study includes drug / therapy specifications, their respective mechanisms of action, development histories, target therapeutic indication(s), available dosage forms, historical annual sales, technology platforms (if available), and a comparison of intravenous and subcutaneous formulations (if applicable).



Chapter 6 provides a list of subcutaneous delivery technology platforms that are either currently available, or being developed by various firms, for the formulation of subcutaneous drugs. The chapter highlights key features of each technology and provides information on their developers. It also features an analysis based on the advantage(s) of their proprietary technology platforms, applicability to other types of molecules, and other possible modes of drug delivery.



Chapter 7 features a three-dimensional analysis of the technology platforms that are presently available for developing drug formulations for subcutaneous delivery. The analysis takes into consideration several parameters, such as pipeline strength (in terms of product candidates developed based on the technology, both marketed and under development), supplier power of the developer (in terms of year of establishment and employee size of the company) and number of collaborations established related to the technology, over the past few years. It also includes a benchmark analysis of technology providers that are based in North America and Europe, highlighting the advantage(s) of their proprietary technology platforms, applicability to other types of molecules, and other possible modes of drug delivery.



Chapter 8 includes elaborate profiles of key technology providers, featuring overview of the companies, a review of their proprietary technologies, mechanisms of action, key advantages, list of product candidates developed using the technology, recent developments related to the technology (funding and collaborations) and a comprehensive future outlook.



Chapter 9 features an elaborate discussion on subcutaneous delivery systems with special focus on large volume wearable injectors, autoinjectors, pen injectors, needle free injectors, prefilled syringes, drug reconstitution systems and implants. It includes a detailed analysis based on specific parameters for each device category, namely [A] large volume wearable injectors, by type of device (infusion pump and patch pump), type of dose delivered (continuous and bolus), volume of drug container / storage capacity (in mL), usability (disposable and reusable) and status of development (commercialized and under development), [B] autoinjectors, by type of drug container (syringe, cartridge and others), usability (disposable and reusable), mechanism of action (automatic, semi-automatic and manual), volume of the drug container (in mL) and dosage type (fixed dose and variable dose) [C] pen injectors, by usability (disposable and reusable), volume of the drug container (in mL) and dosage type (fixed dose and variable dose) [D] needle free injection systems, by type of technology (jet, spring and gas), usability (disposable and reusable) and drug volume delivered, [E] prefilled syringes, by type of syringe (glass and plastic), [F] drug reconstitution systems, by type of device (dual chambered systems and other novel systems), type of container (cartridge and others) and usability (disposable and reusable), [G] implants, by type of material (silicone, titanium, polymers and others), indication, type of implant (biodegradable and non-biodegradable), treatment duration, drug delivered, dosage strength and status of development. As large volume wearable injectors and autoinjectors represent the most novel and advanced types of devices, we have also provided a comprehensive product competitiveness analysis of these products taking into consideration the supplier power (based on size of employee base) and product specifications.



Chapter 10 presents a comprehensive market forecast analysis, highlighting the future potential of the market till the year 2030. It also includes future sales projections of various subcutaneous biologic drug candidates. The chapter presents a detailed market segmentation on the basis of therapeutic areas (autoimmune disorders, metabolic disorders, blood disorders, bone disorders, oncological disorders, genetic disorders, neurological disorders, respiratory disorders and others) and molecule type (proteins, peptides (recombinant), monoclonal antibodies, other antibody based products, cell / gene therapies and vaccines). In addition to the market forecast for subcutaneous biologic drugs, we have also provided an 8-year forecast of subcutaneous delivery systems, including large volume wearable injectors, autoinjectors, prefilled syringes and drug reconstitution systems. It also includes the forecast of revenues that subcutaneous formulation technology developers are likely to generate through licensing agreements. We have provided a view on the likely upfront payments and milestone payments that will be involved in the deals signed or planned with an aim to develop subcutaneous formulation of biologics.



Chapter 11 provides a detailed analysis capturing the key parameters and trends that are likely to influence the future of the subcutaneous products market, under a comprehensive SWOT framework. The chapter also features a schematic Harvey ball analysis to highlight the relative impact of each SWOT parameter on the overall subcutaneous products market.



Chapter 12 is a summary of the overall report. In this chapter, we have provided a list of the key takeaways from the report, and expressed our independent opinion related to the research and analysis described in the previous chapters.



Chapter 13 is a collection of interview transcripts of discussions held with key stakeholders in this market. In this chapter, we have presented the details of our conversations with David Daily (Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, DALI Medical Devices), Deborah Bitterfield (Chief Executive Officer & Founder, Lindy Biosciences), Frederic Ors (Chief Executive Officer, Immunovaccine Technologies), Matthew Young (Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Oval Medical Technologies), Menachem Zucker (Vice President and Chief Scientist, Elcam Medical), Michael Reilly (Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Excelse Bio), Michael Hooven (Chief Executive Officer, Enable Injections), Poonam R Velagaleti (Co-Founder, i-novion), Tiffany H. Burke (Director, Global Communications, West Pharmaceutical Services) and Graham Reynolds (Vice President & General Manager, Global Biologics, West Pharmaceutical Services), and David Heuze (Communication Leader, MedinCell).



Chapter 14 is an appendix, which provides tabulated data and numbers for all the figures provided in the report.



Chapter 15 is an appendix, which provides the list of companies and organizations mentioned in the report.



EXAMPLE HIGHLIGHTS

1. Till date, over 95 biologics have been approved as subcutaneous formulations. In fact, more than 10 such products were approved in 2017 / 2018 by the FDA; these include (in alphabetical order) Admelog (Sanofi), Benlysta (Human Genome Sciences and GSK), CRYSVITA (Kyowa Hakko Kirin and Ultragenyx), DUPIXENT (Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Sanofi), FASENRA (AstraZeneca), Fiasp (Novo Nordisk), HAEGARDA (CSL Behring), HEMLIBRA (Roche), ILUMYA (Merck and Sun Pharma), Kevzara (Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Sanofi), Kyntheum / SILIQ / Lumicef (AstraZeneca, LEO Pharma, Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Kyowa Hakko Kirin), RITUXAN HYCELA (Roche, Biogen and Chugai Pharmaceutical) and TREMFYA (Janssen Pharmaceuticals). In addition, close to 240 products are presently being investigated across various stages of clinical development. Around 25% of the clinical candidates are currently in phase III trials; of these, marketing applications have been filed for 15% of the candidates. Notable examples of products that are likely to receive approval in the near future include (in alphabetical order) burosumab (Kyowa Hakko Kirin and Ultragenyx), fremanezumab (Teva Pharmaceutical and Otsuka Pharmaceutical) and galcanezumab (Eli Lilly).

2. The market is characterized by the presence of several big pharmaceutical companies that have multiple subcutaneous biologics in their product portfolios; examples include (in decreasing order of number of marketed / clinical products in their portfolio) Amgen, Roche, Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Merck, Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Merck Serono. In addition, several small-sized companies and start-ups have undertaken initiatives in this area; examples include (in alphabetical order, no selection criteria) Acer Therapeutics, Altor BioScience, Anthera Pharmaceuticals, Araclon Biotech, ARMO Biosciences, Avillion, Bird Rock Bio, Boston Pharmaceuticals, Catalyst Biosciences, Centocor Ortho Biotech, Corvidia Therapeutics, CuraVac, CytoDyn, Cytori Therapeutics, DiaMedica Therapeutics, Diasome Pharmaceuticals, Genor Biopharma, GlobeImmune, Harbour BioMed, Immutep, Neumedicines, Neurimmune, Oncolix, PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals, Provenance Biopharmaceuticals, Qu Biologics, REMD Biotherapeutics, Taisho Pharmaceutical, Viela Bio, Vitaeris and XEME Biopharma

3. Close to 45% of the subcutaneous biologics under clinical development are monoclonal antibodies. These are followed by other types of protein-based therapeutics, including interferons, interleukins, hormones, enzymes and cytokines, which account for approximately 27% of the clinical pipeline. Vaccines, recombinant peptides and cell / gene therapies are other therapy types being investigated for subcutaneous administration. Further, about 25% of the products in the development pipeline are designed to treat autoimmune disorders, such as (in the decreasing order of number of biologics under development) rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, psoriasis, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. On the other hand, nearly 20% of the candidates are being developed for the treatment of metabolic disorders, primarily focused on diabetes. Other prominent therapeutic areas for which such product formulations are under development include cardiovascular diseases, neurological disorders and certain cancer indications.

4. In order to overcome the challenges related to the formulation of biologics for subcutaneous delivery, multiple companies have developed innovative technology platforms. During our research, we came across close to 20 technology platforms that have been developed to facilitate the subcutaneous administration of biologics. We observed that most of the technology developers in this domain are small or mid-sized companies with a workforce of up to 200 employees; in fact, five such companies were established post 2013; these are (in order of year of establishment) Elektrofi (2016), Lindy Biosciences (2016), i-novion (2015), Excelse Bio (2014) and ReForm Biologics (2014). As per our proprietary company competitiveness analysis, Halozyme Therapeutics, Camurus, Adocia, MedinCell, Ascendis Pharma and Xeris Pharmaceuticals have emerged as key players in terms of supplier power, pipeline strength and number of collaborations signed specific to the subcutaneous formulation technology.

5. The increasing preference for self-administration has prompted several device manufacturers to develop novel systems for the subcutaneous delivery of drugs. During our research, we came across over 110 companies that are currently involved in the development of over 230 drug delivery systems. Of all the device categories, we observed that several companies (28) are involved in the development / manufacturing of prefilled syringes (glass / plastic), whereas large volume wearable injectors is the second most popular category, with such solutions being developed by 27 players. Other types of delivery systems being evaluated for subcutaneous delivery include (in the decreasing order of number of companies involved) implants, needle free injection systems, autoinjectors, novel drug reconstitution systems and pen injectors. It is worth highlighting that around 10 players are involved in the development of more than one type of delivery system; these are (in alphabetical order) Antares Pharma, Becton Dickinson, Crossject, ELCAM Medical, Future Injection Technologies, Gerresheimer, Owen Mumford, SHL Group, West Pharmaceuticals and Ypsomed.

6. Despite the various limitations associated with subcutaneous formulations, the field offers immense opportunities to pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers and technology developers. Companies are also reformulating their intravenous drugs for subcutaneous administration for life cycle management and product differentiation purposes; prominent examples of such products include (in the reverse chronological order of approval year for subcutaneous formulation, in the US) MabThera SC / RITUXAN HYCELA (2017), Benlysta (2017), Actemra/RoActemra (2013) and ORENCIA (2011). The rising incidence of chronic clinical conditions (which are characterized by the need for frequent administration of medications) and continuous efforts of therapy / device developers in this field are anticipated to drive the growth in this market in the coming years.

7. The current size of the subcutaneous biologics market is estimated to be more than USD 80 billion and it is expected to grow at an annualized rate of ~6% over the next decade. The drugs developed / being developed for the treatment of autoimmune disorders and metabolic disorders contribute the highest share (over 40%) of the current market; we anticipate the revenue generation potential to increase for other therapeutic areas, such as cardiovascular disorders, blood disorders and genetic disorders, in the future.

8. In terms of the devices / systems that facilitate subcutaneous administration, we expect prefilled syringes to continue to dominate the market, followed by autoinjectors, large volume wearable injectors and novel drug reconstitution systems. In addition, technology developers are likely to significantly benefit from upfront / milestone payments as a result of multi-billion dollar licensing deals.



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SOURCE ReportBuyer

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ATLANTA, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Just after midnight on Friday, Aug. 10, sanitation workers employed by Republic Services [NYSE: RSG] walked off the job to protest the company's violations of federal labor law.

The 120 drivers, helpers, mechanics and dispatchers who are members of Teamsters Local 728 in Atlanta allege that Republic broke federal law when it took work away from full-time mechanics and outsourced it to subcontractors.

The workers ended their strike at 3:30 pm on Friday.

"We wanted to send a wake-up call that we will not stand for the company's violations of our rights," said Marcus Redding, a mechanic at Republic Services in Atlanta. "We planned from the beginning that the strike would only last one day.

"It is a hardship for customers when their trash isn't picked up, which is why we returned to work after one day," Redding continued. "Our hope is that Republic changes its behavior so that we are not forced to take additional actions."

"Republic's plantation mentality has to end," said Randy Brown, President of Local 728. "The company cannot treat its Atlanta workers like indentured servants. These frontline employees put their lives on the line every day to protect the public health, in the fifth-most dangerous job in America, and they deserve dignity, respect, and a fair return on their work."

Brown continued, "In my opinion, Republic has been breaking the law in an attempt to bully its workers into accepting unaffordable health insurance."

Dave Thomas, commercial driver at Republic in Atlanta, said, "Our job is to protect the public health and keep our communities clean. When Republic broke the law and wouldn't listen to us, we felt we had no choice but to go on strike as a wake-up call. We want to protect the public, which is why this was a short strike. We care about the community, but Republic doesn't seem to. We are asking the company to change its behavior so that we don't have to do this again."

Republic/Allied Waste's total revenues were more than $10 billion in 2017. It received $190 million in the 2017 corporate tax cut. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is the primary shareholder of Republic stock. Gates owns approximately 33 percent of the total worth of the company. Michael Larsen, Gates' investment manager, sits on Republic's board of directors.

Contact:

Ben Speight, (404) 604-6762

SOURCE Teamsters Local Union 728
Participants hail from a range of fields in the biological, physical, and social sciences, as well as the humanities. They joined DISI from institutions around the globe, including American universities like Stanford, Michigan, Harvard, and the University of California.

Through lectures, panels, evening "salon" discussions, and research projects, participants forged new collaborations and explored cutting-edge questions. Topics included artificial intelligence, animal cognition, and the role of culture and language in shaping the human mind.

Launched by Jacob Foster and Erica Cartmill of UCLA, DISI is an outgrowth of Diverse Intelligences (DI), a new initiative funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF). Supported by an initial commitment of $20 million, DI is a global effort to advance understanding of the fundamentals of intelligences in many forms.

Given the enthusiastic reception DISI has received, Foster and Cartmill say that they hope DISI can become an annual event, "helping to build a vibrant scholarly community devoted to the study of Diverse Intelligences." Indeed, such community-building is already afoot. During the first few days of DISI, the young scholars collaborated with over 40 recent recipients of TWCF grant funding. This group of world-class researchers mapped out plans for new path-breaking research.

By fostering a new community, DISI hopes to inspire bold conversations about intelligence.

For more information about DISI and the DI Initiative, visit www.diverseintelligencessummer.com and www.diverseintelligences.com.

About Templeton World Charity Foundation

Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF) was established in 1996 in Nassau, The Bahamas, to serve as a global philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to big questions of life and the universe. Sir John Templeton established the Foundation to foster ambitious thinking and creative communications on diverse topics to stimulate humility, curiosity, and enthusiasm for new discoveries.

SOURCE Templeton World Charity Foundation
ISNES, Belgium, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- VolitionRx Limited (NYSE AMERICAN: VNRX) ("Volition") today announced financial results and a business update for the quarter ended June 30, 2018. Volition management will host a conference call to discuss these results and provide a further business update tomorrow, August 14, at 8:30 AM U.S. Eastern Time.

Cameron Reynolds, President and Chief Executive Officer of Volition, said, "We have had numerous highlights this quarter, with strong progress being made on many fronts. I am delighted with the broad strength of new talent in our team, especially the growth in our research and development team in Belgium who are hard at work on the considerable project of turning our assays into robust products that can be used worldwide. This development work will be a key in our future success and is now very much bearing fruit, including the exciting prostate data we just announced. We are also fortunate to be working with institutions and individuals who have world-renowned reputations." Mr. Reynolds continued, "the work on the large colorectal cancer product trials is also progressing and we expect to have enough of the product grade assays to be completed to announce more colorectal cancer data later this year, beginning with an updated triage test. We look forward to achieving additional milestones in the upcoming quarters and sharing further exciting news."

Second Quarter 2018 and Recent Company Highlights

Signed agreements to conduct two large-scale colorectal cancer research studies across the Asia Pacific region in collaboration with the National Taiwan University.

region in collaboration with the National Taiwan University. The first study will comprise 5,000 asymptomatic colorectal cancer screening subjects and the second trial will include up to 2,000 symptomatic colorectal cancer patients.



These studies are being conducted to test and validate Volition's proprietary Nu.Q platform for the detection and diagnosis of colorectal cancer for marketing, rather than for regulatory purposes.



The studies will cost approximately $2.55 million payable over three years and should assist product development in Asia in 2019.

payable over three years and should assist product development in in 2019. Signed an exclusive global sales and distribution agreement with Active Motif for a range of Research Use Only kits, the first of which, the Nu.Q Total assay kit is now available for sale. We expect modest initial revenue in the coming quarter, building through next year and beyond.

Released encouraging preliminary data from a prospective, multi-centered Proof of Concept Study into the utility of Volition's Nu.Q assays to diagnose men with high-grade prostate cancer. At 88% specificity, the Volition assays identified 94% of high-grade prostate cancers that require treatment.

Commenced work on the "Bonn27" study - this 4,500-patient cohort is already collected by the University of Bonn, Germany and includes patients with 27 of the most prevalent cancers.

and includes patients with 27 of the most prevalent cancers. Started proof of concept work in one of our non-cancer disease areas - endometriosis. This study is in collaboration with the University of Oxford , England which has completed a collection of 350 patient samples over the last three years.

Second Quarter 2018 and Other Financial Results

For the three months ended June 30, 2018, Volition reported a net loss of $4.6 million, or $0.15 per share. This compares to a net loss of $3.5 million, or $0.13 per share in the second quarter of 2017.

Cash and cash equivalents as of June 30, 2018 totaled $11.9 million (excluding the $9 million in gross proceeds from the recent private placement) compared to $10.1 million at December 31, 2017. The net cash outflow in the quarter ended June 30, 2018 was approximately $2.4 million.

As previously announced, in July 2018 we secured approximately $700,000 in non-dilutive funding from the Walloon Regional Government and in August 2018 we completed a private placement (PIPE) with an existing accredited investor of 5 million shares of common stock at a price of $1.80, as well as a warrant to purchase up to an additional 5 million shares of common stock at an exercise price of $3.00 per share payable in cash, for aggregate gross proceeds, before the deduction of offering expenses, of $9 million (excluding the proceeds from any exercise of the warrant). These transactions significantly increase our cash position and strengthen our balance sheet.

Upcoming Milestones

For the remainder of 2018 into early 2019, Volition is targeting several important clinical and commercial milestones, including, among others:

Data on both the Triage and the frontline colorectal cancer screening products.

Revenue from the sales of our RUO kits.

Preliminary "Proof of Concept" data on the validity of our Nu.Q technology platform from trials such as the Bonn27 study, another European colorectal cancer trial and the endometriosis study.

Further clinical data on at least one of the other targeted cancers.

Securing larger prostate trial(s).

Obtaining additional key patents in several countries, including the United States .

Conference Call

Volition will host a conference call tomorrow, August 14, at 8:30 AM Eastern Time, to discuss its financial and operating results for the second quarter of 2018 and to provide an update on recent developments. To participate in the call, please dial 1-877-407-9716 (toll-free) in the U.S., 0-800-756-3429 (toll-free) in the U.K., and 1-201-493-6779 (toll) internationally. A live audio webcast of the conference call will also be available via link from the investor relations page of Volition's corporate website at http://ir.volitionrx.com/. The conference ID is 13682285.

The call will be hosted by Cameron Reynolds, President and Chief Executive Officer, along with David Vanston, Chief Financial Officer and Scott Powell, Executive Vice President, Investor Relations.

About Volition

Volition is a multi-national life sciences company focused on developing simple, easy to use, cost effective blood tests designed to help diagnose a range of cancers. The tests are based on the technology platform of Nucleosomics, which is the practice of identifying and measuring nucleosomes in the bloodstream or other bodily fluid - an indication that disease is present.

As cancer screening programs become more widespread, Volition's products aim to help to diagnose a range of cancers quickly, simply, accurately and cost effectively. Early diagnosis has the potential to not only prolong the life of patients, but also to improve their quality of life.

Volition intends to expand the application of its technology beyond cancer by exploring other disease applications. The company's research and development activities are currently centered in Belgium, with additional offices in London, Texas and Singapore, as it focuses on bringing its diagnostic products to market first in Europe, then in the U.S. and ultimately, worldwide.

For more information about Volition, visit Volition's website https://volitionrx.com/ or connect with us via:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/volitionrx

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/volitionrx

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

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/VolitionRx

The contents found at Volition's website address, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube are not incorporated by reference into this document and should not be considered part of this document. The addresses for Volition's website, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube are included in this document as inactive textual references only.

Media/Investor Contacts

Louise Day, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer

[email protected]

+44 (0)7557 774620

Scott Powell, Executive Vice President, Investor Relations

[email protected]

+1 (646) 650 1351

Joseph Green, Edison Advisors

[email protected]

+1 (646) 653 7030

Safe Harbor Statement

Statements in this press release may be "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, that concern matters that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated or projected in the forward-looking statements. Words such as "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "aims," "targets," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," "optimizing," "potential," "goal," "suggests," "could," "would," "should," "may," "will" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements relate to the effectiveness of Volition's bodily-fluid-based diagnostic tests as well as Volition's ability to develop and successfully commercialize such test platforms for early detection of cancer and/or other disease applications. Volition's actual results may differ materially from those indicated in these forward-looking statements due to numerous risks and uncertainties. For instance, if Volition fails to develop and commercialize diagnostic products, it may be unable to execute its plan of operations. Other risks and uncertainties include Volition's failure to obtain necessary regulatory clearances or approvals to distribute and market future products in the clinical IVD market; a failure by the marketplace to accept the products in Volition's development pipeline or any other diagnostic products Volition might develop; Volition will face fierce competition and Volition's intended products may become obsolete due to the highly competitive nature of the diagnostics market and its rapid technological change; and other risks identified in Volition's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, as well as other documents that Volition files with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about Volition's business based, in part, on assumptions made by management. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this release, and, except as required by law, Volition does not undertake an obligation to update its forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

Nucleosomics, NuQ, Nu.QTM and Hypergenomics and their respective logos are trademarks and/or service marks of VolitionRx Limited and its subsidiaries. All other trademarks, service marks and trade names referred to in this press release are the property of their respective owners. Additionally, unless otherwise specified, all references to "$" refer to the legal currency of the United States of America.

SOURCE VolitionRx Ltd

Related Links

http://ir.volitionrx.com


HOUSTON, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- W&T Offshore, Inc. (NYSE: WTI) today announced the retirement of J. Daniel ("Danny") Gibbons, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The Company has appointed Janet Yang as acting Chief Financial Officer, effective immediately.

Tracy Krohn, W&T Offshore's Chairman and CEO, stated, "We appreciate the many contributions that Danny has made to W&T over the last 11 years as CFO of the Company and wish him well in his retirement. Since joining W&T in 2008, Janet has taken on increasing levels of financial responsibility and proved herself to be a valuable asset to the Company. She has helped the Company successfully execute a number of strategic transactions, including our recently announced drilling joint venture. We are pleased to have her take on this role."

Janet Yang joined W&T in 2008 as Finance Manager and in 2012 became Director, Strategic Planning & Analysis, a position she held until being appointed Vice President, Corporate & Business Development in 2017. Ms. Yang has over 15 years of finance, investment and strategy experience in the energy industry. Prior to joining W&T, Ms. Yang held positions in research and investment analysis at BlackGold Capital Management, investment banking at Raymond James and energy trading at Allegheny Energy. Ms. Yang received a B.A. in Economics from Rice University and an M.B.A. with concentrations in Finance and Accounting from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

About W&T Offshore

W&T Offshore, Inc. is an independent oil and natural gas producer with operations offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and has grown through acquisitions, exploration and development. The Company currently has working interests in 48 producing fields in federal and state waters and has under lease approximately 650,000 gross acres, including approximately 440,000 gross acres on the Gulf of Mexico Shelf and approximately 210,000 gross acres in the deepwater. A majority of the Company's daily production is derived from wells it operates. For more information on W&T Offshore, please visit the Company's website at www.wtoffshore.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements reflect our current views with respect to future events, based on what we believe are reasonable assumptions. No assurance can be given, however, that these events will occur. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially including, among other things, market conditions, oil and gas price volatility, uncertainties inherent in oil and gas production operations and estimating reserves, unexpected future capital expenditures, competition, the success of our risk management activities, governmental regulations, uncertainties and other factors discussed in W&T Offshore's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017 and subsequent Form 10-Q reports found at www.sec.gov or at our website at www.wtoffshore.com under the Investor Relations section. Investors are urged to consider closely the disclosures and risk factors in these reports.

CONTACT: Lisa Elliott Janet Yang

Dennard Lascar Investor Relations VP & CFO

[email protected] [email protected]

713-529-6600 713-624-7326

SOURCE W&T Offshore, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.wtoffshore.com


A British-Pakistani stand-up comedian was recently probed by the police after he used a derogatory term in his act 'Meet Abu Hamsta and Paki Bashir".

The comedian, Jeff Mirza was dressed as a butcher 'Paki Bashir' at the show. He was questioned by the Edinburgh police after they received a complaint from a man of Pakistan origin, who claimed that he was offended on seeing the 'Paki' word in a poster, the Daily Star UK reported.

Mirza, on seeing the man at a police station in Edinburgh, tried to explain him why it was alright to use the P-word.

He was quoted by the paper saying, "I told him my daughter at the age of four had been racially abused while playing at  Valentines Park in Ilford and for many years after that, I had been angry when I heard that word."

Mirza said that he is a proud "Paki" and added that there was nothing wrong in using the term.

The word Paki is a racial slur referring to the people of Pakistani descent which is considered derogatory. The term is commonly used in the United Kingdom and Canada for inciting racist violent attacks against the Pakistani people. The term was coined in the late 1960s and is still being used even today.

In 2008, the derogatory word was spray painted on a campaign sign of an Alberta Liberal Party candidate in Edmonton.

In 2009, Prince Harry earned international attention when he was rebuked and forced to undergo sensitivity training as he was caught on video, calling a military recruit as "our little paki friend".

(ANI)
Jerusalem, Aug 13 : Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday criticized rallies that took place in Tel Aviv against a controversial law recently approved by parliament declaring Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Netanyahu was referring to a rally organized in Tel Aviv on Saturday, which organizers estimated had been attended by tens of thousands, mainly from the Arab minority.

"...We saw PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) flags in the heart of Tel Aviv. We heard the calls: 'With blood and fire we will redeem Palestine'," Efe quoted Netanyahu as saying during the weekly cabinet meeting.

"Many of the demonstrators want to abrogate the Law of Return, cancel the national anthem, fold up our flag and cancel Israel as the national state of the Jewish people and turn it - as their spokespersons said - into an Israeli-Palestinian state, and others say: A state of all its citizens," he added.

The controversial law, approved on July 19, recognizes Israel as a Jewish State, grants only Jews the right of self-determination and abolishes Arabic as an official language.

The Arab minority, which represents 20 per cent of the population, considers the law discriminatory and organized the rally a week after the Druze community took to streets.
Astana, Aug 13 : Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, on Sunday emphasized the cooperation between their two countries in the fight against terrorism in Syria during their bilateral meeting within the framework of the 5th Caspian Summit being held in the Kazakh city of Aktau.

"We have a large volume of cooperation, on many questions regarding the Caspian and about the handling of acute crises, including the Syrian crisis," Efe quoted Putin as saying at the start of the meeting.

The Kremlin chief said that the Syrian crisis would be the central issue to be discussed by him and Rohani, the meeting taking place after the historic signing of the convention on the legal status of the world's largest lake by the leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkmenistan - the five countries that share the Caspian Sea.

"I want to inform you about the progress of the contacts with our partners to deal with this complex matter," Putin told Rohani, referring to the negotiations that Moscow wants to launch with Turkey and other countries to find a definitive solution to the Syrian crisis.

In turn, Rohani emphasized that the victories of the Syrian army over the Islamic State and other jihadist groups operating in Syria have been made possible thanks to cooperation between Russia and Iran.

"The whole world is a witness to how, with Iran and Russia's help, the Syrian army has been able to play an important role in the fight against terrorism in ... its country," the Iranian leader said.

Russia and Iran both have the objective, he said, of "ensuring stability and peace in the entire region".

Shortly before the meeting, during his speech at the Caspian Summit, the Iranian president emphasized that the other four countries of the region were going to defend the nuclear pact Tehran signed with six world powers but from which the US has now withdrawn.

The convention signed in Aktau on the legal status of the Caspian Sea is the result of 22 years of arduous negotiations.

The largest lake in the world with an area of 370,886 sq. kilometers (143,200 sq. miles), is to be divided into territorial waters (not exceeding 15 nautical miles in width), exclusive areas for fishing (10 nautical miles in width) and waters for common use, as established in the convention's text.

The Caspian was shared by Moscow and Tehran according to the 1921 and 1940 treaties until the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The emergence of three new coastal states - the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan - forced the rethinking of the Caspian partition and its vast wealth in hydrocarbons.

The large salt lake, according to various estimates, contains probable oil reserves of 235 billion barrels below its bed.
Taipei, Aug 13 : Nine people were killed and 16 injured as fire engulfed a hospital in Taiwan's New Taipei City on Monday, officials said.

The incident took place on the seventh floor of the Weifu hospital, in Xinzhuang district, where over 200 firemen evacuated dozens of patients, but at least nine of them were dead before reaching other hospitals, Efe reported.

Some witnesses said they heard the sound of an explosion before the start of the fire.

A statement from the Office of Disaster Prevention of the Taiwanese Ministry of Health and Welfare said that 33 patients, two employees and a nurse were rescued.

The fire started in a building of the Weifu Hospital and 76 rescue vehicles and some 276 firefighters were deployed to the scene to control the fire, which was extinguished within an hour.

The victims were transferred to the Yadong, Xintai, Hulong, Beima and Fudan hospitals.

The cause of the fire is still unknown and the police of New Taipei have initiated an investigation.
Srinagar, Aug 13 : Militants abducted and killed a civilian in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district, police said on Monday.

"Terrorists on Sunday night barged into the house of Gulzar Ahmad, a resident of Murran village and abducted him," a police officer said.

Later, his body riddled with bullets was recovered from nearby fields, he added.

"Initial investigation suggest that the Zahoor Thokar and Showkat Dar-led group of proscribed terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen are involved in the killing," the officer said.
Seoul, Aug 13 : North and South Korea launched high-level talks on Monday to discuss the date and venue for a third summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and top North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The talks started at 10 a.m. in Tongilgak in the border village of Panmunjom, according to the joint press corps report.

Moon and Kim met in Panmunjom on April 27 for the first time, agreeing to hold another summit in Pyongyang in the fall. They met again on May 26.

The Moon-Kim summit in April was historical as it broke a long spell of hostility between the two sides after the last summit in 2007 in Pyongyang.
Jammu, Aug 13 : Ahead of the Indian and Pakistan Independence Day celebrations, authorities on Monday decided to suspend the Amarnath Yatra from Jammu for three days to ensure safety and security of the pilgrims.

No pilgrim was allowed on Monday to proceed towards the Kashmir Valley from Jammu's Bhagwati Nagar Yatri Niwas, police said.

The pilgrimage from the two base camps of Baltal and Pahalgam, however, would continue towards the Cave Shrine during these three days, a police officer said.

Tension mounted in the valley around August 14 and August 15 coinciding with the Independence Day celebrations in Pakistan and India.

To attract international attention, militants have always tried to carry out attacks in the Valley around these days over the last 30 years since armed insurgency broke out.

Heavy deployments of security have been made here and in other places to prevent any attack.

Nearly 2.79 lakh pilgrims have already performed this year's Amarnath Yatra that started on June 28 and will end on August 26.
Washington, Aug 13 : US President Donald Trump said it was "great" that consumers might boycott American motorcycle manufacturer, Harley-Davidson if it moves some of the company's production overseas.

The President tweeted about the potential boycott on Sunday, reports CNN.

"Many @harleydavidson owners plan to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas. Great!" Trump wrote.

"Most other companies are coming in our direction, including Harley competitors. A really bad move! US will soon have a level playing field, or better."

Tensions have been brewing between the Trump administration and Harley-Davidson for months.

It started when the President imposed hefty tariffs on steel and aluminium imports earlier this year in an effort to bolster domestic manufacturing.

The European Union (EU) responded by pledging to raise tariffs on a list of goods that are imported from the US, including Harley motorcycles, CNN reported.

Harley said it stands to lose as much as $100 million a year, and the company pledged to shift some of its production abroad so that it could avoid the added tariffs on motorcycles sold in the EU.

Trump accused Harley of using the European retaliatory tariffs as "an excuse" for moving manufacturing abroad.

The President also said last month his administration was "working with other Motor Cycle companies who want to move into the US".
New Delhi, Aug 13 : Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chaterjee died at a Kolkata nursing home on Monday following a cardiac arrest and prolonged age-related ailments. Congress President Rahul Gandhi hailed him as "an institution", respected by all parliamentarians.

"I mourn the passing away of Somnath Chatterjee," Gandhi said after news came of the demise of the former 10-time parliamentarian.

"He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief," Gandhi tweeted.

Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal remembered him as "one of the greatest Lok Sabha Speakers India ever had".

"Extremely sad news about Somnath Chatterjeeji. One of the greatest parliamentarians of contemporary times he will always be missed by this country," Kejriwal tweeted.

Chatterjee died at 8.15 a.m at the Bellevue Clinic, where he was admitted on August 7.

He was critical following the heart attack he suffered on Sunday. He was also suffering from a kidney-related ailment and his condition was critical.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : Debutant Dipesh Jain's "Gali Guleiyan", for which Manoj Bajpayee was feted with the Best Actor Award at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM), will hit the screens on September 7.

The Hindi psychological drama -- also known as "In The Shadows" -- has travelled to almost 20 international film festivals. It even won a Special Jury Mention at the gala in Melbourne on Sunday night.

Manoj features in a heart wrenching portrayal of a man trapped within the walls and alleys of old Delhi and his own mind, and it is about how he attempts to break free to find a human connection.

The critically acclaimed actor was competing at IFFM with actors like Akshay Kumar ("Pad Man"), Ranbir Kapoor ("Sanju"), Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor ("Padmaavat") and Varun Dhawan ("October").

Manoj said it's a fantastic feeling to win the award especially when "so many actors who have all done such a great job" were in competition.

"My character in 'Gali Guleiyan' is a very complex one with many layers and the film itself is a difficult one to make. Hats off to our director Dipesh, who despite being a newcomer, came up with such a great idea, made this challenging film and has taken it to festivals across the world.

"The adulation that the film has received has been overwhelming and we are very excited to now take it to our audience as the film sets up for its release in theatres worldwide on September 7."

Jain, who is from Los Angeles, hopes the audience comes forward to support the movie.

"I'll encourage everyone to come watch our film in theatres as it surely will give them an immersive psychological experience like never before."

While Manoj plays the main protagonist, he is supported by an ensemble cast of Ranvir Shorey, Neeraj Kabi and Shahana Goswami along with debutant child actor Om Singh.

It is produced by Shuchi Jain of Exstant Motion Pictures.
Nairobi, Aug 13 : A hippopotamus attacked and killed a Chinese tourist in Kenya over the weekend, according to wildlife authorities.

The attack took place Saturday evening at Lake Naivasha, about 58 miles from from Nairobi, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) tweeted on Sunday.

Chang Ming Chuang, 65, was with a colleague taking pictures of the hippo on the shores of the lake when the animal attacked, reports CNN.

Chuang was taken to the Naivasha District Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Chuang's colleague, Wu Peng Te, 62, survived the attack with minor bruises and is recovering at the Naivasha Sopa Resort, the wildlife service said. KWS is tracking the hippo.

Known as one of the most dangerous animals on the planet, hippos can snap a canoe in half with their strong jaws, according to National Geographic.

Hippos kill about 500 people in Africa each year and can run at the same speed as humans for short distances when faced with danger.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : Describing the pro-Khalistan rally in London by the Sikhs as a conspiracy to divide the country, the Congress on Monday questioned the Narendra Modi-led government's silence on it.

"As a sinister conspiracy is hatched to revive militancy in Punjab, why are BJP-Akali Dal mum? Why has the 56' Modi government been stunned into a conspiratorial silence? Isn't it a conspiracy to break the country? Why silence then?" Congress spokesman Pradeep Singh Surjewala said in a tweet attaching a news report about the pro-Khalistan rally.

The Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), a human rights advocacy group with radical leanings, held what it calls a "London Declaration" on an independence referendum for Punjab at Trafalgar Square in London on Sunday.

Thousands of Sikhs and their supporters gathered to demand a 'Referendum 2020' campaign in Punjab.

They also brandished banners reading "Free Punjab, End Indian occupation", "Punjab Referendum 2020 for Khalistan" and "We will re-establish Punjab as an independent country".
Vientiane, Aug 13 : The death toll in the flooding caused by a dam collapse in Laos has climbed to 36 while 98 are still missing, national daily Vientiane Times reported on Monday.

On Saturday, we found the body of a three-year-old girl, bringing the number of known fatalities to 36, including three injured people who died in hospital, Deputy Director General of the General Political Department, Lao People's Army, Phalom Linthong said.

Laos army teams and rescue teams from Singapore are scouring the area for those still missing, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The operation is not easy because many areas remain flooded after a week of rain and we are constantly encountering challenges caused by thick mud, sand, and buried objects," Linthong said.

Rescue teams from Thailand, China, the Republic of Korea, and Laos arrived on the scene, when the flood hit on July 23, to aid in the search, rescue and relief operation, the daily noted.

Camps are being set up to accommodate the homeless after lower parts of Sanamxay district was flooded following several days of rain.

The rebuilding of roads and bridges in the disaster-hit areas is being accelerated to enable relief supplies transportation.

An under-construction saddle dam of the Xe Pian-Xe Nam Noy hydropower project, invested by South Korean, Thai and Lao companies, collapsed on July 23, unleashing a large amount of water and hitting some 13 villages of Sanamxay district.
Lucknow, Aug 13 : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday condoled the demise of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who died at the age of 89 at a Kolkata hospital.

In the condolence message issued by his office, Adityanath reminisced the value addition brought about by the late leader to the rich and illustrious traditions of Parliament.

He also credited Chatterjee with prioritising the welfare of the poor, marginalised and weaker sections of the society.

While praying for peace to the departed soul and extending his condolences to the bereaved family, the Chief Minister said Chatterjee's services as the Lok Sabha Speaker and a parliamentarian would always be remembered.

Chatterjee died at 8 a.m., on Monday following a cardiac arrest and prolonged illness.
New Delhi : We live in a society driven by digital connections -- the way we bank, shop, apply for a job and even find love has moved online. Despite this, the way we prove our identity hasn't changed, still stubbornly clinging to paper and cards. This method is outdated and not secure; we reveal more personal data than necessary and ID documents can easily be lost, stolen or damaged, putting us at risk of identity theft. Furthermore, we can't be 100 per cent confident in the identities of people we meet online.

A secure digital identity system lets people prove their identity without showing paper documents, confirm the identity of people they meet online, and log into websites securely without passwords. It can help strike the balance between security, privacy and convenience, and make online and offline interactions safer for both individuals and businesses.

Given the growing volume of high profile data breaches over recent years, people are appreciating just how vulnerable their data is. Sixty-eight per cent of Indians said they are worried about becoming victims of a data breach in the near future. A digital identity puts individuals in control of their personal information. They will have greater transparency over who has access to their data and can limit the amount of information they share.

Additionally, companies can benefit from fast and accurate KYC as well as save time and money when verifying the identities of their customers, without the need for paper documents. They can confirm customer identities with less information, safe in the knowledge that every identity is verified.

We are all signing up to more apps and services, and sharing more personal data than ever before. With so many online accounts, convenience often trumps security and people reuse the same passwords and login details across different accounts. The average person has around 32 different online accounts so it is no surprise they reuse the same easy-to-remember passwords. Whilst this makes our lives easier, we are putting our personal data at great risk -- hackers only need to crack one email/password and they can then access a number of websites. They will unlock a treasure trove of personal information, allowing them to impersonate individuals and steal their identity.

A digital identity system offers a secure alternative and many companies are already turning to biometrics in a bid to combat fraud, increase security and enhance the customer experience. They no longer have to remember passwords and they can appreciate the ease and simplicity that biometric technology can offer.

Peer-to-peer platforms have changed the way we interact with people. We can meet life partners through online dating, buy items from strangers on classified sites, and even rent another person's home. Yet it is too easy for people to create fake profiles online and pretend to be someone else.

Anna Rowe, a victim of catfishing, was tricked by a man using the photo of a Bollywood actor on his dating profile. They were in a relationship for 14 months before she discovered his true identity and that he was married. Anna is now calling for catfishing to be made illegal and believes people should have to use their real names on dating sites to prevent them from creating fake profiles. With a single, digital identity and verified details, the misuse of these platforms can be quashed. Individuals have confidence and reassurance that the people they meet are who they say they are -- helping to prevent false profiles and make digital interactions safer.

The time for a secure digital identity system is here. Everyday tasks like logging into websites or proving our identity to a business will become simpler and safer, and individuals will also have more control, privacy and security of their personal data.

(Madhu Nori is CPO & International Commercial Director, Yoti. The views expressed are personal)
New Delhi, Aug 13 : Taking note of the increasing amount of pension and losses in the passenger buisness, a parliamentary committee has suggested rationalisation of train fares while advocating that the Finance Ministry should partly bear the pension liability of the Indian Railways.

The cash-strapped Railways -- one of the largest public-sector employers -- is currently reeling under the impact of pension payment which is at the moment around Rs 50,000 crore annually, while the losses in passenger segment is touching Rs 35,000 crore.

In a report to the Parliament, the Railway Convention Committee (RCC) reviewing the internal resource generation, has also recommended that the Railways should periodically revise and rationalise train fares to increase passenger earnings in the wake of these losses.

According to the Railways, the losses are primarily because passenger fares have not been increased for long, though fares have been raised in certain category of train for limited passengers.

"Taking into account the whopping loss of revenue in passenger services coupled with an operating ratio of 98.5 per cent, the committee is of the considered opinion that the Railways have ultimately to undertake gradual or periodical fare rationalisation, besides embarking upon other requisite measures to increase passenger earnings," the RCC report said.

The panel has also asked the Railways to make a segregated assessment of the actual revenue benefits accrued through the introduction of the flexi-fare system, which is "sometimes reportedly at par with air fares in economy class".

Expressing its deep concern over the shortfalls in earnings, the committee has found that during the last five years -- from 2013-3014 to 2017-2018 -- there have been shortfalls on the part of the Railways in achieving internal revenue generation targets, except in 2014-2015.

During 2013-2014, 2015-2016, 2016-17 and 2017-2018, the shortfall was of Rs 2,828 crore, Rs 769 crore, Rs 2,782 crore and Rs 8,238 crore, respectively.

For the Railways, with its over 13 lakh employees, it is only the ministry which bears its pension liability and for everyone else it is borne by the Ministry of Finance while the passenger operation is cross-subsidised with the earnings from the freight service.

"I would like to submit here that when it comes down to devising the salary structure and the pension structure, the Ministry of Railways has no say in that. The decision is taken by (a) different ministry, irrespective of whether it is Rs 3,000 crore, Rs 5,000 crore, Rs 10,000 cr, it is the Ministry of Railways which is expected to generate these additional resources," Chairman, Railway Board, has stated to the committee.

The committee, headed by Biju Janata Dal (BJD) MP Bhartuhari Mahtab, has found some merit in the contention as the huge impact of the pension liability is adversely affecting internal resource generation by the Railways.

Taking into consideration the merger of the Rail Budget with the Union Budget, the committee has suggested the Railways take up the matter with Finance Ministry and other appropriate authorities so that at least a part of its pension liability is borne by the Finance Ministry.

(Arun Kumar Das can be contacted at akdas2005@gmail.com )
Islamabad, Aug 13 : At least six people have been killed and eight are still trapped following a gas explosion in a coal mine in Pakistan's Balochistan province, police said on Monday.

The accident occurred late on Sunday after an explosion in a mine in Sanjdi area, police spokesperson, Aziz Sadique, told Efe.

Although emergency teams have been deployed to rescue the trapped, the success of the operation remains doubtful partly due to the great depth of the mine, he added.

"I don't think we will rescue them alive," said Sadique.

The precarious safety condition in Pakistani mines make them highly prone to accidents.

In May, 23 miners were killed in two mine accidents in Balochistan.

In 2011, 50 miners died in Balochistan after a series of explosions caused by gas leaks in a coal site.
Bhubaneswar, Aug 13 : Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday mourned the death of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, describing him as a stalwart parliamentarian.

"Shocked and extremely sad to learn the passing away of Shri Somnath Chatterjee. A stalwart parliamentarian, popular amongst people and one of greatest Speakers of Lok Sabha. A huge loss to the Indian democracy. May his family and near & dear ones get the strength to cope," the Chief Minister tweeted.

Chatterjee died in Kolkata at a private clinic following a cardiac arrest and prolonged illness on Monday. He was 89.

He suffered the heart attack on Sunday.
Los Angeles, Aug 13 : Actress Gemma Arterton has written a short story based on her Bond film character titled "Strawberry Fields".

The British actress starred in "Quantum of Solace" opposite Daniel Craig in 2008, and believes the high-profile role gave her a big career boost, while helping her secure the finances necessary to shoot her latest film "The Escape", reports aceshowbiz.com.

"I've written this short story, which I could get in so much trouble for. It's called Woke Bond Woman and it's about what my Bond girl should have done, but it's really funny," Arterton told publication Cover Media.

Areterton thinks it is high time a woman took on the James Bond role, but she does not want a female 007 to become just like 007: "I've always thought there should be a Bond woman... (but) I would not want to see her take advantage of a young man," the actress added.

But Arterton has other roles planned for herself including a film project with Felicity Jones, thanks to the stars' commitment to the Time's Up anti-harassment and equality movement.

She said: "We are part of this Time's Up movement, where all of these actresses, and writers, and directors, and filmmakers that are female get together and meet and just talk."

"No way would I work with Felicity Jones in a movie because there's usually (only) one part for a woman of one age. And so, I meet her and say, 'Let's make a film together,' and she's like, 'Yeah'. This great collective voice is really encouraging and I just hope we will make more honest films about what it is to be a woman rather than what people would like to see," the actress added.
Beijing, Aug 13 : Chinese courts have began to impose a cooling-off period on couples, seeking to legally separate, in an effort to check the increasing divorce rate in the country, authorities said on Monday.

More than a hundred courts in the country have imposed this measure on couples seeking divorce, which increased by nearly 40 percent in the last decade, as part of a pilot programme launched by the Supreme Court in 2016 to resolve domestic disputes, reports Efe news.

The programme is primarily directed at young couples, who according to the courts are "more susceptible to impulsive breakups".

During the cooling-off period, the couples receive marriage counselling, as well as a rundown of the divorce proceedings, including splitting property or sharing custody of children.

The anti-divorce programme comes as China seeks to promote family values and encourage couples to have more children, to counter-balance a lack of human resources in many regions owing to an increasingly ageing population, a fallout of the Communist government's hitherto strict one-child policy.

The measure also comes against the backdrop of an incident in Beijing in 2016, when a judge was shot dead by a man, who was unsatisfied with his divorce ruling.

China legalised divorce since the Communist regime came into power in 1949, although owing to the country's conservative culture, divorce cases were far and few until the 1980s.

According to data from 2016, China recorded around four million divorces annually, 37 per cent more than the 2.9 million in 2011.
Mumbai, Aug 13 : In its first reaction to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's published interview, BJP ally Shiv Sena on Monday described it as "akin to sheer propaganda".

"The reporters sent questions to the PMO, which sent written replies. Many have treated it as an an interview. In other words, it is propaganda," the Sena said in 'Saamana' and 'Dopahar Ka Saamana,' the party's mouthpieces.

"It happens in China, Russia and Communist countries, a case of one-sided dialogue," it added.

The Sena pointed out how, in a direct interview, many questions could have been asked and any "fake statement" would have been detected by the interviewer. "That much freedom must be allowed to journalists.

"The incumbent Prime Minister seems to have ended this tradition. He answers what he deems proper and the interviews are published accordingly," the Sena said in a commentary.

It noted that in the interview, the Prime Minister indicated that seven million jobs were created in one year, of which 4.5 million came up between September 2017 and April 2018.

"The implication is that by 2019, double and triple number of jobs will be created, the PM feels," the Sena pointed out.

"If the interview had been conducted face-to-face, the journalist would have got the opportunity to ask supplementaries such as in which sectors these jobs have been created and how to verify (the claims).

"If so many jobs have indeed been created, then why do unemployed youths rampage on the streets for employment and job reservations?" it asked.

It said barely two years ago after demonetization, there were huge job losses, both in the organized and unorganized sectors.

"Mumbai's core job-creating sectors such as construction, production and service industries now resemble a desert," the Sena said.

"In the recent (Maratha) agitation, over 500 factories were attacked in Aurangabad and Pune, thanks to the government's policies," it said.

"In the past four years, the PM did not hold a single press conference, but expressed his mind through (radio program) Mann Ki Baat which the media reported, but it brought no laurels to Modi," Saamna said.

"Before the (2014) elections, Modi was a friend of the media, but after becoming the PM, he has retreated into a cage... If this continues, then many journalists may lose their jobs."
Mumbai, Aug 13 : "Dangal" star Fatima Sana Shaikh has been announced as the brand ambassador of watch label Fossil India.

"The brand is rooted in a distinctive modern-vintage design aesthetic. It is all about celebrating individuality and uniqueness. I am excited to be on board and look forward to working with its youthful appeal and spirit to re-energize today's youth," Fatima said in a statement to IANS.

The brand announced actors Varun Dhawan and Shruti Hassan as their endorsers last year; Fatima's collaboration with the label will aim to amplify Fossil's proficiency in creating timeless classics through inspired designs.

She will be endorsing the watch and the leather categories. Fatima will be seen alongside Varun in an upcoming campaign, which will celebrate creativity, authenticity and optimism.
Colombo, Aug 13 : Sri Lanka's Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundara on Monday said 25 new police posts will be set up covering all main the tourist spots across the country for visitors' security. And police personnel have been asked to learn Hindi.

The decision was taken after discussions with the Chairman and senior officials of the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA), Xinhua news agency quoted Jayasundara as saying.

He said a new uniform would be introduced to the Tourist Police Division.

In a few years, the tourism sector was expected to become the largest foreign exchange earner for the country. Therefore, ensuring safety of the foreigners visiting Sri Lanka will be a top priority for the police force, Jayasundara said.

"Officers of the Tourist Police Division should pay special attention to language training. In addition to English, they should also learn widely used international languages such as Chinese, Hindi and French," Jayasundara said.

Sri Lanka's tourism industry, once heavily scarred by a 30-year ethnic conflict, has become one of the leading industries after it was dubbed one of the world's greatest tourist hot spots by several international publications.
Seoul, Aug 13 : Korean-American film and music video director Joseph Jun-hee Kahn has accused BTS music band members of having plastic surgery.

Recently Kahn took to his Twitter account and shared some controversial remarks on band members, which has garnered a lot of criticism from the fans of BTS, reports metro.co.uk.

He posted a photo of the BTS boys and tweeted: "They all have plastic surgery. They all wear lipstick. This is what crazy rich Asians actually look like."

Resharing his original tweet, the "Without me" music video director continued saying that boys were searching for the 'pretty boy' look and 'they want to look like idols or celebrities.'

BTS, also known as the Bangtan Boys, is a seven-member South Korean boy band that made debut in 2013 and rose to fame with their hit albums including "Dark and wild" and "The most beautiful part in life, Part 2".

The band comprises musicians V, Jeon Jung-Kook, Jimin, Jin, Suga, RM and J-Hope.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : Performances of Kerala's Sanskrit theatre, Kutiyattam, deemed as one of India's oldest living theatrical traditions, will be held at a six-day festival at the India International Centre (IIC) here, starting Thursday.

The complete act titled "Surpanakhankam" of a Kutiyattam play will be performed by the Kerala-based Nepathya theatre group.

The act is based on Ramayana and is originally in Sanskrit.

"Surpanakhankam", the organisers said, is a dramatic retelling of the interaction of Surpanakha, the sister of Lanka's demon-king Ravana, with Rama and Lakshmana, and the latter's subsequent rejection of her overtures during their exile in the forest.

The act ends in the Ramayana episode of Surpanakha entering the court with her bloodied nose.

This theatrical dance performance will feature 12 performers and promises to be a visual spectacle in itself.

In the festival organised in collaboration with Sahapedia, the online encyclopaedia on Indian culture and history, and Seher, the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), the literary masterpiece will be performed theatrically for five days.

The Kutiyattam theatre represents a synthesis of Sanskrit classicism and the local traditions of Kerala.

Highlighting the artform's battle for survival, Sahapedia Executive Director Sudha Gopalakrishnan said performances of its full-scale, unabridged masterpieces are a dear sight.

"It is now rare to make available its brilliance, beauty and complexity in full performances to audiences outside of Kerala. Even in Kerala itself, such complete performances are now rare," she added.

The 2,000-year-old Sanskrit theatre has been inscribed into Unesco's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.

The festival will go on till August 21.
Mumbai, Aug 13 : Maharashtra leaders on Monday mourned the death of veteran Communist leader and former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee in Kolkata.

Chief Minster Devendra Fadnavis said the country had lost "a tall and influential Communist leader".

"A universally respected person, his long career in parliamentary politics served to inspire and guide the leaders and workers alike. His role as the Lok Sabha Speaker will always be remembered for the way he upheld the Constitution and democratic norms," he said.

Maharashtra Congress President Ashok Chavan said he was "deeply saddened".

Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar described Chatterjee as "a dignified person who set high standards of conduct during his stint as Lok Sabha Speaker".

A great grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, Tushar Gandhi, said: "Eternal Lal Salaam, Comrade Somnath Chatterjee."
Bhubaneswar, Aug 13 : Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday invited a business delegation of Fujian province of China to participate in the Make in Odisha conclave scheduled in November this year.

A six-member Fujian delegation led by H.U. Changsheng (head of the organisation of the CPC Fujian Provincial Committee) on Monday met the Chief Minister at the state secretariat to seek business ties with Odisha.

The Chief Minister said a state delegation led by Odisha Industries Minister Anant Das will visit Fuzhou on August 31 to showcase the investment opportunities to Chinese industries.

While showcasing the investment potentials of the state, the Odisha delegation will invite the Chinese investors for the biennial investors' meet scheduled from November 11-15.

The Chief Minister said resource-rich Odisha is one of the top three states of the country in attracting live manufacturing investments.

He also informed the Chinese team about the conducive business environment, infrastructure and skilled workforce of the state.

The Chief Minister said Odisha intends to facilitate growth in six focus sectors: food processing, electronics manufacturing, petrochemicals, textiles, metal downstreams and tourism.

IANS

cd/prs
Islamabad, Aug 13 : An accountability court here on Monday adjourned the hearings of two remaining corruption references against deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family till August 15 following a commotion over reported firing outside the court premises, the media reported.

Sharif arrived in an armoured car for the hearing in the cases pertaining to Al-Azizia Steel Mills and Hill Metal Establishment as well as Flagship Investment, but it was adjourned after a police officer's gun misfired outside the court's central gate near media personnel, the Express Tribune reported. An inquiry was initiated into the firing incident.

The Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) leader was taken back to Adiala jail in Rawalpindi.

Pakistan's anti-corruption body NAB had filed three cases -- Avenfield, Al-Azizia Steel Mills and Hill Metal Establishment, and offshore companies, including Flagship Investment Limited -- against Sharifs on the Supreme Court's directives in the July 2017 Panamagate verdict. The trial commenced in September that year.

The three-time Premier and his sons Hasan and Hussain were accused in all the three graft references whereas his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Muhammad Safdar were accused in the Avenfield reference only.

Sharif, Maryam Nawaz and Safdar are already serving prison sentence of 10 years, seven years and one year, respectively after being convicted in the Avenfield case -- the family's ownership of four luxury flats in London.

Accountability court Judge Arshad Malik on Monday heard the remaining references and summoned the investigation officer of the cases at the next hearing.

Panamagate Joint Investigation Team head and prosecution's key witness Wajid Zia also appeared before the court. He was cross-examined in the Al-Azizia reference and was yet to record his statement in the Flagship reference.

Sharif was expected to appear before the court in the last hearing, but National Accountability Bureau officials had told the court that he could not be produced due to security concerns.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : US Ambassador to India Kenneth I. Juster called on Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju here on Monday.

The meeting at Rijiju's North Block office lasted half-an-hour, a Home Ministry spokesperson said.

The envoy and Rijiju discussed various issues for strengthening India-US relations, said the spokesperson.

On August 7, Juster held a meeting with Jammu and Kashmir Governor N.N. Vohra in Srinagar where they discussed matters relating to further strengthening of the rapidly advancing India-US understanding on several fronts.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : An unidentified man opened fire at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) scholar Umar Khalid outside the Constitution Club here on Monday, police said. Khalid escaped unhurt.

The attack took place around 2.30 p.m. when Khalid was at a tea stall.

"According to Khalid and his friends, two men approached them. One of them with a pistol opened fire. The attackers then fled the scene. Khalid escaped unhurt," said a police officer.

The officer said a pistol was recovered from the spot.

Khalid went to the Constitution Club to attend a "United Against Hate" programme.
Kolkata, Aug 13 : West Bengal Police on Monday busted an arms racket at south 24 Parganas district's Sonarpur area and arrested two persons.

Police said nearly 15 firearms, including 10 pipe guns, were seized from a car during a raid on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass near Sonarpur area on Monday morning.

"Acting on a tip-off, our personnel conducted a special checking of vehicles on the EM Bypass and detained a car with 15 guns and ammunition. Two persons travelling in the car have been arrested," said a senior officer from Sonarpur police station.

The officer, however, refused to reveal the names of the arrested persons stating it would hamper the ongoing raids.

"The raids are still on. More people are involved in the racket. Revealing the names of the arrested would make their associates cautious," he added.
Islamabad, Aug 13 : Pakistan on Monday released 30 Indian prisoners, including 27 fishermen, in a goodwill gesture ahead of the country's Independence Day.

"This is a humanitarian gesture to mark the country's Independence Day on August 14," the Pakistan Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"This is in line with Pakistan's consistent policy of not politicizing humanitarian issues. It is our hope that the Indian side will also reciprocate in a similar manner," it added.

The Indian fishermen were arrested for intrusion into Pakistani waters for illegal fishing and were freed from a prison in the port city of Karachi.

Pakistan and India routinely arrest fishermen who cross water boundaries for illegal fishing, but the two neighbours have not yet reached an agreement on maritime boundaries.
Chennai, Aug 13 : Six days after the death of M. Karunanidhi, his elder son and former Union Minister M.K. Alagiri on Monday asserted that "true loyalists" of his late father were with him and that his brother M.K. Stalin was a poor leader.

Paying homage to Karunanidhi at his memorial at the Marina Beach here, Alagiri, who was expelled from the DMK in 2014 for criticizing party leaders, told reporters that he had poured his anguish about the party to his father.

He said his anguish was about the party and not about the family and the public would come to know the whole story at the appropriate time.

Alagiri declined to comment about the DMK's Executive Committee meeting to be held here on Tuesday, stating that he was no more in the party.

Alagiri aspired to succeed to the DMK's top post but Karunanidhi, the DMK President until his death, picked his other son Stalin to lead the party and designated him the Working President.

Once considered a strongman from Madurai, Alagiri told CNN News18 that he was the right person to head the DMK and alleged that Stalin was the "Working President" of the party but was not working.

Alagiri added that he was not happy with the way the party was being run. On being asked if there would be a split in the DMK, Alagiri replied how could he split the party when he was not in it in the first place.

Asked if he would do better than Stalin if given an opportunity, Alagiri told CNN: "Definitely, that is what the cadres also want."
Toronto, Aug 13 : Spanish World No. 1 Rafael Nadal defeated Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece while Romania's Simona Halep overcame the tenacious resistance of America's Sloane Stephens in the final of the Rogers Cup here.

It was Nadal's fourth time to win the tourney - and his 80th title overall, a figure attained only by Switzerland's Roger Federer and by Americans Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl, reports Efe.

It took Nadal an hour and 43 minutes on Sunday to down his rival 6-2 and 7-6 (4)

Nadal, 32, had lost the first game of the first set, but handily won the next five. And in the second set, the Greek who turned 20 on Sunday battled hard to turn things around, but ultimately fell in a tiebreak.

The Spaniard made it to the final after his quarter-finals victory on Friday night over Croatia's seventh-ranked Marin Cilic and his semi-finals win on Saturday over 22-year-old Russian Karen Khachanov, who had routed the Netherlands' Robin Haase 6-3, 6-1 in the quarter-finals.

Earlier on Sunday, Halep overcame Stephens, ranked No. 3, to win the women's Montreal tourney title, which she had won two years ago.

Halep needed three sets -- 7-6(6), 3-6 and 6-4 -- and two hours and 39 minutes to knock off the US player, whom she had defeated in the Roland Garros final two months ago.

Halep, who won the tourney in 2016 after getting to the final but losing in 2015, and being knocked out in the semi-final round last year, added her third title this year - after wins at Shenzhen and Roland Garros - to make 18 career triumphs.

Meanwhile, Stephens, who won in Miami and was a finalist in Paris, seemed to fumble the match each time she managed to gain some measure of control over the flow of play.

Although she went behind 1-4 in the first set, Stephens had battled back to challenge her rival, but ultimately lost in a tiebreak. She then, however, nicely won the second set, and was running even in the first four games of the third when Halep managed to break her serve and pulled ahead 4-2, after which the Romanian never looked back until the match was in the bag.

The Rogers Cup is one of the nine ATP World Tour Masters 1000 events and a key tune-up for the US Open, which gets under way on August 27.
: New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) scholar Umar Khalid addresses a press conference, in New Delhi on Aug 13, 2018. An unidentified man opened fire at the JNU scholar outside the ... Image Source: IANS

: New Delhi: A view of the pistol that was recovered from the spot where Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) scholar Umar Khalid was attacked outside the Constitution Club, in New Delhi, on Aug 13, ... Image Source: IANS

New Delhi, Aug 13 : An unidentified man opened fire at controversial Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) scholar Umar Khalid outside the Constitution Club here on Monday but he escaped unhurt, police said.

The attack took place around 2.30 p.m. when Khalid was at a tea stall with friends.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Madhur Verma quoted Khalid as saying that he was attacked and that somebody pounced on him and pushed him.

"Thereafter he tried to fire at Khalid. But the person couldn't fire immediately," Verma said. "People started chasing him. Thereafter, according to Khalid, the attacker fired in the air."

Another police officer said a pistol was recovered from the spot.

Khalid went to the Constitution Club to attend a "United Against Hate" programme. Police said CCTV cameras were being scrutinised to identify the attackers.

Khalid was rusticated and fined by JNU last month after he along with two other students -- Kanhaiya Kumar and Anirban Bhattacharya -- were found guilty of raising anti-national slogans during a poetry-reading gathering inside the campus on February 9, 2016.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : In a first of its kind initiative, principals of four Delhi government colleges were appointed as the Licensing Authority for issuing Learner's Driving License for students.

In a notification issued by the Transport Department on Monday, the directors and principals of GB Pant Institute of Technology, Industrial Training Institute, Pusa, Acharya Narendra Dev College and Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies will be giving the licenses.

"Directors/principals of these educational institutes are hereby appointed/empowered as Licensing Authority for the issuance of Learner's Driving License to their students subject to the conditions," reads the notification.

Slowly, more colleges will be added to the list, a government official told IANS.

A Learner's Licence is valid for up to six months. The initiative will help about two lakh students from various colleges, polytechnics and ITIs in Delhi.
Kolkata, Aug 13 : For long the voice of Opposition, Somnath Chatterjee was the first Communist Speaker of the Lok Sabha and one who defied his party and refused to quit the post over the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008, leading to his expulsion from the CPI-M.

From championing the cause of the downtrodden as one of India's finest parliamentarians and barristers and settling effortlessly into the role of wooing investors to industry-dry West Bengal, Chatterjee donned many a hat with ease and aplomb during a four-decade public career.

The tall, heavily built man with a majestic personality evoked awe at first sight. But beneath that stern exterior lay a tender heart that cared for the poor.

His aggressiveness, baritone, legal acumen and sharp debating skills were big assets not only for the CPI-M but for the opposition benches as a whole in pinning down the government during his three decades in the Lok Sabha. But beyond that Chatterjee always came out as an affable person, gentle in his manners and rising above petty politics.

Perhaps it was this quality that stood Chatterjee in good stead in stewarding the Lok Sabha as Speaker from 2004 to 2009. Excepting Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee, who once hurled papers and her shawl towards the Speaker's podium, no other MP ever accused Chatterjee of being partisan in conducting the House proceedings.

The rivalry between the two went a long way back. It was by upsetting the CPI-M stalwart in the 1984 general elections from Jadavpur that Banerjee - then a youth Congress leader virtually unknown in state politics - cut her teeth in politics. That was Chatterjee's only electoral defeat and the beginning of Banerjee's ascendancy.

However, Banerjee too mellowed and in 2012, a year after taking over as West Bengal Chief Minister, she had proposed his name along with those of Manmohan Singh and A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as her choice for President.

Chatterjee was perhaps the right disciple of his mentor and the late Communist patriarch Jyoti Basu, who shared a similar high-society upbringing and educational qualifications.

Through his political life and even after he was expelled from the CPI-M in 2008, Chatterjee remained close to Basu who had a great liking for Chatterjee. So much so, that as West Bengal Chief Minister, he coaxed and cajoled Chatterjee to take over as chairman of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corp (WBIDC) to woo investors.

Chatterjee put his heart and soul into the job, met industrialists and toured various countries, inking MoUs worth thousands of crores of rupees, though it was another thing that very few of the pacts matured into industrial projects on the ground. The opposition in Bengal lost no opportunity to make fun of Chatterjee, jokingly calling him "MoU da".

Another interesting contradiction lay in Chatterjee's family ties. Though he remained a Marxist all his life, his father Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee was a Hindu revivalist and one of the founders and one-time president of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha.

Parliamentarians from the BJP had at times made mocking reference to the "Marxist Chatterjee" by highlighting this aspect.

Born on July 25, 1929 in Tezpur in Assam, Chatterjee studied at the Mitra Institution School, Presidency College and the University of Calcutta.

He then proceeded to England to earn B.A and M.A degrees in Law from the Jesus College, Cambridge. He was called to the Bar from London's Middle Temple and started legal practice as an advocate at the Calcutta High Court.

Chatterjee joined the CPI-M in 1968. He was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1971 from Burdwan in a by-election as an independent candidate backed by the CPI-M. The seat had fallen vacant after the death of his father Nirmal Chatterjee.

He made it to the Lok Sabha on CPI-M ticket from Jadavpur in 1977 and 1980 and from Bolpur in 1985, 1989, 1991, 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004. From 1989 till 2004, he served as the Leader of the CPI-M in the Lok Sabha.

Chattterjee rose to become a central committee member of the party but was expelled on July 23, 2008 "for seriously compromising the position of the party".

Chatterjee had then contended that the office of the Speaker was above party affiliations and he ceased to be a CPI-M member once he took over the job.

In an interview to IANS, Chatterjee had called his expulsion the "saddest day of my life,... I was sad then, I am sad now also. It is not like weather that it will change".

West Bengal CPI-M leaders, however, constantly kept in touch with him, and even sent feelers that if he applied again admitting his mistake, he would be readmitted. But the principled man, steadfastly refused, while making it clear, that he would be game if the party on its own took him back.

But that was not to be. And to the last day, Chatterjee remained party less, while nursing a void deep in his heart.
Hyderabad, Aug 13 : Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Monday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence on incidents of rape across the country.

Addressing a meeting of women Self-Help Groups (SHGs) here, he said though Modi gave the slogan of "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao", he is maintaining silence on rape of women and girls in different states.

"A BJP MLA in Uttar Pradesh raped a woman but the Prime Minister was silent. In Bihar minor girls were raped but he did not speak a word. Incidents of rape are taking place across the country but he is not opening his mouth," he said.

Rahul, who arrived here on a two-day visit, kicked off the party's campaign for the coming elections to Telangana Assembly and Lok Sabha.

He said that Congress strongly believes that the country cannot progress without women and they should get their due in politics, economy and other spheres of life.

Stating that SHGs are key to women empowerment, Rahul said if Congress party comes to power in Telangana and at the Centre, it would extend all help to SHGs like its previous governments had done.

Rahul interacted with the women, who complained that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government has stopped bearing interest component for bank loans taken by SHGs. They also spoke about non-implementation of "Abhay Hastam", a contributory pension scheme for SHG members launched by the previous Congress government in undivided Andhra Pradesh.

The Congress president promised that if Congress is voted to power, it will bear interest of SHG loans and revive the pension scheme.

Rahul targeted Narendra Modi government for what he called waiving loans of 15 rich industrialists to the tune of Rs 2.5 lakh crore but not waiving loans of women, farmers, and small and medium enterprises.

He alleged that the demonetization was aimed at taking money from the pockets of poor and waive the huge bank loans of top industrialists and businessmen.

Terming GST (Goods and Services Tax) as "Gabbar Singh Tax", the Congress President reiterated that if voted to power, his party would implement GST with single slab and there will be no need for people to fill different forms every month.
Kolkata, Aug 13 : President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday led the nation in paying glowing tributes to former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, one of the country's most respected parliamentarians, who died here in the morning.

Calling him "a veteran parliamentarian who had a forceful presence in the House", the President tweeted: "A loss for public life in Bengal and India. My condolences to his family and innumerable well-wishers."

Modi described Chatterjee, a 10-time MP, as a stalwart of Indian politics who made parliamentary democracy richer.

He said that Chatterjee "was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable. Anguished by his demise".

Congress President Rahul Gandhi hailed him as "an institution".

"He was an institution. Greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines. My condolences to his family at this time of grief," he tweeted.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who came to prominence incidentally with her triumph over Chatterjee in the Lok Sabha polls from Jadavpur consituency in 1984, termed it a great loss.

"Saddened at the passing away of Somnath Da. My condolences to his family and admirers. This is a great loss for us," the Trinamool Congress chief tweeted.

Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal said he was "extremely sad" over his death and remembered him as "one of the greatest parliamentarians of contemporary times. He will always be missed".

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said: "A stalwart parliamentarian, popular amongst people and one of greatest Speakers of Lok Sabha. A huge loss to the Indian democracy."

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also paid homage to Chatterjee.

Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy described the veteran parliamentarian as a towering figure in Indian politics.

"Somnathda was known for stirring parliament speeches, which motivated a generation of Indians. We lost a conscientious leader who fought for social justice and harmony. May his soul rest in peace," tweeted Kumaraswamy.

In Chennai, Tamil Nadu leaders also condoled his death. Chief Minister K. Palaniswami said Chatterjee expertly presided over the Lok Sabha.

PMK founder S. Ramadoss said Chatterjee was a man of impeccable integrity and earned the respect and friendship of all party leaders.

DMK leader M.K. Stalin said Chatterjee was a good friend of his late father and DMK President M. Karunanidhi.

Maharashtra Chief Minster Devendra Fadnavis also mourned the death, saying the country lost "a tall and influential Communist leader".

"A universally respected person, his long career in parliamentary politics served to inspire and guide the leaders and workers alike. His role as the Lok Sabha Speaker will always be remembered for the way he upheld the Constitution and democratic norms," he said.

Maharashtra Congress President Ashok Chavan said he was "deeply saddened".

Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar described Chatterjee as "a dignified person who set high standards of conduct during his stint as Lok Sabha Speaker".

In Kolkata, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Biman Bose said Chatterjee always used to talk in favour of the masses. "Somnath Da's demise is a colossal loss to parliamentary politics...He used to always think of the masses," Bose told the media.

CPI-M state Secretary Surya Kanta Mishra added: "He attended meetings and programmes in support for democracy even after his retirement from active politics."
Kolkata, Aug 13 : Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee had played "a critical and important role" as the Chairman of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation and he performed "onerous task of regaining investors' confidence" for promotion of industries in the state, said industrialists on Monday.

"He had a very critical and important role to play because for the first time the then Jyoti Basu government (then Left Front government) came out with an industrial policy probably in 1994 and he was made Chairman of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation at that time to take forward the industrialisation of the state," said Chairman of the Ambuja Neotia Group's Chairman Harshavardhan Neotia.

"It was a major shift in the policy. I had the privilege travelling with him to many countries," said Neotia.

He was a passionate leader who wanted to showcase opportunities in Bengal, he said.

"I think he created a positive atmosphere which was subsequently built on by others. He had brought a lot of energy and enthusiasm in the promotion of industries in the state," he told IANS.

The 10-time parliamentarian was the Chairman of the nodal agency for industrial development in the state and visited many countries to promote the state as an attractive investment destination.

R.P. Sanjiv Goenka Group's Chairman Sanjiv Goenka described the demise of Chatterjee as the "end of an era."

"The passing away of Somnath Chatterjee snaps a family tie which began many years ago when my father, the late Rama Prasad Goenka, studied in Presidency College. An outstanding lawyer, a legendary parliamentarian and an ardent lover of his country, Chatterjee will be remembered for the sacrifices he made," Goenka said.

Echoing Neotia, Merchants' Chamber of Commerce & Industry President Ramesh Agarwal said Chatterjee was "entrusted the challenging task of reviving industrialisationa in West Bengal when the "state was struggling an image crisis in the mid-1990s and a flight of entrepreneurial capital."

"He contributed significantly to drafting the state industrial policy, 1994. As the Chairman of WBIDC, he performed the onerous task of regaining investors' confidence as he enjoyed the confidence of the business community despite his known political affiliation," Agarwal said.

Expressing condolences, CII's Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said: "We have lost not only a brilliant lawyer, politician, and a Parliamentarian, but also a statesman."

He also said the industry body interacted with him closely in West Bengal and later, on many areas which he was passionate about, viz promoting sustainability in industry, robust water management and a vision for India.

Chatterjee died at 8.15 a.m at the Bellevue Clinic, where he was admitted on August 7.
Kabul, Aug 13 : Over 300 people, including 100 government troops and 30 civilians, have been killed in the intense fighting between Taliban militants and the security forces in Afghanistan's Ghazni city, the country's Defence Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami said on Monday.

The militant group started its offensive in the city last Friday. "As of midday today, the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces recaptured control of nearly all parts of Ghazni city and the Taliban militants would be expelled from the city soon," Bahrami said at a joint press briefing with Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak.

He said that up to 100 government security force members, 30 civilians and over 194 Taliban militants were killed during the four-day clashes between security forces and Taliban militants in the city, Xinhua news agency reported.

At least 147 militants were injured. The US was supporting the Afghan government forces in conducting airstrikes tageting the Taliban.

Within the past 24 hours, the Defence Ministry deployed reinforcement in Ghazni city and its adjacent areas. Fresh troops will bring considerable changes in the security situation of the city in the next 24 hours, Bahrami added.

Last week, Taliban militants launched a massive attack on Ghazni, 125 km south of Kabul, in a coordinated effort to take back the city. Hundreds of Taliban insurgents stormed important government entities including the National Directorate for Security (Afghanistan's Intelligence Agency) and the provincial governor's office.

"The Afghan police and Army will soon clear Ghazni city from the Taliban and normalcy and peace will return into the city as soon as possible," the Interior Minister said.

The clashes also blocked a main road connecting Kabul to southern and western provinces and scores of travellers were stranded.

According to authorities, about 100 soldiers of the Afghan special force were missing in the Ghazni province. President Ashraf Ghani ordered more troops to be sent to the city.

Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that residents of Ghazni were struggling to access basic services and medical care.

"Medication at the main hospital is reportedly becoming scarce... Main access roads both north and south of the city to larger cities where medical facilities are available are contested and unsafe for people to travel," the OCHA said in a statement.

"We call on all parties to the conflict to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect the lives and rights of civilians and to protect civilian infrastructure," it said.
Idukki/Malappuram/Kozhikode/Wayanad, Aug 13 : Landslides caused by rains in northern districts of Kerala like Malappuram and Kozhikode on Monday gave some anxious moments, but there was no loss of life or property since these occurred in uninhabited areas.

In Kozhikode, heavy rain resulted in small landslides in the hilly areas at Thiruvambady while a partially damaged bridge in Munipuzha was washed away by gushing waters.

Landslides were also reported from the interiors of Nilambur in Malappuram district even as authorities there were holding a meeting to review relief and rescue work.

The Chaliyar river was also swollen but things were said to be under control.

A minor landslide occurred near the Malampuzha dam in Palakkad district, though no damage was reported.

On Monday, people in some relief camps in Ernakulam and Thrissur returned to their homes.

Moderate rains were reported in Wayanad district, but those lodged in relief camps there and getting ready to return to their homes were asked by authorities to stay back as a precautionary measure.

Roshy Augustine, an opposition lawmaker from Idukki, said that Monday had passed off without any major incident in the district.

"Water level in the Idukki dam has come down further to 2,397 feet, the lowest since Wednesday, though no decision has been taken to close its five sluices. The water flowing down the Periyar river and its tributaries has not caused any fresh problems so far," Augustine told IANS.

The state Cabinet will meet on Tuesday in the state capital to take a decision on Idukki dam floodgates as well as other issues.

Eight of the 14 districts of Kerala have been affected by the monsoon, with thousands of persons displaced due to the downpour. Over three dozen persons have been killed, even as the defence forces were deployed for rescue and relief operations.
Berlin, Aug 13 : German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on the outskirts of Germany's capital at the weekend, it was announced on Monday.

Merkel would welcome Putin on Saturday at Schloss Meseberg, the official state guest house 65 km north of Berlin, German government's spokesperson Steffen Seibert was quoted as saying by Efe news.

Among the topics up for discussion would be the conflict in Syria and the situation in eastern Ukraine.

The German government insists on the need to maintain an open dialogue with Russia, despite differing points of view, Seibert said.

The two leaders would give a brief press conference ahead of their talks, which are expected to wrap up at around 4 p.m., according to the agenda.

The meeting comes after Merkel travelled to the Russian Black Sea city of Sochi, where she and Putin held talks and came out in favour of maintaining the Iran nuclear deal, despite the US having withdrawn from the pact.
Kolkata, Aug 13 : Two days after BJP President Amit Shah made a veiled attack on Trinamool Congress leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee indirectly accusing him of corruption, he issued a legal notice to Shah asking him to apologise within 72 hours.

Terming the allegations against him as "defamatory", Abhishek Banerjee appealed to Shah to refrain from making or circulating any further defamatory comments against him and threatened to initiate strong legal action against the BJP leader if an apology is not issued.

During his party's rally in Kolkata on August 11, Shah made a veiled reference to Banerjee as 'bhatija' (nephew) and charged him with corruption and diversion of Central funds for his personal use.

The legal notice issued by Banerjee's counsel Sanjay Basu said Banerjee vehemently denies all allegations and imputations made by Shah. It also claimed that Shah's thinly veiled reference to Banerjee has severely jeopardised his reputation as everybody knows him to be the nephew of Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee.

"Issue an unconditional apology in an appropriate press conference within 72 hours from receipt of instant notice retracting the virulent and mala fide statements," the legal notice said.
Jaipur, Aug 13 : Gajanand Sharma, who was recently traced in a Pakistani jail more than 36 years after he was reported missing from his Jaipur home was released on Monday, officials said.

Gajanand was among 30 Indian citizens, including 29 fishermen, who were released by Pakistani authorities two days before the Independence Day.

The Indian citizens were brought to Wagah border from Karachi in a train. "They entered the Indian territory on Monday around 3.30pm," said Sahdev Sharma who went to Wagah to receive Sharma on behalf of Vipr Foundation, an NGO.

Sahdev said Sharma was unwell and could not walk properly. "He was helped by security personnel," said Sahdev.

Gajanand may reach Jaipur by tomorrow after clearing formalities, said Shankarlal Sharma, another member of the organisation.

Sharma disappeared in 1982 and his family members were clueless about his whereabouts till May 4, 2018 when they received a letter from the local police asking for verification.

On August 9, Jaipur MP Ramcharan Bohra, accompanied by Sharma's wife, their son and local BJP leaders, had met Union Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh and sought Sharma's early release.

Bohra had said Gajendra Sharma was initially jailed for two months, but due to lack of consular access, he had to spend over three decades behind bars in a Pakistani jail.
Hyderabad, Aug 13 : Targeting Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Monday alleged that there is a one-family rule and rampant corruption in the state.

Addressing members of the women self-help groups (SHGs) on the first day of his two-day visit to Hyderabad, the Congress leader claimed that only one family was getting all the benefits in the state, in an obvious reference to the family of the Chief Minister, whose son and nephew are Cabinet Ministers and a daughter an MP.

"Today, in Telangana, there is one-family rule. Entire benefit is going to one family. Lands are snatched from farmers, women SHGs are not helped, farmers are not being assisted and there is corruption. The situation is same here and in Delhi," he said targeting both the TRS and BJP-led NDA governments.

Rahul said both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Chandrasekhar Rao made promises but didn't fulfil them.

He referred to Modi's promise of Rs 15 lakh deposits in the bank accounts of every citizen when black money stashed abroad is brought back to India and two crore jobs to the youth every year.

"We don't make false promises like them. We do what we promise," he told a large number of women gathered from across the state.

Rahul Gandhi began his visit amid a buzz about the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) planning to advance the Assembly elections. Polls to the Assembly and the Lok Sabha are scheduled for May next year.

The Congress President said that the Karnataka government, in which his party was a partner, had waived farmers' loans totalling Rs 30,000 crore as promised during the Assembly elections in that state.

Lauding the SHG movement in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, he recalled that they helped in setting up the SHGs in Amethi and Rai Bareli constituencies in Uttar Pradesh.

He claimed that officials had told him that SHGs can't be run in Uttar Pradesh but the SHGs from then undivided Andhra Pradesh taught how to form the groups. Today there are 15 lakh women in SHGs in Uttar Pradesh, he added.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : The AAP government on Monday sought a clarification from the Centre following a report published in a Chinese daily claiming that a company there has been given the licence to print Indian currency.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national spokesperson Raghav Chadha termed the revelation as a "big threat to India's national security" and "financial sovereignty" and asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi why this information was not available in the public domain.

"What were the reasons behind approaching a foreign firm instead of assigning someone domestically? Was India approached by China, and did we succumb to pressure from them in their bid to increase their global influence?" Chadha asked.

The South China Morning Post, a Chinese financial news publication, has reported that a Chinese state-owned company, China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation, has been contracted to print large quantities of international currencies including that of India.

The report states that in 2013, Beijing launched the belt and road plan which involved 60 countries from Asia, Europe and Africa to stimulate economic growth.

The President of the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation, Liu Guisheng, was quoted as saying that his company has since then "successfully won contracts for currency production projects in a number of countries including Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, India, Brazil and Poland."

Referring to the report, Chadha said that an undisclosed source was quoted as saying that some governments have asked Beijing "not to publicise the deal because they are worried such information could compromise national security or trigger unnecessary debates at home."

He opined that in the light of recent hostilities between the two nations, this could lead to some "serious strategic disadvantages for India".

The report claims that despite domestic currency demand being at its lowest, China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation has been "functioning at full capacity to deliver on international contracts".

It also states that while there was not much work until last year, there has been a sudden jump in production.

Chadha went on to dub the Modi government's demonetization move as "wasteful and dubious" in making India a cashless economy and said that similarly, the decision of outsourcing the printing of Indian notes to China is "counter-productive and dangerous."

"If the intent was to move towards a cashless economy, what is the objective of rolling out new currency for Rs10? Who is the beneficiary of the expense at which the printing is being pursued?" Chadha asked.

"Another suspicious aspect of this deal is how it negates our fight against counterfeit currency. This action puts us in a vulnerable position. Will this not create more avenues for international parties for counterfeiting?" he added.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : Pune is the most liveable city, followed closely by Navi Mumbai and Greater Mumbai in a ranking of 111 Indian cities with the national capital ranked at a lowly 65 on the Ease of Living Index released by the government here.

Thane is the fourth Maharashtra city that made it to the top 10 in the list. Other cities ranked among the best 10 are Tirupati, Chandigarh, Raipur, Indore, Vijaywada and Bhopal.

Notably, none of the cities in big states like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have made it to the top 10.

Chennai has been ranked 14, Hyderabad at 27 and Bengaluru at 85. Kolkata had refused to participate in the survey.

Gurugram is at the 88th spot. Rampur in Uttar Pradesh is at the bottom of the list that has Jammu and Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir at 95 and 100.

The Ease of Living Index was launched by Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Monday.

The survey based on four parameters -- governance, social institutions, economic and physical infrastructure -- was conducted in 111 cities across the country.

It is an initiative of the ministry to help cities assess their liveability on the bases of global and national benchmarks.

The survey was started to encourage cities to move towards an outcome-based approach to urban planning and management.

Its framework comprised four pillars -- institutional, social, economic and physical which are further broken down into 15 categories and 78 indicators.

The minister said evaluation of cities was done on a 100-point scale with the institutional and social pillars carrying 25 points each, five points for the pillar on economic and 45 points for the physical pillar.

A ministry official said the cities submitted data on more than 50,000 points. Secondary audit of 10,000 documents, physical audit of 14,000 units and survey of more than 60,000 citizens were completed which led to finalization of the index.

The assessment standards, according to the government, are closely linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and will provide a strong impetus to India's effort for systematic tracking progress of the goals in the urban areas.

Of the 17 SDG goals, eight are directly linked to India's ease of living assessment framework.
Sabarimala (Kerala), Aug 13 : The authorities at the famed Hindu temple Sabarimala on Monday decided not to allow devotees as the Pamba river is overflowing -- a situation described as unsafe for devotees by the temple administration.

The temple is situated along the banks of the Pamba and devotees visiting the temple usually take a dip in the river.

Speaking to the media, A. Padmakumar, president of the Travancore Devasom Board (TDB) which manages the Sabarimala Temple, said that while all pujas and religious activities starting Wednesday will go on as usual, new devotees will now not be allowed.

"Orders have been given to see that if any devotee comes without knowing this directive, they will be sent back as the police have erected barricades. The river Pamba is overflowing and hence we have decided that it's not safe to allow devotees," said Padmakumar.

The decision of the TDB was taken after the shutters of a few small dams in Kerala's Pathanamthitta district were opened following heavy rain in the past two days.

The restrictions will remain in place till further orders.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : The Chhattisgarh government on Monday opposed in the Supreme Court a plea for a CBI inquiry into the killing of 15 alleged Maoists by security forces in Sukma district on August 6, terming it bogus.

Appearing for the state, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi disputed the claims of the petitioner NGO and told the court that photos attached to the plea are not of the said incident.

"The petitioner says there are eight minors (killed in the shootout) but there was no minor," Rohatgi told a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra.

The court asked General Secretary N. Narayan Rao of NGO Civil Liberty Committee to file an affidavit in support of the claims in the public interest litigation.

The bench said that the petitioner has to file an affidavit about the authenticity of the photographs and posted the matter for August 29.

During the hearing, the NGO's counsel said that the petitioner NGO was concerned only with the innocent tribals and not Maoists.

The NGO had urged the apex court for a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or a Special Investigating Team (SIT).

It also sought directions for an inquiry by a sitting Judge of the High Court.

On August 6, police said that 15 Maoists were killed and a senior cadre and a woman rebel captured after a gun battle with security forces in Sukma district following intelligence inputs about the presence of a large number of Maoists.

Eight Maoists, including four women, were gunned down by security forces in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district on July 19.

In April, eight Maoists -- six of them women -- were killed in a joint operation by Chhattisgarh and Telangana securitymen near the inter-state boundary in Bijapur.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : The Delhi High Court on Monday rejected a plea seeking quashing of an agreement between Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) on purchasing of outdated 2G technology.

A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice C. Hari Shankar dismissed the plea and said it is government's policy matter.

The court was hearing a public interest litigation filed by NGO Telecom Watchdog which has alleged that the decision to deploy an outdated 2G technology in Arunachal Pradesh and two districts of Assam is discriminatory, without application of mind and contradictory to Government's policy of Digital India.

The plea has sought quashing of the agreement dated January 16, 2018 signed between DoT and BSNL under which an outdated 2G technology is sought to be purchased at a huge cost of Rs 2,258 crore from two private companies under mysterious circumstances despite the fact that the telecom commission had on December 21 2017 decided to procure 2G-cum-4G for all future projects.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : The central government on Monday dismissed former Allahabad Bank Managing Director Usha Ananthasubramanian on the day she was to superannuate from service, according to an official notification.

In May this year, Ananthasubramanian had been divested of all her powers as MD of Allahabad Bank after being named in a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chargesheet in the Rs 14,000 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud allegedly committed by absconding diamantaire Nirav Modi, but had continued to remain an employee of the bank.

Ananthasubramanian was Chief Executive of the PNB between August 2015 and May 2017, before moving to Allahabad Bank. She was earlier Executive Director at PNB from July 2011 to November 2013.

Official sources said on Monday that government has given permission to the CBI to prosecute Ananthasubramanian and former PNB Executive Director Sanjiv Sharan in the scam in which Modi's uncle Mehul Choksi is co-accused and who is also absconding.

In the chargesheet filed in May in a Mumbai court, the CBI alleged that Ananthasubramanian and other senior PNB officials were aware of the fraud going on for some time but did not take any corrective action.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : The Congress on Monday met Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) O.P. Rawat and demanded that BJP President Amit Shah's membership of the upper House be suspended for not disclosing his liabilities in his election affidavit during the Rajya Sabha polls last year.

"Our delegation met the Election Commission (EC). Under Representation of People's Act, 2004, whoever contests an election, he has to disclose his assets and properties," said Congress leader Kapil Sibal who led a party delegation to the EC.

"If there is any liability, he should disclose that as well. Amit Shah mortgaged two of his properties through his son Jay Shah to a cooperative bank in Gujarat which got them a loan of Rs 25 crore. But he did not disclose this in the election affidavit. This is a liability," he added.

Sibal said: "We told the EC that this is a violation of the 2004 rule. Our representation should be sent to the Chairman, Rajya Sabha, so that action can be taken against Amit Shah."

"The EC said it had taken cognizance of it and will take a decision on it soon and also initiate appropriate action. We don't want to make it a political issue. We want the EC to act on it," he added.

The Congress delegation included Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Jairam Ramesh, Vivek Tankha and Pranav Jha.

In a memorandum to the EC, the party said: "Following the publication of recent news items in the public domain, it has come to light that Amit Shah, who was nominated to Rajya Sabha as a member of Parliament in 2017, has wilfully and deliberately concealed significant liabilities from his declaration."

"At the time of filing his nomination papers for the election to the Upper House, Amit Shah had already mortgaged two of his properties (in 2016) to Kalupur Commercial Cooperative Bank (one of Gujarat's largest Cooperative Banks) for his son Jay Shah's business venture Kusum Finserve LLP," it added.

It also said that Shah's properties were mortgaged in lieu of a large and substantial loan of Rs. 25 crore extended by the bank to his son's company.

"It is, therefore, a fact that the properties are mortgaged to Kalupur Commercial Cooperative Bank and hence constitute a liability that should have been declared."

The party further said: "It must also be pointed out that Section 128 of the Indian Contract Act 1872 defines the liability of the Surety (in this case Amit Shah) as co-extensive with the corporate person/ body taking the loan."

"The act of wilful non-disclosure by the MP in his affidavit amounts to the offence of 'filing of false affidavit' under Section 125A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. Such an offence is punishable by up to 6 months imprisonment, or with fine, or with both," said the memorandum.

The Congress demanded that the EC must take immediate note of this and initiate appropriate proceedings to suspend the membership of Amit Shah to the upper House with immediate effect.

"The EC should also initiate communication with the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha to start the procedure laid down under the relevant 2004 rules to determine what further penalties may be imposed for breach of privilege."

"Further, the EC must initiate proceedings against Amit Shah for the filing of a false affidavit, which attracts up to six months' imprisonment and/or a fine," it added.
Madrid, Aug 13 : Spain's Rafael Nadal announced on Monday his withdrawal from the 2018 Cincinnati Open to have some rest, following his recent victory at the Canadian Open.

On Sunday, Nadal claimed his 33rd ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title, earning a total of 80 career titles, after his victory in Toronto 6-2, 7-6(4) against Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, reports Efe.

"I am very sorry to announce that I won't be playing in Cincinnati this year. No other reason than personally taking care of my body and trying to keep as healthy as I feel now," Nadal posted to his Twitter account.

The 32-year-old, world No. 1, thanked the tournament director Andre Silva for his understanding and apologized to the fans who have always showed him "great support".
Gurugram, Aug 13 : Gurugram Commissioner of Police K.K. Rao on Monday announced an out-of-turn promotion for Constable Lukman Khan for saving a man from drowning in a canal in Faridabad in Haryana a day earlier.

The Constable, posted with the Gurugram Crime Branch, was also given a 1st class appreciation letter and Rs 5,000 for his act of bravery.

"Khan will also be publicly honoured at the Independence Day function in Gurugram," Police Department PRO Subhash Boken told IANS.

A Crime Branch team of Sector 39, led by its chief Rajkumar, was on way to conduct a raid in Faridabad on Sunday when they saw a man drowning in the Yamuna canal.

Bystanders at the spot shouted for help. Constable Khan jumped into the canal and saved the drowning man, later identified as Mangal Singh of Sihi village in Faridabad.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : India on Monday repatriated on humanitarian grounds seven Pakistani civilian prisoners lodged in Indian jails, the External Affairs Ministry said.

The repatriation comes after 14 Pakistani fishermen were released and sent home on August 7.

"India attaches high priority to addressing humanitarian issues, including early release and repatriation of Indian fishermen and prisoners in Pakistan's custody," the Ministry said in a statement here.

"Release of 178 Indian prisoners, including 174 fishermen, has been secured (from Pakistan) in 2018," it stated.

In October last year, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj suggested that the two countries could progress on humanitarian issues related to the elderly, women, children and mentally unsound prisoners when Pakistan High Commissioner Sohail Mahmood called on her.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj reiterated India's call for reforms in the UN Security Council (UNSC) during a meeting with President-elect of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces here on Monday.

Congratulating Garces for becoming only the fourth woman President of the UNGA, Sushma Swaraj assured her of India's support in carrying out her duties, according to a statement issued by the External Affairs Ministry.

It stated that Sushma Swaraj "emphasised the need for UNSC reforms, especially continuation of the inter-governmental negotiations, as well as early finalisation of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT)".

India is part of the Group of Four that also includes Japan, Germany and Brazil seeking permanent membership in a reformed UNSC.

The CCIT is a treaty proposed by India which intends to criminalize all forms of international terrorism and deny terrorists, their financiers and supporters access to funds, arms and safe havens.

According to the Ministry statement, Garces outlined her priorities in the next one year as President of UNGA, especially revitalization of the UN, including the General Assembly as well as Security Council reforms.

Garces, an Ecuadorian politician and diplomat, had called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 10 soon after her arrival here.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : JNU scholar Umar Khalid, accused of raising anti-national slogans in 2016, on Monday survived an attempt to kill him in the heart of the capital, saying he escaped only because of his friends.

Police, however, said it was not clear whether the gunshot fired by the attacker was aimed at him or not.

A shaken Khalid told the media that a man approached him with a gun when he was outside the Constitution Hall, tried to overpower him and shoot him down.

"Thankfully, my friends were there with me. They tried to overpower him but he ran away and he fired from across the road.

"I was very scared at that moment when he pointed a gun at me. At that moment, I was reminded of what happened to (writer activist) Gauri Lankesh. I thought that moment has arrived," Khalid said.

Joint Commissioner of Police Ajay Chaudhary said preliminary investigation showed that an unknown man dragged Khalid when he was with five friends at a tea stall outside the Constitution Club, not far from Parliament.

"A scuffle took place between them," the officer said. "The accused managed to escape. It is not clear yet whether the attacker fired or not with his weapon."

He said the case was being probed from all possible angles. A weapon found at the spot was being examined. "We have deployed the best officers to nab the attacker."

Khalid went to the Constitution Club to attend a "United Against Hate" programme where the listed speakers included noted lawyer Prashant Bhushan, MP Manoj Jha and journalist Amit Sen Gupta.

Arif, a witness to the crime, said Khalid was with him when they were targeted. He said there were at least two attackers. But police spoke about only one attacker.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Madhur Verma earlier quoted Khalid as saying that someone pounced on him and pushed him around 2.30 p.m.

"Thereafter he tried to fire at Khalid. But the person couldn't fire immediately," Verma said.

The officer said the local police were not informed about the programme at the Constitution Club, a popular venue for seminars, meetings and press conferences.

The incident took place about half-a-kilometre from Parliament and behind the high-security Reserve Bank of India. The Constitution Club is itself located in a block of apartments, many of which are allocated to MPs.

Khalid was rusticated and fined by the Jawaharlal Nehru University last month after he along with two others -- Kanhaiya Kumar and Anirban Bhattacharya -- were found guilty of raising anti-national slogans at a poetry-reading event in the campus on February 9, 2016.

Khalid said he felt that Monday's incident was an attempt to silence anyone who raise their voice against the Modi government.

He said that in the last two years, since the JNU episode which led to his jailing, "there has been misinformation everywhere" about him and his politics. He accused a section of the media of spreading propaganda against him.
Hyderabad, Aug 13 : Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Monday dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a debate on the Rafale jet deal with France, reiterating his graft charge against the government.

He said that he was ready for a debate with Modi at any place and time to prove that the government will get each Rafael jet for Rs 1,600 crore against the Rs 540 crore when the contract was signed during the earlier UPA rule.

Addressing a meeting of party workers, he said that Modi could not look him in the eye when he spoke in Parliament on the aircraft deal.

"I spoke before the 'chowkidar' with a 56-inch chest. He was looking everywhere but towards me. A corrupt person when told about his theft can't see you in the eye," Rahul Gandhi said.

The Congress President said that during his 1.5-hour reply to the debate, Modi did not speak a single word about the Rafale deal.

He reiterated his charge that Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had lied to the nation that the aircraft price can't be revealed as per a pact between India and France.

The Congress leader had claimed that the French President had told him that there is no such pact and that the Indian government can reveal the price to anyone it wants.

Rahul Gandhi recalled that the UPA government led by his party had given the contract for 126 aircraft to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited because it had been making aircraft for 70 years. He said that when Modi visited France, the contract was snatched from HAL and given to "his (Modi) friend".

"Modi's friend did not make aircraft in his life. That businessman is in Rs 45,000-crore debt," Rahul Gandhi alleged.

He said that the contract was given to a company formed only 10 days before the contract.

Rahul Gandhi accused the Modi government of snatching jobs from the Indian youth as manufacture of the aircraft by HAL would have provided employment to lakhs of Indians.

The Congress leader said that the Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) of banks shot up to Rs 12 lakh crore during NDA rule from Rs 2.5 lakh crore under the UPA rule. He claimed that the entire Indian banking system has jammed.

The Congress President targeted Modi for failing to fulfil the commitments made to both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh at the time of the bifurcation of undivided Andhra Pradesh.

He said that if voted to power, the Congress would fulfil all commitments, including special category status for Andhra Pradesh.

Aiming at Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, Rahul wanted to know why he supported Modi on demonetisation, the Goods and Services Tax and other issues when the Prime Minister failed to fulfil commitments given to Telangana.

Rahul Gandhi said that Telangana has become the "capital of corruption" as only one family is reaping all the benefits.

He said that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi chief was no less than Modi in making false promises.

He said that if Modi promised Rs 15 lakh in every bank account and two crore jobs every year, Rao promised a job for every family and double bedroom houses to all the poor in the state.

Gandhi said that during the last four years, the TRS government had filled only 10,000 of the one lakh vacancies in government departments and built only 5,000 of the promised 22 lakh houses.
Madrid, Aug 13 : Colombia's Santiago Arias on Monday said during his presentation as AtlAtico Madrid's new right-back that joining the Spanish club would help him become a better player.

The 26-year-old Colombian international came to AtlAtico on a five-year deal after spending the same amount of time at PSV Eindhoven, where he made a total of 172 appearances, reports Efe.

"I am very happy and proud to have signed for this huge club. I hope to have success here," Arias said in a statement published on the club's website.

"I am going to fight for my spot with a great player like Juanfran (Torres). I am here to give it my all," he added.

AtlAtico's president Enrique Cerezo addressed Arias saying that he was to "find attractive and exciting objectives" at the club.

AtlAtico was gearing up for the UEFA Super Cup match against Real Madrid on Wednesday in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : State-run Punjab National Bank (PNB) on Monday said it will continue to strengthen its internal systems to foil any future attempts at fraud despite demonstrations by the employees' union of the lender at some centres.

"PNB is taking all required steps to check any kind of gap, loopholes and deviations in system and procedures," the company said in a statement on Monday.

"The norms are being strengthened and standard operating procedures are being revisited."

Recently, PNB has taken several steps to strengthen its internal systems such as a credit restructuring exercise under which large accounts as well as lending operations will be concentrated in a "few specially designated" branches.

Further, the bank has decided to shift most of the borrowal accounts above Rs 50 crore to branches which will be designated "Systemically Important Branches" (SIBs).

The lender had earlier said that most of its bigger accounts will be operated from branches designated as "Large Corporate Branches" (LCBs) while regular branches will concentrate on regular savings accounts and CASA (current account and savings account).

PNB has already created a stressed asset vertical in June to focus on recovery of stressed assets and NPA's and has also launched the first Central Loan Processing Centre (CLPC) in Connaught Place, New Delhi.

These changes are a part of the recommendations by the bank's independent think tank named 'Mission Parivartan' that has pushed for centralisation of critical functions.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : Parts of the national capital will now enjoy free Wi-Fi and high-speed broadband as Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh launched a slew of "smart city" projects on Monday.

During the inauguration at the Charkha Park in Connaught Place, Singh said that the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), by successfully launching the smart city initiative, has set an example before other aspiring smart cities in the country to follow.

Other initiatives which were inaugurated by the BJP leader include smart poles, solar tree, ideation centre, 50 LED interactive screens, Ambedkar Vatika, two hi-tech nurseries, four mechanical road sweepers, two litter picking machines and 10 auto tippers.

He also released a coffee table book on the green initiatives of the NDMC titled "Green and Colourful NDMC -- A Transformational Journey" on the occasion.

Minister of State for Communications and Railways Manoj Sinha, who was also present on the occasion, said that it is a proud moment that Digital India and Smart City Mission integrated into the initiatives launched by NDMC and MTNL in a joint venture.

"Online or offline is the status symbol in every person's life today and it will be felicitated by the government reliable network provided by MTNL's optical fibre broadband network," Sinha said.

On the occasion, Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs, Hardeep Singh Puri said that with the efforts of NDMC, New Delhi would be the "nerve centre of the command and control of country's digital and smart city mission".

Meanwhile, Delhi Lt. Governor Anil Baijal suggested that the parking management system be integrated with information of vacancies in other nearby parking spots.

"Red light and over-speeding violation mechanism recorded by the Smart Poles, along with e-FIRs and female distress complaint should be recorded by the Digital Display panels in these smart infrastructures," he said.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : The Congress on Monday attacked Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, saying he is "a habitual offender in weaving lies" and is "brazenly misleading people sewing together a web of lies" to save Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Rafale deal.

The party demanded that Modi government immediately set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the Rafale scam and must answer to the questions raised by Congress President Rahul Gandhi.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday hit out at Gandhi, saying he is spreading a "blatant lie" against Prime Minister Modi and his government over alleged corruption in the Rafale deal to escape the Income Tax Department inquiry against him related to the National Herald case.

Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said: "Modi government's Law Minister is a habitual offender in weaving lies based on figments of his imagination.

"Today again he brazenly misled the people by sewing together a web of lies to save his master, Narendra Modi," he said.

Surjewala asked: "Who benefitted from the unilateral Rafale deal which snatched the Rs 30,000 crore ... contract from HAL, thereby benefiting a private entity...?"

"Why did BJP President Amit Shah deliberately hide his son's contingent liabilities and credit facilities worth Rs 97.35 crore and how did 'Shah-Zaada' multiply his earnings by 16,000 times?" he said.

Surjewla said the Congress President on Monday asked the same questions that he has been asking from the Prime Minister as to what is the reason of secrecy behind the Rafale scam deal.

"Why did PM Modi bypass the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS)? Why was Rs 41,000 crore loss caused to public exchequer by 300 per cent rise in the purchase price of Rafale planes from Rs 526 crore per aircraft to Rs 1,670 crore per aircraft?" said Surjewala.

"Why was India denied the transfer of technology to manufacture Rafale aircraft? Why was defence procurement procedure violated with impunity? The country feels sorry for the Law Minister, because instead of talking on the issue at hand, he was busy deflecting public attention by joining imaginary issues," he added.

Since Ravi Shankar Prasad was speaking about the secrecy clause and repeating the alibi which Modi gave during the "No-Confidence motion" debate, he should refer to the agreement between India and France concerning the protection of classified information and material in the field of defence and tell which paragraph states that the commercial cost of defence deals cannot be revealed, he said.

"During the No Confidence Motion debate, Modi was conveniently hiding behind the statement of French Government for not disclosing the price.

"PM's stand is inconsistent with the statement made by French President Emmanuel Macron on March 8, 2018 in an interview to a prominent news channel, stating that 'if the Modi government wanted to disclose some of the details to the opposition and Parliament, he won't interfere in such a discussion'.

"Where does the French President say that the commercial cost of the Rafale deal cannot be disclosed?" Surjewala said.
New Delhi, Aug 13 : Upping the ante on the demand for simultaneous Assembly and Lok Sabha polls, BJP President Amit Shah has told the Law Commission that it will lead to cuts in the otherwise huge expenses borne on holding elections at present.

He also rejected the objections by different opposition parties that the idea of "One Nation, One Election" will be against the basic structure of the Indian federal system. "In fact, it will strengthen the federal structure in India," Shah said.

In his letter to the law panel, handed over to the law panel by a party delegation headed by Union Minister M.A. Naqvi on Monday, Shah said that a perpetual electoral process strained national resources and that in a progressive democracy like India developmental work and policy decisions get halted when the Model Code of Conduct was enforced ahead of the elections.

"There is no relation between the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. Voters vote on different issues in both polls. Therefore, we must have faith and trust in the voters," he said.

Shah said that criticism of the Bharatiya Janata Party's "One Nation, One Election" idea was "baseless" and done for political reasons.

He said that due to elections in one state or the other throughout the year, work of both the state and central governments get affected.

Simultaneous elections, he said, would lead to a reduction in election expenditure.

The BJP delegation that met Law Commission Chairman Justice B.S. Chauhan said that necessary amendments to the Constitution should take place to realise the "One Nation, One Election" idea.

"There are over 9.30 lakh poll booths and over one crore workers are posted during polls. As many as Rs 4,000 crore was spent in 2014 general elections. 'One Nation, One Election' will reduce this cost. This exercise has been successful in several countries," BJP MP Bhupendra Yadav said.

Citing the example of Maharashtra, he said, due to elections for 307 out of 365 days in 2016, the Model Code of Conduct was in force in different parts the state.

"There should be a debate on the issue and after unanimous support from all political parties, the Representation of the People Act should be amended," he said.

He was speaking to reporters after the BJP delegation, which included Vinay Sahasrabuddhe and Yadav and party spokesperson Anil Baluni, met the law panel.

The Congress has opposed the idea before the law panel, saying it was against the basic structure of the Indian federal system.

It also said that ending or extending the terms of assemblies was also against the basic structure of the Indian political system.

The Law Commission has held discussions on the issue last month, with most of those opposed to the proposal saying that it was against the Constitution and will dilute regional interests.

Besides the Congress, the proposal has been opposed by the Trinamool Congress, DMK, Janata Dal-Secular, Aam Aadmi party, CPI and IUML. The AIADMK, which is perceived to be close to the BJP, and BJP ally Goa Forward Party, have also opposed it.

The Law Commission had written to recognised national and state parties to participate in the consultation on simultaneous polls.

The Congress and the BJP preferred to stay away from the discussion. Later, a Congress delegation met the Law Commission and presented it views.

The Law Commission had come out with a draft white paper in April on simultaneous elections, which contained its possible recommendations.

It said that simultaneous elections may be resumed by amending the Constitution, Representation of the People Act of 1951 and the Rules of Procedure of the Lok Sabha and Assemblies.

It said that elections in 2019 could be held in phases, with some states going to the polls along with the Lok Sabha polls and the others in 2024.

Another proposal was that parties which introduce a no-confidence motion should simultaneously give a suggestion for an alternative government.
Chandigarh, Aug 13 : Twenty-nine Indian prisoners, including 26 fishermen, were set free on Monday from Pakistani prisons and sent back home through the Attari-Wagah joint check-post between the two countries, nearly 300km from here.

The prisoners were freed by the Pakistani authorities as a goodwill gesture.

Those freed included Gajanand Sharma, who had been missing from Jaipur in Rajasthan since 1982.

Upon their return to India, the prisoners got an emotional reception and they thanked the Almighty for their return.

They were medically examined by doctors at the border before they were taken towards their respective destinations.
Chennai, Aug 13 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said there are proof of links between terror outfits and those who oppose developmental projects in states.

In an interview to Tamil newspaper Daily Thanthi, Modi said in the recent times it has been observed that some people hinder the implementation of developmental projects in states.

"There are proof of such people having links with terror outfits. It is not only me who is saying this, even my predecessor Manmohan Singh had rightly said that some foreign non-governmental organisations (NGO) are instigating protests against the nuclear power project in Kudankulam," Modi said in an e-mail interview to the newsdaily.

He was responding to a question about Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan saying that there are movements of terror organisations in Tamil Nadu and their activities are of serious concern.

Continuing further, he had said that these terror outfits create fear among innocent people about projects that are for the welfare of people.

Asked about Bharataiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah's statement that Tamil Nadu is one of the most corrupt states in India, Modi said it is the right of the people of that state to estimate the performance of their governments.

"My government is against corruption. It will fight corruption wherever it is. No other government since Independence has fought against corruption like ours," Modi said.

On the issue of aligning with Rajinikanth when he floats a political party, Modi said the question itself is hypothetical and he cannot be expected to answer that.

Modi said without the support of AIADMK and DMK, the BJP won one Lok Sabha constituency in the last general elections.

"It is not an ordinary achievement in Tamil Nadu. We have some traditional pockets of support. That support base is now expanding. For a long period, the choice was limited in Tamil Nadu elections, but now youth are in search of an alternative," Modi said.

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New Delhi, Aug 13 : The Supreme Court on Monday directed the IGP (Meerut Range) to submit a report on the lynching of a man in Hapur in Uttar Pradesh by a mob of alleged cow vigilantes.

It also directed the state government's response within two weeks on a plea for a court-monitored Special Investigation Team probe into the lynching of Qasim, a cattle trader, in Hapur on June 18.

"... the Inspector General of Police of Meerut Range shall submit a report with regard to the incident in question. We have so directed in view of serious allegations/assertions made in the writ petition," a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said.

The court directions came as senior counsel K.V. Vishwanathan said that an act of mob lynching was being projected as road-rage violence.

As Vishwanathan questioned the manner in which the case was handled by the police, the court said: "The IGP (Meerut Range) shall issue directions to a suitable competent authority to move the Magistrate concerned for recording of statement by the sole witness under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure."

In response to submissions on the safety of petitioners Samayudeen and other, the court further directed that if the petitioners harboured a feeling of insecurity they shall bring it to the notice of Hapur Superintendent of Police, "who shall provide them adequate security and do the needful so that they do not remain in a state of fear."

Samayuddin was beaten up mercilessly during the lynching of Qasim at Bajhera village in Hapur district on June 18.

He has pleaded for cancellation of bail granted to the accused, contending also that the Uttar Pradesh Police had ignored the top court's direction to curb lynchings.

The court fixed August 28 for further hearing.

On July 17, the Supreme Court issued 22 guidelines to the central and state governments to put an end to the "horrendous acts" of vigilantism, lynching and mobocracy and directed them to work in tandem to take "preventive, remedial and punitive measures".

The top court had said that it was the duty of the State to "ensure that the machinery of law and order functions efficiently and effectively in maintaining peace so as to preserve our quintessentially secular ethos and pluralistic social fabric in a democratic set-up governed by the rule of law."

Of the 22 guidelines, 12 dealt with preventive steps, nine with remedial measures and one punitive action against police officers found wanting at any stage -- prevention, investigation and expeditious trial.

The departmental action "shall be taken to its logical conclusion preferably within six months", the court had said.

The court had also suggested that Parliament enact a law categorising lynching and other forms of vigilantism as a distinct offence and providing for adequate punishment.
Jaipur, Aug 13 : In an endeavour to pay respect to soldiers and inculcate a feeling of patriotism among the citizenry, around five lakh persons will form a human chief on August 14 in four border districts of Rajasthan, an official said on Monday.

The human chain will cover a total distance of 700 km in Sri Ganganagar, Bikaner, Jaisalmer and Barmer districts along the India-Pakistan border.

It will start from Bikaner at 11 a.m., followed by the other three districts.

Under the state government's programme 'Shahadat ko Salaam', the programme will be supported by the Indian Army and the Border Security Force.

Jaisalmer Superintendent of Police Jagdish Prasad Sharma said that arrangements have been made to make the initiative a success.

Patriotic songs and performances by folk artistes will be part of the event.
Bengaluru, Aug 13 : There is no move to shift "Aero India 2019" from Bengaluru to Lucknow, as clarified by Defence Ministry officials, said Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Ananth Kumar on Monday.

"I have spoken to (Defence Minister) Nirmala Sitharaman, who has confirmed the same -- no decision on shifting Aero India 2019 venue out of Bengaluru to Lucknow," said Kumar in a tweet.

Kumar is a six-time Lok Sabha member from Bengaluru South constituency, while Sitharaman is a Raya Sabha member from Karnataka.

"There were similar rumours last time too, which were proved to be unfounded," added Kumar, referring to media reports then that the 2017 air show would be shifted to Goa, from where former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar hailed.

Kumar's tweet came within hours after Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention to ensure that the February 2019 five-day biennial event is held in this tech hub only.

"I seek your indulgence for conducting the 12th edition of Aero India-2019 in Bengaluru, where the mega event was held successfully for 11 times biennially since 1996," said Kumaraswamy in the letter to Modi.

The letter was written following media reports that the Defence Ministry was planning to shift the upcoming air show to Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, ahead of the general elections in mid-2019.
Kathmandu, Aug 14 : The Eminent Persons' Group (EPG) on Nepal-India Relations has recommended the idea of "smart border" and limiting the cross border movements only from the designated border points.

The move has been proposed in order to check infiltration, curbing criminal activities and keeping records of people crossing either side of the border, an official said.

At present, people crossing the border do not have to produce any kind of identity cards and there is no prohibited entry or exit point.

But, as per the report, which is yet to be made public, the EPG has recommended carrying electronic national identity cards mandatory and that movement should be limited to designated border points only.

If the EPG's suggestions are executed, Nepal and India would have to work on installing equipment at the border where both sides should issue the electronic identity cards to its citizens or should categorise what kind of cards, like passports, driving licence or any other, can be accepted if electronic identity cards are not in place.

The EPG was set up in 2016 by Nepali and Indian governments to work on a mutually agreed document within two years, and also recommend ways to strengthen bilateral ties.
Mumbai, Aug 14 : The trailer of Nawazuddin Siddiqui's "Manto", which is helmed by acclaimed actress-filmmaker Nandita Das, will release on digital platforms on Independence Day.

"Manto", co-produced by HP Studios, Filmstoc and Viacom18 Motion Pictures, traces the life of writer Saadat Hasan Manto. Nawazuddin will be seen bringing the character to life.

"Viacom18, one of our main producers and the ones leading the marketing and distribution for the film along with HP studios, decided to launch the trailer digitally. This was completely their idea," Nandita told IANS.

The film follows the most tumultuous years in the life of iconoclastic writer Manto and those of the countries -- India and Pakistan -- which Manto inhabited and chronicled. The film stars Rasika Dugal as Manto's wife and Tahir Raj Bhasin, Rishi Kapoor and Divya Dutta in key roles.

Talking about Manto, she said: "Manto stood for freedom of expression, both through his writings and the struggles he went through in his life. He challenged all forms of orthodoxy and despite six cases slapped on him, he believed in the power of the written word. That kind of conviction and the courage to follow it through is inspirational."

How do you think the status of freedom of expression in India?

"I am an optimist. So, I believe that writers and artists will continue to express their truth through their work. We, as readers and audiences, need to support such people for our own sake, for a robust and mature society," she said.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 13)  Weather in Luzon may improve by Thursday or Friday if the low pressure area (LPA) inside the Philippine territory will not develop into a tropical depression, said the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA).

"Mino-monitor pa rin po nating ang LPA na ito. Nakadepende na lang po sa development at movement ng LPA na ito kung magtutuluy-tuloy po ang ating pag-ulan lalo na sa Metro Manila," PAGASA weather forecaster Samuel Duran said in an interview on CNN Philippines' News Night.

[Translation: We are still monitoring this LPA. It depends on the development and movement of this LPA whether rainfall will persist, especially in Metro Manila.]

The LPA, which entered the Philippine Area of Responsibility at 3:00 p.m. today, is located at 920 kilometers east-north-east of Basco, Batanes.

There is a low chance that it will become a tropical depression, and it may dissolve in the next 12 to 24 hours, PAGASA said.

As of 6:00 p.m., a yellow rainfall warning was still raised in Metro Manila, Bataan, Zambales and Bulacan. Heavy rains may cause flooding in low-lying portions of these areas.

Moderate with occasional heavy rains are expected in Cavite, Laguna, Rizal and Batangas within the next three hours.

PAGASA earlier reported that rains over Western Luzon won't stop anytime soon.

It said that areas to be most drenched will be the western section of Northern and Central Luzon, where rains are expected to continue for the next five days.

Weather forecaster Aldczar Aurelio said Metro Manila and Southern Luzon would have fair weather beginning Wednesday.

This is due to Tropical Storm "Karding," with international name "Yagi," and Tropical Storm "Leepi" enhancing the southwest monsoon. Karding is already out of Philippine territory, while Leepi is not expected to enter it, PAGASA said.

Aurelio also compared the Habagat's effects to Typhoon "Ondoy" saying they are similar, but have different amount of rainfall.

"Yung ulan ng binagsak ng Ondoy ay napalakas sa loob ng anim na oras umabot sa 450 mm ito naman na ulan sa isang araw 270 mm, pero 'yung epekto kumbaga sa Marikina halos parehas dulot ng Ondoy at Habagat," he said.

[Translation: The rains brought by Ondoy were strong, in six hours it reach 450 millimeters, while these (monsoon) rains, in one day it reached 270 mm, but the effects brought by Ondoy and the Habagat, like on Marikina, is almost the same.]

Aurelio said that on August 11, the country experienced more than half of August's expected rainfall.

This is a developing story. Refresh page for updates.
Los Angeles, Aug 14 : Actress Eva Longoria was surprised how "alert" her baby son Santiago was when he was born.

"Well, it's magical. You are in the hospital, you are a little loopy, a little tired from labour," Longoria told HELLO! magazine.

"There are a lot of people in the room, doctors and nurses, and then it's almost like all the noise goes away. It's just he and I. "He was born so alert! It was like he said, 'Hey! I know you!' It's as if I knew him my whole life," she said.

The 43-year-old actress is supposed to be going back to work in a few weeks' time to direct the drama "Grand Hotel" but she is already dreading it because she hates leaving her little one and even misses him when he's asleep, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

"My son will be two and a half months old and I can't even think about it right now. I enjoy our routine and our days together. People tell me: 'Get ready to be tired,' but I am not.

"I actually miss him when he is sleeping, so I am like: 'Ugh. Hurry up and wake up, so I can play with you and stare at you and kiss you and cuddle you, bite, hug you!' So the thought of going back to work... I get anxiety thinking about it," she said.
Washington, Aug 14 : Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk said on Monday that in late July he met with Saudi Arabia sovereign fund representatives to discuss the electric carmaker's possible exit from the stock market.

Musk said in a statement posted on the Tesla Web site that the Saudi sovereign fund had first contacted him "at the beginning of 2017 to express (their) interest because of the important need to diversify away from oil".

"They then held several additional meetings with me over the next year to reiterate this interest and to try to move forward with a going private transaction. Obviously, the Saudi sovereign fund has more than enough capital needed to execute on such a transaction," Efe quoted him as saying.

"I continue to have discussions with the Saudi fund, and I also am having discussions with a number of other investors, which is something that I always planned to do since I would like for Tesla to continue to have a broad investor base," he said.

He said he had most recently met with the Saudis on July 31 and left that meeting "with no question that a deal with the ... fund could be closed, and that it was just a matter of getting the process moving".

"This is why I referred to 'funding secured' in the August 7th announcement," he said, referring to his surprise tweet on that date that he was thinking about taking Tesla private.

According to Musk, "two thirds" of Tesla's current stockholders would be interested in continuing to hold the firm's shares once it goes private.

On August 7, Musk surprised the investment world with a Twitter announcement that he was considering taking Tesla private and that the funds needed to do so - which some financial analysts estimate at more than $70 billion - were "secured".

Musk's tweet caused a financial firestorm with Tesla shares immediately skyrocketing by almost 11 per cent, although in the coming days they lost a good part of what they had gained.

The Securities and Exchange Commission asked Tesla to report whether Musk's tweets were valid and asked him why he had not made the announcement in an official statement to the markets and investors.

Last Friday, Musk was sued by investors who accused him of having made the announcement to take the firm private to harm so-called "short sellers", people who sell the firm's shares anticipating a drop in the market price and with whom Musk has been engaged in open warfare for some time, contending that they are harming the firm's growth plans.

The Saudi sovereign fund already owns about 5 per cent of the outstanding Tesla shares, Musk said.
AEW Europe has decided to sell the Atrium Tower office building in Warsaw. The new owner of the property located within the Central Business District in Warsaw on Jana Pawa II 25 Avenue is VIG Fund. Constructed by Skanska Property in 1997, the 11,500 sq m property was sold

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EXPERT OBSERVER

The combined effect of low rental yields and declining dwelling values has resulted in a rapid reduction in overall returns from housing over the past year.

According to the CoreLogic Total Returns Index, over recent years value growth has been much stronger than rental returns, showing that the majority of the returns have been achieved via capital gains rather than rental income.

With dwelling values now falling and gross rental yields close to historic lows, the total returns from residential housing are not looking so attractive and a greater share of returns are coming from the yield component.

National dwelling values fell by -1.6% over the 12 months to July 2018, total annual returns have fallen to just 1.9% and are now at their lowest since June 2012.

The fall in total returns has been substantial given that a year earlier total returns were recorded at 14.2%.

Across the combined capital cities, total returns over the 12 months to July 2018 were recorded at 0.8% - the lowest they have been since May 2012.

Total returns across the combined regional markets were recorded at 6.6% over the past year  again, the lowest they have been since June 2013.

A year ago, annual total returns were recorded at 14.8% across the combined capital cities and 12.0% across the combined regional markets.

Over the past 12 months, total returns in Sydney have fallen by -2.5%.

This -2.5% fall in returns is the weakest result since February 2009 and represents a substantial slowdown in annual returns from July 2017 when they had increased by 19.0%.

With dwelling values falling -5.4% in Sydney over the past year it highlights that value changes largely dictate total returns in Sydney.

In regional NSW total returns increased by 6.7% over the past year that was the smallest annual increase since February 2013.

Annual returns in regional NSW have slowed from 17.1% a year ago.

Value falls in Melbourne over the past year have seen a substantial reduction in total returns.

Over the past year, Melbourne recorded at 2.4% reduction that was down from 16.6% a year ago and was also the lowest annual return since October 2012.

Total returns in regional Vic have remained much more stable than those in Melbourne.

Over the past 12 months, total returns in regional Vic have been recorded at 9.8% which was only slightly lower than the 10.4% total returns recorded a year ago.

Value growth is only slightly lower than it was a year ago in regional Vic which is a key contributor to fairly steady total returns.

Over the past year, dwelling value growth has slowed across Qld which has contributed to a moderate reduction in total returns.

Over the year, total returns in Brisbane were recorded at 4.8% which was the lowest return since July 2013 and down from 7.5% a year ago.

Regional Qld total returns were slightly stronger than those in Brisbane were at 5.2% however, they too were down from 9.1% a year ago and the 5.2% was the smallest annual return since October 2012.

The rate of dwelling value growth has slowed over the past year in Adelaide and so too have total returns while the rate of value decline in regional SA has slowed, providing a boost to total returns.

Total returns in Adelaide were recorded at 4.9% over the past year compared to a 6.1% return in regional SA.

In Adelaide, returns have fallen from 9.9% a year ago and are the lowest they have been since June 2013.

Total returns in regional SA have increased from 5.2% a year ago and are the highest they have been since January 2017.

Although values have fallen over the past year in both Perth and regional WA, total returns in each region remain positive.

Over the past 12 months, total returns in Perth were recorded at 1.6%, which was an increase from 1.2% a year ago however, annual returns have eased slightly over recent months.

In regional WA, total returns were recorded at 0.6% over the past year compared to 1.8% a year ago.

With strong increases in dwelling values over the past year, Hobart has recoded the nations highest total returns at 17.1%.

Although 17.1% represents much stronger returns than all other capital cities it is lower than the 19.7% a year ago and also lower than the recent peak of 20.2% in September 2017.

Regional Tas has also generated comparatively high total returns over the past year of 12.0%.

The 12.0% annual returns are down from 14.1%, a year ago which was the recent peak.

There is a big discrepancy between total returns in Darwin and regional NT, which is also reflective of the significant differences in value changes over the past year.

Over the past year, total returns in Darwin were recorded a -0.8% which is down from a positive returns of 2.5% a year ago.

Although total returns are falling, the magnitude of the fall has slowed over the past two months.

In regional NT, total returns were recorded at 12.3%, which was a substantial improvement on the 1.4% annual return a year ago.

Over the 12 months to July 2018, total returns for Canberra dwellings were recorded at 7.0%.

The 7.0% annual return was lower than the 12.8% recorded over the previous 12 months.

As the chart below shows, returns have trended lower over the past year but have begun to stabilize over recent months.

The most recent data shows that there has been a significant fall in investor mortgage demand.

Over recent years most of this demand has been in Sydney and Melbourne, both of which have seen a significant slowdown in total returns over the past year.

Given the decline in returns and an expectation that returns will continue to shrink as values decline further, it is anticipated that investor mortgage demand will also shrink, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne.

Investors could see renewed interest for housing in other regions of the country where total returns remain positive however, however the returns are anticipated to be far inferior to those recorded over recent years in Sydney and Melbourne.

Cameron Kusher is a CoreLogic Research analyst
Australias student housing sector is set to boom in coming years, according to a report from Knight Frank.

Australias PBSA (purpose built student accommodation) sector is undergoing "rapid growth" due to an increasing number of Australian and international university students.

This year, over 8,000 new PBSA beds will become operational across Australia, approximately 20% more than in 2017.

Demand is outstripping supply with a growing population of both local and international students strengthening current demand.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the number of 18-25-year-olds in Australia is projected to increase by 104,000 between 2016 and 2026, increasing the number of Australian university students.

Chinese Higher Education enrollments in Australia could more than double by 2027; rising from the current figure of 124,700 to 294,000 enrollments according to Knight Frank Research estimates.

Knight Franks Paul Savitz, Director, Research and Consulting, Australia, said that speculation about the negative impact of high-ranking Chinese universities is unwarranted.

"There has been speculation of late that because Chinese global university rankings are improving, that this may have negative consequences for Australian universities; given their part reliance on full-fee paying international students," Savitz said.

"However, when students are looking to study abroad, research shows that lifestyle factors are equally as important as the quality of education and because Australia offers international students a fantastic lifestyle with excellent employment opportunities, we have every confidence international student numbers will continue to rise."

In addition to freestanding PBSA developments, an additional opportunity for developers lies in upgrading existing university accommodation.

As a result, its expected that some of the largest investment opportunities will be in partnership with regional or metro universities to redevelop older on-campus stock.

Recent examples of public-private partnerships include the Living + Learning Partners consortium investment in the University of Wollongongs on-campus student accommodation facilities, and ANUs agreement with investment management firm H.R.L Morrison and Co over nine student residences.

The report suggests that establishing long-term partnerships with universities is the key to success in the PBSA sector.

"Whether its upgrading university accommodation or targeting overseas students in the direct let market, the key is developing long term relationships with universities to help meet their specific needs and investors and developers who are able to match a universitys vision will benefit long term; much more than those who simply target particular cities, Savitz said.
Pump and water treatment systems manufacturer AKS Industries has leased a level one office space Melbourne CBDs historic Scottish House.

Stephen Land of Fitzroys negotiated the three-year deal for the 290 square metre space within the 90 William Street building, at $124,700 per annum gross on behalf of a private owner.

Land said the propertys high ceilings, ample natural light and William Street aspect was a drawcard for prospective tenants, as well as its location in an evolving part of the CBD.

The large number of developments through the CBDs western corridor has seen a growing range of tenants enquire for spaces in this part of the city, beyond the law firms seeking a place close to the legal precinct, he said.

Scottish House is just metres from the dual-tower, office, hotel and residential Collins Arch development at 447 Collins Street, on the corner of William Street, as well as Mirvacs Olderfleet project at 477 Collins Street, which will bring more than 52,000 square metres of new office space.

Tenants were looking for an opportunity to take up a character space in the CBD, while being able to enjoy the increasing number of lifestyle and food and beverage offerings being delivered nearby in response to the booming worker population, Land said.

The six-storey Scottish House building was designed for prominent shipping agents McIlwraith McEacharn Ltd in 1907, by architect Charles DEbro, and was their head office for more than 70 years.

The Heritage Council Victoria has deemed Scottish House as architecturally significant as an office building that expresses both in style and structure the commercial values and status of a leading Australian company.
Councils are taking over the NSW Planning system with the latest being North Sydney Councils request to be excluded from planning proposal policy.

At its meeting on 30 July North Sydney Council voted to put all planning proposals on hold until 1 July 2020 as this would be consistent with what the government allowed Ryde Council to do.

The impact of this resolution, if accepted by the NSW Government, will be to put a hold on all major projects in North Sydney for the next 2 years.

Ryde Council seems to be now driving the planning system in Sydney as it is able to bypass Department of Planning policies with the support of the NSW Government.

Now the rest of Sydneys councils are following the Ryde approach so they can also be exempt from NSW Government policy.

Northern Beaches Council recently requested the Minister for Planning to exempt them from planning policies related to affordable rental housing, seniors housing and disabled housing.

Now North Sydney Council wants to be exempt from having to consider planning proposals from the private sector for a two year period.

The NSW Government must exert its authority as the responsible agency for the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act and not allow a feeding frenzy driven by small councils that are keen to undermine the state governments authority.

We have seen the NSW Government allow 50 councils across NSW to be allowed to delay the introduction of the Missing Middle code for terrace houses for a year and then the NSW Government delegated planning along the Sydenham to Bankstown corridor back to the local councils who had been fighting the extent of development.

Private sector developers are finding that there is major confusion about who is running the planning system and that is leading to a Sovereign Risk issue that is undermining investments that assumed state government policies gave some certainty to outcomes.

It is looking like NSW is going into a lock down mode for two years to appease a noisy minority who are concerned about change.

The losers will be the young couples and families looking for somewhere to live.

Chris Johnson is the Urban Taskforce CEO
Six development sites amassing 16 hectares hit the market today as part of the Victorian governments inclusionary Housing Pilot.

It is an initiative to deliver at least 100 new community housing residences across the state.

Offers close September 6.

The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) portfolio encompasses landholdings in Boronia, Broadmeadows, Parkville, Noble Park, Reservoir and Wodonga.

Savills Australias Julian Heatherich, Mark Stafford and Jesse Radisich have been appointed to manage the expressions-of-interest campaign.

They expect enquiries to come from a broad range of local and national developers.

Large, strategically located development sites are becoming increasingly difficult to find across the state, Mr Heatherich said.

This portfolio provides an opportunity for one or more experienced developers to deliver a mix of new private, affordable and community housing options in key Victorian locations.

The inclusionary Housing Pilot forms part of the state governments housing strategy, which includes Homes For Victorians (March 2017) and Plan Melbourne 2017-2050 (March 2017).

The pilot aims to provide greater housing choice for all Victorians by meeting the diverse housing needs of the growing population, Mr Stafford said.

As Melbournes population continues to escalate at a rapid rate, with eight million residents predicted by 2050, this strategy addresses the critical need to increase the supply of affordable housing.

The selected sites are positioned in well-established Victorian suburbs, close to retail amenities, parks, schools and public transport.

- The Boronia site (40 Mount View Road) measures 8.218 hectares and falls within Neighbourhood Residential Zone 3 under the Knox Planning Scheme (pictured below).

- The Broadmeadows site (2-16 Nicholas Street) measures 2.162 hectares and falls within the Residential Growth Zone under the Hume Planning Scheme (pictured below).

- The Parkville site (87-103 Manningham Street) measures 11,542sqm and falls within Residential Growth Zone 1 under the Melbourne Planning Scheme (pictured below).

- the noble Park site (30-40 Athol Road) measures 2.31 hectares and falls within Public Use Zone 2 under the Greater Dandenong Planning Scheme; the site is vacant and spread across two titles (pictured below).

- The Reservoir site (16-20 Dumbarton Street) measures 5,976sqm and falls within General Residential Zone 1 under the Darebin Planning Scheme; the site is vacant and spread across four titles (pictured below).

- The Wodonga site (30 Jarrah Street and 41 Pearce Street) measures 19,220sqm and falls within General Residential Zone 1 under the Wodonga Planning Scheme.
The result was zDefender (previously known as SIEM Agent for z/OS)  software code we put on z/OS that SIEM tools could access to get RACF, ACF2, Top Secret and other mainframe event data into their systems as the events were generated in real time.

CorreLog, Inc., the leader in multi-platform IT security event log management, today announced its latest release of zDefender is now Generally Available. The latest release of CorreLogs mainframe Security Information & Event Management or SIEM product, includes a multitude of enhancements to bring real-time mainframe security visibility into Windows- and UNIX-based enterprise SIEM tools. Though IBM touts its IBM Z as the most powerful transaction system for cloud (i.e. $8 trillion in credit card payments yearly, 30 billion transactions per day, 29 billion ATM transactions yearly), the preferred platforms for securing enterprise data are exclusive to Windows and UNIX systems. This was the genesis of CorreLog building zDefender; to provide these distributed SIEM systems an easy-to-install, easy-to-use mainframe security product with real-time visualization and alerting of mainframe events through a standard web browser or SIEM system.

We all came up through the ranks on the mainframe side of enterprise software, said George Faucher, CorreLog president and founder. And about 10 years ago we saw this huge gap in how long it was taking privileged user event data to go from the mainframe to distributed security tools and decided to do something about it. The result was zDefender (previously known as SIEM Agent for z/OS)  software code we put on z/OS that SIEM tools could access to get RACF, ACF2, Top Secret and other mainframe event data into their systems as the events were generated in real time.

CorreLogs zDefender for z/OS is currently Generally Available, and the version 5.8.3 upgrade includes the following enhancements:



Support for z/OS CONSOLE message streaming

Support for dynamic JES JOBLOG (batch job) output streaming, including active SYSOUT from long-running started tasks

New utility for bulk loading of any flat file into zDefender

INHIBIT now supported for all SMF record types

Support for JSON-format SIEM messages

Support for Compuware Abend-AID (z/OS reliability and quality) and Application Audit

Support for Micro Focus ChangeMan (mainframe change management) events

Approximately 400 additional CICS (online transaction management and connectivity) fields

Surrogate for USERID enrichment

Plus several other enhancements

For a complete list, please visit the support portal here.

CorreLog recommends that existing customers update to zDefender version 5.8.3. The upgrade package is easy to deploy, and existing customers may upgrade to this latest version themselves by contacting CorreLog support here for their download package. Alternately, customers may contact CorreLog support here for upgrade assistance.

Demonstrations of CorreLog zDefender at SHARE St. Louis, August 12-17, 2018

CorreLog will be holding demonstrations of zDefender for z/OS at SHARE St. Louis, at the America's Center Convention Complex, in booth number 316. SHARE attendees will have the opportunity to meet with CorreLog for live product demonstrations and one-on-one conversations about how CorreLog can assist with mainframe security and compliance auditing.

CorreLog Educational Tracks at SHARE St. Louis

I. Technical Breakout Session: Charles Mills Speaking Session with Blue Cross Blue Shield

What: Presentation titled "User Experiences: Know Now - Protecting Privacy Using Real-Time Data." Join this session to hear how a network engineer at BCBS who recently turned mainframer is using real-time mainframe event data to detect excessive login attempts, connections to external IPs, privilege escalation, policy compliance, profile changes, APF changes, and the impact of his own (rookie) work.

When: Tuesday, August 14, 2018: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Where: Room 267, America's Center Convention Complex

Who: Charles Mills, CorreLog Director of Advanced Projects, & Rick Barnes, Systems Engineer with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama

Tracks: Enterprise Data Center; Security and Compliance

Session Number: 22997

More Info: Session Link

II. VSP: Use Cases for Preventing Breaches by Correlating Real-Time Mainframe Events with CorreLog zDefender

What: Learn about CorreLogs zDefender as well as learn some concrete steps you can take to stop attacks, gain operational efficiency, and transform all of your data on the mainframe into actionable intelligence before there is irreversible damage to your system integrity.

When: Tuesday, August 14, 2018: 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM

Where: Room 226

Session Number: 23719

More Info: Session Link

CorreLog zDefender for z/OS

CorreLog has designed software agent-based solutions to collect and forward z/OS events to organizations existing distributed SIEMs or SOCs for real-time security visibility, including audit trails for compliance with PCI DSS, FISMA, the GDPR, HIPAA, IRS Pub. 1075, GLBA, SOX, ISO 27001, and other data security standards. These solutions monitor z/OS events in real time with little impact to systems resources, and roll-up z/OS security events and audit trails into a single view within an IT SOC.

For more information about CorreLogs agent-based mainframe security solutions, visit its Mainframe SIEM Solutions overview page here.

About CorreLog

Since 2007, CorreLog, Inc. has been committed to delivering software solutions for Security and Compliance auditing professionals who need more advanced network/system security and improved adherence to PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOX, FISMA, GDPR, ISO 27001, IRS Pub. 1075, NERC and other industry standards for protecting data. Our solutions are designed to be complementary to clients existing IT investments.

CorreLog specializes in providing the most comprehensive Security & Compliance software at the industrys lowest Total Cost of Ownership. Our solutions help secure data across both mainframe and distributed operating systems, and provide alerts with notifications in real-time to security and network operations resources. CorreLog has worked with companies across Fortune 500 to SMB class who all benefit from our ease of installation and highly interoperable approach to building software that is simple to use and master out of the box. Our customers are up and running with monitoring and alerts within just a few hours, versus weeks or even months with competing enterprise vendor solutions. Our software agent monitoring technology spans from Windows, Linux, UNIX, Mac, SAP, and databases all the way up to the largest mainframes with running IBM z/OS, Linux on z Systems, IBM Db2, IBM IMS, and IBM z/VM.

CorreLog has installed software and framework components used successfully by hundreds of commercial and government organizations worldwide. Our core solutions provide visibility on privileged-user activity, data integrity, FIM and application activity that may hold evidence of cyber threat, and in real time, we notify security personnel with alerts in accordance with compliance standards.

For more information on CorreLog, please visit CorreLog.com.
All Traffic Solutions logo "We chose the SpeedAlert for its cutting-edge technology and its ability to gather real-time data so we could identify traffic and speeding problems."  Major Jamey Schwab, Commander, Eighth Division, LMPD

All Traffic Solutions, a leader in smart parking and transportation technology announced that new customer Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) will deploy web-enabled ATS speed trailers throughout three police divisions. Each of the nine ATS 5 Trailers are equipped with a portable SpeedAlert 18 radar speed display with programmable red and blue strobe lights. The signs all connect to the cloud-based TraffiCloud Traffic Management Suite for remote device monitoring, management and real-time reporting from any Internet connection. The state-of-the-art speed trailers were funded by the nine Republican Members of the Louisville Metro Council.

The LMPD learned about SpeedAlert 18 radar speed displays from a neighboring area police chief who referred them to ATS. We chose the SpeedAlert for its cutting-edge technology and its ability to gather real-time data so we could identify traffic and speeding problems, said Major Jamey Schwab, Commander, Eighth Division of the LMPD. Traditionally, the only way we could know what was happening on a street was to assign a traffic officer with radar at the location. In my division alone theres 80 square miles, three major interstates and thousands of miles of surface street. Now we have ability to monitor any road 24/7, and use the data to allocate resources.

In addition to displaying driver speeds as they pass, the SpeedAlert 18 can be programmed remotely to display speed-dependent messages, or be used as a variable message sign at events, to display traffic alerts and other important notifications. Our current machines use older technology and only display speed. We needed the cutting edge, cloud-based versatility and time-saving features of the SpeedAlert. We plan to share report access with the City Council and other elected officials so that they can monitor traffic information themselves, said Schwab.

This is a great example of how the nine Republican Members of the Louisville Metro Council have successfully worked together by pooling our funding to help address one of our constituents most frequent concerns, speeding. We are excited to help LMPD add this new tool that will help make our streets safer, said Minority Caucus Chair Angela Leet, (District 7).

The Department will deploy the SpeedAlert speed trailers to calm traffic in school zones throughout the Louisville Metro area beginning on August 15, which is the start of the school year for Jefferson County Public Schools. The trailer-mounted radar speed displays will also be utilized to monitor traffic in areas where residents complain about speeding.

For information about ATS portable, connected traffic devices and transportation solutions, or to request a quote, visit the companys website.

Read the ATS white paper Improving Road Safety with Connected Radar Speed Displays and Data.

Posted in Press Releases.

About All Traffic Solutions

All Traffic Solutions is a leader in innovative traffic, transportation and smart parking technologiesas well as portable, web-enabled radar speed and variable message displays and other traffic devicesthat leverage the Cloud, platform and the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide the most accurate, cost effective and turnkey solutions that continue to change the way the world solves its most complex parking, transportation and traffic challenges. By providing an open and interoperable platform, organizations can leverage their existing infrastructure and real-time data and analytics to reduce costs, maximize resources and efficiencies, enable proactive decision making and achieve even better outcomes.

For more information, visit AllTrafficSolutions.com.
Cordisco & Saile LLC "Its really an award dedicated to everyone we have helped over the years." - John Cordisco

Bucks County attorney John F. Cordisco, Esq. of the personal injury law firm Cordisco & Saile LLC has been named one of the Nations Top One Percent by the National Association of Distinguished Counsel.

The distinction is the latest in Cordiscos legal career, which includes 30 years of personal injury law practice as well as stints on the Pennsylvania School Association and Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

The National Association of Distinguished Counsel dedicates itself to promoting the highest legal standards and recognizes attorneys who elevate the standards of the Bar and serve as an example for which other lawyers can aspire.

For Cordisco, the distinction is reflective of his firms service to clients.

A big part of our firms success has been our approach to client service, Cordisco said. Putting yourself in other peoples shoes helps you appreciate their struggle. That appreciation drives us to provide exceptional service and do whatever we can to improve the lives of our neighbors.

That commitment to service has helped the firm recover a slew of million-dollar settlements and judgments on behalf of their clients. Getting the compensation that clients need to pay bills and get medical care motivates Cordisco every day as he prepares to serve and represent injured people in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Awards like this are a residual benefit, though Cordisco appreciates the magnitude of receiving one of his professions highest honors.

Being recognized as one of the Nations Top One Percent is a great honor, Cordisco said. But I do think this award is a testament to our commitment to our clients. So, its really an award dedicated to everyone we have helped over the years.

Cordisco founded the law firm Cordisco & Saile LLC in 2016 with attorney Michael Saile.

About Cordisco & Saile LLC

Cordisco & Saile LLC is a nationally recognized, award-winning personal injury law firm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Founded by attorneys John Cordisco and Michael Saile, the firm specializes in representing victims of slip and falls, car accidents, workers compensation, medical malpractice, and other injury cases.

The law firms primary focus is on helping personal injury victims collect the compensation they need to cover medical expenses and other costs and losses after an accident. Cordisco & Saile LLC is AV Preeminent Rated, which is a peer rating that distinguishes the firm for its professional excellence.

Cordisco & Saile LLC

900 Northbrook Dr #120

Trevose, PA 19053

(215) 642-2335
MHVillage's August 2018 Cover for The MHInsider Magazine. "The RV/MH Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Ind., inducts Class of 2018 this month, celebrating eleven individuals who made outstanding contributions to their respective industries throughout their careers."

MHVillage, the nations number one marketplace for manufactured housing, has published its August edition of MHInsider Magazine with feature stories and expert columns for manufactured housing professionals.

The latest issue of the MHInsider, a 68-page full-color print publication of manufactured housing news, provides in-depth coverage of the RV/MH Hall of Fame Induction Dinner and Ceremonies. The issue also contains a profile on Cascade Financial founders Cody Pearce and George Dover, a candid conversation with Kevin Clayton of Clayton Homes, information on upcoming events, and five columns from industry experts in the areas of fair housing, finance, policy and legislation, preserving a corporate legacy and managing a community sale.

In this third quarterly issue of the MHInsider, we explore a common theme of honoring and preserving legacies worthy of recognition, MHVillage Co-President and Chief Business Development Officer Darren Krolewski said. The RV/MH Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Ind., inducts its Class of 2018 this month, celebrating eleven individuals who made outstanding contributions to their respective industries throughout their careers. Each year, these nominees read like a whos who of some of the most respected, successful and dedicated members of the manufactured housing industry.

It is because of their efforts, our business has become what it is today, he said.

Prior to the launch of The MHInsider in January, the manufactured housing industry had been without a print trade publication since the last industry journal discontinued publication in December 2016.

The publisher of the magazine, MHVillage, assists in selling, purchasing and renting manufactured housing.

Each year, MHVillage registers approximately 25 million unique visitors. In 2017, MHVillage boasted 148 million page views, providing a platform for more than $3 billion in home sales and rentals among its many other services to consumers and professionals in the areas of home building, retail, community management, brokerage, investment and finance.

The intent for the MHInsider magazine is to create an industry-positive and informative medium that strikes a balance between feature profiles, industry trends and the latest news.

The MHInsider magazine is a companion publication to the MHInsider blog for manufactured housing industry professionals, which is updated on a daily-to-weekly basis and includes a bi-weekly email newsletter that provides the latest industry news and trends directly to the inbox of manufactured housing professionals.

Readers can sign up to receive the MHInsider print magazine in the mail, where they also can read an electronic version of the magazine and stay up-to-date with industry news via the MHInsider professional blog.

For advertising opportunities with the MHInsider magazine and blog, please contact MHInsider Account Executive Matthew OBrian at (877) 406-0232. For editorial feedback and contributions, please contact MHInsider Managing Editor Patrick Revere at (616) 888-6994.

About MHVillage

Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, MHVillage Inc. is the nations premier online marketplace for buying and selling manufactured homes. Since its inception in 2004, MHVillage has grown to become the number one consumer website for the manufactured housing industry with more than 25 million unique visitors annually. Nearly 80,000 homes listed on MHVillage are sold annually with a combined transaction value exceeding $3 billion.
We created a new business model that fully integrates the world of fee-based advisory services with fixed indexed annuities and insurance.

Brookstone Capital Management announced that it has recently launched Brookstone Insurance Group (BIG) to provide advisors a solution in sales of fixed indexed annuities and insurance products.

Founder and CEO, Dean Zayed, feels that Brookstone must become more than a standard Turn-Key Asset Management Platform (TAMP). We have been on the cutting edge with an expansive platform that has fulfilled almost every advisors needs, with only one limitation. With BIG, we are removing that limitation. We want to ensure that advisors have one simplified solution for their practice, so we created a new business model that fully integrates the world of fee-based advisory services with fixed indexed annuities and insurance, Zayed said

BIG is a full-service insurance company that will provide advisors access to major carriers, industry leading products, and cutting-edge technology. Advisors are looking for a turn-key solution to streamline their business, as well as being fiduciary compliant. We listened and created an all-inclusive approach that will revolutionize the TAMP industry, Zayed said. With this change in our business model, we believe that Brookstone has once again maintained its status as a thought leader in the industry, he added.

With over $2.4B in Assets Under Management (AUM) and 350+ Advisors doing business in all 50 states, Brookstone has positioned itself as a leader in the independent advisory space. With most of their affiliated advisors also providing insurance solutions to clients, the creation of BIG is the next logical evolution for the company.

About Brookstone Capital Management

Founded in 2006, Brookstone Capital Management is a SEC Registered Investment Advisor firm providing fee-based asset management services. Brookstone offers investment management through a select network of independent advisor representatives, offering portfolios that span conservative, moderate, and growth oriented risk tolerances. Founder and CEO Dean Zayed established Brookstone with the singular goal of forging strategic relationships with independent advisors to support all aspects of their fee-based advisory business.

About Brookstone Insurance Group

Founded in 2018, Brookstone Insurance Group (BIG) is an affiliated company of Brookstone Capital Management established by Dean Zayed. BIG distributes fixed indexed annuity and insurance products through a select network of carriers to its contracted agents.

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BVM (http://www.brazosvalleymarketing.com), an UpCity partner, is now providing SEO services for Businesses in The Woodlands, TX.

Search engine optimization, or as it is more commonly known, SEO, is the practice of using key words and phrase online to attract and convert customers. Through the use of optimized web content, blogs, and articles, a business can organically rise to the first page of search engine results. This, says Dustin Ogle, BVM founder and owner, is paramount.

How many people actually look beyond the first page of Google search results? he asks. Not many. This is why its important to have the key phrases in your online content and marketing materials that ensure you rise about your competition, literally and figuratively.

BVM has years of experience in helping companies get that coveted first-page spot, and now the SEO firm is helping businesses in The Woodlands, TX with their SEO needs. BVM keeps informed about Googles latest algorithms, market trends, and which phrases are the most effective. Yet, they ensure that each customer is given a unique experience.

SEO is not a one-size-fits-all product, confirms Ogle. The SEO strategy that works for one company in The Woodlands, TX will not work for another. We ensure each company that partners with us gets the attention to detail they deserve.

In addition to SEO services in The Woodlands, TX, BVM also helps clients with lead generation and web design. To learn more visit http://www.brazosvalleymarketing.com/blog.

About BVM:

BVM was founded with the local business owner in Houston and Sugar Land, TX in mind, and helps both those starting out and those already established take their business to the next level through web design, social media marketing, lead generation, unquiet content generation, AdWords, SEO and more.

Contact Details:

Dustin Ogle

BVM

5850 San Felipe Street

Suite 500

Houston, TX 77057

Phone: 979-272-6991

Email: dustin(at)brazosvalleymarketing.com

Source: Brazos Valley Marketing (BVM)
CallRail is dedicated to helping our more than 100,000 businesses of all sizes optimize campaign performance, but as more and more brands bring their marketing in-house, our team has stressed the importance of helping agencies prove their value and ROI."

CallRail, the worlds most popular call tracking and analytics provider, announced today that it has been named a finalist for the Digiday Technology Awards in the Best Marketing Analytics/Attribution Platform category, which recognizes an outstanding company honoring the leading analytics tools and platform that measures the entire marketing funnel. CallRail is being recognized for its work with digital marketing agency SalesX in providing best-in-class call analytics and proving ROI to its clients.

The Digiday Technology Awards, formerly the Digiday Signal Awards, recognize the technology platforms that are bringing efficiency, effectiveness and creativity to the media and marketing processes for brands, agencies and publishers. Over the years, the publication has honored industry-leading work by companies like Saatchi & Saatchi LA, xAd and 33Across. Finalists from other categories include Adobe, Amobee and Chartbeat, and judges range from top media companies to leading agencies such as Equinox, Edelman and Bloomberg.

CallRail is dedicated to helping our more than 100,000 businesses of all sizes optimize campaign performance, but as more and more brands bring their marketing in-house, our team has stressed the importance of helping agencies prove their value and ROI, said Andy Powell, CEO and co-founder of CallRail. This is why we value our partnership and the results weve been able to secure for SalesX and its clients. We know how valuable SalesXs services are to achieving high growth for the businesses it works with, and our team wants to continue proving that value to both current and future agencies we work with.

CallRails data-driven technology helped SalesX reduce a clients cost per lead by a staggering 90 percent. Prior to working with SalesX, the clients cost per click was about $7, and their cost per lead was around $700. Within a year of working with SalesX data scientists and CallRails advanced call tracking technology, the SalesX clients cost per click increased to approximately $25, and their cost per lead went down to $60, with a conversion rate of about 35 percent. This is one of several examples where the partnership between SalesX and CallRail resulted in increased visibility and optimization.

For SMBs seeking a digital marketing agency, theres a great deal of comfort in partnering with seasoned experts with a combined 40 years of experience in results-based marketing, said Joe Khoei, CEO and founder of SalesX. CallRails platform enables our agency to deliver and exceed client advertising results by providing higher quality leads and insights into whats resonating with customers and whats not. Not only that, but CallRail has helped our team consistently demonstrate value to our clients upper management and effectively build stronger relationships with the companies we work with on a daily basis.

The Digiday Technology Award winners will be announced on Sept. 5 at 2 p.m. EST via Facebook Live from Edelmans office, a Digiday partner.

To learn more about CallRail, please visit http://www.callrail.com. To learn more about SalesX, please visit http://www.salesx.com.

About CallRail

CallRail provides call tracking and analytics to more than 100,000 companies and marketing agencies globally. CallRails intuitive software helps data-driven marketers optimize the performance of their advertising campaigns, increase sales effectiveness and improve customer retention. From call tracking, routing, recording and analytics, CallRail provides valuable data about your leads and customers to help grow your business.

About SalesX

SalesX is a professional digital marketing agency based in the San Francisco Bay Area, central to Google, Facebook and Apple. The agency has become an award-winning leader by using advanced technology to plan, implement and achieve profitable revenue for clients through innovative and forward-thinking marketing strategies. From building their own Digital Advertising Platform containing a custom library of AdWords scripts to their adoption of Bing Ads, SalesX is advancing the science of digital marketing.
While customers still prefer to go into the store to purchase installed flooring, the area rug business has greatly shifted towards online sales."

During their annual summer conventions, CCA Global Partners businesses Carpet One Floor & Home and Flooring America offered members the opportunity to compete more effectively in their area rug business through the e-Commerce platform Rugs.Shop.

The website offers over 35,000 unique area rugs and facilitates the online ordering experience for customers. Rugs.Shop also supports the site with an online and telephone customer service team. Through this new program, members of Carpet One Floor & Home and Flooring America will be able to use the platform, customized to their local store, to offer this online area rug selection to their customers.

While customers still prefer to go into the store to purchase installed flooring, the area rug business has greatly shifted towards online sales, said Charlie Dilks, Chief Product Office of CCA Global Partners. Working with Rugs.Shop allows us to help our members compete and increase profits from online sales.

For a local, independent retailer, keeping up with the technology and support systems needed to effectively compete in e-Commerce can be difficult. The recent Supreme Court ruling on the subject of internet sales tax is just one example of risks involved for independent retailers trying to sell online.

The program offered through CCA reduces these risks significantly, if not completely. Participating members will receive a dedicated, branded site to use for their customers creating a seamless customer experience. Members will also have the support of a customer service team, credit card processing and drop ship logistics services.

As an added marketing opportunity, stores can also provide their customers with a coupon to their rug shop after a hard surface flooring sale. On the sales management side, stores will be able to track sales to a specific sales professional in order to allocate online rug sale commissions.

Because we think this is such an exciting opportunity for our members, CCA will be waiving the initial set-up fee for our members who choose to participate, said Howard Brodsky, co-CEO of CCA Global Partners. We want to do everything we can to help our members compete with online retailers.

Members were excited about the possibilities the new program offers them. Whether they are looking to expand their current area rug offering or looking for a way to start selling area rugs, this program gives them the opportunity to take advantage of technology to expand their business.

About CCA Global Partners

CCA Global Partners, Inc. is a privately held cooperative based in the United States with member businesses in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. For a quarter of a century, CCA Global has partnered with entrepreneurial businesspeople to create a cooperative powerhouse unmatched in the marketplace. With 15 independent business brands and more than 3,500 locations, CCA Global Partners is well positioned to positively impact the success of family businesses. For more information on CCA Global Partners, go to http://www.ccaglobal.com.
Circular Edge 15 year anniversary logo will appear on INFOCUS lanyards Weve always believed that success comes from taking care of others...We couldnt be more pleased than to celebrate this milestone alongside Quest Oracle Community at JD Edwards INFOCUS.

Circular Edge, a full-service Oracle JD Edwards, Oracle Sales Cloud & Oracle Customer Experience (CX) Cloud Service Provider, is celebrating 15 years of customer successes and product and service innovations at the upcoming JD Edwards INFOCUS conference.

As a Platinum Partner of Quest Oracle Community, Circular Edge will showcase how Oracle JD Edwards customers have leveraged the latest tools and technologies to adopt code current and cloud strategies, improve user experiences and transform business processes during INFOCUS, which will be held August 20-22 in Denver, Colorado.

In 2017, Circular Edge was recognized by Oracle JD Edwards with the prestigious Customer Focus Award for overall Customer Success Stories for delivering integrated ERP/CX digital experiences in distribution, construction, real estate and apparel industries via their Smart Help skill based support services.

Circular Edge has since continued to demonstrate its readiness and commitment toward the future success of Oracle JD Edwards customers, including those who are migrating or considering migrating to a public cloud and those who continue to adopt Cloud-based applications. Circular Edges Lift, Shift and Manage offering, for example, enables customers to upgrade their way across any cloud.

Circular Edge did a phenomenal job accelerating our JDE 9.2 upgrade and migration from a managed JDE hosting provider to Microsoft Azure, said Jeremy Poteet, SVP Information Technology Brookfield Properties - Retail. Utilizing their Smart Help offering, we have reduced overall JDE related infrastructure and support costs while providing better oversight of our environment and reduced development response times to our customers. Their proactive Lynx monitoring approach helps us to catch issues immediately  a huge step up from being alerted by our customers!

This success story is one of several featured sessions available to JD Edwards INFOCUS attendees:



Hines 9.0 to 9.2 Upgrade: Dos and Do Nots: Monday, August 20, 9am-10am

That Cloud Nine Feeling  Brookfield Properties Retails 9.2 Upgrade Journey to the Cloud: Monday, August 20, 3:15pm-4:15pm

Migrating Away from I-Series, Upgrading from 8.12 to 9.2 and the Move to the Cloud: Tuesday, August 21, 8am-9am

How Real Estate Customers are Leveraging the Latest JD Edwards 9.2 Tools and Cloud Adoption: Tuesday, August 21, 8am-9am

Innovation in the Real Estate Industry with JD Edwards & More: Tuesday, August 21, 1:30pm-2:30pm

Circular Edge will also be featuring several expert-led educational and product innovation sessions:

Relax, Its Just A B C D E (Aai, Bsfn, udC, Dd, Er)Deep Dive Into the Building Blocks of JDE: Tuesday, August 21, 11:15am-12:15pm

Business Processes Automation in JDE using AtomIQ: Tuesday, August 21, 11:15am-12:15pm

Cloud CNC Administrator  The Next Generation: Tuesday, August 21, 1:30pm-2:30pm

Eliminate JD Edwards Batch Job Challenges with Smart Scheduler: Tuesday, August 21, 4:30pm-5:30pm

Attendees can visit Circular Edge and Smart Scheduler booths in the Exhibitor Showcase, as well as at the Oracle Real Estate Users Group (OREUG) event, to gain additional insight and see live demos of product and service innovations, including Smart Help, Smart Scheduler, JDESign, AtomIQ, Lift, Shift and Manage, AutoXCHNG, Integrated ERP/CX Digital Experiences, Oracle Sales Cloud Add-Ons and more.

Finally, Circular Edge will be commemorating its 15th anniversary at INFOCUS with a unique, special edition logo featured on the conference lanyards.

Founded in 2003, Circular Edge began with a vision for growth and success that included a collection of specialized skills and experiences, a passion for innovation and a flexible approach toward doing what is best for the customer. 15 years later, Circular Edge and its 150+ multi-skilled and multi-talented employees proudly celebrate the growth they and their customers have achieved through fulfilling this vision.

Weve always believed that success comes from taking care of others. Working together and with the support of Quest Oracle Community, weve been able to innovate, collaborate and succeed through strong partnerships with our customers and each other. Knowing and understanding our customers and their requirements has always guided us in bringing to market the appropriate skills, resources, services and product innovations that help support their needs, said sAchin cHoudhari, Founder and CEO. We couldnt be more pleased than to celebrate this milestone alongside Quest Oracle Community at JD Edwards INFOCUS.

For a complete list of Circular Edge educational sessions at JD Edwards INFOCUS, visit http://www.circularedge.com/infocus18.

About Circular Edge

Circular Edge, started in 2003, is a full-service Oracle JD Edwards, Oracle Sales Cloud & Oracle Customer Experience (CX) Cloud Integrations Service Provider. Built from the ground up as a JD Edwards consulting company, we bring extensive JD Edwards and Oracle Sales Cloud domain expertise into Oracle CX Cloud implementations to deliver Integrated ERP/CX Digital Experiences as well as extended post go-live and upgrade cycle support, systems design, training/skills enablement, reports, development, enhancements, conversions and application integrations via Smart Help. For more information about Circular Edge, visit http://www.circularedge.com.
Construction companies from across the globe will gather to identify how to change at a faster pace, by not only leveraging technology in new and exciting ways, but to begin to think differently about shareholder value and the worker of the future.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for the construction industry today is understanding how to changethis impacts everything including rebuilding infrastructure, the labor shortage, sustainability, operations, digital transformation, and more. Change is perhaps one of the biggest factors that needs to be addressed in the construction industry.

This is one of the chief reasons Constructech is holding the Technology Day 2018 Conference on Thursday, August 23, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Chicago  Arlington Heights, Ill.

The construction industry is one of the most resilient, but has been slower, than other industries, to adopt new technologies, says Peggy Smedley, editorial director, Constructech magazine, and president of Specialty Publishing Media. That all changes on August 23. Construction companies from across the globe will gather to identify how to change at a faster pace, by not only leveraging technology in new and exciting ways, but to begin to think differently about shareholder value and the worker of the future.

Constructech is bringing together a roundtable of thought leaders in the space who will give their opinions about how digital transformation is changing the way workers perform tasks today.

Moderated by Laura Black, editor, Constructech magazine, the panel will include:



Sandra Benson, director global business development, construction, Hexagon PPM

Jit Kee Chin, chief data officer, Suffolk

Jason Pelkey, CIO, Gilbane Building Co.

Claire Rutkowski, CIO, Bentley Systems

Innovation through technology needs to add value and streamline antiquated processes in the field, says Jason Pelkey, senior vice president and CIO, Gilbane Building Company. We look beyond the core use of a specific technology, stretch its capabilities, leverage its data, test it, and then integrate it into a larger platform to maximize its potential.

For a complete overview of Constructechs Technology Day 2018 event, along with registration information, and to learn more about this years sponsor InEight, visit [https://constructech.com/tech-day/

To learn more about the agenda, visit https://constructech.com/tech-day/agenda/

About Constructech Magazine

Constructech has connected hundreds of thousands of construction professionals for 20 years. Constructechs audience is comprised of construction professionals who specify products, systems, and tools in residential, commercial, and industrial building marketplaces. For more information about Constructech, visit constructech.com

About Constructech Technology Day

Constructech Technology Day is a one-day conference that dives into discussions on the use of technology in the construction industry. The conference is open to project managers, CEOs, students, CTOs, IT directors, professors, and more. Technology Day provides attendees with the opportunity to identify ways to effectively use technology to be most efficient in the office and at the jobsite. constructech.com/tech-day/
Heilind Electronics will be exhibiting at Solar Power International in Anaheim from September 25 through 27.

Heilind Electronics, a leading global distributor of electronic components, will be an exhibitor at this years Solar Power International (SPI)  the largest solar trade show in North America. At the event, Heilind will offer samples and related literature from leading solar product manufacturers like Amphenol Solar Technologies, Brady, Burndy, HellermannTyton, Heyco, Mersen, Panduit, Staubli and TE Connectivity.

In addition to providing a live demonstration of Bradys i5100 benchtop printer, Heilind will have many products on display. Featured items include 1000 V and 1500 V connectors and contacts from Amphenol, as well as a diverse range of photovoltaic (PV) connectors, contactors, grounding products, wire management and identification devices, PV tooling and related items.

Were excited to be participating at SPI for the ninth year in a row, said Mark Ferris, Supplier Business Manager, Heilind Electronics. Weve been a part of the solar market for many years and always look forward to meeting new customers who are looking for someone to support their alternative energy component needs.

Heilind Electronics works with companies of all sizes, from startups to large multinational OEMs. The company will have representatives at booth #3839 for the duration of the exhibition, which will be held from September 25 through September 27 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California.

About Heilind Electronics

Heilind Electronics, Inc. (http://www.heilind.com) is one of the world's leading distributors of connectors, relays, sensors, switches, thermal management and circuit protection products, terminal blocks, wire and cable, wiring accessories and insulation and identification products. Founded in 1974, Heilind has locations throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong and China. Follow Heilind on Facebook at facebook.com/Heilind and on Twitter at twitter.com/Heilind.
HERS Breast Cancer Foundation today announced that registration and fundraising sites for their annual 5k Walk, 5k/10k Run and Community Expo are ready and available. The event takes place on Saturday, September 29, 2018 at the Quarry Lakes Regional Recreation Area in Fremont, California. Proceeds will benefit services for Bay Area breast cancer survivors, including post-surgical garments and prostheses.

This event, now in its 19th consecutive year, brings together breast cancer patients and survivors from all over the Bay Area, along with their families and supporters, to celebrate life and raise money for HERS, a nonprofit organization. Every year, runners and walkers of all ages and skill levels enjoy the beautiful racecourses and the lively community spirit of the gathering. Many walkers and runners form teams and wear fun costumes or matching group outfits to show their love and support.

The event website at http://hersbreastcancerfoundation.org/walk-run/ provides walkers and runners all the information they need for registering and participating. Donors, sponsors, and expo exhibitors can also find event details and contact information there. This website helps participants set up their personalized online fundraising page through the Crowdrise site. Its easy to donate and fundraise online at https://www.crowdrise.com/herswalkrun2018.

HERS Breast Cancer Foundation is again partnering with the East Bay Community Foundation. EBCF will be matching online donations up to $20,000. HERS generous donors and participants helped exceed this goal last year.

This years event sponsors include: Fremont Bank Foundation; Beverly Hagan CPA; PetersenDean; Carol Dutra-Vernaci EA; Stanford Health Care-ValleyCare; Chief Craig T. Stecker, Retired; Fremont Association of Management Employees (FAME); Robson Homes, LLC; Lions Club of Union City; Fremont Elks Lodge #2121; Cloverleaf Bowl; Berge-Pappas-Smith/Chapel of the Angels; Republic Services; CV Administrative Services; and many more generous Bay Area organizations and individuals. A complete list is available on the event website.

Check-in and on-site registration will open at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday, September 29 at Fremonts Quarry Lakes Regional Recreation Area. The opening ceremony and dove release at 8:00 a.m. is an inspiring moment when participants gather in a circle to celebrate survivors and remember those who have passed on. Participants take to the course trails at 9:00 a.m. to walk, run or race for this great cause; 10K runners start first, followed by 5K runners, then walkers. New additions to the event this year include a Bollywood-style group warm-up and yoga cool-down. Following the race, participants will enjoy live music, nonprofit and vendor exhibits at the Community Expo, and a BBQ lunch hosted by Dutra Enterprises. Premier Subaru of Fremont is sponsoring the parking at Quarry Lakes.

Heather Holmes, KTVU FOX 2 news anchor, will serve as Master of Ceremonies for the days events. On Your Mark Events, a race event management company, will post race results online within minutes of completion. Awards will be given to the top three male and female runners in each age group for each event (5K and 10K). Every participant (walkers and runners) will receive a medal for completing the course. Participants age 18 and older receive a free T-shirt at check-in.

The 19th Annual Walk/Run fundraiser supports the HERS Breast Cancer Foundations mission: supporting individuals healing from breast cancer by providing post-surgical garments, wigs, and fitting services regardless of financial status. Those interested in sponsoring, donating, participating, or volunteering will find detailed information online (and photo albums from past events) on the Walk/Run website: http://hersbreastcancerfoundation.org/walk-run/.

About HERS Breast Cancer Foundation

HERS Breast Cancer Foundation believes in restoring beauty and dignity to breast cancer survivors at an extremely vulnerable time of their lives. Every day, we bring Hope, Empowerment, Renewal and Support, because every survivor deserves to look and feel whole. HERS, which is celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year, is the only nonprofit organization in the Bay Area that provides vital products (such as bras, prostheses, lymphedema garments, and wigs) for breast cancer survivors in a safe, comfortable, and understanding environment. HERS is truly a soft place to fall.

HERS Breast Cancer Foundation products and services are provided at our program stores at Washington Hospital in Fremont and Stanford Health Care-ValleyCare in Pleasanton. For more information on locations and hours, see: http://hersbreastcancerfoundation.org/hers-breast-cancer-foundation-program-stores/.
More than a million people have successfully used LegalZoom to create a variety of legal documents at affordable prices, and their Living Trust services are no exception.

TopConsumerReviews.com recently gave their highest rating to LegalZoom, an established provider of many legal services, including Living Trusts.

When it comes to planning for the future, most people think that a will is the only legal document available to direct how ones affairs should be carried out after passing away. However, for some individuals, a Living Trust offers much more - including the ability to protect ones assets and potentially avoid having to go through the time-consuming, costly process of probate. However, working with a local attorney to create a Living Trust can also be expensive. For that reason, online legal services are a popular alternative, helping people obtain this critical document at a fraction of the traditional cost.

More than a million people have successfully used LegalZoom to create a variety of legal documents at affordable prices, and their Living Trust services are no exception, described Brian Dolezal of TopConsumerReviews.com. Although it may seem complicated to create a Living Trust, LegalZoom walks their clients through a simple question-and-answer process that covers all of the necessary bases. Better yet, all Living Trusts are reviewed by a lawyer prior to finalizing the document, and customers get additional peace of mind from LegalZooms $50,000 guarantee in the event of any errors. LegalZoom has a great reputation for online legal document services, and they earn our highest recommendation for Living Trusts in 2018.

To find out more about LegalZoom and other online providers of Living Trust services, including reviews and comparison rankings, please visit the Living Trusts category of TopConsumerReviews.com at https://www.topconsumerreviews.com/living-trusts/.

About LegalZoom

Cofounded in 2001 by attorney Robert Shapiro, LegalZoom offers a cost-effective, convenient way to address most common legal needs. LegalZoom provides a wide range of documents such as Patents, Trademarks, Powers of Attorney, Living Wills and traditional Wills, Incorporation, Living Trusts, LLC Formation, Small Claims, Divorce, and many more. Customers should be aware that LegalZoom does not provide legal advice or counsel, as it is not an actual law firm.

About TopConsumerReviews.com

TopConsumerReviews.com is a leading provider of reviews and rankings for thousands of consumer products and services. From Living Trusts to Online Divorce and Life Insurance, TopConsumerReviews.com delivers in-depth product evaluations in order to make your purchasing decision easier.
Magnovo Settles Trademark Lawsuit This lawsuit has been a tremendous strain on my employees and on morale...

After almost five years of litigation, Magnovo Training Group and its President, Robert C. Jackson, settled a trademark and trade secrets lawsuit with Jacksons former employer, The Leaders Institute , a Texas-based charity team building company, for $1,060,000 and permanent injunctions against Magnovo and Jackson. (The Leaders Institute, LLC. v. Magnovo - U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas, Case No. 3:14-CV-3572-B) The settlement comes just weeks before jury selection was to begin in the five-year-long court battle.

At the center of the lawsuit was the BUILD-A-BIKE  team activity that The Leaders Institute  began offering to client companies in 2005. The event combines fun and interactive team development with a donation of bicycles to a local childrens charity. BUILD-A-BIKE  really changed conventions and annual meetings forever, said Doug Staneart, president of The Leaders Institute . It is a very unique way to build teamwork and also give back to your community. According to Staneart, his company has donated over $5 million worth of bicycles to young children in cities all over the world.

Robert Jackson of Indianapolis, a former employee of The Leaders Institute , was trained by Staneart to teach the official BUILD-A-BIKE  program, Jackson was a fantastic instructor, said Staneart, In fact, at one time, he was one of our instructor trainers who taught our newer facilitators how to lead the program. Jackson resigned from his position in 2013.

According to the complaint, Jackson was accused of misappropriating trade secrets, trademark infringement, and cybersquatting. The lawsuit claimed that Jackson had misappropriated his former companys client list and was marketing an infringing version of BUILD-A-BIKE to current and former clients of The Leaders Institute . The lawsuit also alleged that Magnovo had inserted over 1000 instances of the term Build-A-Bike on dozens of Magnovo owned websites.

Cybersquatting is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. In 2013 and 2014, Jackson purchased the websites letsbuildabike.com, charitybuildabike.com, buildabikecharity.com, and buildabikeforcharity.com and began marketing an event called Lets Build-A-Bike. The allegation from the lawsuit was that the Lets Build-A-Bike activity was deceptively similar to the registered BUILD-A-BIKE service mark and was likely to cause confusion in the marketplace.

Jackson and Magnovo lost a series of proceedings and summary judgement decisions in the case prior to the settlement.

In 2015, The Leaders Institute  filed a complaint with the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) asking ICANN, the website domain issuing authority, to transfer the Cybersquatting domains to Staneart. (UDRP Proceeding: Doug Staneart v. Robert Jackson, Claim Number: FA1507001630488) Judge Nelson A. Diaz granted the websites to Staneart, and in the decision, Diaz stated that Jackson registered and used the infringing domains in bad faith because he was formerly a contractor for [Staneart], and that [Jackson] had actual knowledge of [Stanearts] trademark rights when he registered the disputed domain name.

Jackson filed for a cancelation of the BUILD-A-BIKE trademark, but the mark was upheld by Judge Jane Boyle in a summary judgement proceeding.

Jackson also filed a counter-suit against Staneart for defamation and abuse of process, but both were denied by Judge Boyle in summary judgement. Jackson's three defenses were also dismissed from the case in the same summary judgement ruling.

In addition to the monetary settlement agreed to by the parties, the court issued permanent injunctions against Magnovo and Jackson using the BUILD-A-BIKE trade-name in commerce. An additional permanent injunction was issued by the court keeping Jackson and Magnovo from contracting with 130 clients of The Leaders Institute .

Im glad we could finally put this behind us. This lawsuit has been a tremendous strain on my employees and on morale in our workplace, said Staneart.

________________________________________________________________________________

Doug Staneart is CEO of The Leaders Institute based in Dallas, Texas. His company specializes in charity team building activities for companies who want to improve teamwork while giving back to their communities.
MURDER IN THE CLASSROOM: A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR PREVENTION

A new book by Robert D. Sollars was created to help parents, students, and educators avoid a mass shooting in their school. It helps prevent children and parents from being mentally and psychologically traumatized from such an incident. Best of all, the suggestions and ideas in the book wont cost schools or tax-payers hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, as we have seen since Parkland Florida which are generally unnecessary.

Look at Lockport, NY. Wanting to spend $2.75M for facial recognition software without hardening the schools outer perimeter or the idea in other states, of sending resource officers to elementary schools, which are unnecessary due to their lower instances of violence, less than 2% of total incidents.

Sollars uses his grass roots style, holding parents responsible and training everyone on the warning signs, to shine the light on the growing problem of school violence and has more than 35 years of experience in the security field.

He began studying school violence in 1987 after the shooting and suicide at Mid-Buchanan Middle/High School. 12-year-old Nathan Faris took his fathers .45 to school to take care of a bullying problem. He ended up killing his best friend and then himself in front of his classmates.

Sollars then moved on to workplace violence prevention, then turned his attention back to school violence prevention when his youngest daughter entered school in 2004. Even as a security professional, I was worried about her, even being in a small district and schools. There is never a guarantee of safety.

Sollars distills 35 years of security experience to craft revolutionary ideas and thoughts, such as arming staff& threat assessment teams, that will help prevent school violence. His blunt, direct (and sometimes politically incorrect) style may step on the sacred cows of the security industry, but Sollars has seen his ideas implemented successfully in the workplace.

I want to save lives with this book. Our children are our future. If they go to school worrying about being murdered, they are too distracted to learn much while in class. Even a car back fire can send them into paralyzing fear. While they may not suffer any physical injury, the traumatizing effects of just being paranoid that something might happen can be detrimental to their ability to feel safe and to learn.

Robert D. Sollars is available to consult with schools to help them review and revise security measures.

Robert D. Sollars- Security Revolutionary

480-251-5197

Robertsollars2(at)gmail.com

http://www.robertdsollars.com

Twitter: @robertsollars2

Facebook: Robert D. Sollars
Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific aims to help retailers revolutionize their business ways and develop advanced solutions without being limited by traditional thinking. - Kazunori Miyabayashi, President, Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific

Business Applications solutions provider, Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific. Pte. Ltd., will be hosting the "Retail Revolution with Technology" Lunch-and-Learn event on August 22, 2018 in Hong Kong.

With this event, Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific, aims to share valuable insights about the current retail industry trends and challenges, and how revolutionizing technology with modern solutions would help address these. At the event, Hitachi Solutions will explain how Microsoft Dynamics 365 powered solutions that are customer-centered, advanced, and agile, will help retail businesses improve operational efficiency and better cater to shoppers.

Today, customers take charge in their shopping experiences. They shop and consume with personal convenience in mind. The goal is to meet their increasing expectation and to reach the now mobile and digital customer. Retailers need to continuously delight their customers and strengthen client relationship by understanding the basics of their customer base and by giving them exactly what they need and want.

Retail businesses increase their sales by being where their customers are and by giving them premium and personal shopping experiences. They need to leverage digital technology and solutions to continuously attract offline and online traffic.

Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific offers operations management and customer engagement solutions built on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Cloud platform that enables retailers to have a better overview of their in-store and online planning, merchandising, inventory, and marketing. These solutions will allow for brick-and-mortar stores and web stores to efficiently and effectively streamline operations and delivery. Retailers can harness real-time data to make targeted decisions based on their customers' demographic information, personal preferences, purchase history, and behavior.

The key solutions to be discussed are Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Retail, Power BI, and Hitachi Solutions Loyalty Management and eCommerce solutions.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Retail improves management of inventory, sales, and promotions. It enhances employee productivity and customer service with a comprehensive and easy to use Point-of-Sale system. This omni-channel solution delivers exceptional and attractive customer experiences.

Hitachi Solutions' eCommerce lets retailers gain complete management of their online stores and provides a 360-degree view of customers to effectively merchandise products and drive higher sales. It gives customers the power to manage and track their transactions with the My Account portal. The platform is also fully compatible with Microsoft Azure and is PCI Compliant.

The Hitachi Solutions Loyalty Management Solution built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 increases customer retention and drives repeat purchases. It allows for retailers to create unique discounts and promotions that is proven to boost customer satisfaction.

Microsoft Power BI provides you with easy to understand, visual reports and analysis of your data. It generates comprehensive charts and graphs of your stock inventory and sales, by categories that can be drilled down to the most specific level. Retailers can track which pipelines need improvement and more focus. They can better merchandise the products which have lower sales conversion.

"With a diverse and dynamic industry like retail, retailers are challenged with rapidly changing consumer preferences and behavior. To dominate this competitive landscape, Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific aims to help retailers revolutionize their business ways and develop advanced solutions without being limited by traditional thinking," said Kazunori Miyabayashi, President, Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific.

To learn more about the Retail Revolution with Technology Event, please visit this link: https://bit.ly/2Oob0Fb.

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About Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd.

Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific helps its customers with industry specific solutions built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 enhanced with world class Business Analytics, and Portals and Collaboration. Recognized as worldwide Microsoft Dynamics Cloud Partner in 2017, Microsoft ERP Partner of year for Philippines in 2015 and 2016, Microsoft Dynamics Partner of the Year in Asia Pacific in 2015, Microsoft CRM Global Partner of the Year in 2014, and the 2014 Dynamics Global Outstanding Reseller of the Year, Hitachi Solutions Group provides global capabilities with regional offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Japan, China, and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit: http://apac.hitachi-solutions.com/.

About Hitachi Solutions, Ltd.

Hitachi Solutions, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the core IT business of Hitachi Group and a recognized leader in delivering proven business and IT strategies and solutions to companies across many industries. The company provides value-driven services throughout the IT life cycle from systems planning to systems integration, operation and maintenance. Hitachi Solutions delivers products and services of superior value to customers worldwide through key subsidiaries in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, India, China, and Asia Pacific. For more information on Hitachi Solutions, please visit: http://www.hitachi-solutions.com.

About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, delivers innovations that answer societys challenges with our talented team and proven experience in global markets. The companys consolidated revenues for fiscal 2017 (ended March 31, 2018) totaled 9,368.6 billion yen ($88.3 billion). Hitachi is focusing more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes power & infrastructure systems, information & telecommunication systems, construction machinery, high functional materials & components, automotive systems, healthcare and others. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the companys website at http://www.hitachi.com/.
On Location, a nationwide provider of labor and management services for exhibits, events and environments, will host its 2018 Annual Meeting August 15th to 17th at the DoubleTree Suites in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. This three-day program brings together all various components of the organization, including management, sales, operations and administration. As in previous years, On Location will put the spotlight on elevating customer experience with a focus on building value and advancing processes that directly benefit its client base. The agenda includes a company year in review, short-term outlook and long-term goal setting with a mix of large and small group roundtable sessions to discuss processes and procedures. One such advancement is the new On Location mobile APP, featuring a client and employee portal with current and historical project-related details along with general public access to company resources, news and contacts. The APP will be rolled out as a beta for internal users to start and to customers by year end. In planning for this years meeting, On Location recently conducted customer surveys and the feedback will be used as key discussion points. There will also be a hosted video conference with various clients including both exhibitors and exhibit houses.

Each year the highly anticipated gathering takes a look inside approach to learning from each other alongside an open discussion with those from outside the organization to provide a 360-degree view of the company. This concept is a perfect complement to our on-going investment in continuing education and promotion from within, says On Location General Manager, Michael Mulry. It further reaffirms our greatest commitment - delivering the highest quality service to our clients for each and every job. It is what we call Return on Experience (ROE).

This meeting champions cohesive collaboration across various job disciplines further reiterating the importance of teamwork  from the executive level to those on in the field, continued Mulry. Insights from clients and industry partners complement the internal view, offering invaluable knowledge. Together, the program strengthens relationships among On Location team members and provides a greater understanding of clients evolving needs. These are both key components to providing a seamless flow of communication critical in achieving a positive ROE.

Key to the companys goal of working to exceed client expectations is challenging the team to achieve better results by choosing to make good things happen through hard work and commitment. On Location Operations Manager-West Coast, Jim Dillard, has been with the company since 2009 and said. The annual meeting brings together managers who are both seasoned and new, says Dillard. While the industry veterans group shares tips from past experience, the newer team members bring a fresh perspective and approaches to challenges. He goes on to add that each year there are many unique takeaways with one commonality. I always return from the meeting with a better appreciation for all the hard work and importance of the various roles we all play in delivering the best service. Its definitely a team effort.

On Location makes it a point to keep the meeting program fresh and welcomes input from it new faces. Says Jennifer Anderton, a long-time industry veteran who joined the company as an Account Executive in April 2018, Im so excited to meet everyone. It will be so great to put faces with names. After participating on several calls in preparation for the event, Anderton added, The meeting is very well planned with a remarkable attention to detail in the same way we work with clients. There are also clear goals so whether its the large group sessions or breakout roundtables, I look forward to coming away from the meeting with great insight.

Speaking of roundtables, Account Executive Jeff Popovich helped design the discussion groups  one in which the team is segmented by job role to explore three challenges and overcoming them; the other a blend of staff from varied departments tasked with exploring how client expectations are evolving and ways to make On Location better. This is my 5th annual meeting and each one has been better than the last, he notes. We all learn from one another and do so in an environment where all ideas are welcome.

The Annual Meeting is not all work and the relaxed casual nature is one that encourages an open sharing of ideas and experiences We always look to have fun, Mulry explains. Although many of us see co-workers in the field throughout the year, this is an opportunity to spend time in a less pressure atmosphere and get to know one another on a more personal level. Each year there are several team building and social activities plus staff recognition during the three-day program. Every member of our team has something to contribute  an idea, an experience, a point of view, says Mulry. When we come together with the shared goal of delivering the highest quality of client service, making good things happen becomes easier.

Ron Bailey, National Operations Manager added, We help guide our customers through the often-confusing landscape of on-site activities and consider it our duty to do so much more than just provide on-site labor, he says. We promise peace-of-mind in this complex labor landscape  we wont let our customers down. Were passionate about excellence and the annual meeting is another way to reinforce this message.

About On Location

For more than 25 years, On Location has provided nationwide labor and management services for exhibits, events and environments that deliver a positive Return on Experience for its customers - on time and on budget  throughout the country and around the world. As a leading exhibitor assigned contractor, highly trained and experienced employees help clients develop a custom plan, adapting the companys comprehensive processes to fit ones unique business needs and providing nationwide continuity of hands-on service before, during and after each event. For more information, visit: http://www.onlocationind.com.
PalPilot Certified to Drive Success Manufacturers with IATF 16949 certification are recognized for their ability to meet the demands of automotive manufacturing, promising superior process integration, customer confidence, and product performance.

PalPilot is happy to announce that its magnetics manufacturing facility in Taiwan has achieved the International Automotive Task Force (IATF) 16949:2016 certification; applicable to the designing and manufacturing of coils for transformers. This achievement establishes Palpilot as an automotive leader within the manufacturing industry.

The Quality Management Systems (QMS) at the facility was assessed and registered by NQA, Warwick House, Houghton Hall Park, Houghton Regis, Dunstable LU5 5ZX, Bedfordshire England under the provisions of (IATF) 16949:2016.

This certification is an important accomplishment for this manufacturing facility as it indicates the successful implementation of a QMS that delivers continual improvement, underlines defect prevention, contains specific requirements for the automotive industry, and promotes reduction of variation and waste in the supply chain.

This registration is subject to the company maintaining a quality management system to the above standard which will be monitored by NQA.

The IATF 16949:2016 was launched in October 2016 to supersede and replace ISO/TS 16949 and it represents an evolution for quality management in the automotive industry.

Manufacturers with IATF 16949 certification are recognized for their ability to meet the demands of automotive manufacturing, promising superior process integration, customer confidence, and product performance.

For additional information, please contact us at contact@palpilot.com. You will also find further information on our web site at http://www.palpilot.com

PalPilot Magnetics Division: PalPilot is an innovative power magnetics manufacturer with the ability to quickly ramp to high volume and high quality production. We have become a world class trusted partner in the power magnetics industry. Our mission is to assist you 'Our Customer' develop your products by providing advanced technical solutions.

World Class Engineering and Manufacturing: All PalNova products are designed and manufactured to meet industry standard performance specifications and are RoHS compliant. Safety critical components are designed to meet applicable UL standards which. employ the use of materials listed under PalNovas UL Insulation System.

For standard product details please refer to online data sheets. Our team recognizes the importance of supply and demand; each task is carefully executed. The significance of our component supply chain demonstrates our ability to adapt to the ever-changing dynamics of the electronics industry. Learn more about our Component Supply Chain service.
Michael Davis, CPA & Fran Randall, CPA We are excited that Fran and Mike have joined the partner team at RyanSharkey. They have contributed significantly to our Firms success by providing outstanding client service and leadership.

RyanSharkey is pleased to announce the promotions of two of its directors. Fran Randall has been promoted to Tax Partner and Michael Davis has been promoted to Audit & Advisory Partner.

Randall has over 16 years of Big Four public accounting experience, with a strong background in international and U.S. domestic taxation consulting, reporting and compliance, as well as ASC 740 accounting for income tax, tax research and project management. She serves public and non-public U.S. multinational and foreign-owned U.S. clients.

Randall specializes in international tax advisory and accounting for income tax services to both public and privately held multinational and foreign-owned companies, including various treaty matters (e.g., permanent establishment, limitation on benefits and withholding taxes), offshore cash repatriation, acquisition structuring and foreign tax monetization.

Davis has more than 18 years of experience partnering with management teams of both public and privately held entities, assisting them with their accounting, financial reporting and other business needs. Davis has extensive experience working with companies in manufacturing and distribution, government contracting, emerging technology and life sciences industries. His clients have ranged from early stage startup companies to organizations with annual revenues in excess of $1 billion.

Davis advises executive management teams, ownership groups, boards of directors and private equity groups, helping them navigate complex financial reporting and regulatory landscapes both domestically and internationally. His specific areas of expertise include revenue recognition, stock-based compensation, debt and equity transactions and compliance with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations. Additionally, Davis has assisted companies with initial and secondary offerings.

We are excited that Fran and Mike have joined the partner team at RyanSharkey, said Co-Founder and Audit & Advisory Partner Edward Ryan, CPA. They have contributed significantly to our firms success by providing outstanding client service and leadership. In addition, they have deepened our expertise and qualifications in our specialty service areas of international tax and financial reporting, including ASC 606 revenue recognition implementation.

About RyanSharkey

RyanSharkey, LLP is a leading accounting and consulting firm in the Washington, D.C. region, serving the technology, consumer services and government contracting industries. The firm delivers accounting, audit, tax and financial advisory services for a diverse group of clients. Guided by a unique corporate culture, RyanSharkeys team of advisors is known for their personalized insight, forward-thinking solutions and innovative strategies.

Learn more at http://www.ryansharkey.com.
Keynote Speaker: Eric O'Neill 100% of proceeds will be distributed to community outreach programs focused to help grow the regions Information Technology industry, such as: Entrepreneurial Start-Ups, STEM Initiatives, Scholarships, Technology for Kids and Career Days.

Gateway To CyberCity will be held on November 1, 2018 at America's Center in St. Louis, MO. This one-day, executive-level event is geared toward knowledge-sharing and networking for CIO's and their direct management teams. Last year, this event drew in over 250 local St. Louis IT security executives and is expected to bring in even more this year.

A limited amount of sponsorship opportunities are available giving vendors the perfect opportunity to get in front of top local business leaders. Non-sponsoring vendors, consultants, or sales representatives are NOT ALLOWED to register, which is beneficial for both our attendees and the sponsors underwriting the event.

The mission of the conference is to continue to serve the professional needs of our region's IT organizations, by providing a networking and knowledge sharing event for our local community of IT leaders and practitioners, and to recognize the many types of work being done across the St. Louis Region.

The conference also gives back to the community. 100% of proceeds will be distributed to community outreach programs focused to help grow the regions Information Technology industry, such as: Entrepreneurial Start-Ups, STEM Initiatives, Scholarships, Technology for Kids and Career Days.

Sponsoring vendors have the opportunity to share information about problem-solving technology and ideas local executives can use in their day-to-day business practices. Most sponsors use this opportunity to present themselves as experts who can be utilized to help with the issues that present themselves in the workplace.

For more information about the event or sponsorship opportunities, please contact Jim Howard at (515) 332-7940.
The need for mental health care services in this region and among this population is great, and this clinic will be an incredible resource for the community," Lisa Eggebeen, Clinic Director.

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, Medal of Honor recipient Staff Sergeant Ryan Pitts and representatives from the Cohen Veterans Network and Centerstone today gathered in Clarksville, Tenn., to celebrate the grand opening of the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at Centerstone, a new resource targeted to post-9/11 veterans and their loved ones, as well as families of active duty service members.

Clarksville is home to one of the largest populations of retired military in the country, said Lisa Eggebeen, MSSW, LCSW, clinic director for the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at Centerstone. The need for mental health care services in this region and among this population is great, and this clinic will be an incredible resource for the community. We are pleased that we can provide timely and compassionate care that changes peoples lives for the better.

The Cohen Clinic at Centerstone provides confidential, high-quality, mental health care and case management resources for veterans, regardless of discharge status or role, their families and families of active duty military, including spouse, partner, children, parents, siblings and caregivers, regardless of insurance or ability to pay. Clients are given an intake screening upon their first contact with the clinic and can expect their first appointment within seven days.

The clinic offers outpatient treatment for depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, adjustment and transition issues, anger, grief and loss, family and relationship issues and childrens behavioral problems. It began accepting clients in April and has already served more than 150 service members and their families.

The Cohen Clinic at Centerstone is a partnership between Cohen Veterans Network, a not for profit philanthropic organization that serves veterans and their families through a nationwide system of mental health clinics, and Centerstone, a national leader in behavioral health care.

Cohen Veterans Network (CVN) was established in 2016 with a $275 million commitment from philanthropist Steven A. Cohen. The organization works with selected provider partners, like Centerstone, to operate a growing networking of clinics for military veterans and their families nationwide.

We are committed to filling gaps in care for military veterans and their families, said Dr. Anthony Hassan, CEO of Cohen Veterans Network. Veterans have served our country, and it is our moral duty to provide timely, low cost mental health care services they need. We have the opportunity to support post-9/11 veterans on their next mission: happy and healthy lives.

The Cohen Clinic at Centerstone is the tenth CVN-funded clinic and the first in the state of Tennessee.

Were honored Cohen Veterans Network selected Centerstone for this partnership, said Dr. Bob Vero, CEO of Centerstone. Our organizations share a commitment to providing specialized care to veterans, service members and their loved ones. This clinic expands the ways Centerstone serves military families, and we look forward to working with the Cohen team to continue to explore how we can leverage our resources and expertise to reach more people in need.

Staff at the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at Centerstone are trained in military competencies and are aware of the unique challenges veterans and their families face. There are currently four full-time therapists, and the clinic will add staff, as needed, to ensure that all clients are seen in a timely manner.

The newly built facility includes 10,000-square feet of office space, with private waiting areas and well-furnished clinic offices. There is also a family waiting area suitable for children of all ages and a community room where events and classes will be held in the future.

For more information, visit: https://centerstone.org/cohen.

Stay connected. Facebook: @CohenCenterstone // Twitter: @CohenClinicTN

About Centerstone

Centerstone is a not-for-profit health care organization dedicated to delivering care that changes peoples lives. We are a nationally recognized leader, providing mental health and substance use treatment, related crisis care, education and support to people of all ages in communities in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. Nationally, we offer specialized care for service members, veterans and their loved ones, and develop employee assistance programs for businesses of all sizes. Our research institute improves behavioral health care through research, evaluation and technology, and our foundation secures philanthropic resources to support our work. For more about Centerstone, please call (888) 291-4357 or visit centerstone.org.

About Cohen Veterans Network

The Cohen Veterans Network is a 501(c)(3) national not for profit philanthropic organization for post-9/11 veterans and their families. CVN focuses on improving mental health outcomes, with a goal to build a network of outpatient mental health clinics for veterans and their families in high-need communities, in which trained clinicians deliver holistic evidence-based care to treat mental health conditions. Learn more about the Cohen Veterans Network.

Media contacts:

Sarah Brawner, DVL Seigenthaler | FINN Partners

615-610-0323 / sarah.brawner@dvlseigenthaler.com

Scott Hudson, Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at Centerstone

931-221-3872 / wayne.hudson@centerstone.org

Paul Wood, Cohen Veterans Network

Paul.Wood@cohenveteransnetwork.org
Our business has significantly grown over the last several years. The brand relaunch represents the natural evolution of that transformation - Ric Urrutia, Founder and CEO.

Taos, a comprehensive Technology Solutions Partner, has launched a new corporate brand strategy that elevates the companys corporate identity and supports its vastly growing solutions and support in cloud and managed services.

Research determined evolving the brand identity, rather than completely changing the name, was the optimal decision. The industry reputation and equity built under its current identity is a robust asset, but the visual identity and tagline no longer encompassed the organizations array of solutions and offerings. The new tagline (whats next) rebranding is part of the organizations strategy to evolve its business and create a foundation for new opportunities while reinforcing its 29 year history, industry leadership, and expertise.

Our business has significantly grown over the last several years. The brand relaunch represents the natural evolution of that transformation said Ric Urrutia, Founder and CEO. Today, Taos is known for providing visionary guidance, hands-on expertise, and services to help companies transform and operate in innovative, new ways.

Its imperative for our brand to reflect and promote our company as it is today and the tremendous value we bring, added Hamilton Yu, President and COO. Companies can benefit from adopting a cloud strategy, and we are able to maximize those benefits such as efficiency, productivity and filling skill gaps in highly sought after technical roles..

This new branding embodies how Taos is reinventing itself, but is still very committed to its roots. The new identity builds upon its history of innovation and expertise, but also opens doors to the future.

About Taos

Taos, headquartered in San Jose, California (USA), empowers enterprises to operate efficiently, rapidly innovate, and scale their business. As a comprehensive Technology Solutions Partner, Taos simplifies todays complex digital landscape by providing both strategic and technical guidance while implementing transformative solutions. The company specializes in cloud strategic consulting, migration, and 24x7x365 operations and managed services powered by its DevOps practice. For more information, please visit http://www.taos.com.

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We are a family-owned business and are excited to provide high-quality, detail-oriented cleaning services to our community to make our customers lives easier"

Ryan and Andrea Crislip recently opened a franchise of The Maids, a home cleaning service specializing in cleaning for health. The new franchise is located at 250 Fort Zumwalt Sq. in OFallon, Missouri and serves the residents of Cottleville, Lake St. Louis, OFallon, St. Charles, St. Peters, and Wentzville, Missouri. The new franchise is the third location of The Maids serving residents of the St. Louis area.

Andrea is a speech-language pathologist who has owned her private practice for 10 years. She will be running the day-to-day operations of The Maids, while her husband Ryan, an equity and options trader, will remain in his current role, while helping and supporting Andrea in any way possible. The Crislips say they are looking forward to the challenge and excitement of running a new business together while providing an elite service to the people of their community.

We are a family-owned business and are excited to provide high-quality, detail-oriented cleaning services to our community to make our customers lives easier, Ryan and Andrea explain. We plan to provide extra touches to our customers homes to make them feel valued as a customer.

In preparation of the grand opening, Ryan and Andrea spent nearly two weeks completing an extensive administrative and technical training program at The Maids corporate headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, as well as six weeks of training prior to their arrival, and additional training with staff in the local office.

Focused on unparalleled service and quality, The Maids is the only residential cleaning franchise to clean for health using an exclusive cleaning system. This unique cleaning method provides customers with cleaner, healthier homes through the use of environmentally preferable cleaning products and state-of-the-art equipment, including its patented backpack vacuums with HEPA filtration that can capture up to 99 percent of all dust, allergens, bacteria, pet dander, pollen and other pollutants.

The Maids employs professionally uniformed and trained cleaning teams who arrive at customers homes in signature yellow cars emblazoned with The Maids logo. The Maids exclusive team approach provides the most efficient, comprehensive housecleaning in the industry. Each team has a supervisor who ensures that each team meets The Maids high standards of quality and excellence. As added peace of mind, each team member goes through a background check and drug screening. The Maids team is bonded and insured and all services are backed by a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee.

For more information about The Maids of St. Charles County call the office at 636-294-9377 or visit the website at http://www.maids.com
ThermaLab is a great way for companies to test their products on our microwave and/or RF equipment with little or no risk. Thermexs highly skilled team of RF and microwave engineers are with you in the lab to ensure the best possible outcome during testing.Ray Lund, President and CEO

ThermaLab is a fully dedicated area on the Thermex Thermatron manufacturing floor, filled with multiple equipment types used in the Microwave and RF disciplines. These systems are working units, available to test a wide variety of materials and processes to evaluate the suitability for microwave or RF heating and welding.

ThermaLab features full-scale Industrial Microwave and Radio Frequency Systems capable of: Welding and Heat Sealing, Thermoplastic Materials Drying, Curing, Moisture Leveling, Post Baking, and Dehydrating High Pressure Bonding and Laminating Preheating Thermosetting Plastics, Bulk, and Granular Solids Drying and Coating Ballistic, Chemical, and Thermal Resistant Fibers

ThermaLab is ideal for those companies whose process does not yet include microwave or RF technology, or companies currently using non-Thermex Thermatron equipment. Utilizing ThermaLab is a strategic way  at little or no cost  to test and evaluate selected products on Thermex equipment  in a realistic, manufacturing environment.

ThermaLab is a great way for companies to test their products on our microwave and/or RF equipment with little or no risk. Thermexs highly skilled team of RF and microwave engineers are with you in the lab to ensure the best possible outcome during testing.

Companies involved in drying or curing a product, preheating, bonding or laminating, welding or heat-sealing are taking advantage of ThermaLabs test equipment to determine if their processes and productivity could be enhanced using this proven technology, with quality Thermex Thermatron equipment. Thermex Thermatron has worked with the following industries on various projects within ThermaLab:



Medical

Military & Security

Research

Textiles Automotive

Energy & Oil

Metals & Mining

Recreation Aerospace Environmental

Building

Packaging

Participants can accompany their products to our Louisville, Kentucky facility, or we can test products from provided specifications and report the results. Either way, our engineers assist through every step of the process. And, if the process proves beneficial and viable, we can provide specific equipment information, recommendations, and pricing for review.

For more information, contact: Mark Isgrigg, Director of Sales - Mark@thermex-thermatron.com

About Thermex Thermatron, LP Thermex Thermatron, LP is a trusted developer and manufacturer of industrial microwave and radio frequency equipment, including batch ovens, generators, presses, heat sealers, welders, and other custom engineered systems. The company also provides extensive services to help manufacturers throughout the world get the most from microwave, radio frequency, and thermal technology. Please visit our website for more information at Thermex-Thermatron.com.
Richard Antenucci Rich is one of the most technical tax advisors with whom I have worked. He is outstanding with clients and helps them devise a very forward-thinking tax strategy. We are extremely fortunate to have finally landed Rich. --Mike Stowe, Senior Partner

Stowe & Degon LLC, a full-service public accounting and consulting firm, announced the recent addition of Richard Antenucci as Tax Senior Manager to the firm. Antenucci brings nearly 30 years of public accounting experience with tax compliance, planning, and advisory services to the firm. His addition will further boost the Central Massachusetts firms tax accounting experience and service offerings to closely-held businesses and their owners.

A graduate of Northeastern University and Bentley College, Antenucci began his career with Arthur Young & Company (now Ernest & Young) in Worcester, MA. He continued to gain extensive experience with later positions at firms including Deloitte & Touche, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

For Stowe & Degon, Antenucci brings additional resources and skills in corporate taxation, multi-state taxation, real estate matters, nonprofit taxation, and client representation in state and federal tax examinations. The hiring is indicative of the firms continued focus on improving the strength of its team in the areas of accounting, tax, and consulting, for the benefit of its New England clients.

I worked extensively with Rich while at Deloitte & Touche together and I have been recruiting him for several years to join us. Rich is one of the most technical tax advisors with whom I have worked. He is outstanding with clients and helps them devise a very forward-thinking tax strategy. We are extremely fortunate to have finally landed Rich.  Mike Stowe, Senior Partner

Antenucci is a certified public accountant and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants (MSCPA).

About Stowe & Degon

Stowe & Degon LLC is a full-service public accounting and consulting firm serving the New England area. The firm consists of seasoned accounting, tax, and consulting professionals with both domestic and international experience. Stowe & Degon is registered with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Division of Professional Licensure in Public Accountancy, the PCAOB, the SEC Practice Section of the AICPA and the Massachusetts Society of CPAs, and the Employee Benefit Plan Audit Quality Center. The firm is located in Westborough, MA.
Mr. Williams, co-founder of the firm, has served as a passionate advocate for his clients for more than three decades. He focuses his practice primarily on environmental toxic tort cases, whistleblower claims, civil rights violations, and complex personal injury cases. Mr. Williams has received an AV Preeminent rating, the highest given, from legal publisher Martindale-Hubbell. He has also been honored as a Pennsylvania Super Lawyer for environmental litigation every year since 2006. He has secured significant verdicts and settlements in many courts.

Associate Shauna Friedman joined Williams Cedar in 2017 after graduating from Rutgers Law School with honors. Prior to that, Ms. Friedman served as a paralegal for the Cedar Law Firm, working closely with attorneys in the Paulsboro, New Jersey train derailment litigation in which the firm represented more than 1,800 residents and first responders who were affected by a vinyl chloride chemical spill. Ms. Friedman also assisted in several other high-profile cases. She received her Masters Degree from Stockton University in Criminal Justice (summa cum laude) with a concentration in Forensic Psychology.

The legal team at Williams Cedar has recovered nearly half a billion dollars for the personal, civil, and consumer rights of clients throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The firm represents only victims  never corporations or insurance companies. It provides powerful, compassionate, responsive advocacy for victims in personal injury cases, civil rights matters, insurance contract claims, product liability, medical malpractice, whistleblower protection, wage and hour claims, and environmental and toxic torts cases  always striving for maximum financial compensation.

If you need representation, please call the legal team at Williams Cedar at 215-557-0099 or visit the firms website at https://www.williamscedar.com/. The firm has offices in Haddonfield, New Jersey and Philadelphia, where they represent clients throughout the region and nation.
Bull Moose, a Maine and New Hampshirebased retailer known for its music, movie, and video game selection, is steadily becoming one of the regions largest retailers of books. On August 9, the company announced plans to move its Lewiston, Maine store, and increase its footprint, tripling its size to 8,000 sq. ft. The new location, set to open in the fall, will feature 2,000 sq. ft. dedicated to books.

The emphasis on books is part of a company-wide shift that has impacted eight of Bull Moose's 12 locations. The effort began in 2010, with the company's Bangor location. We made a big push into books, said Bull Moose CFO Chris Brown. We kind of knew there is a person who likes to have their culture embodied in some artifact, that they like to collect things.

Brown said the pivot to books was successful partly because of similarities between contemporary bookselling and way the retail music industry once operated. When we started selling books, we noticed that the publishing industry was run how the music industry was run 20 years ago, with lots of reps and personal contacts. [In both businesses you also had] a large corporate presence, and a good community of independent stores.

In 2017, the 150-employee company joined that community of independent stores by becoming a member of the New England Independent Booksellers Association. Brown said he has no plans to rebrand the business around books, since it is already known as a multimedia retailer to its northern New England clientele.

Each Bull Moose store carries a mix of used books (60%) and new titles (40%). The company buys new stock directly from publishers; it acquires used stock from customers. In addition, Brown said the store does offsite event sales and works with libraries.

Book and merchandise buyer Chelsea Berry said that given the store's large music selection, music books sell steadily, "but it's not our most successful genre." Instead, the store has found the most eager readership in young adult, childrens, fantasy, and science fiction books.

Brown believes there is still room to grow, given the regional preferences of readers for a physical store with multiple kinds of portable media. While focused in the near-term on the Lewiston move, he always has an eye out for other possible new locations, and thinks the region can support it. "It's not just like retail elsewhere," said Brown. "Maine and New Hampshire are artsy places and art matters here."
Reports in local press indicate that talk of downsizing the appointments referred to as elephant-sized did not materialize as the president kept 110 ministerial slots filled.

Major cabinet positions largely remained unchanged like the Attorney General and Minister for Justice and Finance Minister. The president replaced a dismissed Energy Minister with the former Lands and Water Resources minister

The reference to an elephant-sized team was in relation to the record number of appointees  the highest under the 1992 consitution, but also a veiled political mockery by opponents because the ruling New Patriotic Partys official emblem is an elephant.

Back in March, the government defended itself against the accusation of a record number of appointments, Minority leader in parliament, Haruna Iddrisu, came out guns blazing saying that the cabinet will feed on the public purse.
Teleology, an investment firm led by the former MTN Nigeria chief, Adrian Wood, emerged as the preferred bidder in February 2018, following a bid process arranged by Barclays Africa, after a debt default forced Etisalat out of the country.

Several reports have it that bureaucratic and administrative bottlenecks are slowing down the sale processes.

Business Insider Sub-Saharan Africa looks at some of these hindrances delaying the official buyout of 9mobile on both sides:

1. Accumulated Debts

In a report by Thisday newspaper, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta explained that the delay in the conclusion of the sales of 9 mobile was as a result of 9 mobile debt to the commission. The regulatory chief said the mobile network was indebted to the tune of over N15 billion in Annual Operating Level (AOL), fees and numbering fees. He said 9 mobile had paid about N7 billion out of it as a commitment.

2. Technical capability and structure of Teleology

The regulatory authority had conducted the first round of technical competence on Teleology. Though details of the first technical appraisal were not released. The Commission said it is conducting another round of due diligence on the preferred bidder.

ALSO READ: 9mobile says its acquisition deadline has been extended

3. Legal case instituted by aggrieved shareholders

There is an ongoing legal case before the Federal High Court in Abuja. The case was instituted by some aggrieved shareholders of 9mobile over the sale of the mobile network.

The shareholders  Afdin Ventures Limited and Dirbia Nigeria Limited, warned the Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigerian Communication Commission and others to halt the sale of the telecommunication firm.

4. Financial evaluation of Teleology

In March 2018, Adrian Wood, Teleology's director, confirmed that that the company transferred a non-refundable deposit of $50 million to the trustees of the Nigerian bank syndicate presently holding ownership of 9mobile.

Wood said the payment underscored Teleologys financial capability and readiness to revive the organisation, adding it was set to aggregate a 10-point to turn 9mobile around.

Teleology was given a period of 90 days to pay the balance of $251 million but missed the deadline on June 30, 2018. The window was extended for another 20 days and elapsed again in July 2018.

5. Nigerian government administrative bottlenecks

According to a Thisday report, Teleology blamed the Nigerian Commission Commission for missing the deadlines on the delay of approval letter of 'No Objection'.

It said it had sourced $251 million and kept in an escrow account waiting for Nigerian regulatory agencies letters before making financial payment.

The government is still making final touches to Teleology Holdings Limited organisational structure, financial capability and technical know-how to run one of the largest mobile networks in the country.
The Series A funding round was led by The Rise Fund, a global fund managed by TPG Growth.

TPG Growth said it is excited to partner with Mines to drive financial access across the world.

Mines, the fintech startup re-inventing credit in emerging markets, also plans to use part of the investment for talent acquisition.

Ekechi Nwokah, CEO at Mines, in a statement, said, there are more than 3 billion adults globally without access to credit. Our vision is that every one of them will have instant access to credit in the next 10 years.

We believe the best way to realize this vision is to partner with banks, retailers and mobile operators and power digital credit products tailored to their markets so they can create the customers of tomorrow, today.

Adia Sowho, VPC Commercial at Mines, said scaling a digital product in Africa requires a deep understanding of two things  distribution and partnerships.

In Nigeria, Mines has demonstrated that its platform is flexible enough to enable partners with consumer reach across the income pyramid, activate a wide swath of distribution channels, from rudimentary USSD to more advanced web-based ones. We look forward to building more partnerships in Nigeria and beyond.

The company provides a credit-as-a-service digital platform that enables institutions in emerging markets to offer credit products to their customers.
9mobile is yet to meet certain conditions as preferred bidders for the takeover of 9mobile. Some of the conditions outlined for Teleology include clear evidence of the registration of Teleology with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), technical capabilities to handle the fourth largest mobile network.

2. Nigerian girls win world's tech competition

Nigerian teenage girls were part of the team that shared more than $50,000 for winning the 2018 Technovation World Pitch Summit, the world's largest tech entrepreneurship program in the United States.

Iridescent, a nonprofit empowering under-represented young people globally announced that the Nigerian girls won the Junior Division Finalists (App focus) category during the "Global Innovation Celebration" held in the San Jose Theatre, August 9, 2018.

3. Facebook goes after Page using a fake or compromised account

People who manage these Pages will be required to complete an authorization process in order to continue to post, making it harder for people to administer a Page using a fake or compromised account, Facebook said in a blog post.

Facebook had deleted 32 Pages and accounts from its platforms for being "involved in coordinated inauthentic behaviour.

4. Nigeria-based digital credit platform, Mines has secured $13 million Series A round

Mines, a fintech startup re-inventing credit in emerging markets, has closed a Series A round of $13M led by The Rise Fund, a global fund managed by TPG Growth.

The startup plans to use its investment for talent acquisition, continued growth in Africa, and expansion to South America and South-East Asia.

5. MTN listing on Nigerian market

MTN Nigeria said it expect to list on the Nigerian Stock Exchange before the end of 2018, subject to regulatory approvals and appropriate market conditions.

MTN Group said any reduction in its ownership of MTN Nigeria will be limited.

6. Business Insider and Andela Kenya present Tech Thursdays

Business Insider Sub-Saharan by Pulse (BISSA) kicks off Tech Thursday in collaboration with Andela Kenya.

7. Nigeria looks for innovative ways to fund the acquisition of satellites

Adebayo Shittu, the Minister of Communications said the government is searching for an innovative way to fund the acquisition of two new communications satellites for Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited.

The Minister regretted that NigComSat Limited had enjoyed limited patronage and urged private and public institutions across the country to patronise the satellite company in order to position it as a prime provider of satellite services across the African continent.
Ever since the Bank of Ghana report revealed that they gave Collapsed Capital Bank an amount of GHs610 Million to sustain it before it collapsed many people have launched their attacks on the Board Chairman of the Banks especially Reverend Dr Mensah Otabil the Founder and General Overseer of International Central Gospel Church (ICGC).

But supporters and ICGC members have flooded social media with flyer's with the writing I Stand With Dr Mensah Otabil. Some of the flyers are even telling people to shut up because they have achieved nothing to criticise Otabil and that has angered Afia Schwarzenegger.

READ MORE: Afia Schwarzenegger sends chilling warning to Kennedy Agyapong

Responding to the flyer that says "Before you talk about my pastor show me your achievement in life" Afia took to Facebook to recounts her own achievements as a single mother and how she has done well for herself. She also revealed how she would have done splendidly with that money which has been spent by Dr Otabil and his team.

Afia also added that the I Stand With Dr. Mensah Flyers are some of the things that annoy ordinary Ghanaians whose money Bank of Ghana gave to Capital Bank that ended up in the pocket of the board members and managers.

READ MORE: Stonebwoy and 7 other artistes who are signed on Universal Music Group

She wrote:

Good day ICGC

Before I talk about your pastor, the man that watches animal kingdom yet preaches to human beings I will show you my achievements.

I was able to put up an orphanage together with my friend's whiles I was living in a single hotel room with my kids and I didnt collect seed neither did I take 610 million taxpayers money

Before I talk about u, let me show u my achievements, I was able to feed extra mouths plus my kids with less than 6,000 GHS salary 2015 without tricking people to sow any 24 hr miracle seed whiles you Pastor Mensah Otabil couldnt sow $5000 to save your bank!

Imagine if this 610 million saga was a political saga...you would have given sermons part 1-7 about how immoral politicians are...

I chose not to comment abt all these But yo be honest flyers like these just make everything annoying

Massa, I stand with the poor Ghanaians that cant have people doing savage post for them even though their money is said to be with you!

They cant show you their achievements cos they have conscience,wont bully people in the name of God to enrich themselves...they cant show you their achievements cos obviously they cant steal, they cant show achievements cos they cant lie in the name of God
According to her if you are not hungry for a hype they will not write anything about you.

Speaking in an interview with TV Africa, Rosemond stated that her experience on the stage of the Golden Movie awards was the turning point in her flourishing career.

She retorts that her inability to pronounce the word indigenous on the stage at the awards really helped her.

READ MORE: Afia Schwarzenegger descends on pastor Otabil and ICGC members

She went on to acknowledge the organizers of the show revealing that their stage made her get an appearance on a popular magazine across countries which includes Uganda.
He told Accra-based Class FM that the revoking of the licences of the 5 banks to form the Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited, has caused a lot of hardship to former staff of these banks.

Mr Addai-Danquah said Let me give you a news lead, as we speak now, managers of Royal Bank, their accounts have been frozen. I spoke to one of the managers yesterday, he actually called me and once a while I get calls from one of these colleagues.

READ ALSO: Security personnel without Ghana Card will not receive salary

Mr Addai-Danquah said that after Capital Bank collapsed he started selling pork for a living. He, therefore, advised other people in the banking sector who have lost their jobs to start businesses that can support their livelihood.

He said the workers can complain but afterward they must support their families.

You can complain but while complaining, do something to save your family from distress.
The government of Ghana is currently bound by a three-year IMF-supported Extended Credit Facility Programme.

However, the current programme with the Bretton Woods institution is expected to end by end of 2018.

President Akufo-Addo has assured that his government is working hard to build a strong and resilient economy to avoid a return to the IMF for a bailout.

The President made the announcement whiles speaking at the St. Peters Cathedral Basilica in Kumasi at a thanksgiving mass held in his honour as part of his five-day tour of the Ashanti Region.

"We inherited the IMF programme but by the end of this year, we will be out of it," he stated.

He further stated that initiatives are being undertaken by his government in the education and agriculture industries which will allow us to have a stable and secure Ghana.
A detailed investigative report indicates that a GHc 610 million liquidity support offered by the Central bank to help stabilize Capital bank was diverted into other businesses.

Pastor Otabil, together with then CEO of the bank, Ato Essien, have been in the spotlight in recent weeks over their role in the diversion of the funds, as well as the subsequent collapse of the Capital bank.

But speaking on the issue, president of IMANI, Franklin Cudjoe said the preacher may not have been aware of the diversion of funds.

According to Mr. Cudjoe, Pastor Otabil may have been misled by his CEO in events that led to the banks collapse.

I am tempted to believe that Pastor Otabil was misled by his CEO.It does seem that the Pastor didnt quite possess the financial spirit and eye to detect that the financial engineering his CEO engaged in was beyond normal limits of risk, the IMANI boss said.

Is there evidence that other board members probably more experienced warned Board Chairman pastor about the varied seeds his CEO was sowing all over the lands that created a hole of Ghc 610m? As I have said, there is no evidence that board chair pastor actively colluded with his CEO to embezzle Ghs 610, so we cannot accuse him of wrong doing.

Meanwhile, the leadership and membership of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC) has backed its founder despite the ongoing backslash.

In a statement, the members of the church affirmed their loyalty to the preacher, describing him as a man of integrity.
Eyewitnesses told Accra based Starr FM that his body was recovered by local search party and other swimmers and rushed to a nearby health facility, where he was pronounced dead. The body has been handed back to the family and was buried at the site of the incident, in line with custom.

READ ALSO: Dozens feared dead as boat capsizes on Oti river

The death of the boy has reportedly sparked anger in the community as residents blame government of creating a deadly reservoir in the village.

The dam has been the only source of drinking water for the villagers and nearby for decades but turned into a swimming pond after a truncated effort by government to develop it into a one village one dam site, a key poverty eradication initiative by president Akufo-Addo aimed at ensuring year-round farming in the north of the country, where rainfall patterns are so deplorable that agric activities are done once throughout the year.

READ ALSO: Country saves over 500 migrants at sea

Seidu Damba, brother of the disclosed that that development of the dam started on July 5, three days before the president toured the region on a three-day working visit. He said contractors abandoned the site after the president ended his tour and left the region.
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He was excited about her academic feat as he had fulfilled his promise of seeing her through the best citadel of learning in London.

In a congratulatory message to his dearest sister, Dr Churchill said your unchallengeable intelligence has indeed stooped to conquer in the victory. I wish you all the best as you delve into the next phase of your life.

His commitments to entrepreneurship has gone a long way to improve the economic strength of the West Africa region.

However, Dr. Olakunle has appreciated his loving and caring mother, for the all-encompassing support and sacrifices for the growth and development of their family.
According to him, the establishment of the schools was a waste of time.

He said the schools was unnecessary giving reasons that it would not be beneficial to those in the rural areas.

In an interview on 21 Minutes with KKB, the Economist and veteran Educationist said "They are only useful for urban areas. All that they have put in the villages are going to be useless. The only people who benefited from it are the contractors not Ghanas education."

He added that the school buildings have the capacity to enroll only 1,500 students each and lacks boarding facilities to accommodate students.
According to him, Martin Amidu must not relent in his efforts to prosecute government officials who are corrupt.

He said some former presidents must be jailed or taken to Nsawam after their three-year immunity expires.

"If an MP or Minster is found to be corrupt, he cannot be said to be privileged, in fact, it has nothing to do with that. Even the presidents when they are corrupt, they have only three years when they get down not to be prosecuted, so, if you are a president and you chop chop, in three years if there is evidence, youll go to Nsawam and its high time some presidents went to Nsawam.
So where is this unprecedented infrastructural development that was touted by my predecessor? The roads in Ghanas second biggest city, Kumasi, are nothing to write home about, even though much of the countrys revenues and resources come from the Ashanti Region, he said.

The President is in the Ashanti Region on a 5-day tour as part of his nationwide tour which started in May.

The President noted that his administration cannot fix all roads in the Region, and, indeed, in the entire country at a go, but assured that before he leaves office, the vast majority of roads in the country would have been fixed.

Over the years, we have not maintained our railway sector. However, in my time, the railway sector is undergoing massive rehabilitation. Shortly, the Minister for Railways Development, Hon. Joe Ghartey, will roll-out the comprehensive plan my Government has for the redevelopment of our countrys railway sector, he said.

I was left with a bankrupt economy, but with hard work and discipline, we have been able to find money. So, this year, GHS500 million has been devoted to the roads in Ashanti. This comprehensive plan for roads, i.e. the Kumasi Roads Facelift Project, has already been approved by Cabinet, and will result in the facelift of Kumasi roads, as well as the development of roads in Ashanti", he added.
This decision is believed to reduce the fleet of cars that travels in the Presidential convoy during the nationwide tour of Nana Akufo-Addo.

Later, pictures popped up of the Minister for Monitoring and Evaluation and MP for Old Tafo, Dr Akoto Osei, outgoing Minister for Aviation, Cecelia Abena Dapaah, Environment and Innovation Minister, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong Boateng amongst others sitting in the branded STC bus.

The move has generated mixed reactions in the media with some section applauding it as a means of government cutting cost, while others have labelled it as a populist move by the government to divert attention from the numerous scandals that have engulfed it.

In June, President Nana Addo stopped all ministers of state and government officials from travelling abroad until further notice.

In a statement signed by Chief of Staff Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, she warned that only foreign affairs and regional integration minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchway would be allowed to travel.
A former Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Kenneth Dzirasah, MP for Keta, Richard Quashigah, former MP Nii Amasah Namoale have all kicked against Mahama being the presidential candidate of the NDC in the 2020 polls.

They all insisted that the NDC cannot win the 2020 elections with Mahama as its flagbearer because he's a failure.

There has been an uneasy calm in the NDC since they were sent packing by the electorate in favour of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) on December 7, 2016.

It heightened when it became clear that Mahama is preparing to contest the presidential election once again, using the NDC Unity Walk as a stepping stone.

Some elders of the party, especially those from the Volta Region, the NDC's stronghold, have dumped Mahama for Prof Joshua Alabi.

Victor Gbeho took a swipe at Mahama recently when he called him a failure for leading the party to a miserable defeat in 2016.

The diplomat said the time has come for the NDC to rebrand and build on its shortfalls in 2016 by electing a flagbearer, who has a better chance of leading the party to win adding that he sees those qualities in the former rector [Alabi].

On the part of Kenneth Dzirasah, he said Prof Alabi is more marketable Mahama.

According to him, the difficulty in marketing Mahama stems from the NDC losing the 2016 elections which has informed his (Dzirasah's) decision to back Professor Joshua Alabi for the contest.

"I want to say that after several reflections on the way forward for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), myself and my good brother, Ambassador Gbeho, conducted few investigations and came to the conclusion that the most marketable personality that could carry us into the year 2020, as a flagbearer, is Joshua Alabi," he said.

The Member of Parliament for Odododiodio, Nii Lante Vanderpuye on Tuesday hinted that out of the 106 NDC Minority MPs, a total of 94 have endorsed Mahama's candidature.

But MP for Keta, Richard Quashigah expressed doubts about the number 94 being quoted by his colleague.

According to him, he thinks Alabi who has exhibited demonstrable character was the best to lead the NDC.

He said Mahama did his best for the party and it is time for a new beginning and a new leadership.

Contestants

Among those who have indicated their interest to lead the party are former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Sylvester Mensah, Dr. Ekow Spio Garbah, a former Trade and Industry, former Vice Chancellor of the University for Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), Prof. Joshua Alabi, Elikplim Agbemava and second deputy Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin.
Kenya is set to be treated to a rare twin migration of two of the most spectacular wild animals, set to leave billions behind its tracks and attract millions of tourists.

Kenya is set to witness the annual spectacular wildebeest migration and the rare humpback whale migration all being eagerly awaited.

According to Tourism Cabinet Secretary, Hon. Najib Balala the country is expecting over 1.7 million tourists in the three-month wildebeest and humpback whale migration, the highlight of the current tourists season.

It is a major tourist boom for us, we have about 800,000 wildebeest already in the Mara and the humpback whales swimming to our coasts, Said Balala at the Mara Serena lodge in the heart of the Maasai Mara during a promotional tour.

The whale migration will see whales swimming from North Antarctica to the Kenyan coast of Watamu while the wildebeest will cross from Serengeti National Park, Tanzania to Masai Mara game reserve, Kenya attracting tourists from all over the world.

Each year, humpback whales are first sighted along the coast of East Africa in early June as they make their annual migration north from Antarctica.

It is believed that they travel to warm tropical inner reefs for protection to enable them to breed and give birth to their calves, which remain with the mothers for about two years, until weaned. They then make the return journey in October, swimming over 4,000km to the cold food-rich seas of Antarctica, their main feeding area.

Also read: 11 places in Kenya where you can never miss a chance to spot the endangered black rhino

Already hotels are doing brisk businesses with booking currently standing at 98 percent.

Here at the Mara hotels and camps are fully booked, tourists are here to witness the rare phenomenon. Kenya is now a safe destination and the sector is now and the sector is now at 18 percent in growth, we are projecting it to get to 50 per cent in the next five years Said Balala.

Taunted as the eighth wonder of the world, over a million wildebeests and about 200,000 zebras and gazelles cross the border of Kenya and Tanzania for a four month stay (July-October) in the savannah of this national reserve.

The migration was expected to begin two weeks ago but delayed.
According to journal Cell Metabolism, the research shows that having a bit of extra fat in a person's lower body may be good for their health.

Simply, women who are pear-shaped tend to be healthier as the bottom and thighs are safer places to store fat on the body.

Fat might not spend a lifetime on the hips, but it is stored there for months, which is better than belly fat, released around two hours after a meal, the German study revealed.

This implies that the fat is not transported to the heart and liver, where it can lead to high blood pressure, high blood sugar and a greater risk of illness in later life.

The study's lead author, Dr Norbert Stefan, from the University of Tubingen explains: "It is better for people of normal weight to be pear-shaped rather than apple-shaped, so that weight is carried on the bottom half of their body rather than around the middle.

"The hips and thighs offer 'safe storage' for fat, stopping it from getting into the blood and reaching the organs."

The belief by many is that thin people with a normal body mass index (BMI) are healthy simply because they are not overweight.

But for an unlucky one in five of this group, the risk of death and cardiovascular disease is more than three-fold higher. In spite of their normal body size, this can put them in greater danger than some obese people, the study revealed.

What more did the study find?

The researchers found that those with bigger thighs and hips could be protecting themselves from diabetes and heart problems.

The researchers looked at 981 people with a high risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease and found that those with smaller hips and thighs were at greater risk.

This was based on MRI scans of fat distribution around the body and fitness checks.

Dr Stefan said: "Fat in the hips and thighs is largely different from fat in the abdomen, called visceral fat. In pear-shaped people, these areas work like a sponge, with fat stored in fat cells where it cannot do much harm."
The man who is worth $30 billion dollars and controls 11% of China's retail trade in undertaking a mission to encourage the continent's young entrepreneurs as part of his role as a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and he has been delivering delicious business tips

Business Insider Sub Sahara Africa has compiled some interesting ones.

"What you need is people's belief not infrastructure to improve lives."

"I came here(Africa) to share the entrepreneurial dream not to sell Chinese products."

"Opportunities are always found where people complain."

"Find people who can be your boss, not those who are willing to be your servants. That is how you will grow."
Ethiopian Airlines and South African Airways are among the leading airlines in Africa, according to Skytrax s 10 best African airlines of 2018.

The 10 best African airlines was announced at the World Airline Awards in London, last month, where leaders and top management from airlines gathered across the world.

From the list, no Nigeria airline made it.

See the top 10 African airlines voted for by airline customers across the globe:

1. Ethiopian Airlines

Ethiopian Airline founded in 1945, is wholly owned by the country's government. The airline flies to more destinations in Africa than any other carrier. It is one of the fastest-growing companies in the industry and is the largest on the African continent

2. South African Airways

South African Airways (SAA) is the flag carrier airline of South Africa. The airline flies to 56 destinations in South Africa, continental Africa and around the world from its Johannesburg hub in partnership with SA Express, SA Airlink and its low-cost carrier, Mango.

3. Air Mauritius

Air Mauritius Limited is the flag carrier airline of Mauritius. In 2017, the company was the fourth largest carrier in Sub-Saharan Africa and has an important standing in the European, African, and Indian Ocean region markets. The airline won the World Travel Awards Indian Ocean Leading Airline Prize from 2005 to 2014.

4. Air Seychelles

Air Seychelles is the national airline of the Republic of Seychelles. The airline is currently 40% owned by Etihad Airways.

5. Kenya Airways

Kenya Airways is the flag carrier airline of Kenya. Founded in 1977, the airline was wholly owned by the Government of Kenya until April 1995, and it was privatised in 1996, becoming the first African flag carrier to successfully do so.

The largest shareholder is the Government of Kenya (48.9%), 38.1% is owned by KQ Lenders Company 2017 Ltd. (in turn owned by a consortium of banks), followed by KLM, which has a 7.8% stake in the company, others are held by private owners.

6. Royal Air Maroc

Royal Air Maroc is the Moroccan national carrier and the country's largest airline. The carrier operates a domestic network in Morocco, scheduled international flights to Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and occasional charter flights that include Hajj services

7. Mango (Airline)

Mango is 100% owned by South African Airways, which is itself owned by the government of South Africa but operates independently as a low-cost airline.

8. Fastjet

Lo Fastjet Plc is a British/South African-based holding company for a group of low-cost carriers that operate in Africa.

9. Kulula

Kulala is a South African low-cost airline, operating on major domestic routes.

10. TAAG Angola Airlines

TAAG Angola Airlines E.P is the state-owned national airline of Angola. Based in Luanda, the airline operates an all-Boeing fleet on domestic services within Angola, medium-haul services in Africa and long-haul services to Brazil, Cuba, China, and Portugal.
Nigeria has been identified as the main country from which the majority of the sex trafficking victims come from according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

IOM estimates that 80 percent of girls arriving from Nigeria  whose numbers have soared from 1,454 in 2014 to 11,009 in 2016  are potential victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation, the report claims.

Sexual exploitation of African migrants in Europe is terrifying as majority of victims are young girls, that is according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM)

Trafficking is a transnational crime that devastates the lives of thousands of people and is the cause of untold suffering, says Federico Soda, director of the IOM Coordinating Office for the Mediterranean.

This is a theme we have been working on for years, committing to protect, prevent, and collaborate with the authorities dealing with organised crime.

The IOM came to this conclusion after it collected information at the various landing sites and reception centres for migrants in different parts of southern Italy.

The IOM functions with the aim of identifying potential victims and assisting those who escape their exploiters and are willing to accept its support.

IOM Project Manager Carlotta Santarossa says the principal purpose of the report, whose English version will be released soon, was to highlight the painful reality of the hateful form of slavery being meted out on defenceless migrants.

Santarossa also called on all relevant agencies to carry out an urgent data analysis and an examination of the market that these girls supply as well as the growing demand for paid sexual services.

Libya has become the main transit point for hundreds of thousands of African refugees and migrants attempting to reach Europe through the Mediterranean Sea.
During the recently concluded 66th annual convention of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) themed: 'Dominion', the General Overseer told the congregation that the killings would soon stop.

"My Daddy will silence all violent situations in the country," he said.

RCCG G.O preaches about dominion

Pastor Adeboye concluded the holy communion service also known as the Last Supper by referring to the theme of the event. He urged the congregation to use their dominion to achieve peace for the entire country.

The RCCG G.O also highlighted the importance of having dominion online.

On Facebook, he wrote, "There are only two categories of people on earth: the dominant and the dominated. Everyone on earth falls into either of these two categories.

"Words are also of two categories; 1. Passive, and 2. Active. The word 'dominion' is a noun of the word 'dominate' which is an active verb. To dominate is to force down and keep down by force.

"You must determine to take your stand and actively take the position of Dominion. A name often reflects the bearer's origin and destination. 'Moses' means out of water. Moses was so affected by his name that he missed out on entering the promised land due to an incidence with water"

Pastor Adeboye continued on August 11th writing, "As we said previously, the word 'dominion' is an active word; it is military and requires action.

God created you to have dominion. When you desire it, you're aligned with His perfect will for you.

"The Bible assures us that when we make our requests according to His will, He hears us and grants unto us our desires. Genesis 27:3040. You either have dominion or you're under yoke"
The dismissal of the lecturer according to the Nation was approved during the University Councils 131st meeting.

The lecturer whose name was not disclosed by the newspaper reportedly a female student in the department.

The Nation also reported that the University Council also approved the withdrawal of 13 students for poor academic performance.

OAU sacks lecturer who demanded sex from student

Recall that in June 2018, the management of Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU sacked Prof Richard Akindele, a lecturer who demanded five round of sex from a post-graduate student, Monica Osagie to upgrade her marks.

ALSO READ:

The Vice-Chancellor of the University, Prof Eyitope Ogunmodede announced the sacking at a press conference on Wednesday, June 20, 2018, in Ile Ife.
This has heightened the expectations among his faithful fans, who have been dancing to his hit singles and collaborations since the turn of the year.

Ever since he dropped his debut album, 'Superstar' in 2011, there has always been the pressure for his next projects to take it a step further, which perhaps explains why it took a three year period for him to release his sophomore project, Ayo.

Another three years passed, before he dropped the 'Sounds From The Other Side' project, but in a deviation from his excessive tinkering of his projects, Wizkid is set to release his second body of work in two years .

Here are five reasons why 'Made in Lagos' is his most important album yet

He needs it to really earn his place as a legend

Now, for a lot of his loyal audience, Wizkid is already a musical legend and the reasons they proffer are quite valid.

If there is one artist in his generation who have proven that it is possible to live your dream, then it is Wizkid. From Ojuelegba, he has succeeded in taking his music to the world and making the global audience pay attention.

His recognitions and awards are well documented and he has also broken down barriers, performing at major concerts worldwide.

But while he ticks almost every box possible, there are a few who still hold some reservations, with their arguments laced around the quality and impact of the last two projects he has delivered.

A 'Made in Lagos' album that succeeds in achieving both commercial and critical acclaim may be the final spell that convinces all that he has earned his seat at the table of music legends.

2018 has been a year of very few albums

Let's face it, even though Nigerian music has made giant strides since the turn of the year, it has actually been a year of few and poor albums.

The mainstream has fully surrendered itself to the allure of dropping 'singles', while those who dared to go ahead with a body of work hug the E.P title instead.

Irrespective of what Wizkid chooses to call this project, the music scene needs a big bang and we are hopeful that the Starboy can actually save the day.

After the lacklustre 'Sounds From The Other Side', he needs a rebound

Not to get it twisted, his last project, 'STFOS', released over a year ago, and aimed at the global market was not in anyway a bad album, but it also was not exactly a defining one.

Pulse Music Review described the body of work as "well-crafted, one-dimensional pop dance project that is all about vibes than actual substance."

Like Ayomide Tayo, posited in his article on the impact of the project on its one year anniversary, ''The post-release marketing of SFTOS has been non-existent. While the album has a lot of strong singles in it, no single has been released since. The project has been laid dormant.''

The album may have helped the rise of his steady profile outside the continent, but a strong body of work is required at this point to sustain the movement.

The world is watching

Now more than ever before, Afrobeats has caught the attention of the world, and it will be great to see the poster boy of the genre deliver a body of work that becomes a cornerstone of the modern day sound and wows the many eyes that are watching and listening.

A lot of younger talents are looking forward to Wizkid for inspiration, and more than just a compilation of hit singles that pack the right vibe to make you dance, it is important he makes the project a creative expression of the level he is playing at now.

Take his place at the top ahead of Davido

Even though the duo have sheathed their swords and now look like best of buddies, there is an unspoken musical rivalry that continues to exist, moreso with Davido's album also due before the end of the year.

For every accomplishment that Wizkid has enjoyed over the past couple of years, Davido has enjoyed same.

When the latter's foray into the international waters failed with his 'Son of Mercy' EP, the popstar initiated his 'Back to Basics' back-up plan, which has seen him emerge stronger on the scene.

Wizkid has towed a similar pattern, moving on from the STFOS experiment and immediately flooding the local market with top singles like 'Manya', 'Soco' and 'Fake Love'.
According Sahara Reporters, a naming ceremony is due for August 14, 2018.

She remains the lead murder suspect in the matter of her husbands death even though she was granted bail on health related grounds. Sanda was pregnant during the death of her husband. The couple had a baby girl before the tragic incident.

ALSO READ: Ghanaian lady shot to death at funeral service

Her husband Bilyamin Bello was stabbed to death on Saturday, November 18, 2017. Shortly after the incident, the Federal Capital Territory Police command have filed criminal charges against Sanda. She was said to have stabbed her husband,to death.

The deceased, who was a real estate developer, was the son of a former Peoples Democratic Party Chairman, Haliru Bello.

On Friday, November 24, 2017, she was arraigned before a High Court in Abuja. The court ordered that she be remanded in Suleja Prison until the next court date.
According to Daily Post, Pastor Esther Neji was "allegedly overpowered and raped to death at her apartment."

In a sad statement, Rev Solomon Ajuk, a Presbyter in the Ikom District of Assemblies Of God Nigeria said, We only discovered that since Sunday weve not seen her. On getting to her House we perceived an offensive Odour with her door still locked.

He continues, We contacted the police who came and we forced the door open only to see her lying between the parlor and her room with a pool of blood on her bed.Her forehead had a wound where she was hit. A wrapper was on her neck, her pant was carelessly thrown suggesting that she was raped and killed. Thats the police preliminary investigation.

While reports also claim her house was scattered upon discovering her body, indicating a struggle, Mr Aluyi Abdul-Azeez, the Divisional Police Officer of Ikom Police Stationconfirmed her cause of death as rape via a struggle.

ALSO READ: How to deal with creeps on social media
Salvador, Bahia state, is one of the many Brazilian areas influenced heavily by West African Slaves, birthing traditional worship of Yoruba gods, festivals and food.

The African slaves from the west, carried along their Yoruba religion with them when they were brought to Brazil. This religion is referred to as Candomble by Afro-Brazilians  a religion that seeks harmony with nature.

It is a fusion of African religions combining Yoruba, Fon and Bantu cultures but largely dominated by Yoruba Orisa worship. The worship of this religion is carried out in religious centres called terreiros. At the hem of affairs are priestesses, known as or priests, pais de santo(father of saints). The gigantic statues all around the temples are called the orixas (African gods) that accompanied the slaves from Africa to Brazil.

Mode of Orisa/orixa worship

Afro-Brazilians worshippers cherish these gods and have been doing so for over 500 years. Somehow, they realised the fusion of Catholicism with this traditional worship, doctrines and beliefs. In the religious ceremonies, worshippers dress in the colours of the orixas (white) and place food at the altar before singing special songs and dancing precisely choreographed steps to the sacred drums.

During the ceremonies, worshippers fall into all kinds of trances, which they believe is caused by the contact and interaction they have experienced with the deity. The Ooni of Ife frequently visits Brazil for the celebration of Yoruba festivals.

There are other variations of African traditional worship across Brazil, and this reflects the different beliefs brought by different groups of slaves from Africa.
The media personality and the love of her life had a lovely, intimate and sunfilled wedding ceremony in August 2017 and it is one of those weddings we cant quite forget in a hurry.

Of course the couple cant, either, and on the first anniversary of that big day, theyre out here reminiscing and looking forward to many more years filled with love, sunlight and laughter.

On her Instagram, Stephanie writes;

"Id choose you all over again. A year down, forever to go. 12/08/2017. Love you Lumi."

A message to which Olumide responds with the following sweet, hopeful words:

Year one down, 99 years to go. Love you more every day my superwoman @stephaniecoker #oneyearanniversary #aderinokuns
The First Lady also dedicated her award of to Nigerian women and children.

Mrs. Buhari, in a message on Instagram on Monday, said: With gratitude to God for an honour done to me by the Governing Council of Sun Moon University, South Korea for being decorated today with a Doctor of Philosophy in Public Administration (Honoris Causa).

My gratitude goes to the President of the University, Dr. Sun-Jo Hwang and the entire members of the governing council of the University for this honour.

I dedicate this honour to all Nigerian women and children.

ALSO READ: Aisha Buhari is now campaigning against her husband

She also commended the love and support shown to her pet project, the Future Assured Initiative.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the university in July 2018 delegated some members of the university to Nigeria to inform Buhari of their intention to honour her.
According to Daily Post, todays meeting is slated to hold at Oshiomholes Aso Drive office by 8:00pm.

The APC chairman has consistently called for the resignation of Senate President Bukola Saraki following his defection to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

According to a PDP source, the Senators will be deliberating on possible ways to remove Saraki and Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu.

The source said Senator Lawan has called for a meeting of all APC senators again.

The meeting will hold at Oshiomholes office on Aso Drive at 8pm on Monday.

The agenda is the the same  sack of the SP and DSP, Daily Post reports.

Impeachment plot

Former APC spokesman, Timi Frank had earlier alleged that the ruling party offered Senators $400,000 about N148,000,000 each (at the rate of N370 to $1), to impeach Saraki.

Frank also said that APC members in the House of Reps were offered the same amount to remove the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara.

PDP cautions APC
Mato, a Professor of Political Science, said that Nigerians must change their attitude to one another, to governance and in their relationships at all times for any positive impact to be made in transforming the country.

Nigerians must change their attitude towards one another for the good of the nation. No amount of constitutional change would guarantee the needed peace in the country except Nigerians embrace peace and accept one another as equal member of the union.

According to him, good attitude towards one another is the foundation for the needed nationalism in the journey towards building a strong united nation.

But due to bad attitude, the country is bedevilled by corruption, religious and ethnic sentiment, and all forms of social ills which open the roof for numerous challenges, the professor said.

Mato, however, supported the devolution of power to federating units, stressing that states and local governments deserve to get more funds, more responsibilities and more power because they are closer to the people.

Gov. Nasir El-Rufai, represented by his Deputy, Barnabas Bala-Bantex, said that Nigeria would thrive as a federation only when more powers are given to states.

El-Rufai argued that the current pressure for reform was because what Nigerians anticipated from the federal structure was unattainable.

He called for the adjustment of the revenue sharing formula to allocate more funds to states and local governments, to fast tract development at grassroots.

Earlier, Head of the History Department of the university, Dr Terhemba Wuam, pointed out that since 1960, various attempts at restructuring the country have not been fully successful.

He recalled that the restructuring had cut across several areas including political, administration, fiscal, economic, education and socio-ethical, and security system of the country.

According to him, the restructuring was often made in response to the vociferous cries of marginalisation by various segment of the country.

It however appears that these attempt have not succeeded in either resolving all the nations challenges or those of any ethic group hence the renewed call for restructuring.

The conference is therefore, organised for participants to look at the issue and guide Nigerians and those in authority on the best way forward.

The Vice Chancellor of KASU, Prof. Muhammad Tanko, commended the department for organising the conference to interrogate the issues that pollute the political landscape.

Tanko, who was represented by Prof Abdullahi Ashafa, Vice Chancellor Academic, pointed out that partisan and interest groups are using the issues of restructuring and true federalism to create unnecessary tension as 2019 general election approaches.

He said that the coming together of academicians as patriotic segment of non-partisan experts to discuss the issues would provide a fruitful direction for the country.

According to him, restructuring and devolution of power would certainly not provide all answers to our national development challenges.

What we need is to restructure our mindset to reflect being true Nigerians in line with President Muhammadu Buharis call that change must begin with us.

I am in support of the idea of restricting, but only if it would make the federating units self-sustaining to be able to develop critical infrastructure and amenities.
According to Punch, this was made known to newsmen in a statement issued by the agencys spokesman, Tony Opuiyo on Monday, August 13, 2018, in Abuja.

Opuiyo also said that no search was conducted in Dauras home by any security agency.

Speaking on the video showing a search being carried out in an apartment, the DSS spokesman said the video is fake.

He also called on Nigerians to desist from spreading fake news or information that might cause a breach of peace.

Opuiyo said The attention of the Department of State Services has been drawn to the circulation of fake information and videos in which several items were said to have been recovered from the Katsina and Abuja homes of its immediate past Director General, Lawal Daura.

These non-existent items include: N21bn cash, 400 assorted and sophisticated small arms and light weapons/rifles, and thousands of Permanent Voter Cards belonging to Niger Republic immigrants.

In another video also in circulation, some persons believed to be personnel of a security outfit were seen forcing open safes stocked with money.

The security operatives were described as executing a recovery operation at the Katsina home of the former DG.

Consequently, the Service wishes to inform the public that these videos are false and should be disregarded.

So far, no such recovery operations have been undertaken by the EFCC or any other security agency at DSS office or residences of the former DG.

There is no doubt that different interests have continued to give varied accounts of the incident of last week at the National Assembly.

It may, however, be recalled that the Presidency had pledged to carry out a detailed investigation regarding the alleged National Assembly siege.

Lawal Daura was sacked by the Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo following the blockade of the National Assembly by DSS operatives on Tuesday, August 7, 2018.
There were no casualties while the protest lasted.

According to Reuters, the soldiers said they were protesting their redeployment from their base in Maiduguri to Marte, a restive district in Borno State.

One soldier was quoted by Reuters as saying: "We are angry and that is why we are shooting. Why are they taking us again to another place after spending about four years?"

The soldier added that they were previously told they would only fight insurgents for a maximum of three years.

The angry soldiers refused to board the plane

The Cable reports that the aggrieved soldiers arrived the airport at 6pm ahead of their posting to Marte, but refused to board the airplane that was to convey them to their new posting.

The soldiers said after spending over four years in Maiduguri, they ought to be sent back to their families and not to be posted to face death.

Superior officers were asked to stay away

An officer who witnessed the incident told TheCable that superior officers, includingBulami Biu, General Officer Commander (GOC) of 7 division, were asked to stay off the airport or risk being shot.

The second batch of pilgrims going for hajj from Borno boarded their flight amid the commotion, TheCable quotes a source as saying.

The special forces are ready for trouble. They are really angry. The superiors were asked to stay off or be killed.

Spokesperson for the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Henrietta Yakubu, said the protest had not forced the airport to shut down.

"The situation has normalised," Yakubu said.

The army added

Protesting soldiers could be punished

Nigeria has been waging a war against Boko Haram since 2009. The terrorist sect intends to establish a hard-line Islamic caliphate in Northeast Nigeria.

Boko Haram has killed more than 30,000 people and has displaced millions since the commencement of its insurgency against the State.

The soldiers who protested at the Maiduguri airport on Sunday could be court-martialled because mutiny is a punishable offence in the army.
Misau said this while reacting to the EFCC statement that debunked the allegations credited to the Senior Special Assistant to the President, Babafemi Ojudu, that the EFCC was working in tandem with Saraki.

The Senator also said that both the APC Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole and Ojudu, were spinning the same conspiracy theoryto hide the lack of coordination and discipline amongst the security agencies.

The EFCCs statement confirms our immediate reaction that both Ojudu and Oshiomhole have been reading from the same conspiracy script.

Nigerians find it unthinkable that Magu, that the Senate refused to confirm  whose EFCC has also prosecuted Saraki for over 3 years at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) would now turn around and start working for this same Saraki. How is this possible?

These people think that they can just wake up, think up conspiracy theories and try to sell it to Nigerians, but the public is smarter and more discerning than their shallow fictitious narratives", the Senator stated.

Misau also stated that the APC and Ojudu should be ashamed of indicting the Presidency in such an explicit fashion.

In any case, shouldn't they be ashamed to even claim that the entire internal security institutions in the country are working for someone else other than the person that appointed them?

Additionally, at what point did they decipher this? Was it before the siege on the National Assembly or after?

What this goes to show is that in their desperate bid to blame someone else for their crime and incompetence, these people no longer have a sense of shame, the Senator said.

Misau further amplified the call for an independent judicial panel of inquiry into the National Assembly siege, stating that any other investigation would be seen as biased and flawed in the eyes of Nigerians and the international community.

In this regard, we hereby reiterate the call for independent judicial panel of inquiry into the invasion. Any other such investigation into the matter would constitute another attempt by these same people to present a biased perspective to the assault on our nations democracy and its highest lawmaking body, Misau stated.
According to Premium Times, Saraki arrived Obasanjos house on Monday, August 13, 2018.

Obasanjo has been at loggerheadswith President Buhari and his administration's handling of some national issues and the economy.

Also, Saraki is being hounded following his defection to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

There have been reports of sinister plots to remove him as the Senate President.

The PDP has also alleged that the Federal Governments planning to arrest Saraki and the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu on trumped up charges.
Of the 137 countries polled during the research, Nigeria is ranked 130 as one of the countries that distrusts its political class the most.

The countries that trust their politicians the most occupy the top places on the log while those who distrust their politicians the most can be found on the lowest rung of the table.

Only Zimbabwe (131), Venezuela (133), Paraguay (134) and Brazil (137) are ranked worse than Nigeria in the trust in politicians index.

The countries who trust their politicians the most are Singapore (1), UAE (2), New Zealand (3), Qatar (4), Finland (5) and Norway (6).

Interestingly, the United States and the United Kingdomoften held as the purveyors of modern day democracy across the worldcome in on the index at 16 and 17 places respectively.

In Africa, Rwanda (10), Egypt (67) and South Africa (114) are ranked higher than Nigeria.

Why trust between politicians and the people matters

According to WEF, the factors influencing whether we trust our governments or not include the state of the economy, political upheaval, and headline-grabbing events like major corruption cases.

The WEF explains why trust between the people and government is important below:

Trusting our government is in our own interest because it supports economic growth. The more people trust their government the more they are likely to invest and spend, which boosts the economy.

Official policies and initiatives are also more likely to work. For instance, people are more likely to pay their taxes and comply with regulations if they trust their government. This is particularly true when people are asked to make sacrifices  such as austerity measures  for the common good.

Governments must do more to win back their citizens trust, says the OECD. They need to start putting more money into public services, and become better at meeting the needs of the entire population, including in healthcare, employment and education. They also need to make sure that all their citizens can access government services.

Nigeria ranks poorly everywhere

Nigerias latest democratic experiment commenced in 1999. However, Africas biggest and resource rich economy is often cited as one of the most corrupt countries in the world by international agencies like Transparency International (TI), no thanks to a political class that is as corrupt as they come and systemic graft everywhere you turn.

In February 2018, TI ranked Nigeria the 148th most corrupt nation in the world (out of 180 countries surveyed) in its Corruption Perception Index (CPI).
Akpabio made this known in an interview with newsmen in Abuja on Monday.

He said though he had yet to hear about it, if his seat must be declared vacant, the seats of those, who defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), should also be declared vacant.

According to him, if the excuse of those calling for his seat to be declared vacant is that there is no rancour in PDP to warrant his defection, they should also know there is no rancour in APC.

Any defection from APC to PDP, we will like to declare those seats vacant.

As you are looking at me, do I look perturbed? I have not heard the report.

I think that is a rumour because at the moment, there is no division in the APC. The APC is one family.

If you hear about R-APC that was not really a political party, that was not a division.

It has since been consumed in what they call Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP)."

On the threat by APC National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole to get the President of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki impeached, Akpabio said he was not aware of that.

I just came in from Ikot-Ekpene, where I decided with my people to join APC. Im yet to be briefed on any of those items. I have not heard anything.

Why dont you wait for me to formally talk to you? I believe that when the National Assembly resumes, you will hear from me directly. So, exercise patience, he said.
The PDP had accused the APC of plotting to arrest Saraki and Ekweremadu.

But in statement by the deputy spokesman of the APC, Yekini Nabena, on Monday, August 13, 2018, the ruling party urged the PDP to refrain from making baseless accusations.

The APC also threw a shade at Senator Dino Melaye who alleged that he was on a tree in the wilderness for eleven hours while trying to evade kidnappers.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in its latest round of bogus claims has alleged that the Federal Government plans to arrest the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki and his Deputy, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, Nabena said.

We had thought that by now, the PDP would be tired of its lame opposition strategy of false alarms, baseless and frivolous accusations.

The President Muhammadu Buhari administration has repeatedly demonstrated its strict adherence to the rule of law, therefore the alleged plan to arrest or harass the mentioned leaders is hogwash and baseless.

Clear conscience fears no accusation. Why are PDP leaders afraid of arrest if their conscience is clear? All law-abiding citizens or resident of the country have nothing to fear about arrest.

However, nobody no matter how highly placed will escape the full wrath of the law if he or she runs fowl of our laws.

If the Senate President and the tree-climbing Senator are facing criminal charges in our law courts and his Deputy has explanations to make to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for acquisition of numerous properties in Nigeria and abroad through questionable sources, the President Buhari-led APC administration has nothing to do with them.

The laws of the country are only being applied and they should answer for their acts of infamy, he added.

'Saraki must go'

The APC has insisted that Saraki must resign or be impeached as Senate President.

The ruling party says Saraki is not qualified for the position.
Babba-Kaita who is currently a member of the federal House of Representatives, polled a vote total of 224,607 to beat a slew of other contestants.

Interestingly, Babba-Kaitas closest challenger for the Katsina senatorial seat was his brother and candidate of the PDP, Kabir Babba-Kaita.

Ahmad and Kabir share the same father but different mothers.

The older Kabir Babba-Kaita polled 59, 724 votes.

Why the Katsina senatorial election was important for the APC

In other Katsina senatorial by-election results as seen by Pulse, MPN scored 633 votes, MMN 343, GPN got 1056 and DA polled 796.

The Katsina North senatorial by-election was held to fill in the vacant seat left by Senator Mustapha Bukar, who died in April this year.

Katsina North is the senatorial district of President Muhammadu Buhari.

The election is coming on the back of the battle for majority seats in the senate, following and elsewhere in the polity, from July 24, 2018.

The APC and PDP will be conducting a headcount to determine just which party controls majority seats in parliament, when the national assembly reconvenes for plenary on Tuesday, August 14, 2018.

Here are full results from the 12 local councils that make up the Katsina North district, as released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC):

Daura LG

No of registered voters  76559

No of accredited voters  23272

APC  18436

DA  45

GPN  566

MMN  18

MPN  26

PDP  3228

Total valid votes  22309

Rejected  501

Total votes cast  22810

Ingawa LG

No of registered voters  76020

No of accredited voters  23146

APC  17036

DA  111

GPN  63

MMN  44

MPN  80

PDP  4005

Total valid votes  21339

Rejected  902

Total votes cast  22241

Dutsi LG

No of registered voters  56912

No of accredited voters  19007

APC  13868

DA  31

GPN  25

MMN  9

MPN  31

PDP  3930

Total valid votes  17894

Rejected  465

Total votes cast  18359

Sandamu LG

No of registered voters  65445

No of accredited voters  25421

APC  18834

DA  20

GPN  11

MMN  6

MPN  7

PDP  4610

Total valid votes  23488

Rejected  553

Total votes cast  24041

Mani LG

No of registered voters  92544

No of accredited voters  31048

APC  20479

DA  127

GPN  98

MMN  55

MPN  113

PDP  7017

Total valid votes  27889

Rejected  1295

Total votes cast  29184

Mashi LG

No of registered voters  83663

No of accredited voters  32987

APC  20927

DA  168

GPN  82

MMN  84

MPN  133

PDP  8653

Total valid votes  300042

Rejected  1698

Total votes cast  31745

Zango LG

No of registered voters  62378

No of accredited voters  18528

APC  14175

DA  23

GPN  34

MMN  8

MPN  19

PDP  3057

Total valid votes  17316

Rejected  655

Total votes cast  17971

Kankia LG

No of registered voters  62196

No of accredited voters  23509

APC  16653

DA  42

GPN  27

MMN  6

MPN  23

PDP  5366

Total valid votes  22117

Rejected  1055

Total votes cast  23172

Baure LG

No of registered voters  92346

No of accredited voters  36770

APC  28271

DA  105

GPN  46

MMN  19

MPN  44

PDP  5674

Total valid votes  34159

Rejected  1432

Total votes cast  34159

Kusada LG

No of registered voters  51019

No of accredited voters  18349

APC  12331

DA  32

GPN  18

MMN  20

MPN  42

PDP  4783

Total valid votes  17226

Rejected  658

Total votes cast  17884

Bindawa LG

No of registered voters  76924

No of accredited voters  29584

APC  22234

DA  43

GPN  40

MMN  16

MPN  63

PDP  5549

Total valid votes  27945

Rejected  1023

Total votes cast  28968

Maiadua LG

No of registered voters  68049

No of accredited voters  26869

APC  21363

DA  49

GPN  56

MMN  58

MPN  52

PDP  3852

Total valid votes  25430

Rejected  654
Last week, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Yusuf Lasun,announced that the national assembly will punctuate its recess this week in order to discuss funding for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ahead of the 2019 elections.

Punch quotes the spokesperson of the House of Representatives, Abdulrazak Namdas as saying that parliament had yet to decide on a date for resumption of plenary.

The national assembly embarked on a recess on July 24, 2018, soon after Senate President Bukola Saraki announced the defection of 15 senators from the APC to the PDP.

NASS siege

Saraki announced his own defection on July 31, with the APC insisting that he must step down as senate president or be impeached.

It is believed that the decision of presiding officers to delay resumption of the national assembly, may have everything to do with truncating the plot to remove Saraki as senate president.

On August 7, 2018, masked operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) stormed
Okorocha believes his only obstacle to becoming President are his people, the Igbos.

Addressing journalists at the Government House, Owerri, Okorocha claimed he enjoys more goodwill up north than he does back home.

The Igbo do not know how to honour their own. They rather like to run down any of their rising leaders. The pull-him-down syndrome is high in Igboland. And it is very unfortunate.

Anytime I come out to run for the Presidency of this country, I will not suffer pull-him-down from the North or from the South-West or South South, it is only in Igboland that I will suffer it, Okorocha said.

Igbo do not value their own

The governor alleged that the Igbo people do not value their own.

And they engage in this pull-him-down practice without knowing the overall implications on the Igbo. So, it will be out of place for an Igbo presidential aspirant at any given period to think that the Igbo will make him President because the Igbo do not value their own. They dont value what they have, but value outsiders. It is in their character. It is in their nature.

Read the newspapers and go to the social media, all the insults and attacks you get are all from the Igbo. They go to any length to run you down without caring about your good intentions and all the efforts being made to see that things work out fine for the people of the area.

It is a problem. It didnt start today. Go down the memory lane, you discover that the pull-him-down syndrome in Igboland didnt start today, he added.
Garba Shehu, who is senior special to the president on media and publicity, told State House correspondents, Monday, that decisive victories in senatorial and state assembly elections in Katsina, Bauchi and Kogi States were an indication that the Buhari/Osinbajo presidential ticket that won the 2015 election will ensure an encore in 2019.

The APC swept parliamentary seats in by-elections held in Bauchi, Katsina and Kogilast weekend. Shehu says the victories are an affirmation of the workability of the joint presidential ticket that handed APC victory in March of 2015.

I like to speak to you about the fabulous shows of the APC in Katsina, Bauchi and Kogi, and even to some extent in Cross River States. All of these coming against the background of Ekiti state, he said.

It is clear that Nigerians are reposing confidence in the Buhari/Osinbajo presidency. Each of these election victories is considered to be epic in nature because none of these elections was an ordinary election. We are happy that we have won and on behalf of the president and the acting president, we like to say thank you to Nigerians who continue to repose their confidence in the leadership of the APC administration.

We also want to thank the leadership of the party at the national level, but equally important, to thank all the partys apparatchiks deployed to all the campaigns and ensured that all the elections were won handsomely by APC.

So, we are expressing our gratitude to everyone for these that had happened and to say that with this increasing confidence reposed in the president and the acting president, who are determined more than ever before to leave no stone unturned in order to bring the promised change to Nigerians.

For a quick review, maybe one, two, three or four lessons can be taken from the victories that the party has been recording.

First of all is to say that these decisive victories are indications that clearly, Nigerians have spoken that President Buhari maintains his momentum. That these victories place Buhari/Osinbajo presidency in very good stead for next years election.

It is a statement of the fact that the APC will go into election next year with every confidence that the elections will be won and that Nigerians by this statement, will also say that they no longer have time for politics of insult and diversion, mudslinging and monkey dey work, baboon dey chop politics of the PDP, and equally important is that these election victories are a clear message to the national assembly that all that Nigerians are interested in is that the business of government should go on", Shehu said.

Second term

Buhari has announced he'll be seeking a second term in office when his first expires next year. Even though he'll only emerge APC flagbearer after a primary election, it is widely believed that the primary vote will only be a formality.
This was made known in a statement signed by the PDP South-West National Vice-Chairman, Eddy Olafeso.

The party had earlier alleged that the All Progressives Congress (APC) is plotting to arrest Saraki and Ekweremadu.

According to Daily Post, Olafeso said the arrest of the Senates top officers might spell doom for Nigerias democracy.

The statement reads: Our attention has been drawn to a disingenuous plot by the Presidency and APC to arrest the Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki and the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu over trumped up charges and therefore feels compelled to sound a note of warning to the authorities not to prosecute actions injurious to our democracy.

The PDP wishes to declare that Nigeria is our fatherland and not an exclusive preserve of the Presidency and APC, therefore the fundamental rights of all Nigerians must not be trampled upon by a few privileged people.

Any orchestrated arrest of both Saraki and Ekweremadu under any guise whatsoever will be viewed as a continuation of the infamous campaign of intimidation and oppression that this administration has continue to sustain against the duo for the past three years of the Buhari administration. Therefore their arrest will be an open invitation to a crisis of monumental dimension in the nation as all Nigerians now know that there remains no basis for such action.

It is sad that a government under the Presidency of a very senior citizen will remain this petty, pedestrian and cheap in every ramification.

Our nation at this particular period should be preoccupied with developmental goals that seek to extend the frontiers of industrialization and economic development, we should be thinking about how to uplift the social status of the ordinary Nigerians.

This pettiness must stop, Nigerians did not vote for the APC in 2015, to entrench this sordid pedestrian attitude in our national life."

Oshiomhole insults everybody

The PDP chieftain also said that APC's actions have become ill mannered since Adams Oshiomhole became the party's chairman.

Olafeso said We also note that the APC has of recent become very rabid since Adams Oshiomole became its Chairman, it has become his regular pastime to seek to insult and assault our leaders and their legacies as if that is his term of reference as Chairman, particularly of note is his constant abuses on Emeritus President Olusegun Obasanjo.

This ill mannered action continues to rob the ruling Party of maturity and a decent approach to tackling political issues, his flippant, loquacious and uncouth language is symptomatic of unfounded aggression and unfounded grudge.

We wish to state that we take absolute exceptions to his wholesale abuses and insults on Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and any other Yoruba leader for that matter and will henceforth be prepared to square up with him on this score should he persist in his ludicrous actions.
News Agency of Nigeria reports that the Independent National Electoral Commission declared APC candidate, Lawal Yahaya Gumau as the winner of last Saturday Senatorial By-election, having scored 119,489 votes, to defeat the PDP candidate, Ladan Salihu and seven others.

Salihu, a former Director-General of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN), scored 50,256 votes.

Addressing a press conference on Monday in Bauchi, Chairman of PDP in the state, Alhaji Hamza Akuyam said their candidate and the party would head to the Election Petition Tribunal to challenge the outcome of the election.

He described the election as the worst in the history of democratic elections in the country.

He alleged that there were manipulations, and that figures were scandalously re-jigged to favour the candidate of a particular political party.

This was done without any consideration for voters who stood in queues for long; some traveled miles and braved extreme conditions, only to be disenfranchised with a stroke of the pen; this is unacceptable, he said. 

He also alleged that vote-buying was widespread and conducted in the open, adding that votes were sold for between N100 and N5000.
One other person left in critical condition and were rushed to hospital for treatment.

Mandera South Deputy County Commissioner Paul Kemei confirmed the incident saying that the victims had been clearing a road along the Kenya-Somalia border.

The victims have been clearing a road along the security wall and they were hit by what we suspect to be an improvised explosive device, Mr Kemei stated.

The incident adds on to several other incidents of insecurity that have hit Mandera county in the recent past.
Matiangi swore to ensure that the illegal substance is no longer sold in Kenya, saying that Nairobi and Kiambu have become notorious market hubs.

However, the move was not well received on social media, with most of the commentators terming his mission as a waste of time.

A majority of those who commented on the issue advised the Interior CS to concentrate on more pressing matters such as corruption and insecurity.

Legalise bhang

Others called for bhang to be legalised and regulated as has been the trend in advanced countries where the drug is increasingly used for medical research.

Is bhangi the same as cannabis? Then this is misappropriated efforts on so called drugs. Why dont people get educated? And stop copying imported laws that have no place here? Cannabis is used for very many essential functions and you are declaring war? Start with illicit alcohol or alcohol in general. Which is the real drug. Start with Marlboro, acid , cocaine etc, Mary Gicharu said on Facebook.

If you can't win it join it. Just legalize marijuana like most countries has done. It generates lot's of revenue instead of taxing Kenyans this much, Godfrey Njogu quipped.

"Undermining God"

Bett Ryan accused the CS of undermining Gods creation, bhang is natural and comes from plants. God was not stupid to make bhang grow on land and he gave mankind that wisdom to use and see the value of each plant bhang being one of them! So if u go against bhang, know u r against God's creation.

The comments reflect a growing support for the campaign calling for an end to the ban on cannabis sativa.

Economist David Ndii, who admitted have used the drug for leisure, and Kibra MP Ken Okoth are some of the supporters calling for legalisation of bhang.
Step Down Buck Regulator / Converter - summary or tutorial about the circuit and operation of a step down or buck regulator using switch mode power supply techniques.

SMPS Power Supply Circuits Primer & Tutorial Includes:

Switch mode power supply How does SMPS work Step down buck converter Step up boost converter Buck Boost converter



See also: Power supply electronics overview Linear power supply Over-voltage protection PSU specs Digital Power Power management bus: PMbus Uninterruptible power supply

With power being a key parameter in many designs, step down or "buck" regulators are widely used.

Although a resistor would enable voltage to be dropped, power is lost, and in applications such as the many battery powered items used today, power consumption is a crucial element.

As a result step down switch mode converters or as they are more commonly termed, buck regulators are widely used.

Linear step down

The most basic form of step down transition is to use a resistor as a potential divider or voltage dropper. In some cases a zener diode may also be used to stabilise the voltage.

The issue with this form of voltage dropper or step down converter is that it is very wasteful in terms of power. Any voltage dropped across the resistor will be dissipated as heat, and any current flowing through the zener diode will also dissipate heat. Both of these elements result on the loss of valuable energy.

Basic buck converter or regulator

The fundamental circuit for a step down converter or buck converter consists of an inductor, diode, capacitor, switch and error amplifier with switch control circuitry.

The circuit for the buck regulator operates by varying the amount of time in which inductor receives energy from the source.

In the basic block diagram the operation of the buck converter or buck regulator can be seen that the output voltage appearing across the load is sensed by the sense / error amplifier and an error voltage is generated that controls the switch.

Typically the switch is controlled by a pulse width modulator, the switch remaining on of longer as more current is drawn by the load and the voltage tends to drop and often there is a fixed frequency oscillator to drive the switching.

Buck converter operation

When the switch in the buck regulator is on, the voltage that appears across the inductor is Vin - Vout. Using the inductor equations, the current in the inductor will rise at a rate of (Vin-Vout)/L. At this time the diode D is reverse biased and does not conduct.

When the switch opens, current must still flow as the inductor works to keep the same current flowing. As a result current still flows through the inductor and into the load. The diode, D then forms the return path with a current Idiode equal to Iout flowing through it.

With the switch open, the polarity of the voltage across the inductor has reversed and therefore the current through the inductor decreases with a slope equal to -Vout/L.

The step down, buck converter circuit can be further explained by examining the current waveforms at different times during the overall cycle.

In the diagram of the current waveforms for the buck converter / switching regulator, it can be seen that the inductor current is the sum of the diode and input / switch current. Current either flows through the switch or the diode.

It is also worth noting that the average input current is less than the average output current. This is to be expected because the buck converter circuit is very efficient and the input voltage is greater than the output voltage. Assuming a perfect circuit, then power in would equal power out, i.e. Vin  In = Vout  Iout. While in a real circuit there will be some losses, efficiency levels greater than 85% are to be expected for a well-designed circuit.

It will also be seen that there is a smoothing capacitor placed on the output. This serves to ensure that the voltage does not vary appreciable, especially during and switch transition times. It will also be required to smooth any switching spikes that occur.

Regulator input and output filtering

A key aspect of switch mode power supply regulators is the input and output filtering. This is a particular issue because of the switching that occurs at the input.

In reality ripple voltage on the output is dependent not only on the output smoothing, but more importantly on an input filter capacitor.

More Circuits & Circuit Design:

Op Amp basics Op Amp circuits Power supply circuits Transistor design Transistor Darlington Transistor circuits FET circuits Circuit symbols

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Primary school teachers will walk off the job on Wednesday as part of a full day of strike action against pay and working conditions.

The new full day strike replaces the previously planned three-hour walk out on August 15. It's been 24 years since primary teachers have taken action.

Theyre demanding more time to teach and support students with special needs as well as a pay increase.



Teachers were offered a pay rise over three years from the Ministry of Education, but votes taken at paid union meetings in June showed the majority opted to reject it.

The offered pay rise ranged from 6.1 percent for the top of the pay scale, which would have made the maximum teacher's salary about $80,600, to a 14.7 percent increase to the entry salary, bringing that to $55,030.

The New Zealand Education Initiative (NZEI) says 86 percent of teachers have been offered a pay increase of just 2.2 to 2.6 percent a year for three years.

RadioLIVE's Ryan Bridge questions whether a professional with an average starting wage of more than $90,000 should be asking for more money.

But one of our listeners, Kathy called in - her husband is a principal of a medium-sized primary school.

A 60 hour week would be an exception.

"He goes to school just after five o'clock in the morning, and is usually home at around five o'clock at night. Those are days when he doesn't have meetings at night," she explained.

"The holidays are not 12 weeks of sitting around and doing nothing, there are courses that, not just the teachers, but the principals also go to to keep up to date with the latest teaching techniques, and the ways of teaching children with special needs - all of those children need extra input and it is given willingly and with training during their holidays.

"People are reluctant to take on the extra work for the minimal amount that they will be earning," Kathy told RadioLIVE.

Listen to the full interview above.

Drive with Ryan Bridge and Ingird Hipkiss, filling infor Lisa Owen, 3pm - 6pm Weekdays and streaming live on 'rova' channel 9 - available on Android and iPhone.

RadioLIVE.
Questions are being raised about New Zealand's role to the ivory trade.

The Jane Goodall Institute believes New Zealand is contributing to the deaths of thousands of elephants and rhinos every year by barely regulating the trade.

According to the current rules, ivory that can be traded is that imported either before a worldwide ban in 1989, or with Department of Conservation permission.

But importers aren't required to provide evidence of an item's age or where it came from.

Ambassador Fiona Gordon told RadioLIVEs Wendyl Nissen the rules need to be tighter.

"We have a completely unregulated domestic market. If you look at the ivory items that are for sale on any given month within New Zealand, youll find that perhaps less than eight percent of them have any information with them about where they came from and when they were imported into New Zealand, she says.

We still have some trade into and out of the country of ivory items.

The Jane Goodall Institute estimates one elephant is killed for its ivory every 15 minutes. Ms Gordon says too many people are unaware of the practise.

"I think people in New Zealand are still quite surprised to hear that we have this domestic market for ivory within New Zealand.

Over 60 percent of the ivory on New Zealands domestic market is a hundred percent ivory  its ornaments, tusks, and so on, Ms Gordon told RadioLIVE.

New Zealand's most popular auction website Trade Me banned all ivory trade in 2014.

Last month an English migrant's antique piano was impounded because it had ivory keys.



Listen to the full interview with Fiona Gordon above.

The Long Lunch with Trudi Nelson, in for Wendyl Nissen, 12pm - 3pm on RadioLIVE and streaming live to the rova app on Android and iPhone.

RadioLIVE.
UK: Stadler Rail has been confirmed as preferred bidder to supply a total of 71 trainsets for use on the next Wales & Borders franchise from 2022.
Nurminen Logistics plans to launch a regular container train service from the port of Helsinki to China via Russia and Kazakhstan in the final quarter of this year. The company reports that demand for Finnish railway transport services grew considerably in H1 2018, boosted by container transport from Finland to ...
GERMANY: Alstoms Coradia iLint hydrogen fuel cell multiple-unit was formally approved for passenger service on July 11. The two prototype units are expected to enter pilot service on the Elbe-Weser network with the first scheduled services planned for late summer.
Here's a subject that Elon Musk might think twice before tweeting about.

Resource-rich Saudi Arabia, which in recent months amassed a $2 billion stake in the Twitter-mad billionaire's electric-car company Tesla Inc., has declared economic war on Canada. The cause was a tweet by Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, whose call for the release of social activists arrested by the Gulf monarchy earned a stunningly disproportionate response this week.
The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between high-ranking members of the Republican presidential campaign staff and a Russian lawyer with Kremlin ties remains the cornerstone of claims that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election.

A growing body of evidence, however, indicates that the meeting may have been a setup -- part of a broad effort to tarnish the Trump campaign involving Hillary Clinton operatives employed by Kremlin-linked figures and Department of Justice officials. This view, that the real collusion may have taken place among those who arranged the meeting rather than the Trump officials who agreed to attend it, is supported by two disparate lines of evidence pulled together for the first time here: newly released records and a pattern of efforts to connect the Trump campaign to Russia.

Bruce Ohr and Christopher Steele, in contact before and after the election.

The first line of evidence includes emails, texts, and memos recently turned over to Congress by the Department of Justice. They show how closely senior Justice Department officials and the Federal Bureau of Investigation worked with employees of Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research firm reportedly paid $1 million by Clinton operatives to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign.

They reveal that then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, the fourth-highest-ranking official at DOJ, coordinated before, during and after the election with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who did work for the Clinton campaign and Russians; and with former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who was employed by Simpson.

Glenn Simpson, who worked for the Clinton campaign and Kremlin-tied lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Those emails, which disclose the topics of discussions but not their details, revolve around two business executives: Donald Trump and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate close to President Vladimir Putin. Steele was particularly interested in resolving issues concerning Deripaska's U.S. visa, which was revoked in 2006 because of his suspected ties to organized crime. In another sign of the overlapping strands of this story, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller was running the FBI in 2009, the bureau had asked Deripaska to contribute millions of dollars to help locate former FBI agent Robert Levinson, captured in Iran in 2007 while working for the CIA. Levinson remains missing.

The Ohr-Steele-Simpson correspondence appears to include references to the former British spys work for Fusion GPS on Trumps ties to Russia. Months before the election, Steele wrote Ohr to say that he would be back in Washington soon "on business of mutual interest."

Resolving the visa problems of Oleg Deripaska, right, with Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, was a focus of the Ohr-Simpson-Steele correspondence.

The cozy relationship was bolstered by the fact that the wife of the senior DOJ official, Nellie Ohr, was employed by Fusion GPS.

After Steele was dismissed by the FBI for speaking to the press for an October 31, 2016 report, Bruce Ohr took over the work of relaying Fusion GPS opposition research on the Trump campaign directly to the FBI.

The culmination of their combined efforts, the 35-page dossier of unverified Trump/Russia connections, was used by the FBI to secure a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. The Department of Justice did not respond to RealClearInvestigations requests for comment, nor did Glenn Simpson's lawyer, Joshua Levy.

The second line of evidence reframing the Trump Tower meeting -- after the Ohr-Steele-Simpson correspondence  was first reported in June by RealClearInvestigations. It shows that, starting in March 2016, FBI confidential sources and other figures associated with Western intelligence services and the Clinton campaign approached the Trump team promising damaging information on Clinton. The Trump Tower meeting appears to have been the most successful of these approaches, since it was the one instance where the Trump campaign signaled it was willing to receive incriminating information on its opponent.

These two strands of evidence  the DOJs collaboration with Clinton-paid researchers and efforts to connect the Trump campaign to Russia  came together in midtown Manhattan on June 9, 2016 at Trump Tower.

At the center of it all was Fusion GPS, which had two clients whose interests were served by the Trump Tower meeting: the Russians and the Clinton campaign.

Natalia Veselnitskaya, who employed Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS and dined with him the nights before and after the Trump Tower meeting.

Even though no evidence has emerged from the meeting of any dark conspiracy, appearances were evidently enough. In sworn Senate testimony last year, Simpson claimed the meeting corroborated one of the key claims made in the reports filed by Fusion GPS contractor Steele: Trump and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.

Nonetheless, Simpson also testified that he had no knowledge of the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and others until it was reported a year later. There is reason to doubt that account.

In fact, the Russian lawyer at the center of the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was his client.

She has publicly stated that she used talking points developed by Simpson for the Russian government in that discussion. Kremlin officials also posted the allegations on the Prosecutor Generals website, and shared them with visiting U.S. congressional delegations.

In addition, Simpson has testified that he had dinner with Veselnitskaya the night before the meeting and the night after.

Rinat Akhmetshin, Trump Tower meeting attendee, photographed at a distance in 2016 after a documentary screening in Washington.

Accompanying Veselnitskaya to the meeting was Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, who had served in the Soviet Unions military counterintelligence service. His role remains unclear, but evidence suggests he may have been the source Simpson was alluding to in December 2016 when Ohr recorded that Simpson told him, Much of the collection about the Trump campaign ties to Russia comes from a former Russian intelligence officer (? not entirely clear) who lives in the U.S.

Veselnitskaya hired Simpson in spring 2014 for work that lasted, according to Simpsons Senate testimony, until mid to late 2016.

Fusion GPS assisted Veselnitskaya -- representing Pyotr Katsyv and his son Denis, both Kremlin-tied businessmen -- in her campaign to repeal U.S. legislation sanctioning Russian officials under the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which was named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian corruption whistleblower who died in police custody. Simpson, sources told RealClearInvestigations, was tasked with running a smear campaign against the driving force behind those sanctions, Chicago-born financier William Browder, who had employed Magnitsky.

William Browder, whose complaint to the Justice Department that Simpson was acting as a foreign agent was ignored.

Although the Trump campaign agreed to meet Veselnitskaya to receive dirt on Clinton, she succeeded in turning the meetings focus instead to the Magnitsky Act and Browder  including Simpson-generated claims accusing Browder of tax evasion and embezzlement. Citing her public acknowledgement, Browder told RealClearInvestigations, It seems to me that Simpson wrote the talking points about me that Veselnitskaya used in her meeting with Donald Trump Jr.

Although Browder was unaware of the Trump Tower meeting, he was so concerned about Fusion GPSs work on behalf of Russian interests that in July 2016, he lodged a complaint with the DOJ against both Simpson and Akhmetshin, for failing to properly register as foreign agents while working for the Russian government.

Instead of raising red flags, Browders concerns appear to have been ignored. Ohr continued to work with Fusion GPS. Records show he quickly responded to Simpsons Aug. 22, 2016 email whose only text was the chummy subject line Can u ring? And the DOJ and FBI used the dossier prepared by Simpsons firm  which drew on Russian sources -- as evidence to obtain a warrant in October 2016 to monitor the communications of Trump team adviser Carter Page.

The warrant was renewed three times, twice after Sen. Charles Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, sent an inquiry to the Justice Department in March 2017 on the status of Browders complaint. It has still not responded to Browders complaint.

With Trumps former personal lawyer Michael Cohen reportedly speaking to Special Counsel Robert Mueller about the Trump Tower meeting, congressional Republicans are pushing back on the interpretation of the meeting as evidence of Trump collusion with Russia. They argue that the meeting shows the collusion is between Russia and the Clinton campaign.

Simpson approached the Clinton campaign through its law firm and said he could dig up dirt on Trump and Russia, said one congressional investigator. The difference between the Trump and Clinton campaigns willingness to take dirt on its opponent is that the Clintons went through with it and paid for it. While their source, Glenn Simpson, was working for a Russian oligarch -- a reference to the Katsyv connection.

Rob Goldstone, the British music publicist who enticed Donald Trump Jr. to the Trump Tower meeting.

A lingering mystery of the Trump Tower meeting is the man who helped arrange it, British music publicist Rob Goldstone. On June 3, he emailed Donald Trump Jr. with an offer originating in a meeting in the office of the prosecutor generalVeslenitskayas point of contact with the Kremlin. Goldstone promised official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."

Trump Jr. promptly responded: "If it's what you say I love it."

The specificity of the phrasing in Goldstones email appears designed to establish the case for collusion: This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its governments support for Mr. Trump.

Even more curious than the wording of Goldstones email is the role he played in arranging the meeting. Goldstone, who has kept a low profile since news of the meeting broke in July 2017, testified before Congress that he now regrets his part in it.

Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr., to the right of Donald Trump on the campaign trail.

According to the dossier, Trump himself as well as aides Paul Manafort and Carter Page were in clandestine contact with the Russian government. If that was really the case, former FBI agent Mark Wauck told RealClearInvestigtions, its not clear why the Russian government needed a British music publicist to make an overture. And why would Moscow need to send a Russian lawyer who didnt speak English to Trump Tower? That tends to confirm that the meeting was intended as a setup.

On June 9, 2016, Goldstone brought Veselnitskaya to meet with Trump Jr., Manafort and Jared Kushner at Trump Tower. The senior Trump campaign officials were disappointed to find out that she wanted to talk about Browder and his associates.

Trump Jr. cut the appointment with Veselnitskaya short. But if this were a sting operation, engineered by Simpson, with likely assistance from Justice Department officials he is now known to have been in regular contact with, the damage had already been done.

The purpose of the meeting, one congressional investigator told RCI, was to substantiate the Clinton-funded dossier alleging that Trump was taking dirt on his rivals from the Russians.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 13)  Davao City Mayor and presidential daughter Sara Duterte-Carpio's regional party will back Ilocos Norte Governor Imee Marcos and re-electionist Senator Cynthia Villar in their Senate bid next year.

The announcement was made by Davao del Norte Mayor Anthony del Rosario, who is also Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP) secretary general, when HNP signed alliances with three national and six local political parties on Monday.

In particular, HNP joined forces with the Nacionalista Party (NP), Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC), and National Unity Party (NUP).

The alliance has two aims: the ensure continued support for President Rodrigo Duterte's administration, and support the candidacy of eight senators.

The party maintained Duterte-Carpio would not run for the Senate, and seek re-election instead.

It is expecting to announce its other senatorial bets in the coming days.

Apart from the Marcoses' Ilocos-based local party, HNP is also teaming up with parties from Bohol, Misamis Oriental, and Zamboanga del Norte. The parties of Pampanga Governor Lilia Pineda and Quezon City Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte are also joining the alliance.

"Sinabi po ng aking mayor, si Mayor Herbert Bautista na ibulong ko daw sa iyo na ikaw ang crush niya," Belmonte joked to Duterte-Carpio.

[Translation: My mayor, Mayor Herbert Bautista, said to whisper to you that he has a crush on you.]

Del Rosario declined to comment on whether the President would endorse HNP's candidates. However, he is expected to attend the oathtaking of the new members this coming Friday in Davao City.

The older Duterte is a member of PDP-Laban, which is fielding its own set of bets.

Local officials from areas badly affected by the weekend flooding were also present -- prompting Duterte-Carpio to apologize. She also announced that she raised P1 million each for Quezon City and Pampanga for relief operations.

"Ok talaga pag may ka-alyansa, puwede pahingi dyan ng 250,000, puwede pahingi ng [200,000], hanggang umabot tayo sa isang milyon," she said. "I'd like to thank our alliance partners for your support."

(Translation: Having alliances is really good. You can ask for 250,000 here, 200,000 there, until we reach a million.)

HNP is also hoping to coalesce with the ruling party of PDP-Laban, but it is still waiting for the latter to resolve its internal problems. PDP-Laban is split in two factions, after a group of members held their own elections without being sanctioned by the party leaders.

Duterte-Carpio announced that her regional party is ready to form alliances in July. House Majority Leader Nonoy Andaya previously said Lakas-CMD, the home party of House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, might team up with HNP. Davao City Rep. Karlo Nograles said the ruling party PDP-Laban might also enter into a coalition with HNP.

Last week, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque also joined the party  even though he is a registered voter in Quezon City. HNP rules require its members to be registered in the Davao region.

Earlier this month, Senator Ping Lacson said Duterte-Carpio was a top pick for a next leader, although he previously condemned her hand in the ouster of former House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez.

Her coalition could become a political powerhouse -- pushing opposition parties to close ranks for 2019.

CNN Philippines Correspondent David Santos contributed to this report.
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The territory that is now the state of Maine was officially recognized as part of Massachusetts following the Treaty of Paris, although many of its residents disliked the arrangement. This led Maine  which was not contiguous with the Bay State  to petition the Massachusetts Assembly for secession in 1807. It was unsuccessful.

Before too long, the United States was at war with Great Britain again. And the perception among Mainers that Massachusetts was unwilling to provide them sufficient protection against British attacks reignited the desire for separation. A few years after the wars end, in 1819, Massachusetts granted permission to secede, and Maine petitioned the federal government for statehood. The timing was fortuitous.

A debate was then raging in Congress over another territorys request for statehood. Missouri had become part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and had applied for statehood in 1817. Rep. James Tallmadge Jr., a Democratic-Republican from New York, had proposed amendments to Missouris request that included restrictions on slavery, stoking the ire of Southerners.

At issue was the balance of power in Congress between free and slave states. To admit a new slave state would tip that balance toward the South. Maine offered an opportunity to even the score. And so a compromise was struck to grant statehood to both territories, one slave, the other free, while outlawing slavery in western territories north of the 3630 parallel. Maine became a state on March 15, 1820, Missouri on August 10, 1821.

The precarious truce on slavery held for about 34 years until the KansasNebraska Act. The act undermined the Missouri Compromise by allowing the question of slavery in these new territories to be decided by the settlers  so-called popular sovereignty. This spurred pro- and anti-slavery factions hoping to influence the outcome to pour into the territories, resulting in violent conflict.

Bleeding Kansas was not the only event of historical moment to follow the KansasNebraska Act, however. The bill had been sponsored by Stephen A. Douglas, and it roused back into national politics a particular lawyer from Illinois, who argued vociferously against both the legality of the act and the morality of slavery in a famous speech at Peoria in 1854.

These are some of the many issues lately taken up in our pages. Below you will find just a few highlights.

 M. Anthony Mills, Managing Editor | RealClear Media Group

***

Anti-Pluralism by William A. Galston. In this weeks RealClear Book of the Week, I highlight a new work arguing that the populist wave sweeping the West threatens liberal democracy.

Renewing Localism for the 21st Century. In the latest installment of our American Project series, Ryan Streeter contends that localism offers the solution to our divided politics.

To Reorganize Government Agencies, Trump Should Channel Truman. James C. Capretta argues that the presidents effort to reorganize federal agencies would benefit from a glance at history.

To Learn How to Govern, Go Home Again. Andy Smarick urges those aspiring to influence public life to seek governing experience at state and local levels.

Americas Factory Towns Arent All Republican. Leo Hindery Jr. rejects a narrative that says Democrats have lost the blue-collar vote.

There Are More Jobs Than Workers. Licensing Reform Can Help. Anil Niraula contends that excessive licensing requirements are hindering both worker mobility and labor force participation rates.

Pope Francis & the Death Penalty. In RealClearReligion, W. David Montgomery takes issue with the theological reasoning behind the Vaticans revised teaching on capital punishment.

Kavanaughs Hero and Climate Science. In RealClearEnergy, historian Jay Hakes assesses the potential impact of Trumps Supreme Court pick on the environment.

Parenting, Marijuana, and Federalism. Donna Sage makes a personal case for medical marijuana in RealClearHealth.

The Right Way Forward on College Completion. In RealClearEducation, Frederick M. Hess and R.J. Martin explore new ideas for improving college graduation rates.

Follow RealClearPolicy: Facebook | Twitter
Sometimes we in developed nations fail to grasp that not everything we do, no matter how well intentioned, is entirely welcomed in developing countries.

Often theyre just too polite to tell us.

Once on a flight to a Pacific island nation, I was seated next to an NGO worker who excitedly told me about her mission there. She was going to facilitate a symposium on gender issues, focusing on boosting the number of women in that countrys parliament.

It turned out that one of her reasons for joining this particular NGO, and taking an interest in the Pacific, was a sense of needing to make up for her grandmothers work many years earlier. Her grandmother had been (and here her voice dropped to a whisper) a missionary in the islands.

Such was her shame at this apparently horrifying family secret that she felt compelled to redress the balance many years later, by bringing the locals what she clearly felt was a more empowering vision. The fact that she was essentially doing exactly the same thing now as her grandmother had done then, albeit in the name of a different ideology, seemed to escape her.

At the end of last year, Samoas Associate Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Lealailepule Rimoni Aiafi, accused the United Nations of planning to secretly promote same-sex marriage in his country.

Speaking to the Samoa Observer, he described UN programs promoting gender equality being used as a secret window to pry open the door for same-sex marriage in Samoa. We have to be awake and be alert.

Now that sounds pretty far-fetched, and UN Women correctly denied the charge at the time, but there was a small grain of truth to it. As a Pacific specialist journalist for almost 25 years, I have often seen perfectly well-intentioned development programs aimed at nudging Pacific societies in a direction deemed progressive (by us) come up against a solid wall of religiously based objections.

And fail.

As is so often the case in the Pacific, no one is likely to want to offend their overseas donors by saying to their face, No, we dont want this because we are Christians. There will be a lot of nodding and smiling and ostensible agreement and yet, as time goes on, the proposed social engineering just doesnt seem to eventuate.

While UN Women certainly wasnt attempting to secretly introduce same-sex marriage into Samoa, its gender equality programs were clearly seen by some as the thin edge of the wedge.

Religious conservatives (who make up a very large proportion of most Pacific nations) are horrified by recent social developments in nearby Western countries such as Australia and New Zealand. Anyone who is a member of some Facebook forums for Pacific countries will be familiar with comments condemning same-sex marriage and expressing fear that their countries will somehow be next.

Tongas initial acceptance of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and immediate withdrawal following a public backlash, is another case in point. It might not necessarily be right, but that fear in the Pacific is very real indeed.

Not everyone disagrees, of course, and theres plenty of debate about these issues in the Pacific, which is perfectly healthy. But Christianity is often seen as a foundation of national identity in most parts of the region, and anything that might weaken it tends to be regarded as a threat.

Our current secularism is not exactly looked on with favour by many in the islands  something which we dont always grasp. Occasionally we are reminded of it directly.

For example, following Lealailepules expression of concern, no less than Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele weighed in, saying there is no true Christian country in the world that would allow same-sex marriage, and it would not be allowed in Samoa as long as it remained a Christian country.

At the time, I actually attempted to interview Lealailepule about his statement, but despite initially agreeing, he then didnt pick up his phone or respond to emails, which I suspect may have been because he thought a Western journalist was likely to simply make fun of his attitudes.

Perhaps countries such as Australia and New Zealand should use more people of faith in their development programs, men and women who can speak the language of religion and understand the concerns of people who, rightly or not, seem to feel vulnerable about what is sometimes seen as an irreligious Western cultural tide bent on sweeping everything before it.

I can still see that NGO worker striding through the airport, off to bring the light to those sitting in darkness, with a supreme self-confidence in the correctness of her cause.

I wonder what her missionary grandmother might have thought.
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By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 08/13/2018



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

: Before the 90 Days featured Rachel Bear and Jon Walters meeting for the first time, and viewers introduced to Tarik's relationship story and adventure abroad, during Sunday night's episode on TLC.: Before the 90 Days features six Americans and their partners overseas trying to make a romance work. In order to pursue a fairy-tale ending, these couples must overcome immense odds and obstacles, including flying halfway across the world just to meet or spend time together.Each couple hopes a marriage proposal will take place within 90 days, or else one's Tourist Visa will expire.The two returning pairs on : Before the 90 Days are Darcey Silva , a 42-year-old who works in the fashion industry from Middletown, CT, and her boyfriend Jesse Meester , a 24-year-old from Amsterdam, Netherlands, as well as Paul Staehle , a 34-year-old who works in IT from Louisville, KY, and his girlfriend Karine Martins , a 21-year-old from Brazil.The four new couples starring on the series are Angela Deem, a 52-year-old nursing assistant for Hospice from Hazlehurst, GA, and, her boyfriend Michael Ilesanmi, a 30-year-old from Nigeria; Rachel Bear , a 33-year-old from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and her boyfriend Jon Walters , a 34-year-old from England; Ricky Reyes, a 33-year-old photographer and videographer from Columbus, OH, and his love interest Melissa, a 28-year-old from Colombia; and Tarik Myers , a 43-year-old realtor and single father from Virginia Beach, VA, and his love interest Hazel Cagalitan from the Philippines.Below is the latest on each American and international pairing, according to the latest episode:Rachel traveled to England with her eight-month-old daughter, Lucy, saying they are a package deal. She believed Jon would be a good dad and hoped for a marriage proposal.Jon , however, didn't show up at the airport, and he made her take a train instead. Rachel was a little upset because she had a lot of luggage and traveling with an infant was a lot of work."That chance he's not who he says he is, that terrifies me," Rachel admitted in a confessional.About 24 hours before Rachel's arrival, Jon revealed he lives with his mother and dog. He works in waste management, sorting through garbage and making sure materials get recycled properly.Jon loved Rachel's big brown eyes and beautiful smile, and he also claimed to be in love with Lucy already.But Jon's sister said he's had a lot of girlfriends in the past and knows nothing about babies and fatherhood. Jon also confessed to being a bit of a playboy in the past, but Rachel was the woman he loved, and he was ready to change his ways for her.Jon said if things went well, he intended to propose marriage to Rachel. He already tried to get a visa to come to United States but his application had been denied because of his criminal record, so marriage was the only way they could be together in America."I'm worried after finding out the extent of my criminal record she may not want me in her life," Jon said.Rachel admitted she was absolutely exhausted from traveling and meeting Jon at the train station instead of the airport was not the dream scenario she had envisioned in her mind. Meanwhile, Jon actually vomited his breakfast because he was so nervous meeting Rachel.Once the couple met, they gushed about how much they loved each other, and they agreed they had shared their last first kiss. Rachel thought Jon was even more handsome in person, and he was so excited to meet Lucy.Although they had gotten to know each other over the last year and a half, Rachel still had questions and concerns about her love interest, and she only had two weeks to dive into his life and find out exactly who he is. The situation made Rachel feel a little anxious.Paul hadn't seen his girlfriend in four months, and he worried Karine's father wouldn't accept "a criminal" marrying his daughter.There were more things for Paul to be worried about. For instance, he was suspicious of Karine's relationship with a guy named Joe. Paul noticed Karine had liked his photos on social media and was flirting with Joe, so he worried she'd just replace him with another American guy if her family didn't approve of him.Once Paul arrived in Brazil, all five of his suitcases were missing from the baggage claim -- including all the documents and court records he had brought with him to show Karine's father."There are a lot of obstacles standing in our way, but I still love her with all of my heart," Paul told the cameras.Paul and Karine stayed in a hotel for a few nights before they planned to move into an apartment together for the next few months. Karine got the room ready with a mosquito net because Paul was afraid of everything the last time he had visited Brazil.When Paul and Karine began exploring the area together the following day, Karine was constantly using her phone, and this upset Paul because she was acting like she didn't miss at all.Paul needed reassurance from Karine that her intentions were pure because her behavior on social media was weighing heavily on his mind.Karine insisted the man she communicated with on Instagram was just a friend who taught her some exercises, but she didn't seem to know what to say once Paul confronted her with a comment she had left on Joe's page of multiple emoticons with heart eyes.Paul hoped Karine hadn't been cheating on him while he was home in the United States. He therefore asked Karine to take a pregnancy test, and she was annoyed how "dramatic" he was acting, especially since he had already tested her for sexually transmitted diseases.Karine refused to oblige to Paul's requests and walked away from him crying, wondering whether he'd ever really trust her.Angela's documents hadn't arrived at the post office when they were supposed to, so she couldn't travel as planned. Her flight was leaving that night at 6PM, but she was missing her passport.Angela was so disappointed because she had waited one year to meet her "soul mate" and had spent a lot of money on this trip. She felt overwhelmed and upset.Angela's passport, however, arrived the next day, and so she was able to book another flight although it cost her a lot of money.Angela intended to propose marriage to Michael in Nigeria, and she couldn't wait to meet him. But Angela's daughter was older than Michael, so that was a cause of concern for the family."I'm worried about leaving my family, but I'm in love. I don't want to wait another 10 years to see if itas real. I need to go for it," Angela told the cameras.Angela said Michael made her happy and feel loved. Even though people looked at her like she was stupid for traveling to Nigeria, she didn't care. She had put so much effort, time and heart into this visit, so she commented, "It's now or never."About 24 hours before Angela arrived in Nigeria, Michael revealed it was his dream to become a businessman in the United States. He couldn't wait to come to America and hopefully meet President Donald Trump , his mentor in business. Michael said he loved Donald Trump and America so much.Michael viewed Angela and "loving and protective." He thought of Angela as his "elder" and said he "respected her so much."But Michael's friends gave him a hard time about dating a woman who's 20 years older. They kept calling her "grandma" and said the huge age difference was simply "too much."Michael argued Angela was going to be his future wife and he's okay with her being the boss. For example, Michael said Angela acted "so dramatic" if he missed one of her calls.Viewers were introduced to Tarik for the first time. He is a single dad to a five-year-old daughter, Arie, who has high-functioning autism. Tarik said she's the most important person in his life.Tarik never married Arie's mother because they had a tumultuous relationship, so he was lonely.As a result, Tarik started traveling a couple of years ago in order to meet new people. He went to Asia and got a girlfriend in Bangkok. It didn't work out, however, so he began searching for The One on Asian dating websites.Tarik said he "got lucky" and "hit the jackpot" with a woman named Hazel from the Philippines."She's drop dead gorgeous to the point where it makes me dumb," Tarik gushed.When texting Tarik, Hazel would say she's very shy, so she refused to talk to him on the phone -- Hazel would only text him. Tarik was starting to get the feeling she had cold feet and was playing games, especially when she asked to pick him up at the airport with friends and her niece by her side.Tarik was hoping to prove his loved ones wrong, that Hazel wasn't just taking him for a ride.But Tarikas little brother, Dean, expressed some reservations about Hazel. Dean said his older brother can be "too nice" and his heart was "too open."Tarik also revealed there were other men in Hazelas life and she's still in touch with ex-boyfriends whom she calls her friends. Dean called Hazel "a con artist," and so he decided to join Tarik on the trip to "protect" his brother and be honest with him about the situation.Tarik was then shown traveling over 9,000 miles and 36 hours to meet the woman of his dreams -- a woman whom he assumed would make a good stepmom for Arie.But Hazel had been acting strange, and Tarik acknowledged everything that was playing out in his mind could fall to pieces or turn on a dime.Tarik had purchased an engagement ring regardless. Although he knew it was crazy to potentially propose to someone he's never met, he was completely invested in his romance with Hazel and hoped she felt the same way.Ricky was traveling to Colombia to meet Melissa. They had only communicated through text, but he felt their romance was real and he fell in love quickly. However, she had been distant recently, answering him in short phrases or with one word.Despite the red flags, he traveled to Colombia with a diamond ring in his pocket."Two things could happen by the next time I come to this airport. One, I have a fiancee, or two, I am heartbroken... I want to meet the love of my life," Ricky said in a confessional.Ricky told Melissa to meet him at a restaurant at 7PM, but she never responded. He suspected she was just nervous and really hoped she would show up.Melissa hadn't communicated with Ricky at all since his arrival, but she finally texted him while he was at the restaurant to warn him that she was running 30 minutes later.Ricky was invested in the relationship emotionally and financially. He just thought Melissa was nervous and that's why she hadn't been very communicative over the last several days, but from a viewer's perspective, Melissa seemed to be a catfish or some type of scam.After two hours of waiting, Ricky began to realize Melissa probably wasn't coming to the restaurant, and he grew very frustrated, concerned and confused. Ricky was "pissed off" and didn't know if she was playing him."She can't even send me a text message back and say, 'I'm sorry!' There's a certain time limit when I'm just going to go," Ricky vented to the cameras.Darcey felt Jesse wanted to keep her below him, and so it often sparked arguments between them.Darcey intended to have a heart to heart about their issues before he met her daughters for the first time.Similarly, Jesse wanted to embrace Darcey's life in America, but he disapproved of her behavior on social media and called her insecure."I don't want to be associated with a partner who behaves like that," he said."Despite our differences, I still love him. I want to be his wife," Darcey noted.Jesse said Darcey's outspoken nature on social media made him look like a cheater and hurt his business as a personal trainer.One dinner out together quickly turned into a heated argument, and neither individual could believe they were already fighting like this. Jesse even threatened to return to Amsterdam right away, and Darcey cried about how Jesse was shutting her out."I'm done," Jesse said, as Darcey vented to the cameras how she felt "suffocated" in their relationship.Jesse didn't understand why it was so hard to just have a good time with Darcey, but she ended up apologizing for how she had treated him. That's all Jesse wanted to hear, that she owned her mistakes.Jesse then said, "I love you," and kissed her hand.Jesse told the cameras that although a woman is 40, it doesn't necessarily mean she's more mature than the average woman. And Darcey just hoped to make the rest of the trip "drama free," mainly for her kids.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 08/13/2018



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

: Happily Ever After? stars Paola Mayfield and Russ Mayfield have revealed whether they have a baby boy or girl on the way."We are having a BOY!!!!" Paola revealed on Instagram, sharing a series of photos from the couple's gender reveal party in Miami, FL."I didn't care if it was a boy or a girl, I just wanted a healthy baby and to be able to have it in my arms as soon as possible. Of course I'm always rooting for a girl but a boy is a blessing as well and I know my husband is really excited! This is an amazing experience now I can finally say I'm pregnant!!! I'm having a little boy. #russandpao #90dayfiance."And Russ also posted a photo from the party of the pair celebrating and cheering as blue confetti fell from above."I am so proud and ecstatic that we will be having a baby BOY! I know and am confident God has prepared me as I welcome in our baby into our world!" Russ wrote on Instagram."I only want to continue striving to be the leader I was called to be and be the proud, strong, and loving father our baby boy deserves. #genderreveal #teamboy #russandpao #babybump #love #90dayfiance #90dayfiancehappilyeverafter #prouddad."Paola, 31, and Russ, 32, had a gender reveal party in Miami on Friday night organized by the mom-to-be's close friend Kelly Pereira, whom the Colombian native met two months after she moved to the sunny state, according to People.The bash reportedly included cocktails, Latin-themed appetizers, and a "joke" cake that didn't identify the color blue or pink.Russ and Paola also spoke to their parents via video chat at the party, People reported, heartfelt comments were made about the Mayfields' rainbow baby.Russ from Oklahoma met Paola, a model and former fashion designer, in her home country of Colombia while he was on a work assignment in the petroleum industry.They got married in October 2013 and initially starred on Season 1 of .The reality TV stars announced last month they're expecting a child together.The big news was delivered to fans in the form of an Instagram photo featuring Russ reading a book entitled Dad's Guide to Pregnancy for Dummies in bed while Paola was surrounded by treats and snacks.The couple previously revealed they had suffered a miscarriage on Season 3 of : Happily Ever After?.The miscarriage left Paola devastated and feeling alone, while Russ didn't know how to talk to or support his wife. However, they worked through their issues together and appear better than ever.A different spinoff of called : Before the 90 Days currently airs on Sunday nights at 8PM ET/PT on TLC.
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As it got closer and closer to 6 p.m. on Aug. 13, waves of women in white dresses flooded Tate Student Center. All of them were PNMs, or Poten
One of the things Reed Barrickman always wanted to do was start a tribute band for one of his favorite bands, The Doors. One day, he decided t
During the height of his fame in the 1960s, Walter Keane drew a large following of impassioned art collectors and fans that were fascinated by the over-the-top big eye motif in the artwork he sold.

Hollywood elites were also admirers of the exaggerated peepers, including actress Natalie Wood whose untimely death in 1981 has recently resurfaced into mainstream media nearly four decades later.

Wood was a collector of original Keane's, and in 1961 the actress had her own portrait done by both San Francisco painters Walter and Margaret Keane. They were invited over to Woods Bel Air home to each do her portrait in a photo shoot done by Life magazine. Images from that event can be seen in the gallery above.

The photo shoot, as it would later turn out, actually captured the intersection of two California scandals. The paintings prefaced a notorious Hawaii courtroom showdown in 1986 where the Keanes were ordered to paint for the jury. After years of discrediting her work, Margaret claimed she was the true genius behind the big eyes, and sued Walter for slander. The case was supposed to set the record straight to determine the true artist behind the big eyes.

Margaret proved she was the rightful artist when she painted an artwork in 53 minutes while Walter declined to paint due to sore shoulder. Director Tim Burtons 2014 film Big Eyes was based on the troubled marriage and the ensuing courtroom showdown.

But on that day in 1961, the Keanes appeared civil and painted two very distinct portraits of the Hollywood icon.

Margaret fashioned a more sophisticated work that presented Wood in a little black dress with a flirty expression, while Walters rendition featured Wood as a wide-eyed waif holding onto a poodle.

One photograph from the shoot showed the couple painting the actress on canvas as Wood gazes, poolside in her bathing suit. Once the portraits were completed, Wood was photographed between the images where she seems to mirror Margarets impression of her.

Though two very distinct portraits, Wood was forever immortalized in both images with signature big eyes.

The couple also painted other luminaries of the time, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Kim Novak, Adlai Stevenson, Jerry Lewis, Liberace, and Woods husband, actor Robert Wagner, who in February was labeled a person of interest in Woods death by investigators.

"As we've investigated the case over the last six years, I think he's more of a person of interest now," Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Lieutenant John Corina told the TV news program 48 Hours. "I mean, we know now that he was the last person to be with Natalie before she disappeared."

The Wood case was officially reopened in 2011.

Walter Keane died in 2000, Margaret Keane has long operated a studio for her work near San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square.

Follow Susana Guerrero on Twitter and email her at sguerrero@sfchronicle.com
TORRINGTON  The Burrville Regional Fire School is no more.

After 50 years of use, the aging and dilapidated buildings at 606 Burr Mountain Road were razed to make way for a modern campus.

The school, which hasnt operated for about three years, will be renamed the Litchfield County Fire Training School. The facility, which is expected to reopen next month, will once again offer training classes for Litchfield County firefighters.

The $13.1 million project was approved in 2016 by the state Bond Commission, but planning for the upgrade began nearly 20 years ago, said Richard Winn, the training school director.

We used to fight for upgraded budgets, he said. That was when the eight regional fire schools operated independently, he said.

There are now nine regional schools, all managed by the Connecticut Fire Academy, a statewide organization that allows the schools to combine their requests for funding. A study conducted by the academy showed that all of the schools needed to be rebuilt.

The Burrville school was third on the list, Winn said.

More for you State provides more than $13 million for Burrville Fire...

We had our own property, so we moved ahead (with the plans), he said.

Construction for the upgrade began in 2017, he added.

The state has budgeted $300,000 a year to operate the the school, but Winn said the annual cost of propane and electricity alone is expected to be $100,000 a year.

We need income, Winn said.

Some of the funds will come from students who register for the state-mandated classes that are required to become a certified firefighter. The cost for a Firefighter I class is $1,050, which includes books and exams. It requires a student to attend 203 hours of training over a five-month period. The subsequent Firefighter II course costs $850 and is held for 95 hours.

Its high-quality training, said Torrington Fire Chief Peter Towey.

Towey said the substantial time commitment to become a certified firefighter will provide added skills for area fire departments.

The campus offers a state-of-the-art conference room, said Robert Norton Jr., the school committee chairman for the Connecticut Fire Academy.

Any fire department or business could hold meetings there, he noted.

The usage cost would be affordable for groups, Norton said.

The upgrade has been a long time in coming, Norton said, noting hes pleased with the results. It looks phenomenal. Its such a big difference from what we used to have. Its something the whole county can be proud of.

A grand opening for the upgraded campus will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Oct. 20. Area firefirghers are invited, Winn said, as well as the public. To learn more about the Connecticut Fire Academy, visit https://www.facebook.com/CTFireAcademy.
A Maoist activist who supported a campaign to set up an independent workers' union in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong has been "kidnapped" and is being detained in an unknown location, prompting further protests by labor activists, RFA has learned.



Shen Mengyu, a former employee of the Jasic Technology factory in Guangdong's Shenzhen city, was taken away by the authorities after she led a campaign for a union to negotiate collectively on behalf of some 1,000 Jasic workers.



Shen was grabbed and forcibly restrained by three unidentified individuals as she ate dinner with her father on Aug. 11, before being bundled into an unmarked vehicle, sources close to the campaign told RFA.



An academic researching the labor movement in China told RFA that nobody knows where Shen was taken. A fellow activist identified only by a nickname Xiao Hu was detained around the same time, and also remains incommunicado, the academic said.



"Around 20 supporters [of Shen and the union campaign] went once again to a square near the Yanziling police station today ... and made speeches, explaining to passersby what had happened," the academic said.



"They were calling for the release [of Shen and other detainees]."



The protesters had steered clear of the police station, for fear of being detained themselves, he said.



"We were beaten up in our own factory by unofficial police thugs," one protester says on video footage of the protest, as a fellow protester holds up a portrait of late supreme leader Mao Zedong behind him.



"You may say that people get beaten up all the time, and there's no way to care about all of it," the man says. "But we have to stand up and speak out like human beings; we can't allow ourselves to be trampled underfoot like ants."



An officer who answered the phone at the Yanziling police station on Monday said they didn't know about the situation, when asked about Shen Mengyu's whereabouts.



'Picking quarrels'



Thirty workers at Shenzhen Jasic Technology were detained last month on suspicion of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," after their cause was supported by a group of Maoists from the far left of China's political spectrum, led by Shen.



A second anonymous source said 16 of them have since been released, but remain under close surveillance by the authorities.



Many have since made allegations of mistreatment and brutality against police, the source said.



"Sixteen out of the 30 have been released, and 14 are still inside," the source said. "Hu Kaiqiao went straight back to her hometown on her release, and we haven't heard anything from her since."



"Seven other workers have spoken out, saying that they were mistreated or tortured to varying degrees," the source said. "Since they came out, they are under surveillance and being followed."



A former detainee and Jasic employee told RFA via social media that conditions in the police station were inhumane, with more than 50 people crammed into a cell of just 30 square meters.



Detainees had to wash in cold water, and were forced into humiliating and stressful postures while being interrogated by police, they said.



Meanwhile, the source said former detainee and Jasic employee Lan Zhiwei was restrained behind his back and beaten, while fellow detainee Huang Lanfeng was struck in the mouth and repeatedly around her head, causing bleeding.



"Another person by the name of Tang Xiangwei also got beaten up in there," the source said.



Shen and a group of Maoists from the far left of China's political spectrum applied for jobs at Jasic Technology as part of their bid to help the unionization campaign at the factory, but many of the workers were then targeted for beatings by unidentified men.



Party connections



According to an open letter penned last month by Shen and fellow activists, Jia Lei, owner of the Jasic factory, and personnel manager Guo Liqun are both delegates to the Shenzhen People's Congress, a rubber-stamp body entirely controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.



Guo's husband is also a high-ranking official in the local government.



"We hope that party secretary Tao Yongxin will immediately deal with this matter, urge the police to release the detainees immediately, and severely punish those who beat up the workers, compensate them for their losses, and apologize," the letter, a copy of which was available on the overseas documentation site HackMD, said.



"The Pingshan government and the regional branch of the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) should pay attention to directives from the central government, and encourage these workers to set up a union for the legal protection of their rights, and play a positive and supervisory role in managing the company," it said.



The detention of workers came on July 27 as they protested the dismissal by factory management of those involved in a bid to set up a union through legal channels.



Seven workers said they had been beaten up by police for their involvement in the campaign to found a union, which began on July 18.



The ruling Chinese Communist Party-backed All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) is charged with protecting workers' rights, but independent labor groups and workers say it has a poor track record when it comes to negotiating with management and government officials.



Meanwhile, rights groups say police are increasingly employing criminal charges as a means of silencing independent labor activism.



Political dilemma



More than 40 years after his death at the age of 82, late supreme leader Mao Zedong still presents a political dilemma to the ruling Chinese Communist Party.



While revering Mao as the leader who founded the People's Republic on Oct. 1, 1949, the party has been forced to conclude publicly that the leader made some "serious political mistakes."



Locally funded statues of Mao have been torn down in recent years, reflecting official concerns over the potential use of the Great Helmsman's image as a focus for millions of poor and dispossessed people in China, including the country's army of petitioners, many of whom have lost their land or homes to government-backed development.



Mao's birthplace at Shaoshan in the central province of Hunan remains a major tourist attraction, drawing massive crowds around the anniversary of his death on Sept. 9.



Those paying homage to the father of communist China include laid-off workers and veterans who fought in the China-Vietnam War in 1979, according to state media.



The administration of President Xi Jinping has shut down a number of Maoist websites in recent years, including Utopia, but has generally allowed them to re-open after politically sensitive events, such as the trial of leftist icon and former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai in 2013.



Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Authorities in Shanghai have detained an activist who called on people to write "Down with the [ruling Chinese] Communist Party" in public toilets in the city, in a fresh twist on the Chinese president's call for a "toilet revolution."



Ji Xiaolong had called on rights activists and democracy campaigners to respond to Chinese president Xi Jinping's call for a "toilet revolution" by penning political slogans on the walls that could be seen by thousands.



Ji posted the comments on social media on July 20, calling on people to write "Down with the Communist Party," his friend Chen Jianfang told RFA.



"He has been incommunicado since July 31, with his phone switched off and nobody at his apartment," Chen said.



"It is very likely that this is because he posted messages online calling for a 'toilet revolution,'" he said. "He wrote a few words in a hospital toilet."



"I don't have money to cure my bowel movements, Fatty Xi [Jinping] is chucking money around, changing the constitution to make himself king," Ji's graffiti read, according to Chen. "When will this suffering end? Down with the Communist Party!"



Ji's sister said she received a call from his girlfriend on July 31 saying she feared something had happened to him.



"He has the kind of personality that can't just let certain things go, such as official corruption or whatever," she said. "As a family, we can't let it go either. I can't."



"We don't care much about affairs of state, but we definitely care about any policies affecting ordinary people," she said.



Whereabouts unknown



Ji's girlfriend, who is currently on the democratic island of Taiwan, said she has yet to receive any confirmation of his whereabouts, and is still trying to find out where he is.



"One friend says he's in [the southwestern province of] Sichuan, but another is saying he's in Pudong district, Shanghai," she said.



"I don't know what's happening, because everyone is saying something different."



Shanghai-based rights lawyer Dai Peiqing, who attends the same church as Ji, said he hasn't been seen for some time.



"We are both Christians, and we would go to the church every day," Dai said. "One week, he just didn't show up, and friends who went [to his home] looking for him a few days later couldn't find him."



"But I don't know [what happened to him], and, as a lawyer, I can't just speculate on the basis of no evidence," he said.



Public toilets needed



Ji's disappearance comes after authorities in the eastern province of Jiangxi set up a steering group to implement Xi's "toilet revolution" in the province, building and renovating more than a million public facilities over the next three years.



The steering group would work to implement Xi's "toilet revolution agenda" in the spirit of the 19th Party Congress, official media reported earlier this month.



But local residents said the government would be better off focusing on people's anger over official corruption and lack of an independent judicial system.



"I certainly don't support this," a resident of rural Jiangxi surnamed Zeng told RFA in an interview on Aug. 3.



"This sort of toilet revolution idea is superfluous. The government should be trying to do a better job and helping people to live and work in peace," he said.



Lawyer Zhang Tingyuan agreed.

"I think they are putting the cart before the horse," he said.



"Jiangxi province should start with issues like education and medical care that are most directly related to people's lives, so that ordinary people can really feel an improvement in their lives," he said.



Reported by Lau Siu-fung for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Yang Fan for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
North Korean authorities have canceled all visits by foreign tourists and businessmen to the capital Pyongyang in advance of the Sept. 9 anniversary of the founding of the countrys communist regime, North Korean sources say.



The ban, which runs from Aug. 11 through Sept. 5, has inconvenienced representatives of foreign firms, some of whom had already made travel plans, an ethnic Korean businessman based in Shenzhen, China, told RFAs Korean Service.



I had bought a ticket for a flight to Pyongyang for mid-August, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



However, my North Korean partner told me a week ago to postpone my trip and schedule it again for some time after Sept. 5, he said.



Citing certain circumstances at his company, the North Korean business partner would offer no further explanation, the source said.



But he sounded very certain, so I canceled my ticket, which had been difficult to arrange, and now Im looking for new dates to go to Pyongyang. Though now Im thinking I may just have to cancel the trip completely, he said.



I suspect the real reason for the sudden request to postpone my trip is that they want visitors available to watch the mass gymnastics displays on Sept. 9, the anniversary of the founding of the Republic, he said.



Others had also given up their plans to go to Pyongyang because their North Korean business partners had asked them to, he said, adding, Its possible that the authorities have ordered the North Korean trading companies to postpone the visits.



Group tours canceled



Also speaking to RFA, a source in the Chinese border city of Dandong said that an Aug. 10 government order suspending group tours to the capital cited an urgent need to renovate all hotels in Pyongyang.



But South Korean and other foreign media say that this is related to preparations for a military parade on Sept. 9 and for a visit by the Chinese vice president.



I think they could be right about that, he said.



Though the government order suspends group tours beginning Aug. 11, tours for foreign tourists to the North Korean city of Sinuiju, near the border with China, and to the coastal region of Rason are continuing to run, the source said.



So it seems likely they are trying only to keep foreigners away from Pyongyang during those dates, he said.



North Korea says they are suspending group tours, but they dont allow individual tours anyway, so this means that they are blocking all visits by foreigners to Pyongyang, he said.



Reported by Joonho Kim for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Rohingya refugees stand behind a fence in the 'no-man's land' between the Myanmar and Bangladesh border, as seen from Maungdaw district in western Myanmar's Rakhine state, June 29, 2018.

A draft of a confidential memorandum of understanding between the Myanmar government and two United Nations agencies says Rohingya Muslim refugees who voluntarily return to the country from neighboring Bangladesh will be sent to their original places of residence or to a secure place of their choice nearest to those locations.

They will also have the same freedom of movement as other Myanmar nationals in Rakhine state, the document says.

Myanmars Ministry of Labor, Immigration and Population signed the MoU with the United Nations development (UNDP) and refugee (UNHCR) agencies on June 6, but the document and its terms have not been issued publicly.

A copy of the draft MoU obtained by RFAs Myanmar Service outlines the general principles and the scope of the parties cooperation in returning and reintegrating some of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled northern Rakhine state after two brutal crackdowns by security forces in October 2016 and August 2017, which included killings, rape, and arson.

The first campaign drove roughly 90,000 Rohingya across the border into Bangladesh, while the second forced more than 700,000 to flee. The refugees have been living in sprawling makeshift camps in southeastern Bangladesh with others who escaped from previous bouts of violence in Rakhine.

[T]hose who have left Myanmar are to return voluntarily and safely to their own households and original places of residence or to a safe and secure place nearest to it of their choice based on their well-informed decision, the MoU says.

It also says: The returnees will enjoy the same freedom of movement as all other Myanmar nationals in Rakhine state, in conformity with existing laws and regulations, and in conformity with the recommendations of the Rakhine Advisory Commission.

After the residency of returning refugees has been verified, Myanmar's labor ministry will issue identification documents to the returnees and ensure a clear and voluntary pathway to citizenship to those eligible, the MoU says.

Because Myanmar views the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, it has systematically discriminated against them, denying them citizenship  though some have lived in the country for generations  freedom of movement, and access to educations, jobs, and health care.

The Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, headed by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, proposed ways to solve sectarian tensions between Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in the multiethnic state, although it did not evaluate possible human rights violations by security forces.

Its final report issued in August 2017 called for the closure of internally displaced persons camps in Rakhine that house Rohingya displaced by communal violence in 2012, reviews of Myanmars 1982 Citizenship Law which prevents the minority group from becoming citizens, and an end to restrictions on the Rohingya to preclude further violence in the region.

A durable solution

The MoU, which does not refer to the Rohingya by name, also says that the government will work for a durable and comprehensive solution to the displacement of persons in and from Rakhine state, and that the parties to the agreement will conduct assessments, planning, coordination, fundraising, and implementation activities with regard to relevant humanitarian and development actions.

The parties agree to the principle that assistance must be designed and implemented in a way that is conflict sensitive, inclusive, and non-discriminatory, taking into account international humanitarian and development principles, the MoU says.

Under the agreement, the UNHCR will provide assistance with the voluntary repatriation and resettlement program through protection activities, community consultations, and site visits, and support programs that benefit all communities in potential return areas.

The UNDP is tasked with coordinating and providing support to assessments related to building resiliency in communities in Rakhine, including sustainable livelihoods, conflict sensitivity, and local institutional capacity building at selected project sites, and with undertaking the planning process for the recovery and development that will benefit returnees.

Activities on repatriation, reintegration assistance, and resilience-based recovery and development under this MoU will be aimed at helping returnees to resume their normal life in the shortest possible time, the document says.

Rights groups have criticized the parties to the MoU for not publicly releasing the terms of the agreement.

But the document says, The parties shall ensure that information under this MoU is not transferred or supplied to any third party without prior written consent from all parties.

Myanmar and the two U.N. agencies must submit written notice to terminate their agreement or temporarily suspend its execution three months in advance of the effective date.

The MoU is in effect for 12 months from the date of its signing. The parties must decide whether to agree to an extension of the MoU at least 90 days before its expiration date on July 5, 2019.

The UNHCR also signed a separate MoU with Bangladesh in April regarding the return of the Rohingya refugees.

The U.N., rights groups, and other members of the international community have said that the August 2017 crackdown on the Rohingya amounted to ethnic cleansing, if not genocide, and the repatriation plan has failed to overcome the group's fears of returning to places where many were killed and their villages burned.

Bangladesh's Foreign Minister Abdul Hassan Mahmood Ali (front row, 2nd from R) sits in an office during a visit to western Myanmar's Rakhine state, Aug. 11, 2018. Credit: Bangladesh's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Visit by Bangladeshi FM

Bangladesh's Foreign Minister Abdul Hassan Mahmood Ali is meanwhile on a four-day visit to Rakhine state to discuss issues related to the repatriation of the Rohingya.

Myanmar signed an agreement with Bangladesh on Nov. 23, 2017, to take back the refugees who wished to voluntarily return to Myanmar and whose prior residency in the country could be verified.

During a ministerial meeting, the two sides agreed on the need to speed up the implementation of the repatriation program. Ali also cited the need to accelerate the creation of an environment conducive to the refugees' return in northern Rakhine state, according to a statement issued by the countrys Ministry of Foreign affairs on Aug. 11.

Myanmar, which has built two refugee reception centers and one transit camp with a capacity for handling 30,000 people, has identified 42 resettlement sites and is erecting prefabricated housing for the returnees in selected locations, the statement said.

Though Myanmar previously said it was prepared to begin taking back refugees in January, the program has been beset by delays, with each side blaming the other.

[The] two governments will keep working on the repatriation process according to [their] agreement, said Aung Tun Thet, member of the Union Enterprise for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development in Rakhine State (UEHRD), a Myanmar government initiative to rebuild infrastructure and the economy in the tattered state and to return and resettle the refugees.

Members of the UEHRD, which is chaired by the countrys de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, met with Ali on Aug. 10 in Naypyidaw to discuss repatriation readiness in accordance with the agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar.

The Myanmar government also asked the Bangladeshi foreign minister to stop providing humanitarian aid from the International Committee of the Red Cross, UNDP, and international NGOs to the 6,000 Rohingya refugees living in a no-mans land on the border line between the two countries, according to the statement issued by Bangladeshs foreign affairs ministry.

Instead, Myanmar proposed delivering aid from the Myanmar side, it said.

The refugees living in the no-mans land have previously demanded that the Myanmar government grant them citizenship, ensure their safety, and rebuild their destroyed houses.

The border line area is the place where nobody is in [one country or the other], Aung Tun Thet said. As long as people live in this area, we will have difficulties and challenges. Thats why we have been asking the people who live in this area to move out.

Bangladesh said it responded positively to Myanmars proposal to conduct a new joint survey of the no-mans land area, the statement said.

Reported by Khin Khin Ei for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Bangladesh has agreed to a request from Myanmar officials to replace the words Myanmar nationals with displaced persons from Rakhine state on identity cards issued to Rohingya refugees in Coxs Bazar, a Bangladeshi official told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news site.



Dhaka agreed to the change during meetings this weekend in Myanmar between Bangladesh Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali and Kyaw Tint Swe, the minister of Myanmars State Counselors Office.



A high-profile delegation led by Ali on Saturday toured Maungdaw township in Myanmars Rakhine State, the site of last years military crackdown that prompted one of the worlds worst refugee crises in decades.



While discussing the repatriation issues at the ministerial meeting, Myanmar raised objection about the words used in the identity card we issued for the Rohingya now living in Coxs Bazar, a member of the Bangladeshi delegation told BenarNews on condition of anonymity.



Myanmar emphasized during the meeting that in line with an agreement signed in Naypyidaw on Nov. 23, 2017, the people who fled to Bangladesh from Rakhine are not Myanmar citizens, but they used to live in Rakhine, the source said.



We listened to them, and agreed to change the identity of those living in Coxs Bazar as displaced persons from Rakhine state, he said. He did not make it clear when Dhaka would issue the new cards reflecting the agreed changes.



Nor was it clear how the decision would affect a joint effort announced in June by U.N. and Bangladeshi officials to issue new ID cards to all Rohingya refugees older than 12 after verifying their identities.



Refugees demand safety guarantees



Rohingya leaders expressed concerns that Myanmars latest move could obliterate their historical rights.



We are Rohingya. We are Myanmar nationals. We do not belong to Bangladesh, Mohammad Afzal, a leader of Balukhali refugee camp, told BenarNews in a phone interview. Bangladesh has refrained from calling us Rohingya because of Myanmars objection. Now, they wont call us Myanmar nationals?



Buddhist-majority Myanmar considers the Rohingya illegal migrants from Bangladesh.



Humayun Kabir, a former ambassador and vice president of private think-tank Bangladesh Enterprise Institute told BenarNews that Naypyitaws demand for Dhaka to drop the word Myanmar national from the Rohingya ID cards seeks to bring uniformity in the nomenclature officially used by Bangladesh and Myanmar.



This is not a big issue, he said. The most important issue is safe and sustainable repatriation of the Rohingya.



Ali and his delegation visited the villages to verify Myanmars preparation for the planned repatriation of the Rohingya refugees, about 700,000 of whom fled to southeastern Bangladesh starting a year ago as a result of a military campaign that the United States and the United Nations have condemned as ethnic cleansing.



The crackdown followed attacks by Rohingya insurgents on police outposts in August 2017.



The refugees live in rudimentary shelters on tree-stripped hills in southeastern Coxs Bazar district, joining about 400,000 others who had fled earlier waves of violence in Myanmar.

Although Bangladesh and Myanmar formally agreed almost nine months ago to work together to start repatriation, no Rohingya have officially returned. Rohingya leaders have told BenarNews in previous interviews that they do not intend to go back until their safety is guaranteed.



Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news site.
SAKI, Azerbaijan -- The leader of Azerbaijan's opposition Republican Alternative (REAL) party has been released from prison after serving more than five years of his seven-year term.

A court of appeals in the northern city of Saki ruled on August 13 that Ilqar Mammadov's remaining prison term must be suspended.

The court also ruled that Mammadov has a two-year probation period during which he will not be allowed to leave the country.

Mammadov called the ruling "not a complete victory," saying that that he and his lawyers had demanded "a full acquittal."

In a statement, Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland welcomed the court order to release Mammadov, saying that "political prisoners in Europe, innocent people should not be deprived of their liberty."

Mammadov was arrested in February 2013 and charged with helping organize riots in the town of Ismayilli, northwest of Baku. He was sentenced to 7 years in jail in March 2014.

The opposition leader has insisted that the case against him was politically motivated.

In April, the Republican Alternative opposition movement announced it was now a political party but said it will not seek formal registration by the state.

Rights groups and Western governments have urged Azerbaijani authorities to release Mammadov and other political prisoners in the oil-rich South Caucasus country for years, and criticized the former Soviet republic's government for persistent clampdowns targeting independent journalists and rights defenders.

President Ilham Aliyev, who has ruled the Caucasus nation of almost 10 million people with an iron fist since shortly before his father's death in 2003, has shrugged off the criticism.
Afghan government forces have retaken most of Ghazni from the Taliban as clashes continued for a fourth straight day after the militant group launched an assault on the eastern city, officials say.

Security forces recaptured some 90 percent of Ghazni after reinforcements were sent to the city, Defense Ministry spokesman Ghafoor Ahmad Javed told RFE/RL late on August 13.

Javed said clashes continued into the evening on August 13 in Ghaznis Baghe Bahlool area, one of the last pockets that remain under Taliban control.

Earlier on August 13, Defense Minister Tareq Shah Bahrami said that some 1,000 additional troops had been sent to Ghazni, the capital of the province of the same name, and were trying to clear the city of Taliban militants.

"With the new measures in place, we expect that there will be a considerable development in the next 24 hours in the situation in Ghazni," Bahrami told reporters in Kabul.

"We hope there will be a good development," he added.

Afghan officials were quoted as saying that U.S. Special Forces units were on the ground helping to coordinate air strikes and ground operations but that was not confirmed by the U.S. military.

Ghazni is a strategic city located on the main road linking the capital, Kabul, with southern Afghanistan.

Three days after the militants launched their assault on the city of 270,000 people early on August 10, information was difficult to verify with telecommunications services being shut down due to the clashes.

Bahrami said the ongoing battle had killed about 100 police officers and soldiers, as well as at least 20 civilians. He also said that 194 Taliban fighters were killed.

Officials at the Interior Ministry were quoted as saying that the fighting also left at least 15 civilians dead and more than 400 others wounded.

Meanwhile, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called on the parties to "protect the lives and rights of civilians and to protect civilian infrastructure," particularly medical facilities.

"Medication at the main hospital is reportedly becoming very scarce and people are unable to safely bring casualties for treatment," Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, acting humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan, said in a statement.

He also said it was "unsafe" for people to travel to larger cities where medical facilities are available.

Food supplies in the city were "reportedly running low," he added.

Shah Gul Rezayee, a lawmaker from Ghazni, told RFE/RL on August 13 that the "Taliban has torched many parts of the city."

Some Ghazni residents who fled to other cities described panic and fear in the city, Rezayee said, speaking by phone from Kabul.

"They say dead bodies are laying uncovered in the streets, people are facing a shortage of food and drinking water, and there is no electricity in the city," she added.

A communications tower was destroyed by the Taliban, cutting off cell-phone and landline access to the city.

"People can't contact their relatives and friends, and it has added to the fear and panic," Rezayee said.

The Western-backed government in Kabul has been struggling to fend off the Taliban and other militant groups since the withdrawal of most NATO troops in 2014.

In May, the Taliban attacked the western city of Farah. After a day of intense fighting, Afghan commandos and U.S. air strikes drove the group to the outskirts of the city.

With reporting by AP and Reuters
China's state-run media claimed on August 13 that the country has prevented a "great tragedy" in the far-western Xinjiang region, the countrys first response to remarks by a United Nations panel saying it was "deeply concerned" about the flight of 1 million ethnic Uyghurs there.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on August 10 said ethnic Uyghurs in China were being held in "counterextremism centers," with millions more forced into re-education camps, turning China's Uyghur region into "something that resembles a massive internment camp."

The panel said most of the detained Uyghurs and Muslim minorities in Xinjiang have never been properly charged with a crime or tried in court.

China has said that Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tensions between the mostly Muslim Uyghur minority who call the region home and the ethnic Han Chinese majority.

In joint editorials in Chinese and English, the Global Times newspaper on August 13 said criticism of the rights record in Xinjiang was an attempt to stir trouble in the region and endanger its stability.

It added that China's security presence there has prevented the region from becoming another Syria or Libya.

China's mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uyghurs are the indigenous population in the northwestern Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region. Many have left China for communities across Central Asia and Turkey.

Members of the Uyghur diaspora say relatives have been arrested for seemingly harmless acts, such as sending Ramadan greetings to friends or downloading popular music.

Based on reporting by AP, dpa, and Reuters


DUSHANBE -- Five people have died in a helicopter accident in eastern Tajikistan, including three Russian mountaineers and two Tajik members of the helicopter crew, officials say.

Umeda Yusufi, a spokeswoman for Tajikistan's State Emergency Committee, said on August 13 that a Tajik pilot and 12 mountaineers, mainly from Russia, survived what she described as a crash-landing in the Pamir Mountains.

Bad weather conditions might have been the cause of the accident, according to Yusufi.

The Russian Embassy in Tajikistan has not confirmed the nationality of the mountaineers.

Tajik state media reported earlier that the Mi-8 helicopter was carrying 13 Russians, one Belarusian, and one Spanish mountaineer after they reached the Ismoili Somoni Peak, the highest in the former Soviet Union.
Norwegian Fisheries Minister Per Sandberg has resigned amid a wave of criticism for not informing the government of his recent private trips to Iran and China.

Sandberg admitted he had travelled to Iran in July and to China in May without informing the prime minister's office in advance.

Sandberg, 58, deputy head of the far-right, anti-immigration Progress Party, has also faced criticism for going on the trips with his girlfriend, Iranian-born Bahareh Letnes, 28, who obtained residency in Norway a decade ago.

Sandberg also admitted bringing his work phone with him.

In Norway, government members are required to report before going abroad on private trips, regardless of destination.

Norway also forbids the use of government-issued phones in a country with which Norway does not have established security cooperation.

After returning from Iran, Sandberg was ordered to hand his work phone to Norway's domestic intelligence service to make sure it was not hacked.

Norway regularly lists Iran as one of the countries most likely to carry out espionage, alongside China and Russia.

Sandberg gave no reason why he breached government security protocols.

Based on reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters
Thousands of Romanians rallied for the third night in a row, protesting against corruption and demanding the resignation of the current government.

Protesters in the capital, Bucharest, on August 12 waved Romanian, NATO, and European Union flags at a rally in a square near government offices.

Protesters shouted "Resign!" and assailed the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) as "the red plague."

There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Two nights earlier, rallies turned violent after riot police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse protesters. Some demonstrators lobbed rocks, bottles, and smoke bombs at riot police. About 500 people were reported injured in the clashes.

Police denied using excessive force, saying officers acted in a "gradual and proportionate" manner.

Local media estimated the crowd in the August 10 rally at 30,000-80,000 in Bucharest, with tens of thousands more demonstrating in other cities. No official figures were available.

Crowds were somewhat smaller on August 12 than they were the previous two nights.

But participants still expressed their anger over the leftist government, accusing it of corruption.

"We should make our presence felt, and they should understand that they are not wanted anymore at the country's helm," Cuc Valeriu, a factory worker, told the AFP news agency.

Coming Home To Protest

Many of those protesting were expat Romanians who had returned from their new homes abroad after organizers called for rallies on social media.

President Klaus Iohannis, a critic of the left-wing government, has condemned "the brutal intervention of riot police in the protests, but he also criticized some demonstrators for breaking through police lines guarding government buildings.

After winning power in 2016, the PSD attempted to decriminalize several corruption offenses through an emergency decree, leading to thousands of Romanians taking to the streets in protest and forcing the party to back down.

Iohannis, the European Commission, and the U.S. State Department criticized the proposed changes to judicial legislation, saying they could derail the rule of law.

Iohannis has been at loggerheads with the PSD, accusing it of attempting to weaken the fight against corruption, putting pressure on the judicial system, and of implementing bad fiscal policies.

Romania is one the poorest members of the European Union, with an average monthly wage of about 520 euros ($590).

It is also one of the EU countries most plagued by corruption and has seen frequent protests in the past year and a half.

With reporting by RFE/RLs Moldovan Service, AP, DW, AFP, Reuters, and Romania-Insider
4 The demonstrators called for Romania's Social Democrat-led government to resign, in part over the ruling coalition's dismissal of the head of the anticorruption agency and its moves to change laws in a way that critics say will make corruption more difficult to prosecute.
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When Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia 50 years ago, crushing the period of liberalization known as the Prague Spring, a young photographer named Libor Hajsky captured scenes of violence and fear -- as well as moments of empathy and dark humor.
Another Playa del Carmen taxi driver shot dead

Playa del Carmen, Q.R.  Another taxi driver in Playa del Carmen has been shot and killed in the residential area of Ejido.

A taxi driver from the Lazaro Cardenas del Rio union was shot during the early morning hours of Sunday.

Preliminary reports say the man, identified as 35-year-old J.R.G.M., was killed at 2:30 a.m. He was hit four times with bullets as someone in a black vehicle drove by, shooting him.

Witnesses said that the taxi driver was parked in Colonia Ejido in front of the Poliforum when two armed men appeared from a black vehicle and shot him repeatedly.

After hearing gunfire, neighbors called emergency 911, however when paramedics arrived, the man had already died.

Police arrived at Juarez Avenue to cordon off the area and begin with their investigation as well as a search for the shooter.

Last week, another Playa del Carmen taxi driver was found dead, shot to death outside his cab in the irregular In-House colony.
Government officials inspect Cancun airport for quality of services

Cancun, Q.R.  Inspectors from the Federal Attorneys Office (Profeco) have been inspecting businesses at the Cancun International Airport to verify the quality of the services being offered.

The Deputy Prosecutor for Services, Maria de los Angeles Jasso Cisneros, led a tour and inspection of the terminal in which she was accompanied by state delegate, Xavier de Jesus Rosado Martinez.

Angeles Jasso Cisneros said the visit is part of the Vacation and Tourism 2018 verification and monitoring program, which includes the distribution of passenger rights brochures with versions in Spanish, English and French.

The trip to the Cancun International Airport was made to verify compliance with the reforms and additions to the Civil Aviation Law and the Federal Consumer Protection Laws. She said they were inspecting for the rights for consumers, to verify the quality of the services provided and implement improvements.

With millions of passengers using the airport, Profeco in Quintana Roo has received only 64 complaints over the past 11 months with a conciliation percentage of 90 percent.

She added that consumers are being served in the service modules installed at the Cancun International Airport, which provide advice, information and immediate conciliation of complaints or non-conformities.

The inspections, which will continue until August 19, are done in coordination with the Ministry of Communications and Transportation and with operators and administrators of the airports, as well as the International Air Transport Association and the National Air Transportation Chamber to raise awareness of the importance of serving tourists well.
Mexico receives three on warrants after US arrests

Mexico City, Mexico  The Attorney General of the Republic says they have received three people with outstanding arrest warrants in Mexico after they were deported by the United States.

Three people with outstanding arrest warrants in Mexico have been handed over to Mexican authorities after the United States arrested and deported them. Two of the arrested were wanted for homicide, while the other has an outstanding arrest warrant for violent robbery.

Ivan F was arrested by US authorities in the state of Georgia. Ivan is wanted by the Orality Court in Criminal Matters in Mexicali, Baja California on charges of homicide.

The second arrested and deported man, Francisco Javier D, was also detained in compliance with an arrest warrant issued by a judge in Criminal Matters in Jiquilpan, Michoacan for the crimes of violent rape and robbery.

US authorities say Francisco Javier D was arrested in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and deported to Mexico where he will face charges.

Israel R. Photo: The Attorney General of the Republic (PGR)

A third man, Israel R, is wanted by authorities in Guanajuato for the crime of homicide. Israel R has an outstanding arrest warrant with a court in Salvatierra, Guanajuato.

In a statement, the Attorney General of Mexico said that joint work between law enforcement of both countries, through the Legal and International Affairs Deputy Attorneys Office and Interpol, resulted in their arrests.
US army officers offer specialized training to Mexican army, navy

Cozumel, Q.R.  US army officers have been on the island of Cozumel since last month, providing specialized training to members of the Mexican army and navy.

For many years, Cozumel has remained the headquarters for training and diving where members of the Mexican army and navy are prepared to react to missions when, and if, necessary. It is also where members of the US military have been coming for several years to help with specialized training for the Mexican army and navy.

The Mexican military, especially those of the Special Forces, jointly train with with their commando counterparts whose primary tasks are protecting land, air and sea.

According to information provided by the interior of the militia, officers from the United States Northern Command have been in Cozumel since last month providing training to members of the Special Forces of the Mexican Navy, noting the US military arrived to train their Mexican counterparts in technical and tactical knowledge.

The tactical instruction will continue until the end of August. There are five specialized military training camps for military forces, with the island of Cozumel being one.
Former Hamilton County Chancellor Howell Peoples has died in Florida at age 75.

He and his wife, Linda, had lived in recent years at Fort Pierce, Fla.

He served as a chancellor here for 32 years.

In January 2010, he announced that he had submitted his resignation to Governor Phil Bredesen to be effective at the end of March.

At the time Chancellor Peoples said, "During my tenure, I have been blessed to have Chancellors Wilkes T. Thrasher, Jr., R. Vann Owens, and W. Frank Brown III as colleagues, and to be supported by the wonderful employees of the Hamilton County Clerk & Master."

He afterward handled some mediation cases with the firm of Miller and Martin.

Chancellor Peoples received his J.D. from the University of Tennessee College of Law and his B.S. from the University of Tennessee.

He was inducted in 2016 into the Pro Bono Hall of Fame along with Justice Mickey Barker.

For many years he was a member of the Chattanooga Civitan Club.

A memorial service is planned later at the Hamilton County Courthouse.
Gasoline prices in Chattanooga have fallen 3.1 cents per gallon in the past week, averaging $2.53 per gallon on Monday, according to GasBuddy's daily survey of 170 stations in Chattanooga. This compares with the national average that has fallen 1.1 cents per gallon versus last week to $2.85 per gallon, according to GasBuddy.

Average gasoline prices on Aug. 13 in Chattanooga have ranged widely over the last five years: 13 in Chattanooga have ranged widely over the last five years:

$2.07 per gallon in 2017, $1.83 in 2016, $2.16 in 2015, $3.08 in 2014 and $3.24 in 2013.

Including the change locally during the past week, prices on Monday were 46.0 cents per gallon higher than a year ago and are 2.4 cents per gallon lower than a month ago. The national average has dropped 3.6 cents per gallon during the last month and stands 50.3 cents per gallon higher than a year ago.

Areas near Chattanooga and their current gas price climate:

Knoxville- $2.57, down 3.7 cents per gallon from last week's $2.61.

State of Tennessee- $2.60, down 2.4 cents per gallon from last week's $2.63.

Huntsville- $2.56, down 1.1 cents per gallon from last week's $2.57.

"Yet again, average gas prices have remained fairly quiet. This summer has been remarkably mum at pumps with most states seeing prices move in an uncharacteristically small summer range of 10-20 cents per gallon or less," said Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy. "Oil prices continue to be range bound between $67 and around $73 per barrel as of late as competing factors weigh on oil prices at very similar times. Oil inventories have continued to decline, but gasoline inventories remain healthy, and with summer drawing to a close and gasoline demand set to step down, we may see additional relief coming barring any disruptions to the flow of oil or gasoline like a major hurricane. "
[CAIRO] After months of arduous negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan about the Renaissance Dam  mainly on keeping water quotas the same as pre-dam levels, and ensuring minimum annual water flow through the dam  it was a real surprise to see an announcement by the Egyptian government that solutions to most outstanding problems had been reached by the end of the last meeting in mid-May.

The announcement followed meetings held on the sidelines of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa earlier this year, which was attended by leaders from across the continent. Information leaked after that meeting, and not denied by any of the governments involved, suggested that the three countries had agreed some technical details on how the reservoir that sits alongside the dam would be filled.

They agreed to fill Renaissance Dam Lake with 45 billion cubic meters of water over three years, so at a rate of 15 billion cubic meters annually. This means that as the upstream country, Ethiopia will keep 15 billion cubic metres to fill the lake, and the same volume will then be deducted from the water quotas of Egypt and Sudan.

But there are still some unanswered questions. What follows the filling of the first 45 billion cubic meters? When will the reservoir be at its full capacity of 75 billion cubic meters? How much water overall will be deducted from each of Egypt and Sudans shares?

I predict that three years after keeping the water in the reservoir, Ethiopia will start pumping it into turbines to generate electricity, and so drain this reservoir within one year. This volume of water is almost the same amount that Egypt and Sudan used to receive each year from the Blue Nile before the dam was built  at most 48.75 billion cubic meters  but in that scenario, the two downstream countries will receive it every three years instead of annually.

In addition, Egypt and Sudan would receive only half of this amount during the first three years of filling the Renaissance Dam Lake  which will then become an endless cycle of three-year refills of 45 billion cubic meters, and a permanent deduction of 15 billion cubic meters on an annual basis from the two countries quota.

This is apart from water losses as a result of evaporation from the lake, deep runoff, and water lost while falling from height to run the turbines  all of which experts estimate amount to around 12 billion cubic meters annually.

Let's look more closely at what is likely to happen with water in the three countries, and how things might change after the Renaissance Dam starts to operate.

Agricultural impact in Egypt

The Blue Nile is the main tributary of the river Nile, and its where the Renaissance dam is built. The tributarys flooding cycle is such that seven lean years of drought, with light floods, are followed by fat years of heavy flooding.

For years, Egypt held back water in the High Dam reservoir during the periods of heavy flooding in order to reuse it during the lean years. But now, after construction of the Renaissance dam, Ethiopia needs to fill its reservoir during both high- and low-flood years in order to sustain the production of electricity from the dam.

This leaves Egypt at a disadvantage: it might no longer be able to save more water in the High dam reservoir, which means that during periods of low flooding it will suffer from not having this extra water to draw from, as well as from the agreed cuts in its share as Ethiopia keeps filling the Renaissance dam reservoir.

The Blue Nile accounts for about 60 per cent of the total water in the River Nile  in essence, it controls the Niles water flow. Another tributary, the Atbara River which also carries a substantial amount of flood waters, is where Ethiopias Tekeze Dam has been built.

Ethiopia will now have sole rights to the flood water from both tributaries in order to guarantee that the dam lake will be filled. And it has not responded yet to Egypts concerns about the fate of water flow during the years of low flooding.

Water problems in the region are being passed along to the years and generations to come Nader Noureddine

Will the priority be to store the scarce water behind the Ethiopian dam to generate electricity, or to pump it towards thirsty people in Egypt and Sudan?

The result will be that Egypt will be forced to change its agricultural policy to deal with the scarcity of its water resources by cutting off rice cultivation. It has already reduced it by about 35 per cent this year, and a law approved by the parliament last April spells imprisonment and big fines for farmers who breach the rules. Half of the countrys rice supply will need to be imported, which  at the current consumption rates of four million tonnes  will amount to spending one billion dollars annually.

Egypt will also move its sugar cane plantations from Upper Egypt to cultivate sugar beet in the north of the country, adding to the suffering of poor people in Upper Egypt whose children already migrate to the north due to lack of employment opportunities. Sugar cane plantations come with 27 complementary industries in Upper Egypt, such as the production of methanol, molasses, rock candy, white vinegar and others. Without these industries unemployment rates will increase, adding to the loss of 150 years of experience in sugarcane farming.

Water-depleting banana plantations will also need to be reduced at least by half. Perhaps the same fate awaits cultivation of broadleaf vegetables such as taro, cabbage, clover and fodder. Summertime plantations may also need to be halved because of their heavy water consumption in the intense heat. [1]

These policy changes will also lead to salinisation of large land areas in the northern delta, which are already suffering from the intrusion of salt water from the Mediterranean Sea. Reducing the area of rice cultivation also means reducing the area to be flooded with the freshwater needed during the process.

As the water gap in Egypt worsens, the food gap is also expected to increase due to the rise in Egyptian food imports which currently cost Egypt about $12 billion to $15-17 billion annually. [1]

To bridge the water gap, Egypt will need to start desalinating sea water, a costly technique which would add more financial pressures and raise the price of water. The UAE, with all its huge petroleum resources, can only produce five billion cubic meters of water from desalinisation each year; in Saudi Arabia its 6.5 billion. These amounts will do very little to bridge Egypts water gap, currently estimated at 42 billion cubic meters and expected to reach 54 billion annually after the Renaissance Dam becomes fully operational.

A move to irrigation in Sudan

As the Renaissance Dam starts working, the Blue Nile and Kassala provinces in eastern Sudan will also suffer from the absence of waters that used to flood the region four months each year, leaving the land fertile for planting crops after the water recedes. Sudan will also have to change its agricultural strategy, moving to irrigated agriculture in this area.

The change will affect one million hectares, and will require the construction of costly canals and drainage networks that will cost billions of dollars, which Sudan's economy is unlikely to afford.

But if the country can get support to establish an irrigation and drainage network in the two provinces, it could grow summer crops  especially cotton, seed food, maize and vegetables  in addition to ending flood-related damages to land and housing.

Nevertheless, it is a change that will also bring a shift towards using harmful chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Sudan may see a benefit as the Renaissance dam will prevent silt from accumulating in the reservoirs of Sudanese dams Sennar and Roseires, which will increase their water storage capacity of water. However, it did not ask how the reservoirs of these two dams will be filled with the 11 billion cubic meters of water they need each year. This will likely take a very long time.

Benefits in Ethiopia

In the absence of agreements on the future of Blue Nile flows in the region, Ethiopia will seize control of most of the Niles waters.

It is expected that the lake of the Renaissance Dam will guarantee about one billion hectares of arable land, which Ethiopia will offer to investors. [1] This will take up about 10 billion cubic meters of lake water each year.

This is why Ethiopia has rejected any reference, in the text of the Khartoum Declaration of Principles signed by the three countries, to the dam being used only to generate electricity  adding the text and for economic development to indicate its intention to exploit the dam's water for agricultural, industrial and infrastructural uses within its territory. [1]

There are still many unresolved issues, and the delay in reaching clear agreements is not to the advantage of Egypt or Sudan. In general, it is clear that we are seeing only the tip of an iceberg in what is becoming an ongoing conflict. Water problems in the region are being passed along to the years and generations to come.

Nader Noureddine is a professor of water resources and land reclamation at Cairo University, Egypt.



This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Middle East & North Africa desk.
[ACCRA] Women smallholders limited access to mobile phones and call credits could derail use of climate information services (CIS) for adapting to climate change risks, a study in Ghana suggests.

According to the researchers, although CIS could help smallholders make informed decisions on use of strategies to become resilient to climate change, research on its use and impact among women and men smallholders in Sub-Saharan Africa is limited.

The objective of the study conducted in two districts of Ghanas Upper West region was to assess the extent to which perceptions of climate change and access to CIS differ among men and women smallholders.

In November 2016, researchers randomly surveyed 900 smallholders, including 51 per cent who accessed climate information through mobile phone voice alerts and text messages delivered by Esoko, an information and communication technology company in Ghana, according to the study published in the journal Climate Change last month (5 July).

The researchers from Ghana and Mali also organised four focused group discussions, with each group having 20 participants and a mix of men and women smallholders to generate comments on perceptions and access to climate information.

Womens limited access to farm resources and the telephone device  is a threat to their ability to adapt to climate change risk. Robert Zougmore, CCAFS, Mali

The study found that men and women had similar perceptions about climate change such as increased strong winds, temperatures, drought and flooding.

But according to the findings, those with access to telephones were about 12 times more likely to use CIS compared with those who did not have telephones.

The higher probability that men will use climate information may be related to their ability to easily access telephone devices, the researchers note in the paper. A more significant number of men (about 35 per cent) than women (20 per cent) had access to mobile phones.

Samuel Partey, study co-author and Mali-based researcher with the Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, tells SciDev.Net that there is a need for exploring various dissemination channels that address the constraints such as lack of credits from the banks, farming tools and seeds experienced by women.

This will help improve womens access and use of CIS so that they can play important roles in household climate change adaptation planning, Partey says.

Robert Zougmore, a co-author of the study and regional programme leader of CCAFS, Mali, adds, Womens limited access to farm resources and the telephone device  is a threat to their ability to adapt to climate change risk.

Mavis Akuffobea, a research scientist at Ghanas Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, agrees with the findings but says that women recognise the threat posed by climate change as a serious problem than men do.

Government policies addressing climate change should include gender-transformative approaches at all levels to support adaptation options for each unique climate distress event that reduce vulnerability of the different gender groups in times of crisis, Akuffobea adds.



This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.
The famous idiom "seeing is believing" is not enough to help amputees with the use of their prosthetic limb. Many amputees opt out of prolonged use of their prosthetic limb because their missing limb simply does not fit their prosthesis. In other words, their own perception of the missing limb, or the brain's representation of it, does not match-up with what they see of the prosthesis.

The underlying problem is twofold. Amputees still feel their missing limb, even if it is physically gone, and this ghost limb aka phantom limb is perceived as much smaller than the lost limb. Next, the commercially available prosthetic limb does not yet provide sensory feedback other than what the patient sees, meaning that the patient has no sense of touch from the prosthetic limb and must constantly watch it for correct use.

Tricking the brain to embody the prosthetic limb

Now, in a scientific collaboration led by EPFL (Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne), scientists show that amputees can actually be convinced that the prosthetic hand belongs to their own body. They do this by going beyond the "seeing is believing" idiom based on established research on how the brain identifies what belongs to its own body. Instead of using the sense of sight alone, they used an astute combination of two senses: sight and touch. The results are published today in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.

"The brain regularly uses its senses to evaluate what belongs to the body and what is external to the body. We showed exactly how vision and touch can be combined to trick the amputee's brain into feeling what it sees, inducing embodiment of the prosthetic hand with an additional effect that the phantom limb grows into the prosthetic one," explains Giulio Rognini of EPFL's Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroprosthetics led by Olaf Blanke, in a collaboration with Silvestro Micera of EPFL and Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Italy. "The setup is portable and could one day be turned into a therapy to help patients embody their prosthetic limb permanently."

In two hand amputees, the scientists provided artificial tactile sensations at the tip of the index finger -- of the phantom limb -- by stimulating the patient's nerve in the stump. At the same time, the patient wore virtual reality goggles which showed the index finger of the prosthetic limb glowing in synchrony with the administered touch sensations. This combination of virtual reality with artificial tactile sensations takes the rubber-hand illusion to another level.

Both patients reported feeling as though the prosthetic hand belonged to their own body. Moreover, when asked to evaluate the position of their hands, both patients felt as though their phantom limb had extended into the prosthetic limb. Previous to the experiment, they both reported that the phantom hand was small and directly connected to the stump, as if the phantom limb had no forearm, a change in size referred to as "telescoping" in scientific jargon. In fact, their phantom limb extended during the experiment, and remained extended for up to 10 minutes afterwards.

The experiment simply requires the patient to passively observe two sensations on the fingertip, the visual glow and the artificial touch happening in synchrony, in order for embodiment and extension of the phantom limb to take place. This is the first time that the principles of multisensory integration, in particular how the brain integrates bodily multisensory information to create the coherent and compelling experience of having a body, have been tailored to provoke embodiment of the prosthetic hand and reduction of telescoping.

Building upon results from a European-wide collaboration

The study builds upon research that opened new avenues in prosthetics. In 2014, in a European collaboration led by EPFL, scientists overcame a major hurdle by giving an amputee the ability to feel -- in real-time -- with the help of their prosthetic hand. Information about touch coming from sensors at the prosthetic fingertips were directly processed and relayed into the nervous system via electrodes that were surgically wired to the stump's main nerves. The potential of this technology is still being explored, and two years later in 2016, the scientists showed that the enhanced prosthetic technology could even help the same amputee detect differences in texture.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRF5sqx6seU
Thursday, Oct. 4, at its new location on the corner of Rosa Parks Boulevard. and Jefferson Street at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park in Nashville. Grand opening events will take place throughout the weekend. The Tennessee State Museum is scheduled to open to the public onat its new location on the corner of Rosa Parks Boulevard. and Jefferson Street at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park in Nashville.Grand opening events will take place throughout the weekend.

Since we first started working on this project, the plan was to build a 100-year museum to showcase the rich history of our state and provide a memorable experience to visitors of all ages, Governor Bill Haslam said. It is exciting that were only months away from opening the doors to this important educational asset for Tennessee.

The museum hosted its final event in its former location in the James K. Polk building in early May. Throughout the summer, artifacts and exhibitions are being installed in the new location.

A lot of work has gone into not only building the new museum but carefully transporting all of the historic art, artifacts, documents, and more that has been part of the Museum over the years, Ashley Howell, executive director of the Tennessee State Museum, said. Everything is leading up to the opening of the new museum, and we couldnt be prouder to share Tennessees story with the hundreds of thousands of people who walk through the doors of our new state-of-the-art facility. Best of all, the state museum will continue to offer free admission for our many visitors.

Additional information about grand opening events and activities will be announced in the coming weeks.



About the New Tennessee State Museum

For over 35 years, the Tennessee State Museum, one of the oldest and largest state museums in the nation, has been confined to the lower levels of the James K. Polk State Office Building.

In 2015, Governor Bill Haslam proposed and the Tennessee General Assembly appropriated $120 million to build a new home for the museum with the additional funding to complete the project to be raised in private contributions. To date, more than $30 million in private donations have been raised, and the construction of the new museum is running on time and on budget.

The former Tennessee State Museum hosted approximately 115,000 visitors each year. The new museum, which is on the northwest corner of the Bicentennial Mall in Nashville, is expected to host more than 220,000 visitors annually, adding to the growing menu of memorable and educational opportunities Tennessee has to offer.

tnmuseum2018.org/

For more information about the new Tennessee State Museum, visit




Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, was first approved for use in Monsanto's weed killer in 1974. While it became the world's most popular and widely used herbicide, the question of whether it causes cancer has been hotly debated by environmentalists, regulators, researchers and lawyers -- even as Monsanto has insisted for decades that it's perfectly safe.
Uh-oh! It could be you, or it could be us, but there's no page here.
Part of Mattress Firms problem is its huge network of stores. The Houston-based retailer viewed multiple stores in cities as a way to build visibility, and spread out advertising and distribution costs. At the same time, it was snapping up competitors like Sleepys, Sleep Train, Back to Bed and Bedding Experts in a bid to build a national brand, and taking over some of those locations.
On August 13, 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil injunctive action against Chad Anthony Lewis, a Kentucky resident for unlawfully acting as an unregistered broker and selling unregistered investments in two oil and gas companies based in Texas.

The SEC's complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleges that Lewis illegally solicited and raised money from investors for Aegis Oil, LLC and 7S Oil & Gas, LLC. Both of these companies offered and sold unregistered securities in the form of "joint venture units" in oil and gas development projects located in Texas.

According to the SEC's complaint, Lewis, who worked at different times both for Aegis and 7S, helped train a network of sales agents that unlawfully solicited investments for Aegis and 7S and assisted agents in closing sales calls with investors. The SEC alleges that Lewis directly solicited at least one investor, who purchased investments in both Aegis and 7S. Lewis was paid transaction-based compensation in the form of a sales commission of 2% on all investor proceeds raised through the offerings. He also received commissions ranging from 20% to 31% from the proceeds of the investments he sold to one investor. In total, Lewis received about $374,000 in commission payments from the Aegis offerings and $250,700 from the 7S offerings.

The SEC's complaint charges Lewis with violating Sections 5(a) and 5(c) of the Securities Act of 1933, and Section 15(a)(1) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations, Lewis has consented to the entry of a judgment permanently enjoining him from future violations of the above provisions the federal securities laws, and ordering him to pay disgorgement plus prejudgment interest and a civil penalty, in amounts to be determined by the Court at a later date upon motion by the SEC.

The SEC's investigation was conducted by Raynette R. Nicoleau, Shan Chang, and Crystal Ivory in the Miami Regional Office, and supervised by Chedly C. Dumornay. The litigation will be led by Russell Koonin.
Alexa, can you make insurance fun again?

Amazons ubiquitous Echo speakers can have its voice assistant read the news or add paper towels to your shopping list. But Mountain Views Hippo Insurance has a different job in mind for Alexa: scaring away burglars and other unwanted visitors.

Once you download the skill  Amazons term for Alexa-specific voice apps  and turn on Away Mode, your Echo or other Alexa-capable devices will play background conversations ranging from two drunk guys trying to start a website to a family trying to set up Ikea furniture. The recorded patter is awkward to overhear  and thats the point.

Were trying to make you uncomfortable, said Assaf Wand, the companys co-founder.

Wand said the skill was a way to get people interested in the real goal of the company: providing an insurance plan that is modern and wide-reaching.

He and his colleagues at Hippo realized pretty early on that no one cares about insurance, and that using something like an Amazon Echo to get the message out is an effective way to get people to start talking about the importance of safeguarding their houses.

Theres already been some positive response: The news of the new Alexa tie-in was enough to get Hippo trending on the Crunchbase startup database.

Paul Kuroda / Special to The Chronicle

The company is working to update the antiquated process of signing up for home insurance.

To hear more To listen or subscribe on Apple devices: https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1316784843 For other devices, search for "Startups of the Week" in your favorite podcast app. See More Collapse

When people buy a house, he says, they typically get an insurance plan through an agent. As years pass, and as more items of value are added to the house, like couches and electronics, people forget to update their insurance plan.

Insurance is your safety net, Wand said. And with time, this net starts to have gaping holes.

The company, which says its plans are cheaper than traditional ones because it doesnt have to pay agents, claims it has the broadest coverage in the market for everything from smart-home gadgets to new sofas to camping gear.

Hippo, which has about $39 million in funding, operates in 10 states, including California and Texas.

Risk is an evolving, flexible beast, but insurance as it is today is relatively static, said Wand. So our goal is world domination, and well go from there.

Deal of the week: Solebit

What it does: Solebit helps examine email attachments and links for threats at a rapid speed. It generally takes about 10 to 15 minutes to analyze and inspect the different parts of an incoming email. With Solebit, that can be done in a few seconds, the company says.

What happened: Solebit was acquired by Mimecast, a 15-year-old British company that also provides email security.

Headquarters: San Francisco

Funding: $13 million

Employees: 11 to 50

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

Also trending: RideOS

What it does: RideOS is a fleet management system that wants to make the introduction of self-driving cars safer and more streamlined. The company will gather data on everything from pedestrians to potholes. CEO Justin Ho compares it to an air traffic control system, but for self-driving vehicles.

What happened: The company raised $25 million in a funding round led by Next47 Ventures, a Siemens-backed global venture investment firm.

Why it matters: The money will help to support the introduction of self-driving cars in European markets, Ho said.

Headquarters: San Francisco

Funding: $34 million

Employees: 20

Natasha Mascarenhas is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: natasha.mascarenhas@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @nmasc_
Black athletes, stars in VC lineup

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is courting black celebrities and athletes as investors in a new $15 million fund, the Wall Street Journal reports. Kevin Durant and Will Smith are among the funds limited partners, according to the Journals sources. Returns from the fund will be donated to nonprofits to boost the involvement of blacks in technology. Durant is already a tech investor through his Durant Company, which joined Andreessen Horowitz in backing sports-media startup Overtime earlier this year.

Wish upon a startup

Inexpensive products sold through a mobile app have made Peter Szulczewski and Danny Zhang, co-founders of San Francisco startup Wish, billionaires on paper. Thats according to an analysis by EquityZen, a marketplace for shares in private technology companies, which found each owns a stake worth $1.3 billion. Wish now has more than 500 million users worldwide, according to its website.

Smoke gets in your electricity bill

The smoke billowing from Californias wildfires is dimming output from solar farms. First Solar, which operates more than two gigawatts of solar farms in the state  thats equivalent to about two nuclear reactors  has seen production dip at installations near fires, according to spokesman Steve Krum. The slumps in generation have been very minimal, he said, likening them to the impact of passing clouds on solar panels.

Daily Briefing is compiled from San Francisco Chronicle staff and news services. See more items and links at www.sfgate.com.
YOSEMITE WEST  When a wall of flames raced up the hillside at Avalanche Creek on a recent afternoon, firefighters in Yosemite National Park had to act quickly.

The giant Ferguson Fire was headed toward the south rim of Yosemite Valley, and if crews didnt stop it here, the fire would open up on the edge of the parks most beloved spot. Already, 10,000 acres of Yosemite had been charred, and much of the park was entering its third week of closure.

But just as the blaze began spitting hot embers out of the creek drainage and across Glacier Point Road, where helicopters with water buckets and engine teams with chain saws had staked their line of defense, firefighters caught a break  at least for the moment.

The fire struck a patch of forest that had burned in a previous fire. With fewer trees and less brush to serve as fuel, the flames began to taper off. The conflagration slowed, a pause that crews hoped would become a turning point in the firefight and one that forestry experts say highlights the benefits of having a regular regime of fire on the landscape.

When these fires push into old burns, theres progress, said Kelly Martin, chief of fire and aviation management at Yosemite, who has been helping oversee the 96,000-acre Ferguson Fire. Its basically fighting fire with fire.

As California grasps at ways to prevent the increasingly intense blazes seen in recent years, the idea of letting fire burn in the states wildlands, instead of trying to prevent it, is gaining currency.

Experts say allowing natural fire to run its course or setting controlled burns, when people and property arent threatened, will reduce hazardous vegetation and make future wildfires far less catastrophic. One of the main reasons the situation has gotten so bad, experts say, is that decades of fire suppression have broken the cycle of fire thats inherent to forests, creating an unnatural buildup of tinder.

As much as 50 percent of the land consumed by the Ferguson Fire hasnt burned since record-keeping began in the 1930s, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Historically, conifer forests in the Sierra burned as often as every 10 years.

While federal and state land managers have long dabbled in planned fire, they have yet to fully embrace it, even as last years devastation in the Wine Country and this summers deadly inferno in Redding are hastening the call for change.

There cant be a more compelling and urgent case to do this, Martin said. The only way we can get out of this problem were in is to have a different relationship with fire.

When the Ferguson Fire ignited just west of Yosemite in the Sierra National Forest on July 13, Forest Service officials made the call to aggressively attack it. The towns of El Portal and Mariposa were nearby, as was the national park with its glacial canyons and towering waterfalls, and 4 million annual tourists.

There were no questions asked, said District Ranger Denise Tolmie. Its a full-suppression fire.

Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

But about 30 miles to the east, where another blaze is burning, the same Forest Service officials made a different decision, one that suggests at least an emerging interest in new tactics.

When Tolmie got the report of the lightning-ignited fire near the headwaters of the San Joaquin River on June 11, she decided not to send a strike team to stop it. The Lions Fire was burning a comfortable distance from roads and communities, so she would let it go.

We felt the fire effects would be positive, Tolmie said.

The 9,000-acre fire has since cleared vast stands of dead and dying red fir, which, left around, would have increased fuel loads in the forest and added risk for homes in nearby Mammoth Lakes, according to the Forest Service. The fire also has helped boost forest health, officials say, by restoring nutrients in the soil and creating space for new plant life.

Tolmie said shed like to see more of the ecosystem and fuel-reduction benefits of such strategies, but hurdles stand in the way.

First and foremost is ensuring that fire, when allowed to burn or intentionally set, is safe. The Forest Service has tight restrictions on when blazes like the Lions Fire can run their course. The fire has to be an adequate distance from cities and towns, for example, and enough firefighters must be on hand to monitor the situation.

The fire also has to overcome community resistance. The Smokey-Bear mentality pushed during nearly a century of fire suppression has left much of the public hostile to burns. This mind-set has hardened as more people have staked out homes in Californias wilderness areas.

Then theres the smoke. Many parts of the state are suffering poor air quality, including basins around Yosemite. Residents and local air regulators dont want more smoke in the sky than necessary.

On the Lions Fire, the Forest Service is trying to limit the number of smoky days by helping the blaze move along more quickly. Firefighters have been sent in to light fires on tracts of land at the head of the burn.

Were trying to build ourselves up to do more fire across the landscape, Tolmie said. Theres just a lot we have to take into account before burning.

This year, the Forest Service has set fire to about 60,000 acres in California, officials say. The state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, which also manages a portion of California wildlands, burned another 19,000 acres over the past year.

While the amount of burning is increasing for both agencies, its still a small fraction of the combined 50 million acres statewide that the two departments oversee. For perspective, uncontrolled wildfires scorched about 1.2 million acres in California in 2017.

Many who study forestry and wildfires say a lot more planned burns are needed to keep dangerous blazes from erupting.

Theres no way thousands of houses should be burning like this, said Stephen Pyne, fire historian and professor at Arizona State University. You have to get rid of the vegetation or you have the fuel. What youre doing in California is getting your burning of fuel under the worst possible conditions  during wildfires.

Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

Pyne said California should be setting prescribed fire to several million acres of land each year. Other states do far more, he said, especially in the Southeast, where year-round rain and gentler topography make it easier to conduct controlled burns.

Florida ignites about 2.1 million acres of land a year, according to state records.

This spring, California Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order to improve forest management, which includes a bid for more prescribed burning as part of an effort to address the increase in catastrophic wildfire.

Fifteen of Californias 20 biggest fires have occurred since 2000, with the Ranch Fire in Lake, Mendocino and Colusa counties recently slipping into the top spot. The blaze has burned nearly 300,000 acres.

Fire Tracker Follow wildfires across the state Latest updates on wildfires burning across Northern and Southern California

Last years Tubbs Fire in Napa and Sonoma counties remains the states most destructive fire, with 22 people killed and more than 5,000 buildings burned. The Carr Fire in Redding recently notched the sixth-worst toll in state history, claiming seven lives and destroying more than 1,500 structures.

While misguided forest- management policies are just one reason that fire has become more devastating, a warming climate and more development in Californias wildlands also contribute, making planned burning vital, said wildfire specialist Max Moritz with UCs Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

We need to become more comfortable with fire as a tool, he said. Prescribed fire could do a lot of good, restoring these forests to healthy conditions and reducing the fire hazard.

The state budget, which took effect in July, includes $30 million for the formation of several new Cal Fire crews devoted exclusively to conducting planned burns and clearing hazardous vegetation.

Meanwhile, those in charge of a handful of national forests in California, including the Sierra National Forest, are planning to revise their forest management plans to encourage more prescribed fire.

Back at Avalanche Creek, where hundreds of firefighters with air support were working to keep the Ferguson Fire from moving toward Yosemite Valley, the flames remained stubborn.

At one point, as the blaze pushed across Glacier Point Road, a camp of unsuspecting fire personnel was trapped up the dead-end street and ordered to take the unusual step of sheltering in place.

Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

The group eventually made it to safety, but the firefighting effort hasnt been without casualties. Two crew members have died on the fire, and several have been injured. About 10 buildings have been destroyed. Meanwhile, the local tourist industry has lost millions as countless vacations have been canceled.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

This is the last critical piece, said Greg Cole, foreman for the Fulton Hotshot Crew out of Glennville (Kern County), whose team was using chain saws and metal rakes to create a break at the head of the firestorm. Were just trying to cut the heat out.

His crews greatest progress came where the 1,045-acre Avalanche Fire burned in 2011 and the adjacent 3,047-acre Grouse Fire burned in 2009. The fire was advancing less quickly there, and firefighters had more time to put in their containment line.

The old fire scars are providing opportunity, said Tom Efird, a spokesman for the Forest Service and a former district ranger for the Sierra National Forest, pointing to a knob with fewer trees and less brush to catch fire. We dont want it to get into the timber again, which makes it so much harder to get a hold on the fire.

Efird said the slower pace of the burn was representative of what fires looked like when the forests burned naturally.

Its replicating what used to be, he said.

The old burn areas turned out to be pivotal for firefighters. By Monday, containment of the blaze was estimated to have grown to 86 percent. Fire officials were almost ready to declare victory.

Yosemite Valley was scheduled to reopen Tuesday, after a 20-day closure, and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, to the south, opened Monday morning.

When it made its run out of Avalanche Creek, there was quite a firefight, said Mark von Tillow, the incident commander overseeing the suppression effort. But the last couple of days have been really good for us.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander
Firefighters may be able to extinguish the wildfires roaring through California within weeks, but the political effect of the blazes could last at least until the Nov. 6 midterm elections.

With flames forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee their homes and clouds of smoke hovering over large chunks of the state, California Democrats already are using the disaster to flog GOP House members for their environmental votes.

Last week the Democratic group Red to Blue California, which is trying to flip nine Republican-held congressional seats in the state, went on the attack against GOP Rep. Tom McClintock of Elk Grove (Sacramento County). His district stretches from the suburbs of Sacramento south past Yosemite National Park and the Sierra National Forest, where the Ferguson Fire has burned more than 95,000 acres since July 13.

The group put out a mailer and a digital ad that slammed McClintock for his voting record on fire-related issues, saying he had backed cuts to the Forest Service and opposed efforts to increase funding to fight wildfires.

Career politician Tom McClintocks position on fire prevention is so bad he might as well be lighting the fires himself, the group said in its mailer.

McClintocks backers were quick to respond.

As the sponsors of these ads know, the bills they referred to were omnibus spending bills in which only a tiny fraction of the funds went to firefighting, Chris Baker, a campaign spokesman for McClintock, said in a statement. He called the congressman a leader in the House of efforts to aid forest fire prevention.

But for Democrats, forcing McClintock to defend himself on an issue like wildfires is already a victory, especially if the message reaches independents and Republicans with an environmental bent.

We want more (congressional) districts in play and wanted to plant the flag here on McClintocks turf, said Andrew Feldman, a spokesman for Red to Blue California. This shouldnt be a partisan issue.

The wildfires are complete game changers, said R.L. Miller, the founder of Climate Hawks Vote and one of Californias leading environmentalists. The path that were on (environmentally) right now is frightening to Californians. And if they want to change that path, we have to vote against the people who stand with this administration.

Miller hopes to appeal to younger Republicans, who hold much different views than older Republicans on the environment.

A May survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research organization, for example, found that 44 percent of Millennial Republicans supported more offshore drilling, compared with 75 percent of Baby Boomer and older Republicans.

Last week, the Sierra Club released digital ads against Republican Reps. Jeff Denham of Turlock (Stanislaus County) and Steve Knight of Lancaster (Los Angeles County) that turn up the heat on their environmental voting records. Each ad says the targeted GOP congressman likes carbon, methane and air pollution more than he likes our kids.

Many environmental issues cut across party lines in California, delivering allies to Democratic candidates they wouldnt have on issues with a more partisan split such as immigration, government spending and single-payer health care.

Across the state, the environment is not so much a partisan issue as a California issue, said Mark Baldassare, president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California, which polls regularly on state candidates and issues. A large number of Republicans and independents join Democrats in support of issues that involve the environment.

A poll released last month by the institute highlighted a surprising nonpartisan tilt on many green issues.

Nearly 3 in 4 Californians, including 71 percent of Republicans, see ocean and beach conditions as very important to the states future economy and quality of life, the poll said. Fewer than half of California Republicans surveyed said the overall quality of the ocean is at least good, and two-thirds of respondents, including 40 percent of Republicans, opposed drilling off the states coast.

Polling done in April for the anti-offshore drilling group Protect the Pacific in three GOP-held congressional districts in Southern California shows just how important environmental issues can be for Democrats.

In all three, a strong majority of respondents opposed drilling off the coast, with more than 79 percent saying ocean and beach conditions are important to them personally.

When 58 percent of those polled in Orange Countys 45th Congressional District say GOP Rep. Mimi Walters of Irvine should vote to oppose offshore drilling, thats awful news for Walters, who has called in the past for more oil platforms off the coast.

Theres an expectation that the coast is incredibly important to the local economy and the quality of life, said Adam Probolsky, who conducted the poll. Its not about political philosophy.

Those economic concerns also can play a very different role than they have in the past.

Fire Tracker Follow wildfires across the state Latest updates on wildfires burning across Northern and Southern California

In previous years, some Democrats running in conservative districts wouldnt talk as much about the environment if their Republican opponent said tighter regulations could choke off job growth.

But now they can say, Look at California: We have a great environmental record in the country and our economy is adding a lot of jobs, said Mike Young, associate director of campaigns and organizing for the California League of Conservation Voters.

The Democrats environmental message got an unexpected  and unintended  boost from President Trump, who tweeted last week that Californias wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which arent allowing massive amounts of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean.

For Democrats, tweets like that, along with Trumps calls for such things as easing auto emission rules, pushing for more coal mining, rewriting the Endangered Species Act and cutting the size of some national monuments, can help make the president part of the California House contests.

Theyd love that because Trumps popularity in the state started low and has stayed there. Just 31 percent of respondents to a Public Policy Institute of California poll this month in competitive House districts thought he was doing a good job on environmental issues.

California Democrats should be salivating at an opportunity to nationalize the congressional races by forcing GOP incumbents to say whether they stand with the presidents environmental policies, said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University. They can use the environment in California because so many voters react so strongly.

One of the reasons is that there are plenty of voters who still remember the huge Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 and the choking smog that for decades was a regular part of life in Southern California.

Those voters dont want to go back to when they couldnt go outside because they couldnt breathe the air, Baldassare said.

John Wildermuth and Joe Garofoli are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com, jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth, @joegarofoli
The body count in the Golden State Killers alleged reign of terror increased to 13 on Monday when prosecutors in Tulare County filed charges linking the suspect to another spree of crimes previously attributed to a person dubbed the Visalia Ransacker.

A new murder charge was filed as investigators continue to unspool Joseph James DeAngelos expansive wave of alleged violence, tracing it back to 1974 when he worked as a police officer in the small town of Exeter.

DeAngelo, 72, is also accused of being the East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker. He was charged Monday with one count of murder with a special allegation of personal use of a firearm in the killing of 45-year-old community college teacher Claude Snelling.

Now Playing: Visalia Police Chief Jason Salazar and Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward, announce that charges will be filed against Joesph DeAngelo, the accused East Area Rapist (Golden State Killer) suspect, in the 1975 murder of Claude Neff, a local professor. Neff's killing was attributed to the Visalia Ransacker, whom authorities now believe was Joseph DeAngelo. Video: Tulare County District Attorney's Office

To think that the crimes  that now we see from the charges filed around the state  may have originated in our quaint, quiet, wonderful little town is quite startling, Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward said at a press conference announcing the murder charge.

Snelling, a journalism professor at College of the Sequoias, was shot dead while trying to save his teenage daughter from the clutches of a masked intruder on Sept. 11, 1975. He awoke in the early-morning hours after hearing a disturbance, looked out his window and spotted a man in his carport trying to kidnap 16-year-old Elizabeth Hupp.

Snelling ran to his daughters rescue and the kidnapper pulled out a gun and shot him dead, Visalia police Chief Jason Salazar said. Hupp escaped as the assailant fled.

The murder shocked the small Central Valley town of Visalia and came amid more than 100 bizarre burglaries, attempted burglaries and an attempted murder between 1974 and 1975 that were believed to be the work of the Ransacker.

This community was terrorized by these rampant crimes in their tenacity, their intimacy and the frequency in which they were occurring, Ward said.

The crime wave, though, abruptly stopped in December 1975, right before DeAngelo started working at the Auburn Police Department and the East Area Rapist cases began around the Sacramento area.

In the Visalia crimes, DeAngelo broke into homes by prying open windows and doors, Salazar said. But rather than loot the home of expensive items, the burglar took keepsakes, family photos and other personal belongings.

Investigators said the gun used in Snellings murder was stolen from a home two days earlier, leading them to believe the Ransacker was also the killer.

Authorities nearly captured him Dec. 12, 1975, when police spotted a masked man entering the backyard of a Visalia home. The intruder opened fire on a police detective, hopped a fence and disappeared.

The detective was unharmed, but the bullet shattered his flashlight. It was the last time authorities heard from the Ransacker until DeAngelo was arrested at his Citrus Heights home in April.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

DeAngelo is accused of crimes that terrorized Californians throughout the 1970s and 80s before abruptly stopping nearly 30 years ago, police said.

Investigators previously linked him to 12 killings and at least 50 rapes before Mondays announcement. He also faces murder charges in Sacramento, Ventura, Orange and Santa Barbara counties. Its unclear if prosecutors can file rape charges since the cases have passed the statute of limitations.

Detectives caught DeAngelo using an unprecedented approach. They uploaded his DNA profile into an open-source genealogy website called GEDmatch, which revealed several potential relatives of the then-unknown suspect.

Investigators soon closed in on DeAngelo, now a grandfather living in the same home he bought in 1979, by gathering DNA samples from his car and trash that matched with several cases.

DeAngelos attorney did not return messages. He has not entered a plea and is due back in court Sept. 5.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.comn Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
As students head back to class across California this month, many will sip water from school fountains or faucets that could contain high levels of lead.

Thats because two-thirds of the states 1,026 school districts have not taken advantage of a free state testing program to determine whether the toxic metal is coming out of the taps and, if so, whether it exceeds federal standards. Among the 330 districts that have started or completed testing, one in five identified at least one school where levels exceeded the federal standard, according to data submitted to the state by June 1.

The testing by local water utilities has been available to every public and private school in the state for more than 18 months. Exposure to high levels of lead can cause irreversible neurological and brain damage, including lowering a childs IQ.

It is disappointing to see that a large number of districts have yet to take advantage of this program, said Troy Flint, spokesman for the California School Boards Association, which has sent out numerous reminders about the free program. It would make sense for every district to jump at the chance to find out if they have a problem with lead in their system and to correct it.

Peter DaSilva / Special to The Chronicle

Just 3,133 of Californias 10,000 schools had posted test results by the end of the school year.

That testing identified 158 samples from school fountains or faucets with high lead levels, and while that is fraction of the 14,000 tested so far, some had lead at levels far exceeding the federal guidelines of 15 parts per billion, according to the California Water Resources Control Board, which oversees the program.

A water faucet in a storage room at a Daly Citys Tobias Elementary School tested at 1,900 parts per billion  127 times the federal standard  although the faucet was inaccessible to students, district officials said.

A water fountain in the gym at San Francisco International High School on Potrero Hill tested at 860 parts per billion.

Oakland Unified decided to do independent initial testing of its 87 school last August and found seven taps with lead above federal standards, including one at the Glenview Elementary temporary campus at 60 parts per billion. Subsequent testing by East Bay Municipal Utility District has found no taps above 15 parts per billion. In May, district officials decided to install water stations at 110 schools using funds from the citys soda tax.

At Oaklands Conservatory of Instrumental Vocal Arts High School, a charter school located at Merritt Community College, testing identified five taps with high levels of lead, including a drinking fountain in the mens locker room that tested at 90 parts per billion.

An additional 555 school taps across the state had lead levels of 5 to 15 parts per billion, which the health and consumer activists say is still too high. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that water lead concentrations in school fountains not exceed 1 part per billion, while other experts say less than 5 is more realistic.

All taps found with high levels of lead were removed from service or had repairs made.

Peter DaSilva / Special to The Chronicle

Under the state voluntary program that began in January 2017, districts can request the free testing from their local water utility, which is then required to test within 90 days, collecting samples while school is in session and from at least five taps at each site.

Given the results of testing so far, its safe to assume that many more schools have lead coming out of the taps children will be using when they return to school, some as early as this week, said Laura Deehan, public health advocate for CalPIRG, a consumer rights group.

The fact that kids are going back to school, that is unacceptable, she said. I urge all schools to get their drinking water tested right away and take action wherever they find lead.

The voluntary testing program expires Nov. 1, but all districts will eventually see testing at all their school sites.

In October, the governor signed legislation requiring local water utilities to sample taps for lead in all state public schools by July 2019. The measure puts the onus on the water providers, rather than school districts, to initiate testing.

Trying to keep students water safe After the water crisis in Flint, Mich. - in which corrosion of pipes led to leaching of lead into the city water supply - California officials pushed for lead testing in water, especially in schools. While districts have been eligible for free testing by their water utilities for 18 months, a new law will require all schools test for lead by July 2019. 330 districts out of 1,026 had tested taps for lead by end of the school year. 20% of districts found elevated levels of lead in at least one school. 3,133 schools out of 10,400 (30 percent) posted results from lead testing by June 1. 118 taps tested had levels of lead above 15 parts per billion. 555 taps tested 5 to 15 parts per billion. 13,788 taps tested below 5 parts per billion. See More Collapse

In the meantime, Pleasanton Unified is among the 600 districts that have yet to sample school taps for lead.

We had planned to start last year, but things just got delayed, said district spokesman Patrick Gannon, citing scheduling conflicts. The tests have to be done during the school year, so we had to wait until the fall.

In April 2017, San Francisco Unified was among the first districts to start testing for lead, finding in initial results high lead levels in the water at three schools: West Portal and Malcolm X elementary schools and San Francisco International High School. Malcolm X Elementary is in the Bayview.

The district took the fountains and faucets out of service and subsequently tested all taps at those schools.

Berkeley Unified tested most of its schools in December, finding three taps with lead above the federal standard, including a theater lobby fountain that had been inaccessible because of construction work. It tested at 640 parts per billion, a result probably caused by stagnant water sitting in the pipes for months, officials said.

Based on the results, Berkeley Superintendent Donald Evans took a strict stand on lead, adopting a new district policy that restricts lead content in water to below 1 part per billion.

COVID Resources Coronavirus Map Tracking COVID-19 cases across the Bay Area and California.

Castro Valley, Dublin, Fremont and New Haven school districts were among those statewide that, as of June 1, had not submitted any results to the California State Water Board.

Some districts tested late in the school year but had not yet submitted results by June 1. Other districts, including Fresno, started testing within the last two months at sites where summer school was in session. Dublin officials said they tested a sampling of taps last year but used an outside contractor to do the work. Additional testing will be done by the local water utility during the upcoming school year, with those results submitted to the state.

Still, with thousands of schools left to test statewide, Flint said that there appears to be confusion about how the voluntary program works and who pays for it, despite outreach by childrens health organizations, environmental groups and the California School Boards Association.

A fair number of districts are not fully aware of the free program or dont understand how easy it is to implement, Flint added.

Concerns about the presence of lead in water have been prompted at least in part by the water crisis in Flint, Mich., where corrosion of pipes led to leaching of lead into the city water supply.

Over the past two decades, lead exposure in children has been dramatically reduced because of the phaseout of leaded gasoline and lead-based paint, as well as bans on lead in food containers and other consumer items.

In 2000, about 2 percent of children ages 1 to 5 had high levels of lead, down from 88 percent in 1980, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Lead, however, is still present in many homes and schools.

Water utilities regularly test for contaminants, so in California, the water flowing into schools is safe, officials say. But lead in fixtures and pipe solders installed before 2010 can leach into the water.

While sampling taps isnt error-free or comprehensive enough to ensure an absence of lead at a school, its still worthwhile, said Marc Edwards, Virginia Tech professor of civil engineering and an expert in lead and water.

Edwards said he isnt surprised many California districts didnt take advantage of the voluntary testing program, despite it being free.

Most things that are voluntary at schools just dont get done because schools have so many mandatory things to do, he said.

A previous version of this story misstated the share of districts that tested and found elevated levels of lead in at least one school. It is 20 percent. The story has been altered to reflect this change.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker
Volvo, the venerable Swedish brand owned by the Chinese multinational automotive company Geely, was the first automaker to export from China to the U.S. with the S60 Inscription in 2015. Except for an assembly plate in the doorjam, you never would know. It worked so well Volvo opened an assembly plant in Charleston, South Carolina on June 20. The plant will produce the sleek new S60 sedan initially, and according to Automotive News, the XC90 crossover by 2021. This marks the first time a Chinese-owned automaker assembled cars in the U.S.
Early this summer, Joshua Brody, who lives in Bernal Heights, found a wallet containing credit card, debit card, drivers license and material indicating that its owner was an employee of Instacart, a grocery delivery company, and had been living in Katy, Texas.

On June 30, Good Samaritan Brody sent an email to the San Francisco company asking how he could return it to the employee. He heard back the same day, in a letter that began Hi There!, before thanking him for contacting Instacart Community Support, and saying that the company would do our best to get back to you within 24 hours. A few minutes later, he received another replying, that the inquiry had been forwarded to our Shopper Team, which would be in touch.

On July 1, the company re-thanked him, and said the inquiry would be forwarded to someone on our team who would be in touch shortly. On July 2, Brody wrote again, saying he hadnt heard anything more, and I hope your employee has been informed that his wallet has been found. On July 3, he wrote again, saying hed heard nothing, and providing his phone number.

On July 19, Instacart Community Operations wrote to Brody, apologizing for the delay and asking if the employee was delivering to you, and if so, can we have the order number associated with the delivery. Brody replied that hed found the wallet on the street, I am sure he has given up on ever getting it back, but Id just as soon get it to him as throw it out.

On Aug. 6, Brody, a patient man, wrote again, repeating that hed found the wallet in the street, and saying the delivery number was irrelevant. As of Thursday, Aug. 9, there was still no response.

In this, the month of Jerry Garcias birthday, the Rex Foundation announced a new Jerry Garcia Tribute Night venue: Wrigley Field in Chicago, on Aug. 27. Apparently, its a ritual that is spreading: The first such tribute, of course, was at AT&T Park (this years was Thursday), and there was a Dead tribute night at a Red Sox game at Fenway Park in July.

From a NE Bernal Nextdoor listing, spotted by Lynn Ludlow: Hello neighbors. Our kitty seems to be bringing home items she probably takes from our neighbors. If you are missing a pair of sport socks with pink toes or a small stuffed monkey, let me know! Attached is a picture of the (innocent-looking) cat with her stolen goods. Everybody could always use an extra pair of socks, but when you think about what a cat could do with a stuffed monkey, its scandalous.

Cintas, which provides products and services on contract with corporations, has sent word of nominees that qualified for its annual The Americas Best Restroom contest. The public is invited to vote, and the winner gets $2,500 in products and services for restaurant cleaning or facility management.

But the nuts and bolts of this are not important. What is vital is that No. 10 on the alphabetical list of finalists is the San Francisco restaurant the Progress, a true departure from the soft wooden tones and natural feel of the dining room, said the description. Wanting guests to feel as though they werent just walking into a restroom, but entering a sparkly drum set, the owners and designers of the restaurant used 250 pounds of glitter to achieve their mission. A thick layer of glitter coats the walls, floors and ceiling, creating a 360-degree sparkly, colorful and exceptional restroom experience.

(I cant help wondering about the confluence of bare bottoms and free-floating glitter, but I guess enough glue has been employed to deal with airborne sparkles.)

Among the nine other competitors is a restaurant where guests are transported into a colorful, stylish and Instagram worthy world (my advice is if someone whisks out a cell phone in the restroom, get outta there quickly); and a restroom with Monopoly, Sorry!, Clue, Scrabble and other board games plastered on the wall. If you often find yourself nodding off while visiting the facilities, this may be the place for you. Its nearly impossible to be bored, says Cintas.

PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING

She used to work in a restaurant, but now shes an exterminator.

Woman at Martis Place in Alameda, overheard by Lynn Wilton

Leah Garchik is open for business in San Francisco, 415-777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @leahgarchik
The Muni construction worker struck and killed by a steel beam inside the Twin Peaks Tunnel was identified Monday as 51-year-old Patrick Ricketts of Williams (Colusa County).

Ricketts, a signal technician, was hit around 5:30 p.m. Friday at the West Portal side of the 2.3-mile tunnel and taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where he died, officials said.

Our sincerest condolences are with his family, friends and colleagues at this time, Mayor London Breed said in a statement. This is a tragic incident and I want to commend the Twin Peaks Tunnel laborers who quickly sprang into action to help their colleague.

Exactly what happened inside the tunnel was not immediately known. The injury occurred when a temporary steel beam fell and pinned (Ricketts) underneath, said Erica Kato, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

Work inside the 100-year-old light rail tunnel, which has been closed for a $41 million renovation project since June 25, was suspended while the accident was being investigated. Police and safety inspectors later determined that it was safe to resume work in the tunnel.

It was not clear how the suspension would affect plans to restore light rail service to 80,000 daily riders in late August.

The renovation project involves shutting down the tunnel between the Castro and West Portal stations to upgrade infrastructure, tracks, walls and drainage. Riders on the K, L and M lines have been using shuttle buses instead.

Ricketts was an employee of Shimmick Construction of Oakland, the main contractor on the project. The company did not return calls seeking comment.

Grief counseling was being made available to tunnel workers.

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF
Police rushed to evacuate more than 60 animals from a Solano SPCA that appeared to be in the direct path of a growing wildfire.

Body cam footage taken Friday captured Vacaville police officers racing to rescue the cats and dogs, hastily tossing leashes around their necks and corralling them into crates as a massive cloud of smoke from the fire wafted overhead. Some dogs were tossed into patrol cars and sat on the laps of officers rushing to flee the flames.
An Oakland police officer was in critical condition Monday night after crashing his patrol vehicle then hitting a parked semi-truck while on his way to a call, police said.

The officer, who is the son of a lieutenant, had to be extricated from his vehicle by the Oakland Fire Department, police said. He was taken to a hospital and remained in critical condition.
Beignet seekers headed to the GastroMagic stage during the last day of Outside Lands on Sunday, Aug. 12, didn't find Big Freedia dishing the classic New Orleans treat at this year's Beignets & Bounce Brunch, as she has since the festival-food fusion stage debuted in 2014.

But the schedule change-up was amicable  Big Freedia had a schedule conflict  so Superfly and Another Planet decided to carry on the tradition with Katey Red, a hip-hop emcee from New Orleans, and Brenda Buenviaje of Brenda's French Soul Food's in San Francisco.

Red provided the bounce as Buenviaje brought the beignets during a lively afternoon set. With only about a half hour of set time to huck as many beignets into the crowd as possible, Red and her dancers got to twerk  er, work ... well, both.

RELATED: The best and the worst dishes at Outside Lands 2018

"It's getting hot in here," she said, as the crowd began to recite the next lines from Nelly's hit song. Red stopped to reprimand the crowd. "That ain't my song though."

Red then invited audience members to jump on stage to "shake" for their beignets as dancers, along with Buenviaje, sprinkled them with powdered sugar. At first, about seven or eight people took up Red on the challenge, but by the end of the set, around 30  including one man on crutches  cycled through, emerging caked in sugar and noshing on the still-hot fried confection.

RELATED: Outside Lands 2018: Beer Lands gets hopping with variety, balance

In between goading from Red, Buenviaje, her restaurant staffers and dancers threw beignets, as well as tiny King Cake baby figurines, meant to symbolize luck and prosperity, from the stage.

One guest was handed an almost human-sized gold-colored baby  ostensibly also symbolizing good fortune  but everyone who nabbed a beignet surely felt just as lucky.

More updates from Outside Lands 2018.

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.


Dish to try after voting: Griyo (fried pork) entree ($12.50). It comes with a choice of rice, rice and beans, or black mushroom rice, and it's served with fried plantains and pikliz, which is a spicy slaw. "(Griyo is) pork cubes, pork shoulder a little bit spiced up," Desir said. "We also have rice and mushrooms, which is something really unique that a lot of people want to try it and see what it is because they've never seen a black rice before." The rice gets its color from the black, dried mushrooms used to prepare it.
What is about money that makes people do bad things?

It seems a fair question when the news is dominated by misdeeds of the rich and powerful. The Paul Manafort trial, now entering its third week, has revealed details of his alleged crimes: defrauding banks out of tens of millions of dollars, evading taxes by stashing huge sums in offshore accounts and using riches earned through unregistered work for foreign governments to buy $15,000 ostrich and python jackets.

Manafort's deputy Rick Gates testified about the small fortune he embezzled and spent on his globe-trotting infidelities. Also last week, Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., was charged with insider trading. Scandals have shown Trump's Cabinet members flouting government rules and ethics for private jet rides, $31,000 dining table sets, $43,000 soundproof booths and questionable business trips abroad.

"To researchers who study wealth and power, it's dismaying but not surprising because it tracks so closely with our findings. The effect of power is sadly one of the most reliable laws of human behavior," said Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley who has spent decades studying wealth, power and privilege.

Six years ago, Keltner and a then-graduate student in his lab, Paul Piff, published influential innovative experiments that confirmed many of our worst assumptions about the rich and the corrupting power of wealth.

In one experiment, the researchers stationed themselves at a busy intersection with four-way stop signs and tracked the model of every car whose driver cut off others instead of waiting their turn. People driving expensive cars - like a brand-new Mercedes - were four times more likely to ignore right-of-way laws than those in cheap cars like an old beat-up Honda.

"It told us that there's something about wealth and privilege that makes you feel like you're above the law, that allows you to treat others like they don't exist," Keltner said.

Next, they had a researcher play a pedestrian trying to cross at a crosswalk and tracked which cars stopped as the law requires and which blew right past him. The results were even more stark.

Every one of the cheapest cars stopped, while half of the expensive cars ignored the pedestrian in the crosswalk - many even after making eye contact.

There have been warnings throughout the ages about the corrupting effects of wealth and power. Buddha, for example, gave up the rich life of a prince for enlightenment. Jesus warned his disciples that a camel would have an easier time squeezing through the eye of a needle than a rich man trying to get into God's kingdom. Rapper Biggie Smalls reached a similar conclusion before his untimely death: "Mo money, Mo problems."

In the past few decades, a growing body of psychology research has tried to capture and measure the exact effects of wealth on behavior and morality.

That research has shown the rich cheat more on their taxes. They cheat more on their romantic partners. The wealthy and better-educated are more likely to shoplift. They are more likely to cheat at games of chance. They are often less empathetic. In studies of charitable giving, it's often the lower-income households who donate higher proportions of their income than middle-class and many upper-income folk.

In one of the more surprising findings from their 2015 paper, Keltner and Piff found the rich are more likely to literally take candy from children. In that experiment, they first asked 129 subjects to compare their finances to people who had either more or less money. Then they gave their subjects a jar of candy and told them the sweets were intended for children in a nearby lab but they could take some if they wanted. Those who felt richer after comparing their finances to poorer people took significantly more candy for themselves.

The findings build on similar research in recent years that suggests wealth and power strip people of their inhibitions, increase risk taking and feelings of entitlement and invulnerability. At the same time, power makes people less empathetic and able to see others' perspectives.

"Wealth is basically a mechanism for power, and power has a freeing effect on people. It takes away the constraints of society and frees people to act according to their dominant desires," said Adam Galinsky of Columbia Business School, whose experiments have explored how power often propels people's actions. In some cases, those desires may be altruistic or helpful to society, so power heightens those goals and can give rise to effective philanthropists. Often, however, power leads to self-serving behaviors unrestrained by the usual concerns over rules or the consequences for others.

Because much of the psychological research into wealth and power is relatively new, many of the findings are still being tested and need to be confirmed by replication, researchers say. "I wouldn't say these questions are settled. There are disagreements about the exact effect of wealth and ethics and how large the effect is," said Michael Kraus, a social psychologist at Yale's School of Management. But the research has never seen such booming interest and momentum - with growing inequality in America and a multimillionaire born into wealth in the White House.

"There's a lot of reasons we should care about the ethics of wealthy people," Kraus said. "Even if research found that they were no more unethical as anyone else, their influence on the world is so much greater. If someone like me steals something, it only affects only a handful of people. But if someone like Manafort steals or lies or cheats, it affects so many more people. There are foreign governments and banks involved. You start getting into that area where it can affect the whole country and the course of democracy."
And the sweet-eaters don't need experience. The Local reports that Ferrero specifically wants regular consumers, not nutrition experts. The lucky 60 will begin on September 30 with a three-month course in honing their senses, and then 40 of the group will be chosen to work two days a week on tasting panels.
Their most collaborative songwriting project to date, a new EP titled Comb for Gold, comes out Aug. 26 on Fine Prints. Soundwise, Logan described the new music as, a bit more complex, instrumentation-wise compared to their first album, Static Thick. They even have another albums worth of material, ready to release, hopefully as soon as possible. There seems to be a wealth of material with this band, Logan says. Quillin agrees. We always joke that we spent more time together now than if we ever went out. Their relationship seems to be going better than ever.
"This show isn't just a job to me, it is a vital part of my life and has been like a sanctuary these last seven years," he continued. "It's been with me through good times and bad and I'm so grateful to the fans, producers and the amazing casts of both of these shows for allowing me to come here and be a part of this community every week."
When the (gun)smoke finally clears, Desna emerges wearing the boss necklace of dead sister friend. I can't believe Clay had the audacity to think that after Desna took all the risks, she was just going to let him step in to his old role and force her work for him again (the ego of the white patriarchy never fails to astound me). So when she came into the strip club in her angelic white and looked Clay in the eye and said, "Thanks for underestimating me, I learned a whole lot," all I could think was "Get yours!" If you want to find a boss who respects you, listens to your concerns and does right by you? You only have to look in the mirror  can I get an amen? It's you. Women are doing it for themselves. Get out the way, Husser flotsam! And amid all this, she gets a casino too! Thank goodness for Mandy! So one door closed, but a more lucrative (read: legal) one opens. I can hardly wait.
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)



Police are investigating a shooting in San Francisco's Mission District that hospitalized a 50-year-old man Sunday night.



Around 10 p.m., the victim was standing at the corner of 24th and Folsom streets with his friends. A gray sedan then pulled up and the male driver allegedly began shooting, striking the victim in the leg, police said.



The victim was taken to a hospital with injuries not considered life-threatening, according to police. No other people were injured in the shooting.



Officers were unable to locate and arrest the suspect.



Anyone with further information is advised to call the police tip line at (415) 575-4444 or to text a tip to TIP411 with "SFPD" at the beginning of the message. Tipsters can remain anonymous.





Copyright  2018 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
SANTA CLARA (BCN)



The public agency that owns Levi's Stadium has won a legal victory in a dispute with the San Francisco 49ers over the team's rent, city said in a news release.



An arbiter last week denied the 49ers' request to reduce their annual rent by $4.25 million. Instead, the team's rent will increase by $238,000 to $24.7 million, according to the Santa Clara Stadium Authority.



In March 2016, the 49ers requested the rent reduction to $20.25 million per year. The City Council unanimously refused the reduction, and the 49ers filed for arbitration to decide the issue.



In addition to the rent increase, the arbiter's decision confirms that the Stadium Authority will receive back pay for rental payments owed, attorneys' fees and costs, and future increased rental payments, according to the news release.



"With the success of the City Council (acting as the Stadium Authority) and the new city administration, there is a new balance of power that puts the taxpayers and their representatives in charge," Santa Clara Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor said in the release.



"Unfortunately, the 49ers have a record of withholding documents and payments from the Stadium Authority. ... On behalf of the Stadium Authority board, we will work to ensure timely payments of these public funds owed to the Stadium Authority and continue to hold the 49ers accountable to the public and Stadium Authority for issues important to Santa Clara."



Representatives for the 49ers could not be immediately reached for comment.




NOTE TO EDITORS: This story is a special project being published by Bay City News for use by subscribers. The Appropriations Committee of the California Legislature is currently reviewing a bail reform proposal, Senate Bill 10. The deadline to pass the bill out of committee is Aug. 17.



By Marissa Gerchick, Fiona Kelliher and Emily Lemmerman



Bay City News Service



In late 1987, Sheri Costa drove her three young children from Alameda County to Fresno County to see her husband in jail. He had been arrested more than 30 days earlier in Fresno on charges of drug possession with intent to sell and distribute, and the price of his freedom was set: $100,000.



Costa paid a bail bondsman $10,000 in cash, a non-refundable deposit representing 10 percent of the bail. For the bail bondsman to pay the remaining $90,000, she also needed to promise property as collateral. But at 26, she didn't own a home, so she convinced her friend's parents to put up their homes.



Over the years, Costa has helped with bail payments for her nephew and neighborhood kids who have had run-ins with the law, on charges ranging from attempted murder to assault.



"The nice thing about having a big family is that you all get to split up the bail payments," Costa said.



If California's Senate Bill 10 passes this fall, families like Costa's might be able to bring loved ones home without the financial burden of bail.



The proposed legislation would drastically reduce the use of money bail, and instead require all 58 California counties to use risk assessments to help judges decide when to release those charged with crimes.



The assessments ask questions to predict whether a defendant will show up to court or commit a crime if they are released. Many counties throughout the state have already begun to implement risk assessments in their pretrial systems.



Proponents of the bill see the proposed legislation as a step in the right direction for fixing an outdated and unfair bail system. But the use of risk assessments is not without controversy.



Some experts and community organizations suggest that SB 10 is too vague and doesn't address key issues with the design and use of the required pretrial risk assessments.



On July 30, more than 100 organizations -- including the American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation -- released a signed statement arguing against the use of pretrial risk assessments because of the concern that they may exacerbate or perpetuate bias in the criminal justice system.



How that report will impact SB 10 will be seen after the state Legislature reconvenes later this month.



Counties that already use risk assessments implement them in myriad ways, according to details culled from over 40 public records requests and 25 interviews.



They use different tools, provide different information to their judges about defendants, and sometimes struggle to find resources to evaluate the tools' effectiveness.



The differences between counties don't mean officials are not being fair, experts say, but they do indicate a system that is fraught with misunderstandings over what risk assessment tools can do - and how they can be evaluated.



---



Using a "pretrial risk assessment tool" isn't always high-tech. Most mornings in Napa County, probation officers receive a list with the names of people arrested in the last 24 hours. They head downstairs to the jail and ask a few questions to those who are locked up.



Each answer to an officer's questions is assigned a number. The officer adds up a defendant's score -- intended to predict whether that person will skip a court date or commit a crime if released -- and writes an accompanying report for the judge, who will decide which defendants to release by the end of the afternoon.



Napa's specific questionnaire, called the Ohio Risk Assessment System (ORAS) pretrial tool is one of many pretrial risk assessments used by counties across the state. San Francisco and Santa Cruz use the Public Safety Assessment (PSA), which was developed by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Some counties have worked with research organizations to design their own pretrial risk assessment tool.



Using different tools isn't necessarily a problem, said Marie VanNostrand, the co-founder of Luminosity, a company that focuses on developing data-driven solutions for criminal justice problems.



"To me, it almost doesn't matter what risk assessment is used, as long as it's valid and it's accurately classifying the risk in an unbiased way," VanNostrand said.



That question of bias is central to the future of SB 10. The recent statement of concerns about pretrial risk assessments, which included several organizations that back the bill, argues that pretrial risk assessments could perpetuate racial bias and shouldn't be adopted in jurisdictions that don't already use them.



But SB 10 would require many counties in California to start using risk assessments for the first time.



The statement also hits on problems highlighted in several research papers. A study commissioned by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation found that one tool overestimated the likelihood of women to commit violent crime compared to men.



Another study found the same effect for a risk assessment used at the federal level. These risk assessments are designed to assign risk scores based on a person's likelihood of committing a new violent crime, meaning that people with the same likelihood of committing a violent crime should have the same risk score.



But these studies found that among women and men with the same risk score, the women were on average less likely to commit violent crime than the men were -- suggesting the women should have been given lower risk scores or the men higher ones.



In short, risk assessment scores can be biased against women by potentially rating them as higher risk than they actually are.



In Wisconsin and New Jersey, courts have tried to curtail this gender bias by allowing gender to be included as a factor used to calculate risk scores. They reason that including gender in the assessments may lead to more accurate ratings.



SB 10, meanwhile, stipulates that risk assessment tools must be "equally accurate across all racial groups, ethnic groups, and genders" to ensure that they are fair, but the proposed bill also bans the use of race, ethnicity and gender in deciding who is released or kept in jail.



While acknowledging the potential for bias, many are optimistic about risk assessments, arguing that they push the system in the right direction.



In response to the July 30 statement critiquing the use of pretrial tools, the justice reform organization Pretrial Justice Institute wrote that tools can have positive effects when used carefully.



"Is there ever going to be a perfect system where an algorithm can predict risk? No," said Jeff Adachi, San Francisco's public defender. "But from the data, this is a better way. The risk assessment tools, while not perfect, are better than simply taking a human being and saying 'you decide.'"



---



SB 10 leaves many details of risk assessment implementation to each county. The same score -- received through the same assessment -- could have different results depending on how a county implements the tool.



Judges, who make the final decisions about release or detention, use the risk assessments as one factor in the process. They also rely on their own experiences and discretion when deciding who to release and who to detain.



VanNostrand, who implemented pretrial risk assessments in New Jersey, said that more research is needed on how scores should be translated into recommendations for judges.



"The risk assessment is research-based," she said. "The recommendation usually is not."



Another pressing question is whether judges will be required to follow the risk assessment recommendation. In San Francisco, Adachi said, judges often detain defendants for whom a risk assessment has recommended release.



It's unclear what the final version of SB 10 will say about judges deviating from risk assessment recommendations. Deciding whether to regulate judge discretion means recognizing the "delicate balance" between the state's legislative, judicial, and executive branches, state Sen. Robert Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, said.



The issue of judicial oversight -- and other aspects of implementation -- could also affect counties that already use tools in myriad ways, from what information judges receive to how defendants get released.



Judges in Solano County receive a narrative about each defendant, while judges in Mariposa County get a standardized sheet with the defendant's risk level, risk factors like previous offenses and sometimes the defendant's income. It's not yet clear whether these counties will have to change their practices in response to SB 10.



Many of these decisions around the implementation of risk assessments are political rather than scientific, said Sakira Cook, director of the Criminal Justice Program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which authored the recent critique of the tools.



When these key implementation decisions are made, "the community must be at the table," Cook said.



---



Tim Dowler, who oversees the Ventura County Probation Agency's adult services bureau, wanted his county to pick a tool that had a history of effectiveness in California when they overhauled their pretrial program in 2011.



That means testing, or validating, whether the predictions about whether a person would show up for court were accurate, based on data about people accused of crimes in California.



"We knew right from the beginning -- we were like, 'What is validated in California?' and couldn't find one," Dowler said.



The county picked the ORAS-pretrial tool, but vowed to evaluate the tool to make sure it was accurately predicting scores. This year, the county will go through the evaluation process with the help of the University of Cincinnati.



Every jurisdiction should follow Dowler's instinct, said several experts, including VanNostrand. After implementing a tool, counties ought to collect data to test its effectiveness -- and continually repeat the process.



But under SB 10, validation is suggested rather than explicitly required. The bill's language around evaluation says counties should send data to the Judicial Council "when possible" and that tools should be "regularly validated and adjusted."



Two tools used in many California counties, the ORAS-pretrial tool and a tool from Virginia, were developed based on analyses performed on people going before the court in other states. The "cutoffs" for these tools -- the number of points defendants must receive to be considered low-, moderate- or high-risk -- might not be the same across all populations.



Evaluating the risk assessment tools isn't hard, said Edward Latessa, the creator of the ORAS-pretrial tool. Since so many people move through the system quickly, data can be collected about how well a risk assessment works in a year or less.



"There's really no excuse for not validating the tool on your own population," Latessa said.



But there are challenges to such evaluation. While some counties have evaluated their tools, others say cost or outdated technology make the process difficult.



In Mariposa County, the probation department's case management system isn't technologically compatible with the court's case management system.



Officials in Mariposa County said they would have to compare data by hand. Monterey County's Probation Department also cited technological barriers -- alongside a lack of funding -- as preventing the county from performing a full evaluation study.



Even with those problems, it's possible that SB 10 will bring greater balance to the pretrial system.



"If someone is booked for the same offense, whether you can afford or can't afford bail shouldn't make a difference," said Ryan Oliphant, assistant chief probation officer in Mariposa County.



For Sheri Costa's family, the changes proposed by SB 10 didn't come soon enough.



"We've never been fortunate to have pretrial as an option," she said. "For us, it was always bail."





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Ma sees this nostalgia as destructive, even deadly. The virus  Shen Fever, it is called in the book  zombifies its victims by destroying their brains with obsessive nostalgia for the past. Fevered victims re-enact the same scenes and actions in their homes, over and over, madly, until they die or are put out of their misery by Bob and his gang. In one scene, a mother sets the dining room table, over and over and over, no longer a person, just a shell of one stuck on an endless loop through a moment from the past. At one point, one of Bobs band becomes afflicted with Shen Fever after she returns to her childhood home and begins trying on dresses hanging in her closet. I looked at her eyes, upside down. They were open but unfocused. They didnt register me. The pupils didnt move, Chen says, describing her friend as she becomes entranced by her past.
OAKLAND (BCN)



A defendant who was only 16 years old at the time of the fatal shooting of two men in East Oakland three years ago has pleaded no contest to two counts of second-degree murder, according to court documents.



Ishiah Stewart, an Antioch resident who is now 19, entered his pleas on Thursday for the slayings of Robert Fields, 23, of San Leandro, and Avery Enoch, 27, of Oakland, who were fatally shot in the 2300 block of 88th Avenue at 10:06 p.m. on Sept. 9, 2015.



Authorities haven't disclosed a motive for the double murder.



According to a transcript of Stewart's plea hearing, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Allen Hymer said Stewart potentially could have faced up to 100 years to life in state prison if he'd gone to trial and been convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and all of the other charges against him.



But Alameda County prosecutor Nick Homer said the plea agreement, which was reached shortly before Stewart was to stand trial, calls for him to serve only 15 years to life.



Homer said at the hearing that he kept the families of Fields and Enoch closely informed about the plea negotiations in the case.



"Nothing will make their loss right. However, they are in agreement with this disposition," Homer said.



Stewart's lawyer Jared Winter said Stewart didn't enter into the plea agreement lightly and said he and Stewart agree that "this is the appropriate result for this case."



Hymer said, "Mr. Stewart is getting something out of the plea bargain and the District Attorney is getting something out of the plea bargain and that's why it's a plea bargain."



Oakland police said Stewart was arrested at his home in Antioch on June 3, 2016, after witnesses and physical evidence connected him to the fatal shootings of Fields and Enoch. The charges against him were filed on June 7, 2017.



Stewart is scheduled to be sentenced by Hymer on Sept. 20.





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A woman in her 60s or 70s was struck and killed by a Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit train in Novato this morning.



Novato police and the Marin County coroner's division of the Marin County Sheriff's Office are working to determine her identity, Novato police Capt. Jim Correa said.



The collision was reported at 5:48 a.m. just south of North Hamilton Parkway.



SMART trains were running about 20 minutes late around 9:45 a.m. but were expected to be back on time shortly, SMART spokeswoman Jeanne Mariani-Belding said. The tracks reopened at 9:26 a.m.







An Oakland police officer who was critically injured in a crash earlier today had been responding to a call of a suspicious person near the Port of Oakland, police said.



The officer was headed east in a marked patrol SUV on Middle Harbor Road near the west gate of the Oakland International Container Terminal, where the SUV hit a car and then a parked big-rig at 2:49 a.m.



The officer had to be extricated by the Oakland Fire Department and was taken to a hospital. Police said earlier that the officer was undergoing surgery, but no update on the officer's condition has been released.



No other drivers were injured in the crash.







Two Antioch residents killed in a suspected DUI crash off of state Highway 24 in Walnut Creek early Sunday morning have been identified by the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office.



Dakarai Rishon Fagorala, 17, and John Hamed Walizadam, 18, died after the car they riding in veered off Highway 24 near Interstate Highway 680, sheriff's officials said.



The driver, 18-year-old Ramya Ramey of Antioch, was arrested on suspicion of felony manslaughter for killing two passengers and multiple felony DUI counts for injuring two other passengers, according to the California Highway Patrol.



The crash was reported at 4:01 a.m., when the Honda Civic driven by Ramey went off the highway and flipped onto Boulevard Circle.



The two male passengers were pronounced dead at the scene. Ramey and the two other female passengers, from Antioch and Oakley, all suffered major injuries and were still hospitalized as of this morning, according to the CHP.



The crash is under investigation. Anyone with information can call the Contra Costa CHP at (925) 646-4980 or (800)-TELL-CHP.







Police are investigating a shooting that killed a 19-year-old man and injured three other people in San Francisco's Excelsior District early Saturday morning.



The shooting occurred around 2:10 a.m. near the corner of Mission Street and Geneva Avenue, police said.



The city's medical examiner's office has identified the man who died as Gerson Romero.



The other victims were described by police as two men, 19 and 23, and a 19-year-old woman. Their injuries were not considered life-threatening.



The suspects were described as five men between the ages of 20 and 25, according to police. Further information was not immediately available.







Police are investigating a shooting in San Francisco's Mission District that hospitalized a 50-year-old man Sunday night.



Around 10 p.m., the victim was standing at the corner of 24th and Folsom streets with his friends. A gray sedan then pulled up and the male driver allegedly began shooting, striking the victim in the leg, police said.



The victim was taken to a hospital with injuries not considered life-threatening, according to police. No other people were injured in the shooting.



Officers were unable to locate and arrest the suspect.







At least one person was injured and another arrested following a solo-vehicle crash early this morning on state Highway 128 in unincorporated Napa County, according to the California Highway Patrol.



The CHP said the crash was first reported around 12:35 a.m. and at least one of the motorists needed to be extricated from the vehicle.



No other information about the crash was immediately available from the CHP.







The Vacaville Police Department released video on Sunday of its officers, officials with the nonprofits SPCA of Solano County and Humane Animal Services, and other volunteers evacuating the SPCA office as the Nelson Fire roared down a nearby hill on Friday.



The fire, which was fully contained on Sunday, burned one home, threatened several other structures and scorched 2,162 acres after it started near Interstate Highway 80 in Fairfield on Friday afternoon, according to Cal Fire.



The video shows officers throwing as many animals as possible into their patrol vehicles as the fire bears down from a grassy hill toward the building, which is located off Peabody Road and near California State Prison Solano.



No injuries were reported in the fire, but a home on Peabody Road burned, Cal Fire officials said.



SPCA of Solano County officials wrote on their website Sunday that they were back at the office and were determining what was lost from smoke damage or a lack of power to the building's refrigerators.







An Oakland man was arrested early Sunday on suspicion of gun and drug possession for sale offenses in the parking lot of an Emeryville mall, police said.



An officer tried to pull over Kenneth Ammons, 51, who was riding a motor scooter believed to be stolen and was making several traffic violations in the parking lot of the East Bay Bridge shopping center at 3838 Hollis St., Emeryville police Capt. Oliver Collins said.



As Ammons ran from the officer, he threw away a loaded firearm that was later recovered, police said. Officers found Ammons was in possession of narcotics, a digital scale and a cellphone.



He was taken into custody without incident.





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Two 18-year-old men were killed when a car plunged from eastbound state Highway 24 onto a Walnut Creek city street early Sunday morning, the California Highway Patrol said.



Two other passengers, 18-year-old women from Antioch and Oakley, suffered major injuries and were taken to John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek.



The driver, 18-year-old Ramya Ramey of Antioch, also suffered major injuries and was arrested on suspicion of felony manslaughter for the deaths of the passengers who died in the crash and multiple counts of felony DUI for causing major injuries to the other passengers.



The fatal crash was reported at 4:01 a.m. Sunday. The driver was approaching the Interstate Highway 680 interchange from eastbound Highway 24 when her Honda veered off the highway and overturned onto Boulevard Circle.



The crash remains under investigation. Anyone who witnessed the collision, or the events leading up to it, can call the Contra Costa CHP in Martinez at (925) 646-4980 or 1-800-TELL-CHP.







The public agency that owns Levi's Stadium has won a legal victory in a dispute with the San Francisco 49ers over the team's rent, the city said in a news release Sunday.



An arbiter last week denied the 49ers' request to reduce their annual rent by $4.25 million. Instead, the team's rent will increase by $238,000 to $24.7 million, according to the Santa Clara Stadium Authority.



In March 2016, the 49ers requested the rent reduction to $20.25 million per year. The City Council unanimously refused the reduction, and the 49ers filed for arbitration to decide the issue.



In addition to the rent increase, the arbiter's decision confirms that the Stadium Authority will receive back pay for rental payments owed, attorneys' fees and costs, and future increased rental payments, according to the news release.



"With the success of the City Council (acting as the Stadium Authority) and the new city administration, there is a new balance of power that puts the taxpayers and their representatives in charge," Santa Clara Mayor Lisa M. Gillmor said in the release.



"Unfortunately, the 49ers have a record of withholding documents and payments from the Stadium Authority. ... On behalf of the Stadium Authority board, we will work to ensure timely payments of these public funds owed to the Stadium Authority and continue to hold the 49ers accountable to the public and Stadium Authority for issues important to Santa Clara."



Rahul Chandhok, vice president of public affairs and strategic communications for the 49ers, said in a statement Sunday that the team accepts the arbitrator's decision to increase its annual rent payment by 1 percent. He also said it's "deceitful" of Gillmor to infer otherwise.



"It's exactly this deceptive approach, her lack of transparency, and fuzzy math that make Mayor Gillmor difficult to trust," Chandhok said.







An alleged DUI driver has been arrested on suspicion of murder after striking and killing a pedestrian on northbound Interstate 880 in Oakland Sunday morning, according to the California Highway Patrol.



The suspect, identified as 56-year-old Berkeley resident Maury Butler, struck a driver who had exited a vehicle after a two-car collision just south of 66th Avenue in Oakland that was first reported at 2:24 a.m. The suspect, who was driving a white Lexus sedan, was pulled over after striking the victim and found to be driving under the influence, according to Officer Herman Baza. This is the driver's fourth DUI, Baza said, and he was driving with a suspended license.



The driver faces an enhancement to the charges because of the multiple DUI convictions.



The victim was identified by the Alameda County Coroner's Bureau as Jesaun Benson-Garrett, 19. His California ID lists Antioch as his city of residence.







The Lafayette City Council will discuss a proposal tonight that could help save the historic Park Theater in the downtown area, and allow a developer to build an apartment building nearby.



At its meeting today, which starts at 6:15 p.m. at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center, 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd., the council will talk about whether a plan to transfer "density" credits to a developer could encourage construction of an economically practical apartment project on 1.5 acres at Golden Gate Way and First Street.



The hope is that, at the same time, the density transfer could help preserve the old theater a few hundred feet to the west for eventual donation to the community.



The transfer of density credits from the theater property to the 1.5-acre Lincoln property could allow its owner John Protopappas, an Oakland-based developer, to build a 92-unit apartment project there. Under such an agreement, Protopappas would be required to preserve the old Park Theater building. Protopappas now has an option to buy the Park Theater property, too, needed to make this plan work.



Under existing city rules, a maximum of 52 apartment units could occupy the 1.5-acre Lincoln parcel.







Two Oakland men have been arrested on suspicion of assault and robbery in connection with a jewelry store heist that happened last month at Bayfair Center, San Leandro police said Friday.



Steven Glenn, 35, and Randy Hawkins, 41, both confessed to the robbery at Sam's Jewelry Store, police said in a news release.



The robbery occurred about 6:30 p.m. July 24, when the suspects entered the store and began inquiring about the "expensive" jewelry line, police said.



They then left, but returned a short time later. One suspect reportedly stood outside while the other entered, wearing gloves, and began smashing glass display cases and stealing the valuables inside, according to police.



An estimated $14,000 in jewelry was taken, police said.





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A multiple-vehicle traffic collision is currently blocking multiple lanes of southbound U.S. Highway 101 just north of Yerba Buena Road in San Jose, according to the California Highway Patrol.



The CHP said the collision was first reported at 12:49 a.m. and two people are trapped in one of the vehicles involved. There is no estimated time of when all the lanes would be reopened.



No further information is immediately available.





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DALY CITY (BCN)



Thirty-two residents of a three-story duplex and four nearby houses in Daly City were displaced from their homes Saturday afternoon by a structure fire, according to the Daly City-based North County Fire Authority.



Sixteen fire companies responded to the duplex in the 500 block of Sylvan Street about 4:07 p.m. Saturday, according to a fire authority statement.



Firefighters found thick black smoke coming from the rear yard of the duplex. Flames and heat from the rear deck and yard area of the duplex ignited the rear of the two adjacent homes on Sylvan Street and to the rear of two homes on Lisbon Street.



There were no injuries to any of the firefighters or residents.



Firefighters remained on the scene for over five hours checking for flare-ups and doing mop-up operations, fire officials said. Fifteen of the 32 displaced residents sought help from the American Red Cross, and the rest made their own housing arrangements.



The cause of the fire remained under investigation today by the North County Fire Prevention Services Bureau.









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MARTINEZ (BCN)



The Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will consider censuring Gus Kramer, the county's longtime assessor, in light of allegations of sexual harassment involving two female workers in the assessor's office.



The censure - an official judgment involving condemnation, as defined by Merriam-Webster - would be largely symbolic, being as Kramer's position is an elected one. But the supervisors' resolution says all county departments must provide harassment-free workplaces.



"This is what the board expects of all of its department heads, whether they are appointed or elected," according to one passage in the supervisors' resolution.



The supervisors' planned action comes after an Aug. 5 story by the Bay Area News Group about a county-commissioned investigator's report that it is "more likely than not" that Kramer harassed two female employees in his department on several occasions from 2008 until 2015.



The resolution before the county supervisors Tuesday also calls for complaints against Kramer to also be referred to the county's civil grand jury for possible further investigation.



County Associate Appraiser Margaret Eychner had filed a complaint against Kramer in 2015, which was never formally pursued. Eychner filed a new complaint against Kramer June 18 detailing various actions she considers to be sexual harassment, according to the Bay Area News Group. A second woman, whose identity hasn't been made public, filed a similar complaint in 2015, as well, alleging harassment.



Kramer, who has served as assessor since 1994, was also the subject of a sexual harassment complaint in 2000. The county reached a $1 million settlement with the women in 2009 after a jury found Kramer had retaliated against her for filing the original 2000 complaint.



The supervisors' meeting begins at 9:30 a.m. in the supervisors' chamber in the county administration building, 651 Pine St. in downtown Martinez.





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SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)



An argument early Saturday morning may have preceded a quadruple shooting in San Francisco's Excelsior District that killed a 19-year-old man.



The shooting occurred around 2:10 a.m. Saturday near the corner of Mission Street and Geneva Avenue, police said.



The city's medical examiner's office has identified the man who died as Gerson Romero.



The other victims were described by police as two men, 19 and 23, and a 19-year-old woman. Their injuries were not considered life-threatening.



According to police Officer Joseph Tomlinson, witnesses said a group of men were standing on the sidewalk. After hearing one of the men say something, the witnesses said they heard gunshots.



Romero was pronounced dead at the scene. One victim suffered gunshot wounds to their lower back, another was shot in the buttocks, and the third was grazed in their leg, Tomlinson said.



They were taken to a hospital by medical personnel.



The suspects were described as five men between the ages of 20 and 25.



"We're not sure if there was one or more guns at this point," Tomlinson said.



Additionally, Tomlinson said investigators have located surveillance cameras in the area and are currently reviewing them.



Anyone with further information about the fatal shooting can contact the San Francisco police tip line at (415) 575-4444 or text a tip to TIP411 with "SFPD" at the beginning of the message. Tipsters can remain anonymous.





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The patient at the clinic was in his 40s and had lost both his legs to Type 1 diabetes. He had mental health and substance abuse problems and was taking large amounts of opioids to manage pain. He was assigned to Nichole Mitchell, who in 2014 was a newly minted nurse practitioner in her first week of a one-year postgraduate residency program at the Community Health Center clinic in Middletown, Conn.



In a regular clinical appointment, "I would have been given 20 minutes with him, and would have been without the support or knowledge of how to treat pain or Type 1 diabetes," she said.



But her residency program gives the nurse practitioners extra time to assess patients, allowing her to come up with a plan for the man's care, she said, with a doctor at her side to whom she could put all her questions.



A few years later, Mitchell is still at that clinic and now mentors nurse practitioner residents. She has developed a specialty in caring for patients with HIV and hepatitis C, as well as transgender health care.



The residency program "gives you the space to explore things you're interested in in family practice," Mitchell said. "There's no way I could have gotten that training without the residency."



Mitchell is part of a growing cadre of nurse practitioners typically, registered nurses who have completed a master's degree in nursing who tack on up to a year of clinical and other training, often in primary care.



Residencies may be at federally qualified health centers, Veterans Affairs medical centers or private practices and hospital systems. Patients run the gamut, but many are low-income and have complicated needs.



Proponents say the programs help prepare new nurse practitioners to deal with the growing number of patients with complex health issues. But detractors say that a standard training program already provides adequate preparation to handle patients with serious health care needs. Nurse practitioners who choose not to do a residency, as the vast majority of the 23,000 who graduate each year do not, are well qualified to provide good patient care, they say.



As many communities, especially rural ones, struggle to attract medical providers, it's increasingly likely that patients will see a nurse practitioner rather than a medical doctor when they need care. In 2016, nurse practitioners made up a quarter of primary care providers in rural areas and 23 percent in non-rural areas, up from 17.6 and 15.9 percent, respectively, in 2008, according to a study in the June issue of Health Affairs.



Depending on the state, they may practice independently of physicians or with varying degrees of oversight. Research has shown that nurse practitioners generally provide care that's comparable to that of doctors in terms of quality, safety and effectiveness.



But their training differs. Unlike the three-year residency programs that doctors must generally complete after medical school in order to practice medicine, nurse practitioner residency programs, sometimes called fellowships, are completely voluntary. Like medical school residents, though, the nurse practitioner residents work for a fraction of what they would make at a regular job, typically about half to three-quarters of a normal salary.



Advocates say it's worth it.



"It's a very difficult transition to go from excellent nurse practitioner training to full scope-of-practice provider," said Margaret Flinter, a nurse practitioner who is senior vice president and clinical director of Community Health Center, a network of community health centers in Connecticut.



"My experience was that too often, too many junior NPs found it a difficult transition, and we lost people, maybe forever, based on the intensity and readiness for seeing people" at our centers.



Flinter started the first nurse practitioner residency program in 2007. There are now more than 50 postgraduate primary care residency programs nationwide, she said. Mentored clinical training is a key part of the programs, but they typically also include formal lectures and clinical rotations in other specialties.



Not everyone is as gung-ho about the need for nurse practitioner residency programs, though.



"There's a lot of debate within the community," said Joyce Knestrick, president of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners. Knestrick practices in Wheeling, W.Va., a rural area about an hour's drive from Pittsburgh. She said that there could be a benefit if a nurse practitioner wanted to switch from primary care to work in a cardiology practice, for example. But otherwise she's not sold on the idea.



A position statement from the Nurse Practitioner Roundtable, a group of professional organizations of which AANP is a member, offered this assessment: "Forty years of patient outcomes and clinical research demonstrates that nurse practitioners consistently provide high quality, competent care. Additional post-graduate preparation is not required or necessary for entry into practice."



"We already have good outcomes to show that our current educational system has been effective," Knestrick said. "So I'm not really sure what the benefit is for residencies."



(c)2018 Kaiser Health News | Visit Kaiser Health News at www.khn.org
An earlier Tribune investigation found that although experts recommend that rape victims be treated by providers trained in that specialty, few nurses undergo the training. The care a patient receives can depend on which emergency room he or she goes to and when; one hospital may have multiple sexual assault nurse examiners on staff while another has none.
Bill Cunningham died in 2016, and the Sunday New York Times just hasnt been the same for me. You see, Id go immediately to the Sunday Styles section and look for his photographs of New Yorkers and their fashions, both people on the street and the smart society types who posed at the assorted balls, receptions and openings. It didnt matter where I was actually living, the Connecticut River Valley or San Franciscos Russian Hill, gazing at Cunninghams On the Street and Evening Hours photos always transported me back to a New York where I could imagine, if only for a second, that it was me charging across 57th street at Fifth Avenue looking dashing or posing in a tuxedo somewhere with a canape in one hand and a martini in the other.
Instead of more and wider roads, the region should instead invest in transit and making it easier to bike and walk, the alliance said. The report comes just before the Tuesday close of the public comment period for On to 2050, the new draft plan by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, or CMAP, which sets the agenda for transportation funding for the region and determines which projects are eligible for federal funding.
Curiously, the first Division Street bridge at that location, built in 1869, was removed in 1902 and reused at Blackhawk Street, according to the book Chicago River Bridges by Patrick McBriarty. That bridge was removed in 1910, after being declared an obstruction to navigation in an order from the U.S. secretary of war, and the location has since been without a bridge.
The annual Perseid meteor shower reached its peak Sunday night with as many as 60 shooting stars streaking across the sky each hour into the early hours of Monday.

This year's event coincided with a new moon phase of the lunar cycle, allowing for a darker show and brighter celestial spectacle.

Stargazers and photographers around the world stepped outside to look for the blazing fireballs and above you'll find images of last night's peak.

Many Bay Area residents saw little in the sky due to foggy conditions. "Too cloudy to see the Perseids, as usual for the Bay Area." Tweeted @explodedsoda. "Maybe it'll be clearer when I wake up to pee at 4am."

But outside the urban areas, the show was clear and bright. "Drove up to Tahoe last night to watch the Perseid Meteor shower and play with the telescope at the Bright Star Observatory," wrote CodyDarkstalker on Twitter. "So cool to see Mars and the rings of Saturn and the meteor showers and the milky way."

The Perseids light up the sky every year when the Earth passes through the cloud of debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle, and appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus in the northeastern sky.

The 2018 Perseids run from July 17 to Aug. 24, but the peak occurred on Aug. 12 and most of the shooting stars will have passed with only a few strays etched across the sky.
"When the community comes together with law enforcement together, and embracing our children and our future, I think better things happen," said Emanuel, who is up for re-election next year. "So while there's always a valid question about tactics, I also think (there's) a valid observation about culture and partnership. And what I saw this weekend was a city embracing their children, embracing the start of the school year, coming together as a neighborhood, working with law enforcement, working with neighbors."
DAMASCUS, Syria  Syrian government officials vowed Monday to ensure the safe return of refugees and urged Western countries to encourage the process by lifting sanctions.

Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said the refugees return is a top priority for Damascus, adding that the Syrian government will facilitate their return by all means. He added that the country would welcome any foreign assistance, provided it comes with no preconditions.

Public Administration Minister Hussein Makhlouf said authorities are working to rebuild hospitals, schools and other infrastructure to help accommodate refugees.

President Bashar Assads forces, with Russian air support, have won a series of victories in recent months against opposition fighters, who are now mainly confined to the northern Idlib province. The fighting is over in much of the country, but many of the more than 5 million refugees fear mandatory conscription or reprisal from government forces if they return. Others have nowhere to go after their homes and businesses were destroyed.

Speaking in Damascus, Makhlouf claimed the government has restored more than 5,000 schools and 250 hospitals, and that about 3.5 million internally displaced people have regained their homes in Syria.

The return of refugees is a necessary condition for the countrys rebuilding and development, he said.

Makhlouf called on Western countries to lift an economic embargo imposed early in the seven-year conflict that was aimed at pressuring Assad to step down, noting that it would help restore the Syrian economy and encourage the refugees return.

His statement echoed calls by Russian officials, who urged the U.S. and its Western allies to provide humanitarian assistance to Syria and help rebuild its economy.

The United Nations refugee agency says it is premature to promote returns to Syria as it is still dangerous, but that refugees who want to return should be supported.

Dmitry Kozlov and Sergei Grits are Associated Press writers.
SEOUL  The rival Koreas announced Monday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in will meet in Pyongyang sometime in September, while their envoys also discussed Pyongyangs nuclear disarmament efforts and international sanctions.

The push for what would be the leaders third summit since April comes amid renewed worries surrounding a nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang.

The announcement released after nearly two hours of talks led by the rivals chiefs for inter-Korean affairs was thin on details. In a three-sentence joint statement, the two sides did not mention an exact date for the summit and provided no details on how to implement past agreements.

The meeting at a North Korea-controlled building in the border village of Panmunjom comes as the international community waits to see if North Korea will begin abandoning its nuclear weapons program, something officials suggested would happen after Kims summit with President Trump in June in Singapore.

North Korea is thought to have a growing arsenal of nuclear bombs and long-range missiles and to be closing in on the ability to reliably target anywhere on the U.S. mainland. A string of North Korean weapons tests last year, during which Pyongyang claimed to have completed its nuclear arsenal, had many in Asia worried that Washington and Pyongyang were on the brink of war.

The South Korean unification minister, Cho Myoung-gyon, said the two sides also discussed international sanctions meant to punish the North for its development of nuclear weapons, but he didnt elaborate.

Pyongyang has urged Washington to ease the economic punishments, but the United States says that cant happen until the North completely denuclearizes.

The South Korean envoy said he urged Pyongyang to accelerate its current nuclear negotiations with the United States. The North said it was making efforts to disarm, but Cho said there were no new details on those efforts.

Experts say there has been slow progress on those efforts since the Singapore summit. Pyongyang has urged Washington to reciprocate its goodwill gestures, which include suspending missile and nuclear tests and returning the remains of Americans who fought in the Korean War. Washington, which canceled an annual joint military exercise with South Korea that had taken place in August in previous years, has refused to ease sanctions until North Korea finally and fully denuclearizes.

Youkyung Lee is an Associated Press writer.
US-based chip-maker Qualcomm has announced that it has mutually agreed to a settlement with the Taiwan Fair Trade Commission (TFTC), after being slapped with a $774 million fine for antitrust violations.



As part of the agreement, Qualcomm comes to the entitlement to only pay an amount of $93 million -- that the company already paid in July-end -- which would be retained by the TFTC with no amount due, the chipset-maker wrote in a blog post late on Friday.



"This settlement directly addresses concerns raised by the TFTC, regardless of disputed positions, and builds on our foundation of collaborative, long-term business relationships in Taiwan," Alex Rogers, Executive Vice President, and President, Qualcomm Technology Licensing, said in a statement.



The San Diego-based company would now also work with the TFTC and its sister agencies within the Taiwanese government to implement the 5G roll-out under regulations put in place by the Taiwanese regulator.



"In addition, Qualcomm will drive certain commercial initiatives in Taiwan over the next five years for the benefit of the mobile and semiconductor ecosystem including 5G collaborations, new market expansion, start-up and university collaborations and the development of a Taiwanese center for operations and manufacturing engineering," Qualcomm added.



The dispute arose after Taiwan's regulator reportedly said that the chip-maker abused its monopoly power over smartphone modems by putting higher patent licensing fees on companies that use the devices in their products.



The initial anti-trust fine of $774 million was announced to Qualcomm in October 2017 at Taiwan which claimed that the firm was giving other chip-makers a run for their businesses.



Apart from Taiwan, China and South Korea have also previously fined Qualcomm over anti-competitive behaviors and Apple has also put forth several lawsuits against the chip-maker for similar practices.

Read more news:

The IT consultancy myths

Musk wants Tesla to go private at $420 per share
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A unique art exhibit centered around living with disabilities debuted over the weekend at the Staten Island Pride Center, where art -- and acceptance -- are are always in the forefront.

"Artists Undeterred" features creators and producers who identify with having a disability. Saturday's enlightening launch event was attended by a diverse crowd who packed the house.

"In this world there is no one size fits all. We are all different," said co-curator Milenka Berengolc. "And tonight that is demonstrated as we have artwork by artists who hail from Israel, India, Great Britain, Canada, California, Ohio and Kansas. It's a large multifaceted project.

Participating artists: MANDEM, Laura Cowle, Kathryne Husk, Anthony Tusler, Efrat Vaknin, Sergio Acevedo, Patti Durr, LeVar Lawrence, Rosary Solimanto, Ani Schreiber, Anjum Malik, Yiqiao Wang, Scott Upton, Ryan Haddad and DisArt.

*Check out the gallery above for scenes from the opening reception*

Margaret Chase, co-curator of the project: "We are very proud to be a grantee of Staten Islands Arts from Staten Island Cultural Affairs for our project called 'Artists Undeterred,' boldly exploring disabilities, a forum for disabled artists to have their work seen. These artists have very strong view points and their artwork reflects their views as they explore their disability in their artwork.

"We appreciate everyone being here tonight -- and especially those who helped us put this evening together. It is gratifying and thrilling to showcase the work of disabled artists who engage directly and forcefully with issues of disability in their creative work."

The artwork will be at Pride Center in Tompkinsville until Oct. 1. Next up: From Oct. 20 to Dec. 30, the co-curators will exhibit a selection of entirely different artwork in the Newhouse Gallery for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor.

"We are thrilled and delighted to have all of you here tonight and are so grateful to Staten Island Art and cultural affairs for their grant," Milenka said. "And thanks to Steve Wakefield for his keen eye or it might not have been as good a show. My passion is art and I'm a performance artist and I'm a disabled artist myself."

Milenka also read an excerpt from a Indian artist: "I never let myself down. My disability may be for the world, but not for me. First love yourself and then everyone will love you."

Also featured at the opening reception: Performances by Joel Francois and the Open Doors Reality Poets, who spoke about gun violence, as well as video screenings, refreshments and the pleasure of being surrounded by an exuberant crowd.

"One of the aims of this project is to bring together disabled and non-disabled people and to encourage interchange and dialogue about art, disability, identity, gender, accessibility and other pertinent issues," Margaret said. "There were many animated conversations going on and it truly made our hearts expand."

The Staten Island Pride Community Center, a full service center, hosts myriad programs that includes support groups, from Wednesdays through Saturdays. This project is made possible (in part) by a DCA Art Fund Grant from Staten Island Arts, with public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

For further information, visit PrideCenterSI.org.
FORT DRUM, N.Y. -- President Donald Trump has signed a $716 billion defense policy bill that will boost military pay by 2.6 percent, the largest hike in nine years.

Named for John McCain, the president failed to mention the ailing senator while delivering remarks before the signing.

Rep. Dan Donovan (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) -- who was in attendance at the event Monday at New York's Fort Drum -- called the raise "well deserved" and praised the other elements the bill includes.

"This bill helps restore our military readiness by equipping our brave women and men in uniform with the resources necessary to protect our homeland, providing troops with a well-deserved pay raise, strengthening cyber defenses, and making critical investments in military capabilities and technologies to address new and evolving threats," said Donovan, who serves on the House Homeland Security Committee.

Donovan later added, "...We can never truly repay our service members for their sacrifices, but with today's action our nation makes certain that they have the tools and resources needed to do their jobs. I will continue to make our troops and veterans a top priority."

Donovan also thanked the House Armed Services' chair, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-N.Y.), and the chair of the House Armed Services Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-T.X.).

Donovan didn't comment in his statement on President Trump failing to mention McCain (R-Arizona) before the signing. McCain chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee and has been at home since he began battling brain cancer last year.

The congressman was not available to comment when asked later on Monday.

Trump and McCain are engaged in a long-running feud that dates to Trump's 2016 presidential run. At campaign rallies, Trump regularly castigates McCain -- without outright naming him -- for casting a dramatic thumbs-down vote that doomed Trump's effort last year to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which was enacted by President Barack Obama.

The bill -- formally named the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act but referred to by Trump as simply the National Defense Authorization Act -- will introduce thousands of new recruits to active duty, reserve and National Guard units and replace aging tanks, planes, ships and helicopters with more advanced and lethal technology, Trump said.

It also allows Trump to waive sanctions against countries that bought Russian weapons and now want to buy U.S. military equipment.

The bill provides no money for Trump's requested Space Force but authorizes the military parade he wants in Washington in November.

The measure also addresses child-on-child sexual assault at U.S. military bases worldwide. The issue was revealed this spring in an Associated Press investigation.

(Associated Press material was used in the report.)
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Marie Giovanniello, 61, was "shocked" when she backed her car out of her garage Sunday afternoon and noticed an "X" etched into the rear passenger-side bumper of her 2018 Ford Escape.

"We just took my car out of the garage," Giovanniello said. "We don't know where or when it happened."

Giovanniello, a Bulls Head resident and a nurse at Staten Island University Hospital in Prince's Bay, said she parked her car at the hospital for her Friday night shift.

"I got out of work at 11 at night," Giovanniello said, adding that she could have not noticed the marking when she returned to her car that night.

The following day, Giovanniello said that she parked at stores in New Springville.

"I don't have beef with anyone...I don't think anyone could've done this toward me in particular," she said.

After Giovanniello saw the damage, her daughter notified her that there was a string of "X's" etched into cars along the South Shore.

In July, the Advance reported that 40 to 50 cars were damaged in a spree of graffiti-style vandalism.

According to police at the time, the first incident occurred in May and the spree spanned throughout July.

Most of the vehicles were parked in Prince's Bay, Pleasant Plains, Huguenot, Bloomingdale and Woodrow when the crimes occurred.

All sorts of different colors, makes and models of cars have been targeted in what police suspect are random crimes mainly occurring during daytime hours, the Advance previously reported.

The marking on Giovanniello's car appears to be consistent with the deep and wide etchings on cars that were included in the aforementioned investigation.

Police, however, were not able to confirm that the most recent incident was linked to the previous spree.

The Crime Stoppers reward was placed at $2,500 in July.

Police in July asked victims to continue reporting these incidents, in part because that will provide detectives with more opportunities to review videos. The hope is that police eventually will have a photo of a person of interest to release to the public.

Giovanniello called the 123rd Precinct following the incident and filed a report for the vandalism.

People with information are encouraged to contact the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-8477 (TIPS) or for Spanish, 1-888-577-4782 (PISTA). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577.

All calls are strictly confidential.
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Some attorneys blame Brown for failing to provide enough notice and training on the new software before it went live. But Brown, who said her staff is working overtime to iron out the kinks, said she could provide only the few instructions given to her by Tyler Technologies. One of Browns June training sessions drew 1,100 pro se litigants and other court users. There are 131 workstations at the Daley Center and suburban courthouses to assist users and at least 10 people on each floor of the downtown courthouse to answer questions, a spokeswoman said.
The teen was shot once in the back in what prosecutors described as a botched attempt at gang retaliation while she and about a dozen other students took shelter from the rain in Harsh Park, about a mile from Obamas Kenwood neighborhood home, after school let out early because of final exams.
Its rare the royal commission gets to line up a high-profile target. Thus when counsel assisting Michael Hodge had National Australia Banks head of wealth Andrew Hagger in the frame, the pressure to inflict injury was intense.

The bigger the scalp the better, the cleaner the scalping the stronger the impact.

It is executives like Hagger, ones that are so closely proximate to the intouchables that run the big four banks, that are prized by the royal commission. These executives might one day make it to the top job, they have media and shareholder profile, they draw crowds, television cameras and big headlines.

Andrew Hagger of NAB leaves court after giving evidence at the banking royal commission. Credit:Darrian Traynor

And just as important, the higher the executive in the pecking order the less able corporate perpetrators are to blame those lower down the food chain who were acting without authority - the bad apples or the rogue excuse.
Suncorp's superannuation trustee used tax refunds within funds to purchase administrative services from other parts of the financial conglomerate, instead of returning the money to members as many funds do, the royal commission heard.

As part of its scrutiny of superannuation trustees, the Hayne royal commission on Monday afternoon turned its attention to how Suncorp used what it called a "tax surplus."

Senior Counsel Assisting Michael Hodge QC at the Banking Royal Commission. Credit:Archives

This referred to member funds that were collected for taxation purposes, but the fund ended up with a surplus because of deductions.

Senior counsel assisting the commission, Michael Hodge QC, questioned Maurizio Pinto, the head of the office of the trustee within Suncorp Portfolio Services Limited (SPSL), about the arrangement, and the monitoring of the services provided.
With the Financial Services Royal Commission turning its sights to superannuation, one group of Australians has been identified as particularly disadvantaged.

Counsel assisting the commission, Rowena Orr, QC, told the commission that a 2016 working paper by the CSIRO Monash Superannuation Cluster found the retirement gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians is 23 per cent.

The superannuation system is shortchanging indigenous Australians. Credit:Glenn Campbell

Indigenous Australians have a superannuation balance at retirement with a mean that is 46 per cent lower than what is required for a comfortable retirement.

Q Super executive Lynette Melcer has done extensive work in the area of indigenous superannuation after undertaking a trip to the Lockhart River region of Far North Queensland.
Mid-sized gas company Cooper Energy has reached its highest trading point in more than four years as it shifts from an explorer to a producer.

The group has recorded a 213 per cent increase in profit and 515 per cent increase in earnings, reversing losses it made last year, predominately due to the sale of the Orbost gas plant to gas pipeline company APA.

Cooper Energy's Sole gas project will supply Victoria with around 30 petajoules of gas a year.

Coopers earnings rose from $5.3 million to $32.6 million and its profit from a loss of $8.7 million last year to a profit of $9.8 million.

This year saw the final investment decision for Cooper Sole gas project in Victorias Otway Basin.
Australian steel giant BlueScope is weighing a $960 million move to drastically expand its US manufacturing operations as the company emerges as a big winner from US President Donald Trumps economic policies.

Delivering its best full-year profit in a decade, BlueScope on Monday announced it would examine the case to add up to 900,000 metric tonnes of steel-making capacity at its North Star steel mill in the US state of Ohio, where Mr Trumps tax reforms and tough new steel import tariffs are poised to drive growth higher.

Steel company BlueScope this week posted its highest yearly profit since 2008. Credit:Adam McLean

Its a good time to be a steelmaker in North America, BlueScope chief executive Mark Vassella said.

BlueScope is widely considered a beneficiary of the escalating trade war between the US and China due to its large investments in the US while also managing to secure an exemption from any tariffs for the 300,000 tonnes of product it imports into the US every year from Australia.
There have been two large question marks over-hanging JB Hi-Fi over the past year. One is whether it is vulnerable to the incursion of Amazon in this market and the other is whether its $70 million acquisition of The Good Guys reflected strategic genius or hubris.

The answer to the first question is promising but not definitive. The second remains open.

The overall performance of the group was very solid, with earnings up 12.3 per cent to $233.2 million, ahead of the revised guidance of a $230 million (down from between $235 million and $240 million) the group provided earlier in the year.

JB Hi-Fi shares jumped as much as 11 per cent on Wednesday. Credit:Max Mason-Hubers

Within that was a stellar performance  the kind of performance weve come to expect  from the JB-Hi brand in Australia.
Also it's a little funny that after peddling conspiracy theories about how fossil-fuel interests are sabotaging Tesla, Musk is looking to sell the company to Saudi Arabia. (To be fair, Musk is also "having discussions with a number of other investors, which is something that I always planned to do since I would like for Tesla to continue to have a broad investor base.") But there is another, subtler sense in which Musk hasn't secured his funding. It's not just that the Saudi PIF hasn't signed a detailed binding termsheet committing it to put up the $US70 billion that Musk would need to buy Tesla. It's also that he doesn't even want the $US70 billion: Reports that more than $US70b would be needed to take Tesla private dramatically overstate the actual capital raise needed. The $US420 buyout price would only be used for Tesla shareholders who do not remain with our company if it is private. My best estimate right now is that approximately two-thirds of shares owned by all current investors would roll over into a private Tesla. It seems that Musk's offer to buy Tesla at $US420 a share would be contingent on a large majority of shareholders turning it down. That is not how takeover offers usually work! Like, usually, if you offer to buy my shares for $US420, and I agree to sell you my shares for $US420, then you are happy and you give me the money and I give you the shares. Here, Musk's offer to buy everyone's shares for $US420 seems to require most of the shareholders saying no.

Where did that two-thirds estimate come from? Well, not from talking to the shareholders, at least not before Musk tweeted about "Funding secured" and "Investor support is confirmed." Which is good, because having those conversations with those shareholders would have been super-illegal! As Musk recognizes, now, in his blog post, which I suspect more lawyers have seen than had seen those tweets: The only way I could have meaningful discussions with our largest shareholders was to be completely forthcoming with them about my desire to take the company private. However, it wouldn't be right to share information about going private with just our largest investors without sharing the same information with all investors at the same time. Loading Will a majority of Tesla shareholders approve of Musk's "going-private" plan but turn down his offer of money, preferring to stay in the stock as it goes private? Well, I dunno, maybe. His shareholders do seem to be loyal. Certainly Musk's super-fan retail shareholders would if they could, but it is still not at all obvious that Tesla will be able to turn itself into a private company that is still open to public retail shareholders. The basic structure of US securities law is that companies can sell shares to the general public if and only if they comply with the requirements of being public companies. Musk doesn't think that those laws should apply to him, but I am not sure that the regulators will agree. Meanwhile Tesla's biggest institutional shareholders include Vanguard and BlackRock, both of which do a lot of index investing and might have trouble holding nearly as many shares in a private company. They also include T. Rowe Price and Fidelity, both of which do notably invest in private companies. But those private investments are at an entirely different scale from their public investments. Fidelity, for instance, owns about $US180 million of stock in Uber Technologies Inc., another buzzy controversial company with a $US60 billion-ish valuation that happens to be private. That's less than one-twentieth of the $US4 billion it has in Tesla. Its appetite for a private Tesla might be closer to its appetite for private Uber than for public Tesla.

So the funding is perhaps somewhat less than secured. But you can see where Musk was coming from. "Taking a company private" is a term of art, and it might not be obvious to everyone that it means buying out all of the company's stock for cash. It might not be obvious how much funding you need to secure to say that you have "funding secured" to take an $US80 billion company private, or how many contingencies you need to satisfy before you can say "Only reason why this is not certain is that it's contingent on a shareholder vote." Musk legitimately might not know these things, might not understand how the things he tweeted might be misleading. That wouldn't even really reflect badly on him. He's a smart guy who has a lot on his plate and who has not focused extensively on the nuances of securities law and corporate structuring. It was just some tweets. But here is the thing. Other CEOs don't always know this stuff either. They might muse vaguely about going private to their investment bankers or lawyers, who would explain the process and options to them. Or they might even muse about it to their boards, who would hire advisers and explore the possibility with them. But they wouldn't muse about it in public. They have lawyers. They have corporate communications policies. They have structures in place to prevent their random whims from causing damage. Any disclosure about a potential transaction will be made in a carefully lawyered press release, published outside of market hours, that emphasizes that nothing has been finalised and that any deal is uncertain and will be contingent on funding and board approval and many other conditions. Responsible CEOs do these things in order to minimise the disruption to their shareholders, to allow them to be fully informed before they make any trading decisions. They don't just tweet it casually in the middle of the trading day. But if you do decide to just tweet your every random thought without consulting anyone, then any errors are kind of on you. It is not really an excuse to say that you didn't mean to mislead anyone, that you thought that what you were saying was right, that it made sense to you. Because every other public-company CEO cares about this stuff, and tries to avoid saying untrue material things in casual public communications. If you don't care, if you are just reckless about your public announcements of material information, then you should expect that to eventually go wrong. Here is the other thing about Musk's plan to go private while keeping all the same shareholders. It makes no sense. Usually when a CEO wants to take his company private, it's because he wants to change something. One thing that usually changes is leverage; a going-private transaction normally involves borrowing a lot of money to juice the equity returns of the company, something that is obviously not a consideration here. ("I do not think it would be wise to burden Tesla with significantly increased debt," blogged Musk, correctly.)

But traditionally the main thing that changes is what is called, in the lingo, "the separation of ownership and control." A public company is owned by a lot of diffuse semi-anonymous investors who do not have a concentrated interest in the success of the firm, and managed by a CEO who is effectively a hired employee of those shareholders. When it goes private, though, those shareholders are replaced by a few big shareholders. One is, typically, the CEO, who normally increases his ownership share in a going-private transaction, giving him a greater financial interest in the success of the company. (Again that is not applicable here; Musk already owns 21.9 percent of Tesla, has a huge financial interest in its success, and has said that he does not "envision that being substantially different after any deal is completed.") The others are, typically, the CEO's private-equity backers, who take large equity positions, get board seats, and generally act like focused careful owners of the company. It is a shift in ownership structure, from the hands-off passive investors in the public markets to hands-on active private-equity investors, on the theory that the hands-on investors will do a better job of monitoring and incentivizing management and will make the company more profitable. That is obviously not Musk's plan, since he wants to keep a widely diversified shareholder base, including most of the shareholders who own Tesla as a public company. Also he does not  seem like a guy who is looking for more monitoring and incentives from his board of directors? His theory in going private seems to be that he wants his shareholders to be even less involved than they are now. Musk's initial explanation last week gave three reasons for wanting to go private: As a public company, we are subject to wild swings in our stock price that can be a major distraction for everyone working at Tesla, all of whom are shareholders. Being public also subjects us to the quarterly earnings cycle that puts enormous pressure on Tesla to make decisions that may be right for a given quarter, but not necessarily right for the long-term. Finally, as the most shorted stock in the history of the stock market, being public means that there are large numbers of people who have the incentive to attack the company. The first one is specious: If you're a long-term holder of Tesla, the stock will be worth what it's worth in the long term. If you find the short-term price fluctuations distracting, just don't look at them! Avoiding that distraction by getting rid of the ability to buy or sell Tesla stock seems like wild overkill.

The third one is also specious: Yes, public markets allow anyone who wants to sell Tesla to sell it, but they also allow anyone who wants to buy Tesla to buy it. People who dislike Tesla can go short, people who like Tesla can go long, and-pretty obviously, judging by its $US60 billion market capitalization achieved without ever making a profit-the latter effect dominates. Going private will shut out short sellers, but it will also shut out true believers who want to buy more stock. And as far as I can tell Musk has no evidence at all for his theory that short sellers are somehow doing something to attack or sabotage Tesla. Remember he has the same theory about fossil-fuel interests sabotaging Tesla  but wants Saudi Arabia involved in the buyout. But Musk's second reason  "the quarterly earnings cycle that puts enormous pressure on Tesla to make decisions that may be right for a given quarter, but not necessarily right for the long-term"  is the silliest. Where does that pressure come from? Are there gamma rays of short-termism wafting through the public markets? If being public creates pressure to make short-term decisions, then surely that pressure has to come from public-market shareholders. There is something about those public shareholders  who tend to be relatively diversified, relatively hands-off, relatively passive and to have quarterly performance pressures from their own investors  that makes them concerned primarily with the short term. Whether or not you believe this, you can't solve it by taking a company private and keeping all the same shareholders. If Tesla's big shareholders  T. Rowe and Baillie Gifford and Fidelity and Tencent and Vanguard and BlackRock and Capital  are all myopically focused on the short term, then going private and keeping them as shareholders won't solve anything. If they're not, then there's no need to go private. The thing is that all of Musk's enemies are imaginary. I mean, they exist, but they don't matter. There are short sellers who think that Tesla is overvalued, and they short the stock, and they tweet about it. Musk owes them nothing and can ignore their tweets, as virtually every other public-company CEO does. There are Wall Street analysts who ask questions that Musk doesn't like, but he can ignore their questions, and sometimes, quite rudely, does. What matters, for a public-company CEO, is what his shareholders think. He is answerable to them. If they care only about short-term results, if they demand immediate profits at the expense of long-term sustainability, if they can be easily swayed to back an activist's proxy fight or a hostile takeover, then maybe he should go private. All of those are ridiculous things to think about Tesla's shareholders. The evidence for that is not only their unfailing loyalty to Musk, but also the fact that he wants to go private and bring them along. The shareholders are not the problem with being public, and there are no other problems. "The stock market has been kind to Elon Musk," James Mackintosh wrote last week. If Musk wants to find a widespread pool of investors willing to take a gamble on his vision for Tesla, he has found them. The obvious mechanism for finding a large group of investors to buy shares in a company without expecting to control that company is also the correct one: You list the shares publicly, and let the people who want to buy them, buy them. You don't need to travel to Saudi Arabia to find someone who'll put money into Tesla without demanding any control rights in return. They're right there in front of you. They're the people who already own the stock.
The Turk in Italy

Opera Australia

Joan Sutherland Theatre, August 12



Lubricious heroes, wanton heroines, salacious dialogue, colour and movement are not in themselves sufficient for a comic hit. You also need impeccable timing and that is where Rossini and director Simon Phillips come together to turn this extraordinarily trivial story into three hours of lively amusement.

Trivial pursuit: The Turk in Italy is three hours of lively entertainment in the hands of director Simon Phillips.

Their joint abilities are amply on display during the overture in which the stage is populated with deckchairs, sunbathers and nonsense just as the music is filled out with themes and conventional harmonic formulas, each racing towards the cadence point with a breathless wink.

Racing towards the cadence through teasing diversions is what Rossini does particularly well and Phillips has a knack of multiplying those diversions onstage with jugglers, dance and chorus-line gags that would threaten to upstage if there was anything of actual importance going on.
Beer is emerging as a surprise helper for some drought-hit farmers in NSW.

Not the amber liquid itself, but a byproduct of its production, which three Illawarra brewers are sending to cattle farms in the region to help get the stock through the hardest drought in many farmers memories.

David McGrath from Illawarra Brewing Company with some bags of grain which will be sent to farmers after they are cooked. Credit:Adam McLean

Early in the brewing process, the grain - mostly barley, sometimes wheat - is cooked to extract the sugars. When the solids are separated out afterwards, what is left over is a sludgy concoction of softened grains that cows dont mind at all.

And with many of the regions farmers forced to find alternative feed sources to keep their stock alive when grass isnt growing in the paddocks, the barley "porridge" can help out.
For Marta Browne, having acne as a teenager was awful: she was bullied constantly, aggrieved by her tight, sore skin, and suffered from depression and anxiety.

The effects carried through to her 20s, when she began suffering anxiety attacks, and, at times, became housebound due to her depression.

The link between acne and mental health. Credit:Stocksy

While Marta doesnt believe her acne caused her mental health issues, she says the effect it had on her self-esteem was undoubtedly a strong contributing factor.

Marta believes theres a stigma around acne, where it is viewed as a "personal failing" rather than just a health issue.
Another survivor, Sandra Alarcon of Northlake, joined Sanchez and others for the blessing. She held a cross in her hand while she spoke about how her life has changed. The plane crash was scary, and sometimes she still cant believe it happened, she said. She recalled fellow passengers looking at each other, shocked that they were still alive.
ACT farmers battling some of the driest conditions in living memory will receive financial support from the territory government as part of a package to be announced on Tuesday morning.

Environment Minister Mick Gentleman will unveil a 50 per cent freight subsidy scheme based on the one announced in NSW last week, with eligible farmers able to save up to $20,000 on the cost of transporting fodder, water or stock.

Gold Creek farmer John Starr, who has welcomed news that the ACT government will provide financial support for farmers. Credit:Jamila Toderas

Drought-stricken farmers in the ACT and across the border have been forced to turn to feed suppliers as far afield as South Australia in an effort to keep their stock alive as the lack of grass creates an ever-increasing local demand for hay and grain.

The ACT subsidies, designed to relieve the financial strain on farmers who have had to fork out thousands of dollars extra to source feed from interstate, will be back-dated to July and made available for one year.
A Canberra man who lost part of his hand in a dog attack at a public housing complex will not be compensated for his injuries.

However, a territory judge has questioned laws that "permits residents of Canberra to be put at risk by aggressive dogs owned by others".

Daniel Meyers shows the injuries sustained after being mauled by two dogs in a public housing block. Credit:Karleen Minney

"In an urban community where crime rates are low, there is no reason why citizens need dogs that are of such a temperament as to represent a threat to the lives of other citizens," Justice David Mossop wrote in his decision.

Daniel Meyers received horrific injuries when he was mauled by two pitbull terriers kept by visitors of a tenant at the Spence public housing complex in 2016.
Anyone who knows me knows I dont mind a glass of rose. And it seems Im not alone. According to wine retailer Cellarmasters rose sales have increased 38.5 per cent in the past 12 months. I wonder how much I have contributed to that myself.

I like to think I know what Im on about too. I like a dry rose, pale as you can get it, something fresh, but not too fruity. But thats about the extent of my wine knowledge.

A selection of roses from the Canberra Wine Region from Ainslie Cellars. Credit:Karen Hardy

One of the benefits of this job is youre allowed to ask experts questions under the premise that youre trying to deliver the reader some information. Sometimes I just want the answers for myself.

This rose investigation is one of those times. It started when I found out August 14 is actually International Rose Day. Like I needed an excuse.
Esther Anatolitis says the way to think constructively about the future is to think - and act - differently, otherwise nothing will change.

The National Association for the Visual Arts executive director will be among hundreds of visual arts practitioners and industry professionals who are coming to Canberra for the two-day arts event Future/Forward.

Anatolitis says the event, on August 14 and 15 at the National Gallery of Australia and Parliament House, is intended to influence national policy by advocating for a government approach to the contemporary art sector "that's ambitious and fair".

Black Opium 2 by Fiona Foley, one of the artists attending the event. Credit:State Library of Queensland, South Bank. Photo by Josef Ruckli. Image courtesy of State Library of Queensland.

By that, she means "creating a working environment where artists are energised and inspired to work creatively".
They can lift more than 300 kilograms at the push of a button, and the new electric stretchers and power loaders installed in ACT ambulances are being hailed as tools that will keep paramedics and patients safer.

Five new state-of-the-art ambulances fitted with the stretchers arrived in Canberra on Monday, while three ambulances already in the fleet have been retro-fitted to include the technology.

ACT Ambulance Service chief officer Howard Wren and Emergency Services Minister Mick Gentleman inspect one of the new electric stretchers that arrived in the ACT on Monday. Credit:Jamila Toderas

Two-thirds of ACT paramedics' accepted compensation claims from 2011 to 2016 were for musculoskeletal injuries suffered as a result of lifting and transporting patients, with back injuries accounting for 42 per cent of all accepted claims.

The manual stretchers in the territory's ambulances weigh about 45 kilograms, and ACT Ambulance chief officer Howard Wren said the strain on paramedics was only getting greater, with an increasing population and heavier patients.
Police are calling for witnesses to come forward after a driver described as "erratic" hit two cars in a matter of minutes on Saturday afternoon.

ACT Policing said a white Volkswagen Jetta reversed into another vehicle about 12.20pm, before driving off along Hindmarsh Drive in Phillip.

The vehicle then travelled along the Tuggeranong Parkway towards Belconnen, where police said it was reportedly being driven erratically when it collided with a vehicle towing a trailer.

Police were contacted and officers intercepted the Volkswagen on College Street in Belconnen.

Police urged anyone who witnessed the crashes, or anyone who has dash-cam footage of the incidents, to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000, or via the Crime Stoppers ACT website.
Barry Skinner hates having to ask for the money he's owed, but it's a situation the Fyshwick business director finds himself in often.

Mr Skinner said his company, electrical contracting firm Pathway Communications, had lost about $100,000 in the last two-and-a-half years because other businesses had failed to pay invoices on time, or at all.

Barry Skinner, whose business Pathway Communications has lost about $100,000 in the past two-and-a-half years through late or non-payment of bills. Credit:Karleen Minney

He said he now spent about 10 hours a week chasing payments.

"It's a ridiculous scenario that costs me money and slows down jobs," Mr Skinner said.
But it does have a bigger point, says Bubalo, formerly an Australian diplomat and now a principal at Nous, a public policy consultancy: "It's a message targeted at the Saudis internally. The family and MbS personally will dictate the pace of reform. Some of the activists they've arrested in the last few months have been asking for exactly the reforms that MbS has enacted." Like women's right to drive. "The second part of it is to whip up some Saudi nationalism to paper over some of the dissent internally at the pace of the improvement in life." And, according to Bubalo, the furious response is also designed to convey a message to other countries - "If you criticise us, you will put your economic interests at risk". So is the demonstration working as intended? The US has been conspicuously quiet in support of its big neighbour and ally. The two are supposed to share the values of democracy and freedom.

Yet Donald Trump has disparaged Canada repeatedly and last week, rather than supporting Canada's stand on human rights, he threatened to impose trade sanctions on Canadian car exports to the US. Illustration: Andrew Dyson Trump is far more supportive of the autocrats of Arabia. The first country he visited as President was Saudi Arabia. He signed a $US110 billion deal to sell arms to MbS. He supports the Saudi war in Yemen, and he endorses the Saudi trade embargo of its neighbour Qatar. In fact, MbS feels "emboldened by the friendship of US President Donald Trump", says former Canadian attorney-general Irwin Cotler, and by "the culture and community of resurgent global authoritarianism".

Similarly, Britain and the European Union have kept quiet about their supposed commitment to human rights and democracy. We do not have a single friend in the whole entire world, concluded Rachel Curran, a policy adviser to the former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. And Australia? "Its important that the Australian government stand with Canada on this," says the head of Human Rights Watch in Australia, Elaine Pearson. "Saudi Arabia is clearly trying to suppress any foreign criticism of its appalling human rights record, and it will set a dangerous precedent if it seems to succeed with no pushback from rights respecting countries." Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop should stand with Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland in publicly calling for the release of detained womens rights activists in Saudi Arabia, says Pearson. So what is Australia's position? "While we welcome recent reforms promoting women's rights, I in fact raised the issue of the detention of women's rights activists with Saudi Foreign Minister al-Jubeir in the G-20 meeting in May," Julie Bishop tells me, her first public comment on the matter. Saudi Arabia has been locking up women who led the protests against the ban on women driving. Credit:AP "Our diplomats have held discussions with Saudi officials on this issue in Saudi Arabia last week. Australia's long-standing position is to support gender equality and freedom of speech." So Bishop on Australia's behalf is standing up for principle in dealing with Saudi Arabia. And these comments make that public.

But she does not take the further step of explicitly siding with Canada in this dispute, nor does she go so far as supporting the call for the immediate release of the 18 activists detained so far: "We do not seek to interfere in the judicial processes of other countries," says the Australian minister. Can Ottawa withstand the economic pain of the Saudi measures? Its two-way trade with Saudi Arabia amounts to only 0.24 per cent of its total. If Ottawa can't endure such minimal cost, we'll know that no country can again be expected to stand up for any principle. Australia's two-way trade with Saudi Arabia is in similar proportion at a scant 0.3 per cent, according to trade economist Tim Harcourt. Loading Obversely, if Canada does stick to its guns and emerges unbowed and unharmed, it will have called the Saudi bluff.
A mobile dental van operator that illegally X-rayed thousands of schoolchildren across NSW has been fined almost $200,000.

Downing Centre magistrate Hugh Donnelly said the offences committed by Sydney-based Australian Aged Dental Care Pty Ltd warranted a penalty of almost $700,000, though he was jurisdictionally restrained from setting it.

One of the Smiles Onsite mobile dental vans visiting James Meehan High School in NSW. Credit:Facebook

The company, which runs mobile dental clinic Smiles Onsite, pleaded guilty on the third day of its trial last month to nine counts of administering radiation without a user licence.

In sentencing the company on Monday, Mr Donnelly said the business employed clinic managers who didn't hold a radiation user licence or have any form of training in taking X-rays.
A man has been charged with murder following a fatal daylight assault in Lurnea on Sunday.

Police say a 31-year-old man who died after the assault in Sydney's south-west was "just out walking" when he was set upon in the "vicious" and "targeted" attack.

Emergency services rushed to Morison Drive and Hill Road, Lurnea, about 4.45pm on Sunday after police received several reports of two men fighting.

Officers found William Guterres with serious head injuries and began CPR. He was treated by NSW Ambulance paramedics and taken to Liverpool Hospital, but later died.
He said his father was a victim of an attack in Englewood last year when he was robbed of his car and wallet by someone who struck him in the back of the head, knocking him out and hospitalizing him. Shantan said his father chalked it up to one random incident in a community where he had been doing business for at least seven years. He said his father bought houses, fixed them up and rented them to families, and was well-known and liked in the community.
Although the family of jailed politician Eddie Obeid has had a rare win in the courts, Obeids son Moses has taken legal action to try to prevent parts of the judgment from being made public.

Federal Court judge Lindsay Foster, who has taken two years to complete his judgment, is faced with competing interests: the public's right to know and the principle of open justice on the one hand and a persons right to a fair trial on the other.

Moses Obeid outside an earlier hearing. Credit:Peter Rae

In 2015 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched legal action against two of Obeids sons, Moses and Paul, along with prominent lawyer and businessman John McGuigan, his son James and investment banker Richard Poole as well as companies associated with them.

The ACCC alleged the group had engaged in cartel conduct. The ACCC told the court that in 2009 Paul and Moses Obeid struck a deal with Cascade Coal that resulted in other bids being withdrawn to ensure Cascade was awarded a lucrative coal exploration licence from the NSW government. Evidence was given that the Obeids pocketed almost $30 million when the rival bids withdrew.
The contention that lack of infrastructure is the only constraint on a high rate of population growth ignores both ecological realities and quality of life considerations. - Andrew Bullock, Bundagen Coalition doublespeak cruels emissions policy The doublespeak coming from the Neanderthals in the federal Coalition is sickening (Joyce names his price for support, August 13). Even the NEG policy being trumpeted by Minister Josh Frydenberg is designed to handicap any future growth of renewable energy. While we profit from being one of the worlds biggest exporters of coal, Australia is becoming a pariah by not taking action against climate change. - Bruce Spence, Balmain The government has promised a 26 per cent drop in national carbon emissions. To achieve this the NEG may reduce emissions in the energy sector by 26 per cent, but this sector only covers 34 per cent of total emissions, which means the current policy will at best reduce overall carbon emissions by 8 per cent. As this is only about a third of our target could the Coalition explain how this policy apparently meets our international obligations or where the other emissions reductions are going to come from? - Peter Newberry, Randwick They said it again. Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly this time, who argues Australia cannot affect the globes temperature. Where does China get its coal from Craig? - Paul Doyle, Glenbrook

Throughout the negotiations around energy policy, Malcolm Turnbull has declared Coalition policy to be technologically agnostic, while accusing the ALP of being ideologically addicted to renewables. In yet another backflip, he has now agreed to finance a new coal-fired power station in a desperate attempt to prevent a few Coalition climate-change deniers crossing the floor when the NEG is discussed in the lower house. This man will do anything to hang on to his job. - Richard Edmonds, Balcolyn It still seems amazing that the party led by Turnbull could suddenly remove Abbott as prime minister, then sit back and watch him trying to remain a relevant politician on the backbench. - Mary Julian, Glebe Since the abolition of the carbon tax in 2014, Australias greenhouse gas emissions have risen. A carbon fee on fossil fuels as they enter the economy would be simpler and less vulnerable to gaming than Julia Gillards carbon tax. As suggested by Lee-Anne Walker (Letters, August 11) the dividend should be returned directly to households, so avoiding governments tendency to curry favour with voters. The frequency, duration and intensity of extreme weather events will increase faster if countries such as ours drag the chain on transforming our economies away from fossil fuels. - George Carrard, Oatley Don't blame troops if things go awry The media sensationalism re allegations of improper conduct by Ben Roberts-Smith is nothing short of utter contempt for those sent to partake in a war in which we ought never to have been involved. Your editorial (Soldiers deserve a full and open hearing, August 12), was merely an attempt to justify those sensationalist headlines, which will undoubtedly bring shame and despair upon those already suffering and cut down a young man who was under extreme pressure.

In war you do what you have to do to stay alive and protect your people. You have to make split-second decisions under shocking circumstances and you have to manage your people to avoid dying in a foreign war that has no bearing on this country. Unsurprisingly, the best training and intentions dont go to plan and much will go awry under circumstances that most of us will only ever experience through the big screen. Only those who have actively served will know the terror, the pressure, the fear for mates, the impossibility of knowing who is going to befriend you or take your life. If this country doesnt want things to go awry, dont send our troops to war and then publicly cut them down for doing what theyve been sent to do. - Rose Cunningham, Yarravel Mentors for new MPs key Newly elected MPs enter a world unlike any other and most require assistance navigating the labyrinth that is the electoral office with the instant demands of their constituents, the media and their political chiefs (NSW Labor wont say if it will investigate Husar leaks, August 13). All parties have retired members who could mentor the neophytes in their transition to this new life. Some already do this to the benefit of the individual and to the electorate. - Tony Re, Georges Hall Priorities flawed

Surely an upgrade for Redfern station should have taken priority over stadium upgrades and replacements (Land sale to fund Redfern station upgrade, August 13). If Town Hall and Redfern are the two most vulnerable stations to fire on the rail network, and lifts only service two of the 12 platforms, questions have to be asked of the Berejiklian governments process for determining priorities. It seems that the developers will win once more. - Sandra Burke, North Sydney The report that land at north Redfern and Eveleigh will be sold to fund the long overdue upgrades at Redfern station is based on politicians belief that public land is theirs to do with as they wish and that the only way to provide public infrastructure is through the sale or privatisation of public assets. If the government has a good business case for its building programs, it should present it to the proper investors  the voting public  at the next election, before stripping us of what little public land we have left. - Jennie Morris, Wollongong What, no artists impression of the Redfern-Eveleigh redevelopment? Is that because we already know what it will be? A vibrant village. - Diane Davie, Rose Bay Worth preserving One up for Clover Moore warning us of the icons of Sydneys 20th century Modernist architecture in jeopardy of redevelopment by Lendlease and a compliant LNP government as in the past (Important or just ugly? Heres the brutal truth, August 13).

The 20th century was a high point in modern architecture, internationally and in Australia, young architects returned from overseas with their eyes opened to Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. All buildings by Harry Seidler (even Blues Point Tower), and Ken Woolley should be preserved. These are just two among many others of the architects that brought Sydney to international architecture standing. Our heritage is important far beyond the transient greed of conservative politicians and their lobbyists. - Charles Jaggers, Castlecrag Brutalist architecture has nothing to do with the word brutal. Its name originates from the French beton brut or raw concrete. And condemning buildings (or indeed anything) as ugly is pretty bogan. Sadly few see modernist buildings as heritage significant because they are not old, which is why so many are under threat. Yet Australias second (and this states first) building to be accorded UNESCO world heritage status, the Sydney Opera House, is only 43-years-old. Can I suggest adding Bidura Childrens Court in Glebe to any compilation of highly significant buildings under threat and on this governments hit list? - Keith Parsons, Newcastle Note of discord Well may Josh Frydenberg use the Tom Jones defence to justify throwing millions in taxpayer money at his polluting mates (Not unusual: Minister defends $444m reef grant, August 13). Come the next election voters will be singing their rebuttal from the Who, loud and clear: Wont Get Fooled Again. - Scott Simpson, Moruya Cancer is cancer

Cancer by any other name is cancer (Push for cancer diagnosis overhaul, August 13). To downgrade the terminology for lesser cancers goes against the fact that, all too often, what appears to be a well-caught, contained cancer spreads. It is an insidious, often unpredictable disease that does not follow any of the rules. Within the space of a month I have lost two very dear friends to this merciless disease which has a mind of its own. - Genevieve Milton, Newtown Reason to opt out Sue Casiglia (Letters, August 13) states we have control over who has access to our health record. As a health worker I would like her to know that I often work in areas where log on and password details are written on Post-it notes and left in clear view. Not so secure. I opted out on day one. - Sue Ryan, Hamilton East Cookie lesson The best lesson I have seen regarding mining (Alarm bells as big mining firms target schools for recruitment, August 13) is the chocolate chip lesson. Children are given a chocolate chip cookie and asked to take out as many chocolate chips as they can and then put the cookie back together without the chocolate chips.

A great lesson, even with care, of how the environment can never get back to its original state after mining. The lesson ends well as the students can then eat the cookie. - Ken Pares, Forster Word to the wise David Astle may like to look up bigot before he brandishes it when someone expresses a differing opinion (Wordplay, Spectrum, August 11-12). Using his preferred dictionarys definition: A person who is intolerantly convinced of the rightness of a particular creed, opinion, practice, etc. Lets compare some comments. Barry Humphries: But I dont think Im right to pontificate. Im really an actor. Astle: My contempt for his remarks was also the reason Id pulled the puzzle. Which better fits the definition? - Mal Marshall, Balmain The last straw
Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore has identified challenges linked to urban growth, climate change and social inequality among the priorities that should shape the city over the next three decades.

Cr Moore, who has been mayor since 2004, has called for planning to start on "Sustainable Sydney 2050", a broad strategy to inform policies, planning and development across the city.

'We need to consider the kind of city people will inherit in 10, 20 and even 30 years time': Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore. Credit:Michel O'Sullivan

Plans for the fresh approach follow the council's Sustainable 2030 plan, adopted a decade ago after extensive community consultation.

Cr Moore said that feedback urged the City of Sydney council to take action on climate change, maintain a strong economy, support the arts and connect residents with each other and the world.
Former Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale looked tired at Brisbane Magistrates Court on Monday morning as he faced fresh charges laid against him by the Crime and Corruption Commission.

Charged with an additional eight charges of fraud and one of corruption, the charges allege Mr Pisasale used his position as mayor for personal financial gain including three interstate trips.

Former Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale leaves Brisbane Magistrates Court on August 13. Credit:AAP/Darren England

The charges allege that Mr Pisasale "dishonestly gained benefit for himself" on three occasions in December 2016, February 2017 and May 2017 with interstate travel.

A further charge of corruption while in his role as mayor was that Mr Pisasale allegedly "corruptly agreed to champion the Yamanto project for himself on account of influencing Ipswich City Council employees and private contractors".
We need a berthing location in the CBD, there is no point building it as West End of New Farm. This is not the first time Queens Wharf Brisbane has forced the relocation of river services. River City Cruises had to leave its moorings under the Riverside Expressway when the Destination Brisbane Consortium development started. Darren (pictured) and Carolyn Timms operate River City Cruises which departs from Pontoon A. Credit:Tony Moore Ms Timms said all the development was fantastic for Brisbane but called for any infrastructure that was removed to be replaced.

At this stage where we will be relocated to is a little unclear, she said. We are certainly very confident the Brisbane City Council will relocate it, A Destination Brisbane Consortium spokesman said the consortium was working closely with the Queensland government, South Bank Corporation and other stakeholders on the final design of the pedestrian bridge landing. The consortium will engage further with local stakeholders in the lead up to construction once the detailed design has been approved by EDQ (Economic Development Queensland), he said. A South Bank Corporation spokeswoman said it was still in discussions to the project proponents regarding pontoon A.

The focus for South Bank Corporation is to optimise the landing point for business and visitors, she said. We will work to ensure stakeholders in and around the landing point experience minimal disruption during construction. The cost blow out for the pedestrian-only bridge The councils deputy mayor and public and active transport chairman Adrian Schrinner has renewed his calls for the bridge to be scrapped, citing an expected cost blow out as the latest reason. Brisbane City Council wants the proposed Neville Bonner Bridge from the new casino and hotel complex to South Bank near the Wheel of Brisbane scrapped.

It is understood the projected cost of the bridge has increased by about 70 per cent to $120 million. Cr Schrinner said an estimated cost of more than $120 million is a big jump from the original anticipated cost of $70 million. The bridge was originally sold to the community as a public benefit ... its becoming increasingly clear that the public benefit is limited, he said. If there was a $120 million or even a $70 million investment into a new bridge it would be a different bridge than what has been designed. Bicycle Queensland chief executive Anne Savage has backed the councils calls for the bridge to be scrapped and urged the state and local government to work together on a solution.

The Neville Bonner Bridge is not the solution we need to get more people walking and riding in Brisbane, Ms Savage said. $120 million is a cost blow out of nearly 70 per cent, representing a poor investment of extremely low value. Mature trees potentially lost to bridge landing Preparation work for the South Bank bridge landing have begun with geotechnical drilling works underway. The new Neville Bonner Bridge will cross the Brisbane River in 2022 and land at South Bank in front of the Wheel of Brisbane. It is understood the anticipated impact zone for the bridge in South Bank includes several large mature trees as well as public open space near the Wheel of Brisbane.

Cr Schrinner said any impacts on Brisbanes biggest and most important tourist attraction was something to be mindful of. Innovation and Tourism Industry Development Minister Kate Jones said the council provided three formal submissions as part of the assessment process for the plan for development for Queens Wharf Brisbane and none raised a formal objection to the Neville Bonner Bridge. This is too little, too late from the deputy mayor, she said. Cr Schrinner has previously said a formal objection was different from raising concerns, and the council had raised concerns. The South Bank Corporation spokeswoman said the bridge contractor, Destination Brisbane Consortium, was responsible to offset any vegetation removed.
Detectives continue to interview a man suspected of the hit-run killing of a Dutch national on a bicycle in South Yarra on Sunday.

The man, 26, was arrested in Bourke Street, Melbourne's CBD, about 5.30pm on Monday after a member of the public recognised him from images released by police.

It is understood the man received medical treatment overnight.
Melbournes South Sudanese community is fed up with being demonised by racist media coverage and political commentary about youth crime.

Community leader and lawyer Maker Mayek and a group of suburban mayors say the racist fearmongering must be stopped following the high-profile coverage of police incidents involving African-Australian youths.

The call for calm comes after tensions over a teenage relationship erupted into violence involving dozens of Sudanese-Australian youths in the northwest suburb of Taylors Hill last week, when a police car was damaged and nearby residents were scared.

Police were criticised for not making arrests on the night.
Approaching 12 degrees in the city now ahead of a mostly sunny top of 18.

Coming up today, the next instalment of our very long-running debate on national energy policies. Coalition MPs are debating the issue in the party room this morning. If approved, the vote will clear the way for the carbon reduction bill to be introduced. The government still needs agreement from the states to implement the National Energy Guarantee.

Police are also interviewing the 26-year-old man arrested yesterday over the hit-run death of a Dutch cyclist on Chapel Street on Sunday. The woman's distraught family has arrived in the country. They're expected to make a statement.

That's it from us today. We'll be back from 6am tomorrow.
A man has admitted breaking into a Perth home, murdering a resident and attacking his partner.

Damian Eric Maxfield, 34, was due to stand trial before a judge alone in the Supreme Court of WA on Monday, accused of stabbing 40-year-old Scott Martin to death and seriously injuring his partner Erelle Mason, 32, in their Halls Head apartment in January last year.

Maxfield instead pleaded guilty to murder, aggravated burglary, and doing an act likely to endanger the life, health or safety of a person.

The latter charge was downgraded from attempted murder on a public interest basis, Prosecutor Laura Christian said.

Maxfield showed no emotion when he entered his pleas, but there were tears in the packed public gallery.
Two WA Rebels members have been charged after police in Sydneys west were threatened when they approached a group of bikies on Friday.

The officers  from the Police Transport Command  were walking near a shopping centre in Parramatta about 10.30am on Friday, before noticing a group of people believed to be associated with outlaw motorcycle gangs.

Police approached three of the men in the group and spoke to them in the shopping centre, where it is alleged one of the men, a 43-year-old, threatened and intimidated the officers before the group left the area.

A series of inquiries led to Strike Force Raptor and riot squad officers descending on a Parramatta hotel later that day, where they searched eight Rebels members and three associates.

Two WA men were arrested and taken to Parramatta Police Station. The men, 43 and 48, were both charged with affray and participating in a criminal group.
In their statement, issued in response to questions about the settlements, Willow Creek officials said they redesigned the room at the church for those children with special needs so there are no longer isolated areas or sensory rooms and all participants are visible to all staff at all times. In addition, participants cannot be removed from the room at any time, and the church has enhanced its volunteer requirements, while also requiring electronic IDs to access to the room.
The Clerk of the ACT Legislative Assembly has urged Canberra's local politicians be banned from meeting with unregistered lobbyists, after four years of government inaction on the proposal when it was made in 2014.

The proposal was one of many before a committee inquiry reviewing the Assembly's Standing Orders, ranging from measures that could both further stifle, or widen debate, as well as improve the way the Assembly operates.

The ACT Legislative Assembly is examining new proposals for its operations. Credit:Fairfax Media

In a submission to the inquiry, the Clerk, Tom Duncan, wrote he sought advice from the Assembly's Ethics and Integrity Advisor Stephen Skehill about the Assembly's existing lobbyist regulations.

Mr Skehill told the Office of the Legislative Assembly the current guidelines still did not prohibit contact between territory politicians, their staff or public servants from meeting unregistered lobbyists, and Mr Duncan wrote that such a prohibition should be included.
Key wings of ACT Labor's right faction will not follow backbencher Michael Pettersson into political no man's land, after he sensationally quit the faction.

It was feared up to a third of the faction could defect after Mr Pettersson, CFMEU executive officer and former deputy right convener Michael Hiscox and two others quit the right on the weekend.

Labor backbencher Michael Pettersson quit the right faction on the weekend, causing ripples within the party. Credit:Fairfax Media

Mr Pettersson had indicated the Electrical Trades Union was also leaving the faction.

However Dave McKinley, secretary of the Electrical Trades Union's NSW branch, said it was not the case.
ACT Corrections Minister Shane Rattenbury has hit back at a former Chief Minister's claim he lied about a government decision to allow the prison officer's union a veto over a needle exchange program at Canberra's prison.

Mr Rattenbury said earlier this year former chief minister Jon Stanhope had given the union a veto over the potential program, which Mr Stanhope said last week was wrong, and he had always intended to allow the union consultation only.

A needle exchange program at the Alexander Maconochie Centre is no closer despite years of debate. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong

There remains no resolution on the proposal, which could help reduce blood-borne virus rates in the Alexander Maconochie Centre, but also pose potential safety risks to correctional officers, after correctional staff overwhelmingly voted against it in 2016.

But former ACT legislator Michael Moore, a prominent public health advocate, reignited the debate in recent weeks, urging the government act via legislation, which could override a clause in the government's enterprise bargaining agreement with the Community and Public Sector Union about the proposal.
Mr Taylor urged companies and community groups to read the draft laws when they are released on Tuesday, saying there would be time for lengthy consultation before the bill is introduced to Parliament and a likely Senate inquiry before any vote. The important point to remember is Im not just the Minister for Law Enforcement, Im the Minister for Cyber Security. I want more cyber security, I want strengthened encryption, Mr Taylor said. The minister said that similar laws in Britain, which triggered a political storm over privacy, did not have the legal ban on back door access that is included in the Australian bill. While security agencies have worked with Telstra, Optus and Vodafone for many years to intercept messages after gaining warrants and court orders, the government is worried about the number of companies now offering encrypted services  not only Apple and Facebook but Whatsapp, Wickr and others. Theres a huge increase in the number of companies involved and that means we have to have an industry framework for this and thats what this legislation is providing, Mr Taylor said.

That proliferation is the key to this  when it was a smaller number of companies, we could do things informally. The crucial thing here is that if we dont do this, we will be giving terrorists, paedophiles and other criminals a place to hide. We can ensure we dont give them a place to hide and at the same time we can protect encryption because it is so crucial. Syed Rizwan Farook. Shaping the debate is the legal fight between Apple and the FBI during 2016 after two terrorists killed 14 people and wounded 22 others in San Bernadino, California. The FBI was unable to unlock an iPhone 5 used by one of the killers, Syed Rizwan Farook. Apple refused to help and the dispute went through the US courts until the FBI found a security company to unlock the phone.

The Turnbull government is insisting its new laws will not be used to break a device and its encryption in the way seen in the San Bernadino case, arguing the US dispute with Apple is a false parallel. The new bill toughens the powers for existing types of search warrants issued by judges and members of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for use by interception agencies  police, anti-corruption commissions and national security agencies. A technical assistance request will allow for voluntary help by a messaging company, giving their staff civil immunity from prosecution in any dispute. A technical assistance notice can be issued by an interception agency to require a communications provider to offer assistance. A technical capability notice can be issued by the Attorney-General, at the request of an interception agency, to require a company to provide more extensive help such as building functionality, but this cannot include building features to decrypt information or remove electronic protection in the system.

New powers will also be available to the Australian Border Force, such as orders that require the owner of a device to provide access to the device, provided it is the subject of an existing search warrant. As well, authorities will be permitted more time they can hold and search a seized device, up from 14 to 30 days. The new powers cannot be used to impose data retention capabilities, a move aimed at assuring critics there will be no expansion of the controversial but separate powers in the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment from 2015. The new bill, the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access), provides for judicial review if companies want to challenge requests from police, anti-corruption authorities and security agencies. Agencies will require an underlying warrant or authorisation for any request, as set out under existing interception law, but the fines for those who do not co-operate will be increased to $10 million for each instance of non-compliance.
The Turnbull government could face further weeks of scrutiny over a controversial $444 million grant to the non-profit Great Barrier Reef Foundation, with the National Audit Office considering a review.

Josh Frydenberg, the Environment and Energy Minister, said on Monday he had asked the secretary of his department to write to the auditor to request "he consider such an audit as a priority".

A clown fish on the Great Barrier Reef. The $444 million grant continues to attract attention. Credit:Jason South

The Auditor-General has publicly stated an interest in undertaking an audit of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation Partnership which we would welcome.

Tony Burke, Labor's environment spokesman, said it was an extraordinary step for the secretary of the department to be sending a letter like that to the Auditor-General at the exact same time that Josh Frydenberg is standing up in Parliament saying there is no problem here".
What on earth is going on inside the Labor Party? The Emma Husar saga is a very sad story. For everyone involved.

Emma Husar last week in Sydney. Credit:Louie Douvis

A hero wins them a tough seat but when it all gets a bit rough shes treated not like a criminal, but worse. Criminals go through a transparent process, get all the details of the allegations against them and get to cross-examine their accusers. Internally appointed inquiries arent as transparent because they are not courts of law. Husar is meant to be happy with redacted allegations and summary findings.

Staff lodged complaints about her in just over two years. The inquiry into 44 allegations of misconduct exonerated Husar of the most serious and salacious allegations and found others had merit.

Yet senior Labor people muttering statements like I knew there had been a few complaints just doesn't cut it. Feigned ignorance by senior Labor figures is just that ... feigned. Nobody knew anything but somehow an internal Labor inquiry was set up? Yeah, sure.
Universities will use a new report that shows graduates are adding $1.5 billion each year in income tax revenue to pressure the Turnbull government to reconsider its funding for the sector.

The London Economics report, commissioned by the Group of Eight universities, found graduates contribute $13,000 extra in net income tax revenue over their lifetime compared to those who did not attend university after accounting for education costs, foregone student loan debt and social security payments.

Group of Eight chief executive Vicki Thomson said the report showed funding for the university sector was an investment, not a cost.

"For every $100 million spent on research there is an economic impact of $1 billion while a funding cut of $100 million means an economic reduction of $1 billion - the benefits to the economy are obvious  the return on investment for the government is apparent," she said.
At the time of Ms Bishop's Huawei trip, former foreign minister Alexander Downer was a director of Huawei. A spokesman for Ms Bishop said many politicians accept sponsored international travel to "inform their policy and parliamentary interests", especially when in opposition. "In her capacity as Shadow Foreign Minister, the travel was declared and in compliance with the Register of Interests, he said. Her office did not answer specific questions about her contact with Mr Downer about Huawei or the trip.

Mr Irons said he was conscious of the security concerns about Huawei. "I followed the advice and procedures of the parliaments International and Parliamentary Relations office for international travel," he said. "I have always believed that if you hear things it's better to see for yourself." Huawei's corporate affairs director Jeremy Mitchell said the company had invited politicians to China to tour its facilities because it had been previously accused of secrecy. He said the trips were about openness and transparency and gave politicians an opportunity to better understand the company.

"Also, it gives them an opportunity to  and we normally partner with the ACBC or with the Asia Society  to get an understanding of modern China because it gives a context on how a private company like Huawei gets to the position that we have globally," he said. "I think a lot of people don't understand China and they sort of say well, how does Huawei really be a private company? "Part of why we tend to partner with people to do this is so they'll visit Huawei for a day, maybe a day and a half, but they'll also go and see and talk to other Chinese companies." Kerry Stokes advises Huawei on business strategy Seven West Media chairman Kerry Stokes has been revealed as an influential part of Huawei's business.

Since 2010 he has been a member of the company's International Advisory Council. According to a Huawei press release, its members "draw on their expertise to provide Huawei with insights and analysis on trends and issues impacting the global ICT and economic environment, and make recommendations on the companys business strategy". But Mr Stokes said he hadn't attended one of the council's annual meetings for several years. Huawei director John Brumby with then Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull at an event to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Huawei's operations in Australia in 2014. He said the role did not involve advocating for Huawei in Australia and he had not discussed Huawei with any Western Australian or federal ministers or politicians.

In 2014, Mr Stokes hosted an event on behalf of Huawei to celebrate the company's 10th anniversary of Australian operations, which was attended by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who was then the communications minister, Mr Brumby and Huawei's Australian CEO Zhao Xichu. Mr Mitchell said Mr Stokes had been a long-time friend of Huawei founder and global chief executive Ren Zhengfei and was the only Australian member of the International Advisory Council. "They meet roughly once a year, a one-day meeting, where essentially they have a round table with our senior executives and essentially they act as mentors I think to our global company," Mr Mitchell said. "He [Mr Stokes] takes his own time to come to these meetings and we appreciate, very much, that he does that. "But he doesn't do any lobbying on our behalf in Australia.

"The only thing that he did do for us is our 10-year anniversary. He hosted a dinner for about 20 people to celebrate our 10 years in Australia, that was about four years ago." Treasurer Ben Wyatt linked to Huawei-funded business group Treasurer Ben Wyatt was a member of the Australia China Business Council (ACBC), which is chaired by Huawei director and former Victorian Premier John Brumby, between 2008 and 2017. Huawei is also a financial sponsor of the ACBC. The ACBC was involved in inviting WA politicians, including Transport Minister Rita Saffioti and Education Minister Sue Ellery, to China in 2015 on trips paid for by Huawei.

A spokesman said Mr Wyatt first joined the ACBC in the 2008/09 financial year and his membership concluded at the end of the 2016/17. He said he had not discussed Huawei with Mr Brumby, but he "met with John Brumby as part of the review in the GST distribution which he authored with Nick Greiner" in 2012. Mr Wyatt's department is responsible for managing tenders in the state, but there is no suggestion he had any involvement in the decision to award the $136 million PTA contract to Huawei. Mr Mitchell said it was important for Huawei, as one of the biggest private Chinese companies operating in Australia, to be part of the ACBC. "ACBC have a role about the greater Australia-China business relationship and they don't do any individual lobbying on our behalf or other members' behalf," he said.

A spokeswoman for the ACBC said the organisation was formed a year after diplomatic relations were established between Australia and China to promote bilateral trade and investment. Former Labor Treasurer Eric Ripper is Huawei's WA lobbyist GRA Partners, a government relations firm partly owned by former WA treasurer Eric Ripper, is lobbying on behalf of Huawei in WA. Mr Ripper, who is chairman of the firm and a registered lobbyist, is listed as working on behalf of the Chinese telco in the Department of Premier and Cabinet's Register of Lobbyists. It is understood GRA Partners' Amanda Reid, who was an adviser to former Attorney General Jim McGinty, has been arranging briefings for WA politicians following the awarding of the PTA contract.
Seoul: The rival Koreas have agreed to hold a third summit between their leaders in Pyongyang sometime before the end of September.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met in April and May at the border truce village of Panmunjom, within the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas, and agreed that the next summit in autumn would be held in the North Korean capital.

The two Koreas held a fresh round of talks at the DMZ on Monday to discuss the third summit, led by the South's Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon and Ri Son Gwon, chairman of the North's reunification committee.

Ri said both sides agreed on specific details, including the date for the summit, but declined to elaborate.
London: The job advertisement on Facebook sounded almost too good to be true.

A living wage, a car, a lovely house to live in - bills paid - with a terrace overlooking the Aegean Sea, just a short walk from a pristine beach on the Greek island of Syros.

God's Little People Cat Rescue in Syros Greece posted an ad on Facebook looking for someone to care for about 70 cats, and received more than 3000 applications. Credit:Facebook/GLPCR

The job? Caring for up to 70 cats, amounting to four hours of work a day. Nearly 1000 Britons have applied for the role after the announcement posted on Facebook last week by Joan Bowell, owner of the God's Little People Cat Rescue, went viral.

"We were doing a quiet thing on a Greek island - but no more," Bowell's husband, Richard, 65, told London's Telegraph.
As for the attorney general, that office lacks the ability to directly prosecute corruption and instead must refer or work criminal cases with local states attorneys. Harold has pushed for a law convening statewide grand juries to allow the attorney general to prosecute criminal acts. Such a plan has long been proposed by attorney general candidates in both parties but has been disregarded by lawmakers fearful that it could lead to the prosecution of political enemies.
Moscow: The five countries with shorelines on the Caspian Sea have agreed to a formula for dividing up the world's largest inland body of water and its potentially vast oil and gas resources.

From left: President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow at the fifth Caspian summit at the Friendship Palace in Aktau, the Caspian Sea port in Kazakhstan, on Sunday. Credit:AP

The leaders of Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, which the Kremlin said in a statement "reflected a balance of interests" of the seashore nations.

Landlocked and less salty than an ocean, the Caspian Sea was regarded by Iran and the Soviet Union  until the Soviet collapse  as a lake, with a border neatly dividing the two countries' territories.

But when new bordering nations emerged, they sought either their own zones of Caspian territory or a new approach to governing the sea that would classify it as international water with territorial zones and neutral areas.
If sanctions are expanded even further to target Russia's top state-controlled banks, freezing their dollar transactions - as proposed under legislation introduced in the Senate this month - it would amount to a "declaration of economic war," Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday.

US President Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, shake hands at the beginning of a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland, on June 16. Credit:AP

The Trump administration announcement of export restrictions in response to accusations Moscow used a nerve agent to poison a former Russian spy in Britain sent the ruble tumbling to a two-year low and drew a stern warning from its prime minister. While the initial sanctions may have a limited impact, a second batch expected within months could hit the Russian economy much harder and send already tense relations into a tailspin.

On his watch, the US has imposed a slew of sanctions on Russia for human rights abuses, meddling in the US election and Russian military aggression in Ukraine and Syria. For the most part, they have punished Russian officials and associates of President Vladimir Putin rather than targeting broad economic sectors.

In 2014, both the US and European Union introduced sanctions that restricted Russia's access to global financial markets and to equipment for new energy projects. Those measures were punishing, but the sanctions announced by the Trump administration this past week could be even worse.

Poisoned: Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, 33. Credit:AP

The restrictions were triggered under US law on chemical weapons following a formal US determination that Russia used the Novichok nerve agent to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury in March.

The first tranche, due to take effect on August 22, will deny export licences to Russia for the purchase of many items with national security implications. Existing sanctions already prohibit the export of most military and security-related items, but now the ban will be extended to goods such as gas turbine engines, electronics and calibration equipment that were previously allowed on a case-by-case basis. The State Department said it could potentially affect hundreds of millions of dollars in trade.
Payson: A US man has flown a small plane into his own house hours after being arrested for assaulting his wife.

The pilot, Duane Youd, died. His wife and a child who were in the home got out and survived despite the front part of the two-storey house being engulfed in flames, Sergeant Noemi Sandoval said.

Duane Youd is accused of intentionally flying into his own house. Credit:Utah County Sheriff's Office

The crash occurred in Payson, a Utah city of about 20,000 residents, 96 kilometres south of Salt Lake City.

Investigators believe the plane belonged to Youd's employer and that he intentionally flew into his own house, Sergeant Sandoval said. He was an experienced pilot, she added.
PHILIPSBURG:--- ADT recently donated a Burglar Alarm, Fire Alarm, and Video Access Control system to the K1 Britannia Foundation.

We are impressed with the great work K1 and her volunteers do for the islands youth, and we admire K1 for stepping up to the plate right after hurricane Irma by coordinating and organizing relief aid together with the Dutch Marines and Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard. Since K1 solely relies on volunteers, donations, and funding grants we decided to help them out with their security need. explains Ilja Botha, ADT St Maarten Sales Consultant (right).

K1 Britannias co-founder Priya Thirumur (left) is grateful for the donation, since the Burglar and Fire Alarm not only protect K1s office and her staff, but also ensure that the office now meets the requirements for contents insurance.

On the video access control system Priya Thirumur comments: Its great were now able to see and talk to whoever is at the door, and give them access without having to go downstairs first, or leave the door open all the time!.

To get in touch with and support K1 Britannia Foundation, visit www.k1britanniafoundation.org, www.facebook.com/k1sxm or call 553-8186. To learn more about ADT Security Systems and how they can protect your family, employees and assets visit https://facebook.com/adtsxm or call 520-3728.
~ Non-Payment of Hospital Services Investigation moving, Jeffry placed in garde a vue.- Vice Prosecutor YVES Paillard.~

MARIGOT:--- About 30 gendarmes and other French Law Enforcement officers circled the Louis Constant Fleming Hospital LCF on Monday morning. They then went inside the hospital and detained Dr. Louis Jeffry who was taken through the back door of the building in handcuffs to a waiting vehicle.

French law enforcement officers have been busy investigating the lack of payment to all French hospitals in the French Caribbean that treated patients from the Dutch side of the island and were never paid for their services.

Just recently CHU Pointe A Pitre launched a case against Dr. Louis Jeffry while there is an ongoing investigation regarding the lack of payment to the Louis Constant Fleming Hospital. The French Health Care Services ARS also have been busy with this case.

At the moment law enforcement agencies are tightlipped about the detention of Dr. Louis Jeffry. As soon as the Prosecutor of Gendarmerie makes a statement this article will be updated.

SMN News wrote several articles relating to the lack of payment to LCF for Dutch side patients that were treated on the French side. At the moment Ducth side patients that are insured by USZV are denied treatment at LCF unless they pay cash.

USZV St. Maarten Social Insurance Bank made several payments to the association Observatoire St. Martin (OBS). Dr. Louis Jeffry created the association in 2010 and has been the president of the association that was intended to enhance healthcare cooperation between the French Caribbean Islands and Dutch St. Maarten.

In May 2018 SMN News published an article that stated that USZV has an outstanding bill at LCF for Euros 353,412.67. That sum has since increased and so far no payments were made by OBS or Careaway that is operated within the confines of LCF.

Vice Prosecutor Yves Paillard confirmed via press release that some five gendarmes conducted searches at the Louis Constant Fleming Hospital (LCF) on Monday morning. Paillard said that the searches were conducted between 10am and 1pm without incident.

The searches were conducted in the presence of the representative of the medical team and the Public Prosecutors Office.

Paillard further states that the searches and arrest of at least one doctor is part of a preliminary investigation aiming at checking the relations between a doctor who is a member of the hospital medical commission and foreign companies as well as a subsidized association , which may be penalized in particular for illegal taking of interest. Paillard says the doctor remains in custody and enjoys the rights on the presumption of innocence and this is also understood by the gendarmes that are conducting the investigation.

Click here to read about the non-payment of hospital bills.
Have you been watching the little dust up between Saudi Arabia and Canada? A quick rundown goes like this. Saudi Arabia arrested some women's rights activists and Canada's diplomat (don't know who) made a tweet admonishing them over it.Saudi Arabia went ape shit, withdrew student scholarships to Canada and made a couple of other punitive measures against them to show their displeasure.Canada in the meanwhile has been chest thumping about supporting human rights while having their people contact their counterparts in the Kingdom to try and calm the situation.In relation to this conversation they've "reached out to allies" for help on the issue.I ask why?Why should we be involved in a dust up between Saudi Arabia and Canada? Is it in our national interests? There is no article 5 violation just measures taken by Saudi Arabia that adversely affect some Canadian industries.I believe it'll all blow over but some comments on the blog seem to indicate that this is AGAIN another issue where the US should lead.WHY!
Protect physical assets from cyber-attacks

Recent cyber-attacks have disabled and even shut down physical assets. Robust foundational security and training staff, able to recognise an attack can help mitigate the threat, as ABBs Rob Putman explains. Edge devices and data analytics As cyber security specialists, we must navigate an ever-changing threat landscape, one that is made even more complex by the increased interconnectivity between Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT), as companies look to leverage edge devices and data analytics, as well as remote connectivity, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the threat surface evolves, the industry must guard against attacks on key physical infrastructure, carried out by a range of malicious actors, including nation states and criminals intent on blackmail. The chemicals sector, a high-value target for cyber-criminals Cyber-criminals view the chemicals sector, as a high-value target, because of the potential cost In 2017, not long after a ransomware attack that targeted Maersk, the worlds largest shipping firm, made the news around the world. Another cyber-attack, this time targeting physical industrial assets, generated fewer headlines, and yet could have resulted in both real, as well as financial, damage. Cyber-criminals view the chemicals sector, as a high-value target, because of the potential cost, both financial and reputational, to the operator, should production be interrupted or stopped entirely. Cyber security vulnerabilities put physical assets at risk The attack in question, a Triton custom malware attack on a petro-chemical facility in Saudi Arabia, targeted a safety system, taking over system controllers. Bugs in the code triggered an emergency shutdown, but could have led to the release of toxic and explosive gases. It was a vivid reminder of how cyber security vulnerabilities are increasingly putting companies key physical assets at risk. Two more-recent high-profile incidents illustrate my point. In February, a Florida water treatment plant was hacked. The malicious actor remotely accessed the system for three to five minutes, during which time they opened various functions on the screen, including one that controls the amount of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) in the water. The hacker changed the NaOH from about 100 parts per million to 11,100 parts per million, which could have resulted in a mass poisoning event. Colonial Pipeline cyber-attack incident Then, in May, the Colonial Pipeline system that originates in Houston, Texas and carries gasoline, and jet fuel, suffered a ransomware attack. Using a VPN, hackers targeted back-office IT systems, forcing Colonial to shut down IT hosts and network infrastructure, severing communication with those OT systems that are responsible for communicating transactional data associated with fuel delivery. In this instance, a single compromised password disrupted Colonials ability to invoice its customers. This dependency on OT data stopped pipeline and business operations, and the company was elected to pay the hackers an initial ransom of US$ 4.4 million, in order to restore operations. The Colonial attack was multi-dimensional, in that it not only impacted Colonials business, but also the wider US economy and national security, since the pipeline transports nearly half of the east coast's fuel supplies. Outdated IT system elevates physical risk The increased interconnectivity between IT and OT can also create vulnerabilit Attacks such as these prove that, armed with little more than a laptop, an email account and access to the dark web, determined hackers can cause disproportionate damage to physical infrastructure. As mentioned at the outset, the increased interconnectivity between IT and OT can also create vulnerability. Producers often want to know: Is it risky to connect a production asset or their operational environment to the Cloud? My answer is, if you do so without having done any risk audits around people, processes and technology, or without enhancing and maintaining that environment, then yes, that is risky. For example, we often observe that the life cycle of a production asset far outlasts the IT systems that are used to run it. Take a cement kiln. Several generations of plant operators may have come and gone, but that asset may still run, using legacy software, such as Windows XP and why not? Need to replace aging distributed control systems Well, thats fine, if you are not concerned about having that asset compromised, and all that entails. A flat IT network, an aging distributed control system, and machines with legacy versions of Microsoft Windows, all these elements, which are still commonplace in many industries, make it much easier for attackers to find and infiltrate a company, without needing sophisticated tools. The age-old mantra of not interfering with a piece of equipment or software that appears to be working, often applies to the individual assets. For example that cement kiln that are still controlled by the same Windows XP-based control software. However, if were honest, things have changed quite a bit, not because something was broken, but because innovation came in. That same kiln control system is most likely connected to other systems, than when first commissioned and that opens it to exposure to threats that it was never designed for. The human element There is a misconception that IoT-connected devices can open companies to risk There is a misconception that IoT-connected devices can open companies to risk, but many recent, high-profile cyber-attacks have been conducted from a laptop, by hacking someones VPN, or are a simple phishing/malware attack. In all these cases, the human element is partly to blame. Take the Florida attack. The compromised computer at the water treatment facility was reportedly running an outdated Windows 7 operating system and staff all used the same password, in order to gain remote access via the Teamviewer app, which the hacker was then able to use. Physical and human assets, key to robust cyber security Discussion on the best way to mitigate the threat is often framed solely around specific technical solutions and ignores the fact that robust foundational cyber security is really driven by two very different, but equally important, types of capital: physical assets (e.g. production machinery), and human assets. The truth is that smart digital software and industry-renowned cyber security applications, while critical, are in many cases, only as good as the weakest human link in the chain. Industry would, therefore, do well to ask itself the following question: Do we have a security problem, or a complacency problem? At this juncture, it is important to point out that the majority of companies that ABB works with, are at least aware of the threat posed by cyber attackers, and the potential impact of an attack, on their revenues, reputation and bottom line. User error and human-generated exposures Making sure staff are aware of the threat and training them to respond properly, if they are targeted, is vital However, user error and human-generated exposures are where most of these attacks occur. Those human failures are mostly not due to malicious intent from employees, but to the lack of training of the employees on secure behavior. Making sure staff are aware of the threat and training them to respond properly, if they are targeted, is vital. However, there are also age demographics at play here. Much of the operations employee base is heading towards retirement and often, there is no plan or ability to backfill these people. Need to invest in new digital and automated technologies If you think you don't have enough people now, in order to stay on top of basic care and feeding of the OT environment, with regards to security, what is that going to be like in 20 years? For this reason, there must be a major industry reset, when it comes to its workforce. Companies must invest in new digital and automated technologies, not only to ensure that they stay ahead of the curve and mitigate risk, but also to attract the next generation of digitally literate talent. Robust cyber security is built on solid foundations When we talk about foundational cyber security, we mean fundamentals, such as patching, malware protection, high-fidelity system backups, an up-to-date anti-virus system, and other options, such as application allow-listing and asset inventory. These basic controls can help companies understand their system setup and the potential threats, identify vulnerabilities, and assess their risk exposure. The Pareto principle states that around 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes. In the context of cyber security, that means 80% of exposure to risk comes from 20% of the lack of security. If companies do the foundational things right, they can manage out a significant amount of this risk. Importance of maintaining and upgrading security controls However, having basic security controls, such as anti-virus software in place, is just the first step on that journey. Equally important is having someone within the organisation, with the requisite skill set, or the extra labour bandwidth, to operate, maintain and update those security controls, as they evolve. Educating, training and recruiting existing employees, and the next generation of talent, along with forging partnerships with trusted technology providers, will ensure that industry can leverage the latest digital technologies, in order to drive business value, and secure physical assets against cyber-attacks.
Ald. Danny Solis, 25th, who represents the Latino Pilsen neighborhood, said an Aug. 1 police raid in his ward violated Chicagos pro-immigrant Welcoming City Ordinance by collaborating with homeland security officials, a charge police disputed. Solis also criticized the department for focusing on what he considered a relatively low-level crime, such as counterfeit clothes, when the city recently experienced its most violent weekend in years.
After decades of scientific brainstorming and years of construction, NASA's Parker Solar Probe is safely on its way to flying seven times closer to the sun than any mission has before.

Now that the spacecraft is finally off the ground, it won't be long before scientists can start digging into its data  and that data will keep coming for seven years.

"There's definitely a coiled-spring feeling," project scientist Nicola Fox, a solar scientist at Johns Hopkins University, told Space.com earlier this week, before the launch. "We're just ready for her to leave this planet." [The Greatest Missions to the Sun]

And now, the spacecraft has finally left Earth. Here's where the journey will take it.

Here comes the sun

An artist's depiction of the Parker Solar Probe at work around the sun. (Image credit: APL/NASA GSFC)

The $1.5 billion Parker Solar Probe needed a ton of speed to escape Earth's orbit, hence the total of three rocket stages that fired during the launch. That will carry it to the neighborhood of Venus in just six weeks, arriving by late September.

On Sept. 28, the spacecraft will need to pull off a careful maneuver designed to gently slow it down and begin its calculated dance with the sun. That maneuver, called a gravity assist, will pass a little of the spacecraft's acceleration to the planet and edge the probe a little closer to the sun.

The Parker Solar Probe will then begin its first of 24 orbits around the sun, with its first close approach, or perihelion, coming on Nov. 1.

Each orbit will be petal-shaped, skimming over the sun closely and then flying out farther into space to close out the orbit. The bulk of the probe's science work will come when it is within a quarter of the distance between Earth and the sun  although the team is hoping that the instruments can be turned on for as much of the mission as possible.

The early orbits, while remaining farther away from the sun, will be special because the spacecraft will spend its time close to the sun in essentially the equivalent of geosynchronous orbit, hovering over the same region. "Not a lot of people appreciate how entertaining these periods are going to be," Justin Kasper, a physicist at the University of Michigan and principal investigator for one of the probe's instruments, told Space.com about these early orbits.

During these periods, which scientists call fast radial scans, the spacecraft will swoop in at a speed that closely matches the sun's speed of rotation, and then swoop out again. While the spacecraft keeps pace with the sun's rotation, it will be able to watch how the same region of the sun behaves over a period of about 10 days.

"We're really able to hover and stare at it," Fox said, giving the team "the ability to spend days looking at the dynamics of how one region of the sun is changing  or maybe it isn't changing."

That means there's plenty of science to look forward to years before the spacecraft completes its closest approach to the sun near the end of the mission. "It might take us five years to get to our closest orbit, but we should have some amazing insights into our sun just this winter," Kasper said. "We're going to have some amazing observations this November with that first perihelion." [What's Inside Our Sun? A Star Tour from the Inside Out]

Seven years to go

As the mission continues, the spacecraft will move closer and closer to the sun, eventually coming to less than 4 million miles (6 million kilometers) above the visible layer of the sun that we think of as the surface.

On each orbit, the spacecraft will take the same measurements at different depths in the sun's atmosphere, which is called the corona. That layer, which is invisible from Earth except during a total solar eclipse, reaches temperatures of millions of degrees (Fahrenheit or Celsius).

A diagram showing the planned path of the Parker Solar Probe's mission. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL)

"It's all exactly the same observations; the beauty of the Parker Solar Probe mission is that we are getting [the same data from] these different locations," Fox said. "We really do get a chance to look at the dynamics in all different locations in the corona."

Scientists are hoping that will help them decipher how the corona gets so hot and how the sun produces phenomena like the solar wind and solar flares, which have serious impacts on space travel, satellites and even life here on Earth.

In addition to sampling different layers of the sun, the probe will catch our star displaying a complete range of activity, since it undergoes an 11-year cycle from relatively tranquil to particularly tempestuous conditions and back again.

"The sun is very different during those different phases," Fox said. "We do want to see a nice broad spectrum of solar activity.

Squeezing as much science in as possible

But while the Parker Solar Probe is gathering all that data, the spacecraft won't be able to communicate with Earth. Instead, it will focus on making as many observations as possible. Then, it will send back huge chunks of information in batches.

Several of those data dumps will come as the spacecraft executes another crucial chore: dancing around Venus to inch closer to the sun. The probe will repeat the gravity-assist maneuver planned for late September a total of seven times throughout the mission, until the spacecraft has slipped too close to the sun to be able to loop around Venus.

And if all goes well, scientists may get a bonus in addition to the wealth of solar data: observations of Venus. During the sixth gravity assist, the spacecraft won't be aligned well to send data home, so if it has enough power, it may leave its instruments on and turn them to its dance partner.

"There is an absolute dearth of Venus missions," Paul Byrne, a planetary geologist at North Carolina State University who studies the planet, told Space.com. "A single flyby in and of itself would not revolutionize our understanding of Venus, but it would be extremely useful."

Venus will need its own revolution  but our understanding of the star that shapes every day of our lives will never be the same after scientists start analyzing the data the Parker Solar Probe sends home.

End of the road

Of course, all good things must come to an end, and the Parker Solar Probe's mission is due to last until mid-2025. If the spacecraft still has fuel, which it uses to twist itself to keep delicate instruments hidden behind a protective heat shield, the scientists hope that the mission could, theoretically, be extended.

But sooner or later, that fuel will run out, and the spacecraft will be helpless, its high-tech heat shield rendered useless. The instruments and the probe's skeleton will slowly break apart until nothing is left except the heat shield itself, Parker Solar Probe project manager Andrew Driesman, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said during a NASA news conference on Aug. 9.

"In hopefully a long, long period of time  10, 20 years [whenever the spacecraft runs out of fuel and breaks apart]  there's going to be a carbon disk floating around the sun in its orbit," Driesman said. Then, he added, it's anyone's guess how long it could circle our sun as a lonely reminder that the star once fostered humans who developed the technology to reach out and touch it. "That carbon disk will be around until the end of the solar system," Driesman said.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Perseid Meteors Put On a Show!

The Perseid meteor shower of 2018 put on a spectacular show for skywatchers around the world. The annual meteor shower peaked Aug. 11-13, just after the new moon, which made for excellent meteor-spotting conditions. Click through this gallery to see some of the best Perseid photos submitted by Space.com readers!

Perseid Fireball in Macedonia

At Galicica National Park near Ohrid, Macedonia, astrophotographer Stojan Stojanovski captured a Perseid fireball as it lit up the starry sky above a serene mountain landscape. "Near the big puddle where animals drink water, we started shooting around 11 p.m. local time," Stojanovski told Space.com. "It was a good night with very good number of meteors per hour."

Meteor Meets Mars in Las Vegas

A Perseid meteor, Mars and the Milky Way light up the night sky in this photo taken near Las Vegas by Tyler Leavitt. "The orange glow to the right of the frame is the Vegas light pollution mixed with haze and smoke from the California wildfires," Leavitt told Space.com in an email.

Meteor, Mars and the Milky Way from Macedonia

In this photo from Galicica National Park in Macedonia, Stojanovski captured a fireball meteor near Mars and the Milky Way.

Fireball Over Colorado

A fireball zips across the Milky Way in this photo taken by Sergio Garcia Rill at Sprague Lake in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park.

Las Vegas, Nevada

Mars glows near a bright-green Perseid meteor over Las Vegas, Nevada in this photo by Tyler Leavitt.

Perseids Over Greece

Fotis Mavroudakis captured this photo of Perseid meteors over Falakro Oros, a mountain in northern Greece. The image combines 40 fireballs captured over a period of about 5 hours.

Meteor at Mount Galicica

In another view from Galicica mountain near Ohrid, Macedonia, astrophotographer Simjanoski Bojan captured a Perseid prancing through the Milky Way.

Fireball Over Colorado

A Perseid fireball streaks across the star-speckled sky over Sprague Lake in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park in this image by astrophotographer Sergio Garcia Rill.

Italian Perseids from the Virtual Telescope Project

Several Perseid meteors dash across the sky above Italy's Castel Santa Maria in this photo by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project taken during the peak on Aug. 12-13, 2018.

Perseid Pierces Through Smoky Skies

Maxim Senin

Smoke from wildfires in California obscured the view of the Perseid meteor shower for much of the western U.S., but astrophotographer Maxim Senin managed to capture a few meteors from the Los Angeles Astronomic Society's dark-sky site in Los Padres National Forest.
Plenty of meteors  including some fireballs  are visible over Sprague Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park in this photo by astrophotographer Sergio Garcia Rill. He captured these meteors during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower on Aug. 12, 2018. (Image credit: Sergio Garcia Rill

Brilliant displays of Perseid meteors lit up the heavens this past weekend as the annual Perseid meteor shower reached its peak.

Skywatchers across the Northern Hemisphere had the best views of the Perseid meteor shower, which produced around 60 to 70 "shooting stars" per hour over the weekend. The shower peaked overnight on Sunday (Aug. 12) and early into Monday morning (Aug. 13).

Because the meteor shower's peak arrived just after the new moon on Saturday (Aug. 11), the dark "moonless" sky provided excellent conditions for spotting meteors in the night sky. [The Dazzling Perseid Meteor Shower of 2018 in Photos]

Astrophotographer Stojan Stojanovski captured this photo of a fireball during the Perseid meteor shower in August 2018. (Image credit: Stojan Stojanovski

As Perseid meteors dashed across the sky throughout the night, skywatchers were treated to the occasional fireball meteor. Fireballs are large meteors that explode with bright, green light as they enter Earth's atmosphere.

At Galicica National Park near Ohrid, Macedonia, astrophotographer Stojan Stojanovski captured a Perseid fireball as it lit up the starry sky above a serene mountain landscape. "Near the big puddle where animals drink water, we started shooting around 11 p.m. local time," Stojanovski told Space.com. "It was a good night with very good number of meteors per hour."

Watching the meteor shower outside Las Vegas, astrophotographer Tyler Leavitt spotted a pink-and-green Perseid meteor crossing in front of the Milky Way  and pointing toward Mars.

A Perseid meteor, Mars and the Milky Way light up the night sky in this photo taken near Las Vegas by Tyler Leavitt overnight on Aug. 12-13, 2018. (Image credit: Tyler Leavitt

The Red Planet, which is still bright in the sky following its close approach to Earth on July 31, continues to offer spectacular views in the night sky. While waiting for the Perseids to make an appearance over southern Idaho, photographer Catherine Oostdyk snapped a view of her son Benjamin patiently scanning the skies. No meteors are visible in the photo, but the image does show Mars, the biggest and brightest object in the sky.

Although much of the U.S. was unable to see the meteor shower due to cloudy weather and smoke from wildfires, skywatchers in Europe were blessed with clear skies. In Italy, Gianluca Masi, an astrophysicist with the Virtual Telescope Project, hosted a live webcast of the Perseid meteor shower from Castel Santa Maria. Masi told Space.com that the meteor-spotting event "went very well, and we could see tons of stars and many Perseids." [Photos: Amazing Perseid Meteor Shower Displays]

Benjamin Oostdyk patiently waits for early Perseid meteors while camping with his family in Idaho in this photo taken by his mother Catherine a few days before the peak of the Perseid meteor shower of 2018. Mars is visible as the bright orange object at left. (Image credit: Catherine Oostdyk

While the meteor shower's peak has passed, the Perseids haven't left us just yet. Some meteors will still be visible until the end of August. The next major meteor shower will be the Orionids, which peak on Oct. 21-22.

Several Perseid meteors dash across the sky above Italy's Castel Santa Maria in this photo by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project taken during the peak on Aug. 12-13, 2018. (Image credit: Gianluca Masi/ Virtual Telescope Project

Editor's note: If you have an amazing meteor shower photo you'd like to share with Space.com and our news partners for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Printing firm Cenveo says it has a plan to rebuild after it emerges from bankruptcy. Whether that strategy takes into account a major setback in the past few weeks is uncertain.

The Stamford-based firm last month lost a major source of business when its printing-and-mailing contract for the 2020 U.S. Census was canceled. Combined with misgivings about recent management changes, the projects demise has heightened concerns among many observers about the companys ability to put itself on a strong footing after completing Chapter 11 proceedings.

As more of their customers move into an electronic environment, theyre going to continue to have problems unless theyre able to rapidly capture that market, said David Cadden, a professor emeritus in Quinnipiac Universitys business school. Its a grim prognosis, and theyre facing a huge challenge.

Cenveo officials did not respond to messages seeking comment for this article.

Lost business

Last October, Cenveo was awarded the $61 million Census contract, one of the U.S. Government Publishing Offices largest-ever printing-and-mailing deals. The two-year agreement covered the production of questionnaires in English and Spanish, as well as letters, inserts, postcards and envelopes.

But the partnership would last only eight months. Last month, a judge in federal bankruptcy court in New York state approved an agreement between Cenveo and the U.S. Department of Justice to cancel the pact.

Following talks between Cenveo and Justice that dealt with the companys restructuring, including its projected liquidity, federal authorities concluded that because of the constitutional mandate to conduct the 2020 Census, it is in the public interest to terminate the census contract, according to an excerpt of the settlement order.

As part of the payout, Cenveo is receiving $5.5 million from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Cenveo completed all required work for a census test this year in Providence County, R.I., according to Publishing Office spokesman Gary Somerset.

The agency plans to award a replacement contract in November, to ensure no negative effect on the 2020 printing-and-mailing operation or the overall 2020 census, Somerset said.

While the census contract represented only about 4 percent of 2016 Cenveo sales  the last full year for which company earnings are available  some expect see the contract termination as a symbolic blow that will hurt the companys already fragile finances.

If the GPO is concerned, shouldnt all other large customers of the company? Thad McIlroy, who runs the website thefutureofpublishing.com, said in an email. If I needed a bunch of envelopes printed next year, Id certainly be sourcing alternate suppliers. As Cenveo emerges from Chapter 11, to retain or regain business, they are going to have to discount their prices in a tight market.

While Cenveo is a public company, the Burton family that leads the firm maintains a dominant position. CEO and Chairman Robert Burton Sr. owned about 10 percent of the companys shares, according to the companys bankruptcy filing in February.

They should bring in some independent people, Nathu Puri, founder of the Nottingham, England-based multi-industry conglomerate Purico Group, said in an interview earlier this year. And theyve got to change the board because its a bloody disaster. How can the current leadership turn it around when theyve brought a company with a value that was once $1.5 billion down to what it is today?

Puri ranked as Cenveos third-largest shareholder, with an 8 percent stake, according to the bankruptcy declaration. He was not available for comment this week.

In a possible response to investor unrest, Cenveo announced in early June that Burton Sr., a Greenwich resident, would retire and be replaced by son and President Robert Burton Jr. when the company finishes the Chapter 11 process. Michael Burton, Cenveos chief operating officer and another Burton son, would become president.

I know I leave Cenveo in the capable hands of my two sons who have worked by my side at Cenveo since September 2005, Burton Sr. said in a statement. Both Rob and Mike are very strong and capable managers who have served in numerous executive positions over the past 15-plus years and are now ready to assume responsibility for leading Cenveo through its next phase of growth and creating value to our new shareholders.

Burton Sr., who has served as CEO and chairman for the past 12 years, is set to stay on as a company adviser until Dec. 31. He will remain a Cenveo shareholder. His retirement announcement did not indicate that he would step down as chairman.

As far as I can see, Dad (Burton Sr.) is no longer going to be coming into the office, so the kids will have to call him at home to find out what he wants the company to do next, McIlroy said. I dont think this is a meaningful change in leadership.

Among other management changes, Cenveo appointed in February a new chief financial officer, Mark Hiltwein, who held the same position during an earlier stint with the company. At the same time, it named a chief restructuring officer, Ayman Zameli, to lead restructuring initiatives during the Chapter 11 proceedings.

Cenveo officials have said they expect to finish Chapter 11 work by the end of this summer. They reported in June that their reorganization plan had garnered the support of 90 percent of first-lien holder creditors.

When it filed for bankruptcy, Cenveo carried about $1.4 billion in liabilities  including some $1.1 billion in securitized debt  compared with about $790 million in assets. After coming out of bankruptcy, funded debt would drop to less than $400 million, according to the firm.

You want to have a sense of continuity, but, on the other hand, you want a sense that the person with their hands on the steering wheel recognizes the mistakes that have been made and that they have to plot a new course, said Quinnipiacs Cadden. I dont know if I feel confident that the sons of the CEO are going to be able to do that.

pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; Twitter: @paulschott
STAMFORD  Asked by a judge to weigh in on a lawsuit over development of the South End peninsula that once housed the citys only boatyard, a state environmental agency has cited concern about the effects of climate change.

Sea levels are projected to rise as much as 20 inches over the next three decades, according to a letter from Brian Thompson, a director with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

The 14-acre peninsula is within a coastal flood hazard area, offers only one point of egress  Bateman Way  and sits outside the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hurricane barrier, raising a concern for public safety during significant storm events, Thompson wrote.

During 2012s Super Storm Sandy, for example, the peninsula was completely flooded, Thompson wrote, while the residential property behind the hurricane barrier was protected from the storm surge.

Thomson, director of DEEPs Land and Water Resources Division, directed his comments to Stamfords chief attorney, Kathryn Emmett, who forwarded them to state Superior Court Judge Henry Cohn. In April Cohn requested the DEEP comment before proceeding with the 2-year-old case.

We urge your careful consideration of (these) factors when reviewing future development plans for the site, Thompson wrote Emmett in the Aug. 2 letter.

Long Island Sound advocacy group SoundKeeper alleges in the lawsuit that the Zoning Board two years ago wrongfully amended an agreement with developer Building and Land Technology to allow the peninsula to be used for something other than a boatyard.

Thompson references the change in his comments, explaining that the city removed a requirement in the original development plan that BLT maintain a working boatyard on the peninsula. The board replaced the requirement with a list of permitted uses that includes office and retail buildings, boat slips and improved public access to the water.

The city required that BLT, also named in the SoundKeeper suit, build a smaller replacement boatyard on Southfield Avenue - it opened in the spring - and a separate boat storage and repair facility on Magee Avenue.

No plans

BLT, which is in the middle of a multi-billion-dollar remake of the South End with a project called Harbor Point, has so far not submitted a development plan for the peninsula. BLT tore down the boatyard in 2011 without the Zoning Boards knowledge, sparking a community outcry about big developers skirting the rules in Stamford.

At first the Zoning Board fought back, obtaining a court order that BLT stop all work on the peninsula until it presented a plan for a replacement boatyard. BLTs response was to propose that the boatyard requirement be eliminated.

In the contentiousness that followed, BLT submitted a series of replacement plans that were rejected until two summers ago when, after intervention by Mayor David Martin, the Zoning Board approved the Southfield Avenue-Magee Avenue plan.

SoundKeeper charged that the city violated its own regulations when it dropped the boatyard requirement and violated the state Coastal Area Management Act, which requires that the peninsula be limited to maritime use. The site had been the center of Stamfords maritime industry since the colonial days.

The city countered that SoundKeeper has no standing in the case because the environment was not harmed when the boatyard requirement was dropped. BLTs position is that tearing down the boatyard helped the environment because contaminated soil was removed, stopping pollutants from leaching into the Sound.

Unsuitable

In the DEEP comment ordered by Cohn, Thompson wrote that the peninsula adjacent to Stamford Harbor makes it physically well-suited to maritime and recreational boating use, its historical function, and that the citys Master Plan and harbor management plan continue to designate this site for marine commercial use.

The purpose of the boatyard requirement was to allow for increased residential density behind the hurricane barrier while preserving the 14-acre site for low-density water-dependent boatyard use, Thompson wrote. It was designed to protect life and property from coastal hazards as well as giving highest priority and preference to water-dependent uses.

He said the DEEP understands the economic development considerations for wanting to build on the peninsula, long coveted for its sweeping views of Long Island Sound. The DEEP has already approved a request for an exemption to develop the peninsula, but a site such as this is unsuitable for a critical activity as defined in the Flood Management Act, Thompson wrote.

Statutes define critical activity as treatment and storage of hazardous waste, a hospital, senior housing, schools and residences.

But water-dependent use is not the only policy the city must consider, Thompson wrote.

The DEEP would encourage the city to ensure that further development is well-suited to site conditions considering both current risks and future impacts of climate change, he wrote.

Emmett said Monday she cannot comment on active litigation.

A BLT spokesman emailed a statement saying, We appreciate DEEPs comments in response to the courts request, and - consistent with the comments - we look forward to working with DEEP when a final site plan application is submitted for the future development of the site.

SoundKeeper attorney Reed Super said he has no comment on the ongoing case. Super has said that if the judge rules in SoundKeepers favor, BLT could be held to the original zoning agreement and have to rebuild a full-service boatyard on the peninsula.

The next court proceeding is scheduled for Sept. 18 in New Britain.

acarella@stamfordadvocate.com; 203-964-2296.
In the last days of October 2012, Superstorm Sandys remnants pushed seawater over roads and through the first floors of Fairfields idyllic beach neighborhoods. The tide found nowhere to recede because the storm kept pushing more water against the closed tide gates.

Some people left and some people, the tough old Yankees whod seen storms before, stayed in their houses, recalled Assistant Fire Chief Scott Bisson, who was the unified commander, overseeing evacuations and the aftermath from a building that almost had to be evacuated.

Within hours, the mold came and so did its musty odor. People were removing all of the wet, porous materials, Bisson remembered, rugs, toys, wood, furniture, couches, chairs, beds, mattressesputting it outside for bulk pickup. There was a smell in the air. It does not take long for that.

Six years later, the rebuilt beach houses of Fairfield reach four stories high above ground-level, open garage spaces, through which the tides can rush unimpeded, fulfilling federal flood regulations. Some homeowners sold their houses rather than go through rebuilding. The new construction resembles a boom town.

In a century, climate change and a rising sea level on Connecticuts coast have brought more frequent and devastating flooding during storms.

The flooding destroys property, which people hear about immediately. But it also harms peoples health.

After flooding, mold quickly multiplies into fuzzy blobs on walls and furniture. When people try to clean up, they breathe in airborne microbes that can trigger breathing problems, skin rashes and infections, mucous membrane illnesses, and problems in internal organs, according to fungal scientist Eckardt Johanning and his colleagues, writing in an article in Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine.

Health researchers said residents should view floods as hazardous to their health and doctors need to beef up their training to recognize flood-related illnesses.

Getting worse

Mold itself can make people sick, but mold also signals the presence of other bacteria and disease, said Paula Schenck, director of the Center for Indoor Environments and Health at UConn Health. She said doctors can advise their patients to have the appropriate protective gear on hand before the flood, and then avoid exposures that would cause illness, so Im sort of on a disease-prevention soapbox here.

This little-discussed public health threat  exposure to mold  is rising slowly into the public consciousness. Nuisance flooding has increased on the United States coasts, and it will increase dramatically after 2050.

Sands Cleary, the Fairfield health director, said that after Hurricane Sandy the town decided not to enforce its blight ordinance, under which the town could fine residents $100 a day for flood-soaked objects or debris. For several months, we had large numbers of houses that were putting debris out on the streets, and we werent enforcing that because people had just gone through a terrible experience, he said.

Around New England, most coastal areas have been inundated several inches over the past century. Bridgeports sea level has risen nearly 1 foot and New Londons slightly less, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administrations calculations. The yearly increase is almost 3 millimeters.

In March, the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation at the University of Connecticut released a report predicting increases of another 20 inches by 2050. Major areas of the coast will flood regularly in the future.

Adam Whelchel, director of science for the Connecticut Chapter of the Nature Conservancy, has worked on coastal resilience planning with dozens of municipalities. Theres a whole lot of emotional stress that goes along with living along the coast, he said.

Fungi mysteries

High-tide flooding along the U.S. coastline has increased 300 to 900 percent in the last half century. NOAAs map of projected high-tide flooding can be zoomed to street-level detail for any town in Connecticut. A perusal around the state shows that inundation by floods will cover large swaths of Guilford south of Interstate 95, and large areas of Madison, Bridgeport, Middletown, Old Saybrook, Haddam, Hartford and Stamford in the future.

Buildings in the floodwaters path will be prone to mold and all that mold signifies.

All molds are part of the kingdom of fungi. Scientists havent yet identified 90 percent or so of all the fungi that exists, said De-Wei Li, a research mycologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Stations Valley Laboratory in Windsor. Scientists who study fungi spend much of their time simply identifying species.

The hundreds of molds scientists have identified in this part of the world can trigger allergies like asthma and skin reactions, and some of them contain mycotoxins or volatile organic compounds in their spores. Mycotoxins and VOCs can cause serious diseases or reactions when ingested, when they come in contact with skin, or when someone breathes them in. The microscopic spores penetrate deep into the lungs.

A month after Sandy hit in the Northeast, scientists collected samples of mold from houses in Brielle and Manasquan, New Jersey. They found 36 types of mold, including six that killed flies in the lab. Molds found included Aspergillus niger, which the CDC reports can cause lung infections and allergic reactions; Aspergilloma (fungus ball); and the most common found in damp or water-damaged structures, Penicillium chrysogenum; among others.

The presence of mold also indicates a whole soup of biological materials, including bacteria. If someone sees mold growing inside, they are witnessing a risk to respiratory health, Schenck said.

She added that flood waters can be dangerously contaminated. Certain medical conditions make one vulnerable to airborne mold.

Many materials  wallboard, fabrics themselves (clothes, curtains) and those that trap dust (carpet) are a grand meal for mold, Schenck has written. Even some well-constructed buildings that havent had moisture concerns in the past become wet from wind-driven rain and flood waters in severe storms. Schenck wants people to know that any time they see mold, they should consider it an indicator that moisture is available for biological growth. The wetter it is, the greater the chances of severe respiratory illnesses.

An increase in floods will cause wood and drywall and other building materials to become saturated more often, causing an increase in peoples exposure to airborne mold spores, since that is how they reproduce. This means that people whose immune systems have been weakened by disease are more vulnerable to health effects from mold.

The most urgent advice about a flooded living space is to get out until the standing water has subsided. Once its flooded, dont go wading unprotected in that environment, Schenck said.

This story was reported under a partnership with the Connecticut Health I-Team (www.c-hit.org)
Forest preserve worker Caleb Rallings, 20, of Hillside, was indicted on charges of aggravated driving under the influence and reckless homicide. Prosecutors said Rallings had THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in his bloodstream when he drove a forest preserve dump truck into the vehicles stopped at a red light at Arlington Heights and Cosman roads in Elk Grove Village. The speed limit there is 30 mph.
SHELTON  Firefighters first saw smoke when they responded to a recent call. But the firefighters soon found a fire  three stories below ground level.

Fire units from Sheltons Echo Hose Hook & Ladder Co. 1 were dispatched tot he Hydro Power Plant at 305 Canal Street on Thursday.
STAMFORD  With help from a Board of Education grant, the Stamford Public Education Foundation held its first pilot camp for students entering fourth and fifth grades  a six-week full day summer camp where learning and recreation are blended together.

(The board) felt there was a lack in summer academics, said Lynn Tusa, development and communications director for SPEF. They wanted a way for it to be engaging.

Mornings at Summer Voyager are filled with activities that sneak learning into fun  like making Rube Goldberg machines or setting up a course to launch a marble to the center of the room  and afternoons involve enrichment. SPEF teamed up with the Stamford Museum and Nature Center, Soundwaters and Peak Performance so campers can rotate through arts, STEM and physical education activities.

The voyager concept and name came from the idea theyd voyage through three enrichment activities, said SPEF CEO Matthew Quinones, who is also a Democratic city representative for District 16.

The program runs from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Students get busing, as well as two meals and a snack, thanks to SPEFs partnership with Stamford Public Schools.

The curriculum for the program was written by Kelly Dibble, head teacher for the program, as well as an administrative intern with Stamford Public Schools. Each week has a different curriculum such as computer coding, creativity or inventing.

The idea for me is theyre engaged, Dibble said. Summer school works for some students, but some are not engaged. Here, theyre learning, but they dont know theyre learning.

While theyre learning how to code or taking mini-courses in areas such as chess, dance or martial arts, the students are also learning teamwork as they work together to build an invention or solve a puzzle. Dibble also said the curriculum focuses on student choice where they get to decide which mini-course they take, do projects around what theyd do with $1 million or research potential future careers.

Campers were chosen based on recommendations from SPS, which reached out to 400 eligible students via letters to their parents. Of that, 250 responded and 95 attended the pilot year with 87 enrolled for the full six weeks. The majority of the campers received full scholarships for the $250 program cost.

Quinones said Summer Voyagers had striking attendance in its pilot year with average attendance of 88 percent.

SPEF hopes to continue the program into next year.

erin.kayata@stamfordfadvoca te.com; (203) 964-2265; @erin_kayata
I think its good. Democracy is all about choice and people putting forth their ideas and how they think the city could be better, how the state could be better and weve got a lot of people running for mayor and I think thats only going to make for a bigger and better discussion, Mendoza said. The mayor has his ideas, but all of the candidates are hopefully going to be putting forward ideas on how they think the city can be better, and all of us can learn from that. The more, the merrier as far as Im concerned. (Bill Ruthhart)
Michael Cummo / Hearst Connecticut Media

STAMFORD  A Brooklyn man found guilty by a Stamford judge of having sex with his cousins girlfriend without her consent had his sentencing put off so he can cooperate with probation officers writing a report to the judge on his background.

Dayvon Williams, 28, appeared in court Monday ready to be sentenced by Judge John Blawie to as many as 10 years in jail after being convicted during a June trial of second-degree sexual assault.
Let's start off with Plus500.

The company posted some barnstorming results but its shares have tanked after it warned about changes in industry regulation.

It announced a whopping 147% jump in half-year turnover to $466 million (365 million), with the number of customers jumping 121% to over 248,000 as cryptocurrency fever gripped investors.

But the results also came with a stark warning about regulation as global bodies crack down on online trading platforms to protect retail investors.

Plus500 provides an online platform for retail customers to trade contracts for differences, essentially allowing them to bet on moves in share prices without having to buy the underlying stock.

The European Securities and Markets Authority has banned binary options sales to retail clients and has restricted the sales of CFDs to shield investors from deep losses.

The company said: It is unlikely that the exceptional performance of the first half will be repeated following the impact of these rule changes.

The firm has started to look at whether its long-time customers could be reclassified as professional investors and retain the right to trade using higher leverage.
M ore than 400,000 Londoners live with a sight-threatening eye disease  and another 194,000 will develop one by 2030. Patients with these conditions get world-class care from the NHS, but doctors have to painstakingly analyse scans of the eye to diagnose them in the first place. That can delay treatment and can cost people their sight.

At DeepMind, we wanted to see whether artificial intelligence (AI) could make the difference. Today results from our work with Moorfields Eye Hospital, peer-reviewed in the journal Nature Medicine, show that our AI can recommend how patients should treated for more than 50 eye diseases as accurately as any medical expert. Crucially, AI can show doctors how it reached its decision, so they can study its recommendation to make the best diagnosis.

This is early research and the technology isnt used in hospitals yet. But it shows how intelligent software could help doctors immediately identify patients who need urgent treatment.

This kind of potential is why we started DeepMind in London in 2010, and why weve devoted the past eight years to the science of AI. Looking at the progress so far, we think this technology could become widespread in healthcare over the next decade. Imagine what that could do for patient care, for nurses and doctors who want to spend time on patients not admin and for an NHS that remains badly overstretched. But there are significant barriers to overcome if were going to make that future a reality.

First, the NHS needs better basic tools. AI cant be much help in a system where medical professionals still have to use pagers and fax machines, and get test results printed out on little pieces of paper like bus tickets.

We need to bring the kind of mobile technology we take for granted in our personal lives onto the wards, making medical records digital and mobile.

Second, we need to ensure that more patients are aware of how medical data is routinely used by the NHS and researchers, and that they have confidence in how its protected.

Third, we need to encourage more technologists to work in socially important areas such as health. Were making more progress on apps that help us order food, than on apps that could help doctors and nurses save lives.

We started this work because Moorfields recognised AIs potential to help solve some of the hospitals challenges, and got in touch. Every single patient, clinician and hospital in the UK have their own challenges where better tech could make a difference  and so we need to make these deep collaborations the norm, not the exception.

The UK is known for its incredible health service and growing tech sector. Both are full of brilliant people who care about making a difference. If we can bring these two worlds closer together, the impact could be extraordinary.
T he exciting medical breakthrough announced today by doctors at Londons Moorfields Eye Hospital, in which artificial intelligence has been used to diagnose more than 50 types of eye disease and prioritise the patients with the most severe conditions for the speediest treatment, promises to bring major benefits for the hundreds of thousands of people who suffer from potentially sight-threatening conditions. That is a reason to celebrate in itself and is a tribute, once again, to the outstanding abilities of not only those at Moorfields but at many other of Londons world-leading hospitals and medical research centres. The result, it is hoped, will be that within a few years every scan taken can be examined by an electronic DeepMind technology to identify within seconds those patients who need the most urgent attention, eliminating delays and improving the prospects of successful intervention by the hospitals clinicians. Many people should end up with better sight as a result as treatment is given before damage escalates.

But perhaps even more thrilling is the possiblity that the methods used to achieve this success could be applied to tackle an even wider range of diseases, including cancer and heart disease, in which doctors currently use X-rays, CT or MRI scans to determine a patients condition. At the moment, as with eye scans, the sheer volume of scans that need to be analysed can slow down assessments, creating risk and potential harm, as well as overwhelming medical staff. Provided the accuracy of the technology  which matched that of humans in the Moorfields research  can be confirmed, this can only benefit the NHS, by improving efficiency and allowing doctors to spend more of their time focusing on the patients in greatest need of their attention. Nor should be there be any misplaced fears about technology easing out humans altogether. Doctors will, of course, still carry out whatever treatment is necessary and their own assessment of patients scans once they have been prioritised by a computers electronic brain. As ministers have said today in welcoming the Moorfields breakthrough, artificial intelligence is the type of technology that will benefit the NHS in the long term. Todays advance is therefore an important milestone and one that all Londoners should welcome.

Ending rough sleeping

A new Government strategy for eliminating homelessness within a decade has been unveiled today amid controversy about how much of the promised 100 million of spending is new investment. The political squabbling should not, however, obscure either the good intent behind todays plans  which include a greater emphasis on intervention, such as treatment for drug and mental health problems, to help the homeless off the streets  or the need for action to address what campaigners have understandably described as a national scandal. As the Communities Secretary James Brokenshire said today, it is simply unacceptable that people have to sleep on the streets.

Regrettably, though, the problem has been getting worse, including in London where the all-too-frequent sight of homeless people sleeping out is one of the most upsetting aspects of life in the capital today. By focusing on treatment, not punishment, and using outreach navigators to direct the homeless towards services that can help them, todays strategy aims in the right direction. But more housing is needed too, which Londons Mayor and council leaders must help to deliver. Preventing homelessness in the first place is the best approach of all.

Stop Heathrow queues
I n recent years, we have seen a dramatic turnaround in London education [London schools hailed for giving the best chances to disadvantaged children, August 8]. Although its tempting to directly apply successes to other areas of the country, the evidence as to why London schools are performing so much better is widely disputed, and London has certain advantages as a city which would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.

The reality is there wasnt just one factor, or programme, at play. Instead, London schools have benefited from many factors, including a thriving voluntary sector, supported by many businesses and individuals, which has helped to support the fantastic work of schools and teachers.

Our charity, SHINE, relocated from London to Leeds in 2017 in order to focus on raising achievement across the Northern Powerhouse region. We want to help level the educational playing field outside the capital, taking the best of our learning from London but playing to local strengths and needs. Just as in London, other parts of England now need a combined effort from charities and businesses as well as government to help the school system thrive.

London shows us whats possible, but it also reveals deep regional imbalances in our country. Children from other parts of England deserve the same educational chances as their peers in London.

Fiona Spellman

CEO, SHINE

EDITOR'S REPLY

Dear Fiona

Youre right to draw attention to the transformation of Londons schools from among the worst in the country a generation ago, to best now.

There were many ingredients to this success but fundamental were the reforms under Labour, Coalition and Conservative governments. The revolution started with a small number of academies in Hackney, then one of the most deprived and diverse communities, before spreading widely across the capital. But we must not rest on our laurels. London schools need to continue to improve, while in the north of England we must make a huge, concerted effort to close the attainment gap with the south.

The Northern Powerhouse Partnership, which I chair, has set out a plan for doing that. Its high time the Government made a big commitment to delivering it.

George Osborne, Editor

Why has the Mayor backed developers?

Our local council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, has had the overwhelming support of residents when it has twice rejected a planning application to redevelop Newcombe House, the very unattractive tower building on Notting Hill Gate, by replacing it with a far larger and equally unattractive new tower building. In resisting the developers the council has surely fulfilled its role in representing the will of the people.

The Mayor has now intervened to override the council using arguments that only a well-paid lawyer could construct and looks likely to support the developers proposal. The claim that the interests of the people are being protected by this action does not stand up to one moment of scrutiny.

George Thomas

Service providers pitiful standards

In most industries the message sent to customers by price increases, like the one announced on Wednesday by British Gas, would be akin to leaving the cage door to your favourite pet open so that it could return to the wild.

However, in the case of British Gas this isnt the intended message. Instead, it is one of arrogance and belligerence that typifies the way in which many large companies in the UK treat their consumers, regardless of their official rhetoric.

In the UK, the bar for service delivery is set so culturally low its no wonder many large firms trip over it. Consumers need to start demanding better from their service providers and that rather than seeking to be just OK they actually start to behave and deliver better results.

Chris Proctor

CEO, Oneserve

Councils can stop modern slavery

DEFEATING the evil that is modern slavery is something that we can all contribute to.

The Cooperative Party has launched a Modern Slavery Charter, which it is asking all local authorities to sign up to. In London so far Barking & Dagenham, Ealing, Islington, Lambeth, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest borough councils have signed up. This leaves 25 others, along with the City of London, yet to do so.

The charter commits local authorities to proactively vetting their own supply chains to ensure no instances of modern slavery are taking place. It is bold and ambitious but we have to be to deal with this scourge on our society, which is happening today in our great city in plain sight.

Lord Kennedy of Southwark

Labour and Cooperative

Democracy is not about numbers

DEMOCRACY is our belief but pursuing it in ignorance, as in the referendum, is simple folly. How did the electorate decide? The topic in the news at that time was immigration  but what is actually wrong with immigration? Anyone who has been in hospital in the past decade will have noted and benefited from the skill and care by medical staff from other countries; they are ensuring the functionality of our NHS.

Adopting the division of 51.9/48.1 may be democracy numerically; realistically, it indicates great uncertainty and the need for further thought, with the implications of leaving that have come to light.
A painting thought to be by a famous British painter when it was sold for 165,000, has been dubbed a fake by a BBC television programme.

The painting, which had been attributed to Sir William Nicholson, was bought by an art enthusiast from Mayfair gallery Bowse & Darby for the considerable sum in 2006.

The artwork, a still life which shows a glass water jug beside a stack of plates and two pears, could now be almost worthless following the revelation.

Having found that the painting had been left out of a catalogue of the artists work, owner Lyn sought the help of the BBCs Fake or Fortune programme to determine its provenance.

The show, which is fronted by BBC presenter Fiona Bruce and art dealer Phillip Mould, consulted a handwriting expert, as well as scientific evidence that linked paint on the canvas to the paint in Nicholsons paintbox, which has been kept by the artists grandson.

The painting, which a leading expert says is not a work by Sir William Nicholson / BBC/Prudence Cumings

Leading expert Patricia Reed, however, was left unconvinced that the painting was a work by Nicholson. "There is nothing that gives direct evidence that he actually executed the work himself," she said.

William Darby, of Browse & Darby gallery, told the programme, "I was shocked. As far as I was concerned this painting couldn't have been done by anyone else."
T he Land Rover Defenders engine is barely above idle speed; Im hardly touching the throttle. But its bonnet is pointing high at the sky, the chassis is groaning like a sailing ship in a storm and Im gripping the steering wheel hard.

Im sure the 1988 Land Rover is more than capable of traversing this seemingly vertical waterfall but one false move on my part could see us crashing off our perch to the rocks below.

I glance out of the window and see that the tyres - BF Goodrich KM3s inflated to just 15 psi so that they mould themselves around every inch of grip the rock offers - are doing a great job.

And that is, after all, why were here, 7,000 feet up in the sunkissed High Sierra in California, an exhilarating 20-minute helicopter flight from shimmering Lake Tahoe.

Along with a varied assortment of guests - Hollywood stunt drivers, top US athletes, television personalities, sky-divers, even several members of a downhill speed skating team from Toronto, Canada - weve been sent out on the world-famous Rubicon Trail, a notoriously tough (my new friends say super-awesome) rocky, river-crossed, high-altitude trail roughly 80 miles to the east of Sacramento.

And heres the thing. Developed from hunting, migration and trade trails carved across the Sierra Nevada by native Americans centuries ago, then seized by gold rush explorers before being adopted in the 40s and 50s by the off-road 4X4 fraternity, its just 22 miles long. And - thanks to famous obstacles known variously as Thousand Dollar Hill, Gatekeeper, The Granite Bowl, Soup Bowl, Sluice Box, Walker Rock and Cadillac Hill - it takes up to three days to complete.

View from windscreen of the Land Rover Defender / David Williams

One of my guides today assures me he did it in just a few hours on a motorcycle once, but he has a mad glint in his eye and Im not sure I entirely believe him. On other occasions, admits this hard man of the mountains, hes been forced to make it out on foot after the trail did what it routinely does to many of those who come to drive here, and pulverised his prized truck (they call them rigs) to such an extent that he had to ship in new parts, rebuild it in situ - and then drive it back to safety.

Each year some 70,000 off-road enthusiasts from around the world come here to rent - or build their own - vehicles, before tackling the Rubicon, carrying water, food, firewood, bedding and tents, as its in the middle of nowhere and you need to sleep under the stars.

Wiser combatants also hire guides. Its easy to get lost out here, even easier to wreck your machine if - as you crawl forward at a slow walking pace - you dont have someone in front watching every move, to make sure you dont drive into trouble.

David Williams tests out the Defender / David Williams

Today, BF Goodrich have hired the very best guides available and they man every point of danger, guiding our convoy of 20 or so Jeeps and Land Rovers over boulders, across streams, through scarily tight gulleys that leave just an inch or so of air between our door mirrors and the mountain, and across loose shale.

All under the burning sun and surrounded by dramatic, snow-capped mountains.

Naturally, the day starts with a safety briefing. They call it Thousand Dollar Hill for a reason, says our guide as we stand on a bare, rocky, almost lunar plateau in the early morning sunlight.

Its the average amount of damage you do to your vehicle on that section of the Rubicon Trail if you get it wrong. So listen to your guides. Follow their instructions and remember; its not a race. Lets get the vehicles back in one piece.

The best way is to follow in the wheel-tracks of the 4X4 in front. If their brake lights come on and theres a whole lot of grinding going on as they try to reverse out of trouble, maybe find a different way round...

Weve only got a very short distance to go today, he adds. You could walk it faster but remember - if you get stuck and do need to get out, most of the injuries on the Rubicon Trail happen outside the vehicle when people lose their footing. It can be treacherous out there.

It proves to be a whole load of fun. Nice and slows the way to do it, advises my co-driver, ex-pat Mike Hopwood, as I ease the automatic gearbox into First and those KM3 tyres hug the rock.

Well need plenty of left-foot braking, says Mike, whose Worcestershire accent has been largely obliterated by years spent in Vermont. Keep your left foot over the brake pedal when climbing over an obstacle and then, on the way down again, apply lots of constant pressure so we dont crash down hard.

Dont forget; youll often be using the throttle at the same time as braking; out here each wheel is doing a different job at the same time; one might be about to sink down into a hole while the others fighting for grip as it climbs up over a boulder. Its all about observation - and control.

Mikes the type to inspire confidence. When he isnt out on the Trail he runs the 4X4 Center in South Burlington, Vermont, where he teaches off-road skills and has an enviable reputation restoring old Land Rovers and modifying them for expeditions such the Rubicon.

Time for a break on the Rubicon Trail / David Williams

Today were in his own white 1988 Defender, equipped with a Cummins R 2.8 turbodiesel producing 167bhp and a flat 260 lbs of torque, plus six-speed automatic transmission and custom transfer box gearing and raised suspension, all essential to let the vehicle climb slowly up - and down - the rock. Tough skid pans bolted underneath protect the drivetrain from the terrain.

Today, though, its the big, fat, grippy all-terrain tyres from Michelin subsidiary BF Goodrich that are the stars. They soak up the punishment - sharp rocks, adverse cambers, mud, river water, absurd levels of twist and torque and horsepower - and theres not a single puncture.

Neither does anyone, ever - quite - get stuck, even when we traverse chassi-twisting boulders the size of a Jeep.

Regular Rubicon enthusiasts like to launch their adventure at Loon Lake or by Wentworth Springs to the west, which starts with a vehicle-eating obstacle known as the Devils Postpile, a jumbled mound of huge boulders surely designed to make the faint of heart turn back and think again.

Thanks to our helicopter ride - and limited time on the mountain - we start near another legendary obstacle, Little Sluice. By lunchtime weve probably traversed only a couple of miles, and stop to admire the long, sunny views, as the Jeeps and Land Rovers take a rest.

After lunch - and demonstration passenger rides in crazy Rock Racing Vehicles, fast, lightweight, high-riding 4X4s which, in the hands of competition drivers, spring from rock to rock at high speed, like mountain goats, on grippy, partially-inflated KM3s - I try out one of the Jeep Wranglers as we tackle Old Sluice, a series of challenging rock formations.

Four-wheelers on the Rubicon Trail / Supplied

Softly sprung in comparison to the Land Rover and with powerful, modern, air-conditioning it offers a tamer ride but I miss the groans, creeks, torque - the drama - of the Land Rover, and switch back when we stop for more water.

Too soon our day is over and - thanks to the expertise of our guides, the enormous ability of our modified vehicles and the grip of those carefully-developed new KM3s - weve all made it through.

Our helicopter swirls in over the distant mountain peaks, picks us up, and deposits us back in Tahoe. Driving will never feel quite the same, again.

How the Defender compares with Land Rover's latest model

The Land Rover Defender was created in in the 1980s and was shipped all over the world, before production ended in January 2016.

Its combination of rugged build, seemingly limitless off-road ability and classic looks means it is still highly prized by farmers, rescue services, enthusiasts - and Rubicon devotees.

In looks, it could hardly be more different from Land Rovers latest product; the swish, aerodynamic, drop-dead-handsome Velar model, launched last year.

But you shouldnt judge a book by its cover. Costing from 44,735, the Velar is aimed at filling the gap between the larger Range Rover Sport, and the smaller Range Rover Evoque. More than any mere gap-filler, it has emerged as something of a hero product for Land Rover, thanks to its combination of dashing good looks and off-road performance.

The Velar is aimed at filling the gap between the larger Range Rover Sport, and the smaller Range Rover Evoque

I first encountered the Velar on its press launch, in Norway when, after enjoying the cars superb handling on the famous, switchback Trollstigen route, we also drove it off-road, across a mountain. Just like the famous Defender it took the lumps, bumps, loose shale - and a deep-water crossing - all in its stride.

What was more surprising, when the Velar turned up in Britain, was how well it fitted into family life in London too. More compact than the bigger Range Rovers but still just as luxurious, they prove nimble, fun, and easy to park in the capital. The elevated seating position is great in traffic, too.

Powered by a three-litre V6 diesel emitting 167 g/km, the punchy looking 70,530 R-Dynamic HSE D300 is ten times more refined than that rugged - but enjoyable - Defender out on the Rubicon. But it sprints from 0-60mph in just 6.1 seconds and emits 167 g/km, and has a claimed combined fuel consumption of 44.1mpg. Mated to a very slick-changing eight-speed automatic gearbox with steering wheel-mounted paddles, its a hoot to drive, especially over long distances.

Press the Dynamic button, to sharpen up throttle, gears, suspension and steering, and its even more entertaining.

On the R-Dynamic, equipment levels are lavish - especially compared to Mikes Defender. Goodies include Land Rovers famous Terrain Response (pre-packaged programmes for handling conditions such as mud, ruts, gravel etc..), Hill Descent Control, Electronic Air Suspension, heated windscreen, tyre pressure monitoring, all season tyres, Bluetooth, Cruise Control with Speed Limiter, Voice Control and so on. We could have done with its powerful air conditioning out on the Rubicon Trail.

And while the Velar doesnt have the 15 inches of ground clearance built into Mikes Defender, you can press a button to raise the air suspension from its normal height to just under 10 inches (251mm); enough for most obstacles.

On the safety front, the Velar has Advanced Emergency Brake Assist, Autonomous Emergency Braking, Lane Departure Warning and six airbags. Euro NCAP-wise, the Velar scores an impressive 93 per cent for adult occupancy, 85 per cent for child occupants, and 72 per cent overall. All undreamed of when the Defender rolled off the production line.

Inside, occupants feel well looked-after, with Jaguar Land Rovers latest infotainment system, spearheaded by the slick-looking Touch Pro Duo control screens (the lower ones slightly too low for easy viewing) and a big, third screen directly ahead of the driver. The driver interface isnt quite as intuitive as some - it takes a little getting used to - but it is still very good indeed.

Would I take the Velar over the Rubicon? I doubt it; it just looks too shiny and chic. Maybe when its at least as old as Mikes Land Rover Defender...
North Korea is thought to have a growing arsenal of nuclear bombs and long-range missiles and to be closing in on the ability to reliably target anywhere on the U.S. mainland. A string of North Korean weapons tests last year, during which Pyongyang claimed to have completed its nuclear arsenal, had many in Asia worried that Washington and Pyongyang were on the brink of war.
A fter a two-month long heatwave , weve finally got a taste of autumn this week, with grey skies and temperatures dropping to below 20C.

And while were all celebrating the fact we might actually be able to sleep through the night once again, were also missing the heat already and desperate to book our next sunny holiday.

Below are our top picks for where to go in October  for those trying to chase the last of the sun to those who want to embrace the first chills of autumn.

1. British Columbia, Canada

Indulge in maple syrup and look out for Moose while admiring Canada's golden leaves / Unsplash

Autumn, with its glorious golden leaves, has to be one of the prettiest times of the year. And if you want to experience these leaves in their full glory then head to Canadas British Columbia. Known for its striking blue lakes and high peaks, British Columbia is home to a host of national parks or visit Vancouver for a city break.

2. Samoa

Take a leap into these glorious tropical waters / Unsplash

If you really want to unwind and relax, head to one of the Pacific Islands. The way of life there is completely opposite to what it is in London, people walk slowly, take their time doing things and smile at each other as they pass on the street. By the time you leave youll feel like youve had a years rest. In October, the southern hemisphere tourists have disappeared and youll have the 29C island largely to yourself. So soak up the sun, go for a snorkel and lean in to the island way of life.

3. Oman

Unexpected and untouched, Oman is a hidden oasis / Unsplash

From vast deserts to tropical waters, Oman is filled with otherworldly terrain. While in the country, make a visit to Muscats Grand Mosque, go on a camel trek through the desert and visit Wadi Shab - the gorge between cliffs. Wadi Shab is filled with turquoise pools, waterfalls and terraced plantations that remain largely untouched.

4. Dundee, Scotland

Scotland's surprising new must-visit destination (V&A Dundee) / V&A Dundee

With the new V&A opening in September, theres never been a better time to visit Dundee. While there, make sure you go for a quick jaunt to the highlands to see Scotlands gorgeous autumnal colours.

5. Broome, Australia

Admire the magic of the Kimberley during your trip to Broome / Shutterstock

Broome is your gateway to the beautiful beaches of Western Australia. Hot all year round, the October temperatures average around 33C. Besides the white sand beaches and turquoise waters (look out for sharks), Broome is also close to the Kimberley  one of the most beautiful parts of Australias outback with dramatic gorges, waterfalls and rivers (watch out for crocodiles).

6. Sighisoara, Romania

Dracula's home town isn't as frightening as you'd think / Unsplash

What would October be without visiting at least one scary place? To celebrate Halloween, take a trip to the original Draculas birthplace. Vlad Tepes or as he was better known, Vlad the Impaler, was the Prince of Wallachia in the fifteenth century and is said to have been the influence behind Bram Stokers iconic character. Besides immersing yourself in some morbid history, the city of Sighisoara is a beauty in itself and part of Europe that is still mostly untouched by mass tourism.

7. Nashville, USA

A country music lover's paradise / Unsplash

There are a number of festivals you can attend in Nashville come October, from the Independent Music Festival to the Americana Festivaland even the Music City Food & Wine Festival, if youre getting a bit tired of the music. The Southern Festival of Books is also held in Nashville each October so theres a festival to attend for everyone.

8. Atacama desert, Chile

It all comes down to timing with these gorgeous blooms / Pixabay

Something amazing happens in northern Chile in October every few years. If they have had a particularly high downfall of rain over the winter, the normally barren Atacama desert will suddenly bloom with flowers come spring  a phenomenon called desierto florido. However, as this only occurs every two to five years, you would need to get your timing right in order to see it.

9. Perugia, Italy

Chocolate and Italy? Say no more / Pixabay

Each October, the town of Perugia in Italy hosts a 10-day chocolate festival called Eurochocolate  which is reason enough to go for a visit. Along with chocolate sellers, there are also a myriad of workshops held over the week and a half to learn how to make chocolate as well as themed events and tasting tours. Best of all entrance to the festival is completely free.

10. Seville, Spain

Catch the last summer rays in this Spanish idyll / Unsplash
W hat happens when you combine a Brooklyn aesthetic with enviable views of the Manhattan skyline? The Willamsburg Hotel.

Set in the heartland of the original hipsterville town of Willamsburg, this Wythe Avenue newbie draws in an increasingly affluent crowd with its grand ballroom, three bars and soon-to-be-open rooftop pool.

Through and through, The Williamsburg Hotel seems to have been designed for Instagram. From check in to check out, the spaces will tempt and dare you to take a snap of every nook and cranny you come across.

Where is it?

Right at the end of Wythe Avenue in hipster mecca Williamsburg. Cool restaurants, quirky boutiques and two other hotelsThe Wythe and The William Valeare its neighbours.

The hotel might be a good way a way from the main island, there's no need to worry. Subway services direct to Manhattan are available on the L train from Bedford Avenue, or you can opt for the ferry (North Williamsburg landing) which will get you into Midtown in as little as 10 minutes for a very reasonable $2.50.

Style

Bare, but Instagrammable. With its teal jewel tones, Chesterfields, chevron wood floors, highly 'grammable copper bar crowned by a kaleidoscopic unicorn rainbow halo and tall red brick and glass building exterior, the hotel easily ticks all the style boxes.

Designed by Michaelis Boyd Associates (the London-based starchitects behind Babington House, the Groucho Club and Soho House Berlin), the hotel is a bold and beautiful vision and offers an enticing mix of contemporary elegance with nods to the neighbourhood's industrial past.

The Copper Bar

Facilities

The staff are uber cool and know their stuff, particularly with regards to local hangouts and how to experience the Big Apple like a true New Yorker. From check-in to check-out, the boys and gals who run the place will do everything from booking taxis to having a casual chat with you during your stay. An added bonus is that a complimentary tuk-tuk will drop you off to local destinations, or nearby subway stops. Our advice, opt for good old fashioned walking - you'll see tons more.

For fitness fanatics, you'll be disappointed to learn that there is no gym, but the rooftop with 40ft pool and tower bar opening late spring 2018 should be enough to fill the void.

Harvey, the all day hotel restaurant, serves a mix of light and refreshing local delicacies (avocado on toast, obviously) for breakfast, as well as a Brooklyn-inspired afternoon tea and more hearty options such as steak, pizza and spaghetti come dinnertime.

Terrace Room

The Rooms

Compact, comfortable and uber colourful. Each dwelling boasts bespoke furniture designed by Michaelis Boyed in collaboration with Bill Amberg Studio: giant overhanging cloud lamp, brown leather headerboard, clean white walls and linens with mustard yellow pillows included. The gorgeous teal-tiled semi-open shower room complete with stunning golden shower and factory windows overlooking your bed ultimately wins the design Oscar. The WC is private.

Shower Room

Other stylish and quirky additions to the room include a tote bag donning the words 'sleep with a local' and a pillow menu with five alternate options, which includes the use of a sound machine offering a roster of noises such as rain or waves. At first it's a novelty, but by night number two, the mute button will be your friend. Use of a mini bar, plush bathrobes and Apotheke toiletries also add to the Williamsburg Hotel experience.

In addition to that, your Terrace room's floor-to-ceiling windows hide an artificially turfed balcony hiding epic waterfront views of the Mid and Uptown Manhattan skyline. Advice, grab a bottle and watch the world go by at sunset (or sunrise).

What to Instagram?

Without doubt, the enviable Manhattan view from the Terrace balcony. It's a total stunner. If you don't manage to nab a city view room, the teal towers of your shower and the main hotel copper bar is guaranteed to give you oodles of Insta likes.

Best for?

Design types and travellers avoiding the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, as well as couples seeking something a little special to add to their New York City experience.

Details
A builder accused of using a digger to cause up to 4 million of damage to a row of newly-built retirement homes has appeared in court.

Daniel Neagu, 30, was charged with criminal damage after five McCarthy and Stone homes worth approximately 800,000 each were wrecked in Buntingford, Hertfordshire.

Neagu, who had performed work for the firm, did not enter a plea during the hearing at Hatfield Magistrates' Court where he appeared via videolink from police cells on Monday.

Sitting on an estate still under construction, the homes in Ermine Street had external walls torn out, leaving debris littering their gardens. A turquoise digger stood beside the devastation.

McCarthy and Stone said owners were due to move into the unoccupied bungalows within weeks.

Row of houses wrecked in Hertfordshire as man charged

Hertfordshire Constabulary said officers arrested a man at the scene after being called at about 5.40pm on Saturday.

The Romanian national living in Athelstone Road, Harrow, north-west London, was not employed directly by McCarthy and Stone and was instead working for subcontractor Fenton, the McCarthy and Stone spokeswoman said.

Several of the new-build houses were smashed / PA

"We are now awaiting a structural engineer's report, so we can plan the work required to repair or rebuild these properties," she added

"We are absolutely devastated for the purchasers affected and our priority is to continue to stay in close contact with them and their families, and to ensure that any disruption is kept to a minimum."

Neagu, who spoke in court only to give his particulars and state his desire not to enter a plea yet, was charged with one count of criminal damage to the value of 4 million on five houses belonging to McCarthy and Stone.

He was remanded in custody to enter a plea at St Albans Crown Court on September 10.

Elaine Francois told The Sun: 'It looks like an earthquake or bomb struck.'

A fellow builder said he was 'angry' after going to see the damage because he did not know what he would do for work.

Some of the houses will have to be pulled down / PA

Jeffrey Keys, 53, said: 'We were meant be returning on Monday but now dont know what were doing for work."
T he convicted drug-dealer brother of a seven-year-old boy killed in a suspected arson murder has been sent back to prison.

Sam Urhie, who had recently been released after being jailed in 2016 for drug dealing offences, was arrested on Friday on an urgent recall to prison.

The Metropolitan Police said the 21-year-old had not been arrested as a suspect in last Tuesdays blaze at the family home in Deptford, south-east London, which killed brother Joel.

A spokesman for the force said: A 21-year-old man was arrested by police in Lewisham on Friday, 10 August on behalf of the Probation Service following an urgent recall to prison.

He was not arrested as a suspect in the ongoing murder investigation following the fatal fire in Deptford.

Killed in arson attack: Joel Urhie, 7 / PA

Two men, aged 21 and 29, were arrested in connection with the fire on Saturday morning.

They were detained on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and arson with intent to endanger life, and were later released under investigation pending further inquiries.

Sources have said that one line of inquiry in the fire investigation is that the attack was gang-related amid reports Sam may have been the target.

Court records show Sam was sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court in February 2016.

The Crown Prosecution Service said he was handed a jail sentence of four years and four months after he pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine and heroin with intent to supply, and having criminal cash.

Police have said they are keeping an open mind concerning motive.

Joel was found dead after the fire, and a post-mortem found his cause of death was consistent with fire and smoke inhalation.
A trusted ally of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who is accused of lying to police over a speeding ticket will stand trial in November, the Old Bailey heard today.

Fiona Onasanya MP allegedly misled Cambridgeshire Police over who was behind the wheel of a speeding vehicle in July last year.

The 34-year-old MP for Peterborough, who is part of Mr Corbyns front bench team as a Labour whip, has been charged alongside her younger brother, Festus Onasanya, 33, with perverting the course of justice between July and November.

It is said the name of another man, Aleks Antipow, was given to investigators probing who was driving the speeding vehicle on July 24 last year.

The alleged offence happened just after Onasanya was elected as an MP in a key marginal constituency in the 2017 General Election. She has since been fast-tracked into Jeremy Corbyn's top team as one of the party whips.

Labour leader Jeremy Cobyn / PA

Onasanya stood in the dock at the Old Bailey alongside her brother this afternoon, pleading not guilty to the charge against her.

Festus also pleaded not guilty to two further charges of perverting the course of justice against him alone.

MP Fiona Onasanya with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn / PA Archive/PA Images

He is accused of lying to Cambridgeshire Police over two other speeding tickets which were issued in June and August last year.

Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC, the Recorder of London, freed both defendants on unconditional bail until a seven-day trial which is due to start on November 12.

Fiona Onasanya, a former commercial property solicitor from Peterborough, pleaded not guilty to one charge of doing an act tending or intending to pervert the course of justice.

Festus Onasanya, from Cambridge, denied three charges of doing an act tending or intending to pervert the course of justice.
A Louis Vuitton model who stabbed to death a more successful catwalk rival after an Instagram feud over a woman is facing life in jail today.

George Koh, 24, murdered lookalike fellow model Harry Uzoka, 25, in a fatal confrontation in the street in Shepherd's Bush, after they had sparred verbally on social media.

Mr Uzoka, seen as a rising star in the modelling world and tipped for success in movies, had accused Koh of copying his style and branded the other man a "fake".

The feud escalated when Koh met up with a female French model and bragged that he had slept with Mr Uzoka's girlfriend.

When Mr Uzoka heard of the false brag, he called out Koh on Instagram and WhatsApp and they arranged to meet face-to-face.

Mr Uzoka stabbed to death / Harry Uzoka/Instagram

But while Mr Uzoka and a friend armed themselves with dumbbell bars, Koh armed himself with two knife and was backed by his friend Merse Dikanda, 24, who was also armed with a knife, and a third man, 24-year-old personal trainer Jonathan Okigbo.

Mr Uzoka, who counted supermodel Jourdan Dunn among his friends and had work for GQ, Everlane, and Levi's in his portfolio, was stabbed through the heart in the confrontation, on January 11.

At the Old Bailey this afternoon, Koh and Dikanda were both found guilty of Mr Uzoka's murder. Okigbo was cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter.

Koh, wearing a smart blue suit and tie, stood with his hands in his pockets as the verdicts were delivered, displaying little emotion. Okigbo shook his head and slumped in his chair as he was convicted.

Judge Wendy Joseph QC remanded all three men into custody until sentencing on September 21.

The court heard the simmering feud between Koh and Mr Uzoka came to a head in the two weeks before the murder with the visit of Paris-based model Annecetta Lafon.

Both men had been in contact with her online, and she came to stay with Koh first but soon realised he was "obsessed" with Mr Uzoka.

When Ms Lafon visited Mr Uzoka, she told him about Koh's boast to have slept with his girlfriend, leading to a series of insults being traded on social media.

"A dispute arose between them over a girl and incomprehensibly they arranged a confrontation in Shepherds Bush", said prosecutor Richard Horwell QC.

"Mr Uzoka described Koh as a fake and said that he wanted to have it out with Koh, face to face."

Koh, from Camden, and Dikanda, for no fixed address, and Okigbo, also from Camden, all denied murder.

Koh pleaded guilty before the trial began to possession of two knives in the fight.
C hilling CCTV footage shows the moment a callous killer wipes a knife on his jeans moments after stabbing male model rival Harry Uzoka to death in a row over a woman.

George Koh, 24, murdered lookalike fellow model Mr Uzoka, 25 , in a fatal confrontation in the street in Shepherd's Bush, after they had sparred verbally on social media.

The feud escalated when Koh met up with a female French model and bragged that he had slept with Mr Uzoka's girlfriend.

The pair arranged to meet face-to-face with Mr Ukoza and a friend arming themselves with dumbbells.

Chilling CCTV showed the group chase Harry Uzoka / Met police

Koh and pal Merse Dikanda, 24, armed themselves with knives.

A third man, 24-year-old personal trainer Jonathan Okigbo, also backed the duo in the fight.

The footage, today released by police, shows the trio chase Mr Uzoka and a friend through a carpark in Ollgar Close, Shepherds Bush, close to Mr Uzokas home.

The group can be seen brandishing weapons as they chase Mr Uzoka and his friend into a carpark before re-appearing.

CCTV captures the moments around Harry Uzoka's murder / Met police

One of the men wipes his blade on his trouser leg before the group huddle in a doorway following the fatal stabbing.

At the Old Bailey this afternoon, Koh and Dikanda were both found guilty of Mr Uzoka's murder. Okigbo was cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter.

Koh, wearing a smart blue suit and tie, stood with his hands in his pockets as the verdicts were delivered, displaying little emotion. Okigbo shook his head and slumped in his chair as he was convicted.

Judge Wendy Joseph QC remanded all three men into custody until sentencing on September 21.

Harry Uzoka / Harry Uzoka/Instagram

The court heard the simmering feud between Koh and Mr Uzoka came to a head in the two weeks before the murder with the visit of Paris-based model Annecetta Lafon.

Both men had been in contact with her online, and she came to stay with Koh first but soon realised he was "obsessed" with Mr Uzoka.

When Ms Lafon visited Mr Uzoka, she told him about Koh's boast to have slept with his girlfriend, leading to a series of insults being traded on social media.

George Koh has been found guilty over the murder of Harry Uzoka / Met police

"A dispute arose between them over a girl and incomprehensibly they arranged a confrontation in Shepherds Bush", said prosecutor Richard Horwell QC.

"Mr Uzoka described Koh as a fake and said that he wanted to have it out with Koh, face to face.

Merse Dikanda has been found guilty of the murder Harry Uzoka / Met police

Koh, from Camden, and Dikanda, for no fixed address, and Okigbo, also from Camden, all denied murder.

Koh pleaded guilty before the trial began to possession of two knives in the fight.
R esidents of the neighbourhood in Manchester where a suspect opened fire on a street party are "doing their best" to eradicate gang culture, a former police superintendent has said.

Martin Harding, a former superintendent and firearms officer for Greater Manchester Police, told Good Morning Britain that gang crime in Moss Side has been embedded for many years.

"In terms of the gang culture, it's been there for decades now and it won't disappear overnight. We've got lots of people doing lots of work to try and tackle that culture," he said.

But, he added: "The people in Moss Side are doing their best to remove that gang culture and get back to a normal way of life where they can do what everybody else wants to do.

"Grow old, grow happy, see their children grow up in safety and be able to go to events and not have shotguns discharged into packed crowds."

His comments come after 12 people, including a 12-year-old child, were injured in in the late-night shooting after Manchester's Caribbean Carnival in the inner-city neighbourhood.

Officers were called to reports of two loud bangs at the party on Claremont Road in Moss Side in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Officers have launched an investigation into attempted murder / PA

Greater Manchester Police said nine people, including two children who were at the street party with parents, were taken to hospital suffering pellet injuries, mostly to their legs.

One man sustained a broken leg, although the cause is not clear.

Chief Superintendent Wasim Chaudhry of the Greater Manchester Police / PA

Two more people presented themselves at hospital for a check up on Sunday but their injuries were not thought to be serious.

Chief Superintendent Wasim Chaudhry said police had launched an attempted murder investigation but the motive for the shooting is not known.

He said: "In the early hours of today, at around 2.25 this morning, my officers got a report of the sound of two loud bangs in the Claremont Road area of south Manchester and officers were quickly in attendance, within a minute in fact.

"They were both armed officers that attended and also unarmed staff.

"What they were faced with was a large crowd of a number of hundred people, several hundred people, in the area who were continuing to celebrate the Caribbean Carnival and a number of those people had been injured and there was a state of panic which our officers had to contend and deal with."

The street in Moss Side was littered with rubbish after the party ended in horror / PA

Mr Chaudhry said police were working on the "hypothesis" that there was a shotgun discharge, but it was not clear how many times the weapon had been fired.

Youth worker Kemoy Walker said he had been on the main stage at the carnival on Saturday and had been at another street party on Claremont Road until about 11.30pm.

Ten people in hospital after a shooting in Moss Side, Manchester
Elaine Manna noticed problems with her sight when the TV began going wavy and it felt like she was wearing glasses covered in raindrops.

She was diagnosed with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in 2000 and eventually went blind in her left eye.

Ms Manna, 71, a retired charity manager and mother of three from Hackney, said: AMD has had a major impact on my life. I love going to the theatre but I find it difficult to see peoples faces and I struggle to find my way around dimly lit rooms.

Problems in her right eye were diagnosed late. She was initially referred to another hospital by her GP, then was transferred to Moorfields when she was told she would have to wait six weeks to be seen. Since 2013 she has received treatment there, and the sight in her right eye has been saved. Dr Pearse Keane, above, her consultant at Moorfields, said delayed diagnosis had inspired the AI project. Ms Manna added: I really hope that technology can help people like me in the future.

Cathy Yelf, of the Macular Society, said: Timely treatment for patients with wet AMD, such as Elaine, is vital.
T he family of a London youth worker who died while on holiday in Ibiza today demanded answers over the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.

Anwaar Lahrichi-Greenwood, 24, went missing after a night out with friends and his body was found floating in San Antonio port.

His family said an initial post-mortem examination gave the cause of death as drowning but their concerns have been fuelled by reports that injuries were found on his body.

Today they offered a 5,000 reward for information that leads to a conviction.

Pleading for witnesses to come forward, Amina Lahrichi, 45, paid tribute to her kind and gentle son, who worked as a mentor and carer for vulnerable children.

We want answers. For me its not good enough that my son went on holiday, and now hes dead.

My daughter has lost her best friend. I always thought that whatever happened to me, they would take care of each other. He became the man I wanted him to be.

Mr Lahrichi-Greenwood, from Edmonton, had gone with friends to the Soul City nightclub near the harbour before he vanished at 3am on Saturday, August 4.

Spanish authorities have told the family that he was found in the harbour on the Sunday afternoon without any clothes on, except for his socks.

Mr Lahrichi-Greenwood was at least the fourth young British tourist to die on the Mediterranean island since the beginning of July

His sister, Suhayla, said she had received reports on social media that her brother had been seen in a bad way and bleeding in the hours after the club closed.

A witness said they believe they saw him being attacked in the street. Others reported seeing someone matching Mr Lahrichi-Greenwoods description talking to a group of men near the harbour after becoming separated from his friends.

His aunt Rashida Lahrichi, 47, travelled to Ibiza last week to identify his body.

She said Spanish police were investigating and appealing for witnesses but that no criminal investigation had been launched.

A Civil Guard source said: A local court is co-ordinating the investigation but everything is pointing towards this death being the result of a tragic accident.
P olice are searching for a 24-year-old man after a female officer was attacked with a sledgehammer.

Officers were called to a premises in Barnet, north London on Friday after reports of a domestic disturbance involving an armed man.

When two officers entered the address on Sunningfields Road, they were confronted by a man who brandished a sledgehammer and swung it at them.

A female officer, aged in her mid-30s, was struck by the object before the man then fled the scene.

The Metropolitan Police said the female officer was not seriously injured and is recovering at home.

Officers are looking to speak with Cayle Lynch in connection with the incident.

He is known to sleep rough and is often seen at Sunny Hill Park and Hampstead Heath, police said.
A parrot stuck on a London roof treated firefighters who came to its aid this morning with a torrent of expletives, witnesses said.

Officers from the London Fire Brigade were called to rescue Jessie the Macaw parrot, who had spent three days languishing on a neighbour's roof after escaping her home in Cuckoo Hall Lane, Edmonton.

The firefighters were called amid concerns for Jessie's welfare after owners and the RSPCA failed to get her down.

In an effort to bond with the parrot, the fire crew manager coaxed her with the words "I love you", as instructed by animal experts.

But the parrot told the firefighters to 'f*** off', according to a witness.

Standoff: The crew manager tries to coax Jessie down / Paul Wood

Watch manager Chris Swallow, who was at the scene, said: Jessie had been on the same roof for three days and there were concerns that she may be injured which is why she hadnt come down.

Our crew manager was the willing volunteer who went up the ladder to try and bring Jessie down. We were told that to bond with the parrot, you have to tell her I love you, which is exactly what the crew manager did.

While Jessie responded I love you back, we then discovered that she had a bit of a foul mouth and kept swearing, much to our amusement.

Jessie also speaks Turkish and Greek, so we tried telling her to come in both those languages too.

Jessie eventually flew off of her own accord / Paul Wood

Thankfully it soon became apparent that Jessie was fine and uninjured as she flew off to another roof and then to a tree.

The scene was reminiscent of an episode of London's Burning in which the pump ladder crew is called to bring down a parrot called Clive which refuses to come down from a roof.

In episode seven of series two, the character Sicknote tries to coax the parrot down and ends up talking to the bird as if it was a person threatening suicide.

The LFB said that in the first instance, anybody worried about a pet stuck on the roof should call the RSPCA, who will revert to the LFB only if they are unable to help.
T heresa Mays allies say Boris Johnson should be doing more to help the Tory fight to beat Sadiq Khan in the next election for Mayor of London.

A close supporter of the Prime Minister told the Standard that Mr Johnson should be using his time on the backbenches to expose the Labour mayor and help secure a Conservative win in 2020.

The call comes amid frustration at No 10 that the former Foreign Secretary has dominated the news for a week with his controversial comments that women who wear the burka resemble letter boxes and bank robbers.

There is also suspicion among Tory MPs that he is using a new weekly newspaper column to set out a platform for a fresh Conservative leadership bid.

There is a massive challenge for Conservatives in London to expose Sadiq Khans record on issues like his failure to deliver on housing, said the ally of Mrs May. Boris is uniquely qualified to take the lead in this area having won the mayoralty. He knows the issues and understands London.

Mr Johnson should be helping the Tories fight Sadiq Khan in London, say the PM's supporters

The call was laughed off by a Johnson supporter who said he had already used his column to target Mr Khan. His latest article, on housing, contained an attack on the Labour mayors targets for affordable housing, saying: We need to tell lefties like Sadiq Khan to stop their ideological obsession with quotas for affordable housing.

However, the column was attracting more media attention for a separate attack on absurdly high levels of stamp duty, which he said should be cut.

Mr Johnson has yet to respond to allegations of Islamophobia and has ignored demands for an apology made by Mrs May and Conservative chairman Brandon Lewis.

Boris Johnson brings tea for the press to drink outside his house / PA

Instead he handed cups of tea to reporters camped outside his Oxfordshire home after his return from a holiday in Italy.

The Muslim Council of Britain today wrote to Mrs May demanding a full investigation into Mr Johnsons comments and not a whitewash.

No-one should be allowed to victimise minorities with impunity, it said.

Mr Johnson pictured at his home today / PA

In a ferocious attack, Conservative peer Lord Cooper accused Mr Johnson of casual courting of fascism and moral emptiness.

But Brexit-backing MP Jacob Rees-Mogg denounced the investigation launched into Mr Johnsons remarks as a show trial.

And a ComRes poll for the Sunday Express found that 53 per cent of voters believe Mr Johnson should not be disciplined for his comments, against 40 per cent who think he should.

Communities Secretary James Brokenshire said this morning he would certainly have not chosen the words that Boris used to describe Muslim womens appearance.

But he declined to comment further, telling BBC Breakfast that an official complaints procedure was under way.

There is an ongoing investigation in relation to complaints that have been made over Boriss comments last week, said the Cabinet minister. I think thats the right approach.
B ritain's social care crisis could be dealt with by those over 40 paying more national insurance, former cabinet minister Damian Green said today.

In an interview with the Standard, Mr Green, one of Theresa Mays closest allies, said he would also want to see a small proportion of the housing wealth of the over-65s paying for care.

Government proposals on social care are due to be released this autumn.

Mr Greens suggestion of using the value of peoples homes to cover care costs may alarm some Tories who opposed the dementia tax, a disastrous 2017 manifesto policy that would have required people with assets over 100,000 to pay for their care and which was swiftly dumped after the election.

Mr Green, asked how he would pay for the looming social care bill, said: In two ways: with an increase in national insurance for the over-40s, and the use of a small proportion of the housing wealth of the over-65s.

Mr Green was sacked as First Secretary of State last year for breaching the ministerial code. He had given misleading statements about pornography found on his office computer in 2008.

He also apologised to journalist Kate Maltby for making her feel uncomfortable when he sent her a text message.

He is now focusing on social care and older peoples issues.

He said: We have a system which assumes you retire in your early sixties and then live for a few years. Thats not true. Many more people are going to live until they are 90.
D oes Damian Green look like a Tory? I only wonder because hes midway through an anecdote about how he was once mistaken for a Leninist revolutionary. He was bundled into a party and fed free beer before everyone was shushed and an earnest man informed them not to associate with Labour because it was old and bureaucratic and they were hardened Leftist purists.

A panicked young Green then outed himself with the words Im at the wrong party. I dont think you want me here. Apparently his swish of shoulder-length fair hair had caused the Labourites to identify him as one of their own. But you look normal, they stammered, incredulous. You are normal, weve spoken to you. You cant be a Tory.

Greens take from this is: If they could have seen ahead they would have understood that that was why there was going to be a period of Tory hegemony, because actually perfectly normal 18- year-olds were becoming Tories. Whereas my take is: Damian Green had long hair? Does anyone have a photo?

Were on the subject of the Seventies because, staggeringly, the former First Secretary of State and de facto deputy of the Conservative Party has just compared the current political climate where emotions feel raw and hatred runs high  to the era in which he was politicised. Can I remember a time like this? Yes. Politics in the Sevenites was like this. It made me think This country, with its fantastic history, cant go on like this. This was a country clearly going down the pan. I was the generation that revised for their exams by candlelight. There were strikes, the three-day week ... there were power cuts, rubbish in the street, bodies going unburied; there was chaos. Politics now reminds me of that.

Mr Green speaking in the House of Commons before he was sacked / PA

Its not a vision youd expect from a Conservative MP, much less an ally of Theresa May, whom hes known since university and served under at the Home Office, as well as in Cabinet. His fears are rooted in Brexit. The country is hugely divided, he says. Its spawned hatred in politics. But the open hostility wont go away while people are still worried. We need to come up with something even if its not a perfect solution as soon as we feasibly can. The longer this period goes on, the more damage were doing to society.

To Green, this means a version of the Chequers deal with tweaks around the edges. He sees a period of hard negotiating through the autumn, the period where no deal hangs like Damocless sword. With European negotiations you have weeks of, Oh, theyre failing. Then at the last minute, probably two in the morning, Oh look! Theyve reached an agreement. I am still fairly confident, more than 50 per cent confident, thats where well get to. He falters on fairly.

Does he anticipate a leadership change? No. Nor does he forsee an election any time soon. But he doesnt rule out another referendum, although it would be a last resort.

Its been eight months since Green left the Cabinet, sacked on a technicality in the heat of #MeToo. The journalist Kate Maltby  whose parents were old friends of Green  said hed put a fleeting hand against my knee, so brief that it was almost deniable. Later he sent a text message proposing a drink after she had been photographed for an article in a corset.

A Cabinet office inquiry found Maltbys account plausible.

Kate Maltby said Mr Green put a "fleeting" hand against her knee / PA

Days afterwards it was reported that pornography had been found on a computer in his parliamentary office back in 2008 when the Tories were in opposition. The whole episode was murky, not just because of the smut but because Bob Quick, the retired Metropolitan officer who revealed the details to a newspaper, appeared to be in breach of police confidentiality rules. Green says he didnt put the pornography on the computer.

It was a horrible period, he says. Not least for his wife Alicia and two grown-up daughters, who had to live with the press on their doorstep for weeks on end.

The Prime Minister said she shared concerns about the behaviour of the formers officers and promised an investigation by the professional standards department of the Met. It never took place, to Greens knowledge. Nor was he allowed to see the report civil servants compiled on him. Is the system for investigating politicians fair? Im exactly not the right person to talk about the system for enforcing the ministerial code. Others need to comment on that, I dont have the locus.

What about due process? Its a legitimate question but I am not the person to comment on it.

Prime Minister Theresa May smiles as she sits alongside Damian Green at Prime Minister's Questions / PA

In the end he was sacked not for the pornography or Maltbys allegations but for two press releases saying he didnt know there was pornography on the computers. He did. That broke the ministerial code.

Green steers clear of pornography (Im not going to talk about it) and Maltby (I apologised. Ive moved on). So I ask about Gavin Barwell, said to have thrust the fatal stab into his ministerial career. Any chief of staff, he says, crossing his arms, has the power given to them by the Prime Minister.

In his view when the system goes wrong its for two reasons: when individuals pursue a particular course of action regardless. And when ministers dither and simply cant make up their minds. He stops short of naming anyone.

Reform is needed for new ministers, he says, who need more and better training. For instance, when the coalition government came in after a generation in opposition, none of us had ever done this job before, from Cameron downwards. They had half a days training from the Institute for Government. The idea that in any other sphere of life youd do that would be extraordinary. .

Damian Green on... ...Burkas and Britishness We are extraordinarily good at absorbing people from different cultures and making them British. Britishness changes over time as well. Anything that damages that, I will oppose. ...The current climate Can I remember a time like this? Yes. Politics in the Seventies was like this, it cant go on. ...His fellow MPs Dominic Grieve threw me in the river once but lent me a pair of shoes afterwards  weve always been good friends.

When I was appointed immigration minister I started the day with an office of four reporting to me and a budget of 100,000, and ended with 27,000 reporting to me, and a budget of 2.7bn.

Would he like to be a minister again? I dont expect anything, he says, but if anyone asks me to do a job Ill do it, so His hands fall on the table. The only sensible way to deal with politics is to get on with life. Hes seen what happens to colleagues who have become embittered. The iron will enter your soul and thats a terrible state.

Today, sitting in his office at Portcullis House, Green seems to have regained his equilibrium. Social care and provisions for old people is the thorny issue hes focused on, with a green paper due in the autumn alongside the overall ten-year plan for the NHS. The sooner we produce this green paper the sooner we can start having a proper debate which will take years, he says. How will he pay for it? In two ways: with an increase in National Insurance for the over-forties, and the use of a small proportion of the housing wealth of the over 65s.

In February this year, while he was still battling the fall out of his sacking, his father  whom he admired greatly  died. Hed suffered from dementia for a number of years, but there was always something of the spark still there.

Contrary to what is often expected of politicians, his was a happy childhood. He was Welsh working class, the son of parents who both left school at 14, the grandson of a Barry docker. His father started at the bottom in newspapers and rose to the board at Thomson Newspapers. The classic social mobility success story. From grammar school, he won a scholarship to read PPE at Balliol.

So as an adult, I am clearly middle class: I went to Oxford; I am a Tory MP. It would be absurd for me  in the way that John Prescott always does  to say, I am working class. We need a society where you are not defined by what you were born into, a society that gives you the opportunity to better yourself.

Oxford in those days was made up of 50 per cent state-school kids because of the grammar school system. But class rivalry was rife. One incident involved an inebriated mob including Dominic Grieve (who went to Westminster), throwing Green off a bridge into a shallow stretch of the Cherwell and breaking his wrist. It must have been agony but Green forgave him instantly. He behaved impeccably and leant me a pair of shoes to get home as mine had disappeared, says Green. He had always been a good friend.

As well as long hair, Green had the full university experience, which sounds more fields of natural substances other than wheat. (A lot worse than wheat he laughs, followed by disclaimer that his wife knows all the gory details).

One constant throughout his life is his devotion to music festivals. He went to the first Reading festival in 1971 when he was 15 and frequently since, Glastonbury a lot of times (although he was mercifully miles from the Oh, Jeremy Corbyn chorus). This year at Latitude in Suffolk he glamped with a decent bed. Alicia enjoys it too. They celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary this year. Blimey, I say. He replies, Yes, thats slightly what we think.

Actually, they were together for 13 years before they married, meeting  he acknowledges its an awful thing  at a Tory event aged 19. Is total honesty the secret of a great marriage? There are hundreds of ways, he says.

He is awkward when I ask if Alicia is still friends with May. At university they literally had tutorials together in political geography, but now the PM is busy. What about before? We werent in and out of each others houses but we have circles of friends in common so we meet at parties.

We return to the state of Britain post-referendum, to the current arguments about the burka and Britishness and to what defines our society. We are extraordinarily good at absorbing people from different cultures and making them British, Green says. And Britishness changes over time as well. Anything that damages that, I will oppose.
J eremy Corbyn says he does not think he laid a wreath near the graves of Palestinian terrorists linked to the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes.

However the Labour leader has admitted being present at a 2014 memorial in the Palestinian Martyr's Cemetery in Tunisia.

He came under fire after photos published by the Daily Mail showed him holding a wreath at the cemetery where members of Black September, the terror group which massacred 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, are buried.

Speaking for the first time since photos emerged, Mr Corbyn told Sky News: "I was present when it was laid, I don't think I was actually involved in it.

"I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere."

The Labour leader is now being slammed by his own MPs.

Luciana Berger, MP for Liverpool Wavertree, wrote on Twitter: "Being 'present' is the same as being involved. When I attend a memorial, my presence alone, whether I lay a wreath or not, demonstrates my association & support.

"There can also never be a 'fitting memorial' for terrorists. Where is the apology?"

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit out at Mr Corbyn on Twitter.

Labour has said that Mr Corbyn has made it clear he was present to pay his respects to the 47 victims of a 1985 Israeli air strike on Palestinian Liberation Organisation offices in Tunis.

Mr Corbyn also said on Monday that the controversial version of the international definition of anti-Semitism agreed by Labour's ruling body was the "most sophisticated" of any political party.

The party has controversially not signed up to all of the examples of anti-Semitic behaviour set out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Mr Corbyn said the party did not want to "unwittingly" shut down debate about Israel.

He told Sky News: "The one example that we are discussing and consulting on is one that makes sure that you can discuss and debate the relations between Israel and Palestine, the future of the peace process and, yes, make criticisms of the actions of the Israeli government in the bombing of Gaza and other places.
The flagship fund was welcomed by homelessness charities as a significant step towards helping the estimated 4,750 people sleeping rough on English streets on any given night. But under questioning on BBC Radio 4s Today programme, Mr Brokenshire said half the cash had already been committed to rough sleeping and the other half was reprioritised from existing budgets in his department.

He said: Yes, some of this is reprioritised from within existing budgets where we have underspends  There are significant sums of money being focused and targeted.

"Half of that has already been committed to homelessness and rough sleeping. The remaining half is money thats new to rough sleeping and homelessness, reflecting and recognising the priorities and importance of taxes.

Earlier the Governments integration czar Dame Louise Casey had said additional funds had to be committed if the pledge to end rough sleeping by 2027 was to be met.

Theresa May said she wanted to help homeless people turn their lives around as the 100 million plan was launched.

The Conservatives have promised to halve rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament and eliminate it by 2027.

The strategy includes 50 million for homes outside London for people ready to move on from hostels or refuges, and 30 million for mental health support for rough sleepers. There will also be money for those with addictions.

Asked again if it was all part of existing budgets, Mr Brokenshire replied: What is important is ensuring that we make that difference on rough sleeping, getting people out from vulnerable situations.

Last night Croydon South MP Chris Philp, parliamentary private secretary to Mr Brokenshire, had told the BBCs Westminster Hour programme that the money was all new investment.

Dame Louise told the programme: 100 million sounds like quite a lot of money  the department have been announcing money in various pots and its quite hard to get to the bottom of what is new money and what is existing money.

Shelter chief executive Polly Neate had welcomed the strategy with the caveat that more must be done to tackle issues around housing benefit and lack of housing. She said: This strategy is an important step forward in the fight against the rough sleeping emergency thats led to people dying on our streets.

We still need to tackle the chronic lack of genuinely affordable homes, deep instability of renting, and problems with housing benefit that are leaving so many without a home.

If the Government wants to eradicate rough sleeping for good, this strategy must be quickly followed by a new plan to build many more social homes and efforts to create real security for those struggling with their rent.

Nickie Aiken, leader of Westminster City Council, said: Todays emphasis on drug misuse in the strategy is welcome. Having had one rough sleeping death in Westminster formally ascribed to Spice this year, I hope we see more concerted action to tackle this lethal epidemic.
T he widows of Israeli athletes murdered by terrorists in the Munich OIympics attack have said they were "extremely disturbed" by reports that Jeremy Corbyn took part in a wreath-laying ceremony near the graves of some of those responsible.

Ankie Spitzer and Ilana Romano, whose husbands Andre and Yossef were among 11 athletes taken hostage and killed at the 1972 Munich Olympics, warned the Labour leader that he would be "judged by the company you keep".

And Home Secretary Sajid Javid suggested that Mr Corbyn should quit over the issue.

The Daily Mail published pictures of the Labour leader holding a wreath in the Palestinian Martyr's Cemetery in Tunisia, during a visit to the north African country in 2014.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid suggested that Mr Corbyn should quit over the issue / Getty Images

Labour said that Mr Corbyn had already made clear he was paying his respects to the victims of a 1985 Israeli air strike on Palestinian Liberation Organisation offices in Tunis.

But the Mail said its own visit to the graveyard showed that the pictures were taken in front of a plaque honouring the founder of Black September, which carried out the massacre, while the air strike memorial was 15 yards away.

Mrs Spitzer and Mrs Romano told the Jewish News: "We do not recall a visit of Mr Corbyn to the graves of our murdered fathers, sons and husbands.

17 people, including the members of Black September, died in the 1972 attack in Munich

"They only went to the Olympic Games in order to participate in this festival of love, peace and brotherhood; but they all returned home in coffins.

"For Mr Corbyn to honour these terrorists is the ultimate act of maliciousness, cruelty and stupidity."

And they added: "Do not forget, Mr Corbyn, that you will be judged by the company you keep."

Responding to the Mail story, Labour sources said that Mr Corbyn had already given a full explanation of his presence in the cemetery when the visit first hit the headlines during last year's general election campaign.

Jeremy Corbyn visited the grave of the leader of Black September, it was claimed - although Labour deny this / AP

The Labour leader said last year: "I was in Tunisia at a Palestinian conference and I spoke at that Palestinian conference and I laid a wreath to all those that had died in the air attack that took place on Tunis, on the headquarters of the Palestinian organisations there.

"And I was accompanied by very many other people who were at a conference searching for peace."

Writing in the Morning Star at the time of the visit, Mr Corbyn said that wreaths had been laid not only at the memorial, but also "on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991".

Mr Javid said: "If this was the leader of any other major political party, he or she would be gone by now."

And the chair of the Jewish Leadership Council, Jonathan Goldstein, told the Jewish News: "This man is not fit to be a Member of Parliament, let alone a national leader.

"He has spent his entire political career cavorting with conspiracy theorists, terrorists and revolutionaries who seek to undo all the good for which our ancestors have given their lives. In so many ways, enough is enough."

The pictures emerged amid continuing controversy over Labour's refusal to adopt in full an international definition of anti-Semitism, including a list of examples of anti-Semitic behaviour.

Three senior union leaders have added their voices to calls from deputy leader Tom Watson for the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance text to be incorporated in its entirety into Labour's new code of conduct on anti-Semitism.

Labour has launched a consultation with Jewish groups over the code, after protests that the version agreed by the party's ruling National Executive Committee omits four examples relating to criticism of the state of Israel.

A Labour Party spokesman said: "The code of conduct adopts the IHRA definition and expands on and contextualises its examples to produce robust, legally sound guidelines that a political party can apply to disciplinary cases.

"The NEC upheld the adoption of the code of conduct on anti-Semitism, but in recognition of the serious concerns expressed, agreed to re-open the development of the code, in consultation with Jewish community organisations and groups, in order to better reflect their views."

Writing in the Sunday Mirror, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: "Both Jeremy Corbyn and I have made clear that racism and anti-Semitism have no place in the Labour Party.

"Labour will resolve any outstanding issues within our party and get out there to assist the Jewish community in fighting anti-Semitism and racism."
A young Brit believed to have been killed in a street brawl in Ibiza has been described as a "gentle soul with a heart of gold".

Conor Spraggs, 23, died after reportedly getting into a fight with a group of men and women, also said to be British, in the resort of San Antonio.

Police are investigating the incident, which happened in the early hours of Sunday.

A JustGiving page, set up to bring his body home and cover his funeral costs, has raised more than 3,000.

'Top lad': Tributes have been paid to Mr Spraggs after his death on Sunday / JustGiving

The page description reads: "Conor was tragically killed on his last day of his holiday in Ibiza.

"We are trying to raise enough money to fly his body home so he can be back with his family and put to rest in his home town.

"Conor was a gentle soul, with a heart of gold who is going to be deeply missed by family and friends and anyone who knew him."

Those who donated to the fund remembered Mr Spraggs as a "top lad" who had "not a bad bone in his body".

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: "Our staff are providing assistance to the family of a British man who has died in Ibiza and are in touch with the local authorities, who are investigating."

Mr Spraggs, from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, is the latest British holidaymaker to die this summer in the popular destination.

In July, the body of a 19-year-old man was pulled from a pool in Sant Josep in the early hours of the morning.
T he founder of the Everyday Sexism campaign says that schoolboys think making girls cry during sex is normal due to the amount of porn available on the internet.

Laura Bates warned that when asked, boys admitted that making girls cry was "part of foreplay" due to the misogyny and dehumanising nature of pornography online.

The 31-year-old was speaking during an appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Ms Bates told the audience that Britain was facing a sexual assault epidemic with one rape a day being committed in schools during term-time.

The Times reports that 5,500 sexual offences including 600 rapes in UK schools were reported to police in the three years to July 2015.

Ms Bates added that victims were being put back into the classrooms alongside their attackers.

The government has pledged to produce guidelines for schools to prevent sexual assault victims being forced to share classes with their perpetrators.

It is also consulting on proposals to make all state schools teach relationships and sex education.

Ms Bates launched her website in 2012, allowing people to unload stories about sexism. She expected to receive around 50 entries, however it became a global phenomenon, with 60,000 submissions.
P etra Ecclestone is set to relocate her family to Los Angeles as she no longer feels safe at her London home.

The F1 heiress revealed how talking to other parents about rising levels of crime in the UK helped convince her to move to the United States with her children.

She is looking to sell her Chelsea mansion and live permanently in the US with new boyfriend Sam Palmer.

Speaking to the Sunday Times magazine, Ecclestone said she could no longer handle how dangerous it feels to live in the UK,

"It's crazy how unsafe the UK has become  so much more so than 10 years ago,' she said.

"Talking with mums at school, there have been so many incidents, so many attacks, robberies, knives during the day. You don't feel safe walking around the neighbourhood."

Eccelstone employs four security guards full time - one for her and one for each of her three children - due to her safety fears.

It comes after her home was attacked in 2016 by arsonists with a petrol bomb.

A conman also targeted her and the property, taking 450,000 worth of jewellery in 2013.

Violent crime is on the rise both in London and across the country, official figures show.
A n unemployed law graduate who was accused of using her rich girlfriend as a cash cow has won a legal fight for half of their 1.7million former home.

Shree Ladwa, 43, was lavished with expensive jewellery and hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash during a 16-year relationship with Beverley Chapman.

Ms Chapman, 46, bankrolled their luxury lifestyle, buying Ms Ladwa an Aston Martin for her birthday and paying off the mortgage on their home in Chingford.

But when the couple split in 2016 Ms Chapman wanted to claim the home as her own, insisting she had put it in both their names only after being pestered by Ms Ladwa.

She argued that law graduate Ms Ladwa had not done a proper days work during their time together.

But Judge Stephen Murch, at Central London county court, ruled in favour of Ms Ladwa, who argued she had been the housewife in a relationship likened to traditional marriage.

Miss Ladwa argued that she acted as a housewife while the couple were living at the property in Waltham Abbey /  Google

The judge found the women had a common intention to jointly own the home, and it would be put in both their names once the mortgage was paid off.

Having seen Ms Chapman give evidence, I cannot accept that Ms Ladwa was the kind of person who could make her act against her will, he added.

Unfortunately, I was left with the impression that Ms Chapman has convinced herself that her version of events is to be preferred, regretting what she now perceives to have been undue generosity when she was in a relationship with Ms Ladwa.

The couple started dating in 2000, when Ms Chapman was working in her familys building firm and Ms Ladwa was a third-year university law student.She did not go on to a career in the law, and time spent at cookery college Le Cordon Bleu did not lead to employment either, the court heard.

The Chingford home was bought in 2007 for 1.4 million in Ms Chapmans name, and transferred to joint ownership about a year later. Ms Chapman said she gave Ms Ladwa almost 400,000 during the relationship, as her partner had only a 25,000-a-year allowance from her mother to live on.

Ms Ladwa told the court she had tried hard to get a solicitors training contract and had never hassled her partner over the house. Bev told me it would be easier to secure the mortgage if it was just in her sole name, she said. It was always going to be our home, our future home. I trusted her.

She said there had been at least two marriage proposals, including 75,000 worth of engagement rings.

In the court case, Ms Chapman also tried to reclaim designer shoes, bags and jewellery by Cartier, Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton, as well as the proceeds of the sale of the Aston Martin.

She argued the gifts, valued at about 130,000, were loans, but Judge Murch said he did not agree the two women at any stage regarded them as a loan.

He added: My reason for this is that they were at all times in a relationship in which they understood perfectly that Ms Chapman had greater wealth It can never have been envisaged that Ms Ladwa would pay them back. I cannot conclude that it was ever discussed.
B ritons in Europe are facing an increasingly uncertain future because of the threat of a no-deal Brexit and Brussels failure to spell out the rules that will apply after the UK leaves the EU, a leading law firm warned today.

Fragomen, which advises businesses and individuals on immigration issues, said that British citizens would be treated as third-party nationals once the UK quits the EU and become subject to the 27 different immigration systems operated by the remaining members.

They would be required to comply with different rules on length of stay, salaries, qualifications and good character depending on which country they were in. Refusals or potentially lengthy delays before visas were granted were possible and there was no guarantee that spouses or partners would be able to work.

The firm said that the problems, which would also result in higher employment costs for businesses hiring Britons, were being compounded by a lack of clarity from the EU about the regulations that would apply and the growing risk that there would be no transition period.

Caron Pope, Fragomens managing partner, said: The heightened prospect of no deal is worrying our clients, not least because of the impact on their people in Europe.

"The EU need to get a grip of it and say how they will be treated. We cant believe that British people will be sent packing, but we do need to know the terms and process that will allow them to stay.

From an immigration perspective, the UK has built technology, created processes, published law. We havent seen any of that from Europe.

"How will British people who need to work in Europe get their permission? Will they need to wait months for a work permit, like non-Europeans do in a lot of European locations? Should they be ready to be told their partners cant work in countries like France and Belgium if they arent married? What will the cost be? We need answers now.

Fragomen said that examples of the different rules that applied to non-EU nationals included a requirement in Belgium and Luxembourg for spouses to obtain special permission to undertake employment.

France did not regard an unmarried partner as part of a persons family.

Ms Pope said multinationals which were already used to coping with such rules for American, Indian, Chinese or other non-European staff should be able to cope.

But smaller firms will suffer and all businesses would face more costs, delays, and time spent preparing and staying compliant with the rules.
A painting bought for 165,000 and attributed to Sir William Nicholson is feared to be a worthless fake.

The still life of a glass jug which was thought to have been painted by the acclaimed British artist was examined on the BBC Ones Fake Or Fortune? programme on Sunday night.

It failed to convince a leading expert who said there was not enough evidence to confirm who painted it.

But a handwriting expert believes the work is authentic and evidence links it to Nicholsons paint box, which is kept in his grandsons house.

They confirmed that the writing on the back of the painting was likely to have been signed by the artist.

Reformed art forger John Myatt told the programme that he had faked a Nicholson during his criminal career but not this painting.

The still life painting is feared to be a worthless fake / BBC

The programme eventually concluded there was not enough direct evidence to prove that Nicholson executed the work himself.

It has been suggested that the work could have been made by amateur Sunday painters tutored by Nicholson in the 1930s.

One of his students was former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who famously loved to paint.

Presenter Fiona Bruce said she was shocked that the painting could be a fake.

"I'm genuinely shocked by that verdict. I didn't expect it. I thought the case was so strong, she said.

The owner of the painting said she didnt have any doubt of its authenticity when she bought it in 2006.

But when a catalogue of Nicholsons work was published by Reed in 2011 with his official known list of pieces, the painting was not included.

Will Darby, whose Mayfair gallery Browse and Darby exhibited the painting before selling it for 165,000, said: "I was shocked.

As far as I was concerned this painting couldn't have been done by anyone else."
T heresa May has unveiled plans to help homeless people turn their lives around with a 100 million fund to end rough sleeping on Englands streets.

The Government strategy was revealed by Communities Secretary James Brokenshire and officially launches today.

But the Housing Secretary has admitted that there is no new money behind the fund.

In an interview on the BBC's Radio 4 Today show, Mr Brokenshire said half the cash had already been committed to rough sleeping and the other half was "reprioritised" from existing budgets in his department.

He said: "Yes, some of this is reprioritised... reprioritised from within existing budgets where we have underspends and issues such as that.

"There are significant sums of money being focused and targeted.

A police community support officer for the British Transport Police speaks to a man in a sleeping bag outside Victoria Station in London / Getty Images

"Half of that has already been committed to homelessness and rough sleeping.

"The other remaining half of this is money that's new to rough sleeping and homelessness, reflecting and recognising the priorities and importance of taxes."



The Government said the scheme will offer support for people with mental health or addiction problems as well as offering accommodation. The scheme was welcomed by homelessness charities.

They said it was a significant step towards meeting the Conservative manifesto commitment to halve rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament and eliminate it by 2027.

Around 4,751 people are estimated to sleep rough on any given night in England.

Mrs May said: "Nobody should have to sleep rough and that's why we must do all we can to help the most vulnerable in our society get the support they need.

"But we recognise this is a complex issue - as well as ensuring people have somewhere to live, we have to deal with underlying problems and ultimately help people turn their lives around."

The strategy will not provide a total fix for homelessness, the Government warned, which would require a significant increase in social housing, more security for renters and the reversal of policies which leave migrants homeless.

But it includes 50 million for homes outside London for people ready to move on from hostels or refuges and 30 million for mental health support for rough sleepers.

It focuses on efforts to prevent people becoming homeless in the first place with targeted support to get those in crisis off the streets and into long-term housing.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has unveiled plans to end rough sleeping in England / Getty Images

Ministers are also expected to review legislation on homelessness and rough sleeping  including the Vagrancy Act from 1824 which makes it illegal to sleep rough or beg in England and Wales.

Seven homelessness charities who advised on the strategy said it would "make a real difference to people's lives" in a joint statement.

However, the charities Crisis, Homeless Link, National Housing Federation, Shelter, St Basil's, St Mungo's and Thames Reach warned: "For the strategy to work, the Government must also set out bold, cross-departmental plans to tackle the root causes of all forms of homelessness and prevent it from happening in the first place.

"This must include plans to build significantly more social housing, to foster greater security for renters, to ensure people have access to benefits and other support they need to help them keep their homes."

James Brokenshire revealed the new strategy, which launches today (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images) / Getty Images

The chief executive of St Mungo's outreach, hostel and recovery service, Howard Sinclair, said: "This strategy is a really important first step towards meeting the Government's 2027 target to end rough sleeping and shows they are serious about understanding the problem and getting the right support to people at the right time."

Labour's shadow housing secretary John Healey dismissed the strategy as "a feeble plan that lacks any urgency to tackle the crisis of rising rough sleeping".

"The scale of the problem is clear today but the Government's target means waiting almost a decade to deal with this crisis, he said.
T hunderstorms and heavy rain are expected to batter the UK on Monday with forecasters issuing a severe weather warning for a large part of the country.

The Met Office has put an 11-hour yellow alert for thunderstorms in place across a swathe of East Anglia and parts of north east England.

Alongside the warning, the Environment Agency has put out 19 flood alerts scattered across England.

Forecasters have warned heavy downpours could arrive in London over the course of Monday as rain becomes more widespread.

A Met Office spokeswoman said: Today we have a thunderstorm warning in place between 11am and 10pm in East Anglia to parts of north east England.

That is where we have got the highest risk of seeing some heavy localised downpours, we could cause some flooding issues.

There are lots of clouds across Scotland, across western parts, Northern Ireland, Wales, south east England we could see some brighter spells.

These thunderstorms are developing in the east but we could see some heavy downpours in London.

The top temperature in the UK will be in the London area, around 24C.

'Mother of all thunderstorms' 1 /11 'Mother of all thunderstorms' Lightning over the Suleymaniye Mosque in Dalston as the mother of all thunderstorms swept over London Andrew Lanxon Hoyle/@Batteryhq/P The thunderstorm illuminates the night sky over the Thames in this picture from Tower RNLI TowerRNLI/PA A lightning bolt arcs over London's skyscrapers Reuters The display of lightning in a Twitter picture that passed near Reigate @robinpeyton Lightning in south-west London @NitaiLevi/Twitter This time-lapse image shows lightning striking behind Big Ben in central London James Brewin/PA Lightning above Wembley Stadium REUTERS Londoners run for cover as a lightning bolt darts across the sky over Kings Cross @pamelsaurusrex/PA Lightning over the Shard @samueltwilkinson /PA Lightning seen from a bedroom window as it strikes above a street in south London REUTERS There were between 15,000 and 20,000 lightning strikes over the UK last night REUTERS

On Tuesday, the UK will will be drier with spells of sunshine, before rain again arrives on Wednesday, this time from the west.

London will be dry and warm there will be spells of sunshine, across the UK it will be the same picture with some cloud around, the spokeswoman added.

Again the top temperature will be in London at around 25C.

There will be some rain in Scotland and the west on Wednesday, heavy rain pushing through from the west.

Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England will see the rain first and it will arrive in south overnight.

Once that rain has passed through there will be a much fresher feeling across the UK. Highs of 25C on Wednesday in the south but by Thursday that will drop to 22C.
A t least 39 people have died and many are wounded following a blast that brought down a building in Syria's northern province of Idlibm, reports say.

The building is said to have contained an arms depot, but the cause of the blast was not immediately known, opposition activists said.

The opposition-run Syrian Civil Defence, first responders also known as the White Helmets, said the blast occurred in the village of Sarmada near the Turkish border.

Two five-storey buildings collapsed after the blast, burying many of the victims, it said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 39, including 21 women and children.

Destroyed buildings are seen on August 12 following the blast / AFP/Getty Images

The Observatory said an arms depot in the basement of a building had detonated.

It said the depot was run by an arms dealer close to the Levant Liberation Committee.

Meanwhile, Syrian government forces fighting rebels in Idlib province have sent more reinforcements ahead of a potential offensive on the last major rebel stronghold in Syria.

The pro-government Al-Watan daily said on Sunday that huge military reinforcements have reached the outskirts of Idlib province as a preliminary step to launch a wide-scale offensive.

Quoting military sources, the paper said that troops have reached the northern countryside of the neighbouring Hama province as part of military preparations to recapture Idlib province.

The expected offensive on Idlib comes after government forces captured major rebel strongholds earlier this year near the capital Damascus and in the southern provinces of Daraa and Quneitra.

Government airstrikes on the province on Friday killed dozens.
A n orca whale that drew international attention by carrying her dead calf around for 17 days has finally let go and begun to feed and swim normally again.

The orca, called J35, was spotted chasing salmon in Haro Strait west of San Juan Island on Saturday afternoon by the Center for Whale Research in Washington state.

"Her tour of grief is now over and her behaviour is remarkably frisky," the Center said on its website.

Fears for J35, also known as Tahlequah, had grown after researchers observed her grieving her infant for a record-breaking length of time.

Researchers say J35 is now back frolicking with her pod / AP

Killer whales are known to carry corpses for up to a week, however experts said J35 had entered an unusual "deep grieving process".

There are only 75 endangered Southern Resident whales left in the sea and her calf was the first live birth in the group, which has been struggling because of a dire lack of Chinook salmon, since 2015.

"Maybe this is just her own way of just getting past the loss of another baby. She's probably lost two more in the past decade," Ken Balcomb, a senior scientist at the Centre for Whale Research, told the BBC.

The baby orca whale being pushed by her mother after being born off the Canada coast near Victoria, British Columbia / AP

"It's got to be tragic for these animals to lose these babies, and it's happening at a record pace."

J35's calf died minutes after birth on July 24 and she carried it with her across 1,000 miles before finally abandoning the corpse as it decomposed.

"There had been reports from brief sightings by whale-watchers two days ago that J35 (Tahlequah) was not pushing the calf carcass in Georgia Strait near Vancouver, BC, and now we can confirm that she definitely has abandoned it," said the Center.

"The carcass has probably sunk to the bottom of these inland marine waters of the Salish Sea, and researchers may not get a chance to examine it for necropsy."
M ore than 300 people have been injured, five seriously, after part of a wooden pier collapsed into the sea during a music festival in Spain.

Witnesses reported scenes of panic after the packed platform buckled while a rap artist was performing, causing some people to fall into the sea.

The performer, Rels B, had told the crowd to jump just before the freak accident occurred, according to local reports.

"There were loads, I mean loads of people" on the boardwalk, one witness told RTVE.

One video posted on social media shows the perspective of an audience member filming the performance before the screen suddenly goes black.

At least 330 people, many of them teenagers, are said to have been injured in Sunday nights incident during the O Marisquino festival in the city of Vigo, north-west Spain.

The wooden boards cracked along a central section, about 40 metres long, and people slid down into the sea below, emergency services said.

Divers were deployed as a desperate search ensued however there have been no reports of any fatalities.

Pier collapse: Several firefighters search for victims after hundreds of people were injured during a concert in Vigo / EPA

Images show scores of emergency services workers at the scene during the aftermath as the injured were taken to various hospitals.

In a tweet, Rels B wished "strength" to the injured and told any worried relatives or friends to contact an emergency help desk set up by festival organisers.

Hundreds injured: Some 266 people were wounded, five of them are seriously injured, in the accident / EPA

Vigo's mayor Abel Caballero said the platform that collapsed just before midnight was 30 metres long and 10 metres wide.

A section of the wooden pier which collapsed during a concert in Vigo, north-western Spain / EPA

He added that there will be an investigation into the causes of the incident.

Two police officers walk at the scene the day after an oceanside boardwalk collapsed, in Vigo, Spain / AP

The president of the Vigo port authority, Enrique Cesar Lopez Veiga, said he suspects there was a structural problem in the boardwalk, which is supported by concrete pillars.
U S President Donald Trump has branded his former advisor a wacky lowlife after she revealed that she had taped a call with him after she was fired by chief of staff John Kelly.

Earlier on Monday, Omarosa Manigault Newman released another audio recording which she claimed featured Donald Trump, as she threatens to "blow the whistle" on White House Corruption.

Ms Manigault Newman, a former Apprentice contestant, is releasing a tell-all book on August 14. She said: Theres a lot of very corrupt things happening in the White House and I am going to blow the whistle on a lot of them.

Mr Trump took aim via Twitter, writing: Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will.

Omarosa Manigault Newman was the former White House aide to President Donald Trump. / EPA

"She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard ...really bad things.

Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems.

"I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired!

While I know its not presidential to take on a lowlife like Omarosa, and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!

Some three hours later, he added that Ms Manigault Newman had already signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Donald Trump took aim at the former advisor on Twitter / AP

She added that she saw the US president behaving like a dog off the leash at numerous events he attended without his wife, first lady Melania.

The former advisor said after years of defending him that she had come to the conclusion that Mr Trump was a bigot.

"I didn't want to believe it," she writes. "I rejected what other people said about him because they didn't know him like I did. I had to go through the pain of witnessing his racism with my own eyes, and hearing it with my own ears, many times, until I couldn't deny it any longer."

Ms Manigault Newman also alleges that allies of the president tried to buy her silence.
We've seen this horror film before. In 2016, TV media treated Trump like a celebrity, never really putting him through the policy paces like other candidates, and, moreover, turning over hours of free TV time to him. He called in to shows from the comfy environs of home rather than appear in person. He got live coverage of his rallies. That was a mistake that should not be repeated. Not only Avenatti but also a slew of other nonpoliticians and TV personalities may very well enter the presidential primary races. What coverage do they deserve, and how should they be treated?
A sexism row has erupted in South Korean after a woman was jailed for secretly photographing a nude male life-drawing model.

The 25-year-old woman, known by her surname Ahn, was sentenced to 10 months in prison and 40 hours' sexual violence counselling by Seoul western district court, according to the news agency Agence France-Presse.

Ahn, who is a model herself, was arrested in May after she posted a photo that was taken at the Seoul art college online.

The strict verdict drew allegations of bias because South Korea is currently battling a rising tide of spycam videos, known as "molka", and campaigners say male offenders often go unpunished.

Protestors at the rally against 'molka' in Seoul / AFP/Getty Images

According to government statistics, the number of spycam reports has spiralled from about 1,100 in 2010 to more than 6,500 in 2017, with hidden cameras planted in changing rooms and even workplace bathrooms to capture intimate images.

From 2012 to 2017, 98 per cent of offenders were men, while 84 per cent of the 26,000 victims were women.

But according to activists and official figures, despite the existence of maximum penalties such as jail terms of up to five years, these are handed out in fewer than 10 per cent of cases.

"The whole response by the police to this rare case in which a victim is male is truly unprecedented," Seo Seung-hui, head of the Korea Cyber Sexual Violence civic group, told AFP.

"We rarely saw them act so quickly for countless cases in which victims were female," she added.

The verdict comes after 70,000 people signed a petition against "bias" in molka cases sparked by police efforts to arrest the operator of a feminist website that hosts spycam videos, including Ahn's footage.
A ship carrying 141 migrants rescued at sea has been refused permission to dock in Italy, with the country's transport minister suggesting the vessel head to the UK.

Danilo Toninelli said "the United Kingdom should assume its responsibility to safeguard the castaways."

MV Aquarius has been 'stuck' at sea since Friday after it rescued migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean on wooden boats.

The Libyan Joint Rescue Coordination Centre informed the ship that it would not "provide a place of safety and instructed Aquarius request a place of safety from another Rescue Coordination Centre," according to Doctors Without Borders.

On Monday, both Malta and Italy denied the ship permission to disembark.

The vessel is carrying 141 migrants rescued from wooden boats / EPA

Italian transport minister Danilo Toninelli said that as the ship is flying under a Gibraltar flag, the UK should take them in: "The boat is now in Maltese waters and has a Gibraltar flag.

"At this point, the United Kingdom should take responsibility for the safeguarding of the shipwrecked."

Italy has refused to take in ships, requesting that migrants be taken to Libya.

Aquarius is run by SOS Mediterranee and Doctors without Borders.

According to Doctors Without Borders, the vast majority of those onboard originate from Eritrea and Somalia while there are also people onboard from Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Morocco and Ghana.

Migrants are seen resting on board MV Aquarius / REUTERS

It comes just a day after Libya's coast guard confirmed that it had rescued 60 Europe-bound migrants including women and children, off the Mediterranean coast.

Spokesman Ayob Gassim says the migrants, including 19 women and four children, were rescued after their rubber boat ran into trouble on Monday off the coast of the western town of Zawiya.

Libya has become a major transit point to Europe for those fleeing poverty and civil war elsewhere in Africa.
Muslim Council demands thorough investigation into Johnson comments

The Muslim Council of Britain will tell Theresa May today that the investigation into Boris Johnsons burka comments must not be a whitewash.

The former Foreign Secretary provoked fury in a newspaper column last week when he compared women in the religious garment to letterboxes.

The council says in a letter to Mrs May that no one should be allowed to quote victimise minorities with impunity.

Mr Johnson dodged the controversy in his weekly column this morning by writing about proposals to encourage house building.

The Tell Mama project, which monitors anti-Muslim violence, has reported an increase in incidents of abuse aimed at women wearing the niqab or hijab over the past week.

Train passenger satisfaction plummets

Passenger satisfaction with rail punctuality and reliability has fallen over the past decade, according to consumer group Which?.

The proportion of people satisfied with those areas of train performance dropped from 79 per cent in spring 2008 to 73 per cent this year.

Which said its analysis of survey results showed the decline was even sharper for commuters, falling from 72 per cent to 62 per cent.

That would equate to a 150 annual increase for many long-distance commuters.

A spokesman for the Rail Delivery Group, which represents the rail industry, said: "We are seeing a once-in-a-generation investment to change and improve for the benefit of our customers with 98p in every pound spent on train fares being invested back into the railway."

Arson victim's brother recalled to prison

The convicted drug-dealer brother of a seven-year-old boy killed in a suspected arson attack has been recalled to prison.

Police said Sam Urhie had not been sent back to jail as part of the murder investigation into the blaze that killed little Joel last Tuesday.

Sources have said one line of enquiry is that the attack was gang-related amid reports Sam Urhie may have been the target.

Unite the Right white nationalist rally dwarfed by counter-protesters

Thousands of anti-racism protesters have dwarfed a rally by less than two dozen white nationalists in Washington, telling them Nazis go home.

Organisers had expected hundreds to turn out to mark the anniversary of last years Unite the Right demonstration that descended into violence and left one person dead.

But only 20 people gathered and were jeered by counter-protesters. Minor scuffles broke out but police said there was only one arrest.

Makia Green, who represents the Washington branch of Black Lives Matter, told Sunday's crowd: "We know from experience that ignoring white nationalism doesn't work."

165,000 painting is 'worthless' after expert rules it is not authentic

A painting bought for 165,000 and attributed to William Nicholson has failed to convince the artist's leading expert of its authenticity and been rejected as close to worthless.

The still life of a glass jug and pears was examined on BBC One's Fake Or Fortune? but a thorough forensic case was not enough to persuade Nicholsons leading authority, Patricia Reed.

It was left out of the artist's latest catalogue raisonne - the official list of all his known works.

The programme obtained new evidence that scientifically linked the painting to Nicholson's very own paint box which is kept in his grandson's house, and a handwriting expert also confirmed that writing on the back of the painting was very likely to have been written by Nicholson himself.

But it has been suggested that because there was a group of amateur painters who were tutored individually by Nicholson in his studio and elsewhere during the 1930s, known as the "Sunday painters", the painting could have been executed by one of them, under his supervision.

Grieving orca 'back to normal'

The Centre for Whale Research in Washington state said it watched the orca chase a school of salmon off San Juan Island over the weekend.

Founder Ken Balcom said he was immensely relieved to see the grieving mother returning to typical behaviour.

And on this day

1889: The coin-operated phone was patented in the USA by William Gray of Hartford, Connecticut

1899: Film director Alfred Hitchcock was born

1961: East German border guards stopped cars passing to the east through the Brandenburg Gate, thus sealing the border and preventing an exodus to the West. Barbed wire was erected, later to be replaced by the Berlin Wall

1964: The last hangings in Britain took place
B ronzers have long been a crucial step in our beauty routines.

Its subtle addition can make a big difference to illuminate and transform our complexions with just a sweep of the brush to give you that fresh from holiday glow.

When summer feels like a long time away, these sun-kissed heroes bring a much-needed dose of sunshine to even the darkest of winter days without worrying about the potential dodgy side effects of fake or spray tans.

Bronzers come in three main forms; sticks, powders and liquid and can have a glitter or matte finish depending on your preference.

Which type of bronzer is best for me?

For beginners, its probably best to stick to the powder format as they are the easiest to achieve an even application. They also work best for those with oily or combination skin but it is important to prep properly before applying. Use primer or moisturiser and wear over the top of foundation to give the formula staying-power. Opt for a medium sized fluffy brush with a flat top for all over the face and an angled brush for contour and tap to get rid of excess.

For a liquid or cream bronzer, they tend to apply darker than their powder counterparts and are not as fool proof. That being said, they may have a better sheen and work better for those with dry skin. Apply with a sponge or your fingers or combine with moisturiser for ease.

Where should I apply bronzer?

Use your bronzer to accentuate certain areas and add definition to your face. Apply to areas where you would be most sun-kissed like your hairline, cheekbones and nose or go for the triple technique by adding the warm illumination to your hairline, high point of cheek and jawline.

How do you pick the right shade?

When it comes to choosing the right product for you, dont go too much darker than your natural shade  one or two shades at most. If you have applied too much, use a clean brush and go over your face with circular movements. Natural lighting will provide the best application.

Pay particular attention to your undertone and whether you have a cool, neutral or warm hue. For those with a cool undertone, opt for peachy, beige or soft hues. For warm, golden is your best bet and for neutral, steer clear of yellow and pink shades in favour of natural browns.

In order to look as natural as possible you must find the right shade to match your skin tone which follows a general rule of thumb; lean in to how your skin reacts in the sun. For fair and light skin , warm beige, rosy and bronze colours will replicate that just touched by the sun feel. If you have medium or olive skin , use bronzer to create a perfected finish to compliment your natural tan with gold and copper colourings. Bronzers for darker skin tones can appear more like a finishing powder and can end up washing out deep skin tones as some products contain white pigments, opt for deeper shades, rusty tones, amber or chocolate-brown bronzers.

Bronzing Powder

Bobbi Browns Bronzing Powder has become a cult product and there is good reason for that  this fine powder is absolutely fool proof.

The wearable formula is offered in six shades, ranging from Natural to Deep, making it one of the most versatile on the market. It has red and brown tones that mimic the natural tanning hue and thus should be applied to cheeks, forehead, nose and chin where the sun is most likely to hit for a realistic fresh-from-the-beach look all year round.

Ideal for beginners but also a fan favourite with professional makeup artists, it has a matte finish without shimmer and works well for contouring.

Match you skin tone without going too dark as it is quite pigmented but when done right, blends easily into the skin.

This is the kind of product that youll keep buying over and over again.

32 | Bobbi Brown | Buy it now

Nars Bronzer

The Nars bronzers have long been fan favourite products, offered in two versatile hues; Laguna and Casino. They look darker in the package than the colour actually appears on the skin but still offer a healthy glow with a copper golden finish.

Best for light to medium skin tones, the formula builds well and is easily blendable, giving you more control. A little goes a long way with this powder that has a subtle glittery sheen.

30 | Liberty | Buy it now

Becca Sunlit Bronzer

The Becca bronzer is one of our favourites as it creates an unobtrusive second-skin like finish. It comes in five colours with golden beige, warm golden brown, medium amber, auburn brown, medium dark and rich bronze hues that work for every skin tone.

The fine texture powder glides on to the skin and blends seamlessly to create a realistic finish but with a lovely subtle shimmer. The illuminating bronzer is a prize product that avoids any orange tinge  instead you're left with a smooth, flawless and golden glow.

27 | Cult Beauty | Buy it now

Yves Saint Laurent Sahariennes Bronzing Stones

Not only is this YSL option an extremely attractive product with its sand dune tonal design and luxe packaging but it is also a lust-worthy bronzer  the weightless powder sits like a flawless second-skin.

Opt between the four shade variations and apply all over your face or use as a contouring tool for more defined radiance. It has a light, warm finish that gradually builds up without sinking into fine lines or drying out your skin and is ideal for normal and oily complexions.

30.60 | Boots | Buy it now

Hourglass Ambient Lighting Bronzer

This aesthetically pleasing Bronzer comes from Hourglass. There are four shades that are specifically designed for fair, light, medium and medium-deep skin tones with warm bronze, golden beige, pale yellow powder, neutral bronze, cool bronze hues.

The balance of pigments comes in a marbled design that when swirled gives a soft, subtle finish that glides right on to skin with a good amount of coverage. The formula sits well to brighten complexion and offers a flawless, sun-kissed look. The multitasking product can work as a highlighter or setting powder with a slightly shimmery addition.

There is the bonus of a mesh reinforcement that helps reduce the chance of the product shattering.

45 | Liberty | Buy it now

Milk Makeup Matte Bronzer

Sun in a stick, Milk Makeup's cream bronzer comes in two shades and is super easy to apply. Swipe over your cheekbones, jawline, collar bone or wherever your face and body might need a little colour and blend seamlessly with your fingers, a sponge or brush.

The lightweight formula looks darker in the stick that it appears on your skin which is actually far more buildable to intensify the colour. The Blaze shade is for light or medium skin tones with a red undertone that gives that post-holiday look. Baked is warmer with a slight shimmer.

The travel-friendly stick tends to be more durable than its powdered counterparts, especially for the clumsy among us that have a tendency to drop them.

There is no added fragrance but it does have a play doh-like scent which you cant actually smell on your skin.

20.50 | Cult Beauty | Buy it now

Benefit Hoola Matte Bronzer

A holy grail product since its launch in 2001, Benefits Hoola bronzer is truly something special. The fluffy powder brush makes for a simple application, while the pigment-packed formula takes your complexion from dull to dreamy in a jiffy. This warm shade is just the ticket for pale or medium skin tones.

27 | Look Fantastic | Buy it now

bareMinerals Endless Summer Bronzer

bareMinerals has updated its bronzer to make the application easier than ever. The pressed powder formula is mineral-based and clean. It applies seamlessly to skin with a matte coverage that is blendable and will not go patchy.

The brand offer two colours; Faux Tan  a natural cool for fair to medium skin tones and Warmth  a bronze hue for medium to deep. Both hues are very pigmented and so a little goes a long way for an intense colour pay off. It leaves you with a flawless complexion that is long-lasting.

26 | FeelUnique | Buy it now

Soleil Tan de Chanel

This bestselling Chanel product is one of the most adaptable bronzers that weve seen. The innovative product has a firm mouse texture similar to a cream but glides on to the skin like a powder, leaving a nice sheen and a slight glimmer. You can even mix with your moisturiser to add to its blendability or wet your brush for ease in application.

While it may appear thick, when on the skin, it feels lightweight but as a word of warning, you only need a small amount to reap the benefits.

There is only one universal shade and it has a soft, natural bronze hue that leaves you with a perfect warm glow.

The Soleil Tan is ideal for those with dry skin and is definitely worth the investment.

40 | Chanel | Buy it now

Fenty Beauty Sun Stalk'r Instant Warmth Bronzer

In line with the brands diverse ethos, Fenty Beauty have an impressive eight shades that provides options for all skin tones from fair to deep. You can have a very full coverage bronzer if you go slightly darker than your skin tone or opt instead for a setting powder-like product if you go down the lighter end of the spectrum.

The tightly pressed formula is easy to use, allowing you to start with a subtle glow and build the colour gradually. There is no shimmer or sparkle in the formula and gives off a warm glowy hue over a more orange shade.

It is easily blended to preventing patchiness and will not come off on your clothes.

25 | Harvey Nichols | Buy it now

Soleil Glow Bronzer

We are all after that lit-from-within glow and that is the entire raison d'etre of this cult Tom Ford bronzer.

The luxe product is housed in a chic packaging where it is embellished with flecks of gold.

The formula is nourishing thanks to the combination of cocoa seed butter, mango seed butter and cupuacu butter but it has earned itself a place on our list due to its radiant and flawless finish. The Soleil Bronzer is also long-lasting both in application and product lifespan  after a good amount of use there's hardly a dent.

The bronzer is buildable and is easy to blend without endless time bluffing to stop blotchiness. You can use it to create definition with contouring or apply all over the face for a luminous complexion.
J ack Whitehall has faced a backlash over reports that he has been cast as Disneys first openly gay character.

The British comedian has reportedly landed himself a role in forthcoming action adventure The Jungle Cruise, but Disney fans are questioning why a straight actor has been cast instead of a gay actor.

According to reports, he will star alongside Emily Blunt and The Rock in what has been described as a turning point in Disneys colourful history.

The film is supposedly set in the 19th century, where LGBTQ+ rights were non-existent.

Whitehall is set to take the role of a fun, effete man who makes clear he has no interest in women, according to the Sun.

However, the announcement has left some fans unimpressed, with many questioning why a gay actor hadn't been cast in the role.

One wrote: See Look I've Got nought against @jackwhitehall and all, but come on Having a gay character is good but why not have an LGBT+ person play the role, they have and know the challenges from personal experience, it will be fun to know if any LGBT+ people were offered the role, Disney. (sic)

Another commented: If Disney really cared about supporting lgbt+ representation, theyd have found an lgbt+ actor for the role. I also GUARANTEE this person wouldve also been right for the role, if not better.

Slammed: Fans criticised the British comedian / Getty Images

Secondly, there are more lgbt+ actors out there than this small pool that Hollywood allows as token gestures, which is another highlight of discrimination.

Would they have been a big enough name? Who gives a f***, if theyre good and the casting is right they dont need to be.And f*** Jack Whitehall for taking it, if he had any sense hed say no and insist it be offered to an lgbt+ person.

A third posted: I don't have a problem with straight actors playing a camp gay guy. I have a problem with Jack Whitehall, who is not a good actor whatsoever, portraying what he thinks is 'camp'.
L ove Island winner Jack Fincham has opened up about his nerves ahead of meeting his prospective father-in-law Danny Dyer.

Fincham, 26, said he would be lying if he said he hadnt felt jittery ahead of their meeting last week when he finally met girlfriend Dani Dyers dad for a curry.

Hes lovely, Fincham said of the EastEnders hard man as he made his presenting debut on This Morning. We had a nice take away together. Any man who says theyre not slightly nervous to meet their girlfriends mum and dad is lying.

Asked if he referred to Danny as Mr Dyer he told host Ruth Langsford: I stuck with Danny, Dan. Theyre similar to my family, really nice and welcoming. We had a right laugh.

Love Island: Danni reveals details of Jack's first meeting with father Danny Dyer

Fincham also opened up on his plans to move in with 22-year-old Dani who he met on this years Love Island. The couple were crowned champions and walked away with 50,000.

Weve been going online and picking [houses] to look at and well try and get a day off next week to have a look, he said. We want to get one chose.

Fincham last week left fans fuming after he failed to post any pictures of his meeting with the actor, simply posting one of Dani sitting on his lap. He captioned the shot: Lovely evening round Dans for her bday, happy birthday beautiful I hope you have had a lovely day love you loads xxx @danidyerxx.

Love Island Live 2018 event at ExCel - In pictures 1 /27 Love Island Live 2018 event at ExCel - In pictures PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA PA

But fans were desperate for a picture of Finchams face-to-face meeting with Danny after they previously bonded via video call in the Love Island villa.

One asked: Wheres daddy Dyer??

Another wrote: WHERE IS THE PHOTO WITH DANNY DYER.
A ctress Ruby Rose has reportedly deleted her Twitter account amid a backlash over her casting as Batwoman.

The Australian star no longer has an active account on the social media platform after she was met with a barrage of abuse, telling her followers that she was taking a break to focus on her work.

Rose confirmed her casting as Jewish lesbian superhero Kat Kane in the forthcoming CW show, with some people taking to Twitter to criticise the fact that she isnt Jewish and has identified as gender fluid in the past.

Before deactivating her account, Rose wrote: Where on earth did Ruby is not a lesbian therefore she cant be batwoman come from  has to be the funniest most ridiculous thing Ive ever read.

I came out at 12? And have for the past 5 years had to deal with shes too gay how do yall flip it like that? I didnt change. I wish we would all support each other and our journeys.

The Orange is the New Black star continued: When women and when minorities join forces we are unstoppable when we tear each other down its much more hurtful than from any group.

But hey/ love a challenge I just wish women and the LGBT community supported each other more, My wish was we were all a little kinder and more supportive of each otherSending everyone my love and gratitude, its been a rollercoaster of a year, this month especially.

She finished by saying: I am looking forward to getting more than 4 hours of sleep and to break from Twitter to focus all my energy on my next 2 projects. If you need me, Ill be on my Bat Phone.

Rose announced the news of her casting last week, saying that she was realising her childhood dream.

Rose wrote on Instagram that she was "thrilled and honoured" and "an emotional wreck" over the news, adding that as a young, gay person, she never felt represented on TV.

But some people were quick to criticise Rose, with many asking why a jewish lesban actress couldnt have been cast in the role.

There's no reason they can't find a Jewish lesbian to play a Jewish lesbian. I have nothing against Ruby Rose. It's just that it's disrespectful to cast a white woman in a minority role, and a rather loaded minority at that. Representation matters, one person wrote on Twitter.

I'm disappointed that Ruby Rose was cast as Batwoman considering it's a complete erasure of Kate Kane's Jewishness. They should have cast a Jewish lesbian to play a Jewish lesbian character, wrote another.

Others called out the absurd backlash, with one person writing: Ruby Rose isn't lesbian enough to play a gay character?! She needs to be a Jewish lesbian too as her character is Jewish?! Welcome to 2018!!! #whingers.
I n the world of artificial intelligence (AI), cyber security start-up Darktrace is one of the most exciting companies in the space.

Launched in Cambridge five years ago by a mixture of mathematicians, former intelligence agents, and specialists from the tech industry, it has quickly risen to the top of the UK tech scene, gaining a coveted unicorn valuation of $1.25 billion along the way.

As well as the exciting AI technology that is transforming cyber security, the company is also unique in that it has two female CEOs, Poppy Gustafsson and Nicole Eagan.

When some tech companies can barely fit one woman on their board, its great to see Darktrace championing women in technology in this way.

Its only something Im aware of when Im doing interviews or when Im at an industry event and suddenly you see a sea of men staring back at you, CEO Gustafsson tells the Standard.

Its only ever a fleeting glimpse and then you get back on with it.

This no-nonsense attitude has propelled Gustafsson into her high-flying spot at Darktrace and cemented her as one of the tech industrys ones to watch. Heres what you need to know about Gustafsson.

The changing battlegrounds

Gustafsson has been the minority gender for most of her life, starting with her maths degree at the University of Sheffield. She studied an accountancy qualification at Deloitte, before working for a venture capital firm and a few tech companies until the opportunity to join Darktraces founding team came along.

She says the ambitions for the company were what attracted her. We knew we had a phenomenal product and we wanted to have a global reach very quickly.

Darktrace's CEO Poppy Gustafsson / Darktrace

Its interesting discussing Darktraces beginnings with Gustafsson because you have to cast your mind back to five years ago when cyber security wasnt considered as interesting or integral to businesses as it is now.

In 2016 there was the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee, for which 13 people have just been indicted. Then last year, we had the global malware attacks of WannaCry and NotPetya.

Now, every week there appears to be another company announcing a data breach; most recently Timehop. Darktrace has flourished with this backdrop, growing from its original space in Cambridge to 33 offices around the globe.

Whats been going on?

Beforehand, security was about keeping the bad guys off your network by having a big strong wall, says Gustafsson. [But] our founders believed that at some point the cyber breach was inevitable so we need to think about identifying the attack in the early stages and stopping it.

Darktraces USP is its Enterprise Immune System product that likens networks to the human bodys immune system. What the immune system does is it has an innate sense of self  it knows who you are and can identify bacteria or a virus that comes into the body by virtue of the fact it is not you, she says.

Through this, the tech can identify an attack and target the response by slowing it down and stopping it so breaches dont escalate and become a problem. This is all done using power of AI.

Preparing for the next big cyber threat

Living in an increasingly connected world has major implications for how cyber security functions in our businesses and at home, thanks to our changing relationships with technology.

Cyber security isnt just laptops and servers anymore, explains Gustafsson. Right now I can see a smart TV and a smart fish tank that is internet connected to regulate the temperature of the water, and its all these non-traditional internet-connected devices that are expanding the threat surface that attackers can use and exploit.

Darktrace has to be constantly innovating to keep up with these challenges in order to be able to face off the bad guys, something Gustafsson describes as a technological arms race.

Were an organisation that has technology and innovation at its core and weve made huge leaps and bounds but its only a matter of time before the hackers of the world are leveraging those tech advances with regards to their own approach.

Internet of Things devices, like the Amazon Echo, are opening up more security pain points in our homes

But, security isnt just about attacks from nation states and global hacking groups. Gustafsson says that one of the biggest issues in cyber security is simply human error. 99 per cent of the time we are showing companies [issues] during pitches that they were unaware of.

There was the time when Darktrace was pitching to a law firm with an employee swipe card system. A good idea but it turned out: Every time someone swiped the drinks machine, all the personal details from the swipe card were going to the drinks vendor.

Darktrace was able to contact the vendor and get it sorted straight away, but this is an example of an unintentional attack. It demonstrates that the biggest threats from your company can come from within. That was a consequence of the network not being set up in a way they thought it had been. They werent even aware of it, she adds.

Life on top

Gustafsson puts Darktraces success down to its ability to challenge the status quo. From the start we challenged the idea that cyber security was about keeping the bad guys out, right through to the fact that were talked about as an organisation that is led by two women. In our minds, theres no reason it wouldnt be.

This top-down decision does make it an anomaly amongst tech companies and it impacts the company culture.

As soon as you create a tech organisation that is gender agnostic, people flourish respective whether theyre male or female, she says.

Yet, its not easy leading a company that is so spread out across the world and maintaining that company culture in 33 offices. Gustafsson admits she no longer knows the names and faces of all Darktraces employees, over 700 to be exact, due to its fast growth.

But I want to make sure they continue to feel a part of this brilliant organisation. Its making sure that the culture is the same whether youre working in Cambridge or Brazil. So that is a lot of work, she says.

And, she hopes that more people will be encouraged to enter the field. For anyone looking to get into tech or security specifically, her advice is to study maths or computer science.
T he love for '90s nostalgia shows no signs of abating whether it's bucket hats, slogan tees or Nokia phones.

After the successful relaunch of the beloved Nokia 3310, HMD Global has decided to bring back another Nokia favourite: the Nokia 8110, also known as the banana phone.

Nokias parent company announced the new phone on stage at Mobile World Congress earlier this year but this week you will be able to get your hands on the device beloved by The Matrixs Neo.

Heres what you need to know about the new and improved Nokia 8110 4G.

Keanu Reeve's character Neo using the original Nokia 8110 in The Matrix (matrixreloadedphonescene1308a)

Nokia 8110 4G features and specs

If you also lament the loss of the classic flip phone then the Nokia 8110 will be a welcome option. Thanks to its curved banana-like design, it has a smooth slide mechanism which you can open to pick up phone calls and slide back when youre done.

This is much more satisfying than pressing a button.

This is not your old-school Nokia with no internet, in fact, the new Nokia 8110 comes fitted with 4G, as well as its own apps store and apps like Google Maps, Facebook and Twitter come pre-installed on the phone.

The slider device has 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage and a 2-megapixel camera. For comparison, the new Samsung Galaxy Note 9 smartphone has 8GB of RAM, 512GB of storage and a dual lens 16-megapixel camera.

Nokia announces new 8110 mobile phone at MWC

It also has a 1,500 mAh battery and is powered by Qualcomms 205 mobile platform, which promises 25 days of standby time on a single charge. Take that smartphones.

If that wasnt enough, your favourite '90s mobile game Snake also makes an appearance on the new device.

Thanks to its reputation as the banana phone, the new device is available to buy in either yellow or black.

Nokia 8110 price

Price wise, the Nokia 8110 4G will cost 69.99 in the UK and is available to pre-order from Carphone Warehouse, EE, O2, Vodafone and other key retailers.

The Nokia 8110 is also known as the banana phone due to its curved shape / Nokia / HMD Global

Nokia 8110 release date

The new Nokia will be released for sale this week on Wednesday August 15. But is the '90s nostalgia factor enough to get people to actually switch from their smartphones back to a Nokia?

HMD Global is hopeful. According to Counterpoint Research, Nokia was one of the fastest growing phone brands in the first quarter of 2018, alongside Huawei and OnePlus.

The Finnish company's sales made up 4.3 per cent of the total handset market.
For instance, the idea that Robert Muellers special counsel investigation is rigged and a witch hunt is one exclusively pushed on cable news by Fox (and, not surprisingly, echoing the presidents own PR campaign). Fox commentators regularly declare that Mueller and his team have found no evidence of collusion (a misused word  the term should be conspiracy), even though he has gotten several plea deals and indictments and helped bring a criminal trial against the presidents former campaign manager. Fox hosts such as Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro disparage the investigation as taking too long, even though it has produced such stunning results in near record time.
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As I read Sunday's paper, I came across the article "Truce between rival gang factions leads to playground." It was about how two rival gangs put down their guns and helped build a park in the Pullman neighborhood. What a novel idea. People can organize marches down expressways and Lake Shore Drive, but until people stand up for themselves, their neighbors and their neighborhoods, and talk to their local alderman, not much will change. In many suburbs there are neighborhood watch signs, which mean people who live in those areas keep an eye on their neighborhoods and report suspicious things to the police. Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is probably right when he says people know who is doing the shooting, but they fear for their lives and retaliation.
The Romania 100 Platform, along with other civic organizations, filed on Monday a criminal complaint with the Prosecution Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice against the Gendarmerie chief and the Minister of Internal Affairs over the authorities' intervention at the anti-government rally organized on Friday, August 10, in Bucharest's Victoriei Square, leader of the Romania Together Movement, former Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos announced.

"This protest degenerated into violence primarily because of provocateurs, agitators and gangs of hooligans who were infiltrated or infiltrated the rally, and also because of the out of proportion response from the state authorities, and from the Gendarmerie. It is highly important for the participants in the rally and for those who believe in democracy that we clarify the administrative and criminal responsibilities for what happened there. (...) The Romania 100 Platform, together with other civic organizations, is filing this morning a criminal complaint with the Prosecution Office, where we clearly mention all those who carry the responsibility for what has happened there, complete with arguments. From our point of view, the administrative responsibility obviously falls on the Minister of Internal Affairs, the head of the Gendarmerie, the Prefect of Bucharest, who gave the intervention order," Ciolos told a press conference.

According to him, his political formation provides interested citizens a template for the criminal complaint, for them to be able to claim their rights and due explanations.The former Prime Minister also said that "it is very important for all Romanian citizens that the competent authorities clarify whether there had been premeditation for everything that happened there, who is to blame for the aggressions, who is responsible for the provocations there. And without doubt, the Gendarmerie leaders, the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Prime Minister too must take responsibility, because the Gendarmerie reports to them and they coordinate law enforcement interventions."The leader of the Romania Together Movement pointed out that "it is not admissible in a democracy, that authorities who are required to ensure security and order and protect peaceful citizens turn against them."
Direct foreign investments have gone up by 29.44 percent during the first six months of this year, in comparison with the similar period of 2017, to 2.194 billion Euro, according to the data of the Romanian National Bank (BNR), published on Monday.

"Direct investments of non-Romanian residents summed up 2.194 billion euro (in comparison with 1.695 billion euro, during the period of January-June 2017), of which capital participations (including reinvested estimate net profit) summed up 2.258 billion euro, an intragrup loans registered a negative net value of 64 billion Euro", according to BNR's press release.

According to the data published by the National Trade Register Office (ONRC), the number of new companies with foreign capital dropped, during the first six months of this year, by 2.73 percent, as opposed to the similar period of last year, to 2,858 units.The 2,858 new companies had a subscribed share capital of over 35.021 million dollars, higher by 92.4 percent, in comparison with the period of January - June 2017.
President Klaus Iohannis on Monday asked the opposition politicians to leave aside their "small interests" and "pride" and put the country interest above anything else, while pointing out that they need to establish a dialogue.

"I want to address myself to the opposition now and to the opposition politicians. The alternative will not invent itself! Only by working with determination and wisdom you can win the people's trust. The opposition too has the duty of ensuring the stability of the country and maintain Romania on its normal path. And for that to happen there is need, of course, of a sustained dialogue between all forces in opposition! The responsible politicians know when to leave their small interests and pride aside and put the country interest first and the Romanians' interest is to stop the abuses of the current majority. In order to create that alternative I was referring to earlier, the parties in opposition must get to an understanding," said Iohannis, in his public message on Monday, while referring to the recent events.

He underscored that he will continue to act for maintaining the rule of law, regardless of how strong the "pressure" from (main ruling) PSD will be.

"I want to assure you that, no matter how strong the pressure from the PSD and its propaganda will be, I will continue to support wholeheartedly the fundamental interests of the Romanians, the state institutions fighting corruption, as well as the need to make Romania a strong and prosperous country. As President, I will continue to act for maintaining a rule of law, with strong institutions, which are strong in applying the law, for protecting the citizens and their rights," concluded Iohannis.
Several people showed up on Monday at the Bucharest Military Prosecutor's Office, in order to file complaints concerning the way the Gendarmerie intervened during diaspora's protest, on Friday, in Victoriei Square.

One of the protesters, Radu Florin Nicusor, told journalists about how the Gendarmerie intervention unfolded.

"I was at the protest Friday night, in the side of the square where rocks were not thrown. When the order came to evacuate the square, everyone fled. The gendarmerie barrier came, I chose to not move, because I was not a threat to anyone. I raised my hands, turned around and put my hands behind my head. When the Gendarmerie barrier came, they hit me in the head, shoulder and arm. They wanted to admit me to Floreasca, but I refused. I got a medical file (...) I manifested peacefully. We want something to change in this country. I considered that that's the way something could change (...) I somewhat agree with the Gendarmerie, because, after I passed the barrier, a gendarme helped me reach the ambulance and I saw bits of sidewalk, torn up and thrown, large rocks. To be honest, I would have done the same thing when the evacuation order came (...) I have a head wound. I had no reason to fight back. I, indeed, cursed the gendarmes", said Radu Florin Nicusor.He said that he was present at other protests as well, but the intervention of the gendarmes on Friday night seemed "brutal".Military Prosecutors have moved ex officio and opened a criminal case into the law enforcement intervention and the violent incidents that occurred at the rally Friday evening in Victoriei Square.The head prosecutor of the Military Prosecutor's Office, attached to the Bucharest Military Court, Ionel Corbu, declared on Monday that until this point there were 30 complaints that were filed by people that suffered, as a result of the gendarmes' intervention in Victoriei Square.
Romania is prepared to organise on May 9 2019 the informal Summit of the heads of state and government, in the context of our country exercising the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, shows a press release on Monday remitted to AGERPRES by the Sibiu City Hall.

"The Summit of May 9 2019, dedicated to the future of the European Union and the future strategic agenda of the leaders for the 2019-2024 interval, will reunite 27 heads of state and government of the member states in Sibiu, 36 official delegations, 400 high-level guests, approx. 900 journalists and 100 translators," shows the release.

On Monday, in Sibiu, the Minister for European Affairs, Victor Negrescu, discussed with the representatives of the Presidential Administration, the Sibiu City Mayor, Astrid Fodor, the County Prefect, Adela Muntean, the President of the County Council, Daniela Cimpean, the official broadcaster, as well as the representatives of the institutions in charge with the protection and safety of the participants during the Summit, reads a press release.

"The agenda also included the organisational plan for the Summit that refers, among other things, to hosting the events at the headquarters of the Sibiu City Hall, the logistic infrastructure in the central squares of the city, as well as the cultural programme to be organised on the sidelines of the reunion of the heads of state and government from the European Union," says the same release.

On May 9 2019, Sibiu will be for a day the political capital of the European Union, with the heads of state and government from EU to gather for the first European Summit held after Brexit.
Men crash Maxima into Gold Coast store, take purses and other items before fleeing in Audi, police say.

Gold Coast store robbed after car crashes into it
Good news came on Aug.12  the Caspian Sea Day marked since 2007 by littoral states. A final comprehensive open-ended agreement to solve a major international controversial issue was clinched in Aktau, Kazakhstan. Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan signed a convention on the Caspian Sea's legal status  the Caspian Sea Convention (CSC). Providing clear guidelines for the collective use of the Sea, it puts an end to the international dispute that has lasted more than two decades. The agreement will ease tensions in the region and pave the way for lucrative energy projects as well as more military cooperation between the Caspian states.

The seabed holds about 50 billion barrels of oil and nearly 9 trillion cubic meters of natural gas in proven or probable reserves, which cost trillions of US dollars. The final delimitation of the seabed will require additional agreements between littoral nations to supplement the convention.

The document refers to the Caspian as a sea (not a lake) with "a special legal status". Each country has the right to establish territorial waters not exceeding 15 nautical miles from the shoreline. A further 10 nautical miles are defined as exclusive fishing zones. The remaining surface of the sea is kept for common use. The state sovereignty of littoral states spreads over the sea surface until the outer border of their territorial waters, as well as to the seabed below and airspace above this area. Mutually agreed on seabed security zones limited to 500 meters could be established along the perimeter of respective sectors around artificially created objects on the condition that they dont exceed 500 meters from the outer points. In no case should sovereign rights of the parties be undermined. The Caspian Five can lay underwater cables and pipelines along the bottom of the Caspian Sea, subject only to the agreement of those states whose sectors the pipelines or cables will pass through.

The agreement keeps most of the sea in shared use but divides up the seabed and underground resources. The five littoral nations will establish a Caspian economic forum.

A stipulation in the document prevents non-Caspian countries from deploying military forces on the sea. The freedom of navigation for military ships is important for Russia, which plans to move its warships equipped with Kalibr long-range land attack cruise missiles from Astrakhan to Derbent, closer to maritime borders. With Kalibr missiles entry into service, the role of the Russian Caspian Flotilla has grown. The convention envisages that naval vessels are to abide by certain rules, especially in littoral and economic zones. With five navies operating in the area, incidents prevention is a matter of special importance and there is a consensus on that. In early August, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan held the TENIZ-2018 search and rescue exercise to enhance cooperation between the nations with common sea borders. Not a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Turkmenistan has to grapple with the security problems as Islamic State groups become more active in the northern part of Afghanistan. Getting closer to the Caspian Sea partners may be needed in case the country needs allies to fend the threat off.

The security-related protocols signed at the Aktau summit create a framework for common security policy in the region. The Caspian Sea is located in the vicinity of volatile Middle East and the hotbed in Afghanistan to make the idea of joint security effort top the agenda of the Caspian Five.

With economic and security interests uniting the five littoral states, the signing of the convention may serve as a starting point for emergence of a new international forum. The Caspian Five will certainly push forward with projects that had been put on hold while the agreements details were being hashed out. Its a big deal for investments.

China will gain as the development has immediate relation to its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Caspian Sea may turn into a region of burgeoning trade and economic prosperity. Iran needs it badly as the US sanctions pressure mounts. In May, Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) signed a Free Trade Area (FTA) agreement. Two Caspian states, Russia and Kazakhstan, are EAEU members. The Union has an FTA with China to link it economically with Iran, which is already linked with Beijing politically through the SCO, where it has an observer status being an aspirant nation for full-fledged membership. The solution of the Caspian Sea problem will certainly spur Russian-Iranian economic cooperation as both nations are hit by American sanctions.

There is a very important geopolitical consequence. Its only natural that the region rich with untapped resources is of interest for NATO. The Caspian basin is within the European Commands area of responsibility. There have been attempts to use the differences between the Caspian states to infiltrate the region. The convention eliminates non-Caspian states military presence to keep NATO away and pave the way for the Caspian to become a sea of peace.

Photo: Tengrinews
The Iran sanctions have officially been cast. These are the most biting sanctions ever imposed, and in November they ratchet up to yet another level. I am asking for WORLD PEACE, nothing less!

What on earth does this tweet from President Trump  I am asking for World Peace  mean? It does not at all gel with NY businessman pragmatism: that he wants to diss Obama; or, that he wants to implode Iran in order to recover US energy dominance; or, that with Irans implosion, the hitherto obstructed path, would thus be cleared for all Sunni Arab states desirous of normalising and trading with Israel  so to do.

But the extravagant capitalisation of WORLD PEACE implies that Trump has some wider vision, behind this new American war of choice on Iran. WORLD PEACE: It strongly suggests Trump leading us toward a definite destiny: not just for America, but for all humanity (no less). It is an apocalyptic vision. (i.e. an event that implies something not bad, but rather that the implosion of Revolutionary Iran, somehow will bring human Salvation).

The conviction that the crimes and follies of the past can be left behind in some all-encompassing transformation of human life is a secular reincarnation of early Christian beliefs. The very idea of an event which transforms humanity and leads to Salvation owes to religious conviction  in this case the Jewish apocalyptic current (of which Jesus was an adherent) that was assimilated into early Christianity.

Is this religious eruption Trumps own? Or, did he absorb it from Ivankas conversion to Orthodox Judaism; or, has it emerged out from Trump and Pences Evangelical base?

We do not know. But once we move into the domain of human salvation, we need to re-calibrate our understanding of what is afoot here. We may need  when we try to understand Trump and Israel, in particular  to set aside the standard image of a hard-nosed, real-estate negotiator, and instead at least consider if there is religious impulse lurking here. Here, we must go to US [Evangelical] Pastor Robert Jeffress, who was specifically tasked by Trump and his family to travel to Jerusalem in order to Preside at the ceremony marking the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem for clues to what may lie behind Trumps exotic tweet. Jeffress states:

Jerusalem has been the object of the affection of both Jews and Christians down through history and [constitutes] the touchstone of prophecy [that God gave the Holy Land to the Jews in eternity];

Let us unpack and be a little clearer about the religiosity that lies behind Jeffress quite strong language: Dating from Exodus, Israel formed a separate, chosen people. In this way, through choosing his people, and with his Covenant, Yahweh constitutes them as a people. This boils down to saying that Israel will exist as people for only so long as it recognises Yahwey as its God. What is true for the people is true also for the land, for it is only in Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) that the Torah can be perfectly fulfilled  and conversely, Eretz Israel only has (religious) meaning as long as the Torah is observed there. Hence the particularity of the Land  as of the people.

As we said, this was the voice elected by the Trump family to officiate at the Jerusalem ceremony. This choice signifies something, perhaps. Otherwise, as John Limbert, a retired professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the US Naval Academy and former deputy secretary for Iran (and an veteran of the US Embassy siege in Tehran) writes: nothing makes sense:

What has President Trump done? Obsessed with Obama and a sucker for Israeli and Saudi flattery, he has rejected the idea that diplomacy might accomplish more with the Islamic Republic, than forty years of futile, mutual chest-beating. He has chosen an approach that combines bullying, threats, accusations, and unrealistic demands, with an offer to talk. In doing so, Trump has led with his chin and given the Iranians a gift: the opportunity to say no, and defy a strong and threatening foreign power. In Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeinis words of three decades ago still resonate. Asked about negotiating with the United States, he famously said, Why should the sheep negotiate with the wolf? In other words, the Americans have no interest in reaching an agreement with us: They want to eat us. Trump has filled his administration with shills for the widely-hated Iranian dissident group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a Jonestown-like cult with a dubious past and a more dubious present  Iranians know that, as bad as the present regime is, MEK rule will be much worsean Iranian version of the Khmer Rouge. Trump has threatened to punish any country or company doing business with Iran and to stop Tehran from selling its crude oil. These tactics repeat those of the British during1951  1953 before they joined the CIA to stage a coup detat to remove the nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Trump has issued an all-caps threat to annihilate millions of Iranians followed by an offer to talk with anyone, anywhere, anytime, without preconditions. In the meantime, Trumps Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has further muddled the messagewhatever it is. In his recent speech to an Iranian-American audience in Los Angeles, Pompeo referred to Iran as that country and denounced the entire Islamic revolution, thus denigrating the sacrifices of millions of Iranians who fought and died to overthrow the monarchy and defend their country against Iraqi invaders. With such statements, his professions of respect for individual Iranians and for the countrys ancient culture lack any shred of sincerity.

Plainly a deeply frustrated and confused US Iran expert. (Perhaps that is in part owing to reading events from the standard secular, US foreign policy perspective.)

Professor Elizabeth Oldmixon however explains that for a subset of the US [Christian] evangelical community, the status of Israel is really, really important because of the way they understand the end of time . She continues: When we talk about the Holy Land, Gods promise of the Holy Land, were talking about real estate on both sides of the Jordan River. So the sense of Greater Israel, and expansionism, is really important to this community. Jerusalem is just central to that. Its viewed as a historical and biblical capital These are the folks who believe that there will be a millennium in the future, a golden age, where Christ reigns on Earth, [and] they believe that before Christ will return, there will be a tribulation where Christ defeats evil.

And how big is that subset? Roughly a third of the American evangelical population, which is something like 15 million people.

So, we have a triumvirate of US religious Orthodox envoys (all Trump family members, or former family retainers)  who are charged with the mission of WORLD PEACE. What can this possibly mean  when said so emphatically (all capitals) by Trump, and included within the context of his imposing crushing sanctions on Iran  other than a desire finally to instantiate the promised Holy Land, for the Jews  and thus bring to a close the long running Middle East conflict? The theology also suggests that with Salvation, peace will be established.

There's something that these Christians have in common with religious Zionists in Israel Prof. Oldmixon adds, as something of a footnote  though it is crucial: The founding generation in Israel was fairly secular. Their support for a Jewish state wasn't about biblical prophecy. Religious Jews were always unhappy that the founding generation wasn't really motivated by a religious understanding of the Jewish people in the world. That's something that evangelicals in this country share. They support Israel for religious reasons.

Well lets look whats actually happening? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a defining moment in the annals of Zionism and the annals of the state of Israel, when the Knesset enacted last month, a basic law [named  tellingly  the nation-state law], which specifies that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people  in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historic right to self-determination.

The law further enshrined religiously based differentiation, including a clause that points to priority for Jewish-only communities by declaring the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and promising to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.

The law has been a subject of controversy in Israel. It passed the Knesset by the narrow margin of 62 to 55. Opponents argue that it constitutes a step away from democracy and from equality of citizenship. However, just to be clear, the new basic law changes nothing  for now.

Differentiated political and legal rights already exists in Israel, and legal ways to create segregated communities in Israel also exist. There is no right to equality, and Israel is not a state of all its citizens.

The point here is not so much the issue of discrimination which is occupying the media, but rather the shift from a secular state, as the original Zionists conceived it, to a state operating to a religious impulse. In a sense, Israel moves towards a constitution based on the first books of the Old Testament, which constitute the Torah. (Much in the way that Saudi Arabia simply asserts the Quran to be its constitution.)

So, in what way has the Trump family been acting? What does that tell us? Well, firstly, Trump has gifted' Jerusalem to Israel  the other prophetically mandatory element (apart from occupying all Eretz Israel), for the instantiation of a Jewish Holy Land. Kushner, meanwhile, has been working away to take the refugee status of 1948 Palestinians and their descendants, off-the-table, by proposing to subsidize recipient states to assimilate their Palestinian refugees, in loco. And Trump too has now committed to undoing Iran, the demon threatening the Jewish project, and has committed to publishing his Deal of the Century.

Of course we do not know what is in the deal, but Netanyahu has just slipped into place the legal framework (the Nation-State law) that might facilitate the present Israeli state becoming a unitary, religiously Jewish state. It cannot be a coincidence that this comes after the IDF recently informed the Knesset that the populations of Jews and non-Jews, between the River (Jordan) and the Sea (the Mediterranean) are now equal  at 6.5 million, each. The nation-state law effectively forecloses on the risk of political pluralism and equality of political rights.

Reports suggest that in Trumps plan, the US acting alone might acknowledge a Palestinian state by declaration, but without specifying where situate, and with effectively no attributes of a state. A state in name only, in other words. No Jerusalem as its capital, and plainly no right of return for refugees  and no refugee status for the 1948 Palestinians (so-called because of their dispossession of homes in 1948); and likely no mention of settlements. (We understand that the Deal is currently in limbo, as religious parties in Netanyahus coalition want no mention of any Palestinian state at all  not even in name only).

White House officials say furthermore that if the Palestinians continue to refuse to engage with the plan, that the US will publish it anyway  which, effectively will be an invitation for the Israeli Religious Right to impose those parts that if favours (annexation of land in the West Bank, and further expansion under the rubric of consolidating Jewish communities  as per the Nation-State Act).

Well, it seems that the Arab world is waking up. It is dawning on them that The Deal of the Century will be as humiliating to their prestige  as was the outcome to the Six Day War. Has this been Trumps objective all along: to instantiate a State of the Jews? Perhaps Limbert has it back to front? Rather than that the Saudis suckering Trump, Trump has been playing to the flaws in MbS character: drawing the Arabs into a project whose theological foundation and import they never grasped?

In any event, the wind is now blowing in another direction: King Salman has yanked the Palestinian file from out of the hands of MbS  and, after a year of secrecy surrounding the Deal, disquiet amongst Arab leaders is growing. Their acquiescence is no longer assured. They smell a rat.

The bottom line? Iran will not be crippled by sanctions, and whatever becomes of Trump's Deal, an introverted, fortress Israel will find itself in a region in which the locus of politics is slowly, but surely, drifting towards the alliance of forces who prevailed in the epic struggle over Syria. Today it is Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey who are turning their face to the East. Tomorrow, when the Iran siege turns out to be a flop, and the Deal stands naked, it may be that parts of the Gulf (Dubai, Kuwait and Oman) will be drifting, together with Qatar, towards the Russia-China axis.
For a man who is assailed and accused of lacking judgment even more than US President Donald Trump, it's amazing how often British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has already been proven courageously and presciently right.

In 1990, Corbyn opposed the most powerful and successful peace time prime minster of the 20th century, Margaret Thatcher when she tried to impose a so-called poll tax on the population of the UK. His judgment was vindicated: Thatchers own party rose up and threw her out of office.

At the beginning of the 21st century Corbyn was pilloried throughout the UK media for his outspoken opposition to Prime Minister Tony Blairs support for the US invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. Blair was prime minister for a full decade and won three landslide general elections, yet today he is discredited and politically virtually a recluse. Corbyns opposition to both wars looks wise, as well as principled and courageous.

Corbyns support for the revolutionary Irish Republican movement was so strong that the UK security service MI5 monitored him for two decades listing him as a potential subversive who might undermine parliamentary democracy. On the contrary, in the late 1990s, Prime Minister Blair engaged the Irish Republican Army and its political wing Sinn Fein in a peace process that has led to a lasting peace in Ireland. Corbyn, who supported strongly the 1998 Good Friday Agreement proved once again to be ahead of his time.

Corbyn has never been afraid of taking ferociously unpopular positions. In 2015, after shocking Islamic State terror attacks in Paris he advocated the urgent need for a political settlement to end the Syrian Civil War. His advice was ignored by every major Western government. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions more turned into destitute refugees flooding into the European Union since then.

Corbyn was also ahead of his time in seeking to engage Iran constructively. He hosted a call-in show on an Iranian TV channel for three years from 2009 to 2012 even though he knew that at the time such activities would seem to rule him out from ever being a serious contender to lead the Labour Party. But in 2015, the Conservative government of the UK, along with those of the United States, France and Germany joined in signing a far reaching nuclear agreement with Tehran.

Corbyns economic positions have long been despised by the Western liberal intellectual elites who have been spared the price of having their livelihoods destroyed by such policies. He strongly advocates using the power of government to encourage the rebuilding of major national industries and manufacturing power. These views are hardly radical, Robert Skidelsky, one of the most influential UK economists of the past generation has given significant support to Corbyns proposal of a National Investment Bank. These policies are neither Marxist nor revolutionary. But they can certainly be described as Social Democratic and humane.

Corbyn is no unprincipled careerist either. In voting his convictions and his conscience, he puts 99 percent of the UK parliamentarians of his generation to shame. Between 1997 and 2010, during the Labour governments of Blair and Gordon Brown, Corbyn voted most often against the official party line than any other member of parliament (MP)  a total of 428 times and an astonishing figure. In 2005 he was labeled the second most rebellious Labour MP of all time when his party ran the country.

One of the few areas Corbyn was clearly ambiguous on was the question of whether the UK should remain in the 28-nation European Union or leave it, and even here his ambivalence appeared honestly come by and reflected the genuine divisions in his country. Corbyn recognized the enormous differences between both extremes that have been tearing the British public apart on the EU issue.

Ironically, only Donald Trump in the United States  a figure for whom Corbyn certainly has no personal or policy sympathy whatsoever  is comparable to the degree to which he has defied the Conventional Wisdoms of the political media establishment yet done impressively well in fighting elections that were supposed to be impossible.

In fact, the record and pattern of Corbyns career has been very clear: His real crime- which he has repeated consistently  is to be years, often decades, ahead of Conventional Wisdom.

In routine, tranquil times, people like Corbyn are usually seen as troublemakers or even as dangerous lunatics. But at times of crisis when the wisdom of mediocrities is exposed as worthless, such figures prove vital to national survival.

When told that General James Wolfe, the UKs one brilliant general of the mid-18th century, was believed to be insane, King George II replied Mad is he? Then I wish hed bite some of my other generals!

The UK political establishment has sneered at Jeremy Corbyns bark. Perhaps it is time they need to experience his bite.
Salina, N.Y. -- Le Moyne Manor, the banquet facility and inn that started out in 1916 as famed architect Ward Wellington Ward's mansion overlooking Onondaga Lake, is coming down.

Ritter & Paratore Contracting Inc. has begun knocking the banquet facility down and will demolish the inn next, said Louis Muraco, commercial leasing representative of Empire Management Co. The work is expected to take about 45 days.

Muraco's father, David, president and CEO of Empire Management, bought the vacant banquet and inn at 629 Old Liverpool Road in Salina's Galeville area from Vesta Community Housing, of Albany, in 2016.

The Muracos are holding informal talks with Salina town officials about their plans to redevelop the property into a mix of retail stores and luxury apartments.

Planning is in its early stages, but their concept is for three or four three-story buildings, with retail on the ground floors and apartments on the second and third floors.

A total of 48 to 54 apartments, some overlooking Onondaga Lake, would be built, Louis Muraco said. Construction on the first building would start early in 2019, he said.

The buildings would be similar in size and concept to the mixed-use Theophilus Cazenove building that the Muracos plan to build on Route 20 in Cazenovia, near the recently opened Aldi grocery store. However, the new Salina buildings would have different exterior appearances, Muraco said.

"We intend to keep the Le Moyne Manor name and incorporate design details of the Galeville area as best we can," he said.

No leases have been signed with retailers yet, he said.

Here's a gallery of photos showing how Le Moyne Manor looked before the demolition started:

Le Moyne Manor to be redeveloped 65 Gallery: Le Moyne Manor to be redeveloped

Famed architect Ward Wellington Ward built a house on the property in 1916 and called it Le Moyne Manor. The property was reputed, but never proven, to be where Father Simon Le Moyne became the first European to discover salt springs around Onondaga Lake in 1654.

Ward's wife, the former Maude Moyer, sold the mansion after his death in 1932. It was later developed into the Le Moyne Manor Restaurant by Frank Montanaro.

Montanaro expanded the home over the years, adding large banquet rooms and a separate building containing a hotel. Countless weddings, parties, dinners, meetings, proms and other events were held there. Montanaro sold the property in 1992.

Vesta acquired it in 1998 and operated the hotel until 2015 as a halfway house for people recovering from alcohol and drug addictions. It closed the banquet facility in 2011. The property fell into disrepair and became the frequent target of vandals after Vesta left three years ago.

David Muraco reached a deal to sell the property to Ronald Mucci, owner of Longley Jones Management Corp., in 2017. But the deal fell through when Mucci's plans to demolish the manor and build an apartment building in its place went nowhere.

Before the demolition began, the Muracos discovered lots of Syracuse China in the basement of the banquet facility and donated it to the Onondaga Historical Association.

This Syracuse China was found in the basement of Le Moyne Manor in Salina before the banquet facility's demolition began.

Contact Rick Moriarty anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148
FLEMING, N.Y. -- A Cayuga County man was charged with boating while intoxicated after an accident that sent two people to the hospital Sunday evening on Owasco Lake, according to Cayuga County Sheriff's deputies.

Frank R. McKay, 57, of the town of Fleming, is accused of operating a 1988 Harris 28-foot pontoon boat while drunk in Fleming, deputies said.

A 43-year-old woman and a 44-year-old man were injured when they got into the water and were struck by the running boat motor, deputies said. Deputies were called to the lake at 6:11 p.m.

Amy McKay, of the town of Throop, suffered a serious injury to her arm and was flown to Upstate University Hospital by a Mercy Flight helicopter.

William Lansbury, of Auburn, suffered injuries to his lower extremities and was transported to Upstate University Hospital by AMR Ambulance.

About 10 to 12 occupants were on the boat at the time.

Frank McKay was arraigned in Fleming Town Court and released on his own recognizance.

Deputies ask anyone with information about the incident to contact Detective Sgt. Frederick Cornelius at (315) 253-6562. Tips can also be left on sheriff's website by clicking the "Tips" tab. Anonymous tips are welcome.
August Rice

A driver was killed Saturday afternoon near Albany after he was hit by two drunk drivers on opposite sides of I-90, according to New York State Police.

Police said August Rice, 23, of Rexford, NY was driving east when he hit a vehicle, pushing it across the median and into the westbound lane. Then, Rex Tucker-Moss, 41, of Poughquag, NY, hit the same vehicle in the westbound lane.

Both Rice and Tucker-Moss were intoxicated, police said. Tucker-Moss had two children, ages 10 and 7, in the car.

Both men were arrested on charges of 2nd-degree Vehicular Manslaughter and drunk driving. Tucker-Moss was also charged with Aggravated DWI (Leandra's Law), for driving drunk with children in the car and Endangering the Welfare of a Child, police said.

The victim's name has not yet been released.
Syracuse, NY - Gary Thibodeau, the convicted kidnapper of Heidi Allen whose fight for a new trial spanned two decades, has died. He was 64.

Thibodeau had been in hospice care for the past year in the hospital ward of the Coxsackie Correctional Facility, south of Albany. He died Sunday from complications related to COPD, a lung disease, his lawyer confirmed. An autopsy is pending.

He recently lost his last-chance state appeal to overturn his conviction in Allen's disappearance from the D&W convenience store on Easter Day 1994.

Thibodeau maintained his innocence throughout his final days. But his death means he will have no more chances to clear his name - plans for a federal appeal died with him. He will remain the convicted criminal who kidnapped the 18-year-old store clerk.

Thibodeau died less than two years away from his first possible parole hearing in January 2020. He was sentenced in 1995 to 25 years to life in prison.

Allen's case received renewed attention in 2014 after multiple people came forward alleging that three other men had implicated themselves in her kidnapping and presumed death.

A lengthy hearing in 2015 involved 52 witnesses - including the three who were named as possible new suspects, who each denied involvement - and concluded with Visiting Judge Daniel King ruling that the new information would be inadmissible at trial.

That ruling was debated by both a Rochester appellate court and, in June of this year, the state's highest court, which ruled against a new trial in a narrow 4-3 decision. There wasn't enough independent evidence to corroborate alleged confessions made by the other three men, the court majorities ruled.

Allen's disappearance April 3, 1994 set off a massive search and led to arrests of Thibodeau and his brother Richard, the last man known to have seen Allen alive.

Oswego County prosecutors went to trial against the Thibodeau brothers in 1995, arguing that the brothers had kidnapped Allen together in Richard's van. Prosecutors presented a circumstantial case, presenting no physical evidence linking the brothers to the kidnapping.

Separate juries acquitted Richard and convicted Gary in perhaps the most controversial trial outcome in local history. Photos of Gary Thibodeau's shocked reaction to the jury's guilty verdict have circulated ever since.

Gary Thibodeau's appeal for a new trial was shot down decades ago by state appellate courts and a federal review. After that point, Thibodeau said he felt no hope that he'd ever get out and wanted to die.

"I've been innocent since Day One," he told Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard in July 2014.

"I just figured, well, there ain't no chance now," he said after the appeals were exhausted. "No sense in giving them the 25 (years). I'll let my body go to hell and hope I can die a lot sooner. I ain't gonna kill myself, but if it happens naturally, that's fine with me."

But Thibodeau said in 2015 that new information linking others to the crime had given him renewed hope.

"I've been driving this vehicle for 62 years," he said in March 2015. "I know it's just about done. I don't want to die, But I can feel it, that I don't have a whole lot of time left. But I'm not wishing and wanting and begging like I was before."

His lawyer, Lisa Peebles, vowed in recent weeks to keep fighting as long as Thibodeau could hold on. She asked the state's high court to reconsider its 4-3 decision in paperwork filed in mid-July.

"All we have to do is swing one more judge," Peebles noted.
To the Editor:



Fine commentary by your editorial board on the Ted Ackerman fiasco ("Disgraced Syracuse firefighter should have stayed fired," Aug. 9, 2018). That someone in a responsible position in the community would finally step forward with an overdue, but cogent say-so on the matter is apropos, particularly amid the conspicuous thunder of silence on the part of those with equal credibility and/or clout in our city. It's an embarrassment to the city, and a mockery of justice, such silence is also a sad commentary on the death of outrage in America today.



Firefighters are supposed to move toward emergency situations, not run away from them -- whether on or off duty. Among the many flimsy arguments given merit by the so-called "independent arbitrator" on Ackerman's behalf was that the the firefighter was "not on duty" on the night he willfully attempted to cover up a crime he witnessed. Nonsense, and everyone knows it. Everyone, it seems, except the arbitrator, and those peculiarly biased in favor of Ackerman with agendas of their own. That Ackerman didn't so much as a make a call on behalf of the victim that night is an indefensibly depraved error of omission, and should cost him his job. Period.



Notwithstanding, seems the real story is the arbitration process itself in equitably taking into account the victim and his family. Clearly, that was not the case here, and in the eyes of many, is the reason justice was not served. This decision was all and only about Ackerman, his work record, subsequent "repentance," crony supports and multiple flimsy excuses that fateful night. The arbitrator got it wrong. The deceased victim and his family, along with justice, deserve better. That the gravity of such cases is left exclusively in the hands of a single arbitrator and his "arbitrary" decision needs to be looked at, if not changed. This was a case where neglect may have contributed to someone's tragic death. There are far less important adjudication matters that occur in our land to ensure that just decisions are rendered, ones that require a panel or jury to decide. Such should have been the case here.



That the arbitrator's Ackerman report took 26 pages, not 26 words, is a testimony to the obfuscating art of legal word-crafting, to say nothing of its demerits in not being comprehensive in its scope. No wonder the relationship between real justice and the adjudicating process has increasingly become one of pure coincidence in our land.



Again, shame on local leaders for their silence on the matter. As a result of this tragedy, perhaps there are a few (how about one, even?) who are willing to look at the cracks in the arbitration process, and close them, so as not to further aggravate the victim's victimization. Kudos to the mother of the deceased, who refused to lower herself by being in the presence of Ackerman for his so-called "apology," and for having the self-respecting resolve to move out of state, the deep wound of her son's tragic loss no doubt made deeper by this this miscarriage of justice. I'm sure the people of Colorado will get an earful of what she was treated to in these parts. Embarrassing, is what it is, reprehensible, and another dark day for the city of Syracuse.



Joe Masterleo

Jamesville
President Donald Trump's fundraising reception to benefit Rep. Claudia Tenney on Monday will be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Utica, according to two sources who plan to attend the private event.

The White House and Tenney's campaign have declined to disclose the time or location of the fundraiser.

One source invited to the fundraiser received an email from Tenney's campaign on Sunday confirming that the event will be at 4:30 p.m. at the Hotel Utica, 102 Lafayette St. in downtown Utica. Admission costs a minimum of $1,000 per person.

The hotel also posted a message on its website Sunday stating: "Due to a conference, hotel parking will be very limited and street parking may be required from 2 to 6 p.m. Aug. 13 (Monday)."

The email from the Tenney campaign warned that streets around the hotel will begin to close at 3 p.m.

Tenney's campaign did not disclose how many people have sent in an RSVP to attend the fundraiser. Tickets cost up to $15,000 for donors who want to sit at a head table and have their photo taken with Trump.

It will be Trump's first appearance in Upstate New York since he was elected president in 2016. He plans to visit Fort Drum earlier Monday to sign an annual bill that authorizes spending and budget priorities for the Department of Defense.

The anti-Trump group Indivisible Mohawk Valley is organizing a protest from 4 to 7 p.m. Monday at the State Office Building, 207 Genesee St., Utica. Organizers initially planned to hold the protest at Liberty Bell Park at Lafayette and Genesee streets in Utica.

Tenney's opponent in the November election, Democrat Anthony Brindisi, plans to hold his own fundraiser at the same time as Trump's visit. Brindisi's campaign is charging $10 per ticket, and offering free photos with the candidate, for the event at Chesterfield Restaurant in Utica.

Contact Mark Weiner: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751
WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump will travel to Fort Drum today to sign a bill authorizing military funding that honors U.S. Sen. John McCain, a GOP rival the president has openly mocked and criticized.

Trump plans to make public remarks in a Fort Drum hangar when he signs the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. The $716 billion bill will increase pay for service members and boost spending on military equipment and weapons in fiscal 2019.

White House observers will be watching to see if Trump pays tribute to McCain, 81, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee who has been battling brain cancer.

Trump ignited a feud with McCain in 2015 during the presidential campaign when he said the Arizona senator was not a war hero. McCain, a former Navy fighter pilot, was held for almost six years as a prisoner of war after his jet was shot down in the former North Vietnam.

McCain later dropped his support for Trump during the presidential election. In July 2017, McCain cast the deciding vote to defeat a Republican bill that would have repealed parts of the Affordable Care Act.

Vice President Mike Pence, who has maintained a better relationship with McCain, will join Trump at Fort Drum for the ceremony this afternoon.

Syracuse.com will have a team of journalists providing live coverage of Trump's visit to Fort Drum and a stop later in the afternoon at a fundraiser for Rep. Claudia Tenney in Utica. Check back for updates throughout the day.

Contact Mark Weiner: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751
From "Rock the Bells" to rocking the vote: Could rappers LL Cool J and Busta Rhymes end up running for New York governor soon?

A new political party wants the hip-hop stars to challenge Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a future gubernatorial race, according to the New York Daily News. The New American Party is seeking to get on the ballot for upcoming state elections to address urban issues better than past lawmakers.

Jineea Butler, founder of the Hip Hop Union and a Republican congressional candidate running against Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-Manhattan), tells the newspaper that she's spoken to Busta Rhymes about potentially running for governor on the New American Party line, but he has not yet committed. Butler said she's also reached out to LL Cool J, but he hasn't responded.

"We're looking for somebody that can energize the vote so we can clear the 50,000 votes (needed to secure a guaranteed ballot line the next four years) and someone who resonates with millennials and young folks," Butler told the Daily News.

"We're juggling a bunch of candidates we can look at from the hip hop community," she continued. "This would work right now in America... America needs something else. We're fighting against each other. We've come too far in this country to go back to racism. Hip hop brought people together."

Busta Rhymes, 46, whose real name is Trevor Smith Jr., and LL Cool J, 50, born James Todd Smith (not related), have not commented publicly on Butler's interest.

Both hip-hop stars are New York City natives best known for music spanning the late '80s, '90s and 2000s. Both are also actors; LL Cool J also hosts "Lip Sync Battle" and recently launched his own SiriusXM channel Rock The Bells Radio.

Another hip-hop icon, Eric Barrier of Eric B. & Rakim, is reportedly assisting the New American Party in securing a high-profile candidate for governor.

According to the Daily News, the party is circulating petitions statewide in order to get the 15,000 signatures required by Aug. 21 to create the line for the upcoming election.

Butler told the newspaper that they're trying to appeal to black voters who feel taken for granted by Democrats and ignored by Republicans. Organizers have also discussed offering the party's lieutenant governor line to Democrat Jumaane Williams and the attorney general line to GOP candidate Keith Wofford, she added.

"The African-American community, we want to leverage our vote," she explained. "Right now, we're just being abused."
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Zephyr Teachout, who wants to become New York's next attorney general, has a personally inscribed copy of her 2014 book, "Corruption in America," she plans to leave in Utica today for President Donald Trump.

"I hope you enjoy the book, and that it persuades you to divest your business interests and stop violating the original anti-corruption provisions of the Constitution ...," the inscription says.

Teachout stopped in Syracuse this morning on her way to join anti-Trump protests in Utica where the president is scheduled to attend a fundraiser for Rep. Claudia Tenney. Teachout's trip to Utica is part of what she calls a three-day "Trump corruption tour."

"We in New York have a responsibility both to New Yorkers and the country to investigate illegality in Trump's businesses and foundation," she said.

Teachout, 46, a law professor, is one of four candidates running in the Sept. 13 primary to become the Democratic candidate for state attorney general. Barbara Underwood was appointed to the post in May to replace Eric Schneiderman, who resigned after being accused of physically assaulting four women. The race is wide open because Underwood is not running.

Teachout, who lives in Dutchess County, ran in 2014 for the Democratic nomination for governor and lost to incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but captured 34 percent of the vote. In 2016 she ran for Congress and lost to Rep. John Faso, R-Kinderhook, by 9 percentage points.

Teachout said if she wins, she will not use the position as a stepping stone to run for governor or other higher offices as many attorneys general do.

Taking on Trump and corruption in Albany are two key issues of her campaign.

Trump has extensive real estate holdings in New York. Teachout cited recent news stories reporting profits at Trump International Hotel in Manhattan jumped 13 percent during the first quarter of 2018 because of a stay there by the crown prince of Saudia Arabia and his entourage. She said many of his other properties do business with foreign governments, such as Trump Tower which leases space to China and the United Arab Emirates.

Teachout said these deals violate the U.S. Constitution which bans payments to federal officials from foreign governments.

"It's a daily scandal foreign governments can use their cash to influence the bottom line of the president of the United States," Teachout said.

If elected, Teachout said she would immediately take legal action demanding Trump divest his business interests. She is one of several lawyers who sued Trump shortly after he took office for violating the Constitution's "emoluments clause."

As attorney general Teachout said she would investigate corruption in Albany using executive order 106 issued by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2013 to create the Moreland Commission to investigate politicians. He subsequently disbanded the commission. She said Cuomo never rescinded that order which gives the attorney general power to investigate corruption in state government.

Teachout said the need for an independent attorney general who will investigate wrongdoing in Albany was demonstrated by the recent federal convictions of a former SUNY official and real estate developers in Syracuse and Buffalo charged with rigging bids on several of Cuomo's economic development projects.

Teachout said she told Schneiderman when he was attorney general to sue Trump to force him to divest his business interests, but Schneiderman did not take her advice.

Cuomo recently gave Underwood the green light to launch a criminal investigation into the Trump foundation after Teachout called on Cuomo to do so.

In the inscription in her book for Trump, Teachout wrote:

"I think you may especially enjoy pages 1-384, detailing how corruption at the highest levels of power threatens our entire democracy."
FORT DRUM, N.Y. -- President Donald Trump promised a new day for the U.S. military on Monday, telling soldiers from the Army's 10th Mountain Division that they deserve better pay and equipment as he signed a bill authorizing $716 billion in defense spending.

"Every day the Army is fighting for us, and now we are fighting for you 100 percent," Trump told about 500 soldiers gathered in a hangar at Fort Drum. "Nobody understands how stretched our military has become better than the soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division."

Trump made his comments before signing the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act, a bill that boosts pay for military personnel by 2.6 percent and provides big increases in spending on military equipment.

"The National Defense Authorization Act is the most significant investment in our military and our war fighters in modern history, and I'm very proud to be a big, big part of it," Trump told the soldiers in his first trip to Upstate New York as president.

"I want to say, very strongly, there is no better place than right here at Fort Drum to celebrate its passage," the president said. "After years of devastating cuts, we're now rebuilding our military like we never have before."

Trump did not mention Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., during his speech, even though Congress honored the 81-year-old senator by putting his name on the annual bill authorizing military spending.

Trump has openly mocked and criticized McCain in a feud that began in 2015 when the president said McCain was not a war hero.

The president did single out Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., for praise. McSally, who was in the audience, is running for the Arizona Senate seat that will open with the retirement of GOP Sen. Jeff Flake.

Trump mostly stuck to his script, reading from a teleprompter during a speech that lasted a little more than 30 minutes. But he did take one swipe at the media when he pointed out reporters covering his speech. He congratulated himself for not using the term "fake news."

"I'm so proud of myself," Trump said. "I didn't call them the fake news media...We know the real truth, but I won't say it today."

Trump was greeted when he arrived at Fort Drum by Vice President Mike Pence, who arrived at the Army post about 30 minutes before the president.

Pence was joined on the tarmac by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, and Maj. Gen. Walt Piatt, commanding general of the Army's 10th Mountain Division, which is based at Fort Drum.

Trump received a 21-gun salute as a military band played Hail to the Chief on the tarmac at Fort Drum's Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield.

Stefanik, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, invited Trump in March to visit Fort Drum. Stefanik has advocated for the Army post to receive increased funding, and has asked the Pentagon to build an East Coast missile interceptor site at Fort Drum.

Trump later introduced Stefanik to the Army soldiers, mispronouncing her name, but praising her persistence in asking him to visit Fort Drum.

Fort Drum is the largest single-site employer in New York state, and its 10th Mountain Division has been the most deployed unit in the Army since 2001.

Before his speech, Trump stood on the tarmac at the airfield to watch a previously unannounced air assault exercise with 10th Mountain Division Combat Aviation Brigade soldiers and Black Hawk helicopters.

The president also took some time to chat with three Army soldiers, their faces covered in camouflage paint, who took part in the exercise.

Trump planned to fly after his speech to Griffiss International Airport in Rome on his way to a private fundraiser in Utica for Rep. Claudia Tenney.

Tickets to the fundraiser at the Hotel Utica cost up to $15,000 for donors who want to join Trump in a roundtable discussion and have their photo taken with the president.

Contact Mark Weiner: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751
Republican House Representative Devin Nunes has found himself in hot water after a tape of him talking at a closed-door fundraiser was leaked to TV host Rachel Maddow. On the tape, Nunes, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, seems to be admitting to bias in favor of the president and encourages Republicans to protect him from investigation. The tape has spurred calls for Paul Ryan to remove Nunes from his chair position. But is an embarrassing audio tape a good enough reason?

PERSPECTIVES

On her August 8 episode, TV host Rachel Maddow played a tape of Republican Representative Devin Nunes talking at a closed-door political fundraiser in Washington state. In the tape, Nunes appears to admit that he is trying to protect the president from thorough investigation in order to maintain control for the Republican Party.

Nunes is the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, the body tasked with investigating the accusations of collusions between the Russians and the Trump administration. By baldly stating he is trying to protect the president, Nunes has shown he cannot be an unbiased investigator into the serious accusations. Not only that, but he could be hindering further investigations with his actions. For these reasons, some are saying he should be removed as the chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has the power to remove Nunes from his position as the committee chairman, and has been asked to remove the representative from the seat earlier this year. In February, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, requested Nunes' removal based on what they saw as "dishonest" actions. Ryan rejected that request. Per The Washington Times:

If Ryan did not remove Nunes for his earlier actions, there is little indication he will remove the representative now.

Politico writer Mieke Eoyang argues it is Ryan's responsibility to remove Nunes from this position. Not only that, but as Ryan is resigning from his position in a matter of months, there is little to no chance of the speaker facing serious repercussions from this action.

Writer Matthew Walther argues against this stance in an op-ed for The Week. Walther believes the kerfuffle about the Nunes tape is overblown. Nunes isn't admitting anything that couldn't already be assumed by his previous actions. Therefore, there's no reason to take the drastic action of removing Nunes from the position.

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President Donald Trump has signed a defense bill honoring U.S. Sen John McCain, but did not mention McCain once by name at the Upstate New York signing event.

Trump addressed 10th Mountain Division soldiers at a Fort Drum hangar on Monday afternoon to thank the troops for their service and sign the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. The $716 billion bill will increase pay for service members and boost spending on military equipment and weapons in fiscal 2019.

"There is no better place than right here in Fort Drum. After news of devastating cuts we're rebuilding our military better than ever before," Trump said.

The Commander in Chief was joined by Vice President Mike Pence, Major General Walter Piatt and Rep. Elise Stefanik, the New York Congresswoman (R-21st Congressional District) who invited Trump to Fort Drum.

Trump concluded the event with a signing of H.R. 5515, the John McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019.

However, during his remarks, Trump never once mentioned McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee who has been battling brain cancer. He instead referred to it as simply the "National Defense Authorization Act" or the NDAA.

"The NDAA is the most significant investment in our military and in our war fighters in modern history and I'm very proud to be a big, big part of it," Trump said.

"To survive and having that survival of our freedom it depends upon the might of our military. And no enemy on earth can match the strength, courage and skill of the American Army and the American armed forces. Nobody's even close. They never will be."

The president has frequently clashed with McCain, starting in 2015 when he said the Arizona senator was not a war hero. McCain, a former Navy fighter pilot, was held for almost six years as a prisoner of war after his jet was shot down in the former North Vietnam.

"He's not a war hero," Trump said of his GOP rival during his presidential campaign. "He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."

McCain later dropped his support for Trump during the presidential election and, in 2017, cast the deciding vote to defeat a Republican bill that would have repealed parts of the Affordable Care Act. He also hinted last year that he didn't believe the medical diagnosis in Trump's reported deferment from the Vietnam War draft due to bone spurs.

"We drafted the lowest income level of America," he told C-SPAN in October, "and the highest income level found a doctor that would say they had a bone spur."

By the time Trump got to Utica for a political event later in the day, he was more direct, while still not mentioning McCain by name.

As his remarks moved to the Affordable Care Act, Trump said, "I would've gotten rid of everything, but as you know, one of our wonderful senators had thumbs down at 2 o'clock in the morning."

Pence, who has maintained a warmer relationship with McCain, also did not mention McCain during opening remarks introducing Trump at Fort Drum.

McCain appeared to return the favor with a statement released Monday afternoon that did not mention Trump or Pence by name.

"I'm very proud that the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 has been signed into law," McCain's statement said. "Today's bill signing completes the historically quick process by which the NDAA has become law, and will help deliver our service members the resources they need to rise to the challenges of a dangerous world. I thank my colleagues in Congress for working together to craft this legislation, which honors our men and women in uniform and lives up to the traditions of bipartisanship and collaboration that have come to define the NDAA process..."

"I'm humbled that my colleagues in Congress chose to designate this bill in my name. Serving as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and working on behalf of America's brave service members has been one of the greatest honors of my life. I'm proud that throughout my tenure, the committee has led with a spirit of comity and cooperation to provide for America's Armed Forces."

Trump departed Fort Drum's Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field in Air Force One after the event for a private fundraising reception to benefit Rep. Claudia Tenney at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Utica.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has released a statement sarcastically welcoming President Donald Trump to Upstate New York.

"Mr. President, welcome back to New York, the progressive capital of the nation," Cuomo said in a statement. "Despite being a native New Yorker, since you took office, you have attacked our healthcare, passed a tax law that punished New York in order to fund corporate tax cuts, ripped immigrant New Yorkers from their families, launched an assault on our environment, and undermined the basic values on which this state and this nation were built."

"You say you want to make this country great again, but you have clearly forgotten what made this country great in the first place. Perhaps you can use this trip to New York to help you remember what truly makes this state and this nation great."

Trump is visiting Fort Drum with Vice President Pence on Monday afternoon before heading to a private fundraising reception to benefit Rep. Claudia Tenney later Monday at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Utica. While in Watertown, Trump will sign the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act, a $716 billion bill that increases pay for service members and boosts spending on military equipment and weapons in fiscal 2019.

Just landed at Fort Drum, New York. Looking forward to making a speech about our GREAT HEROES!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

It's Trump's first visit to Upstate New York since being elected in 2016. Cuomo is not expected to appear at either event.

"While in Utica, I urge you to meet with the immigrants and refugees who are breathing new life into the city, which has a higher proportion of immigrants than any other city in upstate New York," Cuomo said.

"I urge you to visit Seneca Falls, where women first fought for equal rights -- a legacy New York is fighting to uphold against your administration's ongoing attacks on women."

Cuomo also urged Trump to visit Westchester, Long Island, the new Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, and "the new Buffalo, where an economic renaissance is transforming the city without resorting to harmful tariffs or trying to revive the industries of yesterday."

He also took shots at Trump's controversial zero-tolerance immigration policy separating families at the U.S. border.

"Mr. President, I urge you to visit the Statue of Liberty in our harbor to remember the American promise made to your grandfather when he first came to this country as an immigrant -- the promise of equality, hope and opportunity for all," Cuomo continued. "Perhaps then you will remember what made this country great."
President Donald Trump praised Fort Drum's soldier of the year in remarks at an Upstate New York event Monday.

Trump addressed the U.S. Army soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division near Watertown, N.Y., for an event marking the signing of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. The $716 billion bill will increase pay for service members and boost spending on military equipment and weapons in fiscal 2019.

The Commander in Chief kicked off the event by telling the soldiers to sit "at ease," and praised the hard work and dedication of the brave men and women in American armed forces.

"There is no better place than right here in Fort Drum. After news of devastating cuts we're rebuilding our military better than ever before," Trump said. No military on earth can match the United States, he added.

Trump then singled out Rep. Elise Stefanik, who he said repeatedly asked him to come visit Fort Drum, and thanked several generals.

He then called out Fort Drum's "soldier of the year," Michael Lima, and asked how many he was competing with for the honor.

"That's a lot of soldiers. 18,000?" Trump said. "Want to work for me? Thank you, Michael."

Trump also said all of the Fort Drum soldiers were "Mountain Tough." He said he asked a general to explain what the difference is between those troops and other military personnel.

"Sir, there's a difference," Trump said he was told. He did not elaborate.

The Commander in Chief just asked if the Soldier of the Year wants to go work for him... ummm ya, he already does. @realDonaldTrump  KarenLMa (@Karenlynnmassa) August 13, 2018

Trump also brought up his plans for a new branch of the military dubbed the United States Space Force.

"We are the biggest, the strongest and smartest," Trump added. "America is respected again... God bless our troops, and God bless the United States of America."

Trump will later head to Utica for a private fundraising reception to benefit Rep. Claudia Tenney at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Utica.
WASHINGTON -- Vice President Mike Pence will join President Donald Trump at Fort Drum today for a ceremony to sign an annual bill authorizing spending and budget priorities for the Department of Defense.

Pence's office announced his plans for the last-minute trip to Fort Drum this morning, almost a week after the White House said Trump would make his first trip as president to Upstate New York.

Pence will travel separately from Trump to Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield at Fort Drum and arrive at about 1:30 p.m., the vice president's office said. Pence will greet the president when he arrives about 30 minutes later.

The vice president's schedule does not include a trip to Utica later Monday afternoon, where Trump plans to attend a fundraiser for Rep. Claudia Tenney.

At Fort Drum, Pence will witness Trump sign the John McCain National Defense Authorization Act. The $716 billion bill sets the budget and funding priorities for the Department of Defense for fiscal 2019.

It will be the first trip to Fort Drum for Trump and Pence since they were elected in 2016. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, who represents the region, had invited Trump in March to visit the home of the Army's 10th Mountain Division.

Contact Mark Weiner: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751
Obviously, its too soon to say how successful it will be, but there is a group determined to make that move  at least in Aurora. And its being led by a charismatic ex-con-turned author and businessman now traveling the country speaking in schools and youth detention centers with the goal of empowering young people so they dont follow the same path that handed him a 25-year prison term on three counts of armed robbery.
U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney has raised nearly $2 million in her bid for re-election to NY's 22nd Congressional District.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to raise money for Tenney today in Utica.

Syracuse.com pulled the names of all donors reported to the Federal Election Commission into a searchable database. Enter a name or search by donors' employers. You can also search by state to see how much money is flowing in from elsewhere.

Tenney faces a challenge from Democrat Anthony Brindisi, a NYS Assemblyman. He has also raised almost $2 million.

Donations have been reported through the end of June. The next deadline is October 15.

The 22nd Congressional District covers all of Madison, Oneida, Cortland and Chenango counties and portions of Oswego, Broome, Herkimer, and Tioga counties.

to load this Caspio

by Caspio

Contact Michelle Breidenbach anytime:

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| 315-470-3186.
Buffalo, N.Y. -- A Buffalo man told police he was robbed over the weekend with his own sword when he let a stranger into his home to use the bathroom.



The man let a woman he did not know into his home to use the bathroom at about 1 p.m. on Saturday. He had left a sword he owned in plain sight, police said, according to The Buffalo News.



As the woman was leaving, she picked up the sword and threatened to hurt the man if he didn't hand over his wallet, the man told police, according to the News. The woman then shoved the man to the ground and took his wallet.



She dropped the sword and ran off, according to the News. The man's wallet contained cash, his driver's license, bank card, Social Security card and other items.

Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Google + | 315-454-2112
White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller is an "immigration hypocrite," his uncle says in a new editorial.

"If my nephew's ideas on immigration had been in force a century ago, our family would have been wiped out," David S. Glosser wrote in a Politico column published on Monday. "I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, who is an educated man and well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family's life in this country."

Glosser describes a "classically American tale" of how an ancestor named Wolf-Leib Glosser fled anti-Jewish violence in Antopol, now known as Belarus, to come to America in 1903. He arrived at Ellis Island in New York with just $8, but worked in sweat shops until he could open his own store, which led to a chain of Pennsylvania supermarkets and discount department stores run by the next generation of Glossers, including David's father -- Miller's maternal grandfather.

"It was big enough to be listed on the AMEX stock exchange and employed thousands of people over time. In the span of some 80 years and five decades, this family emerged from poverty in a hostile country to become a prosperous, educated clan of merchants, scholars, professionals, and, most important, American citizens," Glosser wrote.

The Hill reports Miller is considered the architect of President Donald Trump's controversial zero-tolerance immigration policy, separating families at the U.S. border as a deterrent to illegal immigrants. Miller famously dismissed the "Give me your tired, your poor..." poem on the Statue of Liberty last year when asked if the administration was shifting away from "American tradition when it comes to immigration."

Glosser says Miller's policies, including the travel ban on Muslim majority countries and a decrease in refugees, would've prevented their family from becoming Americans.

"The Glossers came to the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the 'America First' nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees. Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family would likely have been murdered by the Nazis along with all but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol," Glosser wrote.

"Stephen's is not the only family with a chain immigration story in the Trump administration," he added.

According to Newsweek, Trump's own grandfather was a German migrant "on the run from military conscription to a new life in the U.S.A.," and his mother was reported to have "fled the poverty of rural Scotland for the economic possibilities of New York City."

"Trump and my nephew both know their immigrant and refugee roots. Yet, they repeat the insults and false accusations of earlier generations against these refugees to make them seem less than human," Glosser continued. "As free Americans, and the descendants of immigrants and refugees, we have the obligation to exercise our conscience by voting for candidates who will stand up for our highest national values and not succumb to our lowest fears."
Wet weather will continue across Upstate New York this week, especially during Monday and Tuesday.

A meandering area of low pressure will slowly work its way across the Northeast early this week. The slow moving nature of the low, a lack of winds aloft, and significant amounts of moisture off the Atlantic Ocean could produce areas of flooding.

Rain on Monday is most likely across southern parts of the Finger Lakes and Central New York during the morning, with additional rain in the Catskills, Capital Region, and southern Adirondacks developing during the afternoon.

Tuesday morning could bring another round of heavy rain to some of these same areas, especially in Central New York and the eastern Finger Lakes, where flooding concerns are elevated.

Rain will expand during the afternoon, impacting most of Upstate New York. By Tuesday evening, the heavy rain will exit Upstate New York via the Adirondacks and eastern North Country.

Over the two days, some localized areas could see as much as 3-5 inches of rain. Widespread amounts over an inch are possible for all but Western New York and the western half of the North Country. There, little rain will fall, with just some occasional light showers.

Wednesday will have a few more scattered showers and perhaps a thunderstorm, but the main heavy rain threat will be over. Areas most likely to see rain will include the Adirondacks and North Country with the afternoon being the most likely time for rain.

With the clouds and rain, most areas will stick in the low and mid 70s Monday and Tuesday, but Wednesday will see a jump in temperature back into the 80s. Humidity levels will remain high, so it will feel rather uncomfortable.

Thursday will follow suit, with more muggy heat. Most areas will not see rain, though a few late day showers and thunderstorms may try to pop up across Western New York and the Finger Lakes.

A new weather system will swing through on Friday. Low pressure will track across Canada, dragging a cold front across Upstate New York. Afternoon showers and thunderstorms appear likely with the front, though the details on any heavy rain or severe threats will need to be resolved later in the week.

Here are the details day-by-day:

Monday, August 13

Rain will spread north from Pennsylvania during the morning, impacting mostly southern Central New York and the southern Finger Lakes. Afternoon showers and thunderstorms will then develop across the Catskills, Capital Region, and southern Adirondacks.

Temperatures will mostly be in the low and mid 70s. The North Country could see a little sun, which would push temperatures into the low 80s.

Tuesday, August14



Rain, some heavy, will fall during the morning across the eastern Finger Lakes and Central New York. This rain will expand across most of Upstate New York throughout the day.

Temperatures will range throughout the 70s.

Wednesday, August 15

A few showers will be possible, especially across the northern and eastern areas of Upstate New York. A couple thunderstorms may also pop up during the afternoon. Elsewhere, skies will be partly cloudy with just a small chance for a shower.

Temperatures will be in the low and mid 80s with upper 70s in the higher elevations.

Thursday, August 16

Most areas will not see rain with just a couple isolated thunderstorms developing during the late afternoon for southwestern New York. Otherwise, skies will be partly cloudy.

Low and mid 80s are likely along and south of I-90, with upper 70s further north.

Friday, August 17

Showers and thunderstorms will develop during the afternoon and move from west to east across the region.

High temperatures will reach the low and mid 80s before the thunderstorms develop.

In this 2015 file photo, Route 298 south of Bridgeport, in Central New York, is closed due to flooding.

More from NYUP Weather
In addition to the day-to-day campaign to enhance student welfare, many will also recall the active role that Cambridge University Students Union (CUSU) has had in the high-profile disputes of the past academic year, from divestment to staff pensions to de-colonising the curriculum. The likelihood is that many of these issues will return in Michaelmas and beyond, and so it will be the role of the newly elected CUSU team to address them.

New President Evie Aspinall comes across as a fresh face, having immersed herself in CUSU for the first time only weeks before winning the election in Lent. She now faces an unenviable task  anyone studying the election figures would be forgiven for concluding that many students feel disillusioned with their Union, and Evies campaign sought to highlight the organisations lack of visibility. I began by asking what she will do to address this, now that she can no longer claim to speak as an outsider.

There are multiple things. Ive got a blog every week, but Ill also be doing vlogs once weve sorted out the technology. Also going into colleges more; Im hoping to go, or send one of the team, to every college every term so students have a chance to engage. More work is also being done on CUSU council. She points out that the council  which meets fortnightly during term and which any student can attend  represents an opportunity for students to engage with their Union, but most simply do not.

This part of her vision represents variations on a theme that also appeared in the successful campaigns of her immediate predecessors. But Evie seems keen to capitalise on her credentials as a fresh presence in order to force real change. She talks proudly of the democratic review that is now being conducted into the whole CUSU process, and is also keen to address the controversy of drinking societies, which emerged immediately following the election. But one of her first actions has been to tackle the issue of inequality between colleges. Ive created the college review, which JCRs are filling out slowly but surely, which basically gives us a lot of information about all of the colleges, so that they can collect and compare whats going on in other colleges. They can use it as a lobbying tool against their own colleges, if, say, theyre the ones with the highest rents.

She admits that this requires more than just warm words. In an ideal world, wed be able to push the university to cut rents in all colleges, but because of the college system it doesnt work like that. So, college inequality is a really tricky one. But one of the things Id like to do is really support and help drive rent campaigns within colleges such as Newnham and Robinson, rather than doing it at university level.

It seems likely that for many current students, unless they have specifically approached CUSU for help, their most direct exposure so far will have been as part of the cyclical round of protests and petitions that formed the backdrop of student life in the past year. This raises difficult questions about the mandate of the organisation, as issues such as the CUSU-endorsed staff pension strikes proved divisive. Evie predicts that the prominent debates of next year will relate to the governments controversial Prevent strategy to tackle radicalisation, as well as the lingering struggle to decolonise the curriculum. With this in mind, I asked whether or not CUSU should be political.

I think CUSU will inherently be political in that we are representing students opinions, and those opinions tend to be political. Were fighting for certain things for students: marginalised students are having a disproportionately bad time at university, and so we have to be political in pushing an agenda to protect our students, because thats what were there for. I think we will always be more political than other Unions, because we dont have the resources other Unions have. CUSU is very underfunded, and doesnt have a big fancy building where we can run the fun stuff that other Unions spend a lot of the time doing. However, she admits that this makes the issue of engagement all the more important. I do think there is a need to broaden the appeal of CUSU, and talk to students who dont normally get involved to see what they want as well.

We move on to Cambridges academic culture, and I ask if she believes it is too challenging.

Absolutely, without a doubt. I think mainly its a workload issue. I know this is something Daisy [the previous President] was going to deal with in Lent term last year but couldnt because of the strikes, and that took up all her time. But workload in Cambridge is ridiculous When people say that the Tompkins Table is a trivial issue, I dont agree. If colleges are obsessed with how high their college is on the Tompkins Table theyll start pushing their students ridiculously hard. She thinks that part of the reason for this unhealthy culture is the type of students that Oxbridge typically attracts. People want the academic rigour, and there will always be pressure. Even if there was less work, students would still put pressure on themselves. But I do think there is definitely a discussion to be had about workload.

Finally, with the arrival of a new academic year, where can Freshers turn if they have a problem? We have something called the Students Union Advice Service, which lots of people dont really know about. It deals with all the issues from mental health, to academic issues, to relationships any issue you might be having. You can just email them, there can be times where they work for months with a student on an issue. And a lot of students go there when they dont want to go to their college There is loads of support out there, and its growing all the time. Its a really great service which is coordinated by CUSU and is in the CUSU building, by the lounge. They are trained professionals who have dealt with loads of cases before.
The Department of Science and Technology  Science Education Institute (DOST-SEI) has just announced new developments on its scholarship programs, which now include increased number of slots and a higher monthly stipend rate for all its scholars across the country.

Department of Science and Technology undergraduate scholars currently benefit from the increased monthly stipend of PHP 7,000 per month from the previous amounts of just PHP 5,000 to PHP 6,000. This is in addition to the PHP 40,000 per year tuition and other school fees subsidy, PHP 10,000 per year book allowance, one-time PHP 1,000 uniform allowance; one-time PHP 1,000 graduation allowance, one economy-class round trip fare per year for those studying outside of their home province, and group insurance.

What's great for interested students is that DOST is now accepting applications for scholarships online! Simply visit https://www.science-scholarships.ph/, sign up the online forms, and submit your application.

- Birth Certificate

- For Working Household Members (any of the following):

* Latest Income Tax Return of the working family member

* Form W2 if the parents has their own business

* Employment Contract for OFW if the head of the family is working overseas

* BIR Certificate of Exemption for ITR Filing or Municipal or Barangay Certificate of Indigency if the head of the family is unemployed

- Electric Consumption for the last three months

- Affidavit of guardianship (if with legal guardian)

- Certificate of Scholarship in High School (if Private School)

- High School Statement of Account (if Private School)

- DSWD ID (if beneficiary):

* Listahan 2.0

* Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps)

- Forms C, D1, D2, E, F, G of the Application form

DOST Secretaryand DOST-SEI Directordisclosed details about the program in a press conference held on July 18, 2018 at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) in Manila.The event coincided with the celebration of the 2018 National Science and Technology Week (NSTW), which Biyo saw as an opportune time to drum up the publics interest in DOSTs long-standing scholarship program.Recently, DOST-SEI posted the names of the 8,994 new qualifiers for its undergraduate scholarship, which is the biggest batch since the program started in 1958. Biyo hopes to further increase the number of scholars supported in all DOST-SEI scholarship programs from 20,618 in 2016 to a target number of 33,256 scholars for 2019."Through the new benefits in our Scholarship Program, we hope to get more scholars and graduates who will eventually work in S&T for the country," shared Mr. de la Pena.During the press conference, Ms. Biyo acknowledged top scholar-graduates, Ruben James Rosal and John Kenneth Malilay, who both joined the panel to share their experiences as DOST scholars during their undergraduate years. "The testimonies of our scholars are always the best proof of the effectiveness of our programs," she told the media.Interested Grade 12 students are encouraged to submit their applications for the 2019 DOST-SEI Undergraduate Science and Technology Scholarship until August 31, 2018. Examination will be on October 21, 2018.Incoming 3rd year college students taking identified S&T programs, on the other hand, are likewise invited to apply in the Junior Level Science Scholarship (JLSS) program. JLSS application ends on September 14, 2018.Apart from your an email address, you may also be required to submit soft copies of the following documents at the website, so prepare them and have them scanned:Examination is scheduled on October 20, 2018 for this year. For additional details, you may log on toor email
Why it matters: It is not surprising that Google can and does track Android and iOS users that use its apps such as Maps or Chrome. Likewise, it is probably not all that astonishing that it sells that location information to advertisers. However, it may be a shock to find out that even if you turn off Location History, those apps are still tracking and collecting your location information.

A researcher at UC Berkeley noticed something strange when she had Location History disabled. Her phone requested she rate a recent visit to Kohls, which prompted her to ask on her blog, So how did Google Maps know where I was?

Its a good question and one the Associated Press was eager to look into with the help of computer science researchers at Princeton University.

If youve used a smartphone for any length of time, youre probably aware that there are options to turn off location tracking. If allowed, Google apps will track your movements and save them to your account under your Location History. So if you turn off this setting, Google stops tracking you, right?

Its a fair assumption, but it is also wrong. Turning off Location History only stops Google from saving your movements to your visual history which you can view at any time on your Google account webpage. Even with Location History disabled, some apps still track your movements without you knowing.

Storing location data in violation of users' preferences is wrong.

I am not opposed to background location tracking in principle, said Berkeley urban planning researcher K. Shankari. It just really bothers me that it is not explicitly stated.

Indeed, Google is not very transparent when it comes to notifying users of its location tracking practices. You can find it in its terms of use and a few other places that users tend not to tread much.

Storing location data in violation of users' preferences is wrong, said Princeton computer scientist Jonathan Mayer, who also formerly served as chief technologist for the FCC. If youre going to allow users to turn off something called Location History, then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off. That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.

A Google spokesperson argued that the company is perfectly clear regarding its tracking policies and how to turn off services.

There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve peoples experience, including Location History, Web, and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services. We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time.

To completely disable location tracking, users must turn off Location History and Web & App Activity  something not made abundantly clear to the typical user.

In fact according to the AP, Google offers a more accurate description of how Location History actually works in a place youd only see if you turn it off  a popup that appears when you pause Location History on your Google account webpage.

Another popup also appears when re-enabling Web & App Activity, but since this setting is on by default, its not likely the users will see it unless they already know about disabling these services.

Last year Google earned $95.4 billion from location-related advertising. It is no wonder that they bury how to opt out of these services deep within their privacy agreements, and obscurely related popups on the phone and account websites. Ignorance of these policies and procedures is no defense, but users these days are pretty lazy. This is a fact that Google banks on in a very literal sense.

Map Image via The Mobile PC Guys
Paul Rudd is heading back to the small screen in an upcoming comedy on Netflix called Living With Yourself.

Rudd, playing a dissatisfied man struggling with life, tries a radical new treatment program. The specifics of this treatment program is still unclear, but he somehow ends up living with an identical version of himself, albeit one that is significantly better-equipped to handle most aspects of life that he struggles with.

Netflix Orders New Comedy 'Living With Yourself'

The series will be directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, best known for their critically acclaimed 2006 comedy Little Miss Sunshine that was nominated for a number of Oscars. Michael Arndt won for writing the screenplay, and Alan Arkin also won for his portrayal of Edwin Hoover, a heroin-snorting retirement home evictee.

Rudd will, of course, play the two roles, and the show will primarily be about him trying to become a better person, Variety reports.

Both Dayton and Faris are directing all eight episodes. Timothy Greenberg created the show, and he will also serve as executive producer and showrunner. Tony Hernandez, Jeff Blitz, and Rudd himself will also serve as executive producers.

Paul Rudd's Latest TV Work

Rudd was last seen as Scott Lang in Ant-Man and the Wasp and before that, as Cactus Bill in the Netflix original film Mute.

Although he works primarily in film, Rudd has had some minor appearances in TV over the years, including small roles in Neon Joe, Werewolf Hunter; Bob's Burgers; Nightcap; and most recently, Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, which debuted on Netflix in 2017.

Netflix says Living With Yourself is a "fresh and inventive philosophical comedy," as per The Hollywood Reporter. The article also suggests Rudd will only star in the show's first season.

Suppose Netflix orders even more seasons, would those follow entirely different characters going through the same treatment? It seems like an interesting premise, although that is pure guesswork for now.

Netflix has yet to set an official release date for Living With Yourself, but perhaps it will begin streaming in 2019, maybe a little later in the year. Netflix is notorious for making surprise drops, however.

The streaming service dropped a completely new show back in 2016 called The OA that became a viral hit, and it also surprisingly released The Cloverfield Paradox earlier this February after a Super Bowl ad. Time will tell if Netflix plans to drop Living With Yourself in this fashion, so stay tuned.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Earlier this month, reports claimed Google that it was planning to kowtow to China's censorship policies and release a sanitized version of Google Search that will filter out certain results to comply with the country's rules around freedom of speech.

Google is now being criticized for this potential move by none other than Lokman Tsui, who served as the company's head of free expression for Asia and the Pacific until 2014.

In an interview with The Intercept, Tsui said Google's plan to build a censored version of Search specifically for China is "stupid," and that it would likely violate human rights standards.

Google's Censored Search App Isn't A Good Idea

"In these past few years things have been deteriorating so badly in China  you cannot be there without compromising yourself," said Tsui, adding that censored version of Search in China "would be a moral victory for Beijing...(which) has nothing to lose."

If Google is allowed to go back to China, it will be under the terms and conditions that Beijing would lay out for it.

"I can't see how Google would be able to negotiate any kind of a deal that would be positive. I can't see a way to operate Google search in China without violating widely-held international human rights standards," said Tsui.

Google And Freedom Of Speech

A censored search would be a dramatic shift in Google's position on freedom of speech, notes Business Insider. In 2010, the company pulled out of China in the first place because it did not want to help the Chinese government censor information and be involved in limiting "free speech on the web."

The censored app will apparently be released as an Android app that will "blacklist sensitive queries" and filter out websites that are blocked in China, including Wikipedia pages and many others. All components under Search, including Image Search, spell check, and suggestions, will be subject to China's censorship laws.

The Intercept was the first to break the story about Google's plans for the app in question, citing a whistleblower who provided internal documents detailing the move. The tipster shared the document because they were "against large companies and governments collaborating in the oppression of their people." He also believes "what is done in China will become a template for many other nations."

It is not clear if Google will push through with such plans. It has yet to acknowledge them.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
California election officials are guarding their voting machines and registration lists against Russian hackers -- although no one has spotted any.



"I operate under the assumption that hacking is actually happening and California is a target," Secretary of State Alex Padilla says.



"This year, there's a big focus on several congressional races that could determine the House majority. The stakes in California have national implications."



But would the Russians actually try to change election outcomes?



"I have no doubt that if they could, they would," says Padilla, a Democrat who's heavily favored to win re-election in November.



Hacking into California's voting system and altering votes, however, is considered by most experts to be practically impossible. That's because voting machines aren't hooked up to the internet. State law forbids it. A hacker might attack one machine but couldn't reach into the entire vote-collecting system.



"We invited the Department of Homeland Security to try to hack into our system," says Joe Holland, Santa Barbara County's recorder-assessor and president of the state association of election officials. "They stayed five days and couldn't do it."



Voter registration lists are different, however.



"People are registered online. Records are connected to the internet. And hackers could break into those," says Matt Bishop, a UC Davis computer science professor. "They could create chaos by disenfranchising voters."



Los Angeles County Voter Registrar Dean Logan says: "There's also an ongoing myth that we don't count mail ballots unless it's a close contest. We always count all ballots."



National security officials revealed last year that Russian hackers tried to break into 21 states' election systems in 2016.

California apparently wasn't one, despite an initial report by the Department of Homeland Security. The agency later corrected itself and said Russian hackers had actually "scanned" the state Department of Technology's network, not the Secretary of State's.



"Our notification [from Homeland Security] was not only a year late," Padilla complained at the time. "It also turned out to be bad information."



In Sacramento, Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature recently appropriated $134 million to upgrade county voting systems and defend them against hackers.



Padilla criticized the Republican-led Congress for rejecting a $250 million appropriation that would have helped states protect their voting systems.



"Intelligence officials have been crystal clear: Our democracy is, and will continue to be, under attack by Russia and others," he said in a statement.



(c)2018 the Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.








The body found off Hood Road in Livingston Parish early Friday morning has been identified as a missing Texas man.

Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard said Monday that the man, Fermin Pecina, 38, died of a single gunshot wound.

Ard said Pecina had been staying in the Baton Rouge area for the past few weeks.

Pecina's family reported him missing to the Baton Rouge Police Department on Aug. 11, said Baton Rouge Police spokesman Sgt. Don Coppola Jr.

Livingston Parish Sheriff's spokeswoman Lori Steele said Pecina is from Corpus Christi.

The case is being investigated as a homicide. Steele said suicide has been ruled out "based on the evidence."

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Ard said Friday the man was found around 7 a.m. after a driver spotted the body along Hood Road. Steele said the body was located 3.2 miles east of Walker Road South.

The sheriff said investigators believe the man was dead at least 8 hours before he was found. He said family helped identify the body.

Steele would not comment on what Pecina was doing in Louisiana or whether there are any suspects.

The investigation is ongoing.
PORT ALLEN  Two recent hires for the city's police department didn't last a week before calling it quits, leading a councilman to suggest  unsuccessfully, it turns out  a moratorium on any new hires until they can figure out why the department has such a high turnover rate.

The two recent departures are cops who were just hired July 11 and were among 30 officers Police Chief Esdron Brown has hired since January 2013. More than half that number  16  have either quit, been fired or retired since he was elected to his first term in 2012.

The police department is budgeted for 16 full-time police officers.

Brown has said Port Allen isn't the only small-town police department struggling to retain officers. One major factor, he said, is competition from surrounding towns and parishes that pay higher wages, provide more-affordable health insurance and offer more specialized training and better equipment.

Starting pay in Port Allen for officers who have completed Peace Officers Standards and Training is $45,186 annually. In comparison, starting salary for P.O.S.T.-certified officers in Brusly is $30,720 a year, in New Roads it's about $24,000 annually and in Baton Rouge it's nearly $40,000 a year.

Councilman Garry Hubble says he's not buying Brown's arguments and will refuse to keep approving Brown's requests for permission to hire if the police chief can't stop the police station's revolving door from spinning.

"He claims its happening all over the country, but when you look at the numbers, it's disproportionate to what were going through," Hubble said. "For us to sit there and keep advertising for positions and hiring folks without remedying the problem is the definition of insanity."

At Wednesday's council meeting, Hubble tried to block Brown's request to advertise his two recently vacated slots by voting against the measure, along with fellow councilman Hugh "Hootie" Reviere.

Brown, however, will get the opportunity to make the hires thanks to Councilmen Ray Helen Lawrence, Brandon Brown and Mayor Richard Lee, who had to step in a break the tie vote on advertising the vacant positions.

Councilman Carey Williams was absent from the meeting.

Talk over the turnover in the police department comes at a time when Brown also faces criticism over an unsolved murder from the family and friends of a 28-year-old Fatrell Queen, who was fatally shot inside his home in November. They criticized Brown and his department for not properly communicating with them about the investigation and not bringing in outside agencies to assist in the investigation.

+2 Port Allen council urges police chief to seek assistance in unsolved homicide investigation PORT ALLEN  The City Council is urging Police Chief Esdron Brown to ask an outside agency for help in the investigation of the unsolved slayi

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And in June, a federal civil rights lawsuit was filed against Brown by former officer Patrick Marshall, who claimed the police chief tried to force him to attend mandatory religious counseling sessions, and when the officer refused, Brown retaliated with disciplinary actions that included threats of suspension or job termination. Marshall resigned in November 2017. Brown has denied those allegations.

Despite giving Brown the approval to seek more officers, every council member expressed the same concerns over the police department's turnover rate, but none seemed all that eager to entertain Hubble's suggestion for a moratorium.

"If we can't do that, I would like to have a separate entity come in an investigate the problem," Hubble said, likening the police department to a "hornet's nest." "The numbers don't lie. I threw that out to see where it would go. Guess the council wants to keep hiring and keep hiring since I dont see what we have now changing."

The two officers who recently left were among the three the council approved hiring for at its July 11 meeting. According to minutes from the meeting, all three officers started working July 25.

According to the city's chief financial officer, one new hire quit after working only two days and the other quit by July 31.

Brown said the officers leaving had nothing to do with the department but he couldn't get into details since it was a personnel matter.

Mayor Lee said he read the notice one of the officers submitted and she praised the police department but also didn't provide specific details why she left.

Lawsuit: Port Allen police chief imposed religious beliefs on officers, wanted 'saved' department PORT ALLEN  A former officer with the city's police department is claiming Police Chief Esdron Brown tried to force him to attend mandatory r

"There's nothing Im doing to run someone off," Brown said. "If they want to leave, it's because they can't measure up to my high standards."

Brown said any blame being thrown his way over the department's turnover rate also falls on the shoulders of the City Council, which holds the purse strings for his department.

"They determine the budget and what kind of money I get," Brown said. "They determine the kinds of equipment, training and cars my officers get to do their job."

As for Hubble's continued criticism, Brown said, "Why is he complaining when Port Allen was recently named the third safest city in the state? Seems like they should be giving the police department a pat on the back."

The National Council for Home Safety and Security rated Louisiana municipalities in 2017 for safety, based on violent crimes and property crimes per population. Harahan and Patterson came in first and second, respectively. Port Allen came in third. The council is a national trade association for licensed alarm installers and contractors.
Gov. John Bel Edwards joined other Democratic governors in Colorado last week for a discussion on divisive politics and how states can work to unite people.

Folks are just anxious, the Aspen Daily News quoted Edwards as saying Friday at the Aspen Institute event. We ought not to vilify anyone. I dont talk about Trump backers as crazy or racist.

Gov. John Bel Edwards addresses ALEC meeting of legislators in New Orleans Gov. John Bel Edwards on Wednesday welcomed state legislators from around the country to New Orleans for the annual meeting of ALEC -- a lobby

Edwards, who is running for re-election next year against an inevitable but still to be determined Republican challenger or challengers, was joined by Govs. Steve Bullock of Montana, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Jay Inslee of Washington and Dannel Malloy of Connecticut for the Aspen Institute's Democratic governors panel dubbed "Uniting a Divided Nation Starting with the States."

A day earlier, Edwards traveled to Bedminster, N.J., to meet with Trump and other leaders about prison reform efforts. Edwards was the only Democrat that the White House invited to take part.

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Gov. John Bel Edwards invites President Donald Trump to tour Angola, see state's criminal justice overhaul Gov. John Bel Edwards has invited President Donald Trump to Louisiana to tour the State Penitentiary at Angola and see ongoing efforts to over

During that meeting, Edwards gave Trump a written invitation to come to Louisiana to see criminal justice overhaul and tour the State Penitentiary at Angola. The White House has confirmed receipt of the invitation but no details of a possible trip have been announced.

The governor's office did not issue a public advisory ahead of Edwards' talk at the Aspen Institute, which was open to the public.

Edwards administration sent multiple public notices ahead of his meeting with Trump, and released an advisory for a speech he gave last week to the conservative-leaning American Legislative Exchange Council, commonly called ALEC.
Interim Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, R-Baton Rouge, talks to reporters about his last-minute decision to run in the special election for secretary of state, on Friday, July 20, 2018, in Baton Rouge, La. Friday was the last day of the sign-up period for the Nov. 6 ballot. (AP Photo/Melinda Deslatte) ORG XMIT: RPMD104
An officer of the law should not have to put up with threats to his job when he arrests somebody. But two men from Livingston and Tangipahoa parishes won a lawsuit, on constitutional grounds, after they were accused of public intimidation.

A federal appeals court agreed with U.S. district judges who found the language of the current law against public intimidation too broad.

The appellate ruling stems from two lawsuits filed by men in Livingston and Tangipahoa parishes who were booked on public intimidation after threatening to get the officers arresting them fired.

"Because the meaning of 'threat' is broad enough to sweep in threats to take lawful, peaceful actions  such as threats to sue a police officer or challenge an incumbent officeholder  (the law) is unconstitutionally overbroad," according to an opinion published Friday by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Louisiana has a public intimidation law that makes it a felony to "use violence, force or threats upon (a person) with the intent to influence his conduct in relation to his position, employment or duty." The law applies to public employees, jurors, trial witnesses, election officials and school bus drivers. It carries a maximum penalty of five years at hard labor.

We know of no case in which such a harsh maximum penalty was imposed. In the case of the Livingston and Tangipahoa men, when the incidents appeared to result in no harm to others, local officials declined to prosecute. Even so, the accused men filed lawsuits over the public intimidation charges.

The First Amendment to the Constitution is intended to protect free speech, and in a society as diverse as the United States, it must be broadly construed. Our liberties are precious, and the courts acted rightly to signal to the state that the public intimidation statute must be rewritten or shelved.

The attorney general's office is required to defend the state's laws and had reasonably pursued an appeal to the 5th Circuit judges in the lawsuits. Still, we question whether further appeals would be a waste of money and time for the state over this kind of case.

That said, what do guys think they're doing when threatening officers with political repercussions for their actions? Society should frown on these kinds of threats, even if the language of the U.S. and state constitutions does protect some people from criminal prosecution in such cases.
Hogan said he got the idea several weeks back when he went to a car show and someone else had a Chucky doll on their car. Chucky is the lead character in a series of horror movies about an evil doll come to life. Hogan said he noticed no kids were getting near the car and touching its paint.
Photographs from 'Looking Again'

Felix Moissenet, Portrait of a Man, The New Orleans Museum of Art: Museum Purchase, Maya and James Brace Fund, 2013.22

Daniel Louis Mundy, The Extinct Dinornis or Moa Bird, The New Orleans Museum of Art: Museum purchase, 1981 Deaccessioned Auction Funds, 82.44

Charlotte (Lotte) Stam-Beese, Albert Braun with Mirror, The New Orleans Museum of Art: Museum Purchase, General Acquisitions Fund, 82.102

Leslie Gill, Garden of Sculptor, Elie Nadelman, New York, The New Orleans Museum of Art: Gift of New Orleans Museum of Art Exhibition Fund, 83.156.2

Lewis Wickes Hine, Mechanic and Steam Pump, The New Orleans Museum of Art: , 74.84 Imogen Cunningham, Rubber Plant, The New Orleans Museum of Art: Gift of Clarence John Laughlin, 82.281.86

Marta Kuhn-Weber, Street Woman, The New Orleans Museum of Art: Museum purchase, Women's Volunteer Committee Fund, 74.63

Clarence John Laughlin, A Mangled Staircase (No. 2), The New Orleans Museum of Art: Bequest of Clarence John Laughlin, 85.118.59

Robert Disraeli, Industrialization, The New Orleans Museum of Art: Museum purchase, General Acquisitions Fund, 81.173
Yes. Covid cases have been low and the city is ready

No. It's way too soon, especially with the holiday season

Do what you want, but I'm still wearing a mask

Def keeping my plague doctor costume for 2022

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August is about as far in the calendar as one can get from Mardi Gras  either the last one or the next one.

But south Louisiana's annual late winter bacchanal is never far from the minds of boosters of Jefferson Parish, where flagging parade attendance, shrinking krewes and questions about the celebration's future have driven officials and krewe captains to consider ways to revive a once-vibrant Metairie tradition.

Uncertainty about construction schedules at Clearview Shopping Center is throwing an additional monkey wrench into plans. For years, most east bank Carnival parades have staged in the shopping center's parking lot. But the recent sale of the Sears building to the shopping center's owners and their announced plans to develop it mean that parking lot may not be available beyond this year.

It's just another headache that Parish Councilwoman Jennifer Van Vrancken and other parish leaders including President Mike Yenni, along with the krewe captains, are having to consider.

"We have been looking at different potential routes," Van Vrancken said Friday. Changing the Metairie parade route is not a new idea; krewes have been floating the idea for years. But with the changes coming to the shopping center and declining attendance, the idea has taken on a new urgency, Van Vrancken said.

Several potential route changes have been mentioned: an east-to-west route along Veterans Boulevard, one along Metairie Road and another that would originate at the Baby Cakes ballpark on Airline Drive and run along Transcontinental Drive are all in the mix. But each presents difficulties as well as benefits, Van Vrancken said, and as yet, no final route has been selected.

New routes are not the only ideas being considered.

Van Vrancken said Jefferson needs to be able to attract new parading krewes. Right now, the parish requires each parade to have at least 10 floats and eight marching bands. That's hard on new krewes, she said. New krewes may need to be given a grace period to build up to those numbers, she said.

+3 Why Jefferson Parish Council awarded money to two more Carnival krewes, totaling $85K The Jefferson Parish Council on Wednesday allocated $25,000 each to two Carnival krewes that one councilman said are key to helping lure touri

For 2019, Jefferson Parish lost one parade when the Corps de Napoleon opted not to parade next year. But a new krewe, the Krewe of Kings, has stepped up with a planned 17-float parade, according to a review of applications for parade permits.

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The Krewe of Kings plans to roll on Feb. 24, the Sunday after Family Gras, which remains a big attraction in Jefferson. Van Vrancken suggested that perhaps more parades could roll that weekend, when competition from big New Orleans parades is not as stiff as on the celebration's final weekend.

"We have strong crowds in Metairie that weekend," she said. "It's less strong the next weekend, when there are some strong parades in New Orleans," notably Endymion and Bacchus.

Other ideas include running some parades back to back so that watchers will get to see more floats and catch more throws. The parish also may consider offering some incentive for Jefferson krewes to put on a good show, something similar to Rhythm on the Route, a competition that offers cash prizes to the best marching bands in Jefferson.

No decisions on such programs have been made, Van Vrancken said.

For krewe captains, the uncertainty is frustrating.

"There's been so much indecision from parish leaders, we don't know what's going on," said Bob Carnesi, captain of Caesar, one of Jefferson's largest krewes. "Somebody's got to make some decisions one way or another."

Carnesi said most of the talk has been about the potential route changes, with several krewes favoring a route that would include Transcontinental.

Membership attrition hasn't avoided his krewe, either. This year, Caesar will have a couple of floats for its former maids, and the krewe is still considering whether to open its membership to women.

Van Vrancken said her goal is to bring Jefferson's Carnival back to what she recalls from when she was a child and used to watch the parades along Severn Avenue in Metairie with her family.

"It's something that I know adds to the quality of life," she said. "I want to see it return to a vibrance that we have struggled to maintain."
Lawyers have filed a class-action lawsuit against the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board for damage caused by last year's Aug. 5 flood.

The suit, filed in Civil District Court last week, alleges the S&WB failed to properly maintain its drainage system or to provide adequate notice to residents about the many problems with the system.

The suit seeks compensation for damage caused by the flood to vehicles, buildings and other property throughout Mid-City, Treme and other areas of the city.

"This flood was a big deal. People were not forewarned about this flood; no signal went out," attorney Michael Whitaker said. "This substantially impacted their lives."

S&WB officials declined to discuss the suit, citing a policy against commenting on pending litigation.

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The attorneys who filed the suit are with Bruno & Bruno and the Whitaker Firm, the same two firms representing hundreds of Uptown plaintiffs suing the S&WB over damage their homes sustained during work on the massive Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project.

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The new suit outlines the many problems with the drainage system that have been revealed over the past year, including pumps that were out of service on Aug. 5, electrical turbines that broke down and limited the S&WB's ability to power its equipment, and staffing shortages.

All of those, combined with repeated false assurances from the top S&WB officials at the time that everything was working as intended, amount to negligence on the part of the public utility, according to the suit.

"At the time this flood happened, the situation and readiness of these pumps was disgraceful," Whitaker said. "That the management at the time misrepresented their readiness was even worse."

Whitaker said many of the claims made in the suit were validated in a draft version of a "root cause analysis" of the flood commissioned by former Mayor Mitch Landrieu. That report was released to The New Orleans Advocate last week in response to a public-records request.

However, Whitaker said it still could be difficult to prove the S&WB is legally on the hook for damage from the flood.

"I think it is fair to say it will likely be a difficult lawsuit," he said. "But it needs to be done for these people who were affected."
Months after a judge ruled in favor of a small group of homeowners who said construction of a mammoth drainage project in Uptown New Orleans had caused major damage to their houses, hundreds of more cases continue to remain in limbo.

The Sewerage & Water Board continues to fight against the claims of nearly 300 such homeowners, who say the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project cracked the foundations of their houses or caused other costly damage.

And as homes remain unrepaired and legal fees that already total more than the cost of the damages mount, members of the New Orleans City Council are pushing the S&WB to reach settlements quickly rather than continue to drag out the cases in a process that could take years to resolve.

The idea of fighting those lawsuits is ridiculous, said Councilman Jay H. Banks, whose district includes the area around Napoleon Avenue where most of the damage claims come from.

Those houses have been damaged, and if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, theres a high likelihood that its a duck, he said of the belief that the flood control work caused the damage.

The project at the center of the lawsuits, generally known as SELA, is a huge effort aimed at improving the ability of drainage systems throughout the New Orleans area to handle heavy rainstorms. While the project is being overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers, that agencys agreement with the S&WB puts the utility on the hook for damage claims.

So far, the cases have moved slowly through the court system as the S&WB has battled on various fronts.

It seemed there might be a breakthrough earlier this year, when the first five plaintiffs went to trial and Civil District Court Judge Nakisha Ervin-Knott awarded them a total of $518,000 in a ruling that also established the S&WBs responsibility for the damage.

Judge rules S&WB owes $500K to 5 Uptown homeowners for damage caused by SELA project A New Orleans judge has awarded five Uptown residents a total of a half-million dollars for damage to their homes caused by construction work 

The S&WB, however, is appealing that judgment.

Those pushing for quick settlements gained a new argument last month, when Ervin-Knott ordered the S&WB to pay an additional $577,000 to cover the plaintiffs legal fees.

I would much prefer to see those resources spent on fixing the houses than on paying attorneys fees, Banks said. I realize there are things that are complicated and different nuances to everything, but this one does not seem to have any rational reasoning that I can figure out.

The S&WB declined to answer questions about why the agency continues to pursue its current strategy, citing the ongoing litigation. An attorney for the S&WB, questioned by a City Council committee last month, also declined to shed light on what might be holding up an overall settlement.

Michael Whitaker, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said that by continuing to contest the remaining cases, the S&WB is just continuing to rack up legal fees.

Were we able to negotiate a reasonable settlement or a settlement procedure, they would recognize a significant discount on the claims because we dont have to take the cases to trial, Whitaker said.

This is a losing proposition (for the board). Youve got to end this, not just because its the right thing to do but because its the sensible economic thing to do, he said.

Suit seeking damages from S&WB for Uptown drainage work could be headed to trial after ruling A 2-year-old lawsuit by homeowners and businesses who say the Sewerage & Water Board should have to pay for damages they incurred during c

Beyond the mounting legal costs, continuing to fight the claims also means it could be years before any of the plaintiffs get the money to fix their houses. The next group of 10 plaintiffs is scheduled to go to trial in October; another trial is set for January.

Some of the claims paid out by the S&WB could even be credited against the $305 million, plus interest, that the utility must pay the Corps over 30 years as its share of the project.

However, Corps officials said the two agencies' agreement places strict limits on how close the damage must be to the construction site in order for the S&WB to use any money it pays to offset the amount it owes the federal government. In most cases, that impact zone does not extend far enough to cover the houses that line the avenues where the work occurred, said Ricky Boyett, a spokesman for the Corps.

City Councilman Jason Williams, speaking at last months committee meeting, said the S&WB should go to the negotiating table rather than continue to fight the cases, arguing that the only people who make out well at the trials are the lawyers. Williams is a criminal defense lawyer.

The Sewerage & Water Board is going to have to pay something, and putting it off is not in the boards best interest and its not in the homeowners best interest, Williams said. To the extent that we can make this right by ending it and not dragging it on, I think that makes a lot of sense.

Years of neglect, broken drainage system the culprit in 2017 floods, report confirms New Orleans officials long failed to respond to the growing threat posed by a broken drainage system, and that neglect contributed to the seve
His first name may be Christian, and he may love the pope, but Christian Day is a witch. Just ask him.

Day and his husband, Brian Cain, have welcomed others who practice witchcraft and magic to New Orleans for the past four years, with hundreds from around the world coming to the Bourbon Orleans Hotel for the annual HexFest.

Day said that with the citys history of tolerating, and even reverencing, voodoo and witchcraft, the first three years of the festival were nothing but welcoming.

Not this year.

Over the weekend, the festival's witches, voodoo priestesses and conjurors were joined in the French Quarter by Christian groups, who protested and prayed outside St. Louis Cathedral.

Day said he respected their right to protest, even though he thought they were wrong  he took serious issue with their calling festival participants demonic and Satanic  but what he found under his door Saturday crossed a line.

The one-page message, left under the door of nearly every room in the hotel, condemned the festival, saying in part, The Angels of the Most High are surrounding the city and you cannot prevail.

This is a terrorizing act. It is a frightening act, Day said. What an absolutely atrocious welcome mat for our nation to have a family from Australia come all the way to America to be terrorized in their hotel room.

The letter was anonymous, and no one has taken responsibility for it, though groups including the Catholic youth organization TFP Student Action were on hand for the protest Saturday.

Day said he was told others had heard young people in the halls talking about putting the messages under doors late Friday night.

Thats not an act anyone at the festival would even think of doing, Day added, saying that witchcraft  which he said was officially recognized as a religion by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986  is badly misrepresented.

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It is all about channeling ones energy to do good in the world, he said.

How to put that into practice is the purpose of the festival, with the weekend filled with workshops like bone cross juju, conjure dolls for all your needs and celestial sorcery. It also included a trip to Marie Laveaus tomb and an opening ritual aboard the Creole Queen.

Day said the festival has doubled in size since it started in 2015, when about 150 people attended. Now, that numbers over 300, and it includes well-known members of the magical community and those Day said are still in the broom closet.

One of those attending  and offering a workshop  was Starr Casas, a self-described conjuror.

Casas said shes always felt at home in the witchery community even though she still follows Christianity. Thats why she was especially upset at the protests.

Jesus was a healer. Mary was a healer. So are they sinners? Casas said. I dont like being called a devil, and I dont like being called a Satanist because I am none of those.

Day said Satanism is not a respected part of the witchery community, calling those who follow it radical and attention-seeking.

But he has a message for those who try to scare his community: They would have a better time with their mythical Satan than with me.

I dont protest with nuns. I show up with scantily-clad bikini women in pointy hats, he said. They picked a fight with the wrong person. I will not watch the guests of our festival terrorized or intimidated without severe retaliation in all legal ways. If they want to see what a legal protest can look like, I can push the boundaries of taste.

HexFest concluded with a ritual Sunday night, but Day and other participants are already looking forward to next year. HexFest 2019 is scheduled for Aug. 9-11.

Editor's note: This story was changed Aug. 13 to remove a reference to protesters from St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church in Metairie. That group did not attend the protests.
A rideshare driver was stabbed in the French Quarter while out on a break from driving early Monday morning, according to the New Orleans Police Department.

Around the intersection of Bourbon and Iberville Streets, a woman approached the driver and the two began to argue, police say. The woman allegedly grabbed a broken glass bottle and stabbed the rideshare driver, a 39-year-old woman, in the neck.

The victim drove herself to a local hospital, police said.

The incident occurred around 3:24 a.m.

Police reported two other aggravated batteries and one armed robbery in New Orleans since Sunday:

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--In the Lower Ninth Ward, a 21-year-old woman and a juvenile were in an argument when the juvenile allegedly pulled out a knife and stabbed the woman in the chest, according to NOPD. The woman was transported by EMS to an area hospital. The juvenile was arrested, police said.

The incident occurred around 2:14 p.m. Sunday on the 1400 block of Egania Street.

--Later Sunday, a 35-year-old man went into Discount East in the 4900 block of Downman Road in New Orleans East and told the casher that he had been shot, NOPD said. Officers saw several bullet wounds in the man's car. The man was transported to an area hospital by EMS. The incident occurred around 8:40 p.m.

--Finally, a CVS in New Orleans East was robbed by a man with a semi-automatic gun Sunday evening, NOPD said. A man walked into the shop and allegedly pointed the gun at the cashier, who gave him money from the register, police said. The man fled with the cash. The armed robbery occurred around 8:39 p.m. on the 5900 block of Read Boulevard.
Sewer system overflows in state Rep. Paul Hollis' Mandeville-area neighborhood spurred the legislator to push for the creation of a statewide panel to investigate sewage spills and figure out ways to stop them.

The Sanitary Sewer Systems Overflows Commission, created during the Legislature's regular session this year, will hold its first meeting at 1 p.m. Aug. 28 at the State Capitol, according to a news release. But many more meetings will follow, according to Hollis, who will chair the panel.

The commission will hold hearings in areas of the state that have the most problems with leaky sewer pipes and troubled sewage treatment plants, Hollis said.

Experts in sewer systems will be invited to testify, the Republican lawmaker said in a news release. The public will be encouraged to voice their experiences, challenges and frustrations."

Hollis said the objective of the panel, which by law will expire March 1, is to create thoughtful, bipartisan legislation in time for the 2019 session that has buy-in from experts and the public.

Initially, Hollis had planned to introduce legislation requiring automated reporting equipment on sewerage lift stations with a history of problems, like the one in his own subdivision, Grande Maison.

But he discovered that five of the six spills he had personally documented were never reported to the state Department of Environmental Quality, raising the question of whether there is good enough documentation to identify the troubled spots.

Reporting issues in St. Tammany Parish have continued to be a source of contention, culminating in a heated Parish Council meeting in May when council members delayed signing off on eight Municipal Wastewater Pollution Prevention reports prepared by Tammany Utilities East, the parish-owned water and sewer system.

Homeowners had turned out in force to complain that the utility was underreporting spills, with Chuck Lamarche, president of the Cross Gates Homeowners Association, saying that only three spills from his neighborhood were included in one document even though there had been six.

The Parish Council finally signed off on the reports at its Aug. 6 meeting after hearing a presentation from Greg Gordon, director of Environmental Services for the parish, who outlined a series of changes he said have been made at Tammany Utilities to ensure accurate reporting in the future.

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Gordon said an independent audit of work orders from 2017 found that 54 spills in all were not reported to the state. He said a new work order procedure has been put in place that includes a follow-up the day after a spill happens and monthly reviews to ensure that all spills are reported to the state.

Gordon said the utility has met with DEQ, and there might be some action in the form of a compliance order.

Tammany Utilities has ordered 80 auto dialers that will alert personnel to a problem before a spill happens, he said, and an additional 100 will be included in next year's budget.

Tammany Utilities has also, at the urging of a Parish Council work group, set up a preventive maintenance schedule for all its equipment.

"I don't want sewage hitting the ground. That's not a good thing," Gordon said, adding that the utility has "cleaned up the way we report."

But Lamarche, who spoke at the meeting, urged the Parish Council to get an independent outside review of the report for Cross Gates before signing off on it because of the past problems.

Lamarche also criticized Parish President Pat Brister, who he said had filed an objection to Hollis' bill that formed the state commission. And he raised objections to Gordon's appointment to the panel, which he described as the fox watching the hen house.

Gordon was appointed to the commission by the Police Jury Association.

Other members are Sen. Jack Donahue, R-Mandeville, vice chairman; Clarence Beebe, mayor of Hornbeck, representing the Louisiana Municipal Association; Pat Credeur, executive director of the Louisiana Rural Water Association; Kristi Trail, executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation; Amanda Laughlin, chief engineer in the Louisiana Department of Health; and state DEQ Secretary Chuck Carr Brown.
Continuing evidence to the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry suggests this pillar of our economy and society has been beset by termites.

In recent days, former High Court judge Kenneth Haynes probe has expanded the potential consequences for the banks; in some cases the wrongdoing has been so egregious it may have transgressed not only corporate statutes, but also criminal law.

Commissioner Kenneth Hayne.

The community has a right to feel angry and alarmed by the evidence to an inquiry long resisted by the banks and by the government. Appalling behaviour so far revealed includes charging fees for no service, selling inappropriate products, fraud, lying to regulators, market rigging and concealing commissions. The full list is much longer. Widely published and broadcast testimony being prised from unwilling executives has devalued the banks most precious currency, the communitys trust.
The fierce scrutiny of bank misconduct is eating into the profits of National Australia Bank, which said it would take extra provisions in the second half for "regulatory compliance investigations."

NAB flagged the extra provisions - money set aside to cover a liability - in a trading update on Tuesday, which said unaudited cash profit was 3 per cent lower in annual terms in the June quarter, at $1.65 billion.

NAB's bottomline result dipped because of higher spending on investment and credit impairment charges. Credit:Pat Scala

After Commonwealth Bank's profits last week fell 5 per cent because of its many compliance woes, NAB chief executive Andrew Thorburn signalled the bank would also be feeling the impact of compliance shortcomings in its second half.

"As we make progress towards resolving several previously disclosed regulatory compliance investigations, we expect to recognise additional provisions in the 2H18 result, noting there are significant uncertainties in determining a provisioning outcome at this time," he said in a statement.
One of National Australia Bank's top executives has been accused of "not being candid" with the corporate watchdog, after the bank omitted the full extent of a $33.7 million customer refund from its communication with the regulator.

Commissioner Kenneth Hayne also described the bank's communication strategy with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) as "saying 'ask us what you like, but we won't tell you what to ask'."

NAB group executive Andrew Hagger on Monday faced a sustained grilling over the bank's "fees for no service" problems, and in particular its 2016 decision not to give ASIC its latest estimates about how much compensation it would have to pay.
Learning to Follow 'Vanguard' Loading Bronfman's arrest was astonishing in part because of the Bronfman family's standing in New York business and philanthropic circles. Her father was a major benefactor of Jewish organisations, and several of the five children from his first marriage have had high-profile careers. A son, Edgar Bronfman Jr., once served as chief executive of Warner Music. Sara and Clare Bronfman were born to their father's third wife and are 20 years younger than some of their half-siblings. After their parents divorced, when they were 7 and 4, they left New York and grew up in Kenya and England, according to a 2010 article in Vanity Fair.

It was Sara Bronfman who introduced her sister to Nxivm in the early 2000s. The group, which was based in Albany, New York, offered its members workshops that it said were designed to help participants achieve greater self-fulfillment by removing emotional and psychological roadblocks. At the time, the Bronfman sisters, who were then in their early 20s, were opposites in both appearance and personality. Sara was blonde, outgoing and likable, and appeared to be seeking a direction in life. Clare, who is extremely thin and has a narrow face and brown hair, struck Nxivm members as dour and socially awkward. She also already had a passion. As a teenager, she had become an equestrian, going on to compete in international events and open a farm to train horses. Smallville actress Allison Mack is also a defendant in the case. Credit:AP At first, Clare Bronfman appeared to have little interest in joining Nxivm. But several meetings with Raniere turned her into a believer. She also apparently fell in love with Raniere, who had sexual relationships with many Nxivm women, several former members said. Starting in the late 1990s, approximately 16,000 people took his courses and some were drawn deeply into the group, giving up careers and past ties to become followers of Raniere, who was referred to as "Vanguard." In the early 2000s, Edgar Bronfman Sr. also took some Nxivm training courses, before quickly losing interest. Several former Nxvim members said that Raniere was convinced that the businessman was behind the negative Forbes article about him. He blamed the Bronfman sisters for the episode, those former members said, and used it to exert control over them.

In the mid-2000s, Edgar Bronfman Jr., while he was head of Warner Music, also apparently once came to Albany at the request of his sisters to help judge a Nxivm-sponsored a cappella singing contest, said several people familiar with his visit. (Bronfman did not respond to emails seeking comment.) 'Very degrading and reprimanding' As Clare Bronfman's authority within Nxivm grew, she did not hesitate to wield it, several former members of the group said. When people she hired to work for her asked for higher pay, for example, the heiress said no and lectured them about appreciating the value of money. "I found her very degrading and very reprimanding," said one ex-Nxivm member, Bonnie Piesse, who is married to Vicente, the former Nxivm official who witnessed Bronfman interviewing her father about the group. "She was very cold."

For more than a decade, the Bronfman sisters used their substantial fortunes to underwrite Nxivm in a variety of ways. To raise Raniere's profile, they arranged for the Dalai Lama to visit Albany. The group made use of a private jet they provided to ferry celebrities it was courting as recruits. Clare Bronfman also bought an island in Fiji that Raniere and other Nxivm officials used as a retreat. Sara Bronfman eventually married and had children, and her involvement in the group diminished. But Clare Bronfman's singular focus stayed on Raniere and Nxivm. Along with financing the organisation, she started two nonprofit organisations to promulgate its ideas. NXIVM founder Keith Raniere. Credit:YouTube One of them, the Ethical Science Foundation, conducted a study to see if Nxivm's training techniques could be used to treat people with Tourette's syndrome, a disorder marked by involuntary tics or verbal outbursts. A Nxivm-affiliated doctor associated with that study also carried out a bizarre experiment in which female followers of Raniere were shown films containing scenes of extreme violence while their facial expressions were videotaped. It is not known whether Bronfman was aware of that study and, if so, whether she approved of it. But none of the recent revelations about Raniere or Nxivm's practices appear to have shaken her belief in the group.

$US100 million bail By all accounts, Bronfman was initially unaware of the secret sorority within Nxivm, or the branding of its members' flesh. But after its practices became public in October, she leapt to Raniere's defense, posting a statement that extolled his virtues and described the sorority as a voluntary group whose members benefited from it. Actress Catherine Oxenberg's daughter India has recently left NXIVM. Credit:AP "I've seen so much good come from both our programs and from Keith himself," Bronfman wrote. "It would be a tragedy to lose the innovative and transformational ideas and tools that continue to improve the lives of so many."
Small business owner Phoebe Bell believes scammers were watching her emails "for months" before they swiped $10,000 from her homewares operation, Sage and Clare.

Earlier this year, the company placed a stock order with an unnamed supplier. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the interaction  Bell outlined the required stock and emailed back and forth for weeks about the order.

Sage and Clare owner Phoebe Bell says the experience has shaken "my self-confidence, because I thought I was smarter than that".

The supplier then gave details of a new bank account to pay the money into for the order. This was not unusual, Bell says, because suppliers often change their details.

Sage and Clare paid $10,000 into the requested account, but after strange emails kept coming from the supplier, Bell had a bad feeling.
The University of Sydney research says dropping the cancer label from low-risk conditions may protect patients from unnecessary and aggressive treatments. Once they hear the C word, they want the most invasive treatment possible in order to cut the cancer from their bodies. They cant bear the silent waiting, the active surveillance.

The senior author of the new report, Kirsten McCaffery, a professor of behavioural science with an international reputation in screening, shared decision making and health literacy, says getting men to see the doctor may be a side benefit of a better way of talking about these low-risk cancers and that medicine now understands that not all cancers are the same. She believes it may help reduce the prevalence of horrible surgeries and horrible treatments. Shes also confident it could make the whole idea of regular check-ups less anxiety-producing  and thats a very good thing for us all. We need evidence-based decisions, not fear-based decisions.

These are turtle cancers, that are very slow and there is no need to have immediate surgeries and radical treatments. We are working from a 19th century definition of cancer, when cancer was a death sentence, says McCaffery. As she puts it, We know there are many men who avoid going to see the doctor because they are fearful something is wrong and they would rather not think about it. This new approach could reduce that anxiety. 

But is that enough? John Macdonald, leader of the mens health team and professor of primary care at Western Sydney University, tells me he hears women reproaching each other in the supermarket for not getting their Pap smears or mammograms. And I admit its the kind of thing I might do to a friend. While he says the changes to the language we might use around cancer could help, we need to set men up to want to visit the doctor, as opposed to relying on their nagging partners (as little fun for the nagger as it is for the nagee).

We need to tell them that taking care of themselves is not wussy, says Macdonald. He also believes doctors must take responsibility and make their services more male-friendly. He reminds me that Australia is one of only three countries in the world with a national mens health policy but nobody ever refers to it.
When high-school sweethearts Mathew and Alysia Kaiser got married in front of family and friends in a park on Arthurs Seat, they promised to always love and care for each other.

But six years later, Alysia, 31, and Mathew, 32, are not able to live together. Alysia has been waiting almost a year and a half for the National Disability Insurance Scheme to provide the basic equipment she needs to live at home.

Alysia Kaiser, who has muscular dystrophy, can't live at home with her husband without the equipment she needs. Credit:Chris Hopkins

Instead Alysia, who has muscular dystrophy and requires 24-hour access to a ventilator, has to live in a room in a supported accommodation facility in Thornbury, in Melbournes north.

Shes lonely, isolated, and at times has been suicidal, far from her family and community on the Mornington Peninsula. And because of his work commitments, Mathew can only make the three-hour round trip to visit his wife once a week.
Victoria's dry winter is likely to trigger the largest order of desalinated water the state has seen, in a decision that could challenge the government's commitment to keep water bills down.

Melbournes water storage levels have virtually flatlined this winter, for the first time since the millennium drought broke.

They are at 60 per cent, their lowest level in late winter since 2010.

Melbourne Water has advised the government to next year order 100 gigalitres of desalinated water, almost one quarter of the citys annual demand.

This would be followed by an even larger order of 125 gigalitres of desal water in 2020.
A female cyclist was killed in the collision. Credit:Luis Ascui

The driver responsible for the hit-run killing of a Dutch national is being harboured in Melbournes inner suburbs, according to police who say an arrest is imminent.

Detective Inspector Stuart McGregor says police have narrowed their search down to four suspects who match the description of the man caught on CCTV near Sunday's crash site.

All four are yet to be accounted for and most are already known to police.
As students arrive at both schools they will find what was once their library converted into a learning commons. They will be as much a place for study and collaboration as they will for checking out materials.
As a result now acknowledged by the Department of Health and the Environmental Protection Authority, living in Hope Valley and Wattleup exposed residents to potentially toxic air quality that significantly heightened their chances of ill health. According to a 2017 health report, Wattleup and the surrounding Kwinana area has in fact experienced one of the highest rates of colorectal cancer deaths, positive results from bowel cancer screening, and lung cancer death in Perth in recent years. "When we were clearing out Wattleup, we found huge clusters of cancers that were three and four times the cancer rates anywhere else in Western Australia," Mr Kierath said. "There was maps of the pollution and Wattleup and Hope Valley were right smack in those areas. At the time the development plan was examined in parliament, former member for Cockburn Bill Thomas publicly opposed sections of the act on the basis residents should not be forced from their homes - and if they were, to receive a fair acquistion price from LandCorp.

The last of Wattleup's family-owned businesses still based in the area. Credit:Hannah Barry But behind closed doors, Mr Kierath said the pair had conversations where Mr Thomas said he understood the importance of getting residents out of the area. More than 20 years on, Mr Thomas says openly his opinion aligns with Mr Kierath's. "Wattleup quite frankly should have never been built in the first place. It was built on prime industrial land, and the way it's positioned to the north west, it was in the middle of winds coming from the Kwinana industrial port," he said. "It's a planning blight. People should have got out earlier."

So why are 24 residents still sitting inside the ticking time bomb? A potentially deadly wait Some Wattleup residents believe the wait for Landcorp to buy-out properties has put its population further at risk health impacts, and are currently trying to quantify just how many residents have experienced health effects due to living in the suburb through a survey. "My neighbour over the road ... died about two years ago now," Wattleup resident Jim Wade said. "He tried to sell it on to set his family up because he had terminal cancer and Landcorp wouldn't buy his place.

"His wife is stuck there. She's trying to sell. She's got it on the market, but who's going to buy it?" Resident Eva Ricci said she remembers questioning government and its agencies repeatedly about health concerns from living in the Wattleup area when she noticed the significant amount of her neighbours developing terminal illnesses. "There were definitely clusters of cancer, but nobody took that on board," she said. "There was absolutely no acknowledgement at the time that [health concerns] were the reason we were being moved out." A pipe with a sign reading 'caustic soda' runs along a jetty at the Alcoa Corp in Kwinana. Credit:Carla Gottgens

Mr Kierath's admission is the first confirmation Ms Ricci has had in 20 years that her concerns were valid, but she is now worried his statements could have broader implications for those still stuck living in Wattleup. "If it should never have been built, it's now not just the townsite, but also now a whole periphery of people who have been exposed to those same health risks over the years," she said. Fellow resident Kelly Vidovich agreed, and said there was no reason residents should still be living in the area if there were ongoing health concerns. She pointed to a new development being built in nearby Hammond Park. "If moving out for health reasons was the case, why are these new subdivisions being built so bloody close?" she said.

A section of land near Munster up for development. Credit:Harcourt "That's even of more concern than the residents that are left here." A rock and a hard place Despite admissions residents could still be exposed to potentially harmful air quality, the process of getting locals out of Wattleup continues to stall. LandCorp has been charged with buying out the properties, but it's understood the authority experienced problems due to the limited funds it could draw from in order to pay out those sitting on rural properties.

The most current figures regarding property aquisition date back to 2010. "LandCorp completed the acquisition of approximately 459 properties in 2010, which included 142 houses in Hope Valley and 317 houses in Wattleup," LandCorp acting general manager Matt Read said. All single residential town site properties in Hope Valley and Wattleup have been purchased, and 53 rural properties were also bought out due to "hardship". LandCorp said 24 rural property owners still remain on its hardship register. It currently has the funds available to purchase just three.

Member for Kwinana Roger Cook said to his knowledge, the hardship register remained so long after eight years because funding had "dried up" under the Barnett government and was never replenished. "Having kicked off the process way back when, it has simply become stalled, and as a result of that, there are people still left there who can neither sell their properties or get out," he said. "LandCorp's not going to buy them out, but they can't develop their properties either because it's still subject to the overall master planning process. So it's really quite unfair for those people." But LandCorp continues to remain steadfast in that it will only purchase properties using its government funding that fit the "hardship clause" set out in the act. Former lands minister Terry Redman said during his four years involved with authorities between 2013 and 2017, the struggle for hardship and acquisition funding appeared to be the main reason the development had stalled.

"There was certainly no plan by the Barnett government to slow or stop the progress of Latitude 32 development," he said. Many properties in the zone have been locked away after Landcorp purchased them. Credit:Hannah Barry "Advice at the time was that Landcorp had a set budget to fund exit strategies for remaining residents, which of course got used up every year." But Mr Kierath, himself a former minister overseeing land throughout the early 2000s, said the authority's lack of funding was a weak excuse to leave residents stuck in Wattleup. "I would have expected them to acquire as many properties as they could," he said.

Mr Kierath said once plans ticked over a five-year mark and a negotiation hadn't been settled, LandCorp should have begun the process of issuing resumption notices in order to ensure the plan stays on track. A resumption notice warns residents the relevant authority intends to resume ownership of the property, and a landowner does not have to move out straight away. LandCorp was issued the power under the Hope Valley and Wattleup Redevelopment Act. It's pretty weak to say we don't have enough money to buy up the remaining landowners," Mr Kierath said. Eva Ricci, outside her old home in Wattleup. She moved from the home 11 years ago. Credit:Hannah Barry

Ms Ricci said it was becoming almost impossible for Wattleup owners to claim hardship. "You have to prove that you are very, very ill, bloody near death, or financially incumbent to make the hardship register, and then they'd screw you down even harder," she said. "We sold for $328,000. To get a comparable property for a house that was nowhere near the same size we had to pay $760,000. "We had to go into debt. We were debt-free and we had to go into debt. It cost us a fortune. We couldn't find anywhere with the amount of money we had." And to add insult to injury, residents could only sit idly by as West Mundijong was tapped to become the new link between the inner harbour and outer harbour back in June.

"I feel like we've been forgotten," Ms Ricci said. "They've bowled us down like we didn't exist. "They wiped the houses off the face of the earth on the pretext people would forget about it - that they would forget we were ever there." The fight for their future Residents are continuing the fight for their future, and local landowner Brian Vidovich made his latest attempt to find out more back in June. He wrote to the premier's office:

"I again draw your attention to the governments in-action, and failure at a duty of care, regarding hardship funding for the Hope Valley Wattleup Redevelopment Area Act, known as Latitude 32. "Correspondence I sent to you on the May 11 2017, outlined some of the issues experienced by those living in Latitude 32. "You acknowledged the letter and passed it on to your planning minister Rita Saffioti. It has been more than 12 months and there still has been no pro-active or decisive response from you or members of your cabinet. In response to his letter, from the Premier's office: "Dear Mr Vidovich,

"Thank you for your email to the premier ... the matter you have raised falls within the portfolio responsibility of the Minister for Lands, Hon Rita Saffioti MLA, and therefore your correspondence has been forwarded to that office for consideration and any appropriate response." Mr Vidovich has still not received a reply to his letter, but Ms Saffioti provided a statement to WAtoday regarding the status of the development. Rita Saffioti. Credit:Emma Young We are very sympathetic to residential landowners who feel in limbo due to the long-term plans for the Latitude 32 industrial development, she said. There was some initial funding in the 2018/19 budget to progress further property acquisitions from owners facing hardship.
ACT Liberal Senator Zed Seselja will vote against restoring the rights of territories to legalise voluntary euthanasia, saying the removal of restrictions would lead to an assisted dying regime in Canberra with "minimal safeguards".

The Senate will on Tuesday debate a private members' bill from Liberal Democrats Senator David Leyonhjelm that would repeal the 21-year-old Andrews Bill, which nullified the Northern Territory's euthanasia laws and stopped the ACT from bringing in a similar scheme.

ACT Senator Zed Seselja with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in June. Senator Seselja is opposed to euthanasia. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Senator Seselja said he had no doubt voluntary euthanasia would become law in the ACT if Andrews Bill was scrapped.

"Make no mistake, this is not about territory rights, its about human rights. I fear the passage of Senator Leyonhjelms Bill will lead to assisted suicide becoming legal in the ACT under a regime that will have minimal safeguards," Senator Seselja said.
A private member's bill that would clear the way for assisted dying to be legalised across Australia could be passed in the Senate this week, but may not be granted the lower house vote needed to pass into law.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is under pressure from conservatives within the Coalition, has refused to say whether he will bring forward the bill for debate - and a conscience vote - in the House of Representatives.

Liberal Democratic Party senator David Leyonhjelm says he is confident his private member's bill will pass the Senate, where it is due to be debated over three days starting on Tuesday.

Senator David Leyonhjelm believes his bill will pass the Senate this week. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Senator Leyonhjelm has accused Mr Turnbull of reneging on a promise to guarantee that his bill would be subject to a free vote in both houses of Parliament, threatening to block government bills in the Senate in response.
The former leader urged Australians to heed warnings from the chief executive of Tomago Aluminium, Matt Howell, who runs the nations largest aluminium smelter and has warned about need to keep using coal-fired power to sustain industry. Now he is the man who should be listened to, Mr Abbott told the ABC. Yet Tomago Aluminium was a signatory to a letter from the Business Council of Australia on Monday hours before Mr Abbotts interview, urging MPs to back the NEG and blaming policy uncertainty for driving up prices. We call on federal, state and territory parliamentarians to take the necessary steps to implement the Guarantee without further delay this week, said the joint statement led by BCA chief Jennifer Westacott. The letter was endorsed by Alcoa, BHP, BlueScope, Rio Tinto, Shell Australia as well as Tomago Aluminium.

Asked about Mr Turnbulls declaration that to oppose the NEG was to engage in idiocy and ideology on energy policy, Mr Abbott took aim at the Prime Ministers claims and rejected the promises of price cuts from the NEG. Idiocy is doing more of the same and expecting a different result, Mr Abbott told the ABCs 7.30 program. He said it would be wrong to sign up to the NEG to meet the objectives of state and territory governments and argued it was right to reverse course on the Paris agreement on climate change given the United States wanted to withdraw from the pact. There has been no leaking, no briefing against the government, there has been none of it, Mr Abbott said of his behaviour since losing power in 2015, when he vowed not to undermine the government.

Im prepared to back myself against my former colleagues when it comes to playing it straight and playing it fair. Mr Abbott said he chose to speak about policy because he wanted the government to be the best it could be, but he sidestepped a question from host Leigh Sales about whether he was still the countrys most effective opposition leader. The interview came after Mr Turnbull rejected Mr Abbotts remark earlier this month that pigs might fly when asked about modelling showing the NEG would cut power bills. Labor energy spokesman Mark Butler asked Mr Turnbull in Question Time if he agreed with the man he replaced, prompting the Prime Minister to insist the NEG would deliver more affordable energy. The honourable member knows very well what happens when you allow ideology and idiocy to take charge of energy policy, Mr Turnbull replied.

Mr Abbott has a handful of allies in his push to change policy within the Coalition party room on Tuesday, but there were no new voices publicly backing him in the lead-up to the crucial gathering. Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg needs formal approval from the party room for draft legislation to cut emissions by 26 per cent in the electricity sector, a federal law that will guide the NEG. Minister for Environment and Energy Josh Frydenberg on Monday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen While the mechanism of the guarantee will be put into force by state legislation, Mr Frydenberg will outline the policy to the party room to secure an endorsement. He will then resume negotiations with state and territory energy ministers by phone before seeking a final agreement after four weeks of consultation on the state bill.

The government process sets up a key vote in Federal Parliament on emission reductions, given the bill that is put to the Coalition party room on Tuesday is likely to be introduced in to Parliament on Wednesday or Thursday to mandate the 26 per cent reduction. Labor is arguing for a cut of 45 per cent across the economy but will have to decide whether to support the government bill or reject it as inadequate. Nationals MPs emerged from a confidential briefing on energy on Monday morning to express increasing confidence about the NEG in the belief the government will also extension of coal-fired power stations ahead of a crucial vote on the Turnbull governments energy plan. Queensland Liberal National Party MP Scott Buchholz declared the first tranche of the new plan would see the owners of coal-fired power stations start to invest in upgrades to keep generating more electricity for longer. The comments came after Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims briefed the Nationals party room on 56 recommendations to ease price pressures across the electricity market.

The briefing gave Nationals MPs including former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce opportunity to debate whether to embrace the National Energy Guarantee when it goes to the wider Coalition party room on Tuesday. Nationals MPs told Fairfax Media there were no surprises in the briefing but it was a good discussion on the full list of ACCC recommendations. One MP said he continued to back the certainty offered by the National Energy Guarantee. Fairfax Media understands Mr Sims made it clear to the Nationals party room that one of the 56 recommendations in the regulators pricing report in June should not be described as underwriting coal or favouring coal-fired power stations. Instead, Mr Sims was unequivocal that the recommendation was about helping to finance new forms of generation regardless of their technology, ranging from renewables to fossil fuels.
Taipei: At least nine patients have been killed after a fire broke out in a public hospital in northern Taiwan, authorities say.

Fire inspectors view damages after a fire broke out at the Taipei Hospital in Hsinchuang, New Taipei City, Taiwan, on Monday. Credit:EPA

The fire at the New Taipei hospital's hospice care centre, which houses at least 33 critically ill patients, broke out on Monday, the state run Central News Agency reports.

More than 20 patients were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment and of them nine were pronounced dead with 10 others in a critical condition.

DPA
Washington: Former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman secretly taped Chief of Staff John Kelly as he fired her in December in the Situation Room, a breach of security protocols, but one that revealed him suggesting that she could face damage to her reputation if she did not leave quietly.

Omarosa Manigault Newman attends a meeting with President Donald Trump on African American History Month in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in February. Credit:AP

The recording was played Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, where Newman, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, promoted her new book, Unhinged. In the memoir, which focuses on her relationship with Trump going back to her time on The Apprentice, she describes the world around the President as a cult in which he creates his own reality.

On the recording, Kelly says Newman could be facing "pretty significant legal issues" over what he alleged was misuse of a government car. She denied misusing it.

"I'd like to see this be a friendly departure," Kelly says on the tape. "There are pretty significant legal issues that we hope don't develop into something that, that'll make it ugly for you."
Krispy Kreme's First Taste Of All-new Mercedes-Benz Sprinter







Krispy Kreme's freshly-made glazed doughnuts are synonymous with "delicious tastes and joyful memories". To ensure those products are always of the highest quality, the global brand relies on a key ingredient - the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter.

Krispy Kreme runs 60 vehicles with gross weights of 3.5, 5.0 or 5.5 tonnes in this country, all of which have insulated, ambient box bodies and column tail-lifts. Every one of them wears a three-pointed star.

The latest addition to its fleet is one of the first chassis cabs from the just-launched, third-generation Sprinter range. Recognisable as such from its reworked front end - slender new LED lights, a more upright windscreen and blistered wheel arches - the 314 CDI L3 long was fitted with its box body and 500 kg Dhollandia lift by Krispy Kreme's regular supplier, All Style Bodies, of Reading.

While external revisions are relatively mild, new Sprinter has been transformed inside. The 2018 model's cab interior combines class-leading style, practicality and quality. The result is the most car-like driving experience yet seen in a van, one that offers unrivalled levels of comfort, quietness and smoothness.

New Sprinter also breaks new ground thanks to its 4G Internet connectivity. This advanced manufacturer solution incorporates the Mercedes PRO connect range of fast, efficient and cost-effective vehicle management services, as well as the cutting-edge Mercedes MBUX infotainment system, which features a user-friendly voice control function that responds to "Hey Mercedes!" followed by the command, in conjunction with Navigation.

Meanwhile, to a reassuring armoury that has enabled the Sprinter to dominate the safety category at awards events for years, Mercedes-Benz has now added more innovation. New features include the autonomous Active Brake Assist system with another 'first' in the shape of pedestrian recognition technology, and ATTENTION ASSIST, which detects drowsiness in the driver and encourages them to take breaks when tired.

Delivered by the Mercedes-Benz East London Van Centre, Krispy Kreme's new vehicle is the subject of a lease purchase agreement with Mercedes-Benz Financial Services and, like the operator's other Sprinters, will be maintained under a ServiceCare Plan within the manufacturer's Dealer Network.

Krispy Kreme's UK headquarters are in Camberley, Surrey, and its distribution operation is based on a 'hub and spoke' model. The vans work from 14 factories ('hubs'), where its iconic doughnuts are made. At 11 of these locations customers can enjoy the ultimate Krispy Kreme experience by seeing the process take place in unique Doughnut Theatres.

The company's bright and comfortable Doughnut & Coffee Shops ('spokes') receive daily deliveries of fresh doughnuts, while the company's drivers are also responsible for cleaning and replenishing the self-serve cabinets in many supermarkets and service stations.

Krispy Kreme's National Transport Manager Ben Povey explained: "Product freshness is integral to our success - if a doughnut is not delivered on the day it's made then it doesn't get sold, so time is precious.

"We simply cannot afford to have vehicles off the road, and this - above all else - explains why we choose the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. It's the 'best in class' in terms of reliability and uptime, and essential to the smooth running of our business." Krispy Kreme's drivers start their shifts early each morning with approximately 4,000 doughnuts on board - the new Sprinter is operating from the company's factory in Slough - and typically make 14 deliveries per day, the last of which takes place at around noon. It is a demanding job, so providing comfortable, safe vehicles in which to work is also a priority.

"The Sprinter has always been popular with those who use it, but the new model has raised driver acceptance to a completely new level," declared Ben Povey. "It's a real pleasure to be at the wheel, while for a company like Krispy Kreme, which is acutely aware of its Duty of Care obligations to colleagues and other road users, the additional safety specification can only reinforce our commitment to the Mercedes-Benz brand." He continued: "Efficiency is key to the smooth running of a logistics operation that entails delivering doughnuts fresh every day across the UK, so we're certainly very interested in the potential benefits to be gained from the new Sprinter's industry-leading connectivity. The enhanced fleet visibility which Mercedes Pro connect offers, and the obvious attractions of a 'one-stop shop' solution, mean this is something we're going to be looking at very closely." Ben Povey and Krispy Kreme colleagues attended the latest Mercedes-Benz VanExperience Live, as guests of the manufacturer. Staged in June at the Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire, the event presented them with the chance to try a variety of models from the new Sprinter range which, as well as all-wheel drive models, includes the first front-wheel drive variants.

"VanExperience was a great day out of the business for my National Transport Management Team," recalled Mr Povey. "It was tremendous fun, of course, but also very informative and engaging. The opportunity not only to learn about the product but also to really put it through its paces was one you just wouldn't get anywhere else."
GuardKnox's multi-layered security framework protects all messages that exist in the vehicle in real time, on a bit level

LONDON, Aug. 13, 2018 -- Based on its recent analysis of the European vehicle cybersecurity market for the automotive industry, Frost & Sullivan recognises the Israel-based GuardKnox with the 2018 European Technology Innovation Award. GuardKnox's cybersecurity framework, comprised of its patented Communication Lockdown methodology, secure network orchestrator (SNO) hardware architecture, and service oriented architecture (SOA), prevents cyber-attacks in real time with zero false positives, minimal maintenance efforts, zero connectivity requirements, and negligible performance impact. These solutions meet the most stringent cybersecurity standard ISO 26262, the Common Criteria (ISO 15408), and can increase original equipment manufacturer (OEM) reliability to 99.99999%.

"GuardKnox's patented SNO is offered as a plug-in hardware and software component that can be seamlessly incorporated during vehicle production. It employs a Communication Lockdown Methodology that passes all the messages entering the vehicle's network through routing, content, and contextual layers. These layers proactively quarantine vulnerable messages from engine control units (ECUs) in real time," said Dorothy Amy, Senior Research Analyst, Automotive IT, Industry Analyst. "The Central SNO solution then provides another layer of security, taking in-vehicle communication cyber security to the next level."

GuardKnox's Communication Lockdown methodology (US Patent 9,899,563B2) provides the highest level of vehicle security by permitting only authorized communication, locking every field in every message within the vehicle. By utilizing strict rule sets, the architecture is designed to transmit only the vetted communication with very high security and fidelity, making the system verifiable, efficient, and highly attack resistant.

GuardKnox's second patent for hardware architecture (US Patent 20,180,131,697), SNO, enables secure physical separation of communication networks. SNO will lock down all internal communication at a bit level and serve as a gatekeeper by enforcing the layers of protection on every message either at ingress or egress. It is more relevant in a fragmented automotive supply chain because it eliminates the complexities of integrating software-only solutions into a holistic security strategy.

GuardKnox's third patent for SOA (US Patent 15,863,053) allows SOA to support the Communication Lockdown methodology for vehicle cybersecurity. This patent enables a multi-platform and multi-service approach to hosting multiple operating systems and services on a single ECU with full permission control, therefore enabling new revenue streams. It also has a secure separation (both hardware and software) between all resources, application groups, and operating systems.

"GuardKnox's innovative Communication Lockdown approach and hardware architecture will offer superior levels of security in connected vehicles, eliminating integration overheads for OEMs, lowering complexity issues, and reducing overall costs," noted Amy. "GuardKnox's differentiating stand-alone gateway unit not only secures the vehicle but also aids real-time customization, securely hosts services, and has on-board secure storage and processing that complies with GDPR."

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed a product with innovative features and functionality that is gaining rapid acceptance in the market. The award recognizes the quality of the solution and the customer value enhancements it enables.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

About GuardKnox

GuardKnox is an automotive cyber-solutions company providing comprehensive cyber defense. The GuardKnox team brings decades of experience providing the same cyber security solutions to the Israeli Air Force systems: Iron Dome, Arrow and Israeli F-16 and F-35 fighter jets. GuardKnox's patented and deterministic hardware and software solution the SNO, or Secure Network Orchestrator, is completely autonomous, does not require any constant online connectivity and can defend against both known and unknown attacks. The GuardKnox solution family provides security in-depth with a central gateway ECU drop-in SNO, a local SNO for externally connected ECU's, as well as a reporting mechanism providing centralized fleet security. As a complete ECU, it integrates seamlessly into the vehicle, the value chain and the vehicle production process.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector, and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion.
Meghan Markle. Photo: John Rainford/Getty Images

This weekend, Meghan Markles messy father  Thomas Markle Sr.  gave yet another interview to the British press: This time around, he claimed to have had a heated phone call with Prince Harry after it was revealed that Thomas had staged paparazzi photographs. Now, the Daily Mail reports the royal family is in a state of existential crisis over the nonstop drama.

The report came shortly after Thomas told the Mail on Sunday that Prince Harry called him after the photographs were first published, asking his bride-to-bes father whether he had actually staged the photographs (Thomas claims he lied and said no). Later, it was revealed the images were actually staged, Prince Harry called him again (while Thomas was in the hospital recovering from his alleged heart attack).

Thomas claims that, during this particular phone call, the prince said that if he had listened to the royalss earlier warning to avoid the paparazzi, this would never have happened. Per the Daily Mail:

Mr Markle said he told Harry: Maybe it would be better for you guys if I was dead  then you could pretend to be sad. Then I hung up.

Although Thomas also vowed that this interview would be his last (okay, sure), the palace is reportedly struggling with its handling the whole ordeal. The Daily Mails Richard Kay writes that the situation is fast turning into an existential crisis for the Queens family. Furthermore, royal aides believe Buckingham Palaces response to and handling of Thomass drama has been inept and feeble. A former aide, who worked on Prince William and Kate Middletons 2011 wedding, told the tabloid:

The perception is that he was treated very much as an afterthought. No one went to visit him when the answer would have been to have someone fly out from London and explain to him how things were going to happen. 

The aide added that the royal family previously brought Middletons messy uncle  Gary Goldsmith, who has made headlines for alleged drug use and domestic violence  into the fold instead of ignoring him. He was told he would be invited to everything but that if he felt inclined to speak out and give interviews, we asked that he let us know in advance so that we would be prepared, the aide said. No one seems to have thought of that this time.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte. Photo: JOSHUA ROBERTS/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Usually, Twitter.com is a place where people go to hurl insults at celebrities, strangers, and fast-food restaurants. But sometimes its also a place where they go to own their parents. Like Bobby Goodlatte, a designer and investor, and son of GOP congressman Bob Goodlatte, who recently announced he gave the maximum allowed donation to Jennifer Lewis, the Democrat running for his fathers seat representing Virginias 6th Congressional District.

I just gave the maximum allowed donation to Jennifer Lewis, a democrat running for my father's congressional seat. I've also gotten 5 other folks to commit to donate the max. 2018 is the year to flip districts  let's do this! https://t.co/bYCKta2Bhs  Bobby Goodlatte (@rsg) August 13, 2018

damn Bobby ice in those veins, one user tweeted.

Certainly wasnt an easy decision, the younger Goodlatte replied.

Though Lewis is not campaigning against Goodlatte, who announced last November that he is not running for reelection, she is running against one of his former staffers and political heir apparent, GOP state delegate Ben Cline.

A few hours after his first tweet, Bobby shared a Washington Post story about FBI agent Peter Strzok. Strzok, who had been a senior official into the Russia and Hillary Clinton email investigations, was fired on Monday for a series of anti-Trump texts he had exchanged with an FBI lawyer in 2016. In July, Strzok was grilled for hours by House Republicans, including Representative Goodlatte, who has represented Virginias 6th District since 1993, and also serves as the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. On Monday, Bobby wrote that he was deeply embarrassed that the Strzoks career was ruined by my fathers political grandstanding.

Im deeply embarrassed that Peter Strzoks career was ruined by my fathers political grandstanding. That committee hearing was a low point for Congress.



Thank you for your service sir. You are a patriot https://t.co/3dNN3AlXCZ  Bobby Goodlatte (@rsg) August 13, 2018

A slightly different approach to disagreeing with your politician parents than other large adult children have used.

This post has been updated to reflect that Jennifer Lewis is running against Ben Cline for Goodlattes congressional seat.
When a person gives us that information  this is the issue, this is a description of the car or the license plate number  the person who is causing the traffic issue can be identified and that person will be dealt with, Senne said.
Tracey talked about how Patrick hoped the trip would help her 'go back to my normal bubbly self' and even though he said he'd be 'patient' with her and her mood, that wasn't the case.

"He would go off and leave me on my own for half the day, He would say that I asked for this and that I deserved all this bullying [and] that I just need to snap out of it. He said that because I went on MAFS its my responsibility and I need to fix all this."

The pair got into an intense fight resulting in Patrick leaving the country and Tracey being left stranded with no way of getting home.

Tracey then admitted "I went into a head spin and I overdosed, I just didnt see a way out of the current situation."

The Daily Mail added that 'doctors were able to save her following the suicide bid' and since returning to Australia, Tracey has now checked herself in to a mental health clinic.

"Im not someone who has a history of depression, but I started getting help in April because the psychologist said I might have post-traumatic stress disorder because of everything Id been through.



[My doctors] thought the best thing I could do was to have care to get better as quickly as possible".

We're so sad to hear this about Tracey and we're looking forward to her getting through this tough time of her life!

If you feel you need help dealing with depression or a difficult time in your life, call Lifeline on 0800 543 354 or the Suicide Crisis Helpline on 0508 828 865(0508 TAUTOKO). Both are available 24/7.
Alaska Airlines Plane Makes Emergency Landing Over Strong Odor

A strong odor on an Alaska Airlines flight forced the plane to make an emergency landing on Aug. 12.

The plane, which was going from San Francisco to New Orleans, was forced to land in Los Angeles when strong odor was detected onboard during the flight in the aft cabin, a representative told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The plane landed at the Los Angeles airport at around 12 p.m. local time, according to the outlet, and the 136 passengers on board were re-accommodated on other flights.

The plane, according to Alaska Airlines, was being inspected by technicians to pinpoint the cause.

The cause of the smell wasnt revealed.

Update on Alaska Airlines Crash

Meanwhile, according to reports on Aug. 13, human remains and black boxes were found in the wreckage of a plane owned by Alaska Airlines subsidiary Horizon Air in Washington state.

Over the weekend, Richard Russell, an airport worker, stole the aircraft from Seattles airport and flew close to highly populated areas before crashing, the FBI said. The Pierce County Medical Examiners office confirmed that Russell died in the crash, USA Today reported.

Russell partook in a 75-minute plane ride that included attempted barrel rolls and unusual comments to air traffic control officials.

Officials said that he used a vehicle on the airport tarmac to point the plane to the runway. Then, he entered the empty plane and went into the cockpit.

This is aviation in America, Alaska Airlines CEO Brad Tilden told USA Today. The doors of the airplanes are not keyed like a car. There is not an ignition key like a car. The setup in aviation in America is we secure the airfield.

Tilden noted that the incident will likely spur tighter security measures at airports and on planes. Yesterdays events will push us to learn what we can from this tragedy so that we can help prevent it from ever happening again, at our airline or any other, Tilden said Aug. 11, CNBC reported.

The physical security layers in the airport are not designed to protect (against) this, Jeff Price, an aviation security consultant, professor at the Metropolitan State University in Denver, told CNBC.

In the report, Russell told air traffic control that he played a number of video games to figure out how to fly the plane. You think if I land this successfully Alaska will give me a job as a pilot? he said, adding that hes just a broken guy.

We dont know how he learned to do that, said Horizons CEO Gary Beck about how Russell came to operate the plane. CNBC, quoting an airline captain, also reported that the process of starting up the plane is complex.

Ive got a lot of people who care about me, Russell told them. Its going to disappoint them to hear that I did this.

Military jets were flying close to his plane during the flight.
Chinese Hospital Gets Slap on Wrist for Selling Fake Traditional Chinese Medicine

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FBI Fires Peter Strzok, Disgraced Agent Who Led Russia Probe

The FBI has fired Peter Strzok, the agent notorious for sending biased text messages about then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016 while investigating both Trump and his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Strzoks lawyer, Aitan Goelman, said in a statement that the bureau fired Strzok on Aug. 10. The FBI, which does not usually comment on personnel actions below the executive level, declined to comment.

According to Goelman, FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich fired Strzok. The bureaus disciplinary branch recommended that Strzok should be suspended for 60 days and removed from supervisory duties, but Bowdich overruled that finding, Goelman said.

The decision to terminate was taken in response to political pressure and to punish Special Agent Strzok for political speech protected by the 1st Amendment, not on a fair and independent examination of the facts, Goelman said in the statement.

Strzok exchanged thousands of text messages with FBI lawyer Lisa Page during the course of an extramarital affair. In the texts, Strzok called Trump an  idiot, said that Clinton should win 100,000,000  0, discussed an insurance policy in the unlikely event that Trump would win, vowed to stop Trump from becoming president, and spoke of impeachment days after joining special counsel Robert Muellers investigation.

Strzok wrote some of the messages while investigating Clintons use of a private email server and the rest while investigating allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, including as part of the special counsel probe. Mueller removed Strzok from the special counsel team upon learning of Strzoks text messages.

In a message on Twitter, Trump suggested that the Clinton investigation should be redone.

Just fired Agent Strzok, formerly of the FBI, was in charge of the Crooked Hillary Clinton sham investigation. It was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone! Trump wrote on Twitter on Aug. 13.

Just fired Agent Strzok, formerly of the FBI, was in charge of the Crooked Hillary Clinton sham investigation. It was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

In another message, Trump asked if the special counsel investigation, which took over Strzoks probe, should be ended given Strzoks termination.

The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ [Department of Justice] gets longer & longer, Trump wrote on Aug. 13. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction  I just fight back!

Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI  finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction  I just fight back!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

In June, the Justice Department inspector general concluded in a report on the Clinton email case that the bias expressed by Strzok and a handful of FBI employees cast a cloud over the probe. However, the inspector general did not find evidence that Strzoks bias influenced any investigative decision in the Clinton case. The inspector general is still investigating FBI and DOJ actions in the Russian probe.

Strzok issued a response on his Twitter account shortly after news of his termination broke. The spokeswoman for Strzoks lawyer confirmed the authenticity of the Twitter account to the Daily Caller.

Deeply saddened by this decision. It has been an honor to serve my country and work with the fine men and women of the FBI, Strzok wrote.

Strzok accompanied his post with a link to a GoFundMe donation page, which raised more than $30,000 in four hours. The page describes Strzok as a proud husband, a veteran, and a hero.

President Trump has repeatedly lambasted Strzok and other senior officials who ran the bureau during the investigation of his campaign in 2016 and 2017, including then-FBI Director James Comey and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Russian Collusion with the Trump Campaign, one of the most successful in history, is a TOTAL HOAX. The Democrats paid for the phony and discredited Dossier which was, along with Comey, McCabe, Strzok and his lover, the lovely Lisa Page, used to begin the Witch Hunt. Disgraceful! Trump wrote on Twitter on Aug. 1.

Page resigned from the bureau in May. Trump fired Comey last year. Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe in March. FBI Chief Counsel James Baker and Chief of Staff James Rybicki, both of whom were mentioned in the Page-Strzok texts, left the bureau.

Never seen a federal agency where thats happened, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote on Twitter.

Strzoks FBI team along with senior bureau and DOJ officials obtained an intrusive warrant to spy on former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page over the course of 12 months. The secret court application for that warrant was based almost entirely on an unverified opposition research dossier. The dossier was compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele. The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for the dossier.

The officials who signed off on the secret court warrant applications failed to mention to the judges that Trumps opponent in the election, Hillary Clinton, funded the dossier.

Like Strzok, Steele was also biased against Trump and wanted to do anything to prevent Trump from becoming president. The FBI cut ties with Steele in November 2016 for leaking to the media. Recently released emails between Steele and senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr show that Steele continued to feed information to the FBI long after the bureau prohibited him from collecting intelligence on its behalf.

According to Ohrs notes, he met with Strzok and Page less than three weeks after Steele was terminated. Steele continued to use Ohr as a back channel to the FBI. The pair kept in contact for more than a year after the FBI terminated Steele.

Ohrs wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for the same firm that hired Steele. The firm, Fusion GPS, received money from Russia for a different project while Steele was compiling the dossier. Congressional investigators have called on the couple to testify. Ohrs hearing is on Aug. 28.

In July, Strzok defended himself for hours in testimony before a joint session of the House judiciary and government oversight committees. Strzok repeatedly asserted that bias is different from personal political opinion. At the hearing, Strzok refused to answer basic questions about the Russia investigation, citing restrictions placed on him by the FBI due to an ongoing investigation.

Update: the FBI responded to an Epoch Times request for comment with the following statement:

Mr. Strzok was subject to the standard FBI review and disciplinary process after conduct highlighted in the IG report was referred to the FBIs Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). OPR reviewed the investigative materials, as well as the written and oral responses of Mr. Strzok and his counsel, and issued OPRs decision. The Deputy Director, as the senior career FBI official, has the delegated authority to review and modify any disciplinary findings and/or penalty as deemed necessary in the best interest of the FBI.
FBIs Stated Reliance on PapadopoulosDowner Meeting Fraught With Inconsistencies

Meeting was not a chance encounter, and similar information appeared in the first Steele memo

News Analysis

For over a year now, a seemingly chance encounter between George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, and Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat, has been cited as the sole reason the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016.

The meeting, however, was not by chance. It was set up through a chain of two intermediaries. The information relayed was limited and, significantly, appears nearly identical to information later contained in the first memo from former British spy Christopher Steele that the FBI obtained in early July 2016.

Papadopoulos knew an Israeli Embassy official in London named Christian Cantor, who introduced Papadopoulos to Erika Thompson. Thompson was a counselor to Downer and served in Australias London embassy.

According to The Daily Caller, Thompson reached out to Papadopoulos in early May 2016 and said Downer wanted to meet with Papadopoulos. The meeting between Papadopoulos and Downer took place on May 10, 2016, over a shared drink in a London bar.

According to Downer, Papadopoulos at some point mentioned the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

During that conversation, he [Papadopoulos] mentioned the Russians might use material that they have on Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the election, which may be damaging, Downer told The Australian about the Papadopoulos meeting in an April 2018 article.

Downer makes clear in the interview that Papadopoulos did not say what the information was.

He didnt say dirt, he said material that could be damaging to her. No, he said it would be damaging. He didnt say what it was, Downer said.

Downer also said that none of the comments from Papadopoulos indicated that Trump had any knowledge of what was being discussed.

Nothing he [Papadopoulos] said in that conversation indicated Trump himself had been conspiring with the Russians to collect information on Hillary Clinton, he said.

It was just that this guy [Papadopoulos] clearly knew that the Russians did have material on Hillary Clintonbut whether Trump knew or not? He didnt say Trump knew or that Trump was in any way involved in this. He said it was about Russians and Hillary Clinton; it wasnt about Trump.

Downers version of eventsthat he wasnt told of any specifics regarding information the Russians allegedly had on Clintonwas later corroborated by a memo written by the minority of the House intelligence committee. On page 2 of the memo, the congressmen state: We would later learn in Papadopouloss [October 2017] plea that the information the Russians could assist by anonymously releasing were thousands of Hillary Clinton emails.

Unclear How Information Went to FBI

Downer, in his interview with The Australian, said that he reported his conversation with Papadopoulos back to Australia. Well, it was worth reporting, he said. It wasnt the only thing we reported. We reported [back to Australia] the following day or a day or two after  it seemed quite interesting. Downers conversation with Papadopoulos was reportedly disclosed to the FBI on July 22, 2016, through channels with the Australian government.

However, according to a May 31, 2018, article published in The Wall Street Journal, it was Downer who conveyed his information directly to the U.S. Embassy in London.

The Downer details landed with the embassys then-charge daffaires, Elizabeth Dibble, who previously served as a principal deputy assistant secretary in Mrs. Clintons State Department, the article states. Where the information went from there remains unknown.

This version of events appears to be at least partially corroborated by the House intelligence committee, which found that no official intelligence was used to open the FBIs counterintelligence investigation.

There was no intelligence that passed through the Five Eyes channels to our government. There was no Five Eyes Intelligence Product as its been reported. There was no product, Nunes told Maria Bartiromo in April.

This means that neither Australian intelligence nor the Australian government itself alerted the FBI to the Papadopoulos information. What happened with the Downer details, and to whom they were ultimately relayed, remains unknown.

What is known is that details surprisingly similar to the PapadopoulosDowner conversation show up in the first memo written by Steele on June 20, 2016. In what would later become known as the Steele dossier, he writes:

A dossier of compromising information on Hillary Clinton has been collated by the Russian Intelligence Services over many years and mainly comprises bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls.  It has not yet been distributed abroad, including to Trump.

Steele had been hired by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, through law firm Perkins Coie and opposition research firm Fusion GPS, to produce the dossier containing unverified allegations against Trump.

Downers Connections to British Intelligence

Downers background appears somewhat unusual for an Australian diplomat. Downer has long-standing ties to UK intelligence firm Hakluyt, having served on the advisory board of Hakluyts parent company Holdingham from 2008 to 2014. Hakluyts top officials come from MI6. Several board members, like Sir Iain Lobben, come from GCHQthe UK equivalent to the National Security Agency. Former MI6 head Richard Dearlove has a number of ties to Hakluyt as well.

Downer was forced to resign from Hakluyts advisory board when he became Australian ambassador to the UK in 2014. But Downer reportedly maintained contact with Hakluyt officials.

Australian High Commissioner to the UK Alexander Downer had been on the advisory board of the London-headquartered firm since 2008 when he was a UN special envoy but was forced to give up the position when he was appointed to head the Australian diplomatic post in London in 2014, News Corp. reported on Jan. 18, 2016.

Downer, according to the article, had still been attending client conferences and gatherings of the group.

Downer also arranged one of the largest foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation: $25 million from the Australian government.

In the official version of events, the FBI was informed on July 22, 2016, of the PapadopoulosDowner conversation. This was the first time Papadopoulos landed on the FBIs radar.

Just over a week later, on July 31, 2016, the FBI opened a massive counterintelligence investigation into an opposing presidential candidates campaign based solely on this single conversationa conversation that differed little from details contained in the June 20, 2016, memo by Steele, which the FBI had already had in their possession since early July.

Jeff Carlson is a CFA Charterholder. He has worked for 20 years as an analyst and portfolio manager in the high-yield bond market. He runs the website TheMarketsWork.com
Three U46 schools will also have new leaders beginning this school year. Krystal Bush is the new principal at the DREAM Academy in Elgin; Dustin Covarrubias takes over as the principal of Willard Elementary School in Elgin; and John Signatur is the new principal of Bartlett Elementary.
Flight Data and Human Remains Found in Stolen Sea-Tac Plane

The flight data recorder was recovered from the airplane that was stolen from Sea-Tac International Airport in Washington state on Aug. 10.

The man who stole and later crashed the plane was identified by officials as Richard Russell, 29, a local ground service agent who assisted baggage handlers.

Along with the data recorder, officials announced that theyd discovered human remains on the plane.

The National Transportation Security Board is processing the data from the recorder, which the FBI recovered, while the Pierce County Medical Examiners Office is analyzing the remains.

Thank you for patiently supporting the thorough #FBI investigation into the #N449QXIncident. pic.twitter.com/0inxHNwcD0  FBI Seattle (@FBISeattle) August 13, 2018

Plane Stolen

Russell stole the aircraft, a Bombardier Q400 turboprop aircraft, around 8 p.m. on Aug. 10.

Two F-15C alert aircraft were quickly dispatched to try to intercept the plane and guide it out over the Pacific Ocean, but Russell crashed in a wooded area on Ketron Island in the southern end of the Puget Sound about an hour after he took off.

A recording of the interaction between Russell and air traffic control shows that Russell was burning through fuel faster than he thought.

He seems to be having a good time and declines to land.

There is a runway just off to your right side in about a mile, the controller says, referring to an airfield at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Oh man. Those guys will rough me up if I try and land there, the man responded. This is probably jail time for life, huh?

I think Im going to try to do a barrel roll, and if that goes good Ill go nose down and call it a night, he added shortly before crashing.

At one point, he does begin to demonstrate regretfulness.

Ive got a lot of people that care about me, Rich said in the recording.

Its going to disappoint them to hear that I did this. I would like to apologize to each and every one of them. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess. Never really knew it, until now.

Presumed Dead

Russell is presumed dead in the crash. The Pierce County Sheriffs Office described him as a suicidal male.

His family said in a statement that they were stunned and heartbroken over what happened.

He was a faithful husband, a loving son, and a good friend. A childhood friend remarked that Beebo was loved by everyone because he was kind and gentle to each person he met, family spokesperson, Mike Mathews said at a press conference. This is a complete shock to us.

Apple, iPhone, and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

Experts said what happened indicates the real threat to aviation safety comes from airport and airline workers.

The greatest threat we have to aviation is the insider threat, Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent and transportation security expert, told the Associated Press.

Here we have an employee who was vetted to the level to have access to the aircraft and had a skill set proficient enough to take off with that plane.

From NTD.tv
Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services, on Jan. 9, 2018, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

HHS Seeks to Reverse Court Ruling Nullifying Kentucky Medicaid Waiver

The Trump administration says it will work to reverse a court decision blocking a Kentucky Medicaid waiver, that would, among other things, tie work requirements to Medicaid eligibility.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington nullified the waiver in June, saying that the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) didnt fully consider the ramifications of the waiver, which the state estimated might result in as many as 95,000 people losing coverage by the government-run health care program. He said the departments decision was not in line with the Administrative Procedure Act, which allows a court to overrule an agencys decision if it believes it failed to consider an important aspect of the problem.

The ruling came after 15 Kentucky residents filed a lawsuit against the state on the grounds that they could lose their health care coverage if new policies under the waiver were to be put into effect.

HHS plans to demonstrate that it did its due diligence in considering the ramifications of the waiver and is seeking additional comments, ahead of an Aug. 18 deadline.

We suffered one blow in a district court in litigation, said HHS Secretary Alex Azar. We are undeterred. We are proceeding forward. We are fully committed to work requirements and community participation requirements in the Medicaid program. We will continue to litigate. We will continue to approve plans.

Under the waiver, Kentucky could require its Medicaid patients to prove that they have participated in training, community service, a substance abuse treatment program or worked for at least 80 hours a month.

Critics say that could keep people from accessing health care services who need it to keep their jobs. The administration says it believes the work requirements will improve peoples physical and mental health and reduce reliance on government programs.
Hippo Kills Taiwanese Tourist in Kenya: Reports

A hippopotamus bit a Taiwanese tourist in the chest, killing him as he was trying to photograph it in Kenya.

Chang Ming Chuang, 66, was following the animal at a resort on Lake Naivasha, located 56 miles northwest of the capital, Nairobi, the BBC reported. Another Taiwanese tourist was injured in the incident.

Six people have been killed by hippos in Kenya in 2018.

Local reports, including one from The Star of Kenya, said the tourist was from China. The BBC reported that Taiwans foreign ministry confirmed the tourists were Taiwanese.

KWS is sad to announce the death of a tourist who was attacked yesterday evening. His colleague survived with minor bruises and was treated at Naivasha District Hospital. We are tracking the hippo, the Kenya Wildlife Service wrote in a tweet.

Witness James Omollo said the tourist got too close to the animal, which turned against him before biting him, according to The Star. He was rushed to Naivasha Subcounty Hospital bleeding profusely, but he passed on while undergoing treatment, he said.

Chairman of Lake Naivasha Boat Owners Association David Kilo said that the rise in water levels has contributed to a spike in hippo attacks. It forces the hippos to stay away from the water.

The hippo that attacked the tourist was looking for pasture near the hotel. This is not the first time, he said.

Hippos can weigh as much as three tons, and they kill an estimated 500 people every year in Africa.

Kilo also told The Star that an illegal fisherman was attacked by a hippo several miles from where the tourist was killed. He died at the scene of the attack.

The man was also bitten on the chest. He died minutes after he was retrieved from the lake, he said.

Conservation Efforts

We have seen a rise in cases of human-wildlife conflict around the lake and this is mainly due to the encroachment on the riparian land, he said.

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Hundreds of hippos are shot each year to minimize human-wildlife conflict, despite the fact that ditches or low fences easily deter hippos. It is more likely that the popularity of hippo meat is the reason for this strategy. Hippo fat and ivory tusks are also valuable to humans, according to the African Wildlife Foundation conservation group.

As human populations grow, they encroach on wildlife habitats as they build new settlements, increase agricultural production, and construct new roads. The hippo once ranged from the Nile Delta to the Cape, but now it is mostly confined to protected areas, it added.

Kenya earned $1.2 billion from tourism in 2017, with 1.4 million tourists arriving in the country, according to the BBC.
Hundreds Injured as Spanish Festival Platform Collapses Into Sea

MADRIDHundreds of people were hurt, five seriously, when a wooden platform collapsed at a seaside music festival in northwestern Spain on Sunday night, state television RTVE reported.

There were no reports of any fatalities from the incident which broadcaster Radio Galega said left 266 people injured at the O Marisquino festival in Vigo, a town in the Galicia region.

Vigos mayor Abel Caballero said the platform that collapsed just before midnight was 30 meters long and 10 meters wide.

There were loads, I mean loads of people on the boardwalk, one witness told RTVE.

People fell on me. I had trouble getting out. I was trying to get out and skidded, my foot got stuck, in the water. I got it out. A boy gave me his hand and I got out. I felt paralysed and [then] I left. There was a girl with blood on her head, Aitana Alonso said to local newspaper Faro De Vigo.

It is not clear what caused the platform to collapse.

By Isla Binnie

Jane Gray contributed to this report
Special Counsel Robert Mueller departs after briefing members of the U.S. Senate on his investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on June 21, 2017. (Reuters/Joshua Roberts)

Judge Allows Mueller Case Against Russian Company to Proceed

A judge on Aug. 13 backed Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the federal Russia investigation, allowing a case to proceed against a Russian company accused of helping fund a propaganda operation to meddle in the 2016 election.

Judge Dabney Friedrich, in an opinion filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, rejected an argument by the company, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, that Mueller was unlawfully appointed and lacked prosecutorial authority.

By investigating and prosecuting Concord, the Special Counsel did not exceed his authority, Friedrich wrote in her opinion.

She also rejected the companys argument that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, acting on behalf of Attorney General Jeff Sessions after his recusal, was out of bounds in bringing in Mueller to investigate the alleged Russian meddling.

Concords lawyers, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, had argued that Rosenstein violated the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution in hiring Mueller in May 2017. Friedrich ruled that U.S. Supreme Court and circuit court rulings made clear Rosenstein did have statutory authority to bring in Mueller.

Prosecutors contend Concord is controlled by Evgeny Prigozhin, a businessman identified by Russian media as being close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and who U.S. officials have said has extensive ties to Russias military and political establishment.

The company is one of three entities, along with 13 Russian individuals, indicted by the special counsels office in an alleged criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper with the 2016 U.S. election.

Rosenstein appointed Mueller to investigate allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The Concord indictment does not accuse any American citizen of wrongdoing and includes no evidence or allegations regarding the Trump campaign.

Russia has denied any involvement. Trump has said there was no collusion and blasted the investigation by Mueller as a witch hunt.

Epoch Times reporter Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.
Mamma Mia! Here Come the Tourists Again

The Abba-inspired sequel of Mamma Mia is filling cinemas around the world. But the films locationthe small Croatian island of Visshould now also expect to attract high numbers of visitors. The inevitable increase in inbound tourists visiting the films coastal backdrop will become the latest example of film-induced tourisma phenomenon which describes the way people flock to visit film and television locations.

According to Srecko Horvat, a Croatian philosopher, the remote islandwhich represents the imaginary island of Kalokairi in the filmis now preparing to experience a similar fate to the location of the original film: the Greek island of Skopelos.

In 2008, the Mamma Mia effect was a phrase coined to describe the way the original $610 million-earning movie triggered unprecedented demand for hotel accommodation on the tiny Aegean island and sent prices in local bars and restaurants soaring. Despite concerns about the negative impact of these tourism invasions and the risk of overtourism, it has been reported that some of the Greek islanders have expressed upset about the decision to film the sequel elsewhere. If Skopelos can no longer claim to be the Mamma Mia island, the revenue from film tourists might now be enjoyed by the Croatian island instead.

Must-See Locations

You dont have to look far to find adverts enticing film lovers to visit the locations of movies. For example, Rough Guide provides 40 must-see film locations around the world. Destination marketing organizations also use them to promote their visitor offerVisit Waless Light, Camera, Action campaign aims to attract people to see where the likes of Torchwood and Robin Hood were made. Meanwhile, Tourism New Zealands campaign has successfully piggybacked off the popularity of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Hobbit movies.

The potential income from film-induced tourism can be significant. For example, the blockbusters Rob Roy and Braveheart generated an additional tourism income of more than $19 million for Scotland. In fact, more than 500,000 American Braveheart fans traveled to Scotlanddespite the fact the movie was made in Ireland.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy prompted a 50 percent increase in tourist arrivals to New Zealandand Forbes estimated income of $22 million a year just from these visitors. Total revenue from film production in New Zealand totaled $3.155 billion in 2014. Back in 1991, the movie Thelma and Louisewhich featured Canyonlands and the Arches National Park in Utahled to a visitor increase of 22.6 percent with an additional increase of 16.6 percent the following year.

Blessing and Curse

Tourism is by no means new to Croatia. It is one of the fastest-growing tourism destinations, with 86.1 million overnight stays in 2017up 10.6 percent since 2016. The contribution of tourism to its GDP is set to rise to 31.5 percent by 2027. But the additional Mamma Mia effect may fuel concerns that the country is becoming over-reliant on tourism, which might be detrimental to Croatias long-term economic growth. This scenario highlights the double-edged nature of tourismthe rush to see the film set may generate welcome income, but it can be both a blessing and a curse.

Film-induced tourism can raise public awareness of important places and issuesfor example, the plight of gorillas in Rwanda following the film Gorillas in the Mist improve a destinations image and boost local employment. But it also poses a challenge to destinations without the infrastructure to cope with sudden spikes in visitor numbers. This increase in tourism can lead to overcrowding, congestion, social problems, and higher property values which effectively price locals out.

The negative impact of film-induced tourism is illustrated well by Maya Island in Thailandthe location for the film The Beach in 2000. The film prompted a sudden 22 percent spike in young people visiting the island. But growing concerns about environmental damage have led to a recent decision to close the beach. With 5,000 tourists arriving by boat every day, excessive pressure has been placed on its ecosystems, damaging coral reefs and habitats.

Similarly, in Scotland, the locations of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Transformers: The Last Knight have prompted many tourists to visit the Isle of Skye. This surge of tourists is placing unwelcome pressure on an infrastructure unable to cope with high visitor numbers.

The film and tourism industries have much in common. But although joint marketing campaigns between the tourism and film industries make sense, those behind them must take joint responsibility for addressing the potential impact. It is time for these two industries to work together and address how they can bring longer-term social, cultural and economic benefits and sustainable prosperity to destinations.

One opportunity to mitigate the impact of film-tourism on fragile locations may lie in sustainable certifications such as the We are Albert project. This U.K.-based project provides the film and TV industries with expertise and opportunities to help ensure their productions are made in a way that benefits individuals, industry organizations, film locations, and the planet. The online scheme of rewarding film and television teams for implementing sustainable and responsible production techniques is a model of good practice. In seeking a sensitive approach to filming on location, such initiatives might go some way towards addressing the Mamma Mia effect.

Collaborative working across these two industries might help both industries show they are more than Money, Money, Money. Rather, pursuing a strategy which is more about Knowing me, Knowing you at a community and environmental level might help keep tourists, the industry, locals and the environment happy.

Sally Everett is deputy dean of the business school at Anglia Ruskin University. This article was originally published on The Conversation.
SpaceX, Tesla, and The Boring Company founder Elon Musk attends the 2018 SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, in Hawthorne, California on July 22, 2018. (ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

Musk Says Saudis Would Fund Tesla Buyout, Defending His Tweet

Saudi Arabias sovereign wealth fund approached Musk multiple times about taking Tesla private

WASHINGTONTesla CEO Elon Musk clarified his comments about securing funds to take the electric-car maker private, saying that his funding secured tweet last week was based on repeated and ongoing discussions with Saudi Arabias sovereign wealth fund, which owns 5 percent of the company.

Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private, Musk stated Aug. 13 in a blog post.

The Saudis first expressed their interest in 2017 because of the important need to diversify away from oil, he said, adding that they continued to reiterate their interest to take Tesla private in several follow-up meetings.

Obviously, the Saudi sovereign fund has more than enough capital needed to execute on such a transaction.

Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018

Recently, after the Saudi fund bought almost 5 percent of Tesla stock through the public markets, they reached out to ask for another meeting.

Musk said that meeting took place on July 31.

The [managing director of the] Saudi fund expressed his support for funding a going-private transaction for Tesla at this time, he said.

I continue to have discussions with the Saudi fund, and I also am having discussions with a number of other investors, which is something that I always planned to do, since I would like for Tesla to continue to have a broad investor base.

Musk posted his long explanation on the blog amid reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating whether Musks earlier tweet was accurate.

Musk shocked markets with a tweet on Aug. 7 announcing that he had secured financing to take Tesla private at $420 a share, sending the stock up 10 percent on the same day.

Experts claimed that Musks disclosure of his plans via Twitter to take the company private were not in line with a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule that prohibits publicly traded companies from announcing plans to buy or sell securities if executives dont intend to follow through, dont have the means to complete the deal, or are flat out trying to manipulate the stock price.

The probability that Musk is going to get sued by the SEC is quite high, Joseph Grundfest, former SEC commissioner, told financial news cable network CNBC.
Off-the-Grid Dream Becomes Nightmare in New Mexico Compound

AMALIA, N.M.One of the leading members of a group prosecutors accused of abusing children at a New Mexico compound struggled with his plan to live off the grid after he underestimated a harsh mountain desert climate and settled on the wrong plot of land.

Relatives and neighbors say things began to go downhill for Lucas Morton, 39, shortly after he arrived in this vast alpine valley about 40 miles (64 km) north of Taos in a white moving van last December.

His brother-in-law Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, wanted in Georgia for child abduction, soon joined them together with his wife, sister and children.

The families set up home on a 10-acre plot of land that was near to one owned by Morton, a carpenter, but which actually belonged to U.S. Army veteran Jason Badger. The vet filed a court complaint but the Morton and Wahhaj families stayed on the land.

With snow and bitter north winds, the families began to suffer. At the suggestion of neighbors, Morton dug a hole and put a camping trailer in it to seek shelter.

Land is cheap in the valley, around $850 an acre, but winter temperatures can drop to -30 Fahrenheit (-34 C). Attempts at communal living in northern New Mexico have struggled or failed, going back to 1970s communes.

The adults and 11 children used wood to cook, hauled water from neighbors wells and got heat from propane heaters. Their shelters kept blowing away, a neighbor said.

Morton was one of five adults arrested at the compound on Aug. 3 on child abuse charges and accused by prosecutors of giving weapons training to a child to carry out school shootings.

No-one was specifically charged over the school shooting accusation and Defense Attorney Aleksandar Kostich told reporters that prosecutors had provided no evidence of the allegation, which came from a foster parent who is caring for one of the children.

Morton was also charged with harboring a felon, Ibn Wahhaj, who was armed with an AR-15 rifle, five magazines of ammunition, and four handguns when arrested, according to police.

Ibn Wahhaj is accused of abducting his seriously-ill, three-year-old son Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj in December from his mother in Georgia. On Monday a body, believed to be that of the boy was found buried at the compound, police said.

Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe first referred to the suspects as extremist of the Muslim belief, but declined to elaborate when later asked about it by reporters.

Public defenders representing the five adults, who are in Taos County jail, did not respond to requests for comment.

Get out of Society

Morton and his 15-year-old nephew Mohammed last November attended a four-week, $2,500 course in Taos on how to build an earthship  an eco house made largely of earth-filled tires.

All they wanted to do was get out of society, get away, homestead and live a peaceful life by themselves, said Mortons father Gerard Jabril Abdulwali, 64.

Inside Mortons abandoned van at the compound, I love my family is written over hearts drawn on the first page of a notebook belonging to Aisha, one of his four children.

There are signs the group made friends locally.

A local man gave Morton hundreds of tires to build an earthship home. A neighbor gave him wood to build bunk beds, and another helped them hook up solar panels.

These people said police drones began to circle the area in late May or June. Badger told local media he had earlier informed Georgia police that the abducted boy was at Mortons home.

In the next months the home began to look more like a compound. The families stacked tires around it and built what look like defensive walls. A 150-foot tunnel leads to what appear to be escape holes among sagebrush and chamisa bushes.

I got the feeling Lucas didnt want what he was in anymore, said neighbor Tyler Anderson, 41, a car-body technician, who showed Morton how to wire up solar panels.

Anderson said near daily target shooting at the house stopped once the drones appeared.

The arrests at the compound made one neighbor, who described himself only as Quincy, stand at his gate and cry.

He and other locals disputed police reports the Morton and Wahhaj children were found ragged and starving.

I made sure everyone in that place had shoes and clothes. They werent hungry, said the man.

Mortons wife Subhannah Wahhaj, 35, regularly went grocery shopping with Quincys wife. Their last trip, was on Aug. 2, Quincy said. Police launched the raid the next day.

By Andrew Hay
Crude oil storage tanks are seen from above at the Cushing oil hub, in Cushing, Oklahoma, March 24, 2016. (REUTERS/Nick Oxford)

Oil Edges Lower as Cushing Build Adds to Demand Fears

NEW YORKOil prices fell on Aug. 13 after data suggested inventories at the U.S. crude delivery hub rose in the latest week, compounding worries that troubled emerging markets and trade tensions will dent the outlook for fuel demand.

Brent crude futures dipped 20 cents, or 0.3 percent, to settle at $72.61 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude declined 43 cents to settle at $67.20 a barrel, with a 0.7 percent loss.

Prices fell earlier in the session by more than $1 a barrel after inventories at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub for WTI rose by about 1.7 million barrels in the week through Aug. 10, traders said, citing data from market intelligence firm Genscape.

Crude inventories at Cushing have been dwindling, in part due to an outage at an oil processing facility in Canada that has reduced the flow of crude into the hub. The Canadian Syncrude processing facility has begun ramping up light oil production and was expected to return to full production in September.

Cushing may finally start to replenish from critically low inventory levels, said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital Management in New York.

Turkeys financial crisis has raised the risk of contagion throughout emerging economies, dragging down South Africas rand, Argentina and Mexicos pesos and the Russian rouble. It has also dented emerging market stocks while curbing growth and the outlook for oil demand.

That is compounding worries that a deepening trade war between the United States, China, and the European Union will squeeze business activity in the worlds biggest economies.

Turkey is a relatively small oil consumer, accounting for less than 1 million barrels per day (bpd), or around 1 percent of global demand. However, contagion concerns are prompting risk-off sentiment, Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates, said in a note.

The energy complex is being increasingly jostled by fresh daily headlines that dont necessarily have much effect on current supply or demand on a short-term basis but could dramatically affect oil balances when looking down the road just a few months, he said.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries forecast lower demand for its crude next year as rivals pump more and said top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, eager to avoid a return of oversupply, had cut production.

In a monthly report, OPEC said the world will need 32.05 million bpd of crude from its 15 members in 2019, down 130,000 bpd from last months forecast.

The drop in demand for OPEC crude means there will be less strain on other producers in making up for supply losses in Venezuela and Libya, and potentially in Iran, as renewed U.S. sanctions kick in.

OPEC in the report said concern about global trade tensions had weighed on crude prices in July, although it expected support for the market from refined products.

Healthy global economic developments and increased industrial activity should support the demand for distillate fuels in the coming months, leading to a further drawdown in diesel inventories, it said.

U.S. oil production from seven major shale basins was expected to rise 93,000 bpd in September to 7.52 million bpd, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said.

By Stephanie Kelly & Alex Lawler
Orca Carries Dead Calf for Weeks Before Letting Go

An orca that carried her dead calf for 17 days has let it go, said researchers on Aug. 11.

The killer whale, called J35 and is also known as Tahlequah, was seen chasing salmon with other orcas in the Haro Strait near the U.S.-Canada border. The whale was no longer carrying around her dead calfsomething she had done since July 24, the Center for Whale Research in Washington state wrote on its website.

Her tour of grief is now over and her behavior is remarkably frisky. Telephoto digital images taken from shore show that this mother whale appears to be in good physical condition, according to the research website.

One more sad symbol of a planet on the edge of ecological collapse #Tahlequah #bioabundance #biodiversity https://t.co/zezYGA9PN5  Natalie Bennett (@natalieben) August 12, 2018

Tahlequah was found yesterday no longer carrying her dead calf. Her 17 day, thousand mile journey is the longest case of cetacean mourning recorded. The Southern Resident orcas will continue to die and miscarry if we dont restore salmon populations and reduce pesticide use. pic.twitter.com/JQqc1gejYP  jewlz (@jewiwee) August 12, 2018

It added: There had been reports from brief sightings by whale-watchers two days ago that J35 (Tahlequah) was not pushing the calf carcass in Georgia Strait near Vancouver, BC; and, now we can confirm that she definitely has abandoned it.

The calfs body likely sunk to the bottom of these inland marine waters of the Salish Sea, and researchers may not get a chance to examine it for necropsy, researchers said.

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Im hoping this ordeal is over, the centers founder, Ken Balcomb, told ABC News. The 20-year-old whales emotional state is not yet known, he added to the Seattle Times because losing the calf may have been emotionally hard on her.

She is alive and well and at least over that part of her grief. Today was the first day that I for sure saw her. It is no longer there, he added.

Researchers had originally planned to study the calfs cause of death.
I was overjoyed that the work I had put into the application, and the trust that others had in me for those recommendations, had been enjoyed enough to allow me into the program, Rivera said.
Plaintiff DeWayne Johnson reacts after hearing the verdict to his case against Monsanto at the Superior Court Of California in San Francisco, California on Aug. 10, 2018. (JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Plaintiffs Say Roundup Cancer Verdict Makes US Safer and More Just

News Analysis

The court victory was celebrated by plaintiffs as a breakthrough like those achieved in landmark tobacco and asbestos cases, as a victory for public health, as a defeat for corporate manipulation and deceit, and as consolation for a grievously injured victim.

On Aug. 10, a San Francisco jury, after days of deliberation, awarded former groundskeeper DeWayne Lee Johnson $39.2 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages from agricultural giant Monsanto, concluding that its top-selling product Roundup had indeed caused his terminal cancernon-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Usually, such cases elicit a shudder of pity for the victim but with the knowledge thatin tobacco and asbestos cases, for examplewe can choose to abstain and avoid. Glyphosate, by contrast, is inescapable: Its in our food, water, air, soil, our dogs urine, and human breast milk. Its in our vaccines and even, at very high levels, in common food items.

This verdict represents a legal near-death blow, undercutting billions of public relations dollars Monsanto has invested in keeping its star productlabeled in 2015 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a probable carcinogenfree of criticism over cancer fears.

Historic

Speaking at a press conference with colleagues from three law firms, trial attorney Brent Wisner said, This case was historic.

Every major known carcinogen had a moment like thisa moment when the science finally caught up, when they could no longer bury it, Wisner said.

In a statement to jurors, he stressed that internal documents made public for the first time in discovery for this case prove that Monsanto has known for decades that glyphosate and specifically Roundup could cause cancer.

In reaching its decision, the jury heard eight weeks of testimony from independent scientists, research papers going back decades, and private Monsanto emails.

At the press conference, Wisner, 34, managed to convey the enormous importance of the verdict with clear words, spoken simply. You know you did something wrong, he said, summing up the jury verdicts message to Monsanto, and now you have to pay.

I cannot say how important this case is, he said. There are 4,000 other cases filed around the United States and countless other thousands out there who are suffering from cancer because Monsanto didnt give them a choice.

Monsanto Gambled

Choice is one of the resonant words of this landmark case, because Monsanto never warned its consumers about the potential dangers of its product.

Monsanto gambled and lost, said David Steele, a toxic tort attorney in San Francisco who usually litigates on behalf of corporations.

When asked if the verdict surprised him, Steele said: Yes. It was humongous$300 million for one plaintiff, that is a lot of money. Thats definitely an indication that Monsanto acted with malice or oppression or fraud in marketing their products and concealing its dangerous properties.

Monsanto might try to undo the verdict, he said. Itll lose, but thats a standard thing. What they want is an appeal that reverses it, that would save them a few billion dollars.

This case is not going to be finally resolved any time soon, but, all the other cases waiting in the wings will now flood forward. They have everything they need. Theres a lot of money to be made on the Monsanto carcass.

Punitive Damages

Johnson, the man who opened the litigation floodgates, is 46 and a father of three. He was diagnosed with terminal non-Hodgkins lymphoma after continuous exposure to Roundup in his work as a groundskeeper at a school. He grew alarmed when his whole body erupted in lesions, rashes, and soresand sought answers repeatedly from Monsanto, which ignored his inquiries.

Johnson used protective gear when spraying the chemical, but at various times his skin was directly exposed to the herbicide and crop desiccant that is claimed in an infographic signed by Monsantos social sciences lead to be less toxic than caffeine or table salt.

Roundup destroyed my whole life, Johnson said on the witness stand. His wife testified how he cried himself to sleep, worrying about how to support his family, when his sickness made him unable to work, and his wife had to support the family and work several jobs to sustain his medical treatment.

The cause is way bigger than me, Johnson said at the press conference, after thanking his legal team, family, and supporters around the world. Hopefully, this thing will start to get the attention that it needs.

The $250 million in punitive damages awarded to Johnson reflected Monsantos failure to warn consumers that its popular weed killer causes cancer. Beyond that, plaintiffs attorneys said Monsanto engaged in four decades of distortion and manipulation not only of science, but of federal agencies such as the EPA, science foundations, and mass media.

In many ways, it was American democracy and the justice system that was on trial in this case, said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the attorneys from a total of three law firms litigating the landmark case.

Kennedy spoke of the subversion of democracy in Monsantos relentless campaign to control public perception through mass media, science, and the courts, as well as the corruption of public officials [and] the capture of agencies that are supposed to protect us.

Reaction

Monsanto vice President Scott Partridge said in a statement:

We are sympathetic to Mr. Johnson and his family. Todays decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviewsand conclusions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and regulatory authorities around the worldsupport the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnsons cancer.

We will appeal this decision and continue to vigorously defend this product, which has a 40-year history of safe use and continues to be a vital, effective, and safe tool for farmers and others.

The verdict sent shockwaves across the world, meeting with jubilation among thousands of glyphosate-skeptics and silence among news sites and blogs, such as Respectful Insolence, which for years has mocked the notion that glyphosate, the worlds most widely used herbicide, causes cancer.

On social media, comments cropped up like so many weeds, with people recounting stories of family members and animals, especially dogs, that had died of cancer following exposure to Roundup.

Globally, sentiment has long been against Monsanto, particularly in Europe. The European Union, prior to the verdict, had already issued a non-binding resolution to ban glyphosate in all products by 2022, and at least one major UK retailer announced it was reviewing carrying Roundup in light of the decision in Johnsons case.

Monsanto, a 117-year-old company and the maker of Agent Orange, DDT, and genetically modified organisms, has been referred to as the most vilified company on the planet. With a $66 billion merger with German Bayer completed in June 2018, the vilified name itselfMonsantowill be retired, but not those of its products. On news of the verdict, Bayer saw its stock lose $11 billion in value.
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-M.N.) listens during a news conference in front of the Capitol on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 1, 2017. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Rep. Keith Ellison Denies Allegations of Domestic Violence Against Ex-Girlfriend

A Minneapolis congressman is denying accusations of domestic violence made by an ex-girlfriend and her son.

The allegations against Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) first surfaced in an Aug. 11 Facebook post by Austin Monahan, the son of Ellisons ex-girlfriend Karen Monahan, and come days before an Aug. 14 primary, in which Ellison is running for state attorney general.

Ellison, who is a six-term incumbent from the states 5th Congressional District and serves as deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, responded to the accusations following demands from several of his primary opponents.

Karen Monahan told The Epoch Times that throughout the relationship, which spanned several years, she saw Ellison morph into a different person who repeatedly lied to her and cheated on her with other women. She said she suffered physically from what she called narcissistic abuse.

The pathological lying, cheating, smearing my name, and seeking validation and sympathy from the various females he was preying on, kept getting more and more frequent, she said in an email on Aug. 13. By the time the physical abuse occurred, I was dealing with the PTSD full-blown.

In the lengthy post shared widely online, Austin Monahan accused Ellison of a barrage of misdeeds, including how he had seen over 100 text and Twitter messages in which the congressman had threatened his mother. Austin Monahan also wrote about viewing an almost two-minute long video that showed Ellison dragging my mama off the bed by her feet, while screaming and yelling obscene slurs. The son said he found the files on his mothers computer in 2017.

My brother and I watched our mom come out of pure hell after getting out of her relationship with Keith Ellison, Austin Monahan wrote at the beginning of the post. His claims were also publicly backed by his mother, who is a political organizer.

Ellison denied any claims of abuse, saying in a statement: Karen and I were in a long-term relationship which ended in 2016, and I still care deeply for her well-being.  This video does not exist because I have never behaved in this way, and any characterization otherwise is false.

Karen Monahan told The Epoch Times that the incident in the video happened in 2016 when she calmly confronted Ellison over a lie he told her. She said he suddenly flew into a rage that she had never witnessed before and the next morning, after asking her to take the trash out, he dragged her off her bed and forced her to leave. She said she couldnt move back in until months later.

Minnesota Public Radio News obtained and reviewed the messages exchanged between the two. In their report, they said they found no evidence of the alleged physical abuse in texts after their breakup. But a screenshot of one December 2017 text message shows Karen Monahan confronting Ellison about the video (the outlet did not receive the video).

We never discussedthe video I have of you trying to drag me off the bed, Karen Monahan wrote to Ellison in the text. The congressman didnt respond to the message or any others after it.

The congressmans ex-wife, Kim Ellison, came to his defense on Aug. 12, stating that the behavior described does not match the character of the Keith I know.

An online search found no court records of any incidents between the two.

Austin Monahan said he confronted his mother last year upon discovering the files but she begged him and his brother not to tell anyone. He told the Star Tribune on Aug. 11 he did not have the video, adding that he had no reason to tear down the congressman.

Karen Monahan said she did not want to share her story publicly and had tried to get Ellison into restorative justice (a system that focuses on the rehabilitation of offenders through victims), but he kept rejecting her offers.
A man stands in front of a bright red eco-friendly urinal on the Ile Saint-Louis along the River Seine in Paris on Aug. 13, 2018. (Reuters/Philippe Wojazer)

Residents of Paris Neighborhoods Voice Outrage Over Very Public Eco-Friendly Urinals

Paris residents have long had to endure the stench of urine on their streets, but a new set of highly visible urinals is causing an uproar.

While the bright red urinoirs have been installed to combat the problem of public peeing, locals have complained about lack of privacy and their location in upscale neighborhoods.

One in particular, on the chic Ile Saint-Louis island in the middle of the River Seineone of the citys most exclusive quartershas provoked residents to write to the mayor to demand its removal.

Theres no need to put something so immodest and ugly in such an historic spot, said Paola Pellizzari, 68, owner of a Venetian art store.

Its beside the most beautiful townhouse on the island, the Hotel de Lauzun, where Baudelaire lived, she told Reuters, referring to the 19th-century French poet.

She said that the urinal, which is installed about 22 yards from an elementary school, incites exhibitionism.

But, according to their manufacturer, the Faltazi design agency, the devices are an eco solution to public peeing, and contain straw that can be used as compost in public parks. The straw reduces the smell of urine and means the devices dont need to be connected to sewers.

A Blight on Neighborhoods

The problem, say locals, is that they are basically just boxes with openings in the front and no stalls of any kind around them, so locals fear they could blight their neighborhoods. In addition, they can be a little embarrassing to use.

Wouter, 43, who was visiting from Amsterdam, told Britains Daily Telegraph he had used one of them, but felt uncomfortable.

Public toilets are usually more hidden, he said. At first, I thought it was a modern art installation because of the flower box on top.

One of the boxes overlooks the Seine with tourist boats passing in front, not far from the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Its horrible, the 50-year-old owner of a nearby art gallery, who declined to give his name, told Reuters.

Were told we have to accept this but this is absolutely unacceptable. Its destroying the legacy of the island. Cant people behave?

A Serious Problem

Mayor Ariel Weil said the boxes were rolled out in locations where public peeing is a problem.

If we dont do anything, men are just going to pee in the streets, he said. If it is really bothering people, we will find another location.

Paris has a long history of public urination, with so-called pissoirs common on the streets of the city in the mid-1800s. By the 1930s, there were around 1,200 of the green sheet-metal stalls, but by the 1960s, they were mostly phased out.

Victor Massip, who invented the controversial model in Ile Saint-Louis, said theyre necessary.

People urinating on the streets of France is a serious problem, he told the Daily Telegraph. We knew there was a demand for a solution, so weve come up with one.
The Samsung logo is seen in Seoul, South Korea, March 23, 2018. (Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji)

Samsung May Suspend Operations at China Mobile Phone Plant

SEOULSamsung Electronics Co Ltd is considering suspending operations at one of its mobile phone manufacturing plants in China due to slumping sales and rising labor costs, the Electronic Times reported on Aug. 13.

Samsung might stop producing mobile phones this year at Tianjin Samsung Telecom Technology, located in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, the South Korean newspaper said, describing the move under consideration as a potential withdrawal.

The worlds biggest smartphone maker said on Aug. 13 that nothing had been decided on the fate of its Tianjin operation.

The overall smartphone market is having difficulties due to slowing growth. Samsung Electronics Tianjin telecom enterprise aims to focus on activities that increase competitiveness and efficiency, it said in a statement to Reuters.

Just five years ago, Samsung had 20 percent of the Chinese market only to see that fall to less than 1 percent this year, outgunned by Huawei , Xiaomi and other Chinese brands, particularly on pricing.

The South Korean tech giant is also under pressure to jump-start faltering smartphone sales after posting its slowest quarterly profit growth in more than a year, as rivals nip at its heels with cheaper, feature-packed models.

In addition to the Tianjin plant, Samsung also another Chinese phone factory in Huizhou.

In recent years, Samsung has focused its major mobile phone investments on production facilities in Vietnam and India. It opened the worlds biggest smartphone factory outside New Delhi last month, which is slated to become an export hub.

According to the Electronic Times, its Tianjin plant in China produces 36 million mobile phones a year and its Huizhou plant makes 72 million units a year, while the two factories in Vietnam combined make 240 million units a year.

By Ju-min Park
Counter protesters and members of the Antifa and Blac Bloc burn a Confederate battle flag on the east of Lafayette Square where the white supremacist Unite the Right rally is being held in Washington on Aug. 12, 2018. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Secret Service Aware of Antifa Threats of Violence Against Trump

Members of the domestic terrorist organization Antifa gathered in Washington on Aug. 12 to counterprotest a small gathering of right-wing demonstrators on the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville riots, and to threaten President Donald Trump in videos with violence and even murder.

The Secret Service is aware of the videos circulating in the media. As a matter of policy, we do not comment regarding Protective Intelligence investigations, a Secret Service spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

According to Reuters, there were two dozen demonstrators and thousands of chanting counterprotesters. Antifa, which is known for its members wearing masks and all-black attire. regularly organizes to attack conservatives who participate in public events. That day, they were seen attacking police officers and threatening members of the media.

When Antifa members were asked by a Daily Caller reporter at the rally about what they would do if they saw the president in person, the responses all had one thing in common: the physical harm or murder of the president.

Some of the answers included: I would murder him, and Wed have to do him like Gaddafi, (referencing the Libyan dictator, who was killed by his own people).

The two sides were separated by a large police presence at Lafayette Square, near the White House. The right-wing rally, dubbed the Unite the Right 2, ended early due to rain.

Trump marked the anniversary in a Twitter post on Aug. 11 and called for unity.

The riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division, he wrote. We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!
President Donald Trump and then-Director of Communications for the White House Public Liaison Office Omarosa Manigault in the Oval Office of the White House on Oct. 24, 2017. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Trump Fires Back at Former Staffer Omarosa

President Donald Trump has lambasted former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman after she accused him of racism in her recent book, and administration officials suggest she may be in legal jeopardy.

Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will, Trump said in an Aug. 13 tweet. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok.

Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

Manigault Newman worked with Trump on his reality television show, The Apprentice. She joined his presidential campaign as director of African-American Outreach and landed a job in his administration as his assistant and communications director for the Office of Public Liaison.

She was fired in December.

People in the White House hated her, Trump wrote. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work.

really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me  until she got fired!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

The watershed moment came, it appears, in the months after Trump appointed Gen. John Kelly as his chief of staff.

When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems, Trump said in a tweet. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me  until she got fired!

Book Deal

After leaving the White House, Manigault Newman was downhearted because Trump ceased all correspondences with her, an unnamed insider source told The Daily Mail.

She used her TV appearances to hype up her story of working for Trump, fishing for the best publishing deal, the source said.

When I can tell my story, it is a profound story that I know the world will want to hear, she told ABC News in December.

She denied that she was fired.

I wanted to make the one year mark. That was one of the goals that I set out to and then get back to my life, she said.

But later in the interview, she went further, saying she resigned on her own because of her objections to the Trump administration.

John Kelly and I had a very straightforward discussion about concerns that I had, issues that I raised. And as a result, I resigned, she said.

Back then, she wouldnt go as far as questioning Trumps character when it came to his attitude toward different races. She said he tried in his own way to bring Americans together.

That was about to change.

In February, she appeared on CBSs reality show, Celebrity Big Brother, where she made ominous claims about the Trump administration, such as its bad and were not OK.

She knew that Celebrity Big Brother might be make-or-break for her landing a book deal and she maximized that moment, the insider source told The Daily Mail.

In July, the newspaper reported that Manigault Newman landed a seven-figure book deal with Simon & Schuster, a subsidiary of CBS.

Carolyn Reidy, president and chief executive of the publisher, has donated nearly $15,000 to Democratic candidates since 1999, including $2,300 to Hillary Clintons 2008 presidential run and $5,175 to her 2016 bid. In fact, Reidy donated to Clinton over the lawful limit in 2016 and had to have part of her donations refunded.

Based on OpenSecrets.org data, Reidy gave the money to the Democratic National Committee instead.

Simon & Schuster published all seven of Clintons books. In 2014, there was lots of finger-pointing going on at Simon & Schuster, a source told Page Six, after the publisher reportedly paid Clinton $14 million in advance for her memoir, which sold 85,000 in its first week, reported The New York Times, but slowed to sell a disappointing 300,000 copies over the next 21 months, according to Time magazine. Clintons next book, Stronger Together, was an even harder flop, only selling about 2,900 copies in its first week, NYT reported.

Reidy now placed her bets on Manigault Newman, who called Trump a racist, a bigot, and a misogynist in her book and accused him of using a racial slur during the production of The Apprentice, The Guardian reported.

Falling Apart

Political consultant Frank Luntz said Manigault Newman mentioned him as one of the sources of the racial slur claiman attribution he denied.

She claims to have heard from someone who heard from me that I heard Trump use the N-word, he said in an Aug. 10 tweet. Not only is this flat-out false (Ive never heard such a thing), but Omarosa didnt even make an effort to call or email me to verify. Very shoddy work.

Manigault Newman also accused Trump of using racial slurs against George Conway, who is half Filipino. He is the husband of Trumps counselor, Kellyanne Conway.

George Conway, a vocal Trump critic on Twitter, dismissed this particular claim.

The allegation is not credible, and indeed is ridiculous, particularly in light of the timing of her departure from the White HouseDecember 12, 2017, he said in an Aug. 10 tweet. Its absurd all around.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to the claims on Aug. 10.

Instead of telling the truth about all the good President Trump and his administration are doing to make America safe and prosperous, this book is riddled with lies and false accusations, she said in a statement.

Its sad that a disgruntled former White House employee is trying to profit off these false attacks, and even worse that the media would now give her a platform, after not taking her seriously when she had only positive things to say about the president during her time in the administration.

On Aug. 12, NBC News and other media aired a tape that Manigault Newman said she secretly made of Kelly firing her in December. On the tape, Kelly said hes been made aware of significant integrity issues about her, including issues that made her open to some legal action. He offered her a friendly departure, where she could resign to avoid damage to her reputation.

She refused, and Kelly was forced to fire her, unnamed White House aides told Politico.

Legal Issues

Manigault Newman said she talked to Kelly in the Situation Room, a highly secured room in the White House, where personal devices arent allowed.

The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room, shows a blatant disregard for our national securityand then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee, Sanders said in a Aug. 12 statement.

In addition, Manigault Newman may have broken a nondisclosure agreement. Everyone in the West Wing must sign one, Kellyanne Conway said on Aug. 12.

Trump said in an Aug. 13 tweet that Manigault Newman indeed signed such an agreement.

In another tweet, Trump said he chided Manigault Newman to counter fake news, the moniker he uses for a majority of the legacy media outlets.

While I know its not presidential to take on a lowlife like Omarosa, and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry! he said.

Correction: The article was updated to clarify Kellyanne Conways Aug. 12 statement.
Two Koreas Plan Third Summit in September

SEOULNorth and South Korea agreed on Aug. 13 to hold a summit in the North in September, another step towards boosting cooperation between the old rivals.

Officials from both sides meeting in the truce village of Panmunjom, in the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas, reached an agreement on a September summit between the countries leaders in the Norths capital of Pyongyang.

No date was announced for what will be the third meeting this year between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

They first met in April in Panmunjom, a remarkable thaw in ties after more than a year of rising tension and fears of war over the Norths development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

There they agreed that Moon would visit the Norths capital in the autumn, though the pair met again in May in an unannounced meeting at Panmunjom.

No details on an agenda for next months talks were announced, but the two Koreas have been discussing a range of issues, from a possible peace declaration to joint economic and infrastructure projects.

The progress between the two Koreas comes after Kim vowed to work toward that goal at a landmark summit in June in Singapore with U.S. President Donald Trump.

United States officials have said that North Korea had yet to agree to a timeline for eliminating its nuclear arsenal or to disclose its size, which American estimates have put at between 30 and 60 warheads.

After Mondays talks, Ri Son Gwon, the chairman of a North Korean committee aiming for the peaceful reunification of the peninsula, told his South Korean counterpart, Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, it was important to clear obstacles preventing inter-Korean relations from moving forward.

If the issues that were raised at the talks arent resolved, unexpected problems could emerge and the issues that are already on the schedule may face difficulties, Ri said, without giving details.

Potential Problems

One issue that has angered North Korea recently has been the case of a dozen North Korean restaurant workers who came to the South in 2016 via China.

The North says they were abducted by the South and should be returned, and has raised the possibility of the issue creating an obstacle to the reunion of some families divided by the 1950-53 Korean War, planned for next week.

Cho did not say if North Korea had raised the case of the restaurant workers on Monday, merely saying it had not brought up new issues.

There were mentions that if there are problems to be resolved by both sides, on humanitarian issues or for the development of inter-Korean relations, we should do it, the minister told reporters.

Cho said the two sides had exchanged views on the Norths denuclearization and on a peace mechanism to replace the armistice that ended fighting during the Korean War.

Moon and Kim agreed during their first summit to push for a declaration of an end to the Korean War together with the United States this year, but Washington has said it would only be possible after the North abandons its nuclear program.

Last month, the Norths state media criticized the South, accusing it of only caring only about the views of the United States and failing to take practical steps to advance inter-Korean relations.

South Korea hopes to restart efforts on a cross-peninsula railway and a joint industrial park but has been cautious about major projects due to international sanctions chiefly engineered by Washington over the Norths nuclear and missile programs.

The North has urged the United States to end the sanctions, saying it had made goodwill gestures, including a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests, the dismantling of a nuclear site, and the return of the remains of some U.S. soldiers killed in the Korean War.

The North is asking the South to play a bridging role as they want the United States to speed up progress in declaring an end to the war officially, said Seo Yu-seok, a researcher at the Institute of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

Ri said the two sides had agreed on a date for the summit, but he declined to elaborate.

Kim Eui-kyeom, a spokesman of South Koreas presidential office, said it would be difficult for the summit to happen before the Sept. 9 anniversary of North Koreas founding, a major holiday there.

By Hyonhee Shin and Joyce Lee
Valsartan Recall: FDA Adds More Firms in Recall of Blood Pressure Drug

More companies were added to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration recall of blood pressure and heart medicine containing a possible carcinogen, according to an update on Aug. 8.

Valsartan, according to the FDA, is used as a component in drugs that is to treat high blood pressure as well as congestive heart failure. The FDA initiated its first recall July 13 after tests showed the drugs could contain N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA).

The Aug. 8 recall update includes Valsartan tablets from pharmaceutical companies AvKare, A-S Medication Solutions LLC, Bryant Ranch Prepack Inc, Camber Pharmaceuticals, Inc. H. J. Harkins Company, Northwind Pharmaceuticals, NuCare Pharmaceuticals Inc., Prinston Pharmaceutical Inc. (labeled as Solco Healthcare LLC), Proficient Rx LP, RemedyRepack, Teva Pharmaceuticals (labeled as Major Pharmaceuticals), Teva Pharmaceuticals USA (labeled as Actavis).

A list of the drugs can be accessed on the FDAs website, which can be accessed here (pdf).

The FDA said in a statement on Aug. 9, that it has updated the list of valsartan products under recall and the list of valsartan products not under recall to incorporate recalls of valsartan-containing products manufactured by Hetero Labs Limited, in India, labeled as Camber Pharmaceuticals Inc. Not all Camber valsartan products distributed in the U.S. are being recalled.

Camber Pharmaceuticals is recalling certain valsartan tablets because they contain the impurity N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) in the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API). Hetero Labs manufactures the API for the Camber products using a process similar to Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals. Test results from Hetero Labs show the amount of NDMA found in its valsartan API exceeds acceptable levels; although it is generally lower than the amount discovered in the API manufactured by Zhejiang, according to the agency.

On Aug. 2, the FDA added more valsartan-containing drugs to its recall list.

Made in China

The Epoch Times previously reported that the most of the valsartan-containing drugs were manufactured by Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals in Linhai, China.

NDMA, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was once used to make rocket fuel, antioxidants, and softeners for copolymers. It isnt used for anything other than for research.

Chinas National Health Commission said that the recalled drug, which is used to treat patients with high blood pressure, shouldnt be used for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, Reuters reported on July 30.

The Chinese regimes health regulator also said there were six local companies that used valsartan manufactured by Huahai. Five of the firms have issued recalls.

Rosemary Gibson, a senior adviser at The Hastings Center and an author of several books on health care issues, said that the tainted valsartan shows how defective medicines and pharmaceutical ingredients made by Chinese manufacturers are becoming a health hazard for other countries.

There is a lack of trust in medicines made in China now, Gibson told The Epoch Times earlier in July. The public wants their medicine to be safe. This carcinogen hidden in valsartan raises the question whether other products that are made in China have been made contrary to the global standard we came to accept.

Apple, iPhone, and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

The U.S.China Economic and Security Review Commission said in an annual report (pdf) published in January that China has been a prolific source of defective and counterfeit drugs. Chinese consumers may prefer U.S. pharmaceutical products due to concerns over the quality of domestic drugs. China has been a prolific source of counterfeit and defective medicine. In 2012, Chinese authorities seized 77 million domestically produced gel capsules that were created from industrial waste and contained excessive levels of cadmium, the report said.

The U.S. National Library of Medicine also noted Chinas drug problems.

China has significant gaps and weaknesses in its regulatory oversight of the off-label use of drugs, its website says. As in the United States, the off-label prescribing of drugs is not prohibited in China if there is a sound scientific basis.
So, say youve started a business in a remote location, and the business is doing well; but if youre like most entrepreneurs, youre not content to rest on your laurels: Youre interested in growing your company further, and one of your tactics is using a remote workforce.

Related: 7 Tips for Managing a Remote Team (Infographic)

Now, that may call for scaling; and scaling a remote workforce involves addressing specific needs that are different from those faced by growing on-site companies. This doesnt mean you shouldnt scale, but it does mean you should be sensitive to your remote employees in the process. Here's how to do that:

Dont rush.

The moment you realize your business is not only thriving but also ready to expand is a thrilling one. Understandably, you'll want to respond by growing rapidly. Yet, while expansion is a logical decision, if youre regularly turning away desirable clients or raking in revenue, expanding too quickly isn't going to translate to automatic success.

Just take the example of KIND Healthy Snacks. When he spoke to USA Today, CEO Daniel Lubetzky, the paper observed, admitted to making a lot of mistakes during his earlier entrepreneurial years, such as putting too much emphasis on expansion and taking on big orders that were difficult to fulfill.

It wasnt until the company slowed down and invested time into perfecting a crafted snack bar that the business found success, the newspaper report. And that's a good lesson to learn because, for remote business owners, the temptation to expand as quickly as possible is especially tempting.

Those remote business owners should slow down, because expansion will require hiring new talent, restructuring to deal with a larger workforce and client base and addressing new challenges, such as the need for heavy-duty technology infrastructure. Some bumps along the road during expansion are inevitable, so rushing through several dramatic changes at once is unwise.

You'll just have even less time than you would have to experiment with new arrangements and find what works best.

Related: How to Make Your Business Fully Remote in 7 Steps

Dont ignore physical spaces.

When you scale a remote company, you have to hire new people, and chances are they wont be in the same city as you. They might not even be from the same continent. That means physical workspaces like offices are irrelevant, right?

Wrong. In my experience, the reality is more complicated. For example, our company is starting to participate in shared incubator hubs, which are owned collectively by multiple companies -- usually, companies that share interests, values and areas of expertise. Renting space in a shared incubator can be a lot cheaper than renting an office. With a hub, you have space for employees to come together for annual meetings or retreats; you can also host visiting employees and boost workplace rapport; and you can interact with clients in-person.

So a co-working space or incubator can be a great way to maintain the advantages of a remote workforce while simultaneously tapping into resources that help non-remote companies stay cohesive as they grow. If our first hub thrives, we plan on expanding into more shared space, so that we can provide in-person interaction across the globe.

Hire high-quality talent.

When youre starting a business, every penny counts. Its important to hold on to that mindset when youve established yourself and when you begin expanding, too. Often, entrepreneurs are tempted to cut corners when it comes to hiring top-tier talent, because salary and benefit packages can easily be the most expensive part of operating.

However, if theres one place where you shouldnt be cutting corners, its expanding your remote workforce. After all, a bad hire will cost you in the long run: Not only do you have to spend money to on-board and train new employees, but the constant monitoring and elevated risk of errors with less-than-qualified employees can be exhausting. These issues could even jeopardize your companys good name.

Then, as your business grows, youll have less and less personal bandwidth to monitor every employees performance or find replacements when someone leaves. That means its essential to get hiring decisions right the first time, and with each hire to find a good fit that will contribute to the company without your having to breathe (remotely) down his or her neck.

Another thing: Finding quality hires will require that you offer fair, attractive compensation.

Invest in quality technology.

Running your business remotely is easier than ever, thanks to collaborative services such as Google Docs and Slack. Most of these tools are free or very affordable to start using; For example, Dropbox offers unlimited cloud storage for professional teams for about $20 a month, and Slack offers services such as multi-person online screen-sharing when users upgrade from the free version.

As your company grows, dont be afraid to invest in technology and digital services. Communicating expectations and sharing work products online is even more crucial in a remote workplace than an in-office one, and your tools need to be up to the task.

Build a positive workplace culture.

Social interaction, even outside of strictly work-related tasks, occurs naturally in non-remote workplaces. That social interaction goes a long way in shaping a workplaces culture; and culture, far from being an afterthought to financial stats and client lists, is crucial to helping workforces succeed.

Positive workplace cultures can create more collaboration-oriented, engaged and productive employees. In fact, according to research by the Gallup Organization, as reported by the Huffington Post: Disengaged workers [surveyed] had 37 percent higher absenteeism, 49 percent more accidents and 60 percent more errors and defects.

"In organizations with low employee engagement scores," the website reported, "they experienced 18 percent lower productivity, 16 percent lower profitability, 37 percent lower job growth and 65 percent lower share price over time.

Of course, creating a positive workplace culture even in non-remote businesses can be a challenge, but its especially tricky for remote companies, where workers cant even say hello in the elevator. Collaboration tools such as Slack are as useful for building company culture as they are for accomplishing actual work.

Encouraging a non-work Slack channel is a great idea. With Slack you can encourage light-hearted conversation and hold regular video meetings among your team members, so employees form closer bonds through facial and voice social cues.

Such online meetings in my own business also encourage respect and cooperation, helping to build a productive remote culture.

Consider attention to onboarding essential.

Onboarding new employees is a vital step for all companies, but the stakes are particularly high for expanding remote companies. In addition to formal onboarding procedures and documents, many non-remote companies onboard new hires by assigning them to shadow experienced employees and by relying on co-workers to help these new people navigate less formal elements of workplace culture.

As a remote manager, you have far less access to this informal, learn-as-you-go element of traditional on-boarding. Thats why its essential that your formal onboarding process be as robust as possible. Clear explanations of procedures and work expectations are a must. Also, it may often be helpful to assign an experienced employee as an informal mentor to every new employee.

Delegate.

Being a bit of a control freak can serve you well when youre first starting your remote business. You can make sure the work your team sends out meets your standards and that administrative procedures, client interactions and other protocols are done just-so. But the larger your company grows, the harder it will be to retain absolute control over everything, and trying to do that will only lead to burnout and frustration for all.

Related: Remote Teams: Good for Your Company or a Productivity Nightmare? (Infographic)

Delegation requires thinking seriously about how you want your company to look in the future. Will it have different departments? How will the department heads manage their teams, communicate with one other and stay accountable to you? Setting up a delegation system that works is easier said than done, but its still essential to successful growth.

Establishing your remote business is no small feat, and its important to make sure that growth strengthens rather than weakens it.

Related:

7 Keys to Scaling a Remote Workforce

How to Manage People in Different Time Zones

How This Freelance Approach Can Produce Full-Time Results



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
In this ongoing column, The Digest, Entrepreneur.com News Director Stephen J. Bronner speaks with food entrepreneurs and executives to see what it took to get their products into the mouths of customers.

After Daniel Nicholson tasted coconut-milk-based ice cream Nadamoo for the first time in 2008, he wanted to get involved with the startup.

"I was just absolutely blown away that it was a product without any dairy," he says. "This was my opportunity to just jump in head first to something and start getting my hands dirty."

First, he introduced Nadamoo to his family, who were so impressed with the product and branding that they invested in the company. He then convinced the company's founder to let him become its comptroller. Three years later, the founder decided to step away from the business, leading the then 27-year-old Nicholson to assume the role of the company's president and CEO.

"Whether because [my family] had an inherent belief in me or just believed deeply in the products and in its ability to succeed in the marketplace," he says, "I don't know."

Related: How This Husband and Wife Duo Built a Company That Was Acquired by Nestle Only 5 Years After Its Founding

Nadamoo has grew steadily since, with its products now available in about 4,500 stores, including Whole Foods, Sprouts, Albertsons-Safeway and soon, Stop & Shop. It saw about 95 percent year-over-year growth in 2017, with retail sales of approximately $12 million, according to the company, and estimates similar growth this year.

Nadamoo is part of a growing trend of dairy-free alternatives, which most notably includes an explosion of "milk" made with nuts, seeds or grains. The global dairy alternatives market is projected to reach $14.36 billion by 2022, according to market research firm Reportlinker.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Nadamoo

Entrepreneur spoke with Nicholson about Nadamoo's growth, marketing and leadership.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Was it tough to take over the business after the founder stepped away?

I essentially was the one who was running the nuts and bolts of the everyday operation. [The founder] created this wonderful recipe that we all loved and believed in. I basically saw her role in the big picture as she created the recipe. It is the IP of the company that we are now investors in.

I said to myself, if you do decide to keep this thing going, realize that you're going to be diving even deeper. You better be able to connect at an even deeper level with this product and brand. Because at the end of the day you're going to need something to sustain your work ethic and your passion behind this product.

How did the company land its first big distribution deal?

It's 2015, my wife is our VP of sales, and we are actually off in Thailand visiting our coconut milk supplier. We had recently finished meeting with the global office of Whole Foods. We knew that there was a chance they would roll it out nationally, but we didn't feel with any level of certainty that it was a done deal.

We were excited about this trip and connecting more deeply with the farmers who are providing us with our key ingredient. We had just checked into a hotel. I remember the moment so vividly. I'm in the shower and I just hear screams coming from the bedroom -- screams of excitement and joy. My wife Kristen shouts out to me that we landed Whole Foods. That was by far and away the big breakthrough moment for us.

How did you get that initial meeting with Whole Foods?

We're based here in Austin. Whole Foods was our first customer in 2005, right after our founder had created the recipe. She was on a mission to gain feedback from the local community on the product. She had a relationship with the founder and owner of a juice shop and asked him if she could [set up a] pop up in the shop and [give] samples of the ice cream. It just so happens that in walks one of the Whole Foods buyers, and he stumbled upon the ice cream. She basically gets a verbal commitment from Whole Foods to buy her product and so she goes to the drawing board and starts figuring out everything she needs to do to put the product in packaging.

We've been able to do a good job on our end to cultivate some of those relationships that ultimately led us to this opportunity where we got in front of a global grocery coordinator.

Related: 6 Factors in Taking Over an Existing Business

What can entrepreneurs can learn from your experience?

One of the things that I've been enamored by in all of this experience is you have to put yourself out there. You can't be timid about cold calling people or cold emailing people and putting yourself in a position to build new relationships and cultivate them. Relationships, at the end of the day, are a huge part of what we do well as a company, because we care about people.

To have a real genuine care -- not just about your product and the ingredients that you're putting into it -- but about people. That can create opportunities for you. You're always living your life with integrity and putting yourself in positions to create and build upon and cultivate these relationships.

What is the big challenge in your industry and how are you able to overcome it?

The biggest challenge in our industry is the level of money, excitement and energy around this space. I know that sounds strange. The natural foods space was built upon health and wellness and natural ingredients first. Now big money has found out that this is a good place to invest.

There might be more money in this space than is necessary to build this industry in a genuine way. When people are coming into the market even before they have a product with deep pockets and the ability to hire former executives from major Fortune 500 food companies, the challenge is for authentic brands like ours to continue to separate and differentiate ourselves. We need to make sure [this trend is] not moving this natural food industry in a direction that does not serve the consumer as well as it should.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Nadamoo

What marketing tactic has been the most effective for the brand and why?

Social media has done an amazing job of leveling the playing field. In 2008, we were just using word of mouth. We were doing demos in stores. We were going at it from a guerrilla marketing angle and building the brand one spoonful or one scoop at a time. We use the same tactics now and amplify what we're doing on social media.

What's the one thing that you would want people to know about the process to create Nadamoo?

How difficult it is. I'm fascinated by the raw material aspect of it. To see something come from a tall palm tree, then additional processing where the coconut is cracked, the outer layer is shaved off, you take the raw white meat of the coconut and process that into milk. It's incredible. We're beginning to approach millions of pounds of coconut milk and all of that starts from these individual coconuts in Southeast Asia. That's just one ingredient from our seven to eight ingredients that go into our base mix for our ice cream.

What's your goal for the business for the next three years?

My three-year plan entails additional market saturation here in the United States, where we're only in roughly 4,500 stores. The total market opportunity in the U.S. is somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 stores. We want to close that gap. But almost simultaneously we're looking to expand the brand internationally. We've been working on our relationships in Mexico and Canada and even now, out in Asia.

The other thing that we're excited about is the strength of the brand name allowing us to move into different categories. Nadamoo has the potential to be one of the biggest household names as a dairy-free brand. We have plans to focus on some other categories like yogurt, beverage, coffee creamers or cheese.

Related: Before Halo Top Became One of America's Fastest-Growing Ice Cream Brands, It Was on the Verge of Death

Did you meet your wife before you started working together?

Yes. I didn't hire her. We dated for about eight months before we decided to make a hard decision. My wife actually had some [consumer packaged goods] experience. She's just a natural salesperson. As we started dating and started getting to know each other, she loved what I was doing with Nadamoo and had a lot of respect and appreciation for it.

At some point as we were dating, my existing VP of sales was going into retirement. She wanted to throw her name in the hat to replace him. Of course, that made for an important conversation with the family, and it made for several important conversations between me and my girlfriend at the time. We ultimately decided to move forward together. It's been nice to share in the building of the company. It's been a great partnership.

Related:

How This 27-Year-Old Took Over a Dairy-Free Ice Cream Brand and Helped It Grow to $12 Million in Sales

How This Husband and Wife Duo Built a Company That Was Acquired by Nestle Only 5 Years After Its Founding

This Single Mother and First-Time Entrepreneur Overcame Many Naysayers, Building a Vegan Snack Brand Sold Nationally



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Editors Note: Inspire Me is a series in which entrepreneurs and leaders share what motivates them through good times and bad, while also sharing stories of how they overcame challenges in hopes of inspiring others.

Sometimes without realizing it, a job that is secure can stagnate your growth, and what should be inspiring you just makes you just feel even more stuck. It can be scary to walk away from something you know is solid into the unknown, but sometimes it is exactly what you need to do to find your next great opportunity.

Shoprunner COO Stacey Bernhard found herself in this situation back in 2007. She was coming up on five years in leadership roles at Travelocity, but instead of being excited about the next steps, she felt her motivation dwindling. She felt an overwhelming call to do something to get out of her comfort zone and re-inspire herself.

So I quit what was a great job with a great team and a great set of leaders to take time off and to go explore, Bernhard told Entrepreneur. You start thinking about life in terms of three levers of having time, energy and money. Over the course of your life, each of those is moving in a different position. I didn't want to consolidate all of my travel experiences and my adventures into one fixed place, so it was important for me to go and do something different.

With that mission in mind, Bernhard quit her job as director of travel merchandising for Travelocitys lastminute.com and traveled for a year. When she returned, she began to work for Match.com, in strategy and business development. But after more than five years in executive roles at the company, she decided to, once again, step away to regroup by becoming immersed in a different culture to bring new ideas, confidence and energy back to her professional life.

She has traveled, both on her own and with her family, to Africa, Europe, Central America, Asia and the Middle East, spending weeks and months at a time getting to know a new community of people. It helped shape my confidence, [inform] the things that I was looking for in a job and the type of people I wanted to surround yourself with, says Bernhard.

Related: Bluemercury Founder Marla Beck on Why You Should Do the Things That Terrify You

And while many people dont have the scheduling or financial freedom to take that kind of time, Bernhard says that there is a way to embrace the unknown in your own backyard, and it begins with not feeling pressured to follow anyones timeline but your own.

If you want to do it, there's no reason to wait. Make a plan and start on it wherever you are your journey, says Bernhard. It's never too late.

When you know you're facing a serious challenge or obstacle, how do you motivate yourself to tackle it?

If I'm feeling low or frustrated or under inspired, I really try to feed of off my team's passion and their energy to bring me back. Startups situations can be really hard, and there are a lot of highs and lows. But someone always has a win to share. And I am a big fan of celebrating wins, big and small. Just being able to use other people's joy and wins and successes as inspiration and motivation really pulls me forward.

What is a quote that inspires you and why?

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all." That for me is a reminder every day to be bold, and I own making that happen. Whatever someone's version of the daring adventure looks like, do whatever it takes to make that happen. For me it's always been about getting out of my comfort zone, whether that is professional or personal. It can be taking on a new challenge at work or a new role, or it's putting all things professional on hold to take off for a year of crazy travel adventure somewhere. I love the freedom that [boldness] gives me to try and to fail and to learn and to try again. It lets me bring my whole self to work everyday.

Who is a woman that inspires you and why?

My grandmother. She was a lifelong adventurer at a time where traveling as a solo female wasn't the norm. She built a business in real estate and at a salon, teaching herself how to run things. She never stopped learning or trying new things. Between 85 and 90 she started writing a book and learned how to play the ukulele and continued to paint and never miss a chance to stop in at the casino and play slots. She was a brave and strong woman who was committed to her family and was never willing to slow down. That's the life I want to lead. My willingness to take risks, a lot of that is from her.

What has inspired you to be a better person?

There's a lot of crazy stuff going on in the world, and it can feel pretty daunting to think about the path to a better place. As individuals, we can change perception, we can drive important dialogue and have an impact on people around us. And when when Im out traveling, I think a lot about that. I want to be a better person. I believe it's going to impact the world around me, and the world around me deserves my best self.

Related: S'well's Sarah Kauss On How Getting Advice From Your Past Self Can Help You Through Your Toughest Moments

When you are feeling at your worst, what inspires you?

Starting to plan my next adventure and reflect on my past experiences and imagining the next path and countries and cultures that are going to influence me on my next set of adventures is always inspiring and can pull me out of a valley. My globe in my living room is a reminder that the world is a big and awesome place, and it's my job to explore and contribute to it and enjoy every step of the way.

For those women who are looking to start a business or take on a new challenge, what advice do you have for them to keep going?

Women are particularly hard on themselves. Step back and really think about what you have done. Make a list, if you have to, of you what you built and, what you learned and what you know. You'll find you impress yourself. I think wins when tend to get filed away really quickly. And the energy transfers right to tackling that that next hurdle. But we have to be much kinder to ourselves. Celebrate what you have done and then take some time to be honest with yourself. Think about what you would do differently if you had it to do over again. It's something I try to do once a quarter, whether I'm feeling discouraged or not. Taking time to reflect on how far you have come, accepting that maybe it didn't have that the outcome that you want, figure out the lesson and take that into the next set of opportunities.

Related:

'It's Never Too Late' to Become a Bolder, Braver Version of Yourself, Says This C-Suite Executive -- Here Is Her Strategy.

How the Single Worst Tragedy in This Artist's Life Made Her Figure Out How to Heal and Get Stronger

These Co-Founders Insisted on Being Co-CEOs Despite It Costing Them Funding



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
The son of one of the highest-ranking Republicans in Congress, retiring Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, turned on his father's politics in a series of tweets and urged voters to flip the conservative district from red to blue.

Bobby Goodlatte, a venture capitalist who lives in San Francisco, on Sunday evening tweeted his support for the underdog Democrat running for his father's seat, announced he had donated the maximum of $2,700 to her campaign and encouraged others to do the same.

As word of the bombshell endorsement spread Monday, the younger Goodlatte wrote that he was "deeply embarrassed" that fired FBI agent Peter Strzok's career "was ruined by his father's political grandstanding."

The tweets helped Democrat Jennifer Lewis raise more than $10,000 from around the country and brought national attention to the little-known contest in a conservative western Virginia district that President Donald Trump won by double digits.

Lewis is a first-time candidate and "progressive populist" running against Ben Cline, a state lawmaker and Goodlatte's former chief of staff, who has been endorsed by the congressman. Analysts consider it a safe Republican seat.

An aide to Goodlatte did not respond to requests for comment about his son's communications. Cline declined comment.

Lewis said she awoke at 5:30 a.m. Monday to a flood of text and calls alerting her to the younger Goodlatte's activity.

"We're just completely honored to have his support," she said. "For him to put himself out there was just so honorable also. He didn't have to. He could have just quietly sent us a check. The fact that he chose to get involved shows just how important this race is."

In addition to donating to Lewis, Bobby Goodlatte gave to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

His father is the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and former chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.

He is not seeking reelection after more than a quarter century in Congress representing the 6th District, which stretches from the Shenandoah Valley to the Roanoke Valley and east to Lynchburg, the home of Liberty University.

Bobby Goodlatte, 32, was raised in the Roanoke region as one of two children of the congressman and his wife, Maryellen, an attorney.

He moved to California after graduating from Duke University and was one of Facebook's early employees. Today he invests in tech start-ups.

The Goodlattes' daughter, Jennifer Goodlatte Barblan, is an attorney who works on Capitol Hill, a visible presence on the campaign trail who has worked the polls with her dad, friends and political observers say.

Bobby Goodlatte has posted liberal messages on social media in the past, but this appears to be the first time he has publicly targeted his father.

"I just gave the maximum allowed donation to Jennifer Lewis, a democrat running for my father's congressional seat. I've also gotten 5 other folks to commit to donate the max. 2018 is the year to flip districts -- let's do this!" Bobby Goodlatte tweeted Sunday evening.

He doubled down on the message asking his 32,000 followers to do more than retweet him. "Donate!!" he wrote with a link to Lewis's Act Blue page.

Hours after the FBI on Monday fired Peter Strzok, the agent who helped lead the bureau's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Bobby Goodlatte tweeted a condemnation of the way his father questioned Strzok during a hearing in July.

"I'm deeply embarrassed that Peter Strzok's [career] was ruined by my father's political grandstanding. That committee hearing was a low point for Congress. Thank you for your service sir. You are a patriot," he tweeted.

Virginia Del. Todd Gilbert, R, copied the tweet and joked: "In related news, Bobby will apparently be having Thanksgiving dinner at the Strzok's home this year."

Lewis, 36, favors Medicare for all, legalization of marijuana and hemp and a $15 minimum wage. She said she would not support Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for speaker if Democrats win control of the House.

Lewis built a reputation around the district as an early and vocal opponent of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 600-mile project that will carry natural gas from West Virginia through central Virginia.

The pipeline, being built by Dominion Energy, would bisect the congressional district and faces opposition from environmentalists and critics of eminent domain.

Pipeline construction stopped last week, after three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit vacated a National Park Service-issued permit that allowed the pipeline to tunnel under the Blue Ridge Parkway, saying the agency had not explained how the pipeline fulfilled its mandate to conserve public lands.

Cline, a member of the House of Delegates since 2002 and an attorney, has a larger war chest than Lewis.

He has raised $390,000 for the race and had $85,000 cash on hand by the end of June. Lewis raised $72,778 and had $34,363 cash on hand.

Cline has not said whether he opposes the pipeline.
The economic development and potential job opportunities would have a positive impact on this region, but we want to make sure our residents are not adversely affected, said Stormwater Commission Chairman Craig Taylor, a member of the Lake County Board. Environmental impacts of the development process should be proactively and adequately addressed. Lake County has made a large investment in flood mitigation activities, and we want to ensure those efforts are supported watershed-wide.
Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic; jejim/iStock

The swanky former apartment of famed chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain in New York City is on the rental market, TMZ has reported. But prospective Manhattan tenants would need to shell out $14,200 a month for the two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment where the star of CNN's "Parts Unknown" lived before his death in June.

Unlike on his show, where Bourdain traveled to the far corners of the world to showcase little-known delicacies, often in humble conditions, the condo Bourdain was subletting is the epitome of luxury. The nearly 1,300-square-foot residence in the Time Warner Center features a foyer, floor-to-ceiling windows, views of the city and the Hudson River, two walk-in closets (the ultimate New York City luxury), a marble bathroom, and hardwood floors. It also has a state-of-the-art kitchen, as befits a chef like Bourdain.
I never said this in my life, nor do I take any pride in saying in my life, Stone said. I feel like George W. Bush on the aircraft carrier with the Mission Accomplished sign only to realize that hes gotten our country mired in a war that is still going on.  It seems like my statements were premature.
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The headline screamed "Amazon, Google and Netflix are fighting over this rare gas," which is helium, nonrenewable, and running out. When it's gone it's gone. That's a huge crisis for medicine, the military, and computer chips that run the 21st century's gadgets, appliances, and vehicles. But, a couple small companies have a solution.
While few of us have had the desire to wallow in revenge porn as is alleged against Sauer, many of us have known someone who has undergone treatment for substance addiction. We have seen the devastating effects alcohol and drug abuse have had on siblings, relatives, friends and neighbors.
Loud, low-flying military jets have Mt. Pleasant residents asking, Did you hear that? What was that?

Three write-in candidates earn spots on Isabella Countys November ballot.

Municipal water testing has started in Gratiot County and is expected in Isabella soon, as state officials measure PFAS contamination across Michigan.

Summer construction at Mt. Pleasant schools nears completion, just in time for the school year.
Varughese, a graduate of Niles West High School, was found dead in the woods after being missing for five days. Authorities in Carbondale chalked it up to a tragic accident. They initially said there was no indication of foul play and that Varugheses death was the result of hypothermia.
Mothers Day weekend raids nets more than 14k meth pills

PHUKET: A series of raids Saturday night into early Sunday morning (Aug 11-12) netted eight suspects and more than 14,000 methamphetamine (ya bah) pills, more than 104 grams of crystal meth (ya ice).

drugscrimepolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 13 August 2018, 05:30PM

More than 14,000 meth pills were taken off the streets in the latest raids, with a couple in Rawai found in possession of the bulk of them. Photo: Phuket Provincial Police

A variety of suspects were caught in teh raids over the Mothers Day weekend. A well-made handgun that fires shotgun cartridges was seized in the raids. Photo: Phuket Provincial Police

A variety of suspects were caught in teh raids over the Mothers Day weekend. A well-made handgun that fires shotgun cartridges was seized in the raids. Photo: Phuket Provincial Police

More than 14,000 meth pills were taken off the streets in the latest raids, with a couple in Rawai found in possession of the bulk of them. Photo: Phuket Provincial Police

Also seized was a well-made homemade handgun that fired shotgun cartridges, along with four cartridges and 17 9mm bullets.

Police also reported that among those arrested were a teenage couple found to be selling drugs as as a business and that one of the female suspects arrested is a fourth-year law student at a well-known university.

The raids began when officers arrested Wisit Phumnart, 36, at a location near Wat Chalong at 4pm on Saturday (Aug 11), when he was found in possession of 8.38g of ya ice and 18 pills of ya bah. Wisit was taken to Chalong Police Station and charged with illegal possession of a Category 1 drug with intent to sell.

At 8:30pm, officers arrested Nanthawan Srithongkul, 30, with seven ya bah pills in front of a Family Mart on Chao Fa West Rd. She was also taken to Chalong Police Station, where she was charged with illegal possession of a Category 1 drug with intent to sell.

At 11pm, officers arrested three suspects at an address in Moo 6, Wichit.

Malika Songmeuang, 27, was found in possession of one bag containing 470mg of ya ice. She was taken to Wichit Police Station and charged with illegal possession of a Category 1 drug with intent to sell.

Thachama Naengnoi, 27, was found in possession of 12 bags containing a total of 28.68g of ya ice, 79 pills of ya bah, a weighing device and drug-taking paraphernalia. She, too, was taken to Wichit Police Station and charged with illegal possession of a Category 1 drug with intent to sell.

Thanaphol Naengnoi, 20, was found in possession of two bags containing a total of 1.89g of ya ice, a handgun and 21 rounds of ammunition (four shotgun cartridges and in total 17 9mm bullets). Thanaphol was also taken to Wichit Police Station, where he was charged with illegal possession of a Category 1 drug with intent to sell and illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition.

At 2am on Sunday (Aug 12), officers arrested Ahsart Duawan, 41, registered as living at an address in Moo 2 Rassada, and found him in possession of 100 orange ya bah pills stamped WY when he was stopped and searched in front of a clinic on Wichit Songkram Rd in Phuket Town. He was taken to Phuket City Police Station and charged with illegal possession of a Category 1 drug with intent to sell.

At 2:30am, officers arrested Thanapat Naowaprai, 28, and his female companion Sarocha Hatthian, 24, reported as a Year 4 law student at a well-known university. The couple, arrested at an address in Moo 4, Rawai, were found in possession of 14,000 pills of ya bah packed into 14 separate plastic packs. Both suspects were taken to Chalong Police Station and charged with illegal possession of a Category 1 drug with intent to sell.

To wrap up the busy 24 hours of drug arrests, at 6:30pm on Sunday officers recovered a bag containing 100.6g of ya ice hidden in a cardboard box at the base of a tree beside the road on Soi Racha-Uthit, Moo 6, Wichit. It was not explained to which arrest, if any, the drugs recovered related to.
One injured as fire destroys Phuket tour boat, amid tour

PHUKET: All 20 tourists are safe, but a boat mechanic remains injured, after the tour boat they were on a day trip on caught fire off Phuket earlier today (Aug 13).

tourismmarineSafety

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 13 August 2018, 03:09PM

The fire completely destroyed the tour boat off Phuket. Photo: Phuket Tourist Police

The twin-hulled fibreglass tour boat BBC Lion 9 picked up the 20 tourists, all from the Middle East, from Laem Sai Pier in Pa Khlok, Thalang, on Phukets northeast coast, to take them on a day trip to Ao Maan, in Baan Yan Saba, in Moo 4, Khlong Khian, Takua Thung, Phang Nga.

Initial witness reports placed the incident at Koh Lawa, merely 3.2 kilometres northeast of Laem Khat on Phukets northeast coast. Koh Lawa is within Khlong Khian Subdistrict.

The captain of the boat, Wanchart Oonkhao, reported that the boat had stopped at the bay to allow the tourists to relax and swim.

All the tourists were in the water except for one child when there were three distinct explosions on the boat, he said.

With all tourists safely off the boat, Mr Wanchart moved it closer to shore, but was forced to abandon the boat as the flames completely destroyed the vessel.

All 20 tourists were reported to be safe and had been picked up by another boat operating on the same tour schedule, the PR Dept reported.

However, the boats mechanic, Soongiblee Haramchai, 32, was injured in the incident and taken to Thalang Hospital.

Marine Department officials are investigating the incident, The Phuket News has been told.
Phuket beach surf safety urged amid monsoon surge

PHUKET: Swimmers at all Phuket beaches have been urged to exercise high caution today (Aug 13) as a strong monsoon surge pounds the west coast with powerful waves.

tourismmarineSafety

By The Phuket News

Monday 13 August 2018, 12:50PM

Tourists in the water at Nai Harn yesterday despite the powerful surf pounding the west coast. Photo: Phuket Naiharn Surf Lifesaving Club

The warning comes from the Royal Thai Navy Hydrographic Department and the International Surf Lifesaving Association (ISLA).

The Royal Thai Navy Hydrographic Department has issued a warning of a Monsoon Surge as strong waves pound the west coast, causing much damage as the beaches are being eroded by the waves.

The beach erosion over the weekend saw two lifeguard watch stations  one a lifeguard tower  literally fall to the waves. (See story here.)

Capt Wanchi Janlaiad of the Navys Hydrographic Department explained that the surge is an annual phenomenon caused by the southwest monsoon  and that the powerful waves and strong winds were expected to continue for the next two to three days.

The ISLA this morning recognised the change in weather, but also urged all swimmers with exercise caution as warnings were still in place for high waves and dangerous rip currents.

The TMD radar is clear for now, and onshore winds have decreased. The only ISLA warnings in effect at this time are: HIGH SURF and RIP CURRENTS.

A warning means these conditions are imminent, or are already occurring, ISLA noted in its report this morning.

However, the warning also noted, Conditions can change rapidly. If onshore winds increase, dangerous surf conditions can return quickly.

Wiwat Chitchertwong, who has been appointed Acting Chief of the Phuket Marine Office since the Phoenix tour boat disaster on July 5, warned all small boats to proceed with caution as strong wind waves are forecast to reach two to four metres high.

The warning by the national weather bureau, the Thai Meteorological Department (TMD), remains in effect for Aug 12-15.

The TMD noted in he warning, The southwest monsoon over the Andaman Sea will intensify, causing the Andaman Sea waves to reach 2-4 meters high with wave height more than 4 meters.

People along the Southwest coast (Andaman coast) should beware of the dangerous waves.

Small boats should be kept out of the water during this time, and all boat operators should check the readiness of the boat and engine and prepare the vessel equipment, including ensuring that life-saving devices are available at any time, and all people on board should wear a life jacket while on the boat, the warning read.

Also check announcements from the Thai Meteorological Department closely and assess the weather along the (designated) route, evaluate the performance of the ships under their control in accordance with the principles of navigation and strictly follow the orders of the port authority, the warning added.
PM Prayut, Cabinet to visit Phuket

PHUKET: Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha will visit Phuket as part of a tour of the Southern Thailand provinces this month.

politicseconomics

By The Phuket News

Monday 13 August 2018, 11:27AM

The mobile Cabinet tour of Southern Thailand will be held on Monday-Tuesday, August 20-21. Image: PR Dept

Although the exact date for PM Prayuts visit to Phuket has yet to be announced, the mobile Cabinet tour will be held on Monday-Tuesday, August 20-21, the Public Relations Department announced this morning (Aug 13).

The aim of the tour is to oversee development in the southern provinces both on the Gulf of Thailand and along the Andaman coast.

The tour specifically will include visits to Phuket, Phang Nga, Krabi, Ranong, Trang and Satun provinces along the Andaman coast.

On the Gulf of Thailand, the tour will include visits to Chumphon, Nakhon Sri Thammarat. Phatthalung Surat Thani and Songkhla.

The Prime Minister has confirmed to specifically conduct visits to Ranong and Chumphon provinces, the announcement said this morning.

The actual mobile Cabinet meeting will be held in Chumphon province on Tuesday, August 21, led by Deputy Prime Minister Gen Chatchai Sarikulya.

They are assigned to supervise and follow the governmental operations in the southern provinces of Andaman Coast and the southern Gulf of Thailand, said the announcement.
Storms force dam discharge, four reservoirs under close watch

BANGKOK: The Nam Un dam in Sakon Nakhon is now holding 102% of its safe maximum capacity, necessitating continued discharge of water downstream with the dam is expected to take more inflow later this week.

weather

By Bangkok Post

Monday 13 August 2018, 10:59AM

Mist shrouds the rear of the Khun Dan Prakan Chon dam in Nakhon Nayoks Pak Phli district, where excess water is discharged. As of Sunday, the dam held 163 million cubic metres of water, about 73% of its capacity. Photo: Bangkok Post / Chanat Katanyu

Officials said about 4 million cubic metres of water flowed into the dam on Saturday (Aug 11) following heavy rain, while the dam is discharging about 5 million cu/m of water per day.

It is necessary for the dam to release as much water as possible  through all channels including the spillway and irrigation canals  to take more inflow as several storms are expected to come before the end of the rainy season, they said.

For the Kaeng Krachan dam, flood draining is now under control and and flood impacts in Phetchaburi province had been controlled and curtailed after massive flood draining efforts early this week, as Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha visited the province to inspect the area.

Srinagarindra and Vajiralongkorn dams are continuing to discharge 66 million cu/m daily combined after reaching 87% and 85% of their storage capacity respectively, according to the Royal Irrigation Department (RID).

Vaivij Sangpanitch, director of Vajiralongkorn dam, said the 43 million cu/m water has been drained daily, insisting the reservoir would have space to cope with rains expected to come the end of this month.

Prasert Inthab, director of Srinagarindra dam, said the draining of over 23 million cu/m daily provided capacity for taking more water by the end of this month.

He said dam officials gave prior notice to the village downstream about water draining and provided assistance for villages that might experience rising water.

Meanwhile, the Thai Meteorological Department (TMD) said about 60% of Sakon Nakhon province faces the threat of floods from tomorrow until Friday.

People have been warned of heavy rain, flash floods, overflows from streams and landslides.

Residents in the North and Northeast are also warned to expect flash floods and mudslides in the next few days, triggered by tropical depression Yagi hitting Vietnam Monday.

The depression, with a wind speed of 50 kilometres per hour, will move from the South China Sea to upper Vietnam Monday and Tuesday and will cause heavy rain across the northern and northeastern regions of Thailand, according to the TMD.

The weather bureau also said a southwest monsoon in the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Thailand could cause large waves of between two and four metres in some coastal areas.

Fishermen and boat owners are advised to exercise extreme caution while small boats should stay ashore.

Meanwhile, flash floods from a local mountain range have submerged agricultural areas in Phato and Lang Suan districts after Chumphon was battered by five consecutive days of heavy rain.

Locals have been forced to move their belongings to higher ground and evacuate their animals. The extent of damage to farmland is not yet known.

In Kanchanaburi, six families in Sangkhla Buri district urged state agencies on Sunday to speed up efforts to provide them assistance after their houses were damaged by a landslide caused by heavy rainfall last month.

All of them have been living in temporary accommodation since July 20.

The villagers earlier sought help from Tambon Wang Ka municipality which at the time sent authorities to examine their houses' condition. However, the municipality has yet to take any further action.

In an update on the general situation, Chayaphol Thitisak, chief of the Department of Disaster Prevention, said the flood situation caused by the tropical storm Son-Tinh has receded.

Read original story here.
Canada has a chance to become North Americas new regulatory pacesetter in vehicle emissions and fuel-economy standards if the Trump administration succeeds in its effort to roll back the strict new standards set by the Obama administration, which the Canadian government readily adopted.

In coming months, Ottawa will have to decide whether to stand fast with the new Obama-era regulations, or degrade them to align with relaxed Trump regulations.

That would seem to put Ottawa in a quandary. Relaxing Canadian standards would further impair a Canadian reputation for fighting climate change undermined by federal approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline.

But holding to the stricter current standards risks defection of Canadian automaking operations to a more laissez-faire U.S. and Mexico.

There is another option, though, suggested by Christopher Sands, veteran scholar of Canada-U.S. relations at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in a recent Sands essay for the C.D. Howe Institute.

Donald Trump, the U.S. president, is trying to strip California of its 48-year-old waiver to set its own, higher standards than federal regulations, as well as rolling back the Obama federal standards. If the Trump administration is successful in stripping California of its role as a regulatory pacesetter on automotive emissions standards, Sands writes, Canada could attempt to take Californias place.

The middle course Sands suggests is for Canada to keep the current higher standards but make them voluntary rather than mandatory.

Automakers who remain in compliance with the higher standards could brand their products as meeting a new Canadian Emissions Standard, an attractive selling point.

It would be akin to the developers who seek Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification and appliance makers who comply with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys voluntary EnergyStar ratings program, also in order to command premium selling prices.

Canadian Tire pays the price to stay in fighting trim

The price of shares in Canadian Tire Corp. Ltd. (CTC), one of Canadas most reliable income stocks, dipped as much as 7.5 per cent last Thursday as the company reported second-quarter profits and revenues well below analysts expectations.

But last weeks share-price slip was probably an overreaction.

The firms all-important same-store revenues growth remained strong at CTCs retail banners, including Canadian Tire, Marks and Sport Chek. Total revenue was up 3.2 per cent in the quarter, to $3.48 billion.

The sore spot was a 12.6-per-cent drop in year-over-year quarterly profit, to $170.6 million.

The CTC profit decline in the first two quarters of 2018 results from CTCs heavy investment to remain competitive with powerhouse retailers Walmart Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

CTC has revamped its loyalty program to cover all its banners, including its Gas+ filling stations. The upfront costs of that will pay off in higher revenues as customers are more easily able to use their loyalty points and old-fashioned but beloved Canadian Tire money across all of CTCs businesses.

This year CTC also made one of the biggest acquisitions in its history, the $985-million purchase of Oslo-based apparel marketer Helly Hansen. That firm, transformed into a global brand during its ownership by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (Teachers), has racked up three consecutive years of increased profit.

Given its success at integrating its acquisitions of Marks and Forzani Group (Sport Chek, et al.), Hansen should help those two CTC units bulk up their apparel selection.

Theres no evidence here that CTC has lost its touch in both organic growth and growth by acquisition. Nor, with its major investments in the business, does it suffer the complacency of the ill-fated Target Canada and Sears Canada.

Saudi Arabia is not your friend

Given the tiny amount of economic activity between Canada and Saudi Arabia, the Saudi all-fronts attack on Canada that began last week is akin to a Saudi assault on the fall-fashion pages of Vogue.

But the Saudi attack on Canada, over an anodyne Canadian criticism of Saudi human-rights practices, is a powerful warning to Western economies that have been eager to host Saudi investments. That was billed as a win-win proposition.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) wants to diversify his economy away from oil and gas. And the West is eager that the Saudi kingdom be more heavily invested in mainstream Western economies.

Theres a snag, though, as noted in this space some time ago.

MBS, 32, presents well as a Saudi modernizer, entertaining tycoons worldwide with PowerPoint presentations of his Vision 2025 campaign to achieve Saudi world leadership in selected technologies.

Meanwhile, though, the Crown Prince has spearheaded his kingdoms pointless war in Yemen, asserting Saudi authority over Lebanon and led an economic blockade of Qatar, whose trifling sin is to host the broadcast centre of Al Jazeera. Qatar has been forced to sell its stakes in Tiffany & Co. and Credit Suisse Group AG to keep the country running.

Not only is Saudi Arabia an unreliable foreign investor, it strips its satellites of that status.

Compounding the Qatar debacle, the Saudi-Canada dispute signals that MBS means to use the estimated $2 trillion (U.S.) in Saudis sovereign wealth fund as a geopolitical weapon, favouring certain jurisdictions with investment and withdrawing it from, or denying it to, others.

The only reason Saudi Arabia hasnt abruptly withdrawn investments from Canada is that it effectively has none. Which is fortunate, obviously.

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Script violation.

The phrase is new to my lexicon, but when you start reading about women and crying at work and the angst layered into whether its appropriate for women to cry at work, you might just fall upon this language, as I did.

The precipitating moment was a recent interview with a woman executive reflecting on a board meeting during which she teared up  so not done  and my own recollection of being advised that an early weepy moment could compromise my future career. The message: dont do that again.

This was a puzzle. It was okay, on the evidence, to be rude or lecherous or a bully in the workplace (I include my own occasional behaviour in the rude category) but as soon as the tears fall from a womans eyes, then whamo. Say goodbye to being taken seriously.

Seriously?

Well that depends. In a paper published in June by the Academy of Management, professors Beth Bechky and Kimberly Elsbach note that while there has been research into the situational causes for crying at work and the underlying drivers (psychological, emotional), there has been relatively little examination into the context and consequences of women crying at work. In particular, the authors note, we know little about how observers perceive professional women who cry at work, and even less about how the work context influences those perceptions.

Share your thoughts

What are the effects of female crying when it comes time for, say, performance evaluations or ones ultimate career trajectory? In this the empirical research has been absent. And yet the effects of the crying behaviour could have serious career consequences.

Its complex. Those emotional drivers? As observers, we are quite lousy at assessing the emotional backstory in others. The authors cite dispiriting research demonstrating that even during what they define as unambiguous displays of sadness, 24 per cent of observers in one particular study picked afraid as the underlying cause of the tears. A further 15 per cent went for disgust and anger and other unnamed descriptors. Sixty-one per cent of respondents picked sadness.

Because the underlying emotions associated with crying are often ambiguous, the authors tell us, the underlying meaning of crying, in terms of what it says about the situation and the crier is also often ambiguous. As a result, we argue that determining the meaning of female crying at work may rely on assessment information other than the criers underlying emotions.

You will not be surprised to learn that laboratory studies demonstrate that we are A-OK when it comes to adults crying in non-work settings, especially in the obvious ones: funerals, weddings. The authors dont cite airports, but airports are great for crying.

Nor is it surprising that some emotions expressed in the workplace grade better for men than women. Anger, by example. It has been demonstrated that male professional leaders who express anger are more positively perceived than female professionals who express anger. Yet this emotion does not carry the same negative connotation that crying does.

Or rather, can. When U.S. President Barack Obama cried in his gun control speech as he reflected on the slaughtered children of Sandy Hook Elementary School he was praised for putting his emotions on display  and harshly criticized in other quarters for being weak, an embarrassment, even actorly.

For their study, Elsbach and Bechky interviewed 65 full-time professionals who had observed crying at work but had not cried at work themselves. In analyzing 100 crying events, certain themes emerged, including crying triggers (critical feedback, by example), types of crying (tearing up? bawling ones eyes out?) and the observers behavioural responses (assessing the crier as weak would be one example here).

The ambiguity of the crying events came through in the research. Of the 100 crying events, the underlying emotion of the crier was clearly identified in only seven of these.

Some distinctions emerged. Crying during critical feedback was allowed as long as employees did not let crying prevent feedback from getting through to them and as long as the crying did not continue in public following the performance evaluation. (Any subsequent carry-on crying behaviour was deemed prohibited by observers.)

Crying during heated meetings was almost always taken as a sign of a lack of professionalism, and thus also deemed prohibitive behaviour.

The authors conclude that the workplace performs to cognitive scripts when evaluating women who cry on site. The worker who cries in that heated meeting is assigned dispositional attributes by observers  that is, she is seen as weak or unprofessional. The authors call this script violation, the crier having gone off script in what is deemed acceptable behaviour. Script confirmation, on the other hand, occurs when observers accept that the crier has experienced a tough go at work. And so these situational attributes draw a more forgiving audience.

I have failed to capture the nuances involved in this script writing  does the crying occur in a private setting? Did it happen once or weekly? Five minutes or half an hour? You cant read through this and conclude comprehensively what the rules of corporate engagement are meant to be.

Crying in front of strangers is deemed a clear script violation. So theres one hard and fast rule. As one observer phrased it: dont cry in front of anybody unless its somebody that you know and trust.

Continuing to cry after receiving a critical performance evaluation labels the worker as overly emotional.

It is dispiriting and not surprising to read that even an observer sympathetic to a crying colleague can nevertheless make negative assumptions about the colleagues professionalism.

One might conclude that this is all fodder for a more enlightened approach to management.

But no.

The authors land all the responsibility for what they call the management of emotional displays in professional work contexts onto the shoulders of the crier. What should a woman do? Tip one: stop crying and/or leave the company of others while crying. Tip two: apologize later for crying to those who witnessed it. Tip three: keep the crying to a minimum  dont allow it to detract from the work.

In general, if you are a woman who cries at work, paying attention to the context and the emotions of observers could save your career, the authors conclude.

And here I thought all this research would lead to progress. Apologize for crying? Never.
School supply lists are getting longer and parents can feel financially frazzled by the pressures of back-to-school shopping.

The average Canadian family spent a whopping $890 on supplies and clothing, according to a recent survey by RetailMeNot Inc. Driving up those costs, which are double that spent five years ago, are tech items like software, tablets and apps.

Gulp.

Worry not, there are effective ways to save money during the back-to-school season by getting creatively frugal.

Inventory management

Before you race out to the mall, take into account of what you already have. Then, form your list based on what your child needs. If youve got supplies you dont need, like a backpack or calculator, sell them. If no one buys your leftovers, donate to a local charity.

Second-hand supplies

For gently used items like computers, books or clothing, hit up thrift shops, garage sales, neighbourhood clothing exchanges, eBay or Kijiji. When I was in high school and university, I bought my computers and books second-hand, which saved my parents and me thousands of dollars.

Read more:

A back-to-school reno by a DIY family

Opinion: Rolling back sex education is not good for kids

How to afford to go back to school as an adult

Shop online with wholesalers and big-box stores

Big-box stores like Costco, Walmart, Loblaws and Amazon carry a wide variety of back-to-school inventory at affordable prices. A 2017 survey by eBay Canada suggested that close to 55 per cent of Canadian families will shop online for supplies to compare prices, then have the items conveniently delivered.

Spread out your purchases

I know. I know. Its August and you cant go back in time. Prepare for next year by spreading out your childs back-to-school purchases. Typically in October, stores blow out their September inventories at clearance prices.

Smart techs for learning

In todays schooling system, its often implied your child will fall behind without access to the right technologies. However, this doesnt mean you should rush out to buy the latest MacBook Pro. Get a clear understanding of the type of work the school will assign, then select the appropriate technology. Must the work be conducted on Photoshop? Or can a free service, like Pixlr, be used? Your kids can also share a family computer and tablet.

All parents want to equip their children with the right levels of support they need to succeed. But you dont need to break the bank on back-to-school clothing and supplies. If youre around to help with homework, talk through challenges and are a source of positive encouragement, thats what a child remembers.

Lesley-Anne Scorgie is a personal finance author and founder of MeVest.ca

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EDMONTON  A national non-profit is worried a recent spat between the governments of Canada and Saudi Arabia may pose travel challenges for Canadian Muslims leaving for the Hajj pilgrimage.

According to the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), anyone scheduled to travel to and from the country on Saudi Arabian Airlines with return dates beyond Aug. 13, should contact the airline or their respective travel agencies where the booking was made to assess alternate options for return travel.

Also known as Saudia  the Gulf kingdoms state carrier  will suspend all direct flights between Canada and Saudi Arabia next week. The move comes amidst a growing feud between the two countries.

Reports suggest that failure to confirm a return flight could mean travellers are denied boarding or denied entry into Saudi Arabia, Leila Nasr, a communications co-ordinator with the NCCM, said in an email to StarMetro. Travellers who fail to make alternate arrangements could also be prevented from returning to Canada and risk being stuck in Saudi Arabia for an indeterminate period of time.

The Hajj  an annual pilgrimage undertaken by millions of Muslims from around the world and one of the five Pillars of Islam  takes place from Aug. 19 to 24 this year.

In recent days, Riyadh suspended diplomatic ties with Canada, expelled the Canadian ambassador and recalled its own envoy to Ottawa after Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and her department criticized the regime on Twitter for its arrest of social activists, demanding their immediate release.

Angered by the condemnation, Saudi Arabia has also tried to sting Canadas economy by halting future trade and investment deals and by cancelling lucrative scholarships that would have seen 15,000 of its citizens study in Canada. One media report said Saudi banks and pension funds were ordered to sell off their Canadian assets, although that report remains unconfirmed.

Edmonton-based Eco Travels specializes in booking Hajj travel packages. The company remains largely unaffected by the row because its made reservations on flights via Europe, but says passengers are nevertheless worried about the reception they may receive.

People are a bit worried because of maybe what a reaction may be over there, said Aminah Aboughoushe, an Eco Travels employee. The best thing anyways when you go whether there was an issue is just not to talk politics with the locals.

Several other travel agencies, however, have had to scramble to change reservations last minute because most tend to book flights from Toronto, she added.

We dont have any direct flights that are going to Saudi Arabia, she said. Our flights are going into Europe on Air Canada and then on from there.

On Thursday, the airliner said in a tweet that it is making a concerted effort to ensure travel continues with minimum inconvenience from/to Canada.

We are working closely in co-operation with out partners and other airlines to provide you with the best alternatives for your flight reservations and arrangements.

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HALIFAXA 54-year-old man is dead after colliding with a deer on a Nova Scotia highway.

In a media release, Nova Scotia RCMP said Queens County District RCMP received a 911 call Sunday at 4:45 p.m. regarding a collision involving a motorcycle and a deer. The collision occurred on Highway 208 at Frank Lake, located 48 km north of Liverpool.

Police said as a result of the collision, the motorcyclist was transported by EHS LifeFlight to the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax where he later passed away. The 54-year-old man was from Bridgewater.

A detour was in place for several hours while an RCMP collision analyst was on the scene. Police said the investigation into the cause of the collision is continuing.

This marks the third fatality from the weekend involving a motorcyclist. On Saturday a 33-year-old motorcyclist from Halifax crashed on St. Margarets Bay Rd. in Timberlea. The male driver ended up in a shopping plaza parking lot. Police announced Sunday that hed died from his injuries.

On Saturday, a man died after the motorcycle he was driving crashed with a car in rural Nova Scotia.

The RCMP said that collision happened around 1:15 p.m. Saturday on Highway 311 south of Tatamagouche near what is called The Falls.

It was a very tragic weekend on our highways. It was very sad, Nova Scotia RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Dal Hutchison said in an interview.

To have three within a week is out of the ordinary. We had three this weekend and one the previous weekend as well in Cape Breton. Its high.

Hutchison said there were different contributing factors that led to each collision, but the overall message is that all drivers need to be aware regardless of what kind of vehicle theyre driving.

People just need to stop. Look. Look again and then be aware too of speed, he said. The ones from the weekend theyre all unique in their own way what led to the collisions. To have four in a week, definitely thats four too many.

Yvette d'Entremont is a Halifax-based reporter covering health, environment and education. Follow her on Twitter: @ydentremont

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There was a single dilapidated home and detached garage on this property, which we demolished to address this eyesore, the nonprofit wrote in its application. Now we would like to further assist in strengthening the market value of the neighborhood by building these two homes on these lots.
FREDERICTONIt was about 7 a.m. on Friday when the first shots rang out, shattering the peace and quiet of Lawrence Perrins morning routine.

The 59-year-old walked up the driveway of his apartment building on the north side of Fredericton where he looked across to the building next door and saw the barrel of a long gun sticking out of a third-floor window.

Moments later, he heard a woman scream.

I didnt see her, but I heard her screaming, he said Sunday in an interview outside his apartment.

She came out, and you could hear her screaming, and then (I) heard another shot or two go.

Two days after the fatal shooting that claimed the lives of two police officers and two civilians in New Brunswicks capital, new details of Fridays rash of violence began to emerge in witness accounts.

Only a patch of grass and some bushes stand between the three-storey brick apartment complex where the shooting happened and the modest, U-shaped building occupied by Perrin and his neighbours, including many low-income seniors.

On Sunday, after police removed the barricades that were blocking their access to the road, Perrin and two others appeared eager to describe what theyd seen and heard.

Fredericton police have said two officers responded to reports of a shooting in an apartment complex at about 7:10 a.m. and found two victims on the ground  a man and woman later identified as Donnie Robichaud and Bobbie Lee Wright.

The responding officers, constables Robb Costello and Sara Burns, were shot from an elevated position by someone firing a long gun as they responded to the call, Fredericton police Chief Leanne Fitch said Saturday.

Carl Dunnett and George Ferris, who watched part of the incident unfold from Dunnetts balcony, said more police officers arrived on the scene several minutes after the initial gunshots.

Once the police showed up, there was quite a bit more gunfire for a little bit, Dunnett said.

While they didnt witness Costello or Burns deaths, in the moments that followed, Perrin and his neighbours said they witnessed a shootout between the suspect and a police officer taking cover around the corner of the building, who Ferris said was white as a ghost.

He was shooting (up) at the window, then he backed off for a moment, I think he reloaded.

Moments later, Ferris heard someone yell, Keep coming, youll get er next! followed by swearing.

Tim Morehouse, a resident of the neighbourhood, also remembered hearing the shouting.

Morehouse recounted last week that he was in his apartment when he heard someone shout: Shut up! Shut up!

He said he heard two gunshots, and then three more. He said he looked out his window and saw the body of a man on the ground, in the back parking lot of 237 Brookside Dr.

I hear more shots and looked out and theres two police officers on the ground, he said. I called 911 and they came and checked on them and they were shot.

Caitlyn Francis, who lives in the complex where the shooting occurred, said she heard the first sirens between 7:10 and 7:13 a.m., as she was getting her four-year-old stepson ready for daycare.

She looked out and saw a police cruiser pull in, driven by an officer she said she believes was Costello.

Not even a minute or two later, I heard the first gunshot, she told The Canadian Press in an interview Saturday.

Even after the initial gunfire, she said the true gravity of the situation only hit her when more police in tactical gear arrived in an armoured vehicle, and she saw them mounting a big gun on the roof.

At that point I freaked out, she said.

The next moments were a blur, she said, as she focused on keeping her stepson safe and calm as several more shots were fired, she said.

I pulled him into my bedroom, got him to lay on the floor back there, tried to play cartoons for him, but he still could hear (the gunshots), she said.

Meanwhile, dozens of officers dressed in combat gear were converging on the building, where Perrin said they swarmed the lawn in front of his building.

They laid that chair over there with a gun and scope on it, he said, pointing.

No more than 15, 20 minutes later, there was helicopters going all over the place.

Francis, hiding in her apartment with her stepson, said the whole thing ended just before 9 a.m., when a police officer knocked on her door and escorted her from the building.

A short time later, police announced that they had arrested an injured man inside an apartment.

The next day, officials identified the alleged gunman as 48-year-old Matthew Vincent Raymond, who is facing four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths.

On Sunday, the scene of the shooting was still barricaded off with yellow police tape, and officers could be seen using a lift to inspect the buildings eaves and upper windows.

While their tree-lined residential neighbourhood is generally quiet, Perrin and his neighbours all said the cluster of buildings next door is visited on a regular basis by police responding to domestic disturbance incidents.

Theres lots of yelling and screaming, Ferris said.

Perrin said many of his neighbours are still feeling unsettled and jumpy.

You hear a garbage truck come, and it goes bang, bang, bang, and theyre out the door, he said.

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GRAVENHURST, ONT.Provincial police say they have charged a 30-year-old man with second-degree murder in the death of his father.

Police say the death was the result of a violent altercation at a cottage in Gravenhurst, Ont., about 150 kilometres north of Toronto.

They say they responded to the scene at about 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

Upon their arrival, they say they found 67-year-old man of Brampton, Ont., dead at the scene.

They say his son has been charged with second-degree murder, indignity to a body and assault.

Police say the accused will appear in court in Bracebridge, Ont., on Monday.

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OTTAWA  Federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen  who criticized Queens Parks views on asylum seekers  is no longer on a government task force overseeing the response to asylum seekers, a move cheered by his Ontario counterpart.

Lisa MacLeod, Ontarios minister of children, community and social services, said she was encouraged that Hussen was removed from the Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on Irregular Migration and replaced by former Toronto police chief Bill Blair, who was recently promoted to cabinet.

Blair was named to the new position of minister of border security and organized crime reduction, with responsibility for the issue of refugees who have been crossing into Canada from the U.S., mostly into Quebec.

New Brunswick MP Dominic LeBlanc was confirmed Monday as the new chair of the task force, replacing Transport Minister Marc Garneau. LeBlanc became minister of intergovernmental and northern affairs and internal trade in the July cabinet shuffle.

MacLeod welcomed the change, suggesting it was a chance to reset relationships on the file between Ottawa and Queens Park.

I do think that the federal government started off on the wrong foot with our administration, MacLeod said Monday following a meeting of the task force.

She took aim at what she called stunts by Hussen, adding, Im glad to see that he has been removed.

MacLeod said she has already spoken several times with Blair and that LeBlanc has also reached out. I think the relationship has been a very positive one to start with, she said.

Relations with the newly elected government at Queens Park got off to a strained start when Hussen was critical of Premier Doug Fords comments about border-crossers and the impact they were having on services in the province.

Hussen last month called Fords comments divisive.

Its fear-mongering and its not Canadian. Its very dangerous, Hussen said at the time. Ontario sadly has chosen the language of fear. Theyve chosen to intentionally use language that could potentially criminalize asylum seekers in the minds of Canadians.

MacLeod had sought an apology from Hussen and on Monday accused him of using divisive rhetoric.

I just feel it became more a matter of rhetoric, whos Canadian, who's not, irregular, illegal. The words around that became far more important than actually fixing the problem, she said.

Officials in Ottawa dismissed suggestions Monday that Hussens removal from the committee was a result of his disagreements with Ontarios new government.

Mathieu Genest, a spokesperson for Hussen, said that Trudeau has appointed Blair to be the main contact on the issue and that he will represent the government on the intergovernmental task force. While Hussen and Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale will support that work, they will no longer be formal members of the task force, Genest said in an email.

Speaking at a news conference, MacLeod voiced frustration that Ottawa has not yet moved on Ontarios demand for $200 million in funding to reimburse it for costs incurred so far assisting border-crossers who have come to Ontario.

Those expenses include $90 million in social assistance; $12 million in emergency shelter costs for the city of Ottawa and another $74 million for shelter costs in Toronto; $3 million in emergency coordination costs with Red Cross; and $20 million in education costs.

MacLeod originally demanded the funding last month in a letter sent to Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos. She said the only progress made so far was federal cabinet musical chairs, a reference to the recent cabinet shuffle in Ottawa.

We are expecting the federal government to come to the table with a significant financial contribution, she said.

Toronto Mayor John Tory spoke out earlier this year, demanding federal funding to offset the costs of sheltering refugees in the city. Ottawa has since promised $11 million for the city with the possibility of more financial aid to come.

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Premier Doug Ford is giving up Ontarios monopoly on weed, opening sales of recreational cannabis to private stores by April 1 in a dramatic shift that will make this province the biggest prize for Canadas emerging legal marijuana industry.

The move scraps the defeated Liberal governments plan for 150 brick-and-mortar Ontario Cannabis Stores, modelled on LCBO outlets, by 2020. However, until a private retail system is in place, the OCS website will be the only legal source for recreational pot smokers in Ontario after cannabis use is legalized nationwide on Oct. 17.

The Ontario Cannabis Store will also keep its standing as the sole wholesale distributor for private marijuana retailers who make the grade.

The government of Ontario will not be in the business of running physical cannabis stores, Finance Minister Vic Fedeli told a news conference Monday, acknowledging the change is a significant departure.

Instead, we will work with private sector businesses to build a safe, reliable retail system that will divert sales away from the illegal market.

Attorney General Caroline Mulroney said private stores will be tightly regulated and stressed the government will make it clear to consumers that marijuana is still a drug that poses risks to health and safety.

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The turnaround on retail sales  which Ford had previously mused about  was welcomed by the cannabis industry as a more practical solution, which Green party Leader Mike Schreiner said should save money over building government stores.

This puts everything back in play, said Darren Bondar, founder and chief executive of Alberta-based Spiritleaf, which hopes to sell franchises in Ontario and expects a surge in applications.

Were so excited for the opportunity. Weve been working on this for 18 months and weve identified 123 potential territories.

Have your say

The government could not say how many stores are expected in the province, what price will be set for weed or what the criteria will be for retail licences.

But Fedeli had a message for marijuana dispensaries that will remain outside the law after Oct. 17: We wont want to do business with people running an illegal business.

Marijuana products will be sold with an official seal to help consumers identify legitimate retailers. The seal pictures the official Ontario trillium flower logo  not a marijuana leaf  below the words Ontario Licensed.

The province will soon begin consultations on rules that retailers will have to follow, including hours of operation and guidelines for training staff.

Fedeli pledged a zero-tolerance policy with severely escalating fines for pot retailers operating in illicit markets on the side. Any store selling to minors will be done, he added. Pot sales in Ontario will be restricted to those 19 and older.

Municipalities will be given the power to opt out of having any pot stores within their boundaries.

With local elections across Ontario this fall, its going to be a ballot question in many cities and towns, predicted Liberal interim leader John Fraser, who raised concerns that regulating dozens or hundreds of private stores will bring greater challenges.

The New Democrats said Fords Progressive Conservatives should have stuck with government-owned stores, but opened more outlets more quickly than the Liberals had planned, in order to curb the illegal market.

The safest, most responsible way to sell legal cannabis is through the public sector, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said in a statement.

Doug Ford needs to make sure that the promised consultation on the private retail model is open, transparent and thorough and includes the voices of as many Ontarians as possible.

B.C. cannabis activist and entrepreneur Jodie Emery urged the province not to stack the deck in favour of big companies.

We hope Ontario to be a truly free market where a young married couple will be able to open up a cannabis store as easily as they could a coffee shop or a craft beer parlour, she told the Star.

It makes sense to delay pot stores until next year, others said.

Pushing the launch date from October to next April for bricks-and-mortar cannabis retailers was the right call, in our view, said Ed Collins of Toronto-based Cannabis Compliance Inc., a consultancy that assists private firms seeking to enter the emerging Canadian market.

It gives extra time for private retailers to get ready while giving the government time for its regulatory due diligence. We know theres going to be a massive flood of individuals wanting to get into the private marketplace in Ontario, and this timetable lets that unfold at a reasonable pace.

Unlike Alberta, which has placed a cap on private retail operations that limits individual sellers to a 15 per cent share of the marketplace, and unlike B.C., where private retailers will be permitted a maximum of eight store locations, the Ontario rules are expected to allow private retailers to seize market share without limits, industry players said.

Five other provinces  British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland  plan to allow private stores to sell recreational cannabis.

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For the millions of Canadians who use cannabis, there are just 64 days left until they can light up a joint, inhale and breathe easy knowing that they are staying comfortably within the confines of the law.

But even after Oct. 17, when cannabis becomes legal, marijuana users who get behind the wheel will find themselves veering back into murky legal territory. While there may be new drugged driving laws on the books  and saliva testing devices heading soon to a police cruiser near you  critics say the legal landscape is still hazy for marijuana users who drive, with the potential to criminalize people who are not actually impaired.

Canadian regulators have now introduced legal limits for blood concentrations of THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana  even though researchers say there is no direct relationship between impairment and specific levels of THC in the bloodstream. Critics have also pointed to potential issues with roadside saliva testing devices, which were not designed with Canadian winters in mind and require internal temperatures of at least 4 C to work.

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Civil liberties advocates now worry the government has adopted a zero tolerance approach based on inconclusive science. They fear that sober people will end up receiving criminal records  and those at greatest risk will be medical cannabis users and racialized communities that are already over-policed, said Rob De Luca with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Its going to criminalize a host of individuals who are basically going about their day, thinking theyre doing completely legal behaviour, said De Luca, director of the CCLAs public safety program. The impact of bringing the full weight of the state and the criminal justice system against someone who may not have been impaired behind the wheel  thats a remarkable thing.

Share your thoughts

Critics like De Luca do not question the dangers of drug-impaired driving or the importance of taking public safety into account. Studies have shown that cannabis can negatively impact cognitive and psychomotor performance and organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving have come out strongly in support of Canadas new impaired driving laws.

Studies have also shown a higher risk of car crashes after cannabis use, with some papers suggesting a near-doubling of the risk. A recent Statistics Canada survey also found that one in seven cannabis users with a drivers licence admitted to getting behind the wheel within two hours of consuming the drug.

But regulating cannabis is a much trickier proposition than regulating alcohol, which has now been thoroughly studied for decades. Alcohol is a simple molecule that eliminates from the body at a constant rate; cannabinoids like THC have complicated metabolic pathways and get stored in fat, releasing at different rates.

Frequent, chronic users  such as medical cannabis users  can also develop tolerance. And they can test THC positive for much longer periods than occasional smokers; one U.S. study, which looked at 30 men who were daily cannabis smokers, found that two people were still THC-positive 30 days after their last toke, albeit at low blood concentrations.

There is plenty of evidence that a person with a blood alcohol concentration of more than 0.08, Canadas legal limit, is clearly impaired. But cut-off points are harder to generalize for cannabis users because THC affects everyone so differently, depending on a variety of factors  everything from a persons history of cannabis use to the amount of fat tissue they have in their bodies.

It makes it very complex to evaluate what a blood concentration means in terms of someones performance or behaviour, said Dayong Lee, a toxicology manager with the Houston Forensic Science Center who has studied cannabis and impairment.

But Canadian regulators have decided to impose blood concentration limits for THC, even while acknowledging that science is unable to provide general guidance to drivers about how much cannabis should be consumed before it is unsafe to drive or before the proposed levels would be exceeded.

It is now illegal for Canadian drivers to have blood THC concentrations of five nanograms (ng) per millilitre or more  a crime that carries mandatory penalties of $1,000 and jail time for repeat offenders. Drivers with at least 2.5 ng/ml of THC in their blood, combined with low levels of alcohol, will also be charged.

Regulators have also made it a summary offence to have concentrations of between two and five nanograms per millilitre of blood. Offenders receive a maximum fine of $1,000 and a criminal record, which they can apply to suspend only after five years.

The government should take every public safety approach thats appropriate, but they shouldnt take it when the scientific foundation is not clear, said Kyla Lee, a Vancouver lawyer who defends impaired driving cases. Meanwhile, people (will be) getting criminal records for drugs, which will render them inadmissible to the United States and have all sorts of consequences for employment, families, life insurance, etc.

According to Dayong Lee, the cut-off points of two and five nanograms per millilitre are based on a handful of studies in which the majority of people showed some cognitive impairment at these concentrations. But these studies are based on relatively small populations and its hard to generalize their results, she said.

I can think of less than 10 studies that support the five nanograms being impaired, Lee said. Its really critical that drug blood concentration itself is not being used solely to demonstrate that this person is impaired.

Forensic toxicologist Marilyn Huestis agrees. During her two decades with the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, she conducted numerous studies looking at cannabis impairment and was amazed to find that in one small study of chronic cannabis users, she could still detect signs of impairment even three weeks after their last usage.

But she has yet to see a significant correlation between specific blood drug concentrations and impairment. My philosophy for identifying impaired driving ... the first thing is that you show the person is really impaired. Because some people might have five (nanograms) or two (nanograms) and maybe theyre not impaired, she said. Then you do the biological sample to point (out) which drugs are causing the impairment.

Yet, Canadian laws do not explicitly require drivers get tested for impairment before they can be charged with drug-impaired driving.

The Canadian government is also introducing new roadside devices that act as a kind of breathalyzer exam for drugs, including THC. But instead of blowing, drivers provide saliva samples that are tested on the spot using the same immunological technology as pregnancy sticks.

These devices can reveal whether specific drugs might be present, but further tests are needed to confirm blood concentration levels. The first device being considered for Canadian approval is the Draeger DrugTest 5000, which has received early criticism for requiring an internal temperature of at least 4 C. Lots of Canada, lots of the time, is below four degrees Celsius, Kyla Lee said.

In an email, Draeger Canada said its technology is well suited to Canada, with internal temperature control functionality that helps ensure optimal performance in a broad range of conditions but was unable to respond to followup questions by press time.

Huestis said shes tested the Draeger DrugTest 5000 and it works very well. The device is already in use in countries like Australia and Spain, and in Norway, police apprehensions of DUI drivers more than doubled after the device was introduced, according to a 2018 study.

But other jurisdictions have reported lacklustre experiences with the device. According to tender documents, the Irish government anticipated that 50,000 tests would be performed with the device every year. Last year, however, police only used it on 612 drivers, with 90 testing positive for drug use.

A senior police officer told the Irish Times that the length of time required to use the device  at least 10 minutes  was a deterrent for officers, who opted to focus on alcohol detection instead. He said some officers also struggled to get usable saliva samples from nervous drivers, whose mouths would dry up.

According to a federal Department of Justice spokesperson, the Draeger DrugTest 5000 was recommended for approval by the Canadian Society of Forensic Science, which is also evaluating a number of other drug screeners. The device is now undergoing a 30-day public comment period that closes on Aug. 18, after which the attorney general will decide whether or not to approve it for use in Canada.
A young victim of the mass shooting in Torontos Greektown neighbourhood was among the crowd at a benefit concert held Saturday night to raise money for those impacted by last months violence.

Samantha Price, a recent high school grad, said she was on Danforth Ave. eating ice cream with 18-year-old Reese Fallon and some other friends on the night of July 22 when a gunman opened fire into crowded restaurants and patios.

A bullet pierced Prices upper thigh, she said, and her friend Fallon was killed.

Ten-year-old Julianna Kozis was also killed and 12 others were injured before the gunman ended his own life.

Price, still on crutches, and accompanied by her father, Ken Price, returned to the Danforth Saturday night to attend the concert organized by Canadian rock band Billy Talent, who have a studio just steps from where the shooting happened.

The mood at the concert was one of celebration and kinship, but it was also punctuated by solemn moments as the various musicians paused on stage to remind the enthusiastic audience  and themselves  why they were there.

Tickets cost about $50 and the venues 1,500 seats were sold out, with proceeds from the show to be donated to the #TorontoStrong fund.

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Billy Talent headlined the concert along with musicians City and Colour, Pup, Finger Eleven and Maestro Fresh-Wes.

Ken Price appeared on stage after City and Colour performed, to thank the audience for supporting the shooting victims. As Samantha looked on from the balcony level, he also thanked the first responders who tended his daughters wounds.

Sam is lucky, she will get to recover and attend university, but all of us will carry this forward, he said.

After leaving the show Samantha, who will begin studies at Western University in the fall, indicated her recovery has been a roller-coaster process.

There are ups and downs every day, but Im recovering pretty well, she said, adding that returning to the Danforth area was an emotional experience.

Im overwhelmed but Im amazed at the amount of love the community has shown, she said.

Finger Eleven kicked off the show following a rendition of Leonard Cohens Hallelujah performed by local singer Alexander Stewart, 18. He also performed the song a day earlier at the opening of the areas Taste of the Danforth festival.

Maestro Fresh-Wes hyped up the crowd performing some old hits including Let Your Backbone Slide, while Toronto band Pup had concertgoers crowd surfing to their music. Pup lead singer Stefan Babcock even plunged into the crowd himself, delighting those near the front of the stage.

But it was when Billy Talent began their set with Devil In A Midnight Mass, that the crowd really made it clear who theyd been waiting for.

The band also performed White Sparrows, which lead singer Ben Kowalewicz noted they dont usually do. The songs lyrics, which discuss the tragic death of a woman, served a poignant reminder to the audience about the shooting victims.

At one point during the set Kowalewicz climbed on top of a speaker to talk to the crowd, which included Toronto Mayor John Tory.

We love this city, he said, adding that the band knew it had to do something in the wake of last months tragedy.

We need to stand up and make sure the rest of the world, and let the community, and let the Danforth, and let the city of Toronto know that we are a people of love, compassion and kindness, he said.

Take this feeling from tonight, and when you leave these doors, remember the feeling of tonight and pay that forward.

In closing the show, all of the musicians gathered on stage to perform a rendition of The Tragically Hips Bobcaygeon.

Later, outside the venue, Yasmin Afshar, 23, said that hearing Ken Price talk about his daughter really struck a chord.

I think it really touched everyone, she said, adding music has a way of bringing people together.

Any event you go to in Toronto, you realize how many people are here, with you, supporting you.
When John Elmsley died in 1863, his will included a minor renovation project: Please take my heart from my body and place it in the wall of St. Basils Church.

There it remains, floating in alcohol, inside a jar, behind a wall. The heart of the man who was involved in one of this citys biggest religious scandals, the heart of a mercurial but generous guy who changed the fortunes of Catholic Toronto when he made a splashy conversion in 1833.

Heart burial was a mortuary practice once trendy among medieval kings, religious men and European nobility, especially during the Catholic Reformation. The practice never took off in North America, and was not a custom of Indigenous people here. Elmsleys heart burial in St. Basils Church is believed to be the only one in Torontos history.

It is shocking in todays somewhat bloodless society, David Mulroney said a few days before retiring from St. Michaels College, which was built alongside St. Basils Church on land donated by Elmsley. Mulroney has been a parishioner at the downtown church east of Queens Park for his entire life, and he remembers being fascinated with the heart as a boy.

I sort of understood that its his heart, he must have really loved this place, and when I read about it as an adult I realized he really did love this place.

At a time when rich, powerful Protestants ran the city, Elmsley was an Anglican ensconced in the upper crust. His father, John Elmsley Sr., had been one of the early chief justices of Upper Canada, one of the few university graduates in the colony, with a somewhat pompous habit of dropping quotes in Latin, as per the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

The Elmsleys had been good friends with John Strachan, who would later become the first Anglican bishop of Toronto, and were a prominent family in Toronto (then called York) before they moved to Quebec, when the elder Elmsley took over the chief justice gig for Lower Canada in 1802. When Elmsley Sr. died in Montreal a few years later, the family decamped to England, where young John Elmsley joined the Royal Navy, before returning to York in the 1820s, the familys only surviving son.

The younger Elmsley returned to manage the familys many land holdings, the most prominent being the estate of Clover Hill. The park lot had been acquired by his father in 1798 and, after a series of trades with another landowner, generally extended from Queens Park to Yonge St., and north from College St., according to the St. Michaels College archives.

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He was a member of the executive council and the legislative council of the Upper Canada government for several stretches, and had his hand in major infrastructure projects including canals and railroads, and was a director of one of the citys early banks. He was known as Captain John Elmsley for his many postings, military and commercial, on the local waterways  a skillful and popular lake captain, one Victorian book recalled.

When he married a Catholic woman named Charlotte Sherwood in 1831, Elmsley was keen to hold on to his beliefs, making sure to have a separate ceremony in each church. But around the time of his marriage, he read a pamphlet that would change his life.

The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation holds that the unleavened wafers and wine of the Catholic communion become the actual body and blood of Christ when the priest consecrates them. The doctrine had long been one that divided Protestants and Catholics, but Elmsley was so convinced by the pamphlet written by the Bishop of Strasbourg that he started to question his faith.

At St. James Church, where the whos who of Toronto society congregated every Sunday, Elmsleys attendance became sporadic. In the summer of 1833, Elmsley wrote to the Catholic Bishop of Kingston about his growing interest in the religion (Toronto did not yet have its own diocese), saying he wanted to keep his conversion quiet, because my older mother, who, in the common course of nature cannot long remain in this world, would be most terribly shocked to learn that I have embraced a religion against which she has ever entertained the most violent prejudices.

He also sent along a cheque for 10 for his sins, as compensation for all the times he had defrauded his neighbour of swine and other animals he shot when they wandered onto his estate. In those days, Toronto was a small commercial city of rural estates and mostly wooden homes, where barnyard animals wandered the streets, along with close to 10,000 inhabitants.

The Catholic bishop, while in Toronto, lived in one of the more stately brick buildings on Jarvis St., not far from the citys first Catholic church, St. Pauls. The bishops home on Jarvis has changed slightly over the years, but it remains one of the few architectural relics of that time period, now the home of Mystic Muffin restaurant. (Ive got to stop there and say, Hello, Im the successor of the guy who used to live here, the current archbishop, Cardinal Thomas Collins, says with a laugh.)

Although Elmsley asked the bishop to keep his interest on the down-low, Elmsley himself was not the silent type. That summer he paid to have 5,000 copies of the transubstantiation essay printed and scattered across the province. He boldly sent one to his friend John Strachan, then the Archdeacon of York and the rector of St. James Church, with an ultimatum: if Strachan couldnt overthrow the argument, Elmsley would start to receive Catholic communion.

Strachan was not someone you wanted to take on lightly, Mulroney says.

Strachan was mortified to see the son of two old and valued friends, zealous and enlightened members of the Church of England forsaking his Protestant faith. He wouldnt have responded publicly, but Elmlsey had printed 5,000 pamphlets, so Strachan responded with a 54-page argument of his own in 1834, a theological battle royale.

While the Protestant faith was based in Scripture, Strachan wrote, the system of the Roman Catholic Church is the result of the gradual accumulation of faith and ceremony, under the influence of time and circumstance.

Anglicans believed in the spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Strachan wrote, but how could Christs body come down to twenty thousand different churches to be divided, chewed, swallowed and digested, he asked.

The priest is understood to possess the miraculous power, to change bread and wine to body and blood with a blessing in Latin, he wrote, and among Protestants, and I may say among persons of common sense, it is not generally reckoned necessary to oppose the absurdity of Transubstantiation by serious argument.

Reid Locklin, associate professor of Christianity and culture at the University of Toronto, said that different denominations of Christianity have different interpretations of the Eucharist.

When I work with students with this, theyll say its just language, he said, but it does kind of matter, and it matters on both sides.

Locklin said that this is one of the reasons that Catholics will not throw away a consecrated wafer. We keep it in a tabernacle and venerate it. The idea is that Christ is actually, personally present in a way that is not merely spiritual.

In the 1930s, Catholic historian Rev. Brother Alfred Dooner called Strachans salvo a most violent attack on the Catholic church written with the intolerance and blindness of extreme bigotry.

The scandal eventually settled down and Elmsley swapped his Family Compact pewmates for the impoverished Irish immigrants of St. Pauls. The downtown church had substantial debt, so Elmsley pitched several unpopular revenue-generating ideas: door collections that were mocked as toll gathering; and pew-rents, then a common practice throughout the city.

The parishioners stood in the aisles to avoid the cost of sitting down, and called Elmsley a pompous Tory squire and meddling convert, historian Murray W. Nicolson writes.

I feel myself quite unequal to the contest with these ruffians who at a word from the priest would put me in the Lake, Elmsley wrote to his old friend, the bishop in Kingston.

He gave up a lot, and he did it because of his conscience, Cardinal Collins said. He had studied this thing  and he said this is truth, this is right. Really, I think he probably wrecked his friendship with Strachan.

The Catholic community Elmsley joined was a contentious one. The local priest had just left the priesthood and was attacking the religion because of a fight he had with the bishop, and infighting plagued the parish, Collins said.

This English aristocrat walks in and starts giving them orders, so I can imagine they didnt really like him very much at times, Collins said, noting that Elmsley was a born leader. Im sure he got booted out of all his fancy clubs and fancy friendships.

Elmsley had a reputation for speaking his mind, acting impulsively, and leaving organizations in a huff.

Before Elmsleys conversion was public, 1833 had already been a fairly scandalous year for the 32-year-old. He had added to his family wealth by buying up land grants from United Empire Loyalists, but when the lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada introduced a measure to stop that kind of speculation, Elmlsey protested, Lt.-Gov. John Colborne demanded an apology, and an indignant Elmsley resigned his seat on the executive council, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography notes.

What an egregious ass he (Elmsley) has made of himself, journalist Robert Stanton said. While Elmsleys Catholic conversion may have affected his personal life, it did not affect his access to power in Upper Canada for long. Elmsley was back on the executive council in 1836, and was one of the few members of government to participate in military duty, helping put down the rebellion of 1837. Elmsley and his men were among those ordered to send the Caroline (a U.S. steamer contracted to rebel forces) over Niagara Falls in 1837. This ship was lit on fire and cut from its moorings in a sensational attack that became a precedent for pre-emptive acts of self-defence. It also became a diplomatic incident.

The next year, his military service came to a somewhat ignominious end. In 1838, he was asked to take his men to the Grand River to help another captain, but Elmsley refused unless he was given a better military rank. The government said no, Elmsley resigned his command and was dismissed from the executive council. He demanded a court martial to clear his name, which was refused Dooner writes.

By the 1840s, Elmsley, who had never lost his love of the water, was captaining a commercial steamer on the St. Lawrence and raising his growing family  he had 10 children. He was also adding to his fortune by buying land grants in Brockville from veterans of the War of 1812 (Soldiers, even though militiamen, and sailors are never very provident, and they could be had at a large discount of their real value, wrote the man who accompanied Elsmley on his mission.) With his growing wealth, he settled into the role that he would be remembered for: generous benefactor to the Catholic community.

He went on fundraising campaigns to help liquidate the parish debt, and he helped build St. Michaels Cathedral, assuming the projects debt of $57,600 with another parishioner when Torontos first Catholic bishop, Michael Power, died in 1847 of typhus. Around the same time he began subdividing his Clover Hill property, naming the streets for his favourite saints: St. Alban, St. Mary, St. Clement, St. Joseph, St. Charles.

Cardinal Collins, who grew up in Guelph, learned about Elmsley once he moved to Toronto in 2007.

I became profoundly aware, he said, everywhere you go you meet John Elmsley.

In 1863, with his own health declining, Elmsley wrote his will, and included the special request for the heart. Elmsley had a deep connection to St. Basils Church, spending a few hours of each day there. He also read widely, and would have known the symbolic importance of heart burial in the Catholic faith. Maybe he was inspired by another convert, King Henri IV of France. Henris religious back-and-forth reflected the tumult of 16th-century France: born Catholic, raised a Calvinist, he went back to Catholicism after he became king, granting religious liberty to Protestants, and ushering in a short period of relative peace. After his assassination in Paris in 1610, his heart was buried at a Jesuit chapel in the Loire Valley.

Elmsley, who had gone from Protestant to Catholic, from meddler to benefactor, had helped usher in a new era for Torontos Catholics, and when he died in May 1863, his body was buried in the vault at St. Michaels Cathedral, but his heart went to the church.

In the 1880s, a Toronto Telegram reporter wandered inside the stately church to ask about the tablet on the west wall, where a Latin inscription mentioned the heart of John Elmsley.

Church officials told the reporter it had been hermetically sealed in a jar of alcohol and deposited in the niche behind the tablet where it now rests.

And 155 years after his death, Elmsleys heart is still there, the alcohol likely preventing its decomposition, but possibly shrinking the organ itself. The churchs footprint has changed over the years, but the heart has not been disturbed. There is little to indicate it is there, only an engraved tablet with a Latin phrase, tucked behind rows of flickering candles.

It is not necessary to tell the Catholics of Toronto or the archdiocese who the late Hon. John Elmsley was, an 1886 book notes. His many donations of land and money to the cause of charity and education will make his name be forever held in veneration and esteem.

While Elmsley and his heart are well known to the parish, and a reliable shock for the incoming crop of St. Michaels College students on the yearly campus tour, Elmsleys legacy is mostly forgotten outside of these walls. Cardinal Collins doesnt think Elmsley is as well known as he should be, for all of the excitement of his life, the very public conversion, the generous gifts, his courage. His heart is in the wall, his body rests at the downtown cathedral, but maybe some day, a statue will rise.

He was a great man, he said, heart and head together.

SIDEBAR: Popes, kings, sultans and Chopin

The separation of the heart and the body can be traced to to medieval court poetry in the 11th and 12th century, writes Immo Warntjes, a professor of medieval history in the book Death at Court. In some of the epic romances, the heart was a symbol of love, courage and knightly noblesse, and in some poems in the second half of the 12th century, the heart became an independent entity, leaving the body for the love interest of its owner. This literary idea that was soon put into burial practice by those who listened to these stories at their courts, Warntjes writes.

But it was Robert of Arbrissel, a famous religious man in northwestern France who was believed to have had the first heart burial or double burial in the Middle Ages, in 1116, Warntjes notes. (There were instances of the heart being buried with entrails in the 11th century, but not the heart buried on its own.) Robert was a controversial reformer and preacher who founded the Abbey of Fontevraud in Anjou, France, in the early 12th century. He had the aura of a saint in his lifetime, and when he became ill while visiting a priory in Orsan, he made it known he wanted to be buried at the abbey he founded in Anjou.

Unfortunately, Robert did not die in Anjou, and he was too popular for his own good, so his body became a must-have relic, and the secular and religious leaders of the two communities bickered over who would keep the body. Although there is debate in the literature, it appears that a compromise was reached, Warntjes writes. Roberts body went to Fontevraud, his heart was to stay in Orsan. More heart burials followed: the heart of Pope Calixtus II was buried in an abbey in 1124, and when the archbishop of Dublin was buried in Normandy in 1180, his heart came back to the Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin 50 years later, Estella Weiss-Krejci notes in a chapter on heart burial in the 2010 book Body Parts and Bodies Whole. Nearly a century after Robert of Arbrissels death, secular rulers like Richard the Lionheart followed the trend, possibly encouraged by their court literature and poetry.

Weiss-Krejci, a researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, who specializes in mortuary archeology, defines heart burial as burying the heart away from the corpse, in a separate location, without any other internal organs. Processing the corpse goes back to prehistoric times, she notes, with different traditions developing around the world.

Evisceration, or the removal of intestines, had been a practical way to keep the body of a prominent person in better shape for transportation and lying-in-state rituals, and in Europe, the practice dated back to the 8th and 9th centuries, but became standard in the Holy Roman Empire between the 10th and 11th centuries.

Heart removal, which is difficult to do with the placement of the ribs and the diaphragm, was not a necessary part of that process. Heart burial was more symbolic: a way to show love, entrench a belief system, a way to show loyalty to more than one place, although other body parts, like intestines, hands or arms, could also accomplish the same thing, Weiss-Krejci notes in an email.

Heart burial was by no means a common occurrence, but it became more popular for nonpractical reasons during the Catholic Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation led to renewal and change within the church, and creation of new orders like the Jesuits. Hearts were buried with some of these new orders as heart symbolism gained special importance in a specific moment of spiritual and political crisis, Weiss-Krejci writes.

By the middle of the 17th century, heart burial had also become a symbol of devotion to the Virgin Mary, and it had become a good compromise among competing religious orders. When Habsburg Empress Claudia Felicitas died in 1676, she had planned to be buried beside her mother (who was still alive) at a Dominican order, but the Capuchin monks who felt deprived of her body demanded her heart, Weiss-Krejci writes.

Although many famous Catholics were associated with heart burial, it was not an exclusive Catholic tradition, she notes. The wife of Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus (who died in 1632), a Protestant, kept her husbands heart for a time, but later buried it with the body. The heart of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, was allegedly buried separately when he died in 1566.

English poet Thomas Hardy, who wasnt very religious, had his heart buried in a Dorset churchyard, while his ashes went to Westminster Abbeys Poets Corner. It wasnt his choice  it had been a compromise after his 1928 death between competing interests.

One of the most famous contemporary heart burials was that of Frederic Chopin.

Chopin requested in his will that his heart be returned to his homeland in present-day Poland when he died in France in 1849. His older sister smuggled his heart back to Poland in 1850 inside a crystal jar of what was believed to be cognac, which had been used since the French Revolution for tissue preservation, according to one study. After many historic perturbations, the study notes, the heart has been entombed at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Warsaw since 1945, with a stone engraved with a biblical quote: Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The jar was exhumed in 2014 by a team of Polish scientists who wanted to know if Chopin died from tuberculosis, as had long been thought, or cystic fibrosis, as later theories suggested. They did not remove the heart from the jar, but noted that it was massively enlarged, floppy, and had a frosted white appearance, with several lesions, according to their study. They concluded, based on its appearance, that he likely died from tuberculosis complications.

By the time of Chopins death in the 19th century, heart burials were losing their appeal, considered by some to be old-fashioned and barbaric, Weiss-Krejci notes, although the practice had a sporadic revival in the early 20th century. In Toronto, representatives from the Catholic Archdiocese, Mount Pleasant Group and St. James Cemetery said they do not have any records of heart burials at their sites.
The provinces move to slash Torontos local representation could be turned on its head by city council, which experts say has the power to change how it governs without Queens Parks approval.

That means council could adopt a two-tier system like the one in Los Angeles, with 97 neighbourhood councils, or in New York City, with 59 community boards.

Its not the end of democracy, said Gabriel Eidelman, a University of Toronto urban policy professor. Nothing in Bill 5 limits city council from rethinking and redesigning its own internal decision-making processes. On the contrary, it may actually wake council up to take action.

Read more:

Mayor John Tory urges Premier Doug Ford in public letter not to cut council in half

Toronto city hall exploring options to fight Fords council cut

What do Toronto city councillors do? More like, what dont they do?

Premier Doug Ford surprised Toronto in July with his plan to reduce council from 47 seats to 25, now known as Bill 5. City staff are examining if and how the city can challenge the proposed legislation in court, but there remains a strong possibility Toronto will run its fall election under a 25-ward system, with each councillor representing on average of 109,000 residents. If there were 47 wards, each councillor would represent an estimated 60,000 residents.

Council does not need the provinces approval to create a Toronto version of neighbourhood councils or community boards like those in L.A. and New York, Eidelman said. In those cities, the extra layer of government is another way for residents to have their voices heard.

Speaking from L.A., Grayce Liu said the neighbourhood councils were created in the 1990s in response to areas wanting to secede from the larger city because they felt their interests werent represented at city hall. Liu, a general manager in the citys department of neighbourhood empowerment, said the goal of the neighbourhood council experiment was to honour the unique communities in Los Angeles.

The experiment stuck. Years later, neighbourhood councils advise their council members on contentious developments, award grants to local organizations and make city staff aware of minor problems like potholes that need to be filled, or traffic lights that need to be synchronized, Liu said.

In New York, besides a mayor and council members, citizens elect borough presidents, who appoint residents to advisory community boards. The chairs of each board meet regularly with their borough president and local councillors to initiate and review plans for the borough.

In both L.A. and New York, city staff attend the community board or neighbourhood council meetings, and the bodies have their own budgets. In L.A., all of the associated costs, plus the training of new representatives on municipal processes, add up to about $10 million (U.S.) a year, Liu said.

If Toronto wants some version of what the U.S. cities have, the key is using the four community councils it already has as a jumping-off point to institutionally have more opportunities for the public to have their voices heard in an official manner, said Alexandra Flynn, a University of Toronto urban governance professor and lawyer.

Currently, Toronto is divided into four areas each represented by a community council  Etobicoke York, North York, Scarborough, and Toronto and East York. Councillors sit on the community council that their ward is in, hold public hearings and make decisions and recommendations on local planning matters. Most decisions made at community council end up going to city council for final approval.

The system was created after Torontos amalgamation to give the six former municipalities control of local issues, said Michael Prue, the last mayor of East York who went on to become a councillor in the amalgamated city and is now running for council in Amherstburg, Ont. The original plan, and one that Toronto should now consider, was for community councils to eventually do a great deal more, he said.

Prue said Toronto should have between eight and 12 community councils to preserve in your face local politics and allow residents to have their say and continue to participate.

The role of community councils should be expanded, Flynn agreed. Theres nothing stopping staff from looking creatively at how to do it.

Council has the power to establish as many community councils, or other subcommittees or advisory boards, as it sees fit and to approve compensation for members, said Eidelman. Last year, the province under Liberal rule changed the City of Toronto Act to include a section on community councils that states they can be composed of councillors, individuals appointed by council or a combination.

The new section clearly spells out that community councils can be structured differently than council committees, thus opening up the possibility that council could establish an entirely new mechanism to delegate authority, Eidelman said. They could end up even more robust than New Yorks community boards or L.A.s neighbourhood council.

Council also has the power to expand the role of community councils so they can make final decisions on more items, such as removing trees, granting liquor licences or adding bike lanes, said Eidelman. City council meetings often get bogged down by these hyperlocal agenda items instead of sticking to more pressing citywide issues.

Eidelman was part of a team that put this and other recommendations to improve governance to councillors last year. Only one of the 14 recommendations was adopted.

One limitation is that council does not have the authority to hold elections to fill the spots, rather than appoint representatives, the city clerks office said. It would need the province to make that change.

Better representation is something Toronto needs, no matter the number of wards, said a group of citizens who participated last week in an event held to discuss the future of local democracy organized by St. Stephens Community House, a social service provider for the citys most vulnerable.

If you take away our representation then youre eliminating the ability to grow, the capacity for people to be represented, and youre disregarding (that) we are a whole lot of people with a whole lot of issues that are changing rapidly, said advocate Andy Villanueva, who has experience speaking at city council committee meetings.

For the past two years, Toby Nicol, a member of St. Stephens advocacy committee, said hes watched as councillors approve Band-Aid solutions for homelessness issues and fail to stand up for the disenfranchised community theyre supposed to represent.

St. Stephens social action worker Helen Armstrong said shes nervous about how a 25-ward system will play out, when program participants, are already struggling to have their concerns heard with far more councillors.

Sometimes it feels like, Are they really listening? Armstrong said.

To get the ball rolling on more local representation, council needs to ask staff for a governance review, but councillors will come kicking and screaming, Flynn said. Those councillors who are engaged in their communities already might not see the need for more consultation and meetings and think, Why bother? Others may not want to dilute their power by delegating to community councils.

The drive for change will have to come from the mayor, and should be an election issue, Flynn said. This needs attention because were talking about equality of participation and who gets a voice.

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BLOOMBERGIndias election commission is preparing to tighten regulations to deal with an expected escalation in social media-driven hate speech in the lead up to next years poll.

Theres been a rise in religious and ethnic tensions in recent months as people increasingly turn to social media to push political views. At least 24 people have been killed this year driven by fake rumours about child kidnappings and cow smuggling. The Election Commission of India has established a panel to examine the growing use of platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube and recommend ways to deal with violations, said Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa.

Fake news and paid news  all these are matters of concern when social media is being misused, Lavasa said in an interview at his office in New Delhi. We are looking at enforcing existing instructions and tightening regulations so that loopholes can be plugged.

India joins a growing list of countries attempting to curb the misuse of social media in election campaigns. In the lead up to a closely-fought election in Malaysia, former prime minister Najib Razak  dogged by corruption allegations  introduced a fake news law that his successor, Mahathir Mohamad, has since vowed to repeal. Singapore and Philippines are also considering introducing legislation on fake news, while Germany introduced a new law that compels social media networks to remove hate speech.

Opposition parties say intolerance in India is rising since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. Lawmakers from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party say they are not to blame and insist state governments must deal with anti-social elements.

Holding elections in worlds second most populous country is a complex and daunting task. The Election Commission has already begun preparations on logistic and security arrangements in the country of 1.3 billion, scheduled to elect their new federal government in April and May 2019.

About 875 million voters are eligible to cast their votes, or more than the combined population of Europe. As many as 11 million poll workers and security forces will facilitate the election process and ensure voting in a million polling stations, said Lavasa, one of the countrys three election commissioners.

For the first time, the commission is targeting people with disabilities, with ramps at all polling stations and voter cards in braille to enhance their electoral participation.

It also plans to set up more pink polling booths managed by women officials to motivate female voters, said Lavasa. The 2014 election created history with the highest ever female voter turnout of 65.63 per cent.

The commission is also concerned about the rise in incidents of bribery after it seized cash, liquor and gold in recent state assembly elections. It will launch a mobile app to help citizens file complaints easily by uploading photos of illegal activities, he said, adding more GPS-enabled surveillance teams will be deployed.

India is currently passing through a challenging phase because of the massive rise of intolerance, religious hatred and abuse of social media, said Niranjan Sahoo, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation think tank in New Delhi. While the Election Commissions intention is bold, it is not easy for it to enforce laws and tackle this menace.

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NEW YORKU.S. President Donald Trump is backing calls for a Harley-Davidson boycott amid an ongoing steel tariff dispute.

Harley-Davidson drew Trumps wrath in June after the manufacturer announced it is moving production of motorcycles sold in Europe to facilities outside the U.S. The company blames the decision on tariffs imposed by the European Union to retaliate for tariffs Trump imposed on a host of EU products.

On Sunday Trump tweeted that many Harley-Davidson owners plan to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas.

That followed Trumps meeting on Saturday with about 180 bikers who are part of a Bikers for Trump fan group at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson did not respond to a request for comment.

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An event like this means a lot, to be able to support the police and the police academy (cadets and volunteers). A lot of the people here are my friends and I know them from church, he said. I always teach my children that police (and fire) are here to protect and help us.
DOUMA, SYRIARazan Zaitouneh earned enemies on all sides of her homelands civil war.

One of Syrias most well-known rights activists, she was bold, outspoken and defiantly secular. Perhaps most dangerously, she was impartial. She chanted in protests against President Bashar Assad, but was also unflinching in documenting abuses by rebels fighting to oust him.

Then she vanished.

Her fate has been one of the longest-running mysteries of Syrias long conflict. There has been no sign of life, no proof of death since a cold December evening in 2013 when Zaitouneh, her husband and two colleagues were abducted by gunmen from her office in Douma, a rebel-held town on the outskirts of Damascus.

Five years later, bits of clues are emerging: a handwritten threat vowing I will kill you; a log-on from her computer after the kidnappers stole it from her office; possible sightings by witnesses and reports of graffiti on a prison cell wall reading, I miss my mother  Razan Zaitouneh, 2016.

The clues give strong indications that Zaitouneh was taken by the Army of Islam, the most powerful rebel faction in Douma at the time, and was then likely held in its feared Tawbeh Prison. The Army of Islam vehemently denies any role in her disappearance.

It is also likely she was killed, though how long after the abduction is unknown, several friends and colleagues told The Associated Press.

The small hope that she and the others were kept alive in detention was shaken in April, when Syrian government forces retook Douma. The Army of Islams fighters, their families and thousands of civilians were evacuated north in buses. Prisoners were released. But Zaitouneh and her colleagues did not surface.

Read more:

In Damascus, Syrians dare to hope that wars end may be near

Syrian government raises its flag over cradle of 2011 revolt

Syrian government forces bomb south opposition holdout after talks fail

An AP team recently toured the abandoned Tawbeh Prison, a compound that once was a desertification research facility for the Agriculture Ministry. The complex was transformed into a dark maze of cells where the Army of Islam held hundreds of people over the years, including opponents.

Graffiti were scrawled on cell walls  names, greetings to families and crude calendars as inmates counted days. Solitary confinement cells were tiny, a meter wide and two meters long with a latrine hole at one end. The complex was laced with tunnels connecting the buildings and leading outside the compound.

The AP interviewed a dozen activists, rebels and acquaintances of Zaitouneh and locals from Douma to assemble what is known about her disappearance. Many spoke on condition of anonymity because they were concerned about upsetting the families or feared reprisals.

Zaitouneh was already well-known before the war as a defence lawyer for political prisoners.

She became one of the faces of the early days of Syrias uprising in 2011, when unarmed protesters took to the streets calling for Assads removal. With long blond hair and blue eyes, she chanted and sang at demonstrations. At one rally shown in an online video, she shouts through a loudspeaker, Civil disobedience will continue until we bring down Bashar Assads regime.

Under the governments crackdown, the opposition eventually took up arms, and the conflict slid into civil war.

Zaitouneh founded the Violation Documentation Center as well as a network of activists, the Local Coordination Committees. She received a string of international honours; in 2013, then-U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry honoured her as an International Woman of Courage.

She is a woman of principles, said opposition activist Mazen Darwish, who has known her for nearly 18 years. She is a woman who loves life, open minded and is a good friend.

Zaitouneh went into hiding as Syrian authorities arrested opposition activists in Damascus. In early 2013, she escaped into rebel-held Douma, the largest town in the eastern Ghouta region.

There, she stood out  in appearance and advocacy. Zaitouneh and her colleague Samira al-Khalil went in public without a head scarf in the conservative town, where almost all women wear the head scarf or face veils. She also worked on creating a local administration to provide civilian authority amid the armed groups. Zaitouneh got funding from abroad, money that she used to help victims of the conflict, apparently upsetting the Army of Islam rebels.

At the time, the Army of Islam, made up of religious hard-liners, was consolidating its power in Douma, squeezing out other rebels and imposing strict Shariah rules.

On Dec. 9, 2013, gunmen stormed the Violation Documentation Center. They took the then-36-year-old Zaitouneh, her husband Wael Hamadeh, al-Khalil and another colleague, Nazim Hammadi, as well as all computers and electronic devices. They left untouched a pile of Syrian pounds worth about $60,000 (U.S.) sitting on a desk.

Hamza Bayraqdar, an Army of Islam official, denied his group had any role in the kidnapping. Speaking to the AP, he said Army of Islam brought Zaitouneh to Douma to protect her from the Syrian government.

Eastern Ghouta was facing major violations by Assads forces against civilians. The work of Razan and her friends was mostly to document such acts, he said.

But several of those who spoke to the AP said the Army of Islam saw her documenting of abuses as a threat and resented her local administration plan as an encroachment on their power.

Zaitouneh received a series of threats that friends and activists say trace back to Army of Islam.

Weeks before the kidnapping, a gunman opened fire in the air outside the VDC office. Soon after, Zaitouneh received a handwritten note giving her three days to leave. Otherwise, I will kill you. I will kill you. I will kill you. I will kill you, Razan Zaitouneh, it read.

An Army of Islam official, Hussein al-Shazli, later confessed in a local court that he delivered the note on orders of the groups command, Darwish said. But the court released al-Shazli after Zahran Alloush, the Army of Islams leader, intervened.

Despite the threats, Razan refused protection, said Mohammed Kattoub, a dentist living in Douma at the time who was in contact with the VDC team. He saw the handwritten threat.

She has a very strong personality and said, I can protect myself. 

A witness later told VDC members that, the morning after the kidnapping, he saw three hooded women being held in an apartment near Doumas main Martyrs Square, said Ossama Nassar, a close aide to Zaitouneh who ran her office in Douma after her kidnapping, until he left the town earlier this year as part of the evacuation.

Nassar believes the prisoners were in fact Zaitouneh, al-Khalil and Hammadi, who had long hair. The apartment was likely a stopover before they were moved elsewhere.

Shortly after the incident, the man who lived in the apartment was found dead, Nassar said.

Also found dead was the owner of a refrigerator truck used as a getaway vehicle in the kidnappings, said Ahmad Taha, the commander of a rebel group that was later crushed by the Army of Islam. The killings raised suspicion that the culprits were covering their tracks.

Those who follow the case believe Zaitouneh and her colleagues were held in Tawbeh Prison.

One former prisoner said she saw Zaitouneh there, and when VDC members showed her a lineup of pictures, she picked out Zaitouneh, Nassar said. Nassar said several witnesses reported the prison message allegedly scrawled by Zaitouneh about her mother, dated 2016  which, if confirmed, would mean she lived for several years after the kidnapping.

Also, one of the computers taken from the VDC was activated from inside Tawbeh prison, according to one prominent figure from Douma who spoke to the AP, saying the IP address was traced to the Army of Islam. Al-Khalils husband, Yassin Haj Saleh, made a similar claim in an article he wrote in 2014.

Haj Saleh refused to comment when contacted by the AP. Attempts to reach other relatives of the missing were unsuccessful. Zaitounehs sister and mother did not respond to requests for an interview.

Almost all who worked with or knew Zaitouneh are scattered, either elsewhere in Syria or abroad, meaning there is no one to search for her  or her grave.

There are multiple reports on where she and the others may be buried. One figure in Douma said his information was that Army of Islam buried them in al-Ebb, a nearby farm area. Another said he believed they were buried in Housh Nasri, a nearby village.

Another possibility is Nashabiyeh, a town several kilometres away. An official with a pro-government group said his group and the Syrian military were digging up a mass grave filled with bodies of their fighters, killed by the Army of Islam. He said he had information Zaitouneh could be there too. He spoke on condition he and his group not be named because their presence in the area is sensitive.

Darwish said there is proof Zaitouneh was in the Army of Islams jails until early 2017, after which all information was cut.

After the Army of Islam left Douma, regrettably, the possibilities are headed more and more toward the worse, he said.

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We recently learned that Ontario Premier Doug Ford does not support a ban on the sale of handguns in Toronto.

Thats disappointing. But, to be effective, its a national handgun ban that we need anyway.

And while Ford seems to think he can run the City of Toronto, as well as the province, he has much less influence over Ottawa. It is Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus Liberals that need to take steps to reduce the number of guns that wind up on our streets.

But how can the premier be so wrong on the details of something so serious as this?

Ford said he doesnt support what Toronto councillors called for in the wake of last months mass shooting on the Danforth because bans dont work. His evidence: Chicago.

You look at Chicago  you all know that I spend a ton of time in Chicago  and they have a ban and guess what, last week they had 72 shootings, 72 or 76 shootings. Imagine that, Ford said last week.

Its hardly a surprise that Chicagos handgun ban isnt working, because it doesnt have one.

Not since 2010, at least, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the strongest gun controls in that country. According to the Chicago police, the city had 70 shooting incidents in the week Ford was referring to, including 41 people shot in a seven-hour period.

So Chicago, a city Ford knows well from work with the family label business, is hardly an example to pull out as to why gun control is a bad thing.

Ford also said that he doesnt support a ban because lots of good guys own guns.

Theres a lot of legal, responsible handgun owners, he said. We have to refocus all our resources going after the bad guys, not the good guys.

Yes, there certainly are some good handgun owners. And yes, a national ban on the private ownership of handguns would strip them of the right to continue with their hobby of target shooting or collecting handguns.

But thats not a reason, in and of itself, not to do it. Governments routinely make decisions that adversely affect some individuals for the broader good of society.

On top of that, many good, legal owners have their handguns stolen. And, increasingly, some legal handgun owners are far from Fords good guys.

They are, in fact, buying handguns to sell them to the people Ford likes to call the bad guys.

According to Toronto police, half the guns used for criminal activity that have been traced were once purchased legally in Canada. And thats a figure that has risen since Stephen Harpers Conservative government loosened federal gun controls.

Trudeaus Liberals have taken steps to undo some of that damage, but the legislation it tabled in the spring doesnt go far enough. Canada should ban private ownership of handguns; increase restrictions on other firearms that fall well outside the range of ordinary rifles and shotguns; introduce more stringent requirements for selling and owning guns; and make it easier for the police to track them.

While Ford opposed a handgun ban, he did offer up what he sees as the solution to gun crime in Toronto. And that too was disappointing.

I love boots on the ground, I love having police in neighbourhoods, he said.

So, on Thursday, the premier said hed give $18 million to Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders to spend as he sees fit. And another $7.5 million to get Crown attorneys to oppose bail for gun crimes, something they say theyre already almost always required to do.

Toronto went down this targeted, tough-on-crime approach with the now-defunct TAVIS unit. It didnt work then, and a broader solution is needed now.

There is no evidence that flooding neighbourhoods with police and electronic surveillance is a long-term solution to gun crime and the social and economic issues that lead to it. And there is plenty of evidence that its not.

And yet here Ford is, pushing this failed approach while scoffing at a handgun ban and leaving the root causes of violence unaddressed.

As he proudly stated: Im from the old school.

Trouble is, thats a failed school and its time the city moved on.

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If gun violence is to be reduced, the federal Liberal government must make it harder to obtain restricted weapons. That is self-evident.

It is also what Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus government is extremely reluctant to do.

Gun violence is making headlines again this summer. In Toronto, according to police, there have been 241 shootings to date this year resulting in 30 deaths.

Thats double what it was four years ago.

Ontario Premier Doug Fords solution is to give law enforcers more money. On Thursday, he announced that his Progressive Conservative government will give $18 million over the next four years to Toronto police. It will also spend an additional $7.5 million on Crown prosecutors dealing with gun crimes.

Its not exactly clear what the extra Toronto policing money will be used for. Ford said thats up to Chief Mark Saunders. But the governments website says the money will be used to provide the force with additional digital, investigative and analytical resources  whatever that means.

Fords not wrong in devoting more money to police. Policing alone may not be enough to lower gun crime substantially. But it is necessary.

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Where Ford is wrong is in his assumption that nothing else is needed. There are reasons why people resort to gun violence.

Sometimes, as in the case of Danforth shooter Faisal Hussain, these reasons have to do with mental health. Sometimes they have to do with the feeling of being left out of mainstream society.

Sometimes the perpetrators are simply irredeemable jerks.

But to refuse to deal with the reasons behind gun violence is to risk failure. Fords decision to scale back the previous Liberal governments planned growth in mental health spending certainly doesnt help.

Nor does his insistence on upholding what he calls the right of legal, responsible handgun owners to possess restricted weapons.

Which is where Trudeaus federal government comes in.

Its up to Ottawa to set the rules for who may own weapons. When it comes to handguns, these rules are too lax. As gun control advocate Wendy Cukier argues, they are also too often insufficiently enforced.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police says 50 per cent of the handguns used in crimes that its members have been able to trace were diverted from legal, Canadian firearms owners.

Sometimes, they were stolen. Sometimes their legal owners sold them on the black market.

My Star colleague Betsy Powell reported on a case two years ago in which a university student was able to legally purchase 23 handguns over a 22-month period. He then sold them illegally.

Ottawas Bill C-71 is supposed to deal with these problems. It does not. The bill, which is slated to go to the Senate this fall, would require gun sellers to keep records. It would also make background checks more rigorous.

But the system would still allow far too many Canadians to legally possess restricted weapons, such as handguns. Cukier points out that there are a million legally owned handguns and assault weapons in Canada  more than double the number held 10 years ago.

Some owners, such as certain kinds of security guards, need handguns. Most dont. They either collect handguns or use them for sport.

I see the attraction that guns hold. I used to own two .303 rifles. A firearm can be an intricate and beautiful piece of machinery.

But so is a cuckoo clock  which is significantly less dangerous.

I also understand the Liberal governments reluctance to be bold. The Liberals last serious attempt to control weaponry  the 1995 long gun registry  was a political disaster.

Still

Toronto City Council wants to ban the sale of handguns in Toronto. Thats not a useful idea. It would just encourage more gun shops to open in neighbouring communities.

A better idea is to limit handgun ownership across Canada to those who can prove they need such weapons.

This wouldnt stop the illegal flow of handguns from the U.S. Nor would it deter those, such as the North York van attacker, who are determined to kill.

But it would go a long way toward making this country safer. And thats something.

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Although Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor by the American-born Israeli writer and journalist Yossi Klein Halevi is said to be available in Arabic, at least on the internet and apparently for free, its not certain that many Palestinians will read it. And, as far as I know, theres as yet no Hebrew translation.

Written in English, the book will be read by some Israelis and Palestinians, but, above all, by many others around the world. Its already on the New York Times bestseller list.

Readers will find the book compelling because it describes vividly  indeed, dramatically  the dilemmas of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as articulated by a sensitive, liberal Jewish Israeli committed to his faith and its history, yet appreciative of the aspirations and needs of his Palestinian neighbours. The author acknowledges the contradictory yet compelling narratives by the two sides. Peace can only happen when both stories are understood and appreciated.

The Jewish narrative has it, as history attests, that Jews have lived in the Land of Israel since biblical times. The State of Israel exists today, Halevi writes, because it never stopped existing, even if only in prayer. Zionism, the movement that created modern Israel, was the meeting point between need and longing.

The Palestinian narrative rejects all that. It sees Israel as the illegitimate effort by Holocaust survivors and their supporters to compensate for the crimes committed by the Nazis against the Jews of Europe at the expense of the indigenous Arab population. Some go as far as to blatantly deny that the Holocaust ever happened. They view Zionism as another version of Western colonialism.

Though deeply committed to the Jewish narrative, the history and the faith that shaped it, Yossi Klein Halevi recognizes the devastating effects on the Palestinians caused by the Jews return to their land. Already on page 8 of the book he admits to being open to the Palestinian tragedy: the shattering of a people whose organizing principle is now dislocation and whose most significant anniversaries are humiliating defeats.

He cites with approval the description of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by A.B. Yehoshua, the distinguished Israeli novelist, as the struggle between right and right. Therefore, it can only be resolved by painful compromises on both sides.

The founders of the State of Israel were prepared to make them. Thus, already in 1947, when the United Nations decreed a partition of the country and the creation of a Palestinian and a Jewish state, the Palestinians rejected it and, together with several Arab states, went to war. There have been other wars since. The next one may be on the horizon.

Each Israeli victory has led to more Palestinian suffering. Therefore, compromises that spell sacrifices on both sides offer the only viable solution. Palestinians wont rescind their claims. Jews wont give up the land they know is theirs. But both sides can yield enough to bring about peace.

Halevi writes: Neither side can implement the totality of its claim without erasing the claim of the other. The moral argument of partition is simply this: For the sake of allowing the other side to achieve some measure of justice, each side needs to impose on itself some measure of injustice.

Mercifully, Halevi doesnt come up with another peace plan. There have been many of those over the years and yet another is on its way, this time on behalf of U.S. President Donald Trump and his team.

Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor does better: It tries to help us understand whats at stake. Peace will only come about when both sides acknowledge the others narrative and are prepared to revise their own.

Dow Marmur is rabbi emeritus of Toronto's Holy Blossom Temple and a freelance contributor for the Star.

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VANCOUVER Scattered reports began to emerge on social media Friday night of a commercial airplane performing what appeared to be mid-air stunts over Puget Sound with two American fighter jets in pursuit.

Hikers and others out to enjoy the sunset recorded the scene on their phones, looking on in horror as the plane careened out of the air toward Ketron Island as the light faded from the sky.

The voice of the 29-year-old pilot, a Horizon Air employee named Richard Russell who had stolen the plane off the tarmac at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (Sea-Tac), can be heard on a heartbreaking recording of his communication with the Sea-Tac control tower. He expresses wonder at the beauty of Mount Rainier and the Olympic Range, and remorse for the pain he imagines he will have caused his loved ones on the ground.

Then, all of a sudden, the recording ends. Russell had crashed the plane into the island, according to airport authorities. He did not survive.

Promptly at 9:31 p.m. PST, a statement confirming the basic details of the incident had already been released by Sea-Tac on social media  a move reporters in Canada applauded for its professionalism and commitment to clarity.

A police description of Russell, early confirmation that no other passengers or crew were aboard during the flight and statements from airline officials were all soon to follow  as was the recording of Russells last minutes.

This example of transparent, rapid and complete communication with media and the public following a tragic and jarring incident demonstrates a vast gulf between how access to information is handled in Canada and how its handled in the United States, according to a Canadian information expert.

Sean Holman, associate professor of journalism at Mount Royal University in Calgary, said Canadian institutions take a father knows best approach to providing the public with information  an attitude that stands in stark contrast to the public has a right to know culture in the U.S.

In general, Canada is far more secretive than the United States usually is, Holman said in an interview. In the United States, theyre very focused on ensuring people know what is happening, whereas a lot of public bodies here might be worried about the privacy implications of that (approach).

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Holman suggested more opaque communications policies might be designed to prevent sensationalistic reporting or crime-scene gawking, and protect civilian and institutional privacy. But not only does a higher level of transparency satisfy the human desire to understand and feel in control, he said, it prevents information vacuums that allow speculation and conspiracy to flourish.

And while privacy is most certainly worth protecting in some cases, said Holman, Canadian governments, agencies and Crown corporations have leveraged Canadians concerns around personal privacy to justify the creation of policies that relieve institutions of the democratic obligation to be transparent about their activities.

At what point does privacy start interfering with the public interest? he asked. In Canada, weve seen circumstances where public bodies use privacy as an excuse to prevent accountability, to prevent the public from knowing things that they should know.

Holman pointed to the current dust-up over whether the B.C. Liberals will release documents relating to their handling of the issue of money laundering throughout their 16 years in power as one perfect example of politicians standing on Canadian convention to prevent access to what should be a public record of a democratically elected partys proceedings.

On Friday, a letter from B.C. Attorney General David Eby was delivered to B.C. Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson requesting the Liberals waive cabinet privilege and hand over all documents relating to money laundering to aid in the current governments efforts to comprehensively end such criminal practices in B.C. casinos and throughout B.C.s economy.

But B.C. Liberal house leader Mary Polak accused Eby of playing politics with a serious issue, saying he should focus on pursuing those who have broken the law  although a statement from the party said the Liberals would consider his proposal to waive secrecy over documents from their time in office.

Cabinet privilege is a practice of Canadian governments that keeps secret the internal discussions and meetings between a governments ministers.

And Holman, of Mount Royal University, calls this practice insane. Its considered radical if not outright foolish to challenge cabinet confidentiality, he said, unless one reflects on what the practice means for the ability of the public to know what its elected representatives are up to.

What, the public has no right to know what happens in governments top decision-making bodies? he asked. That doesnt make any sense  That is an insane premise for a democracy.

The fact this practice is accepted as a normal part of Canadian political functioning, he said, is a knock-on effect of Canadas prioritization of privacy over public interest.

And while the protection of the public from surveillance by the state  and from overzealous inquiry from fellow members of the public  is a treasured and valuable civil right, it is important to recognize that demanding greater transparency from governmental bodies does not automatically involve a curtailing of the privacy rights of average citizens, he said.

In fact, he said, the United States provides an example of a society in which the push-and-pull between an individuals right to privacy and a governmental obligation to transparency is at the forefront of civic discourse.

Whereas Canada has a Privacy Commissioner to resolve private, corporate and governmental disputes over the release of information, in the United States, said Holman, this function is handled by the courts. As a result, he said, an entire community of professionals and advocates has formed around the issue of challenging the government to be more transparent.

And when that happens, said Holman, the right of the public to access to information becomes a civil right. It becomes something you have to exercise, its become something you have to claim. It becomes something youre forced to defend as opposed to what is a very Canadian thing to do, which is institutionalize accountability.

And his advice is for members of the public and the media to refuse to accept absolute control of messaging and information by government as routine.

We (need to) start recognizing and repeat as often as we can, he said, that what is happening in Canada when it comes to openness and lack of openness is not normal and should not be considered normal within a democratic society.

With files from David P. Ball

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VANCOUVERBritish Columbians can rest assured that help will be provided as soon as possible.

Thats Ottawas message with nearly 18,000 people in British Columbia under evacuation alerts as 150 new wildfires ignited in British Columbia over the weekend. The federal government announced Monday that it would deploy 200 soldiers and several aircraft to help.

On Monday, the province pleaded for Ottawas urgent help in battling forest fires that have seen more than 3,000 residents evacuated already. Almost immediately, the federal government agreed.

We have accepted an official request for assistance from the province of B.C. to help in the fight against the wildfires, public safety minister Ralph Goodale said on Twitter. Through air support and personnel, the government of Canada will support affected communities and first responders who are courageously taking on this battle.

Goodales B.C. counterpart, Mike Farnworth, said deploying the Canadian Armed Forces was something he expected, since theyre already fully trained and self-contained  able to stay out in the fire areas in the bush for quite some time, he told reporters in a teleconference Monday afternoon, to deal with mopping up and patrolling of fires once they are contained.

Farnworth said federal financial help is needed quickly, and expressed gratitude that Ottawa agreed, after months of discussions between high-level staff about B.C.s needs.

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Federal assistance is  determined by what is happening out in the province, he explained. Our fire service in B.C. staff are expected make recommendations to me, for example saying, We have enough resources, but were getting stretched, were at point where we need help from the federal.

Its the first point in this years fire season a request to the federal government has been made.

Although there are already more than 3,400 firefighters responding to this summers infernos, Farnworth said 200 more are needed just for mop-up and patrol of contained fires to free up front-line firefighters, as well as heavy-lift aircraft to rapidly move wildfire personnel and equipment to newly sparked fires, as well as planes to help in evacuations.

Firefighters have arrived to help from outside B.C. already, including many from Mexico, Australia and New Zealand and other Canadian provinces.

I thank the federal government and the Canadian Armed Forces for their assistance, and also ask British Columbians to do their part by following burning bans to prevent human-caused fires.

Last summer saw at least 1,200 wildfires rage across B.C., and the evacuation of the entire city of Williams Lake, B.C., population 12,000. In January, the federal government earmarked $175 million through its Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements to B.C. recovery efforts.

After a similar request for urgent help last year, the Canadian Armed Forces deployed soldiers to assist in evacuation and response efforts, and Ottawa also provided $20 million for farmers who faced extraordinary recovery costs incurred.

However, what would really help curb the spread of wildfires throughout the province  something experts predict will continue to worsen under the impacts of climate change  is something even the federal government cant provide.

The best thing we can hope for now is a change of weather, Farnworth said. Winds to blow the smoke away, or a good old-fashioned weeklong dreanching of rains that will extinguish the fires and improve the air quality.

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VANCOUVERA 43-year-old man has been arrested and could face numerous criminal charges over a bomb threat to a Surrey business on Sunday evening, Surrey RCMP said.

Police officers arrested the suspect, who hasnt been publicly named, after receiving a report of a bomb threat just before 6 p.m. at a private business near King George Blvd. and 96 Ave.

Members of the Surrey RCMP attended and contained the scene, watch commander Sgt. Brian Blair said in a news release Monday. Members subsequently entered a business and arrested the suspect with out incident.

RCMP wouldnt provide any further details, including whether there was any explosive device found, stating that its investigation is in the early stages still, but that numerous charges under the Criminal Code are pending.

Under Canadas Criminal Code, a variety of charges are available even if the threat is a hoax, with up to 10 years imprisonment if it is deemed criminal harassment: If a threat causes that other person reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them.

Additionally, the indictable offence of uttering threats  causing any person to receive a threat to cause death or bodily harm to any person, to burn, destroy or damage real or personal property  could get up to five years in prison, the law states.

And anyone who communicates information that, in all the circumstances, is likely to cause a reasonable apprehension that terrorist activity is occurring or will occur  is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

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GODFREY  The guest of honor at a Godfrey birthday party Sunday didnt seem to mind the rare milestone that she had reached.

I dont feel a hundred, Clearther White said, who was born Aug. 7, 1918 and greeted dozens of family and friends at Integrity Healthcare where she now resides. I know all of these people. Some of them climbed up on my knee when I was their babysitter.

White, whose first name is pronounced cla-REETH-a, said the secret to living a long, healthy life like hers is simple.

I stayed in church and Sunday School and Bible Class all my life and stayed away from jail, White said. The Lord has taken care of me. I always said When the Lord gets ready for me, I want to be ready for Him. But he aint ready for me yet!

White was born in Arkansas and her family eventually moved to the Alton area. Two of her uncles were preachers and some music and dancing talent runs in the family as well, but even as a young child everyone was expected to work.

I picked cotton, I pulled corn, I killed chickens, I did some hard work! White said. Ive seen hard times, Ive seen people put out of their homes, Ive seen all of that.

White has been married three times and outlived all three husbands. She had no natural children but raised a niece and nephew as her own from the time they were infants.

As far as other loved ones, seventy-five-year-old Catherine Casey could be identified by her gold first niece t-shirt at the birthday party.

She can be stern but shes always happy, Casey said. Like the rest of us, she wants to have her own way and when youre older you can have your way, isnt that right?

Casey also gave her thoughts on how to live a long, healthy life.

Just stay happy, dont let anything worry you, Casey said. Dont worry about it, keep God in mind.

Cynthia Jones, of Alton is another of Whites nieces.

Shes very nice and kind but strict if she has to be, Jones said. She taught us all kinds of stuff: how to make biscuits, to cook, and then when we learned how to cook we had to cook for her.

Kenneth Jones, of Alton is Whites nephew.

Shes a nice woman, took care of everybody, was good to her family and tried to make sure everybody grew up and did the right thing, said Jones. Im going to try to stay out of trouble so I can get to her age.

Rosie Berry, of Alton is Whites 87-year-old sister.

Growing up she was a little mean, she bossed me around a lot. But she hasnt done that lately, Berry said. Shes good and feisty when she wants to be.

Im not really surprised she reached one hundred years of age, Berry said. I always thought she would outlive me, but that hasnt happened yet.

Organizers of Sundays birthday party had blue t-shirts made that said Im still here! 100 years old! 8-7-1918. Cupcakes and ice cream were served, and balloons, streamers and flowers adorned a large room at Integrity Healthcare.

A large contingent from Whites church turned out for the occasion, too.

Clearther was a member of the first church I pastored in 1992 and was very vibrant, resilient, very tenacious and fiery, very much spirit-filled, said Gino Austin, pastor of the Harvest Christian Fellowship in Alton. She has always loved the church, always loved God.

When she was regularly attending, until her health took her the other direction, she was always an inspiration for all of us. She gave us a lot of history, Austin said. Shes seen a lot and has been through a lot, but she has always been an encourager.

David Blanchette is a freelance photographer and reporter for the Telegraph.
For the Telegraph

WOOD RIVER  Bishop Frank J. Beard and the Cabinet of the Illinois Great Rivers Conference of the United Methodist Church have appointed Rev. Dr. Cary L. Beckwith, of Buffalo, New York, to be the pastor of the Wanda and Wood River First United Methodist churches. His appointment began Aug. 1.

Beckwith, a native of St. Louis, is married to Rev. Chan-Tell King Beckwith. They are the proud parents of three: Ni-Keith, Ni-Vante, Car-Vante; and the grandparents of Ni-Keith II.
EDWARDSVILLE  The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Engineerings Solar Car Team had its best showing yet in the 2018 Formula Sun Grand Prix (FSGP) and American Solar Challenge (ASC) this summer. Twenty-four teams participated in the annual FSGP beginning July 6, and then the qualifying teams raced in the biannual ASC from Omaha, Nebraska to Bend, Oregon from July 14-22, covering 1,700 miles.

The competitions involve three phases:

 Scrutineering: The competing teams underwent a three-day sequence of testing in Hastings, Nebraska to assure the car was electrically and mechanically safe to drive on the track and the road. Teams fail scrutineering if a problem cannot be fixed within the three-day time frame.

 FSGP Qualifier: Cars commence laps on a closed track. In order to qualify for the road competition, each car had to make 97 laps around the track in one day or 145 laps in two consecutive days.

 ASC Road race: Cars began the road race from Omaha to Bend, competing for shortest time between daily checkpoints and stage stops. The preplanned route integrates the solar cars into regular traffic.

The last time the SIUE team qualified for the cross-country trip was 2005, said Andy Lozowski, PhD, solar team advisor and chair of the SIUE Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. We didnt quite make the required laps in the FSGP qualifier this year. However, we received provisional qualification for the road event upon the condition of covering the first stage of the road race on time. We made only 243 miles out of the required 491 miles, and we ran out of power because of a lack of sunshine. So, it ended our participation after the first two days.

Both our team and the ASC officials knew that our lithium-ion batteries were old, Lozowski explained. Old batteries fail to reliably hold a charge. Our cars only issue was the battery cells. We did not give up until the last electron was used. The official observer, riding in our chase vehicles, made a note of that in his report. Nevertheless, we had to end our competitive participation in ASC. The ASC officials praised our team for driving the car down to the very last bit of charge, recognizing the sound engineering of the car.

SIUE received an unexpected surprise when ASC officials extended an invitation to continue with the race as a demonstration vehicle. We were allowed to arrive at every checkpoint and stage stop, and display our car, Lozowski said. SIUEs logo was present at all the stage cities, available to the media and general public taking pictures and video.

Since 2005, SIUE participated in the FSGP annual track races but didnt compete in the ASC road races, because each year the car wasnt technically viable enough to qualify. The road race is extremely challenging, because the car must be sturdy and sound enough to handle many miles of travel. Annually, SIUE concentrated on FSGP with the goal of attaining a ranked position, which was accomplished by placing 10th overall in 2017. The quality of the car increased every year, becoming more stable and durable.

Senior Triston Cooper, of Lincoln, who concluded his tenure as the team director with this competition, led the 11-member team. Sophomore Sydney Stogner, of Shiloh, was one of the drivers and will serve as the new team director starting this month. Three team members were drivers and provided mechanical support: sophomore Chris Oliva, of Edwardsville, junior Mico Agustin, of Edwardsville, and junior Mark Naleway, of Bloomington, who becomes mechanical director this month.

Senior Jim Banner, of Edwardsville, managed mechanical systems. Sophomore Peter Royer, of Maryland Heights, provided mechanical refabricating of broken parts. Freshman Trent Mette, of Teutopolis, provided telemetry and was proficient in slipping the trailer out of tight spaces. Junior Jon Doucette, of OFallon, provided both electrical and mechanical support and becomes assistant project director this month. Junior Antonio Pizzarro, of Edwardsville, also provided telemetry. Junior Dan Morrissey, of Alton, managed lighting systems and assumes the electrical director role this month.

Stogner noted that the solar car race is more than just a competition, Its a race that brings many people together from all over the world, as we all cheer and help each other.

At a lot of the stops, we talked to SIUE alumni who were so proud of us and cheered us on, Stogner said. Talking to wide-eyed kids asking us about the space ship was fantastic. One child told us that to make our car better, we needed more dinosaurs! We made note of that.

Lozowski described the event as a great experience for students. Students craft new ideas and solutions to problems, while interacting with the public, he said. They realize that organization of the team, especially involving other academic majors (business, marketing, mass media and geography), is essential to success in ASC.

Also motivation is the key. Our students see they are no less talented than the teams competing from the other most prestigious universities and believe that we can get to the same level in a few years. Our team history shows continuous improvement.

Lozowski pointed to many other benefits from participating, such as establishing personal relationships. I was able to spend an hour with the leader of the University of Michigan team that consistently wins, he said. He described their team organization, their solar car-related courses, and the way they design and build the car.

I talked with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) faculty, who expressed some ideas as to how MIT and SIUE could collaborate to build a research component around our SIUE car, making it more appealing when raising funds for the car.

Lozowski took pride in his teams toughness. Our students got soaked in the mountain rain one night in Lander, Wyoming, and it was a freezing cold night he noted. But in the morning, they were back demonstrating the car, while their uniform shirts were steaming from the morning sun on their backs. They are tough as can be.

The track race crew included sophomore Landon Skelly, of Chatham, who worked on mechanical, and senior Emmery Mammen, of Lincoln, was the mechanical director. Alumni Brittany Riddle, of Troy, served as safety officer, and Matthew McQueen, of Huntley, handled timing and statistics. Dave Holderman, Dan Hauer and Zachary Crawford were advisors who also traveled to Nebraska.

Steve Muren, another long-time advisor, was unable to travel with the team this year. Im very proud of this team and what they accomplished this year! he said. They worked extremely hard and were dedicated to realizing the best results ever for the team.

The team is excited and ready to start preparing for the FSGP 2019 next summer. Changes in the regulations will require the team to design and build a new car. Ive already spoken with Syd, and we will be meeting this week to start planning.
At 76, Vinayak Kelkar is fit as a fiddle. He feels fortunate that none of the common ailments associated with salt, sugar or age have afflicted him so far; he can comfortably spend time playing bridge with his peers, attend social gatherings and invest about two and a half hours everyday to brisk walks and "contemplative" yoga sessions, without experiencing burnout. Family time is when he revels in the company of his children and grandchildren, and reminisce stories of his own past. Yet, of late, Kelkar, a mechanical engineer and retired professor, has been obsessing about the nature of death, its unpredictability and specifically about how he can claim his own "right to die"in other words, practise active euthanasia.

Accordingly, he framed a 14-page draft legislation demanding that those who are over the age of 45, and in sound healththat is, they suffer neither from an infirmity of the mind nor of the bodybe given the right to determine the time and manner of their own death. This was in response to the Supreme Court's judgment early this year (March 7, 2018) which legalised passive euthanasia in India, by means of the withdrawal of life support to terminally ill patients or those in a permanent vegetative state.

Kelkar questions the scope of the ruling. Why is it that euthanasia is reserved only for terminally ill patients and not for common people who may be of sound health, but may want to end their lives? Since every individual has a right to life and personal integrity, it should be his or her sole decision when he/she would like to leave the world, and how. Kelkar argues in favour of active or voluntary euthanasia and also says that it will help in timely organ donation, which, in turn, will save many other lives. Euthanasia literally means 'bringing about death peacefully to ease suffering, specifically in cases of disabled or terminally ill patients'. While in a number of countries, including India, active euthanasia is illegal, countries such as Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Canada, and a few others, have assisted suicide laws which allow citizens to opt for voluntary euthanasia, as had happened in case of 104-year-old Australian scientist David Goodall who travelled to Switzerland to legally commit suicide which was planned to be with a poisonous injection. As per reports, Goodall was reported saying, "one should be free to choose death, when death is at an appropriate time."

However, Kelkar makes it a point to clarify the provisions to prevent misuse, in his draft. Every individual must be very well counselled before he is given the permission to carry out active euthanasia, and there must be a certain specific administrative and judicial set up that will look into each case for its merits, he says. "Nobody will be allowed to kill himself or herself under duress, or under pressure or because of ill-informed or misplaced or temporary frustration."

The septuagenarian sent his draft Purposeful life and Comprehensive Euthanasia law', to one and all in the corridors of power, right from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, various members of parliament and legislative assemblies, and also to chief minister of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis, whose office promptly acknowledged the receipt of his letter. "An individual is the owner/master of his own body, including all its organs while alive and after death. This has already been accepted by our society and law in practice. Now what is needed is to accept this ethically and legally. Our most fundamental of all rights, the right to life does not mean a duty to live and includes by extension right not to live. Moreover, Why can't I die when I'm happy? When I feel my purpose in life is solved? Why should I wait for some grave affliction to strike me that will lead me to death? I want the right to choose the time and place of my own death."

About a fortnight back, which was barely a few days after the death of noted poet-lyricist and Padma Bhushan awardee Gopal Das 'Neeraj,' administrative officials admitted that the poet pleaded with the Aligarh district magistrate to consider a plea for euthanasia a week before his death. "I have come to know that recently Supreme Court permitted euthanasia for those turning disabled because of body pain. My body and my health are now good for nothing and thus my own body has turned (out) to be a burden for me. As such I want to free myself from it, stated Neeraj in the letter. There is no doubt that those who undergo incurable or life threatening diseases must be given the option of passive euthanasia, says V.S.Mehta, a practicing neurosurgeon and an ex-chief of Neurosciences Centre at AIIMS in New Delhi. "But for those who are healthy and moving, and simply want to end their life just so as to avoid some future immobility or ill health, must be evaluated by a psychiatrist because theirs is a personality problem. To even think of such options as killing oneself as and when one pleases, after a certain age, is simply ridiculous and must not be encouraged."
The adage that failures can teach many lessons seems quite...
The Naperville event, held in Knoch Park, has grown to become what organizers say is one of the largest Indian-American festivals in the Midwest, and for those who attend, a celebration of the senses.
In Gurvinder Singh's 2011 film Anhe Ghore Da Daan (Alms for the Blind Horse), an extremely poor family's desperation is shown to unfold over the course of a single day in a dalit village in Punjab. Closely based on Jnanpith award-winning writer Gurdial Singhs Punjabi novel of the same name, the powerful film was critically lauded for its restrained narrative style and poetic texture.

Gurvinder Singh, instantly hailed as a fresh new cinematic voice, is deeply influenced by Mani Kaul; Anhe Ghore...went on to win three national awards, including one for best direction. "Punjabi cinema, nay Indian cinema as a whole, has rarely portrayed reality with such astonishing clarity in recent times," raved one review. This Independence Day, watch this important depiction of caste and discontent at People's Film Collective's second edition of 'Frames of Freedom' film festival.

The collective, or PFC, based in West Bengal, is an independent, people-funded platform started by a group of cultural activists in 2013. It staunchly believes in people's cinema with people's support. They show documentaries, protest films and socio-culturally important cinema outside the realm of flashy, erudite film festivals and comfy multiplex circuits. Its members have taken these films to factories, municipal offices, railways stations, trade union groups, schools and public grounds in rural and semi-urban districts of West Bengal, and its annual Kolkata People's Film Festival has become an important event in the city's cultural calendar.

Frames of Freedom, in its first edition last year, showed I AM 20, In the Shade Of Fallen Chinar, Muktir Gaan, Garm Hava, and Manuscripts Dont Burn. This year, it's back with five feature-length films which question what we understand by 'independence', and highlight the continued march of people for freedom. Chaitanya Tamhane's Court, Bikramjit Gupta's Achal (The Stagnant), Aamir Bashir's Harud (Autumn) and Nagraj Manjule's Fandry are the other films being screened. The venue will also have a section on relevant books and DVDs, including a special corner for children.

Nurturing young minds to develop a political orientation is also a crucial undertaking of this grassroot collective working to reinforce the voices of the working class and people's movements via films. They also bring out an annual Bangla magazine Protirodher Cinema (Cinema of Resistance), a collection of essays and writings on alternative cinema.

Frames of Freedom film festival will take place at Jogesh Mime Academy in Kolkata on August 15.
Actress Janhvi Kapoor on Monday shared a lovely childhood picture with parents Sridevi and Boney Kapoor, on the occasion of Sridevi's 55th birth anniversary. Fans and family have still not recovered from the tragic death of Sridevi in Dubai in February.

In the picture, which surely seems to be a special memory, Janhvi is seen in her mother Sridevi's arms, as Boney Kapoor stands behind, hold them close. Janhvi, however, hasn't added any caption for the image. Janhvi who recently made her Bollywood debut with Dhadak has often talked about the void her mother's death has left her with. The Kapoors, however, have gotten together strongly to support each other and move forward despite the tragic loss.

"She never wanted me to be an actress. She was more relaxed about Khushi getting into films. She thought I was naive, that I wasn't thick-skinned enough. She wanted us to live a more relaxed life. She loved what she did but you know it was intense," said Janhvi on her mother's response to her entering Bollywood.

A post shared by Janhvi Kapoor (@janhvikapoor) on Aug 12, 2018 at 12:29pm PDT

To the world, she was their Chandni, but to me, she was my love, my friend, mother to our girls, my partner. To our daughters, she was their everything, their life, Boney Kapoor wrote in a note after her death.

Recently, the late actor was also posthumously honoured with the Best Actress award for her performance in Mom at the 65th National Film Awards.
Politicians, student leaders and activists condemned the alleged attack on JNU student leader Umar Khalid outside the Constitution Club here on Monday, saying the incident was the fallout of a "hate campaign" against him on social media and mainstream media.

Some unidentified men targeted the JNU student leader and gunshots were heard, but he escaped unhurt, according to witnesses even as the police asserted it will verify the incident.

Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah tweeted against the attack and said, "Wage a motivated hate campaign against individuals & sooner or later someone will feel emboldened enough to take the law into their own hands. The attack on @UmarKhalidJNU is the direct result of the relentless hate campaign using both social & mainstream media. Glad he's well."

Tagging the official Twitter handle of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) India, Dalit leader and Independent MLA from Gujarat Jignesh Mevani claimed that "last month when Khalid, Shehla Rashid and I had received death threats, we had sought police protection and even till today, none of us have been given any kind of security".

"Even those media groups, who are working to help BJP achieve political gains, and call Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid as members of 'tukde tukde gang' and 'anti-nationals' are also to be blamed for the attack," he posted on Twitter.

JNU student leader Shehla Rashid shared the screenshot of a threat message she had allegedly received from one Ravi Poojary after the attack on Khalid.

"Meanwhile, got this death threat from right-wing Hindutvawadi fundamentalist Ravi Poojary. He warns Umar Khalid, Jignesh Mevani and me to shut up! Threat by SMS #DigitalIndia," she posted on Twitter.

The message shared by her read, "Just Shut Your Mouth Or we will Shut Your Mouth Forever. Tell Umar Khalid and Jignesh Mevani Also. MAFIA DON RAVI POOJARY."

She said the attack on Khalid was the "direct result of hatred whipped up by... and other hate media" and called it "shocking and condemnable".

Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur opined it was time the online mob took to the streets against such incidents.

"I want to say I'm shocked and surprised but I'm not. It was only time the online mob came out on the streets. And God forbid something happens tomorrow to someone the blood will be on our hands for not condemning the hatred enough.

"Gauri Lankesh, Kalburgi, Shujaat Bhukhari and now an attack on @UmarKhalidJNU. History tells us that these are the warning signs before a perfectly normal, thriving nation turns into a battlefield. How are we still this ignorant and keep missing them?" she posted on the microblogging site.

Social activist Kavita Krishnan also blamed certain news channels for the "murderous violence" against Khalid.

? "Shocking attempt to kill #UmarKhalid - ironically outside Construction Club in Delhi. The hate speech and fake news by news channels targeting him and others as 'anti national' directly results in such murderous violence," she wrote on Twitter.

JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar tweeted in Hindi and said, "What could be a bigger evidence of jungle raj in the country that the copies of the Constitution are burnt and Umar Khalid is fired at, close to Parliament. The confidence of criminals has increased under the current government and media."

Actress and JNU alumnus Swara Bhasker also posted on Twitter, "What are we becoming?!???!? A lawless anarchic state of affairs.. so damaging to our institutions and credibility at a responsible state. Even if you don't like Umar's views! #UmarKhalid."

Comedian Kunal Kamra posted on social media, "If this doesn't chill your spine what will? If you choose silence now when will you speak? If this is not wrong, what is wrong? In Solidarity."
A day after hundreds of people held a pro-Khalistan rally in London's iconic Trafalgar Square, Randeep Singh Surjewala, communications in-charge of the Congress party, on Monday accused the Narendra Modi government and opposition Akali Dal of a conspiratorial silence over the issue.

Surjewala tweeted, As a sinister conspiracy is hatched to revive militancy in Punjab, why are BJP-Akali Dal mum? Why has the 56 Modi Govt been stunned into a conspiratorial silence?

As a sinister conspiracy is hatched to revive militancy in Punjab, why are BJP-Akali Dal mum?



Why has the 56 Modi Govt been stunned into a conspiratorial silence?



         ?    ?https://t.co/9Ue5CDRakW  Randeep Singh Surjewala (@rssurjewala) August 13, 2018

The rally by pro-Khalistan groups highlighted the theme of 'Referendum 2020', which calls for organising a referendum for establishing an independent Sikh homeland in Punjab. Lord Nazir Ahmed, a peer of the House of Lords, who is of Pakistani origin, had been one of the main supporters of Referendum 2020 and was a speaker at Sunday's rally.

The ministry of external affairs expressed its disappointment at the UK police for granting permission for the Referendum 2020 event, noting that the decision did not take into account the ties between the countries.

Interestingly, pro-India groups held counter-events at Trafalgar Square to coincide with the Referendum 2020 rally. The We Stand With India and Love My India events were held in designated areas away from the Referendum 2020 rally and attracted hundreds of supporters. Both pro-Khalistan and pro-India rallies passed off peacefully.

The BJP had on Sunday dismissed the Referendum 2020 rally as a useless exercise by a desperate group of radicals, who had no support from Punjabis across the world.

Tarun Chugh, national secretary of the BJP, argued Referendum 2020 was an anti-national proposal aimed at creating communal trouble in and outside Punjab.

Chugh echoed the words of Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who had earlier claimed Referendum 2020 was an attempt by Sikh radicals backed by Pakistan's ISI to create strife in India.

(With PTI inputs)
JNU former-student leader Umar Khalid escaped unhurt after being shot in New Delhi on Monday. Apparently, an unidentified man opened fire at Umar Khalid outside the Constitution Club of India, near Parliament.

An eyewitness to the incident claimed Khalid had arrived at the spot to join a protest against mob lynching incidents and women's safety issues. He claimed Khalid was with a group at a tea stall when the attacker approached him and opened fire, but missed him. Khalid's supporters tried to chase the attacker, who dropped the gun and fled.



Further details are awaited.

Khalid had hit the headlines in 2016 when he, along with another student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, was arrested for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans at the JNU campus. In June this year, Khalid lodged a police complaint claiming he was receiving threats from Ravi Pujari, who had reportedly also threatened him in 2016.

Reacting to the incident, Shehla Rashid, another student leader from JNU, claimed to have spoken to Khalid and claimed he was "okay, but very worried about his safety". She also blamed some media organisations for the incident, tweeting it was a "direct result of hatred whipped" by them.


The government is all set to grant special remission to specific categories of convicted prisoners as a homage to Mahatma Gandhi whose 150th birth anniversary will be celebrated in the country from October 2, 2018 to October 2, 2020. The remission will be granted to those who have consistently maintained good conduct during their term in prisons.

The Union home ministry on Monday said that the move is a tribute to the humanitarian values Mahatma Gandhi stood for. The ministry has asked all states and Union Territories to constitute a state level committee to examine cases of eligible prisoners fulfilling these conditions.

The prisoners shall be considered for special remission and released in three phasesphase I on October 2 this year, phase II on April 6, 2019 and phase III on October, 2 2019. The cut-off date for consideration of the cases of eligible prisoners for Phase-I would be October 1 and for Phase-II, April 5, 2019 and for Phase-III, October 1, 2019.

According to the home ministry, six categories of prisoners who have consistently maintained overall good conduct will be eligible for special remission. The first category is women convicts of 55 years of age and above, who have completed 50 per cent of their actual sentence period (without counting the period of general remission earned by them). The second category is transgender convicts of 55 years of age and above, who have completed 50 per cent of their actual sentence period (without counting the period of general remission earned by them). The third category is male convicts of 60 years of age and above, who have completed 50 per cent of their actual sentence period. Another category is physically challenged convicts with 70 per cent disability and more (duly certified by a Medical Board) who have completed 50 per cent of their actual sentence period. The last two categories are terminally ill convicts (duly certified by a medical board) and convicted prisoners who have completed two-third (66 per cent) of their actual sentence period.

Though ''prison'' is a state subject, the MHA provides assistance to states on various aspects of reformation and rehabilitation of offenders, which is the ultimate objective of prison administration. The ministry has meanwhile drawn up a list of those convicts who will not be granted special remission. On top of this red list are convicts who have been sentenced to death or whose death sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment.

It will also not be applicable for cases of convicts involved in terrorist activities or persons convicted under Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1985 (TADA), The Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002 (POTA), Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA), The Explosive Substances Act, 1908, The National Security Act, 1982 (NSA), Official Secrets Act, 1923 and Anti-Hijacking Act, 2016.

Special remission will not be granted also in cases of prisoners convicted for dowry death or counterfeiting currency notes (FICN) and those convicted for the offence of rape, human trafficking and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO) or Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956.

Economic offenders also cannot be granted remission if they are booked under Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA), and Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015.

It is also not applicable in cases of prisoners convicted under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985; Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988;

and other cases where the state governments considers appropriate to exclude.

The state level committees, tasked to draw up the lists of convicts who can be released, will include Additional Chief Secretary or Principal Secretary in-charge of Home Department of the States, member of the Department of Law and Justice and DG/IG Prisons of the States. The primary task of the committee will be to consider and scrutinise all cases and make recommendations to the state government. Then the state government will put up the recommendations before the governor for his approval. The mandate to grant special remission lies with the governor who has been given powers under Article 161 of the Constitution of India, and in case of Jammu and Kashmir under Section 34 of its Constitution. Meanwhile, in cases where approval of the Centre is required, the applications will be sent to the home ministry while cases of release of any foreign national convicts will be reviewed and decided by the Ministry of External Affairs.
Declaring that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a gau bhakt (cow worshipper), Yoga guru and entrepreneur Baba Ramdev called on the PM to enact a law to ban cow slaughter in the country.

"Who else can be a bigger rashtra bhakt and gau bhakt than Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He should enact a law to ban cow slaughter in the country," Ramdev said.

Baba Ramdev said on Sunday gaurakshaks (cow protectors) are forced to come out on the streets as police and civil administrators fail to deal strictly with the menace of cow smuggling.

Ramdev said strict action should be taken against those involved in illegal cow slaughter and added that a few gaurakshaks do go overboard, which maligns the image of "90 per cent genuine" people who work for cow protection.

"No one speaks about cow smugglers. Why are cow slaughterers given encouragement? It should never happen. We are not in favour of those having licence for cow slaughterhouses and those transporting animals," Ramdev told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Jaipur.

Replying to a question on the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, Ramdev said nearly 3-4 crore people live illegally in the country, which poses a huge threat to the country's integrity, unity and sovereignty.

Be it a Bangladeshi, Pakistani or American, no one should be allowed to live illegally in the country, Ramdev added.
Pitching for simultaneous elections to state assemblies and Lok Sabha, the Bharatiya Janata Party said it would bring stability into India's polity and strengthen the federal structure of the country. Barring a few parties, most of the NDA allies and most of the opposition parties are opposed to the idea of holding simultaneous elections.

The idea, floated several times in the past, had got a fillip when Prime Minister Narendra Modi strongly pushed for it saying it would help save money and ensure better governance in the country. The BJP sent four of its senior leaders to Law Commission presently studying the proposal with a letter from party chief Amit Shah.

Shah in his letter cited several examples to address the concerns forwarded by the opposition parties against the idea. During 2016, Maharashtra had elections for most part of the year. Out of the 365 days, the state had the model code of conduct in some part of the state due to several elections, be it Lok Sabha, state assembly or local bodies. This led to hindrances in the states development, Shah said in his letter to Justice B.S. Chauhan (retired) who heads the Law Commission.

One of the main arguments of parties like the Left, the Congress and the AAP is that holding simultaneous elections would mean that presidential form of government coming into play. The regional aspirations and parties will be worst sufferers as people would favour one party both at the Centre and the state.

Shah in his letter argued that there have been examples where elections were held simultaneously to Centre and state, and two separate party governments were elected. He cited the example of Karnataka which in 1980 voted for Congress in the Lok Sabha polls, but elected a JD(S) government in the state.

To make 'one nation, one poll' into reality, legislative amendments will be required into the People's Representation Act, uniformity should be brought into the national and state level voters list, and state and national laws and rules should be brought on same page.

The BJP chief said a national consensus needs to be arrived at to make this possible. Earlier speaking at various fora, Shah had denied that Modi government will hold simultaneous elections for the 2019. But this has not quelled the apprehensions in the mind of the several parties which accuse the BJP of trying to force homogeneity of the political views across the country.

Shah termed the criticism of 'one nation, one poll' as inspired by narrow political views and called it inappropriate. There may be a short term pain, but its advantages will save the country of huge resources, he said. The BJP president said other issues like ensuring adequate EVMs, police force, personnel can be worked out.

There are over 9.3 lakh polling booths and over one crore workers are posted during the elections. During 2011, over Rs 700 crore was spent, while the government expenses jumped to Rs 4000 crore in 2014 polls. Simultaneous elections will reduce that cost. This exercise has been successful in several countries, BJP general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Bhupender Yadav said after meeting the Law Commission.
Frees was among 52 musicians from around the country attending the Jazz I Session and was a member of the top performance group, The Birch Creek Ambassadors. He performed 15 concerts throughout the county as a traveling ensemble.
The Supreme Court on Monday sought response from the Narendra Modi government on a plea seeking a court-monitored investigation into the alleged suicides of a Ministry of Corporate Affairs official and his wife and two children in 2016.

B.K. Bansal was being investigated for corruption by the CBI and purportedly left behind a suicide note alleging torture by CBI officials. The suicides of Bansal and his family had created a political uproar in 2016, with opposition parties alleging foul play and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal even pointing fingers at BJP chief Amit Shah.

Kejriwal alleged one of the CBI officials named by Bansal in his suicide note had links to Shah. Interestingly, Kejriwal's official Facebook page has kept a dedicated album to show the suicide note purportedly written by Bansal.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud was hearing a PIL moved by senior advocate Colin Gonsalves. The petitioner sought a court-monitored probe as Bansal had accused the CBI of harassment.

Bansal, a former director-general of Corporate Affairs, was found hanging with his son at their residence in East Delhi in September 2016. In July that year, Bansal's wife and daughter allegedly committed suicide, citing harassment by the CBI.

Bansal was arrested earlier in July for allegedly accepting a bribe from a pharmaceutical company and was out on bail when he committed suicide.

After Bansal and his son committed suicide, Congress spokesman Manish Tewari demanded a court-monitored probe and asked whether the dead official had been privy to deep secrets.

(With PTI inputs)
Former speaker of Lok Sabha and CPI(M) leader Somnath Chatterjee will be given a funeral with state honours, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Monday after paying respects to his mortal remains at a private hospital in Kolkata.

Ironically, it is yet unclear whether the central leadership of the CPI(M), Chatterjee's own former party, would come to pay respects to Chatterjee. Only general secretary Sitaram Yechury is scheduled to arrive in Kolkata to pay his respects.

Chatterjee, who was suffering from multiple organ failure, died on Monday morning at 8.30am after suffering three heart attacks since Sunday evening. The 89-year-old former CPI(M) leader had declared he wanted to donate his body to SSKM Hospital; Chatterjee's body would be handed over to hospital authorities later on Monday.

Chatterjee was expelled by the CPI(M) politburo because he refused to resign as speaker of Lok Sabha following CPI(M)'s withdrawal of support to the UPA government in 2008.

However on Monday, senior CPI(M) leaders in West Bengal thronged Chatterjee's house and the hospital where he died to see him for the last time. Former CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat, who was instrumental in ousting Chatterjee from the party, is yet to make a statement after his death.

Yechury called Chatterjee a messiah of the working class and "defender of Constitution of India". Despite Chatterjee's ouster from the CPI(M), Yechury always maintained contact with him and often met him at his residences in Shantiniketan and Kolkata. Breaking all norms, Yechury made the CPI(M) politburo take a resolution to condole the death of Chatterjee, though he was an expelled leader.

The message of Chatterjee's death has not been conveyed to last chief minister of the CPI(M) in West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who is ailing. Bhattacharjee had been considered a very ardent acolyte of Chatterjee.

It was Chatterjee, whowhen deputed by then West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu as chairman of West Bengal Industrial Development Corporationstreamlined the industrial policy of the state, which was taken forward by Bhattacharjee when he was chief minister. Chatterjee till his last days was a strong supporter of Bhattacharjee.

Former president Pranab Mukherjee said, "I have lost my personal friend and the nation has lost a great son." From President of India Ramnath Kovind to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, major political leaders condoled the death of Chatterjee and termed him as one of the greatest politicians and parliamentarians in India.

Chatterjee was a stringent critic of the BJP even at a time when the saffron party was not a force to reckon with in West Bengal.

Chatterjee had told this correspondent some time back, Communists could not think of what would benefit them. Communists would have to gauge the impending threats to humanity and working class. Communal tone in Indian politics can destroy the country if it's allowed to grow."
Is the party supreme, or Parliament? Somnath Chatterjee set a precedent in the Indian parliamentary history when he chose the spirit of the Constitution over his party's rulebook, over 10 years ago in July 2008, when faced with a dilemma over continuing in the post of Speaker or vote against the government of the day. The decision earned him a sobriquet of being a conscientious parliamentarian, but had to pay the price of leaving electoral politics forever. Before that he was elected to Lok Sabha 10 times, losing only once to Mamata Banerjee, the current chief minister of West Bengal.

Chatterjees death, after a multi-organ failure at the age of 89, marks the end of an era of stalwart parliamentarians known for their sense of propriety and oratorical prowess. Along with his CPI colleague Indrajit Gupta and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Chatterjee would command respect inside the Lok Sabha every time he delivered a speech. Though often critical of the government, the trio would not hesitate to support it when it came to issues of national importance. In mid-nineties, when the sufi shrine Charar-e-Sharif was destroyed in a fire following the gunbattle between the holed up terrorists and armed forces, many in the Lok Sabha criticised the army action. It was left to the eloquence of Chatterjee who steered the debate in a way the security operation was not politicised.

Trained as a lawyer, Somnath contested the first time to the Lok Sabha after the death of his father who was an MP from Bengal. During his years in the Lok Sabha, Chatterjee also brought in lawyers felicities as he quoted rules and regulations governing the conduct of business inside the House . From 1989 till 2004, he was the leader of the CPI(M) in Lok Sabha.

His repeated victories in Lok Sabha elections with impressive margins testified to his popularity with the masses, his standing in the party and his towering stature as a parliamentarian, read a brief sketch on him posted by the Lok Sabha secretariat. In 1996, he was given the richly deserved Outstanding Parliamentarian Award.

Chatterjee has never missed a chance to champion the cause of the working classes and the deprived people.

He was elected as the Speaker on 4 June, 2004. Incidently, it was the first time that a Speaker pro-tem had become a Speaker of the Lok Sabha. His name was proposed by the then Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi. The proposal was then seconded by Pranab Mukherjee, who was the defence minister.

The then PM Manmohan Singh had shared his connection with Chatterjee recalling that, as a young boy, he received a scroll from N.C. Chatterjee, Somnaths father, declaring him to be a proud graduate of Hindu College, Amritsar.

Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while replying to the motion of thanks in Lok Sabha in 2016, had quoted Somnath Chatterjee over the repeated disruptions inside the House.

The most critical part of his public life has been the conduct of the proceedings of the House during the Trust Vote of 22 July, 2008. It evoked appreciation from citizens across India and abroad. He had refused to toe the party line as it asked him to resign as Speaker and vote as an MP against the Manmohan Singh-government. The CPM, by then, had withdrawn support to the UPA over its signing of the civil nuclear deal with the USA. Chatterjee had refused to obey his party saying he was above the party lines as it had demanded of the Speaker.

It was during his tenure in 2004 that Lok Sabha started live coverage of Zero Hour. Two years later in 2006, the entire proceedings of Lok Sabha were telecast live through a separate TV channel.

Known for his headmasterly conduct, he often chided MPs for their unruly behavior. I do not know what is the future of this country if Parliament of India behaves like this? he would often say inside the House as recalcitrant members refused to listen.

He maintained a consistent line that the MPs themselves should not vote on their pay and allowances, and that the same should be decided only by an independent Commission.

Another key initiative taken by Somnath Chatterjee was the setting up of a high-tech Parliamentary Museum on Indias democratic heritage within the Parliament complex.
Former Lok Sabha speaker and veteran CPI(M) MP Somnath Chatterjee died at the age of 89 on Monday. He had been admitted at the Belle Vue Clinic in Kolkata after suffering a haemorrhagic stroke on June 27.

Though Chatterjee's condition improved, he was readmitted to hospital on August 10. He suffered a mild heart attack on Sunday and died of multiple organ failure.

Chatterjee had been a Lok Sabha MP 10 times for the CPI(M) before taking up the position of speaker in 2004 after the ascent of the UPA-1 government, which was supported by the Left.

For a CPI(M) member, Chatterjee's ascent could be described as uncharacteristic. He was born on July 25 1929, the son of N.C. Chatterjee, who was a Hindu revivalist associated with the Hindu Mahasabha and had been its president. The senior Chatterjee was a Lok Sabha MP for the Mahasabha. Chatterjee did his barrister-at-law from Middle Temple in the UK.

Chatterjee joined the CPI(M) in 1968 and won his first Lok Sabha election from Burdwan in 1971 after the seat fell vacant, ironically, after the death of his father, who was the sitting MP.

Chatterjee represented multiple constituencies from West Bengal in the Lok Sabha including Burdwan, Bolpur and Jadavpur. Interestingly, Chatterjee's only defeat in a Lok Sabha election was in 1984 when he lost to Mamata Banerjee of the Congress from Jadavpur, which was, incidentally, her first parliamentary win.

Chatterjee was considered as the 'face' of the CPI(M) nationally and acclaimed as a erudite parliamentarian, who was respected across party lines. He was part of several key parliamentary committees. Chatterjee won the 'Outstanding Parliamentarian Award' in 1996 and his election as Lok Sabha speaker was unanimous. As speaker, Chatterjee was praised for his adherence to procedure.

Chatterjee's tenure as speaker was momentous as it coincided with the CPI(M)'s 'peak' in Parliamentary numbers and, subsequently, the party's opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal being pursued by then-prime minister Manmohan Singh. Chatterjee was expelled from the CPI(M) in 2008 after he refused to resign and toe the line drawn by then-party general secretary Prakash Karat.

While he retired from active politics after his tenure as speaker, Chatterjee's perceptive and frank views on political issues continued to attract attention.

Chatterjee had warned against the rising popularity of the Trinamool Congress under Banerjee, which eventually ousted the CPI(M) in 2011, ending three decades of Left rule in West Bengal. Later, Chatterjee criticised the CPI(M) leadership under Karat for having lost its touch with common people after the party's disastrous performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Even as his health had weakened considerably by 2018, Chatterjee attacked Banerjee for the TMC's intimidatory tactics in the panchayat elections.
A meeting between officials from North and South Korea on Monday has fuelled claims that the two countries could be planning to hold a summit between their leaders in Pyongyang later this month. If the Pyongyang summit does take place, it would be the third meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in less than six months.

A South Korea delegation led by Cho Myoung-gyon, the Minister for Unification, commenced talks at the truce village at Panmunjom with a North Korean delegation led by Ri Son Gwon, chairman of the Norths reunification committee.

Media agencies in South Korea claim the two countries are preparing for a third summit that could be held as early as the end of August or early September. The delegations could possibly consider a date after the reunion ceremonies of families separated by the Korean War, which is held from August 20-26, and before North Korea celebrates the 70th anniversary of its founding on September 9.

Kim Eui-kyeom, a spokesperson for President Moon, said he hoped the delegations can decide on the date and venue of the leaders' next summit.

Moon and Kim met on April 27 this year at the South Korean side of Panmunjom, in a much publicised meeting. They met again on May 26 on the North Korean side of Panmunjom, though the second meeting had not been announced beforehand.

The planned Moon-Kim summit comes amid worries in the US that North Korea is yet to agree to a timeline for elimination of its nuclear weapons.
New Delhi, Aug 13 (PTI) Remembering wife Sridevi on her 55th birth anniversary, Boney Kapoor today said that the void left by the actor could never be replaced, but her memories is something the family can live by.

Sridevi passed away on February 24 due to accidental drowning in her hotel bathtub in Dubai.

"Today this vacuum, this void cannot be replaced but the good wishes and the goodwill that she has left behind is something that we can live with... She is with me, in my memories...with my children," a teary-eyed Boney told reporters here.

"I feel the loss of her every second of my life, not just me even my children do. This is something that we have to live with. Unfortunately, she was snatched away from us sooner than anybody expected," he added.

The producer was in the capital, along with their daughters Janhvi and Khushi, for a retrospective on the veteran actor organised by the Films Division, Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

In the retrospective, Sridevi's films such as "Mom", "Lamhe", "English Vinglish", "Chandni" and "Sadma" will be open for showcase.

Boney thanked close friend and Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh, who was the guest of honour, for organising the two-day programme.

"I thank the Government of India, I and B Ministry for giving this honour to my wife. We are grateful and humbled by the kind of honour that has been bestowed on her by the ministry, by the Government of India and my friend Amar Singh ji," he said.

Boney said Sridevi may not be amongst her family and admirers today, but like a true artiste, the National Award-winning actor will continue to live throughout her legacy.

He praised the actor for her "remarkable journey" that was spread across different languages and spanned an almost 50 year-long career.

"She wanted to do a film in Bengali too. She was quite keen to do films in all the Indian languages," he said.

"I admire her sincerity, dedication and the understanding with which she played every character. Her biggest USP was that she never tried to act but would disappear in a character," he added.

Reminiscing his love story with Sridevi, Boney said it took him 10-12 years to win her heart.

"I fell in love with her when I saw her for the first time on the screen. It was one sided love since the beginning. I chased her in the sense that I went to Chennai to sign her but unfortunately she was not available at that time. I was in awe of her, her work.

"The aura that she had created around as an actor was something that I admired. Maybe, all these reasons contributed to me falling in head over heels for her," he said.

"My love story with Sridevi is an open book. Whatever matters of the heart that can be shared is all in the public domain. What is most close (about her) will remain in the heart. That's my support system for life," he added.

Boney said his children, Arjun and Anshula from first wife Mona, too have been his strength through these tough times.

"The way they have accepted Janhvi and Khushi... That has made me feel very relieved. My all four children are my strength," he said.

Veteran classical dancer and nominated Rajya Sabha MP Sonal Mansingh was the chief guest.

The event was also attended by former actor-MP Jaya Prada, a frequent co-star of Sridevi's.

Prada, who worked with the actor in over 16 films such as "Tohfa", "Mawaali", "Mundadugu" among others, said Sridevi's passing is a "great loss" to the industry.

Janhvi, who found it difficult to keep herself together through the reminiscences session, broke down in her father's arms while leaving the premises. PTI RDS BK KJ

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Mumbai, Aug 13 (PTI) Taking a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his whirlwind poll rallies, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said today he should address election meetings of all parties and not just the BJP.

He said the prime minister, a star campaigner for the BJP in elections, and also chief ministers, should treat all as equal.

"While being sworn-in, the prime minister, chief ministers and ministers take oath that they will treat everyone as equal.

"Why should the prime minister go only for the BJP (poll) campaign?" he said, speaking at the 58th anniversary function of the weekly magazine 'Marmik' this evening.

"They (prime ministers) should go for poll campaign of all (parties). They should attend the poll campaign of the Shiv Sena, independents and Communists," Thackeray said.

He made a veiled reference to BJP president Amit Shah writing to the Law Commission, pitching various benefits of holding simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and state assemblies in the country.

"One nation, one election is nice. If democracy has to take root in our country, then the Election Commission should ban prime minister, chief ministers and ministers from (participating in) poll campaigns," Thackeray said.

"The prime minister says he will give houses for all by 2022. If someone objects, he will say that person has negativity," Thackeray said.

Union minister Nitin Gadkari has said the popular "achhe din" slogan of the BJP has become a "gale mein haddi" (bone stuck in neck) for the NDA government, he said.

He referred to Modi announcing a financial aid of Rs 1,000 crore for the IIT-Bombay during its 56th annual convocation here on Saturday and said the BJP-led government in the state is ignoring the adjoining Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation.

The corporation has not got even a single penny of the Rs 6,500 crore that Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had promised in 2015, the Sena chief said. PTI VT RSY SMN

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In our community, the Union Pacific Railroad is shared with the CTA Green Line and Metra, [and is] an integral part of our public transportation network, Abu-Taleb said. Some of us have seen delivery trucks stuck under the train line. Mr. Guerrero will address the embankments infrastructure and how Union Pacific monitors the underpass to ensure everyones safety.
AICTE Chairman stresses on new initiatives to encourage

innovation

Kolkata, Aug 13 (PTI) All India Council for Technical

Education Chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe has stressed on the

congregation of the new initiatives of AICTE and Indian

National Academy of Engineers (INAE) to encourage innovation.

Sahasrabudhe was speaking on the Centre's move to

encourage innovation at the 2nd Indian National Academy of

Engineers Youth conclave at the IIT Kharagpur yesterday.

He said important schemes have been initiated by AICTE,

the national-level council for technical education in the

country, to improve laboratory condition of institutions while

distinguished fellows can now visit other centres for a full

semester and claim reimbursement.

The research fellows will also be provided travel grant

for presenting their research paper at conferences, he said.

Sahasrabudhe also said in a message to the conclave

souvenir, the recent 'Smart India Hackathon' initiative by the

AICTEs and MHRD involved Under Graduation students of

technical institutions.

The 'Smart India Hackathon' was aimed at solving

challenging problems of different government departments and

ministries and state governments and engage with young

students for creating worlds largest open innovation model,

he said.

The AICTE chief said, "Many countries such as Canada,

Australia, South Korea and Singapore have shown keen interest

in participating under this banner. Certainly, these exercises

help bring awareness and fundamental skills among students and

help build the foundation for future innovation and skill

development."

Students from different institutes competed in six

sections at the Youth conclave which ended on August 12.

The students made their presentation at the finals on

August 11-12.

While the School of Aeronautics, Neemrana, won the top

prize for Optimising Food Chain Aspects in which students

were asked to devise a product to store farm produce, Future

Institute of Engineering and Management, Kolkata won the first

prize in the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan category in which

students had to segregate household waste.

The IIT KGP team lifted the first prize for 'Town

Planning. In the Mobile Application Development category, IIT

KGP won the top prize for both healthcare app development and

digitisation of agriculture.

IIT KGP Director Partha Pratim Chakrabarti pointed out that

this era is the time of convergence where people from

different sectors work together to solve complex problems for

technical and social excellence."

INAE President B N Suresh asked students to make full use

of the conclave and interact with others.

Around 300 students from all over the country participated

at the conclave. PTI SUS

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Attari (Amritsar), Aug 13 (PTI) Twenty six Indian fishermen and three others were today set free from jails by Pakistani authorities in a goodwill gesture.

The freed prisoners were handed over to authorities at the joint check post at Attari-Wagah border, officials said.

India also released seven Pakistani prisoners who were handed over to the concerned authorities today, they said.

Among the prisoners released by Pakistan was Gajanand Sharma who was missing from Jaipur since 1982.

Sharma's family was unaware of his whereabouts until they were informed by the Pakistan embassy few months back, officials said. In Sharma's absence, his wife worked as a domestic help to look after their children, they said.

All released prisoners crossed over to India on the basis of an 'Emergency Travel Certificate' issued by the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.

After the repatriation, medical examination of all prisoners was conducted by a team of doctors.

On crossing over to the Indian side, the prisoners bowed down and kissed the soil. Many had their eyes moist while some looked relieved.

Fishermen from Pakistan and India are frequently detained on charges of illegal 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 being drifted away. PTI JMS CHS SUN VSD ADS

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New Delhi, Aug 13 (PTI) BJP chief Amit Shah today condoled the death of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, describing him as an excellent parliamentarian.

Chatterjee, 89, passed away at a private hospital in Kolkata this morning following multiple organ failure.

"Saddened to learn about the demise of Somnath Chatterjee, former Speaker of Lok Sabha," Shah tweeted.

"He (Chatterjee) was an excellent Parliamentarian, whose long years as a member of the House, enriched our Parliamentary traditions. My condolences to his family and supporters in this hour of grief," Shah said.

Chatterjee was suffering from a kidney-related ailment and was admitted to the hospital in a critical condition on Tuesday last. PTI JTR

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New Delhi, Aug 13 (PTI) Attempts are being made to erase the legacy of the country's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and it is becoming a part of the policy under the current dispensation, journalist-turned-politician Kumar Ketkar said today.

Ketkar said the government was selectively highlighting only the shortcomings of the first prime minister.

"The government is trying to erase the legacy of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. In fact, this is becoming part of the policy. Look at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library or any other institution," Ketkar said.

He was speaking at the launch of a book by Uttam Khobragade, a former IAS officer from Maharashtra, who has now joined the Congress.

Known to be close to the Nehru-Gandhi family, the Congress sent veteran journalist Ketkar to the Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra this year.

Khorbragade said it is because of Nehru that democracy survived in the country.

Former Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde also attended the event. PTI PR SMN

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Jharkhand CM offers prayers at Surya Mandir

Jamshedpur, Aug 13 (PTI) Jharkhand Chief Minister

Raghubar Das today offered prayer at a Surya Mandir in East

Singhbhum district, an official release said.

Accompanied by thousands of kanwarias (Lord Shiva

devotees), Das lifted holy water from Baridih bustee chat

ghat.

He then walked around 1.5 km with the Kanwarias and

offered holy water to Lord Shiva at the Surya Mandir at

Sidgora on the occasion of the auspicious month of 'Shravan',

it said.

Das prayed for prosperity and all round development of

the state, the release added. PTI BS

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New Delhi, Aug 13 (PTI) The Supreme Court today accepted the suggestions of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) to have hologram-based coloured stickers on vehicles which would indicate the nature of fuel being used.

The MoRTH told a bench headed by Justice M B Lokur that hologram-based sticker of light-blue colour will be used for petrol and CNG run vehicles while similar sticker of orange colour would be placed on diesel vehicles.

The bench also comprising justices S Abdul Nazeer and Deepak Gupta asked the ministry to implement the use of coloured stickers on vehicles plying in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) by September 30.

The apex court also asked Additional Solicitor General A N S Nadkarni, who was representing MoRTH, to consider having green number plates for electric and hybrid vehicles.

Nadkarni told the bench that the ministry would look into it and take a decision soon.

Advocate Aparajita Singh, assisting the court as amicus curiae in the air pollution matter, had earlier suggested to the bench that colour-coaded stickers should be used to identify the nature of fuel being used in the vehicle.

These issues had cropped up when the court was hearing a petition on air pollution in Delhi-national capital region (NCR). PTI ABA UK AAR

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Only one slab of GST after we come to power- Rahul Gandhi

(Eds; rpting after recasting 7th para)

Hyderabad, Aug 13 (PTI) Congress President Rahul Gandhi

today slammed the Goods and Services Tax as "Gabbar Singh Tax"

and said that one slab GST would be implemented when the

"Congress party-Government" comes to power at the Centre.

Speaking at an interactive meeting with women Self-Help

Groups, organised by the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee,

he also attacked the NDA government, saying it waived loans of

Rs 2.5 lakh crore of the 15 richest businessmen in the country

during the past two years.

"No, (it is) Gabbar Singh Tax. This GST is a way of

removing money from the pockets of the poor. This is not GST,

this is Gabbar Singh Tax. When the Congress Party government

comes (to power), we will give you GST - Goods and Services

Tax.

In that, there will be only one tax level. There will not

be five different taxes. In that, you will not have to fill

different (compliance) forms every month", he responded to a

woman who complained about being levied GST.

Gandhi arrived here to a rousing reception on a two-day

visit, his first to Telangana after becoming the party

President.

The Congress leader also said he would not make false

promises and pointed out that the Karnataka government, in

which Congress was also part of, was implementing the farm

loan waiver scheme.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about

providing enhanced Minimum Support Price for various crops,

entailing an expenditure of Rs 10,000 crore for the entire

country, the Congress Government in Karnataka had implemented

loan waiver of Rs 30,000 crore, he said.

Even as the poor stood in queues at banks for their money

after demonetisation was announced in November 2016, the cash

deposited by them was used to cater to loan waiver of the

rich, he alleged.

He also attacked the TRS government in Telangana.

"Today, one-family government is running in Telangana.All

benefits are being given to one family.

Lands of farmers are being snatched, women SHGs are not

helped, support required to be given to farmers is not given

and only corruption is seen," Gandhi said, targeting the

family of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

Tomorrow, Gandhi would hold a teleconference with 31,600

booth0 committee presidents, mandal and district Congress

presidents and also state unit office bearers.

Later, he would address about 150 young industrialists

and CEOs from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

In the evening,Rahul Gandhi would attend a public meeting

of students and unemployed youth at Saroornagar stadium.

He would leave for Delhi by 8.30 PM that night. PTI SJR

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New Delhi, Aug 13 (PTI) The ruling AAP and the opposition BJP indulged in a war of words today over Delhi Police's charge sheet in the chief secretary assault case, with the latter demanding Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to step down from his post on moral grounds.

It is a "shameful" day in the history of Delhi's polity as the chief minister and the deputy chief Minister stand accused of "criminal conspiracy" in the case of assault on chief secretary Anshu Prakash, said Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari.

"The chief minister should own moral responsibility for the attack on the chief secretary and hand over his charge to some other party colleague till the court decides the matter," he demanded.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Saurabh Bhardwaj attacked the Narendra Modi government alleging that a "conspiracy" was hatched to defame the chief minister, his deputy Manish Sisodia and 11 party MLAs accused in the case.

The Delhi Police in its charge sheet filed in a city court today has named Kejriwal and Sisodia as accused in connection with the alleged assault on Prakash in February.

The charge sheet has also named 11 AAP MLAs who were allegedly present during the alleged assault on Prakash during a late night meeting at the chief minister's residence.

"A midnight conspiracy to defame the Delhi Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister and 11 MLAs in a false and laughable case, was hatched at the highest level by the Modi government through its politically appointed Lieutenant Governor and the pro-BJP Chief Secretary," alleged Bhardwaj.

The Aam Aadmi Party is of clear view that Anshu Prakash who has been associated with senior BJP leaders for long, was posted as chief Secretary of Delhi with a "sinister plan" to paralyse the elected Delhi government, charged the AAP spokesperson. PTI VIT VIT SMN

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French tourist found murdered in TN, one held

Thanjavur (TN), Aug 13 (PTI): A 50-year old French

tourist was found murdered in a village in the district and a

local acquaintance arrested for allegedly killing him, police

said today.

The killing came to light yesterday after the

half-burnt body of M Pierre Boutier wrapped in a gunny bag was

found in an irrigation channel.

Police arrested 29-year old Thirumurugan, a resident

of Avikkottai village in the district, on the charge of

killing the French national whom he had befriended during a

visit to Mahabalipuram recently.

According to police, Thirumurugan, who surrendered on

his own yesterday, 'confessed' to the crime.

The two were allegedly in an homosexual relationship

and Boutier had come to Avikottai on August 5 on an invitation

by Thirumurugan.

Some days ago, when both were consuming liquor an

argument broke out and Thirumurugan allegedly attacked the

Frenchman, killing him on the spot.

He subsequently attempted to burn the body and wrapped

it in a gunny bag and dumped it into the Ullikottai irrigation

channel, police said.

On being informed by the locals, police recovered the

body and also found Boutier's passport. PTI COR

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New Delhi, Aug 13 (PTI) A drug addict juvenile allegedly stabbed an employee of a de-addiction centre to death after the latter had gone to bring him to the centre, the police said today.

The incident was reported from west Delhi's Khyala yesterday.

Yesterday, one Prakash, who works with an NOG in Laxmi Nagar, informed the police about the incident. The mother of the juvenile had called up the NGO's landline number and requested them to take her son for drug rehabilitation.

Subsequently, Prakash, Nishidh and Harsh Chaudhary alias Harshu went to the woman's house to bring the minor.

When they reached the house, the minor, who was standing outside his house, resisted their attempts to escort him to the car, the police said.

They overpowered him but when they were returning towards their car, the minor whipped out a knife from his pocket and stabbed Chaudhary on the left side of his chest. He fell down unconscious and was rushed to a hospital where he was declared brought dead, they added. PTI SLB AQS

AQS
On June 29, 2015, Reyes and three other Latin Counts members formulated a plan to shoot and kill multiple members of the rival Latin King street gang who were congregated to mourn the recent death of one of their members, the indictment states.
New Delhi, Aug 13 (PTI) A minor girl was allegedly raped by three men over a period of time in the Uttam Nagar area, the police said today.

The three accused were arrested, they added.

The police were informed last Saturday about the incident when the victim alleged that the accused had raped her on different occasions, they said.

The victim's parents are divorced and the she stays with her father in Uttam Nagar. PTI SLB AQS

AQS
Wall Street analysts have given American Renal Associates a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but American Renal Associates wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

View MarketBeat's top stock picks here.
Alsberry, 16, and fellow Wirt-Emerson students began the school year at a new school Monday after the district closed Wirt-Emerson in June. Alsberry said it seemed most of his classmates came to West Side, although numbers werent available.
Wall Street analysts have given Chinook Energy a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but Chinook Energy wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

View MarketBeat's top stock picks here.
The bill would establish a task force to look at the impact of the affordable housing crisis, according to Youngs office, and let the group make recommendations to Congress on how use affordable housing to improve other federal programs and improve life outcomes.
Williamstown, Mass.

The racial slur cracks the air, and the audience responds with an audible inhale. But Berenice, a black maid in a small Southern town in 1945, doesn't react at all. The word is uttered by her employer, a distracted, widowed white businessman and father who largely leaves the raising of his 12-year-old daughter to Berenice, and he uses it to refer to Berenice's foster brother and to her beau.

It's a hard slap of a moment, the indignity worsened by the awareness of how utterly common it is in the world of "The Member of the Wedding," Carson McCullers' 1950 stage adaptation of her celebrated novel from four years earlier. A contemplative, at times plodding production directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch closes the Mainstage season at Williamstown Theatre Festival.

The production, though beautifully realized by designers Laura Jellinek (set), Clint Ramos (costumes), Isabella Byrd (lighting) and Bray Poor (sound and original music), has a staid atmosphere despite the prepubescent ball of energy at its center, Frankie, Berenice's charge and challenge. A lively, inquisitive girl desperate to fit somewhere, anywhere, in a backward town she's destined to leave far behind as an adult, Frankie's inchoate longings find focus when her beloved brother returns from the Army to get married.

Frankie is desperate to participate in the nuptials so she can be part of something meaningful  "the we of me," as she puts it. With her close-cropped hair, tomboyish mien and close company with two more outsiders -- Berenice and her odd younger cousin John Henry, played by the open, curious Logan Schuyler Smith -- she's an early representation of queer otherness.

The delicate lyricism of McCullers' prose comes through in her dialog and in director Upchurch's pacing of the play. As wild as Frankie gets, including shouting at neighbor kids while wearing a bucket as a sort of knight's helmet, the production feels measured, sedate.

Tavi Gevinson, who was in the Chekhov update "Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow" last summer in Williamstown, is 22 years old, but her performance is so luminous she's believably 12. (Julie Harris, who was 25 when she played Frankie, became a sensation for her stage performance, reprising it in the 1952 film adaptation.)

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Even more captivating is Roslyn Ruff as Berenice, whose silences say even more than her wise words. Magnetic to watch, Ruff is a study in repose when she smokes a cigarette, her exhalations filling the air with all she cannot say.



sbarnes@timesunion.com  518-454-5489  blog.timesunion.com/tablehopping  @Tablehopping  facebook.com/SteveBarnesFoodCritic
Colonie

Officials broke ground Monday for a $23.6 million building that will house the headquarters operation for financial services firm Ayco Corp., allowing it to centralize its operations, now at three locations in the Capital Region.

Larry Restieri, president and CEO of Ayco and a managing partner at Goldman Sachs, its parent company, said the first employees are expected to move in during the first quarter of 2020.

He said there's also a potential phase two to the project to provide more office space as the company continues to expand. Ayco offers a corporate-sponsored program providing financial services to executives at more than 400 corporations nationwide. About one fifth of those corporations are on the Fortune 1000 list of largest companies.

Locally, client companies include General Electric, IBM and Regeneron. Ayco was founded in 1971 to provide services to GE executives. It has since grown to 870 employees and expects to have as many as 1,030 by 2021.

The new building will go up on the 120-acre site formerly occupied by Starlite Theater, which was also known previously as the Colonie Tent and Colonie Coliseum. The venue, which opened in 1958, held its last events in 1998.

Galesi Group of Schenectady is the developer, and it plans other improvements at the site, including a new road that will connect Route 9R with Route 9.

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The site was attractive to Ayco for a number of reasons.

"This is the best location for the Capital Region," observed David Buicko, CEO of Galesi. "It's centrally located between Albany, Schenectady, Saratoga and Troy. "

Restieri said it's also convenient to both the airport and the train station.

Buicko thanked Colonie officials for their assistance with the project, singling out the town's industrial development agency for its help.

Ayco and Galesi together are expected to receive about $7 million in tax breaks for the project. The developer was unsuccessful in its request for a $5 million state economic development grant to help with infrastructure improvements, including the new road.
Schenectady

Price Chopper/Market 32's parent company is evaluating a plan to potentially outsource its information technology function to a third party, a company spokeswoman confirmed.

The move, which would impact an undisclosed number of IT workers at Golub Corp., the holding company of the Price Chopper/Market32 supermarket chain, has not been finalized and is not expected to result in any job losses.

"None of this is a surprise to the team," said Price Chopper/Market32 spokewoman Mona Golub. "There is a plan that is under review that has not been finalized."

Golub did not say how many in the IT department could be affected. The company has been working with a consultant to evaluate the new strategy. Some current Golub employees could be "rebadged" under the vendor, meaning they would be hired by the vendor, whose identity was not disclosed.

"We're always looking to innovate," Golub said, adding that outsourcing a non-customer facing function could save the supermarket chain substantial overhead without impacting customer service or store quality.

The IT operations department at Price Chopper/Market32 has an annual budget of more than $10 million overseeing technology operations ranging from the IT help desk, and computer support to data processing, print services and field support, according to the LinkedIn profile of one high-ranking IT executive at the company.

Price Chopper/Market32 have worked with a variety of software and IT consulting firms over the years to optimize operations. The company's chief information officer is Sam Wagar, a Siena College graduate.

IT jobs are some of the toughest to fill in the Capital Region, which has a large shortfall of such workers.

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Golub Corp. has used multiple vendors to help it with its transformation of the Price Chopper stores into Market32. It used Watt International, a Toronto-based retail strategy and design consulting firm that it hired in 2015. It also used Sevan Multi-Site Solutions for construction management at rebranded Price Chopper stores. It's estimated that the new layout and other enhancements of the Market32 brand will lead to double-digit increases in average weekly sales.

A company that specializes in IT work, that has multiple customers and multiple offices in markets that can more easily find qualified workers, could potentially be able to offer the same or better services at a cheaper cost due to scale and expertise.

Price Chopper/Market 32 has roughly 24,000 employees across the Northeast and about 700 at its Schenectady headquarters. The company has been spending about $300 million converting stores over to its new Market32 brand concept and has been trimming operational costs where it can to pay for the upgrades, which have required more customer-facing hires.

Golub Corp. and its two supermarket brands are owned by the Golub family and its employees.
Taking the first step in changing your life sometimes involves radical change, and something major to kick you in the butt to get you moving. That's how this family of six, plus a dog the size of a small man, ended up selling their home and fleeing suburbia for a quieter life in a travel trailer.

Its important to get a few things straight right from the get-go. I was sure I hated motorhomes. And trailers. And campers, tents, fifth wheels, yada-yada. I was sure of this for reasons that are somewhat unclear. At the very least these mobile hovels were not worthy of my interest. After all, for 25 years I have been a pretty famous, albeit marginally, talented automotive journalist who has driven virtually every car built since Richard Nixon told me he wasnt a crook. Ive traveled the world. Ive often complained about Four Seasons Hotels being a bit shabby while once criticizing a rickshaw driver that his low end torque seemed a bit below par. And I was sure I hated RVs.

Now that I think of it, there was a time when I, as a curious 8 year old, stuck my head inside a neighbor's Coleman Pop Up trailer that was parked in their driveway. It had a tiny kitchen. And canvas tent covers over the beds. And it smelled like people. Like hair. Or the inside of a persons elbow. Not good.

RELATED: Is the grass really greener when you leave the Bay Area?

The deal was likely then sealed.

I hated RVs.

Pivot now to 2016. An unremarkable Tuesday night at 11 p.m. as I slept beside my amazing wife and down the hall from our four sleeping children. For it was at that moment that I awoke to what I was sure was our 115-pound Weimeraner sitting on my chest. But the dog was nowhere in sight. The pain instead was what every middle-aged somewhat overweight, middle class white-guy-douche-bag who spent the 1980s eating too many Porterhouses and doing too many things he later forgets having done fears the most. I was having a heart attack. A bad one. Like the kind when your priest walks into your hospital room and apologizes.

After weeks and weeks in the hospital mending and unclogging what I once believed was nothing more than "success" surging through my cardiac arteries, I came home. Sick and tired.

Kim, the partner I have never deserved, immediately said we needed to change our life. I managed to whisper to her that I hadnt had a steak in a month. She maintained her own whisper and said again, We need to change everything. Crap.

Two days later Kim was annoyingly peppy as she came through the door and asked if I would join her outside.

Get off the couch! She laughed.

Evil, I thought.

I managed to walk outside in my NY Giants pajamas that I swore were part of my recovery regimen. And there it was. A travel trailer, although my inaccurate assessment of said vehicle at that moment was to call it a camper.

I immediately condemned the notion that we were ever going to use it.

We need to change everything, Kim whispered again.

Three days and 200 collective pages of print and online training manuals later, we hit the road with our Sonic Lite Travel Trailer. (More disclosure: I dont care for anything lite. Not my beer, nor the rear end of a girl, nor anything else for that matter but I kept most of that to myself at the time.)

The Sonic Lite promised in its literature that all of its controls were intuitive and easy to use and that that it could be towed with a standard truck or SUV. I was still terrified. I had never towed a thing in my life. Not a trailer, nor a boat, nor the line but I digress.

Our first trip was straight back to the RV dealer so they could double check my hitch and safety connections.

Like just about every RV dealer Ive met since, and there have been over 50, they were kind and generous with their time and patient with my arrogance and excuses for being an RV moron.

Within 30 minutes I was assured I was set to go and I would be safe towing this crate.

I pulled out of their driveway in my 2007 GMC Denali with a gasoline V8 engine (previously unused 7,000 pound towing package still on board from the day I bought it) and I drove to the on-ramp of Interstate 80 in Sacramento and turned to Kim and said, Where should I go?

Anywhere she said. "Anywhere you want."

Tempting I thought. But we were a bit lite. Very lite.

An immediate U-turn (no small feat) had us heading back into our little stereotypical Northern California neighborhood where the disdain for all things with a hitch is palpable. Sharon, the cranky neighbor who has assuredly won an award after central casting determined she be the character we grow old living next to was the first to comment.

Did you actually BUY that?, she screeched as she breached the completely invisible albeit much needed property line in our front yard.

I stole it, Sharon. I swiped it. Boosted it right off the lot. Im a MOTORHOME klepto Sharon! So  Now you know. And jimmy cracked corn and I dont .

Enough said Kim.

Why does she always whisper when Im out of control? Criminy. It was enough, by the way. For my work had yet to fully begin because inside was the family. The WHOLE fam-damily.

A quick introduction to the twins--15 years old and quite fraternal--Natalie and Matthew. A loving and remarkably good looking pair of offspring who rank above average when factoring in most human virtues. In fact, their lack of remarkable teenager angst and overall lack of any deficiency scares the snot out of me. More on that later.

The next kid is named Gretchen. A blond-haired, blue-eyed, strong-willed kid who claims Jan Brady is completely misunderstood and also may be her soul-sister. Oy.

The baby is now 10 years old and is named Charlotte. A brilliant child with a smile that can warp steel. And Charlotte is also bald. Completely. No hair. And thats because Charlotte has Alopecia. And that means she has no hair. Butsometimes it grows in. And then falls out again. Its hard to tell if its coming in or falling out.

If this all seems weird, I guess it is. But hair is not a big issue in our house. Ever. And Charlotte will confirm we are always under budget on shampoo, which is good.

The final member of the clan is Owen. The overweight, over-entitled 11-year-old Weimeraner who demands more cuddle time than my college roommate who majored in Theater Arts and minored in Liza Minelli.

So, lets go everyone! Please?

RELATED: A family takes an even longer RV trip.

And thats where the story of our new life on a hitch really begins.

How to get all 6 of us ready in an instant to go somewhere weve never been before while towing a 21-foot box that weve never even spent a night in. Even the dog seemed dubious.

Kim, of course, just whispered, "Lets go."

And so I tapped into my incredibly limited knowledge of some old black and white film I saw on The Late, Late Show 40 years ago that called to "To Go West Young Man" (a qualified senior citizen with two heart stents and double daily doses of a statin, I was fully aware of the inherent irony.)

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Out of the unremarkable Central Valley we drove. West to Vallejo, where, for the first time, I felt it. The wind.

And not just any wind. Wind that was pushing this thing behind me and pushing it side to side. I swear on all that's holy I was convinced the trailer was weaving so hard it was about to pass me in the number two lane.

It was at that point Kim found her voice.

"Ummm, is THAT normal?" She wasn't whispering anymore.

"I have no clue." It seems I was now whispering. Something I often do just prior to spontaneous urination, related to unmitigated fear.

After slowing the family truckster down to what seemed a very reasonable 50 miles per hour, the trailer lost its ability to mimic Elvis on Ed Sullivan and all seemed well.

So well that the Vallejo exit seemed perfect to hang a right on.

I had been to Bodega Bay in the early 90's. Pre-kids and pre-Kim. As we pulled into the busy but certainly quaint town, the question hit.

"How do you know this place?", she asked.

Ummmm.... Travel magazine? Anthony Bordain? Elderly aunt's summer residence? The possible lies were endless. I leaned over and coughed up "I came here once with a girl and we did it in a cheap motel that was still more expensive than I could afford and they declined my credit card so she had to use her Visa card and I think that's the reason she still hates me and......"

"Enough." She was whispering again.

I now had guilt, a trailer, and a family that was increasingly anxious to experience camping. A lot of pressure.

Doing what dads do, I pulled into the lone gas station in Bodega Bay and asked for 50 bucks in gas, a Scratcher lottery ticket--I do that sometimes to see if my streak of never wining can continue endlessly... it did--and then asked him if I could camp somewhere.

"Camp anywhere you want... but you better have a reservation."

This didn't sound good. Reservations? I was beginning to have reservations about this new life.

"Unless you go to Wrights. You can always drop in at Wrights Beach. Almost always," he added.

His name was Gus. Or Bob. Or another monosyllabic blue-collar name that is always unremarkable. Like Doug. Either way, I immediately adored him. Because he was right about Wrights.

Eight minutes north of the gas station I turned into Wrights Beach. It was already dark. But I could hear the waves. And with that sound, that moment, I felt it. The physical release of stress that I had never felt before. A literal explosion of decades of mental physical dysfunction that was in retrospect nothing short of religious.

And I had not even unhooked the trailer yet.

Partly because of how captivating the moment was. And partly because I was now convinced that although I had gotten us to our initial destination safely, I had no clue how to unhitch.

Kim came up from behind and put her arms around me and whispered that she loved me.

And so it begins I thought...

Doug Brauner is a television and radio host, mechanic, and now an RV enthusiast from Sacramento, who edited this column from his trailer on the beach in Capitola.

SFGATE is always interested in stories about radical changes in how people live their life, pondering if the grass is greener. Share your story in the comments, and we may reach out to you, too.
WILTON - Old sounds mingled with new on the battlefield Saturday. A drone buzzed overhead as men on horseback skirmished and their sabers rattled together. A man in uniform offered commentary with a battery-operated bullhorn amid cannon and carbine fire.

Historically, no Civil War battles took place in New York, although the Empire State contributed the most regiments and the most men to the Union Army of any state, said reenactor Jim Buell. Wilton's present-day connection to the war comes from Grant's Cottage, where Pres. Ulysses Grant, who was a general for the Union before becoming president, spent the last weeks of his life with his family as a guest at a cottage on Mt. McGregor.
Times Union archive

The Empire State Youth Orchestra Wind Orchestra will travel to Hungary to perform Wednesday through August 22nd as part of a cross-cultural exchange that started a few years ago.

Dr. Robert Hansbrough, who conducts the wind orchestra, met Dr. Joszef Csikota, who serves as president of the Eastern European World Association of Bands and Ensembles while he was in the United States visiting the College of Saint Rose as a guest clinician and conductor, according to a release. Hansbrough then invited Csikota to conduct the ESYO Wind Orchestra in 2016. During that visit, Csikota met with the ESYO administration and subsequently invited the Wind Orchestra to attend the 2018 convention in Hungary.
A short time later, the victim told police, he heard yelling and screaming outside his tent, and the victim unzipped the tent, where Heavilin was allegedly screaming at him about the loud music, and told him his kids had school in the morning and the music was keeping everybody awake, according to a report.
Troy

A hiking trail at the city's historic Prospect Park will be renamed Monday after the first African-American graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who later went on to design the park.

A recently-restored trail at the park's southwest corner will carry the name of Garnet Douglass Baltimore, a graduate in civil engineering from RPI in 1881. He designed the 80-acre city park in 1903.

Mayor Patrick Madden will lead the 11 a.m. ceremony, which will also include officials from RPI, Friends of Prospect Park, Troy Little Italy Quality of Life Committee, and the National Park Service Rivers and Trails Program.

In 2005, a stretch of Eighth Street, between Federal and Ferry streets, was ceremonially renamed for Baltimore, the grandson of a Revolutionary War solider and former slave who escaped and settled in Troy.

Beginning last year, workers from the city, National Park Service, and Friends of Prospect Park restored a long-defunct hiking trail in the southwest corner of the park. The trail connects the iconic peak to the Little Italy and South Troy neighborhoods.

According to RPI's Alumni Hall of Fame, which also inducted Baltimore in 2005, he laid out Albany's Graceland Cemetery, as well as cemeteries in Hoosick Falls, Amsterdam and Glens Falls.

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He was consulting engineer for Oakwood Cemetery for 30 years. He designed the landscape for St. Mary's Hospital in Troy, and he supervised the extension of a lock on the Oswego Canal, a project that involved coping with quicksand.

He also made surveys and maps of crime scenes and testified about them in court. He worked as an assistant engineer and surveyor on the Erie Canal.

Baltimore also was active in the city's life, serving as chairman of the Civic Art Committee in 1912-13 and organizing Troy Night in 1913, held at Troy Music Hall.

That event resulted in new ornamental street lighting and other improvements. An active alumnus, he was a member of the Troy Alumni Club and served as secretary of the Alumni Association's 50-Year Club until his death in 1946.
ALBANY  Days after U.S. Rep. Chris Collins was hit with federal insider trading charges, Democrats are calling for other New York Republican members of Congress to return donations received from him.

Attorney Antonio Delgado, a Democratic running in a heated general election contest against Rep. John Faso, called on the Kinderhook Republican to return $3,000 he received from Collins.

"John Faso has consistently favored big corporations and special interests over the needs and concerns of his own constituents," said Delgado campaign manager Allyson Marcus. "He has taken thousands from dishonest representatives and Washington insiders. Faso should return the $3,000 from Collins immediately in order to finally demonstrate to the people of our district that he won't benefit from corrupt politicians."

Faso's campaign could not immediately be reached for comment.

Delgado has himself taken significant contributions from employees of the country's highest-grossing lobbying firm, Akin Gump. Delgado used to work for the Washington, D.C.-based firm as an attorney, but was not involved in lobbying.

The campaign of state Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi, D-Utica, called on Rep. Claudia Tenney, an Oneida County Republican who like Faso faces a competitive race, to return $3,000 that she accepted since 2013 from Collins' committee, the Congressional House Republican in Service or CHRIS PAC.

Ellen Foster, Brindisi's campaign manager, said in a statement released Wednesday  just hours after Collins' indictment was unsealed  charging that Tenney has "taken thousands from corrupt representatives and Washington insiders. ... Tenney should return the $3,000 to send her constituents a message that corruption on both sides of the aisle is wrong."

Raychel Renna, Tenney's campaign manager, shot back by saying that Brindisi's family members have had legal troubles  his father, a prominent attorney, represented upstate organized crime figures before giving up criminal defense work  and that Collins "is entitled to due process as well."

"Brindisi's sudden concern with corruption is partisan and politically motivated considering that his campaigns have been bankrolled by corrupt Gov. Cuomo, two-time convicted felon Sheldon Silver ... and liberal Nancy Pelosi," said Renna said.

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A pro-Democrat PAC, American Bridge 21st Century, also called on Faso and Tenney to return Collins' PAC money. They demanded the same of Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, whose campaigns received $3,000 from Collins in recent years.

Stefanik's campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Collins announced on Saturday that he was abandoning his re-election bid in the solidly Republican district in western New York.

Collins was the first sitting member of Congress to endorse Donald J. Trump presidential campaign. Trump will appear at a fundraiser for Tenney during an upstate visit on Monday that will begin in Stefanik's district with the president's appearance at Fort Drum outside Watertown.

Collins has been charged by federal prosecutors with tipping off his son to sell stock in an Australian pharmaceutical company ahead of the public release of news that its flagship product, a drug to treat multiple sclerosis, had failed its clinical trials. Collins pleaded not guilty in his initial court appearance.
SCHENECTADY  One criminal charge filed against a woman embroiled in a familial dispute with the citys police chief and his brother has been dropped, while another has been downgraded to a violation.

Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney confirmed Sunday that a misdemeanor stalking charge against Kimberly Duncan was downgraded to second-degree harassment, a violation, and an obscenity charge had been dropped. The changes to the charges were first reported by the Daily Gazette.

Carney said it was a "prosecutorial decision" based on what charges fit the facts of the case. He declined to comment further, saying it is still a pending case.

Duncans attorney, Brian Mercy, could not immediately be reached for comment Sunday.

Duncan was accused of sending explicit pictures to the wife of Schenectady patrolman Sean Clifford, who is the Schenectady police chief's brother. In a notice of claim recently filed against the city, Duncan alleges Chief Eric Clifford orchestrated her arrest in April in retaliation and called her husbands boss at the State Police.

She accuses the chief of defamation of character in a notice that seeks $10 million.

In the handwritten document, Duncan wrote that Clifford "acted outside the scope of his employment, rich with defamation and abuse of power," when he called her husband's superiors to allege that Duncan was having an affair with Clifford's brother, a Schenectady K9 officer.

"He then filed an order of protection against me on behalf of himself and 5 other family members of his whom I've never met," she wrote.

Duncan was initially charged in April with stalking and obscenity that allegedly took place between March 4 and April 16, according to court papers. Duncan is accused of sending "nude photographs depicting her breast and vaginal area with an obscene performance" to the cellphone of the wife of Sean Clifford, 48.

Her criminal case, which now is just made up of the harassment charge, is headed for a bench trial in city court Aug. 24.

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Duncan said she suffered "damages and injuries" when she was removed from the police station April 19 and illegally imprisoned after attempting to file a complaint about officer misconduct. She said she initially went to the station to file a complaint against Sean Clifford's wife. Instead, she was accused of violating the order of protection.

Duncan said she was held at the Schenectady County jail until she could post bail.

Duncan claims her arrest defamed her character, caused "tremendous stress in her personal life," and made it impossible for her to find a job or an apartment.

The police department has asked state troopers to handle the investigation to avoid a conflict of interest. The citys corporation counsel has denied the allegations in Duncans claim.
ALBANY - A controversial, but common practice of paying Executive Chamber staff from the budgets of agencies and authorities was used when two Democratic state senate candidates briefly worked for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

Hiring political appointees to work for the governor  but paying them through other entities  has allowed governors since Nelson Rockefeller to increase the size of their staffs without inflating their own office's budget. Last year this practice drew the attention of FBI agents and led to a subpoena from federal prosecutors for documents and personnel files, although it's unclear what criminal law might have been violated by the hiring practice.

"This practice dates back in New York at least 50 years and is used in the federal government and by other states," Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi said. "This hadn't been an issue since at least the Rockefeller administration."

Aaron Gladd, a Democrat vying to replace retiring Republican Sen. Kathy Marchione, was paid by the state's Division of Military and Naval Affairs for more than a year, even though he was serving as Cuomo's deputy policy director until this spring. Before that, he worked in the administration for two years as part of the Empire State Fellows program.

"When I became the deputy policy director (in 2017), I took over a lot more responsibility for veteran and military affairs issues, like Fort Drum and the National Guard," said Gladd, who served as a platoon leader in Afghanistan for the U.S. Army.

He was paid $81,649 in 2017, according to records maintained by SeeThroughNY.

He said he was never approached by investigators, and noted that both parties have paid staff in this manner. "I don't like it," he said of the practice.

The art of creative payroll practices are not limited to any one party or branch of state government in Albany.

The New York Times previously reported that Gov. George Pataki, a Republican, had 40 executive chamber officials paid by agency or authority budgets in 2003 and Gov. Mario Cuomo, a Democrat, got around reducing his personal staff in 1984 by paying workers from state agency budget lines.

In recent years, Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, a Long Island Republican, approved stipend payments to members of his majority coalition for positions they didn't actually hold.

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Democratic state Senate candidate Alessandra Biaggi, who is hoping to unseat incumbent Democrat Jeff Klein from his downstate district, was paid by the state Department of Taxation & Finance while serving in the governor's counsel's office during 2017. She had a salary of $105,000, but only worked there long enough to collect $69,602, according to records maintained on SeeThroughNY.

"When she first started she was told that this was the way things were done, so she accepted that," Biaggi's campaign spokesman said. "When she heard about the FBI asking questions she went back and asked again, and she was again assured it was appropriate."

She never spoke with investigators about her employment, according to the campaign.

In the spring of 2017, Biaggi was part of a wave of Executive Chamber hires that came from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign or worked in the administration of President Barack Obama. Biaggi was the deputy national operations director for Clinton's campaign, according to Linkedin.

David.Lombardo@timesunion.com - 518.454.5427 - @poozer87
Albany

The group Environmental Advocates of New York has released its annual scorecard of how lawmakers voted on bills affecting the environment  and Senate Leader John Flanagan came out the big loser.

Flanagan, a Long Island Republican, won the "Oil Slick Award," given each year to the lawmaker who Environmental Advocates says did the most to block efforts to protect the environment.

The group looks at how lawmakers voted on bills relating to pollution, water and air quality, erosion and open space conservation. It cited Flanagan's work to block bills that would impose a carbon tax on business emissions and prohibit potentially dangerous chemicals from toys, as well as skeptical comments he made about the reality of climate change.

"The Senate continues to be a place where big, bold environmental ideas go to die," the group said in a report accompanying its scorecard.

Flanagan spokesman Scott Reif dismissed the criticism as politically motivated. He noted that under Flanagan the Senate approved $2.5 billion for clean water projects, as well as record funding levels for the state's environmental protection fund.

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Upcoming

The Senate will hold a hearing Monday in Binghamton on the state's efforts to boost businesses owned by women or minorities. Similar hearings are scheduled in New York City, Canandaigua and Long Island in coming months.
ALBANY  A Massachusetts man was arrested Friday in Menands and charged with traveling across state lines with the intent to have sex with a minor.

Joseph A. Defilippi, 55, of Chicopee, Mass., was arrested Friday at a park where he thought he was meeting a 13-year-old boy named Dylan. Instead, he was arrested and taken into federal custody, according to a release from U.S. Attorney Grant C. Jaquith and James Hendricks, special agent in charge of the Albany field office of the FBI.
A grieving orca whale has released the body of her dead calf after carrying it for at least 17 days through the Pacific Ocean in an unprecedented act of mourning, according to researchers.

On Saturday, Tahlequah, as the mother has come to be called, was observed swimming without the body of her calf, according to Center for Whale Research Founder Ken Balcomb.

"Her tour of grief is now over and her behavior is remarkably frisky," read an update on the research center's website.

The center said whale-watchers near Vancouver, British Columbia, had reported seeing Tahlequah without her calf's body last week, but Saturday was the first time researchers were able to confirm those reports.

Tahlequah's mourning had astonished and devastated much of the world.

The orca gave birth on July 25 in what should have been a happy milestone for her long-suffering clan.

As Allyson Chiu wrote for The Washington Post, the pod of killer whales that roams between Vancouver and San Juan Island has dwindled to 75 members over the decades. The cause is no mystery: Humans have netted up the whales' salmon, driven ships through their hunting lanes and polluted their water, to the point that researchers fear Tahlequah's generation may be the last of her family.

The 400-pound, orange-tinted baby that wriggled out of her that morning was the first live birth in the pod since 2015, Chiu wrote. It lived about half an hour.

People love to anthropomorphize animals, often fallaciously. But studies have found that orcas really do possess high levels of intelligence and empathy, and emotions that may not be totally alien to our own.

So, when Tahlequah did not let her emaciated calf sink to the bottom of the Pacific, but rather balanced it on her head and pushed it along as she followed her pod, researchers thought they understood what was happening.

"You cannot interpret it any other way," Deborah Giles, a killer whale biologist with the University of Washington, told Chiu. "This is an animal that is grieving for its dead baby, and she doesn't want to let it go. She's not ready."

That was the beginning of a long funeral procession. "The hours turned into days," Chiu wrote two days after the death. "And on Thursday she was still seen pushing her baby to the water's surface."

And still the next day, and through the weekend, and into the next week and next month.

The act itself was not unprecedented, but researchers said it was rare to see a mother carry her dead for so long. It couldn't have been easy for her. Tahlequah's pod travels dozens of miles in a day, Chiu wrote, and she pushed her baby's hundreds of pounds every inch of the way. She was forever picking up the body as it sank, hoisting it out of the water to take a breath, and repeating.

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Researchers with the Canadian and U.S. governments and other organizations tracked her all the while, the Seattle Times wrote. They hoped to capture the calf once Tahlequah finally let go, and discover why it had died - as nearly all the babies in this pod seemed to.

But Tahlequah would not let go. Eventually, researchers stopped calling what they were witnessing "rare" and began using the word "unprecedented."

And the phenomenon was no longer of purely scientific interest.

People wrote poems about Tahlequah and drew pictures. People lost sleep thinking about the whale. A scientist cried thinking of her. Tahlequah inspired politicians and essayists - and a sense of interspecies kinship in some mothers who had also lost children.

And still, Tahlequah carried her child. The world's interest in her feat finally grew to encompass her whole family.

Last week, the Times wrote, biologists and government officials began working on a plan to save the youngest living member of Talhequah's pod - a 3-year-old orca that appears to be on the brink of starvation. They are tracking the young whale - Scarlet - in an attempt to feed her antibiotic-laced salmon.

In that sense, maybe, Tahlequah's doomed calf did bring new hope to the pod, which had previously swum and struggled in near-anonymity.

At the same time, the mother's obsession had become gravely concerning to researchers. They worried that the effort of pushing her calf - for about 1,000 miles - would make Tahlequah weak and keep her from finding enough food. Fortunately, that doesn't appear to be the case.

The Center for Whale Research said Tahlequah "vigorously chased a school of salmon with her pod-mates" when researchers spotted her on Saturday.
The North Country and Mohawk Valley are preparing for the arrival of President Donald Trump Monday, his first visit to upstate New York since taking office last year.

Air Force One will land at Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field at Fort Drum in Jefferson County Monday afternoon. Trump is scheduled to appear at the base to sign a defense spending bill at 2:15 p.m.

Trump will then board Air Force One to make a short trip south, landing at Griffiss International Airport in Rome, Oneida County, at 4:05 p.m. He will attend a private fundraising event for U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican who represents the 22nd Congressional district that stretches from Utica to Binghamton.

The president is following in the footsteps of the past three U.S. presidents who all visited Fort Drum during their tenure.

His visit comes amid intense battles nationwide for Congressional seats up for grabs in this fall's midterm elections.

U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, said she invited Trump in March to visit Fort Drum. But while she is running to retain her North Country seat for a third-term, she is in a more stable position in her re-election bid than Tenney, who is in a competitive race against Democratic challenger state Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi.

The Tenney event that is being held somewhere in the Utica area will be a private fundraiser; tickets range from $1,000 per person for "supporters" to $15,000 per person for "hosts," according to various media reports.

"It's historic. It's exciting," Oneida County Republican chairman Peter Sobel told the Times Union Sunday. "Obviously the (22nd district) seat is important. It's important we hold it as Republicans, and I think the President recognizes that. That's part of the reason he's coming."

The Utica fundraiser is being run by the Republican National Committee, and has not involved GOP supporters in Oneida County.

Sobel joked about not knowing the details about the fundraiser.

"Too rich for my blood," he said. "She's got my support and he's got my support. I don't need to spend $1,000 for them to know that."

Brindisi has also scheduled a fundraiser in East Utica at the same time as Trump's visit, according to the Observer-Dispatch. Tickets for that event range from $10 to $150.

Tenney got even more help from the White House last month, when Trump daughter and White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump visited an asphalt and paving company in Cortland County and held a roundtable discussion featuring Tenney.

And while Donald Trump's visit is welcome for Tenney, who has enthusiastically backed the president's rhetoric and policies, it's unclear how much the Mohawk Valley and Southern Tier still supports Trump. The 22nd Congressional district overwhelming went for Trump in the 2016 election. But according to a recent Siena College Research Institute poll, Trump was viewed unfavorably by 55 percent of upstate New York residents in June.

As for Stefanik, the congresswoman's office put out a press release last week announcing the president's decision to visit Fort Drum, saying, "I am proud of the partnership with this Administration to begin rebuilding our military and the President's visit is an important opportunity ..."

In her position as a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, she is also pushing for a new East Coast missile defense system to be housed at Fort Drum.

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But Stefanik has not been as enthusiastic a foot solider for the president as Tenney has. While Stefanik voted last year to repeal and replace Obamacare, she has said she supports special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election as a means of "getting to the apolitical truth." In June, Stefanik also said the administration's tariffs on Canada and other nations will undercut the growth of cross-border trade, negatively impacting the North Country economy.

Stefanik is running against Democratic challenger Tedra Cobb, a former St. Lawrence County legislator.

Trump, meanwhile, has not visited any Upstate locations since becoming president. He was last in the North Country in April 2016 when he appeared at a campaign event at the Watertown International Airport, according to the Watertown Daily Times. He was at the Times Union Center in Albany that same month.

For Utica, Trump's visit as a sitting president is even more significant. The Observer-Dispatch reports that it is the first time a president has visited Utica since 1952, when it was part of a whistle-stop train tour for President Harry Truman.

The Capital Region last had a sitting president visit in 2012, when President Barack Obama gave a speech at the University at Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, using the school as a backdrop to offer an election-year vision of the economy.

During Trump's visit to Fort Drum Monday, he will sign the "John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019," a $716 billion annual defense authorization measure. The act is named after Republican Sen. John McCain - despite McCain's continued criticisms of Trump, including blasting the president's coziness with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Protests also have been organized. The 1199 SEIU Upstate NY union has said protests will take place at Public Square and Watertown and state offices on Genesee Street in Utica.

Trump is going to miss the upstate appearance of one of his former staffers two days later. Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer will appear at a New York state GOP private fundraising event at a home on Union Street in Saratoga Springs on Wednesday.
UTICA  President Donald J. Trump's two-stop visit to upstate New York offered roughly equal helpings of praise for his administration's accomplishments and political red meat for Republicans heading into this fall's elections.

One of those GOP incumbents, U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, was credited by Trump with pressing him to make his first stop of the day, at Fort Drum outside Watertown. It was his first appearance in upstate New York since taking office.

Stefanik "called me so many times," Trump told members of the historic 10th Mountain Division, their families and local elected officials that had gathered in a hangar on the base after observing an air assault exercise at Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field. " ... I said 'I won't be able to. We'll have to change a lot of (schedules).' But that didn't suit her. She didn't stop, and here I am."

Stefanik, a Willsboro Republican, was invited on stage, and said it was "truly an honor" to welcome Trump to the home of the 10th Mountain Division, which she noted was the most deployed unit in the U.S. Army since the 9/11 terror attacks.

Trump came to the base to sign a $717 billion appropriations measure that funds the military. In addition to Stefanik, he was joined by Vice President Mike Pence, Staten Island Republican Congressman Dan Donovan and Republican state senators Joe Griffo and Patricia Ritchie.

Stefanik, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, outlined the provisions of the appropriations bill, including a pay increase for service members and new levels of investment in military readiness.

Absent from Trump's remarks was any mention of U.S. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who the defense spending bill was named after. McCain, a decorated Vietnam war veteran who is battling terminal cancer, has repeatedly feuded with the president.

Trump said that taxpayer support for the military is made easier by a humming national economy.

"We've created almost 4 million new jobs since the election, a number that the media in the back would never have said would be possible," Trump said.

"I'm so proud of myself, I didn't call them the fake news media," he added, eliciting laughs and applause from the crowd. "I said to myself, 'I will not today in front of our great armed forces, call them fake news.' We know the real truth, but we won't say it today."

Trump also heralded his recent call for the creation of a U.S. Space Force, which he hopes would become a sixth branch of the nation's military. Trump said that the force would handle threats to satellite communications and other defense measures.

"Space has become a war-fighting domain. ... We must have American dominance in space," he said.

A few hours later at the Hotel Utica, Trump appeared at a fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney, who is facing a tight race with state Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi.

As the audience  who had paid between $1,000 and $15,000 to attend  held their cellphones high to capture the moment, Trump repeated his recitation of his administration's accomplishments with a far greater emphasis on politics. The president told them he had flirted with running for governor in 2012, but settled on seeking the White House instead.

Sign up for The Knick  Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter.

He lambasted Gov. Andrew Cuomo for placing a moratorium on the natural gas drilling technique known as hydrofracking, and said the Democrat "wants to end your Second Amendment." He also claimed Cuomo told him in a private conversation that he would never run for president against him.

"Your taxes are high for one reason: Andrew Cuomo," Trump said.

The governor was far from the only Democrat on the president's hit list in Utica: He knocked U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and praised her Republican opponent Chele Farley, who was in the room along with state GOP chair Ed Cox, and called Rep. Maxine Waters "crazy Maxine  low-IQ person."

The event, which was opened to some members of the media at the last minute, was in many ways a throwback to 2016, when Trump dominated the New York presidential primary largely due to his support among upstate Republicans.

Outside the hotel, hundreds of people organized by the liberal grassroots group Indivisible Mohawk Valley protested in proximity to more than 100 Trump supporters across a busy intersection in downtown Utica. Each side came armed with homemade signs and flags, and the street filled with political chants and car honks of support.

Dozens of police officers were present to cordon off each group's designated turf and act as calming presence.

In response to Tenney's fundraiser, Brindisi was hosting his own Utica fundraiser for a far lower price: $10 per person.

David.Lombardo@timesunion.com - 518.454.5427 - @poozer87
Once again, our clueless and giving the appearance that all Hoosiers are ignorant VP Pence announces a plan to create a new military branch for space defense. Has he or his babbling heard of the Air Force Space Command and what it's mission is  "to provide resilient and affordable space capabilities for the Air Force, Joint Force and the Nation"? Don't they have Top Secret clearances and already know this? The Air Force Space Command already have an excellent command seal. Lockheed Martin engineers and Air Force personnel are already testing and learning on an advanced radar system already investing $325 million know as Space Fence. Let's use the force to locate Yoda and appoint him to Jedi Joint Chief of Staff to teach the rest of the staff how to become Jedi knights!
Cashel Councillor, Tom Wood, has again called on Health Minister, Simon Harris, to get to grips with the situation and utilise Our Ladys Hospital to its maximum potential.

In corresponding with Minister Harris last week Cllr Wood wrote, with thousands of people, young and old, on waiting lists for all kinds of treatments

I cannot understand, why, after its 13 million renovation, this state of the art facility cannot be utilised to relieve the pressure.

It could facilitate thousands of people from Tipperary and surrounding counties awaiting appointments and treatments, with an overnight stay if deemed necessary.

I believe that HSE personnel are really fooling you about Our Lady's. This Hospital, with no beds, should be titled a Monument to Failure, so its now high time to get to grips with the situation and remedy this fiasco.

Councillor Wood says there are no words to describe seeing the Hospital, only open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, silent and in total darkness while the health services are in crisis.

In the past few years he has called on the Minister and the Health Service Executive to relieve the trolley pressure on South Tipperary General Hospital by providing step-down beds in the Cashel centre but to no avail.
Gardai in Tipperary are investigating an armed robbery on a service station in Cahir in which a man entered a premises with a weapon before demanding money from a safe.

The incident occurred at a service station on the Cashel Rd, Cahir at around 10pm on Saturday night, August 11.

A lone male raider entered the premises armed with was is described as a firearm. He brought a male employee to a back office and demanded cash from the safe. The raider took an undisclosed amount of cash from the premises and left the scene. No one was injured during the incident.

Gardai are appealing for anyone in the vicinity of Nash Pl, Mullaney Gardens, Rosemount estate and Banora Cres who may have noticed a person or persons acting suspiciously in the area from as early as 8.30pm on Saturday to come forward.

Gardai have appealed for anyone with information to come forward and are looking to trace a number of people who walked the route towards the filling station on the Cashel Rd who may have noticed unusual activity. They are appealing for anyone who was in the area where the burglary took place between 8.30pm and 10.30pm to come forward.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Cahir Garda Station on 052 7445630.
Tipperary students awaiting their Leaving Cert results this Wednesday, August 15, are being advised that the National Parents Council post-primary Leaving Cert helpline, 1800-265165 will operate from Wednesday to August 22.

This period covers the release of the results through to the first round of offers from the Central Applications Office.

This year, approximately 57,000 students sat the Leaving Certificate.

The Helpline supports students and parents by reducing stress through providing accurate information and counselling during this time.

The phones will be staffed by members of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors, who will assist callers with up-to-date information on all the issues that arise at this time. These will range from, appeal procedures, points, CAO applications and non-CAO options.

SUSI, the Student Universal Support Ireland, will also have a representative on hand to advise on any grant related queries.

The helpline is sponsored by the Irish Independent and the Department of Education and Skills. This year the event is hosted in the Croke Park Media Centre courtesy of the GAA Community Programme.

In 2017, the helpline had over 4,300 queries that were answered over the six days. It saw an increase of over 40 per cent on the previous year.

Geoffrey Browne, president NPCpp said: "For many this period is a key decision time and a gateway to third level. However, learning is lifelong and with motivation and self belief there are many roads open to progress in a chosen career."

Aoife Greene, communications and information services manager at SUSI said: "SUSI is delighted to continue to support the exam helpline, which offers an invaluable service to students and their families."
[August 13, 2018] China Mobile Hong Kong launches MyLink Pass

HONG KONG, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The highly anticipated annual launch of the newest flagship handset is around the corner! In view of the strong market demand for the next flagship handset, China Mobile Hong Kong (CMHK) announced today the launch of MyLink Pass registration, allowing the public (not limited to CMHK customers) to enroll through MyLink Mobile App for a quick grasp of the latest information on the flagship handset, and be well prepared for future ordering. CMHK Privilege Club members' registration of MyLink Pass even offers them higher priority in reservation of the flagship handset of the year! The registration process is simple. CMHK customers only need to log in to the MyLink Mobile App, and the system will automatically fill in their personal information and successfully complete the registration with just one click. Non-CMHK customers can also get their dedicated MyLink Pass instantly after filling in their personal information. When the concerned brand releases new information, MyLink Pass users will immediately receive emails or SMS to obtain first-hand information, so as to achieve priority booking of the flagship handset and check reservation status. Don't hesitate! Register now for MyLink Pass to experience the convenience of the MyLink Mobile App and take the preemptive opportunity to own your desirable handset! Customers can also register at CMHK Annual Flagship Handset MyLink Pass webpage:

www.hk.chinamobile.com/en/flagship_handset_registration.html Notes: This Campaign commences from today until further notice. This Campaign aims to provide the latest information about the upcoming annual flagship handset. Upon successful registration, a CMHK MyLink Pass will be assigned via email or SMS. Pre-order details will be sent through these channels. Under the age of 18 is not eligible to this Campaign. This Campaign is applicable to customers who is eligible to subscribe designated service plan only. Each participant will only be entitled to the registration once. CMHK reserves the right to vary these terms and conditions without prior notice. About China Mobile Hong Kong Company Limited China Mobile Hong Kong Company Limited ("CMHK") is the wholly-owned subsidiary of China Mobile Limited (HKEx: 941) (NYSE: CHL), which ranks 47th on the Fortune Global 500. CMHK was incepted in January 1997 and was the first mobile network operator to launch PCS services in Hong Kong. CMHK's 4G LTE service covers two major standards LTE FDD and TD-LTE and launched the world's first converged commercial LTE network in 2012 and in November 2016, CMHK has successfully launched 4.5G mobile network. The Company offers innovative and comprehensive communications services, including voice, data, IDD and international roaming through 4G LTE, 3GHSPA, GPRS, EDGE and other technologies. In 2016, CMHK became the first mobile operator* to provide 4G network coverage in 16 tunnels throughout Hong Kong. In February 2017, CMHK became Hong Kong's 1st mobile operator to cloudify its core network; in August, it became world's 1st operator to launch commercial 2.3GHz TDD Massive MIMO technology and in September, it is the 1st operator to announce and activate NB-IoT commercial service. In March 2018, China Mobile Hong Kong became Hong Kong's 1st mobile operator to announce 5G deployment plan upon awarding the Trial Permit for 5G Test by the Office of Communications Authority (OFCA). From May 2014 onwards, CMHK became the first service provider in Hong Kong to provide 4G data roaming service in Mainland China, creating a new era for cross-border mobile services. From May 2016 onwards, CMHK has launched "Supreme Greater China" Service Plan, "Supreme Global", "Supreme Asia" and "Bay Area" service plan to empower customers with the advantages of cross-border communications between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau. In April 2018, first flagship store opened in Mongkok to showcase smart living experiences. The Company has been named as a "Caring Company" for 15 years consecutively since 2002, and a recognized merchant under the "Quality Tourism Service" scheme since 2004 till now. For more information, please visit: www.hk.chinamobile.com







*According to the "Test Report on Mobile Networks in Hong Kong Tunnels Available for

Customer Use" (as of 26th May 2016). #The 4G data roaming service coverage is measured against a designated list of destinations,

please visit the China mobile Hong Kong website for details. The data was retrieved as of 1st

September 2017.

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180813/2210224-1 SOURCE China Mobile Hong Kong Company Limited

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[August 13, 2018] Dentsu's CCI to Bring SpotX Video Ad Serving Platform to Domestic Broadcasting Stations in Japan

TOKYO and DENVER, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Dentsu's Cyber Communications Inc. (CCI) (Head office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Representative Director and President: Akio Niizawa) and SpotX, Inc. (Headquarters: Denver, Colorado, USA, CEO, President: Mike Shehan), have announced their partnership to bring SpotX's video ad serving platform solutions to domestic broadcasting stations in Japan. SpotX, a global video advertising and monetization platform, offers cross-screen ad serving across video formats, programmatic infrastructure, data enablement, as well as in-depth analytics and reporting. This partnership will allow broadcasters and media owners throughout Japan to maximize their advertising revenue. The broadcasters that are planning to adopt SpotX's solutions for improved monetization strategies are:

Tokyo Broadcasting System Television, Inc. / Fuji Television Network, Inc.

Mainichi Broadcasting System, Inc. / Kansai Television Co. Ltd. / Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation

Tokai Television Broadcasting Co., Ltd. / Nagoya Broadcasting Network Co.,Ltd.

Aichi Television Broadcasting Co., Ltd. / Fukuoka Broadcasting System Corporation

Hokkaido Broadcasting Co.,Ltd. / Sapporo Television Broadcasting, Co., Ltd.

Hokkaido Television Broadcasting Co.,Ltd. / Hokkaido Cultural Broadcasting Co., Ltd.

Shizuoka Asahi Television Co., Ltd. / RCC Broadcasting Co., Ltd. / TSS-TV Co., Ltd. CCI chose to work with SpotX and offer its video ad serving platform solutions in the market because: SpotX is purpose-built for video with technology focused exclusively on the supply-side;

RTL Group, SpotX's parent company has capital strength and stability as the leader acrossbroadcast, content and digital; and

SpotX is heavily focused on the Japanese market.



About CCI

CCI was established in 1996, the year digital advertising first started in Japan. Since then, as a Dentsu Group's digital marketing company CCI has been a pioneer of Japanese digital market offering a wide range of digital marketing services for publishers and agencies. Today, CCI has business with over 500 leading ad agencies and over 1500 websites, which is the largest scale for the market.

https://www.cci.co.jp/en/

About SpotX

SpotX is the leading global video advertising platform that enables media owners and publishers to monetize premium content across desktop, mobile and connected TV devices. As a modern ad server with programmatic infrastructure, data enablement, and monetization solutions for OTT, outstream, and addressable TV, SpotX gives media owners and publishers the control, transparency, and actionable insights needed to understand buyer behavior, manage access and pricing, and maximize revenue. SpotX also provides advertisers with a direct pipeline to premium supply and innovative solutions for optimizing media efficiency, reach, and audience targeting. With best-in-class technology purpose-built for video, SpotX's holistic, brand-safe solution is employed by some of the largest media owners and publishers in the world including fuboTV, Microsoft Casual Games, Newsy, Samba TV, Sling TV, Vudu and partners with a variety of different companies within the digital video ecosystem including comScore, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, JW Player, MediaMath, MOAT, Nielsen, Oracle, and more. Headquartered in Denver, SpotX has nearly 600 employees in 24 offices worldwide including Amsterdam, Hamburg, London, Los Angeles, Milan, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, and Tokyo. In October 2017, RTL Group completed its 100% acquisition of SpotX which is currently combining its business with smartclip, a sister company. Learn more at www.spotx.tv and follow @SpotX on Twitter and LinkedIn. Media Contacts

Cyber Communications Inc.

E-mail: ms-sales@cci.co.jp SpotX JAPAC

Mandy Davenport

E-mail: mdavenport@spotx.tv SpotX USA

Tammy Blythe Goodman

E-mail: tgoodman@spotx.tv SpotX EMEA

Joanna Burton

E-mail: jburton@spotx.tv View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dentsus-cci-to-bring-spotx-video-ad-serving-platform-to-domestic-broadcasting-stations-in-japan-300695827.html SOURCE SpotX

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The following incidents were listed in the official reports of the Skokie Police Department. Readers are reminded that an arrest by police does not constitute a finding of guilt; only a court of law can make that determination.
[August 13, 2018] DarkPulse, Inc. Announces Investor Relations Campaign; Retains Experienced Texas Firm to Assist

NEW YORK, NY , Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DarkPulse, Inc. (OTC PINK: KLMK) today announced it has retained E & E Communications to assist with its investor relations program. Our goal is to be?a leader?in distribution sensor solutions. ?The system we have developed, we believe,?should?outperform anything else in the sector. ?Interestingly, it is dark pulsing that?should?allow us to be so successful, said Dennis O'Leary, DarkPulse's Chairman and Co-CEO. Because of our achievements we are looking to tell our story to more investors, to both increase stock price and liquidity. As Mr. OLeary mentions, there is a story that needs to be told here and we look forward to assisting the Company in highlighting their achievements. Since 1997, we have assisted numerous public companies all over the world. I am confident DarkPulse will be among the most successful, said Paul Knopick, E & E Communications, Texas. About DarkPulse, Inc. DarkPulse, Inc. iscomprised of two, patent-rich security platforms: Advanced, Fiber-based Monitoring Systems and Ultra-High Sensitivity Sensors ("UHHS"). The first involves advanced laser-based monitoring systems, including hardware/software that detects changes in the structural integrity of infrastructure. The second involves analytical equipment/patented technologies for detecting trace amounts of explosives/ chemical warfare agents/illicit drugs--considered the "Holy Grail" of global security.?



For more information, visit? www.DarkPulse.com Safe Harbor Statement

The information 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," "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, delays in completing various engineering, development and/or manufacturing programs, changes in product mix, development and production delays, and other factors beyond the Company's control. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Contact: Paul Knopick E & E Communications pknopick@eandecommunications.com 940.262.3584

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[August 13, 2018] Black Hat USA Continues to Break Records with Blockbuster 2018 Event

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Black Hat, the worlds leading producer of information security events, today highlights the 2018 programming and new initiatives that helped make Black Hat USA 2018 its most successful show to date. The event welcomed nearly 19,000 of the most security-savvy professionals across the InfoSec spectrum  spanning academia, world-class researchers, and leaders in the public and private sectors. The events robust lineup featured groundbreaking content led by security experts who showcased the latest and greatest research currently impacting the industry.

The Black Hat Review Board, comprised of 24 of the world's foremost security experts, evaluated more submissions this year than ever before  producing the largest program to date. This year's conference welcomed more than 300 speakers and Trainers across more than 80 deeply technical Trainings and nearly 120 innovative research-based Briefings on stage. For more information about the event and to download available whitepapers and presentations, visit: blackhat.com/us-18/. Show Highlights Keynote Parisa Tabriz , Director of Engineering and Project Zero for Google, presented Optimistic Dissatisfaction with the Status Quo: Steps we Must Take to Improve Security in Complex Landscapes to a bustling Mandalay Bay Events Center, which housed more than 6,000 attendees.

, Director of Engineering and Project Zero for Google, presented Optimistic Dissatisfaction with the Status Quo: Steps we Must Take to Improve Security in Complex Landscapes to a bustling Mandalay Bay Events Center, which housed more than 6,000 attendees. CISO Summit welcomed 200 executives from top public and private organizations for an exclusive, program intended to give CISOs and other InfoSec executives more practical insight into the latest security trends and technologies and enterprise best practices.

welcomed 200 executives from top public and private organizations for an exclusive, program intended to give CISOs and other InfoSec executives more practical insight into the latest security trends and technologies and enterprise best practices. Arsenal returned for its ninth year, offering researchers and the open source community the ability to demonstrate tools they develop and use in their daily professions  live. This year's program featured more than 90 tools, including 11 Arsenal Theater Demos and a new space for open-source enthusiasts to work with researchers in a hands-on environment.

returned for its ninth year, offering researchers and the open source community the ability to demonstrate tools they develop and use in their daily professions  live. This year's program featured more than 90 tools, including 11 Arsenal Theater Demos and a new space for open-source enthusiasts to work with researchers in a hands-on environment. Business Hall buzzed with more than 300 leading companies. Attendees were given the opportunity to experience hands on learning, demonstrations and education on the latest products and technologies impacting the industry, as well as deep dive sessions presented by vendors in the Business Hall Theaters. Community Focus

Black Hat is driven by the needs of the InfoSec community - giving back and helping to foster the next generation of security professionals is a priority and Black Hat is proud to highlight some of its most recent initiatives: New Community Track: Developed to provide a focus on relevant issues currently impacting the InfoSec community, presented Briefings spanned careers, diverity, security awareness, health, and more. Insights and solutions from industry experts were provided to help individuals both new to InfoSec as well as seasoned professionals.

Developed to provide a focus on relevant issues currently impacting the InfoSec community, presented Briefings spanned careers, diverity, security awareness, health, and more. Insights and solutions from industry experts were provided to help individuals both new to InfoSec as well as seasoned professionals. New Community Programs : Over the years, Black Hat has expanded its community programming to shine light on topics specific to the InfoSec community, as well as welcome a wider range of professionals to the event. This years offerings spanned scholarship opportunities, workshops, networking, activities promoting health and wellness, partnerships with non-profit organizations and more.

: Over the years, Black Hat has expanded its community programming to shine light on topics specific to the InfoSec community, as well as welcome a wider range of professionals to the event. This years offerings spanned scholarship opportunities, workshops, networking, activities promoting health and wellness, partnerships with non-profit organizations and more. Electronic Frontier Foundation Support: For the fifth year, Black Hat is proudly donating $50,000 to the EFF to continue supporting their important work in protecting civil liberties within the digital world. Black Hat has a strong partnership with the EFF to provide pro-bono legal consultations to security researchers on the legality of any research or data they plan to present at the annual shows.

For the fifth year, Black Hat is proudly donating $50,000 to the EFF to continue supporting their important work in protecting civil liberties within the digital world. Black Hat has a strong partnership with the EFF to provide pro-bono legal consultations to security researchers on the legality of any research or data they plan to present at the annual shows. Scholarships: Black Hat awarded more than 200 Academic Briefings Scholarships to deserving students from around the world. Black Hat and EWF again offered the Female Leaders Scholarship Program to minimize the gender gap among the InfoSec community and give students the opportunity to learn, network and collaborate with the worlds brightest minds. Event speakers were also given two complimentary Briefings passes per talk to be given to students of their choice.

Black Hat awarded more than 200 Academic Briefings Scholarships to deserving students from around the world. Black Hat and EWF again offered the Female Leaders Scholarship Program to minimize the gender gap among the InfoSec community and give students the opportunity to learn, network and collaborate with the worlds brightest minds. Event speakers were also given two complimentary Briefings passes per talk to be given to students of their choice. HERO Corps: Black Hat will be donating all proceeds from its specialized 2018 event t-shirt to the Human Exploitation Rescue Operative (HERO) Corps, a joint project of the National Association to Protect Children.



Top sponsors of Black Hat USA 2018 include: Diamond Sponsors: Cisco, Cylance, Forcepoint, LogRhythm, McAfee, Qualys, Rapid7, RSA, Tenable; Platinum Plus Sponsors: AlienVault, Bromium, Carbon Black, Cofense, CrowdStrike, Cybereason, DarkMatter, Darktrace, DigitalGuardian, ESET, FireEye, Fortinet, NETSCOUT, Palo Alto Networks, Recorded Future, SentinelOne, Symantec, Webroot; Platinum Sponsors: Bomgar, CyberVista, Cyxtera Technologies, ExtraHop Networks, F5 Networks, iboss, Lastline, Mimecast, Optiv Security, Proofpoint, Inc., ReliaQuest, SecurityScorecard, Spirent Communications, Synack, Synopsys, Trend Micro, Vectra, ZeroFOX. For all sponsorship opportunities, visit: blackhat.com/us-18/sponsors.html What's Next: Black Hat Europe 2018

Following a successful USA event, Black Hat is preparing for Black Hat Europe 2018, a four-day event taking place December 3-6, 2018 at the ExCeL in London, England. The event will bring together an international security audience for two days of intense classroom-style Trainings followed by two days of the infamous Black Hat Briefings presented by some of the most renowned experts in the industry. For more information and to register, please visit: blackhat.com/eu-18/

Connect with Black Hat (#BlackHat) Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

Flickr FUTURE DATES/EVENTS Black Hat Trainings 2018 , Chicago, Illinois, October 22-23, 2018

, Chicago, Illinois, October 22-23, 2018 Black Hat Europe 2018 , London, England, December 3-6, 2018

, London, England, December 3-6, 2018 Black Hat Asia 2019 , Singapore, March 26-29, 2019

, Singapore, March 26-29, 2019 Black Hat USA 2019, Las Vegas, Nevada, August 3-8, 2019 About Black Hat

For more than 20 years, Black Hat has provided attendees with the very latest in information security research, development, and trends. These high-profile global events and trainings are driven by the needs of the security community, striving to bring together the best minds in the industry. Black Hat inspires professionals at all career levels, encouraging growth and collaboration among academia, world-class researchers, and leaders in the public and private sectors. Black Hat Briefings and Trainings are held annually in the United States, Europe and Asia. More information is available at: blackhat.com. Black Hat is organized by UBM, which in June 2018 combined with Informa PLC to become a leading B2B information services group and the largest B2B Events organizer in the world. To learn more and for the latest news and information, visit www.ubm.com and www.informa.com. Media Contact:

Kimberly Samra

Black Hat PR

BlackHatPR@ubm.com

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[August 13, 2018] Top 20 Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing Companies 2018 - Visiongain Report

LONDON, August 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Market Share Analysis of Leading Companies Including Financial Data & Analysis of Battery Production Facilities for Applications in Automotive Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV), Grid Energy Storage Technologies (EST), Renewable Energy, Industrial & Consumer Electronics The development of the automotive battery market is important for the automotive sector as batteries serve different automotive applications in alternate and conventional products. Increasing adoption of electric vehicles with favourable government initiatives including subsidies and tax rebates will encourage demand for Lithium-Ion batteries. Hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are key application areas. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/523989/Visiongain_Logo.jpg )

Lithium-ion batteries use a cobalt-based cathode and a graphite-based anode owing to high energy density achieved by the combination. High energy density increases the power storage and can energise electronics and applications with high power requirements. Compared to other types of batteries, Lithium-Ion batteries can deliver upwards of 3.6 volts, which is three times higher. With increasing concerns over energy security and carbon emission issues, there has been a significant increase in the adoption of renewable and nuclear sources for power generation. This leads to an increased focus on more efficient and reliable energy storage and therefore, augmenting the demand for lithium-ion batteries. Visiongain's Top 20 Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing Companies Report 2018 will keep you informed and up to date with the developments in the market. With reference to this report, it details the key investment trends in the global market, Analysis on Total Company Sales and the share of total company sales from Lithium-Ion Batteries and information on Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing Company Contracts / Projects / Programmes.



The report will answer questions such as:

- How is the Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing market evolving?

- What is driving and restraining the Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing market dynamics?

- Who are the leading players and what are their prospects for the development of Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing projects? Five Reasons Why You Must Order and Read This Report Today: 1) Financial structure of 20 Leading players in the Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing market

- Total Company Sales (US $m)

- Operating Profit/Loss (US $m)

- Share of Company Revenue from Li-ion Battery Buiness (%)







- Sales from Li-Ion Battery Business (US $m)

- Total Company Sales by Region

- Revenue of Business Segment that includes Li-Ion Battery Business (US $m)

- Share in Li-Ion Battery Market (%) 2) The report reveals extensive details and analysis of 59 Lithium-Ion Battery Production Facilities:

- Country

- Location

- Plant Description





3) The report lists Competitor Positioning in the Global Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing Market

- Strategic Supply Agreements and Partnerships 4) The report provides Drivers and Restraints affecting the Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing Market 5) The report provides market share analysis by Revenue and detailed profiles of the leading companies operating within the Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing market:

- A123 Systems Inc.

- Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC)

- Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC)

- BYD Company Ltd.

- CBAK Energy Technology Inc.

- Comtemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL)

- GS Yuasa Corporation

- Hefei Guoxuan High-tech Power Energy Co., Ltd

- Hitachi Chemical Co., Ltd.

- Johnson Controls International Plc.

- LG Chem

- Microvast Inc.

- Panasonic Corporation

- Saft Batteries

- Samsung SDI Co. Ltd.

- TDK Corporation/Amperes Technology Ltd (ATL)

- Tesla Inc.

- Tianjin Lishen Battery Joint-Stock Co., Ltd.

- Tianneng Power International Ltd

- Toshiba Corporation This independent 160-page report guarantees you will remain better informed than your competitors. With 160 tables and figures examining the Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing market space, the report gives you profiles of the leading companies operating within the Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing market with financial analysis as well as in-depth analysis of contracts, projects and programmes. This report is essential reading for you or anyone in the Energy sector. Purchasing this report today will help you to recognise those important market opportunities and understand the possibilities there. I look forward to receiving your order. To request a report overview of this report please contact Sara Peerun at sara.peerun@visiongain.com or refer to our website : https://www.visiongain.com/report/top-20-lithium-ion-battery-manufacturing-companies-2018/ 3M

A123 Systems Inc.

ABB

AES Distributed Energy

Amazon

Amperex Technology Ltd (ATL)

Anhui Zotye Automobile Co.

Apple

Aston Martin

Audi

Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC)

Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC)

BAIC Motor Corporation

Berkshire Hathaway Energy

BMW

Bren-Tronics Inc.

BYD Co. Ltd.

CBAK Energy Technology Inc.

Cheil Industries Inc.

Chengfei Integration Technology Co., Ltd. (CITC)

China Aviation Lithium Battery Co., Ltd. (CALB)

China Metallurgical Group

China Mobile

China Unicom

Chint Group

Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL)

Coolpad

Daimler

Dayun Automobile Co., Ltd

Denso

DMA

Dongfeng Motor Corporation

EFA-S

Exxon

FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles)

Ford

General Motors

Graphenano

Green Charge Networks

GS Yuasa Corporation

GSR Capital

GWL Power

Hefei Guoxuan High-tech Power Energy Co., Ltd

Higer

Hitachi Chemical Co., Ltd.

Hitachi Ltd.

Holyoke Gas & Electric

Honda

HTC

Huawei

Hyundai

JAC Motors

Jaguar, Land Rover

Japan Airlines

Japan Storage Battery Co., Ltd

Johnson Controls

Kia Motors

Kopin Corporation

Lenovo

LG Chem Ltd.

Lithium Energy and Power GmbH & Company KG

Lithium Energy Japan (LEJ)

LLC

Lucind Motor

Magna Steyr Battery Systems

Mahindra & Mahindra

Mahindra Electric Mobility Ltd.

Matthews Associates Inc.

Mercedes-Benz

Microvast Inc.

Mitsubishi Motors Corporation

NEC Corporation

NEC Tokin Corporation

Nissan Motor Company

Panasonic Corporation

Perbix

Porsche

POSCO

Potevio.

PowerGenix

Proterra Inc.

Renault

Robert Bosch Ltd.

Saft Batteries

Samsung SDI Co. Ltd.

SANYO

SB LiMotive

Scania

Shin-Kobe Electric Machinery

SQM

SsangYong

State Grid

Suzuki Motor Corporation

Tangshan Caofeidian Development Investment Group

Terra Motors

Tesla Inc.

Textron Specialized Vehicles Inc. (TSV)

Tianjin Lishen Battery Joint-Stock Co

Tianneng Power International Ltd

Tianqi Lithium Corporation

TOBU Railway Co. Ltd.

Tokyo Metro Co. Ltd.

Toshiba Corporation

Total

Toyota

Valmet Automotive

Van Hool

Volkswagen

Volvo Car Group

Wanxiang

Webasto

YUASA Battery

Zhabuye Lithium

Zhengzhou Yutong Group To see a report overview please e-mail Sara Peerun on sara.peerun@visiongain.com

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[August 13, 2018] Thoma Bravo to Acquire Quorum Software

Thoma Bravo, LLC, a leading private equity investment firm, today announced that it has agreed to acquire Quorum Software ("Quorum" or "the Company"), the leader in digital transformation for the oil and gas industry, from Silver Lake. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of this year, subject to standard and customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Since its inception in 1998, Quorum has delivered purpose-built software, fueling the digital transformation of the oil and gas industry and operates in markets across the United States and Canada. Quorum serves its customer base by providing integrated solutions for their core processing needs across the upstream, midstream, and downstream segments of the oil and gas value chain. "We are excited to partner with Thoma Bravo to advance our strategic goal of 'shaping the modern energy workplace' through delivering innovative mobile and cloud-based software platforms and services," stated Perry Turbes, Chief Executive Officer, Quorum Software. Turbes continued: "The North American oil & gas industry continues to grow, with a heightened focus on operational efficiencies and maximized capital productivity. Quorum's comprehensive capabilities across the value chain with advanced technical innovation and deep domain expertise, coupled with our strong brand, positions us well for continued growth. We look forward to benefitting from Thoma Bravo's expertise in helping companies grow through prudent investment strategies. We are also thrilled to partner with their software industry experts to harness exciting new growth opportunities." "Quorum i a pioneer and leader in the energy software market, offering a broad portfolio of mission critical technology solutions to its world-class customer base," said Scott Crabill, a Managing Partner at Thoma Bravo. "We look forward to working with Perry and the Quorum management team to move the Company into its next phase of growth."



Credit Suisse is serving as financial advisor to Quorum, and Hogan Lovells is serving as its legal advisor. Macquarie Capital is serving as financial advisor to Thoma Bravo, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP is serving as its legal advisor. Financing for the transaction is being provided by Credit Suisse and Macquarie Capital. About Thoma Bravo, LLC

Thoma Bravo is a leading private equity firm focused on the software and technology-enabled services sectors. With a series of funds representing more than $24 billion in capital commitments, Thoma Bravo partners with a company's management team to implement operating best practices, invest in growth initiatives and make accretive acquisitions intended to accelerate revenue and earnings, with the goal of increasing the value of the business. Representative past and present portfolio companies include industry leaders such as ABC Financial, Blue Coat (News - Alert) Systems, Deltek, Digital Insight, Global Healthcare Exchange, Hyland Software, Imprivata, iPipeline, PowerPlan, Qlik, Riverbed, SailPoint, SolarWinds, SonicWall, Sparta Systems and TravelClick. The firm has offices in San Francisco and Chicago. For more information, visit thomabravo.com. About Quorum Software Quorum offers an industry-leading portfolio of finance, operations and accounting software that empowers energy companies of all sizes to conquer their most complex business challenges. From the field to the back office, defying complexity is coded in our DNA and our software. This unmatched experience is why Quorum is the choice of eight of the largest public energy companies worldwide, 75 percent of LNG exporters throughout North America and 80 percent of all natural gas processed in the United States. Designed for digital transformation, the myQuorum software platform delivers open standards, mobile-first design and cloud technologies to empower innovation at the speed of thought. At Quorum, we're helping visionary leaders transform their business, and the energy industry, for a digital world. For more information, visit www.quorumsoftware.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180813005149/en/

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[August 13, 2018] U.S. Department of Defense Announces Hack the Marine Corps Bug Bounty Program With HackerOne

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and HackerOne, the leading hacker-powered security platform, today announced the launch of the Department's sixth bug bounty program, Hack the Marine Corps. The bug bounty challenge will focus on Marine Corps' public-facing websites and services in order to harden the defenses of the Marine Corps Enterprise Network (MCEN). The bug bounty program will conclude on August 26, 2018. The Marine Corps' bug bounty program kicked off with a live-hacking event in Las Vegas, Nev. on August 12, 2018 coinciding with the world's largest hacker and security conferences, Black Hat USA, DefCon and BSides Las Vegas. Nearly 100 hand-selected ethical hackers from the global security researcher community participated in nine straight hours of hacking Marine Corps public-facing websites and services for vulnerabilities. During the launch event, expert security researchers were shoulder-to-shoulder with the Marines from U.S. Marine Corps Cyberspace Command (MARFORCYBER), representing both offensive and defensive cyber teams. Hackers filed 75 unique valid security vulnerability reports during the event and were awarded over $80,000 for helping further secure the MCEN, the Marine Corps' portion of the DoD Information Network (DoDIN). "Hack the Marine Corps allows us to leverage the talents of the global ethical hacker community to take an honest, hard look at our current cybersecurity posture. Our Marines need to operate against the best. What we learn from this program will assist the Marine Corps in improving our warfighting platform, the Marine Corps Enterprise Network. Working with the ethical hacker community provides us with a large return on investment to identify and mitigate current critical vulnerabilities, reduce attack surfaces, and minimize future vulnerabilities. It will make us more combat ready," said Maj.Gen. Matthew Glavy, Commander, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command. U.S. Marine Corps The Hack the Marine Corps bug bounty program supports the Marine Corps' ongoing commitment to hardening its defensive posture and overall cybersecurity. In March, the Marine Corps announced the creation of a cyberspace career field that provides a professionalized, highly skilled workforce that can effectively employ cyberspace capabilities and effects. These efforts are part of the Corps' commitment to fighting and winning - in all domains. Hack the Pentagon Hack the Marine Corps is part of the Hack the Pentagon crowd-sourced security initiative with the DoD's Defense Digital Service (DDS) and HackerOne. Recognizing many of the nation's biggest companies use bug bounties to improve the security and delivery of digital services, DDS launched the federal government's first bug bounty challenge in collaboration with HackerOne in 2016. "Information security is a challenge unlike any other for our military. Our adversaries are working to exploit networks and cripple our operations without ever firing a weapon," said DDS Director Chris Lynch. "Sometimes, the best line of defense is a skilled hacker working together with our men and women in uniform to better secure our systems. We're excited to see Hack the Pentagon continue to build momentum and bring together nerds who want to make a difference and help protect our nation." Since the launch of Hack the Pentagon, more than 5,000 valid vulnerabilities have been reported in government systems. These bug bounty challenges include: Hack the Pentagon launched in May 2016 and resulted in 138 valid vulnerabilities resolved and tens of thousands of dollars paid to ethical hackers for their efforts.

Hack the Army launched in December 2016 and surfaced 118 valid vulnerabilities resolved and paid $100,000 to ethical hackers.

launched in December 2016 and surfaced 118 valid vulnerabilities resolved and paid $100,000 to ethical hackers. Hack the Air Force launched in April 2017 and resulted in 207 valid vulnerabilities resolved and more than $130,000 paid to ethical hackers.

launched in April 2017 and resulted in 207 valid vulnerabilities resolved and more than $130,000 paid to ethical hackers. Hack the Air Force 2.0 launched in December 2017 and resulted in 106 valid vulnerabilities resolved and $103,883 paid to hackers.

launched in December 2017 and resulted in 106 valid vulnerabilities resolved and $103,883 paid to hackers. Hack the Defense Travel System launched in April 2018 and focused on testing a DoD enterprise system and resulted in 100 security vulnerabilities reported and $80,000 paid to hackers.



disclose them to the DoD through its ongoing vulnerability disclosure program with HackerOne. The Defense Department launched its Vulnerability Disclosure Policy in 2016 as part of Hack the Pentagon to provide a legal avenue for security researchers to find and disclose vulnerabilities in any DoD public-facing systems. "Success in cybersecurity is about harnessing human ingenuity," said Marten Mickos, CEO at HackerOne. "There is no tool, scanner, or software that detects critical security vulnerabilities faster or more completely than hackers. The Marine Corps, one of the most secure organizations in the world, is the latest government agency to benefit from diverse hacker perspectives to protect Americans on and off the battlefield."

Ethical Hacker Tapped by Pentagon to Support Bug Bounty Initiatives After winning the Hack the Air Force challenge, renowned ethical hacker Jack Cable joined DDS, the DoD agency that leads the Hack the Pentagon program, for a tour of duty. 18-year old Cable helped to support and implement the Hack the Marine Corps Challenge, lending his unique, hacker security skills and perspective towards the planning of bug bounties for the government. Ethical hackers, security researchers, engineers, and others interested in joining DDS can learn more here. Defense Digital Service The Defense Digital Service is a team of top tech talent on a tour of duty at the Pentagon to improve technology across the Department. DDS applies industry best practices to high-impact national security missions and tackles some of DoD's most complex IT challenges. Projects include reforming digital services that provide military families access to critical benefits, developing drone detection technologies, hunting adversaries on DoD networks, and redesigning training for cyber soldiers. DDS is an agency team of the U.S. Digital Service. The DDS Director reports directly to the Secretary of Defense. About HackerOne HackerOne is the #1 hacker-powered security platform, helping organizations find and fix critical vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. More Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 1000 companies trust HackerOne than any other hacker-powered security alternative. The U.S. Department of Defense, General Motors, Google (News - Alert) , Twitter, GitHub, Nintendo, Lufthansa, Panasonic Avionics, Qualcomm, Starbucks, Dropbox, Intel, the CERT Coordination Center and over 1,000 other organizations have partnered with HackerOne to resolve over 76,000 vulnerabilities and award over $32M in bug bounties. HackerOne is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in London, New York, and the Netherlands. For a comprehensive look at the industry based on the largest repository of hacker reported vulnerability data, download the The Hacker-Powered Security Report 2018. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180813005420/en/

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[August 13, 2018] Aetna Collaborates with Four Local Health Systems, Introduces Regional Aetna Whole Health? - Southern California Plan

Aetna (NYSE: AET) has introduced the regional Aetna Whole Health - Southern California plan to employers with employees in San Diego County, Orange (News - Alert) County, Los Angeles County and select portions of the Inland Empire. The new, regional health care solution includes the networks of four existing accountable care collaborations -- Aetna Whole Health - Sharp in San Diego; Aetna Whole Health - MemorialCare in Orange County and southern Los Angeles County; Aetna Whole Health - PrimeCare Physicians Plans in the Inland Empire and Aetna Whole Health - Providence Health & Services in Los Angeles County -- to improve access, quality and affordability for Aetna customers and members. The four Aetna Whole Health plans will continue to be available on an individual basis for local employers that don't have need for a network that covers a broader geography. Aetna Whole Health - Southern California members will have access to approximately 1,400 primary care doctors, 8,300 specialists, 51 hospitals and 122 urgent care facilities across five counties. The new plan is currently available for self-insured employers and will be available to fuly insured employers pending regulatory approval.



"We are excited to expand our relationships with Sharp (News - Alert) , MemorialCare, PrimeCare and Providence to offer a regional health care product for our members and customers in Southern California," said Kristen Miranda, Aetna's president in California. "This innovative product brings together the right doctors, facilities and technology to improve health outcomes, while enhancing the member experience." Aetna Whole Health gives employers better health care options for their employees, and will feature a new model of health care delivery designed to offer:

Cost savings to employees who use providers in their selected network;

A more coordinated, personalized experience for patients; and

Better health care outcomes. "As the region's leader in delivering high-quality care and a superb patient experience at a reduced cost, MemorialCare is honored to be Aetna's exclusive network partner in Orange County, Southern Los Angeles County and Greater Long Beach," says Barry Arbuckle, Ph.D., MemorialCare President & CEO. "Employers and patients seek our innovative offerings because we tailor programs to meet their needs, use data to improve outcomes and help those with risk factors manage chronic conditions and achieve optimal health. With hospitals and 200 care locations, we are able to provide consumers, employers and health plans high value care in the right location with the right services and at the right price." New payment agreements reward improvements in quality and costs of care

The agreement features a new payment model to reward providers for meeting quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction measures including: The percentage of Aetna members who get recommended preventive care and screenings;

Better management of patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart failure;

Reductions in avoidable hospital readmission rates; and

Reductions in emergency room visits. "With Aetna Whole Health we are building upon our long-standing partnership with Aetna to provide people living in the Inland Empire access to high-quality, cost-effective care," said Jamie Phillips, president of PrimeCare. "Our goal is to improve access to top-quality, affordable health care here in the Los Angeles Area - from the South Bay to the San Fernando Valley and beyond - while continuously raising the bar on patient satisfaction," said David Mast, CEO of Providence Health & Services Los Angeles medical foundations. "We can best meet this goal by collaborating with physicians, hospitals and payers to ensure high value care is available to the communities we serve." "Sharp HealthCare and our medical groups, Sharp Community Medical Group and Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group, are very excited to be part of this Southern California offering and to be aligned with Aetna and these other excellent providers," said Mike Murphy, President and CEO of Sharp HealthCare, San Diego's largest health system. "Employers here in San Diego and throughout Southern California can provide value to their workers by offering a collaborative network that ensures the delivery of high-quality, cost-efficient care." Aetna is working with health care organizations nationwide to develop products and services that support value-driven, patient-centered care for health care consumers. Nationally today, more than 7 million Aetna members receive care from doctors committed to the value-based approach, with approximately 53 percent of Aetna claims payments going to doctors and providers who practice value-based care. About Aetna

Aetna is one of the nation's leading diversified health care benefits companies, serving an estimated 40.3 million people with information and resources to help them make better informed decisions about their health care. Aetna offers a broad range of traditional, voluntary and consumer-directed health insurance products and related services, including medical, pharmacy, dental and behavioral health plans, medical management capabilities, Medicaid health care management services, workers' compensation administrative services and health information technology products and services. Aetna's customers include employer groups, individuals, college students, part-time and hourly workers, health plans, health care providers, governmental units, government-sponsored plans, labor groups and expatriates. For more information, see www.aetna.com and learn about how Aetna is helping to build a healthier world. @AetnaNews View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180813005158/en/

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[August 13, 2018] L. William Varner Joins the Board of Directors at Cornerstone Defense

HANOVER, Md., Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Cornerstone Defense LLC, a leader in the delivery of advanced technology services and solutions, today announced the appointment of L. William (Bill) Varner  former President of ManTech's Mission, Cyber and Intelligence Solutions Group  to its Board of Directors. "Bill brings a history of success delivering solutions to defense and intelligence agencies. His experience across multiple government agencies will add a valuable perspective to our team and compliments our strategy to deliver the highest quality technology services and solutions to our customers. We welcome him to our Board of Directors," said Chris Goodrich, Chief Executive Officer. "As a growing company, we are looking for the absolute best to join our Board," declared Patrick Palmer, Cornerstone's Chief Growth Officer. "There's no question that Bill is among the top leaders and executives in this industry. His participation will greatly enhance our team." "I look forward to being on the Board for Cornerstone Defense. I see Cornerstone as being a highly technical growing company," said Varner. "I'm looking forward to working with the executive team and continuing to contribute to important missions withn the United States Government."



Bill Varner is the former President of ManTech's Mission, Cyber and Intelligence Solutions group. Before joining ManTech, he was Vice President and Executive Director of the Intelligence Operations Unit at Northrop Grumman-TASC, which specialized in highly technical engineering and operations support to the intelligence community. Bill has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from George Washington University, a master's degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University, and a master's of business administration degree in finance from Virginia Polytechnic University. About Cornerstone Defense LLC

Cornerstone Defense, LLC provides technical services to the Intelligence and Defense communities of the U.S. Government. Headquartered in Hanover, Maryland, Cornerstone specializes in Cloud Architecture, Systems and Network Engineering, Systems and Networks Security, and Application Development. Cornerstone's advanced capabilities in service delivery begin with its employees. By hiring and supporting skilled employees, Cornerstone assists our government and integrator community clientele by delivering cutting-edge capabilities that enable the achievement of mission critical objectives. For additional information on Cornerstone Defense, visit www.cornerstonedefense.com. POC NAME: Chris Goodrich POC TITLE: President and CEO Cornerstone Defense LLC POC NUMBER: 443-713-3974 Related Files PR Varner 081818 Draft (max).docx View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/l-william-varner-joins-the-board-of-directors-at-cornerstone-defense-300696154.html SOURCE Cornerstone Defense LLC

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[August 13, 2018] Ed Rempel to Appear On Money Show to Talk Retirement Tax Strategies

TORONTO, Aug. 13, 2018 /CNW/ - Fee-for-service financial planner Ed Rempel is set to appear on The Money Show in September 2018 where he will discuss best strategies to minimize tax on retirement in a highly anticipated appearance. Ed Rempel has more than 24 years of financial planning experience and 35 years of experience as an accountant, and is well-versed in all things financial planning-related. On The Money Show, which features experts such as Rob Carrick, Benj Gallander, Peter Hodson, and more, Ed Rempel will put this expertise to good use todiscuss 6 different strategies to minimize tax on retirement.



Recently, Rempel spoke on the Moolala Show on SiriusXM Radio with business journalist Bruce Sellery about ways to minimize tax on retirement income. He has also written about the topic for Canadian MoneySaver, Money.ca, and his own blog, Unconventional Wisdom. Rempel will speak about how he believes Canadians can actually have a lot more tax saving opportunities after they retire than before during his Money Show appearance. He will also discuss topics like how much you should withdraw from your investments, how much you should withdraw from your RRSP vs. TFSA vs. non-registered accounts, and how tax-efficient your investments really are.

Rempel may also touch on relevant topics like his "8-Year GIS Strategy" for planning for a comfortable retirement as well as other retirement investing and planning related issues. ABOUT ED REMPEL

For the last 24 years, Ed Rempel has assisted Canadians with creating real, professional financial plans that earn results. He is a dedicated fee-for-service financial planner as well as a successful financial blogger. He is particularly passionate about helping people avoid what he calls "financial quackery"  financial advice that's really just a sales pitch  and "placebo advice"  bad advice meant to make you feel good. ABOUT THE MONEY SHOW

MoneyShow.com helps consumers access insights and ideas from the nation's leading financial newsletter advisors. It is the leading online destination for investors, traders and financial advisors looking for investing and trading advice. The Money Show is a multimedia site providing free, 24-hour access to commentary, videos, webcasts, webinars, virtual events, and more from top investing and trading experts. SOURCE Money.ca

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[August 13, 2018] Propel Media Announces Intent to Deregister Its Common Stock

IRVINE, Calif., Aug. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Propel Media, Inc. (OTC Pink: PROM) (Propel Media or the Company), a performance focused digital media and advertising company, today announced its intention to deregister its common stock and suspend its reporting obligations with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC). The required documentation to deregister Propel Medias common stock and suspend its reporting obligations, which is expected to be filed with the SEC on or about September 4, 2018, will not impact stockholders ownership of their common stock, and such common stock will continue to represent the same percentage ownership interest in the Company as immediately before such filing.

Marv Tseu, Propel Medias Chief Executive Officer, stated: During the past several years, the trading volume in our stock has been low. In addition, the valuations of comparable publicly-traded businesses in our sector have been erratic and volatile, making it difficult to use stock as a currency for accretive acquisitions. At the same time, the valuations of privately-held businesses in the sector have often eclipsed those of their publicly-traded peers. Because of these factors, which are exacerbated by our small float (more than 78% of the outstanding shares are owned by founders, directors and officers), we dont believe that the benefits of maintaining our status as a reporting company outweigh the management time, cost and other burdens associated with such status. Deregistration will reduce the Companys administrative costs and it will eliminate the time and distractions of the management team associated with SEC reporting requirements. As a result, Propel Medias team will be able to increase its focus on maintaining its core business and growing DeepIntent, its AI-based platform. DeepIntent enables large advertisers to curate and target relevant audiences efficiently, resulting in a significant increase in the financial returns realized through their advertising campaigns. The Company will also continue to aggressively pursue other opportunities to diversify its revenue streams by providing new services to brands and direct-response advertisers in both existing and new markets for both customer acquisition and increased customer engagement. Propel Medias board of directors decided to deregister and suspend its reporting obligations after careful consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of being an SEC reporting company. The decision to deregister was also made in conjunction with the boards continuing review of various strategic alternatives available to the Company. In addition, the board considered many factors in making this decision, including: the low trading volume and minimal liquidity in Propel Medias common stock and the current lack of analyst coverage for the stock;

the lack of institutional investor upport and interest in Propel Media in particular and publicly-traded AdTech companies in general; and

the costs and significant management time associated with the preparation and filing of periodic reports with the SEC and the burdens associated with complying with laws applicable to reporting companies, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.



The Company believes that, immediately following the filing of the Form 15, its common stock will continue to be quoted on the OTC Pink, a centralized electronic quotation service operated by the OTC Markets for over-the-counter securities. However, the Company can give no assurance that trading in its stock will continue in the future on the OTC Pink or on any other securities exchange or quotation medium.

Stockholders may consult their financial advisors, the Company or the Companys Transfer Agent, Continental Stock Transfer & Trust Company, regarding any questions related to their holding of common stock in the Company following the Company deregistering its common stock and suspending its reporting obligations with the SEC. About Propel Media Propel Media connects digital marketers with unique audiences through intent-based technology that delivers superior performance with measurable results. We Do Digital Differently with a distinctive approach to digital powered by proprietary contextualization technology and a unique supply of ad inventory. Headquartered in Irvine, California, Propel Media is distinguished by its ability to deliver consistent results and its commitment to providing the highest level of client services to its partners. For more information, visit: www.propelmedia.com. Forward-Looking Statements: This press release includes certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not statements of historical fact. Forward-looking statements herein include those statements regarding Propel Medias capital structure, ability to execute its operating plan, anticipated financial flexibility and future financial performance and any other statements that are not statements of historical fact. These statements may be identified, without limitation, by the use of forward-looking terminology such as anticipates, expects, will or comparable terms or the negative thereof. Such statements are based on managements current estimates, assumptions that management believes to be reasonable, and currently available competitive, financial, and economic data as of the date hereof. Forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain and subject to a variety of events, factors and conditions, many of which are beyond the control of Propel Media and not all of which are known to Propel Media, including, without limitation, Propel Medias ability to realize anticipated cost savings from its deregistration, the ability to timely and effectively implement its deregistration plans, adverse effects on share price and liquidity following Propel Medias deregistration, as well as more general business and financial risks such as those risk factors described from time to time in Propel Medias reports filed with the SEC. Among the business and financial factors that could cause Propel Medias actual results to differ materially are: loss of key advertising customers; inability to acquire new advertising customers; limitations on its ability to acquire new users profitably or at all, including, but not limited to, due to changing policies of Google, Facebook or another larger industry participant; inability to protect its intellectual property; inability to comply with the covenants in its credit facility; inability to obtain necessary financing or enter into equity arrangements with existing or new institutional shareholders; inability to execute its acquisition strategy; inability to effectively manage its growth; failure to effectively integrate the operations of acquired businesses; competition; loss of key personnel; increases in costs of operations; continued compliance with government regulations; and general economic conditions. Further, investors should keep in mind that Propel Medias financial results in any particular period may not be indicative of future results. Propel Media is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions or otherwise, except as required by law. Contact Information:

David Shapiro

949.390.6979

dshapiro@propelmedia.com

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[August 13, 2018] Global Satellite Payloads Market Analysis 2017-2018 and Forecast to 2026: A $26.51 Billion Opportunity - ResearchAndMarkets.com

The "Satellite Payloads - Global Market Outlook (2017-2026)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. According to the report, the market accounted for $10.98 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach $26.51 billion by 2026 growing at a CAGR of 10.3% during the forecast period. Rapid growth in hosted payloads, satellite miniaturization and major innovations in communication & navigation applications are some factors boosting the market growth. However, high expenditure on development is a major restraint hampering the market. Moreover, cost reduction in satellite and exposure of Over-The-Top platform in television industry will provide significant opportunities for the market growth over the forecast period. Based on the orbit type, the LEO (low earth orbit) segment is expected to lead the market, due to its wide variety of applications in earth observation, remote sensing, and mobile & telecommunication services. In tems of geography, North America is expected to be the largest and the fastest growing market during the forecast period, owing to the presence of major key players and rising government investments on space technologies.



Key Topics Covered 1 Executive Summary

2 Preface 3 Market Trend Analysis 4 Porters Five Force Analysis 5 Global Satellite Payloads Market, By Frequency Band 6 Global Satellite Payloads Market, By Orbit Type 7 Global Satellite Payloads Market, By Vehicle Type 8 Global Satellite Payloads Market, By Payload Weight 9 Global Satellite Payloads Market, By Payload Type 10 Global Satellite Payloads Market, By Application 11 Global Satellite Payloads Market, By Geography 12 Key Developments 13 Company Profiling SSL

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation

Viasat, Inc.

Boeing Company

Harris Corporation (News - Alert)

Cobham PLC Harris Corporation

Intelsat General Corporation

Lockheed Martin Corporation

Thales Group

Raytheon (News - Alert) Company

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Jsat International Inc.

Northrop Grumman Corporation

Orbital ATK (News - Alert) , Inc.

Pace Exploration Technologies Corp.

Swedish Space Corporation

UTC Aerospace Systems

Airbus Group For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/v48z8v/global_satellite?w=4 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180813005668/en/

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The task force is interviewing people of interest that may have been involved, so theyre looking at it right now. We will definitely have an update out when one is available, Swaback said.
Banks Partner to Award $23K PGP Grant to Neighborhood STRONG

Austin Bank, Southside Bank, Citizens National Bank and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas (FHLB Dallas) will award $23,000 in Partnership Grant Program ( PGP (News - Alert) ) funds to Neighborhood STRONG, a nonprofit organization focused on enhancing the quality of life of the residents of Wards 1 and 2 in Lufkin, Texas. The organization partners with other local organizations to assist homeowners in enhancing and renovating their properties.

Representatives from the banks and the nonprofit will attend a check presentation at noon on Tuesday, August 14, 2018, at Neighborhood STRONG's offices at 211 East Shepherd Avenue, Suite 110 in Lufkin, Texas. The media is encouraged to attend.

PGP awards are matched by the member's contribution to a CBO of $500 up to $4,000 at a 3:1 ratio to provide grants up to $12,000 that help promote and strengthen relationships between community-based organizations and FHLB Dallas members. The PGP also complements the development activities fostered by FHLB Dallas' Affordable Housing and Community Investment programs. In 2018, FHLB Dallas is awarding $300,000 in Partnership Grant Program (PGP) funds through 31 member institutions to assist 32 community-based organizations. Combined with the $114,010 contributed by FHLB Dallas members, a total of $414,010 will be awarded to the organizations.

For more information about the PGP, visit fhlb.com/pgp.







WHAT: Check Presentation WHEN: 12:00 p.m., Tuesday, August 14, 2018 WHO: State Representative Trent Ashby (TX-57), Senior Vice President, Business Development, Citizens National Bank Terry Fauble, Senior Vice President, Lufkin Location President, Austin Bank Debbie Braune, Senior Vice President, Risk Management/CRA Officer, Austin Bank Malcolm Deason, Senior Vice President, Commercial Lender, Southside Bank Jay Shands, East Texas Regional President, Southside Bank Brooke Mott, Vice President, CRA Officer, Southside Bank Jon Moore, Senior Vice President, Central Regional Manager, Citizens National Bank Chase Luce, Assistant Vice President, Citizens National Bank, Board Member, Neighborhood STRONG Maria Enriquez-Anderson, Assistant Vice President, Citizens National Bank David Jenkins, Assistant Vice President, Citizens National Bank Susan Callahan, CRA Officer, Citizens National Bank Wayne Lawrence, Executive Director, Neighborhood STRONG Mark Loya, Senior Affordable Housing Analyst, FHLB Dallas WHERE: Neighborhood STRONG 211 East Shepherd Avenue, Suite 110 Lufkin, Texas 75901

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180813005672/en/
[August 13, 2018] INSERTING and REPLACING GBTA Convention 2018 Exhibitor Profiles

In the release dated August 10, 2018, insert after Travelport the Traxo exhibitor profile. The corrected release reads: GBTA CONVENTION 2018 EXHIBITOR PROFILES The GBTA Convention takes place 11 - 15 August, 2018 at the San Diego Convention Center. Please note the following important information. #GBTA2018 Exhibitor News and Press Kits:

http://www.tradeshownews.com/events/gbta-convention-2018/ Information for Media:

https://convention.gbta.org/Press Business Wire is the official news wire for GBTA 2018. Listed below are exhibitor profiles.







Company: AIG Travel Booth: 916 Ticker Symbol & Exchange: AIG Web: www.aig.com/travel AIG Travel, Inc., a member of American International Group, Inc., is a worldwide leader in travel insurance and global assistance. Travel Guard is the marketing name for its portfolio of travel insurance solutions and travel-related services, including medical and security services, marketed to both leisure and business travelers around the globe. Services are provided through a network of wholly owned service centers located in Asia, Europe and the Americas. For additional information, please visit our websites at www.aig.com/travel and www.travelguard.com Company: Airlines Reporting Corporation Booth: 3641 Web: https://www2.arccorp.com/ An industry leader in air travel distribution and intelligence, ARC settled $88.5 billion in ticket transactions in 2017 between airlines and travel agencies, representing more than 265 million passenger trips. ARC also provides flexible distribution solutions, innovative technology and access to the world's most comprehensive air ticket transaction data, helping the global air travel community connect, grow and thrive. For more information, please visit www.arccorp.com. Company: AppZen Booth: 3400 Web: www.appzen.com AppZen is the first artificial intelligence solution for business process automation. AppZen's platform uses AI to automate expense report auditing and instantly detect compliance issues and fraud. AppZen's patented AI combines computer vision, deep learning, and natural language processing to automatically read and understand expense reports, receipts, and travel documents and cross-check them with hundreds of data sources in real time to determine the accuracy and legitimacy of every expense. This enables companies to detect fraud and compliance issues in seconds. The company was founded in 2012 and today works with more than 25 Fortune 1000 companies. Company: Blacklane Booth: 1251 Web: www.blacklane.com Every day, Blacklane connects passengers in over 260 cities worldwide with our vast network of reliable, top-quality chauffeurs. Passengers and bookers can easily book rides from one hour before pickup, to months in advance with our website or apps. Our all-inclusive rates are guaranteed at the moment of booking and cover all taxes, fees, tolls, and gratuities. Every ride is backed up by our 24/7/365 Corporate Care team with real-time service control for tens of thousands of top-of-the-line vehicles. Plus, every single Blacklane ride is carbon neutral thanks to our carbon offset program. Company: BRIDGE / Citadines Connect Fifth Avenue Booth: 1243 Citadines Connect Fifth Avenue, formerly known as Hotel Central Fifth Avenue, a 125-room boutique hotel located at 15 West 45th Street in NYC, is set to launch in September 2018. Following an extensive renovation, Citadines Connect Fifth Avenue, will offer newly refurbished room accommodations, an interactive lobby and embrace its location by "connecting" guests to their surroundings. Located in the heart of Manhattan, walking distance from the Empire State Building, Fifth Avenue, Times Square and more, Citadines Connect Fifth Avenue has created a variety of personalized conveniences for individuals. Upon entering the lobby, guests will have use of a large shared community table and seating area with a 24-hour grab and go corner. Quarterly, the hotel will partner with a local food and beverage outpost to offer product and a pop-up experience. Company: Cvent (News - Alert) Booth: 2151 Web: www.cvent.com Cvent, Inc. is a leading meetings, events, and hospitality management technology provider with more than 3,200 employees, 25,000 customers, and 300,000 users worldwide. The Cvent Event Cloud offers software solutions to event planners for online event registration, venue selection, event management, mobile events apps, and more helping event professionals navigate every aspect of the event planning process, increase attendance, and maximize impact. The Cvent Hospitality Cloud partners with hotels and venues to help them drive group and corporate travel business. Through a suite of proprietary digital marketing tools and software solutions to service their customers directly, efficiently and profitably. Company: Hyatt Hotels Corporation Booth: 3623 Ticker Symbol & Exchange: NYSE: H Web: www.hyatt.com Hyatt Hotels Corporation, headquartered in Chicago, is a leading global hospitality company with a portfolio of 14 premier brands. Hyatt's portfolio includes more than 700 properties in more than 50 countries across six continents. The company's purpose to care for people so they can be their best informs its business decisions and is intended to attract and retain top colleagues, build relationships with guests and create value for shareholders. Company: Luggage Teleport Inc. Booth: 1016 Web: www.luggageteleport.com Luggage Teleport Inc. provides on-demand luggage delivery so business travelers can enjoy a hassle-free, time-saving travel experience. To use our service, the traveler can simply request a delivery for his luggage on our mobile application or website. He will meet our driver at the specific time he chooses. Our driver will lock the luggage with the Luggage Teleport safety lock, and deliver it to the traveler's destination. We have been featured at CES (News - Alert) Smart Cities and international media outlets such as Forbes (https://goo.gl/KU29iH), Inc. and The Sun. We are looking for partnerships with Airlines, Hotels and Corporations with business travelers! Company: Lumo Booth: IR-1 Web: https://thinklumo.com Lumo predicts flight delays weeks, days, and hours ahead of time, helping users proactively deal with disruptions and avoid the costs and inconvenience associated with air travel disruptions. Lumo is like a weather forecast for your trip. Founded by a team of PhDs and based in Boston & Boulder, Lumo's predictions assist corporations, airlines, travel management companies, online booking tools, and other travel entities in managing flight disruptions. Technology developed by Lumo under Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from NASA also measure airspace efficiency and allocate airspace resources for future manned/unmanned aircraft operations. Company: Ovation Corporate Travel Booth: Relaxation Lounge Web: www.ovationtravel.com Ovation is one of the largest independently owned travel companies headquartered in the U.S. Ovation is a $1.1 billion travel management company with travel consultants in more than 30 locations throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. Ovation is the largest affiliate of BCD Travel and utilizes BCD's global network to fulfill its clients' travel programs across the globe. With over 600 employees and over 200 independent travel advisors, Ovation provides business travel services, bespoke luxury travel experiences and meeting and special events planning for over 700 professional organizations and over 200,000 travelers. Company: PredictX Booth: 3915 Web: www.predictx.com PredictX is a SaaS (News - Alert) company, partnered with travel managers to harness the benefits of data analytics to drive cross-program value and growth. Using machine learning models, we fuse TMC (News - Alert) , Card and Expense data sources along with company hierarchies. The result is an integrated total program spend product identifying incremental improvement opportunities. The PredictX data suite goes a step further - far beyond simple travel dashboards. We provide air contract management, hotel city strategies, meetings spend management, expense analytics, deep supplier sourcing and behavior management. Our platform is able to automate repetitive tasks - transforming travel management's focus from analyzing and fixing issues to predicting and preventing any future obstacles to growth. Company: Seven Corners Booth: 4000 Web: www.sevencorners.com Founded in 1993, Seven Corners, Inc. is an innovative and service-focused international travel insurance and specialty benefit management company. Members include international travelers, agencies of the U.S. government, corporations, foreign governments, and various types of insurance companies. With a business model concentrated on innovative products and customized service levels, Seven Corners works to consistently exceed members' needs and expectations. With more than 25 years of experience, Seven Corners is headquartered near Indianapolis in Carmel, Indiana. Company: SpotHero for Business Booth: 1353 Web: www.spothero.com/business SpotHero for Business is North America's leading corporate parking reservation service. Business travelers can find and reserve parking in close proximity to hotels, airports, downtown offices and client sites, all from the SpotHero app on their mobile device. Digital receipts are then automatically forwarded to preferred expense reimbursement platforms, such as Concur, Certify, Expensify, and Chrome River. With urban drivers spending twenty minutes on average searching for a parking spot, the SpotHero for Business solution ensures significant time savings, not to mention cost savings through transparent parking prices and the ability to compare nearby rates. For more information, visit SpotHero.com/business. Company: Tramada Booth: IR-9 Web: https://tramada.us Tramada is an advanced platform that streamlines travel operations, data management, document production, and travel accounting. Tramada is GDS agnostic, NDC-capable and integrates with over 50 products, including online booking tools, mobile solutions, and expense systems. The plug-and-play design makes it easy to add the latest applications while automated service fees, markup tools, and commission management features increase revenue and drive down costs. Tramada Systems has long been the leading provider at its home in Australia and is quickly gaining recognition and adoption in North America. Learn more at tramada.us. Company: TravelBank Booth: 2735 Web: https://travelbank.com/ TravelBank is the leading all-in-one travel and expense platform and uses a proprietary algorithm to predict travel costs and build budgets with real-time pricing. Designed for busy professionals, the app features a camera-first experience for tracking expenses on the fly, a curated travel bookings portal with special corporate rates for business travel, and an auto-rewards program that incentivizes employees to choose more cost-effective options. Company: Travelport Booth: 3324 Ticker Symbol & Exchange: NYSE: TVPT Web: www.Travelport.com Travelport is the technology company that makes the experience of buying and managing travel continually better. It operates a travel commerce platform providing distribution, technology, payment and other solutions for the global travel and tourism industry. The Company facilitates travel commerce by connecting the world's leading travel providers with online and offline travel buyers in a proprietary business-to-business (B2B) travel platform. Travelport has a leadership position in airline merchandising, hotel content and distribution, car rental, mobile commerce and B2B payment solutions. The Company also provides critical IT services to airlines, such as shopping, ticketing, departure control and other solutions. With net revenue of over $2.4 billion in 2017, Travelport is headquartered in Langley, U.K., has over 4,000 employees and is represented in approximately 180 countries. Company: Traxo Booth: 1039 Web: www.traxo.com Through its patented and proprietary itinerary intelligence technology, Traxo helps corporate clients and travel managers easily track and manage the full spectrum of their employee business travel activity and spend in real-time -- even providing comprehensive visibility into off-platform/out-of-policy bookings that employees make directly with suppliers or via consumer OTAs or apps. With an easy-to-use browser-based dashboard and direct integration to top travel suppliers and services such as rate-shopping, duty of care, or expense management applications, Traxo streamlines the travel data management process and makes managing corporate travel a breeze for travel departments of any size -- from Fortune 500 companies to SMEs. Company: TRIPBAM Booth: 3105 Web: http://www.tripbam.com/main.aspx TRIPBAM improves the savings achieved and effectiveness of clients' hotel programs through its hotel rate re-shopping and rebooking service. TRIPBAM delivers actionable insights via its Analytics and new Hotel Intelligence tools that enable clients to monitor hotel program performance daily, make improvements during the year, benchmark their program against peers, and have greater confidence in signing long term/dynamic discounts with suppliers. TRIPBAM searches daily for lower rates, taking advantage of daily rate fluctuations to find savings on already booked hotels or at similar hotels nearby, and then rebooks those reservations at lower rates that meet each client's pre-defined rules. Company: Vedius Booth: IR10 Web: http://vediusapp.com/ Founded by Constantine George, M.D., chief medical officer of EPITOMEDICAL, the Vedius app grants access to first-class concierge medical care from a network of board-certified physicians from anyone's smartphone to aid in the prevention of illness, treatment of injury and overall health. With same-day appointments, Vedius patients can be seen and treated by a physician in their hotel room or within EPITOMEDICAL's private practice facility. Patients can speak with a physician through a virtual meeting space and convention attendees can also be seen on-site at the Convention Center. Vedius delivers seamless specialist referrals, on-site treatment and 24/7 access to internists/pediatricians to treat all patients. Vedius can be installed at no cost on any mobile device. Company: WorkTrip Booth: 1052 Web: www.worktrip.com WorkTrip serves as the central intelligence for your organization's global events. Ease the burden of business travel by having all event, travel, and company contact information in one place. WorkTrip increases compliance rates and streamlines communication between teams. Find and communicate with your travelers to keep them safe wherever they are. WorkTrip makes it easy! Company: Zeno by Serko Booth: 135 Ticker Symbol & Exchange: SKO (NZSX, ASX) Web: https://www.serko.com Zeno, the next generation travel management application that uses artificial intelligence, predictive workflows and a global travel marketplace to transform business travel across the entire journey, is excited to announce its debut in North America. Zeno is built on the premise of "No more compromise", ending the struggle that has been inherent between travelers and travel managers. The solution is offered by Serko, a leading travel technology company headquartered in New Zealand with customers in more than 35 countries around the world. Serko established its North American headquarters in 2017 and has already announced a number of resellers in market.

About Business Wire: Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure. Investor relations, public relations, public policy and marketing professionals rely on Business Wire to accurately distribute market-moving news and multimedia, host online newsrooms and IR websites, build content marketing platforms, generate social engagements and provide audience analysis that improves interaction with specified target markets. Founded in 1961, Business Wire is a trusted source for news organizations, journalists, investment professionals and regulatory authorities, delivering news directly into editorial systems and leading online news sources via its multi-patented NX Network. Business Wire has 29 offices worldwide to securely meet the varying needs of communications professionals and news consumers. Learn more at services.BusinessWire.com and Tempo, the Business Wire resource for industry trends; follow updates on Twitter (News - Alert) : @businesswire or on Facebook. Click here to subscribe to Mobile Alerts for Business Wire. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180810005360/en/

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There's something happening on streets across the U.S. to make getting around easier. And it has nothing to do with hoverboards.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Over the last several months, smart-mobility companies Bird and Lime have been expanding their presence in cities across the country. The companies offer app-based scooter rides that allow you to locate a scooter around your city, unlock it and pay for it from the app, then get off at your destination.

The process is simple and cheap, and it certainly beats walking. And with so many more cities coming online with Lime and Bird scooters each week, there's a good chance you'll see some of these "micro-mobility solutions" traveling around your streets soon. But these scooters are also causing some controversy, with some cities already banning them.

Stay ahead of the curve and learn about how the Bird and Lime scooters work, where you can (and can't) use them and why some cities are already banning these vehicles.

What is a micro-mobility solution?

To understand Bird and Lime, you must first understand what a micro-mobility solution is.

Both companies are concerned about the state of mobility and our reliance upon cars to get around town. They realize that to cut down on congestion and help the environment, there needs to be an alternative to ride-sharing options like Uber and Lyft.

MORE: 9 Odd Ways Your Tech Devices May Injure You

So, they've opted for electric scooters and, in some cases, bikes. The two companies are setting up areas for you to pick up an electric scooter and pay for it with your app, before taking it to your destination.

The companies envision people using the services for business and leisure travel and are trying to expand their offerings to more cities across the U.S. You can also play a role in getting their operations to your municipality.

What is Lime?

Lime focuses on what it calls "smart mobility for the modern world." The company allows you to take electric scooters, e-assist bikes and rental bikes from one point to another.

(Image credit: Lime)

The service is completely controlled by the free Lime app, which is available on both Android and iOS. Rides start at $1, and you can use your scooter for as long as you want.

What is Bird?

Bird is a similar service, in that it allows you to take rides with electric scooters and access them from the company's app. Prices start at $1 for a ride, and as soon as you find a nearby Bird (that's the name of the scooters), you can ride it anywhere around town. You can then leave the scooters anywhere, since there are no specific docking stations.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Bird's apps are free to download on iOS and Android, and the service is available in several cities across the U.S. In addition to facilitating rides, Bird is extremely concerned about security and has a handy guide on its site that tells you how to be safe while you're riding one of the company's scooters.

How does Lime work?

It's pretty simple. Just download the company's app from Android or iOS. You'll find that they are free to download and work on most recent devices.

(Image credit: Lime)

Next up, create your Lime account and access the map to find out where your local rides are.

When you get to the bike or scooter of your choosing, you'll see a QR code on it. Scan that into your app. Lime will then charge your card and track you as you go. Once your payment is confirmed, the Lime bike or scooter will unlock, and it's off you go.

How does Bird work?

As you would with Lime, you'll need to download the iOS or Android app for Bird to get started.

(Image credit: Bird)

After you boot up the app, you'll want to find a Bird near you and tap the button on the screen to unlock the scooter. Bird will charge you as you go. When you're done, you can drop the scooter off anywhere and choose to "lock" your Bird from the app. It'll then be left there for the next person and stop charging you for your time.

How much do the services cost?

It's hard to pinpoint exactly how much you can expect to pay with Bird or Lime, because the cost depends on where you're going and how long you're traveling.

However, both services start at $1 to unlock. They then charge you a small fee per minute. Bird limits your daily charge to $100. If you don't return the vehicle within 48 hours, it's considered lost or stolen, and you could be charged up to $500. The company also reserves the right to charge $25 for rentals that last more than 24 hours but less than 48 hours.

MORE: Connected Cars: A Guide to New Vehicle Technology

Lime charges 15 cents per minute in most areas for an electric scooter. Electric-assist bikes also charge 15 cents per minute. Lime's bikes will set you back $1 for every 30 minutes.

Additionally, Lime has a plan called LimePrime, which costs $30 per month for $100 in ride credits. However, that's available only on classic pedal bikes. A LimePrime Students plan is available for $15 per month and includes 100 ride credits.

According to its user agreement, Lime could also charge you a variety of fees for vandalizing its vehicles. These charges max out at between $50 and $200 per 24-hour period, depending on the vehicle you choose. Lime will also charge you between $600 to $2,000 if you fail to return a vehicle within 48 hours.

What about safety?

There's obviously a safety component to consider. After all, if you're riding an electric scooter or bike, you should wear a helmet.

However, neither Lime nor Bird offers helmets with its rides. Instead, the companies suggest you wear a helmet and give you a guide on road signals. In other words, your safety is on you.

Where is Lime available?

Mesa, Ariz.

Scottsdale, Ariz.

Tempe, Ariz.

Alameda, Calif.

Albany, Calif.

Burlingame, Calif.

El Cerrito, Calif.

Imperial Beach, Calif.

Los Angeles

Monrovia, Calif.

Mountain View, Calif.

National City, Calif.

Oakland, Calif.

San Diego

San Francisco

San Mateo, Calif.

Santa Monica, Calif.

South San Francisco, Calif.

South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

Walnut Creek, Calif.

Aurora, Colo.

Denver

Key Biscayne, Fla.

Miami Shores, Fla.

North Bay Village, Fla.

North Miami, Fla.

Chicago

Rockford, Ill.

Elkhart, Ind.

South Bend, Ind.

Silver Spring, Md.

Arlington, Mass.

Bedford, Mass.

Belmont, Mass.

Chelsea, Mass.

Everett, Mass.

Malden, Mass.

Medford, Mass.

Melrose, Mass.

Milton, Mass.

Needham, Mass.

Newton, Mass.

Revere, Mass.

Waltham, Mass.

Watertown, Mass.

Winthrop, Mass.

Edina, Minn.

Golden Valley, Minn.

Minneapolis

Clayton, Mo.

Ferguson, Mo.

St. Louis

Reno, Nev.

Keyport, N.J.

Plainfield, N.J.

Ithaca, N.Y.

New York

White Plains, N.Y.

Yonkers, N.Y.

Charlotte, N.C.

Durham, N.C.

Greensboro, NC

Columbus, Ohio

Dublin, Ohio

Worthington, Ohio

Portland, Ore.

Arlington, Texas

Austin, Texas

Dallas

Plano, Texas

Salt Lake City

Seattle

Bothell, Wash.

Washington, D.C.

Green Bay, Wis.

Berlin

Bremen, Germany

Frankfurt, Germany

Zurich

Paris

What is the Lime Campus Network?

The Lime Campus Network is Lime's service for students. It's available at a few campuses (below) and is designed to change how students make their way around campus.

Here's a list of Lime Campus Network participants:

University of Notre Dame

Saint Mary's College

University of Washington

St. Thomas University

Johnson & Wales University - North Miami

North Carolina Central University

Washington University in St. Louis

Holy Cross College

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Guilford College

California State University, Northridge

Durham Technical Community College

East Carolina University

North Carolina State University

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University

Arkansas State University

Barry University

Duke University

Georgetown University

Does Lime offer business and community network options?

Yup. Companies and community organizations can sign up for the service to provide access to employees and constituents, respectively. Lime's community network lets low-income individuals use Lime at "heavily subsidized" prices.

Where can I find Bird?

Scottsdale, Ariz.

Tempe, Ariz.

Los Angeles

Newport Beach, Calif.

Oakland, Calif.

San Diego

San Jose, Calif.

Denver

Indianapolis

Cambridge, Mass.

Somerville, Mass.

Baltimore

Edina, Minn.

Minneapolis

St. Paul, Minn.

Kansas City, Mo.

St. Louis

Charlotte, N.C.

Raleigh, N.C.

Cincinnati

Columbus, Ohio

Oklahoma City

Portland, Ore.

Providence, R.I.

Memphis, Tenn.

Austin, Texas

Dallas

San Antonio

Salt Lake City

Arlington, Va.

Milwaukee

Washington, D.C

Paris

How will I know when they're coming to my area?

Luckily, both Bird and Lime offer ways for you to request their services in your area.

If you want Bird to come to your city, ask a city official to contact the company's City Relations team at city@bird.co. Bird will take it from there.

Lime, meanwhile, has a voting system that calls on anyone to suggest that the service come to their city. Once Lime votes hit a critical mass for your area, the service could come to your city.

Can I make money off Lime and Bird?

You can. As nice as electric scooters might be, they do need to be charged. And because Lime or Bird users might not have easy access to charging stations, the companies need help from the community to keep the chargers boosted.

So, both Bird and Lime offer programs that will pay people to pick up low-battery scooters, charge them overnight at their homes and then bring them back to locations determined by the companies.

MORE: How to Order an Uber from the Amazon Echo

Neither company says how much it pays, but you can contact them directly to find out.

Why are some cities banning these scooters?

Over the last few weeks, some municipalities have taken issue with e-scooter companies. While the cities have stopped short of calling the companies illegal or suggesting they shouldn't be in their areas, the locations have cautioned that these businesses can't just come to the municipalities without some oversight.

In Milwaukee, for instance, Bird was asked to remove its scooters pending a framework for deciding how the company would operate there. The move followed a lawsuit the city filed against Bird over the scooters' use by citizens. Wisconsin is currently evaluating scooter use on public roads, and until Milwaukee can get some guidance there, Bird's scooters are banned in the city.

(Image credit: Bird)

It's a similar story for Bird in Boston, which has threatened to impound the company's scooters. The city wants Bird to obtain permits to operate its service  something the company did not get when it opened in Boston. A hearing will take place in the fall.

Santa Monica, California, banned Bird, Lime and all other e-scooter companies, pending a trial program that starts in September.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the city was overrun with scooters that caused traffic jams and other nuisances. City officials banned the companies until they could develop policies to control the services. The city is currently proposing higher fees to obtain permits, as well as a cap on the total number of scooters that can operate around the city.

Nearby Beverly Hills, California, banned both Bird and Lime for six months in July. The city council rules that the scooters are a safety concern, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and were deployed in the area without coordinating the launch with city officials.

Indeed, proper permitting and getting permission appear to be the biggest problems facing Bird and Lime.
At some point, everyone gets rid of their guns. Sometimes a buddy persistently asks to buy one of them or the person gets bored of it or a spouse wants them gone, Shanahan said. Once you build one of these, its your gun and your gun only and if you try to sell it then youve broken the law  federal and state.
The 6.1-inch Galaxy S10 may be the middle child of the S10 lineup, but don't sleep on this powerful smartphone or its beautiful display.

The 6.1-inch Galaxy S10 may be the middle child of the S10 lineup, but don't sleep on this powerful smartphone or its beautiful display.

Make way, Galaxy S10. The Samsung Galaxy S20 series is here, which bring advanced cameras, 120Hz displays and improved performance to the company's flagship phone.

That brings up an interesting question: should prospective buyers entertain one of the newer models, or snag a Galaxy S10 on the cheap, while many retailers have heavily discounted their stock?

That all depends on how badly you want the S20's upgrades. The S20 models packs 5G connectivity and Snapdragon 865 power; a triple-lens rear camera with a 48-megapixel, 3x optical zoom lens; a 120Hz display; and a larger, 4,000-mAh battery, among other upgrades. es.

You could save nearly a quarter of what the S20 costs and still get one of last year's finest phones in the Galaxy S10, with its dazzling OLED display and great (if not class-leading) cameras that come alive when shooting low light. Even with the S20 looming large, the S10 is still every bit the jack-of-all-trades premium Android handset it was when it launched  not to mention one of the best smartphones money can buy.

If you're on the fence, be sure to check our Galaxy S20 versus Galaxy S10 comparison to see all the differences. And see how Samsung's flagship stacks up against Apple's in our Galaxy S10 vs iPhone 11 Pro face-off.

Samsung Galaxy S10 review: Price and availability

You can buy a Galaxy S10 from all major retailers. The big four U.S. carriers  AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile  carry the S10, as do U.S. Cellular and Xfinity Mobile. You can also order an unlocked Galaxy S10 online.

Following the Galaxy S20's launch, Samsung began offering the 128GB Galaxy S10 for $749 and the 512GB model for $899. Those models cost $899 and $1,149, respectively, before the S20 entered the picture. Check out our roundup of best Galaxy S10 deals for more opportunities to save.

Samsung Galaxy S10 review: Specs

Price $899 Display (Resolution) 6.1-inch Dynamic AMOLED (3040 x 1440) Rear Camera(s) 16-MP ultrawide (/2.2), 12-MP dual-pixel wide (/1.5, /2.4), 12-MP telephoto (/2.4) Front Camera 10-MP dual-pixel (f/1.9) CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 RAM 8GB Storage 128GB, 512GB microSD Yes, up to 512GB Battery 3,400 mAh Colors Prism Black, Prism White, Prism Blue, Prism Green (except U.S.), Flamingo Pink (except U.K.) Size 5.9 x 2.77 x 0.3 inches Weight 5.5 ounces

Samsung Galaxy S10 review: Display

Almost every other smartphone maker has eliminated bezels by adding a notch that swoops down from the top of the device to disguise the front-facing camera. Samsung avoided that trend altogether with all three Galaxy S10 models, instead developing the unique Infinity-O display, which embeds the front-facing camera lens directly in the screen.

The midsized S10 sports a hole-punch-size cutout for its single selfie lens, which is far less distracting than the S10 Plus' oval-shaped cutout.

I read lengthy New York Times articles, raced my trusty Mitsubishi Lancer in Asphalt 9 and took multiple selfies with the S10, and the hole punch never took away from the experience. When snapping photos of myself, I realized that the obvious cutout ensured I always looked directly at the lens. For those of you who never seem to nail eye contact with the camera lens, the S10's cutout is a great feature, making this task ridiculously easy.

You can also hide the hole punch with Samsung's cleverly designed wallpapers. That won't help when you're streaming videos or browsing the web, but the disguise looks pretty damn good when you show it off to friends. The slightly curved glass practically cascades from the phone's frame. That curved glass also makes it a little too easy to accidentally press something simply because you were holding the device; this was also a problem in past generations of Galaxy phones. If you want to hide the cutout altogether, thats an option, but that effect is so ugly that you may as well buy another Android device with a notch and call it a day.

The S10 broke DisplayMate's records for display brightness, color accuracy and image contrast, and the list goes on, so the S10 earned an A+ for a virtually perfect display. We found the same in our testing. The S10's AMOLED display covers 208.2 percent of the sRGB color gamut and notched a 0.38 Delta-E rating for color accuracy (numbers closer to 0 are better). The S10 hit a peak brightness of 611 nits when we shone a flashlight on its sensor, making the phone's panel almost as bright as that on the S10 Plus (625 nits). The Pixel 3 is ultra dim by comparison, hitting just 362 nits.

Samsung Galaxy S10 review: Design

Aside from the hole-punch display, the Galaxy S10 is the same as every other smartphone on the market. That's not a bad thing, but if you're waiting for innovative smartphone design before spending close to $1,000 (or far more) for a new device, you'll have to hold out for the foldable phones arriving this year.

The 6.1-inch S10 has the exact same dimensions as Apple's 6.1-inch, $749 iPhone 11 but is more than a full ounce lighter. The S10 isn't a one-handed device for those of us with petite paws; the 5.8-inch S10e is both smaller and cheaper, so go for that device if size is the deciding factor for you in phone selection.

The S10 comes in the same colors as the larger $999 Galaxy S10 Plus, which offers a few simple options (like white and black) and some bolder ones (blue, Flamingo Pink). I tested the Prism Black model, which is a terribly boring glassy black slab. I suggest going with Prism White, or one of the more interesting hues, which will help you stand out. The black model collects so many fingerprints that you'll look like a really uncool forensics investigator.

Like all Galaxy S models, the S10 is rated IP68 water-resistant, meaning it can survive in up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) of water for a half-hour. That's respectable in the flagship phone realm, and thus earns the Galaxy S10 a spot on our list of the best waterproof phones.

Samsung Galaxy S10 review: Cameras

The S10 and S10 Plus have one key difference, aside from the larger phone's bigger display: The Plus sports an additional 8-megapixel, depth-sensing, front-facing camera for better selfies. Both devices have a selfie-portrait effect, which enables other effects, including wind-swept and black-and-white backgrounds.

But the S10 achieves those effects using software instead of an additional depth-sensing lens, and it shows when comparing the two side by side.

As you can see in the black-and-white Live Focus image above, the S10's camera software gets a little messy around my curls. Meanwhile, the S10 Plus seamlessly softens the background around them, creating a more natural effect.

Otherwise, the S10 and S10 Plus have the same rear triple-lens camera array, with telephoto, standard and wide-angle shooters for capturing a variety of viewpoints. I compared the S10 with a Pixel 3 by capturing a Brooklyn storefront. Both images capture the detail in the brick and the gleam of the coffee shop's sign, but the S10 is more color-accurate; the neon "No Sleep Till" sign glowed more yellow than blue-white in real life.





I also compared the S10's telephoto lens and optical zoom with the iPhone XS cameras by playing tourist with a photo of the Statue of Liberty as seen from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. It's an almost impossible shot, because Lady Liberty is extremely far away and the midday sun is not helpful. The iPhone's optical zoom fared better, as the S10's image is darker, with more artifacts in the photo.





The S10's cameras are good, though if you want more dramatic photos, the Pixel 3 and newer Pixel 4 remain better options, while the latest iPhones capture more-natural shots.

Samsung Galaxy S10 review: Security

Samsung can't compete with Apple on biometric authentication, and we're not sure the Galaxy maker is even trying. This is one area where Samsung needs to work harder to ensure that unlocking your phone and authenticating payments are locked down with the most secure biometric scans that money can buy.

In our testing, the S10's facial recognition is easily fooled by a photograph of a person's face. That's just plain embarrassing. The photo trick doesn't work if you turn off Fast Facial Recognition in the S10's settings, but the facial-authentication method is still less secure than it should be. That's because Samsung doesn't use hardware to create a 3D map of your face the way Apple does with its Face ID.

The S10's in-display reader is more secure, due to an ultrasonic sensor that maps the 3D curves of your fingerprint. You have to press a little longer on the sensor than you would think, but the phone unlocks quickly enough, and I appreciate that it's not a two-step process, like on the iPhone XS. (On that phone, you have to wait for the camera to scan your face and then swipe up.)

There have been some complaints about the Galaxy S10's ultrasonic fingerprint sensor not working properly when a screen protector is applied to the phone. In fact, one woman claims that anyone could unlock her Galaxy S10 after she purchased a screen protector off of eBay. Fortunately, Samsung issued an update designed to fix this problem shortly after release.

Samsung Galaxy S10 review: Performance

The Galaxy S10 Plus and smaller S10 have the same exact specs, and it shows in their performance power. With Qualcomm's 7-nanometer Snapdragon 855 processor and 8GB of RAM, the S10 easily matches the larger S10 Plus' speed.

The two devices scored evenly on Geekbench 4, a synthetic test of overall system performance. The S10 notched a multicore score of 10,813, sneaking just ahead of the larger phone's performance (10,732). Both phones lag behind the iPhone XS' A12 Bionic processor, which blows away the competition with a 11,420 score.

But both S10s handily crush their Android rivals, including the Pixel 3 (7,316) and OnePlus 6T (8,972).



MORE: Best phones: Here are the 10 best available

And the S10, like the S10 Plus, pulled ahead of both the iPhone and competing Android flagships in the 3DMark Slingshot Extreme graphics-performance benchmark. The S10 notched a score of 5,606 on the OpenGL ES 3.1 test, just behind the larger S10's score (5,648) and easily ahead of the results from the OnePlus 6T (5,183), Pixel 3 (4,396) and iPhone XS (4,339).

I unlocked one premium race car after another in my favorite graphics-intensive game, Asphalt 9, easily killing 45 minutes burning rubber around the globe. The S10 never lagged or felt warm to the touch.

Samsung Galaxy S10 review: Battery life

The Galaxy S10's 3,400-mAh battery isn't as large as the massive, 4,100-mAh pack inside the S10 Plus. And as expected, the smaller device doesn't last as long on a charge, though you can still go a long time without topping off your battery.

The S10 eked out 10 hours and 19 minutes on the Tom's Guide Battery Test, which consists of continuous web surfing over 4G LTE. The S10 Plus landed near the top of our list of longest-lasting smartphones, reaching 12 hours and 35 seconds on that test.

MORE: Smartphones with the longest battery life

The Galaxy S9 Plus, released in 2018, also lasts longer on a charge than the S10, but that older phone has a slightly larger, 3,500-mAh battery. The S10e and its smaller, 3,100-mAh unit died after 9 hours and 42 minutes. The S10 outlasted both the iPhone XS (9:41) and the Pixel 3 XL (9:30). In the iPhone 11 Pro vs. Samsung's S10 face-off, the Pro lasted four minutes longer (10:23) than the S10.

All three Galaxy S10 models have a new Wireless PowerShare feature that we wish every smartphone on the market offered. The tool, which you toggle on in the shortcuts menu by swiping down, lets you charge up any Qi-compatible device.

I used this to charge up Samsung's Galaxy Watch Active, and the process works quickly and seamlessly.

Samsung Galaxy S10 review: Software

The OneUI software on the Galaxy S10 is streamlined as promised and fairly to easy to use. The settings menu, for example, presents a lot fewer options than previous Galaxy phones.

By default, theres a Recent Apps, Home Button and Back button along the bottom of the display. But you can switch to full-screen gestures. You'll swipe up from the bottom left to see recent apps, up from the bottom to go home and up from the right to go back.

The Galaxy S10 also now offers some of the more compelling software features of the Galaxy Note 10. These include Live Focus video for applying bokeh effects to your footage and Samsung DeX for PC, which allows you to see notifications and send and receive messages on your laptop without having to fire up your phone.

Samsung Galaxy S10 review: Verdict

Even more than a year since its release, the Galaxy S10 offers superfast performance and a beautiful display, with a less distracting camera cutout than on the larger, pricier S10 Plus. I also love that the S10 offers my favorite feature, Wireless PowerShare. That means you don't have to splurge on the priciest Galaxy to reverse-charge all of your devices.

Apple and Google's latest flagships sport better cameras, depending on whether you prefer more dramatic or more natural shots. And if you want longer battery life, the S10 Plus is a better bet, provided you can handle a larger, 6.4-inch screen. We do prefer the S10 to the value-priced OnePlus 6T, based on our face-off.

Sure, the Galaxy S20's redesigned triple-camera stack and 5G connectivity could put the Galaxy S10's photography and data speeds to shame. But at the end of the day, if all you're looking for is a well-rounded, well-crafted Android flagship that can do it all  including work with a pair of good old-fashioned wired headphones  for a price you can sleep easy at night spending, the Galaxy S10 remains an unbeatable proposition.
Google Maps tips and tricks: 22 things to try next time you drive

Google Maps can do way more than getting you around, so be sure to check out these 22 essential tips to enhance your drive.
Whether youre targeting for world-record overclocks or you're just after a PC that doesnt get loud under load, you should pick the best CPU cooler you can afford. Choosing the best cooler for your best CPU is an important decision in any processor upgrade or new PC build. The best CPU cooler will make a big difference in temperatures, noise, and even performance -- especially if you're overclocking.

If your current CPU cooler cant keep your processors heat under control, that could mean slower performance and/or a shorter lifespan for your processor--and clearly, no one wants that.



Don't forget to consider thermal paste or another thermal interface material (TIM), though. Nearly all coolers will come with some kind of paste, whether it's pre-applied or in a small syringe or tube. But to make sure you're getting the most efficient heat transfer between your CPU and cooler plate, check out the many thoroughly tested products in our roundup to find the best thermal paste for your CPU, which we've revamped with new products for 2021.

Best CPU Coolers For You

If youre not sure if you want to go with air cooling (a hefty metal heatsink and fans) or opt for a liquid-cooled AIO (a pump attached to a radiator and fans), there are a few things to consider. Big air coolers tend to take up more internal space in your PC case, particularly when it comes to vertical clearance off your best motherboard. Air coolers can also be louder and less efficient at moving heat away from your CPU and out of the chassis, though these days thats not always true. If you can go the extreme route, there are fanless options like Noctua's Colossal NH-P1.

Air coolers usually cost less than AIOs, though that line is blurring as well. AIO coolers are getting more affordable, while high-end air coolers reach toward and sometimes above the $100 range. While it's an extreme case (in price, size and cooling abilities), the Ice Giant Prosiphon Elite has an MSRP ($170) that competes with many large AIO coolers.



If money isn't a major concern and silent operation and low temperatures are important to you, you may want to consider a custom cooling loop. For more on how these can perform (and how good they look), check out our Blue Shift build feature.

Quick Shopping Tips

When choosing the best CPU cooler for your needs, consider the following:

Own a recent Ryzen CPU? You may not need to buy a cooler, but it depends on the model. Most Ryzen 2000 and 3000-series processors and some older Ryzen models ship with coolers, and many of them can handle moderate overclocks. Note, though, that the most-recent Ryzen 5000 CPUs don't ship with coolers in the Ryzen 7/9 range. If you want the best CPU clock speed possible, youll still likely want to buy an aftermarket cooler anyway. But for many Ryzen owners who don't plan to push their silicon to the limit, the best CPU cooler might just be the free one in the box.

If opting for a large air cooler, be sure to check clearances before buying. Big coolers and low-profile models can bump up against tall RAM and even VRM heatsinks sometimes. And tall coolers can cause clearance issues with your case door or window. Be sure to check the dimensions and advertised clearances of any cooler you're considering and your case before buying.

Remember that, all else being equal, more fans equals better cooling, but more noise. The coolers that do the best job of moving warm air away from your CPU and out of your case are also often the loudest. If fan noise is an issue for you, youll want a cooler that does a good job of balancing noise and cooling. If you can set your cooler's fan speeds based on temperatures in your motherboard's BIOS, that should also help.

For much more detail on how to choose the right cooler (and cooler type) check out our 2021 CPU cooler buying guide.

The Best Air Coolers You Can Buy Today

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

1. Cooler Master MasterAir MA624 Stealth Best Big Air CPU Cooler Specifications Dimensions: 165.1 x 149.4 x 127.0 mm Base Height: 31.8mm Weight: 46.3 oz (1312g) Fans: (2) 140 x 25 mm Socket Support: 115x, 1366, 1200, 2011x, 2066; FM2(+), FM1, AM2(+), AM3(+), AM4 Warranty: 5 years TODAY'S BEST DEALS Prime $99.99 View at Amazon Reasons to buy + Great cooling performance + Integrated center fan simplifies install + Additional 120mm fan for tall DIMMs Reasons to avoid - Premium price

Cooler Master has pulled out all the stops to release an excellent option in the large heatpipe cooler arena. The MasterAir MA624 Stealth trades blows with some of the best CPU coolers weve tested. It even comes with a third 120 mm fan to use when tall DIMMS create clearance problems. The MasterAir MA624 Stealth doesnt glitter with RGB lighting, which many will find refreshing. But it does shine on merit, as an effective near-silent thermal solution for some of the most potent desktop CPUs from both Intel and AMD--as long as you dont count Threadripper.

Read: Cooler Master MasterAir MA624 Stealth review

Best Big Air CPU Cooler: Deepcool Assassin III (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

2. Deepcool Assassin III Best Big Air CPU Cooler Alternative Specifications Dimensions: 171.5 x 139.7 x 133.4mm Base Height: 38.1mm Weight: 42.7oz (1210g) Fans: (2) 140 x 25mm Socket Support: 115x, 1366, 2011x, 2066; FM2(+), FM1, AM2(+), AM3(+), AM4 Warranty: 5 years TODAY'S BEST DEALS Prime $89.99 View at Amazon $89.99 View at BHPhoto Reasons to buy + Budget friendly + Silent operation + Excellent thermal performance Reasons to avoid - Lack of RGB lighting options - Incomplete AMD and Intel CPU socket support

With twin cooling towers, seven heatpipes and two 140mm fans, the GamerStorm Assassin III from Deep Cool brought us the lowest temperature of big-air coolers. Pairing that thermal performance with low noise makes it our choice for air-cooling big CPUs, with great looks and easy installation qualifying as bonuses.

Read: Deepcool Assassin III review

Note that DeepCool's AS500 is also an excellent alternative for those who don't quite have the room or the budget for a true big air cooler. It punches above its cooling class, delivering excellent temps for its $59.99 MSRP. But while it has been released in the UK, we're still waiting for stock to show up here in the USA.

Best Mid-size Air CPU Cooler: Cooler Master MasterAir MA410M

3. Cooler Master MasterAir MA410M Best Mid-size Air CPU Cooler Specifications Dimensions: 158.8 x 132.4 x 58.2mm Base Height: 37.88mm Weight: 43.87oz (1247g) Fans: (2) 120 x 25mm RGB Socket Support: AMD FM2(+), FM1, AM2(+), AM3(+), AM4, Intel 7115x, 1366, 2011x, 2066 Warranty: 5 years TODAY'S BEST DEALS Prime $69.99 View at Amazon $107.07 View at Amazon 183 Amazon customer reviews      Reasons to buy + Excellent cooling performance + Mid-size cooler occupies less space + Thermal probe provides thermal load display via RGB lighting Reasons to avoid - Fans kick up a bit more noise than others by comparison

The Cooler Master MasterAir MA410M is our pick for an excellent performing mid-size air cooler, especially considering the aggressively designed exterior shell and the inclusion of addressable RGB lighting from within the cooling tower itself. Sitting on the upper range of the affordable pricing tier, $67 (60) might cause budget system builders to balk a bit, but considering the features and performance, it definitely deserves those few extra dollars.

Read: Cooler Master MasterAir MA410M review

Best AMD Threadripper Air CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U14S

4. Noctua NH-U14S Best AMD Threadripper Air CPU Cooler Specifications Dimensions: 171.45 x 151.4 x 52.3mm Base Height: 25.1mm Weight: 36.5oz (1035g) Fans: (1) 140 x 25mm Socket Support: AMD TR4, SP3 Warranty: 6 years TODAY'S BEST DEALS Prime $89.95 View at Amazon Prime $99.95 View at Amazon 635 Amazon customer reviews      Reasons to buy + Excellent performance + Very low noise levels + Simple, secure installation Reasons to avoid - Premium price - Tall cooler height poses compatibility issues in smaller cases

The Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 provides whisper-quiet cooling with big league thermal performance  the kind of overclocked Threadripper performance that sneaks into quality 360 AIO cooling performance. Armed with six nickel-plated copper heatpipes and a NF-A15 140mm PWM fan, the AMD-friendly NH-U14S TR4-SP3 is a silent thermal assassin. For Threadripper air cooling, this cooler checks all the boxes for enthusiasts and overclockers alike.

Read: Noctua NH-U14S review

Best Threadripper Cooler Alternative: Arctic Freezer 50TR

Neither as cool nor as quiet as Noctua's NH-U14S, the Artice Freezer 50 TR got our attention for its lower price. The value advantage could be important to current builders hoping to save money by using AMD's previous generation 2000-series parts.

Best Budget Air CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS10x Performa Black (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

5. Zalman CNPS10x Performa Black Best Budget Air CPU Cooler Specifications Dimensions: 155.6 x 136.7 x 69.9mm Base Height: 33mm Weight: 29.7 oz (842g) Fans: (1) 135 x 25mm Socket Support: AMD, Intel 115x, 1200, 2011, 2066 Warranty: 2 years TODAY'S BEST DEALS Prime $39.99 View at Amazon Prime $44.99 View at Amazon Reasons to buy + Excellent performance + Budget price + Extremely silent operation Reasons to avoid - Spring tension screws are not integrated into mounting base

The Zalman CNPS10x Performa Black is a mid-size, quad-heatpipe cooler that features jet-black style and a single, ultra-silent 135mm fan that rips through CPU thermal loads for your multi-core desktop enthusiast processor.



Its $45 price and cooling potential that nips at the heels of the pack leaders puts the Zalman CNPS10x Performa Black in a strong position to be a system builder favorite when extra dollars need to be spent on other components. Zalman has given the system building community an excellent, no-frills cooling option that looks great and lets you focus your money where it needs to go.

Read: Zalman CNPS10x Performa Black review



Best Budget Air Cooler Alternative: be quiet! Shadow Rock Slim 2

Saving on the Best CPU Coolers

Whether you're shopping for one of the products that made our best CPU coolers list or one that didn't, you may find some savings by checking out our list of Newegg promo codes or Corsair coupon codes.

MORE: Best Liquid CPU Cooling

MORE: How To Choose A CPU Cooler

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Chromebooks may soon be able to support running Windows 10 along Chrome OS, according to recent comments in Chrome OS source code.

Windows 10 on Chromebooks

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Google was working on an Alt OS mode, which would allow different operating systems to run alongside Chrome OS. At the time, it wasnt clear what this actually meant, considering you could already run some Linux distributions alongside Chrome OS. We also knew that Chrome OS supported Android apps and that native Linux apps were coming to Chrome OS.

Later, we discovered that Googles own Pixelbook would soon receive Microsofts certification to run Windows 10, at which point it became clear that Alt OS was referring to Windows 10. Google engineers were spotted submitting Alt OS code commits to the Campfire branch as well as the Pixelbook branch. Campfire looks to be a system for picking another operating system (Alt OS) to run at boot.

It doesnt look like Campfire is a Pixelbook-only feature, as multiple Campfire variants have been discovered. However, if each device needs Microsoft's certification, then the feature likely wont come to all Chromebooks either, or at least not all Chromebooks that are already on the market. Future Chromebooks may all have to support dual-booting Windows 10 if Google requires that from Chromebook manufacturers.

Normally, to run a Linux distribution alongside Chrome OS, you need to enable the Developer Mode, which also disables Verified Boot. However, it seems that booting into Windows 10 will not require enabling Developer Mode. Campfire-enabled systems will also need to come with at least 40GB of storage, 30GB for Windows 10 and 10GB for Chrome OS.

Campfire Could Be Officially Revealed Soon

This fall, Google is expected to have a hardware event in which the company will unveil its next-generation Pixel 3 mobile devices. Rumors say that Google will release some new Pixelbooks then too. Googles engineers seem to be in a hurry to implement the Campfire feature right now, so the company may at least demonstrate how it works at that event.

Supporting Windows on Chromebooks may give the Chromebook market a significant boost in sales, as that feature should remove the biggest objection people have had against Chromebooks. From day one, most criticism has been targeted at the fact that Chromebooks dont support more fully featured applications. Google has slowly changed that, first with support for all Android apps, then with the announced support for Linux apps and now with reports of support for Windows programs too.
The ThinkPad P1

Lenovo today revealed two new ThinkPads, including its thinnest workstation ever, the ThinkPad P1 and a powerful machine with top-of-the-line specs, the ThinkPad P72. They will be available at the end of August starting at $1,949 for the P1 and $1,799 for the P72.

The P1 is thin for a 15-inch workstation at 0.7 inches, and packs the latest 8th Gen Intel Xeon and Core (up to Core i9) processors, up to 64GB of RAM and up to 4TB of NVMEe SSD storage. Lenovo also suggests the the ThinkPad P1 has a power supply thats 35 percent smaller than previous mobile workstations, making the charger just as portable. Lenovo has been long-rumored to be releasing a 15-inch thin and powerful notebook, and now its finally here.

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Lenovo ThinkPad P72 CPU 8th Gen Intel Xeon and Core 8th Gen Intel Xeon and Core GPU Up to Nvidia Quadro P2000 Up to Nvidia Quadro P5200 RAM Up to 64GB DDR4 Up to 128GB DDR4 Storage Up to 4TB NVMe SSD Up to 6TB Battery 80Whr 99Whr Display 15.6-inch, FHD or 4K Touch 17.3-inch, FHD or 4K Size 14.2 x 9.7 x 0.7 inches 16.4 x 11.1 x 1 inches Weight 3.8 pounds 7.5 pounds Ports (2x) Thunderbolt 3 (2x) USB 3.1 Type-A, HDMI 2.0, Mini Gigabit Ethernet, Headphone jack, Smart Card Reader (2x) Thunderbolt 3 (2x) USB 3.1 Type-A, HDMI 2.0, Mini Gigabit Ethernet, Headphone jack, Smart Card Reader, Mini DisplayPort Starting Price $1,949 $1,799

The ThinkPad P72 eschews style and size for power. It offers Xeon and Core processors and up to an Nvidia Quadro P5200 GPU, as well as up to 128GB of RAM. Lenovo claims the 17.3-inch, 4K display will offer up to 400 nits of brightness. But at a full-inch thick and a hefty 7.5 pounds, this one isnt designed for portability.

The ThinkPad P72 (Image credit: Lenovo)

The announcements were timed with the Siggraph computer graphics conference taking place in Vancouver.
Former Leavenworth police officer indicted in deadly shooting A former Leavenworth police officer has been indicted for involuntary manslaughter for a deadly police shooting. Matthew Harrington has already been fired. The police department determined he violated their use of deadly force policy when he shot and killed Antonio Garcia Jr. in July 2017.

Complex case just outside of the metro inspires increasing media attention and a media image that threatens to galvanize the interest of social justice warriors across the nation eager to take up divisive issues in flyover country.Take a look:
Johnson County unanimously approves 1,176 provisional ballots to be counted Election officials in Johnson County, Kansas, have unanimously approved 1,176 provisional ballots to be counted as recommended by the Johnson County Election Office. The board has also approved 275 partial ballots, but not the entire ballot will count because of certain issues. The Johnson County board of canvassers has also decided to not count 898 provisional ballots.

No matter who you support, we can all agree that voting in the Golden Ghetto is now a bad joke and the election is more farce than fact.More on this in a bit but here's a good specific starting point for the conversation:
Lee Jeans headquarters will move from Merriam Merriam is losing one of its biggest employers. Lee Jeans will move its headquarters from Merriam, Kansas, as part of a plan announced Monday by its parent company to split in two.

Another old school biz is on the decline because millennials have realized thatCheck the local impact . . .
Executive Summary

The most up-to-date estimates by the Economic Commission for Africa indicate that during the period 2000-2015, net illicit financial flows between Africa and the rest of the world averaged US$73 billion (at 2016 prices) per year from trade misinvoicing alone. Recent exposure of illicit financial flow scandals shows that those involved in such activities have used a range of practices to perpetrate the flows. Furthermore, there are a number of fundamental enablers of illicit financial flows that cut across institutions, sectors and stakeholders, such as: the benefits to the perpetuators, the facilitating infrastructure, the absorptive jurisdictions and the constraints of public authorities.

Since the release of the African Union-Economic Commission for Africa pdf High-Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows report (2.16 MB) in 2015, some headway has been made at the global level, but this continues to be in silos of sectors, groups of nations or stakeholders. Moreover, evidence reviewed for this study suggests that illicit financial flows continue to present a serious challenge to development in Africa. Given that illicit financial flows from Africa involve actors from across the globe, and that the laws and policies of non-African jurisdictions have a serious impact on illicit flows from Africa, it has become a priority to review the adequacy of global frameworks in tackling illicit financial flows.

In the present study, the global framework or architecture for combating illicit financial flows and its effectiveness in tackling the illicit financial flow problem are examined. Another objective of the study is to identify the gaps in the existing architecture for preventing illicit financial flows, and how Africa should feed into this process to improve its efficiency, effectiveness and inclusiveness. The literature available on the issue was examined, while delving into the framework for tackling illicit financial flows, and analysing actions and their impacts on: (a) the world as a whole; (b) the subregions of Africa; and (c) individual African countries, with a focus on Cameroon, Cote dIvoire, Morocco and South Africa, from which primary data were collected to support the study.

The results of the study indicate that a range of different institutions and agreements exist with the aim of tackling the various aspects of illicit financial flows. However, the institutions have different mandates, which often overlap. In addition, there is currently no mechanism covering all relevant organizations and all aspects of illicit financial flow problems at the global level, indicating substantial gaps in the global fight against illicit financial flows from Africa.

Accordingly, as the perpetrators of illicit financial flows have the ability to exploit the different methods of transfer available, a weakness in any part of the global regulatory architecture on such flows could substantially compromise the overall efforts to tackle illicit financial flows. This is because the perpetrators may conduct regulatory arbitrage and divert the flows through channels with weak controls. In addition, aside from creating opportunities for regulatory arbitrage, the lack of a comprehensive coordination mechanism for anti-illicit financial flow efforts also risks duplication in the activities of the different organizations trying to tackle those flows. Consequently, in a context characterized by a complex web of actors and issues, the application of the principles of effective governance becomes critical to influence the commitment, coordination, and cooperation of all stakeholders involved in combating illicit financial flows. Accordingly, the study highlights, the urgent need for Africa to play a more active role in addressing the imbalance in global power structures. This requires a concerted continental approach, which includes actions at both the regional and domestic levels.

Source: Financial Transparency Coalition, 2017. Who Makes the Rules on Illicit Financial Flows? FTC Policy Brief.

Recommendations

Based on the analysis above and the gaps identified, some recommendations to improve the performance of the global governance architecture in combating illicit financial flows at the global, regional and national levels are provided in the study.

The main global recommendations include: (a) the development of a global governance framework to mitigate illicit financial flows; (b) publication by the Bank for International Settlements of the data it holds on international banking assets by country of origin and destination for all jurisdictions; (c) support be given for the setting up of and capacitating of transfer pricing units; (d) promotion of global minimum standards for the publication of ownership information; (e) consideration of countermeasures for noncompliant jurisdictions; (f) immediate reciprocity not be considered as to entry requirement to tax information exchange; (g) establishment of global standards in conducting reviews of accounts held by senior government officials, leaders of political parties, executives of State-owned enterprises and others with access to substantial State assets and power to direct them.

Recommendations at the continental level include: (a) piloting of follow the money partnerships to curtail trade mispricing globally; (b) setting up of a continental-level data standard for the exchange of tax information; (c) extending the provisions of the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption, especially, with regard to the functions of the Advisory Board on Corruption; (d) amending the African Peer Review Mechanism questionnaire to include illicit financial flows; and (e) introducing systems for automatic exchange of tax information among African countries.

Recommendations at the national level include: (a) requiring multinational corporations to provide comprehensive reporting on their operations, indicating disaggregated financial reporting on by-country or by-subsidiary bases; (b) require companies to prepare cost-benefit analyses before allowing them to invest in a country; (c) African countries should join voluntary initiatives, such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative; (d) African Governments should provide training to and empower investigators responsible for combating illicit financial flows; (e) greater coordination should be instituted between revenue authorities and ministries of finance in developing transfer pricing rules and build capacity in this area; (f) ensure transparent procurement procedures and government tenders and build capacity in this area; (g) introduce effective incentives for civil servants with clear documentation; and (h) place politicians companies into trusts for the duration of their political term and prohibit them from engaging in any government businesses.

The present paper was prepared under the overall guidance of Adam Elhiraika, Director of the Macroeconomic Policy Division, Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).
Hueys have been referred to as "the workhorse" of Vietnam.

(Jug Gerard flew helicopters for 27 months in Vietnam. This account, in his words, covers the first six months of the time.

Gerard's personal military decorations include Distinguished Flying Cross w/Gold Star (2), Bronze Star w/V (for valor), Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal w/27, Navy & Marine Corps Commendation Medal w/V, Vietnam Campaign Medal with silver star (five campaigns) and Republic of Vietnam Bronze Star Cross of Gallantry.)

I had a fulfilling, diverse 25-year Marine corps career beginning in 1956 as a naval aviation cadet in Pensacola to the final years as te...
Here's some ways to stay safe this Halloween

State and local agencies have released several tips on staying sate this Halloween.
On Saturday, July 21, the Transylvania County Honor Guard recognized a veteran of WWII at Hendersonville Presbyterian Church. The ceremony was somber, moving and unusual in two respects. First, it was performed in Henderson County, and second, the veteran being honored had been a member of the British Royal Navy.

Douglas Davidson was born in 1925 in Airdrie, Scotland. In 1942, at age 16, he joined the British Royal Navy and served in WWII aboard the destroyer HMS Opportune. During the war, the Opportune served with great distinction, escorting Allied Russian ships to the Soviet Union thro...
Sandy Schenck (left) and others in the program are trying to instill a love for fly fishing in young people. See more photos on page 10A. (Times photo by Park Baker)

While the summer camp season is coming to end, the memories created for most campers will last a lifetime, and for one local camp owner those memories he hopes will instill a sense of wonder, in particular, about fly fishing.

Green River Preserve owner Sandy Schenck has been teaching fishing at his 3,000-acre camp, located on Reasonover Road at the headwaters of the Green River, for nearly 30 years. His delight in watching a child learn the basics like casting, knot tying and learning to roll cast is childlike in itself.

One of his many projects is the Summer on the Fly program, which...
The potential impacts of the Hospital Corporation of Americas (HCA) possible purchase of Mission Health on rural communities were discussed in a recent Facebook Live forum.

This is the second part of the question and answer forum, the first of which appeared in Thursdays issue.

Karen Vernon, communications director at Mission Health, moderated the forum, and fielded questions based on the panelists recent visit to other HCA-owned hospital systems, such as TriStar Health, TriStar Ashland City Medical Center, TriStar Centennial Medical Center and TriStar Horizon Medical Center in T...
Recently Senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio issued a general cyber warning and call to action. Sen. Nelson followed up with another warning for Florida, indicating that classified intelligence sources had detected a threat.

Hackers have already infiltrated critical infrastructures in the U.S., including energy, nuclear, water, aviation and manufacturing sectors according to Homeland Security and the F.B.I. Malware has been detected in U.S. utilities, the same malware that took down Ukraines electrical grid in 2015 and 2016.

Clearly the future of political warfare is in the cyber doma...
The Swallow-tailed kite inhabits the cloudy mountaintops, as well as the cypress swamps in the eastern part of North Carolina. It's habitat is threatened by climate change in the mountains and logging and habitat loss in the eastern part of the state.

Each spring, the air fills with the calls of millions of migratory birds making their annual journeys from wintering grounds in the southern hemisphere to breeding grounds in North America. Yet populations of many birds are in decline as a result of habitat loss and degradation. Thanks to the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act (NMBCA) grants program, however, these long distance travelers will benefit from $18 million in federal and matching funds.

The NMBCA provides critical funding each year for bird conservation and research throughout the Western Hemisphere and is the only sou...
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sanjiv@tribunemail.com

For nearly 50 years, there has been no thunder of passing trains over the bridge at Hussainiwala. The dedication of a new bridge at the site by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday will not bring the trains to resume the now-interrupted run from Mumbai to Peshawar. That has to await better times in Indo-Pak relations. Destroyed in the 1971 Indo-Pak war, the bridge also was a symbol of India's defensive mindset that was more in evidence on the China border where the then prevailing strategic mindset was to deny infrastructure to opposing armies to roll in. That mentality was mothballed on the China border. But for the doubters, the bridge's reconstruction should allay any remaining doubts.

This is sacred land in more ways than one. It is not only the site of pitched battles with Pakistani troops in 1965 and 1971. It was here that locals took matters in their hand and did not allow the cremation site of freedom fighter Bhagat Singh and his comrades to lapse into obscurity. It is hard to believe that this land was in Pakistan till 1961 when Jawaharlal Nehru brokered an exchange that brought 12 villages into India. If sentimentality to bring back the cremation site of the martyrs was the overriding then, the nostalgia element in Sitharaman's dedication of the bridge was also a nod to the martyr's memorial of the freedom fighters whose sacrifices put India's fight against colonialism in high gear.

Since Indo-Pak ties are in a limbo, the immediate use of the bridge will be to promote business, agriculture and better movement of Army vehicles and ammunition. The high-kicking and foot-stamping by border guards at Hussainiwala, less belligerent than at Wagah, will continue. But the once-principal road crossing between India and Pakistan has to await better times to become operational again. Till then, the restored bridge will stand out as a symbol of an extended hand of friendship to Pakistan if it can curb the incubation of anti-India militants on its soil.
editorial@tribune.com

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 13

An insurance company, ICICI Lombard, has rejected crop insurance claims of Rs 390 crore of Sirsa and Bhiwani districts for the 2017 kharif season, leading to unrest among farmers.

The Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Department had assessed the claims through crop-cutting experiments (CCEs) carried out in the fields have been rejected by the ICICI Lombard.

The insurance company is contesting the methodology in CCEs and has quoted satellite evidence to prove its point, while the department alleges the matter was never raised when it settled the claims in five other districts where the amount of losses was lower. But it is disputing claims in Sirsa and Bhiwani as the amount of losses is higher.

In Sirsa district, claims worth Rs 170 crore of cotton crop are pending and, in Bhiwani district, claims worth Rs 220 crore of bajra crop are pending.

The company has already received premium for the rabi crop and it will move to some other district now as a company is assigned a cluster of districts only for two years. Initially, company officials continued buying time. First, they sought time till June 1, then till July 20 and then till August 2. Now, they have refused to settle the claims, alleged Vikal Pachar, president, Akhil Bharatiya Swaminathan Aayog Sangharsh Samiti, Sirsa.

Dusmanta Kumar Bahera, Director of the department, said: The insurance company has wrongly disputed the claims. The department has taken up the matter with the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) of the Centre constituted under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY).

He said the meeting of the TAC was to be held in New Delhi on Monday, but it was put off due to some reason.

A spokesperson for ICICI Lombard, however, claimed that the CCE schedules were not shared with the company for co-observance and even where companys officials were involved, data mismatch have been found.

The company resorted to Remote Sensing Technology (RST) analysis using normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI). The results showed that our stand was correct. We have placed the evidence before the TAC, which is to take the final call, the company said.

On why the matter of the CCEs was not raised in other districts, ICICI Lombard said the anomalies were mainly observed in multiple-harvesting crops such as cotton.
gspannu7@gmail.com

Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, August 13

Responding to a threat given by All-India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) leader Yashpal Malik of opposing their programmes from August 16, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and Finance Minister Capt Abhimanyu made it clear that they will deal strongly against any attempt to create anarchy.

The CM said nobody would be allowed to take the law into their hands, while Abhimanyu referred to Malik as member of liar gang and said that the community members were demanding the details of the funds collected during Jat agitation.

The AIJASS leader during a bhaichara sammelan in Jassia (Rohtak) on Sunday announced to relaunch the stir for reservation from August 16 in a phased manner.

It was announced that in the first phase, the samiti members will stage dharnas at the venue of the programmes of the CM and the finance minister organised in the rural areas of nine districts Rohtak, Jhajjar, Dadri, Bhiwani, Hisar, Kaithal, Jind, Panipat and Sonepat.

Both Khattar and Abhimanyu were here to attend a state-level function organised by the Finance Department and banks on promotion of digital transactions, BHIM app and disbursal of loans.

The CM claimed the threat to be a serious issue and said, It is unfortunate that someone is challenging the ministers and the CM of the government. It would be dealt properly. We will follow all legal process and nobody would be allowed to take law into their hands.

On being asked whether Malik was playing into the hands of any political parties, the CM said everyone knows about it and as the elections come nearer, some people make such efforts.

We will ensure the law and order situation and also it is our duty to maintain peace and harmony in the state, the CM said.

On the other hand, Abhimanyu said, If someone criticises us, it boosts our morale and it shows we are going on the right track.

Without naming any political party and leader, the finance minister said, A liar gang is active in the state and Malik is working as the member of that gang. The gang members are those who looted the state for ten years in their tenure and even got their party chief attacked. These members never accepted a Dalit leader as their party chief.

He said the community members were demanding the details of the funds collected during the Jat agitation and instead of giving a reply, he was misleading the community, but this time his efforts would not be fulfilled.

On being asked about the statements being given by Kurukshetra MP Raj Kumar Saini, he said that anyone who was working against the spirit of brotherhood in the state was against the society.
monicakchauhan@gmail.com

London, August 13

A Pakistan-born bishop in the UK has called for a near-total ban on wearing of burqas in public places in the country as he backed former British foreign secretary Boris Johnson's criticism of the practice, according to a media report.

Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, said the burqas should be outlawed in a wide range of situations where people interact, including in hospitals, doctors surgeries, universities and schools, Daily Express reported.

Earlier this month, Johnson triggered a controversy when he wrote in a newspaper column that women in burqas resemble "bank robbers" and "letter boxes."

Ali said for "reasons of national security alone" the burqa should not be allowed in Parliament or even town halls.

"We have all seen how even male terrorists have escaped arrest by donning a burqa and making an effective getaway," he said.

He added: "It is true that some women choose to wear the burqa or niqab because they feel it makes them more observant Muslims. It is also true however that the burqa or niqab is being weaponised by Islamists to impose what they consider to be 'Islamic' character on communities, neighbourhoods and even nations."

The controversial call from the Pakistan-born bishop was backed by former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey.Ali has earlier sparked controversy during his time as bishop between 1994 and 2009.

He received death threats for saying in a newspaper that Islamic extremists created "no-go areas" for non-Muslims in Britain.Ali was the first non-white diocesan bishop in the Church of England. He was the 106th bishop at Rochester, the second oldest cathedral in the country. PTI
monicakchauhan@gmail.com

Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, August 13

Heavy rain wreaked havoc in various parts of Himachal Pradesh over the past 24 hours, leaving 16 persons dead and triggering massive landslides that left traffic snapped and commuters stranded on highways.

A government advisory asked people to avoid travel as the weather officials warned of heavy rain in the state till Tuesday and thereafter on August 16 and 17. The government has ordered the closure of schools on Tuesday as well.

Solan district bore the brunt of monsoon fury as eight persons lost their lives in rain-related incidents. Four members of a family were killed in a landslide in Kandaghat subdivision while a boy was swept away in the swollen Kaushalya river near Parwanoo. Four persons died in Mandi, two in Hamirpur and one each in Bilaspur and Una.

Six national highways, including the Chandigarh-Shimla, Kangra-Shimla, Mandi-Kullu and the Mandi-Pathankot links, were among the 923 affected roads.

The maximum 353 roads were blocked in Shimla zone, followed by 255 in Mandi, 164 in Hamirpur and 152 in Kangra, said officials. The Shimla-Kalka rail service was suspended too as landslides buried the track near Jutogh and Kandaghat.

Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur said the state had suffered a loss of around Rs 775 crore as landslides had damaged roads, irrigation and other public projects.

Himachal received 73.8 mm average rain in the past 24 hours, which is 500 per cent more than the normal of 12.3 mm, said Meteorological Department Director Manmohan Singh. Sujanpur Tira in Hamirpur was the wettest place in the state with 307 mm rainfall, followed by Arki in Solan (300 mm) and Nadaun in Hamirpur (285 mm). Shimla received 207.6 mm rainfall while Solan got 163 mm.

                            ,      -          Jairam Thakur (@jairamthakurbjp) August 13, 2018

No travel Advisory

The state government has advised people to avoid travel in view of more rain forecast on Tuesday. Chief Secretary Vineet Chaudhary directed the DCs to ensure nobody ventured near riverbanks, swollen nullahs. Trekkers have been advised to defer their schedule.

7 districts worst hit

Seven of 12 districts, including Solan, Kinnaur, Shimla, Chamba, Mandi, Kullu and Sirmaur, worst affected. Traffic on Chandigarh-Manali NH-21 suspended after water level in the Beas rose near Hanogi temple.

923 roads blocked

Rs 775 cr estimated loss
editorial@tribune.com

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, August 13

Torrential rain has claimed the lives of seven persons, including four children, in Solan district on Monday. Damage caused to roads and bridges runs into crores of rupees.

Four members of a family were buried under debris when a retaining wall adjacent to a hill caved in and fell on the house at Chakla village near Kurgal in Kandaghat around 4 am.

Though villagers and the local administration tried to rescue the family, the latter could not be saved. The deceased were identified as Devinder (32), his wife Meena (28), son Aditya (six) and daughter Harshita (three).

Kandaghat SDM Dr Sanjeev Dhiman said it took them three hours to pull out the bodies.

In another incident, a 12-year-old boy, Himanshu, studying in Eicher School, Parwanoo, drowned in a local nullah at Rani village near the Kaushalya river in Parwanoo. He, along with his grandfather, was trying to cross the nullah when he slipped.

He was washed away in the gushing waters which merged into the Kaushalya river and his body could not be traced.

Parwanoo DSP Ajay Rana said though police personnel, Home Guards and the fire staff had launched a search operation, the body could not be found till the evening.

HP State Electricity Board Limited suffered a loss of Rs 54.90 lakh due to a snag developed in the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh industrial area as well as in Parwanoo.

Its Jharmajri-based substation, from where a major chunk of the 70 MVA power is supplied, was submerged. It took the staff of the local fire station nearly four hours to pump out more than 1 lakh-litre water at the speed of 270 litre per minute, said Superintending Engineer SK Sen.

An approach road to the Sadhupul bridge enroute Chail caved in due to a sudden surge in the water level of the river, causing a loss of Rs 8 lakh-Rs 10 lakh to the Public Works Department.

Executive Engineer, PWD, Kulbir Kumar, said though the bridge was intact, the damaged to approach road had rendered it unsafe, adding that it had to be closed to traffic.

The high water level led the river to change its course and the gushing waters crossed the last pier erected on the Chail side, eroding the wall raised along the approach road.

The bridge was inaugurated in October 2016 and was constructed at a cost of Rs 2.8 crore. It was constructed during the British Raj and had collapsed in 2014.

A water park, constructed with an outlay of Rs 1.25 crore and inaugurated in Sadhupul in June last year, was inundated and a major part of its infrastructure was washed away. Questions have been raised over the selection of its site as the flood threat has been ignored while constructing it. The district received 300 mm of rain in the past 24 hours.

Train services on the Kalka-Shimla heritage rail track remained suspended due to several landslides.

Rainwater accumulated at various places, including the Kandaghat railway station, and the staff were engaged in clearing the slush and water from the track.

Several landslides blocked the traffic on the Parwanoo-Shimla NH-22 and a major landslide near Chakki-Ka-Mor inconvenienced commuters stuck since morning. Though the traffic was restored through the single lane by afternoon, vehicles moved at a snails pace, owing to landslides and a large number of vehicles on the highway.

A 38-year-old youth, Deepak Kumar, was buried under debris near Sai Temple, Garkhal, in the morning.

Another child was reportedly washed away in Surajpur near Piplughat in Arki sub-division, said ADM Vivek Chandel. He added that Rs 55,000 had been disbursed as per the laid-down norms.

The ADM said four head of cattle had perished, causing a loss of Rs 95,000 to owners, while 24 cowsheds had been damaged. The IPH Department suffered a loss of Rs 13,35,000 on account of various irrigation and water supply schemes in the district. This rainy season, the district suffered a loss of Rs 37,24,52,703.
editorial@tribune.com

Dinesh Manhotra

Tribune News Service

Swankhamore (Samba), Aug 13

The country will celebrate its 72nd Independence Day on Wednesday but the third generation of nearly 1.5 lakh refugees, most of whom are Dalits, are still struggling to get themselves liberated from the yoke of slavery.

For these refugees, freedom from the British rule was a farce as they have been protesting since 1947 to get basic rights.

Called West Pakistan refugees in official records, these displaced people from Pakistan Punjab are being treated as unwanted and have been wronged by the successive state governments which have made no serious efforts to solve their humanitarian issues.

For us, independence is nothing but a farce because our third generation is struggling to get basic human rights in J&K, said Labha Ram Gandhi, chairman, West Pakistani Refugees Action Committee.

Gandhi is preparing data of the refugee families living in various camps as the Central government has announced to sanction ex gratia of Rs 5 lakh to each family.

The monetary relief is not going to solve our humanitarian issue. Our main demand is the citizenship right and we are agitating for it since 1947, Gandhi said. He said the refugees from West Pakistan, settled in other parts of the country, were enjoying all rights and privileges.

According to official statistics, as many as 19,960 families of the West Pakistan refugees are living in 137 hamlets, most of them along the Indo-Pak border in the Jammu province, especially in Kathua, Samba and Jammu districts.

Many refugees live in mud houses which have no water and power supply.

Before the formation of the PDP-BJP government, the refugees were given Domicile Certificate which made them eligible for jobs in the Central government.

The BJP had promised to grant them citizenship as a one-time measure. Instead of granting citizenship to the refugees, the BJP even abolished the Domicile Certificate. The party had later promised to grant identity certificates to the refugees but due to the pressure from separatist groups, the proposal was abandoned.

On August 17, 2016, the then Deputy Commissioner, Jammu, had issued an order directing all tehsildars of Jammu district to issue identify certificates to the West Pakistan refugees in the state so that their children could get jobs in the Armed Forces but the process was stalled.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, August 13

Divisional Commissioner of Kashmir Baseer Khan, Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), Law and Order, Munir Khan and Kashmir Inspector General of Police SP Pani met Governor NN Vohra at Raj Bhawan on Monday.

The Governor was briefed on the arrangements put in place for the Independence Day celebrations by the senior civil and police officers of Kashmir division.

Munir Khan also briefed Vohra on the details of the counter-terrorist operation carried out in the Batmaloo area on Sunday morning and the enhanced surveillance in the entire city and its vicinity.
gspannu7@gmail.com

Srinagar, August 13

A jawan was killed as the Army on Monday foiled an infiltration bid by militants in the Tangdhar sector of Jammu and Kashmir, officials said.

In a separate incident, another soldier was killed in a blast in Uri sector last evening, they said.

An Army official said Sepoy Pushpendra Singh laid down his life while foiling an infiltration bid along the Line of Control (LoC) in Tangdhar.

A wreath-laying ceremony will be held for Sepoy Pushpendra Singh at the Badamibagh Army headquarters here tomorrow, the official said.

In another incident, a jawan-Kuldeep Singh Rawat of 4 Garhwal rifles, was killed in the Uri sector yesterday in a blast, a police official said.

It was not immediately clear as to how the blasts took place, he added.

Earlier, an official had said that Pushpendra Singh had also lost his life in a blast. - PTI
editorial@tribune.com

Suhail A Shah

Anantnag, August 13

A 24-year-old civilian was abducted and later shot dead by militants in south Kashmirs Pulwama district, the police said on Monday.

The slain has been identified as Gulzar Ahmad Bhat, a resident of the Murran area in Pulwama.

A senior police officer from Pulwama said Bhat was called out of his house on some pretext by unidentified militants late Sunday evening. He was shot dead later in the night, he added.

Bhats body was recovered in an apple orchard, not far from his home, early Monday morning. Local sources said the people who spotted the body informed the police. He was shot multiple times, a local said.

The J&K Police have blamed the Hizbul Mujahideen for the killing. Initial investigation in the matter suggests that in this incident a group of terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen led by Zahoor Thokar and Showkat Dar is involved in this killing, a police spokesman in Srinagar said.

The body was handed over to the family after medico-legal formalities. Hundreds of locals later in the day attended the funeral prayers.

Locals said Bhat worked as a salesman at an eye clinic in the Bijbehara area of Anantnag district.

Meanwhile, two overground workers (OGWs) were arrested by security forces for attacking and attempting to snatch the rifle of a bank guard in the Khrew area of Pulwama district on August 10. The bank guard had foiled the rifle-snatching attempt.

During the course of investigation, it came across that two OGWs Yasir Ahmad Wani of Babapora and Yawar Sultan of Shar Shali Khrew were involved in the commission of crime and were subsequently arrested. The investigation of the case is still going on, the police spokesman said.

Victim shot multiple times

Gulzar Ahmad Bhat's body was recovered in an apple orchard, not far from his home, early Monday morning. Local sources said the people who spotted the body informed the police. "He was shot multiple times," a local said. Bhat worked as a salesman at an eye clinic in the Bijbehara area of Anantnag district, they said.
ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

Mona

Its that time of the year when you cannot miss a tricolour at every crossing, at every chowk of the city. Buying and placing the national flag on our desk or in the car is just lip service or August 15 actually means something beyond a day off?

Freedom on paper

Freedom is to be able to pursue your dreams. As a young girl who still has to get permission to pursue academics or sports, the countrys independence means little to me, especially when compared with my brother, my age, who can be out for five days in a row without inviting a scorn from the family For me, nights are out of bounds!

That translates into giving up many opportunities that could help me get a better grip on my life. My grouse with men versus women situation in independent India does not take away the gratitude I feel for freedom fighters, who made sure that we are not dominated by another country, another race. In Gandhi ji, I see a shining example on how we can better our lives without violence, which sadly is a state today. If only we could be heard in a civilised manner that befits the largest democracy of the world.

 Aanchal Sharma, student, Govt Post Graduate College for Girls-42

Unaddressed issues

I wish independence we got was not just from the British yoke, but also corruption, poverty, gender inequality or unemployment. These are the issues that stop us from taking pride in our country as one should.

 Tanu Uppal, marketing professional

Slave to the system

As a young student, dont many of us feel like a slave to our system? First, its parents who take the call on what profession you chose. Add to it your paying capability and the fierce competition. I dont feel free in such circumstances. Our freedom fighters fought against an exploitative and oppressive regime. Everyone should be free to choose.

 Amandeep, student, PU

Respect & dignity

Freedom is not just being free from slavery, but also living a life of respect and dignity. Being born in a free country, we take it all for granted but also with this comes the rider to maintain peace and prosperity, sadly something that we are fast forgetting.

 Dilshan Dhillon, student psychology

Privileges exceed challenges

As a society we dont value our country for we havent seen the struggle, the slavery. Its easy to criticise and find faults, but truth remains that we are free to opt for any field, any dream. The youth today has privileges that exceed the challenges. Indias youth that doubleup as the modern-day freedom fighters today have to fight prejudices that plague our society.

 Saurabh Acharya, banker

Truly inspired

A free country is where we pursue life as per our liking. My great-grandfather was a freedom-fighter and I spent considerable time with him, though he never shared tales of the valour. Its Subhash Chandra Bose who inspires me to face the challenges head.

 Jyotinder Kumar, student, GMSSS 16

Full of gratitude

Together as NGO Tammana, we visited the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial to pay respects to martyrs, who fought against all the atrocities for our nation, and taught us the real meaning of courage.

 Isha Kakaria, founder Tammana & Tanusiyaa Events
editorial@tribune.com

Our Correspondent

Payal, August 13

Having penned down half a dozen books on human rights and research methodology, Dr Shveta Dhaliwal, Director, South Asia Service Region (CTRLD) Consortium for Teaching Research and Learning Department, US, aims to start a helpline and a coordinated programme for updating educated youth on various avenues of research career on a global map.

Calling upon students to take more interest in politics and foreign policy making, Dhaliwal argued political awareness affects lives of all significantly.

Addressing a meeting of office-bearers of organisations of the region, Dr Dhaliwal said social activists should work towards spreading awareness about scholarships and fellowship programmes available from time to time so that the youth of the border state could explore the world and develop their own understanding of this globalised world.

Referring to her observations made during the recent prestigious fellowship under the banner of Study of United States Institutions (SUSI), Dr Dhaliwal acknowledged that even countries such as the US intended dispersing elements of their foreign policy among laureates and thinkers of the world.

Presently working Fulbright campus representative at the Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Patiala, Dhaliwal specialises in human rights, regionalism, international relations and political thinking with special focus on South Asia.

Showing concern over lack of platforms for updating educated youths on scholarships and fellowships available at international level, Dr Dhaliwal said she was the only expert to represent India during SISU and there were scholars from 17 other countries such as the UK, Paraguay, Honduras, Egypt, Chile, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Bangladesh, Iraq and others. The programme was hosted by the Center for Civic Engagement, Bard College, Annandale, New York.

Though as an individual I may not reach every aspirant, I wish to reach out to students of the border state through social organisations and schools so that they can avail opportunities being provided by the biggest institutes of the world, said Dr Dhaliwal who is also planning to come out with a book on US Foreign Policy. She is keen to work with schools to have free online courses on human rights which are offered by various institutes.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Rajkot, August 13

Three people, including a father-son duo, were killed and two others injured in a clash between two groups over a land dispute in Gujarats Morbi district, police said on Monday.

Twelve people had been arrested in connection with the incident, they said.

A group, led by one Dhanji Dabhi and his accomplices, attacked members of another group on Sunday night with sharp weapons on Leelapur Road, around 90 km from Rajkot, Morbi talukas police sub-inspector SA Gohil said.

Three members of the other group were seriously injured in the attack, he said.

They were rushed to the Morbi Civil Hospital where doctors declared them dead, he said.

The deceased were identified as Dilawarkhan Pathan (55), his son Momin (30) and nephew Afzal (22).

Two members of the group led by Dhabi were also injured in the clash and admitted to hospital, he said.

Based on a complaint lodged by a relative of the deceased, the police arrested 12 people of the Satwara community, who were named in the FIR, Gohil said.

A land dispute is suspected to be the reason behind the clash, he added. PTI
gspannu7@gmail.com

Yash Goyal

Jaipur, August 13

After 36 years in a Pakistan jail, Gajanand Sharma, a labourer from Jaipur, was on Monday released and handed over to the Indian authorities at Wagah Border in Punjab.

Gajanands wife Makhani Devi and elder son Mukesh are awaiting his arrival in Jaipur through Indian Embassy in next one or two days.

The family today celebrated the Teej festival with fervour and traditional gaiety at their home here.

We have been assured by the Union Minister of State VK Singh in Parliament that my father would be released on this day (August 13), but we were advised to not go to Wagah Border as he (father) would be taken to the Indian Embassy and then he would be returning home, Mukesh told The Tribune.

Though we got a message and a photo of my fathers arrival at the Indian border from well-wishers and TV media, he said.

We, especially my mother who was half-hearted after all the time, are getting more impatient to see him. We are counting days every moment now, he said between sobs.

The reasons of Gajanands disappearance and lodging in Pakistan jail are still a mystery and even Rajasthan Police and Intelligence department are waiting for Gajanands arrival in Jaipur to know from him a true tale of agony.

Last week, VK Singh assured Jaipur MP Ram Charan Bohra and family members of Gajananad who met him in his office in Parlimanet in Delhi.

Seventy years old Makhani Devi had lost all hope that her husband Gajanand would be alive now as he disappeared 36 years ago in 1982 from a small village of Maharkalan in Jaipurs Samod area.

Makhani and her two sons got stunned in May this year when a cop approached for verification of nationality of Gajananad.

We all do not know when and how my father disappeared from our village. My mother who is now 70 is illiterate and approached the police stations, searched here and there but to no avail. She practically did not lodge any FIR anywhere. Slowly we all come to a decision that he is not alive," Mukesh, his elder son who is now 4th class employee in Family Welfare Department, said.

On May 1, a query by the Ministry of External Affairs to confirm the nationality and whereabouts of Gajanand Sharma, the State Intelligence (CID) marked the inquiry to the Samod police station to verify the details.

Meanwhile, the family had moved to Jaipurs Brahampuri area and left the village. Samod police finally traced the affected family and confirmed that it is Gajanand Sharma and presently lodged in Pakitans jail.

On May 18, Samod police SP (Jaipur Rural) Rameshwar Singh had verified to us Gajanands nationality and present location of the family in Jaipurs Brahampuri area. Now IB has marked the inquiry for further verification to DCP-North here, then after receiving it, a report would be submitted to the MEA.

According to a report, Pakistan on Monday released 30 Indian prisoners, including 27 fishermen, from jail as a goodwill gesture ahead of the countrys Independence Day tomorrow.

The release of the prisoners is in line with Pakistans consistent policy of not politicising humanitarian issues, Foreign Office Spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said in a statement.
gspannu7@gmail.com

Lucknow, August 13

Taking a jibe at BJP chief Amit Shahs claim that the saffron party will win 73-plus of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh in 2019, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav said on Monday the BJP was saying this as the shaping up of opposition unity had frightened it.

Samajwadi people are ready (for the Lok Sabha elections). What is our strategy, we will not disclose. But its implementation has begun and see their condition, Yadav told reporters here today.

They are saying they will win 73-plus seats, he said. Forget 73-plus, you have just lost three seats in by-elections, Yadav, a former UP chief minister, said.

He said the BJP should first correct its arithmetic.

The SP chief was distributing laptops to meritorious students at the party headquarters here.

To a question on the possibility of a SP-BSP alliance, he said, Big interviews about this tie-up are appearing in newspapers. A Mahagathbandhan will be formed. It is there and will stay in the future too. As far as UP is concerned, an alliance will be here also.

Earlier, on August 5, BJP president Amit Shah while addressing a gathering in Chandauli had claimed that the opposition was spreading the rumour about the impact on the poll equation in UP if the SP and the BSP come together.

Even if Bua (BSP chief Mayawati), bhatija (Yadav) and Rahul (Gandhi) join hands, our tally (in Lok Sabha from UP) will be 74 instead of 73 now and not even 72, he had said.

Shah had exuded confidence that the BJP and its allies will perform better than 2014 when they wrested 73 of the 80 seats in UP.

In an apparent response, Yadav said today that the people of the state had seen how the BJP had deceived the people and how it had driven a wedge into different communities for political interest, how it triggered spread of hatred among people of different religions.

As the Lok Sabha elections are approaching, the BJP will forget issues like demonetisation, and rake up new issues like defence industrial corridor, Yadav said.

When ordinary roads are not being made and permissions are not being given for construction of bridges, then how and when such a corridor will be built? he asked.

Referring to the laptop distribution initiative, he said it was not a political stunt.

Today, the laptop is a necessity for every child, so the SP during its regime distributed laptops, he said. We distributed then, and are doing it today as well, he added.  PTI
rchopra@tribunemail.com

New Delhi, August 13

Leaders across party lines on Monday condoled the death of former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee, describing him as an outstanding parliamentarian who enriched Indian politics.

Chatterjee, 89, passed away at a private hospital in Kolkata on Monday morning following multiple organ failure.

Tributes poured in as news came in of the death of the 10-time Lok Sabha MP who had joined the CPI(M) in 1968. Chatterjee was speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.

He was a stalwartof Indian politics, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said.

He made our parliamentary democracy richer and was a strong voice for the well-being of the poor and vulnerable, an anguished Prime Minister said, adding that his thoughts were with Chatterjees family and supporters.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi said Chatterjee was an institution and greatly respected and admired by all parliamentarians, across party lines.

Conveying his condolences to Chatterjees family and supporters, BJP chief Amit Shah said Chatterjee was an excellent parliamentarian. His long years as a member of the House enriched parliamentary traditions, he added.

He was a remarkable human being, an eminent parliamentarian and a very clear-headed speaker of the Lok Sabha. I convey my heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family, said former vice president M Hamid Ansari.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal echoed him and termed Chatterjee one of the greatest parliamentarians of contemporary times who would also be remembered as one of the greatest Lok Sabha Speakers India had ever had.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said Chatterjee and she shared a very cordial relationship despite their ideological differences.

He was principled and scholarly, and played a significant role in Indias parliament, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said he would be remembered for his contributions which enriched Indian politics and was an outstanding parliamentarian.

According to former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, Chatterjee through his life had been a democrat, a liberal and a champion of enlarging the constituency for social democracy.

NCP supremo Sharad Pawar said Chatterjee was a dignified person who set high standards of conduct during his stint as the Speaker of Lok Sabha.

The passing away of Somnath-da is great loss for all of us, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said in her condolence message. PTI
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 13

The Congress on Monday petitioned the Election Commission, demanding criminal action against BJP president Amit Shah who, the party alleged, had concealed his liabilities in the Rajya Sabha election affidavit of 2017, in violation of the law. The EC said it would look into the matter.

A high-level Congress delegation comprising Kapil Sibal, Jairam Ramesh, Abhishek Singhvi and Vivek Tankha represented the Chief Election Commissioner on the matter. They alleged Shah had concealed liabilities in respect of two properties in Ahmedabad that he had mortgaged with the Cooperative Bank of Gujarat for his son Jay Shahs company Kusum Finservice that had got a loan of Rs 25 crore against the mortgage.

The mortgaged property is Shahs liability and the question is merely that of disclosure. He must be criminally prosecuted. The EC should file a complaint because its about violation of its own rules, Sibal said. The Congress also urged Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu to follow rules which require suspension and disqualification of MPs who resort to incomplete disclosures in poll affidavits.

Ramesh had on Saturday alleged dubious transactions involving Jay Shahs new firm, asking how the company worth Rs 6 crore had got loans worth Rs 95 crore from Gujarat banks.

GROUNDS: WILFUL NON-DISCLOSURE
editorial@tribune.com

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 12

In an important signal on optimum use of available funds, the armed forces have been asked to avoid fresh accretions  adding any more numbers to the existing strength  while continuing with right-sizing of the Army, Navy and the Air Force.

The matter of force numbers, the resultant man-power costs and redundancy caused due to technological upgrades was raised by a top government official at the two-day Unified Commanders Conference held in New Delhi on July 30 and July 31, sources confirmed to The Tribune. The matter of not increasing numbers was referred to and the rising costs were discussed, a functionary confirmed about the meeting.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is clear: Addition of new equipment (modernisation) does not mean a corresponding rise in the strength of men, said sources. The foundation of this was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi very early into his tenure. In his address at one such conference in December 2015, Modi said: Modernisation and expansion of forces at the same time is a difficult and unnecessary goal. Over the last decade, the armed forces have absorbed a fair amount of technological developments, including communications and digitisation, which means some of the troops can be redeployed.

The high-powered Defence Planning Council (DPC), at its first meeting in May this year, asked for leaner, meaner and restructured armed forces ready for future wars enabled by proper use of budgetary allocations. Army Chief General Bipin Rawat had ordered restructuring of the Army on June 12 this year.

The Army, the biggest of the three armed forces, about 1.3-million strong, has been asked to improve its teeth-to-tail ratio. In simple words, it means have more fighting units and reduce non-fighting numbers. Last year, the MoD announced a major change as 57,000 officers and soldiers were to be redeployed to have more combat-oriented roles by 2019.

It was an outcome of a committee headed by Lt Gen DB Shekatkar (retd), which suggested 99 points for structural changes in the Army, among them being cutting down flab and reducing revenue (maintenance) expenditure. Of these, the MoD has accepted 65 suggestions.

Focus on right-sizing
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Thanjavur, August 13

A 50-year-old French tourist was found murdered in a village in the district and a local acquaintance arrested for allegedly killing him, police said on Monday.

The killing came to light on Sunday after the half-burnt body of M Pierre Boutier wrapped in a gunny bag was found in an irrigation channel.

Police arrested 29-year old Thirumurugan, a resident of Avikkottai village in the district, on the charge of killing the French national whom he had befriended during a visit to Mahabalipuram recently.

According to police, Thirumurugan, who surrendered on his own on Sunday, confessed to the crime.

The two were allegedly in a homosexual relation and Boutier had come to Avikottai on August 5 on an invitation by Thirumurugan.

Some days ago, when both were consuming liquor an argument broke out and Thirumurugan allegedly attacked the Frenchman, killing him on the spot.

He subsequently attempted to burn the body and wrapped it in a gunny bag and dumped it into the Ullikottai irrigation channel, police said.

On being informed by the locals, police recovered the body and also found Boutiers passport. PTI
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 13

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Uttar Pradesh government on a petition filed by three survivors of the Hapur lynching case seeking a court-monitored probe by a special investigation team (SIT) in the incident.

The petitioners have sought cancellation of bail granted to two of the four accused and transferring the trial to a court outside Uttar Pradesh.

A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra asked Inspector General of Police (IGP), Meerut Range, to file a report on the issue in two weeks.

The Bench--which also included Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice DY Chandrachud--ordered the IGP to arrange recording of statements of the three petitioners under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code before a Judicial Magistrate.

The Bench also directed the Superintendent of Police concerned to provide security to the injured survivors--now witnesses in the case--after senior counsel KV Viswanathan submitted that it was necessary to instil a sense of security in them.

The Bench refused to allow the accused to intervene in the case.

The incident occurred on June 18--a day after the SC issued guidelines to check lynchings--when one of the survivors--65-year-old Samaydeen was with 45-year-old meat trader Qasim Qureishi. An alleged mob of gau-rakshaks attacked them for allegedly killing a cow. Video-recording of the incident showed that both Qureishi and the petitioner were beaten up and the petitioners beard was pulled. Qureishi died in the incident.

Last week, advocate Vrinda Grover had mentioned the survivors plea before the CJIs Bench which had posted it for hearing on Monday.

The petitioners alleged that the police violated the Supreme Courts verdict in the mob lynching case. They had raised questions over the conduct of the police as the FIR described the crime as as road rage.

The petitioners said they apprehened threat to their lives.

The police FIR named one Yudhishthir Singh Sisodia as the main accused. Four people were arrested but Sisodia was let off on bail a few days later. He had claimed that he was not present at the spot. But a sting conducted by a TV news channel showed him talking about the crime.
amansharma@tribunemail.com

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 13

The Congress on Monday petitioned the Election Commission demanding criminal action against BJP president Amit Shah who, they alleged, had hidden his liabilities in the Rajya Sabha election affidavit of 2017, in violation of the law.

A high-level Congress delegation comprising Kapil Sibal, Jairam Ramesh, Abhishek Singhvi and Vivek Tankha today represented the Chief Election Commissioner on this matter and said Rajya Sabha MP Amit Shah had violated election law by concealing liabilities in respect of two properties he mortgaged for his son Jay Shah in Gujarat.

The EC had in 2004 laid down rules mandating disclosure of assets and liabilities by all contesting candidates in their Election affidavits.

Consequently, the Supreme Court reiterated this requirement in its judgments and rules such disclosures to be absolutely essential and suppression to be inexcusable.

Under Section 125 A of the Representation of People's Act, concealment can lead to criminal prosecution and six months in jail.

The Congress has asked the EC to invoke its 2004 rules and lodge a criminal complaint against Shah who became a Rajya Sabha MP last year.

The party says it can also lodge a complaint but won't because "it doesn't want to make this a political issue".

Under question is Shah's July 24, 2017 election affidavit which discloses his assets but allegedly hides two of his liabilities.

Sibal today said Shah had mortgaged two properties in Ahmedabad to the cooperative bank of Gujarat as mortgage for his son's company Kusum Finservice which got a loan of Rs 25 crore against the mortgage.

"The mortgaged property is a liability of Amit Shah and the question was merely of disclosure. He hasn't disclosed this and must be criminally prosecuted. EC should file the complaint because it's about the violation of their own rules," Sibal said.

The Congress also urged Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu to follow rules which require suspension and disqualification of MPs who resort to incomplete disclosures in poll affidavits.

EC says it will look into the matter.

Jairam Ramesh has on Saturday alleged dubious transactions involving Jay Shah's new firm and also asked how his company with a worth of Rs 6 crore got loans worth Rs 95 crore from Gujarat banks.
sanjiv@tribunemail.com

Tribune News Service

Amritsar/Jaipur, August 13

Jaipur native Gajanand Sharma, 69, was among the 29 Indian prisoners repatriated on Monday via the Attari-Wagah joint check post (JCP) on the eve of Pakistans Independence Day (August 14). None of his family members were there to receive him. They were not intimated about his release, after 36 long years.

Gajanand, a labourer, and other freed prisoners  all fishermen  will remain in the custody of the immigration authorities till their kin turn up to take them home As a reciprocal goodwill gesture, seven Pakistani prisoners too have been repatriated by the Indian authorities.

Gajanand, then aged 33, went missing from Jaipur in 1982. He was unable to recall under what circumstances he had crossed over. Indian officials too were silent about it.

Back home in Fatehram ka Tiba, under Nahargarh police station, Gajanands wife Makhani Devi, their sons Rakesh and Mukesh, their wives and children are eagerly awaiting his arrival. The family had no clue about his whereabouts till approached by officials from the office of the SP (Jaipur-Rural) in May this year. They wanted to verify Gajanands antecedents.

Mukesh, who works with the Social Welfare Department at Jaipur, said his mother had to toil hard to raise the children all by herself.

I was only 12 when my father went missing, he said.

Being illiterate, my mother did not file a missing persons report. Nor did the police act on her complaint. But to our utter surprise, a police team approached us in the first week of May, carrying papers that testified my father was alive and lodged in the Lahore jail.

Subsequently, our local MP Ramcharan Bohara approached the External Affairs Ministry to expedite the process for his release. We were told to wait for a call from the External Affairs Ministry. Thats why we did not reach Wagah to receive him. All of us, especially my mother, are only too impatient to be with him, he said, sobbing.
sanjiv@tribunemail.com

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 13

It is a concept that does not find resonance with other political parties, but the BJP today raised the pitch for simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the country. BJP chief Amit Shah, in a letter to Law Commission Chairperson Balbir Singh Cahuhan, said one nation, one poll would not just cut down expenses but also enable lawmakers to concentrate on development and governance in the country.

The BJP pitch added to prevailing speculations on simultaneous polls in the country from the next round itself, which leaders dismissed.

Opposition to simultaneous polls seems to be politically motivated, said Shah, in an exhaustive letter running into eight pages where he recounted how during 2016-17 some parts of Maharashtra remained under the aachaar sanhita  election code of conduct  for 307 of the 365 days.

Similar situations were witnessed in other states as well, he said, asserting that due to election cycles in various states throughout the year, developmental works get affected. The perpetual election process strained national resources and hampered development works and policy decisions, leading to extra expenditure and wastage of manpower deputed on the election-related duty.

A BJP delegation led by Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Rajya Sabha MPs Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, Bhupendra Yadav and Anil Baluni also met Justice Chauhan with Shahs letter recommending necessary amendments to the Constitution to realise the idea. The delegation said legal provisions should be amended to avoid frequent elections hampering development works in states.
editorial@tribune.com

Shubhadeep Choudhury

Tribune News Service

Kolkata, August 12

Controversial retired High Court judge CS Karnan has kicked up a fresh controversy. He has refused to vacate the official residence allotted to him in Kolkata, saying the flat had served as a court and the order passed by him from the court against eight SC judges still awaits execution.

Karnan, who underwent six months imprisonment for contempt of court following a Supreme Court order, has said he cannot leave the house till his order against eight SC judges, including then CJI JS Kehar and the incumbent CJI Dipak Misra, is executed.

In a letter addressed to Registrar General of Calcutta HC, Karnan said he passed a judicial order against the eight SC judges under the atrocities Act on May 8, 2017. Since he was barred by the SC from attending the HC, so the order against the SC judges was pronounced from his residence by treating it as a makeshift court, Karnan said.

Karnan, who was asked by the SC to undergo psychiatric evaluation, said as a lawful tenant, he was prepared to pay rent for the flat to its owners and if necessary, he was even ready to purchase the property. Karnan retired on June 12 last year, a week before he was taken into custody by the police from Coimbatore on the instructions of the SC after he evaded arrest for more than a month.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

KV Prasad

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 13

Somnath Chatterjee will best be remembered for three things--a catalyst for opposition unity, Speaker of the Lok Sabha and rebel in his own party--all in a span of nine years.

Known as one of the most articulate Marxist parliamentarians, Chatterjee started acquiring a national profile since the start of the new millennium as he began organising meetings of opposition leaders at his Ashoka Road residence.

Read: Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee passes away at 89

It was at these conclaves that the Marxist leader became a bridge between the Congress under Sonia Gandhi and other political leaders outside the BJP-led NDA fold, including the Samajwadi Party.

These meetings, including a dinner in 2003 on the eve of a surprise move by the Congress to move a no-confidence motion against the Vajpayee government, proved to be the catalyst for what turned out to be Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.

Chatterjees proximity and approachable attitude and ability to break free from classical Marxist trappings perhaps led Sonia Gandhi to offer him the Speakership when the UPA rode to power in the summer of 2004. Such was his persona that he was among the few MPs who could walk into PM Atal Bihari Vajpayees office without an appointment.

Election as the Speaker, in a way, ended the fine run of this outstanding parliamentarian who could speak on any subject with authority and would be heard with rapt attention from across the aisle.

A stickler for rules and precedents, Chatterjee brought a new toughness to office.

He expected discipline in the House and often reminded members that they did not have to disturb another member just to underscore their disagreement with the views being placed. Hearing does not mean agreeing, you can respond when your turn comes, was his refrain, often in vain.

Aware of the dignity of the House, he once pulled up a Union minister, who was also his predecessor, for missing his turn when the ministers name was called to lay the official papers listed, stating this was not expected of the person.

Yet having been an MP in the opposition for long, he knew the burden of expectations on a member. When I sit in the Chair and look around in the House, I see a mini-India, Chatterjee told this writer after completion of one year in office while noting with a tinge of regret for his inability to accommodate all members whose hands went up seeking to grab his attention to ask a supplementary during Question Hour.

Chatterjee steadfastly guarded power of the legislature and at times commented on other organs, especially the judiciary, when he interpreted any move as an attempt to encroach upon parliamentary domain.

There were other momentous events too. It was during his tenure that 10 Lok Sabha members faced expulsions after the cash-for-questions scandal surfaced; a former secretary-general was admonished for privilege; and towards the end, there was another scandal in the form of cash for votes during the 2008 Trust vote by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Ironically, the July 2008 trust vote led to Chatterjees expulsion from the CPI (M) since the party wanted him to step down from the Chair and vote against the motion. He preferred to conduct the proceedings till the vote was taken.

The CPI (M) was ideologically against the Manmohan Singh government moving ahead on the nuclear deal with the US, the reason for the Left parties to withdraw outside support to the UPA. Expectedly, marching orders followed soon.

According to party insiders, the Politbureau wanted Chatterjee to be expelled before the vote but intervention by then general secretary Prakash Karat to avoid the situation turning into the CPI (M) versus Chatterjee rather than the Left versus UPA carried the day but ended membership of this stalwart. He remained a Communist-Marxist till death, party or no party.
amansharma@tribunemail.com

Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, August 13

Though there are agencies which look into the functioning of shelter homes in Bihar and provide some kind of checks and balances, everything failed in the case of the Muzaffarpur institution where female inmates were regularly raped, says the head of the research team which blew the lid off the sordid goings-on there.

"There are different agencies which look into the functioning of the shelter homes. There is the Child Protection Officer and there is the Child Welfare Committee with judicial powers. However, in this case there was a total breakdown of all norms. The child protection officer and the member of the Child Welfare Committee had all become parties to the crimes," says Mohammad Tarique, Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, who led a team of researchers which studied the shelter homes in Bihar.

According to Tarique, the eight-member TISS team studied 110 shelter homes in Bihar's 35 districts over a period of seven months. Of them at least 15 of them required corrective action. "Though some of them require serious intervention none were as bad as the shelter home at Muzaffarpur," says Tarique.

The 34-year old researcher, who has been involved with social work since his student days, says the social audit of Bihar's shelter homes was the brainchild of Atul Prasad, Principal Secretary, Social Welfare Department, Government of Bihar. Apparently, Prasad had heard of some malpractices at some of the shelter homes and got TISS to carry out a social audit of all the institutions in the state.

While many of the shelter homes are run by the government, private agencies and non-government organisations also run such facilities.

Incidentally, Tarique and his team did not face any resistance even at the Muzaffarpur shelter home where its female inmates, including minors, were trafficked by their care-takers. "We did not face any resistance of intimidation. There were orders from the authorities to carry out the audit and there were no problems," says Tarique.

It is not clear whether similar social audits have been conducted at shelter homes in other states of India. However, the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi is toying with the idea of conducting similar audits in the national capital. "There have been informal discussions but nothing has been finalised as yet," says Tarique.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Barnala, August 13

Peeved at the removal of Sukhpal Khaira as the Leader of Opposition, some former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) volunteers on Monday gheraoed MP Bhagwant Mann at Pandori village after the cremation of Kaka Singh, father of Mehal Kalan MLA Kulwant Singh Pandori.

After the cremation, when Mann sat in his vehicle to leave, some ex-volunteers, who had recently resigned from their positions to protest the removal of Khaira, started asking him to discuss with them issues due to which the partys prospects were getting affected. Mann assured them that he would discuss all issues in the coming days.

Its really surprising that they did not care that I was there to attend the cremation of an MLAs father. They started misbehaving with me, tried to snatch the weapon of my security guard and also pushed him. It all happened in the presence of the Mehal Kalan SHO, who also tried to stop them from misbehaving, Bhagwant Mann told The Tribune.

Kulwant Singh Pandori alleged that some AAP leaders from Mehal Kalan had become puppets in the hands of disgruntled party leaders.

Amandeep Singh, Nirmal Singh, Kaka Singh, Pargat Singh and Gagan and others tried to stop Mann. They were threatening me too. They have resigned from all party positions and now are trying to provoke people against me and the party, alleged Pandori.

When contacted, Mehal Kalan Station House Officer (SHO) Shamsher Singh said he had called the security staff of Mann to the police station to record their statements.

We will take legal action after recording their statements, he said.

No rally at Issru: Khaira
editorial@tribune.com

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, August 12

The Kerala police team, in city to probe the rape charges against Jalandhar Bishop Franco Mulakkal, was reportedly told by a few nuns it interrogated on Sunday about a programme titled A day with the shepherd that the Bishop ran during 2014-16.

After prayers, the Bishop would summon nuns, at times in private, till 10 pm in the night. The programme was reportedly scrapped after some of them raised objections. It was in this connection that the Kerala police on Sunday questioned Father Antony, director of a pastoral centre near Trinity College, for more than three hours.

It was in a hall at this pastoral centre that the programme was held.

The Kerala police team, led by Vaikom DSP K Subhash, reportedly looked for entries in computers or otherwise for those attending the programme held during the tenure of Sister Regina, Superior General of Missionaries of Jesus. The complainant nun, who worked on the post before her, left Jalandhar for Kerala in 2013.

Father Peter, PRO, Jalandhar Diocese, said the programme was started in June 2014.

It was run for a year and a half. Started at the insistence of the nuns, there would be prayers and motivational sessions during the day after which the nuns would go to the Bishop for personal questions or confession. Even if held in private till late, the door was always kept ajar. The programme was stopped as the Bishops responsibilities increased and he had no time for it.

Some elements within our community are attempting to malign the Bishop, put pressure on the investigating team and mislead the public, he maintained. The Kottayam police chief said they were trying to ascertain the motive and had quizzed Father Antony. The team also visited Majitha in Amritsar to quiz a cousin of the complainant nun, Father Sebastian Pallasery.
sanjiv@tribunemail.com

Jalandhar, August 13

The Kerala police quizzed Jalandhar Bishop Franco Mulakkal in an alleged rape case late Monday evening amid high drama. The probe team found the Bishop missing as it reached his residence at about 3.15 pm.

His lawyer Mandeep S Sachdev, who visited Bishops House four times, refused to say anything but hinted his client had not received a police notice. He said they had not moved court for anticipatory bail, putting to rest rumours on the Bishops likely arrest. The lawyer claimed 40 nuns had met the inquiry team at Bishops House and given statements in his favour.

A formal notice was issued to Bishop Mulakkal asking him to appear before the police team at 8 pm, it was later learnt. Top Kerala police officers reportedly put pressure on the Bishop to cooperate and appear before the probe team without delay.

As the Bishop arrived in a convoy at 7.45 pm, his guards and some supporters manhandled mediapersons from Kerala. The Kerala police team, in Jalandhar since Friday last, also quizzed Father Antony and Jalandhar Diocese PRO Father Peter at the Police Lines.  TNS
monicakchauhan@gmail.com

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, August 13

Three days after the Kerala Police team arrived in Jalandhar to investigate the alleged rape case lodged by a nun, the cops finally went inside the premises of Bishop House at 3.15 pm on Monday. In the evening, Bishop Franco Mulakkal too reached the Bishop House.

His lawyer said he just got a notice that the Bishop should appear before police at 8 pm. The Bishop was around and so he came back, he added.

The interrogation is expected to go on for at least two hours.

The inquiry team led by Vaikom DSP K Subhash came accompanied by the Jalandhar Police. Ahead of the arrival of the team, the road leading to the Bishop House was barricaded from both sides.

His lawyer Mandeep S Sachdev visited the Bishop House to discuss the case. Even though there have been speculations that the Bishop could be arrested, the lawyer earlier said no anticipatory bail had been moved in the court.

In the day, the team interrogated two priests Father Antony and Jalandhar Diocese PRO Father Peter at Police Lines.

The team had met some nuns and ex-nuns at the Missionaries of Jesus and priests in the last few days and recorded their statements.
editorial@tribune.com

Anirudh Gupta

Ferozepur, August 12

Fourty-seven years after four spans of the bridge over the Sutlej along the Hussainiwala barrage were blown off by Indian troops during the 1971 India-Pakistan war to prevent Pakistani armoured forces from advancing towards Ferozepur, Union Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday dedicated a new bridge at the site.

Completed by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), this strategically important 280-foot-long bridge will benefit residents of 12 border

villages in Hussainiwala enclave, besides supporting offensive operations towards Kasur, located south of Lahore in Pakistan.

Sitharaman said it was an honour for her to inaugurate the bridge  blown off on the night of December 3-4, 1971  at this historic and sacred place where martyrs Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were unceremoniously cremated by the British.

After the 1971 war, the Army built a Bailey bridge to restore communication from the Hussainiwala barrage to Ferozepur. As the temporary bridge developed cracks, the Army decided to replace it. Subsequently, the BRO was entrusted with Project Chetak. Engineers of 49 Border Road Task Force completed the new bridge on existing piers and abutment.

This bridge will promote business, agriculture and better movement of Army vehicles and ammunition, Sitharaman said, lauding the BRO for completing the project ahead of schedule.

We will never allow the enemy to occupy an inch of space of this land ever, she told the jawans who raised slogans of Western Command Zindabad. At the National Martyrs Memorial, a teary-eyed Sitharaman paid tributes to the martyrs.

Meanwhile, Punjab minister Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi and MP Sher Singh Ghubaya handed over memorandums to her. Sodhi demanded that farmers with land-holdings between the barbed wire fence and Zero Line be paid relief at Rs 20,000 per acre and they be granted proprietary rights.
editorial@tribune.com

Rajmeet Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 13

To win over young voters ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress has decided to launch a campaign involving its popular leaders.

On the directives of the Congress president Rahul Gandhi, the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) has roped in leaders such as Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, PWD Minister Vijay Inder Singla and MP Ravneet Bittu to spearhead its campaign Soch Se Soch Ki Ladaai. Under the programme, debates will be held between young participants and party leaders on issues such as drugs, hatred, and anarchy.

Young MLAs such as Amrinder Singh Raja Warring, Kulbir Zira, Barinderjit Pahra and Dalbir Goldy will also be involved.

AICC joint secretary and IYC incharge Krishna Allavaru and IYC president Keshav Chand Yadav were in attendance at one such debate organised for college students in Jalandhar. Allavaru, a confidant of Rahul, and Sidhu also participated in the debate that was streamed live on Facebook and Twitter. State IYC president Amarpreet Lally said the debates would offer a platform to the young participants to speak on topics concerning them.

Similar campaigns will be launched in states where Assembly elections are round the corner. These include Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

Amit Bawa, IYC spokesperson, said the programmes would be taken to the district and block levels across the state. A senior party leader said: Taking a cue from poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who had played a key role in tapping the youth in the 2017 Punjab elections, the party wants to make it an ideology fight with the BJP rather than Rahul Gandhi versus Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha elections.
laxmi@tribune.com

Fasihur Rehman Khan

Islamabad, August 13

On the first day of the opening session of newly elected National Assembly, vested interests and political compulsions forced Pakistans opposition parties into a disjointed and divided mode as Imran Khan is all set to become the prime minister.

The two main opposition parties  PML-N and PPP  supposed to contest prime minister and speakership vote jointly against Imran Khan led PTI, remained at arms length when the Monday session opened for oath of all members.

Former President Asif Ali Zardari, who shares PPP leadership with son Bilawal Bhutto, didnt shake hands with PML-N President even when sitting in proximity at front rows of Parliament. Neither did Imran Khan exchange any pleasantry with Asif Zardari or Shahbaz Sharif amid speculations that PPP may be low key or withdraw its joint candidate for Speakership in favour of PTIs Asad Qaiser. Or behave lukewarm towards Shahbaz Sharifs candidature in voting as he faces Imran Khan for premiership race on August 17. To meet this end, a photo opportunity and handshake was carved out and stage managed between Imran Khan and Bilawal Bhutto in the National Assembly hall as both exchanged pleasantries.

Pakistans 15th National Assembly commenced on Monday with oath taking of new legislators and to kick start a democratic process that will culminate on Friday after election of new prime minister and Speaker.

Imran Khan is all set to become PM by August 17 as he and cabinet members will take oath of office the next day.

Shahbaz Sharif, former Punjab chief minister, will become the Opposition leader. And PTIs Asad Qaiser is expected to easily get elected as Speaker.

Imran borrows waistcoat for photo

Islamabad: Pakistans Prime Minister-in-waiting Imran Khan on Monday borrowed a waistcoat from an employee of the National Assembly to pose for a photograph for his parliamentary registration card, a media report said on Monday. Khan arrived in parliament wearing a traditional white salwar kameez to attend the maiden session of the National Assembly. He first got himself registered at the parliament. He then asked for a waistcoat to pose for a registration card picture, Urdu langauge daily Jang reported. PTI

Jailed Sharif appears in court

Islamabad: Pakistans jailed former PM Nawaz Sharif on Monday appeared before an accountability court hearing two graft cases against him and his family, but the proceeding was adjourned till Wednesday following disturbance caused by reports of firing outside the court premises. The PML-N leader appeared before the court for hearing in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills and the Hill Metal Establishment cases. Sharif was brought to the court in an armoured vehicle and was taken back to the high-security jail after the hearing. PTI

Shehbaz, Bilawal to lose security deposit

Islamabad: PML-N chief Shehbaz Sharif and chairman of the PPP Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari are among the candidates whose security deposit will be forfeited for failing to get 25 per cent of the total votes polled in their constituencies in the July 25 elections, according to a media report on Monday. PTI
laxmi@tribune.com

BRIDGEWATER: Former presidential adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman has said she secretly recorded conversations she had in the White House, including her firing by chief of staff John Kelly in the high-security situation room. It was a highly unusual admission, which drew immediate fire from allies of the president. AP

China imposes cooling-off period to check divorce rate

Beijing: Chinese courts are imposing cooling-off periods to couples seeking legal separation to reconsider their decision in a bid to check the sharp increase of divorce rate in the country. In the past two years, cooling-off periods  lasting from two weeks to three months  have been imposed on couples filing for divorce in 118 courts across Beijing and Sichuan and Shandong provinces, the state-run China Daily reported on Monday. PTI

Lankas top cop asks police to learn Hindi, Chinese

Colombo: Sri Lankas Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundera has directed the countrys tourist police personnel to learn international languages, including Hindi, Chinese and French, as the tourism sector is set to be the biggest forex earner for the island nation. As many as 2,06,337 tourists visited Sri Lanka during the first six months of 2018. PTI

Pakistani couple found kissing in car, arrested

Islamabad: A young Pakistani couple have been arrested for allegedly kissing and cuddling in a car here, a media report said on Monday. The couple, aged around 18-19 years, have been booked for obscene acts, an offence punishable with imprisonment for up to three months, or with fine, or both, The Express Tribune reported. PTI

Great fall

Vigo: A cop inspects the seafront platform at Vigo in northwest Spain after a section of a wooden promenade collapsed with people watching a rap artist just before midnight on Sunday. At least 316 people were injured in the mishap. AFP
singhking99@yahoo.com

New York: US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has erroneously referred to Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla, who was shot dead in a hate crime at a suburban Kansas City bar last year, as a Sikh. Sessions, Americas top law enforcement official, said this while addressing the Alliance Defending Freedoms Summit on Religious Liberty on August 8, a day after US Navy veteran Adam Purinton of Olathe was awarded three consecutive life sentences for the crime. Yesterday, we obtained a life sentence for a man who murdered an Indian-American man, a Sikh as it turned out, because he thought he was a Muslim, Sessions said. PTI

Paks chaiwala MNA-elect turns out to be millionaire

Peshawar: A Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf MNA-elect, who was widely reported to be a chaiwala (tea seller) during the election campaign, has turned out to be a millionaire, according to a media report. Gul Zafar Khan, who won from NA-41 (Bajaur) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, owns assets worth over Rs 30 million, Geo TV reported, citing the documents submitted by him to the Election Commission of Pakistan. The documents say that the MNA-elect owns a garment business. He used to make tea at a hotel in Rawalpindi before he was given ticket by Imran Khans party. PTI

Dwarkanath Tagore bust unveiled in London

London: Prince Dwarkanath Tagore, best known for his significant role in the Bengal Renaissance of the 19th century, has been honoured with a new bust in London. The grandfather of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore was among the first Indian industrialists, also known as merchant princes, investing in a range of businesses from steam engines to banking in the 1820s. He died during a visit to the UK in August 1846 and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in north-west London, where his bust was unveiled on Saturday. PTI

No room in US for neo-nazism: Ivanka

Washington: Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trumps daughter and a White House adviser, has explicitly condemned white supremacy, racism and neo-nazism in a manner her father seems reluctant to do. The tweets come on the anniversary of deadly unrest triggered by a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.One year ago in Charlottesville, we witnessed an ugly display of hatred, racism, bigotry & violence, Ivanka tweeted. While Americans are blessed to live in a nation that protects liberty, freedom of speech and diversity of opinion, there is no place for white supremacy, racism and neo-nazism in our great country, she said. AFP
Sponsored: Ministry of Planning

Climate Change and Land Degradation are two significant environmental issues facing the world today. We see many countries in the news talking about their strategies towards dealing with these, but what is our country doing?

More here
Hello, I am looking fo a bit of help finalizing a 3 week (24 days on the ground) family vacation to Australia in September. Traveling will be me and the wife and two kids, aged 4 years and an infant 2 months. We are flying in and out of Sydney and will spend ~6 days each in Sydney and Melbourne and looking to see how best to allocate remaining days:

We are trying to see if we spend 6 days in the South Coast in Byron and Noosa. Partial concern with South Coast is it will be the 2nd week of September and the weather may not be ideal to best take advantage of the local.

1. We are also debating if we should drive up from Sydney or fly?

2. Is it better to go further north to Port Douglas or Darwin?

The other 6 days we are trying to decide on two itineraries, but are also open to other thoughts:

1. Break up into 3 day drive on the Great Ocean Road and the other 3 days in Tasmania

2. Fly to Christchurch and drive down to Queenstown before heading back to Sydney to return home

Thank you much for all your suggestions and input. Happy Travels!
When we travel overseas we rely on wifi at accommodation and use WhatsApp to communicate with family and friends at home. FaceTime to video call. Download maps when we have wifi to use offline- think thats how it works.

Others might be more help than me to answer specific questions but Ill have a go-

Some areas between towns on your travels have no mobile reception should that be an issue.

Its old fashioned, but Visitor Centres on that route have really useful printed maps ( free). Worth having as backup. Plus all main tourist attractions, wineries etc are on them.
My partner and I have been given a 6 night stay at a luxury resort in Nha Trang in Vietnam. We have decided to extend it to a 3 week trip between Vietnam and Cambodia. We will be travelling in January 2019. I've been overseas several times but he never has and this will be our first time travelling together. We are interested in history, culture, food, beaches and beautiful scenery.

This is a rough itinerary I have done for the Vietnam part of our trip, for which I have allocated 14 nights. I have done it based on geography and a couple of blogs I have read on the internet that have pointed out interesting things to do in each place. Please let me know if you think this will be feasible, enjoyable and if we will be missing any major sites. Also any ideas on travelling between cities, we probably wouldn't feel confident driving ourselves.

Fly into Ho Chi Minh- stay 2 days/3 nights

travel to Nah Trang- Stay 7 days/six nights

Travel to Hoi An- stay 2 days/1 night

Travel to Thua Thien Hue- stay 2 days/1 night

Travel to Hanoi- Stay 2 days/3 nights

Fly from Hanoi to Cambodia.

Any advice would be appreciated, I'm feeling really overwhelmed! Thank you.
Hello Fellow Travelers!

My husband and I are finalizing our 5 year anniversary trip to Japan and we already have all of our accommodations nailed down. Whoo Hooo!! Alas, the transportation planning has us stumped, as we have a rather unusual route. We will arrive at Tokyo Narita on Saturday October 13th and take the Keisei Bus to Tokyo Station. We plan to walk and explore Asakusa and Ueno until Monday the 15th, when we start our 7 Day JR Pass and leave for Mt Fuji - Lake Kawaguchiko. We have reservations at Onsen Konansou for 2 nights, then we will leave Wednesday morning the 17th for Kyoto. We are staying at K's House Hostel in Kyoto 2 nights, and headed back to Tokyo on Friday the 19th, possibly the afternoon. We have about 2 more days in Tokyo before our flight on Sunday afternoon the 21st.

My questions are as follows:

1. What would be a good plan for our Bus Ticket from Narita to Tokyo Station, as we must allow plenty of time to exit our plane, go through customs, purchase our Suica Card and Pocket Wifi, and whatever Yen we decide to exchange. Would 2 hours be sufficient to get all of this done? I would like to purchase our Bus Ticket in advance but I don't want to miss the bus due to a flight delay or some other unexpected inconvenience. I have heard that these buses fill up quickly and we don't want to be at the airport for hours waiting to get a ride into town.

2. Knowing that Tokyo to Mt Fuji is the shortest route in our trip, we decided to make that our first stop. I want to be sure that we find the most efficient means, hopefully by Shinkansen until we have to use a non-JR line. The hotel offers a shuttle from Kawaguchiko Station, but it's actually only a 10 minute walk. Here is the route they recommend on their site - JR Shinjuku  (Express Service)  Otsuki Station  (Fuji-Kyuko Line)  Kawaguchiko Station. Is there a better/faster route? Are there typically trains scheduled early on Monday mornings for this route?

3. Mt. Fuji ( Lake Kawaguchiko ) to Kyoto Station. We would like to leave early on Wednesday morning. We would like to avoid additional payments and also not have to spend time returning to Tokyo. This may prove impossible, but we are looking for the cheapest and fastest route. Help!

4.Finally, Kyoto back to Tokyo. Using our JR Pass, it seems our best option is Hikari, since Nozomi is not covered. Is this correct?

5. Would it be safe to reserve seats on all trains only a day in advance or is that too risky? If we want to allow some flexibility in our schedule to perhaps leave Mt Fuji for Kyoto a little later than planned, how likely is it that we would find two tickets a day in advance for all the trains and routes that it takes to get us there? I'm also aware that some trains only make a few trips per day, limiting these options.

Thanks in advance for any advice!!
Hi all,

I will be travelling to Asia over December & January.

Trip is Vietnam for about 12 nights, then South Korea for about 5 nights, then Japan for about 12 nights as well.

I am looking at the options to fly into Japan, and either looking at Tokyo or Osaka.

So my initial plan was to arrive into Tokyo, spend about 4 to 5 nights, then heading down to Osaka, spend a few nights, then onto Kobe & Kyoto for maybe a night each then to Hiroshima for maybe 2 nights, then head back to Osaka to catch my flight out.

I was looking at doing all internal travel by rail, and was looking at the rail options which is about $259 for 7 nights, but wondering if I can get to all those places I want to via rail, and hopefully catch the bullet train at some point on the trip.

Anybody have any experience on the rail options, and any advice for me, on rail travel or even if I should change my trip around and enter through Osaka and then make my way around.

Would really appreciate the advice and any other travel tips on what to see & what to miss.

Thanks in advance.
Land is a very important asset to many African communities. It is common to hear cases of family members fighting over a specific piece of land or of children demanding land inheritance from their parents way before they are even dead! So, while the population in Africa keeps increasing, the land becomes one of the most sought-after commodities... What we all know is that the most populous African country is Nigeria with over 150 million inhabitants. But is Algeria the largest country in the African continent based on size with a landmass of around 2,381,741 km?

Does having the largest land mass imply that the country has the largest population?

Regardless of whether a country has a large or small landmass, population growth and modern development continue to mount intense competition for land resources, especially in areas close to the cities or in high-value geographical locations.

With over 50 countries in the African continent, which is the largest in terms of land mass and population size? Read on to find out.

The largest country in Africa by size

With a population of 38.7 million, Algeria has not only the largest land mass in Africa, but it also ranked the tenth largest in the world. What is so interesting about this country is that its 90% desert and its crude oil reserves are the 16th largest in the world.

With such a vast land size, it is interesting to note that only around 3% is cultivated. Algerias official language is Arabic, but the people also speak Berber, and a bit of English is taught in schools.

2. The Democratic Republic of the Congo 2,267,050 km

Apart from ranking as the second largest country in Africa, Congo is the 11th largest in the world with regards to land size and is home to 1.1 percent of the world population. The land is rich in various natural resources and is home to Mount Stanley which is the third highest mountain in Africa.

Named after the Congo River, this country goes by many names such as Zaire, DRC Congo, Congo and Congo Kinshasa. They also have an active volcano called Nyiragongo.

Sudan was the largest country in Africa by land size before South Sudan separated in 2011. It is now the third largest with a population size of about 41 million. Nearly 70% of the population belongs to the ethnic group Sudanese Arabs while the rest belong to various ethnic groups like Nuba, Fur, Fallata, and Beja.

Did you know that Sudan is a multilingual nation with over 100 native languages and more than 500 accents? While petroleum is their major natural resource, the country can also boast of mining several minerals including gold, copper, chromium ore and mica.

4. Libya 1,759,540 km

When ranking the first five largest countries in Africa, Libya takes the fourth position with a land size of around 1.7 million Square kilometers. It is also the 17th largest country in the world and is home to around 6.4 million people.

Approximately 90% of the population resides in three of the largest cities in Libya: Misrata, Tripoli, and Benghazi. Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa and boasts of having the longest Mediterranean Sea coast of around 1,770 kilometers.

5. Chad 1,284,000 km

Now that you know which is the largest country in Africa by size you might be wondering which is the poorest? Despite having a population size of over 15 million, and having rich resources like gold, uranium and crude oil, Chad was ranked by Forbes as the 7th most corrupt country.

This country got its name from the famous Lake Chad which is believed to be disappearing at a very fast pace due to drought and deforestation. A third of the total area is covered by Sahara desert (the largest African hot desert); however, the citizens are still able to cultivate various staple foods like millet, and sorghum.

Located in West Africa, Nigerias land mass is mostly covered by Sahara desert making the subtropical climate hot and dry. In terms of land area, it ranks 23 largest in the world and the country is named after the Niger River. As of 2018, Niger has a population of approximately 22 million.

With a population size of around 30 million, Angola is the seventh largest country in Africa by land mass. It is made up of four regions: hills and mountains, rainforest, high plateau and arid coastal low land. The highest point of the country is called Morro de Mocco which peaks at 8,592 feet, and the lowest point is the Atlantic Ocean.

You may be wondering what makes the size of the land in Angola so interesting.

The Zambezi River and the Kalandula Falls which is the largest waterfall in Africa based on volume are some of the most notable features found in Angola.

Mali is a landlocked country found in West Africa. Its the 24th largest country in the world.

Although this African country is one of the hottest in the world, its South region is the most fertile. Mali has various natural resources like phosphate, granite, limestone, and salt, but its primary source of revenue is gold mining and agricultural exports.

9. South Africa 1,213,090 km

The land in South Africa is made of many wonders. It is home to Table Mountain which is one of the oldest mountains in the world. This country also has the largest visible craters in the world and has three capital cities: Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Pretoria.

Its a multilingual country with various official languages like Afrikaans, English, Sesotho, IsiNdebele, IsiZulu, and Setswana.

10. Ethiopia 1,104,300 km

This country has various amazing facts. Apart from ranking as the tenth largest country in Africa size, Ethiopia is one of the nations in Africa that was never formally colonized. It is also the only country in the world with a different calendar which contains 13 months a year.

A big part of its landmass lies on the Horn of Africa, and the area is mostly dominated by vast highland which is divided by the Great Rift Valley.

The largest country in Africa by population 2018

Africa is contributing significantly to the rapid increase in the worlds population. According to research by the United Nations, over the past three decades, the worlds population has increased by around 2.9 billion and Africa is contributing significantly to this figure. This change comes at a time when many other continents are also experiencing a population increase.

The research also shows that Africa is the least urbanized continent in the world but by 2050 around 56 percent of its population will be residing in urban areas. The most urbanized African countries are Algeria, Gabon, Libya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It might surprise you to know that even though Africa is the second largest continent, it has a young age structure whereby children aged 0-14 make up nearly 45 percent of Africas population. Almost two fifth of Africa's population is in the 0-14 age group, and 19 percent are in the 15-24 age group.

So which country has the largest population in Africa?

Here is the list of most populous African countries.

1. Nigeria population size 195,875,237 residents

While Nigeria holds the title for being the most populous in Africa, it is also the biggest oil producer in Africa and 6th largest oil producer in the world.

Located in western Africa, Nigeria occupies a land area of about 910,770 km2. According to UN research, the biggest part of the population lives in Lagos which has a population of about 10 million followed by Ibadan and Kano which have 3.1 million and 2.3 million people respectively.

While Oil industry is the major contributor to Nigerias economy, the agricultural sector contributes to over 4% of GDP and between 60% and 70% of the population is involved in farming.

2. Ethiopia population size 107,534,882 people

Ethiopias capital city Addis Ababa plays an important role in urbanization. With a population growth of 2.73% per annum, the urban population is at 13.2 million as compared to 66.8 million rural populations.

This country is the 14th most populous in the world, and between 2010 and 2015 it has experienced a 2.5% annual population growth. Ethiopia is also believed to be the first place in Africa where coffee was discovered.

3. Egypt population size 99,375,741 residents

Egypt is the third most populous country in Africa, and most of its citizens live along river Nile and in cities such as Cairo. It has an annual population growth of 2.29% and the Sphinx, Pyramids and Valley of the Kings are the main tourist attraction sites.

One interesting fact about this country is Pepi II who became an Egyptian pharaoh when he was only six years old but ended up ruling Egypt for 94 years.

4. DRC Congo population size 84,004,989 residents

It is impossible to list the largest country in Africa by population without mentioning DRC Congo. The high fertility levels have been a major contributor to Congos large population. With an annual growth rate of 3.3 percent, most of the population resides in urban cities including Kinshasa. By 2025, it is predicted that DRC Congo will have an increase of 6 million people to its already large figure. Forbes Magazine ranked Congo as the third fastest growing cities of tomorrow.

5. Tanzania population size 59,091,392 residents

With a population density of 53 residents per square kilometre, United Republic of Tanzania has an urban population growth rate of 5.4 percent. While the fertility rate has decreased, the life expectancy at birth has increased from 60.1 to 64.8 between the years 2010 and 2017.

Despite ranking in the first five largest countries in Africa by population, Tanzania is home to Mount Kilimanjaro, a wild array of wildlife and Lake Tanganyika.

6. South Africa population size 57,398,421 residents

South Africa has an average annual population growth of 1.4% and an urban population growth of 1.6% per year. Despite having one of the largest populations in Africa, the fertility rate has decreased mostly because of disease-related fatalities. The total population of this country is predicted to reach around 61 million by 2022.

7. Kenya population size 50,950,879 residents

Do you love sunny summers, hospitable people, and good climatic conditions?

Kenya boasts of many attraction sites for both local and international tourist. The coastal beaches, wildlife migrations, and the different cuisines are some of the aspects that will make your holiday memorable in Kenya. The total population of Kenya is expected to reach around 53 million by 2022.

8. Uganda population size 44,270,563 people

The high fertility rate is a major contributing factor to the high population in Uganda. This country has the fifth highest fertility rate in the world and an annual population growth of 3.4%.

9. Algeria population size 42,008,054 citizens

When talking about which country has the largest population in Africa then Algerias population puts it at number ten. Algeria has one of the largest and fastest growing populations in the world. As in many countries, the number reason for the high population in this African country is high fertility rate. As of 2017, Algeria has an annual population growth of 2%.

10. Sudan population size 41,511,526 residents

It is impossible to give the list of largest country in Africa by population without mentioning Sudan. Notable features that make this country stand out is the dessert terrains within its borders. It has an annual urban population growth rate of 2.5%.

According to the UN report, Africa is experiencing very high rates of population growth, and in 2050, most of the populations of around 26 African countries is projected to be double their current size. Since high fertility rate is one of the main contributors of a large population, it is possible that in the next few years, the list of the largest countries in the African continent by land size and population will have different names.

Now you have an idea of what is the Largest country in the African continent. Leave your highlights in the comments section.

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Source: Tuko News
There is always a different story behind every success story, and Kanze Dena's path to success is not an exception! Perhaps its her ever smiling nature that masks her troubled past or rather her confident personality that portrays a perfect life. But, all in all, it's safe to say that her journey to success has not always been rosy. This vivacious lady has had her fair-share of up moments that might make anyone wish to be her, but very few people know about her downs that could easily break even the most strong-willed person. Did you know that Kanze Dena has had three suicide attempts, two pregnancies, a fake miscarriage diagnosed in one of the biggest hospitals in Kenya and death of a daughter? Yes, her life story reads like a script from a movie! But, there is also the beautiful side of her life that we cannot avoid to highlight... So, is Kanze Dena pregnant?

No, right now Kanze Dena is not pregnant. However, her two pregnancies were among the many life obstacles she had to go through. These challenges almost caused her to commit suicide. Interested? Read on to find out more.

What do we know about Kanze Dena?

For the past few weeks, Kanze Dena has been the talk of the town thanks to her new job as the Deputy State House Spokesperson. The fact that the former TV personality was handpicked and appointed by President Uhuru Kenyatta makes her success story worth celebrating. This is more especially because she is a single mother who has beat the odds to become the first ever woman to hold that position in Kenya.

But for Kanze Dena success has not come easy. Her journey has been filed with extreme pain, the death of loved ones, self-esteem insecurities of not feeling pretty enough and getting abandoned twice. But none can compare with the loss of a child. While speaking with Kathy Kiuna on the show Woman Without Limits and in an interview with Maisha Magic Story Yangu, Kanze Dena gives everyone an in-depth look into another side of her life that has never been seen before.

First Kanze Dena pregnancy

When people see successful celebrities, they dont see the struggles and the journey that brought them to where they are now. While Kanzes struggles with self-esteem started when she was in high school which is where she also started drinking alcohol to fit in, it was her first pregnancy that took a toll on her mental health.

Kellen Beatrice Kane Dena was brought up by a single mother, fourth child to her mum who was married before and first born to the union between her biological father and mother. Kanzes father left when she was four years old, and just like any other curious teenager Kanze Dena got into a relationship when she finished fourth form. At that time she was working as a waitress in one of the local restaurants where she also had the role of peeling potatoes.

Kanze thought she had found a man that appreciated and loved her unconditionally. Unfortunately, she got pregnant, and the man disappeared. She had no steady job, and because she wanted to go to college, she hid the pregnancy. A few months into the pregnancy her mother enrolled her into secretarial course. By that time Kanze had decided to give birth to the baby and put it up for adoption.

So far everything including Kanze Dena pregnancy was going according to her plans. Her mom did not know she was pregnant and that she was giving up the baby for adoption. However, on the day she gave birth, her plan went haywire!

A friend from Youth For Christ called her aunt and told her that Kanze was in Pumwani hospital. The aunt then called the mother, and the two of them rushed to the hospital to see Kanze. The mom persuaded her to keep the baby girl who was named Natasha.

When you think the sad story just ended and Kanze can live happily ever after, the worst happens.

Three months later after Kanze had accepted that she was going to be a single mother; she got an urgent call to go home. At that time Natasha was living in upcountry, and Kanze Dena was concentrating on her final exams in secretarial. When Kanze reached home, she was told that Natasha was dead. Her daughters death caused her to experience depression which led to her first suicide attempt.

Second Kanze Dena pregnancy

After surviving a suicide attempt, Kanze Dena moved on with her life. However, she got pregnant again while on campus doing her degree and as a member of the Bible study. Being a born again in church means that Kanze had to be a role model and live a certain upright way where pregnancy out of wedlock was considered a No No. But Kanze Dena pregnancy was filled with so many challenges and not the ordinary complains from pregnant women.

First, while she was three months pregnant, Kanze woke up in a pool of blood and when she was rushed to the hospital, the doctors told her she had a miscarriage. Secondly, a few months later she had a severe stomach pain and was rushed to the hospital, the doctor checks and says she is 7 months pregnant. Thirdly, Kanze was in a relationship where she was not in talking terms with the boyfriend, so she was bound to have a child without the father in the picture.

As if things couldnt get worse, when Kanze Dena was eight months pregnant, her mother got sick with colon cancer, and during her first surgery she gave birth to a baby boy Amani. 2 months after giving birth Kanze tried her second suicide attempt with a knife. The suicide didnt push through as her mother brought the baby for her to breastfeed.

After the second suicide attempt, Kanze Denas career turned for the better, but her personal life continued to turn upside down. She got a job with Citizen TV which meant a better salary than what she was paid as an intern at KBC. However, while she was celebrating her sons first birthday, Kanzes mom died. Image self-esteem issues, inability to sustain a relationship, together with inability to give the son a complete home, Kanze thought of trying another suicide. This was while she was at Mombasa on a retreat.

Although her story is difficult to hear, the fact that she told it on her own terms works not only to show how far she has come but to also raise awareness on suicide attempts and how survivors struggle during those darkest hours.

So, there you have it, for the fans or those of you who were asking is Kanze Dena pregnant? As of now, Kanze Dena has gone through two pregnancies and she is not pregnant currently. Her daughter Natasha who was from the first pregnancy died a few months after birth. For her second pregnancy, Kanze gave birth to a boy named Amani who she loves to show off on her social media pages and now co-parents with her baby daddy.

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The KDF cadet recruitment 2018 has been announced. Interested candidates can apply for the jobs but should ensure that they meet the requirements of the job opening. The recruitment will be held in the months of August and September at various centers that will be gazetted in due course. Kenyan youths can apply for a chance to work as a solder.

The Kenyan job market is extremely competitive. Getting a dream job is not a walk in the park. One has to travail and beat all the odds to fill that job opening at disposal. In fact, the number of unemployed Kenyan youths has soared over the years. Many even fret to apply for available vacancies due to intrinsic perceptions that they will not be picked for the post or someone else will get the chance. If you are a Kenyan with such employment ideologies, are you aware of KDF cadet recruitment 2018 has been ?

What to you need to know about the 2018 cadet recruitment in Kenya

Perhaps you are aware of the 2018 cadet recruitment in Kenya. If you are well-conversant with such information, fret not. There is a lot to know about KDF cadet recruitment 2018. Many job applicants in Kenya only see the downside of the recruitment procedures. The majority think of canvassing in order to fill the available positions, but this does not work when seeking employment in the KDF sector.

For candidates to shun any disappointments, they have to meet all the stated recruitment requirements. One key mistake many candidates make is availing themselves late at the recruitment venue. As an aspiring military officer, time-keeping is important.

In the current competitive employment market, canvassing or bribery is not the way to go. An individual seeking a vacancy in the Kenya Defence Forces should poses the necessary requirements in order to excel in cadet recruitment. The key requirements for prospective cadet candidates in Kenya include:

Must be a Kenyan citizen Must be aged between 18 and 26 Minimum weight of; 54.55 Kg for men and 50.00 Kg for women. Minimum height should be 1.60m (5ft 3in) for men and 1.52m (5ft) for women. Should not have any criminal record meaning the candidate must produce a good conduct certificate. Be medically and physically fit and this should be in accordance with the KDF standards. Produce a valid Kenyan national identity card Candidates must hold a mean Grade B (Plain) or a high standard of education. The candidate must have at least a C+ (Plus) in Mathematics, English and one science subject. Graduates sending their Kenya Defence Forces cadet application will be given certain preferences. All female candidates must NOT be pregnant.

The Kenya Defence Force department also makes it clear that bribery and any acts of corruption are punishable by law. Candidates who present fabricated or fake documents should also beware of the consequences of their acts. So, if you intend to make any unlawful offer beware of the consequences. Simply, let your qualifications speak for you and adhere to the Kenya Defence Forces cadet recruitment requirements.

Candidates who feel that they meet the above-mentioned requirements should not have any qualms about applying for the job opportunity and avail themselves for the recruitment. The 2018 KDF recruitment is set to take place in months of August and September. The dates and venues for recruitment will be advertised and candidates should rely on local dailies for such information in due course.

READ ALSO: How Kenyan guys should plan their life

The KDF cadet job application procedure

It is a hassle free procedure to apply for KDF cadet jobs. All a candidate needs to ascertain is whether he or she meets the requirements of the applications. Other details to hold in your fingertips include:

Provide clear photocopies of all relevant academic or professional certificates. Any candidates who will present fake documents will be arrested.

Current national identity card (ID)

Ensure you attach all these documents to the application.

Address the application letter to:

Assistant Chief of the Defence Forces

(Personnel and Logistics),

Ministry of Defence,

Defence Headquarters,

Ulinzi House,

P.o Box 40668,

Nairobi-00100.

The process is not daunting but if you get stuck, you can consult with friends, relatives or colleagues who understand the kdf cadet application process better than you. Upon cadet job application and recruitment, only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. The Kenya Defence Forces department takes all the initiatives to ensure the entire recruitment project is a success.

Thanks to the strictness of the procedure and good leadership, candidates who meet the requirements of the recruitment will know their fate at the right time and as per the KDF departments decisions. KDF cadet shortlisting does not take a year, qualified candidates can check on local dailies or rely on the internet for such information. Candidates who dont get shortlisted should not give up and get discouraged. This recruitment initiative takes place on yearly basis.

READ ALSO: Good questions to ask in an interview

What awaits qualified KDF cadets in Kenya?

Many employees in todays society are not motivated by the good work they do for their societies or to their loved ones but what they get in return. Many Kenyan employees focus on the remunerations they will get and the income they will take home. If you are thinking of joining KDF and you have already been shortlisted among the best candidates, the next thing to think about is the KDF cadet salary.

KDF cadet salaries vary with ranks from the lowest to the highest. So, even as a new cadet or recruit, you have a monthly salary to take home and you will not experience any financial pressures as you undertake your duties. There are many remunerations that come with your services to the nation and you will not regret your profound decision to join KDF unit.

READ ALSO: New teachers pay rise 2018

Many jobs seekers in Kenya are well versed with terms such as cadet. In fact, those who have never felt the need of finding out what the title means, have probably heard about the term from fellow job hunters. In simple terms, a cadet is a trainee and the term is frequently used to mean individuals training to become officers in the military sector. In Kenya, this junior military trainee is normally referred to as a KDF cadet.

This is a military occupation that has been in existence in Kenyas military ranks for many decades. So if you think of joining this field, you will not be the first one. This means that a trainee has to abide by the recruitment requirements, adhere to training routines and go through every set procedure to completion of the project. Commitment and dedication is a core facet that each trainee must exhibit. In essence, there is a lot of qualifications and traits to exhibit in order to achieve your dreams as a Kenya Defence Force cadet.

Kenyans looking for new job opportunities should not have any worries. The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) department is happy to announce the August and September 2018 recruitment of cadets. Those with a specialty in different fields can also apply as specialist officers. Take this opportunity and try your luck if you meet the cadet application and recruitment requirements.

READ ALSO: Jaqanaz Resort career opportunities recruitment 2018

Source: Tuko.co.ke
- President Uhuru wants to leave a freer, stable and united Kenya by end of his term

- The government has rolled out programmes meant to empower the youth according to the president

- Over 100,000 youth are being targeted for government internship from 2019

President Uhuru Kenyatta on Sunday, August 12, said that he was determined to sanitize all government systems and give quality leadership they have for years longed to have.

Uhuru said that the ongoing investigations and prosecutions launched against corrupt individuals who have infiltrated government system was one one of the approaches his administration had adopted in order to make Kenya a better place.

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READ ALSO: Ngina Kenyatta na mabinti weingine 9 wa marais wa Afrika wanaopendeza ajabu

President Uhuru wants to leave a freer, stable and united Kenya by end of his term. Photo: President Uhuru

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Cross border trade war intensify as Tanzania bans carrot imports from Kenya

In order to launch the country on the right course, the president observed that it was imperative to ensure that the welfare of the youthful population was well entrenched for their benefit.

"If we cannot solve the problem of the youth as a country, then we cannot achieve tangible development," Uhuru

READ ALSO: Uhuru lights up social media with impressive penalty-taking skills

Among the projects the president said were set to be roll-out in a rapid effort to achieve a richer country was the expansion of national funding programs that support business development programs that support youth, women and people living with disabilities.

Unemployment, Uhuru observed had adversely affected youth which thus leading led most of them to resort to unlawful means of finding a life.

He nonetheless revealed that the government will from 2019 launch a paid internship program which will go along way in cushioning the youth from tough economic times while also equipping them with marketable skill.

READ ALSO: DP Ruto throws weight behind ongoing crackdown on illegally acquired properties

More than 100,000 youth are set to benefit from the initiative every year once it will be rolled out, said

He observed that the Information Computer Technology sector had achieved great steps noting that the country had been ranked among the top country in the world than hand embraced cyber literacy.

In a move to boost uptake of ICT services, the government is currently rolling out a National Optic Fiber Backbone Infrastructure in all the 47 counties.

READ ALSO: I have lost many friends because of ongoing demolitions, but impunity must stop - Uhuru

In 2017, it also trained at least 15,000 youth in the Ajira Digital Program which equipped the trainees with skills needed to benefit cyberspace jobs.

Consequently, the president that the his Big Four agenda premised on affordable housing, universal healthcare, manufacturing and food security was also set to create at least 800,000 jobs come 2022.

TUKO.co.ke had earlier reported the head of state had declared that he was even ready lose his close allies just to see the country headed on a transformation trajectory.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Phenny Awiti Story: Meet HIV Positive Mom Raising HIV Negative Kids | Tuko TV

Source: Kenyan Breaking News
- Makau Musyoka was allegedly killed by his uncle Evans Kasyoki for life insurance money

- Kasyoki reportedly took two life insurance policies using Musyoka's name and listed himself as the beneficiary

- Musyoka's family believe Kasyoki murdered his nephew so he could claim the life insurance benefits

- When Kasyoki was arrested for questioning, he was released days later under unclear circumstances

- The DPP took over the case and warned anyone found culpable of obstructing justice would face the full force of the law

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Noordin Haji has ordered for fresh investigations into the alleged murder of Machakos man, Makau Musyoka, over KSh 9 million life insurance money.

Musyoka was allegedly killed by his own uncle identified as Evans Kasyoki who had taken two life insurance policies using the name of the deceased.

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READ ALSO: Ngina Kenyatta na mabinti weingine 9 wa marais wa Afrika wanaopendeza ajabu

DPP Noordin Haji ordered on Sunday, August 12, ordered for investigation into murder of Machakos man, Makau Musyoka, over KSh 9 million life insurance money. Photo: DPP

Source: Twitter

READ ALSO: Likuyani MP survives assassination attempt as assailants spray his car with bullets, kill driver

The DPP ordered for probe into Musyoka's death following a chilling investigative feature aired on Citizen TV on the night of Sunday, August 12, and which detailed a series of incidents that painted a gory picture of how a nephew was brutally killed by his own uncle because of insurance money.

"The DPP's attention has been drawn to a news feature appearing on Citizen TV Kenya prime time news in regard to the Kangundo incident. Due to the nature of the case, the DPP has directed that immediate legal steps be taken to ensure justice is done," the DPP said in a Twitter statement seen by TUKO.co.ke on Monday, August 13.

Evans Kasyoki was accused of killing his nephew Makau Musyoka over KSh 9 million life insurance money. Photo:The Hans India.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: 19-year-old circumcised by force after being found drinking beer with elders in Marimanti

Haji assured Musyoka's family and the general public that his office would do everything possible to bring to book those who orchestrated or helped cover up the heinous crime.

"We wish to inform the public that obstruction of due process is serious criminal offence and any person who will be found culpable shall face full force of the law," the DPP tweeted.

READ ALSO: Jealous Rongo chiefs wife sets 3 children, herself on fire after husband marries second wife

This would not be the first time the authorities would be looking for Kasyoki, the main suspect.

He had initially been arrested and released by the police a few days later under unclear circumstances to the disappointment of the deceased man's family who had all along been pursuing justice.

Musyoka's murder story left many Kenyans in utter disbelief and angry and raised questions on whether or not taking an insurance cover that could cost a life was a good idea.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Massive Demolitions in Kileleshwa as JAVA House and Shell Station down - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko
- Ayub Savula and Justus Murunga alleged members of the 12 Parliament were not interested in serving Kenyans

- They threatened to mobilise farmers to petition Supreme Court to commence dissolution of Parliament

- The politicians suggested current MPs should be sent home so Kenyans can elect leaders who are not corrupt

- The remarks came amid claims that a section of legislators took bribes to water down the dirty sugar report

- Speaker Muturi ordered for investigation into the bribery claims and warned any MP found culpable would face the law

A section of politicians from western Kenya region have declared war against fellow members of Parliament accused of taking bribes to shoot down a damning report on the sugar import scandal that implicated senior government officials.

Mutungu MP Justus Murunga and his vocal Lugari counterpart Ayub Savula suggested the 12th Parliament be dissolved owing to the bribery allegations that badly tainted the reputation of the Kenyan lawmakers.

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READ ALSO: Ngina Kenyatta na mabinti weingine 9 wa marais wa Afrika wanaopendeza ajabu

Lugari Member of Parliament, Ayub Savula (L), and Mutungu MP Justus Murunga threatened to mobilise Kenyans to petition Supreme Court to dissolve the 12 Parliament over graft allegations.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Ukay Centre demolished hours after court declines to issue orders blocking its destruction

While meeting in Kisumu on Sunday, August 12, the MPs threatened to mobilise Kenyans from the Western and Nyanza regions and especially the sugarcane farmers to file a petition at the Supreme Court to start the process of dissolving the embattled 12th Parliament.

Speaker Justin Muturi on August 12 instructed the Clerk of the National Assembly to summon MPs to share testimonies on bribery claims with the Powers and Privileges Committee.

Source: Twitter

READ ALSO: DPP Haji orders probe into murder of Machakos man over KSh 9 million life insurance money

His sentiments were echoed by Murunga who added they would convene a meeting of all cane farmers to protest importation of illegal sugar into the country.

The politicians claimed they had information MPs received bribes to tamper with the dirty sugar report and that they were ready to share their testimonies with the Powers and Privilege Committee as was ordered earlier by National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi.

READ ALSO: Woman claiming to be late Kenyas 400 metres champion Nicholas Betts wife disowned by family

In a statement seen by TUKO.co.ke on August 12, Muturi warned stern action would be taken against any members who would be found to have conducted themselves in a manner inconsistent with what is expected of them.

"My office and the House leadership in general takes the bribery allegations within the precincts of Parliament very, very seriously and this must be thoroughly investigated, and appropriate action taken pursuant to provisions of relevant statutes," he said.

A number of legislators led by Dagoretti North MP Simba Arati earlier alleged some of their colleagues received money to save Treasury boss Henry Rotich and former Industrialisation CS Aden Mohamed who had been implicated in the sugar scandal.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Former Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero Arraigned in Court Over Corruption Charge - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko
- The governor does not believe demolishing buildings is the answer

- Waititu believes there should instead be a way of moving the rivers

- According to him, demolishing malls ia a huge loss not only to the owners but the county in general

Kiambu governor Fedinand Waititu has come up with one of the most bizarre solutions to the contentious issue of demolitions of buildings sitting on riparian land in Nairobi.

Waititu has over the past few years been on the receiving end of hilarious jokes which seem to always point out that the governor often has a very unique stance on national matters.

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READ ALSO: Ngina Kenyatta na mabinti weingine 9 wa marais wa Afrika wanaopendeza ajabu

Waititu has been under fire as Kiambu governor in recent months

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Likuyani MP survives assassination attempt as assailants spray his car with bullets, kill driver

Since assuming the Kiambu top job, Waititu has not had it easy, often coming under serious scrutiny over the ways he runs the county.

The fact that he has shown open dissension with his deputy James Nyoro has done little to help his overall credentials as the governor.

On the question of buildings illegally sitting on road reserves and riparian land, Waititu had quite the odd take on the issue as he felt that destroying the buildings to pave way for sewer paths and rivers was not necessarily the answer.

Of course demolitions of luxurious malls such as Ukay and South End along Langata road seems like extreme measures but President Uhuru Kenyatta was adamant there would be no impunity going forward on his watch.

Ukay Mall was the latest one to fall victim to demolition for allegedly sitting on riparian land

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Village Market, Tribe Hotel not earmarked for demolition - Management

So what should be done, according to the Kiambu governor? To ensure a win-win situation for everybody, Waititu sensationally suggested the rivers or any other obstructed features should be slightly moved instead of demolishing buildings altogether.

In a video seen by TUKO.co.ke, Waititu is on record suggesting that if a costly building is sitting on a river, then perhaps the next plausible thing would be to tell the owner of the building to find a way of "moving the river" away from obstruction.

The issue should be looked at such that if there is a house is near a river, it is upon the owner to be informed of the situation so he can organise how the river can be slightly moved, but demolition of houses is not the solution surely, he alluded.

READ ALSO: NEMA to demolish multimillion house in Riara estate where former MP lives

His sentiments raised a lot of questions as a handful of Kenyans did not see the logic in moving a natural feature which was initially existent prior to the construction of the posh buildings.

READ ALSO: Sonko talks tough on city land grabbers as ex-governor Kidero spends night in police cells

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news

Cecilia Mwangi Story: Meet 78-Year-0ld Sound System Master At Faces of Kenya | Tuko TV:

Source: Tuko Breaking News
- The eight were in their vehicle heading to their workstation at the Kenya-Somalia border wall

- The deputy county commissioner expressed concern over the lack of security officers who always accompany the workers to their workstations

- The commissioner said investigations have been launched to establish why the contractor let the workers go without security officers

Six people have died and two others injured after a vehicle they were traveling in ran over an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at Elwak area in Mandera County.

Mandera South Deputy County Commissioner Paul Kemei said the eight were on their way to their workstation at the Kenya-Somalia border where they were clearing a road.

READ ALSO: Eric Omondi ajifanya mganga Marekani, awanasa Wazungu wengi

Six people have died and two others injured after a vehicle they were traveling in ran over an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at Elwak area in Mandera County. Photo: Daily Nation

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Police gun down three notorious criminals in Kimilili

"The victims have been clearing a road along the security wall and they were hit by what we suspect to be an improvised explosive device, said Kenei as reported by the Daily Nation on Monday, August 13.

He said the device that exploded at 10am must have been planted at the area earlier in the morning by suspected al-Shabaab militants.

Kenei said the team is always escorted to the site by security officers but he did not understand why they were not guarded on Monday.

READ ALSO: 5 KDF soldiers killed, 6 injured in suspected al-Shabaab attack in Lamu

He said investigations were underway to find out why the contractor let his team go to the site without security officers.

In the past three years, over 100 security agents have been killed through IEDs in Lamu, Wajir, Mandera and Garissa counties.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news

Phenny Awiti Story: Meet HIV Positive Mom Raising HIV Negative Kids | Tuko TV

Source: Tuko.co.ke
- The company was happy with government's prompt intervention to broker a peace deal with the locals

- Its country manager, Martin Mbogo, announced they will commence full-time operations on August 23

- Tullow suspended operations in Turkana citing insecurity in the region amid protests by locals

- The residents of Turkana stopped transportation of oil to Mombasa demanding a cut of the proceeds

Oil and gas explorer, Tullow, has announced it will resume operations in Turkana oil fields on August 23 after the national government succeeded in ending a 45 day stalemate with the locals who had completely paralysed the company's operations.

Tullow Oil through its country manager, Martin Mbogo, expressed satisfaction with the manner in which the government was addressing the stalemate it had with the aggrieved residents of Turkana.

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READ ALSO: Eric Omondi ajifanya mganga Marekani, awanasa Wazungu wengi

Tullow Oil company shut down Turkana Operations in July 2018 amidst standoff with locals over insecurity, unemployment. Photo: Deniss Morton.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Tullow Oil suspends operations in Turkana citing rampant insecurity

A statement issued by the National Government Communication Centre on Monday, August 13, revealed the government had gazetted Turkana Grievances Management Committee to spearhead engagement with the local community in a bid to find permanent solutions to underlying and emerging issues in the Early Oil Pilot Scheme (EOPS).

"Chaired by Turkana County Commissioner, the Committee comprises Turkana Governor, officials from the County Assembly, and representatives from all Turkana constituencies, FBOs, professional bodies, the Kenya Chamber, Tullow Oil Co., and various Government ministries," the statement, seen by TUKO.co.ke on Monday evening stated.

READ ALSO: Tullow stops water supply for Turkana communities after locals disrupt oil transportation

Tullow suspended its operations in the Turkana oil fields in July 2018 following a spate of violent demonstrations by the local community and increased incidents of insecurity in the oil-rich region.

In an earlier statement dispatched to newsrooms on July 25, the company said the protests had made it impossible for operations to continue.

The local people were using the trucking operation as a lever really to demonstrate to the national government that the security situation on the ground had to improve, Tullow's CEO Paul McDade said.

READ ALSO: Turkana residents break into oil storage site, paralyse operations demanding audience with president Uhuru

The decision to halt operations came about a month after President Uhuru Kenyatta flagged off the first batch of crude oil from Ngamia 8 to the port of Mombasa in preparation for exportation of the commodity under the Early Oil Pilot Scheme.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Top 3 Poorest Countries in The World: How Do People Live There? - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko Kenya
- Ndii said Uhuru should demolish Weston Hotel and lose Ruto as one of his remaining close friends

- The economist suggested Uhuru should then proceed to turn in himself, insinuating the president is also guilty of impunity

- Uhuru disclosed he had lost many friends because of the ongoing demolitions and anti-graft war

- The president however insisted war on graft and crackdown on illegal properties erected on wetlands would not stop

Firebrand economist David Ndii has challenged President Uhuru Kenyatta to order for demolition of Deputy President William Ruto's Weston Hotel in Nairobi claiming the property is built on a public land.

The top National Super Alliance (NASA) coalition strategist also suggested the president should lose Ruto as his friend then turn in himself, implying that both Uhuru and the DP were as guilty of impunity as those whose properties were being targeted for demolition.

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READ ALSO: Eric Omondi ajifanya mganga wa kienyeji Marekani, awanasa Wazungu wengi

Economist David Ndii Deputy President William Ruto's Weston Hotel was built on a public land and challenged President Uhuru Kenyatta to demolish it.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: NEMA to demolish multimillion house in Riara estate where former MP lives

In a Twitter post seen by TUKO.co.ke on Monday, August 13, Ndii alleged Ruto irregularly acquired public land on which he built Weston Hotel and therefore the president should remove him in his list of remaining friends.

"This is public land. One more friend you need to lose. And once you are done with him, turn yourself in," he tweeted in reference to an investigative report published earlier by one of the local dailies.

READ ALSO: You have 45 million Kenyans behind you, don't fear losing friends - Citizens tell Uhuru

The national government in collaboration with the country government of Nairobi embarked on a demolition spree targeting buildings allegedly erected on wetlands including Ukay Centre and Southend Mall.

Uhuru on August 12 reiterated the demolition exercise would not spare anyone, regardless of who they were in the society.

"No matter how much money you have, no matter how many people in high offices you know, we will not be prevented from achieving our dreams because of impunity," he warned.

READ ALSO: Police begin manhunt for officials who approved buildings on riparian land after Uhuru's order

The president also disclosed he had lost many friends as a result of the ongoing war against graft but insisted impunity must end even if it would cost him all his friends.

"I have lost many friends. Many have called me asking 'how can you be watching when all the destruction is going on?' I say a time has come to fight impunity. Let us lose our friends and do what is right in the eyes of God. Let us create a society that respects and treasures hard work and integrity, a nation with a conscience," he said.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Massive Demolitions in Kileleshwa as JAVA House and Shell Station down - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko Newspaper
A security officer is dead.

He was shot and killed as bandits pounced on cigarette delivery van, in Valencia.

Another person, who was also shot in the robbery, is now hospitalised.
The European Business Association (EBA) has appealed to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Country Director for Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine with a request to support the second level of pension insurance in Ukraine.

"The European Business Association has appealed to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Country Director for Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine. The letter points to the importance of introducing the second level of pension insurance for the population, reads the association's press release.

The business community notes that it is important to take effective and qualitative steps to reduce the pension system deficit and sees the solution in the introduction of the second level of pension insurance from January 1, 2019.

The business supports the idea of  the defined contribution pension system. In EBAs opinion, the mechanism for implementing the second level is perfectly stipulated in draft law No. 6677. The document has more than ten positive feedbacks from domestic and international experts, and its provisions comply with the relevant Directive of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe.

"The European Business Association calls on the IMF and the World Bank to support this document. We hope that this will help to launch the comprehensive development of the second level of pension insurance and stabilize the pension system in principle," the press release summarizes.

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U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker has commented on a video released by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine on the unhindered movement of Russian trucks across the Ukrainian border, pointing to the Kremlin's true role in the conflict in Donbas.

He wrote this in a series of tweets, Ukrinform reports.

"Here is footage from the OSCE SMM of convoys of trucks illegally entering and exiting Ukraine from Russia. As a reminder, Russia has blocked an effective border monitoring mission and its forces routinely prevent the SMM from visiting the border," Volker said.

He also posted a video taken from the OSCE's unmanned aerial vehicle, which documented the movement of convoys of military vehicles across the border.

In another tweet, the U.S. diplomat drew attention to the Kremlin's true role in the conflict against Ukraine.

"This is yet another way that Russia deliberately prolongs the conflict and sustains the fighting in eastern Ukraine despite international efforts to bring peace for Ukraine," Volker wrote.

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The new law on national security is supported by all partners of Ukraine from the North Atlantic Alliance, President Petro Poroshenko has said on his Facebook page

"The law on Ukraine's national security sets out a strategy for reforming the defense sector of our state. It received approval and support from all of our NATO partners," the head of state said.

As reported, on June 21, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the law on Ukraine's national security submitted by the president. A total of 248 MPs voted for this decision.

Poroshenko signed the law on July 5. The new law on national security came into force on July 8.

The law determines the fundamentals and principles of national security and defense, the goals and basic principles of state policy that will guarantee the protection of society and every citizen against threats.

In particular, it clarifies the president's powers regarding strategic management of the National Guard through the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during martial law.

The law stipulates that the defense minister and his deputies will be appointed from among civilians, and it also separates the positions of the chief of the General Staff and the chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is appointed and dismissed by the president upon a motion from the defense minister.

The law also launches the reform of security forces in line with NATO standards. In particular, it changes the status of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) - now it is a special body with law enforcement functions. The main tasks of the SBU are countering intelligence and subversion activities against Ukraine, fighting terrorism, ensuring counterintelligence protection of state sovereignty, constitutional order and territorial integrity, defense and scientific and technical potential, etc.

The document also states that its separate clauses will come into force from January 1, 2019 (regarding the appointment of the defense minister and his deputies from among civilians) and from January 1, 2021 (regarding the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, branches of troops).

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The volunteer union Bevar Ukraine, which unites Ukrainians in Denmark, has delivered over 500 tonnes of humanitarian cargo to Ukraine over the past four years.

Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman wrote this on his Facebook page.

"Four years ago, the volunteer union Bevar Ukraine appeared in Denmark. It united Ukrainians who live in this country and want to help their homeland. The social initiative arose from a purely emotional impulse and quickly turned into an effective social movement. Today they equip Ukrainian kindergartens and nursing homes. Moreover, household appliances, special beds, mattresses collected by volunteers are delivered to remote towns and villages. More than 500 tonnes of humanitarian cargo have been transferred to Ukraine over the past four years, Groysman said.

He added that he met with representatives of the volunteer organization during his visit to Denmark and agreed on cooperation with them.

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Well-known French artists and officials, including French Minister of Culture Francoise Nyssen, as well as film directors Jean-Luc Godard and Ken Loach, have written an open letter calling for the release of Oleg Sentsov and international mobilization to accelerate this process.

The text of the letter was published by Le Monde.

"Since art knows no boundaries, since art is universal, the rights of those who create it must be the same. Freedom of expression and freedom of creation cannot stop when dissidence begins. But today the director is dying, because he is a dissident. His life is under threat because of his ideas, as was the case with Vasily Grossman, Solzhenitsyn and others under the communist regime," reads the letter.

It says that Sentsov has been held in Russia for more than four years and sentencing of him to 20 years imprisonment by a Russian military court, after a trial that "has clearly not respected the right to defense, is a violation of international law and basic standards of justice." "His only true crime is a demonstration of freedom of speech, the ability to express his political beliefs through his art, isn't it?" reads the letter.

The letter contains the call to "act quickly" since the filmmaker's health is deteriorating.

"Not to act is to allow Oleg Sentsov to die. It means to give up our values and our principles, to give up what we defend. This means to agree with the fact that a person can be killed for his ideas, thoughts, position," reads the letter.

The authors propose that the international community join the call for Sentsov's release.

"An urgent need is for Russia to find in this situation not only a humanitarian but also a political solution. Not only France (President Emmanuel Macron provided several proposals that President Vladimir Putin promised to answer), but the entire international community, from the EU to the UN, must mobilize to get these answers," the letter said.

The letter was signed by the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers (SACD), the Civil Society of Multimedia Authors (SCAM), the Guild of Authors, Directors and Producers (ARP), the Film Producers Society (SRF), the Association of Francophone Directors (ARRF, Belgium), and Le Theatre du Soleil.

On August 10, French President Emmanuel Macron had a telephone conversation with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The French leader expressed his concern about the health of Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov and proposed options for a humanitarian solution to the situation.

Russian journalist Victoria Ivleva said on Sunday that a plane with Sentsov aboard flew out of Salekhard at 23.00 on Saturday, August 10. She also expressed hope that he would be taken to Kyiv. However, this information was false.

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The U.S. Navy routinely operates in the Black Sea consistent with the Montreux Convention and international law.

The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Carney (DDG 64) entered the Black Sea, August 12, in order to conduct maritime security operations and enhance capability and interoperability with allies and partners in the region.

The ship's operations in the Black Sea are meant to enhance maritime security and stability, and combined readiness and naval capability with Black Sea allies and partners, according to the U.S. 6th Fleet's press service.

"Carneys arrival in the Black Sea demonstrates our continued commitment to security and stability in the region. Our time spent here will help us improve interoperability and the sharing of information and experiences with our partner nations, says Cmdr. Tyson Young, commanding officer of Carney.

Carney entered the Black Sea to demonstrate the U.S. commitment to the collective defense of NATO allies and Black Sea partners. All Department of Defense efforts in support of NATO allies in eastern Europe fall under Operation Atlantic Resolve.

The U.S. Navy routinely operates in the Black Sea consistent with the Montreux Convention and international law.

Carney, forward-deployed to Rota, Spain, is on a routine patrol conducting naval operations with allies and partners in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations in order to advance security and stability in the Black Sea region.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the international Sea Breeze naval exercised will be expanded to boost regional security.
The Committee of Voters of Ukraine believes that now it is important to initiate criminal cases against those citizens who were involved in the organization of the "electoral process" in the Russian-occupied Crimea.

The proposal put forth by deputy head of the Central Election Commission Andrii Mahera to deprive of citizenship the participants of the so-called "referendum" in the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions was not a political statement, Chairman of the Voter Committee of Ukraine Oleksiy Koshel said, adding that organizers of such polls should be prosecuted.

According to Koshel, by maintaining an extremely liberal attitude toward criminals breaching election laws, Ukraine is hurting itself, the news portal Obozrevatel said.

"In many countries, there are various restrictions on voting rights. Therefore, it is quite logical to deny the right to vote the people who participated in illegal referendums," Koshel said, adding that it is more important to initiate criminal cases against those citizens of Ukraine who were involved in organizing the "election process."

Read alsoUkraine NSDC secretary slams Donbas referendum idea

"For example, in the occupied Crimea more than 100,000 citizens took part in the organization of pseudo-elections of Vladimir Putin. These are members of election committees, so-called party agitators, so-called observers, and so on," he said. "These citizens should know that if they cross the line of demarcation with Ukraine, [the Ukrainian] law enforces will be awaiting them, with handcuffs ready. In my opinion, we shouldn't be afraid of this, even when it comes to such a huge number of people, because these citizens have a choice: either to serve Putin or to be free people in Ukraine," said Koshel.

Earlier, a top election official in Ukraine proposed stripping participants in the so-called "referendum" in the Russian-occupied Donbas of Ukrainian citizenship.

In the spring of this year, President Petro Poroshenko put forward a proposal that people be deprived of citizenship for participation in "Russian presidential elections" in Crimea.
In their letter, the authors compare Sentsov with Soviet dissidents, such as writers Vasily Grossman and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who were persecuted for their ideas.

Over 100 Western filmmakers on Monday called on Russia to free illegally convicted Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, who has been on hunger strike in a Russian penal colony since May 14, 2018.

Read alsoRussia's prison watchdog says it spent US$1,350 on Sentsov in three months of hunger strike

About 120 actors and directors, joined by French Culture Minister Francoise Nyssen, warned to do nothing would be to let Sentsov die and called on the EU and UN to put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to an open letter in French daily Le Monde.

In their letter, the authors compare Sentsov with Soviet dissidents, such as writers Vasily Grossman and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who were persecuted for their ideas.

UNIAN memo. Sentsov was arrested in Russian-occupied Crimea in spring 2014 and in August 2015 he was sentenced to 20 years in prison following an unfair trial where he faced "terrorism" charges stemming from his opposition to Russia's occupation of Crimea. He has been serving his term in a penal colony in the town of Labytnangi, Russia's Yamal. Sentsov began his hunger strike on May 14, 2018, in protest against the politically motivated jailing of dozens of Ukrainians in the Russian Federation.
The ministry also expects Russia to release all illegally detained Ukrainian citizens.

Finland's Foreign Minister Timo Soini has urged Russia to provide illegally convicted Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, who has been on hunger strike in a Russian penal colony since May 14, 2018, with medical treatment.

Read alsoOver 100 Western filmmakers call on Russia to free Sentsov

"Health of Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov in prison is deteriorating rapidly. We expect Russia to provide him with medical treatment and to release all illegally detained Ukrainian citizens," the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland wrote on Twitter on Monday with reference to the minister.

UNIAN memo. Sentsov was arrested in Russian-occupied Crimea in spring 2014 and in August 2015 he was sentenced to 20 years in prison following an unfair trial where he faced "terrorism" charges stemming from his opposition to Russia's occupation of Crimea. He has been serving his term in a penal colony in the town of Labytnangi, Russia's Yamal. Sentsov began his hunger strike on May 14, 2018, in protest against the politically motivated jailing of dozens of Ukrainians in the Russian Federation.
Police have not yet taken their testimonies into account.

A family couple from Lviv, Hanna and Serhiy Antonyshyns, say that the main suspect in the acid attack on a Kherson activist and city council official Kateryna Handziuk, a local resident Mykola Novikov, was at another location on the day of the attack.

"It makes no sense to them to help him on purpose," a Ukrainian journalist Denis Kazansky says, commenting on the two eyewitnesses' statement he recorded on video, adding that they did not know the suspect personally.

"They have no reason to perjure and get prosecuted for concealing the criminal," said Kazansky.

Read alsoAcid attack on Kherson official ordered by law enforcement officers  case memo

Witnesses added that the police had not summoned them for questioning in the case.

"It's still unclear, why But it all looks as if the police are interested in pinning a crime on Novikov instead of finding a real criminal. Therefore, there were no key witnesses at the court hearing," the journalist concludes.

As reported earlier, on the morning of July 31, an unidentified perpetrator poured acid on Kateryna Handziuk, a local city council official and acclaimed activist.

As the case gained wide media coverage, the police reported the detention of the suspect, a local resident Mykola Novikov.

Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko earlier forwarded the case to the Security Service of Ukraine as local law enforcers could be behind the attack.
Harassment at secondary schools accounted for 51.3% of all the cases.

Some 109,000 instances of school bullying were reported in Ukraine in 2017; both children and adults  parents and teachers  went to school psychologists with such a problem.

"Some 39% of all requests came from children, 29% from teachers, 5% from bystanders, the remaining ones (27%) were from parents," Hromadske TV reported citing Director General of the Inclusive and Out-of-School Education Directorate of Ukraine's Ministry of Education Larysa Samsonova.

Samsonova does not see anything bad in such statistics, despite an increase in reports about school bullying.

"The fact that this indicator has increased means that people identify bullying, and we must think about what to do next," she said.

Read alsoSweden extends support to IT education in Ukraine

Psychologist Kateryna Danylevska says there should be a comprehensive solution to working with parents, teachers and students themselves to tackle harassment at school.

"It would be good for psychologists to provide support to teachers, while parents should raise their children, teaching them how to respect themselves and others, and developing trust-based relationships," Danylevska said.

According to NGO STUDENA, 63.9% of Ukrainian teachers observed bullying of children in their classrooms in 2018. It reports that 51.3% of all cases of harassment were registered at secondary schools.
According to intelligence reports, one militant was killed and another six were injured.

Over the past day, August 12, the enemy opened fire 57 times on the positions of the Ukrainian military in Donbas, including 12 times from heavy weapons.

Russian occupation troops opened aimed fire from grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, and small arms, and in separate directions - from the arms installed on infantry fighting vehicles, the press center of the Joint Forces Operation reported on Facebook.

"As a result of the fighting, two servicemen of the Joint Forces were wounded," the report said.

From midnight, militants of the Russian occupation forces opened fire eight times on the positions of the JFO troops. One serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was wounded.

Read alsoSituation in Donbas remains tense: One Ukrainian soldier wounded, enemy uses mortars, IFVs

"According to intelligence reports, one militant was killed and another six were injured," the JFO Staff added.

As UNIAN reported earlier, in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the OSCE observers spotted dozens of tanks and artillery systems, deployed outside the designated withdrawal areas, as well as air defense systems and electronic warfare.
These days, Ukraine is marking the fourth anniversary of the Ilovaisk tragedy.

Ukraine's forces launched an operation to liberate the eastern Ukrainian city of Ilovaisk on August 10, 2014, and within eight days Ukrainian troops pushed back Russian occupation forces from a part of the city, which was a significant breakthrough at the time.

On August 19, Ukrainian forces even managed to break through to the center of Ilovaisk and raise the Ukrainian flag there.

However, after the invasion of regular Russian troops, the Ilovaisk group got into encirclement by the enemy.

Read alsoRussia was stalling opening of "Ilovaisk corridor" to organize ambush of Ukrainian troops  Defense Ministry

On August 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to open the "green" corridor to the Ukrainian military, who were still surrounded in the area. At the same time, the enemy put forward an ultimatum, demanding that the Ukrainian forces surrender all heavy weapons.

Russians never followed through on their promises and on August 30 the Ukrainian convoys were ambushed. The brutal attack took lives of 366 Ukrainian soldiers and leaving 429 injured, according to official statistics.

Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers were taken captive, then held in inhuman conditions and tortured.

Heavy losses of those days prompted the Ukrainian leadership to conclude the Minsk truce.

An investigation into the causes of the tragedy is still ongoing.

These days, Ukraine is marking the fourth anniversary of the Ilovaisk tragedy.
The situation in the area of the Joint Forces Operation remains controlled.

Russia's hybrid military forces mounted 14 attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas on Monday, with one Ukrainian soldier reported as wounded in action.

Read alsoIn flashback: Ilovaisk battle in 2014 becomes turning point in Donbas war

"The occupiers opened aimed fire from grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms to attack the defenders of the villages of Krymske, Novotoshkivske, Troyitske, Novozvanivka, Novoluhanske, Novotroyitske, Bohdanivka, Hnutove and Lebedynske," the press center of Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation said in an update on Facebook as of 18:00 Kyiv time on August 13, 2018.

"At the same time, the enemy used 122mm artillery systems against the defenders of Novotoshkivske, 82mm mortars against the Ukrainian military in Troyitske and Novozvanivka, as well as 120mm mortars near Bohdanivka. In certain areas, the enemy engaged infantry fighting vehicles and anti-tank missile systems. One soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was wounded during hostilities," the report says.

"The situation in the area of the Joint Forces Operation remains controlled," the press center added.
Police kept the opposing sides separated.

Approximately two dozen white nationalists rallied in the U.S. capital on Sunday, one year after clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, left one person dead and elevated racial tensions in America.

But they were vastly outnumbered by throngs of counterprotesters, CNN reports.

The showing from "Unite the Right 2" participants fell far short of the hundreds that organizer Jason Kessler was expecting, based on his event permit application.

Kessler, who organized last year's "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, blamed the low turnout on logistical issues and confusion regarding the group's transportation -- a claim echoed by at least two men who spoke to reporters. "People are scared to come out after what happened last year," one of the men added.

The white nationalists left the park not long after they arrived, prompted by the sound of thunder and rain, and were whisked away in white vans.

Everywhere they went Sunday afternoon, "Unite the Right 2" rallygoers were confronted by counterprotesters, who had been gathering throughout the day as part of a series of demonstrations led by members of 40 anti-racism groups.

Read alsoGOP lawmaker: Russian meddling fanned the flames in Charlottesville  media

Police kept the opposing sides separated.

In the past, similar far-right demonstrations have been dwarfed by counterprotests.

Sunday's demonstrations and the opposing rallies took place against a backdrop of heightened racial tensions in the U.S.

Recent months have seen a series of high-profile incidents in which police were called on people of color for innocuous acts, like napping in a dormitory common room, having a barbecue and going to the pool.

The demonstrations also come at a time when the wounds from last year's events in Charlottesville remain raw, particularly in regard to the death of counterprotester Heather Heyer, who was killed when a suspected neo-Nazi sympathizer drove a car into a crowd.

Charlottesville authorities came under harsh criticism for their delayed response to the clashes between white supremacists and counterprotesters. An independent review faulted police and said they failed to adequately prepare for the "Unite the Right" rally.

Read alsoReuters: Russia denounces new U.S. sanctions as illegal, mulls retaliation

Kessler organized that event to oppose the renaming of two parks honoring Confederate generals. That drew white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan.

U.S. President Donald Trump -- who has been accused of deepening the racial divide in America -- condemned last year's events in Charlottesville in a tweet Saturday morning, saying they "resulted in senseless death and division."

"We must come together as a nation," he wrote. "I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!"

It was a departure from his comments a year ago, when he said there were "very fine people" on both sides of the conflict in Charlottesville. That statement set off a political firestorm that lasted for days and culminated in an infamous press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York.
About 15,000 people rallied in front of the government headquarters in the capital on Sunday, whistling, blowing vuvuzelas and shouting "Corruption kills! Resignation!"

Thousands of Romanians rallied for a third day running on Sunday against the Social Democrat government in anti-corruption protests, demanding Prime Minister Viorica Dancila step down.

The protests in Bucharest and in several other major cities were peaceful, in contrast to the first night of demonstrations on Friday when riot police fired tear gas and used water canon on a huge rally in central Bucharest, with hundreds of people needing medical attention, according to Reuters.

About 15,000 people rallied in front of the government headquarters in the capital on Sunday, whistling, blowing vuvuzelas and shouting "Corruption kills! Resignation!" They also chanted "Thieves, thieves," waving Romanian, U.S., NATO and European Union flags.

Read alsoWhite nationalists dwarfed by crowds of counterprotesters in Washington - CNN

Peaceful rallies have repeatedly been held since the Social Democrats took power in early 2017 and tried to decriminalize several graft offences.

Earlier this year, ruling party legislators pushed changes to the criminal code through parliament, drawing concern from the European Commission and U.S. State Department. The changes are being challenged in the Constitutional Court.

Social Democrat leader Liviu Dragnea was sentenced to three and a half years in prison by the Supreme Court in June for incitement to abuse of office, a ruling which is not final as it is pending an appeal.
Closing arguments may take place on Tuesday.

U.S. prosecutors on Monday plan to wrap up their tax and bank fraud case against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, making it likely the case will go to the jury by midweek if the defense decides not to call any witnesses.

The trial is in its 10th day in Alexandria, Virginia, federal court and is not scheduled to resume until Monday afternoon, Reuters said. The case arose from U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Before completing their case, prosecutors will call James Brennan, an executive at the Federal Savings Bank. On Friday, a former salesman at Federal testified that the bank's chief executive personally approved $16 million in loans to Manafort while seeking Manafort's help getting a post in President Donald Trump's cabinet.

The prosecution also wants to recall Paula Liss, an agent with the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The defense is seeking to block further questioning of her, and the judge has not yet ruled. Liss testified last week that Manafort did not disclose his foreign bank accounts.

Manafort's lawyers will then face a choice: call their own witnesses or hope the prosecution's case is not strong enough to outweigh defense attacks on the credibility of Rick Gates and the testimony of more than two dozen other witnesses.

Read alsoManafort's ex-business partner Gates: Ukrainian clients wire millions of dollars to account in Cyprus

Gates testified last week that Manafort, his former boss, directed him to help commit the tax and bank frauds, but the defense portrayed him as living a "secret life" of infidelity and embezzlement.

Prosecutors contend Manafort hid a significant portion of the approximately $60 million he earned as a consultant for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, then lied to borrow millions more in a bid to maintain an extravagant lifestyle when the Ukraine work dried up.

If the defense decides not to call any witnesses, the court may on Monday hold a conference with the lawyers to decide what instructions should be given to the jury before they begin deliberations, Judge T.S. Ellis said on Friday.

Closing arguments may take place on Tuesday. Ellis ordered each side to limit its summation to two hours.

It was unclear if Ellis makes public the reason behind an unexpected recess on Friday that lasted into the midafternoon and included a lengthy discussion with the lawyers and judge at the bench, the contents of which remain under seal.

Some legal experts have speculated that it may have been triggered by a problem with the jury after Ellis reminded jurors in unusual detail and multiple times about the defendant's presumed innocence, the need to "keep an open mind" about the trial and not to talk to anyone about the case.
August 13 2018

Stormoway Port Authority is inviting bids for the design of a new deep-water port in Stornoway as part of a 20-year masterplan for the Isle of Lewis.

New infrastructure is required to accommodate the burgeoning cruise ship businesses by providing the scale of berths necessary to accommodate the giant vessels of up to 350m in length. At present vessels of 156m and above must be turned away owing to a lack of capacity.

Once built the new terminal could bring up to 40 additional vessels each year to the Western Isles, as well as facilitate an expansion of renewable energy industry on the islands as well as additional industrial, storage and decommissioning facilities.

Stornoway Port Authority Chief Executive Alex Macleod said: The tendering of the design contract marks a significant date for the Port Authority and the Hebrides.

Whilst the work on the design continues, we will work with a number of agencies, including the Scottish Government, to investigate and source innovative ways to fund the project.

The first phase design is due to be completed by May next year, enabling construction to begin by the end of next year for completion by June 2021.
The Ukrainian authorities plan to discuss with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission, which will visit Kiev in September, the continuation of cooperation after the conclusion of the four-year IMF support program, Acting Ukrainian Finance Minister Oksana Markarova said on Monday.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) The Ukrainian authorities plan to discuss with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission, which will visit Kiev in September, the continuation of cooperation after the conclusion of the four-year IMF support program, Acting Ukrainian Finance Minister Oksana Markarova said on Monday.

The visit of the IMF mission to Ukraine is scheduled for September 6-19. The two parties are expected to discuss the latest economic developments as well as future cooperation, in particular, the IMF financial assistance to the country in order to ensure its macroeconomic stability and sustainable growth.

"We are interested in discussing with the fund both the current issues and the continuation of cooperation after the program's conclusion in March 2019 in order to ensure stability and predictability of Ukraine's development for the citizens, national businesses and foreign investors," Markarova was quoted as saying in the Finance Ministry's statement.

She added that she was confident that the IMF would continue to support economic reforms in the country, implemented by the president, the government and the National Bank.

The IMF 2015-2019 aid program under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) provides for the allocation of $17.5 billion to Ukraine. Ukraine has already received four tranches of credit and expected to receive the fifth one in December, however, it has not been allocated so far since Kiev has not met all the IMF requirements. The creation of an anti-corruption court in Ukraine and the increase of domestic gas prices remain IMF main demands.
(@FahadShabbir)

Senate Standing Committee on Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) Monday was informed that Central Development Working Party (CDWP) had approved Rs 2000 million for the establishment of Cancer Hospital in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Aug, 2018 ) :Senate Standing Committee on Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) Monday was informed that Central Development Working Party (CDWP) had approved Rs 2000 million for the establishment of Cancer Hospital in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).

The Cancer Hospital Islamabad was the project of Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University, Executive Director Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) Dr Amjad informed the Senate Committee in a detailed briefing.

The committee meeting was held here under the Chairmanship of Senator Dr Ashok Kumar which also attended by the Senators including Mir Muhammad Yousaf Badini, Muhammad Asad Ali Khan Junejo, Mushahid Hussain Sayed, Sardar Muhammad Shafiq Tareen, Sajjad Hussain Turi, Nighat Mirza, Saadia Abbasi, Samina Saeed and officials from the PIMS.

The committee suggested the said above Cancer Hospital should be established at National Institute of Health (NIH) Hospital as it has enough land.

He also informed the senate body that PC-1 for the establishment of Liver Transplant at PIMS has been approved.

Lauding the efforts for improving the medical services at PIMS Hospital, the Chairman committee said that the Dr Amjad had changed our minds about the hospital's performance.

Dr Amjad invited the senate body to visit the hospital and hold next meeting at PIMS.

In his briefing Dr Amjad said that around 1.

2 million patients had been checked at PIMS during the years 2017-18.

He informed the committee that PIMS did not have fully functioned oncology department at the hospital; adding only one doctor of the said department was available.

However, he said that all type of operations were being conducted at the PIMS.

Eight Renal transplants had been conducted so far, he added.

Sharing the details, ED PIMS said that currently, 1150 posts were vacant at the hospital which would be filled by the incoming government.

He said that current budget of PIMS was Rs 4245 million. On the request of ED PIMS, the committee recommended the Pakistan Works Department (PWD) to complete the construction work at hospital within eight months to continue the system smoothly.

He also told the body that eight Kidney Transplants had been conducted since last one and half month at PIMS.

Around 45 beds were working at PIMS emergency, he said adding that new emergency of the hospital had also been functioned.

While, giving details about the Cardiac Center at PIMS, he said that stents and medicines were being provided freely to the patients.

Presently, more than 100 ventilators were working at the hospital, he told.

At the end, the committee also recommended that an another PIMS type hospital should be established in ICT as earlier hospital is unable to bear the burden of patients.
ABU DHABI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 13th Aug, 2018) The Department of Urban Planning and Municipalities at the Abu Dhabi City Municipality has completed all preparations in the abattoirs for receiving the public during Eid al-Adha.

The working hours of slaughterhouses will be from 06:30 to 19:30 on the first day of Eid and from 06:00 to 19:30 on the following Eid days.

The municipality will also hold the Eid prayer in the mosques attached to slaughterhouses to make it easy for the public. The animals will be received from owners before the Eid prayer and will be slaughtered immediately after, in order to ease overcrowding. This practice has proved successful in the past.

The municipality organised an awareness lecture for workers at the slaughterhouses, including a detailed explanation of the Eid plan, improving the public service and meeting the increasing demand for slaughterhouses.

The Abu Dhabi Automated slaughterhouse will receive animals for sacrifice from the Emirates Red Crescent, ERC, for 2018, as well as the pre-registered sacrifices. Requests are made through the app 'Zabihati'. The municipality has deployed three veterinarians and 55 butchers. It has also stepped up the preparedness of all slaughter lines, air conditioning systems, and refrigerators to provide distinctive services.

In the Abu Dhabi slaughterhouse, the municipality expects to receive 2,500 sacrifices on the first day. Slaughterhouse Hall 1 and 2 will be operational during Eid. The services will be provided by eight veterinarians, four observers and 150 butchers. The slaughtering of cows will start at noon on the first day.

During Eid al-Adha, the municipality will suspend the special cutting service (only 8 pieces of sheep and goats are allowed).

The municipality said that it would not be able to hand over to the public the stomach, bowls and heads of slaughtered animals.

In preparation for the auspicious occasion, the municipality has conducted all necessary periodic maintenance of the slaughtering equipment. It has also checked the air conditioning and water sources and inspected the readiness of the slaughterhouse. It also deployed 30 cleaning workers and provided cleaning materials and equipment. Preparations also included the installation of tents as waiting places for clients and fitted them with suitable fans and steel barriers for customers to queue in lanes for delivering their sacrifices for slaughter. There will be three lanes (lane to Hall No. 1, lane to Hall No. 2, and a lane dedicated to female clients).

The municipality expects that Al Wathba slaughterhouse to receive 1,000 sacrifices on the first day of Eid and has deployed four veterinarians and 40 butchers to serve the public. The slaughter and processing of cows and camels will start from the first day of the Eid after 12:00. Al Wathba Slaughterhouse will be ready to receive carcasses which include camels, cattle, sheep and goats.

The Bani Yas slaughterhouse is expected to receive 3,000 sacrifices on the first day of Eid. The slaughterhouse Halls 1 and 2 have been prepared and eight veterinarians and 200 butchers have been assigned. The slaughterhouse provides cattle, sheep and goat processing services. Camels will be processed at the Al Wathba Slaughterhouse only.

The Al Shahama slaughterhouse is expected to receive 1,500 sacrifices on the first day. The slaughterhouse is manned by four veterinarians and 50 butchers. The slaughterhouse will provide slaughter services for cows, sheep and goats only.
Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum issued Cabinet Resolution No. 43 of 2018 in support of the people of determination and Resolution No. 38 of 2018 regarding the adoption of the UAE sign language dictionary.

DUBAI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 13th Aug, 2018) Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum issued Cabinet Resolution No. 43 of 2018 in support of the people of determination and Resolution No. 38 of 2018 regarding the adoption of the UAE sign language dictionary.

Resolution No. 43 - published in the latest issue of the Official Gazette - aims to support the rights of people of determination in the field of employment by enabling access to opportunities in the labour market in such a manner that ensures their rights to work on an equal footing with others. The resolution also aims to provide this segment of society with the necessary support to seek equal employment opportunities in various sectors.

The resolution requires concerned government entities to protect the rights of people of determination to ensure the right to work on an equal basis with others and to ensure that they have equal employment opportunities.

The resolution stressed the need to provide working and health conditions for people of determination, and not to terminate their services or refer them to retirement due to disability or its occurrence after appointment, unless retirement age is reached or a competent medical committee decision states they are not fit to work.

The resolution stipulates that the private sector should be encouraged to integrate people of determination into their institutions and grant them exemptions and privileges. It also calls upon the concerned authorities not to discriminate against this segment of society.

As per the resolution, the Ministry of Community Development will coordinate with the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation and the Federal Human Resources Authority to develop regulations that will determine the nature of reasonable accommodation arrangements needed by people of determination in the work environment.

In addition, the resolution His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum issued concerning the adoption of the UAE sign language dictionary stipulates the competence of the UAE Cabinet to adopt any amendments to the Emirati Sign Language Dictionary on the proposal of the Minister of Community Development.
All is set to celebrate the 71st Independence Day of Pakistan on Tuesday - August 14 with traditional zeal and fervor across the Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK).

MIRPUR (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Aug, 2018 ) ,:All is set to celebrate the 71st Independence Day of Pakistan on Tuesday - August 14 with traditional zeal and fervor across the Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK).

An AJK government spokesperson told APP here on Monday that the day will dawn with special prayers in mosques for stability, prosperity, security and progress of Pakistan and for the early success of the Kashmiris indigenous struggle for the achievement of their legitimate right to self determination.

The National flag hoisting ceremonies, rallies, processions and colorful functions under the aegis of various public and private sector, social and political organizations, in all small and major towns and cities of the state, will be the hall mark of the day.

It will be a state holiday across AJK on this occasion. Major National flag hoisting ceremony in AJK will be held in the capital city of Muzafferabad.

Similar flag hoisting ceremonies will be held in all other ten district headquarters of AJK including Mirpur, Kotli, Bagh, Sudhanoti, Bhimbher, Rawalakot, Havaili, Hattiyan and Neelum valley. The national flag hoisting ceremonies will also be held at all tehsil headquarters as well as subordinate towns and villages.

In Mirpur a grand Jashan-e-Azadi Pakistan rally in Mirpur to celebrate the 71st founding anniversary of Pakistan under the auspices of the local traders body Markazi Anjuman-e-Tajraan (Ittehad group) at 10.

00 a.m in front of Quaid-e-Azam Stadium on Tuesday.

"The grand rally by all segments of the civil society including the local business frternity will be hall mark of the day", said the organization's President Chaudhry Mahmood, while unveiling the capacious day-long programs by the local business fraternity to celebrate the national day.

National flags of Pakistan and AJK will also be hoisted atop all major buildings of private and public-sector organizations besides illumination of colorful lights to mark Jashan-e-Azadi Pakistan celebrations, he added.

Unveiling the salient features of the colorful programs of celebration of the independence day of Pakistan, Mahmood told media Monday that celebration of the Independence day of Pakistan this year too, as all previous years since the inception of the country will be the manifestation of the Kashmiris deep rooted love and affection with Pakistan since Pakistan runs through the blood of the people of Jammu Kashmir same as Kashmir runs through the blood of our Pakistan brethren, he vowed.

Besides the AJK government, various social, political and public representative organizations are giving final shape to the arrangements for celebrating Jashan-e-Azadi - e -Pakistan in traditional zeal and fervor.
Australia's High Commissioner to Pakistan Margaret Adamson has congratulated the people and government on the Independence Day with a pledge to stand with its people in their efforts to build a strong, stable, prosperous and democratic country.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Aug, 2018 ) :Australia's High Commissioner to Pakistan Margaret Adamson has congratulated the people and government on the Independence Day with a pledge to stand with its people in their efforts to build a strong, stable, prosperous and democratic country.

"Jashan-e-Azadi Mubarak! - I congratulate the people and Government of Pakistan on the occasion of Pakistan Independence Day, Ambassador Adamson said in a statement.

She said Pakistan has seen momentous changes during its 71 years of nationhood and Australia has been a steadfast friend throughout this period.

"We will continue to stand with the people of Pakistan in their efforts to build a strong, stable, prosperous and democratic country."She expressed confidence that the partnership between the two countries in education, trade, development and sporting and cultural ties would continue to strengthen.

The ambassador said she was "grateful for the contribution made to Australia by our Pakistani diaspora who play an integral role in our vibrant multicultural society and in fostering people-to-people links between our two countries.
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ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Aug, 2018 ) :With the start of Haj just a few days away, officials from numerous Saudi ministries and departments, including the Ministry of Health, are making the rounds to ensure that all Haj procedures and facilities designed to facilitate the arrival of about two million pilgrims are in place and ready to welcome Muslims from across the globe.

A total of 1,302,192 pilgrims had arrived in the Kingdom from abroad until Saturday, registering a nearly 6% increase compared to the same period last year, according to the Directorate General For Passports.Haj officially starts on Aug. 19.

No epidemic or quarantine diseases have been reported so far. However, the Ministry of Health is prepared to meet contingencies, Saudi Gazette reported.

In Madinah, 11 hospitals have been set up in the area to provide services specifically to pilgrims while other hospitals have made preparations for emergency cases. All hospitals are supported by 13 Primary seasonal healthcare centers.

The Jeddah Health Affairs has assigned 115 doctors, technicians and administrators to work in the Health Control Centre at Jeddah Islamic Port through which many pilgrims will arrive.

In addition to verifying health certificates of pilgrims arriving via the port, medicine and required vaccines will also be available.

Hamad Al-Dowaila, Vice Minister of Health, recently paid visits to many health facilities in Jeddah and Makkah to check on their readiness to deal with the rush of pilgrims in the coming days.

He also paid a visit to King Abdul Aziz Airport's pilgrim city, where he was briefed on preparations and received a detailed account of the various departments represented and the services they provide.

He also toured one of the arrival halls for pilgrims.

The newly launched program, the Makkah Route Initiative, is designed to streamline procedures for religious travelers to Saudi Arabia by allowing them to undergo many of their entry procedures while still at their airport of embarkation. Introduced this year in Malaysia and Indonesia because of the large number of pilgrims coming from these two countries, the Makkah Route Initiative allows health records to be viewed electronically before pilgrims arrive in the Kingdom.

Pilgrims coming from the two countries can also be fingerprinted and have their passports stamped before departing.
(@rukhshanmir)

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Aug, 2018 ) :Islamabad Traffic Police (ITP) have devised a plan regarding the elaborate traffic arrangements to be put in place for the upcoming Independence Day celebrations and a total of 357 officers and officials will be deputed for frequent flow of traffic in the city.

A total of 357 officers and officials including SSP, SP, three DSPs and 19 Inspectors will perform their duties on different roads of the city to guide the people as per devised traffic plan.

Various roads of the city would remain closed for Independence day ceremony to be held at convention center from 6:00 am till closing of the ceremony.

However, a diversion plan for frequent flow of traffic has also been chalked out.

According to diversion plan, Kashmir Highway would remain closed from Abpara chowk to Koriyanwala chowk while traffic of this route would be diverted to Muree road via Faizabad.

The Sehrwardy Embassy road leading to Serena hotel would also be closed while its traffic would use alternate Bazar Chowk, Sarfaraz road, Shaheed Millat road and municipal road.

Shahrah-e-Jamhoriyat would be closed from Secretariat chowk to convention centre and citizens could use Margalla road as alternate for approaching Ayub chowk and Marriott hotel. The road from Barri-Imam to Radio Pakistan would remain closed while 3rd road could be used as an alternate.

The road from Kashmir chowk to Serena hotel would also be closed while the traffic of this road would be diverted to Margalla road via Faizabad and Zero-point. The traffic leading towards Murree from Club road would take a U-turn and would use one-way road till Koriyanwala chowk.

The officials of ITP, for guidance of the citizens, would be deployed at all spots where the traffic would be closed.

Besides this, ITP radio FM 92.4 would also update the citizens with real time traffic situation and diversion plan through its transmission.

On the directions of SSP traffic Farrukh Rasheed, ITP have also decided to take strict action against one-wheelers for performing stunts on August 13-14.

The directions have also been issued to the In-charges of all zones for crackdown against vehicles with heavy silencers and over-speeding drivers.

The legal action would also be taken against the motorbike mechanics for making alteration in the bikes. The barricades would be put up by special squads of ITP on different roads including Kashmir Highway, Expressway, Faisal Avenue, Murree road, 7th Avenue, 9th Avenue and Park road to take action against those performing stunts on bikes and cars or using heavy silencers.

The SSP traffic also appealed to the parents for not providing the motorbikes to their children for one-wheeling.
(@mahnoorsheikh03)

PTI MNA Malik Hussain has announced to donate his first salary in the fund

Islamabad (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News  13th August, 2018) The newly elected MNA belonging to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) have announced to donate their first salary in the dams fund.

According to media reports, PTI MNA Malik Hussain has announced to donate his first salary in the fund developed for the construction of Diamer Basha and Mohmand Dam.

The dams fund was started by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar for the construction of Daimer Basha and Mohmand Dam.

The fund has been established by the SBP on the directions of the Supreme Court. The fund may receive donations from both domestic, international donors and contributions from abroad which will be received at all branches of above mentioned banks where such branches exist.

The trend was started by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar who donated Rs 10 lac for the construction of dams.

Following the chief justice, ISPR DG Major General Asif Ghafoor said that the officers of Pakistan Army, Navy and Air Force contributed their two-day pay, while soldiers one-day pay for this national cause.

Senate Chairman Muhammad Sadiq Sanjrani also announced a donation of Rs1.5 million in the funds meant for the construction of Diamer Bhasha and Mohmand dams.

Meanwhile, Habib Bank Ltd announced to donate Rs 10 crore for the construction of dams while the employees of Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (FESCO) announced to contribute their one-day salary in the construction of Bhasha and Mohmand dams.

Officers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Government contributed their three-day salary to the fund for the construction of Diamer-Bhasha and Mohmand dams.

Caretaker Minister for Foreign Affairs Abdullah Hussain Haroon donated the entire salary of his tenure in the Fund-2018 meant for the construction of these dams.

Allama Syed Iftikhar Hussain Naqvi, a renowned scholar and member Council of the Islamic Ideology (CII) donated his one month salary for Dams Construction Fund.

Judges of Islamabad High Court (IHC) donated Rs 1 lac each while Veterans of Pakistan (formerly PESA) have also decided to contribute from their monthly pensions.

The Pakistan National Shipping Corporation (PNSC) also contributed Rs20 million to Chief Justices Diamer Bhasha and Mohmand Damn Fund.

Moreover, a student from Bannu also announced to donate the money prize he received upon getting a position in Matric exams to the dams fund, a nine-year-old Ali Sher donated Rs 10,000 for the dams fund by saving his pocket money and selling his toys while a fruit seller from Kamalia donated Rs 5000 for the construction of dams.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

MANSEHRA, Aug 12(UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Aug, 2018 ) ::education Department Mansehra decided to reinstate hundreds of suspended teachers on the orders of Peshawar High Court (PHC).

The teachers were sacked in 1997 in all over Khyber Pakhtunkhwa owing to certain reasons.

The suspended teachers those would be benefited by the PHC court verdict were including district Manshera, Torghar and Battagram.

Education department has directed all sacked teachers to submit their educational documents, CNIC, first appointment letter, service book, suspension orders and medical certificate in their respective districts to start the process of reestablishment of their services.
(@FahadShabbir)

AMMAN, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Aug, 2018 ) :The second stage of the security operation against a terrorist cell in the northwestern city of Salt resulted in the rescue of one security personnel, State Minister for Media Affairs, Jumana Ghunimat, announced on Sunday.

Ghunimat, who is also the Government Spokesperson, confirmed the rescued agent is still alive, but listed in a critical condition.

The security operation is still undergoing with careful and well-thought-out steps, to make sure that no civilians are threatened by the terrorist, the Ghneimat added.

Civil Defense personnel moved into the building to search rubble and examine the situation, the minister pointed out."Five members of the terrorist cell are now in custody, three of which were arrested at the beginning of the operation," she added.

The minister urged the public to stay away from the location of theraid, as the security operation is still undergoing.
(@FahadShabbir)

At least 15 people were killed in Peru on Sunday after a bus fell into a ravine in the western region of Ancash, police said.

LIMA, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Aug, 2018 ) :At least 15 people were killed in Peru on Sunday after a bus fell into a ravine in the western region of Ancash, police said.

The accident occurred in the Sihuas-Quiches highway, in an area known as Arenapampa, when the bus plummeted into a 100-meter deep ravine. The causes are still being investigated.

Rescue teams, aided by local inhabitants, were able to transport the injured to hospitals nearby.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

As many as 49 people have died after being subjected to physical and psychological torture in secret prisons run by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the south of Yemen, the Al Jazeera TV channel reported citing a report provided by the Yemeni military.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) As many as 49 people have died after being subjected to physical and psychological torture in secret prisons run by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the south of Yemen, the Al Jazeera tv channel reported citing a report provided by the Yemeni military.

The Yemeni military, which provided the report, has been working with the Saudi-led coalition, which comprises nine states, including the UAE.

According to the report, the United Arab Emirates has organized a total of 27 clandestine prisons including one in Eritrea, where the Emirates' military base is located.

The broadcaster said that the detainees had been subject to rape, electrocution, beatings and sleep deprivation, among others.

In July, Amnesty International appealed to the UAE government to disclose the information regarding detention centers in Yemen, put an end to reported arbitrary arrests and torture and to carry out an investigation into the alleged violations.

The UAE government slammed the watchdog's report denying running any prisons in Yemen and calling the report politically motivated and aimed at hampering the coalition's efforts in backing the Yemeni government.

The civil war in Yemen began in 2015 with the Saudi-led coalition intervening in March and carrying out airstrikes against the rebels and organized a large-scale sea blockade of the country.
The Southern Transport Corridor, a logistics network linking China's western cities and ASEAN countries, is growing to be a vital artery.









Goods from the western provinces of China can be shipped to Singapore through the Beibu Gulf in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region by road, railway and waterways. The route also connects Europe to Southeast Asia, with Chongqing as the vital railway link on the route.





"The logistics network is a crucial step for China to strengthen its trade ties with not only countries along the route but also with those that need transshipment, like Australia," said Lan Yongxin, deputy director at the Guangxi-ASEAN Cooperation Office.





The Southern Transport Corridor, whose full name is the China-Singapore (Chongqing) Connectivity Initiative Southern Transport Corridor, is a joint venture between China and Singapore. It is positioned as new strategic pivot in Southwest and Central China's opening-up.





The corridor is expected to offer a shorter, quicker and cheaper trade route between western China and Southeast Asia, besides helping the country to expand its economic cooperation with Europe and the rest of the world.





Shipments from Chongqing now take two days to arrive in the Beibu Gulf and travel about 1,450 kilometers by train, before departing to South Asia. In the past, journeys for the same purpose took about 14 days to Shanghai by the riverways before being shipped to South Asia.





"A well-developed logistics network is essential to boost trade and economy," Lan said.





In July, the railway line linking the Beibu Gulf and Chongqing started daily cargo services. From last September to July this year, two-way shipping by railways grew 355 times year-on-year and has ferried about 19,750 containers, according to news website CNR.





Lan said the new route has facilitated more cooperation in logistics between China and ASEAN countries.





Singapore-based logistics company Pacific International Lines Pte Ltd, for instance, has cooperated with Guangxi Beibu Gulf International Port Group to set up a joint venture called Beibu Gulf-PSA International Container Terminal Co Ltd.





Pacific International Lines also plans to invest 10 billion yuan ($1.46 billion) to set up an international logistics and industrial park which will be operated as a trading platform and business incubator.





"The segment of cold chain logistics has seen rapid development, thanks to the Southern Transport Corridor," said Lan. "Many goods imported into China are tropical fruits and seafood that are perishable and require low-temperature transport.





"Many related businesses have started to boom along the route and many Chinese companies are also investing in ASEAN companies."





Genomics company BGI, for instance, has been investing in ASEAN companies and setting up industrial parks for technology innovation and to grow farm products.





"The government is also promoting trade expos and summits, like the upcoming China-ASEAN Expo," said Lan.





Aiming at promoting bilateral trade and investment, this year's China-ASEAN Expo, now in its 15th edition, will be held from Sept 12 to 15 in Nanning, capital of Guangxi.





"Going forward, we expect the Southern Transport Corridor to play a larger role in facilitating cross-border trade," said Lan.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

Azerbaijan on Monday freed opposition leader Ilgar Mammadov from jail five years after his imprisonment sparked widespread international condemnation for being politically motivated.

Baku, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Aug, 2018 ) :Azerbaijan on Monday freed opposition leader Ilgar Mammadov from jail five years after his imprisonment sparked widespread international condemnation for being politically motivated.

A court in the capital Baku ruled the 48-year-old leader of the pro-Western ReAL opposition party should be freed "with a two-year probation period," his lawyer Fuad Agayev told journalists.

Mammadov, previously seen as President Ilham Aliyev's leading political opponent, was also banned from travelling abroad, his lawyer added.

"We will be trying to achieve his full acquittal," Agayev said.

Pro-democracy campaigner Mammadov was widely expected to run in presidential elections when he was arrested in February 2013 on charges of causing unrest in the town of Ismayilli.

He denied any role in the trouble, which saw police and protesters clash, but was sentenced in 2014 to seven years in jail for "inciting anti-government riots".

The same year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the criminal proceedings against Mammadov had no legal basis and were politically motivated.

In October 2015, Mammadov's lawyers said he was severely beaten in the head by prison guards.

In 2016, the European Union called on Azerbaijan to comply with the ruling and release Mammadov after the tightly-controlled former Soviet state's supreme court rejected his appeal.

Rights groups say the government of the energy-rich Caspian state has clamped down on opponents since 2013.

Aliyev secured a fourth consecutive presidential term in April with 86 percent of the vote in elections that international observers said were marred by "serious irregularities" and lack of competition.

He has been in power for 15 years and was first elected in 2003, after the death of his father Heydar Aliyev.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 14th August, 2018) US National Security Advisor John Bolton and Turkeys Envoy to the United States Serdar Kilic have discussed the imprisonment of US pastor Andrew Brunson as well as bilateral ties between the two nations in a meeting on Monday, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.

"At the Turkish Ambassadors request, Ambassador John Bolton met with Ambassador Serdar Kilic of Turkey today in the White House," Sanders said on Monday. "They discussed Turkeys continued detention of Pastor Andrew Brunson and the state of the US-Turkey relationship."

Earlier on Monday, US President Donald Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2019 requiring an assessment of the US diplomatic and military relationship with Turkey amid Ankaras potential purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems.

Most recently, Trump authorized the doubling of steel and aluminum tariffs on Turkey resulting in the Turkish lira reaching a record low. The Trump administration also froze the assets of two Turkish ministers who allegedly contributed to human rights abuses in the country.

US-Turkish bilateral relations have deteriorated over US pastor Andrew Brunson detention in Turkey in 2016. Brunson, who was arrested on suspicion of ties to the movement accused of orchestrating the 2016 failed military coup in Turkey, was released from prison in late July and placed under house arrest.
(@rukhshanmir)

The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) threatens to last longer than the previous one registered in May due to higher population mobility and the more volatile security situation in the affected provinces, Jessica Ilunga, a spokeswoman for the DRC Ministry of Public Health, told Sputnik on Monday.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) threatens to last longer than the previous one registered in May due to higher population mobility and the more volatile security situation in the affected provinces, Jessica Ilunga, a spokeswoman for the DRC Ministry of Public Health, told Sputnik on Monday.

On August 1, the DRC Ministry of Public Health declared the beginning of a new Ebola outbreak in the countrys Ituri and North Kivu provinces. This is the 10th Ebola outbreak the DRC has faced in 42 years, and the second one declared this year.

"We cannot speculate on the duration of the outbreak as outbreaks are often unpredictable. However, we expect it to last longer than the previous outbreak in the Equateur province for at least four reasons: the outbreak is in a densely populated area; the population in the region is extremely mobile as they are merchants; there are good road connections that facilitates transport of people between several cities; the security situation in that region is also tense and volatile," Ilunga said.

Ilunga noted that the ministrys priority was to improve the mechanisms to control, detect and swiftly respond to any Ebola cases. The disease itself, however, will never be completely eradicated, since the Equatorial Forest, the virus natural reservoir, covers about 46 percent of the country, she clarified.

According to the spokeswoman, the ministrys response to the outbreak has been seriously hampered by military operations against militants active in the area, which prevent a safe and unhindered access of medical staff to those affected.

"There are active military operations in Beni to get rid of rebel groups operating in the area and some areas are unsafe for our health workers to go to. It is a major concern as the most important part of the response is contact tracing and investigations in the community, which requires a high level of mobility of our health teams," Ilunga pointed out.

The health authorities therefore maintained close cooperation with the Defense Ministry and the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) to "secure areas where health workers will deployed," the spokeswoman noted.

Ilunga added that the ministry had also stepped up its response efforts with regard to Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, as a precaution.

"However, at the moment operations in Goma focus on the preparedness of the city as there has been no confirmed Ebola case there yet. This includes setting up an Ebola treatment center, activating screening mechanisms at the major points of entry of the city and raising awareness among the population about preventive measures," she said.

The previous Ebola outbreak in the country's Equator province broke out on May 8 and lasted through July 24 with 53 confirmed and probable cases, including 33 deaths.
A driver of Russian journalists who were murdered in the Central African Republic (CAR) last month was imprisoned, the press service of the Russian Embassy in the CAR told Sputnik on Monday citing local investigators.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) A driver of Russian journalists who were murdered in the Central African Republic (CAR) last month was imprisoned, the press service of the Russian Embassy in the car told Sputnik on Monday citing local investigators.

"He is in jail ... in Bangui. We asked the investigators about his status and they said that the driver is currently treated as a witness and is in jail to ensure his accessibility on one hand ...

and his security, just in case, on the other," the press service said.

According to the press service, Russian investigators have not yet arrived in CAR, with the date of their arrival unknown.

On July 30, Russian nationals Kirill Radchenko, Alexander Rastorguev and Orkhan Dzhemal were killed near the CAR city of Sibut.

An investigative media outlet of Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky confirmed that it had sent the journalists to the CAR to work on a documentary film.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

The Zaatari refugee camp in northern Jordan has turned into a city-like settlement and is currently home to some 80,000 Syrians who have fled their homes due to the civil war.

AMMAN (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) The Zaatari refugee camp in northern Jordan has turned into a city-like settlement and is currently home to some 80,000 Syrians who have fled their homes due to the civil war.

A Sputnik correspondent visited the camp to find out the refugees' plans for the future.

The camp, located near the Syrian border in the Jordanian province of Mafraq, was built in 2012, one year after the start of the civil war in Syria, and currently occupies an area of over 5 square kilometers (1.9 square miles). Up until 2015, the camp was home to more than 125,000 people, mostly coming from southern Syria.

About three years ago, Jordanian authorities and international organizations set up two new refugee camps in northern Jordan to reduce overcrowding in Zaatari.

According to an official from a UN-accredited humanitarian organization, Zaatari is an "exemplary" camp which has 32 schools, hospitals, as well as a supply of water and humanitarian aid.

Moreover, refugees receive a food allowance of 20 Jordanian dinars (roughly $30), a tiny amount for Jordan. But the camp does host regular public events where Syrians can earn some money. However, individuals are not allowed to work for more than three months because the number of applicants significantly exceeds the number of job opportunities.

Accompanied by a police officer, the Sputnik correspondent visited a market located on Zaatari's main street. Many of its shops have glass windows and sell a wide variety of goods, including party clothing and mobile phones.

"I fled Daraa [a city in Syria] when the war broke out. My family has been living here for seven years. I opened this shop two years ago ... The Jordanian government is doing its best to ensure good living conditions in the camp," the owner of a shop selling outdated electronic devices said.

Asked about his prospects for returning to his home country, he responded positively.

"But the war destroyed my house. The [Syrian] army has taken control of the village just recently, and we do not know what the situation is like there. Nobody can guarantee our safety at the moment, and I cannot risk my familys well-being," the shop owner said.

At a candy shop nearby, a smiling young man with a beard offer his customers a piece of baklava.

He moved to Jordan with his parents at the age of 11.

"I really want to go back home. But for now, the employees of the UN Refugee Agency cannot confirm that Syria is completely safe. Moreover, I will probably have to serve in the [Syrian] army but I have to work to feed my family," the young man said.

Every Syrian man aged 18 and older is subject to compulsory military service. Many Syrians have returned home to fight terrorists in their home country.

An owner of a second hand clothing store seemed to be more determined to return home than his younger colleagues. He has a family of 15 and is also from Daara.

"We could leave as soon as tomorrow. Nothing is keeping us here. Our Jordanian brothers gave us a helping hand, shared their bread with us ... Once we are guaranteed safety and provided with an opportunity to return, we will be the first to do so," he said.

Southern Syria was proclaimed free from terrorists about a week ago. The army now controls three provinces: Daraa, Suwayda and Quneitra. In most of the towns, the militants surrendered without a fight and agreed to a truce and amnesty. Some Syrian families from border towns have already returned home via border crossings that were previously used by smugglers.

Some 1.5 million Syrian refugees currently reside in Jordan, the majority of whom work in major cities. Some of them, like entrepreneur Adnan Habbab, have already returned to Syria. He managed reopened a small hotel in the historic center of Damascus, which used to be a popular tourist destination before the war.

In Amman, the correspondent spoke to local parliament member Haled Ramadan. His father is a refugee who left Palestine in late 1940s. Black and white photos in Ramadan's house show the past as well as Palestinians fleeing a Yarmouk refugee camp located near Damascus.

"As of today, thousands of unregistered citizens in Jordan are trying to get [their documents] legalized through international organizations since they want to get international guarantees of safety and decent living conditions upon their return to Syria," Ramadan said.

He added that this is about the return of some 2 million people.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

A group of Russian journalists has arrived in the Central African Republic (CAR) on Sunday a few weeks after the killing of their colleagues near the city of Sibut in CAR, the Russian Embassy in the African country told Sputnik on Monday.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 14th August, 2018) A group of Russian journalists has arrived in the Central African Republic (CAR) on Sunday a few weeks after the killing of their colleagues near the city of Sibut in CAR, the Russian Embassy in the African country told Sputnik on Monday.

"The group of journalists arrived in Bangui yesterday ... They visited the embassy where they received safety instructions. They told us about their provisional plans as they had just arrived [in the CAR] and had no detailed action plan yet," the embassy's press service said.

The Russian Federal news Agency earlier announced its plan to send a film crew to the CAR, tasked with examining the situation in the African country as well as the difficulties a journalist could face there.

The agency said the crew would coordinate its work with the Russian Foreign Ministry and relevant car government agencies.

Russian nationals Kirill Radchenko, Alexander Rastorguev and Orkhan Dzhemal were killed in the CAR on July 30. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, preliminary information showed robbery was the motivation behind the attack.
TEHRAN, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Aug, 2018 ) :Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday called for "swift and just" legal action from new courts after the head of the judiciary said the country faced an "economic war", state television reported.

The rial Currency has lost about half of its value since April under the threat of revived U.S. sanctions, with heavy demand for Dollars among ordinary Iranians trying to protect their savings.

The central bank and the judiciary have blamed "enemies" for the fall of the currency and a rapid rise in the price of gold coins, and the judiciary has said more than 40 people including a former central bank deputy have been arrested on charges carrying the death penalty.

"The current special economic conditions are considered an economic war," judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani said in a letter to Khamenei, calling for the setting up of special courts to deal quickly with financial crimes, the television report said.

Khamenei agreed, saying: "The purpose (of the courts) should be to punish those guilty of corrupt economic practices swiftly and justly," the tv added. "The courts should be advised to (ensure) the accuracy of their rulings." New Islamic revolutionary courts will be set up for two years and directed to impose maximum sentences on those "disrupting and corrupting the economy", and appeal rights will be curbed, Amoli Larijani proposed in his letter, read on state television.

In May, the United States pulled out of a 2015 deal between world powers and Tehran under which international sanctions on Iran were lifted in return for curbs on its nuclear program.

Washington this week reimposed sanctions on Iran's purchase of U.S. dollars, its trade in gold and preciousmetals and its dealings with metals, coal and industrial-related software.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei ruled out on Monday the possibility of either waging a war or engaging in negotiations with the United States amid escalated Tehran-Washington tensions.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei ruled out on Monday the possibility of either waging a war or engaging in negotiations with the United States amid escalated Tehran-Washington tensions.

Since the United States withdrew in May from the Iran nuclear deal and announced re-impositions of anti-Iranian sanctions, the two countries' officials repeatedly exchanged rants threatening of consequences of going to war. US President Donald Trump said in late July, however, that he would meet with Iranian leaders without preconditions "whenever they want."

"Recently, US officials have been talking blatantly about us.

Beside sanctions, they are talking about war and negotiations. In this regard, let me say a few words to the people: THERE WILL BE NO WAR, NOR WILL WE NEGOTIATE WITH THE US," Khamenei tweeted.

Tehran claims that in order to pave way for talks with Iran, the United States should return to the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which envisioned lifting anti-Iranian sanctions in exchange for Tehran maintaining peaceful nature of its nuclear program. Other signatories to the deal, including China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the European Union, have agreed that the agreement needs to be preserved.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

The Ukrainian Justice Ministry intends to propose to international partners to create a version of the Magnitsky Act to impose additional individually-targeted sanctions on the leadership of Russia over the situation with Ukrainians jailed in Russia, Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko said on Monday.

KIEV (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) The Ukrainian Justice Ministry intends to propose to international partners to create a version of the Magnitsky Act to impose additional individually-targeted sanctions on the leadership of Russia over the situation with Ukrainians jailed in Russia, Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko said on Monday.

Earlier in August the Ukrainian authorities filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over alleged violations of rights of Ukrainians convicted in Russia. This was the sixth such lawsuit. Russian officials have repeatedly said that Kiev has no evidence of these alleged human rights violations.

"We expect the ECHR to consider this case promptly enough and we will be asking to consider this case as a priority one ..

. Secondly, we will propose to our international partners to form a separate sanctions list, an equivalent of the Magnitsky Act," Petrenko said at a press conference as quoted by Ukrinform.

According to the minister, Kiev has for the first time sent a document to an international court, which Names Russian officials who, in Ukraine's opinion, are involved in violating the rights of Ukrainians convicted in Russia.

In December 2012, the United States adopted the Magnitsky Act on sanctions against Russian nationals, who are allegedly involved in violations of human rights. In 2016, Washington adopted the Global Magnitsky Act that no longer targets only Russian citizens and allows the US government to impose sanctions on any individual or entity implicated in human rights abuses.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil will arrive in Moscow next Monday, and will discuss with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov the issue of Syrian refugees returning to their homeland, a source in the Lebanese Foreign Ministry told Sputnik on Monday.

BEIRUT (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil will arrive in Moscow next Monday, and will discuss with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov the issue of Syrian refugees returning to their homeland, a source in the Lebanese Foreign Ministry told Sputnik on Monday.

"On August 20, minister Bassil will visit Moscow, where he will hold talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov," the source said.

It is expected that during the negotiations, the Russia-proposed initiative to ensure the safe return of refugees to Syria and the formation of logistics centers for this purpose will be discussed, according to the source.

Lebanon and a number of other states will be involved in organizing the work of these centers.

Syria has been torn by civil war since 2011, with the government fighting numerous opposition groups and terrorist organizations. Russia is assisting the country in returning to peaceful life, being a guarantor of the ceasefire regime and having announced in late July the creation of a refugee center in Syria that will receive, relocate and accommodate civilians returning home.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry's latest estimates, there are more than 1.7 million Syrians in nine countries who had expressed their desire to return to their homes.
China exported 12,651 copyrights on publications in 2017, up 29 percent from the previous year, according to a report on the country's publishing industry in 2017.









The report issued by the State Administration of Press and Publication said book copyrights accounted for the majority with 10,670, while the remainder was made up of 424 copyrights of audio and video products and 1,557 of electronic publications.





A total of 18,037 copyrights of publications were imported into the country last year, including 17,154 book copyrights.





Copyright authorities across the country uncovered 4,102 institutions involved in copyright infringement and other illicit acts and 155 locations where pirated publications were produced during the year, and confiscated some 9.7 million pirated publications, including 5.5 million books and journals.





China exported 21.7 million copies of books, newspapers, and journals in 2017, and imported 32.6 million. Over 5.4 million copies of children's books were exported, according to the report.
Bamako, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Aug, 2018 ) :Malians were voting on Sunday in a presidential runoff likely to see Ibrahim Boubacar Keita returned to office despite criticism of his handling of the country's security crisis and allegations of election fraud.

The second round is a rerun of a 2013 faceoff that Keita, 73, won by a landslide over former finance minister Soumaila Cisse.

This year's campaign saw fierce attacks on Keita's perceived failure to dampen a wave of jihadist bloodshed and ethnic violence, as well as mounting accusations of vote fraud.

But public enthusiasm has been low and the opposition is fractured.

After the July 29 first-round vote the pool of candidates was reduced from 24 to two, as Keita was credited with 42 percent of the vote and Cisse, 68, picked up 18 percent.

"We hope the new president does better and knows how to make up for past mistakes," El Hajd Aliou Sow, a retired civil servant, told AFP as he left a group of early-morning voters.

Mali, a landlocked nation home to at least 20 ethnic groups where the majority of people live on less than $2 a day, has battled jihadist attacks and intercommunal violence for years.

The first round was peppered by violence and threats from armed groups that led to several hundred polling stations being closed, mainly in the lawless central region.

Security services said Saturday they had disrupted a plot to carry out "targeted attacks" in the capital Bamako on the eve of the runoff.

Keita cast his vote in the capital Bamako shortly after 0900 GMT and warned against "staged" electoral fraud after accusations of ballot box stuffing and other irregularities.

"How could you stage fraud when you are assured of the support of your people?" Keita said.

Cisse's party told AFP in the early hours of Sunday that ballot papers were already circulating, several hours before polls opened.

But he has failed to unite the opposition behind him, and first-round challengers have either backed the president or refused to give voting instructions.

Few Malians attended a string of planned marches and protests called for by opposition leaders in the capital Bamako ahead of the run-off.

As a result, Keita, commonly named "IBK" after his initials, is the clear favourite.
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US Secretary of Defense James Mattis during his trip to Brazil and other regional countries this week will seek to increase cooperation with the countries in South America, the Department of Defense said in a press release on Monday.

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) US Secretary of Defense James Mattis during his trip to Brazil and other regional countries this week will seek to increase cooperation with the countries in South America, the Department of Defense said in a press release on Monday.

"[T]he United States is looking to expand its partnerships with the nations of the region where it makes sense to do so," the release said.

The Defense Department explained that the United States aims to develop cooperation with countries in instances that are mutually beneficial, noting that countries in South America are already working with the United States on a number of key military issues.

Earlier on Monday, Mattis arrived in Brazil where he will attempt to assess relations between the United States and militaries in South America, according to the Department of Defense.

Mattis will also visit Argentina, Columbia and Chile after he wraps up scheduled meetings with officials in Brazil.
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Moscow expects that the upcoming results of the presidential election held in Mali will contribute to the restoration of peace and national reconciliation in the country, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday in a statement.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) Moscow expects that the upcoming results of the presidential election held in Mali will contribute to the restoration of peace and national reconciliation in the country, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday in a statement.

On Sunday, Mali held the second round of the presidential vote contested between incumbent President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Soumaila Cisse, representing the Union for the Republic and Democracy.

"We expect that the results of the elections will serve the cause of restoring peace and achieving national reconciliation in Mali, will allow the Malian society to continue moving forward along the way of stable and democratic development, will help to more effectively counter the terrorist threat in the Sahara-Sahel region as a whole," the statement reads.

The first round of the election was held on July 29. The situation in the country between the two rounds was marred by some incidents. On July 31, a group transporting election materials in Segou area was attacked, leaving four soldiers and eight attackers dead.

Last week, the United Nations issued a report accusing Malian security forces of killing civilians during their anti-terrorist operations against Islamist groups. The government has already acknowledged that its forces were linked to the killings.
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Norwegian Minister of Fisheries Per Sandberg resigned after visiting Iran while on holiday without giving prior notice to the government and violating security rules, local media reported on Monday.

STOCKHOLM (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) Norwegian Minister of Fisheries Per Sandberg resigned after visiting Iran while on holiday without giving prior notice to the government and violating security rules, local media reported on Monday.

According to the Afterposten media outlet, Sandberg visited Iran with his 28-year old girlfriend, a Norway national of Iranian origin, during July's vacation. The former minister informed the government two days after his arrival in Iran and took his work phone, which was a breach of Norway's security.

Harald Tom Nesvik was appointed as the new minister.

Sandberg's girlfriend reportedly applied for asylum in Norway in early 2000s and was granted the permit in 2008. Local media have repeatedly suspected her of links to the Iranian authorities following her active participation in the activity of the Iranian Embassy in Norway. The woman has claimed in her interview to the NRK broadcaster that she was "facilitating Norwegians to get acquainted with Iran's culture."
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HIRJILLA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 14th August, 2018) Over 1,500 refugees from the Syrian northwestern province of Idlib will arrive on Tuesday to the Hirjilla refugee camp in southwestern Rif Dimashq province, while the total number of refugees the camp is expected to host may rise to 15,000, the camps director said.

According to Abdurahman Khattyb, the refugee camp currently hosts 700 people, while "another 1,500 refugees are set to arrive tomorrow. We are finishing repairs in the western part of the camp, after which we will be able to take 7,000 more," the director said.

The refugees will be residing at the camp until the full liberation of the Idlib province from the terrorists, according to Khattyb.

The Idlib province, which suffers from unstable security situation, was seized by the Jabhat Fatah al Sham terror group (outlawed in Russia) in 2015. The Syrian government allowed radicals who surrendered in the city of Aleppo, in the Homs province and in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta to leave for Idlib.
Over 25,000 Syrians, who were forced to leave their homes in Syria's Damascus province due to the civil war and flee to Lebanon, have returned home in the past four months, Damascus Provincial Governor Alaa Ibrahim said on Monday.

JDAIDIT YABWS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) Over 25,000 Syrians, who were forced to leave their homes in Syria's Damascus province due to the civil war and flee to Lebanon, have returned home in the past four months, Damascus Provincial Governor Alaa Ibrahim said on Monday.

"Over 25,000 refugees have returned from Lebanon over the past four months," he said.

According to him, there was an upsurge in the number of people returning home after the victory over terrorists was declared.

"People are currently actively arriving in Syria, and we, as the executive government, do everything so that they could return to their homes," Ibrahim added.

He also said that the refugees were provided medical and psychological assistance at the checkpoints, and also given food, water and articles of daily necessity. After that they go home, and if their houses are destroyed, the authorities offer them a temporary location.

Over 220 people have returned to Syria from Lebanon on Monday. They have come in four buses followed by trucks carrying their belongings. Not only Syrian authorities, but employees of the Russian Defense Ministry's Center for Refugee Reception, Distribution and Settlement welcomed them.

Earlier in the day, the Russian Defense Ministry's Center for Refugee Reception, Distribution and Settlement said that over 6,600 Syrian refugees have returned home from Lebanon since July 18.

Russia assists Syria, where the government has been fighting against numerous opposition and terrorist groups since 2011, by providing humanitarian aid and being one of the guarantors of the ceasefire regime. In late July, Russia announced the creation of a refugee center in Syria set to receive, relocate and accommodate civilians returning home.
Bamako, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Aug, 2018 ) :A polling station chief was killed by suspected jihadists in northern Mali as insecurity disrupted a presidential runoff on Sunday.

Security had been drastically boosted ahead of the election's second round between President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and former finance minister Soumaila Cisse. But several polling stations were closed in the restive central and northern regions due to security concerns.

"Jihadists came this Sunday around 13:30 (1330 GMT) to a polling station in Arkodia," in the restive northern Timbuktu region, a local official told AFP.

"They asked everyone to put their hands up.

The polling station president tried to escape. The jihadists shot and killed him," the source said.

The first round vote on July 29 was marred with violence and threats from armed groups that led to several hundred polling stations being closed -- but no casualties had been reported.

Authorities in the vast West African nation said Saturday they had disrupted a plot to carry out "targeted attacks" in the capital Bamako on the eve of the vote.

Sunday's ballot in Mali is a rerun of a 2013 faceoff between Keita, 73, and Cisse, 68, amid a wave of jihadist bloodshed and ethnic violence.
Bamako, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Aug, 2018 ) :The head of a polling station was killed by suspected jihadists on Sunday as Malians voted in a presidential runoff, according to a local official and security sources.

"Jihadists came this sunday around 13:30 (1330 GMT) to a polling station in Arkodia," in the restive northern Timbuktu region, the official told AFP.

"They asked everyone to put their hands up. The polling station president tried to escape. The jihadists shot and killed him," the source said.

The armed men said no one could vote at the station, it added.

"Six people entered the polling station and killed the president," a security source said.

The second round of voting in Mali is a rerun of a 2013 faceoff between president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, 73, and former finance minister Soumaila Cisse, 68, amid a wave of jihadist bloodshed and ethnic violence.

The first round on July 29 was peppered by violence and threats from armed groups that led to several hundred polling stations being closed, mainly in the lawless central region.

Security had been drastically boosted ahead of Sunday's second round and authorities said Saturday they had disrupted a plot to carry out "targeted attacks" in the capital Bamako on the eve of the vote.

Several polling stations were again closed in the restive central and northern regions on Sunday due to insecurity.

Voting could not take place in the northern village of Kiname, 120 kilometres (75 miles) from Timbuktu, after "armed men came and took all the voting material to the river bank and set it on fire," one resident told AFP.

"There was no voting in Toguerekotia in the Sossobe district (of the central Mopti region) because of insecurity," the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), which has 150 observers across the country, said in a statement.
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The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are not going to fight alongside Syrian government forces in the northwestern Idlib province, the SDF's spokesperson, Kino Gabriel, said in a statement on Monday.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are not going to fight alongside Syrian government forces in the northwestern Idlib province, the SDF's spokesperson, Kino Gabriel, said in a statement on Monday.

In July, media reported that the two sides met to discuss potential military cooperation and that former co-chairman of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), whose armed wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG), accounts for a major part of SDF fighters, said it was the Kurds' duty to fight for Idlib.

"We declare that such rumors are incorrect, neither our participation in such operations, nor any negotiations or coordination with the Syrian regime," Gabriel said in a statement published on the SDF's official website, adding that reports regarding cooperation between the SDF and Damascus were published by "biased" media.

According to the spokesperson, the SDF is focused on carrying out operations in the north of the Deir ez-Zor province and driving out the Islamic State terrorist group (outlawed in Russia) from their last strongholds.

The Syrian Democratic Forces are among a number of rebel groups participating in the now over seven-year-long armed conflict in Syria. However, both the SDF and Damascus have been fighting the Islamic State.

The northwestern Idlib province remains the last major militant stronghold after being seized by the Jabhat Fatah al Sham terrorist organization (banned in Russia) in 2015 and is currently one of Syria's de-escalation zones.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

Six Russian mountaineers, seriously injured in a hard landing of Mi-8 helicopter in eastern Tajikistan, have been taken to the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, a spokesperson for the republic's committee of emergency situations told Sputnik.

DUSHANBE (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) Six Russian mountaineers, seriously injured in a hard landing of Mi-8 helicopter in eastern Tajikistan, have been taken to the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, a spokesperson for the republic's committee of emergency situations told Sputnik.

Earlier in the day, the committee confirmed that three mountaineers from Russia and two crew members had been killed in the incident. The remaining 13 people were evacuated by rescuers from the hard landing site.

"Six Russian mountaineers, who were seriously injured, have been rushed from the Lyakhsh district to Dushanbe and hospitalized," the spokesperson said.
China's medical insurance administration said it will lower the prices of 14 cancer drugs and instructed provincial-level drug-procurement platforms to follow the new standard by the end of next month.



The National Healthcare Security Administration said on Saturday patients can expect to buy the drugs more cheaply after September.

The decision was based on a recent circular on the adjustment of medical insurance reimbursement and procurement prices of cancer drugs.

The administration will take steps to make sure the new prices are implemented, in order to allow the public to enjoy the benefits as soon as possible, a source from the administration said.

Negotiations have been underway between the administration and pharmaceutical companies to add more affordable cancer drugs to the country's medical insurance reimbursement list.

A range of drugs have been selected, with the administration confirming the producers' willingness to further negotiate. The drugs are all crucial in dealing with hematologic neoplasms and solid tumors, and have great clinical value and potentially huge benefits to patients, the administration said.

Negotiations launched last year have already lowered the prices of 15 clinically effective but expensive cancer drugs such as Herceptin, Rituximab, and Bortezomib, and added them to the medical insurance reimbursement list.
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Fifty-nine residents of the Syrian city of Idlib, including 17 children, have reportedly been killed after an explosion in an ammunition depot on Sunday, United Nations deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said in a press briefing on Monday.

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) Fifty-nine residents of the Syrian city of Idlib, including 17 children, have reportedly been killed after an explosion in an ammunition depot on Sunday, United Nations deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said in a press briefing on Monday.

"Yesterday, at least 59 civilians were reportedly killed, 17 of them children, when weapons and ammunition depot exploded in the residential area ... in northern Idlib governorate," Haq told reporters.

A total of 434 people reportedly died over the weekend as the result of fighting in Syrias Idlib, Hama and Aleppo provinces, Haq said.

Haq explained that two United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) facilities providing support to women and children in northern Syria are now out of service as a result of of the rising hostilities and attacks in the area.

In addition, Haq said local authorities have reported that all school activities have been suspended in Idlib for three days.

The Idlib province was seized by the Jabhat Fatah al Sham terror group (outlawed in Russia) in 2015. The province is now home to numerous Islamic extremists fighting the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad. Many of the extremists had surrendered during the fighting in the city of Aleppo and in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta, and were allowed to leave for Idlib.
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South Sudan was the most violent country to deliver aid in 2017 for the third consecutive year, a fresh report by the Aid Worker Security Database said.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) South Sudan was the most violent country to deliver aid in 2017 for the third consecutive year, a fresh report by the Aid Worker Security Database said.

The report revealed that last year 46 of a total of 158 recorded incidents of violence against aid staff took place in South Sudan, with the country ranking higher than Syria with 31 registered attacks and Afghanistan with 15 incidents. South Sudan also topped the ranking in 2016 and 2015.

"The violence in South Sudan continued to escalate, with record numbers of aid workers killed by gunfire in addition to a rise in aid worker kidnappings. Prior to 2016, kidnappings were relatively rare in South Sudan. The sharp increase in 2016 and continuing through 2018 suggests a troubling trend of armed groups using this tactic to assert control over aid operations," the report read.

According to the database, the overall number of attacks did not change significantly in 2017, as compared to the 2016 numbers, but the fatal incidents rose by 23 percent.

"The 139 aid workers killed in 2017 is the second highest recorded annual death toll, following 2013 (156)," the report specified.

South Sudan gained independence from Sudan following a referendum in 2011, in which majority of the voters supported the move. In 2013, a civil war erupted in the country over an ethnic conflict among the country's officials. The parties to the conflict agreed to a ceasefire in June and signed a peace deal earlier in the month.
Syrian Minister for Public Administration Hussein Makhlouf, who also chairs the country's refugees committee, called on Germany on Monday to lift the anti-Syrian sanctions in a bid to facilitate the country's restoration and civilians' return.

DAMASCUS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) Syrian Minister for Public Administration Hussein Makhlouf, who also chairs the country's refugees committee, called on Germany on Monday to lift the anti-Syrian sanctions in a bid to facilitate the country's restoration and civilians' return.

"I want to address the German government through you and ask for lifting the unilateral sanctions against Syria," Makhlouf told reporters.

According to the official, the European sanctions have been instigated by the United States and hinder the post-crisis restoration of Syria,

Lifting the anti-Syrian sanctions would contribute to the return of refugees, Makhlouf said.

Since 2011, the European Union has been imposing restrictive measures against the Syrian government officials and entities over "the violent repression of the civilian population in Syria." The latest extension of the sanctions took place in May. The restrictions which are currently in place until June next year, include oil embargo, investment restrictions, assets freezes, ban on selling "equipment and technology that might be used for internal repression" to Syria.

According to the United Nations, over 5.6 million people have fled Syria and over 6.6 million have been internally displaced since the onset of the conflict in 2011.
Syrian Minister for Public Administration Hussein Makhlouf, who also chairs the country's refugees committee, called on Germany on Monday to lift the anti-Syrian sanctions in a bid to facilitate the country's restoration and civilians' return.

DAMASCUS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) Syrian Minister for Public Administration Hussein Makhlouf, who also chairs the country's refugees committee, called on Germany on Monday to lift the anti-Syrian sanctions in a bid to facilitate the country's restoration and civilians' return.

"I want to address the German government through you and ask for lifting the unilateral sanctions against Syria," Makhlouf told reporters.

According to the official, the European sanctions have been instigated by the United States and hinder the post-crisis restoration of Syria,

Lifting the anti-Syrian sanctions would contribute to the return of refugees, Makhlouf said.

Also, the minister commended Russia's efforts on Syria's restoration.

"We highly appreciate the efforts which Russia makes on the international arena and in the international organizations on providing relevant support and restoring what was destroyed by terrorism," the minister said, adding that revitalizing the country's economy was the most crucial factor contributing to the refugees return.

Since 2011, the European Union has been imposing restrictive measures against the Syrian government officials and entities over "the violent repression of the civilian population in Syria." The latest extension of the sanctions took place in May. The restrictions which are currently in place until June next year, include oil embargo, investment restrictions, assets freezes, ban on selling "equipment and technology that might be used for internal repression" to Syria.

According to the United Nations, over 5.6 million people have fled Syria and over 6.6 million have been internally displaced since the onset of the conflict in 2011.
Kabul, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Aug, 2018 ) :A Taliban delegation travelled to Uzbekistan earlier this month to discuss the Afghan peace process and withdrawal of foreign forces, officials said Sunday, as fighting between insurgents and security forces raged near Kabul.

The meetings in Afghanistan's northern neighbour follow recent reports that the Taliban sent similar delegations to China, illustrating the group's rising ambitions to engage in independent talks with foreign governments as momentum for a peace settlement in the country builds.

The head of the Taliban's political office in Qatar Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanekzai met with Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdul Aziz Kamilov over a four-day period from August 6, and discussed the "prospects of the peace process in Afghanistan", the Uzbek foreign ministry said in a statement.

The Taliban said in a separate statement they discussed the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan, peace and "future national projects such as security for railroad and power lines".

Uzbekistan's special envoy for Afghanistan Ismatulla Irgashev also attended the meetings, officials said.

The talks follow an earlier trip to Uzbekistan by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in late March.

The move was welcomed by some in Kabul, where pressure is mounting to engage the insurgents and end the nearly 17-year-old war.

The Taliban have continued to push for direct negotiations with the US -- rather than the government in Kabul, which the insurgents see as illegitimate -- but have also attempted to build independent contacts with other governments.

"These kind of meetings are going to continue until the real talks begin," Sayed Ehsan Taheri, a spokesman for the Afghanistan High Peace Council, told AFP.

The Taliban have repeatedly rejected overtures from the Afghan government to join a peace process, as they intensify attacks across the country.

Late Thursday Taliban fighters launched a major assault on the provincial capital of Ghazni, just a two hour drive south of Kabul.

Anticipation had been mounting about the possibility of a government ceasefire announcement for the Islamic holiday of Eid-al Adha later this month.

An unprecedented truce in June brought fighting between security forces and the Taliban to a temporary halt, giving war-weary Afghans some welcome relief from violence.

The June ceasefire sparked hopes that an opportunity for peace talks between the government and Taliban may be opening.

Later in the month Washington indicated a change in its longstanding policy when US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States was prepared to "support, facilitate and participate" in talks, opening the way to militants to meet US officials in Qatar.

Pompeo also said the role of foreign forces in Afghanistan would be on the table.
At least 47 PKK terrorists were "neutralized" as part of anti-terror operations across Turkey over the past week, the country's Interior Ministry said on Monday.

ANKARA, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Aug, 2018 ) :At least 47 PKK terrorists were "neutralized" as part of anti-terror operations across Turkey over the past week, the country's Interior Ministry said on Monday.

Turkish authorities often use the word "neutralized" in their statements to imply that the terrorists in question either surrendered or were killed or captured.

In a statement, the ministry said the Turkish Armed Forces carried out 2,218 ground and air operations on August 6-13.

The ministry said 35 of the terrorists were killed, three captured, and nine others surrendered to authorities.

During the operations, as many 128 people were arrested for allegedly aiding and abetting the PKK terrorist group and 39 others for their suspected links to the Daesh terrorist organization.

In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK - listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU -- has been responsible for the death of some 40,000 people, including women and children.

Also, another 312 people were arrested over the past week for suspected links to the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), the group behind the July 2016 defeated coup, which martyred 251 people and injured nearly 2,200.

Four more people were arrested for their links to leftist terrorist groups, according to the statement.

The security forces also destroyed three terrorist shelters, including several caves, and seven improvised explosives during operations in the eastern and southeastern provinces of Tunceli, Hakkari, and Bitlis, the statement said.

In addition, security forces seized 31 hand grenades, 39 assorted weapons, and 1,329 rounds of ammunition.

During the operations, the security forces also arrested 483 suspects for crimes linked to terrorism, and 124 others for human trafficking, while 3,489 people were held for crimes linked to drugs and smuggling.

Additionally, 2,725 anti-drug and contraband operations arrested 477 suspects, the statement read.

The raids also led to the seizure of 1,899 kilograms (4,186 lb.) of heroin, some 7,961 pills or other forms of illegal drugs, and over 23 tons of smuggled oil.
Tourism in Turkey has risen by 30 percent, as compared to last year's numbers, and is one of the sectors which contribute the most to lowering the country's account deficit, local media reported on Monday, citing the Turkish authorities.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) Tourism in Turkey has risen by 30 percent, as compared to last year's numbers, and is one of the sectors which contribute the most to lowering the country's account deficit, local media reported on Monday, citing the Turkish authorities.

According to the Anadolu Agency, 40 million tourists are expected to have visited Turkey by the end of the year.

The authorities had a contribution target for the industry to reduce the existing account deficit by about 50 percent in 2019, the media added.

The news outlet specified that the increase was facilitated, among other things, by China declaring 2018 the Year of Turkish Tourism. Turkey witnessed a 97-percent growth in Chinese visitors in the first seven months of the year, as compared year-on-year to 2017, the media said.

The country was visited by over 32 million tourists in 2017, according to the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
The United States has sent 43 undocumented immigrants interdicted in boats headed for Puerto Rico to the Dominican Republic, the US Coast Guard announced in a press release on Monday.

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) The United States has sent 43 undocumented immigrants interdicted in boats headed for Puerto Rico to the Dominican Republic, the US Coast Guard announced in a press release on Monday.

"The repatriation is a combination of two separate interdiction cases, which Customs and Border Protection aircrews and Coast Guard cutter crews located and rescued these migrants," the release stated.

The repatriation followed the interdiction of two migrant vessels near Puerto Rico last week, one with 19 migrants and a second with 37 people, the release explained.

In addition to 43 migrants sent to the Dominican Republic, 13 were transferred to Puerto Rico, one of whom was transported to a hospital and 12 detained to face potential Federal criminal immigration charges for attempted illegal re-entry into the United States, the release said.
The Uzbek Foreign Ministry on Monday dismissed reports alleging that the Taliban had opened its political office in Tashkent, noting that the issue was not on the agenda.

TASHKENT (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th August, 2018) The Uzbek Foreign Ministry on Monday dismissed reports alleging that the Taliban had opened its political office in Tashkent, noting that the issue was not on the agenda.

On Saturday, the ministry said that its officials met with a delegation from Talibans political office on August 6-10. According to the ministry, the sides exchanged views on the prospects for peace settlement in Afghanistan. On Sunday, Reuters reported, citing a Taliban official, that the movement had opened a political office in Tashkent.

"This issue was not discussed.

There are no plans to open any office," a spokesman for the ministry told Sputnik, when asked to comment on the issue.

Uzbekistan is involved in the Moscow format of Afghan reconciliation talks. In late July, Russian Ambassador in Kabul Alexander Mantytskiy told Sputnik that preparations for their next round were underway, noting that the talks may be held in late August.

The security situation in Afghanistan has been unstable for years as the government continues to fight Taliban militants over the control of the state.
The aim of this study was to establish the minimal important difference (MID) of the Australian Pelvic Floor Questionnaire (APFQ) in women undergoing surgery for stress urinary incontinence or symptomatic pelvic organ prolapse. A further aim was to estimate dysfunction scores dependent on the bothersomeness in a community cohort.

The APFQ was completed before and 6 weeks after pelvic floor surgery by 183 women (n = 80 suburethral tape insertion; n = 103 laparoscopic sacrocolpopexy). Distribution and anchor-based methods were used to establish the effect size, standardised response mean and MID (calculated as the difference between women who stated no change or a little better in the Patient Global Impression of Improvement [PGI-I]). In a community cohort of 470 women aged 42-80 years, the APFQ was analysed according to disclosed bothersomeness.

For the suburethral tape group, the effect size in the bladder domain was 1.5 and the PGI-I-based MID 1.3. For the POP surgery, group the effect size in the prolapse domain was calculated at 2.2 and the PGI-I-based MID at 1.0. The domain scores for women who declared no bother were significantly different from those who were a little bothered (bladder domain 2.2 vs 4.0, bowel 0.6 vs 1.7, POP 0.1 vs 3.2, sex 1.8 vs 3.0) with wide variations.

The MID of the APFQ ranged from 1.0 to 1.3 in the domains after POP or continence surgery respectively. This is corroborated by the differences in domain scores from community-based women who were bothered versus not bothered by pelvic floor symptoms.

International urogynecology journal. 2018 Aug 07 [Epub ahead of print]

Kaven Baessler, Alexandra Mowat, Christopher F Maher

Pelvic Floor Centre Franziskus and St Joseph Hospitals, Budapester Strasse 15-17, 12787, Berlin, Germany. ., Greenslopes Private Hospital and University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia., Royal Brisbane & Women's, Wesley and Mater Hospitals Brisbane, Suite 86, Sandford Jackson Building, 30 Chasely Street, Auchenflower, QLD, 4066, Australia.

PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30088031
You are here: China

The government of Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet autonomous region, is using favorable policies to attract investors and boost employment.

The city government of Lhasa signed contracts with 34 investors Sunday, with the contracts worth 8.3 billion yuan (about US$1.2 billion). The contract signing ceremony was held during the traditional Shoton Festival, or Yogurt Festival, which began Saturday and runs until Aug. 17.

Most of the investors are in the agriculture, tourism and culture sectors, said Fang Guilin, vice mayor of Lhasa.

Various types of industries are developing robustly in Lhasa, bringing quality economic growth and improving people's lives. The city government has unveiled favorable policies to maintain the growth momentum, he said.

The corporate tax rate for companies which set up start-ups, hi-tech or poverty relief operations is only nine percent, much lower than a general average of 20 percent, according to a new tax policy in in the city.

Companies who hire local residents also get a tax cut and favorable loan rates are applied for investors.

The city government has set up a 20-million-yuan fund to support technological companies and intelligent innovation of traditional industries.
Leading members of a branch of the "Almighty God" cult in northeast China have stood trial in Daqing, Heilongjiang province, since July 31, a police source said Sunday.

Heilongjiang police arrested the leader and some key members of the cult branch in northeast China in June 2017, according to a police statement.

"Almighty God," known in Chinese as Quannengshen, grabbed national headlines in May 2014 when videos went viral showing five of its members beating a woman to death at a McDonald's in Zhaoyuan, eastern Shandong province, condemning her as an "evil spirit" as she refused to give them her mobile phone number for recruitment purposes.

"The 'Almighty God' cult has been predominantly violent," said Huang Chao, managing director of the international research center on cult issue with Wuhan University, central China's Hubei province.

According to Huang, police have processed more than 100 violent incidents initiated by the "Almighty God" members across the country and in more than 30 occasions they resisted law enforcement with violence.

"In 2012, some cult members attacked police stations, damaged police vehicles and injured police officers," he said.

Mastermind behind "Almighty God"



According to the police source, the cult was founded by a man named Zhao Weishan, born in 1951, who had founded and participated in several cult organizations in the 1980s.

In 1993 Zhao started to claim that his mistress Yang Xiangbin was the "Almighty Goddess" and "female Jesus" and himself the "high priest."

Zhao and Yang both fled to the United States in 2000.

"He was an ordinary man, not different from others," said Zhao's ex-wife.

"He was smart but not in the right way," said his older sister.

The "Almighty God" cult borrowed some ideas from Christianity, such as the Second Coming, but altered core doctrines of the Bible, Huang Chao said.

The cult has engaged in illegal activities in the disguise of Christianity, said Lyu Dezhi, head of Heilongjiang Theological Seminary.

Targeting the vulnerable



According to the police, the cult mostly recruits less-educated women who have family problems and at first lured them with normal Christianity teachings and then the cult ideology.

"In the beginning new recruits were not forced to donate or attend the gatherings but after becoming a convert they were manipulated to leave their family and devote everything to the cult," said a Heilongjiang police officer who investigated the case and preferred to be anonymous.

Cult members were banned from using mobile phones, watching TV and even reading normal books such as fictions. They were only allowed to read the so-called God's books and watch videos made for brainwashing.

Hundreds of ordinary people set up groups on social networks such as WeChat and QQ to look for missing family members who had joined the cult and cut off contacts.

A young woman surnamed Song from eastern Anhui province has not seen her mother since 2014. Her mother, once an upbeat and kind person, started to believe in the "Almighty God" and apocalypse in 2012.

"When she went missing, I was about to give birth. How indifferent she became that she chose to leave home at that time?" Song said in tears.

Financially exploiting followers



"Followers should be devoted to the 'Almighty God,' in plain words, donating money to the organization. The more you donate, the closer you are to the God," said a former convert surnamed Zhang.

Only a small amount of the donation was used in daily operation of the organization and a majority of the money was transferred abroad, said Zhang, who used to handle money transfers.

Low-ranking followers lived a frugal life, often collecting left-over vegetables from the market. Some of the elder female members would walk or ride bikes rather than taking bus to save money.

Zhao, the cult founder, lives a luxury life in expensive villas in the United States, commanding the money flow from China.

According to a document seized by the police, about 140 million yuan (about US$20.47 million) was transferred abroad from northeast China from November 2016 to March 2017.

"The cult taught me to be indifferent to my family and to be non-human," said an anonymous former convert. "All I want now is to stay with my family and make up for the pain I brought them."

To prevent the spread of the cult, it is important to raise awareness and improve education among the people, Huang Chao said.

The police also called for joint efforts of the public to root up the source of the cult.
One person died and two others were injured in Nicaraguas capital on Saturday, while participating in protests against the government of President Daniel Ortega.

By Devin Watkins

Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, Archbishop of Managua, lamented the death of a demonstrator on Saturday who was marching in a protest against the government.

Gunfire from suspected pro-government security forces killed Lenin Mendiola on Saturday. Two other protesters were injured at a separate rally in the capital, Managua.

Hundreds of Nicaraguans took part in demonstrations to demand the release of political prisoners.

Listen to our report

Local leaders son



Lenin Mendiola was the son of a local leader in Matagalpa. The Nicaraguan government denounced his death.

Cardinal Brenes expressed his sadness for the protesters death at a press conference held on Sunday.

He said Mendiolas death was especially regrettable since violence had appeared to diminish over the past week.



I believe that a Nicaraguan who dies, no matter what their [political] tendency may be, is always painful for Nicaragua, and that is condemnable for all Nicaraguans. So, I send my prayers and closeness to the Mendiola family, back in Matagalpa, and also to this person from the countryside whom I saw riddled with bullets on television.

National Dialogue



At the press conference, Cardinal Brenes said the Church is making every effort to reopen the National Dialogue as soon as possible.

Hopefully, well have some positive response [from the government] to get it back on track, he told reporters.


Metalcore band Beartooth brings the The Disease Tour to House of Blues Las Vegas on Thursday, Nov. 1 with special guests Knocked Loose and Sylar.

Beartooth originally formed as an alternative creative outlet for front man Caleb Shomo during his time as lead vocalist for Attack Attack! However, the Ohio-based metalcore band eventually became Shomos main focus as they sought to create a more raw and driving hardcore sound by using strip-down production and less electrocore. The group signed with Red Bull Records in 2013 and released their debut EP, Sick soon thereafter. By 2014, Beartooth had added rhythm guitarist Karmon Bradbury just as they issued their first LP, Disgusting. In 2016, Beartooths follow-up album, Aggressive, debuted at the top of the Billboard Alternative chart and came in at No. 25 on the Billboard 200.

Recently, Beartooth has teased the release of their latest, and much anticipated project Disease by dropping their newest single Bad Listener.


Las Vegas fashion stylist Jenna Doughton will host the sixth annual style with a cause event benefiting (CASA) on Wednesday, Oct. 3 at the Gramercy luxury apartments from 6-9 p.m. (Photo credit: Lucinda Flint Photography)

The fun, fashion-filled night will include beauty bars, a fall fashion show and beauty transformations for all who love makeovers, fashion, shoes and more. Proceeds from the evening will benefit CASA programs in Nevada that support advocacy for abused and neglected children to thrive in safe, permanent homes.

This year, the local affiliate of CASA celebrated 38 years of providing advocacy for children in Clark County. Nearly 3,500 abused and neglected children live in foster care in Clark County, Nevada because they cannot live safely at home. These children need powerful voices to speak for them. The mission of CASA is to provide that voice.
Voice of America's Mandarin Service correspondent and a multimedia journalist working for VOA were detained Monday evening by Chinese police while attempting to interview a retired Chinese professor who was taken away by authorities during a live television interview with VOA nearly two weeks ago.



Correspondent Yibing Feng and VOA contractor Allen Ai were taken into custody in Jinan, Shandong province after talking to professor Sun Wenguang, 84, through a closed door of his apartment. Sun told Feng details of his detention and thanked VOA for allowing him to express his freedom of speech on the air.



Authorities in the apartment hallway attempted several times to disrupt the interview and ordered Feng and his Chinese assistant to leave the building. The two reporters were then held by police at the building exit. They are still believed to be in police custody.



It is outrageous that two journalists have been detained for nothing more than doing their jobs, said VOA Director Amanda Bennett. She called for them to be released immediately.



Sun Wenguang, who was detained earlier this month, was only recently allowed to return home under strict security, close friends told VOA on Monday. Chinese authorities have refused to comment on his detention.



On Monday, the professor shouted answers to VOAs questions from behind a locked door saying that he was moved to several locations after being detained August 1, including Yanzi Mountain Villa at Jinan Military Region, a military-linked hotel and reception center in Jinan, his hometown. He was taken to four places, often staying for one or two days under a security watch, he said.



Now I have been locked in at my dwelling, he said. My wife and I have been in a forced trip outside our residence for 10 days and we stayed in four hotels. And now we are back to our home finally. But they sent four security guys to sleep in our home.

Here in China, we have a lack of freedom of press, the professor said. Authorities have blocked and suppressed press freedom. Chinese authorities have a practice of trade barrier and press barrier. Why can Chinese reporters act as journalists in the U.S. freely while U.S. reporters cannot do normal journalistic work in China?



When the VOA journalists first arrived at Sun's apartment, they encountered a few security people outside the door.



After they identified themselves as journalists, correspondent Feng told security: Please don't interrupt our work.



A security officer asked them to go downstairs where they were later detained. The two VOA journalists were then taken away separately in police cars.



Where are you taking me? Feng asked police in a conversation that was overhead on a cell phone call to VOA editors in Washington.



You will know, an officer responded.



I need to talk to your leader, Yibing told the officer.



The police then apparently asked Yibing to turn over his equipment.



This is (US) government property, you cannot take it, Yibing told them, referring to VOA's status as a U.S. government broadcasting entity.

Before the cell phone line went dead, the sound of footsteps could be heard.



Dont grab me, Yibing said. I will go with you.

Earlier this month, professor Sun was taken away during a live telephone interview on the VOA Mandarin television show Issues & Opinions as he was criticizing Chinas foreign aid and diplomatic strategy in Africa. During the interview, he told VOA that authorities were breaking into his house in an attempt to prevent him from speaking out against the government.

* This is a developing story which will be updated
Samled Inthavong had almost finished hoisting his family members into a boat when a building uprooted by the collapse of a dam upstream slammed into his house.

Bobbing atop the surging floodwaters in the inky midnight darkness, he could only watch as his house caved in on his grandparents trapped inside.

My grandparents couldnt move. They died in the house, he said in a rescue center where he sat with his few remaining possessions, including a photo of his grandmother Chanthai shot on a mobile phone.

As his house collapsed, Inthavongs boat shot away and collided with his sisters adjacent house. There he, his wife, Bang Helmani, and his children Alik, Had and Koid, took refuge on the roof until the rising floodwaters, which reached more than 10 meters, swallowed her home as well.

At 2 oclock [a.m.] I was looking around the neighborhood. People were crying and the water was over the whole village. All the houses were gone. Some people were holding on to trees, some people were holding on to power poles, he said.

Inthavong and his family made for the latter, clutching desperately to the steel structure as flying debris and violent tides crashed beneath them. It wasnt until morning that a rescue boat arrived in Ban Mai village.

WATCH: Survivors Recount Horror of Lao Dam Collapse



Thousands rescued

Lt. Col. Khamsouk Khamleuangthep, vice commander of the Lao Air Forces Air Regiment 703, commanded the rescue team that saved Inthavongs family and more than 1,000 others after a poorly constructed auxiliary dam collapsed at the Xe Pian Xe Namnoy (PNPC) hydropower complex in southern Laos on July 23.

Thirteen villages were inundated in Attapeu province with a surge so powerful it forced the evacuation of a town more than 100 kilometers downstream in Cambodia.

In that time we found people in the trees. After that we took a boat from Sanamxai [rescue base] to collect the people in the trees, Khamleuangthep said.

Heavily restricted by rough weather, the regiments three helicopters had flown 157 missions supported by boats as of Tuesday, rescuing 1,569 survivors, he said. There are more than 6,500 survivors in temporary shelters spread across five rescue bases with almost 3,500 at Sanamxai alone, the district government says. In total, officials say 7,095 people have been displaced in Laos, with 13,067 affected in some way. State media report 35 dead and 99 missing.

I am really upset about this and Ive been working from the beginning until now without stopping and Im very happy to be helping the people, Khamleuangthep said.

Trauma, exhaustion, fury

The survivors he has rescued feel a mixture of trauma, exhaustion and fury.

Sommay Keosuvanh, a 60-year-old villager from Ban Mai, said the company operating the dam, the South Korean firm SK E&C, had told his community a large volume of water was being released but failed to warn of a possible collapse.

When the water came, it came quick like a tsunami and people were scared, he said, adding that the initial surge through his village was at least a meter high. Keosuvanh said the floodwaters destroyed 95 percent of the homes in the village.

Others interviewed by VOA in Ban Mai said the local chief broadcast a warning over loudspeakers that also failed to say anything about a collapse.

SK E&C, which is building the dam through a joint venture with PNPC, declined multiple requests for comment including some made during visits directly to their field office.

But after staying tight-lipped in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the Laos government this week said SK E&Cs shoddy construction was likely to blame for the collapse.

It also announced a wide-ranging review of some 50 hydropower projects before any more are approved. This follows years of criticism from conservation groups over the governments ambitious plan to use its hydroelectric potential to turn the country into the battery of Asia.

Little consolation

Thats little consolation for the residents of Ban Mai and Kokkong, whose villages have been leveled, leaving a tangled mess of smashed concrete, uprooted trees and fallen power poles.

On either side of the submerged road connecting them, fields as far as the eye can see are caked in thick mud, ruined for this years harvest.

Some of those who are lucky enough to still have a house, like 38-year-old shopkeeper Sovampheng, have begun returning to see what they can salvage from the mud.

After spending the second night on the roof I moved to Ban Bok village and somebody came to steal from my shop in the evening by entering from the roof, she said, rummaging through her damaged stock with her 14-year-old daughter Phutdavenh.

Sovampheng said she and her husband were forced to come back and sleep on the roof of their house in Kokkong village to make sure thieves didnt loot what little they have left.

Im feeling very sad as I just bought new supplies for my shop and I lost everything, she said.

Her daughter Phutdavenh was playing with her phone in bed when the water surged in.

I felt very scared. I had never seen something like this before. It was so dangerous, she told VOA.

Back at the Sanamxai camp, six bodies are doused in kerosene and burned at a mass cremation while survivors like Inthavong wait to find out what the government will do for them.

Inthavong will have to wait for another cremation; the body of his grandfather Phan still hasnt been found.
President Donald Trump on Friday approved the nomination of senior Asia diplomat W. Patrick Murphy as his pick to lead the U.S. mission in Cambodia amid soured U.S.-Cambodian relations over Phnom Penhs handling of a general election last month.

If confirmed by the Senate, Murphy who is currently the State Departments Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Southeast Asia will succeed Ambassador William Heidt, who will end his three-year tenure in the coming months.

The appointment comes as relations between the two countries have hit a low after Prime Minister Hun Sen accused Washington of sponsoring a plot of overthrowing him by supporting the Cambodia National Rescue Party. The CNRP was disbanded in November and its leader, Kem Sokha, arrested on treason charges, prompting criticism and limited sanctions on some officials.

Cambodia held a general election on July 29 that saw Hun Sens ruling Cambodian Peoples Party win every seat in parliament in the absence of the CNRP, which previously held a large minority.

Ou Virak, founding president of the Future Forum, a Cambodian think tank, said the decision to nominate Murphy may be a sign of the increasing importance Washington placed on Cambodia given its strengthening alliance with China.

Its a sign that the Trump Administration is considering Cambodia as a more important and strategic country as Patrick Murphy is senior and quite respected in Asia-Pacific diplomatic circles, he said.

Its likely due to two reasons: the rise of China and its influence and the growing importance of Southeast Asia.

While Cambodia-U.S. relations have worsened since late 2016 when Cambodia fired the first warning shot by canceling joint annual military drills and accused the U.S. of supporting the opposition, Cambodia has moved ever closer to Beijing, which has pumped billions of dollars of investment into the country over the past decade.

Phay Siphan, a government spokesman, said it was too early to comment on Murphy likely appointment, adding that Cambodia hoped for improved relations with Washington.

The presence of the new ambassador designated to represent the U.S. here in the Kingdom of Cambodia is a show of good relations and cooperation in the future, Siphan told VOA Khmer.

It is natural that we have differences, but the opportunity to improve relations and to sit down and discuss those differences not to provoke conflict between countries: This is diplomacy.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh declined to comment on either Murphys nomination or Ambassador Heidts next post.

But in a statement posted to the Embassys Facebook page on Monday, Ambassador Heidt said: Patrick is a terrific nominee for the position. He has a distinguished record of service, is very familiar with Southeast Asia and knows U.S. foreign policy in the region extremely well."

Before being stationed at the State Departments Asia division in 2016, Murphy was a diplomat in Thailand, serving as the deputy chief of mission, and a special envoy to Myanmar during the democratic transition before the 2014 election of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Over the past two years, Murphy has been a frequent visitor to Southeast Asia, including two visits to Cambodia last year.

During his first trip in April last year, Murphy was told by Cambodian foreign minister Prak Sokhonn of Cambodias decision to scrap a controversial 15-year-old repatriation scheme for Cambodians living in the United States. The U.S. responded by imposing visa restrictions on senior Cambodian foreign ministry officials and their families.

Murphy was the first senior U.S. official to visit Cambodia after the controversial dissolution of the opposition CNRP in November.

In December, Murphy renewed Washingtons message to Phnom Penh to reverse course, but his comments were dismissed by Cambodian officials, who justified the political crackdown as legal.

There are many challenges here in Phnom Penh, but the courageous people of #Cambodia have overcome many obstacles in recent decades, Murphy wrote in a tweet posted in December.

Murphy also spent his time meeting Cambodian opposition leaders while visiting Phnom Penh last year. He also met CNRP official Kem Monovithya at the State Department in January this year.

Mu Sochua, Vice President of the now-disbanded CNRP, said she expects the new ambassador to maintain support for democratization efforts in the country.

With this kind of ... a sham election in Cambodia, there can be serious economic and political impacts on Asean stability. Thus we need now diplomats [like Murphy] with Asean experiences to represent the U.S. here in Cambodia, she said.
Chinese scientists are planning an ultrafast rail transportation system of their own that would run at up to 1,500 km/h, faster than the Hyperloop track ready to be built by the HTT company in China.

Zhang Weihua and his team at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, said the high-tech tube transportation system they are planning to build is designed to carry commuters and cargo at ultrafast speeds, with the top speed expected to be reached in April 2021.

Since Elon Musk proposed the idea of Hyperloop in 2013, the competition on the research and development of ultrafast trains has long been fierce among the nations.

According to Zhang, the contest for speed is the major battlefield. This time, Zhang and his team are expected to break a world speed record.

Once the track is completed  in less than three years according to Zhang  all types of ultra-high-speed maglev transportation tests can be carried out, including those on high- and low-temperature superconductor maglevs, among which a high-temperature superconductor maglev train will be tested in Chengdu Province, southwest China.

Technologies for the Hyperloop system can be used in many industries, such as aerospace, railway transportation, new materials, next-generation engines and nuclear power generation, as well as in the military, said Sun Fuquan, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development.

"It will not be easy for manufacturers worldwide to develop a transportation system with speeds of between 1,000 km/h and 1,500 km/h. They will need to team up with many companies and research and financial institutions from China and abroad. A large number of patents in related fields will be required."
Nearly 140 aid workers were killed last year, a 23 percent rise on 2016, according to data released Monday that showed South Sudan was the most dangerous country in which to deliver aid for the third year running.

The figures revealed a dramatic increase in aid worker kidnappings and fatal shootings in South Sudan  the world's youngest country  and a trebling of attacks in Central African Republic (CAR).

South Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and CAR accounted for two-thirds of 158 major incidents targeting humanitarian operations last year, according to the annual Aid Worker Security Report compiled by independent research group Humanitarian Outcomes.

It recorded attacks on 313 aid workers in 22 countries with 139 people killed, 102 wounded and 76 kidnapped, four of whom were killed. The death toll was the second highest recorded.

Most attacks took place in situations where international aid organizations have restricted access, it said. Nine in 10 victims were local, reflecting the growing dependence on national staff and organizations.

Report co-author Abby Stoddard said although the number of attacks was roughly the same as in 2016, there had been a marked rise in the number of victims who worked for national rather than international aid agencies.

"Local groups are taking on huge amounts of risk in these conflicts," she told Reuters.

The figures also showed a sharp rise in aid worker abductions in South Sudan, with 36 people kidnapped so far this year, up from two in 2015.

Stoddard said kidnapping had become a tactic for controlling the delivery of aid in South Sudan, rather than for generating income as happened in other conflicts.

"It's unusual that [kidnappings] have increased so rapidly," she said. "The worry is that it could become a widespread means of attack, as it has been for years in Afghanistan."

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said 100 aid workers had been killed in South Sudan since conflict flared in 2013.

NRC Secretary General Jan Egeland said those behind the attacks must be brought to justice.

"Aid workers are protected by international law and must not be used as pawns in South Sudan's conflict. Violence against aid workers paralyses our lifesaving work," he said in a statement.

The aid agency said it was "cautiously optimistic" about a peace deal signed this month by South Sudan's President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar, but added that it must lead to better humanitarian access.

The agency said food experts had "pointed to the possibility of famine" if access to people on the brink of starvation did not improve.
A court in Azerbaijan freed human rights activist Ilgar Mammadov on Monday after he had served five years of a seven-year jail sentence which the European Court of Human Rights has described as "an unjustified restriction of freedom."

Mammadov, leader of a rights group called Republican Alternative (ReAl), was convicted and sentenced in 2013 for organizing and taking part in demonstrations in the northern town of Ismailli against a provincial leader.

Fellow activists and lawyers of the accused said at the time that the court's verdict was politically motivated, while the European Court of Human Rights said in May 2014 that the courts in Azerbaijan had violated Mammadov's right to liberty.

The European court ordered the Baku government to pay him 22,000 euros ($30,000) in compensation and free him, though this never happened.

A court in Baku on Monday released him before the end of his sentence, putting him on probation for two years and banning him from leaving Azerbaijan, a Reuters correspondent reported from the court.

"I'm not happy with the decision of the court. This is not a complete, but a partial victory," Mammadov told journalists at his home soon after the release.

The mainly Muslim country, sandwiched between Russia and Iran, has been governed by President Ilham Aliyev since he succeeded his father in 2003.

It has been courted by the West because of its role as a counterbalance to Russia for supplies of oil and gas to Europe, while rights groups accuse Baku of muzzling dissent and jailing opponents, charges which the government denies.
Chilean president Sebastian Pinera's pick for culture minister was forced to resign on Monday, just days into his new job, after criticism mounted over comments he made in 2015 about a human rights museum in capital Santiago.



Mauricio Rojas, a Chilean-Swedish political economist and member of Pinera's center-right coalition, questioned the validity of the Museum of History and Human Rights, which opened in 2010 and documents abuses during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.



"More than a museum, it is an installation whose purpose ... is to shock the spectator, leaving them astonished and preventing them from reasoning," he was quoted as saying in a book published in 2015. "It is a manipulation of history ... a shameless and inaccurate use of a national tragedy that touched so many of us directly."



The comments were picked up on by Chilean media at the weekend, sparking a wave of criticism from politicians on the left and right, and calls by Chilean actors, writers and musicians for Rojas to resign.



Rojas, who made the comments in a book he co-authored that discussed his move from the left side of the political spectrum to the right, said on Twitter on Saturday that those comments did not reflect his current view, and that he had "never diminished nor justified unacceptable, systematic and grave human rights violations that happened in Chile."



The scandal represents a fresh headache for Pinera, who has seen his approval ratings fall amid a series of gaffes by his ministers, coupled with continuing high unemployment figures.



Last week, just five months into his term, he removed three ministers in a reshuffle.



Pinera rejected Rojas' comments about the museum.



"In the best interests of our country, for the wellbeing of all our compatriots and the good functioning of our government, I have decided to accept his resignation," he said.



He said that Rojas' replacement will be Consuelo Valdes, an archeologist.



An estimated 3,000 people disappeared or lost their lives during the Pinochet dictatorship, and 28,000 were tortured.
Beijing has stationed its first permanent search and rescue ship in a hotly disputed part of the South China Sea as a public relations move after alarming smaller countries with a military buildup in the same waters, analysts say.

The Ministry of Transport in China sent the vessel, called South Sea Rescue 115, to the Spratly Islands on July 27, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The vessel can work in storm gales and waves up to six meters high, according to Xinhua. Its also equipped with a helicopter pad. More such vessels will be built, the agency added.

The ministrys Rescue and Salvage Bureau will consistently improve its standby mechanism in the South China Sea region to better carry out maritime rescue duties and obligations under international treaties, bureau head Wang Zhenliang said as quoted by Xinhua.

China may have sent and publicized this vessels deployment to look good after angering other states over militarization, experts say.

The whole thing about making big announcements about like having a humanitarian activity is kind of just trying to put a friendly veneer on top of what is pretty clearly militarization and just trying to kind of like brainwash, said Jonathan Spangler, director of the South China Sea Think Tank in Taipei.

Military buildup

Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam contest all or part of Beijings claims to about 90 percent of the South China Sea including the Spratly Islands. The sea, which covers 3.5 million square kilometers, is prized for fisheries, oil, natural gas and shipping lanes.

China cites historical records to support its claims. Over the past decade it has used landfill to expand some of the seas tiny islets. That expansion, followed in some cases by military installations, irritates other claimants as China has the regions strongest armed forces.

China might try and sort of take the heat off the military function by publicizing the search and rescue function, but I dont think thats really going to alter perceptions, said Euan Graham, international security director with the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney.

There is a sort of PR war going on, but I think Chinas ability to win that PR war is much less than it was a few years ago just because I think the military dimension has become more open, more difficult to hide, he said.

Chinese military vessels and aircraft preceded the search-and-rescue vessel, he noted, so China is putting its cart before the horse.

Other countries offering aid

Beijing may hope its search-and-rescue ship will help it catch up to other governments, analysts believe.

Chinese political rival Taiwan does search and rescue work from its base at Taiping Island, the largest in the Spratly chain. A Taiwanese coast guard official said in 2015 his agency had rescued non-Taiwanese fishermen from storms in the Spratlys.

Last year, Australian troops did a disaster relief exercise with the Philippines in a bay along the South China Sea.

And Japans Izumo-class helicopter-carrying warship can do humanitarian work as well as rescues, said Collin Koh, maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Japan sent the ship into the South China Sea in mid-2017.

Australia and Japan do not claim any part of the sea but oppose any exclusive use of it by China.

Philippines watching

In the Philippines, which holds nine islets in the Spratly chain, policymakers may see the search-and-rescue vessel as a dubious though overdue gesture, said Maria Ela Atienza, political science professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

The two countries have gotten along over the past two years, but the Philippine Star news website said in May China had set a "red line" with the Philippines, saying uninhabited islets should stay that way.

China could play a bigger role in the region when civilians are hurt, Atienza said. Filipinos scorned China for perceived lack of aid after Typhoon Yolanda killed more than 6,000 people in the Philippines in 2013, she said.

From a diplomatic perspective, it can be considered good neighborly action, Atienza said. (China) has not played that kind of a role in recent cases where rescue operations are needed.

Economic aid

Beijing has been particularly image conscious since 2016, when it lost a world arbitration court verdict over the legal basis for its South China Sea claims.

China rejected the verdict but began building up relations after that with the Southeast Asian maritime claimants by offering development aid and investment in infrastructure construction. China commands the worlds second largest economy, dwarfing those of Southeast Asia.

Countries with greater power and Chinas level of resources also have a greater responsibility to offer humanitarian aid, Spangler said.
Voice of America's Mandarin Service correspondent and a multimedia journalist working for VOA were detained Monday evening by Chinese police while attempting to interview a retired Chinese professor who was taken away by authorities during a live television interview with VOA nearly two weeks ago.



Correspondent Yibing Feng and VOA contractor Allen Ai were taken into custody in Jinan, Shandong province after talking to professor Sun Wenguang, 84, through a closed door of his apartment. Sun told Feng details of his detention and thanked VOA for allowing him to express his freedom of speech on the air.



Authorities in the apartment hallway attempted several times to disrupt the interview and ordered Feng and his Chinese assistant to leave the building. The two reporters were then held by police at the building exit. They are still believed to be in police custody.





It is outrageous that two journalists have been detained for nothing more than doing their jobs, said VOA Director Amanda Bennett. She called for them to be released immediately.



Sun Wenguang, who was detained earlier this month, was only recently allowed to return home under strict security, close friends told VOA on Monday. Chinese authorities have refused to comment on his detention.



On Monday, the professor shouted answers to VOAs questions from behind a locked door saying that he was moved to several locations after being detained August 1, including Yanzi Mountain Villa at Jinan Military Region, a military-linked hotel and reception center in Jinan, his hometown. He was taken to four places, often staying for one or two days under a security watch, he said.



Now I have been locked in at my dwelling, he said. My wife and I have been in a forced trip outside our residence for 10 days and we stayed in four hotels. And now we are back to our home finally. But they sent four security guys to sleep in our home.

Here in China, we have a lack of freedom of press, the professor said. Authorities have blocked and suppressed press freedom. Chinese authorities have a practice of trade barrier and press barrier. Why can Chinese reporters act as journalists in the U.S. freely while U.S. reporters cannot do normal journalistic work in China?



When the VOA journalists first arrived at Sun's apartment, they encountered a few security people outside the door.



After they identified themselves as journalists, correspondent Feng told security: Please don't interrupt our work.



A security officer asked them to go downstairs where they were later detained. The two VOA journalists were then taken away separately in police cars.



Where are you taking me? Feng asked police in a conversation that was overhead on a cell phone call to VOA editors in Washington.



You will know, an officer responded.



I need to talk to your leader, Yibing told the officer.



The police then apparently asked Yibing to turn over his equipment.



This is (US) government property, you cannot take it, Yibing told them, referring to VOA's status as a U.S. government broadcasting entity.

Before the cell phone line went dead, the sound of footsteps could be heard.



Dont grab me, Yibing said. I will go with you.

Earlier this month, professor Sun was taken away during a live telephone interview on the VOA Mandarin television show Issues & Opinions as he was criticizing Chinas foreign aid and diplomatic strategy in Africa. During the interview, he told VOA that authorities were breaking into his house in an attempt to prevent him from speaking out against the government.

* This is a developing story which will be updated
A retired Chinese professor who was taken away by authorities during a live television interview with VOA's Mandarin Service nearly two weeks ago, has been allowed to return home under strict security, close friends told VOA on Monday.



Sun Wenguang, 84, told the friends that after he was detained on August 1, he was moved to several locations including Yanzi Mountain Villa at Jinan Military Region, a military-linked hotel and reception center in Jinan, eastern China, his hometown. He was taken to four places, often staying for one or two days under a security watch, friends said.



After speaking with him on Monday, friends said the professor asked them to contact VOA and relay that he was safe and back home. They said that Wenguang told them security guards searched his home and took away all his cellphones, landline telephone, and computer. His social media accounts are blocked, friends said.



VOA attempted to reach Wenguang on Monday but could not make contact. Chinese authorities have refused to comment on the matter.



Wenguang was taken away during a live telephone interview on the VOA Mandarin television show Issues & Opinions as he was criticizing China's foreign aid and diplomatic strategy in Africa. During the interview, Sun told VOA that authorities were breaking into his house in an attempt to prevent him from speaking out against the government.



The professor returned home after more than 150 alumni of China's Shandong University - where he taught for decades - wrote an open letter to authorities, urging the school to ensure his personal safety and freedom.



Wang Shujun, a co-signer of the open letter, told VOA that he was shocked about the incident, which he thought was outrageous, uncivilized and unconstitutional. He noted that the local authorities in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province, severely hurt China's international image by treating the outspoken critic so rudely and recklessly.



"Even President Xi Jinping wouldn't be happy if he learned what happened to the professor," said Wang in a telephone interview with VOA Sunday.



Chinese authorities, including leaders of Shandong University, have kept silent about the incident involving professor Sun despite continuing inquiries from VOA and other international media.



The Trump administration has said it is concerned about the whereabouts of the retired Chinese university professor.



"We condemn China's ongoing abuse of human rights, in particular, the suppression of the fundamental freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly, and the unlawful detention of activists, lawyers, journalists and civil-society leaders seeking to defend those freedoms," a State Department spokesperson told VOA.



The official also said the State Department was grateful for the work of VOA reporters and other journalists in China who "have dedicated their lives and taken great risk to pursue this important work."



Sun was answering questions on the VOA show about an open letter he'd written to Chinese President Xi Jinping, criticizing Chinese aid to Africa when there are so many living in poverty in China.



Sun told the host in Washington that police had entered his apartment and demanded he end the interview. Sun blamed Xi for sending the officers to break down his door.



"I am entitled to express my opinion. This is my freedom of speech," were Sun's last words before the line went dead.

Sun is an outspoken, longtime critic of Chinese authorities. He was arrested during the infamous Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and was sentenced to seven years in prison in 1978 for criticizing Mao Zedong, two years after Mao had died.
Egypt's president said on Monday Cairo was deeply concerned about security in the Red Sea following an attack by Yemen's Houthis on two oil tankers that forced Saudi Arabia to suspend crude shipments temporarily through the strait of Bab al-Mandab.

Speaking at a joint press conference with his Yemeni counterpart, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi also said Cairo was committed to helping Yemen regain its security after more than three years of war that has killed thousands of people.

"We categorically reject that Yemen would become a foothold for the influence of non-Arab forces, or a platform for security and stability threats against the brotherly Arab countries or freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait," Sissi said, speaking alongside President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Last month, Saudi Arabia temporarily halted oil shipments through Bab al-Mandab citing security concerns after Iran-aligned Yemen's Houthis attacked two oil tankers in the Red Sea near the strait with missiles, damaging one vessel.

Although Saudi Arabia resumed oil shipments through the strait several days later, the incident has highlighted the volatility of the situation in the area, where fighting between the Houthis and supporters of Hadi's government has been raging since 2015.

Yemen lies along the southern end of the Red Sea, one of the most important trade routes in the world for oil tankers. The tankers pass near Yemen's shores while heading from the Middle East through the Suez Canal to Europe.

Speaking after talks with Hadi in Cairo, Sissi said Egypt supported the internationally-recognized Yemeni government and was committed to helping it restore stability to the country.

Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, is a member of the Saudi-led coalition which intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015 to try to restore Hadi to power against what it sees as Iranian support for the Houthis.

But its role has been mainly to patrol Bab al-Mandab with naval vessels.

Hadi said he had briefed Sissi on what he called Iranian support for the Houthis in endangering security in the Red Sea.

"We discussed the dangers that the Red Sea had been exposed to because of the terrorism of the Houthi militias and its supporter, Iran, which aims not only to impact Red Sea security but Arab national security as a whole," Hadi said.

Iran denies providing military support to the Houthis.
An explosion at a fuel depot and electrical generation plant has left dozens of casualties Monday in the Syrian rebel-held town of Maarat al-Numan. The explosion came as rescue workers in the rebel-held town of Sarmada continued to pull bodies from the rubble after an explosion there Saturday left more than 60 people dead.



Amateur video showed frightened residents cowering behind buildings as a massive explosion and fireball rocked the skyline over the Syrian opposition held town of Maarat al-Numan.

It was not clear what set off the explosion that left dozens of casualties Monday.

Arab media reported a makeshift generator that provides electricity to parts of the town exploded, before setting off a secondary explosion in a nearby fuel depot, which caused the giant fireball.

Meanwhile, members of the Syrian volunteer force, the White Helmets, continued to dig through the rubble of a six-story building flattened by the explosion of a basement weapons depot Saturday in Sarmada. Dozens of people were killed and many more bodies are thought to be buried under the ruins.

Syria analyst Joshua Landis, who heads the Middle East program at the University of Oklahoma, says it is not clear who is behind the in-fighting between various rebel factions in Idlib province, including assassinations, car-bomb attacks or explosions that have racked the area in recent months.

"There have been a lot of assassinations of top [Hayat al Tahrir al -Sham, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra] people in the last six months and we do not know who or what is driving that assassination campaign... whether it is just purely inter-militia back-stabbing, fight for control, or whether Turkey has urged its proxies to get rid of these guys and to weaken the more jihadist elements. Is it the Syrian government? Finger-pointing is all over the place, that it is ISIS-driven, that it is Turkish-driven, that it is Syrian-driven. We do not really know," he said.

Syria's government continues to move reinforcements to the area around rebel-held Idlib province for what appears to be the final battle for control of the region. Arab media noted all parties in the conflict were eyeing diplomatic talks Monday between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Military analyst Ali Maqsoud told Syrian state TV that the battle for Idlib "will be different from the rest of the battles," claiming the "large concentration of [pro-government] reinforcements is prepared for the worst case scenario of having to defeat the worst of the worst terrorists in the country."
The United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union on March 29, yet little is clear: There is no divorce deal so far, rivals to Prime Minister Theresa May are circling and some lawmakers are pushing for a rerun of the 2016 referendum.

How will the Brexit finale play out?

Following are scenarios:

1) Disorderly Brexit

If May is toppled, fails to reach a deal with the EU or finds her deal is rejected by parliament, the United Kingdom would be plunged into crisis.

Many opponents of Brexit predict this outcome, as do some supporters of a deeper break with the EU than that advocated by the prime minister.

* May falls

May's botched snap election in 2017 lost her party its majority in parliament. Her minority government is now propped up by nine Democratic Unionist Party lawmakers from Northern Ireland.

Her own Conservative Party, which has grappled with schism over Europe for 30 years, is in open conflict and some lawmakers want a change of leader to be tougher in Brexit negotiations.

If May fell, the Conservative Party would have to select a new leader, a step that would delay already tight negotiations.

A national election is possible, though not legally necessary.

Opinion polls, though, show the United Kingdom is divided in its support for Brexit and political parties: No party has a clear enough lead to confidently predict victory in an election.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a socialist who voted "out" in the 1975 referendum on membership of the European Community, has seen his poll ratings fall.

Possible successors to May include Boris Johnson, her former foreign secretary, interior minister Sajid Javid, environment minister Michael Gove or Dominic Raab, her new Brexit minister.

Other possible contenders include Tom Tugendhat, a former soldier and chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, or lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg.

While the majority of Conservative lawmakers voted against Brexit, many have since switched to supporting Brexit and up to 80 of the 316 Conservative lawmakers now support a sharper split with the EU than May is proposing.

* No deal

Both London and Brussels say they want to get a divorce deal at the October 18 EU Council, but diplomats think that target date is too optimistic.

Two documents need to be agreed: the Withdrawal Agreement Treaty (currently 129 pages long) and a political declaration on the framework for a future relationship. The political declaration could set out aims in general terms.

EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier rejected key elements of May's new trade proposals last month.

Agreeing to a feasible arrangement for the Northern Irish border with the Republic of Ireland is one of several major hurdles and EU crises such as the 2015 Greek bailout show how protracted negotiations can be.

If May cannot get a deal by October, an agreement could be reached at the December 13/14 EU Council.

* Deal rejected

Any deal with the EU must be approved by the British parliament, which is due to go on Christmas holiday from Dec. 20 to Jan. 7. If British lawmakers reject a deal in late December or early January, Britain would face the prospect of leaving the EU three months later without an agreement.

The country would move from seamless trade with the rest of the European Union to customs arrangements set by the World Trade Organization for external states with no preferential deals.

Some business leaders have warned that adding just two minutes onto every truck's customs procedure passing through the southern English port of Dover would produce a 14-mile traffic jam on either side of the Channel after one day.

Supporters of Brexit say those fears are overblown and that the U.K. economy would thrive in the long term outside the EU.

If the deal was rejected, May would be likely to resign and neither her party, nor Labour, could be certain of winning an election.

The prime minister is betting that the fear of a so called "no-deal" scenario will push many Conservative and Labour lawmakers to support a deal. But the numbers are tight.

Parliament will have two votes: One on the Brexit deal and one on the Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill (WAIB).

Recent votes, such as the July vote knocking down an amendment to the Trade Bill, have shown May can command a majority of around six votes on major Brexit issues.

If the U.K. faced a no-deal scenario, other options include asking for an extension of the Brexit negotiation (by possibly withdrawing the Article 50 notification  something lawyers say is feasible) or parliament calling for a rerun of the referendum.

2) Last-minute deal

British politicians are trying to persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron to ensure that the EU does a deal that May can sell to her parliament.

In that case, little would be likely to change immediately when the United Kingdom leaves the EU on March 29, 2019, because a transition period lasts until Dec. 31, 2020.

May has said she will fight the next U.K. election, due in 2022, although she would likely face a challenge from her lawmakers before that.

A transition period would not necessarily guarantee a smooth exit; business leaders say they fear politicians have given little thought to the question of how the U.K. should operate in practice after it leaves the European Union.

3) Brexit reversed

If the U.K. is thrust into chaos later this year, there is a chance Brexit could be stopped through a popular vote, according to an influential group of British politicians and journalists.

Opinion polls show that the United Kingdom remains deeply divided over Brexit, though some recent surveys have shown a swing toward support for staying in the EU.

A YouGov poll, conducted July 31-Aug. 7 and commissioned by the pro-referendum "People's Vote" campaign, found 45 percent of voters supported holding a new referendum whatever the outcome of talks with the EU, while 34 percent opposed it.

Calling a rerun of a referendum that was a Conservative brainchild would sink the premiership of any Conservative leader while Labour's Corbyn has so far indicated he does not support another referendum.

Supporters of another referendum think parliament could call such a vote if the government was in turmoil.

Brexit supporters have warned that a second referendum on membership of the EU would trigger a major constitutional crisis in Britain with uncertain consequences.

Dominic Cummings, the campaign director of Vote Leave, warned opponents of Brexit to be careful what they wish for, saying a second referendum would result in another vote to leave and could wreck both the main parties.

"The Tories will be destroyed and maybe Labour too," he wrote.
A European rescue ship packed with 141 migrants and picked up in the Mediterranean Friday is still looking for a safe place to dock.

The Aquarius, run by SOS Mediterranee, and Doctors Without Borders, said it has been turned down outright by Italy and Malta. The groups accuse both governments of breaking international maritime law that allows ships to head to the closest point of safety.

Italy and its new right-wing government said rescue ships play into the hands of human traffickers who get large sums of money to abandon their passengers at sea.

Malta said it has nothing to do with the ship and that the vessel has no legal standing to enter its ports.

Spain, which let the Aquarius dock in June after nine days at sea, said it is not the safest port because it is not the closest one.

"We're asking all European countries to find a solution. We're asking them to be responsible and find a safe port in the Mediterranean," SOS Mediterranee president Sophie Beau implored Monday.

The Aquarius picked up 141 migrants Friday who were stuck in unstable wooden boats off the Libyan coast.

SOS Mediterranee said most of the migrants came from Somalia and Eritrea and had been held in inhumane conditions in Libya before heading out to sea. Many were suffering from malnutrition.

Thousands of people from sub-Saharan Africa and countries such as Syria and Afghanistan try crossing the Mediterranean every year to escape war, terrorism and poverty for a better life in the European Union.
You are here: China

Forty Taiwan college students started a 10-day visit of mainland Internet enterprises Monday.

The activity was jointly launched by Xinhua's official website Xinhuanet.com and Taiwan-based Want Want China Times Group, to enhance exchanges between young people across the Taiwan Strait.

The students will visit several enterprises, including online retailer JD, ride-hailing platform Didi, coffee chain Luckin and Xinhuanet.

"The Internet has become a driving force for economic growth on the mainland," said Xinhuanet chairman and president Tian Shubin.

Tian said he hoped the visit would open up opportunities for Taiwan's young people.

"I really look forward to seeing how the amazing Internet ride-hailing industry came into being," said Lin Kunsong, a sophomore from Soochow University in Taipei.

The students are from more than 20 universities, including Taiwan University, Cheng Kung University and Sun Yat-sen University.

The visit has been organized for two years in a row.
Officers kept the peace at this weekend's protests and counter-protests a year after a deadly far-right rally. Authorities made several arrests in Charlottesville and in northern Virginia, where a small group of right-wing demonstrators took the Metro to their rally outside the White House.

Authorities said a man heading to the "Unite the Right 2" rally in Washington was arrested Sunday for assaulting two Virginia police officers. Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller tells WTOP-FM that Donald Franklin Georgette, 30, was arrested after spitting at the officers outside the Vienna/Fairfax/George Mason University Metro station.



Meanwhile, in Charlottesville, police made several arrests as hundreds marched Saturday in a demonstration against the far-right "Unite the Right" rally that left one dead and others injured a year ago. That march was overwhelmingly peaceful as well, but Charlottesville Police say they're investigating an alleged assault of an officer who approached a man whose face was covered. Police say the officer and the man fell to the ground. Others pulled them apart, enabling the masked man to get away. No one was injured, and the march continued.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has fired agent Peter Strzok, who had become the target of Republican anger over his text messages disparaging President Donald Trump, Strzok's lawyer said Monday.

Strzok was a key figure in the early stages of the FBI's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, until his anti-Trump text messages to his lover, former FBI attorney Lisa Page, were discovered.

In one of them, Strzok vowed to keep Trump from winning the election, though there was no evidence he and Page imposed their political views on the investigation. Earlier, Strzok helped investigate Trump's Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, over her use of a private email server while she was the U.S. secretary of state.





Trump praised the firing, saying in a Twitter comment, "Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally."

The U.S. leader said the "list of bad players" at the FBI and the Justice Department "gets longer & longer." He said that "based on the fact" that Strzok once played an important role in special counsel Robert Mueller's criminal investigation of Russian meddling in the election, "will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!"

Trump called the Clinton email probe a "sham investigation. It was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone!"

Mueller's investigation is now in its 15th month. He has secured guilty pleas from several Trump associates, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and ex-foreign affairs adviser George Papadopoulos, both of whom pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about their contacts with Russia. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is currently on trial for bank and tax fraud in connection with his lobbying efforts for Ukraine that predated his work on Trump's campaign two years ago.

The FBI office that normally handles disciplinary actions had recommended that Strzok be demoted and suspended for 60 days over the anti-Trump texts, but FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich ordered the firing last Friday.

Strzok's attorney, Aitan Goelman, criticized his client's ouster, saying, "The decision to fire Special Agent Strzok is not only a departure from typical bureau practice, but also contradicts Director (Christopher) Wray's testimony to Congress and his assurances that the FBI intended to follow its regular process in this and all personnel matters."

Goelman said Strzok's dismissal after a 22-year FBI career should be deeply troubling to all Americans. A lengthy investigation and multiple rounds of congressional testimony failed to produce a shred of evidence that Strzoks personal views ever affected his work.

Last month, Strzok told a House of Representatives hearing that the anti-Trump text messages he exchanged with Page reflected his personal opinions and that he had never let his beliefs interfere with his work for the FBI.

In the key exchange between Strzok and Page, she texted him that Trump is "not ever going to become president, right? Right?!" Strzok replied, "No. No he won't. We'll stop it."

In a lengthy review of FBI actions over the last two years, Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz weeks ago concluded there was no evidence the pair acted on their views, but said the exchange was "not only indicative of a biased state of mind, but even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidates electoral prospects.
The diplomatic feud between Saudi Arabia and Canada, triggered by a tweet criticizing the Gulf kingdoms human rights record, looks set to worsen this week with the suspension of direct Saudi flights to Canada.

Neither side is showing signs of wanting to ease a quarrel that flared when Canadas foreign minister criticized the recent arrests of 11 prominent rights activists in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia accused Canada of interfering in its internal affairs with the tweets that called on the Gulf kingdom to release detained civil society activists.

Following the tweets posted August 5, the feud has only worsened, with media in both countries piling on and urging government officials in their respective countries to not back down.

The Saudis have expelled Canadas ambassador and recalled their own envoy from Ottawa, ordered home 15,000 scholarship students studying at Canadian universities and hospitals, and frozen bilateral trade and investment, including halting barley and wheat imports.

Both governments can benefit politically from the standoff when it comes to domestic politics, say analysts, who suspect the feud could play out for some time.

The diplomatic spat took Canadian officials off guard. They say the tweets by Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland protesting the detention of female critics of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdoms de facto ruler, were hardly unusual and amounted to routine critiquing of the Saudi rights record. They accuse Riyadh of an absurd overreaction.

But analysts say the sharp reaction by Riyadh may have less to do with Canada and more to do with domestic Saudi politics, fitting in with a recent pattern of aggressive Saudi behavior that has seen Riyadh engineer a standoff with Gulf neighbor Qatar, which it is blockading, and continuing to pursue the war in Yemen, despite allegations of human rights violations.

They say the crown prince appears to be ramping up Saudi nationalism to try to reduce the risk of a reactionary backlash from conservative clerics and their supporters in the royal family to a series of reforms the crown prince has implemented, part of a high-profile social and economic modernization program designed to refashion Saudi Arabia thats been unfolding the past two years.

The reforms include allowing women to drive, opening movie theaters, and allowing concerts. Economic modernization, including welcoming greater foreign investment, is designed to reduce the Saudi economys dependence on oil.



No one should interpret this as a tantrum from Riyadh, tweeted Hisham Al-Zoubeir Hellyer, an analyst with the Atlantic Council, a U.S.-based research group. It is far more likely to be a calculated move, designed to establish a new litmus test internationally for continued relations with Saudi Arabia. The question is whether or not everyone will buckle or refuse."

The Canadian government shows little sign of backing off, although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has acknowledged recently that Saudi Arabia has made progress on human rights.

Much of the Canadian media is supportive.

We should not apologize, and we should be ready to accept further retaliation from Riyadh, wrote Jim Warren, a columnist for the Toronto Sun.

When we consider Canadian values versus Saudi Arabian values, we must stand up for what is right and for what we believe in. This will require sacrifices. Doing the right thing sometimes costs you something.

In its efforts to bring the Canadian government to heel, Riyadh has organized an apparently coordinated social media offensive, which has taken several bizarre turns, including targeting Canadas womens rights record, by accusing Canada of being one of the worst oppressors of women.

One social-media posting, which was deleted after being linked to the Saudi government, warned Canada not to stick its nose where it doesnt belong, with the message superimposed over a photograph depicting a plane flying into Torontos CN Tower.

While in the short-term, both sides may benefit politically from brow-beating each other before domestic constituencies, it doesnt appear that anyone truly stands to gain from this in either country, argues Shuvaloy Majumdar, an analyst at Canadas Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a former government adviser.

In a tweet, Majumdar faults the Canadian government for the dispute, arguing it should have been more careful in how it campaigns for human rights, One doesnt just wave a wand or issue a tweet."
A year after the Trump administration introduced its strategy for Afghanistan, the Taliban are asserting themselves on the battlefield even as U.S. officials talk up hopes for peace. That's raising questions about the viability of the American game plan for ending a war that began when some of the current U.S. troops were in diapers.

A Taliban assault on Ghazni, a key city linking areas of Taliban influence barely 75 miles from Kabul, has killed about 100 Afghan security forces and 20 civilians since Friday, the Afghan Defense Ministry said. That has demonstrated the militants' ability to attack, if not hold, a strategic center on the nation's main highway, and highlighted the vulnerability of Afghan security forces.

Against that turbulent backdrop, some wonder whether President Donald Trump can resist pulling the plug on a war in which the U.S. is still spending $4 billion-plus a year just to keep Afghan forces afloat. He said when he introduced his strategy on Aug. 21, 2017, that his instinct was to withdraw entirely.

Fighting across the country has intensified in recent weeks despite a fleeting outbreak of peace earlier in the summer. Taliban and the Afghan government called separate, briefly overlapping, national cease fires in June, and the administration has made its own contact with the Taliban in hopes of nudging them into talks with Kabul.

The strategy revisits an approach that was tried, and failed, under President Barack Obama: increasing military pressure to push the Taliban into peace negotiations with the Afghan government. Signs point to Trump pressing ahead; he is about to send a new Army general, Scott Miller, to take charge of the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul.

David Sedney, who has worked on Afghan issues as a civilian, including multiple years in Kabul and at the Pentagon, since the war began in October 2001, said he believes the chances for peace are the best theyve been.

That doesnt mean theyre great, he said in an interview. It just means theyre better.

Among the meaningful factors at play, Sedney says, is Trumps announcement a year ago that the U.S. would no longer set time limits on its military support for Afghanistan. This introduced an element of uncertainty for the Taliban, he said. On the other hand, the current U.S. push to draw Taliban leaders into peace negotiations with Kabul must succeed soon, he said, or risk following the failed path of previous efforts.

Trump also gave the U.S. military more leeway to attack the Taliban, and a few thousand additional U.S. troops were sent to Afghanistan this year as part of an effort to improve the effectiveness of training and advising Afghan ground forces, while also developing a small Afghan air force. The battlefield results have been mixed, however, as the Taliban have managed to preserve their influence in numerous districts.

Early in 2018 the U.S. military declared Afghanistan to be its top combat priority, supplanting the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Key U.S. warplanes, including A-10 ground attack aircraft, were switched to Afghanistan, and the Pentagon introduced a newly formed outfit called a Security Force Assistance Brigade of U.S. soldiers assigned to help Afghan forces closer to the battlefield.

With Ghazni under threat, the U.S. has dispatched military advisers to assist the Afghan forces in retaking the besieged city, and has launched airstrikes.

Seth Jones, a longtime watcher of Afghanistan and director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was unlikely the Taliban will be able to hold populated areas of Ghazni for long. The militants have lacked sufficient popular support and military power to hold population centers.

But the Talibans ability to mass forces in multiple areas of Afghanistan at virtually the same time including in Ghazni, Faryab, Baghlan, and Kunduz provinces  should worry Afghan and U.S. officials. Tribal leaders and local officials had been repeatedly warning Afghan policymakers in Kabul that the Taliban was preparing for a broad offensive in Ghazni, Jones said.

He remains skeptical the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan will work as he sees no sign that Trump is willing to take what could be a game-changing move: to target the top Taliban leaders in their Pakistan sanctuaries.

Much like Bush and Obama, the Trump administration has other areas of the world that it would rather focus on, whether its the Korean Peninsula or Iran or China more broadly, and to move on, if possible, from Afghanistan, Jones said. If a settlement is the way to do that, then they are willing to give that a shot. The challenge, though, is that it is still not clear to me that the Taliban is seriously interested in peace negotiations in terms that would be acceptable to the U.S. and the Afghan governments, including making a formal, public break with al-Qaida.

The Taliban is willing to talk a little bit about talks, but not to sit down and formally negotiate, he added. I think they view time as in their favor and that the longer the war continues, the better their negotiating position.

The group has growing regional clout. The Taliban assault on Ghazni began as the head of its political office was wrapping up a rare diplomatic foray in neighboring Uzbekistan.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who helped persuade Trump last summer not to quit Afghanistan, says its too early to render judgment on whether peace talks will emerge anytime soon.

No doubt the strategy has confronted the Taliban with a reason to go to cease fires ... and to go into discussions about potential negotiations, he said Aug. 7. But it is still early in that reconciliation process.
U.S. President Donald Trump assailed a former adviser on Monday, calling Omarosa Manigault Newman "Wacky Omarosa," after she disclosed, for the second day in a row on national television, secret tape recordings she made at the White House.

Trump, in Twitter comments, attacked the aide who for years appeared on his reality television show, "The Apprentice," before he turned to politics and won the White House.

"Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time," Trump tweeted. "She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired!..."

Later, he half-apologized for his comments about her.

"While I know its 'not presidential' to take on a lowlife like Omarosa," he said, "and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!"

Trump's remarks came a couple hours after Manigault Newman played an audio recording of a conversation she had with Trump seeming to show that the president was surprised his chief of staff John Kelly had fired her late last year.

"Omarosa, whats going on?" Trump said on the brief recording aired on NBC's "Today" show. Manigault Newman said the phone call occurred the day after Kelly ousted her. "I just saw on the news that youre thinking about leaving. What happened?" Trump says.

"Gen. Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave," Manigault Newman replied.

But Trump said, "No. Nobody even told me about it. You know, they run a big operation, but I didnt know it. I didnt know that. Goddamnit."

"I dont love you leaving at all," he added, while not doing anything to block her dismissal.

On Sunday, Manigault Newman released a recording of Kelly firing her in the Situation Room, the supposedly secure inner sanctum of the White House where U.S. presidents discuss crucial national security issues and aides are supposed to leave electronic devices outside.

As he fired her, according to the recording, Kelly told Manigault Newman, I think its important to understand that if we make this a friendly departure, we can all be, you know, you can look at your time here in the White House as a year of service to the nation. And then you can go on without any type of difficulty in the future, relative to your reputation.

Manigault Newman, seeking publicity for her new book, "Unhinged," that is highly critical of Trump and his White House, claims that she was offered a $15,000-a-month retainer as she left the White House to not criticize Trump or Vice President Mike Pence and their wives, but that she turned it down. She says she has other tapes she secretly made at the White House.

Before his attack on her Monday, when asked about the book,Trump called her a "lowlife."

Trump's spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said Sunday, "The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room shows a blatant disregard for our national security  and then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee."

The Republican Party tweeted: "Omarosa is ... 'Unbelievable.' 'Not credible.' 'Unethical.'
Tunisia's president promised Monday to submit a bill to parliament soon that aims to give women equal inheritance rights with men, as debate over the topic of inheritance reverberated around the Muslim world.

In a speech marking Women's Day in Tunisia, President Beji Caid Essebsi said he wants to submit the proposal "as soon as possible," probably when parliament resumes in October.



The current system, which is based on Islamic Shariah law, generally grants daughters only half the inheritance given to sons, and is standard practice in most Muslim countries.



Many Muslim clerics see the inheritance rules as enshrined in the Quran, Islam's holy book.

Since independence from France in 1956, Tunisia has been a standard-bearer in the Muslim world for women's rights. Last month, a woman from Tunisia's moderate Islamic party was elected mayor of Tunis, the capital, the first time a woman has held the post.



The president's decision is based on the recommendations of a 300-page government report known as the Colibe report. It recommended the change in inheritance rights as well as proposals to end the death penalty and legalize homosexuality, which now in Tunisia is outlawed and punished with three years in prison.



Essebsi said Monday his decision is based on Article 2 of the country's Constitution, which he said "stipulates that Tunisia is a state based on citizenship, the will of the people and the supremacy of law" rather than religion.



On Saturday, thousands of fundamentalist men and veiled women marched under a blazing sun from Tunis to Bardo, outside the capital where Tunisia's parliament is located, to protest the Colibe report.
North and South Korea say their respective leaders will meet in North's capital of Pyongyang sometime next month.

The announcement was made Monday after the two sides held high-level talks in Panmunjom, the truce village in the border zone that separates the autocratic North from the democratic South.

The statement did not give a firm date on when the meeting between North Korea's Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in will take place.

Kim and Moon held a historic first summit in April in Panmunjom, followed by a second meeting in May, also in the truce village. If plans for the September summit go forward, Moon would be the third South Korean leader to visit Pyongyang.

Next month's planned meeting between the leaders of the rival Koreas continues a flurry of diplomatic overtures since Moon accepted Kim's offer for North Korean athletes to participate in February's Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.

The overture culminated in a summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump in June, where they signed a vague agreement for the North to rid itself of its nuclear arsenal.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said the United States is in close contact with South Korea about "our unified response to North Korea." The official said the United States remains "confident" that Kim will fulfill his promise to denuclearize his country.

"The United States and its allies are committed to the same goal  the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea," said the official, adding that "sanctions will remain in full effect should North Korea fail to denuclearize."
High-profile U.S. officials have visited South America in recent weeks to signal strength in inter-American alliances amid U.S. competitors increased interest in the region.

Speaking to reporters while traveling to Brazil Sunday, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said Russian and Chinese involvement in South America has had zero impact on military-to-military relationships with America's Latin partners.

Mattis said the United States supports sovereign decisions by sovereign states, while also cautioning against potentially damaging inroads by other nations.

Theres more than one way to lose sovereignty in this world. Its not just by bayonets. It can also be by countries that come in bearing gifts and large loanspiling massive debt on countries knowing they know will not be able to repay it, Mattis said, in what appeared to be a jab at Chinese loans to countries like Venezuela and the Philippines.

Chinese influence in Latin America grows from a larger commercial perspective to feed Chinese demand back home, which Beijing then leverages to broaden security collaboration, the director of the Atlantic Councils Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, Jason Marczak, told VOA.

Russias role, however, is specifically to undermine U.S. security interests, Marczak said. Moscow has been providing weapons to countries like Nicaragua and Venezuela, where police regularly abuse and arrest citizens protesting against the government.

Partner of choice

Mattiss trip to the region follows a visit by the top Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson to Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Brazil.

In an exclusive interview with VOA, Richardson said the U.S. military, and especially the U.S. Navy, wants to make sure that it is the security partner of choice for Latin America.

We want to be that stable, steady, committed team that will be there for one another when the chips are down, Richardson told VOA.

The U.S. Navy has been partnering with Latin American allies to combat illicit trafficking, particularly as it pertains to narcotics. Allies are also mindful of transnational types of terror threats, with partners in the Caribbean keeping a close watch for piracy, a crime Richardson called terrorism at sea.

Officials say other security areas are ripe for inter-American military cooperation, from humanitarian missions to cybersecurity.

Richardson said he believed shared values among inter-American militaries could help deepen transparency across their governments.

The stability that these security relationships provide offers a lot of flexibility for the other elements of national power, whether those be diplomatic or economic, Richardson said.

About a month before of Richardsons visit, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence also spent a week in South America. Pence said on Twitter that he highlighted opportunities for stronger economic and security relationships during the trip while bringing renewed attention to the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.

Refugees fleeing violence in Venezuela have poured over the border into Brazil and Colombia, two of the stops on Secretary Mattiss South America tour. Mattis will also travel to Argentina and Chile.
A leading U.S. Jewish columnist said Monday that he was detained by Israeli authorities at Tel Aviv's airport and questioned about his political activity, the latest in a series of such incidents.

Peter Beinart, a contributing editor at The Atlantic and a columnist at the liberal Jewish Forward daily, said on Twitter that he had been detained at Israel's Ben Gurion airport when he arrived for a family visit Sunday.

In an article in The Forward, Beinart said he was taken into a room at the airport and questioned by an Israeli security official on the reasons for his visit.

"Then the political questions began. Was I involved in any organization that could provoke violence in Israel? I said no. Was I involved in any organization that threatens Israel democracy? I said no  that I support Israeli organizations that employ non-violence to defend Israeli democracy," he wrote.

Beinart said he was also questioned about a protest he had attended during a previous visit, in the Palestinian city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. He was released after about an hour, he said.

A few hours after Beinart tweeted about the incident, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office released an English statement which said: "Prime Minister Netanyahu heard of Mr. Beinart's questioning at Ben Gurion airport and immediately spoke with Israel's security forces to inquire how this happened. He was told it was an administrative mistake," the statement said.

"Israel is an open society which welcomes all  critics and supporters alike. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where people voice their opinions freely and robustly," the statement said.

In the past few weeks at least three pro-Palestinian activists arriving in Israel from abroad have said they were detained at the border by Israeli security officials and questioned about their political activity.
Chinese authorities detained a Voice of America Mandarin Service correspondent and a multimedia journalist working for VOA for at least six hours Monday evening. The two journalists were taken into custody as they attempted to interview a retired Chinese professor who was taken away by police during a live television interview with VOA nearly two weeks ago.

Correspondent Yibing Feng and VOA contractor Allen Ai were taken into custody in Jinan, Shandong province after talking to professor Sun Wenguang, 84, through the closed door of his apartment. Sun told Feng details of his detention and thanked VOA for allowing him to express his freedom of speech on the air.

Police who were in the apartment building attempted to interrupt the interview and then separately detained both reporters. The VOA reporters said they were taken in separate vehicles to undisclosed locations on the university campus by men who identified themselves as contract security guards. They were freed before dawn Tuesday unharmed.



I was just released from the hands of secret police in Jinan, with all my cell phones destroyed by them, Feng wrote in an email to his editor. They separated Allen from me during these hours.

Feng later clarified that the phones are structurally intact, however they are currently inoperable.



After spending hours in a car with two men, Ai was driven to the outskirts of Jinan and released early Tuesday. He said that the men scanned and downloaded all of his electronic devices before letting him go.

It is outrageous that two journalists have been detained for nothing more than doing their jobs, said VOA Director Amanda Bennett. "Its the job of journalist to find out whats going on, to talk to people in the news, and that is all that they were doing.

She also acknowledged that "this is not the first time weve had some issues with China and our journalists."

The U.S. State Department also urged China to allow journalists to do their jobs without interference, and to allow all individuals to express their views freely.

"We are deeply concerned about reports of the detention of a VOA correspondent and contractor, and of interviewee Professor Sun Wenguang by Chinese security officials," a Department of State spokesperson said. "We strongly condemn Chinas worsening abuse of human rights, in particular the suppression of the fundamental freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assembly and the unlawful detention of activists, lawyers, journalists, and civil-society leaders seeking to defend those freedoms."

Republican Congressman Chris Smith called the detention of the two journalists brazenly heavy-handed, even by Chinas low standards for press freedom.

Chinese state-controlled media have long enjoyed freedoms in the U.S. not afforded to American journalists in China, and this is becoming an acute problem because these freedoms are often exploited by the Chinese government to expand propaganda or political influence networks.

Rep. Smith called for the Trump administration to consider ways to reduce the U.S. footprint of Chinese government-controlled media if more journalists are detained in the future.

Chinese authorities have refused to comment on Sun Wenguangs or the reporters' detentions.

But outside analysts say the episode highlights Xi Jinpings ongoing clampdown on speech. Professor Sun spoke about the issue in an interview outside his apartment, minutes before the VOA reporters were detained.

Here in China, we have a lack of freedom of press, the professor said. Authorities have blocked and suppressed press freedom. Chinese authorities have a practice of trade barrier and press barrier. Why can Chinese reporters act as journalists in the U.S. freely while U.S. reporters cannot do normal journalistic work in China? he told Yibing Feng.

Teng Biao, a former Chinese human rights lawyer and visiting scholar at New York Universitys Law school, said the professors detention, followed by the two journalists', shows how China under President Xi is becoming increasingly intolerant of speech critical of the government.

The CCPs clamping down on freedom of speech targets not only domestic media, it has also been extended to foreign media and foreign nationals.

A statement from Reporters Without Borders denounced Chinas arrest of the VOA reporters, saying the persecution of independent voices has taken on dramatic proportions under Xi's rule, and the international community must not tolerate any more such blatant attacks on the freedom to inform.

Chen Guangcheng, a well-known blind civil rights activist lawyer who was harassed and detained in China for years over his legal work, said he is familiar with VOAs Yibeng Feng from his own time in detention.

When I escaped from my hometown and was admitted to Chaoyang Hospital in Beijing, he kept calling me to find out about the situation. Although we hadnt met in person, I feel like I knew him already.

Chen Guangcheng said under Chinese law, foreign reporters are supposed to be able to travel anywhere and interview anyone they wish, without government permission. But he said authorities have long ignored the rule while harassing foreign reporters.

VOA's Ira Mellman contributed to this report.
Vote counting is under way following the second and final round in Mali's presidential election. Voting on Sunday was peaceful, but many Malians are cynical about their country's political system, and most did not vote.

Concerns about Islamist attacks may have kept some away from polls in the countryside  where violent incidents marred the first round of voting in July  but, in the capital of Bamako, businessman Bahama Sidibe says many are simply disappointed with politics.

Sidibe says many people feel it does not matter which of the two remaining candidates wins, as nothing will change either way.

Others stayed away because they felt the election would be rigged. A few hundred people gathered in downtown Bamako as the polls closed Sunday to protest election fraud.

Teacher Fatoumata Diarra, one of the protesters, told VOA the first round of results was tainted by vote rigging. Diarra claimed votes had been bought, and that fictitious supporters had cast their votes under false names.

Authorities deny the allegations. While 18 of 23 opposition candidates claimed irregularities in the first round of voting, little evidence of widespread voter fraud has emerged.

But transparency remains crucial in the minds of many election observers, especially the European Union. The EU observer mission's leader, Italian politician Cecile Kyenge, noted some delays in the first round.

"We had demanded the publication of the results for each polling station," Kyenge said. "A request that was finally granted by the Malian Ministry of Territorial Administration that calls the provisional results. The other request was the publication of the electoral lists. This will enhance the election's transparency."

The first results from the presidential runoff are expected Tuesday. The final results probably will not be known until the end of the week.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita is expected to win a second term over opposition leader Soumaila Cisse; Keita took 41 percent of the vote in the first round.

However, political analyst Ballan Diakite says Keita has lost a large number of allies  a few of whom decided to run for the presidency themselves. While Keita is a head of state, Diakite says, he is a poor people manager who will increasingly rely on a close circle of associates who understand the old saying: You are either with me or against me.

The result, Diakite predicts, is further polarization in Mali's political landscape.
White House national security adviser John Bolton met on Monday with Turkey's ambassador to the United States to discuss Turkey's detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson, the White House said.

"At the Turkish ambassador's request, Ambassador John Bolton met with Ambassador Serdar Kilic of Turkey (on Monday) in the White House. They discussed Turkey's continued detention of Pastor Andrew Brunson and the state of the U.S.-Turkey relationship," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.

"The fact that there's ongoing discussions between the two countries regarding Brunson's return to the U.S. is positive," said Jay Sekulow, an attorney for U.S. President Donald Trump who is also representing Brunson's family. "I look forward to the Brunson family returning to the U.S."

Relations between NATO allies Turkey and the United States are at a low point, hurt by Brunson's detention, as well as diverging interests in Syria. Trump doubled tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum imports last week, contributing to a precipitous fall in the lira.

U.S. officials have given no indication that the United States has been prepared to give any ground over the Brunson issue, with Trump seemingly content to keep up economic pressure.

The United States is also considering a fine against Turkey's state-owned Halkbank for allegedly helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions. Earlier this month, the United States imposed sanctions on two top officials in Erdogan's cabinet in an attempt to get Turkey to turn over Brunson.

Last week, Trump tweeted that "our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!"

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said the Trump administration was carefully monitoring the financial situation in Turkey after its currency fell to a record low against the U.S. dollar on Monday.

"We're monitoring it very closely. Treasury Secretary (Steven) Mnuchin is monitoring it very closely," Hassett, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told MSNBC.
Zimbabwe is at a tense standstill as it awaits the results of a legal challenge to last month's presidential election, the first in decades without longtime leader Robert Mugabe on the ballot.

The nation went into last months general elections with great hopes  even the incumbent ruling party leader and president Emmerson Mnangagwa touted change as a central part of his platform.

Hes the official victor in the July 30 poll, winning 50.8 percent of the vote, but his inauguration has been indefinitely postponed by the court challenge. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change alliance said its candidate, Nelson Chamisa, who officially got 44 percent of the vote, actually won the poll.

"We're seeking a declaration to the effect that the presidential election was not properly conducted, was not conducted in terms of the constitution, was not conducted in terms of the electoral act, was not conducted in terms standards of fairness, transparency and accountability, MDC lawyer Thabani Mpofu said at court on Friday.

International observers praised the poll for being peaceful but raised concerns over the environment around the poll and the campaign.

Even before results were announced, opposition supporters took to the streets of the capital, Harare, first celebrating what they claimed was a certain win, then protesting the delay in results, and then running for their lives after security forces fired live rounds, killing six people.



And for the first time in ages, even analysts say theyre not quite sure how this impasse will end.

Its a very precarious situation, sort of like hanging over a cliff, not very dangerously, but somehow, dangerously, said Professor Annie Chikwanha, of the University of Johannesburg. And thats because of the uncertainties surrounding what will happen once the Constitutional Court has given its verdict.

What analysts say needs to happen is unlikely: two men from different generations, different temperaments and different ends of the political spectrum and need to come together. Chamisa has outright dismissed suggestions of entering into a government with Mnangagwa, and said the two men have not spoken.

Chikwanha said they need to mend that bridge.

Politically, it is important for whoever wins to take in, or bring the other one on board, she told VOA in Johannesburg. They may not want to do it, but there has to be some form of appeasement that would appeal to the general electorate and to the voters, or to the public that supports the loser.

Analysts say they hope Zimbabwe can move forward, and that this election will, hopefully, be a blip in that journey.

I said, far in advance of the 2017 coup that this would be an election that wouldnt count, said Zimbabwe analyst and professor David Moore of the University of Johannesburg. Two thousand twenty-three would count, because the younger generation, which cut their teeth in the early 2000s against the regime, are now gaining maturity, having experience. And if they can maintain a hold over the MDC, and perhaps other opposition parties that might emerge, we will see a much different election.



But right now, as Zimbabwe waits, that may be cold comfort for this very divided nation.
Zimbabwes ruling Zanu PF party is on Monday expected to file opposing papers at the Constitutional Court against a petition filed by Movement for Democratic Change Alliance presidential candidate Nelson Chamisa last Friday challenging incumbent president Emmerson Mnangagwas victory in the poll held July 30.

Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana, Zanu PFs secretary for Legal Affairs, told the state-controlled media Sunday that they have set up a 12-member team to tackle the case.

He said they want the Constitutional Court to dismiss the petition on the basis that the MDC Alliance did not properly serve the papers at the presidents address.

However, some legal experts told VOA Zimbabwe Service the courts rules and regulations clearly stipulate that such petition can be delivered directly or indirectly to respondents.

Zanu PF Central Committee member, Believe Gaule, said the case should be dismissed as the MDC Alliance did not follow some court regulations.

But Nkululeko Sibanda, spokesperson the MDC-T leader Nelson Chamisa, said they filed their papers as per some provisions of the law.

Human rights lawyer Job Sibanda said the case may be dismissed if the MDC Alliance did not properly serve the court papers.
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Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa thanked citizens for holding peaceful elections, but blamed the MDC Alliance for post-election violence. In the wake of a court challenge that derailed his inauguration, Mnangagwa called for unity, peace and love and urged the nation to move on. #voazimvotes
Adam and Eleanor Ortiz, 9 and 7, of Oakton, Virginia, went to Wyoming to see the Devils Tower National Monument. Ten years before President Woodrow Wilson created the National Park Service, Devils Tower was the countrys first designated national monument. Twins Henry and Corinne Hess, 12, of Washington, explored Native American history in New Mexico. At Chaco Culture National Historical Park, they learned about how the Chacoans survived there more than a thousand years ago. Nolan and Louis Powers, 14 and 11, from Reston, Virginia, earned a Park Service patch by visiting Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska. They spoke to a park ranger and learned about the science behind these large glaciers.
When I first met Jalloh two weeks ago, she sat on her couch in an apartment she shares with three other people in Herndon, Va., and cried. Without the two jobs, she said, she no longer had enough money to send to the four children she left in her native country, with the hopes of one day bringing them to the U.S. to live with her. They were 14, 12, 10 and 9 when she left, and although they are now adults, she said, they depend on the money she sends them because they cant find jobs in their country.
There were not 5,000 fascists in the streets at that moment. There were a few dozen police officers in a department that is majority African American. The officers were not in riot gear, most of them were away from their families and working overtime on a Sunday, residents of the region, protecting the First Amendment rights of folks they probably loathe, without the luxury of being able to take a side.
The field for the seat held by Silverman also includes independents Rustin Lewis, who raised $3,100 in the latest period and had $6,600 in cash on hand, and Dionne Reeder, who is in the red after loaning her campaign $6,900 and reporting $4,500 in the bank. Republican Ralph J. Chittams Sr., Libertarian Denise Hicks and Statehood Green Party candidate David Schwartzman reported little or no campaign fundraising.
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People are very much in favor of going for a lot more renewables, for whatever reason, said Dru Schmidt-Perkins, the former president of the land conservation group 1,000 Friends of Maryland. That support comes to a screeching halt when land that is perceived to be valuable for other things, whether a historic viewshed or farming, suddenly becomes a target of a location for this new project.
Born in the northern city of Nam Dinh on Dec. 29, 1927, he joined the Communist Party at 19. In a memoir, Following Ho Chi Minh (1995), he recalled that he swore an oath under the light of an oil lamp always to be loyal to the idea of liberating the people and the whole of mankind. . . . I equated joining the Party with patriotism and gaining independence. A life full of activity, yet simple, beckoned; it would be bright and glorious without a ripple of concern discernible in the future.
McKenna also denied a request by Kings attorney to sentence his client under the Districts Youth Rehabilitation Act. The law was designed for criminals under the age of 22 to allow for shorter sentences and the opportunity for offenders to emerge with no criminal record if they successfully complete their sentence and probation period. Prosecutors said King did not qualify based on his age at the time of the crime.
All of us having served on foundation boards understand how to go about developing a strategy, Meeks said. We have a long way to go, but this is a national fund. . . . With some 560 Native American tribes, this could be a drop in a bucket  which is why we have to be really smart about how we use this money.
Were just completely honored to have his support, she said. For him to put himself out there was just so honorable, also. He didnt have to. He could have just quietly sent us a check. The fact that he chose to get involved shows just how important this race is.
Authorities said he used a tractor to rotate the plane 180 degrees, positioning it so that he could taxi toward a runway. They said its not clear whether he had ever taken flight lessons or used flight simulators, or where he gained the skills to take off. The plane didnt require a key, but it did require buttons and switches to be activated in a particular order.
4 W.Va. Supreme Court justices impeached: The West Virginia House of Delegates has impeached all four of the state's Supreme Court justices. The Republican-led House on Monday impeached Justice Beth Walker and the others for abusing their authority. The article says they failed to control office expenses and didn't maintain policies over matters such as working lunches and state vehicle use. Suspended Justice Allen Loughry, Chief Justice Margaret Workman and Justice Robin Davis also were impeached. Loughry has pleaded not guilty to a 23-count federal indictment.
You have to govern the state because you are not an anarchist, said Van Mobley, one of Trumps earliest and most visible Wisconsin supporters. Walkers earlier focus was that spending was out of control but now, in many ways, its now going to be making sure that you have institutions that are going to work.




There is only one world, but theories of international relations abound. Indeed, since the birth of the discipline of international studies after the First World War, many new theories have emerged.



While some Chinese scholars claim the book Feigong(Against Offensive War)written by the philosopher Mozi (, ca. 470  ca. 391 BCE) should be considered the first in the world on international relations, it's a fact that the views of Western scholars have dominated contemporary theories on the subject. Important ideas such as realism, liberalism and constructivism, among many others, are not invented by Chinese scholars.

In 1977, Stanley Hoffmann (1928~2015) wrote an essay arguing that theories of international relations are "an American social science." Many years later, Stephen M. Walt found no conclusive reason to doubt that international relations theories remained dominated by scholars from the Anglo-Saxon world (the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada).

However, there was a caveat in his 2011 article: "That said, I do have this nagging doubt that maybe I've missed something or someone. So, nominations are now open: who are the most important writers on foreign affairs operating outside the Anglo-Saxon world?"

Differences between a theory and a li-nian

In the 1980s, an ambitious idea appeared in China, calling for domestic scholars to establish a Chinese school of international relations theories, or "theories with Chinese characteristics." Three or four decades have elapsed since then, however, without that dream coming true.

It does not mean that Chinese scholars in the field of international relations are incompetent. Rather, a few of them have yet been able to win recognition by their counterparts around the world.

Undoubtedly, theories of international relations are important and necessary. However, for the purpose of making contributions to world peace and development, or understanding the world in a better way, we need to remember that diplomatic li-nian () is no less important than a theory.

There is no fixed translation for the word li-nian. It has meanings encompassing belief, idea, thinking, doctrine, philosophy, concept, principle, etc.

Differences between a theory of international relations and a diplomatic li-nian are evident. On the one hand, while a theory is the outcome of long-term academic research by scholars, diplomatic li-nian is expressed by leaders of a particular country in their speeches or writings. On the other hand, a theory is often an abstract type of thinking and reasoning, not always closely related to the reality of the world situation. However, a diplomatic li-nian never fails to reflect the perception and judgment of political leaders about the world. Therefore, a country's foreign policies are influenced more by li-nian than theory.

Since 1949, Chinese leaders have put forward quite a few ideas in this regard. Some of them are outdated as the world situations and domestic conditions on which they were based have dramatically changed. For instance, Mao Zedong suggested the world's proletariat should (and would) unite to 'liberate humanity." When the Cultural Revolution (1966~1976) ended, this particular li-nian was dropped.

A community of shared future for humanity

In recent years, to build a community of shared future for humanity has become China's most important diplomatic li-nian. It first appeared in the White Paper entitled "China's Peaceful Development" published by the Chinese government on September 6, 2011.

At the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), in November 2012, the then Party chief Hu Jintao reaffirmed this in his report.

In March 2013, President Xi Jinping embarked on his first overseas trip to Russia and Africa as China's paramount leader. In his speech delivered to a university in Moscow, he said he likened the world to a global village or a community of a shared future with deepening inter-dependence among nations. Since then, he has repeatedly mentioned this diplomatic li-nian on various occasions.

At the 19th CPC National Congress in October 2017, this particular li-nian was written into the Party constitution; and, at the 13th National People's Congress session in March 2018, it was added to the national Constitution. As a result, it has become the will of the nation and the Party.

Apart from the community of a shared future for all humanity, President Xi has also proposed to construct such a community for Asia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, China-Africa, China-Latin America, China-ASEAN, China-Arab, China-Cambodia, China-Pakistan, China-Belarus, China-Vietnam, China-Uzbekistan, China-Kazakhstan, China-Laos, and China and its neighbors. Moreover, he has also suggested a similar development in cyberspace.

From his various speeches, we can see that this is composed of five pillars: peace, security, economic prosperity, cultural harmony and a green environment. These objectives will not be realized shortly, but humanity should not stop cherishing this dream for the world.

In conclusion, although no Chinese school of international relations theories is born yet, diplomatic li-nian like building a community of a shared future for all humanity is much more important and helpful. And, this philosophy can also serve as a guiding principle for Chinese scholars to establish a Chinese school of international relations theories.

The writer is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/jiangshixue.htm





Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn




Chinese tourist killed in hippo attack in Kenya: A Chinese tourist was attacked and killed by a hippo as he was taking pictures on the edge of Lake Naivasha in Kenya's Rift Valley, just hours after a local fisherman was mauled to death in the same area, authorities said. A second Chinese tourist was injured in the incident, the Kenya Wildlife Service said. The deaths brought to six the number of people who have been killed by hippos around Lake Naivasha this year. A wildlife service spokesman said the circumstances in which the two Chinese were attacked are not clear.
The left-wing politician  a longtime critic of Israels treatment of Palestinians  has been facing mounting criticism since the Daily Mail published photos of Corbyn holding a wreath in a Tunis cemetery in 2014, near what the newspaper said were graves of members of Black September, the Palestinian militant group that carried out the massacre at the Munich Games. Several members of the group were later killed by Israel.
We should be extremely careful before rushing to embrace an Internet that is moderated by a few private companies by default, one where the platforms that control so much public discourse routinely remove posts and deactivate accounts because of objections to the content. Once systems like content moderation become the norm, those in power inevitably exploit them. Time and time again, platforms have capitulated to censorship demands from authoritarian regimes, and powerful actors have manipulated flagging procedures to effectively censor their political opponents. Given this practical reality, and the sad history of political censorship in the United States, let's not cheer one decision that we might agree with.
We dont know yet if Trump or his associates had any direct involvement in Putins conspiracy to interfere in our electoral process. But only a fool would suggest that the Russian leader is an innocent man. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs indictment documents in painstaking detail how Russias military spy agency hacked into Americas infrastructure and describes its ongoing efforts to destabilize our country. The forensic evidence proving Putins cyberwar against the United States is so comprehensive that neither the president nor his sycophants in Congress deny in good faith that Russia has been coordinating attacks against the United States for years.
I had just finished an eye examination for one of my patients and swiveled around to the computer. It was clear that he needed cataract surgery; he was nearly blind despite his Coke-bottle glasses. But even before I logged into the scheduling system, I knew what I was going to find: He wouldnt be able to get an appointment with an ophthalmologist for more than three months. Everyones schedule was full.
My vote is to celebrate all this while remembering, as many localists do, that some problems require national action. Were better off having a federal Social Security and Medicare program, and it will take a comparable effort to get health insurance to everyone. Its also true that a nationwide economic market needs more than patchwork regulation, and that wealthy places can better maneuver through their difficulties than poorer localities. The countrys hardest hit places can use outside assistance to turn the corner. And we can never forget that it took federal power to enforce civil rights across the land.
Walz has said he has evolved on the gun issue and always been a pro-labor liberal on other issues. The NRA you see now is not the NRA when they were teaching us gun safety classes when we were growing up, he told the state news website MinnPost last year. On the trail, he says his experience attracting votes in a part of the state that little resembles the urban center of Minneapolis will help him not just win, but build consensus when he does.
Were supporting candidates where the black vote can be decisive and where every dollar counts, said Akunna Cook, executive director of the Black Economic Alliance. Cook declined to specify how much the group would spend on Jealous, who has vastly less to spend than Hogan. But she said the alliance is evaluating on a case-by-case basis what it takes for our candidates to win.
Kasich has been busy making the case that Republicans should be wary of following Trumps lead. He told NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday that the Aug. 7 election in Ohios heavily Republican 12th Congressional District was a reaction to the chaos he says voters see in Trumps Washington, from the presidents conduct to Trumps hard-line stances on trade and immigration.
 Flash

Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan signed an agreement Sunday for collective use of the Caspian Sea after two decades of negotiations, the Kremlin said.





The presidents of the five states inked the landmark convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea at the Fifth Caspian Summit in the Kazakh city of Aktau.





Russian President Vladimir Putin said the convention "fixes the exclusive right and responsibility of our states for the fate of the Caspian Sea and establishes clear rules for its collective use", according to a Kremlin transcript.





The document clearly regulates the issues of necessary delimitation, navigation and fishing regimes, fixes the principles of military-political interaction of the participating countries and guarantees the use of Caspian Sea exclusively for peaceful purposes, Putin said.





According to the Russian president, the necessary regulatory base for the settlement of the legal status of the Caspian Sea will be provided by six agreements in the spheres of economy, transport and security, which were also signed on Sunday.





In particular, on the basis of the agreement on economic cooperation in the Caspian, priority will be given to building up regional trade and economic ties and deepening close and mutually beneficial cooperation.





Putin also outlined the prospects of cooperation between the Caspian states in the spheres of tourism, ecology and conservation of bio-resources, suppression of drug trafficking as well as prevention and liquidation of emergency situations, the Kremlin said.





"We need to make full use of the possibilities of the convention and signed documents to stimulate trade and economic relations between the coastal states," Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarabyev was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.





He also said that the five states have agreed to sign an agreement on confidence-building measures in the military sector, in a bid to ensure the arms balance in the region and strengthen regional security and stability.





Works on the convention have been in development since 1996, and the foreign ministers of five states reached a consensus on its draft in Moscow in December 2017.
He campaigned on repealing and replace. We had all the votes, and perhaps he was grandstanding, who knows what he was doing? Trump said, referring to McCain during a rally in South Carolina in June. But you know what? He said, No, no. Everybody said, What the hell happened? Hes been campaigning for eight years  repeal and replace. And he didnt do that.
We call on all parties to the conflict to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect the lives and rights of civilians and to protect civilian infrastructure, said Rik Peeperkorn, acting U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan. Notably, parties to the conflict need to ensure that access to medical services is not denied and respect for medical facilities and staff is upheld.Medication at the main hospital was reportedly becoming scarce, and people were unable to safely bring casualties for treatment. Main access roads north and south of the city to larger cities where medical facilities are available were contested and unsafe for travel, Peeperkorn added.
Isolated from the rest of the world, the remaining fighters worry that if they were to leave, they will be punished for crimes they have committed. They are also trapped in an environment where captives inform on each other for promotion and commanders are punished for being kind.
Strzok, who was a deputy assistant director for counterintelligence at the bureau, has apologized for sending the messages and said they reflected personal views that did not affect his work. His attorney has said that had Strzok wanted to prevent Trumps election, he could have leaked that Trumps campaign was under investigation for possibly coordinating with Russia  a revelation that might have upended his presidential bid.
 Flash

India's state-owned space agency Sunday announced that it would launch its second lunar mission in January 2019.





"We are aiming to launch the mission on January 3 next year, but the window to land on the lunar surface is open till March 2019," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief K. Sivan told media in the southern city of Bengaluru.





Under its second lunar mission called Chandrayaan-2, ISRO will try to get an orbiter analyse of the moon's conditions to collect data on its topography, mineralogy and exosphere. It will also attempt to land a rover on the moon's south pole.





India successfully launched its first mission, Chandrayaan-1, to the moon in 2008. It was launched on October 22, 2008, and included a probe, an impactor and an orbiter. Its moon impact probe crash-landed on the lunar surface on November 14, 2008.





The first lunar mission in India costed about 60 million U.S. dollars.
Mattis, speaking during a trip to South America, played down the U.S. role in the Yemen conflict. The United States does assist the coalition in seeking to avoid strikes on protected locations, he said, but does not help with dynamic targeting, which occurs when pilots identify targets as they fly missions.
The two Koreas match up; they know their counterparts, he said. The South Koreans have done this before when they were in government. They are not new to this. When things start to go wrong, they are like, Oh, yeah, weve had this before. 
A Maori Niuean man working for a Rainbow Beach tour company was given a canister labelled Black Guy Repllent [sic] by his colleagues when he asked for sunscreen, he claims.

Mr Tupetagi says he was given this canister when he asked his employer for sunscreen.

The incident was just one alleged example of ongoing workplace racial vilification that the man, McDuff Tupetagi, is claiming forced him to take sick leave for mental distress and anxiety, and made him feel like an unwanted creature or pest.

In a statement of facts lodged in the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission this week, Mr Tupetagi said at his work he was frequently made the butt of jokes and referred to as the black fella.

Mr Tupetagi is now suing the Fraser Island tour company and two of its employees for discrimination.
But she hadnt told him about "Hendrik Cornelius". "She met a man on the internet and started an intimate relationship with him," Woodrums NSW Legal Aid lawyer Rebecca Neil told District Court Judge Penelope Wass last week. Woodrum texted Cornelius on May 28, 2017, saying that her father had agreed to help financially after telling him she needed $US50,000. Denise Woodrum was found with cocaine in her shoes after arriving at Sydney Airport. Credit:Facebook "This of course would be a loan on my part," she texted.

"No I didnt tell him about you  just for me to get out of debt  Im still going through bankruptcy and he doesnt know that either." Despite exchanging hundreds of texts with Cornelius from April 2017 to her arrival in Sydney on August 4, 2017, she had never seen him face to face. Once in the custody of Australian Customs officials, she had even tried to call him, the court heard. "She was groomed to provide a financial gain for this person, Hendrik Cornelius, whatever person or persons it was behind this identity," Ms Neil said. "There are fraudsters out there who are relying on women who are vulnerable."

On January 31 this year Woodrum pleaded guilty before Central Local Court magistrate Les Mabbutt to importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug. It was accepted by the NSW District Court that she was reckless as to what exactly she was carrying into Australia. But her agency in the international operation, which spanned North and South America, as well as across the Pacific, remains in dispute. "She went on this trip thinking she was bringing artefacts for him," Ms Neil said. But Judge Wass questioned the truthfulness of Woodrums account, finding it "inconsistent and at times unbelievable".

"I am less than convinced by her explanation," she said. Prosecutor Ben Dunstan urged Judge Wass to find Woodrum knew she was smuggling cocaine. According to an agreed set of facts tendered to the court, Woodrum flew from Missouri to Texas, then to Trinidad and Tobago on July 18. The cocaine was found in Woodrum's luggage after her bags were screened. Credit:Australian Border Force The next day she travelled to Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname, in South America.

On July 25, she texted someone named "Stacie": "This whole trip is paid for and will get additional payment for work." On July 30, Woodrum texted Cornelius: "Riding in his car to get stuff no signature needed." That same day she returned to the US via Trinidad and Tobago. On August 2, she texted Cornelius a list of expenses, including for hotels and flights, and departed Miami for Sydney, via Los Angeles. "Its been a pleasure serving together  " she texted him after landing.

When Woodrum arrived at Sydney Airport at 7am, her bags were selected for screening. She told the Australian Border Force officers she had come to Sydney to see the Harbour Bridge and the aquarium and that the shoes in her suitcase were a gift for her mother. After swabbing the suitcase, a substance was detected inside the heel of a shoe, a wallet and buttons on clothing. The drugs weighed just over one kilogram. Credit:Australian Border Force When the shoes were X-rayed, Woodrum asked, "How much did they find in the shoes? Sorry, just talking to myself."

After being told she had tested positive for cocaine she said, "Why, how much did you find?" This was her "penny drop moment", the court would later hear. The weight of the powder was just over a kilogram, containing 756 grams of pure cocaine. During a recorded interview she told officials that in Paramaribo she was given gifts and clothes, which she was supposed to give to people in Sydney whom she was instructed to meet. She was told to go to a hotel on arrival and let "them" know she had made it, she said.

Meanwhile, Cornelius was texting her: "Are you ok?" "What are you doing honey?" "Shuttle?" "In taxi?" Woodrum, who has been in custody since the day she was arrested, is due to be sentenced early next month. Even while behind bars, she told a prison psychologist she "sort of had a relationship" with Cornelius. Reading from Ms Neils submissions, Judge Wass asked, "to what extent did she do it for love?" Ms Neil said her client was a socially isolated but "very religious woman who belonged to a lay order of sisters in the US."

The packages of drugs as seen on the X-ray at the airport. Credit:Australian Border Force Cheryl Wittenauer, a spokesperson for the Adorers of the Blood of Christ in the US, said Woodrum wasn't a vowed sister or member of the order, but a lay associate. "Lay associates live in the secular world like you and me but are inspired by a sister's or a priest's spirituality and ministry. They try to live out that spirituality in their own private life," Ms Wittenauer told the Herald. She said Woodrum previously considered becoming an Adorer, but ultimately didn't join or wasn't accepted. "The Adorers learned of the alleged criminal activity last August. Nothing in her behavior prior to this episode would have tipped them off that this could happen," Ms Wittenauer said.

Mr Rozanski told Fairfax Media his daughter was a former teacher who had a masters degree in marketing. He said she had lost her job at the YMCA in Osage Beach, Missouri, then began working at two jobs to try to make ends meet. She had suffered depression and undergone a hysterectomy. "All of a sudden she met someone she talked to. She said she was going to be doing some travelling," Mr Rozanski said. "Life took a turn. She has never done anything like this before, and this experience has been difficult for me to understand. Mostly because none of our family has had anything happen to them that even remotely resembles what Denise has done.
 Flash

Thousands of anti-protesters gathered in several locations in central Washington Sunday afternoon, hours before a controversial right supremacist rally is scheduled.





The protesters are gathered in Lafayette park, just across the street from the White House, and the freedom plaza, just blocks away.





The protesters gathered in the country's capital to mark the one-year anniversary of the deadly Charlottesville protest, during which a white supremacist killed a female anti protester, sparking nationwide furor.





To prevent potential conflict, Washington law enforcement came onto the street in force to maintain order. An entire section of Pennsylvania adjacent to the White House has been sealed off.





Organizers of the the far right rally, officially named United the Right 2, claim their purpose was to advocate "White civil rights," but were slammed as promoting racism and xenophobia. The far right rally is set to begin in Lafayette park at 5:30 pm.





Anti-protesters held up signs denouncing racism, fascism and calling for pluralism, and at time broke out in chants and sing alongs.





Debbie Wagner, an anti protester from neighboring state of Maryland, told Xinhua that she was shocked by the tragedy at Charlottesville last year, and found many around her have become more politically vocal in the past year.





"White Supremacism is a terrible thing, I hope America can continue to be a place of diversity," she said.





Last summer's "Unite the Right" rally in historic Charlottesville, held on Aug. 12 to protest U.S. cities taking down Confederate statues, attracted national attention when white supremacists, fascists and neo-Nazis violently clashed with counter-protesters.





A 32-year-old woman was killed and 19 others were injured when an Ohio man associated with white nationalist groups allegedly drove a car into the crowd of counter-protesters.





President Trump drew a firestorm of criticism last year following the deadly when he said "both sides" were to blame for the violence.
Barnaby Joyce says he will support the Turnbull government's National Energy Guarantee on the condition that it creates a "plan B" to cut electricity prices in case the NEG doesn't work as promised.

The former deputy prime minister, who has reserved the option of crossing the floor to oppose the plan, made the demand of Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg by phone on Saturday evening.

Mr Joyce proposed the government create a divestment power option as a threat to break up the energy firms in the event that they fail to cut power prices.

Barnaby Joyce has threatened to cross the floor if his demands aren't met. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

"It would give us the capacity to say to these companies: 'Don't put 'em up or we will break you up,' " he said.
In the 60 years since its inception, SASR has been subject to numerous reviews and culture studies, none more testing than the current defence force Inspector-Generals inquiry into rumours of excessive behaviour in Afghanistan.

The culture of independence that imbues the SASR can be a virtue as well as a command nightmare. The who dares wins ethos to operate with agility and freedom is a defining characteristic. Big Boys Rules they call it when stretching the budget to rent a Porsche or treat visiting elite soilders from other parts of the world.

A degree of autonomy from the restraint of regimentation helps explain the propensity for scandal to hit SASR. That it sometimes goes unpublished and unpunished is down to much the same reason.

The Special Air Service Regiment are known as the cats by the rival commando unit in the army. To the rest of the defence force the descriptor is their location: Perth.

Only a fool would imagine the bad eggs are all in one basket but reported wrongdoing so far points exclusively at SASR. Given the difficult nature of their job  going after Taliban commanders and bomb makers  this might not surprise. But it would be wrong to immediately write off allegations of excessive force as acceptable behaviour in combat. SASR selects and trains soldiers who know how to kill, but also sets great store in getting the thinking right. They often proclaim the shot not fired is more important than the one that is. Understated excellence, courageous restraint and professional integrity are also core values.

In shaping the inquiry, former special operations commander Major-General Jeff Sengelman looked to specific wrongdoing, but also deficiencies of command. No surprise it made him unpopular among some peers. But further down the line there is appreciation. According to one officer, Love him or hate him, he is the only SOCAUST to do anything about it.

So, who knew this was going on? And even if the command chain was not linked in, how far should responsibility reach?

Australian SAS soldiers on patrol near Bagram, Afghanistan. Credit:Simon O'Dwyer

As former troop captain (and Liberal MP) Andrew Hastie noted after he arrived for the 19th of 20 Special Operations Task Group rotations, the men were grasping for operational clarity in a fog of strategic ambiguity. Abstract measures of success, like improved trust in central government, were never as easy to comprehend as a long-discredited, Vietnam-era kill count. As the Afghanistan conflict bled on, desensitisation set in, something Hastie and many of his peers worked hard to counter.
Well that was the case until Jasmine, from south Sydney's Wolli Creek, raised the issue.

But as Jasmine recently discovered, learning to code just wasn't an option on offer at St Therese Catholic Primary School, which she's currently attending in Mascot, in Sydney's south.

"I really love coding," she says confidently, referring to the computer language used to create applications and video games. "Im just starting to think about what I'm going to do when I grow up and I think I might be a coder."

"They only just started to incorporate [visual computer programming language] Scratch for Year 4 this year and before that they never had a coding course, which is a shame," Jasmine's mum, Anastasia, says. "And the reason they started this course was because Jasmine was telling her teacher and that inspired them to look into it and get started."

Making use of free online resources from Code Club Australia, a nationwide charity network of volunteer-led coding clubs with a mission to get children coding, the school is now teaching others in Jasmine's year to code as well - but not without Jasmine's help, of course.

"Jasmine has been helping the teachers to teach everyone," Anastasia says. "It's pretty good that all the kids now have the opportunity to learn it; I think it's quite important because it is the language for the future, isnt it?"

Code Club is a charity organisation with the aim of getting kids to learn how to code.

Aimed at kids aged between eight and 15, Code Club is financially backed by the Telstra Foundation, as well as by the federal and Tasmanian governments, Bank of Queensland, and the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. It has raised an estimated $1.2 million to date.
Now a family is left to reckon with tragedy, while strangers find grim inspiration in his final act. No warning signs Public acts of violence - such as mass shootings - often reflect the perpetrator's troubled, dark past. But there appears to be no manifesto, no digital trail of warning signs from Russell. He grins in selfies at work. He and wife Hannah started a bakery in Oregon in their early 20s, according to a 2012 story in a local paper depicting a happy, determined couple. In one blog, he describes aspirations to land a management job or join the military. Mike Mathews and friends of Richard Russell talk to the media after the crash. Credit:AP

And in recordings of conversations with air traffic controllers, Russell jokes and laughs, though he is at times contemplative and raw. He appears regretful about the pain he knows will inevitably visit his family. Loading The Russell family released a statement on Saturday evening, saying they were "stunned and heartbroken" over the incident and the loss of a man they called Beebo. "It may seem difficult for those watching at home to believe, but Beebo was a warm, compassionate man. It is impossible to encompass who he was in a press release. He was a faithful husband, a loving son, and a good friend," the family said in the statement, read by friend Mike Mathews, ABC reported. In a video he posted for a college class in December, Russell jokes about the sometimes mundane duties of his job.

"I lift a lot of bags. Like a lot of bags. So many bags," he says. Someone plucks a bag off a conveyor belt. "Oh, a purple one!" Russell exclaims. Loading It was worth it, he says, to conveniently travel to Alaska, where he grew up, to visit family. Speculation has swirled over Russell's intent. He could have envisioned an aerial joyride and return to the ground. Or he could have had grim plans to take his own life. Russell told air traffic controllers that he was a "broken guy" with a "few screws loose," but also that he wanted to avoid injuring innocent people.

His family's brief statement did not address any potential mental health issues. Authorities described him as "suicidal". "Beebo's intent was not to harm anyone and he was right in saying that there are so many people who loved him," Mathews said. The statement, he added, was the only one that will be released. Played video games How did he learn to fly like that? It's not clear.

Authorities said they did not believe he had a pilot's licence. Gary Beck, the chief executive of Horizon Air, told reporters on Saturday that the acrobatics and manoeuvres, including barrel rolls and one loop that brought Russell metres from the water's surface, were "incredible." Russell told controllers midflight that he played video games in preparation, but it was not clear whether he meant flight simulators - some of which are commercially available and depict exhaustive and realistic measures to start an aircraft. His conversation with controllers reveals limited experience. At one point, he explains he doesn't know how to follow instructions to "punch in" data or how to assess his fuel consumption after take-off. In another moment, Russell says he is lightheaded and talks about adjusting the cabin pressure, but it is not clear whether he was able to do that. Videos posted to social media show the other side of his skills. He tilts the wings and rumbles low over Puget Sound. "To be honest with you, commercial aircraft are complex machines. They're not as easy to fly as, say, a Cessna 150," Beck said.

"I don't know how he achieved the experience that he did." Perhaps it was because the only life he seemed to have taken was his own. Or that he appeared to be a happy, regular guy. But as the cockpit recordings and videos of Russell's antics spread, and internet users uncovered his online postings, his final act drew both admirers and detractors. "He did a barrel roll in a stolen plane and went out in a blaze of glory. Will many of us have a better story to tell when we get to wherever we're going," one Reddit user says in a thread. Another called it "cathartic and liberating". Others said it was wrong to glorify him for an act that could have killed more people.
President Trump has told Canada that is must wait to re-enter NAFTA talks while hailing negotiations with Mexico as coming along nicely.

The president said over the weekend that Canadas tariffs and taxes are far too high and repeated threats to tax the car industry if a deal cant be reached.

Bloomberg reports that Trumps harsh words came in a tweet late Friday, which also praised Mexicos president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as being an absolute gentleman.
STAMFORD  The citys building boom and the wholesale reimagining of the South End neighborhood could have political ramifications Tuesday as voters in the two state house districts with contested primaries go to the polls in much different demographic areas than they did years ago.

The 146th, where incumbent Terry Adams faces David Michel for the Democratic ticket, is a prime example. The district - which spans Shippan, the South End and most of downtown - is now home to more people, more wealthy residents and has a larger share of white residents and renters than it had in 2009, an analysis of census figures show.

The 147th meanwhile, with two GOP candidates, Dariens Marcy Minnick and city Rep. Anzelmo Graziosi vying for the Republican slot Tuesday to go against Democrat Matt Blumenthal in November, has also changed.

The district, which picks up the eastern half of North Stamford and a sliver of Darien, has long been more of a bedroom community than the younger 146th, but figures show that it too is starting to shift, younger and wealthier, albeit at a much slower pace.

A larger share of residents in the 147th now rent  10 percentage points more  and the district has gotten younger although its median age of nearly 42 years old is still older than other parts of the city.

Meanwhile, the average household size, 2.85 people, has stayed the same.

To be fair, maps outlining the voting districts have also changed since 2009, and that plays a role in the demographic changes seen in a Stamford Advocate analysis of the oldest and newest demographic figures available  U.S. Census Bureau estimates from 2009 and 2016.

But unlike demographic shifts seen after post-census redistricting in other parts of the country, sometimes contested as partisan gerrymandering, it appears that the massive shifts here in Stamford have more to do with how the city has grown than creative cartography.

Mirroring the city as a whole, both districts have gained residents since 2009: the 147th has 1,000 more residents, the 146th nearly 2,200.

The 146ths population boom  8 percent in five years  appears to have brought people that have little in common with the district of old.

The areas median household income is up 69 percent  now at nearly $120,000, within striking distance of the 147ths $139,000, which includes a slice of affluent Darien.

In 2009, the median household income for the residents of the 146th was $71,000.

The district has long been renter-heavy, with both the South End and downtown to account for, but the share of those who rent, has also jumped considerably, figures show.

While more than half of 146ths residents were renters in 2009, that has jumped 14 percentage points.

Nearly three quarters of those residing in the 146th now rent.

A large portion of that newfound population can be pegged to the Harbor Point development, which turned vacant industrial land to rental apartments.

With Harbor Points luxury rental units, the district has also become younger and whiter, it appears.

The median age in the 146th went from 35 to 33. The share of white residents in the district went from 58 percent of residents to 63 percent, or 15,900 people.

barry.lytton@stamfordadvocate.com; 203-964-2263; @bglytton
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South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) agreed Monday to hold a third summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang in September.





The agreement was reached after the high-level talks between the two sides at the border village of Panmunjom.





The joint press release, adopted after the talks, said the two sides agreed to hold the inter-Korean summit meeting in Pyongyang within September, failing to agree on detailed schedule.
The UK's first ever theatre convention has been announced with a raft of theatre stars already confirmed to appear.

StageCon will take place at Shoreditch Town Hall in November and will feature appearances from West End stars including Carrie Hope Fletcher, Christina Bennington, Cameron Blakely, Samantha Bond, Sharon D Clarke, Sophie Evans, Cherrelle Skeete and Michael Xavier. Louise Dearman, Alice Fearn, David Hunter, Debbie Kurup, Scott Paige, Steph Parry, Stuart Matthew Price, Caroline Sheen and Charlotte Wakefield are also appearing.

The format of StageCon will be similar to New York's theatre convention BroadwayCon and will take place on the 3 and 4 November. The event intends to represent all aspects of theatre, from musicals to plays, opera and dance and those who develop theatre as well as performers.

Events featured will include live performances, sing-a-longs, discussions, cast reunions, panels, games, previews, workshops, meet and greets and showcases. There will be a 'Village' of stalls offering a range of goods, merchandise and theatrical services. Vendors included are National Theatre Bookshop, Zeat Art, The Royal Theatrical Fund and WhatsOnStage. StageCon is presented in partnership with WhatsOnStage.

A portion of profits from StageCon will be donated to The Royal Theatrical Fund. Robert Lindsay, RTF's president said: "We are looking forward to being involved with this new and exciting opportunity for the theatre community. It is important that we let those in our industry know about the range of assistance we provide, including benefits advice and help with financial problems. "

StageCon UK general manager James Yeoburn said: "StageCon presents a really exciting opportunity for fans from across the UK and the EU to come together in London to celebrate the magic of theatre. Those attending can expect to enjoy a diverse programme of 100+ hours of events and performances from everyone's favourite artists, theatre makers and shows  from the West End to London's fringe and beyond."

More names and events will be announced in due course. A day ticket for the event costs 85 and a weekend ticket costs 160.
Include a visit to The Dark Side of F Street in your Halloween hauntings! Take some canned foods and grocery ...

When you see the flags flying at schools, you dont generally think about who put them up or how they...
Its 5 p.m. on the Monday of the August long weekend and Folklorama ambassador general Joseph Orobia is already on duty.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 13/8/2018 (1173 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Its 5 p.m. on the Monday of the August long weekend and Folklorama ambassador general Joseph Orobia is already on duty.

Clad in his traditional Filipino embroidered shirt, he arrives at the Caso do Minho Portuguese Pavilion  wife, mother and two young kids in tow  and is ushered through the VIP line quickly in order to take a tour of the cultural display.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Folklorama ambassador Joseph Orobia at the Casa do Minho Portuguese Pavilion.

He and his crew are then seated front and centre for the first show of the night and given samples of food and beverages. This pattern continues at both the South Sudanese and Chinese pavilions, the next two stops on his evenings itinerary.

All ambassadors and VIPs get this treatment when travelling from pavilion to pavilion, but as the bearer of Folkloramas ambassador general title, Orobia gets a bit of extra attention. For the next two weeks, Orobia is basically Folklorama royalty, one of four ambassadors general (three of whom are, like Orobia, from the Pearl of the Orient Philippine pavilion) who won the honour and responsibility of representing the entire Folklorama organization both during and outside of the festival.

"We do get special treatment, its pretty cool," says Orobia, 38, while tasting some Portuguese treats.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Folklorama ambassador Joseph Orobia at the Casa do Minho Portuguese Pavilion.

"Our job is basically the same as the ambassadors, its to host. Were supposed to be the ones hosting, and I guess thats our role throughout the year, so this is kind of the payback. But sometimes I do get that treatment and I dont feel like I should, I feel like I should be helping these guys serve and welcome people at the door. So anytime someone wants to take a picture or stop and say something, then, yeah, I absolutely take that time to do that."

The role of ambassador general has evolved a lot since the beginning of the festival; in the early days, there were mayors and queens representing each pavilion, and the queen would be in the running for the title of Miss Folklorama at the end of each festival, which wasnt considered a beauty pageant but rather a "contest of ethnic preservation and presentation."

It wasnt until 1990 when the title was changed from mayor and queen to ambassador, and expanded to include two adult and two youth representatives from each pavilion. And rather than having a Miss Folklorama, the competition  now comprising an interview and public-speaking rounds  was to find two youth and two adult ambassadors general.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Folklorama ambassador Joseph Orobia gets teased by the Folklorama Llama at the Casa do Minho Portuguese Pavilion.

"Obviously it did evolve to a point where the ambassadors general themselves are representative of Folklorama, they work for the organization outside of the festival. So they are representing the organization and our mission of celebrating diversity and promoting cultural understanding on a year-round basis," says Folklorama executive director Teresa Cotroneo.

Doug Speirs | Uplift A weekly review of funny, uplifting news in Winnipeg and around the globe that is delivered to your inbox each Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

"Their term begins the day after the previous festival ends, so the 2019 term will begin on Aug. 19 of this year. They are invited to different appearances within the community; Folklorama is out in the community supporting organizations like Siloam Mission or Winnipeg Harvest, so they are called upon to attend in cultural attire and participate as a representative of the organization."

Despite the fact the festival is only on its second day, this is already Orobias fifth pavilion hes visited, and the first of four stops to come tonight. Among all of their duties throughout the year, which also includes mentoring incoming ambassadors, during the festival, the ambassadors general are encouraged to visit every one of Folkloramas 43 pavilions.

Its a big time commitment for a volunteer position, but its something Orobia has wanted to do since his earliest days performing at the Pearl of the Orient Philippine Pavilion when he was seven years old. Hes now a dance teacher there, and his children, Lauren, 10, and Milano, 6, are involved in the pavilion as well.

"Its something Ive always wanted to do even before I had kids. This was a big part of my life when I was growing up and now being able to see them doing it and see the joy it brings to them as well, its so comforting and Im so grateful that we live in a city that has this festival going on," he says.

"Its been a busy time, but its been really good. Its helped me come out of my shell and its been just as good for me as it has been for the festival... me and the other ambassador generals, we were very lucky, weve got a huge team behind us, a very supportive team and all they ask is that we try our best."

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @NireRabel
In Manitoba, only waterfront properties at Lake Winnipeg are expected to rise in value.
Despite Canadians flocking to lakes and streams for summer getaways, cottage prices are expected to see a slight dip in Manitoba, with one notable exception.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 13/8/2018 (1173 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Despite Canadians flocking to lakes and streams for summer getaways, cottage prices are expected to see a slight dip in Manitoba, with one notable exception.

Against the backdrop of a strong forecasted national recreational property market  with most provinces expected to experience significant price increases  Manitoba is an outlier, with a projected decline in average cottage price.

Year-over-year prices in Manitoba are expected to drop 0.9 per cent in 2018, to $230,833, according to a cross-Canada survey of recreational property specialists produced by Royal LePage.

In Lac du Bonnet, for example, waterfront property prices are expected to dip 2.5 per cent this year, while non-waterfront property prices are projected to decrease by 9.1 per cent.

Around Lake Winnipeg, however, its a different story.

Waterfront properties at Lake Winnipeg, which has a number of popular destinations, are expected to go up 10 per cent in average price point over 2017.

Managing broker of Interlake Real Estate, Chris Neufeld, said while recreational properties that have already sold in the area may have jumped in average price, he feels its still a buyers market.

"From our standpoint, we feel we have a lot of properties available. We think its a buyers market. That 10 per cent increase would only reflect properties sold. If anything, we think there are more frustrated sellers because there are more properties on the market," he said.

Tom Thomson Many young people arent interested in owning, or cant afford, a cottage.

Neufeld said more cottages and recreational properties remain on the market for a couple of reasons: sellers are too optimistic about their pricing and changing demographics means fewer people are interested in owning a cottage.

"More people are getting away from cottage life than getting into it," Neufeld said.

"As a result, we have more listings. Baby boomers are getting into their 60s and 70s. The cottage life doesnt fit their lifestyle anymore. I think thats a big factor.

"There are still people that enjoy being out at the lake, especially if youre talking about areas within an hour of Winnipeg.

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"But many young people are either not interested  or not able to afford  the cottage lifestyle."

Neufelds observations are consistent with Royal LePages cross-Canada survey.

The recreational property specialists interviewed for the report said upticks in demand and sales werent likely to translate into a decrease in supply, given a rise in inventory over the past year.

"Despite a strong economy and low unemployment rate, prices across (Manitobas) recreational property market will likely stay flat this year, as a result of new mortgage regulations having impacted purchasing power," Royal LePage Prime Real Estate managing partner Michael Froese said in a written statement.

"Even though Manitoba is home to some of the most affordable recreational properties in the country, and has a number of unique programs encouraging secondary homeownership, the new stress test may make many purchasers think twice about taking on additional debt, limiting the great potential found within the market this year."

ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @rk_thorpe
Its been almost one year since U.S. lawmakers, prompted by a massive cyberattack that disabled huge chunks of the internet, floated a bipartisan bill to set the first cybersecurity standards for the broad group of devices known as the Internet of Things (IoT).

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 13/8/2018 (1173 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Its been almost one year since U.S. lawmakers, prompted by a massive cyberattack that disabled huge chunks of the internet, floated a bipartisan bill to set the first cybersecurity standards for the broad group of devices known as the Internet of Things (IoT).

In the time since, Congress hasnt done much with the legislation from senators Mark R. Warner and Cory Gardner, introduced in August 2017. But security researchers at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas say theres only more urgency now to boost security of connected devices, which include connected thermostats, smartwatches, pacemakers and even shower heads (yes, really).

"We tend to not want to regulate tech and IoT," said Josh Corman, founder of I Am the Cavalry, a grassroots initiative focused on the security of the Internet of Things. "But now that that software can affect public safety and public life, eventually it should get some minimum standards."

The risks will keep growing as more devices are internet-connected. With that in mind, here are a few things security researchers want policymakers to understand as they consider whether  and how  to regulate the rapidly expanding Internet of Things:

More cyberattacks coming

The Mirai botnet attack in 2016 that inspired Warner and Gardners bill offered a powerful lesson in how vulnerability-prone IoT devices can be weaponized by malicious actors. Hackers exploited security flaws in webcams and other devices and used them to launch a series of crippling denial-of-service attacks, knocking out Twitter, Netflix and other major websites for hours by flooding them with fake traffic.

Until manufacturers start improving device security across the board, hackers will continue to target the same vulnerabilities, meaning more large-scale attacks could be on the horizon.

Mirai was "the long tail of low-cost, low-hygiene devices doing more damage than the internet can handle," Corman said. "Time is the real enemy here."

IoT devices need to be patchable

Just like personal computers, connected devices use software that needs updating every now and then to fix flaws and guard against digital attacks. This is true of everything from refrigerators to wearable fitness trackers to smoke detectors. But on many devices, theres no way to make such patches.

That has to change, or its only going to get easier for hackers to exploit the devices, security researchers say. "If it connects to the internet, youre going to have to have a way to update it  for its entire life," said Caleb Barlow, vice-president of IBM Securitys X-Force Threat Intelligence. If manufacturers dont start allowing devices to be patched with security updates, devices could wind up taking on a "shelf life" beyond which theyre no longer digitally secure, Barlow said.

Smart cities vulnerable

Cities are quickly moving forward with "smart-city" technology  everything from internet-connected surveillance cameras and streetlights to automated waste management pickup to intelligence transportation systems. Those devices need the same types of safeguards.

"The federal government is the (venture capitalist) behind these infrastructure projects, and as were building new infrastructure in a city, you have to think of security by design," said Daniel Crowley, head of research for IBMs X-Force Red, which conducts vulnerability tests for a range of organizations.

"You might be talking about systems that are embedded in concrete," he said. "Before you encase it in concrete  or while its encased in concrete  can you update this thing?"

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Security researchers your friends

If IoT vendors are going to fix vulnerabilities in their devices, theyd do well to embrace the security researchers  sometimes called "white-hat" hackers  who find them and disclose them, experts said. Lawmakers can help on that front by encouraging companies to adopt policies that offer legal protections to researchers who hack into devices in good faith and reveal flaws. Right now, hackers who disclose bugs lack such protections, leaving them exposed to lawsuits or even criminal charges if they expose flaws in a companys products.

"If you put out a welcome mat to good-guy hackers and report vulnerabilities to you, the public is much more likely to have a patch available to them before theres an attack like Mirai," Corman said.

Lawmakers are warming up to the idea of "white-hat" hacking, said Corman, who has testified before Congress on IoT security. "Are we done? No," he said.

"But weve definitely turned the tide."

 Washington Post
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 13/8/2018 (1173 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BOARDS

Manitoba ASCD (formerly Association for Supervision and Development)

2018-19 board of directors: president, Warren Nickerson; president elect, Al Schroeder; past-president, Jacquie Neufeld; treasurer, Teresa Rogers; secretary (interim), Andrea Loepp; members at large, Lois McGill; Greg Swintak; Margaret Murray; Brad Burns; Tina Gordon; Darren Kuropatwa; Eric Sagenes; Nadine Trumbley; and Sascha Epp; executive director, Cheryl Chaban.

Rossbrook House

has announced its board of directors for 2018-19: president, Denis Bracken, University of Manitoba  St. Pauls College; vice-president, Brenda Hasiuk, MGEU; past-president, Leslie Galloway, Childrens Hospital (retired); treasurer, Gil Grenier, Acumen Corporate Development Inc.; secretary, Shannon McAteer, C.U.P.E.; directors, John Burchill, Winnipeg Police Services; Noelle DePape, Social Planning Council of Winnipeg; Scot Halley, Winnipeg Police Service; Pat Mainville, Argyle High School; Todd Mondor, University of Manitoba; Brigitte Sandron, Travel Manitoba; and Gabriella Zaporozan, CPA, CGA, Heartland Chartered Professional Accountants LLP.

Rossbrook House Foundation

board of directors: chairman, Ron Bailey, Ron Bailey & Associates; past-chairman, Tom Dooley, MLT Aikns LLP; treasurer, Jane Quinton, CIBC Wood Gundy; secretary, Jeff Coleman, Patill/St. James Insurance; directors, Bruce Henderson, BMO Henderson & Associates; Katie Krahn, Blueprint Inc.; Jennefer Nepinak, Canadian Museum for Human Rights; Denis Bracken, Rossbrook House board president and Leslie Galloway, Rossbrook House board past-president.

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The Childrens Rehabilitation Foundation

has announced its 2018-19 board of directors: chairman, Peter Garagan; vice-chairman, Chris Wullum; finance-secretary, Grant Skinner; treasurer, Joey Enright; executive director of the Rehabilitation Centre for Children, Cheryl Susinski; board members, Todd Baigrie; Noel Bernier; Dr. Juliette E. Cooper; Cindy Elliot; Julie Huish; Ken Jur; Michael Mah; and Wayne Rivers.

APPOINTMENTS

Kildonan Place Shopping Centre

Primaris Management Inc. is pleased to welcome Joe Lesko to the role of operations manager of Kildonan Place Shopping Centre. Joe comes to KP with a diverse background in facilities management, and will be responsible for management of a number of key areas of the shopping centre. Kildonan Place is managed by Primaris Management Inc., a division of H&R REIT.

If youve got a board, appointment or award announcement email you submission to: bizlistings@freepress.mb.ca
Its gone from a mere nuisance to a crisis that is putting Canadian lives at risk.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 13/8/2018 (1173 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Editorial

Its gone from a mere nuisance to a crisis that is putting Canadian lives at risk.

EpiPen auto-injectors  devices that deliver an emergency dose of adrenalin, or epinephrine, to people suffering from anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction  have been in short supply this month, and the problem is worsening.

Some severe allergy sufferers have been told its unclear when their prescriptions for auto-injectors can be filled and that they should hang on to their expired EpiPens and use them in the rare event of an anaphylactic reaction, because expired medication is better than no medication.

It is difficult to understand  let alone accept  how such a dire situation can arise in a country such as Canada, which counts the quality of its health care as one of its greatest achievements.

The heart of the problem is the fact there is only one supplier of epinephrine auto-injectors in this country, Pfizer Canada.

The company has blamed the worsening shortage on a number of manufacturing issues. A message on the company website says it likely wont ship new stock of adult-dose EpiPens until the end of the month, an alarming situation for severe allergy sufferers.

Even after those EpiPens are shipped, Health Canada has warned the supply will continue to be limited and the problem could well drag on for months, possibly into 2019.

It is no small problem. An estimated 2.6 million Canadians suffer from serious allergies and a reported 630,000 of them rely on an epinephrine auto-injector for the emergency treatment they require.

The timing of this critical shortage is particularly problematic as Canadians head into the heart of wasp season, and stings from these pests can be potentially lethal. It also comes as parents are preparing to ship kids back to school, where they are at greater risk from severe food allergies.

The EpiPen Jr. continues to be available, but Health Canada has said those stocks are also limited.

None of the current alternatives for those who depend on emergency medication to stave off life-threatening allergic reactions is acceptable. It is true the medication in EpiPens does not become useless on the day of expiry, but having to rely on expired medication in the face of a potentially lethal reaction is an alarming option.

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It might be possible, in some cases, for patients to obtain vials of epinephrine and learn to inject themselves with a syringe, but preparing and delivering the right amount of medication in the required time is a frightening prospect. Severe allergic reactions can develop with incredible speed.

It seems painfully obvious  as the federal opposition parties have pointed out  that Canada can no longer rely on a single supplier for a life-saving medical device used by adults and most children over 10 years old.

There are other companies that produce auto-injectors and, if Pfizer Canada is unable to meet the demand consistently, these suppliers must be encouraged to enter the Canadian market.

"Having a second supplier, that is definitely something we need," Raj Patel, an Elmira, Ont., pharmacist told his local newspaper, the Observer.

"At least two manufacturers. So if somebodys manufacturing facility has some accident like a fire or something, then the other manufacturers will make sure there is a continuous supply."

Life-threatening allergic reactions can occur with alarming speed, which is why the federal government must act decisively and without hesitation to address a crisis that shows no sign of being solved on its own.
One of the oldest ethnic newspapers in Canada is folding.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 13/8/2018 (1173 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of the oldest ethnic newspapers in Canada is folding.

The Winnipeg-based Ukrainian Voice, published since 1910, once had 22,000 subscribers. However, decades of dwindling circulation and the struggling temper of the times for newspapers made the decision to close inevitable, Trident Press president Bill Strus said last week.

"Theyre open to the 22nd of this month," he said. "Being a numbers guy, it was easy. Getting into it and understanding the historical significance of the paper, it was sad."

The newspaper was conceived by a group of Ukrainian teachers who saw the need for a united voice to bond Ukrainian immigrants together.

"They got together in 1909, and they decided the immigrants were scattered and known by their regions (in Ukraine) rather than by their nation... So they got together and formed the Ukrainian Voice. They took the stance they were going to report factual, honest reporting without a bias or tie to a political party or a religion, totally non-partisan," Strus said.

Maria Bosak, editor of the Ukrainian Voice for the past 23 years, says subscribers have been calling the newspaper to lament its closure. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press)

"They were the fourth Ukrainian paper at the time, but they were the only one to survive. They actually bought two of them out."

Based in Winnipeg, the paper  first published March 16, 1910  would become the leading advocate for Ukrainians in Canada.

"The papers motto was, and Ill read it: Be proud of your heritage but be passionate about your country, meaning Canada," Strus said.

The Main Street storefront that houses the newspaper is staying open but will relocate to McGregor Street. Trident Press operates a shipping service for parcels to Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Moldova, Russia and the Baltic states. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press)

The paper ran as a Ukrainian-language weekly for years, until federal bilingual legislation required it to include some English-language content. The latest edition has yet to be released, and it still uses the Cyrillic alphabet.

The Main Street storefront that houses the newspaper is staying open but will relocate to McGregor Street. Trident Press operates a shipping service for parcels to Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Moldova, Russia and the Baltic states.

For decades, the Voice was a force for change. The same group that founded it would go on to spearhead support for a Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church in Canada. The first church opened in Saskatoon, with the second in Winnipeg within a decade of the papers first run.

The paper first published in 1910. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press)

Circulation started dropping off in the 1960s, and financial woes followed. The newspaper reduced publication to twice weekly, and then once every couple of months.

Trident donated the papers archives to St. Andrews College at the University of Manitoba, with plans to digitize the documents and make them available to the public online within a year.

"I wasnt going to throw away history," Strus said.

Old printing blocks at the Ukrainian Voice. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press)

Maria Bosak, editor of the Voice for 23 years, was continuing the work of packing at the Main Street office last week. The volume of records left over, even after the university picked up its share, is staggering.

"A hundred and 10 years weve been here, and moving is hard work," she said.

Rows of neat, metre-high of stacks of newspapers from one of the Ukrainian-language rivals the Voice absorbed were at the back of the storefront. Wrapped in cellophane, theyre destined for shipment to Toronto.

"The papers motto was, and Ill read it: Be proud of your heritage but be passionate about your country, meaning Canada," Strus said. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press)

The reference library, a long narrow room with floor-to-ceiling shelves, was crammed with books and boxes.

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The literary treasure trove was in the basement. There, Bosak flipped the switch on a trumpet-style shop light to show off newspapers going back a century, all carefully laid out in wooden crates stacked like bookcases.

"All history," she said, adding she doesnt know what will happen to it all.

Old printing blocks at the Ukrainian Voice. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press)

"Recycling?" she mused.

The premises must be vacated by Aug. 21, she said. "If people want it, they can take it. Free," she said.

"We had subscribers all over. Theyre calling us... they know the paper is closing. They said, We love that newspaper," Bosak said. "Sometimes, I dont know what I can say."

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
OTTAWA  The federal government almost clinched a deal to transfer Kapyong Barracks to local First Nations three years before an agreement-in-principle was signed in the spring, the Free Press has learned.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 13/8/2018 (1173 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  The federal government almost clinched a deal to transfer Kapyong Barracks to local First Nations three years before an agreement-in-principle was signed in the spring, the Free Press has learned.

Instead, one of the seven bands that form Treaty One First Nations splintered into a separate negotiation process, highlighting an issue that could re-emerge in the Kapyong talks.

Last week, Peguis First Nation broke ground at 1075 Portage Ave. for its first urban reserve in what could become a model for Kapyong. But Peguis has a deal with Ottawa over land allotments that is distinct from the other six First Nations under that treaty.

Cindy Spence started her term as Peguis chief in March 2015 and was blamed by fellow chiefs for delaying the Kapyong talks. She argues she was standing up for Peguis separate land entitlement.

"I wasnt at liberty to share a lot of what I shared at the table," Spence said in her first wide-ranging interview on Kapyong. "Negotiations got very heated, at many times."

She says shortly after she took office in March 2015, the other six chiefs pressured her to sign a deal: "Immediately following the election, I was approached by the other six communities who attempted to get us to join them to accept Canadas initial offer in regards to Kapyong," Spence wrote in an email.

Peguis, which is the most populous First Nation in Manitoba, had a federal commission assess its land entitlements in 1998. The court found that the federal government has not upheld the per capita acreage it promised when Peguis signed Treaty One in 1871.

In a resulting settlement, Peguis has federal funds that it can use to purchase a quota of land anywhere in Manitoba, including surplus federal land. Other bands are limited to land already available for sale thats within their traditional territory.

During Ottawas years-long legal battle with Treaty One, a Federal Court of Appeal judge noted "significant differences" between Peguis land entitlement and that of the other six First Nations. Ottawa itself noted that Peguis has "more expansive rights/obligations" as a result of the settlement, which came into force in 2008.

Spence said land allocation is particularly sensitive to Peguis after the Crowns 1908 decision to move what was then called the St. Peters Reserve near Selkirk about 200 kilometres north to the groups current reserve land, in a flood plain in the Interlake region. That makes it the only Treaty One nation to be located outside the treaty area.

She said the point of buying back the land is to give Peguis citizens a foothold in or near Winnipeg and to use it for economic spinoffs that can pull them out of poverty while restoring their traditional territory.

"Thats been something that has been important to our elders and our people, and something that many of our people hold sacred," she said.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Last week, Peguis First Nation broke ground at 1075 Portage Ave. for its first urban reserve in what could become a model for Kapyong.

Spence was particularly concerned that shared land ownership increased the chance of management issues. For example, all Manitoba councils formed the Tribal Council Investment Group in 1990, but its executives ended up squandering millions on travel expenses and strip clubs, with little remitted to First Nations people.

A legal adviser, who was also an elder, told Spence that putting part of the land in Peguis name would keep leaders more accountable. That adviser is no longer part of the negotiations.

Long Plain Chief Dennis Meeches speaks on behalf of all seven First Nations. He couldnt recall whether Spence had been presented with a deal in March 2015 by the other six bands. "There were offers on the table, initial offers, counteroffers," he said. "A lot of things have happened."

Peguis separate land entitlement occupied months of government employees time, according to hundreds of pages of emails obtained from Canada Lands Co. (CLC), the Crown corporation that has helped Ottawa negotiate a deal with First Nations.

By January 2016, a Vancouver lawyer specializing in treaty rights was in touch with CLC and Justice Canada on Peguis behalf, according to internal emails obtained through access-to-information requests.

Both Spence and Meeches confirmed that Peguis had a parallel negotiation process with Ottawa by that summer, entirely separate from the other six First Nations. The goal was to carve out a distinct piece of land for Peguis.

Now, Meeches and Hudson say Peguis is on board with the other First Nations, aiming to have the entire property shared by all seven bands.

The documents also show CLC updated a list of when each of the seven chiefs finished their term. This spring, sources told the Free Press that the April announcement of an agreement-in-principle was hastily organized in hopes of preserving momentum on the interim deal ahead of looming elections. (The Indian Act forces First Nations to hold elections every two years.)

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Peguis holds its next election in March 2019; nominations likely wont be held until the new year, so its unknown whether candidates for chief would side with current chief Glenn Hudson or Spence in negotiating a Kapyong deal.

Meeches didnt want to entertain the idea that the issue could re-emerge under another chief. "Were way beyond that, and the article youre trying to write may skew whats happening right now," he told the Free Press.

He also said Treaty One hopes to get renderings completed by the fall with the help of CLC and use them for public consultations. That would be the first time Winnipeggers get a clear sense of how the property may be developed. Those involved are considering a war museum, condos, a gas bar and a casino.

Spence says she hopes Kapyong becomes an opportunity "to build us up" and bring Winnipeggers and First Nations closer together, but she admits its been a saga.

"Theres a lot of history around Kapyong; Ill tell you that."

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Some of Manitobas most senior residents began the month of August in a financial plight, thanks to the end of government subsidies that helped them live in housing where rent was based on their incomes.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 13/8/2018 (1173 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

Some of Manitobas most senior residents began the month of August in a financial plight, thanks to the end of government subsidies that helped them live in housing where rent was based on their incomes.

Effective July 31, a mortgage and rent subsidy operating agreement expired after 35 years.

Its not as if the end of the agreement was a surprise. For almost two decades, groups such as the Canadian Housing Renewal Association and the Right to Housing Coalition have raised awareness that the agreements end will present transitional challenges for low-income renters and non-profit housing groups.

But, even with such advance notice, officials have not crafted adequate measures to fill the gap between the greatly increased rent and the residents ability to pay.

For example at Lions Place (610 Portage Ave.)  where my mother lives  the end of the subsidy program creates major problems for 66 of the 287 residents who live in the building.

These long-term residents, many of whom are from 80 to 90 years of age, now have to pay market rents to stay in their apartments.

In 2017, the rent-geared-to-income (RGI) monthly rent was $628. Effective Aug.1, they are now charged $848.

As a way to bridge this $220 rent gap, residents can apply for the provincial governments Rent Assist program. This gives low-income seniors $95 per month for a rent subsidy, leaving a monthly rent gap of $125.

At a meeting with residents on May 24, Lions Housing announced it has agreed to fill the gap between the old RGI subsidy monthly rent and the new Rent Assist program for a two-year period, which is estimated to cost $75,000-$80,000 per year. In the short term, the gap appears to be addressed.

But a second problem these residents face is the policy of the provincial Rent Assist subsidy program that claws back the $1,100 education property tax credit for seniors, which the residents had received from the Manitoba government tax credit program.

The net impact of this clawback amounts to a $900 to $1,000 annual loss of income for each of these 66 residents.

So while they are receiving almost $1,200 in rent-subsidy benefits annually, they are losing up to $1,000 of their rental tax credit.

The residents on the former RGI subsidy program are by definition on low and fixed incomes. They count on this rental tax credit refund to help them pay for needed medical and living expenses.

This clawback of the education property tax credit was apparently overlooked by the provincial government in its negotiations to address the impact of the end of the subsidy agreement.

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In the Manitoba Legislature on May 23, then-families minister Scott Fielding (who became finance minister in the recent provincial cabinet shuffle) stated he met on April 19 with the president of Lions Housing, Dan Burton, to "find a way, a solution, where, in fact, all residents would be whole, where they wouldnt have to pay any more for the rents. That is the solution we came to."

This provinces annual expenditure of about $60,000 for Lions Place residents to continue to receive the seniors rental tax credit would not be a long-term financial liability. The residents in question are more than 80 years old and will likely require other forms of housing and care in the upcoming years.

As a case in point, Lions Housing identified that in December 2017, more than 80 residents were on the RGI subsidy program and by July 2018, there were 66 residents remaining  a decline of almost 20 per cent in the eight-month period.

The provincial government can alleviate the stress and anxiety that this issue has created and make the seniors situation "whole" again by restoring the net $900 to $1,000 annual rental tax credit benefit for these seniors as long as they continue to live in their apartment which they have called home for many years.

Taking care of our seniors  our mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers  is a shared family value that we all have as citizens of Manitoba.

Tom Simms is a longtime social-housing advocate in Winnipeg.
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Varian Medical Systems, Inc. designs, manufactures, sells, and services medical devices and software products for treating cancer and other medical conditions worldwide. It operates through Oncology Systems and Proton Solutions segments. The Oncology Systems segment offers hardware and software products for treating cancer with radiotherapy, fixed field intensity-modulated radiation therapy, image-guided radiation therapy, volumetric modulated arc therapy, stereotactic radiosurgery, stereotactic body radiotherapy, artificial intelligence based adaptive radiotherapy, and brachytherapy, as well as quality assurance equipment. Its products include linear accelerators, brachytherapy afterloaders, treatment accessories, and quality assurance software; and information management, treatment planning, image processing, clinical knowledge exchange, patient care management, decision-making support, and practice management software. This segment serves university research and community hospitals, private and governmental institutions, healthcare agencies, physicians' offices, medical oncology practices, radiotherapy centers, and cancer care clinics. The Proton Solutions segment designs, develops, manufactures, sells, and services products and systems for delivering proton therapy for the treatment of cancer. The company has a strategic agreement with McKesson Corp. to supply treatment delivery systems and planning, services, and radiotherapy information system solutions to its U.S. Oncology Network and Vantage Oncology affiliated sites of care; and a strategic partnership with Siemens AG to represent Siemens diagnostic imaging products to radiation oncology clinics in the United States and other select markets. Varian Medical Systems, Inc. was formerly known as Varian Associates, Inc. and changed its name to Varian Medical Systems, Inc. in April 1999. The company was founded in 1948 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

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The Bank of New York Mellon pays an annual dividend of $1.36 per share and currently has a dividend yield of 2.29%. The Bank of New York Mellon does not yet have a strong track record of dividend growth. The dividend payout ratio of The Bank of New York Mellon is 33.92%. This payout ratio is at a healthy, sustainable level, below 75%. Based on earnings estimates, The Bank of New York Mellon will have a dividend payout ratio of 29.44% next year. This indicates that The Bank of New York Mellon will be able to sustain or increase its dividend.

View The Bank of New York Mellon's dividend history.
The Southern pays an annual dividend of $2.64 per share and currently has a dividend yield of 4.21%. SO has a dividend yield higher than 75% of all dividend-paying stocks, making it a leading dividend payer. The Southern has been increasing its dividend for 20 consecutive years, indicating the company has a strong committment to maintain and grow its dividend. The dividend payout ratio of The Southern is 81.23%. Payout ratios above 75% are not desirable because they may not be sustainable. Based on earnings estimates, The Southern will have a dividend payout ratio of 74.37% next year. This indicates that The Southern will be able to sustain or increase its dividend.

View The Southern's dividend history.
The Toronto-Dominion Bank, together with its subsidiaries, provides various personal and commercial banking products and services in Canada and the United States. It operates through three segments: Canadian Retail, U.S. Retail, and Wholesale Banking. The company offers personal deposits, such as chequing, savings, and investment products; financing, investment, cash management, international trade, and day-to-day banking services to businesses; and financing options to customers at point of sale for automotive and recreational vehicle purchases through auto dealer network. It also provides credit cards; real estate secured lending; auto finance; consumer lending; point-of-sale payment solutions for large and small businesses; wealth and asset management products, private banking, investment advisory, and trust services to retail and institutional clients; and property and casualty insurance, as well as life and health insurance products. The company also provides capital markets, and corporate and investment banking services, including underwriting and distribution of new debt and equity issues; advice on strategic acquisitions and divestitures; and trading, funding, and investment services to companies, governments, and institutions. It offers its products and services under the TD Bank and America's Most Convenient Bank brand names. The company operates through a network of 1,085 branches, 3,440 automated teller machines, and 1,223 stores, as well as offers telephone, digital, and mobile banking services. The Toronto-Dominion Bank was founded in 1855 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Boston Scientific: 34 Biomedical Merger Corp., 9357-1867 Quebec Inc., Acurate Industria e Comercio Ltda., Advanced Bionics, Advanced Stent Technologies, American Medical Systems, American Medical Systems Europe B.V., Apama Medical, Apama Medical Inc., Asthmatx, Atritech, Augmenix, Augmenix Inc., Augmenix K.K., BSC International Medical Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BSC Medical Device Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BTG, BTG Australasia Pty Ltd, BTG Europe B.V., BTG IM Holdings Ltd., BTG International (Holdings) Limited, BTG International Asia Limited, BTG International Canada Inc., BTG International Germany GmbH, BTG International Healthcare Inc., BTG International Healthcare LLC, BTG International Healthcare Limited, BTG International Inc., BTG International Limited, BTG Limited, BTG Management Services Limited, BTG Medikal Limited Sirketi, Bard Electrophysiology, Barosense, Biocompatibles Inc., Biocompatibles International Limited, Biocompatibles UK Limited, Boston Scientific (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Boston Scientific (South Africa) Proprietary Limited, Boston Scientific (Thailand) Ltd., Boston Scientific (UK) Limited, Boston Scientific AG, Boston Scientific Argentina S.A., Boston Scientific Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Boston Scientific Benelux NV, Boston Scientific Canada Limited, Boston Scientific Ceska republika s.r.o., Boston Scientific Chile SpA, Boston Scientific Colombia Limitada, Boston Scientific Comercial de Costa Rica BSCR S.R.L., Boston Scientific Far East B.V., Boston Scientific Gesellschaft m.b.H., Boston Scientific Group plc, Boston Scientific Hellas S.A., Boston Scientific Hong Kong Limited, Boston Scientific Iberica S.A., Boston Scientific India Private Limited, Boston Scientific International B.V., Boston Scientific International Finance Limited, Boston Scientific International S.A., Boston Scientific Israel Ltd., Boston Scientific Japan K.K., Boston Scientific Korea Co. Ltd., Boston Scientific Lebanon SAL, Boston Scientific Limited, Boston Scientific Ltd., Boston Scientific Medical Device, Boston Scientific Medical Device Limited, Boston Scientific Medizintechnik GmbH, Boston Scientific Middle East FZ-LLC, Boston Scientific Middle East SAL, Boston Scientific Nederland B.V., Boston Scientific Neuromodulation Corporation, Boston Scientific New Zealand Limited, Boston Scientific Nordic AB, Boston Scientific Peru S.A.C., Boston Scientific Philippines Inc., Boston Scientific Polska Sp. z o.o., Boston Scientific Portugal - Dispositivos Medicos Lda, Boston Scientific Pty Ltd, Boston Scientific Romania S.R.L., Boston Scientific S.A.S., Boston Scientific S.p.A., Boston Scientific Scimed, Boston Scientific Scimed Inc., Boston Scientific Services Private Limited, Boston Scientific TIP Gerecleri Limited Sirketi, Boston Scientific Technology & Engineering Services Private Limited, Boston Scientific Uruguay S.A., Boston Scientific Vietnam Company Limited, Boston Scientific de Costa Rica S.R.L., Boston Scientific de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Boston Scientific del Caribe Inc., Boston Scientific do Brasil Ltda., Bravo Bidco Limited, BridgePoint Medical, Cameron Health, Cardiac Pacemakers Inc., Cardiac Pathways Corp, Catheter Innovations, Claret Medical, Claret Medical Inc., Cosman Medical, Cosman Medical LLC, CryoCor, Cryterion Medical, Cryterion Medical Inc., Cryterion Medical Ireland Limited, EKOS LLC, EMcision, EMcision International Inc., EP Technologies, EP Technologies Inc., Electron Acquisition Corporation, EndoChoice, EndoChoice Holdings Inc., EndoChoice Inc., EndoChoice Innovation Center Ltd., EndoChoice Israel Ltd., Endotex, Enteric Medical Technologies, Galil Medical Inc., Galil Medical Ltd., Galil Medical UK Limited, Guidant, Guidant Delaware Holding Corporation, Guidant Europe NV, Guidant Puerto Rico B.V., Hong Kong Medtech Trading Limited, Intelect Medical, Millipede, Millipede Inc., NXT Merger Corp., Notebook Merger Sub Ltd., Novate Medical Limited, NxThera, NxThera Inc., PT Boston Scientific Indonesia, PneumRx GmbH, PneumRx LLC, PneumRx Liimited, Protherics Medicines Development B.V., Protherics Medicines Development Limited, Protherics UK Limited, Provensis Limited, RMI Acquisition Corp., Remon Medical Technologies, Rhythmia Medical, Robert S. Smith M.D. Inc., Roxwood Medical Inc., SNS Merger Corp, Sadra Medical, Sadra Medical Inc., Securus Medical Group, Securus Medical Group Inc., Special K Merger Corp., StarMedTec, Stream Enterprises LLC, Symetis, Symetis SA, Target Therapeutics, Target Therapeutics Inc., The LumenR Tissue Retractor System, Veniti, Veniti Inc., VertiFlex, Vertiflex Inc., Vessix Vascular, Xlumena, Zuma Investment Pty Ltd, iogyn, nVision Medical, and nVision Medical Corporation.
The following companies are subsidiares of Bristol-Myers Squibb: 1096271 B.C. ULC, 345 Park LLC, A.G. Medical Services P.A., AHI Investment LLC, AbVitro LLC, Abraxis BioScience Australia Pty Ltd., Abraxis BioScience Inc., Abraxis BioScience International Holding Company Inc., Abraxis BioScience LLC, Abraxis BioScience Puerto Rico LLC, Acetylon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Adnexus, Adnexus a Bristol-Myers Squibb R&D Company, Allard Labs Acquisition G.P., Amira Pharmaceuticals, Amira Pharmaceuticals Inc., Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Apothecon LLC, B-MS Generx Unlimited Company, BMS Benelux Holdings B.V., BMS Bermuda Nominees L.L.C., BMS Data Acquisition Company LLC, BMS Forex Company, BMS Holdings Sarl, BMS Holdings Spain S.L., BMS International Insurance Designated Activity Company, BMS Investco SAS, BMS Korea Holdings L.L.C., BMS Latin American Nominees L.L.C., BMS Luxembourg Partners L.L.C., BMS Omega Bermuda Holdings Finance Ltd., BMS Pharmaceutical Korea Limited, BMS Pharmaceuticals Germany Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals International Holdings Netherlands B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Korea Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Mexico Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Netherlands Holdings B.V., BMS Real Estate LLC, BMS Spain Investments LLC, BMS Strategic Portfolio Investments Holdings Inc., Blisa Acquisition G.P., Bristol (Iran) S.A., Bristol Iran Private Company Limited, Bristol Laboratories Inc., Bristol Laboratories International S.A., Bristol Laboratories Medical Information Systems Inc., Bristol-Myers (Andes) L.L.C., Bristol-Myers (Private) Limited, Bristol-Myers Middle East S.A.L., Bristol-Myers Overseas Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Israel) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (NZ) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Proprietary) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Singapore) Pte. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Taiwan) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (West Indies) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb A.E., Bristol-Myers Squibb Aktiebolag, Bristol-Myers Squibb Argentina S. R. L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Australia Pty. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Axia Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb B.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Belgium S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Business Services Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada International Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Delta Company Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Denmark Filial of Bristol-Myers Squibb AB, Bristol-Myers Squibb EMEA Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Egypt LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Epsilon Holdings Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Ltda., Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Portuguesa S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb GesmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb GmbH & Co. KGaA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holding Germany GmbH & Co. KG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings 2002 Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Germany Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Ireland Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Pharma Ltd. Liability Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Ilaclari Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb India Pvt. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Company Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Investco L.L.C., Bristol-Myers Squibb K.K., Bristol-Myers Squibb Kft., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg International S.C.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb MEA GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Manufacturing Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Marketing Services S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Middle East & Africa FZ-LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Norway Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Nutricionales de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Peru S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (HK) Ltd, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (Thailand) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Holding Company LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Ventures Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Polska Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Products SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico/Sanofi Pharmaceutical Partnership Puerto Rico, Bristol-Myers Squibb Romania S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.A.U., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Holding Partnership, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Service Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Services Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Spol. s r.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Theta Finance Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Trustees Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Colombia S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Costa Rica Sociedad Anonima, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Guatemala S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb/Astrazeneca EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Pfizer EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Partnership, Bristol-Myers de Venezuela S.C.A., CHT I LLC, CHT II LLC, CHT III LLC, CHT IV LLC, CR Finance Company LLC, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals Inc., Celem LLC, Celem Ltd., Celgene, Celgene A.B., Celgene AS, Celgene Ab (Finland), Celgene Alpine Investment Co. II LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. III LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. LLC, Celgene ApS, Celgene B.V., Celgene BVBA, Celgene Brasil Produtos Farmaceuticos Ltda., Celgene CAR LLC, Celgene CAR Ltd., Celgene Chemicals Sarl, Celgene China Holdings LLC, Celgene Co., Celgene Corporation, Celgene Distribution B.V., Celgene EngMab GmbH, Celgene Europe B.V., Celgene Europe Limited, Celgene European Investment Company LLC, Celgene Financing Company LLC, Celgene Global Holdings Sarl, Celgene GmbH [Austria], Celgene GmbH [Germany], Celgene GmbH [Switzerland], Celgene Holdings East Corporation, Celgene Holdings II Sarl, Celgene Holdings III Sarl, Celgene Ilac Pazarlama ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Celgene Inc., Celgene International Holdings Corporation, Celgene International II Sarl, Celgene International III Sarl, Celgene International Inc., Celgene International Sarl, Celgene K.K., Celgene Kft., Celgene Limited [Hong Kong], Celgene Limited [Ireland], Celgene Limited [New Zealand], Celgene Limited [Taiwan], Celgene Limited [UK], Celgene Logistics Sarl, Celgene Ltd, Celgene Luxembourg Sarl, Celgene Management Sarl, Celgene NJ Investment Co, Celgene Netherlands B.V., Celgene Netherlands Investment B.V., Celgene Pharmaceutical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Celgene Pte. Ltd., Celgene Pty Ltd, Celgene Puerto Rico Distribution LLC, Celgene Quanticel Research Inc, Celgene R&D Sarl, Celgene RIVOT LLC, Celgene RIVOT Ltd., Celgene RIVOT SRL, Celgene Receptos Limited, Celgene Receptos Sarl, Celgene Research Incubator At Summit West LLC, Celgene Research S.L.U., Celgene Research and Development Company LLC, Celgene Research and Development I ULC, Celgene Research and Development II LLC, Celgene Research and Investment Company II LLC, Celgene S. de R.L. de C.V., Celgene S.L.U., Celgene S.R.L., Celgene SAS, Celgene Sarl AU, Celgene Sdn Bhd, Celgene Services Sarl, Celgene Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Celgene Sp. Z.o.o., Celgene Sro [Czech Republic], Celgene Summit Investment Co, Celgene Switzerland Holding Sarl, Celgene Switzerland II LLC, Celgene Switzerland Investment Sarl, Celgene Switzerland LLC, Celgene Switzerland Sarl, Celgene Tri A Holdings Ltd., Celgene Tri Sarl, Celgene UK Distribution Limited, Celgene UK Holdings Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing II Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing III Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing Limited, Celgene d.o.o., Celgene sro [Slovakia], Celmed LLC, Celmed Ltd., ConvaTec Divestiture, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals AB, Crosp Ltd., Delinia Inc., Deuteria Pharmaceuticals Inc., DuPont Pharmaceuticals, E. R. Squibb & Sons Inter-American Corporation, E. R. Squibb & Sons L.L.C., E. R. Squibb & Sons Limited, EWI Corporation, EngMab Sarl, F-star Alpha, FermaVir Pharmaceuticals L.L.C., FermaVir Research L.L.C., Flexus Biosciences, Flexus Biosciences Inc., Forbius, Galecto Biotech, GenPharm International L.L.C., Gloucester Pharmaceuticals LLC, Grove Insurance Company Ltd., Heyden Farmaceutica Portuguesa Limitada, IFM Therapeutics, Impact Biomedicines Inc., Inhibitex, Inhibitex L.L.C., Innate Tumor Immunity Inc., JuMP Holdings LLC, Juno Therapeutics GmbH, Juno Therapeutics Inc., Kosan Biosciences, Kosan Biosciences Incorporated, Linson Investments Limited, Mead Johnson (Manufacturing) Jamaica Limited, Mead Johnson Jamaica Ltd., Medarex, Morris Avenue Investment II LLC, Morris Avenue Investment LLC, MyoKardia, O.o.o. Bristol-Myers Squibb, Oy Bristol-Myers Squibb (Finland) AB, Padlock Therapeutics, Padlock Therapeutics Inc., Pharmion LLC, Princeton Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Receptos LLC, Receptos Services LLC, RedoxTherapies Inc., Route 22 Real Estate Holding Corporation, SPV A Holdings ULC, Seamair Insurance DAC, Signal Pharmaceuticals LLC, Sino-American Shanghai Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Societe Francaise de Complements Alimentaires(S.O.F.C.A.), Squibb Middle East S.A., Summit West Celgene LLC, Swords Laboratories, VentiRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Westwood-Intrafin SA, Westwood-Squibb Pharmaceuticals Inc., X-Body Inc., ZymoGenetics, ZymoGenetics Inc., ZymoGenetics LLC, ZymoGenetics Paymaster LLC, iPierian, and iPierian Inc..
BTG plc acquires, develops, manufactures, and commercializes pharmaceutical products in the United States, Europe, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Interventional Medicine, Pharmaceuticals, and Licensing. The Interventional Medicine segment offers interventional oncology products and systems, such as beads and TheraSphere for treatment of liver cancer; and GALIL medical system, a cryoablation technology for use in kidney cancer and other indications. This segment also provides interventional vascular products consisting of EKOS system, an ultrasonic catheter drug delivery device used in the treatment of blood clots; Varithena for the treatment of varicose veins; and PneumRx Coil for the treatment of emphysema, a debilitating lung disease. The Pharmaceuticals segment offers antidote products, such as CroFab for the treatment of crotalid snake envenomations; DigiFab for the treatment of digoxin toxicity; and Voraxaze for high-dose methotrexate toxicity. The Licensing segment provides Zytiga for treatment of prostate cancer; Two-Part Hip Cup; and Lemtrada. The company also manufactures and commercializes therapeutic ultrasound devices, and roxwood systems, as well as develops venous thrombus management devices. The company was formerly known as British Technology Group International plc and changed its name to BTG plc in March 1995. BTG plc was founded in 1948 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Banco Santander: 2 & 3 Triton Limited, A & L CF (Guernsey) Limited (f), A & L CF June (2) Limited, A & L CF June (3) Limited, A & L CF March (5) Limited, A & L CF September (4) Limited, AFB SAM Holdings S.L., ALIL Services Limited (b), AN (123) Limited, ANITCO Limited, Abbey Business Services (India) Private Limited, Abbey Covered Bonds (LM) Limited, Abbey National, Abbey National Beta Investments Limited, Abbey National Business Office Equipment Leasing Limited, Abbey National International Limited, Abbey National Nominees Limited, Abbey National PLP (UK) Limited, Abbey National Property Investments, Abbey National Treasury Services Investments Limited, Abbey National Treasury Services Overseas Holdings, Abbey National UK Investments, Abbey Stockbrokers (Nominees) Limited, Abbey Stockbrokers Limited, Ablasa Participaciones S.L., Administracion de Bancos Latinoamericanos Santander S.L., Aduro S.A., Aevis Europa S.L., Afisa S.A., Albert., Aljardi SGPS Lda., Alliance & Leicester, Alliance & Leicester Cash Solutions Limited, Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank Limited, Alliance & Leicester Investments (Derivatives) Limited, Alliance & Leicester Investments (No.2) Limited, Alliance & Leicester Investments Limited, Alliance & Leicester Limited, Alliance & Leicester Personal Finance Limited, Altamira Santander Real Estate S.A., Alternative Leasing FIL, Amazonia Trade Limited, Amherst Pierpont, Andaluza de Inversiones S.A., Aquanima Brasil Ltda., Aquanima Chile S.A., Aquanima Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Aquanima S.A., Arcaz - Sociedade Imobiliaria Portuguesa Lda., Argenline S.A. (b), Asto Digital Limited, Athena Corporation Limited, Atual - Fundo de Invest Multimercado Credito Privado Investimento no Exterior, Atual Servicos de Recuperacao de Creditos e Meios Digitais S.A., Autodescuento S.L., Autohaus24 GmbH, Auttar HUT Processamento de Dados Ltda., Aviacion Antares A.I.E., Aviacion Britanica A.I.E., Aviacion Centaurus A.I.E., Aviacion Comillas S.L. Unipersonal, Aviacion Intercontinental A.I.E., Aviacion Laredo S.L., Aviacion Oyambre S.L. Unipersonal, Aviacion Real A.I.E., Aviacion Santillana S.L., Aviacion Suances S.L., Aviacion Triton A.I.E., Aymore Credito Financiamento e Investimento S.A., BEN Beneficios e Servicos S.A., BRS Investments S.A., BZW Bank, Banca PSA Italia S.p.A., Banco Bandepe S.A., Banco Madesant - Sociedade Unipessoal S.A., Banco PSA Finance Brasil S.A., Banco Popular, Banco Santander (Brasil) S.A., Banco Santander (Mexico) S.A. Institucion de Banca Multiple Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico como Fiduciaria del Fideicomiso 100740, Banco Santander (Mexico) S.A. Institucion de Banca Multiple Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico como Fiduciaria del Fideicomiso 2002114, Banco Santander (Mexico) S.A. Institucion de Banca Multiple Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico como Fiduciaria del Fideicomiso GFSSLPT, Banco Santander - Chile, Banco Santander Consumer Portugal S.A., Banco Santander International, Banco Santander International SA, Banco Santander Mexico S.A. Institucion de Banca Multiple Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico, Banco Santander Peru S.A., Banco Santander Rio S.A., Banco Santander S.A., Banco Santander Totta S.A., Banco Santander de Negocios Colombia S.A., Banco de Albacete S.A., Bansa Santander S.A., CCAP Auto Lease Ltd., Canyon Multifamily Impact Fund IV LLC, Capital Street Delaware LP, Capital Street Holdings LLC, Capital Street REIT Holdings LLC, Capital Street S.A., Carfax (Guernsey) Limited (f), Carfinco Financial Group, Carfinco Financial Group Inc., Carfinco Inc., Casa de Bolsa Santander S.A. de C.V. Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico, Cater Allen Holdings Limited, Cater Allen International Limited, Cater Allen Limited, Cater Allen Lloyd's Holdings Limited, Cater Allen Syndicate Management Limited, Centro de Capacitacion Santander A.C., Certidesa S.L., Chrysler Capital Auto Funding I LLC, Chrysler Capital Auto Funding II LLC, Chrysler Capital Auto Receivables LLC, Chrysler Capital Master Auto Receivables Funding 2 LLC, Chrysler Capital Master Auto Receivables Funding 4 LLC, Chrysler Capital Master Auto Receivables Funding LLC, Cobranza Amigable S.A.P.I. de C.V., Community Development and Affordable Housing Fund LLC (g), Compagnie Generale de Credit Aux Particuliers - Credipar S.A., Compagnie Pour la Location de Vehicules - CLV, Comunidad Laboral Trabajando Argentina S.A., Comunidad Laboral Trabajando Iberica S.L. Unipersonal en liquidacion (b), Consulteam Consultores de Gestao Lda., Consumer Lending Receivables LLC, Crawfall S.A. (b), Cantabra de Inversiones S.A., Cantabro Catalana de Inversiones S.A., Darep Designated Activity Company, Decarome S.A.P.I. de C.V., Deva Capital Advisory Company S.L., Deva Capital Holding Company S.L., Deva Capital Investment Company S.L., Deva Capital Management Company S.L., Deva Capital Servicer Company S.L., Digital Procurement Holdings N.V., Diners Club Spain S.A., Direccion Estratega S.C., Dirgenfin S.L. en liquidacion (b), Ebury, El Corte Ingles, Elavon Mexico, Electrolyser S.A. de C.V., Entidad de Desarrollo a la Pequena y Micro Empresa Santander Consumo Peru S.A., Erestone S.A.S., Esfera Fidelidade S.A., Evidence Previdencia S.A., Financeira El Corte Ingles Portugal S.F.C. S.A., Financiera El Corte Ingles E.F.C. S.A., Finsantusa S.L. Unipersonal, First National Motor Business Limited, First National Motor Contracts Limited, First National Motor Facilities Limited, First National Motor Finance Limited, First National Motor Leasing Limited, First National Motor plc, First National Tricity Finance Limited, Fondos Santander S.A. Administradora de Fondos de Inversion (en liquidacion) (b), Fortensky Trading Ltd., Fosse Funding (No.1) Limited, Fosse Master Issuer plc, Fosse Trustee (UK) Limited, GTS El Centro Equity Holdings LLC, GTS El Centro Project Holdings LLC, Gamma Sociedade Financeira de Titularizacao de Creditos S.A., Gesban Mexico Servicios Administrativos Globales S.A. de C.V., Gesban Santander Servicios Profesionales Contables Limitada, Gesban Servicios Administrativos Globales S.L., Gesban UK Limited, Gestion de Instalaciones Fotovoltaicas S.L. Unipersonal, Gestion de Inversiones JILT S.A., Gestora de Procesos S.A. en liquidacion (b), Getnet Adquirencia e Servicos para Meios de Pagamento S.A., Global Vosgos S.L. Unipersonal, Grupo Empresarial Santander S.L., Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico S.A. de C.V., Grupo Financiero Santander SAB de CV, Guaranty Car S.A. Unipersonal, HQ Mobile Limited, Hispamer Renting S.A. Unipersonal, Holbah II Limited, Holbah Santander S.L. Unipersonal, Holmes Funding Limited, Holmes Master Issuer plc, Holmes Trustees Limited, Hyundai Capital Bank Europe GmbH, Iberica de Compras Corporativas S.L., Independence Community Bank Corp., Insurance Funding Solutions Limited, Interfinance Holanda B.V., Inversiones Capital Global S.A. Unipersonal, Inversiones Maritimas del Mediterraneo S.A., Isla de los Buques S.A., Klare Corredora de Seguros S.A., Landcompany 2020 S.L., Langton Funding (No.1) Limited, Langton Mortgages Trustee (UK) Limited, Langton Securities (2008-1) plc, Langton Securities (2010-1) PLC, Langton Securities (2010-2) PLC, Laparanza S.A., Liquidity Limited, Luri 1 S.A. en liquidacion (b) (e), Luri 6 S.A. Unipersonal, Master Red Europa S.L., Mata Alta S.L., Merciver S.L., Mercury TFS, Mercury Trade Finance Solutions S.A. de C.V., Mercury Trade Finance Solutions S.L., Mercury Trade Finance Solutions S.p.A., Moneybit S.L., Mortgage Engine Limited, Motor 2016-1 PLC, Motor 2017-1 PLC, Mouro Capital I LP, Multiplica SpA, NW Services CO., Naviera Mirambel S.L., Naviera Trans Gas A.I.E., Naviera Trans Iron S.L., Naviera Trans Ore A.I.E., Naviera Trans Wind S.L. (b), Naviera Transcantabrica S.L., Naviera Transchem S.L. Unipersonal, NeoAuto S.A.C., Norbest AS, Novimovest  Fundo de Investimento Imobiliario, Open Bank Argentina S.A., Open Bank S.A., Open Digital Market S.L., Open Digital Services S.L., Operadora de Carteras Gamma S.A.P.I. de C.V., Optimal Investment Services SA, Optimal Multiadvisors Ireland Plc / Optimal Strategic US Equity Ireland Euro Fund, Optimal Multiadvisors Ireland Plc / Optimal Strategic US Equity Ireland US Dollar Fund, PBE Companies LLC, PECOH Limited, PI Distribuidora de Titulos e Valores Mobiliarios S.A., PSA Bank Deutschland GmbH, PSA Banque France, PSA Finance UK Limited, PSA Financial Services Nederland B.V., PSA Financial Services Spain E.F.C. S.A., PSA Renting Italia S.p.A., PagoFX Europe S.A., PagoFX HoldCo S.L., PagoFX UK Ltd, PagoNxt Merchant Solutions S.L., PagoNxt S.L., Parasant SA, Patagon.com, Pereda Gestion S.A., Pingham International S.A., Popular Spain Holding de Inversiones S.L.U., Portal Universia Argentina S.A., Portal Universia Portugal Prestacao de Servicos de Informatica S.A., Prime 16  Fundo de Investimentos Imobiliario, Punta Lima LLC, Punta Lima Wind Farm LLC, Retop S.A., Return Capital Servicos de Recuperacao de Creditos S.A., Return Gestao de Recursos S.A., Riobank International (Uruguay) SAIFE (b), Rojo Entretenimento S.A., SAM Asset Management S.A. de C.V. Sociedad Operadora de Fondos de Inversion, SAM Investment Holdings S.L., SAM UK Investment Holdings Limited (b), SANB Promotora de Vendas e Cobranca Ltda., SCF Eastside Locks GP Limited, SDMX Superdigital S.A. de C.V., SMPS Merchant Platform Solutions Mexico S.A de C.V, Sancap Investimentos e Participacoes S.A., Santander (CF Trustee Property Nominee) Limited, Santander (UK) Group Pension Schemes Trustees Limited, Santander Ahorro Inmobiliario 1 S.A., Santander Ahorro Inmobiliario 2 S.A., Santander Alternatives SICAV RAIF, Santander Asesorias Financieras Limitada, Santander Asset Finance (December) Limited, Santander Asset Finance plc, Santander Asset Management - S.G.O.I.C. S.A., Santander Asset Management Chile S.A., Santander Asset Management LLC, Santander Asset Management Luxembourg S.A., Santander Asset Management S.A. Administradora General de Fondos, Santander Asset Management S.A. S.G.I.I.C., Santander Asset Management UK Holdings Limited, Santander Asset Management UK Limited, Santander Back-Offices Globales Mayoristas S.A., Santander Banca de Inversion Colombia S.A.S., Santander Bank & Trust Ltd., Santander Bank National Association, Santander Bank Polska S.A., Santander Brasil Administradora de Consorcio Ltda., Santander Brasil Gestao de Recursos Ltda., Santander Brasil Tecnologia S.A., Santander Capital Desarrollo SGEIC S.A. Unipersonal, Santander Capital Structuring S.A. de C.V., Santander Capitalizacao S.A., Santander Cards Ireland Limited, Santander Cards Limited, Santander Cards UK Limited, Santander Chile Holding S.A., Santander Consulting (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Santander Consumer (UK) plc, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2013-B2 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2013-B3 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2018-L1 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2018-L3 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2018-L4 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2018-L5 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2019-B1 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2019-L2 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2019-L3 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2020-B1 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2020-L1 LLC, Santander Consumer Auto Receivables Funding 2020-L2 LLC, Santander Consumer Bank, Santander Consumer Bank AG, Santander Consumer Bank GmbH, Santander Consumer Bank S.A., Santander Consumer Bank S.p.A., Santander Consumer Banque S.A., Santander Consumer Credit Services Limited, Santander Consumer Finance Benelux B.V., Santander Consumer Finance Global Services S.L., Santander Consumer Finance Oy, Santander Consumer Finance S.A., Santander Consumer Finance Schweiz AG, Santander Consumer Financial Solutions Sp. z o.o., Santander Consumer Finanse Sp. z o.o. (b), Santander Consumer Holding Austria GmbH, Santander Consumer Holding GmbH, Santander Consumer International Puerto Rico LLC, Santander Consumer Leasing GmbH, Santander Consumer Mediacion Operador de Banca-Seguros Vinculado S.L., Santander Consumer Multirent Sp. z o.o., Santander Consumer Operations Services GmbH, Santander Consumer Receivables 10 LLC, Santander Consumer Receivables 11 LLC, Santander Consumer Receivables 3 LLC, Santander Consumer Receivables 7 LLC, Santander Consumer Receivables Funding LLC, Santander Consumer Renting S.L., Santander Consumer S.A., Santander Consumer S.A.S., Santander Consumer Services GmbH, Santander Consumer Services S.A., Santander Consumer Technology Services GmbH, Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc., Santander Consumer USA Inc., Santander Consumo S.A. de C.V. S.O.F.O.M. E.R. Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico, Santander Corredora de Seguros Limitada, Santander Corredores de Bolsa Limitada, Santander Corretora de Cambio e Valores Mobiliarios S.A., Santander Corretora de Seguros Investimentos e Servicos S.A., Santander Customer Voice S.A., Santander Digital Assets S.L., Santander Drive Auto Receivables LLC, Santander Equity Investments Limited, Santander Espana Merchant Services Entidad de Pago S.L. Unipersonal, Santander Espana Servicios Legales y de Cumplimiento S.L., Santander Estates Limited, Santander F24 S.A., Santander Facility Management Espana S.L., Santander Factoring S.A., Santander Factoring Sp. z o.o., Santander Factoring y Confirming S.A. E.F.C., Santander Finance 2012-1 LLC, Santander Financial Exchanges Limited, Santander Financial Services Inc., Santander Financial Services plc, Santander Finanse Sp. z o.o., Santander Fintech Holdings S.L., Santander Fintech Limited, Santander Fundo de Investimento SBAC Referenciado di Credito Privado, Santander Gestion de Recaudacion y Cobranzas Ltda., Santander Global Consumer Finance Limited, Santander Global Facilities S.A. de C.V., Santander Global Facilities S.L., Santander Global Operations S.A., Santander Global Services S.A. (b), Santander Global Sport S.A., Santander Global Technology Brasil Ltda., Santander Global Technology Chile Limitada, Santander Global Technology S.L., Santander Global Trade Platform Solutions S.L., Santander Guarantee Company, Santander Holding Imobiliaria S.A., Santander Holding Internacional S.A., Santander Holdings USA Inc., Santander ISA Managers Limited, Santander Inclusion Financiera S.A. de C.V. S.O.F.O.M. E.R. Grupo Financiero Santander Mexico, Santander Insurance Agency U.S. LLC, Santander Insurance Services UK Limited, Santander Intermediacion Correduria de Seguros S.A., Santander International Products Plc. (d), Santander Inversiones S.A., Santander Investment Bank Limited, Santander Investment Chile Limitada, Santander Investment I S.A., Santander Investment S.A., Santander Investment Securities Inc., Santander Investments GP 1 S.a.r.l., Santander Inwestycje Sp. z o.o., Santander Lease S.A. E.F.C., Santander Leasing LLC, Santander Leasing S.A., Santander Leasing S.A. Arrendamento Mercantil, Santander Lending Limited, Santander Mediacion Operador de Banca-Seguros Vinculado S.A., Santander Merchant Platform Operations S.A. de C.V., Santander Merchant Platform Services S.A. de C.V., Santander Merchant Platform Solutions Mexico S.A. de C.V., Santander Merchant Platform Solutions S.A., Santander Merchant Platform Solutions Uruguay S.A., Santander Merchant Platform SolucoesTecnologicas Brasil Ltda., Santander Merchant S.A., Santander Mortgage Holdings Limited, Santander Paraty Qif PLC, Santander Pensiones S.A. E.G.F.P., Santander Pensoes - Sociedade Gestora de Fundos de Pensoes S.A., Santander Private Banking Gestion S.A. S.G.I.I.C., Santander Private Banking UK Limited, Santander Private Banking s.p.a. in Liquidazione (b), Santander Private Real Estate Advisory & Management S.A., Santander Private Real Estate Advisory S.A., Santander Real Estate S.A., Santander Retail Auto Lease Funding LLC, Santander Rio Asset Management Gerente de Fondos Comunes de Inversion S.A., Santander Rio Trust S.A., Santander Rio Valores S.A., Santander S.A. Sociedad Securitizadora, Santander Secretariat Services Limited, Santander Securities LLC, Santander Seguros y Reaseguros Compania Aseguradora S.A., Santander Servicios Corporativos S.A. de C.V., Santander Servicios Especializados S.A. de C.V., Santander Technology USA LLC, Santander Tecnologia e Inovacao Ltda., Santander Tecnologia Argentina S.A., Santander Tecnologia Espana S.L.U., Santander Tecnologia Mexico S.A. de C.V., Santander Totta SGPS S.A., Santander Totta Seguros Companhia de Seguros de Vida S.A., Santander Towarzystwo Funduszy Inwestycyjnych S.A., Santander Trade Services Limited, Santander UK Group Holdings plc, Santander UK Investments, Santander UK Operations Limited, Santander UK Plc, Santander UK Technology Limited, Santander Wealth Management International SA, Santander de Titulizacion S.G.F.T. S.A., Santusa Holding S.L., Services and Promotions Delaware Corp., Services and Promotions Miami LLC, Servicio de Alarmas Controladas por Ordenador S.A., Servicios de Cobranza Recuperacion y Seguimiento S.A. De C.V., Sheppards Moneybrokers Limited, Shiloh III Wind Project LLC, Sociedad Integral de Valoraciones Automatizadas S.A., Sociedad Operadora de Tarjetas de Pago Santander Getnet Chile S.A., Socur S.A., Sol Orchard Imperial 1 LLC, Solarlaser Limited, Sovereign Community Development Company, Sovereign Delaware Investment Corporation, Sovereign Lease Holdings LLC, Sovereign REIT Holdings Inc., Sovereign Spirit Limited (f), Sterrebeeck B.V., Suleyado 2003 S.L. Unipersonal, Summer Empreendimentos Ltda., Super Pagamentos e Administracao de Meios Eletronicos S.A., Superdigital Argentina S.A.U., Superdigital Colombia S.A.S., Superdigital Holding Company S.L., Superdigital Peru S.A.C., Suzuki Servicios Financieros S.L., Swesant SA, TIMFin S.p.A., TOPSAM S.A de C.V., Taxagest Sociedade Gestora de Participacoes Sociais S.A., Teatinos Siglo XXI Inversiones S.A., The Alliance & Leicester Corporation Limited, The Best Specialty Coffee S.L. Unipersonal, Time Retail Finance Limited (b), Tonopah Solar I LLC, Toque Fale Servicos de Telemarketing Ltda., Tornquist Asesores de Seguros S.A. (b), Totta (Ireland) PLC, Totta Urbe - Empresa de Administracao e Construcoes S.A., Trabajando.com Mexico S.A. de C.V. en liquidacion (b), Trabajando.com Peru S.A.C., Trans Rotor Limited (b), Transolver Finance EFC S.A., Tresmares Growth Fund Santander SCR S.A., Tresmares Santander Direct Lending SICC S.A., Tuttle and Son Limited, Universia Brasil S.A., Universia Chile S.A., Universia Colombia S.A.S., Universia Espana Red de Universidades S.A., Universia Holding S.L., Universia Mexico S.A. de C.V., Universia Peru S.A., Universia Uruguay S.A., Uro Property Holdings SOCIMI S.A., WIM Servicios Corporativos S.A. de C.V., WTW Shipping Designated Activity Company, Wallcesa S.A., Wave Holdco S.L., Waypoint Insurance Group Inc., and Wirecard (Technological Assets).
The following companies are subsidiares of Caterpillar: Advanced Tri-Gen Power Systems LLC, Anchor Coupling Inc., Asia Power Systems (Tianjin) Ltd., AsiaTrak (Tianjin) Ltd., Banco Caterpillar S.A., Berg Propulsion International Pte Ltd., Bucyrus, Bucyrus Australia Surface Pty. Ltd., Bucyrus Europe Holdings Ltd., Bucyrus Europe Limited, Bucyrus International (Chile) Limitada, Bucyrus International (Peru) S.A., Bucyrus Mining Australia Pty. Ltd., Bucyrus Mining China LLC, Bucyrus UK Limited, Cat Rental Kyushu LLC, Caterpillar (Africa) (Proprietary) Limited, Caterpillar (China) Financial Leasing Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (China) Machinery Components Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (HK) Limited, Caterpillar (Huainan) Machinery Service Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Langfang) Mining Equipment Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Luxembourg) Investment Co. S.a r.l., Caterpillar (NI) Limited, Caterpillar (Newberry) LLC, Caterpillar (Qingzhou) Ltd., Caterpillar (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Suzhou) Logistics Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Thailand) Limited, Caterpillar (U.K.) Limited, Caterpillar (Wujiang) Ltd., Caterpillar (Xuzhou) Ltd., Caterpillar (Zhengzhou) Ltd., Caterpillar Acquisition Holding Corp., Caterpillar Americas C.V., Caterpillar Americas Co., Caterpillar Americas Funding Inc., Caterpillar Americas Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Asia Limited, Caterpillar Asia Pacific L.P., Caterpillar Asia Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Asset Intelligence LLC, Caterpillar Belgium S.A., Caterpillar Brasil Comercio de Maquinas e Pecas Ltda., Caterpillar Brasil Ltda., Caterpillar Brazil LLC, Caterpillar Castings Kiel GmbH, Caterpillar Centro de Formacion S.L., Caterpillar China Limited, Caterpillar Commercial Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Commercial LLC, Caterpillar Commercial Northern Europe Limited, Caterpillar Commercial S.A., Caterpillar Commercial S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Commercial Services S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Communications LLC, Caterpillar Corporativo Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Cote DIvoire, Caterpillar Credito S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.N.R., Caterpillar DC Pension Trust Limited, Caterpillar Digital Services & Solutions SARL, Caterpillar Distribution International LLC, Caterpillar Distribution Services Europe B.V.B.A., Caterpillar East Real Estate Holding Ltd., Caterpillar Emissions Solutions Inc., Caterpillar Energy Solutions Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Energy Solutions GmbH, Caterpillar Energy Solutions Inc., Caterpillar Energy Solutions S.A., Caterpillar Energy System Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Engine Systems Inc., Caterpillar Equipos Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Eurasia LLC, Caterpillar FS (QFC) LLC, Caterpillar Finance France S.A., Caterpillar Finance Kabushiki Kaisha, Caterpillar Financial Acquisition Funding LLC, Caterpillar Financial Aftermarket Solutions Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Australia Leasing Pty Limited, Caterpillar Financial Australia Limited, Caterpillar Financial Commercial Account Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Corporacion Financiera S.A. E.F.C., Caterpillar Financial Dealer Funding LLC, Caterpillar Financial Funding Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Kazakhstan Limited Liability Partnership, Caterpillar Financial Leasing (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Financial New Zealand Limited, Caterpillar Financial Nordic Services AB, Caterpillar Financial Nova Scotia Corporation, Caterpillar Financial OOO, Caterpillar Financial Receivables Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Renting S.A., Caterpillar Financial SARL, Caterpillar Financial Services (Dubai) Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services (Ireland) plc, Caterpillar Financial Services (UK) Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services Argentina S.A., Caterpillar Financial Services Asia Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Financial Services Belgium S.P.R.L., Caterpillar Financial Services CR s.r.o., Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Services GmbH, Caterpillar Financial Services India Private Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services Leasing ULC, Caterpillar Financial Services Limited Les Services Financiers Caterpillar Limitee, Caterpillar Financial Services Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Caterpillar Financial Services Netherlands B.V., Caterpillar Financial Services Norway AS, Caterpillar Financial Services Philippines Inc., Caterpillar Financial Services Poland Sp. z o.o., Caterpillar Financial Services South Africa (Pty) Limited, Caterpillar Financial UK Acquisition Funding Partners, Caterpillar Financial Ukraine LLC, Caterpillar Fluid Systems S.r.l., Caterpillar Fomento Comercial Ltda., Caterpillar Forest Products Inc., Caterpillar France S.A.S., Caterpillar GB L.L.C., Caterpillar Global Investments S.a r.l., Caterpillar Global Mining America LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Equipamentos De Mineracao do Brasil Ltda., Caterpillar Global Mining Equipment LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Europe GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Expanded Products Pty Ltd, Caterpillar Global Mining Germany Holdings GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining HMS GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Holdings GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Hong Kong AFC Manufacturing Holding Co. Limited, Caterpillar Global Mining Hong Kong Limited, Caterpillar Global Mining LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Mexico LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Global Mining SARL, Caterpillar Global Mining U.S. Parts LLC, Caterpillar Global Services LLC, Caterpillar Group Services S.A., Caterpillar Holding (France) S.A.S., Caterpillar Holding Germany GmbH, Caterpillar Holdings Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Hungary Components Manufacturing Ltd., Caterpillar Hydraulics Italia S.r.l., Caterpillar IPX LLC, Caterpillar IRB LLC, Caterpillar Impact Products Limited, Caterpillar India Private Limited, Caterpillar Industrial Inc., Caterpillar Industrias Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Industries (Pty) Ltd, Caterpillar Insurance Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Insurance Company, Caterpillar Insurance Holdings Inc., Caterpillar Insurance Services Corporation, Caterpillar International Finance Designated Activity Company, Caterpillar International Finance Luxembourg Holding S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Finance Luxembourg S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Holding S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Luxembourg I S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Luxembourg II S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Product SARL, Caterpillar International Services Corporation, Caterpillar International Services del Peru S.A., Caterpillar Investment Limited, Caterpillar Investment One SARL, Caterpillar Investment Two SARL, Caterpillar Investments, Caterpillar Japan LLC, Caterpillar Latin America Services S.R.L., Caterpillar Latin America Services de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Latin America Services de Panama S. de R.L., Caterpillar Latin America Servicios de Chile Limitada, Caterpillar Latin America Support Services S. DE R.L., Caterpillar Leasing (Thailand) Limited, Caterpillar Leasing Chile S.A., Caterpillar Leasing GmbH (Leipzig), Caterpillar Leasing Operativo Limitada, Caterpillar Life Insurance Company, Caterpillar Logistics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Logistics (UK) Limited, Caterpillar Logistics Inc., Caterpillar Logistics ML Services France S.A.S., Caterpillar Logistics Services China Limited, Caterpillar Luxembourg Group S.ar.l., Caterpillar Luxembourg LLC, Caterpillar Luxembourg S.a r.l., Caterpillar Machinery Nantong Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Marine Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Marine Asset Intelligence, Caterpillar Marine Power UK Limited, Caterpillar Marine Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Maroc SARL, Caterpillar Materiels Routiers SAS, Caterpillar Mexico LLC, Caterpillar Mexico S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar Mining Canada ULC, Caterpillar Mining Chile Servicios Limitada, Caterpillar Motoren (Guangdong) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Motoren GmbH & Co. KG, Caterpillar Motoren Henstedt-Ulzburg GmbH, Caterpillar Motoren Rostock GmbH, Caterpillar Motoren Verwaltungs-GmbH, Caterpillar Netherlands Holding B.V., Caterpillar North America C.V., Caterpillar Operator Training Ltd., Caterpillar Overseas Credit Corporation SARL, Caterpillar Overseas Investment Holding SARL, Caterpillar Overseas Limited, Caterpillar Overseas SARL, Caterpillar Panama Services S.A., Caterpillar Paving Products Inc., Caterpillar Paving Products Xuzhou Ltd., Caterpillar Pension Trust Limited, Caterpillar Poland Sp. z o.o., Caterpillar Power Generation Systems (Bangladesh) Limited, Caterpillar Power Generation Systems L.L.C., Caterpillar Power Systems Inc., Caterpillar Power Ventures International Ltd., Caterpillar Precision Seals Korea, Caterpillar Prodotti Stradali S.r.l., Caterpillar Product Services Corporation, Caterpillar Propulsion AB, Caterpillar Propulsion International Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Propulsion Italy S.R.L., Caterpillar Propulsion Namibia (Proprietary) Limited, Caterpillar Propulsion Production AB, Caterpillar Propulsion Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Propulsion Singapore Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar R&D Center (China) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe LLC, Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe Servicios S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar Reman Powertrain Indiana LLC, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Drivetrain LLC, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Renting France S.A.S., Caterpillar Reynosa S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar SARL, Caterpillar Services Germany GmbH, Caterpillar Servicios Limitada, Caterpillar Servicios Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Servizi Italia Srl, Caterpillar Shrewsbury Limited, Caterpillar Skinningrove Limited, Caterpillar Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd., Caterpillar Special Services Belgium S.P.R.L., Caterpillar Switchgear Americas LLC, Caterpillar Switchgear Holding Inc., Caterpillar Tianjin Ltd., Caterpillar Torreon S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Tosno L.L.C., Caterpillar Transmissions France S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Tunneling Canada Holdings Ltd., Caterpillar Tunnelling Canada Corporation, Caterpillar Tunnelling Europe Limited, Caterpillar UK Employee Trust Limited, Caterpillar UK Engines Company Limited, Caterpillar UK Group Limited, Caterpillar UK Holdings Limited, Caterpillar Undercarriage (Xuzhou) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Underground Mining Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Used Equipment Services Inc., Caterpillar Venture Capital Inc., Caterpillar Work Tools B.V., Caterpillar Work Tools Inc., Caterpillar World Trading Corporation, Caterpillar Xuzhou, Caterpillar of Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar of Canada Corporation, Caterpillar of Delaware Inc., Centre de Distribution de Wallonie SPRL, CleanAir Systems, Downer Freight Rail, ECM Railway Evolution Romania s.r.l., ECM S.p.A., EDC European Excavator Design Center GmbH, EMC Holding Corp., EMD International Holdings Inc., ERA Information & Entertainment (BVI) Limited, ERA Mining Machinery Limited, Electro-Motive Diesel Limited, Electro-Motive Locomotive Technologies LLC, Electro-Motive Technical Consulting Co. (Beijing) Ltd., Energy Services International Limited, Equipos de Acuna S.A. de C.V., Eurenov S.A.S., F. G. Wilson (Proprietary) Limited, F. Perkins Limited, FG Wilson (Engineering) Limited, GB Holdco (China) Inc., GFCM Comercial Mexico S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.N.R., GFCM Servicios S.A. de C.V., Gremada Industries - Assets, Hong Kong Siwei Holdings Limited, Inmobiliaria Conek S.A. de C.V., JCS Co., Kemper Valve & Fittings Corp., Leo Inc., Locomotive Demand Power Pty Ltd., Locomotoras Progress Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Lovat, M2M Data Corporation, MGE Equipamentos & Servicos Ferroviarios, MWM, MWM Austria GmbH, MWM Benelux B.V., MWM Energy Australia Pty Ltd, MWM France S.A.S, MWM Real Estate GmbH, MaK Americas Inc., MaK Americas Inc. (Canada), Magnum Power Products LLC, Marble, Maschinenbau Kiel GmbH, Mec-Track S.r.l., Metalmark Financial Services Limited, Motoren Steffens GmbH, Nippon Caterpillar LLC, P. T. Solar Services Indonesia, PT Caterpillar Finance Indonesia, PT. Bucyrus Indonesia, PT. Caterpillar Indonesia, PT. Caterpillar Indonesia Batam, PT. Caterpillar Remanufacturing Indonesia, Perkins Engines, Perkins Engines (Asia Pacific) Pte Ltd, Perkins Engines Group Limited, Perkins Engines Inc., Perkins Group Limited, Perkins Holdings Limited LLC, Perkins India Private Limited, Perkins International Inc., Perkins Japan LLC, Perkins Limited, Perkins Machinery (Changshu) Co. Ltd., Perkins Motores do Brasil Ltda., Perkins Power Systems Technology (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Perkins Small Engines (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Perkins Small Engines LLC, Perkins Small Engines Limited, Perkins Technology Inc., Progress Metal Reclamation Company, Progress Rail Arabia Limited Company, Progress Rail Australia Pty Ltd, Progress Rail Canada Corporation, Progress Rail Equipamentos e Servicos Ferroviarios do Brasil Ltda., Progress Rail Equipment Leasing Corporation, Progress Rail Holdings Inc., Progress Rail Innovations Private Limited, Progress Rail Inspection & Information Systems GmbH, Progress Rail Inspection & Information Systems S.r.l., Progress Rail International Corp., Progress Rail Leasing Canada Corporation, Progress Rail Leasing Corporation, Progress Rail Leasing de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Progress Rail Locomotivas (do Brasil) Ltda., Progress Rail Locomotive Canada Co., Progress Rail Locomotive Chile SpA, Progress Rail Locomotive Inc., Progress Rail Maintenance de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Progress Rail Manufacturing Corporation, Progress Rail Raceland Corporation, Progress Rail Rocklin Corporation, Progress Rail SA Proprietary Limited, Progress Rail Services Corporation, Progress Rail Services Holdings Corp., Progress Rail Services LLC, Progress Rail Services UK Limited, Progress Rail Switching Services LLC, Progress Rail Transcanada Corporation, Progress Rail Welding Corporation, Progress Rail Wildwood LLC, Progress Rail de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pyroban Group, Pyroban Group, Pyrrha Investments B.V., Pyrrha Investments Limited, S&L Railroad LLC, SCM Singapore Holdings Pte. Ltd., SPL Software Alliance LLC, Sabre Engines, Servicios de Turbinas Solar S. de R.L. de C.V., Shandong SEM Machinery Co. Ltd., Solar Turbines, Solar Turbines, Solar Turbines (Beijing) Trading Services Co. Ltd., Solar Turbines (Thailand) Ltd., Solar Turbines CIS Limited Liability Company, Solar Turbines Canada Ltd./Ltee., Solar Turbines Central Asia Limited Liability Partnership, Solar Turbines EAME s.r.o., Solar Turbines Egypt Limited Liability Company, Solar Turbines Europe S.A., Solar Turbines India Private Limited, Solar Turbines International Company, Solar Turbines Italy S.R.L., Solar Turbines Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Solar Turbines Middle East Limited, Solar Turbines New Zealand Limited, Solar Turbines Saudi Arabia Limited, Solar Turbines Services Company, Solar Turbines Services Nigeria Limited, Solar Turbines Services of Argentina S.R.L., Solar Turbines Switzerland Sagl, Solar Turbines Trinidad & Tobago Limited, Solar Turbines West-Africa SARL, Tangshan DBT Machinery Co. Ltd., Tecnologia Modificada S.A. de C.V., Towmotor Corporation, Traction & Mining Motor Repairs Pty Ltd, Turbinas Solar S.A. de C.V., Turbinas Solar de Colombia S.A., Turbinas Solar de Venezuela C.A., Turbo Tecnologia de Reparaciones S.A. de C.V., Turbomach, Turbomach Endustriyel Gaz Turbinleri Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited, Turbomach France SARL, Turbomach GmbH, Turbomach Netherlands B.V., Turbomach Pakistan (Private) Limited, Turbomach S.A. Unipersonal, Turbomach Sp. Z o.o., Turner Powertrain Systems Limited, UK Hose Assembly Limited, Underground Imaging Technologies Inc, United Industries LLC, VALA Inc., Vasky Energy Ltd., Wealdstone Engineering, Weir - Oil & Gas Division, West Virginia Auto Shredding Inc., Western Gear Machinery LLC, Wetland Sustainability Fund I LLC, Williams Technologies, Yard Club, Zhengzhou Siwei Mechanical and Electrical Equipment Sales Co. Ltd., and okyo Rental Ltd..
Deutsche Telekom AG, together with its subsidiaries, provides integrated telecommunication services. The company operates through five segments: Germany, United States, Europe, Systems Solutions, and Group Development. It offers fixed-network services, including voice and data communication services based on fixed-network and broadband technology; and sells terminal equipment and other hardware products, as well as services to resellers. The company also provides mobile voice and data services to consumers and business customers; sells mobile devices and other hardware products; and sells mobile services to resellers and to companies that purchases and markets network services to third parties, such as mobile virtual network operators. In addition, it offers internet services; internet-based TV products and services; and information and communication technology systems for multinational corporations and public sector institutions with an infrastructure of data centers and networks under the T-Systems brand, as well as call center services. The company has 242 million mobile customers and 22 million broadband customers, as well as 27 million fixed-network lines. Deutsche Telekom AG has a collaboration with VMware, Inc. on cloud-based open and intelligent virtual RAN platform to bring agility to radio access networks for existing LTE and future 5G networks; and partnership with Microsoft to deliver high-performance cloud computing experiences. The company was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Bonn, Germany.

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Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. engages in global investment banking, securities, and investment management, which provides financial services. It operates through the following business segments: Investment Banking, Global Markets, Asset Management, and Consumer & Wealth Management. The Investment Banking segment serves public and private sector clients around the world and provides financial advisory services, help companies raise capital to strengthen and grow their businesses and provide financing to corporate clients. The Global Markets segment serves its clients who buy and sell financial products, funding and manage risk. The Asset Management segment provides investment services to help clients preserve and grow their financial assets. The Consumer & Wealth Management segment helps clients to achieve their individual financial goals by providing a wealth advisory and banking services. The company was founded by Marcus Goldman in 1869 and is headquartered in New York, NY.

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Eagle Materials, Inc. is a holding company, which engages in the provision of heavy construction materials, light building materials, and materials used for oil and natural gas extraction. It operates through the following segments: Cement, Concrete and Aggregates, Gypsum Wallboard, Recycled Paperboard, and Oil and Gas Proppants. The Cement segment deals with the manufacture, production, distribution, and sale of portland cement. The Concrete and Aggregates segment involves mixing cement, sand, gravel, or crushed stone and water to form concrete, which is then sold and distributed to construction contractors. The Gypsum Wallboard segment mines and extracts natural gypsum rock, which is used in the manufacture of gypsum wallboard. The Recycled Paperboard segment processes paper fiber, water, and paper chemicals to form recycled paperboards, then sell them to gypsum wallboard manufacturers. The Oil and Gas Proppants segment produces frac sand used in oil and natural gas exploration, and provides transloading and storage for well servicing companies. The company was founded in 1963 and is headquartered in Dallas, TX.

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The following companies are subsidiares of EnerSys: ABSL Power Solutions Inc., ABSL Power Solutions Ltd., Acumuladores Industriales EnerSys SA, Alpha Alternative Energy Inc., Alpha Broadband Services Inc., Alpha Innovations Industria e Comercio de Produtos Eletronicos Ltda., Alpha Innovations Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Alpha Mexico Network Power S.A. de C.V., Alpha Tech Energy Solutions India Private Limited, Alpha Technical Services Ltd., Alpha Technologies Ltd., Alpha Technologies Pty. Ltd., Alpha Technologies Services Inc., Alphatec Technologies (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Argus Research Ltd., Batterias Hawker de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Battery Power International Pte Ltd., Coppervale Enterprises Inc., DCPM Engineering Sdn Bhd, EH Batterien AG, EH Europe GmbH, EH Global Holdings GmbH, EH Swiss Holdings GmbH, ENAS Industrial Batteries Morocco Sarl, EnerSys (Chaozhou) Huada Batteries Company Limited, EnerSys (China) Huada Batteries Company Limited, EnerSys (Chongqing) Huada Batteries Company Limited, EnerSys (Jiangsu) Huada Batteries Company Limited (94.7%) *, EnerSys (Luxembourg) Finance Sarl, EnerSys (Yangzhou) Huada Batteries Co. Ltd., EnerSys A/S, EnerSys AB, EnerSys AD, EnerSys AE, EnerSys AS, EnerSys Advanced Systems Inc., EnerSys Argentina S.A., EnerSys Asia Limited, EnerSys Australia Pty Ltd., EnerSys BV, EnerSys BVBA, EnerSys Battery Private Limited, EnerSys Brasil Ltda., EnerSys Bulgaria EOOD, EnerSys Canada Inc., EnerSys Capital Inc., EnerSys Cayman Euro L.P., EnerSys Cayman Holdings L.P., EnerSys Cayman Inc., EnerSys Delaware Inc., EnerSys Delaware LLC I, EnerSys Delaware LLC II, EnerSys Delaware LLC III, EnerSys Delaware LLC IV, EnerSys Delaware LLC V, EnerSys Energy Products Inc., EnerSys Europe Oy, EnerSys European Holding Co., EnerSys GmbH, EnerSys Holdings (Luxembourg) Sarl, EnerSys Holdings UK Ltd., EnerSys Hungaria Kft., EnerSys India Batteries Private Ltd., EnerSys JSC, EnerSys LLC, EnerSys Ltd., EnerSys Malaysia Sdn Bhd, EnerSys Mexico Holdings LLC, EnerSys Mexico Management LLC, EnerSys Participacoes Ltda., EnerSys Reserve Power Pte. Ltd., EnerSys S.r.l., EnerSys SARL, EnerSys SNC, EnerSys South East Asia Pte. Ltd., EnerSys de Mexico II S de R.L. de CV, EnerSys de Mexico S de R.L. de CV, EnerSys s.r.o., EnerSys sp. z o.o., EnerSystem Chile Ltda., Enersys Aku Sanaya Dis Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Esfinco LLC, Hawker GmbH, Hawker Power Systems Inc., Hawker Powersource Inc., Hawker Systems GmbH & Co. KG., ICS Industries Pty Ltd, ICS Industries Pty Ltd., ICS Sheet Metal Pty Ltd., Industrial Battery Holding Ltda., International Communication Shelters Australasia Pty Ltd., Lancord Pty Ltd., Lenmic Pty Ltd., MIB Energy Sdn Bhd, N Holding AB, National Infrastructure Pty Ltd., National Infrastructure Services Pty Ltd., NaviSemi Energy Pte Ltd., NaviSemi Inc., New Pacifico Realty Inc., NorthStar Battery Company LLC, NorthStar Battery Company LLC, NorthStar Battery DMCC, Outback Power Technologies Inc., Powercom (NSW) Pty Ltd., Powersonic S de R.L. de CV, Purcell Systems, Purcell Systems Inc., Purcell Systems International AB, Quallion LLC, Riverfront Holding S. de R.L. de C.V., Shenzhen Huada Power Supply Mechanical & Electrical Co. Ltd. , SiteTel Shanghai Co Ltd., SiteTel Sweden AB, Telecomponents & Supply (Hong Kong) Ltd., The Enser Corporation, UTS Holdings Sdn Bhd, UTS Technology (JB) Sdn Bhd, UTS Technology (PG) Sdn Bhd, YCI Inc., and Yecoltd S. de R.L. de CV.
The following companies are subsidiares of World Fuel Services: AHT Services LLC, ANY-G B.V., ANY-G Services B.V., AVCARD Holding Company (BVI) Ltd., AVCARD Services (BVI) Ltd., Advance Petroleum LLC, Air Petro Corp., Alta Fuels Llc, Alta Transportation LLC, Altitude Ventures Holding Inc., Amelia Holding AB, Amsterdam Software B.V., Ascent Aviation Group Inc., Associated Petroleum Products, Associated Petroleum Products Inc, Avinode AB, Avinode Aktiebolag, Avinode Group AB, Avinode Inc., Baseops International Inc., Bergen Energi AB, Bunkerfuels, CarterEnergy Corporation, Casa Petro S.R.L., Chrome Club Inc., Colt Aviation Holdings LLC, Colt International, Colt International Europe SARL, Colt International LLC, Colt International das Americas Servicos de Aviacao Ltda., Colt Risk Management Services LLC, Ecuacentair Cia. Ltda., Energie-Tankdienstgesellschaft Bremen mbH, Falmouth Oil Services Limited, Falmouth Petroleum Limited, Gib Oil Limited, Hellenic Aviation Fuel Company S.A., Henty Oil Limited, Henty Shipping Services Limited, Indianhead Oil, JCP Brazil LLC, K T M Inc., KTM Inc, Kinect Consulting LLC, Kinect Energy AS, Kinect Energy Denmark A/S, Kinect Energy France Sarl, Kinect Energy Germany GmbH, Kinect Energy Green Services AS, Kinect Energy Hungary Kft, Kinect Energy Inc., Kinect Energy Markets AS, Kinect Energy Netherlands B.V., Kinect Energy Pty Limited, Kinect Energy Spot AS, Kinect Energy Sweden AB, Kinect Energy UK Limited, LFO Holdings Limited, Lakeside Oil Company Inc, Linton Fuel Oils Limited, MH Aviation Services (Pty) Ltd., MS Europe B.V., MS Lebanon LLC., MS Technology Solutions Costa Rica Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, MSTS Consorzio, MSTS Holding LLC, MSTS Payments LLC, Marine Energy, Multi Service Aero B.V., Multi Service Comercio S. de R.L. de C.V., Multi Service Egypt, Multi Service Holding B.V., Multi Service Middle East FZ-LLC, Multi Service Pre Paid Solutions B.V., Multi Service Private Label B.V., Multi Service Pty Limited, Multi Service Singapore PTE. LTD., Multi Service Technology Solutions, Multi Service Technology Solutions Inc., Multi Service Technology Solutions Inc. / Jordan LLC, Multi Service US Holding LLC, NCS Fuel IQ Limited, NCS UK Holding Co. Limited, NCS US Inc., Nature Port Reception Facilities Limited, Nordic Camp Supply ApS, Nordic Camp Supply B.V., Nordic Camp Supply Estonia OU, Norse Bunker AS, Oil Shipping (Bunkering) B.V., Oil Shipping Korea Limited, Orchard (Holdings) UK Limited, Orchard Energy Limited, PAPCO Inc., PAX Distribution LLC, PT Oil Shipping Trans Indonesia, PT Servicios de Guatemala Limitada, Papco, PayNode AB, Pester Marketing Company, Petro Air Corp, PetroServicios de Costa Rica S.R.L., Petromundo Internacional S.R.L., Redline Oil Services Limited, Resource Recovery of America Inc., SchedAero Inc., Schedaero AB, Servicios Auxiliares de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Servicios Ecuatorianos de Energia-Secsa CIA. LTDA, Servicios WFSE Ecuador C.L., Servicios de Combustible Atlanticos S.R.L, Shell Oil Gibraltar, South Minnesota Lubes, TGS Petroleum Inc, TM Hawkins Brazil LLC, Tamlyn Shipping Limited, Tank and Marine Engineering Limited, Texor Petroleum Company, The Hiller Group Incorporated, The Lubricant Company Limited, Tobras Distribuidora de Combustiveis Ltda., Tramp Group Limited, Tramp Holdings Limited, Tramp Oil & Marine (Argentina) S.R.L., Tramp Oil & Marine (Chile) Limitada, Tramp Oil & Marine Limited, Tramp Oil (Brasil) Ltda., Tramp Oil Germany GmbH, Tramp Oil-Schiffahrts-und Handelsgesellschaft mbH & Co., Trans-Tec Mundial S.R.L., U.S. Energy Engineering Inc., U.S. Energy Services Inc., UVair fuel business, WF Lubricants S.L., WFL (UK) II Limited, WFL (UK) Limited, WFL Mozambique LDA, WFS & J Company Limited, WFS (Guam) Limited, WFS Agencia de Naves Limitada, WFS Commercial Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., WFS Danish Holding Company I ApS, WFS Danish Holding Partnership K/S, WFS UK Holding Company II Limited, WFS UK Holding Company III Limited, WFS UK Holding Partnership II LP, WFS UK Holding Partnership III LP, WFS UK Holding Partnership LP, WFS US Holding Company I LLC, WFS US Holding Company II LLC, WFS US Holding Company III LLC, WFS US Holding Company IV LLC, WFS US Holding Company IX LLC, WFS US Holding Company V LLC, WFS US Holding Company VI LLC, WFS US Holding Company VII LLC, WFS US Holding Company VIII LLC, WFS US Holding Company X LLC, Watson Petroleum, Western Aviation Products LLC, Western Petroleum Company, Wilhelmsen Marine Fuels (WMF), World Fuel CX LLC, World Fuel Capital Limited, World Fuel Cayman Holding Company I, World Fuel Cayman Holding Company III, World Fuel Cayman Holding Company IV, World Fuel Cayman Holding Company V, World Fuel Commodities Services (Ireland) Limited, World Fuel Gas and Power Limited, World Fuel PG Trading Limited, World Fuel Services (Australia) Pty Ltd, World Fuel Services (Bahamas) LLC, World Fuel Services (Costa Rica) Limitada, World Fuel Services (Denmark) ApS, World Fuel Services (Hong Kong) Limited, World Fuel Services (KG) LLC, World Fuel Services (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., World Fuel Services (New Zealand) Limited, World Fuel Services (Panama) Limited Liability Company Sociedad De Responsabilidad Limitada, World Fuel Services (Singapore) II Pte. Ltd., World Fuel Services (Singapore) Pte Ltd, World Fuel Services (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, World Fuel Services (Taiwan) Limited, World Fuel Services (Uruguay) S.A., World Fuel Services Argentina S.R.L., World Fuel Services Aviation Limited, World Fuel Services Belgium BVBA, World Fuel Services CZ s.r.o., World Fuel Services Canada ULC, World Fuel Services Chile Limitada, World Fuel Services Company LLC, World Fuel Services Corporate Aviation Support Services Inc., World Fuel Services Europe Ltd., World Fuel Services European Holding Company I Ltd., World Fuel Services Finance Company S.a.r.L., World Fuel Services France SAS, World Fuel Services Inc., World Fuel Services International (Panama) LLC, World Fuel Services Italy S.r.L., World Fuel Services Japan G.K., World Fuel Services Kenya Limited, World Fuel Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., World Fuel Services Pakistan (Pvt.) Limited, World Fuel Services Peru S.R.L., World Fuel Services Private Limited, World Fuel Services Regulatory Holdings LLC, World Fuel Services Trading DMCC, World Fuel Services Turkey Petrol Urunleri Dagitim Ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, World Fuel Singapore Holding Company I Pte Ltd, World Fuel Singapore Holding Company II Pte Ltd, and Yacht Fuel Services Limited.
The following companies are subsidiares of Illinois Tool Works: A V Co 1 Limited, A V Co 2 Limited, A V Co 3 Limited, ACCU-LUBE Manufacturing GmbH - Schmiermittel und -gerate -, AIP/BI Holdings Inc., Accessories Marketing Holding Corp., Advanced Molding Company Inc., Allen Coding GmbH, Allen France SAS, Alpine Automation Limited, Alpine Engineered Products, Alpine Holdings Inc., Alpine Systems Corporation, Anaerobicos S.r.l., AppliChem GmbH, Arylux Hungary Elektromechanikus Alkatreszgyarto Kft, Avery Berkel France, Avery India Limited, Avery Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avery Weigh Tronix, Avery Weigh-Tronix (Suzhou) Weighing Technology Co. Ltd., Avery Weigh-Tronix Finance Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Holdings Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix International Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix LLC, Avery Weigh-Tronix Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Properties Limited, Azon Limited, B.C. Immo, Beijing Miller Electric Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Berkel (Ireland) Limited, Berrington UK, Brapenta Eletronica Ltda., Brooks Instrument (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Brooks Instrument B.V., Brooks Instrument GmbH, Brooks Instrument KFT, Brooks Instrument Korea Ltd., Brooks Instrument LLC, Buell Industries Inc., CAPMAX Logistica S.A. de C.V., CCI Realty Company, CFC Europe GmbH, CS (Australia) Pty Limited, CS (Finance) Europe S.a.r.l., CS Mexico Holding Company S DE RL DE CV, CSMTS LLC, Calvia Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnosci, Capital Ventures (Australasia) S.a r.l, Capmax Logistica S.A. de C.V., Celeste Industries Corporation, Coeur, Coeur (Shanghai) Medical Appliance Trading Co. Ltd, Coeur Asia Limited, Coeur Holding Company, Coeur Inc., Compagnie Hobart, Compagnie de Materiel et d'Equipements Techniques-Comet, Constructions Isothermiques Bontami C.I.B., Crane Carrier Company, Despatch Industries, Diagraph Corporation Sdn. Bhd, Diagraph ITW Mexico S. de R.L. De C.V., Diagraph Mexico S.A. DE C.V., Dongguan Ark-Les Electric Components Co. Ltd., Dongguan CK Branding Co. Ltd., Dorbyl U.K. (Holdings) Limited, Duo Fast de Espana S.A.U., Duo-Fast Korea Co. Ltd., Duo-Fast LLC, E.C.S. d.o.o., ECS Cable Protection Sp. Zoo, ELRO (Holding) AG, ELRO Grosskuchen GmbH, ELRO-WERKE AG, Elga Skandinavian AS, Elro Group, Eltex-Elektrostatik-Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Envases Multipac S.A. de C.V., Eurotec Srl, FEG Investments L.L.C., Fasver, Filtertek, Filtertek De Mexico Holding Inc., Filtertek De Mexico S.A. de C.V., GC Financement SA, Gamko B.V., Gun Hwa Platech (Taicang) Co. Ltd., HOBART Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Hartness International, Hobart (Japan) K.K., Hobart Andina S.A.S., Hobart Brothers International Chile Limitada, Hobart Brothers LLC, Hobart Dayton Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Hobart Food Equipment Co. Ltd., Hobart Foster Belgium, Hobart International (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Hobart Korea LLC, Hobart LLC, Hobart Nederland B.V., Hobart Sales & Service Inc., Hobart Scandinavia ApS, Hobart Techniek B.V., Horis, ILC Investments Holdings Inc., ITW (China) Investment Company Limited, ITW (Deutschland) GmbH, ITW (EU) Holdings Ltd., ITW (European) Finance Co. Ltd., ITW (European) Finance II Co. Ltd., ITW (European) Finance III Co. Ltd., ITW (Ningbo) Components & Fastenings Systems Co. Ltd., ITW AEP LLC, ITW AOC LLC, ITW Aircraft Investments Inc., ITW Alpha Sarl, ITW Ampang Industries Philippines Inc., ITW Appliance Components EOOD, ITW Appliance Components S.A. de C.V., ITW Appliance Components S.r.l.a, ITW Appliance Components d.o.o., ITW Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, ITW Australia Property Holdings Pty Ltd., ITW Australia Pty Ltd, ITW Automotive Components (Chongqing) Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Components (Langfang) Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Japan K.K., ITW Automotive Korea LLC, ITW Automotive Parts (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, ITW Automotive Products GmbH, ITW Automotive Products Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Bailly Comte, ITW Befestigungssysteme GmbH, ITW Belgium, ITW Brazilian Nominee L.L.C., ITW Building Components Group Inc., ITW CER, ITW CP Distribution Center Holland BV, ITW CS (UK) Ltd., ITW Canada Inc., ITW Celeste Inc., ITW Chemical Products Ltda, ITW Chemical Products Scandinavia ApS, ITW Colombia S.A.S., ITW Construction Products (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW Construction Products (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., ITW Construction Products AB, ITW Construction Products AS, ITW Construction Products ApS, ITW Construction Products CZ s.r.o., ITW Construction Products Italy Srl, ITW Construction Products OU, ITW Construction Products OY, ITW Contamination Control (Wujiang) Co. Ltd., ITW Contamination Control B.V., ITW Covid Security Group Inc., ITW DS Investments Inc., ITW DelFast do Brasil Ltda., ITW Delta Sarl, ITW Denmark ApS, ITW Dynatec, ITW Dynatec Adhesive Equipment (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., ITW Dynatec GmbH, ITW Dynatec Kabushiki Kaisha, ITW EAE B.V., ITW EAE Mexico S de RL de CV, ITW EF&C France SAS, ITW EF&C Selb GmbH, ITW Electronic Business Asia Co. Limited, ITW Electronic Components/Products (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW Electronics (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., ITW Epsilon Sarl, ITW Espana S.A., ITW FEG Hong Kong Limited, ITW FEG do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW Fastener Products GmbH, ITW Finance Designated Activity Company, ITW Finance Europe S.A., ITW Fluids and Hygiene Solutions Ltda., ITW Food Equipment Group LLC, ITW France Finance Alpha S.A.S., ITW GH LLC, ITW GSE ApS, ITW GSE Inc., ITW Gamma Sarl, ITW German Management LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings Y Compania Sociedad en Comandita por Acciones, ITW Global Investments II Inc., ITW Global Investments Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Europe GmbH, ITW Global Tire Repair Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Japan K.K., ITW Graphics (Thailand) Ltd., ITW Graphics Asia Limited, ITW Graphics Italy S.R.L. in liquidazione, ITW Great Britain Investment & Licensing Holding Company, ITW Group France (Luxembourg) S.ar.l., ITW HLP Thailand Co. Ltd., ITW Holding Quimica B.C. S.L. Sole Shareholder Company, ITW Holdings Australia L.P., ITW Holdings I Limited, ITW Holdings II Limited, ITW Holdings III Limited, ITW Holdings IV Limited, ITW Holdings IX Limited, ITW Holdings Inc., ITW Holdings UK, ITW Holdings V Limited, ITW Holdings VI Limited, ITW Holdings VII Limited, ITW Holdings VIII Limited, ITW Holdings X Limited, ITW Holdings XI Limited, ITW Hungary Finance Beta Kft, ITW ILC Holdings I Inc., ITW IPG Investments LLC, ITW Imaden Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW India Private Limited, ITW International Holdings LLC, ITW Invest Holding GmbH, ITW Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, ITW Ireland Unlimited Company, ITW Italy Finance Srl, ITW Italy Holding Srl, ITW Japan Ltd., ITW Korea LLC, ITW LLC & Co. KG, ITW Limited, ITW Lombard Holdings Inc., ITW Lys Fusion S.r.l., ITW M FILMS II LLC, ITW MH LLC, ITW Meritex Sdn. Bhd., ITW Metal Fasteners S.L., ITW Mexico Holding Company S. De R.L. de C.V., ITW Mexico Holdings LLC, ITW Morlock GmbH, ITW Mortgage Investments II Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments III Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments IV Inc., ITW Netherlands Administration BV, ITW Netherlands Beta B.V., ITW Netherlands Finance Alpha BV, ITW New Universal LLC, ITW New Zealand, ITW Novadan Sp. Z.o.o., ITW PPF Brasil Adesivos Ltda., ITW Packaging Technology (China) Co. Ltd., ITW Participations S.a r.l., ITW Pension Funds Trustee Company, ITW Performance Plastic (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Japan Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Korea Limited, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids OOO, ITW Performance Polymers (Wujiang) Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers ApS, ITW Performance Polymers and Fluids Group FZE, ITW Peru S.A.C., ITW Philippines Holdings LLC, ITW Poly Mex S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Polymers Sealants North America Inc., ITW Pronovia s.r.o., ITW Pte. Ltd., ITW Qufu Automotive Cooling Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Real Estate Germany GmbH, ITW Residuals III L.L.C., ITW Residuals IV L.L.C., ITW Rivex, ITW SMPI, ITW SPG Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Simco-Ion (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., ITW Slovakia s.r.o., ITW Spain Holdings S.L., ITW Specialty Film LLC, ITW Specialty Films France, ITW Specialty Materials (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., ITW Spraytec, ITW Sverige AB, ITW Sweden Holding AB, ITW Test & Measurement Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, ITW Test & Measurement GmbH, ITW Test and Measurement Italia Srl, ITW Test and Measurement Services Industry and Trade Ltd., ITW Texwipe Philippines Inc., ITW Thermal Films (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW UK, ITW UK Finance Beta Limited, ITW UK Finance Delta Limited, ITW UK Finance Gamma Limited, ITW UK Finance Limited, ITW UK Finance Zeta Ltd., ITW UK II Limited, ITW Universal II LLC, ITW Welding, ITW Welding AB, ITW Welding GmbH, ITW Welding Products B.V., ITW Welding Products Group FZE, ITW Welding Products Group S. DE R.L. De C.V., ITW Welding Products Italy Srl, ITW Welding Products Limited Liability Company, ITW Welding Produtos Para Solgdagem Ltda., ITW Welding Servicios Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Welding Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW de France, ITW do Brasil Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Ideal Molding Technologies LLC, Illinois Tool Works (Chile) Limitada, Illinois Tool Works (ITW) Nederland B.V., Illinois Tool Works Norway AS, Impar Comercio E Representacoes Ltda., Industrie Plastic Elsasser GmbH, Inmobiliaria Cit. S.A. de C.F., Innova Temperlite Servicios S.A. de C.V., Innovacion y Transformacion Automotriz S.A. de C.V., Instron (Shanghai) Ltd., Instron (Thailand) Limited, Instron Brasil Equipamentos Cientificos Ltda., Instron Foreign Sales Corp. Limited, Instron France S.A.S., Instron GmbH, Instron Holdings Limited, Instron International Limited, Instron Japan Company Ltd., Instron Korea LLC, International Leasing Company LLC, International Truss Systems Proprietary Limited, Isolenge - ITW Sistemas de Isolamento Termico Ltda., KCPL Mauritius Holdings, Kester, Kester Components (M) Sdn. Bhd., Kleinmann GmbH, Krafft S.L., Loma Systems, Loma Systems (Canada) Inc., Loma Systems BV, Loma Systems sro, Lombard Pressings Limited, Lumex Inc., Lys Fusion Poland Sp. z.o.o., M&C Specialties (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., M&C Specialties Co., MAGNAFLUX GmbH, MEHB Holdings Limited, MGHG Property LLC, MOA Enterprises Inc, Manufacturing Avancee S.A., Meritex Technology (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Meurer Verpackungssysteme GmbH, Miller Electric Mfg. LLC, Miller Insurance Ltd., NDT Holding LLC, NOVADAN APS, Norden Olje AB, North Star Imaging Europe, North Star Imaging Inc., Nova Chimica S.r.l., Orbitalum Tools GmbH, PENTA-91 OOO, PR. A. I. Srl, PT ITW Construction Products Indonesia, Pacific Concept Industries Limited (Enping), Panreac Quimica S.L., Paslode Fasteners (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Peerless Machinery Corp., Penta Dnepr LLC, Penta Sever OOO, Penta Volga OOO, Polyrey, Premark FEG L.L.C., Premark HII Holdings LLC, Premark International, Premark International LLC, Prolex Sociedad Anonima, QSA Global Inc., Quimica Industrial Mediterranea S.L., Ramset Fasteners (Hong Kong) Ltd., Rapid Cook LLC, Refrigeration France, S.E.E. Sistemas Industria E Comercio Ltda., ST Mexico Holdings LLC, Sealant Systems International Inc., Sentinel Asia Yuhan Hoesa, Shanghai ITW Plastic & Metal Co. Ltd, Simco (Nederland) B.V., Simco Japan Inc., Societe de Prospection et dInventions Techniques  SPIT, Speedline Holdings I Inc., Speedline Holdings I LLC, Speedline Technologies GmbH, Speedline Technologies Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Speedline Technologies Mexico Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Stokvis Celix Portugal Unipessoal LDA, Stokvis Danmark ApS, Stokvis Holdings S.A.R.L., Stokvis Promi s.r.o, Stokvis Prostick Tapes Private Limited, Stokvis Tapes (Hong Kong) Co. Limited, Stokvis Tapes (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes (Taiwan) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes BVBA, Stokvis Tapes Benelux B.V., Stokvis Tapes Deutschland GmbH, Stokvis Tapes France, Stokvis Tapes Italia s.r.l., Stokvis Tapes Limited, Stokvis Tapes Limited Liability Company, Stokvis Tapes Norge AS, Stokvis Tapes Oy, Stokvis Tapes Polska Sp Z.O.O., Stokvis Tapes Sverige AB, Stolvis Holdings II S.A.R.L., Technopack Industria Comercio Consultoria e Representacoes Ltda., Teknek (China) Limited, Teknek (Japan) Limited, Teksaleco Ltd., The Miller Group Ltd, Thirode Grandes Cuisines Poligny, Tien Tai Electrode (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., Tien Tai Electrode Co. Ltd., Unichemicals Industria e Comercio Ltda., VR-Leasing Sarita GmbH & Co. Immobilien KG, VS European Holdco BV, Valeron Strength Films B.V.B.A., Veneta Decalcogomme S.r.l., Versachem Chile S.A., Vesta, Vesta (Guangzhou) Catering Equipment Co. Ltd, Vesta Global Limited, Viltronics Soltec, Vitronics Soltec B.V., Wachs Canada Ltd., Wachs Subsea LLC, Weigh-Tronix Canada ULC, Weigh-Tronix UK Limited, Wilsonart International Holdings LLC, Wynn Oil (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd., Wynn's Automotive France, Wynn's Belgium BVBA, Wynn's Italia Srl, Wynn's Mekuba India Pvt Ltd, ZF TRW (Engineered Fasteners and Components), and Zip-Pak International B.V..
Jenoptik AG engages in the optics and photonics business in Germany and internationally. The company operates through Light & Optics, Light & Production, and Light & Safety divisions. It offers automation solutions and application products, such as welding and fastening systems, material handling, transfer devices and systems, fixtures, end of arm tooling, and positioners; develops and manufactures metrology solutions comprising dimensional, form, in-process, optical, optical surface inspection, and roughness and contour metrology, as well as laser distance sensors for monitoring and optimizing production processes; microscope and thermographic camera, imaging modules, polymer-based camera modules, and digital imaging platforms; and diode and solid state lasers, laser distance meters, laser machines, and objective lenses and beam expanders for laser perforation, laser cutting, and laser welding applications. The company also provides light detection and ranging sensors; optical systems; optoelectronic systems and components. In addition, it offers traffic safety systems; digital camera technology with license plate recognition; lasers, radar, piezo sensors, and induction loop sensors; back-office software for evaluating traffic monitoring data; and stationary and mobile traffic monitoring. Further, the company provides civil security solutions, such as automatic number plate recognition (ANPR); and TraffiData analysis software, which provides analysis in real time on the incoming data. It serves semiconductor equipment, automotive and suppliers, mechanical engineering, medical technology, traffic, aviation, and security and defense technology companies. Jenoptik AG was founded in 1846 and is headquartered in Jena, Germany.

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Pendragon PLC, together with its subsidiaries, operates in the automotive retail sector in the United Kingdom. It operates through Car Store, Franchised UK Motor, Software, and Leasing segments. The company sells new and used motor cars, motorbikes, trucks, and vans together with associated aftersales activities of service, body repair, and parts sales. It also operates carstore.com, an online marketplace for used cars; and distributes aftermarket parts, accessories, and workshop consumables under the Quickco brand. In addition, the company provides cloud-based dealer management systems; and Licence Link, an online license checking tool for fleets, as well as leases cars and vans to small, medium, and large fleets under the Pendragon Vehicle Management brand, and retails vehicles under the Evans Halshaw and Stratstone brand names. It operates 142 franchise points. Pendragon PLC was incorporated in 1988 and is headquartered in Nottingham, the United Kingdom.

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The Bank of Nova Scotia provides various banking products and services in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Colombia, the Caribbean and Central America, and internationally. It operates through Canadian Banking, International Banking, Global Banking and Markets, and Global Wealth Management segments. The company offers financial advice and solutions, and day-to-day banking products, including debit and credit cards, chequing and saving accounts, investments, mortgages, loans, and insurance to individuals; and business banking solutions comprising lending, deposit, cash management, and trade finance solutions to small businesses and commercial customers, including automotive financing solutions to dealers and their customers. It also provides wealth management advice and solutions, including online brokerage, mobile investment, full-service brokerage, trust, private banking, and private investment counsel services; and retail mutual funds, exchange traded funds, liquid alternative funds, and institutional funds. In addition, the company offers international banking services for retail, corporate, and commercial customers; and lending and transaction, investment banking advisory, and capital markets access services to corporate customers. Further, it provides Internet, mobile, and telephone banking services. The company operates a network of 952 branches and approximately 3,540 automated banking machines in Canada; and approximately 1,400 branches, 5,200 ATMs, and 22 contact centers internationally. The Bank of Nova Scotia was founded in 1832 and is headquartered in Halifax, Canada.

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Ameriprise Financial, Inc. operates as a holding company. The firm provides financial planning, asset management and insurance services to individuals, businesses and institutions. It operates through the following business segments: Advice & Wealth Management, Asset Management, Retirement & Protection Solutions, and Corporate & Other. The Advice & Wealth Management segment provides financial planning and advice, as well as full service brokerage and banking services, primarily to retail clients through the company's financial advisors. The Asset Management segment provides investment advice and investment products to retail and institutional clients. It also provides products and services on a global scale through two complementary asset management businesses: Columbia Management and Threadneedle. The Columbia Management business primarily provides U.S. domestic products and services and Threadneedle primarily provides international investment products and services. Its international retail products are primarily provided through third-party financial institutions. The segments retail products include mutual funds and variable product funds underlying insurance and annuity separat

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The following companies are subsidiares of BlackRock: Acero Cooperatief U.A., Acero Holdings I B.V., Amethyst Merger Sub LLC, AnalytX Hosting LLC, AnalytX LLC, AnalytX Software LLC, Aperio, Aperio, Aquila Heywood, Asia-Pacific Private Credit Opportunities Fund I (GenPar) Ltd., BAA Holdings LLC, BFM Holdco LLC, BLK (Gallatin) Holdings LLC, BLK SMI LLC, BR Acquisition Mexico S.A. de C.V., BR Jersey International Holdings L.P., Beijing eFront Software Company Limited, BlackRock (Barbados) Finco 1 SRL, BlackRock (Channel Islands) Limited, BlackRock (Luxembourg) S.A., BlackRock (Netherlands) B.V., BlackRock (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BlackRock (Singapore) Holdco II Pte. Ltd., BlackRock (Singapore) Holdco Pte. Limited, BlackRock (Singapore) Limited, BlackRock AP Investment Holdco LLC, BlackRock Advisors (UK) Limited, BlackRock Advisors LLC, BlackRock Advisors Singapore Pte. Limited, BlackRock Alternative Advisors GP Holdings LLC, BlackRock Alternatives Management LLC, BlackRock Argentina Asesorias Ltda., BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited, BlackRock Asset Management Deutschland AG, BlackRock Asset Management International Inc., BlackRock Asset Management Investor Services Limited, BlackRock Asset Management Ireland Limited, BlackRock Asset Management North Asia Limited, BlackRock Asset Management Schweiz AG, BlackRock Asset Management UK Limited, BlackRock Australia Holdco Pty. Ltd., BlackRock Brasil Gestora de Investimentos Ltda., BlackRock Cal 1 Investor LLC, BlackRock Canada Holdings LP, BlackRock Canada Holdings ULC, BlackRock Capital Holdings Inc., BlackRock Capital Investment Advisors LLC, BlackRock Capital Management Inc., BlackRock Cayco Limited, BlackRock Cayman 1 LP, BlackRock Cayman Capital Holdings Limited, BlackRock Cayman Finco 2 Limited, BlackRock Cayman Finco 3 Limited, BlackRock Cayman Finco Limited, BlackRock Cayman West Bay Finco Limited, BlackRock Cayman West Bay IV Limited, BlackRock Cayman Z Limited, BlackRock Channel Islands Holdco Limited, BlackRock Chile Asesorias Limitada, BlackRock Colombia Holdco LLC, BlackRock Colombia Infraestructura S.A.S., BlackRock Colombia SAS, BlackRock Company Secretarial Services (UK) Limited, BlackRock Corporation US Inc., BlackRock Delaware Holdings Inc., BlackRock Enterprise Management Services (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BlackRock Europe Development Management Limited, BlackRock Execution Services, BlackRock Finance Europe Limited, BlackRock Financial Management Inc., BlackRock Finco LLC, BlackRock Finco UK Ltd., BlackRock First Partner Limited, BlackRock France SAS, BlackRock Fund Advisors, BlackRock Fund Management Company S.A., BlackRock Fund Managers Limited, BlackRock Funding International Ltd., BlackRock Funds Services Group LLC, BlackRock Germany GmBH, BlackRock Group Limited, BlackRock HK Holdco Limited, BlackRock Holdco 2 Inc., BlackRock Holdco 3 LLC, BlackRock Holdco 4 LLC, BlackRock Holdco 5 LLC, BlackRock Holdco 6 LLC, BlackRock Hungary Kft, BlackRock Index Services LLC, BlackRock Infrastructure Management I LLC, BlackRock Institutional Services Inc., BlackRock Institutional Trust Company National Association, BlackRock International Holdings Inc., BlackRock International Limited, BlackRock Investment Management (Australia) Limited, BlackRock Investment Management (Dublin) Limited, BlackRock Investment Management (Korea) Limited, BlackRock Investment Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BlackRock Investment Management (Taiwan) Limited, BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Limited, BlackRock Investment Management Ireland Holdings Limited, BlackRock Investment Management LLC, BlackRock Investments LLC, BlackRock Japan Co. Ltd., BlackRock Japan Holdings GK, BlackRock Jersey Finco 2 Limited, BlackRock Latin America Holdco LLC, BlackRock Latin American Holdings B.V., BlackRock Life Limited, BlackRock Lux Finco S.a r.l., BlackRock Luxembourg Holdco S.a r.l., BlackRock Mexican Holdco B.V., BlackRock Mexico Infraestructura I S. de R.L. de C.V., BlackRock Mexico Infraestructura II S. de R.L. de C.V., BlackRock Mexico Infraestructura III S. de R.L. de C.V., BlackRock Mexico Manager II S. de R.L. de C.V., BlackRock Mexico Manager III S. de R.L. de C.V., BlackRock Mexico Manager S de R.L. de C.V., BlackRock Mexico Operadora S.A. de C.V. Sociedad Operadora de Fondos de Inversion, BlackRock Mortgage Ventures LLC, BlackRock Niagara LLC, BlackRock Operations (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., BlackRock Overseas Investment Fund Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BlackRock PC Holdings LLC, BlackRock Pensions Limited, BlackRock Peru Asesorias S.A., BlackRock Property Consulting (Beijing) Co. Ltd., BlackRock Property France S.a.r.l., BlackRock Property Lux S.a.r.l., BlackRock Property Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., BlackRock Realty Advisors Inc., BlackRock Saudi Arabia, BlackRock Scale Holdings LLC, BlackRock Services India Private Limited, BlackRock Singapore III Pte. Ltd., BlackRock Slovakia s.r.o., BlackRock Strategic Investors GP LLC, BlackRock Strategic Investors LP, BlackRock Trident Holding Company Limited, BlackRock UK (Alpha) Limited, BlackRock UK (Beta) Limited, BlackRock UK (Delta) LP, BlackRock UK (Gamma) Limited, BlackRock UK (Sigma) Limited, BlackRock UK 2 LLP, BlackRock UK 3 LLP, BlackRock UK 4 LLP, BlackRock UK A LLP, BlackRock UK Holdco 2 Limited, BlackRock UK Holdco Limited, Blackhawk Investment Holding LLC, CIE Automotive, Cachematrix Holdings, Cachematrix Holdings LLC, Cachematrix Integrations Private Limited, Cachematrix Software Solutions LLC, Cachematrix UK Limited, FutureAdvisor Inc., Glass Mountain Pipeline, Global Energy & Power Infrastructure Advisors LLC, Global Energy & Power Infrastructure II Advisors LLC, Grosvenor Alternate Partner Limited, Grosvenor Ventures Limited, HLX Financial Holdings LLC, MGPA (Bermuda) Limited, MGPA (Exec) Limited, MGPA Limited, Mercury Carry Company Ltd., Mercury Private Equity MUST 3 (Jersey) Limited, Object Capital Technology Inc., Phoenix Acquisition B.V., Phoenix Acquisitions Holdings LLC, Portfolio Administration & Management Ltd., Prestadora de Servicios Integrales BlackRock Mexico S.A. de C.V., SVOF/MM LLC, St. Albans House Nominees (Jersey) Ltd., State Street Research & Management, Tennenbaum Capital Partners LLC, Tennenbaum Capital Partners LLC, Tlali Acero S.A. de C.V. SOFOM ENR, Trident Merger LLC, eFront, eFront, eFront (Jersey) Limited, eFront DMLT Holdings LLC, eFront DMLT Holdings S.R.L, eFront DR S.R.L, eFront Do Brasil Solucoes Informaticas Para Sistemas Financeiros Ltda., eFront FZ-LLC, eFront Financial Solutions Inc., eFront GmbH, eFront Holding II SAS, eFront Holdings SAS, eFront Hong Kong Limited, eFront II SAS, eFront Kabushiki Kaisha, eFront Ltd, eFront SAS, eFront Singapore Pte. Ltd, eFront Software Luxembourg S.a r.l., eFront Solutions Financeieres Inc., eFront d.o.o. Beograd, iShares (DE) I Investmentaktiengesellschaft mit Teilgesellschaftsvermogen, and iShares Delaware Trust Sponsor LLC.
The following companies are subsidiares of Eastman Chemical: BP - Aviation Turbine Oil Business, CP Films Vertriebs GmbH, Commonwealth Laminating & Coating (Hong Kong) Limited, Commonwealth Laminating & Coating Inc, Crown Operations International LLC, Dynaloy, Eastman Administracion S.A. de C.V., Eastman Chemical (Barbados) SRL, Eastman Chemical (China) Co. Ltd., Eastman Chemical (China) Co. Ltd. - Guangzhou Branch, Eastman Chemical (China) Co. Ltd. - JingAn Branch, Eastman Chemical (Gibraltar) Limited, Eastman Chemical (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Eastman Chemical (PPU) Pte. Ltd., Eastman Chemical AMI GmbH, Eastman Chemical AMI LLC, Eastman Chemical AP Holdings B.V., Eastman Chemical Adhesives (Hong Kong) Limited, Eastman Chemical Advanced Materials B.V., Eastman Chemical Argentina S.R.L., Eastman Chemical Asia Pacific Pte Ltd-Indonesia Rep Office, Eastman Chemical Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Eastman Chemical Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. - Vietnam Representative Office, Eastman Chemical Australia Pty LTD - New Zealand Branch, Eastman Chemical Australia Pty. Ltd., Eastman Chemical B.V., Eastman Chemical B.V. - Czech Republic Representative Office, Eastman Chemical B.V. - Denmark Branch, Eastman Chemical B.V. - Filiale Italiana, Eastman Chemical B.V. - France Branch, Eastman Chemical B.V. - Hungarian Commercial Representative Office, Eastman Chemical B.V. - Poland Representative Office, Eastman Chemical B.V. - South Africa Representative Office, Eastman Chemical B.V. Taiwan Branch, Eastman Chemical B.V. The Hague Zug Branch, Eastman Chemical Canada Inc., Eastman Chemical Company Investments Inc., Eastman Chemical EMEA B.V., Eastman Chemical Europe Middle East and Africa LLC, Eastman Chemical Europe S.a.r.l., Eastman Chemical Fibers IP GmbH, Eastman Chemical Fibers IP LLC, Eastman Chemical Finance B.V., Eastman Chemical Finance CN S.a.r.l., Eastman Chemical Finance EUR S.a.r.l., Eastman Chemical Finance GBP S.a.r.l., Eastman Chemical Finance SGD S.a.r.l., Eastman Chemical Finance USD S.a.r.l., Eastman Chemical Financial Corporation, Eastman Chemical GDL S.a.r.l., Eastman Chemical Germany Holdings GmbH & Co. KG, Eastman Chemical Germany Management GmbH & Co. KG, Eastman Chemical Germany Verwaltungs-GmbH, Eastman Chemical Global Holdings LLC, Eastman Chemical Global Holdings S.a.r.l., Eastman Chemical GmbH, Eastman Chemical HK Limited, Eastman Chemical Holdings do Brasil Ltda., Eastman Chemical Hong Kong B.V., Eastman Chemical Iberica S.L., Eastman Chemical India Private Limited, Eastman Chemical Intermediates (Hong Kong) Limited, Eastman Chemical International GmbH, Eastman Chemical International Holdings B.V., Eastman Chemical International LP LLC, Eastman Chemical Japan Ltd., Eastman Chemical Korea B.V., Eastman Chemical Korea Ltd., Eastman Chemical Latin America Inc., Eastman Chemical Ltd., Eastman Chemical Ltd. - Australia Branch, Eastman Chemical Ltd. - Singapore Branch, Eastman Chemical Ltd. - Taiwan Branch, Eastman Chemical Luxembourg Finance S.a.r.l., Eastman Chemical Luxembourg Holdings 1 LLC, Eastman Chemical Luxembourg Holdings 1 S.a.r.l., Eastman Chemical Luxembourg Holdings 2 S.a.r.l., Eastman Chemical Luxembourg Holdings LLC, Eastman Chemical Luxembourg Holdings S.a.r.l., Eastman Chemical Malaysia B.V., Eastman Chemical Middelburg B.V., Eastman Chemical Netherlands Limited, Eastman Chemical Products Singapore Pte. Ltd., Eastman Chemical Regional UK, Eastman Chemical Resins Inc., Eastman Chemical S.C.S., Eastman Chemical Singapore Pte. Ltd., Eastman Chemical Switzerland GmbH, Eastman Chemical Technology BVBA, Eastman Chemical Texas City Inc., Eastman Chemical US Finance LLC, Eastman Chemical Uruapan S.A. de C.V., Eastman Chemical Workington Limited, Eastman Chemical do Brasil Ltda., Eastman Cogen Management L.L.C., Eastman Cogeneration L.P., Eastman Company UK Limited, Eastman Fibers Korea Limited, Eastman Fibers Singapore Pte. Ltd., Eastman Foundation, Eastman Global Holdings Inc., Eastman International Holdings LLC, Eastman International Management Company, Eastman Italia S.r.l., Eastman Kimya Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Eastman LAR Distribucion S. de R.L. de C.V., Eastman Mazzucchelli Hong Kong Limited, Eastman Mazzucchelli Plastics (Shenzhen) Company Limited, Eastman Servicios Corporativos S.A. de C.V., Eastman Spain L.L.C., Eastman Specialties Corporation, Eastman Specialties Holdings Corporation, Eastman Specialties OU, Eastman Specialties S.a.r.l., Eastman Specialties Wuhan Youji Chemical Co. Ltd, Eastman de Argentina SRL, Ecuataminco S.A., Flexsys America L.P., Flexsys America LLC, Flexsys Chemicals (M) Sdn Bhd, Flexsys K.K., Flexsys Rubber Chemicals Limited, Flexsys Verkauf GmbH, Flexsys Verkauf GmbH - France Branch, Flexsys Verwaltungs- und Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Genovique Specialties Corporation, HDK Industries Inc., Holston Defense Corporation, Huper Optik (GP) L.L.C., Huper Optik International Pte. Ltd., Huper Optik U.S.A. L.P., Industriepark Nienburg GmbH, Kingsport Hotel L.L.C., Knowlton Technologies LLC, Monchem International LLC, Mustang Pipeline Company, Nanjing Yangzi Eastman Chemical Ltd, Novomatrix Inc., Novomatrix International Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Qilu Eastman Specialty Chemicals Ltd, S E Investment LLC, Sakra Hyco Pte. Ltd., Sakra Island Carbon Dioxide Pte Ltd, Scandiflex do Brasil Ltda., Solchem LLC, Solchem Netherlands C.V., Solutia (Thailand) Ltd., Solutia Brasil Ltda., Solutia Canada Inc., Solutia Chemicals France S.a.r.l., Solutia Chemicals India Private Limited, Solutia Chemicals India Private Limited - Branch, Solutia Deutschland GmbH, Solutia Europe BVBA - Portugal Representative Office, Solutia Europe BVBA - Russia Representative Office, Solutia Europe SPRL/BVBA, Solutia Greater China LLC, Solutia Hong Kong Limited, Solutia Inc., Solutia International Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Solutia Italia S.r.l., Solutia Japan Limited, Solutia Performance Products (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Solutia Performance Products Solutions Ltd., Solutia Singapore Pte. Ltd., Solutia Solar GmbH, Solutia Therminol Co. Ltd. Suzhou, Solutia Tlaxcala S.A. de C.V., Solutia UK Holdings Limited, Solutia UK Investments Limited, Solutia UK Limited, Solutia Venezuela S.R.L., Southwall Europe GmbH, Southwall Insulating Glass LLC, Southwall Technologies Inc., St. Gabriel CC Company LLC, Sterling Chemicals Inc, SunTek Australia Pty. Ltd., SunTek Films Canada Inc., SunTek UK Limited, TX Energy LLC, Taminco Argentina S.A., Taminco BVBA, Taminco BVBA - France Rep Office, Taminco BVBA - Hungarian Commercial Representative Office, Taminco BVBA - Oficina de Representacion en Espana, Taminco BVBA - The Philippines, Taminco Chile S.p.A, Taminco Choline Chloride (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Taminco Corporation, Taminco Finland Oy, Taminco Germany GmbH, Taminco Global Chemical LLC, Taminco Group BVBA, Taminco Group Holdings S.a.r.l., Taminco Holding Netherlands B.V., Taminco Intermediate LLC, Taminco Italia S.r.l., Taminco Limitada, Taminco Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Taminco US LLC, Taminco Uruguay S.A., Taminco de Guatemala S.A., Taminco de Honduras S.A. de C.V., Taminco do Brasil Comercio e Industria de Aminas Ltda., Taminco do Brasil Produtos Quimicos Ltda., Te An Ling Tian (Nanjing) Fine Chemical Co. Ltd., TetraVitae Bioscience, V-Kool International Pte. Ltd., and Yixing Taminco Feed Additives Co. Ltd..
The following companies are subsidiares of Prudential Financial: 210-220 E. 22nd Street SSGA Owner LLC, AIG Edison, AIG Star, AREF Cayman Co Ltd., AREF GP II Pte. Ltd., AREF GP Ltd., ASPF II - Feeder Fund GmbH, ASPF II - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, ASPF II Management GmbH, ASPF III (Scots) L.P., ASSURANCE, AST Investment Services Inc., Adlerwerke CB Investment LLC, Administradora de Fondos de Pensiones Habitat S.A., Administradora de Inversiones Previsionales SpA, Aoba Life Insurance Company, Asia Property Fund III GP S.a.r.l., Assurance IQ LLC, Assurance Intelligence LLC, BSC CP LP, Braeloch Holdings Inc., Braeloch Successor Corporation, Brazilian Capital Fund GP Limited, Broad Street Global Advisors LLC, Broome Street Holdings LLC, CB German Retail LLC, CLIS Co. Ltd., COLICO INC., Campus Drive LLC, Capital Agricultural Property Services Inc., Chadwick Boulevard Investment Holdings Co. LLC, Cibecue LLC, Coconino LLC, Colico II Inc., Columbus Drive Partners L.P., Commerce Street Holdings LLC, Commerce Street Investments LLC, Coolidge LLC, Coral Reef GP, Coral Reef L.P., Coral Reef Unit Trust, Cottage Street Investments LLC, Cottage Street Orbit Acquisition LLC, DHFL PRAMERICA LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED, DICKENS AVENUE HOLDINGS VI LLC, DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI (Ireland) L.P., DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI (US) L.P., Don Cesar Investor LLC, Dryden Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Dryden Finance II LLC, EVP II GP S.a r.l., EVP II Sweden Resi I GP S.a r.l., Edison Place Senior Note LLC, Essex LLC, EuroCore GP S.a r.l., European Value Partners GP S.a.r.l., Everbright PGIM Fund Management Co. Ltd., Flagstaff LLC, GA 1600 Commons LLC, GA 333 Hennepin Investor LLC, GA BV LLC, GA Bay Area GP LLC, GA Bay Area Investor LLC, GA Belden LLC, GA CLARENDON LLC, GA Cal Crossings LLC, GA Collins LLC, GA E. 22nd Street Apartments Holdings LLC, GA East 86 Street LLC, GA JHCII LLC, GA MENLO PARK INVESTOR LLC, GA Manor at Harbour Island LLC, GA Metro LLC, GA Mission LLC, GA TRITON INVESTOR LLC, GA W Paces LLC, GA/MDI 333 Hennepin Associates LLC, GIBRALTAR BSN HOLDINGS SDN BHD, GIBRALTAR INDIA SOLUTIONS LLP, Gateway Holdings II LLC, Gateway Holdings LLC, German Retail Income CP LP, Gibraltar BSN Life Berhad, Gibraltar International Insurance Services Company Inc., Gibraltar International Service LLC, Gibraltar Reinsurance Company Ltd., Gibraltar Universal Life Reinsurance Company, Glenealy International Limited, Global Portfolio Strategies Inc., Gold GP Limited, Gold II L.P., Gold L.P., Graham Resources Inc., Graham Royalty Ltd., Green Tree GP, Green Tree L.P., Greenlee LLC, Halsey Street Investments LLC, Hirakata LLC, IVP Fund GP LLC, Impact Investments Bridges UK S.a.r.l, Inter-Atlantic G Fund L.P., Inversiones Previsionales Chile SpA, Inversiones Previsionales Dos SpA, Ironbound Fund LLC, Jennison Associates LLC, Kyarra S.a r.l., Kyoei Annuity Home Co. Ltd., LINEUP LLC, Lake Street Partners IV L.P., MC GA COLLINS HOLDINGS LLC, MC GA COLLINS REALTY LLC, MC Insurance Agency Services LLC, Manor at Harbour Island LLC, Marble Canyon LLC, Maricopa LLC, Market Street Holdings IV LLC, Morenci LLC, Mulberry Street Holdings LLC, Mulberry Street Investment L.P., Mulberry Street Partners LLC, Mullin TBG Insurance Agency Services LLC, MullinTBG Insurance Agency Services, National Family Assurance Group LLC, New Savanna, Orchard Street Acres Inc., PAI Bay Farm LLC, PAI Bayrock Groves LLC, PAI Belvidere Farms LLC, PAI Big Cypress Farm LLC, PAI Corcoran 640 Ranch LLC, PAI DeKalb Farm LLC, PAI Delano 1500 Ranches LLC, PAI Flicker Orchard LLC, PAI Good Hope Farm LLC, PAI Hawk Creek Ranch LLC, PAI Hills Valley Ranches LLC, PAI Holly Hill Groves LLC, PAI Hunt Farm LLC, PAI Jackson Bayou Farm LLC, PAI Lake Placid Groves LLC, PAI Wallula Gap Vineyard LLC, PCP V Cayman AIV GP L.P., PEREF II Co-Invest 1 GP S.a r.l., PEREF II GP S.a r.l., PEREF II PV S.r.l, PFI EM-Tech Fund I LLC, PG Business Service Co. Ltd, PG Collection Service Co. Ltd., PGA Asian Retail Limited, PGA European Limited, PGI Co. Ltd, PGIM (Australia) Pty Ltd, PGIM (Hong Kong) Ltd., PGIM (Scots) Limited, PGIM (Shanghai) Company Ltd., PGIM (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., PGIM AVP IV GP S.a r.l., PGIM Advisory (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PGIM Agricultural Investments GP LLC, PGIM Agricultural Investors LP, PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Fund L.P., PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Partners LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management (Feeder) VI LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Fund VI L.P., PGIM European Financing Limited, PGIM European Services Limited, PGIM Financial Limited, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund II L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives GP LLC, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives II GP LLC, PGIM Foreign Investments Inc., PGIM Holding Company LLC, PGIM INDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM INDIA TRUSTEES PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM Inc., PGIM International Financing Inc., PGIM Investments LLC, PGIM Japan Co. Ltd., PGIM Korea Inc., PGIM LTIF Berlin GP S.a r.l., PGIM LTIF Berlin MLP S.ar.l., PGIM LTIF GP S.a.r.l., PGIM Limited, PGIM Loan Originator Manager Limited, PGIM M Campus GP S.a r.l., PGIM Management Partner Limited, PGIM MetaProp Investor LP LLC, PGIM Netherlands B.V., PGIM Overseas Investment Fund Management (Shanghai) Company Ltd, PGIM Private Capital (Ireland) Limited, PGIM Private Capital Limited, PGIM Private Placement Investors Inc., PGIM Private Placement Investors L.P., PGIM REF EUROPE SCSp, PGIM REF Europe GP S.a r.l., PGIM REF Europe Member LLC, PGIM REF Intermediary Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate (Japan) Ltd., PGIM Real Estate (UK) Limited, PGIM Real Estate CD S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Capital VII GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest L.P., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest SCSp, PGIM Real Estate Co-Invest Holdings LLC, PGIM Real Estate Debt GmbH, PGIM Real Estate Finance Holding Company, PGIM Real Estate Finance LLC, PGIM Real Estate France SAS, PGIM Real Estate Germany AG, PGIM Real Estate Global Debt GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Inmuebles S. de R.L. de C.V, PGIM Real Estate Italy S.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Loan Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate Luxembourg S.A., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate Management Luxembourg S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Mexico S.C., PGIM Real Estate S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate U.S. Debt Fund GP LLC, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management (Feeder) I LLC, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management Fund I L.P., PGIM Strategic Financing LLC, PGIM Strategic Investments Inc., PGIM USPF VI Manager LLC, PGIM Warehouse Inc., PGLH of Delaware Inc., PIFM Holdco LLC, PIIC Limited, PIISC Holdings (UK) Limited, PIM KF Blocker Holdings LLC, PIM KF Blocker V Holdings LLC, PIM USPF V Manager LLC, PLA Administradora Industrial SRL, PLA Administradora LLC, PLA Administradora S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional II S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional S.de R.L. de C.V., PLA Co-Investor LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager I LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager II LLC, PLA Mexico Residential Manager I LLC, PLA Residential Fund III Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund III Limited Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund III Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund IV Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund IV Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund I Blue LP, PLA Retail Fund I LP, PLA Retail Fund I Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund I Red LP, PLA Retail Fund II Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LP, PLA Retail Fund II Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II U.S. Carry/Co-Invest LP, PLA Services Manager Mexico LLC, PLAI Limited, PMCF Holdings LLC, PMCF Properties LLC, PPPF General Partner LLP, PR GA SCP Apartments LLC, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP (SCOTS FEEDER) LLP, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP LLP, PRECO ACCOUNT III LLC, PRECO ACCOUNT PARTNERSHIP III LP, PRECO Account IV LLC, PRECO Account Partnership IV LP, PRECO III GP LLP, PREFG Hanwha Manager LLC, PREI Acquisition I Inc., PREI Acquisition II Inc., PREI Acquisition LLC, PREI HYDG LLC, PREI International Inc., PRIAC Property Acquisitions LLC, PRICOA Management Partner Limited, PRISA Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Pooled Manager LLC, PRISA III Fund GP LLC, PRISA III Fund PIM LLC, PRREF II Fund Manager LLC, PRU 3XSquare LLC, PRUCO LLC, PRUDENTIAL CAPITAL ENERGY PARTNERS MANAGEMENT (FEEDER) LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP MEMBER LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP REIT LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE 2 LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE LLC, PT PFI Mega Life Insurance, Passaic Fund LLC, Pine Tree GP, Pine Tree L.P., Platinum GP Limited, Platinum II L.P., Platinum L.P., Pramerica (Hong Kong) Holdings Limited, Pramerica (Luxembourg) CP GP S.a.r.l., Pramerica (Scots) CP GP LLP, Pramerica Business Consulting (Shanghai) Company Limited, Pramerica EVP CP LP, Pramerica Financial Asia Headquarters Pte. Ltd., Pramerica Financial Asia Limited, Pramerica Fixed Income Funds Management Limited, Pramerica Fosun Life Insurance Co. Ltd., Pramerica General Partner LLP, Pramerica Holdings Ltd, Pramerica Insurance Agency (China) Company Ltd., Pramerica PRECAP I GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP II GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP III GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP IV GP LLP, Pramerica Pan European Real Estate (Scots) LP, Pramerica Property Partners Fund (Scotland) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I (Scotland) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I GP (Scots Feeder) LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital II (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital III (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP (Scots Feeder) LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP Limited, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V (Netherlands) GP LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital VI (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica SGR S.p.A, Pramerica Systems Ireland Limited, Preco III (Scotland) Limited Partnership, Pru 101 Wood LLC, Pru Alpha Partners I LLC, Pru Fixed Income Emerging Markets Partners I LLC, PruVen Capital Partners Fund I L.P., Pruco Assignment Corporation, Pruco Life Insurance Company, Pruco Life Insurance Company of New Jersey, Pruco Securities LLC, Prudential 900 Aviation Boulevard LLC, Prudential Affordable Mortgage Company LLC, Prudential Agricultural Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Annuities Distributors Inc., Prudential Annuities Holding Company Inc., Prudential Annuities Inc., Prudential Annuities Information Services & Technology Corporation, Prudential Annuities Life Assurance Corporation, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Captive Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Universal Company, Prudential Bank & Trust FSB, Prudential Capital Energy Opportunity Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners Management Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Partners Management Fund IV L.P., Prudential Capital and Investment Services LLC, Prudential Chile II SpA, Prudential Chile SpA, Prudential Commercial Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Customer Solutions LLC, Prudential Equity Group LLC, Prudential Financial Securities Investment Trust Enterprise, Prudential Fixed Income Global Liquidity Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Fixed Income U.S. Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Funding LLC, Prudential General Services of Japan Y.K., Prudential Gibraltar Agency Co. Ltd., Prudential Global Funding LLC, Prudential Holdings of Japan Inc., Prudential Huntoon Paige Associates LLC, Prudential IBH Holdco Inc., Prudential Impact Investments Mortgage Loans LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Debt LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Equity LLC, Prudential Industrial Properties LLC, Prudential Insurance Agency LLC, Prudential International Insurance Holdings Ltd., Prudential International Insurance Service Company L.L.C., Prudential International Investments Advisers LLC, Prudential International Investments Company LLC, Prudential International Investments LLC, Prudential Investment Management Services LLC, Prudential Japan Holdings LLC, Prudential Legacy Insurance Company of New Jersey, Prudential Life Insurance Company of Taiwan Inc., Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 1 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 2 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Capital Asset Holding Company LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Funding LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Holdings LLC, Prudential Multifamily Mortgage LLC, Prudential Mutual Fund Services LLC, Prudential Newark Realty LLC, Prudential QOZ Investment Fund 1 LLC, Prudential Realty Securities Inc., Prudential Retirement Financial Services Holding LLC, Prudential Retirement Holdings LLC, Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company, Prudential Securities Secured Financing Corporation, Prudential Securities Structured Assets Inc., Prudential Seguros Mexico S.A. de C.V., Prudential Seguros S.A., Prudential Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Prudential Structured Settlement Company, Prudential Systems Japan Limited, Prudential Term Reinsurance Company, Prudential Trust Co. Ltd., Prudential Trust Company, Prudential Universal Reinsurance Company, Prudential Workplace Solutions Group Services LLC, Prudential do Brasil Seguros de Vida S.A., Prudential do Brasil Vida em Grupo S.A., Prudential/TMW Real Estate Group LLC, Pruservicos Participacoes Ltda., QMA JP EM All Cap Equity Partners LLC, QMA LLC, QMA Wadhwani LLP, Quartzsite LLC, Residential Services Corporation of America LLC, Rio CP LP, Rock European Real Estate Holdings S.ar.l., Rock Global Real Estate LLC, Rock Kensington Limited, Rock Marty GP S.a r.l., Rock Oxford S.a r.l., Rock UK Real Estate Holdings S.ar.l., Rock UK Real Estate II S.a.r.l., Rockstone Co. Ltd., Rosado Grande LLC, Ross Avenue Energy Fund Holdings LLC, Ross Avenue Minerals 2012 LLC, SCP Apartments LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERS VI GP LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERSHIP FUND VI GP LLC, SHP IV Carried Interest LP, SHP V Carried Interest L.P., SMP Holdings Inc., SVIIT Holdings Inc., Sanei Collection Service Co. Ltd. (Kabushiki Kaisha Sanei Shuuno Service), Senior Housing Partners IV L.L.C., Senior Housing Partners V LLC, Senior Housing Partnership Fund IV L.L.C., Senior Housing Partnership Fund V LLC, Sterling Private Placement Management LLP, Stetson Street Partners L.P., Strand Investments Limited, TBG Insurance Services Corporation, TENSATOR HOLDINGS LTD, TF Proveedora S.C., TMW ASPF I Verwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, TMW ASPF Management GmbH, TMW Management LLC, TMW Real Estate Group LLC, TMW Realty Advisors LLC, TMW USPF Verwaltungs GmbH, TRGOAG Company Inc., The Gibraltar Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Keynes Dynamic Beta Strategy (US) Fund GP LLC, The Prudential Assigned Settlement Services Corp., The Prudential Brazilian Capital Fund LP, The Prudential Gibraltar Financial Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Prudential Home Mortgage Company Inc., The Prudential Insurance Company of America, The Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd., The Prudential Real Estate Financial Services of America Inc., The WMF Group, Thurloe Commercial Guernsey Limited, Times Square Center Associates, USPF V - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, USPF V Carry LLC, USPF V Co-Invest LLC, USPF V Investment LP, United States Property Fund VI GP S.a r.l., Vailsburg Fund LLC, Vantage Casualty Insurance Company, Wabash Avenue Holdings V LLC, Wabash Avenue Partners V L.P., Wadhwani Capital Limited, Waveland Avenue Holdings I LLC, Waveland Avenue Partners I (Ireland) L.P., Waveland Avenue Partners I (US) L.P., Wellness Services Ecossistema De Bem Estar Ltda., Wellness Services SRL, Yamato Life, and Yavapai LLC.
Royal Bank of Canada operates as a diversified financial service company worldwide. The company's Personal & Commercial Banking segment offers checking and savings accounts, home equity financing, personal lending, private banking, indirect lending, mutual funds and self-directed brokerage accounts, guaranteed investment certificates, credit cards, and payment products and solutions; and lending, leasing, deposit, investment, foreign exchange, cash management, auto dealer financing, trade products, and services to small and medium-sized commercial businesses. This segment offers financial products and services through branches, automated teller machines, and mobile sales network. Its Wealth Management segment provides a suite of advice-based solutions and strategies to high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals, and institutional clients. The company's Insurance segment offers life, health, home, auto, travel, wealth, annuities, and reinsurance advice and solutions; and creditor and business insurance services to individual, business, and group clients through its field sales force, advice centers, and online, as well as through independent insurance advisors and affinity relationships. Its Investor & Treasury Services segment provides asset, cash management, transaction banking, and treasury services to institutional clients; correspondent banking and trade finance services for financial institutions; and short-term funding and liquidity management services. The company's Capital Markets segment offers corporate and investment banking, as well as equity and debt origination, distribution, sale, and trading services for corporations, institutional investors, asset managers, governments, and central banks. Royal Bank of Canada has a strategic partnership with Royal College Of Physicians & Surgeons Of Canada to support the needs of Canada's medical specialists. The company was founded in 1864 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

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Unum Group is engaged in providing financial protection benefits. It operates through the following segments: Unum US, Unum International, Colonial Life, Closed Block and Corporate. The Unum US segment comprises of group long-term and short-term disability insurance, group life and accidental death and dismemberment products, and supplemental and voluntary lines of business. The Unum International segment engages in the operations of UK business, which includes insurance for group long-term disability, group life, and supplemental lines of business that include dental, individual disability, and critical illness products; Poland business primarily includes insurance for individual and group life with accident and health riders. The Colonial Life segment includes insurance for accident, sickness, disability products, life products, and cancer and critical illness products. The Closed Block segment consists of individual disability, group and individual long-term care, and other insurance products no longer actively marketed. The Corporate segment refers to investment income on corporate assets and other corporate income and expenses not allocated to a line of business; and interest

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The following companies are subsidiares of Valero Energy: AIR BP-PBF DEL PERU SAC, BELFAST STORAGE LTD, CANADIAN ULTRAMAR COMPANY, COLONNADE TEXAS INSURANCE COMPANY LLC, COLONNADE VERMONT INSURANCE COMPANY, DIAMOND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY LLC, DIAMOND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY OF CANADA INC., DIAMOND GREEN DIESEL HOLDINGS LLC, DIAMOND GREEN DIESEL LLC, DIAMOND K RANCH LLC, DIAMOND OMEGA COMPANY L.L.C., DIAMOND SHAMROCK REFINING COMPANY L.P., DIAMOND UNIT INVESTMENTS L.L.C., DSRM NATIONAL BANK, ENTERPRISE CLAIMS MANAGEMENT INC., GCP LOGISTICS COMPANY LLC, GOLDEN EAGLE ASSURANCE LIMITED, HAMMOND MAINLINE PIPELINE LLC, HUNTWAY REFINING COMPANY, MAINLINE PIPELINES LIMITED, MAPLE ETHANOL LTD., MICHIGAN REDEVELOPMENT GP LLC, MICHIGAN REDEVELOPMENT L.P., MRP PROPERTIES COMPANY LLC, NECHES RIVER HOLDING CORP., NORCO METHANOL LLC, OCEANIC TANKERS AGENCY LIMITED, PARKWAY PIPELINE LLC, PENTA TANKS TERMINALS S.A., PI DOCK FACILITIES LLC, PICKARD PLACE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION, PORT ARTHUR COKER COMPANY L.P., PREMCOR USA INC., PROPERTY RESTORATION L.P., PURE BIOFUELS DEL PERU S.A.C., PURE BIOFUELS HOLDINGS L.P., Parkway Pipeline, Premcor, Pure Biofuels Del Peru, SABINE RIVER HOLDING CORP., SABINE RIVER LLC, SAINT BERNARD PROPERTIES COMPANY LLC, SUNBELT REFINING COMPANY L.P., THE PREMCOR PIPELINE CO., THE PREMCOR REFINING GROUP INC., THE SHAMROCK PIPE LINE CORPORATION, TRANSPORT MARITIME ST. LAURENT INC., ULTRAMAR ACCEPTANCE INC., ULTRAMAR ENERGY INC., ULTRAMAR INC., Ultramar Diamond Shamrock, V-TEX LOGISTICS LLC, VALERO (BARBADOS) SRL, VALERO (PERU) HOLDINGS GP LLC, VALERO (PERU) HOLDINGS LIMITED, VALERO ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO ARUBA ACQUISITION COMPANY I LTD., VALERO ARUBA FINANCE INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO ARUBA HOLDING COMPANY N.V., VALERO ARUBA HOLDINGS INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO ARUBA MAINTENANCE/OPERATIONS COMPANY N.V., VALERO BROWNSVILLE TERMINAL LLC, VALERO CANADA FINANCE INC., VALERO CANADA L.P., VALERO CAPITAL CORPORATION, VALERO CARIBBEAN SERVICES COMPANY, VALERO COKER CORPORATION ARUBA N.V., VALERO CUSTOMS & TRADE SERVICES INC., VALERO EAST BAY LLC, VALERO ENERGY (IRELAND) LIMITED, VALERO ENERGY ARUBA II COMPANY, VALERO ENERGY INC., VALERO ENERGY LTD, VALERO ENERGY PARTNERS GP LLC, VALERO ENERGY PARTNERS LP, VALERO ENERGY UK LTD, VALERO ENTERPRISES INC., VALERO EQUITY SERVICES LTD, VALERO FINANCE L.P. I, VALERO FINANCE L.P. II, VALERO FINANCE L.P. III, VALERO FOREST CONTRIBUTION LLC, VALERO GRAIN MARKETING LLC, VALERO H2 PIPELINE COMPANY LLC, VALERO HOLDCO UK LTD, VALERO HOLDINGS INC., VALERO INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS INC., VALERO LIVE OAK LLC, VALERO LOGISTICS UK LTD, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY (PANAMA) LLC, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY COMPANY, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPY INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO MARKETING IRELAND LIMITED, VALERO MKS LOGISTICS L.L.C., VALERO NEDERLAND COOPERATIEF U.A., VALERO NEDERLAND COOPERATIEF U.A., VALERO NEW AMSTERDAM B.V., VALERO OMEGA COMPANY L.L.C., VALERO OPERATIONAL SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO OPERATIONAL SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO OPERATIONS SUPPORT LTD, VALERO PARTNERS CCTS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS CORPUS EAST LLC, VALERO PARTNERS CORPUS WEST LLC, VALERO PARTNERS EP LLC, VALERO PARTNERS HOUSTON LLC, VALERO PARTNERS LOUISIANA LLC, VALERO PARTNERS LUCAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MCKEE LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MEMPHIS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MERAUX LLC, VALERO PARTNERS NORTH TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS OPERATING CO. LLC, VALERO PARTNERS PAPS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS PORT ARTHUR LLC, VALERO PARTNERS SOUTH TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS TEXAS CITY LLC, VALERO PARTNERS THREE RIVERS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WEST MEMPHIS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WEST TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WYNNEWOOD LLC, VALERO PAYMENT SERVICES COMPANY, VALERO PEMBROKESHIRE LLC, VALERO PEMBROKESHIRE OIL TERMINAL LTD, VALERO PLAINS COMPANY LLC, VALERO POWER MARKETING LLC, VALERO RAIL OPERATIONS DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO RAIL OPERATIONS DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO RAIL PARTNERS LLC, VALERO REFINING AND MARKETING COMPANY, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-ARUBA N.V., VALERO REFINING COMPANY-CALIFORNIA, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-OKLAHOMA, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-TENNESSEE L.L.C., VALERO REFINING-MERAUX LLC, VALERO REFINING-NEW ORLEANS L.L.C., VALERO REFINING-TEXAS L.P., VALERO RENEWABLE FUELS COMPANY LLC, VALERO SECURITY SYSTEMS INC., VALERO SERVICES INC., VALERO SKELLYTOWN PIPELINE LLC, VALERO TEJAS COMPANY LLC, VALERO TERMINAL HOLDCO LTD, VALERO TERMINALING AND DISTRIBUTION COMPANY, VALERO TERMINALING AND DISTRIBUTION DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO TEXAS POWER MARKETING INC., VALERO ULTRAMAR HOLDINGS INC., VALERO UNIT INVESTMENTS L.L.C., VALERO WEST WALES LLC, VRG PROPERTIES COMPANY, VTD PROPERTIES COMPANY, WARSHALL COMPANY LLC, and ZELIG COMMERCIAL INC..
Bank of America Corp. is a bank and financial holding company, which engages in the provision of banking and nonbank financial services. It operates through the following segments: Consumer Banking, Global Wealth and Investment Management, Global Banking, Global Markets, and All Other. The Consumer Banking segment offers credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses. The Global Wealth and Investment Management provides client experience through a network of financial advisors focused on to meet their needs through a full set of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products. The Global Banking segment deals with lending-related products and services, integrated working capital management and treasury solutions to clients, and underwriting and advisory services. The Global Markets segment includes sales and trading services, as well as research, to institutional clients across fixed-income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity businesses. The All Other segment consists of asset and liability management activities, equity investments, non-core mortgage loans and servicing activities, the net impact of periodic revisions

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The following companies are subsidiares of General Dynamics: 42SIX LLC, ARMA Global Corporation, Advanced Technical Products, Aeromil (Australia) Pty Ltd, Aeromil Aircraft Engineering Pty Ltd, Aeromil Aviation Services Pty Ltd, Aeromil IT Services Pty Ltd, Aeromil Marine Pty Ltd, Aeromil Pacific Pty Ltd, American Overseas Marine Company LLC, Anteon International Corporation, Applied Physical Sciences, Applied Physical Sciences Corp., Ascend Intelligence, Australian Avionics Pty Ltd, Autonomic Resources LLC, Avion Logistics Limited, Avjet Corporation, AxleTech International, Axsys, BATH IRON WORKS CORPORATION, BP-HP Pte Limited, Bath Iron Works, Bath Iron Works Australia Corporation, Bath Iron Works Canada LLC, Bluefin Robotics Corporation, Blueprint Technologies Inc., Braintree I Maritime Corp., Braintree II Maritime Corp., Braintree III Maritime Corp., Braintree IV Maritime Corp., Braintree V Maritime Corp., Buccaneer Computer Systems & Service Inc., CSC Computer Sciences Venezuela S.A., CSRA, CSRA (Costa Rica) S.A., CSRA (Guyana) Inc., CSRA (Middle East) LLC, CSRA Argentina S.R.L., CSRA BH d.o.o., CSRA Bahamas Limited, CSRA Bahrain S.P.C., CSRA Belgium SPRL, CSRA Bolivia S.R.L., CSRA Brazil Servicos de Tecnologia Ltda., CSRA Canada Inc., CSRA Caribbean Inc., CSRA Chile SpA, CSRA Colombia SAS, CSRA Commerce 2010 LLC, CSRA Consular Services Holding Company LLC, CSRA Consular Services Inc., CSRA France SARL, CSRA Guatemala Solutions Sociedad Anonima, CSRA Honduras Sociedad Anonima, CSRA Inc., CSRA Information Systems LLC, CSRA Information Technology Spain SL, CSRA Ireland Limited, CSRA Italy S.R.L, CSRA Kosovo L.L.C., CSRA LATAM LLC, CSRA LLC, CSRA Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., CSRA Netherlands B.V., CSRA Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, CSRA Panama Inc., CSRA Peru S.R.L., CSRA Senegal SARL, CSRA South Africa (Pty) Ltd, CSRA State and Local Solutions LLC, CSRA Systems & Solutions LLC, CSRA Trinidad & Tobago Limited, CSRA Turkey Bilisim Teknolojileri Limited Sirketi, CSRA Uruguay S.R.L, CSRA Visa Services Israel Ltd., CSRAIT - Information Services Portugal Unipessoal LDA, Centauri Solutions LLC, Command System, Computing Devices International, Concord I Maritime Corporation, Concord II Maritime Corporation, Concord III Maritime Corporation, Concord IV Maritime Corporation, Concord V Maritime Corporation, Convair Aircraft Corporation, Convair Corporation, Creative Technology, Customer Services Ecuador CSRA S.A., Devcor, Diamond Fortress Technologies, DynPort Vaccine Company LLC, EB Groton Engineering Inc., EBV Explosives Environmental, ELCS-CZ s.r.o., Eagle Enterprise Inc., Earl Industries - Ship Repair and Coatings Division, Ebv Explosives Environmental Company, Electric Boat - Australia LLC, Electric Boat - UK LLC, Electric Boat Canada LLC, Electric Boat Corporation, Electric Boat France LLC, Electrocom Inc., Engineering Technology, Expro Finance Inc., FBD Fahrzeug und Bremsendienst GmbH, FC Business Systems, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Force Protection, Force Protection Europe Limited, Force Protection Inc., ForeSight Technology Services LLC, Freeman United Coal Mining Company LLC, GD Brazil Holdings LLC, GD European Land Systems - Steyr GmbH, GD European Land Systems Holding GmbH, GDOTS Services Corporation, GM GDLS Defense Group L.L.C., GPS Source Inc., GTE Government Systems, GWA-Datatrac FAST LLC, Galaxy Aerospace Company, Gayston Corporation - Defense Operations, General Dynamics - OTS (Global) Inc., General Dynamics AIS Australia Pty Ltd, General Dynamics Canadian Finance Inc., General Dynamics Canadian Holdings Inc., General Dynamics Commercial Cyber Services LLC, General Dynamics European Finance Limited, General Dynamics European Land Systems - Austria GmbH, General Dynamics European Land Systems - Bridge Systems GmbH, General Dynamics European Land Systems - Czech s.r.o., General Dynamics European Land Systems - Denmark ApS, General Dynamics European Land Systems - Deutschland GmbH, General Dynamics European Land Systems - FWW GmbH, General Dynamics European Land Systems - Mowag GmbH, General Dynamics European Land Systems Romania S.R.L., General Dynamics European Land Systems S.L., General Dynamics Global Force LLC, General Dynamics Global Holdings Limited, General Dynamics Global Imaging Technologies Inc., General Dynamics Government Satellite Services LLC, General Dynamics Government Systems Corporation, General Dynamics Government Systems Overseas Corporation, General Dynamics Information Technology Canada Limited, General Dynamics Information Technology Inc., General Dynamics Information Technology Limited, General Dynamics Installation Services LLC, General Dynamics International Corporation, General Dynamics Itronix LLC, General Dynamics Land Systems - Australia Pty. Ltd., General Dynamics Land Systems - Canada Corporation, General Dynamics Land Systems - Canada Services Inc., General Dynamics Land Systems - Canadian Services Limited, General Dynamics Land Systems - Force Protection Inc., General Dynamics Land Systems Customer Service & Support Company, General Dynamics Land Systems Inc., General Dynamics Limited, General Dynamics Marine Systems Inc., General Dynamics Mission Systems Inc., General Dynamics Mission Systems International Limited, General Dynamics Mission Systems Overseas Company LLC, General Dynamics Motion Control LLC, General Dynamics OTS (Aerospace) Inc., General Dynamics OTS (California) Inc., General Dynamics OTS (DRI) Inc., General Dynamics OTS (Niceville) Inc., General Dynamics OTS (Pennsylvania) Inc., General Dynamics One Source LLC, General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems - Canada Inc., General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems - Canada Valleyfield Inc., General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems - Simunition Operations Inc., General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems Inc., General Dynamics Overseas Systems and Services Corporation, General Dynamics Properties Inc., General Dynamics Robotic Systems Inc., General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies Inc., General Dynamics Satcom Technologies Asia Private Limited, General Dynamics Satellite Communication Services LLC, General Dynamics Saudi Holdings S.L., General Dynamics Shared Resources LLC, General Dynamics Support Services Company, General Dynamics Swiss Financial Management Limited, General Dynamics United Kingdom Limited, General Dynamics Worldwide Holdings Inc., General Dynamics-OTS Inc., General Motors Defense, Gulfstream 100 Holdings LLC, Gulfstream Aerospace, Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation (CA), Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation (DE), Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation (GA), Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation (OK), Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation of Texas, Gulfstream Aerospace Hong Kong Limited, Gulfstream Aerospace LLC, Gulfstream Aerospace LP, Gulfstream Aerospace Ltd., Gulfstream Aerospace Services Corporation, Gulfstream Aerospace Sociedad de Responssabilidad Limitada de CapitalVariable (S. de R.L. de C.V.), Gulfstream Do Brasil Servicos De Suporte E Manutencao A Aeronaves Ltda., Gulfstream International Corporation, Gulfstream Leasing LLC, Gulfstream Product Support Corporation, Gulfstream Services Corporation, Gulfstream Tennessee Corporation, Gulfstream-California Inc., Hawker Pacific (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Hawker Pacific Aircraft Management Pte Ltd, Hawker Pacific Airservices Limited, Hawker Pacific Airservices Pvt Ltd, Hawker Pacific Asia Holdings Pte Ltd, Hawker Pacific Asia Pte Ltd, Hawker Pacific Australia Pty Ltd, Hawker Pacific Aviation Services Pty Ltd, Hawker Pacific NZ Limited, Hawker Pacific Pty Ltd, IPWireless, IPWireless PTE. Limited, Information Services Consulting Limited, Interiores Aereos S.A. de C.V., International Manufacturing Technologies Inc., Itronix, Janteq Australia PTY Limited, Janteq Corp., Jet Aviation, Jet Aviation (Asia Pacific) Pte. Ltd., Jet Aviation (Bermuda) Ltd., Jet Aviation (Hong Kong) Ltd., Jet Aviation (Malaysia) SDN BHD, Jet Aviation 125 Services LLC, Jet Aviation AG, Jet Aviation Brazil Holdings Inc., Jet Aviation Business Jets (Hong Kong) Limited, Jet Aviation Business Jets AG, Jet Aviation Business Jets FZCO, Jet Aviation California LLC, Jet Aviation Dulles LLC, Jet Aviation Flight Services Inc., Jet Aviation France SAS, Jet Aviation Holding GmbH, Jet Aviation Holdings USA Inc., Jet Aviation Houston Inc., Jet Aviation International Inc., Jet Aviation Malaga SA, Jet Aviation Management AG, Jet Aviation Netherlands B.V., Jet Aviation Savannah Holding LLC, Jet Aviation Services GmbH, Jet Aviation St. Louis Inc., Jet Aviation Teterboro LP, Jet Aviation Texas Inc., Jet Aviation of America Inc., Jet Aviation/Palm Beach Inc., Jet Professionals LLC, Kylmar, Longreach Energy LLC, MAYA Viz, Maricom Systems Incorporated, Material Service Resources Company LLC, Matthews Land Company, Mediaware International, Mediaware International Pty Ltd, Metro Machine, Metro Machine co, Midwest Properties Sales LLC, NASSCO, NASSCO Holdings Incorporated, NES Associates LLC, National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, Network Connectivity Solutions Corp., Newberry Holdings LLC, OOO Jet Aviation Vnukovo, Open Kernel Labs, Page Europa Srl, Patriot I Shipping Corp., Patriot II Shipping Corp., Patriot IV Shipping Corp., Plane 79 LLC, Praxis Engineering Technologies LLC, PrimeX Technologies, Prodelin India Private Limited, Proyectos Prohumane Mexico S.A. de C.V., Quincy Maritime Corporation III, Raven Acquisitions LLC, SENTECH INC., SRA International Inc., Saco Defense, Santa Barbara Sistemas S.A., Savannah Air Center LLC, Signal Solutions LLC, Southern Illinois Recovery Inc., Spectrum Astro, St. Marks Powder Inc., Stabilo Pty Ltd, Steyr-Daimler-Puch Spezialfahrzeug AG & Co KG, Sydney Jet Charter Pty Ltd, Tadpole Computer, Tecnologias Internacionales de Manufactura S.A. de C.V., Tenacity Solutions Incorporated, The Depth of Ideas for General Trading LLC, TriPoint Global Communications, Vangent, Vangent Servicios de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Veridian, Vertex Antennentechnik GmbH, ViPS, Vulnerability Research Labs LLC, and Weco LLC.
Nabors Industries Ltd. engages in the provision of platform work over and drilling rigs. It operates through the following segments: U.S. Drilling, Canada Drilling, International Drilling, Drilling Solutions, and Rig Technologies. The U.S. Drilling segment includes land drilling activities in the lower 48 states and Alaska, as well as offshore operations in the Gulf of Mexico. The Canada segment consists of land-based drilling rigs in Canada. The International segment focuses in maintaining a footprint in the oil and gas market, most notably in Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Argentina, Colombia, Kazakhstan, and Venezuela. The Drilling Solutions segment offers drilling technologies, such as patented steering systems and rig instrumentation software systems that enhance drilling performance and wellbore placement. The Rig Technologies segment comprises Canrig, which manufactures and sells top drives, catwalks, wrenches, drawworks, and drilling related equipment, such as robotic systems and downhole tools. The company was founded by Clair Nabors in 1952 and is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda.

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Zurich Insurance Group AG is a holding company, which engages in the provision of insurance products and related services. It operates through the following segments: Property and Casualty Regions, Life Regions, Farmers, Group Functions and Operations, and Non-Core Businesses. The Property and Casualty Regions segment provides motor, home and commercial products and services for individuals, as well as small and large businesses on both a local and global basis. The Life Regions segment refers to the comprehensive range of life and health insurance products on both an individual and a group basis, including annuities, endowment and term insurance, unit-linked and investment-oriented products, as well as full private health, supplemental health and long-term care insurance. The Farmers segment includes non-claims administrative and management services to the Farmers Exchanges, which are owned by policyholders. The Group Functions and Operations segment comprises the Group s Holding and Financing and Headquarters activities. The Non-Core Businesses segment includes insurance and reinsurance businesses that the Group does not consider core to its operations and that are therefore mos

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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull gave a speech last week that pointed to the nervousness wracking his government and the Australian capitalist class as a whole over the Trump administrations America First drive toward trade war and war, especially against China.

In the state-owned and corporate media, Turnbulls presentation was generally praised as an effort to reset relations with Beijing. Turnbull achieved what looks like at least a modest but important turnaround in the recently choppy diplomatic relationship with Beijing, the Australians foreign editor Greg Sheridan wrote on Saturday.

In reality, the speech was another revealing expression of a fundamental dilemma confronting the Australian ruling class, brought to a new height by Trumps belligerent nationalism.

Since World War II, Australian capitalism has relied heavily on US imperialism to advance its economic and strategic interests including through its own predatory operations across the Indo-Pacific. Chinas economic growth over the past three decades, however, has tied entire Australian-based industries, especially mining, agriculture and education, to China.

In the most immediate sense, the speech was an effort to shield, for as long as possible, the profit interests of those sections of Australian big business that depend most on Chinese markets, in the face of a potentially devastating confrontation between Washington and Beijing.

Speaking at Sydneys University of New South Wales, which has almost 20,000 overseas students from Chinamore than a third of its entire enrolmentTurnbull lauded ties with China as a very deep relationship, one of great opportunity and potential and it gets deeper and stronger all the time.

This was a remarkable performance. For the past 18 months, Turnbulls Liberal-National Coalition government has closely followed the Trump administration, like Obamas before it, in denouncing China.

Turnbull and his ministers have provocatively accused Beijing of interfering in Australian political, economic and social life, and condemned Chinas activities in the South China Sea. They have branded Chinese aid to South Pacific countries as debt diplomacy and identified Chinese telecommunications conglomerates as a threat to Australias national security.

In repeated speeches, Turnbull has echoed his predecessors, Liberal-National and Labor Party alike, in pledging an unconditional commitment to the US alliance. During a three-day official visit to Washington in February, for example, he spoke of 100 years of military mateship, dating back to World War I, assuring his audience that the partnership would continue for another century. Standing alongside Trump, Turnbull added that the US was Australias most important strategic and economic partner and the alliance is as close as it possibly could be and yet keeps getting closer.

Beijing has tried to counteract the Washington-driven offensive by freezing some relations with Canberra. Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has not been invited to China for two years, and Australian exports, such as wine, have experienced regulatory difficulties in China. Earlier this year, Chinese authorities warned students that Australia might not be a safe place because of the vilification of Chinese people associated with the passage of the Turnbull governments unprecedented foreign interference laws.

With Labors support, this legislation was rammed through parliament in June to outlaw any political activity accused of having covert international or foreign backing. It is clearly intended, by Turnbulls own statements in tabling the laws, to target those associated with China, as part of wider preparations to condition public opinion for a war.

During the lead-up to the passage of the laws, mainstream media outlets demonised supposedly pro-China business figures. The more than a million Australians of Chinese descent and Chinese students were painted as possible participants in fifth column activities to subvert the Australian nation-state. No one in the government or the parliamentary establishment opposed this campaign.

Yet, in last weeks speech, Turnbull suddenly declared: Modern Australia is unimaginable without the talented and dynamic contribution of Australians of Chinese descent. They are a vital thread in the fabric of Australian society.

No doubt, short-term profit calculations are involved. Chinese students now constitute the largest group of Australias annual intake of high fee-paying international students. They have become cash cows for the countrys underfunded public universities. Chinese enrolments at universities have almost doubled since 2013 to 125,000, and were predicted to top 200,000 by 2025 before Beijings reaction to the foreign interference propaganda.

International education is now a $30.8 billion export industry for Australia, Turnbull noted, our third largest export industry and our single largest services export industry. This success, he said, flowed right through the economy; to retail, tourism, hospitality, health care, medical services and so much more.

The Australian Financial Review last Friday highlighted a meeting in March between Turnbull and representatives of the countrys top universities which were deeply concerned that the governments strident anti-China rhetoric would result in a precipitous fall in Chinese students and thus income. In January, Sydney University vice-chancellor Michael Spence wrote a column accusing the government of Sinophobic blathering that could damage one of the countrys fastest growing industries.

More fundamental pressures than student revenues, however, were indicated by the speech, which Fairfax Media said had been under consideration in government and national security circles for several months.

There is evident alarm that the Trump administrations multi-billion tariffs imposed on China could have flow-on effects for Australian exporters and service providers. Even more fundamentally, Washingtons protectionism, directed against allies and rivals alike, has thrown into doubt its reliability as the unchallenged capitalist hegemon since World War II.

Turnbull spoke of rapid change that was unsettling. In a thinly veiled criticism of Trump, he criticised protectionism as self-defeating and lauded a speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Australian parliament in 2014, in which Xi called for adherence to international rules.

Turnbull reverted to a claim he had echoed before the Coalition took office in 2013: that it would be a big mistake to assume that Chinas emergence as a global economic force would inevitably lead to conflict with the US, or that the United States and its allies would or should seek to contain China.

This flies in the face of the historical experience of the 20th century, which produced two world wars for global dominance, as well as recent Australian history.

Turnbull expressed the hope that in the midst of this rapid change, Australia could address its own interests by pursuing a relationship with China based on mutual respect and understanding.

An Australian Financial Review editorial offered a franker view. While welcoming Turnbulls speech as a bid to shore up a global rules-based order, it warned that Australias old strategic certainty was at an end:

China is a powerful rival for the title of regional superpower, against the traditional US hegemon which has backstopped Asian security as the region has become the new centre of the global economy. Washingtons retreat into America First self-interest, partly as a result of this, has made the picture even more complicated for us.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman on Wednesday noted and commended Turnbulls speech for enhancing mutual trust, while calling on Australia to take concrete actions to carry forward bilateral relations along the right track.

As several commentators noted, however, any mending of fences with Beijing is likely to be short-lived. Within weeks, Turnbulls government must decide whether or not to exclude Huawei, one of the worlds largest telcos, from the countrys planned 5G mobile network, just as the previous Labor government barred it from the National Broadband Network in 2012.

Despite intensive lobbying by Huawei, Australias US-backed intelligence agencies have publicly indicated their opposition to the companys involvement, making it almost certain that the Turnbull government will not dare step out of line, regardless of the likely commercial fallout.
Don't get too excited if you're planning on skipping gleefully down the high street to your local game emporium, because there's not a whole lot out this week that's new, unless you live in Australia and fancy bagging yourself a physical copy of Compulsion Games' trippy We Happy Few.

Otherwise, there's not really very much to write home about, other than the release of the XCOM 2 Collection in North America, which we're assuming brings together the base game and all of the DLC expansions released for the turn-based tactical alien zapper thus far.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, as they say, is your lot. There's bugger all else out in retail stores this week, which is good if you're saving money. Not so good if you wanted to rush out and buy the latest big release in a box. But don't worry: the next few weeks after this one are looking promising.

In Stores - Week Commencing 13th August:

Asia (via play-asia.com)

Xbox One

...

Australia (via ebgames.com.au)

Xbox One

We Happy Few

Europe (via amazon.co.uk)

Xbox One

...

North America (via gamestop.com)

Xbox One
Shadow of the Tomb Raider Comparison - Xbox One vs. Xbox One S vs. Xbox One X vs. PS4 vs. PS4 Pro
Marilyn Manson will not be charged in a sexual assault case dating back to October 2011. As TMZ and The Hollywood Reporter report, a police report for the crime was filed against Manson this May for unspecified sexual assault allegations dating back to 2011. These allegations are now being made public for the first time. 

By Rob Arcand

Marilyn Manson will not be charged in a sexual assault case dating back to October 2011. As TMZ and The Hollywood Reporter report, a police report for the crime was filed against Manson this May for unspecified sexual assault allegations dating back to 2011. These allegations are now being made public for the first time.

TMZ reports that the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office would not charge Manson because of an absence of corroboration. Manson also reportedly faced allegations of battery and assault with a deadly weapon, but those charges also wont be filled because the states statute of limitations expired. In a statement shared with The Hollywood Reporter, Mansons attorney, Howard E. King, Esq., writes:

Under current policy, the Los Angeles County District Attorney must investigate any claim of sexual abuse, no matter how outlandish. It is not surprising that the District Attorney, after investigation, summarily rejected the claims made in a police report filed by a former acquaintance against Brian Warner p/k/a Marilyn Manson. The allegations made to the police were and are categorically denied by Mr. Warner and are either completely delusional or part of a calculated attempt to generate publicity for the claimants business of selling Manson memorabilia. The police report that spurred the investigation was accompanied by the womans press release and other attempts to generate publicity that fraudulently claimed she was held captive by Mr. Warner for 48 hours in 2011. Any claim of sexual impropriety or imprisonment at that, or any other, time is false.

This post Marilyn Manson Sexual Assault Case Dismissed by L.A. District Attorney first appeared on SPIN.
No rest for President Donald Trumps active fingers on Sunday. The Commander-in-Tweet was back at it today, spreading the word on such topics as Bob Mueller, Harley Davidsons domestic focus, unemployment, the Department of Justice, and the media cover-up of the biggest story of our time.

The day is young in Washington, so well keep an eye out if the President adds to the storm in the coming hours.

The tweetstorm so far:

Seems like the Department of Justice (and FBI) had a program to keep Donald Trump from becoming President. @DarrellIssa @foxandfriends If this had happened to the other side, everybody involved would be in jail. This is a Media coverup of the biggest story of our time.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2018

Many @harleydavidson owners plan to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas. Great! Most other companies are coming in our direction, including Harley competitors. A really bad move! U.S. will soon have a level playing field, or better.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2018

.@GovMikeHuckabee Your paycheck is bigger, your pension is stronger. @foxandfriends Unemployment numbers are better than they have been in 50 years, & perhaps ever. Our country is booming like never before  and it will get even better! Many companies moving back to the U.S.A.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2018

.@JudgeJeanine Bob Mueller, isnt your whole investigation premised on a Fake Dossier, paid for by Hillary, created by a man who hates Donald Trump, & used to con a FISA Court Judge. Bob, I really think its time for you to give up your phony investigation. No Collusion!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2018

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FBI agent who sent anti-Trump texts fired originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

The FBI agent who came under scrutiny for anti-Trump texts he sent from a work phone during the 2016 presidential campaign has now been fired, according to his lawyer.

Peter Strzok was fired on Friday after serving in the FBI for 21 years, his lawyer Aitan Goelman said in a statement.

"Deeply saddened by this decision," Strzok posted Monday on Twitter. "It has been an honor to serve my country and work with the fine men and women of the FBI."

Goelman said Strzok's firing "departed from established precedent by firing" Strzok, especially because the deputy director's decision to terminate Strzok went even further than the recommendation of the FBI's ethics office.

PHOTO:Deputy Assistant FBI Director Peter Strzok speaks during a joint hearing of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees on Capitol Hill on July 12, 2018, in Washington D.C. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Strzok's public profile reached a tipping point in July when, during an open hearing, Republicans on the House Judiciary and Oversight committees got their first opportunity to publicly press him on a slew of anti-Trump text messages he sent in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. At the time of those text messages, Strzok was leading the FBI's probe of Russia's meddling in the election.

Strzok also helped lead the FBI's probe of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, and Republicans have insisted Strzok's role in both cases raises questions over whether the probes were tainted by politics.

On Monday, Goelman said Strzok's firing "should be deeply troubling to all Americans."

"A lengthy investigation and multiple rounds of Congressional testimony failed to produce a shred of evidence that Special Agent Strzoks personal views ever affected his work," Goelman said in the statement.

PHOTO: Deputy Assistant FBI Director Peter Strzok testifies before a joint committee hearing of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees on Capitol Hill, July 12, 2018, in Washington. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

"In fact, in his decades of service, Special Agent Strzok has proved himself to be one of the countrys top counterintelligence officers, leading to only one conclusion  the decision to terminate was taken in response to political pressure, and to punish Special Agent Strzok for political speech protected by the First Amendment, not on a fair and independent examination of the facts. It is a decision that produces only one winner - those who seek to harm our country and weaken our democracy," the statement said.

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President Donald Trump has publicly criticized Strzok in the past and weighed in on the news of his firing.

"Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!" he wrote in the first of two tweets Monday.

"Just fired Agent Strzok, formerly of the FBI, was in charge of the Crooked Hillary Clinton sham investigation. It was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone!" Trump wrote in the second tweet.

Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

Just fired Agent Strzok, formerly of the FBI, was in charge of the Crooked Hillary Clinton sham investigation. It was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 13, 2018

During his testimony to the House panel last month, Strzok told chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Virginia: "I can assure, Mr. Chairman, at no time, in any of these texts, did those personal beliefs ever enter into the realm of any action I took."

"This isn't just me sitting here telling you  you don't have to take my word for it," Strzok continued. "At every step, at every investigative decision, there were multiple layers of people above me -- assistant director, executive assistant director, deputy director, and the director  and multiple layers of people below me ... all of whom were involved in all of these decisions. They would not tolerate any improper behavior in me any more than I would tolerate it in them. that is who we are as the FBI. And the suggestion that I in some dark chamber somewhere in the FBI would somehow cast aside all of these procedures, all of these safeguards, and somehow be able to do this, is astounding to me. It simply couldn't happen. And the proposition that that is going on, that it might occur in the FBI, deeply corrodes what the FBI is in American society, the effectiveness of their mission, and it is deeply destructive."

After news of Strzok's firing on Monday, Goodlatte's son took to Twitter to praise Strzok as a "patriot" and condemn his father's behavior.

"Im deeply embarrassed that Peter Strzoks career was ruined by my fathers political grandstanding," Bobby Goodlatte wrote. "That committee hearing was a low point for Congress."

The FBI declined to comment to ABC News on Strzok's firing.
'Golden State Killer' suspect allegedly killed his first victim in 1975, while he was a police officer originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

The suspected "Golden State Killer" is now facing charges for his 13th alleged murder, and the earliest one yet -- the killing of a college professor in central California in 1975.

Joseph DeAngelo, a 72-year-old former police officer, was arrested this April and charged with 12 killings, following decades in which California law enforcement officers were stumped by what became known as the "Golden State Killer" case.

DeAngelo is now accused of shooting to death Claude Snelling while allegedly trying to kidnap Snelling's daughter from the professor's Visalia home on Sept. 11, 1975, Visalia Police Chief Jason Salazar said at a news conference Monday.

DeAngelo was working as a police officer in Exeter, California, at the time of Snelling's murder, Salazar said.

While DNA was recovered from other of DeAngelo's alleged crimes, no DNA was available from the Visalia killing, Salazar said.

PHOTO: Joseph James Deangelo, known as 'The Golden State Killer,' is seen in this police booking photo, April 25, 2018, after being apprehended. (Sacramento Police Department)

He now stands accused of 13 murders across five California counties.

DeAngelo is also believed to be behind a string of burglaries that terrorized Visalia in Tulare County in the mid-1970s, Salazar said.

A prowler would break into homes in the evening by prying open doors or windows, Salazar said. The intruder would rifle through belongings but rather than steal items of high value would instead take keepsake items, like pocketing one earring instead of a pair, Salazar said.

The burglar was also known to eat or prepare food in victims' homes, and some victims received strange phone calls after the robberies, Salazar said. These were practices common to the "Golden State Killer" after rapes and break-ins.

The Visalia break-ins ended after an officer caught a suspect trying to enter a home, Salazar said. The suspect shot at the officer, injuring him, but the officer was able to provide a description of the suspect, Salazar said.

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Ballistic information allowed police to link a gun stolen in one of the break-ins to Snelling's killing, Salazar said.

DeAngelo is now facing a first-degree murder charge, Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward said Monday.

(MORE: How DNA from family members helped solve the 'Golden State Killer' case: DA)

(MORE: How DNA and genetic genealogy are becoming 'major' game-changers in decades-old cold cases)

The "Golden State Killer" was believed to have left a trail of murders, rapes and home burglaries throughout California in the 1970s and 1980s, with the last known crime in 1986.

PHOTO: An evidence room from the 'Golden State Killer' investigation. (Courtesy FBI )

(MORE: 'Golden State Killer' victim recalls rape that 'terrorized' her)

(MORE: Suspected 'Golden State Killer' seemed shocked by arrest, told police he had a roast in the oven: Official)

But no arrest was made for decades.

In the early 2000s, investigators were able to obtain the killer's DNA at one crime scene: The 1980 double murder of Lyman and Charlene Smith, who were bludgeoned to death at their Ventura County home.

Investigators then started reviewing rape kits -- which contained DNA samples from victims -- in other jurisdictions, said Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert.

PHOTO: This undated photo released by the FBI shows part of 'East Area Rapist' Crime reports at the Sheriff's department evidence room in Sacramento, Calif. (FBI via AP)

One of those counties was Contra Costa, where recently retired investigator Paul Holes led the charge to use genealogy to find the killer, said Schubert. Holes spent nearly 25 years on this case, she said.

This year, investigators plugged the mystery killer's DNA into a genealogy database.

(MORE: Why former FBI agent thinks 'Golden State Killer' suspect fits the serial killer profile)

(MORE: 'Going to kill you': Hear chilling phone call allegedly made by 'Golden State Killer')

Based on the pool of people on the genealogy website, investigators were then able to build a family tree of the unknown killers relatives, who had submitted their DNA to the database on their own.

Investigators narrowed the search based on age, location and other characteristics, leading them to DeAngelo.

Authorities surveilled DeAngelo and collected his DNA from a tissue left in a trash. Investigators plugged his discarded DNA back into the genealogy database and found a match, linking DeAngelo's DNA to that gathered at multiple crime scenes, Schubert said.

DeAngelo is awaiting trial in Sacramento County. He has not entered a plea.
Ivanka Trump, administration mark anniversary of Charlottesville riot originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

Several members of the Trump administration on Saturday noted the one-year anniversary of the riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, that ended up with one woman dead and a reigniting of heated discussions of race in America.

Among those marking the anniversary was Ivanka Trump, the daughter of President Donald Trump and an adviser to his administration, who tweeted there was "no place for white supremacy, racism and neo-nazism in our great country."

She shared a string of three tweets Saturday afternoon.

1:3 One year ago in Charlottesville, we witnessed an ugly display of hatred, racism, bigotry & violence.  Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) August 12, 2018

2:3 While Americans are blessed to live in a nation that protects liberty, freedom of speech and diversity of opinion, there is no place for white supremacy, racism and neo-nazism in our great country.  Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) August 12, 2018

3:3 Rather than tearing each other down with hatred, racism & violence, we can lift one another up, strengthen our communities and strive to help every American achieve his or her full potential!  Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) August 12, 2018

Ivanka Trump encouraged her followers to "strengthen our communities" and help other "achieve his or her full potential."

(MORE: Ahead of Charlottesville anniversary, Heather Heyer's mom urges people to 'think about what she was here for')

Her father was slammed last year for saying that there was "hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides" in the wake of the riots, which left 32-year-old Heather Heyer dead. He then backtracked on his comments in a statement that condemned the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists. Soon after though, he said that while there were bad people in the white supremacist group, "you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides."

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Heyer was killed when an alleged far-right protester drove his car into a group of antifa supporters on Aug. 12, 2017.

The president tweeted earlier in the day on Saturday, saying the riots ago "resulted in senseless death and division. We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!"

The riots in Charlottesville a year ago resulted in senseless death and division. We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 11, 2018

Vice President Mike Pence also took to Twitter on Saturday afternoon to comment on the riots from a year ago. Thousands of protesters are expected in Washington, D.C., on Sunday with far-right groups organizing another "Unite the Right" rally and anti-fascist groups expected to respond.

(MORE: At violent Charlottesville protests 'I felt like I wasn't in America': Reporter's Notebook)

Pence shared a lengthy statement, saying, "Bigotry, racism and hatred run counter to our most cherished values and have no place in American society."

"This weekend, Karen and I will pray for the victims of that tragic day and their families," Pence continued, referring to his wife. "And we will also continue to pray -- in these too divided times -- that Americans will come together in new and renewed ways in this one Nation under God with liberty and justice for All."

My statement on one year since Charlottesville. pic.twitter.com/Yi5NMlIXZW  Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) August 11, 2018

ABC News' Meridith McGraw and Chris Donovan contributed to this report.
To judge in Manafort trial, courtroom is 'Rome' and he is 'Caesar' originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

When you walk into Courtroom 900 in the federal court house in Alexandria, Virginia, you step into another domain, a territory ruled not by a mayor or a governor or even a president, but by a self-proclaimed emperor.

"I'm a Caesar in my own Rome," Judge T.S. "Tim" Ellis recently told a defendant. "And it's a small Rome."

Ellis, the 30-year veteran of the bench who is presiding over the government's financial crimes case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is well-known in legal circles for his colorful commentary. But his unique style - and his seemingly harsh treatment of government prosecutors - has at times stunned observers and stolen the spotlight in the first significant trial to spring from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

His pointed remarks have made headlines -- he warned attorneys on both sides to "rein in your facial expressions" last week -- but legal experts say his behavior could have a more significant impact on the jurors assigned to the case.

PHOTO: This courtroom sketch depicts Paul Manafort, fourth from right, standing with his lawyers in front of U.S. district Judge T.S Ellis III, and the jury during the jury selection of his trial in Alexandria, Va., July 31, 2018. (Dana Verkouteren via AP)

"Jurors will likely view the judge as the arbiter of fairness and appropriate conduct," Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, told ABC News. "Any inference by the judge that the prosecution is not playing by the rules can play into the defense strategy that this case is a classic government overreach motivated at least in part by political considerations."

Mintz told ABC News that it is not entirely uncommon for judges in criminal trials to clash more with the prosecution than the defense. The vast majority of a trial, Mintz said, is typically spent on the prosecutions case, since the prosecution has the burden of proof.

It should also be noted that lawyers for Manafort, who has pleaded not guilty, have not yet presented their defense, so it remains to be seen how Ellis interacts with the other side.

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(MORE: Rick Gates concludes his testimony against former boss Paul Manafort)

But the judge's unpredictable pronouncements -- ranging from the self-deprecating to the biting - have nevertheless hit a range of targets, including journalists.

"I'm not a watcher of TV or radio," he told jurors, as he counseled them to avoid news about the trial. Tuning out "might be more pleasant," he added with a grin.

Even before the trial began, Ellis reminded government prosecutors that "nobody has unfettered power" during a contentious preliminary hearing - drawing words of encouragement from President Trump - though he eventually ruled in the government's favor.

"These allegations clearly pre-date the appointment of the special counsel," he said just two minutes into the hearing. "None of it had any relation to the campaign."

As the trial got under way, his jabs at prosecutors intensified.

Ellis rejected the government's requests to show the jury scores of pictures depicting rows of suits purportedly purchased with money wired from overseas accounts, what the government said was evidence of Manafort's opulent lifestyle, telling prosecutors they need not "gild the lily."

(MORE: Rick Gates returns to court to testify against his former boss Paul Manafort)

"The government doesn't want to prosecute someone because they wear nice clothing, do they?" Ellis said.

Ellis admonished prosecutors for using the term "oligarch," which he said has "come to have a 'pejorative' meaning."

"We're not going to have this case tried as 'He associated with despicable people, therefore he's a despicable person,'" he said. "That's not the American way ... Call them 'financiers.'"

And Ellis has repeatedly demanded that prosecutors pick up the pace and once scolded a prosecutor for responding "Yeah," instead of "Yes, your honor."

PHOTO: This courtroom sketch depicts Rick Gates on the witness stand as he is cross examined by defense lawyer Kevin Downing during the trial of Paul Manafort in Alexandria, Va., Aug. 7, 2018. U.S. District court Judge T.S. Ellis III presides. (Dana Verkouteren via AP)

Ellis and prosecutor Greg Andres appear to have a particularly acrimonious relationship. Bloomberg reported last week that, in a discussion out of earshot of the jury, Ellis told Andres he saw tears in his eyes.

"I understand how frustrated you are," Ellis said. "In fact, there's tears in your eyes right now." Andres denied it, but the judge was insistent: "Well, they're watery."

Later in the week, Andres' frustration appeared to boil over again, and he accused Ellis, through clinched teeth, of "constantly interrupting him." The judge fired back: "Let the record reflect that I rarely interrupt you," he said.

Andres said he stood by his position, to which Ellis responded: "All right. Then you will lose."

On Thursday, however, Ellis appeared to wonder whether one his barbs had crossed a line, telling the jurors to ignore his criticism of prosecutors over a decision to allow a witness to sit in court as other witnesses testified.

"I was critical of counsel allowing a witness to remain in the courtroom. You are to put that aside ... I was probably wrong," Ellis told the jurors. "This role doesn't make me any less human."

(MORE: Behind the scenes of the Paul Manafort trial)

So far, Ellis has established the closest rapport with the jurors themselves. He has required everyone in his courtroom to stand when the jury enters each day. He has asked them about the quality of their lunch, teased them about their seat selections and commiserated with them about traffic, even pushing back the trial's start time to spare them the gridlock "headache."

And he has displayed flashes of humor meant to keep the heavy proceedings light. When he mangled the name of a fashion designer during discussion of Manafort's wardrobe, he turned apologetically to the jury: "If it doesn't say 'Men's Warehouse,' I don't know it."

But even the judge's attempts at humor can seem to cut against the prosecutors.

About halfway through a bookkeeper's testimony, with Andres leading the witness methodically through a thick binder of documents, Ellis interrupted.

"Move it along," he said, drawing chuckles from the jury. "We'll break for lunch as soon as Mr. Andres is finished."

When Manafort's longtime business partner Rick Gates, the prosecution's star witness, testified that the defendant "kept fairly frequent" track of his offshore accounts, Ellis was ready with a rejoinder.

PHOTO: This courtroom sketch depicts Rick Gates, right, testifying during questioning by prosecutor Greg Andres, standing at left, as Paul Manafort, far left, sits with his lawyer Kevin Downing at in Alexandria, Va., Aug. 7, 2018. (Dana Verkouteren via AP)

"Well, he didn't keep track of the money you stole from him," Ellis quipped as the courtroom burst into laughter. "So [Manafort] didn't do it that closely."

John D. Cohen, a former senior homeland security official who is now an ABC News contributor, said the prosecutors have likely factored in the judge's behavior as they prepped for the Manafort trial.

"Most prosecutors who have had experience going before a judge such as Judge Ellis typically develop strategies to minimize any potential negative implications of the judge's behaviors," Cohen said. "That said, the court has to be very careful that the judge's behavior does not send a message to the jurors that the judge is opining of the veracity and accuracy of the evidence being presented."

(MORE: 'Star witness' testifies against former boss Paul Manafort)

Cohen said Ellis' behavior "could" have an effect on the jury, but added "as long as the judge doesn't impede the ability of the government to present their case in a fair and objective manner it shouldn't be too much of a problem."

Former federal prosecutor Mintz suggested that prosecutors could help their case by pushing back against the judge, but that strategy comes with a degree of risk.

"By pushing back against the judge, they can demonstrate their belief in the strength of their case," Mintz said. "But they do not want this trial to devolve into a battle of wills with the court and take the jurys eyes off of the evidence."
Kellyanne Conway on accusation Trump is racist: 'None of us would be there if that were true' originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway responded to allegations that President Donald Trump is a racist, saying "none of us would be" at the White House if that were true.

Conway also told ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl on "This Week" that in the two years she has worked for Trump, she has never a single time heard him use a racial slur about anyone.

Conway was responding to a new book by former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman who describes Trump as a racist and that she has heard him use racial slurs.

I think that Omarosa unfortunately has undercut her own credibility, Conway told Karl. This is somebody who gave a glowing appraisal of Donald Trump the businessman, the star of 'The Apprentice,' the candidate, and indeed the president of the United States. She told your own network, Jon, ABC News, the day after she was fired from the White House that she had resigned  She said she never heard him use the N-word.

PHOTO: Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway and Omarosa Manigault, left, attend an event celebrating Women's History Month, in the East Room at the White House, March 29, 2017, in Washington, DC. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

I have never a single time heard him use a racial slur about anyone. I also never heard Omarosa complain that he had done that, and so the only thing that's changed is that she's now selling books, Conway said.

Manigault Newmans new book, Unhinged, is set to be released Tuesday. According to The Guardian and The Washington Post, both of which obtained advance copies, Manigault Newman writes that Trump is a racist, bigot and misogynist.

Manigault Newmans title at the White House was assistant to the president and director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison. She was the most senior African-American staff member in the West Wing.

Conway said that Manigault Newman should be taking credit" for Trump administration achievements that benefit African-Americans.

I think Omarosa is a tremendous disappointment here because she should be taking credit for all the great gains that this president has made with respect to that low unemployment number among African-Americans, Conway said.

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Karl pressed Conway on who is the most prominent, high-level African-American serving in the West Wing on President Trumps staff since Manigault Newmans departure in December.

When she mentioned Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Karl reinforced that he was asking about White House staff...the people the president is with every day.

Conway mentioned Ja'Ron Smith, special assistant to the president for domestic policy, whose office is in the Executive Office of the President, Conway said.

Karl said, "But [he is] not in the West Wing. What does that say to have not a single senior adviser in the West Wing whos African American?"

Conway said she "didnt say that there wasnt" a senior African-American adviser in the West Wing, but that the focus should be on the president's actions.

The fact is that this president is doing well for all Americans. He promised on Nov. 9, on his election night  He said I will be the president for all Americans, even those who didnt support me  And hes made good on that promise," she said.

(MORE: White House slams Omarosa Manigault Newman's new book as 'riddled with lies and false accusations')

Karl said later in the show that none of the "55 top-paid staffers" at the White House are African-American. "There is no African-American at that top level," he said during a This Week roundtable.

Karl was responding to former White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short who named some African-American members of the president's staff not mentioned by Conway.

(MORE: Trump calls Omarosa a 'low-life'; says Sessions is 'scared stiff')

PHOTO: President Donald Trump speaks before a dinner meeting with business leaders, Aug. 7, 2018, at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Short said there is "Mary Elizabeth Taylor, who is an African-American staffer on our team who did more in this White House to get Neil Gorsuch confirmed [to the Supreme Court] than anybody else. She led all of our confirmations.

He continued with praise for Ja'Ron Smith and for Daris Meeks, a senior member of Vice President Mike Pence's staff.

"There's a lot of focus in the media on Omarosa, but there's less focus actually on those who are doing really hard jobs and doing really good work for the president, Short said.
Florida 'stand your ground' shooter Michael Drejka charged with manslaughter originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

The Florida man who invoked the "stand your ground" self-defense law after shooting a black man in a dispute over a parking space was charged Monday with manslaughter, officials said.

Michael Drejka, 48, was arrested Monday morning in the fatal July shooting of Markeis McGlockton in Clearwater, Florida -- an incident that was caught on video which sparked an uproar after its release.

PHOTO: Michael Drejka is seen in an Aug. 13, 2018 photo provided by the Pinellas County, Fla., Sheriff's Office. (Pinellas County Sheriff's Office via AP)

The announcement that Drejka was charged with manslaughter provided McGlockton's family with some comfort even as they continue to mourn.

McGlockton's mother, Monica Moore, said at a news conference that she has been in a "daze" since her son's death.

"So today when I head that he [Drejka] was being charged, I guess I could start healing," Moore said.

McGlockton's father, Michael McGlockton, said he believed Drejka should have been arrested and charged "from day one."

"When I got the news today I was happy, I was ecstatic about it, but I'm just sorry that it took so long, you know, three weeks later," he said. "I know this is going to be a long road. We are up for the task and we just hope for a good outcome at the end."

Drejka was booked at the Pinellas County Jail and bond was set at $100,000. He is scheduled to make his first court appearance on Tuesday, at which time a judge will review his bond status and decide whether to appoint an attorney for Drejka, or if the defendant can afford to hire his own lawyer.

PHOTO: In this July 19, 2018, image taken from surveillance video released by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, Markeis McGlockton, far left, is shot by Michael Drejka during an altercation in the parking lot of a convenience store in Clearwater, Fla. (Pinellas County Sheriff's Office via AP)

If convicted, Drejka faces up to 30 years in prison.

Bernie McCabe, the state attorney for Pinellas County, announced his decision to file charges against Drejka 12 days after receiving investigative reports on the case from the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.

"We have filed a formal charge, and he has been arrested, and he will now go through the court system," McCabe said in a statement.

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Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri had initially declined to arrest Drejka after the gunman invoked the "stand your ground" defense, saying his decision was bound by the law.

"I support the State Attorney's decision and will have no further comment as the case continues to work its way through the criminal justice system," Gualtieri said in a statement on Monday.

(MORE: Sheriff says he made 'correct' decision in Florida 'stand your ground' shooting of unarmed man)

McCabe said charging Drejka is "consistent with the decision-making process established under Florida law in this case."

McGlockton, 28, was shot on July 19 after he came out of a convenience store and saw Drejka berating his girlfriend, Britany Jacobs, about parking in a handicap zone. Surveillance video showed McGlockton shoving Drejka to the ground and Drejka, who had a legal concealed weapons permit, pulling a handgun and shooting McGlockton.

PHOTO: A family photo of Markeis McGlockton on display at a news conference held by Clearwater, Fla., July 24, 2018. (Jim Damaske/Tampa Bay Times/TNS via Newscom)

Attorneys for Jacobs, the mother of McGlockton's three young children, and McGlockton's parents have held several press conferences to say they do not believe Drejka should have been given immunity from arrest under "stand your ground."

(MORE: Family of Florida man fatally shot contends gunman can't 'hide' behind Stand Your Ground law)

"My first thought on hearing this news was: It's about time," said Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Jacobs.

Crump said he "firmly" stands behind McCabe's decision to charge Drejka.

"This self-appointed wannabe cop attempted to hide behind 'stand your ground' to defend his indefensible actions, but the truth has finally cut through the noise," Crump said in a statement. "I have full faith that this truth will prevail to punish this cold-blooded killer who angrily created the altercation that led to Markeis needless death. We will continue to fight until justice is brought for the family of Markeis McGlockton."

(MORE: 'Stand Your Ground' laws under scrutiny again after man gunned down in parking lot)

Michele Rayner, an attorney for McGlockton's parents, added: "This is a big step forward in the direction of justice, not only for Markeis' family but also for society as a whole."

PHOTO: Britany Jacobs, 25, her 5-year-old son Markeis McGlockton Jr., and their cousin Mesha Gilbert, 26, during a vigil for Markeis McGlockton Sr., 28, at Mt. Carmel Baptist Church in Clearwater, Fla., July 22, 2018. (Octavio Jones/Tampa Bay Times via AP)

Rayner pointed out that the security video shows McGlockton retreating from Drejka after he pushed the man down in an effort to protect Jacobs and his children. She said that it took four seconds for Drejka to make "the conscious decision" to shoot McGlockton.

"Obviously, we are very encouraged by today's turn of events, especially in light of the sheriff's refusal to do the right thing initially," Rayner said during Monday's press conference. "While we are very encouraged by what the State Attorney has done and by, we believe, making the right decision, we understand that this is a very long road. This is a first step among many steps and we have a long way to go. Our ultimate goal is a conviction in this case."

Rayner said Jacobs did not attend Monday's press conference because she had to take her 5-year-old son, Markeis Jr., to his first day of school.

"This is the first of many milestones in Mr. McGlockton's children's lives that he will miss because of Michael Drejka's actions," Rayner said.
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]

First comes love, then comes marriage. Then  for Meghan Markle, at least  comes a slew of questions about why she's not continuing the Windsor bloodline yet. Well, it's not surprising that Markle, who hasn't done much to fit into the expectations for being a royal, isn't following that old adage. According to Harper's Bazaar, there's a very good reason for Markle and Prince Harry to delay any sort of baby plans: travel.

RELATED: Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Will Reportedly Stay in This Mega Mansion During Their Royal Tour

The newly minted royal may not have logged many hours under her tiara so far, but the magazine reports that she'll be racking up a lot of miles in the coming months. The Express adds that Meghan and Harry will embark on their very first royal tour together this October. And it's not just a run-of-the-mill outing, either. The itinerary includes a stop in Sydney for the 2018 Invictus Games and appearances in Australia, Fiji, the Kingdom of Tonga, and finally New Zealand. That's a packed schedule for anyone, but toss in royal dinners, official visitations, and other obligations and it's sure to be more about work than play for Markle and Harry.

The Express predicts that Markle will "likely want to avoid all the side effects that come with traveling while pregnant." With most of the world focused on her comings and goings it's probably best not to worry about the possibility of morning sickness and fatigue when she's halfway around the world.

RELATED: Thomas Markle Claims Meghan Never Sent Him an Invitation to the Royal Wedding

The U.K.'s National Health Service states that traveling in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy can be more difficult than usual due to "nausea and overwhelming exhaustion." The agency adds that the risk of miscarriage is higher in the initial three months. Plus, the flight from England to the Southern Hemisphere isn't a simple jaunt. The NHS also reports that traveling for periods longer than four hours can increase the risk of developing blood clots or deep vein thrombosis.

But devotees to the royals need not worry. Buckingham Palace hasn't released the couple's schedule after the trip, but it's sure to be more relaxing than this fall's whirlwind trek. Plus, Harry has already said that he's very excited about the prospects of starting a family. During an interview with the BBC, he said, "Hopefully, well start a family in the near future." It's only a matter of time before George, Charlotte, and Louis have a little cousin.
Rare, mysterious, and beautiful, blue diamonds are among the most coveted gems on earth. Theyve continually garnered top dollar at auctionin 2016 the Oppenheimer Blue Diamond sold for a record-setting $57.5 million, topping the sale price of the Blue Moon of Josephine, which crossed the block for $48.4 million the previous year. While the blue jewel has been at the top of collectors lists for centuries, its exact origins have remained a mysterythat is, until inquiring minds at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) set out to quite literally uncover what makes this dazzling diamond so special.

A new study, published this year in the August 2 issue of Nature, reveals that blue diamonds derive their color from minute quantities of the element boron. Mineral inclusions within the jewels show that they formed in deeply subducted oceanic plates that are superdeep. Remarkably, the boron atoms contained in these gems may have originated from ancient oceans.

These blue diamonds come from roughly four times deeper in the earth than most other kinds of gem diamonds, says Evan Smith, a geologist and research fellow at the GIA in New York. Smith, alongside researchers from the Carnegie Institution, the University of Cape Town, and the University of Padova, used a variety of analytical techniques to examine the mineral inclusions in 46 blue diamonds submitted to the GIA for identification and grading over a two-year period. Their research concluded that blue examples form around 410 miles below the earths surfaceabout four times as deep as other diamonds. From a geological standpoint, thats really surprisingI mean these are a completely different kind of diamond, really.

With this discovery, blue diamonds have further solidified their position as one of the planets rarest and most desirable gems, and it stands to reason that their demand will maintain an upward trajectory due to their rarity. Hence, the awareness of this research is salutary in making smart investments. Now that weve figured out that they form exceptionally deep in the earth, theres really no way that we can access more of them, notes Smith. Were at the mercy of nature.

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From Town & Country

Earlier this month, Princess Beatrice of York shared that being a modern royal with a separate career outside the palace walls can be "hard to navigate."

"There is no precedent, there is no protocol, Beatrice said in an interview with British Vogue. We are the first: we are young women trying to build careers and have personal lives, and were also princesses and doing all of this in the public eye.

Beatrice, who works for a US-based company called Afiniti and appears at official royal events alongside the rest of her family, might do well to take a cue from her Thai counterpart, Princess Sirivannavari Nariratana.

Sirivannavari is the daughter of the current king of Thailand, King Vajiralongkorn, but that's hardly the only noteworthy thing about her. She's also a fashion designer, a dedicated equestrian, and she even once played professional badminton-her team won gold at the 2005 Southeast Asian Games-in addition to performing her traditional royal duties.

This month, Tatler questions, "Is Princess Sirivannavari Nariratana the most talented royal in the world?" It's a hyperbolic question tailor-made to catch your attention on social media, but in Sirivannavari's case, it just might be true.

In 2007, Pierre Balmain invited her to show her eponymous line, Sirivannavari, at Paris Fashion Week. The debut collection was romantic in style, and inspired by one of the princess's own love poems. "I started writing poetry a couple of years ago," she tells Tatler. "Its a tale of yearning between a young military officer and a farm girlall facilitated by the titular horse, who carries the wounded soldier into the farm girls arms."

Horses are clearly a passion of Sirivannavari's; she trains intensely in the sport of dressage.

"I train six days a week, Ill ride three horses for an hour each. Ive had injuries. Ive broken my leg, I have a screw in my left foot, but I have never given up," she tells Tatler. "I put all my efforts into achieving my goals."



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But when it comes down to it, her true love isn't the fashion scene in Paris or the riding ring. It's Thailand, her home. Of her country she simply says, "We are inseparable."

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BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP)  One of the four Vermont Democrats seeking the party nomination to run for governor in the fall election isn't old enough to vote, let alone drive.

Ethan Sonneborn, 14, of Bristol, met the requirements to be on the primary ballot and is taking his place with the state's more age-appropriate candidates on the Tuesday primary ballot, to say nothing of numerous candidate forums and debates.

"I think Vermonters should take me seriously because I have practical progressive ideas, and I happen to be 14, not the other way around," Sonneborn said in a recent televised gubernatorial forum. "I think that my message and my platform transcend age."

The Vermont Constitution doesn't have an age requirement for people seeking the state's highest office beyond having lived in the state for four years before the election. Sonneborn qualifies.

That apparent oversight by the state's founders more than 225 years ago was enough to encourage the politically precocious teen to collect the signatures needed to place him on the primary ballot.

He said he's always been fascinated with the concept of building coalitions. Robert F. Kennedy was the politician who most embodies that for him.

Sonneborn said his decision to run grew out of his frustration with state and national politics. The teen learned he could, and then decided to do so as a gut reaction to clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, one year ago.

His July finance report shows Ethan has raised just over $1,700, not enough to make him competitive in a world where the successful candidates will undoubtedly have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, for ads, mailings, staff and other miscellaneous political expenses before the November general election.

Even if he doesn't have much money, Ethan has been on the stage with Vermont's other Democratic candidates.

It might be a stretch, though, to call the other candidates traditional politicians.

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Former utility executive Christine Hallquist says her experience and ideas make her the best choice as Vermont's next governor, but outside Vermont she's pitching herself as someone who would, if elected, become the nation's first transgender political candidate. There is also James Ehlers, an environmentalist, Brenda Siegel, a dance festival organizer.

Last January, two Vermont lawmakers introduced a bill that would require candidates to be registered voters. The proposal went nowhere. At a recent news conference, Republican Gov. Phil Scott said he thought lawmakers should take a look at who should be able to run for the state's highest office.

"I think you should at least be able to get your driver's license at the time that you become governor," said Scott, who is seeking re-election and is facing businessman Keith Stern in the Republican primary.

Sonneborn thinks he'll do better in the primary than people are expecting. And he measures his campaign's success another way, too.

"I think if I can get one person who wasn't involved in the political process before involved now, then my campaign will have been a success," he said.

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Associated Press writer Wilson Ring contributed to this report from Burlington, Vermont.
Zachary Keck

Security, Asia

Could Kim really do it?

In 2015, North Korea Practiced "Sinking" a Navy Aircraft Carrier

Kim also told the military not to fear America and its allies superior technology because the fight with the enemies is not only the confrontation between arms and equipment and physical strength but the confrontation of mental power and ideology of people. Kim argued that North Korea holds advantages over its adversaries in these latter qualities.

North Koreas Navy and Air Force recently conducted a drill simulating mercilessly striking U.S. Aircraft Carriers using guerrillas-style combat, according to official media outlets.

On Saturday the Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim Jong-un had recent personally overseen a recent joint naval and air force drill that practiced sinking U.S. Aircraft carriers.

(This first appeared in 2015.)

The drill was conducted with main emphasis on rounding off the war method of mounting surprise air and naval attacks on the U.S. imperialists' carrier which sailed into the operation waters in the southern half to make military strikes at strategic targets of the DPRK, the report said, using North Koreas official name, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK).

(Recommended: 5 North Korean Weapons South Korea Should Fear)

According to KCNA, the drills began with North Koreas fighter aircraft bolding breaking through the carrier strike groups dense network of anti-air defense to launch close-range zooming attacks on the carrier itself. After these sorties, combined submarine units made torpedo attacks in succession from ambushed waters on the enemy forces hit hard by air strikes.

After the drills were complete, Kim Jong-un directed the armed forces to intensify their efforts against U.S. carrier strike groups, because if the military steadily studies and rounds off the war methods of mercilessly striking the enemy's backbone by the guerrillas-style combat method it is quite possible to send even a carrier to the bottom of the sea.

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Kim also told the military not to fear America and its allies superior technology because the fight with the enemies is not only the confrontation between arms and equipment and physical strength but the confrontation of mental power and ideology of people. Kim argued that North Korea holds advantages over its adversaries in these latter qualities.

(Recommended: The 5 Most Dangerous Nuclear Threats No One Is Talking About)

It is not the first time that North Korea has discussed sinking a U.S. aircraft carrier. In October 2013, the U.S., South Korea and Japan held trilateral naval drills off the Korean Peninsula that included the USS George Washington nuclear aircraft carrier, along with supported weaponry like guided-missile ships, anti-submarine helicopters and early warning aircraft. In response, North Korea released a statement via KCNA that threatened to mount a counterattack that would bury the provocateurs in the sea together with the carrier. During the drills North Koreas general staff said deploying the aircraft carrier for the drills was very dangerous, reckless behavior, and claimed it was armed with at least 100 nuclear bombs aboard, many guided-missile destroyers, cruisers, submarines and escort warships, etc.

Similarly, when the USS George Washington participated in drills in South Korea in July of last year, North Korea claimed charged the U.S. with reckless hostility and confrontation," although it didnt specifically threaten to sink the carrier itself. KIm Jong-un did visit frontline troops during the drill and directed them to send their enemies to the bottom of the sea, to the last man.

It is unclear if the North Korean military has previously practiced sinking U.S. aircraft carriers.

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Yahoo News photo Illustration; photos: AP, Getty

ALEXANDRIA, Va.  As the trial of President Trumps former campaign chairman resumed Monday, it appeared prosecutors from special counsel Robert Muellers office had decided not to call three seemingly key figures. The absence of these witnesses offers intriguing hints about potential ongoing investigations and additional prosecutions that could yet take place.

It became clear these witnesses would not appear when Greg D. Andres, Muellers lead prosecutor at Paul Manaforts trial for alleged financial fraud, confirmed to Judge T.S. Ellis III before court let out last week that the prosecution has only one or two more witnesses to present to the jury. The prosecutors final witnesses will be James Brennan, an officer of the Federal Savings Bank, and potentially Paula Liss, a senior special agent at the Treasury Departments Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Last week, Richard Gates, Manaforts erstwhile right-hand man who pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the Mueller team earlier this year, provided both damaging testimony against Manafort and an opportunity for the defense team to take some heat off their client with a withering cross-examination, which featured dramatic exchanges about Gatess marital infidelity, his padding of expense reports and his admitted theft of Manaforts funds.

While the drama over Gatess appearance captured a great deal of attention, the absence of other key figures has gone largely undiscussed. This brief list, which is by no means comprehensive, includes several people who are knowledgeable about Manaforts alleged crimes, according to the testimony of other witnesses, but who are not being called by prosecutors to the stand:

1. Jeffrey Yohai  Manaforts former son-in-law. Given earlier reporting that he was cooperating with federal investigators, Yohais absence from the prosecutions witness list in Alexandria is one of the towering mysteries in the case. Manaforts daughter Jessica divorced Yohai last year, but before the marriage broke up, Yohai was Manaforts real estate partner.

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One part of the alleged bank fraud scheme involves Yohai and Manafort seeking loans from the Banc of California to buy or build houses and apartment complexes to rent out in Southern California. A Banc of California employee called to the stand this week testified that Yohai did not bring much to the relationship. Yohai personally offered very weak financial support, Gary Seferian testified, and the properties he and Manafort asked the bank to finance were less complete than Yohai had claimed. Prosecutors also had Seferian read from a May 2016 email hed written indicating that Yohai had no experience flipping the sort of expensive Los Angeles homes he and Manafort planned to buy. Unimpressed with Yohai, the bank looked to Manaforts assets and income as the primary source of repayment for their loans, and prosecutors allege that Manafort had misrepresented those finances.

A separate part of the alleged bank fraud scheme involved Manafort seeking more favorable terms on loans from Citizens Bank by misleading the bank and its appraisers about the use of his condo in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. Jurors heard testimony from Citizens Bank employees and were shown emails indicating that Manafort recruited his own daughter and Yohai into putting on a charade for the banks appraiser. Remember, he believes that you and Jessica are living there, Manafort wrote to Yohai in one email. The purpose of the ruse was to persuade Citizens Bank that the extended Manafort family was using the condo as a second home, when in truth Manafort was renting out the condo on Airbnb and similar websites. (A former Navy SEAL who now works at Airbnb described to the jury how often the condo was listed on the site.)

Several media outlets reported earlier this year that Yohai had struck a plea agreement with the U.S. attorneys office in Los Angeles and agreed to cooperate with the government, including the special counsels office, in exchange for reduced charges relating to a bank fraud conspiracy in his real estate business. That agreement, if it exists, remains under seal. The government has not publicly charged Yohai with a crime.

The most natural venue for Yohais cooperation would have been this Manafort trial, where the alleged bank fraud is at issue. (Manafort has a second trial coming up in D.C., but it will focus on his alleged unregistered lobbying on behalf of foreign governments.) Were the reports of a deal wrong? Is the special counsels office saving Yohais testimony for something else, perhaps involving Manaforts foreign activities? Has it lost confidence in Yohai as a witness?

In response to these questions and others, Peter Carr, the spokesman for the special counsels office, declined to comment beyond what was said in court. A member of the defense team did not respond to a request for comment.

Jeffrey Yohai, Steve Calk and David Fallarino. (Photos: BFA, Federal Savings Bank, Facebook)

2. Steve Calk  the founder, chairman and CEO of the Federal Savings Bank in Chicago. On Friday, after hours of mysterious delays that scuttled the morning session and kept jurors and spectators in suspense for much of the afternoon, the prosecution called Dennis Raico as its first witness. Raico testified under a grant of immunity about how the bank Calk runs came to give Paul Manafort $16 million of loans  with one of the loans closing shortly after the 2016 presidential election and the other shortly before the 2017 presidential inauguration.

Raico testified that the timing was no coincidence. Calk, he told the court, was angling for a role in the Trump administration, and he took an unusual interest in Manaforts loan applications, repeatedly meeting privately and socially with Manafort and discussing loan terms with him directly. Raico testified that he had never seen the banks CEO previously get involved with an individual loan application. During the summer of 2016, Manafort had already exercised his influence to put Calk on a Trump campaign advisory committee, and Calk indicated to Raico that he wanted to be part of a future Trump administration. A few days after Trump won the election, and shortly before the first loan closed, Calk called Raico and asked him to call Manafort to inquire whether Calk was up for treasury secretary or HUD? Raico was uncomfortable with the request and didnt make the call.

Email evidence initially introduced earlier showed that Manafort had used his influence during the transition to push Calk for a post as secretary of the Army. Raicos testimony was bracing and persuasive, and Mondays witness will likely make a similar impression. However, these other bank officers are generally able to testify only about their limited firsthand knowledge, they were not at all the dinners and privy to all the phone conversations between the bank CEO and the campaign chairman. Calks own immunized testimony against Manafort would almost certainly be much more powerful, yet the prosecutors do not plan to call him. Why not?

Raicos testimony potentially implicates Calk as well as Manafort. It is a federal offense for a person to give or offer money or other things of value to someone in exchange for that second persons promise to use his or her influence to get the first person appointed to a government job. In addition, Raicos testimony raises questions of whether Calk defrauded the bank, its investors and its regulators in some way. The government has no apparent plans to call Calk as a witness, and so its reasonable to conclude they havent offered him any kind of immunity and he may be in grave legal jeopardy. However, as of this writing, he has not been publicly charged with a crime.

3. David Fallarino  Manaforts front office banker at Citizens Bank. Jurors heard testimony on Thursday last week from two of Fallarinos assistants, who were asked to describe a number of emails Fallarino had sent and received, framing the sort of financial information he needed to receive from Manafort. Earlier in the week, jurors had seen evidence of how Manafort took these emails as instructions showing how to effectively falsify his financial documents to win approval of the loan he desired. On Thursday, jurors also heard from an underwriting supervisor at the bank who processed the Manafort loans Fallarino had recommended.

The testimony of Fallarinos assistants, his underwriting colleague and the raft of emails prosecutors introduced into evidence all make clear that Fallarino was the main point of contact between Manafort and Gates and Citizens Bank, and Fallarino almost certainly has the most information surrounding any misrepresentations. So what explains Fallarinos absence from the stand? One theory, which I think best fits the facts, is that Fallarino refused to testify without immunity, and the government refused to grant it. That would reflect the prosecutors judgment that they could prove the elements of their case against Manafort that relate to Citizens Bank with the testimony of the lower level employees who ultimately appeared without being granted immunity, and that they preferred not to give up the governments ability to prosecute Fallarino. While Fallarino has not been publicly charged with a crime, it appears that he too may be in substantial legal jeopardy.

Its not clear whether the defense will seek to call Yohai, Calk or Fallarino to testify on Manaforts behalf, but the evidence introduced in court thus far makes that possibility appear remote. By not procuring testimony from these potential witnesses, the special counsels office appears to have accepted some added difficulties in its prosecution of Manafort in order to protect the Department of Justices ability to pursue other ongoing inquiries. Its a fair bet theres a lot more to come from this story.

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Luppe B. Luppen is a lawyer and a writer in New York City. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he graduated from Stanford University (2005) and Washington & Lee School of Law (2008). He is @nycsouthpaw on twitter.

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Read more from Yahoo News:
The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not allowed to publicly talk about the topic, told The Associated Press on Monday that Franklin is seriously ill. No more details were provided.

The Queen of Soul canceled planned concerts earlier this year after she was ordered by her doctor to stay off the road and rest up. She was originally scheduled to perform on her 76th birthday in March in Newark, New Jersey, and at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in April.

Last year, the icon announced her plans to retire, saying she would perform at some select things. One of those select events was a gala for Elton Johns 25th anniversary of his AIDS foundation in November in New York City, where Franklin closed the event with a collection of songs including I Say a Little Prayer and Freeway.

Abdul Duke Fakir, the lone surviving original member of the Four Tops, told the AP on Monday morning they have been very close for decades and their most recent conversation was about a week ago by phone. Fakir said they talked after Franklin had stopped by his Detroit house when he wasnt there.

She was telling me she rides around the city every now and then  she talks about how beautiful it is again, Fakir said. We were reminiscing about how blessed we were  only a couple two of us are around from that era. We were just kind of reminiscing about the good times we had.

Fakir, who calls Franklin baby sis because hes older than she is by six years, said despite her health troubles she was talking about the future.

She talked about this great, big special she was going to have in New York, with all her great friends performing, he said. It made me feel good as well  she was still hoping and wishing and dreaming as we do in this business.

Mariah Carey was among the celebrities who tweeted well wishes to Franklin, writing that she is praying for the Queen of Soul. Missy Elliott wrote that the public has to celebrate iconic artists before they die.

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So many (of them) have given us decades of Timeless music, the rapper wrote on Twitter.

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Associated Press Writer Jeff Karoub contributed to this report from Detroit.
US Ambassador to the United Kingdom Woody Johnson at the Ambassador's official residence in Regent's Park - A Eddie Mulholland

Britain should side with Donald Trump rather than Brussels over Iran, the US ambassador to London declares on Saturday as he calls on America's "closest ally" to reverse its position on the controversial nuclear deal.

Writing for The Telegraph, Woody Johnson challenges the UK to abandon its European neighbours who are still backing a deal to trade with Iran and join forces with America to enforce hard-hitting sanctions.

Mr Johnson also delivers an explicit ultimatum to British companies, telling then to stop doing business with Iran or face "serious consequences" for your trade with America.

The comments are a direct challenge to Theresa May's Government coming days after a minister point-blank refused to go along with President Trump's sanctions on Tehran and keep the 2015 nuclear agreement alive.

They also come just six days after British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt signed a joint statement with the EU which promised to push ahead with blocking the impact of the sanctions.

US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk stepping off Air Force One as they arrive at London's Stansted Airport last month Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Mr Johnson's comments escalate the tensions over what is the first test of the special relationship between the US and UK since Mr Trump's successful visit to the UK last month.

Britain negotiated the original Iran deal in 2015 with France, Germany, China, Russia, US, in a process coordinated by the European Union.

It saw the regime agree to curb its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of sanctions.

But Mr Trump pulled America out of the deal, which was struck by his predecessor Barack Obama, three months ago because Mr Trump believes it is not stopping Iran from meddling the Middle East. This week hard-hitting economic sanctions were reimposed.

In his article Mr Johnson writes: America is turning up the pressure and we want the UK by our side. It is time to move on from the flawed 2015 deal.

We are asking global Britain to use its considerable diplomatic power and influence and join us as we lead a concerted global effort towards a genuinely comprehensive agreement.

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Together, we can help bring about the peace and prosperity in Iran that the whole world wants to see.

Mr Johnson even goes over the head of Whitehall and urges British businesses directly to cut ties with Iran. The UK's trade with Iran was 365million in 2016.

He writes: The President has been explicit: any businesses which put their own commercial interests in Iran ahead of the global good will risk serious consequences for their trade with the United States.

Only by presenting a united front can we exert the maximum possible pressure on the Iranian regime and get them to finally change course and put an end to their malign and reckless activities both at home and abroad.

British Prime Minister Theresa May walks with U.S President Donald Trump after their joint press conference at Chequers last month Credit: Stefan Rousseau/PA/POOL

The call amounts to a plea for Britain to break with its European Union partners over Iran and adopt Mr Trumps strategy. The UK will be formally out of the EU in April 2019.

But last night senior UK government figures rejected the demands, further deepening the policy rift between the two traditional allies.

One Government minister said Mr Trump was simply throwing red meat to his support base and his strategy would be counter-productive, while a Foreign Office source reiterated the UK's support for the agreement.

Donald Trump warns Theresa May a soft Brexit will 'kill' any trade deal with the US

The minister added: "The trouble is with this approach is that it plays into the hands of the hardliners [in Tehran]. They court this. The whole purpose of the deal was to allow big companies to go into Iran - which is crying out for infrastructure improvement.

"It is all ratcheting slightly out of control - I can't see Britain wanting to join in with that because where it takes you into a more hardline position.

"We pride ourselves on having a better understanding of the world than most - we would urge absolute caution on this. This is not the direction of travel you want go in."

A Foreign Office source said: "We remain committed to the deal and are open to talking with the US administration and Congress about ways we can work together to address our shared concerns about Iran's regional activity."

In recent months Britain has thrown its support behind a so-called blocking statute, implemented in Brussels, which will protect European business from Americas Iran sanctions.

The move is an attempt to keep European companies trading with Iran - seen as a critical factor in keeping the agreement alive. Iran has said it will stick with the deal only if it continues to enjoy the economic benefits it was promised.

podcast promotion - brexit

In the statement signed on Monday by foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, his French and German counterparts Jean-Yves Le Drian and Heiko Maas, and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, they say they "deeply regret" the US sanctions and "are determined to protect European economic operators engaged in legitimate business with Iran."

Asked the following day if Britain would "go along with the US" on Iran, Alistair Burt, a Foreign Office minister, said: "We made it clear that we regard the nuclear deal as an important part of the region's security. We think this is really important, sticking to a deal a number of partners have agreed to."

Asked how British companies could protected from US sanctions, he added: "If a company fears legal and enforcement activity, they can be protected by EU legislation. But the practicalities might be different. Many companies won't be affected."

Challenged over whether the UK would "stand up" to President Trump, Mr Burt said: "They can expect us to do that - yes. Sometimes you need to take a stand against friends.
Cairo (AFP) - An Egyptian court Sunday sentenced to life in prison the Muslim Brotherhood's supreme guide, Mohamed Badie, and four other leaders in a retrial on accusations of inciting street violence, their lawyer said.

Defence lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maksoud named the others as Mohamed el-Beltagi, Essam el-Erian, Safwat Higazi and El-Husseini Antar.

The Brotherhood was designated a terrorist organisation in Egypt in December 2013, after the military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July of that year in the wake of mass protests against his rule.

"We will appeal the sentences within 60 days," the lawyer told AFP, adding that four other people were sentenced to jail terms of between 10 and 15 years.

The accusations date back to July 2013 when Brotherhood leaders and members marched in Giza, west of Cairo, in protest at Morsi's ouster.

The defendants were charged with terrorism, attempted murder, forming an armed group to attack citizens, and illegal possession of firearms.

Badie and the others were initially sentenced in September 2014 to life in prison, but Egypt's court of cassation cancelled the ruling and ordered the retrial.
Orlando Sentinel

As a volunteer at Sand Lake Elementary where her two children attend school, Victoria Triece has spent hours helping organize class parties and assist in lab assignments in her older sons classroom, something she said she wanted to do ever since she became a mom. I always wanted to be involved in that aspect of life, Triece said. My mother did it for me and having her there was the best ...
Love cats, but humans not so much? Comfortable with the idea of living on a secluded Greek island in the company of 55 cats, Grecian sun and sea, and little else? A feline sanctuary on a small Greek island called Syros will pay you to cuddle cats all day while soaking in the sun.

The job offer was posted online recently by Joan Bowell who heads the Facebook page for God's Little People Cat Rescue, with a reassurance that the post is genuine and "not a joke."

The candidate would take over the cat sanctuary on the Greek island of Syros, in exchange for a free stay on the island and a modest salary.

A reading of the job description and candidate profile makes it hard not to conjure up images of a middle-aged cat lady.

"You'll no doubt thrive best if you are the type of person who appreciates nature and likes tranquility -- and rest comfortably in your own company," reads the Facebook posting.

"That said, you'll never feel lonely in the company of the cats and you'll be expected to live with a small handful of cats in your house."

Also, millennial influencers looking for a good Instagram story need not apply.

"From experience the job is most suitable for someone 45+ years of age, who's responsible, reliable, honest, practically inclined -- and really, with a heart of gold!"

The ideal candidate would also be a trained veterinarian nurse, as the position requires feeding and medicating cats.

Candidates should be comfortable handling feral cats and living in seclusion on a nature preserve that may be busy in summer, but is tranquil and quiet in winter.

Since posting the job offer, Bowell told The Telegraph that she's received about 3,000 applications, mostly from the US and the UK.

Bowell will make a decision by the end of the month.

For more information on how to apply, visit God's Little People Cat Rescue's page.
Chris Hardwick made his return to Talking Dead on Sunday, following the midseason premiere of Fear the Walking Dead.

Yvette Nicole Brown was originally scheduled to replace Hardwick as host of the episode; however, AMC reinstated Hardwick after completing its investigation of sexual assault allegations.

Chris Hardwick on Talking Dead." (Photo: Jordin Althaus/AMC)

AMCs decision was met with some backlash.

During the week before Hardwicks return, fans on social media continued to show support for actress Chloe Dykstra, who described her experience with an emotionally and sexually abusive ex-boyfriend in a June post on Medium. Though Dykstra didnt name Hardwick in the piece, readers quickly assumed that it was referencing her three-year relationship with him. He denied these claims.

A number of Talking Dead staff, including an executive producer, also quit the show over Hardwicks reinstatement, The Wrap reported.

On Sunday, Hardwick addressed the audience:

I really just want to take a minute, and I want to say that I am so appreciative to be standing here right now. And I want to thank you, the Walking Dead community, for all of your support these last couple of months. You know, this show is not just a job to me. This is a vital part of my life, you know. This has been a sanctuary, these last seven years weve been here. This has been with me through good times and bad times, and I have so much gratitude to you, the fans and the producers and the amazing casts of both of these shows, for allowing me to come here and be a part of this community every week. This is what this is. This is a community, and were along the precipice of a lot of changes on both Walking Dead shows in the coming weeks and months, and I am so looking forward to going on that journey with you, and Ive said the following words a million times, countless times, and that Ive never been more thankful than I am in this very moment, to say to you that I am Chris Hardwick, and this is Talking Dead.

Hardwick went on to praise Brown, who was a guest on the pre-taped episode, for taking over his various hosting spots. The two shared a hug and the studio audience applauded. He did not directly address the investigation or staff departures.

Story continues

Chris Hardwick's return to TV included tears, rousing applause from the #TalkingDead audience, and a hug from Yvette Nicole Brown pic.twitter.com/cKTBIFbmh6  Jillian Sederholm (@JillianSed) August 13, 2018

Dykstras Medium essay outlined disturbing emotional abuse and industry blacklisting that she said she suffered as a result of a past relationship. Shortly after the essay was published, Hardwick was removed from hosting his various shows on AMC as well as moderating San Diego Comic-Con panels, pending an AMC investigation.

Before AMC reinstated him on Talking Dead, Walking Dead executive producer David Alpert told HuffPost he wanted Hardwick back but reiterated: We have to figure out whats going on.

Although Dykstra didnt participate in AMCs investigation, she recently tweeted that she would 100% stand by every single word of her essay outlining the abuse she experienced:

Hey dudes. Just a reminder: I 100% stand by every single word of my essay. I made sure it was unembellished, factual, and that I had evidence to back it up in order to protect myself in case of ACTUAL litigation (not a network investigation, where Im not protected). That is all.  Chloe Dykstra (@skydart) August 10, 2018

Ahead of Sundays Talking Dead episode, Hardwicks name was also restored to the Nerdist website, which he founded. Such information was removed in June.

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Related...

Chris Hardwick Denies Sexually Assaulting Ex-Girlfriend Chloe Dykstra

This One Mention Of Chris Hardwick At Comic-Con Was Telling

Chris Hardwick's Career Back On Track After Sexual Assault Investigation

'Talking Dead' Staffers Protest Chris Hardwick's Return To AMC By Quitting

Also on HuffPost

Cliff Curtis as Travis and Kim Dickens as Madison - Fear the Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Alycia Debnam Carey as Alicia and Frank Dillane as Nick - Fear the Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Alycia Debnam Carey as Alicia and Frank Dillane as Nick - Fear the Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Elizabeth Rodriguez as Liza and Lorenzo James Henrie as Chris - Fear the Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Elizabeth Rodriguez as Liza, Lorenzo James Henrie as Chris and Cliff Curtis as Travis - Fear the Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Cliff Curtis as Travis - Fear the Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Cliff Curtis as Travis and Kim Dickens as Madison - Fear the Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Kim Dickens as Madison - Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Alycia Debnam Carey as Alicia - Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Patricia Reyes SpAndola as Griselda Salazar - Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Cliff Curtis as Travis - Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Ruben Blades as Daniel Salazar - Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Frank Dillane as Nick - Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Lorenzo James Henrie as Chris - Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Elizabeth Rodriguez as Liza - Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Mercedes Mason as Ofelia - Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Gallery - Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Buenos Aires (AFP) - Records kept in notebooks of the kinds used by schoolchildren are bringing down titans of Argentina's industry in a multimillion-dollar corruption scandal.

Dirty dealings are nothing new in Argentina.

What sets this case apart is the large number of people going down -- around 20 so far, with additional names surfacing regularly -- and their high-flying status in the business world.

The scandal involves under-the-table payments to the governments of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, the Peronist couple who ruled before the current president, Mauricio Macri.

One big mystery is whether the money went to enrich government officials personally or was helped finance election campaigns.

Investigative Magistrate Claudio Bonadio is raising eyebrows by aggressively ordering the arrest and questioning of so many business leaders, from both ends of the political spectrum in Argentina. Most of the arrests happened on August 1.

"It is not the first time that major businessmen have gone to jail. What is new is the number and the reason," said Sergio Morresi, a political scientist at San Martin National University.

- Tycoons under arrest -

Prosecutor Carlos Stornelli has said bribes paid in the so called "corruption copybooks" case total $160 million.

Bonadio began jailing tycoons after the publication of the records by Oscar Centeno, who worked as a driver for the deputy planning and public works minister Roberto Baratta.

In these notebooks, Centeno meticulously recorded the alleged receipt of sacks of money from 2005 to 2015.

The whistleblower had been expelled from the army for bad behavior.

"There is no doubt that the copybooks describe in detail the way in which the Kirchners raised money illegally for seven years without any alarm going off at any oversight agency," said Nicolas Solari of the consultancy Poliarquia.

So far, eight business leaders have confessed and struck plea-bargain deals.

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Angelo Calcaterra, a cousin of Macri, acknowledged having ordered the payment of cash requested as a bribe in order to receive government contracts.

Testifying before the judge, he said he thought this was a mandatory election campaign contribution.

Leaders of big multinational companies such as Argentina's Techint and Isolux of Spain have paid a visit to Bonadio's office.

"The indictment and arrest of business leaders is new, and considering the unpopularity and impunity that big business people enjoy, it will probably be well received by public opinion," said sociologist Ricardo Rouvier.

- Privileged -

Morresi, the political scientist, said "one possible result is real progress in transparency and criminal convictions."

The Buenos Aires stock market has taken a hit with the arrests.

Alberto Fernandez, who served as chief of staff to the late Nestor Kirchner, has complained that only business leaders who supported the Kirchners and their leftist Peronist governments have ended up behind bars -- not those close to the current, conservative Macri government.

A dozen or so people from the planning and public works ministry have gone before the judge -- though they have not yet been charged over the case -- and Cristina Kirchner's turn comes Monday. She now holds a seat as a senator.

Ex-planning minister Julio de Vido and his deputy Jose Lopez have been in prison for corruption since 2017 and 2016, respectively.

They managed the federal government's public works projects under the Kirchners and were the only two ministers to survive the various cabinet reshuffles across the couple's 12 years in power.

Lope was caught red-handed hiding 160 suitcases and duffel bags containing $9 million in a convent with the help of a nun.
Robert Farley

Security, Asia

No need to worry?

Could China's New Destroyer 'Sink' the Navy?

So the short answer to the question does the United States need to respond to the Type 055 is no, not in the medium term. The longer answer is that the U.S. Navy needs to figure out its procurement and shipbuilding policies soon in order to credibly approach design of the next big surface combatant.

Does the United States have an answer to Chinas new Type 055 destroyers? Does it need one?

On July 3 Dalian shipyard launched two of the big new ships, with some reports suggesting that the class may extend to twenty-four vessels. The ships are large and have more VLS cells than Flight III Arleigh Burke destroyers, although the latter still exceed the former in sensor integration and other capabilities.

Still, with the Navys cruiser force aging, does the U.S. Navy need to think seriously about its own large cruiser?

(This first appeared last month.)

Description:

The Type 055 destroyers are large ships, probably displacing around thirteen thousand tons and carrying 112 vertical launch system (VLS) cells, in addition to a 130-millimeter gun and a wide array of sensors and defensive weapons. They are the worlds largest surface combatants apart from the Zumwalt class destroyers, which really are specialized land attack vessels. The overall production run remains uncertain, with a low estimate of six and a high estimate of twenty-four; much likely depends on how effectively the ship performs in PLAN service.

U.S. Response:

The United States has been slow to develop a replacement to the Ticonderoga class cruisers, which are somewhat smaller than the Type 055. The DDG-1000 class will end after three ships, and in any case the Zumwalts do not perform missions similar to the Type 055. The Obama administration cancelled the CG(X) program after cost projections became excessive. In response to the failure of the DDG(X) and CG(X) programs, the Navy decided to restart the Arleigh Burke program, which had the added benefit of improving ballistic missile defense capabilities. But apart from the Arleigh Burke Flight III ships, the U.S. Navy has no specific large combatants in its long-term plans. At the moment, the FFG(X) program is dominating the U.S. Navys procurement attention, as the shortcomings of the Littoral Combat Ship have demonstrated a need to fill the gap between the LCS and the Arleigh Burkes.

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But the Ticonderogas will soon reach the end of their useful service lives, as will the oldest of the DDG-51 class of ships. Some have floated the idea of a cruiser based on the hull of the LPD-17, which would allow high energy production, a degree of modularity, and the inclusion of a wide variety of different systems. However, the LPD-17s are large and slow, likely incapable of keeping up with carrier battle groups. Another idea (floated by Tyler Rogoway, among others) is to modify the existing Zumwalt design for cruiser-esque purposes. But as of yet the Navy has made no firm determination about the future of its large surface combatant program.

The Need?

But then there is little obvious need for a direct analogue to specific Chinese ship classes. The existing cruisers and destroyers of the U.S. Navy perform roles essentially similar to that of the Type 055s, even if the latter carry more VLS cells. And the era in which individual ships fight each other independently is long in the past; indeed, even during the dreadnought era individual ship-to-ship comparison rarely played out in actual combat.

In a fight between the United States and China, the U.S. Navy would use a wide variety of air, surface, and subsurface systems to track and destroy the largest units of the PLAN. While the additional VLS systems and sensors of the Type 055 will undoubtedly increase Chinese capabilities, they wont be directed towards any specific U.S. ship type (other perhaps than aircraft carriers). Similarly, the U.S. Navy will find it far more convenient to sink the Type 055s with submarines and air-launched cruise missiles than it will with any specific ship type. And so the question is less can the United States match the Type 055 than what hull or set of hulls will make it easiest to match the capabilities that the Type 055 can offer? There are a variety of technological developments (VLS, power generation, sensor capability, and future avenues in railguns and lasers) that suggest that size may once again be rewarded in naval architecture; the Type 055s offer Chinas initial answer for how to take advantage of these developments, just as the Zumwalts represented an exploration of those capabilities on the U.S. side. Unfortunately, the former seem more likely to see long-term success than the latter.

Recommended: How an Old F-15 Might Kill Russias New Stealth Fighter

Recommended: How China Plans to Win a War Against the U.S. Navy

Recommended: How the Air Force Would Destroy North Korea

Wrap

So the short answer to the question does the United States need to respond to the Type 055 is no, not in the medium term. The longer answer is that the U.S. Navy needs to figure out its procurement and shipbuilding policies soon in order to credibly approach design of the next big surface combatant. As the Ticonderogas continue to age, they will leave a gap that a new large warship needs to fill, even if it is never likely to meet the Type 055 in direct combat. China has decided to take advantage of the efficiencies inherent in a large hull-type, not because of any specific competition with the United States, but rather because of the evolution of key technologies. The U.S. Navy can also take advantage of these evolutionary developments, even if it doesnt specifically think of matching the Type 055, but it needs to sort out its long-term shipbuilding plans.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, is author of The Battleship Book . He serves as a senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky.

Image: Creative Commons.

Read full article
The several dozen white supremacists who showed up outside the White House on Sunday to mark the one-year anniversary of their movements violent gathering in Charlottesville, Va., were overwhelmingly outnumbered by thousands of counter-protesters.

For the anti-racist and anti-fascist demonstrators, it was a successful attempt to wrest the narrative away from the alt-right, who had initially expected the gathering  called Unite the Right 2 and organized by prominent white nationalist Jason Kessler  to draw as many as 400.

Its one of the few things theyre afraid of: being outnumbered, Nick Wood, a 30-year-old demonstrator affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, told TIME outside of the park. I was a Marine, and I see these guys as domestic enemies of the Constitution, so.

A group of passersby on scooters at Lafayette Square.

A counter-protester writes the word love on the cheek of another counter-protester at Lafayette Square, ahead of a planned gathering of white nationalists.

Two counter-protesters attend a demonstration, in opposition of the Unite the Right 2 rally, at Freedom Plaza.

A poster bearing the face of Heather Heyer, who was killed after a vehicle was rammed into a crowd of counter-protesters at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville a year earlier.

The gathering was a non-event in part because of the rigor of local and federal law enforcement agencies, who kept the blocks surrounding the White House under tight control in the hours preceding the rally. But more than anything else, it was the simple fact that not that many white supremacists showed up.

The ones who didnt come are the ones who are afraid of losing their jobs and having their whole lives dismantled, Wood said.

The white nationalist demonstration was scheduled to begin outside the White House in the early evening after a march from the Foggy Bottom Metro station less than a mile away, but it was clear hours before that that their exercise would prove underwhelming.

No more than 30 white nationalist sympathizers ascended from the underground station in Foggy Bottom to find themselves faced by dozens of protesters and even more law enforcement officials. Facing angry jeers, the small group, some clad in camouflage and others brandishing the American flag, began their walk across the capital, protected by an armada of police motorcycles.

Ahead of the demonstration, members of the alt-right were pragmatic in curtailing their expectations. I dont really see much potential for good things coming out of this. Theres certainly a lot of potential for danger. It will most likely will be a bit of a dud, Richard Spencer, a prominent figurehead of the white nationalist movement, said on Saturday.

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They assembled in a small scrum on the southern end of Lafayette Square, near the White House fence, separated from the sprawling counter-protest by steel cordons and an expanse of roughly fifty yards. Security made access to their demonstration was virtually impossible.

The counter-demonstration grew as the afternoon went on, with a loose confederation of protesters  militant anti-fascists, known as Antifa, clad in black; socialists and communists; LGBT liberation groups; politically minded D.C. citizens  filling the park and the adjacent avenues.

A counter-protester yells into a megaphone.

Three counter-protesters who attended the opposition demonstration at Freedom Plaza.

A group of counter-protesters sit in a tree.

Their gathering was largely peaceful, but the mood was at points tense. With thunderclouds gathering over the north face of the White House, Antifa demonstrators appeared to be hungering for an altercation with the handful of white nationalists gathered in the park. At one point, dozens of black-clad activists, their faces concealed by black bandannas, lobbed fireworks and eggs into the square.

Were mostly trying to address the person whos currently occupying the Oval Office, one counter-demonstrator, who declined to give his name and held a sign that said IF YOU DONT DENOUNCE NAZIS, YOU ARE A NAZI, said.

He was referring to President Donald Trump, whose ambivalent disavowal of last years riot in Charlottesville  in which he said there were very bad people  on both sides  prompted outrage on the left. On Saturday, a day before the demonstration, Trump tweeted that we must come together as a nation, saying he condemn[s] all types of racism and acts of violence.

A group of anti-fascist demonstrators.

A young counter-protester, among the more than 1,000 who showed up to oppose the Unite the Right 2 rally.

A woman hands a Black Lives Matter sign back to a young boy, who was readjusting his position in a tree, at Lafayette Square.

Counter-protesters were quick to declare Sundays demonstration a victory for their side, but some prominent white nationalists dismissed this, saying that public activism had already served its purpose for their movement.

Activism was very interesting in 2017 because it proves that there was a real movement, Spencer said. One of the criticisms of the alt-right was that it was a half dozen computer programmers using bots to get Trump elected. Charlottesville proved it wasnt. For every person that was there, there were a thousand people who wanted to be.

Anti-fascist protesters in Lafayette Square.

A counter-protester holds a shooting target with a swastika in the middle.

Anti-fascist demonstrators pass a busker in downtown Washington.
Reuters

Taco Bell owner Yum Brands Inc beat Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue and profit on Thursday, as strong demand for its fried chicken and tacos cushioned the blow from a slowdown in sales at its Pizza Hut chain. Chipotle Mexican Grill and McDonald's have also delivered a strong beat in the third quarter, aided by product price hikes and the reopening of seating areas in their restaurants. "We did see a return to dine-in, yet we saw digital sales go up ... that is still something that is going to continue to grow for us," Yum Brands Chief Executive Officer David Gibbs said on a call with analysts.
A pedestrian walks between two Bird dock less scooters, one laying on its side - AFP

Electric scooters, billed as the new and environmentally friendly way of commuting, are facing a backlash from cities across the US.

Billions of dollars have been pumped into innovative high-tech companies like Lime, Bird and Spin, headquartered in California.

Combined, the companies operate in more than 100 US cities as well as around half a dozen in Europe, including Paris. They are still banned in the UK.

The scooters are booked via an app. They normally cost around one dollar (78 pence) to unlock and 15 cents (12p) a minute to rent. Users can then zip around town, avoiding urban gridlock as they weave around traffic and, in some cases, pedestrians.

But according to many city authorities, the result has been mayhem on the streets. Pedestrians have complained of having to take evasive action to get out of the way of scooters which can reach top speeds of 15mph.

Residents have also been incensed by the clutter of scooters being haphazardly dumped by riders when they have finished using them. Now several municipalities have declared enough is enough.

Riders make their way across a street on Bird electric scooters in the Venice Beach section of Los Angeles Credit: AP/Richard Vogel

San Francisco, for example, served cease and desist orders on electric scooter companies which led to the vehicles being taken off the streets.

Santa Monica instructed police to enforce road traffic laws, requiring riders to have a driving licence and wear a helmet.

Kansas City has banned them from the shopping areas. On the east coast, Bostons Mayor Martin Walsh has said the electric scooters will be impounded if they appear.

The scooters just arrived one day, said Julian Gold, the Mayor of Beverly Hills in California. It is not as if they came up to us and said they were going to do this.

People ride Lime and Bird scooters along the strand in Santa Monica, California Credit: Richard Vogel/AP

They gave no thought to the consequences and the consequences were pretty significant. People were riding in a dangerous manner, they were not wearing helmets, they were falling off.

People in the hospital emergency room were telling us that the number of injuries was pretty significant.

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They werent like rental bikes which were put back into a rack, they were being left anywhere, on peoples lawns or in their driveways, Dr Gold said.

We have our police department enforcing this and it is taking up resources which should be devoted to fighting crime.

We were left playing catch up. The backlash has not just been at the government level but from residents as well.

The industry regards these difficulties as teething troubles as cities get used to a new form of transport.

Cities and Bird share a common goal of reducing carbon emissions," said a Bird spokesman.

"We want to collaborate and have productive conversations to bring this equitable and environmentally friendly transportation option to people globally."
The United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket launches NASA's Parker Solar Probe to the Sun - REUTERS

Nasa sends spacecraft on mission to Sun's atmosphere

Parker Solar Probe is as heat-resistant as a spacecraft gets

Aim is to make 24 passes through the corona during 7-year mission

Successful launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Sunday

Embarking on a mission that scientists have been dreaming of since the Sputnik era, a Nasa spacecraft hurtled on Sunday towards the sun on a quest to unlock some of its mysteries by getting closer than any object sent before.

If all goes well, the Parker Solar Probe will fly straight through the wispy edges of the sun's corona, or outer atmosphere, in November. In the years ahead, it will gradually get within 3.8 million miles of the surface, its instruments protected from the extreme heat and radiation by a revolutionary new carbon heat shield and other high-tech wizardry.

Altogether, the Parker probe will make 24 close approaches to our star during the seven-year, $1.5 billion journey.

"Wow, here we go. We're in for some learning over the next several years," said Eugene Parker, the 91-year-old astrophysicist for whom the spacecraft is named.

Why Nasa's daring mission to 'touch the sun' will be 'the next jump in knowledge'

It was Parker who accurately theorised 60 years ago the existence of solar wind - the supersonic stream of charged particles blasting off the sun and coursing through space, sometimes wreaking havoc on electrical systems on Earth.

This is the first time Nasa has named a spacecraft after a living person.

As Parker and thousands of others watched, a Delta IV Heavy rocket carried the probe aloft, thundering into the clear, star-studded sky on three pillars of fire that lit up the middle-of-the-night darkness.

Nasa needed the mighty 23-story rocket, plus a third stage, to get the Parker probe - the size of a small car and well under a ton - racing toward the sun, 93 million miles from Earth.

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The United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket launches NASA's Parker Solar Probe to the Sun Credit: Reuters

A Saturday morning launch attempt was foiled by last-minute technical trouble. But Sunday gave way to complete success.

It was the first rocket launch ever witnessed by Parker, a retired University of Chicago professor. He said it was like looking at photos of the Taj Mahal for years and then beholding the real thing in India.

"I really have to turn from biting my nails in getting it launched, to thinking about all the interesting things which I don't know yet and which will be made clear, I assume, over the next five or six or seven years," Parker said on Nasa TV.

Among the mysteries scientists hope to solve: Why is the corona hundreds of times hotter than the surface, which is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius)? And why is the sun's atmosphere continually expanding and accelerating, as Parker theorised in 1958?

The United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket launching NASA's Parker Solar Probe to touch the Sun Credit: AFP

"The only way we can do that is to finally go up and touch the sun," said project scientist Nicola Fox of Johns Hopkins University. "We've looked at it. We've studied it from missions that are close in, even as close as the planet Mercury. But we have to go there."

A better understanding of the sun's life-giving and sometimes violent nature could also enable earthlings to better protect satellites and astronauts in orbit, along with the power grids so vital to today's technology-dependent society, said Thomas Zurbuchen, Nasa's science mission chief.

Parker, the probe, will start shattering records this autumn. On its very first brush with the sun, it will come within 15.5 million miles, easily beating the current record of 27 million miles set by Nasa's Helios 2 spacecraft in 1976.

Astrophysicist Eugene Parker attends a news conference about the Parker Solar Probe named after him Credit: AP

By the time Parker gets to its 22nd, 23rd and 24th orbits of the sun in 2024 and 2025, it will be even deeper into the corona and travelling at a record 430,000 mph. Nothing from planet Earth has ever gone that fast.

Even Fox has difficulty comprehending the mission's derring-do.

"To me, it's still mind-blowing," she said. "Even I still go, 'Really? We're doing that?'"

The 8-foot (2.4-meter) heat shield will serve as an umbrella that will shade the spacecraft's scientific instruments, with on-board sensors adjusting the protective cover as necessary so that nothing gets fried.

A mission to get up close and personal with our star has been on Nasa's books since 1958. The trick was making the spacecraft compact and light enough to travel at incredible speeds and durable enough to withstand the punishing environment.

"We've had to wait so long for our technology to catch up with our dreams," Fox said.

8:51AM

Next stop: the Sun

The @ulalaunch#DeltaIVHeavy, with the Parker #SolarProbe onboard, launches to the Sun! Follow the link to more images as they come in! https://t.co/nZMjaDfkDGpic.twitter.com/55naMVq5TO  NASA HQ PHOTO (@nasahqphoto) August 12, 2018

8:33AM

We have lift-off

A successful launch of the Parker Solar Probe.

8:27AM

430,000 mph

At closest approach, our Parker #SolarProbe spacecraft will be hurtling around @NASASun at approximately 430,000 miles per hour! That's fast enough to get from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. in one second. Watch: https://t.co/T3F4bqeATBpic.twitter.com/RPzeX2bW65  NASA (@NASA) August 12, 2018

8:17AM

Favourable weather - launch is still scheduled for 8.31am BST

We have favorable weather for today's 3:31am ET liftoff of our Parker #SolarProbe spacecraft that is headed to the Sun. Watch live: https://t.co/T3F4bqwcibpic.twitter.com/rVPbiPMgEZ  NASA (@NASA) August 12, 2018

7:42AM

What are the key questions the mission hopes to shed light on?

Magnetic fields

How can the Sun's atmosphere, called the corona, reach temperatures exceeding a million degrees Celsius if the star's surface is "only" 6,000 C (10,800 degrees Fahrenheit)?

"That's the big question: what's heating the solar corona?", said Thierry Dudok de Wit, an astrophysicist at France's National Centre for Scientific Research.

One likely suspect is electromagnetic waves.

Energy is stored in magnetic fields, the thinking goes, that are constantly stirring up the visible surface of the Sun, called the photosphere, and releasing energy into the solar atmosphere.

The FIELDS instrument - which captures the scale and shape of electric and magnetic field - is designed to help scientists figure out how, when, and where that energy release occurs.

Solar wind

Another mystery is how solar wind - composed of ionised gases streaming outward from the Sun at 500 kilometres per second (nearly a million miles per hour) - accelerates.

Finding out would help scientists forecast major space weather events that can adversely impact Earth's magnetic field and, in some cases, change the orbit of satellites and create electrical disturbances.

The solar wind carries a million tons of matter into space every second.

Enter the Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation (SWEAP), which will count the most abundant particles in the solar wind - electrons, protons and helium ions - and measure their velocity, density and temperature.

"This could help us do a much better job of predicting when a disturbance in the solar wind could hit Earth, triggering space weather that could disrupt GPS, radio, radar and the electric grid," said Justin Kaspar, a professor at the University of Michigan and a principle investigator for the Parker Solar Probe.

Particle acceleration

The Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (ISOIS) harnesses a pair of instruments to measure the full life-cycle of electrons, protons, ions: where they come from, how they accelerate, how they move out of the Sun through interplanetary space.

"These are high-energy particles that travel at phenomenal speeds approaching the speed of light," said Dudok de Wit.

"They reach Earth" - 150 million kilometres (more than 90 million miles) distant - "in 30 to 60 minutes."

Earth's magnetic shield protects us from these potentially harmful particles, he noted.

"But the day we go to Mars, we'll need to be able to predict solar eruptions of these particles, which can be deadly," he told AFP.

Close up

The Wide-Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) is the only imaging device on board. Never will a camera have come so close to the Sun.

WISPR will look at the large-scale structure of matter spewing outward from the Sun as it approaches the probe, to compliment the detailed physical measurements of other instruments.

NASA scientists know what they are looking for, but have allowed for the element of surprise.

"We have ideas about what will be found, but the most important results may well come from observations that are completely unexpected," said Mark Wiedenbeck, a researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and part of the ISOIS team.

7:23AM

How and why the Parker spacecraft is so tough

SUPERHERO-WORTHY SHIELD

Parker's lightweight heat shield is just 4 inches (11 centimeters) thick. But it can withstand 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,370 degrees Celsius) as well as extreme radiation, thanks to its high-tech carbon. Although the corona reaches millions of degrees, it's a wispy, tenuous, environment and so the spacecraft won't need to endure such severe temperatures. The 8-foot (2.4-meter) shield will face the sun during the close solar encounters, shading the science instruments in the back and keeping them humming at a cool 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius). As one scientist notes, this is a shield Captain America would envy.

SEVEN YEARS IN HOT PURSUIT

The spacecraft's path to the sun runs past Venus. It will fly by our solar system's hottest planet seven times over seven years, using the gravity of Venus to shrink its own oval orbit and draw increasingly closer to the sun. The first Venus flyby is in October, followed by the first dip into the sun's corona in November. There will be 24 orbits between Venus and the sun, with the final three putting Parker closest to the sun - just 3.8 million miles (6 million kilometers) out - in 2024 and 2025. That's a scant 4 percent of the 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) between Earth and the Sun.

This handout illustration obtained July 6, 2018 courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins APL shows an artists conception of NASAs Parker Solar Probe, the spacecraft that will fly through the Suns corona to trace how energy and heat move through the stars atmosphere

BREAKING RECORDS

The records will start falling as soon as Parker takes its first run past the sun.. The current close-to-the-sun champ, NASA's former Helios 2, got within 27 million miles (43 million kilometers) in 1976. Parker will come within 15.5 million miles (25 million kilometers) in November and then start beating its own record. During its closest solar approaches, the spacecraft will hurtle through the corona at 430,000 mph (690 kph), setting a speed record.

SOLAR SCIENCE

Our yellow dwarf star is, in many ways, a mystery. The outreaching corona is hundreds of times hotter than the sun's actual surface, confounding scientists. In addition, physicists don't know what's driving the solar wind, the supersonic stream of charged particles constantly blasting away from the sun. By being right in the thick of it, Parker should provide some answers, shedding light not only on our star but the billions of others out there.

PARKER THE MAN

Sixty years ago, a young astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, Eugene Parker, proposed the existence of solar wind. Many were skeptical and told him to read up on it first "so you don't make these killer mistakes," he recalls. Vindication came with NASA's Mariner 2 spacecraft in 1962. Parker is now 91 years old and at Cape Canaveral with his family to witness his first launch - a Delta IV Heavy rocket with the spacecraft bearing his name. It's the first time NASA has named a spacecraft after someone who's still alive. In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, Parker noted from a publicity standpoint, "it absolutely wipes out everything else" in his career. "At my age, it gets fatiguing. But of course, I enjoy it."

7:18AM

Nasa aims for Sunday morning launch after it was delayed on Saturday

Nasa is hoping for second time lucky when it tries to launch a $1.5 billion spacecraft on Sunday morning on a course that will send it plunging through the Sun's sizzling atmosphere on humanity's first mission to explore a star.

The Parker Solar Probe had been scheduled to blast off on a Delta IV Heavy Rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, a day earlier.

However, the countdown was halted with just one-minute, 55 seconds remaining when an alarm was triggered by a fault in the helium pressure system.

As soon as the red pressure alarm went off, a launch controller ordered, "Hold, hold, hold."

Thousands of spectators had gathered in the middle of the night to witness the launch, including the University of Chicago astrophysicist for whom the spacecraft is named. Eugene Parker predicted the existence of solar wind 60 years ago.

Why Nasa's daring mission to 'touch the sun' will be 'the next jump in knowledge'

He is now 91 and eager to see the solar probe take off. He plans to stick around at least another few days.

The car-sized probe is due to lift off at 8.31 BST if engineers can fix the fault.

By coming closer to the Sun than any spacecraft in history, the probe's main goal is to unveil the secrets of the corona, the unusual atmosphere around the Sun which can cause fierce radioactive storms which threaten Earth.

Not only is the corona about 300 times hotter than the Sun's surface, it also hurls powerful plasma and energetic particles that can unleash geomagnetic space storms, wreaking havoc on Earth by disrupting the power grid.

But these solar outbursts are poorly understood.

"The Parker Solar Probe will help us do a much better job of predicting when a disturbance in the solar wind could hit Earth," said Justin Kasper, one of the project scientists and a professor at the University of Michigan.

When it nears the Sun, the probe will travel rapidly enough to go from New York to Tokyo in one minute - some 430,000 miles (700,000 kilometres) per hour, making it the fastest human-made object.
Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) thinks lawmakers should consider pursuing impeachment against President Donald Trump. (Photo: Win McNamee via Getty Images)

Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) on Sunday said impeachment should be on the table for President Donald Trump, stemming from his friendly ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Appearing on CNNs State of the Union, McAuliffe pointed to Trumps refusal to publicly condemn Russian interference in U.S. elections during last months summit Putin with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. McAuliffe tweeted that Trump had violated his oath of office after the meeting.

If President [Bill] Clinton or President [Barack] Obama had gone to Helsinki and done what President Trump had done, you would already have impeachment hearings going on, said McAuliffe, a former head of the Democratic National Committee. Its something we ought to look at. Clearly, what he has done with Putin, he is a foe, he fights us every single day, we are battling him all over the globe.

McAuliffes Sunday comments are a departure from what he said about the impeachment issue in November. He said then that special counsel Robert Mueller should complete his investigation of Russian efforts to manipulate the 2016 election and possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia before there was talk of impeachment.

Democrats are divided on whether calling for Trumps impeachment is a wise strategy ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, in which polls show them in good position to win control of the House. Some party leaders worry a focus on impeachment will distract from other issues and energize Republicans. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has encouraged Democrats to tamp down talk of impeachment, but some in the party are forging ahead anyway.

McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton ally, has been mentioned as a possible contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination  speculation that he has not scotched.

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(Photo: Joshua Roberts / Reuters)

WASHINGTON  FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, who was taken off special counsel Robert Muellers team after Justice Department investigators discovered his texts disparaging President Donald Trump, has been fired from the bureau despite the recommendations of a career FBI official.

Aitan Goelman, Strzoks attorney, said in a statement that Strzok was fired late Friday afternoon on the orders of FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich, despite an FBI career officials recommendation that Strzok face a 60-day suspension and a demotion.

Goelman called the decision a departure from typical Bureau practice and said it contradicted FBI Director Chris Wrays earlier guarantee that the bureau would follow its regular process, despite Trumps disdain for the now-former FBI official.

This decision should be deeply troubling to all Americans. A lengthy investigation and multiple rounds of Congressional testimony failed to produce a shred of evidence that Special Agent Strzoks personal views ever affected his work, Goelman said. In fact, in his decades of service, Special Agent Strzok has proved himself to be one of the countrys top counterintelligence officers, leading to only one conclusion  the decision to terminate was taken in response to political pressure, and to punish Special Agent Strzok for political speech protected by the First Amendment, not on a fair and independent examination of the facts. It is a decision that produces only one winner  those who seek to harm our country and weaken our democracy.

Strzok exchanged texts with former FBI official Lisa Page that disparaged Trump as well as other politicians, including various Democrats. He testified last month after the release of an inspector general report on the handling of the FBIs Hillary Clinton probe that described anti-Trump texts exchanged by bureau officials.

Strzok, a 21-year veteran of the FBI, played a prominent role in both of the investigations surrounding the Clinton and Trump campaigns during the 2016 election. He was involved in the Clinton investigation, which was highly public, as well as the investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election, which the bureau never publicly acknowledged until months into Trumps presidency. Strzok subsequently joined the Mueller team, but left the team as soon as Mueller became aware of his anti-Trump texts.

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The precise justification for Bowdichs decision to fire Strzok despite the recommendation of the FBIs Office of Professional Responsibility is unclear. But DOJs inspector general was deeply troubled by texts Strzok sent that potentially indicated or created the appearance that the investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations, and particularly focused on one anti-Trump text that implied a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidates electoral prospects. The inspector general report also criticized Strzok for his use of personal email to conduct FBI business.

Its possible that the former FBI counterintelligence officials extramarital relationship with Page also played a role in the FBIs decision. Wray said at at a press conference in June that the bureau wouldnt hesitate to hold people accountable for their actions after the disciplinary process.

Trump celebrated Strzoks firing on Twitter, writing Monday that the investigation into his campaign should be dropped and that the investigation into Clinton should be properly redone.

This story has been updated throughout.

Related...

Here's What The FBI Lovers' Secret Texts Actually Say About Trump, Clinton And Leaks

FBI Agent Peter Strzok Calls GOP Hearing On Anti-Trump Texts A 'Notch In Putins Belt'

The Mueller Investigation, Explained. Here's Your Guide To The Trump-Russia Probe.

Ryan Reilly is HuffPosts senior justice reporter covering the Justice Department, federal law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs. Have a tip? Reach him at ryan.reilly@huffpost.com or on Signal at 202-527-9261.

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TAIPEI (Reuters) - A fire at a hospital in Taiwan in the early hours of Monday killed nine people and injured 15 and an investigation has been launched into the cause of the blaze, authorities said. Premier William Lai said the health ministry was overseeing rescue efforts at the hospital in New Taipei City, where the fire was extinguished shortly after dawn. The fire broke out on the 7th floor of the building, which was used for hospice care. Media footage showed patients being wheeled out of the building in their hospital beds, while medical workers took others out on stretchers and into ambulances. Scores of ambulances lined up outside the hospital waiting to take victims to medical centers. Lai said lessons had to be learned by every hospital in Taiwan. "In the event of a repeat incident, it'll help to limit the impact to a minimum," Lai told media. President Tsai Ing-wen, on a stop-off in the United States on Monday on her way to visit two of Taiwan's remaining diplomatic allies, Belize and Paraguay, expressed grief for the dead and hopes for the injured, the government said. (Reporting by Jess Macy Yu and Taipei bureau; Editing by Robert Birsel)
After being duped on Sacha Baron Cohens Showtime series Who Is America?, former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio has come forward to address the skewering Cohen gave him.

I made a bad mistake security-wise, Arpaio said in an interview with the Washington Examiner about his appearance on the show. They said, were doing a feature for Showtime  the top 20 people in the United States. It looked pretty nice [that] I made the top people.

During the interview, Cohen disguised himself as a Finnish celebrity named OMGWhizzBoyOMG and the two had a bizarre conversation in which Arpaio spoke to a tiny toy donut about the need for guns, conceded that Trump has most likely had a golden shower, and admitted that he would accept an offer of a blow job from Trump.

Arpaio was impressed at the fame of OMGWhizzBoyOMG but at the same time, was a little suspicious because they were filming in a warehouse. He claimed he couldnt understand Cohen through his accent so when it came to questions about golden showers, blow jobs, and hand jobs Arpaio was confused. He didnt catch on that Cohen was referring to sexual acts.

I thought he was talking about  the president has gold [in his shower], said Arpaio of the interview that was conducted nearly a year ago. When it came to the questions about handjobs he thought Cohen was talking about illegals coming over working with their hands on their job.

When Cohen mentioned getting a blow job from the president, Arpaio said: The only thing I got was that he would offer me a job. I didnt hear that little thing before that. I dont know where that came from.

In an attempt to redeem himself, Arpaio challenged Cohen saying, Get the guts, get out of your undercover role, come and interview me in English, of course, so I can understand him so we can go man-to-man. You can ask me anything you want. Ill be glad to deal with it. He wont have the guts to do that. Maybe he will, I dont know.

Story continues

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Marseille (AFP) - The operators of the migrant ship Aquarius on Monday called on Europe to find a safe haven for 141 people it rescued in the Mediterranean, saying Italy and Malta had again refused to let the vessel dock.

The Aquarius, which was left stranded with 630 migrants on board in June after being turned away by Rome and Valletta, resumed rescue operations off the Libyan coast last week.

On Friday, it picked up 141 people in two separate operations, half of them children and over a third of them women, but it has again struggled to find a port to bring them ashore.

Sophie Beau, president of the vessel's French operator SOS Mediterranee, said the ship, currently at sea between Malta and the Italian island of Lampedusa, had again received "official negative replies" from the two countries.

"We're asking all European countries to find a solution. We're asking them to be responsible and find a safe port in the Mediterranean," she said, accusing Italy and Malta of flouting international maritime law.

Tove Ernst, a spokesman for the European Commission, said it was in contact with "a number of member states that have approached us regarding the incident" to try to find a "swift resolution" to the standoff.

- Hardline stance -

Since June, Italy's new far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has regularly turned away rescue ships operated by foreign NGOs, accusing them of playing into the hands of people smugglers.

On Saturday, he said the Gibraltar-flagged Aquarius would "never see an Italian port" again.

His hardline stance has sparked a row among EU members, underscoring their failure to come up with a common approach to the influx of people trying to escape conflict, persecution or poverty in Africa and the Middle East.

In June, Spain stepped in and welcomed the Aquarius.

France, which was within closer range but did not allow the boat access, took in 78 of the migrants after they landed in Spain.

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However this time a Spanish government source told AFP that, as Spain is not the nearest port, "it is not the safest port" for the migrant ship to dock.

The French presidency said Monday that it was in touch with the other EU nations on the Mediterranean to "rapidly" find a port where the Aquarius can dock, while stressing that international maritime law states that the boat should be able to dock in the port that is closest.

Paris also voiced regret at the "very tough political stance" of the Italian government.

- 'We can welcome these migrants' -

The director of the French port of Sete on the Mediterranean coast said meanwhile Monday that he would be prepared to let the boat, carrying migrants mostly from Somalia and Eritrea to dock if the government gave the all clear.

"We have a port, three docks are available and we can welcome these migrants whenever, but they cannot come without the approval of the French authorities," Jean-Claude Gayssot told AFP.

Leaders on the French island of Corsica had offered to welcome the Aquarius in June.

Meanwhile the government of Gibraltar announced Monday that the Aquarius would no longer be allowed to operate under its maritime flag.

The boat was registered in the British overseas territory, on Spain's southern flank, in 2009.

For years, Italy pleaded with its EU partners for help with a massive influx of arrivals from Africa that has seen 700,000 people cross the Mediterranean and land in the country since 2013.
Rudy Giuliani has given different accounts of President Donald Trumps conversation with thenFBI Director James Comey about former national security adviser Michael Flynn. (Photo: Ronen Zvulun / Reuters)

WASHINGTON  Hoping to reconcile conflicting explanations about whether President Donald Trump asked thenFBI Director James Comey to go easy on fired national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Monday offered a new version: that Trump never made the request but that even if he had, it would not have been improper.

The conversation never took place, Rudy Giuliani told HuffPost. But if it did take place  that [Trump] said, Go easy on Flynn  theres nothing wrong with that.

Giuliani told ABC News on July 8 about the Trump-Comey conversation, saying, What he said was, Can you, can you give him a break? On July 30, Giuliani was even more explicit about that version of events during an interview with Fox News, saying, He didnt tell him, Dont investigate him, dont prosecute him. He asked him to exercise his prosecutorial discretion because he was a good man with a great war record.

But on Sunday he told CNN, There was no conversation about Michael Flynn.

Giuliani said Monday that there was no conflict between the two sets of remarks, because the ones from July were part of a hypothetical scenario. In reality, he said, Trump has told him consistently that the conversation as Comey described it never took place.

Every time weve gone over it, its been the same answer, said Giuliani, who took charge of Trumps outside legal defense team this spring. It would be easier for us if he had the same recollection as Comey.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to take questions about the matter, referring them to Giuliani.

Comey has stated that Trumps request to see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go came during a Feb. 14, 2017, Oval Office conversation. Comey said he considered the request so unusual that he made notes about it that evening. Trump fired Flynn on Feb. 13, three weeks after the Justice Department warned the White House that Flynn had lied to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials during the presidential transition.

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In May 2017, the day after Trump fired Comey, the president told top Russian officials visiting the Oval Office that he did so because of an investigation Comey was heading into contacts between Trumps campaign and Russian officials who were working to help him win the presidency.

After his firing, Comey told a friend about his conversations with Trump and the contemporaneous memos he wrote about them. They are now a focus of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed to take over the probe after Comeys departure.

According to Giuliani, had Trump told Comey to go easy on Flynn, Comey should have immediately informed his deputy to start an obstruction of justice investigation. Thats what I would have done, said Giuliani, who was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York before he became New Yorks mayor. If Comey is right and [Trump] was obstructing, he had a duty to report it.

Giuliani said Comeys failure to do so proves either that the conversation he described never took place or that Comey did not think Trumps request was meaningful in any way. Its not serious when you want to kiss his ass and you want to remain the head of his FBI? Giuliani asked. But its obstruction of justice after youre fired?

Giulianis attacks appear designed to damage Comeys credibility  but do nothing to help the credibility the president, who brags about lying and speaks and writes dozens of untruths every week.

Giuliani, nevertheless, defended Trumps veracity. I dont know that the president lies. I know that Comey lies, Giuliani said. When pressed, he added, The president has never lied to me.

When Giuliani joined Trumps team in late April, he boasted he would be wrapping up the entire investigation within a few weeks. Now Giuliani is no longer forecasting an end date but says Mueller needs to wrap things up quickly or violate Department of Justice guidelines to not allow investigations to affect elections.

Giuliani said that even though Trump is not on any midterm ballots, the elections are still largely about him. The election has a lot to do with the presidents party, Giuliani said. Common sense would lead you to the conclusion that this election is going to have a lot to do with the president.

Giulianis latest assertions mirror other reasoning he has offered in Trumps defense. He has claimed that a $130,000 payment from Trumps personal lawyer to a porn star to buy her silence regarding an affair she says she had with Trump was unrelated to the 2016 campaign, even though the payment was made within days of the election. More recently, Giuliani argued that collusion with a foreign power to win an election is not illegal, even though conspiring with foreigners to influence an election is a crime.

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Glyphosate, the world's most widely used herbicide and the active ingredient in Monsanto's weedkiller Roundup, is the subject of fierce controversy all across the globe and is classified by the World Health Organization as "probably" being carcinogenic.

After a US court on Friday ordered Monsanto to pay nearly $290 million in compensation to a groundskeeper who was diagnosed with cancer after repeatedly using Roundup, here is the state of play regarding lawsuits and restrictions on the use of glyphosate around the world:

UNITED STATES

A San Francisco court ordered Monsanto to pay $250 million in punitive damages and nearly $40 million in compensatory damages and other costs to Dewayne Johnson, a California groundskeeper diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma -- a cancer that affects white blood cells -- 2014. He says he repeatedly used a professional version of Roundup while working at a school in Benicia, California.

The jurors unanimously found that Monsanto -- which vowed to appeal -- acted with "malice" and that its weed killers Roundup and the professional grade version RangerPro contributed "substantially" to Dewayne Johnson's terminal illness.

Thousands of lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto, all at varying stages of the legal process.

The agrochemicals giant insisted that the court decision "does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews... support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr Johnson's cancer."

Germany's Bayer, which acquired Monsanto for $63 billion in June, said Saturday that it was "convinced that glyphosate is safe and does not cause cancer."

EUROPE

After two years after fierce debate, the EU member states decided, at the end of 2017, to renew the licence for glyphosate for another five years.

The EU's executive body, the European Commission, points to the approval of glyphosate by its two scientific agencies, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency, which do not classify the substance as carcinogenic.

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But the independence of EFSA has been questioned after media suggested that pages of its report were copied and pasted from analyses in a Monsanto study.

FRANCE

The French government promised in May that glyphosate would be banned "for its main uses" by 2021, and "for all of its uses" within five years.

In June, a beekeeping cooperative in northern France filed a legal complaint against Bayer after traces of the controversial weedkiller glyphosate were detected in batches of honey.

In the autumn of 2017, a French judge who was due to sentence environmental activists for vandalising cans containing glyphosate, asked for advice from the EU regarding the dangerousness of the substance.

In 2009, France's highest court, the Court of Cassation, fined Monsanto 15,000 euros ($17,100) for "false adverts" that vaunted the weedkiller Roundup as "biodegradable".

ARGENTINA

The world's third-biggest producer of soybeans after the United States and Brazil, Argentina uses vast quantities of glyphosate.

In some fertile plans in Pampa, concerned inhabitants clash almost daily with the farmers for whom the product is indispensible.

Without nationwide legislation, the mayors of individual towns and cities have passed measures restricting use of glyphosate. Farmers generally contest the measures, raising tensions further.

BRAZIL

At the beginning of August, a federal judge in Brasilia ruled that new products containing glyphosate could not be registered in the country. Existing regulations concerning glyphosate were also suspended, pending a government reevaluation of toxicological data.

The Brazilian government plans to appeal that decision before the next harvest.

As the biggest economy and agricultural producer in Latin America, Brazil widely uses glyphosate-based herbicides, particularly in soybean plantations.

SALVADOR

Parliament voted in September 2013 to pull 53 agrochemical products, including herbicides and pesticides, from the market.

The decision was partially annulled by the president at the time, Mauricio Funes. He asked that 11 of the 53 products not be pulled on the grounds that they are widely used and that they are not banned at an international level.

A technical committee was set up, but there have been major changes to the situation in five years. Glyphosate is still on sale in Salvador.

SRI LANKA

The Sri Lankan government banned imports of glyphosate in October 2015 following a campaign spearheaded by a Buddhist monk.

Agricultural organisations criticise the government for not having conducted other scientific research, calculating that the ban cost them 10 percent of the 300 millions of kilogrammes of tea products annually.

In July, the government lifted the import ban but restricted the use of glyphosate on tea and rubber plantations.

bur-juj/spm/jh

MONSANTO

BAYER
By Joseph Ax CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (Reuters) - Hundreds of students and left-wing activists took to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, as a rally to mark the anniversary of last year's white nationalist gathering turned largely into an anti-police protest. With chants like, "Cops and Klan go hand in hand," the protesters' criticisms of both police and the University of Virginia underscored the resentment that still exists a year after torch-bearing neo-Nazis marched through campus, shouting anti-Semitic messages and beating counterprotesters. Several students said they were angry that the police response was far larger this year compared with last year, when people carrying tiki torches the white nationalist rally went mostly unchecked. At one point on Saturday, dozens of officers in riot gear formed a line near where the rally was taking place, prompting many protesters to rush over yelling, "Why are you in riot gear? We don't see no riot here." The standoff ended without any clashes as organizers urged the crowd to move away and begin marching off campus. Police, who appeared to be avoiding a confrontation, rode bicycles ahead of the march to stop traffic. The newly installed president of the University of Virginia, James Ryan, apologized for the school's inaction last year while speaking at an event to memorialize the anniversary. Saturday's march capped a day of hope, grief, anger and remembrance in Charlottesville, one year after the "Unite the Right" rally brought racially charged street violence to the scenic college town. The organizer of last year's rally, local blogger Jason Kessler, has planned a sequel for Sunday in Washington after being denied a permit in Charlottesville. With hundreds of police maintaining a tight security perimeter around a 15-block downtown area, Charlottesville's normally bustling business district was relatively quiet on Saturday. The buzz of a police helicopter overhead was a constant throughout the day. The massive police response was not welcomed by everyone, including some residents and business owners who complained that the restrictions were an overreaction. The result, however, was a day largely devoid of conflict. Authorities arrested three men for minor offenses, including a 64-year-old disabled man who appeared to deliberately challenge the prohibition on certain items in the secured area. The man, John Miska, who was wearing a handgun in a shoulder holster, visited a drugstore and purchased razor blades, which qualified as contraband under the city's emergency declaration. The gun, however, was not banned, based on state law. When he refused an officer's request to take the razors to his car, he was arrested for disorderly conduct. "This is the loss of our constitutional rights here in Charlottesville," he shouted, as officers led him away in plastic hand ties. A group of anti-fascist protesters, sometimes known as "Antifa," marched in the afternoon, carrying signs with messages like "Good Night White Pride." They stopped to pay their respects at the corner where a local woman, Heather Heyer, was killed when an Ohio man drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters following last year's rally. While some businesses closed for the weekend, many merchants remained open in a show of solidarity. "It's my town, and I'm not afraid," said Karen Walker, whose floral shop Hedge was open on Saturday even though she did not expect much business. Outside her front door, a bucket of freshly cut flowers was available for passersby to take for free. Many local residents also made a point of coming downtown to mark the anniversary. Kathe Falzer, 67, changed a flight to California so she could spend Saturday in town. "I felt the need to be here and support the businesses," Falzer said as she ate lunch at a diner on Main Street. (Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Alistair Bell)
Hundreds of Sikh separatists and their supporters gathered in London's Trafalgar Square on Sunday to demand a referendum on an independent homeland to be carved out of India.

They brandished banners reading "Free Punjab, End Indian occupation", "Punjab Referendum 2020 for Khalistan" and "We will re-establish Punjab as an independent country".

The protest was organised by the US and Canada-based group Sikhs for Justice, and drew people from all over the world, many of them chanting "Khalistan".

The Indian government has expressed concern to London over the activity of expatriate Sikh separatists, who want to create a homeland of Khalistan in India's northern Punjab state.

The Foreign Office confirmed it discussed the rally with the Indian High Commission, but a spokeswoman told AFP: "Peaceful protest is a vital part of a democratic society."

Gurpatwant S. Pannun, legal advisor to Sikhs for Justice, said: "This is a peaceful, democratic campaign to give Sikhs the right to determine their own future."

Jas Singh, 26, a demonstrator from London, told AFP: "In India, anybody who speaks for a referendum gets picked up and put in jail."

There was a small counter-demonstration of about a dozen people singing and holding up signs saying: "We stand for one united India."
KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents attacked police headquarters and other government buildings in Ghazni in central Afghanistan on Sunday, killing dozens of soldiers and police and threatening to seize control of the city, officials and residents said. U.S. aircraft conducted at least four air strikes but details of the fighting were unclear as most of the city's telecoms masts were destroyed in fighting over recent days. A senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said around 80 members of the security forces, as well as an unknown number of civilians had been killed. Mohammad Sharif Yaftali, Afghan army chief of staff, said the city was not under threat of collapse and heavy fighting was underway to push back the Taliban from the city limits. "Strategic locations and centers in the city are under the control of Afghan forces and the Taliban are hiding inside people's homes and shops and resisting," Yaftali told reporters at a news conference in Kabul. But lawmakers from Ghazni who managed to talk to some residents said the Taliban were in control of much of the city after launching an initial attack in the early hours of Friday. "Only the governor's office, police headquarters and intelligence agency's compound are in the hands of the government and Taliban are pushing to take them," said Chaman Shah Ehtemadi, a lawmaker from Ghazni. The attack, the heaviest blow struck by the Taliban since they came close to overrunning the western city of Farah in May, dampened hopes of peace talks which had grown since a surprise three-day truce during the Eid al-Fitr holiday in June. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the insurgents had taken the district center of Khwajaumari, north of the city, and several areas in other districts of Ghazni province. Many members of the security forces had surrendered, he said. Local officials have warned for months that Ghazni, a city on the main highway linking Kabul with Afghanistan's south, was under threat, with the Taliban in control of most of the surrounding province. Mohammad Rahim Hasanyar, a member of the provincial council, said heavy fighting was continuing in several areas of the city and Afghan forces were in defense mode. "No one knows what the exact situation is because there is no communication service," he said. "FIRE AND DEAD BODIES" With the highway heavily mined to prevent reinforcements from arriving, residents were largely trapped inside but some who managed to escape across fields on the city's periphery said many government buildings were ablaze. "There was burning and fire and dead bodies everywhere in the city," Abdul Wakil, a resident who escaped, told Reuters at a checkpoint into Kabul. The Red Cross said on Twitter that it was watching the situation closely. It had supplied body bags to the provincial hospital and was ready to provide more assistance. President Ashraf Ghani made no mention of the crisis during an extended speech on youth affairs on Sunday and with little coming out from the government, people were left to rely on alternative sources of information. Short videos circulating on social media, purported to be from Ghazni, showed a number of heavily armed Taliban patrolling in the city with a large plume of smoke and flames coming out from the town. "It is over and the city is taken," said a man standing outside his home, with several Taliban insurgents nearby. The videos could not be independently verified by Reuters but they generated heavy commentary by social media users that underlined the shock caused by the attack. U.S. military headquarters in Kabul said sporadic clashes were occurring and American aircraft had conducted five strikes on Saturday and four more on Sunday. "The Afghan National Defence and Security Forces continue to hold their ground and maintain control of all government centers," Lt Col Martin O'Donnell, U.S. Forces Afghanistan spokesman, said in an emailed statement. The Taliban have not taken a major provincial center since they overran the northern city of Kunduz in 2015 and the assault on Ghazni was a major blow to the Western-backed government just weeks before parliamentary elections scheduled for Oct. 20. (Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Richard Borsuk, Mark Potter and Giles Elgood)
Oslo (AFP) - Norway's rightwing Fisheries Minister Per Sandberg quit on Monday after breaching security protocol when he went on holiday to Iran with an Iranian-born former beauty queen, in a major media scandal.

The deputy head of the anti-immigration Progress Party -- which is part of the ruling coalition -- admitted he had travelled to Iran in July with his new girlfriend Bahareh Letnes, 28, without informing the prime minister's office in advance.

The 58-year-old also admitted bringing his work phone with him. Norway's intelligence agency regularly lists Iran as one of the countries most likely to carry out espionage, alongside China and Russia.

"Per himself asked to step down, and I think it was the right decision," Conservative Prime Minister Erna Solberg told reporters.

"He didn't show the necessary common sense when it comes to handling security issues," she said.

The story has been making headlines in Norway, fuelling criticism from members of the opposition and Sandberg's own party, which is in a coalition with the Conservatives and the Liberals.

Letnes had her asylum request rejected three times in Norway and was expelled, but finally obtained a residency permit on the grounds that she risked being subjected to a forced marriage in Iran.

The Progress Party favours a strict immigration policy, calling for rejected asylum seekers to be expelled swiftly. It is also highly critical of foreigners who return to their native country after receiving asylum in Norway.

Sandberg issued an apology in a bid to quell the criticism, but with new details emerging daily he ultimately decided to resign.

Among other things, it emerged he had also broken security protocol in May when he took his work phone to China.

"It's sad," he told reporters on Monday. "I had hoped to finish up a few projects," he added, refusing to comment on the personal aspects of the affair.

Norwegian intelligence services have opened a probe into Letnes, who denies any ties to the Iranian regime.

Sandberg will be replaced by Harald Tom Nesvik, a member of his own party, and has also stepped down as deputy head of the party.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday called for "swift and just" legal action from new courts after the head of the judiciary said the country faced an "economic war", state television reported. The rial currency has lost about half of its value since April under the threat of revived U.S. sanctions, with heavy demand for dollars among ordinary Iranians trying to protect their savings. The cost of living has also soared, sparking sporadic demonstrations against profiteering and corruption, with many protesters chanting anti-government slogans. The central bank and the judiciary have blamed "enemies" for the fall of the currency and a rapid rise in the price of gold coins, and the judiciary has said more than 40 people including a former central bank deputy have been arrested on charges carrying the death penalty. The judiciary has suggested that arch-foes the United States and Israel as well as regional rival Saudi Arabia and government opponents living in exile are fomenting the unrest. "The current special economic conditions are considered an economic war," judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani said in a letter to Khamenei, calling for the setting up of special courts to deal quickly with financial crimes, the television report said. Khamenei agreed, saying: "The purpose (of the courts) should be to punish those guilty of corrupt economic practices swiftly and justly," the TV added. "The courts should be advised to (ensure) the accuracy of their rulings." New Islamic revolutionary courts will be set up for two years and directed to impose maximum sentences on those "disrupting and corrupting the economy", and appeal rights will be curbed, Amoli Larijani proposed in his letter, read on state television. In May, the United States pulled out of a 2015 deal between world powers and Tehran under which international sanctions on Iran were lifted in return for curbs on its nuclear program. Washington this week reimposed sanctions on Irans purchase of U.S. dollars, its trade in gold and precious metals and its dealings with metals, coal and industrial-related software. The United States has told other countries they must halt imports of Iranian oil from early November or face U.S. financial measures. (Reporting by Dubai newsroom; editing by David Stamp and Hugh Lawson)
By Parisa Hafezi ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader on Monday rejected U.S. President Donald Trump's offer of unconditional talks to improve bilateral ties and he also accused the Iranian government of economic mismanagement in the face of reimposed U.S. sanctions. Washington reimposed the sanctions last week after pulling out of a 2015 international deal aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear program in return for an easing of economic sanctions. Trump has also threatened to penalize companies that continue to operate in Iran. "I ban holding any talks with America... America never remains loyal to its promises in talks," said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on policy in the Islamic Republic. "America's withdrawal from the nuclear deal is a clear proof that America cannot be trusted," state TV quoted Khamenei as telling a gathering attended by thousands of Iranians. The sanctions target Iran's trade in gold and other precious metals, its purchases of U.S. dollars and its car industry. Washington had said Iran's only chance of avoiding the sanctions would be to accept Trump's offer to negotiate for a tougher nuclear deal. Iranian officials already rejected the offer but it is the first time Khamenei has publicly commented. But Khamenei ruled out the possibility of war with the United States. "They (the Americans) are exaggerating the possibility of a war with Iran. There will be no war... We have never started a war and they will not confront Iran militarily," he said. ECONOMIC WOES Khamenei, whose remarks on Monday come amid a sharp fall in the rial currency that has prompted angry protests, criticized the government of President Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist cleric who championed the 2015 deal aimed at ending Iran's political and economic isolation. "More than the sanctions, economic mismanagement (by the government) is putting pressure on ordinary Iranians... I do not call it betrayal but a huge mistake in management," state TV quoted Khamenei as saying. "With better management and more efficient planning we can resist the sanctions and overcome them," Khamenei said, in an apparent effort to deflect public anger over the deteriorating economy towards Rouhani's government. European countries, which still back the 2015 deal, fear Trump's moves will undermine Rouhani and strengthen the hand of his hardline rivals in the clerical establishment. The rial has lost about half of its value since April in anticipation of the renewed U.S. sanctions, driven mainly by heavy demand for dollars among ordinary Iranians trying to protect their savings. Iranian officials have blamed "enemies" for the fall of the currency and a rapid rise in the price of gold coins, and more than 60 people, including several officials, have been arrested on charges that carry the death penalty. "The corrupt people (officials) should be punished firmly," Khamenei said on Monday. Thousands of Iranians have protested in recent weeks against sharp rises in the prices of some food items, a lack of jobs and state corruption. The protests over the cost of living have often turned into anti-government rallies. Defying U.S. demands to curb its missile program, Iran unveiled a new generation of its "Fateh Mobin" short-range ballistic missile on Monday, state TV reported. "Our will to enhance our defense power in all fields will increase if the pressure mounts on Iran," Defence Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami said after unveiling the "fully home-made precision-guided" missile. Trump has said Iran must also stop meddling in conflicts in Syria and Yemen, but Foreign Minister Javad Zarif struck a defiant tone on Monday, telling Qatar's al Jazeera TV: "Iran will not change its policies in the region because of U.S. sanctions and threats." (Additional reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo; Writing by Parisa Hafez; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Zachary Keck

Security, Middle East

Israels nuclear establishment has been conducting drills simulating attacks against the countrys two nuclear reactors

Israel's Great Weakness: An Attack on Its Nuclear Reactors?

Fears about the vulnerability of Israel and other countries nuclear reactors are likely to grow in the coming years and decades. Although Irans missiles cannot realistically threaten Israels nuclear reactors at the moment, the real question is how long will that continue to be the case? It wasnt long ago that a country like China didnt have guided missiles. Now, it is believed that Beijing has missiles that can threaten moving targets like U.S. aircraft carriers at long distances. And history has consistently shown that technologyincluding missilesinevitably spreads.

Israels nuclear establishment has been conducting drills simulating attacks against the countrys two nuclear reactors.

(This first appeared last month.)

The Israel Atomic Energy Commission has been taking numerous steps to protect the nuclear reactors in Dimona and Nahal Sorek in light of assessments that Iran and Hezbollah see the reactors as preferred targets for missile attacks, the left-leaning Israeli daily, Haaretz, reported on June 28.

The Nahal Sorek reactor is a small research reactor America supplied to Israel as part of the Atoms of Peace program. The Dimona reactor is a much larger reactor that Israel used to produce plutonium for its nuclear weapons program. The Dimona reactor is still operating, although its unclear if it is making plutonium. It is widely believed that Israel uses Dimona to produce tritium for boosted atomic weapons.

According to the Haaretz article, members of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) believe that a missile attack is the greatest danger to the reactors today.

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The report added that recently the IAEC held a large training exercise that simulated a missile attack on one of the reactors, and included the evacuation of employees and actions to prevent a leak of radioactive materials.

This threat is hardly imaginary, as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly threatened to attack Israels nuclear reactors as well as its chemical supplies.

I call on Israel not only to empty the ammonia tank in Haifa, but also to dismantle the nuclear reactor in Dimona. Our military capabilities will strike Israel and its settlements, Nasrallah said in February of last year.

He added: In Israel, they know that Hezbollah has the possibility of reaching the nuclear reactor, which is antiquated, and it doesnt require major force to hit.

In 2016, Nasrallah called for targeting the ammonia stockpiles in Haifa Hezbollahs nuclear bomb option.

IAEC members downplayed the actual dangers of an attack on one of Israels reactors. According to Haaretz, the IAEC believes that even if a missile hit one of the reactors the employees inside would be safe.

What the commission does fear is that the attack would be extremely useful for propaganda purposes. Indeed, Dimona has long served as a potent symbol of Israeli power ever since Israels founding father David Ben-Gurion purchased it from France.

The IAEC is also concerned that an attack against Israels reactors would spark panic among the Israeli public, similar to how some observers worry that the use of a dirty bomb in a crowded city would be a weapon of mass disruption.

The IAECs assessment might be overly optimistic, however. As Haartezs notes, last year four Israeli scientists including Irad Brandys, an engineer at the Dimona reactorpublished an article estimating the damage caused by a Scud missile attack on a nuclear reactor similar to the ones that Israel operates.

They concluded that the monitor and control equipment can resist the in-structure shock both in the horizontal and vertical directions when the missile explodes beyond 35 m.

However, missiles that landed closer to the reactor could cause various types of damage, including (in Haaretzs description) a breach of the reactors protective envelope, which could lead to a leak of radioactive gas, as well as a disruption to critical systems, most importantly the reactors cooling system. The loss of electricity powering the cooling systems of some of Japans reactors was at the heart of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

Of course, most missiles are not anywhere near accurate enough to hit a target within 35 meters, at least with any sort of consistency.

Arguably Irans most advanced missile is the Emad, which has a maneuverable re-entry vehicle (MaRV). MaRVs allow the missiles warhead to maneuver late in flight both to evade missile defenses and achieve pinpoint accuracy.

But Irans Emad missile is believed to have an accuracy (technically a circular error probable) of five hundred meters. That means that fifty percent of the time it would land within five hundred meters of the target. Thus, even if Iran gave Emad missiles to Hezbollah, the Lebanese group would have to get extremely lucky to have one of them land within thirty-five meters of one of Israels reactors.

Still, the IAECs concerns highlight an underappreciated cost of nuclear reactorsthe need to protect them, not just from terrorist groups but also from nation states. Of course, Israel itself has illustrated this challenge in the past when it bombed both an Iraqi and Syrian reactor before they were operational. This concern is especially warranted as more countries in the region begin building nuclear reactors.

Israel has also worried about the vulnerability of its Dimona reactor before. In fact, according to Avner Cohenwho has written extensively about the Israeli nuclear programconcerns that Egypt was preparing to attack Israels nuclear reactor was one factor that prompted the Jewish state to launch a preemptive attack in the Six Day War.

Dimona was on the minds of Israeli leaders, especially Prime Minister [Levi] Eshkol, almost from the beginning of the crisis, Cohen stated in his book Israel and the Bomb.

Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser had threatened to attack Dimona a number of times during the 1960s. Then, Egyptian aircraft made a number of reconnaissance flights over Dimona in the days leading up to the war. And, as Cohen writes, After the war it was discovered that the two Israeli nuclear research centers, at Dimona and Nachal Soreq, were high-priority targets in Egyptian war plans.

Fears about the vulnerability of Israel and other countries nuclear reactors are likely to grow in the coming years and decades. Although Irans missiles cannot realistically threaten Israels nuclear reactors at the moment, the real question is how long will that continue to be the case? It wasnt long ago that a country like China didnt have guided missiles. Now, it is believed that Beijing has missiles that can threaten moving targets like U.S. aircraft carriers at long distances. And history has consistently shown that technologyincluding missilesinevitably spreads.

Zachary Keck (@ZacharyKeck) is the Wohlstetter Public Affairs Fellow at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waves to supporters at the party headquarters in Tel Aviv March 18, 2015. Netanyahu claimed victory in Israel's election after exit polls showed he had erased his center-left rivals' lead with a hard rightward shi

Paul R. Pillar

Security, Middle East

Israel does not share many of the most important values of Western liberal democracies, including the United States.

Israel Is Not a Liberal Democracy

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a defining moment in the annals of Zionism and the annals of the state of Israel when the Knesset enacted earlier this month a basic law (having constitutional status in Israel) making the right of national self-determination unique to the Jewish people and not applicable to all citizens. The law further enshrined religiously based discrimination, including a clause that points to priority for Jewish-only communities by declaring the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and promising to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.

The law has been a subject of much controversy in Israel. It passed the Knesset by the narrow margin of sixty-two to fifty-five. Opponents argue that it constitutes a step away from democracy. But this was one more item on the agenda of the ruling right-wing coalition that, given the rightward move in Israeli politics in recent years, the coalition was able to push through.

However much sympathy one may have for the opponents, they are not only on the losing side of an Israeli political trend but also trying to square a circle. There always has been an inherent and fundamental tension between the idea of Israel as a democracy and the concept of giving preferential treatment to a single religious or ethnic group over all others.

Major proponents of the new law recognize this, and some of them have been disarmingly frank about it. The hardline Minister of Justice, Ayelet Shaked, has explicitly disparaged the idea that Israel should respect universal values. She has stated openly that if there is a choice between maintaining the Jewish majority and Jewish character of Israel and observing human rights, it is human rights that should be sacrificed. Or take it from the most influential big-money backer of Netanyahu and of American support for Netanyahus policies: casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. At a conference in 2014 that discussed implications of perpetual Israeli occupation or annexation of the West Bank without giving Palestinian residents the right to vote, Adelson declared, Israel isnt going to be a democratic state. So what?

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Certainly infringement of human rights should be criticized wherever it occurs. There is plenty to criticize about Israels infringement of rightsnot just regarding the one-fifth of Israeli citizens who are not Jewish and whose second-class citizenship the new basic law enshrines, but even more so regarding the residents of Israeli-occupied territory who are denied political rights altogether. But in the interest of treating states and not just individuals equitably, it should be noted that Israel is hardly alone in its region when it comes to giving preferential treatment to members of one religion even when this means impairing the freedom and rights of others.

Intra-Regional Similarities

In this respect Israel resembles, for example, Iran. Iran officially calls itself an Islamic Republicthe kind of constitutional self-identification that is comparable to Israels new basic law about self-determination being something only for Jews. Iran does officially recognize some (though not all) minority religions, and it reserves seats in its legislature for Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. But everyone realizes that the state religion of Shia Islam has preference over all others in many ways that are politically as well as religiously significant.

The most extreme pattern of religious preference at the expense of the rights of others is in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom considers the Koran to be its constitution. Open practice of any religion other than Islam is prohibited. Farther east there is Pakistan, which from its birth identified itself as the home and refuge for South Asian Muslims, much as Israel has identified itself as the home and refuge for diaspora Jews. Religious intolerance and impairment of the rights of non-Muslims, including through blasphemy laws, prevails today in Pakistan.

Even places in Israels neighborhood that do not have a single dominant religion exhibit religious preferences outweighing wider human and political rights. If you are Lebanese, for example, forget about ever seeking the countrys presidency unless you happen to be a Maronite Christiandespite that faith representing a declining proportion of the countrys population.

More generally, Israel has increasingly come to resemble the surrounding region in its social mores, especially with the rise in numbers and influence of ultra-Orthodox Jews and the political parties that represent them. Specifically with regard to segregation of the sexes and even, occasionally, religiously-motivated abusive treatment or women or girls, the resemblance is closest to scenes elsewhere in the region where fundamentalist Islam prevails.

In short, Israel, especially as far as issues of religious preference and related political exclusivity are concerned, is very much a Middle Eastern state. It is worthy of that descriptor as a nation that defines its character and objectives in pre-Enlightenment terms, with ancient scripture and religious lore given preference over modern conceptions of human rights.

The Fiction of Shared Values

As such, Israel does not share many of the most important values of Western liberal democracies, including the United States. Religious neutralityespecially given the major role religion had played in original settlement of some of the American colonieswas highly important in establishment of the United States. When Thomas Jefferson and James Madison put a draft of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom before the states General Assembly in 1779, devout Christians such as Patrick Henry tried to insert a reference to Jesus Christ in the opening words but were voted down overwhelmingly. Jefferson approvingly interpreted the vote as a sign that the legislature wanted the law to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination. The Virginia law was a precursor to the clause in the U.S. Constitutionthe first line in the Bill of Rightsprohibiting establishment of religion. Israel certainly does not share this value, and with a large subjugated population that is walled off because of its ethnicity or religion, nor does it share the important value of equal political rights.

The notion of Israel as a fellow democracy rests upon the nature of politics practiced within the subcommunity of Jewish Israelis. Palestinian residents of the occupied territories have no part in that democracy, of course. In effect, the one-fifth of the Israeli electorate that is Arab also is not fully part of it either. An unwritten rule of Israeli politics is that parties representing Arabs can never be part of a governing coalition.

Democracy for a subcommunity does not make the nation as a whole democratic. The United States has seen such situations in the more ignoble parts of its history. Many white primaries in the Jim Crow South were vigorously contested, but that did not make them any less of an affront to American democracy or democratic principles.

The United States does not share important values with Israel, but that does not mean it cannot have a normal and worthwhile relationship with Israel. Washington has quite a close relationship, after all, with Saudi Arabia. It does mean that the fiction of shared values should be dispensed with as a rationale for a relationship that goes well beyond normal.

Acceptance of Israel as a Middle Eastern state is necessary to achieve an outcome in everyones, including Israels, interests, which is for Israel to have full and normal relations with its regional neighbors. Disposing of the fiction of shared values with the West will help toward that objective (not to mention helping to clarify exactly what the values of Western democracies really are). A source of resistance to Arab acceptance of Israel has been the perception of Israel as a Western colonial excrescence that has continued long after other British and French (as well as Ottoman) colonialism in the Arab world had ended.

Of course, political rights for Palestinian Arabs are an essential step toward the same objective, even for Arabs who are hardly democrats themselves. The king of Saudi Arabia recently reaffirmed the longstanding Arab position regarding the need for those rights, notwithstanding press reports about his son the crown prince plotting with Jared Kushner to impose some alternative formula.

As for that newly enacted Israeli basic law, the provision promising priority for Jewish-only settlements has, as Arab-Israeli writer Sayed Kashua observes, a distinctly colonialist tone.

Paul R. Pillar is a contributing editor at the National Interest and the author of Why America Misunderstands the World.

Image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waves to supporters at the party headquarters in Tel Aviv March 18, 2015. Netanyahu claimed victory in Israel's election after exit polls showed he had erased his center-left rivals' lead with a hard rightward shift in which he abandoned a commitment to negotiate a Palestinian state. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

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Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a rare, secret visit to Egypt in May for talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Israeli television reported Monday.

There was no immediate confirmation of the visit from official sources, but the private Channel 10 station said the leaders met on May 22.

That followed a day of huge protests on May 14 along the Gaza border against the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem, sparking clashes which left 63 Palestinians dead.

Gaza lies between Israel and Egypt, which has previously mediated between Netanyahu's government and the Islamist Hamas movement that controls the coastal enclave.

According to American sources quoted by Channel 10, Netanyahu and Sisi discussed the possibility of a long-term truce in the Strip, where Israel has since 2008 fought three wars with Hamas.

The Islamists seized power in the territory after a virtual civil war with the Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, and Gaza has been under a crushing Israeli blockade for a decade.

Netanyahu and Sisi also examined the possible return of the Palestinian Authority to the territory, an easing of Israel's blockade and reconstruction of Gaza's war-scarred infrastructure, the report said.

The Egyptian presidency was not immediately available to comment on the Channel 10 report.

Gaza has seen mass protests since the end of March as Palestinians demand the right to return to homes their families fled or were expelled from in 1948 during the war surrounding the creation of Israel.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday that another round of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was inevitable, despite attempts to reach a long-term truce.

There have also been three major military flare-ups between Israel and Hamas since July, on top of the months of tension along the border.

At least 169 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since March 30, mostly during clashes sparked by demonstrations.

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One Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper in July.

There have been efforts by United Nations officials and Egypt to secure a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas, though Israeli officials have not commented on them.

A fragile truce came into effect Thursday night, mediated by Egypt and the UN, according to a source close to the negotiations.

Thursday saw extensive Israeli air strikes in retaliation for the launching of more than 180 rockets and mortar rounds by Hamas and its allies beginning on Wednesday night.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a secret summit with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt in May to discuss a long-term ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Israel's Channel Ten News said on Monday. A spokesman for Netanyahu declined to comment on the report and there was no immediate comment from Egyptian officials. Channel Ten, citing unnamed senior U.S. officials, said the meeting was held on May 22. Egypt and the United Nations have been trying to mediate a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, following a spike in cross-border violence in the past few months. The two leaders discussed the easing of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza, rehabilitation of its infrastructure and terms for a ceasefire, the report said. More than 2 million Palestinians are packed into the Gaza Strip, which is experiencing deep economic hardship. The World Bank has described the situation as a humanitarian crisis with shortages of water, electricity and medicine. Citing security concerns, Israel and Egypt keep tight restrictions on their border crossings with Gaza, which have reduced the enclave's economy to a state of collapse. Israel says the blockade is intended to prevent weapons reaching Hamas and other Gaza militant groups who have launched hundreds of rockets across the border in the past few months, during which time Israel has also carried out dozens of air strikes, targeting what it said were Hamas sites. At least 161 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire in weekly protests along the Israel-Gaza border that began on March 30, and one Israeli soldier has been killed by a Palestinian sniper. (Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by David Holmes)
Migrants are rescued by SOS Mediterranee organisation and Doctors Without Borders during a search and rescue (SAR) operation with the MV Aquarius rescue ship in the Mediterranean Sea, off the Libyan Coast, August 10 - Reuters

Italys transport minister has called on the UK to take responsibility for 141 people rescued by a ship sailing under the flag of the British territory of Gibraltar.

Danilo Toninelli, the transport and infrastructure minister and a senior member of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S), said via Twitter on Monday that the rescue was co-ordinated by the Libyan coast guard and the rescue ship was in Maltese waters, sailing under the flag of Gibraltar.

At this point the United Kingdom assumes its responsibility for the safeguarding of the shipwrecks," he said.

A European Commission spokesperson said all diplomatic channels were being employed to find a country willing to take the migrants, who were plucked from wooden boats in two operations 25 nautical miles off the Libyan coast Friday.

French charity organisation SOS Mediterranee, which co-operates the ship with Doctors Without Borders, said on Monday they had sailed to a standby point mid-way between Malta and Italy (both countries are refusing to allow the Aquarius to dock) while awaiting Europe to assign a safe port.

L'Ong #Aquarius e stata coordinata dalla Guardia Costiera libica in area di loro responsabilita. La nave e ora in acque maltesi e batte bandiera di Gibilterra. A questo punto il Regno Unito si assuma le sue responsabilita per la salvaguardia dei naufraghi.  Danilo Toninelli (@DaniloToninelli) August 13, 2018

Approximately 70 per cent of the migrants are from Somalia and Eritrea, including 67 unaccompanied minors and two pregnant women. They told rescuers five ships passed by them without offering help.

Interior Minister and Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini said on Monday the Aquarius can go where it wants, but not to Italy.

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Aquarius NGO ship with another 141 immigrants on board: German owned, rented by French NGO, foreign crew, in Maltese waters, flying the flag of Gibraltar, Salvini said via Twitter, adding hashtags #closedports and #openhearts.

A migrant child plays with a member of the crew on board the MV Aquarius rescue ship run by SOS Mediterranee organisation and Doctors Without Borders during a search and rescue (SAR) operation in the Mediterranean Sea, off the Libyan Coast, August 12 Credit: GUGLIELMO MANGIAPANE/REUTERS

The far-right leader of the League party has initiated a tough stance on migration since taking over as interior minister, essentially closing Italys ports to NGO vessels.

The same ship was turned away from ports in Italy and Malta in June after rescuing more than 600 migrants, who were eventually taken to Spain.

European governments have put all their efforts into propping up the Libyan Joint Rescue Coordination Center, however Fridays events show they dont have the capacity to fully coordinate a rescue, said Aloys Vimard, MSFs project coordinator on board the Aquarius. A rescue is not complete until there is safe disembarkation.
By Antonio Denti ON BOARD THE AQUARIUS (Reuters) - Italy on Monday denied safe harbor to 141 people rescued by a humanitarian ship off the coast of Libya last week, setting up another standoff with European Union allies over taking in migrants who try to cross the Mediterranean. The Aquarius, run by Franco-German charity SOS Mediterranee and Doctors without Borders (MSF), picked up the people in two separate operations and is in international waters between Italy and Malta. Malta said it had no legal obligation to berth the ship and Spain said its ports were not the safest destination. Italy called on Britain to welcome the Aquarius because it was registered in Gibraltar, but the British territory on Spain's southern coast said it should go to an Italian port. More than 650,000 migrants have come to Italy's shores since 2014, and Rome has accused its EU peers of not sharing the burden of taking in those who arrive on the bloc's southern border. The Aquarius spent nine days at sea in June after Italy's new populist government took office and shut its ports to all humanitarian boats, calling its operators a "taxi service" and accusing them of helping people-smugglers  charges the charities deny. "It can go where it wants, not in Italy!" far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said on Twitter on Monday, mentioning France, Germany, Britain or Malta as possible destinations. "Stop human traffickers and their accomplices," he wrote. Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli, who oversees ports and the coast guard, tweeted that, because of the Gibraltar connection, Britain "should assume its responsibility to safeguard the castaways". The Gibraltar government said in a statement the ship could no longer fly a Gibraltar flag from Aug. 20 and should revert back to the "underlying owners' flag," which is Germany. Meanwhile, the Aquarius should be allowed to disembark "safely and promptly" at an Italian port. The European Commission was in touch with several EU states and trying to help resolve the situation, a spokesman in Brussels said. While Britain could theoretically be considered as a destination port, it was not practical to bring the ship there. MALTA REJECTION Malta rejected any suggestion the Aquarius should dock in its ports, saying the latest rescue was made closer to Libya, Tunisia and Italy than to its own shores. "Malta was neither the coordinating nor the competent authority (and) ...the requests for the vessel to enter our ports are unwarranted and without legal standing," it said in a statement. Earlier on Monday, Malta's armed forces rescued 114 migrants from a rubber dinghy taking on water 53 nautical miles (100 km) south of Malta and brought them back to the island. In June, the Aquarius ended up taking some 630 migrants to Spain, which welcomed it. But on Monday, a government spokeswoman in Madrid said: "Spain is not the safest port because it is not the nearest one" for the ship to dock. The ship's search and rescue coordinator Nick Romaniuk said some migrants on board were sick and wounded and "need to be disembarked as soon as possible" for proper medical care. Due to pressure from Italy and Malta, most charity ships are no longer patrolling off the coast of Libya. Though departures from Libya have fallen dramatically this year, people smugglers are still pushing some boats out to sea and an estimated 720 people died in June and July when charity ships were mainly absent, Amnesty International estimates. Protracted feuds between EU states over how to handle immigrants have thrown the issue back onto the European agenda. That is despite overall Mediterranean arrivals having dropped sharply since peaking at around 1 million in 2015. EU border agency Frontex said on Monday it counted 73,500 "irregular border crossings" into the bloc so far this year via the sea and the Western Balkans route, more than 40 percent fewer than in the first seven months of 2017. (Additional reporting by Chris Scicluna in VALLETTA, Francesco Guarascio and Gabriela Baczynska in BRUSSELS, Andres Gonzalez and Isla Binnie in MADRID and Kylie MacLellan in LONDON, Writing by Steve Scherer and Gavin Jones; Editing by Toby Chopra and John Stonestreet)
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi AMMAN (Reuters) - Militants behind an attack on Jordanian police supported Islamic State and investigations had revealed plans for more attacks on security and civilian targets, Jordan's interior minister said on Monday. Jordanian police said on Saturday a homemade explosive device planted near a police van killed a policeman and injured six others the day before. The police vehicle had been maintaining security near a music festival in the majority Christian town of Fuhais, near the capital Amman and 15 kilometers (about 10 miles) from the hillside city of Salt. In a huge security operation, Jordanian forces laid siege to a building in a residential part of Salt on Saturday night in search of those responsible for the bomb attack. After the suspected militants refused to heed calls to surrender, the security forces stormed the building in a shoot out that resulted in the death of three militants and four security personnel, police said. Ten members of the security forces were also injured. Interior Minister Sameer al-Mobaideen said the militants, who blew up part of the building when the security forces stormed it, did not belong to a specific group but subscribed to Islamic State ideology. Militants from Islamic State and other radical jihadist groups have long targeted U.S.-allied Jordan and dozens of militants are serving long prison terms. "There were plots to wage a series of terror attacks that sought security points and popular gatherings. We know the targets but we won't tell them so people won't get terrified," Mobaideen said. King Abdullah, a Middle East ally of Western powers against Islamist militancy who has also safeguarded Jordans peace treaty with Israel, warned on Saturday the perpetrators of the attack would pay dearly. SECRET INVESTIGATIONS The monarch has been among the most vocal leaders in the region in warning of threats posed by radical groups. The group were all Jordanian and there were no signs so far they had foreign links, Mobaideen said, refusing to give names of suspects. "The investigations are secret and ongoing," he told a news conference Alongside automatic weapons in the suspect's possession, the authorities found a location where chemical ingredients for manufacturing explosives were buried, Mobaideen added. General Hussein Hawatmeh, head of Jordan' Gendarmerie, said the militant cell was recently set up and there were indications its members had embraced radical ideology. "What is dangerous is that these new recruits are more impulsive than those with experience in executing operations that harm Jordan's security," Hawatmeh told reporters. Jordan has been relatively unscathed by the uprisings, civil wars and Islamist militancy that have swept the Middle East since 2011. But there have been some incidents of Islamist violence, increasingly carried out by members of powerful tribes that are traditionally the backbone of support for the ruling Hashemite dynasty. Security forces have been extra vigilant having warned that sympathizers of Islamic State could launch revenge attacks after militants were driven out of most of the territory they once controlled in Syria and Iraq. Intelligence officials and some experts believe widening social disparities and a perception of official corruption are fuelling a rise in radicalization among disaffected youths in a country with high unemployment and growing poverty. (Writing by Ellen Francis and Suleiman al Khalidi Editing by Andrew Roche and David Holmes)
The two Koreas opened high-level talks Monday to prepare for a possible summit in Pyongyang between the South's President Moon Jae-in and the North's leader Kim Jong Un, as the diplomatic thaw on the peninsula builds.

The exact date and location of what would be their third meeting have yet to be decided, but at their historic first summit in Panmunjom in April they agreed Moon would visit Kim in the North Korean capital during the autumn.

Monday's high-level talks, taking place on the northern side of the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone, were proposed by the North last week as it lashed out at Washington for pushing ahead with sanctions.

"As the Pyongyang meeting of the leaders of the north and south is being discussed, I think talking about the issue will provide answers to the wishes of the people," the North's chief delegate Ri Son Gwon said in his opening statement.

Using a proverb describing a very intimate friend to refer to inter-Korean ties, Ri added: "We have opened an era where we are advancing hand in hand rather than standing in each other's way."

Despite the rapprochement, international sanctions against the North for its nuclear and missile programmes have kept economic cooperation between the two Koreas from taking off, while little progress has been made on the key issue of Pyongyang's denuclearisation.

South Korea's Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, leading the delegation from Seoul, said it was important that the two Koreas keep "the same mind".

"Many issues will be raised (at the meeting), but I think any problem can be resolved with that mindset," Cho added.

- Rapid rapprochement -

The two Koreas have informally agreed the summit will take place in Pyongyang late this month or at the beginning of September, Yonhap News Agency reported Monday, without citing a source.

Cho addressed the possibility of Pyongyang raising the issue of sanctions to the South, and said: "We will explain our position to the North."

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The rapid rapprochement between the two neighbours that began this year paved the way for a landmark meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.

Cross-border exchanges between the two Koreas have significantly increased since then, with the neighbours planning to hold reunions for war-separated families next week for the first time in three years.

But although Trump touted his summit with Kim as a historic breakthrough, the nuclear-armed North has since criticised Washington for its "gangster-like" demands of complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.

Meanwhile the US has urged the international community to maintain tough sanctions on the isolated regime -- Seoul has caught three South Korean firms importing coal and iron from the North last year in violation of the measures.

Analysts say Moon could try to act as a mediator between the US and North Korea, having salvaged the Singapore meeting when Trump abruptly cancelled it.

If the third Moon-Kim summit takes place, the two are also expected to focus on hammering out a consensus on officially ending the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded with an armistice instead of a peace treaty.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP)  The Latest on the Republican gubernatorial primary race between Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer and Secretary of State Kris Kobach (all times local):

5:50 p.m.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach hung on to his narrow lead for the Republican nomination in the governor's race, but the state's two most populous counties won't be reporting their canvass results until Tuesday.

Kobach had a 206-vote lead over Gov. Jeff Colyer by the time the secretary of state's office closed for the day Monday, with 43 counties left to report their results in the coming days. The count resumes Tuesday morning.

The campaigns for both Republican candidates said they planned to continue campaigning for the general election as if they were the GOP nominee.

___

4:30 p.m.

The top election official in Kansas' most populous county says they are not counting some 35 provisional ballots where the unaffiliated voter did not complete a party affiliation declaration on Election Day.

How to handle such ballots in Johnson County and across the state has emerged on the first day of canvassing as the most contentious issue in the razor-thin race for the Republican nomination for governor.

A legal opinion issued Monday by the governor's top attorney took issue with the guidance issued by the person Kobach appointed to oversee vote counters after he recused himself.

Assistant Secretary of State Eric Rucker has told election officials that provisional ballots cast by such voters should not be counted  a guidance Johnson County apparently appears to be following.

The results for the state's two largest counties will not be finished until Tuesday.

___

10:50 a.m.

Commissioners say results from Kansas' most populous county won't be available until Tuesday afternoon in the review of some 9,000 provisional ballots in the tight Republican primary for governor.

In suburban Kansas City's Johnson County, commissioners agreed Monday morning to throw out 898 provisional ballots and to count 1,451 of them.

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Secretary of State Kris Kobach led Gov. Jeff Colyer by 110 votes out of 313,000-plus cast, after late mail-in ballots from all 105 counties were added Friday to totals from advance voting and ballots cast at the polls last Tuesday. That grew to 113 votes Monday morning after the results were posted from four small counties.

Even as counties begin to review provisional ballots, the outcome of those reviews is in question. On Monday, the governor's chief counsel disputed guidance issued by the deputy whom Kobach appointed to oversee vote counters.

___

10:15 a.m.

The fight over how to count unaffiliated voters in Kansas has begun as the state reviews nearly 9,000 provisional ballots in the close Republican primary for governor.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Gov. Jeff Colyer are locked in a tight battle for the ticket, separated by 110 votes as of Friday.

On Monday, the governor's chief counsel disputed guidance issued by the deputy whom Kobach appointed to oversee vote counters.

Assistant Secretary of State Eric Rucker says an unaffiliated voter who doesn't declare party affiliation is not entitled to vote. Poll workers sometimes give unaffiliated voters provisional ballots rather than a party affiliation statement.

The chief counsel says provisional ballots cast by unaffiliated voters in a primary should be construed as evidence of voter intent and must be counted.

___

9:25 a.m.

Election officials in more than half of Kansas counties are beginning to review some 9,000 provisional ballots Monday as part of a statewide effort to arrive at final official vote totals in the tight Republican primary for governor.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach led Gov. Jeff Colyer by 110 votes out of 313,000-plus cast after late mail-in ballots from all 105 counties were added Friday to totals from advance voting and ballots cast at the polls Tuesday.

The canvass was beginning early Monday in suburban Kansas City's Johnson County, where a board it set to review 1,800 provisional ballots, given to voters at the polls when their eligibility is in question. Seventy-six counties start canvass meetings Monday, but some will meet later this week and next.

Colyer's team said they would have representatives at every canvass meeting to watch the process.

___

11 p.m.

County election officials across Kansas will begin reviewing provisional ballots from last week's primary to arrive at final official vote totals in the tight Republican race for governor.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach led Gov. Jeff Colyer by 110 votes out of more than 313,000 cast as of Friday evening. That was after late mail-in ballots were added to totals from absentee voting and ballots cast at the polls Tuesday.

County officials will review nearly 9,000 provisional ballots, given to voters at the polls when their eligibility is in question. Most counties start their canvass meetings Monday, but some will meet later this week and next.

Colyer said Friday that he believes Kobach's office advised county clerks to discard legal mail-in ballots. Kobach said he's following the law.
Laverne Cox has been inspired to shed more light on her suicide attempt. (Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

Laverne Cox has mostly kept quiet about her suicide attempt since she spoke about it in 2014  until now. The mistreatment of trans murder victims in Jacksonville, Fla., has driven her to revisit that past.

The Orange Is the New Black actress shared an article about trans murder on social media today, along with a lengthy and personal explanation. The ProPublica article addresses the way violence against trans people is handled across the country, specifically in Jacksonville. Over the past six months, four black trans women have been shot, three of them fatally, ProPublica reports. All three of the murders remain unsolved, possibly because the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office refuses to address the victims by their chosen names and genders. And the problem doesnt just exist in Jacksonville. About 65 different law enforcement agencies have investigated murders of transgender people since Jan. 1, 2015, ProPublica found, and in 74 of 85 cases, victims were identified by names or genders they no longer used. Arrests have only been made in about half of the killings of transgender people nationwide in the last three and a half years.

Calling a trans person by the name they no longer use is referred to as deadnaming in the trans community, and it can hold up an investigation.

Cox couldnt stay silent on the topic. She took to social media to share her personal experience with deadnaming.

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Many years ago when I was contemplating suicide, I was planning to have a note in my pocket at the time of my death and several other notes in my home which would state my name, preferred gender pronouns and that I should be referred to as a woman in my death, she wrote.

Cox first discussed her suicide attempt in 2014. The suicide attempt happened when I was in sixth grade and I was having all these feelings about other boys. And I didnt want to live, she said in an ABC special. Last year she shared more details with Mic. I had my own suicide attempt  when I was a young person because of shame, because of stigma, because I didnt understand who I was.

Today, she addressed the fact that she hasnt spoken about violence against trans people in a while, and discussed why she felt a need to now. I used to share a lot more on social media about the murders of trans folks. I dont as much now because its retraumatizing for me to constantly live in this space of death, murder and the injustices that lead to these deaths.

But she couldnt stay silent about the facts brought up in this new report. As I read this report from ProPublica I sobbed and wept for all the trans people who have been murdered and those experiencing direct, cultural and structural violence.

She expressed her disappointment in the authorities, especially in Jacksonville. I am angered, saddened and enraged that the police in Jacksonville, Florida and other jurisdictions dont have policies in place to respect the gender identities of trans folks when they have been MURDERED. This misgendering and deadnaming also impedes the investigations into these murders.

Cox is receiving a lot of love for her openness and for shedding light on this issue. The post has over 10K likes and over 200 praising comments, including one from her OITNB co-star Selenis Leyva, who wrote, Sending you a hug sis! We can get so caught up in things and forget the road many like yourself had to walk to come up on the other side! May God continue blessing you. And to all our trans brothers and sisters we see you, we hear you , and you are not alone!!! #transisbeautiful.

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The powerful earthquakes that struck the Indonesian island of Lombok in recent weeks killing some 400 people have sent holidaymakers fleeing, raising questions about how its lucrative tourism sector will bounce back.

Two deadly tremors a week apart -- accompanied by dozens of aftershocks -- wrought widespread damage on homes and livelihoods, striking during the crucial tourism season, when hotels, local businesses and seasonal workers earn the bulk of their annual revenue.

In the Gili Islands, a popular backpacker and diving destination just off Lombok's northern coast, thousands of terrified tourists jostled on powder-white beaches for departing boats.

Lombok's airport was briefly crammed with holidaymakers rushing to get flights out, while the main tourist drag of Senggigi has been left deserted.

Alfan Hasandi depended on peak season tourists to see his family through the rest of the year. He and his brothers ran a now shuttered business on one of the islands, Gili Air, offering boat tickets, snorkeling, trekking and vehicle rentals, usually earning five million rupiah ($350) a day during peak season.

"We hope we can rebuild... but it's impossible because people are still traumatised," the 25-year-old told AFP. "Our homes have been completely destroyed... We don't have money to rebuild, we need help."

Located in the one of the most tectonically active areas in the world, Indonesians are used to natural disasters and its tourism industry has bounced back from catastrophes in the past.

But for Lombok, the quakes struck at an especially cruel time, when the island's tourism industry was on the way up.

- 'A new Bali' -

Dubbed "The Island of a Thousand Mosques", Muslim-majority Lombok was always a path less travelled destination than its bigger neighbor Bali, the Hindu-majority island that forms the backbone of Indonesia's $19.4 billion tourist sector.

But it had been earmarked as one of Indonesian President Joko Widodo's "10 new Balis" with the regional government hoping to develop it into a major destination, especially in the booming halal tourism sector.

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Its residents now have to repair and rebuild, hoping that spooked tourists return.

Senggigi would normally be bustling with visitors this time of year. Now boats lie idle along its main beach, restaurants and hotels have been shuttered on its main drag and the usual stream of touts offering services has dried up.

"We don't know whether we can operate again in September," Susi Hayati, manager of the Asmara restaurant, told AFP.

Ketut Jaya, manager of the nearby Holiday Resort Lombok, said it might be a month before they could start taking guest bookings again. Just 19 of the resort's 189 rooms were occupied by hardy tourists who decided not to leave after the quake.

Authorities estimate the damage unleashed by the two quakes on buildings and infrastructure on Lombok will exceed two trillion rupiah ($138 million).

- 'Temporary shock' -

But while the post-quake images of destruction and departing tourists were dramatic, analysts predict tourism in the region will recover after short-term pain.

Indonesia's tourism sector has been robust in the face of major crises before, including natural disasters like the 2004 tsunami and terror attacks such as the 2002 Bali bombings.

"The impact is not as big as a tsunami and the (Lombok) airport is still open," Tedjo Iskandar, a Jakarta-based travel analyst with TTC Travel Mart, told AFP.

Asnawi Bahar, chairman of Indonesia's tour and travel agency association, described the earthquake as a "temporary shock" for the sector.

The number of visitors to Bali plummeted following the 2002 bombings, which targeted a nightclub and bar frequented by Western tourists. The attacks killed more than 200 people and shocked the world.

But the island soon regained its status as one of the world's most popular holiday destinations.

That is little comfort for people like Vina Kartika, who used to work on Gili Trawangan, where one of her friends was killed in the quake, and has currently lost her seasonal tourism job.

"I will now have to stay at home, doing nothing," she said.

On Gili Air island, some hotels were flattened but others survived. A diving school was barricaded with wood panels and furniture to keep intruders out. A supermarket in the middle of the island was completely empty, its windows broken.

Hasandi said he is trying to remain upbeat, and he said lessons can be learned from the Bali's recovery.

"People were scared back then but then came back," he said. "This is a natural disaster, so it should be OK -- God willing."
A salon owner was charged with assault and battery after punching a female customer in the face in Tulsa, Okla. (Photo: YouTube/Luvly Soul)

An upsetting video of a beauty supply store owner punching a mother in the face is burning up social media.

The viral recording, which surfaced Monday, shows a man identified by police as Changseok Jun, owner of Juns Beauty Supply in Tulsa, Okla., punching the woman outside the store Sunday after her child pocketed a small item as the family was walking out the door.

The altercation was shot by an unknown witness and shared on social media, including by social activist Shaun King, who tweeted, This is the 2nd time an Asian owner of a Black beauty supply shop has physically attacked a Black woman in the past week.

This is at Juns Beauty Supply in Tulsa, OK. The one of North Peoria. This is the 2nd time an Asian owner of a Black beauty supply shop has physically attacked a Black woman in the past week. A small child walked out w/ a keychain  she took it back. He punched her in the face pic.twitter.com/UzGyAkNp2F  Shaun King (@shaunking) August 13, 2018

Yahoo Lifestyle could not reach a representative at Juns Beauty Supply for comment.

Sergeant Shane Tuell of the Tulsa Police Department tells Yahoo Lifestyle that the attack occurred early Sunday evening when a small child, unbeknownst to his or her mother, took an item from the store without paying.

The owner of Juns Beauty Supply in Tulsa, Okla., was cited for assault and battery after punching a female customer in the face. (Photo: YouTube/Luvly Soul)

Mr. Jun followed the victim outside to confront her, and she threw the item back inside the store, then pushed him in his upper torso as she was leaving, says Tuell. Mr. Jun then punched the woman in the right side of her mouth with his closed fist.

Jun was charged with assault and battery, a misdemeanor, and was ordered to appear in court on Sept. 12. A judge will rule on what happens next, but Tuell says possibilities include a fine or community service. The victim, whose name is not known, has the option to sue Jun.

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People feuded on Twitter about which party was wronged and whether the shop owner was racist.

I doubt he needed stitches. She clearly caused him no harm & she was walking away so he wasnt protecting himself  Lynn Titshaw (@LynnTitshaw) August 13, 2018

No, she did not hit him first. He stalked her out of the store, berated her non stop, and as she walked away and put her hand up to get him away, he punched her from behind with a closed first. He bloodied her mouth. She required stitches. https://t.co/md9vvpGt4U  Shaun King (@shaunking) August 13, 2018

I rewatched this and I think you have a valid and fair point. However, I do think the response was disproportionate and done in retaliation, not to protect himself. Again, I wonder if he would have made the same choice if she was a white woman.  Alyssa Conn (@aconn2) August 13, 2018

She hardly hit him. Thats dramatic. She used her arm to lightly push him.  pettymayy (@pattyymayy) August 13, 2018

My boys have walked out of stores with little things often over the years. I always return them. Ive never been punched because of it. Black women dont have that liberty. That is both sickening and enraging. If it had been a white woman he wouldnt have done that.  Laura Miers (@LauraMiers) August 13, 2018

During the first week of August, a violent outburst occurred at the New Red Apple Nails salon in Brooklyn after a customer allegedly took issue with a botched eyebrow wax and refused to pay for the service.

One employee hit a woman with a broomstick, while others threw punches. According to witness Mercy Maduka, who shot the video, the staff was hitting [the women] like animals. Ultimately, as the New York Post reported, both an employee and a customer faced criminal charges.

It was crazy how you can hit someone and her grandma because of $5, Maduka told Yahoo Lifestyle.

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Joseph Oberhansley charged with murder, rape and abuse of a corpse in slaying of 46-year-old Tammy Jo Blanton: Facebook

A man accused of killing his former girlfriend and eating parts of her body has been deemed mentally fit to stand trial by a state psychiatrist.

Joseph Oberhansley has been in prison in September 2014, when his ex-girlfriend Tammy Jo Blanton was found dead in her home in Jeffersonville, in the US state of Indiana.

Mr Oberhansley is accused of breaking into Ms Blantons house, raping her, stabbing her to death, then sawing her head and body open to eat her brain, heart and lungs.

Despite the state psychiatrists decision, Mr Oberhansleys competency can still be contested by his defence lawyers, according to prosecutors.

His fitness for trial has been questioned since his defence team requested an psychiatric assessment in February 2017, noting he was suspicious, paranoid, uncommunicative and agitated.

A judge consulted psychiatrists and ruled he was not competent in October 2017.

Mr Oberhansley said at a hearing on Thursday he wanted to fire his lawyers, claiming they were trying to control his mind, local news outlet the Courier Journal reported.

The defendant claimed two other men killed Ms Blanton, as he did during a police interview in 2014.

Im just so tired of dealing with all this stuff and being locked in this cage, he said, I just want to be executed.

Prosecuting attorney for Clark County Jeremy Mull asked the judge to set a date for a trial in the next six months, but the defence asked for a month-long delay before a trial is scheduled. The next hearing in the case was set for 21 September.

Mr Oberhansley is charged with murder, burglary and rape and faces up to the death penalty if convicted.
Prosecutors have rested their case against former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort after 10 days of testimony alleging how he avoided taxes on at least $16 million of income and lied to banks to maintain an extravagant lifestyle once his work for pro-Kremlin politicians in Ukraine dried up.

More than two dozen witnesses painted a picture of Mr Manafort, 69, as a lavish spender with little regard for the law. The prosecution allege that Mr Manafort stashed his money from his political consulting work in 31 undisclosed offshore bank accounts, and skirted taxes on that income by wiring it directly to vendors to snap up real estate, bespoke suits, cars and antique rugs. Mr Manafort denies all charges against him.

It is unclear whether Mr Manafort's lawyers will call any witnesses, and legal experts say it is highly unlikely that Mr Manafort himself will take the stand. Closing statements could take place as early as Tuesday, after which the 12-person jury will begin deliberating.

The trial was in its 10th day in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. The case arose from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

One of the last witnesses for the prosecution was James Brennan, an executive at Federal Savings Bank, which extended $16 million in loans to Mr Manafort.

Mr Brennan said bank president Javier Ubarri made an initial decision to reject a $9.5 million loan on Mr Manafort's Hampton estate, but bank CEO Steve Calk overruled it. It closed because Mr Calk wanted it to close, Mr Brennan said about the loan.

Mr Brennan, asked about whether the bank made money from lending to Mr Manafort, said the bank has written off the loans and took a hit of $11.8 million.

Prosecutors contend Mr Manafort hid a significant portion of the approximately $60 million he earned as a consultant for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, then lied to borrow millions more

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When Mark Hamills career took off after landing his iconic role in Star Wars, it was natural that other actors came to him for career advice  including Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But as Hamill revealed over the weekend via Twitter, his advice was totally wrong for the bodybuilder.

Arnold Schwarzenegger asked me for advice when he was just starting out, Hamill wrote on Saturday. I told him to lose his accent for a wider range of roles & to change his last name since no one could pronounce it. He did the opposite & became one of the biggest stars EVER.

Arnold Schwarzenegger asked me for advice when he was just starting out. I told him to lose his accent for a wider range of roles & to change his last name since no one could pronounce it. He did the opposite & became one of the biggest stars EVER#TrueStory https://t.co/6HMs1PNDsu  Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) August 11, 2018

Luckily, Schwarzenegger didnt listen. But the former governor of California tweeted back at Hamill that he understood his advice at the time.

Your advice was absolutely correct under any normal circumstances, and those were the rules back then. I just happen to be a rule-breaker, the Terminator star wrote.

Your advice was absolutely correct under any normal circumstances, and those were the rules back then. I just happen to be a rule-breaker. https://t.co/d4UZ0DCWxi  Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) August 11, 2018

Still, Hamill recognized that their exchange was a missed opportunity.

It wasnt until years later that I realized it was a missed opportunity for me to ask YOU for advice, he tweeted back at Schwarzenegger. My belated apologies, mh and included the hashtags #RuleBreakersRule #BeYourself #HastaLaVistaHamill.

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Seems like we need a career advice show (or at a least a panel) from these two Hollywood icons.

As far as Hamills own career goes, he got a major career boost from Freddy Krueger himself. The young actor once stayed with Nightmare on Elm Street star Robert Englund, who told Hamill to audition for a role in a movie called Star Wars.

 ... I went home and told a little kid that was sleeping on my couch, after a six-pack of Heineken, all about [Star Wars], and his name was Mark Hamill, Englund told Yahoo in 2014.

I said, Hey, Lucas is doing this space movie. Maybe youre right for it. The lead guys like a teenager ... So Mark got on the phone to his agent and I think he went up the next day. He nailed it, and the rest is history.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visit the Hmeymim air base in Latakia Province, Syria December 11. REUTERS/File Photo

Chuck Freilich

Russia, Middle East

And they are likely to stay.

In the Middle East the Russians Arent Coming: They Are Back

Four decades after the United States largely succeeded in sidelining the Soviet Union in the Middle East and becoming the leading regional, Russia is resurrecting its long-lost standing. The process of partial American disengagement from the region that began under President Barack Obama has further increased under President Donald Trump. Indeed, if things continue as is, Russia may soon supplant the United States.

Russias growing influence is manifest across the region, from Morocco to Iran. This remarkable turnabout, part of Vladimir Putins overarching strategy of restoring Russias standing as a great power, has been the result of deft diplomacy combined with a willingness to sell arms and nuclear power reactors to all askers.

While international attention has been focused on the Iranian nuclear program, Russia has been playing an increasingly important role in two other dangerous trends underway in the region: a massive conventional arms race$1.3 trillion of arms bought by the Gulf states alone between 2000 and 2014and a dramatic push to procure nuclear power reactors. All of the reactor programs reflect legitimate energy needs, but civil nuclear programs in the Middle East have a nasty tendency to morph into military ones.

U.S. allies in the region today have become hesitant to continue placing all of their strategic faith and security in American hands. While they uniformly welcome President Trumps more hardline approach, the scars of American weakness during the Obama years, as they perceive it, have yet to heal. Moreover, Trumps unique character has engendered ongoing doubts regarding American trustworthiness. For the meantime, U.S. allies are hedging their bets.

Egypts anger over what it viewed as insufficient American support for the Mubarak regime, and subsequent sanctions on arms sales, led to a significant improvement in its relations with Russia. A deal for four Russian nuclear power reactors was concluded in 2017. Military ties have been restored, including the sale of some dozens of advanced fighters, attack helicopters and S-300 missiles, along with new joint military exercises.

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Egypt has been the linchpin of American policy in the region ever since it evicted the Soviets in the early 1970s. In so doing, it created the basis for the three mutually reinforcing pillars of U.S. Middle East policy to this day: the establishment of a moderate, pro-American Arab camp with Egypt and Saudi Arabia at its center; countering regional rogues such as Iraq, Iran and Libya with the moderates support; and the promotion of Arab-Israeli peaceagain, with moderate support. An Egyptian-Russian rapprochement constitutes a severe blow to American standing.

For decades, an unwritten deal has governed U.S.-Saudi relations; security for an assured supply of oil. In 1991, the United States even went to war in defense of Saudi Arabia. Today, however, the Saudis are skittish. In 2017, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud conducted the first ever visit of a Saudi monarch to Russia. A deal was signed for highly advanced S-400 and anti-tank missiles. A nuclear cooperation agreement was also signed, and Russia hopes to provide at least two of the planned sixteen Saudi reactors. Russia and Saudi Arabiawho together make up approximately 20 percent of international oil productionhave also coordinated policy to raise the global price.

Russias minimalistic military intervention in Syria, with just two fighter squadrons, has been remarkably successful, saving the Assad regime at virtually no cost to Russia, which left the bloody ground fighting to Iran and Hezbollah. Obamas self-enervating prognosis that Syria would become Russias Vietnam has been proven baseless.

Russia has become the primary player in Syria today, ensuring its long-term presence there with a Syrian commitment to grant it air and naval basesfrom which it projects region-wide powerfor forty-nine more years. A country of little importance in and of itself to the United States, Syria has become the focal point of the most critical regional issues, including the Sunni-Shiite confrontation, the war against ISIS, Iranian expansionism, and a possible Iranian-Israeli conflict. Russias position in Syria provides it with influence over all.

The U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has driven Tehran even closer to Russia, its longtime ally. Iran is counting on Russia to help defeat the American sanctions regime and prevent any possibility of military action against it. Russia has already supplied Iran with S-300 missiles, and sales of fighter aircraft, tanks and artillery once Security Council mandated limitations expire have been mooted. Russia provided Iran with its sole nuclear reactor, and may sell a few more.

Turkey, for decades a virulently anti-Russian NATO ally, has been cozying up to Moscow and appears to be going ahead with the purchase of S-400 missiles over the vehement protests of its NATO allies. Morocco, Bahrain and Qatar are also interested in the S-400. Russia signed a large arms deal with the UAE and is exploring the possibility of gaining access to naval bases in Libya. A nuclear cooperation agreement was signed with Tunisia.

Russia has also offered Lebanon a large arms deal and is interested in air and naval bases there too. Russia has cooperated overtly with Hezbollah in the fighting in Syria, and Hezbollah itself now has Russian arms, presumably supplied indirectly by Syria and/or Iran without Russian knowledge.

Concomitantly, Russia has also succeeded in developing an increasingly close relationship with Israel. U.S. disengagement from Syria and its withdrawal from the nuclear deal have had the practical effect of making Russia a critical player for Israel. The prospects of an Israeli conflict with Iran/Hezbollah in Syria, or with Iran over its nuclear program, hinge significantly on the role played by Russia. Premier Benjamin Netanyahu has now visited Putin in Moscow ten times in the last two years alone.

The diplomatic world, much like nature, abhors a vacuum, and Russia has rushed to fill the void left by the United States. A restoration of American primacy is possible, and would be welcomed by allies, but would require three important changes in U.S. policy.

First, that the United States finally develop a strategy for Syria. Certainly a hard call, but as Russia has proven, the United States could be playing a far more effective role without risking major involvement. Second, the adoption of a coherent U.S. policy towards Iran. Not just a capricious withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, followed by the enunciation of welcome but unrealistic objectives, without preparing any policy options other than sanctions, or anything that appears like a plan Bor even a plan A. Finally, maintaining the close alliance with Israel, but also either pursuing an all-out attempt to reach a breakthrough with the Palestinians, or a decision to make do with conflict management in a way that does not further inflame matters.

Unfortunately, the prospects of any of this happening under Trump are low. In the Middle East, the Russians are backand likely to stay.

Check Freilich is a senior fellow at Harvards Belfer Center and is a former deputy national security adviser in Israel. He is also the author of Israeli National Security: a New Strategy for an Era of Change, Oxford University Press, 2018.

Read full article
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP)  Seven years after his presidential aspirations fizzled, Tim Pawlenty is hoping to regain his winning touch and restart his political career in a familiar spot: Minnesota's Republican primary for governor.

The former two-term governor's name is the biggest in both parties in the wide-open and high-stakes race for the state's top job. Tuesday's primary will determine which of three Democrats and two Republicans succeed outgoing Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton.

The race not only gives Pawlenty a shot at redemption but also could be a chance for Republicans to seize full control of Minnesota's traditionally blue state government. Unless Democrats recapture the state House  a tall order  a victory in the governor's race would be the party's only blockade against GOP-backed policies that already rule most of the Upper Midwest.

The primaries for governor were just one piece of a stacked election that also included races for U.S. Senate, several competitive congressional matchups and a rare open race for the attorney general seat that Swanson was vacating to run for governor. Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison was leaving Congress to try for that seat, but his candidacy was hit over the weekend by an allegation from an ex-girlfriend that he physically abused her. Ellison denied the charge.

In the gubernatorial race, Democrats treated Pawlenty as their November opponent even as they tried to figure out their own candidate. He was the most frequent target in campaign ads and stump speeches from southern Minnesota's U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, state Rep. Erin Murphy and Attorney General Lori Swanson. And the liberal outside political organization Alliance for a Better Minnesota spent months and millions of dollars on attack ads to remind voters of the $6.1 billion deficit Pawlenty handed Dayton in 2011.

After Pawlenty quit the 2012 presidential race, he declared himself retired from politics and moved on to a lobbying job in Washington. But in April, after months of flirting with a run, he jumped into the governor's race . His opponent: Jeff Johnson, the party's 2014 nominee and loser to Dayton.

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Pawlenty's resume quickly cleared most other GOP hopefuls from the race, and big money immediately flowed his way from such national groups as the Republican Governors Association, which quickly reserved $2.3 million in ad buys.

But the self-described "Sam's Club Republican" didn't have an easy time reintegrating himself in a party that has changed drastically since he left office in 2011. He quickly abandoned a quest for the party's support, which went to Johnson.

He also struggled to live down his blistering critique of President Donald Trump in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, when he called then-candidate Trump "unhinged and unfit for the presidency." He has since said he still voted for Trump and supports the president's agenda.

Johnson gleefully circulated those comments, calling himself the true conservative and branding Pawlenty part of the "status quo." In one debate , Pawlenty and Johnson sparred for several minutes over who had insulted the president worse, with Pawlenty reminding radio listeners that Johnson had once referred to Trump as "a jackass."

"I supported him," Johnson said in response. "You told people not to vote for him."

Longtime Republican political operative Gregg Peppin said it remains to be seen whether GOP voters want Pawlenty back, noting that unlike Terry Branstad  the former Iowa governor who left office for more than a decade but stayed in Iowa before seeking his old job  Pawlenty sought work elsewhere. He spent more than five years working for the Financial Services Roundtable in Washington.

"I don't know if voters will penalize him for that or not," said Peppin, who worked on Johnson's 2014 campaign but isn't working for either candidate this year.

But Pawlenty was the last Republican to win statewide in Minnesota when he won his second term in 2006. And Johnson couldn't keep up with weeks of attack ads statewide branding him a phony conservative who supported Dayton's push to expand the state sales tax and supported a property tax increase as a Hennepin County commissioner.

While countering Pawlenty was a unifying theme for the Democrats, their primary turned ugly in the closing days. Swanson, who entered the race late after three terms as attorney general, attacked Walz last week with an ad dubbing him "No-Show Walz" for missing more than 60 percent of votes in Congress this year.

Walz admitted it's a fair figure and that he's struggled to balance his congressional duties with campaign and personal life, but accused Swanson of taking the low road with name-calling.

"We get plenty of that from the White House right now," he said during a Minnesota Public Radio News debate on Friday.

Walz portrayed his background  rural Minnesota roots, former teacher, National Guard veteran  as making him best suited to reverse a trend of Democrats struggling away from state's urban core.

Murphy, a former nurse and longtime state lawmaker, hoped to energize loyal Democratic voters with her endorsement from both the party and Dayton. Swanson touted her electoral success as the party's highest vote-getter during three terms and her work as attorney general.

But Swanson came under scrutiny in the final week after a former staffer in her office accused her of pressuring employees to help with her political ambitions. D'Andre Norman told The Intercept he spent years rounding up young staffers to volunteer on Swanson's behalf at political conventions before he was fired in 2014  an allegation that Swanson called a lie.

It wasn't the first blow to Swanson's campaign. She stood by her running mate , Rep. Rick Nolan, after Nolan acknowledged mishandling an allegation of sexual harassment against an aide in his congressional office.
Shebaa (Lebanon) (AFP) - Dozens of Syrian refugees left Lebanon by bus on Monday in the latest of a wave of returns to their war-torn country, Lebanese authorities said.

An AFP photographer in the southern town of Shebaa saw women and children wait to board buses, while men loaded belongings on the back of a large pick-up truck.

Lebanon's General Security agency "secured the voluntary return of 137 displaced Syrians from the areas of Shebaa and central Bekaa through the Masnaa border crossing towards Syria," it said it a statement.

Lebanon hosts around 1.5 million Syrians who fled the civil war across the border, many of them in the Bekaa Valley in the east of the country.

Lebanese state news agency NNA said "several refugees returned to Syria with their own private vehicles" through Masnaa, without giving a figure.

Syrian state news agency SANA said the returnees had begun arriving in Syria.

It earlier said preparations had been made to "receive hundreds of displaced returning from Lebanon to their homes in the Damascus countryside".

Since April, more than 2,000 Syrians have headed home from Lebanon in such returns coordinated by the authorities in Beirut and Damascus, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

Human rights groups have warned that Syrians returning to their homeland should do so voluntarily and with full knowledge of the risks.

According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, around 13,000 Syrians went home from Lebanon during the first six months of this year.

More than 350,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since Syria's war started with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011.

But President Bashar al-Assad has called for displaced Syrians to return since his regime ousted rebels and jihadists from large parts of the country following a massive military intervention by regime ally Russia.

Last month, Russia presented the United States with plans for the coordinated return of refugees to Syria.

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The proposal includes the establishment of working groups in both Lebanon and Jordan, involving US and Russian officials.

Earlier this month, Syrian state media said the government was to set up a committee to coordinate repatriating millions of its nationals.

Last week, Lebanon's General Security agency announced it had opened 17 centres across the country to receive applications for Syrians who want to travel back home.
Monday, August 13, 2018

What to watch today

This week comes with a nice cross-section of economic data thatll provide an early look on how the U.S. economy is performing in Q3. On Wednesday, well get the July reports on retail sales and industrial production. Thatll be followed by the July housing starts report on Thursday. By the way, that retail sales report will include data from Amazons Prime Day, which happened on July 16.

There are no notable U.S. economic reports or earnings announcements scheduled for Monday. However, investors and traders will continue to watch for any spillover effects from Turkeys financial crisis.

Top news

REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo

Musk tweet draws Tesla investor lawsuits: Elon Musk and Tesla Inc. (TSLA) were sued by investors for manipulating share prices after the chief executive officers bombshell tweet that he was thinking about taking the company private and that hed secured funding for the deal. [Bloomberg]

Saudi fund in talks to invest in Tesla buyout deal: Saudi Arabias sovereign wealth fund is in talks that could see it becoming a significant investor in Tesla as part of Elon Musks plan to take the electric car maker private, according to people with knowledge of the funds plans. The Public Investment Fund has built up a stake just shy of 5% in Tesla in recent months. [Bloomberg]

What the collapse of Turkeys currency means for the US: The selloff in Turkeys lira currency has investors worried about potential contagion from the U.S.s North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally and prospective European Union member. [Yahoo Finance]

Elliott Management to push Nielsen Holdings to sell: Activist investor Elliott Management Corp. has taken a big stake in Nielsen Holdings (NLSN) and plans to push the TV-ratings company to sell itself. The New York hedge fund owns more than 8% of Nielsen, worth at least $640 million, people familiar with the matter said. [The Wall Street Journal]

Bayer shares slide after Monsantos Roundup cancer trial: Shares in Bayer plunged more than 10% to their lowest in almost two years after a California jury ordered the German companys subsidiary Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages last week. [Reuters]

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Papa Johns offers to help struggling franchisees: Papa Johns International Inc. (PZZA) said it would provide financial assistance to its U.S. franchisees through the remainder of the year as it tries to turn around the business it says has been hurt by its founders remarks. Relations between the pizza chain and founder John Schnatter have become increasingly fraught in recent weeks. [The Wall Street Journal]

For more of the latest news, go to Yahoo Finance

Counter-protesters chant and hold signs during the Unite the Right 2 rally in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018. The rally marks the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville, Virginia, rally where a car driven into a crowd of counter protesters killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Photographer: Aaron P. Bernstein/Bloomberg

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Zachary Keck

Security, Europe

While much attention was given to the recently concluded NATO Summit, the alliance has quietly been busying trying to hunt its own submarines.

NATO Is Getting Ready to Go to War Against Russia's Submarines

The episode does make clear that NATO has to devote extensive resources to tracking Russian submarines and that interoperability is crucial. Hence, the need for drills like Dynamic Mongoose and Dynamic Mantra.

While much attention was given to the recently concluded NATO Summit, the alliance has quietly been busying trying to hunt its own submarines.

From June 25 to July 6, 2018, seven NATO members participated in the annual Dynamic Mongoose exercise. Held off the coast of Norway, the exercise seeks to sharpen the alliances anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities at a time when Russia is replenishing its undersea fleet.

(This first appeared last month.)

Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Turkey, and the United States were the members that took part in the exercise, according to a NATO press release. The drill consisted of two Norwegian submarines trying to evade the combined capabilities of the eight participants. Norway's only submarines are its six Ula-class diesel electric boats.

Among those hunting the Ula subs were seven surface ships from Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Turkey operating under the command of Standing Maritime Group One (SNGM61). Although the press release did not identify the ships that participated, Naval Today said the fleet consisted of two Dutch frigates, one frigate each from the four other countries, as well as a Polish tanker.

To better enhance their interoperability and proficiency in anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare skills, each surface ship will have the opportunity to devise and execute a variety of tactics to locate and track submarines, the NATO press release said.

The surface ships were joined by Maritime Patrol Aircraft from Germany, Norway, and the United States. These aircraft flew out of the Andoya Air Base in Norway and were under the operational command of NATO Maritime Air Command (COMMARAIR).

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Once again, the press release did not identify the specific aircraft that participated but Germany and Norway typically use P-3 Orions for maritime patrols. Other reports said that the United States contribution was the P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine warfare aircraft, which are replacing the P-3s. Norway is among the countries buying the P-8s.

NATOs annual anti-submarine-warfare exercise DYNAMIC MONGOOSE remains one of the most challenging exercises and an excellent opportunity for NATO nations naval forces to practice and evaluate their Anti-Submarine skillset in a challenging environment, Rear Admiral Andrew Lennon, NATO Submarines Commander, was quoted as saying in the press release.

He added: This exercise is a unique opportunity to enhance naval forces warfighting skills in all three dimensions of Anti-Submarine-Warfare in a multinational and multi-threat environment.

Dynamic Mongoose is not the only ASW exercise NATO conducted this year. The much larger Dynamic Manta was held in March in the Mediterranean off the coast of Sicily.

A NATO press release from that time revealed that Dynamic Mantra featured Canadian, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, and American submarines operating under NATO Submarine Command.

They were joined by nine surface ships provided by the United States, United Kingdom, France, Greece, Belgium, Spain, and Turkey. Rounding out the exercise was ten Maritime Patrol Aircraft and 8 Helicopters from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Beyond drills, there are increasingly frequent real life opportunities to hone the alliances ASW skills by tracking Russian submarine patrols.

Last year Admiral Vladimir Korolyov, the head of Russias Navy, claimed Moscows submarines spent 3,000 days at sea in 2016. Assuming each patrol is between four and six months long, that means Russia conducted between 17 and 25 submarine patrols that year.

Some of these patrols are tracked by NATO. For example, during the spring and summer of 2017 the alliance spent months following a Varshavyanka-class diesel-electric submarine, which Moscow bills as "the quietest submarines in the world.

In a November 2017 article in the Wall Street Journal , Julian Barnes details the enormous lengths the alliance went to over the course of three months to track the submarine on a journey that took it from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.

NATOs efforts began with the Dutch following the Russian sub while it was in the North Sea, before a British ship took over when it approached the English Channel. A Spanish patrol boat temporarily helped out before the submarine reached Gibraltar, when an American cruiser assisted by a P-8 followed the vessel into the Mediterranean.

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Once there the submarine launched missile attacks on Syria and lingered for weeks in a cat and mouse game with NATO. At one point, the U.S. Navy became concerned that it could target an American aircraft carrier in the region.

Its unclear from the article how well the Western naval forces fared in keeping tabs on the Russian sub when it was submerged. A U.S. naval officer said that the submarines second missile salvo into Syria was monitored by a French frigate and U.S. naval aerial surveillance.

The episode does make clear that NATO has to devote extensive resources to tracking Russian submarines and that interoperability is crucial. Hence, the need for drills like Dynamic Mongoose and Dynamic Mantra.

Zachary Keck (@ZacharyKeck) is a former managing editor of The National Interest.

Image: Creative Commons.

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Former Trump ally also claims to have recorded John Kelly firing her in the high-security White House Situation Room

Former White House aide and reality TV star Omarosa Manigault Newman claims she has heard a tape of Donald Trump using the N-word and other racial epithets during filming for The Apprentice.

In her book, Unhinged, a copy of which was first obtained by the Guardian ahead of its publication next week, Manigault Newman insisted that tapes did exist, but did not say she heard them, or that she had heard Trump use the word herself.

Speaking with Chuck Todd on NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday, however, Manigault Newman, who, as assistant to the president, was once the most prominent African American in the White House, claimed she had been played the recording since the book went to print.

Ive heard his voice, Manigault Newman said. Once I heard it for myself it confirmed what I feared the most, that Donald Trump is a con and has been masquerading as someone who is actually open to engaging with diverse communities. But when he talks that way, the way he does on this tape, it confirms that he is truly a racist.

Pressed on why she had not heard the tape before publishing her book, the author claimed its owner is afraid because of the forces working to stop it coming out while also regretting that people are probably trying to leverage it for an October surprise ahead of the November midterm elections.

She confirmed that Trump never said the N-word in her presence, though she said it was possible he used the racial slur to describe her because Donald Trump talks about everyone behind their backs.

On Sunday, Manigault Newman released an audio recording, aired on Meet the Press, which she claimed she made in December 2017 when the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, called her into the Situation Room to fire her.

The recording, if established to be genuine, could be treated as a breach of White House security.

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The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room, shows a blatant disregard for our national security  and then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee, the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said in a statement.

Manigault Newman defended her action earlier in the day, saying she had recorded the exchange, along with an undisclosed number of others before her departure, because she was trying to protect herself.

I protected myself because this is a White House where everybody lies. The president lies to the American people. Sarah Huckabee stands in front of the country and lies every single day. You have to have your own back because otherwise youll look back and youll see 17 knives in your back.

Trump called Manigault Newman a lowlife on Saturday, in his first public response to her book. Sanders has described it as riddled with lies and false accusations.



The White House aide Kellyanne Conway told ABCs This Week on Sunday that the first time she heard her former colleague suggest those awful things about Trumps language was in the book.

I think that Omarosa unfortunately has undercut her own credibility, Conway said, saying the author had previously given a glowing appraisal of Donald Trump.

WATCH: Omarosa releases secret tape of John Kelly firing from White House #MTP pic.twitter.com/KtNEiuPkqz  Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) August 12, 2018

On NBC, Toddreminded her that in December 2016 she had written: I am living the American Dream because of Donald Trump  its very hard to make the argument that Donald Trump doesnt like black people and black women.

Soon after making that statement, she entered the White House as one of Trumps longest-serving aides, and as liaison with African-American groups.

Todd pointed out even after a number of incidents that drew attention to Trumps insensitivity to racial issues, she still defended her longtime boss while working at the White House.

Being used by Donald Trump for so long, I was like the frog in hot water. You dont know till it starts bubbling and bubbling, she responded, calling her dramatic reversal the gift of hindsight.

I was complicit and for that I regret, the former Apprenticecontestant said.

In one of the purported recordings of Kelly, a mans voice can be heard saying Manigault Newman faced integrity issues of a very serious nature, but if her exit was a friendly departure she would be able to go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation.

Manigault Newman claimed she now regards the venue was chosen to impart a message. They take me into the Situation Room, the doors are locked. They tell me I cant leave. And they start to threaten me, put fear in me, to put me under duress.

That phrasing, she now claims, constituted a very obvious threat that justifies her secretly recording the meeting.

Soon after she was fired, the Washington Post reported, Manigault Newman was offered a $15,000-a-month job with the Trumps campaign. The offer came with a binding non-disclosure agreement containing a No Disparagement clause that demanded she not to demean or disparage publicly, in any form or through any medium, the Campaign, Mr. Trump, Mr. Pence 

Manigault Newman says she understood the offer was not for a real job.

They didnt really care if I showed up. In fact, there are several former employees from the White House who actually signed this agreement, who are all being paid $15,000 for their silence.

Todd asked her if she truly believed people are being bought off.

Absolutely, Manigault Newman said. The campaign, the RNC, and America First, which is why Sean Spicer was describing Donald Trump as a unicorn jumping over rainbows  because he signed this same agreement.

In another claim, Manigault Newman said she had seen the president eat a note handed to him in the Oval Office by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to prevent presidential archivists getting it.

Cohen swiftly rubbished her recollection on Twitter.

LTo the many dozens of #journalists who called me, questioning @OMAROSA claim in her new book that @POTUS @realDonaldTrump took a note from me, put it in his mouth and ate it...I saw NO such thing and am shocked anyone would take this seriously.  Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) August 12, 2018




WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he condemns "all types of racism and acts of violence," appealing for unity ahead of the anniversary of a deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump drew strong criticism in the days after the Charlottesville rally last year for equating white supremacists with counter-protesters and saying "both sides" were to blame. On Saturday, Trump wrote on Twitter that the "riots" in Charlottesville "resulted in senseless death and division. We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!" White nationalists held a "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville last year, billing it as a protest over the removal of a statue honoring a commander of the Confederate Army, the losing side in the U.S. Civil War. Counter-protesters turned out to demonstrate against the rally. James Alex Fields, Jr. is charged with driving his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring dozens of people. He has pleaded not guilty and his trial is set to begin in November. The organizer of last year's event, white nationalist Jason Kessler, was denied a permit in Charlottesville this year but has secured permission to hold a demonstration on Sunday in Washington, across the street from the White House. (Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Frances Kerry)
For 17 days, a southern resident killer whale (SRKW) named J35, but better known as Tahlequah, carried her deceased baby for more than 1,000 miles.

The orca's unusually long spell of grieving came to an end on Saturday, when Tahlequah was spotted in the Haro Strait off Victoria, British Columbia, chasing a school of salmon without her newborn.

SEE ALSO: New dolphin-whale hybrid sea creature is the spawn of an unholy union

"Her tour of grief is now over and her behavior is remarkably frisky," the Center for Whale Research (CWR) explained in a blog post online.

August 11, 2018

J35 update: "The ordeal of J35 carrying her dead calf for at least seventeen days and 1,000 miles is now over, thank goodness."

- Ken Balcomb, Center for Whale Researchhttps://t.co/kQpA4WWbmg pic.twitter.com/cQIN13HgN6  Whale Research (@CWROrcas) August 12, 2018

The CWR added that the baby's carcass has probably sunk to the bottom of the Salish Sea, meaning that researchers may not get a chance to examine it.

On Jul. 24, Tahlequah's baby orca died shortly after birth, in what has been a common story for the southern resident killer whale population.

Over the last two decades, 75 percent of SRKW newborns failed to survive. The last successful birth was in 2015, when two calves were born.

In the hours, then days after the death, Tahlequah was spotted trying to keep her baby's head above the water's surface, reluctant to leave the body behind.

"That's not unprecedented, but its the longest one that Ive personally witnessed," Ken Balcomb, CWR's founder and principal investigator, told The Washington Post.

These orcas are facing a real threat of extinction, with no successful pregnancies in the last three years. At just 75 whales, the population is at its lowest in 30 years.

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The SRKW's decline is linked to the reduction in population of its primary food source, Chinook salmon.

Canada's government announced in May it would cut the allowable catch of Chinook by up to 35 percent to help protect the orca.
Jungle Cruise, the upcoming film starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, will reportedly feature Disneys first openly gay character. While thats progress for sure, there is some criticism over the casting of the role.

On Sunday, a report in the U.K. tabloid the Sun said that the role British comedian and actor Jack Whitehall, 30, is playing in the movie based on Disneylands theme park ride and set in the 19th century is a gay man  one who is hugely effete, very camp and very funny, according to a source. This latest script, set at a time when it wasnt socially acceptable to be gay, is another significant turning point.

Jack Whitehall, pictured at the BRIT Awards in February, landed a role in the upcoming film Jungle Cruise, and he will reportedly be playing an openly gay character. (Photo: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images)

And while its definitely a turning point, theres criticism online over casting an actor in the role who isnt gay.

Really @Disney #JungleCruise ? Your first significant gay role will be played by a straight white man perpetuating stereotypes? Fail! This ship should sink. https://t.co/npPESNZaxD  Omar Sharif Jr. (@OmarSharifJr) August 13, 2018

Its not that its a problem to cast a fantastic straight ally to play a gay role, its that there are so many gay actors that are under represented in all sorts of roles across the board and so I think that this is, fantastic, but also a bit sad  #JungleCruise  James Barr  (@imjamesbarr) August 13, 2018

Jack Whitehall playing gay for laughs is NOT the progress we need  Hazza (@Clarkhf) August 12, 2018

Such a dam shame its so hard to find gay actors to play gay roles in hollywood . Do better @disney @jackwhitehall https://t.co/QUQ3qbb8NZ  Chris Salvatore (@CSalvatore) August 12, 2018

Was really excited for @JungleCruise but hearing that @jackwhitehall will be doing the usual straight-man-plays-camp-gay-man act has put me off big time. To be queer is NOT a punchline.   g (@eightlegsright) August 13, 2018

Im actually devastated about the casting of @jackwhitehall in a gay role for @Disney. HIRE A GAY ACTOR! How is this happening STILL? I completely blame both parties and am disgusted and upset with both  Samuel Billett (@TheErmintrude) August 13, 2018

Absolutely LOVE Jack Whitehall but could they seriously not pick someone actually gay? https://t.co/CclBS0KA8J  Maria (@marialoizouu) August 13, 2018

Though many also wondered whether an actors sexual orientation should matter when it comes to casting a role.

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Shock as actor is asked to play someone different from themselves. Isnt that kind of the point? Wouldnt always casting gay actors in gay roles be condemned for typecasting? https://t.co/tfni2m3B1P  Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) August 13, 2018

Are you kidding? Its acting  why does his sexuality matter??? https://t.co/dbAkqBohpQ  KERRIE COSH (@kjcoshy) August 13, 2018

Outrage that Jack Whitehall is playing a gay. Does this mean criminals have to be played by criminals?  Adrian Emming (@Adezilla1) August 13, 2018

People complaining about Jack Whitehall being cast as Disney's first openly gay character 'despite being straight', is like complaining that Mike Myers isn't really an Ogre.  Joel Cotterall (@Jjcotterall) August 13, 2018

More than one person pointed to the backlash over Scarlett Johansson playing a transgender character in the film Rub and Tug. She eventually pulled out of the project.

If Scarlett Johansson wasnt allowed to play a trans man then Jack Whitehall shouldnt be allowed to play a gay man. Especially so when you consider there are absolute hundreds of out gay men in Hollywood who are better actors than him  Sophie WilkINson (@sophwilkinson) August 13, 2018

I am so hoping this goes the way of Scarlet Johansson. 

Decision to cast Jack Whitehall as Disneys first gay character sparks debate https://t.co/vBdUyL978E  Lionel (@JustLion34) August 13, 2018

And some compared the discussion to the debate over whether Idris Elba, who is black, should be cast as James Bond.

You agree with Idris Elba playing James Bond but dont agree with Jack Whitehall playing a gay character   DanJO (@DjOMufc) August 13, 2018

To all the people worried about Idris Elba playing James Bond it's no more worthy of outrage than Jack Whitehall playing a gay Disney character. It's all fantasy anyway!  Sarah Vine (@WestminsterWAG) August 13, 2018

The people getting pissy about Jack Whitehall playing a gay character, our the same people who are pissed about Idris Elba possibly playing the first black James Bond, like ffs why is the world so sensitive nowadays.  Gareth (@Kehnul) August 13, 2018

Meanwhile, Whitehall is settling into life on the set of a movie that, for better or worse, is making him a household name. He shared a video of the Rock on set and wrote that it is an honor to be part of the epic adventure. The self-professed Disney nerd said hes having the time of my life.

In 2017, Disneys live-action Beauty and the Beast featured what was considered the first gay moment in a Disney film when the character LeFou, played by Josh Gad, displayed confused feelings for leading man Gaston. However, it was a blink-and-youll-miss-it bit. This Jungle Cruise news comes just days after openly gay actress Ruby Rose made headlines for being cast as lesbian superhero Batwoman for the CW. That hasnt been without drama either. She deleted her Twitter account over the weekend because of cruel remarks.

Reps for Whitehall and Disney have not yet responded to requests for comment.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
Every year our skies are lit up by returning meteor showers, from Perseids to Lyrids, Orionids to Geminids. If the weather conditions are in our favour and the moon isn't too bright, there's a chance you'll be able to see some spectacular shooting stars in action.

Here is our guide to the must-see meteor showers of 2018  including the spectacular Perseids shower which will peak this weekend  as well as where and how to see them.

What exactly is a meteor shower?

A meteor shower occurs when Earth passes through the debris stream occupying the orbit of a comet - or, in simpler terms, when a number of meteors flash across the sky from roughly the same point.

Meteors are sometimes called shooting stars, although they actually have nothing to do with stars.

If you're lucky you could see up to 100 meteors or 'shooting stars' every hour on December 13/14. Credit: PETE LAWRENCE

Perspective makes meteor showers appear to emanate from a single point in the sky known as the shower radiant. A typical meteor results from a particle the size of a grain of sand vaporising in Earths atmosphere when it enters at 134,000mph.

Something larger than a grape will produce a fireball and this is often accompanied by a persistent afterglow known as a meteor train. This is a column of ionised gas slowly fading from view as it loses energy.

Meteor, meteorid or meteroite?

Let's get this straight. A meteor is a meteoroid  or a particle broken off an asteroid or comet orbiting the Sun  that burns up as it enters the Earth's atmosphere creating the effect of a "shooting star".

Meteoroids that reach the Earth's surface without disintegrating are called meteorites.

Meteors are mostly pieces of comet dust and ice no larger than a grain of rice. Meteorites are principally rocks broken off asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and can weigh as much as 60 tonnes.

They can be "stony", made up of minerals rich in silicon and oxygen, "iron", consisting mainly of iron and nickel, or "stony-iron", a combination of the two.

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The Geminids meteor shower in Vladivostok, Russia in December 2017 Credit: Yuri Smityuk

Scientists think about 1,000 tons to more than 10,000 tons of material from meteors falls on Earth each day, but it's mostly dust-like grains, according to Nasa, and they pose no threat to Earth.

There are only two incidents recorded where people reported being injured by a meteorite, including one in 1954 when a woman was bruised by a meteorite weighing eight pounds after it fell through her roof.

When is the next meteor shower?

The meteor shower currently gracing our skies is the Perseids, which began in the middle of July and grows in intensity before peaking in mid-August every year.

The shower appears to originate from within the star constellation Perseus  hence the shower's name. It occurs when Earth passes through the debris stream occupying the orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle.

The wonderfully named comet is the largest object known to repeatedly pass Earth (it's 16 miles wide). It orbits the sun ever 133 years and each time it passes through the inner solar system it warms up, releasing fresh comet material into its orbital stream.

The last time it was closest to the sun was in December 1992. It will be back again in July 2126.

Perseid meteor radiant

When can I see the Perseid meteor shower?

The window for the current Perseid meteor shower is from July 17 to August 24 2018. Stargazers stand a chance of seeing the shower at any point in this window, however the peak will occur between August 12 and August 13.

The best time to take a look at the sky will be from about 1am BST in the Northern Hemisphere until the onset of dawn twilight.

Peak rates of 150-200 meteors per hour were recorded in 2016, but typical rates are about 80 meteors an hour streaking across the night sky, each leaving a trail.

To see it, look at a height approximately two-thirds up the sky in any direction. If you want a recommendation, east through south offers some great background constellations in the early hours during August. Look for the shower's "radiant" from the north-east corner of Perseus.

2018 | Major meteor showers

The best stargazing spots in the UK

A dark night is best for a meteor shower, after midnight and before dawn.

Head somewhere away from the bright lights - into more rural areas if you can - and be prepared to wait a good hour if you want the best chance of seeing a shower. Look for a wide, open viewing area - perhaps a national park or large field on the side of a road - and make sure you concentrate your gaze towards the east.

Meteor showers are unpredictable though, so prepare for the fact you might not see much.

Choose a dark location away from stray lights and give yourself at least 20 minutes in total darkness to properly dark adapt.

Britain has some wonderful stargazing locations, including three "Dark Sky Reserves" (Snowdonia, Brecon Beacons and Exmoor national parks) and Europe's largest "Dark Sky Park" (Northumberland National Park and the adjoining Kielder Water and Forest Park).

best stargazing locations

Galloway Forest Park: Galloway is a couple of hours from Glasgow and an hour from Carlisle. The park's most popular spot for stargazing is Loch Trool. Exmoor and around: Exmoor was granted International Dark-Sky Reserve status by the International Dark-Sky Association in 2011. Light pollution is managed to make the area more appealing to amateur astronomers. Romney Marsh: Night once provided cover for smugglers known as Owlers, but today Romney Marsh offers celestial bounty, arching over a landscape adorned with the spires of ancient churches. Kielder: Kielder Forest is officially the darkest place in England  250 square miles of wooded beauty where Northumberland brushes against Scotland. It has its own fabulous, modern, wood-clad observatory on the slopes of Black Fell above Kielder Water. North York Moors: As well as stunning night skies, the North York Moors boast historic market towns such as Helmsley and Pickering, plus appealing coastal spots, including Scarborough and Whitby.

The other major meteor showers to look out for in 2018

The Quadrantid meteor shower

The Quadrantids was the first major meteor shower of 2018; it peaked at around 8pm on January 3 when between 10 and 60 meteors were shooting per hour.

It had a sharp peak, which means the best of the shower only lasted a few hours - although it remained active until January 12th.

First spotted in 1825 by the Italian astronomer Antonio Brucalassi, astronomers suspect the shower originates from the comet C/1490 Y1, which was first observed 500 years ago by Japanese, Chinese and Korean astronomers.

Why is it called Quadrantid?

The Quadrantids appear to radiate from the extinct constellation Quadrans Muralis, which is now part of the Bootes constellation and not far from the Big Dipper.

Because of the constellation's position in the sky, the shower is often impossible to see in the Southern Hemisphere - however there is a chance of spotting it up to 51 degrees south latitude.

The best spots to see the display are in countries with high northern latitudes, like Norway, Sweden, Canada and Finland.

The Lyrid meteor shower

The Lyrid meteor shower takes places annually between April 16 and April 25. In 2018, it peaked on the morning of April 22, with the greatest number of meteors falling during the few hours before dawn.

With no moon, stargazers might have been able to see between 10 and 20 Lyrid meteors per hour at the shower's peak.

Lyrid meteors are typically as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper, but some are much more intense, even brighter than Venus, the brightest object in the night sky after the moon.

Called "Lyrid fireballs", these cast shadows for a split second and leave behind smokey debris trails that linger for minutes.

Tim Peake space pictures

What causes the Lyrid meteor shower?

The ionised gas in the meteors' trail burns up as it enters the Earth's atmosphere, creates the glow which can be seen streaking across the night sky.

The shower occurs as the Earth passes through the dust left over from Comet Thatcher (C/186 G1), which makes a full orbit of the sun once every 415 years (which is why there are no photographs of it).

Flakes of comet dust, most no bigger than grains of sand, strike Earth's atmosphere traveling 49 km/s (110,000 mph) and disintegrate as streaks of light.

Comet Thatcher last visited the inner solar system in 1861 - before the widespread use of photography - and isnt expected to return until the year 2276.

How did the Lyrids get its name?

The shower radiates out from the direction of the star Vega, the brightest light in the constellation Lyra the Harp, from which it takes its name.

Vega is a brilliant blue-white star about three times wider than our Sun and 25 light years away.

The Lyrids radiating from the vicinity of the blue star Lyra Credit: earthsky.org

You might remember Vega being mentioned in Carl Sagan's movie Contact - it was the source of alien radio transmissions to Earth.

When were the Lyrids first observed and recorded?

The earliest sightings of the Lyrid meteor shower go back 2,700 years and are among the oldest of known meteor showers.

In the year 687 BC the ancient Chinese observed the meteors and recorded them in the ancient Zuo Zhan chronicles saying:

"On the 4th month in the summer in the year of xin-mao (of year 7 of King Zhuang of Lu), at night, (the sky is so bright that some) fixed stars become invisible (because of the meteor shower); at midnight, stars fell like rain.

That era of Chinese history corresponds with what is now called the Spring and Autumn Period (about 771 to 476 BC).

Tradition associates this period with the Chinese teacher and philosopher Confucius, one of the first to espouse the principle: Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.

American observers saw an outburst of nearly 100 Lyrid meteors per hour in 1982. Around 100 meteors per hour were seen in Greece in 1922 and from Japan in 1945.

The Orionid meteor shower

The Orionid meteors appear every year, with showers producing around 20 meteors every hour.

The shower is active throughout October until November 7, but the best time to see it will be on October 20 between midnight and dawn, when the sky is darkest and the shower will be at its brightest.

Tom Kerss, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich said:"If you can brave the cold, make a plan to stay out and enjoy the thrill of seeing tiny flecks of Halley's Comet disintegrate at hypersonic speeds above your head."

He advises finding a secluded spot and allowing the eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Orionid meteors streak across the sky over Kula town of Manisa, Turkey on October 21, 2017 Credit: Anadolu Agency

Mr Kerss said: "There's no advantage to using binoculars or a telescope, your eyes are the best tool available for spotting meteors, so relax and gaze up at the sky, and eventually your patience will be rewarded.

"Meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, though if you have to pick a direction, you might fare slightly better looking east."

The meteoroids from Halley's Comet strike Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 148,000mph, (238,000kph) burning up in streaking flashes of light that can be seen with the naked eye.

Orionid meteors are known for their speed and brilliance, so if you persevere there's a good chance you'll see several bright 'shooting stars' zipping across the sky.

The Orionid Meteor Shower is one of two meteor showers created by debris from Halley's Comet - the other is the Eta Aquarids, which occurs in May. Unfortunately, Halley's Comet itself has not been visible from Earth since 1986.

Why is it called Orionid?

It's named Orionid because it appears to radiate from the constellation Orion. Orion is one of the brightest and best known constellations and contains two of the 10 brightest stars in the sky Rigel and Betelgeuse, as well as the famous Orion's Belt.

Orion's Belt is made up of three bright stars quite close together almost in a straight line, and is about 1,500 light years from us on Earth.

Orion has been known since ancient times and is also referred to as Hunter thanks to Greek mythology. He is often seen in star maps facing Taurus, the bull.

The Geminid meteor shower

The Geminids are an annual meteor shower caused by the 3200 Phaethon asteroid. Its orbit brings it very close to the sun, causing its surface material to crumble and break off. The Earth passes through this space debris every December, which burns up as hits our atmosphere. These are the meteors visible in our sky.

The Geminids were first observed relatively recently, in 1862, compared with the Perseids (36AD) and the Leonids (902AD).

The meteor shower appears to come from a point in the constellation Gemini, hence its name.

The Geminids meteor shower over Egersheld Cape on Russky Island in the Sea of Japan in December 2017 Credit: Yuri Smityuk

When can it be seen?

The next Geminid meteor shower can be seen from around December 4th to 17th, with peak activity from about 10pm on December 13th and into the early hours of the 14th.

Sightings are possible around the world, but there's good news for Britons: the shower favours observers in the Northern Hemisphere over those in the Southern. If you're lucky you could see up to 100 meteors or 'shooting stars' every hour.

You can spot the meteors anywhere, but they will appear to come from the Gemini constellation.

Stars in the Milky Way over Kielder Forest Credit: Owen Humphreys

During December, it begins the evening in the east and moves across the sky to the west during the night. Find Orion's Belt - three bright stars positioned in a row - and then look above it and a little to the left.

They will appear as streaks of light, and will sometimes arrive in bursts of two or three. They vary in colour, depending on their composition.

An average of 120 meteors an hour - or two a minute - can be expected, or more during the 2am peak.
MANILA, Philippines (AP)  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has accepted an invitation to visit Israel next month in a sign of improving ties, which hit a sore spot early in his presidency when he compared his bloody anti-drug crackdown to Hitler and the Holocaust.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said Monday that Duterte will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his Sept. 2-5 visit to discuss cooperation in labor, tourism, trade, agriculture, counterterrorism and law enforcement. Several accords are expected to be signed.

It will be the first visit by a Philippine president since diplomatic ties were established in 1957, the department said, adding that Duterte will be joined by a business delegation.

The Philippines has recently acquired Israeli-made arms such as Galil assault rifles and pistols for its 120,000-strong police force, which is at the frontline of Duterte's battle against illegal drugs and other crimes, an official said.

Duterte's visit "will highlight the enduring friendship between Filipinos and Israelis, which began when President Manuel L. Quezon opened the doors of the Philippines as a sanctuary to an estimated 1,300 Jewish refugees who were fleeing the Holocaust," the department said.

Duterte drew outrage a few months after he took office in 2016 when he compared his anti-drug campaign to the Holocaust and said he would be "happy to slaughter" 3 million addicts. He later apologized.

Israel's Foreign Ministry then said it was "unfortunate" that Duterte chose to invoke Hitler and the Holocaust in discussing his fight against illegal drugs.

Duterte acknowledged he erred in referencing what happened to Jewish people under Hitler.

"I mentioned the word Jewish and that was what was terribly wrong and for that I apologize," Duterte said then, adding, "I'm not one of the racist members of this republic."

The Nazis and their allies killed 6 million Jews during World War II as part of a campaign to obliterate European Jewry.

More than 4,500 mostly poor drug suspects have been killed in gunbattles with police under Duterte's anti-drug crackdown, alarming Western governments, U.N. officials and human rights groups.
By Nathan Layne and Karen Freifeld

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors on Monday rested their case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort after 10 days of testimony alleging how he avoided taxes on at least $16 million of income and lied to banks to maintain an extravagant lifestyle once his work for pro-Kremlin politicians in Ukraine dried up.

More than two dozen witnesses painted a picture of Manafort, 69, as a lavish spender with little regard for the law. A political consultant in the Ukraine, Manafort stashed his money in 31 undisclosed offshore bank accounts, and skirted taxes on that income by wiring it directly to vendors to snap up real estate, bespoke suits, cars and antique rugs, the witnesses said.

It is unclear whether Manafort's lawyers will call any witnesses, and legal experts say it is highly unlikely that Manafort himself will take the stand. Closing statements could take place as early as Tuesday, after which the 12-person jury will begin deliberations.

If found guilty on all charges, Manafort could face eight to 10 years in prison based on federal sentencing guidelines, according to sentencing expert Justin Paperny.

The trial is in its 10th day in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. The case arose from U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

One of the last witnesses for the prosecution was James Brennan, an executive at Federal Savings Bank, which extended $16 million in loans to Manafort.

Brennan said bank president Javier Ubarri made an initial decision to reject a $9.5 million loan on Manaforts Hampton estate, but bank CEO Steve Calk overruled it. "It closed because Mr. Calk wanted it to close," Brennan said about the loan.

On Friday, a former salesman at Federal testified that Calk personally approved loans to Manafort while seeking Manafort's help getting a job in President Donald Trump's campaign and his cabinet.

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Federal Savings Bank has not returned calls seeking comment, and has said it will make no comment during Manafort's trial.

Brennan, asked about whether the bank made money from lending to Manafort, said the bank has written off the loans and "took a hit" of $11.8 million.

Prosecutors contend Manafort hid a significant portion of the approximately $60 million he earned as a consultant for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, then lied to borrow millions more.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne and Karen Freifeld in Alexandria, Virginia; Writing by Warren Strobel; Editing by Bill Trott and James Dalgleish)
A protester at a Colorado right-wing conference challenged Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke over his failure to recognize the danger of climate change, and he inexplicably blasted her for not serving.

It wasnt clear if Zinke meant serving in the government or the military.

The confrontation occurred Friday in Steamboat Springs at the Freedom Conference, which features leading conservative thought and policy leaders.

Local protester Sallie Holmes stood up during a speech by Zinke, calling out: Why wont you acknowledge that climate change is causing and accelerating wildfires, even in Routt County?

Steamboat Springs is located in Routt County in western Colorado, where officials have been battling fires.

Holmes, 27, was immediately escorted out by security as the crowd booed. Zinke angrily shouted: You know what? You havent served and you dont understand what energy is. Id like to see your child have to fight for energy.

Holmes added as she was being led out the door: Our community is suffering because you will not acknowledge climate change.

Zinke appeared to be implying that Holmes had no standing to complain about the Trump administrations position on climate change because she hadnt served, and he assumed she knew nothing about energy.

Interior Department officials did not immediately return phone calls to clarify what Zinke meant by served or why that was a prerequisite for Holmes comments.

Zinkes boss, President Donald Trump, has called climate change a Chinese hoax and last year announced the U.S. withdrawal from the international Paris climate accords.

Holmes told Huffpost that she thought Zinke, a former Navy Seal, attacked her for not serving in the military, particularly since he referred to her child fighting for energy, perhaps referring to a future war over oil.

So its out there. Its all about energy and thats why they need to pillage public lands so were energy independent, she said.

Zinke, at the start of his speech, asked military veterans to stand and joked that serving as a Navy Seal was easier than his current post, because when people shot at you, I could shoot back.

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When Holmes interrupted him, he was talking about Trump, tariffs and energy. She said she was stunned by Zinkes anger as he jabbed the air with his finger and yelled at her.

She said it was her first time participating in such a protest. The ticket to get into the event cost her $382, she told HuffPost.

They wouldnt give me a seat at the table, so I took it, said Holmes.

In his Cabinet job, Zinke has been instrumental in gutting Utahs Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments while public lands in his home state of Montana were increased. The de-designated public lands are now open to energy and mining corporations.

Some 1,400 protesters gathered at a Stand for Our Land demonstration Friday against Zinke and the Trump administrations policies outside the Routt County courthouse.

Zinke has attacked our national monuments. Hes putting emphasis on extractive industries like oil and gas and allowing them to get around rules... and hes attacking the [federal] Land [and] Water Conservation Fund, event organizer Cody Perry told the Steamboat Pilot & Today.

Thousands of pages of emails released  and almost immediately retracted  last month from the Interior Department revealed that officials dismissed the importance of public lands for tourism, recreation and archeological discoveries. Ryan and aides instead targeted their surveys of protected sites to prioritize the value of ranching, logging, and energy development.

No one loves public land as much as I do, Zinke insisted in his Friday speech.

Also on HuffPost

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Saada (Yemen) (AFP) - Thousands of Yemenis vented anger against Riyadh and Washington on Monday as they took part in a mass funeral for children killed in an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition.

At least 29 children were among those killed in the air raid Thursday on a bus in a crowded market in Dahyan, Saada province, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The mass funeral was held in Saada city, a stronghold of the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, with images broadcast by the rebels' Al-Masirah television.

Around 50 vehicles brought coffins into a large square in the city.

The coffins were covered with green drapes and portraits of the victims were lined up on the ground, where relatives cried over them and the Islamic prayer for the dead was recited.

Mourners raised pictures of the children and shouted slogans against Saudi Arabia and its ally and key arms supplier, the United States.

"America kills Yemeni children," read several banners.

The Saudi-led coalition has taken part in Yemen's conflict since 2015 in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's government in its fight against the Huthis.

The head of the rebels' revolutionary council, Mohammed Ali al-Huthi, took part in the funeral and slammed the raid as a "crime by America and its allies against the children of Yemen".

The Huthis' health ministry said that 51 people were killed in the raids including 40 children.

- 'Ugly' side of war -

It also said 79 others were wounded, including 56 children.

Al-Masirah did not say how many victims were buried on Monday.

Some families had already buried their loved ones, according to residents.

The coalition said Friday it would launch a probe to "assess the events (and) clarify their circumstances", while the United Nations Security Council has called for a "credible investigation".

The UAE, a key Saudi ally in the coalition battling the Huthis, on Monday said that both sides in the conflict had been to blame.

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Anwar Gargash, the UAE's minister of state for foreign affairs, bemoaned the "ugly" side of war and played up the coalition's own probe into the strike.

"In this war we have seen civilians shot at, bombed, killed and, unfortunately, this is really part of any confrontation," he said in Dubai.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke by telephone on Monday, discussing topics including efforts by a UN special envoy to "to resolve the conflict in Yemen", the State Department said.

The war in impoverished Yemen has left nearly 10,000 people dead and unleashed what the UN describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The UN envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has invited the warring sides to talks on September 6 in Geneva.
Gil Feliciano says goodbye to one of the doctors from Iniciativas De Paz that came to check on him and his wife. (Photo: Alexis Fairbanks)

For more than six months after the storms, Ingrid Morales settled down to sleep every night on a thin canvas cot, surrounded by water bottles, medications and other supplies soon to be on their way to the survivors of Hurricane Maria. Her 7-year-old daughter slept on a cot next to her, and her husband slept in an adjacent room also stacked with boxes of supplies.

The family wasnt sleeping at the makeshift clinic because they were displaced, like so many Puerto Ricans after hurricanes Irma and Maria battered the island. The family lives nearby, and while they lost some clothes, appliances and mattresses, the home itself was unscathed.

But Morales is responsible for handling the donations that Clinica Bantiox  a health clinic set up in a preschool just six days after Hurricane Maria  receives from organizations around the world. She stays there to ensure that everything, from the blood sugar meters to diapers, stays safe overnight.

At one point, more than 100 doctors, nurses and other volunteers slept alongside the Morales family at the clinic. By March 2018, it was just the Morales family. As a member of the administrative staff, Morales felt the responsibility was too important to abandon, which is why she spent so many nights there. But she also has a personal reason to stay.

I think that giving is healing, she said.

The clinic is just one component of Iniciativa Comunitaria, a nonprofit that is helping address health care needs after the storm. It also runs brigades that bring mobile clinics to communities around the island. The Puerto Rico-based organization has been around for over 25 years, sending groups of volunteers they call brigades to respond to crises in Haiti, Guatemala and elsewhere across the world.

Now, the volunteers homeland is in crisis. The water levels in Toa Baja, the low-lying suburb of San Juan where the clinic is located, reached nearly 20 feet during the storm, leaving some residents stranded on their roofs. In the aftermath, Iniciativa Comunitaria has helped more than 6,000 people between its clinic and its brigades.

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The members of the brigade started their journey more than nine months ago. Its their longest mission ever.

the Health Brigade from UNC | Carolina Photojournalism on Vimeo.

Continual Healing

While Hurricane Maria no longer makes headlines every day on the United States mainland, Puerto Ricans are still recovering physically and emotionally from the islands most devastating storm in decades. Doctors and medical professionals are needed more than ever.

Even before the storm, Puerto Ricos financial crisis had driven doctors away from the island in search of jobs elsewhere. Between 2006 and 2016, 5,000 doctors emigrated away. Furthering the medical crisis, an estimated 10 doctors per day have left the island since the storm, according to local news outlet El Nuevo Dia.

Everything was so disrupted that their income stopped, their offices were destroyed, said Dr. Wendy Matos, executive director of the University of Puerto Ricos faculty practice plan. Its like the rug was taken out from under their feet. People made decisions to survive.

Those who remain are picking up the pieces.

An overhead view of one of the communities Iniciativas De Paz serves reveals that some houses are entirely without roofs, and others are still making do with the tarp roofs installed by FEMA. (Photo: Alexis Fairbanks)

You have to go out to serve, said Jose Luis Vargas Tapia, the leader of Iniciativa Comunitarias brigades, called Iniciativas de Paz. His father, Jose Antonio Vargas Vidot, started Iniciativa Comunitaria in 1990.

You have to do it because if not you, then who is going to do it?

As the sun rose in Toa Baja on a Wednesday morning in March, the clinic brimmed with volunteers preparing to set off on the mission.

They packed duffle bags full of medications and supplies, including blood sugar monitors, vaccines and antibiotics. Franchely Soto, Iniciativa Comunitarias logistics coordinator, darted around volunteers with a clipboard, checking off her list with precision.

Things werent always so organized. To set up a clinic in six days, they had to make do with the facilities and limited supplies they had at the time. The clinic inhabits one of the rooms in the preschool, and several other classrooms  including the one where Morales sleeps  hold supplies.

Stethoscopes hang on plastic hooks, Post-its and papers plaster the walls and the staff sits at card tables. A curtain divides the waiting area and administrative offices from where patients are seen.

In front of the door, a sign greets patients: We are a big hug.

The brigade has been on nearly 70 missions, and they have the process down like clockwork.

Vargas Vidot, who is now a senator in the Puerto Rican legislature, started Iniciativa Comunitaria to address HIV among drug users and the homeless. The program has grown to offer 12 different services.

Around a year after he was elected in November 2016, his son, Jose Luis Vargas Tapia, took over leading Iniciativa Comunitarias brigades.

For their morning briefing, Vargas Tapia gathers around 20 volunteers: doctors, medical students, nurses, administrators and anyone else who happens to be on hand that day.

The community theyre about to serve  Aguada, a small town on the islands west coast  is more than 80 miles away, but Vargas Tapia talks about patients whom hes never met like theyre family. Some still dont have power or water. Fallen trees still line many roads.

Here we have no titles; here we are human beings serving other humans, Vargas Tapia told the volunteers. Thats it.

The volunteers load into a caravan of cars and set off through the countryside, watching as the buildings of San Juan give way to lush rolling hills, where Aguada overlooks a valley and a glimmer of the coastline.

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Abdona Villonueva suffers from dementia and Alzheimer's but still happily spends her time swinging on her hammock in her home in Aguada. She is cared for by her daughter Carmen who is having her blood pressure checked while Abdona watches. (Photo: Alex Kormann)

After unpacking their supplies in the hot sun, Vargas Tapia and his team split up to visit patients, some of whom are bedridden. They have 37 people on their list.

One of them is Isidra Perez. Iniciativa Comunitarias van pulls up to her house, and a doctor and nursing student hop out.

Perez, who is bedridden, has suffered from multiple ailments, including severe bronchitis and ulcers. A lack of electricity can be life-threatening for the elderly population, so after losing power in the storm, Perezs family used their generator between five and seven hours per day for five months to run the air conditioning.

They only ran the generator in bursts, but the cost of the gasoline to fuel it added up quickly. The family struggled to afford the nearly $1,000 cost.

Perez needed to be taken to the hospital not long after the storm hit, but because the roads were blocked with debris there was no way to get to the hospital. Her family struggled to keep her healthy in the long weeks with no power or access to medical care. Luz Bonilla, Perezs daughter, was finally able to heal her mother using natural remedies.

At the beginning you feel desperate: no water, no light, no this, no that, said Bonilla. But little by little you say, Hello, this is something I can overcome, and little by little we settled.

Because Bonilla works at a local hospital, she was able to get in touch with her doctor and take care of her mother, but others still struggle to access medical care.

Although hospitals are now open, they face supply and staff shortages, and in the storms wake some did not accept patients from other areas. Some patients have had to wait nearly a full day to receive treatment.

But its patients with long-term diseases like diabetes who are most at risk.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 16 percent of Puerto Ricans reported having diabetes in 2014, compared to 10.1 percent for the U.S. population as a whole. A study from the University of Puerto Ricos Medical School found that nearly 40 percent of adults in San Juan suffered from hypertension.

And a loss of power for some diabetics can be a life or death situation, as insulin needs to be refrigerated.

The deaths after a disaster come from untreated chronic illnesses, Vargas Vidot said. So diabetes is endemic here. Hypertension is endemic. Cardiovascular problems are endemic.

Cristina, a nurse for the Iniciativa Comunitaria health brigade, does a check up on Luis Cortez in front of his home in Aguada. He has not received any form of medical examination in years and cries after his family expresses concern and support for him. (Photo: Alex Kormann)

Chronic illness fatalities arent reflected in the storms official death toll of 64, even if many wouldnt have happened otherwise. A study from researchers at Harvard estimated the death toll could be more than 4,600.

Matos of the University of Puerto Rico says that the storm can also exacerbate other long-term health consequences that often get overlooked, such as mental health issues and suicide risk.

The number of deaths by suicide had already increased in Puerto Rico by 29 percent between 2016 and 2017, after years of decline. And a 2012 study of inner city primary care patients in Puerto Rico found that 14 percent had probable post-traumatic stress disorder.

While its too early for most research to track the long-term impacts Hurricane Maria could have had on PTSD, for instance, research on 2005s Hurricane Katrina can provide clues. A study of low-income parents in the 18 months following Hurricane Katrina found that nearly half exhibited signs of probable PTSD.

The government disregarded the effect of a disaster on the emotional state of people, Matos said. That affects directly not only the thinking process and decision making, but their physical conditions too.

During their brigades, the volunteers keep that concept in mind, focusing on both emotional and physical health. One volunteer plays guitar for the patients. Its a remedy for the loneliness the increasing number of elderly people face.

Between 2014 and 2016, the share of the population older than 65 increased from 14.5 percent to nearly 19 percent, while the share of people under 18 declined, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Since the storm, experts say the exodus of young people has only gotten worse. As of January, more than 200,000 Puerto Ricans had fled the island for the mainland. Most of them are the islands youth.

The young people are the future, and if they are leaving, whats gonna happen? said Carla Santiago, a third-year medical student at the University of Medicine and Health Sciences on Saint Kitts island, who doubles as a volunteer with the brigade. Puerto Rico needs more young people to rebuild.

Sometimes, the elderly just need someone to talk to, or share a song with. And thats where Iniciativa Comunitaria comes in.

The People Left Behind

As Inciativa Comunitarias daytime volunteers pack up and head back to Toa Baja, the night brigades are just getting started.

The group of undergraduate and medical students at the University of Puerto Rico is part of Recinto Pa la Calle, a program associated with Iniciativa Comunitaria that provides services at night for people who are homeless and drug users.

After loading cars with supplies, the volunteers pulled their vehicles up to an empty bus station, where just one other car was parked. Adriana Rodriguez, a third-year medical student at the University of Puerto Rico, hopped out of her car and approached a homeless camp, scattered with tents, mattresses and bicycles.

Victor Cajigas checks in on a homeless man living in front of Centro Medico Hospital after giving him water and fresh blankets. (Photo: Alex Kormann)

The camps residents brightened as she shouted, Hola, Iniciativa! from her car. After exchanging a few words with them, Rodriguez waved to her peers, who emerged from a caravan of cars donning Iniciativa Comunitarias logo.

The students handed out orange juice, coffee, sandwiches, clothes, toothpaste and condoms; anything they had in their supply of donations, they provided. Several of the students dressed wounds, while others just took time to listen to the stories of people in the camps.

Rene, who asked that his last name not be used, is the leader of this homeless camp. The other residents call him the Veteran. The members of the camp survived the storm thanks in part to Iniciativa Comunitarias volunteers, who brought them and others to a temporary shelter at the groups headquarters.

Volunteers dropped off Rene and the others at the camp two days later. The storm destroyed what few things they had. Some of their mattresses were strewn against the fence along the other side of the wide lot. The bus terminal they rely on for light was without power. But still, Rene stayed.

I would be leaving all my people behind, he said. People need me to be here.

During the storm, many of Puerto Ricos homeless population stayed on the streets. Its the homeless, the elderly, drug users and other forgotten populations that Iniciativa Comunitaria focuses much of its efforts on. And many of those residents and volunteers alike say government assistance is not reaching those who need it most.

Most patients we have been seeing, they havent been seen by any physician or any group, Soto said.

Many of those communities are used to helping themselves. Cantera, an impoverished community in San Juan the brigade recently visited, has operated as a nonprofit for years, as have several others. The nonprofit leaders helped coordinate Iniciativa Comunitarias visit and identify patients.

Theres a concept of community that doesnt represent a geographic thing, Vargas Vidot said.

Thats what drives Iniciativa Comunitarias volunteers to rebuild their community  whether its a town on the opposite coast of the island, a poor neighborhood in San Juan or a bus station just outside of the University of Puerto Ricos medical school where the homeless sleep.

We saw Puerto Rico literally broken, said Sofia Muns, a first-year medical student at the University of Puerto Rico. If you see something broken, its human that you want to bring it back together.

Photos and video by Hanna Davison, Alex Kormann, Alexis Fairbanks, Kaitlin Harlow and MaryRachel Bulkeley. Graphics by MaryRachel Bulkeley. With contributions from University of Puerto Rico students Roberto Santana and Shirley Colon.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) on Sunday denied abusing a woman with whom he had a long-term relationship until 2016. (Photo: Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) on Sunday denied that he assaulted an ex-girlfriend, as alleged by the womans son in a viral Facebook post a day earlier.

Karen and I were in a long-term relationship which ended in 2016, and I still care deeply for her well-being, Ellison said in a statement to CBS Minnesota. I never behaved this way, and any characterization otherwise is false.

Karen Monahans son, Austin Monahan, wrote in his Facebook post on Saturday that his mom had come out of pure hell after getting out of her relationship with Ellison. Austin said that in mid-2017 he discovered a video, as well as dozens of text and Twitter messages between his mother and Ellison, that allegedly show the Minnesota lawmaker physically and verbally abusing her.

Ellison, who has served as deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee since 2017, denied the existence of the video on Sunday.

In his Facebook post, Austin said his mom has always tried to protect me and my brother. She doesnt have to protect us anymore and we arent letting her stand alone.

He described how he first uncovered the alleged abuse:

In the middle of 2017, I was using my moms computer trying to download something and I clicked on a file, I found over 100 text and twitters messages and video almost 2 min long that showed Keith Ellison dragging my mama off the bed by her feet, screaming and calling her a fucking bitch and telling her to get the fuck out of his house. The messages I found, were mixed with him consistently telling my mom he wanted her back, he missed her, he knew he fucked up and we wished he could do things different, he would victim shaming, bully her, and threaten her if she went public.

Austin said he confronted Ellison about the alleged abuse in a text message soon thereafter, though his post does not specify whether the congressman replied.

Karen Monahan confirmed the abuse to Austin and his brother, though she asked them not to go public with accusations, her son wrote in the post. He felt comfortable alleging the abuse Saturday on Facebook because his mother is planning on sharing her story, he said.

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Karen Monahan stood by her sons allegations in a series of tweets Sunday. Neither the Monahans nor a representative for Ellison immediately responded to HuffPosts requests for comment.

I am so proud of my son for his courage. But this situation impacted me. If you have anything to say, please say it me and leave him out of it. No nasty comments to him https://t.co/UC84loHz1m  Karen Monahan (@KarenMonahan01) August 12, 2018

I shut down my facebook 2 days ago because I didnt want my kids seeing post people were posting to me. I really cant activate it now cause will be worse for them. My son is getting bullied on FB, DO NOT BULLY MY KIDS. tweet to me and leave them out of it  Karen Monahan (@KarenMonahan01) August 12, 2018

What my son said is true. Every statement he made was true.@keithellison, you know you did that to me. I have given every opportunity to get help and heal. Even now, u r willing to say my son is lying and have me continue to leak more text and info just so others will believe him  Karen Monahan (@KarenMonahan01) August 12, 2018

For you to get help and heal. Told u that would be what I would could consider a Just ending to this hell my family and I have been through. I said that the night before u announced ur run 4 AG.  Karen Monahan (@KarenMonahan01) August 12, 2018

Karen Monahan also tweeted text messages she said she sent to Ellison in December 2017 and April 2018.

The relationship changed my personality and so much over time, she allegedly texted Ellison. HuffPost has modified screenshots of the alleged texts to remove a phone number allegedly belonging to Ellison.

(Photo: Twitter)

(Photo: Twitter)

2nd

April 2018 pic.twitter.com/sNSvccEUON  Karen Monahan (@KarenMonahan01) August 12, 2018

Hours later, Karen Monahan released a lengthy statement describing the alleged abuse. In her statement, she accused Ellison of repeated emotional abuse and at least one incident of physical abuse.

Part of living an authentic life and taking back your freedom, means breaking your silence, if that is what feels right for you, she wrote. I made a vow to my kids and my grandkids that I would do what was in my power to leave a better world for them. ... No amount of victim shaming, smearing, etc. can hurt as bad as living a life of fear, shame and secrecy.

Karen Monahan told CNN she misplaced the video allegedly showing Ellison dragging her off a bed, but that she likely wouldnt release it to the public even if she had it available because its embarrassing.

According to CNN, she provided screenshots of several text messages she allegedly exchanged with Ellison:

Monahan provided one text of her mentioning the physical altercation to Ellison in December 2017. Keith, We never discussed  the video I have of you trying to drag me off the bed, yelling get the f*** out now, calling me a bitch and saying I hate you bitch, the text message read. In follow up texts viewed by CNN, Ellison did not directly address the physical altercation. Other messages viewed by CNN do not specifically show incidents of verbal abuse.

Karen Monahan is a senior organizer for a Minnesota chapter of the Sierra Club, according to the environmental advocacy groups website.

Ellison, 55, is giving up his House seat to run for attorney general in Minnesota. First elected to the House in 2006, he was the first Muslim to serve in the chamber.

Other Democratic candidates in the attorney general race tweeted their concern over the accusations.

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This post was brought to my attention because I was tagged in this post. Domestic Violence is never ok. The incidents described are troubling. I call on Keith Ellison to answer these allegations.https://t.co/CQ1LSVfZqf  Debra Hilstrom (@debrahilstrom) August 12, 2018

I've read @KeithEllison s brief response to allegations he engaged in domestic abuse. I always heard similar denials when I was a prosecutor so questions remain. If the victim's claims that a videotape & other evidence exist, they must be given to law enforcement immeidately.  Tom Foley (@foleyforag) August 12, 2018

Last night allegations against Congressman Keith Ellison were made public. The allegations are extremely troubling. We all deserve a prompt, transparent, and thorough response from Keith and I ask him to respond without delay.  Matt Pelikan (@mattpelikan) August 12, 2018

Minnesota holds its primary on Tuesday.

This story has been updated to include Karen Monahans statement as well as her comments to CNN.

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misidentified Minnesota Rep. Debra Hilstrom as speaker of the states House of Representatives. She is a member of the House but not currently part of the chambers leadership.

Related Coverage

Keith Ellison Becomes The Lead Medicare For All Proponent In The House

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Cleveland Indians outfielder Leonys Martin is currently in the hospital battling a life-threatening bacterial infection that affected several organs. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

Cleveland Indians outfielder Leonys Martin is currently in the hospital battling a life-threatening bacterial infection that he contracted last week.

Martin initially became sick on Tuesday night, and missed the Indians game against the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday, when he was taken to the Cleveland Clinic.

Indians president Chris Antonetti addressed the organization about Martins status on Monday, telling reporters that Martin is currently in stable condition. While they are optimistic that hell have a full recovery, Martins progress is currently being measured in weeks instead of days  meaning he wont likely be back on the field anytime soon.

Leonys had a bacterial infection that entered his blood stream and when it entered his blood stream it produced toxins, Antonetti told Cleveland.com. Those toxins did damage to his internal organs and the functioning of those organs was compromised, and it was severe.

Thankfully, hes made a lot of progress in the last 24 to 36 hours and hes regained a lot of the organ function. And so, were optimistic and hes on a good path right now and were hopeful that hell have a full recovery.

Antonetti said that doctors are still running tests to figure out exactly what infection Martin contracted, and to figure out how he became sick in the first place.

We dont know exactly how the bacteria entered his system, Antonetti told Cleveland.com. Its not a communicable thing. It cant be transferred from one person to the next, but the bacteria somehow entered his blood stream. We dont yet know how.

Im not sure we will know how. But, once that bacteria entered the blood steam, it produced toxins that led to him getting really sick.

Martin was placed on the 10-day disabled list on Thursday, and the Indians recalled outfielder Greg Allen to take his place.

The 30-year-old is in his eighth season in the MLB after getting his start with the Texas Rangers in 2011. He was traded to the Indians on July 31 from the Detroit Tigers, where was batting .251 and hit nine home runs.

He has played in six games this season for the Indians, and has hit 5-for-15 with two home runs and four RBI.

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Daniel R. DePetris

Security, Middle East

Ankara remains a NATO member state with all of the privileges membership provides. But Turkey's actions, both its crackdown of democratic governance and its foreign policy, is pulling it further away from the transatlantic community.

The Rift Between Turkey and America Was Already There

Its not every day when one NATO member state sanctions the government of another over a disagreement, but this is exactly what the United States did to Turkey last week. On Wednesday, August 1, the Trump administration announced that Turkeys justice and interior ministers would be cut off from U.S. banks and banned from conducting business with Americans over the issue of Andrew Brunson, a pastor who was arrested in October 2016 and charged with conspiring against the Erdogan government. Pastor Brunsons unjust detention and continued prosecution by Turkish officials, said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a press statement, is simply unacceptable.

The United States and Turkey have traditionally had a collegial strategic defense relationship. The Turks were inducted into the NATO alliance in 1952 during the first wave of accession in part because Washington viewed Ankara as an anti-Communist bulwark in a critical stretch of territory connecting Europe with Asia. The relationship has seen its share of disputes and flare-ups, from numerous Turkish military coups during the Cold War to Ankaras refusal to allow U.S. troops to use its territory on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But despite the occasional divergences, there was an elementary understanding that it served everyones interests for American and Turkish officials to have solid working ties.

The differences today are far acuter. Apart from Brunsons arrest and trial and President Recep Tayyip Erdogans consolidation of power after the 2016 coup attempt against him, U.S.-Turkey relations have seen setback after setback ever since Syrias anti-regime demonstrations deteriorated into civil war.

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For Erdogan, the Americans (first under Barack Obama and now under Donald Trump) are patronizing bullies who expect Turkey to tow the line and follow orders. Anti-Americanism has been ripe in Turkish politics in part because Erdogan has fanned it and used the ensuing hyper-nationalism to his political advantage. Ankara views the United States as exhibiting extremely poor judgment in Syria, both during the early years of the war when Erdogan was pushing for a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone for anti-Assad rebels to later on in the conflict, when Washington began partnering, arming, and providing air support to the very Syrian Kurdish fighters the Turks label as terrorists.

And then there is Fethullah Gulen, the exiled cleric based in Pennsylvania whom Erdogan blames as the orchestrator of the attempted coup. Erdogan has asked for Gulens extradition, a request Washington has denied every time.

The way Washington sees things, the Turks are not acting like a NATO ally. Instead of combating terrorism, the Turkish authorities looked the other way as European jihadists landed in Turkish airports and crossed the Turkish-Syrian border on their way to join the Islamic State or Al-Qaeda. Rather than bombing ISIS, the Turkish military chose to slow down the counter-ISIS campaign by bombing Syrian Kurdish fighters in the north. There was a time not so long ago when Turkish officials were threatening to clear Kurdish militants from the Syrian city of Manbij, even if it resulted in a shooting war with U.S. special operations troops in the area.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu reached an agreement to replace Kurdish troops and civil servants with the Arabs who actually lived there. But it took months of back-and-forth and a lot of fiery rhetoric to get there.

The U.S. Congress has long lost patience with the way Erdogan is conducting himself. In addition to this weeks sanctions over Brunsons detention, Congress passed the annual defense policy bill which included a provision preventing the transfer of F-35 aircraft to Turkey until a full assessment of the U.S.-Turkey defense relationship is made. The Turks, in typical fashion, are furious.

These interactions don't mimic those of two NATO allies committed to one another's defense during a time of attack. Far from it; they represent the culmination of a relationship that is being eroded by two vastly different sets of national interests. America wants an eradication of ISIS; the Turks want eradication of the fighters who are taking the fight to ISIS on the battlefield. Washington wants Turkey to release Americans from its custody; Ankara wants the Americans to stop shielding a man whom it regards as a traitor. The Pentagon is pushing for Erdogan to cancel his acquisition of the S-400 Russian air defense system; Erdogan and his ministers, meanwhile, expect to be given the F-35 aircraft they already paid for. The United States demands all importers of Iranian crude oil to stop their purchases by November, and the resource-hungry Turkish government dismisses them as an illegal ultimatum contrary to U.N. Security Council resolutions. If there are any similarities between the two countries, it's the realization that relations are moving in an acrimonious direction.

Right now, Turkey remains a NATO member state with all of the privileges membership provides. But Ankaras actions, both its crackdown of democratic governance and its foreign policy, is pulling it further away from the transatlantic community. Its not at all clear what NATO can do about it, and one can imagine Tayyip Erdogan grinning ear-to-ear about it.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities. He is also a contributor to multiple publications, including CNN, The Diplomat, The American Conservative, and many others.

Image: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan gestures during a rally in Mardin, capital of Mardin province in southeastern Turkey, June 20, 2018. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

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Abomey-Calavi (Benin) (AFP) - "Darkness has fallen on the kingdom," the prime minister of the Abomey kingdom in southern Benin told the 300,000 people gathered to mark the death of traditional monarch Dah Dedjalagni Agoli-Agbo.

The celebration at the weekend of the ancestral king's life is the beginning of at least six months of funeral rites, following his death and burial in July.

The rest will continue in the privacy of the royal courtyard.

"Tradition says that fever grips the kingdom for as long as the funeral is not held," said Dah Sodjo Kehnounhon, royal advisor and funeral organiser.

"The death of the king plunges his kingdom into darkness. No celebration may take place until the king's ceremonies have ended."

The crowd witnessed ritual sacrifice of a goat, followed by the deep ring of gongs signifying the start of the ceremony.

Dignitaries, princes and courtiers from the region, bare-chested and wearing loinclothes, sat crossed-legged in two long columns outside the palace.

Government officials and royals from around the country also made the trip to Abomey, once the capital of the 400-year-old kingdom known as Dahomey, the former name of Benin.

Agoli-Agbo's ascension to the throne of Dahomey in 1989 was disputed, with some not recognising his rule until 2010.

A police officer by training who had 41 wives, his age was also argued but was said by his younger brother to have been 84.

- Consult voodoo spirit Fa -

The former kingdom of Dahomey had vied for control of the Gulf of Guinea region and was renowned for its fearsome women soldiers and rich from the slave trade.

"Under the twelve kings who succeeded from 1625 to 1900, the kingdom established itself as one of the most powerful of the western coast of Africa," according to the UNESCO website.

In the past, great numbers of people were sacrified to accompany the king into the spirit world, according to Oxford Reference, but not anymore.

Story continues

In modern Benin the constitution does not recognise kings and other traditional chiefs.

Their political power ended when King Behanzin was deported during the colonial struggle against France at the end of the 19th century.

Still, they retain great influence on the city and their subjects, a testament to the power of tradition in the region, where voodoo is practised alongside Christianity and Islam.

Agoli-Agbo, who had an immaculate royal pedigree, worked on the renovation of several palaces, turning them into tourist attractions in the small West African country.

"He was a reformer king who felt that children should be interested in custom and culture," said Didier Samsom to AFP, one of the king's descendants.

The king worked hard to "make the court more modern and dust off the tradition."

When the ceremonies have ended, a successor to Agola-Agbo is due to be revealed to the public.

But many fear the appointment will take longer than usual, since all the royal communities have to agree on the appointment of the new sovereign.

"We could consult Fa -- the voodoo spirit -- if necessary," said the court minister.
It feels like just yesterday, we were watching our favorite WWE wrestlers rock it out in cage matches and beat one another senseless. But many of them have graduated from their days in the ring and are off to new endeavors. Ever wonder what happened to Kane, Catus Jack, and Ivory? Luckily, weve got answers. Heres where five of our favorite WWE stars are today.

Glenn Jacobs went by Kane in the WWE, where he was a three-time world champion. He got the name in the 1990s, playing the fire-obsessed half-brother of the Undertaker, aka wrestler Mark William Calaway.

A post shared by Glenn Jacobs (@glennjacobstn) on Jul 16, 2017 at 5:43am PDT

In 2017, the Royal Rumble match record holder announced that he was running for mayor of Tennessees third-largest county, Knox. Following in the footsteps of wrestler Jesse the Body Ventura, who was elected governor of Minnesota in 1998, he won.

WWE is always going to be part of me, and hopefully Ill always be part of it. I havent ruled out making special appearances every now and then. My main priority is being mayor, of course, Jacobs told Rolling Stone.

You probably already know that Dwayne the Rock Johnson has had a fruitful post-WWE career. After some small television roles in the late 1990s, Johnson found his first lead film role in The Scorpion King in 2002  and it wouldnt be his last. And he has definitely come a long way from his football days. Check out his viral headshot, talk about a throwback!

Most recently, the Rock has starred in The Fast and Furious franchise, HBO show Ballers, and summer flicks like Baywatch, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and Skyscraper. He also just happens to hold the world record for the most selfies taken in three minutes  105, during the premiere of San Andreas in London in 2015  and he does a lot of charity work.

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John Cena had a bunch of WWE personas back in the day. But the Doctor of Thuganomics and the Prototype has left his wrestling and rapping days behind. Nowadays hes making his name on the silver screen. He has starred in Amy Schumers Trainwreck, Sisters, Daddys Home, and Bumblebee: The Movie. Cena currently hosts American Grit on Fox.

And like the Rock, he also holds a major record. He has granted the most Make-a-Wish Foundation wishes in history  more than 500! When it comes to granting wishes, Cena makes sure to clear his calendar.

I just drop everything. If I can offer a fantastic experience, Ill be first in line to do my part, Cena told ESPN. Now thats a record holder we can get behind.

Lisa Moretti, also known as Ivory, first found national exposure on an indie wrestling circuit. You might recognize the name. She performed as Tina Ferrari with the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling  GLOW! Since the Netflix show came out, she has given interviews supporting the womens wrestling revolution. And in April, she was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.

#wwefanaxxess #ivory Memorabilia A post shared by Lisa Moretti (@lisamorettiofficial) on Apr 8, 2018 at 3:26pm PDT

Mick Foley is a wrestler turned color commentator. After retiring from the WWE, the four-time world champion got to book writing. Now hes a New York Times bestselling author, well known for his ongoing set of memoirs and childrens books. His fifth autobiography, Saint Mick, was released in 2017.

Whether they are starring in movies or running a city, we love getting to see our WWE stars succeed.

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Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.
Dave Majumdar

Security, Europe

Russias future sixth-generation fighter as well as its next generation unmanned aircraft could be equipped with what is described as a radio-photonic radar.

Russia's Next Fighter Might Have a New Way to Shoot Down F-22s and F-35s

The Russians are not the first to start developing photonic radars. An Italian funded project called PHOtonic-based full DIgital Radar (PHODIR) developed the first fully photonics-based coherent radar system in 2014. A photonic radar replaces the traditional electronic circuits of conventional radars with lasers, optical filters and photodiodes to generate very precise, high-quality radio frequency signals. While the photonic radar still uses radio waves to locate objects like conventional systems, the laser allows it to pulse highly tuned frequencies in a broad emission band from the tens of megahertz to possibly up to the hundreds of gigahertz, states a General Electric press statement.

Russias future sixth-generation fighter as well as its next generation unmanned aircraft could be equipped with what is described as a radio-photonic radar.

(This first appeared last month.)

If the Russians succeed in developing such systems, Moscow would be in possession of a sensor with far greater range and resolutionhigh enough to develop a three dimensional image of an airborne targetthan anything currently in operation around the world. Potentially, such a radar system could allow the Russians to develop a weapons quality track on a stealth aircraft if it proves to be successful.

According to the state-owned TASS news agency, Russias RTI Group is expected to complete preliminary research and developmentas well as built a mockupof a X-band radio-photonic radar this year. That "will determine a principal scheme of building the radio-photonic locator," the RTI Group told TASS. That should allow the company "in several years to build prototypes of super-light and small-size radars for unmanned aerial vehicles."

Story continues

Photonic radars "will be able to provide radio wave imaging when an image has greater details with the possibility to identify the target type," the RTI Group told TASS. That mirrors previous statements from the Radio-Electronic Technologies Group, which is generally better known by its Russian acronym KRET.

"The radio-photonic radar will be able to see farther than existing radars, in our estimates. And, as we irradiate an enemy in an unprecedentedly wide range of frequencies, we'll know its position with the highest accuracy and after processing we'll get an almost photographic image of it - radio vision," Vladimir Mikheyev, an advisor to the first deputy chief executive officer of KRET, told TASS last year.

KRET claims to have already developed working prototypes of various subcomponents of their photonic radar. KRET is now working on building a full-scale prototype of the system.

"Both the emitter and the receiver have been built on the basis of the experimental prototype as part of the R&D work. All this works and performs the location - we emit an ultra-high frequency signal, it is reflected back and we receive and process it and get the radar picture of an object. We see what we need to do to make it optimal," Mikheyev said.

"Now a full-fledged mockup of this radio-optical photonic antenna array is being developed as part of the research and development work, which will allow us to test the characteristics of the serial prototype."

The Russians are not the first to start developing photonic radars. An Italian funded project called PHOtonic-based full DIgital Radar (PHODIR) developed the first fully photonics-based coherent radar system in 2014. A photonic radar replaces the traditional electronic circuits of conventional radars with lasers, optical filters and photodiodes to generate very precise, high-quality radio frequency signals. While the photonic radar still uses radio waves to locate objects like conventional systems, the laser allows it to pulse highly tuned frequencies in a broad emission band from the tens of megahertz to possibly up to the hundreds of gigahertz, states a General Electric press statement.

Current marine radar and air traffic control typically operate in the 1-12 gigahertz range, with higher frequencies typically meaning more precise detection of objects.

Lead PHODIR researcher Paolo Ghelfi, an electronics engineer with Italy's National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT), described some the teams research to Txchnologist.

"We are defining the position, speed and even the shape of big cargo ships in and outside the port," Ghelfi said. "Using a laser instead of traditional radar electronics means we can detect more accurate positions of objects. We can also detect smaller objects farther away because our system produces lower noise in the radar signal."

The PHODIR team published their findings in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature in 2014.

The proposed architecture exploits a single pulsed laser for generating tunable radar signals and receiving their echoes, avoiding radio-frequency up- and downconversion and guaranteeing both the software-defined approach and high resolution, reads the paper abstract from the Italian team.

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Its performance exceeds state-of-the-art electronics at carrier frequencies above two gigahertz, and the detection of non-cooperating aeroplanes confirms the effectiveness and expected precision of the system.

Other researchersincluding one from Chinahave followed up on the PHODIR teams work to address some of the limitations of current photonic radar technology.

The signal processing in the sampling receiver is still a main limitation of the operation frequency and bandwidth, reads a paper by Chinese scientists Fangzheng Zhang, Qingshui Guo and Shilong Pan in Nature.

To down-convert the high-frequency RF signals, microwave photonic frequency conversion and time-stretched analog-to-digital conversion techniques have been proposed, but it is still hard for a traditional radar receiver to process the down-converted baseband or intermediate frequency (IF)-band signals if a very large operation bandwidth is adopted.

The Chinese researchers posed a solution to that problem in their paper.

We propose and demonstrate a photonics-based real-time high-range-resolution radar incorporating optical generation and processing of broadband LFM signals, the researchers wrote.

In the transmitter, a broadband LFM signal is generated by frequency quadrupling of a low-speed electrical signal applying a single integrated electro-optical modulator. In the receiver, the reflected LFM signal is de-chirped to a low-frequency signal based on photonic frequency mixing. The implementation of photonic de-chirping can directly process high-frequency and large bandwidth signals without any electrical frequency conversion. After photonic de-chirping, ADC with a moderate sampling rate can be used in the receiver and real-time signal processing is realizable. In the proposed system, the bandwidth limitations due to electrical signal generation and processing is eliminated. The maximum operation bandwidth is mainly determined by the electro-optical devices, which can be tens or even hundreds of gigahertz. As a result, real-time radar detection with a very high range resolution can be realized.

Meanwhile Russia has started to invest in military applications of photonic radar technology, the Pentagon has a fairly large head start. Indeed, the Pentagon has a host of photonics-based technology development program underwaynot just for radars but also for signals intelligence and other applications. The fact that Moscow and Beijing are also working on such technology only highlights that the Pentagon is not longer able maintain a huge technological lead over potential adversaries over the longer term.

Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for The National Interest. You can follow him on Twitter: @davemajumdar.

Image: Creative Commons.

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Michael Peck

Security, Europe

Could this trigger a Nuclear War?

Russia Claims to Be Developing New Aircraft that Can Disable U.S. Satellites

If Russia can in fact disable the electronics on American satellites, and the NPR does reflect U.S. policy, then turning off a satellite could be construed as an act of war sufficient to justify a nuclear response. Whether a U.S. president would in fact risk thermonuclear war over a disabled satellite is another matter. Nonetheless, Russias new toy could have dangerous implications.

Russia says it is developing a new aircraft that can disable the electronics on U.S. satellites.

Could this new development trigger a nuclear war?

The electronic warfare aircraft will be capable of turning off the electronics installed on military satellites, according to Russias Sputnik News. The conceptual work has been completed and design and development will begin soon.

(This first appeared last month.)

The work is currently underway to develop an aircraft equipped with jamming systems that will replace Il-22PP Porubshchik [electronic warfare aircraft], which are currently being delivered to the Russian Aerospace Forces, an unnamed Russian defense industry source told Sputnik News. This machine will receive a fundamentally new on-board equipment, which will allow to conduct electronic suppression of any targetsground, air, seaand disable enemy satellites that provide navigation and radio communication on the ground.

Russia currently operates three electronic warfare aircraft based on the Ilyushin Il-22, according to Sputnik News. The Il-22PP versions are variants of the Il-22 (NATO code name Coot B) airborne command post, which is itself derived from the Il-18 airliner, which first flew in the 1950s.

The Il-22PP was first flown publicly in 2016. The aircraft, described as an escort jammer to support other aircraft, was intended to disrupt radars, surface-to-air and cruise-missile guidance systems, and tactical data networks such as Link 16.

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The problem of Porubshchik 1 is in the aircraft platform itself, as Russia has about 10 Il-22 planes and this machine cannot be reproduced, the defense industry source told Sputnik News.

The new aircraft will be named Porubshchik 2, but most likely, this machine will join the Aerospace Forces under a different name, the source added. There definitely will be a new air-frame. There is a possibility of developing such an aircraft on the basis of Tu-214 or Il-76 plane.

None of this is particularly noteworthy. Electronic-warfare aircraft, such as the EA-18G, have become a fixture of aerial warfare since World War II. Jamming radars, missile-guidance systems and communications networks has become par for the course. For that matter, the Pentagon worries about Russian and Chinese capabilities to jam or spoof GPS links that are key to accurate navigation and targeting.

But disabling the electronics on satellites? This would seem to be a different challenge, and how Russia plans to tackle it is unclear. For example, what does it mean to turn off a military satellite? Convince the satellite to shut down its systems, perhaps by spoofing a command signal from ground control? Or does it mean hitting the satellite with some kind of powerful beam that fries its electronics or disrupt its systems? And how powerful a system could be mounted on what is essentially a medium-sized airliner?

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However, the most interesting question isnt about aircraft or satellites. Its about who is willing to risk nuclear war. The Trump administrations draft Nuclear Posture Review, released in January, suggests that America could respond with nuclear weapons to a kinetic or cyberattack on U.S. satellites. The President will have an expanding range of limited and graduated options to credibly deter Russian nuclear or non-nuclear strategic attacks, which could now include attacks against U.S. NC3 [nuclear command, control and communications], in space and cyber space, states the NPR.

If Russia can in fact disable the electronics on American satellites, and the NPR does reflect U.S. policy, then turning off a satellite could be construed as an act of war sufficient to justify a nuclear response. Whether a U.S. president would in fact risk thermonuclear war over a disabled satellite is another matter. Nonetheless, Russias new toy could have dangerous implications.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump may meet if they feel the need to focus on improving relations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Sunday, according to the RIA state news agency. "If the leaders feel the need to meet and get back to the questions that we think should unite Russia and the United States, but which provoke rejection among some circles in the United States, I think such meeting will take place," Lavrov said. After their last meeting in Helsinki in July, Trump saw a wave of criticism at home for failing to confront Putin publicly over Moscow's interference in the 2016 U.S. election, and for seeming to contradict his own intelligence agencies on the threat from Russia. As a result, Trump postponed in late July a second meeting with Putin until next year. A few days later, however, Putin said he wanted Trump to be his guest in Moscow, and the White House welcomed the idea despite lingering criticism over the Helsinki summit. Russia is seeking such meetings as it is under punitive sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union and wants them lifted. Lavrov said on Sunday Russia was ready to extend contacts with the United States on the level of foreign ministers if the U.S. side was ready to act on a basis of equality, RIA reported. (Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Mark Potter)
Washington (AFP) - Tesla chief executive Elon Musk disclosed Monday that he was in talks with Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and other investors to take the electric automaker private.

The revelation came after Musk claimed in an August 7 Twitter post that financing for a deal to take Tesla private had been "secured."

Musk said in a blog post on Monday he had "no question" that the Saudis would finance such a transaction following a July 31 meeting.

"I continue to have discussions with the Saudi fund, and I also am having discussions with a number of other investors, which is something that I always planned to do since I would like for Tesla to continue to have a broad investor base," Musk wrote.

"It is appropriate to complete those discussions before presenting a detailed proposal to an independent board committee."

The transaction would be structured with equity so as not to burden Tesla with crushing debt, Musk added.

Musk's surprise comments last week sparked speculation he would need to borrow massive amounts to take Tesla private, a move that could allow the company to operate without requirements for financial reports and other pressures of a publicly traded firm.

But the comments also raised questions about whether Musk ran afoul of securities laws by claiming backing without a firm financial commitment.

The disclosures about Saudi interest "helps reduce the legal risk fallout for Tesla," said Efraim Levy, an equity analyst at CFRA Research.

"It also helps clarify the going private situation even if the transaction is ultimately not consummated."

But Levy said taking the company private would be a mixed blessing for Tesla and Musk -- the company could avoid short-term pressures from Wall Street but also reduce its access to capital markets.

"They've had significant benefits from having access to capital markets, and the media attention has provided priceless free advertising," Levy said.

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"Despite Musk protestations, we think remaining public has and will benefit Tesla," he added.

Tesla shares failed to sustain an early surge and ended with a small gain of 0.26 percent at $356.41.

- Less than $70 billion -

In his blog post Monday, Musk said that reports that more than $70 billion would be needed to take Tesla private "dramatically overstate the actual capital raise needed" because he expected some shareholders to remain invested in the firm.

His comment that he wanted to launch a buyout at $420 a share "would only be used for Tesla shareholders who do not remain with our company if it is private," Musk said in the post.

"My best estimate right now is that approximately two-thirds of shares owned by all current investors would roll over into a private Tesla."

Musk added that the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund "has approached me multiple times" starting in early 2017 about taking Tesla private and had already taken a stake of nearly five percent though share purchases.

He said the Saudis were interested "because of the important need to diversify away from oil" and added that the sovereign fund "has more than enough capital needed to execute on such a transaction."

Loup Ventures analysts Gene Munster and Will Thompson said in a research note that Musk has answered the question "where would the money come from?" but still faces a number of challenges.

"If Musk can help it, we believe he will limit additional investors to 20 percent equity (he owns 22 percent), which implies the Saudi fund could only invest $16 billion," the analysts wrote.

"We still believe there is a greater than 50 percent chance Tesla is private in a year, and the blog post slightly increased those odds."

California-based Tesla has become one of the most valuable automakers on expectations it will disrupt the industry, although it produced only slightly more than 100,000 vehicles last year.

The company has been struggling to boost production of its Model 3, which is less expensive than its first models and could held expand Tesla's base.
US aviation chiefs are struggling to work out how the ground crew worker who stole a plane at Seattle airport last week carried out a series of "incredible" loops and stunts before crashing off the coast of Seattle.

Flight experts are still investigating how 29-year-old Horizon Air employee Richard Russell managed to start the Q400 turboprop aircraft, take off, then carry out a series of incredible manoeuvres.

Audio recordings from the cockpit have revealed 29-year-old Horizon Air employee Richard Russell explaining how he picked up flight knowledge from video games.

Ive played video games before and I know what Im doing a little bit, he told ground control before he crashed into Ketron Island off the coast of Seattle on Friday.

Pilot guy, can this thing do a back flip, you think? Mr Russell was also heard saying on the recording, before telling air traffic controllers he was going to try a barrel roll with the turboprop.

Horizon Air CEO Gary Beck said in a news conference at the weekend that it did not appear Mr Russell had a pilots license, leaving the airline confused about how he managed to fly for about an hour before crashing.

The US authorities have described Mr Russell as suicidal. I wasnt really planning on landing it, he was heard to tell air traffic controllers.

(AP)

According to CNN, the FBI has recovered human remains and the black box recorder from the unscheduled flight. Nobody other than Mr Russell was on board.

There were some manoeuvres that were done that were incredible manoeuvres, Alaska Air CEO Brad Tilden told CNBC News. I dont know how he achieved the experience that he did.

Some believe it is possible video game simulators could have provided Mr Russell with just enough know-how.

Yes, I believe that a civilian who has a thorough experience of flight simulation could indeed start, taxi and take off an aircraft with no real-world pilot experience, Ryan Barclay, the founder and executive director of Fly Away Simulation told The New York Times.

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Others remain sceptical. Rick Todd, president of the National Association of Flight Instructors, said: Its highly improbable, but not impossible, that he never had a lick of flying except other than in a virtual world.

Mr Russell was followed by two military jets after taking the plane for the authorised flight from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport shortly after 7.30pm.

Authorities are still investigating how he gained access to the aircraft.

This is going to be a major learning event for the industry, said CNN aviation analyst Justin Green. This is a really big deal.

Related Video: Stolen Plane in Seattle Prompts Security Concerns

Watch news, TV and more on Yahoo View.
Quentin Tarantinos not the only one looking to share a piece of Sharon Tates legacy.

While the director addresses Tates shocking 1969 murder at the hands of Manson Family members in his next film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a Los Angeles auction house will soon be selling items from the actresss personal wardrobe.

Sharon Tates minidress from her 1968 wedding to Roman Polanski is expected to sell for $25,000 to $50,000. (Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images)

Juliens Auctions is proud to present this auction event that celebrates the beauty and grace of one of Hollywoods brightest stars of the 1960s, Sharon Tate, Darren Julien, president and CEO of Juliens Auctions, said in a press release of the Nov. 17 sale.

We honor Sharon Tates life and loves in this personal collection that captures the style of a woman whose life was cut way too short and has long been overshadowed by an unspeakable tragedy.

Tate, who was just 26 and eight months pregnant when she was slain, was famously married to director Roman Polanski. The ivory silk moire mini wedding dress she wore to their 1968 ceremony at Londons Chelsea Register Office is expected to command the most attention, with bids estimated to range from $25,000 to $50,000.

Other standout pieces include her Fuhrmans Beverly Hills chocolate mink swing coat, estimated at $20,000 to $40,000; a black floral lace Christian Dior dress worn to the 1966 London premiere of Polanskis film Cul-de-Sac ($15,000 to $30,000); and an Alba gown for the 1968 Golden Globes ($4,000 to $6,000).

The auction will include the chocolate sheer silk Alba gown Tate  pictured with John Cassavetes, left, and Polanski  wore to the 1968 Golden Globes. (Photo: Max B. Miller/Fotos International/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

In addition to clothing  including a Betsey Johnson for Paraphernalia minidress worn to a 1967 premiere ($1,000 to $2,000)  the tragic stars monogrammed luggage ($1,000 to $2,000), makeup ($300 to $500 for Revlon and Maybelline eyeliner and eyebrow pencils), and copy of Denis Diderots Paradox of the Actor ($800 to $1,200) will also be available for bidding.

News of the auction comes just days after images of actress Margot Robbie in character as Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood were revealed.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:




The rescue ship Aquarius, chartered by French aid group SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) - AFP

The NGO rescue ship the Aquarius has called on European governments to offer it safe harbour after rescuing 141 migrants from the Mediterranean, saying it has been stranded at sea for more than two days.

Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and SOS Mediterranee, which jointly operate the Aquarius, said they had contacted authorities in Italy, Malta, Tunisia and Libya following Fridays rescues but have been denied a place to disembark.

They called for urgent humanitarian assistance for those on board, most of whom were said to be from Somalia and Eritrea, were weak and malnourished, and included 67 unaccompanied minors.

What is of utmost importance is that the survivors are brought to a place of safety without delay, where their basic needs can be met and where they can be protected from abuse, said Nick Romaniuk, Search and Rescue Coordinator for SOS Mediterranee.

The NGOs said that those on board reported encountering five boats which did not offer assistance, a "disturbing development" that suggested Italy's ban on rescue ships was deterring crews from helping migrants in distress.

The Aquarius found itself at the centre of a major diplomatic standoff in June when both Italy and Malta turned it away, leaving it at sea with 630 migrants onboard for more than a week before it was able to dock in the Spanish port city of Valencia.

It is unclear whether Spains prime minister, Pedro Sanchez of the centre-left PSOE, will repeat that offer.

He has since allowed a Spanish NGO boat, the Open Arms, to dock on three occasions. But he has been accused of failing to ensure local authorities have the resources to cope with the arrivals.

Spain last month overtook Italy as the biggest European landing point for migrants, a development blamed largely on the clampdown in the Central Mediterranean.

SOS Mediterranee and MSF said Europe was increasingly putting the coordination of rescues in the hands of Libyan authorities, but the latter did not have the "capacity" and had simply told it to contact others.

Mr Sanchez this weekend met Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, to discuss the crisis. They laid out a proposal of EU aid to north African governments, improved European coordination on asylum and efforts against "racist tendencies" towards migrants in some member states.
North Korea released pictures of Kim Jong-un at a fish stocking station in what analyst believe is the latest attempt to shift the focus to the economy - AFP

North and South Korea have agreed to hold a third summit between leaders Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un in September, amid ongoing tensions between Pyongyang and Washington over the Norths lack of progress in giving up its nuclear weapons.

The agreement was struck between high level officials meeting in the border village of Panmunjom on Monday, although negotiators failed to nail down a precise date.

A joint statement said they had held consultations in a sincere manner on the active enforcement of the Panmunjom Declaration  a deal signed by Kim and Mr Moon at their first meeting in April, pledging to end the Korean war and work towards a nuclear-free Peninsula and a new era of peace.

But the optimism of Aprils ground-breaking summit, during which Mr Moon and Kim frequently held hands and hugged, no longer hangs in the air.

On Sunday North Korean state media lashed out at Seoul, accusing it of foot-dragging over the Panmunjom agreement and of blind obedience to US-led sanctions.

Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in shake hands at the inter-Korean border at the start of their first meeting in June Credit: AFP/AFP

"It's been more than 100 days since the April 27 Panmunjom Declaration was adopted, but no fruit or progress has been produced. It is because of America's sanctions and the South's unfair participation in them," it said through the state-run Uriminzokkiri website.

Pyongyang has also hit out at the US, the United Nations and Japan since a historic June meeting between Kim and Donald Trump, the US president.

North Korea has repeatedly called for the US to put an end to the Korean War  which ended in an armistice not a peace treaty  and to repeal crippling economic sanctions as a reward or Pyongyangs show of good faith in ending its nuclear weapons testing.

However, the US has maintained that the Norths failure to stop its nuclear and missiles programme, as evidenced in a recent UN report, is inconsistent with Kims commitment to rid his country of nuclear weapons.

In a frosty statement issued by the North Korean permanent mission to the United Nations in New York, Pyongyang accused the US of attempting to invent a pretext for increased sanctions.

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It added that some high-level officials in the US administration were making baseless accusations, warning that there is no guarantee that the hard-won atmosphere of stability on the Korean Peninsula will continue.

A separate statement also condemned the UN secretary general for saying that North Korea could be achieved through total denuclearisation that is verifiable and irreversible, signifying a stronger commitment than was agreed at earlier summits.

In quotes | Singapore summit North Korea Trump Kim

Some believe a second meeting between Kim and President Trump could be a way to bring back the momentum to work towards peace, citing the UN General Assembly in New York next month as a convenient occasion to hold fresh talks.

The White House has denied such a meeting is currently in the works but analysts believe it could take place in the margins of the assembly.

Evans Revere, a former US diplomat, told The Daily Beast that Mr Trump might be tempted to use that venue to put on a show with his North Korean counterpart that would top what occurred in Singapore".

Yet Washington is outwardly maintaining a firm line with Pyongyang. On Monday, Harry Harris, the new US ambassador to Seoul, said that it was too early to declare a formal end to the war or to lift sanctions.

The potential for positive change in North Korea is limitless, the ambassador said, in comments reported by Yonhap.

But only if Chairman Kim fulfills his commitments to denuclearise. Sanctions will remain in place until North Korea takes concrete and verifiable steps toward denuclearisation. Our two nations are committed to choose the right deal, not just any deal, he said.
Even Stephen Miller's family can't stand him.

The senior Trump advisor has made his fair share of enemies thanks to his work on Trump's harsh immigration policies, and now at least one of his family members is part of that crowd.

SEE ALSO: Opening your home to refugees is one powerful way to resist Trump's immigration policy

Miller's maternal uncle, David S. Glosser, has penned quite the op-ed for Politico, laying bare what he calls Miller's "immigration hypocrisy," starting with the immigration journey of Miller's own Jewish family, a "classic American tale," from the Eastern Europe town of Antopol (now part of Belarus) at the turn of the 20th century.

The family's journey is one of chain migration, Glosser notes, something Miller is currently working to end. He also outlines how the family could have fallen victim to the same "America First" policy Miller is helping Trump push and even draws a line to the Nazis of 1940s Germany and the Nazis of 2018.

It's a scathing indictment of Miller, the type that Glosser has unloaded on his nephew in the past.

White House Adviser Stephen Miller gets cut off mid-sentence by Jake Tapper



"I think I've wasted enough of my viewers' time"pic.twitter.com/98lJiyCS7t  Rantt Media (@RanttMedia) January 7, 2018

Glosser has plenty more admonishment for Miller, who he says he has "watched with dismay and increasing horror." He also doesn't spare Trump, noting the similar chain migration journey of the president's ancestors and saying the two "may have become numb to the resultant human tragedy and blind to the hypocrisy of their policy decisions."

But Glosser is particularly pointed toward Miller when recounting the life of "Joseph," an immigrant from the north African nation of Eritrea whom he met through volunteer work with a non-profit that assists refugees.

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He details the torturous journey (literally and metaphorically) "Joseph" encountered in his path to the United States "while my nephew, Stephen, was famously recovering from the hardships of his high school cafeteria," a reference to the now-famous incident in which Miller was booed by classmates after a particularly terrible speech.

It's a deft, withering burn that enhances Miller's sheltered petulance on display in the video.

With the Trump administration is going to startling lengths to restrict the number of immigrants admitted to the U.S., Glosser laments the fate of immigrants he's met, people who the U.S. should be welcoming with open arms.

It calls to mind Miller's public spats with journalists over immigration, perhaps most famously his sparring with CNN's Jim Acosta over the poem on the Statue of Liberty.

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That Miller's own ancestor, according to Glosser, made his way only deepens the irony and depravity of Miller's stance.

One can't help but read Glosser's account and think of another sour uncle-nephew relationship.

Visualization of today's article by Stephen Miller's uncle condemning his nephew's immigration hypocrisy. pic.twitter.com/04bEBQGy4e  Sasha Stewart (@ArtfulStew) August 13, 2018

You can read Glosser's piece in its entirety here.
Tesla began production of its Model 3 Performance Edition vehicle back in June, and customers who ordered the car started receiving them in July. That doesnt stop the company from showing off the speed of the electric car on both the streets and now, the snow.

The official Tesla Instagram account uploaded a quick video Sunday showing the Model 3 Performance Edition in action in Alaska. In the clip, the souped-up electric car can be seen taking two curves at high speeds without losing control. The drifting done by the vehicle is straight out of an episode of the anime Initial D.

Model 3 Performance testing in Alaska  A post shared by Tesla (@teslamotors) on Aug 12, 2018 at 9:08am PDT

Video of the Tesla Model 3 Performance Edition came a day after company CEO Elon Musk attended the DefCon Hacking Conference in Las Vegas on Saturday. He held a Q&A with engineers from Tesla and SpaceX to help secure Tesla vehicle software.

Great Q&A @defcon last night. Thanks for helping make Tesla & SpaceX more secure! Planning to open-source Tesla vehicle security software for free use by other car makers. Extremely important to a safe self-driving future for all.  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2018

Musk and Tesla have been in a bit of hot water since he tweeted about taking the company private last week and claimed he secured funding to do so. The day after the tweet, the company stock price jumped, but also, the US Securities and Exchange Commission started an inquiry about Musks statement. The tweet also led to lawsuits from investors. Musk has yet to acknowledge the recent trouble and instead tweeted about selling Tesla short shorts and thigh-high socks.

Starting at $78,000, the Model 3 Performance Edition will continue to make its way to customers who reserved it for $1,000. Its unclear how much more turmoil Tesla will find itself in due to Musks past and future tweets.

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A bit of good news for Tesla car owners is the release of the companys v9.0 autopilot. In the coming weeks, a 14-day trial of the new autonomous driving software will be made available to those who have the proper hardware in their car.

Photos via Instagram

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SAADA, Yemen (Reuters) - Thousands of mourners on Monday buried dozens of children killed in a Saudi-led coalition air strike on a bus in northern Yemen, one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in the three-year-old war. At least 40 children were killed in Thursday's strike, which hit the bus as it drove through a market in Dahyan, a town in Saada, the armed Houthi group which controls the province said. Amid outrage from international human rights groups and U.N. officials, Riyadh continued to defend the raid as a "legitimate military action" intended to hit Houthi leaders, a day after it authorized a coalition investigation of the strike. Wooden coffins, most with a picture of a child, were taken by cars and carried by pall bearers to a graveyard from a square where prayers were held earlier. "Death to America, death to Israel," the crowd chanted, echoing the Houthis' slogan. The shrouded bodies were removed from the coffins and placed in a row of unmarked graves that had been dug on Friday. "My son went to the market to run house errands and then the enemy air strike happened and he was hit by shrapnel and died," said Fares al-Razhi, mourning his 14-year-old son. "For my son, I will take revenge on Salman and Mohammed Bin Zayed," he said, referring to the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Gulf Arab states are leading the alliance of Sunni Muslim countries that intervened in Yemen's war in 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognized government that was expelled from the capital Sanaa by the Houthis in 2014. The coalition said on Friday it would investigate the strike after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the attack and called for an independent probe. But on Saturday, state news agency SPA said Riyadh's mission to the world body delivered a message to Guterres reiterating that the raid was "legitimate" and targeted Houthi leaders "responsible for recruiting and training young children". "War cant be a clean operation unfortunately," UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash told reporters in Dubai when asked about the Saada attack. "But I will say all parties need to accept their part in what they are doing today." TALKS PLANNED The coalition initially said after the attack that the strike had targeted missile launchers that were used by the Houthis to attack the southern Saudi province of Jizan. The Houthis' health minister Taha Mutawakil said last week that the number of casualties stood at 51 killed including 40 children, and at least 79 people wounded of whom 56 were children. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported the same toll on Friday, citing authorities in Saada. The Houthi-run al-Masirah TV on Monday quoted a health official as saying another child had died from his wounds, raising the toll to 52. The head of the Houthis' supreme revolutionary committee, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, attended the funeral and blamed the United States for "this ugly massacre of Yemeni children". The United States and other Western powers provide arms and intelligence to the alliance, and human rights groups have criticized them over coalition air strikes that have killed hundreds of civilians at hospitals, schools and markets. A U.S. military spokeswoman said U.S. forces were not involved in Thursday's air strike. The U.S. State Department urged the alliance to "conduct a thorough and transparent investigation". U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Sunday he has dispatched a three-star general to Riyadh to "look into what happened". The coalition says it does not intentionally target civilians and has set up a committee to probe alleged mass casualty air strikes, which has mostly cleared it of any blame. The Houthis have also been criticized by rights groups. The U.N. special envoy to Yemen has been shuttling between the warring parties ahead of holding consultations in Geneva on Sept. 6 to try to end the conflict that has killed more than 10,000 people and pushed the impoverished Arab country to the verge of starvation, according to the United Nations. Yemeni Foreign Minister Khaled al-Yamani said on Al-Hadath channel on Monday that his government welcomed the Geneva talks. The UAE's Gargash said he hoped the Geneva talks signaled the start of a process that would lead to a political solution to the conflict -- which is widely seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and its regional foe, the Shi'ite Muslim Iran. (Reporting by Reuters team in Yemen, Maha El Dahan in Dubai and Yara Bayoumy in Washington; additional reporting by Ali Abdelaty in Cairo; Writing by Ghaida Ghantous, Editing by Alison Williams, William Maclean)
Viktoria Guzman, who is chronically ill, and her mother, Miriam Huertas, fled Puerto Rico after the natural disaster hit and spent six weeks living in the girl's hospital room: Mark Makela/The Washington Post

The calls, warning that they soon would have to leave and find their own places to live, came by robot.

Every two weeks or so, the automated voice would tell Analee Dalmau and hundreds of other displaced Puerto Rican families that the deadline was looming, that they would soon have to move out of their hotel rooms, that their refuge would no longer be covered by federal funds.

Dalmau, 24, fled her home near the islands tropical rain forest after Hurricane Maria lashed the US territory more than 10 months ago. She landed in West Springfield, Massachusetts, where she, her sister and three nephews have been stuck. Finding a job has been nearly impossible. Though a local charity gave them a restriction-heavy housing voucher, every door theyve knocked on has been closed because of the familys extreme poverty.

Its been frustrating. We cry. We get angry. We panic. Its not just for us, but for our kids, Dalmau says. We are in anguish, and Im getting sick thinking about going back to living in a borrowed car with my entire family on the streets.

It has been a chaotic and uncertain year for the thousands of displaced Puerto Ricans who are still living in hotels across the country. Pushed out of their homes that were destroyed last September in the powerful hurricane, they have nowhere else to go.

LatinoJustice, a civil rights organisation, has filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the Federal Emergency Management Agencys decision to end its Transitional Sheltering Assistance programme without having a longterm plan for the US citizens who effectively will be rendered homeless when federal aid runs out.

The case is playing out in Massachusetts District Court, where Judge Timothy Hillman is expected to take action at a hearing scheduled for 31 August, when more than 2,000 hotel dwellers might have to check out.

Federal authorities say the programme cant continue forever, that it is meant to be a bridge from disaster to recovery, one that thus far has lasted nearly a year.

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Fema has never been designed to be a final solution, says Michael Byrne, the federal coordinating officer for Fema in Puerto Rico. We care about these people, weve been working with them for months... This is not a cold, callous approach to anything.

LatinoJustice argues Fema is treating Puerto Ricans differently from other US disaster survivors, alleging the federal agency is stopping the sheltering programme prematurely and is failing to activate a longterm housing program that it used to help storm victims on the mainland after Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.

I know Fema has dumped a lot of money on this. But they didnt dump the money in the right pot, says Emmanuel Ayala, director of community engagement for the Episcopal Churchs Latino Assistance in central Florida. Ayala has worked closely with Puerto Ricans who are now living in hotels. Its not getting down to the people in the way that people need it.

The options Fema has offered Puerto Rican hurricane refugees often havent matched their circumstances, advocates say. The hundreds of families left in Femas hotel programme as of late June represent the islands poorest, the elderly, the sick.

People congregate on a rowhouse stoop in the historically Puerto Rican Hunting Park neighbourhood in North Philadelphia (Mark Makela for The Washington Post)

Of the more than 1.1 million Puerto Ricans who registered for Fema help after Hurricane Maria, two out of five applicants were deemed ineligible for various types of assistance. And when they tried to appeal, most  80 per cent  were rejected from the programmes, Fema data shows.

One Fema programme awarded families cash to partially rehab damaged homes to make them liveable. But many evacuees had rented their homes, couldnt prove ownership because of difficulty obtaining the documents, or lived in houses that were built informally.

Maria Monet, a single mother in Philadelphia, scrambled after the hurricane destabilised the family home on Puerto Ricos east coast. Her mother had died two months earlier, leaving Monet the property; she also was left with the task of trying to obtain the title to apply for Fema funds.

But the 49-year-old lost her biomedical factory job as conditions worsened on the island. She soon had no money for food. Moving to the mainland, and into a Fema-funded hotel, felt like her only option.

While Fema also offered rental assistance, or to lease housing units on the island, two months of rent wasnt enough for most families. For some, returning to Puerto Rico meant potentially severe health risks, such as for the chronically ill, like 7-year-old Viktoria Guzman.

Viktorias health had been failing for months, as her liver stopped functioning. Her mother, Miriam Huertas, knew if she didnt leave their damaged home in Puerto Rico, it could claim her daughters life. She aimed for Philadelphia because she knew the Childrens Hospital there could help Viktoria receive a transplant. A social worker helped connect her to the Fema hotel programme after she was living in her daughters hospital room for six weeks.

I felt stranded at the hotel. I told Fema I couldnt go home and I couldnt go to a shelter, says Huertas, 35. She lived in the Franklin hotel, along with 30 other evacuee families. I didnt even know what it was to see my daughter play anymore because she was so sick.

It was a snowy day when Will Gonzalez discovered a peculiar but powerful proviso embedded in Pennsylvanias public housing law that would give scores of displaced Puerto Rican families a chance at a home after a monstrous hurricane took theirs.

Gonzalez, a lawyer and director of an umbrella Latino advocacy group in Philadelphia, was working with a coalition of faith, relief and community leaders to find longterm housing for nearly 80 families stuck in Fema-funded hotels in the city of brotherly love.

Time was running out. The agency had set an expiration date for the programme, and soon the survivors of one of the most powerful and destructive storms in Puerto Ricos history would have but two choices: a plane ticket back to San Juan or homelessness.

Gonzalez and the members of the Greater Philadelphia Long Term Recovery Committee found they could legally help place the families  who represent the islands most vulnerable  in public housing expeditiously because they were survivors of a federally declared disaster. The coalition, working with local government officials, secured a super preference that boosted the families to the front of the housing wait list.

The exhaustion in Monets tired eyes dissipated momentarily, and the anxiety of the last year fell away the moment she crossed the threshold of her new public housing unit over the Fourth of July weekend, she says. She had been living with her three teenage children in a hotel for months.

Ayyy, she exhales and stretches her arms out gleefully after entering her new home on a recent day. She has a new housekeeping job, expects to fill the place with donated furniture, and shes getting to know her neighbourhood  explaining to a local grocer what it was she was hoping to buy most: a caldero, a traditional copper pot used for cooking large amounts of rice.

The walls were still bare, the refrigerator empty and each of the apartments four rooms had nothing more than a box fan and air mattress for each member of Monets family. But none of that mattered.

Nothing bothers me anymore, Monet says. Thats how happy, no, relieved I am to finally have a home and restart our lives.

Not everyone has been so lucky.

Attorney Kira Romero-Craft and her LatinoJustice colleagues have been pulling all-nighters for weeks to prepare the case against Fema and keep families in hotels until the federal government comes up with a longterm plan for the Puerto Ricans she represents.

We are not seeing a systemic approach to addressing the needs of the evacuees, she says. Other help was extended in other circumstances. Why isnt it happening here?

What advocates want is for Fema to implement its Disaster Housing Assistance Programme, which pays for and locates longterm housing for low income families.

Fema says the programme is expensive and inefficient, citing reports from its Office of the Inspector General detailing high costs and shortfalls in meeting specific needs. In court documents, agency attorneys say officials have discretion in doling out emergency aid and are immune from liability when they make those decisions.

Partially destroyed houses are seen six months after Hurricane Maria affected Puerto Rico in Fajardo (Ricardo Arduengo/AFP/Getty Images)

The transitional housing or hotel programme must end because Fema says it can no longer absorb 100 percent of the costs. The government of Puerto Rico is supposed to take over payment for at least 10 percent of the program, but the territory is in the midst of a form of bankruptcy.

Its not an effective programme, says Byrne, of Fema, noting that other programmes, such as partnerships with Habitat for Humanity, which is rebuilding homes, have more permanence and success. If Im going to invest time and effort in a programme, Im going to do it in a program that is more effective. There are lots of other ways to get them help.

But affordable housing advocates say the agency has been deliberately undermining the programme for years after Hurricane Sandy, when Fema provided rental subsidies to survivors for at least a year so they could rebuild their lives. The Governor of Puerto Rico and members of congress have requested the same programme, but Fema rejected it.

Fema officials says that as of the end of June, 90 per cent of disaster survivors who fled Puerto Rico after the hurricane reported that they could not return to the island. Fema expects those who are displaced to depend on social service agencies and non-profits in the states where they have relocated.

If theyve chosen to stay in the continental United States, we look to local states and communities to help supply that support framework, Byrne says. We are spending billions of dollars ... and sometimes the programmes are just not enough for particular families.

New York City, the state of Massachusetts and nongovernmental organisations have been paying for extended hotel stays, moving families into existing homeless shelter programmes or providing housing vouchers. The vast majority of evacuees went to Florida, where public housing wait lists are, in some cases, years long.

Dalmau is No 502 on the Springfield, Massachusetts, waiting list. Her housing voucher pays for one year of rent, but landlords want to know what happens after that. She has visited more than two dozen places since April, but she suspects that property managers become sceptical when they learn she has three children  one with special needs  and a sister living with her.

Her lack of a permanent address has caused problems for her when she applies for jobs  without one, she cant get a call back.

In Puerto Rico, Dalmau had plans. She had a job and was going to start a physical therapy programme at a university. The hurricane destroyed everything.

Ive been working since I was 18, Dalmau says. Ive never had to depend on anyone, or the government. People think that is why Puerto Ricans came here, but its not true. We just want a real chance to make things work.

Washington Post
NEWCASTLE, Australia (AP)  The most senior Roman Catholic cleric convicted of covering up child sex abuse was ordered by an Australian court Tuesday to serve his 1-year sentence in home detention rather than jail. Newcastle Magistrate Robert Stone on Tuesday ordered former Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson to be detained at his sister's house for at least 6 months before he is eligible for parole. He will be under strict supervision including having to wear a tracking device that would alert authorities if he left the house. Wilson, 67, has denied the accusations and had refused to resign pending an appeal.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  Hundreds of people have fled four days of fierce fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban over the key provincial capital of Ghazni that has killed about 120 security forces and civilians, the defense minister and witnesses said Monday. Nearly 200 insurgents, many of them foreigners, have been killed, the government said. Between the civilians have left the city and those too fearful to venture from their homes into the streets, "Ghazni has become a ghost town," said Ghulam Mustafa, who made it to neighboring Maidan Wardak province with 14 of his relatives. "The city became so dangerous," the 60-year-old Mustafa told The Associated Press while stopped briefly at a checkpoint where police searched for wounded Taliban fighters.

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AP)  Malaysia is looking to cancel multibillion-dollar Chinese-backed infrastructure projects signed by the previous scandal-tainted government as it digs itself out of debt, Malaysia's prime minister said Monday during an extensive interview in which he also blasted Myanmar's treatment of Rohingya Muslims as "grossly unjust." Mahathir Mohamad, at 93 the world's oldest prime minister, spoke with The Associated Press days before he heads to Beijing for his first visit since returning to power in a stunning electoral upset three months ago. Mahathir said he wants to maintain good relations with China and welcomes its investment, so long as the projects benefit Malaysia.

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PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AP)  Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad commented on lopsided China-backed projects, treatment of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims, the South China Sea furor, a water treaty with Singapore and the country's financial mess in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. Here are excerpts: ___ AX CHINA-BACKED PROJECTS Days before heading to Beijing for his first visit since his stunning electoral victory three months ago, Mahathir said Malaysia doesn't need a Chinese-backed $20 billion East Coast Rail Link and two energy pipelines worth $2.3 billion. The projects have been suspended pending renegotiation. "We don't think they are viable. So if we can, we would like to just drop the projects," Mahathir said.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  Indonesia is deploying 100,000 police and soldiers to provide security for the Asian Games, the biggest event ever held in its terror attack prone capital Jakarta, parts of which have been dramatically spruced up as the city readies to welcome tens of thousands of athletes and visitors. The 18th Asian Games, which run until Sept. 2, are being held in Jakarta, Palembang on the island of Sumatra, and in West Java. About 12,000 athletes, support staff and officials and 5,000 journalists are expected. It's the second time Indonesia has hosted the games. The first in 1962 was under the country's founding president Sukarno, who wanted to showcase Indonesia and himself as a leader of nations who'd thrown off colonial Western rule.

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AP)  Malaysia's prime minister said Monday he is seeking to hike the price of water sold to neighboring Singapore by more than 10 times as his country searches for ways to pay off massive debts. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who shot back to power in an electoral upset in May, told The Associated Press that a decades-old treaty governing the water agreement needs to be revised to reflect increases in the cost of living. The water deal has long been a point of contention between the two countries. Mahathir said in June he wants to renegotiate the deal.

BERLIN (AP)  China insisted on Monday that "arbitrary detention" or "re-education centers" do not exist in its far western Xinjiang region, rejecting concerns raised by a U.N. human rights committee that millions of ethnic Uighurs may be being held in camps. Beijing was responding to questions raised by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva. A committee member last week cited estimates that over 1 million people in China from the country's Uighur and other Muslim minorities are being held in "counter-extremism centers" and another 2 million have been forced into "re-education camps." In Xinjiang, following sporadic violent attacks by Muslim separatists, hundreds of thousands of members of the Uighur and Kazakh Muslim minorities have been arbitrarily detained in indoctrination camps where they are forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the party.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  The rival Koreas announced Monday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in will meet in Pyongyang sometime in September, while their envoys also discussed Pyongyang's nuclear disarmament efforts and international sanctions. The push for what would be the leaders' third summit since April comes amid renewed worries surrounding a nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang. The announcement released after nearly two hours of talks led by the rivals' chiefs for inter-Korean affairs was remarkably thin on details. In a three-sentence joint statement, the two sides did not mention an exact date for the summit and provided no details on how to implement past agreements.

BEIJING (AP)  As China's leaders gather for their annual Yellow Sea retreat, the country's political waters are looking choppy. Chinese President and ruling Communist Party leader Xi Jinping is beset by economic, foreign policy and domestic political challenges just months after clearing his way to rule for as long as he wants as China's most dominant leader since Mao Zedong. Mounting criticism of the Xi administration's policies has exposed the risks he faces from amassing so much power: He's made himself a natural target for blame. "Having concentrated power, Xi is responsible for all policy setbacks and policy failures," said Joseph Cheng, a retired City University of Hong Kong professor and long-time observer of Chinese politics.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  The death toll from the earthquake that rocked the Indonesian island of Lombok a week ago has passed 430 and the government is estimating economic losses will exceed several hundred million dollars. The national disaster agency said Monday the Aug. 5 quake killed 436 people, most of whom died in collapsing buildings. It said damage to homes, infrastructure and other property is at least 5 trillion rupiah ($342 million), calling that a temporary figure that will rise as more assessments are made. The agency said rebuilding will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The magnitude 7.0 quake flattened thousands of homes and according to the disaster agency's latest estimate has displaced about 350,000 people.
BEIJING (AP)  When Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen departs Sunday for Latin America, she'll be traveling to a region she's already visited three times in two years. She doesn't have many other options. As Tsai crosses the halfway mark of her first four-year term, an eight-day swing through Paraguay and Belize is a reflection of how Taiwan's diplomatic isolation has worsened in the midst of a suffocating Chinese pressure campaign. Just 18 countries  mostly clustered in Latin America, the South Pacific and Caribbean  still maintain formal ties with the self-ruling island, down from 22 when Tsai entered office in 2016.

TANJUNG, Indonesia (AP)  Scientists say the powerful Indonesian earthquake that killed more than 300 people lifted the island it struck by as much as 25 centimeters (10 inches). Using satellite images of Lombok from the days following the Aug. 5 quake, scientists from NASA and the California Institute of Technology's joint rapid imaging project made a ground deformation map and measured changes in the island's surface. In the northwest of the island near the epicenter, the rupturing faultline lifted the earth by a quarter of a meter. In other places it dropped by 5-15 centimeters (2-6 inches). Some 270,000 people are homeless or displaced after the earthquake, which damaged and destroyed about 68,000 homes.

MAYONG, India (AP)  The rice farmer doesn't know how it happened. Abdul Mannan just knows a mistake was made somewhere. But what can you say when the authorities suddenly insist one of your five children isn't an Indian? What do you do when your wife and daughter-in-law are suddenly viewed as illegal immigrants? "We are genuine Indians. We are not foreigners," said Mannan, 50, adding his family has lived in India's northeastern Assam state since the 1930s. "I can't understand where the mistake is." Neither can nearly 4 million other people who insist they are Indian but who now must prove their nationality as the politics of citizenship  overlaid with questions of religion, ethnicity and illegal immigration  swirls in a state where such questions have a long and bloody past.

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BEIJING (AP)  Thousands of Muslims gathered at a mosque in northwestern China on Friday to protest its planned demolition in a rare, public pushback to the government's efforts to rewrite how religions are practiced in the country. A large crowd of Hui people, a Muslim ethnic minority, began congregating at the towering Grand Mosque in the town of Weizhou on Thursday, local Hui residents told The Associated Press by phone. "People are in a lot of pain," said Ma Sengming, a 72-year-old man who was at the protest from Thursday morning until Friday afternoon. "Many people were crying. We can't understand why this is happening." Ma said the group shouted "Protect faith in China!" and "Love the country, love the faith!" The protest comes as faith groups that were largely tolerated in the past have seen their freedoms shrink as the government seeks to "Sinicize" religions by making the faithful prioritize allegiance to the officially atheist ruling Communist Party.

MATARAM, Indonesia (AP)  After a deadly earthquake devastated the Indonesian island of Lombok last weekend, Husni Handayani thought the worst was over. The powerful quake claimed hundreds of lives, wounded thousands more and displaced over 270,000 people. But it left her own home in the provincial capital, Mataram, still standing and nobody in her family was harmed. On Thursday, though, a strong aftershock shook the walls of Handayani's kitchen, prompting the pregnant 27-year-old to run outside in a panic. On a curb outside, she tripped and fell, glimpsing blood on her clothes before blacking out. "When I woke up ...

NEW YORK (AP)  An Australian tourist biking in New York City died after colliding with a garbage truck as she swerved to avoid a vehicle blocking the bike lane near Central Park. Police say 23-year-old Madison Jane Lyden veered into traffic around 4:45 p.m. Friday when a stopped taxi suddenly pulled in front of her. Lyden was pronounced dead at a hospital. A transportation advocacy group says it was "a crash waiting to happen" because "lazy and entitled drivers" are parking, dropping people off and idling in bike lanes. Transportation Alternatives says Lyden's death "underscores the need for every major street in New York City to have a safe, protected space to travel by bike."

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  A brazen and bloody overnight assault Friday by the Taliban on a key provincial capital in central Afghanistan has increased pressure on U.S.-backed Afghan forces that are withering under relentless attacks, prompting President Ashraf Ghani to call an emergency meeting of his security officials. While government security forces in the city of Ghazni repulsed the multipronged attack with the help of U.S. air support, Taliban insurgents remained hunkered down on its outskirts, and some were still holed up in residential areas, according to Interior Ministry deputy spokesman, Nasrat Rahimi. At least 39 insurgents were killed, while 14 police died and 20 were wounded in the fighting, said provincial Police Chief Farid Ahmad Mashal.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  The battle lines for Indonesia's 2019 presidential election were drawn Friday as the incumbent Joko "Jokowi" Widodo formally registered as a candidate after choosing a conservative Islamic cleric as his running mate. Jokowi, the first Indonesian president from outside the military and political elite, announced his vice-presidential candidate, Ma'ruf Amin, on Thursday after weeks of fevered speculation in local media. Jokowi's pick has become bigger news in Indonesia, the world's third-largest democracy, than an earthquake on the island of Lombok that killed more than 300 people. The decision disappointed liberals but analysts say it shores up Jokowi's position among conservative Muslims who demonstrated their political power last year with the ouster of Jakarta's minority Christian governor, a Jokowi ally, who was later imprisoned for blasphemy.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  South Korea said a total of 35,000 tons of North Korean coal and pig iron worth $5.8 million illegally entered its ports last year, in possible violations of UN sanctions. Reporting on preliminary results from a 10-month investigation, the Korea Customs Service said Friday it is seeking prosecutions of three local companies and their executives for smuggling or forging documents to say North Korean mineral resources came from Russia. They imported North Korean coal or pig iron in seven separate cases between April and October last year to five South Korean ports, on the Jin Ao, Rich Vigor, Shining Rich and other vessels, the customs office said.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  The off-road accessory was shipped in a box emblazoned with the logo of an auto parts brand owned by Mike Braun, a multimillionaire businessman who often rails against foreign outsourcing in his bid to become Indiana's next senator. The words "Made in China" were stamped across the packaging. Braun frequently criticizes his opponent, vulnerable red-state Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly, for once owning stock in a family business his brother runs that operates a factory in Mexico. However, the Republican nominee's own parts brand, Promaxx Automotive, sells products that were similarly manufactured abroad, according to a review by The Associated Press.
White House adviser Stephen Miller, the architect of some of President Trumps most controversial anti-immigration policies, has been assailed by critics who are quick to point out that Miller himself is a grandchild of refugees. Now Millers own uncle is joining the outcry.

In an essay published by Politico on Monday, David Glosser, a retired neuropsychologist and brother of Millers mother, Miriam, calls his nephew an immigration hypocrite.

I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, who is an educated man and well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our familys life in this country, Glosser writes.

Stephen Miller talks to reporters about President Trumps support for creating a merit-based immigration system at the White House in August 2017. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

He relays the story of how Wolf-Leib Glosser, his great-grandfather and Millers great-great grandfather on his mothers side, fled anti-Jewish violence in what is now Belarus, and arrived in the U.S. in 1903 with $8 to his name.

Wolf-Leib was fluent in Polish, Russian and Yiddish, Glosser writes but understood no English when he landed at Ellis Island.

Miller has said the administration favors immigrants who speak English. And Millers great-grandfather on his fathers side, Nison Miller, failed his naturalization test in 1932 and his petition was denied due to Ignorance, according to court documents that surfaced last year in the wake Trumps brazen immigration actions. (Eventually he retook the test and became a citizen.)

I shudder at the thought of what would have become of the Glossers had the same policies Stephen so coolly espouses  the travel ban, the radical decrease in refugees, the separation of children from their parents, and even talk of limiting citizenship for legal immigrants  been in effect when Wolf-Leib made his desperate bid for freedom, Glosser writes.

He notes that the family came to U.S. just a few years before America First nativists closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees.

Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family would likely have been murdered by the Nazis, Glosser writes. I would encourage Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do not envision a similar fate for him.

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Miller did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

Stephen Miller attends a meeting between President Trump and congressional leaders at the White House, Feb. 2, 2017. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Wolf-Leib eventually settled in Johnstown, Pa., earning enough money to buy the immediate familys passage to America in 1906. According to Glosser, the family progressed from selling goods from a horse and wagon to owning a haberdashery in Johnstown, and, eventually, a chain of supermarkets and discount department stores that was big enough to be listed on the AMEX stock exchange.

Like other immigrants, our familys welcome to the USA was not always a warm one, but we largely had the protection of the law, there was no state sponsored violence against us, no kidnapping of our male children, and we enjoyed good relations with our neighbors, Glosser continues. And he said that while the family experienced its share of anti-Semitism, they were left alone to live our lives and build the American dream. Children were born, synagogues founded, and we thrived. This was the miracle of America.

Its a miracle that Glosser believes Miller has lost complete sight of.

Acting for so long in the theater of right wing politics, Stephen and Trump may have become numb to the resultant human tragedy and blind to the hypocrisy of their policy decisions, he writes. After all, Stephens is not the only family with a chain immigration story in the Trump administration.

Trumps own grandfather was a German migrant, his mother a Scottish economic refugee. And just last week, first lady Melania Trumps parents, who are from Slovenia, were granted U.S. citizenship. A source told Yahoo News that they were sponsored by their daughter. Melania Trump became a U.S. citizen in 2006 after marrying Trump the year before.

Trump has sought to eliminate family-based sponsorship, which he calls chain migration, and replace it with merit-based citizenship programs.

Trump and my nephew both know their immigrant and refugee roots, Glosser writes. Yet, they repeat the insults and false accusations of earlier generations against these refugees to make them seem less than human. Trump publicly parades the grieving families of people hurt or killed by migrants, just as the early Nazis dredged up Jewish criminals to frighten and enrage their political base to justify persecution of all Jews.

These facts are important not only for their grim historical irony but because vulnerable people are being hurt, Glosser adds. They are real people, not the ghoulish caricatures portrayed by Trump.

Additional reporting by Hunter Walker in Washington

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:
Welcome to another day living under the Trump administration.

According to a Politico report published on Monday, during a 2017 briefing to prep for a meeting with the prime minister of India, President Donald Trump called the country of Nepal "nipple" and laughed when he referred to the country of Bhutan as "button."

SEE ALSO: How Donald Trump's own words have helped fuel the QAnon fire

Trump's cultural gaffe was confirmed by two sources with "knowledge of the meeting," per Politico. A White House representative told Politico that people present at the 2017 meeting "don't remember" the president's "nipple" remark.

The report details Trump's "diplomatic faux pas" during his time in office, including the time he wanted to call Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during the afternoon in Washington, D.C.  which was the middle of the night in Tokyo.

As "a person close to Trump" told Politico:

The report also revealed Trump's painfully awkward comments during internal staff meetings. During a briefing before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 2017 visit, Trump offered to "set him up with somebody" when he found out that Modi and his wife are estranged. During the same meeting, he was confused by Nepal and Bhutan's geographic locations between India and China.

"He didn't know what those were," a source "familiar with the meeting" told Politico. "He was like, 'What is this stuff in between and these other countries?'"

Trump's ignorant remarks aren't new  in January, the Washington Post reported that the president faked an Indian accent, imitating Modi. He also one referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and several African nations as "shithole countries."

Knowing Trump's track record, is anyone really surprised by his comments?
Fort Drum (United States) (AFP) - US President Donald Trump signed an almost $750 billion defense spending bill Monday, while vowing a new "Space Force" would give America dominance over rivals in China and elsewhere.

"Our competitors have begun weaponizing space," Trump warned troops at Fort Drum in New York state, as he signed a National Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress earlier this month.

"It's not enough to have American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space," Trump said, as he warned of the threat from China and elsewhere.

"Look at what they're doing, they have given me run-downs," he said in reference to security briefings. "I've seen things that you don't want to see what they're doing and how advanced they are."

"They want to jam transmissions which threaten our battlefield operations and so many other things"

"We'll be catching them very shortly," he said. "We will be so far ahead of them in a very short time, your head will spin."

He specifically mentioned a "new" Chinese military division that oversees space operations.

The spending bill contains a number of important provisions, including a prohibition on delivering F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft to Turkey, a NATO ally unless they ditch Russian technology.

Trump has sparred with the country's leaders over the detention of a Christian pastor.

It also extends a restriction on US-Russian military cooperation, something the White House vociferously opposed.
By David Shepardson and David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Talks between the United States and Mexico over the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement were set to drag into next week, as auto industry officials said on Friday that new sticking points had emerged over President Donald Trump's threat to impose steep automotive tariffs. Auto industry officials familiar with the talks said the Trump administration wants the ability to impose national security tariffs on future Mexican production from new auto assembly and parts plants. These officials said U.S negotiators had essentially agreed that a new NAFTA trade deal would exempt existing Mexican auto plants from any "Section 232" tariffs that Trump may impose. But the U.S. negotiators do not want to apply the same guarantees to new Mexican auto plants, the officials said, as the potential threat of 25 percent tariffs would discourage new automotive investment in Mexico to serve the U.S. market. At Trump's direction, the Commerce Department in May launched a probe into whether imports of cars, trucks and auto parts pose a national security risk, invoking the same 1962 trade law used to justify broad tariffs on steel and aluminum -- including those imposed on Canada and Mexico. Administration officials and congressional aides have said the car tariff probe, like the metals tariffs, in part is aimed at winning concessions during ongoing NAFTA renegotiation talks. Trump late on Friday tweeted that a "deal with Mexico is coming along nicely. Autoworkers and farmers must be taken care of or there will be no deal," adding that Mexican president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador "has been an absolute gentleman." Trump added that Canada "must wait" to rejoin the NAFTA talks. "Their Tariffs and Trade Barriers are far too high. Will tax cars if can't make a deal!" Trump tweeted. Adam Austen, a spokesman for Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, who is leading NAFTA trade talks for Canada, said the minister was in regular contact with her Mexican and U.S. counterparts. "Were glad Mexico and the U.S. continue to work out their bilateral issues. Its the only way well get to a deal, Austen said. ISSUES TO WORK OUT Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told reporters in Washington on Friday his talks with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer would resume next week, but there were still many bilateral issues to work out before Canada could rejoin the talks. Asked about progress on autos rules of origin, he said: "Nothing is close until everything is close, but there are items in every element that is being discussed." Guajardo said that once bilateral U.S.-Mexican issues were resolved, Canada could rejoin the talks to work on tri-lateral issues. He said this could take place in "the next few days or weeks." Industry officials also said the U.S. team had barely moved from its demands last May of a 75 percent overall regional content threshold with 40-45 percent content from high-wage zones -- effectively the United States and Canada -- with the only substantial change a slightly longer phase-in time. The automotive officials said that Mexico had sought reassurances that new content rules would not cause losses of existing facilities or jobs in the sector and that a NAFTA deal would make Mexico immune to any automotive tariff Trump imposes on national security grounds. But the U.S. side was sticking to a hard stance in the final stretch of the year-old NAFTA talks, trying to extract concessions as another late August deadline for a deal approaches, one industry representative said. The issues the two countries are hammering out include what percentage of auto industry components need to be made in North America to avoid tariffs, and how many cars and trucks need to be made in factories paying higher wages. The U.S.-Mexico talks for a reworked North American Free Trade Agreement resumed three weeks ago, without Canada, after negotiations involving all three members of the $1.2 trillion trade bloc stalled in May. (Reporting by David Shepardson and David Lawder in Washington, and Christine Murray in Mexico City. Writing by David Lawder; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Diane Craft)
Mukalla (Yemen) (AFP) - The United Arab Emirates, a key player in Yemen's war, says it is determined to wipe out Al-Qaeda in the country and denies making deals with the jihadists.

The UAE entered Yemen's complex war in 2015 alongside regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia, after Iran-backed Huthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa and swathes of the country from the government of Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

But that summer, as Emirati-backed government forces retook five southern provinces of Yemen, they found themselves facing another powerful enemy: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The group, seen by the US State Department as the most dangerous branch of the global Al-Qaeda franchise, had taken advantage of the chaos gripping Yemen to carve out its own territory.

In April 2015, the group seized Mukalla, capital of the vast Hadramaut province, which it controlled for a year until being ousted in an Emirati-led operation.

Emirati forces have established a major military presence across the country's south and commanders say they are determined to wipe out AQAP.

"Irrespective of what happens in the wider Yemen conflict, the UAE will continue until AQAP is broken as a regional and global threat," a senior Emirati military official said during a recent press tour in the country's south.

- 'Nothing to negotiate' -

More than two years since the jihadists were ousted from the city, Hadramaut governor General Faraj Salmin al-Bahsani, described the operation.

"We set up a local force of soldiers from the region, with Emirati help," said Bahsani, who is also commander of government forces across a chunk of southern Yemen.

"Coalition air forces paralysed Al-Qaeda forces before they were ousted from the region," he said, sitting in his office in the provincial government headquarters, its wall adorned with a picture of Hadi.

Experts said the jihadists, who had imposed a reign of terror on the city, opted to cut their losses by withdrawing without a fight to remote mountain areas.

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But a press report published earlier this month detailed secret deals allegedly made between AQAP and the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen.

Payments were reportedly made to some jihadists to convince them to retreat, while others were allowed to leave with their weapons.

The claims were dismissed as "false accusations" by Brigadier General Musallam al-Rashedi, from the Emirati Armed Forces, who said he was angered by the report.

"There is nothing to negotiate with these guys," he told journalists Monday in Dubai.

- Dependant on UAE -

In Mukalla, a semblance of normality has returned.

Its port, a key trading point serving the entire province, is a hub of activity.

Cargo ships come and go, directed into the dock by a tugboat provided by the UAE.

The city is heavily dependent on its Emirati backers.

The UAE has pumped some $3.8 billion (3.3 billion euros) of aid into the country since 2015 and provides much of the support that keeps hospitals, schools, courts and the port running, according to its governor.

Abu Dhabi's police force has even sent 170 cars and 500 brand new motorcycles to the city, an Emirati general said.

The Emirates have also trained and equipped some 60,000 Yemeni fighters, 30,000 of whom were directly involved in the fight against Al-Qaeda, according to an Emirati military official.

He said Al-Qaeda's activities have dramatically decreased. The group launched just five attacks in southern Yemen in the first half of 2018, as compared to 77 over the same period of 2016.

He added that until 2016, the jihadists had a major presence in cities and towns which are home to some 850,000 people, giving the group with a major source of funding and new recruits.

That is no longer the case.

Emirati operations and a long-running American drone campaign against the group have hit its capabilities hard.

Some 1,000 AQAP fighters have been killed in Yemen since 2015, including 13 of the group's top 18 leaders, the official said.

A further 1,500 have been captured.

General Rashedi said that since the start of 2016, the jihadists have lost "half the territory" they controlled in southern Yemen.

"Their capacity to carry out terrorism globally has been seriously hampered," he said.

AQAP claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo magazine in January 2015.

In July this year, Amnesty said human rights violations in a string of UAE-run Yemeni prisons could amount to war crimes, a report rejected by Abu Dhabi.

Despite Emirati successes, Bahsani admits that AQAP is still active in Hadramaut, alongside the Islamic State group which has recently established a presence in southern Yemen.

He blamed both groups for a string of killings targeting security officials.
Dubai (AFP) - An Emirati minister, whose country belongs to the Saudi-led coalition battling rebels in Yemen, on Monday bemoaned the "ugly" side of war following the killing of dozens of Yemeni children in an air strike.

"This war has been and remains an ugly war," Anwar Gargash, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) minister of state for foreign affairs, told a news conference in Dubai.

A coalition strike last Thursday hit a bus in Huthi rebel-held northern Yemen, killing at least 29 children, according to the International Committee for the Red Cross.

Huthi officials gave a death toll of 51, including 40 children, and labelled the raid a "crime by America and its allies against the children of Yemen".

The coalition announced afterwards that it had ordered an investigation into the strike, which it initially said had targeted Huthi rebel combatants.

"In this war we have seen civilians shot at, bombed, killed and, unfortunately, this is really part of any confrontation," Gargash said, adding that both sides in the conflict had been to blame.

"War is not something that can be actually a clean operation," said the UAE minister.

Gargash played up the coalition's probe into the incident.

"In various conflicts many parties have not allowed neutral or independent investigations," he said.

The minister said those calling for independent investigations should instead urge the coalition "to tighten the rules of engagement".

Mourners held a mass funeral Monday for the victims of the bus attack in the northern Yemeni city of Saada, where demonstrators vented their anger at Saudi Arabia.

The coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015 in a bid to restore the internationally recognised government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after the Iran-backed Huthis drove his government out of the capital Sanaa.

The war has left around 10,000 people dead, the vast majority of them civilians, and triggered what the United Nations has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
(Reuters) - A furor over alleged anti-semitism in Britain's main opposition party widened on Monday when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn exchanged accusations on Twitter over Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed. Labour has been wrestling accusations of anti-semitism for months, and Corbyn has previously apologized for what he has described as "pockets" of anti-semitism in the organization. Britain's right-leaning Daily Mail on Friday reported that Corbyn, on a visit to Tunisia in 2014, had laid a wreath at the graves of members of a Palestinian group that killed 11 Israeli athletes and a German policeman at the 1972 Munich Olympics. It said the cemetery houses a memorial to the dozens killed in the 1985 Israeli bombing of the Palestine Liberation Organisation headquarters in exile in Tunis, as well as the graves of members of Black September, a PLO splinter group that carried out the Munich attack. It published a photograph it said showed Corbyn standing near the graves of Black September members. Labour said Corbyn, a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, was in Tunis to honor the victims of the 1985 raid. Unimpressed, Netanyahu said in a tweet: "The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves of the terrorists who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone  left, right and everything in between." Corbyn responded: "Netanyahu's claims about my actions and words are false. What deserves unequivocal condemnation is the killing of over 160 Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli forces since March, including dozens of children." The Labour Party said Corbyn did not lay a wreath at the graves of anyone linked to Black September and he condemned the Munich attack. Corbyn however told reporters on Monday: "I was present when (a wreath) was laid, I don't think I was involved in it," adding that the visit was a peace-seeking exercise. Despite deep divisions in the Conservative government as it negotiates Britain's exit from the European Union, Labour's poll standing appears to have been damaged by the anti-semitism row. A YouGov poll last week showed that 39 percent of those asked would vote for the Conservatives, a gain of one point for May's party compared to last week when the two biggest parties were level. Labour dropped three points to 35 percent. (Writing and reporting by Elisabeth O'Leary in Edinburgh; Editing by William Maclean)
Trumps ex-adviser sprinkles a few crumbs for Mueller and offers several personnel critiques, but offers little introspection

It has all the ingredients of a great novel; power, sex, race and money. Light on policy and heavy on the personal, Omarosa Manigault Newmans Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House is a prime candidate for this summers best in beach reading.

Yes, this is the very same former contestant on The Apprentice who once bragged to PBS Frontline in 2016 that every critic, every detractor will have to bow down to President Trump.

Now, as the woman who became the most prominent African American in the Trump White House before she was abruptly dismissed last December, she dishes the dirt, and few are spared.

Manigault Newman recalls her days on The Apprentice when Donald Trump, Don Jr and the model Carol Alt were seated around the table. According to Manigault Newman, Trump turned to his son, and said: Youve got to get ass like that. You got to get some ass like that. At the time, Vanessa, Don Jrs soon-to-be ex-wife, was pregnant.

And yes, according to Manigault Newman, there is now a tanning bed in the White House.

Unhinged also posits that Trump may have received personal counseling from the Rev Paula White, the pastor of the New Destiny Church, a non-denominational megachurch in Apoka, Florida. According to Manigault Newman, White had blocked her from her job of choice at the White House, head of the Office of Public Liaison.

She was then warned by a Trump family member to back off on account of Trump and White enjoying a special relationship. Not content to let the story end there, Manigault Newman asks whether Whites position as Trumps spiritual advisor had ever been missionary?

Disturbingly, but not surprisingly, we are also advised that Trump had initially asked to be sworn in over a copy of Art of the Deal, instead of the Bible.

The Apprentice veteran also chronicles the hobbies of her former colleagues. Among other things, Manigault Newman teases, Another highly visible assistant to the president might  be carrying on her affair right now. As for the identity of the presidential aide, Omarosa leaves the question of who that might be to the readers imagination, and medias follow-up.

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Unhinged also sprinkles a few crumbs for the Mueller investigation, and offers several substantive personnel critiques. Manigault Newman writes that the president asked her whether she approved of his firing of former FBI director James Comey, a question she sidestepped. Omarosa recalls Trump saying: Hey Omarosa, what do you think about Comey? I had to let him go, right? He could not be trusted; he was not loyal.

Manigault Newman offers self-absolution from the get-go. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Mike Pence, the vice president, Gen John Kelly, Trumps chief of staff, and Betsy DeVos, Trumps education secretary, come in for a barrage of criticism. Omarosa labels Pence the Stepford Veep, who beatifically gazes up at the president, even as he actively yearns to replace him. For added measure, Pence is tagged for being an open door for anonymous donors, aka the Kochs, who have since fallen from the presidents good graces.

As for DeVos, Omarosa lets the reader know that Trump refers to her as Ditzy DeVos, and that the ultra-wealthy DeVos was a mixture of arrogance, ignorance, and condescension. Faced with protests at Howard University  a historically black college and Omarosas alma matter  over the administrations positions on education and race, DeVos is quoted by Manigault Newman as saying: They dont get it. They dont have the capacity to understand what were trying to accomplish.

But it is Kelly who is the prime target for Manigault Newmans wrath, and it was Kelly who fired her. Unhinged depicts him as a chief of staff who went out of his way to dispatch her from the White House, and then went the added mile of pummeling her in the media. In rebuttal, Manigault Newman denies being escorted by Secret Service from the building and misusing government property.

In an effort to even the score, Omarosa also offers a purported quote of Kelly trashing Cowanda Jones-Johnson, the mother of Sgt La David Johnson, who was killed in an ambush in Niger. Apparently, Kelly had a problem with Jones-Johnson allowing Florida congresswoman Fredericka Wilson listen to Trumps call to Jones-Johnson.

Omarosa recounts Kelly saying: How dare she put the call on speaker? How dare she not just be grateful to receive a call at all? Apparently, knowing ones place is not just about protocol for Kelly.

As to be expected, Unhinged is self-reverential, with Omarosa, an ordained Baptist minister, offering self-absolution from the get-go. The almost mononymous author volunteers that Trump was not her first choice for president, and that she only signed up after an expected gig with the Clinton campaign fell through.

Apparently, back in 2013, Omarosa was working for a Clinton Pac, Ready for Hillary, and telling the world: All of us have to stick together and get behind this sister. As for joining the Trump campaign, Omarosa was courted by Michael Cohen, Corey Lewandowski, and Donald Trump, she says. Who could say no to an offer like that?

Looking back at her brief White House tenure, Omarosa writes: If I get hurt, if somebody cuts me, I bleed. But a marked lack of introspection permeates Unhinged.

Reliving the Access Hollywood tape episode, Omarosa explains that she could not abandon Trump on account of loyalty and her remit  to handle the campaigns ever-growing woman problem.

For the record, Trumps purported use of the N-Word, which made headlines last week, was never much of a secret. It had been reported in the press for years. Against this backdrop, Omarosa would be hard-pressed to claim ignorance. Or an epiphany.
LONDON (AP)  The U.S. ambassador in London is urging Britain to back President Donald Trump in pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement, saying a united front is the best way to persuade Tehran to change its course.

Ambassador Robert Wood Johnson wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that "we are asking global Britain to use its considerable diplomatic power and influence and join us as we lead a concerted global effort towards a genuinely comprehensive agreement."

Trump pulled out of the deal in May and last week began reinstating economic sanctions against Iran that were eased in exchange for concessions on Iran's nuclear program.

The U.K., France, Russia, China, Germany and the European Union, which also signed the deal, have criticized Trump's decision and continue to back the agreement with Iran.
A widely-condemned white nationalist rally in Washington drew fewer than two dozen supporters, and was drowned out by thousands of counter-protesters chanting "Nazis go home" and "No KKK in the USA".

Organisers of the "Unite the Right 2" rally had obtained a permit for up to 400 far-right demonstrators to gather outside the White House.

The event was intended to mark the first anniversary of a similar rally in Charlottesville, Virginia last year when neo-Nazis paraded through the streets and Heather Heyer, a counter-protester, died after a far-right sympathiser ploughed a car into a crowd.

Jason Kessler, the organiser of both the Charlottesville and Washington rallies, emerged form an underground train station in the capital carrying US flags and flanked by a handful of supporters.

They marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, escorted by police in riot gear.

Police escort 'Unite the Right' organiser Jason Kessler and protesters during a far-right rally at Lafayette Park opposite the White House Credit: AFP

There had been reports that David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, would speak at the event, but he did not attend.

In Lafayette Square, opposite the White House, counter-protesters included masked members of the Antifa anti-fascist group, along with a wide cross-section of Washington residents.

Jason Kessler, the organizer of the white rights protest, center, speaks to members of the media during the Unite the Right 2 rally in Washington, D.C Credit: Bloomberg

Mark Williams, 48, a Gulf War military veteran and counter-protester, told The Telegraph: "I believe the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. We killed Nazis before, I don't have a problem with doing it now."

He added: "I'm a little old to engage in that. But I'm not surprised so few of them turned up. They were scared, and they should have been."

Antifa and counter protestors to a far-right rally march during the Unite the Right 2 Rally in Washington, DC, Credit: AFP

Makia Green, of Black Lives Matter, told the counter-rally: "We know from experience that ignoring white nationalism doesn't work."

Kessler claimed his event was a "white civil rights rally" and had been about advocating "free speech for everybody". He added: "It was a precedent that had to be set."

As the far-right demonstrators left, counter-protesters attempted to block their path with barricades of bamboo and shopping trolleys. Police escorted the far-right group away in vans.

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Demonstrators opposed to a far-right rally washes the eyes of a friend hit by pepper spray used by police to disperse the crowds Credit: AFP

Later, there were some standoffs and minor scuffles between Antifa protesters in body armour and helmets, and police on motorcycles, in streets near the White House. President Donald Trump was away in New Jersey for the weekend.

Kessler had been denied a permit to hold a rally in Charlottesville again this year.

At a counter-protest there Heather Heyer's mother, Susan Bro, asked the crowd to raise their fists in solidarity, and laid flowers at a memorial.

She said the United States had a "huge racial problem" and still "so much healing to do".
German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a news conference in Budapest August 21, 2007. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh(HUNGARY)

Christian Hacke

Security, Europe

A countrys crisis diplomacy can only be successful when it is backed by hard military power.

Why Germany Should Get the Bomb

Considering the politics of Donald Trump, Germany can no longer rely on the protection of the United States. According to political scientist Christian Hacke, Berlin has no other choice: Germany must become a nuclear power.

***

The U.S. presidents semi-authoritarian attitude and his willingness to make friends with the enemies of democracy has exacerbated doubts about whether the West is at risk of breaking up.

President Donald Trump treats once valued allies with scorn and castigates them in public. Under the battle cry America first, allies have suddenly become a burden. President Trump is trampling on the core Western values and interests and in so doing, he is gambling away the role of the United States as the leading power of the West. Instead he is chumming up with dictators and squandering Americas reputation as a responsible global power. He is giving up crucial influence, which could lead to alarming shifts of power to the detriment of the free world.

A look in the history books, such as the period between the two world wars, shows that isolationism and protectionism are typical U.S. characteristics. In this respect, the liberal internationalism pursued by the United States during the Cold War can be the seen as an aberration. Accordingly, Trump is very much in tune with popular traditions. So, in a sense what he is doing is nothing new, but he has revolutionized U.S. foreign policy like no other president since the Second World War: friends become enemies while the red carpet is being rolled out to the enemies of democracy.

Trump represents an America that has always been there, but that we Europeans and especially we Germans have never known and whose very existence we have deliberately suppressed: This America prefers to keep the world at arms length and feels most comfortable without the burden of international responsibility.

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This rapid change in U.S. foreign policy is hitting allies, especially Germany, hard. For more than sixty years, the Federal Republic was a favored European ally, but today it holds the dubious honor of being Trumps personal enemy number one. Such an about-face is unprecedented in the modern history of America. Germany policy explains why many Germans still seem to be in shock. Unsurprisingly, Trumps incessant degradations and constant haranguing of Germany have led to a correspondingly angry backlash.

The chancellor handles Trumps verbal abuse calmly; however, Germanys moralizing arrogance is no substitute for a viable political strategy. In this case Germany is clearly sitting at the shorter end of the lever, since it needs the United States more than vice versa. The U.S. president is right when he complains about decades of lackluster German defense spending. Thus, is it really so surprising that Washington now regards Berlin as an ungrateful freeloader, who refuses to show military solidarity when it gets dangerous?

Germany is not just being criticized for its inadequate defense contribution within the NATO framework, but also because of the dire state of the German Bundeswehr. Nothing flies, nothing floats, and nothing runs in the German military. The German armed forces appear incapable of defending the country (much less anyone else) and reforms remain half-hearted. Yet, at the same time, Germanys political elites do not just content themselves with working toward non-proliferation, but emphatically support the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Germany and the Global Zero campaign.

This mirrors the publics disinterest in defense policy and reflects a provincial sentiment that regards peace as the natural state of world politics. The occurrence of international crises is met by momentary alarmism, but soon enough public sentiment soon returns to indifference. Thus, Berlins strategy can best be described as close your eyes and hope for the best.

Yet, basing Germanys security policy on hope alone could prove fatalhistory offers numerous examples! But no, in Germanythe island of the blessedwhen it comes to security one wins votes by engaging in naive idealism. Not just to satisfy the pacifist and increasingly anti-American mood of the general population, but to stoke it even further, now that gets you the votes! Never mind that this puts Germanys security at risk and fosters anti-Americanism.

Donald Trumps narcissistic behavior and abrasive style plays right into the hands of this development. However, in their outrage they overlook that in the United States, Trumps politics have been better received than many Germans would care to admit.

His populist diplomacy based on the pattern of pursuing friendship with powerful authoritarian leaders and distancing America from its useless allies is more popular in the United States than many Europeans suspect. The American people are politically exhausted after seventeen years of unsuccessful anti-terror war. However, this perspective is lost in the one-sided Trump bashing taking place in Germany. Particularly concerning is that the dramatic security policy implications this has for Germany are being completely disregarded.

After all, does anyone still believe that an inadequate security policy and Trump bashing are appropriate in times of revolutionary changes in the world? Instead, should we not be concerned that Germanys nuclear naivete is playing right into Trumps Germany bashing, further weakening the United States nuclear deterrence guarantee?

1. First of all, Berlin should try to accommodate the United States in terms of its security policy: Germanys insufficient defense spending must be increased quickly and substantially. The half-hearted approach we have seen so far is not enough.

2. Germany must also improve the quality of its armed forces and, if necessary, modernize them.

3. Germany must cultivate an ambitious strategic culture; to do this Berlin must develop the will and the ability to think and to act in military-strategic terms. The emergence of new challenges has made the ability to think in geopolitical terms, such as how to safeguard Germanys trade interests, much more pressing. A national defense policy, which is based on the transatlantic alliance but does not hide behind it, has become imperative.

4. The emerging nuclear threats of the twenty-first century should not be trivialized as relics of the Cold War but must be resolved with Germanys active and constructive participation.

5. Germanys new role as enemy number one of the United States president forces it to radically reconsider it security policy.

In this delicate security situation, the following alternatives are available to Germany:

1. Berlin continues to muddle through and hope for better times after Trump is gone. However, if Germany chooses to follow this path the U.S. security guarantee will become less and less credible by the day. President Trumps recent statements regarding NATO member Montenegro have further reinforced these doubts. Particularly Germany, as President Trumps new enemy, can no longer count on U.S. support. This forces us into a disturbing conclusion: for the first time since 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany is without the protection of the U.S. nuclear shield. Accordingly, in case of a serious crisis, Germany would be defenseless! Yet, who talks about this issue? Who presents a well-reasoned argument about possible consequences? Clearly, the German security debate is in need of more intellectual and material contributions. In order to again convince the United States that both NATO, as well as its member state Germany, are worth defending, Germany must think and act, especially in regard to nuclear deterrence, with a view toward the future.

2. As a replacement for an increasingly uncertain U.S. nuclear guarantee, a European nuclear force is now being discussed in Berlin. Either a collaborative European nuclear power is to be created, or France and/or Britain are supposed to guarantee continued nuclear deterrence for Germany. Germany could finance such a European nuclear power by agreeing to co-finance British and/or French nuclear weapons projects if, in return, the two powers agree to guarantee Germanys safety with an extended nuclear deterrent. But is such a proposal convincing?

Europe has now been waiting in vain for a common defense policy for seventy years. Even in the future, differing national interests will ensure that such a policy will remain elusive, particularly, since neither France nor Great Britain is inclined to guarantee Germanys security with their respective (national) nuclear arsenals. Accordingly, a French or British nuclear shield most likely does not present a viable alternative to assure Germanys safety. After all, Charles de Gaulles maxim of nuclear power being hard to share does not just apply to France. In this, too, it seems Berlin is chasing an illusion.

3. Since the U.S. nuclear guarantee has become increasingly doubtful and a common European deterrent does not seem to be forthcoming, only one possible conclusion can be drawn: in a serious crisis the only one Germany can truly rely on is itself. After all, extended deterrence has one major weakness: under the current circumstances, non-nuclear allies like Germany can no longer be certain that an allied nuclear power would still be willing to guarantee their safety in the event of a crisis. Thus, our attention turns to the elephant in the room, which nobody in Germany wants to acknowledge: What about Germany as a nuclear power?

In the past, Germany was able to eschew weapons of mass destruction because its safety was guaranteed by others, a situation which today seems rather more dubious. Consequently, the principle of Pacta sunt servanda must now be followed by Rebus sic stantibus. Logically, the emergence of new crises and structural changes must now also lead to a review of the cornerstones of German defense policy.

However, because of political correctness, lack of civil courage, and lack of military-strategic considerations, the nuclear component of our safety is ignored. Instead, the decision-makers in Berlin have adopted a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil approach. Additionally, ill-considered decisions such as the suspension of compulsory military service must also be reviewed: the recent announcement that foreigners are now to be recruited into the Bundeswehr, due to a lack of applicants, is more than troubling. Is the Bundeswehr to become a pseudo-European foreign legion because of Germanys unwillingness to defend itself? In light of Germanys controversial energy transition, the phase-out of nuclear power must also be reviewed. Both of these decisions have permanently weakened the morale, societal anchoring, and defense capacity of the armed forces as well as eroded Germanys role model function as a civilian nuclear power.

In summary: The foreseeable loss of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, the lack of a European nuclear deterrent, the erosion of Western institutions like NATO and the European Union, as well as Germanys inadequate defense culture call for a complete reassessment of Germanys defense policy. This also begs the question: under which circumstances and at what cost could Europes central country become a nuclear power?

The personnel and structural changes in the United States and in the world are forcing Germany to make difficult choices, from which decision-makers in government and society can no longer shrink. The nuclearization of the twenty-first century is threatening to make Germany defenseless. Rather than engaging in disarmament, the world is threatened with the proliferation of nuclear dictatorships based on the model of North Korea. Thus, Germany must arm itself against this threat.

Moreover, Germany as a democratic nuclear power would strengthen the security of the West. These questions must be discussed without hysteria; there is no need for alarmism. Instead, the debate should focus on how to ensure Germanys long-term security in an increasingly confusing world. Considering the general rise of national egoism, a country like Germany must look toward its own security. Ideally, every potential aggressor must be deterred by nuclear power. If the crises of the past years have taught us one thing, it is that the impossible can become a reality very quickly.

Yet, above all nuclear weapons have a political function, namely to protect a country from blackmail in crisis situations. A countrys crisis diplomacy can only be successful when it is backed by hard military power. After all, the annexation of Crimea would probably not have occurred if NATO had possessed a credible deterrent capacity or if Russia could have been deterred by escalation dominance. Therefore, Germany must also prepare itself for this eventuality.

It is all well and good to call on the Europeans to finally take their fate into their own hands, but experience has eroded confidence in the ability of the Europeans to follow a common security policy.

Finally, the ritualized idealization of European integration and the demonization of national interest has led the European Union into a dead end and deep crisis. Consequently, striking a balance between community interests and national considerations is long overdue, especially in Germany. In the face of new transatlantic uncertainties and potential confrontations, national defense based on an independent nuclear deterrence capacity must be given priority. As the French say Gouverner cest prevoirthe art of government is based on foresight. Therefore, we must not content ourselves with high-handed criticism of Trump; instead, we must arm ourselves militarily, against all sides and by any means necessary. Following such a realistic, forward-looking policy, Germany will one day be able to handle crises confidently and strengthen the free world.

Christian Hacke, born in 1943, is one of the most renowned political scientists in Germany. From 1980 to 2000 Hacke was a Professor at the University of the German Armed Forces, now Helmut Schmidt University, in Hamburg. From 2000 to 2008 he succeeded Hans-Peter Schwarz and Karl Dietrich Bracher as a Professor at the University of Bonn.

This article originally appeared in Die Welte and was translated from German by Michael Trinkwalder.

Image: German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a news conference in Budapest August 21, 2007. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh(HUNGARY)

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Paris (AFP) - The United Nations has called for a "credible" investigation into an airstrike that killed at least 29 children in Yemen, but experts and aid groups doubt that a probe announced by the Saudi-led coalition bombing the country will yield results.

The raid last Thursday hit a bus at a crowded market in northern Yemen, killing the 29 children and injuring around 50 other people, according to a toll from the International Committee for the Red Cross.

The coalition, which includes the United Arab Emirates, announced afterwards that it had ordered an investigation into the strike in Saada which it claimed initially had targeted Huthi rebel combatants.

After a meeting last Friday, the UN Security Council called for a "credible" probe but it did not request an independent investigation -- as demanded by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Commenting on the coalition investigation, James Dorsey, a Middle East specialist at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said that "unsupervised investigations of oneself are always problematic."

"Add to this that Saudi Arabias record in such investigations, its lack of transparency, and human rights record offers little reason to have confidence in an investigation that it controls," he added.

The coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognised government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after Iran-backed Huthi rebels drove him out of the capital Sanaa.

The war has left around 10,000 people dead, the vast majority of them civilians, and caused the world's worst humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations.

The coalition has been repeatedly blamed for bombing civilians, including during a strike on a wedding hall in the town of Mokha in September 2015, where 131 people died. The alliance denied responsibility.

In October 2016, a coalition air strike at a funeral in Sanaa killed 140 people.

Story continues

The coalition, armed with Western-made aircraft and other weapons, has admitted a small number of mistakes, but accuses the rebels of using civilians as human shields.

"An airstrike on a bus full of schoolboys appears to be a flagrant violation of the rules of war, but in the absence of an independent, professional investigation we cannot say for sure," Sheila Carapico, a professor of international studies at the US-based University of Richmond, told AFP on Monday.

"Unfortunately, the Saudi military is likely to resist formal outside examination of the evidence, and their main weapons suppliers in the UK and the US seem reluctant as well," she added.

"The kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with no record or experience in this kind of investigation, almost always issues blanket denials."

- "Tres improbable" -

Major Western countries have condemned the air strikes, but they remain political and military backers of Saudi Arabia, which is a regional ally and spends billions of dollars on arms from the United States, Britain and France.

During US-led air campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria since 2001, Western forces occasionally admitted "collateral damage" when civilians were killed unintentionally.

But they too resisted independent investigations into the circumstances of major errors.

"The sad truth is the Saudis have been given a chance to investigate themselves and the results are laughable," said Human Rights Watch's deputy UN director Akshaya Kumar last Friday.

The coalition initially called the strike on the school bus a "legitimate military action" in response to a rebel missile attack on Saudi Arabia's southern Jizan city a day earlier.

But as international media photographed dazed and bloodied children flooding into hospitals, it was forced to concede to an investigation.

The bombing raid, part of a military intervention that reflects Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's increasingly assertive foreign policy, follows the kingdom's diplomatic rupture with Canada last week.

Saudi Arabia expelled Canada's ambassador, recalled its own envoy and froze all new trade and investments after Ottawa publicly demanded the "immediate release" of rights campaigners jailed in the kingdom.

The Saudi reaction could impinge on the kingdom's efforts to attract badly needed foreign investment to fund its ambitious reform plan to pivot the economy away from oil, experts say.
A demolition order was given to the family of Mohammad Tareq Yousef, 17, the terrorist who committed the stabbing attack in the settlement of Adam last month.

IDF forces gave the order to the terrorist's family in the West Bank town of Kobar on Monday.
Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Monday a four-way Syria summit "is planned in the upcoming future", with the leaders of Russia, France, Turkey and Germany attending.

It said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will visit Ankara on Monday and Tuesday to discuss the four-way meeting with his Turkish counterpart.
The Syrian news agency SANA reported that two aircraft were shot down after they tried to attack the base of the Russian forces in Latakia, Syria.

No damage was caused and no injuries were reported.
Ahead of Tuesday's trial of Islam Yusuf Hamidthe terrorist who killed Staff Sgt. Ronen Lubarsky two months ago, the Duvdevan soldiers father, Vladimir Lubarsky, asked the trials judges to give the defendant a death penalty.

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Staff Sgt. Ronen Lubarsky, a 20-year-old Rehovot resident, was a member of the army's elite Duvdevan Unit and was acting as part of the force that was serving an arrest warrant in the al-Am'ari refugee camp near Ramallah. An inquiry into the incident revealed that a large marble slab hit his head.

Vladimir Lubarsky (Photo: Amit Hoover)

After receiving emergency medical attention in the field, Staff Sgt. Lubarsky was taken to the hospital and hospitalized in its intensive care unit, where he was later pronounced dead.

Following the attack, soldiers from the IDF's elite Duvdevan unit raided a Refugee Camp in the late morning hours and pulled the terrorist who killed their friend Ronen, out of bed. The terrorist was arrested and brought to Israel to stand trial.

The terrorist Hamid, who was hiding in a different house in the crowded and violent refugee camp, has already served five years in Israeli prison for his involvement in a Hamas-led shooting attack.

Hamid comes from a family of Hamas terrorists behind several attacks that killed Israelis in the past.

President Reuven Rivlin with Ronen's parents (Photo: Gov. Press Office)

Four of his brothers, also Hamas members, are serving life sentences for their involvement in murderous terror attacks during the second intifada, including the 2002 Seafood Market attack in Tel Aviv that claimed the lives of three Israelis.

One of the brothers is serving a life sentence for the 1994 shooting of Shin Bet operative Noam Cohen.

Half of the Hamid family is affiliated with Hamas and the other with Fatah. Hamid's elder brother is one of the founders of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and the right hand of Marwan Barghouti.

None of the Hamid brothers who were sentenced to life had been released in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal.

Ronen's father at his son's funeral (Photo: Amit Shabi)

In a letter addressed to government ministers, which he intends to read before the judges, Ronen's father writes: "Let us restore deterrence and save lives, as my late son did and our soldiers keep on doing day after day, night after night."

"The trial of my son's murderer must be the first in a series of steps that will change reality and give hope to the people of Israel," he stressed.

"Five brothers of the terrorist who murdered Ronen committed terrorist attacks, in which nine people were murdered. Four brothers were sentenced to cumulative life sentences and the fifth brother was killed during his arrest," Lubarsky added.

"It is possible that if all five brothers were sentenced to death, Ronen's life would have been spared. Only the death penalty guarantees that terrorists will not return to the cycle of terrorism. "

Ronen Lubarsky, right

Matan Peleg, CEO of right-wing organization Im Tirtzu, who accompanies the Lubarsky family together with the "Choosing Life" forum of beraved families explained on Sunday why he supports the father's request.

"The circle of terror must be cut off, and only real deterrence can do so. Thus, giving terrorists the death penalty and banishing terrorists' family members are essentially life-saving measures."
Istanbul prosecutor's office launched an investigation into individuals suspected of involved in actions that threaten Turkey's economic security, private broadcaster CNN Turk said on Monday.

Turkey was targeted by an economic attack, the prosecutor's office said and pledged to take legal action against all written and visual news as well as social media accounts which it deemed to serve towards the purpose of this attack.
Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon said on Monday that the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC or "Kan" in Hebrew) would make a grave mistake if it gives up on hosting the Eurovision Song Contest because of its refusal to transfer 12 million euro as a guarantee to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

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"The corporation has made a grave mistake. It has to manage its affairs like any other government body. Its attempts to tie the situation to politics are erroneous. They are able to transfer the sum in a minute. If they do not transfer the guarantee, they will make a grave mistake, which will be contrary to the rules and regulations," stressed Kahlon in an interview with Ynet.

The Finance Minister went on to say that there is no justifiable reason for 2019 Eurovision not to be held in Israel.

Moshe Kahlon (Meshi Ben Ami)

"There is no reason why the contest shouldnt be held in Israel. The situation is a result of a professional fight between those in the IPBC and the treasury  the IPBC is a government body, it is financed by the taxpayers' money and it has to operate according to the rules and regulations," he concluded.

The IPBC issued an immediate statement addressing Kahlons remarks.

"We have been saying all along that the IPBC is unable to foot the bill of the production cost. If the government decides to finance it, the Eurovision will be held in Israel. The IPBC once again urges the decision makers to sit down and reach an agreement over budget with the treasury, read the official statement.

Eurovision winner Netta Barzilai and Prime Minister Netanyahu (Photo: Haim Zach/GPO)

"The finance minister also insisted he has no intentions of interfering in the affairs of the IPBC, suggesting the company is capable of solving the crisis on their own.

"There is no reason for intervention  They need to do what everyone else does, what's the story here? Suspect my commitment? I almost broke up the coalition and put my political career on the line in order for IPBC to be established  The only politicians in this story are the IPBC people. Whether the Eurovision will be held in Israel depends only on the IPBC, and there is no one stopping them. If the IPBC does not want to host it, the Eurovision will not happen, he emphasized.

The production cost of the Eurovision in Israel is estimated at 35 million euro, and the IPBC was supposed to transfer the guarantee to the EBU by August 1.

The EBU has agreed to give the IPBC an extension until August 14, but the issue of where the money will come from has not yet been resolved.

Israel won the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest with Netta Barzilai's "Toy," granting it the right to host next year's competition.

But despite his enthusiasm over the win, the prime minister refuses to allocate a budget for the competition, arguing the money should come from the IPBC's annual budget.

"The prime minister and the finance minister have decided a body budgeted at the enormous amount of NIS 750 million at the expense of the public can find the funds for a guarantee for the Eurovision. The IPBC is being wasteful and trying to sabotage the Eurovision," a source close to Netanyahu said.

The IPBC, meanwhile, claims it would not be able to take the money out of its own budget unless it fires 200 employees or cuts down on original productions.

The IPBC explained that its budget is "completely transparent and covers, by law, diverse activity in three TV channels, nine radio stations and additional online activity."

The finance minister also addressed the prime ministers statement on Sunday suggesting that he will announce a snap election if a solution to the IDF Draft Law is not found.

"I do not see how this problem can be solved. Litzman says, 'If you do not change it, I will resign.' Lieberman says, If you change it, I will resign. I believe both of them, which is why I believe that the Knesset will be dispeerd at the beginning of a winter session.

"I think that politically, no one wants snap elections  Everyone would have prefered to drag this out until the next term ... Politically  I am committed to the coalition agreements. I am comfortable, I know what I signed and what I will approve, Kahlon concluded.
The parole board accepted Stas Misezhnikov's request for early release on Monday.

Misezhnikov, a former Minister of Tourism (Yisrael Beiteinu) is currently serving his sentence in Hermon Prison.

Following the decision to reduce his sentence by one third, he is expected to be released in early September.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banned holding any direct talks with the United States, state TV reported, rejecting an offer last month by US President Donald Trump for talks with no preconditions with Tehran.

"I ban holding any talks with America ... America never remains loyal to its promises in talks ... just gives empty words ... and never retreats from its goals for talks," Khamenei was quoted as saying by TV.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday ruled out the possibility of any military confrontation with the United States, Iranian state TV reported.

"Recently, American officials have been talking blatantly about Iran ... they are talking about war and negotiations ... They are exaggerating about possibility of a war with Iran. There will be no war ... We have never started a war and they will not confront Iran militarily," Iran's top authority said in a televised speech
The Israel Prison Service parole board decided on Monday to cut a prison sentence of former Yisrael Beytenu MK Stas Misezhnikov by a third, after the former tourism minister served eight out of 15 months he was sentenced to.

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The committee convened in Hermon Prison to approve the decision despite the opposition of the State Prosecutor's Office. The decision contains a provision, according to which, the prosecution would be able to request an additional hearing if a final report of those in charge of the procedure will be negative.

Misezhnikov was convicted on corruption charges, and has been serving his sentence since December 2017.

Stas Misezhnikov (Photo: Avihu Shapira)

He was convicted in a plea bargain for fraud and breach of trust but more serious charges as as bribery and money laundering were dropped.

Miseznikov confessed that his actions, during his term as the tourism minister, represented a serious conflict of interest. He admitted that he personally campaigned to have the Ministry of Tourism sponsor the Eilat Student Festival in 2010 with a budget of around NIS 1 million. He also recommended that the events organizers hire his alleged girlfriend, Julia Roth, as a producer.

He also admitted that he had demanded from the Director General of the Ministry of Tourism constant updates regarding the progress of the contracts approval.

Misezhnikov did not reveal to the ministrys employees the extent of the relationship between him and Roth and the fact that she was hired to produce the event only after his recommendation.
Yechiel Isakov has been identified as the former employee of cyber surveillance company NSO Group who has been charged with stealing intellectual property and trying to sell it for $50 million over the Darknet in a manner that could harm state security, Israel's Justice Ministry said.

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Isakov, 38, was a senior programmer with access to the company's servers and proprietary tools, a ministry statement said.

The ministry said the accused, whose identity was not originally published, was called in for a hearing by NSO on April 24 before his dismissal, after which he downloaded software and information worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

(Photo: Orel Cohen)

The defendant connected a portable storage device to the company's servers and downloaded the software, products and information, including the source code of the software, while circumventing the protection systems in the company's computers, according to his indictment. The value of the company's products stolen by the defendant is estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars.

After copying the transcripts, Isakov then posing as a hacker on the darknet and contaced an unidentified individual, also posing as a hacker. Isakov then attempted to sell the information for $50 million in encrypted, untraceable virtual currency, the idictment added.

The potential buyer alerted NSO, which called in the police who arrested Isakov on June 5, the ministry said.

NSO, which has 500 employees and a valuation of at least $900 million, said that no intellectual property or company materials were shared with any third party or otherwise leaked and no customer data or information was compromised.

NSO building (Photo: Orel Cohen)

The company is best known as a supplier of mobile surveillance tools to governments and law enforcement agencies. The company was in the spotlight last year amid allegations that the Mexican government had used its Pegasus mobile spyware to target private citizens.

The Justice Ministry said that, according to testimony gathered in the case, the ex-employee's alleged actions "endangered NSO and could have led to its collapse" and also posed a threat to state security.
Four days of ferocious fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban over a key provincial capital has claimed the lives of about 100 Afghan policemen and soldiers and at least 20 civilians, the defense minister said Monday.

The staggering numbers provided by Gen. Tareq Shah Bahrami were the first official casualty toll since the Taliban launched a massive assault on Ghazni, the capital of Ghazni province, last Friday.

The multi-pronged assault overwhelmed the city's defenses and allowed insurgents to capture several parts of it. It was a major show of force by the Taliban, who infiltrated deep into this strategic city barely 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital, Kabul.

The United States has sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces.
Dozens of refugees return to Syria on Monday as part of a new departure plan coordinated by the authorities of Beirut and Damascus, said Lebanese security forces.

In Lebanon, calls are mounting for refugees to return to their country since the Damascus regime triumphed over the rebels and jihadists and regained control of vast areas of the war-torn country.
Militants behind an attack on Jordanian police supported Islamic State and investigations had revealed plans for more attacks on security and civilian targets, Jordan's interior minister said on Monday.

Jordanian police said on Saturday a homemade explosive device planted near a police van killed a policeman and injured six others the day before.

The police vehicle had been maintaining security near a music festival in the majority Christian town of Fuhais, near the capital Amman and 15 kilometres (about 10 miles) from the hillside city of Salt.

In a huge security operation, Jordanian forces laid siege to a building in a residential part of Salt on Saturday night in search of those responsible for the bomb attack.
Iran's supreme leader said Monday that his country will neither go to war nor enter into negotiations with the United States as the Trump administration restores sanctions lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.

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In remarks carried by state television, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said "along with sanctions, Americans have recently raised two more options, war and talks ... War will not happen and we will not enter talks."

President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from Iran's nuclear deal with world powers in May and last week the US began restoring sanctions, exacerbating a financial crisis in Iran that has sent its currency tumbling. Trump has suggested he would be willing to hold talks with Iranian leaders, but that would be impossible without permission from Khamenei, who has the final say on all major policies.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Photo: AFP)

"Negotiations with the US would definitely harm us and they are forbidden. America's withdrawal from the nuclear deal is a clear proof that America cannot be trusted," state TV quoted Khamenei as telling a gathering attended by thousands of Iranians.

"I ban holding any talks with America ... America never remains loyal to its promises in talks," said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on policy in the Islamic Republic.

"More than the sanctions, economic mismanagement (by the government) is putting pressure on ordinary Iranians... I do not call it betrayal but a huge mistake in management," state TV quoted Khamenei as saying.

Khamenei meanwhile blamed the monetary crisis on President Hassan Rouhani's administration, saying that "With better management and more efficient planning we can resist the sanctions and overcome them."

Recently, U.S. officials have been talking blatantly about us. Beside sanctions, they are talking about war and negotiations. In this regard, let me say a few words to the people: THERE WILL BE NO WAR, NOR WILL WE NEGOTIATE WITH THE U.S..  Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) August 13, 2018

The sanctions target Iran's trade in gold and other precious metals, its purchases of US dollars and its car industry.

European countries, which still back the 2015 deal, fear Trump's moves will undermine Rouhani and strengthen the hand of his hardline rivals in the clerical establishment.

The rial has lost about half of its value since April in anticipation of the renewed US sanctions, driven mainly by heavy demand for dollars among ordinary Iranians trying to protect their savings.

Iranian officials have blamed "enemies" for the fall of the currency and a rapid rise in the price of gold coins, and more than 60 people, including several officials, have been arrested on charges that carry the death penalty.

"The corrupt people (officials) should be punished firmly," Khamenei said on Monday.

Showcasing a new missile

Also on Monday, Iran said it launched a production line for a radar-evading, short-range missile. Defense Minister Gen. Amir Hatami told state TV the surface-to-surface missile, dubbed Fateh-e Mobin, or Bright Conqueror, was effective in all weather conditions.

"Our will to enhance our defence power in all fields will increase if the pressure mounts on Iran," Hatami said after unveiling the "fully home-made precision-guided" missile.

Unveiling the new missile

X

He did not discuss the range of the missile, but older versions like the Fateh-313 have a range of some 500 kilometers (300 miles). Iran is believed to have long-range missiles with a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles), which are capable of reaching US bases in the region and Israel.

Trump has said Iran must also stop meddling in conflicts in Syria and Yemen, but Foreign Minister Javad Zarif struck a defiant tone on Monday, telling Qatar's al Jazeera TV: "Iran will not change its policies in the region because of US sanctions and threats."

Defense Minister Gen. Amir Hatami unveiling new Fateh-e Mobin ballistic missile

Iran often announces military achievements that cannot be independently verified.
The IDF came out in defense on Monday of former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan after a report on Sunday claimed that bereaved families wrote a letter to Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman urging him to drop him from the list of four candidates.

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According to the report broadcast on Channel 2 News, families of fallen soldiers belonging to the Choose Life forum told Lieberman that it would be inappropriate to appoint Golan to replace incumbent Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, whose term will soon expire, due to a string of outrageous comments he has made in the past.

Maj. Gen. Yair Golan has served in the IDF for 38 years in every military sphere and he has made a big contribution to the security of Israel, the IDF wrote in a rare Twitter post responding to the news report.

Staff Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

The IDFs achievements in the war on terror under his command speak for themselves. The portrayal of Maj. Gen. Golan as someone who has not acted or will not act against terrorists is out of touch with reality, the tweet continued.

Every baseless attempt to besmirch the good name of a commander in the IDF and his operational contributions is not appropriate.

Earlier on Monday, Lieberman addressed the statements being made against Golan. Maj. Gen. Yair Golan is a wonderful officer and a brave commander who has dedicated his life to the security of the State of Israel, the defense minister wrote on Twitter following the news report.

The slander campaign that has been waged against him in recent days is inappropriate, and it will have no influence on the outcome on the process of appointing the chief of staff, he added.

Golan found himself in cold water in 2016 when he sparked controversy in Israel during a speech to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day in which he appeared to have drawn a comparison between current Israeli sentiment and that of Europe in the 1930s, which led to the Holocaust.

The Holocaust must lead us to think about our public life, and more importantly, it must lead everyone who can, not merely those who want, to carry public responsibility. If there is something that frightens me about the memory of the Holocaust, it is seeing the abhorrent processes that took place in Europe, and Germany in particular, some 70, 80 or 90 years ago, and finding manifestations of these processes here among us in 2016, Golan said

Defense Minister Lieberman and Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot (Photo: Ariel Harmoni/Defense Ministry)

Amid the backlash, Golans speech drawing a harsh public rebuke by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who slammed the former chief of staffs comments as infuriating.

The remarks are fundamentally incorrect. They should not have been made at any time, much less now. They do an injustice to Israeli society and belittle the Holocaust. The deputy chief of staff is an outstanding officer, but his remarks on this issue were utterly mistaken and unacceptable to me, Netanyahu said

Following scathing criticism of Golan's comments from Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett, who was present in the audience, and others, the IDF Spokespersons Unit released a statement seeking to clarify Golans remarks.

The deputy chief of staff would like to clarify that he had no intention to compare the IDF and the State of Israel to the process that took place in Germany 70 years ago. The absurd comparison is entirely without foundation, and there was no intention to draw such parallels or to criticize the state's leadership. The IDF is a moral army which safeguards the purity of arms and human life, the statement said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened the second meeting on Monday of the Ministerial Committee on Druze, Circassian and Minority Community Members who serve in the Security Forces Affairs, the establishment of which was decided upon last week.

Among the issues discussed were the existing impediments to the implementation of Cabinet decision #959 regarding the "2016-19 Development Plan for Strengthening the Druze and Circassian Towns and Villages," a GPO press statement said

Prime Minister Netanyahu instructed the PMO director general to meet with Druze and Circassian local council heads and with the director generals of the relevant ministries and submit to the committee feasible steps to remove the impediments especially regarding housing and employment.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a clandestine meeting at the end of May with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, according to a foreign diplomatic source.

The Prime Ministers Office did not immediately comment on the report.
The Israeli Ministry of Health warned the public on Monday against swimming in streams in the Golan Heights after it emereged that almost 30 people caught a bacterial infection after bathing in the waters.

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So far, 27 people who have visited Yehudiya, Zaki, Zavitan and Meshishim streams since July 1 have caught the infection known as Leptospirosis, with half of them still hospitalized.

Hundreds more who visited the streams are expected to be examined, the ministry said.

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority announced that the streams suspected of being infected are closed to visitors until further notice due to Ministry of Health order.

Other streams in northern Israel have been given the all clear and remain open to visitors, the Nature and Parks Authority said, adding that the public is invited to come and enjoy parks. The parks authority will remain in contact with relevant ministries, follow their orders and monitor water quality.

Zavitan stream in the Golan Heights (Photo: Israel Bardugo)

As of Sunday, 8 patients had arrived at the Ziv Medical Center in Safed, another 8 at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, 4 at the Poriya Baruch Padeh Medical Center in Tiberias, and one at both Rambam Medical Center in Haifa and HaEmek Medical Center in Afula.

Another four patients arrived at the Carmel Medical Center after bathing in the Golan Heights streams.

A 19-year-old man from Kfar Hasidim and a 25-year-old woman from Ramat Yishay were hospitalized after bathing in Meshushim pool.

The man was treated and discharged while the woman was still said to have been suffering from abdominal painone of the symptoms of the infectionand remains under supervision.

The other two at the Carmel Medical Center also said they had bathed in one of the affected streams a week ago and had begun suffering symptoms of Leptospirosis in the last few days.

Yuval Maskin, who contracted Leptospirosis (Photo: Yishai Porat)

Prof. Michal Hovers, who runs the infectious diseases unit in Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba, explained how Leptospirosis infects the streams and described its main symptoms.

"Animals infected the waters and streams, and people who either bathe there or come into contact with mice urine in outdoor habitats can catch this infection," she said in an interview with Ynet.

"Symptoms can be mild in some cases but in others the infection can become severe and lead to kidney and liver failure, she continued.

Prof. Hovers added that symptoms include fever, flu-like symptoms and sometimes corneal infections but emphasized that not all symptoms require admission to hospital.

Mild cases can heal without intervention, and thus not everyone who bathed in the streams and who has a fever has to rush to the hospital," she noted.

"However, if high temperatures persist and someone doesn't feel well, it is better to go and get a blood test in order to ensure that liver and kidney functions are in order, and take antibiotics if needed, she explained.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a clandestine meeting in May with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, according to a foreign diplomatic source.

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The Prime Ministers Office did not immediately comment on the report.

According to Channel 10 News, the meeting took place on May 22 when Netanyahu flew with a small delegation of advisors and security guards.

He stayed in Egypt for a few hours and participated in the breaking of the Ramadan fast before returning to Israel late at night.

The Channel 10 report also claimed that government ministers were not aware of the surreptitious meeting.

PM Netanyahu with President al-Sisi in 2017 (:  , ")

Egypt has played a critical role in recent months in a bid to broker a lasting ceasefire between Israel and Hamas as tensions threaten to thrust the two warring sides into yet another military conflict.

A Palestinian official involved in the diplomatic channels involving Israel, Hamas and Egypt said that the discussions, dubbed quiet on condition of quiet, were held between Netanyahu and al-Sisi in Cairo.

In September 2017, the two leaders met in New York in what was their first public meeting since al-Sis took office in 2014.

The two leaders had already had secret meetings and maintain close ties that are often kept under wraps.

During their 2017 talks, Netanyahu and al-Sisi discussed ways to renew peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

A statement from Netanyahu's office at the time said the meeting, held at the Palace Hotel where al-Sisi is staying while in New York, was "comprehensive" and dealt with the "problems in the region."

According to a statement from al-Sisi's office, the Egyptian president stressed the importance of renewing peace talks in order to reach a just solution based on the idea of two states for two peoples.
The United Nations says at least 134 people, including many children, were killed over the weekend in northern Syria.

UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York on Monday that at least 59 civilians, including 17 children, were killed when a weapons and ammunition depot exploded in a residential building near the town of Sarmada.

A Syrian search-and-rescue group put the total death toll from the blast at 67. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave a slightly higher death toll, saying 69 died, including 17 children. The Observatory says 52 of the victims were civilians; the rest were militants or couldn't be identified.

Citing the UN children's agency, Haq said another 28 children were killed over the last 36 hours in other incidents. He says three UNICEF-supported health facilities were attacked and two are now out of service
Egypt's president said on Monday Cairo was deeply concerned about security in the Red Sea following an attack by Yemen's Houthis on two oil tankers that forced Saudi Arabia to suspend crude shipments temporarily through the strait of Bab al-Mandab.

Speaking at a joint press conference with his Yemeni counterpart, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi also said Cairo was committed to helping Yemen regain its security after more than three years of war that has killed thousands of people.
After two days of quiet at the Gaza border, with no mortars or incendiary balloons fired at Israel, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman will discuss easing restrictions on Gaza with IDF and defence officials on Tuesday.

Among restrictions to be eased are enlarging the Gaza fishing perimeter and opening Kerem Shalom border crossing.
A 2015 report carried out by the Military Investigative Police identified a string of mistakes made by the Israel Air Force, the Israel Navy and the IDFs intelligence branch prior to an attack that led to the killing of four Palestinian children in an airstrike launched on a Gaza beach during Operation Protective Edge in 2014.

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According to an article published at the beginning of the week on the American website The Intercept, Israel compiled a secret report that concluded that the boys' deaths were caused by missiles launched from an armed drone.

In 2015, the military criminal investigation division (CID) announced that the case had been closed into the suspected criminal case which caused an international outcry after images surfaced showing the boys running before being killed.

The Intercept alleges that the impact of the attack could have been mitigated and that the deaths of all four boys could have been prevented.

After killing the first boy, the drone operators told investigators, they had sought clarification from their superiors as to how far along the beach, used by civilians, they could pursue the fleeing survivors, The Intercept report says. Less than a minute later, as the boys ran for their lives, the drone operators decided to launch a second missile, killing three more children, despite never getting an answer to their question.

The Intercept claims to have seen the military report which documents how on the day of the strike, an Israeli Hermes 450 surveillance drone hovering over a beach in Gaza City transmitted images of eight figures clambering from the strand onto a jetty.

A small shipping container on the jetty had been already been obliterated by an Israeli missile the previous day, it says, based on intelligence indicating that Hamas naval commandos may have been using it to store weapons.

Some analysts have questioned that intelligence, however, since there were no secondary explosions after the structure was hit and journalists staying in nearby hotels reported that no militants had been seen around the jetty that week, The Intercept says.

It goes on to say that the Israeli investigation report concludes that after one of the figures on the jetty entered the container that had been destroyed the previous day, an Israeli air force commander at the Palmachim air base, south of Tel Aviv, ordered the operators of a second drone, which was armed, to fire a missile at the container.

The July 16 strike was all the more ignominious for Israel since shortly before it took place the IDF published a video using live feeds from drones to show that the IAF takes efforts to avoid killing non-combatants.

However, Israel acknowledges that civilian deaths are at times unavoidable while fighting in such a densely populated area and has long held that it issues warning to civilians to vacate areas that are marked for an impending strike. It says that Hamas deliberately hides among civilians and hides its military weapons in hospitals and schools in order to goad Israel into attacking and inflicting as many civilians casualties in possible in order to ratchet up international pressure on the country.

The video released by the IDF showed a number of strikes being aborted after civilians were identified in an area about the be hit.

However, the strike that killed the four childrenIsmail Bakr, 10; Ahed Bakr, 10; Zakaria Bakr, 10; and Mohammed Bakr, 11was considered a great success at the time according to one of the naval officers, the report says, because they mistakenly believed that it had claimed the lives of four Hamas terrorists readying to carry out a strike on Israel.

IDF video of aborted missions in Gaza (:  ")

X

After images surfaced in the international media of the strike, the IDF analysed the aerial mission and subsequently recommended that the military police launch and investigation into possible criminal negligence.

The report goes on to allege that the testimonies collected were included in a report presented to Israels military advocate general, Maj. Gen. Danny Efroni 11 months later.

Efroni did not release the testimonies, but did make a summary of the reports findings public on June 11, 2015, when he closed the investigation without filing any charges. Israels chief military prosecutor decided that no further criminal or disciplinary measures would be taken, since the investigators had concluded that it would not have been possible for the operational entities involved to have identified these figures, via aerial surveillance, as children, The Intercept says.

The IDF said in a statement that the incident was thoroughly and comprehensively checked by the General Staff apparatus and investigated by the CID. The investigated that was conducted revealed that the strike that was carried out by the IDF on July 16, 2014 was aimed at figures who were believed to be Hamas activists, who were in a military compound belonging to the naval force of the terror organization, Hamas.

In hindsight, it turned out that that they were children who entered the compound. The investigation also revealed that the strike was carried out in accordance with acceptable procedures, while taking various precautionary measures that were intended to avoid harming civilians, and that an error of identification was found, which was reasonable in the circumstances of the case, the statement said.

Accordingly, in 2015 the investigation was closed without any legal steps. The then Judge Advocate General's decision was published and can be examined, the statement concluded.
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman is set to discuss on Tuesday with IDF and defence officials easing some restrictions on the Gaza Strip after two days of quiet on the volatile border.

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After weeks of regular exchanges of fire, no mortars or incendiary balloons have been fired at Israel from Gaza for the past 48 hours. Security official said that the aim of easing the restrictions is to show the people of Gaza that quiet is rewarded accordingly.

Lieberman is to hold an evaluation meeting at noon and is said to be considering both enlarging the Gaza fishing perimeter and opening Kerem Shalom border crossing on the proviso that the border remains quiet.

Defense Minister Lieberman with IDF Chief Gadi Eisenkot (Photo: Ariel Harmoni/GPO)

Security officals are to consider easing other restrictions in the upcoming days if Hamas observes the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire which has held since 10:45pm last Thursday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lieberman announced the closing of the Kerem Shalom crossing last month, as well as the cutting off fuel and gas supplies to the Gaza Strip after a ceasefire agreement was violated earlier that day when a rocket was fired into southern Israel. Medicines and food were, however, allowed to pass through the crossing.

A fire around Kibbutz Nahal Oz (Photo: AFP)

Eight days later the crossing was partially reopened and some restrictions were eased, only to be closed two weeks ago after the situation at the Gaza border escalated yet again.

Last Friday, 3 Palestinians were killed in border confrontations shortly before a ceasefire was reported , although initially denied by Israel. The lull in the fighting followed a day of constant mortar launching and five direct hits on houses in Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip.

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman visitng Kerem Shalom Crossing (Photo: Reuters)

The IDFs last strike before the ceasefire caused a building from which the Hamas terror organization was operating to collapse , injuring 18.

The building, which was entirely obliterated, was located in the Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City and was officially defined as a cultural center, but was used for terrorist activities

Another building that was allegedly used as a hotel was destroyed a day earlier that served as a concrete slab manufacturing facility for Hamas tunnels.
A prominent Jewish-American commentator who has been critical of Israel's policies said Monday that he was detained by Israeli airport authorities and interrogated about his political views before he was allowed to enter the country.

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The government said that the incident was a mistake.

Beinart, a contributor to The Atlantic, CNN and the Israeli left-wing daily Haaretz, considers himself a supporter of Israel, but has been an outspoken critic of the government's policies toward the Palestinians and close alliance with President Donald Trump.

He has warned of a growing rift between Israel and the predominantly liberal Jewish-American community, and said that Israel must establish a Palestinian state to ensure its survival as a Jewish-majority democracy. Such views are shared by many on Israel's political Left.

Peter Beinart

In an interview, Beinart said he was pulled aside when he arrived with his family on Sunday to attend a relative's bat mitzvah.

Beinart said he was sent to a small room where a security official asked about his political activities and whether he was involved in groups that advocate violence, threaten democracy or promote anarchy.

Beinart said he was then asked about his participation in a nonviolent West Bank protest two years ago. He said the interview ended after he said he would not be joining any protests on his current visit. He was released after calling a well-known Israeli human rights lawyer. In all, he said he was held for over an hour.

Beinart called his experience "trivial" when compared to the experiences of others, particularly Palestinians and Palestinian Americans who travel through Israel's main international airport.

"My hope would be that this provokes a conversation more generally about the way in which Israel harasses people based on their political views," he said. "The real scandal is what happens to people who are much more vulnerable than me because they don't have the privilege that I have as an American Jew."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said that upon learning of Beinart's detention he immediately asked Israeli security officials what happened and was told it was an "administrative mistake."

"Israel is an open society which welcomes allcritics and supporters alike," his office said. "Israel is the only country in the Middle East where people voice their opinions freely and robustly."

The Shin Bet internal security service apologized for causing any anguish and said it was investigating.

In recent weeks, a left-wing Israeli author who lives in the US said he was detained at the airport for a "cautionary conversation" about his political activities, while two Jewish-American women involved in Israeli left-wing causes were questioned about their political work with Palestinians while entering the country from Egypt.

Israel has also begun enforcing a ban on foreign activists who support boycotts of the country.
The Housing Finance data over the past two months has seen the decline of investment loans, and while this might have left some investors doubting whether this was the right time to acquire property or inject more funds, one thing is certain: the market is not any more inaccessible.

Your Investment Property had the chance to connect with Gateway Bank Chief Customer Officer Alexis Airey and get her insights on the condition of the investment property sector, the opportunities available in the market and how these can be maximised.

Airey emphasised that the investment property market is in a state of flux. Citing the lending regulatory environment and tighter restrictions as key factors affecting the situation of the sector, she said that the market should stabilise within the next year  after the market has completely adjusted to the guideline changes.

When asked about the implication of the Housing Finance data from May, which showed the number of investment loans had dropped to its lowest level in over two years, Airey did not deny that this indicated a slowdown. However, she also held on to a positive outlook for the days to come.

Whilst it may not be as lucrative as it has been in recent years, especially for those looking for quick payouts on their investments, investing in property will remain a steady way to build your capital growth  as long as youre happy to focus on a long-term strategy, she said.

To support this claim, Airey shared some investment prospects that are ideal at present.

Savvy investors seeking to enter the property market or grow their portfolio with equity from existing assets can take advantage of the current buyer-driven market, which is providing ideal conditions to buy, as growth in house prices is low in most metropolitan areas in Australia in recent times.

Airey also underscored the value in renovating and repairing homes. Even the smallest improvements  like repainting your property or replacing the carpets  can add tens of thousands of dollars to your property value, she said.

Airey did warn that, if one opts to invest in renovations and improvements, he or she must assess the values of the property and find out the price ceiling. From there, one can decide how much should be spent in renovations. [This is] to ensure you dont end up spending too much on renovations that wont provide you with a comparable return on your investment.

There is also the option to invest in larger construction projects such as building a self-contained granny flat. Airey said that that it is possible to increase a propertys value by hundreds of thousands of dollars provided that the investor is mindful of overcapitalization.

In the end, Airey highlighted some common but very important advice when it comes to investments. Get informed, she quipped.

If youre going down the buying route, make sure to do ample research to avoid getting stuck in a buying trap. Dont be fooled into thinking that the cheap property that seems too good to be true will pay off for you in a few years down the track  oftentimes it will be too good to be true and will be well-priced because the seller knows that its a low-value asset. 

Related stories:

Housing Investor Loans Drop To The Lowest Rate Since 2009

Housing Investors' Loan Approvals Still Down
News

Atlanta, Georgia - An Atlanta, Georgia resident pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of aggravated identity theft for her role in a stolen identity refund fraud scheme, announced Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard E. Zuckerman of the Justice Departments Tax Division and U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak for the Northern District of Georgia.

According to documents and information presented in court, Stephanie Parker worked for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a Contact Representative in Atlanta, Georgia. Between September 2012 and March 2013, taxpayers called into the IRS for assistance and Parker handled the taxpayers inquiries. During the calls, Parker obtained the taxpayers Social Security numbers and addresses. On at least five occasions, Parker used the taxpayers personal information to electronically file fraudulent tax returns in their names without their authorization. Parker directed the fraudulent tax refunds to bank accounts controlled by her friends. Parker, in turn, had the money withdrawn from at least one of those accounts and deposited a portion of the money into her own bank account and used it for personal expenses.

Parker faces a mandatory sentence of two years in prison, as well as a period of supervised release, restitution and monetary penalties. A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Zuckerman and U.S. Attorney Pak commended special agents of IRSCriminal Investigation and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), who conducted the investigation, and Trial Attorneys Michael Boteler, Alexander Effendi, and Melanie Smith of the Tax Division, who are prosecuting this case.
News

Tucson, Arizona - Casa Grande Border Patrol agents apprehended 17 illegal aliens and seized 10 bundles of marijuana during two incidents Tuesday with the assistance of Arizona National Guard soldiers using a UH-72 Lakota helicopter.

National Guard aircraft on patrol along

the border

Chief Patrol Agent Rodolfo Karisch recently testified before Congress that the National Guards assistance to the Border Patrol increases our ability to detect, deter, and respond to threats of all kinds, including drugs, weapons, illegal aliens and possible terrorists, he said. Since Operation Guardian Support began in April, the National Guard has contributed to thousands of apprehensions, the seizure of thousands of pounds of dangerous drugs, and multiple rescues.

One such example of support occurred Tuesday morning with a National Guard helicopter flight crew maintaining visual on drug smugglers near Cowlic, Arizona, and reporting the smugglers location to agents on the ground. Thanks to the Guards support, agents apprehended seven illegal aliens and seized more than 465 pounds of marijuana valued in excess of $230,000.

Successful apprehension of group of

drug backpackers

Hours later, Guardsmen and an agent in a helicopter spotted a group of people hiding in a wash south of Sells, Arizona, and relayed that one man was attempting to run away. With aerial support, agents on dirt bikes were guided to the location and arrested 10 illegal aliens, including the man attempting to run.

All 17 illegal aliens, from varies countries, were arrested and processed for immigration violations. The seven men smuggling narcotics will face additional criminal charges.
News

Phoenix, Arizona - On the evening of Wednesday, August 22, 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will host a Diversity Agent Recruitment (DAR) information session. FBI special agents from the FBI Phoenix Office will be available at the event to discuss career opportunities and promote diversity employment within the FBI.

The FBI seeks to hire an additional 900 special agents in 2018. Under a unique hiring initiative, the FBI will be hosting a recruitment event to attract highly qualified candidates for the special agent position. The event will discuss the rewards of pursuing an exciting career as an FBI special agent and the critical role a diverse workforce plays in the success of the FBI. In announcing the event, Special Agent in Charge Michael DeLeon stated, The threats we face as a nation are becoming increasingly more complex and global in nature. To address new and emerging threats, the FBI is committed to diversifying its special agent population by hiring more female and multi-cultural applicants, as well as candidates possessing backgrounds in science, technology, engineering, and math.

The FBI recruitment event seeks highly qualified applicants who are U.S. citizens between 23-36 years of age and have a bachelors degree (at a minimum) from an accredited institution and three or more years of work experience.

The event is free, but by invitation only. Aspiring FBI candidates can receive an invitation to this event by uploading their resume to the FBI. Visit FBI.Gov/Phoenix and click on the link in the Diversity Agent Recruitment Event section, for more information.

Currently, the FBI employs 13,538 special agents. Approximately 20 percent of the agent workforce is female and 2,252 are from identified minority groups.

While the FBI encourages applicants from all backgrounds to become special agents, recruiters are currently seeking applicants with skills in the following areas:

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)

Foreign Languages (Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Chinese, Korean, Cambodian)

Law

Emergency Medicine

Certified Public Accountants

Attorneys

Detectives

Military (specifically Special Forces, Explosives, WMD, and Intelligence Experts)

Scientists

Pilots (helicopter, fixed wing)

Additional information regarding career opportunities in the FBI is available online at www.fbijobs.gov.
Arizona News

Payson, Arizona - On Monday, August 6, 2018, the FBI and our partner agencies arrested two suspects in connection with the Mazatzal Casino Robbery in Payson, Arizona. Ryan Pearson, 31, and Armando Ochoa, 32, were arrested in Payson without incident. Both were employees of the Mazatzal Casino.

On July 17, 2018, two suspects, who were dressed in black and who were wearing hoods and masks, entered the casino located at mile marker 251, Highway 87 on the Tonto Apache Indian Reservation. The suspects brandished a long gun and pistols and fired multiple rounds inside the casino. No one was injured. The two suspects fled the casino with an undisclosed amount of money.

Pearson and Ochoa are now charged with a Hobbs Act Robbery and Use of a Weapon in a Crime of Violence.

The FBI would like to thank the public for their help in this case along with the Payson Police Department, Tonto Apache Police Department, Phoenix Police Department, Mesa Police Department, Salt River Police Department, Gila County Sheriffs Office, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

If deemed applicable, reward payments will be made at the conclusion of the investigation. As a matter of policy, the FBI does not publically release the identity of those who provide tips.

All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Arizona News

Phoenix, Arizona - Last week, Eric Lorenzo Sanchez, 25, of Second Mesa, Arizona, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Diane J. Humetewa to 18 months imprisonment, to be followed by three years of supervised release. Sanchez, an enrolled member of the Hopi Tribe, had previously pleaded guilty to possession of an unregistered weapon made from a shotgun.

On June 11, 2016, Sanchez was involved in a car accident on the Hopi Reservation. When law enforcement responded to the scene, they found a firearm near Sanchezs car. Sanchez, a previously convicted felon, admitted that the firearm was his. The firearm was a 12-gauge shotgun, which had been modified to shorten the barrel and was not registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, as is required for so-called short-barreled shotguns. The firearms serial number had also been obliterated in violation of the law.

The investigation in this case was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Bureau of Indian Affairs  Office of Justice Services (Hopi Agency). The prosecution was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Samuels, District of Arizona, Phoenix.
Arizona News

Phoenix, Arizona - Tuesday, Ethan Barlow, 27, of Kayenta, Arizona, and a member of the Navajo Nation, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell to 46 months in prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release. Barlow had previously pleaded guilty to one count of involuntary manslaughter.

The case involved Barlow driving his vehicle with a BAC level of over .134 (three hours post-crash). Barlow admitted that he had been drinking rum and smoking marijuana. As a result, Barlow caused his vehicle to roll over and crash, killing his sole passenger. The crash occurred within the Navajo Reservation.

The investigation in this case was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Navajo Nation Department of Law Enforcement, and the Arizona Department of Public Safety. The prosecution was handled by Sharon K. Sexton, Assistant U.S. Attorney, District of Arizona.
Border News

Sierra Blanca, Texas - The rescue of a female in the desert in west Texas culminated after Agents from the Sierra Blanca Border Patrol Station apprehended four male illegal aliens from Mexico and Guatemala near the Consuelo Ranch on April 7.

Desert Rescue in Big Bend, Texas

The group, who were in good health, had previously made a distress call via cell phone regarding a female in their group. The group said they left a female behind the previous day, at approximately 3:00 p.m. (MDT). They identified the missing female as Guatemalan, approximately 17-to-19 years of age. Border Patrol agents interviewed the group to get an approximate location of where they last saw the female. Agents from the Sierra Blanca Station, and additional agents from El Paso Sector Mobile Response team, deployed in an attempt to locate the missing female.

The following day, Sierra Blanca Station Agents, El Paso BORSTAR Agents, and CBP Air and Marine Agents with a rotary-wing aircraft continued to search for the missing female. At approximately 10:45 a.m. the missing female was located. She was evaluated and provided with first aid at the rescue site, and found to be severely dehydrated. A CBP Air and Marine aircraft transported the female and a BORSTAR agent to Interstate 10 and Farmers Market Road 192, where a Fort Hancock EMS took over the transport and provided medical assistance. Fort Hancock EMS transported the female to Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso, Texas for further medical evaluation and treatment. She remains at Del Sol Medical Center.
Border News

San Luis, Arizona - U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers arrested a U.S. teen in connection to a failed smuggling attempt Wednesday resulting in the seizure of nearly five pounds of heroin at Arizonas Port of San Luis.

Officers seized nearly five pounds of

heroin from a body carrier

Officers referred a 15-year-old male for additional inspection as he attempted to enter the U.S. from Mexico through a pedestrian lane Wednesday morning. Following an alert by a CBP narcotics detection canine to a scent it was trained to detect, officers discovered packages of heroin wrapped around both of his upper legs. The drugs are valued at almost $134,000.

CBP officers seized the drugs, while the subject was arrested and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations.
Border News

Nogales, Arizona - U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Arizonas Port of Nogales arrested a Mexican national for attempting to smuggle cocaine into the United States Thursday, worth more than $643,000.

CBP officers at the Dennis DeConcini Crossing referred a 27-year-old Mexican man for further inspection of his Ford SUV he was driving Thursday morning. After a CBP narcotics detection canine alerted to a scent it was trained to detect, officers removed multiple packages of cocaine from the rocker panels. The drugs weighed almost 27 pounds, with an estimated value of more than $643,000.

Officers seized the drugs and vehicle. The subject was arrested and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations.
Latest News

Yuma, Arizona - Agents assigned to the Wellton Station Interstate 8 Immigration Checkpoint arrested a Mexican national Lawfully Admitted for Permanent Residence after he attempted to smuggle $150K in methamphetamine Wednesday.

At approximately 12:00 p.m., agents referred a silver 2012 Hyundai Sonata to the secondary inspection area for further investigation, where they discovered 43 packages of methamphetamine weighing 50 pounds, with an estimated street value of $150,000 dollars.

The driver, a 34-year-old male currently residing in Somerton was arrested, and his vehicle and contraband were seized.
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - Today, Carla Provost, was officially selected to be Chief of the Border Patrol. She previously served in command staff roles at Yuma Sector.

U.S. Border Patrol Chief

Carla L. Provost

This morning, Carla Provost took the helm as the United States Border Patrols 18th chief, and is the first female to serve in this role. She has more than 23 years in the U.S. Border Patrol, and has held many leadership positions in the organization, including two within Yuma Sector. Chief Provost served as an Assistant Chief Patrol Agent at Yuma Sector Headquarters from 2006  2009. She was then selected as Wellton Stations Patrol Agent in Charge and served in that position until 2011.

Yuma Sector Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Porvaznik said, We are proud to have Chief Provost named as the new Chief of the Border Patrol. She is a proven leader and the right person at the right time to lead the Border Patrol. He continued, Chief Provost has always served with honor, integrity and unwavering dedication to the mission and the people she leads.
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Telstra Corporation Limited provides telecommunications and information services to businesses, governments, and individuals in Australia and internationally. It operates in four segments: Telstra Consumer and Small Business, Telstra Enterprise, Networks and IT, and Telstra InfraCo. The company offers telecommunication products, services, and solutions across mobiles, fixed and mobile broadband, telephony and Pay TV/IPTV, and digital content; and online self-service capabilities, as well as operates inbound and outbound call centers, owned and licensed Telstra shops, and the Telstra dealership network. It also provides sales and contract management; and product management services for data and Internet protocol networks, mobility services, and network applications and services products, such as managed network, unified communications, cloud, industry solutions, and integrated services and monitoring. In addition, the company engages in the development of industry vertical solutions; planning, design, engineering architecture, and construction of Telstra networks, technology, and information technology solutions; and delivering network technologies. Further, it provides telecommunication products and services through its networks and related support systems to other carriers, carriage service providers, and Internet service providers; access to fixed network infrastructure assets; disconnection services; and network services under the Infrastructure Services Agreement and commercial contracts, as well as holds fixed network infrastructure, including data centers, non-mobiles related domestic fiber, copper, HFC cable, international subsea cables, exchanges, poles, ducts, and pipes. The company was formerly known as Australian and Overseas Telecommunications Corporation Limited and changed its name to Telstra Corporation Limited in April 1993. Telstra Corporation Limited was founded in 1901 and is based in Melbourne, Australia.

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Wesley College of Education is a dream institution for many young people aspiring to pursue an education in Ghana. The institute was started back in 1922 by Gold Coast Methodist church to train church workers, teachers, and ministers. Due to the increasing demand for educating Akan speaking circles of Ghana, there was a need to train more teachers and ministers. Wesley College was therefore relocated to Kumasi, which opened officially in March 1924. Wesley College popularly known as WESCO is currently among the top public institutions that nurture teachers who teach in public schools of Ghana. Admission requirements, courses, and fees are very fair for all aspiring students. This gives equal opportunities to all native students of Ghana.

Source:deafconnection.org

The best way to increase your chances of entry success to Wesley College is to understand the requirements from the word go. Knowing which courses are offered and what each courses costs is something that will help you prepare ahead.

READ ALSO: List of nursing training colleges in Ghana and entry requirements

Courses offered at Wesley College of Education

Wesley College of Education provides various education courses and programs under six thematic departments. These departments include:

Mathematics

Social science

Languages

Science

Vocational skills

Education

Each of these departments is headed by the head of the department who is directly appointed by the principal. All courses offered are within the scope of these departments. These courses include the following:

Science and mathematics

Physical education

French education

General program

Early childhood education

Special need program.

All students pursuing a diploma in basic education take a maximum of three years. Two years are set aside exclusively for class work and one year is meant for mentorship in the form of teaching practice. Students released from WESCO are deployed to various schools in Ghana. Therefore, students from WESCO enjoy 100% employment opportunities as opposed to other careers.

Admission requirements for Wesley College of Education - Diploma

Wesley College of Education is one of the oldest colleges in Ghana and attracts many students from different parts of the country. It, therefore, has strict qualification criteria that are used to narrow down on the number of accepted students. The necessary qualifications required for admission to pursue a diploma in basic education include the following:

Senior secondary school certificate examination (SSSCE) holders must have passes (A-D) in six (6) subjects. The course should include core mathematics and English language. At least three (3) out of the six subjects must be applicable and significant to the course of choice.

Western African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) holders must have passes (A1-C6 in six (6) subjects and should include Core mathematics and English language. The candidates should also have at least C6 in at least three (3) subjects out of the six and should be relevant to the course of choice

Technical and Vocational education and Training (TVET) holders must have credit in five (5) subjects including Mathematics and English language and two elective subjects.

Students whose results have not been released or are still waiting for the May/June WASSCE results can also apply by purchasing the online form and filling in their details.

Students who will not have attained these minimum qualifications will automatically be denied application access. There are, however, specific entry requirements to various course options of diploma in basic education. These requirements are as follows:

1. General program

All WASSCE holders wishing to pursue general program must have credit (A1-C6) in at least three (3) core subjects including mathematics and English language. The candidate must also have credit in at least two (2) elective subjects. All SSSCE holders wishing to pursue general program must have credit (A-D) in at least three (3) core subjects including mathematics and English language. The candidates should also have credit in two relevant elective subjects. Applicants holding TVET and wishing to pursue general program must also have a credit in three (3) core subjects and at least two (2) credit any relevant elective subject.

2. Science and mathematics program

WASSCE holders who wish to do mathematics and science must have at least credit (A1-C6) in three (3) core subjects inclusive of English and mathematics. The candidates should also have two (2) credits in relevant elective subjects. SSSCE holders taking mathematics and sciences should have credit (A-D) in three (3) core subjects and two (2) elective subjects. TVET holder wishing to take science and mathematics should have three (3) credits in core subjects and two (2) relevant elective subjects.

3. Early childhood education

Candidates who are holders of WASSCE and wish to pursue early childhood must at least have credit (A1-C6) in three core subjects including mathematics and English. Credit in two relevant elective subjects is also required. SSSCE holders who want to pursue early childhood education must have credit (A-D) in three core subjects including mathematics and English language. The candidate must also have credit in two relevant elective subjects. TVET holders wishing to take this program must also have equal qualifications as WASSCE and SSSCE holders.

4. French

WASSCE holders who want to pursue the French language must have credit (A1-C6) in three (3) core subjects and at least credit in two relevant elective subjects including French. SSSCE holders who want to pursue French must have credit (A-D) in three core subjects and two elective subjects including French. TVET holders applying to pursue the French language must have credit in three (3) core subjects with two relevant elective subjects.

5. Technical program

WASSCE holders who want to pursue technical program must have credit (A1-C6) in three (3) core subjects including mathematics and English language. Candidates should also have credit in at least two (2) elective subjects with are relevant to the course. SSSCE holders who want to pursue this course must have credit (A-D) in three (3) core subjects and credit in two (2) relevant elective subjects. TVET holders wishing to take this course must have credit in three (3) core subjects including Mathematics and English language and two relevant elective subjects.

Admission requirements for special applicants

Admission for visually impaired people is made at J.N Ahmadiyya College of Education, Presbyterian College of Education Akropong and WA Wesley College of Education, Kumasi. These colleges have special facilities to offer quality education to people with different disabilities in Ghana.

Visually impaired candidates who are WASSCE holders and want to pursue education must have credit (A1-C6) in three core subjects including social studies and English language. They must also have passed in at least two elective subjects.

SSSCE holders wishing to pursue education must have passes (A-D) in three core subjects and two elective subjects. TVET holders wanting to pursue education must have five credit, three (3) in core subjects including social studies and English language and two elective subjects.

Another category of special needs students is the hearing impaired. Learning facilities for this category are located in Presbyterian College of Education.

WASSCE holders wishing to pursue education must have credit (A1-C6) in three (3) core subjects including mathematics and English and two elective subjects.

SSSCE candidates should prove that they pass (A-D) in three (3) core subjects and passes in any two relevant elective subjects.

TVET holders wishing to pursue this option should have same qualifications as those of SSSCE candidates.

Degree courses

Source:youthvillage.co.ke

Wesley College of Education recently upgraded to offer degree courses to its student's fraternity. Qualifications required to be enrolled for degree option are quite higher compared to diploma qualifications. The new degree program takes four years as opposed to diploma courses, which take three years. Some general requirements to join the four-year degree program include the following:

WASSCE holders who wish to pursue a degree in education must have credit (A1-C6) in at least six (6) subjects including core mathematics and English language and passes in at least three (3) elective subjects significant to option of choice.

SSSCE holders who wish to pursue a degree in education should have credit (A-D) in at least six subjects including mathematics and English language. The candidate should also have three (3) passes in relevant elective subjects.

TVET holders wishing to pursue a degree in education should at least have credit in three core subjects inclusive of core mathematics and English language and at least three (3) relevant elective subjects.

Specific qualification requirements for admission to pursue different course options is given in brief below.

Bachelor of education, general.

Candidates who wish to pursue bachelor degree and are holders of WASSCE should at least have credit (A1-C6) in three subjects inclusive of core mathematics and English language. They should also have three (3) passes in relevant elective subjects.

SSSCE holders who want to pursue a degree must have credit (A-D) in three (3) core subjects and three passes in three (3) relevant elective subject courses.

Bachelor of education science and mathematics

Students holding WASSCE willing to pursue a degree in science and mathematics should have credit (A1-C6) in three (3) core subjects and three relevant elective subjects. Core subjects must include mathematics and English language.

SSSCE holders pursuing a degree must have credit (A-D) in at least three (3) subjects and passes in three (3) relevant elective courses.

Bachelor of education early childhood education

WASSCE holders who want to pursue a degree in early childhood education must have credit in three (3) core subjects including mathematics and English and three passes in relevant elective courses.

Candidates holding SSSCE should have credit (A-D) in three (3) core subjects and passes in three (3) relevant elective courses.

Other degree programs offered include:

A degree in French

A degree in vocational with TVET requirements

A degree in vocational/technical with WASSCE AND SSSCE qualifications.

READ ALSO: Central university college fees, hostel prices, and admission requirements

Wesley College of Education application forms

Candidates who feel that they have attained all the above requirements to join Wesley College of Education should apply for admission.

Here is the procedure for applying;

1. Fill out the application form. Provide your full names and other details including passport size photo.

2. Applicants passport size photo should not be larger than 40kb

3. Save your work and carefully go through it to edit any incorrect information. When fully certified that the information is correct, submit by clicking on the submit button. A confirmation page appears on the inter-phase upon submission of the application form.

4. Print the confirmation page and keep it very safe. You will need it to confirm your admission status and to print admission letter.

5. When that is complete, click the close button to go back to the login page.

6. All applicants are required to print two copies of the confirmation page and attach to the result slip and forward them Wesley College of education, Kumasi.

Wesley College of education Kumasi admission list

Source:WordPress.com

2018/2019 admission list for Wesley College of Education is out. The management of Wesley College of Education released the names of all successful candidates who will be admitted in 2018/2019 academic year. Congratulations to all those who got an opportunity to study at Wesley. You can check your admission status from the University's portal. Also note that:

Qualified students shall receive a text message that they have been granted an opportunity to study at the college.

All qualified candidates shall be issued with personal identification numbers and application numbers to enable them access admission letters.

Applicants who do not receive text messages can go to the college and check their names from the notice board. In case they find their names, they should contact college administration for more information on their admission status.

Note: Before applying to the Wesley College of Education, it is important to inquire from the management on the available vacancies and the specific requirements of the option of choice. Sometimes rules are changed depending on current affairs, and therefore you will be safer getting the latest information. Alternatively, you can visit the official website and inquire about the latest information.

Wesley College of Education fees

Wesley College of Education fees are among the most affordable in Ghana. The fee structure is determined by the administration of Wesley College but is regulated by the government of Ghana. The college reserves the right to change fees at a time without the consent of the students but with close monitoring of the government. Fees structure for 2018/2019 academic year is yet to be released and will be uploaded in the official college website. Keep in touch with the college website to access the fee structure as soon as it is released.

Contact details

Wesley College of education is found at Kumasi in the Ashanti region. It is located on longitude 6.70 N and latitude 1.60E. Its official website is Wesco.edu.gh. You can also reach out through:

Telephone: 0322028541

Postal address: P. O. Box 1927, 00233, Kumasi

Email Address: info@wesco.edu.gh

In case you are interested in joining Wesley College of Education, knowing what is required of you is important.

READ ALSO: Ghana Telecom University Courses

Source: Yen.com.gh
Zenith University College admission requirements will come in handy when seeking admission at the college. Whether you want to pursue a business course, information technology or you want to be perfect and conversant with the laws of the land; Zenith University will give you instant solutions. Courses offered at Zenith University are as diverse as the students admitted to the University. The courses focus on offering quality knowledge and skills.

Source:students.com.ng

Before joining the University, it helps to know exactly what is needed to gain entry. Apart from the academic qualifications, it is important that you understand the fees required. The following details on Zenith University contain all the useful information you need to be better prepared for your application.

READ ALSO: List of nursing training colleges in Ghana and entry requirements

Zenith University College details

Zenith University College is one of the most competitive private institutions of higher learning in Ghana. It was established in December 2001. You may have asked yourself, where is Zenith University College located? The University is situated behind Ghana Trade Fair Center, La, Accra. It started as a tutorial college for foreign Universities and later opened tertiary education Center. One question though, is Zenith University College accredited? Yes, it is. The University was accredited in 2005 to offer diploma, degree and postgraduate programs.

Mission

Its mission is to provide quality and competent education with international standards and facilitate recognition and creation of favourable environments, which challenges and stimulates students to explore their intellectual potential fully. All this is geared towards ensuring that all alumni leaving the University have achieved competence and credible intellectual power.

The University is also determined to equip its students with knowledge and skills, which they will apply in solving various problems. These include the situations of the world economy, food insecurity, and poverty in most developing countries and generally become competent and reliable in the global market.

Vision

To be one of the leading regional Universities in knowledge creation, knowledge dissemination and research in Africa.

Courses offered in Zenith University college Ghana

Zenith University College programs are provided in three thematic faculties that are ICT, Law and Business administration. They are as follows:

READ ALSO: Ghana Telecom University Fees 2017-2018: Get Familiar with Your Varsity Requirements

School of law

Zenith University College (ZUC) aims at producing competent and knowledgeable lawyers who can defend their rights and that of others. Zenith School of Law releases intelligent young men and women with up to date knowledge and skills to defend the laws of the land. The University is known for the long-standing traditions of producing sharp scholars who venture in different spheres of law. Some become politicians while others become academics. Zenith University College categorically offers diploma and degree courses in Ghana Law and London Law. National accreditation board of Ghana accredits Ghana Law while the University of London in the United Kingdom accredits London Law. The table below shows diploma and degree courses offered at ZUC with their costs.

Source:zucghana.org

Registration and examination fees also apply on each semester.

Source:zenithuniversitycollege.org

The available diploma in law fees is affordable for many aspiring lawyers.

Apart from the fees captured in Ghana Cedis, there is still an amount payable to the London University. This includes:

Source:zucghana.org

Source:zucghana.org

School of business

Zenith School of business seeks to produce highly trained professionals who will propel economic development by initiating business and entrepreneurship culture in the economy. The school of business produces very competent businesspersons who can work from any corner of the world. The main aim of the faculty is to model managers and financial leaders who can think beyond the traditional boundaries and give a solution to world economic status. Zenith School of business offers degree and diploma programs in accounting, marketing, business management, human resource management, financial management, tourism management and hospitality management. The table below shows the BBA courses and their related fees for different academic levels.

Source:zucghana.org

Diploma course in business administration

For those students who may get the direct intake to pursue a Bachelor in Business Administration (BBA), they start from diploma level. Zenith University offers a comprehensive diploma in business administration, which fully prepares students to be competent in a competitive market. The table below shows the fees payable for pursuing a diploma in business administration.

Source:zenithuniversitycollege.org

School of computing and information technology

Development of the business sector in the economy highly depends on its flexibility to adapt to new changes in the economy. Movement of information influences changes in the economy. Zenith University tends to prepare intelligent officers who will enhance faster movement of information and facilitate its usage. This will consequently cause a quicker growth of firms in the economy due to increased consumer knowledge. A very competitive course offered in this faculty is a degree in business information system, which empowers students to influence competitiveness in the economy.

Zenith University graduate program

Zenith University is known worldwide for producing competent researchers, leaders, and professionals who have significantly influenced the world. Masters in business administration was introduced in reaction to a progressive demand by former alumni, leaders and human resources who wanted to extend and increase their knowledge and intellectual borders. Managers who wanted to move up in the management hierarchy have also facilitated this move. To take the challenge, School of Research and Graduate Studies was established majorly to offer postgraduate courses to prospective candidates. The aim of this was to produce versatile students who can interpret the problems of the business world and act appropriately. Postgraduate courses offered by Zenith University include the following:

Marketing

Banking and finance

Human resource management

General management.

The table below shows the fees paid to undertake these courses from Zenith University College.

Source:zenithuniversitycollege.org

The total amount of registration and tuition fees in the two academic years is GHC 10,200 for local students. However, international students are required to pay GHC 13,140 for the same service.

Professional programs

Source:cuk.ac

Zenith University College offers professional courses in advanced learning, with the aim of preparing students to meet professional and academic excellence. This program aims at ensuring a high level of competence among professionals in different areas of specialization. All candidates before being disbursed to different areas of their professions must pass a licensing examination to prove their credibility. This examination is usually set and regulated by regulatory bodies of Ghana and United Kingdom. Zenith University College is accredited to offer these professional courses by the following agencies:

National accreditation board of Ghana

ICA Ghana

ACCA UK

CTH UK

among others.

The University, therefore, offers the following professional courses;

Association of business executive (ABE)

Chartered institute of marketing(CIM)

A confederation of tourism and hospitality(CTH)

Chartered institute of logistics transport(CILT)

Association of chartered certified accountants(ACCA).

Zenith University College certificate is only awarded on successful completion of any of these professional courses. The table below shows these courses with their related fees.

Sources:zucghana.org

General requirements for Ghanaian students

Candidates applying for consideration and are holding WASSCE/SSSCE certificates must have credit in at least six(6) subjects, three(3) core subjects which should include Mathematics and English and two elective subjects. The candidates should also have attained an aggregate score of twenty-four (24) and thirty-six (36) in SSSCE and WASSCE respectively.

Students with 0 level certificate who want to join ZUC must have five credit with Mathematics and English language and have at least two(2) As in general paper and any other paper. The candidate must have sat for and passed Ghana business examination including Mathematics and English.

Apart from the other general requirements, candidates holding WASSCE/SSSCE must have done well in elective Mathematics and Physics.

Candidates wishing to pursue these programs and are holders of diploma with a final aggregate of (FGPA) 2.5 and above will be absorbed directly do pursue BBA.

Mature student admission will be required to have:

25 years and above

Minimum working experience of three years

At least three (3) GCE O level certificates holding passes

Should have a pass in entrance paper which include mathematics, English and general paper prepared by Zenith university college.

International students

International students must show their eligibility by producing certificates or transcripts. They should fully be translated if they are written in any other language apart from English. Non-English students must pass an English test as a foreign language examination. Those who fail will be dropped.

Qualification for LLB admission

Candidates applying for postgraduate must have a degree from a recognized institution of higher learning.

Candidate applying through the standard route must have at least three GCE A-level passes with three GCE ordinary level passes including English language and Mathematics is necessary.

The candidate should also have two GCE advanced level passes and five(5) ordinary passes including English language and Mathematics.

Other essential requirements for various programs can be accessed through the official ZUC website. In case you get to apply for any course at Zenith, make sure that the Zenith University College application form is filled properly.

Contact

For more information on its location, courses, fees and admission requirements, you can reach Zenith University through the following address of Zenith University College:

Location: La Education Center

Postal address: P.O. BOX TF 511 Trade Fair Center, La Accra Ghana

Tel: 00233-0302-784849

E-mail: mails@zucghana.org

Fax: 00233-0302-779099

When all is said and done, Zenith University College remains one of the most reliable higher learning institutions in Ghana. Choose to enrol for a course of your choice and never regret it.

READ ALSO: Central university college fees, hostel prices, and admission requirements

Source: Yen
At its inception in November 1967, Sunyani Technical University was a technical Institute. It was upgraded to the status of a University in January 1997. This upgrade aimed to ensure the institution is providing career-focused training at tertiary level. So, which are the Sunyani Technical University courses and admission requirements?

Image: facebook.com, @Sunyani Technical University

Source: UGC

Today, the University is one of the leading institutions of higher learning. Currently, Sunyani Technical University offers various programs such as Bachelor of Technology Degree Programmes, Applied Arts disciplines, TVET, Higher National Diploma and Non-Tertiary Programmes in Engineering, Science, and Technology.

Sunyani Technical University courses

The institution has set itself apart to provide non-tertiary programs in technical and vocational courses, higher national diploma (HND), and Bachelor of Technology degree program. Sunyani university main objective is to:

Offer opportunities for publication of research findings, applied research, and skills development

Provide tertiary education in different fields such as applied social science, science technology, commerce, manufacturing, applied arts, and any other course which has been approved by the Ministry of Education.

Here are some of the courses that the university offers to students:

Bachelor programmes

Students looking to enroll for Bachelor prorammes are invited to so so. The University offers a variety of courses that meet the intent of learners. It is wise to go through the requirements and specifications for each Bachelor programme to ensure you meet all the requirements listed. Here are some of the programmes available for interested applicants:

Bachelor of Technology (BTech) Fashion Design Technology

Bachelor of Technology (BTech) Electrical and Electronics Engineering

Bachelor of Technology (BTech) Civil Engineering

Bachelor of Technology (BTech) Mechanical Engineering

Bachelor of Technology (BTech) Construction Technology

READ ALSO: GIMPA courses and fees: List of programs offered in 2020

HND programmes

Image: facebook.com, @Sunyani Technical University

Source: UGC

Providing quality education is key for the institution. Sunyani Technical University also offers HND programmes to its students. The following are the HND programmes offered at the University:

HND Accountancy (regular, weekend and evening)

HND Accounting Technology (regular, weekend and evening)

HND Marketing (regular, weekend and evening)

HND Purchasing and Supply (regular, weekend and evening)

HND Secretaryship and Management Studies (regular, weekend and evening)

HND Civil Engineering

HND Electrical/Electronic Engineering (Computer engineering option)

HND Electrical/Electronic Engineering (Medical engineering technology option)

HND Electrical/Electronic Engineering (Power Systems option)

HND Electrical/Electronic Engineering (Telecommunication options)

HND Materials Engineering

HND Mechanical Engineering (Automobile option)

HND Mechanical Engineering (plant option)

HND Mechanical Engineering (production option)

HND Building Technology

HND Ceramic Arts

HND Fashion Design Technology

HND Textiles Technology

HND Interior Design and Technology (Wood Technology)

HND Computer Science

HND Dispensing Technician

HND General Agriculture

HND Hotel, Catering and Institutional Management (regular, weekend and evening)

HND Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

Diploma programmes

If you are looking to enroll for a diploma course, the institution provides various diploma courses to meet the students intent. Here are some of the diploma courses available to students.

Diploma in Computerised Accounting (DCA) (2-year programme)

Diploma in Banking Technology & Accounting (DBTA) (2-year programme)

Diploma in Electronic Marketing (2-year programme)

Diploma in Business Administration (2-year programme)

Diploma in Public Relations (2-year programme)

Diploma in Procurement & Materials Management (2-year programme)

Diploma in Business Studies (Accounting Option) (1-year programme)

Diploma in Business Studies (Secretarial Option) (1-year programme)

Diploma in Business Studies (Management Option) (1-year programme)

Diploma in Business Studies (Marketing Option) (1-year programme)

Diploma in Business Studies (Purchasing and Supply Option) (1-year programme)

Diploma in Business Studies (Statistics Option) (1-year programme)

Technician and advanced programmes

If you are looking to enroll for any technician and advanced programmes, the institution provides such courses to ensure students are armed with the right skills. Here are some of the technician and advanced programmes available to students.

Construction Technicians Course (CTC) Part I

Construction Technicians Course (CTC) Part II

Construction Technicians Course (CTC) Part III

Electrical Engineering Technicians (EET) Part I

Electrical Engineering Technicians (EET) Part II

Electrical Engineering Technicians (EET) Part III

Mechanical Engineering Technicians (MET) Part I

Mechanical Engineering Technicians (MET) Part II

Mechanical Engineering Technicians Part III

Motor Vehicle Technicians (MVT) Part I

Motor Vehicle Technicians (MVT) Part II

Motor Vehicle Technicians Part III (MVT III)

Advanced Blocklaying and Concreting

Advanced Carpentry and Joinery

Advanced Cookery (8122)

Advanced Furniture

Advanced Painting and Decorating

Advanced Fashion and Designing

Advanced Furniture Design & Construction

READ ALSO: Takoradi Technical University courses, registration and admission requirements

Craft programmes/Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET) programmes

The Technical University also runs programmes of the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET) at the Certificate II and Advanced levels. The programmes include:

Agric Mechanics Work

Autobody Inter/COTVET

Blocklaying and Concreting Inter/COTVET

Catering Inter/COTVET

Electrical Installation Work

Electrical Machine Rewinding and Repairs

Fabrication and Welding

Fashion and Designing Intermediate

Furniture Craft Inter/COTVET

General Textiles

Heavy Duty and Diesel Mechanics

Industrial Maintenance Technology

Industrial Mechanics

Mechanical Engineering Craft Practice

Motor Vehicle Mechanics Work

Painting and Decorating Inter

Refrigeration & Air-conditioning Mechanics

Small Engines Repairs

Textiles Technician

Proficiency certificates

The institution offers proficiency certificate courses to ensure students are armed with the right skills. Here are the various certificate courses available to students.

Architectural and Engineering Draughtmanship

Proficiency in Chinese Language

Proficiency in English Language

Proficiency in French Language

Is Sunyani technical form out?

The online admission form for 2020/2021 academic year is available on Sunyani Technical University admission portal. This is because admissions are ongoing. Suppose you have already made your online application for the academic year and need to check your Sunyani Technical University admission status, do so on the platform as well.

However, applicants are advised that they should not worry in case their name is missing on the Sunyani Technical University admission list. This is because the admissions are still ongoing, and so, they should keep checking for updates.

One is advised to check the updated Sunyani Technical University fees on their official website. Sunyani Technical University results checking is done by login in at the student portal page.

READ ALSO: UMaT courses and fees 2020-2021: short, postgraduate and more

How do I apply to Sunyani Technical University?

Joining the Technical University is a dream come true for most students who desire to gain a quality education. Therefore, after applying, it is vital to ensure you follow all the steps to ensure your application is successful. The following are steps to follow when making your application:

Image: facebook.com, @Sunyani Technical University

Source: UGC

Step 1

Pay for your online admission application form at any of the following locations:

Sunyani Technical University Campus

Post offices

Fidelity bank

Zenith bank

Ecobank

Stanbic bank

Mobile money short code *447*160# on all networks

Step 2

Applicants applying for programmes that do not require a certificate should contact the Registrar, Sunyani Technical University either directly or on the phone before paying for the form. The contact number is 03520 27052/24924.

Step 3

Pay for the online application form and collect your serial number and pin code. You will also have the serial number and pin code sent to your phone through a text message.

Make sure you provide a valid phone number and ensure your phone is active when paying for your form to enable you to receive a text for your application.

Step 4

Login using the serial number and code sent to you.

Step 5

It takes three steps to complete the online admission application form.

Step 6

Section 6-A

Select Programmes of choice, provide your personal information, and previous schools attended. You would be required to upload an electronic passport picture (jpg, pjeg, png or gif formats).

Section 6-B

Provide details of relevant certificates obtained, employment history (Compulsory for Mature applicants) and sponsor's information.

Section 6-C

Submit and print the completed application form. You are also to Print and complete the declaration form.

Section 7

After each step, click the save and continue button to save and go to the next step.

Section 8

You can logout and continue later till you submit your form. (NOTE: Non-Submitted application forms would not be processed)

Section 9

After Step 6-B, you can submit your admission application form. (NOTE: After submitting your application, no corrections can be done by applicants)

Section 10

Remember to make your phone active while processing your form to enable you to receive the appropriate message after submitting your application form.

You are requested to send the following documents to the below address:

A printed copy of the submitted application form A printed and completed copy of a Declaration form Photocopies of Certificates/Results slips and all other relevant documents

THE REGISTRAR

SUNYANI TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

P. O. BOX 206

SUNYANI B/A

Sunyani Technical University offers unparalleled levels of learning to students while preparing them for the job market. Learn all about Sunyani Technical University courses and admission requirements, and book your slot.

Meanwhile, YEN.com.gh on July 22, 2020, reported on Accra Institute of Technology courses and admission requirements. Accra Institute of Technology is one of the most distinguished institutions in Ghana.

Established in 2009 as a non-profit private institution of higher education, the technology-driven university is accredited by the National Accreditation Board (NAB).

READ ALSO: Nursing schools in Ghana 2020/2021 fees, course, requirements

Source: Yen
- John Mahama has argued against taxing churches

- The former president says any move by the government to tax church is suicidal

- The GRA has expressed interest in chasing after churches that fail to pay taxes

The former president, John Dramani Mahama has warned the government against any move to tax churches.

John Dramani Mahama described any move by President Akufo-Addo to introduce taxes to the church as "suicidal".

Speaking to Adom FM at the synod of the Global Evangelical church at the University of Ghana, the former president suggested that the Christian Council must rather be given the chance to deal with developments in the clergy.

READ ALSO: Defunct Capital Bank manager now grills pork for a living

The argument by John Dramani Mahama follows a contrary one by President Akufo-Addo where he warned that the flamboyant lifestyles of churches must attract taxation.

YEN.com.gh compiled sections of Nana Addo's presentation which also saw the president calling for churches to be very decent in spending.

So far, the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has hinted of investigating churches that rake in much revenue that is subsequently not taxed.

The commissioner general stated that it will pay informants 25 percent of a penalty against the churches that are hiding under a fellowship to make money without paying taxes to the state.

The GRA is currently tightening its tax-collection loopholes as part of efforts to meet its 2018 revenue target. Only 1.2 million out of the 30 million population in Ghana are paying taxes.

READ ALSO: You're a man of "integrity", we stand by you  ICGC to Otabil

Out of the 1.2 million, 1 million are in the formal sector and 200 thousand are in the informal sector. This implies that the contribution of the informal sector to total tax revenue is below 5 percent creating a huge gap in the national revenue generation.

Ghana News Today: Shatta Waly May Become A President Of Ghana | #Yencomgh

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish on YEN.com.gh? Please contact us on Facebook or Instagram now!

Source: Yen
- Prophet Adom has prophesied that some three prophets will die in 2018

- The doomsday prophet is fond of making scary prophecies against famous people in Ghana

- The Christian Council has kicked against the culture of doomsday prophets

Prophet Stephen Kwadwo Adom, the founder and leader of Zion Miracle Worship Centre (ZMWC), has predicted that his fellow colleagues in the prophetic ministry will soon die.

The prophet, who has predicted the death of some celebrities including Shatta Wale (the prophecy of dying in December 2018) and Wendy Shay (the prophecy that she will be buried in a nurse attire), claims that Prophet Badu Kobi, Bishop Obinim and Rev Obofour will meet death by the end of 2018.

In what has been seen as a vindictive video, the prophet took a swipe at these fellow prophets who, according to him, are misleading a lot of gullible Ghanaians.

READ ALSO: Mahama warns Akufo-Addo over 'suicidal' attempt to tax churches

Prophet Stephen Kwadwo Adom, the founder and leader of Zion Miracle Worship Center (ZMWC) has put several people including Shatta Wale, Afia Schwarzenegger, Nana Ama McBrown, Wendy Shay, Ebonys brother and other politicians on a prophetic death row.

The Prophet who seems to be embarking on a mission to gain popularity has given some alarming death predictions that should not be taken for granted.

READ ALSO: You're a man of "integrity", we stand by you  ICGC to Otabil

The recent culture of doom prophecies has been a concern to the Christian Council which recently warned prophets against any such action.

Watch video below courtesy Gh.page.com

Ghana News Today: Shatta Waly May Become A President Of Ghana | #Yencomgh

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish on YEN.com.gh? Please contact us on Facebook or Instagram now!

Source: Yen.com.gh
The Islamic University College Ghana was established at the turn of the new millennium by the Ahlul Bait Foundation. It got full government accreditation two years later in 2002. It was one of the first private tertiary institutions in Ghana. This was made possible by the change in Ghana Government Policy in 1997 that made it possible for private participation in tertiary education. The foundation had had the idea of starting a tertiary education institute as far back as 1986. Its first batch of students was a cohort of 15 students enrolled in a two-year course on Islamic Theology. The course was intended for Muslim youth in Ghana to promote higher moral standards.

SOURCE: newsghana.com.gh

The university has since developed more advanced courses with undergraduate and graduate courses across fields of Business and the Arts. It is worth noting that the courses offered by the university are all accredited by the National Accreditation Board. The courses are offered in affiliation with the much older University of Ghana, Legon. This means, and it is also indicated on the university website, that Islamic University College Ghana courses degrees are awarded by the University of Ghana. In this article we will take a look at the courses offered, what it takes for you to qualify for admission, the application process, the different paths to the university and finally the Islamic University College Ghana fees.

Islamic University College courses

The university boasts two fully accredited faculties; the Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Business Administration and a Department of Communications Studies.

Faculty of Arts

The faculty of arts at the Islamic University College Ghana offers only 2 programmes for the award of a degree;

1. Bachelor of Arts Religious Studies (Islamic Option)

One of the programmes at the Islamic University (courses); the programme is intended for prospective students that are keen on the religious study of Islamic faith. It is a four-year programme at the university that teaches the students to be reliable and responsible leaders of the Muslim community in Ghana. It is a way to bring together the intellectual analysis of the different interpretations of Muslim faith by believers around the world. The course requires completion of 136 credits before being awarded a degree by the University of Ghana.

2. Master of Philosophy (Qur'anic Exegeses and Science)

The course is aimed at encouraging knowledge in research intensive study methods to prepare for later success whether academically or professionally. It is aimed at students of religious studies to further their knowledge and build different schools of thought given their greater knowledge. To complete the course, you need to complete 67 credits in a period of two years. The degree is awarded by a different affiliate university outside of Ghana, the Al-Mustafa International University in Iran. Note that the Ahlul Bait Foundation is of Iranian origins.

Requirements: the requirement for admission is a degree from an accredited university in religious studies or any other degree from a recognized institution. Evidence of four years of study in an Islamic seminary with good grades will also grant an applicant admission. Prior knowledge of the Arabic Language is an added advantage for any student that satisfies all above conditions.

Faculty of Business Administration

The faculty was set and fully accredited in 2002. It is headed by Mr. Alhaji Yusuf Ahmed Hamdan. The degrees are awarded by the University of Ghana Business School.

The faculty offers a single degree, with multiple options. These are;

Bachelor of Business Administration (Accounting)

Bachelor of Business Administration (Baking and Finance)

Bachelor of Business Administration (Marketing)

Bachelor of Business Administration (Human Resource Management)

It is a 4-year course that requires the completion of 136 credits to qualify to be awarded a degree. We will look at the entry requirements later in this article. The aim of the courses above to a varying degree in every option available is to imbue the ability to dissect the business environment in both the public and private sector and make the best decisions for wealth creation. The analysis of conditions in the business, banking and financial sector will enable students understands the dynamics of entrepreneurship and business administration skills of either option for the best results. As a school with a focus or religious values, the Islamic University (courses) are also meant to teach social and moral values that go a long way in ensuring its students shape the business environments they are in to the strictest ethical standards possible.

The Faculty of Business Administration has five Business Administration options but the last option, Management Information Systems is currently not available to students.

Department of Communication Studies

Established and accredited I 2011, the department aims to fill the human resource gap in the mass communication industry. The growth of the media sector in Ghana for both print media and broadcasting media has brought many opportunities for employment in this sector. The degree programmes by the department are;

Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies (Journalism)

Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies (Advertising)

Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies (Public Relations)

The degree takes four years and 136 credits to complete. The aim of this course is to train the students with the skills required to sustain a reliable media in Ghana. It is to ensure that its graduates go to work with the highest ethical standing to ensure the best output. The various options available are each targeted at a facet of industry that is experiencing dynamic growth and will require new individuals to prop up. Graduates of this courses are all able to apply communication theories and concepts to the communication requirements they will have to facilitate whether rural, urban, governmental, traditional or modern sectors or on the global stage.

The Islamic University College Ghana offers one more course in education;

Bachelor of Education in Early Childhood Education

The course runs for four years and upon completion of 136 credits a degree is awarded. The course is intended for;

Graduates of Senior high schools that want to work in the education sector under the Ghana Education Service.

Holders of a Certificate A for Post-Secondary of Post-Middle School education.

Holders of a higher national diploma (HND)

Individuals with a diploma in Early Childhood Education

Holders of any diploma certificate are also qualified to take the course.

The courses main objective is to train educators to best teach children to develop their own constructs of understanding of different concepts and ideas in school. The graduates are expected to teach children how to learn and understand. It is the provision of the foundation of childrens inquiry and curiosity about all subjects. The course also enforces total inclusivity of all persons without discrimination. These educators are to make education enjoyable for children by creating experiences that make them experience success and competence.

READ ALSO: University College of Management Studies admission requirements

Islamic University College entry requirements

SOURCE: seekghana.com

The following are the requirements for admission into the first year of study at the Islamic University;

1. A Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination holder of the West African Examination Council with an aggregate of 24 or higher and at least a pass in core English, core Mathematics, Integrated Science or in Social Studies with three more electives.

2. A holder of the West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination of the West African Examination Council with passes (that is a Grade C6 or higher) in both core English, core Mathematics and Social Studies or in Integrated Science. The holder must have attained an aggregate of 36 or higher.

3. A combination of both the above qualifications also gets you admission.

4. A candidate that has completed the Cambridge GCE O level with 5 credits in English Language and Mathematics. The prospect must have attained at least 2 GCE A level passes with one with a grade D or higher and a pass in the General Paper.

5. The following are advised to apply as Mature Applicants;

Ghana GCE O Level with 5 credits in Mathematics and also English Language

Teachers Post-Secondary School Certificate, specifically without a diploma.

Holders of certificates equivalent to high school qualification from both local and foreign institutions are eligible for application as well.

6. The following categories of applicants are eligible for admission into Level 200 or Level 300 (second and third years) after an interview to evaluate the applicants;

Holders of professional certificates such as HND with a first class or second-class honors, ICA, CIM or others.

RSA II and higher, holders of DBS (with distinction), the GIJ certificate, a Teachers diploma or any university degree in an unrelated field.

These applicants are required to bring their comprehensive transcripts for SSSCE or WASSCE or GCE to the interview to enable evaluation for placement.

7. Mature applicants of at least 25 years are exempt from the above qualifications but will need to demonstrate ability for academic work and a minimum of three years working experience. The applicants in this category sit for the University Entrance Exam that tests English (Essay, Comprehension and Grammar Usage), Mathematics and a General paper to evaluate critical thinking and current affairs knowledge. An interview will then be conducted to which a prospective candidate should bring a copy of their birth certificate and letters that will act as evidence of their first employment and their current occupations.

8. All foreign students are required to demonstrate English fluency and satisfy an equivalent of any of the above qualifications to be eligible for admission.

READ ALSO: Presbyterian University College courses and tuition fees

Islamic University College Ghana application procedure

SOURCE: campusnewsgh.com

The application procedure is very short and simple. Here is a precise step by step guide on how to apply for the September 2018 intake.

Note that the application deadline is on the 31st of August 2018. The application forms for mature candidates are supposed to reach the universitys Academic Administration by 17th August 2018. The last day for Direct-Entry applicants is 24th August 2018.

1. Obtain the Application Form

These can be found at Regional Post Offices countrywide, the university Administration Block and are available for download from the university website here.

2. Pay the Application fee of GH100.00 for Ghanaian citizens and US$ 70.00 for foreigners. Payments for applicants that downloaded an application forms should e made at the Ghana Commercial Bank. Payment should be made to the following accounts;

Account Name: ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY COLLEGE GHANA

Branch Name: GCB TETTEH QUARSHIE BRANCH

Account Number: 1261130002860

3. The completed application form must be submitted with the following attached to it;

4. All stated academic qualifications and result slips

5. The payment-slip for the application fee

6. Any other documents that have been requested for attachment in the application form.

7. The completed form should be signed by the student and delivered by post or in person to the Academic Administration Department of the Islamic University College before the dates stated above.

The Islamic University College Ghana address for posting is;

The Vice-President (Academic Affairs)

Islamic University College, Ghana (IUCG)

P.O. Box CT-3221, Accra. Ghana

Mature candidates are required to take a tutorial course that costs GH250 that ran from 16th to 27th July. You can see the tutorial centers available here.

Islamic University College Ghana fees structure can be found on their portal..

This is the only university in the list of Islamic universities in Ghana but it offers admission irrespective or religion or background. The Islamic University Ghana location is at E Legon - Trasacco Estate Rd, Ghana. It is worth noting that all prospective students should consult the university first before moving forward with the Islamic University College Ghana before applying.

Source: Yen
- The former Managing Director of BOST, Dr. Alfred Obeng, has allegedly mocked Boakye Agyarko, over his removal as Energy Minister

- According to him, justice has been served as Agyarko masterminded his removal from office two months ago

The former Managing Director of the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation (BOST), Dr. Alfred Obeng, has reported mocked Boakye Agyarko, over his removal from office as Energy Minister.

Speaking to Bryt FMs Hamza Mohammed, he revealed that Agyarko masterminded his removal from office as MD of BOST.

According to brytfmonline.com, Agyarko is merely getting his reward for actions, and he (Obeng) therefore does not feel sorry for him.

Boakye Agyarko Source: Supplied

READ ALSO: Mahama cautions Akufo-Addo over intention to tax churches

He went on to say that Agyarkos sack from office is a reward for touching the anointed one of God.

He added that the Board Chairman of BOST, Dr. Kwame Acheampong-Kyei, who is the owner of Sovereign Bank, also reaped what he sowed, as he played a role in his removal.

Sovereignty Bank is one of the five now defunct banks that have been merged to form the Consolidated Bank of Ghana.

Dr. Alfred Obeng was removed from office about two months ago, following reports of high profile scandals that plagued his administration.

Boakye Agyarko was also removed from office following revelations about the Ameri deal and its amendment agreement.

READ ALSO: Four policemen shot by robbers recieving treatment at Korle Bu

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- Shatta Wale has called on President Akufo-Addo to help save Menzgold Ghana from collapse

- According to him, a failure to intervene means President Akufo-Addo does not care about the youth of Ghana

Ghanaian dancehall musician, Shatta Wale, has called on President Akufo-Addo to do all he can to save Menzgold Ghana.

Taking to Twitter, a social media platform, he explained that the only way he can prove he cares for the youth of Ghana is to save the company from collapse.

According to him, the recent actions of the president reveals that he isnt in touch with the youth of the country.

READ ALSO: I am happy Agyarko has been sacked - Former BOST MD

For about a week now, there has been an exchange of words between Menzgold and the Bank of Ghana.

According to the Central Bank, the company has been receiving deposits from its clients, which should not be the case.

The youth, especially social media users, have defended MenzGold and have accused the Bank of Ghana and other individuals of embarking on a covert operation to see the company fail.

In the tweet, Shatta Wale expressed amazement at the fact that Finance Minister, Ken Ofori  Atta is able to exert his authority through the Central Bank.

He added that Ofori-Atta has proven he can bring down Menzgold and this is not in the best interest of the youth of Ghana.

READ ALSO: Juventus fans invade pitch on Ronaldo's debut

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- The collapse of Capital Bank has seen calls for Mensa Otabil to be prosecuted

- Mensa Otabil has stayed quiet over the matter as supporters and congregants express their solidarity

- The Bank of Ghana has revealed telling reports on how managers of and Capital Bank caused the collapse of their banks

Seven local banks have all collapsed in the past few months. Recent audit reports from the Bank of Ghana has shown that one of the major issues that collapsed these banks was poor decision making on the part of managers.

One of the defunct banks which attracted much controversy is Capital Bank of which Pastor Mensa Otabil was the board chairman.

Mensa Otabil's wrongdoing so far has been his inability to ensure due diligence on a loan he granted some key players in the collapse of Capital Bank.

READ ALSO: Mahama warns Akufo-Addo over 'suicidal' attempt to tax churches

Funds raised through the commercial paper issuance by MC Management Services Limited and Breitling Services were used as capitalization for the establishment of the Sovereign Bank Limited," parts of a BoG audit report revealed.

The Bank of Ghana in its report spotted some red flags including some GHc 27.5 million used for business promotion and handled by a board member; transfers to IFS amounting to GHc 23.9 million, transfers to Nordea Capital amounting to GHc 65 million, and transfers to Alltime Capital amounting to GHc 130 million.

Mensa Otabil ( Third person from the left) with officials of the defunct capital bank (Photo supplied)

Concerning Alltime Capital, the report noted that Mr. Ato Essien stated that the placement of GHc 130m with Alltime Capital was strategic and funds would be paid back by March 2016.

In all this, the General Overseer of the ICGC, Dr. Mensa Otabil assured management that he would ensure the funds were returned by March 2016.

After these damning reports, there have been calls for heads to roll. In fact, the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) has mounted investigations into the matter.

The question that remains unanswered is if Mensa Otabil could face the full rigors of the law should he be found guilty of financial malfeasance.

Among the expression of dissatisfaction over the telling reports from the Bank of Ghana has been a general call for Mensa Otabil to be prosecuted. According to the Member of Parliament for Kumbungu Constituency, Ras Mubarak, Mensa Otabil must not be left out of any prosecution.

Anyone, including @MensaOtabil whos responsible for the current banking crisis must face the music. You cant use the peoples money anyhow. Lets see if this administration has the spine to go after the rich and powerful, he posted on his Twitter handle.

Despite calls for his prosecution, Mensa Otabil seemed to have gained some popularity in social media from supporters and congregants of his church who have expressed their solidarity.

The "I stand with Mensa Otabil" tagline has literally swamped social media as supporters including popular journalists and media personalities.

So far, the presbytery of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), has also issued a press statement hailing Mensa Otabil as a man of integrity.

READ ALSO: Defunct Capital Bank manager now grills pork for a living

In the midst of this controversy, Mensa Otabil has remained silent. His decision not to comment on the issue can be seen as strategic especially when every word he utters might be used against him in a court of law.

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Source: Yen
- The Zylofon Boss, Nana Appiah Mensah has been rumoured to be part of a secret cult

- He rubbished the rumours with many of his workers jumping to his defense

- In a new post, Nana Appiah has revealed exactly which relationship' group he belongs to

Perhaps, the Zylofon Boss, Nana Appiah Mensah, seeks to set records straight on the many rumours and accusations that he is illuminati.

According to earlier reports, the Zylofon Boss shared a photo in which a mysterious ring was spotted on him.

This made people jump to the conclusion that he belonged to a secret cult for which reason he is so wealthy.

READ ALSO: 10 photos of Jackie Appiahs son Damien which would make you love him instantly

However, the Zylofon Boss rubbished the reports and even had some of his workers jumping to his defense.

In a new post sighted by YEN.com.gh, Nana Appiah Mensah seems to reveal the exact social group he belongs to.

He shared this photo to his Instagram page of a group called SPACNation which he said is a relationship, not a religion.

The photo has a crown with colours of diadems embedded in it, and at the middle of the crown is a cross, YEN.com.gh observed.

Under the crown is the inscription: Souls with wealth. The church and the world.

The photo also has the harsh tags: #SoulsWithWealth #NewBeginnings #SPACNation.

READ ALSO: I was forced to drive Inna Patty from Ghana to Benin and back  Miss Ghana 2015 reveals

Nana Appiah Mensah further captioned the photo with an invitation to all people who are interested to attend the event which was to be held in London last Sunday, August 12, 2018.

He also reminded interested people that the organization is a relationship, not a religion.

Nana Appiah Mensah wrote: Spacnation presents Souls with Wealth. All are cordially invited. ..Its a relationship, not a religion. God bless you.

By emphasizing that it is a relationship and not a religion, the Zylofon Boss seems to stress that it is a mere social group.

But his photo and caption has some of his fans and followers talking.

Some of them believe the Zylofon Boss is just playing with the minds of Ghanaians and needs to be straight forward with what SPACNation is really about.

READ ALSO: Obinim and two prophets to die in 2018 - Prophet Adom

For instance, Streetafrica wanted Nana Appiah to come clean.

streetafrica_ent: Massa be specific an stop twisting the mind of Ghanaians..

Clive saw the whole thing as a great inspiration.

clive736: Great inspiration Sir @mn_appiah.

Mcrbj was excited about the fact that it was said to be a relationship and not a religion.

mcrbj_gh: I love this one @mn_appiahDaddy Its Relationship...Not Religion.

Nana Appiah Mensah has also been in the news recently following his brawl with the Bank of Ghana over his gold company Menzgold.

The BoG has indicated that it would close down the company for flouting banking laws in Ghana.

But Nana Appiah has hit back at the BoG calling its move to close down Menzgold a joke.

According to him, the BoG is not Menzgolds regulator therefore, all propaganda raised against the company are baseless.

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- Shatta Michy has indicated that she is not a lesbian

- According to reports, Michy is a bi-sexual after video of her went viral fighting a girl

Shatta Wales longtime girlfriend, Shatta Michy, has vehemently rubbished claims that she is bi-sexual.

Many social media users have tagged Michy as a lesbian after video of herself fighting with a girl went viral last year.

According to rumuors, the empress of Shatta Movement Empire fought with the girl over a lady who is Michys lover.

READ ALSO: Industry players demanded for my 'tonga' before helping me - top Ghanaian songstress

Michy speaking in an interview with graphic showbiz, opined that she can never be a lesbian.

I do not do girls, I heard that rumour too, it was a video that showed that a fight broke up in a club where I was and all that but no I am not into that," she said.

You know because of who I am, you go to places where fans want to Snapchat with you so I am sure it might have been one of those moments, where probably I had gotten close to the person and someone gets it on his or her snap and then I am seen as a lesbian.

READ ALSO: Akufo-Addo has to save Menzgold if he is concerned about the youth  Shatta Wale

Michy explained she is a human being has several sides.

I am a lady with different personalities depending on the mood. Sometimes I am a tomboy, at other times I can be an introvert, a nerd and oh I love to read a lot so yes I can be studious. Again I can be the crazy fun person the next minute.

YEN.com.gh had previously reported the romantic relationship between Michy and Shatta Wale as the two have re-united after breaking up some months ago.

READ ALSO: Nana Appiah Mensah finally flaunts his cult group in latest photo?

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- Prophet Kumchacha has been known to cause a lot of brouhaha with his pronouncements

- The preacher has calmed down the fears of many with this announcement

Nicholas Osei, popularly know as Prophet Kumchacha is the founder and leader of Heavens Gate Ministries. The spiritual leader has indicated that married couples who have oral sex are committing no sin in the eyes of God.

The preacher as reported by Adomfmonline.com, said no part of the Bible condemned the act of giving pleasure orally. For him, the lack of evidence is a reason that backs his pronouncement.

Kumchacha quoted two main Bible verses in a bid to make his case stronger. He mentioned 1 Corinthians 7:5 and Proverbs 18:22.

READ ALSO: MzVee gets marriage proposal from new artiste Dzidu

Kumchacha is quoted as saying: From Genesis to Revelations, there is nowhere in the Bible that talks about oral sex been bad. But God likes marriage, so if it is done with your wife then it is good. But if you are not married, then it is a sin, it is not good."

He continued: If the married couples have agreed on it and they like it, then it is not bad.

Kumchacha also said he would recommend the act for men with certain functional problems of their private areas.

READ ALSO: Your second wife should be your only wife - Gifty Anti tells her husband

Prophet Kumchacha is known to be a controversial preacher. He has had numerous public feuds with celebrities including Patapaa and Afia Schwarzenegger.

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Source: Yen
- Sheik I.C Quaye, Chairman of the Hajj Board, has given an assurance of the best of Tuo Zaafi during this year's Hajj

- This has done little to comfort travelers as issues of travelling and accommodation continue to frustrate them

The Chairman of the Hajj Board, Sheikh I.C Quaye, has assured pilgrims of the best of meals as they embark on this years Hajj.

According to him, the delicious food will be prepared by a Nigeria-based Saudi Arabian, with support from the government.

His assurances come after rumours of confusion at the Hajj Village in Accra, on Saturday, August 11, 2018, as prospective pilgrims travelling to Saudi Arabia demanded answers from the Hajj Board over delays in their flight.

READ ALSO: Those who will runs against Mahama should be careful; I will spill secrets - Appiah Stadium

The anxiety of prospective pilgrims continue to heighten as the airports in the two Holy Cities of Saudi Arabia, Makkah and Medina, are expected to be closed on Thursday, August 16, 2018, to any flight carrying prospective pilgrims from any part of the world.

The pilgrims, who were supposed to be airlifted that morning, vented their frustrations on the Hajj Board, with some accusing Board members of incompetence and lack of proper planning.

The situation has since not been solved, as the Board could not charter a bigger aircraft to airlift the pilgrims to embark on the pilgrimage.

Additionally, no information has been communicated to the prospective pilgrims, as they have remained in darkness for the past five days.

The Board, instead of contracting a bigger airplane which could fly about 506 passengers on a single manifest as done by the previous regime, opted for a 174-passenger aircraft for this years operations.

The Board also requested Saudi authorities to reduce Ghanas quota of 6,700 pilgrims to 5,500, which created a lot of tension among the Hajj agents and prospective pilgrims.

This has compelled some of the agents travelling as far as to Nigeria to seek consideration from partner agents for their passengers to embark on the holy journey.

READ ALSO: Juventus fans disrupt first Ronaldo match

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- It has emerged that Menzgold's business module of buying gold and subsequently advancing interests to investors in Ghana is in clear breach of its licence agreement

- According to the Bank of Ghana (BoG) Menzgold, which is known as a precious minerals trading company, is carrying out unlawful transactions by taking deposits

It has been revealed that Menzgold Ghana Limited is not licensed to sell gold in the country.

Accra-based Citi FM reports that the gold dealership company was given its license as MenzBanc Ghana Limited and consented to buying the precious mineral from registered small-scale miners and subsequently exporting.

Per the license granted to Menzgold, the company is solely permitted to buy gold in Ghana and export to other countries.

Nana Appiah Mensah is the CEO of Menzgold. Source: Citinewsroom.com

READ ALSO: Anas' near-death experience in fresh Malawi expose

Menzgold has recently come under the spotlight over its operations, following numerous exchanges with the Bank of Ghana.

The central bank accused the gold dealership firm of unlawfully taking deposits, whiles cautioning the public against depositing their funds with the company.

A statement from the Bank of Ghana said Menzgold has no authority to engage in what it says are the solicitation, receipt of money or investment and the payment of dividends or returns to its clients.

The central bank maintained that MenzGold is in breach of section 6(1) of the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act, 2016 (Act 930).

The Bank of Ghana said despite several warnings to the company, Menzgold continues to engage in the illegality of taking deposits.

However, the management of Menzgold rebutted the claims made by the central bank, insisting their operations were perfectly legal.

READ ALSO: Three inmates escape while flushing toilet

In a statement, Menzgold said it unfortunate and disparaging that the Bank of Ghana with whom we have had a number of engagements over the years and taken them through our business operations would still issue such a statement.

But documents suggest that Menzgold was licensed primarily to sell the gold outside the country and repatriate majority of the proceeds.

The Company is hereby authorized to purchase gold locally from any person holding a small scale mining license (small-scale miner) at the Companys registered offices in Ghana to export same in accordance with the terms of this Agreement, indicated the then Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Nii Osah Mills, who signed the agreement on behalf of the government on 22nd August 2016.

There was also another condition in the agreement that stipulates that Menzgold would repatriate at least 80% of the proceeds from its sale of the gold.

Read more interesting stories on the development in Ghana's banking sector here.

YEN earlier reported that Menzgold CEO, Nana Appiah Mensah, has finally revealed the "cult" that he belongs to. His revelation follows claims that he is a member of Illuminati. Nana Appiah opened up on the claims in a Twitter post on Sunday.

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READ ALSO: Nana Appiah Mensah finally flaunts his cult group in latest photo?

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- Nana Addo says his administration has chalked much success in two years

- The president believes his campaign promises including the Free SHS policy have been achieved

- Nana Addo embarked on a 5-day tour of the Ashanti Region

President Akufo-Addo has patted himself on the back saying his administration has achieved so much in just two years. The president says his administration has succeeded in successfully implementing the free senior high school education.

Nana Addo says even though his political critics argued that the funding of the free SHS was impossible, his administration was still able to weather the storm and get things running.

Those who said we could not do it has been put to shame. Very soon, we will pass legislation that stipulates that every child in Ghana should go to school up to Senior High School level, at least. We dont want dropouts. This way, everyone can find meaningful employment in this country, he stated during his 5-day tour of the Ashanti Region.

READ ALSO: Nana Appiah Mensah finally flaunts his cult group in latest photo?

Nana Addo also claimed that almost all of his government policies have been achieved. According to him, the work that we promised to do, the promises I made during the campaign period, I believe that all Ghanaians can attest to the fact that they were not idle promises, but rather promises that I honestly believed that I could fulfill, once I won power.

Unfulfilled promises:

The success of the NPP administration was largely based on the ambitious and mouth-watering campaign promises the then-presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo churned to millions of supporters and voters.

Just when the NPP administration chalked hundred days in office, the vice president came before Ghanaians and spelled out what he believed to be the 100 achievements of his administration in just a hundred days.

Few years has passed since the NPP-government took office and prevailing issues as joblessness and national security continue to threaten the chances of the NPP in 2020.

Some of the major promises the government is yet to accomplish are the national ID card, completion of one district one factory as well as one constituency to one million dollars.

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Ghana is one of the countries where free speech is very prevalent among both youth and adults alike.

As a result, it is very easy to find people from all walks of life engaging in public discourse and contributing their views on issues.

This sort of vociferation has been aided by the advent of social media, which seems to have all of a sudden given every citizen a voice irrespective of class or social status.

5 families Ghanaians are talking about right now. Source; Supplied.

READ ALSO: Anas' near-death experience in fresh Malawi expose

Over the past one month, Ghanaians have been talking, with the dominant subject centered on issues relating to the banking sector.

However, issues cannot be discussed without referring to the personalities involved; and more so when these issues have to do with money.

Below are five families whose names are on the lips of almost every Ghanaian right now:

1. The Otabil Family

The past week has been dominated by discussions surrounding the role of Pastor Mensa Otabil in the collapse of the defunct Capital Bank.

The founder of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC) was allegedly aware of a GHc 610 million liquidity support from the central bank which was diverted into other business.

Having been board chairman of Capital Bank at the time, the preacher has divided opinion in the public, with some Ghanaians standing with him while others believe he should take blame for the misuse of the money and the subsequent collapse of the bank.

2. The Patty Family

Another family that has been in the news in recent times is the Patty Family following controversies over the organisation of the Miss Ghana pageant.

Some former beauty queens have accused organisers of the pageant of using them as pimps and failing to honour their promises to the eventual winners.

Inna Patty, who is the CEO of Exclusive Events, organisers of the beauty pageant, has been the one to contend with most of these allegations and that has therefore got her name often being discussed in the media.

READ ALSO: Three inmates escape while flushing toilet

3. The Appiah Mensah Family

By now, every Ghanaian is very familiar with the name Appiah Mensah due to the success of one young man with that family name.

CEO of Zylofon Media and Menzgold Ghana, Nana Appiah Mensah, has recently been up for discussion to the ongoing tag or war between his latter company and the Bank of Ghana.

The central bank has accused Menzgold of taking deposits, which the gold dealer's firm is not licensed for. However, Menzgold Ghana has also refuted these claims, insisting the company is working legally. This has prompted a major discussion in the media, with musicians and other celebrities even getting involved.

4. Akufo-Addo Family

Unsurprisingly, the President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, finds himself in the list of families being talked about the most in the country.

Being the first gentleman of the land comes with a lot of things, and one of those, rather unfortunately, is always being in the spotlight.

In a recent address, President Akufo-Addo made mention of the fact that this dog cannot be hanged in relation to his political opponents trying to label his government and family as corrupt. However, social media immediately went berserk, with some comparing the dog moniker to that of former president Mahama who was often referred to as a dead goat based on his own utterances. Lets just say Ghanaians play too much.

5. The Duffour Family

The Duffour family has also made the headlines over the last couple of weeks for various reasons, albeit all being relating to the banking sector.

Dr. Kwabena Duffour Snr may have taken a relaxed stance in recent years, but his son, Dr. Kwabena Duffour Jnr, is still actively involved in the running of the family businesses.

Read more interesting stories on the development in Ghana's banking sector here.

Unfortunately, though, the collapse of UniBank, which was being chaired by Dr. Duffour Jnr, has seen the family name make the headlines for all the wrong reasons. There are reports that the board of the bank forged misused the banks funds, which left the Bank of Ghana with no choice than to merge it with four other struggling local banks. But this is a matter that has dragged the Duffour family into the media.

YEN earlier reported that ace investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas and his crew where almost lynched to death in their latest investigative piece in Malawi.

The investigative story for the BBC sought to unravel the issues surrounding the mysterious deaths of many in Malawi for ritual purposes.

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READ ALSO: 7 Ghanaian celebrities prophets are sure they will not see 2019

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All over the world, domestic violence stories have been reported and despite the social media outbursts and caution, this act still seems to be rampant.

Some people survive this attack while others do not, and so has been the fate of a 42-year-old woman who has just been reported dead after she was beaten mercilessly beaten by her boyfriend in South Africa.

Identified as Manotsi Lemao, she passed away at her cousins place where she was trying to recover from the brutalisation.

Pretty lady dies after being beaten by boyfriend on her birthday. Source: Tuko.com

Her cousin, Mateboho Selokoma, disclosed that she found out about her cousin after her husband went to Lemaos house to get some money.

READ ALSO: Jackie Appiahs son Damien flaunts his heavy 'machine' on social media and some fans are jealous

She said: He found the boyfriend. He told him that he and Manotsi had a fight earlier and she was sleeping. I then went to check on her and I found her brutally beaten. She had a blue eye and her body was swollen. She could not walk on her own. She said her boyfriend had beaten her up. I took her to the doctor. X-rays revealed that she had a broken leg.

Selokoma further disclosed that the deceased spent some days with her family but passed away on Thursday, August 9, after eating her birthday cake. But before her demise, Selokoma said that the deceased complained that her foot was itching her.

READ ALSO: My 'atopa' toy satisfies me more than 99.9% of my ex-boyfriend - Princess Shyngle

She said: Before she died, she complained that her foot was itchy. She said her heart was beating too slow, and she fell on my sons bed and died. Had this man not beaten her, she would still be alive.I wish the law would take its course.

However, Manotsis death was confirmed by the South African police spokeswoman, Sergent Ikobeng.

She disclosed that the deceased was allegedly beaten by her lover and was later discharged from the hospital. Ikobeng added that, Manotsi gave up at her cousins home but they are still awaiting autopsy result to determine the true cause of her death.

READ ALSO: Man who pretends to be mad confesses to many shop break-ins after being caught stealing (Video)

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China helping mine potential for Afghan development amid shadow of insecurity

By Hujjatullah Zia for China Daily | China Daily | Updated: 2018-08-13 07:33

Mineral resources bring great potential for the economic development of Afghanistan and could contribute greatly to the country's self-reliance.

Besides many other valuable mines, Mes Aynak holds one of the world's largest untapped deposits and a 5,000-year-old archaeological site in the province of Logar contains an estimated 12.5 million tons of copper.

In 2007, Beijing-based China Metallurgical Group Corporation (or MCC) won the rights to extract copper from Mes Aynak. The company bid over $3 billion and promised to provide roads, a railway and a 400-megawatt electricity plant for the district where the mine is located. However, the work of the Chinese engineers stalled, perhaps in the wake of insecurity, which is the main barrier before trade and investment.

Government newspaper Kabul Times has reported that three members of MCC had a meeting with Hasina Safi, the Afghan acting minister of information and culture, to accelerate work on excavation of "historical relics around Mes Aynak". The MCC delegation vowed to support archaeologists in the Mes Aynak project area, the report said. Safi praised China for its cooperation, saying it indicates the good mutual relation.

Afghanistan also has huge potential energy. It is estimated to have the potential for producing 223,000 MW of solar energy, 23,000 MW hydropower energy and 68,000 MW of wind energy.

The Kabul government is pursuing railway track projects to contribute to regional connectivity, with the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline, the power project for Central Asia-South Asia, and 500 KW power transmission line of Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Tajikistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan.

Poverty

It is self-explanatory that the protracted war has not only resulted in civilian casualties but also in the loss of archaeological sites, historical statues and mineral resources in Afghanistan. For example, a statue of Buddha was destroyed by the Taliban's regime, historical artifacts were looted and mineral resources were excavated illegally and smuggled abroad.

Although some countries, including Japan, returned the artifacts, hundreds of others are still missing. Above all, illegal mining by warlords, criminal gangs and militants reportedly continues.

Despite having rich resources, Afghan people still suffer from poverty. To free the country from economic crisis and alleviate poverty, the Kabul government will have to boost its economic ties and make more contracts with companies for excavating mineral resources before they are exploited by militants and unknown individuals.

Moreover, the government has to tighten the security of mineral resources, ensure the safety of archaeologists, companies and mine workers and prosecute those who are involved in illegal mining or smuggling of Afghanistan's resources and artifacts.

The author is a columnist for Daily Outlook, an independent newspaper in Afghanistan.

(China Daily 08/13/2018 page11)
Fundatia Est-Europeana anunta lansarea Programului de granturi pentru sustinerea fondurilor de antreprenoriat pentru tineri, inclusiv unul in Gagauzia
TWENTY medical students from Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (Muhas) will next month leave for China to pursue Masters and Doctorate degrees in various fields, including liver transplant.

They will simultaneously leave with 30 other medical professionals from various hospitals in the country to the Asian nation for short medical training courses, according to Chinese Ambassador to Tanzania Wang Ke.

Ms Ke said the sponsorship was a response to President John Magufulis request to China to help the Tanzanian government in developing medical talents.

The president made the plea during his visit to the Chinese Navy hospital ship Peace Ark which toured the country last November and offered free medical treatments to 6,441 Tanzanians.

During the farewell reception in Dar es Salaam yesterday, the envoy said: President Magufuli visited the ship and highly praised the advanced equipment of the hospital ship and the exquisite medical skills of the Chinese expertsin his thank-you letter to Chinese President Xi Jiping, he asked for help in developing the countrys medical talents.

All the 20 students and 30 medical professionals have Chinese government scholarship, according to the Ambassador, And, this is another important achievement of cooperation between the two countries in the field of education and medicine.

China provides over 100 scholarships to Tanzanians every year, including 20 in oil and gas.

With the promotion of industries and realisation of the countrys 2025 vision, Ms Ke said in-depth of development mutual beneficial cooperation, there are over 4,000 Tanzanian students in China, with 80 per cent of them self-funded.

They are mainly pursuing courses in machinery, communications, transportation, finance and engineering.

Education, Science, Technology and Vocational Training Minister Professor Joyce Ndalichako appreciated the scholarships, saying the government was determined to improve health care in the country.

She challenged the scholarship beneficiaries to concentrate on their studies and contribute to the national development of medical expertise upon their return in the home country.

We have told you that you are going to pursue critical areas, including bone marrow and liver transplants, transfusion medicine, critical care, interventional radiology and cardiothoracic surgerydespite the seriousness of the courses, we expect your contribution in improving health services in the country, she said.

MUHAS Vice-Chancellor Prof Andrea Pembe said expertise in the selected areas was dearly needed for specialised services at Mlonganzila Muhimbili Academic Medical Centre (MAMC) as well as for teaching and research activities.

He said MUHAS was privileged to have the scholarships to bridge the country's need for specialists and super-specialists in health.

And, as the leading higher learning institution in the country in health sector, the university looks forward to have the trainees graduating and coming back in the country to train others at MUHAS and other Tanzanian institutions.

Our expectations are that the scholarship recipients will successfully complete their studies within the prescribed time.

And, to achieve that, selection took into consideration your intellectual competence to produce the desired outcomes, he reminded the students.
Crisis Phone Numberspecial noticeIf you are a veteran in emotional crisis and need help RIGHT NOW, call this toll-free number 1-800-273-8255, available 24/7, and tell them you are a veteran. All calls are confidential.1-888-899-9377A Crisis Intervention Hotline has been established by the VA Heartland Network to assist veterans who may be dealing with a mental health crisis or difficult issue in their lives. The hotline will also aid family members or friends of veterans who need help in assisting a veteran in crisis.
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A linear accelerator is commonly used in external beam radiation treatments, for patients with cancer. Linear accelerator customizes high energy x-rays or electrons depending on a tumors shape and destroys cancer cells while sparing surrounding normal tissue. It is designed with build-up safety features to ensure that it will not deliver a higher dose than prescribed. The linear accelerator is used to treat all parts or organs of the body, by delivering high-energy x-rays or electrons to the region of the patient's tumor. A radiation oncologist prescribes the appropriate treatment volume and dosage of radiation.



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Linear Accelerators for Radiation Market Drivers

Increasing number of initiatives by various government and private organizations in early diagnosis of cancer, increases the survival rate, and reduces cancer mortality rate, and this is expected to help to boost market growth of linear accelerators for radiation. For instance, in February 2017, World Health Organization (WHO) proposed new guidelines to improve survival rate of people living with cancer, by ensuring that health service providers can focus on diagnosing and treating the disease earlier. WHO proposed three steps to early diagnosis are: improve public awareness of different cancer symptoms, invest in strengthening and equipping health services and training and ensuring people living with cancer can access safe and effective treatment. Moreover, Cancer Research UK organized Early Diagnosis Research Conference in February 2017, to share and discuss latest developments in early diagnosis research.

Growth of the linear accelerators for radiation market size is driven by increasing prevalence and incidence of various types of cancer, along with growing patient awareness programs by government and private organizations, and rising adoption of radiotherapy in cancer treatment. For instance, according to the Cancer Atlas: 2017, there were an estimated 14.1 million new cancer cases in 2012. Moreover, India, China, and other East and Central Asian countries accounted for nearly half of worlds new cancer cases and deaths, in 2017. Furthermore, according to the same source, by 2025, there will be an estimated 19.3 million new cancer cases and 11.4 million cancer deaths, in less developed regions.

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Linear Accelerators for Radiation Market Restraints

Major concerns of affordability and accessibility for the treatment, lack of trained personnel to operate linear accelerators, are some of the limiting factors, which may hinder the future market growth for linear accelerators for radiation.

Linear Accelerators for Radiation Market  Regional Analysis

Geographically, global linear accelerators for radiation market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Africa. Growing adoption of linear accelerators by prominent cancer treatment centers, worldwide; and upgrading the conventional treatment, will augment growth of the linear accelerators for radiation market, in the near future. In May 2016, Leeds Cancer Centre, a leading providers of cancer care in the U.K. updated its existing treatment equipment with eight Elekta Versa HD linear accelerators. The Versa HD linear accelerators combined with Volumetric Arc Therapy (VMAT) allows to deliver complex head and neck cancer therapy up to 42% faster. Furthermore, in November 2017, Romanian government signed for five Elekta linear accelerators, to supply the country with sophisticated radiation therapy devices. In addition, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre from Canada and Odense University Hospital from Denmark in December 2016, also ordered high-field MR-supported linear accelerator (MR-linac). Both Versa HD linear accelerator and high-field MR-supported linear accelerator (MR-linac) are manufactured by Elekta AB.

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According to the IndustryARC titled "Aerial Imaging Market: By Platform (Helicopters, Fixed-Wing Aircraft, Vehicle-Mounted Poles, Stand-Alone Telescoping, Others); By Application (Government, Military & Defense, Energy, Others) & By Region - Forecast (2018-2023), "the Aerial Imaging Market is driven by the increasing applications of aerial imaging in the agriculture, government, civil engineering, research, and other sectors.

North America to Dominate the Aerial Imaging Market

North America is expected to dominate the Aerial Imaging Market during the forecast period due to the large-scale applications of aerial imagery in the energy, agriculture, and defence sectors in this region. Europe and Asia-Pacific follow suit. Asia Pacific is expected to have the fastest growth in the coming years due to growing applications of drone filming in government and agricultural sectors in countries such as China and India. The Middle East and African markets are expected to be driven by the increasing applications of aerial imagery in the tourism industry. The South American market will be driven by the growing applications of aerial imagery in the agricultural and industrial sectors.

Selected Regulatory Analysis Done in the Full Report

The defence sector will dominate the Aerial Imaging Market in the coming years.

This segment uses aerial imaging to safeguard border areas and prepare map structures. Other areas such as research and exploration, mining, oil and gas, archaeological surveys, and resource management also use aerial imaging.

Selected Driving Factors Mentioned in the Full Report

The growing adoption of unmanned aerial vehicles in defence and other industries will boost the demand for aerial imaging services.

The increasing popularity of location-based services and technological developments in the field of advanced aerial camera systems and drone technology will spur the growth of aerial video photography.

The application of aerial imagery in applications such as homeland security and management of environmental changes will drive the demand for aerial imaging.

The growing incidences of natural disasters will enhance the growth of aerial imaging.

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Key Players of the Aerial Imaging Market

The key players of the Aerial Imaging Market include Digital Aerial Solutions, Cooper Aerial Surveys Co, Fugro N.V., and Landiscor Aerial Information. Digital Aerial Solutions provides various geospatial data services. Cooper Aerial Surveys is engaged in providing professional land, water, and aerial surveying services. Furgo NV operates in three segments, namely marine, land, and geoscience. Landiscor Aerial Information provides aerial mapping services for the real estate sector.

The Aerial Imaging Market is segmented as below:

Advanced technologies such as Geographical Information System (GIS) will generate opportunities for the Aerial Imaging Market.

Aerial Imaging Market By Platform Helicopter Fixed-Wing Aircraft Multi-Rotor Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Dirigibles & Blimps Balloons, Rockets Parachutes Kites Vehicle-Mounted Poles Stand-Alone Telescoping

Aerial Imaging Market By Application Government Military & Defense Energy Agriculture and Forestry Civil Engineering Commercial Insurance

Aerial Imaging Market By Geography(17+ countries)

Aerial Imaging Market Entropy

Company Profiles NRC Group ASA (Previously BLOM ASA) Cicade s.a Digital Aerial Solutions, LLC Cooper Aerial Surveys Co. Fugro N.V. Landiscor Aerial Information EagleView Technologies, Inc. Nearmap ltd. Kucera International Digital Aerial Solutions

Appendix: Abbreviations, Sources, Research Methodology, Bibliography, Compilation of Experts, Disclaimer.

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Entries Will Now Also be Accepted from Canada and the United Kingdom NEW YORK, Aug. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --A Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: ESRT) today announced its seventh annual photo contest for photographers to share their "Empire State Building (ESB) Moment" and have the chance to win $5,000. For the first time, the contest will be open to participants not only in the United States, but also in Canada, and the United Kingdom. In addition to the Grand Prize, those who submit photos will compete to win one of the eight weekly prizes and a Runner-Up prize of $1,500. Winners will also have their work displayed in the new Empire State Building Observatory. Fans of the Empire State Building may submit their photo entry via Instagram or Twitter by using the hashtag #ESBmoment and #contest. Entrants may also submit their photos using ESB's photo contest microsite, www.esbphotocontest.com or by texting "ESBMOMENT" to 811-811 for a link for submission*. Entries will be accepted from 4:00 PM ET on Monday, August 13, 2018, through Friday, October 5, 2018, at 11:59 PM ET. Exterior and interior shots of the building will be accepted. "A picture is worth 1,000 words, and what better way to share a special 'ESB moment' than through a photographic memory," said Anthony E. Malkin, Chairman and CEO of ESRT. "We are excited to share unique, personal perspectives of ESB as seen through the eyes of our Guests, and to give our Guests a chance for their 15 minutes of fame through the display of their winning submissions in our new $160 million Observatory experience." Eight weekly winners determined by fan vote on the website will be awarded a customized goody bag and a weekly winner title. The eight winners automatically become finalists and will compete for a chance to win the Grand Prize. Winners will be announced throughout the contest on the microsite and ESB's social media platforms. Entrants must be over the age of 18 and legal residents of the United States, the United Kingdom, or Canada. For official contest rules and additional information about the photo contest, visit www.esbphotocontest.com. *For US Entrants only: Charges and restrictions of the mobile platform provider may apply. About the Empire State Building

Soaring 1,454 feet above Midtown Manhattan (from base to antenna), the Empire State Building, owned by Empire State Realty Trust, Inc., is the "World's Most Famous Building." With new investments in energy efficiency, infrastructure, public areas and amenities, the Empire State Building has attracted first-rate tenants in a diverse array of industries from around the world. The skyscraper's robust broadcasting technology supports major television and FM radio stations in the New York metropolitan market. The Empire State Building was named America's favorite building in a poll conducted by the American Institute of Architects, and the Empire State Building Observatory is one of the world's most beloved attractions as the region's #1 tourist destination. For more information on the Empire State Building, please visit www.empirestatebuilding.com, www.facebook.com/empirestatebuilding, @EmpireStateBldg, www.instagram.com/empirestatebldg, www.youtube.com/esbnyc or www.pinterest.com/empirestatebldg/. About Empire State Realty Trust

Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: ESRT), a leading real estate investment trust (REIT), owns, manages, operates, acquires and repositions office and retail properties in Manhattan and the greater New York metropolitan area, including the Empire State Building, the world's most famous building. Headquartered in New York, New York, the Company's office and retail portfolio covers 10.1 million rentable square feet, as of June 30, 2018, consisting of 9.4 million rentable square feet in 14 office properties, including nine in Manhattan, three in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and two in Westchester County, New York; and approximately 700,000 rentable square feet in the retail portfolio.
Western civilization is hit or miss. Sometimes you get Waffle House, sometimes you get genocide. But once you push aside the white people who are too into their whiteness, there's definitely some stuff to like. In fact, some non-Western countries are into Western traditions waaaay more than we are, and their interpretations can get pretty weird. For example ...

5 Butler Cafes, Where Japanese Women Get Served By White Nerds

Back in the early 2000s, Yuki Hirohata interviewed 200 Japanese women to see what they'd want in a female-oriented restaurant. Although Hirohata probably expected answers ranging from Hello Kitty napkins to anywhere they could avoid subway gropers, the most common request was a place where women could practice their English with sexy foreign men. You'd assume that meant crab cakes eaten off the abs of Rock lookalikes, but Japanese women have slightly different tastes. When Hirohata opened the Princess-themed Butlers Cafe in 2002, she made sure to exclusively employ only the sexiest foreigners the West had to offer: nerdy white dudes who look like they'd lose a fight to a stiff breeze.

Butlers Cafe Great, exactly what every dude with an anime body pillow needed: encouragement.

And lest you think this is one of those strange one-off fad restaurants that cater to a niche clientele, several of these have been humming along for years, all staffed by every dude from high school who wouldn't shut up about Sailor Moon. These guys serve cake, flirt, and help edit patrons' English-language diaries for clarity and significantly more instances of the phrase "dope-ass white boys." Women are treated like princesses, which includes the option of wearing a tiara or receiving a little bell to summon their butler.
Many Australians are turning to creative ways to live their dreams before it's too late - even if it's just for a year or two.

Kirby Gibbons, 29, and her husband, Jacob, are one Aussie couple who are doing just that, after they decided to pack their life up in a van and hit the road for at least two years with their three children Axl, 6, Darci, 4 and Bonnie, 3.

The Tasmanian couple, who have a blog called One Day We Should, have been travelling around Australia for year - and it is only costing them $5.80 each day.

'It was always something we talked about and always wanted to do. Unfortunately my dad was diagnosed with early onset dementia and that was a huge wake up call for us to realise that life is unpredictable and you can't sit back, putting everything off until another day,' Kirby told FEMAIL.

The travel bloggers behind One Day We Should, Kirby Gibbons, 29, and husband, Jacob Gibbons, 33, decided to pack their life up in a van and hit the road with their three children Axl, 6, Darci, 4 and Bonnie, 3 (pictured in the Whitsundays)

Originally from Tasmania, the family of five have been travelling around Australia for a year - and it has only cost them $5.80 each day (the kids are pictured at the Ord River in the Kimberley)

To make a trip of a lifetime like this work, Ms Gibbons said they had to make sure they could set themselves up financially.

'Jacob has always worked huge hours and often worked away from home and I worked three jobs when we first got together and then later stayed home caring for our three kids,' Ms Gibbons said.

'We saved every penny. We've never done the week away in Bali, we've rarely gone out and we made as many budget cuts and wise financial decisions as we could.'

They completed their first full lap of Australia in March 2018 and are aiming to travel for at least one more year.

They completed their first full lap of Australia in March 2018 and are aiming to travel for at least one more year

In the first 10 months they spent a total of $1765.70 on accommodation, which worked out to be only $40.80 a week

They spend approximately $1 per kilometre of travel on all of their expenses, including food and fuel

What was the cost breakdown? - They spent $1765.80 on accommodation in the first 10 months - This worked out to be $40.80 a week - The most ridiculous quote for a caravan park site they received was over $130 a night for power and over $100 for no power, which they didn't take up - The most they paid for a site was $57, which was unpowered - They haven't stayed in a caravan park since June, 2017 - In the first week on the road they spent $300 on accommodation On average they are spending $5.80 per day Advertisement

They have been doing the trip in a Mazda Bt50 towing a 20 foot bunk van with triple bunks, ensuite and the capabilities to camp off-grid.

In the first 10 months they spent a total of $1765.70 on accommodation, which worked out to be only $40.80 a week.

Overall, they spend approximately $1 per kilometre of travel on all of their expenses, including food and fuel.

The most they paid for a site was $57 a night, which was only because the national park was full.

This taught them that they needed to pre-book accommodation or not arrive in peak season when it came to the rest of their journey.

To make a trip of a lifetime like this work they had to make sure they could set themselves up financially (pictured in Hassan's Wall, New South Wales)

This being said, they haven't stayed in a caravan park since June 2017 and they haven't stayed in a powered campsite since August 2017.

It took the family two years to plan their amazing adventure.

In that time they purchased the ute, set it up and renovated their house so that it would increase in value before they sold it. With that money they purchased the van and set off.

'We saved every penny. We've never done the week away in Bali, we've rarely gone out and we made as many budget cuts and wise financial decisions as we could,' Ms Gibbons said

After the duo made the decision to follow their heart and take their family on this adventure it took them two years before they could hit the road (kids pictured at Whitehaven Beach)

In that time they purchased the ute and set it up and they renovated their house so that it would increase in value and then sold it. With that money they purchased the van and set off

The family doesn't follow any particular route when they are travelling.

'We simply find the next place that looks great using a handy app called WikiCamps and then go there,' she said.

'We have slowed down our lap this time round so we can explore the areas we are in fully.'

Despite upgrading their backyard to the Australian outback, Ms Gibbons said they weren't forced to take extra precautions.

'The precautions are no different to life at home really. We have to keep an eye on the kids all the time,' she said.

In the first 10 months they drove around all of Australia and are now going to revisit areas where they didn't spend enough time

'I guess our "backyard" could potentially have Australian wildlife such as crocodiles, snakes and dingos, but the kids are very aware of these dangers and we make sure they are reminded of our rules and set strict boundaries every time we arrive in a campsite,' she added.

'In saying that, this is our everyday life so the kids have become very bush smart.'

She explained that because the family spend every single day together the children understand what their parent's expect of their behaviour.

They have also enrolled their oldest child, Axl, in the Tasmania E-school so that they are sent school work each term.

Despite upgrading their backyard to the Australian outback, Ms Gibbons said there are no extra precautions they have to take (photo taken during their trip to Mount Britton)

'We work through it together and our girls also enjoy joining in and learning,' Ms Gibbons said.

'Along with this they all learn so much in this lifestyle and already have learnt so many life skills and information about our country that they wouldn't of otherwise been taught.'

Because they're travelling for such an extended period of time, Ms Gibbons wants to ensure that the van that they spend all of their time in is as homely as possible.

'The precautions are no different to life at home really. We have to keep an eye on the kids all the time,' she explained (pictured is Little Blue Lake in Tasmania)

They have also enrolled their oldest child, Axl, in the Tasmania E-school so that they are sent school work each term (pictured at the Katherine Hot Springs)

Because they're travelling for such an extended period of time, Ms Gibbons wants to ensure that the van that they spend all of their time in is as homely as possible (pictured at the Whitsundays)

Their space contains a queen bed at the front that can be sectioned off from the rest of the van, a small kitchen and dining area, combination bathroom and triple bunks for the kids that can also be sectioned off.

'The kids love being close to one another. They enjoy having their bunk beds stacked on top of one another with the eldest on the top, middle child in the middle and youngest on the lowest bunk,' she said.

'I've been addicted to these Kmart hacks pages wishing for a home to decorate when I realised there was no reason I couldn't do it to our mini home on wheels.

'As we live in the van full time I wanted to have that feeling of "I love this" every time I walk into the van - and now I do.'

Their space contains a queen bed at the front that can be sectioned off from the rest of the van, a small kitchen and dining area (pictured at Lake Bonney Riverland in South Australia)

Often Ms Gibbons will shop at Kmart to decorate their home on wheels but because they're currently staying in Gympie, which doesn't have a Kmart, she has been relying on Bunnings.

'I purchased the greenery squares for $15 each and cut them to size for my bed backdrop. Left overs went into my little nooks for my makeup area,' she revealed.

'I also added some $10 dainty fairy lights that I weaved in between the greenery.'

Another addition is the $9 adhesive mirror squares, which Ms Gibbons said is one of her favourites.

'They come in a pack of three and are super lightweight and non-breakable which are essential when decorating a caravan,' she said.

'Our other decor items are $8 lightweight led candle and small $15 artificial plants $15, which are both from Big W.

'They're both light weight and stuck down so they don't move when we're towing.'

Soon they'll be adding a few exterior additions to the van, such as a barbecue on a slide for the tunnel boot and painting the lid of the Weber to match the van.

They have also installed a diesel heater to keep them warm when they visit Tasmania and Victoria and plenty of solar to enable them to free camp indefinitely.

'We have a couple more additions on our wish list yet to be installed,' she said.
A mother has revealed how her healthy seven-year-old son was left in a 'vegetative' state in hospital just days after suffering cold-like symptoms.

Francisca Grol, 39, of Kent, watched in horror as her son Kasten rapidly deteriorated to the point where he was unable to eat, walk or speak after being struck down with a rare brain condition in March.

The schoolboy was diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis, a rare and poorly understood disease that causes the body to produce antibodies that attack the brain, leading to a loss of cognitive and motor function.

Over six weeks Kasten went from being in a semi-comatose state to slowly regaining his ability to speak, walk and to use the toilet, in a process Mrs Grol describes as her son's 'rebirth'.

Kasten Grol, seven, was left in a 'vegetative' state in hospital after being struck down with autoimmune encephalitis, a rare disease which causes the body to produce antibodies that attack the brain. Pictured, Kasten at Evelina Children's Hospital, London with parents Francisca (bottom right) and Sterling (left), brother Yohan (far left) and a nurse

Schoolboy Kasten went from playing with friends to being bed-bound in hospital within a matter of days as the disease took hold. He eventually lost the ability to walk, talk and swallow. Pictured, Kasten before he was diagnosed with the condition in April this year

The seven-year-old is now back at home near Sevenoaks with his mother, father Sterling, 42, and younger brother Johan, six, as he continues his recovery.

But so little is known about the disease, which was only discovered in 2007, that it is not yet clear how it will affect Kasten in the long-term.

Mrs Grol is now sharing the family's story in the hope of raising awareness of the condition that almost took her son's life.

Speaking to FEMAIL, the mother of two told how the first sign something was wrong was when Kasten fell ill in the days leading up to the Easter holidays in March.

Mother-of-two Francisca Grol described how she watched in horror as her son battled the disease in hospital (pictured). The mother thought her son was suffering from the common cold just days before he suffered the seizure that led to his hospitalisation

'He had what seemed like a cold, a virus, what kids normally get, but he had gotten better and gone to school,' she recalled. A couple of days later Kasten and his brother were sitting down to eat when he suffered a seizure.

Mrs Grol said: 'He fell out of his chair and started shaking. I thought at first that he had choked on the chicken in his pasta but he went into respiratory arrest and we went completely blue in my arms.'

WHAT IS ENCEPHALITIS? Encephalitis is an uncommon but serious condition in which the brain becomes inflamed (swollen). It can be life-threatening and requires urgent treatment in hospital. Anyone can be affected, but the very young and very old are most at risk. Encephalitis sometimes starts off with flu-like symptoms, such as a high temperature and headache, but these don't always occur. More serious symptoms develop over hours, days or weeks, including: confusion or disorientation, seizures (fits), changes in personality and behaviour or loss of consciousness. Dial 999 for an ambulance immediately if you or someone else has these more serious symptoms. It's not always clear what causes encephalitis, but it can be caused by viral infections. Several common viruses can spread to the brain and cause encephalitis in rare cases, including the herpes simplex virus (which causes cold sores and genital herpes) and the chickenpox virus. Source: NHS Advertisement

With the help of a 999 operator, Mrs Grol was able to keep her son stable as her six-year-old son Johan opened the door for the paramedics.

Kasten was put into an ambulance where he went into full respiratory arrest and suffered a collapsed lung en route to Pembury Hospital, in Tunbridge Wells. He was placed into an induced coma and transferred to Evelina Children's Hospital, London.

Mrs Grol said: 'At Evelina, I sat up all night long. I did not sleep at all. It felt like my world had crashed around me. My mother-in-law and I said that it felt like some horrible nightmare that you expect to wake-up from.

'I was suffering from PTSD from the trauma of having to resuscitate him in the kitchen, and everything that happened from that point... It was the fear of not knowing what the heck had just happened... And not knowing what was going on.'

Over the next three to four days Kasten suffered as many as 40 seizures. With each one he lost more and more cognition.

'He wasn't able to sit up, then he lost sentences, then it was single words, then it was losing the ability to eat, then he lost his ability to swallow altogether,' Mrs Grol said. 'He was looking into the distance, completely blank. He became a vegetative.'

Fortunately Dr Raol Singh, a brain inflammation pediatric specialist, was on call and recognised Kasten's symptoms. He was diagnosed within six days of being admitted.

After prescribing a high dosage of steroids and an immune treatment called intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), Kasten was given a course of plasmapheresis, also known as plasma exchange or 'PLEX', which works to 'clean' the blood.

Kasten, pictured in hospital with younger brother Yohan, regained the ability to walk, talk and swallow following a course of plasmapheresis, also known as plasma exchange or 'PLEX', which works to 'clean' the blood. The first word he was able to say was 'poo'

Kasten was put into an ambulance where he went into full respiratory arrest and suffered a collapsed lung en route to Pembury Hospital, in Tunbridge Wells. He was placed into an induced coma and transferred to Evelina Children's Hospital, London (pictured)

The benefits to Kasten were immediate. He soon regained speech, one word at a time.

'The first word was "poo",' Mrs Grol recalled. 'He was screaming it at the top of his lung. Me, my mother in law and my husband, we had tears rolling down our cheeks. It was followed by the word "fart".

'Part of the illness causes "looping" of words... So from when he would wake up at 6 in the morning to when he would go to sleep at 10 at night, he would shout "poo" and "fart". On a loop.'

The mother-of-two told how after each PLEX session her son would 'slowly come back'.

The progress he was making was clear when he took a card from his younger brother, affectionately nicknamed 'YoYo', and read the message saying 'I love you to the moon and back'.

The process of re-learning was gradual, with Kasten developing from single words to whole sentences. His mother Francisca described it as a 'rebirth' for her son, Kasten pictured in hospital during his recovery

Eventually the ability to walk came back to Kasten. Pictured, taking tentative steps on the ward with the help of the caring staff from Evelina Children's Hospital in London

Mrs Grol said: 'He ran his fingers along the words... And he was able to read it. That was an incredible moment.'

However, while his condition was improving Kasten could still only speak in short sentences, was wearing nappies and was suffering distressing hallucinations caused by his condition.

Eventually, memories of how to do these basic tasks came back to him. 'It just all kind of came back,' Mrs Grol said. 'It was like a rebirth, it really was like he was an infant and everything was coming back.'

When Kasten was finally discharged from hospital at the end of May he still had trouble communicating and using sentences but was feeding himself.

Mrs Grol said: 'We are eternally grateful for the incredible care we received at Evelina Children's hospital from Kasten's consultant Dr Ming Lim and his team.'

When Kasten was finally discharged from hospital at the end of May he still had trouble communicating and using sentences but was feeding himself. Pictured during his recovery. Over six weeks Kasten went from being in a semi-comatose state to slowly regaining his ability to speak, walk and to use the toilet, in a process Mrs Grol describes as her son's 'rebirth'

Staff at Evelina Children's Hospital helped to keep Kasten's spirits up throughout his treatment, pictured. The schoolboy has since returned home to his family near Sevenoaks, Kent.

Now his condition has dramatically improved but he is still on medication and suffers sporadic seizures which require 'rescue breathing'.

Mrs Grol said: 'Things that used to phase me do not phase me anymore. You live with gratitude for just having your family.

'I am just so grateful that I've got the kids arguing because it means I have them here. And I am happy I have the mess in my home because that means there's someone here to make the mess.'

Now the Grols are raising money to fund ground-breaking research being conducted into the illness by Dr Sarosh Irani at Oxford University.

On a Virgin Money Giving page, Mrs Grol explained it costs 1million to run a project over three years.

The hope is that the study will allow researchers and medics to learn more about the causes and treatments of the disease, which was only discovered in 2007.

Mrs Grol added: 'Kasten will start school part-time again in September... [But] there's always the risk of relapse... In terms of long-term prognosis, nobody knows. That's why research is so important.'
A teen who kindly bought the woman behind her a coffee at Starbucks was rewarded with a heartfelt letter from the stranger  who turned out to be one of her neighbors.

Mackenzie, a 19-year-old college student from Northeast Ohio, took to Twitter this week to share photos of the two-page letter from the woman, Nicole Clawson, who explained that her kind gesture had made her day.

Thank you for the coffee! I rarely go to Starbucks and treat myself, but the last couple of months have been a bit of a struggle,' Nicole wrote.

Paying it forward: Mackenzie (pictured), 19, from Ohio, bought the woman behind her in line a coffee at Starbucks this week

Grateful: The woman, Nicole Clawson, turned out to be Mackenzie's neighbor. She left a two-page letter in the teen's mailbox thanking her for the kind gesture

'My father just passed away and he was also my babysitter. My family and my children have had a really hard time.'

The mom went on to explain that her babysitter had called off sick, so she had to take the day off from work.

'I decided to buy my kids breakfast and get myself coffee with total guilt because I am going to become a stay-at-home Mom for a while,' she admitted, noting that she's 'not financially or emotionally prepared to quit working'.

'I cried when I found out you were so sweet to buy my coffee and thrilled to see you pull in a couple houses down from where I live,' Nicole continued.

Touched: Nicole (left) explained to Mackenzie (right) she was going through a difficult time following the death of her father and her act of kindness made her day

'I felt it necessary for you to know that what you did for me was more than just a coffee. It was something that turned my whole day around, put tears in my eyes, a smile on my face, and I feel so grateful. Thank you!

While sharing the letter on Twitter, Mackenzie urged other people to pay it forward, explaining that 'small acts can make a big difference folks, spread some kindness.'

The tweet has received nearly 75,000 'likes' and more than 18,000 retweets, including one from Starbucks.

'Kindness matters,' the coffee chain tweeted.

'Kindness matters': Mackenzie shared the letter on Twitter, and the post received more than 18,00 retweets, including one from Starbucks

Wonderful story: Nicole revealed on Twitter that Mackenzie (pictured) thanked her for the letter and even offered to babysit for her

Nicole thanked Mackenzie for the coffee a second time on Twitter, revealing that the teen had thanked her for writing the card and even offered to babysit for her.

'You truly are the sweetest and a wonderful person who deserves the recognition!' she wrote in the comments section.

In a another comment, Nicole noted that her children are aware of Mackenzie's kind gesture and how it made her feel.

'This has been such a great learning opportunity for them, on how to treat others, no matter what,' she explained. 'They are excited to pay it forward, and treat others with kindness and selflessness.'
Nursing student Renae Williamson who complained about her crippling migraines discovered she had just 24 hours to live following a shock brain tumour diagnosis

A 40-year-old woman who complained about her crippling headaches discovered she had just 24 hours to live following a shock brain tumour diagnosis.

Nursing student Renae Williamson, from Western Australia, began experiencing excruciating headaches for four days in June last year.

Unfazed about the symptom, she put the debilitating tension down to genetics because migraines runs in her family.

But after an MRI scan, Mrs Williamson was given the shocking news she needed to undergo surgery to remove two nodules from her head, with one tumour in her brain measuring 2.2cm.

The tumour had caused so much swelling of the brain, she was told she was on the brink of it being untreatable.

'I was told if I had left it another 24 hours I would be dead. It was surreal. I didn't have any words,' Mrs Williamson told Daily Mail Australia.

'I was feeling like a normal person who exercising, studying at uni - just someone who was living a normal everyday life.

'So when you sit down and told there's a huge tumour in your brain, it came as a surprise. I was really worried and I wasn't myself after getting the news.

But after an MRI scan, Mrs Williamson was given the shocking news she needed to undergo surgery to remove two nodules from her head, with one tumour in her brain measuring 2.2cm

'The way they said it was so casual, it was like saying "hello". It was such a shock to me because it literally started off with just a headache over a few days.

'My twin sister suffers from migraines and it runs in the family so we didn't think anything of it but she told me to get checked just in case.

'And it turned out to be a tumour - thank God I listened to my headaches.'

With her husband Jared by her hospital bedside for the next five excruciating days, she was given pain relief to alleviate the pain as further scans were done.

Following a successful surgery to remove the 2.2cm tumour from the brain, she was left bedridden with 19 staples to the back of her head.

Five days after surgery, Mrs Williamson was finally allowed to go home - but she faced the challenges of not being allowed to do many everyday tasks.

'I wasn't allowed to do many everyday tasks like driving a car, cooking or lifting anything over 200g. Almost any sort of physical exertion,' she said.

After five days post-surgery, Mrs Williamson was finally allowed to go home - but she faced the challenges of not being allowed to do many everyday tasks

But after being home for seven days, she was rushed back to the hospital after she started leaking cerebral spinal fluid from the staples.

'I ended up with having nearly as many stitches as I did staples,' she said.

'But this did not stop the leaking. I was required to go back into hospital and get a spinal tab put in to relieve the pressure on the operated area and allow it to heal.

'I was in the hospital for nine days where I was confined to complete bed rest. I could not move without first letting a nurse know. This was the hardest of all of it.

We've had to sell our apartment to afford the cost associated with fighting or rather living with melanoma

'I cried so much. I felt completely helpless. For the first time, I was scared and nervous about what was happening to me.'

And to make things worse, she was also diagnosed with stage four melanoma - despite being vigilant in the sun her whole life.

'The doctor said to me "no one wants melanoma but luckily in the last five years there have been significant developments in treatment options",' she recalled.

'For me, that means the combinations of two drugs that effectively buy me time. How much? No one can tell you.

'The oncologist said "some people live, some people die. We don't know why some do and some don't".'

Following a successful surgery to remove the 2.2cm tumour from the brain, she was left bedridden after getting 19 staples to the back of her head

She also admits the ongoing treatments have put a financial strain on her life.

'We literally got down to $5... Some weeks we didn't know how I was going to afford my medicine,' she said.

'I have had to give up my studies in nursing. We've had to sell our apartment to afford the cost associated with fighting or rather living with melanoma.

'We cannot afford to go out. Even just for simple meals. If we didn't receive vouchers for the movies for birthdays and Christmas we wouldn't be going out at all.'

You either sink or swim so I've got to accept that things might not work. I might not be here in a year but I'm not going to curl up in a ball and throw my life away

More than one year on, Mrs Williamson said she has been responding well to the treatment.

'I am getting better and stronger everyday. So far I am living and responding well to the treatment so far,' she said.

'I'm going to stay me, it's important to stay positive because it's the best I can do in these situations.

'You either sink or swim so I've got to accept that things might not work. I might not be here in a year but I'm not going to curl up in a ball and throw my life away.'

Last week, Mrs Williamson underwent surgery remove a tumour behind her right eat.

'I lost hearing in my right ear. There's been swelling in that area so it's been playing with my balance. It'll take me months to come back,' she said.

Generous family and friends have rallied behind the cancer-stricken woman (pictured with her husband Jared) to help raise funds for her ongoing medical treatments

Generous family and friends have rallied behind the cancer-stricken woman to help raise funds for her ongoing medical treatments via GoFundMe.

'The fundraising page literally saved me,' she explained.

'We've had so many people rally behind me and it really surprises you who you can rely on. It's phenomenal and it teaches you a lot about human nature.

'I just want to thank everyone who has supported us so far - giving us food, making donations and sending well wishes to keep me positive.

'I just can't thank them enough. My friends and family have been wonderful, and I'm married to the most amazing man. For now I'm just be hanging with the family.'

For anyone going through a similar journey, Mrs Williamson advised: 'Don't put too much pressure on yourself.

'There's a lot to take in but some things need to be celebrated. We went to lunch on Friday for the first time in a long time, it doesn't seem much but it's such a big deal for us.

'You've just got to make the best of a bad situation. Be kind to people in general because the world needs to be a better place.'

To make a donation, please visit the GoFundMe page.
Piper Seymour isn't like most of the other Instagram influencers you'll find on social media today.

The cheerful youngster from Brisbane, who boasts a following of 52,000 people, stands apart because she's already wildly successful despite being just four years of age.

Her mother, Kerry, helped set up a profile for her when Piper was six months old, jumping on the adorable 'baby' accounts that fans flock to.

Piper Seymour isn't like most of the other Instagram influencers you'll find on social media today

'My eldest daughter was 16 years old at the time and had seen other baby accounts and suggested it,' Kerry told FEMAIL.

'At first I thought she was crazy but she showed me some other accounts and actually started Piper's Instagram for me and took the first few photos.'

The main focus of the account settled on all things fashion because Piper was a natural in front of the camera.

'My eldest daughter was 16 years old at the time and had seen other baby accounts and suggested it,' Kerry told FEMAIL

The profile @pipersienna didn't become a viral sensation over night but took a steady stream of daily uploads and lots of attention before she hit the big time

'Brands wanted to send her clothes and hair accessories right from the age of six months old. We have evolved into a lifestyle account but fashion will always be important. Plus Piper does love receiving her clothes in the mail,' Kerry commented.

The profile @pipersienna didn't become a viral sensation overnight, but a steady stream of daily uploads saw her eventually hit the big time.

But the effort was worth it, with the young star earning up to $550 per sponsored post.

'Offers like $550 don't come around everyday,' Kerry admitted. 'Offers can range from $200 upwards.'

'Not all our posts are sponsored, a lot of them aren't, because I get a bit sick of seeing some accounts always "selling" something.

'Offers like $550 don't come around everyday,' Kerry admitted. 'Offers can range from $200 upwards'

At the moment Piper's audience is women aged between 22 and 52 who are interested in all things children and family

'Our page is a collection of our life and what we do and I would prefer to connect with our followers rather than sell to them all the time.

'I turn down a lot of cosmetic products, food we don't eat, or things that just don't sit right with my views or it's something I'm just not into. I have to love it to take the time to want to photograph it!'

At the moment Piper's audience is women aged between 22 and 52 who are interested in all things children and family.

Fans are becoming more intrigued with the rest of the family, including Piper's older brother Josh, and what they do in their day-to-day life.

'With Piper being my third child obviously I'm classed as an older mother, so I find I'm pretty comfortable and confident in my parenting now and I've made a few changes to our lifestyle that I would have been too scared to make with my first child in case I screwed it all up,' Kerry said.

Fans are becoming more intrigued with the rest of the family, including Piper's older brother Josh, and what they do in their day-to-day life

Beyond blogging, Piper enjoys the 'normal four-year-old stuff' like dinosaurs, My Little Ponies and The Lion King

'We have become vegan (plant-based) over the last six months which has been a fun lifestyle change that we are all enjoying and feeling really good about.

'We also own a kombi, she's just a new addition that we use on weekends and day trips and holidays within Australia for fun when we are not traveling overseas.

'We try to have at least one to two weeks every six weeks of travelling and then just a few short trips or staycations in between.

'I have homeschooled Josh through distance educaton for two years now, originally so we could travel more and not disrupt his schooling but now I realise it been a huge lifestyle change for us too, really moving us towards a slower pace of living.

'We really enjoy it so much more than the 12 years of daily schooling and afternoon activities we did with our eldest. It allows us so much more freedom and definitely connects us more as a family.

'Piper will also start prep via distance education next year. I'm sure none of us could go back to traditional schooling again. We live in Queensland by the beach where we try to get out and explore as much as possible.'

'Her days are usually spent drawing or getting her hands on the craft bag. She plays outside or down at the beach a lot usually with her brother as he's home,' Kerry explained

Piper's opportunities to travel the world and work alongside adorable clothing brands is a major perk of the job

Beyond blogging, Piper enjoys the 'normal four-year-old stuff' like dinosaurs, My Little Ponies and The Lion King.

'Her days are usually spent drawing or getting her hands on the craft bag. She plays outside or down at the beach a lot usually with her brother as he's home,' Kerry explained.

'Plus she loves it when we travel... she's always happy to be away exploring something new, both kids definitely get itchy feet if we are home too long and start asking where we are going next.

'Disneyland in Hong Kong was her favourite place we have been and the only place that she has cried because she didn't want to go home,' Kerry said

'Disneyland in Hong Kong was her favourite place we have been and the only place that she has cried because she didn't want to go home.'

Piper's opportunities to travel the world and work alongside clothing brands is a major perk of the job, and that's exactly what Kerry hopes it is for her daughter in the future: a blessing.

'I would just like it to keep giving her what it already does; the opportunity to travel the world and see places that we wouldn't have been able to afford to show her and give her a voice when and if she wants one.'
Under-eye circles, bags and pigmentation around our peepers are a bane of life for women the world over.

But such beauty curses may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to a revolutionary new concealer formulation that promises to be 'Spanx for your under-eye bags'.

Celebrity-loved make-up artist, Charlotte Tilbury, will launch her Magic Away Liquid Concealer in September - a formulation that's been twenty years in the making.

Celebrity-loved make-up artist, Charlotte Tilbury , will launch her Magic Away Liquid Concealer in September - a formulation that's been twenty years in the making

The product has already been dubbed 'magic' by beauty bloggers including Stefanie (pictured without and with concealer) of House of Paper Doll

'This ingredient has a unique gummy texture that stretches over the complexion and resurfaces like new skin!,' Charlotte Tilbury (pictured) said of the concealer

The 'miracle stick' promises to help reduce the appearance of dark circles, pigmentation and blemishes.

Meanwhile, the Spanx element of the product derives from the 'elastic stretch' the product has due to a special ingredient, Persian silk tree bark extract.

'This ingredient has a unique gummy texture that stretches over the complexion and resurfaces like new skin!,' Charlotte Tilbury said of Persian silk tree bark.

'It can contribute to the illusion of a lifted upper eyelid, as well as reducing the appearance of fine lines, fading dark circles and puffiness.'

The concealer (left) will retail for $49 when it is available from September; meanwhile she is also releasing a powder (right) to help with blemishes and redness

'It targets the spots that need concealing, stretches over areas you want to appear smooth and helps covers up tricky red patches This is a concealer you can really trust,' Charlotte said

It also comes in sixteen different colours and shades (pictured), so there is something for every different skin tone

Priced at $49, the concealer doesn't come cheap.

What makes the Magic Away concealer magic? * Persian silk tree bark extract: This ingredient has a unique gummy texture that stretches over the complexion and resurfaces like new skin! It can contribute to the illusion of a lifted upper eyelid, as well as reducing the appearance of fine lines, fading dark circles and puffiness. * Palmitoyl Glycine: This helps to rejuvenate the complexion and makes the skin look bouncy, fresh and youthful. It also helps to reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles. * Extract of wild indigo: This helps to enhance the skin's luminosity and brightens your under eyes. Advertisement

But it's already got make-up bloggers and beauty personalities talking, thanks to the range of sixteen colours and shades on offer, and the effect it has on your eyes and under-eyes.

'For me, the perfect concealer didn't exist,' Charlotte said.

'There has been NOTHING I've found like this on the market, until now! I liken it to a magic wand because it makes your skin wishes come true It targets the spots that need concealing, stretches over areas you want to appear smooth and helps covers up tricky red patches This is a concealer you can really trust.'

Beauty blogger, Stefanie, from House of Paper Doll, agreed, sharing a YouTube video of the product, and deeming it 'magical' in a blog post.

'I'm almost 40 and my under eye area can often lean more on the dry side now with so many products settling into fine lines which then just accentuates these darn lines more especially after hours of wear,' she wrote.

'This is probably one of the best concealers I have tried that doesn't produce that powdery, caking effect.'

Beauty bloggers agree, with some saying: 'This is probably one of the best concealers I have tried that doesn't produce that powdery, caking effect'

The famous makeup artist counts Amal Clooney, the Duchess of Sussex and Nicole Kidman (pictured with Charlotte Tilbury), among her high-profile fans

The famous makeup artist, who counts Amal Clooney, the Duchess of Sussex and Nicole Kidman, among her high-profile fans, is known for releasing cult products, including her Hollywood Flawless Filter foundation and her iconic Pillow Talk lipstick.

The Pillow Talk lip liner and lipstick is such a success that one product sells every six seconds globally.

Recently, Charlotte Tilbury revealed the best-selling beauty products in Australia, which is the brand's third largest market.

Alongside Pillow Talk, top of the list was the Magic Eye Rescue ($90), an anti-ageing eye cream that is packed with powerhouse ingredients which claim to reduce the appearance of fine lines and dark circles.

Aussie women also love the Walk of Shame lipstick ($49) - a berry rose shade worn by Miranda Kerr on her wedding day.

The Brightening Youth Glow primer ($76) was the third best-selling product, thanks to its ability to colour correct and provide the perfect base for makeup.

Meanwhile, Charlotte's Filmstar Bronze & Blush ($109) came in fourth place, and her Full Fat Lashes mascara ($48) rounded out the top five.

To join the waiting list for Charlotte Tilbury's Magic Away Concealer, released September 6, please click here.
Her Majesty's former press secretary has revealed that Camilla will make the perfect Queen Consort as she never fails to keep her husband's spirits up.

Charles Anson told People magazine that the Duchess of Cornwall, 70, 'kind of jollies' Prince Charles along and 'doesn't let him get too overburdened by the woes of the world.'

'She's got a good philosophy about life: "There are things you can change, other things you can't change . . . Don't get too hung up about it",' he explained.

And the public relations expert who advised the Queen for more than six years before leaving to take up a role with Burger King in 1996, insisted that the Duchess will be known as Queen Consort when Charles, 69, eventually takes the throne.

'I think she'll be a great consort as queen,' he said.

The Queen's former press secretary has revealed Charles and Camilla make such a great match as she doesn't let him get overburdened by worries. Pictured: At the reopening the Strand Hall, Builth Wells in July 2018

The Duchess of Cornwall, 70, 'jollies' Prince Charles along and stops him from getting overburdened by worry, according to the Queen's former press secretary. Pictured: A visit to Nice Flower Market during a Royal Tour of France and Greece in May 2018

Charles and Camilla share a joke on a visit to Les Halles de Lyon-Paul Bocuse food market in Lyon in May 2018. The Queen's former press secretary believes Camilla will make a 'great' Queen Consort

Camilla herself has previously spoken out about how she prioritises maintaining a sense of humour in the public eye.

In an interview with the Mail on Sunday last year, she explained: Youve got to laugh through most things, and sometimes I do laugh a bit too much.

'There are situations where its very difficult not to lose it completely, especially, you know, if something goes terribly wrong and everybody sits there for a split second [not sure how to react].

The Queen's former Press Secretary with Her Majesty and the Queen Mother at Epsom Derby in 1991

'You do have to swallow and pinch yourself very hard to not laugh.

However, the exact title Camilla will take when Charles eventually ascends the throne still remains the subject of debate.

Since Camillas marriage to Prince Charles in 2005, Clarence House has maintained it is intended she will be known as Princess Consort.

However, it is well known the heir to the throne would like to see his wife crowned queen.

In March this year, Prince Charles' website quietly removed a statement in which they said it is intended The Duchess will be known as HRH The Princess Consort when The Prince of Wales accedes to the throne.

Princes Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall drink wine during a visit to Les Halles de Lyon-Paul Bocuse food market in May 2018

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall after the blessing of their marriage at St George's Chapel, Windsor in 2005

It was also removed from her personal biography and the Buckingham Palace's website appears to have removed the reference in its profile of Prince Charles' wife, too.

A spokesman said at the time: This is one question that Clarence House has not been asked by the public for some time, which is why it no longer features.

She's not always had the easiest of time in the court of public opinion, but a documentary released last year to celebrate her 70th birthday seemed to win over a new legion of fans as it showed a softer side to the Duchess.

A timeline of Charles and Camilla's relationship Camilla was 25-year-old when she first caught the eye of the 23-year-old Prince of Wales in the summer of 1972. However, neither saw a future in the relationship as Camilla had already become involved with Andrew Parker Bowles, then an officer in the Household Cavalry, and the Prince of Wales was expected to marry a virgin. The affair came to a natural end when Charles went to the Caribbean in January 1973 with the Navy, and Camilla returned to The affair reached a natural hiatus when Charles, then still in the Navy, left for the Caribbean in January 1973. Camilla married Andrew Parker Bowles in a Catholic ceremony at the Guards Chapel in London on July 4, 1973. Five years later, towards the end of 1978, Charles and Camilla resumed their love affair and it ended again in 1981 when he married Diana. He's since insisted they only rekindled things in 1986 when his marriage to Diana was beyond repair. Andrew and Camilla Parker Bowles announced their divorce in a statement from their lawyers on January 10, 1995. Dianas death changed everything, and Camilla agreed to follow a finely calibrated PR campaign to bring her gradually out into the open. In April 2005, eight years after Dianas death the couple married. Advertisement

Cameras followed Charles and Camilla on various engagements, including a trip to Italy and a charity tea dance, where they enjoyed an awkward dance with an Elvis Impersonator.

In The Real Camilla: HRH the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Charles said of his wife: 'She has a wonderful way with people that is what is special about her.

'She is remarkable really, she is the best listener in the world and can get anything out of anyone.'
The new series of Dragons' Den got off to a gruesome start on BBC2 last night as an entrepreneur tempted the investors with his live anatomy and surgical class, featuring real animal organs.

Former secondary school teacher Sam Piri from Warwickshire, the founder of Anatomy Lab Live, wanted a 90,000 investment for five per cent of his events business, which is mainly aimed at medical trainees.

But in order to showcase his work, the Dragons had to overcome their squeamishness to approach the operating table where he'd arranged a mock body filled with real pig organs.

'Have you got a sick bucket somewhere just in case?' Jenny Campbell asked, as the Dragons approached the operating table to practice open heart surgery, while Deborah Meaden had to bow out entirely.

'That turns my stomach. I can't do that. It's the smell,' she said.

Despite their initial reticence, however, the Dragons were impressed by Sam's business, which also offers 'dinner and dissection' events, and Peter Jones, Deobrah Meaden and Tej Lalvani went head-to-head with their offers.

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On last night's episode of Dragons' Den, Jenny Campbell, Tej Lalvani and Peter Jones practice open heart surgery with real pig organs with Sam Piri from Warwickshire, the founder of Anatomy Lab Live

Deborah Meaden was too squeamish to get involved and said the smell was turning her stomach, but she was still impressed by Sam's business model and offered to invest in the first episode of the latest series of Dragon's Den

When entrepreneur Sam arrived in the den, he admitted he was nervous about how the Dragons would respond to his proposal.

'We've had a couple of people vomiting,' he explained. 'We've had a couple of people passing out every now and again. Hopefully they're not too put off by the smell.'

He set up his business in 2015 and it now offers anatomy and phsyiology training in schools, hospitals, colleges across the UK, as well as 'dinner and dissection' events where anyone can pay 89 to have a two-course dinner and play at being a surgeon.

But he explained to the Dragons he's eager to expand his business across Europe and the US while there are no direct competitors.

Entrepreneur Sam Piri from Warwickshire appeared on last night's Dragons' Den to explain he was looking for a 90,000 investment for a five per cent stake, in order to grow his business internationally

Dragon Jenny Campbell asked entrepreneur Sam Piri if he had a sick bucket handy after he explained they would be working with real animal organs during a surgery simulation on Sunday night's episode

Thoracic cavity allows healthcare practitioners to really contextualise and see the organs in situ, which they don't normally get in routine training.

Tej Lalvani, who is CEO of the UK's largest vitamin company Vitabiotics, was immediately interested and told Sam he could immediately give him the contacts he needs to expand.

'We've got direct connections with hundreds of thousands of doctors worldwide,' he said. 'You need to be plugged into that network as soon as possible.'

He even offered Sam 30,000 more than he'd asked for with a 120K investment, but explained that he wanted 25 per cent of his company in return.

Vitabiotics CEO Tej Lalvani offered 120,000, 30K more than Sam was asking for on Sunday night's Dragons' Den, and promised he could put him in contact with the best doctors internationally

The Dragons had a go at simulating open heart surgery, using a real pig's heart, on Sunday night's episode. Sam explained that his surgery events and training business uses by-products of the meat industry and stops them going into landfill

Sam admitted that people had been physically sick and passed out at his events, where surgery is simulated on real animal organs. As well as training medical students, his company offers 'Dinner and Dissection' experiences where people can buy tickets to have meal and try their hand at surgery

Despite her initial squeamishness, Deborah Meaden was also interested and said that although she didn't have the same contacts, growing businesses and upscaling internationally is a 'well-trodden path' for her.

She offered 90K for 15 per cent of the business, before Peter Jones jumped in to pitch his experience in managing events and understanding the market, offering the same investment for 20 per cent.

However, Sam was nervous about giving away too big a stake and asked if any of the Dragons would be interested in teamed up.

In the end, he decided to accept an offer from Peter and Deborah for half the money in return for a ten per cent stake.

Dragons' Den airs Sundays at 8pm on BBC2
Disney has come under fire after selecting a straight actor to play the studios' first ever openly gay character.

British comedian Jack Whitehall was selected to star as Emily Blunt's gay brother alongside Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson in Disney's The Jungle Cruise.

And while the news that his character will be openly gay is regarded as a pivotal moment in Walt Disney's history many fans are less than happy with the casting.

Taking to Twitter many have complained that Jack's character should be played by a gay actor and that in not doing so Disney is 'perpetuating stereotypes'.

Disney has come under fire for casting straight actor Jack Whitehall (pictured) in the studios' first ever openly gay role

Fans took to Twitter to argue that the role should have been given to a gay actor

Chris Salvatore wrote: 'Such a dam shame it's so hard to find gay actors to play gay roles in hollywood. Do better @disney (sic)

Another added: 'If you're one of the people who 'doesn't see the big deal' RE Jack Whitehall, a straight white male cast as the first openly gay Disney character then you're part of the problem.'

'How is a straight actor playing a "hugely effete, very camp," secondary gay character helpful for #LGBT visibility and positive portrayal in the arts? Booooo' lamented a third.

Others agreed that while they appreciated that Jack Whitehall is an 'amazing' LGBTQ+ ally they felt that Disney had made a mistake.

Jack Whitehall was selected to star as Emily Blunt's gay brother alongside Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson (pictured with Blunt on set) in Disney's The Jungle Cruise

Many agreed that they were disappointed with the decision with Omar Sharif Jr arguing that it would 'perpetuate stereotypes'

James Barr said: Super excited about this huge moment for the LGBTQ+ family and @jackwhitehall is amazing...

'BUT when so many gay actor friends of mine are turned down for straight roles because there's a "whiff of gay" it's frustrating to cast NonGay people in gay roles''.

However, others argued that as Jack is an actor he is entitled to play someone different to life.

Other said that while Jack is an 'amazing ally' to the LGBTQ community he was inappropriate for the role

MP We Streeting tweeted: 'Shock as actor is asked to play someone different than themselves. Isn't that kind of the point?

'Wouldn't always casting gay actors in gay roles be condemned as type casting?'

MailOnline has contacted Walt Disney Studios for a comment.

The comedian, 30, who has previously starred in small cameo roles in Frozen and the upcoming Nutcracker and the Four Realms, will star alongside Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, 46, and Emily Blunt, 35.

However, others argued that as Jack is an actor he is entitled to play someone different to life

A source told The Sun: 'This is a huge gig for Jack and has landed him his biggest ever pay cheque.

'But, more excitingly, he is playing a gay man - one who is hugely effete, very camp and very funny, its a dream role.

'Disneys always been incredibly supportive of the LGBTQ community, this latest script, set at a time when it wasnt socially acceptable to be gay, is another significant turning point.'

Exciting: Earlier this week, the comedian took to Twitter to share a video of Dwayne talking about the film, set for release in 2019

Earlier this week, the comedian took to Twitter to share a video of Dwayne talking about the film, set for release in 2019.

He said: 'It's been years in the making and from the bottom of my heart we are all so honoured to bring this rich story and movie to life for all of you around the world

'Now check this out in 1955 Walt disney imagined, designed and created the very first Jungle Cruise ride and how about this- Walt Disney himself was the first skipper for the very first Jungle Cruise ride.

Based on the ride: Johnson will play a boat captain who takes his sister (Blunt) and her brother (Whitehall) on a mission to find a tree believed to possess healing powers.

'It is with great honour and reverence that I get the opportunity to play this role and we can show you guys this story.

He added: 'Walt this one is for you buddy and world get ready for the adventure of a lifetime.

'Welcome to Jungle Cruise.'

Johnson will play a boat captain who takes his sister (Blunt) and her brother (Whitehall) on a mission to find a tree believed to possess healing powers.

Storyline: 'Wild animals and a competing German expedition figure into the proceeding

Wild animals and a competing German expedition figure into the proceedings.

Jack's gay character role comes after Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast 2017 release featured LeFou as a homosexual man.

In the lead-up to the nationwide premiere, it was revealed the character of Gastons manservant, played by Frozen alum Josh Gad, will have the first 'gay scene' in Disney's history.

Beauty and the Beast director Bill Condon has said of Gad's character: 'LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston'.
An old blog post from Meghan Markle's now-defunct website The Tig has resurfaced online, revealing the Duchess's childhood dreams of becoming a princess.

The entry, written by Meghan, 37, in 2014 during her time as Rachel Zane on law drama Suits, spoke about her dreams of being She-Ra, the Princess of Power.

It continued to describe how women still harbour fantasies of being a princess, citing the 'circumstance and pomp' surrounding Kate Middleton - who she described as 'Princess Kate' - as proof.

And just four years later, Meghan would herself be at the centre of a similar frenzy, marrying Prince Harry in May 2018 and becoming sister-in-law to Kate.

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An old blog post from Meghan Markle's now-defunct website The Tig has resurfaced, revealing her childhood dreams of being a princess just four years before she walked down the aisle with Prince Harry in May

Writing on her blog, which was discontinued when her relationship with Harry became serious in April 2017 but has resurfaced, according to Glamour, Meghan revealed her dreams during an interview with humanitarian and Princess, Alia Al Senussi.

In the revealing 'Tig talk' entry, Meghan wrote: 'Little girls dream of being princesses.'

Describing She-Ra, a 1985 cartoon character famed for strength and feminist powers, she continued: 'I, for one, was all about She-Ra, Princess of Power.'

Admitting that dreams of being a princess aren't just confined to children, Meghan added: 'And grown women seem to retain this childhood fantasy.

'Just look at the pomp and circumstance surrounding the royal wedding and endless conversation about Princess Kate.'

The blog continued to describe how grown women still harbour fantasies of being a princess, citing the 'circumstance and pomp' surrounding Kate Middleton (seen together at Wimbledon in July), as proof - unaware just four years later Kate would be her sister-in-law

The blog was part of an empowering entry on Princess Alia Al Senussi, whose family was exiled from Libya when Gaddhafi seized the throne in 1969.

Describing the interview with the princess as a 'pinch-myself-I'm-emailing-with-a-princess moment', Meghan continued the blog with a six-question interview on the double-major graduate princess.

The entry, written by Meghan in 2014 during her time as Rachel Zane on law drama Suits (seen), spoke about her dreams of being She-Ra, the Princess of Power

And this was just two years before the now Duke and Duchess of Sussex met in the summer of 2016 after being set up on a blind date by a mutual friend, thought to be fashion designer Misha Nonoo.

In November 2016 Harry confirmed their romance after he released a statement asking for his girlfriend's privacy to be respected, revealing she had been subject to a torrent of abuse amid rumors of their romance.

Just weeks later the Prince visited the American actress on set of Toronto-based legal drama Suits, before the couple were first sighted together in London during December 2016.

The duo then made a number of low key appearances together in 2017, before Harry proposed to the stunning Suits star during a cosy night in over a roast dinner in 2017 after a 16-month whirlwind romance.

The couple announced their engagement in November 2017, spending Christmas together with the Queen at Sandringham.

They married on May 19 this year at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in England.
Former Vampire Diaries star Nina Dobrev is no stranger to a red carpet event - however in the summer, when the temperatures are soaring and the unrelenting camera lights are flashing, it can be a seeming-insurmountable task for anyone to maintain a fresh face of makeup.

Thankfully, when it came to prepping for Sunday night's Teen Choice Awards, the 29-year-old had a helping hand in the form of celebrity beauty guru Georgie Eisdell, who has revealed the rather extensive work that went on behind the scenes of Nina's 'effortless' look.

'I wanted Ninas look for the Teen Choice Awards to be super cool and effortless,' Georgie explained to DailyMail.com.

What a transformation! Nina Dobrev's makeup artist has detailed how she achieved the star's stunning red carpet look for Sunday evening's Teen Choice Awards

Long-lasting: Georgie Eisdell used a staggering $575.50 worth of products to get 29-year-old Nina ready for the event

Secret skills: The celebrity beauty guru also shared her top tips for how to ensure a makeup look lasts in the face of warm weather, and bright camera flashes

'I went for a strong lip and gorgeous clean dewy skin to achieve a natural effortless glam. I always love a classic Marilyn Monroe moment and Nina looks so great with a red lip.'

But far from simply nailing the lip, there was a lot more to Nina's bold beauty moment that might have met the eye - beginning with advanced skincare preparation which begins an entire week ahead of the event.

'[Pre-event skin prep] is just as important as makeup,' Georgie explained. 'When you have a great base to work with, everything goes on better, stays on better and looks better.

'Most clients I work with always look after their skin, but before an event a great facial is always going to pep up the complexion. I suggest this [is done] a few days to a week before, not the day before.'

On the day of the event itself, skincare remains just as vital a step in terms of ensuring your makeup will go on properly - and will last all night long. According to Georgie, the secret is to apply light layers of product, otherwise you risk the makeup 'just sitting on the skin an looking thick'.

'I love to use a loose powder to set the makeup so it lasts longer,' she added. 'Using powders rather than creams for blush and bronzer always helps too.'

Prep: While Georgie said she likes her clients to start with a facial one week ahead of the event, Nina went with a more unconventional option in the form of her dog Mrs. Maverick's slobber

Glam squad: Nina's team of beauty experts, which was made up of Georgie and hairstylist Riawna Capri, met the actress at her house

The final touch: Nina's 'effortless' beauty look was centered around a bold red lip - the Proenza Schouler for Lancome Lip Kajal in Bold Red ($24)

Highlight: Georgie noted that she likes to be able to 'see skin' through a makeup look, and never wants to complete cover up a client's natural beauty

Nina had rather an unconventional start to her red carpet preparations on Sunday, however - revealing in her Instagram Story that she received rather a unique facial courtesy of her beloved dog Mrs. Maverick licking her repeatedly after she returned home from the gym.

Jokingly noting that the dog slobber was all she needed ahead of her turn in front of the cameras, she tagged Georgie and her hairstylist Riawna Capri to tell them that they 'didn't have to come over anymore' because Mrs. Maverick had her sorted as far as pre-event glam was concerned.

It seems the duo ignored Nina's humorous suggestion, and instead worked wonders on the stunning actress's natural beauty, with Georgie getting to work on some skincare while Nina's hair was being worked on.

'I prepared Nina's skin with Lancome Absolue L'Extrait Ultimate Eye Patch to reduce any darkness and smooth the under eye area,' Georgie said of her first step - which was documented by Nina on her Instagram Story. 'Then I used Lancome Energie De Vie Day Creamall over her face for major hydration.'

The beauty expert then began working on a long-lasting base for Nina, using a variety of products by the French brand - including the Teint Idole Ultra Wear Liquid Foundation and Camouflage Concealer - to give the starlet even, natural-looking coverage.

To ensure the products stayed put throughout the evening, Georgie used plenty of the Long Time No Shine Loose Setting Powder to reduce any unwanted sheen - and to keep the foundation and concealer locked into place.

Layer by layer: The beauty guru advises using light layers of skincare before starting your makeup, to avoid the products from sitting on the skin and looking 'thick'

Swanking about: The Bulgaria-born star, who shot to fame on The Vampire Diaries, even had her legs prepped by Georgie, who gave them a glowing sheen with some moisturizer pre-event

But for Georgie, the key to creating a natural and 'effortless' red carpet look is all about emphasizing the person's own features - rather than trying to cover them up.

'I prefer to see red carpet makeup where you can still see the skin,' she noted. 'You can wear a good coverage base and still see the skin if you dont pile it on.

'I love to enhance my girls natural features, they are all wearing makeup but the trick is to not look too overdone on the red carpet or up close and personal.'

For Nina, Sunday night's look was all about the lips - but in order to ensure that the bold choice of red wasn't too overpowering, Georgie spent ample time emphasizing the actress's naturally-large brown eyes, revealing that she applied two ample coats of mascara to boost Nina's lashes.

'I applied two layers of Lancome Monsieur Big Waterproof Mascara in Black, making sure to push and wiggle the product into the lashes to make them full and fluffy,' she explained.

Last but not least, the lip - which came in the form of the Proenza Schouler for Lancome Lip Kajal in Bold Red - and helped to create what Georgie referred to as Nina's 'Marilyn Monroe moment' on the red carpet.

However Georgie's job didn't stop at Nina's face; the makeup artist was also responsible for ensuring that the star's long legs looked their absolute best in her chic yellow mini dress.

'I used Lancome Nutrix Royal Body Lotion so her gorgeous long legs had an amazing glow as she walked the red carpet,' she revealed, before explaining that the final step in the process was to 'spritz her with the Lancome Fix it Forget it Setting Spray before she walked out the door' to ensure that her products stayed put throughout the event - and in the face of the makeup-melting glare of the cameras.
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She may be pregnant but that hasn't stopped Pippa Middleton from partying as she was seen arriving at brother-in-law Spencer Matthew's 30th birthday celebrations on Sunday.

The sister of the Duchess of Cambridge arrived at the former Made in Chelsea star's apartment in London to toast his milestone birthday yesterday.

Pippa, 34, looked glowing in a polka dot 'Bardot' style dress in mint green with a cream trim showcasing her ever-growing bump.

The mother-to-be, who is thought to be expecting her first child in October, cut a fairly casual figure pairing her chic ensemble with a pair of white sneakers and wore a tan coloured cross-body bag.

Pregnant Pippa Matthews attended the 30th birthday party of her brother-in-law Spencer Matthews on Sunday in London joined by her husband James and their two dogs (one of which is seen here)

She was accompanied by husband James Matthews, brother of Spencer, as well as a rather unusual party guests in the form of the couple's black spaniel and black labrador.

Celebrations for the Made in Chelsea star, who turned 30 on August 6, took place at his apartment where he was joined by other former cast members including Oliver Proudlock, Hugo Taylor, Millie Mackintosh, Jamie Laing.

Spencer and James' father David Matthews was also seen making a rare appearance after the accusations of rape that were made against him - which he strongly denies.

It is the second time he has been spotted more than four months after it emerged Mr Matthews was being investigated by French authorities over the allegations.

Pippa was sure to have plenty to talk about with Vogue who is also expecting her first child who will be cousin to Pippa and James' baby.

Spencer and his sister-in-law appeared to be getting along famously as he held a friendly hand on her face while they chatted on the balcony of his stylish London apartment where the event was held

The couple were accompanied by two rather unusual party guests in the form of their black spaniel and black Labrador as they made their way to Spencer's 30th birthday celebrations

Pippa's husband James Matthews was also in attendance and could be seen enjoying a tipple, but pregnant Pippa stuck to soft drinks

Pippa's wasn't the only bump at the party with Spencer's wife Vogue Williams (pictured with her husband) also expecting her first baby

Spencer and Jame' father David Matthews (pictured) was also seen making a rare appearance after the accusations of rape that were made against him - which he strongly denies

THE ACCUSATIONS AGAINST DAVID MATTHEWS - PIPPA'S FATHER-IN-LAW David Matthews was accused of two offences in the late 1990s, one in Paris and one on the island of St Barts where the millionaire owned a hotel. The woman at the centre of the claims contacted police last year and initially told officers Mr Matthews had acted inappropriately towards her when she was 15. The Matthews family said at the time of the Paris probe: 'David Matthews categorically denies the allegation and unequivocally contests the untrue and scandalous accusation.' His alleged victim, now aged 34, lives in the UK but is understood to have come forward to police in Paris last year. Her mother is said to be helping her with the case which was first reported in April this year. Statute of limitations for rape cases in France is 20 years after the victim has turned 18. The victim in this case would have turned 18 in 2003. This means the case can be dealt with up until 2023. The former racing driver turned property dealer was arrested by judicial police linked to the Juvenile Protection Brigade (BPM) after landing at Paris Orly Airport on 27th March where he spent two days in custody. He was held for 48 hours and questioned before appearing at the Palais de Justice, where he was charged with the 'rape of a minor by a person with authority over his victim', a crime that carries a maximum 15-year jail sentence in France. Just days after his first allegation Mr Matthews faced claims that he raped a second woman with Now South Yorkshire Police said to be investigating second allegation of rape from another woman dating from the 1980s, the Sun reported. Mr Matthews strongly denies the claims. Advertisement

Birthday boy Spencer appeared to be in a jovial spirit donning a rainbow coloured sailor hat as he celebrated alongside friends and family.

He and sister-in-law Pippa appeared to be getting along famously with Spencer seen putting a friendly hand on her cheek as they chatted on his balcony.

Pippa first confirmed her 'happy news' in her Waitrose Weekend column in June after several months of speculation.

The 34-year-old also revealed she had passed the first trimester without suffering the morning sickness her elder sibling experienced at the start of all three of her pregnancies.

The sister of the Duchess of Cambridge was glowing in a mint coloured polka dot dress with a cream trim at the celebrations on Sunday

She and James appeared more loved up than ever as he placed a tentative arm on her bump during yesterday's party

The couple first confirmed their pregnancy in June when Pippa wrote about the 'happy news' in her Waitrose Weekend column following months of speculation

Spencer was joined by his family as well as former cast members including Oliver Proudlock, Hugo Taylor, Millie Mackintosh, Jamie Laing

Spencer's former Made in Chelsea co-star Millie Mackintosh was also in attendance, looking chic in a silver ensemble

The Jump star's animated display comes as he opened up the The Times' about leaving his partying and lothario in the past.

Spencer, who had given up alcohol while training for an Iron Man earlier this year, explained how he no longer looks to have all eyes on him and wants to be a 'better example' to his unborn son.

He said: I think you get bored. Ive no interest in being the centre of attention that I used to love.

Hugo appeared to be holding a bottle of champagne and a gift as he arrived to the star-studded party with wife Millie Mackintosh

Pippa appeared to be waiting for their ride as they were seen (left) without their pooch and (right with their black Labrador puppy as they arrived to the celebrations

Birthday boy Spencer was seen looking jovial as he stood alongside close pal Hugo Taylor and a whole hoard of well-heeled guests

At one point Spencer appeared reflective (left) as he waited for some food to be served up while Pippa and James looked deep in discussion (right)

'I want to set a better example for my unborn son, who is going to be with us soon and my ideal night is spending it in with Vogue.'

Continuing to discuss change, Spencer admitted that he's moved on from his womanising past, which was documented during his tenure on Made In Chelsea, and vowed that he would never be unfaithful to Irish presenter Vogue.

The idea of being unfaithful would be a momentous waste of time. I wouldnt want to do that to her. Things change.

Pregnant Vogue looked to be having a whale of a time as she cackled alongisde her pal, while Spencer enjoyed a chat with James

Other MIC alumni included Millie's husband Hugo Taylor who appeared to be leading a toast for his pal Spencer

Ahead of the party Spencer was seen stocking up on supplied from his local Co-op including several litres of water

James and Pippa appeared to have come armed with a gift which seems to have been purchased in David Mellor home design

When it came to party food the former reality star enlisted the help of a professional caterer to man the outdoor barbecue
A body-positive fitness instructor mother has opened up about how she overcame her insecurities through pole dancing, revealing why she kept up her beloved hobby throughout her pregnancy and into motherhood, now even posing for pictures on her pole while holding her baby in her arms.

Mathea, 28, from Oakland, California, led a wildchild lifestyle filled with parties in her teens, all the while feeling totally worthless. However, when she discovered her love of dance and fitness through pole dancing, she began to realize her inherent worth, and was able to leave her unfulfilling life behind her.

The stay-at-home mother, whose son B is one year old, found such a welcoming community and support network in pole fitness that she continue to pole dance up until she was eight-months pregnant, and started it up again just two months post-partum.

Unique hobby: Mother-of-one Mathea began pole dancing at age 20, continued up until she was eight-months pregnant, and has even posed on the pole with her son in her arms

Happy as can be: The 28-year-old says that pole dancing helped her to overcome body dysmorphia, and discover her love for fitness and dance

Moving on: Mathea admitted that she lived a fairly wildchild lifestyle as a teen, but says the endless partying made her feel 'worthless'

Mathea explained the changes she found in herself through pole dance fitness and the reaction she gets when people find out what she does while being a mother.

'Their reaction is almost always amazement and respect,' said Mathea.

'Pole is becoming more mainstream, so people generally recognize and appreciate the skill and strength it takes to do pole dance fitness. In fact, very rarely do I encounter "haters", but the good news is that I'm not looking for anyone else's approval  I pole dance because it brings me joy and keeps me fit.

'I don't really have time to worry about what people think of me. I always make an effort to stand in my integrity as my most authentic self, so people can take it or leave it  I am both a pole dancer and a mother, and I am proud of it.

'I started pole dancing in 2010, because it sounded fun and interestingplus it was a new and exciting way to get fit. After my first class I was hookedand not just because it was a great workout.

'The women I met at the pole studio were incredibly supportive, encouraging, and uplifting, and I truly felt that I was part of a sisterhood. Body image, insecurities, and shame are forgotten and irrelevant during pole classevery body shape is cheered on and celebrated equally.'

Mathea describes herself as being body positive, a social movement rooted in the belief that all human beings should have a positive body image, and be accepting of their own bodies as well as the bodies of others. The movement has become popular in recent years.

Support system: The body-positive activist, who is also an outspoken supporter of public breastfeeding, says the pole dancing community around her is nothing but supportive

Deeper meaning: Not only has pole dancing helped Mathea to become fitter and more confident, she says it has also enabled her to cultivate 'self-love and acceptance'

Staying strong: Although Mathea says she does not encounter very many 'haters', she noted that won't allow anyone who does critique her lifestyle to upset her

The mother-of-one, who still works out three to six days a week, attributes pole dance fitness to her increase in confidence and explained what being body positive means to her.

'Of course, you will build muscle, burn calories, and break a sweat while pole dancing, but you will also discover that your confidence skyrockets,' she said.

'There is something very special about the pole community: the support you receive from being a part of it, coupled with the quest for personal strength, is a combination that encourages the cultivation of self-love and acceptance.

'As a woman who has struggled with body dysmorphia and crippling insecurities, I don't think it is realistic to assume that we can simply replace negative self-talk with positive affirmation and suddenly love ourselves entirely.

'I personally believe that body positivity is a journeynot a destinationand is created by the daily grind of choosing authenticity over self-deprecation, and actualising the fact that we are worthy of love, success, and opportunity regardless of our appearance.

'We become disempowered when we believe our aesthetic determines our worth, and when we recognize that bodies are not merely the sum of our parts (we are whole women), we can begin to transform shame and self-criticism into self-confidence and acceptance.

Fit and active: Pole dancing has remained one of the most consistent aspects of Mathea's life since she was 20, and she said it brings her nothing but 'joy'

Powerful: 'I am saddened by a society that would shame a mother for nourishing her child in public,' Mathea said of her determination to breastfeed in public

Statement: 'By nursing my child in public, I feel that I am encouraging other mothers to do the same, so that we might normalize this beautiful, natural thing,' Mathea added

'Body positivity is important because, if we ever expect to liberate ourselves from insecurity and self-doubt, we must again and again reject the arbitrary societal beauty standards that tell us we are unworthy, until we know in our heart of hearts that we are enough, as is.'

There is often controversy in the US over women breastfeeding in public, with many viewing this as unacceptable behavior, while mothers try to explain it is a natural act.

For Mathea, part of being body positive is to love your whole body and as a mother to a young child this means breast feeding as and where is required.

'I am saddened by a society that would shame a mother for nourishing her child in public,' she said.

'As a woman, my body was biologically designed to birth and breastfeed, and I will not be discouraged by an oversexed and undereducated culture that deems breastfeeding as gross or immodest.

'I breastfeed in public for no other reason than because I must feed my child. If someone is disgusted by, or sexualising the act of a mother nursing her baby, it seems to me that the problem belongs to a misguided societynot the breastfeeding mother.

'By nursing my child in public, I feel that I am encouraging other mothers to do the same, so that we might normalize this beautiful, natural thing.'
Odd Mom Out star Jill Kargman has revealed that she underwent a preventative double mastectomy earlier this year  but it wasn't the pain and discomfort from surgery that kept her up at night during her recovery.

The 44-year-old, who starred in the three-season Bravo show adapted from her 2007 book Momzillas, opened up about the procedure in a new essay for Tablet magazine, in which she also discussed the heartbreaking anti-Semitism that her young son Fletch faced at St. Bernard's School in New York City while she was recovering from her surgery.

Jill, who lives on the Upper East Side, said she was still hooked up to drainage tubes when Fletch came home and told her about a classmate calling himself a 'fan of Hitler'  and despite her complaints to the school, the classmate faced minimal consequences.

Procedure: Odd Mom Out star Jill Kargman has revealed that she underwent a double mastectomy earlier this year. While she was recovering, her son Fletch came home from school to tell her a classmate had made horrific anti-Semitic remarks

Jill, who is the sister of Drew Barrymore's ex-husband Will Kopelman, elected to get the mastectomy when she learned she had a genetic mutation called CHEK2 that would increase her changes of getting breast cancer.

While still recovering, she wrote, she was distracted from her physical pain when Fletch came home on the verge of tears.

He told his mother that another boy in his class had said, 'Im a fan of Hitler! God sent Hitler down to kill the Jews because they nailed Jesus to the cross!'

Jill was horrified by the comment, even though she wasn't entirely surprised  this wasn't the first time that classmate had made an anti-Semitic remark.

Earlier that year, Fletch was telling classmates that he wasn't blown away by Radio City Music Hall's Christmas Spectacular, and the classmate had told him, 'You just didnt get it because you are a Jew and the show is made for Christians.'

At the time of the earlier incident, Jill was concerned, but not enraged. She had emailed the headmaster, who oddly wrote back, 'Courage!', and then let the situation be.

'It wasnt a threat, just a weird thing to say, and Im not the squeaky-wheel mom who calls my kids schools or other mothers. I grew up with an acute distaste for busybodies or tattletales,' she said.

This time around, though, she didn't drop it. She was 'running on Tylenol and sheer rage' and wasn't about to let the hateful comment go.

So she and her husband contacted the school, telling them they were 'furious'. The school put together a disciplinary committee to deal with the matter - and their solution was to punish the anti-Semitic child by excluding him from two field trips.

Jill did not think this punishment was quite enough. What's more, the offending child ended up only being pulled from one field trip.

'We found the whole episode extremely upsetting and I found myself  a generally very happy person  in a dark spiral of anguish for a month,' she said.

At a loss, she spoke to her rabbi.

'According to my rabbi, anti-Semitic slurs are sharply on the rise,' she said.

'We are falsely perceived as puppeteers of the media. Waspy friends have confessed to being privy to Locust Valley dinner party whispers of how were all Madoff types and that copper wire was invented when two Jews found the same penny.'

Jill was leaving Mount Sinai hospital after having her drains removed that she had an idea. She went to a nearby bookstore and picked out several books about the Holocaust.

Moving on: She and her husband Harry (pictured together in May) decided to pull their son from the school

She wrapped them up and added a note to the anti-Semitic boy's family, which said: 'We thought this would prove valuable reading for your family. Best, the Kargmans.'

She had it delivered to them, but never heard anything about it. Still, it made her feel a bit better.

'Now is the time to speak up. We cant be afraid of causing trouble. And institutions need to have protocols for punishment and community healing, as well as a schoolwide discussion on how this will simply not be tolerated. Racism, religious or sexual discrimination, sexism, none of it,' she wrote.

Ultimately, unsatisfied with the way her son's school handled hateful, racist remarks, she and her husband decided to enroll him in a new school this September. She added that she feels lucky that she lives in New York City, where she has that option, as people from smaller towns do not.

A spokesperson for the school told DailyMail.com that St. Bernard's 'condemns' anti-Semitism, insisting that it 'does not tolerate racism, religious or sexual discrimination, or bigotry or any kind', and that Jill's essay 'does not accurately or fully describe the underlying facts' of the incident in question.

'We work hard to educate our boys and reinforce these shared values through formal curriculum initiatives and in our daily interactions,' the spokesperson said.

'The school acts promptly when an issue arises. We are confident that our process assures that we carefully evaluate the nature of the alleged issue, assess the conduct and the individuals involved, and implement an appropriate response, including disciplinary action, that judiciously addresses the matter consistent with our school and community values.

'While we do not disclose publicly individual disciplinary actions with respect to our students, particularly as they are young children, the essay does not accurately or fully describe the underlying facts or the disciplinary actions taken.'
Whether it's deep-fried or just served plain, halloumi always seems to whip cheese fans into a frenzy.

It's why Burger King lovers are now going wild for the fast food chain's new deep-fried Halloumi King burger.

Unfortunately, however, the sandwich of a squeaky halloumi patty between two burger bun halves, mayonnaise, onions, tomato and lettuce is only available in Sweden.

Burger King has launched a new Halloumi King burger but it's only available in Sweden. It comes with a deep-fried halloumi patty, mayonnaise, onions, tomato and lettuce

It's prompted dozens of halloumi fans to call for Burger King to launch the burger in the UK too.

The burger uses cheese from Cyprus. The chain has also launched an 'Extra Looooong' version in Sweden.

There's not sign of it appearing on UK menus anytime soon, but there is definitely enough demand for it, with many taking to Twitter to ask the fast food giant to launch it across the water.

Burger King Sweden also has an Extra 'Looooong' version of the burger which also has a sweet chilli relish, and onion rings, as well as two halloumi patties

Halloumi always seems to excite fans, and it is definitely the ingredient of the summer.

JD Wetherspoon pubs launched 3.10 halloumi fries last week, and customers said they were itching to try them on social media.

They are set to rival Portugese-style restaurant chain Nando's version, which cost 3.70 as a starter after launching the trendy side dish in February.

Earlier this summer, Aldi launched its own version of halloumi fries that you can cook at home for 1.99 a bag.

The supermarket said that 'foodie dreams are about to come true' when it announced the launch before admitting inspiration had come from a well-known chain restaurant.
Chocolate lovers have been divided after spotting a fruity new flavour of Maltesers on Instagram.

Australian account FoodFindsGeelong shared a snap of a new raspberry flavour of the chocolate treat on Sunday, causing a hot debate among fans.

While purists were convinced the berries would 'ruin' the taste more adventurous chocoholics were eager to give the snack a try with UK fans pleading Mars to stock the product in Britain.

The Instagram user, from Geelong, shared their review of the snack which recently launched in Australia.

Rating the product 10/10 they said: 'Raspberry Maltesers have finally hit the shelves! Same light crunchy malt centre coated in raspberry flavored milk chocolate.

Chocoholics have been divided over a new Raspberry flavour of Maltesers that have been released in Australia

Instagram user FoodFindsGeelong shared their review of the product on their account giving the treat a 10/10

'As soon as you open the packet your hit with a sweet raspberry smell. They definitely nailed the raspberry flavor and it pairs really well with the chocolate 10/10.'

The post has garnered almost 1,000 likes in 24 hours with followers eager to share their feedback.

One wrote: 'Seriously- who signed that flavour off? Maltesers are amazing but these have been ruined with raspberry.'

Others took to Instagram sharing their disgust over the new product and argued Maltersers would taste 'disgusting' with the fruity addition.

One person said: 'Omg, barf, disgusting! The originals are sublime, don't mess with the best.'

Another wrote: 'No! Chocolate and flavours shouldn't be mixed.'

However, many social media users remained unconvinced arguing raspberry would ruin the taste of original Maltesers

The new flavour is currently only available in Australia with no plans to debut in the UK.

Some social media users have begun petitioning for the brand to sell them in other countries.

One person wrote: 'please, please, please sell the raspberry flavoured Maltesers in the UK'

But others urged Mars to introduce new raspberry Maltesers in UK stores

Another said: 'Maltesers have been rocking their new products this year! First truffles, then buttons and now raspberry Maltesers!

'Now there are something I must try... fingers crossed we start to see them on our UK Shelves!'

In May confectionery company Mars excited fans with the launch of the Malteser button (seen)

Later the same month the company introduced Malteser truffles designed to be given as gifts

This is just the latest in Malteser innovation with 2018 seeing the launch of two new products.

In May confectionery company Mars excited fans with the launch of the Malteser button - dispelling rumours that they would be replacing the spherical original.

The 166-calorie-a-bag treats are flattened balls of Mars chocolate with tiny malt pockets inside.

And later the same month the company introduced Malteser truffles designed to be given as gifts.

The 1.99 truffles are individually wrapped and have a crunchy malty base with a truffle centre.
Heartbreaking pictures have emerged of a baby girl in India facing a race against time for surgery to remove a solid mass on her neck.

Kaokuchangti Reang has an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) - a tangle of blood vessels under the skin causing disfigurement.

Doctors warn her condition is 'decreasing by the day' and have quoted a sum of 500,000 Rupees (5,645) for treating the 'rock hard marble' mass.

But her poverty-stricken mother is unable to afford such a fee and has resorted to fundraising, in a last ditch hope for her 10-month-old daughter.

Baktirung, 20, who has no husband, has now received help from a local charity, who have today begged kind-hearted strangers to donate.

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Kaokuchangti Reang has an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) - a tangle of blood vessels under the skin causing disfigurement (pictured recently)

In a heartbreaking interview with local reporters, Baktirung said: 'We have no money, many people have volunteered to help we owe them our lives.'

She first approached doctors in a remote village where she lives, when her daughter had a 'cough and cold' - but these are not known symptoms of an AVM.

Medics in North Tripura - in the north east of the country - were unable to confirm what was wrong with Kaokuchangti.

As her condition continued to worsen, Baktirung took her to the AGMC Hospital in Agartala - a 124 miles (200km) journey west.

Doctors warn her condition is 'decreasing by the day' and have quoted a sum of 500,000 Rupees (5,645) for treating the 'rock hard marble' mass (pictured with her mother Baktirung, 20, before the mass started to grow)

ARTERIOVENOUS MALFORMATIONS: WHAT ARE THEY? An arteriovenous malformation (AVM) is a specific term used to describe a tangle of blood vessels with abnormal connections between arteries and veins. High pressure arteries containing fast flowing blood are directly connected to low pressure veins, which normally only contain slow flowing blood. This means that blood from the arteries drains directly into the veins - without stopping to supply the normal tissues in that part of the body with essential substances like oxygen and nutrition. Over time this can lead to the normal tissues becoming painful or fragile. It also means that the AVM gets progressively larger over time as the amount of blood flowing through it increases, and it can cause problems due to its size. Finally, it may also mean that the heart has to work harder to keep up with the extra blood flow. Some doctors describe an AVM as 'a ring road that bypasses the high street of a town'. Traffic (or blood) will use the bypass rather than the high street which suffers as a result. AVMs are thought to affect approximately 1.4 in every 100,000 people. Source: Great Ormond Street Hospital Advertisement

But doctors face a race against time as they claim Kaokuchangti needs immediate treatment, as her condition is 'decreasing by the day'.

Issac Kaipeng, of the unnamed community group that stepped in to help, said he was 'shocked' to see Kaokuchangtis condition.

He told local reporters: 'I came to know about this girl through a local source and really wanted to help her.'

'Her family did not even have proper knowledge where to consult and which hospital to get, let alone be the line of treatment.

'We brought her to AGMC then and got her treatment started there. But we had limited funds, we hope people come forward to help this baby get some help.'

Issac told local reporters Indian doctors quoted a sum of 500,000 Indian Rupees, which he said was a 'huge' amount for the family.

The 38-year-old added: 'The doctors have said she needs an immediate treatment as her condition is decreasing by the day.'

Issac has started a fundraising page for those wanting to donate towards treatment.

Doctors there diagnosed Kaokuchangti's neck mass as an AVM and revealed she had congestive heart failure - a little-known symptom.

The first part of treatment has already started at the AGMC Hospital - but details of the procedure have yet to surface in local reports.

Baktirung, who works as a wage labourer with a meagre income, has been asked to take her daughter outside the state for further treatment when is stable.

After pleading for help to treat her 'healthy' and 'joyful' girl, a local charity stepped in to desperately try and raise the money needed.
Age-related diseases like cancer and dementia could be preventable, new research suggests.

Scientists have managed to rejuvenate old human cells in the lab.

The exact cause of ageing is unclear, however, previous research suggests cells deteriorate when they lose the ability to turn genes 'on and off' correctly.

Injecting small amounts of the chemical hydrogen sulphide into the 'energy powerhouses' of cells' allows them to once again control gene regulation.

The researchers believe their findings could slow down or halt the processes that lead to 'elderly' diseases.

Ageing may be reversible: Doctors rejuvenate old human cells in the lab (stock)

DOES SEX SLOW AGEING? Having sex at least once a week slows ageing in women - even if they do not enjoy being intimate, research suggested in July 2017. Being active between the sheets increases the length of women's telomeres, a study found. These 'cap' the end of DNA strands, with longer lengths being associated with slower ageing, longer lifespans and improved overall health. Women's telomeres lengthen with regular love making regardless of whether they are sexually satisfied in their relationship, the research adds. Researchers believe sex may aid ageing in women by dampening stress and boosting their immune systems. The scientists, from the University of California, San Francisco, analysed physical intimacy, as well as partner support or conflict, overall relationship satisfaction and stress in 129 mothers in long-term relationships. Blood samples were taken from the study's participants to determine their telomere length. The study was conducted over one week. Lead author Tomas Cabeza de Baca said: 'Over time, shortened telomeres may contribute to chronic degenerative diseases and premature mortality. 'Sexual intimacy may dampen the effects of stress by down-regulating stress response systems and up-regulating immune response. 'Over time, these patterns of stress function should result in longer telomere length,' PsyPost reported. Advertisement

Why do cells age?

Cells are thought to age due to the accumulation of so-called senescent cells.

These are older, deteriorated cells that do not function as well as they should and spread such effects to the cells that surround them.

Removal of senescent cells has previously been shown to delay the onset of cataracts in animals.

Cells are thought to become senescent due to DNA damage or inflammation, as well as an inability to turn genes on and off at the right time.

How did the researchers reverse cell ageing?

The scientists, from the University of Exeter, treated old cells with hydrogen sulphide, which makes cells better able to turn genes on and off correctly.

Hydrogen sulphide can be toxic in large amounts. Therefore, the chemical was delivered straight to the cells' energy powerhouses, known as mitochondria, to cause fewer side effects.

Results, published in the journal Aging, suggest the number of sensecent cells halved.

The researchers hope their findings will enable senescent cells to be removed from living people.

Watch the speed a cell commits suicide to protect the body

This comes after footage released earlier this month shows the exact speed at which a cell commits suicide to protect the body from disease.

The video demonstrates death spreads across a cell at a speed of 0.03mm a minute.

Cells, which can be up to 0.1mm across, often kill themselves for the greater good, such as to prevent cancer developing or viruses spreading. This process is known as apoptosis.

Such fatalities are triggered by a signal going off within a cell that then spreads like a 'wave' with the self destruction of one part of the cell sparking the same death elsewhere, like a wildfire, a study found.

Experts previously thought cell death spread by diffusion, which is the movement of substances from an area where they are at a high concentration to a region where their concentration is low.

Yet the study's researchers, from Stanford University, argue a cell death speed of 0.03mm is too fast to be down to diffusion and must instead be caused by a chemical trigger.
A retired business manager had life-changing surgery on his nose after it swelled to three times its normal size.

Geoff Turner, 72, from Llandudno, suffered from the skin disorder rhinophyma, which turned his nose into a bulbous mass with lumps growing out of the front and sides.

The disorder also obscured his vision, affected his breathing and left him battling depression.

Mr Turner said: 'It was horrendous. I was very self-conscious and quite depressed about it. Every time I went for a meal I'd be surrounded by people who looked quite normal while I had a huge nose.'

After medication and creams failed to improve his appearance, Mr Turner was forced to go under the knife and is thrilled with his 'perfect' new nose.

He said: 'I feel like a totally different person. I feel 100 per cent better about myself.'

For three years, Geoff Turner suffered from the skin condition rhinophyma, which turned his nose into a bulbous mass with lumps growing out of the front and sides

After medication and creams failed to improve his appearance, Mr Turner was forced to go under the knife and is 'thrilled' with his new nose three weeks on (pictured)

As well as affecting his appearance, Mr Turner's nose also obstructed his vision and breathing

WHAT IS RHINOPHYMA? Rhinophyma is a progressive skin condition that affects the nose. It most commonly affects people with rosacea, with their noses becoming redder, swollen at the ends and bumpy. Rhinophyma occurs due to the formation of scar-like tissue, as well as the glands that produce oil on the skin enlarging. It is not genetic or linked to alcohol. There is no cure. Oral treatment, such as acne medication, usually does not work but may reduce redness and slow the growth of oil-producing glands. Surgery is usually required, which involves removes excess tissue by shaving off layers of the skin. Such procedures can be carried out via a carbon dioxide laser, scalpel excision, dermabrasion or electrical currents. Bleeding, scarring and permanent colour changes to the skin can be side effects. People can reduce the appearance of rhinophyma by wearing SPF every day and using gentle, unfragranced soaps and moisturisers. Source: British Association of Dermatologists Advertisement

'I feel like a totally different person'

Mr Turner, who lives with his 72-year-old partner Andrea, said: 'After surgery, everything is back to normal again. I feel like a totally different person.

'I've got couple of minor scars but apart from that you'd never know, which is quite simply amazing.

'I can go out now without worrying about what people are thinking and feel 100 per cent better about myself.'

Mr Tuner started suffering from the skin disorder three years ago.

He said: 'It kind of creeps up on you and you don't realise something's happening.

'Over time, I started to think it was getting out of hand as it'd got so much bigger.

After trying medication and lotions with nothing working, Mr Turner was left with no choice but to go under the knife.

Speaking of the results, Mr Turner said: 'It's amazing the difference it has made. I have a perfect nose again! It's a fantastic feeling and I'm over the moon.'

Mr Turner felt depressed about his nose and thought everyone was looking at him

He has praised his surgeon Professor Fahmy (pictured) for the 'amazing difference'

'Its removal is a big boost to restore self-confidence'

Speaking of rhinophyma, Professor Fahmy, who performed Mr Turner's surgery at the private Spire Yale Hospital, Wrexham, said: 'This swelling is because there is formation of scar-like tissue and the sebaceous glands (which produce oil on the skin) get bigger. Luckily, it isn't common.

'Not only can the appearance be a cause of embarrassment but the bulbous nose can affect breathing if it blocks the nasal openings.

'Although this is a benign growth, it has a huge impact on the facial appearance particularly because it affects the nose and the centre of the face. Its removal is a big boost to restore self-confidence and avoid potential breathing difficulties.

'It's a very gratifying outcome for the patient and very rewarding for the surgeon to be able to make someone feel better about themselves.'
Blundering NHS chiefs at a cash-strapped hospital have spent 700,000 on a helipad which cannot be used because it does not have enough lights.

The state-of-the art landing base was built at the Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, for emergency night-time missions by rescue helicopters.

It was due to start having emergency flights in March 2017 - but now, seventeen months on, it has still hasn't been used for a single flight.

This, experts say, is because the helipad doesn't have enough lights.

Delayed: The ill-fated helipad at the Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales

On site: The addition cost 700,000, but is still yet to be utilised by emergency staff

Emergency helicopters are still using the hospitals old helipad - with patients being transferred by ambulance to the hospital building. But it cannot be used in darkness at night.

Air ambulance staff are 'hugely disappointed' with the blunder, according to Conservative health leaders.

Welsh Conservative and Shadow Health Secretary, Angela Burns, said: 'Having spoken with Wales Air Ambulance dozens of times, I know for a fact that they want to be able to use these helipads as soon as possible.

'They will be hugely disappointed with this delay.

'Welsh Conservatives will always welcome investment in our health service, but the point of spending that public money is so it can be put to good use, especially in the more deprived areas of Wales.

'Therefore, to see this helipad in Merthyr Tydfils Prince Charles Hospital nearly a year-and-a-half late in becoming operational is likely to anger a lot of people.'

Waiting game: Experts say there are health and safety fears because the helipad doesn't have enough lights, but it should be operational by the end of the year

An estimated 1billion a year is wasted because patients are not showing up for hospital appointments while 26million a year is spent on prescriptions for gluten-free food

The health board expects the new helipad to be ready for use 'in the next few months'.

A spokesman for Cwm Taf University health board said: 'It is essential to ensure that all safety measures are in place for landings and take offs prior to the service becoming live.

'These measures have now been trialled. A night flight landing was also required after which the service operators and specialist aviation advisors confirmed that additional lighting and fencing was needed to support night flight operations.'
Women who are treated rudely or disrespectfully at work are more likely to be strict parents, new research suggests.

Scientists found those whose colleagues ignore them, take credit for their work or blame others for their mistakes believe they are bad parents.

They then make up for being 'bad parents' by being more authoritative towards their children, according to the Canadian researchers.

Study author Dr Angela Dionisi, from Carleton University, Ottawa, said: 'This is a form of mistreatment that many likely dismiss as non-effectual.

'It's unpleasant, it's frustrating, but it may boil down to one seeing a coworker behaving as a jerk.

'Our findings, however, suggest this low-intensity behavior can actually erode one's sense of parental competence, and as a result, may also be harming one's children'.

Strict parenting has been associated with children being overly shy, struggling in social situations and suffering from depression or anxiety.

Women who are treated rudely at work are more likely to be strict parents (stock)

HOW CAN YOU DEAL WITH TODDLERS' TEMPER TANTRUMS? According to Professor David Hawes, from The University of Sydney, parents should: Reward good behaviour with affection and short bursts of attention

Praise actions that represent a change in behaviour For instance, rewarding children for tidying away their toys when they previously left them out Respond to bad behaviour immediately with a clear explanation of what they are doing wrong

If they continue to misbehave, immediately place them in a 'time out' Time out is an isolated, boring place where they have to sit for a period of time, for example two minutes. Source: The Conversation Advertisement

How the research was carried out

An online survey was carried out on 146 working mothers and their spouses.

The mothers were asked about their experience of rudeness in the workplace, as well as how effective they felt they were as parents.

Their spouses were also asked whether their wives are strict and controlling or passive towards their children.

'Authoritarian parenting is a negative style of parenting'

Results suggest women who experience rudeness at work are significantly more likely to be strict parents.

Such women also feel they are ineffective parents, which may explain why they act more authoritative.

Co-author Dr Kathryne Dupre said: 'Research suggests that authoritarian parenting is more of a negative style of parenting as compared to other parenting styles.

'This style of parenting has been associated with a variety of negative child outcomes, including associating obedience and success with love, exhibiting aggressive behavior outside the home, being fearful or overly shy around others, having difficulty in social situations due to a lack of social competence, suffering from depression and anxiety, and struggling with self-control.

The findings were presented at the annual American Psychological Association congress.

Women whose colleagues ignore them, take credit for their work or blame them for mistakes believe they are bad parents, which they make up for by being more authoritative (stock)

'Helicopter' parents cause their children to struggle at school

This comes after research released last June suggested children who have 'helicopter parents' may be more likely to struggle at school and behave badly.

Youngsters whose parents hover over them and dictate what they do may be less likely to cope with the challenges of growing up, a study found.

Researchers, from the University of Minnesota, also found coddled children are more likely to struggle in school and have difficulties making friends.

This is because children need to learn the 'fundamental skills' of managing their own emotions and behaviours, with overwhelming parents limiting their abilities to do so.

Examples of 'helicopter parenting' include telling a child what toy to play with, how to play with it and how to clean up afterwards.
MONEY offered to Kyela rice farmers by Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (Sagcot) Catalytic Trust Fund (Sagcot-CTF) has greatly reduced postharvest losses, thanks to the construction of a big warehouse, Mtenda Kyela Rice Company Managing Director George Mtenda said at the weekend.

Mr Mtenda said a lot of rice was damaged during harvest due to lack of a warehouse until the company joined hands with primary cooperative societies and sought funds from the Sagcot- CTF.

Lack of safe storage was a critical problem. But now it has been solved, he noted, saying it was difficult to convince farmers to collaborate to secure funds from Sagcot-CTF.

He explained that Sagcot-CTF funds had also reduced middle men, who capitalised on storage problems and bought rice from growers at low prices. Mr Mtenda said they planned to apply for more funds by next month.

While launching the Agricultural Sector Development Programme (phase II) in Dar es Salaam recently, President John Magufuli said it was high time Sagcot-CTF increased funds to agricultural projects.

Sagcot-CTF Executive Secretary, Dr John Kyaruzi, said eligible agricultural applicants could receive between 500m/- and 4bn/-.

He thus called on farmers to fully utilise the funds to grow rice and increase production as the fifth phase government was committed to transforming the agricultural sector for the betterment of farmers and their families.

There is enough money for eligible agricultural applicants. Please, organise yourselves and use this opportunity to grow rice, he said, hailing the government and development partners for supporting agriculture.

Sagcot-CTF Manager Tom Herlehy said applicants should present correct information because officials from the fund would inspect to verify the information contained in the forms.

Mr Herlehy said the CTFs primary goal in funding agricultural projects was to alleviate poverty.

We are going to supervise the entire exercise honestly and diligently to enable eligible applicants or farmers to qualify for the funds, he explained.

One Sagcot-CTFs objective is to provide innovative finances to catalyse private investments associated with developing the agri-business sector and strengthening of supply chains encompassing smallholder farmers and assist with initial costs of developing commercially viable agricultural business in the Sagcot.
Scores of Indiana women whose children have been diagnosed with cancer are outraged after tests revealed highly carcinogenic chemicals in the air of the town where they lived.

Kari Rhinehart and Stacie Davidson are the mothers of just two of the more than 60 children in Johnson County - about 23 miles south of Indianapolis - diagnosed with rare forms of blood and brain cancer in the last 10 years.

About half of these cases were found in one single town of the county: Franklin.

Testing conducted last month near the site of a power plant once located in Franklin. revealed high levels of three chemicals in the air that have been linked to cancer.

The mothers have now formed a nonprofit group, If It Was Your Child, to spread awareness of the 'cluster' and are calling upon the EPA to conduct testing in hopes that they can drive down the staggering number of cases.

Scores of Indiana women whose children have been diagnosed with cancer are outraged after tests revealed highly carcinogenic chemicals in the air of the town where they lived. Pictured: Kari Rhinehart, left, and Stacie Davidson

Kari Rhinehart's 13-year-old daughter, Emma Grace Findley (left), was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor in 2014 and passed away three months later. That same year, Stacie Davidson's stepson, Zane (right), was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia in 2014 but is in remission

In 2014, Stacie Davidson's stepson, Zane, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a rare form of the blood cancer, when he was just 10 years old.

'When Zane was in the hospital, we met a couple of other kids there who were from Johnson County,' Davidson told Daily Mail Online.

'My first thought was: "Oh my god, we have people from Johnson County. This is great; we can bond."'

However, her initial sense of camaraderie soon turned to fear when she started meeting more and more kids diagnosed with cancer from the area.

'Friends of friends were calling saying there was a new diagnosis and, within 16 months of Zane's diagnosis, nine kids were also diagnosed with cancer,' Davidson said.

But she says that Zane is lucky because after three years of chemotherapy and radiation, he is now in remission.

That same year, Kari Rhinehart's 13-year-old daughter, Emma Grace Findley, was diagnosed with Glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive brain tumor in the pineal region.

These tumors are usually highly malignant and grade IV tumors, which means they can grow fast and spread quickly.

The one-year-survival rate is just 37.2 percent. Just three months after her diagnosis, Emma passed away.

'We used our kids as the canary in the coal mine in our town,' she told CBS This Morning.

According to statistics from the National Cancer Institute, these are not isolated cases.

The Indy Star reported that in Johnson County, there were 111 cases of cancer in those younger than age 20 between 1999 and 2013.

Even more shocking was that 40 of those cases were just since 2010.

The incidence rate of 22.2 cases per 100,000 people was higher than the state average of 17.3 cases and the national average of 15.3 cases.

After the mothers conducted several interviews with local media about the number of children diagnosed with cancer in Johnson County, investigations began to be conducted in where the contamination site could be.

In 2015, an investigation from WTHR revealed that toxic chemicals had been leaking into the environment, particularly into nearby Webb Well Field, since the 1990s from the old Amphenol Corp/Franklin Power Products plant site.

The mothers discovered that there have been 111 cases of cancer in those younger than age 20 between 1999 and 2013 in Johnson County. Even more shocking was that 40 of those cases were just since 2010. Half of them were in the town of Franklin

The incidence rate of 22.2 cases per 100,000 people was higher than the state average of 17.3 cases and the national average of 15.3 cases. Pictured: Rhinehart with her daughter

However, Indiana state health officials said at a community meeting that after evaluating the number of cancer cases in 2015 and 2017, they did not believe there evidence of a cancer cluster. Pictured: Zane with his father, Matt

High levels of toxic chemical contamination was discovered in three wells in 2006 that were shut down.

The environmental nonprofit group, Edison Wetlands Association - located in New Jersey and specializing in the cleanup of hazardous waste sites - decided to do some testing

The group conducted vapor intrusion testing in 14 homes near the former site of the plant in Franklin.

In a release, the EWA said it found high levels of several carcinogens including radon, a radioactive gas; TCE, a volatile chemical compound; and PCE, a solvent often used in dry cleaning.

The highest levels were not found from canisters placed in basements and in the ground but from those place in backyards, meaning the contaminants were found to mainly be airborne.

'What's apparent to us is that it may be more of an ambient air problem in that the outside air outside of these homes is contaminated,' Shannon Lisa, EWA program director, said in a statement.

However, Indiana state health officials said at a community meeting that after evaluating the number of cancer cases in 2015 and 2017, they did not believe there evidence of a cancer cluster.

The environmental nonprofit group, Edison Wetlands Association conducted vapor intrusion testing in 14 homes near the former site of the plant in Franklin. Pictured: Rhinehart, left, and Davidson

The group said it found high levels of several carcinogens including radon, a radioactive gas; TCE, a volatile chemical compound; and PCE, a solvent often used in dry cleaning, in the air. Pictured: Zane, left, with his brother and Davidson, right

Rhinehart lived in Franklin for 20 years - from 1995 to 2015 - and said that she doesn't want the numbers to cause alarm but to heighten awareness. Pictured: Rhinehart, right, with her daughter Emma

'It was frustrating [to hear] that but not surprising,' Davidson said.

'If you look at CDC guidelines, there are no numbers, no statistics. It has to be at the same time and within a geographical location but there are no numbers to define what is a cluster.

'We want to know if five percent above the national average doesn't qualify as a cancer cluster, what does?'

Davidson said she doesn't believe there was a cover-up but that officials knew about the contamination and just did nothing about it.

'Zane has lived in Johnson County his whole life, and he lived in Franklin for five years with his mom close to the contamination site at one point. We truly just want transparency,' she said.

Rhinehart lived in Franklin for 20 years - from 1995 to 2015 - and said that she doesn't want the numbers to cause alarm but to heighten awareness.

'I have two other kids who are in Franklin 50 percent of the time because I have split custody but we don't want people to get alarmed, we want people to be made aware,' she said.

'If they're aware, we can get more testing done and that's the only way we can hold these agencies accountable.

'No one wants their town called [a cancer cluster] but the town's name is not important than our children's lives.'

Rhinehart (pictured) said they are not just calling upon the EPA for comprehensive testing but, through private funds, hope to conduct soil and gas sampling and testing of hundreds of more homes

'We truly want transparency, you should feel safe to have child wait by the bus and not worry about the air they're breathing,' said Davidson (pictured)

The Amphenol Corporation told CBS This Morning that it has been working with the EPA and said that recently ambient air testing was found to meet EPA standards.

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management also told the program that it considering installing a permanent air monitoring system in Franklin.

Davidson told Daily Mail Online that Zane, now 13, is in remission and doing well, but she says she wants more testing done.

'We're not talking to lawyers, that's not our priority,' she said.

'We truly want transparency, you should feel safe to have child wait by the bus and not worry about the air they're breathing.'

Rhinehart agrees, saying that they are not just calling upon the EPA for comprehensive testing but, through private funds, hope to conduct soil and gas sampling and testing of hundreds of more homes.

'It's been frustrating to know the contamination has been going on for so long,' she said.

'When you see it on paper, you can't just roll over and stick your head in the sand.'
Sleeping pills taken by hundreds of thousands may boost the risk of Alzheimer's, a study suggests.

Researchers found the risk of developing the memory-robbing disorder is higher for patients taking benzodiazepines and Z-drugs.

And the huge analysis revealed a higher risk for those on stronger medications, and for those who have taken the drugs for longer than recommended.

Figures suggest there are at least 260,000 people in Britain and nearly 100 million in the US who take benzodiazepines and Z-drugs for at least a month.

The recommended usage of benzos and Z-drugs is no more than four weeks, as evidence suggests they do little after this time.

Doctors dole out benzos, which slow the body's functions and are highly effective in the short-term, to combat anxiety and sleeplessness.

Researchers found the risk of developing the memory-robbing disorder is higher for patients taking benzodiazepines and Z-drugs

Z-drugs are hypnotic sedatives that work similarly to benzos. The most well-known are zolpidem, zopiclone and zaleplon.

Evidence is growing over benzos - a class of powerful sedatives, which include Valium and Xanax - and their links to dangerous addiction.

And the new study, carried out by the University of Eastern Finland, if confirmed in further trials, may add to the long-list of dangers, including falls and even an early death.

Researchers analysed the use of benzodiazepines and Z-drugs and the prevalence of Alzheimers among 353,000 participants.

Of the participants, a fifth had already given the devastating news they had the most common form of dementia between 2005 and 2011.

Medical records of each participant since 1995 were collected, to examine any links between medication use and the disorder.

For patients taking benzodiazepines or Z-drugs, the risk of Alzheimers increased by around six per cent, according to an analysis.

Researchers led by Vesa Tapiainen also found the higher the dose, the more likely the patient was to be struck down with the disorder.

Mr Tapiainen and colleagues admitted the increased risk of Alzheimers was small.

The findings of the Finnish trial were published in the journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica.

Writing in the journal, researchers said: 'Benzodiazepine and related drug use in general was associated with modestly increased risk of Alzheimer's.'

For decades, patient groups, addiction charities and experts have warned about the over-use of benzodiazepines.

Studies have shown people who take the powerful sedatives for six weeks face a 50 per cent chance of becoming addicted.

And once hooked, the only help thousands can receive is from addiction services on the NHS that are often frequented by Class A drug addicts.

Concerned charities have also called for doctors to change prescribing habits but such calls have been largely ignored.

Withdrawal symptoms for patients coming off benzodiazepines can include anxiety, panic attacks and even hallucinations.

Dr David Reynolds, chief scientific officer at Alzheimers Research UK, said: 'This study suggests that taking drugs such as benzodiazepines maybe associated with a slightly increased risk of developing Alzheimers, but the results dont give conclusive evidence about what causes this link.

'While this study only looked at benzodiazepine use more than five years before people were diagnosed with Alzheimers, we know that the disease can start to get underway in the brain up to twenty years before obvious memory and thinking symptoms start to show.

'Benzodiazepines are often prescribed to treat sleep problems or anxiety, and as these symptoms may also be early indicators of the onset of Alzheimers, this could account for the link highlighted in this study.

'These drugs need to be carefully prescribed and doctors are best placed to assess individual circumstances, weigh benefits against any potential risks and to make an informed judgement about the most appropriate course of treatment.'
An experimental drug could finally let doctors treat half of cancers, which often become drug resistant, defying treatment.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco used a drug being developed by Revolution Medicines to slow the growth of lung, skin, colon and pancreatic cells in the lab.

The cancers they hope to treat are particularly stubborn thanks to mutations that make ells grow out of control.

Since their experiments in animals so successfully disrupted this process, the researchers plan to expedite it to clinical trials, where it could change the way doctors treat half of the most stubborn, deadly cancers they encounter.

Scientists have discovered a drug that can target a signalling pathway that switches about half of all cancer cases into overdrive, offering hope to treat drug-resistant tumors

Any body tissue can become cancerous because any cell's copying process can be corrupted by genetic mutations that cause it to grow out of control.

Our tissues are constantly repairing themselves by creating more cells, which is accomplished through cellular division.

These divisions are triggered by communications passed through a sort of cellular game of telephone, or a signalling pathway.

As the instructions for cell division are passed down the line, they're vulnerable to get interrupted, which can then cause a genetic mutation that causes cells to multiply out of control.

One of the signalling pathways involved is the MAPK/ERK pathway. Messages to turn cell division 'on' or 'off' travel through this pathway.

But if one of the proteins that acts like a switch gets stuck in one position or the other, divide out of control, becoming a cancer.

The best way to get rid of these tumors is to surgically remove them, but they can also become too large and entangled with healthy tissue for this to be possible.

In this case, doctors use chemo or radiation to attack rapidly dividing cells, but sometimes it is too late, and this does not rewrite the instructions for division itself.

But a drug that effectively rewrote the MAPK/ERK pathway instructions to get the 'on/off' switch protein back to its normal position could be a game-changer for the treatment of many cancers.

In their lab experiments with Petri dish cells for lung, skin, pancreatic and colon cells, the researchers had unprecedented success doing exactly this.

Previously, the 'on/off' proteins seemed to just be too complicated to alter or the corrupted message would just find another signalling route to travel down when scientists attempted to intervene in the MAPK/ERK pathway.

This time, however, it worked.

By targeting an even earlier point in the line of communication, the University of California, San Francisco scientists were able to essentially mute the external signals telling the cells to grow by blocking a molecule called SHP2.

'The implications of being able to block SHP2 are broad and may extend to more types of cancer than seen in the present study,' lead study author Dr Trever Bivona said.

His treatment slowed the growth of all of the Petri dish cancers and even killed cancer cells off in some cases.

In human lung cancer cells grown in human mice, the new drug also slowed down the growth of the tumors dramatically, which the researchers will help them get the drugs to human patients faster.

'Almost every major oncogene I can think of coopts this pathway in one way or another, and many of these cancers currently have no effective targeted therapies or eventually develop resistance to available targeted therapies,' said Dr Bovina.

'It's exciting to anticipate such important work moving quickly from the laboratory to the clinic.'
Elderly men make just as good carers as women, new research suggests.

Older males spend the same amount of time looking after their ill spouses as females do, a study found.

Yet young men are not as caring towards their unwell partners as women are, which may be due to them having less time to run errands or do housework due to work commitments compared to their retired counterparts, according to the researchers.

The scientists claim their findings are important due to people living longer and therefore requiring greater levels of care.

Study author Dr Laura Langner, from the University of Oxford, said: 'With the gender gap in life expectancy closing, and children becoming less available to care for their parents, it is likely that many more men will be called upon to care for their partners.

'Our findings at least suggest that women won't have to worry that their partners are not up to the job of caring for them'.

Elderly men make just as good carers as women, new research suggests (stock)

HOW OLD CAN HUMANS LIVE TO? Humans may live to 120 in just 60 years time, a leading expert claimed in May 2017. Research reveals it is possible to slow down our biological, or 'inner', ageing process, which could help us to live decades beyond the current life expectancy of 81. Drugs that interact with our DNA maintain the function of our bodies for longer, the research suggests. Experts stress, however, this must be combined with a healthy lifestyle for full effect. Yet, how a 120-year-old life expectancy may impact people's quality of life is unclear. The side effects of such treatments are also unknown. Several European countries are in talks to start drug trials within the next three years. Professor Vladimir Khavinson, head of the St. Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology, said: 'It is important to understand that nobody would want to live a long and unhealthy life. 'The main goal for us now must be to allow people to stay healthy for as long as possible into their old age.' Six of these drugs are already available in Russia. These include Thymalin to maintain immune system function and Cortexin to preserve brain activity. The drugs work on the so-called 'peptide technology theory', which states that interacting with DNA increases protein production that prolongs lifespan. Speaking at the international symposium on longevity in Geneva, Professor Khavinson added: 'One of the key indicators of ageing is the reduction of protein synthesis. 'We have come to the conclusion that it is possible to restore it to a normal level with the use of peptide bioregulators and have found an optimal way to maintain natural peptide production of a sufficient quantity. 'The technology developed by our scientific institute is based on the extraction of peptides from the tissues of young healthy animals that have the same structure as human tissues.' A similar study conducted by researchers at the GLMED medical center in Moscow assessed 60 age markers throughout such drugs' treatment in participants aged 31-to-72 years old. Results suggested that, when combined with a healthy lifestyle, the drugs reduce a person's biological age by an average of up to two years over 12 months. Advertisement

How the research was carried out

The researchers analysed 538 couples from Germany with an average age of 69.

One member of each couple required care from their spouse.

The scientists assessed how many hours the caregivers spent looking after their partners, whether that be responding to their physical needs, running errands or doing housework.

'Male caregivers are as responsive towards their partner's illness'

Results suggest men adjust their time just as much as women do when their other halves become unwell.

Perhaps surprisingly, men increase the amount of time they spend on housework and errands more than women when their partners become severely ill.

When a person's spouse is only relatively unwell, however, women spend more time on housework than men.

Dr Langner said: 'Our results suggest that gender differences in spousal caregiving in old age are not as pronounced as previously thought.

'We found that, unlike many previous studies on caregiving in later life - male caregivers were just as responsive towards their partner's onset of illness as female caregivers.

'This stands in sharp contrast [to] the division of caregiving (i.e. childcare) and housework in mid-life.

'There could be a number of reasons for this, but a key factor may be that in later life many people retire and no longer have the responsibility of work, so are able to focus on other priorities - that their spouse may have been doing already.'

Centenarians die in better health than those who pass away 20 years younger

This comes after research released in July last year suggested centenarians die in better health than those who pass away in their 80s or 90s.

People who die aged 100 or older have on average 3.3 health complaints at the time of their passing, a study found.

This is compared to 4.6 ailments in those who pass away in their 80s or 90s, the research adds.

Study author Dr Paul Gellert, from the Charite hospital, Berlin, said: 'Our results also show that the increase in conditions seen during the last few years of life was lower in centenarians than in those who had died between the ages of 90 and 99 or 80 and 89.'

The researchers did not speculate on why centenarians die with fewer conditions, however, it may be that people require good health in order to reach such an age.
We all know that we're supposed to run fruits and vegetables under a tap before we eat them.

According to the CDC, washing your produce under running water can actually prevent yourself from becoming infected with bacteria such as Salmonella, E coli and Listeria.

But sometimes it can feel like your cleaning has done nothing and, with conflicting information out there, it's unclear how long under the sink is long enough to be useful.

Drew Patterson, the culinary director of the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, explained to DailyMail.com how to handle each type of fruit - saying you may need as long as 20 seconds for fruits like melon but others you needn't worry.

Drew Patterson, the culinary director of the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, spoke to Daily Mail Online about why it's so important to wash fruits and vegetables before you eat them

WHAT CONTAMINANTS SHOULD YOU BE WORRIED ABOUT?

From dirt to grocery worker's hands to pesticides, there are several things to worry about when it comes to produce.

Patterson says that the first reason to wash your fruits and vegetables is from anything they've picked up from the earth.

'There's always the risk when you buy something that grows in the ground or grows naturally that it could pick up dirt or sand or pebbles, so washing them under water can help get them out,' Patterson told DailyMail.com.

He notes that washing will not be effective at getting rid of all the bacteria found in or on produce, but says it lowers the risk.

'Of course, you can't wash bacteria out with just water - you'd have to use soap. But you've at least mitigated your risk,' he said.

Then there's the bacteria potentially lurking on the hands of the farmers who pick fruits and vegetables, the grocery store workers that stock them and the shoppers that pick them up and examine them.

The risk particularly lies with someone who has not washed their hands after defecating because several bacteria that cause food-borne illnesses are found in fecal matter.

HOW LONG SHOULD YOU WASH FRUITS AND VEGGIES THAT ARE POROUS?

Patterson says for fruits and vegetables that are porous - tiny holes through which liquid or air could pass - 10 to 20 seconds under cool, running water is the best way to go.

'Cantaloupes are very porous, which means it can pick up more contaminants. So to clean them, you have to scrub it really well,' he said.

The same applies to fruits like strawberries and these are the only kind of fruits for which Patterson recommends using a produce brush to get a good scrub in.

The 10-to-20-second rule also applies to vegetables that have roots like bean sprouts or green onions.

'Green onions and bean sprouts are like thin tubes so contaminants can get trapped in there that potentially harbor bacteria so you want to give them a good rinse,' he said.

HOW LONG SHOULD YOU WASH FRUITS WITH PEELS?

For fruits that have smooth peels, like watermelons and apples, you don't need any more than 10 seconds under cool water.

'Watermelon has smooth, cleanable surfaces so you don't need to sit there scrubbing away,' said Patterson.

He recommends either using your hands or a cloth to gently wash off any possible contaminants.

For produce where the whole peel comes off, such as oranges and bananas, Patterson says a rinse isn't even completely necessary because the tough peel makes it difficult for bacteria to pass through.

IS IT NECESSARY TO BUY A VEGETABLE WASH FOR YOUR PRODUCE?

There have been studies released that recommend other methods of cleaning your produce.

One study from Nanjing University in Japan soaked cabbage in a salt water solution and vinegar to remove pesticides.

Another study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst soaked apples in a solution of baking soda and water to remove leftover residue.

Patterson says that it's not a bad idea to take either of those steps, but adds that it's better to not make the solution yourself.

If you're going to go through those extra steps, invest in a pre-approved, pre-made vegetable wash on the market,' he said.

'The way you don't have to worry about how much salt or baking soda you put in the solution. Someone has done that work for you.'

Despite the pathogens that can be present in peels and leaves, Patterson says that consumers should not be hesitant to eat fruits and veggies.

'I don't want people to think: "Oh I'll just eat fried foods because there's less risk with food that's been cooked",' he said.

'Fruits and vegetables have a lot of health benefits and taking extra precautionary measures can only help you.

'Buy from reputable vendors and reputable stores and just know what their food-handling practices are.'
It never sounded like a good idea: plastic high heels encasing your feet during a notoriously hot and sweaty summer.

But fashion is pain, and this year the clear heel became the must-have item, championed by Kim Kardashian, Chrissy Teigen, Rihanna, and more.

Thankfully, for those reluctant to take the leap, you now have a very good reason not to.

Stiletto-wearing podiatrist Dr Suzanne Levine is speaking up for for fans of comfort - warning the trend could wreck irreparable damage on your feet.

'You are putting your feet at serious risk by essentially wrapping them in non-breathable plastic,' Dr Levine, of New York City's Institute Beaute, told DailyMail.com via email.

'Without any aeration, the moist environment can exacerbate preexisting fungal conditions or bacterial infections - in addition to increasing your risk for blisters.'

Kim Kardashian has been wearing clear heels since 2016 (pictured), but this heatwave-ridden summer it has caught on to become mainstream. A foot doctor warns there are risks, though

Chrissy Teigen, also pictured in 2016, braved the logistically complicated trend in these heels

In May this year, Kanye West revealed some clear heels for his line Yeezy, which Kim dubbed 'Cinderella' shoes

In fact, in the last few months since Kanye West's 'Cinderella Shoe' hit the market in May, Dr Levine has seen a spike in patients with conditions called hyperhidrosis and bromohidrosis - lengthy names for 'smelly feet'.

For those desperate to try the trend, Dr Levine, who first spoke to Page Six, recommends taking certain precautions to lower your risk of side effects.

'I would wear with some sort of drying agent for the foot - antiperspirant or spray powder,' she said.

'Wear them when the sun goes down, only for a few hours at a time.'

As for Kim Kardashian's beloved clear, heeled boots, Dr Levine says those are only for the foolhardy.

'Start off with the shorter pairs. I don't recommend diving straight into the full boot!'\

They are strong words from Dr Levine, who is hardly a heel-hater.

In fact, she's known as the 'podiatrist in high heels', and works in a pair of three-inch pumps every day.

'I can't imagine wearing anything but a heel. I live wearing heels,' Dr Levine explained.

She believes they bring all kinds of benefits to your entire body.

But if you're going to wear them, you need to be committed and prepared.

'You've really got to work in order to wear high heels. Most people aren't willing to do that, that's the problem,' Dr Levine explains.

'You cannot wear heels and be out of shape. It's really about exercising. You have to pay attention to your body.

'If you wear heels and you don't exercise you will sustain injuries.'

Both Priyanka Chopra (left, in April in New York) and Rita Ora (right, in December in London) like the trend

Last September, the trend was pegged as a must-have for summer 2018, as it was everywhere during Spring/Summer '18 fashion week. Here, for example, founder of thecladlife.com Kristen Dodson Smith championed some Yeezy shoes on day 3 of Paris Women's Fashion Week SS18

Kylie paired her comfy gear with some plastic stilettos for dinner in Hollywood in June

All strands of the Kardashian clan - from Kourtney to Blac Chyna - have embraced the trend

Kylie Jenner opted for some clear heels on a fashion show double date with her sister Kim, brother-in-law Kanye, and boyfriend Travis in June this year

Podiatrist-turned-shoe designer Joan Oloff, who has her own eponymous footwear label, agrees that the use of PVC to create a shoe can put you at serious risk of infections - and noted that, while the material may look fashion-forward, it can do much more harm than good.

'Fully encompassing the foot in PVC may be asking for problems,' she told DailyMail.com.

'We live in an age where fungal toenails is almost epidemic. Housing the foot in an unbreathable environment all day provides a prime breeding ground for the fungus that causes athletes foot or mycotic, deformed toenails.

'And these issues are much easier to prevent than eradicate.

'Like previous fads, I believe this may soon fall out of favor. I would caution women that some of the ill effects of this type of footwear may last a lifetime. In general, all natural materials provide the healthiest environment for feet!'

However, Joan adds that if the PVC shoe trend isn't something you can resist trying for yourself, you should opt for footwear that use the highest-quality materials - and that only feature the plastic material on a small portion of the design.

'The reality is that PVC has successfully been used in the uppers [top section] of womens shoes in the past,' she explained.

'Stuart Weitzman created a very successful collection with PVC almost 20 years ago. He tended to use it more sparingly, however. One of the keys is using a better quality PVC, which has the ability to mold to the foot. Less expensive PVC is too stiff and becomes a source for irritation.'
A 14-year-old girl has died of complications from a brain tumor just days before starting the chemotherapy a court ordered despite her parents' wishes.

The young girl, who the Cleveland Plain Dealer called by the pseudonym Zara Ali, was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor in July.

Her tumor was a low-grade one, but it was pressing on her optic nerve, damaging her vision and, because it was too large to operate on, doctors recommended chemotherapy.

Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic placed a shunt to drain the fluid that was giving her headaches, but Zara's parents - identified as Omar and Rosalind - did not want their daughter to receive what they saw as 'toxic' chemicals in the form of chemo.

For months, the tumor continued to press on Zara's optic nerve, increasingly limiting her vision while her parents administered turmeric and frankincense.

Finally, the Ohio court mandated at the end of July that Zara could wait no longer and had to start chemo within 12 days.

But on Thursday August 10, the little girl died.

Dr Stacey Zahler (left) diagnosed a 14-year-old girl with a noncancerous brain tumor and recommended chemotherapy to shrink it, but the girl's parents wanted to treat it with natural remedies. Despite a legal battle before Ohio Magistrate Judge Ginny Millas (right), the girl died

Zara started getting frequent headaches and even vomiting in September 2017.

Too much cerebrospinal fluid had been building up in the girl's brain, causing her unpleasant symptoms.

She was soon booked for surgery to have a shunt placed to drain the excess liquid from her brain.

Diagnostic imaging revealed that the cerebrospinal fluid had probably gathered around Zara's brain in an effort to protect it from something her body knew shouldn't be there: a tumor.

The mass wasn't cancerous, but it was thoroughly tangled up with the blood vessels feeding Zara's brain, pressing on the pituitary gland in her brain, her brain stem and thalamus, threatening every region it touched.

Already, it had ruined much of her optic nerves. By the time doctors saw her, she was legally blind in her left eye.

Zara's tumor had grown too big and complex to operate on and her doctors worried that if they waited too long to act, the surge in hormones that might come with puberty could fuel the tumor, as could radiation therapy to shrink it.

But if the tumor's size couldn't be reduced, Dr Stacey Zahler, a pediatric oncologist and hemotologist at Cleveland Clinic, feared Zara would lose her vision altogether, or worse.

In October, Dr Zahler told the family that Zara's best bet was chemotherapy, but her parents didn't want her anywhere near the treatment.

Omar and Rosalind wanted their daughter to be treated only with natural or homeopathic remedies.

The Moorish American couple feared that the hospital was only pushing drugs on their daughter because it served the institution's financial interests, according to the Plain Dealer's account of court proceedings.

Instead, they wanted to treat her with turmeric and frankincense instead.

'Turmeric is being peddled for everything from joint pain to cancer,' Dr Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University told Daily Mail Online.

A handful of studies on frankincense and cancer have been done. The ones that show promise are done in petri dishes. In animal models, frankincense seems to do very little.

When asked in court about the the pair of treatments, one of Zara's doctors testified 'tuurmeric has been used in Ayurvedic medicine, which is a form of medicine based in India and primarily used for inflammation. It has never been used [for] brain tumors.'

Dr Lisa Lystad, a Cleveland Clinic neuro-ophthalmologist demonstrated in court how Zara's vision was rapidly disappearing thanks to the untreated tumor

She drew a diagragram of the tumor's location and size to explain the pressure it was putting on Zara's optic nerve. As it grew, it was making the 14-year-old blind

Frankincense 'has never been shown to be useful in any medical condition,' she said.

Omar took the opposite view: 'Chemo is man-made - it's not organic,' he later said in court, according to the Plain Dealer.

In court, Dr Zahler testified that the pair of chemo drugs she had intended to put Zara on - vincristine and carboplatin - shrinks or stabilizes tumor size for 70 percent of patients.

In theory, Zara's treatment hung in the balance of these two numbers, Dr Caplan explains.

For cases like hers, 'the first question is what is the likelihood of success? The more likely a treatment is to prevent severe disability or death, the stronger the case for overriding the parents or appointing a guardian is,' Dr Caplan says.

The Cleveland Clinic team conceded, agreeing to try the parents' natural route for awhile, as long as they brought Zara in regularly for tests to monitor the tumor's growth.

When doctors said the word, it would be time to give up on homeopathy and use the traditional recommendation made by Dr Zahler.

But when Dr Lisa Lystad, a neuro-ophthalmologist saw Zara in December and told the family that the time had come, Omar and Rosalind were no longer willing to keep up their end of the bargain.

By January, the two doctors, the three Alis, the testimony of a social worker and attorneys for each appeared before magistrate judge Ginny Millas in Juvenile Court, where the Plain Observer gained special permission to attend the proceedings.

It had been six months since Zara had been diagnosed. Remarkably, her tumor seemed to be holding steady.

But the already poor vision in her left eye was rapidly deteriorating. In February, she couldn't read a an eye chart or count fingers in front of her at all.

Omar, who wore a fez style hat to every court appearance, missed the day of testimony on his daughter's eyesight, but insisted that she had been telling her parents her vision was actually improving.

'Some ethicists say that children should have more input in their treatment the older they get, but I don't prescribe to that unless they're almost 18,' says Dr Caplan.

The girl's father wore a fez, Moorish-style hat, to court every day

'Until then, they are still very much under the influence of their parents and want to please them.'

The Alis tried to find a second opinion but by March, Judge Millas had decided enough was enough.

She would not take Zara away from her family, but she did order them to take her to chemo treatments in a March ruling.

By the end of April, the Alis had gotten a second opinion from a doctor at University Hospitals (UH) Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital.

He had agreed to start a milder chemo treatment, though disagreed with the court's ordering the family to do so. Zara still hadn't had her first dose of chemotherapy, and the attorney for the county investigator pushed the court once again to ensure that the treatment was started, but back at Cleveland Clinic.

It took another three months for that order to come through, issued by Judge Michael Ryan on July 31.

Unbeknownst to the judge, it was already too late.

Two days earlier, Zara fell unconscious at home and was rushed to UH where she was placed on a ventilator.

The girl never woke up again.

Omar and Rosalind told the Plain Dealer that the UH doctors had blamed Zara's death on a shunt malfunction, which happens in about 50 percent of cases, within two years of placement.

Daily Mail Online asked the hospital to clarify the cause of Zara's death, but UH responded by saying: 'Our deepest sympathies to the family for the loss of their child. However, due to patient privacy laws we cannot comment further.'

On Thursday, 14-year-old Zara was taken off of her ventilator. She died in the hospital with her mother by her side.
Before Sydney and Lexi Stark were born in March 2001, doctors told their parents to prepare for stillbirth.

The girls were conjoined at the hip, spine and intestines - something which carries a 50 percent risk of mortality.

To the amazement of their doctors at Kaiser Permanente in Denver, Colorado, the girls survived a day, then another, then another.

Against all odds, at seven months old, they were strong enough to undergo grueling separation surgery - the first ever performed in Colorado.

Even now, 17 years on, separation surgeries are incredibly risky and life-threatening for one or both of the twins.

But today, Syd and Lexi are just as strong and healthy as their peers at high school, and have shared their story with Megyn Kelly Today on NBC.

Sydney and Lexi Stark say they feel very connected, but live their lives like any other teenager

Seventeen years ago they were born, against all odds, conjoined at the pelvis

They were the first twins ever separated in Colorado - and it turned out to be a success

It was a rollercoaster for James and Emily, a motivational speaker who won Mrs Colorado - the pageant 'celebrating the uniqueness of the married woman' - in 1995, and Mrs America in 2002

The girls, on the cusp of their senior year in high school, are busy planning their next moves - Lexi wants to go to the University of Calgary, and Sydney wants to go to the University of Missouri.

For their parents, James and Emily Stark, it feels surreal that they've made it to this point.

On August 3, 2000, a year and a month after they got married, they found out they were pregnant - with twins. However, scans soon revealed the girls were fused at the spine.

This only occurs in one in 189,000 births. The most widely-accepted theory for it is that the fertilized egg started to split - as happens with identical twins - but the division was not complete, and part of their bodies remained fused.

Lexi and Sydney are technically known as pygopagus twins - two bodies joined at the pelvis - which, as with all conjoined twins, is more common in girls.

Since no conjoined twins had been separated in Colorado, survival was slim, and quality of life also seemed bleak. They probably would never walk.

In retrospect, Emily and James realize that they just didn't consider the very real risk that their daughters wouldn't even survive the C-section birth, let alone life after.

Emily and James realize that they just didn't consider the very real risk that their daughters wouldn't even survive the C-section birth

On August 3, 2000, a year and a month after they got married, they found out they were pregnant - with twins. However, scans soon revealed the girls were fused at the spine

Lexi and Sydney are technically known as pygopagus twins - two bodies joined at the pelvis - which, as with all conjoined twins, is more common in girls

Since no conjoined twins had been separated in Colorado, survival was slim, and quality of life also seemed bleak. Doctors said they probably would never walk

'I just remember looking at the ceiling, and I just kind of tuned out, and James kind of took over from there,' says Emily, a motivational speaker who won Mrs Colorado - the pageant 'celebrating the uniqueness of the married woman' - in 1995, and Mrs America in 2002.

'I think it was always, they will survive. I don't think it was ever a question,' James said. 'Obviously we knew what conjoined twins were, you see stories and you read about them. [The doctor] brought out this thousand-page medical book and flipped through it to the page on conjoined twins and there was literally two paragraphs on conjoined twins.'

Once they arrived, Emily said, they were certain the girls would be fine, and did not hesitate to push for separation, even though it hadn't been done.

In the run-up, she started to feel nervous.

'We had done so many things to get to this day, and about two weeks before I looked at James and I said, are we playing God? Are we messing with perfection? Because we could keep them together and we could keep them, but are we messing this up?'

But James assured her.

The surgery was a success, and the entire surgical team applauded and yelped when it was over

Once they arrived, Emily said, they were certain the girls would be fine, and did not hesitate to push for separation, even though it hadn't been done

He recalls saying: 'At the end of the day you have to trust that you made the right decision with the information you had at the time. If something went wrong, you're never prepared for that, but at least you went into it knowing what you were doing.'

The surgery was a success, and the entire surgical team applauded and yelped when it was over.

Now, Lexi and Sydney say they still feel eerily connected - and insist that they can feel each others' sadness and pain.

It's something, they say, that will always stay with them, regardless of whether they go to college thousands of miles apart.

Lexi and Sydney say they still feel eerily connected - and insist that they can feel each others' sadness and pain
Patient-to-be: Sarah Brookes pictured after her pre-wedding sunbed sessions

When Sarah Brookes passes a tanning salon, she has to suppress the urge to go in and ask them to stop trading.

Sarah, 41, a mother of two from Bradford, West Yorkshire, would like commercial sunbeds to be banned outright.

Thats because she has advanced malignant melanoma  the most dangerous form of skin cancer  and she believes sunbeds are responsible.

Sarah never even liked sitting in the sun, but six years ago she agreed to have a course of sunbed treatments after a friend asked her to be her bridesmaid.

The friend suggested that all the bridesmaids get a tan so they wouldnt have pasty white faces on the wedding day.

The irony is I have always avoided the sun and family used to call me the vampire because I was always so white, says Sarah, who lives with husband Darren, 43, and their sons, Morgan, 15, and Mason, 12. Ive always slathered sun cream on my children.

I didnt want a spray tan because Im allergic to a lot of skincare products and make-up and didnt want to flare up for the wedding.

So Sarah agreed, reluctantly, to have ten three-minute sunbed sessions  paid for by the bride. It was a decision she now bitterly regrets.

Sunbed use in the UK is often marketed as a way to get a safer tan. However, the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified UV-emitting tanning devices as carcinogenic to humans, in the same category as smoking and asbestos.

It also says there is sufficient evidence to show that sunbeds are a cause of melanoma, the risk being higher the younger people are when they begin using them.

The World Health Organisation, meanwhile, says sunbed radiation can produce adverse health effects similar to those of natural sunlight, most notably in fair-skinned persistent users.

Treatment: Sarah after her neck surgery (L) and the first sign of skin cancer on her ear (right)

Fighting: The mum-of-two has undergone numerous therapies to beat her cancerous growths

When Sarah went to the tanning salon, she says she wasnt given any warning information or told to wear sun cream. I was given a pair of goggles to protect my eyes and that was that.

Sarah recalls the stand-up tanning booth feeling claustrophobic  then tubes of light light up and you feel very hot and enclosed.

Despite the ten sessions I was probably paler than the average person as Ive always had very white skin, she adds. After the wedding, Sarah never used a sunbed again.

Four years later, in 2016, she was driving with son Morgan when he noticed her ear was bleeding on the top towards the back.

His exact words were, Mum, thats minging. I went to the pharmacy who said they thought it was an infected spot and told me to see the doctor if it became hot.

It didnt, so Sarah forgot about it. Four months later, her mother pointed out the area, saying it looked like a lump. This time Sarah went to her GP, who examined the area  now the size of a pea  and referred her to a dermatologist.

Two weeks later, Sarah had an appointment at St Lukes Hospital, Bradford where she was told she needed a biopsy.

Switch them off: The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified UV-emitting tanning devices as carcinogenic to humans, in the same category as smoking and asbestos

Difficult times: Sarah is pictured mid-treatment during radiotherapy in her local hospital

Diagnosis: Sarah had malignant melanoma which had spread to the lymph nodes, and she needed to have part of her ear removed

As Sarah recalls: The dermatologist said they were so worried they wanted to do it there and then.

Days later a letter arrived asking Sarah to see her consultant. The news was shocking: Sarah had malignant melanoma which had spread to the lymph nodes, and she needed to have part of her ear removed. I couldnt believe it, as Ive barely even sat in the sun, she says.

In 25 per cent of cases melanoma arises from a changing mole, explains Dr Christian Aldridge, a dermatologist at Prince Charles Hospital, Merthyr Tydfil, an advisor to charity Melanoma UK and chair of the All Wales Specalist Advisory Group for Skin Cancer. The rest arise from normal-looking skin. The main things to look out for are a change in size, shape and colour of an existing mole or the development of a new pigmented lesion over a short period of time.

Advanced melanoma is characterised by bleeding.

Melanoma is the most serious skin cancer, he adds, as it is more likely to spread and can appear years after exposure.

Around 2,000 Britons a year die from melanoma. Worryingly, the cancer is on the increase in two age bands: Fifty and 60-year-olds, corresponding to low-cost package holidays from the Seventies and Eighties, and in 20-30-year-olds, possibly due to increased sunbed exposure or genetic risk factors, says Dr Aldridge.

The rise is likely to be due partly to increased reporting  but intense sun exposure abroad and significant burning during childhood also act as well-known risk factors for melanoma, as well as the increasing trend of using sunbeds, particularly among young women.

During my youth, my long hair had covered my ears. But in the tanning booth Id swept it up into a bun each time. I was convinced my melanoma had been caused by sunbed use.

The issue is the amount of sunbed usage at a young age, which essentially accelerates the lifetime UV exposure. Obviously no one uses sunscreen when using sunbeds as the intention is to tan, he adds.

Dr Emma Wedgeworth, a consultant dermatologist and British Skin Foundation spokesman, says: It is difficult to know how much radiation different tanning machines emit, but it has been estimated that some can emit up to four times more UV radiation, particularly UVA [which is linked to skin cancer], than the midday sun.

The evening after she received her diagnosis, Sarah and Darren talked to their children. We were positive, she says. If they were operating, there was hope. Three weeks later she had surgery to remove the tumour and two lymph nodes.

A few weeks after her first operation, Sarah had more lymph nodes removed. This involved an incision from her chin across to her ear, then down to her collarbone, an operation that took four hours.

I woke up and soon the pain hit  as did my questions about why this was happening to me, she recalls. I kept thinking, how on earth did I get skin cancer?

Id always avoided the sun. Id never burned as a child. The cancer had started on my ear but Id always had long hair covering my ears. It seemed impossible.

Six days later, Sarah went home, then started a four-week course of radiotherapy. It was during this that Sarah had her Eureka moment.

Pictured today: Still fighting, Sarahs cancer team have told her that it's a possibility her cancer was caused by the ten sunbed sessions

Lying in the radiotherapy tunnel, feeling hot, as a machine whirred around me, cast my mind back to a similar experience, she recalls. And then I remembered what it was  it was a memory of standing up, hot, trapped in a tanning booth four years earlier.

Suddenly it made sense. During my youth, my long hair had covered my ears. But in the tanning booth Id swept it up into a bun each time. I was convinced my melanoma had been caused by sunbed use.

Sarahs cancer team have told her this is a possibility.

Dr Aldridge explains: UV light is a well-known carcinogen and is the biggest environmental factor implicated in the development of skin cancer. Sunbeds have been shown to emit UV radiation as powerful as UV levels found in the Mediterranean.

Scientific evidence already exists demonstrating a link between sunbed use and melanoma. It is difficult to quantify risks for ten sunbed sessions but it is likely that risk is cumulative in combination with natural sun exposure.

Around ten months after her radiotherapy, Sarah developed headaches and an MRI scan last November revealed a tumour in her brain.

She underwent gamma knife surgery, where tiny beams of radiation are targeted at a tumour to shrink it.

Two months later a scan revealed three more tumours; she underwent another round of gamma knife surgery but the cancer has spread to the lining of her brain.

Sarah is now having targeted therapy  where drugs are used to target specific genes or proteins to stop cancer growing. The side-effects  exhaustion and nausea  mean she can no longer work as a progress support leader in a school; she cant drive and uses a mobility scooter.

My sons have been amazing. Darren has to work, so they walk to the shop, cook my dinner, get me my medication. But then the guilt comes: I believe I brought this on myself for using tanning beds. Ill always regret it.

If I could turn back time I would have refused the sunbeds and gone to that wedding with my pasty face.

People need to realise how dangerous sunbeds can be, adds Sarah, who is backing a petition to Parliament (petition.parliament.uk) on this. I want them to be banned just as they are in Australia and Brazil. That way, perhaps other people will not have to go through what I am going through now.

Dr Aldridge says: Melanoma UK is pushing for a total sunbed ban. Salons are supposed to monitor the number of sessions their regular clients have, but who is policing this?

I know from my patients they use salons four to five times a week and many have bought their own machines. These patients are under me because they all have melanoma.

In a statement, Gary Lipman, chairman of the Sunbed Association, said: There is no comparison between sunbeds in Australia and Europe and there is no unflawed scientific evidence demonstrating a causal relationship between responsible sunbed use and melanoma.

The cause of melanoma is a mixed and complex subject and unlike Australia, sunbeds are subject to stringent regulatory controls in the UK for salon operation and staff training.

Anyone looking to tan using a sunbed should use a salon in membership of The Sunbed Association where they will be screened for contra-indications and receive advice from trained staff about how to tan responsibly. We do not accept the assertions made in the campaign by or on behalf of Melanoma UK.

Sign her petition here.
Test: Thirty patients are being recruited to a clinical trial at Imperial College London

A tiny balloon filled with hot water could help millions of women overcome problems with their fertility.

The radical treatment is also expected to treat acne, facial hair growth and weight gain caused by polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a condition that affects one in five women in the UK.

Thirty patients are being recruited to a clinical trial at Imperial College London to see if the balloon, no bigger than a grain of rice, could cure PCOS  a major cause of infertility.

If the trial, due to complete in summer 2019, is successful, the treatment, which takes just over an hour, could transform pregnancy rates among women with PCOS.

The procedure improves the way the body reacts to insulin. Around 70 per cent of PCOS cases are due to insulin resistance, where the bodys cells become less sensitive to the hormone that helps muscles absorb sugar from blood to use as fuel.

As this resistance builds, the pancreas  the gland in the abdomen which makes insulin  reacts by pumping out even more of it.

When insulin accumulates in the female body, it can increase testosterone and lead to weight gain, acne and hirsutism. This hormonal disruption can slash the number of times a woman ovulates from around 12 times a year to, in some cases, zero.

But scientists hope that by using the balloon to restore normal menstrual cycles, they can bolster the chances of pregnancy in women with PCOS. Current approaches include encouraging patients to lose weight (as weight gain affects insulin sensitivity), or treatment with diabetes drugs such as metformin.

The tiny balloon burns away some of the lining of the intestine. Doctors insert a thin tube with the deflated silicon balloon on the end down the patients throat. Once it reaches the duodenum  the foot-long part of the intestine where much of our food is digested  it is inflated and hot water pumped through it.

As it is pressed against the duodenum, the hot balloon sears the surrounding tissue.

Potential life-changer: A tiny balloon filled with hot water could help millions of women overcome problems with their fertility

Called Revita, the device is already used for type 2 diabetes because the burning process, ablation, burns off cells which have become resistant to insulin.

This allows new cells to form which are not insulin-resistant. In diabetes, this means glucose levels fall and circulation improves, reducing the dangers of stroke and heart attack. In PCOS, scientists hope, it will increase ovulation  the point in the menstrual cycle when an egg is released from the ovaries  and the chances of conception.

Endocrinologist Dr Alex Miras, part of the team running the trial, says PCOS sufferers in the trial will be aged 18-45, have irregular periods and signs of insulin resistance but not diabetes.

Half will undergo the Revita treatment and the rest will think theyre having it done but no ablation will be carried out.

Lack of periods can cause an 80 per cent reduction in fertility, said Dr Miras, but we know tackling insulin resistance kick-starts the menstrual cycle. Its a one-off procedure that could restore fertility.

Dr Diana Mansour, a consultant in sexual and reproductive healthcare at Newcastle-upon-Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, welcomed the trial. She said: There is some evidence it helps in type 2 diabetes, so for women with PCOS with insulin resistance it may be of some benefit. But we need to see the full results before getting too excited.
MULTICHOICE has removed free-to-air television channels from its broadcast service platform following directives from the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) and Minister for Works, Transport and Communications, Eng Isack Kamwelwe.

Multichoice Public Relations Officer, Johnson Mshana confirmed to the Daily News that the channels were removed by midnight on Sunday to abide to regulators directive on free-to-air channels despite the matter being before the Fair Competition Tribunal (FCT) for arbitration.

Immediately on Sunday midnight we removed the channels. We can not go against the governments directive, said Mr Mshana in an interview.

TCRA has threatened to suspend Multichoice Tanzania and Simbanet licences for airing free-to-air television channels contrary to governing laws and regulations.

The regulator accused the two of failing to abide by licence stated conditions despite several warnings to not air free-to-air (FTA) channels as part of their services on subscription channels.

Minister Kamwelwe said on Saturday Multichoice Tanzania, owners of DSTV, Simbanet (ZUKU), and Azam Media Limited were not allowed to air free-to-air channels because they are not part of services on their subscription channels.

In June 2016, TCRA started an initiative to suspend free-to-air channels on pay TV services at the end of the month to cut operational costs.

The regulator was offering four FTA channels, but later reversed its decision and frozen the plan.

The decision came after the country managed to switch from analogue television signal to digital at the end of 2012 and became the first in mainland Sub-Saharan Africa to do so.
Defence equipment specialist Chemring has warned profits are likely to take a 10 to 20million hit after a fatal explosion at its Salisbury facility on Friday.

The firm makes products to detect chemical, biological and bomb attacks as well as bullets, explosives and anti-missile protection systems.

On Friday evening, fire broke out at its Countermeasures facility following the explosion, killing one employee and leaving another one in critical conditions.

Fire broke out at the Countermeasures facility (pictured) after the blast on Friday evening

The company said the total financial impact was yet to be assessed, but expected profits to come in approximately 10million to 20million below expectations, with a knock-on effect on debt and cash flow.

Chemring shares fell as much as 20 per cent at the open to then recover slightly to trade 15 per cent down at 199.80p.

Deliveries to customers from the factory  where production is currently suspended - were previously expected to be 25million and generate 15million in the final quarter of the year, which ends in October.

Chemring said that investigations were ongoing and that a detailed analysis of the possible impact of the incident on the groups finances has begun.

It will update on the situation again when it publishes its its next trading statement on 4 September.

The impact on our 2018 and 2019 financial years cannot be accurately quantified at this stage as it will be dependent on insurance recoveries, the timeline for the investigation to be completed and the site to re-open, remediation work to be completed and at what rate production resumes, the firm said in a statement today.

The deceased was a 29-year-old man from Southampton, Wiltshire Police confirmed over the weekend. Authorities said the victim's family have been informed.

The second man caught up in the explosion, a 26-year-old from Pewsey, was in a serious but stable condition in Salisbury District Hospital.

Wiltshire Police said it was investigating the explosion with health and safety officers, and reassured the public that they faced no further risk.

Analysts at AJ Bell commented: 'A profit warning from Chemring in the wake of a tragic incident which left one worker dead and another badly injured on Friday is having a significant impact on the companys share price.

'The 10m to 20m hit to its profit for the 12 months to 31 October is concern enough but is compounded by a statement that the company cannot yet fully quantify the impact on either this financial year or next.

'Chief executive Michael Ord has only been in post for a matter of weeks after the retirement of his predecessor Michael Flowers.

'Flowers had led a restructuring of the group which had arguably over-stretched itself at the height of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.'
Clarkson posted falling profits in the first six months of the year as it reiterated the impact of a 'challenging environment' in the shipping and offshore markets on business.

However, the shipping services giant, which issued a profit warning in April, said trading had improved in the second quarter and left full-year expectations unchanged.

Pre-tax profits for the six months to the end of June fell by 18 per cent to 18million, from 21.9million in the same period last year, on a 2.7 per cent decline in revenues to 152.6million.

'Challenging environment': But Clarkson said trading had improved in the second quarter

Despite falling profits, investors reacted positively to the results, with shares in the FTSE 250-listed company rising 9.6 per cent to 2,835p in morning trading.

Chief executive Andi Case said in a statement: 'The first quarter of 2018 presented a challenging trading environment across the shipping and offshore capital markets, including a quiet period in sale and purchase, and accentuated by a fall in the value of the US dollar.

'Conditions in some markets did, however, improve in the second quarter when the breadth and diversity of our business again provided opportunity irrespective of volatility in the market.

'We should benefit in the second half of the year from these recent improvements and remain confident in the mid to long-term potential for the group.'

The figures come after Clarkson issued a profit warning in April, saying that earnings for both the first half and the full year were likely to be 'materially below those of last year'.

It said it had suffered from choppy conditions in shipping and offshore capital markets as well as lower freight rates within the tanker market and a fall in the US dollar.

Michael Hewson at CMC Markets UK said: 'The shipping industry is usually seen as a decent bellwether of global growth so today's trading update from shipping giant Clarkson isn't likely to make for encouraging reading, with profits and revenues lower.'

However, he noted that markets have reacted positively after management left their full guidance unchanged.

Broker Liberum upgraded its recommendation to buy from hold following the update, saying that confidence in the short-term outlook has improved.

'We remain confident in the longer-term potential to benefit from an eventual structural rebound in shipping markets,' Liberum said in a note.
The British high street is suffering from a vicious circle in which local shops are closing because there are no banks left in the vicinity, a report suggests today.

Nearly half of independent retailers blamed the lack of a local bank branch for poor trading - and a significant third of owners said they are considering shutting up shop to go online.

Nottingham Building Society found that bank closures generally mean fewer shoppers visit High Streets and that then impacts on local retailers. Some 36 per cent of consumers saying they would make fewer visits to their town or village once their local bank branch closed.

Shutting up shop: The report suggests bank branch closures are behind some of the High Street's toubles.

In the survey, 46 per cent of shop owners blame the loss of a local bank branch in the last three years for falling customer numbers and lower sales.

Shop owners in areas affected by branch closures estimate that their annual revenue dropped by an average of 20 per cent after the bank shut its doors and footfall drops.

High Street footfall lifts in July A separate report by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Springboard found that High Streets enjoyed a brief reprieve last month. Footfall edged up 0.3 per cent in July as consumers popped out in the warm weather to pick up food, drink and fans. However, the sunshine deterred shoppers from making trips to indoor centres or large furniture stores, causing visitor numbers at shopping centres to sink 3.4 per cent, and 0.5 per cent at retail parks. Overall, footfall fell 0.8 per cent in July. The national town centre vacancy rate remained at 9.2 per cent, as the announcement of store closures have been made but not yet all implemented.

It also found that 26 per cent were looking at moving their businesses to a new area or smaller premises nearby, while 31 per cent say they are considering shutting their high street stores and operating solely online.

The survey noted that 15 per cent were mulling job cuts.

Gary Womersley, head of branch network for Nottingham Building Society, said: 'Financial institutions play a major role in local high streets drawing customers to shops and boosting sales and business.

'This is particularly true in market towns, where much of our focus is placed. Sadly, there are now as many as 1,500 towns in the UK that used to have branches but no longer do.'

A Government report released earlier this year shows that 1,270 bank branches were closed between 2014 and 2017, with 650 cut last year alone.

Further closures have since been announced by the likes of Royal Bank of Scotland, which has confirmed it will close 162 branches across England and Wales.

Lloyds earlier this year also announced plans to shutter 49 branches across its Lloyds and Halifax brands between July and October.

Banks are crucial to the High Street's health, the survey suggests.

A separate study by the Nottingham Building Society released last month projects that a further 2,400 banks could close, putting 12,000 jobs at risk.

'We're seeing campaigns in the media calling for people to embrace their high streets and we fully back that but also recognise the need to evolve, Mr Womersley said.

'Expert advice and great service is integral to the strength of our branch network supporting our unique 'all-under-one-roof' strategy that offers building society and estate agency services to our customers.'

The society's research has been part of a campaign to to highlight the value of bank branches to local towns and businesses, having doubled its network of branches to 67 over the past five years.
A Tasmanian man who tried to sell his rock collection on Gumtree has been fined $850 because some of the stones were deemed to be Aboriginal relics.

Jake Raymond Cleaver was caught trying to sell 38 rocks in an undercover sting by a government officer posing as a buyer for the artefacts, 17 of which were found to be Aboriginal relics.

The 37-year-old did not identify as Aboriginal and he went ahead with the attempted sale despite being told by an antiques dealer it was probably 'not entirely legal'.

Jake Cleaver tried to sell this collection of 38 rocks he inherited from his grandfather on Gumtree. Tasmanian Aborigines alerted authorities and a sting operation was commenced

Truganini, who died in 1876, was once considered to be the last full-blood speaker of a Tasmanian Aboriginal language. However, full-blood Tasmanian Aboriginal women living on Flinders and Lady Barron Islands, and Kangaroo Island in South Australia outlived Truganini

Selling or attempting to sell Aboriginal relics - or objects that could be relics - is an offence in Tasmania attracting a maximum fine for an individual of $815,000.

Cleaver pleaded guilty last Thursday in Hobart Magistrates Court to three charges relating to the discovery of 'undeclared' Aboriginal stones at his New Town home on July 5 last year.

The Aboriginal Relics Act of 1975 requires someone in possession of indigenous relics to inform the proper authorities of ownership.

Cleaver said he had inherited a collection of stones from his late grandfather a couple of years earlier and advertised them on Gumtree using the name Stan Lee, according to the ABC.

He had previously taken the relics to an antiques dealer to inquire about their legitimacy and was told the act of selling the stones would be encroaching on a 'grey area'.

Under the former Aboriginal Relics Act of Tasmania indigenous artefacts had to date from before 1876 to be considered relics. That was the year Truginini (pictured far right) died

Jake Cleaver was fined $850 for trying to sell his collection of Aboriginal stone relics (above)

Members of the Aboriginal community notified Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment (DPIPWE) and a sting operation began.

An undercover officer from DPIPWE posing as a Gumtree buyer offered Cleaver $300 to $400 for his stones. Cleaver told the officer he just 'wanted someone to appreciate them.'

Prosecutor Emily Bell told the court: 'When informed that it wasn't entirely legal, he continued to make arrangements to meet with the buyer, saying he'd been told before he shouldn't sell them.'

The undercover investigator was invited to Cleaver's home and saw 38 stones on a coffee table.

The court heard an archaeologist specialising in Aboriginal relics found 17 of the stones were 'relics' created before 1876 - the year Truganini died.

Truganini was long considered the last 'full-blood' speaker of a Tasmanian indigenous language but that claim has been discounted. The date of her death had been used as a cut-off to determine what was of 'Aboriginal heritage'.

A group of Aborigines in Tasmania painted about 1859. It is an offence to sell Aboriginal relics in Tasmania. All such artefacts in private possession must be reported to state authorities

The remaining stones were not defined as relics under the Act but were still considered significant to Aboriginal people.

Cleaver 'did not intend to deceive' and genuinely believed all the items were Aboriginal relics, the court heard.

HOW ARE TASMANIAN ABORIGINAL RELICS PROTECTED? It is an offence under the Tasmanian Aboriginal Heritage Act to destroy, damage, deface, conceal, sell or offer for sale an Aboriginal relic. The offence of selling an Aboriginal relic is extended to an object which 'so nearly resembles a relic as to be likely to deceive or be capable of being mistaken for a relic.' It is an offence to make a copy of an Aboriginal carving or engraving that is a relic by rubbing, tracing or casting. A relic that is found or abandoned by any person on Crown land is the property of the Crown. It is an offence to remove a relic from where it was found or abandoned. The Act also requires anyone who has possession of a Tasmanian Aboriginal relic, or knows where one is kept, to provide that information to the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and the Environment. Source: Aboriginal Heritage Act Advertisement

The palliative care worker had shown remorse and made full admissions to police, defence lawyer Philippa Willshire said.

'He wasn't told that it was illegal to sell the items but he fully concedes that the warning signs were there,' Ms Willshire said.

'He didn't mean any disrespect to the Aboriginal community and he is grateful the stones will go back to their rightful owners.'

Cleaver had found his discussions with authorities about the stones and the Aboriginal Relics Act 'educational', Ms Willshire said.

Magistrate Reg Marron said Tasmania had a historically 'shocking, disgraceful attitude to the indigenous people' which included digging up their stone relics, Hobart's Mercury newspaper reported.

'In my view, that highlights the absolute importance of safeguarding the little bits that are left, Mr Marron said.

'In selling them, you were seeking financial gain, rather than the safe custodianship of the stones, and your conduct could be regarded as reckless.'

Mr Marron fined Cleaver $850. No conviction was recorded.

It was not revealed how Cleaver's grandfather obtained the relics.

The Aboriginal Relics Act under which Cleaver was prosecuted has been replaced by the Aboriginal Heritage Act which removed the requirement for artefacts to be pre-1876 to qualify as relics.
Shortly after the plane took off, traffic controllers were heard on an Internet livestream speaking to a man identified as 'Rich'.

'There is the runway just off your right side in about a mile, do you see that?' the traffic controller said.

'Oh those guys will try to rough me up if I try land there,' Rich replied. 'I think I might mess something up there too. I wouldn't want to do that. Oh they probably have got anti-aircraft.'

'They don't have any of that stuff, we are just trying to find you a place to land safely.'

'Yeah, not quite ready to bring it down just yet, but holy smokes I need to stop looking at the fuel 'cos it's going down quick.'

'OK, Rich, if you could, could you start a left-hand turn and we'll take you down to the south-east.'

'This is probably jail time for life, huh? I would hope it is for a guy like me. '

Rich: I've got a lot of people that care about me. It's going to disappoint them to hear that I did this.

I would like to apologize to each and every one of them. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose I guess. Never really knew it, until now

Rich: I'm down to 2,100, I started at like 30-something.

Air traffic control: Rich, you said you had 2,100 pounds of fuel left?

Rich: Yeah, I don't know what the burnage, burnout? Is like on a takeoff, but yeah, it's burned quite a bit faster than I expected.

Air traffic control: Right now he's just flying around, and he just needs some help controlling the aircraft.

Rich: Nah I mean, I don't need that much help. I've played some video games before. I would like to figure out how to get this make it pressurized or something so I'm not lightheaded.

Rich: Ah minimum wage. We'll chalk it up to that. Maybe that will grease the gears a little bit with the higher-ups

Rich: Damnit Andrew, people's lives are at stake here.

Air traffic control: Ah Rich, don't say stuff like that.

Rich: I don't want to hurt anyone, I just want you to whisper sweet nothings into my ear.

Rich: Hey do you think if I land this successfully Alaska will give me a job as a pilot?

Air traffic control: You know, I think they would give you a job doing anything if you could pull this off.

Rich: Yeah right! Nah, I'm a white guy

Air traffic control: If you wanted to land, probably your best bet is that runway just ahead and to your left. Again, that's McCourt (sic) Field.

If you wanted to try, that might be the best way to set up and see if you can land there. Or just like the pilot's suggestion, the other option might be over Puget Sound, into the water.

Rich: Dang, did you talk to McCourt, cause I don't know if I'd be happy with you telling me I could land like that, cause I could really mess some stuff up.

Air traffic control: Well Rich I already talked to 'em. Just like me, what we want to see is you not get hurt, or anyone else get hurt. So if you want to try to land, that's the way to go.

Rich: Hey I want the coordinates of that orca, you know, the mama orca with the baby. I want to see that guy.

Rich: Hey, is that pilot on? I want to know what this weather is going to be like in the Olympics (mountains).

Air traffic control: Well, if you can see the Olympics, the weather's good. I can see the Olympics from my window, and it looks pretty good over there.

Rich: Alright, 'cause I felt some, what felt like turbulence around Rainer, but there was no clouds hardly.

Air traffic control: Oh, that's just the wind blowing over all over the bumpy surfaces there.

Captain Bill: Alright Rich, this is Captain Bill. Congratulations, you did that, now let's try to land that airplane safely and not hurt anyone on the ground.

Rich: Alright, damnit, I don't know man, I don't know. I don't want to I was kind of hoping that would be it, you know.

Rich: I'm gonna land it, in a safe kind of manner. I think I'm gonna try to do a barrel roll, and if that goes good, I'm just gonna nose down and call it a night.

Air traffic control: Well Rich, before you do that, let's think about this. I've got another pilot coming up, pilot Joel, in just a minute here I hope. And we'll be able to give you some advice on what to do next.

Rich: I feel like one of my engines is going out or something.

Air traffic control: OK Rich, if you could, you just want to keep that plane right over the water. Maybe keep the aircraft nice and low.

Rich: Just kind of lightheaded, dizzy. Man, the sights went by so fast. I was thinking, like, I'm going to have this moment of serenity, take in all the sights. There's a lot of pretty stuff, but they're prettier in a different context.

Air traffic control: Do you have any idea of how much fuel you have left?

Rich: Oh man, not enough. Not enough to get by. Like, uh, 760? 760 pounds?

Air traffic control: Just flying around the plane, you seem comfortable with that?

Rich: Oh hell yeah, its a blast. Ive played video games before so I know what Im doing a little bit.

Air traffic control: OK, and you can see all the terrain around you, youve got no issue with visibility or anything?

Rich: Naw, everythings peachy, peachy clean. Just did a little circle around Rainer, its beautiful. I think Ive got some gas to go check out the Olympics (mountains).

Rich: I wouldnt know how to land it, I wasnt really planning on landing it.

Rich: Sorry, my mic came off, I threw up a little bit. Im sorry about this, I hope this doesnt ruin your day.

Rich: Man, have you been to the Olympics? These guys are gorgeous, holy smokes.

Air traffic control: Ya, I have been out there, its always a nice drive.

Rich: (inaudible)

Air traffic control: Hey I bet you do. I havent done much hiking over there. But if you could start a left turn, and back towards the east. I know youre getting a good view there, but if you go too much farther in that direction I wont be able to hear you anymore.

Rich: Hey pilot guy, can this thing do a backflip, you think?

Rich: I wouldnt mind just shooting the s**t with you guys, but its all business, you know?
Jim Mattis has claimed he was never against Donald Trump's plan for a Space Force.

The Defense Secretary last year opposed moves in Congress to create a separate space service and wrote a letter to a fellow republican criticising the plan.

But on Sunday he insisted he is behind the idea and was only trying to establish a consensus about what the Pentagon's space problem is before recommending a way to fix it.

'I was not against setting up a Space Force,' he told reporters flying with him to Brazil to begin his first tour of South America as defense secretary on Sunday.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (right with Vice President Mike Pence during an event on the creation of a United States Space Force) has said creating a Space Force as a separate military service is the right way to reorganize the Pentagon's approach to space

Defense Chief Jim Mattis initially said a space force would add burdensome bureaucracy and unwanted costs

'What I was against was rushing to do that before we could define the problem' that needed solving.

This, he said, is why he pushed back against efforts in Congress to create a Space Force.

In a July 2017 letter to Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner, Mattis wrote: 'I do not wish to add a separate service that would likely present a narrower and even parochial approach to space operations.'

Mattis' comments Sunday were his first since Vice President Mike Pence announced on Thursday that the Trump administration would push for creation of the Space Force as a sixth, separate military service by 2020.

The Pentagon first will establish a Space Command to oversee and coordinate space operations and a Space Development Agency to accelerate the development and fielding of space technologies for the military.

It also will build up larger numbers of servicemen and servicewomen with expertise in space operations.

Trump said he wants a Space Force and signed a Space Policy Directive in June, pictured above, where he directed the Pentagon to create an independent military service branch

'We're in favor of war-fighting capability organized along the lines of what the president laid out,' Mattis said, referring to President Donald Trump's instruction in June that the Pentagon begin the process of creating a Space Force that would be 'separate but equal' to the Air Force, which currently manages most of the military's space operations.

Mattis said he has been discussing this with Trump and Pence since the first month of the administration.

Critics of making space a separate branch of the military say it would entail more bureaucracy and cost. Deputy Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan said on Thursday that the Pentagon does not yet know how much it will cost but that it would be in the billions of dollars.

Shanahan said the Pentagon would submit a legislative proposal for a Space Force early next year as part of its fiscal 2020 budget request.

Mattis was in Brazil to discuss a range of defense issues, including mutual security threats. Later in the week, he is scheduled to make the first visit to Argentina by a US defense secretary since 2005. He also will visit Chile and Colombia.
An Australian teenager who was arrested after being accused of stealing two luxury watches in Bali's international airport has been detained by Indonesian police.

The 17-year-old boy, from Mermaid Waters on the Gold Coast, was arrested at 2pm Saturday, just before he was set to board a Jetstar flight from Bali to Brisbane, according to the Courier Mail.

Footage showed the boy being questioned at Denpasar police station after he was accused of stealing two watches valued from $950 to $1,200 at the airport's duty free store.

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An Australian teenage boy (pictured) who was arrested after being accused of stealing two luxury watches in Bali's international airport has been detained by Indonesian police

The video showed the boy, wearing Gucci thongs and blue footy shorts, talking to an Indonesian police officer next to a man understood to be the boy's father.

The teenage boy is currently being detained in an isolated room at the Bali police station, instead of prison, because he is a minor.

The footage then pans to the boy sitting on a wooden bench in isolation outside the police interrogation room.

The bench and floor around him can be seen strewn with his clothes, bags and a bottle of water.

A spokesman from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) told Daily Mail Australia on Monday that they are providing consular assistance to the teenager.

'The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular assistance to an Australian youth detained in Bali, Indonesia. Due to privacy obligations we are unable to provide further information.'

He was reportedly with his step-brother when he was arrested in the airport on Saturday.

The boy's parents have stayed behind and rescheduled their trip back to Australia.

A lawyer is assisting the teen, who is believed to be with his father and stepmother.

Lawyer Putu Angga Pratama Sukma told News Corp the teenager was 'crying' and 'promised not to do the same thing again'.

'In Indonesia, a case with a child as a perpetrator, the case is attempted to finish without court,' he said.

'We call it diversion. It's kind of like mediation. Police will encourage the victim to revoke the report and forgive the perpetrator,' he continued.

Latest Australians who've been arrested in Bali Brendon Luke Johnsson, 43 Brendon Johnsson (right) was arrested at a boarding house in Kuta with his girlfriend Remi (left) for allegedly using and trafficking cocaine on the resort island, according to Denpasar Police Brendon Johnsson was arrested after allegedly using and trafficking cocaine on the resort island of Kuta in Bali. Police allege they found 11.6 grams of cocaine packed into 13 plastic bags worth about $3,000. He was arrested by Indonesian authorities on August 4 and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Joshua James Baker, 32 Joshua Baker (pictured) was arrested at Nghurah Rai airport in October, 2017 Joshua Baker was arrested after arriving at Ngurah Rai airport with 28 grams of marijuana, tobacco and close to 40 pills of Diazepam last October. He faced up to 15 years in jail if he was convicted of drug possession. During his trial in March, he was found guilty of illegally using a category one narcotic for personal consumption and possession of psychotropic drugs, ABC reports. Baker dodged prison and was sentenced to spend 10 months in rehabilitation. Isaac Emmanuel Roberts, 35 Australian man Isaac Emmanuel Roberts (pictured) was caught with crystal meth and ecstasy pills in Bali last December Isaac Roberts was arrested at Balis international airport with 14.3 grams of crystal methamphetamine and 14 ecstasy tablets after arriving from Bangkok on December 4. Roberts was sentenced to 15 months of rehabilitation for drug offences in April. Advertisement

The teenage boy was accused of stealing two luxury watches at a Duty Free shop (pictured) in Bali's international airport on Saturday (file image)

People have taken to social media slamming the 17-year-old Australian for allegedly stealing in a foreign country.

'Pay for your crime...no excuses,' one man said.

'He needs a good life lesson. Punish him hard. Australia is too soft on petty crime and it leads to larger more serious crime,' another said.

The boy is being held at the same police station as Queenslander Brendon Johnsson who is facing drug dealing charges.

Last week, the 43-year-old was arrested in his Kuta home after police allegedly found 12 grams of cocaine worth about $3,000 in a raid.

If found guilty, Johnsson faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison under Indonesian law.
Melbourne psychologist Kris Schroder, 57, (pictured) allegedly stole more than $250,000 from her long-term partner Maree Hart who battled brain cancer and died in 2016

A psychologist is accused of stealing more than $250,000 from her long-term same-sex partner who battled brain cancer, according to police.

Kris Schroder, 57, allegedly hid the will of her partner Maree Hart who died in 2016 and fraudulently made herself the sole beneficiary of a $2.4 million estate, Fairfax reported.

Police allege Ms Schroder replaced the 1998 will - which named Ms Schroder a beneficiary along with Ms Hart's niece and nephew - with a 2014 document that police claim is fake.

It is alleged that Ms Schroder persuaded two men to witness the false document, including a former partner.

The registered psychologist who works in Dandenong also allegedly took money from Ms Hart's bank account in the months before she died aged 59.

Ms Schroder is expected to appear at the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday for more than 140 offences, including 127 counts of theft, six counts of perjury and six counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The accused claims she is a victim of police corruption and that some of her partner's relatives were motivated by homophobia.

Police allege that Ms Schroder replaced Ms Hart's (pictured) 1998 will with a fake document in 2014

'I lost my wife and rock of 22 years in this, my health, my life, my reputation and there is nothing left. I am not guilty of any of these charges,' Ms Schroder told Fairfax.

'I am a 57-year-old woman who all I did was love and care for my partner of 22 years when she was diagnosed with brain cancer. And we lost everything and these two parasites did not help us once and have destroyed us.'

Ms Schroder had formally been in a legal battle at the Supreme Court of Victoria and the appeals tribunal with her former partner's family. The details of the case are unable to be published for legal reasons.

A suppression order will be requested at the Melbourne Magistrates Court as Ms Schroder said the case could affect her clients.
A Vietnamese national jailed over one of the biggest cannabis grow houses ever found in Australia claims he was tricked into helping the operation and didn't understand the term 'weed'.

Brothers Hieu Dinh Vu, 26, and Dinh Tung Vu, 27, as well as the latter's wife Thi Phuong Lien Tran, 30, were arrested in May 2015 during dramatic police raids on their Alice River home in Townsville's west.

The 26-year-old's barrister said his client was only involved in the operation - capable of yielding $2million worth of cannabis each year - because he 'couldn't refuse' his brother.

'It wasn't until far later he became aware of the purpose of the Ring Road property or even the meaning of the word ''weed'',' Harlis Kirimof said, the Townsville Bulletin reported.

A Vietnamese national jailed over one of the biggest cannabis grow houses ever found in Australia claims he was tricked into helping the operation and didn't understand the term 'weed'. Pictured are some of the plants police seized in May, 2015

'While he may have assisted in the setting up of the grow house, he never initiated anything.'

The trio were jailed on Friday, with Judge Gregory Lynham finding Dinh Tung Vu was the chief offender.

Judge Lynham said the sophistication of the operation suggested there was 'someone further up the chain who's never going to be identified'.

Dinh Tung Vu was jailed for five years, his wife for three-and-a-half years and his brother for three.
A Sydney street sign has triggered outrage online after a picture of its convoluted parking instructions went viral.

The image, captured in Leichhardt in Sydney's inner west, shows the sign's elaborate attempts to advise motorists as to when they can and can't park in the designated zones - and for how long.

'Jesus Sydney take a chill pill,' reads the caption of the picture, as tweeted by Dean Nye on Saturday morning.

A Sydney street sign (pictured) has triggered outrage online after a picture of its convoluted parking instructions went viral

The image, captured in Leichhardt in Sydney's inner west, shows the sign's elaborate attempts to advise motorists as to when they can park in the designated zones - and for how long - without being hit with a fine

It has since accrued more than 5,200 likes, 936 retweets and, at the time of writing, 143 comments - as incredulous social media users vent their frustration over the perplexing sign and its seemingly mixed messages.

'You need to have a copy of the Rosetta Stone to decipher that and by then your 5 minutes are up,' quipped one commenter.

'I thought Melbourne was bad enough,' wrote another. 'You'd have a ticket by the time you'd finished reading that sign.'

A third Twitter user weighed in to suggest that the baffling instructions were typical of Sydney's roads.

Incredulous social media users weighed in to vent their frustration over the perplexing sign and its seemingly mixed messages

Some suggested that it's typical of Sydney's roads, while others blame state government for the baffling signage

'I was born and raised in Sydney and I still dont understand our parking signs,' they wrote. 'Sometimes P means you pay, sometimes it doesnt, sometimes you need a ticket.

'Sometimes you just give up and go home because thats easier than understanding a sign.'

Others, meanwhile, pointed the finger of blame at the state government, with one commenter saying 'Welcome to 3 terms of the Liberal Party'.

It would appear that complicated street signs are not exclusive to Sydney, however, as some Twitter users took to the comments thread to share snaps of similarly baffling signs in New York City and Culver City, California.

'NYC says hi,' wrote one.

'Culver City says gday mate!' wrote the other.

It would appear that complicated street signs are not exclusive to Sydney, however, as some Twitter users took to the comments thread to share snaps of similarly baffling signs in New York City (pictured) and Culver City, California